L2 Romanian Influence in the Acquisition of the English Passive by L1 Speakers of Hungarian

• Authors: Enikő Tankó
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

The main question to be investigated is to what extent native speakers of Hungarian understand and acquire the English passive voice, as there is no generalized syntactic passive construction in Hungarian. As we will show, native speakers of Hungarian tend to use the predicative verbal adverbial construction when translating English passive sentences, as this construction is the closest syntactic equivalent of the English passive voice. Another question to be investigated is whether L2 Romanian works as a facilitating factor in the process of acquiring the L3 English passive voice. If all our subjects, Hungarian students living in Romania, were Hungarian-Romanian bilinguals, it would be obvious that knowledge of Romanian helps them in acquiring the English passive. However, as it will be shown, the bilingualism hypothesis is disconfirmed. Still, passive knowledge of Romanian influences to some extent the acquisition of the English passive voice.

Keywords

EN

passive; SLA; parameter resetting; L2/L3 influence

• Publisher: Sciendo
• Journal: Acta Universitatis Sapientiae, Philologica
• Year: 2014
• Volume: 6
• Issue: 2
• Pages: 227-248

Dates

online

2015-03-01

Contributors

author

Enikő Tankó

• Department of Humanities Sapientia Hungarian University of Transylvania (Miercurea Ciuc, Romania)

References

• Adamikné Jászó, Anna. 2000. A magyar nyelv könyve [The Book of Hungarian Grammar]. Budapest: Trezor.
• Alberti, Gabor. 1996. Model Tau: A Formal Theory of Thematic Roles. In Bánréti, Zoltán (ed.), Papers in the Theory of Grammar, 184-235. Budapest: Institute for Linguistics, Academy Press.
• Alberti, Gabor. 1998. On Passivization in Hungarian. In Groot, Casper de & Kenesei, István (eds.), Papers fom the Amsterdam Conference. Approaches toHungarian (6): 105-121, Szeged: JATE Press.
• Bartos, Huba. 2009. The syntax of Hungarian va- adverbial participles. A single affix with variable merge-in locations. In É. Kiss, Katalin (ed.), Adverbs andAdverbial Adjuncts at the Interfaces, 75-102, Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
• Bene, Annamária. 2005. Az igék bennható-mediális-tranzitív felosztásánakalkalmazhatosága magyar szintaktikai es morfológiai sajátosságokmagyarázatában [The applicability of the unergative - unaccusative - transitive categorization of verbs in explaining syntactic and morphological properties of Hungarian]. PhD dissertation, Budapest: Eötvös Loránd University.
• Bhatia, Tej & Ritchie, William. 2006. The Handbook of Bilingualism. Malden, Oxford, Carlton: Blackwell Publishing.
• Bloomfield, Leonard. 1933. Language. New York: Holt.
• Doughty, Catherine J. & Long, Michael H. 2003. The Handbook of SecondLanguage Acquisition, Maiden, Oxford, Carlton: Blackwell Publishing.
• É. Kiss, Katalin. 2008. Topic and focus: Two structural positions associated with logical functions in the left periphery of the Hungarian sentence. ActaLinguistica Hungarica 55: 287-296.
• Finer, Daniel. 1990. Modularity and Lexical Parameterization in the Adult Grammar. Linguistics 28: 905-927.
• Finer, Daniel & Broselow, Ellen. 1986. Second Language Acquisition of Reflexive Binding. North Eastern Linguistic Society 16: 154-168.
• Fox, Danny & Grodzinsky, Yosef. 1998. Children's passive: a view from the by-phrase. Linguistic Inquiry 29: 311-332.
• Groot, Casper de. 1987. On the predicative verbal adverbial construction in Hungarian. In Kenesei, István (ed.), Approaches to Hungarian 2: 273-298, Szeged: JATE Press.
• Groot, Casper de. 1989. Predicate Structure in a Functional Grammar ofHungarian: Functional Grammar Series (11). Dordrecht: Foris Publications.
• Haugen, Einar. 1953. The Norwegian Language in America: A Study in BilingualBehaviour, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
• Hawkins, Roger. 1998. The inaccessibility of formal features of functional categories. Second language acquisition, Paper presented at the Pacific Second Language Research Forum, Tokyo.
• Hawkins, Roger & Chan, Yuet-Hung Cecilia. 1997. The partial availability of Universal Grammar in second language acquisition: the ‘failed functional features hypothesis'. Second Language Research 13: 187-226.
• Kádár, Edit & Németh, Boglárka. 2009. Predikatív hatarozói igeneves szerkezetek Csangó beszélt nyelvi szövegekben [The predicative verbal-adverbial constructions in the Csangó spoken texts]. In É. Kiss Katalin and Hegedüs Attila (eds.), Nyelvelmélet és dialektológia [Language Theory and Dialectology], 189- 212. Piliscsaba: Pázmány Péter Katolikus Egyetem.
• Kádár, Edit & Németh, Boglárka. 2010. The role of the predicative participle construction in the Csangó tense-aspect system. Philobiblon 15: 194-225.
• Kalman, Laszló. 2001. Magyar leíró nyelvtan [Hungarian descriptive grammar]. Budapest: MTA.
• Kertész, Judit. 2005. Eseményszerkezet, aspektus, mondatszerkezet. A predikatívhatározói igenevek [Event structure, aspect, clause structure: The predicative adverbial participles]. PhD dissertation. Budapest: Eötvös Lórand University.
• Keszler, Borbála. 1999. Magyar grammatika [Hungarian Grammar]. Budapest: Nemzeti.
• Komlósy, András. 1994. Complements and Adjuncts. In Kiefer, Ferenc & É. Kiss, Katalin (eds.), Syntax and Semantics, vol. 27, The Syntactical Structure ofHungarian, 91-178. San Diego - New York: Academic Press.
• Laczkó, Tibor. 1993. Unaccusative Participles in Hungarian and the Theory of Lexical Mapping: Proceedings of the 4th Symposium on Logic and Language, 149-163. Budapest: Áron Publishers.
• Laczkó, Tibor. 1994. On a "Passive" Participle in Hungarian. Proceedings of theFourth Colloquium on Generative Grammar 16, Tarragona.
• Laczkó, Tibor. 1995. The Syntax of Hungarian Noun Phrases. A Lexical-FunctionalApproach. Frankfurt: Peter Lang.
• Laczkó, Tibor. 2000. A melléknévi és hatarozói igenévképzők [The adjectival and adverbial participial affixes]. In Kiefer Ferec (ed.), Strukturális magyarnyelvtan, Morfológia [A structural grammar of Hungarian, 3. Morphology], 409-451, Budapest: Academy Press.
• Laczkó, Tibor. 2005. Nominalization, participle formation, typology, and lexical mapping theory. In Piñon, Christopher & Siptár, Péter (eds.), Approaches toHungarian, 9. Papers from the Düsseldorf Conference, 207-230, Academic Press, Budapest.
• Márkus, Andrea. 2008. Participles and the passive in Hungarian. MA thesis, Budapest: Eötvös Lórand University.
• Mey, Jacob. 2009. Concise Encyclopedia of Pragmatics. Oxford: Elsevier.
• MacLaughlin, Dawn. 1996. Second Language Acquisition of English Reflexives: Is There Hope beyond Transfer. In Stringfellow, Andy et al. (eds.), Proceedingsof the 20th Annual Boston University Conference on Language Development, 453-464. Somerville, Massachusetts: Cascadilla Press.
• MacLaughlin, Dawn. 1998. The Acquisition of the Morphosyntax of English Reflexives by Non-Native Speakers. In Beck, Maria-Luise (ed.), Morphologyand Its Interfaces in Second Language Knowledge, 195-226. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing.
• MacWhinney, Brian; Pléh, Csaba & Bates, Elizabeth. 1985. The development of sentence interpretation in Hungarian. Cognitive Psychology 17: 178-209.
• Pearson, Barbara Zurer & Roeper Thomas. 2004. Learnability and triggers: Obligatory versus optional triggers for the passive in two dialects of English and in language impairment. In Brugos, Alejna, Micciulla, Linnea & Smith, Christine (eds.), BUCLD 28, The proceedings of the 28th Annual BostonUniversity Conference on Language Development, 447-460. Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Press.
• Pinker, Steven; Lebeaux, David S. & Frost, Loren. 1987. Productivity and constraints in the acquisition of the passive: Cognition 26: 195-267.[PubMed][Crossref]
• Schachter, Jacquelyn. 1996. Maturation and the issue of Universal Grammar in second language acquisition. In Ritchie, William & Bhatia, Tej (eds.), Handbookof Second Language Acquisition, 159-193. San Diego: Academic Press.
• Schwartz, Bonnie. 1998. On two hypotheses of transfer in SLA: minimal trees and absolute Ll influence. In Flynn, Susan; Martohardjono, Cita and O'Neil, Wayne (eds.), The generative study of SLA, 35-59. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
• Siewierska, Anna. 1984. The Passive. A Comparative Linguistic Analysis. London: Croom Helm.
• Tankó, Enikő. 2011. The Acquisition of the English Passive Construction by L1Speakers of Hungarian. PhD thesis. Bucharest: University of Bucharest.
• Tóth, Ildikó. 2000. Va- and van- Participles in Hungarian. In Alberti, Gabor and Kenesei, István (eds.), Papers from the Pécs Conference. Approaches toHungarian 7: 237-256. Szeged: JATE Press.
• Wanner, Anja. 2009. Deconstructing the English Passive. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
• White, Lydia. 2003. Second Language Acquisition and Universal Grammar. Cambridge: CUP.

Identifiers

DOI

10.1515/ausp-2015-0016