English Question Formation in Hindi Bilinguals Amanda ... · 1 Introduction Bilingualism is more...

English Question Formation in Hindi Bilinguals

Amanda Nagler

Northeastern University

Abstract

Question formation happens differently for both types of questions in different languages.

Yes/no questions in English are formed by inverting the subject and the auxiliary verb in a

process called subject aux inversion. Hindi yes/no question formation is done with a question

word particle, kyaa, which is added to the beginning or end of a sentence that transforms the

sentence into a question. It was expected that for the bilingual speakers whose L1 is Hindi that

Hindi grammar techniques and instead of inverting the auxiliary and the subject NP, the bilingual

will attempt to add the question particle in English the way they would do in Hindi. Participants

were shown a picture of a scene from a cartoon and then prompted to ask a yes/no or a content

question in English by posing this question to the characters in the scene. Participants were also

asked to fill out a language background self-report. Participants produced optional failure of SAI

in 19% of trials however not in the expected way. Several different methods and strategies were

used to compensate for failure of SAI with the most common of these strategies being a “Do you

think…” type question. This allowed participants a plug it in type of formula for question

formation. This effect would not be as present in monolinguals of English or simultaneous

bilinguals after acquisition.

Keywords: bilingual, question formation, SAI failure, sequential bilingual, yes/no questions

1 Introduction

Bilingualism is more than just the ability to speak more than one language, it is a group of people

that have the ability to use two linguistic codes interchangeably (Hamers & Blanc, 2000, p. 6).

Many different bilingual communities exist, each with different language profiles and different

balances of those languages. Views of what bilingualism is have changed over time. Hamers and

Blanc (2000, p. 8) note that initially, Bloomfield (1935) proposed a concept of bilingualism that

only referred to a perfect bilingual or rather the idea of someone that has balanced and native like

command of both of their languages. However as time went on and the concepts of bilingualism

and populations of bilinguals became better understood, the idea of a bilingual continuum,

suggested by Paradis (1986), with bilinguals at different and continually changing levels in both

L1 and L2 depending on a number of factors (age of acquisition, purposes of the languages,

environment, etc.) emerged (Hamers & Blanc, 2000, p. 8). Due to the complicated nature of

bilingualism, linguists have historically primarily focused up to this point on monolinguals

despite the fact that bilinguals represent more than half of the world’s population. Thus, we look

at bilingualism as an ever changing balance between the two languages that a bilingual person

has access to, with motivations, and needs projecting on to the actual use of the languages.

Though each individual bilingual has a unique background and mix of their languages, this study

focused on sequential bilinguals. That is, bilinguals that have acquired an L1 (for the purposes of

our study, that L1 will be Hindi) just after birth and then acquired an L2 (English) later in life.

This means that there is already a well-established grammatical system in the mind of the

bilingual at the time of L2 acquisition and that the English grammatical system is being

incorporated in to the grammatical understanding of that individual.

The past few decades have involved many studies of bilingualism and how it works.

Linguists have been looking at whether there is a division in the mind of a bilingual between

their two languages (L1 and L2) or whether the languages are stored in the same grammatical

store for years. The separate underlying proficiency model is the concept that there are

completely separate stores in memory for each and every language that a bilingual/multilingual

can speak. These completely separate stores would then process each language independently of

each other, leaving no parallel activations, no priming effects and little mixing between

languages. The common underlying proficiency model discussed in Hamers and Blanc (2000, p.

84) states that the opposite is true. According to this model, all forms, syntax, morphology and so

on are stored in one space in memory for all languages and would thus allow for interlanguage

influence.

The current study looked at bilingualism by comparing the processes that a bilingual

speaker of Hindi and English is going through in terms of English question formation to the

processes that a native English speaker goes through as a child. The purpose was to test if second

language acquisition mirrors first language acquisition despite age of acquisition and to

understand better the processes that go in to question formation across languages. Further, this

study attempts to see what effect age of acquisition will have on later language usage for

sequential bilinguals. Because of the focus on sequential bilinguals, the expected result was that

the bilingual would revert to using structures that they already had stored in their fully formed L1

grammar (Hindi) instead of fully developing the native English question formation pattern. There

should be evidence of syntactic parallel activation, providing further evidence for CUP. Evidence

should point to the sheer importance of age of acquisition in bilinguals.

2 Theoretical Background

2.1 Grammatical Rules

All languages have grammatical rules regarding sentence structure, word order and even

question formation. Question formation in Hindi and English is different for both content and

yes/no of questions. According to Carnie (2007, p. 208), yes/no questions in English are formed

by inverting the subject and the auxiliary verb in a process called subject aux inversion. It is

important to note that the auxiliary verb must be taken from the main clause of the sentence and

not selected at random or by which is left most in terms of syntactic structure. (Crain &

Nakayama, 1987, p. 526) This process is usually accompanied by an intonation rise as noted by

Agnihotri (2007, p. 24) as can be seen in the following example:

(1) The book is blue.

The statement above in (1) is a fairly simple declarative statement that would easily be

stated by both native English speakers as children and bilingual speakers as adults. The subject

of the sentence is the noun phrase (NP) the book and the auxiliary is the verb is. The subject

auxiliary inversion (SAI) then occurs, causing the auxiliary verb to move up in the syntactic

structure to fill a complimentizer position in the structure. This leads to the proper question form

seen in the example below:

(2) Is the book blue?

This inversion however, does not occur in all languages and particularly does not occur in

Hindi when forming yes/no questions. Instead there is a question word particle, kyaa, that is

added to the beginning or end of a sentence that transforms the sentence into a question

(Agnihotri, 2007, p. 24). Kyaa literally translated means “what.” However, unlike in English,

their question word particle can be used for both yes/no questions and content questions. Kyaa at

the beginning or end of the sentence is filling a space in the syntactic structure with a +Question

marker that creates a yes/no question.

(3) kyaa aap mere saath cal rahe hãi

what you me with come PROG be

Are you coming with me?

(4) vo abhii bazaar ga-yaa

he just market go- PST.PERF.

He just left for the market.

(5) Kyaa vo abhii bazaar ga-yaa

what he just market go-PST.PERF.

Did he just leave for the market?

As can be clearly seen between (4) and (5), the structure of the sentence is unchanged by

the question making process except for the addition of the question particle either at the

beginning or the end of the sentence. In English, if a sentence that is to be made a question lacks

an auxiliary with which to complete the SAI, English handles it by utilizing do-support. Do-

support is the process of inserting a dummy (meaningless) auxiliary in yes/no questions. (Carnie,

2007) This process does not happen in Hindi and instead this would be accomplished by the use

of intonation to mark a question.

(6) You read the book.

(7) Did you read the book?

As can be seen from the example of do-support above, line (6) becomes a question only

with the assistance of do-support. Question formation in Hindi is structurally very different than

it is in English. There is a complete lack of movement, rather, there is just an additional

morpheme in the sentence that signals a much more structural change for the listener. There is

one more type of question formation that is important to understand for the study that was

conducted and that is the notion of tag questions. Tag questions are not properly formed yes/no

questions, they are declarative statements with interrogative fragments attached at the end.

(8) You read the book, right?

This formation has the tag question formation with the tag right attaching itself on to the

end of the sentence. This type of question is the expected step between a Hindi question

formation and an English yes/no formation.

It should be noted that the failure or absence of SAI is a common feature of Indian

English, however it is also a common feature of Standard American English. Intonation based

questions are used equal amounts but in different manners by the two dialects. Indian dialect

intonation based questions are more bare and devoid of markers. Balasubramanian also suggests

that tag questions such as isn’t it are quite popular in Indian English. (Balasubramanian, 2009, p.

36)

2.2 Previous Studies

One of the more pivotal studies to look at when regarding yes/no questions, is Bellugi (1971).

This study supports the idea of a piecemeal acquisition of subject auxiliary inversion (SAI) that

suggests that question acquisition does not happen all at once but rather in stages. (Guasti, 2002)

SAI acquisition happens in a specific order for children starting with yes/no questions and then

move on to the next stage, acquiring SAI for positive questions, and then for negatives.

However, as previously stated, there is always conflict among clinical data and drawn

conclusions with bilingual studies and this piecemeal acquisition for SAI is contested.

Particularly it is contested by Stromswold (1990) which instead suggests that there is merely an

optional failure to perform SAI in early childhood for native English speakers. (Guasti, 2002)

However it is important to realize that because the native English speakers who are trying to

acquire SAI have no working structures in their mind, they will then be forced to acquire the SAI

structure much faster than a bilingual might due to the existence of a working model in the mind

of a bilingual. Thus, the late adult bilingual would have to first start to acquire SAI for yes/no

questions and it is a question of whether these Hindi-English bilinguals who have an established

grammar that does not perform SAI will avoid it altogether and stay in a state of this optional

failure.

Many studies have posed questions about interlanguage influence in bilinguals

throughout the years. This topic is incredibly relevant to the proposed study. Pozzan and Quirk

(n.d.) conducted a study on L1 influence on L2 question formation in bilinguals working with

both Spanish-English and Chinese-English bilinguals with English native speakers as a control.

Their method required the use of a dummy shy student to whom the participants would ask either

yes/no or content questions. The questions were prompted by phrases such as “Maybe Gloria

called Jim. Ask Miss Brainy,” which would cause the participants to respond with a question for

the character. This elicit production experiment resulted in the conclusion that there are structural

effects from L1 to L2.

A study conducted by Wang and Wen (2002) focused on testing the levels of interference

of L1 in L2 writing at the different stages of the writing process. By having 16 Chinese-English

female bilinguals do a think-aloud writing task, Wang and Wen were able to measure the level of

L1 usage at each of the five stages they created to describe the writing process. Those stages

were task examining, idea generating, idea organizing, text generating, and process controlling.

They found that L1 interference occurred most in idea generating, idea organizing and process

controlling. Essentially, when interacting with the processes that required organizing and

controlling the text, the speaker reverted to their L1. One of the clear findings of this experiment

was that L2 usage is most likely to occur at the text generating stage. The text generating stage is

where a writer must create written content in L2, whether that content is generated from

translating a text that they generated in Chinese first, which happens with less fluent bilinguals,

or whether that text is directly generated in English (the L2), which happens in the more L2

fluent bilinguals. Wang and Wen (2002) suggested several trends from their results, the first of

which is that the less fluent student groups were more likely to revert to L1 than their more fluent

counterparts. This study shows not only clear and definite evidence of the interference of L1 in

the writing process, but it shows just how frequently it occurs at the different levels of fluency.

This can be applied at a larger level to language production in general beyond just the writing

process, even more specifically to question formation.

Hartsuiker, Pickering and Veltkamp’s (2004) study looks at whether syntax for two

languages is stored in the same few representations, for example, the passive sentence

construction would be stored for both English and Spanish, or if the accounts were separate,

there would be a representation of an English passive sentence and a representation of a Spanish

passive sentence. Hartsuiker et al.’s experiment involved a Spanish speaking confederate

syntactically priming a naïve participant who is speaking English. The intended effect was that

the naïve participant would be primed and thus use the prime/target form. For example, if the

confederate uses a passive sentence the hope is that the naïve participant would use a passive

sentence. Hartsuiker et al. found that this interlanguage priming effect did occur in passives.

Thus the hypothesis of the study was suggested by their results for passive sentences. This points

towards evidence of clear interlanguage influence and to the effects of interlanguage priming. All

results of this study pointed to a shared syntax account (i.e. a common underlying proficiency)

simply because if interlanguage priming can be accomplished then there is implied parallel

activation which would insist upon a shared model for the two languages.

Another study, conducted by Marian and Spivey (2003), that involved tracking eye

movements of Russian-English bilinguals to track interlanguage interference. This was

accomplished by measuring how frequently the participant looked to objects that had

phonologically similar names to the target object in the competition language, the same language

or both at the same time (providing three unique types of competition for participants). For

example, one of the pairs that Marian and Spivey discussed, was “glove-glass-glaz

(tambourine).” The study looked at the frequency of eye movements to objects like the

tambourine when glass was said and so on for the other sets of stimuli they had. Results for this

experiment provided further evidence for parallel activation as participants had significant

competition interference both within and between languages. These results support the concept

of shared language stores for lexicon.

Finally, beyond just the concepts of interference it is important, for the purposes of the

current study, to understand the concept of critical mass. Critical mass is defined as a threshold

point between storing learned combinations, producing those combinations by rote and

understanding and being able to utilize a linguistic feature properly as a grammatical and

recursive element of language. This point is different for different linguistic phenomenon based

on the difficulty and frequency of use of this phenomenon as will be seen in the studies

discussed. This critical mass hypothesis is particularly valuable when analyzing bilingual

language acquisition as compared to monolingual language acquisition. (Gathercole &Thomas,

2005)

One study that was conducted on monolingual children focused on overgeneralization,

overregulation and production of irregulars in toddlers (Marchman & Bates, 1994). The

researchers argue that these phenomena imply that critical mass has been reached is an incredibly

strong argument. The overgeneralized lexical item could not have been learned, as no

grammatically speaking adult would have given the word as input; and thus it cannot be a

learned combination. The study was conducted on toddlers by having parents report level of

input and conducting the MacArthur Communicative Development Inventory: Toddler Form on

the toddlers involved in the study. The results showed that children had reached critical mass for

the grammatical structures they were testing as they were focusing primarily on the over-

regularization of errors. They proposed that the toddlers who were capable of this over-

regularization must have reached critical mass. These results supported critical mass as a theory

and provide the foundation for many studies thereafter.

A study conducted by Gathercole and Thomas (2005) looked at critical mass as a model

of acquisition for Welsh speaking children in the north of Wales. The study was designed around

the more complex phenomenon of gender marking mutations in Welsh. Participants were

children who were split into groups based on both amount of exposure to Welsh in both home

and school environments and by age. The task involved forming sentences that forced different

kinds of specific gender mutations and markings in Welsh to see which children had acquired the

grammar and which had yet to do so. Groups that received the most Welsh input (i.e. the children

speaking only Welsh at both home and in school) were the first to acquire the grammatical effect

and children with the least Welsh input were the last. Gathercole and Thomas attributed this to

critical mass, suggesting that it is because these primarily Welsh speaking children logically

reached the critical mass of input first, and consequently that they were the first group able to

generalize the effect. In fact, this study showed that children in Welsh only schools were able to

generalize grammatical gender significantly earlier than children in Welsh English and English

only homes. They found that though school environment was important it was home

environment that decided how early children could reach critical mass. This makes it clear that

level of input in acquiring grammatical features is important, and that increased level of input

allows for an earlier acquisition overall as home environment is where young children would be

receiving most of their input. This study attributes the importance of amount of input to the

notion of critical mass and offers founding support for the theory of critical mass, suggesting that

once this mass is reached the feature can be generalized as was seen in both the adults and some

of the older children.

Paradis (2007) conducted a similar study on French English bilinguals and monolinguals.

This study focused on past tense marking and regular and irregular verbs in both languages,

similar to the Marchman and Bates study (1994) previously mentioned. The children were

broken in to groups based on home languages and level of bilinguality. Then they were tested

with the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (PPVT) in either English or French. The children

were also given past tense elicitation tasks in both languages or in just French in the case of the

monolinguals. The responses were coded to judge level of vocabulary and general fluency of the

children and those results were then compared with the level of input suggested by the groups

they had been broken in to for the purposes of this study. The results suggested that for dominant

languages there is no lagging for bilingual children as opposed to monolingual children. Thus,

for children who received more input in French than in English, they were considered to be at a

monolingual skill level for French, but would be found to be delayed in English. This again

suggests that amount of input is critical to acquisition thus supporting critical mass.

3 The Current Study

This study sought to produce situations in which the optional failure to perform SAI suggested

by Stromswold (1990) would occur. The analysis would show how a native language that does

not use SAI affected (potentially increasing) this optional failure and prolong the period of time

in which this failure would occur because of the fully formed grammar that does not require this

inversion. The purpose of this study was to see if a late bilingual speaker of English is going

through the same processes that a native language speaker in terms of acquiring question

formation skills. It was expected that for the bilingual speakers whose L1 is Hindi that Hindi

grammar techniques will be the basis by which they form questions. And that instead of inverting

the auxiliary and the subject NP, the expected result was that the bilingual will add the question

particle in English the way they would try to do in Hindi. However, since in English an

ungrammatical sentence would be formed if the question particle were to be added in the

beginning, the speaker will never choose to form that sentence. This ungrammatical tag

formation can be seen in the example below:

(9) *Right, you ate?

Then the only way that is grammatically acceptable in English for the speaker to

accomplish this is to attach the question particle to the end of the sentence in the form of the tag

questions that were discussed earlier.

(10) You ate, right?

This form is more of a tag question than a typical yes/no question in English. For

example, we expect that a developed native speaker will use the form:

(11) Did you eat?

This occurs because there is a grammatical structure that is solidified in the mind of the

bilinguals and cognitively it is far simpler for the speakers to continue to use those forms. Also,

theories of parallel activation, such as those suggested in Hartsuiker, Pickering and Veltkamp’s

(2004) study, suggest that a shared syntax account would lend towards the neural pathways for

question production activating both languages, allowing for the production of syntactic structures

from L1 while L2 is being produced. Thus our hypothesis is that the structures that already exist

in the mind of the bilingual will delay acquisition of SAI and promote this optional failure of

SAI for the bilingual speakers.

3.1 Methodology

Crain and Nakayama (1987) conducted a study that focuses on child’s question formation and to

see if children were using structure dependent or independent clauses. Their study was conducted

by having children pose questions to a doll, prompting them by providing them with sentences

that they could convert to questions to ask the doll. By asking yes/no questions the children

showed that their question formation pattern was in fact structure dependent. The current study is

incredibly similar to the one Crain and Nakayama conducted. The procedure was roughly the

same in practice.

In total there were 11 sequential Hindi-English bilinguals that participated in this study.

Each participant had to have acquired Hindi just after birth and English after the age of three thus

qualifying as sequential bilinguals. Age and gender were not considered when choosing

participants so long as participants were over the age of 18. There should be no bearing of gender

on this particular phenomenon. The choice of using adult participants was made because for the

specific language profile required for this study, that of Hindi first, English later, most children

who would fit that profile are still living in India until at least college years if not later.

Participants were all originally from India with Indian nationality, however the region of India

that the participants originated from and the other languages or home languages that they each

had were all unique.

Table 1 Participants and time spent in the U.S.

Participant Years living in U.S.

Participant 1 2

Participant 2 4 months

Participant 3 4

Participant 4 5

Participant 5 3



Participant 8 1

Participant 9 8

Participant 10 2

Participant 11 1

Average 2.5

Participants were individually shown pictures of a scenes from Tom and Jerry cartoons.

In total there were five different scenes, each with a set of six prompted questions for a total of

30 trials. Each group of prompts for the scenes had four yes/no type questions and two content

questions. After each picture was shown, participants were asked to in brief describe the photo

they were seeing. This was merely a test to insure basic understanding of the task and to get

participants used to reading the prompts. Next the participants were prompted to ask a yes/no or

a content question in English by posing this question to the characters in the scene. This method

is an emulation of both Crain and Nakayama (1987) and Pozzan and Quirk (n.d.) . The

generation of this question is intentionally spontaneous and will show the natural formation

tendencies of the speakers. After the four yes/no generations, there were always two content

questions for each of the photos shown for a total of six question generations per image.

Participants were shown five different images in total, each participant was shown the same five

photos to allow for direct comparison within the smaller data set. This allowed for a total of 30

data points for comparison across the 11 participants involved in the study. The results were

audio recorded and then transcribed. However, unlike Crain and Nakayama (1987), the purpose

of this study will be to look more at the similarities and differences that appear between the

question formation in the group of late bilinguals that will be our participants and a native

English speaker (the experimenter)’s judgements. This comparison with well attested data allows

us to draw conclusions about the processes of second language acquisition and whether it is an

error in production or rather, merely an optional failure for SAI to occur in the speech of a

bilingual.

For the purposes of this study, there was a focus on yes/no questions primarily as yes/no

question formation was predicted to be where most of the significant data would be seen. Data

was also collected regarding Wh- formation to see if there is significant difference in question

formation there as well. Levels of fluency and language background were assessed by self-report

for the participants. The self-report was rated on a 7 point scale with 1 being that the speaker is

only familiar with a few words and 7 being that the speaker rates themselves as natively fluent in

a language. This scale was used to rate both understanding and speaking separately. Language

use was also tracked and the participant was asked to self-report their use of the languages they

are reporting in comparison to one another. If the participant spoke three languages then the

languages would be ranked first, second and third with the first being the language used most in

a particular setting and third being the language used least. If the language was not used in a

particular setting then it did not receive a ranking. The settings were home, school/work and

social (described as time with family and/or friends outside of the home.) This data was recorded

and taken in to account when looking at the spontaneously generated responses. Particularly, age

of acquisition of each participant as well as length of time outside of India. Most participants

were graduate students who had moved to Boston for school. There were only two outliers, both

working professionals living just outside Boston having moved with their families. Participants

were asked to submit a language background and language use survey to give us a better

understanding of some factors besides age of acquisition alone which may influence the

strategies used to produce yes/no questions.

4 Results

On average, the participants had a native English type question formations for 24.3 of the 30

possible responses in the trials. The rest of the questions, on average between 6-7 questions per

participant, utilized different strategies to avoid the more native English choices.

Table 2 Native and non-native responses

Participant Native formations/possible

responses

Non-native formations/possible

responses

Participant 1 22/30 8/30











Average 24.3/30 5.7/30

The higher rates of non-native type forms were found in participants who came to the U.S. either

at time close to the point of testing or at a later age. The simple usage of tag questions as a

strategy for avoiding SAI was far less common than was initially expected. In fact, this strategy

was hardly used at all. Across participants, only one incidence which can be seen below in (1).

Participant 7 was one of the participants with the most deviations from native English in his

speech, with 19/30 questions being formed in a manner more consistent with a native English

speaker. This participant was 23 years old and had only just moved to the U.S. three months

before to begin graduate school. This participant rated himself as less fluent in English (4/7) than

did most of the other participants. Though this type of strategy was hypothesized to be the most

common, it only occurred once even in the other ten non-native type constructions in participant

7’s responses.

Table 3 Tag question strategy

Prompt Native Speaker Participant 7

Ask Jerry if his sword is sharp. Jerry, is your sword

sharp?

jerry your sword is

sharp or not

When the questions were not asked in this way, different strategies were used to avoid the

use of SAI. One of the most common methods for avoiding this SAI was to use “do you think” as

the question marker in the sentence. This phrase was used in 12.7% percent of the overall trials

and was the most common strategy outside of proper SAI to be used by participants. This type of

phrase can be seen in Table 4, an excerpt from Participant 10. Participant 10 had recently

matriculated from graduate school in Boston and had spent several years in an American and

primarily English climate.

Table 4 “Do you think” strategy


Ask Tom if he thinks Jerry is in

the mousehole.

Tom, is jerry in the

mousehole?

hey do you really think

jerry is in that

mousehole

Other strategies included a clause including the subject only followed by a typical SAI

clause with a pronoun rather than the actual subject as can be seen in Table 5 below. This type of

strategy was far less frequently, only occurring in natural speech in three participants. Participant

1 is a undergraduate student studying in Boston. In her first year, she also had spent less time in

the U.S. and thus had a slightly above average amount of optional failure of SAI at 22/30 trails

beings the standard SAI usage.

Table 5 “it” substitution strategy


Ask Jerry if the umbrella he is

holding is yellow.

Is the umbrella you are

holding yellow?

jerry the umbrella

you’re holding-is that

yellow

Frequently, the presence of incorrect morphology tainted the questions that were formed

to make them sound incorrect. Despite this, the syntactic structure of those sentences, where the

inflectional morphology fixed to be grammatical, was correct. These types of mistakes were

typically made in conjunction with more deviations from the typical SAI structure as well. Thus,

this type of response was primarily found in participants who self-reported a lower familiarity

and usage of their L2, English. An example of this can be seen in participant 6’s question

generation. These errors can be seen only in a handful of participant’s natural speech. Participant

6 and 7 traveled from India together.

Table 6

Ungrammatical error


Ask Tom if he bought the

cheese for Jerry.

Tom, did you buy this

cheese for Jerry?

Tom do you bought

this cheese for Jerry

This question would, aside from the incorrect tense on the verbs in the sentence, is

syntactically similar to a native speaker’s syntactic form. Thus, these statements were not

counted in the final tally of incorrect statements, merely these forms are something to note for

future study. Beyond that, certain strategies appeared to be unique to specific participants which

could be a byproduct of many factors. These strategies will be discussed individually in the

discussion.

5 Discussion

Though the expected strategy of avoiding SAI altogether and using a tag question like a question

particle at the beginning or end of the sentence was not used as frequently as was expected, other

strategies were used to avoid typical native English question formation. As Stromswold (1990)

suggested, there was an optional failure of SAI to occur in some of the data collected from the 11

total participants measured. Though it did not manifest as frequently in the data as was

anticipated, the optional failure was present and is attributable to a reliance on native Hindi

grammars, acquired at birth.

For the purposes of this study, the participants had varied backgrounds which lead to

varied results. As stated earlier, the participants were all from different areas of India and had

different combinations of languages outside of Hindi and English. Thus, between the different

participants there were many differences in strategies as well as amounts of errors. The higher

rates of non-native type forms were found in participants who came to the U.S. either at time

close to the point of testing or at a later age. This suggests either that they were surrounded by

primarily Hindi or purely Indian dialects of English for a larger percentage of their lives.

Many participants that had less errors also had been attending a primarily English

medium high school. None of my participants had formal education in only one language or the

other, all had at least 12 years of both, if not more. The participants who attended these primarily

English based schools often had a stronger sense of prescriptive grammar for Standard American

English. One participant even went on to say that she was taught that asking tag questions was an

incorrect form. That being said, every participant had some variation in how the questions were

asked and all of the yes/no questions in particular were evaluated in comparison with the basic

SAI structure and judged by their deviation or resistance to that structure.

Though only one participant used the tag question strategy, many of the participants

during the debriefing portion of the experiment explained that not only did they notice the

phenomenon in natural speech of people with similar language backgrounds, but that their

parents often used such a construction. Thus, the phenomenon exists according to personal

testimony and perhaps it is only a more specific data set that would utilize this strategy more

than others. Further experiments would need to be run to confirm this phenomenon in an older

data set in order to see if the personal testimony of these participants has evidential support.

Most of the participants in this experiment were graduate students currently studying in the U.S.

though a few participants were just outside that range. All participants were under the age of 40.

One of the more interesting phenomena that occurred in the data was the frequency of the

“do you think” type phrase to act as a [+question] particle that would convert an otherwise

declarative sentence to a yes/no question. This question form utilizes a combination of creating

an embedded clause at the same time as using do-support to create a yes/no question. Though do-

support is structurally a different method than the addition of a question particle like kyaa, it is

possible that native Hindi speakers when coming in to contact with a new grammar interpreted

the do-support or the creation of a word from a null auxiliary filling the question particle space in

their syntactic structure while simultaneously avoiding movement of any kind, let alone

inversion. Despite the addition of the embedded clause it is entirely possible that this type of

phrase is a far more natural solution to avoiding SAI and relying on a native grammar that uses

question particles than expected. This type of strategy for question forming was often used with

either a yes/no question or a content question and seemed to be a strategy used for overall

question formation rather than for a specific type of question. This suggested misinterpretation of

do-support would require further study to prove the connection between the native Hindi

grammar and the use of do-support and a “do you think” type phrase to avoid SAI.

Another strategy that was frequently used across participants to avoid a typical yes/no

question was to name the subject and then ask a SAI yes/no question using the pronoun ‘it’ or

‘that’ as the subject of the SAI question. This can be seen in an example pulled from participant

1 (4.4) earlier. This type of question may be easier when fully acquiring SAI because only

certain exemplar setences have to be recalled such as ‘Is that…’ or ‘Is it…’

Participant 8 had a unique strategy of giving two options and then asking a content

question to avoid the formation of a yes/no question in the typical manner. An example of this

can be seen in Table 7. This unique strategy was not exhibited by other participants however, it

is still a grammatically acceptable way to avoid SAI in practice. Participant 8 was an older

participant, age 37, who had moved to America for work. His age at the time of moving may

have negated the effects of having lived in the U.S. longer, though this would require further

study.

Table 7 Content question strategy


Ask Tom if he is bored. Tom, are you bored? how’s the book is it

boring is it interesting-

what do you think tom

Finally, some questions where the prompt suggested an odd or atypical word order led

some of the participants to produce a word order that is atypical for both native Hindi and native

English speakers. The example given below in Table 8 was a prompt that many participants

struggled with producing correctly.

Table 8 Atypical word order


Ask Tom what color the

shutters are.

What color are the

shutters?

What color the shutter

is tom

This particular type of production caused an issue for several of the speakers, causing

them to put the auxiliary at the end of the sentence in what seems to be a tag question look a-like.

This may be an attempt to perform a grammatical failure of SAI.

The background given on critical mass suggests that the more exposure that bilinguals

have to a particular phenomenon earlier in life, the quicker that person will reach the critical

mass and adopt a linguistic phenomenon in to their syntactic repertoire. This notion suggests that

any participant with more background in English, either in a school setting, family or a media

type setting, would be less likely to require alternative and avoidant strategies for question

formation. This idea suggests that the participants that used more than average avoidant

strategies would have less background and perhaps not have reached critical mass for the form

they are attempting to produce. Those participants with less than average avoidant strategies

would have the opposite, either having reached critical mass or very nearly so. The results

suggested by Paradis (2007) would also suggest that for those that rated English as their

dominant language over Hindi and any other home language would perform better in the illicit

production tasks. This was supported by the data obtained in the self-report surveys received.

In short, the creative strategies used by the bilingual speakers in the study allowed them

to revert to the grammar of their L1, Hindi, as much English allows. These strategies were more

frequently implemented by speakers with a less exposure or, perhaps, an incomplete critical mass

of this L2, however each participant used at least one. Age of acquisition of the two languages

and subsequent experience/critical mass input of those languages clearly affects and enables the

participant’s reliability in producing native like structures. There is a lot of room for further

study of all the data, with norming data to be collected from children who are native speakers of

English as well as data to be collected from non-sequential bilinguals to compare the two data

sets and see if the reliance on the Hindi grammar is due to age of acquisition or if there is some

other factors involved.

6 Conclusion

This study endeavored to look at the effect that a native grammar could have on a

grammar that was formed later in the mind of a bilingual. The formation of yes/no questions in

English differs in structure from yes/no questions in Hindi and thus the structural choices that

Hindi-English bilinguals make while forming questions show how pronounced the effect that a

native grammar may have. What was discovered was that there seems to be a strong influence of

this native grammar, particularly with people who have less experience with the second language

(bilinguals who, perhaps, have not reached critical mass yet). For example, participants who

found themselves having attended more amounts of time of English schooling, were more likely

to implement SAI correctly rather than optionally fail to produce the inversion. It is believed

that, like native English speaking children who are acquiring the SAI feature of language, Hindi-

English bilinguals utilize this optional failure of SAI in order to remain with the grammar that is

already fully formed. However, since these bilingual speakers are adults with other language

skills, there are more varied strategies utilized by these speakers. Further study needs to be

conducted on participants who perhaps have had less experience in English medium schools or

English primary environments.

Appendix A-Complete transcripts of all 11 participants responding to the prompts.

Participant 1 22/30

Group 1: Reading Describe So I can see that Tom and Jerry are reading a book

together and tom has a dreamy expression while Jerry

has a similar expression

Yes/no Ask if the book is blue. hey Jerry is the book blue

Ask Jerry if he likes the book.

Do you like the book?

Ask Tom if he is bored. Tom are you bored

Ask Jerry if Tom likes the book.

Jerry do you think Tom likes the book

Content Ask Jerry what the book is about.

Jerry what is the book about

Ask Tom why they are reading.

Why are you guys reading this

Group 2: Dynamite

Describe Okay so um classic tom and jerry prank where tom is lighting a- I don't know what you call it like a pipe bomb-whatever in Jerry's home while blissfully unaware of the fact that Jerry is doing the same thing behind him

Yes/no Ask Jerry if the match is hot.

Hey jerry is the match hot

Ask Tom if he thinks that Jerry is in the mousehole.

Tom do you really think Jerry is in there-in his home

Ask Tom if his plan is going to end well.

Tom again do you think this is going to end well

Ask Jerry if the dynamite is red.

Jerry is the dynamite red

Content Ask Jerry which stick of dynamite is bigger.

Jerry which stick of the dynamite do you think is bigger

Ask Tom where Jerry is right now.

Tom do you know where jerry is right now

Group 3: food Describe Okay so this one appears to be tom setting a trap by placing food trying to lure jerry out while again unaware of the fact that he is actually on his head

Yes/no Ask Tom if there is a hamburger on the floor.

is there a hamburger on the floor tom

Ask Jerry if the walls are green.

jerry are the walls green

Ask Tom if he bought the cheese for Jerry.

tom did you buy the cheese for jerry

Ask Jerry if he likes the cheese.

jerry do you like cheese

Content Ask Jerry what he is holding.

also jerry what are you holding

Ask Tom what he will do when he sees Jerry.

tom what do you plan on doing when you see jerry

Group 4: Doll house

Describe aw this is sweet going back to a different time where- well jerry appears to be the lady of the house while tom appears to be the big baby- which makes sense

Yes/no Ask Jerry if his umbrella is yellow.

jerry the umbrella you’re holding-is that yellow

Ask Tom if his bow is too tight.

tom do you think the bow around your neck is a little too tight

Ask Tom how many flowers there are in the windowsill.

also tom how many flowers do you think there are in the window sill

Ask Jerry if the house is big.

jerry is the house too big

Content Ask Jerry where he is going.

also jerry where are you going

Ask Tom what color the shutters are.

tom what color are the shutters

Group 5: Sword fight

Describe okay so they appear to be fighting- sword fighting um I love toms purple outfit-it’s cute jerry looks like robin hood which is even more adorable

Yes/no Ask Tom if Jerry is braver than him.

tom do you think jerry is braver than you

Ask Tom if his hat is purple.

also is your hat purple

Ask Jerry if his sword is sharp.

jerry you have a much smaller sword is it at least sharp

Ask Jerry if he is going to win the fight.

jerry do you think you are going to win

Content Ask Jerry how he is going to win.

also how are you going to win

Ask Tom where he got his sword.

tom where did you get a sword

Participant 2 25/30

Group 1: Reading Describe Tom and jerry are reading a book together

Yes/no Ask if the book is blue. is the blue-is the book blue jerry


do you like the book jerry

Ask Tom if he is bored. are you bored tom


tom do you like the book


what is the book about jerry


why are you reading tom

Group 2: Dynamite

Describe tom is trying to ignite the bomb before uh-jerry and jerry’s doing that near his butt


jerry is the match hot


tom is jerry in the mousehole


do you think the plan is going to end well tom


jerry is the dynamite red


do you know which stick of dynamite is bigger jerry


tom do you know where jerry is right now

Group 3: food Describe Jerry is on top of toms head and tom is-I think scheming to hurt jerry


is there a hamburger on the floor tom


are the walls green jerry


uh tom did you buy that cheese for jerry


do you like cheese jerry


what are you holding jerry


what would you do when you see jerry tom

Group 4: Doll house

Describe uh tom is dressed I don’t know as a little baby and uh- jerry is uh dressed as a European elite lady with a kind of an umbrella


is the umbrella yellow jerry

Ask Tom if his bow is too tight.

is your bow too tight tom


how many flowers are there in the window-windowsill


is the house big jerry


where are you going jerry


what color are the shutters tom


Describe tom and jerry are preparing for a fight in costume with swords in their hands


uh do you think jerry is braver than you tom


is the hat purple tom


is the sword sharp jerry


do you think you are going to win the fight jerry


how are you going to win jerry


where did you get your sword tom

Participant 3 28/30

Group 1: Reading Describe so tom and jerry seem to be enjoying reading a book

Yes/no Ask if the book is blue. hey jerry is this blook-is this book blue


hey jerry do you like the book

Ask Tom if he is bored. hey tom are you bored


hey jerry do you know if tom likes the book


hey jerry what is this book about


hey tom what are you and jerry reading

Group 2: Dynamite

Describe um-well tom and jerry seem to be playing with firecrackers and one of them seems to be-is apparently going to get hurt


hey jerry is the match hot


hey tom is jerry in the mousehole


hey tom is your plan going to end well


hey jerry is the dynamite red


hey jerry which stick of dynamite is bigger


hey tom do you know where jerry is right now

Group 3: food Describe so tom and jerry seem to be having fun with food and they are trying to catch someone by enticing to come out of the mouse hole


hey tom is there a hamburger on the floor


hey jerry are the walls green


hey tom did you bring the cheese for jerry


hey jerry do you like the cheese


hey jerry what are you holding in your hand


hey tom what will you do when you see jerry

Group 4: Doll house

Describe so tom and jerry seem to be dressed up as- maids


hey jerry is your umbrella yellow in color

Ask if his bow is too tight. hey tom is your bow too tight


hey tom how many flowers are there in the windowsill


hey jerry is this house big


hey jerry where are you going


hey tom what color are the shutter


Describe okay tom and jerry seem to be playing-role playing with swords


hey tom is jerry braver than you


hey tom is your hat purple


hey jerry is your sword sharp


hey jerry are you gonna win the fight


hey jerry how are you going to win


hey tom where did you get this sword.

Participant 4 28/30

Group 1: Reading Describe --[Unintelligible]

Yes/no Ask if the book is blue. Jerry is your book blue


Jerry if you-do you like the book

Ask Tom if he is bored. Are you bored tom


Jerry uh-does tom like the book


hey jerry what’s the book about


uh-tom why you are reading

Group 2: Dynamite

Describe okay oh my god uh- jerry is sitting on a bomb-uh more of sentences um and uh tom is going to blow it uh the other one- what are you doing jerry with the bomb-bang and then…


oh okay- jerry is the match hot


he thinks that jerry is in the mousehole… uh jerry are you in the mousehole


tom is your plan going to be well


jerry is your dynamite red


which stick of dynamite is bigger jerry


where is jerry-I have to ask tom, no-tom where is jerry right now

Group 3: food Describe okay tom is sitting on jerry’s head what is there in the box…what are you eating what’s there on the floor.


okay is there a hamburger on the floor


are the walls green jerry


tom did you uh bring cheese for jerry




jerry what are you holding


tom what will you do if you see jerry

Group 4: Doll house

Describe oh it’s a beautiful house, who’s house is it what are you trying to get snatch or steal there


jerry is your umbrella yellow

Ask if his bow is too tight. is uh-tom is your bow too tight


tom how many- tom how many flowers are there in the windowsill


is the house big jerry


jerry where are you going


what color the shutter is tom


Describe describe picture-oh my god- uh- it’s a small sword with tom, and uh jerry is going to kill with the bigger sword


tom is jerry braver than you


tom is your-your hat is purple


jerry is your uh-sword sharp


jerry are you going to win the fight


jerry how he is going to win-how are you going to win


tom where you got your sword from

Participant 5 26/30

Group 1: Reading Describe Tom is reading a book to jerry

Yes/no Ask if the book is blue. jerry is-is the book blue


jerry do you like the book

Ask Tom if he is bored. tom are you bored


uh jerry… jerry does tom like the book


jerry what is the book about


tom why are you reading this book

Group 2: Dynamite

Describe tom is trying to kill jerry with a dynamite and jerry is doing the same to tom


jerry is your match hot


tom do you think jerry is in the mousehole


tom do you think your plan is going to end well


jerry is the dynamite red


jerry which stick of dynamite is bigger


tom where is jerry right now

Group 3: food Describe tom is trying to put some food for jerry and jerry is sitting on top of tom


tom is there a hamburger on the floor


jerry is the wall green


tom did you buy this cheese- this cheese for jerry






tom what will you do when you see jerry

Group 4: Doll house

Describe tom and jerry are dressed like women and they are doing some housecleaning stuff maybe


jerry is umbrella yellow

Ask if his bow is too tight. tom is bow too tight for you


tom how many flowers are there in the windowwills


jerry is this house big


jerry what are you doing-oh where are you going




Describe Jerry and tom are having a sword fight


tom are you braver than jerry


tom is that a purple hat


jerry is your sword sharp


jerry are you going to win the fight


jerry how are you going to win


tom where did you get this sword from

Participant 6 18/30

Group 1: Reading Describe this scene might be like they both are reading story uh-from a book. Tom has some shape of skipping to next page

Yes/no Ask if the book is blue. um-ask jerry if the book is blue… uh so jerry uh what color the book is.


so… do you like the book so far

Ask Tom if he is bored. tom are you bored of this book right now


ask jerry if tom likes the book- okay um… jerry do you like –uh jerry do tom like the book you read


so jerry the book you read- can you tell me what is it about?


tom um-why you and jerry are reading that book

Group 2: Dynamite

Describe this shows like tom was having to blast jerry’s hole and right then jerry was trying to blast him


uh-ask jerry if the match is hot, jerry do you think the match is hot


ask tom if he thinks that jerry is in the mousehole- uh tom do you think right now jerry is in mousehole


so tom do you think that this plan is going to work


ask jerry if the dynamite is red- so… jerry what do you think what’s the color of the dynamite


[mumbling] um…jerry what do you think which stick is bigger, the one with tom or one with you


um tom do you know where is jerry

Group 3: food Describe this again shows the- that tom is setting up a trap for jerry but jerry is on top of him


ask tom if there is a hamburger-tom is that the hamburger on the floor


ask jerry if the walls are green-so jerry do-uh is the wall color is green


tom if bought- for jerry- so tom do you bought this cheese for jerry


ask jerry if he likes the cheese… jerry do you like this cheese


hey jerry what’s that in your hand


[mumbling] so so tom what you are up to when you will see jerry

Group 4: Doll house

Describe okay so it seems like a small miniature house and jerry’s dressed up some- like some pervert and tom is baby, yeah


ask jerry if his umbrella is yellow- uh- jerry is your umbrella color yellow

Ask if his bow is too tight. ask tom if his bow is too tight…um tom is your bow too tight


how many there are in the windowsill- tom how many flowers do you think are there in windowsill


ask jerry if the house is big- so jerry is the – uh is the house big enough for you


ask jerry where he is going- so jerry where are you heading to


ask tom what color the shutters are- tom can you tell me what is the color of that shutter


Describe describe the picture in a few sentences- it’s like uh they are playing or fighting with the sword


ask tom if jerry is braver than him- tom do you think jerry is braver than you


ask tom if his hat is purple- tom what’s the color of your hat-is it purple


ask jerry if his sword is sharp-so jerry is your sword sharp


ask jerry if he is going to win the fight- so jerry do you think uh will you win this fight


[mumbling] so jerry have you had any plan to win this


so tom where do you got that sword from

Participant 7 19/30

Group 1: Reading Describe I think tom is like in his dreams-he’s not concentrating on the book but jerry is like very concentrating he’s concentrating on the book

Yes/no Ask if the book is blue. uh-Jerry do you think the book-the color of the book is blue


jerry do you like the book- I don’t

Ask Tom if he is bored. Tom are you bored because you’re not looking at the book you’re in your dreams


Jerry do you think tom likes the book-I don’t think so


Jerry tell me what the book is all about


Tom why are we reading, it’s so annoying

Group 2: Dynamite

Describe oh…Here tom is trying to blow the house of jerry but jerry is trying to blow the a-s-s off tom is that okay


Jerry do you think the match is hot


tom do you think jerry is in the mousehole


tom do you really think the plan is going to end well


jerry do you think the dynamite is red


jerry which stick of the dynamite is bigger


tom where is jerry right now

Group 3: food Describe here tom is trying to put a trap for jerry but jerry is sitting on the head of tom


tom is there a hamburger on the floor, I want to eat it


jerry are the walls we-green, I think it’s red


tom did you bought cheese for jerry


jerry did you like the cheese-I hate-I hate it


hey jerry what are you holding


tom what will you do when you are gonna see jerry

Group 4: Doll house

Describe I think here tom is-tom was expecting something to come out of that house but he got like amused when he see jerry dressing like that-like some lady


jerry is your umbrella is yellow-I think it’s pink

Ask if his bow is too tight. tom do you think your bow is tight


hey tom, how many flowers are there in your windowsill


jerry do you think your house is big




tom what colors the shutters are


Describe so here they are getting together fight now and I like that toms hat and jerry’s like hitting total-uh- you know, I’m pretty sure that tom fight…


tom do you really think jerry is braver than you


tom what’s the color of your hat is it purple


jerry your sword is sharp or not


jerry are you going to win the fight, I think you will


what are your plans jerry how are you going to win the fight


hey tom where did you get your sword

Participant 8 21/30

Group 1: Reading Describe so I see like tom and jerry are trying to be very friendly and trying to read the book together and uh-tom sees very goofy but jerry seems to be more serious and sullen

Yes/no Ask if the book is blue. ask jerry if the book is blue-so oh, okay jerry is the book blue in color


ask jerry if he likes the book-jerry how do you find the book, is it good for you-what’s your comments on the book

Ask Tom if he is bored. how’s the book is it boring is it interesting-what do you think tom


oh okay tom what do you think, jerry likes the book


hey jerry what’s the book about


why they are reading-hey tom why are you reading this book-don’t you have anything better to do

Group 2: Dynamite

Describe describe the picture- oh okay- okay uh I have to describe this picture- so tom is trying to set up the

bomb and uh- jerry is probably trying to set up the tom


the match is hot- jerry what do you think is the match hot for you


hey tom do you really think jerry is in the mousehole.


hey tom is the plan going well for you


is the dynamite red in color


which stick of dynamite is bigger- hey jerry which stick of the dynamite is bigger


hey tom where do you think is jerry right now

Group 3: food Describe describe the picture in a few sentences- okay- this looks confusing or is that really oh it seems like there is a burger lying in front of tom and he’s probably planning to have it but it looks like jerry has some other plans


hey tom do you think-it’s a hamburger or something else-oh that’s fine okay


ask jerry if- hey jerry are the walls green in color


hey tom is the cheese uh lying there for jerry


jerry do you really like the cheese




tom what are your plans when you see jerry

Group 4: Doll house

Describe so it seems like jerry is probably going out for an outing he’s very well dressed and probably even tom is surprised to see jerry in such a nice dress


hey jerry is your umbrella yellow in color

Ask if his bow is too tight. tom is the bow too tight


hey tom how many flowers do you see in the windowsill


jerry is the house big enough for you




hey tom what color the shutters are


Describe so it looks like uh- there is a battle setting up between tom and jerry and they both don’t seem to compete with each other and I think the end result is not going to be too feel good for them




hey tom is your hat purple in color


jerry do you think your sword is sharp enough


jerry do you really think you can win this fight


how are you planning to win jerry


tom from where did you buy this sword

Participant 9 26/30

Group 1: Reading Describe Um tom and jerry are playing and reading a book and it looks like tom is plotting something uh and poor jerry is unaware and unafraid

Yes/no Ask if the book is blue. jerry is the book blue in color



Ask Tom if he is bored. tom are you bored


jerry do you think tom likes the book


jerry what is the book about


tom why are you both reading

Group 2: Dynamite

Describe okay um tom is uh trying to light a dynamite in to jerry’s home but what he doesn’t realize is that jerry is also lighting a dynamite behind his butt


Jerry is the match hot


tom do you think jerry is in the mouse hole


tom do you think your plan is going to end well


jerry is the dynamite red in color


jerry which stick of dynamite is bigger


tom do you know where jerry is right now

Group 3: food Describe okay uh jerry is okay tom is uh looks like he is setting a trap for jerry there is uh a slice of cheese and a burger and a piece of fruit on the ground and jerry is actually standing or sitting on tom’s head


uh tom is there a hamburger on the floor


jerry are the walls green in color


tom did you bring the cheese for jerry


jerry do you like the cheese




tom what are you going to do when you see jerry

Group 4: Doll house

Describe um tom is dressed like a baby wearing a diaper and a head scarf and jerry is dressed like an old lady um wearing a beautiful yellow robe wearing a pink umbrella wearing pink heels


jerry is your is the color of the umbrella yellow

Ask if his bow is too tight. tom is your bow on too tight


tom how many flowers are there in the windowsill


jerry is the house too big


jerry where are you going




Describe um tom and jerry look like they’re about to duel they’re both holding a sword each and…uh


tom is jerry braver than you


tom is your hat purple


jerry is your sword sharp


jerry are you going to win this fight


jerry how are you going to win this fight


tom where did you get this sword

Participant 10 28/30

Group 1: Reading Describe jerry trying to read a book which tom is reading as well

Yes/no Ask if the book is blue. hey jerry is the book blue


did you like it jerry

Ask Tom if he is bored. hey tom are you bored


did you like the book tom


hey jerry what is the book about


hey tom why are you reading the book

Group 2: Dynamite

Describe so both tom and jerry are trying to- trouble them with a fire cracker


hey jerry is the match hot


hey do you really think jerry is in that mousehole


hey tom do you really think your plan is gonna work


hey jerry is the dynamite red


hey jerry which stick of the dynamite is bigger


hey tom where is jerry right now

Group 3: food Describe okay how long… um tom is trying to lure jerry with a piece of cheese




if the walls are green-hey jerry are the walls green


bought the cheese for jerry- hey tom did you get the cheese for jerry


hey jerry do you like cheese




hey tom what would you-do uh hey tom hey tom what would you do when you see when you see jerry

Group 4: Doll house

Describe I think tom and jerry are trying to act like babies


hey jerry is your umbrella yellow

Ask if his bow is too tight. hey tom is your bow too tight


hey tom how many flowers are there in the window


hey jerry do you find the house big




hey tom what color the shutters are


Describe tom and jerry are trying to have a sword fight






hey jerry is your sword sharp


hey jerry are you going to win the fight


hey jerry-how is- how are you going to win the fight


hey tom where you got that sword from

Participant 11 26/30

Group 1: Reading Describe okay so uh tom and jerry are trying to read a book and they seem engrossed in reading the book

Yes/no Ask if the book is blue. um hey jerry is the book blue


uh do you like the book jerry

Ask Tom if he is bored. tom are you getting bored




hey jerry what is the book about


tom why are we reading

Group 2: Dynamite

Describe okay jerry is trying to play some prank with tom and uh they are basically doing some mischief


hey jerry is the match stick hot


uh hey tom is jerry inside the mouse hole


hey tom is this plan gonna end well


hey jerry is the dynamite ra-red


jerry do you know which stick of the dynamite is bigger


hey tom where is jerry right now

Group 3: food Describe Oh-this looks uhhhhh-oh I’m trying to think what they are doing- uh… I don’t know it doesn’t make any sense to me. Um… okay let me think …. they are trying to restrain themselves from eating all the food and concentrating on the reading




hey jerry are the walls green


hey tom did you get the cheese for jerry


hey jerry did you like the cheese




hey tom what will you do if you see jerry

Group 4: Doll house

Describe oh that’s good uh tom and jerry trying to wear some baby attire


hey jerry is your umbrella yellow

Ask if his bow is too tight. hey tom is the bow too tight


hey tom how many flowers are there in the windowsill


hey jerry what do you think the house is big




hey tom what do you think the shutters are


Describe uh they are having a ferocious fight with swords


hey tom do you think jerry is more brave than me.




hey jerry do you think your sword is sharp


hey jerry do you think you’ll win the fight


hey jerry how do you think you’re going to win


hey tom where did you get your sword

KEY

BLUE: “do you think”

YELLOW: failure of SAI

GREEN: Pronoun replacement in SAI

RED: incorrect

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