UMD Theses and Dissertations
Permanent URI for this collectionhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/3
New submissions to the thesis/dissertation collections are added automatically as they are received from the Graduate School. Currently, the Graduate School deposits all theses and dissertations from a given semester after the official graduation date. This means that there may be up to a 4 month delay in the appearance of a given thesis/dissertation in DRUM.
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Item CROSS-LINGUISTIC DIFFERENCES IN THE LEARNING OF INFLECTIONAL MORPHOLOGY: EFFECTS OF TARGET LANGUAGE PARADIGM COMPLEXITY(2020) Solovyeva, Ekaterina; DeKeyser, Robert M.; Second Language Acquisition and Application; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Inflectional morphology poses significant difficulty to learners of foreign languages. Multiple approaches have attempted to explain it through one of two lenses. First, inflection has been viewed as one manifestation of syntactic knowledge; its learning has been related to the learning of syntactic structures. Second, the perceptual and semantic properties of the morphemes themselves have been invoked as a cause of difficulty. These groups of accounts presuppose different amounts of abstract knowledge and quite different learning mechanisms. On syntactic accounts, learners possess elaborate architectures of syntactic projections that they use to analyze linguistic input. They do not simply learn morphemes as discrete units in a list—instead, they learn the configurations of feature settings that these morphemes express. On general-cognitive accounts, learners do learn morphemes as units—each with non-zero difficulty and more or less independent of the others. The “more” there is to learn, the worse off the learner. This dissertation paves the way towards integrating the two types of accounts by testing them on cross-linguistic data. This study compares learning rates for languages whose inflectional systems vary in complexity (as reflected in the number of distinct inflectional endings)—German (lowest), Italian (high), and Czech (high, coupled with morpholexical variation). Written learner productions were examined for the accuracy of verbal inflection on dimensions ranging from morphosyntactic (uninflected forms, non-finite forms, use of finite instead of non-finite forms) to morpholexical (errors in root processes, application of wrong verb class templates, or wrong phonemic composition of the root or ending). Error frequencies were modeled using Poisson regression. Complexity affected accuracy differently in different domains of inflection production. Inflectional paradigm complexity was facilitative for learning to supply inflection, and learners of Italian and Czech were not disadvantaged compared to learners of German, despite their paradigms having more distinct elements. However, the complexity of verb class systems and the opacity of morphophonological alternations did result in disadvantages. Learners of Czech misapplied inflectional patterns associated with verb classes more than learners of German; they also failed to recall the correct segments associated with inflections, which resulted in more frequent use of inexistent forms.Item Motivation and Long-Term Language Achievement: Understanding Motivation to Persist in Foreign Language Learning(2009) Smith, Laura J.; Martin, Cynthia; Lavine, Roberta; Curriculum and Instruction; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Achieving native-like proficiency in a foreign language is a long-term process; therefore, designing and implementing a plan for long-term language achievement may help more learners achieve their long-term language goals of fluency as well as related career goals. This study presents recommendations that may be incorporated into the college curriculum to help both learners and teachers facilitate the development of motivation to persist in language learning and use at native-like proficiency. The results of this dissertation study provide greater insight into language learning motivation, changes in motivation, and motivational regulation. Data were collected using a questionnaire and an unstructured interview protocol to report the language learning motivation patterns of seven native-English speaking, traditional age undergraduate foreign language learners. Data were collected, coded, and analyzed following an emergent constant comparison method using process modeling procedures to analyze and report quantifiable categories of data, sequences of variables, patterns, and processes as they emerged. Results indicate that changes in the primary source of motivation and motivational orientations occur over time and that internally regulated motivation associated with long-term goals is associated with persistence. A greater understanding of language learning motivation may help teachers and learners develop strategies to regulate motivation in order to facilitate the development of motivation to persist in language learning beyond basic university requirements. This may also operationalize motivation for professional language use at native-like proficiency.