Morphosyntactic Issues in Second Language Acquisition 9781847690661

Table of contents :
Contents
Contributors
Preface
Part 1: Studies on ESL/EFL Morphosyntactic Development
1. Focus Constructions and Language Transfer
2. Argument Realisation and Information Packaging in Tough- Movement Constructions: A Learner-Corpus-Based Investigation
3. L1 Syntactic Preferences of Polish Adolescents in Bilingual and Monolingual Education Programmes
4. MOGUL and Crosslinguistic Influence
5. Syntactic Processing in Multilingual Performance (A Case Study)
6. The Morphology -me in Modern Greek as L2: How German and Russian L2 Learners Interpret Verbal Constructions
7. Unaccusativity Marks
8. To Move or Not to Move: Acquisition of L2 English Syntactic Movement Parameter
9. Last to Acquire: On the Relation of Concession in Interpreting
10. Pragmatic (In)Competence in EFL Writing
Part 2: Pedagogical Grammar in Promoting Acquisition of L2 Morphosyntax
11. The Role of Explicit Rule Presentation in Teaching English Articles to Polish Learners
12. The Effect of Corrective Feedback on the Acquisition of the English Third-Person -s Ending
13. The Acquisition of German Syntax by Polish Learners in Classroom Conditions
14. Introducing Language Interface in Pedagogical Grammar
15. Towards Reflecting the Dynamic Nature of Grammar in Foreign Language Instruction: Expectations and Current Pedagogic Practice

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Morphosyntactic Issues in Second Language Acquisition

SECOND LANGUAGE ACQUISITION Series Editor: Professor David Singleton, Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland This series brings together titles dealing with a variety of aspects of language acquisition and processing in situations where a language or languages other than the native language is involved. Second language is thus interpreted in its broadest possible sense. The volumes included in the series all offer in their different ways, on the one hand, exposition and discussion of empirical findings and, on the other, some degree of theoretical reflection. In this latter connection, no particular theoretical stance is privileged in the series; nor is any relevant perspective – sociolinguistic, psycholinguistic, neurolinguistic, etc. – deemed out of place. The intended readership of the series includes final-year undergraduates working on second language acquisition projects, postgraduate students involved in second language acquisition research, and researchers and teachers in general whose interests include a second language acquisition component. Other Books in the Series Artificial Intelligence in Second Language Learning: Raising Error Awareness Marina Dodigovic Studies of Fossilization in Second Language Acquisition ZhaoHong Han and Terence Odlin (eds) Language Learners in Study Abroad Contexts Margaret A. DuFon and Eton Churchill (eds) Early Trilingualism: A Focus on Questions Julia D. Barnes Cross-linguistic Influences in the Second Language Lexicon Janusz Arabski (ed.) Motivation, Language Attitudes and Globalisation: A Hungarian Perspective Zoltán Dörnyei, Kata Csizér and Nóra Németh Age and the Rate of Foreign Language Learning Carmen Muñoz (ed.) Investigating Tasks in Formal Language Learning María del Pilar García Mayo (ed.) Input for Instructed L2 Learners: The Relevance of Relevance Anna Nizegorodcew Cross-linguistic Similarity in Foreign Language Learning Håkan Ringbom Second Language Lexical Processes Zsolt Lengyel and Judit Navracsics (eds) Third or Additional Language Acquisition Gessica De Angelis Understanding Second Language Process ZhaoHong Han (ed.) Japan's Built-in Lexicon of English-based Loanwords Frank E. Daulton Vocabulary Learning Strategies and Foreign Language Acquisition Višnja Pavi…iƒ Taka… Foreign Language Input: Initial Processing Rebekah Rast

For more details of these or any other of our publications, please contact: Multilingual Matters, Frankfurt Lodge, Clevedon Hall, Victoria Road, Clevedon, BS21 7HH, England http://www.multilingual-matters.com

SECOND LANGUAGE ACQUISITION 29 Series Editor: David Singleton, Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland

Morphosyntactic Issues in Second Language Acquisition Edited by

Danuta GabryÑ-Barker

MULTILINGUAL MATTERS Clevedon • Buffalo • Toronto

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Morphosyntactic Issues in Second Language Acquisition/Edited by Danuta Gabrys-Barker. Second Language Acquisition: 29 Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Second language acquisition. 2. Grammar, Comparative and general–Morphosyntax. 3. Language and languages–Study and teaching. I. Gabrys, Danuta. P118.2.M675 2008 418–dc22 2007050427 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue entry for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN-13: 978-1-84769-065-4 (hbk) Multilingual Matters UK: Frankfurt Lodge, Clevedon Hall, Victoria Road, Clevedon BS21 7HH. USA: UTP, 2250 Military Road, Tonawanda, NY 14150, USA. Canada: UTP, 5201 Dufferin Street, North York, Ontario M3H 5T8, Canada. Copyright © 2008 Danuta GabryÑ-Barker and the authors of individual chapters. All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced in any form or by any means without permission in writing from the publisher. The policy of Multilingual Matters/Channel View Publications is to use papers that are natural, renewable and recyclable products, made from wood grown in sustainable forests. In the manufacturing process of our books, and to further support our policy, preference is given to printers that have FSC and PEFC Chain of Custody certification. The FSC and/or PEFC logos will appear on those books where full certification has been granted to the printer concerned. Typeset by Techset Composition Ltd. Printed and bound in Great Britain by the Cromwell Press Ltd.

Contents

Contributors. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . vii Preface. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . x Part 1: Studies on ESL/EFL Morphosyntactic Development 1 Focus Constructions and Language Transfer Terence Odlin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 2 Argument Realisation and Information Packaging in Tough-Movement Constructions – A Learner-Corpus-Based Investigation Marcus Callies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29 3 L1 Syntactic Preferences of Polish Adolescents in Bilingual and Monolingual Education Programmes Anna Ewert . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47 4 MOGUL and Crosslinguistic Influence Mike Sharwood-Smith and John Truscott . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63 5 Syntactic Processing in Multilingual Performance (A Case Study) Danuta Gabrys´-Barker . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86 6 The Morphology -me in Modern Greek as L2: How German and Russian L2 Learners Interpret Verbal Constructions Irini Kassotaki. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107 7 Unaccusativity Marks Konrad Szczes´niak . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121 8 To Move or Not to Move: Acquisition of L2 English Syntactic Movement Parameter Cem Can, Abdurrahman Kilimci and Esra Altunkol. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 132 9 Last to Acquire: On the Relation of Concession in Interpreting Andrzej Łyda . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 144 10 Pragmatic (In)Competence in EFL Writing Rüdiger Zimmermann . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 160 Part 2: Pedagogical Grammar in Promoting Acquisition of L2 Morphosyntax 11 The Role of Explicit Rule Presentation in Teaching English Articles to Polish Learners Agnieszka Król-Markefka . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 177 v

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Contents

12 The Effect of Corrective Feedback on the Acquisition of the English Third Person -s Ending Mirosław Pawlak . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 The Acquisition of German Syntax by Polish Learners in Classroom Conditions Barbara Sadownik. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 Introducing Language Interface in Pedagogical Grammar Michał B. Paradowski. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 Towards Reflecting the Dynamic Nature of Grammar in Foreign Language Instruction: Expectations and Current Pedagogic Practice Anna Mystkowska-Wiertelak . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Contributors

Esra Altunkol is a reader and PhD candidate at the ELT Department of Cukurova University, Turkey. Her research interests include adult SLA from the generative perspective and ELT methodology. Marcus Callies is an assistant professor in English Linguistics at the University of Marburg, Germany. His research interests are second language research with a focus on discourse-functional and pragmatic aspects of learner language, contrastive linguistics, corpus linguistics and learner corpus research. Cem Can is an assistant professor at the ELT Department of Cukurova University, Turkey. His research interests include adult SLA from a generative perspective, corpus linguistics and ELT. Anna Ewert is an assistant professor in the School of English, Adam Mickiewicz University, Poland. Her current research interests include bilingualism, multicompetence development and SLA. She has published on morphosyntax and pragmatic aspects of L2 users’ L1 and on L2 acquisition in childhood. Danuta Gabrys´ -Barker works as an associate professor at the Institute of English, University of Silesia, Poland. Her major academic interests lie in lexical multilinguality, psycholinguistics and language processing. She has published a book on the multilingual mental lexicon and papers on various aspects of SLA and EFL teacher training. Irini Kassotaki, PhD teaches Modern Greek to L2 students of the University of Crete (Iraklio) and of IDEKE (Institute for Continuing Adult Education). She is a teaching fellow at the TEI (Technological Education Institute) of Crete. Her research areas are second language acquisition, learning and teaching, sentence comprehension and morphosyntax. Abdurrahman Kilimci is an assistant professor at the ELT Department of Cukurova University, Turkey. His research interests include corpus linguistics, ELT and educational technology. Agnieszka Król-Markefka works as a teaching assistant in the Institute of English Philology at the Jagiellonian University in Kraków, Poland. vii

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Currently, her research focuses on the teaching of grammar and in particular on the applications of cognitive linguistics to ELT methodology. Andrzej Łyda is an associate professor at the Institute of English, University of Silesia, Poland. His research interests include interactional linguistics, spoken discourse analysis and translation and interpreting. His recent publications include a book on Concessive Relation in Spoken Discourse: A Study into Academic Discourse Spoken English. Anna Mystkowska-Wiertelak is a teacher and teacher trainer working at the English Department of the Faculty of Pedagogy and Fine Arts of Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznan´ . Her main interests comprise teacher education and foreign language instruction. Terence Odlin teaches linguistics at Ohio State University. He is the author of a book and several papers about crosslinguistic influence and a book about pedagogical grammar. Michał B. Paradowski received his PhD in linguistics from the Institute of English Studies, University of Warsaw, where he defended his dissertation on the language interface model of pedagogical grammar, and is currently a Reader at the UW Institute of Applied Linguistics. His interests include issues relating to SLA research, the availability of UG, the effects of formal instruction and ELT pedagogy in general; his second concentration is syntax, especially the relations between Chomsky’s Minimalist Program, linguistic development and language contact phenomena. Mirosław Pawlak holds a PhD in Applied Linguistics from Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznan, Poland. He is currently an associate professor at Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznan and a professor in Higher Vocational College, Konin, Poland. His research interests include form-focused instruction, classroom interaction, learner autonomy, communication strategies, pronunciation instruction and pedagogic tasks. Barbara Sadownik works as a professor in the Institute of German Philology of and director of the Applied Linguistics Section of the Institute at Marie Curie University in Lublin, Poland. Her main research interests comprise psycholinguistic and neurolinguistic aspects of second language acquisition and foreign language learning. Mike Sharwood-Smith is Professor of Languages at Harriot-Watt University in Edingburgh, Scotland and Editor of the journal, Second Language Research. His research interests centre around conscious and subconscious processes in second language acquisition and performance and he is developing a new explanatory framework called MOGUL together with his current co-author John Truscott.

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Konrad Szczes´ niak is an assistant professor at the Institute of English, University of Silesia, Poland. His research focuses on the syntax–semantics interface and he is the author of a Portuguese language coursebook. John Truscott is Associate Professor in the Department of Foreign Languages and Literature at National Tsing Hua University, Taiwan. His primary research interest is in developing a processing-based framework for understanding language development and use, a joint project with Mike Sharwood-Smith. His other major line of research involves the effectiveness of grammar instruction and correction for second language learning. Rüdiger Zimmermann works at the University of Marburg, Germany as a Professor and Chair of English Linguistics. He is renowned as a scholar for his projects in the area of lexical strategies and one of the first to use introspective method in SLA research. His major academic research is within oral and written text production in L2, interlanguage word order and also intercultural pragmatics and metaphors.

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Preface

Many recent publications have focused on problems operating at the lexical level in second language acquisition (SLA), which itself was the consequence of an overwhelming emphasis on grammar research in the past and a corresponding neglect of vocabulary. It seems however that the whole movement of language awareness in the area of applied linguistics and language pedagogy has revived an interest in grammatical issues in language acquisition and learning. Also, SLA research has shown that lexical development does not occur on its own but interacts and overlaps with the morphosyntactic development of a learner. This has entailed a growing need for more research in this area of language acquisition. The present volume aims to make a serious contribution to this developing field. It consists of chapters on various issues relating to the morphosyntactic development of foreign language learners from different L1 backgrounds, in many cases involving languages which are typologically distant from English, such as Polish, Greek and Turkish. In addition, it highlights areas which one might expect to be especially transfer-prone not only at the level of interlingual transfer but also at the intralingual level. The chapters in the first part of the volume ‘Studies on ESL/EFL Morphosyntactic Development’ report on empirical studies on word morphology and sentence patterns, and also look at the interface of lexis and grammar in the discourse and syntactic processing of foreign language learners. Odlin’s chapter is an overview of theories and research on focus constructions in L2 acquisition from a pragmatic and psycholinguistic perspective. It also discusses the crosslinguistic influences observed in focus constructions, as produced in written texts. A corpus-based study presented by Callies also looks at the written production of a bilingual and compares it with native speakers’ written discourse in terms of clause syntactic operations and, more precisely, tough- constructions (toconstructions with such words as difficult, easy, hard and impossible). He observes that these constructions are under-used in non-native productions of advanced L2 users as they are typologically marked and functionally and semantically complex. Another chapter that investigates language transfer is Ewert’s empirical study of the influence of intensive L2 classroom x

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instruction on the development of L1, which the data demonstrates is facilitative as it contributes visibly to the development of language awareness. The data show different syntactic preferences in the case of bilingual and monolingual learners as the result of developmental change and language transfer. Two chapters discuss language (syntactic) performance from a process-oriented perspective, Sharwood-Smith and Truscott’s, and Gabrys´ -Barker’s. Sharwood-Smith and Truscott present MOGUL (The Modular Growth and Use of Language) framework and analyse crosslinguistic influences in the acquisition of the past tense in English. Gabrys´ -Barker’s case study of a multilingual language user also looks at crosslinguistic influences between the L1 (Polish), L2 (English) and L3 (Italian) of the learner, but focuses mostly on the translation strategies used at different stages of on-line text processing, demonstrating the interface between lexical and syntactic processing in a think-aloud translation task. Kassotaki’s chapter reports on the off-line experiment carried out in a group of German and Russian learners of Greek as their L2 to observe the influence or otherwise of L1 on L2 comprehension in relation to reflexive verbs. These are represented morphologically either as a suffix (-sia in Russian) or as a free standing morpheme (sich in German). Another presentation that looks at morphology as an important aspect of L2 grammatical development is Szczes´ niak’s study of the reflexive particle in Slavic languages in the case of unaccussative verbs, together with his examination of MDH (Markedness Differential Hypothesis) and its insufficiency in explaining learning difficulties in this very area of grammar. The study conducted by Can, Kilimci and Altunkol seeks to investigate L2 acquisition of syntactic movement in English noun clauses by a group of Turkish adult L2 learners. The tests performed by non-native speakers and the language corpora of native speakers demonstrate that preference for the use of nouns in object position is not characteristic of L2 learners but also of native speakers of English. A different context of L2 English use is discussed by Łyda in his chapters on concession, where he looks at areas of language difficulty as evinced in the performance of simultaneous and consecutive conference interpreters and the ways those highly skilled language users encounter problems in on-line processing from L2 into L1. He observes that not only language competence (semantic and syntactic complexity) but also topic-specific knowledge (semantic complexity) contribute to the effectiveness of translation of concession clauses, when interpreters often resort to under-translating or using under-specified connectives. Finally in this section, Zimmermann reports on the problems associated with pragmatic competence in writing in English and looks at the ways English as a Foreign Language (EFL) advanced learners cope with being polite (or rather, as his findings show, impolite) and comments on the

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relation between politeness and the knowledge of text schemata and Gricean maxims. The second part of the book ‘Pedagogical Grammar in Promoting the Acquisition of L2 Morphosyntax’ elaborates on the role of input, formfocused instruction and the role of context in promoting the acquisition of difficult grammatical features such the English article system or the -s ending in the third person singular. It also comments more generally on the way empirical findings in the area of morphosyntax can inform the pedagogic grammar to be applied in the formal instruction context of a foreign language classroom. All of the chapters in this part of the volume feed into the ongoing discussion on the need for form-focused instruction as facilitative for L2 grammatical development. Król-Markefka looks at one of the hardest-to-learn linguistic phenomenon, the English article system. She examines the need for explicit teaching, clearly highlighting the conditions under which it can be facilitative (i.e. a certain degree of automatisation of syntactic structures and metacognitive awareness accompanied by practice). Pawlak also focuses on one of the most pertinent areas of difficulty in EFL acquisition, that of the third person singular -s ending and points to the need for form-focused instruction. However, he argues for a more implicit instructional technique: a combination of output enhancement and recasting as corrective feedback in meaningfocused tasks, which seem to facilitate correct -s ending production in spontaneous communicative tasks. A slightly different position is taken by Sadownik, who discusses issues associated with the acquisition of selected areas of German grammar by Polish learners, namely negation and word order in verb placement in main and subordinate clauses. In her concluding section, Sadownik states that the pace of L2 acquisition is different in L1 (formal instruction) and L2 settings (naturalistic conditions) whereas in terms of route it is not significantly different. Classroom instruction per se cannot effect it, as it is more determined by the learner’s developmental readiness to acquire it. Paradowski, in his search for the answer to the question how important grammar instruction is for the development of grammatical competence in an EFL learner, works within the framework of the Cognitive Language Interface Method (coined by Paradowski and based on GozdawaGołebiowski’s 2003 pedagogical grammar), which assumes the importance of L1 awareness and metalinguistic reflection in learners. In her discussion of ‘grammaring’ in the classroom and its role in grammar acquisition, Wiertelak-Mystkowska offers a different perspective and focuses on the affective dimension of grammar learning. Specifically, she discusses the roles of learners’ beliefs and expectations as valid variables in grammar development. In her view they are the variables which should contribute to more effective classroom instructional practices used by teachers. The survey study carried out showed a growing interest in what

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the author calls ‘non-transmissive teaching styles’, and the need for ‘grammaring’ (uncovering grammar) in the Foreign Language (FL) classroom. The volume therefore presents various contexts for L2/Ln acquisition/ learning/use. It references language users/learners with different language backgrounds. It describes different aspects of morphosyntax investigated empirically but is also firmly grounded in theoretical analyses. Moreover, the chapters included in this volume demonstrate the variety of research methods currently being used in SLA research – from more traditional experimental designs and corpus-based studies to fairly new introspective ones describing on-line processing of language by multilingual language users. This volume is intended to reach both linguists – mainly in its discussion of morphosyntactic issues – and applied linguists insofar as it discusses the empirical data relevant to the morphosyntactic development of FL learners/users. It also aims to assist practising foreign language instructors by emphasising, as it does, the role of pedagogical grammar in FL learning, with special focus on language input both in terms of content (from a cognitive perspective) and form (form-focused instruction). The book should also be of interest to those studying second language acquisition processes at the postgraduate level as it reviews more generally the relevant theoretical issues, providing background to the empirical studies conducted by the contributing authors. I trust that the variety in subject focus, types of studies and language configurations discussed will make the material presented in this volume challenging and valuable. Danuta Gabrys´ -Barker

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Part 1

Studies on ESL/EFL Morphosyntactic Development

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Chapter 1

Focus Constructions and Language Transfer TERENCE ODLIN

Introduction As with several other terms in linguistics, the word focus means different things to different analysts. For example, it sometimes serves as a synonym for topic or topicalisation (e.g. Keesing, 1991), while at other times it indicates something quite distinct. Attempting to review all the different possible meanings or to develop an entire theory of focus, topic, and related notions is beyond the scope of this chapter, but a definition of focus is nevertheless essential. One given by Carston provides a useful point of departure: ‘focus is the syntactic constituent in which dominates all the information that contributes directly to relevance’ (Carston, 1996: 311). The last word in Carston’s definition is no accident, as her approach is grounded in relevance theory (e.g. Wilson & Sperber, 1993). Later in her article Carston illustrates how a particular focus construction known as an it-cleft sentence plays a special role in contributing to relevance. She contrasts a simple sentence A ROTTWEILER bit me with an it-cleft: It was a Rottweiler that bit me. According to Carston, the special syntactic structure of the latter sentence ‘constrains the sort of context in which it can be appropriately used’ (Carston, 1996: 312). The structure leads hearers ‘to treat as a background assumption that something bit the speaker and to derive cognitive effects from the information that the entity responsible was a Rottweiler’ (Carston, 1996: 312). The implied meaning (which is certainly one of the cognitive effects) could vary depending on the context, where the sentence might serve, as Carston observes, to forestall a hearer’s interpretation that the dog that bit the speaker was a neighbour’s Alsatian. Alternatively, the cleft might serve a speaker’s aim to persuade the listener of the great danger of Rottweilers. Whatever the context, the it-cleft can function as a bridge between the information in the focused constituent and backgrounded information that might be either implicit or explicit in the communicative situation. 3

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The metaphor of a bridge has in fact a fairly long history in discussions of the relation between grammar and meaning, as seen in a study by Haviland and Clark (1974) and in one by Prince (1978), who illustrates the bridge with, among other examples, a wh-cleft sentence found in a popular magazine: ‘Nikki Crane, 19, does not want to be a movie star. What she hopes to do is be a star on the horse-show circuit’ (Prince, 1978: 887, emphasis added). According to Prince, . . . one cannot know from the first sentence that N.C. wants to do something. When one hears the cleft, however, one simply constructs an inferential bridge – N.C. wants to do something – which is quite compatible with our knowledge of the world and of 19-year-olds. (Prince, 1978: 887) Although the bridge metaphor helps to understand what focus constructions do, there exist important differences in the types of inferential bridges built with different grammatical structures. Much of Prince’s classic article attempts to sort out differences in meaning between it-clefts and wh-clefts (the latter sometimes called pseudo-clefts), and with the former type of structure, she identifies subtypes that function quite differently, as will be discussed further on. In subsequent work Prince has attempted to distinguish the differences in other focus constructions as well (e.g. Prince, 1998). Similar efforts have been pursued by others (e.g. Birner & Ward, 1998) for English, but also with comparable work on other languages (e.g. Doherty, 1999, 2001). Carston formulated her definition of focus broadly enough to accommodate not only specialised structures such as cleft sentences but also simple sentences, which often have a prominent stress on the final constituent as in her example John invited LUCY (Carston, 1996: 310). However, the more specialised structures will be the concern of this chapter. Although learning focal stress in simple sentences might itself pose problems for second language learners, there is a much greater challenge posed by wh-clefts, it-clefts, and other cases that Carston terms ‘syntactically marked structures’. Since this chapter will concentrate on such cases, the use of focus will have here the specialised sense of Carston’s three-word phrase. The main theoretical issue that will be pursued with regard to these structures is cross-linguistic influence (also known as language transfer). The discussion will show that understanding transfer in this area requires a more detailed understanding of complex problems of related to form, meaning, and cross-linguistic correspondences. These problems shape much of the learning environment that teachers must take into account if they wish to develop effective pedagogies. Before the questions of transfer and pedagogy are addressed, it is necessary to consider variations both within and across languages in forms and meanings. After that survey there will be a brief consideration

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Focus Constructions and Language Transfer

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of cognitive effects and then a discussion of of translation equivalence, a problem that both linguists and learners face. The analysis of transfer will review evidence of cross-linguistic influence on focus constructions but also indications of possible limits on such influence. Finally, some implications of the preceding analysis will be considered.

Variation in Forms A typological survey of forms and meanings in focus constructions is now appropriate, after which there will be a complementary survey of meanings. This short survey cannot do full justice to the wide range seen cross-linguistically, but it will nevertheless prove useful for the discussion of transfer later in the chapter. In this section the look at other languages will require translations, and the principle for deciding what counts as a focus construction in another language will be if the English translation shows what Carston calls a ‘marked syntactic pattern’. This procedure has some theoretical shortcomings (especially since English might seem to be the descriptive norm). However, some of the shortcomings will examined in the later discussion of translation equivalence. The ‘marked’ syntax that Carston alludes to seems to imply grammatical complexity me or at least a departure from the canonical Subject-VerbObject (SVO) order of simple sentences in English. Syntactic complexity makes cleft sentences quite different: in it-clefts there is a formulaic use of it, some form of the verb be (most often is or was), then a constituent in the focus position, all of which is seen in It was a Rottweiler, and with a relative clause (that bit) completing the cleft. Although the relative does not serve the usual function of such clauses (modification of a noun), it does have formal characteristics of such clauses, including the possible use of a relative pronoun. Wh-clefts likewise have syntactically complex patterns, and in addition allow different possible word orders: for example, A Rottweiler is what bit me and What bit me was a Rottweiler. Word order variation proves important for other focusing structures as well. Various constituents can occur before SV patterns: The gardeners pulled up every weed. The flowers they left undisturbed. (Fronted noun phrase) The gardeners worked extra hours. For their trouble, they were given an extra day off. (Fronted prepositional phrase) The gardeners promised to finish before the party began, and finish they did. (Fronted verb phrase) The party was a success, but quiet it was not. (Fronted adjective phrase) Birner and Ward (1998: 4–5) list similar examples of ‘preposing’, to use their term, and another pattern that they term ‘postposing’: for example, They were enormous, those pipes (Birner & Ward, 1998: 6). Apart from the different word order, another difference of the last example from the

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preceding ones is that the postposed NP makes the same reference that the sentence-initial pronoun does. In preposing there can also be pairs of focused NPs along with pronouns following the verb, as in an example from Prince (1986: 217), My copy of Antila, I don’t know who has it. Prince and many others see in such cases a ‘topicalisation’ pattern distinct from the preposing patterns already described. Along with preposing and postposing another rearrangement is possible, one which Birner (1994) calls inversion, for example, ‘Labor savings are achieved because the crew is put to better use than cleaning belts manually: also eliminated is the expense of buying secondary chemicals’ (Birner, 1994: 233). Birner defines inversion as the placement of the subject after the verb (the expense of . . . in the example), along with other rearrangements before the verb. Other languages, especially several in the Celtic, Germanic and Romance branches of Indo-European, show many similarities to English in the grammar of focus constructions. Thus several languages have cleft structures, as in the following example from written Swedish which can be translated as an it-cleft, the example coming from a database used by Odlin and Jarvis (2004). The writer, a native speaker of that language, was describing a scene in the Charlie Chaplin film Modern Times: Charlie säger då att det var han som tog brödet The literal translation is Charlie says then that it was he who took bread-the In the discourse context of the film, Chaplin is trying to divert suspicion about the theft from a starving woman to himself. Spanish also has structures quite similar to English clefts, as in the following example: lo que es absoluatamente claro es que en un mundo globalizado las lenguas de relación internacional van a ser muy pocas. (Gabilondo, 2002: 6) Literal translation: . . . what is absolutely clear is that in a world globalised, the languages of relation international go to be very few. The lo que form is quite common Spanish and is often translatable as what. As the literal translation indicates, very few changes would be needed to produce an acceptable English version. While many languages rely heavily on clefting, others such as Russian intensively exploit another formal resource: word order permutations. In Russian, preposing, postposing and inversion can all signal focus constructions (Thompson, 1978): Kolya kupil mašinu. Kolya mašinu kupil. Kupil Kolya mašinu.

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Kolya bought the car. Kolya BOUGHT the car. Kolya did buy the car.

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Kupil mašinu Kolya. Mašinu Kolya kupil. Mašinu kupil Kolya.

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KOLYA bought the car. The car, Kolya bought it. The car, it was Kolya who bought it.

Both similarities and differences between Russian and English are evident in these examples. Like English, Russian is often analysed as a language whose basic word order is Subject (Kolya)- Verb (kupil)- Object (mašinu). Moreover, Mašinu Kolya kupil and its English translation show similar preposing. Even so, the VOS and OVS sentences show that postposing and inversion are much more available as options in Russian than in English, which relies more on word stress and clefting. For most linguists, the great flexibility of Russian word order is attributable to its complex inflectional system in nouns, whereas the much sparer system of English leads to a heavier reliance on word order to mark grammatical roles such as subject and object. Thompson, moreover, contends that languages with rigid word order like English also tend to rely much more on clefting to signal focus. Apart from word order permutations and clefting, another common formal pattern is the focusing particle. Sankoff (1993: 117) emphasises that in many languages of New Guinea and parts nearby ‘. . . focus . . . is mainly handled through a variety of markers occurring with the focused element remaining in situ, rather than through movement or clefting’. One of the cases she cites to support this claim comes from a dissertation on the Austronesian language Manam by Lichtenberk (1980: 482): ási ne-ng ngau-ló-?a bushknife poss.-2sg. 1sg.-from-foc It was from me that he stole your knife.

i-ana?ú?-a?-i 3sg.-steal-trans-3sg.

(In Lichtenberg’s actual thesis, the international phonetic alphabet (IPA) symbol for the velar nasal appears, but the citation above employs the
ng digraph to indicate the phoneme.) The focus particle -?a does not involve subordination or a change of word order but it does serve the same function that the cleft in the translation does. In some cases focus particles can have other functions as well. For instance, Keesing (1991) illustrates how the Kwaio language of the Solomons Islands has a morpheme that can serve as a focus marker in some sentences but as a marker of perfective aspect in others: ngai ne-e aga-si-a him TOP-he see-TRS-it ‘He’s the one who saw it.’ (Keesing, 1991: 331) e ‘akwa no’o she run away PERF She has run away. (Keesing, 1991: 330) In the first example, the ne-e is an allomorph of no-o, serving as a focus marker, where Keesing uses the abbreviation TOP (topicaliser) in the

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example but the term focus in his discussion. The other example shows that the allomorph no-o can also function as a marker of perfective aspect, as Keesing’s translation with the English present perfect indicates. Other languages show still other options. Tamil, for instance, combinines word order shifts in tandem with focusing particles (Asher, 1985: 89). Moreover, each of the three patterns discussed at some length – clefting, particles and and word order permutations – can take fairly diverse forms. Finally, the question of just what does or does not count as a formal device indicating focus should be mentioned. For instance, certain constructions with the pronoun one are often considered a special type of focus construction, as in the translation of the Kwaio sentence as He’s the one who saw it. The one pattern will indeed count as a focus construction in this chapter, but how many other such structures there may be is a difficult issue – and one related to problems to be discussed in the following sections.

Variation in Meanings Prince (1978) noted a problem in earlier investigations (e.g. Akmajian, 1970) in ignoring meaning differences signaled by different types of focus constructions. In one way it does make sense to regard as equivalent It was a Rottweiler that bit me and The one that bit me was a Rottweiler (and Akmajian does compare it-clefts and one sentences in his analysis). On the other hand, Akmajian went further, claiming that such sentences ‘are synonymous, share the same presuppositions, answer the same questions, and in general are used interchangeably’ (Akmajian, 1970: 149). Like many other linguists, Akmajian used truth conditions as the main test of meaning equivalence: if the proposition in the sentence It was a Rottweiler that bit me is true, the proposition in the one sentence must also be true. Prince has not disputed the value of truth-conditional analyses to help understand meaning, but her 1978 paper makes clear that focus constructions are not interchangeable in all cases. The lack of complete interchangeability sometimes involves syntactic factors. Prince (1978: 885) cites a wh-cleft recorded in conversation, What you are saying is that President was involved, and she contrasts it with the ungrammaticality of the same proposition reformulated as an it-cleft: *It is that the President is involved that you are saying; a nominal that clause (that the President is involved) can serve as the focus in a wh-cleft but not in an it-cleft. Along with syntactic constraints, there are strong statistical tendencies in actual discourse. For example, in Prince’s study, the focus position of it-clefts (e.g. a Rottweiler in It was a Rottweiler that bit me) tended to be short, whereas the focus position in wh-clefts tended to be long (e.g. be a star on the horse-show circuit in What she hopes to do is be a star on the horse-show circuit). The statistical differences between wh-clefts and it-clefts correlate in turn with differences in how they are used everyday discourse. Prince’s

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survey found that the wh-clause in wh-clefts normally codes information that speakers or writers assume to be in the consciousness of their audience or readily accessible as in the case of metalinguistic comments such as What I mean is . . . or What happened is . . . for example, What happened is that the agent asked if he could see the office (Prince, 1978: 893). The speaker recorded saying this could assume that his audience shared his assumption that something had happened (cf. Kim, 1995). The uses of it-clefts are especially heterogeneous. Prince found many where a shared presupposition was evident in the subordinate clause as in So I learned to sew books. They’re really good books. It’s just the covers that are rotten (Prince, 1978: 896). In this case, the shared presupposition seems to be that something is damaged. In another type of it-cleft the subordinate clause has information that no speaker or writer can assume will be known to the audience: for example, It was just about 50 years ago that Henry Ford gave us the weekend (Prince, 1978: 898), where the cleft introduces a story about how the industrialist’s new labour policies changed the work week in the United States. As Prince notes, it-clefts show an interesting relation to discourse hedges (e.g. perhaps, it seems that, and more or less). Where hedges weaken a statement, it-clefts can strengthen one ‘by presenting it as already known fact’ (Prince, 1978: 900) even if a fact not known to the audience. Prince seems to have it-clefts of the second type primarily in mind in comparing hedges and clefts (although her position on this is not entirely clear). However, either type of it-cleft as well as wh-clefts and other focus constructions can likewise be viewed as cases where speakers and writers take a forceful stance: if hedges seem tentative, focus constructions convey some certainty. In this sense, such constructions communicate affective as well as propositional meanings. There is a real, albeit only hazily understood, relation between affective meanings and mental states such as certainty and caution, even though these states may seem less ‘emotional’ than states such as joy and anger. In view of this relation, it is not surprising that in studies of modality and evidentiality (the basis one has for making an assertion), researchers sometimes also discuss the affective stances of speakers (e.g. Escobar, 1997). Focus constructions have likewise prompted some analysts to see emotional meanings involved in some or even all focus constructions (cf. Kim, 1995: 265–268; Kruisinga, 1953: 74–75; Odlin, 2006: 27; Stein, 1995). A study by Irvine (1990) is particularly instructive. She found that the use of focus in Wolof varied by social class: aristocrats, who are expected to show great restraint, use relatively few focus constructions, whereas griots, the traditional poets and genealogists, frequently use them. From the work of Prince and others, it is clear that different focus constructions are often not interchangeable but are instead specially tailored for different discourse contexts. Many of the precise differences of meaning remain problematic, involving, as they do, complex questions

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such as the nature of presupposition and definiteness. One question, however, is especially relevant to the issue of meaning transfer: whether there are language-specific meanings in focus constructions. Work on Yiddish and language contact between Yiddish and English indicates that different languages can and do have focus constructions with language-specific meanings (Prince, 1981, 1986, 1988). Yiddishspeaking immigrants to the United States developed a type of preposing that linguists frequently term Yiddish-Movement, as seen in an example from Prince (1981: 260): Q: How’s your son? A: Don’t ask! A sportscar he wants! Prince discusses the meaning difference as a difference between salience and plausibility. For Yiddish speakers or Yiddish/English bilinguals, any type of focus fronting is possible as long as the presupposed meaning is plausible. Prince (1981: 260) contrasts the previous dialogue with a less plausible one: Q: How’s your son? A: Don’t ask! A sportscar he stole! The first use of movement is felicitous since ‘it can be assumed to be general shared knowledge, but not necessarily salient/given, that a son or at least this son wants things’ (Prince, 1981: 260). In contrast, the second case of fronting would only be felicitous with a shared assumption ‘that a son or at least this son, steals things’ (Prince, 1981: 260). For Prince, Birner and Ward, and for many other linguists (e.g. Weinreich, 1953/1968), the source of Yiddish-Movement is Yiddish syntax, which is illustrated in the following example from Prince (1986: 217): Q: vos hot zi geshonken ayer zun? What has she given your son A: a hemd hot zi geshonken mayn zun! A shirt has she given my son A shmatavate hemd! Q: What did she give your son! A: A shirt she gave my son! A lousy shirt! Prince provides a discourse context where the person answering the question was expecting that her son would receive more than a shirt as a gift. For Birner and Ward (1998), the transfer from Yiddish also involves an extension from mere salience to plausibility, but they also speculate that for bilinguals, ‘. . . Yiddish-Movement and other focus preoposings are not distinct types of focus preoposing, but rather a single construction that is less constrained than Standard English focus preposing’ (Birner & Ward, 1998: 92–93). For monolingual speakers of English outside of the New

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York area, Yiddish-Movement usually does seem distinct, although not so much for New Yorkers who are not Jewish but have been influenced by the Yiddish/English contact situation (Feinstein, 1980).

Cognitive Effects As noted in the introduction, Carston (1996) maintains that focus constructions enable listeners to ‘derive cognitive effects’ from the information organised in a particular syntactic pattern. Along with like-minded advocates of relevance theory as well as others (e.g. Levinson, 1997), Carston stresses that the semantic structure of a proposition will often not be sufficient information for listeners to understand a specific meaning in its context. Accordingly, speakers may use particular structures to guide their audience, choosing focus patterns and other constructions. In this view, syntax serves the interrelated aims of semantic coding and pragmatic enrichment of meaning (cf. Givón, 1984). Devices such as clefting and word order permutations are thus implicated both in a speaker’s (or writer’s) construction of meaning and in an audience’s reconstruction of that meaning. While such reconstructive activity is the cognitive effect that Carston foregrounds in her analyses, it is not the only possible one. Psycholinguistic evidence points to concomitants which will be discussed in this section. Before that discussion, however, it is necessary to contemplate the problem of the psychological reality of meaning categories often invoked in analyses of focus devices. As noted in the introduction, terms such as focus and topicalisation are often used interchangeably, and the variable use certainly has its critics such as Tomlin: ‘most linguistic functions, particularly pragmatic functions like old information or topic or focus lack either theoretically satisfying definitions or reliable means of identification’ (Tomlin, 1994: 150). Tomlin (1997) goes much further in a discussion of the semantics and pragmatics of the passive voice: . . . the function of the syntactic subject in English is solely to code or index what has been called conventionally the clause-level theme or topic. Furthermore, . . . the pragmatic notion of clause-level theme or topic has no standing as a theoretical category but can be fully understood and reduced to the referent in a conceptual representation attentionally detected at the moment at the moment an utterance is formulated; that is, the functional category of topic or theme does not exist but reflects the linguist’s naïve view and understanding of one cognitive basis of utterance formulation. (Tomlin, 1997: 165) While extreme and expressly reductionist, Tomlin’s claim does have some empirical support from investigations of the passive where speakers’

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choices of syntactic subject could be manipulated experimentally (cf. Tomlin, 1995). In effect, Tomlin holds that the linguistic representation of the passive requires only a characteristic syntactic formula (more or less NP  BE auxiliary  main verb in perfective form), and that a non-linguistic behaviour, attention, is what triggers the use of the syntactic formula. Although his approach might be considered one sort of ‘cognitive linguistics’, Tomlin’s position is nevertheless a curious throwback to the behaviourist model of meaning sketched by Bloomfield (1933) in his influential textbook, where he sought to reduce meaning to observable behaviour. Most seriously, perhaps, Tomlin’s approach seems to offer no way to account for grammatical patterns quite different from the passive. In the case of it-clefts and wh-clefts, for example, something other than a sentence subject is in the focus positions yet it commands attention. Defenders of Tomlin’s position might argue that experimental manipulation will eventually identify the precise conditions involving the particular type of attention given when a particular structure such as an it-cleft is used. However, such a defense will not help with cases where the focus position is marked lexically as in the Manam particle -?a given earlier. The English translation of the example as a cleft sentence suggests that Manam speakers would be directing their attention in a way similar to that of English users of the cleft. By Tomlin’s logic, -?a must not be a morpheme even though it appears to be so. If such a focusing particle has no meaning, by Tomlin’s logic, the same would presumably hold for the so-called topic and subject particles of Japanese and Korean and many other cases as well. Despite Tomlin’s scepticism, it does seem necessary for linguists to continue to assume that focus constructions and other grammatical devices have real meanings, however difficult they may be to specify precisely. Although Tomlin’s strongest claims seem dubious, empirical research such as what he advocates certainly matters in any attempt to understand the cognitive effects of focus constructions. In fact, there is growing evidence of such effects on readers (e.g. Birch et al., 2000; Klin et al., 2004). Birch et al. found a difference among readers given texts with it-clefts in comparison with those who read texts without such structures; the former group outperformed the latter on tasks involving recall and recognition memory. In experiments using different versions of stories prepared with and without wh-clefts, Klin et al. obtained similar results, which they see as support for an inference that ‘linguistic cues function as mental processing instructions, informing readers about the importance of concepts’ (Klin et al., 2004: 519). Klin et al. allude to a similar analysis of Givón (1992), and it is also remarkably like Carston’s. While Carston emphasised the effects on listeners and Tomlin the effects on speakers, it seems clear that any thorough explanation of the

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cognitive impact of focus constructions will have to account for the needs of both speakers and listeners as well of writers and readers (and there are textual studies showing a different patterning of such structures in speech and writing, e.g. Biber et al., 1999). Along with the evidence on memory and attention, there is the fact that focusing devices change over time, and such change seems likely to involve new pragmatic or semantic mappings by speakers or writers who feel that the available resources do not fully express what they wish to say. It is beyond the scope of this chapter to consider any particular mappings, but the history of it-clefts shows that structures which were rare in the Old English period grew common by the end of the Middle English period (c. 1500), with new expressive patterns thus arising (Ball, 1994). The diachronic pattern here no doubt has implications for second language acquisition (SLA) since learners whose competence continues to develop may find their available interlanguage resources insufficient, and so they may look for new ways to express focus. A quest for new ways may sometimes call upon the resources of the native language, as evidence on transfer of form and meanings from the L1 will show later in this chapter. One question that the available evidence cannot answer is what, if any, language-specific effects of transfer may also reflect different patterns of cognising. When such patterns involve L1 influence, they can be called conceptual transfer (Jarvis, 1998; Odlin, 2005). Since focus constructions interact with attention and memory, perhaps recall and memory sometimes reflect language-specific factors. This possibility is discussed by Odlin (2008).

Translation and Cross-Linguistic Comparability One probable linguistic universal is that all languages have focus constructions of one kind or another. However, variations in forms and meanings make it hard to construct viable typologies or to make fully accurate contrastive predictions, and such difficulty is also evident in translation problems. Translators naturally try to construct new texts aligned closely in meanings and forms with those of the original text (Frawley, 1984). In similar (usually historically related) languages, the challenge will often be less than in the case of dissimilar languages from very different cultures. Yet even languages as similar as German and English show significant points of contrast in their focus systems so that translators cannot invariably rely on formal similarities. Doherty (1999, 2001) stresses that although both languages have cleft constructions, these structures are not always formally or pragmatically equivalent. In a discussion of English-to-German translation, she illustrates one type of problem with the English sentence It is here that Freud’s is a theory or a prototheory peopled

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with actors, where the German translation does not have clefting (Doherty, 1999: 300): Gerade hier ist die Freudsche Theorie eine Theorie oder Prototheorie mit Akteuren. [Literally: Just here is the Freudian theory a theory or prototheory with actors.] To establish a pragmatic equivalent, the translation employs an intensifying adverb (gerade) along with hier, with the adverbial prhase appearing in preverbal position and the subject in postverbal position (die Freudsche Theorie). As for German-to-English translation, a cleft in the English version sometimes reflects a cleft in the original, as in the following example (Doherty, 2001: 287–288, emphases added): Grenouille found his heart pounding, and he knew that it was not the exertion of running that set his heart pounding but rather his excited helplessness in the presence of the scent. Grenouille spürte, wie sein Herz pochte, und er wusste, dass es nicht die Anstrengung des Laufens war, die es pochen machte, sondern seine erregte Hilflosigkeit vor der Gegenwart dieses Geruchs. [Literally: Grenoille perceived how his heart pounded and he knew, that it not the exertion of the running was, that it to pound made, rather his excited helplessness before the presence of-this scent.] However, in other instances, the cleft in the translation reflects something quite different in the oringal (Doherty, 2001: 287–288, emphases added): He suspected that it was not he who followed the scent, but the scent that had captured him and was drawing him irresistibly to it. . . . denn er ahnte, dass nicht er dem Duft folgte, sondern dass der Duft ihn gefangengenommen hatte und nun unwiderstehlich zu sich zog. [Literally: . . . then he suspected, that not he the scent followed, rather that the scent him captured had and now irresistibly to (it)self drew.] In this case the translator found an it-cleft to be pragmatically similar enough even though the original has no cleft but instead has a focus construction that starts with a negator nicht, followed then by the subject pronoun (er), then by the object NP (dem Duft), and ends with the verb ( folgte). What these cases show, therefore, is that although cleft sentences belong to the repertory of focus constructions in both German and in English, the former language also employs intensifiers and word order shifts to evoke pragmatic meanings like those that English evokes through clefting. Yet even though clefting shows a high functional load in English, there are

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other cross-linguistic contrasts where English behaves somewhat like German. The following example comes from a native speaker of Irish beginning a story about the fairies, and the English translation is by a native speaker of Irish and English (Ó Catháin, 1985: 23): Is é an dream a cuireeah as na Flaithis iad . . . Is it the crowd that put out the Heaven them Translation by Ó Catháin: They are really the crowd that was put out of Heaven . . . Ó Catháin’s translation renders the object pronoun of the original (iad) as a subject pronoun (they), probably because a literal translation of the verb (cuireeah) is not viable in the specific context. Some descriptions of Irish mislabel forms such as cuireeah ‘passive’, but more accurate descriptors are ‘autonomous’ and ‘impersonal’, the latter preferred by Ó Siadhail (1989: 180), who would translate cuireeah with the aid of an impersonal pronoun, thus one put. In any case, Ó Catháin had few viable options, and a passive translation at least preserves the truth conditions of the original. The Irish sentence shows the characteristic pattern of clefting (Ó Siadhail, 1989: 236): it begins with a cleft (Is é), followed by the phrase in focus (an dream, ‘the crowd’), and then by the pronoun (a) which begins the relative clause having the predicate cuirdeah iad as . . . (‘put out them out . . .’), where the Irish iad in this clause is technically a resumptive pronoun. In contrast, the English translation does not employ a cleft. To preserve what he could of the pragmatic force of the cleft, however, Ó Catháin used really. No such word appears in the Irish version, but the English adverb clearly serves to suggest what the cleft in Irish indicates, and this use thus resembles what the German gerade helped to achieve in the translation of an English cleft. The preceding example indicates that clefting in Irish allows for a wider pragmatic range than clefting in English does. The Irish cleft expresses an affective meaning not possible to state in English except through a formally different pattern, that is, an Intensifier. As noted earlier, focus devices can signal affect in various languages. Moreover, there are affective constructions even harder to translate. One such instance appears in a Spanish flamenco song where a jilted woman rails at her one-time lover saying, Quien no te quiere á tí soy yo. Who not you loves to you am I. (Morente, 2002) Although this example appears in a song, the type of focus construction here is common in everyday language as well. Whitley (2002: 279) notes two variants that can intensify the sentence Miss Chile lo va a ganar (Miss Chile it goes to win, i.e. ‘Miss Chile is going to win it’): Quien lo va a ganar es Miss Chile. and Es Miss Chile quien lo va a ganar.

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In all of these examples, the pronoun quien (who) can be replaced by la que (she who); the two emphatic sentences might thus be translated The one who is going to win is Miss Chile and Miss Chile is the one who is going to win, or in the case of the latter, It’s Miss Chile who is going to win. In the flamenco song, however, a translation aligned closely with the focus construction sounds bizarre: I am she who does not love you, and I am the one who does not love you is not much of an improvement. Several native speakers of Spanish whom I have consulted agree that the focus construction in the flamenco line is very emotionally charged, and it seems that in some cases close translations of syntactically expressed affect become virtually impossible. Such translation difficulties obviously pose serious problems for contrastive analysts interested in assessing the similarity of focus constructions across languages. The examples used in this section all involve Indo-European languages with somewhat similar typologies, and even so, the cross-linguistic correspondences are only partial either in form or meaning. With languages showing greater typological distances, the contrastive problem is even greater. Whatever the difficulties, linguists will no doubt continue to try to improve on their understanding of the correspondences of form and meaning in focus constructions. Along with clefts and other marked constructions, intensifiers certainly warrant close study (e.g. Siemund, 2000), since they have pragmatic functions similar to clefts, and yet intensifiers also have a life of their own including structures such as reflexive pronouns, which do not seem to overlap as much with clefting as adverbs do. One useful approach may well be what Kamio (1991, 1997) calls ‘territory of information’, which attempts to characterise a wide range of grammatical structures including clefts in terms of different subjective stances a speaker or writer might take (cf. Finegan, 1995). If the wide range of stances challenges translators and comparative linguists, it clearly poses even greater problems for second language learners. The next two sections consider just how the native language may reduce or increase such challenges.

Evidence of Transfer Several kinds of evidence show that the transfer of focus constructions recurs in many language contact situations involving second language acquisition. This section will consider first some of the evidence of formal L1 influences, then influences of L1 meaning, and then some quantitative evidence. Some of the clearest indicators of formal influence come from cases of L1 morphemes used in focus constructions that appear in the second language. For instance, Tok Pisin uses a focusing particle yet which is,

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according to Sankoff (1993), the result of the influence of a similar particle iat in the Austronesian language Tolai. Like the morpheme -?a in Manam, iat follows the focused constituent, but the Tolai form is phonetically similar to English yet. One Tok Pisin sentence with yet is translated by Sankoff with the one construction: Tok ‘Orait yu yet kilim pikinini bilong mi’ Say Alright 2sg foc kill child poss 1sg (She) said, ‘Alright, you’re the one who killed my child’. (Sankoff, 1993: 131) Interestingly, other sentences with yet that Sankoff cites are translated with reflexive pronouns, which shows that meanings of intensifiers, reflexives and clefts all overlap in certain ways even though there are also differences as noted earlier. Another case of substrate influence involving a focusing particle comes from the South American creole Saramaccan (Smith, 1996). In this instance the particle is we, as in the following example: De we ko ta fan ku Masa Jesosi de They foc come prog speak with Master Jesus there It was THEM who came to talk with Lord Jesus there. (Smith, 1996: 118) Although we might seem to have English we as its source, such an explication seems highly improbable in the context of the sentence. Moreover, Smith identifies a very similar use of we as a focusing particle in the NigerCongo language Fon, which he views as the source for this construction. Still another case of a focusing particle due to substrate influence appears in Melanesian Pidgin (Keesing, 1991), and it will be discussed further on. Although contact languages such as Tok Pisin and Saramaccan offer some of the clearest examples, the importation of L1 morphemes in L2 focus constructions is not restricted to pidgins and creoles. A study by Odlin and Jarvis (2004) cites the following use of the Swedish relative pronoun som: He [Chaplin] say it were he som take the bred. The context here was a Charlie Chaplin movie that students wrote about, and the interlanguage structure reflects the influence of cleft sentence patterns in Swedish as seen in an the example given earlier: Charlie säger då att det var han som tog brödet English also uses some as a pronoun, of course, but not as a relative. Not surprisingly, however, some native speakers of Swedish misjudge the grammatical fit between the cognates some and som to be closer than is really the case. It is worth noting that students whose native language is Finnish sometimes over-rely on Swedish when they use English, but the only erroneous clefts with som found by Odlin and Jarvis came from native speakers of Swedish.

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While focus particles and similar morphemes such as som provide clear indicators of transfer, there is another type of formal evidence as well. Special syntactic characteristics of clefting in Irish and Scottish Gaelic appear in the contact varieties of English in traditionally Celtic regions. As noted already, cleft sentences in Irish sometimes resemble English patterns as in the example about the fairies cited earlier. Another example is even closer to English cleft patterns: (Is é) an fear a bhí ag péinteáil cathaoir inné Is him the man who was at-painting chair yesterday It is the man who was painting a chair yesterday. (Ó Siadhail, 1989: 236) For all the similarities, though, important differences also exist. Along with the initial VS order, there is another detail of this sentence that differs from the usual English clefting pattern: the possibility of deleting the words Is é. That is, a normal clefting pattern in Irish is also An fear a bhí ag péinteáil cathaoir inné. Scottish Gaelic likewise allows for this deletion option, and so does Welsh. The longstanding contact between the Celtic languages and English led to the rise of some new patterns of clefting in English. In Ireland and Scotland there are attested cases of a cleft pattern where It is or it’s would be deleted, as in the following example from a bilingual speaker (H) interviewed in one of the Hebrides Islands by an ethnographer (E): H: And they’re [cattle] eating in the machaire [plain], [E: Yes] in the wintertime when there there’s no grass. [E: Yes, yes] But mind up there, down on the west end there, you could cut it like corn. [E: mm] But not now. No. [E: No] The cattle that’s eating it. E: Did the factor object? (Odlin, 1997: 38) In the discourse context here, H might have chosen to say It’s the cattle that’s eating it to explain the barren condition of the turf, but instead he felt free to use the same option available in Gaelic cleft sentences. Odlin (1997) terms such structures ‘truncated clefts’. There is other evidence of formal characteristics of the L1 influencing the form of L2 focus constructions (e.g. Filppula, 1986), but L1 meanings also influence L2 constructions, and such cases offer especially interesting challenges for SLA research. As discussed earlier, Prince and others see Yiddish-Movement differing from other types of preposing where the plausibility of information more than its salience accounts for why sentences like A sportscar he wants are felicitous in contrast to ones such as A sportscar he stole in particular discourse contexts. In addition to expressing plausibility and salience, focus constructions can also signal affect as seen in the Irish example involving the fairies Is é an dream a cuireeah as na Flaithis iad . . . , which was translated with an

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intensifer into English: They are really the crowd that was put out of heaven . . . For bilingual speakers of English and Irish (or Scottish Gaelic), the contact varieties of English developed a special kind of cleft that likewise expresses an affective meaning. Even after the period of widespread bilingualism in these Celtic regions ended, monolinguals using such constructions could still be found in certain regions in the 20th century. The following example comes from such an area in County Roscommon: It’s me that was afraid o’ him, which Henry (1957: 196) translates as I assure you that I was very much afraid of him. Like Ó Catháin’s translation of the Irish, Henry’s translation of the English vernacular uses adverbial intensifers very much but also a verb that has an intensifying function (assure). Henry attributes the special meaning in such clefts to Irish influence. Focus particles sometimes have more than one meaning, and there is at least one case in the literature where the polysemy shows up in L2. The Kwaio allomorphs no-o/ne-e can signal either focus or perfective aspect (examples of which were given earlier). Keesing (1991) identifies nao as the morpheme in Melanesian Pidgin that recodes those Kwaio meanings and gives a number of examples including this focus construction: hem nao i save him he know ‘He’s the one who knows’. (Keesing, 1991: 331) One of the examples of the perfective nao given by Keesing is in hem iranawe nao, which he translates as She has run away (Keesing, 1991: 330). The transfer here involves, in Keesing’s judgement, the phonetic similarity of Kwaio no-o and English now, even where the grammatical functions served by nao go much beyond the meanings of the adverb now. Along with transfer involving forms and meanings in focus constructions, there is another kind of evidence of cross-linguistic influence: from studies of quantitative variation. Filppula (1986) pioneered such a methodology for investigations of substrate influence by looking at the frequency of cleft sentences in interviews he conducted with speakers of English in different parts of Ireland and also from speakers of British English. He found that the incidence of it-clefts varied strikingly, where the Dublin sample showed 1.3 clefts per thousand words, the sample from two western counties (Clare and Kerry) showed 2.8, over twice as many. Filppula’s explanation invokes the differing histories of these regions, where Dublin was long the centre of English speakers (both native Irish and English settlers) whereas Clare and Kerry shifted relatively recently from Irish to English, mainly in the 19th century. Further support for this interpretation comes from data from County Wicklow, a traditionally rural area but closer to Dublin than to Clare or Kerry: the frequency of it-clefts was in between Dublin and the western counties: 1.8. Moreover, the British English sample showed a much smaller figure: 0.7 clefts (about half the

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Dublin figure). As with other linguists who have studied clefts in the English of Ireland, Filppula attributes the high frequency of these focus constructions to Irish influence since the latter language uses clefting even more than English does. In a recent investigation of English in Wales, Paulasto (2006) has employed a methodology similar to Filppula’s and has gotten comparable results for focus fronting, a structure more or less equivalent to what Birner and Ward term preposing. As noted earlier, Welsh has a pattern of truncated clefting very much like what is found in Irish and Scottish Gaelic (Thorne, 1993: 371). However, the type of substrate influence that Paulasto examined did not have a relative pronoun that. It is not clear whether Welsh English ever had truncated clefts such as The cattle that’s eating it, but Paulasto’s evidence abounds with cases of fronting that indicate the influence of the Welsh truncation pattern. In some the preposing results in the appearance of a prepositional phrase before the rest of the clause: for example, I was a tomboy, with the lads I used to go you know. Older bilinguals showed a distinct preference for fronting, especially in comparison with speakers of English in England. Quantitative studies such as those of Filppula and Paulasto thus corroborate other evidence of transfer.

Ultimate Attainment While the evidence involving form, meaning, and quantitative variation shows the reality of cross-linguistic influence in focus constructions, there remain serious problems in understanding just how such influence operates. Some of the difficulties will be manifest in a comparison of the evidence already discussed with the following observation by Schachter: Even more striking is the non-occurrence in proficient secondlanguage-speaker-production of a number of the so-called movement transformations, particularly raising, clefts, pseudoclefts, topicalizing rules, adverb movement rules . . . Frequency counts of the occurrence of these constructions in conversational English are difficult to find, but my strong impression is that many of them occur quite frequently in my speech and that of other native speakers, indicating that their non-occurrence in the speech of non-natives is remarkable and difficult to explain. What is clearly the case is that communicative fluency can be attained without complete grammatical mastery of the language. (Schachter, 1988: 224) Schachter’s claim is not mere speculation, as she cites a detailed study (Schachter & Hart, 1979) that showed the infrequency of certain syntactic structures in a group of advanced English as a second language (ESL) students whose writing was studied along with the writing of less advanced groups.

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Schachter and Hart did not specifically investigate clefting. It has therefore seemed appropriate to look at other writing samples from advanced ESL students. The following evidence comes from a survey of 125 exit examinations of students in a large American university, with the ESL programme and the university quite comparable to those in the Schachter and Hart study. Most crucially, the students in this study had no further ESL requirements, and so they represent the most advanced level of proficiency that can be expected in a writing programme in universities where students who complete their ESL requirements are expected to be able to do the writing assignments of any course in English. The survey was straightforward: the exams were classified into those which had it-clefts and those which did not. Of the 125 papers read, 111 did not have any it-clefts, and the figures below indicate the number of students (classified by the native language): Hindi 2 Urdu 3 Gujarati 1 Sinhalese 1 Malayalm 1 Arabic 16 Jarawa 1

Hausa 7 Igbo 1 Wajah 1 Tara 1 Fulani 2 Balando 1 Sajawa 1

Japanese 6 Chinese 27 Persian 4 Spanish 6 Portuguese 3 French 1 Tangale 1

Thai 4 Indonesian 4 Malay 10 Swedish 1 Norwegian 1 Hungarian 1 Korean 13

In contrast, 14 students did use clefts (with 17 such sentences produced altogether). The figures are thus: Tamil 1 Spanish 2 Gujarati 1

Hausa 2 Portuguese 1 Japanese 1

Jere 1 Arabic 1

Persian 1 Urdu 1

For most of the languages in this survey, the figures are obviously too small to make inferences about transfer or absence of transfer. Even so, the frequency of clefts in the total sample can be compared with the findings of Filppula’s Irish study discussed in the previous section. The ESL composition sample had approximately 62,500 words, a corpus similar in size to what Filppula had for Kerry and Clare (about 70,000 words), which was a sub-corpus with 192 clefts, yielding a ratio, as noted before, of 2.8 clefts per thousand words. In contrast, the 17 clefts in the ESL corpus yield a ratio of 0.27 clefts per thousand words. The Kerry/Clare sub-corpus thus showed about ten times as many clefts as the ESL corpus. Even if another sub-corpus is used, the infrequency of clefts in the ESL corpus remains clear. In the British English sub-corpus of Filppula the ratio was 0.7 clefts per thousand words, and so nearly three times greater than the ESL ratio. Needless to say, there are possible problems in comparing a corpus of ESL writing with one of

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spoken English. Nevertheless, the evidence does support Schachter’s claim about the infrequency of clefting among advanced ESL learners. Schacther’s remarks about the infrequency of clefting form part of her discussion of fundamental differences between child language acquisition and adult SLA. She sees the putative infrequency of clefts and other structures as evidence that relatively proficient adults may never attain the syntactic repertory of native speakers, unlike children who eventually come to use a wide range of complex structures. By this argument, completeness is thus a key distinguisher of first and second language acquisition. Yet another difference is what Schachter calls ‘equipotentiality’, by which she means that while children can acquire any first language with the same ease, such an outcome is not the norm for second language learners. An English speaker, for example, will likely find Finnish much more of a challenge to learn than Swedish (Odlin, 1989: 39), while an Estonian learner of Finnish will have a relatively easy time with Finnish but not such an easy time with Swedish. Schachter clearly sees transfer as crucial: when cross-linguistic similarities are great (as between Finnish and Estonian or between English and Swedish), the learning challenge is greatly reduced. Cross-linguistic similarity (or lack thereof) can indeed help to explain several of the findings in this chapter. Speakers Irish and Scottish Gaelic, for example, have seemed to rely on the similarities between clefting in those languages and in English even while they have sometimes overestimated the similarities, which can thus explain their use of truncated clefts as in The cattle that’s eating it. Swedish speakers likewise overestimate at times the cross-linguistic similarity, with occasional errors resulting as in He say it were he som take the bred. Overestimations of similarity can involve meaning as well as form, as in the Hiberno English cleft. It’s me that was afraid o’ him ( ‘I assure you that I was very much afraid of him’). In language contact situations such as Hiberno-English, truncated clefts or new meanings widen the range of what counts as English structure and may not be a source of much concern pedagogically. On the other hand, teachers of Swedish-speaking learners will no doubt find it helpful to provide students with feedback on the limits of similarity between Swedish som and English some. Yet whatever the pedagogical concerns, the significance of overestimations of similarity for SLA researchers lies more in the fact of possible interlingual identifications. That is, when focus constructions are fairly similar between L1 and L2, learners can and do consider their L1 to be a resource in constructing an L2 interlanguage. Although learners make identifications in some cases, they may not be able to do so in others, or they may at least be sceptical about the possibility. The structural differences between English and Japanese are a case in point. Schachter and Hart found that Japanese learners produced very few relative clauses in comparison with students whose native languages were

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Arabic, Persian and Spanish. Although there have been controversies over how to interpret the findings (cf. Kamimoto et al., 1992; Schachter, 1974), the word order of Japanese helps to explain the infrequency: the modifying clause precedes the noun while in English it follows. Since relative clauses are a key constituent of it-cleft sentences, it would be surprising indeed if it-clefts were frequent among Japanese students. The same logic applies to Chinese learners since relativisation in that language requires, like Japanese, prenominal modification. As with the Japanese case, the consequences for clefting hardly seem surprising: in the exit exam figures reported above, not even one Chinese student’s paper in the 27 had a cleft sentence, and this was the single largest L1 group in the sample. Japanese does have clefting, but the word order is almost the exact opposite of it-clefting in English (Kamio, 1991). Yet along with the challenges of a very different word order, the contrast between Japanese and English requires that learners notice meaning distinctions that their native language does not code. According to Kamio, the same cleft sentence in Japanese can translate into English as either an it-cleft or a wh-cleft. As discussed earlier, these two English patterns are not interchangeable in many contexts, and so the meaning system of the target language will challenge Japanese learners of English perhaps even more than the formal differences will. Whatever difficulties the infrequency of relativisation and clefting may indicate, there is also evidence that learners sometimes have doubts about the cross-linguistic similarity of focus constructions. Trévise (1986) characterises the word order of everyday spoken French as highly flexible, and occasionally some of these vernacular patterns show up in L2 English: for example, I think it’s very good the analysis between the behaviour of animals and the person. Even so, Trévise finds a reluctance in many cases and sees the neutral word order of French in written texts as a constraint. Plag and Zimmermann (1998) found a similar caution among EFL students at a German university, whose acceptability judgements of marked focus constructions in English showed much more scepticism than did the judgements of native speakers of English. These students were also asked to translate German sentences with marked word order into English, and like the French students studied by Trévise, their behaviour indicated considerable doubts about the transferability of such word orders. Such scepticism is not surprising when the translation studies of Doherty are recalled: for professional translators, the cross-linguistic correspondences of focus and emphasis are often elusive and indirect. However, it would be mistaken to conclude that German learners never believe that the marked word orders they use in their native language might work in English. The following example comes from a postgraduate student (given here the fictitious name of Robert) very close to finishing his English requirements: That this book caters to students shows the glossary and the exercises at the end of each chapter which is helpful for every

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exam preparation. The assignment that Robert had was to write critiques of textbooks in his field. The nominal clause at the beginning is the direct object of shows, and the subject is the coordinate NP that stretches to the end of the sentence. It seems likely that Robert relied on his L1 to formulate this very heavy subject NP, which in turn contributed to his use of OVS word order, a possibility exploited much more in German than in English. Another factor may well have been a wish to preserve the presentation order of old information before new information, the latter being expressed by the heavy subject. In any case, Robert produced other instances of marked word order and in fact told me that it was something that other teachers had also pointed out in his writing.

Conclusion This chapter has reviewed a wide range of work on focus constructions and has given special attention to the problem of language transfer in relation to those structures. The key findings are these: • While there exists considerable typological variation in focus constructions, clefting, word order shifts and focus particles are three major formal types. All three are involved in specific cases of cross-linguistic influence. • Relevance theory allows for insights about pragmatic commonalities in focus constructions. Even so, the meanings of these constructions vary both within and between languages, and L1-specific meanings sometimes appear in bilinguals’ use of the L2 (e.g. those in Yiddish-Movement). • The frequency of a focus structure in the L1 can affect its frequency in L2 and eventually in certain monolingual dialects, as work on English in the Celtic lands shows. • Psycholinguistic studies of monolingual performance indicate that focus constructions can have special cognitive effects involving attention and memory. Accordingly, certain effects seem likely to appear in language contact situations also. • Cross-linguistic similarity seems to be an important factor encouraging the use of focus constructions in L2 even while transfer in such cases sometimes results in errors. • The comparability of focus constructions across languages is a major problem for translators – and also for linguists and language learners. In some cases, learners may be skeptical about the equivalence of such structures in two languages, and they may therefore be reluctant to use them. On the other hand, some learners may attempt to use radically different structures of the L1 in the L2, as the case of Robert shows.

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Space does not allow for discussion other important questions such as work on Universal Grammar and other formal analyses (e.g. Culicover & McNally, 1998; Hertel, 2003). A thorough account of transfer will also have to take into account multilingual circumstances such as cases of transfer from L2 to L3 (Cenoz et al., 2001). Even so, some likely pedagogical implications require attention. Although most of the SLA studies cited in this chapter involve production of focus constructions, it may well be that these structures prove especially important for comprehension. Since they are not routinely interchangeable in discourse, each kind has its own special meaning potentials. The comprehension issue seems especially urgent for advanced learners both in listening and in reading. It is not clear how similarly or dissimilarly an advanced non-native speaker may assess the pragmatic meanings of a speaker or writer. However, recent work on the perception of affect indicates that there are considerable differences between native and non-native audiences (Dewaele & Edwards, 2004; Graham et al., 2001). Affect is one dimension of the subjective stances that speakers and writers take (Finegan, 1995), and successful acquisition obviously requires a robust ability of learners to assess such stances in the L2. Since these subjective positions figure prominently in the types of meanings that focus constructions can express, future work should make comprehension a high priority. Although comprehension arguably has a higher pedagogical priority, speaking and writing also matter. In the absence of a stylistic range available to native speakers, learners cannot be said to have an optimal communicative competence. The pedagogical concerns here have not gone unnoticed, as a valuable chapter by Celce-Murcia et al. (1999: 611–628) shows. Even so, there is no doubt room for other types of help in fostering the use as well as the understanding of focus constructions. References Akmajian, A. (1970) On deriving cleft sentences from pseudocleft sentences. Linguistic Inquiry 1, 149–168. Asher, R. (1985) Tamil. Amsterdam: North Holland. Ball, C. (1994) The origins of the informative-presupposition it-cleft. Journal of Pragmatics 22, 603 – 628. Biber, D., Johansson, S., Leech, G., Conrad, S. and Finegan, E. (1999) Longman Grammar of Spoken and Written English. London: Longman. Birner, B. (1994) Information status and word order: An analysis of English inversion. Language 70, 233–259. Birner, B. and Ward, G. (1998) Information Status and Noncanonical Word Order in English. Amsterdam: Benjamins. Birch, S., Albrecht, J. and Myers, J. (2000) Syntactic focusing structures influence discourse processing. Discourse Processes 30, 285–304. Bloomfield, L. (1933) Language. New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston.

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Carston, R. (1996) Syntax and pragmatics. In K. Brown and J. Miller (eds) The Concise Encyclopedia of Syntactic Theories (pp. 306–313). New York: Pergamon. Celce-Murcia, M., Larsen-Freeman, D. and Williams, H. (1999) The Grammar Book: An ESL/EFL Teacher’s Course (2nd edn). Boston: Heinle and Heinle. Cenoz, J., Hufeisen, B. and Jessner, U. (eds) (2001) Cross-Linguistic Influence in Third Language Acquisition: Psycholinguistic Perspectives. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Culicover, P. and McNally, L. (eds) (1998) The Limits of Syntax. San Diego: Academic Press. Dewaele, J. and Edwards, M. (2004) Tense/aspect, verb meaning and perception of emotional intensity by native and non-native users of English. EUROSLA Yearbook 4, 231–252. Doherty, M. (1999) Clefts in translation between English and German. Target 11, 289–315. Doherty, M. (2001) Discourse theory and translation of clefts between English and German. In I. Kenesei and R. Harnish (eds) Perspectives on Semantics, Pragmatics, and Discourse (pp. 273–292). Amsterdam: Benjamins. Escobar, A. (1997) From time to modality in Spanish in contact with Quechua. Hispanic Linguistics 9, 64–99. Feinstein, M. (1980) Ethnicity and topicalization in New York City English. International Journal for the Sociology of Language 26, 15–24. Filppula, M. (1986) Some Aspects of Hiberno-English in a Functional Sentence Perspective. Joensuu, Finland: Joensuu Publications in the Humanities. Finegan, E. (1995) Introduction. In D. Stein and S. Wright (eds) Subjectivity and Subjectivisation: Linguistic Perspectives (pp. 1–15). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Frawley, W. (1984) Prolegomenon to a theory of translation. In W. Frawley (ed.) Translation: Linguistic, Literary, and Philosophical Perspectives (pp. 159–175). Newark, DE: University of Delaware Press. Gabilondo, I. (2002) La salud de la lengua esspanola: Entrevista con Victor García de la Concha [The state of the Spanish language: Interview with Victor García de la Concha]. Puerta del Sol 11, 4–9. Givón, T. (1984) Syntax (Vol. I). Amsterdam: Benjamins. Givón, T. (1992) The grammar of referential coherence as mental processing instructions. Linguistics 30, 5–55. Graham, C.R., Hamblin, A. and Feldstein, S. (2001) Recognition of emotion in English voices by speakers of Japanese, Spanish and English. International Review of Applied Linguistics 39, 19–37. Haviland, S. and Clark, H. (1974) What’s new? Acquiring new information as a process in comprehension. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior 13, 512–538. Henry, P.L. (1957) An Anglo-Irish Dialect of North Roscommon. Dublin: University College, Department of English. Hertel, T. (2003) Lexical and discourse factors in the L2 acquisition of Spanish word order. Second Language Research 19, 273–304. Irvine, J. (1990) Registering affect: Heteroglossia in the linguistic expression of emotion. In C. Lutz and L. Abu-Lughod (eds) Language and the Politics of Emotion (pp. 126–161). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Jarvis, S. (1998) Conceptual Transfer in the Interlanguage Lexicon. Bloomington: Indiana University Linguistics Club. Kamimoto, T., Shimura, A. and Kellerman, E. (1992) A second language classic reconsidered – the case of Schachter’s avoidance. Second Language Research 8, 251–277.

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Kamio, A. (1991) Cleft sentences and the territory of information. In C. Georgopoulos (ed.) Interdisciplinary Approaches to Language. Essays in Honor of S.Y-Kuroda (pp. 353–371). Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers. Kamio, A. (1997) Territory of Information. Amsterdam: Benjamins. Keesing, R. (1991) Substrates, calquing, and grammaticalization in Melanesian Pidgin. In E. Traugott and B. Heine (eds) Approaches to Grammaticalization (Vol. I) (pp. 315–342). Amsterdam: Benjamins. Kim, K. (1995) WH-clefts and left-dislocation in English conversation: Cases of topicalization. In P. Downing and M. Noonan (eds) Word Order in Discourse (pp. 199–246). Amsterdam: Benjamins. Klin, C., Weingartner, K., Guzman, A. and Levine, W. (2004) Readers’ sensitivity to linguistic cues in narratives: How salience influences anaphor resolution. Memory and Cognition 32, 511–522. Kruisinga, E. (1953) An English Grammar (Vol. I, First Part). Groningen: Noordhoff. Levinson, S. (1997) From outer to inner space: Linguistic categories and nonlinguistic thinking. In J. Nuyts and E. Pederson (eds) Language and Linguistic Categorization (pp. 13–45). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Lichtenberk, F. (1980) A grammar of Manam. Unpublished PhD dissertation, University of Hawaii. Morente, E. (2002) Tangos de Pepico Tangos of Pepico. Mi cante y una poema [My song and a poem]. Virgin Records Espana. Ó Catháin, S. (1985) Uair An Chloig Cois Teallaigh (An Hour by the Haerth): Told by Pádraig Eoghain Phádraig Mac an Luain. Collected, translated and annotated by Séamas Ó Catháin. Dublin: Comhaisle Bhéaloideas Éireann, University College. Odlin, T. (1989) Language Transfer. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Odlin, T. (1997) Bilingualism and substrate influence: A look at clefts and reflexives. In J. Kallen (ed.) Focus on Ireland (pp. 35–50). Amsterdam: Benjamins. Odlin, T. (2005) Cross-linguistic influence and conceptual transfer: What are the concepts? Annual Review of Applied Linguistics 25, 3–25. Odlin, T. (2006) Could a contrastive analysis ever be complete? In J. Arabski (ed.) Cross-Linguistic Influence in the Second Language Lexicon (pp. 22–35). Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Odlin, T. (2008) Conceptual transfer and meaning extensions. In P. Robinson and N. Ellis (eds) Handbook of Cognitive Linguistics and Second Language Acquisition. New York: Routledge (in press). Odlin, T. and Jarvis, S. (2004) Same source, different outcomes: A study of Swedish influence on the acquisition of English in Finland. The International Journal of Multilingualism 1, 123–140. Ó Siadhail, M. (1989) Modern Irish. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Paulasto, H. (2006) Welsh English Syntax: Contact and Variation. Joensuu, Finland: Joensuu Publications in the Humanities. Plag, I. and Zimmermann, R. (1998) Wortstellungsprobleme in der Lernersprache Englisch – Frontierung und Inversion [Word order problems in learner English: fronting and inversion] In W. Börner and K. Vogel (eds) Kontrast und Äquivalenz. Beiträge zu Sprachvergleich und Übersetzung [Contrast and Equivalence: Contributions to Language Comparison and Translation] (pp. 208–232). Tübingen: Narr. Prince, E. (1978) A comparison of it-clefts and WH- clefts in discourse. Language 54, 883–908. Prince, E. (1981) Topicalization, Focus-Movement, and Yiddish-Movement: A pragmatic differentiation. Berkeley Linguistics Society 7, 249–264.

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Prince, E. (1986) On the syntactic marking of presupposed open propositions. In A. Farley, P. Farley and K. McCullough (eds) Papers from the Parasession on Pragmatics and Grammatical Theory, 22nd Regional Meeting of the Chicago Linguistics Society, 208–222. Prince, E. (1988) On pragmatic change: The borrowing of discourse functions. Journal of Pragmatics 12, 505–518. Prince, E. (1998) On the limits of syntax, with reference to left-dislocation and topicalization In P. Culicover and L. McNally (eds) The Limits of Syntax (pp. 281–302). San Diego: Academic Press. Sankoff, G. (1993) Focus in Tok Pisin. In F. Byrne and D. Winford (eds) Focus and Grammatical Relations in Creole Languages (pp. 117–140). Amsterdam: Benjamins. Schachter, J. (1974) An error in error analysis. Language Learning 24, 205–214. Schachter, J. (1988) Second language acquisition and its relation to universal grammar. Applied Linguistics 9, 215–235. Schachter, J. and Hart, B. (1979) An analysis of learner production of English structures. Georgetown University Papers in Languages and Linguistics 15 (pp. 18–75). Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press. Siemund, P. (2000) Intensifiers. London: Routledge. Smith, N. (1996) We-focus in Saramaccan: Substrate feature or grammaticalization? In P. Baker and A. Syea (eds) Changing Meanings, Changing Functions, Westminster Creolistics Series 2 (pp. 113–128). London: University of Westminster Press. Stein, D. (1995) Subjective meanings and the history of inversion in English. In D. Stein and S. Wright (eds) Subjectivity and Subjectivisation: Linguistic Perspectives (pp. 129–150). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Thompson, S. (1978) Modern English from a typological point of view. Linguistiche Berichte 54, 19–35. Thorne, D. (1993) Comprehensive Welsh Grammar. Oxford: Blackwell. Tomlin, R. (1994) Functional grammar, pedagogical grammars, and communicative language teaching. In T. Odlin (ed.) Perspectives on Pedagogical Grammar (pp. 140–178). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Tomlin, R. (1995) Focal attention, voice, and word order: An experimental, crosslinguistic study. In P. Downing and M. Noonan (eds) Word Order in Discourse (pp. 517–554). Amsterdam: Benjamins. Tomlin, R. (1997) Mapping conceptual representations into linguistic representations: The role of attention in grammar. In J. Nuyts and E. Pederson (eds) Language and Linguistic Categorization (pp. 162–189). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Trèvise, A. (1986) Is It transferable topicalization? In E. Kellerman and M. Sharwood Smith (eds) Crosslinguistic Influence and Second Language Acquisition. New York: Pergamon. Weinreich, V. (1953/1968) Language in Contact. The Hague: Mouton. Whitley, M. (2002) Spanish/English Contrasts. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press. Wilson, D. and Sperber, D. (1993) Linguistic form and relevance. Lingua 90, 1–25.

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Chapter 2

Argument Realisation and Information Packaging in ToughMovement Constructions: A Learner-Corpus-Based Investigation MARCUS CALLIES

Introduction In recent years, the field of second language acquisition (SLA) research has seen an increasing interest in advanced stages of acquisition and questions of near-native competence, or what is considered as the successful acquisition of a second or foreign language (L2). However, there are still relatively few studies of advanced learners compared to learners at early and intermediate stages of the learning process. The question of whether adult L2 speakers achieve native-like proficiency has been controversial.1 Moreover, while in many (European) countries the ultimate goal of foreign language teaching at the advanced level is for the students to achieve a near-native command of the target language, it is often left unspecified what native-like proficiency exactly means (de Haan, 1997: 55). Advanced learners have typically mastered the target language rules of morphology and syntax, but their written production often sounds unidiomatic, even though it may be free from grammatical errors. The exact reasons for this non-nativeness or foreign-soundingness of learner writing seem difficult to pin down, and therefore are frequently explained by using vague cover terms such as ‘unidiomaticity’ or ‘style’. Corpus-based research into learner language has yielded empirical evidence that texts produced by learners and native speakers in fact differ in terms of frequencies of certain words or structures, both in lexico-grammar and syntax.2 However, an in-depth description of the advanced learner variety with respect to the acquisition of optional and highly L2-specific linguistic phenomena is still a desideratum. This chapter investigates a syntactic construction which entails both functional principles of discourse organisation (information structure and 29

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syntactic weight) and argument realisation. Most recently, studies on advanced L2 learners’ use of focus constructions have shown that information structure management remains a problematic area, and that even highly proficient learners do experience problems with information distribution and the end-weight principle in several syntactic patterns (Callies, 2006a). Moreover, while the acquisition of argument structure alternations has received considerable attention within Universal-Grammar-based approaches to SLA, functional syntactic aspects of these phenomena have largely been neglected in the sparse research on advanced learners. The present chapter examines the frequency and contextual use of the tough-movement construction in the written production of advanced German learners of English based on material from the International Corpus of Learner English (ICLE) and comparable English native speaker writing.

Tough-movement in English English allows a number of clause-internal and clause-external syntactic operations which are either impossible or limited in other languages. One of the clause-internal effects is the relatively large degree of freedom in selecting the basic syntactic functions of subject and object which results in a great number of alternations, that is language-specific changes in the realisation of the argument structure of a verb. Among the clause-external effects are for example the so-called raising constructions, syntactic operations that move arguments across clause boundaries. Three types of raising are recognised in the literature and are exemplified in the following examples. The tough-movement construction, also known as object-to-subject raising (OSR), is illustrated in (3):3 1

a: b: 2 a: b: 3

a: b:

It seems that Sue is tired. Sue seems to be tired. We believe that they return at the weekend. We believe them to return at the weekend. It is difficult to argue with him. He is difficult to argue with.

(subject-to-subject raising)

(subject-to-object raising)

(object-to-subject raising)

While in (1) and (2) above, the subjects of the subordinate clauses, Sue and they respectively, are moved (raised) into the subject/object position of the higher clauses, in (3) it is the object of the subordinate clause which is raised into subject position of the matrix clause. The most frequent adjectives that may trigger tough-movement have been identified through corpus-based descriptive studies of contemporary English. Mair (1987, 1990) observes that it is only a small semantic

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Table 2.1 Most frequent raising adjectives triggering tough-movement in the Survey of English Usage Corpus (78/85 total instances, 875,000 words) Raising adjective

Observed count

Difficult

36

Easy

15

Hard

7

Impossible

4

Interesting

2

Total

64

Source: Mair 1987, 1990 (Adapted from Biber et al., 1999: 228)

group of adjectives that frequently occurs with OSR, namely ‘adjectives referring to degrees of difficulty and a number of adjectival and nominal predicates expressing value judgments’ (61), see Table 2.1. Similar accounts can also be found in the standard reference grammars of English. Quirk et al. (1985: 1229) note that it is ‘adjectives referring to degrees of ease and comfort’ which trigger OSR, and Biber et al. (1999: passim) also identify ‘adjectives of ease or difficulty’ as the semantic group that control OSR, and find that ‘easy, difficult and hard are all notably frequent’ (Biber et al., 1999: 719, 728). There are three main structural alternatives with infinitive clauses that complement the adjectival predicates listed above: 4

a: b: c:

To argue with him is difficult. It is difficult to argue with him. He is difficult to argue with.

(pre-predicate, non-extraposed to-clause) (extraposition of to-complement clause) (post-predicate to-clause with OSR)

While non-extraposed infinitive clauses are rare, Biber et al. (1999: 728ff.) find that overall OSR is slightly more common than extraposition for to-clauses controlled by adjectives of ease or difficulty. To-clauses with these adjectives are most common in academic prose. This holds for both extraposed to-clauses and raised objects. Constructions with difficult and easy are considerably more common than constructions with other ease or difficulty adjectives. In addition, there is no register difference: the proportion of extraposed to-clauses compared to raising constructions is about the same in both conversation and academic prose, see Table 2.2. Thus, neither should be considered the unmarked. They serve different discourse functions and are used for complementary purposes. The fact

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Table 2.2 Frequency counts of to-clause constructions with the four most common adjectives of ease or difficulty per million words Conversation Raising adjective

Academic prose

Raised Extraposed % raised

Raised

Extraposed % raised

Easy

10

6

63

36

26

58

Hard

14

9

61

4

4

50

Difficult

6

6

50

79

52

60

Impossible

1

2

—

4

24

17

Adapted from Biber et al. (1999: 728)

Table 2.3 Frequency counts of raising constructions with the four most common adjectives of ease or difficulty per million words Raising adjective

Conversation

Academic prose

Total

6 (7.1%)

79 (92.9%)

85 (100%)

Easy

10 (21.7%)

36 (78.3%)

46 (100%)

Hard

14 (77.8%)

4 (22.2%)

18 (100%)

Difficult

Impossible

1 (20%)

4 (80%)

5 (100%)

Adapted from Biber et al. (1999: 728)

that they occur in roughly the same proportions in different modes suggests that similar discourse factors are operative. Mair (1987, 1990) finds no significant difference between the occurrence of tough-movement across speaking and writing, and thus concludes that tough-movement constructions cannot be said to be typical of informal usage and considers this sentence type to be stylistically neutral (Mair, 1987: 69). However, in view of the more recent and possibly more representative findings by Biber et al. (Table 2.3, the only exception being hard), tough-movement appears to be more typical of academic prose.

Textual and Discourse Functions of the Tough-Movement Construction It has been argued that one of the major consequences following from the fixed SVO word order in English is that this language has developed a wide range of options to cater for the communicative needs of its speakers, still keeping the subject in its required initial position. Most importantly, the grammatical function of the subject has considerably been expanded, both semantically and functionally (see e.g. Legenhausen & Rohdenburg, 1995). In this context, Foley (1994: 1679) observes that

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‘there is, in fact, a very strong correlation between the concepts of topic and subject in English. [. . .] Thus, the typical way to express alternatives of topic choice is to select different subjects. This is very common in English’. Among these alternative ways of topic choice are the focus constructions, especially clefting, but also non-agentive subjects, existential sentences, raising constructions and the passive. Thus, raising constructions, and tough-movement in particular, are not only interesting in terms of argument realisation, but also from the point of view of information structure, since they have been shown to fulfill important discourse functions in terms of information packaging and thematic progression (Givón, 2001; Mair, 1987, 1990). Biber et al. present a corpus-based overview of raising constructions and discuss several factors that influence the choice between either raising or structural variants with extraposed to- or that-clauses. For toughmovement, they identify a conspiracy of grammatical complexity and information packaging (Biber et al., 1999: 729ff.). In nearly all instances of tough-movement, the implied object of the to-clause presents given information and provides an anaphoric link to the immediately preceding discourse. The raised noun phrase (NP) is typically a pronoun (it, this, that) or a simple anaphoric NP without modifiers (this/that N):4 5

6

Opposition to the whole idea of orphanages refute it mainly because of two reasons. They disagree with the break-up of families and feel the whole policy would be too costly. While these two ideas are difficult to content with, the truth is in the numbers. (US) There were many objections raised against the introduction of the National Lottery when the idea was first proposed. The main issued raised was the unemployment that would occur in the pools company industry. As the Lottery would sound more appealing due to the larger winnings, greater public interest and the fact that it is easier to fill in than a pools coupon, less people would do the pools coupon, and this decrease in demand would mean that pools companies such as Littlewoods and Vernon would be forced to make employees redundent due to a decrease in profits. (BRIT)

By contrast, the extraposed variant is used when the implied object of the to-clause presents new information. Then, the raised object is usually a complex structure which contains another complement clause as in (7) and (8) below, or a heavy, complex NP with a relative clause or complex modifiers as in (9). Thus, raising is dispreferred, since this would result in a heavy, complex NP being the subject. 7

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Boxing is a sport participated in by thousands of people in the UK alone. If it were banned, there would inevitably be boxers who still participated not for the money, but for the love of the sport. Also, there is so much money involved in boxing today, millions of pounds

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in some cases, that it would be impossible to stop illegal betting taking place or underground fights. (BRIT) Many constitutional problems still block our road to Europe, as well as people’s attitudes – we in Britain rather enjoy being an island and not attached to the continent – witness the opposition to the Channel Tunnel. It is impossible to say whether we will eventually be willing to sacrifice the rest of our sovereignty. (BRIT) If we consider that our society rewards valuable labour – valuable contributions – with first, economic measures, and, second, measures of status, then the child care worker may reasonably be judged as not providing a ‘valuable’ contribution to society. It is difficult to imagine, however, a society where workers are encouraged to take employment seriously – to say nothing of finding satisfaction from employment – and where the work force is filled with a diversity of willing workers, without considering the fundamental value of child care providers. (US)

Example (10) below nicely illustrates the interplay of extraposition and tough-movement influenced by grammatical complexity and information packaging. The clause that child care workers are underpaid is realised as an extraposed that-clause and subsequently taken up by the NP the issue, which appears as a raised subject: 10

If we recognise that a work force filled with such diversity of workers will inevitably include women – of all ages – as well as man with family responsibilities, then we see the undeniable economic connection between this ‘low value’ contribution of child care providers, and the economic strength of the nation. It is not difficult to conclude that child care workers are underpaid, and the issue will be difficult to resolve without involving employers or the government in the child care industry – which may not be the ideal solution. (US)

The function of tough-movement as a means of information packaging is discussed in detail by Mair (1987). He shows that this sentence type serves to appropriately distribute given and new information in a sentence and thus supports the thematic progression of discourse. Similar to what Biber et al. (1999) note, Mair finds that the majority of the raised NPs in tough-movement constructions refer to given information which is often indicated by the use of pronominal forms and anaphoric devices such as these and this (Mair, 1987: 63). In a later, broader study, Mair (1990: 76) considers tough-movement a ‘topic creating mechanism’ and provides further evidence for his analysis: referential-indefinite subjects (underlined in the following example) are normally not raised:5 11

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Looking through the years of history it is hard to imagine a time when religion did not exist. (US)

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In a similar vein, Givón (2001) discusses the function of raising as a means of foregrounding an important topic which is ‘converted from an argument of the subordinate clause to a grammatical argument – either subject or object – of the main clause’ (Givón, 2001: 272). He also notes the topicalising pragmatic effect of raising.

Raising: A Comparative Perspective The markedness of raising constructions Givón (1991) proposes a definition of markedness that includes the following correlates: structural complexity, frequency distribution and cognitive complexity. According to these criteria, marked elements are structurally more complex, less frequent and therefore cognitively more salient. They require more attention, mental effort and processing time for the recipient. Givón’s understanding of markedness is extremely useful in the present context since it integrates the notion of cognitive complexity, and postulates a correlation between markedness and the cognitivephysiological complexity of linguistic units: marked structures require more cognitive work in order to be processed. Raising is one of the phenomena studied by Hawkins (1986), who proposes that English/German contrasts can be explained in terms of a typological continuum whereby languages vary according to the degree to which morphological and syntactic surface form and semantic meaning correspond. He argues that there is a greater ambiguity and/or vagueness of surface forms in English. While German exhibits a ‘tight-fit’ between surface form and semantic representation, English shows a ‘loose-fit’ correspondence. This can also be observed in raising constructions. By making reference to the concept of apparent constituency, Mair (1987: 64ff.) observes that tough-movement constructions are deceptively similar to simple sentences which consist of a subject, a copula and a predicative adjective governing an infinitive: 12 a: b: 13 a: b:

This problem is difficult to see. It is difficult to see this problem. John is reluctant to go. * It is reluctant to go John.

He further notes that the relationship between ‘fused’ constructions such as tough-movement and their underlying bi-clausal forms can be even more obscured in phrases in which the infinitival complements are used as if they were ordinary attributive adjectives (his examples): 14 a: b: c:

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. . . one of his tremendously hard to understand papers . . . who speaks fluent but difficult to understand English . . . in a clear and easy-to-follow manner

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In sum, when compared with their underlying bi-clausal variants, tough-movement constructions exhibit a larger distance between form and function, since the grammatical subject is not the logical or semantic subject of these sentences. Consequently, tough-movement constructions are functionally and semantically more complex, less transparent and less explicit, cause more cognitive cost and require more processing time for the recipient in terms of the analysability and decoding of the formfunction relation (Legenhausen & Rohdenburg, 1995: 138). Typological considerations and contrastive analysis From a functional perspective, tough-movement is a uniform crosslinguistic phenomenon in that it explicitly indicates topicalisation of the raised NP. However, the formal linguistic means to express this function are different from language to language, and correlate with other typological syntactic features such as basic word order and subject-prominence (Comrie & Matthews, 1990: 55). Eckman (1977a) has proposed a universal hierarchy of raising processes: Subject-to-object  subject-to-subject  object-to-subject. Van Valin notes that ‘cross-linguistically, matrix-codingas-subject constructions [his term for subject-raising, MC] are much more common than matrix-coding-as-object constructions [i.e. object-raising, MC]’ (Van Valin, 2001: 53). Although both English and German have all three types of raising, a contrastive analysis of raising in English and German reveals that in German, raising is more restricted and only a subset of the English raising verbs and adjectives occur (Hawkins, 1986: 75ff.; König, 1971: 85–89, 1995: 155f., 157; Legenhausen & Rohdenburg, 1995: 135). In all three types of raising mentioned in the previous section, English is more productive than German because there are many more verbs and adjectives that trigger a certain raising construction (Hawkins, 1986: 75ff.). Furthermore, as far as the types and the frequency of raising constructions is concerned, English is not only highly marked when compared with German, but also in a cross-linguistic perspective. Givón states that ‘English may be the most promiscuous language when it comes to raising. Other languages, even when typologically rather close to English, allow little or no raising’ (Givón, 2001: 282). Consequently, English clearly exhibits a higher degree of typological markedness.

Previous Studies and Research Hypotheses While most of the syntactic phenomena that exhibit a large distance between grammatical function and semantic meaning can be assumed to represent learning problems for learners of English as a foreign language, only few of them appear to have been investigated empirically6 (Kortmann,

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1998: 156). Tight-fit, that is more explicit and semantically transparent structures in the L2 have been shown to be acquired earlier, are preferred options, and have a wider range of application also in the advanced stages of the learning process. By contrast, loose-fit, that is less explicit and semantically opaque variants are avoided, even when they exist in the L1 (Kellerman, 1979: 42; Kortmann, 1998: 160). As reported by Kellerman (1983: 118f.), Jordens (1977, 1978) found that with near-synonymous and structurally related sentences (raising, mediopassive constructions and non-agentive subjects), advanced Dutch learners of German showed different acceptability rates. Thus, Dutch learners are more likely to accept sentences with canonical subjects and objects better than sentences with marked (e.g. raised) subjects or objects. I adopt a functional-typological approach to SLA (Eckman, 1996; Giacalone Ramat, 2003), which is based on the assumption that the findings and generalisations made by language typologists can also be applied to language acquisition, and argues for the significance of universal (implicational) hierarchies for the prediction and explanation of (non-)transfer in SLA. The basic assumption is that interlanguages (ILs) are natural languages. If typological language universals are universal to all natural human languages, then they should also hold for ILs, as captured by the Interlanguage Structural Conformity Hypothesis: ‘All universals that are true for primary languages are also true for interlanguages’ (Eckman et al., 1989: 195). Since many language universals can be expressed in terms of (implicational) hierarchical relations with respect to cross-linguistic/typological markedness, it is reasonable to assume that such hierarchical relations between linguistic phenomena should also be present in ILs. Consequently, it should be possible to predict the occurrence of selected linguistic features in ILs, depending on their position in the hierarchy and the relative degree of typological markedness. Eckman (1977b) introduced the Markedness Differential Hypothesis (MDH) and argued that on the basis of a contrastive analysis of two languages (L1 and L2) and the inclusion of the concepts of typological markedness and cross-linguistic influence, it should be possible to predict areas of difficulty for an L2 learner. In a nutshell, the MDH claims that L1 structures that are different from L2 structures and typologically more marked will not be transferred, whereas L1 structures that are different from L2 structures and typologically less marked are more likely to be transferred. Additionally, predictions can be made as to both the order and difficulty of linguistic features in the acquisition process: less marked structures will be acquired first or without difficulty, more marked structures are expected to be acquired later or with greater difficulty. In sum, the MDH identifies potential difficulties in the L2 learning process not merely on the basis of similarities and differences derived

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from a contrastive analysis (CA) of two languages (as in traditional CA), but through a combination of the concepts of typological markedness and crosslinguistic influence. I argue that raising constructions, and tough-movement in particular, can be considered to be problematic even for advanced German learners of English for two reasons: • Raising constructions are marked because they exhibit a large formfunction distance, and are functionally and semantically more complex, less transparent and less explicit. • As far as the different types, frequency and restrictions of raising constructions are concerned, a contrastive analysis shows that English is not only highly marked when compared with German, but also in a cross-linguistic perspective. In sum, raising constructions, and in view of its high degree of typological markedness tough-movement in particular, can be hypothesised to be under-represented in the writing of advanced German learners, most likely due to avoidance (Kortmann, 1998: 156). These assumptions for the acquisition of tough-movement in advanced L2 acquisition receive support from research findings in L1 acquisition which show that tough-movement constructions are also particularly problematic for child learners of English and are consequently acquired late (most recently Anderson, 2005). Experimental studies have identified three stages in children’s acquisition of tough-movement structures: (1) an initial stage in which children assign the tough-movement structure non-adult-like readings, interpreting the subject NP as the subject rather than as the object of the infinitive verb, (2) an intermediate stage in which they vary in their responses, and (3) a final stage in which they show adultlike competence. The intermediate stage is characterised by the fact that children sometimes give adult-like, sometimes non-adult-like readings.

Methodology and Data The present study is a corpus-based investigation of the frequency and contextual use of the tough-movement construction on the basis of written data taken from the International Corpus of Learner English (ICLE) (Granger et al., 2002). It is a raw, that is unannotated corpus, which consists of mostly argumentative essays produced by university students of English with different native languages. The corpus was compiled on the basis of rather strict design criteria. All of the informants that contributed essays to the corpus share the following characteristics: they are all university undergraduates in their 20s, have learned English in an EFL context involving classroom instruction, and are usually in their third or fourth year of studies. Thus, their English proficiency level ranges from higher

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intermediate to advanced, proficiency being assessed on external criteria, namely institutional status (Granger et al., 2002: 14). There are also a number of variable features, the most important one of course being the learner’s native language, but also variables such as knowledge of other foreign languages or L2 exposure. The German subcorpus consists of 235,190 words and includes 439 essays produced by students from several universities in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. For the present purposes, the aim was to establish learners’ global proficiency in their L2 English. For practical reasons, external criteria such as institutional status had to be applied. German learners of English were considered to be advanced in terms of their institutional status if they were undergraduate students of English language and linguistics, and/or literature in their second or third year of university studies, usually enrolled in either a Magister (MA) or teacher training programme.7 The learners’ institutional status was supplemented by two other external learner variables that are vital to determine whether they can be said to have a similar level of advanced proficiency: length of formal English language instruction at school and amount of L2 exposure. These were chosen to ensure that the informants’ first or second foreign language is English and that they have had approximately the same degree of practical language training at school. Only those informants who had received at least seven years of formal instruction at school before they entered university were considered to be advanced and thus included in the present study. Also important is the amount of L2 exposure, defined for the present purposes as the amount of time learners have spent in an English-speaking country. Assuming that an extended study-abroad period in the target culture affects L2 proficiency, it is likely that it does lead to improvement of a student’s overall proficiency. Thus, it was considered necessary to control the variable of L2 exposure. Students who had spent more than four months either living or studying in an English-speaking country were excluded from the study. Given that the proficiency level of students who contributed to the corpus is almost exclusively based on institutional status, it was necessary to compile a subcorpus for the present study which included only writing by those German learners who can be considered advanced as defined above. The ICLE is distributed on a CD-ROM which is organised in database format. It includes a software interface which allows the compilation of one’s own corpus of learner writing based on selected learner variables (cf. Granger et al., 2002: 47). The subcorpus compiled for this study consists of approximately 80,000 words and includes mostly argumentative essays produced by students whose native language is German, who studied at universities in Germany or Austria, and who have had a minimum of seven years of instruction in English at school and a maximum of three years of English at university.

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The learner corpus was compared to two corpora of similar writing produced by native speakers of British and American English, sampled from the Louvain Corpus of Native English Essays (LOCNESS), which consists of a total of 300,000 words of argumentative essay writing by British and American students (cf. Granger et al., 2002: 41). The major advantage of these control corpora is that they are comparable to the learner corpus as to both text type (argumentative essays) and participant characteristics (university students). For the present study, I compiled two corpora on the basis of LOCNESS, consisting of again approximately 80,000 words of argumentative essay writing produced by British grammar school and university students, and US-American college students. Tough-movement constructions were extracted from the corpora on the basis of the most frequent triggering adjectives outlined previously. All instances were submitted to a quantitative statistical and close qualitative textlinguistic analysis.

Results and Discussion Table 2.4 shows the frequencies of use of tough-movement with the four most frequent adjectives in the native speaker and learner corpora. The significance tests8 that were carried out show a very significant underrepresentation of tough-movement constructions in learner writing (Table 2.5). Turning to a qualitative analysis of the tough-movement constructions used by the native speakers and learners, it is striking that there are no instances of fused constructions in the learner corpus, see Table 2.6. Examples of the native speakers’ use of these are given in (15)–(17). 15

16

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Students may find someone to show them morals, but usually, children entrapped in a negative situation may not know to look for outside help. For this reason, the government should have public schools institute religious activities after class periods are finished, so that students could practice their religion if they wanted to. This would not be a difficult or controversial activity to establish. (US) Then a recent TV documentary proved that not only were infected animals sent for slaughter, but that safety precautions were inadequate and BSE was being sent to shops across the country. The government strenuously denied this, making matters worse, and as nobody knows the real situation or even if CJD can be caught from eating infected beef, many people would seem unwilling to take the risk. The recent headlines made by small isolated numbers of deaths from CJD have not helped either. A shorter and easier to explain cause of the fall in beef sales that has been recorded is that increasing numbers of people are becoming vegetarian. (BRIT)

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4 4 11 9 28

Hard

Difficult

Impossible

Total

Extraposed

14

0

5

4

5

Raised

BRIT

4 10 5

50 31.25 0 26

7

55.5

33.3

Extraposed

% raised

Frequency of use of tough-movement in the corpora

Easy

Table 2.4

21

3

3

7

8

Raised

US

44.7

37.5

23.1

63.6

53.3

% raised

35

8

8

8

9

Extraposed

7

0

5

1

1

Raised

Learners

16.6

0

38.5

11.1

10

% raised

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Table 2.5 Observed frequency counts and significance tests for the use of tough-movement in the corpora Log-likelihood (G2)

p

L vs. US

−6.5

La finestra si rompe.

Polish

Paweł rozbija okno.

>

Okno rozbija sie˛.

Portuguese

O Paulo parte a janela.

>

A janela parte-se.

Slovene

Pavel razbije okno.

>

Okno se razbije.

Spanish

Pablo parte la ventana.

>

La ventana se parte.

Cross-linguistic studies of the transitivity alternations (Haspelmath, 1993; Nedjalkov, 1969) also report non-directed alternations, employing the labile, equipollent and suppletive patterns. The labile pattern is found in languages like English or Greek, where the two corresponding verb forms are morphologically identical, with forms like turn or split found in both transitive and intransitive patterns. The equipollent pattern involves verb forms which are related morphologically, but none can be said to be derived from the other. In German, some verbs, like aufwachen/aufwecken (‘wake up’) or lernen/lehren (‘learn’/ ’teach’) are both morphologically equal, none being more complex than its counterpart. Finally, suppletive forms are those that are morphologically unrelated, like the English pair die and kill, or learn and teach, but whose meanings stand in the inchoative-causative relation like other unaccusative verbs. Languages choose one of the above as the dominant pattern, with some languages showing a preference for the anticausative, others for the causative, and still others for the labile or equipollent patterns. The suppletive pattern is never dominant in any language, and usually serves as a complementary mode for the expression of some verb meanings. The above presentation of the causative alternation shows that although the two variants serve to convey a clear semantic contrast, a tell-tale sign of a markedness relation, neither of the two variants suggests itself as more marked than the other. Efforts to identify a marked form would make more sense if one of the two variants, say the inchoative, were shown to be consistently more complex morphologically in most languages, which would obviously make it a marked form. But this is simply not the case, as morphological complexity of the inchoative and the causative is a question of geographic happenstance. This leaves difficulty in the use of the alternation in the target language without a valid explanation.

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The causative alternation vs non-universal asymmetrical alternations To better understand why it is pointless to strive to establish markedness relations in the causative alternation, it is useful to consider examples of alternations where one of the construction variants can be easily identified as being marked on the basis of other criteria postulated in the literature. Markedness is clearly present in alternations like the conative alternation (Pinker, 1989), or swarm-alternation (Dowty, 2001), illustrated by the following sentences: (4) (a) The kid kicked the ball. (conative alternation) (b) The kid kicked at the ball. (5) (a) Insects were crawling in the backyard. (swarm-alternation) (b) The backyard was crawling with insects. What should be noted about the above two examples of alternations is that (1) they are not cross-linguistically universal and (2) they are asymmetrical in the sense that one of the two pattern variants [option (a)] can be easily postulated to be basic, whereas the other one [option (b)] must satisfy a number of semantic or morphological conditions to be licensed, and is therefore rarer than option (a). That being said, option (b) can be identified as a marked form expected to be the source of learning difficulty. However, the above two features which make it possible to postulate markedness are absent in the causative alternation. Incidentally, it is unclear why markedness should be considered the cause of learning difficulty even in the case of the conative alternation and the swarm-alternation, while a more straightforward explanation would be to regard the problematic structures above as either morphologically more complex (4b) or constrained in distribution by special semantic considerations [(4b) and (5b)] At this point, it is useful to bear in mind Haspelmath’s (2006: 8) critique of markedness as a concept which merely mediates between cause and effect. Although the two observations above [(4a) and (4b)] would certainly be taken as being in line with the general understanding of markedness, invoking markedness is unnecessary to propose the two causes given above – they are clear enough on their own, which makes markedness a redundant intermediary in the explanation. Argument structure Not only is markedness difficult to establish for the causative alternation on the basis of the morphology, but it is also elusive in the argument structure of the relevant verbs. Whatever the morphological manifestation of unaccusative verbs in various languages, their underlying argument structure is hypothesised to be similar for both the transitive and the intransitive forms. According to Unaccusative Hypothesis (Perlmutter,

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1978), unaccusative verbs, including verbs of change of state, take as their underlying object (internal argument) the entity which undergoes change described by the verb, and the agent responsible for bringing about the change becomes the subject (external argument) of the verb. Unaccusative verbs are assumed to have the following argument structure frame, here exemplified by the verb moisten: (6) moisten [ [x ACT ] CAUSE [ BECOME [ y MOIST] ] ] The verb moisten reserves two slots for arguments: entity y (theme) which undergoes moistening is the verb’s internal obligatory argument, and entity x whose action is responsible for y’s change of state is the external argument of the verb. When both arguments are expressed, the internal argument (theme) surfaces as the object of the verb, and the external argument x (agent) becomes the subject. However, the external argument x is optional and need not be expressed. When this is the case, it is the theme that surfaces as the subject of the sentence. In other words, the same argument structure yields two possible surface structures. The above analysis of the argument structure with an optional external argument poses an obvious dilemma. Which is more marked, the frame with or without the external argument? Is the argument structure causative by nature or is it underlyingly inchoative? If it is causative, then the structure without the external argument is marked; if it is inchoative, it is the structure with the added external argument that is marked. This question has been the focus of a long debate, with some researchers endorsing the causative analysis and others viewing unaccusative verbs as originally inchoative (see Levin & Rappaport Hovav, 1995 for a detailed discussion). Whichever analysis is correct, it is irrelevant as far as learning difficulty is concerned. Markedness is not a direct cause of difficulty; if at all, it may only be signal that difficulty is to be expected. When a learner has trouble with a structure, more diagnostic benefit will come from discovering precisely what it is about that structure that causes difficulty than from undertaking to settle which structure is more marked. Meanwhile, it is known that learner mistakes reported for unaccusative verbs involve unnecessary reflexivisation of the inchoative, complex periphrastic causatives and over-passivisation, as shown in (7): (7) (a) For no apparent reason, the ship was sunk in a calm sea. (b) The door and all the windows in the house were opened in the wind. The above sentences were presented as multiple choice items to over 100 Polish learners of English, 10 of whom keyed the passive as the most natural form in these sentences. Montrul (2000), Kondo (2005) and Ju (2000) discuss errors typical of the transitivity alternations and converge on the conclusion that despite the universality of the argument structure of unaccusative verbs, errors are made due to the learner’s inability to handle the

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surface instantiations of the arguments of unaccusative verbs. Now, the surface forms of the arguments are almost certainly not dictated by considerations of markedness, but by detailed rules depending on the alternation pattern of a given language – causative, anticausative, equipollent or labile. Learning difficulty stems from an incomplete familiarity with the relevant rules, and it is these rules, not the relative markedness of the forms, that should be the focus of the explanation. Similarly, markedness offers little useful insight in explaining difficulty in the use of the dative alternation in the target language. When learners make mistakes like The teacher explained us it, it is not because the dative alternation depends on markedness dynamics yet to be discovered, but because the distribution of verbs participating in this alternation is constrained by a host of rules which cause considerable difficulty in the learning process (Callies, in this volume; Callies & Szczesniak, 2006). Markedness in non-alternating unaccusative verbs Levin (1993), and Levin and Rappaport Hovav (1995) identify a subgroup of unaccusative verbs which do not participate in causative patterns. Verbs of existence and appearance such as happen, appear, occur, emerge, stem or exist cannot be used transitively: (8) *Antonio appeared a rose from under his coat. *The driver happened an accident. The blocking of these verbs in the transitive pattern has led Chierchia (2004) to conclude that these verbs are marked for the non-lexicalisation of the causative forms. While the MDH would predict learning difficulty here, mistakes involving verbs of existence and appearance in transitive patterns are rare in learner output. To be fair, it should be admitted that this mistaken prediction can be explained away easily by pointing out that the MDH operates on a definition of markedness other than that meant by Chierchia, so it is nothing but a confusion of senses. However, it is precisely because of such potential confusions that markedness is a dubious explanatory device.

Unaccusative Couplets This section discusses an interesting phenomenon connected with unaccusative verbs in Polish. It will be demonstrated that far from being a matter of markedness, the functioning of the structure discussed below is dictated by subtle morphological marks which serve as signals for the selection of the relevant syntactic frames. Many unaccusative verbs in Polish come in pairs of reflexive and nonreflexive versions, both translational equivalents of one single English unaccusative verb (Table 7.2).

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128 Table 7.2

Part 1: Studies on ESL/EFL Morphosyntactic Development Double inchoative forms Alternating

Non-alternating

Reflexive

Non-reflexive

‘burn’

spalic´ sie˛

spłona˛c´

‘extinguish’

gasic´ sie˛

gasna˛c´

Table 7.3 Alternations of double inchoatives in Polish Transitive ‘The lightning burned the house.’ Reflexive spalic´ sie˛

Intransitive ‘The house burned down.’

(9) Piorun spalił dom. (10) Dom sie˛ spalił. Lightning burn REFL:PAST house House SIE˛ burn REFL:PAST

Non-reflexive (11) *Piorun spłona˛ł dom. spłona˛c´ Lightning burn NON-REFL:PAST house

(12) Dom spłona˛ł. House burn NON-REFL:PAST

Of the two, only the reflexive verb participates in the causative alternation. The non-reflexive form does not alternate between the intransitive and the transitive patterns (Table 7.3). The phenomenon is not only limited to Polish; it occurs in a number of other Slavic languages. In Russian, for example, the reflexive unaccusative verbs alternate freely, and the non-reflexive forms are blocked the same way they get blocked in Polish (Table 7.4). Similarly, in Slovene, the non-reflexive fails to participate (Table 7.5). The two verbs in Tables 7.4 and 7.5 are not individual cases that could be dismissed as idiosyncratic exceptions; they are part of a very large group of non-reflexive unaccusative verbs presented in Table 7.6. These inchoative couplets all behave according to the regularity described above. Of the two forms of a couplet, the reflexive forms causativise freely, and the non-reflexives do not. The examples in Table 7.6 are given without much consistency as to their aspect; their presentation was motivated by the desire to juxtapose the verbs in their most similar forms. What is exceptional about the Slavic inchoative is that apart from the anticausative pattern found in many other European languages, it also has equipollent forms for the same verbs. Although many languages which choose the anticausative pattern as their dominant one also have several equipollent forms for some verbs, no case of a language has been described in the literature which would systematically reserve pairs of parallel forms of the same inchoative.

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Unaccusativity Marks Table 7.4

129

Alternations of double inchoatives in Russian Transitive

Intransitive

‘Nika dried off the underwear.’

‘The underwear dried off.’

Reflexive

(13) Nika visushila byelyo. Nika dry REFL:PAST underwear.

(14) Byelyo visushilos. Underwear dry-S REFL:PAST

Non-reflexive

(15) *Nika visohla byelyo. Nika dry NON-REFL:PAST underwear

(16) Byelyo visohlo. Underwear dry NON-REFL:PAST

Table 7.5 Alternations of double inchoatives in Slovene Transitive

Intransitive

Adam drowned Paul.

Paul drowned.

Reflexive utopiti se

(17) Adam je utopil Pavla. Adam drown REFL:PAST Paul.

(18) Pavel se je utopil. Paul drown-SE REFL:PAST

Non-reflexive utoniti

(19) *Adam je utonil Pavla. Adam drown NON-REFL:PAST Paul.

(20) Pavel je utonil. Paul drown NON-REFL:PAST

Table 7.6

Inchoative couplets Reflexive

Non-reflex

Reflexive

Non-reflex

‘slim’

odchudzic´ sie˛

chudna˛c´

‘drown’

utopic´ sie˛

utona˛c´

‘cool’

ochłodzic´ sie˛

ochłodna˛c´

‘burn’

spalic´ sie˛

spłona˛c´

‘freeze’

mrozic´ sie˛

marzna˛c´

‘extinguish’

gasic´ sie˛

gasna˛c´

‘wet’

zmoczyc´ sie˛

zmokna˛c´

‘go deaf’

głuszyc´ sie˛

głuchna˛c´

‘dry off’

wysuszyc´ sie˛

wyschna˛c´

‘go blind’

o´slepic´ sie˛

o´slepna˛c´

‘soften’

zmie˛kczyc´ sie˛

zmie˛kna˛c´

‘get hungry’ głodzic´ sie˛

głodniec´

‘quieten’

uciszyc´ sie˛

cichna˛c´

‘humble’

upokorzyc´ sie˛ pokorniec´

zie˛bna˛c´

‘bloom’

kwiecic´ sie˛

kwitna˛c´

nawilgna˛c´

‘beautify’

upie˛kszyc´ sie˛

pie˛kniec´

zie˛bic´ sie˛ . ‘moisten’ nawilzyc´ sie˛

‘chill’

‘cool’

studzic´ sie˛

stygna˛c´

‘rejuvenate’

odmłodzic´ sie˛ odmłodniec´

‘weaken’

osłabic´ sie˛

słabna˛c´

‘soften’

złagodzic´ sie˛

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złagodniec´

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Predictably, the double inchoative is a challenge for learners of Polish who either over-reflexivise the non-alternating equipollent form, or fail to attach reflexive particle to the anticausative form. The difficulty experienced with the inchoative couplets cannot be explained by the mere assertion that the phenomenon in question exhibits a high degree of markedness. The real cause of difficulty is the learner’s failure to notice the correspondence between the morphology and the syntactic behaviour of the verbs presented in Table 7.6: It turns out that the non-alternating unaccusative verbs carry the verbalising affix -na˛-/-nie-, and the remaining reflexive forms have the affix -y-/-i-. This distinction and its consequences for the Polish inchoatives are simple enough, but it is unclear how this regularity could be accommodated under and illuminated by the concept of markedness. The Polish inchoative is indifferent to considerations of markedness, and instead, it is cued by unaccusative marks in the form of distinct verbalising morphemes. The difficulty experienced in the learning of these forms should be approached in terms of how learners perceive the correspondence between the unaccusativity marks (such as the verbalising affixes or the reflexive particles) and the verb’s syntactic behaviour. Conclusions It should be stressed that the causative alternation and its unusual Slavic manifestation are not isolated quirky cases where markedness happens to be less useful. This would merely mean that markedness does not apply to all kinds of learning difficulties; as such, it would really be a petty objection. A more serious problem is that despite the attractiveness of markedness as an over-arching diagnostic, it may turn out to be nothing more than an unnecessary hindrance distracting attention from the real mechanisms responsible for learning difficulty. Even in cases where the correlation between markedness and learning difficulty is confirmed by experience, it is a mistake to stop at the claim that markedness is behind the learning difficulty, while more straightforward explanations are available. References Archibald, J. (1998) Second Language Phonology. Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Callies, M. and Szczesniak, K. (2006) Argument realization and syntactic weight: The use of the dative alternation by advanced German and Polish learners of English – a learner corpus-based study. 27th Annual Meeting of the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Sprachwissenschaft (DGfS), Niemeyer, Tübingen: Bielefeld. Chierchia, G. (2004) A semantics for unaccusatives and its syntactic consequences. In A. Alexiadou, E. Anagnostopoulou and M. Everaert (eds) The Unaccusativity Puzzle: Studies on the Syntax-Lexicon Interface. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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Dowty, D. (2001) The semantic asymmetry of ‘arguments alternations’ and why it matters. In G. van der Meer and A.G.B. ter Meulen (eds) Groninger Arbeiten zur germanistischen Linguistik, no. 44. Groningen: Centre for Language and Cognition. Eckman, F.R. (1977) Markedness and the contrastive analysis hypothesis. Language Learning 27, 315–330. Eckman, F.R. (1991) The Structural Conformity Hypothesis and the acquisition of consonant clusters in the interlanguage of ESL learners. Studies in Second Language Acquisition 13, 23–41. Eckman, F. (2008) Typological markedness and second language phonology. In J.E. Hansen Edwards and M.L. Zampini (eds) Phonology and Second Language Acquisition. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Gass, S. and Selinker, L. (2001) Second Language Acquisition: An Introductory Course. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Haspelmath, M. (1993) More on the typology of inchoative/causative verb alternations. In B. Comrie and M. Polinsky (eds) Causatives and Transitivity (pp. 87–111). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Haspelmath, M. (2006) Against markedness (and what to replace it with). Journal of Linguistics 42, 25–70. Ju, M.K. (2000) Overpassivization errors by second language learners. Studies in Second Language Acquisition 22, 85–111. Kondo, T. (2005) Overpassivization in second language acquisition. International Review of Applied Linguistics in Language Teaching 43, 129–161. Lado, R. (1957) Linguistics Across Cultures: Applied Linguistics for Language Teachers. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Levin, B. (1993) English Verb Classes and Alternations. A Preliminary Investigation. Chicaco: The University of Chicago Press. Levin, B. and Rappaport Hovav, M. (1995) Unaccusativity at the Syntax-Lexical Semantics Interface. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Montrul, S. (2000) Transitivity alternations in L2 acquisition. Toward a modular view of transfer. Studies in Second Language Acquisition 22, 229–273. Nedjalkov, V.P. (1969) Nekotorye verojatnostnye universalii v glagol’nom slovoobrazovanii. In I.F. Vardul’ (ed.) Jazykovye universalii i lingvisticeskaya tipologiya (pp. 106–114). Moscow: Nauka. Pinker, S. (1989) Learnability and Cognition: The Acquisition of Argument Structure. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Perlmutter, D. (1978) Impersonal passive and the Unaccusative Hypothesis. Proceedings of the Fourth Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society. Berkeley Linguistics Society, University of California, Berkeley, 157–189.

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Chapter 8

To Move or Not to Move: Acquisition of L2 English Syntactic Movement Parameter CEM CAN, ABDURRAHMAN KILIMCI and ESRA ALTUNKOL

Introduction This study aims to investigate the L2 acquisition of syntactic movement in English noun clauses by Turkish adults. Recent studies in the second language acquisition (SLA) domain have been influenced by the Generative Grammar-based approaches to a great extent. The major concern of the studies conducted in the SLA field has been the question of whether Universal Grammar (UG), originally developed and proposed to account for the first language acquisition, also constrains the acquisition of a second language. However, as growing research into this issue has not yielded clear-cut answers, L2 studies within the generative framework have shifted from investigating this issue to determining whether interlanguage grammars exhibit natural language characteristics. This study seeks answers to the following questions: (1) Do Turkish adult L2 learners of English have problems, stemming from their L1 linguistic characteristics, with handling the syntactic movement involved in noun clauses in English in their gradual proficiency level of English? (2) Is there any order of acquisition between the noun clauses in subject position and object position along with the various wh- words? The study has been conducted with 87 English as a Foreign Language (EFL) students whose English proficiency levels have been determined by Michigan Placement Test and ranged from intermediate to advanced. Three different data collection tools have been utilised in order to collect data, as well as two international corpora: TICLE and LOCNESS. 132

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Background of the Study Most of the time, studies in SLA that are influenced by UG-based approaches investigate the parametric variations across languages. By investigating such linguistic characteristics of languages, researchers try to shed light on how languages are learned and how languages can be taught. Early SLA studies within a generative framework centred on whether or not learners had access to UG. As theory about UG developed, this interest was replaced by questions, such as how UG is represented in learner language and how learner language displays properties of natural languages (White, 2003). Keeping this in mind, this study aims to investigate how Turkish adult learners of English acquire the syntactic movement process in English noun clauses. The reason for selecting this operation is that English has overt syntactic movement, whereas Turkish does not. [Crain & LilloMartin (1999) state that wh- movement is universal; that is, even in wh- in situ languages some kind of movement occurs at different levels of representation, namely between surface structure and logical form, and this movement is covert unlike the movement in languages with overt wh- movement in which movement occurs at a level between deep structure and surface structure.] To construct a noun clause in English, one needs to make a few operations, one of which is to move the auxiliary out of its deep structure as in the following: [Where is he going]? She asked me [where he is going]. However, as Kornfilt (1997) asserts, in Turkish indirect wh- questions (in the form of noun clauses) are the same as corresponding direct questions. [Kim öl-dü]? Who had died? Hasan bana [kim-in öl –dügˇ-ün] –ü sordu. Hasan I –DAT. who-GEN. die-FNOM.-3rd person SING ACC. ask-PAST Hasan asked me who had died. (Example adapted from Kornfilt, 1997: 53) As wh- questions do not change in indirect forms, no overt grammatical operation is involved in the formation of Turkish noun clauses. Consider the following: Affirmative form: Direct wh- question: Indirect wh- question in a noun clause:

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O gidiyor. S/he is going. [Nereye gidiyor]? Where is s/he going? [Nereye gittigˇini] sordu. S/he asked where s/he is going.

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Subjacency within UG is a principle which restricts the movement of wh- phrases into one bounding node at a time. Once activated, the principle of subjacency brings along the syntactic parameter to operate in the language in question. Therefore, some languages, in which the principle of subjacency does not operate, do not allow syntactic movement on the surface level. Turkish, Japanese and Korean are examples of such languages. However, English is a language which allows overt syntactic movement in various grammatical operations. For example, for the formation of noun clauses in English, we have the following process: S → NP you 1 – S → aux Are 2 – S → whWhere 3 – S → whWhere

aux are NP you aux are NP you

VP going VP going NP you aux are

whwhere whwhere VP going VP going

These steps of the formation process have been observed in native speaker corpus. The following example excerpted from the native speaker corpus implies such an order of acquisition for the noun clauses in English. While hoping not to cause dissension, it is our opinion that the overall decision of [what is art is linked] to the artists ideas behind his or her creation. On the other hand, L2 learners of English normally start with step 2, and then go to 3. This occurrence is probably due to the learning strategies and teaching techniques utilised in L2 classroom. Turkish, however, has no movement in the formation of wh- questions (Aygen, 1999; Kornfilt, 1997; Miyagawa, 2004; Uzun, 2000). For this reason, Turkish is considered a wh- in situ language. The wh- words stay in situ; that is, they remain in their non-interrogative positions (Aygen, 1999). Example: (5a) Ali ne/kitap Ali what/book (5b) Ali Ali

kitabı the book-ACC.

kime/Ays¸e′ye to whom/ Ays¸e-DAT.

verdi?/ give-PAST -3rd person SING.

(5c) Ali

ne zaman/dün

eve

gitti?/

when/yesterday

home-DAT.

go-PAST -3rd person SING.

Ali

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okuyor?/ read-PROG. -3rd person SING.

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L2 Syntactic Movement Parameter

(6)

135

Ays¸e [kimin/Ahmet’in dün uyudugˇun] -u Ays¸e [whose/Ahmet-POSS. yesterday sleep-PAST -3rd person SING.] ACC. söyledi?/ tell-PAST -3rd person SING. (Examples adapted from Uzun, 2000: 301)

As Uzun (2000) indicates, examples (5a), (5b), (5c) and (6) show that the wh- words are in the same position as in their non-interrogative counterparts. However, in some instances wh- words move out of their original positions. Consider the following example (adapted from Uzun, 2000: 301): (7) Kime

Ali

To whom-DAT. Ali

kitabı

verdi?

the book-ACC.

give-PAST -3rd person SING.

Although the wh- word has moved to the front in (7), such kind of a movement is not common in Turkish and only occurs when the speaker wants to emphasise a certain constituent in the sentence. Since wh- questions have no movement, no movement is involved in the formation of noun clauses, either. The following examples further illustrate that syntactic movement is not involved in the formation of noun clauses except for pragmatic purposes: (8a) Nereye

yerles¸ecekleri

herkes

için

[Where-DAT. settle-FUT. -3rd prs. PL -.ACC.] everybody for merak konusuydu. wonder Where they were going to settle was a wonder to everybody. (8b) Nereye yerles¸-ecek-ler? Where-DAT. settle-FUT. -3rd person PL.-NOM. Where are they going to settle? (9a) Partide ne giyecegˇi kimseyi ilgilendirmez. [Part-LOC. what wear-FUT. -3rd person SING.-DAT.] nobody interest What she is going to wear at the party is nobody’s business. (9b) Partide ne giyecek? Party-LOC. what wear-FUT. -3rd person SING. What is she going to wear at the party? Notice the wh- words in Turkish, nereye (where to) in (8a), and ne (what), in (9a) do not move from their original position unlike in English. Hence, syntactic movement is a parametric variation between Turkish and English, and Cook and Newson state that ‘a language with movement requires a

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complex theory to relate the moved and unmoved forms; it assumes an original level at which the elements are unmoved’ (Cook & Newson, 1996: 279). For this reason, Turkish L2 English users are expected to experience some problems in the construction of English noun clauses.

Methodology Subjects The Turkish subjects in this study have been selected from the students attending the English Language Teaching Department of Çukurova University, Adana, through a stratified purposive sampling. The English proficiency levels of all of the subjects have been measured by Michigan Placement Test. In total, 87 subjects have been involved in the study, 46 intermediate and 41 advanced. The ages of the subjects range between 18 and 23. Students from Çukurova University, Mustafa Kemal University and Mersin University have also been involved in the study, through the inclusion of their essays in the TICLE (Turkish International Corpus of Learner English). Besides the TICLE, the Louvain Corpus of Native English Essays (LOCNESS) has additionally been scanned to see the native speakers’ tendency in forming noun clauses in English. Instruments and data collection Grammaticality Judgement Task

The first instrument used in the study was a Grammaticality Judgement Task (GJT). The GJT contained 36 sentences, 18 ungrammatical, violating the syntactic movement of English and 18 grammatical sentences in English. Four sentences contained all of the question words: what, where, why, who, whose, whom, when, which and how. In this task, subjects were asked to read sentences and judge them as Correct (C) or Incorrect (I). The purpose of the GJT was to test subject’s intuitions about grammaticality. Essential here is a definition of the term ‘intuition’ since the term might be misleading. ‘Intuition’ when used in generative grammar means ‘tapping into our subconscious knowledge’. As Carnie states, intuition elicited through GJTs ‘has a scientific basis [and] it is replicable under strictly controlled experimental conditions’ (Carnie, 2001: 12). The subjects were to judge the sentences in the task in a very short period of time (approximately 15 seconds for each item) so that their first intuitions about grammaticality were elicited. Scrambled sentences task

The second instrument used in collecting data was a Scrambled Sentences Task (SST), developed by the researchers. This task, too,

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consisted of 36 sentences. The distribution of the positions of noun clauses and the question words were equal in this task; that is, each wh- word was used twice in subject position with and without an overt auxiliary verb and twice in object position with and without an auxiliary verb. To complete the task, subjects were asked to use the given words to make a grammatical sentence. The purpose of this task was to see the subjects’ written production of noun clauses, to see whether they were able to construct noun clauses in English. Elicited imitation task

Another instrument used in collecting data was an Elicited Imitation Task (EIT) in which the subjects repeated the sentences they heard. The 18 sentences in this task have been taken from the SST, and the sentences used in EIT were controlled in terms of length for the number of the words. As Munnich et al. (1994) state, EITs are different from GJTs, in that GJTs measure the knowledge of ungrammaticality whereas EITs focus on grammaticality in the reproductions of the subjects. Hence, the utterances of the subjects were evaluated on the basis of their correctness in terms of syntactic movement. The purpose of this task was to see whether subjects were able to reconstruct the sentences they heard. TICLE and LOCNESS

The researchers also benefited from the Turkish International Corpus of Learner English (TICLE), the Turkish sub-corpus of International Corpus of Learner English (ICLE) directed by the Universite Catholique de Louvain in Belgium and coordinated and collected by researchers at the ELT department, Çukurova University, Turkey. The TICLE aims to make an outline of the interlanguage of Turkish learners of English and it is a collection of Turkish adult learners’ argumentative essay writings in English. The corpus has been scanned for the specific purpose of this study – to see how the syntactic movement in English is handled by the Turkish adult learners of English in their written performances. TICLE consists of approximately 168,265 words. Another corpus utilised has been the Louvain Corpus of Native English Essays (LOCNESS) which is a collection of the essays written by American university students. LOCNESS consists of approximately 169,422 words.

Data Analysis The data collected from the three tasks have been analysed to see how the knowledge of syntactic movement in English noun clauses is represented in learner language. For this reason, performance of the subjects in the intermediate group has been compared to that of the advanced group. Table 8.1 displays the results obtained from the GJT.

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Table 8.1

Percentages, frequencies and x2 results for GJT

GJT item number 29

25

2

9

33

21

f intermediate advanced 46

100

41

100

46

100

41

100

46

100

41

100

37

80.4

38

92.7

35

76.1

40

97.6

46

100

41

100

43

4

%

41

93.5 100

x2 —

—

—

0.098

0.004*

—

0.096

Note: df  1, n  46 (int.), 41 (adv.), *statistically significant (p  0.05)

The analysed results relating to the GJT indicate that subjects in both groups have not had difficulty in judging items 29, 25, 2 and 21 correctly. That is, both groups have displayed similar characteristics in their judgements of the following items: 29. 25. 2. 21.

[What she wore to the party] is no one’s business. [How she acted at the party] drew everybody’s attention. I don’t know [where he lives]. Although I asked her a lot, she never told me [with whom she was] that day.

If we look at these items closely, we see that only Item 29 and Item 25 contain a noun clause in subject position. The rest are sentences with a noun clause in object position. All of the subjects in both groups have been correct in their judgements for these items. Moreover, items 29, 25 and 2 do not contain an auxiliary verb within the noun clause which suggests that the subjects’ performance on these items might stem from the fact that items without an auxiliary do not require syntactic movement operation. For Item 33, the difference in subjects’ judgements is statistically significant (x2  0.004, p  0.05). For items 9 and 4, the subjects’ judgements are almost significantly different (Item 9: x2  0.098, Item 4: x2  0.096;

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p  0.05). Important to note here is that all of these items contain an auxiliary verb in the construction of the noun clause. This might support our view that the high performances of subjects on items without an auxiliary verb is due to the fact that subjects are not required to show their syntactic movement knowledge on such items. However, subjects must display their syntactic movement knowledge in the following items: 9. Do you know [where is he going tomorrow]? 33. Did you see [who she was talking to] at the party? 4. I can’t remember [which book did she buy]. On all of these items, the advanced group has performed better than the intermediate group which suggests that subjects have a gradual development of the parameter in question. Table 8.2 shows the results obtained form the SST. Table 8.2 shows that the subjects in both groups have had no difficulty in constructing the noun clause in the following items: 21. [Where she went] is still a mystery. 23. [Whoever wanted to say something] raised their hands. Table 8.2 Percentages, frequencies and x2 results for SST SST item number 21

23

35

25

2

10

20

f intermediate advanced

% intermediate advanced

46

100

41

100

46

100

41

100

25

54.3

33

80.5

42

91.3

41 41 41

100 89.1 100

21

45.7

24

58.5

34

73.9

37

90.2

x2 —

—

0.030*

0.053

0.094

0.097

0.050*

Note: df  1, n  46 (int.), 41 (adv.), *statistically significant (p  0.05)

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This outcome was expected since these items do not contain an auxiliary verb. However, the performances of subjects have differed significantly in the following items (Item 35: x2  0.030, Item 20: x2  0.050; p  0.05): 35. [Whose finger triggered the gun] was not so easy to find out. 20. She wanted to know [what the time was]. The subjects’ shortfall in constructing a noun clause without an auxiliary in subject position might stem from the nature of the wh- word whose. As whose requires an NP, the subjects might have problems in relating the whword and the NP, or their shortfall might be stemming from the marked usage of whose in a noun clause in a subject position. For Item 20, though, the movement of the auxiliary to the end of the noun clause structure might lead the subjects in the intermediate group to perform poorly on this item. On Item 25, the subjects in the advanced group have been almost significantly better (x2  0.053; p  0.05) than the subjects in the intermediate group. This item does not contain an auxiliary; however, again, the marked usage of whom in a noun clause in subject position might be the reason for the difference in the groups’ responses. Also important to note is that the subjects have not failed at all to construct the noun clause in Item 25. In the advanced group 100% of the subjects, and in the intermediate group 91.3% of the subjects have been able to construct the following noun clause: 25. [With whom Mary left the party] is a secret. For Item 2, the advanced group’s performance have differed from the intermediate group’s performance with a x2 value of 0.094 (p  0.05). While 100% of the subjects in the advanced group have been able to construct a grammatical noun clause in Item 2, only 89.1% of the subjects in the intermediate group have been able to do so although Item 2 does not contain an auxiliary. 2. [How they left the country] is still a mystery. Similarly, both groups’ performances have decreased dramatically when the subjects have been expected to use how in subject position, this time with an auxiliary verb. Although both groups’ performances are low for Item 10, the advanced group has performed almost significantly better on this item with a x2 value of 0.097 (p  0.05). Only 45.7% of the subjects in the intermediate group and 58.5% of the subjects in the advanced group have been able to construct the noun clause in the following item: 10. [How she was going to pass the test] developed a great interest among the teachers.

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Table 8.3 Percentages, frequencies and x2 results for EIT EIT item number 17

1

14

f intermediate advanced

% intermediate advanced

40

87

41

100

44

95.7

34

82.9

31

67.4

34

82.9

x2 0.017*

0.052

0.096

Note: df  1, n  46 (int.), 41 (adv.), *statistically significant (p  0.05)

Table 8.3 shows the results obtained form the EIT. As Table 8.3 shows, the advanced group has performed significantly better than the intermediate group when the subjects have been asked to reproduce a noun clause in subject position with an auxiliary verb. While 100% of the subjects in the advanced group has been able to reproduce the noun clause in Item 17, only 87% of the subjects in the intermediate group has been able to do so. This means that the advanced group has performed significantly better than the intermediate group on Item 17 with a x2 value of 0.017 (p  0.05). 17. [What she is going to wear to the party] is nobody’s business. When we look at Item 1 in which the wh- word whom is used in subject position, we see that the intermediate group has performed almost significantly better (x2  0.052, p  0.05) on this item. Only 82.9% of the subjects in the advanced group has been able to reproduce the noun clause in Item 1 whereas 95.7% of the subjects in the intermediate group has been able to do so. 1. [Whom you are going to play chess with] is important. However, on Item 14 in which the subjects have been required to reproduce a noun clause in object position with an auxiliary verb, the advanced group has performed almost significantly better (x2  0.096, p  0.05). Only 67.4% of the subjects in the intermediate group has been able to reproduce the noun clause in Item 14 whereas 82.9% of the subjects in the advanced group has been able to do so. 14. You must decide to [whom you are going to send] the invitations. As mentioned earlier, we have also benefited from two international corpora TICLE and LOCNESS in our study. The overall analysis of both

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corpora reveals that the noun clauses in object position are more frequent than the noun clauses in subject position in both corpora. Moreover, while the subjects in both corpora show similar preferences regarding the noun clause usage and wh- word choice in subject position, their preferences change in the usage of noun clauses and wh- word choice in object position. While, the subjects in the NS corpus tend to use how and why clauses more frequently, the subjects in the NNS corpus significantly (p  0.01) underuse these wh- words. The few grammatically unacceptable sentences in the corpora do not suggest that subjects have problems with the usage of noun clauses, because the NS corpus, as well as the NNS, has grammatically unacceptable sentences. This may be due to performance errors of the subjects.

Conclusion Limited to noun clauses, the purpose of this study has been to test the Turkish subjects’ knowledge on the syntactic movement parameter. The results obtained from the data analysis indicate that the subjects do not fully lack knowledge of syntactic movement nor have they fully mastered the usage of noun clauses which requires them to display their knowledge of syntactic movement. While subjects in the advanced group are more competent in terms of handling syntactic movement operations, they still have problems with noun clauses especially when there is an auxiliary verb involved. The results of the study also imply that the subjects in both groups have problems with noun clauses which contain an auxiliary verb. This outcome is actually what one expects since noun clauses which have an auxiliary verb require syntactic movement, whereas noun clauses without auxiliaries do not. Despite the fact that the subjects in both groups have not fully mastered the knowledge of syntactic movement, the results show that the advanced group performs better in handling the problems stemming from their L1 linguistic characteristics. This shows that, although there are fluctuations in their performances, the subjects have a gradual development in the acquisition of this particular parameter. In the analysis of the data, our first hypothesis was that there might be an order of acquisition since the subjects in both groups tend to use noun clauses in object position with more ease than in the subject position. Moreover, it was observed that in EIT and SST even when the noun clause they were expected to use was in subject position, subjects tended to use pseudo-clefts so that the noun clause was constructed in object position. However, the analysis of the corpora reveals that the subjects in the NS group also have a preference to use noun clauses in object position. This means that the excessive use of noun clauses in object position by NNS

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does not necessarily imply an order of acquisition. Nonetheless, data obtained from our tasks and corpora reveal that a grammatical preference is involved in the usage of noun clauses by both NS and NNS. References Aygen, G. (1999) Q-particle in Turkish Japanese and Sinhala. Proceedings of the International Conference, Cuba, Havana. On WWW at http://www.fas.harvard. edu/~lingpub/misc/tosun/Q%20Particle.pdf. Accessed 25.5.05. Carnie, A. (2001) Syntax. Oxford: Blackwell. Cook, V.J. and Newson, M. (1996) Chomsky’s Universal Grammar (2nd edn). Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Crain, S. and Lillo-Martin, D. (1999) An Introduction to Linguistic Theory and Language Acquisition. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing. Kornfilt, J. (1997) Turkish. London: Routledge. Miyagawa, S. (2004) Wh-in-situ and scrambling in the context of comparative altaic syntax. Proceedings of the First Workshop on Altaic Formal Linguistics. MIT Working Papers in Linguistics. On WWW at http://web.mit.edu/miyagawa/ www/pdfs/Wh-in-situ_scramble_WAFL.pdf. Accessed 31.5.05. Munnich, E., Flynn, S. and Martohardjono, G. (1994) Elicited imitation and grammaticality judgment tasks: What they measure and how they relate to each other. In E. Tarone, S. Gass and A. Cohen (eds) Research Methodology in Second Language Acquisition (pp. 227–243). New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Publishers. Uzun, N.E. (2000). Anaçizgileriyle Evrensel Dilbilgisi ve Türkçe. I˙stanbul: Multilingual. White, L. (2003) Second Language Acquisition and Universal Grammar. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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Chapter 9

Last to Acquire: On the Relation of Concession in Interpreting ANDRZEJ ŁYDA

Introduction In her study on the development of because and so Braunwald (1997) discusses the emergence of the causal connectives in her daughter Laura from age 15– 42 months. As she observes commenting on an entry in her hand-recorded daily diary, when Laura was 2.0:18 the following exchange took place: Form of because: L 2;0.18 is sitting across the table from M. There is no eliciting event. L has used because once before at 1;10.2) L: Why? Because. Because. Nanny Edith coming. Edith coming. Because Nanny Mickey come here. Because (at least 20 times) Because Nanny Mickey coming. (pause) Because Nanny Edith coming. M: Because what, Laura? L: You say why. M: Why? L: Because Nanny Mickey coming. (Braunwald, 1997: 127) For Braunwald this exchange is a clear case of Laura’s beginning to form an association between the word why and the causal connective because. What makes causal connectives different from adversative and concessive connectives, is among others the fact that while there is a wh- question eliciting a because- answer, there is no simple interrogative lexeme that elicits an although- answer. In other words there is a why to every because while there is no why to any although. This simple fact brings about a whole array of questions related to the mechanism of the acquisition of adversative and concessive connectives and processing sentences containing them. Many of the questions have been given attention and found an answer in first language acquisition studies. Less interest has been taken in the acquisition of concessives/adversatives in foreign language research. 144

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Finally, studies on processing of clauses of that type in bilingual interpreting, most often involving the interpreter’s first and second/foreign language are still rare. As will be shown later the relation of concession is generally regarded as semantically, and to a certain degree syntactically complex. It can be expected then that processing of the relation within the constrains of consecutive and simultaneous interpreting (SI) can be a demanding task and that interpreters will resort to various strategies to complete it successfully. It is expected then that the strategies can be indicative of the interpreters’ understanding of the relation. The present study has been designed as the first stage of research aiming to investigate selected aspects of English–Polish interpreters’ performance in consecutive interpreting (CI) of texts containing instances of the relation of concession (for the results of the second part see Łyda, 2006).

Acquisition of Connectives There is no doubt that the first emergence of a connective at a certain age, such as because above, cannot be regarded as evidence of its ‘complete’ acquisition and that the first emergence must be followed by a further development. The range of contexts, both linguistic and social, in which a connective is used remains at that time very restricted, much as correct is the use of the connective in the context in which it appears. Indeed, for example McCabe and Peterson (1997) reported that in their study the number of real mistakes of all connective usage in personal narratives of children of 4–9 years of age was very low and amounted to less than 5%. However these researchers were also cautious to add that the correctness of use of connectives depends on the type of semantic relationship that they encode and also the subtype of particular relations, which in the case of causal relations refers to psychological, physical or logical causality (Corrigan, 1975; Hood & Bloom, 1979). How the completeness of connective acquisition should be ascertained has been often discussed in the rich literature. For Nelson (1991: 283) the process of acquisition of a new word can be viewed as complete when the speaker has already acquired its phonological form, ‘its extension to referents or its use in discourse’, its meaning and its relation to other lexical forms. In the similar vein Berman (1996: 345) argues that the process of attaining full mastery involves the development of understanding of semantic denotations and pragmatic use, the ability to use the new linguistic form in ‘extended syntactic contexts’ and in different styles and registers. Elaborating on Nelson’s criterion of the child’s understanding of the relation between the newly-acquired lexical form and the word forms already held to be acquired Evers-Vermeul (2005) claims that this

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criterion should be understood as the speaker’s ability to make a choice between: (1) leaving the coherence relation implicit; (2) using an underspecified connective (i.e., a connective which is less specific than the intended relation, cf. Spooren 1997); or (3) selecting a specified connective from a set of more or less equally suitable connectives, taking into account the specific linguistic context (e.g. narrative or argumentative) as well as the social context (e.g. formal or informal). (Evers-Vermeul, 2005: 176) Thus, the acquisition of a new linguistic form, including connectives, consists not only in developing an ability to use the new form. It also involves the ability to refrain from the use of a form with no devastating consequences for discourse organisation and comprehension, either as a result of a complete resignation or substitution of a semantically/pragmatically related item for the semantically/pragmatically ‘richer’ one. In the latter case the task of recovering the intended meaning is delegated to the hearers and their ability to account for contextual and co-textual clues. A somewhat different view on connectives acquisition in L1 holds that the fact that errors are found in production of sentences with connectives does not follow directly from incomplete acquisition of connectives but from the still imperfect development of cognitive abilities and incomplete understanding of conceptual relations involving temporality and causality. The concessive/adversative relations are generally regarded as cognitively most complex ones, which is reflected in the order of acquisition of connectives in English speaking children. They are almost unanimously reported to be the last to acquire in L1. Piaget (1969) has shown how late in the process of acquisition semantically complex but and although are finally fully mastered. Also Bloom et al. (1980) claim that the order of acquisition of different types of connectives is strongly related to their relative order of complexity. Accordingly, the acquisition is said to conform to the pattern: additive
temporal
causal
adversative, which finds its confirmation in the studies on the emergence of the linguistic exponents of these relations in children and  because  when  but (cf. Bloom et al., 1980; Diessel, 2004). It is then relatively late that children are able to grasp the underlying relations, and although data are controversial in this respect, it can be generally accepted that the age of 6–8 is when children fully realise the logical implications of concessive connections (cf. Wing & Scholnick, 1981 on the acquisition of subordinating conjunctions). The complex nature of concession finds its confirmation also in studies on processing concessive sentences by adults. For example, Townsend (1997) has found that reading times for sentences combined with causal

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therefore were faster than in however sentences. Also a study undertaken by de Vega (2005) demonstrated that the rate of processing/ reading of adversative/concessive sentences was lower than in the case of causal or temporal ones when a connective was replaced with an inadequate one: Los resultados mostraron que el tiempo de lectura de la segunda cláusula era mayor cuando iba precedida de un conector inapropiado (cualquiera que fuese la sustitución: aditiva por adversativa, causal por adversativa, adversativa por causal, etcétera), que cuando había ausencia de conector. Sin embargo, la interferencia fue mayor cuando se introducía un conector adversativo inapropiado, que cuando era un conector aditivo o causal inapropiado. Este resultado confirma que los conectores adversativos se diferencia más de los causales y aditivos, que estos últimos entre sí. (de Vega, 2005: 91) The two relations involving the two semantic primitives referred to earlier, time and causality, are relatively easy to describe. After all, there have been proposed various cultural and linguistic models of time, in which time is conceptualised by means of a few more basic concepts as space and movement in space. Similarly, casuality has also been explained in terms of temporal categories like earlier: later. Given the hypothesis that the acquisition of these relations entails the acquisition of conceptual relations based on such primitives as time or casuality, it can be interesting to ask what it is that we are said to have mastered in the case of concession. The history of research into concessivity shows however there is no simple answer to the question about its semantic structure.

The Relation of Concession Although the discussion in the preceding sections concentrated on the relation of concession the reader might have had an impression that the terms concession and adversativity have been used almost interchangeably. In what follows I shall explain my position in this respect and specify the sense in which the term concession will be used further. The understanding of concession has been undergoing a continuous development paralleling the development of new linguistic theories and the emergence of new fields of linguistic studies. The common denominator for a variety of senses in which concession has been used is however that it presents a kind of relation of contrast: a contrast of expectations and a contrast to the normal cause-and-effect. In a majority of studies concession is referred to as a relation between two clauses: the adverbial concessive clause and the main one combined by a subordinating conjunction of concessive type, where the idea of concessivity is actually expressed in the main clause (Molencki, 1997: 352).

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For some linguists the relation of concession is simply determined by a set of subordinating connectives, such as although, however, even though, though, etc. By contrast, the traditional lexical markers of adversativity include among others but and whereas. Thus, it is claimed that whether a sentence should be regarded as expressing concession or adversativity can be established on the basis of the connectives involved. A major problem with such a definition follows from the fact that seldom are particular connectives restricted in their use to one and only semantic relation and, as Spooren observes, the semantics of connectives used to indicate a link between segments of text does not necessarily ‘match the semantics of the relation that is intended by the speaker or writer’ (Spooren, 1997: 150). Further, it should be also stressed that connectives are multifunctional and that they exhibit a high degree of underspecification of relations indicated by connectives, which can be tested by substituting a more explicit connective for the underspecified one (Givón, 1990: 828), as for example the exchange of because for and. Others, such as Grochowski (1976), would rather claim that concession, which is not related to sentence type, is only a traditional umbrella term for at least three types of interclausal semantic relations, as exemplified by (1) although p, q, (2) even if p, q and (3) p does not depend on q. In their attempt to find a single universal semantic basis for different concessive meanings König (1988) and König and Siemund (2000) have argued that there exist a relation between concessives and causal constructions, such that¬ (Because P, ¬Q) is equivalent to Although P, Q. The idea of causality as underlying concession has been revisited and modified by Di Meola (1997). Contrary to previous studies, in which concessive relations have been thought to involve one causal relation, Di Meola proposes that two such relations be identified, of which one is ‘hidden’ and the understanding of concessive sentences involves more processing effort as the explicit and implicit (hidden) causes have to be compared. Apart from the syntactic-semantic approach, concession has been also studied within Rhetorical Structure Theory, in which the identification of the concessive markers is based on a definition of concession as a rhetorical relation of a nucleus–satellite (N–S) type between two spans of texts, whose size ranges from a clause to units above the clause. The essence of the relation lies in the speaker’s acknowledgement of ‘apparent incompatible’ information followed by the nucleus span, that is, in a dual simultaneous perception of the nucleus and satellite situations, regarded as apparently incompatible but actually compatible. Thus, the type of connectives employed is not a defining factor of concession. Accordingly, both the traditional ‘adversative’ connectives like but and traditional concessive connectives like although can be employed for marking concession.

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The study The study has been designed to provide answers to the following research questions: • What strategies of rendering the relation of concession are used by Polish novice interpreters from English into Polish. • What strategies of rendering the relation of concession are used by Polish novice interpreters from English into Polish if the concessive marker becomes unavailable to them due to auditory problems (muffled speech, technical problems, etc.). • What do the strategies of rendering the relation of concession tell us about the interpreters’ understanding of the relation of concession. Methods and goals The study’s sample consisted of five 5th year female students of translation and interpreting in the Institute of English, University of Silesia, who had been studying English as a foreign language for at least nine years. Their language proficiency level was very high and their competence in English–Polish interpreting was equally high, although at the time of the study they lacked genuine interpreting experience in real conference setting. All the students knew also German as a foreign language and two were studying French.

Materials and Procedure For the purposes of the study two English texts were used. The two texts had been produced by this author on the basis of an authentic speech, slightly modified in some parts so that it included nine concessive connectives. The two texts had identical structures and they differed only in their subject matter. This information was not imparted to the students. The first text, PM Speech on Climate Change of 14 September 2004 (http:// www.pm.gov.uk/output/Page6333.asp), originally consisting of almost 4000 words, was shortened to 1816 words, with some parts rewritten and converted into concessive constructions, and its delivery took about 13 minutes, that is, at the rate of 140 words per minute. The other ‘artificial’ text, following the structure of the original one, was shorter by 208 words and concerned the issue of changes in education. In this text all concessive markers were made unavailable to the interpreter, having been jammed with a microphone-speaker reflux sound. This procedure was preferred to a simple removal of concessive markers from the sound track, as this would have produced an unnatural pause in the source text production.

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The number of concessive connectives present in the texts followed from earlier reports in the relevant literature on their frequency, which for spoken discourse has the mean value of about 27 instances an hour (see e.g. Barth-Weingarten, 2003). The decision was made that since the analysed speech was as a prepared written text for oral presentation, the number of connectives could be exceed the norm so as not to suggest indirectly what the intended object and goal of the study was. The students participating in the tasks were not told that their output would be analysed in respect of the means of coherence marking because, as might have been expected, rather than produce target texts as complete as possible with an acceptable fluency of the output, they would have concentrated on its structural aspects. However, they were told that the recording was technically imperfect and on a few occasion they might hear a very short reflux sound. The students’ consecutive output was recorded in the interpreting booths in March 2005 and four weeks later the recording session was repeated with the second text. The texts were divided into relatively equal parts of 2.5 minutes. After each of the parts the subjects interpreted the source text into Polish. The syndetic concessives in Text 1 were as follows: (1) From the start of the industrial revolution more than 200 years ago, developed nations have achieved ever greater prosperity and higher living standards. But through this period our activities have come to affect our atmosphere, oceans, geology, chemistry and biodiversity. (2) A recent opinion survey by Greenpeace showed that 78% of people are concerned about climate change. But people are confused about what they can do. (3) For example, on the marine environment, I believe there are strong arguments for a new approach to managing our seas, including a new Marine Bill. But tonight I want to concentrate on what I believe to be the world’s greatest environmental challenge: climate change. (4) It is the poorest countries in the world that will suffer most from severe weather events, longer and hotter droughts and rising oceans. Yet it is they who have contributed least to the problem. (5) That is the gloomy evidence. Nevertheless there is one overriding positive: through the science we are aware of the problem and, with the necessary political and collective will, have the ability to address it effectively. (6) Here it is important to stress the scale of the implications for the developing world. It is far more than an environmental one, massive though that is. (7) Although there is still a handful of sceptics, there is a virtual worldwide scientific consensus on the scope of the problem.

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(8) (9)

151

The number of people affected by floods worldwide is already 150 million today, although it was only 7 million in the 1960s. Although the latest estimates suggest that greenhouse gas emissions in 2003 were about 14% below 1990 levels, we have to do more to achieve our commitment to reduce the emission by 20% by 2010.

In the modified Text 2, the analysed sentences were as follows, with * / marking the deleted connective (in bold type). (10)

(11)

(12)

(13)

(14)

(15) (16) (17) (18)

From the start of the educational revolution, developed nations have achieved ever greater prosperity and higher living standards. * / But through this period our activities have not brought about enough changes in our attitude to ourselves. A recent opinion survey showed that 78% of people are concerned about the present situation in education. But people are confused about what they can do. For example, on the higher education, I believe there are strong arguments for a new approach to managing our universities. */ But tonight I want to concentrate on what I believe to be the our greatest educational problem: violence in schools. It is the poorest people in this country that will suffer most from the changes. */ Yet it is they who have contributed least to the problem. That is the gloomy evidence. */ Nevertheless there is one overriding positive: through the science we are aware of the problem and, with the necessary political and collective will, have the ability to address it effectively. Here it is important to stress the scale of the implications. It is far more than a moral one, massive */ though that is. */ Although there is still a handful of sceptics, there is a virtual consensus on the scope of the problem. The number of people affected is already 1.5 million today, */ although it was only 200 thousand in the 1960s. */ Although the latest estimates suggest that the figures in 2003 were about 14% below 1990 levels, we have to do more to achieve our commitment to reduce it by 20% by 2010.

Results After collecting the data in both interpreting tests, an analysis was performed in terms of several criteria. First, the output was studied to determine whether the two propositions between which the relation of concession holds had been interpreted or whether the subjects failed to render the source text, that is, whether they omitted any part.

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Second, if the answer to the first question was positive, the target text was analysed in terms of the concession marking means. A further analysis was also carried out if the propositions were retained but the concessive markers had been replaced by connectives of other type. In each of the tests designed for consecutive interpreting, the total number of English connectives of concessive type was nine. With five interpreters this amounted to the total of 45 connectives. From a purely theoretical point of view, this could have produced an identical number of their Polish counterparts. However, as can be seen in Table 9.1, the total number of concessives rendered by means of Polish concessive connectives is much lower. Thus, the three major categories of ST rendition were: omission (column 4), retention (columns 5 and 6), and change (column 7). For Test Two an additional category of grammaticality of the span of text resulting from the omission of the concessive connective was added as Column G in Table 9.2. The qualitative and quantitative results for Test 1 and Test 2 are shown in Table 9.1 and Table 9.2, respectively.

Discussion of the Results Both traditionally identified modes of interpreting, simultaneous and consecutive, are marked by temporal constraints. However, in the case of CI these constraints are less severe since it is only in the reception stage that the interpreter is dependent on the speaker-paced input, while the stage of output production is predominantly governed by the interpreters themselves. This is not to mean however that the process of CI is free from any other load at all. Just like SI, CI interpreting requires of the interpreter sharing attentional capacity between the two stages as well as between two simultaneously performed subtask of each phase: listening to the input and note-taking, which is followed by deciphering the notes and producing the target text. Generally however the load of split attention is lower and the quality of CI output is higher than in the SI. Different as views on determinants of quality are, one of the diagnostic tools is accuracy measured by the number of retained propositions. When viewed in this way the quality of CI of Text 1 is high, at least as regards concessive constructions. The total number of omissions of concessive spans of the text amounted to 9%, which is a figure similar to 12.5% of omission of adversative conjunctions reported in Gumul (2004). Also the aggregate figure for omissions and sense distortions is not high and amounts to 16%. Although these omission may result from a number of reasons, it is worth noting that the most problematic concessive sequence was found in Example 5. Here the relation of concession was marked by a very short clause with inverted word order (massive though that is), likely to pass unnoticed by the interpreters due to split attention failure.

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But

But

Yet

Nevertheless

Though

Although

Although

Although

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

Although X Y

X although Y

Although X Y

X though Y

X. Nevertheless Y

X. Yet Y

X. But Y

X. But Y

X. But Y

Clause order

Marker

But

3

2

1 3 (~7%)

4 (9%)

0

0

0

0

1

1

0

33 (~73%)

ale (2); pomimo, pomimo, z˙e

Jednak, (2) Mimo to (2)

Jednak; (2); ale (2); (po)mimo, z˙e (1)

Choc´(iaz˙ ) (3)

Jednak(z˙e) (5)

Mimo, z˙e (2); a (1) przeciez˙ (1)

Jednak (2); ale (1)

Jednak (2); ale (2)

Jednak (2); ale (1)

Translations with a concession marker

Mistranslations/ partial translation with a concessive marker; sense distortion 0

6

5

0

0

0

2

0

1

0

1

0

Omission

4

Segments 1–9 of Text 1 in English–Polish consecutive interpreting task

1

1

Table 9.1

5 (~11%)

0

Wzrósł (1)

Oprócz (1)

0

0

0

´ (1) Ø

0

Równoczes´ nie (1); i (1)

Translations without a concessive marker; other solutions

7

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But

Yet

Nevertheless X. Nevertheless Y

though

Although

although

Although

12

13

14

15

16

17

18

Although X Y

X although Y

Although X Y

X though Y

X. Yet Y

X. But Y

X. But Y

But

11

X. But Y

Clause order

Marker

But

3

2

4

5

6

1 5 (~11%)

0 1 0 3 1 0 0 5 (~11%)

   −   

0

0

0

0

1

2 (that is why)

1 (poniewaz˙)

0



0

0



´ (1) Ø Równoczes´ nie (1); i (1)

Jakkolwiek 1

0

22 (~49%)

ale (2)

Jednak, (2)

13 (~29%)

´ (2) Ø

W porównaniu z; Podczas gdy; a

Jednak; (2); ale (1); sa˛ tez˙

Choc´ (1)

Jednak(z˙ e) (5)

0

´ (1) Jednak (1); ale (1) Ø A przeciez˙ (2)

7 Translations without a concessive marker; other solutions

´ (2) Jednak (1); ale (1) Ø

Jednak (2)

Mistranslations or partial translation with a concessive Translations with a concession marker; sense Grammaticality Omission distortion marker

G

Segments 10–18 of Text 2 in English–Polish consecutive interpreting task

10

1

Table 9.2

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Judging from the overall scores, we can notice that the accuracy index for the rendition of concession markers in Polish was very high (73%). This is in agreement with Shlesinger’s (1995) who argues that in interpreting tasks there can be observed a decreasing omission rate ‘if the connective encoded procedural meaning of addition (e.g. in addition), condition, concession or result, the last three subsumed under the category of causal conjunction’. Further support for the claim comes from a study by Łyda and Gumul (2002). For the five English concessive markers but, although, though, yet and nevertheless, the subjects used a variety of Polish concessive connectives: jednak(z˙ e) (15), ale (8) (po)mimo (z˙ e) (9) and a przeciez˙ (1). Correlation patterns between English and Polish concession markers are shown in Figure 9.1. Interestingly, the most common and versatile Polish connective chociaz˙ , uniquely indicating the relation of concession, was used only three times to render though-clause. As it seems, this low score for chociaz˙ /choc´ should be associated with the high number of jednak/jednakz˙ e, a connective conjunct, which entering the pattern X. Jednak Y allows the interpreter to delay the production of the second sentence and thus delay the marking of the semantic/rhetorical relation. This finds an additional confirmation in the fact that also sentence-initial although was rendered by jednakz˙ e/ jednak and (po)mimo to, both having the same delaying effect. As a consequence of that strategy of partitioning complex sentences into simple ones linked by connective conjuncts rather than conjunctions, the target texts in Examples 1–9 were in most cases longer than the source texts. This is against the general tendency observed in CI that ‘good’ target

Figure 9.1 Correlation patterns between English and Polish concession markers in Test 1

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language texts are shorter and more concise than the source-language texts (Viaggio, 2002). Concessive markers were omitted also in another group of translations, the common denominator of which is that the target-language texts did not preclude the possibility of their concessive interpretation. This strategy was observed in 11% of all cases and was effected through the use of temporal expressions like równoczes´nie (at the same time), expressions of concomitance ‘i’ (and) and oprócz (next to), verb phrase wzrosna˛c´ z . . . do (grow from . . . to) implicating a cause-and-effect relation and one asyndetic ´ ). construction (Ø The second test, in which the concessive markers were deleted, produced diametrically different results in respect of omission (1), mistranslation (2), retention (reconstruction) of the concessive link (3), and other acceptable compensation strategies (4) (see Figure 9.2). Although the missing concessive markers caused ungrammaticality of only one concessive sequence (Example 5) the overall accuracy in the interpreting task decreased. The deterioration was not significant, because the number of omissions increased by one and in two more concessive spans their sense was distorted. Where major changes in the distribution occurred was in the groups of retention and compensation strategies. As concerns the first of these groups, it was only in 22 speech fragments out of 45 that the subjects decided for a concessive interpretation. At the same time they refrained from an explicit syndetic marking of the relation of concession between two spans in as many as 13 cases or 29%. This distribution seems to follow from what Hatim and Mason (1997: 42) define as access to text in different interpreting modes. Given that in CI, the interpreter has the only effective access to the source text via its

80

73

70 60 49

50

Text 1

40 29

30

Text 2

20 10

9 11

7

1

2

11

11

0 3

4

Figure 9.2 Percentages of strategies of interpreting concessive constructions from English into Polish

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structure whereas ‘texture and context are retained only in a most shortlived manner and can be stored more effectively via structure’, it should not be unanticipated that any disturbance to the structure may have a detrimental effect on the interpreter’s performance. Since the load on memory in this mode is substantial, the interpreter has to concentrate on the flow of ideas (rhetorical moves), which can be impeded for example by problems in the listening phase such as missing textual elements. This is convincingly illustrated in Example 15, the only syntactically ill-formed sequence, which brought about three omissions. Also the time period needed by the interpreters to produce their output was almost the same as in the first task although the second text was shorter. This indirectly supports the view held that processing asyndetic constructions reduce the cognitive effort in the speaker but they simultaneously increase the cognitive effort for the hearer, that is, the interpreter, even though, as Brown and Yule (1983: 66) argue, ‘human beings do not require formal textual markers before they are prepared to interpret a text [. . .]’. Actually, the same applies to interpreters, who as mediators between the source and target texts, can elect to produce an asyndetic construction or alternatively provide a connective as a processing instruction for the audience. Among the strategies listed in column 7 in Table 9.2 there can be found six asyndetic constructions (e.g. Example 11), in which the juxtaposition of two sentences may induce a concessive interpretation. Like in Test 1 the remaining means applied by the subjects included lexical means expressing concomitance of seemingly incompatible events and addition (three cases: i, a, w porównaniu), temporal relation of simultaneity (three cases: równoczes´nie, podczas gdy, gdy) and hypothetical concession ( jakkolwiek). Generally then, the concessive interpretation is not provided explicitly, yet the use of multifunctional connectives delegates the responsibility for such an interpretation to the hearer.

Concluding Remarks Although it is difficult to extrapolate firm conclusions from a study of five subjects, it seems justified to say that the relation of concession – the last one to acquire – is a definite challenge to interpreters from their L2 into L1 since the relation requires of the interpreters not only language competence but also general and area-specific knowledge that makes it possible to notice compatibility of two seemingly incompatible events. Since that kind of knowledge can be unavailable to the interpreters, they often resort to strategies of delaying the relation marking, undertranslating by leaving the relation implicit or using underspecified connectives. This, as has been argued after Evers-Vermeul and Spoorens (see section Acquisition of Connectives) is a strong indicator of complete acquisition

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of a new lexical item. To what degree the same strategies are used in L1 to L2 interpreting needs to be accounted for in further studies. References Barth-Weingarten, D. (2003) Concession in Spoken English. On the Realisation of a Discourse-Pragmatic Relation. Tübingen: Narr. Berman, R.A. (1996) Form and function in developing narrative abilities. In D.I. Slobin, J. Gerhardt, A. Kyratzis and J. Guo (eds) Social Interaction, Social Context, and Language (pp. 343–367). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Bloom, L., Lahey, M., Hood, L., Lifter, K. and Fiess, K. (1980) Complex sentences: Acquisition of syntactic connectives and the semantic relations they encode. Journal of Child Language 7, 235–261. Reprinted in Bloom, L. (1991) Language Development From Two to Three (pp. 261–289). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Braunwald, S.R. (1997) The development of because and so: Connecting language, thought, and social understanding. In J. Costermans and M. Fayol (eds) Processing Interclausal Relationships: Studies in the Production and Comprehension of Text (pp. 121–137). New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Brown, G. and Yule, G. (1983) Discourse Analysis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Corrigan, R. (1975) A scalogram analysis of the development of the use and comprehension of ‘because’ in children. Child Development 46, 195–201. de Vega, M. (2005) El procesamiento de oraciones con conectores adversativos y causales. Cognitiva 17, 85–108. Diessel, H. (2004) The Acquisition of Complex Sentences. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Di Meola, C. (1997) Der Ausdruck der Konzessivität in der Deutschen Gegenwartssprache: Theorie und Beschreibung anhand eines Vergleichs mit dem Italienischen. Tübingen: Niemeyer. Evers-Vermeul, J. (2005) The Development of Dutch Connectives; Change and Acquisition as Windows on Form-Function Relations. LOT Dissertation Series 110, Utrecht University. On WWW at http://igitur-archive.library.uu.nl/dissertations/20050817-200059/. (Pdf version downloaded 20 March 2006). Givón, T. (1990) Syntax: A Functional-Typological Introduction (Vol. 2). Amsterdam/ Philadelphia: Benjamins. Grochowski, M. (1976) O strukturze semantycznej przyzwolenia. In M.R. Meyenowa (ed.) Semantyka tekstu i je˛zyka (pp. 225–237). Wrocław: Ossolineum. Gumul, E. (2004) Cohesion in interpreting. Unpublished PhD dissertation, University of Silesia. Hatim, B. and Mason, I. (1997) Translator as a Communicator. Amsterdam/ Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Hood, L. and Bloom, L. (1979) What, when and how about why: A longitudinal study of early expressions of causality. Monographs of the Society of Research on Child Development 44, No. 6. König, E. (1988) Concessive connectives and concessive sentences: Cross-linguistic regularities and pragmatic principles. In J.A. Hawkins (ed.) Explaining Language Universals (pp. 146–166). New York: Blackwell. König, E. and Siemund, P. (2000) Causal and concessive clauses: Formal and semantic relations. In E. Couper-Kuhlen and B. Kortmann (eds) Cause, Condition, Concession and Contrast. Cognitive and Discourse Perspectives (pp. 341–360). Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter.

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Łyda, A. (2006) Asyndetic subordination in interpreting: The case of concessive markers. In K. Bartsch, H. Arlt, P. Horn, D.G. Daviau and G. Durusoy (eds) Innovations and Reproductions in Cultures and Societies. Vienna: Trans. Łyda, A. and Gumul, E. (2002) Cohesion in interpreting. In D. Stanulewicz (ed.), PASE Papers in Language Studies (pp. 349–356). Gdan´ sk: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Gdan´ skiego. McCabe, A. and Peterson, C. (1997) Meaningful ‘mistakes’: The systematicity of children’s connectives in narrative discourse and the social origins of this usage about the past. In J. Costermans and M. Fayol (eds) Processing Interclausal Relationships: Studies in the Production and Comprehension of Text (pp. 139–154). New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Molencki, R. (1997) Concessive clauses in Chaucer’s prose. In J. Fisiak (ed.) Studies in Middle English Linguistics (pp. 351–371). Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Nelson, K. (1991) The matter of time: Interdependencies between language and thought in development. In S.A. Gelman and J.P. Byrnes (eds) Perspectives on Language and Thought: Interrelations in Development (pp. 278–318). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Piaget, J. (1969) Judgement and Reasoning in the Child. New Jersey: Littlefield, Adams. Shlesinger, M. (1995) Shifts in cohesion in simultaneous interpreting. Translator (pp. 193–214). Spooren, W. (1997) The processing of underspecified coherence relations. Discourse Processes 24, 149–168. Townsend, D.J. (1997) Processing clauses and their relationship. In J. Costermans and M. Fayol (eds) Processing Interclausal Relationships: Studies in the Production and Comprehension of Text (pp. 265–282). New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Viaggio, S. 2002. The quest for optimal relevance: The need to equip students with a pragmatic compass. In G. Garzone and M. Viezzi (eds) Interpreting in the 21st Century (pp. 229–244). Wing, C.S. and Scholnick, E.K. (1981) Children’s comprehension of pragmatic concepts expressed in ‘because’, ‘although’, ‘if’ and ‘unless’. Journal of Child Language 8, 347–365.

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Chapter 10

Pragmatic (In)Competence in EFL Writing RÜDIGER ZIMMERMANN

Introduction It is the purpose of this chapter is to take an initial look at the interaction of text schema knowledge and politeness as important factors in interactive EFL writing.

Politeness as an Interactive Strategy? I do not propose to go into the discussion of whether polite behaviour is by its very nature strategic (which is the approach of Brown & Levinson, 1987 and Leech, 1983) or only conventional (alternative of Fraser, 1990). A decision may not make sense on principle, but rather depend on the specific communicative situation. Here, in letter writing, it seems that certain polite acts are such conventionalised parts of the text schema that their presence can be seen to be ‘neutral’, pragmatically unmarked, whereas their absence constitutes a (blatantly) impolite face-threatening act (FTA). Thus, politeness would rather boil down to a matter of strategic choice for a textually obligatory act.

Reasons for Deficiencies in EFL Texts Concerning L2 writing deficiencies and problems, research suggests that pragmatic reasons can outweigh purely linguistic ones, such as shortcomings in grammar and vocabulary. This view is supported by intuitive assessments by language teachers. Thus pragmatic transfer can come into play in three major respects: (1) owing to the overall culture-specific text schema; (2) to the conventional integration of polite acts in this schema; and (3) to the strategic options for an appropriate realisation of the polite acts. 160

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As to the first, much research has been done, dealing with aspects such as linearity vs. descriptive elements and story-in-story (Söter, 1988), use of figurative language (Indrasutra, 1988), of (different) culturally shared knowledge (e.g. in quotations and sayings; cf. Kaplan, 1988). For a short overview, see also Odlin (1989: chap. 4.2. and 4.3). The second aspect can be illustrated with the obligatory introduction to letters in some oriental cultures (here from Iraq), namely asking after the addressee’s health or expressing hope for his well-being. (1) Letter from Bagdad Dear Dr Zimmermann, I am quite delighted to send you this letter wishing you all the best of luck, happiness, and success. I am sorry to inform you that we are suffering a great deal due to the sanctions imposed on our people. This statues?? resulted in a very sharp shortage in food, medicine, and many other basic demands of life including books! ... Thank you and look forward to your cooperation and reply. kindest regards, sincerely, M.H., Lecturer As to the third aspect, the topic of this contribution can be approached more closely with reference to the intercultural differences between English and German observed by House (1998: esp. 71 ff.). She claims convincingly that German politeness is more I-centred, whereas British politeness prefers a you-perspective. (2) Intercultural preferences German English directness indirectness self-orientation other-orientation content-orientation addressee-orientation explicitness implicitness ad-hoc formulation linguistic routines (my translation, cf. House, 1998: 71) Here are a few examples: Ich wollte Dich nicht kränken – You’re not upset, are you ? Kann ich Sie einen Moment stören? – Are you busy at the moment? (cf. House, 1998: 72. For differences in explicitness cf. also Scarcella, 1984) And in addition to these (and other) levels of politeness transfer there is some evidence that it is the overall textual competence in an L1 that

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influences text quality in an L2 more than other aspects, especially FL competence in a narrower grammatical and lexical sense. Looking at German L1–English L2, we found that this applies to some extent in the case of letters ‘asking for belated admission’ (title of Zimmermann, 1996: esp. 228 ff.).

The Present Study: Motives The present study was undertaken for three reasons: (1) We had repeatedly made the informal observation that at least some of our students seem to have problems with polite behaviour. (2) In the context of an advanced seminar course intended to introduce students to the methodology of FL writing research, a writing task was needed that would be limited enough to familiarise participants with major aspects of data collection, transcription, editing and interpretation. Thus, all of them had to transcribe and edit the think-aloud protocols (TAPs) of texts written by other informant-participants, as well as assess the relative quality of the texts produced. Since only illustrative material was intended, only half the class was asked to produce texts (12, out of which 11 are usable); the other half took notes observing the writing process. (3) Finally, a non-trivial writing task was considered to be essential. As the writing task shows, writers were confronted with a conflict between the need for clarity and politeness: to put it in theoretical terms, to what extent would they follow Gricean maxims, and how would they balance the unavoidable FTAs involved with face-workà la Brown/Levinson; or would they follow Leechean maxims?

Method Constraints Obviously, the two decisive constraints affecting the empirical study consisted in the time limitation of one semester and the informants available, namely third and fourth year students of English. Since student writing competence turned out to be of interest, this was clearly not the usual shortcoming of many writing studies. (3) Writing task I You have written a term paper in a seminar course given by Dr Wrightwell, a guest professor from abroad, who promised to read the paper and give you the credit (‘Schein’) after a few weeks. Now six weeks have passed, and you still haven’t got your credit so far.

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You need the result of the seminar course urgently, since you want to register for your final exam. You are writing to Dr Wrightwell to ask him to read and return the paper with the ‘Schein’ within two weeks’ time. Write the letter and put it in the envelope as you would in a real-life situation. The letters will be collected. Please hand in your notes as well, if you made any. Near-authenticity One aspect that could be seen as inviting criticism is the fact that the task was simulated. However, as the writing task shows, we tried our best to minimise this by asking students to treat the letters as they would give or mail them to the addressee. It is worth noting that when I mentioned some impressions I had gained concerning the lack of politeness in the texts produced to several of our native speaker colleagues, they came up with some quite personal experience corroborating this informal impression. Finally, when the students were asked to attempt to write an ‘ideal’ text, first individually (as an assignment), then during an optimisation phase in class, it turned out that their deficiencies in writing competence were real. The writing task I hope it is obvious that this little writing task, where a socially inferior writer addresses a dominant one in a position of authority and power, contains two delicate matters – the reminder and the request with deadline. Of course, the sequence in which the informants wrote their English and German texts was varied, half German L1–English L2, half English L2–German L1. Product and process In order to make some triangulation possible, text production was accompanied by TAPs. As usual this can help with the interpretation of traces of the writing process in the drafts and final versions of the handwritten texts. In addition, it was hoped that the conflict between the need for clarity and politeness would come to the fore in reflections and hesitations in the TAPs.

The Text Schema In order to succeed in composing an optimal letter, several very advanced German speakers of English and two native speakers of British English (BrE)

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were asked to write the letter in English. As a matter of fact, the non-native and native versions displayed only minor differences, all of them in details of lexicon and grammar, but none as to the conventionally expectable text structure. (4) Model letter Writer’s address (Reader’s address) Dear Prof./Dr Wrightwell, Please excuse my/me for/(let me apologize for) troubling you with a matter of great urgency for me. As you (will)/may remember, I handed in a term paper (on ‘. . .’) for your seminar course on ‘. . .’ six weeks ago. You were so kind/(friendly) as to envisage being able to read and grade the paper within a few weeks. Since I am planning to/(want) to register for my examination, I now need the credit very urgently (within two weeks’ time). May I therefore ask you if it would be possible/(I am sorry that I have to ask you) to (finish) read(ing) the paper within the next two weeks. Perhaps I could pick it up (with the credit) in your office hour on . . . I hope you can understand my situation and agree to provide me with the necessary credit/(give me the credit) before the registration deadline for my examination. Thanking you very much in advance, sincerely yours, (Signature) (M. K. and R. Z.) (5) Text schema Wrightwell letter (with FTAs) Writer’s address

Date

(Reader’s address) Dear . . . . A. Apologize for disturbance / request permission for contact

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FTA

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B.1. State fact(s): term paper written (six weeks ago), no correction/credit so far

FTA

B.2. Remind Wr. of ‘promise’ / preparedness to read . . . ‘a few weeks’

FTA

C. Express need D. Give reason for need / justify E. E. Request with deadline

FTA

F. Request/Hope for understanding G. Thanking – in advance – (formula) Concluding formula, Signature The text schema is intended to capture the most typical structure of an appropriate letter. Of course, some acts might occur in another position (such as A towards the end of the letter), but this is irrelevant for the main questions: (1) Are (L2) writers aware of the necessity or expectability of the eight acts included? (2) In particular, how do they come to grips with the three FTAs involved? ‘FTA’ is intended to indicate that act A is needed to meet the negative face want of the addressee; B1 and B2 call for some face-work, too, since they infringe upon the positive face (promise not adhered to) and the negative face want (reminder), respectively; and act E, the request with the deadline, is an insisting act that constitutes a strong threat to the negative face again and calls for redressive action.

Selected Results It was difficult for us to believe what we saw when reading the texts for the first time, in English as well as in German. Realisation of the text schema Table 10.1 is based on the final versions of the letters. Being only productbased, it disregards awareness aspects, which will be treated elsewhere on the basis of the TAPs. The table is largely self-explanatory: it shows the inclusion or non-inclusion of each act in each writer’s letter. The right vertical column shows the average inclusion of an act in the informant group, the low horizontal line shows how many of the acts each writer

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Ø

Ø







Ø



B.1 Ø

B.2 Ø







Ø



4

C

D

E

F

G

Σ

4

Ø

E





4

Ø

Ø





5

Ø

Ø











Ø

Ø

E

Ø

G

S2

4



Ø







Ø

Ø

Ø

G

S3

3

Ø

Ø







Ø

Ø

Ø

E

Schema realisation

Ø

A

G

S1

Table 10.1

5



Ø









Ø

Ø

G

S4

6



Ø











Ø

E

Ø

Ø

Ø

E

4



Ø





3

Ø

Ø





() 

Ø

Ø

Ø

G

S5

3

Ø

Ø





Ø

Ø



Ø

G

Ø



Ø

E

Ø

Ø

Ø

G

5



Ø





4



Ø





() 

S6

S7

4



Ø







Ø

Ø

Ø

E

6



Ø











Ø

G

S8

5

Ø

Ø











Ø

E

6



Ø











Ø

G

S9

6

3

Ø

Ø

 Ø





Ø



Ø

Ø

G











Ø

E

4

Ø

Ø









Ø

Ø

E

S10

5

Ø

Ø











Ø

G

8/72.7%

6/54%

5/45%

0/0%

G

3

Ø

Ø

E

4/36.4%

1/9.1%

11/100%

11/100%

11/100%

5/45%

5/45%

0/0%

Σ/%

48/Ø  4.4 48/Ø  4.4 (55%) (55%)

7/63.6%

0/0%

 11/100%

 11/100%



Ø

Ø

Ø

E

S11

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realised. All this is irrespective of the linguistic correctness and pragmatic quality of the act realisation. If acts appear in another position in the text, they are included in the count. As Table 10.1 shows, the text schema is realised to a modest degree: between three and six acts out of eight in the German as well as the English letters. Three acts are realised in two German and four English letters, four acts in five German and two English letters, five acts in two German and three English letters, and six acts in two German and English letters each. The average realisation rate for English and German is identical (4,4/4,3). In other words, only slightly more than half the expectable acts are performed. Relatively speaking, the best text (number 9) stands out with six acts in German as well as in English. There can be no doubt that the overall results are devastating. Two sample letters may illustrate this interpretation, a relatively ‘good’ one (in (6)) and a really bad one (in (7)). (6) S 9 – English 1 Dear Professor Wrightwell, I’m writing to you because I have a serious problem concerning my term paper or better the schein. I hope you remember our conversation some weeks ago, in which you promised to read my term paper as soon as possible and send it back to me together with the schein. I have been waiting for six weeks now and I am a little bit afraid that you forgot your promise. As I am going to take part in the exam this summer, I really need the schein and the term paper within two weeks. Otherwise, I cannot take part [crossed-out word illegible] in the exam. I am very sorry to urge you in this way, but I hope you will understand this exceptional situation. Yours faithfully Julia R. (7) S 2 – English 1 Dear Mr. Wrightwell, I visited your seminar last semester and wrote a termpaper for this course. You promised to [give] this termpaper back to me within a few weeks. This however has unfortunet (unfortunately) not happened yet. I want to do my final examinations in the near future and that is why I urgently need the corrected t paper and the Schein. Please give both back to me within two weeks because I otherwise get problems with the final exami aexaminations. Yours sincerely

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Clarity From a reader perspective, some of the letters are not fully cooperative in a Gricean sense. (8) Maxims 1: Grice’s Conversational Maxims 1.

QUANTITY Say as much but no more than necessary

2.

QUALITY Say only what you believe true and have evidence for

3.

RELATION Make your contribution relevant

4.

MANNER Be perspicuous, avoid obscurity, ambiguity, prolixity. (simplified version from Schneider, 1988: 73)

Since about one half of the writers do not realise act B1 and B2, information relevant for the reader is not given, and s/he would have problems finding the term paper in question. So the maxim of quantity is flouted, probably also the relation maxim. Politeness phenomena Here we can state several negative results: (1) No writer catered to the negative face wants of the addressee, apologising for the disturbance or asking permission for contact (ct. Brown and Levinson, 1987). Writers from other cultures are better at this; consider this e-mail from Pakistan. (9) E-mail from Pakistan Respected Dr Zimmerman, First of all, my apologies because I have been disturbing you time to time but you always welcomed me. Thank you for this kind attitude. Again thank you very very much for your kind response and dealing on phone when we called you from Pakistan. Sir, I do not have any confusion except this equivalence certificate actually I do not know how to get it and what are the requirements for it. Sir, if you can help me out in this matter I will be very grateful to

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you. As per your instruction, I am sending an e- mail to Dr. Bunke as well for getting this equivalence certificate because I want to start my studies as soon as possible. Thank you very much. Yours obediently, A. K. I do not want to suggest that this would be an ideally structured letter for our cultures, since there is considerably more face-work than content proper (the request parts), but a better trade-off between face-threatening and face-saving acts than can be observed in our data is certainly called for in our culture. (2) As to act F, only one writer (in her English letter) expressed the hope for understanding: (I am very sorry to urge you in this way,) but I hope you will understand this exceptional situation. (number 9) (3) About half of all texts (seven in German, four in English) contained at least thanks (in advance; act G). Our later TAP analysis may help shed light on the question whether the difference between English and German might be a matter of proper expression, that is, a potential avoidance phenomenon. (4) Since, on the other hand, the central face-threatening information (the request with deadline in act E) is contained in all letters, it is crucial to see where clarity of intention, necessary in the interest of the writers, is mitigated by redressive action or any observation of Leechean maxims. There is no space here to go into this question in detail, but a global assessment testifies to a blatant lack of tact: where writers state that the professor has not yet graded the term paper, and where they remind him of his promise or intention to do so, both facts slightly embarrassing for him, they mostly do so more or less bluntly. This, however, has (unfortunately) not happened yet (number 2) I still have not received the Schein (number 6) Leider habe ich bisher noch keinen Schein erhalten (number 9) ‘Regrettably, I haven’t received the credit so far’ Where, however, the writers’ interest is at stake, namely in the request, which is, after all, central to this letter, most of them invest some or even considerable effort in redressive action. It would be very nice if . . ./. . . würde ich Sie gern bitten, . . . wenn möglich . . . (number 4) ‘I would like to ask you, . . . if possible . . .’

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I would like to ask you whether it would be possible for you to . . . (number 5) I am very sorry to urge you . . ./ es wäre sehr nett von Ihnen . . . (number 9) ‘it would be very kind of you’ Remember that the linguistic quality of the attempts to be polite is disregarded here. (10) Maxims 2: Leech’s Conversational Maxims 1.

TACT / GENEROSITY Minimise cost to other / Minimise benefit to self

2.

APPROBATION / MODESTY Minimise dispraise of other / Minimise praise of self

3.

AGREEMENT Minimise disagreement between self and other

4.

SYMPATHY Minimise antipathy between self and other. (simplified version from Schneider, 1988: 74)

From the point of view of Leech’s maxims, a majority of writers tried to make use of at least one of them: Ich habe Verständnis dafür, (dass Sie die Hausarbeit . . nicht korrigieren konnten), ‘I can understand that you haven’t been able to correct the paper.’ (number 3) This can be seen as an attempt to express sympathy, which is, of course, ruined by unintended arrogance. Sollte Ihnen die Hausarbeit . . . nicht gefallen, . . . einfach per e-mail mitzuteilen. ‘Should you not like the paper, . . . simply tell me via e-mail.’ (number 4) So the writer intends to help the reader to minimise cost. Sollte es . . . Probleme geben, setzen Sie sich bitte umgehend mit mir in Verbindung. ‘Should problems arise, please contact me immediately.’ (number 6) Here the attempt to minimise disagreement and perhaps cost is ruined by the tone: immediately Das Porto und ein frankierter Rückumschlag (sic) habe ich . . . beigefügt. ‘I have attached postage and a return envelope.’ (number 8)

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This can be seen as a successful attempt to minimise cost. I hope you remember our conversation . . . am a little bit afraid you forgot . . . very sorry to urge you (number 9) In this letter, the least inappropriate one, the writer follows three maxims, appealing to (earlier) agreement, trying to minimise dispraise, and expressing sympathy. . . . so that you would have enough time to correct it (number 10) Though a bit clumsy, this is at least an attempt to reduce cost, namely time pressure. . . . phone me any time . . . I will attend your office hour (number 11) Here, again, a reduction of cost is offered. On the other hand, many possibilities of catering to the positive face of the reader were ignored (all the following examples are hypothetical). • Tact/generosity: Of course, a short correction without a written comment would be sufficient • Approbation/modesty (by praise): . . . in your interesting seminar (in which I learnt a lot) • Sympathy: (since/although) I know that you have so much work to do . . . Incidentally, if this tendency is corroborated by further data, it would fit well with House’s assumption about the I-centredness of Germans. (This would imply another ironical reversal of the traditional claim in German ‘Völkerpsychologie’ (‘race psychology’) that the British are, by the very structure of their language, more egocentric than Germans.) L1 transfer I will restrict myself to very few remarks on this issue for reasons of space. Clearly, in an overall view, there are only minor differences in the way in which the writers follow the text schema in both languages. Also, in terms of tact, or rather tactlessness, and in terms of politeness for its own sake, we observe hardly any differences. The only differences which seem worth a closer analysis are the few writers (numbers 5, 6, perhaps 8 and 11), where the English requests are politer than the German ones. This might reflect a culture-related assumption about the British (and Americans?) being more polite than Germans, or an

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obligation to be more polite to foreigners. (On the other hand, it seems that slightly more attempts to apply the politeness maxims occur in German L1 than in English L2. We will have to see whether this may be a matter of incompetence/avoidance.) Thus overall text quality in the L2 seems to reflect the shortcomings in the same writer’s L1 text, not a surprising result in the light of earlier research (cf. e.g. Zimmermann, 2000: 89, esp. 4f.). Since the population of this study is, however, far too small, we intend to collect and analyse further data in the near future (Uffmann & Zimmermann, in preparation).

Concluding Remarks This exercise in studying pragmatic competence in EFL writing has turned out to be in some respects an implicit criticism of L1 teaching in German schools, since this fairly basic cultural skill seems not to be taken sufficiently into account. This, in my observation, is not out of tune with the PISA study findings. There is, however, a growing tendency in German university programmes to incorporate a module in English writing skills, which is seen as a key qualification, also beyond English studies. References Brown, P. and Levinson, S. (1987) Politeness: Some Universals in Language Use. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Fraser, B. (1990) Perspectives on politeness. Journal of Pragmatics 14, 219–236. House, J. (1998) Kontrastive Pragmatik und Interkulturelle Kompetenz im Fremdsprachenunterricht. In W. Börner and K. Vogel (eds) Kontrast und Äquivalenz: Beiträge zu Sprachvergleich und Übersetzung (pp. 62–88). Tübingen: Narr. Indrasutra, C. (1988) Narrative styles in the writing of Thai and American students. In A. Purves (ed.) Writing Across Languages and Cultures. Issues in Contrastive Rhetoric (pp. 206–226). Newbury Park: Sage. Kaplan, R. (1998) Contrastive rhetoric and second language learning: Notes toward a theory of contrastive rhetoric. In A. Purves (ed.) Writing Across Languages and Cultures. Issues in Contrastive Rhetoric (pp. 275–304). Newbury Park: Sage. Leech, G.N. (1983) Principles of Pragmatics. London: Longman. Odlin, T. (1989) Language Transfer: Cross-Linguistic Influence in Language Learning. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Scarcella, R.C. (1984) How writers orient their readers in expository essays: A study of native and non-native English-writers. TESOL Quarterly 18/4, 671–688. Schneider, K.P. (1988) Small Talk. Analysing Phatic Discourse. Marburg: Hitzeroth. Söter, A.O. (1988) The second language learner and cultural transfer in narration. In A. Purves (ed.) Writing Across Languages and Cultures. Issues in Contrastive Rhetoric (pp. 177–205). Newbury Park: Sage. Uffmann, C. and Zimmermann, R. (in preparation). Politeness in EFL Writing.

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Zimmermann, R. (1996) Asking for belated admission: Produktion und (Selbst-) Evaluation beim Schreiben in der Fremdsprache Englisch. In W. Börner and K. Vogel (eds) Texte im Fremdsprachenerwerb: Verstehen und Produzieren (pp. 211–235). Tübingen: Narr. Zimmermann, R. (2000) L2 writing: Subprocesses, a model of formulating and empirical findings. Learning and Instruction 10, 73–99.

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Part 2

Pedagogical Grammar in Promoting Acquisition of L2 Morphosyntax

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Chapter 11

The Role of Explicit Rule Presentation in Teaching English Articles to Polish Learners AGNIESZKA KRÓL-MARKEFKA

Introduction What has been witnessed over the last three decades is a drastic decline followed by a gradual rise of explicit instruction. Although, initially, the focus on communicative skills undermined the role of explicit grammar instruction, soon a growing body of research findings (Long, 1988; Newport, 1990; Schmidt, 1990; Swain, 1995; White, 1991) started to indicate that, at least under some circumstances, progress in accuracy and complexity cannot be achieved by means of input and output alone. Quite naturally, researchers began to suppose that if improvements in general language proficiency (i.e. parallel progress in fluency, accuracy and complexity) are to be achieved, some kind of instruction needs to be incorporated into teaching.

The Cognitive View on Language Acquisition The question of how to teach grammar depends on how language and its acquisition are viewed. Within the cognitive theories, language is seen as a dual system, which is partly build of memorised chunks (i.e. formulaic exemplars) and partly of rules which speakers apply in a creative way (Carr & Curran, 1994; Mathews et al., 1989). Learning a language is a cognitive process of constructing and exploiting this dual system. The importance of formulaic language in L2 adult acquisition, especially at early stages, has been confirmed in a series of studies (Bolander, 1987; Rehbein, 1987). On the other hand, vast empirical data indicate that with time, both in L1 and L2 acquisition, formulas are ‘unpacked’ and analysed, which triggers the development of the creative rule system (Skehan, 1998: 9). The processes of memorising chunks and analysing them are referred to as automatisation and restructuring respectively. 177

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In view of the assumptions presented above, it appears that learners should be constantly given opportunities to automatise and restructure their linguistic knowledge. Optimum conditions should be created for the learner to memorise chunks of language as well as to organise information, to form and test hypotheses and to notice the gap between the learner’s interlanguage (IL) and the target language (TL), which will facilitate or accelerate the two essential cognitive processes. The question of establishing optimum conditions for automatisation and restructuring of linguistic material is, however, inevitably dependent on an array of variables.

Variables Influencing the Efficiency of Treatment The variables that influence acquisition are related to (1) the learning context, that is, to the availability of the input and classroom constraints; (2) to the learners: their age, proficiency and educational goals; (3) to the form (its inherent characteristics and its status in the IL) and learning processes to be engaged in its acquisition. A detailed list of variables given by Doughty and Williams (1998: 260) is presented in Table 11.1. Assuming that we are concerned with teenage and adult learners who strive to gain maximum proficiency in English, I would like to focus on the last two variables, that is, the form and the learning processes to be engaged. The form In recent years it has been frequently indicated that different aspects of language may processed, stored and acquired differentially (VanPatten, 1994), which implies that various grammatical structures require distinct forms of instruction. There are many aspects of the form that must be taken into consideration in determining the kind of most effective treatment. Nature of the form The first criterion is the so-called nature of the form, that is its relative complexity and abstractness. Krashen (1981) distinguished between rules that are easy to learn (explicitly) but hard to acquire (implicitly) and rules that are hard to acquire, but easy to learn. For Krashen, it is the combination of formal and functional simplicity (e.g. the third person -s) that makes a rule easy to learn. According to Ellis (1990), a rule is easier to learn (explicitly) when it requires simple processing operations and when the form-function relationship is transparent. Also a number of scientific experiments appear to support the hypothesis saying that it is the acquisition of simple rules

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Role of Explicit Rule Presentation in Teaching English Articles Table 11.1 I.

179

Variables influencing treatment The learning context (1) Availability of input (2) Classroom constraints

II.

The learners (1) Age (2) Proficiency (3) Educational goals

III.

The form (1) Inherent characteristics a. Nature of the rule b. Frequency in the input c. Relation to L1 from (2) Status in IL, e.g. emergent, errored, stabilised

IV.

The learning process to be engaged (1) Noticing (2) Noticing gaps (3) Cognitive comparison (4) Restructuring (5) Hypothesis testing (6) Automatisation

that benefits most from instruction (Ellis, 1994; Pica, 1985; Robinson, 1996; Williams & Evans, 1998). Following from that, one can hypothesise that in the case of the English article system – a complex set of rules in which form–function relationships are far from transparent – implicit learning is more suitable than the explicit treatment. However, it has been observed that some rules, especially as far as their use is concerned, are so complex that they defy clear rule formulation. For such rules Hulstjin (1995) recommends lexical learning, that is memorisation rather than direct instruction on the basis of generalisations. Memorisation, however, is considerably difficult when the form depends on an abstract characteristic of the environment rather than on concrete surface element (De Keyser, 1995: 4). Since this is exactly the attribute of (in)definiteness, it seems that appropriate use of ‘a’ and

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‘the’ in the majority of noun phrases cannot be learnt by remembering the units. The final argument in the debate refers to the findings of two research projects which dealt precisely with the effects of instruction on teaching articles. The studies have shown that instruction can bring positive effects on the use of articles (Master, 1994; Muranoi, 1996). In conclusion it can be said that ‘lexical learning’ will be probably more appropriate at early stages of language acquisition, since it might be facilitative in creating formulas. On the other hand, formal, explicit analysis of rules and uses can be more appropriate and beneficial when restructuring is supposed to take place (Doughty & Williams, 1998). Form’s frequency and salience Another factor determining the kind of instruction is the frequency and salience of a grammatical structure. To a large extent, the main difficulty in the acquisition of articles stems from the fact that although they are very frequent, they are not salient, that is, there is no immediately visible relationship between their form and function and, what is more, their incorrect use does not distort meaning essentially and usually does not hinder communication. Still, in order to be acquired, those forms must be noticed, which means that some artificial measures, for instance typographical input enhancement, should be taken in order to increase the form’s salience (White, 1991; White, 1998). Relation to L1 form Finally, the L1–L2 similarities and contrasts cannot be disregarded. Observations seem to suggest that if L2 form is formally and functionally similar to L1 form, it will pose few problems with its acquisition. It logically follows that contrastive features, such as English articles taught to Polish learners, require explicit instruction, as their meaning and use may be difficult to discover from positive evidence (Dirven, 1986).

Status of the Form and Learning Processes to be Engaged A number of research studies have shown that the efficiency of instruction is relative also to the position a given form has in the learner’s IL: whether the form has been noticed, whether it is already emergent, whether it is used erroneously or correctly. Swain (1995) has discovered that explicit rule presentation is most successful when students have already noticed and attempted to use a given structure. Overt instruction and subsequent opportunities for practice are supposed to help learners perceive their linguistic inadequacies (notice the gap) and try to improve their production.

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A Cognitive Model of the Lesson The above considerations seem to lead to the conclusion that although teaching should be meaning- and communication-focused, instruction is needed – at least at some stages of acquisition. Therefore, an exemplary model of a lesson can be suggested, in which all the above considerations are accounted for (cf. Doughty & Williams, 1998: 257): (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6)

meaning-centred exposure to input; input processing: implicit techniques facilitating noticing; production (frequently erroneous attempts to use the form); explicit instruction (noticing the gap); controlled practice (implicit and explicit knowledge used as a crutch); extensive practice of the procedures in communicative activities (leading to automatisation).

Applied Cognitive Linguistics in Teaching English Articles Cognitive linguistics, as the name suggests, is a theory of language anchored in the analyses of the mind and cognition. Therefore, the explanations of all language phenomena are meaningfully- and pragmaticallybased, which makes cognitive linguistics almost ideally suited for pedagogical purposes. Being rooted in cognitive psychology and information processing theories, the cognitive theory of language is highly compatible with the assumptions the Cognitive Approach to language acquisition presented earlier. For those reasons, a pedagogical grammar of English articles based on Langacker’s (1987, 1991) analysis1 may seem to offer a more understandable account on the meaning and function of articles2 than the explanations given in most teaching materials and coursebooks. By means of explanation, schematic drawings and discussions on the use of sample sentences, it helps learners comprehend the underlying conceptual meaning of ‘a’, ‘the’ and the zero article.3

Study I Study I has been designed to verify the hypothesis that teaching articles based on cognitive assumptions concerning language and language acquisition will result in greater accuracy in using this structure by the students. Subjects and design The subjects were 36 secondary-school learners of English at the elementary and intermediate level. The treatment consisted of five teaching sessions based on the Cognitive Approach, which means that the tasks used aimed at triggering the cognitive processes of noticing, noticing the

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gap, hypothesis testing, analysis, synthesis and categorisation. The treatment comprised techniques facilitating automatisation and restructuring presented earlier, that is, explicit instruction (metatalk), accuracy-focused tasks (gap-filling, grammatical judgement), implicit learning activities (listening, reading) and input enhancement. The explicit instruction was based on the ‘cognitive’ pedagogical grammar of articles, which means that the teacher’s explanations focused on the general function and meaning of articles. For that reason, the treatment did not consist in the enumeration of various uses of ‘the’ and ‘a’, as it is done is the majority of pedagogical materials; the purpose of instruction was to help learners grasp the very concepts of definiteness and countability. Apart from verbal explanation of the meaning, the teacher used drawings, diagrams and gestures, which, through visualisation, was supposed to aid conceptualisation. Results (Study I) Table 11.2 presents mean scores obtained by the elementary and the intermediate group on pre-test immediate and delayed post-test. The t-test done to compare the results obtained on pre-test and the delayed post test has indicated that both groups improved in accuracy. This suggests that treatment brought positive effects. Table 11.2

Mean scores (Study I)

Group

Pre-test (% %)

Immediate post-test (% %)

Delayed post-test (% %)

Elementary

53.2

77.5

68.3

Intermediate

50.7

69.3

60.4

Study II Study I, however, does not allow to establish unequivocally whether the relative success of the treatment can be attributed to the alleged merits of the ‘cognitive’ pedagogical grammar or to the way in which articles have been taught. Therefore, another study had been designed to examine if the metalinguistic knowledge based on cognitive analyses can help learners on its own, that is, with no controlled practice. Subjects and design (Study II) Thirty-two adult students of English at an advanced level took part in the study. The subjects were randomly assigned to three groups: (1) experimental ACL – presented with the materials based on cognitive linguistics

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analyses, (2) experimental TRI – given treatment in the form of rules traditionally quoted in most pedagogical grammars, in which various uses of ‘the and ‘a’ are enumerated, with little attention to their overall meaning; and (3) a control group NT, who did not undergo any treatment. After the pre-test, subjects received materials for self-study. In groups ACL and TRI, the rules referred to the same instances of usage and quoted the same examples. Results (Study II) Table 11.3 presents the mean scores of all groups on the pre-test and the post-test. Again, a t-test has been done to compare the results. The differences between the pre-test and the post-test scores proved to be insignificant in all three groups. This implies that becoming familiar with the metalinguistic information about the meaning and the use of articles did not enhance students’ accuracy. Table 11.3 Mean scores (Study II) Pre-test

ACL

TRI

NT

X

42.53

38.7

39.6

Post-test

ACL

TRI

NT

X

44.61

39

39.6

Discussion Although the two studies cannot be treated as truly experimental research designs and the results cannot be cross-compared (mainly due to the differences in the subjects’ proficiency and the method) the findings might offer useful, preliminary guidelines for further studies in the area. First of all, it can be assumed that perhaps the student’s metalinguistic knowledge about a linguistic structure should not be treated as a value in itself, since it appears that the possession of such knowledge is unrelated to the improvements in accuracy. It is possible that the progress made by students in Study I can be attributed to the range of activities which triggered automatisation rather than to the alleged advantages of the rules based on cognitive grammar. Such interpretation seems particularly probable in the light of the results obtained in Study II, in which the presentation of the function of articles did not run parallel to any kind of practice. Therefore, it can be assumed that it is not so much the awareness or knowledge of rules as the skill of their accurate application that is crucial to progress.

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Second, since Study I did not compare the efficiency of the ‘cognitive’ rules with the treatment based on rules that are usually quoted in pedagogical materials (the so-called ‘traditional’ rules), it may be possible that, together with appropriate practice, the ‘cognitive’ instruction would be more effective than the ‘traditional’ one. However, to investigate this hypothesis, an experimental research project is needed. The following conclusions can be drawn from the theoretical analyses and the empirical data presented in the article: (1) under certain conditions (the students’ proficiency and the form being major determinants) explicit instruction might be beneficial to acquisition; (2) in the case of the article system taught to Polish students, an overt presentation of grammar can be most advantageous at the levels at which some formulas have already been automatised; (3) metacognitive knowledge on its own, that is, not accompanied with practice, seems to be insufficient to advance students’ progress.

Final Remarks The overriding question concerning the benefits conferred by rules based on cognitive grammar remains unanswered. Clearly, more studies are necessary to examine this vital issue, since if ‘cognitive’ rules proved more effective than those which are currently used in teaching materials, a gate would open for devising more efficient ways of teaching not only articles, but also a vast range of all kinds of language phenomena. Notes 1. 2. 3.

Langacker’s account is to a great extent based on earlier studies, most notably on Hawkins (1978). The present application does not take into account more recent cognitive analyses of definiteness. Parts of the ‘cognitive’ pedagogical grammar are presented in Król (2005).

References Bolander, M. (1987) On the acquisition of word order rules in Swedish as a second language. Paper presented in Association Internationale de Linguistique Appliquée (AILA) 1987, Sydney, 16–21 August 1987. Carr, T. and Curran, T. (1994) Cognitive factors in learning about structured sequences: Applications to syntax. Studies in Second Language Acquisition 16, 205–230. De Keyser, R. (1995) Learning second language grammar rules: An experiment with a miniature linguistic system. Studies in Second Language Acquisition 17, 379–410. Dirven, R. (1986) Towards a pedagogical English grammar. In G. Leitner (ed.) The English Reference Grammar: Language and Linguistics, Writers and Readers (pp. 89–102). Tübingen: Niemeyer.

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Doughty, C. and Williams, J. (1998) Pedagogical choices in focus on form. In C. Doughty and J. Williams (eds) Focus on Form in Classroom Second Language Acquisition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Ellis, N. (1994) Implicit and Explicit Learning of Languages. London: Academic Press. Ellis, R. (1990) Instructed Second Language Acquisition. Oxford: Blackwell. Hawkins, J.A. (1978) Definiteness and Indefiniteness: A Study of Reference and Grammaticality Prediction. London: Croom Helm. Hulstjin, J.H. (1995) Not all grammar rules are equal: Giving grammatical instruction its proper place in teaching. In R. Schmidt (ed.) Attention and Awareness in Foreign Language Teaching (pp. 359–386). Honolulu: University of Hawaii. Krashen, S. (1981) Second Language Acquisition and Second Language Learning. Oxford: Pergamon Press. Król, A. (2005) Applied Cognitive Linguistics in Teaching English Articles to Polish Learners. Series A, No 632. Essen: Linguistic Agency University of Duisburg. Langacker, R. (1987) Foundations of Cognitive Grammar: Vol. I: Theoretical Prerequisites. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Langacker, R. (1991) Foundations of Cognitive Grammar: Vol. II: Descriptive Application. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Long, M. (1988) Instructed interlanguage development. In L. Beebe (ed.) Issues in Second Language Acquisition: Multiple Perspectives. Rowley, MA: Newbury House. Master, P. (1994) The effect of systematic instruction on learning the English article system. In T. Odlin (ed.) Perspectives on Pedagogical Grammar. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Mathews, R.C., Buss, R., Stanly, R., Blachard-Fields, W.B., Cho, J.R. and Druhan, B. (1989) Role of implicit and explicit processes in learning from examples: A synergistic effect. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory and Cognition 15, 1083–1100. Muranoi, H. (1996) Effects of interaction enhancement on constraining overgeneralised errors of English articles. In T. Fuijmura, Y. Kato, M. Ahmed and M. Leonung (eds) Proceedings of the 7th Conference on Second Language Research in Japan (pp. 42–58). Niigata: International University of Japan. Newport, E.L. (1990) Maturational constraints on language learning. Cognitive Science 14, 11–28. Pica, T. (1985) The selective impact of classroom instruction on second language acquisition. Applied Linguistics 6 (3), 214–222. Rehbein, J. (1987) Multiple formulae of Turkish migrant workers: German in intercultural communication. In K. Knapp, W. Enniger and A. Knapp-Potthof (eds) Analysing Intercultural Communication. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Robinson, P. (1996) Learning simple and complex second language rules under implicit, incidental, rule-search and instructed conditions. Studies in Second Language Acquisition 18, 27–68. Schmidt, R. (1990) The role of consciousness in second language acquisition. Applied Linguistics 11, 129–158. Skehan, P. (1998) A Cognitive Approach to Language Learning. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Swain, M. (1995) Three functions of output in Second Language Learning. In G. Cook and B. Seidlhofer (eds) Principle and Practise in Applied Linguistics: Studies in Honour of H.G. Widdowson. Oxford: Oxford University Press. VanPatten, B. (1994) Evaluating the role of consciousness in second language acquisition: Terms, linguistic features, and research methodology. Association Internationale de Linguistique Appliquée (AILA) Review 11, 27–36.

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White, J. (1998) Getting the learners’ attention: A prototypical input enhancement study. In C. Doughty and J. Williams, J. (eds) Focus on Form in Classroom Second Language Acquisition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. White, L. (1991) Adverb placement in second language acquisition: Some effects of positive and negative evidence in the classroom. Second Language Research 7, 133–161. Williams, J. and Evans, J. (1998) What kind of focus and on which forms? In C. Doughty and J. Williams (eds) Focus on Form in Classroom Second Language Acquisition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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Chapter 12

The Effect of Corrective Feedback on the Acquisition of the English Third-Person -s Ending MIROSŁAW PAWLAK

Introduction After a period of relative neglect form-focused instruction, or, as Ellis (2001: 1–2) defines it, ‘any planned or incidental instructional activity that is intended to induce language learners to pay attention to linguistic form’, is once again being viewed as an essential component of foreign language pedagogy and there are few who would dispute its contributions to instructed language acquisition.1 Such a stance appears to be fully justified in view of a considerable body of research which shows that formal instruction aids the acquisition of various grammatical features and that its effects are durable (cf. Ellis, R., 2002, 2006; Norris & Ortega, 2000). Much as they acknowledge the necessity for form-focused instruction, however, researchers and methodologists differ considerably in their views on how the teaching of language forms should be implemented to be the most beneficial for the learners. In particular, there is considerable disagreement concerning the grammatical features that should be selected for instruction as well as the methodological options that are most likely to result in the targeted forms being effectively learned. The present chapter aims to contribute to the ongoing discussion concerning these two areas by describing a study which investigated the effect of a combination of output enhancement and recasting, both of which are relatively implicit focus-on-form techniques, on the acquisition of the English third-person singular -s ending, a grammatical feature that even fairly advanced students frequently fail to supply in spontaneous language use. The review of theoretical claims and research findings concerning the targeted feature and the treatment applied presented in the first part of the paper is followed by the description of the design of the study, the presentation and analysis of its findings, and the discussion of 187

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the implications these findings might have for teaching grammar in the foreign language classroom.

Choice of Target Form and Instructional Treatment The choice of the third-person -s as the grammatical feature to be the target of instruction is both pedagogically and theoretically motivated. Anyone who has ever taught English as a second or foreign language would probably agree that the failure to supply that grammatical morpheme in real-time communication is one of the most persistent errors among even very advanced students and that quite often attempts at dealing with this problem prove to be unsuccessful. One reason why the feature in question is so hard to acquire and apparently rather difficult to teach is related to the fact that, not being essential to understanding the meaning of utterances, it is often perceived as semantically redundant and having little communicative value. Equally importantly, although the third-person -s is frequent in the input, it is perceptually non-salient as a marker of grammatical meaning, as it is often accompanied by temporal adverbs and learners are more likely to attend to those than to the grammatical-tense verb morpheme (cf. Ellis, 1990, 1997; Gass & Mackey, 2002; Krashen, 1981). As such problems are not confined to the third-person -s and affect other morphological features, the findings of research investigating the ways in which such forms can effectively be taught are of immediate relevance to language teachers who have a vested interest in improving pedagogic practice. Directing formal instruction at the third-person -s also receives considerable support from second language acquisition theory and research. It has been suggested, for example, that the very characteristics that make the feature so difficult to acquire, namely its communicative redundancy and lack of salience, provide the rationale for instruction as opportunities for exposure alone are not likely to result in its native-like use (Ellis, 1997; Ellis, N., 2002). Researchers have also argued that language features which are formally and functionally simple, that is those where a single element is added to a grammatical string and the form–function relationship is transparent, as is the case with the third-person -s, are the most amenable to instruction (Ellis, 1997; Green & Hecht, 1992; Pica, 1985).2 Additionally, in contrast to what has been termed resilient features such as word order rules, which are present in all varieties of languages and can be acquired naturally, the form in question is an example of a fragile feature and, similarly to other morphological language properties, may be intrinsically difficult to acquire and, thus, benefit from pedagogic intervention (Goldin-Meadow, 1982). A slightly diverging view on the effectiveness of instruction targeting the third-person -s derives from the implicational scale for the development of English morphosyntax (Pienemann et al.,

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1988), where it is described as a non-local morpheme which is acquired rather late as its production requires the capacity to perform complex speech-processing operations. However, such an explanation is not universally accepted, and even if it is valid, it only casts doubts on the effectiveness of instruction in the case of learners who have not yet reached the requisite stage of development, and not those who are more advanced and thus developmentally ready to acquire the feature. Although the arguments presented above strongly indicate that the third-person -s is a prime candidate for pedagogic intervention, they should not be interpreted as providing justification for all kinds of instruction in all kinds of circumstances. Explicit instruction in the form of rule explanation, for instance, would perhaps be more suitable for beginners who are not yet familiar with the feature in question and might be more likely to notice it in the input they receive if they were acquainted with the relevant rule. Intermediate or advanced students like the participants of the study reported below, however, usually possess both the explicit and implicit knowledge of the feature but simply fail to deploy it in spontaneous language use when both form and meaning compete for their limited attentional resources. As posited by the weak-interface position (Ellis, 1997), the value of instruction in such situations lies in helping learners gain greater control over features they have partially acquired and enabling them to use those features more confidently and accurately. One way to accomplish this could be by providing learners with opportunities to engage in progressively less controlled and more meaningful practice activities, where they are fully aware that they are trying to master a particular structure rather than communicate (Ellis, 1997, 1998). Alternatively, and perhaps more beneficially, it is possible to draw learners’ attention to form more implicitly when they are engaged in performing meaning-oriented activities, thus employing what has been come to be known as a focus on form (Long, 1991). It is the latter type of pedagogic intervention that was utilised in the study the chapter describes. Focus-on-form instruction can be incidental, where the teacher focuses on a number of different forms and the treatment provided is extensive in nature, or planned, in which case, a language feature is preselected and the treatment is intensive in that the students have the opportunity to attend to it many times (Ellis, 2001). Obviously, in situations where the teacher wishes to assist learners in gaining greater control over a structure that they find particularly problematic, it makes more sense to opt for planned focus-on-form as only in this way can we reasonably expect learners to register the target-like use of the structure, contrast it with their own output, and, hopefully, use it more fluently and accurately in the future. Although there are different ways in which planned focus-on-form can be accomplished such as input flood, which entails exposing learners to input containing plentiful exemplars of the target feature, input enhancement,

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where the feature is typographically highlighted in the input, or focused communication tasks, designed to elicit production of the structure, the instructional treatment in the present study took the form of implicit corrective feedback, where learners’ attention is drawn to a specific form without compromising the meaning-centredness of the task. One way in which this kind of feedback can be provided is by means of a recast, which reformulates either the whole or part of the learner’s utterance containing an error simultaneously preserving the intended meaning (cf. Doughty & Varela, 1998; Ellis, 2003). Learners’ attention can also be drawn to the targeted structures by means of output enhancement (Takashima & Ellis, 1999), or the use of requests for clarification directed at a single grammatical structure, which is intended to push them into producing output that is more grammatical in accordance with the claims of the output hypothesis (Swain, 1995). Although there are quite a few studies which have shown that both the use of recasting and focused feedback consisting of clarification requests aids the acquisition of syntactic and morphological features (e.g. Ayoun, 2001; Han, 2002; Mackey & Philip, 1998; Nobuyoshi & Ellis, 1993; Takashima & Ellis, 1999), the two focus-on-form techniques are not without their problems. It has been found, for example, that recasts might not be a very effective way of dealing with grammatical errors as learners frequently fail to perceive their corrective nature and are more likely to repair their utterances when clarification requests are used (Lyster, 2001). However, the effectiveness of output enhancement is also limited since there is no guarantee that learners will modify their output, and requesting clarification of the same utterance more than once is bound to divert their attention from the meanings they want to express. Such limitations could perhaps be minimised if errors involving the targeted feature were first followed by a clarification request and then, should that fail to elicit a self-correction, a recast which would provide learners with the target-like form (cf. Pawlak, 2006). It is such a combination of output enhancement and recasting that constituted the instructional treatment utilised in the study the chapter describes.

Design of the Study Rather than aim to test specific hypotheses, the study reported below sought to investigate the effectiveness of a methodological option derived from theory and previous research with the purpose of improving pedagogic practice in a local context. Consequently, it constitutes an example of action research, and since the researcher performed the dual task of an applied linguist and the teacher, it shares the characteristics of technical and practical action research (Carr & Kemmis, 1986; Crookes, 1993). The study aimed to explore (1) the short- and long-term effects of negative

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feedback in the form of output enhancement and recasting provided in the context of meaning-focused activities on the accuracy of production of the English third-person -s; (2) the impact of the treatment on learners’ awareness of the targeted feature; (3) the extent to which the treatment would result in overgeneralisation errors; (4) the variable effect of the treatment for individual learners and different verbs. The subjects were 35 Polish third-year secondary school students who had three 45-minute English classes a week and either no or only extremely limited opportunities for out-of-class exposure to the target language. Although the group as a whole was at the intermediate level of proficiency, individual learners differed considerably in their language ability, which is typical of Polish schools where the knowledge of foreign languages is rarely the main factor taken into account when assigning students to a particular class. Since the students were divided into two groups for their English lessons and there was no significant difference between the groups in terms of proficiency, they were randomly designated as control and experimental, with the former consisting of 17 and the latter 18 learners. Prior to the provision of instructional treatment, a pretest was administered to both the control and experimental groups with the purpose of establishing the initial accuracy with which the subjects produced the target form. First, the students were asked to work in pairs and each had four minutes to tell his or her partner about a family member (mother, father, sister, etc.), which can be regarded as a task where the use of the targeted feature is essential for its successful completion (Loschky & Bley-Vroman, 1993). The interaction of four pairs in each group was taperecorded, transcribed and analysed. Subsequently, the students were given five minutes to write down what they had said, but this time all the papers were collected and analysed. The same procedures were followed for both groups on three posttests administered one, five and nine weeks after the treatment, with the same pairs being recorded. During the treatment, which started one week after the pretest, both groups worked on the same tasks, but only in the experimental group were clarification requests and recasts employed in response to errors involving the targeted form. There were four treatment sessions, each of which lasted about 20 minutes and was incorporated into a regularlyscheduled lesson. On each occasion, the students were provided with a role card and instructed to work in pairs for five minutes and describe a typical day of a professional (a doctor, teacher, police officer, etc.), which again was an activity that was likely to elicit numerous uses of the thirdperson -s. The card was in Polish but some useful English words and phrases were provided to help the learners generate ideas, preempt potential vocabulary problems, and ensure that more of their attentional resources would be available for focus on language forms. This was

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followed by a feedback session, where the students talked about what a given professional usually does on a typical day. All the sessions were tape-recorded to verify the consistency of the treatment. While no feedback whatsoever was provided on the errors which occurred in the control group, each time a treatment group student failed to supply the third-person -s, a clarification request (output enhancement) was used to give him or her a chance to notice the error, as shown in the following example: (1) S: T: S:

The police officer catch criminals . . . Pardon? (clarification request) The police officer ah . . . catches the criminals

If the student repeated the deviant form or there was no response, a recast was used to rephrase the utterance, the correct form being emphasised with added stress. In order to avoid excessive obtrusiveness which would likely have changed the task into a grammar practice activity, the treatment stopped at this point and there were no further attempts to address the error irrespective of whether or not the correct form was repeated. An example follows: (2) S: T: S: T: S:

Teacher often repeat the same things What do you mean? (clarification request) The teacher repeat the same thing . . . he He repeats the same things (recast) . . . yes, yes he repeats the same things and he . . .

The 64 recordings made on the pretest and the three posttests were transcribed and together with the 140 learner compositions subjected to a combination of quantitative and qualitative analysis. The numerical analysis consisted in counting the number of obligatory contexts for the use of the third-person -s as well as the number of occasions on which it was correctly supplied, and, then, calculating accuracy percentages for each student and the whole group on each of the tests. In order to determine the effect of the treatment on the subjects’ awareness of the target feature, the numbers of relevant self-corrections and peer-corrections were tabulated in the spoken data. Also, the incidence of overgeneralisation errors involving the third-person -s was determined, as intralingual transfer was expected to be an unwelcome side-effect of the treatment provided. The quantitative analysis was conducted by means of descriptive statistics as it was impossible to effectively control all the extraneous variables in the classroom context, and the researcher was more interested in exploring the observable pedagogic effect of the corrective strategies employed than in establishing its statistical significance. As for the qualitative analysis, it consisted in investigating intra-learner variability and identifying the verbs that were the most likely to be used correctly.

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Results and Discussion As can be seen from Figure 12.1, which shows the accuracy percentages for the oral task for both groups, the instructional treatment appears to have contributed to a considerable increase in accuracy with which the students used the third-person -s in spontaneous speech and this beneficial effect was durable. This is reflected in the fact that the experimental learners were 25.07% more accurate on posttest 1 in comparison with the pretest as well as the finding that not only were the initial gains maintained but they actually kept increasing on each subsequent posttest (a 4.85% gain from posttest 1 to posttest 2 and a 4.09% gain from posttest 2 to posttest 3), with the pretest–posttest 3 gain standing at a staggering 34.01%. This contrasts sharply with the results of the control students who, despite being considerably more accurate in the use of the target form on the pretest, improved by only 1.4% on posttest 1, and then their performance deteriorated by 11.38% on posttest 2 and by as much as 13.07% on posttest 3, with their final accuracy percentage being an astounding 40.73% lower than that of the experimental group. Although somewhat unexpected, the slight pretest–posttest 1 gain in the control group can be attributed to the fact that the tasks utilised in the testing and treatment sessions required numerous uses of the third-person -s, which may have induced the subjects to pay greater attention to that feature and, consequently, gain greater control over it. Much more difficult to explain is the fact that the control students were 23.05% less accurate on posttest 3 than on the pretest. Pretest

Posttest 1

Posttest 2

Posttest 3

80.00% 75.61%

70.00% 66.67%

71.52%

60.00% 57.93%

59.33%

50.00% 40.00%

47.95% 41.60%

30.00%

34.88%

20.00% 10.00% 0.00%

Figure 12.1

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Accuracy percentages on the oral task

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One reason for such a substantial loss could have been the fact that in the weeks prior to the study the learners had discussed a number of topic which required the use of the Present Simple Tense and in the weeks following it the focus was shifted to other grammatical structures. The use of output enhancement and recasting seems to have had much less effect on the subjects’ ability to correctly supply the third-person -s in planned language production, which is evident from Figure 12.2 presenting the accuracy percentages for the 18 experimental and 17 control students who completed the written task. Although the experimental students gained as much as 12.91% from the pretest to posttest 1, the gain failed to be carried over into the remaining two posttests, with the respective losses standing at 2.32% (posttest 1–posttest 2) and 5.23% (posttest 2–posttest 3). The positive effect of the treatment is still visible, however, since the loss on posttest 3 was rather small and their accuracy was still 5.36% higher than on the pretest. The trend is similar in the case of the control group, which improved by 4.26% on posttest 1, but the gain was not maintained on posttest 2 (a loss of 5.2% from posttest 1) and the accuracy percentage was 9.26% lower on posttest 3 than on the pretest, which resembles the situation on the oral task. Still, the initial increase in accuracy was less than half of that in the experimental group, the losses were greater and, ultimately, the control students were 8.55% less accurate despite being 6.43% better at the outset. This provides further support for the effectiveness of the treatment.

Pretest 90.00%

84.34%

80.00% 70.00% 60.00%

Posttest 1

Posttest 2

Posttest 3

82.02% 76.79%

82.12% 77.86%

76.92%

71.43% 68.24%

50.00% 40.00% 30.00% 20.00% 10.00% 0.00%

Figure 12.2

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Accuracy percentages for the written task

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When comparing the accuracy percentages shown in Figures 12.1 and 12.2, it has to be kept in mind that they were not obtained from the same group of students, as there were more than twice as any compositions as recordings. Therefore, it seems warranted to compare the performance on the two tasks of only those eight students in the two groups who provided both spoken and written data for analysis. The accuracy percentages in spontaneous and monitored language use for both the experimental and control groups are presented in Figures 12.3 and 12.4 respectively. As regards the experimental group, it is obvious that the instructional treatment was less effective for planned than unplanned language use, but the initial gain on the written task for those eight students is almost twice as big as that for 18 students (25.07% vs. 12.91%), as is the pretest–posttest 3 increase in accuracy (10.77% vs. 5.36%). In the case of the control group, the trends for the oral and written task are clearly similar, with the pretest–posttest 1 gain being followed by losses and the final accuracy percentage considerably lower than that on the pretest. As for the results of the eight control students on the written task in comparison with the whole group, the initial gains were smaller (2.47% vs. 4.26%), and the pretest–posttest 3 loss more than twice as big (9.26% vs. 19.67%), which is not surprising considering the fact that their initial accuracy percentage was 13.5% lower. Such differences notwithstanding, it is clear that the eight experimental learners outperformed their eight control counterparts on both tasks on all the posttests despite being initially Pretest

Posttest 1

Posttest 2

Posttest 3

90.00% 79.75%

80.00% 70.00% 60.00%

78.41% 71.52%

61.73%

75.61% 72.50%

66.67%

50.00% 40.00%

41.60%

30.00% 20.00% 10.00% 0.00%

oral task

written task

Figure 12.3 Accuracy percentages for the experimental group (n  8) on the oral and written task

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Posttest 1

Posttest 2

Posttest 3

90.00% 80.00%

77.78%

80.25% 70.15%

70.00%

58.11% 60.00% 50.00% 40.00% 30.00%

57.93%

59.33% 47.95% 34.88%

20.00% 10.00% 0.00%

Figure 12.4 Accuracy percentages for the control group (n  8) on the oral and written task

less accurate, and that they maintained considerable gains on the most delayed posttest while the controls suffered considerable losses. Although many variables could have impacted the results, it can reasonably be assumed that they are primarily due to the instructional treatment. There are a few plausible explanations for the differential effect of the treatment on the experimental students’ accuracy of production in spontaneous and monitored language use. For one thing, the accuracy percentage on the written task was initially much higher than on the oral task both for the eight students whose interaction was analysed and for the group as a whole, and there was simply little room for substantial improvement to occur and be maintained over time. Also, the written measure always followed the pairwork activity, and when the novelty had worn off, the students may have perceived it as tedious and repetitious and thus failed to apply themselves to it. Another reason could be the fact that the feedback was provided only on the learners’ oral production and it was somehow less relevant for their written output, which might be reflective of Anderson’s (1993) claim that the effects of practice in one skill do not transfer directly to another. Finally, all the students produced very few contexts for the targeted feature in their compositions, sometimes as few as three or four, and thus even a single careless slip could have skewed the

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balance. As for the more substantial effect of the treatment on the eight students for whom both spoken and written data were available than on the experimental group as a whole, it could be due to the fact that their initial scores on the written task were c. 10% lower as well as the possibility that their being recorded made them more sensitive to the target form. As shown in Table 12.1, the number of self-corrections performed by the experimental students on the oral task increased from 2 on the pretest to 5 on posttest 1, and that trend persisted, albeit on a smaller scale, on the delayed posttests. The situation is more complicated in the control group, where there were initially more instances of self-repair than in the experimental group, but their number decreased slightly on posttests 1 and 2 only to increase again on posttest 3, which indicates little consistency. Only the experimental students made a few attempts to repair their partners’ utterances on posttests 1 and 2, and no such efforts were identified on the part of the control students. Tempting as it is to ascribe the apparently greater grammatical awareness of the experimental group to the treatment provided, such an interpretation has to be tempered with caution. As the overall number of self- and peer-corrections was rather small and so were the differences between the two groups, it is equally likely that their occurrence and distribution may have been due to chance. Although the foregoing discussion strongly indicates that using a combination of output enhancement and recasting resulted in more accurate use of the third-person -s, the treatment was not unproblematic. First of all, as Table 12.1 shows, the attempt to draw the subjects’ attention

Table 12.1 Self-corrections, peer-corrections and overgeneralisations in the experimental and control groups Oral task – experimental (E) group (n  8) and control (C) group (n  8) Pretest

Posttest 1

Posttest 2

Posttest 3

Group

E

C

E

C

E

C

E

C

Self-corrections

2

6

5

5

6

3

7

5

Peer-corrections

0

0

3

0

1

0

0

0

Overgeneralisation errors

0

3

3

1

6

3

7

3

Written task – experimental (E) group (n  18) and control group (n  17) Pretest

Posttest 1

Posttest 2

Posttest 3

Group

E

C

E

C

E

C

E

C

Overgeneralisation errors

5

4

5

4

3

4

8

2

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to the target feature led to an increase in the number of overgeneralisation errors in the experimental group, with no errors of this kind occurring on the pretest and as many as seven counted on posttest 3. Intralingual errors were also committed by the control students but the number of such errors never exceeded the pretest value and even decreased on posttest 1. The situation looks a little more optimistic in the case of the written measure, where in both groups the number of overgeneralisation errors either remained constant or slightly decreased on the first two posttests. However, it did increase somewhat on posttest 3 in the experimental group and, in fact, the researcher was able to observe many more errors of this kind during regular classroom proceedings even several months later. In addition, the treatment appears not to have been equally effective for all the students, especially in the long run, with some of them maintaining or even increasing the initial gains and others dropping to the previous levels of accuracy. This problem is illustrated in Figure 12.5, which shows the accuracy percentages for the eight experimental students on the oral task. Undisputedly, the fact that all the subjects except for student H, who was always 100% accurate, improved their performance on posttest 1, half of them on posttest 2 and three on posttest 3 testifies to the usefulness of the pedagogic device employed. However, there were also two students who did not appear to benefit much from focused feedback, which indicates that a range of individual and contextual factors may have influenced the ultimate effectiveness of the treatment. Pretest

Posttest 1

Posttest 2

Posttest 3

100.00% 90.00% 80.00% 70.00% 60.00% 50.00% 40.00% 30.00% 20.00% 10.00% 0.00%

Figure 12.5 Accuracy percentages for the eight experimental students on the oral task

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Another reason for exercising caution when evaluating the effect of the treatment is related to the fact that in both the experimental and control group there was a lot of variability in the speech of individual students on the oral task, with the -s ending often being added to one verb and dropped in the case of another in the same sentence. Equally disturbing is the finding of the qualitative analysis of the spoken and written data that many of the correct productions involved such frequently used verbs as like, has or take, which shows that, at least with some learners, it was item-learning rather than system-learning that resulted from the treatment (Hulstijn & de Graaf, 1994). This could mean that they relied on the exemplar-based system rather than the rule-based system for producing output (Skehan, 1998).

Conclusions and Pedagogical Implications The research findings discussed above strongly indicate that the use of a combination of output enhancement and recasting in the context of meaning-centred communication resulted in more accurate production of the third-person -s on the part of the students who were exposed to this kind of treatment and no such effect, or even a considerable deterioration in performance, was observed for the control group. Moreover, the gains in the experimental group not only turned out to be durable but in fact kept increasing in the weeks after the treatment at least in the case of spontaneous language use. Also, although the results are much less straightforward here, the pedagogic intervention appears to have contributed to greater awareness of the targeted feature, which is visible in the fact that the experimental students were more likely than the controls to correct themselves and their partners on the posttests. What has to be emphasised is that the staggering increase in accuracy was bought at an exceptionally low price as measured by the amount of valuable classroom time, since the four treatment sessions combined took only 80 minutes, which makes the pedagogic device employed particularly useful in cases where in-class exposure is limited. It also has to be kept in mind that the provision of implicit negative feedback took place during meaning-focused activities which are relatively easy to design, and enable students not only to gain greater control over a single grammatical morpheme, but also to develop other aspects of their communicative competence and integrate a number of language skills. Such activities are easy to set up in any circumstances and their value lies in the fact that they draw learners’ attention to a particular problem in the context of expressing meaning, which, as research suggests, enhances students’ ability to notice the gaps in their interlanguage knowledge thus aiding acquisition (cf. Schmidt & Frota, 1986; Spada & Lightbown, 1993). In all likelihood, the focus-on-form techniques used in this study could prove equally effective

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in the case of other grammatical features as long as they are formally and conceptually simple, the most obvious candidate being the -ed ending of the Past Simple Tense. This is not to say that they should not be used with complex structures which can perform many different functions, but, rather, that in such cases they would have to be complemented with other methodological options such as explicit instruction, different kinds of practice or input enhancement. Finally, focused communication tasks followed by negative feedback of both implicit and explicit kind appear to be particularly useful in remedial teaching which addresses recurring language problems, or in reviewing structures which have previously been taught (cf. Pawlak, 2006). Despite all the benefits it can bring, focused corrective feedback provided in the context of meaning-centred activities should not be viewed as a panacea that will enable the teacher to deal with all kinds of language problems, with all kinds of students and in all kinds of circumstances. As was demonstrated above, treatment of this kind is not likely to be equally beneficial for all learners, it does not eliminate variability from their interlanguages, it does not ensure system-learning, and it may have the deleterious effect of leading to overgeneralisation errors. Valid as they are, such reservations should not prevent teachers from exploring the effectiveness of output enhancement and recasting in their own classrooms as only in this way can we ever hope to get to know the real value of these and other research-generated methodological options for improving pedagogic practice. Notes 1.

2.

In this chapter, the term form is used to refer exclusively to grammatical aspects of language. It should be noted, however, that in many recent publications it is also intended to include phonological, lexical and pragmalinguistic aspects of language (e.g. Ellis, 2001). There is also an opposing view according to which grammar instruction should be directed at complex rather than simple rules because the latter are likely to be less salient in the input than the former (e.g. Hulstijn & de Graaf, 1994). However, as Ellis (1997) points out, it is too simplistic to conflate complexity with lack of saliency since such simple futures as the third-person -s can be non-salient, while semantically complex features such as the verb  ing are semantically complex and yet quite salient.

References Anderson, J.R. (1993) Rules of the Mind. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Ayoun, D. (2001) The role of negative and positive feedback in the second language acquisition of passé composé and the imparfait. The Modern Language Journal 85, 226–243. Carr, W. and Kemmis, S. (1986) Becoming Critical: Education, Knowledge and Action Research. London: Falmer.

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Crookes, G. (1993) Action research and second language teachers: Going beyond teacher research. Applied Linguistics 14, 130–144. Doughty, C. and Varela, E. (1998) Communicative focus on form. In C. Doughty and J. Williams (eds) Focus on Form in Classroom Second Language Acquisition (pp. 114–138). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Ellis, N. (2002) Reflections on frequency effects in language processing. Studies in Second Language Acquisition 24, 297–339. Ellis, R. (1990) Instructed Second Language Acquisition. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers. Ellis, R. (1997) SLA Research and Language Teaching. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Ellis, R. (1998) Teaching and research: Options in grammar teaching. TESOL Quarterly 32, 39–60. Ellis, R. (2001) Introduction: Investigating form-focused instruction. In R. Ellis (ed.) Form-focused Instruction and Language Learning (pp. 1–46). Oxford: Blackwell Publishers. Ellis, R. (2002) Does form-focused instruction affect the acquisition of implicit knowledge? A review of the research. Studies in Second Language Acquisition 24, 223–236. Ellis, R. (2003) Task-based Language Learning and Teaching. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Ellis, R. (2006) Current issues in the teaching of grammar: An SLA perspective. TESOL Quarterly 40, 83–107. Gass, S. and Mackey, P. (2002) Frequency effects and second language acquisition: A complex picture? Studies in Second Language Acquisition 24, 249–260. Goldin-Meadow, S. (1982) The resilience of recursion: A study of a communication system developed without a conventional language model. In E. Wanner and L. Gleitman (eds) Language Acquisition: The State of the Art (pp. 51–77). New York: Cambridge University Press. Green, P. and Hecht, K. (1992) Implicit and explicit grammar: An empirical study. Applied Linguistics 13, 168–184. Han, Z. (2002) A study of impact of recasts on tense contingency in L2 output. TESOL Quarterly 36, 543–572. Hulstijn, J. and de Graaf, R. (1994) Under what conditions does explicit knowledge of a second language facilitate the acquisition of implicit knowledge? A research proposal. In J. Hulstijn and R. Schmidt (eds) Consciousness in Second Language Learning. AILA Review 11, 97–112. Krashen, S. (1981) Second Language Acquisition and Second Language Learning. Oxford: Pergamon Press. Long, M.H. (1991) Focus on form: A design feature in language teaching methodology. In K. de Bot, R. Ginsberg and C. Kramsch (eds) Foreign Language Research in Cross-Cultural Perspective (pp. 39–52). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Loschky, L. and Bley-Vroman, R. (1993) Grammar and task-based methodology. In G. Crookes and S. Gass (eds) Tasks and Language Learning: Integrating Theory and Practice (pp. 123–167). Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Lyster, R. (2001) Negotiation of form, recasts, and explicit correction in relation to error types and learner repair in immersion classrooms. In R. Ellis (ed.) Form-Focused Instruction and Language Learning (pp. 265–301). Oxford: Blackwell Publishers. Mackey, A. and Philip, J. (1998) Conversational interaction and second language development: Recasts, responses and red herrings. The Modern Language Journal 82, 338–356.

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Nobuyoshi, J. and Ellis, R. (1993) Focused communication tasks and second language acquisition. ELT Journal 47, 203–210. Norris, J. and Ortega, L. (2000) Effectiveness of L2 instruction: A research synthesis and quantitative meta-analysis. Language Learning 50, 417–528. Pawlak, M. (2006) The Place of Form-Focused Instruction in the Foreign Language Classroom. Kalisz-Poznan´: Faculty of Pedagogy and Fine Arts, Adam Mickiewicz University. Pica, T. (1985) The selective impact of instruction on second language acquisition. Applied Linguistics 6, 214–222. Pienemann, M., Johnston, M. and Brindley, G. (1988) Constructing an acquisitionbased procedure for second language assessment. Studies in Second Language Acquisition 10, 217–244. Schmidt, R. and Frota, S. (1986) Developing basic conversational ability in a second language. In R. Day (ed.) Talking to Learn (pp. 237–326). Rowley, MA: Newbury House. Skehan, P. (1998) A Cognitive Approach to Language Learning. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Spada, N. and Lightbown, P. (1993) Instruction and the development of questions in the L2 classroom. Studies in Second Language Acquisition 15, 205–221. Swain, M. (1995) Three functions of output in second language learning. In G. Cook and B. Seidlhofer (eds) Principle and Practice in Applied Linguistics (pp. 125–144). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Takashima, H. and Ellis, R. (1999) Output enhancement and the acquisition of the past tense. In R. Ellis (ed.) Learning a Second Language Through Interaction (pp. 265–301). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

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Chapter 13

The Acquisition of German Syntax by Polish Learners in Classroom Conditions BARBARA SADOWNIK

Introduction Polish glottodidactic studies offer a highly original, often ground-breaking view of the phenomena related to the process of foreign language acquisition. The Polish studies have a distinct character: they differ from similar studies pursued in other countries in a number of ways. The differences lie primarily in the proclaimed status of glottodidactic research, the kinds of tasks set for this research, the mode of analysing empirical material, the theoretical solutions proposed and, finally, in the different theoretical posture adopted vis-à-vis neighbouring disciplines. Mention should also be made here of the fact that foreign language learning and teaching in Poland has always been viewed as a discipline in its own right, intimately linking theory and practice. The Polish glottodidactic studies, whose origins go back to the 1970s, have a distinct anthropological bias. The main target of these studies has been the learner and his/her cognitive abilities to acquire a language on the one hand and the teacher and his teaching skills employed on the other. The founders of Polish glottodidactic studies have always emphasised the need to develop a uniform, empirically well-supported theory which would adequately account for the process of language acquisition, its dynamicity and its internal structure. Without being able to understand the essence and internal interrelations governing the process of foreign language acquisition, it was held, one will not be able to effectively oversee and manage the acquisition process. The complexity and the multifaceted nature of the process, the Polish glottodidactic community holds, calls for an ‘interdisciplinary opening’; it also requires a profound interdisciplinary competence on the part of the researchers (see, e.g. Arabski, 2001; Grucza, 1985, 2002; Sadownik, 1997, 2000). 203

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Closely linked to glottodidactic research are psycholinguistic studies on language acquisition. These studies make an attempt to bring together all possible forms of language acquisition (first, second and foreign language acquisition) under the rubric of one universal theory of language acquisition. The attention of Polish researchers is thus focused now not so much on the differences but rather on the similarities in the acquisition of grammar, especially of syntax and morphology. Studies of language acquisition as a first and second language in natural conditions are based nowadays on much richer empirical material than before; they are the source of various hypotheses and give a powerful impetus for the future development of glottodidactic studies in Poland.

Theoretical Background First and second language acquisition research views language acquisition as a systematic, internally ordered process, governed by wellestablished general rules. This inherent order is manifested, inter alia, in clearly defined linguistic regularities involving developmental sequences, developmental stages and the decomposition of the target structure (cf. Wode, 1981, 1988).1 The developmental sequence provides information about the relative chronology in which particular structures or elements of structures are acquired by the learner.2 The developmental sequence can be divided into discrete stages paired with developmental structures, isolated from the input by the learner and integrated anew with a target structure. During this process, called by Wode the decomposition of the target structure, some elements of the structure are perceived more clearly than others; they are the first to be isolated from the target and integrated again with the linguistic system of the learner’s interlanguage. The validity and importance of this now almost 20-year-old principle governing language acquisition can hardly be questioned. As Zobl notes: Wode’s (1981) Principle of Decomposition is also relevant. It refers to analysis (decomposition) of target structures into their constituent elements and features. His work of language acquisition led him to conclude that L1A and naturalistic L2A differ in degree of decomposition, with L2A showing less of it. (Zobl, 2002: 61) The invariable and stringent nature of the developmental sequence has led to the assumption that any systemic regularities that can be uncovered point to the specific internal structure of the human mind3 and appear to mirror the learner’s cognitive structures rather than reflect the influence of the environment in which the learner happens to grow, the learning conditions he/she finds him/herself in or the methods his/her teacher employs. Naturally, as Wode (1988) notes, external conditions do influence the rate

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and the success of the language learning process; they are to be viewed, however, not so much in terms of how a particular structure has been acquired, but rather in terms of how much has been learnt. The linguist who has exerted the greatest influence on the universalist study of language acquisition is, beyond doubt, Noam Chomsky, a staunch adherent of the modular conception of mind. According to Chomsky, the structure of human language is a highly specialised property of the mind. Chomsky hypothesises that humans have an inborn ability to acquire a language, faculté du language, as well as the ‘wired’ acquisition mechanism which is responsible for the formation of the mental structure. At the same time, Chomsky emphasises the fact that generative grammar is not only about language and linguistic knowledge, but also about ‘human cognitive capacities and the mental structures that serve as vehicles for the exercise of the capacities’ (Chomsky, 1980: 3).4 It should be stressed that despite many theories that have been proposed within the framework of generative grammar, Chomsky’s basic aim has not changed over the decades: generative grammar has always made an attempt to answer basic questions about mental representation, language acquisition and the ways different systems of knowledge are integrated in the human mind (Chomsky, 2001). The tendency to propose simpler and thus more economical theories with a higher degree of generality, already visible in his Theory of Principles and Parameters (Chomsky, 1981, 1982, 1984) has subsequently led Chomsky to the establishment of the so-called Minimalist Program (Chomsky, 1995). It is to this idea of grammar that more and more psycholinguistic theories relate nowadays (see, e.g. Wakabayashi, 2002). Generally, both the principles and parameters theory and the minimalist programme stress the innateness of all core grammars, with parameters on these universal principles set by the linguistic context in which a particular language is used. Seen from this perspective, a core grammar can be seen as the ‘centre’ of Universal Grammar (UG), while lexemes and marked syntactic constructions should be viewed as the ‘peripheries’ of UG. The ‘core forms’–’peripheral forms’ distinction is a point of departure for the recently advanced claim that language acquisition requires the presence of two qualitatively different processes: (1) abstract and a priori rules constituting the core and (2) the general process of language learning and the ability to use mechanical memory in the case of peripheries (cf. Clahsen, 1999; Pinker, 1999, 2003; Pinker & Prince, 1992).5 It deserves mention that the principles and parameters theory has provided a viable basis for the empirical work done on the acquisition of syntax and morphology as documented by the appearance of a wide body of literature in Germany (see, e.g. Clahsen, 1990, 1996, 1999; Clahsen & Hong, 1995; Clahsen & Muysken, 1986; Diehl et al., 2000; Kaltenbacher, 1990; Meisel, 1992, 1994, 1995, 2000; Meisel & Bonnesen, 2005;

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Müller, 1993; Müller, et al., 2006; Pienemann, 1999, 2002a; Rothweiler, 1993; and others).

Research Problems One of the central concerns of second language acquisition research and glottodidactic studies in particular is to properly characterise the developmental sequence and the stages in the development of learner’s second/ foreign language abilities. Generally, the approaches to the question of the nature of foreign language acquisition are divided into several categories which can be formulated in the form of the following questions: (1) What is the relationship between first, second and foreign language acquisition? To what extent are these processes coherent? What are the major differences between them? (2) Are there any observable significant differences between the second language acquisition process performed in natural conditions and the learning process taking place in the formal classroom situation? (3) To what extent does the acquisition of a foreign language resemble second language development from the point of view of: (a) consecutive developmental/intermediate stages; (b) processes lying at the foundation of this acquisition; (c) the factors enabling one to predict and solve problems? These questions clearly show that the most important cognitive process is not only the explication of how the acquisition process of the first, second and foreign language develops, but also the explanation of why the process of competence formation develops in this rather than some other way under the proposed linguistic theory.

Description of the Study Despite the fact that the theory describing the acquisition process of L1 and L2 as a developmental sequence has become widespread, a number of issues still await satisfactory explanations. The questions formulated above have provided a basis for two strands of my research, the aim of which was to make still another attempt to verify the developmental sequence in class setting.6 The first strand of my research has been concerned with the acquisition of negation in German by 18 Polish students aged 15 in class setting for a period of eight months (Sadownik, 1991/1999). I collected the illustrative material by analysing all oral responses of learners of L2 recorded in classes of German. The corpus contains 1200 students’ responses which reflect the acquisition process of negation in German, with its all accompanying elements: morphological units such as nein, nicht, kein, niemand,

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nichts, syntactic elements (place of negation in a sentence) and semantic units (anaphora or non-anaphoric negation). I have ascribed the key role to spontaneous speech, most often involving incorrect applications of the rule of negation. In the case of correct answers, one cannot, I concluded, be absolutely sure as to whether we are witnessing linguistic creativity or just reproduction, that is, the production of ‘memorized wholes which the learner has not yet analysed into their constitutive parts’.7 Because the creative construction process differs markedly from the mechanical application of routines and patterns, we have to take into account several important factors in longitudinal studies, namely the researcher’s maturity, his/her intuition, empathy and the expertise. The second series of longitudinal research was carried out by me in Poland and Switzerland on a group of 12 Polish students aged 15–20, with eight of them learning German at secondary school level (15–18). In each of four grades two students were monitored. Records were made over a period of 10 months (150 hours of recordings); in addition, four adolescents (19–20) were monitored during a four-month summer course in German language (120 hours of recordings). The recordings of spontaneous speech samples, collected during the conversations on topics of general nature, were made every two weeks during the 10- or four-month period. I decided to monitor a small group of pupils longitudinally as this method permits to monitor the systematic progress and strategies in foreign language acquisition, especially the way new acquisitions are ‘built onto’ ‘older’ ones. In my analysis, I concentrated on developmental, mainly syntactic aspects of German, including the acquisition of verbal inflection and phrase structure, the developmental initial word order-to-inversion process, negation, interrogation, and the relative/subordinate clause. Because for space reasons it is impossible to present all aspects of my research here (for details, see Sadownik, 1997, 2000), I shall concentrate on some selected aspects of language acquisition, namely on the acquisition of negation and word order in German in relation to the verb placement in the main and subordinate clauses.

The Acquisition of the German Negation Rule by Polish Students Designed to verify the universal development hypothesis within the framework of glottodidactic studies, my L1-Polish/L2-German study of the acquisition of negation in German, as shown by Polish learners, can be seen as my contribution to the Kiel project and thus, generally, as a contribution to Wode’s theory of the acquisition of negation (Wode, 1981, 1983, 1988).8 In my project I attempted to answer the questions of (1) whether and if so to what extent the different conditions and the different input structure created in Polish schools may have had an influence on the processing and

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acquisition of foreign language structures, and (2) to what extent these conditions could lead to the differences in the acquisition process and its outcome. Put somewhat differently, given different input structures and qualitatively different principles of language acquisition are at work, the question was whether and if so to what extent the conditions under debate could influence the processing strategies of linguistic structures employed in schools and in natural acquisition contexts. It should be stressed that the input structure is not only an essential component of learning a foreign language in school conditions, but it must be seen as playing a central role in governing the learning process itself. The basic difference between second and foreign language acquisition must be attributed to the different language data with which the learner is confronted. The input structure in natural conditions is much richer; it is unordered and comes from many different sources. Learners are thus exposed to a great number of heterogeneous structures which are used depending on the learner’s communicative needs. In contrast, the input structure in school conditions has to be severely delimited for teaching reasons; indeed, guided by progress in teaching, the teacher is expected to introduce each time a highly reduced number of structures and in a given order. Evaluation of teaching progress is based on either the teacher’s intuitive criteria or the author’s handbook and is relative to the difficulty and complexity of a given structure to be mastered. Many teachers tend to put an equation mark, especially in the case of syntax and morphology acquisition, between the input and output structure. Assuming that learning is a function of teaching which conforms to the Input  Intake  Output formula, they expect error-free acquisition of these structures. In my studies on the acquisition of German as a foreign language in school conditions I compared the teaching progress and the developmental sequence of the students in the light of their developmental errors. This is documented in Table 13.1. The clear-cut division of the developmental sequence into reciprocally conditioned developmental stages can be misleading though. In particular, the presentation of these stages in a table like this suggests a ‘dramatic transition’ from one structure into another in the acquisition process. Nothing of this kind happens, however: ‘older’ structures do not vanish automatically. On the contrary, one observes a ‘parallel’ transition between them: at first new structures appear side by side with old ones; in time, there appear fewer and fewer old structures; finally old structures disappear completely. The development of German negation in school conditions is presented in Figure 13.1 The comparison of negation developed by Polish learners with equivalent studies on negation acquisition in German as L1 revealed a great number of parallel structures. They are not, however – and this should be stressed – single, sporadic examples appearing incidentally in school

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Table 13.1 The teaching progress vs. the developmental stages determined by developmental structures during the acquisition of German negation by the Polish learner

The progress in teaching A. anaphoric nein B. sentence internal nicht

The stages of development I. anaphoric nein II. *non-anaphoric nein III. *sentence internal nein IV. sentence internal nicht a. copulas b. full verb sentence

C. negated V. kein Indefinites 1. kein

2. niemand 3. nichts

niemand nichts

Type of developmental structures

Number of examples; time of appearance in months

nein, X nein, S

85; 0,5–8

nein X

50; 1–3

Subj nein X (VP) Subj V nein X

48; 1,5–4 39; 1,5–4

Subj cop nicht NP/Adj Subj V nicht X Subj nicht VP Nicht VP

100; 1–8 112; 1–8 96; 1,5–5 67; 1,5–5

kein N Subj kein X (VP nicht in place of kein before Nouns and Substantives; nicht einNP kein Adj/Adv kein in place of nicht kein....nicht niemand....nicht keine in place of nichts nicht.....nchts

106; 3–8 39; 3–5 70; 3–6 102; 3–6 42; 3–5 37; 3–6 106; 4 –7 25; 5–7 11; 6–7 3; 6–7

Source: (Sadownik, 1991/1999)

conditions, but productive and stable developmental structures which mark the particular developmental stages as determined by the frames of developmental sequences. It is worth mentioning that these sequences corresponded in some measure to the sequences and the developmental stages present in natural conditions. What follows from this, I think, is that during the process of foreign language learning in school conditions, natural acquisition processes (i.e. processes which are inaccessible and cannot be manipulated from the outside) take place anyway. This happens regardless of the strategies used by the teacher, despite the step by step presentation of linguistic material and regardless of the error correction strategy used. The developmental sequence is thus only to a limited extent determined by the progress in teaching. The learner acquires particular fragments of the whole negation system of German, one fragment after another,

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Figure 13.1 The development of German negation by Polish pupils (Sadownik, 1991/1999) integrating them with the target language in accordance with his own rules, most often departing from the norm. Table 13.2 shows a great number of ‘parallel’ developmental structures of German negation during the acquisition process. The analysis of negation demonstrates, I think, that because equivalent structures in Polish are well-formed, both preverbal and double negation in German appear to be interference errors. It should be noted that the Polish negative particle nie can have the maximal scope, that is, it can function as a sentence negation, or it can have a minimal scope, that is, it can negate a particular constituent smaller than S. In the case of sentence negation, the particle nie is placed before the predicate. The German equivalents of nie are nicht or nein; nie can also be used as a German equivalent of kein, which is always used in combination with a noun. In this case nie is placed before the copula: To nie jest bła˛d (Das ist kein Fehler.) This is not a mistake. Nie be˛dziesz miał czasu. (Du wirst keine Zeit haben.) You will have no time. /You don’t have any time. In order to strengthen the negative effect, Polish additionally uses the pronoun z˙aden ‘no’ (Germ. kein, kein einziger), which is placed immediately before the noun or a whole noun phrase consisting of a noun and an adjective: To nie jest z˙aden wielki bła˛d. (Das ist gar kein großer Fehler.) This is no big mistake.

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Table 13.2 Early stages of the acquisition of German negation: selected utterances of the learners Classroom (Sadownik, 1991/1999)

The stages of development

L1 (Wode, 1976, 1981)

I. Holophrastic Negation

nein

nein

....

IIa: anaphoric nein (nein, X) (nein, S) *IIb: non-anaphoric nein (nein+X)9

nein, Milch (`nein, ich möchte Milch`) nein hauen (`nicht hauen`)

nein,da (`nein, es ist da`)

nein, ich bin müde

nein helfen (`nicht helfen`)

nein schwimmen (`ich schwimme nicht`)

III. Sentence internal negation (X+Neg+Y)

Heiko nicht essen Katze nein schlafen (`Heiko ißt nicht´) (`die Katze schläft nicht´)

die nich kaputt (`die ist nicht kaputt´)

L2 (Felix, 1982)

Milch nicht da (`die Milch ist nicht da`)

ich nein heiße Heidi (`ich heiße nicht Heidi`) ich nicht trinke Kaffee (`ich trinke keinen Kaffee`)

The most difficult problem Polish learners of German face is to acquire the ability to place correctly the negative particle in a sentence, especially the particle nicht in relation to the verb. In the first stage of the acquisition process, an incorrect preverbal negation is dominant; the learners tend to use interchangeably (and thus incorrectly) nein nicht and even kein before the verb. This means that they have problems with distinguishing a particular German negative morpheme. Errors of this kind have, as already remarked, been treated as interference mistakes made by L1-Polish learners. The learner’s strategy of basing their language practice on well-established structures of languages already mastered seems to be a rule here; it constitutes an integral part of foreign language acquisition. The occurrence of parallel developmental structures in the acquisition of negation in German as L1 and L2 does not argue against negative transfer, but only delimits its scope. At the same time it vitiates against reducing to interference only the structural parallels between an utterance in L1 and rule in L1. We have to assume that underlying these processes are more general mechanisms of language acquisition. The occurrence of transfer appears to depend in large measure on the degree of mastering by the learner of L1 and L2. More advanced learners seem to notice those similarities between the languages which beginners tend to overlook. Transfer then is subject to the same degree of development as other regularities not directly linked with transfer.

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In my longitudinal studies (Sadownik, 1997) I demonstrated that there exists a close relationship between the development of negation and the process of acquisition of other parts of German grammar including the system of congruence, the place of verb in a sentence and generally, word order. On the whole, my studies also corroborate the hypothesis that the acquisition process of German takes place in discrete developmental stages. Below I present the most important of these stages: Stage I: Variable NEG placement The learners use a rule which moves the negation particle to a position adjacent to the verb; in most cases, preverbal NEG placement is preferred: Nicht gehen in die Schule. not go to school` (= (He) doesn’t go to school.) Preverbal NEG occurs most often before an infinitival form of the main verb. Ich nicht verstehen dieses Wort (...) Mein Bruder nicht besuchen die Privatschule. I don’t understand this word. (...) lit. My brother not to visit the public school. When the copula (the finite form of the verb byc´ ‘be’ ) links the subject with the predicative in one sentence, the learner correctly places negation after the copula: Er ist nicht dumm. (He is not stupid.) Ich bin nicht musikalisch. I do not have an ear for music; lit. ‘I am not musical’. Stage II: Postverbal placement The rule of (II) is constrained to the extent that NEG is placed only postverbally; this also applies to structural contexts where Standard German requires the separation of the negative particle from the verb: Ich kenne nicht die ganze Welt. (Ich kenne die ganze Welt leider nicht.) I know not the world. (= I don’t know the word at all.) Wir haben nicht den Krieg erlebt (= Wir haben den Krieg nicht erlebt.) We have not experienced the war. Stage III. Separation of NEG The learners acquire the rule which has the effect of separating the negating particle from the finite verb in main clauses. Sie kennen sie sowieso nicht. You know her anyway not. (= Anyway, you don’t know her.) Ich brauche Ihren Rat nicht. I don’t need your advice.

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Because this sequence appears in studies on the acquisition of German by children with L1 German (cf. Wode, 1981), by learners with English as L1 (cf. Felix, 1982) and by learners with Polish as L1 (Sadownik, 1981, 1997), it is not unreasonable to claim that what we are witnessing here are not mere coincidences, but rather the general properties of the acquisition process as reflected by the sequence in question.

The Acquisition of the German Word-Order Rule10 The acquisition of German word order, and especially the placement of the predicate’s verbal and non-verbal elements in a German sentence has recently come into focus again (cf. Kenyon & Tschirner, 2000; Schulz, 2002; Terrasi-Haufe, 2004). According to Ellis (1992: 77), the naturalistic acquisition of German word order rules ‘has been the subject of intensive research that has demonstrated the existence of a robust acquisitional sequence. This research provides a solid basis for comparison’. The research clearly shows that canonical word order in simple and complex clauses is acquired early on during the acquisition process, the next stage in the development of German syntax being the verb related negation word order. Comparison of the various sequences in L2 acquisition (Clahsen et al., 1983; Clahsen, 1984, 1987; Clahsen & Muysken, 1986)11 and foreign language acquisition (Sadownik, 1997) has shown that the adverb preposing rule (ADV PREP) is employed very early, before the learners have acquired any other German word order rule. At that time, the canonical dominant verb-position pattern is, as already remarked, SVO. This also holds for the initial stage of the negation sequence: as long the learners have not acquired any of the verb placement rules, the negative particle always appears next to the verb, mostly in preverbal position. As far as the clause– internal placement of adverbial phrases (ADV VP) is concerned, it has been demonstrated that frequencies in the application of this rule coincide with the application of the Subject–Verb Inversion rule. Thus we may hypothesise that the acquisition of both rules might be the result of a single language-learning process. Finally, it has been shown that the separation of the negative particle from the finite verb is acquired simultaneously with Inversion and ADV VP. What follows from this is that the development of verb and adverbial placement as well as of negation may be described in terms of the four general developmental phases shown in Table 13.3. At this juncture let me illustrate the particular stages in the development of word order in German sentences which appeared in all subjects learning German as a foreign language. A model which adequately captures the dynamicity of the word order rule in German is the implication model (see also Clahsen, 1984: 224–225). The analysis of data shows that language patterns are acquired by learners in the same, stable and

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Table 13.3

Four general developmental phases of verb placement

Verb placement I. SVO

Adverbial

Placement negation

ADV PREP

NEG next to Verb

ADV VP

NEG sep. from Verb

II. PARTICLE III. INVERSION IV. V-ENDE (COMP, WH, REL)

unchanging order so that the acquisition of a given rule implies the existence of a structure mastered before. The implication scales explain how transition takes place from one system of rules to another and thus mirrors the developmental sequence which enables us to determine the learner’s competence. The implicational rule order applies to rules that have already been mastered: Stage 1: SVX, i.e. SVO or SV adverbial This stage involves the canonical SVO word order. Because the canonical word order in Polish is also SVO, it pose any serious difficulty to the Polish learner.12 What one may notice here though is some delay on the part of the learner in developing correct the verb–subject agreement in the case of a full verb as opposed to auxiliary and modal verbs: NP (AUX/MOD) V(NP (PP) (1) Meine Mutter ist schön. My mother is beautiful. (2) Sie kann schwimmen. She can swim. (3) *Ich trinken Mineralwasser gern. (Ich trinke Mineralwasser gern). I like (drinking) mineral water. Stage 2: ADV-PREP *(ADV + SVO/adverb fronting The errors in word order of German appear only when the learner uses adverbs and prepositional phrases. These parts of speech are not subject to typological restrictions and can become integrated with a non-stable word order. It is precisely in such cases that learners of a foreign language make use of the word order of L1. In Polish, for reasons of emphasis, adverbs of time, place, etc. are placed in sentence initial or final position. Thus the following word order in Polish is possible: (1) S V O ADV Marek napisał list juz˙ dzisiaj. Marek *hat geschrieben einen Brief schon heute. Mark has already written a letter today.

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(2) S ADV V O Marek juz˙ dzisiaj napisał list. *Marek schon heute hat geschrieben einen Brief. Mark already today has written a letter. (3) O S V ADV List Marek napisał juz dzisiaj. *Einen Brief Marek hat geschrieben schon heute. A letter Mark has already written today. In the Polish main clause, the verb is not, as a rule, used in a sentence final position. German word order is more flexible than English word order, but still less flexible than word order in Polish, the latter being considered a ‘free’ word order language. The canonical SVO in the main sentence can be replaced (1) with OVS if the object is in focus; (2) with the ADV V S order if adverbials and prepositions are put at the beginning of sentence; or (3) with the SOV order if the subordinate clause is moved to the front of the sentence. The obligatory verb second position in the German main clause holds only with a finite verb; in such cases a non-finite verbal form is moved to a sentence final position. If adverbials and prepositional phrases are moved into sentence initial position, then Polish students tended to produce the following incorrect sentences: *Um 7 Uhr ich stehe auf. (Um 7 Uhr stehe ich auf.) At 7 o’clock I get up. *Dann ich gehe ins Badezimmer. (Dann gehe ich ins Badezimmer.) Then I go to the bathroom, *Im Sommer wir waren in Italien. (Im Sommer waren wir in Italien.) In the summer we were in Italy. *Heute wir feiern Geburtstag meiner Mutter. (Heute feiern wir Geburtstag meiner Mutter.) Today we celebrate my Mother’s birthday. The ADV-PREP SVO rule, which yields an incorrect word order (note the ungrammatical third place position of the main clause verb), is mainly used by students of German as a foreign language. The empirical data collected among students-participants of the international course of German in Switzerland are an interesting illustration of ADV-PREP construction as opposed to the typologically variegated L1. Consider: (1) Asako from Japan, L1 Japanish *Die Leute am Anfang sind nicht so offen. Dann sie öffnen sich und dann immer sie passen auf die anderen gut. Hier in der Schweiz die Leute auf der Strasse haben ein ernstes Gesicht und sie lachen kaum. In Japan immer lachen, hier vieleicht wegen des Wetters. Ich hier hoffentlich finde keine Arbeit mit meinem Japanisch.

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(2) Mustafa from Turkey, L1-Turkish *In der Türkei sie hängen noch von islamischem Gesetz, Tradition ab. In der Türkei ein Mann nicht offiziell darf mit vielen Frauen heiraten. (..) Nachher ich habe die Aufnahmeprüfung von der Uni bestanden. Dann wegen der Probleme ich mußte die Uni verlassen. Nach ein Jahr ich habe wieder eine Prüfung bestanden. Japanese, just like Turkish, is an SOV language. (Its canonical order is, for example, Dog man bites.) In SOV languages, sentences have a special position which is filled by the current topic of the conversation, hence the ungrammaticality of (1). (3) Lee from China, L1-Chinese *Jetzt ich wohne nicht in China. (..)*Aber jetzt junge Leute in China sind später verheiratet. Jetzt die Familie ist nicht so groß. Früher die Leute waren sehr früh verheiratet, 15,16, ich meine vor 40 Jahr. Früher die alten Leute in China lebten mit ihren Kindern zusammen. Dann sie konnten spielen, spazierengehen. Jetzt die Regierung habe viele Alterheime gebaut. Dort alte Leute können wohnen. (4) Philippe from Bolivia, L1-Spanish *Jetzt wir sind Demokratie. Vieleicht vor 20 Jahren in Bolivien gab es Konflikte. Jetzt sie sind nicht stark. Im Regenwald alle sind 1,80 m groß. Nach dem Krieg viele Japaner gingen nach Südamerika. This typical appearance of the ADV-PREP rule during the acquisition process of L2 in natural conditions is explained by Pienemann as follows: After the application of ADV the basic SVO strategy is still maintained (thus: ADVSVO) while for SEP (verb separation) and INV (inversion) this is not the case. Therefore, ADV is simpler than the latter two rules. It should also be noted that the application of ADV is facilitated by the fact that ADV always moves elements into a psychologically salient position (which is easier to recognize and remember than other positions.13 (Pienemann, 1989: 55)

Stage 3: PARTICLE (AUX+P+V+PART; P+V: AUX+V+PART) At this juncture non-finite parts of discontinuous verbal elements are moved into sentence-final position. This rule applies to the following structural contexts: (a) separable prefixes Ich rufe dich morgen um 10 Uhr noch einmal an. lit. “I call you tomorrow at 10 o’clock once more up.” I’ll call you up at 10 o’clock once again.

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(b) participles in AUX  V structures Ich bin gestern ins Theater gegangen. lit. “I am yesterday evening in the theatre gone.” Yesterday I went to the theatre. (c) when the VP consists of MOD (modal)  V infin Ich mächte nächstes Jahr nach Brasilien reisen. lit. “I would like next year to Brazil go.” Next year I would like to travel to Brazil. It should be stressed that Polish students encounter rather serious difficulties with acquiring this rule. In Polish there are no split verbs and in the case of a complex predicate one should avoid placing this predicate in sentence final position; nor do infinitives appear in sentence final position: Jurek be˛dzie jutro pracowac´w ogrodzie. Jurek wird morgen im Garten arbeiten. Tomorrow George will be working in the garden Before Polish learners acquire this rule they commit characteristic mistakes, particularly as far as split verbs are concerned. A case in point are split verbs such as (a), vorbereiten, darstellen, etc. and the place of non-verbal part of the predicate, (b) and (c), which is not always put in sentence final position: *Ich vorbereitete ein für mich interessantes Thema über die polnischen Nobelpreisträger. *Ich musste viel erzählen über Polen. (..) Manche haben nicht gewusst beispielsweise, *dass Maria Skłodowska-Curie war Polin. (..) *Wir haben das Mittag gegessen in der Mensa. I am preparing an interesting topic on Polish Nobel Prize winners. I had to talk a lot about Poland . . . many people did not know, for example, that Maria Sklodowska-Curie was Polish. (..) We had our lunch in the cafeteria. Stage 4: INVERSION of subject–verb, ADV placement between Vf and object Following proposed complements and interrogatives, the subject appears immediately after the finite verb. Adverbials can be placed optionally between the finite verb and the object. The acquisition of the subject– verb inversion rule in German sentences is nowadays a much debated issue. What the L1 research shows is the rapid and unproblematic acquisition of this rule while second and foreign language acquisition researches point to serious difficulties in acquiring it in the case of full verbs and lesser difficulties in the case of modal and auxiliary verbs. The acquisition

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of interrogative constructions requires also the application of the subjectobject inversion rule and is, from a semantic point of view, often comparable to declarative sentences. This explains why inversion is more quickly and more easily acquired in interrogative sentences. Stage 5: ADV–VP Adverbials can be placed optionally between the finite verb and the object. Stage 6: Verb–final/in subordinate clauses (COMP, WH, REL)/COMP SOV-finVfin Stage 6 has to do with the operation generating subordinate clauses with a correct final word order. Final word order, just as inversion does, poses the greatest problems to Polish learners. For this reason, I failed to monitor the acquisition of these rules by my students. The changeable position of the verb in the main and in subordinate clauses, typical for German, is an issue so complicated that an analysis of this problem would go far beyond the scope of this paper (see Sadownik, 1997: 221–241). Studies on the acquisition of word order in a German sentence in class conditions have shown the validity of the so-called implicational scale which introduces order in the development of word order in German. This scale establishes a stable template for the acquisition of German linguistic structure. In the first stage of development, learners use a basic/canonical SVO word order irrespective of linguistic context. That is, they show no control of the optional adverb-preposing rule or of obligatory particle, inversion and verb/end rules. These rules are acquired sequentially. Adverb-preposing is acquired first, particle second, inversion third, and verb-end last. The sequence of acquisition comprises an implicational scale, where the acquisition of any rule implies the acquisition of other rules further down the scale, but not those higher up. The acquisition of the V END order in the subordinate clause implies the acquisition of all remaining word order rules in a German sentence, that is ADV–VP, Subject–Verb Inversion, Particle, ADV VOR and SVO: V-ENDE
ADV-VP/INVERSION
PARTICLE
ADV-VOR
SVO Summing up, we can present the acquisition of word order in German by Polish learners as shown in Table 13.4.

Conclusion The empirical material collected in my studies allows for a number of observations to be made about the acquisition of selected fragments of the grammar of German by foreign students. It also leads to the conclusion

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Table 13.4 Actual configurations of acquisition of word order in German by Polish learners (1)

(2)

(3)

S

V

O

V

O

ADV S

V

O

ADV

V

O

S

Vf

O

Vnf

Vf

S

O

S

Vf

Adv

O

ADV

Vf

S

O

COMP S

Vf

O

COMP S

Vf

O

that the acquisition of a language in organised courses must be viewed as a discontinuous process. A given discrete developmental structure which is incompatible with the norm of the target language appears at first quite frequently; then it disappears ‘out of itself’ at a later stage of language acquisition. This should be taken to mean that after this period, favourable conditions have been established for the well-formed structure to have been acquired.14 The nature of these conditions has not been fully explained yet. The basic questions which are still awaiting an answer are: (1) Why does the process of foreign language acquisition develop the way longitudinal empirical studies appear to suggest? (2) What factors determine the far-reaching convergence of developmental sequence in the second language under natural conditions and in the formal classroom situation? (3) What conditions determine the far-reaching convergence with implicational scale, leaving aside individual differences in the rate of acquisition of particular syntactic rules? Although further studies are necessary on the acquisition process, we can conclude, on the basis of the research done so far, that the effective creative contribution of the learner in the acquisition process seems to be far more important than the role of the teacher. For, although the learner him/herself reconstructs the target language systematically, the question still remains open to what extent his/her conscious metalinguistic knowledge boosts the acquisition of linguistic structures (cf. Butzkamm, 2003). As is well known, one of the main problems a teacher of a foreign language encounters in class is the rate at which the language is acquired by individual students and the end results of the teaching process. Some students make quick progress, while others do not go beyond initial developmental stages. One can also observe cases of ‘fossilisation’ of ill-formed expressions, found even in utterances of advanced learners. The idea of

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the decomposition of the target structure, combined with the developmental sequences enables us to look critically at the evaluation criteria used so far, according to which learners’ utterances were classified as ‘incorrect’ or only ‘partially correct’. It seems that some ill-formed structures, reflecting the developmental stages, can be much ‘closer’ to the norm of the target language and thus less incorrect than initially thought. And the other way round: ill-formed structures associated with initial developmental stages must be viewed as a departure from the target structure and thus constitute a blatant breach of the norms of the target language. All in all, the results of this study appear to suggest that at least for some grammatical structure, the route of acquisition does not vary in any significant way from one setting to another. The results also suggest that instruction will not result in the acquisition of new grammatical properties unless the learner is developmentally ready to acquire them. Notes 1. As Weist (2002: 79) notes, ‘Over 20 years ago, Henning Wode asked the following questions: (1) Is L2 acquired in a developmental sequence?, (2) Is there an ordered sequence of stages? And the developmental sequences the same for L1 and L2? (Wode, 1976: 2). Wode answered the first two questions in the affirmative and the third in the negative (see also Wode, 1981).’ 2. The notion developmental sequence is defined by Felix (1982: 69–87) as an hypothesis which relates both to the invariant as well as to the changing elements of the acquisition process. The developmental sequence should be sharply distinguished from the notion order of acquisition, the key concept of acquisition studies, also known as morpheme order studies. According to Felix, order of acquisition consists in capturing the occurrence of ill-formed structures and thus reflects not so much the order of acquisition, but all those parts of grammar which pose a serious problem for the learner. In this context, the validity of Ellis’s (1989) acquisition criterion seems to be debatable. For, according to this criterion, a fully mastered structure is one that has been applied correctly in 75% of its usages and has appeared in at least three obligatory contexts. 3. For Wode (1981), acquisition draws on a linguo-cognitive system, consisting of a system for acquiring the formal properties of language and a system responsible for development. 4. Already in his earlier works Chomsky (1972: 103) observed that this kind of theory opens up the ‘possibility of learning something, from the study of language, that will bring to light inherent properties of the human mind’. 5. According to Pinker (1994: 274), ‘(...) English contains about 180 irregular verbs like held, heard, cut and went – many inherited from Proto-Indo-European – whose past-tense forms cannot be predicted by rule but have to be memorized by rote. Morphology is organized so that whenever a verb has an idiosyncratic form listed in the mental dictionary, the regular -ed rule is blocked: goes sounds ungrammatical because it is blocked by went. Elsewhere, the regular rule applies freely.’ 6. Similar attempts have been made, among others, by Hahn (1982), Felix (1982), Jordens (1983, 1990), Ellis (1989, 1994). Particularly interesting in this respect are Pienemann’s (1989) studies of language acquisition as a foreign language carried out on Swedish, Japanese, English and German.

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7. As already remarked, many psycholinguists assume that learners follow two strings of development at the same time: on the one hand, prefabricated routines are learned and memorised as wholes, which evolve into patterns, while, on the other hand, the creative construction process develops. However, in all types of language acquisition learners differ in the ways of applying formula: some apply them quite often, others apply them rarely. There is also a varying degree of the importance attached to these routines, formulas in the process of acquisition of syntax and morphology by children and by adults (cf. Pienemann, 2002b). As Ioup (1996: 359) notes, ‘The conventional phrases that adult L2 learners use do not provide them with insights into the grammatical system of the language. (...) It appears that for the L2 learner, grasping the lexical context of a fixed phrase does not guarantee acquisition of its syntax or morphology, much less an extension of its grammatical properties to the larger language.’ Too high a level of rule application is nowadays more and more often criticised as a factor causing premature stagnation in language development. 8. The Kiel Project on Language Acquisition was initiated by Henning Wode in the late 1960s. Its aim is the construction of an integrated theory of language acquisition, accounting for commonalities and differences among all acquisitional types (L1, bilingualism, L2 tutored and untutored, relearning after language loss) involving various target languages (see Wode, 1981 for details). Majority of these studies are concerned with the untutored L2 acquisition of English. This universalist approach, although it makes very strong claims concerning man’s general ‘linguo-cognitive’ faculties, mainly derives its arguments from language internal or rather ‘linguistics-internal’ analyses. Consequently, the sequences of L2 development are defined and described in terms of linguistic rules. 9. Non-anaphoric negation in German is expressed by the negating particle nicht in post verbal position. 10. Generally, we can differentiate three types of languages, depending on the placement of the verb in the sentence: SVO (Subject-Verb-Object), SOV, VSO. Basing on topological argumentation, the adherents of generative semantic have proposed for German the following word order: SOV (verb final position), VSO (verb-initial position), as well as SVO (verb second position) (see Bussmann, 2002: 830). German has a number of word order rules. Their surface representation can be described as follows: (1) the canonical word order is SVO (Ich trank eine Tasse Kaffee. ‘I drank a cup of coffee’); (2) Adverb proposing: in German, adverbs can be shifted from sentence internal or final positions to sentence initial position. (Gestern trank ich eine Tasse Kaffee. ‘Yesterday drank I a cup of coffee.’) Adverb-proposing requires inversion; the movement of the adverb is considered a separate rule, however; (3) Particle: this rule states that non-finite verbal elements are moved to clause-final position; (4) Inversion: this rule states that a finite verb form precedes the subject of its clause in certain linguistic contexts, when adverb-preposing occurs and after a sentence-initial direct object (Obstsalat esse ich gern. ‘Fruit salad eat I with pleasure.’) Inversion also occurs in WH interrogatives (Wann fahren wir in die Schweiz? ‘When go we to the Switzerland?’); (5) Verb-end (Ich hoffe, dass sie ihm das Buch gegeben hat. ‘I hope she has given him the book’) (cf. Haftka, 1996). 11. This series of publications describe and explain the naturalistic acquisition of German word order rules by adult migrant workers with Romance language backgrounds and their children. 12. It should be stressed here that although word order in Polish is ‘free’ and depends in some measure on the speaker’s attitude, it is by no means totally free.

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13. Eubank (1993: 257) argues in the same vein: ‘We can now make the following prediction . . .: for L2 learners of German, utterances of the form Adv-SVX (i.e. uninverted) are easier to process (emphasis added) than utterances of the form Adv-VSX (i.e. inverted).’ 14. It is worth noting that Pienemman’s (1984, 1987, 1989) Teachability Hypothesis and Processability Theory addresses a number of questions: Why is it important for language teachers to know about language acquisition? What is learnable at what point of time? According to Pienemman, ‘the teacher’s error correction strategies make sense and can aid the process of acquisition (...) if the interlanguage is close to the point when the structure to be taught is acquired in the natural setting’ (Pienemann, 1989: 60); (...) ‘the influence of teaching is restricted to the learning of items for which the learner is ready’ (Pienemann, 1989: 63).

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Pienemann, M. (1987) Determining the influence of instruction on L2 speech processing. Australian Review of Applied Linguistics 10, 83–113. Pienemann, M. (1989) Is language teachable? Psycholinguistic experiments and hypotheses. Applied Linguistics 10 (1), 52–79. Pienemann, M. (1999) A unified approach toward the development of Swedish as L2: A processability account. Studies in Second Language Acquisition 21, 383–420. Pienemann, M. (2002a) The procedural skill hypothesis for SLA. In P. Burmeister, Th. Piske and A. Rohde (eds) (pp. 43–57). Frankfurt/M.: Peter Lang. Pienemann, M. (2002b) Unanalysierte Einheiten und Sprachverarbeitung im Zweitsprachenerwerb. Zeitschrift für Angewandte Linguistik (ZfAL) 37, 3–27. Pinker, S. (1994) The Language Instinct: How the Mind Creates Language. New York: William Morrow and Company, Inc. Pinker, S. (1999) Words and Rules: The Ingredients of Language. New York: Basic Books. Pinker, S. (2003) Das unbeschriebene Blatt. Die moderne Leugnung der menschlichen Natur. Berlin: Berlin Verlag. Pinker, S. and Prince, A. (1992) Regular and irregular morphology and the psychological status of rules of grammar. In L.A. Sutton, C. Johnson and R. Shields (eds) Proceedings of the 17th Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society: General Session and Parasession on the Grammar of Event Structure (pp. 230–251). Berkeley, CA: Berkeley Linguistics Society. Rothweiler, M. (1993) Der Erwerb der Nebensätze im Deutschen. Eine Pilotstudie. Tübingen: Niemeyer. Sadownik. B. (1991) Implikationen der Zweitsprachenerwerbsforschung für die Glottodidaktik. Lublin: Wydawnictwo UMCS (reprinted 1999). Sadownik, B. (1997) Glottodidaktische und psycholinguistische Aspekte des Fremdsprachenerwerbs: Lernerperspektive. Lublin: Wydawnictwo UMCS. Sadownik, B. (2000) Fremdsprachenerwerb als Untersuchungsgegenstand der Glottodidaktik. In Niemiecki w dialogu/Deutsch im Dialog, 2 (pp. 46–72). Warszawa: Graf-Punkt. Terrasi-Haufe, E. (2004) Der Schulerwerb von Deutsch als Fremdsprache. Eine empirische Untersuchung am Beispiel der italienischsprachigen Schweiz. Reihe Germanistische Linguistik 153. Tübingen: Niemeyer. Wakabayashi, S. (2002) Generative Approaches to the Acquisition of English by Native Speakers of Japanese. Berlin/New York: Walter de Gruyter. Weist, R.M. (2002) Space and time in first and second language acquisition: A tribute to Henning Wode. In P. Burmeister, TH. Piske and A. Rohde (eds) An Integrated View of Language Development. Papers in Honor of Henning Wode (pp. 79–109). Trier: WVT Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier. Wode, H. (1976) Developmental sequences in naturalistic L2 acquisition. Working Papers on Bilingualism 11, 1–31. Wode, H. (1981) Learning a Second Language. An Integrated View of Language Acquisition. Tübingen: Gunther Narr. Wode, H. (1983) Papers on Language Acquisition, Language Learning and Language Teaching. Heidelberg: Gunter Narr. Wode, H. (1988) Einführung in die Psycholinguistik: Theorien–Methoden–Ergebnisse. Ismaning: Hueber. Reprinted as: Psycholinguistik – Eine Einführung in die Lehr- und Lernbarkeit von Sprachen. Ismaning: Hueber, 1993. Zobl, H. (2002) The ‘linguo-cognitive system’ and the vulnerability of functional morphology in L2A and other aquisition types. In P. Burmeister, Th. Piske and A. Rohde (eds) An Integrated View of Language Development. Papers in Honor of Henning Wode (pp. 57–71). Trier: WVT Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier.

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Chapter 14

Introducing Language Interface in Pedagogical Grammar1 MICHAŁ B. PARADOWSKI

Introduction Acknowledging Lenneberg’s (1967) Critical Period Hypothesis or Seliger’s (1978) milder differential fossilisation hypothesis the implication is that once a certain age has been reached by the learner, with reduced (if any) access to Universal Grammar (UG), the grammatical system of a foreign language will never be internalised without the crutch of formal instruction. While a child can acquire languages in a way parallel to his/her mother tongue and become a truly multilingual speaker, the adult no longer has the same capacity to acquire an L2 naturally and automatically. This has been borne out by a body of research indicating that adults who have found themselves in an immersion situation (immigrants, sojourners) never acquire full linguistic competence without the benefit of additional methodical learning; moreover, some fail dismally without developing even rudimentary grammatical competence (e.g. failing to apply morphological endings). Seliger (1978) believes that different levels of language processing (syntax and pronunciation, for instance) are linked to distinct neural mechanisms, with the result that various aspects of language fossilise at different periods (learners with native-like syntax but foreign pronunciation are not uncommon). The process of the lateralisation of macroneural circuits and localisation of language functions is gradual and lengthy, with different aspects of language affected at different stages, and only several becoming unacquirable after puberty (phonology doubtless being most noticeable and therefore frequently quoted – cf. the ‘Henry Kissinger effect’ alias ‘Joseph Conrad phenomenon’; but vide Cummins (1981), Fullana and Muñoz (2003), García Lecumberri and Gallardo (2003) or Leather (2003) for findings that – in a formal context – early exposure does not correlate to a ‘near-native’ accent). An explanation of why no advantage in pronunciation is observed in the adult learner may be that this aspect of language is probably least amenable to conscious 225

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manipulation. There are, of course, also exceptions to this rule, where individuals who embarked on learning foreign pronunciation (even if not the core of the language system, this having been internalised earlier) after puberty nonetheless managed to master it at a native-speaker level, occasionally even surpassing indigenous models. These, however, are individuals equipped with unique predispositions, as rare in everyday life as Olympic sportsmen. Overall, adults still seem to do at least as well as YLs in learning a foreign language (and, more significantly, they manifest a similar developmental route); for instance, Matias (2006) discovers that the more expert language interpreters are those who have – proficiently – learnt the foreign language after their L1 was well-supported by the surrounding environment, thus endorsing the potential for languagelearning accomplishment on the one hand and emphasising the importance of well-developed native language (NL) competence on the other.

The Utility of Formal Instruction in Language Teaching Plentiful arguments have been marshalled to the effect that grammar is indispensable for effective communication (for an extensive overview see e.g. Paradowski, 2003). Although in recent years emphasis has shifted away from the teaching of grammar and disciples of the communicative approach maintain that what ought to be taught are essentially language functions, the fact remains undeniable that these functions are made up from grammatical elements. Ellis (1985: 229) adds that ‘to deny that instruction can help learners to acquire a L2 is not only counter-intuitive, but contrary to the personal experience of countless teachers and students’. While classroom communication renders it possible for second (L2) and foreign language (FL) learners to acquire basic grammatical competence, acquiring full systemic proficiency seems unfeasible (several reasons accountable for such a state of affairs are discussed at length in Paradowski, 2003: 15–44).

Focusing on Foreign Language Learning These factors are particularly consequential in FL learning, where the environment differs substantially from that in second language acquisition (SLA), rendering direct evidence inevitable. First, with a limited attention span, learners happen not to pay too much heed to what is going on in the classroom, and even if they do, they focus on the propositional content of the utterance rather than form (VanPatten’s Primacy of Meaning Principle, 2004: 18) and fail to retain the structure. This is our universal propensity: we listen to language predominantly to understand the message, paying little attention to the precise wording; in Wilberg’s (1987) words, we eat the sweet but discard the wrapper. Explicit instruction

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helps students notice target language (TL) features and patterns and verify their hypotheses. Second, while in an immersion situation learners have ample opportunity and time for repeated and varied exposure to linguistic input and will, hopefully, ultimately absorb it (which is why Krashen dubs natural settings ‘acquisition-rich environments’), in the conventional language classroom (constituting an ‘acquisition-poor environment’) the time factor does not allow sufficient exposure. In a thought-provoking article Krashen (1983) states that the optimal time to acquire or learn a language efficiently is after 90 minutes of continual exposure (which must be interactive, face-toface, e.g. a native speakers’ (NS) lecture; not a news broadcast) – an impracticable condition considering the fact that learners in state schools rarely receive more than two 45-minute lesson units of a FL in one day. Third, indirect linguistic evidence need not necessarily be 100% well-formed. The fact that I vindicate explicit teaching of grammar does not mean that I demand a strictly traditional instructional environment with no interaction; I do recognise ample room for communication in the classroom. The teacher must never fall to the extreme of devoting all classroom time to grammar and leaving no space for spontaneity. Corder warns: Learners do not use their interlanguage very often in the classroom for what we may call ‘normal’ or ‘authentic’ communicative purposes. The greater part of interlanguage data in the classroom is produced as a result of formal exercises and bears the same relation to the spontaneous communicative use of language as the practising of tennis strokes does to playing tennis. (Corder, 1976: 68) The learning of grammar should only be seen as one of the means of acquiring a thorough mastery of communicative competence, not as an end in itself. The only way to learn to communicate in a language is to really communicate in it. When we present a new language form to the students, we should always make it meaningful to them, demonstrate its usefulness – that they will be able to do something with the language, to perform some communicative function for instance. ‘Language is essentially pragmatic in character – situational, contextualized, and purposive, not intended to be, but to do’ (Lewis, 1993: 59). We do not teach the present simple just for the sake of it, if we do not want to teach our learners how to e.g. talk about themselves, their pastimes and daily lives. Using (as opposed to merely comprehending) the language may force the learner to progress from semantic processing symptomatic of the early stages of SLA to syntactic processing; in other words, whereas comprehension can take place by merely attending to the meaning of content words, production may spark off focus on formal features. The learner needs the opportunity to both listen to and produce language used to perform a wide range of different speech acts. As Stevick remarked, ‘[t]hough a student may repeat

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over and over the forms of the language, in doing so he may not be using the language’. Thus, the importance of providing language learners with opportunities to engage in natural communication undoubtedly cannot be dismissed, but the teacher can neither ignore instruction directed at raising the learner’s conscious awareness of the formal properties of the L2. While teaching should not be limited to formal instruction, formal instruction should not be excluded from the language syllabus either. After prolonged debate, recent research has positively settled the case for form-focused instruction (cf. e.g. Doughty, 1991; Harley, 1998; Radwan, 2005, 2006 for a further exploration). It is also received wisdom that mastering the grammatical system of a foreign language poses countless problems for the learner; a fact that needs to be addressed by the teacher. Universal Grammar, or the innate faculty enabling us to acquire our mother tongue effortlessly and without the presence of overt instruction, ceases to become operative or at least loses some of its grip as puberty advances (in line with the current treatment of UG as a set of constraints which prevent the language learner from forming ‘wild’ grammars, rather than the somewhat more vague and liberal term ‘principles’). To the ubiquitous arguments I would like to add in one based on recent evidence from the acquisition (or rather the lack thereof) of universal parameters which customarily (if not universally) tend to pattern in tandem. If together with mastering a given parameter in an FL a cluster of related effects were acquired, this could be treated as evidence of UG still being operative. A study carried out by Gozdawa-Gołe˛biowski (2004a) examining the Null Subject Parameter reveals that instruction in that area of grammar does not lead to adult learners developing native-like intuitions about processes usually attributed to the operation of that parameter. This vindicates the unavailability of UG in the process of foreign language learning (FLL). Without full access to UG and prolonged access to indirect positive evidence the grammatical system of a FL will never be internalised without the compensatory remedy of formal instruction. This in turn summons the eternal question how to achieve this aim effectively and efficiently – one of the issues teachers mention most frequently among the most relevant to language pedagogy.

Utilising the Familiar The earliest and still best roads to linguistic understanding is through the comparison of one language with another. (Bolinger, 1968) Language transfer, both positive (facilitative) and negative (debilitative, interference) is unavoidable (cf. e.g. Paradowski, 2002, 2007d), even where

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there is no need for it to compensate for the unavailability of UG (e.g. in early SLA). We should therefore capitalise on it and turn it to our advantage. It is an empirically supported psychological fact that learning always progresses by relating new information to the already familiar, relying on prior knowledge to facilitate new learning (that is why we learn in terms of prototypes; Paradowski, 2006a, 2006c) – the inherent comparative expectations evident already in the question ‘What does it look like?’ This general truth has been incorporated in Chapter 5.1 of the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages under the label of ‘savoir apprendre’ – the ability to learn, knowledge how to learn effectively – which is recognised as part of the general (i.e. not limited to the linguistic domain only) competences of a language learner/user: In its most general sense, savoir-apprendre is the ability to observe and participate in new experiences and to incorporate new knowledge into existing knowledge, modifying the latter where necessary. (Council of Europe, 2001: 106) Part of ‘savoir apprendre’, of immediate relevance to language pedagogy, is language awareness together with communicative awareness: what languages are, how they work, how they are used and can be learnt (Mariani, 2004: 32). This transfer of general skills is, of course, no Common European Framework (CEF) discovery. As we will find in Coe et al. (1983), for instance, in late 1970s and early 1980s skills and strategies used when performing a listening, speaking, reading or writing activity were frequently taught through specific materials, where the interaction between the pupil and an authentic text was treated as a communicative act, and the students encouraged to recognise that they already possessed skills in their L1 which they could transfer into the TL (Keddle, 2004: 45). We shall see that this is exactly what is fostered in the Language Interface Model. The general observation that we acquire new knowledge by relating it to the already available is also true in the case of FL learners, where the familiar is their L1, which is why – whether they are ordered or forbidden – they will inevitably try to explain a new L2 item to themselves and make sense of it in NL terms and comparing it with their L1, as well as fall back on translation (especially in the earlier stages of proficiency; FL learners with different mother tongues behave differently with respect to certain linguistic properties). FL learners invariably attempt to incorporate the new language in the framework of the known one; they seek a safe passage from the TL to their mother tongue: Starting with the L1 provides a sense of security and validates the learners’ lived experience, allowing them to express themselves. The learner is then willing to experiment and take risks with English. (Auerbach, 1993: 29)

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Most of us are comfortable with the familiar and cautious about anything we perceive to be new or different – we feel more comfortable with friends than strangers, more relaxed in our own country than abroad . . . Similarly, faced with what is new our only strategy for making sense of it is to relate it to our previous knowledge and experience. In this way we make the unfamiliar familiar, with a consequent lowering of our anxiety. (Lewis, 1993: 66) The most likely strategy for the learner is to make a conscious (albeit perhaps unarticulated) link to the L1. These attempts are instinctive and made irrespective of the classroom methodology employed; learners compare languages with or without being instructed to do so, as proven by experiments from various disciplines (cf. e.g. de Bot, 2004; Franceschini et al., 2003; Williams and Hammarberg, 1998). Oxford (1990), for instance, estimates the proportion of learners reliant on interlingual strategies at 60%. Consequently, while their performance is permeated with interference errors on the one hand, facilitative transfer on the other frequently helps them overcome gaps in their FL competence. The overwhelming majority of language course and grammar books on the market (with a few notable exceptions where contrastive grammar boxes are present – e.g. Pye and Kryszewska (2002/2003) with grammar contrast boxes by Grzegorz S´piewak) provide English-language explanations and totally ignore the relations holding between the students’ L1 and the TL. Such mainly Euro- or Amerocentric books moulded in the generic approach are, using James’ (1980: 24) term, ‘universally valid [but] for purely commercial reasons’. Many students and teachers as well are not fully aware of the common properties of the TL and their L1, which could be beneficially put to use in the teaching and learning process. I strongly believe that for a PG to be fully pedagogic, it must be contrastive (especially with linguistically homogeneous FL groups). This entails that competence in the FL can be built by exploiting the common ground, relating TL facts to NL competence (what is known as the extension hypothesis). This entails two consequences. First, a successful teacher should be proficiently conversant in both the L2 and L1 of the learners, thus refuting the myth of native speakerism in grammar teaching (for an extensive discussion of the ‘anti-NS-hegemony’ rationale cf. Paradowski, 2007d). Native speakers’ grammars are ‘-etic or “externally grounded” whereas they ought to be -emic or “congruent with the point of view of the individual being investigated” ’ ( James, 1994: 208). Having a knowledge of, and sensitivity to, the ways in which the learners’ L1 and L2 differ ‘is beneficial both as an aid to localising areas of potential difficulty for the learner where interference may occur and as a vehicle for explanation, in giving learners feedback on their own speaking and writing’ (Leech, 1994: 21).

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Second, FL rules must be formulated in a way that relates to L1 (or another known language) experience. As Singleton (2005) observes, even with the Audiolingual Method, where no occasions were provided for making semantic-associative links between L2 and L1 words, such links were undoubtedly forged anyway. This links with the observation made by Wolff (2005) that learners can only comprehend items which they can assimilate with knowledge already available. Ergo, there are certain things we need not teach because they are identical in both languages; others – we compare in the two languages. How?

The Analytic Language Interface Model I propose the employment of what could be termed the Analytic Language Interface Model, which proves appreciably more successful than other approaches, with the results and enhanced retention preserved long after the instruction period has ended. The method bases to a considerable extent on the model of pedagogical grammar charted in GozdawaGołe˛biowski (2003a: 201–209; 2003b; 2005), with a couple of minor modifications and expansions on my part. What is so new here? The model builds upon the long-known Contrastive Analysis, but in a completely novel fashion, by forging an interface between the learner’s L1 and the TL. This is supplemented (especially in areas not fully amenable to the interface instruction, but also in others as an auxiliary measure) by an explication of the underlying grammatical system, thus leading to an enhanced understanding of the ‘how’s’ and ‘why’s’ of the material to be mastered (Paradowski, 2007a). But step by step: The method usually commences by initial exposure (GozdawaGołe˛biowski, 2003a: 196ff; James, 1994: 210, 1997: 261) of new language material in a natural context, accompanied by its direct translational equivalent, but without aiming at structural decomposition. Preferably, for the learner to pay attention to the relevant grammatical information with a limited capacity to process information, the context should be a short sentence, as such are easier to process than discourse (Wong, 2004: 38–42). At the imprinting stage the same invariant sequence of words will be exposed to the learner a few more times at reasonable intervals until TL–NL meaning equivalence has been established; for instance, moving from the sentence to a passage or connected discourse (as recommended by e.g. Wong, 2004) into which the language point has been written. The new structure is intended for holistic (gestalt) processing and easy recall. Where instruction concerns areas which are already familiar to the learners (as is the case with the language data discussed in this study), these two initial stages can be left out, with the teaching commencing with

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an explication of how the rules of a given grammar area operate in the learners’ steady-state L1. That is, the learner is introduced to rules and facts s/he intuitively knows and subconsciously applies in performance, but which s/he may have never consciously pondered upon. In other words, we lead to the learners’ enhanced language awareness – sensitisation of the learner to the functioning of a mastered language, ‘an ability to contemplate metacognitively a language over which one has therefore developed a coherent and relatively stable set of intuitions: “implicit knowledge that has become explicit” ’ ( James, 1994: 209; emphases added). More attention here is being paid to higher-order rules of use than lowerorder rules of formation as, at least in the case of the research carried out and quoted further on in this chapter, the latter did not pose problems for the already fairly advanced learners. Thus, the first major step is getting the learners to observe and notice patterns in their NL. This finds support for example, in Gabrys´-Barker’s (2005) evidence that source language proficiency is influential on L2 development. Things that have once been explicated have the added preponderance of not becoming easily obliterated and can be recalled as the need arises. This has one more advantage: we can explicate only those L1 items that are relevant to the L2, disregarding ones that may cause confusion. We should also bear in mind the fact that learners often cope with structures that are totally different from their equivalents in the students’ native language precisely because they are so unexpected and ‘bizarre’ and stick in the memory, which can thus further enhance retention. A passage is subsequently made to the explanation of relevant L2 regularities – something more novel this time, being the target proper of the instruction. Since the learners are already au fait with some representative exemplars of the construction in question, the anxiety before having to master some new principles is reduced appreciably, with the reassuring feeling of a déjà vu (Gozdawa-Gołe˛biowski, 2003b: 126). What happens now is raising the learners’ consciousness of FL features – accumulating insight into what the learners do not yet know in the FL, without necessarily directly instilling the rules; James (1997: 260); Rutherford (1987) – revealing the underlying TL pattern and offering a rule, but without losing sight of the L1 principle, showing parallels between both languages. New knowledge representations are not assimilated and stored in an isolated area of the brain, but will always be related (by neural circuits or other means) to areas storing some other information – for instance, implicit L1 knowledge that has become explicated (Gozdawa-Gołe˛biowski, 2003b: 123). This is necessary for making the new knowledge structures available for effective and efficient recall. The NL and TL facts are presented as systemically and systematically related (Gozdawa-Gołe˛biowski, 2003b: 126). Languageawareness tasks sensitise the learner to language phenomena which are present in both his/her L1 and the TL, but whose overt realisation in the

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two languages may differ. Learners discover whether the L1 rules are operative in the L2 and vice versa. The teacher’s task is to demonstrate to the learners through comparative analysis that they already know something which they have so far regarded as mysterious. This eases the burden and is greatly facilitative in lowering the affective filter – a factor not to be disregarded. It is essential to note at this point that at the two stages, especially at early levels of proficiency or where the subject matter is complicated or would require the introduction of complex taxonomy otherwise, in order to maximise efficiency the explanations had preferably be formulated in the mother tongue of the learners ‘as a more accessible and cost-effective alternative to the sometimes lengthy and difficult target-language explanation’ (Ur, 1996: 17; cf. also e.g. Temple et al., 2005 or Wilen et al., 2004). Using the learner’s L1 to provide examples and clarify explanation saves time, makes the input more comprehensible than might be possible with the ‘sink-or-swim English-only approach’ (Temple et al., 2005: 498), and relieves frustration caused by not understanding classroom instruction presented in the TL only (Balosa, 2006). Humans are limited capacity processors – when learning to drive a car, we will not be taking a turn at a busy crossroads, glancing in the rear-view mirror, keeping a conversation going, operating the CD and applying make-up all at the same time (Paradowski, 2007d). When introducing a new concept or piece of information about the language system care should be taken not to rock the boat too much, to ensure that the learners concentrate on the content of the message rather than on painstakingly deciphering its wording. As a rule it is more important for the learners to understand a concept or grammar point than it is for them to be explained exclusively in the TL. An FL learner will – even at very advanced stages – still think in the L1 when performing more and less complex mental operations, such as for example, mathematical calculations (only 24% of the full-time first-year students at the Institute of English Studies, University of Warsaw who were asked in an anonymous questionnaire in which language they perform simple addition, subtraction or multiplication tasks when abroad, indicated English; Paradowski, 2007b). Translational equivalence is probably the most economical way of conveying FL meaning, ‘given its speed and efficiency, and especially at elementary level where explanations in the target language may be over the heads of the students. A refusal to translate may [rather: will] also mean that learners make their own unmonitored and possibly incorrect translations’ (Thornbury, 1999: 41). The judicious use and position of the L1 in the classroom should thus be countenanced, although overuse may trim down the volume of exposure students get to the TL. Alternatively, the ‘sandwich’ instruction technique may be worth trying (also as it has the ‘bath-tub’ effect: we remember best the information that comes first, then last, and only then

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the middle one: 1-2-3 – L2-L1-L2; that is why, when reading a difficult text, it is advisable to make frequent pauses so that there can be many ‘beginnings’), though with lengthier explanations it may be overly timeconsuming. FL metalinguistic terms (grammarians’ jargon) and analyses will only constitute an additional learning burden (even if the learner will not be expected to articulate the rules or analyse sentences, she/he will have to first understand the concepts involved in order to comprehend the rules which should assist him/her in learning and using the language) without necessarily contributing much to the understanding of the grammar item explained: grammar will ‘enter the learner’s experience . . . as an objectified body of alien knowledge to be mastered or as obstacles to be overcome’ (Rutherford, 1987). As Komorowska (1993: 119) points out, we must remember to grade the difficulty: if we introduce a new structure to the learner, we should do it in words that are already familiar to him/her; otherwise we will simultaneously be teaching two different things. Expecting the learners to learn ignotum per ignotum is an insuperable titanic endeavour with usually meagre chances of succeeding, only overloading them, which may be compared to the self-explanatory situation depicted in Figure 14.1. In order for any communication act to be successful, the message must be accessible to the addressee. This means primarily that the addresser (teacher) and the addressee (student/learner) must share a common knowledge of the code being used. Moreover, metalinguistic terms bear

Figure 14.1 Will it fit or won’t it fit? (Photo © Jaroslaw Press; reprinted with permission.)

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no relation to the way in which people actually process language; par exemple, we know that a given verb is transitive while another is intransitive without any intricate linguistic knowledge (Bialystok, 1981). As long as the learner performs correctly, it does not matter whether she/he can verbalise the rules or not, and there is no need to supplement any metalinguistic terms or concepts, as these may even have the opposite, confusing effect. Another problem in using metalinguistic terms mentioned by Mohammed (1996: 286) is that ‘the learner may focus on these terms and learn them by heart either because he thinks that these terms are what the teacher or textbook writer wants him to know or because he believes that learning a language is a matter of learning such terms’. Such knowledge may be quite independent of the ability to understand or produce the forms and structures described. Once the relevant material has been explained, an interface – a contact area between the two language systems – is forged, usually consisting in modifying the L1 rule to accommodate relevant L2 data (GozdawaGołe˛biowski, 2003a: 206). Subsequent carefully monitored practice first expects the learner to apply the FL rules to L1 (sic) examples (Paradowski, 2006b, 2006c, 2007a, 2007d). Precisely that: foreign rules are to be applied to mother-tongue texts. Focusing on the meaning and form at the same . time overcomes the problem mentioned by Nizegorodcew (2005) that form-oriented input is unsuccessful if not interpreted as such. Only then does the teaching move to more traditional TL exercises, but even then in a progressive, transitional fashion: the first exercises being translational equivalents of the L1 examples (in order to preserve the familiarity appeal), subsequently moving on to entirely novel ones, where the learner tackles the tasks without the aid of a déjà vu – as in real-life contexts. This may look like building the L2 on the L1 – which, to a certain extent, it is – but the mother tongue only acts as a scaffolding or bridge to be dismantled or burnt when no longer necessary, or, another valid metaphor, the foundations upon which the construction proper is mounted, which with time become invisible, but remain present at all time. We thus reach the final competence expansion stage – making the learners collapse their already conscious knowledge of the FL system with their already explicit representations of their subconscious L1 competence and integrate the rules, ultimately expecting submersion and subconscious absorption thereof, bringing about multicompetence effects. This is consistent with James’ (1997: 263) observation that ‘[e]xplanation is, in effect, comparative description: quite simply EA [error analysis]’. Although formula memorisation poses a lighter learning burden, rule internalisation is undeniably more successful. James (1994) also maintains that in order to forge the interface a ‘common denominator’ has to be discovered. Metacognition can be this denominator as one can have metacognition of both the native and foreign language. The resulting

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L1:L2 merger is expected to become automatised and – with sufficient frequency of use – proceduralised, thus conducive to accuracy-cum-fluency and compensating for the lack of native intuitions (Gozdawa-Gołe˛biowski, 2003b: passim). By such a gradual, multi-stage method the learners gain command of the TL system before actually starting to use the operational principles in the TL itself. A cognitive inferential (deductive) approach gets them (at least mentally) more engaged in the learning process (‘you learn best what you’ve done yourself’), while the juxtaposition and use of L1 and L2 rules alongside helps the latter merge with the former and thus, hopefully, submerge to the subconscious. By practising the TL rules in the safe grounds of the L1 first, the learner feels more comfortable and at ease (this reducing the affective filter). Such a multistage method greatly stimulates students’ continual involvement and interest in the learning process (Paradowski, 2007a). With its use learners are taught grammar from their own perspective; they obtain a bridge linking the FL with their NL. Every new structure should best be introduced through the prism of the learners’ L1, the only language in which they are, and will ever be, fully competent (unless raised in a bi-/multilingual environment). Explicit exposure to contrastive linguistic input expedites the acquisition of given L2 forms, while consciousnessraising (C-R) elucidates the gap between the learner’s production and that of NSs. Engaging terminology-free contrastive cross-linguistic comparisons may be viewed as an acquisition facilitator, much more straightforward than employing convoluted grammatical explanations (for a wide range of activities which make learners aware of how their own language system corresponds to that of the TL see Gozdawa-Gołe˛biowski, 1999). C-R does not even require the learner to be able to verbalise the rules s/he has learnt. We can also quote here the argument for the study of grammar of the FL raised by the Grammar-Translation Method that focusing on grammar in such a contrastive way will familiarise students with the grammar of their own language, which may, in turn, help them speak and write in their mother tongue: language awareness in the L2 does result in increased L1 accuracy (Ewert, forthcoming). Blum-Kulka and Shefher (1993) demonstrate that also acculturation to L2 pragmatics can affect speakers’ L1.

The Model in Practice Let us now pass on to a handful of examples amenable to the interfacial instruction of English rules vis-à-vis a handful of L1 backgrounds (an extensive inventory can be found in Paradowski, 2003, 2007d; I would like to thank Prof. Romuald Gozdawa-Gołe˛biowski for ideas presented in points 5.1, 5.3, and 5.5–5.7).

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Existential sentences Before introducing English existential sentences, the teacher should make learners aware how word order changes the (contextual) meaning of the sentence in the learners’ L1. This means sensitising students to the universal principles of information structure, such as the given-new order characteristic of nearly all natural languages: when the topic of the sentence is known, it opens the sentence, if not, we demote it to the end of the clause to signal its playing the discourse role of focus. The difference between English and for example, Russian is that while the latter inserts a locative phrase up front, English inserts the expletive There: (1) The gangsters are in town. OLD

NEW

–njȵɂȸɆɇȺɅɐȷ TɃɅɃȹȺ OLD

NEW

(2) There are gangsters in town. –Nj ȸɃɅɃȹG ȸȵɂȸɆɇȺɅɐ NEW

NEW (cf. also Gozdawa-Gołe˛biowski, 2000b: 7)

The reader will easily assign each of the two sentences to its proper place in for example, a newspaper article: the beginning or the middle. What is essential, of course, is the relative – not absolute – novelty of information sequenced in the clause. Such a contrastive comparison simultaneously offers the advantage of illustrating the use of English articles, accounting for the high frequency of the indefinite/zero one in nominal phrases introducing new information (Paradowski, 2006a, 2007d). While mentioning the known Æ unknown word order (called the ‘functional sentence perspective’ by the Linguistic School of Prague, comprising such names as Jan Firbas, Vilém Mathesius and Josef Vachek), this semantic-discoursal vantage point also answers for the relatively high frequency of passive constructions in English as compared with Slavic languages, in that while in the former the structure is seen as a means of reestablishing the theme-rheme order, the latter disprefer non-agentive subjects (further exploration of this issue may be found in e.g. Dusˇkova, 1969; Firbas, 1964; Granger-Legrand, 1976; Halliday, 1967). Ordinal numerals Polish case markings can be expedient in distinguishing contexts where ordinal numerals take and do not take the definite article in English. While ordinals functioning as a predicate (and then usually taking no determiner) such as in sentence (3) will probably be translated into Polish in the Nominative, ordinals acting as attributes to a nominal phrase (4) and thus conventionally preceded by the definite article will appear in an

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equivalent Polish construction in the Instrumental (at least in the case of such minimal pairs): (3) (4)

She was first. She was the first runner.

– Była pierwsza. – Była pierwsza˛ uczestniczka˛ biegu.

We can thus apply contrastive instruction even in the lack of obvious cross-linguistic parallelisms. ‘Reported speech’ The phenomenon of oratio obliqua ought to be taught by elucidating the difference between the nature of tenses in the NL and the TL, where it exists. In Russian, for instance, tenses are arbitrary: anterior to, concurrent with, or posterior to the matrix clause action/state (see the very interesting discussion in Perlin, 1996). English tenses, in contrast, are absolute, that is, they relate the message to the moment of speaking. Russian learners may be asked to consider the following examples: (5) ȣɂɆȿȵȼȵɀɌɇɃ Ƀɂ ȶɃɀȺɂ

– When he was saying that, he was ill. (6) ȣɂɆȿȵȼȵɀɌɇɃ ɃɂȶɐɀȶɃɀȺɂ – Prior to saying that, he had been ill. (7) He said he is ill. – He is still ill now. (8) He said he was ill. – He was ill. (9) He said he had been ill. – He had been ill and then he said so. and to discover the difference in temporal reference themselves (cf. also Gozdawa-Gołe˛biowski, 2000b: 96–97, 2003a: 220–223). This will allow them to realise that the backshift – rather than to be considered yet another special apparatus to be mastered – is a straightforward reflection of the general principles of past tense use in English. Present Progressive with future time reference We can also exploit cross-linguistic parallelisms when explaining the use of the Present Progressive with future time reference. Just as in (10), most languages provide the possibility of employing a present tense form to describe plans or intentions for the future: (10) I’m flying to London tomorrow. (11) Morgen vlieg ik naar Londen. (Dutch) (12) Demain, je prends l’avion pour Londres. (French) (13) Ich fliege morgen nach London. (German) (14) Jeg flyr til London i morgen. (Norwegian) (15) Jutro lece˛ do Londynu. (Polish) (16) ȜȵȷɇɅȵɀȺɌɈȷȠɃɂȹɃɂ (Russian)

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to give but a handful of examples. This, as well as the English Present Simple/Present Progressive distinction, can be traced back to the way in which e.g. the Polish language codes relevant facts depending on the construal of ‘present time’ (where, too, two categories of the present tense can be identified; Gozdawa-Gołe˛biowski, 2000a: 19, 2003a: 202). Adding a special rule to this usage would be a waste of valuable lesson time and could result in unnecessary confusion. After all, ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’. Embedded questions Numerous longitudinal interrogation studies demonstrated that when embedded questions first appear in the learners’ IL, they are characterised by subject–verb or subject–auxiliary inversion, as in simple specific questions, for example: (17) (18)

*I don’t know where does he work. *I don’t know how did he get killed.

only later does the learner ‘unlearn’ the inversion rule and differentiate the word order of ordinary and embedded questions, for example: (19)

I don’t know how he got killed.

An excellent shortcut is to teach indirect questions split into two parts as in the following sentences: (20) (21)

I don’t know where | he works. I’ll tell you how | he got killed.

(cf. Gozdawa-Gołe˛biowski, 1999: 140–141)

and illustrate that they can be constructed by as if translating and welding two simple and familiar L1 clauses (as in Norwegian or French; (22)–(23) and (24)–(25), respectively): (22) (23) (24) (25)

Jeg vet ikke hvor | han arbeider. Jeg vil fortelle deg hvordan | han ble drept. Je ne sais pas ou ` | Il travaille. Je te dirai comment | Il a e´te´ tue.

Modal verbs English constructions with modal verbs are frequently ambiguous. This is especially the case when a modal auxiliary is followed by the perfect, as in sentence (26): (26)

Paul could have got murdered.

This may mean either that (a) we have no idea what has become of Paul and it might be that he is deceased (internal perfect, have belonging

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semantically to the complement of the modal, with present epistemic modality reading), or that (b) the possibility existed but was not actualised – he is alive and kicking but if things had fallen out otherwise he would not have been so lucky (external perfect, have having extended scope over the modal, with past dynamic modality reading). Although at first sight learners may find it difficult to perceive the two meanings, they should not have such problems when presented with the semantic explication of the equivalent – equally equivocal – sentence which their language may allow, as French does (Paradowski, 2006c): (27)

Ils ont pu assassiner Paul.

Short answers Auxiliary verbs are a novum for Polish learners of English, which poses a number of problems for the teacher. One concerns instruction in appropriate short answers that would not result in responses of the type: (28)

Q: Do you want to go?

A: *Yes, I want.

Polish learners usually need time to properly master this area of the language. And yet time that is spent unnecessarily! A simple, straightforward and successful way of teaching English short answers might be to indicate that, just as in Polish, you repeat the first word of the question (in Polish – disregarding the complementiser ‘czy’ – the lexical verb, in English – the auxiliary one): (29) Q: Chcesz is´c´? (30) Q: Do you want to go?

A: Tak, chce˛. A: Yes, I do.

The same method may be used when teaching English question tags, absent from Polish, which only has a few infrequent tag phrases. Adjectival pseudo-passives Another area of similarity between for example, German and English is that a number of supposed passive verbs in the two languages behave like and have the distribution of adjectives (e.g. most do not project the external argument), it follows therefore that they are best analysed as such. English (31) and German (32), just off the bat, exhibit the parallelism clearly (Paradowski, 2007a): (31) (32)

The island was uninhabited. Die Insel war unbewohnt.

Obviously, this one aspect fails to account for the passive voice, but it may help students become more at ease with the structure seeing that it is already familiar.

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Utilising Syntactic Insights The cognitive part of the model (interfacial instruction itself relies to a great extent on the learner’s analytic abilities) may additionally fall back on the underlying syntactic structures, particularly where no direct L1–L2 correspondence can be established. Thus, for instance, a bit of syntax will come in useful when dealing with the notorious erroneous utterances Polish learners produce of the type: (33)

*I’m looking forward to meet you.

The problem will again be solved if we show that the ‘to’ does not function as an infinitive marker, but is just a preposition. As such, (just as in Polish) it can only be followed by a nominal expression (34), but not a verbal one: (34)

I’m looking forward to the meeting.

To cater for those among our learners with a predominance of visual modality, a ballpark labelled tree diagram may even be sketched: (35)

PP P

NP

After such an explication-cum-explanation the persistent error can shortly be eliminated (for a broader discussion of Polish learners’ mistakes in English prepositional constructions see Paradowski, 2002). This explanation will automatically carry over to more constructions of the type, for example, to be used to, to be close to, to be given to, to resort to, to object to, to face up to, to own up to, to stand up to, to lead up to, to commit oneself to, etc. Similarly, the English rule whereby the tense value is marked on the leftmost verbal constituent and the meaning of each of the frequently listed impressive number of ‘tenses’ derives from the presence (or absence) of markers of aspect, together with the order of auxiliary components and the accompanying rule of affix hopping, can best be elucidated encapsulated in the (again, simplified) algorithm following the formalised Aspects model of transformational-generative grammar (Chomsky, 1965) (Figure 14.2). Rather than getting side tracked into the fallacy of the proverbial ‘16’ discrete ‘tenses’, this parsimonious compositional linear account, with each element contributing its well-defined meaning, will not only yield all the attested modal/aspect/verb variations, but also rule out illegitimate constructions – such as for example, a non-infinitival form after a

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Figure 14.2

The English verb–auxiliary complex and ‘affix hopping’

modal (which will have absorbed tense) – as well as handle questionformation (as it is the tense-bearing element that is subject to inversion) and negation (the negative particle is attracted by the tensed auxiliary; Gozdawa-Gołe˛biowski, 2003b: 129). At the same time, with will and shall in their separate slot, the diagram demonstrates why there is no distinct category of ‘future tense’ in English (cf. modalised vs. factual predications in Downing & Locke, 1992: 361 and the discussion in Lewis, 1986: 139–146). Labelled tree diagrams will also be helpful in explaining the distribution of English sentential and verbal adverbs, which is ruled by stricter conditions that in a richly inflectional language such as Polish. A range of mistakes can also be averted by pointing out the underlying representation of relevant constructions. Thus for example, Polish learners, owing to transfer from their L1, will typically say: (36)

#How does it look?

rather than the more idiomatic: (37)

What does it look like?

A way out here is to demonstrate that (38) is derived from a structure as in the echo question: (38)

It looks like what?

where the interrogative NP is subsequently preposed to sentence-initial position. Even more successful can be a Deep-Structure revelation when explaining the contrast between constructions such as subject and object question ((39) and (40), respectively): (39) (40)

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Who loves John? Who does John love?

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A non-advanced Polish learner, typically focusing on the content of the message rather than form, will not perceive the difference between the two constructions or will use the wrong one, not least because their Polish surface equivalents are only distinguishable by inflectional markings, but not word order (cf. Gozdawa-Gołe˛biowski, 2002 for an interesting discussion). The mistake can be eradicated and the contrast elucidated if we present the underlying schemata along the following lines, respectively: (41) (42)

X loves John? Does John love X?

corresponding to the Polish equivalents: (43) (44)

Kto kocha Janka? Kogo Janek kocha?

with quite the same underlying schemata (Paradowski, 2006c): (45) (46)

X kocha Janka? Janek kocha X?

It can thus be maintained that some insights from generative grammar may be of considerable benefit in explaining FL material. Moreover, as X-bar syntax (even when we dispose of the intermediate phrasal categories in order to ease the cognitive load) is a framework common to all natural languages, this ties nicely with the Language Interface Model, and universal principles and constraints can function as yet another common denominator teachers can utilise. Regretfully, a language course book or grammar handbook where such insights are capitalised upon is practically nonexistent. Even reference grammars fail to turn the possibility to their advantage, with the notable exception of Huddleston et al. (2002).

Empirical Findings The findings of a prolonged classroom experiment indicate enhanced performance and retention in the experimental group taught via the Analytic Language Interface Model over control groups even in a deferred post-test, two to five months after the instruction in the grammar areas taught was over. The data discussed here represent the results of a study of 144 second-form secondary-school students (16–17 years of age) with an approximately upper-intermediate level of proficiency over three areas of grammar: the phenomenon commonly referred to as ‘reported speech’ (a systemic area), ‘as’ vs. ‘like’, and relative pronouns and adverbs (more lexical in character; a similar modus operandi has also successfully been applied to the teaching of English conditional sentences

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and articles, thus forming a valuable tool for instruction in these exigent language areas as well): (47) 100.00 90.00 80.00 Success

70.00 60.00

mean median

50.00 40.00 30.00 20.00 10.00 0.00 mean median

Exp. 88.07 88.36

C1 44.40 41.11

C2 65.31 64.83

∑C 49.66 46.75

C4 35.14 45.77

Group

Figure 14.3 Average progress Figure 14.3 indicates significantly higher performance of the experimental group over all of the control groups in a deferred post-test, administered as an unannounced, non-graded diagnostic check, the significance of the results computed using the heteroscedastic t-test formula: (48)

t=

(X - Y ) - ( m X - mY )0 È ( N x - 1)Sx2 + ( N y - 1)Sy2 ˘ Ê 1 1 ˆ + Í ˙Á ˜ Nx + Ny - 2 ÍÎ ˙˚ Ë N x N y ¯

with the standard deviation calculated as: (49)

n

 (X - X )

2

i

SD =

i =1

( N - 1)

and the reference point being critical values considered for one-tailed decisions: (50) SD t’ df alpha

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Exp. 40.052

C1 36.247 2.7658 31 p
.005

C2 23.626 1.9145 31 p
.05

C4 20.559 4.3775 29 p
.005

兺C 29.707

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where alpha indicates the acceptable level of probability (for more detailed and exhaustive statistical analyses see Paradowski, 2006c, 2007a, 2007b). In actual fact, each separate column represents not so much a group in the sense of form division in the school, but the students taught by each individual teacher. Thus, for instance, the experimental group comprised 28 students from two language groups, and the total number of these was 10. In terms of size, therefore, there were in a few cases considerable differences in the number of subjects taking the test with each respective instructor. The last column represents the mean and median scores computed for all the control subjects. Owing to logistic considerations and the tight foreign-language curriculum framework, results for both the diagnostic and the deferred post-test results in the grammar areas tested were not available from all control teachers, nevertheless presenting a representative sample all the same. An analysis of the Pearson product–moment correlation coefficient was also calculated with between the average progress and a few independent variables. This, however, failed to return any significant statistic, thus suggesting that the method essentially works equally effectively regardless of learner characteristics. It is, however, possible that a pattern may emerge when more data from further language areas are analysed.

Final Remarks, Conclusions and Implications It thus seems that the Analytic Language Interface Method does perform its job admirably, even though not many students from the experimental group declared independent attempts at metalinguistic reflection. Even if the effectiveness is not necessarily supreme in all areas of grammar, it is, at least, never significantly inferior to other methods, a fact not to be ignored by language teachers and methodologists alike. The essential benefit is that the results of the instruction hold when the learners have ceased receiving it for some time – a long-term pedagogical goal certainly more desirable than just short-term retention displayed in an immediate follow-up test. We may not only fall back on the knowledge of the learners’ L1, but we can equally well apply analogy learning with other languages that our learners are familiar with – this inclusion of more than just the first language in the FLT classroom, with the connection of languages acquired earlier and later, are being proposed by several researchers (e.g. Gabrys´-Barker, 2005; Marx, 2006; Meißner, 1999; Neuner, 2001). The results of a longitudinal study carried out by Marx (2006) comparing two heterogeneous learner groups from mixed L1 backgrounds indicated higher scores in the target language on various traditional measures of proficiency where learners’ awareness was raised of all the languages in their command. Additionally, the learners developed enhanced ability to perceive language as a logical

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system, and to compare the linguistic systems with one another. An experiment performed by Sercu (2006) on 55 multilingual pupils 17–18 years of age estimated only 54% of transfer in a translation task to originate from the L1, with the activation of other languages with the ‘foreign’ status, both psychotypologically perceived as related (e.g. L1 Dutch Æ L3 English; L1 Dutch Æ L4 German) and – contrary to expectations – also less related (L1 French Æ L3 English), as well as some reverse transfer from the L3 to the L2 (for instance, Dutch – being the medium of instruction – was found to influence both FL and NL performance). The experiment also revealed an interesting configuration apparently confusing for the pupils: L1 French  L2 Dutch  L3 English, in which case French was found to be used primarily for lexical transfer, with Dutch being the source of syntactic transfer. Overall, the research posits the following factors influencing strategy choice in the rendering of lexis in a FL: • loanwords – borrowed straight from another language – taken primarily from another FL rather than the mother tongue (perhaps owing to psychotypological closeness); • loanblends – using the original lemma with TL morphology – being the main strategy when mediating a text in the L1, when TL syntax and morphology have been mastered; • literal translation – used in the case of mastery of the TL. Actually, it is not even certain whether the role of the L1 is more important than that of other already mastered languages; as House (2004) points out, in the process of learning further languages it may not be the mother tongue, but primarily the knowledge of the languages that are perceived as ‘foreign’ that is drawn upon – whether by means of transfer or the use of learning and communication strategies – with transfer from the L1 somewhat avoided and the NL only exploited for surface linguistic phenomena, while L2, L3 and Ln for other strategies (House, 2004). House puts forward the highly plausible hypothesis that the awareness of one’s learning processes, strategies, and competence in the L2 is developed better than of those of the L1 – which are typically unconscious and automatic – and the learners are better-trained in monitoring and ameliorating their deficits and expanding their strengths. This is consistent with data collected by Gabrys´-Barker (2005), which showed that multilinguals perform better in their L3 if they transfer their learning experiences from the context of the L2. It is then, in third-language learning, that the mother tongue may become an impediment, inhibiting the activation of the subjects’ L2 reference system. Examining the results of a case study carried out on a group of L3/ L4 learners of elementary Portuguese who underwent language instruction via English, Gabrys´-Barker (2006) proposes that instruction in the L2 allows the subjects to switch off the highly automatic processing mechanisms involved in thinking in their mother tongue, and activate a FL mode – with

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a higher degree of monitoring – and, consequently, conscious transfer of the FL learning/processing mechanisms already at their disposal. When the learners remember, internalise, proceduralise and automatise the rules on the go, we can profess that we teach grammar as process, not merely as content, even if eventually arriving at a product. While a product-oriented syllabus focuses on the outcome of a language programme and on specifying content – the skills we aim to develop – and the aim is defined as the desired end-product, a process-oriented syllabus focuses on the learning process, that is, the means by which communicative skills will be brought about. Utilising awareness- and consciousnessraising ‘fulfils a process rather than product role: it is a facilitator, a means to an end rather than an end in itself’ (Nunan, 1991: 150). Adhering to this procedure the teacher may trust the learners know more than just the surface structure of the utterances taught. Of course, there remain many more interesting issues arising with this approach, and countless further grammar areas for which the method presented here is applicable. For obvious limitations of space I have only been able to present a fraction of the methodology and the data here. Also, the results will require further cross-corroboration from more extensive independent studies, before they can be generalised to a wider context. Note 1.

Different earlier draft sections of this chapter and selected aspects of the methodology expounded herein were presented, among others, at the: 21st Scandinavian Conference of Linguistics (Trondheim, June 2005), 11th National IATEFL Ukraine Conference (Donetsk, January 2006), Conference on Multilingualism and Applied Comparative Linguistics (Brussels, February 2006), 40th Annual TESOL Convention (Tampa, March 2006), 40th International Annual IATEFL Conference (Harrogate, April 2006), FIPLV World Congress/LMS Språkdagar (Göteborg, June 2006) and 2nd International Language, Culture and Mind Conference (Paris, July 2006). I would like to thank the audiences of these events for their insightful questions, comments and ideas. Words of gratitude are also due for the provision and verification of language data: in Dutch – to Walter De Mulder; French – Agnieszka Fulara, Agnieszka Zygmund and Violetta Mazurkiewicz; Norwegian – Tor Anders Åfarli; and Russian – Olga Gladilina and Fedor Rozhanskiy. I am also grateful to my Supervisor, Prof. Romuald Gozdawa-Gołe˛biowski, for his invaluable suggestions, observations and stimulating discussion. Needless to say, any remaining errors, inaccuracies, distortions or misrepresentations are my responsibility alone.

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Leech, G. (1994) Students’ grammar–teachers’ grammar–learners’ grammar. In M. Bygate, A. Tonkyn and E. Williams (eds) Grammar and the Language Teacher (pp. 17–30). London: Prentice Hall. Lenneberg, E. (1967) Biological Foundations of Language. New York: Wiley and Sons. Lewis, M. (1986) The English Verb. An Exploration of Structure and Meaning. Hove: LTP. Lewis, M. (1993) The Lexical Approach: The State of ELT and a Way Forward. Hove: Language Teaching Publications. Mariani, L. (2004) Learning to learn with the CEF. In K. Morrow (ed.) Insights from the Common European Framework (pp. 32–42). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Marx, N. (2006) And how do you say that in your L2? Increasing learner awareness of L1, L2 and L3. Paper delivered at the Conference on Multilingualism and Applied Comparative Linguistics, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, 9 February 2006. Matias, M.H. (2006) Bilinguals and conference interpretation training. Paper delivered at the Conference on Multilingualism & Applied Comparative Linguistics, Vrije Universiteit Brussels, 9 February 2006. Meißner, F-J. (1999) Das mentale Lexikon aus der Sicht der Mehrsprachigkeitsdida ktik. Grenzgänge 6 (12), 62–80. Mohammed, A.M. (1996) Informal pedagogical grammar. International Review of Applied Linguistics 34 (4), 283–292. Neuner, G. (2001). Didaktisch-methodische Konzeption. Teil I:2. In G. Neuner, B. Hufeisen (eds; in cooperation with U. Koithan, A. Kursiša and N. Marx) Mehrsprachigkeit und Tertiärsprachenlernen. Tertiärsprachen lehren und lernen. Beispiel Deutsch nach Englisch. Vorläufige Arbeitsmaterialien. Munich: ECML and Goethe Institut InterNationes. . Nizegorodcew, A. (2005) Second language acquisition and L2 classroom input. Proceedings of the XVII International Conference on Foreign/Second Language Acquisition. Katowice: University of Silesia. Nunan, D. (1991) Language Teaching Methodology: A Textbook for Teachers. New York: Prentice Hall International. Oxford, R. (1990) Language Learning Strategies: What Every Teacher Should Know. Rowley, MA: Newbury House. Paradowski, M.B. (2002) Polish learners’ mistakes in English prepositional constructions and their possible causes: A data-based approach. FOLIO 11, 75–80. Paradowski, M.B. (2003) Making pedagogical grammar a success – Towards a model of tutored FLL. MA thesis, University of Warsaw. Paradowski, M.B. (2006a) ȗȽɅKɍȺɂɂɔ ɄɅɃȶɀȺɁȽ – ȷȽȿɃɅȽɆɇȵɂɂɔ

ɅKȹɂɃɛ ɁɃȷȽ ȷ ɄȺȹȵȸɃȸKɌɂKȾ ȸɅȵɁȵɇȽɋK ȡȵOȺɅKȵɀW 11-ɛ ȡiȻɂȵɅɃУɂɃɛ ɂȵɈȿɃŧɃ- PɅȵȿO WɌɂɃɛ ȿɃɂɉȺɅȺɂɋKɛ ȕɆɃɋKȵɋKɛ ŧWȿɀȵУȵɌKŧ ȵɂ\ɀKĮɆɑȿɃɛ ɁɃŧW ɔȿKɂɃȼȺɁɂɃɛ IATEFL Ukraine/ȖɅɐOȵɂɆɑȿȵ ȥȵУȵ w ȨȿɅȵWɂW̌ȟɅɃȿɈɐȺɌɐȼ ȺŧɅɃPɃɐȺ (Facing Challenges, Sharing Solutions in ELT)’, 26–27 January 2006 (pp. 142–148). Donetsk: Donetsk State University of Economics and Trade. Paradowski, M.B. (2006b) Facing the challenge of modern language pedagogy. Proceedings of the 2006 International Conference on English Instruction and Assessment (C36, pp. 1–17). CD-ROM. Taiwan: National Chung Cheng University. Paradowski, M.B. (2006c) Uczyc´, aby nauczyc´ – rola je˛zyka ojczystego w gramatyce pedagogicznej i implikacje dla dydaktyki je˛zyków obcych. In J. Krieger-Knieja

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Williams, S. and Hammarberg, B. (1998) Language switches in L3 production: implications for a polyglot speaking model. Applied Linguistics 19 (3), 295–333. Wolff, D. (2005) Integrating language and content in the classroom: the added value of CLIL. Proceedings of the XVII International Conference on Foreign/Second Language Acquisition. University of Silesia, Katowice. Wong, W. (2004) The nature of processing instruction. In B. VanPatten (ed.) Processing Instruction: Theory, Research, and Commentary (pp. 33–63). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

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Chapter 15

Towards Reflecting the Dynamic Nature of Grammar in Foreign Language Instruction: Expectations and Current Pedagogic Practice ANNA MYSTKOWSKA-WIERTELAK

Introduction The controversy over the incorporation of grammar instruction into pedagogic practice in the foreign language classroom has remained unresolved despite numerous studies conducted in the field (cf. Ellis, 2001). The views on teaching grammar can be placed between the two extremes: on the one hand there are supporters of explicit rule-based instruction, on the other those who neglect grammar teaching altogether. Since it has turned out that focus on communication alone does not guarantee high levels of accuracy there has been a tendency to pay more attention to the ways structures are to be approached in the classroom. The revival of grammar teaching does not, however, equal a return to the traditional ways of instruction. One of the possible solutions was presented in From Grammar to Grammaring by Diane Larsen Freeman, a widely published linguist whose interests, apart from grammar, comprise teacher education, second/foreign language teaching methodology and research, and recently emergentism. In her book Larsen-Freeman postulates to enlarge the skills repertoire with a fifth one – namely grammaring. She agrees that the novel notion is closely connected with the other skills but insists that it constitutes a separate entity: ‘the ability to use grammar structures accurately, meaningfully, and appropriately’ (Larsen-Freeman, 2003: 143). Grammaring is a process, something people do rather than they know. Consequently, if grammar is not perceived as a set of facts about language, the noun ‘grammar’ acquires a new dimension of meaning and becomes a verb – ‘to grammar’ to express the dynamic nature of the process. Promoting and implementing grammaring requires the creation of specific conditions where learners are encouraged to deal with a target structure 253

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attentively and employ it to achieve their personal goals. Another important argument for the re-examination of traditional approaches to grammar teaching was voiced in Uncovering Grammar by Thornbury (2001), a theoretician, but first of all, a teacher trainer and practitioner, who recognises the need to maintain the distinction between grammar seen as a product and grammaring understood as the process of its creation. The analysis of the product does not readily equip its users with the ability to produce it, and accordingly, Thornbury argues that: ‘a description of used language is not the same as language being used’ (Thornbury, 2001: 2). Larsen-Freeman refers to this phenomenon as the ‘inert knowledge problem’. She claims that the knowledge gained in the process of formal instruction in the classroom is rarely used spontaneously in communication; it remains ‘inert’ outside the classroom (Larsen-Freeman, 2003: 7).

Defining Language, Defining Grammar Larsen-Freeman (2003: 1) begins her considerations with discussing definitions of language trying to prove that the definition one holds affects beliefs on teaching and learning, and consequently, extends to everyday classroom practices. Not only does it determine one’s choice of the underlying learning theory, but it also influences the choice of items to be taught – the syllabus – and the teaching practices selected for the classroom, for example: a person who believes that language is a means of interaction between people will engage their students in role plays and will teach interactional language, while somebody who thinks that language is a set of rules humans use to create and comprehend utterances will engage learners in grammar exercises and teach grammar rules (cf. Larsen-Freeman, 2003). Consequently, revising or redefining the views on language that teachers hold is an essential condition for grammaring to become classroom reality. If, as Larsen-Freeman (2003: 142) proposes: ‘Language is a dynamic process of pattern formation by which humans use linguistic forms to make meaning in context-appropriate ways’, and ‘grammar(ing) is one of these dynamic processes’, then, the notions of pattern formation and communication will become focal issues in language instruction. Grammar to be uncovered In view of the connectionist approach, which Thornbury (2001) seems to advocate, language shares characteristics of other complex systems – not only is it dynamic and non-linear, adaptive, feedback sensitive and selforganising, but, most importantly of all, ‘emergent’. Hence, the ability to generate accurate and appropriate discourse is not transmitted or ‘implanted from the outside’ but it ‘emerges’ in the learner’s brain in the

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course of encounters with the language-rich environment where the teacher has an important role to play (Thornbury, 2001: 56). The teacher’s task resides in creating optimal conditions, facilitative for ‘uncovering’ grammar, or grammaring, to take place. Thus, the teacher’s duties are manifold: (s)he provides input, facilitates interaction, item learning and pattern detection, provides learners with output opportunities and feedback in order to allow for self-actualisation of the system. Demanding as they seem, they do not differ much from the duties of the teacher in a traditional classroom. Neither does the acceptance of the new approach mean the structural syllabus has to be neglected nor does it entail designing of completely new materials. The supporters of connectionist approaches believe that our brains have the ability to create neural networks that consist of clusters of links between information nodes whose efficiency and strength depends on the frequency with which they are activated. Thus, learning consists in the creation and repeated use of the links which, in the course of active employment, become stronger and more easily accessible and are eventually incorporated into larger networks (cf. Ellis, 2003; Mitchel & Myles, 1998). Hence language learning involves the formation of connections between lexical units, situations and objects, not the creation and application of abstract grammatical rules. Frequent manifestations of a structure in a specific context will result in the activation and reinforcement of the connections in the brain. Both LarsenFreeman or Thornbury agree that the difference between covering grammar and grammaring lies within the teacher’s and learners’ attitudes and beliefs. In traditional pedagogy teachers are expected to present and practice separate items contained in the syllabus as if learning was linear and mechanistic. However, learning a foreign language seems to be a much more complex phenomenon where progress intertwines with periods of backsliding and fossilisation, which is often related to as a ‘U-shaped learning curve’. Not infrequently do learners, who seem to have mastered the target form, regress to earlier stages, which proves that mental grammar reorganises itself while acquiring new data – a process of restructuring takes place (cf. Ellis, 1994). Classroom practices, though, instead of concentrating on pattern analysis, should aim at promoting language growth and be a reaction to the evolving learners’ interlanguage. ‘Interlanguage’, a term coined by Selinker (1972), is used to refer to the internal system students develop in the course of learning that comprises features of both the first and the second language and continually undergoes changes brought about by revising and internalising of the system. Even while following a structural syllabus materials can be used to generate language, notice the patterns and scaffold the emergence of learners’ grammar. Consciousness-rising activities or grammar emergence tasks could be incorporated within the PPP model or its later modifications. The PPP procedure, commonly favoured by teachers and material

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writers all over the world, assumes that students should be carefully led through the three stages: from presentation, further on to highly controlled practice, and finally, to the production phase where they are to use the target structure in their own sentences. The criticism the PPP model was subjected to resulted in the emergence of a number of its modifications. Donn Byrne (1986: 3) suggested that the stages, instead of being passed in a linear mode, should be joined in a circle that could be entered at whichever stage learners or teachers find appropriate. The alternative proposed by Scrivener (1994) was the ARC approach, where ‘A’ stands for Authentic use, ‘R’ for Restricted and ‘C’ represents Clarification and focus. What matters the most in the Authentic use component is the transfer of meaning, not accuracy of the produced language. Students use all the language they know to communicate or comprehend messages. The Restricted category encompasses work on drills, texts and tasks with the focus on the target structure, while the Clarification phase requires the intervention of the teacher or the use of a grammar book to build explicit knowledge about the structure in question. Although Scrivener (1996: 86) strongly objects to the identification of the Clarification component with the Presentation stage, both attempt at building of ‘linguistic competence’ related to the target structure. It can be argued that most language that is produced or comprehended in the language classroom can be described as either A, R or C. Using Scrivener’s terminology the traditional PPP phases could be labelled as CRA, where authentic use is proceeded by clarification and restricted use. Another alternative proposal is that of Lewis (1993) who claims that best results will be obtained if students are encouraged to Observe the language, then Hypothesise about the target structure, and finally Experiment on the basis of the hypotheses they advance themselves. Lewis’ OHE paradigm closely resembles the III of McCarthy and Carter (1995) who want students to work with examples of language (Illustration), then initiate the application of discovery techniques (Interaction) in order to enable the learners to grasp new knowledge (Induction). Whichever approach or sequence the teacher chooses, the tenets of grammaring seem applicable and likely to generate genuine language learning without deliberate material production. Moreover, it may be advantageous if the syllabus understood as a sequence, became a ‘checklist’ for teachers to see which grammatical patterns occurring in classroom materials – a text, for example – correspond to the list of items to be taught. Thus, the obligation to teach structures in an imposed fixed order disappears, which facilitates better harmony between pedagogic grammar and learners’ natural grammar. Larsen-Freeman refers to the works of Breen (1984) and Terrell (1991) to show that many currently implemented approaches create opportunities for working on the grammar that arises naturally in the course of communication exercises and tasks carried out in the classroom.

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Attention, Awareness, Noticing In her attempt to identify what constitutes effective pedagogic practice Larsen-Freeman emphasises the significance of helping students ‘learn to look’ (cf. Larsen-Freeman, 2000) by virtue of explicit instruction which accelerates learning since, on the one hand, it helps to notice the target feature or pattern, and on the other hand, it enables learners to verify more efficiently the hypotheses they make about language. The scholar argues that although learners rarely need theoretical knowledge about language forms, but rather opportunities to use them communicatively, grammar should be taught explicitly. While advancing their concepts of grammaring, both Thornbury and Larsen-Freeman refer to the theoretical considerations presented by Ellis (1997: 149) who challenges the traditional approach and discusses two alternative ways of teaching grammar. The first, referred to as ‘intake facilitation’, consists in focusing the learners’ attention on a structure, its meaning and use. In the second, consciousness-raising, explicit knowledge of a target structure originates thanks to direct explanation or problem-solving. The awareness of the existence of a grammatical structure is perceived as an indispensable condition for its acquisition to occur. The almost three-decade-old notion of noticing (Schmidt & Frota, 1986, in Thornbury, 2001: 36) plays a significant role in the concept of grammaring since it shows how formal instruction can aid natural processes of acquisition. According to Schmidt ‘SLA is largely driven by what learners pay attention to and notice in target language input and what they understand the significance of noticed input to be’ (Schmidt, 2001: 4–5). The structure that is presented and drilled will be noticed in the natural input and thus might be acquired, provided the student is developmentally ready for this to happen. Thornbury (1999: 16), while enumerating arguments for teaching grammar, points to noticing as a ‘prerequisite for acquisition.’ A fair degree of conscious attention is of the utmost importance for learning to occur: first, learners must become aware of linguistic features in the input they are exposed to; secondly, they must be primed to notice the gap existing between the target form and their own output. Because of the fact that human attentional capacity is limited, we need to assist learners in the proper allocation of the resources they have at their disposal. The stimuli that reach the brain enter the shortterm memory store and are quickly replaced by the influx of new information unless attention is engaged so that new linguistic material is transferred into long term memory for the subsequent restructuring to occur. Both Gass (1988) and VanPatten (1996, 2004) emphasise the role of attention in the processing of input and its conversion to intake. Getting the attentional allocation increased seems to constitute an important pedagogical issue because ‘the more one attends, the more one learns’ (Doughty & Williams, 1998: 249). Naturally learners process input for meaning before

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they process it for form and if grammatical form is also decoded lexically the chances of its detection are slim. The increased automatisation of comprehension will enable learners to allocate the released attentional resources to processing of form that they did not notice before. With time attention and detection of structural elements require the employment of fewer and fewer resources and thus the learner can concentrate on the detection of items whose communicative value is relatively low (VanPatten, 1996: 30–31). In his recent article, Ellis (2006) acknowledges that although current developments in SLA have helped to suggest effective ways of teaching of the grammar of a second language, there remain a number of controversial issues that require careful analysis or further research. His own investigations and theoretical considerations led him to the formulation of a number of recommendations with reference to adequate classroom procedures. First of all, he pinpoints that, instead of teaching of the whole of grammar, teachers should concentrate on the structures that are problematic to learners. Ellis claims that teaching of a grammatical structure should comprise work not only on its form, but also its meaning and use, and he points out that a reference grammar that does not describe form-meaning connections must nowadays be seen as insufficient. While discussing the value of explicit knowledge – conscious, learnable and verbalisable, Ellis concedes that it plays a facilitative role in the development of implicit knowledge, and as such should enjoy a high status among language teaching priorities. As to the choice of a deductive or inductive approach for the teaching of explicit knowledge, it has been noticed that a differentiated approach is needed since there are many factors, such as the choice of a structure or learners’ preferences and aptitude, that govern the effectiveness of the adopted mode. In search of the best way to teach grammar for explicit knowledge our attention is drawn to the instructional options that rely significantly on the reception mechanisms, VanPatten’s (1996, 2003) ‘processing instruction’ being one of them. The model developed by VanPatten aims to help learners overcome the limitations of the natural processing strategies. As regards output-based options, the rationale for their application can be found in Skill-building theory or in a sociocultural theory of L2 learning, which assume that social interaction aids learning by necessitating the production of new grammatical structures (Ohta, 2001).

Framework Output practice is not to be neglected within the framework proposed by Larsen-Freeman (2003: 106) as it plays an important role in fluency enhancement and affects the underlying grammatical system. Both input and output practice should include work on all three dimensions any

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piece of language comprises: meaning, form and use. Instead of adopting a hierarchical arrangement of language subsystems Larsen-Freeman proposes a practical three-part division which, apart from demonstrating the equal status of each of the dimensions, shows how the three mutually interact. Larsen-Freeman ascribes the existence of such interrelationships to the dynamic nature of grammar and states that ‘A difference in form always spells a difference in meaning or use. Therefore, if the form wedge of the pie chart is changed in some way in real-time use or over-time change, it will have the effect of changing one or the other of the remaining two wedges’ (Larsen-Freeman, 2003: 44). Each part of the diagram represents a different dimension of language. The first stands for the forms of language – the wedge contains information about how a given structure is assembled (i.e. morphology), how it coexists with other structures in a text (i.e. syntax), together with the structure’s phonological and graphological representations. The semantic wedge contains information about the lexical and grammatical meaning of the structure, which is determined by the use of the structure itself. The use or pragmatic dimension deals with what people mean by the language they use and comprises such elements as social functions and discourse patterns. As an illustration of how a structure can be analysed using the tripartite scheme LarsenFreeman (2003: 38–39) presents a review of the existential there in English. Using the form wedge as the starting point she asks the question ‘How is it formed?’ There occupies a subject position in the sentence, is usually followed by a form of be which is determined by the number of the logical subject that follows, the logical subject is usually indefinite. ‘What does it mean?’ is the next question to be posed while applying the second wedge to analyse the structure: there either shows the location of something or asserts its existence. To satisfy the requirements of the third part of the scheme the question ‘When or why is it used?’ must be answered: to introduce new information in end focus position. The author of the scheme acknowledges, however, that the three dimensions are learned differently and, consequently, should be taught differently. Moreover, some techniques are more effective in the case of one dimension than the others. Furthermore, the choice of the dimension to be focused on should largely depend on the students’ needs.

From Theory to Pedagogic Practice Grammaring, in order to take place in the classroom, requires the development of a proper attitude of the learners whose engagement, motivation and beliefs about learning play a decisive role in the overall process of skills advancement and language acquisition. The teacher’s task is to ensure that learners are provided with sufficient data and design a suitable type of activities, however, it is the learners’ engagement that directly

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shapes the process of learning by increasing both the number of interactions learners get involved in and the quality of language they produce. Even unmotivated students will benefit from instruction if they are engaged in activities that are meaningful to them. Motivation can be sustained in many ways but, importantly, in a language classroom, which shares few characteristics of a natural context and where the social pressure to conform is less prominent, a balance between positive and negative feedback must be maintained. Furthermore, communicative effectiveness and the acknowledgement of learners’ involvement add to the overall feeling of being respected and valued (Thornbury, 2001: 73–76). The convergence between beliefs held by the teacher and those brought by learners is yet another important condition for pedagogic effectiveness. Learners’ belief systems comprise a variety of issues relating to the language, skills to be learned, effective teaching practices etc. Thus, the adoption of the novel approach to grammar instruction requires also the change of the learners’ assumptions about the nature of grammar and the ways it should be taught. Larsen-Freeman (2003: 154) enumerates seven steps she takes to promote grammaring in her classroom. First, she encourages the students to analyse target structures according to the three dimensions: form, use and meaning. Then, shows that two forms will not have the same use or meaning, and lets the students discover reasons for rules and patterns. Second, students get involved in consciousness-raising activities to learn to look, not only in the classroom but also outside. Hypotheses formulated by students are tested in the course of experimentation and play with structures and patterns. Importantly, she has adopted such a way of dealing with learners’ errors that ensures the students do not feel constrained in their attempts to experiment with language. Moreover, errors are treated as an important source of learning. Having noticed that learners often choose to rely on ready-made rules for the sake of their own security, she responded to her students’ needs letting them discover the regularities, at the same time making them aware that most rules, no matter how broad, do not prevent exceptions and that rarely is there one correct answer to a grammar question. Finally, she tries to infuse her students with enthusiasm towards language learning by showing how much pleasure and satisfaction can be derived from dealing with complex structures.

Research Since learners’ beliefs about language and language learning affect to a great extent the outcome of the learning process the author of the present paper decided to ask her students about the opinions they hold in reference to grammar and grammar teaching. The subjects of the study were 25 students of the second year of the English philology, all of whom attended

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methodology classes conducted by the researcher. The questionnaire the students were asked to fill in followed a sequence of methodology classes devoted to deliberations on grammar instruction and its place in language teaching. Since the subjects were highly proficient English philology students, the questionnaire was entirely in English because the risk of potential misunderstanding was very small. The numerical analysis of the responses revealed that an average two-year student at the faculty had had 9,7 years of instruction. Ten (40%) of the respondents reported that they had started learning English at primary school but 17 (68%) admitted they had attended private lessons or language courses. Only three (12%) subjects had ever visited an English-speaking country or attended a language course there, but their stay had not lasted longer than a month. Taking into consideration the claim made by Larsen-Freeman (2003: 1) that the definition of language one holds informs the ways in which s/he approaches language teaching and learning, the researcher adapted a list of definitions which Larsen-Freeman picked out and paraphrased from the literature of the subject of about 100 years: (1) Language is a means of cultural transmission. (2) Language is what people use to talk about the things that are important to them, for example, occurrences in their everyday lives. (3) Language is a set of sound (or, in the case of sign language, sign) and sentence patterns that express meaning. (4) Language is a set of rules through which humans can create and understand novel utterances, ones that they have never before articulated or encountered. (5) Language is a means of interaction between and among people. (6) Language is a means for doing something – accomplishing some purpose, for example, agreeing on a plan of action for handling a conflict. (7) Language is a vehicle for communicating meaning and messages. (8) Language is an instrument of power (those who know a language are empowered in a way that those who do not are not). (9) Language is a medium through which one can learn other things. (10) Language is holistic and is therefore best understood as it is manifest is discourse or whole texts (Larsen-Freeman, 2003: 1–2). Only three definitions of those listed above earned the students’ attention: when asked to choose the definition of language which best matched their own point of view, most of the respondents, 56%, pointed at ‘language as a means of interaction among people’, 36%, the second smaller group, stated they perceived language as a means of cultural transmission, 8% admitted that they saw language as ‘a vehicle for communicating meaning and messages’. Importantly, nobody, although they agreed that grammar was a vital part of instruction, perceived language as ‘a set of rules used to

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create and understand new utterances’. Having inspected the views on language her students hold, the researcher intended to investigate their understanding of the concept of grammar. For this reason several metaphors of grammar proposed by Thornbury (2001: 2) were adapted and the subjects’ task was to choose the metaphor which matched the way in which they perceived grammar. The students were also encouraged to provide their own metaphors. While selecting the representation which in their opinion best described what grammar was the students most frequently (40%) pointed to grammar as ‘glue that holds language together’. For 36% of the respondents grammar was ‘a map of the language’, and 16% of them believed that it was ‘the engine that drives language’. Finally, 8% stated that grammar was ‘high-wired in the brain’. Apart from circling the provided options, two students (8%) added their own metaphors: grammar is a basis or foundations of language. When asked to voice their views on grammar as a school subject, as many as 96% of the respondents declared that for them grammar was important, but only 40% admitted that they perceived it as an interesting subject of study and 8% declared openly that they found grammar boring. The results might imply that, although most of the students understand the significance of the grammar component in language learning, they feel dissatisfied with the classroom practices employed by their teachers. Not surprisingly, again 96% of the subjects stated that teaching grammar was necessary, but only 44% perceived it as helpful, which reveals that the students themselves noticed the lack of correlation between instruction and their success rate. Answering the question ‘which dimension of a grammatical structure is important – form, use or meaning?’ – only five (20%) people selected all three options, which may indicate that emphasis is not evenly distributed among the three in the course of instruction. The subjects were encouraged to attempt to evaluate their own performance with reference to grammatical accuracy choosing options characterising different learning styles. Most of the students (56%) selected the option: ‘I know much about grammar but I make grammatical mistakes.’ Eight percent of the subjects acknowledged that ‘although they knew much about grammar they made grammatical mistakes’. The percentage of those who could boast that ‘they knew much about grammar and they used grammatical structures correctly most of the time’ was not very substantial – only 8% of the experimental group. A scant amount – another 8% of the participants – admitted that ‘communicating the meaning was more important than grammatical accuracy’, which is not surprising taking into account the fact that the syllabi followed in the Polish context are largely structural with high demand put on accuracy rather than fluency. The results show that the students themselves found it difficult to fight the ‘inert knowledge problem’ and had realised that the extensive

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knowledge of rules and regularities did not guarantee high levels of accuracy. Furthermore, the above findings indicate that the type of instruction the subjects had undergone so far was primarily focused on the development of explicit knowledge. However, taking into account the stance that the development of explicit might lead to the growth of implicit knowledge, one might assume that the rules the students had learned about would become internalised with time. Nevertheless, the question arises: how should classroom practices change to allow prompt increase in the implicit knowledge. One of the questions regarded the students’ opinion on the number of grammar classes their course should contain. The responses revealed that as many as 16 (64%) wanted more hours of grammar instruction a week, which indicates that in their view two hours a week was not enough to equip them with sufficient command of the skill in question and that they did not feel classes other than grammar could help them develop. While referring to the questions about the prevailing teaching styles the students had experienced, they circled activities and tasks characteristic for traditional – ‘chalk and talk’ – rule-based approaches. The ‘rarely’ or ‘never’ options were selected next to dictogloss, retranslation, adding grammar to ‘de-grammared’ texts, ‘on-line’ chats done in class – activities advocated by both Larsen Freeman and Thornbury as helpful in the development of the students’ ability to ‘uncover’ grammar on their own. The results of the survey may prove that although the beliefs about language and grammar students hold indicate that they have noticed the dynamic nature of the issue and communication constitutes their primary aim, the way they are taught does not correspond to their actual needs. Unfortunately, only one-fifth seems to realise that special attention should be paid to the relationship between meaning, form and use.

Conclusions The discussion of the methodological option presented in this paper demonstrates the growing interest in the non-transmissive teaching styles where the teacher’s choices result from the feedback provided by the learners thus ensuring a fair degree of correlation between the classroom practices and the learners’ developing grammar. Because of the fact that grammar, which has here acquired the status of the fifth skill, emerges in the learners’ minds it needs to be ‘uncovered’ rather than transmitted from the teacher. The implementation of the discussed approach does not necessitate the development of novel materials since it is not the materials that need to be modified but the views of both teachers and learners. The analysis of the form, meaning and use of the structure shifts the focus from accuracy to meaningfulness and appropriateness of use.

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