scholarly journals Comprehension and production of French object clitics by child second language learners and children with specific language impairment

2005 ◽  
Vol 26 (3) ◽  
pp. 363-391 ◽  
Author(s):  
THERES GRÜTER

The objective of this research was to compare child second language (L2) learners and children with specific language impairment (SLI) on both production and comprehension in order to investigate whether the similarity of their error profiles observed in spontaneous production extends to comprehension. Results are presented from an elicited production and a sentence–picture matching task targeting accusative object clitics in French. As groups, both L2 learners and children with SLI show a low rate of clitic suppliance in production, yet perform well on the comprehension task. No statistically significant differences are found between the two groups on either task. Analyses of individual results, however, reveal diversity within both groups. Although there seems to be a correlation between performance in production and comprehension in the L2 group, this is not the case in the SLI group.

2012 ◽  
Vol 2 (4) ◽  
pp. 379-403 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brigitta Keij ◽  
Leonie Cornips ◽  
Roeland van Hout ◽  
Aafke Hulk ◽  
Joanne van Emmerik

Dutch nouns are divided into two groups according to grammatical gender which is, among others, marked on the definite determiner: common nouns take the definite determiner de and neuter nouns take the definite determiner het. This study is unique in systematically investigating the acquisition of grammatical gender and the definite determiner in the production and knowledge data of the same Dutch children. Three groups of children were examined: (i) typically developing monolinguals (L1-TD: 6;7—9;11), (ii) monolinguals with Specific Language Impairment (L1-SLI: 8;4-12;0), and (iii) typically developing bilinguals, who are early second language learners (eL2: 6;7-10;0). The three groups of children reveal different stages in discovering that de and het cover the gender paradigm. At comparable ages, the L1-TD children have completed this paradigm discovery; however, the eL2 children have not yet completed it, and the L1- SLI children are only at the first stage of the discovery of the gender paradigm.


Author(s):  
Heather Goad

AbstractThe position that languages require both coda and onset options for the syllabification of word-final consonants is adopted. The latter option is further divided into languages where final consonants are onsets of empty-headed syllables and those where final consonants are syllabified through onset-nuclear (ON) sharing. ON sharing is reserved for languages where final consonants display fortition (overt release): the nucleus hosts the release of the consonant. Empirical evidence from across populations demonstrates that ON sharing is unmarked. It is favoured among the outputs of first and second language learners and individuals with Specific Language Impairment. It is further argued that final onsets are optimal for parsing in end-state grammars, as they demarcate the right word-edge more effectively than codas. Among the two types of onsets, ON sharing is preferred: through the nuclear release, it is better able to host the range of contrasts that right-edge onsets display. The parsing argument serves to illustrate how ON sharing provides an advantage to end-state grammars, beyond being an emergent property from acquisition.


2017 ◽  
Vol 36 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Petra Schulz ◽  
Rabea Schwarze

AbstractUsing the standardized test LiSe-DaZ across four test rounds, we collected elicited production data from 22 typically developing early second language learners (eL2 TD) of German (mean age at T1: 3;7) and 11 older eL2 children with Specific Language Impairment (SLI) (mean age at T1: 7;1). Focusing on the relation between verb placement and verbal inflectional morphology two questions were addressed: Do eL2 children obey the ban on non-finite verbs in verb-second position (V2) in German, and do eL2 SLI children differ from their eL2 TD peers in their morpho-syntactic behavior? This is the first study on this issue to systematically differentiate between V2 and verb-final position (Vf) and between bare verb forms and infinitives, based on a large sample of elicited production data. Results show that from the first test round onwards verbal inflectional morphology and verb placement were strongly related in the TD and the SLI group. Bare verb forms occurred in V2 only and are argued to be finite;


2014 ◽  
Vol 36 (4) ◽  
pp. 953-976 ◽  
Author(s):  
ELMA BLOM ◽  
JOHANNE PARADIS

ABSTRACTThe goal of this study was to investigate whether individual difference factors influence the second language (L2) learning of children with specific language impairment (SLI) and children with typical development (TD) differently. The study focuses on tense inflection development in English L2 children. The roles of age of L2 acquisition, length of L2 exposure, and first language (L1) were examined. Twenty-four pairs of 4- and 5-year-old English L2 children with SLI and English L2 children with TD participated in the study. Children's responses on the third person singular and regular past tense probes of the Test of Early Grammatical Impairment (Rice & Wexler, 2001) were analyzed using logistic mixed regression modeling and classification procedures. For all children, those who started learning English later performed better than children who started learning English earlier, but the advantage of an older age of acquisition was particularly present in the L2 with SLI group. For children in the L2 group with TD, their accuracy with tense inflection clearly increased with longer L2 exposure, but this was not found for the L2 children with SLI. Finally, L2 children with TD were better able to transfer L1 knowledge than L2 children with SLI.


2019 ◽  
pp. 136216881985645 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ping-Jung Lee ◽  
Yeu-Ting Liu ◽  
Wen-Ta Tseng

Existing research has established captions as effective second-language (L2) or foreign language (FL) listening comprehension aids. However, due to the transient nature of captions, not all learners are capable of attending to captions in all cases. Previous work posited that to leverage the impact of technologies in learning and instruction, a better understanding of the interplay between technology and cognition is warranted. In this vein, the current study set out to investigate the effects of four different caption modes (full vs. partial vs. real-time vs. control) on the listening comprehension of 95 high-intermediate Taiwanese learners of English as a foreign language (EFL) with different caption reliance (i.e. more-caption-reliant vs. less-caption-reliant). The results showed no significant difference between the participants’ listening comprehension outcomes under the four caption conditions when their caption reliance was not considered. However, when this was considered, the differences among the four caption conditions became salient, which was suggestive of the selective effect of captions on L2 learners with different caption reliance. While less-caption-reliant L2 learners had the best listening comprehension outcome under the partial-caption condition and the worst under the full-caption condition, more-caption-reliant L2 learners exhibited the best performance under the full-caption condition yet the worst under the partial-caption condition. The finding underscores the importance of considering L2 learners’ processing profiles when utilizing captioned videos as multimodal instructional/learning materials and speaks to the need of utilizing differentiated video materials for optimal listening outcomes.


2017 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 228-242 ◽  
Author(s):  
EDITH KAAN ◽  
EUNJIN CHUN

Native speakers show rapid adjustment of their processing strategies and preferences on the basis of the structures they have recently encountered. The present study investigated the nature of priming and adaptation in second-language (L2) speakers and, more specifically, whether similar mechanisms underlie L2 and native language adaptation. Native English speakers and Korean L2 learners of English completed a written priming study probing the use of double object and prepositional phrase datives. Both groups showed cumulative adaptation effects for both types of dative, which was stronger for the structure that was initially less frequent to them (prepositional phrase datives for the native English speakers, and double object datives for the L2 learners). This supports models of priming that incorporate frequency-based modulation of long-lasting activation of structures. L2 learners and native speakers use similar processing mechanisms; differences in adaptation can be accounted for by differences in the relative frequency of structures.


2003 ◽  
Vol 24 (3) ◽  
pp. 453-489 ◽  
Author(s):  
CLAUDIA FELSER ◽  
LEAH ROBERTS ◽  
THEODORE MARINIS ◽  
REBECCA GROSS

This study investigates the way adult second language (L2) learners of English resolve relative clause attachment ambiguities in sentences such as The dean liked the secretary of the professor who was reading a letter. Two groups of advanced L2 learners of English with Greek or German as their first language participated in a set of off-line and on-line tasks. The results indicate that the L2 learners do not process ambiguous sentences of this type in the same way as adult native speakers of English do. Although the learners' disambiguation preferences were influenced by lexical–semantic properties of the preposition linking the two potential antecedent noun phrases (of vs. with), there was no evidence that they applied any phrase structure–based ambiguity resolution strategies of the kind that have been claimed to influence sentence processing in monolingual adults. The L2 learners' performance also differs markedly from the results obtained from 6- to 7-year-old monolingual English children in a parallel auditory study, in that the children's attachment preferences were not affected by the type of preposition at all. We argue that children, monolingual adults, and adult L2 learners differ in the extent to which they are guided by phrase structure and lexical–semantic information during sentence processing.


1982 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 170-180 ◽  
Author(s):  
Craig Chaudron

Subject-matter lessons taught to English as a second language learners in several school levels were transcribed and analyzed. Characteristics of the teachers' speech when elaborating vocabulary were isolated and described, with a view to determining which characteristics would be helpful and which harmful to the students' comprehension and acquisition of vocabulary. It is seen that a major problem for the student may lie in the teacher's overelab-oration of vocabulary meanings through increased redundancy; the non-native listener may find it difficult to decode the exact message, because he cannot discern whether the same information has been provided redundantly or whether new information has been supplied.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document