2 .What Is the Sequence of L2 Acquisition?
The question that interested many of the first SLA researchers was the order in which people acquire an L2: is there a “natural” sequence through which all L2 learners progress or does it vary from one person to another, say, accord- ing to their L1? One research method was to score the presence of certain English “grammatical morphemes” such as continuous “-ing” going and plural “s” books in the speech of L2 learners. Spanish-speaking children learning English start with plural “s” and progress through continuous “-ing”, copula “be” is, and so on (Dulay and Burt 1973). Fairly similar orders were found regardless of whether the learners were in a classroom (Lightbown 1987), whether they were in a country where the language was spoken or not (Makino 1993), and many other factors. Clearly L2 learners of English acquire these grammatical morphemes in a sequence of some kind. However, difficulties emerged with the methodology (was this really the order in which they learnt them or simply the order of difficulty?) and with the grammar (do these gram- matical morphemes such as verbs “be,” inflections “-s” and prepositions to really form a coherent group syntactically?) (Cook 1993). More convincing sequences of L2 acquisition emerged from the ZISA project (Meisel et al. 1981). This studied the development of L2 German by migrant workers with various L1s over a period of time. It was mostly concerned with German word order, which differs from English in that the verb normally comes second in the sentence. Sometimes this yields a Subject Verb Object order, as in Ich liebe dich (I love you), but often it leads to an Adverb Verb Subject order, Immer liebe ich dich (Always love I you), and to other combinations in which the verb comes second. L2 learners of German start by putting subjects in front of verbs as in Die Kinder essen Apfel (The children eat apple) before they learnt how to get other verb second orders by moving elements around in the sen- tence, for example Adverb Verb Da Kinder spielen (There children play). The sequence of acquisition depends on first acquiring a typical word order and then learning how to move elements about. The essentials of this sequence were duplicated with L2 learners of English in Australia by Pienemann and Johnston (1987): the stage of Subject-Verb-Object I like apples, preceded the sentences with movement Apples I like very much. Learners differ from each other according to how much they simplify sentences, say, omitting items such as the copula verb Ich Mädchen (I girl) even if they are at the same developmental stage. This is called the “variation” dimension and complements the “develop- ment” dimension, leading to the name the Multidimensional Model, later known as Processability theory (Pienemann 1993). The concept of sequence was taken further within the large-scale ESF (Euro- pean Science Foundation) project, which looked at the learning of five L2s by young adult speakers of six L1s (Klein and Perdue 1992, 1997). It found that learners start with sentences without verbs, go on to use verbs without inflec- tion Its pinch some bread, and finally have sentences with verbs with inflections Man is coming in . Regardless of which language they are learning, the learners arrive at a common basic L2 grammar, which has three main rules: a sentence may consist of: 1 a Noun Phrase followed by a verb followed by an optional Noun Phrase Mädchen nehme Brot (girl take bread); 2 a Noun Phrase followed by a Copula verb followed by a Noun Phrase, Adjective, or Prepositional Phrase it’s bread; 3 a Verb followed by a Noun Phrase pinching its. Progress beyond this basic grammar consists largely of fleshing out the dif- ferent verbal forms. The stages of acquisition derive from communication and pragmatic principles: L2 learners “organise their utterances and texts accord- ing to elementary principles of their human language capacity” (Klein and Perdue 1997: 343). The ESF project is thus a practical demonstration of the interlanguage hypothesis since it shows a common interlanguage independent of either L1 or L2. The project’s aim was indeed to see “whether a learner variety is based on recognisable organisational principles, how these principles interact, and whether they also apply to fully-fledged languages” (Klein and Perdue 1992: 1). Stages of development are not interesting unless they lead to insights into learning. The study of sequences of acquisition thus shades into explanation. For example Wieden and Nemser (1991) looked at phonological sequences in the acquisition of English by German-speaking children and found three distinct stages: pre-systemic (knowing the sounds only in individual words), transfer (systematically using the L1 categories in the L2) and approximative (restructuring the L2 sounds into a new system). Wolfe Quintero (1992) found that the stages of acquisition of English relative clauses by Japanese learners could be seen as an interaction of six learning strategies. Similarly Schwartz and Sprouse (1996) looked at the stages in which one Turkish learner acquired the verb position in German to determine whether the starting point is the Turkish SOV order. The answer to the question is that there are indeed sequences of L2 acquisi- tion common to learners in different areas of language and with different first languages. The stages through which L2 learners progress have much in com- mon, thus reducing the role of L1 transfer.
On the other hand, the gradual incorporation of SOV structures suggests that instruction and input data indeed trigger what Platzack (1996) calls an approach from “The Initial Hypothesis of Syntax (IHS)” towards the system of the L2.
Data showed also that abstract movement due to feature values are difficult to detect for XVSO structures, while students seem to be more sensitive to explicit complementizer with inherent LC-features with verb final patterns.