Chapter 12
Linguistics in Language Teaching
Exercise 12.2English Interlanguage
The following sentences are taken from actual production (oral or written) by nonnative speakers of English. Provide an explanation – as far as possible, based on rules – of what is problematic about these sentences. The problems may be syntactic, semantic, or pragmatic in nature. Multiple analyses may be possible; if so, give as many analyses as you think are reasonable ones.
I didn’t know what should I do.
My friend running to catch the bus this morning.
My friend was seen her boyfriend at the beach.
The instructor told us to return until 12:00 noon or we would lose our grade.
Nothing which bothered me was happened.
We wanted to played tennis all that weekend.
Q: You say you are not from mainland China, Mr. Chang?A: Yes. I come from Taiwan.
She wanted to know whether that I could help with the meeting.
I will not buy a ticket to the moon even you gave it me for a dollar.
Every country has own culture.
Assume that you are doing a data collection of sentences from native speakers of different languages. Assume that these subjects have studied English for exactly the same length of time in the same schools with the same teachers and that all share other relevant characteristics. Suppose that you arrange your data according to the countries from which your subjects come. A listing of example data sentences from two separate native-language groups yields the following data:
Native Language Group A
What should a parent do when a child does not behave properly?
I asked my driving instructor what could I do about my parking.
Have you ever wondered what is the best place to raise children?
Do you know how to help an old person who is too confused to speak?
She didn’t know did she want to practice or not.
Native Language Group B
What you think about what I tell you yesterday?
She want to know how I can do that.
They can help me, or not?
You not go away yet?
How you know what you supposed to do when somebody cheat you like that?
Identify one or two structural features which all of the examples in each set share. What tentative conclusions might you draw about the nature of the subjects’ native languages? Refer to specific structures in your answer; more than one analysis is possible.
Now, suppose that you found the following sentences in your data collection:
Native Language Group C
Someone might try to climb the mountain behind our town, although it isn’t easy.
If someone tried it, it would take several days to accomplish.
Native Language Group D
Even though I tried to catch the ball, but I couldn’t catch it.
If I tried to study harder, so I might have a better result.
What conclusion about differences in the two native languages vis-à-vis subordinating clauses might you draw? Again, more than one analysis is possible.
I didn’t know what should I do. While direct questions require the subject and (first) auxiliary to change places, indirect (embedded) questions require normal SVO word order. In this case, the word order is the same as normally occurs in main clauses.
My friend running to catch the bus this morning. All properly formed English sentences require a tense. In the case of a sentence with the apparent meaning of a progressive, this tense is marked on a form of the auxiliary be, which additionally marks for person and number. Thus, tense is not properly marked, and a fragment results.
My friend was seen her boyfriend at the beach. The overt form of the auxiliary is that of a passive, but the meaning of the sentence does not suggest that a passive is intended, and a properly formed passive cannot have a grammatical direct object. Therefore, the sentence is ill-formed. (It may be that the speaker/writer confuses seen with the similar-sounding seeing.)
The instructor told us to return until 12:00 noon or we would lose our grade. The problem is that the proper preposition should be by, not until. (Note: many languages have a single word for ‘until’ and ‘by’.) By occurs with punctual actions, while until occurs with durative ones (see Chapter 5 on aspect).
Nothing which bothered me was happened. The verb happen is intransitive; it cannot take a direct object. In this example, the use of the passive suggests that the speaker/writer has improperly placed happen in the category of transitive verbs. (Note: many languages do require verbs such as happen and occur to carry passive markings.)
We wanted to played tennis all weekend. An infinitive is not marked for tense (though it may be marked for aspect, as in to have played); the ‘infinite’ designation suggests that it is ‘outside of’ time. The verb played appears to be marked for past tense; hence there is a contradiction.
Q: You say you are not from mainland China, Mr. Cheng? A: Yes. I come from Taiwan. When expressing agreement with the implication of a negative question, the proper English response is to repeat the negative (perhaps while shaking the head in the same manner as the original speaker), just as it is appropriate to repeat a positive when responding agreeably to a positive question: You say you are from Taiwan? – Yes, I am. Disagreement in English is expressed by a contradiction of the positive or negative force of an utterance. (Here, the problem is that the rules for many languages work in a different way; to agree with the force of a question requires a yes-type answer regardless of whether the question is stated affirmatively or negatively.)
She wanted to know whether that I could help with the meeting. Modern English does not allow double complementizers. Whether and that thus cannot cooccur in a clause.
I will not buy a ticket to the moon even you give it to me for a dollar. Even may modify a single noun phrase (even my family would say yes), a single adjective phrase (This is unlikely or even impossible), a single verb phrase (He even bought an office building), or a single prepositional phrase (even on Sundays). When even modifies a tensed clause, it must become even if or even though.
Every country has own culture. A possessive anaphor requires a possessive adjective to mark the anaphoricity: its own culture.
Group A sentences show a complete uniformity in the treatment of subject auxiliary inversion. Inversion occurs in all environments when direct or indirect questions are formed. From this we could draw a number of possible conclusions. It may be that the speaker's native language does not differentiate between main and embedded clauses where subject-auxiliary inversion is concerned. It may also be that the speaker's native language does not have any inversion at all but that the speaker is working on the (mistaken) assumption that what works for English main clauses also works for embeddings.
Group B sentences show no inversion at all—neither in main nor embedded clauses. It may be that inversion does not occur in the speaker's native language at all and that the speaker is at a developmental stage where inversion has not yet been made part of his/her internal grammar. It also may be that tense marking as an obligatory feature of sentences is not part of the speaker's native language: evidence is the lack of tense-carrying auxiliaries do and be, as well as the lack of the suffix -s on 3rd-person present singular verbs.
Group C speakers seem to find no problem with subordinating clauses with subordinators such as although and if. One might conclude that similar structures exist in the native language. Group D speakers use although/if-clauses, which mark subordination for native speakers, together with but/so clauses, which may only connect two main clauses. English cannot have syntactic coordination together with subordination. The problem may be that the speaker's native language may not make this distinction between subordinate and coordinate; it may also be that the native language has a two-part correlative contrastive construction similar to the English not only … but also or both … and.