Acquisition Of Adjective Morphology and Agreement In Split Contexts By Adult L1 Turkish / L2 Russian Speakers

Abstract

This enquiry aims to examine whether L2 Russian adjectival morphology and adjective agreement in split contexts are acquirable by adult L1 Turkish learners at higher proficiency levels. Unlike Turkish, the Russian adjective is specified for case, number, and grammatical gender. The respective features, along with splitting, are not operational in Turkish. The Bottleneck Hypothesis Updated (Slabakova, 2019) predicts a full acquisition of this domain albeit it poses the highest level of challenge constituting a microparameter with complicated L1-L2 mapping, whereas the Interpretability Hypothesis (Tsimpli and Mastropavlou, 2007) claims it cannot be acquired. The research instrument is a Semantic Entailments task with short- and long-distance NP split d-linked wh-questions designed for the participants to assign the wh-word to either dative or accusative noun, respectively. The data came from adult L1 Turkish/L2 Russian learners and L1 Russian control group. The obtained findings suggest that functional morphology and adjective agreement in split contexts are successfully acquirable by the L2 population.

Keywords

• l2 russian
• l1 turkish
• split d-linked wh-questions
• uninterpretable features
• adjective morphology