Dr.Thesis AK Helland Gujord.Pdf (3.109Mb)

Grammatical encoding of past time in L2 Norwegian The roles of L1 influence and verb semantics Ann-Kristin Helland Gujord Dissertation for the degree philosophiae doctor (PhD) at the University of Bergen 2013 ii In memory of Jon Erik Hagen iii Acknowledgements This thesis is dedicated to Jon Erik Hagen. Jon Erik was responsible for the first courses in Norwegian as a second language at the University of Bergen in the early 1980s. Since then, his efforts in developing the field of research in Norway and in inspiring and encouraging students, teachers, and young researchers in Norwegian as a second language have been of significant importance for the current status of the field. Without Jon Erik, and his closest colleague Kari Tenfjord’s, longlasting endeavours for the field, this thesis, and others to come, would not have been possible. I am saddened that Jon Erik is not here to see the present work come together, as well as the coming works of his students, for whom he meant so much. Jon Erik’s enthusiasm and generous nature will never be forgotten. This thesis would not have been possible if it had not been for the help and support from many colleagues and friends. Firstly I thank my supervisor through many years, Kari Tenfjord; the present study of the encoding of time is much informed by Kari’s own research on the emergence of the present perfect and the preterite in the Norwegian interlanguages of Vietnamese-speaking pupils. Next, I want to express my deep gratitude to my secondary advisor Sandra Halverson for her guidance and support in the last phase of this work. Furthermore, thanks go to Kolbjørn Slethei for teaching me the basics in statistics and to Bård Uri Jensen for the discussions of the statistics applied to the study, and for his valuable comments on parts of the data analysis. Thanks to my informants of Vietnamese and Somali. Also, the thesis would never have been the same if it had not been for my excellent proof reader, Christina Correnti; thank you. Moreover, I owe a great debt to those of my colleagues, who in many different ways contributed to the completion of this work; thank you all. I thank the Faculty of Humanities at the University of Bergen for funding this PhD project, the Department of Linguistics, Literary and Aesthetic Studies for the support throughout the project, and finally, the PhD Research School in Linguistics and Philology and the Askeladden project for the opportunities with which I have been provided. I am very grateful for the help and support of my family, in particular thanks to Elin and Peter. Finally, I thank Heming, my absolute favorite colleague, who has made it all the easier for me to accept a PhD scholarship in Bergen and to complete the thesis. For constantly reminding me that it is time to finish up, I thank Ella Marit, Endre and Vegard. Bergen, December 2012 Ann-Kristin Helland Gujord iv Abstract The focus of the present thesis is the encoding of past time in L2 Norwegian. In Norwegian, the notion of past is grammaticalised through two categories, the preterite and the perfect, which are the two main structures that will be addressed in the study. The overall aim is to explore the grammatical encoding of past time in texts written by Vietnamese (N=99) and Somali (N=97) learners of Norwegian. The texts are assessed to be at proficiency level A2 or B1 of the Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR), and are extracted from a learner corpus of Norwegian (ASK). The investigation is guided by two different theoretical positions in research on second language acquisition (SLA): 1) a language-specific perspective on second language acquisition that assumes that the learner’s L1 can affect the acquisition of temporal morphology, and 2) a universalistic perspective on second language acquisition that assumes that the learner primarily displays universal tendencies and patterns in the acquisition of tense and aspect forms in the L2 (as described in the Aspect Hypothesis) (Bardovi-Harlig 2000; Shirai 2009). These two perspectives are often positioned as competitors; however, in the current study, both of them are included in order to gain a broader view of the acquisition of L2 morphology, and in order to benefit from findings that come from the different strands, but which are nonetheless connected. For instance, although there is a substantial amount of research to support the Aspect Hypothesis, which represents the universalistic position in the present thesis, and which considers the influence of lexical aspect to be an acquisitional universal, later studies within this line of research suggest that the L1 has an effect on the acquisition of temporal morphology (Ayoun and Salaberry 2008; Collins 2002, 2004; Izquierdo and Collins 2008; Rocca 2002, 2007). In addition, these studies also indicate that there is an interaction between lexical aspect and L1 influence (Collins 2002, 2004; Izquierdo and Collins 2008). These findings align with studies that seek to reveal how the conceptualisation and grammatical encoding of time in the L1 affect L2 acquisition (Alloway and Corley 2004; Boroditsky and Trusova 2003; Carroll and Von Stutterheim 2003; Polunenko 2004; Von Stutterheim, Carrol, and Klein 2009; Von Stutterheim and Nüse 2003). These studies have found that L2 learners have difficulties encoding temporal information in the same way that native speakers do, and that this encoding is particularly challenging when the L1 and L2 conceptualise and grammaticalise time differently. v An important part of the thesis is the contrastive analysis of the target language, Norwegian, and the learners’ L1s, Vietnamese and Somali. In order to base the analysis of L1 influence on reliable and nuanced information about the contrastive relations, a method of eliciting information about temporal categories in languages, the translation questionnaire method, is adopted from Dahl (1985, 2000). The similarities and differences revealed in the contrastive analyses of Norwegian and Vietnamese and Norwegian and Somali are also analysed in relation to Ringbom (2007). Based on the contrastive analyses, the two theoretical perspectives, and previous findings, research questions and associated hypotheses are raised. As to methods of analysis, the current study applies Jarvis’s (2000) methodological framework for the study of L1 influence. Furthermore, methodological issues are also of great importance in the exploration of the predictions in the Aspect Hypothesis, due to the complexity involved in the classification of verb phrases into distinct categories of lexical aspect. The research questions and hypotheses are analysed based on a stepwise statistical approach which is intended to reveal systematic differences between the groups compared. The main findings from the analysis can be summarised as follows: transfer effects are detected in the analysis; lexical-aspectual influence as predicted in the Aspect Hypothesis, which claims the acquisition of past morphology to be influenced by the telicity in verb phrases, is not revealed; and some kind of interaction of influence between the learners’ L1s and the temporal content in flectional categories is detected; however, the precise type of interaction is difficult to discern. Finally, the various findings are discussed against the backdrop of the theoretical perspectives and previous findings presented in the thesis. vi List of abbreviations 1 first person 2 second person 3 third person AGR agreement ADV adverb(ial) AUX auxiliary CLF classifier CPRO clitical pronoun DM declarative marker F feminine FOC focus word INF infinitive INFL inflection LEX lexical affix M masculine ROOT verb root PST past PRS present PRT preterite PTCP participle PRS GEN present general PRS PRF present perfect PRS PROG present progressive PST HAB past habitual PST PRF past perfect PST PROG past progressive PST SIMPLE past simple PL plural SG singular TM time marker Q question marker vii Table of contents ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ................................................................................................... IV ABSTRACT ............................................................................................................................. V LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS .............................................................................................. VII CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION .................................................................................................................... 1 1.1 An introduction to time in language ......................................................................................................... 2 1.2 Two perspectives: the study of transfer and the acquisition of temporal morphology .............................. 6 1.3 Data and method ....................................................................................................................................... 9 1.4 Structure of the thesis ............................................................................................................................. 11 CHAPTER 2 L2 ACQUISITION OF TEMPORALITY ........................................................................... 13 2.1 Learning to talk about time in a second language ................................................................................... 14 2.2 The language-specific perspective .......................................................................................................... 17 2.2.1 Thinking for speaking ..................................................................................................................

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