Uppsala Universitet C-uppsats/ Bachelor’s Thesis Institutionen för Lingvistik & Filologi VT 2009 Referent introduction and maintenance - two aspects of information structure: A study of a Dutch L1 learner of Swedish Josefin Lindgren Handledare/Supervisor: Ute Bohnacker Abstract This paper presents an explorative ‘pilot’ study made of oral picture descriptions in the native tongue as well as in the target language of an intermediate Dutch L1 learner of Swedish (L2). Three Swedish L1 native controls were also recorded describing the same pictures. The recordings were transcribed, coded and quantitatively analysed for the following aspects of information structure: 1) referent introduction and 2) referent maintenance per type, 3) constituents in the prefield (i.e. clause-initial position) and 4) occurrences of spatial/existential constructions of referent introduction. The research questions were: Do Dutch L1 and Swedish L1 differ in their patterns of information structure in the area of referent introduction and maintenance, concerning prefield constituents in picture descriptions? Does the L2 learner adhere to the target language (Swedish) patterns, the patterns of his mother tongue (Dutch) or does the interlanguage exhibit different patterns? Differences in frequency emerged, where the Dutch L1 data had substantially higher rates of subjects in the prefield than Swedish L1 and where the perspective taken for referent introduction was largely existential. On the other hand, Swedish L1 showed a greater variation in the prefield and a pattern of referent introduction that was both spatial and existential. The learner followed the patterns of his native tongue, in his L2 Swedish, where the patterns differed from those of Swedish L1. Transfer was found to be a likely cause of this, even though other explanations are not excluded by the results. The strict dichotomy of spatial/existential perspective of referent introduction proposed by e.g. Carroll et al. (2000) was found to exclude many cases of referent introduction. The main problem with the present study was the small quantity of data, as well as the lack of comparable studies; it is therefore recommended to repeat this study using a larger amount of data. Keywords: L2 acquisition, Dutch, Swedish, information structure, referent introduction, referent maintenance, prefield constituents, Carroll & von Stutterheim, Bohnacker & Rosén. i Table of contents Abstract........................................................................................................................................ i Table of contents.........................................................................................................................ii 1. Introduction.............................................................................................................................1 2. Theoretical background and earlier studies............................................................................ 4 2.1 The syntactic structure of Dutch and Swedish: a brief overview and comparison ........ 4 2.1.1 Verb Second and the “prefield”................................................................................. 5 2.1.2 Expletive constructions.............................................................................................. 7 2.2 Information Structure........................................................................................................8 2.2.1 Information Structure in Swedish: Earlier studies .................................................. 10 2.2.2 Information Structure in Dutch: Theories and earlier studies .................................11 2.3 Referent Introduction and Maintenance..........................................................................12 2.3.1 Spatial vs. Existential perspective of Referent Introduction and Maintenance....... 15 2.4 Studies of Dutch learners of Swedish............................................................................. 17 3. Problem definition and Aims................................................................................................ 18 4. Method & data collection......................................................................................................19 4.1 The learner...................................................................................................................... 19 4.2 Native controls................................................................................................................ 20 4.3 The stimuli: the two pictures ..........................................................................................20 4.4 Data collection & analysis.............................................................................................. 21 4.4 The method of analysis................................................................................................... 22 4.5 (Dis)advantages/limitations of the data ..........................................................................23 5. Results & Analysis................................................................................................................24 5.1 Swedish L1......................................................................................................................24 5.1.1 Referent Introduction............................................................................................... 25 5.1.2 Referent Maintenance ............................................................................................. 26 5.1.3 Syntactic Elements in the prefield........................................................................... 28 5.1.4 Existential / Spatial ways of Referent Introduction................................................. 30 5.2 Dutch L1......................................................................................................................... 33 5.2.1 Referent Introduction............................................................................................... 34 5.2.2 Referent Maintenance ............................................................................................. 34 5.2.3 Syntactic Elements in the prefield........................................................................... 36 5.2.4 Existential / Spatial ways of Referent Introduction................................................. 38 5.3 Swedish L2......................................................................................................................40 5.3.1 Referent Introduction............................................................................................... 42 5.3.2 Referent Maintenance ............................................................................................. 44 5.3.3 Syntactic Elements in the prefield........................................................................... 46 5.3.4 Existential / Spatial ways of Referent Introduction................................................. 48 5.4 Summary and brief comparison...................................................................................... 51 5.4.1 Referent Introduction............................................................................................... 51 5.4.2 Referent Maintenance.............................................................................................. 52 5.4.3 Syntactic elements in the prefield............................................................................ 52 5.4.4 Existential / Spatial perspective of Referent Introduction....................................... 53 6. Discussion ............................................................................................................................ 53 6.1 The learner language, Dutch L1 and Swedish L1: Internal comparisons....................... 54 6.1.1 ‘Mastery’ of the indefinite/ definite divide.............................................................. 54 6.1.2 Constituents of the prefield...................................................................................... 56 6.1.3 The high rate of S-V-X in the learner language.......................................................56 6.1.4 The issue of demonstratives.....................................................................................59 ii 6.1.5 The results and individual variation.........................................................................60 6.1.6 The results and the nature of the task.......................................................................60 6.2 The results and some reflections on language teaching..................................................61 6.2 The results and other research: External comparison..................................................... 64 6.2.1 The results and lack of comparable studies............................................................. 64 6.2.2 Indications of differences between closely related Germanic languages.................64 6.2.3 The results and the spatial/existential divide .......................................................... 66 7. Conclusion............................................................................................................................ 68 7.1 General conclusions........................................................................................................ 68 7.2 Problems with the study..................................................................................................69 7.3 Suggestions for future research.......................................................................................70