Using Temporal Markers in Standard American English: Second Language Learners, Bilingual and Bidialectal Speakers

在美国国家科学基金会的支持下，弗吉尼亚·瓦利安博士、伊莱恩·c·克莱因博士和吉塔·马托哈德约诺博士将进行为期三年的语言习得研究。该项目调查了标准美国英语（SAE）中时间标记的理解和产生，不同的第二语言学习者的第一语言（西班牙语或汉语）和学习者开始学习的年龄（6-8岁或20-30岁）。该项目将重点比较单语SAE使用者和流利的SAE- chinese使用者。所有参与者将使用多个任务，儿童和成人参与者将使用相同的任务。本研究探讨了时间标记的理解和产生机制，如第一语言和第二语言之间的句法相似性是否会影响第二语言的学习。这项研究将服务于移民和其他代表性不足的群体。城市学校和社区语言项目的SAE教学存在第二语言知识不足的问题。时间标记的错误在非SAE母语使用者的语言中很常见，并且它们不易改变。但是这些错误的来源对科学家和教育家来说仍然是一个谜。这个项目询问学习者对时间标记的掌握在多大程度上取决于第一语言的特定特征。从这个项目中获得的知识也将有助于改进针对特定困难领域的教学材料，例如时态和aspect的分离。它还将帮助教师了解学习者所面临的特定类型的困难，从而帮助教学。

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.