Understanding Redundancy and Processing Principles in Second Language Acquisition
Understanding Redundancy in Second Language Acquisition
Examples of Redundancy in English
Consider the sentence “Last night I watched a movie.”
Here, redundancy occurs with the past tense, which is expressed in two ways: “last night” and the inflection “-ed” on the verb “watch.”
The “-ed” ending is redundant because the meaning it encodes (past tense) is already expressed by the phrase “last night.”
In such cases, the redundant form has lower communicative value, meaning learners may pay less attention to it.
Principle of Redundancy and Communicative Value
The more inherent semantic value a form has, the higher its communicative value. Conversely, the less inherent semantic value, the lower its communicative value.
However, in the case of redundancy, the opposite is true:
- The more redundant a form is, the lower its communicative value.
Processing Principles in Second Language Acquisition
Principle 1: The Primacy of Meaning Principle
Learners process input for meaning before they process it for form, prioritizing meaning over form.
P1a. The Primacy of Content Words Principle
Learners process content words (nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs) before function words (determiners, prepositions, conjunctions).
For example, in the sentence “Yesterday he went to the park,” learners would first focus on the content words: “yesterday,” “went,” and “park.”
P1b. The Lexical Preference Principle
Learners rely on lexical items (vocabulary) rather than grammatical forms to get meaning when both encode the same semantic information.
For example, in the sentence “Yesterday he played football with John,” the word “yesterday” has higher communicative value for understanding the past tense than the “-ed” ending on “played.”
P1c. The Preference for Non-meaning Principle
Learners process non-redundant meaningful grammatical forms before processing redundant meaningful forms.
For example, in the sentence “He cooks for his brothers every day,” the pronoun “he” is a non-redundant meaningful form, while the “-s” ending on “cooks” is redundant and may be processed later or not at all.
P1d. The Meaning before Non-meaning Principle
Learners process meaningful grammatical forms before non-meaningful forms, regardless of redundancy.
For example, grammatical gender markers in Romance languages like Spanish or Italian often have no inherent meaning and are processed after meaningful forms.
P1e. The Availability of Resources Principle
For learners to process either redundant meaningful grammatical forms or non-meaningful forms, the processing of overall sentential meaning must not draw on available processing resources.
In other words, learners need sufficient cognitive resources to process both meaning and form.
P1f. The Sentence Location Principle
Learners process items in sentence-initial position before those in end or medial position.
For example, in the sentence “Last night I watched a movie,” the past time reference “last night” is processed before the “-ed” ending on “watched.”
Principle 2: The First Noun Principle
Learners have a tendency to assign subject or agent status to the first noun phrase they encounter in a sentence, even when it is not the actual subject or agent.
For example, in the sentence “Chandler was kissed by Phoebe,” learners might initially assume Chandler is the agent (the one doing the kissing) due to its position as the first noun.
Principles to Attenuate Reliance on the First Noun Principle
Several principles can help learners overcome their reliance on the first noun principle:
- P2a. The Lexical Semantics Principle: Learners may use the meaning of verbs to determine the agent, as in the sentence “The fence was kicked by the horse.”
- P2b. The Event Probabilities Principle: Learners may consider the likelihood of events, as in the sentence “The canary was eaten by the cat.”
- P2c. The Contextual Constraint Principle: Preceding context can help learners interpret sentence roles, reducing reliance on word order.
By understanding these principles of redundancy and processing, language teachers can create more effective materials and activities that support second language acquisition.