Morphosyntactic Issues in Second Language Acquisition

Danuta Gabryś-Barker

• Publisher: Multilingual Matters
• Year: 2008
• Print ISBN: 9781847690654
• eBook ISBN: 9781788920582
• Topic: Filología
• Subtopic: Psicolingüística

The volume consists of articles on issues relating to the morphosyntactic development of foreign language learners from different L1 backgrounds, in many cases involving languages which are typologically distant from English, such has Polish, Greek and Turkish. It highlights areas which may be expected to be especially transfer-prone at both the interlingual and intralingual levels. The articles in the first part report empirical studies on word morphology and sentence patterns and also look at the interface of lexis and grammar in the discourse and syntactic processing of foreign language learners. The second part elaborates on pedagogical issues concerning the acquisition of difficult grammatical features such as the English article system or the 's' ending in the third person singular. It also comments more generally on the way pedagogic grammar functions in the learning of the L2.

Part 1

Studies on ESL/EFL Morphosyntactic Development

Chapter 1

Focus Constructions and Language Transfer

TERENCE ODLIN

Introduction

As with several other terms in linguistics, the word focus means different things to different analysts. For example, it sometimes serves as a synonym for topic or topicalisation (e.g. Keesing, 1991), while at other times it indicates something quite distinct. Attempting to review all the different possible meanings or to develop an entire theory of focus, topic, and related notions is beyond the scope of this chapter, but a definition of focus is nevertheless essential. One given by Carston provides a useful point of departure: ‘focus is the syntactic constituent in which dominates all the information that contributes directly to relevance’ (Carston, 1996: 311).

The last word in Carston’s definition is no accident, as her approach is grounded in relevance theory (e.g. Wilson & Sperber, 1993). Later in her article Carston illustrates how a particular focus construction known as an it-cleft sentence plays a special role in contributing to relevance. She contrasts a simple sentence A ROTTWEILER bit me with an it-cleft: It was a Rottweiler that bit me. According to Carston, the special syntactic structure of the latter sentence ‘constrains the sort of context in which it can be appropriately used’ (Carston, 1996: 312). The structure leads hearers ‘to treat as a background assumption that something bit the speaker and to derive cognitive effects from the information that the entity responsible was a Rottweiler’ (Carston, 1996: 312). The implied meaning (which is certainly one of the cognitive effects) could vary depending on the context, where the sentence might serve, as Carston observes, to forestall a hearer’s interpretation that the dog that bit the speaker was a neighbour’s Alsatian. Alternatively, the cleft might serve a speaker’s aim to persuade the listener of the great danger of Rottweilers. Whatever the context, the it-cleft can function as a bridge between the information in the focused constituent and backgrounded information that might be either implicit or explicit in the communicative situation.

The metaphor of a bridge has in fact a fairly long history in discussions of the relation between grammar and meaning, as seen in a study by Haviland and Clark (1974) and in one by Prince (1978), who illustrates the bridge with, among other examples, a wh-cleft sentence found in a popular magazine: ‘Nikki Crane, 19, does not want to be a movie star. What she hopes to do is be a star on the horse-show circuit’ (Prince, 1978: 887, emphasis added).

According to Prince,

. . . one cannot know from the first sentence that N.C. wants to do something. When one hears the cleft, however, one simply constructs an inferential bridge – N.C. wants to do something – which is quite compatible with our knowledge of the world and of 19-year-olds. (Prince, 1978: 887)

Although the bridge metaphor helps to understand what focus constructions do, there exist important differences in the types of inferential bridges built with different grammatical structures. Much of Prince’s classic article attempts to sort out differences in meaning between it-clefts and wh-clefts (the latter sometimes called pseudo-clefts), and with the former type of structure, she identifies subtypes that function quite differently, as will be discussed further on. In subsequent work Prince has attempted to distinguish the differences in other focus constructions as well (e.g. Prince, 1998). Similar efforts have been pursued by others (e.g. Birner & Ward, 1998) for English, but also with comparable work on other languages (e.g. Doherty, 1999, 2001).

Carston formulated her definition of focus broadly enough to accommodate not only specialised structures such as cleft sentences but also simple sentences, which often have a prominent stress on the final constituent as in her example John invited LUCY (Carston, 1996: 310). However, the more specialised structures will be the concern of this chapter. Although learning focal stress in simple sentences might itself pose problems for second language learners, there is a much greater challenge posed by wh-clefts, it-clefts, and other cases that Carston terms ‘syntactically marked structures’. Since this chapter will concentrate on such cases, the use of focus will have here the specialised sense of Carston’s three-word phrase. The main theoretical issue that will be pursued with regard to these structures is cross-linguistic influence (also known as language transfer). The discussion will show that understanding transfer in this area requires a more detailed understanding of complex problems of related to form, meaning, and cross-linguistic correspondences. These problems shape much of the learning environment that teachers must take into account if they wish to develop effective pedagogies.

Before the questions of transfer and pedagogy are addressed, it is necessary to consider variations both within and across languages in forms and meanings. After that survey there will be a brief consideration of cognitive effects and then a discussion of of translation equivalence, a problem that both linguists and learners face. The analysis of transfer will review evidence of cross-linguistic influence on focus constructions but also indications of possible limits on such influence. Finally, some implications of the preceding analysis will be considered.

Variation in Forms

A typological survey of forms and meanings in focus constructions is now appropriate, after which there will be a complementary survey of meanings. This short survey cannot do full justice to the wide range seen cross-linguistically, but it will nevertheless prove useful for the discussion of transfer later in the chapter. In this section the look at other languages will require translations, and the principle for deciding what counts as a focus construction in another language will be if the English translation shows what Carston calls a ‘marked syntactic pattern’. This procedure has some theoretical shortcomings (especially since English might seem to be the descriptive norm). However, some of the shortcomings will examined in the later discussion of translation equivalence.

The ‘marked’ syntax that Carston alludes to seems to imply grammatical complexity me or at least a departure from the canonical Subject-Verb-Object (SVO) order of simple sentences in English. Syntactic complexity makes cleft sentences quite different: in it-clefts there is a formulaic use of it, some form of the verb be (most often is or was), then a constituent in the focus position, all of which is seen in It was a Rottweiler, and with a relative clause (that bit) completing the cleft. Although the relative does not serve the usual function of such clauses (modification of a noun), it does have formal characteristics of such clauses, including the possible use of a relative pronoun. Wh-clefts likewise have syntactically complex patterns, and in addition allow different possible word orders: for example, A Rottweiler is what bit me and What bit me was a Rottweiler.

Word order variation proves important for other focusing structures as well. Various constituents can occur before SV patterns:

The gardeners pulled up every weed. The flowers they left undisturbed. (Fronted noun phrase)

The gardeners worked extra hours. For their trouble, they were given an extra day off. (Fronted prepositional phrase)

The gardeners promised to finish before the party began, and finish they did. (Fronted verb phrase)

The party was a success, but quiet it was not. (Fronted adjective phrase)

Birner and Ward (1998: 4–5) list similar examples of ‘preposing’, to use their term, and another pattern that they term ‘postposing’: for example, They were enormous, those pipes (Birner & Ward, 1998: 6). Apart from the different word order, another difference of the last example from the preceding ones is that the postposed NP makes the same reference that the sentence-initial pronoun does. In preposing there can also be pairs of focused NPs along with pronouns following the verb, as in an example from Prince (1986: 217), My copy of Antila, I don’t know who has it. Prince and many others see in such cases a ‘topicalisation’ pattern distinct from the preposing patterns already described. Along with preposing and postposing another rearrangement is possible, one which Birner (1994) calls inversion, for example, ‘Labor savings are achieved because the crew is put to better use than cleaning belts manually: also eliminated is the expense of buying secondary chemicals’ (Birner, 1994: 233). Birner defines inversion as the placement of the subject after the verb (the expense of . . . in the example), along with other rearrangements before the verb.

Other languages, especially several in the Celtic, Germanic and Romance branches of Indo-European, show many similarities to English in the grammar of focus constructions. Thus several languages have cleft structures, as in the following example from written Swedish which can be translated as an it-cleft, the example coming from a database used by Odlin and Jarvis (2004). The writer, a native speaker of that language, was describing a scene in the Charlie Chaplin film Modern Times:

Charlie säger då att det var han som tog brödet

The literal translation is

Charlie says then that it was he who took bread-the

In the discourse context of the film, Chaplin is trying to divert suspicion about the theft from a starving woman to himself. Spanish also has structures quite similar to English clefts, as in the following example:

lo que es absoluatamente claro es que en un mundo globalizado las lenguas de relación internacional van a ser muy pocas. (Gabilondo, 2002: 6)

Literal translation: . . . what is absolutely clear is that in a world globalised, the languages of relation international go to be very few.

The lo que form is quite common Spanish and is often translatable as what. As the literal translation indicates, very few changes would be needed to produce an acceptable English version.

While many languages rely heavily on clefting, others such as Russian intensively exploit another formal resource: word order permutations. In Russian, preposing, postposing and inversion can all signal focus constructions (Thompson, 1978):

Kolya kupil mašinu.	Kolya bought the car.
Kolya mašinu kupil.	Kolya BOUGHT the car.
Kupil Kolya mašinu.	Kolya did buy the car.
Kupil mašinu Kolya.	KOLYA bought the car.
Mašinu Kolya kupil.	The car, Kolya bought it.
Mašinu kupil Kolya.	The car, it was Kolya who bought it.

Both similarities and differences between Russian and English ar...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Contributors
• Preface
• Part 1: Studies on ESL/EFL Morphosyntactic Development
• Part 2: Pedagogical Grammar in Promoting Acquisition of L2 Morphosyntax