Interlanguage

1

• Interlanguage
• Interlanguage developed as a concept in Error
  Analysis.
• While Error Analysis has fallen out of favor,
  studies of Interlanguage have not. Why?
• Because Interlanguage can be studied empirically.
• Three areas of Interlanguage inquiry
• Systematicity / Variation
• Development sequences
• L1 influence

1
2

• Interlanguage Systematicity
• Recall that an interlanguage is the language
  system that the learner constructs out of the
  linguistic data to which s/he has been exposed
  (LFL, p. 60).
• Many studies of consider the system of
  interlanguages. While interlanguage may be
  non-target-like, it may nevertheless be
  systematic that is, rule-governed at any
  particular moment.
• Many scholars investigate the systematicity that
  may underlie non-target-like interlanguages.
• May underlie other non-target-like features
  of interlanguage may be nonsystematic variation.

3

• Interlanguage Systematicity
• Huebner, T. (1983). Linguistic systems and
  linguistic change in an interlanguage. Studies in
  Second Language Acquisition, 6(1), 3353.
• Case study of the English IL development of a
  Hmong man in Hawaii. 17 hours of recorded speech
  examined, with attention given to two structures,
  among them his use of da, something like the
  English definite article the.
• Yu tol da Jaepanii gow da cher.
• You told the Japanese woman that you were going
  to the church.
• Da used in 64 percent of NP environments
  appropriate to the definite article.

4

• Interlanguage Systematicity
• Da used in 64 percent of NP environments
  appropriate to the definite article.
• But what is the appropriate NP environment for
  definite articles? What is the rule for the use
  of the definite (the) and indefinite article
  (a/n) in English?
• Son 1 Dad gave me a car.
• Son 2 Not the car? 
• Son 1 No, a Taurus. or
• Son 1 No, the Taurus.
• What is Son 2 referring to? 
• What difference does the pair of replies given by
  Son 1 indicate?

5

• Interlanguage Systematicity
• What is the appropriate NP environment for
  definite articles?
• Noun phrases may refer to something specific
  (specific referent, SR) and / or to something
  known to the hearer (HK) or not (-SR -HK).

6

• Interlanguage Systematicity

Quadrant 1 The lion is a noble animal (-SR,
HK). Quadrant 4 Used in equative and other
structures (-SR, -HK). Quadrant 3 Dad gave
me a Taurus (SR, -HK). A refers to a specific
Taurus, but not one known to the hearer.
7

• Interlanguage Systematicity

Quadrant 3 Dad gave me a Taurus (SR, -HK). A
refers to a specific Taurus, but not one known to
the hearer. Quad 2 Dad gave me the Taurus.
(SR, HK) The refers to a specific Taurus
known to the hearer.
8

• Interlanguage Systematicity
• Da used in 64 percent of correct NP
  environments.
• In most of the other 36 percent of NP
  environments that required the definite article,
  the NP was the topic of the sentence topic
  whatever the sentence is about. The tree is
  magnificent.
• Huebner theorized that his informant had
  developed an IL rule for the use of his definite
  article as follows use da in NP environments
  characterized by SR, HK, -Topic.

9

• Interlanguage Systematicity
• use da in NP environments characterized by SR,
  HK, -Topic.
• Logic If it is the topic of the sentence, it is
  known to the hearer by default, and therefore
  doesnt need a definite article perhaps this is
  a kind of simplification rule, to eliminate
  redundant features / structures. If the NP is
  not the topic, Huebners informant may have
  theorized, it does need the definite article.
• Conclusion IL systematic, if non-target-like.

10

• IL Development Sequences, First Lge Learning
• First language development Brown, Roger.
  (1973) A first language. Cambridge Harvard Univ.
  Press.
• HLAL, p. 3 Case study 4 years (diachronic /
  longitudinal) 3 children from age 2 samples
  every 1-2 weeks. Acquisition of 14 morphemes

• 1. -ing
• 3 on
• 3 in
• plural s
• past irregular
• possessive s
• uncontracted copula (I am)
• articles a the

1. past regular
2. 3rd person regular s
3. 3rd person irregular has
4. uncontracted aux (he is eating)
5. contracted copula (Im)
6. contracted aux (hes coming)

11

• IL Development Sequences, First Lge Learning
• 0.86, 0.87, and 0.89 correlations among three
  children for order of acquisition of 14
  morphemes.
• de Villiers, J., de Villiers, P. (1973). A
  cross-sectional study of the acquisition of
  grammatical morphemes. Journal of
  Psycholinguistic Research 2(3), 267278.
• Synchronic / cross sectional study 21 children
  ages 16 40 months, two 1.5-hour sessions.
• Three methods of analysis showed 0.78, 0.84, and
  0.87 correlations among children for order of
  acquisition of same 14 morphemes.

12

• IL Development Sequences, First Lge Learning
• Structures most frequently produced in childs
  environment not necessarily learned earlier.
• Positive reinforcement had no impact on
  acquisition of morphemes.
• What can we conclude, epistemologically, from
  these findings? I.e., what process explains
  first language acquisition?
• Language learning is not a behavioral process of
  habit formation, but is driven by something else.

12
13

• IL Development Sequences, SLA
• Very productive area of inquiry in SLA
• Methodological variations
• Longitudinal / diachronic (like Brown) small
  number of subjects studied over a period of time
  v. cross-sectional / synchronic (like de Villiers
  de Villiers) large number of subjects at a
  specific time.
• Demographic variations
• children v. adult SLA
• Language variations
• Meisel, J.M., Clahsen, H., Pienemann, J.
  (1981). On determining developmental stages in
  natural second language acquisition. SSLA, 3,
  109135.

14

• IL Development Sequences, SLA
• Development stages variations (HLAL pp. 8293)
• Development sequences for
• Interrogative formation
• Negation formation
• Relative clause formation
• Morphemes (Dulay and Burt)
• Pragmatics (Rose)

15

• IL Development Sequences, Dulay Burt
• Literature Review (pp. 3738) 2 pages!
• Error analysis reveals creative construction,
  p. 37 children gradually construct rules for
  speech they hear, guided by universal innate
  mechanisms which cause them to formulate certain
  types of hypotheses about the language system
  being acquired, until the mismatch between what
  they are exposed to and what they produce is
  resolved.
• The second episode, p. 38. Whats this?
• Their study of English morpheme acquisition by
  three different groups of Spanish speakers.
• What limits their conclusions, methodologically?
• Results may be driven by common first language.

16

• IL Development Sequences, Dulay Burt
• Methods of Data Collection
• longitudinal or cross-sectional?
• who are subjects? how does this answer the
  constraint of episode 2?
• how did the researchers find subjects?
• how did they collect data?
• what is the Bilingual Syntax Measure (BSM) (pp.
  3940)

17

• IL Development Sequences, Dulay Burt
• Methods of Data Collection
• what morphemes (functors) did they study?

18

• IL Development Sequences, Dulay Burt
• Methods of Data Analysis
• how was the data analyzed / coded?
• obligatory occasions
• 0 points if no morpheme supplied in O.O.
• She is dance___
• 1 point if morpheme is supplied, but it is
  incorrect
• She is dances
• 2 points if correct morpheme is supplied
• She is dancing.

19

• IL Development Sequences, Dulay Burt
• Methods of Data Analysis
• group individual scores morpheme X summed
• total possible obligatory occasions

20

• IL Development Sequences, Dulay Burt
• Results

21

• IL Development Sequences, Dulay Burt
• Results
• What do the declining lines mean re the
  acquisition of specific morphemes?

What do they mean relative to one another? i.e.
to the Spanish and Chinese language groups?
Note correlations, p. 50 0.95 / 0.96 What do
these mean?
22

• IL Development Sequences, Dulay Burt
• Related Studies

23

• IL Development Sequences, Dulay Burt
• Related Studies

24

• IL Development Sequences, Dulay Burt
• Related Studies

What conclusions can we draw?
25

• IL Development Sequences, Dulay Burt
• Conclusion
• Speakers of numerous native languages (Spanish,
  Cantonese, Greek, Persian, Italian, etc.), at
  various ages, acquire English morphemes in
  remarkably similar orders.
• These studies provide a strong indication that
  universal cognitive mechanisms are the basis for
  the childs organization of a target language,
  and that it is the L2 system, rather than the L1
  system that guides the acquisition process (p.
  52).

26

• IL Development Sequences, Dulay Burt
• Critique
• Meisel, Clahsen, Pienemann (1981) challenge
  Dulay and Burt. By focusing exclusively on
  target language structures (she is dancing), DB
  ignore systematic non-target-like grammars that
  may exist in informants interlanguages.

27

• Interlanguage First Language Influence
• Markedness 
• Phenomenon A in some language is more marked than
  phenomenon B if the presence of A implies the
  presence of B, but the presence of B does not
  imply the presence of A (implicational
  relations).
• Marked or unmarked?
• Sarah is a senior.
• Sarah is a student.
• If she is a senior, she must be a student, so
  this proposition is marked.
• If she is a student, then she may be a senior,
  but we dont know, so this proposition is
  unmarked.

28

• Interlanguage First Language Influence
• Markedness 
• Phenomenon A in some language is more marked than
  phenomenon B if the presence of A implies the
  presence of B, but the presence of B does not
  imply the presence of A (implicational
  relations).
• Markedness Differential Hypothesis
• Those areas of the target language which
  different from the native language and are more
  marked than the native language will be
  difficult.
• Those areas of the target language which are
  different from the native language, but are not
  more marked than the native language, will not be
  difficult.

29

• Interlanguage First Language Influence
• Markedness 
• English and French both have the phoneme / ž /.
• pleasure / jamais
• In English words, / ž / never occurs syllable
  initial (distinguished from words borrowed from
  French, like Jacques).
• BUT (markedness studies show), the syllable
  initial / ž / is not marked in English. Thus,
  while the phonology of French is different than
  English (relative to the distribution of the
  phoneme / ž /), that particular phonology will
  not be difficult for native English speakers to
  learn.

30

• Interlanguage First Language Influence
• Markedness 
• Eckman, F. (1977). Markedness and the contrastive
  analysis hypothesis. Language Learning, 27,
  315-330.