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Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 97 (2013) 454 – 463

The 9th International Conference on Cognitive Science

knowledge of syntax
in the acquisition of aspectual semantics
Bin Yina,*, Elsi Kaiserrb
a
National Institute of Education, Centre for Research in Pedagogy and Practice, 1 Nanyang Walk, Singapore 637616, Republic of Singapore
b
University of Southern California, Department of Linguistics, 3601 Watt Way, GFS 301, Los Angeles, CA 90089, United States of America

Abstract

Telicity (a type of aspectual semantics information) is a syntax-semantics interface property, its semantics standardly being
analyzed as the product of syntactic operations. We aimed to find out whether second language learners on the
semantics of telicity would demonstrate sensitivity to the syntax underlying telicity calculation. Results of a sentence-rating
experiment involving 36 L1 Chinese/L2 English learners and 16 native English speakers suggest that our L2ers may not have
acquired the requisite syntactic knowledge for telicity interpretation.

© 2013
© 2013TheTheAuthors.
Authors.Published
Published
byby Elsevier
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Open access under CC BY-NC-ND license.
Selectionand/or
Selection and/orpeer-review
peer-review under
under responsibility
responsibility of Universiti
of the the Universiti Malaysia
Malaysia Sarawak
Sarawak.

Keywords: Second language acquisition; telicity; aspect; syntax-semantics

1. Introduction

Recently, there has been considerable interest in understanding the acquisition of properties at linguistic
interfaces (e.g. the Interface Hypothesis, Sorace and Filiaci [1]). Research in this area is mainly concerned with
finding out what types of properties may pose difficulties to learners: external interfaces, internal interfaces, or
-interface properties. There is emerging consensus that internal interfaces those which straddle two
modules of grammar (e.g., syntax, semantics, morphology) tend to be unproblematic, compared with external
interfaces which involve a grammar-external domain such as pragmatics (Sorace and Filliaci [1]; Sorace and
Serratrice [2]; Tsimpli and Sorace [3]). Indeed, (among others) a series of studies by Dekydtspotter and colleagues
on English-French interlanguage, as reviewed in Slabakova [4] and White [5] show that syntax-semantics properties
are generally unproblematic for L2 learners, even overcoming Stimulus-of- f Poverty situations (where language input
underdetermine the linguistic property). However, other studies, also examining phenomena at the same interface
(syntax-semantics) point to learning difficulties (e.g., Choi and Lardiere [6]; Hawkins and Harttori [7]; Umeda [8];
Yuan [9] as reviewed in White [5] and Slabakova [4]). Given these disparate findings, more work is needed for a
better understanding of acquisition at this interface.
The study reported in this paper investigates the second language acquisition of aspectual semantics (telicity) in
two kinds of structures (simple telicity and locatum telicity, Hodgson [10]) which, though having the same
interpretation (telic), are analyzed as involving different types of syntactic operations, as shown by Hodgson. We

* Corresponding author. Tel.: +65-6790-3373; fax: +65-6316-4787

E-mail address: bin.yin@nie.edu.sg

1877-0428 © 2013 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. Open access under CC BY-NC-ND license.
Selection and/or peer-review under responsibility of the Universiti Malaysia Sarawak.
doi:10.1016/j.sbspro.2013.10.259
 Bin Yin and Elsi Kaiser / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 97 (2013) 454 – 463 455

syntax, like what has been found for L1 learners who were more successful when the syntactic operation involved is
an overt one than a covert one (Hodgson [10]). By doing so, this study provides new data that can contribute to the
debate on the acquisition of interface properties.

2. Background

2.1. Telicity and the direct object

Telicity is a temporal feature relevant to lexical aspect (e.g., Smith [11]

[12], p. 4). Of the four types of verbs
identified by Vendler [13], Accomplishments and Achievements are telic situations while Statives and Activities are
atelic situations. In the computation of telicity, the direct object plays an important role in some languages. This can
be seen in ex. (1) from English:

(1) a. Mary ate an apple. (bounded entity telic event)

b. Mary ate the apple. (bounded entity telic event)
c. Mary ate ice cream. (unbounded entity atelic event)
d. Mary ate apples. (unbounded entity atelic event)

In examples (1a/b), with a count noun that encodes a specific quantity (i.e., bounded), the event of eating is
1c), Mary might continue
eating indefinitely since the amount of ice cream is indefinite. The same could be said for bare plural nouns, such as
1d). In terms of telicity, the first two sentences present telic situations and the remaining two, atelic
ones. The contributing factor here is the boundedness feature of the direct object (Smith [11]; Tenny [12];
Slobakova [14], among others). Basically, what matters is whether the entity in question has a defined extent or
quantity (Tenny [12] 1 1c) a
(1d) do not specify the quantity of the respective entities.

2.2 Syntactic analyses of telicity

Simple telicity

Although telicity is a semantic (aspectual) notion, it semantic outcome has been analyzed as a syntactic process.
According to prevalent proposals on the syntax of telicity (e.g., Borer [15]; Travis [16]; van Hout [17], among
others), telicity can be structurally represented by a functional category in a syntactic tree called Aspect. Telicity is
entering in a Specifier-Head relationship with the aspectual head and introduced in the
syntactic computation as a telicity feature that must be checked in Spec-AspP (Hodgson [10]
As an illustration, in the sentence The boy ate the cupcake (ex.2), the cupcake , being a count noun phrase
denoting a bounded entity, is assumed to move to a higher position in the structural representation of the sentence
and engage in a syntactic operation that would give rise to a semantic interpretation. Specifically,
moves to the specifier position of Aspect Phrase (AspP) whereby the relevant feature (e.g., telicity) is checked
(between the specifier and the head of the functional projection AspP), leading to a telic interpretation. The diagram
in Figure 1 from Hodgson[10] a
covert movement that takes places at the level of logical form (LF) of the syntactic process.
456 Bin Yin and Elsi Kaiser / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 97 (2013) 454 – 463

(2) The boy ate the cupcake (3) The water filled the bucket

(from Hodgson [10], p. 158) (from Hodgson [10], p. 161)

Figure 1: Structural representation for Figure 2: Structural representation for

simple telicity locatum telicity

Locatum telicity

In addition to the kind of structure illustrated in Figure 1, which Hodgson [10] simple t
be expressed by locatum structures such as the following

(4) The water filled the bucket {in 2 minutes / * for 2 minutes}.

Following Hale and Keyser ([18]; [19]; [20]), Hodgson [10] posits a syntactic relationship between locatum

and (5b), the two structural representations are analyzed as being identical:

(5) a. (put) the books on the shelf

b. (fill) the bucket with water

projection is in turn a complement of the verb phrase (VP) projection. The tree diagram in Figure 2 then illustrates
how the underlying representation .
Crucially, in locatum structures (Figure 2
telicity feature is considered to be an overt movement. The -TP to satisfy the
Extended Projection Principle (EPP). In doing so, it must cross over several syntactic positions on its way to its final
destination, one of which is the Spec-AspP position.
To sum up, simple telicity senten
covert movement operation is assumed to have taken place. As a result of this movement, telicity is derived via the
checking of the relevant feature at Aspect Phrase. Locatum t
analyzed as having undergone an overt movement operation for the checking of the feature. Even though the
aspectual semantics of both structures is the same (telic), the syntactic processes that lead to this reading are
different. In the next section, we briefly review the study by Hodgson ( [21]; [22]; [10]

type of the underlying syntactic structure.

 Bin Yin and Elsi Kaiser / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 97 (2013) 454 – 463 457

2.3. L1 child acquisition of simple versus locatum telicity structures

Current research shows that children up to 6 years of old have problems acquiring simple telicity in that they fail
to assign exclusively telic readings to such sentences (see review in e.g., van Hout [23] and Hodgson [10]). A range
of studies on the acquisition of different languages including Dutch, English, Finnish, German, and Hebrew reveal
properties of the object noun phrase as a key factor in determining
Hodgson [10]
van Hout [23] alludes to the possibility that the syntactic operation (movement of direct object and feature checking)
required for computing telicity might contribute to learning difficulties.
Hodgson specifically interprets the findings of previous studies as showing that children have problems with the
covert movement -vacuous; thus, for all
Hodgson [10]: 159). She hypothesizes that children may
demonstrate better performance with telicity structures that involve an overt movement (locatum telicity), when
compared to those which involve covert movement (simple telicity). To test this, she investigated L1 English and L1

than with simple telic structures, because the former have overt movement whereas the latter have covert movement.
[21]; [22];[10]) experiment, children learning Spanish and/or English (3-8 years of age for
Spanish; 3-6 years of age for English) and adult speakers of these two languages took part in a Truth Value
Judgment Task. Crucially, the

expressed events did not come to their completion. The correct answer would be No since telic sentences (including

adults performed equally well on both constructions (that is, assigning exclusively telic reading to both simple
telicity and locatum telicity sentences), both Spanish and English children did significantly better on the locatum
than on the simple t ed on

syntactic checking operation (Hodgson [10]

influenced by the type of syntactic operations associated with the semantic property.

2.4. Second language acquisition of telicity

Most existing work on L2 telicity is focused on whether and how the direct object plays a role in telicity
calculation calculation (e.g., Slabakova[14]; Gabriele [24]; Kaku-MacDonald [25]). This work has largely shown
that L2 learners encounter difficulties when their first and second languages differ in the role and property of the
direct object in telicity calculation.
Slabakova[14] looked at Bulg
to English in the way that boundedness of the object affects telicity computation. In contrast, in Bulgarian,
boundedness of the direct object does not affect telicity computation. Instead, this language signals telicity through
the use of perfective preverbs. The results of her sentence judgment experiment showed that Spanish learners
patterned like English native speakers and made a distinction between telicity and atelicity signaled through the
direct object. In contrast, Bulgarian learners showed no sensitivity to the boundedness of English object NPs and did
not distinguish telic from atelic sentences. Slabakova[14]
caused these differences.
In related work, Kaku-MacDonald [25] and Gabriele [24] investigated telicity acquisition by L1 Japanese/L2
English learners and L1 English/L2 Japanese learners respectively. Japanese bare count nouns allow both telic and
atelic readings. Gabriele [24] found that her L1 English/L2 Japanese participants had difficulty correctly acquiring
L2 Japanese telicity, assigning exclusively telic readings to bare count nouns in Japanese, as a result of L1 (English)
influence. In Kaku-MacDonald s study on L1 Japanese/L2 English learners, beginning learners were found to
encounter difficulties, incorrectly allowing atelic reading f
consistent with the reading permitted in Japanese, but not English. On the other hand, intermediate and advanced
learners performed better.
458 Bin Yin and Elsi Kaiser / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 97 (2013) 454 – 463

2.5. Motivation for this study

Current L2 telicity work therefore seems to suggest a general lack of success in the acquisition of telicity in cases
where L1 and L2 differ in the contribution the direct object makes to telicity. Aside from L1 transfer, we wonder
whether the explanation Hodgson [10] posited for childr
learners. That is, because the syntactic side of the phenomenon (movement) is covert, it therefore does not register
for the L2 learners. If movement is considered an important step in telicity calculation (e.g., Borer [15]; Travis [16];
van Hout [17]), then naturally, should learners have problems with this step, they will not be able to correctly
interpret the telicity of the sentences.
Indeed, the test sentences in existing L2 English studies are what we would call simple telicity sentences which
[19] -
MacDonald [25] hey were tested
on telic sentences that are analyzed to involve overt movements of the direct object, like what has been found for the
[21]; [22]; [10]) study. The influence of movement operations on L2 learning of telicity
has not been explicitly tested in existing
on simple telicity and locatum telicity contributes not only to furthering the understanding on the syntax-semantics
interface issue, but also the study of L2 telicity in itself.

2.6. General predictions

In this study, we would like to find out if our second language learners of English would be sensitive to the syntactic
processes underlying the computation of aspectual semantics. We take it as given that in order to acquire the correct
semantics, the associated syntax needs to be in place (Slabakova [4]; White, [5]). Therefore, if the English learners
are to perform in a target-like fashion on telicity in English, they need to have the necessary syntax in their
grammar. We outline two scenarios that would evidence the involvement of syntactic knowledge in the current
study: (1) learners perform indistinguishably from native English speaking controls in both the covert syntax
(simple telicity) and overt syntax (locatum telicity) conditions; or (2) learners perform differently from native
speakers but show sensitivity to the difference between covert and overt operations, as has been found for the
reviewed above.

3. Methodology

3.1. Participants

Sixteen native American English speakers and 36 L1 Chinese/L2 English learners (20 females and 16 males)
took part in the study. The L2 learners were mostly from mainland China. At the time of testing, they had studied
English for an average of 12 years (min 8; max 18), and had spent on average 0.9 years (min 0; max 6) in English-
speaking countries. Participants also took a cloze test (modified from Oshita, [26]) to have their proficiency
determined. The distribution of L2 participants in different proficiency ranges is as follows: Those who scored 20
points out of 25 and above are classified as Advanced speakers (n=3); 16-19 points are classified as Intermediate
speakers (n=19); 15 points and below were considered Low proficiency speakers (n=14).

3.2. Test materials and task

To make our L2 study comparable to the L1 studies reported in Hodgson, all 4 verbs used in this study were
taken directly from Hodgson ( [21]; [22]; [10]): cover, filled, cleaned, picked up. All of our materials were entirely
in English.
The task is adopted from Slabakova[14]), which is one of the first studies on L2 English telicity. We used a
sentence rating task to elicit aspectual interpretation of bi-clausal sentences. Each sentence consisted of two clauses

Table 1 for conditions, example test sentences, as well as predicted performance patterns. Construction refers to the
 Bin Yin and Elsi Kaiser / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 97 (2013) 454 – 463 459

second clause implies either a

Completion or an Incompletion of the event described in the first clause: In the Incompletion conditions, the second
y the first
clause (the blanket/the girl covering the piano) did not come to its natural endpoint. On the other hand, in the

event described by the first clause did come to its natural endpoint.

Table 1. Conditions, examples and predictions

Consistent with the general predictions outlined in 2.6, we spell out in Table 1 the specific predictions for the
participants in the study. As argued before, the semantics of telicity is analyzed to be derived from syntactic
processes. If L2 learners have access to such knowledge, we predict two patterns. First, participants may perform f
like native speakers and rate both incompletion conditions (locatum telicity and simple telicity) as unnatural (low
ratings) and at the same time assign high ratings to the completion conditions. Remember that telic events (both
locatum and simple telicity) describe events that are completed and therefore are only compatible with a completion
interpretation. Therefore, under target-like performance, there should be a sharp distinction between the
incompletion conditions on one hand, and completion conditions on the other. The second prediction leads us to
expect a different scenario for L2 learners: if their performance in judging telicity is not native-like but is still
guided by syntax in particular, if they experience more difficulties with structures involving covert movement than
those involving overt movement, similar to children (Hodgson [10]) then we would expect them to have an easier
time with locatum telicity sentences than with simple telicity sentences. This would translate into significantly lower
ratings for locatum telicity sentences with incompletion interpretation than for simple telicity sentences with

studies.
The 2 by 2 setup resulted in 4 conditions, and, with 4 verbs, 16 test sentences. Forty-three fillers were inserted
into the experiment resulting in a total of 59 experiment sentences. Participants were asked to judge how natural
they think the combination of clauses is on a five-point scale (1 = Very Unnatural Combination, 5 = Perfectly
Natural Combination). Before the main experiment, participants also had a chance to practice on 9 items that were
not related to the design of the main study.

4. Results

The naturalness ratings for the four conditions (using the abbreviations from Table 1) are presented in Figure 3
which shows the results for (a) each proficiency group, (b) for all L2 learners combined, and (c) for native speaker
controls.
Figure 3 shows that all proficiency groups rated Incompletion items (white bar and black bar) as much less natural
than Completion items (bars with horizontal and vertical stripes). To explore statistically the sensitivity that L2
460 Bin Yin and Elsi Kaiser / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 97 (2013) 454 – 463

learners and native speakers exhibit to our experimental manipulations, their ratings were subjected to a within-
subjects two-way analysis for variance (ANOVA) having two levels of Interpretation (Incompletion and
Completion) and two levels of Construction (Simple Telicity and Locatum Telicity). The analysis showed a
significant effect of Interpretation for each individual proficiency group except for the Advanced L2 learners,

controls, Low proficiency and Intermediate proficiency learners; p>.20 for Advanced proficiency learners). At the
same time there was no effect of Construction, meaning that there were no overarching differences between simple
telicity sentences and locatum telicity s
between Interpretation and Construction either (p .20 for all proficiency groups). This means that manipulating
the kind of construction in the sentence (simple telicity versus locatum telicity) did not have any differential effects
on the ratings for Incompletion versus Completion items.

Figure 3: Naturalness ratings

In addition to the separate ANOVAs conducted for each group, we also performed a Mixed Design ANOVA to
compare the L2 learners and the native speakers to each other, a Mixed Design ANOVA was conducted.

entered as Within-Subjects factors. The Between-Subjects factor was Proficiency. The analyses show that there was
no Construction * Proficiency interaction (L2 learners as a group vs. Natives: 20). There was also no
Interpretation * Construction * Proficiency interaction (L2 learners as a group vs. Natives: ). This means
that, statistically, native speakers and L2 learners are equally sensitive (or insensitive, in this case) to the distinction
between locatum telicity constructions and simple telicity constructions.
telicity versus simple telicity constructions was dependent on whether the sentence implied a completion versus an
incompletion interpretation of the events.
There was, however, a significant Interpretation * Proficiency interaction (L2 learners as a group vs. Natives:
< .001). This shows that although L2 learners made a significant distinction between the Completion and
Incompletion items, Native speakers made a sharper distinction than learners. It is also worth noting that when we
compare the three L2 groups to each other, there is no Interpretation * Proficiency interaction: the different
proficiency groups did not differ from each other in the extent of the distinction they made between Completion and
Incompletion items ( ).
In sum, the results show that L2 learners were not able to make as sharp a distinction between the Completion
and Incompletion items as Native speakers did, indicating that their acquisition of telicity was not exactly target-
like. In addition, there was no progression towards target-like performance with increasing overall proficiency since
there was no difference among the different proficiency groups. Further, and importantly, learners did not perform
 Bin Yin and Elsi Kaiser / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 97 (2013) 454 – 463 461

better on the locatum telicity sentences (with overt movement operation) than on the simple telicity sentences (with
covert movement). This finding contrasts with what has been found for child learners (Hodgson [21]; [22]; [10]).

5. Discussions and Conclusions

Our results seem to suggest that the L1 Chinese speakers in this study did not have the requisite syntax for
judging telicity in L2 English. Essentially, neither of the predictions that were based on the assumption of L2
learners being able to derive semantics (telicity) via syntax was supported. We need to consider why our learners
did not acquire target-like syntax that would give rise to the corresponding semantic performance. We are
particularly interested in why learners did not make a distinction between simple telicity and locatum telicity
structures because it was a theoretically motivated distinction which has received some empirical support in
acquisition literature. In other words, why did the learners not acquire the fact that locatum telicity involves an overt
movement, in contrast to simple telicity which involves a covert one?
One reason could be the lack of obvious input that would motivate an overt movement analysis for the learners.
This is especially so when one compares this study with those that did demonstrate learning success in other syntax-
semantics interface properties. In this study, the surface word order for the two structures tested is exactly the same:

locatum telicity as involving an overt movement operation, the learner would need the knowledge that the surface

verbs like put (which requires two internal arguments as in

particularly challenging because the input would enable the learner to home in on the fact that in English, the PP
denoting instrument is lower in the structure (inside VP), unlike in Chinese where it is higher. The challenge arises
from the fact that simple telicity sentences in English which do not require an overt movement analysis (the subject
is base-generated in a high position) look very much like the locatum telicity sentences. It might be more
economical for the learner to adopt a single analysis for two superficially identical structures. There is therefore less
motivation to analyze the subject of the locatum telicity sentence as having originated from within the VP (which is
what gave rise to the overt movement. The learner may very well then simply treat both simple telicity and locatum
teclicity as the same syntactically involving a covert movement operation to check telicity, except that we know
they might have trouble with covert operations to begin with. So they may end up not postulating any movement at
all for either locatum telicity and simple telicity. To sum up, it is the presence of similar looking sentences in the
input that prevents the learner from acquiring the syntactic contrast of the structure in question. This is in contrast to
some syntax-semantics studies (such those by Dekytdspotter and colleagues as reviewed in Slabakova [4] and White
[5]) that involve obviously contrastive surface structures re of Combien est-ce que
les étudiants achètent tous de livres? vs. Combien de livres est-ce que les étudiants
achètent tous? studied in Dekydtspotter, Sprouse and Swanson [27]). Faced with such easily noticeable contrast in
structure, the learner is therefore less likely to adopt the same analysis for the two structures and therefore more
motivated to analyze the structure of interest (the discontinuous one) differently, possibly in a target-like fashion.
That the restructuring of interlanguage grammar is driven by failure of the system to analyze new input is one of the
tenets in generative SLA (e.g., White [28]), and could be the reason why the learners in this study did not
demonstrate differential performance for simple telicity versus locatum telicity.
Another explanation is simply that L2 learners have trouble with syntax in general. Access to Universal Grammar
(which in the context of SLA is generally understood to refer to syntax) or lack thereof is an important question in
generative-oriented SLA research. Views range from full access to UG for L2 learners (e.g., Epistein, Flynn and
Martohardjono [29]; Schwartz and Sprouse [30]), to those who consider UG access is restricted but still available in
some form to L2 learners (e.g., Smith and Tsimpli [31]; Hawkins and Chan [32]) and finally to those who reject the
implication of UG in SLA altogether (e.g., Clahsen and Hong [33]; Clahsen and Felser [34]). Clahsen and Felser
[34] performance (both off-line and
online) in the resolution of relative clause attachment ambiguity and filler-gap dependencies concluded that while
monolingual children and mature native speakers are not different in computing detailed syntactic representation
during language processing, adult L2 learners are qualitatively different from these two groups of speakers in not
being able to construct complex syntactic representations during language comprehension, even when L1 and L2
462 Bin Yin and Elsi Kaiser / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 97 (2013) 454 – 463

work similarly in the property being tested. Instead, they rely upon non-syntactic information to help them process
sentences. Under this hypothesis (shallow structure hypothesis), the learner would not be able to acquire the
syntactic operation for telicity, let alone derive semantics on the basis of it.
To conclude, o therefore seems to show that this syntax-semantics
interface property is not necessarily easy to acquire. Although prior studies on L2 telicity have already pointed to
the difficulty encountered by learners in terms of acquiring the role and target-like properties of the direct object in
telicity calculation (Slabakova[14]; Kaku-MacDonald [25]; Gabriele [24]), our study provides a fresh perspective by
ity to effectively utilize syntactic knowledge in computing semantic interpretation.

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