3.4 Typological universals: Accessibility hierarchy (AH)

The typological approach to the study of universals is designed to discover similarities/differences in languages throughout the world. In this part, we will focus on the relative clause(RC). As can be seen, languages vary in whether they have relative clauses. Some languages such as English and Arabic have while others such as Chinese and Japanese do not. This difference influences the ease of learning. Learners whose L1 includes relative clauses find them easier to learn than those whose L1 does not. The relative clause structure itself also affects L2 learning in another way. When learners begin to acquire relative clauses, they usually acquire the RC which is attached to the end of the main clause before the RC which is embedded inside the main clause. Also, languages are more likely to permit relative clauses with a subject pronoun than with an object pronoun

Quite a few studies have been done on typological universals from an SLA perspective. The most widely discussed is the accessibility hierarchy. The basic principle is that one can predict the types of relative clauses that a given language will have based on the following hierarchy shown in Table 3.3:

 

Table 3.3 Accessibility hierarchy for relative clauses

 

SU > DO > IO > OPREP > GEN > OCOMP

SU = subject

DO = direct object

IO = indirect object

OPREP = object of preposition

GEN = genitive

OCOPM = object of comparative

 

According to this hierarchy, if a language has a relative clause of type X, then it will also have any relative clause type higher on the hierarchy, that is, to the left of the type X. For example, if a language has OPREP (object of preposition) relatives (That’s the woman about whom I told you), then it has the first three types, SU, DO and IO clauses. Examples of the six types of RC are as follows:

 

SU: The woman who saw the burglar called the police.

DO: The woman whom the burglar saw called the police.

IO: The woman to whom the burglar gave the money called the police.

OPREP: The woman about whom the children told a story called the police.

GEN: The woman whose daughter was a burglar called the police.

OCOPM: The woman whom the burglar is richer than called the place.

( Gass, 2009:387)

 

The AH serves as an example of how SLA and linguistics can assist each other. Linguistic facts can be used to explain and even predict acquisition. In addition, the results of empirical studies of L2 acquisition can be used to refine our understanding of linguistic facts (Ellis, 2000:65).