ACQUISITION OF ADJECTIVE MORPHOLOGY/AGREEMENT IN L2 RUSSIAN BY ADULT L1 TURKISH LEARNERS: THE CASE OF SPLIT D-LINKED WH-QUESTIONS
Tez Türü: Doktora
Tezin Yürütüldüğü Kurum: İstanbul Aydın Üniversitesi, Lisansüstü Eğitim Enstitüsü, Institute of Graduate Studies, Türkiye
Tez Danışmanı: Filiz Çele
Tezin Onay Tarihi: 2023
Tezin Dili: İngilizce
Özet:
This study aims to explore the acquisition of functional morphology and
adjective agreement in L2 Russian by adult L1 Turkish learners in the
generative perspective. The locus of our research is the acquisition of
adjective agreement in split discourse-linked wh-questions. The question posed is to what extent L2 Russian
learners make correct decisions in connecting the wh-word, specified for case, number, and grammatical gender, with
its headword (restrictor) through employing implicit knowledge of the
uninterpretable features realized as an inflection. Meanwhile, these uninterpretable
features and the related functional morphology, as well as NP splitting, are absent
from the participants’ L1. The enquiry specifically examines L2 acquisition of
short- and long-distance NP splits through dative and accusative
concord/features, respectively. As the above features on the wh-word are absent in Turkish, the
acquisition of this domain of L2 Russian is rendered on a scale from posing
insurmountable difficulties predicted by the Interpretability
Hypothesis (IH, Tsimpli
& Mastropavlou, 2007), to being
acquirable as predicted by the Bottleneck Hypothesis (BH, Slabakova, 2008) and
the Full Transfer/Full Access Hypothesis (FTFAH, Schwartz & Sprouse, 1996).
Research on the acquisition of
inflections on the wh-word and NP
splits is novel to SLA. Based on previous studies regarding the acquisition of
adjective agreement in L2 Russian, we hypothesized that lower proficiency learners
may experience significant difficulties assigning uninterpretable features to
the wh-word whereas in higher levels
the accuracy will increase considerably.
The data came from the results of a
Semantic Entailments task administered online via using Google Forms, where 64 adult L1 Turkish/L2 Russian learners of A2
through C2 proficiency levels chose a continuation as a response to split
discourse-linked wh-questions
supplied with a preceding context. 55 L1 Russian speakers constituted the
control group. To elicit data, 6 conditions were utilized as a result of
manipulating the following factors: gender of the dative noun
(masculine/feminine); gender of the accusative noun (masculine/feminine);
object concord (dative/accusative) externalized as an inflection on the
wh-word. Dative concord is correlated with short-distance splits and accusative
concord – with long-distance splits.
Overall the findings demonstrate a
decreased accuracy in the L2 Russian group relative to the L1 group: 88%
for short-distance splits and 69%
for long distance splits for the L2 Russian milieu whereas the control group displays no
significant variability in accuracy regarding the split type and is uniformly
over the top. Regarding different proficiency levels, the obtained results suggest a stark
difference in L2 Russian learners’ treatment of short-distance and long-distance
conditions: accuracy is relatively high and stable for short-distance splits
throughout proficiency levels (77% in A2 proficiency level and 95% - in B2/C2). Conversely, accuracy for long-distance
splits is 38% in A2 learners but gradually rises to about 85% in the highest
proficiency levels (B2/C2). This outcome raises issues as to why L2 learners’
accuracy is decreased with accusative case morphology, which is normally
acquired prior to dative case morphology. We suspect that the answer lies in
the additional processing load associated with long-distance splits, rather
than in the language-internal system itself. Hence, this domain of L2 Russian, though
challenging at lower levels of proficiency, may be successfully acquired at
higher levels, which overall supports the FTFAH and the BH, and casts doubt on the IH.
The results of the study can be
applied in L2 syllabus preparation: special attention should be paid to
designing activities aimed at developing processability skills in L2.
Keywords: L2 Russian, second language acquisition,
acquisition of functional morphology, acquisition of inflectional morphology,
generative syntax, split d-linked wh-questions, acquisition of uninterpretable
features, acquisition of adjective morphology, acquisition of adjective
agreement