STAGES&IN&LEARNER&LANGUAGE&

Developmental&sequences&

Interlanguage: More than the

sum of target input & L1
IL representations are
1.different from L2 input
2.different from L1 representations
3.similar to children s developing L1

Morpheme&studies:&Bilingual&Syntax&
Measure&

Developmental&sequences&&
They&refer&to&the&acquisiEon&of&morphemes,&
i.e.&of&grammaEcal&meaningful&units&in&
language.&
Their&acquisiEon&refers&to&their&use&in&
obligatory&contexts:&
I&watched&that&movie&yesterday&
Three&trains&

Results&

GrammaEcal&morphemes&(II)&
Learners&are&oNen&more&accurate&in&using&plural&Os&than&in&
using&possessive&Os .&
Learners&are&oNen&more&accurate&in&using&Oing&than&in&using&O
ed&past.&
The&learners&L1&has&some&eect&on&the&accuracy&order&of&
grammaEcal&morphemes;&however,&it&is&not&enErely&
determined&by&the&learners&L1.&There&are&some&strong&
paSerns&of&similarity&among&learners&of&dierent&L1&
backgrounds.&
&&

Krashens&(1977)&summary&&
-ing (progressive)
plural
copula (to be)
auxiliary (progressive
as in He is going)
article
irregular&past&

regular&past&ed&
third&person&singular&s$
possessive&s$$

Source: Lightbrown,
Patsy M. and Nina
Spada. How Languages
are Learned. 3rd ed.
Oxford: Oxford UP,
2006. 84.

Variables&contribuEng&to&the&order&
Salience:&how&easy&is&noEce&the&morpheme.&
Linguis,c-complexity:&how&many&elements&
you&have&to&keep&track&of&
Seman,c-transparency:&how&clear&the&
meaning&is&
Similarity&to&rst&language&form&and&
frequency&in&the&input&

&
Possessive&determiners&
NegaEon&
QuesEons&
RelaEve&clauses&
&

MORE-SEQUENCES-

Possessive determiners
1st stage: Pre-emergence. Definite article or your used for all persons,
genders and numbers
The little boy play with the bicycle
The boy cry in the arm of your mother
2nd stage: Emergence. his or her with a preference to use one of the
forms.
The girl put the make-up on his hand. His father is suprise
3rd stage: Post-emergence. Differentiated use of his or her but not
when the object possessed has natural gender.
The girl fell on her bicycle. She look his father and cry.

NegaEon&
1st stage
No bicycle. I no like it. Not my friend
Negative element before word or expression
2nd stage
He dont like it. I dont can sing
No, not, but also dont. Dont is not marked pers./
number/tense
3rd stage
You can not go there. He was not happy. She dont like rice
Negative element after auxiliary verbs (are, is, can). Dont
still not fully analysed.

NegaEon&(II)&
4th stage
It doesnt work. We didnt have supper.
He didnt went
Do is marked for tense, person and number, although
sometimes both the auxiliary and the verb are marked

ApplicaEon&to&negaEon&
Formulas,&items&or&exemplars:&FORM&
MEANING&PAIRINGS&
I&dont&know&=&NO&IDEA&

Low&scope&paSerns:&&
I&dont&know &&&&&&&&&&&OHe&dont&know&
I&dont&want&&&&&&&&&&&&&&O&He&dont&can&

ConstrucEon&or&schemas&
I&dont&know&&&O&I&didnt&know&&

&OHe&doesnt&know&

Formula-based learning:
The stuff of acquisition
Formulas
How do you do dese?

Low-scope patterns
How do you do dese in English?

Construction or schemata

How do you make the flower?

How does this color is?

Frequency, distribution, context implicitly

encoded from input (Nick Ellis, 2008)

Questions
1st stage:
Dog? Four children? Whats that?
Single words, formulae, or sentence fragments
2nd stage:
Its a monster in the corner?
The boys throw the shoes
Declarative word order, no inversion, no fronting
3rd stage:
Where the children are playing?
Does in this picture there is four astronauts?
Fronting: do-fronting; wh-fronting, no inversion; other
fronting

Questions
4th stage
Where is the sun?
Is there a fish in the water?
Inversion in wh- + copula; yes/no questions with other
auxiliaries
5th stage
How do you say proche?
Whats the boy doing?
Inversion in wh-questions with both an auxiliary and a main
verb
6th Stage
Question tag: Its better, isnt it?
Negative question: Why cant you go?
Embedded question: Can you tell me what the date is today?

Questions: summary
1st Stage
Single words, formulae, or sentence fragments
2nd Stage
Declarative word order, no inversion, no fronting with rising intonation
3rd Stage
Fronting: do-fronting; wh-fronting, no inversion; other fronting
4th Stage
Inversion in wh- + copula; yes/no questions with other auxiliaries
5th Stage
Inversion in wh-questions with both an auxiliary and a main verb
6th Stage
Question tag, Negative question, Embedded question

Relative Clauses
Part of speech

Relative clause

Subject

The girl who was sick went home.

Direct object

The story that I read was long.

Indirect object

The man who[m] Susan gave the present to

was happy.

Object of preposition

I found the book that John was talking about.

Possessive

I know the woman whose father is visiting.

Object of comparison

The person that Susan is taller than is Mary.

Source: Lightbrown, Patsy M. and Nina Spada.
How Languages are Learned. 3rd ed. Oxford:
Oxford UP, 2006. 90.

More on the development of L2 morphology:

Concept-driven emergence of tense & aspect

3 Stage-wise strategies for time reference

(1) pragmatic > (2) lexical > (3) morphological

Basic form/meaning pairings earlier:

pres prog > simple past > pres perf > past perf

Morphology first used with matching verbs:

Aspect Hypothesis (Andersen & Shirai)
e.g. Durative ing with activities (walk)

What is the value of grammar

instruction? The question of the interface
No interface: Krashen, some UG
modularists (e.g. Schwartz)
Strong interface: skill learning theorists,
emergentists (e.g. N. Ellis, Robinson)
Weak interface: interactionists (e.g. Long)
Instruction works (Norris & Ortega, 2000)

Instruction, development, &

learner readiness
Teachability requires learner readiness
Word order stages most inviolable
Relative clauses may benefit from
instruction skipping stages
Grammatical morphemes unconstrained

Advantage of grammar instruction:

Accuracy & rate of learning (6.16)
Instructed learners consistently faster &
more accurate than uninstructed ones
Syntax
word order, relative clauses

Morphology
ed

The future of interlanguage? (6.17)

Teleological view of IL as development
toward a NL target is problematic
monolingual NS as yardstick of success
(Sridhar, Seidlhofer, Cook, Klein)
metaphor of developmental ladder, rather than
dynamic self-organizing system (LarsenFreeman)

WHAT-ABOUT-VOCABULARY?-

Vocabulary&size&and&growth&
How&many&words&are&there&in&English?&&
& & & & &54,000&word&families&
How&many&words&do&educated&naEve&speakers&know?&
& & & & &&17,000O20,000&
How&many&word&families&are&added&every&year?&&
& & & & &1,000&up&to&the&20,000&gure&
How&many&word&families&do&advanced&nonOnaEve&speakers&know?&&
& & & & &3,000O4,000&
What&percentage&of&words&do&you&need&to&know&to&be&able&to&
understand&a&text?&&
&Laufer&(1988)&suggests&that&95%&of&text&coverage&is&needed,&in&other&
words&you&may&not&know&one&in&every&25&words.&&

How&many&word&families&do&we&need&to&
understand&a&text?&
Researchers

1st 1,000
word fam.

2nd 1,000
word fam.

Total

Sutarsyah
(1993)

74.1 %

4,3%

78.4%

A long
economics
text

77.7

4.8

82.5

Hwang
(1989)
a range of
texts

77.2

4.9

82.1

Hirsh
(1992)
Short novels

84.8

5.8

90.6

University&Word&List&(UWL)/&Academic&Word&
List&(AWL)&

accompany,&comply,&decient,&edit,&feasible,&formulate,&
homogeneous,&idenEfy,&ignore,&major,&modify,&noEon,&
occur,&passive,&persist,&quote,&random...&
They&are&not&very&dicult&for&Spanish&speakers&because&
many&of&them&come&from&LaEn&or&Greek,&but&the&ones&
that&are&not&cognates&may&be&very&dicult.&

Coverage&of&UWL/AWL&
Researchers

Hwang (1989)
academic
texts
Sutarsyah(1993),
an economics text

1st 2,000
word
fam.

UWL

Total

78.1%

8.5%

86.6%

82.5

8.7

91.2

Other types of text

Newpapers

80.3

3.9

84.2

Popular
maganizes

82.9

4.0

86.9

Fiction

87.4

1.7

89.1

Test&your&level&
hSp://www.er.uqam.ca/nobel/r21270/levels/
index.html&&