Construction of Cross-Cultural Identity by Language Choice and Linguistic Practice: A Case-Study of Mixed Hong Kong-Mainland Identity in University Contexts

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Open Journal of Modern Linguistics

2013. Vol.3, No.3, 223-227

Published Online September 2013 in SciRes (http://www.scirp.org/journal/ojml) http://dx.doi.org/10.4236/ojml.2013.33030

The Acquisition of Complex Structures: The Case of Child ESL

Yumiko Yamaguchi

Department of English Language, Tokyo Denki University, Tokyo, Japan

Email: [email protected]

Received June 30th, 2013; revised August 2nd, 2013; accepted August 10th, 2013

Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the

original work is properly cited.

This study examines how complex linguistic structures are acquired in child English as a second language.

The spontaneous speech producing by a Japanese primary school child, learning English in a naturalistic

environment, was audio-recorded regularly over two years and the development of complex syntactic

structures containing subordinate clauses was compared with the acquisition of other English morpho-

syntactic structures as represented within Processability Theory (PT) (Pienemann, 1998; Pienemann, Di

Biase, & Kawaguchi, 2005). Although PT predicts that subordination is acquired at the highest stage in

processability hierarchy, the results in this longitudinal study show that some of the subordinate construc-

tions emerge at earlier stages in child ESL acquisition.

Keywords: English as a Second Language; Complex Structures; Subordinate Clauses; Processability

Theory; Primary School Child

Introduction

The development of subordinate clauses has been the focus

of much language acquisition research in both first language

(L1) (e.g., Diessel & Tomasello, 2005; Kidd & Bavin, 2002;

Sheldon, 1974) and second language (L2) contexts (e.g., Doughty,

1991; Eckman, Bell, & Nelson, 1988; Gass, 1979; Izumi, 2003;

Pavesi, 1986). However, most of the previous studies are expe-

rimental and few observational studies on this issue have been

conducted. While the use of English subordinate clauses in chil-

dren’s spontaneous speech in L1 acquisition has been examined

to some extent (e.g., Bowerman, 1979; Bloom, 1991; Diessel,

2004), longitudinal studies on the development of subordinate

clauses by L2 learners (e.g., Mellow, 2006; Schumann, 1980)

are rare. Also, a majority of previous studies analyzed the ac-

quisition of relative clauses in terms of noun phrase accessibil-

ity hierarchy (Keenan & Comrie, 1977).

Subordinate Clauses in English

Basic types of English subordinate clauses include comple-

ment, relative, and adverbial clauses (e.g., Diessel, 2004; Kroeger,

2005). Complement clauses are commonly defined as subordi-

nate clauses functioning as an argument of the matrix clause

predicate. They may serve as the subject or object of the matrix

clause. In child L1 studies (e.g., Diessel, 2004, Diessel & To-

masello, 2001), object complement clauses are found to be very

common in early child speech. Also, it is found that sentential

complements (S-complements) marked by “that” or zero (e.g.,

“Ken know (that) Mary likes dogs”) are the earliest complement

clauses and emerge a few months after the second birthday.

Wh-complements (e.g., “I wonder what John ate for lunch”)

and If-complements marked by “if” or “whether” (e.g., “Lisa

asked me if I like pizza”) are found to appear several months

after the first S-complements.

Relative clauses are subordinate clauses that modify a refer-

ential expression in the matrix clauses. The modified element is

called the head (or filler), and the head can be the subject, the

object, an oblique, a predicate nominal, and so on. Child L1

studies (e.g., Diessel, 2004; Diessel & Tomasello, 2000) found

that the vast majority of the children’s early relative construc-

tions contain a single proposition. In particular, Diessel (2004)

who observed five young children found that an average of

80% of the first ten relative clauses produced by each child is

attached to the predicate nominal of a copular clause. Those

constructions are called “presentational relatives” and the ex-

amples are shown as in 1) to 4). According to Diessel (2004),

young children often produce infinitival and participial relative

constructions containing a single proposition, as in 3) and 4) re-

spectively.

1) That’s the dog that bit me.

2) There is the girl who Tim loves.

3) This is something to eat.

4) Here’s a bird chasing a cat.

This indicates that relative constructions expressing two propo-

sitions, as shown in 5) and 6), rarely appear at early stages in

child L1 acquisition.

5) The boy who called me lives in Japan.

6) I ate the cake which Mary baked.

Regarding adverbial clauses, final adverbial clauses (e.g., “When

Mary came, I was eating lunch”) are found to emerge earlier

than final adverbial clauses (e.g., “I washed my hands after I

cleaned my room”) in child L1 acquisition (e.g., Diessel, 2004).

Y. YAMAGUCHI

224

Subordinate Clauses in Japanese

As the L1 of the participant in this study is Japanese, this

sub-section provides a brief description of Japanese subordinate

clauses.

Japanese has three basic types of subordinate clauses, which

are similar to those in English, such as complement clauses, re-

lative clauses, and adverbial clauses. According to Shibatani

(1991), the verb is always in the final position of the sentence

in Japanese. Complement clauses are placed before the verb, as

in 7), while relative clauses precede the modified noun, as in 8)

and 9). Adverbial clauses are usually placed before the main

clause, as in 10).

7) Ken wa [Mary ga sushi o tabeta koto] o shitteiru

“Ken knows [that Mary ate sushi].”

8) Ken wa [Mary ga dokode sushi o tabeta ka] kiita

“Ken asked Mary [where she ate sushi].”

9) Mary wa [Ken ga tukutta yuushoku ] o tabeta

“Mary ate dinner [that Ken cooked].”

10) [Mary ga kita toki] Ken wa yuushoku o tukutta

“[When Mary came], Ken cooked dinner.”

Processability Theory (PT)

This study uses Processability Theory (PT) (Pienemann, 1998;

Pienemann, et al., 2005) as a theoretical framework for analys-

ing the learner’s development of complex syntax. PT predicts a

universal hierarchy of processing procedures, which are required

for producing linguistic structures, based on Levelt’s (1989)

speech production model and Lexical Functional Grammar (e.g.,

Bresnan, 2001). According to PT, learners, at any stage of de-

velopment, are able to produce only those linguistic structures

which the current stage of their language processors can handle.

The hypothetical hierarchy of processing procedures for mor-

pho-syntactic development is summarized in Pienemann (1998,

2005), as shown in Table 1.

At the first stage, the learner has not developed any langu-

age-specific procedures yet. Thus, possible outcomes at this stage

are single words of invariant form that do not require any proc-

essing procedure or information exchange.

The learner at the category procedure stage is assumed to

become able to employ lexical form variation, such as the inser-

tion of the affix -ed on the verb for indicating past tense and

plural -s marking on nouns without agreement, as in I read books.

At the phrasal procedure stage, the agreement between the

head noun and its modifier in the noun phrase, as in two cats, is

predicted to emerge since the information exchange between

two elements in the same phrase becomes possible. In the case

of languages with verb phrases, such as English, the learner is

assumed to become able to assign particular verb forms with

auxiliaries (e.g., is cooking vs. has cooked) at this stage1.

The learner at the S(entence)-procedure stage is assumed to

become able to exchange information between different phrases.

Thus, subject-verb agreement (i.e., third person singular -s, as

in Mary likes pizza) is predicted to emerge at this stage.

Complex structures containing subordinate clauses are placed

at the top of the processing hierarchy, namely at S’-procedure

stage. At this stage, the learner is assumed to become able to

exchange information about the values of relevant diacritic fea-

tures between elements in different clauses, that is, the main

and the subordinate clauses. According to PT, possible outcomes

at the S’-procedure stage are indirect questions, as in 11), since

the learner needs to distinguish between the main clause and the

subordinate clause where the question word order (i.e., where

has Mary gone?) is not applied.

11) I wonder where Mary has gone.

Previous PT studies for English (e.g., Dyson, 2010; Piene-

mann, 1998; Sakai, 2008) reported that indirect questions were

acquired later than other morpho-syntactic structures listed in

processability hierarchy. However, as the acquisition of other

types of subordinate constructions, such as relative clauses, has

not been examined in PT, it is not clear whether indirect ques-

tions and other subordinate constructions are acquired at the

same stage in processability hierarchy. Therefore, more studies

are needed to investigate the developmental stages of complex

structures containing various subordinate clauses.

Research Questions

In order to address the issues which remain unclear in previ-

ous ESL and PT studies, the following research questions are

formulated in this study.

Q1: Are indirect questions acquired at the highest stage in

ESL acquisition by a Japanese child as predicted in PT?

Q2: Does the child learner acquire indirect questions and

other subordinate constructions at the same time?

Table 1.

Hypothetical hierarchy of processing procedures (after Pienemann, 2005).

Procedure t1 t2 t3 t4 t5

S-Bar

Procedure - - - -

inter-clausal information

exchange

Sentence-

Procedure - - -

inter-phrasal information

exchange

inter-phrasal information

exchange

Phrasal

Procedure - -

phrasal information

exchange

phrasal information

exchange

phrasal information

exchange

Category

Procedure - lexical form

variation

lexical form

variation

lexical form

variation

lexical form

variation

Word/

Lemma

single words and

formulas

single words

and formulas

single words and

formulas

single words and

formulas single words and formulas

1Although PT predicts that verb phrase agreement emerges after noun phrase agreement, the relative sequence is not clear yet (Bettoni & Di Biase, in preparation).

Y. YAMAGUCHI

Research Design

In order to trace the way in which English subordinate clauses

develop over time, a two-year longitudinal study was conducted

on a Japanese primary school child learning English in Austra-

lia. Since longitudinal studies on L2 acquisition over a period

of two years are rare, the current study provides a valuable re-

source for investigating ESL development from the beginning

point of L2 learning to higher acquisitional stages.

Participant

The informant in this study is a Japanese female child, Kumika

(code name). She was a Japanese monolingual until she was 5

years 7 months old. Although she participated in an English ac-

tivity program instructed by a native speaker of English for 2

hours per week for 32 weeks from 4 years 10 months to 5 years

6 months old, she never received formal English instruction and

had few opportunities to speak English in Japan. When she

moved to Australia with her family and started attending local

primary school at the age of 5 years and 7 months, her English

was limited to basic words and formulaic expressions (e.g.,

thank you, I don’t know).

Data Collection Procedure

Data collection started one month after Kumika started at-

tending local primary school in Australia. The child’s speech

production in English was audio recorded regularly. Table 2

shows the amount of her exposure to English in Australia in

weeks before each session.

In order to elicit the child’s speech production in English,

several tasks, such as picture description tasks and communica-

tion games, were utilized in this study. Each session lasted 20

to 40 minutes according to the child’s motivation. All the au-

dio-recorded sessions were transcribed.

Data Analysis

The distributional analyses of speech data were conducted

for English structures listed in PT stages and other subordinate

constructions. In order to examine the development of indirect

questions and other types of subordinate constructions in detail,

subordinate clauses appeared in the child speech production

were coded based on previous observational studies (e.g., Di-

essel, 2004) as follows:

Complement clauses: S-, Wh-, If-complements

Relative clauses: Relative constructions with two proposi-

tions or with a single proposition, Presentational (e.g., there is ~,

this is ~), Infinitival, or Participial relatives

Adverbial clauses: Initial or Final adverbial clauses

Then, the development of each type of subordinate clauses is

compared with the acquisition of other morpho-syntactic struc-

tures listed in PT stages.

Results

The results of the distributional analyses of various subordi-

nate clauses are presented in Table 3. The first row shows the

different points in time (t1, t2…) in the corpus. Note that If-

complements are not included in this table as they never ap-

peared in the child corpus. The occurrences of each structure

were simply counted and the total number of the occurrences

was entered for each structure at each point in time. The num-

ber in brackets shows the total number of the occurrences of

non-target-like relative constructions. As for Wh-complements,

the number after the slash “/” indicates the contexts of Wh-

complements. For instance, “1/2” shows that the child was able

to produce one target-like indirect question out of the two contexts.

As shown in Table 3, non-target-like relative constructions

with a single proposition, as in 12), appeared at t2.

12) Do you have a flower is pink?

This structure is called “presentational amalgam construc-

tion” (Lambrecht, 1988) and is found to appear as a precursor

to the presentational relative constructions at the early stage in

child L1 acquisition (e.g., Diessel, 2004).

At t3, target-like relative constructions with a single proposi-

tion emerged in the form of infinitival relative clauses, as in 13).

Then, participial relative clauses appeared at t4, as in 14).

Table 2.

Kumika’s exposure to English in weeks before each session.

Time t1 t2 t3 t4 t5 t6 t7 t8 t9 t10 t11 t12 t13 t14

Exposure to English (weeks) 4 6 8 10 12 20 28 36 44 52 64 76 88 100

Table 3.

Distribution of subordinate clauses.

Structure/time t1 t2 t3 t4 t5 t6 t7 t8 t9 t10 t11 t12 t13t14

S-comp 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 2 2 1 4 2 1 2

Wh-comp 0 0 0 0 0 0 1/1 3/3 1/1 1/1 1/2 1/1 0 0

Relatives-two propositions 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 2 0 2 1 0

Relatives-single proposition (with Wh-, that, or zero) 0 (8)(1)0 0 (1)0 1(1)4 2 4 5 2 2

(Infinitival relatives) 0 0 2 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 3 0 0 1

(Participial relatives) 0 0 0 2 0 4 5 0 4 0 0 0 8 2

Final ADV 0 0 0 0 0 1 3 0 2 5 3 1 1 7

Initial ADV 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 2 11 5 4 8 9 7

Y. YAMAGUCHI

226

13) We have a books to read

14) I have dog eating the doughnut

At t6, S-complements and adverbial clauses in the final posi-

tion emerged at the same time, as in 15) and 16) respectively.

15) Boy think that’s a bad man

16) Scooby Doo was really scary because they are going fast

At t7, Wh-complements in the form of indirect questions

emerged, as in 17).

17) Do you know what this is?

At the same time, adverbial clauses in the initial position also

emerged, as in (18). Note that “xxx” in brackets indicates an

unintelligible word with three syllables.

18) When boy sleep (xxx) he start to go out from a bottle

At t8, the child started using relative pronouns in the presen-

tational relative constructions which express a single proposi-

tion, as in 19).

19) One day there was a mother who was not scared of any-

thing

Then, at t9, she finally produced relative constructions con-

taining two propositions for the first time, as in 20).

20) They have something looks like stick

Although she omitted a relative pronoun, namely “that” in

19), more target-like relative constructions with two proposi-

tions appeared at t10, as in 21) and 22).

21) He got up and look at his frog that he caught yesterday

22) He saw big bunch of the bees who was chasing the dog

Discussion

The results show the child in this study produced “presenta-

tional amalgam constructions” before any of the target-like rela-

tive constructions. This is consistent with the findings in child

L1 acquisition studies (e.g., Diessel, 2004) and suggests that the

amalgam construction can be a precursor to the presentational

relative constructions in L2 acquisition as well.

Figure 1 shows PT stages for other morpho-syntactic struc-

tures compared with emergence points for subordinate con-

struction examined in this study.

As shown in Figure 1, the child was at stage 3, namely phra-

sal procedure stage, when English subordination emerged. This

suggests that the child started using subordinate clauses after

she acquired phrasal morphology which requires phrasal pro-

cedure. At that time, the child was able to produce relative con-

structions containing only one proposition. The child was still

at stage 3 when S-complements and adverbial clauses in the fi-

nal position emerged at t6.

When the child reached stage 4, namely S-procedure stage, at

t7, Wh-complements in the form of indirect questions and ad-

verbial clauses in the initial position emerged. This indicates

that indirect questions emerged at the same time when the child

Figure 1.

Stages for other structures compared with emergence points for subor-

dinates.

acquired inter-phrasal morphology. Thus, this finding is not

compatible with the prediction in PT that the production of

indirect questions requires the highest procedural skill, namely

S’-procedure.

On the other hand, relative constructions containing two pro-

positions emerged at t9 after she acquired other morphosyntac-

tic structures listed in PT stages. This suggests that only relative

constructions with two propositions can be considered to emer-

ge at the highest stage in L2 acquisition.

These findings indicate that different types of subordinate

constructions emerged at different stages in child ESL acquisi-

tion. In other words, indirect questions and other types of sub-

ordinate constructions, except initial adverbial clauses, are not

found to be acquired at the same time. Since indirect questions

were acquired when the child was at S-procedure stage, the

finding in this study is not consistent with the prediction in PT

that English subordination emerges at S’-procedure stage. This

suggests that it may be necessary to reconsider possible out-

comes at S’-procedure stage in processability hierarchy and to

reformulate developmental stages by including other types of

subordinate constructions.

However, it should be noted that the earlier occurrence of

relative constructions with a single proposition is compatible

with the findings in L1 acquisition studies. Also, final adverbial

clauses are shown to develop before initial adverbial clauses as

found in L1 acquisition studies. These findings suggest that

English subordination develops in a similar manner in both L1

and L2 acquisition.

Conclusion

The results of this two-year longitudinal study of a Japanese

child learner do not show support for the prediction in PT that

indirect questions are acquired at the highest stage in ESL ac-

quisition. This study also demonstrates that indirect questions

and other types of subordinate constructions, except initial ad-

verbial clauses, are not acquired at the same time. As only rela-

tive constructions expressing two propositions are found to

emerge at the highest stage, it seems that the production of sub-

ordinate clauses does not always require the highest procedural

skill. However, as this study examined only one Japanese pri-

Y. YAMAGUCHI

mary school child, more research on the acquisition of complex

structures including various subordinate clauses is needed in

order to establish more precise developmental stages for Eng-

lish L2.

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