PROCESSABILITY THEORY AND THE ROLE OF MORPHOLOGY IN ENGLISH AS A SECOND LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT: A LONGITUDINAL STUDY BRONWEN DYSON Nanette Trujillo Rivera ENGL5050

WHAT IS PIENEMANN’S PROCESSABILITY THEORY?

“Morphological acquisition is the driving force in English as a second language development.” Dyson, B. (2009)

For years researchers in second language acquisition have been drawn by the uncertainty of if learners go through different developmental stages in the incremental development of speech processing.

PROCESSABILITY THEORY (PT) PT CONSISTS OF TWO PSYCHOLINGUISTIC DIMENSIONS: Developmental Dimension Variational Dimension

DEVELOPMENTAL DIMENSION OF PT Language processing for speech production is incremental.

PT STAGES HYPOTHESIS Stage 1: word/lemma – only words Stage 2: Category procedure/Lexical category – strings of words Stage 3: NP phrasal procedure – phrasal morphemes Stage 4: VP phrasal procedure – tense agreement Stage 5: S-(sentence) procedure and Word order rules – inter-phrasal morphemes Stage 6: Matrix/Subordinate Clause Pienemann, 2005:3-14

Pienemann’s PT takes grammar properties as the starting point and classifies it in the Lexical Functional Grammar (LFG).

LFG STRUCTURE Functional Structure – semantic interpretation Constituent Structure – tree structure Argument Structure – predicators

PT PREDICTION PT predicts that ESL learners will acquire both morphology and syntax from stages 2 to 5.

PARTICIPANTS A 12 year-old girl and a 13 year-old boy. Both have received English lessons in China.

PROCEDURE Communication Tasks Interviews

EVIDENCE Both participants first acquired SVO, then subsequently Neg + V and some forms of fronting and finally, inversion. Dyson, B. (2009)

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