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    brown book linguistic

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    © All Rights Reserved
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    13 views20 pages

    BROWN Principles of Language Learning CH 8

    Uploaded by

    Xiomara Chagalj
    brown book linguistic

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF or read online from Scribd
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    *Think of one of two languages you're familiar with or you've tried to learn. How do you feel about the people of the culture of that language? Any mixed feelings? * Look at item 4 on page 203 and write about an example of one or more of Hofstede’s categories in your own current of past experiences in lan guage classrooms, + Do you personally think the spread of English in the colonial era had imperialistic overtones? How can you as an English teacher in this new millennium avoid such cultural imperialism? * Make a list of words, phrases, or language rules in your foreign language that are good examples of the Whorfian hypothesis, Take two or three of those and write about whether or not you think the language itself shapes the way speakers of that language think or fee, CROSS EINGUISTG INFLUENCE AND LEARNER LANGUAGE Leanna intent of principe of sondage aa sition, our focus has been on the psychology of language learning. Psychological principles of second language acquisition form the found tion stones for building a comprehensive understanding of the acquisition of the linguistic system. In this chapter we will ake a different direction as ‘we begin to examine the most salient component of second language acquisition: the language itself. This treatment will rst consider, in histor. ‘cal progression, an era of preoccupation with studies of contrasts between the native language and the target language (contrastive analysis) and the cffect of native on target language (aow called “crosstinguistic influence"). ‘We will then see how the era of contrastive analysis gave way to an era of crror analysis, with its guiding concept of interlanguage, now also widely referred to as"learner language. Finally, questions about the effect of class- room instruction and error treatment will be addressed, with some prac- tical implications for the language teacher, ‘THE CONTRASTIVE ANALYSIS HYPOTHESIS In the middle of the twentieth century, one of the most popular pursuits for applied linguists was the study of two languages in contrast, Bventually the stockpile of comparative and contrasive data on a multitude of pairs of languages yielded what commonly came to be known as the Contrastive Analysis Hypothesis (CAH). Deeply rooted in the behaviorstic and struc. 207 208 cyurren Cross Linguistic infuence and Leamer Language ‘uralist approaches ofthe day, the CAH claimed thatthe principal barrier to second language acquisition isthe interference of the first language systema ‘with the second language system, and that a scientific, structural analysis of the two languages in question would yield 2 taxonomy of linguistic con. {rasts between them which in turn would enable the linguist to predict the difficulties a lesener would encounter. It was at that time considered feasible that the tools of structural in ‘uistics, uch as Tries’ (1952) slor filler grammar, would enable a linguist to accurately describe the two languages in question, and to match those two descriptions agninst each other to determine valid contrasts or differences, between them. Behaviorism contributed to the notion that human behavior is the sum of its smallest parts and components, and therefore that lan guage learning could be described as the acquisition ofall of those discrete ‘units. Moreover, human learning theories highlighted interfering elements of learning, concluding that where no interference could be predicted, no iffculty would be experienced since one could transfer positively all other items in a language. The logical conclusion from these various psy- chological and linguistic assumptions was that second language learning basically involved the overcoming of the differences between the two li guistic systems—the native and target languages. Intuitively the CAH has appeal in that we commonly observe in second language leamers a plethora of errors attributable to the negative transfer of the native language to the target language. It is quite common, for example, to detect certain foreign accents and to be able to infer, from the speech of the learner alone, where the leamer comes from. Native English speakers can easily identify the accents of English language learners from Germany, France, Spain, and Japan, for example.Such accents ‘can even be represented in the written word. Consider Mark Twain's The Innocents Abroad (1869: 111), in which the French-speaking guide intro- ‘duces himself: “If ze ahentlemans will me make ze grande honneur to me rattan in hees serveece, I shall show to him everysing zat is magnifique to look upon in ze beautiful Paree. I speaky ze Angleesh parfaitmaw’ Or William E, Callahan's Juan Castaniegos, a young Mexican in Afraid of the ‘Dark, who says: “Help me to leave from thees place. But, Seftor Capitin, me, ave do notheeng. Notheeng, Seftor Capitin.” These excerpts also capture the transfer of vocabulary and grammatical rules from the native language. Some rather strong claims were made of the CAH by language teaching experts and linguists. One of the strongest was made by Robert Lado (1957: vii in the preface to Linguistics Across Cultures; “The plan of the book rests on the assumption that we can predict and describe the pat tems that will cause lificulty in learning, and those that will not cause dif Ficulty,by comparing systematically the language and the culture to be nr Comtech te npage 209 leaned withthe nate langage and eure ofthe tet Then fist chapter ofthe book, Lao conincs"in the compas ee ‘ative and ign langue este key fo exe oe teds non fine Irving Tote cent wean fhe ee langage wl be sinple fr him and those ment tte con bedcu (gp 1-2 An ea sng cin was made y Earn and Waddle (1966: 37) “The chang that has to take pce inthe language bef fing stent cnet wie rns vec the suc ofthe senate ngage an ee sea of the target language and culture a Sach lis were sported by what some esearch ied 0 be an enptal method of predtonA weldnoyn mall wis fete Stociel Bowen, and Narn (195 who posted wha keyed Neg archy of diffe byw each orgs cold nes pedir ofthe relive cul ofa gen aspect of he aetna Bs pons log! systems in cones Sokal ad his ssc spend eh posite degre filet. These depts mere asl up tients OF tans (Posie, aca, and 20) and of option sa elie choces of ein pone inthe wo ngage const Ted ver cael seat aahs ofthe proper ofthe two ln reference othe herrhy of cy ppd tiguss wer seo dene 2 reasonably acute inventory of phonology at seco langage etme woud encounter Stockwel andi sos a conse irey of difialy foc gamma seocures of wo anges in conta The patel hierar indude seen levels of tel, based on te sane noon used to eonsret phono eei, with te ded mesos of “sructual conespontence” and incona/Semante cmeoadens” Cio Por C967 extre the esece ots gated es in x categories of dic, Priors Nerachy wes spe te ou grammatical and phonological ses of ngage The at eerie: ‘enting ontr of cle ited below Mow ofthe Sales ne taken fom Eels and Spanish (a ate nls pater eng pens asa second Language examples het ther palo Cotes Innes Level 0 — Transfer, No diference or conteastis present between the ‘wo languages.The learner can simply tansfer(postvely) a Sound, structure, or lexical item from the native language to the target language. Examples: English and Spanish cardinal vowels, ‘word order, and certain words (mortal, inteligente, arte, ameri- canos). Level 1 —Coalescence. Two items in the native language Become cox Jesced into essentially one item inthe target language. This requires that learners overtook a distinction they have grown accustomed to, Examples: English third person possesses require ‘ender distinction (bis/ber), and in Spanish they do not (s);an English speaker learning Trench must overlook the dictinetion between feach and learn, and use just the one word apprendre in French, Level 2 — Underdifferentistion. An item in the native language is absent in the target language. The learner must avoid that item, ‘Examples: English learners of Spanish must “forget such items 25 English do as a tense carter, possessive forms of wh- words G@vbose), or the use of some with mass nouns. Level 3 — Reinterpretation. An item that exists in the native language 's given a new shape or distribution, Example:an English speaker learning French must learn a new distribution for nasaized vowels Level 4 — Overdifferentiation. A new item entirely, beating litle if ny similarity to the native language item, must be learned, ‘Example:an English speaker learning Spanish must leaca 0 include determiners in generalized nominals (Manis morta/ET bombre es mortal), or, most commonly, to leara Spanish grammat ‘cal gender inherent in nouas. Level 5 — Split. One item in the native language becomes two or more fn the target language, requiring the learner to make anew dis- tinction, Example: an English speaker learning Spanish must earn the distinction between ser and estar (tobe), or the distinction Deoween Spanish indicative and subjunctive moods. Prato’ reinterpretation, and Soc and his soca orga er arch offic were tased om principles of human ering The ror “ver dere of diel epesns complete one-one coespondence and easter whe the ith dere of dificult was he bight of eer cace, Ptr and Stockwell both med tht thir here ca be applied to viral any two languages and make i possible pede cond nue are ifs in any langage wha he epee of cenit an object. rerio amram a rr eaguye 244 FROM THE CAH TO CLI (CROSS-LINGUISTIC INFLUENCE) Prediction of difficulty by means of contrastive procedures was not ‘without glaring shortcomings. For one thing, the process was aversimpli fied. Subtle phonetic, phonological, and grammatical distinctions were not ‘carefully accounted for Second, it was very difficult, even with six cate- sories, to determine exxetiy which category a particular contrat fit into. For example, when a Japanese speaker learns the English /r, is ita case of ‘level 0, 1,0r 3 difficulty? A case can be made forall three. The third and ‘most problematic issue centered on the larger question of whether or not ‘predictions of difficuly levels were actualy verifiable. ‘The attempt to predict dificlty by means of contrastive analysis is ‘what Ronald Wardhaugh (1970) called the strong Version of the CAH, « version that he believed was quite unrealistic and impracticable. \Wardhaugh noted (p. 125) that “atthe very leas, this version demands of linguists that they have available a set of linguistic universal forrmulated within a compechensive linguistic theory which deals adequately with syntax, semantics, and phonology” He went on to point out the difficulty (p-126), already noted, of an adequate procedure, built on sound theory,for actually contrasting the forms of languages:"Do linguists have available to them an overall contrastive system within which they can relate the two Fanguages in terms of mergers, splits, zeroes, overdifferentiations, under Jifferentiations, reinterpretations?” And so, while many linguists claimed to be using @ scientific, empirical, and theoretically justified toot in con- ‘rastive analysis in actuality they were operating mote out of mentalistic subjectivity ‘Wardhaugh noted, however (p. 126), that contrastive analysis had int itive appeal and that teachers and linguists had successfully used “the best linguistic knowledge available. .. in order to account for observed diff: culties in second language learning" He termed such observational use of ‘conteastive analysis the Weak version of the CAH. The weak version does ‘not imply the @ priori prediction of certain degrees of dificulty It recog: izes the significance of interference across languages, the fact that such interference does exist and can explzin difficulties, but it also recognizes that linguistic difficulties can be more profitably explained a posteriori— after the fact. As learners are leaming the language and errors appeas, teachers can utilize their knowledge of the target and native languages (0 understand sources of error The socalled weak version of the CAH is what remains today under the label cross-linguistic influence (CLD, suggesting that we all recog: nize the significant ole that prior experience plays in any learning act, and m ouwree 8 Crss-ingitic Invence and Lezmer Language that the influence of the native language as priot experience must not be overlooked. The difference between today’s emphasis on influence, rather than prediction, is an important one. Aside from phonology which remains the most reliahte fingnistic eategory for predicting learner performance, as illustrated at the beginning of the chapter, other aspects of language present more of a gamble, Syntactic, lexical, and semantic interference show far more variation among learners than psychomotor based pron ciation interference. Even presumably simple grammatical categories like ‘word order, tense, of aspect have been shown to contain a good deal of variation. For example, one might expect « French speaker who is begin ning to fearn English to say am in New York since January"; however, to predict such an utterance from every French learner of English i to go too fat The most convincing exely criticism ofthe strong version of the CAH swas offered by Whitman and Jackson (1972), who undertook to test empir: ically the effectiveness of coatrastive analysis as a tool for predicting areas of difficulty for Japanese learners of English. The predictions of four sepa: rate contrastive analysis rubrics (including that of Stockwell, Bowen, & “Martin 1965) were applied toa forcyitem test of English grammar to deter: ‘mine, a priori, the retaive difficulty of the test tems for speakers of Japanese. The test was administered to 2500 Japanese learners of English ‘who did not know the relative predicted difficulty of each item. The results of the test were compared with the predictions. The result; Whitman and ‘Jackson found no support for the predictions ofthe contrastive analyses 0 ‘carefully worked out by linguistst They concluded (p. 40) that “contrastive analysis, a8 represented by the four analyses tested in this project, is inade quate, theoretically and practically, to predict the interference problems of a language learner? “Another blow to the strong version of the CAH was delivered by Oller and Ziahosseiny (1970), who proposed what one might calla “subtle it ferences" version of the CAH on the basis of a rather intriguing study of spelling errors. They found that for leamers of Fnglish as a second lan ‘guage, English spelling proved to be more difficult for people whose native language used a Roman script (or example, French, Spanish) than for those whose native language used 2 non-Roman script (Arabic, Japanese). The strong form of the CAH would have predicted that the learning of an entirely new writing system (Level 4 in the hierarchy of difficulty) would be more dificult than reinterpreting (Level 3) spelling rules. Oller and Ziahosseiny (p. 186) found the opposite to be truc, concluding that “wher ‘ever pattems are minimally distinct in form or meaning ia one or more sj ‘tems, confusion may result” “The learning of sounds, sequences, and meanings will, according to Oller and Ziahosseiny’s study, be potentially very dificult where subtle dis Cure & Cosine dene lrgage 213 Snctons ae rege ether betwen the tet language and sae an sug or within the target langage isl Inthe cae of the reba speling Elser were more dfeencesbeveen non Roan way znd Roman wen, Bu lesen anon Roman tig ye Pat take fewer sue dations than

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