Second language acquisition of Bulgarian object clitics PDF
Preview Second language acquisition of Bulgarian object clitics
University of Iowa Iowa Research Online Theses and Dissertations Summer 2009 Second language acquisition of Bulgarian object clitics: a test case for the interface hypothesis Ivan Prodanov Ivanov University of Iowa Copyright 2009 Ivan Prodanov Ivanov This dissertation is available at Iowa Research Online: https://ir.uiowa.edu/etd/300 Recommended Citation Ivanov, Ivan Prodanov. "Second language acquisition of Bulgarian object clitics: a test case for the interface hypothesis." PhD (Doctor of Philosophy) thesis, University of Iowa, 2009. https://doi.org/10.17077/etd.077u4o4q Follow this and additional works at:https://ir.uiowa.edu/etd Part of theLinguistics Commons SECOND LANGUAGE ACQUISITION OF BULGARIAN OBJECT CLITICS: A TEST CASE FOR THE INTERFACE HYPOTHESIS by Ivan Prodanov Ivanov An Abstract Of a thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Doctor of Philosophy degree in Linguistics in the Graduate College of The University of Iowa July 2009 1 Thesis Supervisor: Associate Professor Roumyana Slabakova 1 ABSTRACT The primary objective of this dissertation is to expand the testing ground of the Interface Hypothesis, which states that interface properties involving the syntax and other cognitive domains (such as discourse) may trigger residual optionality effects at the end- state. The target of investigation were Bulgarian object clitics whose syntactic and discursive properties provide a good testing ground for theoretical approaches to second language acquisition. Ten advanced and 14 intermediate L2 speakers of Bulgarian, as well as a control group of Bulgarian native speakers, participated in the study. The test materials included a proficiency test, a grammaticality judgment task to check syntactic knowledge of clitics, and a pragmatic felicity task. The latter was aimed at investigating the degree to which L2 learners of Bulgarian, with English as their L1, had acquired a syntax-discourse interface property of Bulgarian, namely the pragmatic function of clitic doubling. In Bulgarian, clitic doubling serves as an overt marker of topicality and ‘undoubled’ object topics are deemed infelicitous. The results of the experiments in this dissertation present a challenge to some theoretical approaches to second language acquisition, namely the Interpretability Hypothesis and the Interface Hypothesis. The results showed that the intermediate participants did not differentiate between the felicitous and the infelicitous options in the 1 pragmatic felicity task in a target-like manner as their responses either did not exhibit statistically significant difference or favored the response closest to the L1. However, the advanced L2 learners of Bulgarian had successfully acquired the syntax of clitics as well as the pragmatic meaning of clitic doubling in Bulgarian. They displayed target-like convergence with respect to the syntactic properties of Bulgarian object clitics and distinguished between the felicitous and the infelicitous options in the pragmatic task in a native-like manner. 2 The study highlights the fact that successful learning at the syntax-discourse interface cannot be excluded and a lot more research, exploring as many interface conditions as possible, needs to be done in order to validate the Interface Hypothesis as a legitimate constraint which permanently hinders native-like performance. Abstract Approved: _______________________________________________________ Thesis Supervisor _______________________________________________________ Title and Department _______________________________________________________ Date 2 SECOND LANGUAGE ACQUISITION OF BULGARIAN OBJECT CLITICS: A TEST CASE FOR THE INTERFACE HYPOTHESIS by Ivan Prodanov Ivanov A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Doctor of Philosophy degree in Linguistics in the Graduate College of The University of Iowa July 2009 1 Thesis Supervisor: Associate Professor Roumyana Slabakova Graduate College The University of Iowa Iowa City, Iowa CERTIFICATE OF APPROVAL _______________________ PH.D. THESIS _______________ This is to certify that the Ph.D. thesis of Ivan Prodanov Ivanov has been approved by the Examining Committee for the thesis requirement for the Doctor of Philosophy degree in Linguistics at the July 2009 graduation. Thesis Committee: ________________________________________ Roumyana Slabakova, Thesis Supervisor ________________________________________ William D. Davies 2 ________________________________________ Elena Gavruseva ________________________________________ Paula M. Kempchinsky ________________________________________ Jason Rothman To my parents ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This is the section where I will try to refer to all those people that made my journey through the Ph.D. program in linguistics at the University of Iowa possible. It was not easy and I knew it was not going to be easy from the very beginning in the hot and humid August of 2003. But all the effort has been worth it and now when I look back in time, I realize that the number of people who have had a significant contribution to the quality of my life in and outside of academia is huge. Since this is the acknowledgement section of a dissertation, it will probably be most appropriate to start with the person who made this dissertation possible - my advisor Roumyana Slabakova. I have no words to express my gratitude for all the help she has provided for me over the years – she was the reason I became interested in second language acquisition, she was the reason I decided to continue into the Ph.D program and she was the reason I have the opportunity to be writing an acknowledgment section in a dissertation. Prof.Slabakova, thank you so much for all your patience and your belief in my ability to see this through. I know that I was very often doing things at the last moment and, sometimes, I felt discouraged by the difficulties I was facing with finding participants for my experiments. You were always so patient and I guess, sometimes, you believed in me more than I did in myself. I also want to thank two of my professors in the Linguistics Department (also members of my dissertation committee), who contributed significantly to my development as a linguist – Bill Davies and Elena Gavruseva. Bill, that Syntax I class in the fall of 2003 remains the ultimate coursework experience of my academic life. I have been a student for 12 years (actually, I am not very proud of that, one MA should have been enough) and I have taken tons of classes but I have never felt so excited about doing my homework and reading my course books. I used to go home in the evenings after we had that syntax class, hungry and tired, and look at the data we were given on that day iii without thinking about anything else. Elena, thank you so much for all the help with my first comps paper and for the great class in L1 acquisition. I really liked that paper and the experiment was so much fun. There is one very special person for me in the Department of Linguistics that I can never omit in this section – Rob Chametzky. This is one of the most amazing people I have met in my life and when you have the chance to communicate with people like that, you should feel just lucky. Having a conversation with Rob, or just listening to him present his lectures is a treat that I wish everybody could experience. I would also like to thank my committee members from the Spanish department, Paula Kempchinsky and Jason Rothman, who were very helpful with their comments on my dissertation. Also, thanks to Dr. James Maxey who helped me with all the statistics in this dissertation and whose lucid style of presenting statistics made it possible for someone like me to understand it. Big thanks to all my participants without whom my experimental data would not have been possible. Some of them were extremely busy people, but they still managed to find three hours for the completion of the tasks. And thanks to Zlatko, Roumyana’s husband, who helped me find eligible subjects for the study through one of his friends in Bulgaria and whose voice was in the recorded test items for one of the experiments. When it comes to people who have made my life easier over all those years, I should immediately start with my great friend Marta Tryzna and her amazing family – Dominik, Kuba, Julia and little Olivia. I have no idea what I would have done if they were not around to help me during all those years. They made me feel as if I was a part of their family and I would never ever forget that. Barbara Hermeier and Peter Rohrbough, the greatest Iowans I have ever known, are the other two people who have made so much for me. Barb is the sweetest person ever and whatever great things I say about her will be insufficient to capture her iv remarkable personality. Communicating with Peter (preferably, over some drink) on any topic is such an enjoyable experience which will be sorely missed once I have to leave Iowa. I think that for the rest of my life, every time I see or hear the word ‘Iowa’, Barb and Peter will be the first ones that I will associate with it. I know that they (especially Peter) are so proud of their Iowan heritage, but I think that Iowa should be very proud of them, too. My best friend Tsvetelina never stopped encouraging me and our phone conversations lasted forever. And finally, we got my lovely Putt who brought something different in my life and who was suffering with me over this thesis. Tsveti and Putt were the happiest people after my defense and they knew better than anyone what it meant to me. I would also like to thank my roommate for 5 years, Tomomasa Sasa for all the crazy moments we had over the years. He was the best roommate I could have had and he had to suffer my shouting on the Saturday or Sunday early mornings when I woke up to watch my soccer games. It was so much fun communicating with him and as we were writing our dissertations at the same time, he was someone who could understand my frustrations as well as my joys related to that better than anyone else. Finally, I want to thank two of the professors from the Department of Linguistics, Jill Beckman and Alice Davison, and all the students in that department whom I had the privilege to know during my time in Iowa – Maria Fruit, Kristin Lily, Beth Rathe, Eileen Cannon, Gonzalo Campos and his wife Maria-Laura, Jae-Young Shim, Kum-Young Lee, Lalita Dhareshwar, Lauren Eby, Jane Gressang, Melissa Meisterheim, John Njue, Vladimir Kulikov, Elena Kallestinova and Steven Schubert. v
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