Transcript S2: “tu” - University of Hawaii

Lexical and syntactic complexity in a
task-based, CMC environment
Joe Collentine
Northern Arizona University
Karina Collentine
Yavapai College
Important issues in task based research
• Lexical richness
• Morphosyntactic complexity
• Planning
SLA views on the importance of form
• The traditional dichotomy (Ellis 2005;
VanPatten 2000)
• Meaning through form (Ortega 2005;
DeKeyser et al. 2002)
• Meaning through form becomes more evident in
synthetic languages like Spanish
Task Based Research and Complexity
• Strategic and guided planning yields high levels
of complexity
• Online task planning yields syntactic complexity
though perhaps not lexical density
• We know nothing about online planning and
complexity in synthetic languages
(see Ellis 2005)
SCMC
• Inherent tension between spontaneity and
planning (Kern 1995; Warschauer and Kern 2000)
• Often leads to more complex syntact
(Keller-Lally 2006; Soltillo 2000)
The study
• Will intermediate and advanced level learners of
Spanish produce discursive and lexico-grammatical
complexity in SCMC conditions requiring within-task
Planning?
• Two tasks varying in amount of displaced
discourse
Participants
Intermediate (n=14)
Advanced (n=18)
Tasks
• Flash based
• Interact with virtual people to interview
• Solve two tasks
solve a murder mystery
locate a set of keys
• Interrupted writing task
• Post writing task
• Interaction through iChat
http://london-underground.modlang.nau.edu/collenti/juegos2/
Analysis
• Corpus based
• Tagger: Python, NLTK, Corpus del español
• Qualitative analysis: discourse-pragmatic moves,
sociocultural approach
Complexity dimensions
Biber, Davies, Jones, and Tracey-Ventura 2006
Informationally
rich discourse
-Singular and plural nouns
-Post-nominal adjectives
-Pre-nominal adjectives
-Definite articles
-Prepositions
-Derived nouns
-Type-token ratio
-Long words
-Se passives (i.e., ergative se use)
Irrealis discourse
-
Subjunctive use
Conditional use
Future use
Verbs of obligation and causation
(e.g., dejar, permitir, hacer+infintive)
- Infinitives not preceded by a verb
or article
- Verbs followed by an infinitive
- Progressive aspect (imperfect use
or present participle)
- Dependent que clauses
Narrative
discourse
- Clitic usage
- Imperfect tense/aspect
- Preterit tense/aspect
- Possessives
- Third-person pronouns
- Reflexive se and changes of states
- Infinitives not preceded by a verb or
article
- Verbs followed by an infinitive
Informational richness
Hypothetical discourse
Narrative discourse
Interpersonal discourse (ID) – discourse that
involved asking each other questions and evaluating
each other.
200-level, task 1
S2: porque piensas que Paco lo hizo?
S1: Pienso que Paco lo hizo porque la mujer ?
Tina dijo ella era con el’l. Tina dijo que ella
miro’ TV. Creo que pero no estoy seguro.
S1: Todos escucharon algo sobre 10:30. Correcto?
Assertive discourse (AD) - discourse that
involved reporting and concluding on what they
saw or heard.
200-level, task 2
S1: Quiza’s todos son mientrandos [mintiendo].
S2: Nada [nadie] se encargo, de las llaves es
dificil decir quien los robo o si solamente estan
perdidos.
S1: Tiene razo’n. Los llaves estari’a perdidos.
Self-regulated language episodes (SR) –
instances where an individual repaired an utterance
or part of an utterance.
200-level, task 1
S1: hay muchos personas
S2: me gusta su response
S2: “tu”
Interpersonal language episodes (ILE) –
instances where the students repaired an
utterance or part of an utterance together.
200-level, task 2
S2: Que maquina?
S1: La lavadora (sp)?
S2: El refrijador, possiblemente?
External realizations (ER) – external
manifestations of discourse about internal
conclusions.
200-level, task 1
S1: El Dr. Torres se me hizo sospechoso Que
cree,s?
S2: No se’. Pero Voy con su respuesta.
Unrelated discourse (UD) – this category was
comprised of 3 types of discourse:
a) discourse about the story line but unrelated to the story line
300-level, task 2
S2: no me gusta juan porque puede ver su
trasero
S1: jajaja
b) discourse where chatters accused others of the crime (or
each other)
300-level, task 2
S1: no tengo idea que tiene mis llaves, pero no tengo mas tiempo
S2: TU eres el amigo
S1: MIS
S2: (un chiste)
S1: Son Mios!!!!
S2: mentirosa
S2: entonces…
S1: me robas!
S2: que pienso?
S2: ERA TU???
S1: ladrona sucia
S2: profesor! Laura roba mis llaves-
c) instances of humor
300-level, task 2
S2: carlos es ma’l, creo que es obvio…cocina carne
S1: CARNE
S1: AHH
S1: pero a mi me gusta carne
S2: entonces, eres ma’l persona!!
S1: no, es un chiste…
S2: si si yo se
Interrsubjectivity (I) – discourse that
commented on their performance, lack of
performance, or instances where the students
attempted to establish solidarity
a) positive comments about their performance
300-level, task 1
S2: Paco dice que estaba con su banda los
tigres
S2: si’
S2: punto bueno
S1: si’, pienso que yo visto más Law and Order
que yo debo
b) comments about their lack of performance
200-level, task 1
S1: no se nada
S2: ni yo
c) attempts to establish solidarity
300-level, task 2
S1: pues necesitamos un reporte en un
documento o solo en ichat?
S2: solamente nuestras ideas en ichat.
Conclusions