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Language Acquisition Seminar
Real Language Users
&
Variations in Native Speaker
Competence: Implications for
First-language Teaching
By Ngoni Chipere
Language Acquisition Seminar
Table of contents
1. The classical assumptions
2. Evidence from past researches
3. Experiment I – findings and conclusions
4. Experiment II - findings and conclusions
5. Summary
Language Acquisition Seminar
“Ideal Language Users”
Uniform
Same linguistic competence
Generative
Parsing is based on grammar
Autonomous
Independent of semantic factors
Automatic
syntactic processing is an automatic process
Constant
Does not adapt to experience
Language Acquisition Seminar
Holes in the Theory ?
From Prof. N. Chomsky:
I would be inclined to think, even without any
investigation, that there would be a correlation
between linguistic performance and intelligence;
state attained is rather different among people of different
educational level […] it is entirely conceivable that some
complex structures just aren’t developed by a large
number of people, perhaps because the degree of
stimulation in their external environment isn’t
sufficient for them to develop [added emphasis].
Language Acquisition Seminar
Preliminary Discussion
Uniform Competence
–
–
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Empirical evidence for individual differences in linguistic
ability has been found along at least eleven dimensions.
Reported effects of education on comprehension skill.
Evidence that individual differences in cognitive style are
reflected in patterns of language comprehension.
Generativity
–
–
No experimental tests which demonstrate that the ability to
understand complex sentences increases indefinitely as
processing constraints are reduced.
Large number of studies show positive effects of training on
native speakers’ syntactic skills.
Language Acquisition Seminar
Preliminary Discussion – Cont.
Autonomy
–
–
–
Chomsky’s “Colourless green ideas sleep furiously” vs.
“Antepenultimate idiosyncratic elocution paragraphs bright”
“The horse raced past the barn fell” might produce a reliable
garden path effect in naive subjects,
“The landmine buried in the sand exploded” does not.
Lexical choice seem to matter, contrast
“The man whom the farmer whom the girl saw sued died”
with “The fact that the man who Andrew looked up to was a
criminal bothered Sarah.”
Language Acquisition Seminar
Preliminary Discussion – Cont.
Automaticity
–
–
Automaticity is generally regarded in automatic processing
research as an effect of practice.
If parsing is truly a reflex, then it should always occur
regardless of the nature of the experimental task.
Constant
–
–
Training can enhance the syntactic performance of normal
adult native speakers, normal child native speakers and native
speaker children with specific language impairment.
The relationship between education and grammatical skill is
form of evidence for environmentally induced changes in the
linguistic representations.
Language Acquisition Seminar
Does the Language User act like a PC ?
Test
if between and within subject
Uniform
differences
remain
when performance
Same linguistic
competence
constraints are neutralised.
Generative
Parsing is based on grammar
Test if sentences with the same
Autonomous
structure but
different lexical items are
Independent
parsed equally
well. of semantic factors
Test if subjects Automatic
always carry out complete syntactic
processing is an automatic process
analysis of test syntactic
sentences.
Constant
Test if there are any order effects during an
Does not adapt to experience
experiment.
Language Acquisition Seminar
Experiment I
(From “Real Language Users”)
Language Acquisition Seminar
Hypothesis
graduate native and non-native speakers
of English comprehend grammatically
challenging English sentences more
accurately than non-graduate native
speakers of English.
Language Acquisition Seminar
Subjects
12 graduated native
speakers
12 postgraduate
non-native speakers
of English
Group 1
Group 2
12 native speakers
of English whose
formal education
didn’t extend beyond
high school.
Group 3
Language Acquisition Seminar
Materials
Test Sentences:
–
CNP – Complex Noun Phrase
Peter knows that the fact that taking good care of himself is essential
surprises Tom.
–
TM – Tough movement
Alison will be hard to get Tim to give a loan to.
–
PG1 – Parasitic Gap type 1
The servant who Tim visited before overhearing the lady proposing to
dismiss had lunch in a café.
–
PG2 - Parasitic Gap type 2
The solicitor who the man met after discovering his mother arranging
to leave a lot of money for was having coffee.
Questions
–
–
–
–
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Q1 – Key question – diagnostic of correct parsing
Q2 – Backup question
Q3 – Subjects awareness to structural ambiguities.
Q4 – Giveaway question
Q5 – Grammatically judgment
Language Acquisition Seminar
Design
Language Acquisition Seminar
Results – Uniform Competence
Graduated native outperformed non-graduate
natives
Language Acquisition Seminar
Results - Generativity
Performance was not consistent across structures. The
greatest inconsistencies were found in the performance of
native non-graduates followed by native graduates.
Unexpectedly, the non-native graduates performed most
consistently across structures and Conditions.
Language Acquisition Seminar
Results - Autonomy
Group 3 failed almost completely to answer questions on
the implausible sentences correctly.
Native and non-native graduates were not affected by
plausibility.
Language Acquisition Seminar
Results - Automaticity
Subjects were not able to answer all questions about the
same sentence equally well,
Even when subjects answered questions correctly,
however, they still took longer to answer the difficult
questions compared to the easier ones
Language Acquisition Seminar
Results - Constancy
Comprehension scores increased and reading times
decreased on successive presentations of each structural
type.
Language Acquisition Seminar
Possible Conservative Explanations
Wrong
Conclusion
Subjects differed in the availability of
computational resources.
Problems in
Design
There are differences in the ability to
map the syntactic analysis to a semantic
interpretation.
Subjects not
Significant
All groups performed equally badly in
terms of syntactic processing, except that
the highly educated groups employed
more sophisticated repair strategies.
Language Acquisition Seminar
Memory Capacity Discussion
Evidence
–
–
the span of immediate memory is restricted to 7 +/- 2
items.
Subjects had difficulties in recalling sentences with
more than oneself-embedding.
But…
–
–
“for all types of sentences the average percentage …
increased on successive repetitions”
Compared to novices, skilled performers are a) more
accurate; b) generally faster; c) reliant on less information; d)
more consistent and e) in possession of more hierarchically
developed knowledge structures
Language Acquisition Seminar
The Theory of Automatisation
“Automatisation reflects a transition from
algorithm-based performance to memorybased performance.”
“The man who Peter saw...”
Group 3 displayed a significant increase in reading times at ‘Peter’.
“The doctor knows that the fact that taking good care of
himself is essential surprises Tom”
interpreted as either
“The doctor knows that the fact that taking good care of
himself is essential” or
“The doctor knows that the fact that taking good care of
himself surprises Tom”.
Language Acquisition Seminar
Experiment II
(From “Variations in Native Speaker
Competence: Implications for
First-language Teaching”)
Language Acquisition Seminar
2 Theories of Working Memory
Just and Carpenter (1992)
–
Reported a correlation between working memory
capacity and comprehension.
Ericsson and Kintsch (1995)
–
–
Skilled individuals make efficient use of long-term
memory and thereby boost the limited capacity
working memory.
Poor comprehension arises from insufficient
linguistic knowledge.
Therefore comprehension training
should also improve recall.
Language Acquisition Seminar
Aim and Prediction
To determine the effect of memory training and
comprehension training on the comprehension
and recall of complex NP sentences.
Memory training will result in higher recall but will
not improve comprehension of complex sentences.
Comprehension training will result in both higher
recall and improved comprehension of complex
sentences.
Language Acquisition Seminar
Subjects and Materials
18 English native speakers
who either failed GCSE
English or obtained
poor grades
LAA
11 English native speakers
who had obtained ‘A’
grades in GCSE English
HAA
Complex NP sentences:
Tom knows that the fact that flying planes low is dangerous excites the pilot.
Language Acquisition Seminar
Pre-Test
procedure
–
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Recall task – recalling 15-word Complex NP sentences.
Comprehension task – answering comprehension
questions regarding the same sentences.
Results
Recall Scores
Comprehension Scores
Language Acquisition Seminar
Post Test I
procedure
–
–
Memory training – LAA memorized the 10 pre-test
sentences
Same Tasks as Pre-Test – but different sentences.
Results
Recall Scores
Comprehension Scores
Language Acquisition Seminar
Post Test II
procedure
–
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Comprehension training (for LAA groups)
Same Tasks as Pre-Test and Post-Test I
Results
Recall Scores
Comprehension Scores
Language Acquisition Seminar
Questions to be Raised
How much lexical knowledge contributes to the comprehension
of simple declarative sentences.( “Sleep stars radio green”)?
How many of the processing difficulties attributed in the past to
resource limitations can be eliminated through training?
How reliably do subjects interpret novel structures in terms of
familiar ones?
Can semantic processing outrun syntactic processing so as to
bring about an early termination of syntactic processing?
Measure on-line differences in the way familiar vs. unfamiliar
structures are processed and find out to what extent conscious
sentence comprehension resembles conscious problem
solving.
Language Acquisition Seminar
Conclusions and Summary
“the idea that native speakers of
a language know their language
perfectly. … rests purely on an
idealisation made by Chomsky
for descriptive purposes”
there are normal native speakers
of English who are not fully
syntactically productive.
non-native speakers of a
language may be more
productive than native speakers.