Title: A new corpus for Spanish Second Language Acquisition Research
1- A new corpus for Spanish Second Language
Acquisition Research - L. Dominguez, R. Mitchell, M. J. Arche (U. of
Southampton), E. Marsden (U. of York), F. Myles
(Newcastle U.)
2A corpus for L2 Acquisition
- SLA theory aims to understand the complex
mechanisms and conditions behind learner grammars - Access to good quality data is crucial learner
production data focused comprehension tasks - Increasing interest in the creation of electronic
learner corpora - sharing data more easily
- automatising some aspects of data analysis
through the use of software such as
concordancers, part of speech taggers, etc.
3Some Existing Learner Corpora
- CHILDES http//childes.psy.cmu.edu/
- TALKBANK http//talkbank.org/
- English Corpus Linguistics http//cecl.fltr.ucl.a
c.be/Cecl-Projects/Icle/icle.htm - L2 FRENCH
- FLLOC www.flloc.soton.ac.uk/
- L2 (Written) SPANISH
- CEDEL 2 www.ugr.es/cristoballozano/cedel2.htm
4SPLLOC Spanish Language Learner Oral Corpus
- 2 year ESRC funded corpus project investigating
the development of L2 Spanish - Aims
- a small scale, high quality cross-sectional
database of spoken learner Spanish - topics being investigated lie at the
syntax/discourse interface - Data
- Collected - c40 hours of audio recordings
(native/non-native) - - 80 written focused tests on word
order - - 60 computer based tests on
clitic comprehension - 95 transcribed to date!
-
-
5Immediate Research Agenda
- Syntax/discourse interface as conceptualised in
generative linguistics, including - The acquisition of Spanish word order
- Clitic pronouns
- Verbal morphology
- Development of the L2 lexicon
6Corpus Design
- Balance of spontaneous and focused data
(semi-spontaneous oral tasks are complemented by
focused judgement and production tasks) - Balance of genres (semi-spontaneous oral tasks
include interview, narrative and discussion) - Balance of participants (20 L2 speakers from each
of beginner, intermediate and advanced levels
NS speakers) - Flexibility of computer-aided analysis (use of
the CHILDES system, plus an XML version) - Free web access to all materials (anonymised
sound files, transcripts, analysis files) for all
bonafide research users.
7Summary of tasks by type, elicitation method and
genre
Task Type Elicitation Genre Modern Times Loch Ness Photos Paired Discussion Clitic Production Clitic Comprehension Word Order
SEMI -SPONTANEOUS Oral Narrative v v v
SEMI -SPONTANEOUS Oral Interview v
SEMI -SPONTANEOUS Oral Discussion v
FOCUSED TASKS Oral Production v
FOCUSED TASKS Computer based Comprehension v
FOCUSED TASKS Paper Written Comprehension v
8Some task samples
9Loch Ness
Illustrations by Alex Brychta for A Monster
Mistake by Roderick Hunt (Oxford Reading Tree,
2003) used by permission of Oxford University
Press.
10(No Transcript)
11Modern Times
12Photos task
- Description of states
- And
- Description of events
13Clitic Comprehension (computer based)
- The learner hears a sentence with a clitic
pronoun and has to click on the object it refers
to. - 32 screens
- Combination of number and gender (canonical and
non-canonical) plus syntactic collocation. - Canonical feminine -a ending (e.g. calculadora
calculator) - Canonical masculine -o ending (e.g. teléfono
phone) - Non canonical no a/-o ending (e.g. lápiz)
- Collocation Proclitic (as in coniugated verbs)
vs. enclitic (as in infinitives).
14Clitic Production (computer based)
- The learner is asked a question referring to an
object based on the sequence of pictures shown. - 32 slides combination of number and gender
(canonical and non-canonical) plus syntactic
collocation.
15Word Order Task (paper pencil)
- Context-dependent word order preference test
- The learner is presented with 28 situations with
a following question - Two types of questions What happened? (Broad
focus) - Who did x? (Narrow focus)
- 4 items by 7 syntactic contexts
- 4xSVO, 4xVOS, 4xCLLD, 4xUnerg/Narrow, 4xUnerg/
Broad, 4xUnacc/Narrow and 4xUnacc/Broad - Three options Inverted (VS), non-inverted (SV)
and both. - You get home and your brother just tells you that
he has got an email from your friend Sue and that
he has very good news to tell you. You ask your
brother Qué ha pasado? (What happened?) - What could he say?
- a. Se ha comprado un coche Sue b. .Sue
se ha comprado un coche c. Both sentences - (Sue has bought a car) (Sue
has bought a car) - 2. Your brother is having some friends over
for a get together at home. When your mother
comes she sees some smoke coming out of the
bathroom and she asks your brother Quién está
fumando? (Whos smoking?) - What could you brother say?
16Summary of subjects by task (to date)
Task Type Task Name University (Final Year) Sixth Form College (Year 13) Lower Secondary School (Year 9) Natives (all ages)
Open-ended Modern Times 20 5
Open-ended Loch Ness 20 20 20 15
Open-ended Photos 20 20 20 15
Open-ended Paired Discussion 20 20 5
Focused Clitic Comprehension 20 20 20 3
Focused Picture Sequence 20 20 20 10
Focused Word Order 20 20 19 20
17Tools for Data Analysis
- CHILDES (The Child Language Data Exchange System)
- CLAN Computerised Language Analysis
- Computer program suite for transcribing,
searching and analysing language data - CHAT Codes for the Human Analysis of
Transcripts - A format for notation and transcription
- Types of Analyses
- FREQ, MLU, COMBO, KWAL
18Next Steps
- Database will be available for use by the
research community via www.splloc.soton.ac.uk (in
spring 2008) - Articles conference papers (in 2007)
- BAAL LLT SIG
- GALA
- BUCLD
- HLS
- SLRF
- CHILDES training workshop
- 25 January 2008, University of Southampton.
19Acknowledgments
The SPLLOC project is supported by an ESRC
research grant (RES 000231609) We would like to
thank all the participants in the project,
including subjects, transcribers and fieldworkers
20References
- Domínguez, L., Arche, M.J. 2007a. Deviant
optional forms in L2 Spanish the case of word
order variation. Poster presentation at GALA,
Barcelona, 6-8 September. - Domínguez, L., Arche, M.J. 2007b. Optionality in
L2 grammars the acquisition of SV/VS contrast in
Spanish. To be presented at BUCLD 32,Boston, 1-4
November. - Domínguez, L., Arche, M.J. 2007c. The L2
Acquisition of SV/VS contrast in Spanish. To be
presented at the Hispanic Linguistic Symposium,
Texas, 1-4 November. - Domínguez, L., Arche, M.J., Mitchell, R, Marsden,
E. and Myles, F 2007. Innovations in Spanish SLA
research methodology introducing the Spanish
Learner Language Oral Corpus. To be presented
at the Hispanic Linguistic Symposium, Texas, 1-4
November. - Granger, S., J. Hung and S. Petch-Tyson (eds.).
2002. Computer Learner Corpora, second language
acquisition and foreign language teaching.
Amsterdam John Benjamins. - Lozano, C. Mendikoetxea, A. (in press).
Verb-Subject order in L2 English new evidence
from the ICLE corpus. In Actas del XXV Congreso
Internacional de AESLA. Universidad de Murcia. - Lozano, C. Mendikoetxea, A. (forthcoming 2007).
Postverbal subjects at the interfaces in Spanish
and Italian learners of L2 English a corpus
analysis. In Papp, S., Díez, B. and Gilquin, G.
(eds). Linking up contrastive and corpus learner
research. Rodopi - Mitchell, R., Marsden, E., Domínguez, L., Arche,
M. J. and Myles, F. 2007 Creation and analysis
of a Spanish language learner oral corpus
(SPLLOC). Poster presentation at BAAL LLT SIG
Conference Towards a Researched Pedagogy,
University of Lancaster, 2-3 July. - Mitchell, R., Dominguez, L., Arche, M.J., Myles,
F. and Marsden, E. Developing a CHILDES-based
corpus of L2 oral Spanish. To be presented at
Second Language Research Forum, Urbana-Champaign,
11-14 October. - Myles, F. 2002. Linguistic development in
classroom learners of French a cross-sectional
study (No. End of ESRC award report R000223421).
Southampton University of Southampton. - Myles, F. 2005. Interlanguage corpora and second
language acquisition research. Second Language
Research, 21,4 373-391.