Conservation of grammatical knowledge: on the acquisition of possessive noun phrases by Turkish and Moroccan learners of Dutch

Abstract

This article deals with the acquisition of possessive DP structures by Turkish and Moroccan adults and children learning Dutch without substantial classroom instruction. Our main claim is that L₂ learners systematically and consistently rely on their grammatical knowledge, which surfaces in the initial stages of the L₂ acquisition process but also has a strong impact on later developmental stages. Such a strong conservation encompasses parameter settings as well as morphological and vocabulary knowledge.

Before analyzing the various learner variants, we first consider the possessive structures in Turkish, Moroccan Arabic, and Dutch. A thorough analysis of the source languages Turkish and Moroccan Arabic is necessary to reveal the L₁ properties conserved in the expression of L₂ utterances. The analysis of the L₂ possessive variants provides ample evidence that Moroccan learners differ from Turkish learners in their developmental path as well as in the end state attained. We will argue that these differences are due to the different initial states of Turkish and Moroccan learners. The data also provide evidence that adult learners are able to change parametric values that relate to word-order phenomena. They seem less able, however, to acquire new morphological knowledge and language-specific lexical knowledge, which is crucial in appropriating L₂ function words.