THE IMPORTANCE OF MEANING OVER FORM IN SECOND LANGUAGE SYSTEM BUILDING: AN UNRESOLVED ISSUE.
Item
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Title
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THE IMPORTANCE OF MEANING OVER FORM IN SECOND LANGUAGE SYSTEM BUILDING: AN UNRESOLVED ISSUE.
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Identifier
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AAI8708293
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identifier
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8708293
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Creator
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BAILEY, NATHALIE HUTCHINS.
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Contributor
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Carlos A. Yorio
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Date
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1987
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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Language, Linguistics
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Abstract
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The purpose of this thesis is to study Interlanguage development within a particular structural area in order to infer language learning principles. The area of the English past tense--the past progressive and the simple past--has been chosen because of the contrast it offers to English present tense learning. Much has been written about progressive -ing learning, most of which concludes that either easy form or form-learning before function-learning accounts for early progressive -ing acquisition. Some of this research assumes that early progressive learning includes early learning of the past progressive. I hypothesize that the past progressive is learned later than the simple past. I challenge the assumption that easy form predicts early acquisition, predicting that despite form irregularity in the simple past, it will be learned before the regularly formed past progressive. The explanation that I offer for this is that the simple past has a simpler and more natural meaning for the past tense than the past progressive. My conclusion is that meaning constrains language learning more than form.
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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PQT Legacy CUNY.xlsx
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degree
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Ph.D.
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Program
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Linguistics
