EUROSLA Yearbook - Volume 7, Issue 1, 2007

A number of SLA studies in the past decade (e.g. Lardiere, 1995; Murphy, 2000) have attempted to answer the question of whether the Dual-Mechanism Model can be extended to L2 English processing. These studies have found that the clear regular-irregular dissociation in compounds observed for L1 users is not the case for L2 users, who tend to include regular plurals in compounds to varying degrees. The present study reports on further efforts to investigate this issue with Turkish learners of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) in Turkey. An elicited written production task, similar to that used by Murphy (2000), was administered to high and low proficiency L1 Turkish users of EFL and native English speakers. The results, it is claimed, indicate that both the L1 controls and the L2 participants dissociate between regular and irregular nouns within English compounds. However, in contrast to most previous studies, the L2 dissociation was found to be stronger at higher levels of L2 proficiency, which speaks for a developmental restructuring in L2 inflectional processing that could be explained under a weak version of the Dual-Mechanism Model.

The paper presents an investigation of the extent and nature of cross-linguistic influence on both L2 and L1 phraseological competence of advanced Polish learners of English. We review relevant research studies, which describe various types of collocational deviation from native speaker norms in the language production of advanced learners, and indicate that the collocational choices of learners may be affected by their L1, which results either in incorrect collocations, or in patterns of underuse or overuse. We administered two acceptability judgment tests to 91 Polish advanced learners of English, aged 20–22. The collocations used in the test could be classified with respect to two criteria: firstly, they were either typical or unusual collocations; secondly, they were either congruent with their L1 or L2 equivalents or not. Despite the fact that there is both empirical and theoretical support for the idea that learners may show a preference for those L2 collocations which are congruent with L1, our findings do not support this hypothesis. There is no obvious pattern of cross-linguistic influence emerging from the data. The results of this study seem to give the picture of advanced learners who function in their L2 independently of the L1.

This paper describes how simple Boolean Network models can be adapted to explore the way a vocabulary network might grow. The models described have two main parameters — a New Word parameter, which determines the rate at which new words are added to the lexicon, and an independent New Link parameter, which determines the rate at which links form between words. Delaying the application of the New Link parameter by a small amount allows a core of words to establish itself. With these very simple assumptions, a network structure with some of the features of real lexicons can grow itself. The paper describes how the parameter values interact, and how the size of the initial core affects the way the lexicon grows. The paper also speculates about how a more realistic model of lexical growth might be constructed by making the basic processes in the models slightly more complex.

Recent second language (L2) acquisition research has proposed that purely syntactic features are easier to acquire and less vulnerable than ones involving the interfaces (Sorace, 2004; Serratrice et al. 2004). The present paper addresses this issue by investigating the acquisition of the Spanish personal preposition a in English L2 learners of Spanish. The distribution of a in direct object NPs relates to the specificity/definiteness of the NP, the animacy/agentivity of the subject, and verb semantics (Torrego 1998; Zagona 2002). 33 English L2 learners of Spanish of different proficiency levels, and 14 Spanish controls participated in an acceptability judgement task. The results showed significant differences between native speakers and L2 learners of all proficiency levels, who performed at chance, and support the claim that L2 learners have difficulties acquiring structures involving the syntax/semantics interface. However, the advanced learners showed sensitivity to the least complex condition providing evidence that interface phenomena may be acquirable.

This paper reports on a study of the acquisition of reflexive and reciprocal forms in L2 Italian from the point of view of their argument structure. The results are interpreted with respect to the debate about whether transfer is monolithic (Schwartz and Sprouse 1996, Whong-Barr 2005) or modular (Montrul 1997), considering at the same time other relevant factors — innate mechanisms and L2 input. On the basis of the acceptability judgements of Serbian and English learners, compared to native speakers of Italian, it is argued that a modular approach is more realistic, as different types of transfer were identified for morphology (direct transfer of L1 marking) and argument structure (indirect influence of L1 general properties). Possible reliance on innate knowledge was detected at the argument structure level, while the input (examined through a corpus study) was found to influence both domains in different ways. It is also suggested that the three factors should be looked at jointly rather than in isolation.

Interactionists interested in second language acquisition postulate that learners’ competences are sensitive to the context in which they are put into play. Here we explore the language practices displayed, in a bilingual socio-educational milieu, by three dyads of English learners while carrying out oral communicative pair-work. In particular, we examine the role language choice plays in each task. A first analysis of our data indicates that the learners’ language choices seem to reveal the linguistic norms operating in the community of practice they belong to. A second analysis reveals that they exploited their linguistic repertoires according to their interpretation of the task and to their willingness to complete it in English. Thus, in the first two tasks students relied on code-switching as a mechanism to solve communication failures, whereas the third task generated the use of a mixed repertoire as a means to complete the task in the target language.

This paper describes a study into learners’ attributions for success and failure in learning English as a foreign language. The study investigated perceived reasons for successes and failures on actual language learning tasks in both oral communication and reading classes, looking at how learners judge their successes and failures, and their range of attributions. A questionnaire was created based on attribution theory focusing on the attributions of ability, effort, task difficulty, and luck and was administered to 233 Japanese first-year university students. A significant relationship between exam scores and the attributions of ability, task difficulty and likes was found, with attributions for failure focusing on internal causes and attributions for success on external causes. The theoretical structure of causal attributions is discussed, and the implications that can be drawn with regard to cultural bias, language teaching and the nature of the learning environment are considered.

Research has generally found age of learning (AOL) (i.e., age of initial significant L2 exposure) to predict degree of foreign accent (FA), while length of residence (LOR) has sometimes been seen as simply a corollary of AOL. The subjects in the present study were twelve late L2 learners of English with an average AOL of 22.5 and an average LOR of 10, plus a native-speaker control group. All the English-L2 subjects had Spanish and/or Catalan as L1. Short extracts were taken from their oral retelling of a film narrative and judged for FA by four native speakers of English. Language background data were elicited by questionnaire and interview. A significant difference overall emerged between native speakers and non-natives in terms of FA ratings. However, two of the learners scored within the native-speaker range. The discussion examines the possible influence of an array of factors on degree of FA, and explores what might underlie the native-like performance of the two most successful learners.

The study of second language acquisition (SLA) forms a young academic discipline, emerging from fundamental paradigm shifts in SLA’s parent disciplines, linguistics and psychology. This paper gives a brief overview of how the study of SLA came into existence, formulates the fundamental questions concerning SLA, reviews some recent developments, and identifies possibilities and challenges for SLA theory construction and empirical research in the near future. To tackle the fundamental issues of SLA successfully, it is mandatory that SLA researchers, of whom the majority currently has a linguistic background, collaborate with researchers in psychology and other disciplines.

Three of the basic issues raised by the multi-competence perspective for SLA research are: (1) who are the L2 users? Both as the possession of the individual and of the community, L1 and L2 are diverse and flexible, ranging from developing to relatively static to reducing. SLA research has to recognise the shifting flux of L1 and L2 systems.(2) what is the language that the L2 user knows? Five meanings of ‘language’ are discussed: human representation system, institutional object, set of sentences, community and individual possession, concluding that the language systems of the individual and of the community need to be treated as a whole. (3) What is the community the L2 user belongs to? L2 users belong to diverse communities of their own, both local and global. SLA research needs to explore the nature of these communities rather than assuming L2 users wish to be part of native monolingual communities.