Syntactic Variation in the Swedish of Adolescents in Mutilingual Urban Settings
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Syntactic Variation in the Swedish of Adolescents in Mutilingual Urban Settings Subject-verb Order in Declaratives, Questions and Subordinate Clauses Natalia Ganuza Centre for Research on Bilingualism Stockholm University Doctoral Dissertation 2008 Centre for Research on Bilingualism Stockholm University Abstract This thesis investigates the use of word order variation, in particular the variable use of subject-verb inversion and non-inversion in main declarative clauses, among adolescents in contemporary multilingual settings in Sweden. The use of non-inversion in contexts that in standard Swedish require inversion is sometimes claimed to be characteristic of varieties of Swedish spoken among adolescents in multilingual urban areas. The present study includes a wide range of data, both spontaneous and elicited, and explores how common the use of non-inversion is among a relatively large group of participants in different contexts, and how the use of non-inversion is influenced by different demo- graphic, linguistic and socio-pragmatic factors. The results show that non-inversions are used to a limited extent in all types of data in the studied population. Only certain individuals frequently employ non-inversions in some contexts. Further, no direct link is found between second language acquisition and the use of non-inversion in this study. Factors related to the issue of nativeness, for example participants’ reported age of onset of Swedish acquisition, only marginally explain the results. In general, examples of non-inversion are employed more extensively, and by more participants, in peer-peer interaction than with adults. The use of non- inversion appears to be part of some adolescents’ spontaneous language use in certain contexts. More importantly, however, the results suggest that some adolescents employ non-inversions as an active linguistic resource to express their identification with the multilingual environment and the different varieties of Swedish spoken there, to show solidarity with peers, to contest official school discourses, and to play around with linguistic stereotypes. Keywords: syntactic variation, subject-verb inversion, non-inversion, language use in multilingual urban settings, multilingual youths, standard/non-standard, Swedish, second language acquisition. Copyright: Natalia Ganuza Printing: Elanders AB, Stockholm 2008 Correspondence: SE-106 91 Stockholm www.biling.su.se ISBN 978-91-7155-611-0 ISSN 1400-5921 Acknowledgements I would like to thank a number of people who in different ways have contributed to the realisation of this thesis. First and foremost I wish to express my gratitude to all the participants of this study, and all the adolescents and teachers who in different ways participated in the larger research project Language and language use among adolescents in multilingual urban settings. We are forever indebted to you for letting us get a glimpse into your lives and your language uses. Secondly, I want to thank my supervisor Kari Fraurud who has read and commented on numerous drafts of my thesis and whose critique and support has been invaluable. Her guidance and encouragement over the years has been very important to me. I would also like to thank my co-supervisor Lena Ekberg for many thoughtful comments, especially on the preliminary final version of the thesis. Thank you also Kenneth Hyltenstam, Christer Platzack and Marie Werndin for reading and commenting on the preliminary final version of the thesis. I feel privileged to have been a doctorate student at the Centre for Research on Bilingualism, and I would like to thank all my colleagues at the Centre for their feedback on my work at seminars and talks and for contributing to a positive working atmosphere. I would like to particularly mention my colleagues and good friends Dorota LubiĔska, Marie Werndin, Charlotte Haglund, and Helena Kjellberg-Smeds with whom I have had many interesting lunch talks about life’s peculiarities and about the joys and frustrations of being doctorate students. I would also like to extend a warm collective thank you to all the members of the research project Language and language use among adolescents in multilin- gual urban settings: Elin Almér, Ellen Bijvoet, Petra Bodén, Sally Boyd, Lena Ekberg, Julia Grosse, Kari Fraurud, Sofia Hallin, Sofie Johansson Kokkinakis, Roger Källström, Inger Lindberg, Tore Otterup, Gudrun Svensson, Sofia Tingsell, Alexandra Utrzén, and Marie Werndin. I have enjoyed being part of a research team and I appreciate all the comments and support that I have received for my work at our various meetings. Thank you also Niclas Abrahamsson for helping with the layout of the text, Jonathan White for checking my English, and Per Näsman for statistical advice. Stockholm, February 2008 Natalia Ganuza Contents Abstract ii Acknowledgements iii Contents v Tables ix Figures xi Appendices xiii 1 INTRODUCTION 1 1.1 Purpose and aim of the study 1 1.2 Structure of the thesis 3 2 PREVIOUS RESEARCH 5 2.1 Swedish word order 5 2.1.1 Word order in main declarative clauses 5 2.1.2 Word order in questions 9 2.1.3 Word order in subordinate clauses 9 2.1.4 The acquisition of word order in Swedish 11 2.1.4.1 Second language acquisition of word order 11 2.1.4.2 First language acquisition of word order 13 2.2 Language use in contemporary multilingual settings 15 3 THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK 19 3.1 Variation research 19 3.1.1 Early variation studies – The Labovian paradigm 19 3.1.2 Speech accommodation theory and audience design 21 3.1.2.1 Speech accommodation theory 21 3.1.2.2 Speech accommodation theory in SLA 22 3.1.2.3 Audience design 23 3.1.3 Linguistic constraints on variation 23 3.1.4 Psycholinguistic constraints on variation 25 3.1.5 The need for multivariate analyses 25 3.1.6 Ethnographic studies of variation 26 3.2 The importance of age in SLA-research 26 3.3 Problematic use of terminology 28 4 METHOD AND DATA 33 4.1 Participants 33 vi Syntactic Variation in the Swedish of Adolescents in Multilingual Urban Settings 4.1.1 Selection process 34 4.1.2 Schools 35 4.1.3 The large sample 36 4.1.4 The focus sample 36 4.2 Data 39 4.2.1 Background interviews 40 4.2.2 Self-recordings 41 4.2.3 Group conversations 42 4.2.4 Presentations 42 4.2.5 Retellings 43 4.2.6 Transcripts 43 4.2.7 Written data 43 4.2.8 Grammaticality judgment test 45 4.2.8.1 Description of the task and procedure 47 4.2.8.2 Test sentences 48 5 PROCEDURE OF ANALYSIS 51 5.1 Analysis of oral data 51 5.1.1 Analysis of main declarative clauses 52 5.2 Analysis of written data 55 5.3 Analysis of the grammaticality judgment test 55 5.4 Statistical analyses 57 6 RESULTS 59 6.1 Large sample 59 6.1.1 Overview of production data 59 6.1.1.1 Word order in main declarative clauses 59 6.1.1.2 Word order in questions 61 6.1.1.3 Word order in subordinate clauses 62 6.1.2 Comparison between oral and written data 64 6.1.3 Distribution of results among participants 66 6.1.4 Summary of the large sample 68 6.2 Focus sample 68 6.2.1 Overview of production data 68 6.2.1.1 Word order in main declarative clauses 68 6.2.1.2 Word order in questions 71 6.2.1.3 Word order in subordinate clauses 71 6.2.2 Comparison between different contexts 72 6.2.2.1 Specifics of the situational contexts 74 6.2.2.2 Self-recordings 74 6.2.2.3 Group conversations 75 6.2.2.4 Retellings 75 6.2.2.5 Presentations 76 6.2.2.6 Written essays 76 Contents vii 6.2.3 Different patterns for different participants 76 6.2.3.1 Participants who produced relatively many non-inversions in all or most contexts except the written. 77 6.2.3.2 Participants who produced non-inversions only in the less directed contexts 78 6.2.3.3 Participants who produced no or little variation irrespective of context 80 6.2.3.4 Participants who did not fit the other groups 81 6.2.4 Summary of the focus sample 81 6.3 Factors influencing the syntactic variation 82 6.3.1 Demographic factors 82 6.3.1.1 Location 82 6.3.1.2 Sex 85 6.3.1.3 Different factors related to the issue of nativeness 86 6.3.1.4 Summary of demographic factors 89 6.3.2 Linguistic factors 90 6.3.2.1 The clause-initial element 91 6.3.2.1.1 Clause-initial element: Adverbials 95 6.3.2.1.2 Clause-initial element: Subordinate clauses 100 6.3.2.1.3 Presence of topic placeholders 100 6.3.2.1.4 Clause-initial element: The expression å sen du vet ‘and then you know’ 102 6.3.2.2 Type and nature of the subject 103 6.3.2.3 Type and nature of the finite verb 105 6.3.2.4 Summary of linguistic factors 108 6.3.3 Socio-pragmatic factors 109 6.3.3.1 Syntactic accommodation 110 6.3.3.2 Topic of conversation 115 6.3.3.3 Gender 116 6.3.3.4 High-involvement style 117 6.3.3.5 Longer stretches of talk and enumerations of events 119 6.3.3.6 A non-inversion rarely comes alone 121 6.3.3.7 Identification with the multilingual area and the language variety/ies spoken there 121 6.3.3.8 Solidarity 123 6.3.3.9 Contestation 126 6.3.3.10 Staging a stereotype 128 6.3.3.11 Summary of socio-pragmatic factors 130 6.4 Grammaticality Judgment Test (GJT) 130 6.4.1 Overview of the results on the GJT 130 6.4.2 Sentences that received the most variable judgments 131 6.4.3 Comparison of results for different groups of participants 133 6.4.4 Results for individual participants and their correspondence with production data 135 6.4.5 Summary of the grammaticality judgment test 137 viii Syntactic Variation in the Swedish of Adolescents in Multilingual Urban Settings 7 DISCUSSION OF FINDINGS 139 7.1 Relatively infrequent use of word order variation in oral and written production 139 7.2 Informal observation vs.