Abstract
This chapter considers the implications for classroom teaching and materials development of recent research on the second language acquisition of modifiers, specifically regarding word order of prepositional modifiers (e.g., right back into the desert) and attributive adjectives (e.g., great new haircut). While word order of prepositional modifiers is generally not taught in the classroom, adjectival hierarchies in contrast are covered by most ESL grammar series, although never systematically. Universal orderings of prepositional modifiers (Stringer D, Burghardt B, Seo H-K, Wang Y-T. Sec Lang Res 27:289–311, 2011) and adjectives (Cinque G. The syntax of adjectives. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 2010) raise the question of whether orderings of modifiers need to be taught at all, or whether such hierarchies might be naturally manifested without explicit instruction. Results from experimentation targeting the acquisition of prepositional modifiers reveal innate knowledge of the syntax of modification and suggest that teaching materials should focus on the lexicon rather than word order in this domain. In contrast, results from experiments on acquisition of adjective order suggest that while a more general distinction (absolute vs. nonabsolute) may be universal, more fine-grained distinctions are poorly understood by learners even at advanced proficiency levels, regardless of first language background, and require the development of more effective teaching of word order, plausibly though enhanced input.
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- 1.
The ILR and the CEFR are the standard governmental language proficiency scales used in the United States and Europe, respectively.
- 2.
Abbreviations used for syntactic categories are as follows: N (noun), V (verb), Adj (adjective), Adv (adverb), and P (preposition/postposition/particle); phrasal projections are abbreviated NP, VP, AdjP, AdvP, and PP.
- 3.
The assumption here is that Korean adjectives are, in fact, relative clauses. The link between relative clauses and attributive adjectives is well-known, albeit complex and controversial (compare: the boy who is tall and the tall boy; the train which is moving fast and the fast-moving train). Crosslinguistically, it appears that adjectives marked with relative markers, just like relative clauses themselves, are not subject to ordering restrictions (compare: the {great new/*new great} cafe; the café {which is great and which is new/which is new and which is great}). For a review of analyses linking relatives and attributive adjectives, see Alexiadou et al. (2007).
- 4.
The example in (16) is a popular English children’s song: “Twinkle, twinkle, little star / How I wonder what you are / Up above the world so high / Like a diamond in the sky.”
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Acknowledgements
This research was conducted with the collaboration of colleagues in the Department of Second Language Studies as well as teachers and students in the Intensive English Program (IEP) at Indiana University. Many thanks especially to Kathleen Bardovi-Harlig, Doreen Ewert, Michelle Fleener, Marlin Howard, and Heidi Vellenga. Thanks also to Stephanie Dickinson of the Indiana Statistical Consulting Center (ISCC) for her invaluable help with data analysis. The experimental work on modifiers was coauthored with graduate students who, in their own careers, are building bridges between formal L2 research and classroom pedagogy: Beatrix Burghardt, Jung-Eun Choi, Khanyisile Dlamini, Cleyera Martin, Hyun-Kyoung Seo, and Yi-Ting Wang.
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Appendix I: The Aladdin Slides
Appendix I: The Aladdin Slides
Example Slides | ||
1. | Here is Aladdin. Here is the wizard. Here is a very beautiful lamp. | |
2. | Aladdin and the wizard are going to the cave. | |
3. | Aladdin takes the magic lamp from the wizard. | |
Stimulus Slides | ||
4. | He flies right up out of the cave. | [DEG [TRAJECT]] |
5. | He flies on through to the outside. | [FLOW [TRAJECT]] |
6. | He flies straight on over the camels. | [DEG [FLOW]] |
7. | He flies right on up into the clouds. | [DEG [FLOW [TRAJECT]]] |
8. | He goes crash into the birds. | ONOMATOPOEIA |
9. | The lamp falls right back down onto a tree. | [DEG [FLOW [TRAJECT]]] |
10. | The lamp falls on down to the ground. | [FLOW [TRAJECT]] |
11. | Aladdin flies right down in front of a waterfall. | [DEG [TRAJECT]] |
12. | He flies whoosh over a lake. | ONOMATOPOEIA |
13. | Aladdin flies straight on under a rock. | [DEG [FLOW]] |
14. | Aladdin flies right on across the desert. | [DEG [FLOW]] |
15. | He flies straight through into the city. | [DEG [TRAJECT]] |
16. | Oh no! The lamp is not in his bag! | FILLER |
17. | Aladdin flies straight back across the desert. | [DEG [FLOW]] |
18. | He flies right back under the rock. | [DEG [FLOW]] |
19. | He flies back over to the waterfall. | [FLOW [TRAJECT]] |
20. | He flies straight down behind the tree. | [DEG [TRAJECT]] |
21. | Aladdin flies right out from behind the tree. | [DEG [TRAJECT]] |
22. | The wizard falls splash into the lake. | ONOMATOPOEIA |
23. | Aladdin comes straight out from behind the waterfall. | [DEG [TRAJECT]] |
24. | He flies straight back across to the rock. | [DEG [FLOW]] |
25. | He flies right back into the desert. | [DEG [FLOW]] |
26. | Aladdin touches the lamp. The genie appears! | FILLER |
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Stringer, D. (2013). Modifying the Teaching of Modifiers: A Lesson from Universal Grammar. In: Whong, M., Gil, KH., Marsden, H. (eds) Universal Grammar and the Second Language Classroom. Educational Linguistics, vol 16. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-6362-3_5
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