English Attrition in Korean-English Bilingual Children (PDF)
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ENGLISH ATTRITION IN KOREAN-ENGLISH BILINGUAL CHILDREN A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE GRADUATE DIVISION OF THE UNIVERSITY OF HAWAI‘I AT MĀNOA IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY IN LINGUISTICS AUGUST 2011 By Sang-Gu Kang Dissertation Committee: William O’Grady, Chairperson Kamil Ud Deen Luca Onnis Bonnie D. Schwartz Kimi Kondo-Brown © 2011, Sang-Gu Kang I ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS It would have been impossible to complete this dissertation without the help of a great many people and organizations. I owe so much to my chair, William O’Grady, who trained me to become a linguist and encouraged me to always aim high. His generous support and expertise help fueled everything from experiment designs to data analysis and writing. I will always remember his challenging, but warm-hearted guidance. I would like to extend my deepest and sincere appreciation to my committee members. This work owes a lot to their support and valuable comments. I was able to expand my background knowledge of language acquisition and experiment procedures when I was taking Kamil Ud Deen’s classes in the first couple of years in the program. Also, his kind support was always encouraging. I also thank Luca Onnis for his expertise in bilingualism. It was when I was taking his class that I was able to encounter a lot of literature and start thinking about how I should introduce my work. Then, the enthusiasm of Bonnie D. Schwartz inside and outside the classroom always inspired me. Her relentless work ethic and analytic skills were admirable. I also appreciate Kimi Kondo-Brown’s for being the outside member of the committee despite her heavy duties as associate dean. Especially, her comments on the second part of my dissertation were so important and helpful. I would also like to express gratitude to the faculty of the Linguistics program who provided guidance for my work. I am especially indebted to Michael Forman, Robert Blust, Amy Schafer, Katie Drager, and Yuko Otsuka. Also, I must thank the best department secretaries, Jennifer Kanda and Nora Lum for their excellence. I am also grateful to several organizations for supporting my graduate study. The East-West Center provided me with a perfect residence environment and the opportunity to interact with friends from all over the world working in various fields. Then, a part of my fieldwork was funded by the University of Hawai‘i Graduate Student Organization. Also, special thanks to YB Min of YBM Sisa for his generous support of my research. My deep appreciation goes to my advisors in Korea, Kyung-Ja Park and Hikyoung Lee, who showed incredible amount of support throughout the years starting from my undergraduate years. II The two people who devoted an even bigger love and support are my parents, Whoa Seug Kang and Mi Ryoung Song, who this work is dedicated to. My sincere thanks also goes to Min Sun and my sister, Jane, for having faith in me. Last but not the least, I thank all my participants and their parents for inviting me to be a part of their lives. III ABSTRACT The main goal of this dissertation is to investigate English attrition in three Korean- English bilingual children who had returned to Korea after a two-year stay in the U.S. Although the children had lived in the U.S. for two years, individual English proficiency varied, perhaps due to factors such as age and environment, resulting in different paths and rates of attrition. Repeated experiments on the children’s production and comprehension of English articles, irregular past tense verbs, passives, and relative clauses were conducted. Results on these four phenomena as well as observation of code switching and of the use of null subjects are reported. The findings suggest that the attrition is first detected in the speakers’ general processing skills in production. Thus, the experiments that are targeted to examine a few aspects of English grammar are likely to produce meaningful results only after attrition is detected in production errors. The contribution of this study is greater in the area of methodology rather than in the results themselves. Collecting data at different points in time repeatedly using the same material appeared to offer an effective measure of attrition. In addition, it seems clear that Korean-English bilinguals’ English attrition is not likely to occur within a short period because of the highly valued status of English in Korea. IV The scope of attrition research is much wider than mere descriptions of the phenomenon. From the researcher’s stance, issues such as theory and methodology can be interesting. However, from the attriters’ and their parents’ viewpoint, pedagogies customized for returnees could well be the most meaningful contribution of attrition research. The first step for researchers is to describe the attrition phenomenon and establish related theories. Then, based on these foundations, pedagogies that will benefit those trying to evade attrition can be developed. I hope that by drawing on the results described in this dissertation, this research helps to reveal the perils and prospects of attrition research and opens the door to future progress in this area. V TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgement . II Abstract . IV Table of contents . VI List of tables . X List of figures . XIII Chapter 1. Introduction: The study of language attrition . 1 1 Nature of language attrition . 2 2 Course of attrition . 9 2.1 Regression hypothesis . 9 2.2 Threshold hypothesis . 10 2.3 Interference hypothesis . 11 3 Research questions . 13 Part I. Case studies: Loss of English morphology and syntax Chapter 2. Methodology . .. .17 1 Pre-attrition proficiency . 17 2 Case study methods . 19 2.1 Participants . 20 2.2 Procedure . 22 3 Some limitations . 27 Chapter 3. Articles . 29 1 Introduction . 29 2 Literature review . 30 3 Materials . 32 3.1 Picture-naming task . 32 3.2 Story-telling task . 33 4 Results . 35 4.1 Picture-naming task . 36 4.2 Story-telling task . 38 5 Discussion . 40 5.1 Attrition of articles . 42 VI Chapter 4. Irregular past tense verbs . 45 1 Introduction . 45 2 Literature review . 47 3 Materials . 49 3.1 Judgment task . 50 3.2 Elicitation task . 52 3.3 Naturalistic data . 52 4 Results . 53 4.1 Judgment task . 53 4.2 Elicitation task . 57 4.3 Naturalistic data . 61 4.4 Error analysis . 64 5 Discussion . 65 5.1 Further discussion . 68 Chapter 5. Passives. 74 1 Introduction . 74 2 Literature review . 75 3 Materials . 77 3.1 Comprehension task . 78 3.2 Production task . 80 4 Results . 82 4.1 Comprehension task . 82 4.2 Production task . 87 5 Discussion . 89 Chapter 6. Relative clauses . ..