Introduction - 2013 WLC BA in Spanish Graduation ePortfolios



Language Consultant PortfolioCourtney S. HoylandCalifornia State University, Monterey BayIntroductionOmar (pseudonym) is a 48-year-old male who grew up in Mexico City speaking Spanish as a first language. He spoke only English until his family immigrated to the United States when he was fifteen years old. He learned English conversationally and never studied the language in school beyond basic vocabulary as a child. He now speaks both languages fluently with his family, friends and co-workers. He still has an accent, but is easily understandable and makes minimal mistakes in grammar and pronunciation. The language consultant interview was conducted in a private room of the establishment of which we both work together. I asked Omar several questions about his experiences learning English and how he uses his language skills today among family and in his daily life. To analyze the information collected, I listened to the recorded interview various times paying special attention to pronunciation, word choice, sentence structure, and morpheme usage based on my understanding of both language systems. I have provided data based on issues of final consonant cluster pronunciation, inflectional morpheme challenges, and auxiliary verb usage. I chose to analyze these specific issues because of their frequency of occurrence, variety of accuracy, and my perception of the possible reasons for variation.Background ResearchThe phonemic alphabets of the English language and that of Omar’s native Spanish are very similar. The languages share the majority of their consonant sounds, with the largest difference being that Spanish has more consonant allophones while English has a wider variety of vowel sounds compared to the simple five vowel sounds of the Spanish language. Spanish pronunciation has more assimilation of nasals and the /l/ phoneme, creating extra dentals, velars, etc. (Schwegler, Kempff, Ameal-Guerra 2010). Spanish and English have significant variation in consonant clusters and syllabication. Spanish has a tendency towards open syllables and has very few occurrences of consonant clusters, especially in the first and last syllables of words compared to the English tendency to have several consonants grouped together in the beginning, middle, and end of words. (Schwegler et al., 2010). A chart comparison of vowel and consonant sounds for English and Spanish is included in the appendix.The Spanish language has many similarities to the morphology of English. The language is much more inflected than English is. In comparison to the eight inflectional morphemes of English, Spanish has many more changes (Azevedo, 2004). In Omar’s dialect of Spanish (which omits the Vosotros form included in other Spanish dialects), the word “caminar” (to walk), has the following inflections: “camino” (I walk), “caminas” you walk, “camina” he/she walks, “caminamos” we walk, and “caminan” they walk. Each of these morpheme suffixes change depending on if the specific verb is an –ar, -er, or –ir verb, as well as depending on the tense (past, present, future), along with several other tenses that do not exist in English (Azevedo, 2004). Spanish also includes –ando and –iendo morphemes as the equivalent of the English -ing and three different plural morphemes (-es, -s, -nil) (Azevedo, 2004).Instead of an inflectional morpheme for possession, comparative, and superlative, Spanish uses syntactical changes. Instead of “Alicia’s cat,” Spanish uses “su gato” or “el gato es de Alicia.” For comparative, Spanish uses “más” or “menos,” as in “more short than him,” and “Es la más bonita” (It is the prettiest). The use of auxiliary verbs in Spanish seems to be a little bit simpler than Spanish. “Haber” is the only auxiliary verb for Spanish compared to a full list of auxiliary verbs in English (Canteli Dominicis & Reynolds, 2007)BodyPhonologyI chose to analyze the interview transcription for the language consultant’s accuracy of pronunciation with final consonant clusters. Because of the lack of this type of sound grouping in Spanish, I assumed this would be somewhere that I could find significant data. During the portion of our conversation that I transcribed, Omar used 67 words with final consonant clusters and pronounced them correctly 45 times for a total accuracy rate of 67.2 percent. The majority of the issues I discovered were in words with an –st or -rd ending. Almost every time Omar used a word with one of these two endings, he omitted the final /t/ or /d/ sounds. I found it interesting to see that there were variations in Omar’s accuracy with the same word throughout the conversation. At times, he omitted the final /t/ from the word “first,” at other times he added extra emphasis to the final /t/. I noticed that the position of a word in a sentence and the sound that follows might play a role in this variation. For example, on Line 1, Omar said, “They start to learn.” While he omitted the final sound from “start,” the next word contains the /t/ sound that he left off. He does the same thing twice with the words “first time” on Lines 13 and 14. In comparison, on Line 30, he emphasizes the sound in the same word “first” before pauses. I think that rather than these issues being an issue of complete omission of the sound, they may have more to do with assimilation of sounds that occurs frequently in Spanish.MorphologyFor the morphology analysis of the interview with my language consultant, I chose to follow the eight inflectional morphemes of the English language. I chose this path after noticing that my LC seemed to use certain morphemes correctly and consistently, while he omitted other morphemes from his speech on a regular basis. Based on viewing of all inflectional morpheme usage as a whole, my analysis shows that Omar used them correctly 71.4% percent of the time out of 28 appearances in the five-minute section I transcribed. When I looked at specific morphemes individually, it is easy to see which he still struggles with and which he seems to have mastered. The -ing morpheme was used correctly in every instance, and was used 9 times out of the 28 appearances of inflectional morphemes. This appears to be one English morpheme that he feels fully comfortable using in a variety of ways.Omar had more difficulty with the –ed past tense inflectional morpheme. While he used the morpheme on 13 occasions, he used it incorrectly seven times for an accuracy rate of 46.1%. Based on the data, I believe that he has conquered usage of this morpheme with specific verbs, but still needs to apply the idea to others. On several occasions, he omitted the –ed ending from the verb “learn”, but attached it correctly each time he said the words “stayed” and “used.” Other inflectional morphemes were used sparingly, if at all. The four times that Omar used the plural –s morpheme and 2 times that he used the present tense –s morphemes were done so accurately. From this transcribed portion of the interview, I am not able to discern of the possessive, superlative, comparative or past participle morphemes.SyntaxFor the syntax analysis, I have looked at Omar’s usage of the auxiliary verb. While I know that this can also be seen as a morphological issue, I analyzed it based on the view that he used a specific sentence structures and patterns that need the auxiliary verb to make sense. On most occasions, Omar used the correct auxiliary and in a way that was considered correct, but at other times he made mistakes in verb choice or simply omitted the necessary helping verb. My analysis shows that he used 16 auxiliary verbs, with four uses being incorrect. On Line 5, he said his children “have born here” instead of what I assume he meant as they “were born here.” On Line 15, he omits the auxiliary completely by saying “I been here since.” While this example may be grammatically incorrect, it often may be acceptable in casual speak and may be the reason for his choice of words. This same occurrence appears again on Line 35 when Omar says “We been here now.” On Line 22 he also omits the auxiliary when he says “I still learning.” Because the auxiliary verb exists in Spanish, I believe that these issues come more from the fact that Omar learned English conversationally and may have picked these issues up from those around him. ConclusionMy predictions seem to have been supported by the data that I collected in the analysis. Omar did not show much difficulty in pronunciation of consonants, but did struggle with consonant clusters by either omitting the final consonant or allowing it to assimilate with the following word. I was not surprised by his level of accuracy based on previous conversations with him and my knowledge of his speaking abilities. I was surprised however by the subtleties of his language challenges that I miss or unconsciously ignore during our casual conversations but found strikingly obvious during my analysis and in-depth listening. I think that his language skills are actually at a lower level than I had felt previously. I found that he had success with most inflectional morphemes but still struggled with a few. I think that some of the issues I noticed in his speech come mostly from his learning background and the fact that he has learned the language based on casual conversation rather than academic speech, which tends to be more grammatically correct. ReflectionI think that this project gave me the opportunity to see language from a different point of view. Because Omar helps me to develop my own Spanish skills, I think that my brain has trained itself to ignore the mistakes he makes in English and accept them as correct. I think that there are many more aspects of his speech that could be analyzed beyond the skills that I have. Because English has a larger variety of vowel sounds compared to Spanish, it would have been interesting to make a comparison of his pronunciation, but my own abilities to make a distinction between those sounds is limited. I felt I did not have the skills necessary to analyze those sounds and chose instead to focus on consonants, which are much easier to single out and understand. This is something that I would like to focus on more in the future and feel would help me to further improve my Spanish skills by allowing me to avoid interference of my English language habits.AppendixPhonology Analysis, Final Consonant Clusters Line number:Standard formsVariation & example11 start, omits final t002032 most, just, omits final t20400022 hard, don’t, omits final d & t21 most, omits final t30302011 first, omits final t12, first, went, omits final t’s1012 kind, hard, omits final d’s10201013 kind, start, just, omits final t’s & d’s42 just, that’s, omits final t’s101001 just, omits final t11 start, omits final t11 start, omits final t00100021 told, omits final d000001 with, t sound instead of th21 that’s, omits t sound00Total a: ___45__________Total b: _______22________Sum total 67, with 67.2% final consonant cluster accuracy.Morphology Analysis, Inflectional MorphemesLine number:Standard formsVariation & example01 <start>0030001000101001 <get together>2011 <learn>01 <learn>0010000000100011 <learn>11 <learn>11 <learn>000020100020000001 <decide> 00000010Total a: _____20________Total b: ______8_________Add columns a:____ + b:____ = sum total __28____ .Column a:___20___ ÷ sum total __28_____ = __71.4____% accuracy inflectional morpheme use.Syntax Analysis, Auxiliary Verb usageLine number:Standard formsVariation & example0000100001 <have born here>00101020100000000001 <I been here since>00001000000001 <I still learning>10000000000000000010102001 <we been here for>Total a: ____12_________Total b: ___4____________Add columns a:____ + b:____ = sum total _16_____ .Column a:__12____ ÷ sum total __16_____ = __75____% accuracy auxiliary verb use ReferencesAzevedo, M. (2004). Introduccion a la linguistica espanola. (2nd ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Prentic Hall.Canteli Dominicis, M., & Reynolds, J. J. (2007). Repase y escriba; curso avanzado de gramatica y composicion. (5a ed ed.). John Wiley & Sons, Inc.Fromkin, V., Rodman, R., & Hyams, N. (2010). An introduction to language. (9th ed. ed.). Boston: Wadsworth Pub Co.Schwegler, A., Kempff, J., & Ameal-Guerra, A. (2010). Fonética y fonología espa?oles. (4 ed.). Danvers: John Wiley &Sons, Inc. ................
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