bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
SYNTACTIC CONTRASTS IN CHILD BILINGUALISM1
Authors: Kessler Carolyn
Published: October 2006

Contrasts in the simultaneous acquisition of two languages in bilingual children support the theory that languages share deep structures and that differences derive from language‐specific rules.

Twelve bilingual children, age 6 to 8, participated in a study of the sequencing and rate of acquisitions for late‐developing syntactic structures. Comprehension tests examined linguistic competence over a wide range of structures. A statistical analysis provided the basis for interpreting the general pattern of acquisitions; case grammar gave the framework for the linguistic analysis.

Empirical evidence points to a parallelism in the acquisition of shared structures. Differences reflect language contrasts. If one assumes that first and second‐language learning are qualitatively the same processes, the sequential order in which the bilingual child acquires the structures of his two languages may have significance for the adult learner of English and for the development of TESOL materials.
BLACK HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS’ REACTIONS TO BLACK SPEAKERS OF STANDARD AND BLACK ENGLISH
Authors: Hensley Anne
Published: October 2006

The “Matched Guise” technique was used to measure reactions of 120 black high school students towards taped voices of black persons when they speak Standard English (SE) and when they speak Black English (NNE). Subjects, speakers of NNE, listened to taped voices of bidialectal speakers, the two dialects of each speaker maximally separated on the tapes. Voices were rated on a semantic differential scale for 14 traits obtained from equivalent Ss. Subjects revealed an overwhelming preference for the SE guise. Interactions of dialect with speaker sex and student sex are discussed. Three explanations considered are: a) influence of school test context, b) adequacy of traits, and c) that Ss may, indeed, accept values of the dominant culture regarding language standardization.
LATERALIZATION, LANGUAGE LEARNING, AND THE CRITICAL PERIOD: SOME NEW EVIDENCE
Authors: Krashen Stephen D.
Published: October 2006

New evidence is presented that modifies Lenneberg's (1967) proposed critical period of language acquisition. The development of lateralization is complete much earlier than puberty and is thus not a barrier to accent free second language learning by adults. Rather, the development of lateralization may correspond to normal first language acquisition. Also, the case of Genie, a girl who endured 11 years of enforced isolation, shows that some first language acquisition is possible after the critical period, although mechanisms outside of the left hemisphere may be involved. Genie's slow but steady progress also implies that adult achievement in learning second languages should not be pre‐judged.
A NOTE ON THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN ENGLISH PROFICIENCY, YEARS OF LANGUAGE STUDY AND MEDIUM OF INSTRUCTION
Authors: Saegert Joel , Scott Sue , Perkins John , Tucker G. Richard
Published: October 2006

The purpose of this investigation was to examine the relationship between measured English‐language proficiency, years of English‐language study and the use of English as a medium of instruction for samples of Arabic‐speaking Egyptian and Lebanese university students. The results of multivariate regression analyses indicated no systematic relationship between years of EFL study and English proficiency. A better overall predictor of proficiency was whether the students had received any instruction via a foreign language. We emphasize the need to begin a more systematic search for factors related to increases in English‐language proficiency at various stages of study under diverse circumstances.
ZOMBIES AND OTHER PROBLEMS: THEORY AND METHOD IN RESEARCH ON BILINGUALISM1
Authors: Johnson Nancy Ainsworth
Published: October 2006

After a brief consideration of two perennial theories that have influenced research on bilingualism in American schools, this paper focuses on recent research using the Berko method to study acquisition of the English plural by Spanish‐English bilinguals in grades 1 through 10, in San Antonio, Texas. Method and theory in two highly similar studies (Natalicio 1969, and Johnson 1973) are contrasted in detail in an attempt to explain the differences between the two studies' conclusions. Of special interest in the Johnson study are the differing statistical validities found in the same data evaluated by differing criteria, and the elicitation of some data that suggests that the Berko test is measuring a type of linguistic ability other than what it is often assumed to measure.
SIMPLIFICATION: A STRATEGY IN THE ADULT ACQUISITION OF A FOREIGN LANGUAGE: AN EXAMPLE FROM INDONESIAN/MALAY1
Authors: Richards Jack C.
Published: October 2006

We think of language acquisition as a process in which the child arrives at adult grammar gradually by attempting to match to the speech it hears a succession of hypotheses of an increasing order of complexity …as these increasingly complex hypotheses become available to the child through maturational change. For phonology this was clearly shown by Jacobson's spectacular discovery that the child learns phonemes in a largely fixed order, which is determined not externally by the order or frequencies with which they are heard, but internally by their relative linguistic complexity, as reflected also in the rules governing the possible phonemic systems of the languages of the world.
THE INTERLANGUAGE HYPOTHESIS EXTENDED TO CHILDREN1
Authors: Selinker Larry , Swain Merrill , Dumas Guy
Published: October 2006

The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate that the Interlanguage (IL) hypothesis should be extended from (1)adult second‐language acquisition settings to (2) those non‐simultaneous child language acquisition settings where the major sociolinguistic variables is the absence of peers who are native speakers of the target language (TL). The paper first establishes the need to postulate the existence of an IL. Next, data from a Toronto French immersion program are presented which suggest that, as in adult second‐language speech, the strategies of language transfer, simplification, and overgeneralization of TL rules affect the surface forms of the second‐language speech of children in this program. Finally, the possibility is mentioned that, under the sociolinguistic conditions of (2) above, ILs will develop as dialects in their own right, an important possibility for theories of pidginization and creolization, as well as for general theories of language change.
THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN AGE AND SECOND LANGUAGE PRODUCTIVE ABILITY
Authors: Fathman Ann
Published: October 2006

This study examines the relationship between certain aspects of the second language acquisition process and age. An oral production test was developed to assess the ability of nonnative English speaking children to produce standard English morphology and syntax. The test was administered to approximately 200 children (ages 6–15) who were learning English as a second language in American public schools. The results of this testing were used to examine the relationship between age and 1) the rate of acquisition of certain English grammatical structures and 2) the order of acquisition of these grammatical structures.

The results indicated that there was some relationship between age and rate of learning. Among children exposed to English the same amounts of time, the older children scored higher on the morphology and syntax subtests, whereas the younger children received higher ratings in phonology. There were, however, no major differences observed in the order in which children of different ages learned to produce the structures included in the test. These results suggest that there is a difference in the rate of learning of English morphology, syntax and phonology based upon differences in age, but that the order of acquisition in second language learning does not change with age.
TOWARD ASSESSING INTERLANGUAGE PERFORMANCE: THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN SELECTED ERRORS, LEARNERS' CHARACTERISTICS, AND LEARNERS' EXPLANATIONS
Authors: Cohen Andrew D. , Robbins Margaret
Published: October 2006

This study dealt empirically with certain aspects of second language learning among three university students, who all had a relative degree of proficiency in Mandarin and who were in an advanced English‐as‐a‐second‐language class at UCLA. An error analysis of written verb forms was undertaken with two purposes in mind: first, to determine the short‐term effects of teacher correction procedures on the eradication of errors and second, to relate interlanguage background (past language experiences, current language environment, and language learning strategies) and learners' explanation of errors to the errors themselves. A close look at the effects of correction in written work revealed that correction was neither systematic nor enlightened enough to actually influence the production of errors. Although broad in scope and in some ways rudimentary, the gathering of interlanguage background information and error explanations from the learners provided useful insights concerning the production of errors and what these errors tell us about interlanguage.
THE EMERGENCE OF SENTENCE MODALITIES IN THE ENGLISH OF JAPANESE‐SPEAKING CHILDREN
Authors: Gillis Mary , Weber Rose‐Marie
Published: October 2006

An investigation is made of the validity of the hypothesis that second‐language learning in school‐age children follows the same development as first language acquisition, specifically with respect to negatives, interrogatives, and imperatives. The English of two Japanese boys acquiring English in a natural setting was observed over a five‐month period. The analysis and comparison of their language to first language acquisition data (especially Klima and Bellugi 1966) showed a striking basic similarity between first and second language learners. There was no clear evidence of transfer from the children's mother tongue.
THE PSYCHOLINGUISTIC UNITY OF LANGUAGE LEARNING AND LANGUAGE CHANGE
Authors: Dickerson Wayne B.
Published: October 2006

Recent research interest in the performance of second language learners has neglected the area of phonology learning. This report on a longitudinal study shows the viability of using a sociolinguistic model of sound change for studying the process of learning a target language sound system. The model calls for a variability analysis of the phonetic diversity in the learner's speech. The example analysis shows that learners systematically alter their phonetic output in the direction of a particular target. Significantly, second language learners use the same mechanism found to be operative in native language speakers as they participate in the ongoing linguistic change of their speech community. This finding reveals the psycholinguistic unity of the general process of effecting change in phonological systems. Motivations are provided (1) for regarding the learner's performance as the product of a unique language system and (2) for regarding the system as consisting of variable rules. An example of such a rule is given in detail.
READING PERFORMANCE OF BILINGUAL CHILDREN ACCORDING TO TYPE OF SCHOOL AND HOME LANGUAGE1
Authors: Cowan J Ronayne , Sarmad Zohreh
Published: October 2006

This study examined bilingual children's performance in reading Persian and English at grades one, three and six. Two types of programs, one an immersion curriculum, and the other a split curriculum, where half the daily instruction was in one language and the remaining half was in the other, were compared with monolingual control schools. The results showed the bilingual children performing not quite as well as either of their monolingual peer groups, although the difference was more striking for Persian than English. A parallel processing theory of reading for bilinguals is proposed to account for the overall trend.
PHONOLOGICAL ENCODING OF CHINESE IDEOGRAPHS IN SHORT‐TERM MEMORY1
Authors: Chu‐Chang Mae , Loritz Donald J.
Published: October 2006

Three main issues relating to the question of silent speech in reading are addressed: 1) How do Chinese speakers process Chinese ideographs in short‐term memory? 2) How is Chinese students' learning of written English affected by the transition to an alphabetic language? 3) Are the strategies for encoding written words in short‐term memory different for students of diverse language background? Chinese and Spanish bilingual students were tested for short‐term memory encoding strategies on word‐recognition tests. Chinese speakers were found to encode Chinese ideographs phonologically, but both Chinese and Spanish learners of English were found to encode English words visually. Implications for the acquisition of reading are discussed in terms of a two‐stage model.
IMPROVEMENT OF FOREIGN LANGUAGE PRONUNCIATION UNDER HYPNOSIS: A PRELIMINARY STUDY
Authors: Schumann John H. , Holroyd Jean , Campbell Russell N. , Ward Frederick A.
Published: October 2006

This paper reports an experiment which was designed to determine whether foreign language pronunciation could be improved through hypnosis. Twenty subjects were first given the Harvard Group Scale of Hypnotizability to familiarize them with the state of hypnosis. In the second session each subject was individually tested on his/her ability to pronounce Thai words under three conditions: Baseline, Hypnosis, and Post‐Hypnosis. For each experimental condition the subjects heard and repeated the stimulus items on one of three lists of 15 Thai words. The subjects' responses were later evaluated by a native Thai linguist. The results indicate that deeply hypnotized subjects (as defined by self‐reported depth) performed significantly better than less well hypnotized subjects.
A POETICS OF SECOND‐LANGUAGE ACQUISITION1
Authors: Ochsner Robert
Published: October 2006

Today there are many approaches to the study of second‐language acquisition (SLA), but the variety is superficial and misleading, for it disguises an underlying research ideal the controlled experiment. We can, in other words, scientifically “know” facts about SLA only after a controlled experiment replicates and cross validates, these facts. This ideal method is part of the nomothetic tradition of science, tradition which subordinates and ultimately excludes a hermeneutic mode of inquiry. But these two approaches to science need not conflict.

For our SLA research I propose this change: that we alternate between two equal kinds of research. A poetics of SLA teaches us that the thing observed—language—is also the motive inferred—why we speak. Where a nomothetic experimental method gets at the language object, another equally good method of research, a hermeneutic diary study for example, reveals the biases of our work. We should promote in our SLA research this “bilingual attitude.”
EXPLICIT AND IMPLICIT JUDGEMENTS OF L2 GRAMMATICALITY
Authors: Bialystok Ellen
Published: October 2006

The present study examines the differential use of formal explicit knowledge and intuitive implicit knowledge in a second‐language grammatically judgement task. The hypothesis is that a set of conditions can be established which serve to identify the occasions in which each of these specialized types of knowledge will be used. These conditions are described as task‐related factors (amount of detail required, response time allotted, specific structure tested) and learner‐related factors (level of study in the L2, knowledge of other languages).

The subjects for the study were 317 English‐speaking high school students and adults learning. French as a second language French sentences were presented on tape and decisions about the grammatically of each were recorded by subjects on coding sheets.

The results indicated that explicit knowledge intervenes for incorrect sentences requiring detailed responses and that knowledge of another language is beneficial for certain conditions. These findings lead to a discussion of the relationship between implicit and explicit linguistic knowledge in second language proficiency.
READING IN SPANISH AND ENGLISH: EVIDENCE FROM ADULT ESL STUDENTS
Authors: Clarke Mark A.
Published: October 2006

The research discussed here attempted to determine if (a) pycholing‐uistics could explain the reading behaviors of adult Spanish speakers reading in Spanish and in English, and (b) if theme readers transferred their skills to English. The results of two studies are presented. In the first study, twenty‐one adult Spanish‐speaking ESL students took cloze tests in Spanish and in English. In the second study, the Spanish and English reading performances of a good L1 reader and a poor L1 reader were analyzed according to established oral miscue procedures. The results of these studies confirm the psycholinguistic perspective of reading for Spanish speakers reading in Spanish. However, it appears that language competence exerta a powerful effect on the reader, thereby reducing the good reader's advantage over the poor reader when their performances in English are compared. It is concluded that a language competence ceiling effectively prohibits the complete transfer of L1 reading skills to the second language. It is suggested that limited command of the language produces a “short circuit” effect on good readers, forcing them to revert to “poor reader strategies.” Theoretical, pedagogical and methodological implications are discussed.
THE ACQUISITION OF COMPLEX ENGLISH STRUCTURES BY ADULT NATIVE SPEAKERS OF ARABIC AND HEBREW
Authors: Cooper Robert L. , Olshtain Elite , Tucker G. Richard , Waterbury Marianne
Published: October 2006

This investigation examined the acquisition of five complex English syntactic structures by Egyptian and Israeli adult learners at different levels of proficiency. Carol Chomsky's methodology, as adapted by d'anglejan and Tucker, served to assess comprehension of these structures. The responses of the Egyptians and Israelis, which were similar to one another as well as to those of the French Canadians previously studied by d'anglejan and Tucker, suggest that first and second language learners of English encounter some of the same difficulties. Their responses also suggest that the creative construction hypothesis can be applied to second as well as to first language acquisition.
THE EFFECTS OF LABELING AND PERCEPTUAL TRAINING ON PERCEPTION AND DISCRIMINATION LEARNING IN YOUNG CHILDREN1
Authors: Sagi Abraham
Published: October 2006

Ninety‐six seven‐ and nine‐year‐olds were tested under four experimental conditions. A “distinctive label” group associated four different gender‐cued labels with four infants’ faces. An “equivalent label” group associated only two of these labels. There were also two no‐label groups: “differential perception” and “perception”. In the former, perceptual cues were provided; no cues were provided in the latter. The main measures were perception and discrimination learning tests. Nine‐year‐olds were not affected by the labels, seven‐year‐olds were, but more significantly during initial trials. A proposed explanation is that perception is affected by labels, perceptual learning and selective attention. These effects are determined developmentally. That is, as age increases the effects of verbal cues diminish and those of perceptual cues increase. The findings are related to cross‐cultural data, indicating that Israeli toddlers classify according to gender earlier than their American counterparts. This is probably because Hebrew more than English contains distinctive linguistic cues related to gender.
LANGUAGE TRANSFER AND UNIVERSAL GRAMMATICAL RELATIONS
Authors: Gas Susan
Published: October 2006

It is generally accepted by both theoreticians and language teachers that when attempting to communicate in a second language, learners often “transfer” elements of their native language onto the speech patterns of the target language. Despite the wide recognition of this phenomenon and the important role it has had in language learning and pedagogical search, true nature has not been adequately established. In owner to better determine the nature of language transfer, a study investigating the acquisition of relative clauses by adult second language learners was conducted. The purposes of this study were to determine what language transfer consists of, what language phenomena are and are not transferred, what constitutes evidence for the existence of transfer and what the role in language transfer of language universals is. It was found that an adequate description of language transfer cannot be given without a consideration of target language facts and language universals. On the basis of these results a model of language transfer is proposed that predicts under which conditions transfer is most likely to occur. The model suggested herein includes notions of language universals, language distance and surface language phenomena.
STRATEGIES, LANGUAGE TRANSFER AND THE SIMULATION OF THE SECOND LANGUAGE LEARNER'S MENTAL OPERATIONS1
Authors: Smith Mike Sharwood
Published: October 2006

The focus of this paper is on language transfer and a particular method of investigating it. Attempts to analyze the decision procedures underlying a learner's (or second language user's) attempts to structure utterances in a given target language in the light of some recent hypotheses about transfer should highlight the importance of the phenomenon and emphasise the dubiousness of a fairly standard view of transfer as a relatively simple mechanical procedure which the learner falls back on when more‘creative’ strategies fail.
BISYLLABIC LAXING RULE: VOWEL PREDICTION IN LINGUISTICS AND LANGUAGE LEARNING
Authors: Dickerson Wayne B.
Published: October 2006

Research to help learners of English use spelling clues to predict the vowel and consonant sounds as well as the stress of words has revealed a rule simplification which has practical and theoretical implications. This paper shows that the well‐known Trisyllabic Laxing Rule is a subcase of a much simpler and more general vowel quality rule, the Bisyllabic Laxing Rule. On the practical side, the Bisyllabic Laxing Rule gives ESL students a way to predict vowel qualities which heretofore they could only guess at. On the theoretical side, the rule (and others like it) challenges the conventional representation of underlying vowels and the use of vowel alternation rules in the generative description of English phonology.
TIME AND TIMING IN BILINGUAL EDUCATION
Authors: Swain Merrill
Published: October 2006

This paper questions the assumption that the relationship between time spent studying in a second language and second language proficiency is highly related for those aspects of language related to cognitive and academic functioning. The implications of this questioning are explored as they relate to the time devoted to instruction in the second language and the timing of the introduction of the languages of instruction in bilingual education for minority and majority language groups.
DO MORPHEMES MATURE? THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN COGNITIVE MATURATION AND LINGUISTIC DEVELOPMENT IN CHILDREN AND ADULTS1
Authors: Heilenman Laura K.
Published: October 2006

In order to clarify the relationship between cognitive development and linguistic development, French language comprehension tests originally administered to children learning French as a second language (Tremaine 1975) were given to intermediate‐level university students of French as a foreign language. Although there were similarities between the two groups' performances, the general finding was that a certain level of cognitive maturation was related to successful performance on items involving semantic‐syntactic relationships. Items involving inflectional/morphological distinctions, however, did not follow this pattern, and it is suggested that the acquisition of morphology may be more a function of specificexperience with a language than of level of cognitive maturity.
ELICITATION OF INTER‐ENGLISH1
Authors: Singh Rajendra , d'Anglejan Alison , Carroll Susanne
Published: October 2006

This paper advances and argues for the claim that the nature and structure of interlanguage cannot be properly understood without reference to the intuitions that language learners have about the grammaticality of their own production. We show that interlanguage speakers do not necessarily accept structures they commonly produce and argue that any reasonable account of interlanguage must reflect the difference between acceptable and unacceptable interlanguage structures in a principled way. We also show that some of the deviance found in interlanguage can and must be correlated with the variability inherent in the native (LI) system, and introduce a simple mechanism to reflect this correlation. Empirical evidence for our claims is furnished from three different data bases: the inter‐English of native speakers of (1) Hindi, (2) Tagalog, and (3) Quebecois French.
THE SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY OF SECOND LANGUAGE LEARNING: ANOTHER POINT OF VIEW1
Authors: Genesee Fred , Rogers Pierre , Holobow Naomi
Published: October 2006

The present research tested the hypothesis that predictions concerning second language (SL) achievement and use would be improved by considering the motivational support the learner expects from the target language group (TL) in addition to considering the learner's own motivations for learning the language. The hypothesis was tested by asking adolescent English‐speaking Canadian students why they were learning French as a second language and why French‐speaking Canadians wanted them to learn French. Regression analyses were used to examine the relationships between the motivational predictors and the respondents' SL proficiency and use. In support of the hypothesis, it was found that the respondents' expectations of motivational support from the TL group emerged as significant and in some cases unique predictors of SL performance. It is concluded that social psychological models of SL learning need to consider the role of intergroup factors more seriously.
RESEARCH ON METALINGUISTIC JUDGMENTS: A REVIEW OF THEORY, METHODS, AND RESULTS
Authors: Chraudron Craig
Published: October 2006

Studies employing or investigating the metalinguistic judgments of native and nonnative speakers are reviewed. Their results and methodologies are compared in an attempt to stimulate reliable and informative applications of such judgments in future research. It is found that, given appropriate controls and validation procedures, metalinguistic judgments can play a useful role in language acquisition studies.
SANDHI‐VARIATION: A FILTER OF INPUT FOR LEARNERS OF ESL
Authors: Henrichsen Lynn E.
Published: October 2006

When considering the process of second language acquisition, it is useful and important to distinguish between input and intake since, due to various factors, language learners do not take in all the language they are exposed to. Perceptual saliency—a formal characteristic of the input—is believed to be one of these factors.

This experiment was conducted to determine how the presence of sandhi‐variation, a common characteristic of spoken English which reduces the perceptual saliency of many of its features, affects the comprehensibility of English input. Assuming that comprehension is dependent not only on signal clarity but also on cognitive factors, it was hypothesized that the presence of sandhi‐variation in the input would reduce comprehension less when listeners were proficient in English than when they were learning the language.

The results support this hypothesis and lead to the conclusion that for those whose knowledge of English is sufficient to compensate for reduced perceptual saliency. sandhi‐variation affects the input‐to‐intake process very little. For ESL learners, however, sandhi‐variation is an important input‐intake filter.

These findings are discussed in connection with the input hypothesis of second language acquisition. Implications include the possible benefits of modified input and formal instruction for ESL learners.
DESCRIPTION AND EXPLANATION IN INTERLANGUAGE SYNTAX: STATE OF THE ART
Authors: Rutherford William E.
Published: October 2006

The general theme chosen for this approach to interlanguage (IL) syntax "state of the art" is the presumed goal of all IL syntacticians: to find consistency and pattern in syntactic variation. There are two overlapping subsidiary themes as well: those of describing the systematicity in IL syntax and of explaining it.

Themes contributing to descriptive approaches include the transition from morphosyntax acquisition studies to those of more complex syntax, the emergence of syntax from discourse, explicitness, the investigation of language "process" as well as language product, and the serious consideration of "simplicity." Themes contributing to explanatory approaches include general frameworks such as language universals, language typology, core grammar, and markedness.

The paper concludes with suggestions and predictions as to the directions in which continuing research on IL syntax might lead.
GRAMMATICAL ERRORS AS A FUNCTION OF PROCESSING CONSTRAINTS AND EXPLICIT KNOWLEDGE
Authors: Hulstijn Jan H. , Hulstijn Wouter
Published: October 2006

The first question of this study deals with the influence of the factors Time Pressure (present or absent) and Focus of Attention (on information or on grammar) on the correct use of two Dutch word‐order rules in the speech of 32 adult learners of that language. In an experimental repeated measures design using a story retelling task. Attention had a significant effect, but Time did not. The second question deals with the relation between explicitness of rule knowledge, assessed in an interview, and rule application, elicited in the experiment. Although the learners without explicit knowledge of the two word‐order rules made more errors in the story retelling task than learners with explicit knowledge, they were influenced by Time and Attention to the same extent as the learners with explicit knowledge.

The results of this study are discussed in terms of Krashen's Monitor Theory and in terms of an information‐processing approach that distinguishes executive control from metacognitive knowledge.
THE EFFECT OF FAMILIARITY ON THE COMPREHENSIBILITY OF NONNATIVE SPEECH
Authors: Gass Susan , Varonis Evangeline Marlos
Published: October 2006

This study reports on data collected to investigate the effect of various types of familiarity on native speaker comprehension of nonnative speaker speech. We discuss the effects of familiarity with topic, familiarity with nonnative speech in general, familiarity with a nonnative accent in particular, and familiarity with a particular nonnative. Our results indicate that while the most important of these variables is familiarity with topic, the other variables all have a facilitating effect on comprehension. We discuss these findings as they relate to more general notions of comprehensibility.

We also say of some people that they are transparent to us. It is, however, important as regards this observation that one human being can be a complete enigma to another. We learn this when we come into a strange country with entirely strange traditions; and, what is more, even given a mastery of the country's language. We do not understand the people. If a lion could talk, we could not understand him.

—Ludwig Wittgenstein
SOCIAL FACTORS IN SECOND LANGUAGE ATTRITION1
Authors: Gardner R. C. , Lalonde R. N. , MacPherson J.
Published: October 2006

A retrospective design was used to study the effects of attitudes, motivation and reported language use on second language attrition. Students who had been registered in an intensive six‐week course in French in the province of Quebec were mailed questionnaires which asked them to rate their perceived second language skills upon completion of the course as well as their present skill levels (six months later). Attitudinal/motivational variables were also assessed, along with measures of second language use during the six month period. Results, based on a sample of 79 students, indicated attrition on the medium‐level language skills of speaking and understanding. No attrition was evidenced for reading skills. A factor analysis revealed that subjects residing in areas where French was available spent more time using their second language skills. Analyses of variance demonstrated a loss of speaking and understanding skills as a function of attitudes as students with less favourable attitudes and motivation evidenced significant language loss on these skills. In terms of language use, a significant loss was found in speaking skills for the low use group but not the high use group. Contrary to expectations, language use was found to be independent of attitudes. Issues are raised for researchers interested in the unexplored area of second language attrition.
DATIVE ALTERNATION AND THE ANALYSIS OF DATA: A REPLY TO MAZURKEWICH1
Authors: Kellerman Eric
Published: October 2006

This paper is a commentary on Mazurkewich's article on dative alternation and second language acquisition (1984). It suggests that there are a number of weaknesses in the article as regards (a) examples purporting to illustrate the workings of dative alternation, (b) choice of subjects in the experiment and the elicitation format used, and, most importantly, (c) the presentation and statistical treatment of the data. These weaknesses, it is argued, do not permit Mazurkewich to claim that her theory of markedness will also predict which dative structure ([NP PP] or [NP NP]) will be easier to acquire by second language learners.
MEMORY FOR FRENCH NEGATION BY STUDENTS OF FRENCH
Authors: Cividanes Carmen J. , Valian Virginia
Published: October 2006

High school and college students of French recalled French sentences which varied two types of negation. Half the sentences used affirmative syntax and half negative syntax (ne… pas); half used positive verbs (e.g., manger); and half used negative verbs (e.g., oublier). One to two weeks later students performed the same task with English translations. In French, sentences with affirmative syntax and positive verbs were remembered best; either form of negation depressed performance. In English, only verb negation depressed performance. In French, students sometimes inserted ne into affirmative sentences and omitted pas from negative sentences, an error a native speaker would not make. Amount of prior education in French affected how much students remembered but did not differentially affect the influence of syntactic and verb negation. The results suggest that there is an interaction during learning between the foreign language learner's native language and foreign language. Two suggestions about teaching syntactic negation in French are offered.
MUSIC AND MEMORY: PREDICTORS FOR ATTAINED ESL ORAL PROFICIENCY
Authors: Brutten Sheila R. , Angelis Paul J. , Perkins Kyle
Published: October 2006

This article presents the results of an empirical concurrent validation study in which measures of musical ability (pitch, loudness, and rhythm), auditory discrimination, and memory were used to account for variance in attained ESL oral proficiency. Memory was a significant, though tenuous, predictor of variance in the dependent variable. In addition, significant differences were noted for the different language groups and for the different tests. The article concludes with a proposed research program to determine whether training in musical abilities might be a profitable adjunct to ESL instruction.
INVESTIGATING ASPECTS OF THE LANGUAGE LEARNER'S CONFIDENCE: AN APPLICATION OF THE THEORY OF SIGNAL DETECTION
Authors: Yule George , Yanz Jerry L. , Tsuda Atsuko
Published: October 2006

In this study of the performance of a group of adult Japanese ESI learners on a listening test, an attempt is made to discover the relationship between correctness in answering and accuracy in judging the correctness incorrectness of answers chosen. Each time the learners chose an answer, they had to indicate on a 5‐point scale how confident they were of the correctness of the answer. While average ratings for correct answers were higher than for wrong answers, two other patterns of “nonconfident correct answering” and “very confident wrong answering” were found. In order to investigate these phenomena in terms of the individual learner's performance, some analytic procedures from the Theory of Signal Detection were applied. An explanation and exemplification of those procedures are presented. The results show that there can be substantial differences in individual performances, despite identical test scores. These differences in terms of self‐monitoring ability and confidence arc demonstrated and discussed. The study shows that the analytic procedures described can yield a number of important insights into learner performance and that the assumption of a straightforward relationship between accuracy and confidence in answering test items is mistaken.
THE ROLE OF CORE GRAMMAR IN PIDGIN DEVELOPMENT
Authors: Macedo Donaldo P.
Published: October 2006

Traditionally, researchers in the field of pidgin and Creole languages have supported the simplification theory which regards a pidgin as a simplified version of the colonizers language. This paper examines the process of pidgin development within the context of Government and Binding theory as proposed by Chomsky (1981). Empirical evidence given in this paper from Capeverdean creole (and others) indicates that the linguistic phenomenon generally labelled pidginization, creolization, decreolization, etc. can be explained as follows. The contact of various languages may produce a new experience which subsequently fixes the parameters of Universal Grammar, providing a pidgin core grammar. This core is guided by a preference of structure imposed by the markedness theory allowing the learnability condition to operate. The resultant core grammar can later incorporate a marked periphery. The addition of this marked periphery is what had been viewed in the past as creolization. If one of the donor languages is characterized by structures which meet the learnability criterion, the incorporation of the marked periphery will be targeted toward that language. The directionality of the pidgin periphery may then be predicted. However, if none of the languages meets the learnability condition, the pidgin periphery may develop independently of the peripheries of the donor languages.
A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF CHILDREN'S AND ADULTS’ ACQUISITION OF TONE ACCENTS IN SWEDISH1
Authors: Schmid Beata
Published: October 2006

This comparative study investigates first and second language learners' acquisition of tone accents in Swedish. Tone accent distribution is governed by morphophonological rules and the accents are manifested in characteristic pitch patterns. LI learners acquire the full accent distinction at around the age of five, while many L2 learners never do. The tone accent production of two monolingual Swedish children (1;11‐2;5) recorded longitudinally over seven months was compared to that of American adults acquiring Swedish as L2. Both populations overgeneralized one pitch pattern to all bisyllabic words: children used Accent 2 (two‐peaked) and adults Accent 1 (one‐peaked), analogous to the prevailing pattern of their L1. These results are discussed in terms of comparing children's acquisitional strategies with those of L2 learners. Furthermore, the children's early acquisition of a marked phenomenon (Accent 2) forces us to reconsider markedness criteria and whether Accent 2 is marked from a production point of view.
HYPOTHESIS TESTING IN SECOND‐LANGUAGE ACQUISITION THEORY
Authors: Bley‐Vroman Robert
Published: October 2006

Learner hypotheses may be classified logically into two kinds depending on the relationship of the hypothesis to the data needed to test it. Type‐N hypotheses require “negative evidence” (of which explicit correction is a special type) for testing. Type‐P hypotheses can be tested on the basis of “positive data” (comprehensible input, for example) alone. The difference between hypotheses is related to the intuitive concepts of “strictness” and “looseness”. Answers to theoretical questions about the place of input in a formal L2 acquisition model as well as to empirical questions about the necessity of correction are dependent on this hypothesis type distinction.
FOUR EXPERIMENTS ON THE RELATION BETWEEN FOREIGN LANGUAGE TEACHING AND LEARNING*
Authors: Upshur John A.
Published: October 2006

University level students studying English as a foreign language participated in four language learning experiments which were conducted within the framework of existing EFL courses. The experiments indicated (1) that language learning is not related to amount of formal language instruction for those students concurrently enrolled in academic classes, and (2) that sequential mastery of materials is not necessary for learning in an intensive foreign language program. Even the possibility that sentences of a foreign language can be mastered in any order in which they are presented is questioned. The findings were interpreted in support of the view that the most efficient foreign language learning is informal and occurs when the learner must make communicative use of the language variety to be learned, and that the internal structure underlying a set of sentences of a foreign language is not completely learned by presentation and practice of that set of sentences.
Adult versus Child L2 Acquisition: An Information‐Processing Approach
Authors: Kennedy Barbara L.
Published: October 2006

This article assumes that adult L2 learners cannot achieve the same degree of proficiency in their L2 that child L2 learners can. An information‐processing approach to this phenomenon is presented; the aspects of unitization, faulty or incomplete declarative knowledge, and limited working memory space are used to account for the deficiencies often found in adult learners' L2 competence. Once L1 procedural‐knowledge productions have become unitized, it is difficult to alter them. If an L2 production responds to the same cue as does an L1 production, interference from the L1 often occurs. Conscious effort is required to overcome these problems, as well as correct and complete declarative knowledge; however, in an actual communicative situation, conscious effort is focused most often on the semantics of the communication, rather than on the mechanical forms, and the strongest unitized (automatic) productions take over. Moreover, if the learner is able to focus on forms, he/she may not have all of the declarative‐knowledge of the L2 he or she needs or enough working memory space to manipulate all that is required. Justification for the application of a cognitive psychology model to L2 language learning is given. In addition, the information‐processing model is compared to a model that requires a totally separate language acquisition device to account for the same phenomenon.
Task‐Related Variation in Interlanguage: The Case of Articles*
Authors: Tarone Elaine , Parrish Betsy
Published: October 2006

There is no doubt that second‐language learners vary in the accuracy of their production when asked to perform different tasks. For example, Tarone (1985) found that the accuracy with which English articles and other grammatical forms were used by nonnative speakers at a single point in time varied depending on the tasks which the learners were asked to perform. Quantitative measures showed that the shifts in accuracy of article use were highly significant. The causes of this variability, however, were unclear. Researchers such as Arditty & Perdue (1979) have suggested a variety of possible causes of task‐related variability.

In this study, a more fine‐grained quantitative and qualitative analysis of the Tarone (1985) data focuses on the function which articles played in the different tasks. It is found that different tasks elicited different types of noun phrases, which in turn demanded different uses of the article. In addition, it is found that there was some tendency of learner accuracy with articles occurring with one type of noun phrase to change across the tasks used. It is argued that this change in accuracy is due to the communicative demands and discourse characteristics of the tasks. Finally, it is argued that task‐related variability in interlanguage must be due, not to a single variable called “attention to form,” but to a complex of variables, at least one of which must be the differing communicative functions which forms may perform in different tasks, as, for example, when these tasks place different degrees of communicative pressure upon the speaker, or elicit discourse which varies in its cohesiveness.
Using Visual Information to Train Foreign‐Language Vowel Production*
Authors: Flege James Emil
Published: October 2006

The present feasibility study explored the use of visual information for training vowel production in a foreign language (L2). An optoelectronic glossometer was used to measure tongue‐palate distances at four locations along the hard palate and to provide visual feedback specifying tongue targets for English /i,I,æ/ and /α/. Evaluations performed during 10 days prior to training showed that the native Spanish subject examined consistently neutralized the tongue position difference between English /i/‐/I/ and /æ/‐/α/. The same thing occurred when she attempted to imitate vowels spoken by an English native speaker. Physiological, acoustic, and perceptual tests showed that the subject produced a difference between /i/‐/I/ after only ten minutes of visual articulatory modeling and shaping. A similar improvement was not noted for /æ/‐/α/, perhaps because the difference in pharyngeal width that distinguishes these vowels could not be shown directly using the glossometer. Additional work will be needed to determine whether the /i/‐/I/ change was due to the visual feedback and whether greater—and sustained—changes in vowel production can be effected using visual feedback if more training is administered.
Information Type and Its Relation to Nonnative Speaker Comprehension*
Authors: Derwing Tracey M.
Published: October 2006

A native speaker‐nonnative speaker (NS‐NNS) conversational adjustment in the relative proportions of information type was examined for its relation to communicative success. Sixteen native speakers of English were paired with other native speakers and with low‐proficiency nonnative speakers. The subjects viewed a short film, the content of which they were to relay to their two partners independently. Communicative success was measured through comprehension questions addressed to the listeners at the completion of the task. The relative importance of propositional information in the narratives was determined and adjustments were measured. Analyses indicated that an increase in the proportion of background detail correlated with comprehension problems for second‐language learners. The implications of the findings are discussed and suggestions for further research are made.
The Vowels of Stressed and Unstressed Syllables in Nonnative English*
Authors: Fokes Joann , Bond Z. S.
Published: October 2006

Nonnative and native American English speakers produced two‐syllable words such as confess and confirm and three‐ and four‐syllable derived words such as confession and confirmation in isolation and in sentences. The durations and formant patterns of the vowels were measured for the first two syllables of each word. In addition, the ratio of vowel‐to‐syllable was calculated for the syllable (con). The nonnative speakers had most difficulty with the four‐syllable words, producing a vowel of variable quality in the first syllable and failing to reduce the vowel of the second syllable. In addition, the nonnative speakers failed to produce appropriate durations for vowels according to position in word and stress pattern.