Child Second Language Acquisition of English - Durham e-Theses

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Durham E-Theses
Child second language acquisition of English : a
longitudinal case study of a Turkish-speaking child.
Haznedar, Belma
How to cite:
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Child Second Language Acquisition
of English:
A Longitudinal Case Study
of a Turkish-speaking child
by
Belma Haznedar
The copyright of this thesis rests
with the author. No quotation
from it should be published without
the written consent of the author
and information derived from it
should be acknowledged.
A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the
requirements for the degree of
Doctor of Philosophy
University of Durham
Department of Linguistics and English Language
October 1997
\
20 NOV 1997
1
Camm anneme ye babama
Sevgilerirnle
To my parents
with love
2
ABSTRACT
Child Second Language Acquisition of English:
A Longitudinal Case Study of a Turkish-speaking child
Belma Haznedar,-University of Durham, 1997
This dissertation is a longitudinal case study of child second language
acquisition within the Principles and Parameters framework. The spontaneous
English data covering a period of 18 months come from a Turkish-speaking child
who was 4;3 year-old at the start of data collection.
The main theoretical issues addressed in this dissertation are as follows: (i) the
issue of L2 initial state and the extent of Li influence; (ii) the similarities and
differences between child Li acquisition and child L2 acquisition vs. the
similarities and differences between child L2 acquisition and adult L2
acquisition); (iii) the question of the presence of functional categories in early
child L2 acquisition.
The results show that: (i) even a very young child L2 learner initially utilises
Li knowledge; (ii) functional categories are present in child L2 acquisition.
The dissertation consists of eight chapters: 1) Introduction; 2) Early work on
child L2 acquisition; 3) Linguistic theory and language ccquisition; 4) Li
influence on child L2 acquisition; 5) The acquisition of the IP system; 6) Optional
Infinitives in child L2 acquisition; 7) The acquisition of the CP system; 8)
Conclusion.
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Declaration
I declare that this thesis, which I submit for the degree of Doctor of
Philosophy at the University of Durham, is my own work and is not the same as
any which has previously been submitted for a degree in this or another
university.
Belma Haznedar
University of Durham
Department of Linguistics and English Language
se,
Copyright © by Belma Haznedar
The copyright of this thesis rests with the author. No quotation or data from
it should be published without Belma Haznedar's prior written consent and
information derived from it should be acknowledged.
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Acknowledgements
It all began on a typically rainy day in Durham. I realised that doing an MA
could only be a starting point in one's academic life. I had to learn more.
Suddenly, I found myself in a big forest, full of syntactic trees. It took me quite a
while to learn how to climb up those trees. Sometimes I fell out of the tree
without knowing why I was going up. In some courses our trees got taller and
taller, including AgrSP and TP and in others I was swinging on an S level.
In this syntactic world, I would like to thank Joe Emonds for creating a nice
academic atmosphere where research, constant support and encouragement were
the main issues. I was the first PhD student in his new research program. Now I
am leaving, and I have to ask someone as I really do not know the exact number
of PhD students in the department. Warm thanks also go to Maggie Tallerman
for her crosslinguistic syntax courses. I will never forget the day I was doing a
presentation on Breton in her syntax seminar. By definition, it was a
crosslinguistic seminar and as a native speaker of Turkish, I had to do my bit:
something on Breton. I never had enough time to attend S.J's or Mike's
phonology lectures, although I always wanted to. But, they deserve special
thanks for the big smiles on their faces.
Walking up and down in the theoretical world for more than a year, I got
extremely tired and was looking for the entrance to the empirical work. A little
bird told me that a young Turkish boy, Erdem, arrived in Durham with his
parents. I would never have imagined how difficult and also how pleasurable it
would be to work with a young child for such a long time. I must admit at the
beginning it was rather difficult to make him speak in English. There were times
he did not want to speak, there were times he was chatty more than ever, there
were times he was angry with me, and there were times he had a good sense of
humour, as shown in the following lines.
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Belma: Why do you always give me short answers?
Erdem: I like giving little answers, if I give if I always give big answers, my
mouth +1.
Belma: Your mouth gets tired? (2 June 1995)
Someone who has never collected longitudinal data may not realise how
inconvenient it can be to visit a family three or four times a month for nearly
three years. For that alone, I will always be grateful to "my little friend" Erdem
and to his parents who were always supportive even when they really did not
have the time. I also thank Erdem's parents for being loyal to our mutual secret:
the English-only rule during the data collection period. I apologise for making
them speak English at all times until the day before they left the UK.
Perhaps, data collection was the first step, followed by technical work which
took quite a long time. Then came the analysis of the data and the writing
process. I can never thank my supervisor, Bonnie D. Schwartz, enough for her
generous help and support throughout this study. She read and offered
suggestions on every chapter of this dissertation, which made me rethink and
clarify ideas in this study. I am also indebted to her for helping me prepare for
conference talks and write conference papers. Thanks to her careful eyes.
I would also express my heart-felt thanks to Martha Young-Scholten who
helped and convinced me to pursue my PhD in Durham. I also thank her for
giving me comments on portions of the papers derived from the material in this
dissertation.
Thanks go to Isa, Roger and Ute for commenting on one particular section of
this work while I was working on my first conference paper. Xiao Ling and
Andrew also deserve special thanks for sharing my worries and listening to me
when I needed someone to talk to. Come on guys! It is your turn now.
Emine, Ercan, Nilay, Nurdane shared my thirst for Turkish in our long chats.
Esin and Omiir deserve special thanks for their hospitality during my stay in their
flat after my viva.
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Being one of the senior residents in Fisher House, I have made so many
friends who come from different parts of the world. I will not be able to thank
them all, but the following: Lorraine, Harald and Helen for their witty jokes and
enjoyable chats, Nonie for her chicken soup, Peter for his jokes about the honey
business and Mamiko and Theresa for their experiments in the kitchen. I must
also thank Kathryn's mother for making us a cake every weekend, and of course
Kathryn for bringing it for us from Sunderland. Even if we did not see her
around, we always knew that she was around, as our eyes lit up every Monday
with the new cake on the kitchen table.
I am grateful to the Turkish Ministry of Education for making it possible for
me to pursue a PhD in addition to an MA at Durham.
Special thanks must go to Mehmet for his amazing good sense of humour, his
understanding and love. I must also thank him for giving me the first
introductory courses in computing. He nearly fell off his chair and died when I
did not share his love for computers for at least some time at the beginning of my
study.
My last word goes to my family: my dear parents, brothers, sisters, nephews
and nieces whose constant love has always helped me throughout my life. I thank
my elder brother for keeping my eyes open with world-wide disculion panels in
his incredibly long letters. Have I ever known anybody else who speaks and
writes in Turkish so beautifully?
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Page
Title 1
Dedication 2
Abstract 3
Declaration 4
Acknowledgements 5
CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION
1.0 Introduction 15
1.1 An overview 15
1.2 The outline of this dissertation 18
CHAPTER 2: EARLY STUDIES ON CHILD L2 ACQUISITION
2.0 Introduction 22
,.,
2.1 Second language acquisition 22
2.1.1 The Contrastive Analysis Hypothesis 22
2.1.2 The Creative Construction Hypothesis 27
2.2 Morpheme-order studies 30
2.3 A critique of morpheme-order studies 33
2.4 Longitudinal studies in the 1970s 38
2.4.1 Negation 39
2.4.2 Questions 47
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