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1. INTRODUCTION
Recent years have seen at least forty studies of speech by native speakers (NSs)
addressing non-native speakers (NNSs) of the language of communication (for
review, see Long 1980, 1981a).2 Most researchers report finding the NSs using a
reduced, or 'simplified' variety of their language, commonly observed features of
which include shorter utterances, lower syntactic complexity, and avoidance of
low frequency lexical items and idiomatic expressions (see, e.g. Arthur et al. 1980;
Freed 1978; Gaies 1977; Henzl 1979). Several of the modifications of NS-NS
norms reflect adaptations made by adults talking to young children, although the
functions of caretaker speech often differ from those of speech to foreigners
(Freed 1978).
Speech to non-native speakers (foreigner talk) is sometimes also ungrammatical, as when obligatory functors, such as articles, copula, or other inflectional
morphology are deleted (Ferguson 1975; Meisel 1977). Unlike the earlier kinds of
modifications, however, use of this 'broken' form of a language is restricted,
seeming to occur only when two or more of the following conditions are met: (1)
the non-native speaker has very low or no proficiency in the language of communication; (2) the native speaker is, or thinks s/he is, of higher status than the
non-native speaker; (3) the native speaker has considerable prior foreigner talk
experience, but of a very limited kind; and (4) the conversation occurs
spontaneously, i.e. not as part of a laboratory study (Long 198 lc).
The considerable interest in research on speech modified for non-native
speakers has largely been due to claims that linguistic input which is understood
by the learner, or 'intake' (Corder 1967), is the primary data for second language
acquisition (SLA) (see, e.g. Hatch 1979; Krashen 1980; Larsen-Freeman 1979).
It is widely assumed (although yet to be shown empirically) that at least some of
the speech modifications referred to above are what serve to make input comprehensible. Recent research on NS-NNS conversation, however, suggests that
while understanding may indeed be facilitated by encoding in shorter, syntactically less complex utterances, speech modifications alone are rarely sufficient.
Native speakers also make a lot of adjustments to the interactional structure of
Applied Linguistics, Vol. 4, No. 2.
MICHAEL H. LONG
127
conversation, and it is modifications of the latter sort that are greater, more consistently observed, and probably more important for providing comprehensible
input. Since the input/interaction distinction (Long 1980) is a fairly recent one, a
brief clarification of the terms is in order.
2. MODIFIED INPUT AND MODIFIED INTERACTION
The literature on both first and second language acquisition (SLA) often conflates
two related but distinguishable phenomena: input to, and interaction with a
language acquirer. Input refers to the linguistic forms (morphemes, words, utterances)the streams of speech in the airdirected at the non-native speaker.
Thus, in terms of input, we may wish to describe (1) and (2):
1 What's the boy's name?
2 The boy, what's his name?
as two utterances with a mean length of 5.5 words (or 4.5, depending on how we
are scoring contracted forms), a mean syntactic complexity score of 1 (neither
contains more than one S-node), and with (between them) two instances each of
three grammatical morphemes, article, copula, and possessive, two verbs marked
temporally for present, none for non-present, and so on. Suppose, however, that
(1) and (2) occurred sequentially in NS-NNS conversation, as in (3):
128
Um?
When did you finish?
Ten clock
Ten o'clock?
Yeah
When did you finish?
Ten
(4) shows the type of exchange typical of some observational studies of foreigner
talk, e.g. that between native speaker factory foremen and migrant workers. The
native speaker uses an uninverted Wh question lacking do-support or tense
marking. The question is understood first time, however, probably because of its
routine nature, and the worker's reply closes what is, in interactional terms, a
normal two-part exchange, as shown by the NSNS equivalent in (6). The input
to the non-native speaker in (4) is modified,3 that is, but the interactional structure
of the conversation is not. (5) shows just the opposite, and is, incidentally, typical
of NS-NNS conversational data from the quasi-experimental laboratory studies.
After the native speaker's initial question fails, s/he uses an exact self-repetition,
which succeeds in eliciting an appropriate response from the non-native speaker.
The response is sufficiently ambiguous, however, to make the native speaker
employ a confirmation check (Ten o'clock?), which serves to establish that the
non-native speaker's reply had in fact been correctly heard. The six-turn exchange
involves several modifications of the interactional structure of (6), but not of the
input
Thus far, the two constructs, input and interaction, have been posited on the
basis of hypothetical examples and isolated fragments of data. There follows a
brief summary report of one part of a larger study whose findings provide
quantified empirical support for the distinction.
3. AN EMPIRICAL STUDY OF NS-NNS CONVERSATION: INPUT AND INTERACTION4
Method
Controlling for sex and prior foreigner talk experience, 48 adult native speakers
and 16 adult non-native speakers from a variety of first language backgrounds
were randomly assigned to form 32 dyads, 16 NS-NS and 16 NS-NNS, in a
matched-pairs design. Each dyad performed the same six tasks in the same order.
These were: (1) informal conversation, (2) vicarious narrative, (3) giving instructions for two communication games, (4) playing the first game, (5) playing the
second game, and (6) discussing the supposed purpose of the research. About 25
minutes of conversation by each dyad were transcribed for analysis. In testing one
of the larger study's three main research questions, NS-NS and NS-NNS con-
NS
NNS
NS
NNS
NS
NNS
NS
NS
129
MICHAEL H. LONG
NS-NS
Redefined
1^
n
2224
2224
8.36
1.51
7.60
1.42
2369
2369
.71
.65
426.68
3886.91
313 76
4192.96
T=20
T=28
T = 4.5
X= 6
X= 3
16
16
8
8
8
<.OO5
<.025 (n.s.)
>.025 (n.s.)
= .965(n.s)
= .363(n.s.)
Table 2: Numbers and proportions of verbs and copulas on task 1 (data from
Long 1980)
Verbs
NS-NS
(n=16)
NS-NNS
(n=16)
Total
Copulas
89
47.59
98
52.41
187
100
61
37.42
102
62.58
163
100
Non-present
Total
245
264
68.06
79.76
115
67
31.94
20.24
360
331
100
100
Results
Tables 1, 2, and 3 show values across all six tasks for six features of input in
NS-NS and NS-NNS conversation. The statistical significance of differences
between the two corpora was calculated using Wilcoxon's matched-pairs signedranks test (variables 1-3), the sign test (variable 4a and b), and the chi-square test
(variables 5 and 6).
It can be seen that differences on only two of the six input variables attained
significance at the required level (oc = .005)*. In input to NNSs, the average length
of T-units6 was shorter (T = 20, p<.005), and the proportion of verbs marked
temporally for present higher (x2 = 11.58, df = 1, p<.001). Differences between
the two corpora on the other four input variables<lower) syntactic complexity
of T-units, (lower) type-token ratio,7 lexical frequencies of nouns and verbs, and
130
449
728
20.19
29.49
2
78.24
68.00
1740
1679
35
62
Total
1.57
2.51
2224
2469
100
100
= 62.12,df=2,p<.001
Wh
66
177
14.70
24.30
214
313
Umn verted
47.66
43.00
137
202
30.51
27.75
Total
Tag
32
36
7.13
4.95
449
728
100
100
16.77,df=3,p<.OOI
1 Conversational frames
2 Confirmation checks
3 Comprehension checks
4 Clarification requests
5 Self-repetitions
6 Other-repetitions
7 Expansions
8 17 combined
NS-NNS (n = 16)
510.59
23.00
24.51
11.00
35.81
40.00
0
644.92
85.10
3.83
4.09
1.83
5.97
6.67
0
107.49
485.97
138.54
108.90
62.09
251.14
90.55
34.95
1171.13
81.00
22.92
18.15
10.35
41.06
15.09
5.80
195.19
16
16
15
14
16
14
10
16
71
0
5
0
0
11
0
5
P
>.025 (n.s.)
<.005
<.005
<.005
<.005
<.005
<.005
<005
It will be seen that differences on nine out of ten interaction variables attained
significance at the .005 level or beyond. In the interactional structure of NS-NNS
conversation, the relative frequencies of questions, statements, and imperatives in
T-units differed (x2 = 62.12, df = 2, p<.001), as did the frequencies of questiontypes in T-units (x2 = 16.77, df = 3, p<.001). With non-native interlocutors, NSs
used a non-significantly lower number of conversational frames {Now, Well, So,
etc.) (T = 71, p<.025), but more confirmation checks ( T = 16, p<.005), more
comprehension checks (T = 5, p<.005), more clarification requests (T = O,
p<.005), more self-repetitions (T = 0, p<.005), more other-repetitions (T = 11,
NS-NS ( n = 16)
NS-NNS (n = 16)
Imperatives
Statements
MICHAEL H. LONG
131
p<.005), more expansions (T = 5, p<.005), and a higher total number of the last
seven devices (T = 5, p<.005).
It will be recalled that one of the main goals of research on NS-NNS conversation, as on linguistic input to non-native speakers, is to determine how input is
made comprehensible to the acquirer, and thereby (presumably) usable for SLA.
Having established the existence of modifications to the interactional structure of
NS-NNS conversation, some attention will now be paid to the role they play in
providing comprehensible input
Native speakers appear to modify interaction to two main ends: (1) to avoid
conversational trouble, and (2) to repair the discourse when trouble occurs.
Modifications designed to achieve the first purpose reflect prior, long-range
Discussion
As shown by a review of studies of native speaker speech to non-native speakers
conducted prior to the research reported here (Long 1980), previous findings on
input modifications to non-native speakers have been inconsistent both within and
across studies. Further, NS-NS baseline data, when used at all, have usually been
derived from encounters of a kind different from those which provided the
NS-NNS data. For example, some studies have compared speech to native
speakers and non-native speakers of different ages (children and adults), different
numbers (individuals and classes of students), different degrees of familiarity with
the speaker (friends and strangers), in different roles (teacher, student, friend, conversational partner, research subject), in different settings (office and classroom),
engaged on different tasks (language instruction, informal conversation, discussion), and with different understandings of the purpose of the encounter
(surreptitious and obtrusive recording). Several studies have been confounded by
lack of control over two or more of these variables, most of which are widely
recognized as sociolinguistic parameters along which speech may vary (Hymes
1972; Wolfson 1976), and any one of which could be responsible for differences
observed between two corpora, operating independently from or in conjunction
with the NS/NNS difference in the interlocutor that is the supposed object of
inquiry. In other words, the variable findings and the use of non-comparable data
within and across studies may not be unrelated.
Results from a controlled laboratory study like this one must obviously also be
treated cautiously. As is so often the case, however, some loss in external validity
might be considered a small price for the more fundamentally important internal
validity, lack of which, for many researchers, would preclude generalizations
altogether. In this light, therefore, the results presented above might be interpreted as consistent with the following three hypotheses:
1 Native speakers modify not just their speech to non-native speakers, but also
various features of the interactional structure of their conversations with them.
2 Modifications of the interactional structure are greater and more consistently
observed, particularly when NS-NS and NS-NNS data are sampled from
comparable speech events.
3 Modified interaction is observed even in cases where some kinds of input
modification usually considered 'basic' (e.g. reduced syntactic complexity) are
absent.
132
Tactics (T)
(for repairing trouble)
Relinquish topic-control
Select salient topics
Treat topics briefly
Make new topics salient
Check NNS's comprehension
4.1 Strategies
SI .'Relinquish topic-control
Assuming there is no pressure upon them to do otherwise (e.g. from the nature of
the task), native speakers will often attempt to pass control of current and subsequent conversational topics to the non-native speaker. Occasionally, they do
this explicitly, as in (7):
7 NS: OK Now you know the question that's coming What have you what do
you think of the United States or the American people or whatever it is
that interests you or you noticed?
Implicit willingness to talk about whatever the non-native speaker feels comfortable with is pervasive, however, and is what often seems to lie behind the so-called
'or-choice' question (Hatch 1978), of which both (7) and (8) are examples:
8 NS: Are the islands the samedo they look same? . . as Japan as . the country
in Japan? Are the houses, for example, are the houses the same on
Osima.. as say in the country . . Sapporo or (Akairo)? Do the people talk
the same or do the houses look the same? . . . . Or are the trees the same?
As Hatch points out, or-choice questions offer the non-native speaker a series of
potential topics to talk about, often also serving to suggest possible answers to the
'questions' themselves. Of course, native speakers use or-choice questions, too
(and, at times, all the devices discussed here), when talking to other native
planning by the native speaker. They tend to govern the way s/he conducts entire
conversations, and primarily concern what is talked about (conversational topic),
but affect how topics are treated, too. I call these conversational strategies.
Modifications motivated by the need to fix up the conversation when trouble
arises seem to be spontaneous solutions to immediate, short-term problems. They
affect primarily how topics are talked about I call these tactics for discourse
repair. A subset of the modifications of each type, strategies and tactics, is used
both to avoid and repair trouble, i.e. as both strategy and tactic, but most
modifications in this group tend to serve one or the other function more often.
Some examples of devices used as strategies and/or tactics are shown in the table
below.
MICHAEL H. LONG
133
134
MICHAEL H. LONG
135
Using a slow pace (ST1), and especially stressing key words (ST2) and pausing
for half a beat or a beat before or after them (ST3) also boost saliency:
14 NS : How long have you been at UCLA?
15 NS : Aha What year are you?. What year in college are you in?
The last three devices are also used, and more frequently so, as tactics, however
(as indicated by 'ST).
Perhaps the most noticeable effort to make topics salient is the use of questions
to encode topic-nominating moves, as in (7), (8), (10) and (16):
16 NS : So you g- are you going to con- continue at UCLA? Or are you going
to change schools?
17 NS
: Do you feel that- s- so- some people say that Los Angeles is a daytime city
NNS : Yeah
NS : and San Francisco is a night-time city?, (mean) Los Angeles people
do things that have to do with the oh with the beach and with the
sunshine . and in in San Francisco people tend to go out at night to uh
to oh you know the the jazz places or or out to dinner or whatever .
N' they also say that San Francisco's more spp/i/sticated than Los
Angeles . Did you find that? . . People dress up more in San
Francisco?
NNS : Yeah
NS : Yeah . . . How long will you be here?
In (17), the native speaker's series of structuring and reacting moves, mostly in the
form of statements, with pauses at what Sachs, Schegloff, and Jefferson (1974)
call 'transition-relevance points', fails to bring the non-native speaker into the conversation. Her two uses of Yeah in fact sound on the tape like polite backchanneling noises rather than expressions of agreement or understanding.
Compare this excerpt with the successful sequence of quick-fire questions in (10).
One final device used to make new topics salient is what I call 'decomposition'.
This serves both as a strategy and a tactic (ST4), more often the latter. It is,
however, used to avoid trouble, especially by native speakers with considerable
prior foreigner talk experience. Consider examples (18) and (19), which illustrate,
respectively, the use of decomposition as strategy and tactic.
The self-correction, 'So you g-', in (16) seems to be motivated by the wish to
include an extra question marker, subject-auxiliary inversion. A previous study
(Long 1981b) found a remarkable 96 per cent of 50 topic-initiating moves
examined were encoded as questions in NS-NNS conversation, as compared to
62 per cent of 50 such moves in NS-NS conversation (x2 = 17.54, df = 1,
p<.0005). The preference for questions probably has several motivations, some of
which concern the relatively simpler responding tasks they set non-native speakers
(see Long 1981b for discussion). In terms of saliency, however, the linguistic
markers associated with the interrogative form (subject-auxiliary inversion, Wh
morphology, rising intonation, or combinations of these) may help the native
speaker to signal and the non-native speaker to recognize an approaching
speaking turn for the non-native speaker. Turn-allocation devices more common
in NS-NS conversation certainly do not seem to work so well:
136
18 NS
NNS
NS
19 NS
MICHAEL H. LONG
137
21 NS
138
It is widely assumed, and probably rightly, that samples of a SL heard but not
understood by a would-be acquirer of that language serve no useful purpose in the
SLA process. Only comprehensible input will do. The question is, how does that
input become comprehensible to the learner? Modifications of the input itself
almost certainly help. They are not, however, very consistendy observed in studies
MICHAEL H. LONG
139
NOTES
1
This is a slightly amended version of a paper appearing (in German translation) in a special
issue on second language acquisition of Zeitschrift Jur Literaturwissenschafl und Linguistik, Vol.
45, 1981. The author gratefully acknowledges the publishers of LiLi and the editors of Vol. 45,
W. Klein and i. Weissenborn, for permission to produce the English version.
2
As used throughout this paper, the terms 'native speaker' (NS) and 'non-native speaker' (NNS)
refer to speakers for whom the language of communication is/is not their mother tongue. In other
words, as used here, and also in the studies to be reported upon, the native/non-native distinction is
an absolute one. However, many of the linguistic and conversational resources attributed to NSs
addressing non-natives are undoubtedly available to other classes of speakers, too. Thus, some of
the NS speech modifications to be described are also well-attested characteristics of caretaker
speech and of speech to the mentally retarded. They may also turn out to appear in language
addressed to native speakers of a non-standard variety of that language, or, indeed, in language
addressed to any listener (perceived as) less in control of the variety of language being used, whether
or not he or she is a NS. If the ability to adapt linguistic performance to an interlocutor is a universal (non-language-specific) part of linguistic competence, non-native speakers should also be able
to modify their interlanguage when using it to address other NNSs who are of lower proficiency.
Some or all of the linguistic and conversational resources, that is, may well be available to speakers
when differences between their own and their interlocutors' abilities are not absolute, but relative.
1
The example of modified input given in (4) involves deletion of did, and hence, ungrammatical
speech. 'Modified' should not be equated with 'ungrammatical', however. Most modifications do not
result in ungrammatically, taking the form of, e.g. lower syntactic complexity in a corpus of speech
addressed to NNSs compared with that in a corpus of NS-NS talk. Modification within the bounds
of grammaticality is measured in terms of statistically significant differences in the relative frequencies of some linguistic features), e.g. S-nodes per T-unit, between the two corpora.
4
The research reported here was part of a larger study conducted for the author's PhD dissertation at UCLA (Long 1980). For their constructive criticism and support throughout, I would like to
acknowledge the debt I owe the members of my committee: Professors Roger Andersen, Russell
Campbell, Susan Curtiss, Gerry Mahoney, John Schumann, and Noreen Webb, and especially to its
chairperson, Evelyn Hatch. None has seen this paper, however, or is responsible for any errors of
fact or interpretation it may contain.
5
The unusually high alpha level of .005 was used in order to minimize the likelihood of chance
findings of significance when so many variables and hypotheses (30 in the full study) were examined
on the same data set This procedure, of course, also increases the likelihood of a type-2 error, i.e. of
not finding significant differences when differences in fact obtain.
that seek them, and they are certainly not the only means. Modifications in the
interactional structure of conversation are greater, more consistently found, and
probably more important. They even seem to occur when linguistic input is nonsignificantly different in most respects from that in NS-NS conversation.
The modifications of interaction that native speakers make are quite numerous,
diverse, and apparently prone to vary with certain characteristics of the speaker,
such as his or her prior foreigner talk experience. Certain patterns in their use can
be observed, however. Some, such as selecting salient topics and treating them
briefly, appear to be used only as strategies, to avoid conversational trouble.
Others, such as acceptance of unintentional topic-switches and clarification
requests, serve as tactics, to repair the discourse when trouble occurs. Further
research is needed to establish the validity of this preliminary classification, and
then to test how variation in the extent and nature of linguistic input to the learner,
and in the conversational style which succeeds or fails in making it comprehensible, affect the course, rate, and ultimate attainment of the SLA process.
(Received May 1982)
140
' A T-unit (Hunt 1970) is defined as 'a main clause plus all subordinate clauses and nonclausal
structures attached to or embedded in it'.
1
Type-token ratio, a measure of lexical diversity, was calculated by dividing the total number of
different words (types) by the total number of words (tokens).
REFERENCES
Arthur, B., R. Weiner, M. Culver, Y. J. Lee and D. Thomas. 1980. 'The register of
impersonal discourse to foreigners: verbal adjustments to foreign accent' in D. LarsenFreeman (ed.). Discourse Analysis in Second Language Acquisition. Rowley, Mass.:
Newbury House.
Corder, S. P. 1967. 'The significance of learners' errors'. International Review of Applied
MICHAEL H. LONG
141