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This study investigated the acquisition of overt morphological case by adult native speakers of English who were learning Russian or German as a second language (L2). The Russian casemarking system is more complex than the German system; but it almost always provides the listener with case inflections that are reliable cues to sentence interpretation. Two approaches to learning of inflectional morphology were contrasted: the rule-based approach which predicts that learning is determined by paradigm complexity and the associative approach which predicts that learning is determined by the cue validity of individual inflections. A computerized picture-choice task probed the comprehension of L2 learners by varying the cues case-marking, noun configuration, and noun animacy. The results demonstrated that learners of Russian use casemarking much earlier than learners of German and that learners of German rely more on animacy to supplement the weaker case-marking cue. In order to further explore the underlying mechanisms of learning, a connectionist model was developed which correctly simulated the obtained results. Together, these findings support the view that adult L2 learning is associative and driven by the validity of cues in the input.
This study investigated the acquisition of overt morphological case by adult native speakers of English who were learning Russian or German as a second language (L2). The Russian casemarking system is more complex than the German system; but it almost always provides the listener with case inflections that are reliable cues to sentence interpretation. Two approaches to learning of inflectional morphology were contrasted: the rule-based approach which predicts that learning is determined by paradigm complexity and the associative approach which predicts that learning is determined by the cue validity of individual inflections. A computerized picture-choice task probed the comprehension of L2 learners by varying the cues case-marking, noun configuration, and noun animacy. The results demonstrated that learners of Russian use casemarking much earlier than learners of German and that learners of German rely more on animacy to supplement the weaker case-marking cue. In order to further explore the underlying mechanisms of learning, a connectionist model was developed which correctly simulated the obtained results. Together, these findings support the view that adult L2 learning is associative and driven by the validity of cues in the input.
Die sprachmaschine—the language machine—provides a language microworld in which students experiment with word combinations with the intent of forming German sentences. Students choose basic German words from "word bins" and submit them in sentence order to the sentence builder, which explains the process it follows in generating a completed sentence and informs the student if the word list contains incorrect word order or semantic errors. The sentence builder handles sentence patterns composed of subject or time word in first position, verb in second position, an accusative object (if required by the verb), and a prepositional phrase which completes the verb in last position. It recognizes 65 nouns, 18 verbs, 2 time words, and the 9 prepositions whose objects derive case from the verb which the prepositional phrase completes. Students may ask questions about generated sentences and about characteristics of the words stored in the program. All interaction between student and machine is in German and students are encouraged to use full sentence requests and responses to the language machine.
It is argued that there is a need in the field of computer-assisted language learning (CALL) to develop a principled framework which will enable current activity to be related to an appropriate theoretical perspective and to suggest avenues of future development. A comparison of two different types of CALL programs leads to a discussion of some of the possible elements of such a framework.
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