Deborah Arteaga

Articulatory Phonetics in the First-Year Spanish Classroom.

focus of this article is twofold: I reconsider the general question of the role of articulatory phonetics in the second language (L2) classroom and review the phonetics presentation in 10 recent first-year Spanish texts. Pronunciation has been accorded little importance within recent methodological approaches, although their stated goals of communication and intelligibility in fact require the incorporation of explicit phonetics instruction in the language classroom. Considering the first-year Spanish L2 classroom, I propose a phonetics program based on the notion of a learners dialect (cf. Bergen, 1974). I then measure the phonetics presentation of 10 Spanish textbooks against a learners dialect, and find that pronunciation sections are in most cases incomplete and inaccurate and provide for no self-monitoring or recycling. This article argues against the current trend reflected in these texts, which relegates pronunciation to the laboratory manual or eliminates it altogether.

Focusing on Phonology To Teach Morphological Form in French.

Much recent research in language pedagogy has advocated a form–focused approach, noting that input can be tailored to promote acquisition of specific phenomena (R. Ellis, 1990; Harley, 1993; Herschensohn, 1990; Lee & Valdman, 2000; Leeman, Arteagoitia, Fridman, & Doughty, 1995; VanPatten, 1996). In this article, we argue for the importance of phonological form in the second language (L2) classroom, proposing that a thorough grounding in L2 phonological patterns is essential for language learners; we use as evidence for our position the importance of phonological information for the auditory detection of morphological form in French. We offer a pedagogical means by which the morphological rule of gender agreement for adjectives, which involves final consonant alternation, can be imitated in a L2 context through a context–based focus on phonological form. We present empirical evidence that such a focus produces statistically significant results in a classroom experiment that tests listening discrimination of gender alternation in adjectives. Our results also have implications for the effectiveness of an explicit, meaning–oriented focus on form for listening comprehension, inasmuch as the auditory discrimination of contrasts contributes to that process.

Tense and verb raising in advanced L2 French

Two UG approaches to L2A propose different views of parameter resetting, depending on the capacity of interlanguage grammars to gain new values for uninterpretable functional features. Representational Deficit/Interpretability (e.g. Hawkins, 2003) maintains that parameter settings are limited to L1 values, whereas Full Access (e.g. Prevost & White, 2000) claims L2 parameter values may be gained; both assume initial transfer of L1 morphosyntactic settings. We examine verb morphosyntax of three advanced anglophone learners of L2 French, beginning with a description of the theoretical issues. We next report the study: the subjects, data collection and results. The final section discusses the data in terms of the two approaches, concluding that the results generally support FA over RD/I.

A Diachronic View of Old French Genitive Constructions

In Old French, genitive structures both mirrored and differed from those found in Modern French. Prepositional genitives were found (i.e., la niece au duc, la niece du duc both ‘the duke’s niece’), but there were also structures without prepositions, the juxtaposition genitive, JG (cf. Arteaga D. On Old French genitive constructions. In: Amastae J, Goodall G, Montalbetti M, Phinney M (eds) Contemporary research in Romance linguistics. J. Benjamins, Amsterdam, pp 79–90, 1995; Arteaga D, Herschensohn J. A phase-based analysis of old French genitive constructions. In Colina S, Olarrea A, Carvalho AM (eds) Romance Linguistics 2009: selected papers from the 39th annual conference of the Linguistic symposium on the romance languages. J. Benjamins, Amsterdam/Philadelphia, pp 285–300, 2010; Delfitto and Paradisi 2009) type la niece duc or la/le duc niece.). In an analysis focusing on the evolution of the genitive, we propose that the JG in Old French has directly inherited the same structure in Latin, although Latin had no definite article. In later OF, when case endings ceased to be pronounced, case had to be checked by a preposition. At that point, children no longer had the morphological cues (Lightfoot D. The development of language: acquisition, change, and evolution. Blackwell, Oxford, 1999) to assign a genitive meaning to the possessor, the JG was lost. The reason for the narrowing of the a genitives can be explained by the fact that dative a has always been limited to persons (Herslund M. Problemes de syntaxe de l’ancien francais. Complements datifs et genitifs. Akademisk Forlag, Uppsala, 1980).

On the importance of circumlocution in the Spanish language classroom

Arteaga and Llorente (2009) argue for the importance of addressing lexical regional variety in the Spanish language classroom. They advocate teaching students a dialectally neutral term that will be understood across dialectal zones. One problem with this approach, however, is the difficulty of identifying words that have the most currency among dialects. This paper argues for supplementing the use of neutral terms by the skill of circumlocution, which has been argued to be a valuable skill for second language learners in general (Rubin, 1975, Oxford and Nyikos, 1989, Schweers, 1999), although it must be taught explicitly. Model exercises that foster the use of circumlocution, while also emphasizing neutral terms, are given. This combination will allow students to communicate effectively with speakers of a wide variety of dialects.