FROM LANGUAGE TO LITERACY: STRUCTURAL FEATURES OF ACQUIRED LANGUAGES FACILITATING ENGLISH MORPHOLOGICAL AWARENESS

Morphological awareness is a crucial metalinguistic skill, specifically for English Language Learners (ELLs). Since languages differ widely in degree of orthographic opacity, degree of morphological fusion, and degree of morphological synthesis, this thesis sought to evaluate the impact of the structural features of other languages upon ELLs’ levels of English morphological awareness. Additionally, the study investigated the relationship between morphological awareness and perceived levels of literacy and oracy proficiency. Multilingual individuals responded to an online survey containing a morphological awareness task and a language history questionnaire. Each language represented in the sample was coded according to its structural features. Subsequently, the relationship between the features and morphological awareness was analyzed. Morphological awareness was impacted by a confluence of all three structural features. Knowledge of languages with higher degrees of morphological synthesis or higher degrees of orthographic opacity was found to predict higher levels of morphological awareness. Additionally, perceived English literacy proficiency explained a larger degree of the variance in English morphological awareness than perceived English oracy proficiency, though both were statistically significant. The findings indicate the acquisition of English may be impacted by familiarity with other languages and by perceptions of English proficienc

Defining an “ideal” heritage speaker: Theoretical and methodological challenges | Reply to peer commentaries

Linguistic

What causes languages to be transparent?

There is a long tradition in linguistic research (Antilla, 1972; Dressler, 2005) arguing that one-to-one correspondences between form and meaning are somehow more ‘natural’, ‘optimal’ or at least simpler than structures lacking such transparent correspondences. Also recently, it has been argued (e.g. Leufkens, 2013) that in general creole-languages adhere more to such a principle than non-creole languages. In this paper I argue that transparency when found anywhere in languages must be considered from the perspective of learning strategies rather than from the perspective of the computational system. I first argue that transparency is not a principle of grammar. On the contrary, the mapping between the (morpho-)syntax and the phonology in natural languages is characterized by mismatches between structure and form. Consequently, the idea that a transparent mapping is somehow ‘optimal’ is, at least from the perspective of the grammar, misguided. This raises the question why it seems to be the case that transparency is a tendency that may be observed in contact-languages. I answer this question by invoking the Mutual Exclusivity Principle (Merriman and Bowman, 1989) known from word-learning by children, which roughly entails that forms that have been assigned a meaning by the language learner, will not be used in different meanings. Vice versa references that have a particular form will not be expressed by another form. This principle is perfectly in line with transparency. Recently, it has been shown that the Mutual Exclusivity Principle is also operative in other mammals, so we can safely assume that it belongs to more general rather than task-specific cognitive mechanisms. Furthermore, I claim that the Mutual Exclusivity Principle works on stored items only. Since second language acquisition plays a central role in the formation of creoles (Lefebvre et al., 2006; Veenstra, 2009; Muysken, 2013) and since, generally speaking, second language learners rely more on declarative knowledge (‘storage’) than on procedural knowledge (‘computation’) (see e.g. Blom et al., 2008), I argue that the effect of the Mutual Exclusivity Principle will be greater in second language acquisition than in first language acquisition. As a result we may see a tendency towards transparency in contact languages

Discovering words and rules from speech input: an investigation into early morphosyntactic acquisition mechanisms

To acquire language proficiently, learners have to segment fluent speech into units \u2013 that is, words -, and to discover the structural regularities underlying word structure. Yet, these problems are not independent: in varying degrees, all natural languages express syntax as relations between nonadjacent word subparts. This thesis explores how developing infants come to successfully solve both tasks. The experimental work contained in the thesis approaches this issue from two complementary directions: investigating the computational abilities of infants, and assessing the distributional properties of the linguistic input directed to children. To study the nature of the computational mechanisms infants use to segment the speech stream into words, and to discover the structural regularities underlying words, I conducted seventeen artificial grammar studies. Along these experiments, I test the hypothesis that infants may use different mechanisms to learn words and word-internal rules. These mechanisms are supposed to be triggered by different signal properties, and possibly they become available at different stages of development. One mechanism is assumed to compute the distributional properties of the speech input. The other mechanism is hypothesized to be non-statistical in nature, and to project structural regularities without relying on the distributional properties of the speech input. Infants at different ages (namely, 7, 12 and 18 months) are tested in their abilities to detect statistically defined patterns, and to generalize structural regularities appearing inside word-like units. Results show that 18-month-old infants can both extract statistically defined sequences from a continuous stream (Experiment 12), and find internal-word rules only if the familiarization stream is segmented (Experiments 13 and 14). Twelve-month-olds can also segment words from a continuous stream (Experiment 5), but they cannot detect wordstraddling sequences even if they are statistically informative (Experiments 15 and 16). In contrast, they readily generalize word-internal regularities to novel instances after exposure to a segmented stream (Experiments 1-3 and 17), but not after exposure to a continuous stream (Experiment 4). Instead, 7-month-olds do not compute either statistics (Experiments 10 and 11) or within-word relations (Experiments 6 and 7), regardless of input properties. Overall, the results suggest that word segmentation and structural generalization rely on distinct mechanisms, requiring different signal properties to be activated --that is, the presence of segmentation cues is mandatory for the discovery of structural properties, while a continuous stream supports the extraction of statistically occurring patterns. Importantly, the two mechanisms have different developmental trajectories: generalizations became readily available from 12 months, while statistical computations remain rather limited along the first year. To understand how the computational selectivities and the limits of the computational mechanisms match up with the limitations and the properties of natural language, I evaluate the distributional properties of speech directed to children. These analyses aim at assessing with quantitative and qualitative measures whether the input children listen to may offer a reliable basis for the acquisition of morphosyntactic rules. I choose to examine Italian, a language with a rich and complex morphology, evaluating whether the word forms used in speech directed to children would provide sufficient evidence of the morphosyntactic rules of this language. Results show that the speech directed to children is highly systematic and consistent. The most frequently used word forms are also morphologically well-formed words in Italian: thus, frequency information correlates with structural information -- such as the morphological structure of words. While a statistical analysis of the speech input may provide a small set of words occurring with high frequency, how learners come to extract structural properties from them is another problem. In accord with the results of the infant studies, I propose that structural generalizations are projected on a different basis than statistical computations. Overall, the results of both the artificial grammar studies an the corpus analysis are compatible with the hypothesis that the tasks of segmenting words from fluent speech, and that of learning structural regularities underlying word structure rely on statistical and non-statistical cues respectively, placing constraints on computational mechanisms having different nature and selectivities in early development

Heritage Languages and Their Speakers: Opportunities and Challenges for Linguistics

In this paper, we bring to the attention of the linguistic community recent research on heritage languages. Shifting linguistic attention from the model of a monolingual speaker to the model of a multilingual speaker is important for the advancement of our understanding of the language faculty. Native speaker competence is typically the result of normal first language acquisition in an environment where the native language is dominant in various contexts, and learners have extensive and continuous exposure to it and opportunities to use it. Heritage speakers present a different case: they are bilingual speakers of an ethnic or immigrant minority language, whose first language often does not reach native-like attainment in adulthood. We propose a set of connections between heritage language studies and theory construction, underscoring the potential that this population offers for linguistic research. We examine several important grammatical phenomena from the standpoint of their representation in heritage languages, including case, aspect, and other interface phenomena. We discuss how the questions raised by data from heritage speakers could fruitfully shed light on current debates about how language works and how it is acquired under different conditions. We end with a consideration of the potential competing factors that shape a heritage language system in adulthood.Linguistic

Rethinking of Acquisition and Learning: A Systematic Review on Methods in Language Teaching and Learning. Thesis. English Education Graduate Program, State University of Makassar

xiii ABSTRACT Azwar Abidin. 2014. , supervised by Mansur Akil and Muliati. This research was trying to explore the characteristics of methods that serve to facilitate language acquisition and learning. It was also trying to provide a deep analysis from the critical perspective according to Freire’s conceptual framework of critical literacy education to give a different view of language teaching and learning. This research employed both systematic review and critical discourse analysis (CDA). Data in this research were in the form of text, particularly, discursive statements. The discursive statements in this research were the principal arguments of mainstream language teaching and learning methods and Freire’s conceptual framework of critical literacy education as counter-discursive statements. The data analysis was done through the combination of Van Dijk and Fairclough model of critical discourse analysis. The findings revealed that the methods that will serve to facilitate language acquisition and language learning must qualify for at least the following: (a) conceptual framework that is consistent with the particular approaches and (b) applicability criteria that make the teaching and learning process becomes possible. It must also be clear in defining its concepts and boundaries. Freire’s conceptual framework of critical literacy education criticized some principal arguments of popular methods in language teaching and learning. It turned the focus to the learners instead of the process of learning so humanistic values must be considered at the first place. Learning must be dialectical and progressing in spiral model. Understanding discourse construction must be given priority so personal narratives could facilitate acquisition without any intervention from too many given instructions. Comprehensibility of input comes after dialectical perspective. Dialogue facilitates interchanging messages in dialectical process between codification and decodification to develop cognitive and linguistic intelligence of the learners. The last critique was on authenticity of which it is granted the process of codification. This research suggests that language teachers need to understand the principal arguments that underlie the methods they use inside the classroom. This is to avoid discourse domination that can potentially threaten learners’ creativity. It also suggests a critical stance in adopting theoretical framework from experts and theorists and a preference to personal theory construction

The state of the science in generative SLA and its place in modern second language studies.

Manuscript. Published version in press (Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 2017)This article has two main goals. The first is to summarize and comment on the current state-of-affairs of generative approaches to SLA (GenSLA), thirty-five years into its history. This discussion brings the readership of SSLA up-to-date on the questions driving GenSLA agendas and clears up misconceptions about what GenSLA does and does not endeavor to explain. We engage key questions/debates/shifts within GenSLA such as focusing on the deterministic role of input in language acquisition, as well as expanding the inquiry to new populations and empirical methodologies and technologies used. The second goal is to highlight the place of GenSLA in the broader field of SLA. We argue that various theories of SLA are needed, showing that many existing SLA paradigms are much less mutually exclusive than commonly believed (cf. Rothman & VanPatten, 2013; Slabakova et al., 2014, 2015; VanPatten & Rothman, 2014) — especially in light of their different foci and research questions

Directional adposition use in English, Swedish and Finnish

Directional adpositions such as to the left of describe where a Figure is in relation to a Ground. English and Swedish directional adpositions refer to the location of a Figure in relation to a Ground, whether both are static or in motion. In contrast, the Finnish directional adpositions edellä (in front of) and jäljessä (behind) solely describe the location of a moving Figure in relation to a moving Ground (Nikanne, 2003). When using directional adpositions, a frame of reference must be assumed for interpreting the meaning of directional adpositions. For example, the meaning of to the left of in English can be based on a relative (speaker or listener based) reference frame or an intrinsic (object based) reference frame (Levinson, 1996). When a Figure and a Ground are both in motion, it is possible for a Figure to be described as being behind or in front of the Ground, even if neither have intrinsic features. As shown by Walker (in preparation), there are good reasons to assume that in the latter case a motion based reference frame is involved. This means that if Finnish speakers would use edellä (in front of) and jäljessä (behind) more frequently in situations where both the Figure and Ground are in motion, a difference in reference frame use between Finnish on one hand and English and Swedish on the other could be expected. We asked native English, Swedish and Finnish speakers’ to select adpositions from a language specific list to describe the location of a Figure relative to a Ground when both were shown to be moving on a computer screen. We were interested in any differences between Finnish, English and Swedish speakers. All languages showed a predominant use of directional spatial adpositions referring to the lexical concepts TO THE LEFT OF, TO THE RIGHT OF, ABOVE and BELOW. There were no differences between the languages in directional adpositions use or reference frame use, including reference frame use based on motion. We conclude that despite differences in the grammars of the languages involved, and potential differences in reference frame system use, the three languages investigated encode Figure location in relation to Ground location in a similar way when both are in motion. Levinson, S. C. (1996). Frames of reference and Molyneux’s question: Crosslingiuistic evidence. In P. Bloom, M.A. Peterson, L. Nadel & M.F. Garrett (Eds.) Language and Space (pp.109-170). Massachusetts: MIT Press. Nikanne, U. (2003). How Finnish postpositions see the axis system. In E. van der Zee & J. Slack (Eds.), Representing direction in language and space. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Walker, C. (in preparation). Motion encoding in language, the use of spatial locatives in a motion context. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Lincoln, Lincoln. United Kingdo