FIRST LANGUAGE INFLUENCES VIS-À-VIS DEVELOPMENT

There is robust evidence that L1 transfer cannot radically alter the route of L2 acquisition but it can impact the rate of learners’ progress along their natural

First language influences vis-à-vis development 35

developmental paths. This possibility was first formulated by Zobl (1982). He proposed that L1–L2 differences account for the pace or rate at which certain morphosyntactic structures will be learned by different L1 groups. All L1 groups will traverse the same series of approximations to the target L2 system, and will be challenged, broadly speaking, by the same aspects of the L2. However, certain L1 groups may stay longer in a given stage, add some extra sub-stage, or find it more difficult than other L1 groups to learn some aspect of the L2 system in question. Let us examine here three well-known examples.

The development of negation in English is a well-understood area, already intro- duced in section 3.1. As we will see in more detail in Chapter 6, section 6.7, it has been firmly established that at very early stages of development L2 English learners, regardless of L1 background, use pre-verbal negation (No/Not + Verb). In addition to the Turkish–Swedish cases uncovered by Hyltenstam (1977), robust additional evidence exists across L2s. For example, pre-verbal negation was amply attested by Cancino et al. (1978) with L1 Spanish learners whose L1 only allows pre-verbal nega- tion, but also by Ravem (1968) with L1 Norwegian children who initially produced utterances such as I not like that, even though their L1, just like English, only allows post-verbal negation. The effects of the L1 become visible only when one considers rate of development. Speakers of languages where pre-verbal negation is the gram- matical norm (e.g. Italian, Greek, Russian and Spanish) will remain in the first pre- verbal negation stage in English much longer than, for example, L1 Norwegian or L1 Japanese speakers, whose L1s, just like the L2 in this case, require post-verbal nega- tion (Zobl, 1982). In other words, when the rules for negation in the L1 are incon- gruent with the L2 rules, L2 development in this given area is slowed down.

English question formation is another area for which a developmental path has been well mapped in SLA research (see Chapter 6, section 6.12). A research team led at the time by Manfred Pienemann in Australia (Pienemann et al., 1988) found that learners start off by marking their intended questions with a questioning rising intonation. They are able to do this first on fragments (stage 1: a hat?) and later on statements (stage 2: you are tired?). Still later, learners begin using a fronting strategy, that is, they build questions by placing question markers (e.g. what, do, is) in front of statements (stage 3: what you want? do your daughter is here? is your

daughter work there?). Inversion does not occur until those three stages are

acquired. Once inversion emerges at stage 4, it first appears simultaneously in wh- questions containing the copula is/are (where is dog?) and in yes/no questions containing the auxiliary is/are (are you listening me?). The two last, most advanced stages are inversion in wh-questions across all possible contexts at stage 5 and target-like question formation with special cases at stage 6, such as tags (you are

surprised, aren’t you?), negation within questions (don’t you see?) and embedded

questions (I wonder why they left). (You will find a more formal summary of these stages in Table 6.9.) Many years later, Canadian researchers Nina Spada and Patsy Lightbown (1999) found that L1 influence can lead to the addition of an unexpected sub-stage in this well-established developmental sequence. Their participants were 144 L1 French sixth-graders learning English, and the unexpected L1 influence arose in relation to the learning of inversion at stages 4 and 5. For example:

(1) a. Where can I buy a bicycle? b. *Why fish can live in water?

Both (1a) and (1b) constitute examples of wh-questions that require inversion in English, and therefore (1b) is ungrammatical, as indicated by the asterisk. After eight hours of being exposed to a regime of English questions that were flooded into the instructional materials at school, many of the students began to accept (1a). This was a good sign, in that it indicated English inversion in questions was being learned. However, in apparent contradiction, the same students often accepted ungrammatical sentences like that in (1b). Upon closer inspection of the data, Spada and Lightbown concluded these Francophone learners of English were probably at a stage of development in which their internal grammar sanc- tioned inversion with pronouns (as in 1a) as grammatical but inversion with nouns (as expected in the native-like English rendition of 1b) as ungrammatical. This is exactly the pattern their L1 French follows. That is, an L1-induced inter- language rule had emerged, and one that was delaying many of these learners in their path towards adopting the full target-like rule of inversion in English ques- tions.

A third, well-studied area is the English article system, or the choice of whether ‘a’, ‘the’ or zero article is needed in front of nouns (for example, do we say ‘I like Ø French fries’, ‘I like the French fries’ or ‘I like a French fry’?). This topic was investigated in depth by Thom Huebner (1983; see also Chapter 6, section 6.6) and Peter Master (1987), in dissertations at the University of Hawai‘i and the University of California Los Angeles, respectively. English articles are notoriously difficult to learn for all L1 groups alike. However, the nature and magnitude of difficulties that learners face depends on their L1. For L2 English learners whose native languages do not have articles at all, there is a pronounced initial disadvantage in rate of acquisition, as Master (1997) details. For example, an early stage of article development in L2 English is characterized by the alternation of one or this with the to mark nouns that refer to entities already known to the hearer. For learners whose L1s have articles, like Spanish, the first stage of article development where one or

this alternate with the is brief, and the former two non-target-like forms are quickly

abandoned in favour of the. When L1–L2 similarities are present, a fast start is to be expected. For example, Jarvis (2002) found that Swedes with only two years of English instruction showed 86 per cent accuracy in their use of the English indefinite article and 98 per cent accuracy in their use of the English definite article. This can be in part explained by the similarities that English and Swedish exhibit in their article systems. Nevertheless, complete mastery of all functional subtleties of the English articles is difficult, even for such groups. Thus, English learners from a Spanish L1 background tend to overgeneralize the definite article the to certain generic contexts (I like the French fries) and may continue to do so for some time, even into upper-intermediate levels of L2 proficiency. This choice is induced by the semantic makeup underlying their L1 article system, which marks generic meanings with definiteness, where English selects zero article (e.g. me gustan las

Markedness and L1 transfer 37

error is less persistent and less frequent, if at all attested, among learners whose L1s do not have articles.