the acquisition of the english auxiliary

8/8/2019 The Acquisition of the English Auxiliary

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Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages, Inc. (TESOL)

The Acquisition of the English Auxiliary by Native Spanish SpeakersAuthor(s): Herlinda Cancino, Ellen J. Rosansky, John H. SchumannSource: TESOL Quarterly, Vol. 9, No. 4 (Dec., 1975), pp. 421-430Published by: Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages, Inc. (TESOL)Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3585626

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TESOL QuarterlyVol. 9, No. 4December 1975

The Acquisitionof theEnglish Auxiliaryby Native SpanishSpeakers*

Herlinda Cancino, Ellen J. Rosansky, John H. SchumannThis paper describes the appearance of English auxiliaries in the speechof five native speakers of Spanish (two children, two adolescents, oneadult). In addition, it also describes these subjects' acquisition of thenegative and interrogative transformations.The acquisition of the negative transformation showed the followingdevelopmental pattern. The subjects began negating by using no + verbconstructions (e.g. He no can play baseball). Then either simultaneouslyor shortly afterwards, they began using don't + verb constructions (e.g.I don't can explain). Next they acquired constructions in which thenegative was placed after the auxiliaries is and can (e.g. He can't go).Finally, they learned the analyzed forms of don't (do not, doesn't, doesnot, didn't, did not).The analysis of the interrogatives indicated that both YIN and wh-questions appear in the untransposed form, but there is no stage in whichthe untransposed form is consistently prior to the transposed. There isalso no stage in which transposed YIN-questions precede transposed wh-questions or vice-versa. In general, however, transposition is more fre-quent in wh- questions.The results of the auxiliary analysis indicate that is copula appearsfirst and that can and do appear shortly afterwards. Beyond these threeauxiliaries the order of appearance for each subject is highly variable.This result contrasts with recent work on the acquisition of certain Englishmorphemes which shows an invariant order of acquisition.In our research on second language acquisition at Harvard Universitywe have been examining the natural, untutored acquisition of English by

six native Spanish speakers: two children age five, two adolescents ages 11and 13, and two adult subjects, whom we visited approximately twicemonthly for an hour over a period of ten months. All of the subjects hadbeen in this country less than three months when we began. The datawas collected in the following ways:* This paper was presentedat the 1975 TESOL Convention n Los Angeles, Cal-ifornia. The researchreportedhere was supportedby Grant NE-G-00-3-0014 rom theNational Institute of Education, Department of Health, Education and Welfare toCourtneyB. Cazden. However,the opinions expressedherein do not necessarilyreflectthe positionor policy of the National Institute of Education,and the officialendorse-ment by the National Institute of Education should not be inferred.Ms. Cancinoand Ms. Rosanskyare at present graduatestudents at Harvard. Ms.Rosanskyis also principalof a Hebrewschool. Mr. Schumann,Assistant ProfessoratUCLA,has until recently been an ESL teacher in Waltham,Massachusetts. All threehave contributed o WorkingPapers in Bilingualism. Mr. Schumannhas publishedpre-viouslyin the TESOLQuarterly. 421


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TESOL QUARTERLY1. Spontaneous speech recording in which the experimenterengages thesubject in conversation;2. Experimental elicitations in which the subject is asked to do such

things as imitate or negate a model utterance;3. Pre-planned socio-linguistic interaction in which subjects are taken toparties, restaurants, museums, sports events, etc., in order to collectspeech in varied natural situations.All of the data was taped and in addition to the investigator, a bilingualtranscriber was always present, taking notes. The transcribers then tran-scribed (and where necessary, translated) the tapes in a standard formatalong the lines suggested in the Slobin Manual.Studies of second language acquisition have generally been either large

cross sectional studies or studies of single individuals. While our study in-cludes six subjects, this paper concerns itself with only five of them. Ourinitial intention was to analyze the auxiliary in all six subjects; however, oneof our adults knew more English than the other subjects at the beginningof the study and therefore her linguistic development is too advanced forthe present discussion.The five subjects discussed are Marta, Cheo, Juan, Jorge, and Alberto.Marta (5 years old) is an upper middle class Puerto Rican. Cheo (5 yearsold) is an uppermiddle class Colombianfrom Cali. Juan (11 years old) andJorge ( 13 years old) are upper middle class Colombians from Bogota. Al-berto (33 years old) is a lower middle class Costa Rican. In addition toage and socio-economic differences among our subjects, there are somedifferences in the nature of their exposure to English. While Jorge, Juan,Marta and Cheo were all exposed to English through peer speech in publicschools (with practically no ESL instruction), Alberto worked in a factorywhere some of his input is from other non-native speakers of English. Allof the subjects speak Spanish in the home.Our goal in this paper is to describe the acquisition of the English aux-iliary. The auxiliary system occupies a crucial position in English grammar.It provides the means for the expression of negation and interrogation andless frequently, for the expression of emphasis. Auxiliaries generally carrysemantic information and also mark tense and number. Their essentialsystematicity and their indispensability in the functioning of the Englishverb make the study of their development an essential focus for the acquisi-tion of English.We will describe the development of the auxiliary as it appears in thedeclarative, negative and interrogative utterances of our subjects. Finally,an overall picture of auxiliary development will be presented by combiningthese categories. In addition, as we discuss the auxiliary in the negative andinterrogative, we will also discuss the acquisition of the negative and inter-rogative transformations.Throughout our discussion we will be speaking only about the orderof appearance of auxiliaries, not their order of acquisition. This is an

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ACQUISITION OF AUXILIARYimportant distinction. Our analysis answers the question of whether or nota particular auxiliary is present in obligatory context. It does not speak tothe issue of whether or not the auxiliary is correctly supplied (in terms ofnumber and tense) in that context. Thus, if a subject were to say they isboys, he would be given credit for having supplied the copula is. If hewere to say they boys, he would be scored "are copula." Hence what wewill present is a "there-not there" analysis, not a "correct-incorrectanalysis."Future analyses may well include scoring for tense and number. Suchanalyses would then allow us to talk about order of acquisition.1.0 The Auxiliary in Declaratives.

The auxiliary in declaratives includes such forms as: She was hereyesterday and He is going to the store. To determine the order of appear-ance of the auxiliary in declarative utterances we established the followingcriterion: to say that an auxiliary has appeared it must be supplied at least80% of the time in three consecutive samples and in each sample theremust be at least two instances of the particularauxiliary under considerationwith a total of ten or more auxiliaries in the sample. In scoring modalswhere obligatory context cannot be determined we simply considered anauxiliary to have appeared when it was present at least twice in threesuccessive samples. On the basis of this criterion the order of appearancewas found in declaratives as displayed in Table 1.TABLE 1AppearanceOrder for Auxiliaries in the Declarative

Marta Cheois (cop) is (cop)can canis (aux) was (cop)am (aux), are (cop), willwas (cop), are (aux)couldJuan Jorgeis (cop) is (cop), am (aux)can, are (cop), are (aux), was (cop) canis (aux) was (cop)were (cop) are (cop)would was (aux), willwere (aux), am (aux), will is (aux)have am (cop)Albertois (cop)am (cop)are (cop)

From this analysis we can make the generalization that is (cop) andcan appear very early and in that order. Beyond these two auxiliaries, theorder of appearance seems to be quite variable.

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TESOL QUARTERLY2.0 The Auxiliary in Negatives.

When determining the appearance order for auxiliaries in negatives weused the same criterion as we did for declaratives. An auxiliary was scoredas "present" whether or not it was correctly formed with regard to theposition of the negative particle. Thus, He can't go and the less frequentform He no can go were both credited for having the auxiliary can present.This analysis resulted in the orders of appearance displayed in Table 2:

TABLE 2Appearance Order for Auxiliaries in the NegativeMarta Cheocan canis (cop)dodidJuan Jorgedo is (cop)is (cop), can, does candid do, doeswas (cop) didwillAlbertois (cop)can

These orders indicate that, as in the declarative, can and is (cop)appear early, but in the negative the order in which they appear variesfrom subject to subject. Do also shows up in the negative in three of thefive subjects as one of the first auxiliaries to appear. Of course, in declar-atives do did not have the opportunity to appear. As we will see in amoment, early appearance of do in the negative (in the form of don't) resultsfrom the fact that don't is simply a negative marker similar to no and doesnot consist of do plus the negative.2.1 The Negative Transformation.'

The acquisition of the negative transformation showed the followingdevelopmental pattern. The subjects began negating by using no + verbconstructions such as,

I no like ice cream.He no can play baseball.

Then, either simultaneously or shortly afterwards, they began using don't +verb constructions,I don't understand.

I don't can explain.1A preliminary analysis of the negative presented at the 1974 summer LSA meeting(Amherst) suggested that analyzed don't preceded isn't and can't. Subsequent analysis,as shown above, reversed this order.

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ACQUISITIONOF AUXTTIARYNext they acquired constructions in which the negative was placed afterthe auxiliaries is and can,

She is not a teacher.He can't go.Finally, they learned the analyzed forms of don't (do not, doesn't, doesnot, didn't, did not),I do not go every day.He doesn't speak English.They didn't have time.

This sequence led to the speculation that Spanish speakers' first hypothesisis that negation in English is like negation in Spanish; hence the learnersplace no in front of the verb. The learners' next hypothesis appears to bethat the negator in English is not no, but don't, and don't is placed beforethe verb. At this point, it is argued that don't is simply an allomorph ofno and that don't + verb constructions are still essentially Spanish negationbut with the negator slightly more anglicized. Then when the learners beginusing can't, isn't, and the analyzed forms of don't, it would appear thatthey have learned that English negatives are formed by putting the negativeparticle (n't, not) after the first auxiliary element.3.0 The Auxiliary in Interrogatives.Once again using the criterion of 80% supplied in obligatory context forthree consecutive samples, we established the order of appearance of theauxiliary in the interrogative,which can be seen in Table 3.The one generalization derivingfrom this analysis is that is (cop) appearsto precede do and can (with the exception of one subject, Juan, where doand is (cop) appear at the same time). The appearance order beyond is(cop), can and do is, once again, variable.

TABLE 3Appearance Order for Auxiliaries in InterrogativesMarta Cheo Juan Jorge Albertois (cop) is (cop) do, is (cop) is (cop) is (cop)do can did do, cancan, is (aux) can didare (aux) are (aux) are (aux)

3.1 The Interrogative Transformation.2Interest in the development of the interrogative in studies of first lan-guage acquisition was initially motivated by the desire to see whether the

A more extensive discussion of the interrogative can be found in Cazden, Cancino,Rosansky, and Schumann, Second Language Acquisition Sequences in Children, Adoles-cents and Adults. Final Report to National Institute of Education, Grant No. NE-6-00-3-0014, 1975.

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TESOL QUARTERLYacquisition sequence reflected the rules represented in the transformationalanalysis of adult English grammar. For our purposes the transformationalrules for questions are:

Yes/No questions:a. She is playing soccer.b. Is she playing soccer? [Transposition] (Aux is moved in front of thesubject.)Wh-questions:a. He is going where.b. Where he is going? [Preposing] (Wh-word is moved to the front ofthe string.)c. Where is he going? [Transposition] (Aux is moved in front of thesubject.)In first language acquisition, Klima and Bellugi (1966) found what theycalled "Stage C", in which Y/N-questions were inverted but wh-questionswere not. We examined our data on the interrogative to see whether indeedtheir description characterizesthe interrogative in second language learning.In doing so we asked the following questions.a. Do wh-questions appear in the untransposed form? When looking atall wh-questions for all auxiliaries in all subjects the answer is "yes."b. Do untransposed wh-questions appear prior to transposed? When allthe auxiliaries for each subject are considered the answer is "no."c. Do untransposed Y/N-questions appear? Totaling for all auxiliarieswe find that the answer is "yes" for all subjects.d. Do untransposed Y/N-questions appear prior to transposed? Whenall auxiliaries are considered the answer is "no" for all subjects.e. Does Klima and Bellugi's "Stage C" exist for our second languagelearners? The answer is "no" when we look at all the auxiliaries foreach subject.f. Is there a stage for our second language learners which is the exactopposite of "Stage C", i.e., where wh-questions are inverted and Y/N-questions are not? With the exception of one subject (Jorge), this isnot the case.Thus, for second language learners the development of the interrogativeunfolds in the following manner: Both Y/N and wh-questions appear in theuntransposed form, but there is no stage in which the untransposed form isconsistently prior to the transposed. There is also no stage in which trans-

posed Y/N-questions precede transposed wh-questions or vice versa. Ingeneral, however, transposition is more frequent in wh-questions (whichmight be expected because it is here that transposition is obligatory in adultEnglish). If one were to characterizethe sequential development of inversionin our subjects' questions, the best statement that could be made is thatfrom the beginning interrogatives appear in both the transposed and un-

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ACQUISITION OF AUXILIARYtransposed forms. And for some subjects transposition appears to be morefrequent in later development.4.0 The Auxiliary in Declaratives, Negatives and Interrogatives (totaled).When a tally of auxiliaries is made, combining the declarative, negativeand interrogative the following appearance order for auxiliary emerges (seeTable 4). The ordercan be more clearly seen in Table 4a, which displays therank orderingsfor the appearanceof auxiliaries.

TABLE 4Appearance Order for the Auxiliaries (totaled)Marta Cheois (cop) is (cop), dodo canis (aux) was (cop)can, am (aux)did, are (cop)willwas (cop), are (aux)couldJuan Jorgedo, is (cop) is (cop), am (aux)was (aux), can canare (cop) dowas (cop), did, is (aux), does, were (cop) doesam (aux), have was (cop)will didam (cop) are (cop)could is (aux), will, was (aux)are (aux) am (cop)were (aux, wouldAlbertois (cop)am (cop)canare (cop)

The most obvious finding is that is (cop) is acquired first, universally,and do and can are the other two auxiliaries that appear early for most ofthe subjects. As we move beyond these three auxiliaries there is a great dealof variability in terms of order of appearance. This reflects the same varia-bility observed in the order of appearance of the auxiliary when consideredseparately in the declarative, negative and interrogative.The early appearance of is (cop), can and do might be explained on thefollowing grounds.a. is (cop) is a form that exists in Spanish and which functions similarlyto the English form. Of course, there is a second be form in Spanish,estar. But this does not seem to cause problems, because it is gen-erally easy to move from two categories in the native language to one

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TABLE 4aRank Orderings of Appearance of the AuxiliariesIs Is Are Was Were Was Are Am(C) Do Can (A) (C) Does (A) Did (A) (C) (A) (A) Will

Marta 1 2 4 3 5 5 7 7 4 6Cheo 1 1 2 3Juan 1 1 2 4 3 4 2 4 11 5 10 6 7Jorge 1 3 2 8 7 4 8 6 5 1 8Alberto 1 3 4


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ACQUISITIONOF AUXILIARYcategory in the target language. The Spanish counterpart to is (cop)is es, (ser), which is even phonologically similar to the English form.This similarity undoubtedly facilitates positive transfer.

b. The early appearanceof can is probably explicable on the basis of itsfunctional utility in early second language acquisition. It allows thelearner to express notions of ability and requests-notions which areessential for functioning in the second language even at elementarystages.c. The early appearanceof do can be explained, in part, by the fact thatit serves as a negative particle similar to no. In this case, however, al-though do appears early (in the form of don't) it is not functioning asan auxiliary,but simply as a negator. The reason for the early appear-ance of do in questions is more difficult to explain. It could perhapsresult from the existence of certain stereotyped forms, i.e. high fre-quency utterances heard in the input and simply repeated as such:Do you know what I mean? and How do you say X?, or do mightsimply be placed in front of a statement as a question marker.After having rank ordered the appearanceof the auxiliaries for our sub-jects, we wanted to determine whether or not the orders for our subjectswere at all similar. Clearly from "eye-balling" the data we can see that

is (cop) appearsearly for all subjects. But beyond that, we wished to deter-mine statistically whether or not there were any correlations between thesubjects' orders. We analyzed our rank orderingswith the Kendall Correla-tion of ConcordanceW. With an N (the auxiliaries in this case) as large as18, the distribution approaches the x2 distribution. The H. was that theorders are independent or unrelated. The correlation was nonsignificant(p > .90). So, not only were we unable to disprove the null hypothesis, but93% of the time our correlations would not be significant. In other words,we find that our subjects' orders appear to be highly variable.Of course, had we had a larger sample of subjects there is the possibilitythat this measure of concordance would have revealed similar orders for the

appearanceof the subjects' auxiliaries,or it might have revealed a similarityin orders across subjects with the auxiliaries appearing in clusters. With alarger sample it is also possible that different orders might have emerged forchildren, adolescents, and adults.It is equally possible, however,that a larger sample would reveal the verysame variable orders that we have found in our study to date. Assumingthat our findingsare indeed representativeof what occurs in second languageacquisition, some very interesting issues arise:1. There have been recent claims (Dulay &Burt, 1973, Madden, Bailey,and Krashen, 1975) that acquisition of English by speakers of otherlanguages follows an invariant order for certain grammatical mor-phemes. Our analysis which considers grammatical features, some ofwhich are similar to morphemes, finds considerable variability.

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TESOL QUARTERLY2. Whether large-scale cross-sectional studies or in-depth longitudinalinvestigations of small numbers of subjects provide a more accuratedevelopmental descriptionof English is a question which remains to be

resolved.3. Dulay and Burt's (1973) version of the creative construction hypothe-sis has developed out of the observation that morphemes show aninvariant order of acquisition and little interference. How does ahighly variable appearance order for auxiliaries affect the creativeconstruction hypothesis?As more such research results become available earlier explanations forsecond language acquisition may have to be considered from a different

perspective. It is obvious that there is a lot more to be learned, and there-fore it is our hope that research in this area will continue.REFERENCES

Dulay, H. and M. Burt. 1973. Should we teach childrensyntax? LanguageLearning,23, 245-158.Cazden,C., H. Cancino,E. Rosansky and J. Schumann. 1975. Second LanguageAc-quisition Sequences in Children, Adolescents and Adults. U.S. Department ofHealth,Educationand Welfare. National Institute of Education Officeof ResearchGrants. (Grant No. NE-6-00-3-0014,Project No. 730-744)Klima,E. S. and U. Bellugi. 1966. Syntactic regularities n the speech of children. InJ. Lyons and R. J. Wales (Eds.) Psycholinguisticspapers. Edinburgh,EdinburghUniversity Press.Madden, C., N. Bailey and S. Krashen. 1975. Acquisitionof function wordsby adultslearners of ESL: evidence for universalstrategies? Paper presentedat the NinthAnnual TESOL Convention,Los Angeles, March 1975.Siegel, S. 1956. Nonparametricstatistics for the behavioralsciences. New York, Mc-graw-HillBook Company,Inc.Slobin,D. I. (ed.). 1967. A field manual for cross-cultural tudy of the acquisitionofcommunicativecompetence. University of California,Berkeley.

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the acquisition of the english auxiliary

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