Professional Documents
Culture Documents
doi:10.1017/S0272263112000022
Niclas Abrahamsson
Stockholm University
Research has consistently shown there is a negative correlation between age of onset (AO) of acquisition and ultimate attainment (UA) of
either pronunciation or grammar in a second language (L2). A few
studies have indeed reported nativelike behavior in some postpuberty
learners with respect to either phonetics/phonology or morphosyntax,
a result that has sometimes been taken as evidence against the critical
period hypothesis (CPH). However, in the few studies that have employed a wide range of linguistic tests and tasks, adult learners have
not exhibited nativelike L2 proficiency across the board of measures,
which, according to some, suggests that the hypothesis still holds. The
present study investigated the relationship between AO and UA and
the incidence of nativelikeness when measures of phonetic and grammatical intuition are combined. An additional aim was to investigate
whether children and adults develop the L2 through fundamentally different brain mechanismsnamely, whether children acquire the
language (more) implicitly as an interdependent whole, whereas
adults learn it (more) explicitly as independent parts of a whole.
This study is part of the research program High-Level Second Language Use, funded by
the Bank of Sweden Tercentenary Foundation (grant no. M2005-0459). The author wishes
to thank all the 770-something persons who initially volunteered, and in particular the 220
who were eventually selected as participants for the study. Thanks also go to research
assistants Linda Martins and Helne Norstedt for doing an impeccable job with the data
collection, and Helne also with the VOT analyses. Im deeply grateful to my colleagues
Professor Kenneth Hyltenstam and Associate Professor Emanuel Bylund for their feedback on an earlier draft of the manuscript, and also to Lamont Antieau, who checked and
corrected my English writing in no time at all.
Address correspondence to: Niclas Abrahamsson, Centre for Research on Bilingualism,
Stockholm University, SE 106 91 Stockholm, Sweden; e-mail: niclas.abrahamsson@biling.su.se.
Cambridge University Press 2012
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use fundamentally different cognitive (or brain) mechanisms when approaching a new language. Some researchers (e.g., Bley-Vroman, 1989;
DeKeyser, 2000; Paradis, 2004, 2009) hold that even though children,
within the critical period, acquire language automatically, incidentally,
and implicitly from spoken (or signed) input via an innate and specialized capacity for doing so (e.g., through a language-acquisition device
or universal grammar, as proposed by Chomskyan linguists), adults, or
postcritical period learners (including most adolescents), must instead
learn the new language through a conscious effort, intentionally and
explicitly, using general cognitive learning strategies, often via formal
instruction. According to this view, the neurocognitive system responsible for general cognition is not optimized for handling natural (spoken
or signed) linguistic data in the same way as the innate language acquisition mechanism is, which is why most adults typically end up as nonnativelike speakers of their L2. In other words, the outcome of much of
adult learning is explicit knowledge of grammar and pronunciation,
something that is very difcult to use in normal language production
and perception, whereas children primarily acquire implicit competence
that is, morphosyntactic and phonetic intuitionwithin the target
language (similar or even identical to that of children acquiring a L1).
The division between language-specic and general cognition may also
explain how some extremely rare adult learners in fact approach
nativelike levels in a L2namely by making use of an unusually high aptitude for language learning, a trait that most researchers claim belongs to
the general cognitive system (see DeKeyser, 2000; DeKeyser & LarsonHall, 2005; Paradis, 2009; however, for alternative interpretations, see
Abrahamsson & Hyltenstam, 2008; Carroll, 1973; Ioup, Boustagui, El Tigi, &
Moselle, 1994).
The present study investigated, rst, the relationship between AO
and UA in Spanish-speaking learners of Swedish as a L2 and, second, the
incidence of nativelikeness in the areas of grammar and phonology,
with the use of tests of grammatical and phonetic intuition. The study
also investigated whether children and adults approach the task of
language acquisition in fundamentally different ways, that is, whether
they acquire the language implicitly as an interdependent whole or learn
it explicitly as independent parts of a whole (see Paradis, 2004, 2009).
THEORETICAL AND EMPIRICAL BACKGROUND
To date, it is possible to identify at least three main approaches in SLA
research to the behavioral study of age effects, all of which have been
used to draw indirect conclusions about maturational constraints and
the CPH. The focus of attention has been either on (a) the relationship
between learners AO and UA in the L2, (b) the relationship between AO
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and nativelike UA, or (c) the relationship between AO and the very
process leading to a learners UA. What these approaches have in
common is that, in one way or another, they focus on the learners AO
in relation to their UA of the L2that is, the different levels of prociency that are eventually reached by learners as a result of their starting
to learn the language at different ages.
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Niclas Abrahamsson
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mechanisms, adults no longer have access to such mechanisms and instead must rely on domain-general learning strategiesthat is, strategies
belonging to the general cognitive system that are used for all kinds of
learning and not language acquisition specically. In Paradiss (2004,
2009) theory of L2 acquisition and bilingualism, L1 children and early L2
learners engage almost solely in incidental acquisition, which arises
through procedural memory and leads to implicit competence (or linguistic intuition). Adolescent and adult L2 learners, on the contrary,
who can no longer build new procedural representations to the same
extent as children, learn the L2 intentionally and have to rely on declarative memory, which leads to explicit competence (or metalinguistic
knowledge, in Paradiss terminology). Incidental acquisition should affect the whole language system, and different parts of the system should
thus develop simultaneously and unconsciously, whereas intentional
learning should affect mostly those parts of the L2 in which the learner
received explicit instruction and in which he or she took a special
interest.
These issues have not been investigated, let alone corroborated, in
any direct empirical way; rather, they have been explored indirectly
through studies of language learning aptitude. Paradis (2009) claimed
that some rare [adult] L2 speakers may achieve native-like prociency
. . . but by other means (p. 118), and DeKeyser (2000) and Abrahamsson and Hyltenstam (2008) were able to show that late learners with
nativelike performances on various aspects of the L2 also perform well
on standardized aptitude tests, which indicates that they draw heavily
on general cognitive learning abilities (i.e., declarative memory, in Paradiss terms) to compensate for the loss of (innate) specic language
acquisition mechanisms (or procedural memory, in Paradiss theory).
Early learners, in contrast, are not dependent on declarative memory or
any kind of heightened cognitive ability (or aptitude)they acquire the
L2 successfully through the availability of procedural memory alone.
According to Paradis, acquisition via procedural memory is available
to everyone up to about 5 years of age, after which the use of procedural memory to acquire language rapidly declines and individuals
rely on declarative memory (p. 118). He further states that some implicit linguistic competence in L2 can probably be acquired [by adults]
in certain aspects of linguistic structure (syntax, morphology, phonology, in that order of probability) though not completely at any
level (p. 118) and that the use of declarative memory to compensate
for gaps in L2 implicit competence is reected in the considerable
inter-individual variability in attainment between [adult] L2 learners
(p. 118). If Paradis is correct, evidence should be found that adults
learning of different aspects of the L2 is more sporadic, unsystematic,
and fragmented, whereas children automatically and systematically
develop aspects of all linguistic levels at the same time. Paradis (2009)
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195
similar degrees in early L2 learners but not in late L2 learners. More specically, it is predicted that the GJT and VOT measures will correlate positively
for early learners only, not for late learners.
METHOD
Participants
The participants were recruited through a series of newspaper advertisements.1 From a pool of approximately 700 L1 Spanish speakers of L2
Swedish and approximately 70 native speakers (NSs) of Swedish who
volunteered, 200 L2 participants and 20 native controls were selected
for the study. The L2 participants were selected in such a way that they
were to be evenly distributed over an AO continuum ranging from 1 to
30 years. In other words, the sample consisted of six to eight participants at each AO.2 All participants age at the time of the study was 21 or
more (M = 40, range = 2163), their LOR in Sweden was at least 15 years
(M = 25, range = 1546), and they reported no signicant use of other
languages than Spanish or Swedish during childhood. The most common
country of origin was Chile (112 individuals), as the Chilean group is the
largest Spanish-speaking immigrant group in Sweden, followed by Peru
(22), Argentina (16), Spain (13), Colombia (12), Bolivia (8), Uruguay
(8), Guatemala (2), Mexico (2), Cuba (1), Ecuador (1), El Salvador (1), Nicaragua (1), and Panama (1). In other words, the great majority of the participants (n = 187) originated from a Latin American country. All
participants lived in or around the Stockholm area and had done so
during most of their time in Sweden. A senior high school diploma was
the lowest level of education, and the distribution of females and males
was 11783. The native Swedish control group was selected by matching
age at the time of the study (M = 41.2 years), sex (12 women, 8 men), and
educational level with the L2 group. No severe hearing impairments
were reported by any of the participants, which was conrmed through
hearing tests with an OSCILLA SM 910 screening audiometer, nor were
any other language-related challenges such as dyslexia or stuttering.
Because the aim of this study was to compare early and late learners,
the sample of 200 L2 participants was divided into two halves: one that
consisted of learners with AO 115 (n = 101) and one of learners with
AO 1630 (n = 99) (following the division between early and late
learners made by, e.g., DeKeyser, 2000; Johnson & Newport, 1989;
Patkowski, 1980). As can be seen in Table 1, the mean chronological age
at the time of the study was 3435 years in the early-learner group and
4647 years in the late-learner group, a difference that is statistically
signicant. Furthermore, there was a small yet statistically signicant
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Niclas Abrahamsson
AO 1630
(n = 99)
t test
(two-tailed)
SD
SD
34.4
26.2
25.0
7.5
6.2
18.2
46.7
23.4
28.1
7.0
6.2
18.7
11.9
3.26
1.18
< .0001
= .0013
= .24, ns
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Niclas Abrahamsson
2003a; Long, 1990), the test items consisted of sentences that were
quite long and complex. Given the fact that the participants in the present study had been living in the L2 environment for at least 15 years
(see 5 years in Johnson & Newport, 1989) and for 25 years on average,
it was decided that demanding test items would more accurately gauge
the participants L2 prociency than items of the kind used in earlier
studies (such as *Mary will goes to Europe next year, *When Sam will x
his car?; examples from Johnson & Newport, 1989), and ceiling effects
would thus be avoided, even among the NS controls. Additionally, the
use of a test with a high degree of difculty and cognitive load even for
NSs serves as a better means to distinguish between native and nearnative intuitions and between near-native and clearly nonnative intuitions as well as between different degrees of near-nativeness, and this
test can therefore be seen as a guarantee against conclusions based
on underanalyzed data (see Abrahamsson & Hyltenstam, 2008, 2009;
McDonald, 2006).
The stimulus sentences were recorded in an anechoic chamber by a
female NS of Stockholm Swedish. The sentences were played through
KOSS TX/PRO earphones in random order for all participants. Once a
given sentence was presented, the test taker was granted a maximum of
10 s to indicate whether he or she perceived the sentence as grammatically correct or incorrect. Responses were submitted by pressing a
green YES or a red NO button at any point during or after the sentence
presentation. The next sentence was loaded and presented once one of
the response buttons was pressed. If no response was submitted before
time expired, a new sentence was presented; these cases were analyzed
as incorrect responses. The test was designed and run in E-Prime v1.0
(Schneider, Eschman, & Zuccolotto, 2002a, 2002b) and took 1520
minutes to complete.
Categorical Perception of VOT. Voice onset time is dened as the
interval between the release burst of the stop and the onset of
glottal vibration (Lisker & Abramson, 1964, p. 389). Swedish (like
English) voiceless stops are produced as aspirated, long-lag stops
(with relatively long, positive VOT values), whereas their voiced
counterparts are realized as unaspirated short-lag stops (i.e., with
short, positive VOTs). In Spanish, on the contrary, voiceless stops
are realized as positive, short-lag stops, whereas voiced stops are
produced with prevoicing (or voicing lead). As shown in Figure 1,
this means that there is an overlap between the Swedish and Spanish
voicing systems, where Swedish voiced /b, d, / are more or less identical to Spanish voiceless /p, t, k/. Due to this crosslinguistic variation, L2 learners often experience difculty in accurately producing
and perceiving L2 stops. Late learners have been shown to either
transfer their native-language voice timing patterns to the L2 or, even
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Niclas Abrahamsson
RESULTS
The Effect of AO on UA: Group Comparisons and Correlations
The results of the GJT and VOT test for the NSs, the early L2 learners
(AO 115), and the late L2 learners (AO 1630) are presented in Table 2.
The NS mean score on the GJT was 66 (out of 80), and 53 and 45 for
the early and late learners, respectively. A one-way ANOVA showed
that there were statistically signicant differences between the groups,
F(2, 220) = 82.68, p < .0001, and post hoc tests conrmed that the differences between adjacent groupsthat is, between the NSs and the early
L2 learners and between the early and late L2 learnerswere statistically
signicant, t = 7.33 and 7.81, respectively, p < .01 (using the Bonferroni
correction to adjust for multiple comparisons). The effect size of the NS
and early L2 group difference was very large (Cohens d = 1.65), whereas
the effect size of the difference between the two L2 groups was large
(d = 1.10). The mean crossover points on the VOT perception test were
+8.81 ms for the NS group, 2.40 ms for the early L2 group, and 9.72 ms
for the late L2 group. Again, an ANOVA test revealed statistically significant differences between groups, F(2, 215) = 32.97, p < .0001, and post
hoc tests revealed statistically signicant differences between the
NSs and early L2 learners, t = 4.56, and between the two L2 groups, 5.09,
p < .01 (with Bonferroni correction). Effect sizes of these differences
were large (d = 1.09) and medium (d = 0.73), respectively.
A more detailed representation of the age function is given in Figure 2,
in which (a) GJT scores and (b) VOT crossover points (in ms) have
Table 2. GJT mean scores and VOT mean crossover points (ms) of
NSs, L2 speakers AO 115, and L2 speakers AO 1630
Participant group
GJT score
M
SD
Range
VOT crossoveri
M
SD
Range
NSs
(n = 20)
Early L2 learners,
AO 115
(n = 101/100i)
Late L2 learners,
AO 1630
(n = 99/95i)
66
6.81
5676
53
8.81
3277
45
5.29
3157
+8.81
9.60
8 to +23
2.40
10.99
29 to +18
9.72
8.81
33 to +12
i Five participants (one in the AO 115 group and ve in the AO 1530 group) were removed from the
VOT data due to missing or uninterpretable data.
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Figure 2. GJT scores and VOT crossover points plotted against AO.
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Learner group
AO 130 n =
200/195i
AO 115 n = 101/100i
AO 1630 n = 99/95i
Correlation with
VOT crossoveri
Independent
variable
AO
LOR
L1 USE
AGE
AO
LOR
L1 USE
AGE
AO
LOR
L1 USE
AGE
.60
.26
.26
.38
.58
.27
.28
.14
.05
.04
.22
.01
< .001
< .001
< .001
< .001
< .001
< .01
< .01
= .163, ns
= .623, ns
= .694, ns
= .029, ns
= .922, ns
.47
.14
.21
.35
.51
.25
.31
.12
.17
.19
.07
.27
< .001
= .051, ns
< .01
< .001
< .001
< .0125
< .01
= .234, ns
= .1, ns
= .065, ns
= .5, ns
< .01
i Five participants (one in the AO 115 group and four in the AO 1530 group) were removed from the
VOT data due to missing or uninterpretable data.
It is often held that AO is confounded with other independent variables. For example, lower AOs tend to coincide with longer residence in
the new country, high amounts of L1 use are more common among late
learners, and AO generally correlates closely with participants ages at
the time of testing (see, e.g., Stevens, 2006). Therefore, it is often held
that it is difcult to decide whether the AO function should be explained
by maturation or by these other experiential factors that are hidden in
the AO complex. Indeed, as shown in Table 1, participants in the AO
115 group were signicantly younger than those in the AO 1630 group
(mean AGE = 34 vs. 46 years), and the AO 115 group had spent a
few more years in Sweden than the AO 1630 group (mean LOR = 26 vs.
23 years), although it should be noted that the amount of daily Spanish
use was the same for both AO groups. In fact, as shown in Table 4, AO,
LOR, and AGE tend to be interrelated in different ways, and AO and AGE
in particular were highly correlated (r = .75, p < .001). To tease apart the
different impacts of AO and the other independent variables, partial
correlations were performed, which removed the effect of the confounding variable. These are presented in Table 5. As can be seen, when
the effects of other independent variables are removed, AO clearly
emerges as the strongest variable, with strong and highly signicant
correlations with both GJT and VOTthis is especially true for the AO
115 group, which was described as the real locus of AO effects. Most
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Table 4.
AO
AGE
LOR
L1 USE
AGE
LOR
L1 USE
1.00
.75
.25
.05
1.00
.41
.03
1.00
.03
1.00
LOR
L1 USE
AGE
LOR
L1 USE
AGE
LOR
L1 USE
AGE
.14
.29iii
.13
.26ii
.24
.23
.04
.24
.04
Independent variable
with AO removed
.57iii
.61iii
.52iii
.58iii
.57iii
.60iii
.05
.11
.06
AO with other
independent
variable removed
.03
.21ii
.00
.23
.28ii
.20
.21
.12
.22
Independent variable
with AO removed
ii
.45iii
.47iii
.34iii
.50iii
.49iii
.53iii
.19
.19
.04
AO with other
independent
variable removed
VOT crossoveri
Five participants (one in the AO 115 group and four in the 1530 group) were removed from the VOT data due to missing or uninterpretable data.
= p < .0125 (= Bonferronis corrected -level).
iii = p < .001.
AO 1630 n = 99/95i
AO 115 n = 101/100i
AO 130 n = 200/195i
Independent
variable
GJT score
First-order partial correlations of AO and other independent variables (LOR, L1 USE, AGE) with GJT-VOT
Learner group
Table 5.
results
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Table 6. Number and percent nativelike individuals on both GJT and VOT, either GJT or VOT, and neither GJT nor
VOT at different AOs and at 5-year AO intervals; n = 195 (5 of the 200 participants removed because of technical or
instructional problems in the VOT task)
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Niclas Abrahamsson
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possible to see that, in general, results on the GJT and the VOT do seem
to correlate (r = .48, p < .001). However, unless a test-wiseness effect was
involved, these two distinct measures should not be expected to correlate in NSs. That is, for a NS, who, by denition, has attained nativelike
prociency, a high result on a test of grammatical intuition should not
imply a highly positive crossover point on the VOT continuum for stop
consonants, nor should a negative VOT crossover point be expected to
be associated with low grammatical intuition. In other words, as soon
as two given linguistic features of the L1 have fully developed and
crossed the nishing line, it is no longer possible to predict that results
from tests of these features will correlateat least as long as there is no
causal relationship between them, which, of course, is not the case with
the morphosyntactic structures of the present GJT and the voicing contrast investigated with the VOT test. Only via snapshots of ongoing L1
or L2 acquisition, or through the observation of learner systems that
have stabilized somewhere along the interlanguage continuum, should
such a relation be present; once native prociency has been reached,
any variation in grammatical and phonetic abilities should be random.
Therefore, for the NSs high scores on the GJT and positive VOT crossovers would be expectedwith little individual variationbut not necessarily a correlation between the two measures. As can be seen in
Figure 3b, this is (in principle) what was found: Even though the total
variation was somewhat greater than expected (e.g., no NSs were actually expected to locate the mean crossover point on the negative side
of the VOT continuum), the plots are still gathered in the top-right corner of the gure, and no correlation between GJT and VOT was found
(r = .06, p = .80).
Turning next to Figure 3c, it is possible to see that the late-learner
plots are to be found at the bottom-left corner, indicating relatively low
GJT scores and relatively negative VOT crossover points, as presented
in previous sections. As expected, there was no correlation between the
two measures (r = .09, p = .39), possibly indicating that the learning of
grammatical aspects at a certain level does not automatically imply
learning of phonetic aspects at the same or even a similar level. On the
contrary, as the scatter plot shows, those late learners with the most
nativelike (i.e., positive) VOT crossover points also had low GJT scores
(close to chance level), whereas those with the highest GJT scores (at
around 55 to 57) also had negative VOTs.
Finally, in Figure 3d, the early learners have been extracted and
plotted separately. As expected, there was a positive (medium strong)
correlation between GJT scores and VOT crossover points (r = .44,
p < .001), which possibly indicates that grammatical and phonetic intuitions have developed simultaneously. The problem is, however, that
AO, which proved to have the strongest effect among the independent
variables on both GJT and VOT, is probably having an indirect effect on
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Niclas Abrahamsson
this pattern as well; that is, it is not possible to be certain that the correlation between GJT and VOT is not just an artifact of the strong correlations between GJT and AO, and VOT and AO, respectively. In fact, a
partial correlation between GJT and VOT with the effect of AO removed
resulted in a much weaker correlation, r = .21, p = .04. Using the corrected (p = .0125), this result is not statistically signicant; it is only
signicant if the original level (p = .05) is used. It should be noted,
however, that despite the low correlation coefcient and low (or no)
statistical signicance, the AO 115 group was the only one among the
three participant groups to exhibit any kind of relationship between
GJT and VOT. At best, this may be an indication that different parts of
the L2 develop with different rates and even by different means in early
and late learnersat least, there is nothing in these data that would
speak against such an interpretation.
DISCUSSION
In hypothesis 1, it was predicted that AO would be the strongest predictor of UA of both morphosyntactic and phonetic intuitions. This prediction was borne out by the data: There were large and statistically
signicant differences in mean results between NSs, early L2 learners,
and late L2 learners on both the GJT and the VOT test as well as strong,
negative correlations between AO and UA among the L2 participants.
However, the AO effect was present in the early L2 group only, which is
in absolute agreement with previous studies, for example, Johnson &
Newport (1989), who found a strong correlation between AO and GJT
results up to the midteens on the AO continuum, but not beyond. The
present study also found correlations between UA and the independent
variables LOR, amount of L1 use, and current age, but these were significantly weaker than for AO or were statistically nonsignicant. In fact,
and also in full agreement with previous research, it could be shown
that when the effects of confounding variables were parceled out in the
correlational analyses, the impact of AO on UA was virtually unaffected,
whereas the effect of the other independent variables dropped considerably, often down to statistical nonsignicance.
In hypothesis 2, it was predicted that no participant with AOs beyond
puberty would be found with nativelike results on both the GJT and the
VOT test, whereas a majority of the early-childhood learners were predicted to have nativelike results on both tests. It was also predicted that
few, if any, early-childhood learners, but a majority of late learners,
would be found with nativelike results on neither of the tests. All aspects
of this hypothesis were conrmed by the results. The lowest AO in which
no participant was identied with nativelike results on both the GJT and
VOT tests was 12, and AO 13 was the last point on the continuum at
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which nativelike results on both tests were obtained. This means that
no completely nativelike behaviors were observed in this study among
L2 learners who began their L2 acquisition after the age of 13or after
puberty, in Lennebergs (1967) words. More than half of the learners
beyond this AO exhibited nonnativelike results on both the GJT and the
VOT test, whereas, obviously, the remaining late learners were nativelike on one of the measures. Furthermore, more than half of the participants who had begun their acquisition of Swedish between ages 1 and 6
exhibited nativelike results on both the grammatical and phonetic tests.
In principle, the rest of the early-childhood learners (i.e., AO 16) were
nativelike on at least one of the tests, and only two individuals in this
AO range were nonnativelike on both tests. These results suggest that
nativelikeness in both morphosyntactic and phonetic intuition is highly
probable if L2 acquisition starts in early childhood (AO 6), relatively
rare if it starts in later childhood (AO 713), and highly unlikely (or even
impossible) if rst L2 exposure occurs after puberty (AO > 13). Conversely, the data also show that nonnativelike intuition of both morphosyntactic and phonetic features is highly improbable if L2 acquisition
begins during early childhood, relatively rare if it starts in later childhood, but quite common if it starts in the early teens or in adulthood.
The results are also in absolute agreement with our previous studies
and argumentation on AO and nativelike L2 UA, and they conrm the
absolute need for studies aimed at investigating the CPH through
the identication of nativelike late learners to employ several measures
(at least more than one), preferably representing several (and again, at
least more than one) linguistic levels (for discussion, see Abrahamsson &
Hyltenstam, 2009; Hyltenstam & Abrahamsson, 2003a, 2003b).
Finally, in hypothesis 3, it was predicted that the results on the GJT
and the VOT test would positively correlate with each other for early
learners only, but not for late learners (nor for NSs). Before discussing
the results, it is necessary to briey recapitulate the theoretical motivation for the hypothesis. Behind the prediction lies the assumption that
grammatical and phonetic intuitions should develop more or less simultaneously and to a similar degree if the language has been acquired
automatically, incidentally, and implicitly as an interdependent or interconnected whole, but not if it was learned consciously, intentionally,
and explicitly as independent, separate parts of a whole. This, in turn,
would potentially suggest that early and late L2 learners use fundamentally different systems: Although children automatically acquire the
morphosyntactic and phonetic-phonological system from mere exposure (Lenneberg, 1967, p. 176) through innate, domain-specic mechanisms (Bley-Vroman, 1989; DeKeyser, 2000) and by using mostly
procedural memory resources (Paradis, 2009), adults have lost most of
these abilities and instead must learn the L2 consciously, through formal instruction, and via their domain-general cognitive system, using
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Niclas Abrahamsson
211
in contrast, showed no sign of having developed grammatical and phonetic aspects simultaneously, possibly indicating that their approach
to the task of learning a L2 had been more conscious, intentional, and
explicit through the use of domain-general (i.e., cognitive) learning
strategies (hypothesis 3).
The conrmations of hypotheses 1 and 2 underscore the robustness
of earlier research results that concern the relationship between AO
and UA in L2 acquisition. As such, they are also in agreement with the
predictions made by Lennebergs (1967) or Johnson & Newports (1989)
versions of the CPH. However, the conclusions concerning hypothesis
3 necessarily remain more speculative in nature: Not only did this study
fail to present statistically signicant results, but even the rationale
behind the methodology employed to investigate this hypothesis
may have been less solid than for the previous hypotheses. Nevertheless
(or even because of this), the hypothesis that children and adults acquire
or learn L2s in fundamentally different ways, using fundamentally different
cognitive (or brain) mechanisms, should be highly prioritized in future
CPH-related research. There is already an entirely clear answer to the
question of whether children are more successful learners of L2swhat
still remain are answers to the question why this is so.
NOTES
1. The advertisements appeared in free newspapers (Punkt.SE, Metro, and Stockholm
City) distributed in the Stockholm public transportation system.
2. Exceptions were AO 3 (5 participants), AO 17 (2), AO 21 (4), and AO 22 (9).
3. As noted previously, a total of 5 participants were removed from the VOT results
because of missing or uninterpretable data, which resulted in a total of 195 participants
instead of 200.
4. One exception is AO 17, which can most certainly be explained by the fact that this
AO was lled by only 2 participants, both of whom were nativelike on either GJT or VOT.
Had the number of participants been similar to the other AOs (67 being the normal case),
one and probably several participants would have been expected to exhibit nonnativelike
results on both tests.
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APPENDIX
Four ungrammatical examples out of 80 grammaticality judgment items,
grouped by structure type, and with English translation. Target structures are in bold, and correct forms are given in brackets.
1. Subject-verb inversion (V2)
*Med tanke p att den hgkonjunktur landet gick mot var mycket tydlig man frstr
[frstr man] kapitalgarnas uppfattning gllande ekonomiska skyddstullar.
Given that the economic upturn the country was approaching was
very obvious, one understands the capitalists position regarding protectionist tolls.
2. Reexive possessive pronouns
*De mest rutinerade kroppsbyggarna sg till att sina [deras] benmuskler utvecklades i samma takt som vriga muskler.
The most experienced body builders made certain that their leg muscles developed at the same rate as their other muscles.
3. Placement of sentence adverbs in relative clauses
*Fartyget rammade en eka som styrmannen observerade inte [inte observerade]
p sin radar vilket ck katastrofala fljder.
The ship rammed a rowboat that the helmsman hadnt noticed on his
radar, which had catastrophic consequences.
4. Adjective agreement in predicative position (example: AGR-num, plural)
*Skjulen som varit skymda av den hga stenmuren och drfr inte existerat i folks
medvetande blev nu helt blottlagd [blottlagda].
The sheds that had been hidden by the high stone wall, and therefore
nonexistent in peoples consciousness, were now suddenly entirely
exposed.