Instructor: Roger Young
Presenter: Katherine Wu
N97C0002
Gass, S. M., & Selinker, L. (2008). Second language acquisition:
An introductory course (3rd ed.). New York: Routledge.
The topics of this chapter
•
The significance of the lexicon
•
Categories of lexical knowledge
•
Lexical knowledge, development, and influences
•
L1 influence
•
Using lexical skills
•
Conclusion
13.1 The significance of the lexicon
• Maybe the most important language
component for learners:
– Most serious and common errors out of all types
of error.
(Ploitzer, 1978; Levenston, 1979; Meara 1984; Johansson, 1978)
– Lexical errors may interfere with communication.
(Gass 1988)
13.1 The significance of the lexicon
Ex:
P. 449
• (13-1) Can you tell me where is the train station?
• (13-2) I feel sorry for people who live in the
suburbs.
13.1 The significance of the lexicon
• lexical hypothesis (Levelt):
– exicon is the driving force in sentence production
• i.e. in encoding or sentence generation
– Lexicon is an essential mediator between conceptualization and
grammatical and phonological encoding .(blue print in p470)
• Lexicon is important in reading and especially in oral
comprehension (Altmann 1990)
13.2 Categories of lexical knowledge: some
dichotomies
• The major task of second language lexical
research:
– What second language learners know about the
lexicon of the second language.
– How they learn it.
– Why this particular path of development is followed.
13.2 Categories of lexical knowledge:
some dichotomies
• Production and reception
• Knowledge and control
• Breadth and depth
13.2.1 Production and reception
• Pronunciation
– Know how to pronounce
vs. recognizing it
• Spelling
– Know nuances of meaning vs. getting the general
meaning.
• Grammatical constraints
– E.g. impact as a verb takes a direct object, but impact
as a noun occurs in the phrase has an impact on
13.2.1 Production and reception
• Take the word overextended as another
example.
Productive
Receptive
Knowing how to accurately pronounce a
word or correctly spell it
Recognizing the word in writing or orally
Knowing the precise meaning in a variety
of contexts
Knowing the general meaning
Knowing that She overextended herself is
OK, but that She overextended her
chair is probably not OK in the
absence of a highly specific context
Knowing the specific meaning in a specific
context of use
Knowing the precise context of use
Knowing that it is made up of the
component parts—over, extend, -ed
Knowing that it has a possible negative
connotation ( as opposed to
overqualify, which may or may not
have a negative connection)
Knowing that it generally occurs with
himself, herself, oneself, themselves,
ourselves, yourself
Knowing that the opposite is
underextended
13.2.1 Production and reception
Teichroew (1982)
initial stage
final stage
recognition
production
Ex meaning of break
13.2.1 Production and reception
• Potential vocabulary
– Consists of words a learner will recognize
even though she has not yet seen them in the
second language.
• Example: common scientific and technological
terms
• Real vocabulary
– Consists of words the learner is familiar with
after (and because of ) exposure.
13.2.1 Production and reception
• Three types of vocabulary knowledge
(Laufer and Paribakht 1998):
passive, controlled active, and free active
– Passive: understanding the most frequent
meaning of a word.
13.2.1 Production and reception
– Controlled active: involves cued recall
ex. P.453
The railway con_______the city with its
suburbs
- Free active: involves spontaneous use of the
word.
13.2.1 Production and reception
– Development of three knowledge types:
• Passive knowledge the fastest
• Passive vocabulary > active vocabulary
• foreign language setting vs. second language setting
– The gap between knowledge types was smaller in the foreign language
setting.
environment has a strong role in learning.
13.2.2 Knowledge and control
• Bialystok and Sharwood Smith:
– Knowledge: the way in which the language system is
represented in the mind of the learner.
– Control: the processing system for controlling that
system during actual performance.
– The library metaphor:
• Useful, but does not capture the dynamic changing nature
of the second language lexicon?
13.2.2 Knowledge and control
• Drawbacks and questions:
– What is a representation?
• Use phonological knowledge of the lexicon to explain the
library metaphor:
– Idealizations = representations
– Do the representations capture everything we know
about words?
• It does not capture everything important about lexical
pronunciations.
– Example: Zsa Zsa Gabor “Darling, don’t touch my wheel “
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ya4WoU7tzYQ&feature=relat
ed
13.2.2 Knowledge and control
– How exhaustive are the representations?
Tyler(1989):
“The representation of a word cannot contain
all the various and subtle interpretations that the
word could have in different real-world contexts.”
- In sum p.454
13.2.3 Breadth and depth
• Breadth of knowledge: the number of
words learners know (Nation, 2001;
nassaji,2004)  quantity
• Depth of knowledge: a quality measure
(Meara,1996; Read,
1993,2000;Nassaji,2004)
13.2.3 Breadth and depth
• Both influence reading comprehension
– Depth of knowledge was a better predictor of
L2 reading comprehension than just breadth
of knowledge.
– Depth could be tied to particular strategy use.
e.g. identifying, evaluation, and monitoring.
P.455
lexically skilled vs. lexically less skilled
13.2.3 Breadth and depth
• Pulido (2003)
– Vocabulary knowledge had an impact on
incidental vocabulary gain.
• Laufer (1997a) for L2 readers:
– “ the threshold for reading comprehension is,
to a large extent, lexical”
13.2.3 Breadth and depth
• Read (2004):
– “something that is inherently ill-defined,
multidimensional, variable and thus resistant
to neat classifcation.”
– Knowing a second language word including
receptive and productive knowledge. 13.3
13.3 Lexical knowledge, development, and
influences
• Subcategorization
• Word associations and networks
• Word formation
• Word combinations, collocations, and
phraseology
13.3.1 Subcategorization
• Adjemian (1983)
– Second language learners tended to transfer lexical
patterns from their L1 to their L2
ex.
She walks the cats.
Elle marche les chats.
se promener
13.3.2 Word associations and networks
• Meara (1978)
– Natives and Learners made different
associations
• Native speakers: paradigmatic or syntagmatic
associations P457
• Learners : phonological similarity
professeur “professor”  profond “deep”
• Possible interpretation: the learners had not
constructed the network of relationships necessary
for fluent word associations in their L2.
13.3.2 Word associations and networks
• Schmitt and Meara (1997)
– Japanese learners of English
• Suffixes
• “ In both our L1 and our L2, we establish
networks which may be semantic networks,
syntactic networks, phonological networks, and
so forth. Essentially, a lexical network involves
the liking of words in some way.” p458
13.3.3 Word formation
• The importance of word formation varies
from language to language
– English: word formation is less important
because many of the complicated words are
taken from Latin and Greek.
– German: more sensitive to word formation
process. part-by-part translation
• Wasserstoff = hydrogen
• Wasser = water
stoff= substance
13.3.4 Word combinations, collocations, and
phraseology
• Combinations are not totally free!
13.4 L1 influence
• Connectivity:
– L1 and L2 lexis are separately stored, but the
two systems are in communication with each
other.
• Via direct connections
• Via a common conceptual store
• Via both
• Individual differences
13.4 L1 influence
• Jiang: three-stage model of adult second
language vocabulary learning.
– First stage: lexical association stage
– Second stage: lemma mediation stage
(remain the steady-state stage)
– Third stage: L1 information is discarded
13.4 L1 influence
• Lee (2007): L2 proficiency, not L 1
influence, is a key factor in explaining
semantic overgeneralization.
• Finding: the semantic overgeneralization
may be an indicator of L2 development but
not that of crosslinguistic influence.
13.4 .1 incidental vocabulary learning
• “ learners are focused on comprehending
meaning rather that on the explicit goal of
learning new words.”
• Rott (1999) examined exposure through reading
and its effect on acquisition and retention of
vocabulary.
• 2 times is sufficient to affect vocabulary growth.
• 6 times resulted in the greatest amount of know-knowledge
growth.
• Retention was greater for receptive knowledge than for
productive knowledge.
Incidental
13.4 .1 incidental vocabulary learning
• Paribakht and Wesche (1997)
– group one: read passage and answered
comprehension questions
• Gain on vocabulary + recognition knowledge
– group two: read passages and did vocabulary
activities.
• Gain on vocabulary + productive knowledge.
13.4 .1 incidental vocabulary learning
• Follow up study: focused on the strategies
that learners use.
• Inferencing was the most common strategies.
• Dictionary use did not predominate
• Gu and Johnson (1996) study lexical
strategy used by Chinese students :
– There was more than one way to achieve
vocabulary growth: extensive reading as well
as by employing a wide range of strategies.
13.4 .1 incidental vocabulary learning
• Hulstijin, Hollander, and Greidanus (1996)
– When there is access to external information , the
formation of a form-meaning relationship is fostered
up repeated exposure.
• R. Ellis and He (1999)
Investigate the role of negotiation in incidental
vocabulary learning
– the new lexical items use in a communicative
context are retained to a greater extent than they are
only exposed to input.
13.4 .1 incidental vocabulary learning
• Newton (1995): negotiation was not always a
precursor to learning a new vocabulary. Other
factors such as task type played a role in
whether or not a word was learned.
• Gass (1999): proposed that incidental learning is
most likely to occur when two languages are
cognates, when there is significant exposure,
and when related L2 words are known.
13.4 .1 incidental vocabulary learning
• Hustiiji and Laufer (2001): relate retention
of vocabulary learning to the concept of
depth of processing.
– Predicts that memory retention is due to
whether something is shallowly or deeply
processed.
13.4 .1 incidental vocabulary learning
• + Craik and Tulvign’s (1975) richness of
encoding  concept of involvement
– Need, search, and evaluation.
• Need: motivation. Can be either moderate or
strong.
• Internal needs is strong. External source gives
moderate needs.
13.4 .1 incidental vocabulary learning
– Search and evaluation are both cognitive
constructs.
• Search : the attempt to determine the meaning of a
word. (look up dictionary)
• Evaluation : an attempt to determine whether the
word is the correct one given the context. Requires
decision.
– High involvement results in more effective on
vocabulary retention.
13.4 .1 incidental vocabulary learning
• In general, the greater use that learners
make of vocabulary items, the greater the
likelihood they will retain these items both
in form and meaning.
13.4.2 Incremental vocabulary learning
• Learning vocabulary is not a one-time
affair.
• Learning words is a recursive process and
dose not occur instantaneously.
13.4.2 Incremental vocabulary learning
• Wesche (1993): Vocabulary knowledge
Scale with 5 stages:
– (a) the word is unfamiliar
– (b) he word is familiar but he meaning is not
known.
– (c) a translation into the NL can be given
– (d) the word can be used appropriately in a
sentence
– (e) the word is used accurately both
semantically and grammatically.
13.5 Using lexical skills
• Production
• Perception
13.5.1 Production
• Production processes and strategies may
have a strong effect on what learners
produce.
• Credit car payment is _____to lock-in any
instant purchase fares.
13.5.1 Production
• Paradoxical:
– Little evidence of lexical information is crucial
in the sentence production is found in the
early stages of SLA.
13.5.1 Production
• Klein and Perdue (1989) provided a
thorough discussion of principles that
might determine word order arrangements
by second language learners in untutored
settings.
– Three rules: a phrasal, a semantic, and a
pragmatic rule to determine the arrangement
of words.
13.5.1 Production
Ard and Gass (1987):
Lexical information plays little role in early
stages.
examples in p468
Result:
low proficiency : more uniform
judgment than high proficiency:
13.5.1 Production
• Learners have to , and do , learn the
lexical constraints on sentence production.
13.5.1 Production
• Lexical-grammatical pragmatic indicators
– Hebrew construction efsar + infinitive
• Is limited to situations that express a speaker’s
perspective.
13.5.1 Production
• The nature of sentence production
processes contributes to learner difficulties
in lexical use.
13.5.1 Production
• Levelt (1989): model of sentence
production. P 470 Fig. 13.1
13.5.2 Perception
• Different languages utilize different
distinctions in their phonological systems
as a way for word perception.
– Many language use tone to separate words
– English:
• use tense and lax vowels: sheep
vs.
• Strategy of focusing on strong syllables
(Cutler,1990)
– Target word
bone
# of false response
trombone
//
>
ship
Target word # of false response
pet
trumpet
13.5.2 Perception
• Meara:
– It seems likely that a major reason that
Spanish and Chinese learners perform
differently with English words is that they are
utilizing the processing strategies they
learned in their native languages.
13.5.2 Perception
• During ongoing speech, word perception is
generally the main problem in
understanding the discourse.
• Even among competent speakers of a
language, lexical considerations are often
paramount in explaining the flow of a
conversation.
13.5.2 Perception
– Example pp.473-474 Interviewer vs. Cornutt
• Both are native speakers of English
Interviewer: On the matter of careers, a lot of
the jobs that people go into are sort of
lifetime careers. What about baseball?
Is it a full lifetime career?
How long will your baseball career last?
13.5.2 Perception
• Interviewer: But how long can you expect
to…to play, let’s say actively?
How long will your baseball career last?
• Interviewer: But how many years can you
expect to play professional
ball…?