3. The Acquisition of Relative clauses in English as a Second Language

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3. The Acquisition of Relativeclauses in English
as a Second Language
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English subject relative clauses (such as
16)are easier to produce and understand than are
direct object relatives(such as 17). (16)
Subject relative clause the truck that _
pushed the car (17) Direct object relative
clause the truck thatthe car pushed_
similar findings have been reported,
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The structural Distance Hypothesis

• The distance traversed by a syntactic
  operation, calculated in terms of number of nodes
  crossed, determines a structures relative
  complexity.

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Key assumption

• The gap in a relative clause must be linked to
  the noun that it modifies, either by movement of
  an overt or abstract wh element (Chomsky 1997)or
  by inheritance of an NP feature(Gazdar et
  al.1985, OGrady 1997 ) .
• The number of syntactic nodes traversed by these
  operations helps determine the structures
  computational complexity (OGrady 1997179,
  Collins1994)) .

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(19) a. Subject relative clause the truck
that S_ pushed the car number of
maximal projections between the gap and the head
1(Sentence) b. Direct object relative
clause the truck thatS the car
VPpushed_ number of maximal projections
between the gap and the head 2(VPS)
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The linear Distance Hypothesis

• The linear distance between the gap and head,
  calculated in terms of the number of intervening
  words, determines a structures relative
  complexity.

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The Subject gap in a relative clause is not
just less deeply embedded than its direct
counterpart, it is also closer to the head noun.
a. Subject relative clause
1 the truck that _ pushed the car
linear distance between the gap and the head
1 wordb. Direct object relative clause
1 2 3 4 the truck thatthe
car pushed_linear distance between the gap and
the head 4words
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• The structural Distance Hypothesis
• Assume computational operations on hierarchical
  syntactic representations

• the Linear Distance Hypothesis
• Posit nothing more than a linear array of
  words.

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Relative clauses in Korean precede the noun that
they modify

• Subject gap is structurally closer to the
  head than direct object gap but is linearly more
  distance. (The verbal suffixes in Korean
  simultaneously indicate both tense and clause
  type)

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(22) a. subject relative 1
2 _ namca-lul cohaha-nun S yeca
man-Accsative like-Relative clause Prs,
woman the woman who likes the man
structural distance one node(S) linear
distance two words b. Direct object
relative 1 Namca-ka
_ cohaha-nun VPS yeca Man-Nominative,
like-Relative clause Prs, woman the woman who
the man likes structural distance two
nodes(VPS) linear distance one word
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The acquisition of relative clauses in Korean as
a second language

• (23) a. subject relative
• _ Namca-lul cohaha-nun S yeca
• man-Acc like-RC. Prs woman
• the woman who likes the man
• structural distance one node(S)
• linear distance two words
• b. Direct object relative
• Namca-ka _ cohaha-nun VPS yeca
• man-Nom like-RC. Prs woman
• the woman who the man likes
• structural distance two nodes(VPS)
• linear distance one word

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Conclusion

• Learners of Korean as a second language find
  subject relatives far easier than direct object
  relatives.
• The structural distance, not linear distance, is
  the principal determinant of difficulty in the
  case of these constructions.

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4. Conclusion
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Linguistic approach to the study of language
acquisition built around

• The workings of language can and should be
  studied through a combination of grammatical
  analysis and psycholinguistic experimentation
• Figuring out how a particular language works may
  well require the study of other, possibly
  unrelated languages