1. LING212 Second Language Acquisition
Florencia Franceschina

2. Terminology Second language acquisition Foreign language acquisition
Acquisition of additional languages
Bilingual language acquisition

3. L2 grammars A.k.a. interlanguage grammars (ILGs)
Example: L2 speaker on Botticelli

4. Route of acquisition
U-shaped learning
Example: Myles et al. (1999)

5. Myles et al. (1999) L1 English/L2 French 16 adolescents
Recorded 6 times over 2 years
Initially drilled in using ‘chunks’:
Quel âge as-tu?
Comment tu t’appelles?
Qu’est qu’il aime faire?
etc.

6. Myles et al. (1999) Findings: Three question types:
1. Qs formed from chunks they had been drilled on.
2. Novel questions lacking verbs
Où la piscine?
3. Novel questions with verbs

7. Myles et al. (1999) Q type Sample 1 2 3 4 5 6 Chunk 143/186 77%
264/418
63%
47/111
42%
214/483
44%
261/622
40/264
15%
V-less
41/186
22%
129/418
31%
53/111
48%
235/483
49%
287/622
46%
182/264
69%
With V
2/186 1%
25/418 6%
11/111
10%
34/483 7%
74/622
12%
42/264
16%

8. Route of acquisition Fixed stages of acquisition
Example: Pienemann (1998)

9. Pienemann (1998) Stages of acquisition of word order in L2 German:
SVO Die kinder spielen mim ball (the children play with the ball)
Adverb pre-posing Da kinder spielen (there children play)
Verb separation Aller kinder muss die pause machen (all children must the pause make)
Verb second (V2) Dann hat sie wieder die knoch gebringt (then has she again the bone brought)
Verb final in subordinate clauses Er sagte dass er nach hause kommt (he said that he to home comes)

10. Rate of acquisition Some learners are faster than others
Example 1: Snow and Hoefnagel-Hole (1978)
Example 2: Dulay and Burt (1974)

11. Snow and Hoefnagel-Hohle (1978)
L1 English / L2 Dutch
Immersion
Tasks: Pronunciation, auditory discrimination, morphology, sentence repetition, sentence translation, sentence judgement, story comprehension, Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test
Findings:
After 3 months’ residence: adults and adolescents outperformed children on tests
After 10 months’ residence: the children caught up

12. Dulay and Burt (1974)
L1 Chinese (Cantonese) / L2 English (replication of D&B, 73, L1 Spanish / L2 English children)
year-olds in the US
Task: BSM

13. Dulay and Burt (1974): Bilingual Syntax Measure

14. Dulay and Burt (1974): results

15. Variable attainment profile
Fossilization
High levels of individual variation
Example 1: Franceschina (2001)
Example 2: Johnson and Newport (1989)

16. Franceschina (2001) L1 English, L1 Italian / L2 Spanish Nearnatives
Task: Spontaneous speech production
Findings:
All learners were equally accurate (totally target-like) on number agreement
The Italian speakers were more accurate than the English speakers on gender agreement

17. Johnson and Newport (1989) L1 Chinese, L1 Korean / L2 English
46 participants
AoA: between 3-39
Minimum residence in the US: 5 years
Task: GJT testing a range of grammatical properties

18. Johnson and Newport (1989) (1)

19. Johnson and Newport (1989) (2)

20. Summary ILGs are: Systematic (e.g., route, within L1 groups)
Variable (according to age of acquisition, L1, in terms of rate of acquisition and outcome)

21. What determines the variable L2 outcomes?
Learner-internal factors
Age (Singleton and Lengyel, 1995; Birdsong, 1999)
L1 (Odlin, 1989; Gass and Selinker, 1992)
Aptitude (Sawyer and Ranta, 2001)
Motivation (Dornyei and Schmidt, 2001) …

22. What determines the variable L2 outcomes?
Learner-external factors
Type of input (Carroll, 2001; Norris and Ortega, 2000)
Type of interaction (Gass, 1997) …

23. What determines the variable L2 outcomes?
Caveat: SLA researchers do not all agree on the exact role that the previously mentioned factors play in determining L2 outcomes.

24. References
Birdsong, D. (ed.) 1999: Second Language Acquisition and the Critical Period Hypothesis. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Carroll, S. E. 2001: Input and evidence. The raw material of SLA. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Dornyei, Z. and R. Schmidt. 2001: Motivation and second language acquisition. Manoa: University of Hawai'i at Manoa.
Dulay, H. and M. Burt. 1974: Natural sequences in child second language acquisition. Language Learning 24,
Franceschina, F. 2001: Where lies the difference between native and non-native grammars? Evidence from the L2A of Spanish, in S. Foster-Cohen and A. Nizegorodcew, eds. EUROSLA Yearbook 1. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Pp
Gass, S. M. 1997: Input, interaction and the second language learner. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Gass, S. M. and L. Selinker. (eds.) 1992: Language transfer in language learning. Rowley, MA: Newbury House.

25. References
Myles, F., R. Mitchell and P. J. Hooper. 1999: Interrogative chunks in French L2: a basis for creative construction? Studies in Second Language Acquisition 21,
Norris, J. and L. Ortega. 2000: Effectiveness of L2 instruction: a research synthesis and quantitative meta-analysis. Language Learning 50,
Odlin, T. 1989: Language transfer: cross-linguistic influence in language learning. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Pienemann, M. 1998a: Language processing and L2 development. Processability theory. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
b: Developmental dynamics in L1 and L2 acquisition: Processability Theory and generative entrenchment. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition 1, 1-20.
Sawyer, M. and L. Ranta. 2001: Aptitude, individual differences and instructional design, in P. Robinson, ed. Cognition and second language instruction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Pp
Singleton, D. M. and Z. Lengyel. (eds.) 1995: The age factor in second language acquisition. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.
Snow, C. E. and M. Hoefnagel-Hohle. 1978: The critical period for language acquisition: evidence from second language learning. Child Development 49,

26. Administrative
Reading: White (2003: chapter 1). You will find some study questions on the course website. You can also read chapter 2, which contains more advanced discussion.
Empirical study summary forms
Glossary cards
This term seminars will take place in weeks 2, 3, 4, 5, 7 and 8 in Bowland B61