Collection H

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https://scholar.sun.ac.za/handle/10019.1/19489

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Browsing Collection H by Author "Conradie, Simone"

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    L1 influence in the L2 acquisition of isiXhosa verb placement by English and Afrikaans adolescents
    (Department of General Linguistics, Stellenbosch University, 2009) Lombard, Shona; Conradie, Simone
    This paper reports on an investigation into the possibility of first language (L1) transfer in the initialstages of the second language (L2) acquisition of isiXhosa by adolescent L1 speakers of Afrikaans andEnglish, respectively. Four hypotheses about the initial state of L2 acquisition are (i) the Full Transferhypothesis (Schwartz and Sprouse 1994, 1996; White 1989, 2003), (ii) the Minimal Trees hypothesis(Vainikka and Young-Scholten 1994, 1996), (iii) the Initial Hypothesis of Syntax (Platzack 1996) and(iv) the No Transfer hypothesis (Clahsen and Muysken 1986). A study was conducted to test thedifferent predictions made by these hypotheses regarding verb placement by beginner learners ofisiXhosa; data were collected by means of both a sentence completion and a grammaticality judgementtask. It is argued that the results of the study are only compatible with the Full Transfer hypothesis.The implications of the results of this investigation for L2 teaching in a multilingual environment arealso briefly discussed.
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    "Unlearning" construction types transferred from the L1: Evidence from adult L1 Afrikaans L2 French
    (Department of General Linguistics, Stellenbosch University, 2010) Conradie, Simone
    Two construction types that are allowed in Afrikaans but not in French are transitive expletive constructions and full-NP object shift constructions. The study reported here tested whether Afrikaansspeaking advanced adult learners had knowledge of the ungrammaticality of these two construction types in the target L2 French, given that they had not been instructed about this ungrammaticality. The results of this study show that a large number of the L2 learners had indeed acquired knowledge of this ungrammaticality, despite the absence of (explicit) negative evidence to this effect, raising the question of which types of input or evidence learners make use of in L2 acquisition.