With National Science Foundation support, Dr. Virginia Valian, Dr. Elaine C. Klein, and Dr. Gita Martohardjono will conduct three years of research on language acquisition. The project investigates the comprehension and production of temporal markers in Standard American English (SAE), varying second language learners' first language (Spanish or Chinese) and the age when learners begin acquisition (6-8 years or 20-30 years). The project will emphasize comparisons of monolingual SAE speakers and fluent SAE-Chinese speakers. Multiple tasks will be used for all participants, and identical tasks will be used with child and adult participants. The research addresses questions about the mechanisms underlying the comprehension and production of temporal markers, such as whether syntactic similarity between the learner's first and second languages affects learning of the second language.
The research will serve immigrant and other underrepresented groups. The teaching of SAE in urban schools and community language programs suffers from inadequate knowledge about second language. Errors with temporal markers are common in the speech of non-native SAE speakers, and they are resistant to change. But the source of these errors remains a puzzle to scientists and educators alike. This project asks to what extent mastery of temporal markers depends on specific features of a learner's first language. The knowledge gained from this project will also help improve instructional materials that target specific areas of difficulty, such as the separation between tense and aspect. It will also help pedagogy by giving teachers an understanding of the specific types of difficulty that learners have.
