introduction - 2013 wlc ba in spanish graduation...

Running Head: LANGUAGE CONSULTANT PORTFOLIO 1

Language Consultant Portfolio

Courtney S. Hoyland

California State University, Monterey Bay

LANGUAGE CONSULTANT PORTFOLIO 2

I. INTRODUCTION

Omar (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.

II. BACKGROUND RESEARCH

The 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)


III. BODY

A. PHONOLOGY

I 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.

B. MORPHOLOGY

For 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.

C. SYNTAX

For 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.

IV. CONCLUSION

My 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.


V. REFLECTION

I 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.


VI. APPENDIX

Phonology Analysis, Final Consonant Clusters Line number: Standard forms Variation & example

1. 1 1 start, omits final t2. 0 03. 2 04. 3 2 most, just, omits final t5. 2 06. 4 07. 0 08. 2 2 hard, don’t, omits final d & t9. 2 1 most, omits final t10. 3 011. 3 012. 2 013. 1 1 first, omits final t14. 1 2, first, went, omits final t’s15. 1 016. 1 2 kind, hard, omits final d’s17. 1 018. 2 019. 1 020. 1 3 kind, start, just, omits final t’s & d’s21. 4 2 just, that’s, omits final t’s22. 1 023. 1 024. 0 1 just, omits final t25. 1 1 start, omits final t26. 1 1 start, omits final t27. 0 028. 1 029. 0 030. 2 1 told, omits final d31. 0 032. 0 033. 0 1 with, t sound instead of th34. 2 1 that’s, omits t sound35. 0 0

Total a: ___45__________ Total b: _______22________

Sum total 67, with 67.2% final consonant cluster accuracy.


Morphology Analysis, Inflectional MorphemesLine number: Standard forms Variation & example

1. 0 1 <start>2. 0 03. 3 04. 0 05. 1 06. 0 07. 1 08. 1 09. 0 1 <get together>10. 2 011. 1 1 <learn>12. 0 1 <learn>13. 0 014. 1 015. 0 016. 0 017. 0 018. 1 019. 0 020. 1 1 <learn>21. 1 1 <learn>22. 1 1 <learn>23. 0 024. 0 025. 2 026. 1 027. 0 028. 2 029. 0 030. 0 031. 0 1 <decide>32.33.

00

00

34. 0 035. 1 0

Total 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 forms Variation & example

1. 0 02. 0 03. 1 04. 0 05. 0 1 <have born here>6. 0 07. 1 08. 1 09. 2 010. 1 011. 0 012. 0 013. 0 014. 0 015. 0 1 <I been here since>16. 0 017. 0 018. 1 019. 0 020. 0 021. 0 022. 0 1 <I still learning>23. 1 024. 0 025. 0 026. 0 027. 0 028. 0 029. 0 030. 0 031. 0 032. 1 033. 1 034. 2 035. 0 1 <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


References

Azevedo, 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 españoles. (4 ed.).

Danvers: John Wiley &Sons, Inc.

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