The goal of this book is to propose the bottleneck hypothesis, a theory of SLA of semantics according to which second language (L2) learners’ difficulties lie in the acquisition of functional morphology. The principles of semantic composition are available to learners, but functional morphology is the so-called bottleneck of the acquisition process.
Slabakova introduces the issues (chapter 1), spells out the linguistic assumptions (chapter 2), and reviews as well as critiques relevant psycholinguistic and neurolinguistic literature (chapters 3 and 4). The central proposal, put forth in chapter 5, is framed within generative linguistic theory (Chomsky, Reference Chomsky2005; Jackendoff, Reference Jackendoff2002) and assumes Universal Grammar as the best theoretical account of linguistic competence. Extending Yang’s (Reference Yang2002) variational learning approach from first language (L1) to L2 acquisition and following the Minimalist view that crosslinguistic variation resides in the functional lexicon, Slabakova argues that L2 learners reset parameters gradually, in response to functional morphology in the input.
Chapters 6 and 7 provide a comprehensive review of behavioral SLA studies of syntax-semantics interface phenomena, which give the most direct evidence for the proposal. Chapter 6 reviews what are termed “studies of simple syntax-complex semantics cases” in which individual inflectional morphemes encode complex semantic concepts. Phenomena that fall under this heading include grammatical aspect, telicity, reflexive binding, article semantics, and subjunctive mood. In all of the studies reviewed, the learners had to reconfigure their form-meaning mappings: For instance, in Montrul and Slabakova’s (Reference Montrul, Slabakova, Perez-Leroux and Liceras2002) study, English-speaking learners of Spanish had to learn that imperfective past tense morphology in Spanish, unlike that in English, can denote habitual events. The studies in chapter 6 show that advanced, and in some cases even intermediate, L2 learners are capable of acquiring the target form-meaning mappings: Slabakova argues that morphology is a bottleneck rather than an insurmountable obstacle.
Chapter 7 reviews studies of complex syntax-simple semantics cases in which the syntactic structure is complex; these include such phenomena as discontinuous constituents and scrambling, but the corresponding semantics follows straightforwardly from the syntax. The functional elements that bear the relevant syntactic features are the bottleneck; once learners move through this bottleneck, semantic computation presents no difficulty, and most (although not all) studies find targetlike performance at the higher proficiency levels. In some studies, even nontargetlike low-proficiency learners make the relevant semantic distinctions, although not always to the same extent as native speakers. In chapter 8, Slabakova concludes that there is no critical period for the acquisition of semantics and ends with a recommendation for teachers to place more emphasis on practicing inflectional morphology in context.
This volume is timely, given an increasing interest in the SLA of interface phenomena. The central proposal is theoretically well grounded and falsifiable. One weak point is that this book does not clearly lay out what counts as morphological versus semantic knowledge; of the studies discussed, very few (e.g., Montrul & Slabakova, Reference Montrul, Slabakova, Perez-Leroux and Liceras2002) used separate tasks to target these two types of knowledge. For the other studies reviewed, it is not always clear whether morphological or semantic knowledge, or a combination of both, is targeted. Therefore, it is not entirely clear how to determine whether learners’ difficulties reside in acquiring functional morphology or in accessing principles of semantic composition. Slabakova in fact suggests that future research should directly compare knowledge of morphology and of the corresponding semantics across domains as well as production, recognition, and comprehension of morphology.
This book is geared toward faculty and graduate students who work on acquisition from a generative perspective, and this volume assumes familiarity with syntax and semantics; knowledge of the particular semantic phenomena under discussion is not assumed, and each phenomenon is clearly explained with examples. Several chapters contain helpful, reader-friendly charts that summarize the relevant literature and make comparisons in terms of methodology, L1-L2 combinations, and research findings. This volume is valuable both for its theoretical contribution and as a resource for researchers working on acquisition of syntax-semantics interface phenomena.
