Sharon Armon-Lotem
RI in L2
Root infinitives in (Child) Second Language Acquisition
Tracy, R. 2002. Growing (clausal) roots: all children start out (and may remain)
multilingual. Linguistics 40–4, 653–686 YANA 22/5
Root infinitives in the Speech of simultaneous bilingual children.
Berger-Morales, Salustri & Glikerson (2003)
Sharon Armon-Lotem
RI in L2
Are there Root/Optional Infinitives in Child L2?
 Phenomena: Root infinitives (RIs) are used both in first and second language
acquisition.
 Question: Is it the same phenomena in first and second language acquisition?
Prévost, P. 2003. Verb-types and Modality in Early Child L2 Root Infinitives.
Proceedings of the 6th Generative Approaches to Second Language Acquisition
Conference (GASLA 2002), ed. Juana M. Liceras et al., 238-247. Somerville, MA:
Cascadilla Proceedings Project.
 In child L2 acquisition, as in L1 acquisition, Rizzi's (1993/1994) Root Principle is not
initially fully operational.
 These bare forms in child L2 have the same properties of RIs.
 Bare verbal forms are eventive while finite forms can be both non-eventive (stative)
and eventive predicates.
Gavruseva, E. 2004. Root infinitives in child second language English: an aspectual
features account. Second Language Research, Vol. 20, No. 4, 335-371
 The emergence of inflection in child L2 English, though not in L1 English, is linked to
aspectual classes.
 English as the L2 of one L1-Japanese and two L1-Russian children
 The use of bare verbal forms is related to the lexical aspect of the verb. Namely, bare
verbal forms are frequently used with eventive verbs (95% of events), but rarely with
stative verbs (only 16%).
 Since there is primacy of aspect in child L2 acquisition (Gavruseva 2002), root
infinitives in L2 will follow the pattern she has observed.
 The telicity hypothesis - finiteness depends on telicity. Inherently telic verbs will be
finite, while atelic verbs will be non-finite. Verbs not specified for telicity will also be
finite since no telicity feature is checked.
 Her account clearly assumes that bare verbal forms in L2 call for a different account
than given for RIs in L1.
Haznedar, B. and Schwartz, B. 1997. "Are there optional infinitives in child L2
acquisition?". In Proceedings of the 21st annual Boston University Conference on
Language Development, E. Hughes, M. Hughes and A. Greenhill (eds.), 257-268.
Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Press. EINAV 29/5
The “infinitive-like” forms in SLA do not reflect RIs.
CRITERIA:
1. Only in L2 English null subjects are limited to uninflected contexts.
2. Null subjects disappear fairly early, whereas the rate of uninflected verbs does not
change.
3. Only in L2 subject pronouns are all nominative.
4. When 3rd person is used, it is largely correct.
5. It’s occurrence rate rises gradually.
2
Sharon Armon-Lotem
RI in L2
PROBLEMS:
Crucially, Haznedar & Schwartz don’t use data from utterances with auxiliaries
be/do/have and copula be, nor do they use data from yes/no questions, wh-questions and
negated utterances.
Wexler (1992) predicts that “a child who is optionally “dropping” 3rd singular, will have
medial negative sentences [Mary not play baseball (S.A.L.)] in which the s does not
appear on the verb“ (p331):
Harris & Wexler (1996):
 Bare negation used at the OI-stage are largely (over 90%) of type I.
 Do is omitted optionally where required for the same reason that -s is omitted
optionally where required. Nevertheless, do-support is used more than Tense in
general.
 Tensed forms are used almost completely correctly.
 The bare stem is used in present (64%) and non present (47%) contexts.
In addition
 Phillips (1995): There’s a gradual increase in the use of inflected verbs.
 Brown (1970): Past tense morphology is acquired prior to person morphology, but this
does not correlate with a decrease in the use of Ris.
 Armon-Lotem (1996): In Hebrew, the use of RIs reduces (from 5% to less than 1%)
only when questions (and subordination) are mastered (last stage of Klima & Bellugi
1966).
II. A tentative alternative claim: We are dealing with the same phenomena - The
“infinitive-like” forms in CSLA reflect RIs.
CRITERIA:
1. There’s a gradual increase in the use of inflected verbs.
2. Past tense morphology is acquired prior to person morphology.
3. Bare negation used at the OI-stage are largely (over 90%) of type I.
4. Tensed forms are used almost completely correctly.
5. The use of RIs reduces significantly when inverted questions are used (last stage of
Klima & Bellugi 1966).
FINDINGS (From Armon-Lotem):
Main Verbs: The Distribution of Verbal Inflection in Past and Present Contexts - a
decrease in the use of root infinitives in the past tense, from 64% in the first month to
28% in the sixth month, that is, an increased use of inflected verbs. Note, however, that
even in the first month, third of the verbs in the past tense are already inflected. There are
less cases of present tense, third person, contexts, but even when there are more of them,
as in the sixth month, there is a huge gap between the use of inflected verbs in the past
(72%) and in the present (17%). This is in line with Harris & Wexler’s (1996) findings
3
Sharon Armon-Lotem
RI in L2
that bare stems are used more often in the present tense than in the non-present contexts.
The huge difference in the percentage of usage suggests that past morphology is acquired
prior to person morphology. >> Criteria 1 & 2
Negation: The distribution of adult Aux+Neg Order The adult order aux+neg is used only in third of the negations in the first month, but in
all the negations in the sixth month. This means that there is a clear gradual increase in
the use of auxiliaries in negation. Table 2 also shows that there are transition points in the
second and fifth months. Comparing the use of inflected verbs (Table 1, column 2) with
the use of auxiliaries shows that the transition point in the fifth month correlates with an
increase in the use of inflections. >> Criterion 3
Negation: Use of inflection in Neg+V order vs. affirmative context - bare negation
used at the OI-stage is largely of type I. Type I negation significantly overrides type II
negation, which reaches only 28% for Matan. There is a significant gap between the use
of nonfinite verbs in negation, and their use in affirmative past contexts. >> Criterion 3
Questions: The distribution of Auxiliaries and Inversion in Yes/No and Whquestions - the use of root infinitives reduces significantly in Past contexts when
questions are used with auxiliaries and partial inversion. >> partially satisfies criterion 5
Tensed forms are used almost completely correctly
CONSEQUENCES:
If the tentative claim is right, the relevance of theories of first language acquisition to the
use of RIs in CSLA should be reevaluated:
 Maturation of Tns-related features (Wexler 1994).
Though maturational factors might play role in first language acquisition, it is hard to
relate the findings for second language acquisition to the same maturational agenda,
since these children have clearly passed this maturational turning point in acquiring
their first language long before they started producing root infinitives in English.
 Truncation and/or underspecification (Hyams 1995, Rizzi 1994a,b)
There are good reasons to argue that RIs are the result of less than full specification of
Tns (Hyams 1995) and of C (Rizzi 1994a,b). The result of combining a partial
knowledge of the particularities of a language with the least effort principle (Chomsky
1995) is truncated trees, which can explain the use of RIs in first language acquisition
(Armon-Lotem 1996). Underspecified or partially specified functional nodes seem not
to be “strong” enough to surface at PF, or under a stricter version of Minimalism, they
are not even projected from the lexicon. (See also Prevost)
Paradis, J., & Crago, M. 2000. Tense and temporality: A comparison between children
learning a second language and children with SLI. Journal of Speech and Hearing
Disorders, 43(4), 834-848. AALYA 29/5
4