Chapter 11
Early development and relative clause constructions in English as a second
language
A longitudinal study
This study examines the development of relative clause (RC) constructions in a
child learning English as a second language in a naturalistic environment. Processability
Theory (PT) (Pienemann, 1998, 2005; Pienemann & Kessler,
2011) does not treat RCs, hence the present study looks at four major approaches to
RC development and attempts to find points of convergence with PT’s developmental stages. In
order to trace RCs’ development empirically, we audio-recorded at regular intervals the
spontaneous and elicited speech production of a Japanese child learning English from age
5;08 to age 7;08. Our study found that infinitival and participial RC constructions, such as
those considered by Diessel (2004) as building
blocks for RC development in FLA, also emerge early in child ESL.
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 2.Major theoretical approaches to relative clause acquisition
- 2.1Emergentism and Usage-based approaches
- 2.2The Noun Phrase Accessibility Hierarchy (NPAH)
- 2.3Perceptual Difficulty Hypothesis (PDH)
- 2.4SO Hierarchy Hypothesis (SOHH)
- 3.Morpho-syntactic development in Processability Theory
- 4.The study
- 4.1Research question
- 4.2The informant and the data
- 4.3Analysis
- 5.Results
- 5.1Morphological development
- 5.2Development of Relative Clause Constructions
- 6.Discussion
- 6.1Emergentism and Usage-based approaches
- 6.2Testing the Noun Phrase Accessibility Hierarchy (NPAH)
- 6.3Testing the Perceptual Difficulty Hypothesis (PDH)
- 6.4Testing the SO Hierarchy Hypothesis (SOHH)
- 6.5Acquisition of RC constructions and PT stages
- 7.Conclusion
-
Acknowledgements
-
Notes
-
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