BU CAS LX 400 - Week 6b. Functional and pragmatic perspectives

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CAS LX 400 Second Language AcquisitionWhat is a functionalist approach?FunctionalismDiscourseSlide 5Slide 6Grammaticality and felicityTopic, commentSlide 9Slide 10Slide 11Slide 12Slide 13L2 research into functionModes of expressionGivón’s pragmatic vs. syntactic modesModesGrammatical vs. pragmatic knowledgeHuebner (1983)Ge and is(a)Slide 21Slide 22Slide 23Slide 24Ge and daSlide 26theThe course of development of daSlide 29Form-to-functionFunction-to-formSato (1990)Slide 33Slide 34Slide 35Slide 36Moving from the pragmatic mode to the syntactic modeSlide 38The European Science Foundation ProjectSlide 40Slide 41Learner varietiesNUOIUOBasic learner varietyA comment about production studiesSlide 47Slide 48Universal topic-prominent stage?Slide 50Slide 51Conclusions?Week 6b. Functional andpragmatic perspectivesCAS LX 400Second Language AcquisitionWhat is a functionalist approach?•Functionalist researchers (“functionalists”) are generally concerned with the role language structures play in actual communication.•The knowledge about language that they study is primarily knowledge about how language is used.•Givón: Grammar as “a set of strategies that one employs in order to produce coherent communication”Functionalism•It is worth noting that functionalists and generativists are often quite ideologically divided. The functionalist view is generally considered by functionalists to be an alternative to the generativist (roughly speaking, “UG”) view. For many functionalists, the knowledge of language is exclusively cast in terms of knowledge of language use.•I, as essentially a generativist at heart, don’t buy that, but nothing really precludes us from thinking of this instead as looking at two different aspects of our linguistic knowledge. This is how I will treat it here, that is as complementary rather than contradictory.Discourse•To investigate language function, we need to consider language in context, as in the context of a discourse.•Consider: Here are two grammatical sentences.–He bought a book.–John bought it.Discourse•To investigate language function, we need to consider language in context, as in the context of a discourse.•Consider: Here are two grammatical sentences.–He bought a book.–John bought it.•Yet, only one can be used in response to the question (without additional gestures):–What did John buy at the store?Discourse•A well-formed discourse has a coherent flow of information. In any given sentence, some information is new, and generally some information is old.•Certain aspects of language are sensitive to the distinction between new and old information; for example pronouns can only refer to old information.–John walked in. He sat down.–It was a dark and stormy night. He sat down.Grammaticality and felicity•Whether a sentence is grammatical is a semi-independent question as to when it can be used. A sentence is grammatical if it can be used in some context, but it is felicitous only if it is used in the proper context.•Pragmatics is concerned with the system underlying what makes an utterance felicitous is, certainly a part of overall language knowledge.Topic, comment•Sentences in a discourse can generally be divided into a topic and a comment on the topic.•The topic is what the sentence is about (generally, the old information, something already established in the discourse), and the comment is what the sentence says about the topic (generally new information).Topic, comment•In English, the subject generally serves as the topic of a sentence.–Let’s talk about John.–John bought a book.–He also bought some coffee.•There are also other means of indicating the topic:–As for that book, John bought it two weeks ago.–That book, John bought (but this other one, he didn’t).Topic, comment•Many languages explicitly mark topics with a particle, among them, Japanese:–Ano hon wa John ga katta–That book top John nom bought–‘As for that book, John bought it.’•Or Korean:–Ku chayk-un John-i sassta–That book-top John-nom bought–‘As for that book, John bought it.’Topic, comment•Li and Thompson (1976) made a very influential proposal that differentiates languages into two types: topic prominent languages and subject prominent languages.•The underlying organization of these two types of languages are claimed to be different; subject prominent languages like English differentiate subject and predicate primarily, while topic prominent languages like Mandarin or Japanese differentiate topic and comment primarily.Topic, comment•In a topic prominent language, the sentence is usually structured with the topic first (discourse-old, or given information), followed by the comment (discourse-new information).•The concept of “subject” takes a back seat: there are no “meaningless subjects” (like in it rains or there was a fire), “double subjects” are very common (‘As for fish, halibut is delicious’)Topic, comment•The article you use in English also is determined by context. The indefinite article a(n) is used on new information, while the definite article the is used only for given (old) information.–The fireman arrived.–A fireman arrived.–John bought a book. A book was about firemen.L2 research into function•Many L2A researchers have concentrated on this pragmatic knowledge, the use of language in context, to see how this knowledge develops in L2A. It is clear even from English that there is a great deal of pragmatic knowledge involved in language use over and above the things which render sentences grammatical or ungrammatical, principles and parameters and such.Modes of expression•Givón is credited with distinguishing two different “modes of expression” (as ends of a continuum), the pragmatic mode (or “pre-syntactic mode) where a speaker relies heavily on contributions of context and relatively little on structure and syntax) and the syntactic mode (where a speaker structures sentences in a more target-like and systematic way).Givón’s pragmatic vs. syntactic modesPragmatic mode Syntactic modeTopic-comment structure Subject-predicate structureLoose conjunction Tight subordinationSlow rate of delivery, several intonation contoursFast rate of delivery, single intonation contourWord order governed by pragmatic principles (old information followed by new information)Word order governed by “semantic” principles (i.e. agent first)Noun:Verb ratio low


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