Morphosyntactic Issues in Second Language Acquisition: 29 - Hardcover

Danuta Gabrys-Barker

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1847690653 ISBN 13: 9781847690654

Publisher: Multilingual Matters, 2008

Synopsis

This volume presents a selection of second language acquisition studies at the level of morphosyntax. It looks at different aspects of morphosyntactic development of bilingual language learners/users such as language transfer, syntactic processing, morphology and the pragmatics of language among others. The studies report on projects carried out in different language contact contexts, ranging from: English, German, Polish, Greek and Turkish. The volume also includes those studies which show the interface between research findings and pedagogy of foreign language teaching.

About this title

About the Author

Danuta Gabrys-Barker is an Associate Professor of English at the University of Silesia, Katowice, Poland and also a teacher trainer and senior lecturer at Teacher Training College in Gliwice. Her main areas of interest are: multilingualism (especially at the level of mental lexicon), neurolinguistics, psycholinguistics (modalities and learner profiles), research methods in SLA (mainly introspective methods), reflective teaching and the role of action research in teacher development; and more recently researching syntactic issues in SLA. She has published numerous articles in these research areas as well as the book Aspects of multilingual storage, processing and retrieval, Katowice: University of Silesia Press, 2005.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Morphosyntactic Issues in Second Language Acquisition

By Danuta Gabrys-Barker

Multilingual Matters

Copyright © 2008 Danuta Gabrys-Barker and the authors of individual chapters
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-84769-065-4

Contents

Contributors, vii, 
Preface, x, 
Part 1: Studies on ESL/EFL Morphosyntactic Development, 
1 Focus Constructions and Language Transfer Terence Odlin, 3, 
2 Argument Realisation and Information Packaging in Tough-Movement Constructions – A Learner-Corpus-Based Investigation Marcus Callies, 29, 
3 L1 Syntactic Preferences of Polish Adolescents in Bilingual and Monolingual Education Programmes Anna Ewert, 47, 
4 MOGUL and Crosslinguistic Influence Mike Sharwood-Smith and John Truscott, 63, 
5 Syntactic Processing in Multilingual Performance (A Case Study) Danuta Gabrys-Barker, 86, 
6 The Morphology -me in Modern Greek as L2: How German and Russian L2 Learners Interpret Verbal Constructions Irini Kassotaki, 107, 
7 Unaccusativity Marks Konrad Szczesniak, 121, 
8 To Move or Not to Move: Acquisition of L2 English Syntactic Movement Parameter Cem Can, Abdurrahman Kilimci and Esra Altunkol, 132, 
9 Last to Acquire: On the Relation of Concession in Interpreting Andrzej Eyda, 144, 
10 Pragmatic (In)Competence in EFL Writing Rüdiger Zimmermann, 160, 
Part 2: Pedagogical Grammar in Promoting Acquisition of L2 Morphosyntax, 
11 The Role of Explicit Rule Presentation in Teaching English Articles to Polish Learners Agnieszka Krol-Markefka, 177, 
12 The Effect of Corrective Feedback on the Acquisition of the English Third Person -s Ending Miroslaw Pawlak, 187, 
13 The Acquisition of German Syntax by Polish Learners in Classroom Conditions Barbara Sadownik, 203, 
14 Introducing Language Interface in Pedagogical Grammar Michal B. Paradowski, 225, 
15 Towards Reflecting the Dynamic Nature of Grammar in Foreign Language Instruction: Expectations and Current Pedagogic Practice Anna Mystkowska-Wiertelak, 253, 

CHAPTER 1

Focus Constructions and Language Transfer

TERENCE ODLIN

Introduction

As with several other terms in linguistics, the word focus means different things to different analysts. For example, it sometimes serves as a synonym for topic or topicalisation (e.g. Keesing, 1991), while at other times it indicates something quite distinct. Attempting to review all the different possible meanings or to develop an entire theory of focus, topic, and related notions is beyond the scope of this chapter, but a definition of focus is nevertheless essential. One given by Carston provides a useful point of departure: 'focus is the syntactic constituent in which dominates all the information that contributes directly to relevance' (Carston, 1996: 311).

The last word in Carston's definition is no accident, as her approach is grounded in relevance theory (e.g. Wilson & Sperber, 1993). Later in her article Carston illustrates how a particular focus construction known as an it-cleft sentence plays a special role in contributing to relevance. She contrasts a simple sentence A ROTTWEILER bit me with an it-cleft: It was a Rottweiler that bit me. According to Carston, the special syntactic structure of the latter sentence 'constrains the sort of context in which it can be appropriately used' (Carston, 1996: 312). The structure leads hearers 'to treat as a background assumption that something bit the speaker and to derive cognitive effects from the information that the entity responsible was a Rottweiler' (Carston, 1996: 312). The implied meaning (which is certainly one of the cognitive effects) could vary depending on the context, where the sentence might serve, as Carston observes, to forestall a hearer's interpretation that the dog that bit the speaker was a neighbour's Alsatian. Alternatively, the cleft might serve a speaker's aim to persuade the listener of the great danger of Rottweilers. Whatever the context, the it-cleft can function as a bridge between the information in the focused constituent and backgrounded information that might be either implicit or explicit in the communicative situation.

The metaphor of a bridge has in fact a fairly long history in discussions of the relation between grammar and meaning, as seen in a study by Haviland and Clark (1974) and in one by Prince (1978), who illustrates the bridge with, among other examples, a wh-cleft sentence found in a popular magazine: 'Nikki Crane, 19, does not want to be a movie star. What she hopes to do is be a star on the horse-show circuit' (Prince, 1978: 887, emphasis added).

According to Prince,

... one cannot know from the first sentence that N.C. wants to do something. When one hears the cleft, however, one simply constructs an inferential bridge – N.C. wants to do something – which is quite compatible with our knowledge of the world and of 19-year-olds. (Prince, 1978: 887)

Although the bridge metaphor helps to understand what focus constructions do, there exist important differences in the types of inferential bridges built with different grammatical structures. Much of Prince's classic article attempts to sort out differences in meaning between it-clefts and wh-clefts (the latter sometimes called pseudo-clefts), and with the former type of structure, she identifies subtypes that function quite differently, as will be discussed further on. In subsequent work Prince has attempted to distinguish the differences in other focus constructions as well (e.g. Prince, 1998). Similar efforts have been pursued by others (e.g. Birner & Ward, 1998) for English, but also with comparable work on other languages (e.g. Doherty, 1999, 2001).

Carston formulated her definition of focus broadly enough to accommodate not only specialised structures such as cleft sentences but also simple sentences, which often have a prominent stress on the final constituent as in her example John invited LUCY (Carston, 1996: 310). However, the more specialised structures will be the concern of this chapter. Although learning focal stress in simple sentences might itself pose problems for second language learners, there is a much greater challenge posed by wh-clefts, it-clefts, and other cases that Carston terms 'syntactically marked structures'. Since this chapter will concentrate on such cases, the use of focus will have here the specialised sense of Carston's three-word phrase. The main theoretical issue that will be pursued with regard to these structures is cross-linguistic influence (also known as language transfer). The discussion will show that understanding transfer in this area requires a more detailed understanding of complex problems of related to form, meaning, and cross-linguistic correspondences. These problems shape much of the learning environment that teachers must take into account if they wish to develop effective pedagogies.

Before the questions of transfer and pedagogy are addressed, it is necessary to consider variations both within and across languages in forms and meanings. After that survey there will be a brief consideration of cognitive effects and then a discussion of of translation equivalence, a problem that both linguists and learners face. The analysis of transfer will review evidence of cross-linguistic influence on focus constructions but also indications of possible limits on such influence. Finally, some implications of the preceding analysis will be considered.

Variation in Forms

A typological survey of forms and meanings in focus constructions is now appropriate, after which there will be a complementary survey of meanings. This short survey cannot do full justice to the wide range seen cross-linguistically, but it will nevertheless prove useful for the discussion of transfer later in the chapter. In this section the look at other languages will require translations, and the principle for deciding what counts as a focus construction in another language will be if the English translation shows what Carston calls a 'marked syntactic pattern'. This procedure has some theoretical shortcomings (especially since English might seem to be the descriptive norm). However, some of the shortcomings will examined in the later discussion of translation equivalence.

The 'marked' syntax that Carston alludes to seems to imply grammatical complexity me or at least a departure from the canonical Subject-Verb-Object (SVO) order of simple sentences in English. Syntactic complexity makes cleft sentences quite different: in it-clefts there is a formulaic use of it, some form of the verb be (most often is or was), then a constituent in the focus position, all of which is seen in It was a Rottweiler, and with a relative clause (that bit) completing the cleft. Although the relative does not serve the usual function of such clauses (modification of a noun), it does have formal characteristics of such clauses, including the possible use of a relative pronoun. wh-clefts likewise have syntactically complex patterns, and in addition allow different possible word orders: for example, A Rottweiler is what bit me and What bit me was a Rottweiler.

Word order variation proves important for other focusing structures as well. Various constituents can occur before SV patterns:

The gardeners pulled up every weed. The flowers they left undisturbed. (Fronted noun phrase)

The gardeners worked extra hours. For their trouble, they were given an extra day off. (Fronted prepositional phrase)

The gardeners promised to finish before the party began, and finish they did. (Fronted verb phrase)

The party was a success, but quiet it was not. (Fronted adjective phrase)

Birner and Ward (1998: 4–5) list similar examples of 'preposing', to use their term, and another pattern that they term 'postposing': for example, They were enormous, those pipes (Birner & Ward, 1998: 6). Apart from the different word order, another difference of the last example from the preceding ones is that the postposed NP makes the same reference that the sentence-initial pronoun does. In preposing there can also be pairs of focused NPs along with pronouns following the verb, as in an example from Prince (1986: 217), My copy of Antila, I don't know who has it. Prince and many others see in such cases a 'topicalisation' pattern distinct from the preposing patterns already described. Along with preposing and postposing another rearrangement is possible, one which Birner (1994) calls inversion, for example, 'Labor savings are achieved because the crew is put to better use than cleaning belts manually: also eliminated is the expense of buying secondary chemicals' (Birner, 1994: 233). Birner defines inversion as the placement of the subject after the verb (the expense of ... in the example), along with other rearrangements before the verb.

Other languages, especially several in the Celtic, Germanic and Romance branches of Indo-European, show many similarities to English in the grammar of focus constructions. Thus several languages have cleft structures, as in the following example from written Swedish which can be translated as an it-cleft, the example coming from a database used by Odlin and Jarvis (2004). The writer, a native speaker of that language, was describing a scene in the Charlie Chaplin film Modern Times:

Charlie säger då att det var han som tog brödet

The literal translation is

Charlie says then that it was he who took bread-the

In the discourse context of the film, Chaplin is trying to divert suspicion about the theft from a starving woman to himself. Spanish also has structures quite similar to English clefts, as in the following example:

lo que es absoluatamente claro es que en un mundo globalizado las lenguas de relacion internacional van a ser muy pocas. (Gabilondo, 2002: 6)

Literal translation: ... what is absolutely clear is that in a world globalised, the languages of relation international go to be very few.

The lo que form is quite common Spanish and is often translatable as what. As the literal translation indicates, very few changes would be needed to produce an acceptable English version.

While many languages rely heavily on clefting, others such as Russian intensively exploit another formal resource: word order permutations. In Russian, preposing, postposing and inversion can all signal focus constructions (Thompson, 1978):

Kolya kupil mašinu. Kolya bought the car.

Kolya mašinu kupil. Kolya BOUGHT the car.

Kupil Kolya mašinu. Kolya did buy the car.

Kupil mašinu Kolya. KOLYA bought the car.

Mašinu Kolya kupil. The car, Kolya bought it.

Mašinu kupil Kolya. The car, it was Kolya who bought it.

Both similarities and differences between Russian and English are evident in these examples. Like English, Russian is often analysed as a language whose basic word order is Subject (Kolya)- Verb (kupil)- Object (mašinu). Moreover, Mašinu Kolya kupil and its English translation show similar preposing. Even so, the VOS and OVS sentences show that postposing and inversion are much more available as options in Russian than in English, which relies more on word stress and clefting. For most linguists, the great flexibility of Russian word order is attributable to its complex inflectional system in nouns, whereas the much sparer system of English leads to a heavier reliance on word order to mark grammatical roles such as subject and object. Thompson, moreover, contends that languages with rigid word order like English also tend to rely much more on clefting to signal focus.

Apart from word order permutations and clefting, another common formal pattern is the focusing particle. Sankoff (1993: 117) emphasises that in many languages of New Guinea and parts nearby '... focus ... is mainly handled through a variety of markers occurring with the focused element remaining in situ, rather than through movement or clefting'. One of the cases she cites to support this claim comes from a dissertation on the Austronesian language Manam by Lichtenberk (1980: 482):

asi ne-ng ngau-lo-?a i-ana?u?-a?-i
bushknife poss.-2sg. 1sg.-from-foc 3sg.-steal-trans-3sg.

It was from me that he stole your knife.

(In Lichtenberg's actual thesis, the international phonetic alphabet (IPA) symbol for the velar nasal appears, but the citation above employs the digraph to indicate the phoneme.) The focus particle -?a does not involve subordination or a change of word order but it does serve the same function that the cleft in the translation does.

In some cases focus particles can have other functions as well. For instance, Keesing (1991) illustrates how the Kwaio language of the Solomons Islands has a morpheme that can serve as a focus marker in some sentences but as a marker of perfective aspect in others:

ngai ne-e aga-si-a
him TOP-he see-TRS-it
'He's the one who saw it.' (Keesing, 1991: 331)
e 'akwa no'o
she run away PERF
She has run away. (Keesing, 1991: 330)

In the first example, the ne-e is an allomorph of no-o, serving as a focus marker, where Keesing uses the abbreviation TOP (topicaliser) in the example but the term focus in his discussion. The other example shows that the allomorph no-o can also function as a marker of perfective aspect, as Keesing's translation with the English present perfect indicates.

Other languages show still other options. Tamil, for instance, combinines word order shifts in tandem with focusing particles (Asher, 1985: 89). Moreover, each of the three patterns discussed at some length – clefting, particles and and word order permutations – can take fairly diverse forms. Finally, the question of just what does or does not count as a formal device indicating focus should be mentioned. For instance, certain constructions with the pronoun one are often considered a special type of focus construction, as in the translation of the Kwaio sentence as He's the one who saw it. The one pattern will indeed count as a focus construction in this chapter, but how many other such structures there may be is a difficult issue – and one related to problems to be discussed in the following sections.

Variation in Meanings

Prince (1978) noted a problem in earlier investigations (e.g. Akmajian, 1970) in ignoring meaning differences signaled by different types of focus constructions. In one way it does make sense to regard as equivalent It was a Rottweiler that bit me and The one that bit me was a Rottweiler (and Akmajian does compare it-clefts and one sentences in his analysis). On the other hand, Akmajian went further, claiming that such sentences 'are synonymous, share the same presuppositions, answer the same questions, and in general are used interchangeably' (Akmajian, 1970: 149). Like many other linguists, Akmajian used truth conditions as the main test of meaning equivalence: if the proposition in the sentence It was a Rottweiler that bit me is true, the proposition in the one sentence must also be true. Prince has not disputed the value of truth-conditional analyses to help understand meaning, but her 1978 paper makes clear that focus constructions are not interchangeable in all cases.

(Continues...)

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Edition details

• Publisher: Multilingual Matters
• Publication date: 2008
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1847690653
• ISBN 13: 9781847690654
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 280