Does the passé composé influence L2 learners’ use of English past tenses?

2018 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 23-53 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sandra C. Deshors
Keyword(s):  
Contextual Information ◽  
Present Perfect ◽  
Advanced Learners ◽  
Fine Grained ◽  
Proficiency Level ◽  
Form Function ◽  
Usage Patterns ◽  
Advanced Proficiency ◽  
Past Tenses ◽  
Passe Compose

Abstract This study explores the uses of the present perfect (PP) and simple past (SP) by French learners of English and assesses how those uses differ from those in native English and those of the passé composé (PC) in native French which, semantically, overlaps with PP and SP. Methodologically, the study is based on over 3,000 contextualized occurrences of PP, SP and PC, and includes cluster and collostructional analyses. Overall, relatively native-like form-function mappings in interlanguage emerge from the analyses, suggesting that, semantically, advanced learners have integrated the uses of past tenses and that the influence of the PC is relatively weak. Further, at an upper-intermediate to advanced proficiency level, learners have integrated the fine-grained contextual information characteristic of the use of English past tenses. Ultimately, the study shows how different methodological designs can lead to varying conclusions on the (non-)nativelike usage patterns of PP in interlanguage.

scholarly journals A Descriptive Study of Life Syllabus in Assessing Proficiency Level and Collocational Categories of Iranian EFL Learners

2018 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 354
Author(s):  
Mustapha Hajebi
Keyword(s):  
Language Learners ◽  
Descriptive Study ◽  
Advanced Learners ◽  
Efl Learners ◽  
Proficiency Level ◽  
Compelling Reason ◽  
Advanced Proficiency

This research is done to prove the effect of life syllabus in assessing proficiency level and collocational categories of Iranian EFL learners. To this end, four hundred and twenty EFL learners from Yazd and Shiraz universities were selected. They were in intermediate and advanced proficiency groups. The participants were assigned into three groups of one hundred and forty learners and took each of the tests separately. The result appeared to manifest that learners’ perception improve by advanced learners who received life syllabus instructions. It also yielded compelling reason to argue that advanced participants based on life syllabus performed more efficiently compared to their intermediate peers and indicated more collocational competence. The study suggested important implications for language learners, EFL instructors and materials developers.

scholarly journals Influence of L1 Properties and Proficiency on the Acquisition of Gender Agreement

2018 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 92-104 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pierre-Luc Paquet
Keyword(s):  
Eye Tracking ◽  
English Learners ◽  
Explicit Knowledge ◽  
Implicit Knowledge ◽  
Gender Agreement ◽  
Advanced Learners ◽  
Whole Process ◽  
Proficiency Level ◽  
French And English ◽  
Advanced Proficiency

This research investigates the influence of L1 properties and proficiency level on the acquisition of the Spanish gender agreement system. French and English-speaking learners of Spanish participated in the study. Subjects were divided into four different groups considering their L1 (French and English) and their proficiency level (intermediate and advanced). Subjects completed three different tasks: an untimed grammaticality judgment (UGJT) to measure learners’ explicit knowledge, an elicited oral imitation (EOI) and an eye-tracking to assess their implicit knowledge of the Spanish gender agreement system. From this multi-tiered methodology, this research project aimed to examine whether L1 properties and proficiency level influence learners’ explicit and implicit knowledge of the Spanish gender agreement. The results from the UGJT suggest that both French and English learners can notice noun-adjective discord. As for the EOI and eye-tracking tasks, only the French advanced learners clearly demonstrated integrated implicit knowledge of gender agreement. Therefore, based on these results, we can imply that implicit knowledge of gender agreement is acquired later and that L1 properties influence this whole process, even at an advanced proficiency level.

scholarly journals Recasts versus clarification requests: The relevance of linguistic target, proficiency, and communicative ability

2020 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
Nadia Mifka-Profozic
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Language ◽  
Language Proficiency ◽  
Corrective Feedback ◽  
Communicative Ability ◽  
Proficiency Level ◽  
Language Classroom ◽  
Linguistic Structures ◽  
Grammatical Structures ◽  
Communicative Skill ◽  
Passe Compose

AbstractThis paper compares the effects of recasts and clarification requests as two implicit types of corrective feedback (CF) on learning two linguistic structures denoting past aspectual distinction in French, the passé composé and the imparfait. The participants in this classroom-based study are 52 high-school learners of French FL at a pre-intermediate level of proficiency (level B1 of CEFR). A distinctive feature of this study is the use of focused, context constrained communicative tasks in both treatment and tests. The paper specifically highlights the advantages of feedback using recasts for the acquisition of morpho-syntactically complex grammatical structures such as is the French passé composé. The study points to the participants’ communicative ability as an essential aspect of language proficiency, which seems to be crucial to bringing about the benefits of recasts. Oral communicative skill in a foreign language classroom is seen as a prerequisite for an appropriate interpretation and recognition of the corrective nature of recasts.

scholarly journals The Emergence of Second Language Categorisation of the English Article Construction

Languages ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (4) ◽  
pp. 54
Author(s):  
Helen Zhao
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Functional Categories ◽  
L2 Proficiency ◽  
Advanced Learners ◽  
Proficiency Levels ◽  
Form Function ◽  
L2 Learners ◽  
Computer Based ◽  
Increased Sensitivity ◽  
English Articles

This study examines the emergent cognitive categorisation of the English article construction among second language (L2) learners. One hundred and fourteen Mandarin-L1 learners of English, divided into two L2 proficiency levels (low-to-intermediate and advanced), were measured by a computer-based cloze test for the accuracy and response time of appropriate use of English articles in sentential contexts. Results showed that when learners acquired the polysemous English article construction they demonstrated stronger competence in differentiating individual form-function mappings in the article construction. L2 learners’ patterns of article construction usage were shaped by semantic functions. Learners performed better on the definiteness category than on the non-definiteness categories, suggesting that learners were sensitive to the prototypicality of nominal grounding. Advanced learners demonstrated an increased sensitivity to semantic idiosyncrasy, but they lacked contextualised constructional knowledge. Competition among the functional categories and restructuring of functional categories are important ways of regularization that learners go through to acquire semantically complex systems such as articles.

ABSOLUTE FREQUENCY EFFECTS IN SECOND LANGUAGE LEXICAL ACQUISITION

2019 ◽  
Vol 41 (04) ◽  
pp. 721-744 ◽  
Author(s):  
Scott A. Crossley ◽  
Stephen Skalicky ◽  
Kristopher Kyle ◽  
Katia Monteiro
Keyword(s):  
First Language ◽  
English Speaker ◽  
Absolute Frequency ◽  
Advanced Learners ◽  
Frequency Effects ◽  
Proficiency Level ◽  
Gender And Age ◽  
L2 Learners ◽  
L2 Production ◽  
Main Effects

AbstractA number of longitudinal studies of L2 production have reported frequency effects wherein learners' produce more frequent words as a function of time. The current study investigated the spoken output of English L2 learners over a four-month period of time using both native and non-native English speaker frequency norms for both word types and word tokens. The study also controlled for individual differences such as first language distance, English proficiency, gender, and age. Results demonstrated that lower level L2 learners produced more infrequent tokens at the beginning of the study and that high intermediate learners, when compared to advanced learners, produced more infrequent tokens at the beginning of the study and more frequent tokens toward the end of the study. Main effects were also reported for proficiency level, age, and language distance. These results provide further evidence that L2 production may not follow expected frequency trends (i.e., that more infrequent tokens are produced as a function of time).

Phonological and Grammatical Variation in Exemplar Models

2008 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Joan Bybee ◽  
Rena Torres
Keyword(s):  
Contextual Information ◽  
Grammatical Structure ◽  
Cognitive Representations ◽  
Syntactic Variation ◽  
Lexical Representations ◽  
Exemplar Models ◽  
Frequency Of Use ◽  
Grammatical Variation ◽  
Usage Patterns ◽  
Language Frequency

AbstractPhonological and grammatical structure is shaped by usage patterns, as demonstrated by the effects of context and frequency on variation and change. We argue for an exemplar model of lexical representations, in which tokens of use are registered in memory, including phonetic detail as well as linguistic and social contextual information. Since variation is omnipresent in the input, it comes to be represented directly in cognitive representations, which are a record of speakers’ experience with language. Frequency of use and other lexical effects in sound change, which is gradual both phonetically and lexically, are built into exemplar models as the strengthening of exemplars by use and the clustering of exemplars based on phonetic and semantic similarities. The effects of particular lexical items and collocational discourse routines in morpho-syntactic variation and change, including the interaction of the particular and the general in grammaticization, are similarly modeled by the representation of specific instances of constructions and the gradient associations among related forms. Since variation in language use is pervasive and highly conditioned by context, exemplar models are particularly wellsuited to account for variation and change.

De (on) Verklaarbaarheid Van Fossilisatie

1998 ◽  
Vol 58 ◽  
pp. 101-109
Author(s):  
Elisabeth van der Linden
Keyword(s):  
Learning Process ◽  
Past Tense ◽  
Advanced Learners ◽  
Syntactic Structures ◽  
The Past ◽  
Knowledge Based ◽  
Long Time ◽  
Past Tenses ◽  
Different Levels

In the literature about fossilization, several definitions have been given and several explanations have been suggested for this phenomenon. I see fossilization as a long-time stagnation in the T2 learning process, leading to errors based on transfer. Fossilization is caused by sociolinguistic, pyscholinguistic and purely linguistic factors. In this paper I concentrate on the acquisition of syntactic structures and on the role of input and instruction in that process. I argue that, although in the acquisition of some syntactic structures, UG plays an important role, this does not account for the whole learning process: learners have not only to reset parameters when acquiring T2 but have to proceduralize knowledge based on the surface structure of sentences. In the case of the use of past tenses in French, many of the Dutch advanced learners of three different levels of proficiency do not acquire native-like intuitions about the use of these tenses, although input as well as instruction are thorough on this point. I suggest that the past tense system is not UG-dependent and that the instruction does not allow proceduralization of the knowledge.

How multiple past tenses divide the labor: The case of South Baffin Inuktitut

Linguistics ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 53 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Midori Hayashi ◽  
David Y. Oshima
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
Past Tense ◽  
Layered System ◽  
Fine Grained ◽  
The Past ◽  
Linear Scheme ◽  
Temporal Specifications ◽  
Past Tenses ◽  
Common Perception ◽  
Masculine Gender

AbstractIt is a common perception that in languages having multiple past tenses with different remoteness specifications, the past tenses cover the entire past without a gap or overlap. This paper demonstrates that this way of looking at multiple-past tense systems is not appropriate for the system in South Baffin Inuktitut (a variety of the Inuit language). The dialect has at least four past tenses: recent, hodiernal, pre-hodiernal, and distant. We argue that the relation between the four tenses cannot be represented by a simple linear scheme for two reasons. First, the pre-hodiernal past has a special status as the “conventionally designated alternative”, which is chosen in cases of remoteness indeterminacy, analogous to, for example, the Russian masculine gender being used in cases of gender indeterminacy. Second, there is overlap in their coverage. The pre-hodiernal and hodiernal past tenses collectively cover the entire past and thus any past situation can be described with one of them. The other two provide means to make more fine-grained and subjective temporal specifications. Comparison will be made between the system in South Baffin Inuktitut and those in some Bantoid languages which have been pointed out in the literature to have a comparable layered system of tenses.

Does French have a relative past tense?

2000 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 245-271 ◽  
Author(s):  
Raphael Salkie
Keyword(s):  
Recent Work ◽  
Past Tense ◽  
Full Account ◽  
The Difference ◽  
Past Tenses ◽  
Passe Compose

Some recent work on French tenses has proposed a new analysis of the difference between the imperfect and the passé simple/passé composé. The imperfect is said to be a relative or anaphoric tense, while the PS/PC are absolute or deictic tenses. A number of studies have argued against the more widely accepted analysis which sees the difference between these tenses in terms of aspect. This paper argues that the new analysis is fundamentally incorrect as an account of the meaning of the French past tenses, although it has brought to light a range of phenomena which need to be included in a full account of the behaviour of the tenses in discourse. I argue that an enriched version of the traditional analysis can account for all the relevant data.

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