L2 Acquisition of Morphology PDF

UNIT 4: L2 ACQUISITION OF MORPHOLOGY INTRODUCTION: MORPHOLOGY What is morphology? Morphology is the field of linguistics that investigates: -​ The internal structure of words -​ Processes of word formation However, there are different ways of taking into consideration morphology. Thus, we can...

UNIT 4: L2 ACQUISITION OF MORPHOLOGY INTRODUCTION: MORPHOLOGY What is morphology? Morphology is the field of linguistics that investigates: -​ The internal structure of words -​ Processes of word formation However, there are different ways of taking into consideration morphology. Thus, we can differentiate between: -​ Inflectional morphology: conveys grammatical meaning (e.g.: person, number, tense…) -​ Derivational morphology: creates new words (e.g.: print - printer) We are going to focus on the “Morpheme Order Studies” that started in the 70s and have been highly influential. There is a gradient as to what students can acquire morphologically (e.g.: third person singular “-s” is more complicated than the “-s” used in plurals). STUDIES All of these studies were done in the 70s due to the high amount of immigrants in the US. Therefore, they had a social reasoning to study how immigrant children and adults learn an L2. 1.​ Development of morphology in L1 Brown (1973) Aim: How English-speaking children develop morphology. Method: Three children, studied their speech until age 4, recorded 2 hours of speech monthly to language development. Conclusion: All children followed a similar order (=route) but they had different rates (=speed). This order cannot be explained by frequency in the input (example: “the” is the most frequent word in English but is learnt relatively late). These is the gradient followed: Progressive -ing — Prepositions (as free morphemes) — Plural -s — Irregular past — Possessive -’s — Uncontracted couple “be” — Articles a(n), the — Regular past -ed — Regular 3rd person -s — Irregular 3rd person -s  2.​ Dulay and Burt (1974) Aim: “Is the L1 English order observed in bilingual children?”. Method: L1 Spanish or L1 Chinese children aging from 6 to 8. The method used was the Bilingual Syntax Measure (BSM). It consists of asking the children a question based on a picture they can see (why is he so fat?) and expecting the children to answer using a specific morphological feature that has been previously established (because he eats a lot) to see if the have acquired it (e.g.: acquisition of -s). Conclusion: The results showed that Spanish and Chinese children acquire things virtually the same even if there is some variability (seen in the acquisition of progressive -ing -acquire first by Spanish speakers- and the irregular past -acquired past by Chinese speakers-). The results are not perfect because of the articles a/the (they are not acquired at the first stages). 3.​ Bailey, Madden and Krashen (1974) Aim: Is there a natural order of acquisition of morphemes in adults? Is it similar to a child’s? Is there influence of the L1? The focus is on adults. Method: Adults, BSM method: -​ L1 Spanish → L2 English -​ L1 Greek, Italian, Turkish… → L2 English (problematic because Turkish doesn’t have articles in comparison to Italian). Conclusions: 1.​ There are similarities between group 1 and group 2. Therefore, the order of acquisition in L2 English morphology is NOT completely different from the order of acquisition in L1 English. They follow a similar route but have a different rate. For instance, the progressive -ing, the plural -s, the irregular past went and the 3rd person -s were all acquired, more or less, at the same time in English L1 and in English L2. 2.​ A different result is that there is a similar development order for both groups, despite their different mother tongues. Both groups easily acquired the progressive -ing, the contractible copula and the plural -s. Both groups acquired, with difficulties, the possessive -s and the 3rd person singular. The main difference comes with the articles (not all languages have articles) and the past irregular “went”. The second conclusion from this study is that L1 plays a small role in the acquisition of L2 English morphology. 4.​ Pica (1983) Aim: Does context affect learners? Method: Recorded interviews, orthographically transcribed and analysed for morphemes. Three groups of L1 Spanish - L2 English: -​ Instructed (classroom students) -​ Naturalistic (“street” learners) -​ Mixed contents (worked in the mornings and attended classes in the evening) Besides plural and 3rd person singular, the sequence is similar (mainly between mixed and naturalistic groups), with constant problems on the 3rd person singular no matter if the students learn academically or not (it is true that instructed students made less mistakes in the 3rd person singular, but it is a problematic area for them still). This means that different conditions of exposure to English L2 do not significantly alter the accuracy order in which grammatical morphemes are produced. 5.​ Tono (2000) Aim: Influence of L1 Method: Corpus study (JEFL), L1 Japanese L2 English with different proficiency levels (this is problematic because each proficiency level is its own world so they should be paid attention to individually). Conclusion: He found out that there is a strong L1 influence in the production of certain morphemes (e.g., articles were particularly difficult -no articles in Japanese- but possessive genitive –‘s was relatively easy -because they also have a particle for possessive). 6.​ Murakami (2013) Aim: Influence of L1 Method: Corpus study (CLC); with students with different L1s but with a common L2 (English). Conclusion: The Spanish group follows the standard order (-ing > plural > articles > past regular –ed > 3rd singular –s > possessive –’s), except for the last two morphemes (possessive and 3rd singular) where the order is inverted. The Japanese group was affected by their L1, scoring low for articles. L1 affects the acquisition of the L2. 7.​ Morpheme order in secondary schools (Lozano and Díaz-Negrillo) Aim: Method: Corpus study (COREFL), secondary school L1 Spanish L2 English and the type of errors they made. Ranging levels. Written composition of “Frog where are you?”. Conclusion: The easier morphemes were the progressive -ing and the plural -s. The most difficult one was the 3rd person singular -s. There are some things to take into account: -​ There are differences between beginners (A1, A2) and intermediates (B1, B2) because only intermediates show the typical order (even if they are also variable) whilst beginners are more variable (expected mistakes). Thus, there is an order, but it varies according to proficiency level. Taking this into consideration, we can say that the previous studies were done with intermediate learners (they follow the ceiling effect, in which you’ve mastered all of the features so you score a flat line (like an 100%)). 8.​ Goldschneider and Dekeyser (2001) Method: Meta-analysis (an analysis that analises other analysis to get a general conclusion) of 11 studies conducted from 1973 to 1996 from learners of different L1s tested with different methods in naturalistic L2 environments. Conclusion: Influence from the L1 but that we more or less follow the same pattern. This is an implicational scale (if I’m on arrow, three, I have acquired arrows two and one). This is so independently of: -​ the learners’ mother tongue (L1), age and learning environment (classroom/naturalistic) -​ the testing method and the measuring instrument -​ Similar sequencing in child L1 English ​ This concludes with the idea that learners follow their own built-in syllabus following the natural order hypothesis (our own order that may not coincide with textbooks). Nonetheless, some L1 differences exist for certain morphemes (e.g., articles) and different theoretical explanations: nativism (natural order), perceptual saliency (some elements are more noticeable than others)... ​ Textbooks do not coincide with our built in syllabus so we have to apply adaptive evaluation: correcting keeping in mind the order of acquisition of L2. REGULAR VS IRREGULAR PAST TENSE MORPHOLOGY U-SHAPED LEARNING OF IRREGULAR MORPHOLOGY Dual mechanism: -​ One mechanism: Associative memory (learn by heart) -​ Second mechanism: rule-based mechanisms (apply the rule to complete something) STAGE 1: Children memorise highly frequent verbs. So the percentage of his correct forms is really high because they have memorised it. STAGE 2: Children acquire rules because they are exposed to the language. That means that even if they can acquire a new rule, it might interfere with the things acquired in the previous stage. STAGE 3: Completely acquired the norm, how to say the proper thing and we know what we cannot say. They correct themselves even if they make mistakes. Memory and blocking of the rule.