Cognitive constraints on accuracy in verbal inflection and word order in German as a foreign language

Our point of departure was that both second and foreign language learning are primarily (although not exclusively) generated by general cognitive mechanisms, and may together be contrasted against first language acquisition, which is assumed to be the product of a specific Language Acquisition Device.; Thus, foreign (and second) language learning must be regarded as subject to constraints of cognitive processing, such as processing capacity limitations, which need to be alleviated through the automatization and restructuring of individual rules. Using the verbal phrase as an example, we tested the interaction of two types of rules (one syntactic, one morphological) in the execution of a task by learners. We distinguished between paradigmatic and syntagmatic tasks. The former required the manipulation of only one feature (word order or conjugation), the latter the manipulation of both. Overall, we examined the accuracy of verbal inflections in the three surface word order patterns of German, SVO, VSO and SOV, based on a predicted rank-order of salience. We isolated two variables of salience, (a) verb/subject adjacency, and (b) the clause-initial position being occupied by the subject. Both variables are present in SVO, variable (a) is present in VSO, variable (b) is present in SOV. Conjugational accuracy was found to be consistently highest in an SVO environment. Conjugational accuracy in paradigmatic tasks was lowest in VSO, due to conjugation in agreement with non-subject constituents, while in syntagmatic tasks it was lowest in SOV, due to a high rate of inappropriate infinitivizations. These findings were interpreted as reflecting either variable (b) or (a) playing a more prominent role, depending on task demands.; In sum, we demonstrated that the assumption of general cognitive mechanisms being operative in second language acquisition does not preclude the existence of a correlational relationship between two features. Furthermore, our results imply that the phenomenon of backsliding may in many cases be an instantiation of incomplete acquisition, which is reflected in a high degree of variability.