In order to explain the development of English and Spanish skills in children from Spanish-speaking homes in the United States, it is necessary to identify their sources of language exposure. Most research to date has focused on home language use. The aim of this study is to identify sources of English and Spanish exposure outside the home that bilingual children experience between the ages of 2 and 5 years. The present study focuses on 3 potential sources: grandparents, extracurricular activities, and early childcare and education settings. We ask how much English and Spanish exposure children receive, how that changes from 2.5 to 5 years, and whether family variables influence those changes. Participants were 149 children from Spanish-speaking homes in southeastern Florida, with at least one parent an immigrant from a Spanish-speaking country. Measured out-of-home sources of input included hours per of week of English and Spanish from a Grandparent, during Extracurricular Activities, and during Preschool at 30, 36, 42, 48, and 60 months. Parents’ Native Language Background groups were either both native Spanish-speaking or one native, Spanish-speaking and one native, English-speaking. Maternal Education was treated as a dichotomous variable: mothers whose highest level of education in English is less than a four-year college degree and mothers whose highest level of education in English is equivalent to or greater than a four-year college degree. Child Birth Order was also treated as a dichotomous variable: only children and first-born children or later born children. Results revealed that for these children from Spanish-speaking homes, Grandparents are primarily a source of heritage-language (Spanish) input and Extracurricular Activities and Preschool are primarily a source of societal-language (English) input. Findings suggest English exposure from out-of-home sources increases over time possibly at the expense of Spanish exposure. Parents’ Native Language Backgrounds and Maternal Education influenced children’s exposure to both languages from these outside sources of input; Child Birth Order did not. Implications for future research and practical application are discussed. / Includes bibliography. / Dissertation (Ph.D.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2017. / FAU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Collection

Esta pesquisa investiga o papel da língua materna (L1) e da Gramática Universal (GU) na aquisição do inglês por falantes de português brasileiro através da análise de três fenômenos fonológicos: a relação entre sílaba e acento, que é totalmente diferente nas duas línguas e se dá através da marcação de parâmetros métricos; a retração de acento, que ocorre de maneira muito semelhante no inglês e no português e representa uma regra a ser transferida da L1 para a L2; e a assimilação de vozeamento, que existe em ambas as línguas, mas de maneira diferente e, portanto, trata-se de uma regra a ser modificada. Esta investigação permite compreender a influência da GU e da L1 na aquisição de L2 porque, caso os resultados mostrassem que a relação entre a sílaba e acento fosse adquirida com mais facilidade, isso seria uma evidência de que o estado inicial da aquisição é caracterizado pela GU, que permitiu a marcação do parâmetro do acento do inglês. Caso a retração de acento fosse adquirida com mais facilidade, isso significaria que o estado inicial da aquisição é caracterizado pela gramática da L1 e que haveria uma transferência (positiva) dessa regra para a L2. Por fim, caso a assimilação de vozeamento fosse adquirida com mais facilidade, isso significaria que nem a L1 e nem a GU foram fatores determinantes no processo de aquisição desses informantes. A amostra é composta por 30 falantes brasileiros de inglês divididos em três níveis de proficiência (básico, intermediário e avançado), além de 7 falantes nativos, que constituíram o grupo de controle. Para a coleta foram utilizados 3 experimentos, um para cada fenômeno, totalizando 9.248 dados. Os dados referentes à assimilação de vozeamento foram transcritos a partir da verificação acústica do vozeamento do morfema -s. A classificação dos dados referentes à sílaba e acento e à retração de acento, por sua vez, foi realizada em duas etapas: uma verificação perceptual e uma verificação acústica baseada nos principais correlatos do acento nas duas línguas: pitch e duração. Os resultados indicaram que, dentre os três fenômenos analisados, a regra de retração de acento, que se dá através da transferência da L1, e a relação entre sílaba e acento, que se dá pela marcação do parâmetro da L2, foram adquiridas com mais facilidade do que a regra de assimilação de vozeamento, que não tem apoio nem na L1 e nem na GU. Esses resultados são evidência de que o processo de aquisição fonológica de segunda língua é influenciado tanto pela Gramática Universal, que permite a marcação paramétrica a partir do input da língua alvo, quanto pela língua materna, que se manifesta na L2 através de transferência positiva ou negativa, o que faz com que regras que não contam com apoio nem da GU e nem da L1 sejam os fenômenos mais difíceis de serem adquiridos. / This research investigates the role of the first language (L1) and Universal Grammar (UG) in the acquisition of English by speakers of Brazilian Portuguese through the analysis of three phonological phenomena: the relation between syllable and stress, which is totally different in both languages and is given by parameter settings; stress shift, which is very similar in English and Portuguese and represents a rule to be transferred from the L1 to the target-language; and voicing assimilation, which exists in both languages, but in a different way, and, therefore, is a rule to be modified. This investigation allows us to understand the influence of UG and L1 on the acquisition of a second language because, if the results showed that the relation between syllable and stress was the easiest phenomenon to acquire, this would mean that the initial state of the acquisition is characterized by UG, which enabled the English stress parameter setting. If stress shift were more easily acquired, this would mean that the initial state of the acquisition is characterized by the grammar of the L1 and that there would be a (positive) transfer of that rule to the second language. Finally, if voicing assimilation was the easiest rule to acquire, this would mean that neither the L1 nor UG were determining factors in the acquisition process of these subjects. The sample is composed of 30 Brazilian speakers of English divided into three proficiency levels (basic, intermediate and advanced), in addition to 7 native speakers, who constituted the control group. We used 3 experiments for data collection, one for each phenomenon, totalizing 9,248 data. The data referring to voicing assimilation were transcribed based on the acoustic verification of the morpheme -s. The classification of the data related to syllable and stress and stress shift ocurred in two stages: a perceptual verification and an acoustic verification based on the main correlates of stress in the two languages: pitch and duration. The results indicated that stress shift, which occurs through the transfer of the L1, and the relation between syllable and stress, which is given by parameter settings, were more easily acquired than the voicing assimilation rule, which has no support in the L1 and in UG. These results are evidence that second language phonological acquisition is influenced both by Universal Grammar, which allows parameter (re)settings, and by first language, which means that rules that are not supported neither by GU nor L1 are the most difficult phenomena to be acquired.

No description available.

The present study replicates research by Tomoko Takahashi (1984) on lexico-semantic patterns used by students in an acquisition poor environment. The purpose of the current study was to determine how an acquisition rich environment affects learners' use of four lexico-semantic patterns: congruence occurs when the Ll definition of a lexical item forms a one-to-one correspondence with the L2 lexical item; convergence occurs when the Ll lexical item has broader applications than the L2 lexical item; divergence occurs when the L2 lexical item has broader applications than the Ll lexical item; and semantic gap occurs when the Ll lexical item has no appropriate corresponding L2 lexical item (Takahashi, 1984). The instrument, a lexico-semantics test, is the same instrument used in Takahashi's study. It was designed to measure which patterns are most frequently used by Japanese EFL students learning English. The results, unlike Takahashi's, suggest that beginning and advanced ESL students use the four patterns equally well. No significant difference was found between the two groups. These results are contrary to what had been expected. However, they show that the proposed hierarchical order of difficulty of congruence, convergence, divergence and semantic gap is the same in both studies. The results also indicate that the acquisition· rich environment seems to dramatically improve beginners' performance of the four patterns. Since the instrument was designed for EFL students (an acquisition poor environment) it may not have fully challenged the advanced ESL students (an acquisition rich environment) while challenging the beginning students. This may have been due to the fact that the students in the present study received a great deal of input from the acquisition rich environment, which could account for their increased ability to restructure hypotheses about L2 vocabulary items. In conclusion, more studies are needed to determine the complete role of the four lexico-semantic patterns in vocabulary acquisition. An expanded follow up study that fully tests the advanced and beginning ESL learners' ability could determine whether both groups progress along a language continuum with respect to the use of the four lexico-semantic patterns. Furthermore, although the patterns may serve, in a limited capacity, as indicators of a learner's difficulties in vocabulary acquisition, a wider body of research is needed before they can be applied in a language learning environment.

No description available.

The influence of reading ability on cross-language transfer in Mandarin-speaking ninth graders was explored. Each participant's native language (L1-Mandarin Chinese) and second language (L2-English) were assessed. Although the relationship between L1 and L2 reading ability has been discussed in many previous studies, few studies have examined this relationship among L2 readers whose L1 is sharply different from their L2, who are at the junior-high-school age range, and who are learning English in a setting where English is not used in daily communication (e.g., English as a foreign language). To investigate the role of L1 reading competence in the language reading ability transfer, a reformed public examination, called the Basic Competency Test (BCT), was applied in this study. The 30,000 Taiwanese ninth grade participants, randomly selected from the pool of the national examination involved in a consecutive six-year period, were considered as a whole and then disaggregated into six groups based on the year they took the BCT. A preliminary analysis was about reliability coefficients of twelve examinations (six in Mandarin Chinese reading, and six in English reading) used in the present study. Scores from both Mandarin Chinese and English reading comprehension tests were subjected to descriptive, correlational, and regressional analyses. Both correlation and regression analyses revealed congruent results that provided support for the positive influence of Mandarin Chinese reading competence on English reading ability, that is, L2 reading ability is dependent on L1 reading competence. The finding supported the Linguistic Interdependence Hypothesis. In addition, participants' gender and school district also played statistically significant roles to affect the cross-language transfer of reading ability, whereas the length of time in English exposure had no statistically significant effect on the language reading ability transfer. Thus, cross-language transfer in reading ability was influenced by learners' L1 reading competence, gender, and school district. This suggested educational policy makers in Taiwan that boost native-Chinese speaking students' Mandarin knowledge help support the development of English reading ability. Apparently, if students' L1 reading abilities can be built up more soundly, their L2 reading ability should be easier to acquire.

Interest in Portuguese has steadily increased over the last decade in universities across both North and South America (Carvalho 2002, 2011), principally among Spanish speakers. Generally speaking, Portuguese for Spanish-speakers courses have been designed around the theory that Spanish-speaking students will benefit from cross-linguistic influence (CLI, or transfer) due to the typological similarity that exists between Portuguese and Spanish (see Júdice, 2000). Related to this, the Typological Primacy Model, or TPM (Rothman, 2011), states that CLI in L3 acquisition principally comes from the language that is perceived to be typologically similar to the target language (psycho-typology, see Kellerman, 1983), resulting in both positive and negative transfer. Although there is a high degree of typological similarity between Spanish and Portuguese, it is unknown whether or not this linguistic proximity is equally salient to all learners and whether or not learners view this linguistic proximity as an advantage or a disadvantage when learning Portuguese. Furthermore, some studies have suggested that the context in which one's Spanish is acquired may play a role in the different types of CLI evident among different Spanish-speaking learners of Portuguese (e.g., Carvalho & da Silva, 2006; Johnson, 2004; Koike & Gualda, 2008). Consequently, Carvalho (2002, 2011) has called for more empirical evidence to shed light on the nature of CLI between Spanish and Portuguese. This dissertation, consisting of three main studies, seeks to answer this call by examining the effects of language background on L3 Portuguese acquisition among three groups of Spanish-speaking bilinguals: L1 Spanish (L1S) bilinguals, L2 Spanish (L2S) bilinguals, and heritage speakers of Spanish (HS bilinguals). Results from both quantitative and qualitative analyses of questionnaire data from the first study suggest that although all participants view Spanish as the principal source of CLI in L3 Portuguese acquisition, L2S bilinguals and HS bilinguals perceive the role of Spanish as significantly more facilitative when learning Portuguese than do L1S bilinguals. The second and third studies used a sentence completion task and a preference/grammaticality judgment task (see Ayoun, 2000) to measure bilingual students' knowledge of mood distinctions in Spanish in obligatory and non-obligatory contexts, respectively, and how they transfer that knowledge to Portuguese. Results indicate that the L2S group scored significantly lower on both measures of mood distinctions in obligatory contexts in Spanish, but transferred over more of their knowledge to Portuguese than either the L1S or HS groups. Similarly, results suggest that L2S bilinguals do not understand the variable nature of mood distinctions in non-obligatory environments, but show almost identical strategies of mood selection in both Spanish and Portuguese. In contrast, L1S and HS bilinguals display knowledge of the variable nature of mood distinctions in Spanish in these contexts but show marked differences in mood selection between the Spanish and Portuguese tasks. The results of these studies contribute to L3 acquisition literature by emphasizing the complexity involved in determining the role of the background languages in CLI and by highlighting the importance of the context of acquisition in CLI. In addition, the results provide more empirical evidence regarding the differences between how different groups of Spanish-speaking bilinguals transfer their knowledge when acquiring L3 Portuguese.

This thesis investigates the knowledge of semantics-syntax correspondences in second language acquisition (SLA) within the Principles and Parameters framework. A parameter of semantic structure is proposed to account for crosslinguistic syntactic differences between two previously unrelated, and superficially distinct, verb classes: change of state locatives and 'psychological' verbs. Chinese and English contrast in terms of the parameter setting. Experimental evidence indicates that adult Chinese learners of English L2 initially transfer parameter settings, but are able to reset the proposed parameter. However, they only acquire L2 lexical properties and concomitant syntactic privileges with ease when L2 input adds a representation to their grammar. When positive L2 input should pre-empt overgeneralizations based on representation transferred from the L1, it is shown that L1 influence may persist until quite advanced stages of acquisition. The implications of the results are discussed for the parameter setting model of SLA.

Thesis (M. Ed.)--University of Hong Kong, 1997. / Includes bibliographical references (leaf 81-84).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Washington State University, 2000. / Includes bibliographical references.