The study investigated similarities and differences between refusal strategies conducted by British native speakers of English (NSE) and Javanese learners of English (JLE). The data were elicited, using discourse completion tasks (DCT), from 20 NSE and 50 JLE. Comparative data concerning refusal strategies in Javanese were elicited from 35 native speakers of Javanese (NJ) to provide a baseline for investigating the extent to which differences between JLE and NSE could be explained by the influence of L1 pragmatics. The refusal strategies were classified based on modified refusal taxonomy by Beebe et al. (1990) and were analysed into sociopragmatic and pragmalinguistic strategies. Z test and Chi Square (χ2) were applied to test the statistical significance of differences between JLE and NSE usage. The study found that all three groups employed broadly similar sequential orders, frequencies of occurrences, and contents of both semantic formulae and adjuncts. Some differences were found, however, in which the strategies of the two Javanese groups (JLE and NJ) were more alike than either was to NSE. These findings suggest that distinctive JLE usages (i.e. different from NSE) are either due to the influence of L1 (negative pragmatic transfer) or simply deviation (idiosyncratic usage). The former occurred mainly in the utilization of politeness strategies by the Javanese groups. The salient elements of Javanese cultural values and their relation to the expression of politeness are discussed in some detail, and are shown to be reflected in the English of Javanese learners. The latter (deviations) appeared to arise from a conflict between JLE speakers’ notions of “correct” grammar and word meanings, on the one hand, and the pragmalinguistic demands of the interaction, on the other hand.

This thesis is concerned with the investigation of directionality of difficulty in second language acquisition (SLA) by Chinese-speaking learners learning English as a foreign language (EFL) and by English-speaking learners learning Chinese as a foreign language (CFL) . Chinese allows both subject PRO in finite clauses and object pro. However, subject PRO in finite clauses and object pro give rise to ungrammaticality in English. Unlike Chinese, in which topics can be base-generated, English does not allow a base-generated topic. Chinese and English are also different in that while English reflexives can only take a local subject in finite clauses as their antecedent (thus a short-distance reflexive), the Chinese reflexive ziji can take the matrix subject as well as the embedded subject as its antecedent (thus a long-distance reflexive) . With respect to these differences between the two languages, our focus is on whether it is more difficult for CFL learners to acquire subject PRO, object pro, base-generated topics and the long-distance reflexive in the acquisition of Chinese than for EFL learners to unlearn subject PRO, object pro, base-generated topics and the long-distance reflexive in the acquisition of English. The results of our study suggest that there is no single direction of difficulty in the SLA of Chinese and English. In terms of object pro, the direction of difficulty is from Chinese to English. However, in acquiring and unlearning the subject PRO, neither CFL learners nor EFL learners seem to have much difficulty. As for base-generated topics, it is found that the acquisition of this feature by CFL learners is more difficult than the unlearning of this feature by EFL learners. The results concerning the acquisition of the Chinese long-distance reflexive ziji by CFL learners suggest that a lack of long-distance binding for ziji is fossilized in these learners' interlanguage (IL) grammars of Chinese. Based on the findings in this study, we argue that the directionality of difficulty in SLA can only be studied with respect to individual language features and that the mere existence of relevant positive evidence in the input is not a guarantee that there will be a change in the learner's IL grammar. There are many factors involved in deciding the direction of difficulty in SLA. These factors include the availability of informative evidence to the learner, the possibility that the learner makes use of the evidence available for the restructuring of his IL grammar of the target language, the learners' ability to process the relevant data in the input, and the interaction between the structure in the learners' L1 and the inherent developmental stage of the target language.

This paper compares and contrasts how linguistic transfer has been incorporated in English course books for year 7 and year 11 in Swedish schools. This study has focused on finding explicit and implicit reference to transfer and interference in English course books for Swedish students by identifying references from the authors where they have pointed to similarities and differences between Swedish and English. The results of the study showed that comparisons between the languages were used in all books, but explicit references were more common than implicit references. Of the four different linguistic levels (pronunciation, grammar, vocabulary, pragmatics) examined in this study, grammatical comparisons were the most frequent. However, the authors of the books for year 7 used more comparisons between the languages than the authors of the year 11 books. One conclusion that can be drawn from the present study is that it is up to the authors of the course books to decide to what extent they should compare and contrast the two languages, since the national curricula for the subject English give no indications of how the subject of transfer should be dealt with in language acquisition. / Den här uppsatsen jämför hur lingvistisk överföring behandlas engelska kursböcker för årskurs 7 och årskurs 11 i svenska skolor. Studien har fokuserat på att undersöka i vilken mån författarna uttryckligen eller underförstått refererat till överföring och transfer genom att identifiera var kursböckerna innehåller information om likheter och skillnader mellan svenska och engelska. Resultaten från denna studie visar att sådana jämförelser mellan språken fanns i alla böcker, men att uttrycklig jämförelse var det vanligast sättet för författarna att visa på likheter och skillnader. Av de fyra olika lingvistiska nivåer som användes i denna studie (uttal, grammatik, ordförråd, pragmatik), förekom jämförelse av grammatik mest. Författarna till böckerna för årskurs 7 använde sig mer av jämförelser mellan språken än författarna till böckerna för årskurs 11. En slutsats som man kan dra av denna studie är att det är upp till författarna själva att bestämma i vilken mån de ska jämföra de två språken, eftersom läroplanen för ämnet engelska inte ger någon information om hur överföring ska hanteras i språkinlärning.

Thesis advisor: C. Patrick Proctor / The role of immigrant generation status on Latinos' English language development has not received much attention. Empirical studies (Bean & Stevens, 2003) and descriptive data (Fry & Passal, 2009), suggest an intergenerational shift from Spanish to English, such that the first generation primarily speaks Spanish, the second generation speaks both Spanish and English, and the third generation primarily speaks English. Indeed, this intergenerational shift suggests the important role of immigrant generation status in the language and reading comprehension development of bilingual Latinos. If first generation students are more likely to be Spanish dominant, arguably their English language and reading development are likely to be distinctive from their American born peers. Logically, this would suggest a lockstep intergenerational improvement such that second and third generation peers would significantly outperform the first generation in English language and reading. To address this role of immigrant status in the English language and reading development among Latino bilinguals, this dissertation is divided into two studies. The first study was guided by a component view of reading within the context of the immigrant paradox. The second study was concerned with the role of immigrant generation status on the linguistic interdependence (Cummins, 1979) between Spanish language, English language, and English reading comprehension. Both studies utilized multi-level growth modeling to develop longitudinal growth trajectories of English language and reading development. Results indicated that Latino children's English language and reading comprehension performance increased over time. For Study 1, significant effects for generation status suggested a Generation 2 and Generation 3 advantage. For Study 2, significant effects for generation status and Spanish language on the English language growth trajectories provide evidence for paradoxical immigrant generation status trends and cross-language transfer. Both studies emphasize the need for educators to be cognizant of linguistic differences within the bilingual population - particularly for newcomers and students who are less likely to speak English. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2015. / Submitted to: Boston College. Lynch School of Education. / Discipline: Teacher Education, Special Education, Curriculum and Instruction.

Many adults who have dual language experience describe themselves as "passive bilinguals," able to understand two languages, but speak only one. The aim of this study was to examine the relation between language production and comprehension in bilingual children in order to determine whether bilingual comprehension is more readily achieved than production. ... Productive and receptive skills in both languages were assessed using standardized tests. Children's relative amount of exposure to each language, as well as their language choice during production was measured via interview with the primary caregiver.... Language exposure as measured via dominance in one language over another appears to affect productive language differently than receptive language, further evidencing that language exposure is a significant predictor of acquisition that predicts production and comprehension differently. Additionally, when input is held constant, child language choice is uniquely related to productive and receptive language skill. The results of this study not only describe patterns of productive and receptive language skills and their correlates in young bilinguals, but they also address competing theories regarding the roles of input and output in the development of language comprehension and production. / by Krystal M. Ribot. / Thesis (M.A.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2012. / Includes bibliography. / Mode of access: World Wide Web. / System requirements: Adobe Reader.

The problem of this study is to see if there is more symbolic language transfer by autistic children in an untrained matching situation if there has been previous training on similar matching situations. The purposes of the study are twofold. The first is to see if subjects will make a motor sign response untrained to an object if the word for the object has been trained to the motor sign response and to see if they will make a motor sign response untrained to a word for an object if they have been trained to make the response to the object named. The second is to see, if transfer occurs, whether the order presentations of object and word are a factor.

This thesis aims to examine factors that influence the use of shell nouns in the writing production by Chinese and Swedish authors. Based on previous studies of shell nouns, this research establishes a theoretical model and a hypothesis is put forward: Though writing in the same genre, Chinese and Swedish authors have different ways of adopting shell nouns partially due to first language transfer. The verification of this hypothesis involves research samples from four corpora across two genres:Written English Corpus of Chinese Learners and Uppsala Student English Corpus made up of argumentations, and two self-established corpora composed of SCI research articles by Chinese and Swedish authors. It is found that in argumentative essays Chinese authors use significantly less shell nouns compared with Swedish authors and the lexico-grammatical patterns used by Chinese authors are not as diverse as those by Swedish authors. Whereas Chinese authors use the pattern the + N and this/that + N mostly, Swedish authors prefer the pattern the + N + that. As for the cohesive function,Swedish authors are more likely to use shell nouns to establish cataphoric reference. In research articles, however, the comparison shows that though Chinese authors still use significantly less shell nouns, especially cognitive shell nouns, the two groups of writers show no significant difference in choosing lexico-grammatical patterns, premodifiers or other classes of shell nouns. A qualitative analysis indicates that linguistic features including methods of texture, popularity of nouns, concrete and abstract dictions and sentence patterns result in the different use of shell nouns, which confirms the hypothesis. As the degree of difference is not the same in the two genres, a possible explanationis suggested: the genre “argumentation” has weak restriction compared with the genre “researcharticle”. It is the difference in genre restriction that makes Chinese and Swedish authors adopt similar or diverse ways of using shell nouns. A pedagogical implication of this thesis is th at language teachers should pay attention to the influence of genre in writing courses and conduct flexible teaching based on features of different genres.

Evidentials are one of the language codes that convey the speaker's beliefs in terms of the degree of reliability of information and how the speaker obtained information (Chafe, 1986; Ishida, 2006; McCready and Ogata, 2007). Evidentials play an important role in communication since they also function to show the speaker's attitude toward the interlocutors by making a sentence softer (Trent 1998). In his theory of territory of information, Kamio (1990, 1997, 2002) proposed that pragmatic rules of evidentials are different in Japanese than in English. Ishida (2006) studied these differences and argued that learners of Japanese (JF learners) face difficulties when conveying information with evidentials in Japanese. This study aimed to see how learners of Japanese as a foreign language (hereafter JF learners) use evidentials differently from Japanese native speakers by replicating Ishida's (2006) study. Discourse data, consisting of utterances produced by Japanese L1 speakers (J-speakers) in Japanese and JF learners in Japanese and English, was produced based on twelve situations where participants were instructed to convey hearsay information verbally to the specific third party. Collected productions were compared to see differences in the frequencies of evidentials, in general, and in terms of the source of information, the timing of conveyance, and the addressees. The study showed that JF learners use evidentials less frequently both in Japanese and English than J-speakers. This less frequent use of evidentials by JF learners in both languages indicates a transfer effect from English to Japanese. Additionally, a close look at each evidential use revealed other factors that might impact the speaker's choice of evidentials. This study revealed that JF learners tend to prefer to use evidentials such as soo da and to itta, while they tend to avoid using lexical evidentials such as rashii, mitai da, and yoo da which require more practice. These findings have implications for future research and for a classroom pedagogical approaches to the use of evidentials.

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