IS THE “NATURAL ORDER” AN ARTIFACT OF THE BILINGUAL SYNTAX MEASURE?

Comments on J. Porter’s “A cross-sectional study of morpheme acquisition in first language learners”

Stephen D. Krashenl University of Southern California

In a recent study, Porter (1977) reported that the rank order for grammatical morphemes in obligatory contexts between child first language acquirers using the BSM was “moderately dissimilar” to that found for child second language acquirers using the BSM. Also, correlations between the L1 BSM order and child L1 orders obtained from spontaneous speech are “highly dissimilar”. He suggests that the order obtained with the BSM could be “an artifact of the testing situation” and should be validated using spontaneous speech of second language performers. This paper makes three points about these conclusions. (1) Spontaneous speech data has been provided since Porter’s paper was written, and there appears to be clear agreement between BSM and spontaneous speech (and writing) morpheme orders. (2) The BSM L1 order found by Porter is not “highly dissimilar” to child L1 order obtained using spontaneous speech, as the rank order correlation (rho = .67, n = 7) is quite close to statistical signifi- cance. (3) The degree of similarity between Porter’s L1 order and BSM L2 orders is not inconsistent with previous findings. This suggests that the “natural order” found using the BSM for second language acquirers is not an artifact of the test.

In a recent paper, Porter (1977) ran the Bilingual Syntax Measure (Burt, Dulay, and Hernandez 1973) on eleven first language acquirers, ages 2.3 to 4.3. Scoring grammatical mor- phemes in obligatory occasions (using Dulay and Burt’s 1973 scoring procedures), Porter reported that the rank order his subjects produced was “moderately dissimilar” from that found for child L2 acquirers by Dulay and Burt (1974) (rho = 3 0 , p < .05) using the Group Score Method. Also, his subjects’ order was “highly dissimilar” from both the Dulay and Burt child L2 data and de Villiers and de Villiers’ cross-sectional child L1 data, the

‘1 thank Robert Epstein for useful discussion. I also sincerely thank John H. Porter for reading and commenting on a earlier draft of this paper. Research for this paper was partially supported by the Center for the Humanities, University of Southern California.

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latter obtained from free speech (de Villiers and de Villiers 1973) (rho = .68 and .67 respectively, both “not significant”). Here the Group Means Method was used. Finally, using Dulay and Burt’s SAI method, a “not significant” correlation of .71 was obtained between the Porter L1 data and the de Villiers and de Villiers (1973) order. This result, according to Porter, “seriously challenges the validity of the BSM . . . (since) the strong evidence shown for an invariant order of acquisition for L1 learners learning English . . . did not correlate with the order of functor acquisition in L 1 learners as determined by the BSM.” (p. 59). Also, Porter suggests that Dulay and Burt’s sequences could be “an artifact of the testing situation” (p. 59). Porter recommends that BSM results be compared to those obtained in spontaneous speech of second language acquirers.

I would like to make three brief comments on Porter’s conclusions. First, since his research was done, morpheme orders have been determined for second language performers in a variety of ways, and, when the testing situation was such so as to encourage “unmonitored” output (Krashen 1977a, 1977b), all studies show agreement with the BSM order as long as at least ten obligatory occasions are included for each morpheme analyzed. These studies include Krashen, Houck, Giunchi, Bode, Birnbaum, and Strei (1977) (adult spontaneous speech), Krashen, Butler, Birnbaum, and Robertson (1977) (adult composition), Andersen (1976) (adult composition), Rosansky (1976) (child and adult spontaneous speech), and Kessler and Idar (child spontaneous speech). In addition, in the same issue of Language Learning in which Porter’s paper appears, Hanania and Gradman (1977) present a morpheme acquisition order for an “informal” adult second language acquirer that seems quite similar to that reported in other studies. Porter’s suggestion that the BSM order be confirmed in spontaneous speech is entirely appropriate, and fortunately the data has been supplied.

Second, for an n of seven (the number of morphemes in common to Porter’s and de Villiers and de Villiers’ studies), a rank order correlation of .67 is not indicative of “highly dissimilar” orders. In fact, .67 just misses the .05 level of significance! (.714 is necessary for a one-tail test.)2 Closer inspection of the “highly

2I have estimated that for n = 7, rho = .67 reaches at least the .10 level of significance (one-tail). Rigid adherence to the .05 level may be inappropriate here. Instead of lending more “objectivity” or “rigor” to the analysis, such a practice, in cases like this one, may lead to a type I1 error, that is, thinking no relationship exists when one really does exist. The danger

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dissimilar” L1 orders shows that for the BSM order aux is slightly high. Otherwise the orders are quite similar, but not identical. It has only been claimed that one can talk about an average difficulty order or order of acquisition (for discussion see Hatch and Wagner-Gough 1975, and Krashen 1977b). Considering the number of subjects run by Porter (ll), and the modest number of obligatory occasions for aux (not reported), this may not be too serious. One or two subjects’ responses on a few sentences could easily have pushed Porter’s rank order even closer to de Villiers and de Villiers’ order.

Finally, the .80 rank order correlation between the BSM L1 order (Porter) and the BSM L2 order (Dulay and Burt 1974) does not necessarily imply that the L2 order is the result of the BSM. First, as mentioned above, we obtain similar orders without the BSM for second language performance under un-monitored con- ditions. Second, L1 and L2 orders are in general far from totally dissimilar. I have noted previously (Krashen 1977b, Krashen, Butler, Birnbaum, and Robertson 1977) that L1 and L2 orders are quite similar in the domain of bound morphology (early ing, plural, late regular past, 111 singular, and poss., with irregular past in the middle) and previous comparisons have yielded consistently positive rank order correlations (rarely significant at the .05 level; but see footnote 2).

I recently hypothesized (Krashen 197713) an average order (difficulty and acquisition) for child and adult second language acquisition, and argued that all studies that included at least ten

Footnote 2 continued. of making a type I1 error is especially high in cases where small samples are used, and the rank order correlations discussed here, where the n = 7, constitute such a case. Ferguson (1971), for example, notes that

“Although quite clearly. failure to reject the null hypothesis does not imply that the null hypothesis is true, many investigators exhibit an inclination to conclude, even for quite small samples, that no difference, or a trivial difference, exists when a required level of significance is not achieved.” Due to the relation between sample size and type I1 error, Ferguson

concludes that “such conclusions are unwarranted.” (pp. 149-150). Also, there is nothing sacred about the .05 level of significance. Tate

(1965) advises US that “the selection of the probability figure depends largely upon the nature of the problem.” (p. 227). If the consequences of rejecting a hypothesis that is true are very serious, the .01 or even the .001 level may be appropriate, as in pharmacology. McNemar (1969), in a similar vein, notes that “those writers who advocate the .05 level for research workers in psychology cite R. A. Fisher, an eminent statistician, as their authority, but they fail to point out that Fisher’s applications were to experimental situations in agriculture and biology where there is far better control of sampling than is ordinarily the case in psychology.” (p. 66).

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obligatory occasions for each morpheme would show significant correlations with this order (most do, a few miss the .05 level; again, see footnote 2). Porter’s L1 order does indeed correlate significantly with my average L2 order (rho = .91, n = 7, p < .01; corrected for tied ranks), but so does de Villiers and de Villiers’ L1 free speech order when just the seven morphemes are considered that are dealt with in Porter’s analysis (rho = .708 corrected for ties; .05 requires .714. If necessary, please see footnote 2). When the “full set” is calculated, however, the nine morphemes in common to de Villiers and de Villiers 1973, and the average L2 order in Krashen 197713) the correlation drops to .600, which is closer to previous Ll-L2 correlations. Thus, the possibility exists that had Porter been able to include other morphemes, his Ll-L2 correlation would have been 10wer.~

To briefly summarize: (1) Dulay and Burt’s BSM L2 order is not significantly different from that obtained with second language spontaneous speech and compositions. (2) Comparison of the BSM L1 order with a first language morpheme order gathered using spontaneous speech yields a correlation that just misses the .05 level of significance. (3) The similarity’ between Porter’s L1 order and BSM L2 orders is not inconsistent with previous results. This strongly suggests that the BSM morpheme order obtained by several investigators is not an artifact of the test. Instead, as Dulay and Burt (1973, 1974) have hypothesized, it may be the result of tapping the “creative construction” process.

REFERENCES

Andersen, R. 1976. A functor acquisition hierarchy study in Puerto Rico.

3The average L2 order arrived at in Krashen 1977b, is as follows:

plural

I11 singular regular past

Morphemes sharing a box are not ordered with respect to each other.

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Paper presented at the 10th Annual TESOL Conference, New York, March, 1976.

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