Why Money Can't Buy You Anything in German: Interlude: Markedness and the Predictability of Language Transfer

A Functional-Typological Approach to the Mapping of Semantic Roles to Syntactic Functions in SLA Transfer as a Cognitive Process: Psychotypology and Perceived Transferability (Kellerman 1979) Marcus Callies (([email protected])[email protected]) - Philipps-Universität Marburg, Germany / University of Wisconsin-Madison Assumptions: → The learner is an active decision-maker on what linguistic structures may be transferable into the second language → 1. Introduction 2. The Contrast Transfer is seen as a cognitive process subject to three constraints: i) the learner's perception of the distance between the first and the second English verbs show a rather wide range of changes in the realization of their Typical Matchings of Form and Function language (the learner's "psychotypologypsychotypologypsychotypology") argument structure, so-called alternations (Levin 1993): Cross-linguistically, languages show a preference for the grammatical subject of a sentence ii) the learner's perception of the degree of markedness of a potentially (1) a. They protested against the law. typically taking the semantic role of AGENT or related animate semantic roles, e.g. transferable item in the L1 (perceivedperceived transferability)transferability b. They protested the law. EXPERIENCER and RECIPIENT, whereas the object typically carries the role of PATIENT or THEME (e.g. Comrie 1989). This also holds for English and German. iii) the nature of the learner's knowledge of the target language. (2) a. He washes the new shirts. (TS 15) 69 million dollars bought Michael Bloomberg the election as Mayor of New York. b. The new shirts wash well. Non-Canonical / Marked Subjects Problems: (TS 16) Michael Bloomberg has bought the election as Mayor of New York with 69 million dollars. (3) a. He broke the window with a stone. These are inanimate subjects which are used non-metaphorically and non-metonymically, This approach implies a psycholinguistic rather than linguistic understanding of b. The window broke. lacking features typical of agent-like subjects such as volition, intention and sentience. In English markedness in terms of psychological and perceptual complexity, not structural (4) a. John eats tomato salad. and other languages, non-agentive roles may occur in subject position complexity. Psychotypological aspects of the cognitive organization of a learner's interlanguage, such as perceived transferability, are essentially based on subjective b. John eats. i) by deliberate choice of the speaker, often accompanied by a change in verbal voice, or learner perception, a phenomenon hard to objectify and with little predictive power for the ii) by omission of some NPs/roles and the shifting of other NPs/roles as a reaction to the researcher.
To what extent are learners of English as a foreign language aware of these changed constellation, as in (5) below: possibilities, let alone are competent in using them for specific purposes? The The Functional-Typological Approach to SLA: Markedness Differential Hypothesis acquisition of argument structure and its interrelationship with the syntax-semantics (5) a. David opened the door with a key. [AGENT] (Eckman 1977) interface in a second language (L2), as well as the influence of the native language b. The key opened the door. [INSTRUMENT] Assumptions: (L1) in that process is a relatively underexplored field in second language acquisition c. The door opened. [THEME] (SLA) research. → On the basis of a contrastive analysis of two languages (L1 and L2) and the We can observe that with semantically equivalent, i.e. near-synonymous transitive verbs, inclusion of the concepts of typological markedness and cross-linguistic The Semantic Description of Verbal Arguments (e.g. Fillmore 1968) English allows a much broader range of different, notably non agent-like, semantic roles to influence (or language transfer), it should be possible to predict areas of → Each argument is assigned a special participant role in relation to the verb, occupy the subject position than German. The German verbs show more severe selectional difficulty for an L2 learner i.e. the way in which the referent of an NP contributes to the state, action or restrictions than their English counterparts. Equivalent German translations of the English → L1 structures that are different from L2 structures and typologically more situation described by the sentence (aka deep cases, case roles, semantic sentences in (6)-(9) below, retaining both the subject NP and the verb, are highly unidiomatic if marked will not be transferred, whereas L1 structures that are different from (TS 31) A major anthrax threat in Washington has closed a second postal facility. roles, and thematic roles). not ungrammatical: L2 structures and typologically less marked are more likely to be transferred (TS 32) A second postal facility in Washington was closed due to a major anthrax threat. → Roles are not inherent properties of NPs but relational notions and depend → (6) a. California grows the best oranges. [LOCATION] Less marked structures will be acquired first or without difficulty, more marked on their occurrence in the context of a given sentence; the respective verb structures are expected to be acquired later or with greater difficulty. controls the range of semantic roles it takes, imposing selectional restrictions on b. * Kalifornien wächst die besten Orangen. the semantic characteristics of its arguments. c. In Kalifornien wachsen die besten Orangen. Advantages: The concept of typological markedness enables us to objectify language distance along Problems: (7) a. The 3rd of October celebrates the day of German reunification. [TEMPORAL] → No agreement among linguists on a limited inventory of semantic roles typological properties. Thus, this approach has significantly more predictive power since b. * Der 3.Oktober feiert den Tag der Deutschen Einheit. potential difficulties in the L2 learning process are identified not merely on the basis of → Considerable difficulties to clearly identify the semantic role of an NP in a c. Am 3. Oktober wird der Tag der Deutschen Einheit gefeiert. similarities and differences derived from a contrastive analysis of two languages, but specific context through a combination of the concepts of typological markedness and cross-linguistic Reactions: (8) a. 69 million dollars bought him the election. [INSTRUMENT] influence. → Generalized semantic roles,roles e.g. macroroles like ACTOR and b. * 69 Millionen Dollar kauften ihm die Wahl. UNDERGOER (Foley and VanValin 1984) or proto-roles (Dowty 1991) c. Mit 69 Millionen Dollar (er)kaufte er sich die Wahl.

For the present purposes, instead of attempting to clearly identify individual semantic (9) a. A bus crash in Austria has injured 24 people. [CAUSE] roles, I will broadly distinguish between animate (AGENT, PATIENT, 7. The Experiment: Design and Methodology b. * Ein Busunfall in Österreich hat 24 Personen verletzt. EXPERIENCER, RECIPIENT) and inanimate semantic roles (THEME, INSTRUMENT, LOCATION, TEMPORAL, CAUSE, FORCE). c. Bei einem Busunfall in Österreich wurden 24 Personen verletzt. Participants: 44 undergraduate students of English at Marburg University. (TS 27) A bus crash in Austria has injured 24 people. Data collection: Non-timed elicitation using acceptability judgmentsjudgments, error identificationidentification, (TS 28) 24 people were injured in a bus crash in Austria. and an English/German translation task; potential task-related factors were minimized by varying the presentation order of the test items to avoid sequencing effects, and by 8.2 Reasons for Unacceptability 3. An Explanation: The Thematic Role Hierarchy 4. Research Questions including distractors in order to control the attitude and behavior of the informants and to In cases of unacceptable marked-subject sentences, the majority of reasons given for The mapping of semantic roles to syntactic functions is generally thought to be Despite detailed studies on the semantic diversity of subjects in the two languages (Rohdenburg, conceal the actual research goal. the unacceptability of these sentences fall into the category 'unusual subject', followed constrained by a functionally motivated thematic role hierarchy which is considered 1974, Hawkins, 1981, 1986; Plank, 1983; Hansen, 1987) there are very few substantial empirical Administration: Three questionnaires: by 'the sentence doesn't make sense' and 'strange meaning‘: to be universal and implicational. Various versions of such a hierarchy have been studies that have taken up this contrast in an SLA context. 1. Evaluation of marked subject constructions as to their acceptability in a given context proposed in the literature. The thematic hierarchy is essentially "a ranking order of This study considers the mapping of semantic roles to syntactic functions in English and German on a seven-point scale, incl. reasons for unacceptability of a sentence, if applicable the various semantic case-roles according to the likelihood of their [...] occupying the and investigates potential problems that may result for German learners of English as a foreign pragmatic case-roles of subject or direct object in simple clauses" (Givón 1984: 139). language. 2. Evaluation of near-synonymous sentences in which the marked subject-NPs of questionnaire 1 were realized as adjuncts Given a possible hierarchy (cf. Givón 2001: 200) There are two central research questions: 3. Translation of 10 selected items of questionnaire 1 into idiomatic German. AGENT > RECIPIENT > PATIENT > LOCATION > INSTRUMENT > OTHERS
How are marked subjects in English accepted by German learners? Test items: Authentic and only slightly adapted sentences taken from a self-compiled i) subjects are selected from left to right, the leftmost role being the most likely one corpus based on a three-month analysis of several online news sources. Table 1: Reasons for unacceptability of selected marked-subject sentences (in percentages) to be realized as subject
What strategies are employed when translating English sentences featuring a marked Responses in the category 'other reason' yielded a number of very interesting and ii) if a language allows e.g. LOCATION to occupy subject position, it will also allow subject (cf. (6)-(9) above) into idiomatic German? revealing comments, introspective data that clearly indicate the students' metalinguistic all the roles to the left of this role (i.e. all the higher ranked roles) to appear as reflection (see examples on handout). subject in that language. 8. Results 8.1 Acceptability Rates 8.3 Translation General speaking, there were rather high standard deviation scores for the majority of test For 5 out of 10 sentences in the translation task, the majority of learners opted for a 5. Previous Research 6. The Hypotheses sentences, possibly indicative of a heterogeneous learner group. Nevertheless, in 50 change of the subject in the German translation, realizing the subject-NP of the English Rohdenburg (1974) identified two commonly used strategies for translating English Markedness (Givón 1991): percent of the test items (8 out of 16), the German learners accepted the sentences in sentence as a PP/adjunct in the German equivalents: marked-subject sentences into German: i) structural complexitycomplexity, ii) frequency distributiondistribution, and iii) cognitive complexity which the respective NP was realized as an adjunct significantly better than those in which it appeared as a marked subject. i) the subject is retained and the verb is changed in order to adapt to the needs of → Marked elements are structurally more complex, less frequent and therefore the sentence (10b) Also interesting is the observation that the learners accepted subject-NPs carrying the cognitively more salient. They require more attention, mental effort and cause role of (NATURAL) FORCE significantly better than other marked subjects, indicated by ii) the verb is retained and the subject is changed, the former subject usually more processing time for the recipient. rather high mean acceptability rates and comparatively low standard deviations. being realized as an adverbial/adjunct (10c): → → There is a correlation between markedness and the cognitive-physiological Highly significant differences between the mean acceptability rates (p <= 0.001) were (10)a. Other serious fighting killed 5 and injured 12. complexity of linguistic units: marked structures require more cognitive work in obtained for a number of near-synonymous and structurally related test sentences: Table 2: Translation strategies for selected marked-subject sentences (in percentages) b. Weitere schwere Gefechte forderten 5 Tote und 12 Verletzte. order to be processed, cf. also Naturalness Theory, Dressler et al. (1987). c. Bei weiteren schweren Gefechten wurden 5 Personen getötet und 12 verletzt. Summary: English/German Contrastive Analysis & Typological Markedness English is not only highly marked when compared with German, but also in a cross-linguistic 9. Implications for Foreign Language Teaching Jordens (1977, 1978) found that with near-synonymous and structurally related perspective: it allows an unusually broad range of different non-agentive semantic roles to 1) Raising advanced students' awareness with respect to sentences (raising, medio-passive constructions and marked subjects), advanced surface as subject. English clearly exhibits a higher degree of typological markedness: Dutch learners of German show different levels of acceptability, i.e. sentences with a) the existence of marked-subject sentences which clearly deviate from the → There is a larger distance between form and function in English marked- canonical subjects are significantly better accepted than those with marked subjects. native language subject sentences of the type given in (6a)-(9a), since the logical subject of b) the fact that such constructions can be used for specific purposes, such as these sentences is not the grammatical subject. Klein and Perdue (1993) identified semantic constraints that influence the form- shift of responsibility and deception by using pseudo-agentive substitutions. → Such sentences are functionally and semantically more complex, less transparent and function mapping in the early stages of L2 acquisition, relating to the thematic roles less explicit, causing more cognitive cost and requiring more processing time 2) Encouraging students to use more idiomatic structures, e.g. by avoiding of the participants and to the degree of control that one NP-referent with a certain for the recipient in terms of the analyzability and decoding of the form-function subjective style and agentivity in writing (cf. Low 1999): semantic role may have over another NP-referent: relation. There are genre-specific needs for objectification and modesty in academic writing: “Controller Principle: the NP with the highest degree of control comes first“ minimizing the expression of agency and thus the involvement and presence of the Research Hypotheses author/researcher. Constructions of the type exemplified in (11) below are highly → → NPs having a higher degree of control over the other NP-referents in a sentence, German learners of English will show comparatively low acceptability rates for (TS 7) Next month sees Garbage and Lenny Kravitz in town. idiomatic in academic text types such as abstracts or research articles, and there is a consequently being more agent-like, appear in subject position and are acquired English marked subject constructions, which are expected to be underrepresented if not (TS 8) Garbage and Lenny Kravitz will be in town next month. wide range of NPs and verbs that can be used: earlier. avoided in their interlanguage due to interference from L1, which lacks or disprefers those (11) a. This paper investigates ... structures, and higher typological markedness. b. The next chapter argues that ... → Learners will accept near-synonymous and structurally related sentences in Clearly, this is a field in which encouraging students to use these constructions in their which a marked subject-NP is realized as an adjunct significantly better. own writing would result in a higher degree of idiomaticity in the foreign language. 1