This study investigates the role of probabilistic grammatical constraints on the dative alternation in English as a second language. It presents the results of an experiment in which the different factors that are influential in English L1 are tested with advanced learners of English with German as their L1. L2 learners are influenced by the same determinants as L1 speakers, but to a lesser degree. Together with the results of previous studies the present results suggest that initially the learners do not make use of probabilistic constraints in spite of the constraints being influential in L1, and only gradually acquire a sensitivity towards the constraints that govern the choice between the two dative constructions. DATIVE ALTERNATION IN GERMAN-ENGLISH INTERLANGUAGE 3In cases of so-called 'grammatical variation' speakers have a choice between different syntactic or morphosyntactic constructions that are semantically equivalent. In English examples of grammatical variation are the competition between the of-genitive and the sgenitive, between the more-comparative and the -er comparative, or the choice between two kinds of object constructions with ditransitive verbs of transfer (e.g. give). The latter phenomenon is commonly referred to as 'dative alternation'. It has been shown that native speakers are sensitive to probabilistic (rather than categorical) factors that govern the selection of a particular variant in a given context. On the basis of such cases of grammatical variation (and other gradient phenomena, see, for example, the papers in Bod et al., 2003) it has been argued that grammatical knowledge must have a probabilistic component (e.g. Bresnan & Hay, 2008). Thus, it can be shown that the probability of finding a particular variant in a certain context in a corpus correlates with the intuitions of speakers in acceptability judgment tasks, given the same context (e.g. Bresnan, 2007; Bresnan & Ford, 2010). 1 It has also been demonstrated that the choices depend on a variety of influential factors (such as animacy, syntactic complexity, definiteness etc.) that together determine the selection of a particular variant in a particular context (see, for example, Mondorf, 2009 on the comparative, Hinrichs & Szmrecsanyi, 2007 on the genitive, and Bresnan & Ford, 2010 on the dative alternation).The study of SLA syntax has largely focused on the acquisition of syntactic patterns and constructions as such, neglecting phenomena of grammatical variation and the acquisition of probabilistic constraints that govern the selection of variants. This paper presents a study of the role of such constraints in advanced German learners of English, focusing on the dative alternation.In the English dative alternation we find two ways of expressing what seems to be the same kind of event with two different syntactic structures, i.e. either with a prepositional ob-ject ('PP dative') or with an NP object ('NP dative'), with different orders of theme and recipient, as shown in (1).(1) Mary gave the wonderful watch to her mother.Ma...
To overcome planning phases in spontaneous speech production, learners and native speakers use strategies such as (un)filled pauses, smallwords or discourse markers. Small scale studies in this vein have demonstrated that learners differ from native speakers in that they underuse smallwords and discourse markers, and rely on other fluency-enhancing strategies instead. In the present paper, we present a corpusbased study, which investigates fluency-enhancing strategies in four components of the Louvain International Database of Spoken English Interlanguage (LINDSEI; Gilquin et al. 2010), covering four learner English varieties, namely Spanish, German, Bulgarian and Japanese. We investigate 216 different fluencemes (i.e. fluencyenhancing features; Götz in Fluency in native and nonnative English speech, John Benjamins, Amsterdam, 2013) in 200 transcribed interviews with advanced learners of English. An online coding application, which was specially designed and programmed for this project, enables us to cover such a large amount of data. We report on the design, functionality and (dis-)advantages of the online application, the multilevel-coding system we implemented, and the methodological challenges we face in detail. We will also present the findings of one first pilot study where we exhibit considerable variation between and within learners of particular native languages concerning fluenceme frequencies, while distributional patterns of fluencemes are rather similar across varieties.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.
hi@scite.ai
10624 S. Eastern Ave., Ste. A-614
Henderson, NV 89052, USA
Copyright © 2024 scite LLC. All rights reserved.
Made with 💙 for researchers
Part of the Research Solutions Family.