AGE AND ULTIMATE ATTAINMENT IN THE PRONUNCIATION OF A FOREIGN LANGUAGE

1997 ◽  
Vol 19 (4) ◽  
pp. 447-465 ◽  
Author(s):  
Theo Bongaerts ◽  
Chantal van Summeren ◽  
Brigitte Planken ◽  
Erik Schils
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Foreign Language ◽  
Language Learners ◽  
Second Language Learners ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
Native Speaker ◽  
Control Group ◽  
Native Speakers Of English ◽  
Late Start ◽  
Ultimate Attainment

This paper reports on two studies that addressed the issue of ultimate attainment by late second language learners. The aim of the studies, which included a carefully screened group of highly successful Dutch learners of English in their designs, was to determine whether or not late second language learners who had achieved a nativelike performance in the pronunciation of a second language could be identified. Speech samples provided by two groups of learners, one of which consisted of highly successful learners only, and a native speaker control group were rated for accent by native speakers of English. The ratings obtained by some learners were within the range of the ratings assigned to the native speaker controls. Such results suggest that it is not impossible to achieve an authentic, nativelike pronunciation of a second language after a specified biological period of time. Examination of the learning histories of the highly successful learners lead the authors to argue that certain learner characteristics and learning contexts may work together to override the disadvantages of a late start.

Factors driving lexical variation in L2 French: A variationist study of automobile, auto, voiture, char and machine

2008 ◽  
Vol 18 (3) ◽  
pp. 365-381 ◽  
Author(s):  
TERRY NADASDI ◽  
RAYMOND MOUGEON ◽  
KATHERINE REHNER
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Language Learners ◽  
Second Language Learners ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
Native Speaker ◽  
External Factors ◽  
Home Language ◽  
Lexical Variation ◽  
Neutral Variant ◽  
The Prestige

ABSTRACTOur paper examines lexical variation in the spoken French of second language learners and focuses on words referring to the notion of ‘automobile’ (i.e., automobile, auto, voiture, char and machine). Results reveal that while students do follow the native speaker pattern of using the neutral variant auto in most instances, they diverge from native speakers by making no use of the vernacular form char and relatively high use of the prestige variant voiture. The principal external factors that influence variant choice are students' home language and the representation of variants in the input to which students are exposed.

The case of the conditional and the imperfect in variable mood-choice contexts in second-language and native-speaker Spanish

2015 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
pp. 118-144 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aarnes Gudmestad
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Language Learners ◽  
Second Language Learners ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
Native Speaker ◽  
Proficiency Levels ◽  
Form Function ◽  
Verb Forms ◽  
Range Of Functions ◽  
Mood Choice

The current study builds on research on mood distinction in Spanish, which has focused on the subjunctive mood, by examining the full inventory of verb forms that second-language learners and native speakers (NSs) of Spanish use in mood-choice contexts. Twenty NSs and 130 learners corresponding to five proficiency levels completed three oral-elicitation tasks. The results show that participants use a wide repertoire of tense/mood/aspect forms in mood-choice contexts and that NSs and learners use largely the same forms. An analysis of the conditional and imperfect suggests that learners tend to restructure and strengthen their form-function connections between these verb forms and a range of functions.

The Treatment of Foreground-Background Information in the On-Line Descriptive Discourse of Second Language Learners

1984 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 115-142 ◽  
Author(s):  
Russell S. Tomlin
Keyword(s):  
Language Learners ◽  
Second Language Learners ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
Native Speaker ◽  
Communication Strategy ◽  
Background Information ◽  
Advanced Learners ◽  
Discourse Production ◽  
On Line ◽  
Native Speakers Of English

This paper compares the foregrounding strategies of native speakers of English and advanced learners of ESL. Fifteen native speakers and thirty-five advanced learners produced on-line (play-by-play) descriptions of the unfolding action in an animated videotape. A methodology for the quantitative analysis of discourse production is described which permits the explicit identification of foreground-background information and its interaction with both native speaker and interlanguage syntaxes. Results show that: (1) Native speakers and learners exhibit one universal discourse strategy in retreating to a more pragmatic mode of communication under the severe communicative stress of on-line description, as revealed through the systematic loss of the coding relations ordinarily holding between foreground-background information and clause independence/tense-aspect; (2) Learners also exhibit a learner-specific general communication strategy in which significant events are described but nonsignificant events avoided.

scholarly journals Comprehension of grammatically modified and nonmodified sentences by second language learners

1992 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 147-171 ◽  
Author(s):  
Diana C. Issidorides ◽  
Jan H. Hulstijn
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Language Learners ◽  
Second Language Learners ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
Nonnative Speakers ◽  
Control Group ◽  
Grammatical Structure ◽  
L2 Acquisition ◽  
L2 Learners ◽  
State Of Affairs

ABSTRACTAt issue in the present research is whether native speakers' “simplified” or modified utterances, as in foreigner-talk (FT), actually facilitate comprehension for nonnative speakers hearing such utterances. It was hypothesized that (grammatical) Dutch inversion sentences (AdvVSO) that have proven to be problematic in studies on Dutch second language (L2) acquisition - as reflected both in the (ungrammatical) output of L2 learners and in the (ungrammatical) FT input to L2 learners - would not be problematic in terms of comprehension, when compared with modified, ungrammatical AdvSVO and AdvSOV sentences, as long as such sentences do not express an implausible state of affairs. Three subject groups participated in the experiment: 20 English and 22 Turkish L2 learners of Dutch and 30 Dutch native speakers (control group). Subjects heard and interpreted declarative Dutch sentences, in which word order (NVN, VNN, NNV) and animacy configurations (Al [i.e., animate/inanimate], AA, LA) were systematically manipulated. Subjects had to name the noun (first or second) that functions as actor/subject of the sentence. Positive evidence was found for the hypotheses. It is concluded from the present study, as well as from a previous study (Issidorides, 1988), that linguistically more complex input will not necessarily impede comprehension. The fact that normative speakers have difficulties in producing a certain grammatical structure (e.g., the AdvVSO structure) does not imply that such a structure is also more difficult to understand in the speech of others.

scholarly journals Morphosyntactic Processing in Late Second-Language Learners

2010 ◽  
Vol 22 (8) ◽  
pp. 1870-1887 ◽  
Author(s):  
Margaret Gillon Dowens ◽  
Marta Vergara ◽  
Horacio A. Barber ◽  
Manuel Carreiras
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Language Learners ◽  
Second Language Learners ◽  
Native Speaker ◽  
First Language ◽  
Control Group ◽  
Gender Agreement ◽  
L2 Processing ◽  
Sentence Position ◽  
And Gender

The goal of the present study was to investigate the electrophysiological correlates of second-language (L2) morphosyntactic processing in highly proficient late learners of an L2 with long exposure to the L2 environment. ERPs were collected from 22 English–Spanish late learners while they read sentences in which morphosyntactic features of the L2 present or not present in the first language (number and gender agreement, respectively) were manipulated at two different sentence positions—within and across phrases. The results for a control group of age-matched native-speaker Spanish participants included an ERP pattern of LAN-type early negativity followed by P600 effect in response to both agreement violations and for both sentence positions. The late L2 learner results included a similar pattern, consisting of early negativity followed by P600, in the first sentence position (within-phrase agreement violations) but only P600 effects in the second sentence position (across-phrase agreement violation), as well as significant amplitude and onset latency differences between the gender and the number violation effects in both sentence positions. These results reveal that highly proficient learners can show electrophysiological correlates during L2 processing that are qualitatively similar to those of native speakers, but the results also indicate the contribution of factors such as age of acquisition and transfer processes from first language to L2.

scholarly journals The influence of content knowledge on NNS-NNS conversations

2008 ◽  
Vol 30 (2) ◽  
pp. 153
Author(s):  
Yuh-Fang Chang
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Foreign Language ◽  
Language Learners ◽  
Second Language Learners ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
Study Data ◽  
Oral Performance ◽  
Foreign Language Acquisition ◽  
Underlying Causes ◽  
The Relationship

In the field of second and foreign language acquisition, a second-language learner’s language (i.e. interlanguage), like the language of native speakers, varies. What is not clear, however, are the underlying causes of this variation. Causes of interlanguage variation such as linguistic contexts, tasks, and interlocutors have been researched. However, there are other important factors in interlanguage variation that are under-researched. Topic of discourse is one such under-researched factor. The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between discourse topics and second language learners’ oral performance.　Twenty-six Taiwanese students participated in this study. Data were collected from NNS-NNS conversations. It was found that discourse topics have a great impact on the grammatical complexity and fluency of L2 learners’ speech production. 第二言語習得や外国語の習得において、学習者の言語（いわゆる中間言語）も母語話者の習得言語と同様に変異があるということはよく知られているが、未だ解明されていないのは何が変異を起こしているのかである。言語、文脈、タスク、対話者などの要因についてはこれまで比較的多く研究されている。しかしながら談話上のトピックについてはほとんど調査が行われていない。本研究の目的は談話上のトピックと学習者の発話行動の関係を探ることである。26名の台湾人の学生が調査に参加した。非母語話者どうしの対話からデータを収集し分析した結果、談話のトピックは文法構造の複雑度および流暢さに大きく影響することがわかった。

scholarly journals Extrametricality and second language acquisition

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Guilherme Duarte Garcia
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Second Language Acquisition ◽  
Pilot Study ◽  
Language Acquisition ◽  
Language Learners ◽  
Second Language Learners ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
Native Speakers Of English ◽  
Phonetic Cues ◽  
Stress Patterns

This pilot study investigates the second language acquisition (SLA) of stress in Portuguese (L2) by native speakers of English (L1). In particular, it examines the interaction between extrametricality and default stress through two judgement tasks. Stress is suprasegmental, relative and involves a variety of phonetic correlates: Cross-linguistically, stressed syllables tend to be realized with higher pitch, longer duration and greater intensity—but languages differ as to which of these correlates is more or less significant. Phonologically, stress presents some unique characteristics, such as the absence of a categorical feature [±stress]. Languages may also differ as to whether syllable shape affects stress (weight-sensitive) or not (weight-insensitive). Second language learners (L2ers) have to deal with such variability and, more importantly, have to acquire new stress patterns—some of which are often vastly different (even contradictory) when compared to the patterns (and phonetic cues) in their L1.

Access to UG and language transfer: a study of L2 learners' interpretation of reconstruction in Chinese

1999 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 41-72 ◽  
Author(s):  
H. G. Ying
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Language Learners ◽  
Second Language Learners ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
Universal Grammar ◽  
Language Transfer ◽  
Control Group ◽  
Parameter Setting ◽  
L2 Learners ◽  
English Speaking

Twenty-seven English-speaking learners of Chinese (the experimental groups) and 20 native speakers of Chinese (the control group) participated in a study that investigated second language learners' knowledge of reconstruction (NP and predicate fronted sentences with ziji ‘self’) in Chinese. Results of a sentence interpretation task indicate that English-speaking learners of Chinese had knowledge of ambiguity of antecedence of ziji inside a moved predicate, and lack of ambiguity of antecedence of ziji inside a moved NP, although such information is not directly available in English. While the experiment produced evidence that they appeared to have access to Universal Grammar, English-speaking learners of Chinese bound ziji in non-movement sentences to an embedded subject, indicating that they mapped the narrower setting of reflexives in English onto a wider parameter setting of ziji in Chinese.

scholarly journals Hand in Hand: A Comparison of Gestures Accompanying Japanese Native Speaker and JSL Learner Refusals

2004 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 127 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicholas Jungheim
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Language Learners ◽  
Second Language Learners ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
Native Speaker ◽  
Head Movements ◽  
Japanese Culture ◽  
Actual Performance

The purpose of this study is to describe how native speakers of Japanese and Japanese as a second language learners use gestures as an integral part of Japanese refusals. Participants were 10 native speakers and 33 Japanese as a second language learners who performed a series of role plays that included refusals. This study focused on refusals of an offer and refusals of an invitation. Although learners tended to use manual gestures with refusals of an offer and head movements with refusals of an invitation as did native speakers, there were noticeable differences in the actual performance of these gestures. Implications are that in spite of experience living in the Japanese culture, learners could possibly benefit from additional instruction dealing with gestures as an integral part of Japanese refusals. 本研究は、日本人母語話者と第２言語としての日本語学習者が、日本語の断り表現における主要な表現手段としてのジェスチャーをどのように用いているかを明らかにしようとしたものである。被験者は１０人の母語話者と３３人の日本語学習者で、断りを含む一連のロールプレイを行った。特に焦点を当てたのは、何かの申し出に対する断りと招待に対する断りである。学習者は母語話者と同様に、申し出に対する断りには手の動きで、招待に対しては頭の動きでそれを示す傾向にあったが、実際のこれらのジェスチャーには顕著な違いが見られた。この結果は、日本の文化に触れる経験がすべてなのではなく、日本語の断り表現としてのジェスチャーを大切な要素として学習者に指導することによっても学習者がそれを学べる可能性があることを示唆している。

On the repetition of words with the potential for metaphoric extension in conversations between native and non-native speakers of English

2011 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 201-239 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fiona MacArthur ◽  
Jeannette Littlemore
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Second Language Learners ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
Native Speaker ◽  
Structured Interview ◽  
Face To Face ◽  
Joint Construction ◽  
Interview Format ◽  
Native Speakers Of English ◽  
Metaphor Use

Although quite a lot is known about the way that non-native speakers of English may interpret and produce metaphors in their second language, we know little about metaphor use in face-to-face conversation between primary and secondary speakers of English. In this article we explore the use of metaphors in two types of conversational data: one elicited in a semi-structured interview format, the other consisting of naturally occurring conversations involving one non-native speaker in dialogue with various native speakers. We found that although native speakers’ use of metaphor was occasionally problematic for the interaction, metaphor also afforded opportunities for topic development in these conversations. The repetition of a word with the potential for metaphoric extension was a particularly valuable strategy used by non-native speakers in these conversations in constructing their coherent contributions to the discourse. In contrast, the use of phraseological metaphors (often the focus of activities aimed at fostering second language learners’ mastery of conventional English metaphors) did not contribute to the joint construction of meanings in these circumstances. We discuss the role of high frequency vocabulary in these conversations and some implications for further research.

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