Language choices in L2 English sentence production: Why speakers could have used modal perfect but didn’t

Abstract

This study compared production of modal perfect sentences by native English speakers and advanced non-native English speakers from Asian L1 backgrounds in discourse and discourse-free contexts. In experiment 1, native and non-native speakers reconstructed modal perfect sentences from sentential anagrams under time pressure. Both speaker groups were faster to construct modal perfect sentences than closely matched control sentences. In experiment 2, native and non-native speakers read and responded orally to stories designed to elicit modal perfect. The results revealed that non-native speakers produced significantly fewer modal perfect sentences than native speakers. Taken together, the findings suggest that although non-native speakers from Asian L1 backgrounds have the syntactic capability to produce modal perfect under constrained conditions in a sentential anagram task, they are less likely than native speakers to produce such constructions in particular discourse contexts, perhaps as a result of differences in cultural background. Implications for English language instruction are discussed.

Thai EFL University Students’ Productions of the English Past Counterfactuals and Their Influences from Interlanguage Fossilization

“…However, this task may be difficult for learners, particularly non-native speakers of English, to connect, retrieve, and apply the acquired knowledge to the actual communicative usage of the past counterfactuality. One aspect in using counterfactuals is for criticism (Conroy & Cupples, 2013). Speakers of English in collectivism cultures tend to have less propensity to criticize others than their individualist counterparts (Conroy & Cupples, 2013; Hofstede et al, 2017).…”

“…One aspect in using counterfactuals is for criticism (Conroy & Cupples, 2013). Speakers of English in collectivism cultures tend to have less propensity to criticize others than their individualist counterparts (Conroy & Cupples, 2013; Hofstede et al, 2017). The use of focused communication tasks, such as impromptu speaking or storytelling, may be alternatively considered for future research as they may be more effective in capturing learners’ productive process of the English past counterfactuals.…”

“…Thai conditional structures. L2 learners are more likely to rely on semantic and lexical information to comprehend and produce language, which consequently help them perform better in discourse-based tasks (Clahsen & Felser 2006;Conroy & Cupples, 2013;VanPatten, 1996VanPatten, , 2006. Contradictory to this argument, it was found that non-native learners from Asian L1, including Thai and Chinese, tend to relatively less use of and confront difficulties in employing modal perfect (MP) and counterfactual sentences, perhaps due to cultural (Conroy & Cupples, 2013) and grammatical differences (Katip & Gampper, 2016).…”

“…This complexity encompasses several linguistic aspects namely forms, meanings, and subject-verb and tense-relational agreement (Nekoueizadeh & Bahrani, 2013). Therefore, speakers of other languages whose verbal inflection regarding temporal aspects is uncommon in other linguistic systems such as Thai and other Asian languages are likely to encounter difficulties in precisely expressing their conditional statements in English (Conroy & Cupples, 2013; Katip & Gampper, 2016).…”

Language and counterfactual reasoning in Chinese, English and ChineseL1-EnglishL2 reasoners

“…Liu (2018) found that English L2 proficiency may correlate with speed of processing of counterfactual sentences in Chinese L1 . There is also indirect evidence that counterfactuality may be difficult to Chinese native speakers, as they have well-documented difficulty in learning and using English L2 counterfactuals (Chou, 2000; Conroy & Linda, 2013). In spite of the lack of interest among researchers, Bloom’s work is still cited (and refuted) in discussions of linguistic relativity research, whether in dedicated monographs (Deutscher, 2010; Everett, 2013) or in cognitive psychology textbooks (Friedenberg & Silverman, 2011; Galotti, 2017).…”