Dependency distance: A new perspective on the syntactic development in second language acquisition

An interest in investigating the effect of instruction on interlanguage development prompted me to conduct a study on a small group of adult migrant learners of English. As a first step, the learners were assessed for their stage of syntactic development. This assessment showed that a structure-do-fronted questions – had not been acquired by some of the learners but was one for which they were syntactically ready. Because questioning is an important and complex speech act, the learners were then given instruction which focused their attention on do-fronting. The follow-up assessment indicated that instruction can be successful because the learners acquired do-fronting. The study supports the claim that form-focused instruction can make a difference. It also lends weight to Pienemann’s claim that the effectiveness of instruction depends on whether a structure is learnable for an individual learner. The study shows that form-focused instruction can provide an innovative linguistic focus to communicative language teaching and give important assistance with the second language acquisition of the learners.

Download Full-text

Explicit and implicit dimensions of sociopragmatic and pragmalinguistic competence

IRAL - International Review of Applied Linguistics in Language Teaching ◽

10.1515/iral-2018-0319 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 0 (0) ◽

Author(s):

Darcy Sperlich ◽

Jaiho Leem ◽

Eui-Jeen Ahn

Keyword(s):

Second Language ◽

Second Language Acquisition ◽

Language Acquisition ◽

Explicit Knowledge ◽

Past Research ◽

Language Transfer ◽

Knowledge Use ◽

New Perspective ◽

Implicit And Explicit ◽

Korean Learners

AbstractImplicit and explicit knowledge use in second language acquisition has been rigorously researched in areas such as syntax, however our understanding of how these knowledge constructs affect learner pragmatics is not well understood. Through an interlanguage pragmatic perspective we aim to understand how implicit and explicit knowledge intertwines with pragmalinguistic and sociopragmatic competence. This is investigated by testing for L1 politeness transfer in Korean learners of French regarding their acquisition of tu and vous, which provides a new perspective as past research focuses on Anglophone learners. By triangulating data from two test types, results show that the learners have difficulty with vous but not tu, attributed to negative language transfer of L1 politeness values. Moreover, learner variation of tu/vous use can be linked to the explicit/implicit status of their pragmalinguistic and sociopragmatic knowledge, showing that the implicitization of their sociopragmatic knowledge is a challenging hurdle towards native-like tu/vous use.

Download Full-text

A New Perspective for Second Language Acquisition: Parsing

Revue québécoise de linguistique ◽

10.7202/602725ar ◽

2009 ◽

Vol 21 (1) ◽

pp. 79-95 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Johanne S. Bourdages

Keyword(s):

Second Language ◽

Second Language Acquisition ◽

Language Acquisition ◽

New Perspective ◽

The Relationship

Abstract The focus of this paper is on the possible contribution of research in Parsing Theory to the field of Second Language Acquisition. The aim of this paper is an examination of the relationship between the parsing mechanism and the process of language acquisition, and, more specifically, second language acquisition. The suggestion is made that this framework is a valid and an interesting one to pursue in that it might provide evidence to support current hypotheses in Parsing Theory and in Second Language Acquisition.

Download Full-text

A Cross-linguistic Perspective on Questions in German and French Adult Second Language Acquisition

Linguistik Online ◽

10.13092/lo.57.248 ◽

2012 ◽

Vol 57 (7) ◽

Author(s):

Solveig Chilla ◽

Matthias Bonnesen

Keyword(s):

Second Language ◽

Second Language Acquisition ◽

Language Acquisition ◽

First Language ◽

Inflectional Morphology ◽

Second Languages ◽

New Perspective ◽

Feature Values ◽

Feature Checking ◽

Adult Second Language Acquisition

Several studies have been conducted to try and understand and explain the morphological and syntactic aspects of adult second language acquisition (SLA). Two prominent hypotheses that have been put forward concerning late L2 speakers' knowledge of inflectional morphology and of related functional categories and their feature values are the Impaired Representation Hypothesis (IRH) and the Missing Surface Inflection Hypothesis (MSIH). The cross-linguistic comparison of the acquisition of questions in German and French provided in this study offers a new perspective to differences and similarities between first language acquisition (FLA) and adult SLA. Comparing a Germanic and a Romance L2, differing not only in their overall linguistic properties (such as i. e. OV/VO, V2, clitics), but explicitly in the formation and regularities of questions, we present striking similarities in adult SLA, and irrespective of the first and the second languages and of instructed versus non-instructed learning. The investigation of the adult SLA of morphological and structural aspects of questions in French and German strengthens the assumption that the acquisition of morphology and syntax is connected in French and German FLA but is disentangled in adult SLA. Our data reveal variability of question syntax, and with the syntactic position of the verb in particular. Instead of discovering the correct position of the verb at a certain stage of acquisition which can be accounted for by parameter setting in FLA, the adult learners gradually approach the target word order but still exhibit a great deal of variation after several years of exposure to the L2. The findings provided here contradict the predictions of the MSIH (Prévost/White 2000; Ionin/Wexler 2002; among others), for not only morphological features, but syntactic finiteness of finiteness are problematic in adult SLA, and that the Impairment Representation Hypothesis (IRH) (Beck 1998; Eubank 1993/1994; among others) accounts for these differences in first and second language acquisition. IRH and FDH mirror our findings, by predicting the use of (domain-general) strategies instead of agreement or feature checking mechanisms.

Download Full-text

Finiteness and verb placement in second language acquisition

Second language Research ◽

10.1177/026765830001600403 ◽

2000 ◽

Vol 16 (4) ◽

pp. 355-381 ◽

Cited By ~ 32

Author(s):

Teresa Parodi

Keyword(s):

Second Language ◽

Second Language Acquisition ◽

Language Acquisition ◽

Universal Grammar ◽

L2 Acquisition ◽

Verb Agreement ◽

Learning Tasks ◽

Verb Placement ◽

New Perspective ◽

L1 Acquisition

The relationship between finiteness and verb placement has often been studied in both first language (L1) and second language (L2) acquisition and many studies claim that, while there is a correlation between finiteness and verb placement in L1 acquisition, these areas represent separate learning tasks in second language acquisition (SLA). The purpose of this article is to provide a new perspective on this elusive question, analysing data from speakers of Romance languages learning German as a second language (L2). Verbs are classified as thematic and nonthematic and analysed with respect to overt subject–verb agreement and verb placement as seen in negation patterns. A clear association between subject–verb agreement and verb placement is seen for nonthematic verbs: they are in most cases morphologically finite and show the syntactical distribution of finite verbs. These verbs are interpreted as a spell-out of agreement features, differing both from the speakers' L1 and from the L2, but conforming to a universal grammar (UG) option.

Download Full-text