Clause linking in L2 English

Abstract

The development of clause linkage in a second language has been studied extensively in the fields of applied linguistics and second language research. Several studies have focused on the development of specific types of complex structures, essentially based on the development of different classes of subordinate clauses distinguished by traditional grammar. The present contribution uses as a theoretical framework Role and Reference Grammar. RRG’s model of clause linkage proposes a different array of possible relations between combined clauses, adding the concept of cosubordination to the traditional dichotomy coordination/subordination, and pays attention to both predicate-based complexification within the clause and full clause combinations. RRG bases its classification of linkage types on the Interclausal Relations Hierarchy (Van Valin & LaPolla 1997), which unites syntactic and semantic aspects of clause complexification. The present article focuses on the syntax-semantics interface as realized within the Interclausal Relations Hierarchy, and on its impact on the acquisition of clause linkage structures by adolescent L2 learners of English. The corpus consists of oral narrative English interlanguage data elicited from 12- to 18-year-old Dutch-speaking secondary school pupils in Flanders (Belgium). Results show that RRG’s main principles of clause linkage are easily applicable to second language acquisition. The syntactic and semantic strength of a given juncture were found to often coincide in the data, as predicted, and any syntactic encoding of a semantic juncture which matches its semantic strength is likely to be acquired more easily and/or earlier than non-matching realizations. Although not all predictions made by RRG concerning structural variation were confirmed by our L2 English data, we conclude that RRG provides a fruitful, coherent and powerful framework for studying clause linkage and sentence complexification in spoken L2 learner discourse.

“My luggage and my ladies were unloaded”

“…Do they have a special kind of bread here?" 41 The inquit-formula the narrator uses to introduce the women's direct speech is at times very marked (by an affective overflow): "[S]he asked, passionately," they "cry, horrified," "they cry, in a tone of reproach," "they cried, unanimously," "they cried, annoyed," "they lamented," "sighed one of my ladies," "my ladies lamented, dismayed." 42 With only a few exceptions, the narrator introduces his own replies with a more modest, subdued formula, such as "I said with a smile," "I replied," "I repeated, undisturbed."…”

“…3 The second lady has a kind of epitheton ornans: She is the one "who tends to be distracted sometimes," but that is the only characteristic the reader gets from any of the women. 4 The "I" sometimes speaks as a collective "we": "We hobble and jump through a city: Dendermonde," "then we saw the man come back," "the road on which we drive," "We are on the road from Bouillon to Sedan," "Now that we are approaching the German border," "Thus we were struggling in Nancy, to find the way to Dijon," "Thus we drove the entire day, along the river between the mountains," "we reached the far end of our trip and finally go back," "suddenly we see something coming". .…”

“…again were enjoying and cheering, reviving. 7 One of the few times that the ladies do get to interpret a scene, the narrator immediately makes clear that they are doing so at the wrong moment. This happens, for instance, on an evening when one of the tires explodes and the narrator needs to replace it.…”

“…we lost and found her time and time again, she bored and annoyed us, so it would have been better if we had left it from the very beginning and that the whole affair caused them to lose so much time that they nearly got into trouble in the evening. 12 In other words: The narrator knows when to act and when to let go (of sentimental objects), in contrast to his companions, whose lack of savoir faire eventually brings them in a potentially tricky situation.…”

“…Even when the ladies dream of exploring mountains and rivers, they only imagine doing so while seated: they did not ask whether it was possible to drive all the way through to the violet and pink mountains, and they would have loved to sail the blue water of the Rhône, all the time comfortably sitting in the car, that would have turned into a vessel. 15 Time and time again, this travelogue stresses their limited mobility, as well as naiveté and poor decision-making. For example, when they visit the casino in Monte Carlo, the ladies spend the entire day inside at one of the tables gambling and losing all of their money, despite numerous invitations by the narrator to join him to explore the charming village and its expensive restaurants "at the expense of the bank"since he himself has already won, and was clever enough to stop in time.…”