Investigating the Bottleneck Hypothesis in Second Language Acquisition The acquisition of narrow syntax and functional morphology among Norwegian L2 learners of English

Abstract

In this thesis, I test the Bottleneck Hypothesis (Slabakova 2008, 2013, 2016). The Bottleneck Hypothesis (BH) accounts for what is easy and what is hard to acquire in a second language (L2). The BH claims that functional morphology is the difficult part of second language acquisition, and that narrow syntax, for instance, is easier to acquire. More specifically, the BH argues that when English is acquired as L2, the two morphological constructions subject verb agreement and past tense -ed are more difficult to acquire than narrow syntax.

In the current thesis, I test Norwegian L1 speakers acquiring English as L2 by carrying out an acceptability judgement task (AJT). The constructions being tested in the current thesis are the two morphological conditions suggested by the BH; subject verb agreement and past tense, and two conditions within narrow syntax; verb movement across an adverb in subject-initial clauses and verb movement across the subject in non-subject initial clauses.

The current thesis does, to some degree, lend some support to the BH as it does argue that functional morphology, represented by subject verb agreement, is more difficult to acquire than verb movement. Nevertheless, the current thesis also argues that past tense is not particularly difficult to acquire, and even easier to acquire than verb movement in subject-initial clauses where the verb moves across an adverb.