Rena Helms-Park

Evidence of Lexical Transfer in Learner Syntax: The Acquisition of English Causatives by Speakers of Hindi-Urdu and Vietnamese.

This article reports the findings of a study in which transfer of verb properties was investigated via syntactic data elicited from second language (L2) learners. It was hypothesized that a learners first language (L1) would influence the acquisition of verbs in those L2 semantic classes where so-called L1-L2 translation equivalents could be found. To investigate lexical transfer, the performance of Hindi-Urdu speakers on tests of English causatives was compared with that of Vietnamese speakers, because there are significant differences between causativization patterns in Hindi-Urdu and Vietnamese. To account for proficiency-based variation in performance, learners were placed in one of three levels of lexical proficiency in English, and Mann-Whitney comparisons were made between Hindi-Urdu and Vietnamese speakers at corresponding proficiency levels. It was found that the performance of the Hindi-Urdu and Vietnamese groups differed significantly in several semantic contexts. Generally, the results suggest that there is some transfer of semantic information from the L1 verb lexicon to the emerging L2 verb lexicon. More specifically, the findings suggest that verb properties are transferred selectively and that transfer plays a role in the difficulty or ease involved in the shedding of overgeneralized lexical rules.

Interaction, modality, and word engagement as factors in lexical learning in a Chinese context

This study investigates the roles of collaborative output, the modality of output, and word engagement in vocabulary learning and retention by Chinese-speaking undergraduate EFL learners. The two treatment groups reconstructed a passage that they had read in one of two ways: (1) dyadic oral interaction while producing a written report (Written Output); (2) dyadic oral interaction followed by an oral report (Oral Output). A control group completed a reading comprehension task (Reading) based on the same passage. Four posttests revealed that Oral Output led to significantly better productive and receptive lexical learning than Reading all the way to the last posttest. Written Output led to significantly better productive and receptive lexical learning than Reading on posttest 2, but not on posttests 3 and 4. However, the difference in lexical learning between the Written and Oral Output conditions did not achieve significance. Interaction analysis found that the Oral and Written Output groups differed in the types of word processing they favoured as well as in the frequency of their word engagement. The article discusses the reasons why collaborative output facilitates lexical learning; considers the association between the Output performers’ word engagement and lexical retention; and suggests what might have contributed to the better success of the Oral Output group in their lexical retention.

A prototype of a receptive lexical test for a polysynthetic heritage language: The case of Inuttitut in Labrador

This paper describes the process of designing, administering, and assessing a language-sensitive and culture-specific lexical test of Labrador Inuttitut (a dialect of Inuktitut, an Eskimo-Aleut language). This process presented numerous challenges, from choosing citation forms in a polysynthetic language to dealing with a lack of word frequency data. Twenty heritage receptive bilinguals (RBs) with very limited production skills in Inuttitut (their first language) and a comparison group of eight fluent bilinguals (FBs) participated in our study. Since the RBs lacked production skills in Inuttitut, the lexical test required participants to translate a carefully compiled list of Inuttitut nouns and verbs into English. The results revealed that RBs had good comprehension of basic vocabulary (85% accuracy), but differed significantly from FBs, mostly because the RBs had a number of partially accurate translations. The three lowest scoring RBs had the highest number of such translations as well as inaccurate translations based on phonological associations, as is common in emergent lexicons. This lexical test correlates with grammatical proficiency measures, pointing to its potential value as a quick placement and diagnostic test in revitalization programs for Inuttitut as well as other languages in a language loss situation.