Instructor: Roger Young

Presenter: Katherine Wu

N97C0002Gass, S. M., & Selinker, L. (2008). Second language acquisition:Gass, S. M., & Selinker, L. (2008). Second language acquisition:

An introductory course (3rd ed.). New York: Routledge.An introductory course (3rd ed.). New York: Routledge.

The topics of this chapter

• The significance of the lexicon

• Categories of lexical knowledge

• Lexical knowledge, development, and influences

• L1 influence

• Using lexical skills

• Conclusion

13.1 The significance of the lexicon

• Maybe the most important language component for learners:– Most serious and common errors out of all

types of error. (Ploitzer, 1978; Levenston, 1979; Meara 1984; Johansson,

1978)

– Lexical errors may interfere with communication. (Gass 1988)

Ex: P. 449 • (13-1) Can you tell me where is the train

station?

• (13-2) I feel sorry for people who live in the suburbs.

13.1 The significance of the lexicon

• lexical hypothesis (Levelt):– exicon is the driving force in sentence production

• i.e. in encoding or sentence generation

– Lexicon is an essential mediator between conceptualization and grammatical and phonological encoding .(blue print in p470)

• Lexicon is important in reading and especially in oral comprehension (Altmann 1990)

13.1 The significance of the lexicon

• The major task of second language lexical research:

– What second language learners know about the lexicon of the second language.

– How they learn it.

– Why this particular path of development is followed.

13.2 Categories of lexical knowledge: some dichotomies

13.2 Categories of lexical knowledge: some dichotomies

• Production and reception

• Knowledge and control

• Breadth and depth

• Pronunciation – Know how to pronounce vs. recognizing it

• Spelling– Know nuances of meaning vs. getting the general

meaning.

• Grammatical constraints– E.g. impact as a verb takes a direct object, but impact

as a noun occurs in the phrase has an impact on

13.2.1 Production and reception

• Take the word overextended as another example.

13.2.1 Production and reception

Productive ReceptiveKnowing how to accurately

pronounce a word or correctly spell it

Recognizing the word in writing or orally

Knowing the precise meaning in a variety of contexts

Knowing the general meaning

Knowing that She overextended herself is OK, but that She overextended her chair is probably not OK in the absence of a highly specific context

Knowing the specific meaning in a specific context of use

Knowing the precise context of use

Knowing that it is made up of the component parts—over, extend, -ed

Knowing that it has a possible negative connotation ( as opposed to overqualify, which may or may not have a negative connection)

Knowing that it generally occurs with himself, herself, oneself, themselves, ourselves, yourself

Knowing that the opposite is underextended

Teichroew (1982)

initial stage final stage

recognition production

13.2.1 Production and reception

Ex meaning of break

13.2.1 Production and reception

• Potential vocabulary

– Consists of words a learner will recognize even though she has not yet seen them in the second language.

• Example: common scientific and technological terms

• Real vocabulary

– Consists of words the learner is familiar with after (and because of ) exposure.

• Three types of vocabulary knowledge (Laufer and Paribakht 1998):

passive, controlled active, and free active

– Passive: understanding the most frequent meaning of a word.

13.2.1 Production and reception

– Controlled active: involves cued recall

ex. P.453

The railway con_______the city with its suburbs

- Free active: involves spontaneous use of the word.

13.2.1 Production and reception

13.2.1 Production and reception

– Development of three knowledge types:

• Passive knowledge the fastest

• Passive vocabulary > active vocabulary

• foreign language setting vs. second language setting

– The gap between knowledge types was smaller in the foreign language setting.

environment has a strong role in learning.

• Bialystok and Sharwood Smith:– Knowledge: the way in which the language system is

represented in the mind of the learner.

– Control: the processing system for controlling that system during actual performance.

– The library metaphor:• Useful, but does not capture the dynamic changing nature

of the second language lexicon?

13.2.2 Knowledge and control

• Drawbacks and questions:– What is a representation?

• Use phonological knowledge of the lexicon to explain the library metaphor:

– Idealizations = representations

– Do the representations capture everything we know about words?

• It does not capture everything important about lexical pronunciations.

– Example: Zsa Zsa Gabor “Darling, don’t touch my wheel “ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v

=Ya4WoU7tzYQ&feature=related

13.2.2 Knowledge and control

– How exhaustive are the representations?

Tyler(1989):

“The representation of a word cannot contain all the various and subtle interpretations that the word could have in different real-world contexts.”

- In sum p.454

13.2.2 Knowledge and control

• Breadth of knowledge: the number of words learners know (Nation, 2001; nassaji,2004) quantity

• Depth of knowledge: a quality measure (Meara,1996; Read, 1993,2000;Nassaji,2004)

13.2.3 Breadth and depth

• Both influence reading comprehension– Depth of knowledge was a better predictor of

L2 reading comprehension than just breadth of knowledge.

– Depth could be tied to particular strategy use. e.g. identifying, evaluation, and monitoring.

P.455

lexically skilled vs. lexically less skilled

13.2.3 Breadth and depth

• Pulido (2003)– Vocabulary knowledge had an impact on

incidental vocabulary gain.

• Laufer (1997a) for L2 readers: – “ the threshold for reading comprehension is,

to a large extent, lexical”

13.2.3 Breadth and depth

• Read (2004):– “something that is inherently ill-defined,

multidimensional, variable and thus resistant to neat classifcation.”

– Knowing a second language word including receptive and productive knowledge. 13.3

13.2.3 Breadth and depth

• Subcategorization

• Word associations and networks

• Word formation

• Word combinations, collocations, and phraseology

13.3 Lexical knowledge, development, and influences

13.3.1 Subcategorization

• Adjemian (1983) – Second language learners tended to transfer lexical

patterns from their L1 to their L2

ex. She walks the cats.

Elle marche les chats. se promener

13.3.2 Word associations and networks

• Meara (1978)– Natives and Learners made different

associations• Native speakers: paradigmatic or syntagmatic

associations P457• Learners : phonological similarity

professeur “professor” profond “deep”

• Possible interpretation: the learners had not constructed the network of relationships necessary for fluent word associations in their L2.

• Schmitt and Meara (1997) – Japanese learners of English

• Suffixes

• “ In both our L1 and our L2, we establish networks which may be semantic networks, syntactic networks, phonological networks, and so forth. Essentially, a lexical network involves the liking of words in some way.” p458

13.3.2 Word associations and networks

• The importance of word formation varies from language to language– English: word formation is less important

because many of the complicated words are taken from Latin and Greek.

– German: more sensitive to word formation process. part-by-part translation

• Wasserstoff = hydrogen• Wasser = water stoff= substance

13.3.3 Word formation

13.3.4 Word combinations, collocations, and phraseology

• Combinations are not totally free!

• Connectivity:– L1 and L2 lexis are separately stored, but the

two systems are in communication with each other.

• Via direct connections• Via a common conceptual store• Via both

• Individual differences

13.4 L1 influence

• Jiang: three-stage model of adult second language vocabulary learning.– First stage: lexical association stage – Second stage: lemma mediation stage

(remain the steady-state stage)– Third stage: L1 information is discarded

13.4 L1 influence

• Lee (2007): L2 proficiency, not L 1 influence, is a key factor in explaining semantic overgeneralization.

• Finding: the semantic overgeneralization may be an indicator of L2 development but not that of crosslinguistic influence.

13.4 L1 influence

• “ learners are focused on comprehending meaning rather that on the explicit goal of learning new words.”

• Rott (1999) examined exposure through reading and its effect on acquisition and retention of vocabulary.

• 2 times is sufficient to affect vocabulary growth.• 6 times resulted in the greatest amount of know-knowledge

growth.• Retention was greater for receptive knowledge than for

productive knowledge.

13.4 .1 incidental vocabulary learning

• Paribakht and Wesche (1997) – group one: read passage and answered

comprehension questions• Gain on vocabulary + recognition knowledge

– group two: read passages and did vocabulary activities.

• Gain on vocabulary + productive knowledge.

Incidental 13.4 .1 incidental vocabulary learning

• Follow up study: focused on the strategies that learners use.

• Inferencing was the most common strategies.• Dictionary use did not predominate

• Gu and Johnson (1996) study lexical strategy used by Chinese students : – There was more than one way to achieve

vocabulary growth: extensive reading as well as by employing a wide range of strategies.

13.4 .1 incidental vocabulary learning

• Hulstijin, Hollander, and Greidanus (1996)– When there is access to external information , the

formation of a form-meaning relationship is fostered up repeated exposure.

• R. Ellis and He (1999)Investigate the role of negotiation in incidental

vocabulary learning– the new lexical items use in a communicative

context are retained to a greater extent than they are only exposed to input.

13.4 .1 incidental vocabulary learning

• Newton (1995): negotiation was not always a precursor to learning a new vocabulary. Other factors such as task type played a role in whether or not a word was learned.

• Gass (1999): proposed that incidental learning is most likely to occur when two languages are cognates, when there is significant exposure, and when related L2 words are known.

13.4 .1 incidental vocabulary learning

• Hustiiji and Laufer (2001): relate retention of vocabulary learning to the concept of depth of processing.– Predicts that memory retention is due to

whether something is shallowly or deeply processed.

13.4 .1 incidental vocabulary learning

• + Craik and Tulvign’s (1975) richness of encoding concept of involvement– Need, search, and evaluation.

• Need: motivation. Can be either moderate or strong.

• Internal needs is strong. External source gives moderate needs.

13.4 .1 incidental vocabulary learning

– Search and evaluation are both cognitive constructs.

• Search : the attempt to determine the meaning of a word. (look up dictionary)

• Evaluation : an attempt to determine whether the word is the correct one given the context. Requires decision.

– High involvement results in more effective on vocabulary retention.

13.4 .1 incidental vocabulary learning

• In general, the greater use that learners make of vocabulary items, the greater the likelihood they will retain these items both in form and meaning.

13.4 .1 incidental vocabulary learning

13.4.2 Incremental vocabulary learning

• Learning vocabulary is not a one-time affair.

• Learning words is a recursive process and dose not occur instantaneously.

• Wesche (1993): Vocabulary knowledge Scale with 5 stages:– (a) the word is unfamiliar– (b) he word is familiar but he meaning is not

known.– (c) a translation into the NL can be given– (d) the word can be used appropriately in a

sentence– (e) the word is used accurately both

semantically and grammatically.

13.4.2 Incremental vocabulary learning

13.5 Using lexical skills

• Production

• Perception

13.5.1 Production

• Production processes and strategies may have a strong effect on what learners produce.

• Credit car payment is _____to lock-in any instant purchase fares.

• Paradoxical: – Little evidence of lexical information is crucial

in the sentence production is found in the early stages of SLA.

13.5.1 Production

• Klein and Perdue (1989) provided a thorough discussion of principles that might determine word order arrangements by second language learners in untutored settings. – Three rules: a phrasal, a semantic, and a

pragmatic rule to determine the arrangement of words.

13.5.1 Production

Ard and Gass (1987):Lexical information plays little role in early stages.

examples in p468

Result:low proficiency : more uniform

judgment than high proficiency:

13.5.1 Production

• Learners have to , and do , learn the lexical constraints on sentence production.

13.5.1 Production

• Lexical-grammatical pragmatic indicators

– Hebrew construction efsar + infinitive • Is limited to situations that express a speaker’s

perspective.

13.5.1 Production

• The nature of sentence production processes contributes to learner difficulties in lexical use.

13.5.1 Production

• Levelt (1989): model of sentence production. P 470 Fig. 13.1

13.5.1 Production

13.5.2 Perception

• Different languages utilize different distinctions in their phonological systems as a way for word perception.– Many language use tone to separate words– English:

• use tense and lax vowels: sheep vs. ship• Strategy of focusing on strong syllables

(Cutler,1990)– Target word # of false response // Target word # of false response

bone trombone > pet trumpet

• Meara:– It seems likely that a major reason that

Spanish and Chinese learners perform differently with English words is that they are utilizing the processing strategies they learned in their native languages.

13.5.2 Perception

• During ongoing speech, word perception is generally the main problem in understanding the discourse.

• Even among competent speakers of a language, lexical considerations are often paramount in explaining the flow of a conversation.

13.5.2 Perception

– Example pp.473-474 Interviewer vs. Cornutt• Both are native speakers of English

Interviewer: On the matter of careers, a lot of

the jobs that people go into are sort of

lifetime careers. What about baseball?

Is it a full lifetime career?

How long will your baseball career last?

13.5.2 Perception

• Interviewer: But how long can you expect

to…to play, let’s say actively?

How long will your baseball career last?

• Interviewer: But how many years can you expect to play professional ball…?

13.5.2 Perception