République Démocratique Populaire Algérienne Ministère de l’enseignement supérieur et de la recherche scientifique

Ecole Normale Supérieure des Lettres et Sciences Humaines Constantine

Distant Cِours

LMD S5

Prepared by

Soulef Boulmerka

Chargée de cours ENS Constantine

2009-2010

Linguistics

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Table of Contents

Chapter One : Discourse analysis………..4 Chapter Two: Speech Act Theory………..17 Chapter Three: Contrastive Analysis…….26 Chapter Four: Error Analysis……………..34 Bibliography………………………………….44

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Preview

Dear student ,

In this course you will be introduced to some basic concepts in linguistics..

Chapter one will deal with discourse analysis an important field in

linguistics. The next chapter (two) will explain Austin’s speech act theory.

Chapter three will consider the central issue of SLA ( second language

acquisition) ,this will be presented under the findings :contrastive analysis,

error analysis, interlanguage.

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Chapter One: Discourse and Text

The traditional concern of linguistic analysis has been the construction of sentences but in

recent years there has been an increasing in creasing interest in analysis the way sentences

work in sequence to produce coherent stretches of language.

Two main approaches have developed. Discourse analysis focuses on the structure of

nature- ally occurring spoken language, as found in such ‘discourse’ as conversation,

interviews, commentaries and speeches. Text analysis focuses on the structure of written

language, as found in such ‘texts’ as essays, notices road signs, and chapters. But this

distinction is not clear-cut, and there have been many other uses of these labels. In particular,

both ‘ discourse’ and ‘ text’ can be used in a much broader sense to include all language units

with a definable communicative function, whether spoken or written. Some scholars talk

about ‘spoken and written discourse’ others about ‘spoken and written text’. In Europe, the

term text linguistics is often used for the study of the linguistic principles governing the

structure of all forms of text.

The search for larger linguistic unites and structures has been pursued by scalars from

many disciplines. Linguists investigate the features of language that bind sentences When

they are used in sequence. Ethnographers and sociologists study the structure of social

interaction, especially as manifested in the way people enter into dialogue. Anthologists

analyse the structure of myths and folk-tales. Psychologists carry out experiment on the

mental process underlying comprehension and further contribution have come from those

concerned white artificial intelligence, rhetoric, philosophy, and style .

These approaches have a common concern: they stress the need to see language as a

dynamic, social interactive phenomenon whether between speaker and listener, or writer and

reader. It is argued that meaning is conveyed not by single sentences but by more complex

exchanges, in which the participants’ beliefs and expectation, the knowledge they share about

each other and about the world, and the situation in which they interact, play a crucial part.

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I.1 Conversation

Of the many types of communicative act, most study has been devoted to conversation, seen

as the most fundamental and pervasive means of conducting human affairs. These very

characteristics, however, complicate any investigation. Because people interact linguistically

in such a wide range social situations, on such a variety of topics, and with such an

unpredictable set of participant, it has proved very difficult to determine the extent to which

conversational behavior is systematic, and to generalize about it

There is now no doubt that such a system exists .conversation turns out, upon analysis, to be a

highly structured activity, in which people tacitly operate with a set of basic conversation. A

comparison has even been drown with games such as chess: conversations, it seem, can be

thought of as having an opening, a middle, and an endgame. The participants make their

moves and often seem to follow certain rules as the dialogue proceeds. But the analogy ends :

there A successful conversation is not a game :it is no more than a mutually satisfying

linguistic exchange. Few rules are ever stated explicitly . ( some exceptions are ‘ don’t

interrupt’, and look have at me when I talk to you’ ). Furthermore apart fro; in certain types of

argument and debate, there are no winners.

I.1.1 Conversational Success

For a conversation to be successful, in most social contexts, the participants need to feel they

are contributing something to it and are geeing something out of it. For this to happen,

certain conditions must apply. Everyone must have an opportunity to speak: no one should be

monopolizing or constantly interrupting. The participants need to make their roles clear

especially if there are several possibilities ( e.g. ‘spiking as a mother / linguist / Catholic …)

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They need to have to develop a mutual tolerance, to allow for speak or stay silent : when to

stay aloof or become involved .

They need to develop a mutual tolerance, to allow for speaker un clarity and listener

inattention: perfect expression and comprehension are rare, and the success of a dialogue

largely depends on people recognizing their communicative weaknesses, through the use of

rephrasing ( e.g. ‘ Are you with me ? ) .

There is a great deal of ritual in conversation, especially at the beginning and end, and when

topics change. For example, people cannot simply leave a conversation at any random point,

unless they wish to be considered socially inept or ill -mannered. They have to chose their

point of departure ( such as the moment when a topic changes ) or construct a special reason

for leaving. Routines for concluding a conversation are particularly complex and cooperation

if it is not to end abruptly, or in an embarrassed silence. The parties may prepare for their

departure a long way in advance, such as by looking at their watches or giving a verbal early

warning. A widespread convention is for visitors to say they must leave sometime before

they actually intend to depart, and for the hosts to ignore the remark. The second mention then

permits both parties to act.

The topic of the conversation is also an important variable. In general it should be one with

which everyone feels at ease:’ safe’ topics between strangers in English situations usually

include the weather, pets, children, and the local context ( e.g while waiting in room or

queue ): ‘unsafe’ topics include religious and political beliefs and problem of health. There

are some arbitrary divisions: asking what someone does for a living is generally safe: asking

how much they earn is not. Cultural variations can cause problems: commenting about the

cost of the furniture or the taste of a meal maybe acceptable in one society but not in another.

It is difficult to generalize about what is normal, polite, or antisocial in conversational

practice, as there is so much cultural variation. Silence, for example, varies in status. It is in

an embarrassment in English conversations, unless there are special reason ( such as in

moment of grief ). However, in some cultures ( e.g labs, Danes, the western Apache ) it is

quite normal for participants to become silent. Often, who speaks, and how much, is spoken,

depends on the social status of the participants – for example, those of lower rank maybe

expected to stay silent if their seniors wish to speak. Even the basic convention of ‘one person

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speaks at a time ’maybe broken. In Antigua, for example, the phenomenon of several people

speaking at once during a whole conversation is a perfectly normal occurrence.

I.1.2 Conversation analysis

In recent years, the phrase conversation analysis’ has com to be used as the name of a

particular method of studying conversational structure, based on the American sociological

movement of the 1970s know as ethno methodology.

The emphasis in previous sociological research had been deductive and quantitative

focusing on general questions of social structure.

The new name was chosen to reflect direction of study. Which would focus on the technique

(or ‘methods )used by people themselves ( oddly referred to as’ ethnic’ ).

When they are actually engaged in social – and thus linguistic – interaction. The central

concern was to determine how individuals experience make sense of and report their

interactions

In conversation analysis, one data thus consist tape recordings of natural conversation and

their associated transcriptions .These are then systematically analyzed to determine what

properties govern the way in which a conversation proceeds. The approach emphasizes the

need for empirical , inductive work, and in this it is sometimes contrasted with’ discourse

analysis’, which ha soften been more concerned with formal methods of analysis ( such as the

nature of the rules governing the structure of texts).

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I.1.3Conversational Maxims

The success of a conversation depends not only on what speakers say but on their whole

approach to the interaction. People adopt a ‘cooperative principle when they communicative:

they try to get along with each other by following certain conversational maxims that underlie

the efficient use of language. Four basic maxims have been proposed after (H.P.Grice,1975 )

The maxim of quality states that speakers’ contribution to a conversation ought to be true they

should not say what they believe to be false anything for which they lack adequate evidence.

The maxim of quantity states that the contribution should be as informative as is required for

the purposes of the conversation. One should say neither too little nor too much.

The maxim of relevance states that contributions should clearly relate to the purpose of the

exchange.

The maxim of manner states that the contribution should be precipices-in particular, that it

should be orderly and brief, avoiding obscurity and ambiguity.

Other maxims have also been proposed, such as ‘be polite, behave consistently. The principle

of relevance is currently attracting most attention, as it has been proposed as a fundamental

explanatory principle for a theory of human communication.

Listeners will normally assume that speakers are following these criteria. Speakers may of

course break or flout these maxims- for example, they maay lie, be sarcastic, try to be

difference, or cleaver- but conversation proceeds on the assumption that they are not doing so.

Listeners may then draw inferences from what speakers have said( the literal meaning of the

utterance) concerning what they have not said the implications. Or’Implicatures of ( the

utterance ).for example.

A : I need a drink

B; Try the Bell

If B is adhering to the cooperative principle, several implicatures arise out of this dialogue

for example the Bell must be place that sells drinks and is open ( as far as B knows); it must

be nearby , if B is not being cooperative( e.g. if he knows that the Bell is closed , or is the

name of a greengrocer’s) , he is flouting the maxim of quality and relevance.

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Deliberate flouting of this kind is uncommon, of course, and only occurs in such special

cases as sarcasm, joking, or deliberate unpleasantness. More likely is the Inadvertent flouting

of conversational maxims- as would happen if B genuinely and did not know that the Bell was

closed, and accidentally went on a wild goose chase .In every day conversation,

misunderstandings often take palace as speakers make assumptions about what their listeners

know, or need to know , that turn out to be wrong. At such points, the conversation can break

down and may need to be repaired, with the participants questioning, clarifying, and cross-

checking. The repairs are quickly made in the following extract, through the use of such

pointers as ‘told you’ and sorry.

A: Have you got the time ?

B : No, I told you, I lost my watch .

A : Oh, sorrry, I forgot .

But it is quite common for participants not to realize that there has been a breakdown, and to

continue conversing at cross purposes.

I.1.4Conversational Turns

Probably the most widely recognized conversational conversation is that people take turns to

speak but how do people know when it is their turn?

Some rules must be present, otherwise conversations would be continually breaking down

into a disorganized jumble of interruptions and simultaneous talk. In many formal situations,

such as committee meetings and debates, there are often explicit markers showing that a

speaker is about to yield the floor, and indicating who should speak next (‘I think Mr. Smith

will know the answer to that question’). This can happen in informal situation too (‘what do

you think, John ?’ ), but there the turn-taking cues are usually more subtle.

People do not simply stop talking when they are ready to yield the floor. They usually signal

some way in advance that they are about to conclude.

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The clues may be semantic (‘So anyway, ….’,’Last but not least …..’); but more commonly

the speech itself can be modified to show that a turn is about to end – typically, by lowering

its pitch, loudness, or speed Body movements and patterns of eye contact are especially

important. While speaking, we look at and away from our listener in about equal proportions;

but as we approach the end of a turn, we look at the listener more steadily. Similarly, when

talking to a group of people, we often look more steadily at a particular person, to indicate

that in our view this should be the next speaker.

Listeners are not passive in all of this. Here too there are several ways of signaling that

someone wants to talk next. Most obviously, the first person in a group actually to starts

speaking, after the completion of a turn, will usually be allowed to hold the floor. More

subtly, we can signal that we want to speak next by an observable increase in body tension-

by leaning forward, or producing an audible intake of breath. Less subtly, we can simply

interrupt- a strategy which may be tolerated, if the purpose is to clarify what the speaker is

saying, but which more usually leads to social sanctions.

I.1.5 Exchanges

Because conversational discourse varies so much in length and complexity, analysis generally

Begins by braking an interact ion down into the smallest possible units, then examining the

way these units are used in sequences. The units have been called ‘exchanges’, and in their

minimal form consist simply of an initiating utterance(I) followed by a response utterance(

R), as in:

I: What’ s the time?

R: Two o’clock.

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Two- part exchanges ( sometimes called’ adjacency pairs’ ) are common place, being used in

such contexts as questioning : answering, informing/ acknowledging, and complaining/

excusing. Three part exchanges are also important, where the response is followed by an

element of feedback ( F) .Such reactions are especially founding teaching situations:

Teacher: Where were the arrows kept? (I)

Pupil: In a special kind of box. (R)

Teacher: Yes, that ‘s right , in box ( F)

What is of particular interest is to work out of the constraints that apply to sequences of this

kind. The teacher –feedback sequence would be inappropriate in many everyday situations:

A: Did you have a good journey?

B : Apart from a jam at Northampton..

A: * Yes, that’s right, a jam at Northampton .

Unacceptable sequences are easy to invent:

A: Where do you keep the jam?

B: * It ‘s raining again.

On the other hand, with ingenuity it is often possible to imagine situations where such a

sequence could occur( e.g., if B were starting out of the window at the time).And discourse

analysts are always on the lookout for unexpected, but perfectly acceptable, sequences in

context, such as:

A: goodbye.

B: Hello.

(used, for example, as A is leaving an office, passing B on his way in ) . May jokes, too break

discourse rules as the source of their effect:

A: yes, I can.

B: can you see into the future ?

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I.1.6Conversation manoeuvres

Conversational turn-taking is often clear signals of direction.

Openings

Guess What …….. ....................

Sorry to trouble you …………...

Lovely day!

Got a match?

Can I help you?

Good morning. Excuse me …….

Did you hear the one about …….

Can you spare a minute?

Halt! Who goes there?

But not:* How much do you earn?

Ongoing checks

By the speaker: Do you see?

Can you guess what he said ?

Are you with me ?

Do I make myself clear ?

Don’t you think ?

Let me put it another way ……..

Don’t get me wrong ……………..

What I’m trying to say is ………..

By the listener :

You mean ………………………..

Have I got you right?

Mhm. I don’t get you.

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Let’s get that straight ……………..

Changing topic

Introducing a new topic:

That reminds me ………

Incidentally ……………

That’s a good question.

By the way ……………

Speaking of John ………

Where was I?

Concluding a topic:

So it goes

That’s life.

Makes you think. doesn’t it.

Let’s wait and see.

Ending

Sorry, but a have to go new.

Nice talking to you.

Well, must get beak to work.

Gosh, is that tune?

I mustn’t keep you.

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I.1.7 Misunderstandings

An important aim of discourse analysis is to find out why conversations are not always

successful. Misunderstanding and mutual recrimination le unfortunately fairly common,

participants often operate with difference rules and expectations about the way in which the

conversation should proceed-something that is particularly evident when people of different

cultural backgrounds interact. But even within a cultural, different ‘rules of interpretation’

may exist.

It has been suggested, for example, that there are different rules governing the way in which

men and women participate in a conversation. A common source of misunderstanding is the

way both parties use head nods and mhm noises while the other is speaking –something that

women do much more frequently then men. Some analysts have suggested that the two sexes

means different things by this behavior. when a women doses it she is simply indicating that

she is listing. and encouraging the speaker to continue. but the male interprets it to mean that

she is agreeing with everything he is saying. By contrast. When a man doses it. He is

signaling that he does not necessarily agree, where as the woman interprets it to mean that he

is not always listening. Such interpretations are plausible, it is agued, be cause they explain

two of the most widely reported reaction from participants in cross-sex conversations-the

male reaction of ‘It’s impossible to say what a woman really thinks, and the female reaction

of ‘ you never listen to a world I say ( After D.N .Ma/tz &R.ABorker,1982)

I.2 Textual Structure

To call a sequence of sentences a ‘text’ is to imply that the sentences display some kind of

mutual dependence: they are not occurring at random.

Sometimes the internal structure of text is immediately apparent, as the headings of a

restaurant menu: sometimes it has to be carefully demonstrated, as in the network of

relationships that enter into a literary work. In all cases, the task of textual analysis is to

identify the linguistic features that cause the sentence sequence to ‘cohere’-something that

happens whenever the interpretation of one future is dependent upon anther else where in the

sequence. The ties that bind a text together are often referred to under the heading of cohesion

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(after M..A.K. Halliday & R Hasan, 1976). Several types of cohesive factor have been

recognized :

• Conjunctive relation what is about to be said is explicitly related to what has been

said before, though such notion as contrast, result, and time:

• I left early, however, Mark stayed till the end.

Lastly, there’s the question of cost

• Coreference features that cannot be semantically interpreted without referring to

some other feature in the text. Two types of relationship are recognized: anaphoric

relation look backwards for their interpretation, and cataphoric relations look

forwards. Several people approached. They seemed angry. Listen to this : john’s

getting married.

• Substitution one feature replaces a previous expression:

I’ve got a pencil, Do you have one?

Will we get there on time? I think so.

• Ellipsis A piece of structure is omitted and can be understood only from the

preceding discourse.

Where did you see the car? ∧ In the street.

• Repeated forms An expression is repeated in whole or in part:

Canon Brown arrived. Canon brown was cross.

• Lexical relationships One lexical item enters into a structural relationships whit

another: the rovers were lovely. He liked the tulips best.

• Comparison A compared expression is presupposed in the previous discourse:

That house was bad. this one’s far worse.

Cohesive links go a long way towards explaining how the sentences of a text hang together,

but they do not tell the whole story. It is possible to invent a sentence sequence that is highly

cohesive but nonetheless incoherent ( after N.E. Enkvist, 1978,P110):

A week has seven days. Every day I feed my cat.

Cats have four legs. The cat is on the mat. Mat has three letters.

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A text plainly has to be coherent as well as cohesive, in that the concepts and relationships

expressed should be relevant to each other, thus enabling us to mark plausible inferences

about the underlying meaning.

I.2.1Two Ways of Demonstrating Cohesion

Paragraphs are often highly entities. The cohesive ties can stand out very clearly if the

sentences are shuffled into a random order. It may even be possible to reconstitute the original

sequence solely by considering the nature of these ties, as in the following case:

1. However, nobody had seen one for moths .

2. He thought he saw a shape in the bushes.

3. Mark had told him about the foxes .

4. John looked out of the window.

5. Could it be a fox?

( the original sequence was 4,2,5,3,1,)

We can use graphological devices to indicate the paragraph of James Joyce’s shout story’ A

painful case. the sequences of pronouns. The anaphoric definite articles, and the repeated

phrases are the main cohesive features between the clauses and sentences.

Several of course refer back to pervious parts of the Story, these making this paragraph, out

context, impossible to understand.

He turned back the way he had come, the rhythm of the engine pounding in his ears. He

began to doubt the reality of what memory told him. He halted under a tree and allowed the

rhythm to die away. He could not feel hear near him in the DARNESS nor her voice touch

his ear. He waited for some minutes listening. He could hear NOTHING: the NIGHT was

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Perfectly silent. He listened again: perfectly silent. He felt that: he was ALONE.

I.2.2Macrostructures

Not all textual analysis starts with small units and works from the bottom up some approaches

aim to make very general statements about the macrostructure of a text in psychology, for

example, attempts have been made to analyses narratives into schematic outlines that

represent the elements in a story that readers remember. These schemata have been called

story- grammars ( though this is an unusually broad sense of the term ‘grammar’)

In one such approach (after P.W thorrdyke, 1977), simple narratives are analyses into four

components : setting, theme, plot, and resolution. The setting has three components: the

characters, a location, and a time the theme consists of an event and a goal. The plot consists

of various episodes, each with its own goal and outcome, Using distinctions of this kinds,

simple stories are analyses into these components, to see whether the same kinds of structure

can be found in each. Certain similarities do quickly emerge: but when complex narratives are

studied, it proves difficult to devise more detailed categories that are capable of

generalization, and analysis becomes increasingly arbitrary .

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Chapter Two (II) Austin’s Speech Act Theory

Speech act theory was developed by the Oxford philosopher J .L Austin whose 1955 lectures

at Harvard University were published posthumously as How to Do Things with Words(1975).

Austin’s Work is in many respects a reaction to some traditional and influential attitudes to

language . These attitudes can be said to involve three related assumptions as follows:

1- that the basic sentence type in language is declarative( i.e. a statement or assertion);

2- that the principle use of language is to describe states of affairs ( by using statements);

3- that the meaning of utterances can be described in terms of their truth or falsity.

Austin opposed these views and said that language is used for far more than making

statements and that for the most part utterances cannot be said to be either true or false .He

made two important observations .The first is that not all sentences are statements and that

much of conversation is made up of questions, exclamations, commands, and expressions of

wishes like the examples below.

a- Excuse me!

b- Are you serving?

c- Hello.

d- Six pints of stout and a packet of peanuts , please!

e- Give me the dry roasted ones.

f- How much? Are you serious?

Such utterances are not descriptions and cannot be said to be true or false. Austin’s second

observation was that even in sentences with the grammatical form of declaratives , not all are

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used to make statements . Austin identified a subset of declaratives that are not used to make

true or false statements , such as in the examples below:

a- I promise to take a taxi home.

b- I bet you five pounds that he get’s breathalysed.

c- I declare this meeting open

d- I warn you that legal action will ensue.

e- I name this ship The Flying Dutchman.

Austin claimed of these sentences that they were in themselves a kind of action/ thus by

uttering: I promise to take a taxi home, a speaker makes a promise rather than just describing

one. This kind of utterance is called performative : in these examples they perform the action

named by first verb in the sentence, and we can insert the adverb hereby to stress this

function, e.g. I hereby request that you leave my property. We can contrast performative and

non-performative verbs by these two features. A speaker would not for example expect the

uttering of (a) below to constitute the action of cooking a cake, or (d) the action of starting a

car. These sentences describe actions independent of the linguistic act. Accordingly the use of

hereby with these sentences.

a- I cook this cake.

b- I hereby cook this cake.

c- I hereby start this car.

II.1Evaluating Performative Utterances

Austin argued that it is not useful to ask whether performative utterances like those above

are true or not , rather we should ask whether they work or not:do they constitute a

successful warning, bet, ship-naming etc? In Austin’s terminology a performative that

works is called felicitous and one that does not is infelicitous . For them to work , such

performatives have to satisfy the social conventions for a very obvious example, I cannot

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rename a ship by walking up to the dock and saying I name this ship The F lying

Dutchman. Less explicitly , there are social governing the giving of orders to co-workers,

greeting strangers, etc. Austin ‘s name for the enabling conditions for performative is

felicity conditions .Examining these social conventions that support performatives,it is

clear that there is a gradient between perforamtives that are highly institutionalised ,or

even ceremonial , requiring sophisticated and very overt support, like the example of a

judge pronouncing sentence , through to less formal acts like warning, thanking, etc… To

describe the role of felicity conditions, Austin ( 1975) wrote a very general schema:

1- There must exist an accepted conventional procedure having a certain convetional

effect ,the procedure to include the uttering of certain words by certain persons in

certain circumstances…

2- There particular persons and circumstances must be appropriate for the invocation of

the particular procedure invoked…

3- The procedure must be executed by all participants correctly…

4- …and completely…

Austin went on to add sincerity clauses : firstly that participants must have the thoughts ,

feelings and intentions , as specified by the procedure, and secondly, that if subsequent

conduct is called for, the participants must so conduct themselves .If the speech act is

unsuccessful by failing the (1) or ( 2) conditions above, then he described it as a misfire.

Thus my casually renaming any ship visiting Dublin docks is a misfire because (2) above

is not adhered to . If the act is insincerely performed, then he described it as an abuse of

a speech cat, as for example saying I bet … with non intention to pay or , I promise

with…. When I already intend to break the promise . Linguistics, as opposed to

philosophers , have tended not to be so interested in this second type of felicity, since the

primary speech act has, in these cases, been successfully communicated.

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II.2Explicit and Implicit Performatives

Looking at examples of performatives earlier, we can say that they are characterised by

special features:

a- They tend to begin with with a first person verb in a form of we could describe

as simple present: I bet , I warn, etc.

b- This verb belongs to a special class describing verbal activities for example:

promise, warn, sentence, name, bet, pronounce.

c- Generally their performative nature can be emphasised by inserting the adverb

hereby, as described earlier, thus I hereby sentence you to…

Utterances with these characteristics we can call explicit performatives..The

importance of speech act theory lies in the way that Austin and others managed to

extend their analysis from these explicit performatives to other utterances. The first

step was to point out that in some cases the same speech act seems to be performed

but with a relaxation of some of the special characteristics mentioned above.

We regularly meet utterances like those below, where this is so:

a- You are hereby charged with treason.

b- Passengers are requested to avoid jumping out the aircraft.

c- Five pounds says he does not make the semi final.

d- Come up and se me sometime

We can easily provide the sentences above with corresponding explicit performatives, as

below:

1- I ( hereby) charge you with treason

2- We request he passengers avoid jumping out of the aircraft.

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3- I bet you five pounds that he doesn’t make the semi final.

4- I invite you to come up and see me sometime.

It seems reasonable to say that the sentences ( a-d) could be uttered to perform the same

speech acts as those in ( 1-4) . In fact it seems that none of the special characteristics of

performative utterances is indispensable to their performance .How then do we recognise

these other performatives, which we can call implicit performatives? Answers to this have

varied somewhat in he development of the of the theory but Austin’s original contention was

that it was an utterance‘s ability to be expanded to an explicit peformative that identified it as

a performative utterance. The conclusion we could end up with is a situation where the

majority of performatives are implicit, needing expansion to make explicit their force. One

positive advantage of this translation strategy is that it focuses attention on the task of

classifying the performative verbs of a language. For now, the basic claim is clear: explicit

perfrmatives are seen as merely a specialised subset of performatives whose nature as speech

acts is more unambiguous than most.

II.3 Statements as Performatives

Austin’s original position that performatives, which are speech acts subject to felicity

conditions , are to be contrasted with declarative sentences , which are potentially true or

false descriptions of situations .The latter were termed constatives. However, as his analysis

developed, he collapsed the distinction and viewed the making of statements as just another

type of speech act , which he called simply stating. Austin argued that there is no

theoretically sound way to distinguish between performatives and constatives .For example ,

the notion of felicity applies to statements too: statements which are odd because of

presupposition failure, like the sentence The king of France is bald, are infelicitous because

the speaker has violated the conventions for referring to individuals ( i.e. that the listener

can identify them). This infelicity suspends our judgement of the truth or falsity of the

sentence: it is difficult to say that the king of France is false in the same way as the president

of France is a woman, even though they are both not true at the time of writing this . So we

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arrive at a view that all utterances constitute speech acts of one kind or another. For some the

type of act is explicitly marked by their containing a verb labelling the act , warn, bet, name,

suggest, protest ,etc; others are more implicitly signalled.

II.4 Locution and Illocution

Austin proposed that communicating a speech act consists of three elements : the speakers

says something, the speaker signal an associated speech act, and the speech act causes an

effect on the listeners or the participants . The first element he called the locutionary act , by

which he meant the act of saying something that makes sense in a language, i.e. follows the

rules of pronunciation and grammar. The second, the action intended by the speaker, he

termed the illocutionary act .This is what Austin and successors have mainly been concerned

with: the uses to which language can be put in society. In fact the term speech act is often

used with just this meaning of illocutionary acts. The third element, called the

perlocutionary act , is concerned with what follows an utterance: Austin gave the example of

sentences like shoot her! In appropriate circumstances this can have the illocutionary force of

ordering, urging,or advising the addressee to shoot her, but the perlocutionary force of

persuading,forcing, frightening ,etc, the addressee into shooting her.Perlocutionary effects are

less conventionally tied to linguistic forms and so have bee of less interest to linguists. We

know for example that people can recognize orders without obeying them.

II.5 Catergorizing Speech Acts

After Austin ‘s original explorations of speech act theory there have been a number of works

which attempt to systematize the approach .One important focus has been to categorize the

types of speech act possible in languages. J.R.Searle for example, while allowing that there is

a myriad of language particular speech acts , proposed that all acts fall into five main types.

1-Representatives, which commit the speakers to the truth of the expressed proposition(

paradigm cases: asserting, concluding);

24

2-Directives, which are attempts by the speaker to get the addressee to do something (

paradigm cases, requesting, questioning);

3-Commissives, which commit the speaker to some future course of action ( paradigm

cases, promising, threatening, offering);

4- Expressives, which express a psychological state ( paradigm cases : thanking,

apologising, welcoming, congratulating);

5- Declarations, which effect immediate changes in the institutional state of affairs and

which tend to rely on elaborate extra linguistic institutions ( paradigm cases:

excommunicating, declaring war, christening, marrying, firing from employment).

Searle uses a mix of criteria to establish these different types, including the act’s

illocutionary point; its’fit’ with the world; the psychological-state of the speaker; and the

content of the act. The illocutionary point is the purpose or aim of the act: thus the point of

directives is get the hearer to do something. The fit’ concerns direction of the relationship

between language and the world: thus speakers using representatives , for example assertions ,

are seeking to get their their words to matchthe world, while users of directives, for example,

requests or orders , are seeking to change the world so that it matches their words.the criterion

of psychological state relates to the speaker’s state of mind: thus statements like it is raining

reflect belief, while expresives like apologies and congratulations reveal the speaker’s attitude

to events.Thus one cannot properly promise or predict things that have already happened . Or

for another example : one way of viewing the difference between a promise and a threat in

terms of whether the future event is beneficial or harmful to the addressee.

25

In this section we will consider the central issue in SLA- the linguistic system which is

learned. The discussion will involve the nature and characteristics of this system, and its route

of development. We will also discuss the role of the first language in determining the system

the learner learns. These would be presented under the headings: Contrastive analysis, error

analysis, and interlanguage.

26

ChapterIII Contrastive Analysis

III.1 Definition

Contrastive Analysis (CA) or Contrastive linguistics is the systematic comparison of two or

more languages, with the aim of describing their similarities and differences. "In the study of

foreign language learning, the identification of points of structural similarity and difference

between two languages" (Crystal, 1992, p. 83).

The objective of the comparison may vary:

Language comparison is of great interest in a theoretical as well as an applied

perspective. It reveals what is general and what is language specific and is therefore

important both for the understanding of language in general and for the study of the

individual languages compared. (Johansson and Hofland 1994: 25) "Contrastive analysis was

developed and practiced in the 1950s and 1960s as application of structural linguistics to

language teaching" (Richards, Platt & Platt, 1992, p. 83). CA describes similarities and

differences among two or more languages at such levels as phonology, grammar, and semantics.

Contrastive linguistics is thus not a unified field of study. The focus may be on general or on

language specific features. The study may be theoretical, without any immediate application,

or it may be applied, i.e. carried out for a specific purpose.

The term 'contrastive linguistics', or 'contrastive analysis', is especially associated

with applied contrastive studies advocated as a means of predicting and/or explaining

difficulties of second language learners with a particular mother tongue in learning a

particular target language. In the Preface to his well-known book, Lado (1957) expresses the

rationale of the approach as follows:

The plan of the book rests on the assumption that we can predict and describe the

patterns which will cause difficulty in learning and those that will not cause difficulty.

27

III.2 Some Important Definitions

Applied Linguistics

is an interdisciplinary field of study that identifies, investigates, and offers solutions to

language-related real life problems. Some of the academic fields related to applied linguistics

are education, linguistics, psychology, anthropology, and sociology.

Major branches of applied linguistics include bilingualism and multilingualism, computer-

mediated communication (CMC), conversation analysis, language assessment, literacies,

discourse analysis, language pedagogy, sociolinguistics, second language acquisition,

language planning and policies, pragmatics, forensic linguistics, and translation.

First Language / Mother Tongue

A first language (also mother tongue, native language, arterial language, or L1) is the

language a human being learns from birth. A person's first language is a basis for

sociolinguistic identity.

Second Language

A second language (L2) is any language learned after the first language or mother tongue

(L1). Some languages, often called auxiliary languages, are used primarily as second

languages or lingua francas.

It is quite possible that the first language a person learns may no longer be their dominant

language, that is, the one he or she uses most or the one with which he or she is most

28

comfortable in. For example, the Canadian census defines first language for its purposes as

"the first language learned in childhood and still spoken", recognizing that for some, the

earliest language may be lost, a process known as language attrition. This can happen when

young children move, with or without their family (because of immigration or international

adoption), to a new language environment.

Auxiliary Languages

An international auxiliary language (sometimes abbreviated as IAL or auxlang) or

interlanguage is a language meant for communication between people from different nations

who do not share a common native language. An auxiliary language is primarily a second

language.

Languages of dominant societies over the centuries have served as auxiliary languages,

sometimes approaching the international level. French and English have been used as such in

recent times in many parts of the world.However, as these languages are associated with the

very dominance - cultural, political, and economic - that made them popular, they are often

met with strong resistance as well. For this reason, many have turned to the idea of promoting

an artificial or constructed language as a possible solution.

The term "auxiliary" implies that it is intended to be an additional language for the people of

the world, rather than to replace their native languages. Often, the phrase is used to refer to

planned or constructed languages proposed specifically to ease worldwide international

communication, such as Esperanto, Ido, and Interlingua. However, it can also refer to the

concept of such a language being determined by international consensus, including even a

standardized natural language (e.g., International English), and has also been connected to the

project of constructing a universal language.Some auxiliary language aficionados call these

languages auxlangs

29

Second Language Acquisition

is the process by which people learn a second language in addition to their native

language(s). The term second language is used to describe the acquisition of any language

after the acquisition of the mother tongue. There is also research into the similarities and

differences of Third Language Acquisition. The language to be learned is often referred to as

the "target language" or "L2", compared to the first language, "L1". Second language

acquisition may be abbreviated "SLA", or L2A, for "L2 acquisition".

The term "language acquisition" became commonly used after Stephen Krashen contrasted it

with formal and non-constructive "learning." However, "second language acquisition" or

"SLA" has become established as the preferred term for this academic discipline.

Though SLA is often viewed as part of applied linguistics, it is typically concerned with the

language system and learning processes themselves, whereas applied linguistics may focus

more on the experiences of the learner, particularly in the classroom. Additionally, SLA has

mostly examined naturalistic acquisition, where learners acquire a language with little formal

Target Language

A target language is a language that is the focus or end result of certain processes.

• In applied linguistics and second-language pedagogy, the term "target language" refers

to any language that learners are trying to learn in addition to their native language.

The same concept is often expressed as "second language" or "L2."

• In translation, the term "target language" is applied to the language that a source text is

being translated into.

30

Bilingualism

The term bilingualism or multilingualism can refer to an occurrence regarding an individual

speaker who uses two or more languages, a community of speakers where two or more

languages are used, or between speakers of different languages.

Multilingual speakers outnumber monolingual speakers in the world's population.

Monolingualsim

Monolingualism or unilingualism is the condition of being able to speak only a single

language. In a different context "unilingualism" may refer to language policy which enforces

an official or national language over others.

Native-born persons living in many of the Anglosphere nations such as the United States,

Australia, United Kingdom, and New Zealand are frequently typecast as monoglots, owing to

a worldwide perception that English speakers see little relevance in learning a second

language due to the widespread distribution of English and its competent use even in many

non-English speaking countries in Europe, Africa, and South Asia. Many Spanish language

countries in Latin America are also considered to have substantial proportions of the

population who are monoglots.

31

III.3Contrastive Analysis and Second Language Acquisition

Contrastive Analysis was used extensively in the field of Second Language Acquisition

(SLA) in the 1960s and early 1970s, as a method of explaining why some features of a Target

Language were more difficult to acquire than others. According to the behaviourist theories

prevailing at the time, language learning was a question of habit formation, and this could be

reinforced or impeded by existing habits. Therefore, the difficulty in mastering certain

structures in a second language (L2) depended on the difference between the learners' mother

language (L1) and the language they were trying to learn

III.4 History

The theoretical foundations for what became known as the Contrastive Analysis Hypothesis

were formulated in Lado's Linguistics Across Cultures (1957).

In this book, Lado claimed that "those elements which are similar to [the learner's] native

language will be simple for him, and those elements that are different will be difficult". While

this was not a novel suggestion, Lado was the first to provide a comprehensive theoretical

treatment and to suggest a systematic set of technical procedures for the contrastive study of

languages. This involved describing the languages (using structuralist linguistics which is

an approach to the human sciences that attempts to analyze a specific field (for instance,

mythology) as a complex system of interrelated parts. It began in linguistics with the

work of Ferdinand de Saussure. But many French intellectuals perceived it to have a

wider application, and the model was soon modified and applied to other fields, such as

anthropology, psychoanalysis and literary theory. This ushered in the dawn of

structuralism as not just a method, but also an intellectual movement that came to take

existentialism’s pedestal in 1960s France. ), comparing them and predicting learning

difficulties.

32

During the 1960s, there was a widespread enthusiasm with this technique, manifested in the

contrastive descriptions of several European languages, many of which were sponsored by the

Center of Applied Linguistics in Washington, DC. It was expected that once the areas of

potential difficulty had been mapped out through Contrastive Analysis, it would be possible to

design language courses more efficiently. Contrastive Analysis, along with Behaviourism and

Structuralism exerted a profound effect on SLA curriculum design and language teacher

education, and provided the theoretical pillars of Audio-Lingual Method, (also called the

Army Method or also the New Key,which is a style of teaching used in teaching foreign

languages. It is based on behaviorist theory, which professes that certain traits of living

things, and in this case humans, could be trained through a system of reinforcement—correct

use of a trait would receive positive feedback while incorrect use of that trait would receive

negative feedback.This approach to language learning was similar to another, earlier method

called the Direct method. Like the Direct Method, the Audio-Lingual Method advised that

students be taught a language directly, without using the students' native language to explain

new words or grammar in the target language. However, unlike the Direct Method, the

Audiolingual Method didn’t focus on teaching vocabulary. Rather, the teacher drilled students

in the use of grammar)

III.5 Criticism

In its strongest formulation, the Contrastive Analysis Hypothesis claimed that all the errors

made in learning and L2 could be attributed to 'interference' by the L1. However, this claim

could not be sustained by empirical evidence that was accumulated in the mid- and late 1970s.

It was soon pointed out that many errors predicted by Contrastive Analysis were inexplicably

not observed in learners' language. Even more confusingly, some uniform errors were made

by learners irrespective of their L1. It thus became clear that Contrastive Analysis could not

33

predict learning difficulties, and was only useful in the retrospective explanation of errors.

These developments, along with the decline of the behaviourist and structuralist paradigms

considerably weakened the appeal of Contrastive Analysis.

34

Chapter Four IV Error Analysis

Error Analysis owes its place as a scientific method in linguistics and became a recognised

part of applied linguistics thanks to the work of SP Corder.. Before him, linguists observed

learners' errors, categorised them, tried to see which ones were common and which were not,

but not special attention was drawn to their important role in second language acquisition. It

was Corder who highlighted the significance of errors to(teachers, researchers, and students

themselves) .

There are many major concepts introduced by S. P. Corder in his article "The significance of

learners' errors", among which we encounter the following:

. In Corder (1967), he mentions the paradigm shift in linguistics from a behaviouristic view of

language to a more rationalistic view and asserts that in language teaching one important

effect is to shift the emphasis away from teaching towards a study of learning. He focuses on

applying new hypotheses about how languages are learned in L1 to the learning of a second

language. He says "Within this context the study of errors takes on a new importance

and will I believe contribute to a verification or rejection of the new hypothesis." (in

Richards 1974:.21)

According to Corder in L1 acquisition we interpret child's 'incorrect' utterances as being

evidence that he is in the process of acquiring language and that for those who attempt to

describe his knowledge of the language at any point in its development, it is the 'errors' which

provide the important evidence.(ibid.: 23) In second language acquisition, Corder suggested

as a working hypothesis that some of the strategies adopted by the learner of a second

language are considerably the same as those by which a first language is acquired. (It does

not mean, however, the course or sequence of learning is the same in L1 and L2.) By

categorising the errors that learners made, researchers could learn a great deal about the SLA

process by inferring the strategies that second language learners were adopting. For learners

themselves, errors are 'indispensable,' since the making of errors can be regarded as a device

the learner uses in order to learn. (Selinker 1992: 150)

35

Selinker (1992) pointed out the two highly significant contributions that Corder made: "that

the errors of a learner, whether adult or child, are (a) not random, but are in fact

systematic, and are (b) not 'negative' or 'interfering' in any way with learning a TL but

are, on the contrary, a necessary positive factor, indicative of testing hypotheses.

(ibid:151) Such contribution in Corder (1967) began to provide a framework for the study of

adult learner language. Along with the influence of studies in L1 acquisition and concepts

provided by Contrastive Analysis (especially language transfer) and by the interlanguage

hypothesis (e.g. fossilization, backsliding, language transfer, communication and learning

strategies).

IV .1 The Significance of Learners' Errors

In his article "The significance of learners' errors", Corder introduced the following major

concepts

- the distinction between systematic and non-systematic errors.

Unsystematic errors occur in one’s native language; he calls these

"mistakes" and states that they are not significant to the process of

language learning. He uses the term "errors" for the systematic ones,

which occur in a second language.

- Errors are significant in three ways:

- to the teacher: they show a student’s progress

- to the researcher: they show how a language is acquired, what strategies

the learner uses.

- to the learner: he can learn from these errors.

-When a learner has made an error, the most efficient way to teach him the

36

correct form is not by simply giving it to him, but by letting him discover

it and test different hypotheses. (who suggested that the learner should

find the correct linguistic form by searching for it.

- Many errors are due to that the learner uses structures from his native

language. Corder claims that possession of one’s native language is

facilitative. Errors in this case are not inhibitory, but rather evidence of

one’s learning strategies.

IV.2Interlanguage

In the process of mastering a target language (TL), second language learners (L2) develop a

linguistic system that is self-contained and different from both the learner’s first language

(L1) and the TL (Nemser, 1971). This linguistic system has been variously called

interlanguage (IL) (Selinker, 1972), approximative system (Nemser, 1971), idiosyncratic

dialects or transitional dialects (Corder, 1971), etc

The idea of interlanguage is founded upon the assumption that an L2 learner, at any particular

moment in his learning sequence, is using a language system which is neither the L1, nor

the L2. It is a third language, with its own grammar, its own lexicon and so on. The rules

used by the learner are to be found in neither his own mother tongue, nor in the Target

Language. Thus, Nemser cites Serbo-Croat learners of English who will produce "What does

Pat doing now?", although this construction belongs neither in English, nor in Serbo-Croat.

The lesson to be learned, suggest applied linguists such as Nemser, Pitt Corder and Selinker,

is that we need to understand the learner's language as a system in its own right. This is

both possible, and interesting because learners tend to go through a series of interlanguages in

systematic and predictable ways.

37

How does the learner create his/her interlanguage? According to Selinker, there are a number

of basic processes - but, particularly in his later work, he insists upon learning strategies -

that is, activities that the learner adopts in order to help her acquire the language.

-Language transfer - the learner uses her own L1 as a resource. This used to be looked

upon as a mistake, but it is now recognised that all learners fall back on their mother

tongues, particularly in the early stages of language acquisition, and that this is a

necessary process

-Overgeneralization - the learner uses an L2 rule in situations in which a native speaker

would not. This can occur at a number of levels

- thus at the phonetic level, for example, learners of English, after having learnt to

master the English 'r', may take to placing it at the end of words, whereas in RP it

is not pronounced.

- at the grammatical level, a learner in the early stages may use nothing but the

present tense. Later, there may be extensive, non-native use of 'be - ing' forms of

the verb.

- at the lexical level - learners tend to use base terms and to stretch them - thus a

'goose' might be referred to as a 'chicken', or a teaspoon may be a 'little spoon'.

- at the level of discourse, lexical items and expressions may be used in

inappropriate social contexts. Someone learning French as an L2, and who has

been staying with a friendly family with teenagers may find themselves using the

'tu' form to strangers, members of the CRS and so on.

Simplification - both syntactic and semantic - the learner uses speech that resembles

that of very young children or of pidgins. This may be either because they cannot, in

fact, as yet produce the target forms, or because they do not feel sure of them.

Let us look more closely at transfer. It can have several different effects :

38

a) Negative transfer

-Until the morpheme studies of Dulay and Burt, it was often assumed that most

errors were derived from transfer of the L1 to the L2 - this was referred to as

interference. It is now no longer clear where errors derive from. As we have seen,

Dulay and Burt believe that the majority of errors are not based on transfer.

However, it is not always a simple matter to decide whether an error is L1

based or not.

-For example, when French speakers use 'have -en' forms in inappropriate

settings, is it because of overgeneralization, a developmental error, or an

interference error based on the Passé Composé?

-Indeed, it is not always easy to decide whether an error has occurred at all. Take

again the case of the 'have -en' forms. A French speaker learning English may use

the form in the correct setting, but actually derive it from the French Passé

Composé - he has done the right thing, but for the wrong reasons. Has an error

actually occurred? How would we know?

-Consider this dialogue, derived from :

-A : I (look for) Bob. You (see?) him.

-B : Yes, I (see) him half an hour ago

-A French learner might produce

-A : I'm looking for Bob. You have seen him?

-B : Yes. I have seen him half an hour ago.

-If speakers of different mother tongues do, in fact, make different mistakes, and if

these mistakes do appear to be related to structures in the mother tongue, then it

would seem reasonable to speak of 'interference errors

39

-At the level of phonology, this certainly appears to be the case

-- there are typical accents, and it is comparatively easy to distinguish between the English

pronunciation of, say, a German L1 speaker, a French L1 speaker or a Japanese.

-However, even here, there appear to be rules that are target language specific - progress

through to full acquisition of the 'th' appears to follow a fairly regular pattern, which is

similar to that of an English child learning her L1.

-b) Positive transfer

-Not all effects of language transfer are negative - indeed, we may consider

that without some language transfer, there would be no second

language learning. We have seen that, in the cases of Genie and Chelsea,

it is very difficult to master a language after the age of 11 or 12 years of

age, unless one already has a mother-tongue to fall back on. It may be that

younger children are able to pick up an L2 without reference to their L1,

but for adolescents and adults, the mother tongue is a major resource for

language learning.

-Where languages are historically and linguistically related to each other,

the positive effects of transfer may be obvious. French-speaking learners of

English and English speaking learners of French quickly come to realise

that they share an enormous amount of vocabulary, for example - there are

far more 'Vrais Amis' than there are 'Faux amis', and it makes sense

to take advantage of this.

-For Japanese speakers learning Chinese, there is a great advantage when it

comes to studying the written language in the fact that the Japanese

ideographs are based upon the Chinese. This saves considerable time.

40

However, the Chomskian perspective has lead specialists in SLA to believe that there are

deeper levels at which the L1 may aid in language learning. If all languages are

fundamentally the same, then it makes a lot of sense to use the rules of the mother-tongue as

initial hypotheses about the rules of the L2. We will come back to this point in a later lecture,

when considering implicational hierarchies.

We must conclude that - The teacher who tries to forbid his students from having

recourse to their L1 may be doing them a disservice, for L1 can, in fact be extremely

helpful.

c) Avoidance

-Where certain structures are very different from L1, students may simply

avoid using them. Schachter (1974) found that Chinese and Japanese

learners of L2 English made less errors in the use of relative clauses than

did Persian or Arabic learners - but this was because they tried to use

them less often. This is because Persian and Arabic relative clauses are

structured in a similar way to English ones, while the two Oriental

languages treat them in a very different way.

It is difficult to know when a student is using avoidance as a strategy - he must show some

evidence that he knows of the structure that he is avoiding, and it must also be so that a

normal speaker of the target language would have used the structure in that situation.

Kellerman distinguishes 3 types of avoidance :

-1. Learner can anticipate that there is a problem, and has some idea of

what the correct form is like.

-2. Learner knows the target form well, but believes that it would be too

difficult to use in the circumstances in which he finds himself - free-

flowing conversation, for example.

41

-3. Learner knows how to use the target form, but will not do so because it

breaks a personal rule of behaviour - ready use of 'tu' form by person

coming from a culture where formality is highly valued.

d) Overuse

-This may be a concomitant of avoidance. Students will use the forms that

they know rather than try out the ones that they are not sure of. It may also

reflect cultural differences - thus Olshtain (1983) found that American

college students, learning Hebrew in Israel, were much more likely to use

direct expressions of apology than were native speakers. This also seems

to be true of English speakers of French.

How do teachers actually treat errors? In fact, there is considerable variation from one teacher

to another, and also the treatment of error by any one teacher may vary from one moment to

the next.

-Studies of what teachers do have shown that very often they are

inconsistent. Also, some errors are more likely to be treated than others -

discourse, content and lexical errors receive more attention than

phonological or grammatical errors - and here there is variation between

native and non-native-speaker teachers. Many errors are not treated at

all. Further, the more a particular kind of error is made, the less likely

the teacher is to treat it. Moreover, teachers sometimes correct errors

that have not taken place.

-Another question is 'Who does the repairing?'. In natural settings, there is

a preference for self-initiated and self-completed repair. However, in the

classroom, it is the teacher who initiates repair - at least during the

language-centred phase - while he expects the student or one of his peers to

produce the correct form.

42

-Error treatment seems to have little immediate effect upon student

production - thus the teacher may correct an error made by student A to

have student B make exactly the same error five minutes later - and hear

student A do it again before the end of the lesson!

Some experts - Krashen among them - have deduced that this suggests that correction is a

pointless exercise. However, we should be aware that there are no studies as yet of the long-

term effects of error correction.

What about students' attitudes to error correction? In the main they say that they want

to be corrected, both in the classroom, and in conversation with native speakers.

However, when they are taken at their word, they feel uncomfortable with the

resulting style of discourse.

-Our recommendations for action can only be very tentative, and lack

empirical backing. However, it would appear that the following rules are

accepted by most members of the profession now - which does not mean

that they are right!

-1. Teachers should respect student errors - they are a part of the

learning process. Respecting does not mean taking no notice of them, but it

does mean that they are not to be treated as necessarily being evidence of

stupidity, idleness or evil intent on the part of the learner.

-2. Only treat those errors that students are capable of correcting,

according to the state of their interlanguage at the time of the error. Written

scripts should not be returned with simply everything underlined in red ink.

-3. Self-repair is preferable to other-repair, as the student feels better

about it. Being corrected by the teacher, or by other students, may be

humiliating.

43

-4. Teachers need to develop strategies for overcoming avoidance. The

student needs to be put in a situation where he or she is forced to use the

unassimilated structure and to think about the problems that this poses.

However, this needs to be treated as a process of discovery rather than as a

minefield.

Most important, remember that the students errors are a precious resource for the teacher,

which inform her about the state of her pupils' interlanguage. This is why it so important to

avoid negative marking, where the student simply learns that if he makes an error he will

lose points.

44

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