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Practical Grammar I Crosslinguistic Influence October 5, 2010

Practical Grammar I

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Practical Grammar I. Crosslinguistic Influence October 5, 2010. Remember from your reading?. pizza all-dressed subvention verify lectures pass the vacuum cleaner and the quintessential open and close the lights. What do these tell you?. - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

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Page 1: Practical Grammar I

Practical Grammar I

Crosslinguistic InfluenceOctober 5, 2010

Page 2: Practical Grammar I

Remember from your reading?• pizza all-dressed• subvention• verify• lectures• pass the vacuum cleaner• and the quintessential

open and close the lights

Page 3: Practical Grammar I

What do these tell you?

• In a bilingual mind, two scenarios are possible to explain the phenomenon;– We have two word banks

but the door between the two is leaky…

– We have one word bank with labels for things in different languages. E.g. pencil and crayon for the thin cylindrical object we use to write.

Page 4: Practical Grammar I

Why use translation studies?

• Translating is exactly what we do constantly when we are using a language other than our L1;

• Our native language (L1) seeps through into our L2 speech patterns, pronunciation, and writing;

Page 5: Practical Grammar I

What is Crosslinguistic Influence?

• CLI is the term now used to include language transfer, negative transfer and interference.

• In the past, researchers believed that if we studied the differences between two languages, we could be better translators or teachers.

Page 6: Practical Grammar I

Is CLI universal to all languages?

• CLI research is informed by language typology, that is seeing language on a continuum from relatively easy to relatively difficult. English is closer to the easy end than French is and languages such as Vietnamese and Korean are at the difficult end.

• CLI is also informed by contrastive linguistics, which studies the differences between languages.

Page 7: Practical Grammar I

What about French and English?

• Because of the different nature of French and English, CLI occurs frequently in L2 learners and in translation.

• We will look at the eleven most representative occurrences of CLI, for grammar only. They are broken down by category.

Page 8: Practical Grammar I

Indefinite Articles

• In French, we do not use an indefinite article when referring to a person’s profession;

• E.g. She is kindergarten professor.

Page 9: Practical Grammar I

Definite Articles

• In French, the definite article is used for generalization;

• E.g. The singing takes practice.

• E.g. The DVDs are more expensive than the CDs.

Page 10: Practical Grammar I

Definite Articles

• French requires the use of a definite article with proper nouns;

• E.g. The Professor Valentine teaches in Trois-Rivières.

Page 11: Practical Grammar I

Verbs and Verbals

• The French verb system has no progressive forms;

• E.g. The syndicate still negotiate the agreement.

• E.g. When I arrived in class, he studied.

Page 12: Practical Grammar I

Verbs and Verbals

• Tense boundaries are different in English and French;

• E.g. I study here for two years.

• E.g. She has left Saturday morning.

Page 13: Practical Grammar I

Verbs and Verbals

• In French, there is no distinction between the gerund and the infinitive;

• E.g. She avoids to walk on the dark street.

• E.g. I enjoy to eat brochette.

Page 14: Practical Grammar I

Word Order

• The verb-subject order differs in French and English;

• E.g. I knew what would decide the director-general.

Page 15: Practical Grammar I

Word Order

• In French, adverbs can be placed between the verb and the object or before the verb;

• E.g. I like very much poutine.

• E.g. The students efficiently organized the manifestation.

Page 16: Practical Grammar I

Sentence Structure

• French makes use of ‘that’ clauses rather than the infinitive;

• E.g. I want that you start the dossier before you leave.

• E.g. The cash wants that I endorse my cheque.

Page 17: Practical Grammar I

Pronouns

• French makes no distinction between human and non-human for relative pronoun use (which/who);

• E.g. Here is the student which you met in September.

• E.g. The people which arrived will start the classe d’accueil next month.

Page 18: Practical Grammar I

Pronouns

• In French, possessive determiners refer to the xxx instead of the

• E.g. Annie went to the cinema with his father.

• E.g. Leo’s mother broke his arm when she fell on the ice.

Page 19: Practical Grammar I

Practice• 1. He could see her often. • 2. He is a big fan of this baseball

star. • 3. If someone tried to stop these

gangsters, he would be killed. • 4. It could be that he has not

thought about this enough. • 5. He is wanting to get back to his

studies. • 6. The author gives examples of

abbreviations. Some forms can be pronounced as initialisms and acronyms (‘UFO’ or ‘you-foe’). Others mix these types in the one word (CD-ROM).

• 7. This stands in sharp contrast to Nicholson-Lord’s opinion.

Page 20: Practical Grammar I

More Practice• 8. They paid him little attention. • 9. We have never had it so good. • 10. His career seemed ended. • 11. Latin has given place to English

now. • 12. A reader with small knowledge

of the language could not understand such a text.

• 13. Her reason was quite other. • 14. They have tried this quite often

in the past, but they have never been successful.

• 15. He is a successful person in all ways.