Keywords
complementation
complementizer deletion
zero complementizer
How to Cite
Number of views: 472
Number of downloads: 334
Abstract
Sociolinguistic competence is not often examined in nonnative English acquisition. This is particularly true for features where the variants are neither stylistically nor socially constrained, but rather are acceptable in all circumstances. Learning to use a language fully, however, implies being able to deal with this type of ‘difficulty,’ and understanding what type of variable features nonnative speakers acquire with ease and which ones they do not may help us better understand more general processes of second language acquisition. By comparing the rates of complementizer deletion of nonnative to native speakers and examining their distributions across various internal and external factors, this paper addresses these issues and offers an example of acquisition of what is, in some ways, an invisible variant. Furthermore, by focusing on a Swiss student association, the paper is also able to compare the patterns of French, German and Italian native speakers, to examine to what extent they differ in English.
References
Bayley, R. (1995). Competing constraints on variation in the speech of adult Chinese learners of English. In R. Bayley & D. R. Preston (Eds.), Second language acquisition and linguistic variation (pp. 97-120). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Bayley, R. & Regan, V. (2004). Introduction: The acquisition of sociolinguistic competence. Journal of Sociolinguistics, 8(3), 323-338.
Dewaele, J.-M. (2004). Retention or omission of the ne in advanced French interlanguage: The variable effect of extralinguistic factors. Journal of Sociolinguistics, 8(3), 433-450.
Dewaele, J.-M. & Regan V. (2002). Maîtriser la norme sociolinguistique en interlangue française: Le case de l’omission variable de ‘ne.’ Journal of French Language Studies, 12, 123-148.
Durham, M. (2003). Language Choice on a Swiss mailing list. In B. Danet & S. Herring (Eds.),The multilingual Internet [Special issue]. Journal of Computer Mediated Communication, 9(1). Retrieved from: http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol9/issue1/durham.html
Durham, M. (2007). English in Switzerland: inherent variation in a non-native speech community (Doctoral dissertation, University of Fribourg, Swit-zerland). Retrieved from http://ethesis.unifr.ch/theses/downloads.php?file=DurhamM.pdf
Dürmüller, U. (2001). The presence of English at Swiss universities. In U. Ammon (Ed.), The effects of the dominance of English as a language of science on the non-English language communities (pp. 389-403). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Dürmüller, U. (2002). English in Switzerland: From foreign language to lingua franca. In D. Allerton, P. Skandera, & C. Tschichold (Eds.), Perspectives on English as a world language (pp. 114-123). Basel: Schwabe.
Ellegard, A. (1978). The syntactic structure of English texts: A computer-based study of four kinds of text in the Brown University Corpus. Goteborg: Acta Universitatis Gothoburgensis.
Elsness, J. (1984). That or zero? A look at the choice of object clause connective in a corpus of American English. English Studies, 65, 519-533.
Herring, C. (2001). Computer mediated discourse. In D. Schiffrin, D. Tannen, & H. Hamilton (Eds.), The handbook of discourse analysis (pp. 612-634). Oxford: Blackwell.
Hopp, H. (2007). Cross-linguistic differences at the syntax-discourse interface in off- and on-line L2 perfomance. In A. Belikova, L. Meroni, & M. Umeda (Eds.), Proceedings of the 2nd conference on generative approaches to language acquisition North America (GALANA) (pp. 147-158). Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Proceedings Project.
Hymes, D. (1972). On communicative competence. In J. B. Pride & J. Holmes (Eds.), Sociolinguistics (pp. 269-293). Harmondsworth: Penguin.
Kachru, B. (Ed.) (1982). The other tongue. Pergamon Institute of English.
Kolbe, D. (2008). Complement clauses in British English (Unpublished doctoral dissertation). University of Trier.
Kucera H. & Francis, W. (1967). Computational analysis of present-day American English. Providence: Brown University Press.
Langman, J., & Bayley, R. (2002). The acquisition of verbal morphology by Chinese learners of Hungarian. Language Variation and Change, 14(1), 55-77.
Lyster, R. (1996). Question forms, conditionals, and second-person pronouns used by adolescent native speakers across two levels of formality in written and spoken French. The Modern Language Journal, 80, 165-182.
Mougeon, R., Nadasdi, T., & Rehner, K. (2010). The sociolinguistic competence of immersion students. Bristol: Multilingual Matters.
Mougeon, R. & Rehner, K. (2001). Acquisition of sociolinguistic variants by French immersion students: The case of restrictive expressions, and more. Modern Language Journal, 85, 398-414.
Mougeon, R., Rehner, K., & Nadasdi, T. (2004). The learning of spoken French variation by immersion students from Toronto, Canada. Journal of Socio-linguistics, 8(3), 408-432.
Nagy, N., Blondeau, H., & Auger, J. (2003). Second language acquisition and ‘real’ French: An investigation of subject doubling in the French of Mon-treal Anglophones. Language Variation and Change, 15(1), 73-103.
Penner, Z., & Bader, T. (1995). Issues in the syntax of subordination: A comparative study of the complementizer system in Germanic, Romance, and Semitic languages with special reference to Bernese Swiss German. In Z. Penner (Ed.), Topics in Swiss German syntax (pp. 73-290). Bern: Peter Lang.
Regan, V. (1995). Variation in French interlanguage: A longitudinal study of sociolinguistic competence. In R. Bayley & D. R. Preston (Eds.), Second language acquisition and linguistic variation (pp. 177-201). Amsterdam: Benjamins.
Regan, V., Howard, M., & Lemée, I. (2009). The acquisition of sociolinguistic competence in a study abroad context. Bristol: Multilingual Matters.
Rehner, K., Mougeon, R., & Nadasi, T. (2003). The learning of sociolinguistic variation by advanced FSL speakers: The case of nous versus on in immersion French. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 25, 127-156.
Sankoff, G., Thibault, P., Nagy, N., Blondeau, H., Fonollosa, M., & Gagnon, L. (1997). Variation and the use of discourse markers in a language contact situation. Language Variation and Change, 9(2), 191-218.
Soars, L., & Soars, J. (1987). Headway upper-intermediate. Oxford: Oxford Uni-versity Press.
Sorace, A., & Filiaci, F. (2006). Anaphora resolution in near-native speakers of Italian. Second Language Research, 22(3), 339-368.
Spencer, T. (1999). The golden grammar book (2nd ed.). Lausanne: Imprivite S.A.
Tagliamonte, S., & Smith, J. (2005). No momentary fancy! The zero complementizer in English dialects. English Language and Linguistics, 9(2), 289-309.
Thompson, S., & Mulac, A. (1991). The discourse conditions for the use of complementizer that in conversational English. Journal of Pragmatics, 15, 237-251.
Torres Cacoullos, R., & Walker, J. (2009). On the persistence of grammar in discourse formulas: A variationist study of that. Linguistics, 47(1), 1-43.
White, L. (2010). Second language acquisition at the interfaces. Lingua, 124(4), 577-590.
License
1.1 The Author hereby warrants that he/she is the owner of all the copyright and other intellectual property rights in the Work and that, within the scope of the present Agreement, the paper does not infringe the legal rights of another person. The owner of the copyright work also warrants that he/she is the sole and original creator thereof and that is not bound by any legal constraints in regard to the use or sale of the work.
1.2. The Publisher warrants that is the owner of the PRESSto platform for open access journals, hereinafter referred to as the PRESSto Platform.
2. The Author grants the Publisher non-exclusive and free of charge license to unlimited use worldwide over an unspecified period of time in the following areas of exploitation:
2.1. production of multiple copies of the Work produced according to the specific application of a given technology, including printing, reproduction of graphics through mechanical or electrical means (reprography) and digital technology;
2.2. marketing authorisation, loan or lease of the original or copies thereof;
2.3. public performance, public performance in the broadcast, video screening, media enhancements as well as broadcasting and rebroadcasting, made available to the public in such a way that members of the public may access the Work from a place and at a time individually chosen by them;
2.4. inclusion of the Work into a collective work (i.e. with a number of contributions);
2.5. inclusion of the Work in the electronic version to be offered on an electronic platform, or any other conceivable introduction of the Work in its electronic version to the Internet;
2.6. dissemination of electronic versions of the Work in its electronic version online, in a collective work or independently;
2.7. making the Work in the electronic version available to the public in such a way that members of the public may access the Work from a place and at a time individually chosen by them, in particular by making it accessible via the Internet, Intranet, Extranet;
2.8. making the Work available according to appropriate license pattern Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) as well as another language version of this license or any later version published by Creative Commons.
3. The Author grants the Publisher permission to reproduce a single copy (print or download) and royalty-free use and disposal of rights to compilations of the Work and these compilations.
4. The Author grants the Publisher permission to send metadata files related to the Work, including to commercial and non-commercial journal-indexing databases.
5. The Author represents that, on the basis of the license granted in the present Agreement, the Publisher is entitled and obliged to:
5.1. allow third parties to obtain further licenses (sublicenses) to the Work and to other materials, including derivatives thereof or compilations made, based on or including the Work, whereas the provisions of such sub-licenses will be the same as with the Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) Creative Commons sub-license or another language version of this license, or any later version of this license published by Creative Commons;
5.2. make the Work available to the public in such a way that members of the public may access the Work from a place and at a time individually chosen by them, without any technological constraints;
5.3. appropriately inform members of the public to whom the Work is to be made available about sublicenses in such a way as to ensure that all parties are properly informed (appropriate informing messages).
6. Because of the royalty-free provision of services of the Author (resulting from the scope of obligations stipulated in the present Agreement), the Author shall not be entitled to any author’s fee due and payable on the part of the Publisher (no fee or royalty is payable by the Publisher to the Author).
7.1. In the case of third party claims or actions for indemnity against the Publisher owing to any infractions related to any form of infringement of intellectual property rights protection, including copyright infringements, the Author is obliged to take all possible measures necessary to protect against these claims and, when as a result of legal action, the Publisher, or any third party licensed by the Publisher to use the Work, will have to abandon using the Work in its entirety or in part or, following a court ruling in a legal challenge, to pay damages to a third party, whatever the legal basis
7.2. The Author will immediately inform the Publisher about any damage claims related to intellectual property infringements, including the author’s proprietary rights pertaining to a copyrighted work, filed against the Author. of liability, the Author is obliged to redress the damage resulting from claims made by third party, including costs and expenditures incurred in the process.
7.3. To all matters not settled herein provisions of the Polish Civil Code and the Polish Copyright and Related Rights Act shall apply.