Individual Variation and the Role of L1 in the L2 Development of English Grammatical Morphemes

278 Pages·2014·8.57 MB·English

Individual Variation and the Role of L1 in the L2
Development of English Grammatical Morphemes:
Insights From Learner Corpora
Akira Murakami
Department of Theoretical and Applied Linguistics
&
Hughes Hall
University of Cambridge
A dissertation submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy
July 2013
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Preface
Iherebydeclarethatthisdissertationistheresultofmyownworkandincludesnothing
which is the outcome of work done in collaboration except where specifically indicated in
thetext.
Thedissertationdoesnotexceed80,000wordsincludingfootnotes,references,andap-
pendices,butexcludingbibliographies.
AkiraMurakami
UniversityofCambridge
29July,2013
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Acknowledgement
Firstandforemost,Iwouldliketoexpressmysinceregratitudetomysupervisor,Dora
Alexopoulou, not only for her continuing and valuable guidance, extensive feedback, and
constructive advice on the project but also for her constant encouragement, enormous pa-
tience,andunwaveringsupportforthedissertationthroughoutmylifeasaPhDstudent. In
particular,ifanypartofthedataanalysisissuccessfullycommunicatedtothereader,Iowe
much of it to her. The endeavor of carrying out the project and writing up the thesis would
haveneverbeenpossiblewithouthersupervision.
IwouldalsoliketothankothermembersattheDepartmentofTheoreticalandApplied
Linguistics and former Research Centre for English and Applied Linguistics. My primary
appreciationgoestoHenriëtteHendriks,JohnWilliams,andPaulaButteryforreadingpart
of the draft of the thesis and giving me detailed and insightful comments at various stages.
Their useful suggestions greatly improved the thesis in concrete ways, and the regular
ResearchCommitteeMeetingswiththemhelpedmysteadyprogress.
My thanks extend to the researchers involved in the English Profile Programme. I am
especiallygratefultoJohnHawkinsandMichaelMcCarthyfortheirinspirationforandad-
vocacyofmyworkattheresearchseminarsoftheprogramme. Theirwarmencouragement
motivatedmeandincreasedmyconfidenceofthework.
The dissertation also significantly benefited from the comments I received on my pre-
sentations at various conferences including EUROSLA, Corpus Linguistics, Learner Cor-
pusResearch,andSecondLanguageResearchForum,amongothersmallerworkshopsand
seminars. ThepracticaladvicefromNickEllisattheLanguageAcquisitionandLanguage
Processing Research Cluster Workshop was notably helpful to polish part of Chapter 2 of
thethesis.
The empirical data of the thesis came entirely from existing learner corpora. I am
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thankfultoCambridgeESOLandCambridgeUniversityPressforgrantingmeaccesstothe
Cambridge Learner Corpus, and Education First for supplying the data for EF-Cambridge
OpenLanguageDatabase.
IamdeeplyindebtedtomyfriendsatHughesHall,CambridgeUniversityTableTennis
Club, Hughes Hall Table Tennis Club, Hughes Hall Chess Club, and Cambridge Univer-
sity Japanese Interdisciplinary Forum (Toirokai). They brought me moments of joy in the
otherwise isolated everyday life of a research student. Their diversity has enormously en-
hanced my life and contributed to the value of living in Cambridge. I also thank Hughes
HallLibraryforprovidingmewithapleasantenvironmenttostayin. Itisundoubtedlythe
placeIspentthelongesttimeinsincethestartofmyPhDandwheremostpartofthework
forthedissertationwascompleted.
Financial support from Japan Student Services Organization is genuinely acknowl-
edged. It is when I learned about their scholarship that I decided to pursue a PhD outside
of Japan. I am likewise thankful to Hughes Hall Travel Grant for funding me to attend
conferences.
Finally, none of these would have been possible without the long-term moral support
frommyfamily. Iappreciatemyparents,mysister,andmygrandparentsfortheirinvolve-
mentandbeliefinme.
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Abstract
The overarching goal of the dissertation is to illustrate the relevance of learner corpus
researchtothefieldofsecondlanguageacquisition(SLA).Thepossibilitythatlearnercor-
poracanbeusefulinmainstreamSLAresearchhasasignificantimplicationgiventhatthey
have not been systematically explored in relation to SLA theories. The thesis contributes
to building a methodological framework to utilize learner corpora beneficially to SLA and
argues that learner corpus research contributes to other disciplines. This is achieved by a
series of case studies that quantitatively analyze individual variation and the role of native
language (L1) in second language (L2) development of English grammatical morphemes
andexplainthefindingswithexistingSLAtheories.
The dissertation investigates the L2 development of morphemes based on two large-
scale learner corpora. It first reviews the literature and points out that the L2 acquisition
orderofEnglishgrammaticalmorphemesthathasbeenbelieveduniversalinSLAresearch
may, in fact, vary across the learners with different L1 backgrounds and that individual
differences in morpheme studies have been relatively neglected in previous literature. The
presentresearch,thus,providesempiricalevidencetestingtheuniversalityoftheorderand
theextentofindividualdifferences.
In the first study, the thesis investigates L1 influence on the L2 acquisition order of six
English grammatical morphemes across seven L1 groups and five proficiency levels. Data
drawn from approximately 12,000 essays from the Cambridge Learner Corpus establish
clearL1influenceonthisissue. Thestudyalsorevealsthatlearnerswithouttheequivalent
morpheme in L1 tend to achieve an accuracy level of below 90% with respect to the mor-
phemeevenatthehighestproficiencylevel,andthatmorphemesrequiringlearnerstolearn
topayattentiontotherelevantdistinctionsintheiracquisitionshowastrongereffectofL1
than those which only require new form-meaning mappings. The findings are interpreted
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undertheframeworkofthinking-for-speakingproposedbyDanSlobin.
Followingthefirststudy,thedissertationexploitsEF-CambridgeOpenLanguageDatabase
(EFCamDat) and analyzes the developmental patterns of morphemes, L1 influence on the
patterns,andtheextenttowhichindividualvariationisobservedinthedevelopment. Based
onapproximately140,000essayswrittenby46,700learnersof10L1groupsacrossawide
rangeofproficiencylevels,thestudyfoundthat(i)certaindevelopmentalpatternsofaccu-
racy are observed irrespective of target morphemes, (ii) inverted U-shaped development is
rareirrespectiveofmorphemes,(iii)proficiencyinfluencesthewithin-learnerdevelopmen-
tal patterns of morphemes, (iv) the developmental patterns at least slightly vary depending
on morphemes, and (v) significant individual variation is observed in absolute accuracy,
theaccuracydifferencebetweenmorphemes,andtherateofdevelopment. Thefindingsare
interpreted with dynamic systems theory (DST), a theory of development that has recently
been applied to SLA research. The thesis further examines whether any systematic rela-
tionship is observed between the developmental patterns of morphemes. Although DST
expectsthattheirdevelopmentisinterlinked,thestudydidnotfindanystrongrelationships
between the developmental patterns. However, it revealed a weak supportive relationship
inthedevelopmentalpatternbetweenarticlesandplural-s. Thatis,withinindividuallearn-
ers, when the accuracy of articles increases, the accuracy of plural -s tends to increase as
well,andviceversa.
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Table of Contents
Preface 1
Acknowledgement 2
Abstract 4
Table of Contents 6
List of Tables 12
List of Figures 15
Chapter 1: Introduction
17
1.1Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
1.2MorphemeStudies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
1.2.1GeneralRationaleofMorphemeStudies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
1.2.2ExplanationoftheMorphemeAcquisitionOrder . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
1.2.3L1InfluenceinMorphemeStudies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
1.3Thinking-for-Speaking . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
1.4TheImportanceofIndividualVariation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
1.4.1CharacteristicsofDST . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
1.4.2VariabilityinDST . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
1.4.3L1InfluenceinDST . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
1.5ResearchQuestions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
Chapter 2: L1 Influence on the Acquisition Order of En-
glish Grammatical Morphemes
34
2.1Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
7
2.1.1MethodologicalChallengesofTransferStudies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
2.1.2ResearchQuestions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
2.2Method . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
2.2.1TargetMorphemes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
2.2.2TargetL1Groups . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
2.2.3Corpus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
2.2.4ScoringMethod . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
2.2.5DataExtraction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
2.2.6DataAnalysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
2.3Results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
2.3.1DescriptiveData . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
2.3.2SOC-BasedCorrelations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
2.3.3TLU-BasedClustering . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56
2.3.4RegressionAnalyses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62
2.3.4.1Graphicalanalysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62
2.3.4.2Logisticregressionmodel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67
2.4Discussion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72
2.5Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78
Chapter 3: Cross-sectional Analysis of EF-Cambridge Open
Language Database
80
3.1Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80
3.2Method . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80
3.2.1TargetMorphemes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80
3.2.2Corpus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81
3.2.3TargetL1GroupsandProficiencyLevels . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82
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3.2.4ScoringMethod . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85
3.2.5DataExtraction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85
3.2.6DataAnalysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88
3.3Results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90
3.3.1OverallPictureofEFCamDat . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90
3.3.2ComparisonwiththeCLCintheAbsoluteAccuracyoftheMorphemes . . 94
3.3.3ComparisonwiththeCLCintheAccuracyOrderoftheMorphemes . . . . 97
3.3.4RegressionModeling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102
3.4Discussion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114
3.5Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 116
Chapter 4: Individual Variation in the Longitudinal L2 De-
velopment of English Grammatical Morphemes
117
4.1Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117
4.2Method . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 118
4.2.1Corpus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 118
4.2.2TargetMorpheme,L1Groups,andProficiencyLevels . . . . . . . . . . . . 119
4.2.3ScoringMethodandDataExtraction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 120
4.2.4DataAnalysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 120
4.3Results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123
4.3.1Cross-SectionalViewofArticleDevelopment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123
4.3.2LongitudinalViewofArticleDevelopment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125
4.3.2.1MovingWindow . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125
4.3.2.2LongitudinalDevelopmentofArticles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131
4.3.3ClusteringLearnersAccordingtoTheirShapesofArticleDevelopment . . 135
4.3.3.1Regression-BasedClustering . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137
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4.3.3.2KmLClustering . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 140
4.3.3.3ComparingRegression-BasedClusteringandKmLClustering . . . . . . 152
4.3.3.4InterimSummary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 158
4.3.4AnalysesoftheOtherMorphemes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 158
4.3.4.1Cross-SectionalViewoftheOtherMorphemes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159
4.3.4.2ClusteringoftheLongitudinalDevelopmentoftheOtherMorphemes . . 159
4.4Discussion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173
4.5Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 177
Chapter 5: The Roles of L1 and Proficiency in the Longi-
tudinal L2 Development of English Grammatical Mor-
phemes
178
5.1Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 178
5.2Method . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179
5.2.1Data,TargetMorpheme,L1Groups,andProficiencyLevels . . . . . . . . . 179
5.2.2DataAnalysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179
5.3Results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179
5.3.1TestingtheEffectsofL1andProficiencybyPredictingClusterMembership 179
5.3.1.1TestingtheEffectsinArticles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 180
5.3.1.2TestingtheEffectsinPlural-s . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 181
5.3.2Mixed-EffectsModels . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 182
5.3.2.1DescriptionofMixed-EffectsModels . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 184
5.3.2.2ModelSpecification . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 189
5.3.2.3ProsandConsofMixed-EffectsModels . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 192
5.3.2.4ResultsofMixed-EffectsModels . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 197
5.3.3GeneralizedAdditiveModels . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 205