Complexification of the simple clause in the narrative discourse of adult language learners

Abstract

This paper describes an approach to the study of adult language acquisition which takes the learner's attempts to express himself in context as an important factor determining the path of the acquisition process. The interaction of this factor with one other important determining factorthe relative typological proximity between source and target languageis discussed.Taking as an illustration some results from a larger study on clause structure in narrative discourse (see note 2) it is argued that once the learner attains a basic, workable learner variety for this type of discourse, further development will be motivated by the fact that initial constraints on the variety come into 'competition' in specifiable contexts. Contexts are examined where the semantic role of an act an t to its verb is at variance with the discourse status of the actant, and where the inherent temporal properties of a state of affairs described in an utterance are at variance with the intended temporal relationship of that utterance to others in the narrative. Such 'competition' can provoke the learner to further acquisition, which is more or less facilitated by the relative proximity of source-and target-language means to overcome the competition.In conclusion, it is argued that, if the type of approach described here is valid for the study of other aspects of learner performance, then contrastive predictions based on source-and target-language systems must fail to capture two important aspects of acquisitional change: its locus and its motivation.

The basic variety (or: couldn’t natural languages be much simpler?)

“…The presentation concentrates on what seems indispensable for an understanding of the following sections. For details, the reader is referred to Perdue (1993a). 9 8 This does not mean, of course, that the process cannot come to a halt at a much earlier phase.…”

“…In a personal narrative, the learner relates events in which he or she was involved at a specific moment in the past. In the film retelling task, the learner recounts the second half of an 10 For the criteria for informant selection, see Chapter 3 of Perdue (1993a). The research design of the project allowed us to discern (through the inevitable variability encountered while studying real-life learners who acquire at their own pace) the shared structural characteristics of their progress from a noun-based utterance organization Dorriots.…”

“…The research design of the project allowed us to discern (through the inevitable variability encountered while studying real-life learners who acquire at their own pace) the shared structural characteristics of their progress from a noun-based utterance organization Dorriots. 1986;Perdue. 1987;Dietrich, 1989a;Perdue.…”

“…1987;Dietrich, 1989a;Perdue. 1996), right up to a finiteverb-based organization Perdue and Klein, 1992;Perdue, 1995;1996). Not all learners attained this last stage.…”

“…It was co-ordinated from the Max-Planck-Institut für Psycholinguistik in Nijmegen, under the auspices of the European Science Foundation. For a comprehensive account, see Perdue (1993a;1993b). 3 It should be kept in mind that we are talking here about second language acquisition outside the classroom.…”