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Practical Grammar I. Crosslinguistic Influence October 5, 2010. Remember from your reading?. pizza all-dressed subvention verify lectures pass the vacuum cleaner and the quintessential open and close the lights. What do these tell you?.
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Practical Grammar I Crosslinguistic Influence October 5, 2010
Remember from your reading? • pizza all-dressed • subvention • verify • lectures • pass the vacuum cleaner • and the quintessential open and close the lights
What do these tell you? • In a bilingual mind, two scenarios are possible to explain the phenomenon; • We have two word banks but the door between the two is leaky… • We have one word bank with labels for things in different languages. E.g. pencil and crayon for the thin cylindrical object we use to write.
Why use translation studies? • Translating is exactly what we do constantly when we are using a language other than our L1; • Our native language (L1) seeps through into our L2 speech patterns, pronunciation, and writing;
What is Crosslinguistic Influence? • CLI is the term now used to include language transfer, negative transfer and interference. • In the past, researchers believed that if we studied the differences between two languages, we could be better translators or teachers.
Is CLI universal to all languages? • CLI research is informed by language typology, that is seeing language on a continuum from relatively easy to relatively difficult. English is closer to the easy end than French is and languages such as Vietnamese and Korean are at the difficult end. • CLI is also informed by contrastive linguistics, which studies the differences between languages.
What about French and English? • Because of the different nature of French and English, CLI occurs frequently in L2 learners and in translation. • We will look at the eleven most representative occurrences of CLI, for grammar only. They are broken down by category.
Indefinite Articles • In French, we do not use an indefinite article when referring to a person’s profession; • E.g. She is kindergarten professor.
Definite Articles • In French, the definite article is used for generalization; • E.g. The singing takes practice. • E.g. The DVDs are more expensive than the CDs.
Definite Articles • French requires the use of a definite article with proper nouns; • E.g. The Professor Valentine teaches in Trois-Rivières.
Verbs and Verbals • The French verb system has no progressive forms; • E.g. The syndicate still negotiate the agreement. • E.g. When I arrived in class, he studied.
Verbs and Verbals • Tense boundaries are different in English and French; • E.g. I study here for two years. • E.g. She has left Saturday morning.
Verbs and Verbals • In French, there is no distinction between the gerund and the infinitive; • E.g. She avoids to walk on the dark street. • E.g. I enjoy to eat brochette.
Word Order • The verb-subject order differs in French and English; • E.g. I knew what would decide the director-general.
Word Order • In French, adverbs can be placed between the verb and the object or before the verb; • E.g. I like very much poutine. • E.g. The students efficiently organized the manifestation.
Sentence Structure • French makes use of ‘that’ clauses rather than the infinitive; • E.g. I want that you start the dossier before you leave. • E.g. The cash wants that I endorse my cheque.
Pronouns • French makes no distinction between human and non-human for relative pronoun use (which/who); • E.g. Here is the student which you met in September. • E.g. The people which arrived will start the classe d’accueil next month.
Pronouns • In French, possessive determiners refer to the xxx instead of the • E.g. Annie went to the cinema with his father. • E.g. Leo’s mother broke his arm when she fell on the ice.
Practice • 1. He could see her often. • 2. He is a big fan of this baseball star. • 3. If someone tried to stop these gangsters, he would be killed. • 4. It could be that he has not thought about this enough. • 5. He is wanting to get back to his studies. • 6. The author gives examples of abbreviations. Some forms can be pronounced as initialisms and acronyms (‘UFO’ or ‘you-foe’). Others mix these types in the one word (CD-ROM). • 7. This stands in sharp contrast to Nicholson-Lord’s opinion.
More Practice • 8. They paid him little attention. • 9. We have never had it so good. • 10. His career seemed ended. • 11. Latin has given place to English now. • 12. A reader with small knowledge of the language could not understand such a text. • 13. Her reason was quite other. • 14. They have tried this quite often in the past, but they have never been successful. • 15. He is a successful person in all ways.
Bibliography • http://college.hmco.com/english/raimes/keys_writers/3e/instructors/esl/transfer.html • http://www.dirk-siepmann.de/Teacher_Training/Would_you_have_marked_it_wrong/would_you_have_marked_it_wrong.html