Morphology, derivational syntax and second language acquisition of resultatives

This thesis explores questions of functional morphology in morphosyntactic theory and in second language acquisition. The work develops Emonds' (2000) notion of a Syntacticon as the store of grammatical lexical items in the Lexicon and it explores the interaction between morphology and syntax in syntactic derivation. The focus of the work is the resultative construction (e.g. She painted the table red). As a resultative, the string conforms to a regular syntactic structure and gives rise to an interpretation in which there is an agent that acts upon some object so as to effect some change of state. In this work, resultative formation in English is contrasted with resultative formation in Korean because the latter, but not the former, includes an obligatory functional result morpheme, -key. The proposed analysis of the resultative accounts for both the morphological and syntactic facts in English and Korean. Additionally, traditional notions of subcategorization are developed, using a Feature-based approach in order to explain the lexical restrictions associated with resultatives. The thesis also includes an experimental study of the acquisition of English resultatives by native Korean and Mandarin Chinese speakers. These languages were chosen in order to highlight the mismatch between Korean and English resultative formation in terms of functional morphology. Accepting the Full Transfer/Full Access model of Schwartz and sprouse (1996), the whole of the native language is assumed to transfer to form the initial state of second language acquisition. The results of the experimental study provide support for the claim that functional morphology, like that implicated in Korean resultative formation, transfers from the native language to affect the development of the Interlanguage in second language acquisition

Beyond paradigm : The ‘what’ and the ‘how’ of classroom research

This article reviews studies in second language classroom research from a cross-theoretic perspective, arguing that the classroom holds the potential for bringing together researchers from opposing theoretical orientations. It shows how generative and general cognitive approaches share a view of language that implicates both implicit and explicit knowledge, and that holds a bias towards implicit knowledge. Arguing that it is implicit knowledge that should be the object of research, it proposes that classroom research would benefit from incorporating insights from a generative understanding of language. Specifically, there is a need for a more nuanced view of the complexity of language in terms of linguistic domain, and the interaction between those domains. Generative second language acquisition research that shows developmental differences in terms of both linguistic domain and interface is reviewed. The core argument is a call for more attention to the ‘what’ of language development in classroom research and, by implication, teaching practice. As such, the language classroom is seen to offer potential for research that goes beyond paradigm to address both the ‘what’ and the ‘how’ of language development

What's in the textbook and what's in the mind : polarity item "any" in learner English

This paper presents an experimental study of the rarely explored question of how input through instruction interacts with L2 acquisition at the level ofmodular linguistic knowledge. The investigation focuses on L2 knowledge of the English polarity itemany, whose properties are only partially covered by typical language-teaching materials. We investigate Najdi-Saudi Arabic-speaking learners' knowledge of the distribution of any in contexts that are taught, contexts that are not taught but may be observable in the input, and contexts that are neither taught nor observable. We further test whether conscious awareness of instructed rules about any correlates with performance. Our findings suggest a role for instruction and for internal, UG-constrained acquisition, and that these two paths interact.We explore our findings in terms of SharwoodSmithandTruscott's (2014a, 2014b) framework ofmodular online growth and use of language, in which cognitive development is driven by processing

The meaning of negation in the second language classroom: evidence from 'any'

This article brings together an experimental study involving L2 knowledge of negation in English and an analysis of how English language textbooks treat negation, in order to consider whether textbook explanations of negation could better exploit linguistic insights into negation. We focus on the English negative polarity item any, whose distribution is contingent on negation, whether through the explicit negator not or through lexical semantic negators (e.g. hardly). Our experiment compares Chinese-speaking learners with existing data from Arabic-speaking learners, finding lower accuracy on any with lexical semantic negators in both groups. Our textbook analysis reveals an approach to negation that is limited to form, focusing on the explicit negator not without explicit treatment of other types of negation. We propose that emphasizing the meaning of negation, with explicit treatment of the full range of negative forms could facilitate more complete acquisition across a range of grammatical properties where negation plays a role

A linguistic perspective on communicative language teaching

Despite a range of criticism communicative language teaching (CLT) has been broadly accepted as the appropriate approach to language teaching. This paper argues that large shifts in language pedagogy firstly from ‘structure’ to ‘meaning’ and more recently from progressivism to critical pedagogy need to be tempered bya restatement of the importance of linguistics to language teaching. Ten characteristics of CLT are presented and then explored from a linguistic point of view. Throughout, explicit connections are made between cutting-edge linguistic research and questions of language pedagogy within the CLT paradigm. The conclusion is a call for a renewed focus on the understanding of language for language teaching expertise