英语教学法原著选读12：自然顺序假说 上

本篇选自克拉申《第二语言习得的原则与实践(Principles and Practice in SLA）》第二章“第二语言习得理论”A节“有关第二语言习得的五个假说”第二个假说，武太白翻译。

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原文

One of the most exciting discoveries in language acquisition research in recent years has been the finding that the acquisition of grammatical structures proceeds in a predictable order. Acquirers of a given language tend to acquire certain grammatical structures early, and others later. The agreement among individual acquirers is not always 100%, but there are clear, statistically significant, similarities.

English is perhaps the most studied language as far as the natural order hypothesis is concerned, and of all structures of English, morphology is the most studied. Brown (1973) reported that children acquiring English as a first language tended to acquire certain grammatical morphemes, or functions words, earlier than others. For example, the progressive marker ing (as in "He is playing baseball".) and the plural marker /s/ ("two dogs") were among the first morphemes acquired, while the third person singular marker /s/ (as in "He lives in New York") and the possessive /s/ ("John's hat") were typically acquired much later, coming anywhere from six months to one year later. de Villiers and de Villiers (1973) confirmed Brown's longitudinal results cross-sectionally, showing that items that Brown found to be acquired earliest in time were also the ones that children tended to get right more often. In other words, for those morphemes studied, the difficulty order was similar to the acquisition order.

Shortly after Brown's results were published, Dulay and Burt (1974, 1975) reported that children acquiring English as a second language also show a "natural order" for grammatical morphemes, regardless of their first language. The child second language order of acquisition was different from the first language order, but different groups of second language acquirers showed striking similarities. Dulay and Burt's results have been confirmed by a number of investigators (Kessler and Idar, 1977; Fabris, 1978; Makino, 1980). Dulay and Burt used a subset of the 14 morphemes Brown originally investigated. Fathman (1975) confirmed the reality of the natural order in child second language acquisition with her test of oral production, the SLOPE test, which probed 20 different structures.

Following Dulay and Burt's work, Bailey, Madden, and Krashen (1974) reported a natural order for adult subjects, an order quite similar to that seen in child second language acquisition. As we shall see later, this natural order appears only under certain conditions (or rather, it disappears only under certain conditions!). Some of the studies confirming the natural order in adults for grammatical morphemes include Andersen (1976), who used composition, Krashen, Houck, Giunchi, Bode, Birnbaum, and Strei (1977), using free speech, and Christison (1979), also using free speech. Adult research using the SLOPE test also confirms the natural order and widens the data base. Krashen, Sferlazza, Feldman, and Fathman (1976) found an order similar to Fathman's (1975) child second language order, and Kayfetz-Fuller (1978) also reported a natural order using the SLOPE test.

As noted above, the order of acquisition for second language is not the same as the order of acquisition for first language, but there are some similarities. Table 2.1, from Krashen (1977), presents an average order for second language, and shows how the first language order differs. This average order is the result of a comparison of many empirical studies of grammatical morpheme acquisition.

TABLE 2.1. "Average" order of acquisition of grammatical morphemes for English

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译文

近年来语言习得研究领域最激动人心的发现之一就是语法结构的习得有着可以预见的顺序。特定语言的习得者倾向于先习得一些语法结构，然后再习得其他。习得者个体间并不100%一致，但的确有清晰的、从统计角度来看有意义的相似之处。

关于自然顺序假说，英语也许是研究最多的语言，而英语的各种结构中，词形变化是研究最多的。布朗（1973）提出，儿童习得英语母语的倾向是，先习得一些语法词素，再习得其他。例如，进行时态的标志ing（如He is playing baseball）及复数标志s（如two dogs）就是最先习得的，而第三人称单数标志s（如He lives in New York）和所有格标志s（如John’s hat）就是典型的许久之后才习得，大概要半年到一年之后。德威里尔斯和德威里尔斯（1973）确证了布朗的纵向研究成果，用的是横向法，表明布朗发现最早习得的项目也是儿童更容易正确使用的那些。换句话说，对于那些所研究的词素而言，难度的等级与习得的顺序是类似的。

布朗的成果发表后不久，杜雷和伯特（1974，1975）报告儿童习得第二语言时也表现出对语法词素的“自然顺序”，不管第一语言是什么。儿童的二语习得顺序和第一语言不同，但不同群体的二语习得者表现出惊人的相似。杜雷和伯特的成果得到了不少研究者的确证（凯斯勒和伊达尔，1977；法布里斯，1978；Makino——疑为日语人名，不能确认写法，故未译出，抱歉——译注，1980）。杜雷和伯特使用了布朗最初调查使用的一套14个词素。法特曼（1975）以她的口语输出测试——SLOPE测试——确证了儿童二语习得现实中的自然顺序，这种测试考察的是20个不同的结构。

杜雷和伯特之后，贝里，马顿和克拉申（1974）报告了成人受试者的自然顺序，与儿童二语习得中所见非常相似。如同我们后面会看到的那样，这种自然顺序仅在特定情况下出现（或者不如说，仅在特定情况下消失！）。确证成人语法词素学习中的自然顺序的一些研究有安德森（1976），用的是作文法，克拉申，侯克，吉文其，波德，伯恩鲍姆，和斯特雷（1977），用的是自由言语，以及克里斯蒂森（1979），也是用的自由言语。使用SLOPE测试进行的成人研究也确证了自然顺序的存在，并扩大了数据基础。克拉申，思弗拉扎，费尔德曼和法德曼（1976）发现了与法特曼（1975）的儿童二语习得的自然顺序类似的顺序，而凯费茨-福勒（1978）也报告了使用SLOPE测试发现的自然顺序。

如同上文所指出，二语习得的顺序和第一语言习得顺序不同，但也有类似之处。表2.1为克拉申（1977）所作，提出了二语习得的一般顺序，并标明了其与第一语言习得顺序有何不同。这种一般顺序是对许多语法词素习得实证研究进行比较后得出的结果。