Analysis of Data Set 1: Phonology

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Linguistics 420 Dr. Eckman 3/2/2015 Essay 1 – Analysis of Data Set 1: Phonology Robin Fritche Introduction Why do second language learners talk the way they do? This simple question is the springboard for decades of study. Second language acquisition (SLA) researchers ask this question over and over to try to understand how people learn a second language (L2), and why they make the errors they make when attempting to use their target language (TL). Many studies have found that L2 learners make utterances that are not target-like, yet do not resemble anything from their native language (NL) either. Why is this? Corder (1971), Nemser (1971), and Selinker (1972), independently, all came up with the idea of another system at work inside the brain of the L2 learner. I will use Selinker’s term, the interlanguage (IL). An IL is the system a learner creates to enable them to use the TL. There are, of course, elements of the TL in it, but is also influenced by the learner’s NL. The rest is created in the mind of the learner. Altogether, these elements make up the IL, which is systemic and follows specific rules. In this essay, I will examine the participants of Data Set 1: Phonology, provided by Dr. Fred Eckman. In this set are the data from six adult English language learners from three different native language backgrounds: Russian, Spanish, and Malay. All were studying ESL at UWM at the time of data collection. Included are the IL utterances of the participants, the TL forms of those utterances, and a selection of words in each of the participants’ NL for comparison. I will use these data to compare the ILs of the participants to each other, as well as to each of their NLs and the TL of English. Through these comparisons I will create a hypothesis to explain my results. Background Across the data set, there is one similarity in the IL utterances of all

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