‘It starts to explode.’ Phasal segmentation of contextualised events in L2 English

TY - CHAP

T1 - ‘It starts to explode.’ Phasal segmentation of contextualised events in L2 English

AU - Vanek, Norbert

N1 - © 2016, John Benjamins Publishing Company.This is an author-produced version of the published chapter. Uploaded in accordance with the publisher’s self-archiving policy. Further copying may not be permitted; contact the publisher for details.

PY - 2016/10/15

Y1 - 2016/10/15

N2 - En route to acquiring novel principles of temporal information organisation in the target language, second language (L2) learners exhibit a capacity to build temporal constructions of their own, which are not necessarily fixed in the principles of either their source or their target language system. This study surveys hitherto unattested interlanguage phenomena found in the phasal segmentation patterns of two intermediate-level learner groups with unrelated source languages, and identifies analogies of shared developmental patterns. Film verbalisations and acceptability judgements (AJ) were used to elicit responses from Czech and Hungarian intermediate learners of English, and their analyses yielded a threefold benefit. They generated representative degrees of granularity for each group who experiment with new segmentation techniques. They also showed that the ways in which learners partition events in production (pronounced digression from the target) do not directly replicate patterns in acceptability judgements (closer approximation to the target). And thirdly, overlaps and contrasts between learner and native control speaker preferences for phasal partitioning varied in close relation to specific aspectual properties inherent to the verbs used. The combination of production features and acceptability judgements from L2 groups with distant L1s provides an informative mosaic of how learners at intermediate L2 proficiency strive for an optimal fit when combining available linguistic elements to express specific event phases.

AB - En route to acquiring novel principles of temporal information organisation in the target language, second language (L2) learners exhibit a capacity to build temporal constructions of their own, which are not necessarily fixed in the principles of either their source or their target language system. This study surveys hitherto unattested interlanguage phenomena found in the phasal segmentation patterns of two intermediate-level learner groups with unrelated source languages, and identifies analogies of shared developmental patterns. Film verbalisations and acceptability judgements (AJ) were used to elicit responses from Czech and Hungarian intermediate learners of English, and their analyses yielded a threefold benefit. They generated representative degrees of granularity for each group who experiment with new segmentation techniques. They also showed that the ways in which learners partition events in production (pronounced digression from the target) do not directly replicate patterns in acceptability judgements (closer approximation to the target). And thirdly, overlaps and contrasts between learner and native control speaker preferences for phasal partitioning varied in close relation to specific aspectual properties inherent to the verbs used. The combination of production features and acceptability judgements from L2 groups with distant L1s provides an informative mosaic of how learners at intermediate L2 proficiency strive for an optimal fit when combining available linguistic elements to express specific event phases.

M3 - Chapter (peer-reviewed)

SN - 9789027241924

T3 - Studies in Bilingualism

SP - 143

EP - 180

BT - Tense-Aspect-Modality in a Second Language: Contemporary perspectives

A2 - Howard, Martin

A2 - Leclercq, Pascale

PB - John Benjamins Publishing Company

CY - Amsterdam

ER -