Doctoral Dissertation Research: Native Language Transfer and Second Language Acquisition

University Of Iowa, Iowa City IA

Investigators

Abstract

The proposed study consists of an experimental investigation of transfer from a learner's first language (L1) in the acquisition of a second language (L2), couched within the theoretical framework of generative second language acquisition. The focus of the investigation is on pronominal features in French, which differ in theoretically relevant ways from those instantiated in the English pronominal system, but are similar to those in Spanish. In order to test effects of transfer and the additional difficulties of feature reassembly, both English- and Spanish-speaking L1 learners of L2 French are included (in addition to French native speakers), and will be tested on two experimental tasks, one offline and one online. The study addresses specific difficulties that language teachers encounter in class every day. Thus it will benefit society because it will allow language educators to better understand the learning process and target specific problems in a direct way, by creating an adapted curriculum according to the learners' needs. The acquisition of clitic and strong pronouns, and particularly their semantic interpretation, is a difficult aspect in the development of a new language, and only through a systematic and theoretically founded investigation can we increase and advance our knowledge about how this process evolves. The proposed project will increase our understanding of the development of interlanguage grammars and the creation of new linguistic representations when non-native speakers acquire a second language. It combines elements of theoretical linguistics, L2 research and psycholinguistics in a way that the three subfields can inform each other and later inform other fields such as language pedagogy and teacher education. The linguistic phenomenon under investigation, particularly the combination of lexical items and semantic features proposed in this study, is the ideal area to test and advance the currently very prominent SLA hypothesis: the Feature Reassembly Hypothesis (FRH). The study investigates L2 acquisition of French 3rd person pronouns by L1 speakers of English and of Spanish. The FRH states that feature bundles are transferred from L1 to L2, and mismatch in the available features in the native and target language will likely be a source of difficulty for L2 learners. Because the object pronominal system of Spanish and French is almost identical in terms of lexical feature encoding, but the system of English pronouns is vastly different, L1 English and L1 Spanish learners of French are predicted to show different patterns of errors. The study focuses on the acquisition of the strong pronoun vs. clitic pronoun distinction, which English doesn't have, but French and Spanish do, and on the role of the feature [Human], which is part of the feature composition of English pronoun but not those of French or Spanish. Similarly, there is a grammatical distinction of gender encoded on the pronouns of French and Spanish, but not in English, where the distinction of gender is semantic (biological gender). This comparison allows for the evaluation of transfer, feature reassembly and input salience. Unlike much work on the area, the project seeks combined theoretical and applied knowledge gains, by considering both the question of learners? internal representations as well as input and instruction.