A Processability Theory approach to the development of marked word orders in Russian and Italian as second languages

This thesis investigates how learners of Russian and Italian as second languages (L2) – two languages located towards the less configurational end of the typological spectrum (cf. Van Valin 2007) – acquire the skills to move beyond the fixed frame of canonical word order in order to optimise their communicative needs. Acquiring marked word orders in Russian L2 and Italian L2 is no easy task, because in order to produce them without affecting the propositional content of their message, learners must be able not only to free up canonical order, but also to mark grammatical functions (GFs) unequivocally by morphological means. Russian, a more dependent-marking language (cf. King 1995, Comrie 2011), marks GFs mostly by case; Italian, a more head-marking language (cf. Salvi & Vanelli 2004, Schwarze 2009), marks GFs mostly by verbal inflection, resuming topical objects by means of a co-referential clitic pronoun. The present study is conducted within the framework of Processability Theory (PT – Pienemann 1998; Pienemann, Di Biase & Kawaguchi 2005), a psycholinguistic theory of hierarchically-staged grammatical development. Specifically, this work follows the recently reconceptualised approach of Bettoni & Di Biase (2015), which proves advantageous to my purposes in two important respects. First, it offers a newly reformulated hypothesis dealing specifically with the development from unmarked to marked word orders at the syntax-discourse interface, namely the Prominence Hypothesis. Secondly, it addresses important issues at the interface between morphology and syntax, with particular reference to the correspondences between the stages along the Prominence Hypothesis and those in Pienemann’s (1998) hierarchy of processing procedures. Three hypotheses are put forward to account for learners’ development from unmarked to marked word orders. The first hypothesis is formulated by adapting the universal staged sequence of the Prominence Hypothesis to Russian L2 and Italian L2. The other two hypotheses are at the interface between the Prominence Hypothesis and the hierarchy of processing procedures, and specifically account for the development of case in Russian L2 and of clitic pronouns in Italian L2. Using especially devised communicative tasks, such hypotheses are tested cross-sectionally on two groups of learners: one of 10 learners of Russian L2, and one of 10 learners of Italian L2 – all adults at different proficiency levels and from a varied L1 background. Results fully support the developmental hypotheses. In both languages, results show that all learners organise their utterances according to their discourse and pragmatic needs, placing the discourse topic sentence-initially. Trouble for learners begins when the discourse topic differs from the subject. Most of them are able to front adjunct constituents, but leave the fixed canonical order frame intact. Only more advanced learners can topicalise object constituents, marking them by accusative case in Russian, and by the resumptive clitic pronoun in Italian. Results also reveal further interesting patterns at the interface between morphology and syntax in the development of Russian case, and between syntax and discourse in the development of Italian clitic pronouns. Such findings contribute to enhancing our understanding of some of the interfaces between PT’s developmental schedules.