SECOND LANGUAGE ACQUISITION

“TYPOLOGICAL AND FUNCTIONAL APPROACHES”

BY:

BAIQ NINDI ELYRAYANA FEBRIANTY (E1D016017)

ENGLISH EDUCATION PROGRAM

FACULTY OF TEACHER TRAINING AND EDUCATION
UNIVERSITY OF MATARAM
2019
I. Introduction
Typological approaches stem from the study of the patterns exhibited in languages
worldwide, and functional approaches have as their main interest the study of how
language functions. Functional approaches generally entail a consideration of multiple
areas of language, such as tense/aspect, which combines verb meanings, morphological
form, and phonology.

II. Typological Universals

The study of typological universals stems from work in linguistics by Greenberg
(1963). In this approach to the study of universals, linguists attempt to discover
similarities/differences in languages throughout the world. That is, the attempt is to
determine linguistic typologies or what “types” of languages are possible. One of the
most important discoveries of this approach is that one can generalize across unrelated
and geographically nonadjacent languages regarding the occurrence and cooccurrence
of structures. Many of the typological universals are expressed in terms of implications,
such that, if a language has feature X, it will also have feature Y. In Greenberg’s original
work, many universals (or universal tendencies) were based on word order, as in the
following: “In languages with prepositions, the genitive almost always follows the
governing noun, while in languages with postpositions it almost always precedes the
noun” (Greenberg, 1963, p. 78).
For example, in languages with prepositions, like French, Russian, and Italian, we
expect to find the noun representing what is being possessed preceding the possessor.
In fact, this is the case. Italian languages form genitives in the same way:

il cane di mia madre

the dog of my mother

In languages with postpositions, such as Turkish, what we call prepositions follow

the noun, as can be seen in a and b, where the morphological markers follow the noun:
Turkish
a. (From Jannedy, Poletto, and Weldon, 1994, p. 153)
 deniz = an ocean
 denize = to an ocean
 denizin = of an ocean
b. Example of genitive (from Comrie, 1981)
ev- in pencere- s- i
house possessor window separates vowels possessed
“the window of the house”

English is somewhat exceptional in that it allows not only the predicted order (the
leg of the table), but also the unpredicted word order (my friend’s dog).
Other language universals can be stated in rigid (or absolute) terms, for example:

Languages with dominant verb–subject–object (VSO) order are always prepositional.

 This universal can be exemplified by a language such as Welsh, which has verb-first
word order and prepositions (example from Comrie, 1981, p. 81).
Lladdwyd y dyn gan y ddraig.
killed-passive the man by the dragon
“The man was killed by the dragon.”

Interlanguages are subject to the same constraints, that the most important test case
would come from speakers whose NL differs from the TL with regard to the specific
universal in question, because if the two languages in question were similar, one could
claim that it was only a matter of language transfer. That is, to test the hypothesis that
universals are at stake, one must eliminate the possibility that the universal in question
came from the NL. To take a hypothetical example, if a native speaker of a language
with postpositions learns Italian, we would expect that once the learner has learned that
Italian has prepositions, she or he would know that the genitive must follow the noun.
Language universals important to the study of second language acquisition because
the nature of second language systems was the extent to which they could be considered
a “natural language.”
Linguistic phenomenon appears to be impossible in any of the world’s languages,
then it will also be an impossible form in a second language system. As an example, we
consider word order phenomena from a selection of languages of the world. In Hindi,
French, and Japanese, the following sentences are possible:
a) Hindi (from Jannedy, Poletto, and Weldon, 1994)
Ram-ne seb khaya.
Ram apple ate
“Ram ate an apple.”
b) French
Jean a mangé une pomme.
Jean has eaten an apple
“Jean ate an apple.”
c) Japanese (from Jannedy, Poletto, and Weldon, 1994)
Taroo-ga ringo-o tabeta
Taroo apple ate
“Taroo ate an apple.”

If we consider the categories of object, verb, auxiliaries, prepositions/

postpositions, nouns and relative clauses, possessives, and adjective–noun order, we
can see in the following table (Table 7.1) the generalizations that can be seen based
on these data and from English.
We can think of languages as being “head-initial” or “head-final,” where the
“head” is a verb, or a noun, or a preposition in relation to other units within its
constituent. Thus, in a head-initial language, the verb will precede the noun, and, in
a head-final language, the verb will follow the object. If we consider one of the basic
differences in languages, the order of verbs and objects, we can think of the patterns
in Table 7.2.
 There are some oddities; that is, languages or parts of languages where the
predicted patterns do not obtain, as in the following examples.
 Hindi and Japanese relative clauses
- From these data Hindi and Japanese appear to be OV languages; that is,
the object precedes the verb.
- The relative clause precedes the noun in Japanese but follows it in Hindi.
 English Adjective Noun order
- From these data English appears to be a VO language; that is, the verb
precedes the object.
Table Word orders
Hindi French Japanese English
Basic order (V + O) OV VO OV VO
Aux + Verb V Aux Aux V V Aux Aux V
Preposition + Noun N Post Prep N N Post Post N
(Postposition)
N + Relative Clause N + RC N + RC RC + N N + RC
Possessive Poss + N N + Poss Poss + N Both
Adj + N Adj + N N + Adj Adj + N Both (A + N
dominant)

Table OV and VO word orders

OV (head-final) VO (head-initial)
V Aux Aux V
N Post Prep N
?? N + RC
Poss N N + Poss
Adj + N ???

 The adjective precedes the noun rather than following it, as in other VO
languages.
 There are instances where the adjective follows the noun:

She likes all things Japanese/She likes all Japanese things.

There are many ways in which universals can be expected to affect the development
of second language grammars:
a. They could absolutely affect the shape of a learner’s grammar at any point in
time. If this is correct, there would never be any instance of a violation of a given
universal evident in second language grammars.
b. They could affect acquisition order, whereby more marked forms would be the
last to be acquired, or, in the case of implicational universals, one could expect
fewer errors in the less marked forms.
 c. They could be one of many interacting forces in determining the shape of
learners’ grammars.
Some universals may be thought of as having greater influence than others. For
example, if we return to the word order examples given earlier, we saw that English
word order with regard to noun–adjective order is not consistent with the prediction
made by knowing that English is a verb–object language.

A. Test case 1 : the Accessibility Hieararchy

A few test cases in which typological/implicational universals are
investigated from an SLA perspective. Perhaps the most widely discussed
implicational universal is one dealing with relative clause formation. The universal
itself, known as the Accessibility Hierarchy (AH), was discussed at length by
Keenan and Comrie (1977). The basic principle is that one can predict the types of
relative clauses that a given language will have based on the following hierarchy:

Accessibility Hierarchy (AH)

SU > DO > IO > OPREP > GEN > OCOMP1

There are two aspect that important. First, the hierarchy reflects the ease of
relativization and/or certain discourse constraints. If this is the case, ease or
difficulty should not differentially affect languages that an individual uses. That is,
if it is truly a matter of difficulty that makes OComp relative clauses less frequent
(and more difficult) in languages of the world, then OComp relatives should not be
more difficult than other relative clause types in only one of the language systems
that a learner has available (i.e., the NL vs. the learner language). Second, important
aspect of the hierarchy is the implication regarding the use of resumptive pronouns
(pronominal reflexes) in relative clauses.

Resumptive Pronoun Hierarchy

OCOMP > GEN > OPREP > IO > DO > SU

B. Test case II: the acquisition of questions

Eckman, Moravcsik, and Wirth (1989) return to some of the early
Greenbergian universals (1963) to determine whether these universals, developed
on the basis of natural language data, could also be said to be valid for second
language learner data. Eckman, Moravcsik, and Wirth stated the two universals and
their SLA interpretation as follows
1. Wh- inversion implies wh- fronting: “Inversion of statement order (in Wh-
questions) so that verb precedes subject occurs only in language where the
question word or phrase is normally initial.”

la. Reinterpreted for learner languages as: “The relative frequency of occurrence
of subject–verb inversion in whquestions is never larger than the relative
frequency of occurrence of the fronting of the wh- word.”
 2. Yes/No inversion implies wh- inversion: “This same inversion (i.e., inversion
of statement order so that verb precedes subject) occurs in yes/no questions only
if it also occurs in interrogative word questions.”

2a. Reinterpreted for learner languages as: “The relative frequency of

occurrence of subject–verb inversion in yes/no questions is never larger than the
relative frequency of occurrence of subject–verb inversion in wh- questions.”

These universals are interpreted to suggest that the presence of subject– verb
inversion in yes/no questions (a question that requires a yes/no answer) in a
language, as in ,
Will you see my friend?

implies the presence of verb (auxiliary in English) before subject in wh- questions,
as in
Whom will you see?

which in turn implies the presence of wh- fronting (where the wh- word is at the
beginning of the sentence), as in:

Whom will you see? (vs. You will see whom?)

Thus, if a language has yes/no inversion, it will also have verbs before
subjects in wh- questions and it will also have wh- words at the beginning of
sentences. In markedness terms, yes/no inversion is the most marked and wh-
fronting the least.

C. Test case III: voiced/voiceless consonants

The area of investigation is word-final voiced and voiceless consonants. The
data presented in Eckman (1981a, 1981b) are from speakers of Spanish and
Mandarin Chinese learning English.
From the Spanish-speaker data, one can observe the following: word-final
obstruents are voiceless. The data from the Mandarin speakers are somewhat
different in that we do not see devoicing. Rather, what we see is the following: Add
a schwa (ə) following a word-final voiced obstruent (schwas represent reduced
sounds as in [dəpartmənt], department). Thus, both groups of speakers begin with
the same problem—how to resolve the difficulty of producing words with word-
final voiced obstruents which is a marked structure in languages. The Spanish
speakers solve the problem by devoicing the obstruents; the Mandarin speakers
resolve the problem by adding a schwa to the end of words.

D. Falsifiability
There has been little attempt to claim that the universal is inaccurately
described—a logical possibility, as we will see later. Because the linguistic facts of
typological universals, being based on surface facts of languages, are reasonably
well established, it is unlikely that this latter possibility would carry much weight.
Nevertheless, were there widespread evidence that typological universals did not
hold for learner languages, and there were no compelling arguments as to why this
should be so, there would be two possible conclusions: (a) the domain of language
universals is that of natural languages and not second languages, or (b) the domain
of language universals is that of all linguistic systems—any failure to comply with
a putative language universal would then be taken as evidence that the description
of that universal is incorrect.