The acquisition of English as a second language by a Japanese primary school child : a longitudinal study from a processability viewpoint

Abstract

This thesis aims to investigate the acquisitional path of English as a second language (ESL) by a Japanese primary school child within the framework of Processability Theory (PT) (Pienemann 1998; Pienemann, Di Biase, and Kawaguchi 2005). Recent developments in linguistic theories, such as Lexical Functional Grammar (LFG) (e.g., Bresnan 2001), incorporate now new dimensions such as the interface between pragmatic-discourse functions and syntax. These have not been sufficiently investigated in ESL, especially through developmental (i.e., longitudinal) data. PT proposes three new hypotheses, which clarify the language-specific bases of syntactic development, the acquisition of sentential topic/focus, and the development of non-canonical mapping of argument on functional structures in the second language learner. These guided my investigation. The goal of this thesis is twofold: (1) to provide a more detailed description of morphological and syntactic development as observed in ESL acquisition by a Japanese primary school child; and (2) to test, for English L2, two of the new hypotheses in the extension of PT, namely the Unmarked Alignment Hypothesis and the Topic Hypothesis (Pienemann, et al, 2005), against this longitudinal data set. The issues I focus on in this investigation include the relative timing of the evolution of tense (-ed) and aspect (-ing) marking, a closer examination of the acquisition of plural -s in different linguistic contexts, the timing of the acquisition of possessive marking (-'s) with head nouns, and the development of verb phrasal morphology in English L2. Further, the developmental stages for English syntax are examined with longitudinal ESL data, according to the new PT hypotheses as represented in current PT literature (Bettoni and Di Biase, in press; Di Biase and Kawaguchi, in press; Pienemann, et al, 2005). In order to achieve these goals, I conducted a two-year longitudinal study on a Japanese child learning English in Australia from age 5;8 to 7;8. Full distributional analyses of speech data are carried out for a set of English morphological and syntactic structures hypothesized to emerge in the current processability hierarchies. Results show that the acquisitional path of ESL by the Japanese child is generally compatible with the current developmental PT framework. The findings in this study also demonstrate that English declaratives and interrogatives develop in rather independent manners. Further, this study shows that syntax develops faster than morphology at the early stages, while morphology develops faster than syntax at the later stages in ESL acquisition. It is also found that there are some connections between the development of interrogatives and morphological development. By testing the extended processability hierarchies for English on longitudinal data, this study contributes to second language acquisition on account of PT's important theoretical position in the field. It also contributes to the development of ESL education as it provides a more detailed developmental map for possible pedagogical design, particularly in the planning of educational programs for primary school children.

Date of Award	2010
Original language	English