Finite Verb Placement in French Language Change and in Bilingual German–French Acquisition

Anika Schmeißer and Veronika Jansen

Introduction

The idea that language change (LC) is related to language acquisition (LA) has a long tradition and goes back to Neogrammarian works (cf. Paul, 1920) claiming that LC is mainly due to the child's imperfect learning of the language s/he is exposed to. Research done throughout the last number of decades, however, shows that this assumption is now outdated. More recent approaches which assume a connection between LA and LC are consistent with the generative framework by Chomsky (1982 and subsequent works; cf. Adams, 1987; Clark & Roberts, 1993; Kaiser, 2002; Lightfoot, 1991; Roberts, 2007, among others), according to which children do not inductively learn every single input sentence, but acquire their mother tongue by setting various parameters provided by an innate human language capacity, universal grammar (UG). Following this view, children succeed in acquiring the grammar of their parents, although linguistic input is defective on several levels (cf. Chomsky, 1965), which is commonly referred to as the logical problem of LA. In this regard, the combination of UG and exposure to linguistic input enables the child to acquire a language deductively. Yet, strictly speaking, this idea of a deductive LA process does not allow for LC (cf. Clark & Roberts, 1993). For how can LC happen if children, continually and without effort, eventually acquire the target language, i.e. their parents' grammars (cf. Niyogi & Berwick, 1995)? Clark and Roberts (1993) refer to this as the logical problem of LC. For parametric LC to occur under these circumstances, the only possible solution to this problem is that the children's input must have changed in advance. Two possible scenarios have been put forward in the literature to model LC on this basis: the input must either (i) ostensibly or (ii) actually diverge from the underlying representation of the target grammar. In the case of (i), the change of the input must be considered a surface phenomenon due to changes in phonetics or semantics, for example. These 'pre'-changes do not affect the underlying syntactic structure, but may render it opaque. Opacity in the input can be understood in terms of ambiguity, in that this structure allows for both options of a parameter, as demonstrated in Examples (1a) and (2a) (the finite verb is marked in bold italic letters).

(1) a. Der Junge liest das Buch. The boy reads the book b. Das Buch liest der Junge. The book reads the boy

(2) a. Le garcon lit le livre. The boy reads the book b. *Le livre lit le garçon. The book reads the boy

German is a V2-language with the finite verb always in second position. This is demonstrated by the German examples in (1), where either the subject (1a) or a non-subject constituent (here: the object) (1b) may precede the finite verb. This diverges from Modern French, a non-V2-language, which only allows the subject constituent to directly precede the finite verb (2a). Hence, sentence (2b) is ungrammatical. Yet, children being solely exposed to (1a) might either deduce a [+V2]- or a [-V2]-grammar, since the sentence is compatible with both underlying representations. The studies by Adams (1987), Clark and Roberts (1993) and Gibson and Wexler (1994), among others, adhere to this line of argumentation. Following these studies, the mentioned structural ambiguity is the crucial point which may allow for LC. The mechanisms which, in this approach, help the children to decide between the two options available are mainly based on principles of economy and the subset principle by Berwick (1985), according to which the language of the subset can be regarded as the default choice in LA (cf. Clark & Roberts, 1993; Gibson & Wexler, 1994). Valian (1990) and Kroch and Taylor (1997), however, prove this approach empirically wrong.

This leads us to possibility (ii), which claims that a parameter can only be set in response to an unambiguous input sentence/structure, which serves as a trigger. In this respect, a child acquiring German on the basis of sentences like (1a) alone cannot make a decision concerning parameter setting (cf. Fodor, 1998a; Valian, 1990). Consequently, ambiguous sentences like those in (1a) and (2a) cannot be assumed to trigger LC either. Hence, children must be exposed to unambiguous input of the opposing parameter value in order to acquire a grammar that differs from their parents'. This implies that LC can exclusively occur in language contact situations in which the other language possesses the opposing parameter value. Only then will triggers in the input convey a different underlying structure, which is a necessary prerequisite to change the target grammar. Yet, Ferraresi and Goldbach (2003) doubt that LC is contact-induced by nature: referring to studies of bilingual (2L1) LA, the authors ask the question of why the second generation of speakers should necessarily end up with a changed grammar instead of becoming bilingual. This is indeed an important question which, however, need not contradict the assumption of contact-induced LC. Instead, bilingual LA might even be part of the whole LC process, as is outlined below.

Kroch's (2001) syntactic diglossia and the bilingual individual

According to Kroch (2001: 731) and his colleagues, it is precisely the additional acquisition of a 'new' parameter value which evokes LC. The new parameter value begins to compete with the 'old' one on an intra-individual level until one of them finally 'replaces' the other. Kroch (2001) describes this competition in the individual as 'syntactic diglossia' (SD), which is similar to the bilingual coexistence of two different grammars. Following Kroch (2001), Schmeißer (2011) models the entire LC-process, establishing three stages which are relevant for LC to occur on a competence level:

(3) Stage I: parameter value1Stage II: parameter value1 and parameter value2Stage III: parameter value1 or parameter value2

According to this model, the transition from one stage to the other takes place during LA (indicated by the arrow