Eurosla YearbookPub Date : 1900-01-01DOI: 10.1075/EUROSLA.3.09RAS
Rebekah Rast, J. Dommergues
{"title":"Towards a characterisation of saliency on first exposure to a second language","authors":"Rebekah Rast, J. Dommergues","doi":"10.1075/EUROSLA.3.09RAS","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1075/EUROSLA.3.09RAS","url":null,"abstract":"This paper attempts to shed light on the question of what in the input is perceived and processed by the learner, and how it is processed upon first contact with a target language. Subjects were French learners of Polish who had had no contact with Polish or any other Slavic language before the onset of the project. They were tested on a sentence repetition task before receiving any Polish instruction, after 4 hours of instruction, and again after 8 hours. The results suggest that even as little as 8 hours of exposure induces a recognizable interlanguage; that the influence of global input can be predicted by word length, word stress, phonemic distance, transparency, position and frequency; and that the role these factors play evolves over time. Together the results suggest a way to characterise the notion of saliency in the input.","PeriodicalId":236084,"journal":{"name":"Eurosla Yearbook","volume":"27 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"1900-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"115052776","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Eurosla YearbookPub Date : 1900-01-01DOI: 10.1075/EUROSLA.1.10HAV
Gertraud Havranek, H. Cesnik
{"title":"FACTORS AFFECTING THE SUCCESS OF CORRECTIVE FEEDBACK","authors":"Gertraud Havranek, H. Cesnik","doi":"10.1075/EUROSLA.1.10HAV","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1075/EUROSLA.1.10HAV","url":null,"abstract":"The findings from a comprehensive study on oral corrective feedback show that the success of such feedback as measured in a subsequent test is affected by its format, the type of error corrected, and certain learner characteristics. The most successful format of correction, both for the learners receiving the feedback and for their peers, is feedback successfully eliciting self-correction in practice situations. Among the least successful formats for both groups are recasts without further comments or repetition by the corrected learner. The type of error corrected most successfully differs for the two groups. Those corrected learn most from the correction of their grammatical errors and least from correction of pronunciation errors. Peers score best on pronunciation items and gain least from correction of lexical errors. Of the learner characteristics taken into consideration, verbal intelligence, relative proficiency (within levels at school or university), and the learners’ attitude towards correction proved to be most influential.","PeriodicalId":236084,"journal":{"name":"Eurosla Yearbook","volume":"23 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"1900-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"129635006","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Eurosla YearbookPub Date : 1900-01-01DOI: 10.1075/EUROSLA.15.06SUD
Koji Suda
{"title":"The influences of proficiency levels and working memory capacities on sentence comprehension by Japanese learners of English","authors":"Koji Suda","doi":"10.1075/EUROSLA.15.06SUD","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1075/EUROSLA.15.06SUD","url":null,"abstract":"Examining influences of two participant factors, i.e., proficiency and working memory (WM), in second language (L2) sentence processing, we discuss how Japanese learners of English (JLEs) with distinct proficiency levels and WM capacities comprehend relative clauses in English. Reading times (RTs) were collected from intermediate and elementary levels of JLEs with different WM capacities using a self-paced reading task. The results revealed that: (1) JLEs had difficulty interpreting object relative clauses with animate antecedents; (2) JLEs at the elementary level processed the critical region in subject relative clauses with animate antecedents faster than that in object relative clauses with animate antecedents; (3) JLEs with the large WM capacity read embedded verbs faster than those with the small WM capacity; and (4) RTs of the verb region in the subject relative clause were shorter than those in the object relative clause. From these results, we propose that lower proficient L2 learners depend heavily on animacy information when they comprehend relative clauses though there appears evidence that JLEs also make use of structural information. Moreover, we suggest that WM has a positive role in the L2 comprehension process, similar to findings in previous L2 processing studies.","PeriodicalId":236084,"journal":{"name":"Eurosla Yearbook","volume":"6 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"1900-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"129961513","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Eurosla YearbookPub Date : 1900-01-01DOI: 10.1075/EUROSLA.5.08HAK
G. Håkansson
{"title":"Grammar and pragmatics - Swedish as a foreign language","authors":"G. Håkansson","doi":"10.1075/EUROSLA.5.08HAK","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1075/EUROSLA.5.08HAK","url":null,"abstract":"This paper compares grammatical and pragmatic development in foreign language learners of Swedish. For the analysis of grammatical proficiency, data from translation tasks and essays were tested against the stage model proposed in Processability Theory, which identifies five stages of morpho-syntactic development for Swedish (Pienemann 1998, Pienemann and Hakansson 1999). For the pragmatic analysis a gap-fill task, inspired by the discourse completion task (Blum-Kulka 1982, Kasper and Roever 2005), but taking into consideration sequential aspects of the interaction was used. All tasks were piloted with a control group of Swedish native speakers. The results indicate a relationship between native-like pragmatic command and a high level of morpho-syntactic processability. The findings suggest that students whose grammatical processing capacity is restricted to lower levels find it difficult to contextualise their utterances in a pragmatically appropriate way. (Less)","PeriodicalId":236084,"journal":{"name":"Eurosla Yearbook","volume":"4 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"1900-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"130317788","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Eurosla YearbookPub Date : 1900-01-01DOI: 10.1075/EUROSLA.11.09GUI
P. Guijarro-Fuentes
{"title":"Feature composition in Differential Object Marking","authors":"P. Guijarro-Fuentes","doi":"10.1075/EUROSLA.11.09GUI","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1075/EUROSLA.11.09GUI","url":null,"abstract":"In this paper we examine the acquisition of interpretable features in English L2 learners of Spanish by investigating the personal preposition a in Spanish. The presence of a in direct object NPs relates to the animacy/specificity of the NP, the animacy/agentivity of the subject and the semantics of the predicate (Torrego, 1998; Zagona, 2002); that is, personal a is constrained by the interpretability of semantic features. Forty-nine English L2 learners of Spanish of different proficiency levels, and 16 Spanish controls participated in an Acceptability Judgement task. The results showed that L2 learners of Spanish across three proficiency levels behaved differently from native speakers of Spanish. The L2 learners seem to have attained some of the interpretable features (i.e., [±animate]) of the Spanish a-DP direct objects, but reveal delays with others. Nonetheless, our data illustrate partial convergence by advanced learners with the native speakers: some interpretable features are attainable, while others may be less accessible and subject to developmental processes. In analyzing our data we draw on Lardiere’s (2008, 2009) Feature Reassembly Hypothesis, but expanded and extended it in an attempt to critically evaluate and broaden it.","PeriodicalId":236084,"journal":{"name":"Eurosla Yearbook","volume":"83 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"1900-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"134119412","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Eurosla YearbookPub Date : 1900-01-01DOI: 10.1075/EUROSLA.3.10BOX
S. V. Boxtel, T. Bongaerts, P. Coppen
{"title":"Native-like attainment in L2-syntax","authors":"S. V. Boxtel, T. Bongaerts, P. Coppen","doi":"10.1075/EUROSLA.3.10BOX","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1075/EUROSLA.3.10BOX","url":null,"abstract":"In this study, we test the prediction, derived from the Critical Period Hypothesis, that a native-level of attainment in L2 grammar cannot be reached by learners who start acquiring a second language after the onset of puberty. We selected 30 very advanced German and French late learners (age of arrival less than or equal to 12 years) of Dutch and compared their performance on a grammar test with that of 44 (highly educated) native speakers of Dutch. The test consisted of two tasks: an elicited imitation task and a relative grammaticality judgement task. In these tasks, participants were tested on their knowledge of dummy subject constructions. These construction types were chosen because they are known to be very hard to acquire for learners of Dutch as a second language. The results show that it is possible to attain a native level of proficiency for learners who start acquiring a second language (long) after puberty.","PeriodicalId":236084,"journal":{"name":"Eurosla Yearbook","volume":"36 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"1900-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"133701719","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Eurosla YearbookPub Date : 1900-01-01DOI: 10.1075/EUROSLA.14.01GYL
Henrik Gyllstad, J. Granfeldt, P. Bernardini, M. Källkvist
{"title":"Linguistic correlates to communicative proficiency levels of the CEFR: The case of syntactic complexity in written L2 English, L3 French and L4 Italian","authors":"Henrik Gyllstad, J. Granfeldt, P. Bernardini, M. Källkvist","doi":"10.1075/EUROSLA.14.01GYL","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1075/EUROSLA.14.01GYL","url":null,"abstract":"This study is a contribution to the empirical underpinning of the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR), and it aims to identify linguistic correlates to the proficiency levels defined by the CEFR. The study was conducted in a Swedish school setting, focusing on English, French and Italian, and examined the relationship between CEFR levels (A1-C2) assigned by experienced raters to learners’ written texts and three measures of syntactic complexity (based on length of t-unit, subclause ratio, and mean length of clause (cf. Norris & Ortega, 2009)). Data were elicited through two written tasks (a short letter and a narrative) completed by pupils of L2 English (N=54) in years four, nine and the final year of upper-secondary school, L3 French (N=38) in year nine and the final year of upper-secondary school, and L4 Italian (N=28) in the final year of upper-secondary school and first year of university. The results showed that, globally, there were weak to medium-strong correlations between assigned CEFR levels and the three measures of syntactic complexity in English, French and Italian. Furthermore, it was found that syntactic complexity was homogeneous across the three languages at CEFR level A, whereas syntactic complexity was different across languages at CEFR level B, especially in the data for English and French. Consequences for the empirical validity of the CEFR framework and the nature of the three measures of complexity are discussed. (Less)","PeriodicalId":236084,"journal":{"name":"Eurosla Yearbook","volume":"417 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"1900-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"116039201","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Eurosla YearbookPub Date : 1900-01-01DOI: 10.1075/EUROSLA.2.12BEN
S. Benazzo
{"title":"Communicative potential vs. structural constraints: Explanatory factors for the acquisition of scope particles","authors":"S. Benazzo","doi":"10.1075/EUROSLA.2.12BEN","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1075/EUROSLA.2.12BEN","url":null,"abstract":"This study investigates the acquisition of scope items such as ‘only’, ‘even’, ‘also’, ‘still’, ‘again’, ‘already’ etc. in the longitudinal data of untutored second language learners of English, French and German. These items are found to appear in a fixed sequence: additive/restrictive > iterative > contrastive, which correlates crosslinguistically with the development of learner varieties from a prebasic to a postbasic level. Analysis of the discourse behaviour of these particles suggests that while the communicative potential of these items justifies their early appearance, their use is constrained by the global organisation of learner varieties. In other words, appearance of particular items is constrained by the learner’s developmental stage.","PeriodicalId":236084,"journal":{"name":"Eurosla Yearbook","volume":"24 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"1900-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"132999820","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Eurosla YearbookPub Date : 1900-01-01DOI: 10.1075/EUROSLA.10.13OPI
Conny Opitz
{"title":"L1 attrition and L2 acquisition: Global language proficiency and language dominance in adult bilinguals","authors":"Conny Opitz","doi":"10.1075/EUROSLA.10.13OPI","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1075/EUROSLA.10.13OPI","url":null,"abstract":"L1 attrition is increasingly being studied as a feature of bilingualism, taking into account the parallel process of L2 language acquisition in a migrant situation. Such situations may foster L1 attrition as a result of insufficient L1 input and competition or interaction with the language of the host community. In a study of 27 German late bilinguals resident in Ireland, the question of a possible interaction between the two language systems (German and English) is addressed. This paper reports on the results of two of the elicitation instruments used – a C-test as a measure of global language proficiency, and a verbal fluency task as a measure of lexical retrieval and bilingual dominance. The former is an unspeeded integrative task, while the latter taps lexical access as a function of the relative activation levels of the languages. The analysis focuses on the proficiency profiles of the bilingual participants vis-a-vis a German and an Irish control group to establish the level of L1 attrition and L2 acquisition, and the degree with which L1 and L2 proficiency correlate.","PeriodicalId":236084,"journal":{"name":"Eurosla Yearbook","volume":"40 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"1900-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"116540233","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Eurosla YearbookPub Date : 1900-01-01DOI: 10.1075/EUROSLA.8.10SHA
Chuan-Kuo Shan, Boping Yuan
{"title":"'What is happened' in L2 English does not happen in L2 Chinese","authors":"Chuan-Kuo Shan, Boping Yuan","doi":"10.1075/EUROSLA.8.10SHA","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1075/EUROSLA.8.10SHA","url":null,"abstract":"In the literature, L2 learners of English are reported to have problems accepting grammatical unaccusative sentences like the cup broke yesterday although they accept the passivized form like the cup was broken yesterday (e.g. Yip 1995; Ju 2000). They also produce ungrammatical sentences like “If the World War III is happened, . . .”. It has been suggested that these phenomena are universal in the development of L2 English because they occur in the English of L2 learners with different L1s (cf. Ju 2000). In this paper, we present an empirical study investigating whether these non-target phenomena also occur in L2 Chinese. It is found that English speakers of Chinese at different proficiency levels fully accept the NP-V unaccusative construction. Optionality is observed in English speakers’ non-target passivized unaccusative verbs of change of state, which are argued to be due to L1 transfer when English speakers incorrectly treat Chinese change-of-state verbs as causative. Overall, our results suggest that the overpassivization phenomenon should not be considered universal in the L2 acquisition of unaccusativity despite their prevalence in L2 English.","PeriodicalId":236084,"journal":{"name":"Eurosla Yearbook","volume":"49 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"1900-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"129879163","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}