Doctoral Degrees (General Linguistics)

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Browsing Doctoral Degrees (General Linguistics) by browse.metadata.advisor "Byllund, Emmanuel"

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    Multilingual acquisition of determiner phrases in L2 English and L3 French by L1 Swahili speakers in Tanzania
    (Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2021-03) Nyakana, Deniza Joash; Huddlestone, Kate; Byllund, Emmanuel; Stellenbosch University. Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. Dept. of General Linguistics.
    ENGLISH ABSTRACT: This study examined the concurrent multilingual acquisition of second language (L2) English and third language (L3) French Determiner Phrases (DPs) headed by articles, by Tanzanian first language (L1) Swahili speakers. The participants recruited for this study were learning L3 French side by side with L2 English, having started learning English prior to starting to learn French, but before attaining a high level of competency in the L2 English. Therefore, this study is taken as a concurrent multilingual acquisition study as opposed to consecutive multilingual acquisition. In so doing, the study addressed three issues: the effect of the concurrent multilingual acquisition on (in)definiteness marking in L2 English and L3 French, number marking transfer and L3 French interlanguage characteristics of learners who learn English and French concurrently. Regarding the assumptions of the Fluctuation Hypothesis (FH), the prediction was that learners who learn both English and French would not face difficulties in L3 acquisition of DPs headed by articles since L2 English can transfer positively to L3 French as these languages (unlikethe L1,Swahili) both have articles. On the contrary, it was predicted that these learners would fluctuate in the use of definite and indefinite articles in the same fashion in both L2 English and L3 French, as the two languages are being acquired side by side. Moreover, transfer of L3 number marking structures were expected to be non-facilitative either from L1 Swahili, L2 English or both. In addition, the L3 French interlanguage was expected to reveal a number of complex characteristics given the presupposed difficulty entailed in multilingual acquisition. 120 L1 Swahili speaker participants from three secondary and advanced public schools in Tanzania were recruited. These participants were distributed in four groups as follows: 30 form five learners of both L2 English and L3 French,30 form three learners of both L2 English and L3 French, 30 form two learners of L2 English and L3 French and 30 form two learners of L2 English only. Participants completed an elicitation test composed of cloze, truth value judgement and picture description tasks. The test was composed in both English and French in the same format, although these were not a direct translation of each other. Form two learners who were learning both English and French did both versions. Through a mirror image method, the form two, L2 group (those who were learning only English) and the L3 group (those who were learning both L2 English and L3 French) were compared using statistical methods. In addition, a cross-sectional analysis across the L3 groups (form two, three and five) was done to determine the role of the year of instruction and the L3 French interlanguage characteristics. Results revealed that the L2 group (learners who acquire only the L2 English) were more accurate in the use of definite and indefinite articles than the L3 group (those who acquire the L2 English and the L3 French concurrently). Moreover, the L3 group performed in the same fashion in the use of both L2 English and L3 French definite and indefinite articles. In the analysis of number marking transfer, L2 English did not show any privileged positive transfer. Instead, there was evidence of negative transfer from the L1 Swahili on both the L2 English and the L3 French interlanguages, from both the L1 Swahili and L2 English on the L3 French interlanguage, and the L2 English and the L3 French on each other. Finally, the L3 French interlanguage characteristics revealed the over use of the zero article and indefinite articles in places where the definite article was obligatory. However, these characteristics were shown to reduce as years of exposure increased. In addition, in the lower levels, the use of other forms and omission were also revealed as part of the L3 interlanguage characteristics of a multilingual learner. These results were interpreted as the effect of concurrent multilingual acquisition of two foreign languages. Thus, apart from the linguistic and other external factors, the type of multilingual acquisition process, in terms of the number of languages involved,can also determine the type of interlanguage produced by a multilingual learner. In addition, the current results have shown that transfer in multilingual acquisition is not necessarily facilitative in cases where there are two or more target languages involved in the multilingual acquisition process.