Andrea Tyler

The acquisition of English derivational morphology

Abstract Three paper-and-pencil measures were administered to students in fourth, sixth, and eighth grades to assess different aspects of their knowledge of English derivational suffixes. Children appear to develop a rudimentary knowledge of derivational morphology—the ability to recognize a familiar stem in a derivative—before fourth grade. Knowledge of the syntactic properties of derivational suffixes appears to increase through eighth grade. Knowledge of the distributional properties of suffixes also increases, with sixth-grade students showing an increase in overgeneralization errors parallel to that found for inflectional suffixes in much younger children.

Negotiation of Meaning in Conversational and Information Gap Activities: A Comparative Discourse Analysis

This article reports an investigation of how meaning is negotiated in two different types of interactions between native speakers (NSs) and nonnative speakers (NNSs): a relatively unstructured conversation and a two-way information-gap task. Three NS-NNS dyads were recorded as they engaged in these two activities, and the data were examined in detail. Negotiation exchanges, lexical and syntactic complexity, and various pragmatic issues were examined and compared qualitatively and quantitatively. The results suggest that conversational interaction has the potential to offer substantial learning opportunities at multiple levels of interaction even though it offered fewer instances of repair negotiation in the traditional sense than did the information gap activity. In addition, the NNS participants stated in subsequent interviews that they found the conversational activity to be more challenging than the information-gap activity because they had to pay attention to the entire discourse in the former but mainly focused on lexical items in the latter. This study thus raises questions about claims that conversational interactions do not provide learners with as much challenging language practice as do more highly structured interactional activities, such as information gap tasks.

Use of derivational morphology during reading

This study examines contrasting predictions made by models of the lexicon in which stem morphemes play a central accessing role versus models in which stem morphemes play no particular role. Models which assign an independent role to morphemes predict that derivationally suffixed words have both inhibitive and facilitative effects on the reading process. A reading comprehension task was administered to good and poor high-school-age readers to assess their use of both the lexical-semantic and syntactic information provided by morphemes in derivationally suffixed target words. The subjects appeared to use the stem morpheme of a derivationally suffixed word to establish overall sentence meaning but often did not use the syntactic information contained in the derivational suffix. The failure to use syntactic information in the suffix was significantly greater for lower-ability readers than for those reading at or above grade level. The results offer support for morphologically organized models of the lexicon.

The Coconstruction of Cross-Cultural Miscommunication

This paper examines the sources of miscommunication in a videotaped tutoring session involving a native speaker of Korean and a native speaker of U.S. English. Analysis revealed an initial nonmutual interpretation of participant role and status. These divergent interpretations appear to have resulted from the Korean tutors transfer of a Korean conversational routine, which he defined as involving polite speaker modesty, to the U.S. English context. The initial conflicting interpretations are maintained and solidified by additional mismatches in discourse management strategies, schema, and contextualization cues. The cumulative effect of these mismatches was the judgment on the part of each of the interlocutors that the other was uncooperative.

The role of repetition in perceptions of discourse coherence

Abstract Ever since it was first proposed as part of Halliday and Hasans (1976) general model of text cohesion, the construct of lexical cohesion has had great appeal. Under this model, the presence of lexical repetition and related semantic items, in conjunction with schemata (Halliday and Hasan, 1985), contributes to text coherence by creating cohesive ties within the text. However, this model has been criticized by Morgan and Sellner (1980), Green and Morgan (1981) and Green (1989) for confusing lexical repetition and anaphoric reference with the natural consequences of staying on topic and general pragmatic principles. Using an integrated discourse framework (Ellis and Roberts, 1987; Gumperz, 1982a; Tyler et al., 1988), this paper puts forward a third position which accepts the general outlines of the arguments posed by Green, Morgan and Sellner while arguing that certain patterns of repetition do make an independent contribution to discourse comprehensibility. By comparing discourse produced by a native speaker of English with an English text produced by a native speaker of Chinese, the effect of particular patterns of lexical repetition on text coherence is highlighted. The paper argues that lexical repetition serves to provide context-situated definitions of words and phrases and to provide a discourse-specific synonym set; the absence of these patterns of repetition contributes to a perception of incoherence in the non-native discourse examined here.

Usage-Based Approaches to Language and Their Applications to Second Language Learning

Over the past 20 years, many in the field of second language learning and pedagogy have become familiar with models of language that emphasize its communicative nature. These models are often referred to as usage-based because they emphasize the notion that actual language use is a primary shaper of linguistic form. Supporters of these models also argue that making meaning, that is, the use to which language is put, is central to how language is configured. Usage-based models share several other underlying assumptions as well. While these usage models have a number of ideas in common, several distinct approaches have emerged. They often use similar terms, such as cognition and metaphor, but the precise interpretations can vary from model to model. The overall result is that without extensive reading, it is not always clear just how these models differ and what unique insights each offer. This article attempts to address this situation by examining three major usage-based models—systemic functional linguistics, discourse functionalism, and cognitive linguistics. First, the common, underlying tenets shared by the three models are discussed. Second, an overview of the unique tenets and concerns of each approach is presented in order to distinguish key differences among them. Within the discussion of each approach, I also discuss various attempts to apply the model to issues in second language learning.

Discourse Structure in Nonnative English Discourse: The Effect of Ordering and Interpretive Cues on Perceptions of Comprehensibility

A frequently discussed hypothesis concerning the source of cross-linguistic communication difficulty in written discourse is conflicting organizational patterns (Kaplan, 1966, 1987). Extending the argument to oral discourse, Young (1982) argued that spoken English discourse produced by Chinese speakers evidenced a discourse-level topic-comment structure that native English speakers find difficult to follow. However, Tyler (1988) argued that the perception of incoherence might better be understood as the cumulative result of interacting miscues at the discourse level, that is, miscues in syntactic incorporation, lexical discourse markers, tense/aspect, and lexical The study reported here aims at testing these competing hypotheses. One hundred fifteen subjects rated four versions of the Chinese-produced English discourse presented in Youngs study for comprehensibility. Results indicated that the effect of discourse miscues on comprehensibility was highly significant ( F = 70, p F = .47, p

Applying cognitive linguistics to pedagogical grammar: the english prepositions of verticality

In this paper, we illustrate the merit of applying insights from Cognitive Linguistics to pedagogical grammar. We do so by examining English prepositions, long assumed to be one of the most difficult areas of acquisition for second language learners. The approach to the semantics of English prepositions we present is that developed in Evans and Tyler (2004a, b, In prep.) and Tyler and Evans (2001a, 2003). This account offers the following insights: 1) the concepts encoded by prepositions are image-schematic in nature and thus have an embodied basis. In other words, prepositions are not appropriately modelled as constituting linguistic propositions or semantic feature bundles (the received view in formal linguistics); 2) an English preposition encodes an abstract mental idealization of a spatial relation, derived from more specific spatial scenes. This forms the primary meaning component of a semantic network; 3) the idealized spatial relation also encodes a functional element, which derives from the way spatial relations are salient and relevant for human function and interaction with the physical environment; and 4) the additional senses in the semantic network have been extended in systematic, constrained ways. We discuss two key principles of extension: ways of viewing a spatial scene and experiential correlation. We demonstrate the usefulness of a Cognitive Linguistics approach by examining a few aspects of the lexicalization patterns exhibited by in and the four English prepositions of verticality, over, above, under and below. These prepositions provide good evidence that prepositional meanings are extended from the spatial to abstract domains in ways that are regular and constrained. We conclude that a Cognitive Linguistics approach to prepositions provides a more accurate, systematic account that, in turn, offers the basis for a more coherent, learnable presentation of this hitherto seemingly arbitrary aspect of English grammar.

Discourse structure and specification of relationships: A cross-linguistic analysis

Using an integrated discourseframework, äs developed in Tyler and Davies (1990), Ms paper examines two highly constrained, parallel texts, one produced by a native Speaker ofEnglish, one by a native Speaker of Kor ean. The analysis reveals the presence in the English Speakers discourse ofseveral elements of the linguistic code, discourse management strategies, and interpretative frame which made explicit the logical and prominence relationships between ideas, thus creating a hierarchical discourse structure. These elements are either rarely used or used in non-nativelike ways in the Kor ean Speakers discourse, creating a moreflat, undifferentiated discourse structure. These results are discussed in terms ofthe hypothesis put forward by Lakoff (1984), Hinds (1987) and Scollon and Scollon (1981) that degree of Speaker i listener responsibility for specifying connections between ideas may be a significant pragmatic parameter along which languages/ cultures differ.

Sexual Harassment? Cross-Cultural/Cross-Linguistic Perspectives

With the increasing numbers of international graduate students and faculty on US university campuses have come increasing reports of communication problems between these instructors and their US students, including accusations of sexual harassment. We investigate here the key role that culture-specific interpretations of verbal and nonverbal behavior play in effectively communicating in the context of the classroom discourse of US higher education. We extend these interpretations to the area of what verbal and nonverbal behavior might have sexual implications and therefore what teacher (and peer) behavior might be perceived as sexual harassment. Quantitative and qualitative analyses were carried out on the reactions of US undergraduates and international teaching assistants (ITAs) to 12 scenarios based on naturally occurring (and potentially problematic) interactions. Results of the study indicate that (1) language and behavior that is perceived as sexual in nature in the US may not be so perceived in other societies; and (2) certain sexually tinged verbal and nonverbal behaviors may be more tolerated in societies other than US society, given the present state of heightened sensitivity to the issue of sexual harassment in the US. We investigate here the dangers that ITAs may face given both these factors.