Investigating acquisition of discourse markers through a developmental learner corpus  

Oleh:

Polat, Brittany

Jenis: Article from Journal - ilmiah internasional
Dalam koleksi: Journal of Pragmatics: An Interdiciplinary Journal of Language Studies vol. 43 no. 15 (2011), page 3745–3756.
Topik: Discourse markers Developmental learner corpus Second language acquisition Naturalistic learner
Fulltext: Polat_B.pdf (360.04KB)

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Despite the importance of discourse markers for pragmatically effective communication, surprisingly little research has been conducted on the acquisition of these markers by immigrant second language learners. The present paper approaches this understudied research area by using a developmental learner corpus (Belz and Vyatkina, 2005, 2008) to examine discourse marker use by one naturalistic adult language learner for one year. Results show very different patterns of use and development among three focal discourse markers. You know was heavily overused by the participant although its occurrences declined by 50% over the year; like increased from almost zero uses at the beginning of the year to over 2300 occurrences per 100,000 words by mid-year, then dropped by 50% by the study’s end; well was not used at all as a discourse marker. Possible reasons for these patterns are discussed, including the participant’s need for pragmatic coping devices as a naturalistic language learner, or the more nuanced functions of well compared to like and you know. Overall, the paper aims to show the usefulness of developmental learner corpora as a tool for studies of pragmatic acquisition, as well as the importance of considering naturalistic learners in our picture of second language pragmatics.

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