Natalia Mazzaro - University of Toronto
Double negatives: morphology in contact.
Anahí Alba de la Fuente - University of Ottawa
Copula omission in the English grammar of English-Spanish bilinguals: a “transfer” account.
Lia Walsh - Patricia López Morelos - University of Ottawa
Medial WH-Questions in Native and Non-Native Spanish: Learnability and Methodological Issues.
Ewelina Barski - UWO
The acquisition of gender in the L2 Spanish of L1 Polish speakers.
Ana García - UWO
La presencia Docente en Contextos Online Asincrónicos en el aprendizaje del español como L2.
Yolanda Pangtay - UWO
Instant Messenger Conversations in Spanish: Written or Oral Discourse?
Sonia Maria Nunes Reis - UWO
European Portuguese (EP) versus Brazilian Portuguese (BP): its challenges in L2 Portuguese undergraduate courses
Patricia Bayona - UWO
Crosslinguistic Influences in the Acquisition of Spanish L3.
Maria Eugenia de Luna Villalón - UWO
Migración temporal: un factor importante para repensar las lenguas en contacto.
Alma P. Ramírez-Trujillo. -UWO
Adult Acquisition of Infinitives in Spanish by Nahuatl speakers.
Joyce Bruhn de Garavito and Elena Valenzuela. - UWO
Eventive and stative passives: the role of transfer in the acquisition of ser and estar by German L1 speakers.
Saturday, February 14, 2009
Thursday, February 12, 2009
Eventive and stative passives: the role of transfer in the acquisition of ser and estar by German L1 speakers
Eventive and stative passives: the role of transfer in the acquisition of ser and estar by German L1 speakers
Joyce Bruhn de Garavito and Elena Valenzuela
The University of Western Ontario
joycebg@uwo.ca, evalenzu@uwo.ca
Although the acquisition of verbal and adjectival passives has been the subject of a great deal of research in first language acquisition it has not received much attention in second language research. In Spanish, the two types of passive relate directly to one of the most difficult areas of acquisition: the differences between the copular verbs ser and estar. As the examples in (1) show, ser is used with a participle to express an eventive passive, while estar with a participle expresses a state. The passive with ser allows the presence of an agent (Luján 1981), while estar does not. Bruhn de Garavito and Valenzuela ( 2005; 2006) showed that even when learners performed at ceiling with adjectives, they exhibited a great deal of difficulty distinguishing the use of the two copulas with participles. This in spite of the fact that the two types of passive exist in English, the L1 of the learners, although the difference is not overtly marked in this language.
(1) a. La comida fue servida por un mesero muy simpático.
The dinner was served by a very nice waiter.
b. La comida está servida (*por un mesero muy simpático).
The dinner is served (*by a very nice waiter).
In this paper we will examine the acquisition of the two passives by learners whose L1 encodes the difference in a way very similar to Spanish. As seen below, German expresses an eventive passive with the verb werden, while an adjectival passive takes the verb sein (Kratzer, 2000; Examples from Abbot-Smith and Behrens, 2006).
(2) a. Der Reis war gekocht.
The rice was cooked (in a state of being cooked)
b. Der Reis wurde gekocht.
The rice was (went through a process) of being cooked.
The inclusion of learners whose L1 is similar to the L2 will allow us to tease apart the cause of the difficulty encountered by the English L1 speakers. Bruhn de Garavito and Valenzuela argued that it was caused by differences between English and Spanish participles, and not because of the copulas. However, there is now widespread agreement that the difference between the copulas is aspectual, both in German (see Abbot-Smith and Behrens 2006) and in Spanish (Luján 1981; Lema 1992; Schmitt 1992). Aspect has been found to be problematic for English L2 learners (Montrul and Slabakova 2003). Transfer from the L1 would predict that the German learners would have no problems with the Spanish.
The experiment included two groups of speakers, a group of L2 German learners of Spanish (n=15) and a control group (n=10). The learners completed three tasks: a grammaticality judgment task, a truth value judgment task, and a translation task, besides a placement test and a language profile. We predict that transfer cannot explain the results. Rather, it is possible that aspectual distinctions, which lie at the syntax/semantics interface, may not be easily accessed either from the input or from the L1.
Joyce Bruhn de Garavito and Elena Valenzuela
The University of Western Ontario
joycebg@uwo.ca, evalenzu@uwo.ca
Although the acquisition of verbal and adjectival passives has been the subject of a great deal of research in first language acquisition it has not received much attention in second language research. In Spanish, the two types of passive relate directly to one of the most difficult areas of acquisition: the differences between the copular verbs ser and estar. As the examples in (1) show, ser is used with a participle to express an eventive passive, while estar with a participle expresses a state. The passive with ser allows the presence of an agent (Luján 1981), while estar does not. Bruhn de Garavito and Valenzuela ( 2005; 2006) showed that even when learners performed at ceiling with adjectives, they exhibited a great deal of difficulty distinguishing the use of the two copulas with participles. This in spite of the fact that the two types of passive exist in English, the L1 of the learners, although the difference is not overtly marked in this language.
(1) a. La comida fue servida por un mesero muy simpático.
The dinner was served by a very nice waiter.
b. La comida está servida (*por un mesero muy simpático).
The dinner is served (*by a very nice waiter).
In this paper we will examine the acquisition of the two passives by learners whose L1 encodes the difference in a way very similar to Spanish. As seen below, German expresses an eventive passive with the verb werden, while an adjectival passive takes the verb sein (Kratzer, 2000; Examples from Abbot-Smith and Behrens, 2006).
(2) a. Der Reis war gekocht.
The rice was cooked (in a state of being cooked)
b. Der Reis wurde gekocht.
The rice was (went through a process) of being cooked.
The inclusion of learners whose L1 is similar to the L2 will allow us to tease apart the cause of the difficulty encountered by the English L1 speakers. Bruhn de Garavito and Valenzuela argued that it was caused by differences between English and Spanish participles, and not because of the copulas. However, there is now widespread agreement that the difference between the copulas is aspectual, both in German (see Abbot-Smith and Behrens 2006) and in Spanish (Luján 1981; Lema 1992; Schmitt 1992). Aspect has been found to be problematic for English L2 learners (Montrul and Slabakova 2003). Transfer from the L1 would predict that the German learners would have no problems with the Spanish.
The experiment included two groups of speakers, a group of L2 German learners of Spanish (n=15) and a control group (n=10). The learners completed three tasks: a grammaticality judgment task, a truth value judgment task, and a translation task, besides a placement test and a language profile. We predict that transfer cannot explain the results. Rather, it is possible that aspectual distinctions, which lie at the syntax/semantics interface, may not be easily accessed either from the input or from the L1.
Adult Acquisition of Infinitives in Spanish by Nahuatl speakers
Adult Acquisition of Infinitives in Spanish by Nahuatl speakers
Alma P. Ramírez-Trujillo
The University of Western Ontario
aramire@uwo.ca
Within the generative framework, it has been proposed that when two languages are acquired simultaneously, two grammatical systems are developed. Nevertheless, crosslinguistic influence, that is, the influence of one language on another, may take place (Hulk and Müller 2000; Müller and Hulk 2001). In this paper I investigate the acquisition of Spanish infinitives by Nahuatl speakers (Spanish/Nahuatl bilingual speakers and speakers of Spanish as a second language whose first language is Nahuatl). I will discuss whether learners are able to ‘delearn’ some aspects of their native language in order to acquire a simplified form of a more complex structure that is already present in their first language.
Spanish, unlike Nahuatl, is a language with infinitives (see example 1); therefore, every verb has a non-conjugated form which is morphologically marked. On the other hand, Nahuatl is an agglutinative language with no infinitives but a root that works like a bound morpheme, that is, a morpheme that does not have meaning by itself if it is not accompanied by something else such as agreement or tense morphemes (see example 2).
1) Yo no quiero ir a la cama sin comer
I-pro neg want-1st inf-to go to the bed without inf-eat
‘I do not want to go to bed without eating’
2) a. Ni- k- neki ni- choca-s
1st p. Obj.Agr. want-pres 1st p. cry-fut
‘I want to cry’
b. *Yo lloro yo quiero (Nahuatl sentence is ungrammatical in Spanish
English)
Since in the Spanish infinitive constructions we have a conjugated verb accompanied by an infinitive verb, I propose that, in this type of structures, there is just one tense phrase (TP). However, in the case of Nahuatl, where we have two conjugated verbs together, we have a structure with two TP’s. As a consequence of this, Nahuatl speakers have to delearn one TP in order to produce the Spanish infinitive constructions. I will report on an experiment carried out in Mexico where speakers of Nahuatl (n=26) were asked to answer a grammaticality judgement task that compared phrases like the ones showed above in 2a and 2b, and a production task in which participants were asked to describe pictures that elicited infinitive constructions. I expect to contribute evidence to the validation of the hypothesis of crosslinguistic influence due to language contact.
Alma P. Ramírez-Trujillo
The University of Western Ontario
aramire@uwo.ca
Within the generative framework, it has been proposed that when two languages are acquired simultaneously, two grammatical systems are developed. Nevertheless, crosslinguistic influence, that is, the influence of one language on another, may take place (Hulk and Müller 2000; Müller and Hulk 2001). In this paper I investigate the acquisition of Spanish infinitives by Nahuatl speakers (Spanish/Nahuatl bilingual speakers and speakers of Spanish as a second language whose first language is Nahuatl). I will discuss whether learners are able to ‘delearn’ some aspects of their native language in order to acquire a simplified form of a more complex structure that is already present in their first language.
Spanish, unlike Nahuatl, is a language with infinitives (see example 1); therefore, every verb has a non-conjugated form which is morphologically marked. On the other hand, Nahuatl is an agglutinative language with no infinitives but a root that works like a bound morpheme, that is, a morpheme that does not have meaning by itself if it is not accompanied by something else such as agreement or tense morphemes (see example 2).
1) Yo no quiero ir a la cama sin comer
I-pro neg want-1st inf-to go to the bed without inf-eat
‘I do not want to go to bed without eating’
2) a. Ni- k- neki ni- choca-s
1st p. Obj.Agr. want-pres 1st p. cry-fut
‘I want to cry’
b. *Yo lloro yo quiero (Nahuatl sentence is ungrammatical in Spanish
English)
Since in the Spanish infinitive constructions we have a conjugated verb accompanied by an infinitive verb, I propose that, in this type of structures, there is just one tense phrase (TP). However, in the case of Nahuatl, where we have two conjugated verbs together, we have a structure with two TP’s. As a consequence of this, Nahuatl speakers have to delearn one TP in order to produce the Spanish infinitive constructions. I will report on an experiment carried out in Mexico where speakers of Nahuatl (n=26) were asked to answer a grammaticality judgement task that compared phrases like the ones showed above in 2a and 2b, and a production task in which participants were asked to describe pictures that elicited infinitive constructions. I expect to contribute evidence to the validation of the hypothesis of crosslinguistic influence due to language contact.
Monday, February 9, 2009
Migración temporal: un factor importante para repensar las lenguas en contacto
Migración temporal: un factor importante para repensar las lenguas en contacto
Maria Eugenia de Luna Villalón
Maria Eugenia de Luna Villalón
Canadá es reconocido por sus políticas de inmigración y establecimiento que incluyen clases de inglés o francés como segunda lengua para ayudar a los recien llegados en su proceso de adaptación e integración; reconociendo de esta manera que la competencia lingüística es crucial para la inclusión social de los inmigrantes. Sin embargo, las leyes migratorias no contemplan este tipo de ayuda para los migrantes temporales que vienen a Canadá con programas como el de los Trabajadores Agrícolas Temporales (PTAT).
EL PTAT ha estado en función desde los años 60’s y su objetivo principal es abordar la falta de trabajadores no calificados en las granjas de Canadá ‘importando’ trabajadores agrícolas temporales del Caribe y México. El programa se ha convertido en un modelo de de cooperación internacional (para los estados) porque ayuda a tener flujos migratorios temporales respetables y regulados que remplazan la migración ilegal y no deseada (Basok, 2000).
El propósito principal de este estudio es atender la falta de investigación sociolingüística en los migrantes temporales, a través de un estudio de lenguaje y migración que reuna y analice los hechos sociolingüísticos de los trabajadores agrícolas temporales mexicanos que vienen a Ontario y Quebec a través del PTAT.
Mi hipótesis de investigación es: La deficiente o inexistente competencia lingüística, del lenguaje de la mayoría, en un ambiente de lenguas en contacto, es la manifestación de la exclusión y segregación de los trabajadores agrícolas mexicanos en Canadá.
Las preguntas de Investigación son:
EL PTAT ha estado en función desde los años 60’s y su objetivo principal es abordar la falta de trabajadores no calificados en las granjas de Canadá ‘importando’ trabajadores agrícolas temporales del Caribe y México. El programa se ha convertido en un modelo de de cooperación internacional (para los estados) porque ayuda a tener flujos migratorios temporales respetables y regulados que remplazan la migración ilegal y no deseada (Basok, 2000).
El propósito principal de este estudio es atender la falta de investigación sociolingüística en los migrantes temporales, a través de un estudio de lenguaje y migración que reuna y analice los hechos sociolingüísticos de los trabajadores agrícolas temporales mexicanos que vienen a Ontario y Quebec a través del PTAT.
Mi hipótesis de investigación es: La deficiente o inexistente competencia lingüística, del lenguaje de la mayoría, en un ambiente de lenguas en contacto, es la manifestación de la exclusión y segregación de los trabajadores agrícolas mexicanos en Canadá.
Las preguntas de Investigación son:
1. ¿Cómo perciben los participantes su identidad etnolingüística en un escenario multilingüe?
2. ¿Qué barreras lingüísticas enfrentan y cómo afecta esto su vida diaria?
3. ¿Cómo es que sus antecedentes personales –capital humano, social y lingüístico- restringen o permiten la renegociación de su identidad para poder lidear con su nuevo ambiente social y lingüístico?
4. ¿Qué habilidades lingüísticas han adquirido o perdido en su estancia en Canadá?
5. ¿Han sido renegociadas las actitudes lingüísticas de los participantes y sus familias?
Saturday, February 7, 2009
Crosslinguistic Influences in the Acquisition of Spanish L3.
Crosslinguistic Influences in the Acquisition of Spanish L3.
Patricia Bayona
This paper is based on my doctoral dissertation where I examined written production in L3 Spanish in learners with a typologically similar L2 (French) and a typologically more distant L1 (English). The corpus of the study consisted of un-aided compositions produced by participants who have English as a first language and French as a second language. The innovative methodology focused on the statistical analysis of the combination of two tools: a linguistic profile and an error database. The linguistic profile provided data regarding the language acquisition history of the subjects as well as a self-assessment of their level of exposure to the second and third languages. The error database was compiled through the analysis of error of the subjects’ compositions, while considering only the crosslinguistic influences amongst the participants’ linguistic repertoire. It was found that there is a number of strong links between the characteristics of the written production and the level of exposure to the L2 that the learners declare to have had. In other words we were able to establish a series of correlations between the amount of exposure to the L2 and the number of CLI in the L3 (Bayona, 2009).
The findings of the study confirm that learners of foreign languages are simultaneously activating their previously learned languages lexicon at the moment of producing a written text in an L3 (See also Cenoz et al, 2003), and that their social and academic background are influential factors in the production of crosslinguistic influences.
Patricia Bayona
This paper is based on my doctoral dissertation where I examined written production in L3 Spanish in learners with a typologically similar L2 (French) and a typologically more distant L1 (English). The corpus of the study consisted of un-aided compositions produced by participants who have English as a first language and French as a second language. The innovative methodology focused on the statistical analysis of the combination of two tools: a linguistic profile and an error database. The linguistic profile provided data regarding the language acquisition history of the subjects as well as a self-assessment of their level of exposure to the second and third languages. The error database was compiled through the analysis of error of the subjects’ compositions, while considering only the crosslinguistic influences amongst the participants’ linguistic repertoire. It was found that there is a number of strong links between the characteristics of the written production and the level of exposure to the L2 that the learners declare to have had. In other words we were able to establish a series of correlations between the amount of exposure to the L2 and the number of CLI in the L3 (Bayona, 2009).
The findings of the study confirm that learners of foreign languages are simultaneously activating their previously learned languages lexicon at the moment of producing a written text in an L3 (See also Cenoz et al, 2003), and that their social and academic background are influential factors in the production of crosslinguistic influences.
Copula omission in the English grammar of English-Spanish bilinguals: a “transfer” account.
Copula omission in the English grammar of English-Spanish bilinguals: a “transfer” account.
A. Alba de la Fuente, University of Ottawa
R. Fernández Fuertes, Universidad de Valladolid
J. M. Liceras, Universidad de Ottawa
The debate on whether the omission of subjects in child language is to be accounted for syntactically (Hyams and Wexler 1993) or is the result of a processing deficit (Valian 1991, Valian and Eisenberg 1996) has been extrapolated to copula omission by Becker (2002, 2004). This author argues that the differences in the use of overt copula be versus null copula be in child English rather than being a product of sentence length are determined by the semantic nature of the predicate as in (1) versus (2).
A. Alba de la Fuente, University of Ottawa
R. Fernández Fuertes, Universidad de Valladolid
J. M. Liceras, Universidad de Ottawa
The debate on whether the omission of subjects in child language is to be accounted for syntactically (Hyams and Wexler 1993) or is the result of a processing deficit (Valian 1991, Valian and Eisenberg 1996) has been extrapolated to copula omission by Becker (2002, 2004). This author argues that the differences in the use of overt copula be versus null copula be in child English rather than being a product of sentence length are determined by the semantic nature of the predicate as in (1) versus (2).
(1) lady __ on that (Nina, 2;02)
(2) this is lady (Naomi, 2;02)
Locative predicates, as the Prepositional Phrase in (1), are aspectual and it is their Aspectual Phrase that provides temporal anchoring to the sentence (Guéron and Hoekstra 1995). This results in the possibility of using null be with these types of predicates. However, Nominal predicates, like the Noun Phrase in (2), are not aspectual and, therefore, copula be must be explicit to ensure temporal anchoring.
As for copula be with adjective predicates as in (3) and (4), these predicates could be considered Locative or Nominal (Stage-Level or Individual-Level, following Carlson 1977 and Schmitt and Miller’s 2007 terminology) depending on the type of adjective and on the context, so that (3) would contain a Locative/Stage-Level predicate, while (4) a Nominal/Individual-Level one. In this case, even though the results were less clear-cut and individual differences occurred both quantitatively and qualitatively, the stage-level predicate (3) versus the individual-level predicate (4) dichotomy parallels the Locative/Nominal one.
(3) I __ hungry (Leo, 2;11)
(4) Elmo is blue (Simon, 2;05)
In this paper, we provide an analysis of the copula in the developing English grammar of two English/Spanish simultaneous bilingual children in order to address the following issues: 1) whether a grammar-based or a processing-based approach best accounts for child omissions; 2) whether our data mirror the ones discussed by Becker with respect to the differences between Locative and Stage-level predicates versus Nominal and Individual level predicates; 3) whether the differences and similarities are shaped by the fact that Spanish copula is realized by two lexical items: estar (for cases like those in (1) and (3) above) and ser (for cases like those in (2) and (4) above); in other words, whether interlinguistic influence (Hulk and Müller 2000; Paradis and Navarro 2003) can be found in this specific area of grammar.
We have analyzed longitudinal data from the two bilingual children which cover the same age and MLU counts as in the four children in Becker’s (2004) study. An analysis of our data shows that: (i) a grammatical account is favoured over a processing one when the length of the utterances is measured as a word count; (ii) even though there are some similarities in the overall omission patterns with respect to the Locative/Nominal predicate dichotomy, the results are never significant. In the case of the Stage/Individual-level predicates, our data are even less transparent than the monolingual data: in fact our two children display opposite patterns of omission; and (iii) the lexical transparency of Spanish copula estar seems to play a role in the need to incorporate the inflectional level and, therefore, in the copula omission pattern, since our children’s rate of omission is significantly lower than the rate of omission displayed by Becker’s monolingual children.
Medial wh-questions in native and non-native spanish: learnability and methodological issues.
Medial wh-questions in native and non-native spanish: learnability and methodological issues
J. M. Liceras, A. Alba, L. Walsh and P. López-Morelos
University of Ottawa
Using Chomsky’s view of language acquisition and the Minimalist Program, this research seeks to provide a psycholinguistic account of the non-native (L2) acquisition of wh-medial constructions (What do you think who the students like?; Who do you think who the students like?) in the grammars of French and English speakers learning German and Spanish as foreign languages. The presence of these constructions has been attested in the L1 grammars of children acquiring languages where they are not an option in the adult grammar (Thorton 1990; Oiry & Demirdache 2006), as well as in L2 grammars where neither the native nor the target grammar exhibits them (Gutierrez 2005; Schulz 2006; Slavkov 2008). This poses a learnability problem for the researcher, who must determine what type of evidence triggers the production and acceptance of these constructions. There have been competence explanations (i.e. they constitute a default or possible option which is innately available) or processing explanations (i.e. the English grammatical equivalents pose problems either for the parser in general or for working memory in particular). It has also been argued that evidence for these constructions could be provided by abstract morpho-syntactic features or related constructions via transfer from the L2. However, there is no clear-cut evidence favoring one explanation over another, and comparable experimental data gathered from different non-native grammars is not available.
The primary significance of the proposed research resides in addressing the learnability issue of whether universal availability of computational mechanisms, direct input or processing needs constitute the best account for the presence of wh-medial constructions (WH-MQ) in L2 grammars whose learners’ L1s do not exhibit them. To investigate the production, acceptance and processing cost of these instances of long distance dependencies we will use a grammaticality judgments task, an oral production task and an online event-related brain potential (ERP) processing task. In order to address the issue of universal availability versus direct input and processing cost we will compare: (a) the status of WH-MQs, which are possible in German but not in Spanish, to the status of long-distance wh-questions (Who do you think the students like?) which are the preferred or primary option in many natural languages. If direct input plays a role, we should find a clear-cut difference between L2 German and L2 Spanish. However, if the status of these constructions is similar in the two non-native grammars, universal availability or processing costs will have to be called upon.
Here we report on the preliminary results of the grammaticality judgments task that has been administered to a group of French and English learners of Spanish and to a group of native Spanish speakers.
J. M. Liceras, A. Alba, L. Walsh and P. López-Morelos
University of Ottawa
Using Chomsky’s view of language acquisition and the Minimalist Program, this research seeks to provide a psycholinguistic account of the non-native (L2) acquisition of wh-medial constructions (What do you think who the students like?; Who do you think who the students like?) in the grammars of French and English speakers learning German and Spanish as foreign languages. The presence of these constructions has been attested in the L1 grammars of children acquiring languages where they are not an option in the adult grammar (Thorton 1990; Oiry & Demirdache 2006), as well as in L2 grammars where neither the native nor the target grammar exhibits them (Gutierrez 2005; Schulz 2006; Slavkov 2008). This poses a learnability problem for the researcher, who must determine what type of evidence triggers the production and acceptance of these constructions. There have been competence explanations (i.e. they constitute a default or possible option which is innately available) or processing explanations (i.e. the English grammatical equivalents pose problems either for the parser in general or for working memory in particular). It has also been argued that evidence for these constructions could be provided by abstract morpho-syntactic features or related constructions via transfer from the L2. However, there is no clear-cut evidence favoring one explanation over another, and comparable experimental data gathered from different non-native grammars is not available.
The primary significance of the proposed research resides in addressing the learnability issue of whether universal availability of computational mechanisms, direct input or processing needs constitute the best account for the presence of wh-medial constructions (WH-MQ) in L2 grammars whose learners’ L1s do not exhibit them. To investigate the production, acceptance and processing cost of these instances of long distance dependencies we will use a grammaticality judgments task, an oral production task and an online event-related brain potential (ERP) processing task. In order to address the issue of universal availability versus direct input and processing cost we will compare: (a) the status of WH-MQs, which are possible in German but not in Spanish, to the status of long-distance wh-questions (Who do you think the students like?) which are the preferred or primary option in many natural languages. If direct input plays a role, we should find a clear-cut difference between L2 German and L2 Spanish. However, if the status of these constructions is similar in the two non-native grammars, universal availability or processing costs will have to be called upon.
Here we report on the preliminary results of the grammaticality judgments task that has been administered to a group of French and English learners of Spanish and to a group of native Spanish speakers.
European Portuguese (EP) versus Brazilian Portuguese (BP): its challenges in L2 Portuguese undergraduate courses
European Portuguese (EP) versus Brazilian Portuguese (BP): its challenges in L2 Portuguese undergraduate courses
Sonia Maria Nunes Reis, The University of Western Ontario
Issues such as the teaching of clitic placement in Portuguese and the challenges associated with dialect variations leaves room for much discussion in curriculum design and curriculum delivery in post-secondary institutions. Portuguese has the status of being an official language in various countries, but European and Brazilian Portuguese stand as the two varieties most often discussed in experimental literature. Despite the similarities between EP and BP, their syntactic and phonological differences are more extreme than in some other cases of variation, such as the variation found in Spanish, an issue that gives rise to the present study. We are particularly interested in clitic placement from an L2 Acquisition standpoint, and more specifically in the challenges faced in L2 Portuguese courses at the university level. That is, issues pertaining but not limited to:
What attitudes are found amongst L2 Portuguese instructors and L2 Portuguese learners with respect to the two variables of the Portuguese language and the existence of two Portuguese dialects?
Is there a connection between these attitudes of the instructors versus the attitudes of the students in question?
Are the students confused with respect to pronouns in Portuguese?
According to Kato and Raposo (1994), the distinction between EP and BP is dialectal: “European and Brazilian Portuguese have long been considered as two dialects of the same language, with variable aspects in their lexicon, phonology, and grammar.” Along these lines, we are herein interested in studying the phenomenon of dialectal applications of clitic placement in the both variants of the Portuguese language. Examples of dialectal variations between EP and BP are as follow (1) (2):
(1)
a. Chamo-me Sónia. (EP)
b. Me chamo Sônia. (BP)
b. Me chamo Sônia. (BP)
(2)
a. Eu vi-o no ano passado. (EP- written and spoken)
b. Eu vi ele no ano passado. (BP- spoken)
c. Eu o vi no ano passado. (BP- written)
b. Eu vi ele no ano passado. (BP- spoken)
c. Eu o vi no ano passado. (BP- written)
A questionnaire was given to instructors and students of L2 Portuguese at a Canadian university in order to find out how problematic this issue was and how it was generally approached in different institutions. A grammaticality judgment task was also administered to both groups to see which dialect of the Portuguese language (EP or BP) would be preferred in regards to clitic placement. This grammaticality judgment task differed in that its objective was to ascertain which of the two dialects had been internalized by the learners, or if in fact learners accepted both. In the case of the instructors, the grammaticality judgment task also asked, in those forms that were rejected, why they were rejected, whether it was because it simply did not sound grammatical, or whether it was because the rejected form was seen as substandard or uneducated. The results will be discussed.
Instant Messenger conversations in Spanish
Instant Messenger conversations in Spanish
Yolanda Pangtay-Chang
More and more people around the world communicate with others through the use of Internet (Crystal, 2001). Messages on Instant Messenger are written and sent to everybody participating in the communication. When we read and reply to those messages it seems we are having a conversation. Do these messages have written or oral characteristics? Writing and speech, each have different conventions. Writing conventions have to do with punctuation, capitalization, grammar, spelling, and organization of ideas. On the other hand, oral characteristics such as tone, intonation, silence, interjections, pauses, laughter, gestures, and facial expressions contribute to the interpretation of what is said.
The following Instant Messenger conversation shows punctuation marks, capitalization of some words, good spelling, and the use of standard Mexican grammar. We can also notice interjections, pauses, short answers, in other words an attempt is made to convey oral conversational features.
(1) A: ¿Qué tal tu día?
‘How’s your day?’
B: cansadón
‘tiring’
B: y el tuyo?
‘yours?’
A: Huy
‘oh’
B: mmmmh
‘mmmmm’
A: y eso que significa . . . bueno o malo?
‘what does that mean. . . good or bad?’
B: Bueno
‘Good’
With some exceptions (see Johnson 2007), there are almost no studies on the characteristic features of Instant Messenger speech, particularly in languages such as Spanish. The present paper will examine these features based on a corpus of MSN Instant Messenger.
The study focused on the use of connectors such as porque ‘because’, es por eso ‘therefore’, así ‘so’, y ‘and’, etc., as well as other discourse markers such as punctuation, entonation, gestures and/or representations of expressions such as laughter. Discourse markers help senders and receivers of a conversation to perceive the meaning or intention of the communication.
Twenty-five subjects participated in the research, all of them part of the researcher’s contact list on MSN messenger. All the participants are speakers of L1 Spanish, which they use to communicate with the researcher and with their family and friends in their own contact list.
Their ages range from 20 to 66 years old. The objective of this study was to observe grammatical and pragmatic phenomena and forms and functions of the language in the conversations. The researcher kept her MSN open, in order to be either contacted or to contact subjects. 273 conversations were analyzed, looking for: opening and closing, adjacent pairs, turn-taking, change of topics, use of irony or sarcasm, among other features in a conversation.
Results show how participants in an IM conversation follow oral strategies to understand their messages. The time of replication is done in seconds from one message to another. Certain words and expressions in the acts of speech seem to function as replacement of intonation and even facial expressions. In addition, whenever a message was not understood, users would ask for clarification or repair the misunderstanding..
Yolanda Pangtay-Chang
More and more people around the world communicate with others through the use of Internet (Crystal, 2001). Messages on Instant Messenger are written and sent to everybody participating in the communication. When we read and reply to those messages it seems we are having a conversation. Do these messages have written or oral characteristics? Writing and speech, each have different conventions. Writing conventions have to do with punctuation, capitalization, grammar, spelling, and organization of ideas. On the other hand, oral characteristics such as tone, intonation, silence, interjections, pauses, laughter, gestures, and facial expressions contribute to the interpretation of what is said.
The following Instant Messenger conversation shows punctuation marks, capitalization of some words, good spelling, and the use of standard Mexican grammar. We can also notice interjections, pauses, short answers, in other words an attempt is made to convey oral conversational features.
(1) A: ¿Qué tal tu día?
‘How’s your day?’
B: cansadón
‘tiring’
B: y el tuyo?
‘yours?’
A: Huy
‘oh’
B: mmmmh
‘mmmmm’
A: y eso que significa . . . bueno o malo?
‘what does that mean. . . good or bad?’
B: Bueno
‘Good’
With some exceptions (see Johnson 2007), there are almost no studies on the characteristic features of Instant Messenger speech, particularly in languages such as Spanish. The present paper will examine these features based on a corpus of MSN Instant Messenger.
The study focused on the use of connectors such as porque ‘because’, es por eso ‘therefore’, así ‘so’, y ‘and’, etc., as well as other discourse markers such as punctuation, entonation, gestures and/or representations of expressions such as laughter. Discourse markers help senders and receivers of a conversation to perceive the meaning or intention of the communication.
Twenty-five subjects participated in the research, all of them part of the researcher’s contact list on MSN messenger. All the participants are speakers of L1 Spanish, which they use to communicate with the researcher and with their family and friends in their own contact list.
Their ages range from 20 to 66 years old. The objective of this study was to observe grammatical and pragmatic phenomena and forms and functions of the language in the conversations. The researcher kept her MSN open, in order to be either contacted or to contact subjects. 273 conversations were analyzed, looking for: opening and closing, adjacent pairs, turn-taking, change of topics, use of irony or sarcasm, among other features in a conversation.
Results show how participants in an IM conversation follow oral strategies to understand their messages. The time of replication is done in seconds from one message to another. Certain words and expressions in the acts of speech seem to function as replacement of intonation and even facial expressions. In addition, whenever a message was not understood, users would ask for clarification or repair the misunderstanding..
Friday, February 6, 2009
Double negatives: morphology in contact
Double negatives: morphology in contact
Prof. Maria Cristina Cuervo
Natalia Mazzaro
Sentential negation with preverbal n-words displays a crosslinguistic contrast in the presence/absence of a negative element, as illustrated with Spanish (1) and French (2) below. Analyses of this contrast account for this variation in terms of some kind of syntactic parametric variation –in strength of features, movement, etc.– (see Bosque, 1994; Laka, 1994; Haegeman, 1995; Zannuttini, 1997; among others).
1) Nadie (*no) abrió la puerta
Nobody NEG opened the door
'Nobody opened the door'.
2) Personne *( n)’a ouvert la porte
Nobody NEG has opened the door
'Nobody opened the door'.
This contrast is not only found across languages but also within dialects of one language (see Franco & Landa 2006 for Basque Spanish, for instance). In Corrientes – Argentine - Spanish (CS), a variety in contact with Guaraní, the negative clitic no can appear with a preverbal n-word, as shown in (3). Interestingly, the Standard Spanish (SS) variant without no is also accepted (4):
3) Nunca no nos pasó nada (D:164)
Never NEG us happened nothing
'Nothing ever happened to us.'
4) Nunca nos controlaron (D:237)
Never us check
‘They never checked on us’
We present new data which show that this variation exists not only within the same variety of Spanish, but within the same speaker as well. We propose a morphological account of the phenomenon which draws a parallelism between variation in the cooccurrence of a preverbal n-word and the negative clitic –to which we refer as negative doubling- and variation in direct object clitic doubling. Previous approaches seem ill suited to account for variation within the same speaker, since they would suggest speakers have two distinct grammars.
In order to determine the prevalence of negative doubling in the speech community, we conducted and analysed 12 sociolinguistic interviews, each an hour and a half long. The 12 native speakers of CS are distributed along the social categories of sex, age, social class and literacy. The analysis yielded a total of 134 tokens of standard preverbal negation and negative doubling. The results show that negative doubling has an overall rate of occurrence of 17% and that it is present in all layers of society, with women leading in the rate of its use (68%). Concerning the linguistic factors tested, analysis of specificity of the n-word indicates that while the standard variant can have either a specific (44%) or non-specific (56%) reference, negative doubling constructions are almost categorically specific (88%). Specificity, however, was difficult to test with tampoco ‘neither’ and ni ‘nor’.
Negative doubling emerges as the lack of complementarity in distribution of agreeing no and a preverbal n-word, just as clitic doubling is lack of complementarity between an argument DP and an agreeing clitic. We propose, in the spirit of Watanabe 2001, that no is the negative clitic which spells out the Neg head as default, that is, when the specifications of no other lexical items are met. In SS, the item ø rather than no is inserted when SpecNeg is filled. Under this view, the variation found in CS is not a difference in structure or feature strength, which would imply subject-internal variation in core syntax. Here the variation is reduced to variation on the specification of the lexical items ø and no, and is localized in the lexicon (Adger & Smith, 2002). Although of similar nature, this approach crucially differs from Franco & Landa’s (2006) in that it does not depend on their claim –proven wrong by data such as in (1)– that preverbal n-words are contrastively focused and receive main stress. This account can also capture the fact that negative doubling not only occurs with argumental n-words but with negative adverb tampoco ‘neither’ and conjunction ni ‘nor’.
Natalia Mazzaro
Sentential negation with preverbal n-words displays a crosslinguistic contrast in the presence/absence of a negative element, as illustrated with Spanish (1) and French (2) below. Analyses of this contrast account for this variation in terms of some kind of syntactic parametric variation –in strength of features, movement, etc.– (see Bosque, 1994; Laka, 1994; Haegeman, 1995; Zannuttini, 1997; among others).
1) Nadie (*no) abrió la puerta
Nobody NEG opened the door
'Nobody opened the door'.
2) Personne *( n)’a ouvert la porte
Nobody NEG has opened the door
'Nobody opened the door'.
This contrast is not only found across languages but also within dialects of one language (see Franco & Landa 2006 for Basque Spanish, for instance). In Corrientes – Argentine - Spanish (CS), a variety in contact with Guaraní, the negative clitic no can appear with a preverbal n-word, as shown in (3). Interestingly, the Standard Spanish (SS) variant without no is also accepted (4):
3) Nunca no nos pasó nada (D:164)
Never NEG us happened nothing
'Nothing ever happened to us.'
4) Nunca nos controlaron (D:237)
Never us check
‘They never checked on us’
We present new data which show that this variation exists not only within the same variety of Spanish, but within the same speaker as well. We propose a morphological account of the phenomenon which draws a parallelism between variation in the cooccurrence of a preverbal n-word and the negative clitic –to which we refer as negative doubling- and variation in direct object clitic doubling. Previous approaches seem ill suited to account for variation within the same speaker, since they would suggest speakers have two distinct grammars.
In order to determine the prevalence of negative doubling in the speech community, we conducted and analysed 12 sociolinguistic interviews, each an hour and a half long. The 12 native speakers of CS are distributed along the social categories of sex, age, social class and literacy. The analysis yielded a total of 134 tokens of standard preverbal negation and negative doubling. The results show that negative doubling has an overall rate of occurrence of 17% and that it is present in all layers of society, with women leading in the rate of its use (68%). Concerning the linguistic factors tested, analysis of specificity of the n-word indicates that while the standard variant can have either a specific (44%) or non-specific (56%) reference, negative doubling constructions are almost categorically specific (88%). Specificity, however, was difficult to test with tampoco ‘neither’ and ni ‘nor’.
Negative doubling emerges as the lack of complementarity in distribution of agreeing no and a preverbal n-word, just as clitic doubling is lack of complementarity between an argument DP and an agreeing clitic. We propose, in the spirit of Watanabe 2001, that no is the negative clitic which spells out the Neg head as default, that is, when the specifications of no other lexical items are met. In SS, the item ø rather than no is inserted when SpecNeg is filled. Under this view, the variation found in CS is not a difference in structure or feature strength, which would imply subject-internal variation in core syntax. Here the variation is reduced to variation on the specification of the lexical items ø and no, and is localized in the lexicon (Adger & Smith, 2002). Although of similar nature, this approach crucially differs from Franco & Landa’s (2006) in that it does not depend on their claim –proven wrong by data such as in (1)– that preverbal n-words are contrastively focused and receive main stress. This account can also capture the fact that negative doubling not only occurs with argumental n-words but with negative adverb tampoco ‘neither’ and conjunction ni ‘nor’.
La presencia docente en contextos online asincrónicos (escritos y orales) en el aprendizaje del español como segunda lengua.
Ana García-Allén
Este trabajo tiene como objetivo la creación y el análisis de una actividad de enseñanza-aprendizaje prevista en el diseño de un curso universitario de Español Lengua Extranjera (ELE). Para ello nos centraremos en tres ejes teóricos principalmente: por un lado la enseñanza-aprendizaje de Segundas Lenguas (L2) en entornos virtuales, más concretamente en la enseñanza-aprendizaje del Español como Lengua Extranjera en contextos online asincrónicos; por otro lado en los contextos on-line asincrónicos tanto orales como escritos y por último en la presencia docente en contextos online asincrónicos.
El objetivo principal de este proyecto de investigación es valorar por un lado, el uso de una determinada estructura gramatical en la expresión oral y escrita de los estudiantes y por otro la incidencia de la presencia docente en la adquisición y mejora de dichas estructuras .
Los resultados aportarán evidencias empíricas que proporcionan una mayor comprensión de la incidencia de la presencia docente en el aprendizaje de ELE en contextos online asincrónicos orales y escritos.
Este trabajo tiene como objetivo la creación y el análisis de una actividad de enseñanza-aprendizaje prevista en el diseño de un curso universitario de Español Lengua Extranjera (ELE). Para ello nos centraremos en tres ejes teóricos principalmente: por un lado la enseñanza-aprendizaje de Segundas Lenguas (L2) en entornos virtuales, más concretamente en la enseñanza-aprendizaje del Español como Lengua Extranjera en contextos online asincrónicos; por otro lado en los contextos on-line asincrónicos tanto orales como escritos y por último en la presencia docente en contextos online asincrónicos.
El objetivo principal de este proyecto de investigación es valorar por un lado, el uso de una determinada estructura gramatical en la expresión oral y escrita de los estudiantes y por otro la incidencia de la presencia docente en la adquisición y mejora de dichas estructuras .
Los resultados aportarán evidencias empíricas que proporcionan una mayor comprensión de la incidencia de la presencia docente en el aprendizaje de ELE en contextos online asincrónicos orales y escritos.
The acquisition of gender in the L2 Spanish of L1 Polish speakers
Ewelina Barski
This research investigates the acquisition of the abstract feature [gender] in second language (L2) Spanish. Previous research on the acquisition of gender found that gender was difficult to acquire resulting in persistent problems in agreement (Franceschina 2001; Hawkins 1998). Problems realizing gender have been attributed to ‘mapping’ problems where there is a mismatch between surface realizations and abstract feature properties (White et al. 2004). Spanish is a language that has a gender feature for nouns and gender agreement for determiners and adjectives a property of the grammar for which explicit instruction is received. However, viewing how L1 Polish speakers acquire gender in their L2 Spanish will be interesting since Polish also marks gender in demonstratives, nouns and adjectives. In order to investigate this issue, all Polish and Spanish speaking participants completed two tests: An oral production task and a picture-matching task. Currently, there are 14 L1 Polish speakers and 9 L1 Spanish speakers who have been tested. Preliminary results indicate that problems realizing gender are present even when the L1 also marks grammatical gender.
This research investigates the acquisition of the abstract feature [gender] in second language (L2) Spanish. Previous research on the acquisition of gender found that gender was difficult to acquire resulting in persistent problems in agreement (Franceschina 2001; Hawkins 1998). Problems realizing gender have been attributed to ‘mapping’ problems where there is a mismatch between surface realizations and abstract feature properties (White et al. 2004). Spanish is a language that has a gender feature for nouns and gender agreement for determiners and adjectives a property of the grammar for which explicit instruction is received. However, viewing how L1 Polish speakers acquire gender in their L2 Spanish will be interesting since Polish also marks gender in demonstratives, nouns and adjectives. In order to investigate this issue, all Polish and Spanish speaking participants completed two tests: An oral production task and a picture-matching task. Currently, there are 14 L1 Polish speakers and 9 L1 Spanish speakers who have been tested. Preliminary results indicate that problems realizing gender are present even when the L1 also marks grammatical gender.
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