PROFILING CHILD ESL ACQUISITION: PRACTICAL AND METHODOLOGICAL ISSUES KRISTIN KERSTEN Abstract Immersion programs have been claimed to be the most effective educational programs for the acquisition of a second language. This study focusses at ESL data from an immersion elementary school in Germany, which are analyzed within the framework of Processability Theory (PT, Pienemann 1998, 2005) and subsequently compared to PT data from naturalistic L2 acquisition. The paper puts a special focus on methodological issues of data analysis, especially with regard to coding decisions resulting from the form- function interface of linguistic structures. A fine-grained analytical grid is suggested, which is mainly based on the work of Pienemann (1998) and Pallotti (2003, 2007). The results indicate that, after four years of immersion schooling in a monolingual German environment, the participants in the program reached the final two stages of the processing hierarchy suggested by PT (stages 5 and 6) in L2 English, and are thus comparable to children learning English as a second language in a naturalistic context. With regard to data elicitation, it could be demonstrated that the profiling procedures suggested by PT can also be applied, with some limitations, to data sources not directly related to the PT framework. 1. Introduction This paper focusses on data from an immersion (IM) elementary school in Kiel, Germany, in which
Transcript
PROFILING CHILD ESL ACQUISITION: PRACTICAL AND METHODOLOGICAL ISSUES
KRISTIN KERSTEN
Abstract
Immersion programs have been claimed to be the most effective educational programs for the acquisition of a second language. This study focusses at ESL data from an immersion elementary school in Germany, which are analyzed within the framework of Processability Theory (PT, Pienemann 1998, 2005) and subsequently compared to PT data from naturalistic L2 acquisition. The paper puts a special focus on methodological issues of data analysis, especially with regard to coding decisions resulting from the form-function interface of linguistic structures. A fine-grained analytical grid is suggested, which is mainly based on the work of Pienemann (1998) and Pallotti (2003, 2007). The results indicate that, after four years of immersion schooling in a monolingual German environment, the participants in the program reached the final two stages of the processing hierarchy suggested by PT (stages 5 and 6) in L2 English, and are thus comparable to children learning English as a second language in a naturalistic context. With regard to data elicitation, it could be demonstrated that the profiling procedures suggested by PT can also be applied, with some limitations, to data sources not directly related to the PT framework.
1. Introduction
This paper focusses on data from an immersion (IM) elementary school in Kiel, Germany, in which monolingual German children aged 6-11 are instructed in English in almost all parts of the curriculum. The immersion method has been called the most successful educational program for second1 language acquisition in schools (Genesee 1987, Wesche 2002, Wode 2004, cf. also results from a comparative study by Pienemann et al.
1 This article will not differentiate between the terms second and foreign language.
Profiling child ESL acquisition
20062). In order to shed more light on the effectiveness of such programs, semi-spontaneous oral narratives from a four-year longitudinal study with four children of the Kiel immersion school, originally elicited in the framework of temporality and narrative structure (e.g. Berman & Slobin 1994, Dietrich et al. 1995, for an overview on temporal semantics cf. Bardovi-Harlig 2000), are profiled with the help of acquisitional stages for L2 English as suggested by the profiling hierarchy within the framework of Processability Theory (PT, Pienemann 1998, cf. also online information by Pienemann et al. on Rapid Profile3). Developed by Manfred Pienemann in his influential 1998 book, PT is based on the premises of Levelt's (1989) model on language production and relies mainly on Kempen & Hoenkamp's (1987) Incremental Procedural Grammar and Kaplan & Bresnan's (1982) Lexical-Functional Grammar (for a concise introduction to the theory see Pienemann 2005, chapter 1). A special emphasis of the discussion in this paper lies on the criteria used for data coding.
In the first section of this paper, the program, the data elicitation procedure, and the research questions will be introduced. The next part will describe the structures the analysis focusses on, and discuss other theoretical and methodological issues relevant to the coding of the data, especially with regard to the form-function interface in the acquisition of grammatical structures. Afterwards, the operationalization of criteria used for the analysis will be discussed in detail. The following two sections will present the results of the analysis and relate them to attainment levels of naturalistic L2 learners of English (Pienemann & Mackey 1993).
2 Pienemann et al. (2006) present data they collected at an immersive primary school in Kiel-Altenholz for a comparative analysis of different school programs.
3 http://groups.uni-paderborn.de/rapidprofile
2
Kristin Kersten
2. The study
2.1 The immersion project
The data presented here were collected in a bilingual elementary school, the Claus-Rixen Grundschule in Kiel, Germany. The school is one of several educational institutions, ranging from preschool to secondary levels (ages 3-18), which are monitored under the supervision of Henning Wode at Kiel University (see Kersten 2005, Wode 2001 for more information on the Kiel Bilingual Project).
The elementary school incorporates a partial immersion program. Bilingual classes (grades 1-4) mainly composed of monolingual German children from a middle class background are taught in English in all content matter except for German language arts. This amounts to approximately 70% of L2 input throughout the curriculum.
2.2 Data elicitation procedure
The present analysis is part of a larger study which was designed to elicit guided, semi-spontaneous oral narratives in the framework of the acquisition of temporality based on a comparative research study by Berman & Slobin (1994). The data are currently being analyzed with respect to the acquisition of narrative structures (e.g. Möller 2006) and verbal morphology in the framework of temporal semantics (Kersten 2007, 2008). Data was elicited longitudinally over four years in the children’s L1 and L2 at the end of each grade (grades 1-4), and cross-sectionally with an L1 English-speaking comparison group4 from an elementary school in White Bear Lake, Minneapolis, in the USA, grades 1-4.
Subjects: The analysis of this study was carried out on the samples of four subjects of the L2 data set, i.e. subjects 03, 06, 07, and 08. For each of the children, one test is available at each grade level. All subjects are female
4 The term control group is avoided since it implies that all variables except for the dependent one are kept constant. As this was not possible at the time of data collection in the USA, I prefer the term comparison group to indicate that some, but not all of the variables are comparable. Comparable variables include the grades and the age of the children.
3
Profiling child ESL acquisition
and started learning the L2 at age 6, with the exception of child 06, who had prior experience with the L2 in a bilingual preschool.
Method: A picture story was used for data elicitation.5 During each elicitation, the narration was delivered twice in the L2, first with a German-speaking interviewer whom the children were able to ask for vocabulary (Test A), and subsequently with an interviewer who was known to the children as a native speaker of English (Test B). During the second test, no questions were permitted. Both versions provided data for this study. The grade 4 data also include a short interview on personal stories preceding the narration. The tests were audio- and videotaped and subsequently transcribed. The samples average about 7:50 min of recording.
Coding conventions: Direct repetitions within the narrations (e.g. where is my frog, where is my frog), repetitions of interviewers' utterances (up to 3 turns), hesitations and self-corrections, and uninterpretable elements such as tokens with unclear endings were excluded from the analysis.
2.3 Research questions
The developmental stages suggested by PT are used to evaluate the effectiveness of language acquisition in an IM educational program. As the data were collected in a different theoretical framework, the first step of the analysis will focus on the applicability of PT to this specific set of child data. Only after having established the coding criteria for the analysis can the results be compared to naturalistic L2 acquisition. Thus, the study will focus on the following research questions:1. Do the data confirm the stages predicted by PT?2. What are the operational criteria for an application of PT to this data
set?3. Are the results of L2A in an immersion school as indicated by the PT
stages comparable to results achieved by learners from a naturalistic learning context?
5 Frog, where are you? (Mayer 1969), cf. Berman & Slobin (1994).
4
Kristin Kersten
3. Theoretical and methodological considerations
The operational methodology applied here is based on Pienemann (1998) and includes criteria suggested by Pallotti (2003, 2007),6 who, in his recent work, sought to operationalize the coding criteria presented in Pienemann (1998) for his application of PT to Italian. The following section introduces the selection of structures focussed on in the analysis, and discusses some problematic issues which have emerged in the process of data interpretation.
3.1 The structures
The classification of linguistic structures into six developmental stages of ESL identified by PT is based on Pienemann (1998), Rapid Profile, and on Pienemann & Johnston (1987) and will not be repeated here. In order to use PT as a profiling measure for data not elicited in the PT framework, stage syntactic structures morphological structures
6 cancel inv5 3.sg –s4 (wh-)copula inv
yes-no invpart-verb
3 do-fronttopicalwh-frontadv-front
aux+ingaux+en poss pro/detobj.pro
2 SVOneg+V
past regpast irregIL-ingplural –s
1 single wds
Table 1: PT-Structures
6 Im am very much indebted to Gabriele Pallotti for helpful comments and discussions on the first draft of this paper. For a full account of his work on the operationalization of the emergence criterion see Pallotti (2007).
5
Profiling child ESL acquisition
it is important to identify those structures which occur with a relatively high frequency and thus increase data density.
Verbal inflections are likely candidates since they appear in almost every clause of the narrations. Table 1 gives an overview of the syntactic and morphological structures coded for analysis. Irregular past was classified together with regular past and IL (interlanguage) -ing as stage 2 since no exchange of phrasal information is involved. The two auxiliary constructions not present in Rapid Profile were classified as stage 3 because of the unification of values between auxiliary and the lexical verb, which is an instance of phrasal agreement (Pienemann 1998:175). Note that this does not require the target-like use of the auxiliary. The target-like agreement of auxiliary and subject is not relevant here; otherwise the structure would have to be placed at stage 5. To illustrate this with examples from the data:
Child 06.1: and the dog falling down off the window (IL-ing, stage 2)and the boy are looking to a tree (aux+ing, stage 3)
Since there were too few occurrences of do-front and aux 2nd in the sample they were excluded from the analysis.
3.2 Form-function interface and the emergence criterion: some problem cases7
Research in SLA has repeatedly shown that a learner's IL-system is a system in its own right with its individual rules, which do not necessarily need to correspond to those of the target language (Pienemann 1998: 138f, 160f). Especially in the beginning stages of acquisition, investigations into the distribution of linguistic features run the risk of confusing the emergence of interlanguage rules with random variation and chunks (Housen 1995, Perdue 1993, Pienemann 1998 chapter 4, 117ff). Such confusion can be avoided when researchers explicitly define "what forms and what functions are considered evidence for the emergence of a certain structure" (Pallotti 2003:1).
The emergence criterion is a concept crucial for data analysis within the framework of PT. For an analysis of learner language, PT proposes a methodological operation which is based on the criterion of the first emergence of morhosyntactic elements in the language produced by a 7 I am grateful to Satomi Kawaguchi for comments on this issue in an earlier draft
of this paper.
6
Kristin Kersten
learner. More specifically, Pienemann characterizes emergence as the "first systematic use of a structure" in question (1984:191). This refers to the moment "at which certain operations can, in principle, be carried out" (1998:138).
In recent years, Pallotti has further developed the definition of the term emergence (2003, 2007). In his 2007 article, he seeks to operationalize the different components of emergence as quoted above to validify data analyses based on this criterion. The relation of form vs. function of a structure becomes especially important in two aspects of his definition, i.e. the notions of the productive8 and the systematic use of grammatical morphemes:
The learner may in fact be supplying the morpheme randomly, with no clear function, in free allomorphic variation. In this case, one would not say that a systematic form-function association has emerged, but rather that the learner is still experimenting with a phonological form. A criterion must specify a way of differentiating such cases from systematic uses. ... Only when a form begins to be used with a specific, selective function can one conclude that a rule has emerged. This point is also made by Pienemann (1998: 126). (Pallotti 2007:371f)
It has to be pointed out that the term function should refer solely to the grammatical funtion of a linguistic element as opposed to a conceptual or semantic function in a specific context. To give an illustration of this distinction: if the V-s inflection is used by a learner in many different contexts, most of which do not refer to the grammatical function of 3rd
pers. sg., V-s cannot be interpreted as having emerged in terms of a systematic use of the structure. The application of V-s rather seems to be used randomly in the data. However, this example only relates to the suppliance of the grammatical function of 3rd pers. -s. The temporal (i.e. conceptual) function of present tense which the -s inflections carries as well should not be taken into consideration in the analysis, as PT does not make any claims about conceptualization but only about the processing load in terms of syntactic and morphological grammar formulation. This distinction will be discussed in more detail below (section 3.2.3).
While the description of morpho-syntactic forms seems to be a quite straightforward operation, the description of their various functions thus seems a somewhat more complicated matter. It is therefore necessary to
8 Examples for the productive use of a structure are minimal pairs or creative constructions. In a minimal pair of the plural morpheme, the -s will be attached complementarily to nouns in plural context, thus indicating a functional use of the morpheme.
7
Profiling child ESL acquisition
carefully operationalize the criteria which lead to the conclusion that a structure has emerged in an interlanguage system with respect to the first systematic occurrence (Pallotti 2007). To account for these criteria, Table 2 shows a distributional analysis which takes into account the variables context, target-like types, and target-like tokens of a given element, as well as its under- and over-suppliance (i.e. the null-hypothesis). Table 2 is an example for two structures which have emerged in an interlanguage system, i.e. 3rd sg. -s and plural -s (subject 06, grade 1):
Table 2: Example of a distributional analysis (Child 06.1)
To illustrate this distribution with the example of 3 rd pers. sg. -s: In 59 contexts of 3rd pers. sg., the child uses V-s with 11 types (i.e. with different lexical verbs) and 21 tokens (i.e. total occurrences independent of the verb type). 38 contexts of 3rd pers. sg. are used without the -s inflection (i.e. as base form V-ø), which is counted as under-suppliance, but V-s is never used in a context other that the 3rd pers. sg., thus there is no instance of over-suppliance in this example. For this reason, the structure was assigned the status emerged in the analysis (cf. chapter 4).
While in Table 2 the form-function interface seems unproblematic, difficulties may arise in the interpretation of corpora like the one at hand with regard to other kinds of functions. The following sections will discuss the notions of grammatical vs. conceptual function and their relevance to a PT analysis with reference to the interpretation of reported speech vs. relative clauses as an example of the former notion, as well as to maturational and lexico-semantic influences on learner language as an example of the latter.
8
Kristin Kersten
3.2.1 Conceptual vs. grammatical function
The preceding section has hinted at certain difficulties in coming to terms with the form-function relationship which has to be taken into consideration when assigning the emergence criterion to interlanguage data. The term function is, in itself, not without problems, though. As already indicated earlier, it is necessary to tease apart different functional aspects of a linguistic element.
Taking again the function of 3rd pers. sg. -s as an example, two different aspects can be distinguished: On the one hand, the inflection denotes subject-verb agreement. This specific exchange of inter-phrasal grammatical information pertains to the S-procedure in the Formulator of Pienemann's model (1998, 2005, based on Levelt's 1989 model of language production). On the other hand, the inflection marks present tense. In other words, one can differentiate between a grammatical and a semantic function (Tarone 1988) of the linguistic element. In the example of 3rd pers. sg. -s the grammatical function would be inter-phrasal agreement, and the conceptual or semantic function relates the respective event within a temporal sequence. Thus, in the tense/aspect system of a language it is the second, the semantic function, which comes into play (cf. also Huddleston 1993:80f).
In Levelt's model of speech production (1989:9) which underlies PT, time reference is generated in the Conceptualizer (cf. also Pienemann 1998:76), whereas the diacritic feature for tense marking is part of the lemma information stored in the Lexicon. PT's predictions on the processing hierarchy focusses solely on the functioning of the Formulator (Pienemann 1998:74). It pertains fully to syntactic structures, whose functions are often described as "grammatical relations" (Huddleston 1993:7): there is no conceptual difference in saying Turn off the radio or Turn the radio off; nor in Where are you? vs. *Where you are? Thus, in the processing of syntactic structures, it is the grammatical function which indicates that a specific procedure is at work. Still, when it comes to data coding, not all syntactic structures in learner language are easy to interpret in this framework. An example will be discussed in section 3.2.2. In section 3.2.3, a more detailed discussion of form and function with reference to time and morphological tense-marking follows, to which the predictions of PT refer only in part.
3.2.2 Cancel inversion
9
Profiling child ESL acquisition
In his characterization of cancel inversion, Pienemann states that “word order phenomena observed in direct questions do not apply in the context of indirect questions” (1998:170). He gives the example I wonder whether/why/where (he had lunch yesterday). An example for this structure from this study is found in the data of child 08.3:
08.3... shouted: "Where is my frog?"... shouted where the frog is.
The introductory verb shout is not quite target-like, but the opposition of both phrases points to a cancel inversion in the context of an indirect question in the second phrase. But consider the following example:
06.2... looks where the bees are.... to see where is the frog.
According to Greenbaum & Quirk (1990:298f), only cognitive verbs or verbs describing a mental activity introduce indirect questions. However, it seems obvious that, in 06.2, the child overgeneralizes the inversion rule from indirect contexts to relative contexts introduced by look and see. It is apparent in the data that the difference between indirect questions and other forms of subordination is not as clear-cut as theory would have it. The same wh-elements that introduce interrogative clauses can as well introduce relative clauses (Greenbaum & Quirk 1990:309, 367f). And Huddleston (1993:396) points out that the same fronting mechanisms are at work in both kinds of clauses. What adds to the confusion in the latter example of 06.2 is the fact that the antecedent is missing, i.e. the element which the relative pronoun/adverbial refers to. Huddleston (1993:396) calls these structures fused relative constructions. He points out that they even partially overlap with interrogative constructions (as e.g. in he spent what they gave him vs. she told me what they gave him, p. 404).
Without going into too much detail, it obviously seems rather unlikely that the learners distinguish between relative and interrogative wh-elements in their interlanguage. It is much more probable to assume that once a lexical item is annotated for a certain grammatical function, in this case for inversion, it is initially overgeneralized to all contexts, and only later in development becomes differentiated with respect to different grammatical functions.
This might be different, however, in contexts of relative clauses with antecedent. There are many instances of such full relative clauses
10
Kristin Kersten
especially in the data of the third and fourth year. The last section raises the question of whether these elements, too, should be classified as contexts for cancel inversion. Indeed, some instances of the corpus suggest that inversion seems to be an issue for the children even in full relative contexts:
07.4... a place where we don't find them... a hole where he shouted in... a Markt [market] where can you buy Chinese things
08.3... the little frog who he catched... the little frog who has he catched
The question remains which factors influence this development. One factor which may come into play here is the complexity of the structure to be cancelled (i.e. copula-inversion vs. verb-complexes in 08.3). This might represent an example of an intra-stage development (compare Mansouri & Håkansson 2007). This analysis thus suggests that three types of relative contexts have to be differentiated, i.e. indirect, fused and full relative contexts. And for the learner, this differentiation seems not straightforward at all.
3.2.3 Past tense marking
As stated above, in order to establish the first systematic use of a structure, the researcher has to operationalize the notions of first and systematic. In Pallotti's operational criteria for emergence, this is where the function of a morphological structure comes into play, illustrated above with the example of the 3rd pers. sg. -s-inflection, which requires the processing of inter-phrasal agreement. With respect to past reference, which will be discussed in this section, Pienemann states that
the use of grammatical information ... proceeds without reliance on temporary storage. An example is the morphological marking of reference to time. The information about tense is contained in the verb lemma with the value 'past' for the diacritic feature 'tense'. This means that the diacritic feature in question is available in the same location where the morpheme for the marking of past (i.e. '-ed') has to occur and no information has to be deposited into any syntactic procedure to achieve this process. I call the resulting class of morphemes 'lexical'. Since lexical morphemes can be
11
Profiling child ESL acquisition
produced without phrasal procedures they can develop before phrasal procedures. (Pienemann 2005:11)
The -ed-inflection is thus processed by the category procedure and classified at stage 2 in the processing hierarchy. In the present data set however, the question arose as to when the morpheme V-ed could be classified as emerged according to the operational criteria used in the analysis. One problem came up with respect to establishing its systematic use, another in connection with "the marking of past (i.e. -'ed')". Both problems arise in the broad context of the form-function relation. In the following two sections, they will be illustrated with examples from the data and subsequently addressed with reference to the theoretical framework of PT.
3.2.3.1Developmental issues
One reason which can render it difficult to establish the systematic use of verbal inflections especially in corpora of child narratives are maturational
constraints. To establish the systematicity of use, a stable reference point in the linguistic context is indispensable.
16.1 B (Grade 1) 06.2 A+B (Grade 2)and the boy is in the water and hears somethingand then the boy said to the dogquiet (dir)and then the boy looked behind
the tree and there is his frog with another
frog and babiesand then the boy has a little baby
from the mother and the daddy
and the boy fall on the floor ...and then the dog and the boy fell in the waterand then the dog finds the beehiveand [Hesitation: they thi/] the dog thinkthat’s a balland jumpedbecause he(?) want to toys with the boy ...and there came many many bees(beens?) outand the boy looked in a hole in a treeand there cames a owl outand say huh huh ...
Table 3: Tense marking (L2 English)
This may be, for example, the predominant tense of a narration. In narrative child language data, however, it becomes obvious that stable time reference is a specific competence which has to be developed over time. Tables 3-6 vividly illustrate this phenomenon.
12
Kristin Kersten
Table 3 shows a picture very familiar to everyone working with child language. A look at the temporal function of the verbs reveals a high amount of variation regarding tense marking. There are tense shifts within one sentence, within one verb type, and even two different tense markers on one and the same verb. The same is true for aspect marking (Table 4).
08.1 B (Grade 1) 08.2 B (Grade 2)and the boy say au (dir)and then the boy looking in a hole and the bees fly awayand then the dog are running away ...and then the boy staying on the stone‘n then the boy are sitting on a deer ...n’ then the boy are say psst (dir)
and then the boy is looking in a hole in a tree
and then he look above the trunk
Table 4: Aspect marking (L2 English)
Again, we find a range of intra-individual variation: activites like fly and run are sometimes marked with a progressive marker, sometimes they are not; there is variation on the inflections of a single verb type, ect. Interestingly, however, this phenomenon is not restricted to the L2 stories. A similar distribution occurs in the L1 stories (Tables 5 and 6), which are taken from other transcipts in the corpus:
16.1 (Grade 1) 07.2 (Grade 2)er ging zu der Schildkröteund bellte sie anund dann beißt die Schildkröte den Hund
in seine Pfoteund dann leckt er sich die Pfoteund der kleine Junge nahm seinen Eimer
und seine Schaufelund packte sie weg
[and he went to the turtle and barked at her
and then the turtle bites the dog in his paw
and then he licks his pawand the little boy took his bucket and his
dann läuft der Hund zur Schildkröteund bellt sie andann kam der Junge dichter und
dichterund dann biß plötzlich die Schildkröte
den Hund in die Pfote
[then the dog runs to the turtleand barks at herthen the boy came closer and closerand then, suddenly, the turtle bit the
dog in the paw]
13
Profiling child ESL acquisition
spadeand put [past] them away]
Table 5: Tense marking (L1 German)
Tense shifts like went and bites, barks and came as in Table 5 are frequently found. The same is true for English as L1 (Table 6).
25.1 U 04.2 Uthen he looks for himand so does the dogthen he’s barking at a beehiveand the boy’s yelling through a holethen a squirrel came upand bited his nose ...and the dog went running, looking for the frogand then he climbs up a XXX rockand holds onto a branchlooking for the frogand then he got stuck by a moosethe dog’s barking
the dog slipped out the windowthe boy is holding the dogand the dog licked the boynow the boy is calling for the
frog
Table 6: Tense and aspect marking (L1 English)
Here, verbs expressing a rather punctual action like yell through a hole or call for the frog are expressed in the progressive. A time-shift is present in both examples as well, from is yelling to came, went running to climbs and so forth.
The question arises as to the reasons for this distribution. Are the children, even in their L1, not capable of target-like tense distinctions? Are we observing an artefact derived from the specific task, i.e. the acquisition of a narrative competence in children? Do the children shift back and forth between narration style and picture description mode? In order to answer these questions, a much more detailed analysis would need to be carried out. Yet, unfortunately this is out of the scope of this paper. What becomes obvious, though, is the following problem: if this variation cannot be explained satisfactorily for the L1 stories, it is even more difficult to make claims about the function of verbal inflections in the L2, and thus to establish coding criteria for the systematicity of their usage.
14
Kristin Kersten
Whether or not these observations are related to the elicitation task, the fact that the same variability can be observed in the L1 stories of children of the same age strongly hints at a specific cognitive-maturational development of that age. One strong argument in favor of this point is that the temporal switches from past to present gradually decrease in the transcripts from higher grades both in the L1 and the L2 – even though the elicitation task remained the same.
3.2.3.2 Lexico-semantic marking
The second problem in establishing the first systematic use of the past inflection is the assumption that -ed indeed functions as "the marking of past" (Pienemann 2005:11). Even if we assume systematicity in the use of L2 inflections, these inflections do not necessarily need to be used – even though systematically – with the same function a native speaker would use them. It has been suggested that verbal inflections, in the early stages of the acquisition process, tend not to encode the grammatical functions ascribed to them at all. The so-called Aspect Hypothesis (AH) as formulated by Andersen & Shirai (1994) complicates the form-function issue further by suggesting that in the beginning verbal inflections are used to encode the inherent semantic properties of the verbs they are attached to rather than grammatical functions. This has been referred to as the lexical aspect of the verb. The categories of lexical aspect are distinguished with regard to their inherent expression of duration, telecity (including an endpoint or goal), and dynamic properties, i.e. state verbs, activities, accomplishments, and achievements (Vendler 1967, Andersen & Shirai 1994):
Lexical aspectual classesSemantic features States Activities Accomplishments Achievements
Punctual - - - +Telic - - + +
Dynamic - + + +
Table 7: Semantic features of the four categories of inherent lexical aspect (taken from Rohde 2002:137)
According to the AH, English inflections encoding 3rd pers. sg, progressive, and past tense are complementarily affiliated with different verb-categories in that -ing co-occurs mainly with activity verbs, past and perfective inflections with so-called achievements and accomplishments,
15
Profiling child ESL acquisition
and 3rd ps. -s with state verbs. It is assumed that this distribution is, to some extent at least, also inherent in the input (Distributional Bias Hypothesis, Andersen & Shirai 1994), and that it grants the learnability of verb inflections in both L1 and L2 acquisition (Rohde 1997; see also Rohde 2002 for a concise overview of these issues). In a study by Kersten et al. (2002) and Kersten (2007, 2008) the AH was confirmed for the same data corpus in an analysis on lexical aspect (cf. Table 8).9 As a consequence, in the L2 narrations, lexical aspect marking, which has a semantic connotation, has to be carefully distinguished from "the marking of past". It is much more probable that V-ed, in the beginning stages of language acquisition, is used by the learner to indicate a functional notion different from past tense.
09.1 (Grade 1)Clause Aspectual Category- the dog looking in the glass- and the boy looking on the tree- the dog fell down- and them felled the boy and the dog in
the water- shut, the Eul [owl] hats shut the eyes
activityactivityachievementachievementstate
Table 8: Semantic aspect marking (L2 English)
The examples from the data corpus in Table 8 illustrate the predictions of the AH in that activity verbs are inflected with -ing, achievements with past morphology, and state verbs with -s (note the two creative forms of *fell-ed and L1 *hat-s [has], which indicate that the learners use the distribution of verbal morphology productively on forms which have not occurred in the input).
To sum up, the coding difficulties in establishing the systematicity of verbal tense morphology in these L2 narratives are twofold: first, the amount of variation due to the cognitive development yields an unstable 9 The effect of this distribution was dominated, in data from grade 1, by the -ing
inflection, which seemed to be used as a general verb marker of invariant form. It has been proposed that this could be due to its being more saliently marked than the other forms, to its frequency and multiple functions in the input, and/or due to its phonological resemblance to the German infinitve ending -en (Rohde 1997). Support for this idea can be found in the data. 07.1 B: "The boy rufen the frog." vs. "The boy rufing the frog." But in order to make specific claims about function, an analysis of this kind should be carried out for each single child.
16
Kristin Kersten
reference point in the children's L2 narratives; and second, other acquisitional principles seem to interfere with the functional use of morphological structures.
Having illustrated these two phenomena in the language of the learners, it is necessary to recur to the original PT model in order to address the issues of systematicity and form and function of past reference, since the question remains as to when past morphology can be classified as having emerged in the corpus. As stated above, PT predictions pertain to the processing operations in the Formulator of the speech production model. The Lexicon, which contains the lemmata, is seen as a separate component. However, in the beginning stages of language acquisition, the Lexicon is not yet completely annotated (Pienemann 1998:76) and may thus lack specific diacritic features such as tense. The findings with regard to the Aspect Hypothesis even suggest that in interlanguage these annotations may differ from those of the target language and will eventually be changed in the process of further language acquisition. One theoretical aspect has to be borne in mind, however: The fact that the respective inflection does not refer to the same conceptual function in the Lexicon as in the target language does not influence the functioning of the processing procedure in the Formulator. The category procedure is at work in both cases, irrespective of whether the inflection carries a reference to the past or not. In the same sense the target-like past reference is irrelevant for the operationalization of systematic use, as long as the morphological form is used in a creative and productive way. The temporal function of the inflections in question can thus be neglected as long as specific analytical criteria are operationalized for variability and productivity of their use. These criteria are discussed in the following section.
17
Profiling child ESL acquisition
4. Data analysis and interpretation
In accordance with the the previous discussion, the following section will outline the criteria used for this study based on the suggestions by Pienemann (1998) and by Pallotti (2003, 2007) in his definition of operational criteria for data coding.
4.1. Criteria
There are several factors which can potentially undermine the validity of an analysis. The first factor to account for is insufficient evidence. The criteria must therefore include a sufficiently high number of contexts for each structure. For syntax, Pienemann (1998:145) has suggested >4. He concedes, however, that "some degree of ambiguity remains in this analysis when it comes to judging if the number of linguistic contexts is sufficient for a given rule to decide if the rule has been applied or not" (p. 146). Second, the exclusion of chunks has to be guaranteed, which can be achieved by a certain degree of lexical variability in the data. It can be argued that this is a necessary prerequisite for syntactic structures as well, because here the risk runs high that some frequently used structures are learned as formulas (Pienemann 1998:147). Finally, Pienemann mentions the occurrence of random hits. These can be accounted for by the number of over-suppliances or over-use of the structure in question (Pallotti 2003, 2007). Table 9 summarizes these criteria.
threat to validity criterionexclusion of insufficient evidence number of contextsexclusion of cunks variabilityexclusion of random hits overuse
Table 9: Validity criteria
Pallotti10 emphasises that the rate of over-suppliances (inferred from the matrix for a distributional analysis in Pienemann 1998:158) is the crucial factor for the exclusion of random hits, as illustrated in a hypothetical example of a distributional analysis (Table 10):
10 (personal communication)
18
Kristin Kersten
Plural –s pl sgN+ -s 8 2 number of -s 10, number of over-suppliances 2 = 20 %N+ -ø 15 43
number of pl 23, number of under-suppliances 15
Table 10: Hypothetical example of a distributional analysis
Under-suppliance of a yet unacquired linguistic form as represented in the columns is generally to be expected in interlanguage. To illustrate this: if a feature occurs five times correctly with different types, there is probably no difference in the status of its emergence, independent of whether there are 15 or 50 under-uses. It would, however, make a difference had there been 15 over-suppliances instead of two. According to this logic, the percentage of over-suppliance has to be taken as an indicator for randomness. The following cut-off points have been used for the rate of over-suppliance in the analysis:
With reference to Pallotti's criteria, this study uses a fine-grained analysis including bracketed labels to indicate insufficient evidence. The operational criteria used in the analysis are presented in Table 11. There is of course some arbitrariness to any cut-off point in an analysis. Thus, this chart represents a work-in-progress list which has to be refined.
st
structure
con-texts
under-use
over-use
variability
(types)
examples from data / comments
6 cancel inv ? inv / ? he wants to know where the frog ishe looks where the frog is = fused relhe sees in the glass where the frog is = rel
5 aux/do 2nd 4 contextinv
/ 4 or 3 incl. 1mp(types of wh+aux)
mp: where are you looking? / where is my frog going?
19
Profiling child ESL acquisition
3.sg –s 5 3.sgs s3.sg 5 or 3 + 1mp/creat
exclusion of be/havemp: he walks / they walkcreat: past irreg+s
4 wh-cop inv
4 contextinv
/ 4 or 3 incl. 1mp(types of wh+V)
mp: where are you? / where is my frog?
yes-no inv 3 contextinv
invcontext
3 or 2 incl. 1mp(types of
S+V)
overuse: this can you havemp: are you here? / is he here?
part-verb 3 contextmovemt
.
/ 3 or 1 + 1creat
(different verbs)
creat: the dog came the beehive down(mp ?)
3 topical 3 / / 3(different elements)
objects and subordinate clauses(mp ?)
do-front 4 context do-front
do-frontcontex
t
4(do with
diff. contexts)
underuse: he go there?
wh-front 4 Ntl position within S, (not final)
/ 4 or 3 incl. 1mp(types of wh+V)
underuse: he where is?mp: where are you? / where is my frog?
adv-front 3 Ntl position within S, (not final)
/ 3 or 2 + 1mp
or 1 + 1 creat
(types of adverbs)
exclusion: clause-linking conj and then; there isunderuse: the frog in the night go to his familymp: now the boy wake up/now the frog is awaycreat: downside, there are a lake
(*)aux+en 5 ofaux+en
*aux+enenaux
auxen(= +Vø)
5 or 3 + 1 creat
underuse: is fallen/falled/fell, gonecreat: have goed = aux+*en
(*)aux+ing 5 ofaux+in
g
IL-ing auxing
5 or 3 + 1 creat
aux past + aux presentcreat: are rufing = aux+ L1-ingist looking = L1-aux+ing
poss. 5 context poss
poss context
2 his dogunderuse: put he hands on he nose
obj.pro 5 context obj.pro
obj.pro
context
2 exclusion of 2nd sg.he see themunderuse: he see they
2 SVO 4 SOV/VSO
random
/ 4 (with
varying
20
Kristin Kersten
distrib. constit.)neg+V (acc.to Rap.Prof)
3 postverb. neg?
/ 3 or 1 + 1 creat
(types of V with neg.)
the boy (is) not walking / don't walkunderuse: he looks not?creat: don't can come/don't finds/didn't were
past irreg 5 ofV-past
*past-edirreg+edirreg+s
(X-irreg)
5 or 3 + 1 creat
exclusion of be/havecreat: *full=fell = *irreg
past reg 5 ofV-past
/(V-reg+irreg)
(X-ed) 5 or 3 + 1 creat
creat: comed = *past-edcamed = irreg+ed
IL-ing 5of(aux+) V-ing
/ (X-ing) 5 or 3 + 1 creat
creat: the boy rufing = L1-ing
plural –s 5 pls spl 5 or 3 + 1mp/creat
mp: frog / frogscreat: childs, childrens
1 single wds 2 / / / dog, boy, der frog (X): unlikely to occur; ntl: non-target-like; : without; /: no evidence in the data or not possible; mp: minimal pair; creat: creative construction
Table 11: Operational criteria
Following Pienemann, the number of required contexts is lower for syntax than for morphology. On the other hand, in syntax some structures run a higher risk of chunking than others, like for example the collocation of wh-words with auxiliaries (what is, what do etc.). This is why four instead of three contexts were used in such cases. To illustrate this: the non-target-like position of the wh-form within the sentence (He where is?) can be considered as under-use of wh-front. There was no instance of over-suppliance in the data (and it seems difficult to think of any example for it). The notion of minimal pair was also adopted for syntax. An example from the data would be the productive alternation of the auxiliary with the same question word, as in Where are you? vs. Where is my frog?
4.2 Illustration
A combination of these criteria yields the results of a distributional analysis expressed as '+' and '–'. Table 12 gives an overview of the gradation system for emergence. In the case of positive contexts, the columns of negative evidence are disregarded.
21
Profiling child ESL acquisition
random hitsstatus
variabilitystatus
contextsstatus
underusestatus
status:emerged
+ + +(–)/(+) + (+)
(+) – (+)(–) – + + –(–) – (+) + (–)/ / /
Table 12: Operational criteria: gradation of status "emerged"
Table 13 illustrates how this analysis can be applied to the data.
The table shows the analysis of the morphological and syntactic structures used in the narrative of Child 06 in grade 3 with regard to the operational criteria established above.
To exemplify: in Table 13, the structure 3rd sg. -s is interpreted as emerged ('+') since there are a) enough contexts, b) random hits are excluded, and c) there proved to be enough variability with regard to the criteria. The structure aux+en has not emerged ('–') because there are not enough context, thus a high risk of chance, and not enough variability. The feature past irreg may have emerged ('(+)'), but there are not enough contexts and variability according to the criteria.
5. Results and discussion
5.1 Language development
The following tables show an overview of the development of the four subjects from grade 1-4. Table 14 represents an implicational analysis of cross-sectional and longitudinal data of all four subjects. Some of the structures (bold print) which occur late in development have not enough linguistic contexts. But since they had already been confirmed in previous stories of the child, as for example neg+Verb with child 07 (confirmed in year 3), they were assumed to still be part of the child's interlanguage system (cf. continuity assumption, Pienemann 1998). 11
At a first glance, all structures are in line with the PT predictions, except for yes-no inversion and aux+past participle. In most of these cases the structures are already present in the data but there is not sufficient evidence according to the criteria. However, as long as other structures of that stage have emerged, this is a sign that the procedure actually is at work. Thus, there may simply be other factors which delay the acquisition of this specific feature as e.g. higher complexity, lower frequency in the
11 "If a structure has been acquired it will be a constant part of the interlanguage system at later levels of development." (Pienemann 1998:147)
23
Profiling child ESL acquisition
input, etc. (cf. Mansouri 2005, Mansouri & Håkansson 2007 on intra-stage developments). Therefore they should not be considered counter-examples to the implicational pattern as long as one of the structures belonging to a certain stage has emerged. There are, however, many gaps in the data set indicating that it is not as robust as the two ESL corpora presented in Pienemann (1998).
bold +: structure provides not enough contexts in that data set but has been mastered in previous years
Table 14: Implicational Analysis - Development (A+B)
Table 15 shows that, when reduced to the different attainment levels, there is indeed enough evidence for each stage in almost every learner according to the operational criteria.
bold +: structure provides not enough contexts in that data set but has been mastered in previous years
Table 15: Attainment in development (A+B)
Only child 03 does not provide enough evidence for stage 4 throughout all samples. Stage 4 however is confirmed in the data of all the other subjects.
Data which are not specifically elicitated within the framework of PT run the risk of not providing enough contexts for all structures exemplified in the PT hierarchy. Therefore, the steps taken in the current approach were, firstly, the addition of some morphological features, secondly, a refinement of operational criteria as formulated by Pallotti (2003, 2007), and thirdly, the application of the continuity assumption in the reading suggested by Pienemann (1998:147). Insufficient evidence for the stages in Table 15 amounts to less than 14%, and none of it contradicts the theory.
5.2 Comparison with naturalistic child L2-acquisition
To examine the effectiveness of the IM program in the Kiel elementary school, the data were then compared to a naturalistic child ESL study (Pienemann & Mackey 1993). The data are ordered with respect to length of residence in the ESL study, and time of input in the IM program respectively (Tables 16 and 17).
LOR Length of Residence (taken from Pienemann 1998:179)
Table 16: Attainment in development: ESL study according to LOR
25
Profiling child ESL acquisition
The age of the children in both studies is comparable (8-10 in ESL vs. 6-10 in IM). The longest time of input is 60 months (five years) in the ESL study, as opposed to 46 months (four years) in the IM context.
Both studies reveal a high amount of inter-individual variation, indicating that learners learn at a very individual pace, even given the same input situation in the IM program.
Table 17: Attainment in development: IM study according to TOI
In neither study the time of input seems to be predictive for ultimate attainment, but further factors need to be known to make claims about this. Stage 5 seems to be reached earlier by the naturalistic acquirers. However, after 4 years of input more IM children have reached the final stage than the naturalistic learners. It becomes obvious from this comparison that IM is a very efficient program of language teaching which yields results comparable to those of naturalistic L2 learners with respect to the emergence of linguistic features.
6. Conclusion
To conclude, the study has shown that PT is a powerful instrument of analysis which is applicable also to data corpora with elicitation methods outside the PT framework. The operationalized criteria suggested in this paper proved to be helpful tools in analyzing the data. The results showed that all stages predicted by PT could be confirmed in the L2 narrations of German children learning English in an IM elementary school. These children's attainment level within the PT hierarchy is especially significant in comparison with L2 learners who learned the language in a naturalistic context. The study shows that children from an IM elementary program aber capable of reaching comparable levels of attainment in L2
26
Kristin Kersten
acquisition. Early IM can thus be considered a highly efficient program of language teaching. A comparison to results from other teaching programs would be interesting in this context. With regard to refinements of the profiling methodology it would be valuable for future studies to apply the coding criteria as used in this analysis to a larger corpus of L2 data.
References
Andersen, R. W. & Y. Shirai (1994): "Discourse motivations for some cognitive acquisition principles." Studies in Second Language Acquisition, Vol. 16 (1994): 133-156.
Bardovi-Harlig, K. (2000): Tense and Aspect in Second Language Acquisition: Form, Meaning, and Use. Oxford: Blackwell.
Berman, R. & D. I. Slobin (1994): Relating Events in Narrative: A Crosslinguistic Developmental Study. Hillsdale, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Dietrich, R. & W. Klein & C. Noyau (1995): The Acquisition of Temporality in a Second Language. Amsterdam, Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
Genesee, F. (1987): Learning Through Two Languages: Studies of Immersion and Bilingual Education. Cambridge, MA: Newbury House.
Greenbaum, S. & R. Quirk (1990): A Student's Grammar of the English Language. Essex: Longman.
Housen, A. (1995): It's About Time. The Acquisition of Temporality in English-as-a-Second Language in a Multilingual Educational Context. Brussels: Vrije Universiteit Brussel.
Huddleston, R. (61993): Introduction to the Grammar of English. Cambridge: CUP.
Kaplan, R. & J. Bresnan (1982): "Lexical-Functional Grammar: a formal system for grammatical representation." In The Mental Representation of Grammatical Relations edited by J. Bresnan. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press: 173-281.
Kempen, G. & E. Hoenkamp (1987). "An incremental procedural grammar for sentence formulation." Cognitive Science, Vol. 11: 201-258.
Kersten, K. & C. Imhoff & B. Sauer (2002): "The acquisition of English verbs in an elementary school immersion program in Germany." In An integrated view of language development: Papers in honor Henning Wode edited by P. Burmeister, T. Piske, A. Rohde. Trier: WVT: 473-497.
27
Profiling child ESL acquisition
Kersten, K. (2005): "Bilinguale Kindergärten und Grundschulen: Wissenschaft und Praxis im Kieler Immersionsprojekt." In Bilingualität im Kindergarten und in der Primarstufe. Bessere Zukunftschancen für unsere Kinder edited by P. Baron. Opole: Niemieckie Towarzystwo Oswiatowe: 22-33;also available as pdf: www.kristin-kersten.de/media/Kersten$202005$20Bilinguale$20Kitas$20und$20 Grundschulen$20$28Publ$29.pdf
Kersten, K. (2007): "The interaction of lexical aspect and discourse in learner language." Paper presented at EUROSLA 17, University of Newcastle.
Kersten, K. (2008): "Der frühe Erwerb von Verbflexionen: L2 Bildergeschichten aus einer immersiven Grundschule". Paper presented at 5. Arbeitstagung für den wissenschaftlichen Nachwuchs in der Fremdsprachenforschung, University of Hannover.
Levelt, W. J. M. (1989): Speaking. From Intention to Articulation. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Mansouri, F. (2005): "Conceptualising intra-stage sequencing in the learner language." Paper presented at the 5th International Symposium on Processability, Second Language Acquisition and Bilingualism, Deakin University, Victoria, Australia.
Mansouri, F. & G. Håkansson (2007): "Conceptualising intra-stage sequencing in the learner language." In Second Language Acquisition Research: Theory-Construction and Testing edited by Fethi Mansouri. Cambride: Cambridge Scholars Press: 95-117.
Mayer, M. (1969): Frog, Where Are You? New York: Pied Piper.Möller, C. (2006). "The development of narrative in German-English
immersion." Paper presented at EUROSLA 16, Boğaziçi University, Antalya.
Pallotti, G. (2003): "Cross-linguistic tests of Processability Theory: An operational definition of the emergence criterion." Paper presented at EUROSLA 13, University of Edinburgh.
Pallotti, G. (2007): "An operational definition of the emergence criterion." Applied Linguistics, Vol. 28/3: 361-382.
Perdue, C. (ed.) (1993): Adult Language Acquisition: Cross-Linguistic Perspectives. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Pienemann, M. (1984): "Psychological constraints on the teachability of languages." Studies in Second Language Acquisition, Vol. 6: 186-214.
Pienemann, M. (1998): Language Processing and Second Language Development: Processability Theory. Amsterdam, Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
28
Kristin Kersten
Pienemann, M. (2005): "An introduction to Processability Theory." In Cross-linguistic Aspects of Processability Theory edited by M. Pienemann. Amsterdam, Philadelphia: John Benjamins. http://groups.uni-paderborn.de/rapidprofile/docs/INTRO.NEW.pdf (retrieved July 5, 2008)
Pienemann, M. & M. Johnston (1987): "Factors influencing the development of language proficiency." In Applying second language acquisition research edited by D. Nunan. Adelaide: National Curriculum Research Centre, Adult Migrant Education Program: 45-141.
Pienemann, M. & J.-U. Keßler & A. Lenzing & F. Hoffman: Rapid Profile: Linguistic Profiling. Paderborn: University of Paderborn. http://groups.uni-paderborn.de/rapidprofile/ (retrieved Jan. 11, 2008).
Pienemann, M. & J.-U. Keßler & M. Liebner (2006): "Englischerwerb in der Grundschule: Untersuchungsergebnisse im Überblick." In Englischerwerb in der Grundschule edited by M. Pienemann, J. Keßler, E. Roos. Paderborn: Schöningh: 67-88.
Pienemann, M. & A. Mackey (1993): "An empirical study of children’s ESL development and Rapid Pofile." In ESL development. Language and Literacy in Schools, Vol. 2 edited by P. McKay. Commonwealth of Australia and National Languages and Literacy Institute of Australia: 115-259.
Rohde, A. (2002): "The aspect hypothesis and the L2 reacquisition of verbal inflections." In An Integrated View of Language Development: Papers in Honor Henning Wode edited by P. Burmeister, T. Piske, A. Rohde. Trier: WVT: 135-151.
Rohde, A. (1997): Verbflexion und Verbsemantik im Natürlichen L2-Erwerb. Tübingen: Narr.
Tarone, E. (1988): Variation in Interlanguage. London: Edward Arnold.Vendler, Z. (1967): Linguistics in Philosophy. Ithaca: Cornell University
Press.Wesche, M. B. (2002): "Early French immersion: How has the original
Canadian model stood the test of time?" In An Integrated View of Language Development: Papers in Honor Henning Wode edited by P. Burmeister, T. Piske, A. Rohde. Trier: WVT: 357-379.
Wode, H. (2001): "Multilingual education in Europe: What can preschools contribute?" In Language as a Tool: Immersion Research and Practices edited by S. Björklund. University of Vaasa: Proceedings of the University of Vaasa, Reports: 424-446.
Wode, H. (2004): Frühes Fremdsprachenlernen. Englisch ab Kita und Grundschule: Warum? Wie? Was bringt es? Kiel: FMKS.
