ENGLISH NEGATIVES IN THE ORAL PRODUCTION OF THREE SPANISH, SWEDISH, AND HMONG SIXTH GRADERS
Author(s):
Miles, Norma Dorothy
Format:
Thesis
Degree granted:
Ph.D.
Publisher:
Ann Arbor : University of California, Santa Barbara, 1986.
Pages:
339
Language:
English
Abstract:
This study examined certain English negative sequences in the oral production of three 12-year-old English as a second language (ESL) students from Spanish, Swedish, and Hmong backgrounds, respectively. Negation was selected because of its structural complexity, its relationship with the auxiliaries, its interest to other second-language researchers, and the belief that an understanding of this structural area may also assist in providing information into other structural areas. The first language is thought to influence subsequent language learning; therefore, the subjects' respective first language was scrutinized, and contrastive analysis was undertaken to explore the possibility of first-language influence on their verbal production. Additionally, error analysis was used to compare collectively the subjects' qualitative and quantitative anomalies. The aim of this comparison was to identify commonalities in surface structure production, rather than to suggest that the subjects were at a common level of linguistic proficiency. To strengthen and complement the contrastive analysis and error analysis approaches, and to obtain richer and more balanced results, an informant paradigm was also used. This paradigm consisted of three groups of three informants representing each of the three first-language backgrounds in the study, namely, Spanish, Swedish, and Hmong. The nine informants translated certain English negative sequences into equivalent first-language sequences and commented on pertinent features of the first language with respect to English. An analysis of the ungrammatical sequences of selected negative utterances was carried out to determine whether the subjects' respective first language influenced certain anomalies in English. This same analysis was used to determine whether similar anomalies occurred in the English production of all three subjects regardless of their respective first-language backgrounds, or if such production differed markedly, and whether these anomalies occurred only in particular second-language environments. In general, the findings indicated that, to some extent, the respective first languages appeared to influence certain second-language sequences. For the most part, however, the first language seemed to have little consistent effect on the nature of most second-language errors because there were similar surface structure errors in the utterances of all three subjects, some of which reflected no apparent first-language influence. Although the limited performance of the subjects argued against any definitive conclusions, an interpretation of the findings seemed to suggest that first-language influence accounted for certain types of errors as did the learners' still-developing second-language rules system.