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.

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).

(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.

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)

(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)

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..