Acquisition Of Irish: A Case Study

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The Acquisition of Irish : A Case Study Multilingual Matters (Series) ; 72 Owens, Máire. Multilingual Matters 1853591149 9781853591143 9780585146997 English Irish language--Acquisition--Case studies, Second language acquisition--Case studies. 1992 PB1214.O93 1991eb 491.6/28/007 Irish language--Acquisition--Case studies, Second language acquisition--Case studies.

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The Acquisition of Irish A Case Study

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Multilingual Matters Age in Second Language Acquisition BIRGIT HARLEY Aspects of Bingualism in Wales COLIN BAKER Bilingual Children: From Birth to Teens GEORGE SAUNDERS Bilingualism: Basic Principles HUGO BAETENS BEARDSMORE Individualizing the Assesment of Language Abilities JOHN H. A. L. de JONG and D. G. STEVENSON (eds) Key Issues in Bilingualism and Bilingual Education COLIN BAKER Language Acquisition: The Age Factor D. M. SINGLETON Language Acquisition of a Bilingual Child ALVINO FANTINI Modelling and Assessing Second Language Acquisition K. HYLTENSTAM and M. PIENEMANN Our Own Language GABRIELLE MAGUIRE Raising Children Bilingually: The Pre-School Years LENORE ARNBERG Reversing Language Shift JOSHUA A. FISHMAN The Role of the First Language in Second Language Learning HAKAN RINGBOM Second Language Acquisition - Foreign Language Learning B. VanPATTEN and J. F. LEE (eds) Please contact us for the latest book information: Multilingual Matters Ltd, Bank House, 8a Hill Road Clevedon, Avon BS21 7HH England

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MULTILINGUAL MATTERS 72 Series Editor: Derrick Sharp

The Acquisition of Irish: A Case Study Máire Owens

MULTILINGUAL MATTERS LTD Clevedon · Philadelphia · Adelaide

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Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Owens, Máire The Acquisition of Irish: A Case Study/Máire Owens p. cm. (Multilingual Matters: 72) Includes bibliographical references 1. Irish language - Acquisition - Case studies. 2. Second language acquisition Case studies. I. Title. II. Series: Multilingual Matters (Series): 72. PB1214.093 1991 491.6'28'007 dc20 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN 1-85359-114-9 (hbk) ISBN 1-85359-113-0 (pbk) Multilingual Matters Ltd UK: Frankfurt Lodge, Clevedon Hall, Victoria Road, Clevedon, Avon BS21 7SJ. USA: 1900 Frost Road, Suite 101, Bristol, PA 19007, USA. Australia: P.O. Box 6025, 83 Gilles Street, Adelaide, SA 5000, Australia. Copyright © 1992 Máire Owens All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced in any form or by any means without permission in writing from the publisher. Typeset by Photographics, Honiton, Devon. Printed and bound in Great Britain by WBC Print, Bridgend.

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Contents Foreword Glossary 1. Introduction

vii ix 1 1

Genesis of Research

3

The Irish Language

6

Family Background and Circumstances

8

Exposure to L2

12

Eithne: Linguistic and Social Profile

13

Attitude and Motivation

17

Data Collection

21

Analysis of Data 2. Review of Research Background

23 24

Child Directed Speech

24

The Functional Perspective

25

Interlanguage

26

Statistical Analysis

27

Form and Function

29

Bilingual Education

31

Age and Second Language Acquisition

33

Affect

34

Semilingualism

35

Language Transfer and/or Interference

38

Acquisition of Irish

39

Teaching of Irish in Ireland 3. Facilitation of Acquisition

43 43

Input

46

Characteristics of CDS

48

Discourse Features

50

Fine-tuning

57

Scaffolding

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Page vi 4. The Verbal System

65 65

An Outline of the Verbal System in Irish

68

Eithne's Acquisition of Formal Tense Markers

74

Unmarked stem form

75

Stem + -idh

78

Stem + -ann

81

Progressive Aspect

81

Need for Progressive

86

Acquisition of Formal Markers of Progressive Separation of Function of Various Tense and Aspect Markers

101

Present TensePresent Habitual

109

Use of the Copula 5. Verb Related Elements

116 116

Development of Pronominal Reference

126

Prepositional Pronouns

129

Verbal Noun Complements

142

Negatives and Questions

144

Negatives

148

Questions 6. Complex Syntax and Text

163 163

Working from First Principles

164

Comparison of L1 and L2 Acquisition

168

Cohesion: Assembling the Sentence

168

Coordinate Clauses

176

Filling the Gap

176

Indirect Speech

176

Relative Clauses

180

Code-switching

184

Narrative Ability 7. Conclusion References Appendix: Extracts from Transcripts

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190 194 201

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Foreword The study described in this work was undertaken in the hope that it would provide some information about the process of the acquisition of Irish as a second language by a young child and go some way towards encouraging other parents and teachers whose task it is to promote the development of language at home and in school. While the analysis itself is limited to a few elements of the total system, the learning processes revealed by the child are significant both in uncovering the existence of considerable language learning resources in the untutored child that are available for the acquisition of a second language, and in indicating some of the strategies which she applied to the problem in hand. Her developing ability to use Irish for ordinary communication, amply illustrated in the transcripts, merits consideration by those who seek to improve both the methods and the end result of the teaching of Irish. Any task which stretches over a period of some years as this one has, relies on an extensive network of helpers and advisers, without whom it might never be started or would founder short of completion. My thanks go to all who have helped in any way. In particular: My interest in linguistics was developed and this work begun with financial assistance from the Bank of Ireland Endowment to the Centre for Language and Communication Studies, Trinity College, Dublin. Mr David Little published Eithne: A Study of Second Language Development as CLCS Occasional Paper No. 15 and kindly gave permission for the reuse of some of that material in this book. Dr David Singleton provided a constant supply of reading material and advice on demand and supervised in detail through innumerable drafts of the text. Problems which arose in transferring material from manuscript to type were solved for me by Dan Ma Cárthaigh and Breda McMahon. Knowingly and unwittingly, comments and helpful suggestions were supplied by many colleagues and friends, Máire and Liam Mac Mathúna especially. My sister Máiréad Ní Chinnéide read painstakingly through the transcripts to check for typographical errors.

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Finally and most importantly my family deserve credit. They all took a lively interest in the work; all three older children volunteered their services in recording material and Anthony helped in innumerable ways. Luíseach's contribution was mostly negative but hopefully she may benefit from the wisdom and experience acquired. Without Eithne there would have been nothing to write about; she rates an extra-special thank you! MÁIRE OWENS FEBRUARY 1990

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Glossary Abbreviations BSM Bilingual Syntax Measure CDS Child Directed Speech (see Chapter 3) FLA First Language Acquisition FTD Foreigner Talk Discourse HPDP Heidelberger Pidgin Deutsch Projekt IL Interlanguage LI, L2 First Language, Second Language SLA Second Language Acquisition SVO Subject Verb Object VSO Verb Subject Object ZISA Zweitspracherwerb italienischer und spanischer Arbeiter (Second language acquisition of Italian and Spanish workerssee Meisel, 1983)

Irish An Comhchoiste Réamhscolaíochta Teo The Joint Committee for Preschooling Bórd na Gaeilge The Irish Language Board Conradh na Gaeilge The Gaelic League Comhairleoir Adviser Gaeltacht District where Irish is the first language Institiúid Teangeolaiochta Eireann (ITE) The Linguistics Institute of Ireland Naíonra Preschool Nuachúrsaí New Courses Radio na Gaeltachta Irish-medium radio station Scoil Lánghaeilge Irish medium school Stiúrthóir Director Udarás na Gaeltachta The Gaeltacht Authority

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1 Introduction Genesis of Research This study of my daughter Eithne's acquisition of Irish as a second language began when professional and family interests coincided at the beginning of 1984. During an introductory course in Applied Linguistics, undertaken with the pragmatic aim of bringing myself up to date on recent developments in language teaching and improving my employment prospects, I had to select a subject for a major project. At the critical moment of decision, Eithne provided the inspiration. Her few words of Irish and more significantly her questions about words and usage indicated that I had at my disposal a data source equal to that provided by Adam, Eve and Sarah for Brown's (1973) pioneering study. Since one of the main emphases of the course I was following was on communicative approaches to language teaching and since I was particularly interested in the teaching of Irish, it seemed worthwhile to look at how 'natural' methods were fostering communicative ability in this one child. A preliminary study of the following months in Eithne's development has since been published (Owens, 1986); the period it covers is referred to at times as 1E and transcripts of material from this period are numbered 1E1-5. It became obvious that I was observing the initial stages of a process that was both fascinating and relentless but in the time then at my disposal, I could only give some preliminary indications as to the way in which the child was operating. Owens (1986) outlines some of the strategies employed by Eithne to manipulate the meagre amount of language in her control and traces the origins of a verbal system and of other aspects of the systematic building-up of the new language. I experienced considerable difficulty in finding a method of elicitation and having solved this problem, was further frustrated by Eithne's ability to communicate without providing me with the supply of 'developmental errors' that I desired. Inevitably, as I completed my project, Eithne continued to make progress and to produce more interesting samples when I could no longer take account of them, so I was happy to be able to continue the work as an M. Litt. thesis. Three years later I can look back at the evidence which has accumulated. I continue to wonder at the

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forces which induce a small child to concentrate immense effort on the mastery of a relatively insignificant portion of all that has to be learnt. I can now document her progress in some detail but much of it remains a mystery which defies explanation. Despite its fascination, documentation is a wearisome process. I have been encouraged to keep at it, because I think it provides a new perspective on language learning, of particular interest to teachers and parents in Ireland. In places the documentation is inadequate and the gaps detract from the analysis, for which I apologise as a linguist, but as a mother, I recorded what I could without upsetting family life overmuch. An outsider might have achieved a more comprehensive data collection but I hope that the insights provided by the mother-dimension compensate to some extent. In retrospect it would have helped to have started before I did and to have filled some of the gaps, but . . .! I have put together an account of the course of acquisition of Irish for one child. There are striking similarities between the patterns which emerged and those documented for learners of other second languages. These, in turn have been shown to have much in common with first language acquisition. Apart from some fragments (Mac Mathúna, 1979; Nic Fhionnlaoich, 1984; Hickey, 1985; McKenna & Wall, 1986) there is no information available about the acquisition of Irish as a first language. My work does not fill this gap, but it may offer some points of reference. (Work is currently in progress on a study of acquisition of Irish as a first language in I.T.E., Dublin.) McKenna & Wall (1986) made the not surprising discovery that 'acquisition Irish' is similar in many respects to other acquisition corpora. They suggest (McKenna & Wall, 1986: 77) that the implications of this finding: 'viz. that Irish is like all other languages are, far reaching and, if fully appreciated, must affect attitudes to the teaching of Irish in Ireland.' What is surprising is that anyone can seriously have doubted that Irish is like other languagesa vehicle for communication and thought of as an order as high as the intellect which uses it. The capacity of native speakers to acquire the language in childhood can equally not be questioned. What might more profitably be studied is how children are affected by being exposed to a minority language and how the ever-present majority language may constrain their learning of the minority language. This is of particular relevance when one considers the position of Irish as a core-element in the school curriculum from the infant class right through to the end of secondary school. It is vital to discover how

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much time should be devoted to language teaching for it to be effective and when and how that time could most advantageously be used. The present study shows that Irish as a second language, despite its minority position, like any other, can be acquired naturally by a small child. This will astound those who have struggled with the complexities of its grammar and declare themselves unable to speak a word after 11 or 12 years of tuition. I have been surprised myself by the attention paid by Eithne to those very features of the language which one singles out in classes for attention and by the fact that in her case, the results were considerably better. The conditions under which she operated are duplicable throughout the country. Her development was not hindered in any way; family communication patterns changed slightly in emphasis but the demands made were on human rather than financial resources. This study shows that the human capacity to acquire language is available for the acquisition of a second language even under conditions which are quite removed from the forces that compel a baby to learn to communicate. The Irish Language O Murchú (1985) tells the story of Irish in Ireland, its political and social history, its varieties, grammar, spelling and script. Irish is a Celtic language which has suffered the fate of all the other Celtic languages, being driven back by a superior political power into a marginal position on the fringes of Europe. The process began in Ireland when English settlers assumed importance in the sixteenth century and culminated in the nineteenth century when social pressures made the majority of the population turn to English as the only way forward. Whereas a language map of Ireland in about 1800 shows a mainly Irish speaking population with patches of English in an area around Dublin and in Mid-Ulster, the 1851 census figures indicate that the whole eastern part of the country, east of a line from Letterkenny to Limerick and north of a line from Limerick to Rosslare, was English speaking. Given the history of conquest, both social and linguistic, it is only to be expected that present attitudes to the language should be complex, defying simple assessment. Two languages exist in the country. Irish is recognised as the first official language of the state and spoken as a first language mainly by those who live on the western sea-board or Gaeltacht (= the area defined by the speaking of Irish) but also by a sizeable minority scattered through the remainder of the country. The most recent figures estimate between 30,000 and 50,000 people living in Gaeltacht

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areas. The minority in the rest of the country who declare themselves highly competent in Irish and committed to its use is estimated at about 10% of the population. Some of these have come from Gaeltacht areas, others have made a conscious choice to reverse the pattern of language shift. Mac Mathúna (1987) in his analysis of several recent surveys (Committee on Irish Language Attitudes Research (CLAR), 1975; O Riagáin & O Gliasain, 1984, Mac Gréil, 1977) points out that of those outside the Gaeltacht who regularly use Irish, 34% began to do so while at school. These surveys have consistently shown that at least 70% of the population support efforts to maintain and promote the language, primarily focussed on the education system and the Gaeltacht. Despite favourable attitudes towards Irish and considerable expenditure over the 70 years of independent government, English remains the main language of the majority of the population. Official policy has gradually shifted from an objective of 'restoration' to one of 'bilingualism' (Mac Mathúna, 1987). Public opinion also sees a bilingual situation as preferable to either of the monolingual alternatives. Both languages are compulsory school subjects right through the education system. All English speakers educated in the Republic have therefore had some exposure to Irish and while there are Irish speakers in remote areas who have little contact with English, it is doubtful if there is anyone who has not been exposed to that language in some way. One of the initial policies of independent Ireland was that of re-Gaelicisation, to be achieved through the education system. Public Notice No. 4, issued by the Ministry of Education of the Irish Provisional Government on 1st February 1922 decreed (Hannigan, 1984) '(1) The Irish Language shall be taught or used as a medium of instruction, for not less than one full hour each day in all national schools where there is a teacher competent to teach it.' In particular the work of the infant school was to be conducted through the medium of Irish. Since a high standard in Irish was required for university entrance, for teacher training and for jobs in the Civil Service and other organisations, Irish gained a certain measure of prestige and a considerable number of schools became 'all-Irish' schools, that is they used Irish as the sole or predominant medium of instruction. Opposition to 'compulsory Irish' however also grew and in the 1960s, this, coupled with a major report (McNamara, 1966) which found (findings later disputed) that pupils educated through the medium of a second language were backward in basic skills, led to a sharp decrease in the number of 'all-Irish' schools. The following years, years in which a new primary curriculum was introduced with a new audio-visual approach to teaching Irish, brought what was widely perceived

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as a huge drop in standards in Irish. Parents, who had in their time protested loudly about the demands of the compulsory Primary Certificate with its emphasis on grammar and múnlaí cainte (the learning of phrases and idioms), observed children leaving school with 'no' Irish, neither knowledge of grammar nor conversational competence. Teachers maintained that the problem lay in the attitude of society to the language, that there was no opportunity for children to use their school-acquired competence outside that environment. The last 15 years have seen an upsurge in demand for new all-Irish schools. This swing is most evident in urban areas and among the middle classes but there is conspicuous growth in some schools which have been established in working-class suburbs of Dublin where parents have demanded all-Irish schooling for their children and classes for themselves as well. My own contacts with other parents reveal the following reasons for sending children to these new schools: (1) dissatisfaction with the level of competence in Irish achieved in ordinary schools (2) realisation that there is a danger of the Irish language being lost and with it access to a national culture (3) the filtering through of results of studies that show that a language used as a medium of instruction is not a problem in itself, that children in immersion situations learn easily and quickly. To these must be added the non-linguistic reason that many parents are looking for an alternative to the rigidly churchcontrolled network of schools and are attracted by the possibility of becoming more involved in their children's education than is normally permitted. In many cases it is undoubtedly a combination of motives that leads parents to select all-Irish schools. Provision of new schools is unfortunately most practical in urban areas which have the population to allow a vocal minority to go its own way, and there are indications that due to financial restraints and the expected fall in the school population in the next few years, the rise in numbers of such schools will not proceed quite so rapidly in the future. It remains to be seen whether or not the efforts of these and other bodies concerned with promoting the language will be successful in stemming the tide of English which threatens on all sides. In the meantime, it is against this complex background that Eithne's efforts to learn the language must be viewed. I feel that my study details a measure of linguistic achievement in Irish beyond what many would believe possible given the constraints of the language's position and the circumstances under which the learning

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process occurred. Most of the other studies of the acquisition of a second language by children describe an immersion situation where mastery of the new language was a matter of survival in a new country (e.g. Hatch, 1978). Eithne, in contrast, was exposed for limited periods to mainly non-native speakers. Some of her contacts followed a policy of 'une personne, une langue' (Ronjat, 1913), others code-switched according to situation or context, and she was aware of everyone's ability to speak English. Parents who want to raise their children bilingually have, for the most part, since Ronjat, been advised to be consequentto follow a policy! This proved to be impossible in our particular circumstances although I attempted it, trying to define language use according to situation or context, Irish being used mainly in school and in church. But in school the other children speak English among themselves, most of the parents speak only English and the teachers often have to translate or speak English with them. At Mass, although the service we attend is conducted in Irish, the sermon is often preached in English and the notices (possibly the only part of the ceremony which is accessible to a child) are generally read in English. While speaking Irish, most people she knows will have recourse to English words and labels to supplement their vocabulary. For many, using Irish is an academic exercise, willingly undertaken, but one which complicates life rather than being a necessity. It is impossible to know to what extent Eithne was aware of these factors but they must be recognised and taken into consideration. Family Background and Circumstances Eithne is the youngest of three children, growing up in a middleclass family in urban Ireland. She was born in June 1979 and the study is concerned with the period from 4 years 8 months to 5 years 9 months (henceforth 4:8, 5:9). Both her parents come from English-speaking families, but from families where for varying reasons there was considerable support for learning and speaking Irish. Her father's family maintained close links with an area where Irish would have been commonly spoken two generations back and he was educated in a system where mastery of Irish was highly valued and intensively taught from the beginning of national school. As a result, he speaks fluent Irish and is concerned that his children should do likewise. My background is dissimilar, in that I grew up in Northern Ireland. While one of my grandparents came from an area where some Irish was still spoken (Co. Derry in the late nineteenth century), neither of my

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parents had more than a few words of Irish and Irish was less highly rated in the school system, being introduced as a 'foreign' language in secondary school. There were, however, outside cultural influences which encouraged many of us as teenagers to spend summer holidays in the Gaeltacht and participate in Irish-speaking activities during the remaining months of the year. I later took Irish as a degree subject in University College, Dublin. Despite years of studying and speaking Irish, I have never quite thrown off a sense of inadequacy, always aware of grammatical inaccuracy, of rules not adhered to and of intrusion from English. This contrasts sharply with my perception of my ability in German, in which I feel as fluent as a native speaker. I am fairly sure that the difference is one of perception rather than of ability. I attribute it in part to school teaching but feel it also reflects one of the major problems facing speakers of Irish today. For centuries Irish was the language of an impoverished peasant people whose main concern was survival. Rich though the folk tradition may be and fascinating the glimpses of times past to be gleaned from such stories and accounts as are extant, these provide an unreal model for students in the second half of the twentieth century. Contemporary texts are few in number and cannot compete with the vast flow of material in the English language. While I try to read, listen to radio and watch such programmes as are televised in Irish, the supply is limited and time scarce. It is a problem of which many parents become aware when they attempt to introduce some Irish into daily family life. Nothing in their years of study of Irish at school has prepared them for the simple transactions required in saying good-bye to a child at the Naionra (Irish-medium pre-school group) or how to take part in a simple game, and almost any conversation topic will entail reference to English in some way. Both my husband and I speak a third language fluently, from having lived abroad, and can make our way in several others. We have contacts and connexions with many countries and encourage our children to be aware of the world outside Ireland and to look forward to discovering it for themselves. All three have visited many European countries, enjoy seeing new places and have made friends with children with whom they shared no language. Given our interests, we never intended to become a totally Irish-speaking household. We value our command of English and I certainly feel happier with it as the first language of the home. It is the language of which I am a native speaker and I enjoy its rich resources as well as finding it useful.

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Exposure to L2 Eithne was first exposed to Irish in a systematic way, when she began to attend a Naíonra, aged 3:2. A Naíonra is a pre-school group with the dual aim of helping children develop socially and cognitively while exposing them to the Irish language in an Irish-speaking environment. For those children who already speak Irish, the aim is to develop that language and provide extended opportunities for using it. Naíonraí vary considerably, being set up by individuals or groups in varying circumstances, but they share a basic language policythe Stiúrthóir (director) uses Irish at all times with the children, organizing and directing their play, introducing equipment, conducting activities, e.g. games, rhymes, songs, and encouraging the children to interact in that language. Depending on the age or the aptitude of the children, the Stiúrthóir may suggest model phrases or sentences for the children to use but they are not 'forced' to use Irish; requests or comments in English will be responded to as required (in Irish). Groups generally have no more than ten children to one adult, with often an additional adult helper; parents are also roped in for some activities and outings. In many cases the Stiúrthóir undertakes to assist the parents in keeping up with the children's learning of Irish. Naíonraí have their own voluntary association, Na Naíonraí Gaelacha (NNG), which promotes contact and training throughout the country and with similar organizations abroad. With Bord na Gaeilge (The Board for Promotion of Irish), NNG was responsible for setting up An Comhchoiste Reamhscolaiochta Teo (The Joint Pre-school Committee) in 1978. The latter is made up of an advisory committee, drawn from Stiúrthóirí (directors), representatives of Bord na Gaeilge and experts in pre-school education and an administrative office which provides an insurance scheme for the Naíonraí, a body of Comhairleoirí (advisers), who visit each Naíonra at least once a term, a compulsory training course and other training opportunities. These measures ensure that Naíonraí maintain basic standards and that help is always available for Stiúrthóirí who experience difficulties. In the Gaeltacht, Udarás na Gaeltachta (The Gaeltacht Authority) gives financial assistance to Naíonraí but in the rest of the country they are self-financing; most levy a charge per child per week, but some are assisted by fund-raising committees or institutions with which they are associated, e.g. schools or branches of Conradh na Gaeilge (The Gaelic League). The Naíonra attended by Eithne from September 1982 to June 1984, was in a house near our own, conducted by a Stiúrthóir who, though not

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a native speaker, speaks Irish by choice with her own family. The other children were from the immediate neighbourhood and in many ways it was for Eithne an extension of familiar play situations. During the two years that she spent in the Naíonra, only one child, the daughter of the Stiúrthóir, was a fluent Irish speaker; the rest were similar to Eithne in background, some perhaps having less support at home if their parents had little Irish or were reluctant to speak it. Approximately half the children went on to an all-Irish national school. During the school term, the Naíonra functioned for two and a half hours daily from Monday to Thursday. For the first year of Eithne's time there, I had little contact with the Naíonra, but during her second year I spent one morning per week helping and was there every day to collect her. Up to the end of her first year, our language policy at home was somewhat haphazard. The two older children were attending an all-Irish school and some family interaction was conducted through that language, at evening mealtimes and on Sundays. Eithne took little part in such interaction but by the end of her first year in the Naíonra, it was clear that she understood much of what was going on and she had a considerable vocabulary drawn from her experiences in the Naíonra. She also had a repertoire of songs and rhymes and a few phrases which she could use in fixed contexts. My connection with the Naíonra in her second year proved to be of considerable assistance to us both in establishing a context in which we spoke Irish. She accepted without question the fact that I spoke Irish in the Naíonra and was happy for it to continue for some time after I collected her. It was during this second year that I began to notice her paying attention to syntax and in fact it was her questions about elements of the language which encouraged me to examine her progress in more detail. At 4:6 it was clear that she was beginning to notice patterns, mainly in phrases which had been rote-learnt and which she appeared to turn over in her mind, trying to sort out meaningful elements. The preliminary set of recordings, numbered 1E1-5, belong to this period; some aspects of them are discussed in Owens (1986) but they will also be referred to in this work. After two years in the Naíonra, aged 5:2, Eithne went to the all-Irish school already attended by her older brother and sister. Again she had no difficulty settling in, being familiar with the school, having the company of several friends from the Naíonra and being a little older than the average school beginner. The ratio of Irish speakers to non-Irish speakers was similar to that of the Naíonra but this time the group was much bigger and the teacher had to cope with 34 other children, some

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of them a year younger than Eithne, and deal with their settling-in problems. The policy of the school is that Irish is used as far as possible by the staff in dealing with the children and is the medium of instruction in all lessons except English. The main concern of the infant classes is to help the children acquire a working knowledge of Irish and develop the necessary premathematical and pre-reading skills. Reading is introduced as the children are ready, in English first and in Irish when they have the basic competence in that language. The approach is essentially informal, though with 35 children in a room some degree of formality is an inevitable alternative to chaos. In the first few months, Eithne's teacher seemed to place considerable emphasis on English, telling stories and teaching poems in that language; the input in Irish did not appear to take into consideration the fact that some of the children would have benefited from more advanced work. Although they all develop an understanding of Irish and varying degrees of spoken fluency, I have not observed the children in the junior classes of the school using Irish among themselves; even those who speak it at home address their friends in English. The bulk of the recordings date from September 1984 to March 1985, i.e. Eithne's first seven months at school, and are referred to as 2E1-16. From the time of my period of contact with the Naíonra, I tried to develop a consistent policy as regards using Irish at home. It seemed appropriate to use it in the contexts of school and religion although this sometimes broke down if, for example, we had visitors who knew no Irish or if the institutions themselves failed to adhere to the policy. Trying to record samples of Eithne's Irish meant that at regular intervals, I sat down with her for perhaps an hour and talked to her intensively in Irish for that period. My involvement in this project ensured an awareness of language use and an extra effort to maintain Irish once initiated. Some back-sliding occurred at times when the effort of using a second language seemed to be intrusive and in the absence of routine contexts, e.g. during the holidays when there was no school or Naíonra to trigger use of Irish. I reckon Eithne's exposure to Irish over the three year period until the end of June 1985 comes to a maximum of 1,500 hours. This does not take account of the fact that she was involved in one-to-one interaction in Irish for only a fraction of that time. Allowing 12 waking hours in a day, a child acquiring his or her first language would be exposed to that language for almost three times that amount in a single year (365 x 12 = 4,380) and would be the subject of individual attention for a substantial portion of that time. A child learning her first language is involved in more than simply language learning but then so was Eithne. The life of

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a 3-5 year old, if anything, is more activity packed than that of an infant and the concepts to be learnt, more complex. Peers begin to play a more significant role as well at this agea significant factor in this instance where Irish is almost completely excluded from the peer group. Her achievements have to be assessed in the light of this limited exposure. By comparison with my other children, I think Eithne learnt more Irish more easily than they did in a similar time span, and I attribute this entirely to the foundation laid down by the Naionra. The Naíonra provides an environment in which language is linked to activities enjoyed by the child and is part of daily routine. Titone (quoted in Baetens Beardsmore, 1982: 28) suggests that at this age, children enjoy playing with language, their perception of sounds is at its height and they retain some measure of plasticity in the production of speech and it is therefore an ideal age at which to introduce a new language. The Naíonra has further advantages over the school class-room: a better pupil-adult ratio means each child has more opportunities of interacting with a competent speaker and the interaction can be tailored to that child's specific needs; activities are repetitive and based on concrete experience and there is no need for formal 'teaching'. The data from 1E show only a limited production but the rapid progress of 2E quite clearly has its roots in the earlier period. One fact in particular demonstrates thisas Eithne tried out aspects of morphology, she drew on a store of items processed from what she had heard. All of the morphemes she experimented with occur somewhere in the language and in the case of the tense morphemes, somewhere in the verbal system. Some parents might feel disappointed at the apparent slowness of progress in this area, and indeed I found myself frustrated by Eithne's unwillingness to produce more than she felt sure of, but her later achievements prove that the time was in no way wasted and was in fact spent in establishing a base on which to proceed. Other researchers have observed that children acquiring a second language allow themselves a 'silent period' of several months (Hatch, 1972; Hakuta, 1974; Ervin-Tripp, 1974), and indeed some adults seem to require a period of several weeks before they are ready to speak in language classes (Varvel, 1979). Krashen (1982: 27) suggests, following Newmark (1966), that pushing learners to produce before they are ready may cause them to fall back on L1 rules. Both my husband and I have always made it clear to the children that learning Irish is of value, that they are fortunate in being able to attend an Irish-speaking school and that we will do our best to facilitate their learning in any way. In this connection, we buy them any children's

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books in Irish that come on the market, go to any plays or shows that are put on in the city and spend time, when possible in the Gaeltacht. Some pressure is put on them to speak Irish at designated times or be quiet and to speak Irish rather than a mixture of English and Irish, but this pressure is momentary rather than constant. We all tend to lapse into English after a period of effort. Eithne: Linguistic and Social Profile It is difficult for a mother to assess objectively the level of linguistic achievement of her child. Eithne has always demonstrated a considerable facility in her use of English, chattering fluently and extensively with an impressive vocabulary, frequently commented on by outsiders. She is sociable and will talk freely to strangers after only a brief period of hesitation. She appears to have an excellent memory capacity, being able to remember details of events, conversations and stories which others have long forgotten. This capacity relates to both long and short-term memory. She is also very aware of language, likes languages games, practising words and trying words in other languages. She frequently asks for the meanings of words, in both English and Irish and if she encounters a word from another language. Sometimes a simple equivalent or translation is not enough, she requires examples and obviously works on the puzzle in her own mind. During a trip abroad around the time of her fifth birthday, she participated in attempts to learn a few words of French, German and Italian according to the country visited and was well able to mimic the sounds she heard. She accepted without question that other people spoke other languages and that these could be learnt. By the end of her first year in school, she had learnt to read and immediately proceeded to read voraciously for herself, raiding the bookshelves of her older sister. Her comprehension was clearly demonstrated by the level of concentration and also by her insistence on relating to me, in considerable detail, the plot of her current book. From her first year in school she also developed confidence in writing skills, sending notes of apology when banished for misdemeanours (in a spelling totally her own!). Other favourite activities include watching television, playing make-believe games with Sindy dolls and helping with the more creative tasks in the kitchen. Outdoor activities tended to be simply an extension of these; she had little interest in organised games but learnt to swim, ride a bicycle, and came with the family on quite demanding mountain walks (often under protest!). Her physical co-ordination is about average

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for her age; she experienced some difficulty in learning to hold a pencil in the correct way and in forming letters; at school sports she was not one of the fastest runners in her class but scored in more complex obstacle races where she seemed able to grasp quickly what was required. Attitude and Motivation Evidence of Eithne's attitude to Irish is mostly conspicuous by its absence. While at times she has shown herself unwilling to speak Irish or have others speak it, both explicitly and by withdrawing from conversations, on the whole she has been a willing participant in a process which has required considerable effort. I commented on such factors in both Owens (1986) and Owens (1985), suggesting possible reasons for her behaviour. A major factor appears to have been her desire to please me, since cooperation was often secured at a personal, affective level and the most effective method of persuasion was the withdrawal of attention although other, more material appeals were sometimes useful. She took considerable pleasure in listening to herself on the tape recording and would invariably demand to hear what had taken place during a session even on those occasions when she seemed to have forgotten the machine's existence. Once she improved her competence in the language, occasions of withdrawal became fewer and less obvious although there was one instance when, apparently feeling out of sorts, she refused to co-operate and stuck resolutely to English: 2E14 M: Cad tá agat? What's wrong with you? E: I don't want to talk on the tape M: All right. Tar anseo Eithne! Come here Eithne! E: scolds 'cause I'm very tired This may indicate that her earlier attitude stemmed from lack of ability, that she found it stressful to be forced to perform in a language in which she had only limited ability, but one should also consider that while this study was in progress, considerable pressure to communicate was exerted on her and affective factors would also have been involved. Her own comments indicate a degree of pride in her achievement in Irish, fuelled by the appearance of Owens (1986) and the attention paid to it by interested parties. More revealing perhaps is the fact that

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she has never commented on the discrepancies between the position of the two languages. She is undoubtedly unaware of the total sociolinguistic profile of the country, but must have observed that of the people she knows, only a small minority use Irish extensively. This minority is significant for herfamily, school, friendbut excludes most of the families who live around, other close relations and those influential beings who dominate the TV screen. She has commented on the fact that children attending the local national school have 'no' Irish (although some of her contemporaries from the Naíonra go there) but never questioned why this should be so. She knows a few families, including that of her close friend and a near relative, whose children have Irish as a first language but though aware of this, has again never questioned why. She doesn't ask why we speak English at one time and suddenly switch to Irish if a particular person comes along or at a particular time or in a particular context but responds, as a general rule, in the language in which she is addressed. Coming out of school or fresh from a conversation in Irish, she will sometimes initiate an exchange in Irish, at other times she makes it clear that she wants to speak English. Most of her reading is in English but she will read a new Irish book or listen to a story in Irish. Some of the transcripts have comments about Irish which reveal some strange perceptions and are perhaps less accurate than what is revealed by consistent omission. They were for the most part, responses forced by M and not always to be interpreted literally. There is some evidence that she shares the feeling that language is an expression of identityit's something 'we' do/have, unlike other children or families in the neighbourhood or in other schools. She perceives it as difficult, more difficult than English because (a) sometimes she can't put into words what she wants to say (b) other people, even adults, can't/don't speak it (c) she sometimes has to explain words to adults, i.e. Granny, or other visitors (d) Mammy spends a lot of time studying and writing about it. Despite her claims, her perception of difficulty in Irish is a false and strange one. When asked for example, to teach her Granny 'some Irish', she comes up with a list of words for her to learn and insists on correct pronunciation. Granny's ignorance, having to repeat sounds several times, and forgetfulness are what Eithne sees as causing difficulty. She makes no allowances for the fact that Granny can understand sentences in context perfectly well, nor does she perceive her own struggles with verb morphology as in any way problematic. When she

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cannot express her own meaning in Irish, she generally asks for a word equivalent, being able to find a syntactic form in which to use it for herself. Further comments on Irish relate to comparisons between 'how you say it' in the two languages; she singles out certain phonological features, e.g. slender consonants, the vocative form of names and some suffixes, e.g. -áiste, -éir(í)as clearly belonging to Irish and occasionally remarks on differences in word order, e.g. in Irish the verb precedes the subject and possessed comes before possessor. This obsession with vocabulary and pronunciation accords surprisingly well with the approach of many adults to L2 learning, an attitude usually attributed to traditional teaching methods. Her urge to modify and improve her production must lie in perception of the model as something to be achieved. There is no evidence that this perception is conscious; she modifies her own production consciously at times but these are generally minor modifications (e.g. óld'ól(see Table 4.1); otherwise changes slip unobtrusively and progressively into slots. Once forms are model-like, there is little conscious attention paid to them; they are simply accepted as right. Getting them right is also signalled by a significant increase in similar type forms, as though up till then she had been holding back. As noted by numerous observers, the learner exposed to 'natural' language does not invent forms or morphemes, in the sense that his or her choice, while not target-like, is drawn from some aspect of the data he or she has heard and is processing. The tense morphemes for example, tried out by Eithne, all occur in the language; for morphemes which native speakers sometimes elide or which may not always be clearly enunciated, she often substitutes a neutral vowel or leaves a gap. There are remarkably few instances where she draws on English morphologyplurals perhaps, some conjunctionsand no instances of her adding random sounds to words. It seems to me that many people adapt the way they talk to their interlocutors in order to promote communication and perhaps because of a sort of linguistic etiquette. Changes can involve shift of register or style, selection of lexis and even pronunciation. When conversing with a dialect speaker one tends to incorporate vowel sounds, turns of phrase etc. of the dialect in question into one's own production. In the case of Irish, this can be particularly important because of the differences that exist between the major dialects and the fact that most learners aspire to one or other of the dialects.

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Another dimension to this is that when a learner (especially one who is aware of his or her own production being some distance from the target) is participating in a conversation with a fluent speaker, the learner tends to improve. It is easier to talk to a fluent native speaker than to a fellow learner; one can borrow from the interaction, perceiving the perfection of the other's syntax and morphology. Having an engrossing discussion with such a speaker is stimulating not only in terms of content but also on a grammatical level. Accuracy and fluency are both at a premium. I have heard others comment to this effect and have consciously experienced it for myself. We have a friend in Germany who speaks in beautifully shaped sentences, the sense of which accumulates and proceeds towards the resolution of the final verb; the sort of sentence composition one normally encounters only in written texts. When talking to this friend, I am constantly impressed by the clarity and coherence of her language and find myself making efforts to imitate and to pay special attention to sentence construction. Considerable attention has been paid to the modifications in language made by persons speaking with children and foreigners. But it must also happen that the recipients of such talk adjust their level of language upwards; helped by the interaction they move up a notch, tending towards the level of the expert; provided always that the interlocutor is interested in the exchange of meaning and maintains a level somewhat above their own, simplifying by repetition and rephrasing and use of contextual clues rather than by condescending pidginisation. Although there are no direct influences to be observed in her production, Eithne can only have been moving towards the models provided by her main interlocutors. It is no easy task to define the target set by these interlocutors. Each of the three main dialects shows considerable local and individual variation; the 'standard' imposed by written sources outside the Gaeltacht is rarely, if ever, adhered to exclusively. It even makes provision for some of the main dialectal differences. In schools and other institutions which promote the 'standard', there is always variation according to the amount and degree of contact individuals have had with any one dialect or mixture of dialects. Eithne had no contact with native speakers of Irish (apart from her friend Deirdre and other children growing up bilingually in an urban context). In trying to decide what her target norms were and in how far her interlanguage fell short of a target, I eventually came to the conclusion that my own intuitions would have to serve in most cases. I have undergone exposure to each of the three major dialects and am probably a fairly typical non-native user of Irish, if perhaps more pedantic and

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grammar focused than many. It takes me some time to tune into the speech of any extreme dialect speaker but I have little difficulty with for example, the type of speaker heard on Radio na Gaeltachta. In so far as I could understand her and she me, then I take my intuitions about the language as the target. These come complete with errorsI have reflected in transcription of details like initial eclipse and lenition, what appears to be fluctuating accuracy. Even after reflection, many of the rules escape me and I find my intuitions equally uncertain. Eithne, for the most part, ignores both these features to a large extent, except in a few examples where the eclipsed/lenited form seems to have been acquired as the 'less marked', e.g. bhfuairas the past form of the verb faigh. In order to measure her level of aspiration at the beginning of words, one would need more sophisticated instruments than were available to me. I had recourse to grammar books for help in establishing the system of the language. Again my actual performance may not always have reflected the systematicity of the grammar books and these in turn are outdated and pedantic, so I was left with my own understanding. During the period covered by the transcripts, Eithne had no access to written material; her data sources were restricted to myself, the Stiúrthóir of the Naíonra, other adults at home and at school and occasional radio and TV programmes. I have attempted then to give an outline of the position of Irish as it impinges on Eithne's circumstances, some idea of the child's background and personality and of factors which must have influenced her learning. All these are vital for an understanding of the discussion which follows. Data Collection The data on which the following discussion is based are drawn from two periods. They were collected using a standard domestic tape recorder and later transcribed. Some reference is also made to notes jotted down at times when no tape machine was at hand. The list in Table 1.1 shows the dates of the transcripts, the participants and gives some indication of the topic/s discussed. The first five transcripts, 1E1-5 and some occasional notes date from February to May 1984 and some of the material was used in Owens (1986). It has been re-analysed here in the light of subsequent developments since it is a useful indicator of an earlier stage in Eithne's acquisition process. These first five transcripts were the only surviving evidence of

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Page 18 TABLE 1.1 Chronological guide to transcripts T No.

1El 1E2

1E3 1E4 1E5

Date

Comment/Book used

28/6/79Eithne born 9/82E goes to Naíonra begins 2nd year Naíonra 9/83 10/2/84 18/2/84How do I put it on; Grandmother Lucy Tomás agus Eithne 15/3/84

26/9/84Crúbach

2E2

4/1/0/84Ra ta ta tam train story

2E3

18/10/84Eithne agus Tomás

2E4

5/11/84 8/11/84notes from casual 11/11/84conversation 14/11/84Seal ag Léamh; Nancy Nurse 15/11/84The Three Bearstold by E 23/11/84Nancy Nurse

2E6

2E7

2E8

29/11/84Donal agus an Leacoighir; Grandmother Lucy told in L1 and L2 Peter and Jane; The Giant Pancake; Snow 19/12/84White

Participants Age 0:0 3:2

Christmas

E+M E+M

Summer holidays

E+M

30/4/84part of session Cait agus Babóga 9/5/84Harry's Sweater 15/6/84finishes at Naíonra; summer holidays 1/9/84starts school

2E1

2E5

Topic

4:2 4:7

E+A E+M 5:0 5:2 School; daily routine School; who talks Irish School; being sick while on holiday

E+M

School; routine Orders

E+M

Introducing Miffy and Mrs Tittlemouse E role-plays School; money

E+M

Christmas is coming

5:3

E+M

E+M

E+M

E+M

5:5

E+M

(table continued on next page)

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Page 19 TABLE 1.1 (continued) Comment/Book used

T No.

Date

2E9 2E10

An Frog gan 4/1/85Phreab; Cinderella; 18/1/85Ean ar an Díon

2E12 2E13

2E14 2E15

2E16

18/2/85Conversation about friends and activities 28/2/85General discussion of what's happening in school 11/3/85School; teacher; friends; toys 14/3/85Flossie Teacake; Sindy catalogue

Buntús Foclóra (dictionary) general discussion 19/3/85 of the pictures

Topic Christmas School; School; lunch, game

Participants Age E+M E+M E + M2 + D E+M+C

E role-plays E + D discuss the Sindy accessories they have and haven't got; letters

5:8

E+M E+M+D

E+M

5:9

E = Eithne M = mother A =father (all L1 = English, L2 = Irish) M2 = Naíonra director (L1 = Irish) and mother of Deirdre C = Cormac (L1 = English), E's brother D = Deirdre (L1 = Irish), E's friend The books mentioned are mostly picture story-books. Those in Irish are published by An Gúm, except Buntús Foclóra, Gill and Macmillan. Harry's Sweater, Grandmother Lucy: How do I put it on are Picture Puffins, Peter and Jane is a Ladybird Reader, Nancy Nurse appears in the comic Twinkle, Flossie Teacake is a Fontana Young Lion. many attempts to elicit data from Eithne; on some occasions she refused to co-operate; on others it was the recording process which was the problem. I attempted to use a radio microphone but was unable to master the technical complexities involved. In the end I felt I had achieved some measure of success in obtaining material and decided that it was sufficient for my purposes.

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The second period dates from the end of September 1984 to March 1985. Both beginning and end of the period are arbitrary. The beginning was fixed because I decided to undertake work on an M.Litt. thesis and proceeded to work along the lines already established. The end-point is merely a convenient stopping place. The main body of analysis in fact deals with a period from September 1984 to the end of the year. At that point Eithne had achieved control of most of the elements of the Irish verbal system, or at least those elements which were to be of significance for her. The last few transcripts show a change in character as she begins to exert more control over the interaction and to manifest an almost target-like production in Irish. The material contained in the final recordings contributes only marginally to the systems under discussion. In addition, the pattern which had been established for earlier recording sessions, where the two of us looked at a book and first I, later Eithne, told some of the story, changed. It was always my aim to lead Eithne into casual conversation, about everyday happenings, about what she had been doing at school and general family life. By March 1985, however, she had become totally involved in school, was beginning to attempt to read the text when we looked at picture books and it became impossible to steer her conversation in Irish. 2E15 also, where she carries on a threeway conversation involving her friend Deirdre, is significant as an indicator of progress, but the language produced has a completely new character and the simplistic phrases and insistence on establishing identity, precedence and possession add nothing to my analysis of her control of the verbal system. I felt it appropriate to draw a line at this point and to leave the rest for another discussion at another time. Other researchers lay considerable emphasis on recording daily, or at the very least at intervals of only two or three days (Halliday, 1975; Felix, 1978). I have already explained that I found this impossible. It constituted an unwarranted intrusion into family life and, given the pattern of use of Irish in our home, would have distorted that pattern. The period 2E has 16 transcripts made at approximately fortnightly intervals. The data they have provided have allowed me to make a fairly comprehensive study of some areas of Eithne's acquisition although in places I have been conscious of gaps. There is no guarantee however that closer intervals between recordings would have filled those gaps. My work may prove of some assistance to others wishing to make a more detailed analysis of more densely spread material. The field of acquisition in Irish is open to study of all kinds. Indeed it is only by a variety of different types of study and approach that a multidimensional picture can be built up.

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One transcript, which seemed to me at the time to reflect a milestone in Eithne's progress, 2E6, was the subject of a paper read at a seminar on Bilingualism and Bilingual Education in March 1985 and later published in Teanga 5 (Owens, 1985). It touches on some of the items discussed in more detail in this work. The transcripts are reproduced in full in the unpublished dissertation, T.C.D. together with a translation. This translation is intended as a gloss on the original and tries to give an idea of the original for those who cannot read Irish. It was not possible to do more than reproduce the text with some indications of pauses, hesitations and errors. No attempt was made to analyse suprasegmentals. In this present edition extracts from the transcripts are used to illustrate points made and some sample exchanges included in the Appendix. The quantity of material involved precludes publishing any more. Analysis of Data Analysis of the data was essentially informal. During the laborious task of transcription it seemed clear that progress was most clearly to be seen in the development of the verbal system. Nouns and their morphology appeared and disappeared accordingly as contexts changed and English substitutes were always available. Word order on the other hand depended on the position of the verb, and crucial differences between the languages demanded the formation of a nucleus of verbs. As indicated in Chapter 2, other researchers had begun to question the relevance of 'morpheme-counting' and to suggest that more might be achieved by observing the interplay of form and function. Since I had initially been impressed by the level of communication achieved by Eithne before she had developed any kind of verbal system (see Owens, 1986) and since, unlike a child acquiring a first language, she could be expected to want to formulate the same sort of sentences whatever the state of her second language development, it seemed a good idea to observe the strategies and formal markers which she employed to express verb-related functions and notions over the period studied. This was done quite simply by plotting on a chart the forms used to express functions such as present, past, future reference. From this, patterns emerged which are described in later sections of this study. In most cases the intention of the utterances was clear as can be seen in the transcripts, in some a question mark is left. At a later stage I then added to the discussion of the basic verbal system some other items which seemed pertinent such as verbal nouns,

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pronouns and the means of combining sentences. In all cases it was possible to observe chronological progress (apart from a few instances of regression which are detailed in later sections) and the analysis is therefore conducted on this basis.

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2 Review of Research Background Man has always been fascinated by his universe and by his own being, ever seeking to discover how it works. We have come a long way in the twentieth centurymost corners of the earth have yielded up their mysteries, probes are sent into outer space and human anatomy is an open book. The human brain, however, is less penetrable. In earlier times physicians made their way to battle-fields to view the inner secrets of skulls cleft by simple weapons; today despite the most modern techniques and technology we still do not fully understand how the most human of attributes, language, is acquired nor even the details of its functioning. Parents have always attempted to keep track of their children's first words and most can relate anecdotes of idiosyncratic usage and humorous errors. Some linguists have contributed notable accounts of a child's language development (e.g. Leopold's (1948) diary account of his daughter's progress in learning English and German) but in the main the recent proliferation of accounts of child language acquisition is due to the questions posed by Chomsky (1957). Although his chief interest was in the tacit knowledge underlying the capacity of the adult to understand and produce language, he could not ignore the fact that the basics of the system that he found so difficult to describe, were acquired by any normal child, in three or four short years. The question of how children acquire language, what they bring to the task and what help is given to them has provided scope for thousands of articles, books and theses over the last 25 years. My own particular interest in second language acquisition was sparked off by the discovery that, despite significantly different learning conditions, Eithne was going through a process similar to that described by Brown (1973) in his pioneering work. I could see confirmation of the theory that children do not simply imitate and repeat what they hear from adults but that they process the speech of others and build up a competence in the language which is stored, not as phrases to suit certain circumstances, but as elements and rules which can yield an infinite

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number of combinations. Brown demonstrated how the children he studied each followed at their own pace the same course. They progressively used more and more words and morphemes to express their meaning and moreover, the morphemes emerged in a relatively stable order. These findings have been replicated for a number of languages (see in particular Slobin, 1985) although questions remain as to why this should be so. The discovery that they also held for a second language acquired under dissimilar circumstances promised to shed some light on some of the unanswered questions. Child Directed Speech Chomsky's claim that the language to which children are exposed is ill-formed, ungrammatical and extremely complex (Miller & Chomsky, 1963) has been extensively refuted (Snow, 1979) and it has become clear that on the contrary, children are helped considerably in their attempts to master language by the strategies of their caretakers. No direct correlation has ever been found between input (what caretakers say) and output (what children produce), but the studies of CDS (Child Directed Speech) show clearly the importance of interaction (Snow, 1979; de Villiers & de Villiers, 1979). Language emerges in situations of social contact and it is important to consider all aspects of the situation to build up a complete picture. It has been shown that there is a gradual shift in child participation in conversations from a point where the parent vocalises both sides, through a stage where parent and child create text dyadically (Shugar, 1978) to independent turntaking by the child. This is obviously impossible to separate from the growth in socialisation of the child. I will try to show in Chapter 3 how essentially similar strategies and structuring promoted the development of a second language despite the fact that the situation was artificialIrish was not the first language nor the usual language of such interaction for either party, and there was little or no compulsion to use IrishEithne was always aware of the possibility of slipping into English to transmit her message. The Functional Perspective Yet another dimension to the study of child language has been proposed by those who see it as having functional origins (Halliday, 1975).

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There is no doubt but that children have communicative intent long before they discover how to manipulate words to express that intent. It seems essential to consider this intention to communicate as it develops from a non-verbal process to a verbal one. As with the CDS approach, the functional approach focuses on interactiontracing the child's earliest attempts at making verbal contact with another. In the case of a child learning a second language, the intention to communicate will be more transparent, less confused by cognitive development and therefore easier to track. Second language acquisition research has devoted considerable attention to the developing ability to express certain functions in the new language. Despite some controversial details, it is generally accepted that the acquisition of a second language proceeds along lines similar to those demonstrated for first language acquisitioninput is analysed and stored for re-use, sentences are progressively complexified and morphemes emerge in a certain order. Whereas acquisition of the first language can be traced from the beginning to target native speech, the start and finish of second language acquisition are less easy to define. The second language learner starts with some idea of language and heads for an ephemeral target. The language produced en route has become known as 'interlanguage' and as such has been extensively studied. Interlanguage The importance of variation and the manifestations of developmental stages have been the focus of interlanguage (IL) studies. These were a development from error analysis studies and a move away from earlier attempts to 'contrast' languages and predict what features would cause difficulties for learners. Corder (1967) was one of the first to realise that the 'errors' made by L2 learners, rather than being blunders to be erased by conditioning, were evidence of active learning and of hypothesis testing by the learner. Ellis (1985) has published a useful survey of research. In it (Ellis, 1985: 50-5) he picks up three essential features of the L2 learner's interlanguage, that it is: 'permeable', 'dynamic' and 'systematic'. He also criticises the simplistic approach to IL generally adopted (pages 69-71), in restricting analysis to morpheme development. For example the acquisition hierarchy for English described by Dulay & Burt (1973; 1974) has come in for criticism. It has been suggested that the order described was a by-product of the test used. Their use of a '90% accuracy in obligatory contexts' measure has also been questioned

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(Andersen, 1977; Rosansky, 1975). Larsen-Freeman (1976) found that adult learners showed a different order of accuracy when a different elicitation instrument was used. A more complex treatment of the learner's developing systems is demonstrated by attempts which have been made in Germany to apply statistical analysis to data gathered from second language learners. Statistical analysis Researchers involved in the HPDP (Heidelberger Pidgin-Deutsch Projekt) developed a statistical system to show progress in the acquisition of German by foreign workers. Klein & Dittmar's (1979: preface and 20) 'variety grammar' is an attempt to develop a 'formal grammar with probabilistic weighting for an ordered set of varieties, such as dialects, sociolects, registers or developmental stages'. In particular they wanted an instrument which would show the 'fluctuating character of natural language'. According to fellow German, Felix (1982), such statistical analysis is not entirely appropriate for the study of child language and misses an essential feature of development: . . . der Grad der Variation zwischen verschiedenen Kindern spielt für die Ermittlung der Entwicklungssequenz und somit für Aussagen über Gesetzmässigkeiten des Spracherwerbsprozesses bestenfalls eine untergeordnete Rolle. Ausschlaggebend ist nicht, ob und wie stark einzelne Kinder variieren, sondern vielmehr in welchem Bereich sie variierendie Gesetzmässigkeiten des Spracherwerbs sind nicht (primär) statistischer, sondern struktureller Natur (Felix, 1982: 76). But both groups of researchers talk in terms of 'developmental sequences' in which they are joined by a further German researcher, Meisel. In a paper (Meisel, 1983), which is based on studies conducted by a research groupZISA (Zweitspracherwerb italienischer und spanischer Arbeiter), Meisel talks of an implicational relation between linguistic forms as illustrated by the following R1É R2É R3É . . . Rn This is to say that a learner who has acquired the leftmost rule, also has acquired all the others; or a learner who has acquired R2 also has acquired R3, R4 . . . Rn but not R1. (Meisel, 1983: 121)

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His aim is to build up a series of 'developmental sequences' as for example that for word-order rules given on page 135: 13 V ® END D ADV-VP É INVERSION É PARTICLE É ADVFRONTING An important factor in the face of the immense variability observed in the production of L2 learners is that such sequences take account of both use and failure to use items in particular contexts: This reveals that learners need not be able to apply a rule categorically and not even in all contexts required by the German standard before they acquire the next rule. (Meisel, 1983: 136) (See also Meisel, Clahsen & Pienemann, 1981; Clahsen, Meisel & Pienemann, 1982.) Clearly this method has much to offer in the analysis of data provided by a number of respondents. It also clearly requires supplementation by longitudinal studies as indeed Meisel, Klein and Dittmar all recognise. Form and function An essay by Long & Sato (1984), which I found particularly stimulating, sets out the limitations of an approach which concentrates on (1) product rather than process (2) form rather than function (3) single rather than multiple levels of analysis and (4) IL in isolation rather than in its linguistic and conversational context. (Long & Sato, 1984: 253) They favour a multidimensional methodology 'An explanatory theory of IL development, we think, will have to consider interactions between and among all four.' As an example they follow Kumpf (1983) in considering how one might treat the learner's discovery of the semantic/functional domain of tense-aspect-modality. A wide range of linguistic devices apart from verb morphology are used to indicate past time, e.g. temporal adverbials, locative adverbials, calendaric expressions, clause sequencing, interlocutor scaffolding, implicit reference in narrative context and implicit reference (in descriptive context). Such a multi-level analysis will provide a complete account from a point where the learner has no verbal means of conveying such a function but must rely on gesture, help from the interlocutor, context etc. through stages of

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lexicalisation and grammaticalisation to target-like ability. I have attempted to trace some such stages in Eithne's development and to show how she worked at particular functions until she discovered how they could be expressed in the target language. Ellis (1985) also urges a more comprehensive study of SLA that will take into account the wide variation that is evident in IL. He reviews studies which suggest that variation occurs along a continuum of styles, both systematically and non-systematically. The latter is both more difficult to understand and to measure. Variability, Ellis suggests, is basic to the process of development: It was emphasised that each stage of development consists of the rearrangement of a previous variable system into a new variable system. This takes place in two ways. First, forms that were to begin with available only in one style (e.g. the careful style) move along the continuum so that they can be used in another style (e.g. the vernacular style). Second, there is a constant reshuffling of form-function relationships in order to maximise the communicative effectiveness of the interlanguage system; non-systematic variability slowly becomes systematic. (Ellis, 1985: 97) The variability of IL demands that one take into consideration a range of possible influences. Even native speakers' language is subject to variabilitythe causes can range from simple mental fatigue to stylistic adjustments and change of variety. In the case of the learner one must add other factors such as L1 interference and an incomplete L2 system. Only a multidimensional, comprehensive study of the utterances and the context in which they occur can hope to throw light on the mysterious appearance and disappearance of forms. Corder (1977: 5) suggests that intermediate forms remain in storage and are available for use throughout life. He sees language as being 'complexified' from a simple base, maintaining that one cannot say that the learner is 'simplifying' a system he has not yet attained. Meisel (1983), however, argues that there are grounds for calling the learner's IL a process of 'elaborative simplification'. He instances six 'simplifying' processes (Meisel, 1983: 126) which are common to learners and says that these derive from strategies employed by the learner who forms limited hypotheses about the data to which he is exposed. A wide range of strategies has been suggested as being employed by the L2 learner (see for example Faerch & Kasper, 1983). Ellis (1985: 88) characterises their identification as being like 'stumbling blindfold

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around a room to find a hidden object'. Even definition is complex and he suggests 'introspection' as a method of gaining greater insight. I will give later some instances of Eithne's reflections on her problems with the L2; my own observations are occasionally helpful but to a large extent her 'strategies' remain a mystery. Bilingual Education As most students of linguistics are aware, more people in the world are bilingual than are monolingual. It is probably only in some of the more heavily monolingual communities of Europe and North America that bilingualism is perceived as an abnormal phenomenon. Since the discovery of certain advantages in bilingualism (for a list see Saunders, 1982), many monolingual parents seek to find out how these advantages are conferred and by what means their own children can avail of them. It is this attitude which has instigated the growth in bilingual education in Canada and ensured funding for the programmes which attempt to assess its achievements. (For an overview, see Swain & Lapkin, 1984; Faerch, Haastrup & Phillipson, 1984; Harley, 1986.) Earlier work by Gardner & Lambert (1972) was instrumental in converting public opinion to the advantages of bilingualism and in establishing a basis for bilingual and immersion education. A similar upsurge in interest has been evident in Wales where within recent memory, schools exerted great efforts to eradicate the Welsh language. The education system there now accommodates various types of school programmes ranging from those where Welsh is taught for one period per day through bilingual and total immersion. There is also in Wales a system of Welsh medium pre-schools and mother-and-toddler groups under the auspices of Mydiad Meithrin. All of these have been the subject of scrutiny and there is a growing wealth of books and papers outlining success, failure and problems (see Baker, 1985; Harrison-Bellin & Pritter, 1981). A warning note is struck by Harding & Riley (1986: 68) who point out that though 'elitist' bilingualism, that is bilingualism by choice, is generally enriching, the same is not necessarily true for those who simply find themselves in a bilingual situation and in particular for those who belong to a minority language group: . . . most of the studies reporting positive effects were made in societies where bilingualism is encouraged, where the languages

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concerned are both high-status languages and where the parents of the children tested have relatively high socio-economic class ... (Harding & Riley, 1986: 68) Skutnabb-Kangas (1984) also warns against the dangers to which minority language or bilingual children in 'submersion' situations are exposed if their home language is not adequately developedthey may end up semilingual in both languages. Her research was largely concerned with the fate of the children of migrant workers, many of whom drop out of school and show less academic achievement than would be normal for their ability level, as measured on non-language based tests. Criticism has however been expressed about the whole concept of semi-lingualism, which I will talk about later in this chapter. A further hazard for parents is commented on by De Jong (1986) in her pragmatic guide for parents in bilingual situations. She remarks that while possession of two world languages such as English and French is generally considered advantageous, many casual observers were extremely critical of her endeavours to maintain her children's Dutch. Her rationale, shared by many of the people she interviewed, was that her own language was a part of herself and for her children an essential part of her culture and background. The sociolinguistic situation in Ireland has been considered in some detail in a previous section. Much has been made here of the accounts of success in promoting bilingualism achieved by immersion schooling in Canada. While all-Irish schools can be seen to be attracting more pupils than they can cope with, there are fundamental aspects of the education programme that require attention. In particular the question of mother tongue/second language and the complexities introduced by the existence of two core languages in the system need to be carefully researched and reformulated. The Curriculum and Examinations Board (1985) Discussion Paper has gone some way towards formulating the problem, emphasising the existence of four separate basic needs which must be catered for: 1.English as L1 2. English as L1 Irish as L2 Irish as L2 English as medium of Irish as medium of instruction instruction

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3.Irish as L1 2. Irish as L1 English as L2 English as L2 Irish as medium of English as medium of instruction instruction Curriculum and Examinations Board (1985: 29) but the guidelines for the teaching of Irish in National Schools have not been changed since the 'New Curriculum' was introduced in 1971 and the Teachers' Handbook fails entirely to cater for those whose first language is Irish. Age and Second Language Acquisition The question of the age at which a second language can best be acquired has recently been reassessed. Earlier theories of a 'critical period' for language acquisition, the end of which was marked by the onset of puberty (Lenneberg, 1967) have been questioned by reanalysis of some of his data and by increased information about the maturation of the infant brain (Krashen, 1975; Kinsbourne & Hiscock, 1977). Empirical studies are divided as to whether, given the same amount of exposure to L2, older or younger learners fare better. Harley (1986) is at pains to warn against the trap of comparing different types of achievement: In discussing the relative success of L2 acquisition by older and younger learners, several kinds of distinction appear especially relevant for interpreting the results: (a) the extent to which a particular study is concerned with rate of acquisition or ultimate achievement in the L2 (e.g. Krashen, Long & Scarcella, 1979); (b) what kind of proficiency is being measured in terms of Cummins (1983) dimensions of relative contextual support and cognitive involvement; and (c) whether the study is measuring absolute L2 proficiency or achievement relative to native-speaker age norms. (Harley, 1986: 24) Despite some ambivalence in the findings, there does seem to be some support for the intuition that the younger the child is exposed to L2, the more native-like control he or she is likely eventually to achieve. Whereas older learners seem to have an initial cognitive advantage in school-related, academic L2 tasks, younger learners may have the advantage in areas of interpersonal communication and this may be the basis of their long-term superiority (Krashen, Long & Scarcella, 1979; Cummins, 1981; 1983).

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Harley's (1986: 89) own empirical research pinpointed the achievements of younger immersion students on 'context-embedded' tasks and in particular in some verb-related tasks '. . . the early total immersion students in Grade 1 are as proficient as the late immersion students in expressing deictic time distinctions, basic to the French verb system.' This finding echoes results from Harris' (1984) study of achievement in Irish National Schools. He studied a range of objectives relating to control of the language in both comprehension and production. He summarises his findings: Describing the situation in very general terms, it may be stated that an average of about one-third of pupils in ordinary schools attain mastery of each of the Nuachúrsaí objectives in spoken Irish at sixth, fourth and second grades. Another one-third, on average, make at least minimal progress in relation to each of the objectives at each grade, but do not attain mastery. And one-third of the pupils on average, fail to make even minimal progress in relation to each of the objectives at each grade. (Harris, 1984: 138) A significant level of success was however noted in the case of immersion classes, or children who had some experience of Irish in the home. This related particularly to the control of verb morphology and Harris suggests that the explanation lies in the essence of communication: It is not so immediately obvious why mastery of the two verb-related objectives 'understanding the morphology of verbs in listening' and 'control of the morphology of verbs in speaking' should be particularly affected by a moderate or high level of communicative use of the language. The explanation probably resides in the fact referred to previously that verb morphology has a crucial semantic role in communication. (Harris, 1984: 63) Whereas older students have an advantage in being able to learn and cope with abstract concepts of time, it seems that younger children may be best served by being exposed to them in a more natural way, in suitable contexts. Krashen (1975), Rosansky (1975) and more recently Felix (1981) suggest that the Piagetian distinction between stages of 'preformal' and 'formal' operations may be relevant in the different ways in which younger and older learners are best able to learn. The study which follows, shows quite clearly how a five-year-old grapples with the task of expressing distinctions of time and aspect in a second language. As to the question of age and second language teachingmuch depends on the objectives set for instruction. If it is to be a series of

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lessons on structure, a treatment of language organization such as was constituted formerly by the teaching of Latin then it would seem more appropriate to wait until the pupils are older. (Edelhoff (1978) suggests that in some schools in Germany, English has replaced Latin as an academic selector.) If its purpose is to supply a working knowledge or a minimum of survival language, then again more cognitively advanced pupils would seem to have an advantage. If on the other hand, there is a cultural emphasis and if, as in the case of Irish, the aim is to allow pupils to develop an identity in a second language and to use it for communicative purposes, then it seems to me that early immersion is by far the most advantageous approach. It is an aim of this latter type which is proposed by the Curriculum and Examination Board's Discussion Paper (1985): Irish has a unique position in the nation and in our schools . . . it is . . . an important aspect of the cultural identity of all Irish citizens. The educational system has an important role in transmitting our Irish cultural heritage through the language. (Curriculum and Examination Board, 1985: 25) On the evidence of recent surveys (see Harris, 1984: Chapter 2), this is an aim with which the majority of citizens would agree. The Discussion Paper recommends for further study the achievements of naíonraí in helping children acquire Irish: The successful subconscious absorption of Irish by children in naíonraí is proving that children can learn Irish while participating in enjoyable activities. This approach has implications for teaching methods in primary schools, especially the use of play. (Curriculum and Examination Board, 1985: 41) Affect An issue in the age dimension of SLA has been the question of affect. Schumann (1975) proposed that affective variables played a significant role in the difficulties experienced by adults in acquiring L2 and subsequently (Schumann, 1978) stressed the importance of social factors in integration (or lack of) into the host society. Krashen (1982) has suggested that older learners have a high level of affective filter which blocks their receptivity to 'Input', brings the 'Monitor' into use and thus hinders their acquisition.

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Meisel's (1983: 190-4) Wuppertal study of the German of foreign workers attempted to correlate a range of social psychological factors, such as 'ties with Germany', 'contact with Germans', 'social ambitions', 'level of education', with progress in the language. Despite some confusion, he established a connection between negative attitudes over this range of factors and the extent to which the respondents practised 'restrictive simplification' ('more or less pidginised'). Although small children quickly size up parents' attitudes and may reflect the latter's negative feelings towards the Irish language, on the whole they are positive towards any pleasurable learning activity and don't have preconceived notions about Irish. I know from personal experience and from communication with other teachers, however, that whereas Irish is 'easy' to teach in junior classes, negative attitudes make themselves felt from fourth class up (10-11 years) and are prevalent throughout secondary school. There are many contributory causes. A sense of non-achievement and a lack of purpose can be set up by excessive attention to grammar and rules. Whereas English class may be concerned with reading stories, writing reports and using skills for 'doing things', Irish, in National school, is more likely to concentrate on the language as an end in itself, an end which never comes any closer and mastery of which is felt to be irrelevant to the child's world. Achieving communicative ability at an early age would make it possible to use the language for a purpose and this, it seems to me, is of paramount importance in surmounting affective problems. For a variety of reasons then, early immersion programmes have a lot to offer in the Irish context, despite some ambivalence in the research results as to the optimum age for language acquisition. Semilingualism Some concern however has been expressed about children whose L2 is promoted at the expense of L1. Cummins (1979) refers to the difference already noted between those, mostly middle-class, majority-language, immersion pupils on whom bilingualism appears to confer advantages and the low academic achievements of many minority-language children in submersion situations. Cummins et al. (1984) and Skutnabb-Kangas & Toukomaa (1976) argue that academic failure may result when children are educated through L2 and their L1 is not fully developed. Cummins (1978: 397) sees the problem as lying in such children's inadequate cognitive competence, which he defines as '. . . the ability to

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make effective use of the cognitive functions of a language, i.e. to use language effectively as an instrument of thought and represent cognitive operations by means of language'. A UNESCO (1953) document fears that education through a medium other than the mother tongue may result in the child never developing the power of self-expression. These issues are of concern to bilingual programmes everywhere. They suggest a reason for many problems which beset immigrants and should be of particular relevance in Ireland, where the education system does not formally take account of differing L1 and L2 (see Curriculum and Examinations Board, 1985). They are a factor in the demands that the language of the home should not be excluded from the school as has happened in the past to immigrants in many countries. Martin-Jones & Romaine (1986) though, while supporting the concept of a 'language shelter' type of educational programme where minority language children are given the opportunity to consolidate their L1 skills before the introduction of a dominant language to the classroom, are concerned about the theoretical arguments on which such educational policy is based. They reject the notion of an 'idealized full competence' in a language (as did Hymes, 1980), in reference to which 'semi-lingualism' is defined, particularly when the 'ideal' is drawn from highly literate, mostly monolingual societies which have long had codified, standard languages. They point out that it is not possible to separate the process of language learning into separate, discrete items and that tests measure the child's ability to answer the test questions and not necessarily the skills they claim to be measuring. Their concern is that 'semilingualism' should not become legitimised as a deficit theory, as did Bernstein's 'restricted and elaborated codes'. Once such terms become popularised, their original basis is often obscured and ignored. In agreement with Rivera (1984) and others, they would like to see a more ethnographic approach to the evaluation of children's language proficiency and an acceptance of community-based norms in such evaluation. Such a proviso holds, not only for separate language communities but for socially stratified communities if bilingual education is not to be the preserve of the middle classes alone. Language Transfer and/or Interference Audio/visual language teaching methods sought to identify aspects of the L2 which differed from L1 and to drill them away. Some

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developmental studies have since revealed that learners with quite disparate L1s, make the same kinds of errors in L2 and have found few instances of interference-type errors. (For review see Dulay, Burt & Krashen, 1982). But it is clear that the learner of L2 makes use of L1 knowledge to some extent; the difficulty is to identify such use. Wode (1980), reanalysing data from Ravem (1974) and Felix (1980) as well as his own, found a stage in the development of English negation during which the subjects formed sentences with post-verbal negation, without do-support, a fairly clear carryover from their L1. He quotes (Wode, 1980: 50) structures from Ravem's data which are unparalleled in L1 data: 'Say it you not to Daddy' 'Like you me not Reidun' He states: In fact, the data presently available on the various types of language acquisition, limited as they may be, do suggest that the linguistic structure of the previously acquired L1 is an extremely important variable in language acquisition in the sense that it determines the linguistic structure of the learner's L2 developmental utterances. (Wode, 1980: 34) and suggests that some structural areas are more prone to L1 interference than others, for instance word order and phonology. This insistence that word order is particularly subject to interference is echoed by Felix (1980), by Meisel (1983) and also by Zobl (1983). Zobl refers to the ages between three and ten as 'a period of syntactic conservatism' which relies on known wordorder constructions. A consideration of the acquisition of Irish as L2 forces a review of these opinions. Irish differs significantly from English in being a VSO language with very little possibility of a change in the position of the verbonly an adverb can precede it and then only under certain conditions. As well as my own data, Ní Shúilleabháin's (1985) data confirm that this, to them, unusual word order causes no problems for children in immersion schools: . . . young children learning Irish in immersion schools never seem to make a mistake about the verb-initial nature of declaratives, and they seem to absorb, say, internal NP word order and the different determiner systems with ease. (Ní Shúilleabháin, 1985: 149)

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I commented in Owens (1986) that whereas infants acquiring Irish as L1 appeared to make some use of the (universal) strategy 'Agent-action -object' for ordering, e.g. Dadaí amuigh baint prátaí 'Daddy out digging potatoes' (McKenna & Wall, 1986) omissions of the initial verb are not to be found in Eithne's production. In an early example of what looks like a topic-comment construction, having identified the topic/agent, she was careful to rephrase the whole sentence in the order verb-agent-objectprepositional phrase: Mamaía bheanan bhean, tabhair an bhean geansaígeansaí n-ais duit Mammywomanthe woman gave the woman, the jumper back to you (T1E5 1. 126) I will also show that what I initially interpreted as overextension of a present progressive aspect, influenced by its similarity with the English, on reflection is better seen as an active renegotiation of aspect/tense parameters. Interference/transfer in Eithne's production is largely lexical and shows a significant decrease in the later transcripts as her competence in Irish grows. Curiously her Irish seems to have more traces of transfer now, two years later. I have not taken systematic note of this but I suspect that the influence of school and the forms current among fellow pupils may be significant. As I will show, Eithne reverted to first principles and built up the L2 from very basic nuclear utterances to complex sentences. Ellis (1985: 34), after Wode, suggests that interference is 'more likely where there is a crucial similarity measure' and that the question of interference is an extremely complex matter, involving not only features of the L1 and the L2 but also 'universal factors, i.e. factors relating to the universal way in which natural languages are organised'. In the case of negation in Irish where E shows no sign of interference and the basics of which she mastered very quickly despite its distance from the English system, one might propose a universal strategy of preposing negative particle to the verb, which once attempted and realised to be correct, stays fixed. Wode (1984) claims that pre-verbal negation is the unmarked negative form and that this is why it appears in the developmental sequence even in languages where it is not part of the system. There is, however, considerable dispute as to what constitutes markednessunmarkedness, the same phenomenon being variously described by different writers.

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The question of universals is not one which can briefly be summarised or one on which one can pronounce definitively. It is a question to which further study of the acquisition of Irish as L1 and L2 could make a considerable contribution given its distinctive word order. Some possibilities will arise during discussion of the data and may be of use to future researchers. Acquisition of Irish I have reviewed such material as was available on the acquisition of Irish in Owens (1986). In fact, neither Wall (1979) nor Mac Mathúna (1979), which dealt mainly with the acquisition of Irish as a first language, provided any basis for comparison since the children in question were studied only for brief periods at a very early age. Since then, Wall's thesis has been published in a revised version, McKenna & Wall (1986). The latter has clearly been a considerable time in the hands of its publisher/printer and while it constitutes a landmark in being the first and only book on the subject, it fails to make more than cursory acknowledgement of developments and research elsewhere. It is concerned only with a very brief period, three weeks, of material recorded from two children in a Gaeltacht area in North Donegal. The data are used to assess Stage 1 utterances by the two children, Stage 1 being defined following Brown & Herrnstein (1975) as having 'an MLU of 1.00 to 2.00' and normally occurring around the age of 18 to 24 months. Again following Brown (1973), they identify 11 basic semantic and grammatical roles and classify the children's utterances according to these categories. They note some points of convergence and divergence from other corpora: 'the most notable being the high salience of interrogatives, the absence of recurrence and the low salience of negatives'. They suggest that the reason for this may lie in the 'interaction style' of the mothers who differed, they claim, from the 'great majority of mothers' in cross-linguistic studies' by being from non-middle-class, rural background and participating only in a limited form of interaction with their children. A further reason might lie in the limited scope of their study and in the fact that neither of the authors knew the children intimately, even the collector of the data visited their homes only at bi-monthly intervals. Otherwise they found and considered worth pointing out 'in the light of the Irish language revival' that '. . . the Irish language is no different from any other language in this regard. It shares with English, French, Russian and all other languages, the developmental milestones of learning a language.' It is, however, naive to propose that the conditions under

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which the subjects of this study learnt Irish are similar to those pertaining in the classroom and while there are similarities between the way in which first and second languages are acquired under 'natural' conditions, this 'natural order' is not necessarily the best basis for a classroom syllabus. A short article by Hickey (1985) hints at a wealth of interesting contrasts between first language acquisition of Irish and that of other Indo-European languages. Her particular concern is the order of acquisition of pronouns which according to the data she collected, is different from that recorded for English: This preliminary analysis of the data from the Irish children shows that the 3rd person pronouns emerge as Object and Subject before the 1st person pronouns, while all three children use their names pronominally. (Hickey, 1985: 291) She attributes this distinct order to the fact that in Irish, 1st and 2nd person pronouns are morphologically and syntactically more complex than English 1st person pronouns, whereas the 3rd person pronouns are morphologically and semantically less complex, because animacy is not marked. (Hickey, 1985: 291) Further analysis of her data should prove interesting in the extreme. Teaching of Irish in Ireland The teaching of Irish is of major concern to the country since it is a core subject right through the whole system. Several publications reveal the concern of teachers to improve their methods. With the help and cooperation of I.T.E. (Linguistics Institute of Ireland) and other interested bodies (French, German, Spanish and Italian Cultural Institutes), groups of modern language teachers from both second and third level came together to discuss developments in language teaching and to prepare materials for use in Irish schools. This has led to the publication of text books and to the revision of the secondary school programmes along communicative lines. These developments have not gone unnoticed by Irish language teachers and they, with the support of Bord na Gaeilge and I.T.E. have published a communicative-approach based series of text-books Mise agus Tusa (1985). The secondary school programme for Irish has long been condemned as too academic for the average student and a new programme for the junior cycle came into use in 1989.

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Towards a Communicative Curriculum for Irish (Little, O Murchú & Singleton, 1985) outlines a possible syllabus for both primary and secondary cycles, sketching the background to the present provision and the 'needs' of the pupils and making proposals for a new syllabus in terms of realisable behavioural objectives for each stage and the functions and notions which would have to be mastered in order to fulfil the behavioural objectives. In one particular way the teaching of Irish has had an advantage over other languagesit has been traditional for Irish classes to be conducted through the medium of that language and indeed the programme for National Schools recommends that the atmosphere of the school reflect the bias of the system towards the acquisition of the language: Ba cheart an Ghaeilge a úsáid go coitianta sa scoil agus lasmuigh dinuair a bhíonn na páistí ag obair agus nuair a bhíonn siad ag súgradh; is i nGaeilge a thabharfar gnáthorduithe na scoile, a dhéanfar gnáthchaint an ranga, a bheidh na focail mholta agus cheartaithe, agus na gnáthbheannachtai. (Ireland, 1971) Irish should be used generally both inside and outside the school when the children are working and when they are playing; Irish should be the language of ordinary school commands, of talk in class, of praising and correcting and of the normal greetings. The same document (still presented to every student teacher) recommends a structured 'audio-visual' method for the teaching of Irish in national schools. Krashen (1982: 4-5) comments that teachers are too far removed from the theory and research behind their subject while researchers often are no longer practically involved in teaching, and it takes some time for the results of research to filter through the system. The behaviourist theory of language as simply a process of habit formation had been discredited ten years before the authors of the new curriculum designated behaviouristic audio-visual methods: an modh múinte sprioc-theanga is údarásai i measc teangeolaithe ('the target language teaching method which linguists consider best'). As Little, O Murchú & Singleton (1985: 8) point out, in practice most schools adopted a 'mixture of methods' being reluctant to dispense with formal grammar teaching: '. .. the official Department of Education programme for Irish is strongly audio-lingual in its orientation, while the walls of the class-room may carry simple grammatical paradigms for rote-learning.'

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One of the main draw-backs of the method is clear in the comment of teachers that there never seems to be time to carry out steps 4 and 5, which, even the handbook allows, are in fact the most importantto allow the children to communicate freely using the items learned. All the methodology however, is concerned with the presentation and practice of the drills and patterns. A further anomaly is the use of the method in all-Irish schools. Time which might more profitably be spent in other activities is wasted repeating and learning structured utterances far removed from every-day needs. The Irish which children in these schools acquire 'by-the-way' in normal, every-day transactions is under-valued and no specific help is given to them to cope for example, with the language of textbooks or to develop more advanced linguistic skills in Irish than are attainable in Englishmedium schools. Harris (1984) condemns the Nuachúrsai, the programmes used in national schools, as being unrealistic in their expectations given the amount of time available for teaching Irish. He was particularly concerned that their aims were nowhere clearly stated and that to conduct his survey, he had to draw up lists of objectives ab initio. His study is the only objective analysis of the programme that has been attempted in the 15 years of its use. He recommends that consideration be given to the adoption of a more communicative approach and the promotion of bilingual programmes both of which are in fact in keeping with the tone of the handbook and were practised to some extent in many schools but have been eroded in recent years, particularly since the advent of the audio-visual, easy option. Some of the recommendations of the Curriculum and Examinations Board I have already mentioned, in particular their insistence that the language background of pupils and the teaching medium of the school should be taken into consideration in the planning of language programmes. They also advocate the adoption of a communicative approach and an integrated language programme involving mother-tongue as well as other languages and forms of language. Towards a Communicative Curriculum for Irish (1985: 45) advocates the early mastery of the language required for class-room interaction and the promotion of learning activities which 'concentrate on involving pupils to the point where they forget that they are learning and are intent only on using Irish to achieve the goal in question'. The authors spell out, in realistic terms, what might be achieved if the national schools concentrated

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on providing a basic communicative repertoire, leaving the secondary programme scope to expand the intellectual content according to the capabilities of the students. A new attempt is to be made to review and improve the national school programme although the current climate suggests that improvements will be most sought in the curtailing of expenditure. While the findings of research may not always be immediately applicable to class-rooms and it is not desirable that teachers should opt wholesale for the latest 'method', there is a definite move towards the practical in linguistic study and it is to be hoped that a revised programme could make some use of the insights that have been gained into the human language faculty by linguists. At the very least one could hope that any such programme would be firmly based on a coherent theory and have clearly stated achievable objectives and that teachers would be trained to understand both theory and objectives. Very little attention has been paid to Irish in terms of modern grammatical analysis. The school course books and accompanying grammars have all been in the traditional, prescriptive mould. McCloskey (1979: subtitle) uses Irish 'to exemplify a particular view of the relationship between syntax and semantics'. His concern is, however, with some of the more advanced theories of 'Montague Grammar' and as such, of marginal interest (and almost incomprehensible) to those outside that specialised field. More accessible is a descriptive analysis by Stenson (1981) of some aspects of the Irish of a small number of speakers. Of particular interest are her comments on word order in Irish and I will refer to these in some detail in Chapter 5 under the heading 'Verbal Noun Complements'.

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3 Facilitation of Acquisition Input Eithne reached the age of three without acquiring more than a word or two in Irish, comprehension of an occasional phrase like dún an doras 'shut the door' or cá bhfuil do bhróga? 'where are your shoes?' (made obvious by the context in which they were spoken) and some knowledge of the sound system through the Irish names which we all have and the small amount of Irish spoken with the older children in various contexts. We were very fortunate that she was able to attend a Naionra (see Chapter 1) run by a near neighbour. She started there aged 3:3, a competent speaker of English with quite an extensive vocabulary and range of expression. She spent two years in the Naíonra, of which this study is mainly concerned with the final six months. At no time during her period in the Naíonra was Eithne given any formal teaching in the language; there was no language programme nor was any attempt made to highlight specific linguistic structures apart from the practice of some useful words and phrases. The policy was that the children would learn from repetition of certain simple phrases in recurring contexts. For example, from the beginning the Stiúrthóir insisted, with the co-operation of the parents, that the children greet her in Irish on arrival and ask for what they wanted, Ba mhaith liom . . . whether paint of a particular colour or biscuits at break-time. Items like numbers, colours, useful vocabulary were focussed on constantly but in effect no more so than in a first language playgroup situation where the task of the supervisor is similarly to extend the vocabulary and concepts of the child. Although when I began to record material, certain periods were selected when she was requested to speak Irish, the sessions were still unstructured and, as will be seen, their course was dictated by her interest in the topic of conversation and to a lesser extent by her fluency (or lack of) in Irish. At school during the period covered by this study, I think there was likewise very little formal instruction in Irish. The school programme for the infant classes recommends use of the audio-visual course book

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Colm agus Nuala (Ireland, 1967) with a particular emphasis on rhymes, songs and drama as a means of presentation. It was some time however before Eithne made any mention of this type of lesson, presumably because it takes several months for a class of 35 children who range in age from barely 4:0 to 5:6, to settle down. Simple greetings, useful phrases, commands, etc. were practised but again their choice was determined by their usefulness rather than by any grammatical feature or structure. (Eithne occasionally commented scornfully on the fact that some people in her class didn't know some of these.) In all three situations, home, Naíonra, school, Eithne was taught (exposed to) and encouraged to recite or sing simple poems, songs and rhymes. Much of her experience of Irish was not essentially different in character from that of a child learning his/her first language and it involved interaction on a similar level with the same type of peoplemother, father and other concerned adults. Although she may have absorbed some sounds from Irish in the first three years of her life, it was really only when she began to attend the Naíonra that any sort of a consistent pattern of exposure was established. It is not possible to quantify with any accuracy the amount of her exposure either in the Naíonra or in her first year of school since the source of Irish for her was represented in each case, mainly by one person, the Stiúrthóir, myself, her teacher or another interlocutor. (I have already estimated a maximum possible of 1,500 hours over the three years, but this undoubtedly includes periods when her attention may have been focussed on anything but language.) None of the contexts in which she heard Irish were total immersion situations since the other children spoke English and there was always the possibility of the caretaker falling back on English if necessary. Given these conditions, it is quite remarkable that she was sufficiently motivated to make the effort required to master not only the lexis of Irish which is a relatively simple matter, but also the details of its grammatical functioning. She had already a means of self-expression at her disposal and various possibilities for making others aware of her needs. No compulsion was exerted in any of the contexts; her development of Irish was voluntary and, as will be demonstrated in the following chapters, inexorable. Two significant factors in this progress were undoubtedly: (1) her own desire to learn what was there to be learnt and (2) her identification with and desire to be like the caretakers. In respect of both of these, it must be said that school, alone, could not have been as effective a motivating force since although the young child may forge a strong link with a teacher, the latter's time and attention have to be

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distributed among 35 children and the opportunities simply do not exist for much individual interaction. Eithne was fortunate in that the Stiúrthóir of the Naionra understood the importance of creating opportunities to talk with each child and that contact was not limited to the official Naionra hours but was resumed every time she went to play with her friend, the daughter of the Stiúrthóir. It is also important not to underestimate the role of back-up at home; parents and family who take an interest in the activities of the Naíonra and put that interest into practice, constitute both a reinforcement, by allowing additional opportunities for practising what has been learnt, and a further model for the child to identify with and imitate. Finally, the link between mother and child is such that learning constantly proceeds from their interaction, of which language, whatever its form, is only one manifestation. There are of course disadvantages which result from the introduction of a barrier to communication between mother and child, a factor of which I was particularly aware when involved in the initial stages of the project. Eithne, at times, clearly found it distressing to be required to find the words in Irish to express her meaning and some recording sessions were abandoned or not started for this reason. There were tears and resorting to thumb-sucking when I tried to press her beyond what she freely volunteered. Not surprisingly for a 4-5 year old, she did not ever explain this distress in words or attempt to attribute it to a linguistic cause. Her excuse was always that she didn't want to because she was tired or unwell or had something else to do. Her distress though, was at least in part caused by an awareness of her own inadequate resources in Irish. Even sentences which I had heard her produce, she refused to repeat in contexts not of her own devising. In the initial recording sessions it is noticeable that she held back when she was not entirely sure of a construction and, as will be shown in some detail later, when she produces structures, even though they are not quite target-like, they approach the target to some extent and clearly have roots which go some way back. Later transcripts show no reluctance to use Irish, a marked growth in the number of topics initiated by herself and a definite decrease in occasions where she has to fall back on English. Her earlier distress may well have been an additional motivation for her, spurring her on to overcome the inadequacies of which she seemed so aware. Where a teacher observes a pupil learning L2, especially where the learner is following a structured course, she might reasonably expect to be able to anticipate the development of certain forms and patterns. It is on this assumption that tests and examinations have traditionally been

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drawn up. In fact many teachers have been dismayed to find that pupils often know nothing of the specific items taught, or in the case of language, that they know the rules but disregard them in use. Allwright (1984) deals with this problem in a paper titled 'Why don't learners learn what teachers teach?' and Krashen (1982), notably, has addressed himself to the differences between items of language 'learnt' (i.e. consciously mastered) and 'acquired' (i.e. unconsciously picked up). In the present instance, there was no formal teaching so Eithne's learning could not be expected to show evidence of the conscious learning of particular items, but neither was it possible to trace any direct lines of influence from input to output. She developed forms to suit her own programme, in her own time, at her own convenience. Her own mental processes obviously interacted with the data offered to her, but significantly, her L1 does not appear to have played a role of much significance (except see Chapter 6). That she was aware of some basic linguistic processes will be shown, but she refused to rely on her L1 even where it might have been of some assistance and where an adult would undoubtedly have called on it. As I will show, her development was facilitated by the interaction process but this does not suffice to account for particular forms or the order in which they appear. The adult conversing with a small child does not attempt to teach items of grammar and evidence from both first and second language acquisition research suggests that to do so would be a waste of time (Crystal, 1976: 34-5). The explanation for the 'natural order' of morpheme development which can be seen to exist even though one might quarrel with the more extreme position on it (see Chapter 2, under 'Interlanguage'), must be sought either in the mind of the child/learner or in the workings of language or most probably in the processes resulting from interaction of the two. Characteristics of CDS (Child Directed Speech) Language acquisition research in recent years has devoted considerable attention to the study of child-caretaker interaction and the language patterns and modifications used by caretakers to ensure communication with the developing speaker. Snow was a prime instigator in the study of the language addressed to children which in the revised edition of her article 'Conversations with children' (1986) she calls Child Directed Speech. In that article she makes the important point that caretakers are concerned with communicating/talking with children, and for that reason they modify their language,

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repeating and rephrasing, using more intonation and better articulation than are normal in adult-adult speech. The cognitive limitations of children, their inability to cope with concepts beyond the 'here-and-now', she maintains, constrain the language level that can be used with them. This affects semantic relations in particular. The way that caretakers adjust the level of their conversation to the interests and preoccupations of the child is often referred to as 'fine-tuning'. Although no direct correlation has been established between children's linguistic level and the syntactic complexity of the input, i.e. mothers do not assess their children's mastery of tense before starting to use verbs in past or future, it is nevertheless clear that as the child becomes more capable of extended interaction, more complex vocabulary and syntax will be required: 'The syntactic simplicity can . . . be seen as an artefact of semantic simplicity' (Snow, 1986: 370). Snow (1986) quotes from some work which suggests that the earlier treatment of CDS may have been too uniformGleitman, Newport & Gleitman (1984: 75) argue against the efficacy of very simple CDS as a basis for learning language: '. . . such oversimple rules are likely to be hypothesised by the child if the CDS does not display the full range of complexity in the language'. Snow wonders if the picture needs to be much better differentiatedat the early word-learning stage, ultra simple CDS may benefit the child but at later stages, more complex language is necessary to supply a base against which hypotheses may be tested by the child. Repeated efforts have been made to try to trace correlations between children's speech and the language addressed to them. These have been of only marginal use in the attempt to explain the details of acquisition. It is nonetheless clear that language development is an essential aspect of the social integration of the child into a community and has its origins in that process. De Villiers & de Villiers (1979) cite the example of deficient language development in a child of deaf parents, whose main source of language was the television, as an indication that it is the interactive feature of CDS that is most important, a finding with which Snow obviously agrees since she emphasises in the title of her paper that she is concerned with conversations with children. Elliot (1981: 151 f.) summarises the most significant features of CDS under three headings: (a) Paralinguistic featureshigh pitch and exaggerated intonation; (b) Syntactic featuresshort, simple sentences, and (c) Discourse featuresmore interrogatives and imperatives, more

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repetition. The register defined by these characteristics is not limited to adults; other children show a distinct ability to modify their language when speaking to their juniors. My transcripts show ample evidence of these paralinguistic and syntactic features. All of Eithne's interlocutors speak more clearly and slowly than in normal conversation and make use of intonation to focus her attention and to highlight items which she appears to find difficult to understand. The syntax is simple and repetitive in the extreme although not perhaps to the extent observable in speech addressed to very young children. Elliot pointed to frequent verbless utterances, few function words and short preverb length but these characterise the language used when the child is at the one-word stage, interested in simple tasks like labelling. The present data however show few subordinate clauses or embeddings. Items are repeated over and over again, sometimes word for word, sometimes with slight variation to ensure comprehension of the essential elements, e.g. pronouns replaced by nouns, code-switches or translations of lexis and elimination of unnecessary information. The features are most evident in the early set of recordings and have almost vanished by the final ones. In the latter the conversation is fairly evenly apportioned with Eithne taking the initiative in many instances, suggesting and introducing topics and following her own interests. Discourse features Of particular interest in the present study are some of the discourse features of CDS which played a significant role in Eithne's acquisition. Many of the features mentioned above also occur in the language addressed to foreigners learning a language, called Foreigner Talk (FT) or Foreigner Register. Maclaran & Singleton (1984: 122) argue that there is not, in fact a 'well-defined variety' used to foreigners, that the 'simplifications' which can be observed are a 'by-product of the more basic simplification of functional structure'. Individual attitudes cause considerable changes in the way foreigners are addressed, ranging from the conviction that it is enough to raise one's voice to ensure comprehension and compliance, to extreme efforts to locate and remedy the source of a foreigner's difficulty. In accordance with the 'functional' approach suggested by Maclaran & Singleton (1984), it is worth noting that the latter attitude is probably closer to that of adults dealing with small children and that the reason for the modifications undoubtedly lies in the desire to be helpful and facilitate communication with a less-able speaker.

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Long (1981) in an analysis of questions in FTD (Foreigner Talk Discourse) suggests that the native speaker makes use of questions not only because they 'compel' answers, most cultures recognise the compulsion of turn-taking anyway, but because they make a response easier for the non-native speaker. Questions, unlike statements, can be responded to with a single word or phrase but they also provide lexical clues and often a structure which makes sense of the non-native speaker's meagre contribution. He gives as examples: [I'm from Japan] [Yes/No] [Japan] I can see you're not American Do you come from Japan? Where are you from? where in the first case, the non-native speaker carries considerably more of a burden than in the other two. When I began this study I was concerned that the discourse appeared so lop-sided, uneasy that a mother should use so many questions in what was unstructured interaction; it seemed to have too much of the character of a school lesson! Consideration of CDS (see Owens, 1985; Olsen-Fulero & Contorti, 1983) and of FTD however have convinced me that it is the natural pattern and that questions are closely tied in with the role of the facilitator of the interaction. To place an onus on another person to speak and to establish a particular medium of communication, asking questions in the language concerned is the most obvious strategy. Parents want to communicate with their children; they don't simply wait for the child to volunteer information, they ask questions although if the child is not disposed to cooperate then the communication will be negligible. The same applies if one is entertaining a foreigner; one wants to make contact, to establish communication and because of the difficulties involved one is allowed to ask many more questions than are normal in social interaction. I also commented in Owens (1986: 48 ff.) on the fact that the answering system of Irish, quite apart from its discourse function, also provided the child with an easy route into the verbal system. Irish had traditionally no 'yes/no' answer particle, instead it used an echo-system, repeating the verb of the question in positive or negative form. This system has been eroded and particles introduced, mainly from English, and in practice most speakers now use a combination of the two systems. But even now, questions not only provide a structure into which the person replying can slip a one-word answer, they supply a verb form,

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completely contextualised and requiring repetition, a perfect heuristic learning (or teaching) device. Its usefulness to Eithne is demonstrated below. Fine-tuning Snow (1979: 366) dismisses the notion, proposed by Levelt (1975) that mothers provide their children with language lessons: Although mothers do often teach their children about language, about the meanings of words, about how to form plurals, past tenses etc., what mothers are doing most of the time is simply trying to communicate with their children. A sideeffect of their attempts to communicate is the set of modifications described. These modifications are not the result of attempts by the mothers to teach their children to talk: rather they are the result of attempts to communicate effectively with them. (Snow, 1979: 366) But at least some of the interaction between parents and children is focused on language itself. Children are encouraged to play language gamespractising sounds, labelling, rhyming, all of which involve an exchange of forms which does not seek to convey meaning but takes pleasure in the sounds and patterns. It is well documented that children enjoy and conduct monologues of this type when alone (Dodson, 1985; after Weir, 1962). Dodson also quotes examples of bilingual children and those learning a second language who express their understanding of and reflection on newly acquired words and phrases in both languages (Dodson, 1983; 1985). In the case of an older child with a second language the 'games' can be more complex, encompassing what is essentially practice of structures. Especially in the early period of her time in the Naíonra, Eithne frequently reflected on differences between Irish and English and explored certain features aloud. For example the vocative in Irish is marked by prefixing a (which lenites a following consonant) so the name Dónall becomes a Dhónaill. At a very early stage Eithne commented on this feature, maintaining that English names could be turned into Irish in this way. Referring to a friend, she insisted that Diarmaid was the English form and a Dhiarmaid the Irish form of his name. She went on to experiment with other familiar names and came up with the following list, obviously decontextualised: 25/12/1982 a mhamaía bheana Mhéabha Dhónailla Chormaica Roisin

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That her focus was on phonetic manipulation is demonstrated by the fact that it had to be abandoned when she came to a Roisin; it did not fit the pattern because /r/ cannot take lenition. She also enjoyed rhymes and songs whose main feature was a minimal linguistic variation of number or colour, e.g. Cúigear fear ag tógáil tí 'Five men building a house', which gradually becomes Fear amháin ag tógáil tí 'One man building a house'. Such exchanges (although conducting a monologue, her intention was generally to impress a listener with the extent of her knowledge) are not just a 'side-effect' of attempts to communicate. There is no exchange of meaning, the usual function of communication, but it is a joint activitythe listener has a definite function. In addition, although the activity is shared by mother and child, the parts are unequal. The mother's task is to create opportunities for the child to participate and to practise forms which may be required in other circumstances, creating learning opportunities in other words. This may not tie in with Snow's (possibly more traditional) idea of language lessons but it does fit into the educational philosophy which sees a teacher as a facilitator of a child's learning, a process in which the child must be actively involved. In fact Wells (1985) points to motherchild interaction and in particular to the interest displayed by the mother in the child's activities, what he calls 'conversational reciprocity' (Wells, 1985: 22) as a model for teachers who sometimes fail even to simulate such interest. Krashen (1982) also recommends the adoption of some features of CDS as a means of facilitating learning because the learner is thereby provided with 'comprehensible input'. Hatch (1974) is another who is inclined to apply the term 'language lessons' to sessions such as those I enjoyed with Eithne. Face-to-face interaction between child and adult must have some of this character. Adults participate initially in order to make contact with the child or to help out in some waythe activities in themselves are not attractive to adults, it is their interest in the child which attracts. The level of interaction is determined by the childthe adult tunes down to the child's level by modifying her language in various ways; the child, assisted by the adult, moves up a notch or two, availing of the help offered by the adult and borrowing from the examples she provides. The data I have collected which show the interaction between mother and child in a second language throw new light on some of the features of CDS mentioned, though not to the extent of providing a direct correlation between items used by the mother and those developed by the child. The pattern established in the initial recordings, described in Owens (1986) remained fairly constant throughout the period studied,

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although there is a noticeable shift in emphasis. Having looked in vain for a suitable standardised method of elicitation, I decided to rely on familiar book-reading sessions and naturally occurring situations to elicit L2 from E. Whereas in the first two transcripts, E confined herself to marginal statements, single words and truncated phrases, well propped up by the surrounding questions and comments, one can see her share of the interaction increase gradually through the subsequent sessions. Allowing for some initial shyness in the presence of a tape-recorder and lack of familiarity with interaction sessions in this second language, one has to attribute the growth in her participation to her developing ability to produce sentences in the L2. At the beginning of the project she was aged 4:8, at the end 5:9. While still developing cognitively throughout the period, those abilities which at 5:9 she had acquired in Irish were well within her capacity in English at the earlier age. In this case the simplicity of her early production in Irish and of the CDS of her conversation partner cannot be an artefact of cognitive immaturity nor can their change in emphasis be attributed to a growth in cognitive maturity. Her acquisition of forms and syntax in Irish are determined by linguistic factors as are the characteristics of the CDS. I have referred to Snow's (1979; 1986) comments on how caretakers fine-tune their language and her opinion that the syntactic simplicity is an artefact of the semantic simplicity. In the present study, there are definite indications of fine-tuning in the CDS to cope with E's inability to find the forms in which to reply or her switching to English, which I consciously tried to discourage. Having realised that the reasoning-type questions of the BSM (Burt, Dulay & Hernandez-Chavez, 1975; 1978) brought no response. lEl shows a plethora of questions which demand no more than a single word answer; Cad é sin? 'What's that?' and Cé hé sin? 'Who's that?' simply require a label in reply. Attempts to elicit something more complex with Cá bhfuil sé? 'Where is it? ' (some success) and Cad tá á dheanamh ag X? 'What is X doing?' have to be explained, rephrased, backed up with further support and sometimes abandoned. Unconsciously M appears to tailor the topics to items for which E can find wordsfine-tuning of both topic and syntax to suit the child's linguistic level. One of the few extended exchanges of 1El shows clearly the extent to which E is in control and how M attempts to manipulate the shape of the discourse, allowing E to extend her contribution which in effect is allowing her to extend her production of lexemes and morphemesto practise phrases and forms within a strictly limited and structured format.

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Immediately prior to this exchange, E has demonstrated her ability to label and her interest in Santa Claus and the contents of his sack: lEl M: Ar tháinig Santa chuig Eithne? L260Did Santa come to Eithne? E: Tá (pres. tense to be) M: Tá? E: Bhi (past tense to be) M: Bhicad a thug sé? He didwhat did he bring? E: Sindy M: Thug sé Sindy duitar thug sé Sindy do Roisín? He brought you a Sindydid he bring a Sindy to Roisin? E: Ní (r) thug (past tense neg. to give) M: Níor thugar thug sé Sindy do Cormac? He didn'tdid he bring a Sindy to Cormac? E: Ní(r) thug He didn't M: Cad a thug sé do Cormac? Níl fhios agat? What did he bring Cormac? You don't know? E: Tá fhios agam I do know M: Cad a thug sé do Cormac? What did he bring Cormac? E: A train track M: A train trackar thug sé train track do Eithne? did he bring Eithne a train track? E: Nil (pres. tense negative to be) M: Nilar mhaith leat train track? Nowould you like a train track? E: Níor mhaith I wouldn't From my observations in the Naíonra I had the impression that the children were using tá and nil (positive and negative forms of the substantive verb) as yes/no substitutes. Where the question involved the substantive verb (which would in fact account for a substantial proportion of simple sentences) the strategy produced the correct answer but failed in the case of other verbs. The only exception seemed to be Ar mhaith leat 'Would you like . . .' which was correctly answered as Ba mhaith liom 'I would like', possibly because it was a phrase that was practised as being particularly useful. The extract quoted above shows the growing awareness that the system is more complex than initially realised; Eithne

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picks up her own incorrect answer and is able to modify the tense. At a later stage she becomes able to return the verb of the question. While Eithne is progressing towards an accurate expression of her meaning, M is striving to accommodate her deficiencies by fine-tuning. Note the avoidance by M of a complex pronoun in the initial question. E's reply is then questioned and amended. M accepts this indication that E has some grasp of tense and continues. The acceptance of E's answer to the second question shows that M feels no need to avoid the preposition pronoun this time. Each of E's answers is specifically acknowledged as acceptable even when not quite target-like. The questions which follow are academic in that both M and E already share the information requested and are directed at the elicitation of forms, to which E accedes. The exchange finishes off with an exactly worded reply; M allows E to round it off on a positive note with a familiar phrase. The point of the exchange is that it is two-sided, E being allowed to make a significant contribution but it is more a language game or exercise than an exchange of meanings. I have pointed out elsewhere (Owens, 1986) that the early recorded sessions with Eithne show her able to carry on conversation without using freely produced verb forms. Apart from the necessity of developing an answering system (also discussed in Owens, 1986) she influenced the discourse in such a way as to be able to avoid using full verbs. The second recording of the early tapes 1E2 shows this influence at work. It begins with an attempt to elicit the simple past tense. Cé hé sin? M: Who's that? E: Béar A bear M: Cad a dhein an béar? What did the bear do? E: Don't know M: Níl fhios agat. Cad a dhein sé? You don't know. What did he do? E: T-shirt M: Cad a dhein sé leis an t-shirt? What did he do with the t-shirt? E: Put it on his tummy M: Agus cad tá á dhéanamh aige leis na bríste? And what's he doing with the trousers? E: He put them over his head and it was the wrong way round. An bhfuil tú chun aon Ghaeilge a rá? Cad a dhein sé leis na M: bríste?

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Abair tusa. Cá bhfuil na briste? Are you going to say any Irish? What did he do with the trousers? You say. Where are the trousers? E: In M:In san ceann. Agus cá bhfuil na lámha? In the head. And where are the hands? E: In san poll In the hole M:In saninsan poll. Agus cá bhfuil an ceann? Inin the hole. And where is the head? In san bríste. E: In the trousers E replies variously: protests lack of knowledge, code-switches 'put it on his tummy'and indicates a topic't-shirt'without being able to extend it as a proposition. M reverts to a simpler type of question Cá bhfuil 'Where', and from that back to a request for labelling Cad é sin 'What'. Despite E's willingness to participate in the activity, M's proposed level of interaction is beyond her; there is no compulsion to produce because she is aware that M knows as much about the bear as she does and she refuses to attempt an answer to the question. During the session M varies the questioning much more than in 1El and E does her best to rise to the occasion. Feed-back is constantly provided by M, witness the following example: Cén fáth nár chuir sé na bróga ar a chosa? M: Why didn't he put the shoes on his feet? E: Nil fhios agam cá bhfuil na . . . I don't know where the . . . are M: na cosa the feet E: na cosa, cá bhfuil na cosa the feet, where the feet are M: Nil fhios agatnil fhios agatsa cá bhfuil na cosa You don't knowyou (emph.) don't know where your/the feet are? E: Nil béar fhios agam is not bear knowledge at me (lit.) M: Nil fhios Is not knowledge at you E: agat M: at the ag an bear E: béar

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Her meaning clearly was that the bear doesn't know where his feet are and to express it she tried to combine the elements nil fhios ag bearcá bhfuilna cosa. She is only beginning to analyse the phrase nil fhios agam; when her attention is drawn to agatsa she realises that the error lies in the referent and attempts to incorporate béar into the sentence and has made at least some progress by the end of the exchange. The example however shows the importance of feed-back, the advantage to the child in being brought to see that an error exists and helped to reformulate an utterance. In other places one can see that when some kind of satisfactory answer is achieved by E, M continues with a paradigm of questions: ar ith sé? ar chuir se? ar nigh sé? ar nigh tusa? To all of these E is able to make some sort of reply, at once confirming her ability to take part in the conversation and also giving her vital practice of items that are on the verge of being acquired. From the charting of E's responses in the first two recordings, it emerges very clearly that where verbal forms are required, she often simply code-switches. It happens both where progressive forms are called for as well as with full verbs. Continuing the above exchange, M tries to elicit a present progressive (E had shown some ability to cope with this form in the earlier recording). This is more successful but E still code-switches: Agus cad tá á dhéanamh aige leis na bríste? M: And what's he doing with the trousers? E: He . . . put them over his head and it was the wrong way round An bhfuil tusa chun aon Ghaeilge a rá? Cad a dhein sé leis na bríste? Abair tusa! Are you going to talk any Irish? What did he do with the trousers? M: You say. E's use of the English past tense may indicate that she doesn't clearly distinguish the tense/aspect forms of the two questions. M's remonstration only evokes protests and squeals from E and in an effort to keep her involved, M reverts to the simplest form of question, requiring only simple labelling type answers which E had indicated ability to cope with at the beginning of the session: Cá bhfuil na bríste? 1E2 M: Where are the trousers? L.18 E: in . . . M: Insan ceann. Agus cá bhfuil na lámha?

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In his head. And where are his hands? The progressive simplification of question type was entirely unconscious on M's part. It is only on later analysis that it is possible to see just how the child is allowed to determine the level of interaction. Whereas Snow (1979) points out that mothers allow children to determine the semantic level of discourse, here it is quite clear that there is a high degree of interdependency between the meanings conveyed and their form. At 4:8 years of age E is capable of the level of discourse first attempted by M as is shown by her ability to reply in her L1. But because she has not yet got control of the forms, she forces a shift down to a level where the formal tools to express her meanings are at her disposal. As she acquires the forms and discovers their exact function in the system, the level of discourse rises perceptibly until it shows as little sign of contrivance as is normal for her L1. Scaffolding From the moment of birth, mothers (and others) talk to their babies. All sorts of involuntary, digestive grunts and gurgles on the part of the baby are interpreted as expressions of need or contentment and the first indications of voluntary communication, such as smiles and grimaces are immediately taken as meaningful parts of an interaction. This process continues until such time as the child becomes able to carry the full burden of his/her side of a conversation alone. Initially the interlocutor (adult or other child) is responsible for both sides of the conversation, actually verbalising the baby's involuntary grunts and attributing to them an expression of meaning, often far beyond anything the infant is capable of. As the infant develops the means of communicating needs and emotions through the use of tone and gesture, interlocutors continue to put these into words and alternate their own role with that of the child. Even when the child begins to utter words, his/her contributions are expanded into sentences by the interlocutor who is still responsible for maintaining and realising the verbal form of the conversation. These expansions are seen as helpful to the child in the discovery of morphology and syntax although experimental studies have failed to show any direct evidence of acquisition being enhanced by them (de Villiers & de Villiers, 1979: 107). Interlocutor 'scaffolding' can be observed in all these phases of the child's developmentthe interlocutor provides the surroundings into which the child's contribution can be slotted. Because the interlocutor

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attributes a role to the child from the beginning, the child comes to realise the nature of interaction and to be able to take part. It is always the interlocutor's intention that the interaction be reciprocal and he/she therefore facilitates the child in every way possible. Snow (1979: 327 ff.) cites work by Shugar (1978) which described 'how mothers produce the utterances which create context within which very simple child utterances become meaningful parts of the rather complex whole'. In any attempt to assess a child's language development then, it is necessary to look not only at the build-up of structure but also at those factors which enable and encourage such a build-up. This enabling and encouragement can be seen both as an underlying factor in motivation to communicate and also in the development of particular forms. Scollon (1974) showed how some structures in a child's language evolved through such interaction and pointed out a development from 'vertical' to 'horizontal' syntactic constructions. In 'vertical' constructions the framework is provided by the interlocutor with only a limited contribution from the child but this fixes a context of use for the child and supplies feed-back about the correctness of his/her hypothesis. From this the child can then proceed to independent, 'horizontal' usage. This is not to suggest that the interlocutor 'teaches' such structures; the teacher's role, as already pointed out, is that of facilitating their discovery by the child and affording opportunities for the child to practise them. The processes outlined in the description of 'scaffolding' can be seen very clearly in the way E broke into the verbal system and are worth examining in some detail since this is to be the focus of subsequent chapters. While there is some development of tense in the early recordings 1E1-5 in respect of the verb bheith and in the answering system, by and large E avoids using verbs. She shapes the discourse; where she seems unable or unwilling to follow M's lead, M searches for a more acceptable topic. The particular circumstances where she and M share L1 mean there is no compulsion to produce for communication. In addition, the nature of the task, the joint discovery of a picture book where both parties can clearly see the relevant items, permits tenseless discourse. She code-switches, uses action phrases: flip-flop flip-flop-flip (1E2 L.684) i-á i-á i-á 1El L.605) inserts unanalysed chunks: ag rolladh is ag rolladh is ag rolladh (1E2 L.997) rolling and rolling and rolling

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seas suas ar an pussy's tail (lEl L.620) (where seas suas 'stand up' has been learnt as an invariant phrase) and telegraphs, omitting morphemes: Uisce all over pussy (1El L.637) (which is intended to mean 'he threw water over the pussy') Of these various strategies, code-switching is the one to which she resorts most frequently, curiously sometimes in telegraphic form. She omits the subject of the action: wave hand to granny, putting them in the door or uses a basic stem form: run, lunch -eat their lunch In this last example, she first topicalised her meaning, isolating the most important element and then filled it out somewhat but neglected to mark the verb for tense/aspect or even subject. The questions in all of these were a neutral Cad tá á dheanamh ag? 'What isdoing?' or Cad a dhein si?'What did she do?' In these early recordings, where full verb forms appear, they have been clearly modelled for her, as questions or as statements which she responds to affirmatively, contradicts or adjusts. The range of verbs used is limited and the forms required seem to be mostly past tense forms which are also the simplest formsstem with initial lenition where possible. The answering system also allows verbs to be used in their simplest form without even a subject. Once E had grasped the idea that the answering system of Irish involved repetition of verb marked for tense (see Owens, 1986), she demonstrated the ability to return the following verb forms, amended with respect to the initial particle (not entirely accurately) and with the subject correctly omitted: thug, níor thug * indicates where she dhein, níor dhein nigh rachaidh chuir, *ní chuir tháinig, *ní tháinig bhfaca, ni bhfaca **bhfuair

incorrectly uses a present particle with a past verb form ** indicates a dependent verb form incorrectly used alone *** marks where she omits the d' which has to be prefixed to past tense verbs

***ith, *ní ith beginning with a vowel Her initial preference for dependent forms complete with the eclipse

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shows without doubt that it is from the question form that she has extracted them. A further measure of her conviction that the question form can be taken over into the declarative is to be seen in the persistence of such forms a long way into the 2E period studied. Since most such questions put to her were in the past tense, her ability to return the correct (almost) form may be deceptive. A question put in present tense in 1E2 drew a similar answer form: L.902 M: E: M: E: M: E: M: E:

agus an gcabhraíonn tusa liom uaireanta? and do you help me sometimes? níní (pres. tense negative particle) ach uaireanta cabhraíonn tusa liom císte a dhéanamh but sometimes you help me to make cakes cistí deasa nice cakes Seanach ndéanann tusa cistí deasa uaireanta? Yesdon't you make nice cakes sometimes? uairuair somesome An ndéanann tú? Do you? dhéan (lenited stem/incorrect past tense of to do)

Whether or not she understood the question as originally put, certainly by the end of the exchange she has been led to the correct interpretation and her final reply has to be interpreted as an attempted present tense. This reveals a limited conception of the tense system even where she is only required to echo the question form. Studies of elicitation as a way of assessing L2 acquisition similarly show that children will reform sentences they are asked to repeat according to their current conception of morphology and syntax once their immediate memory span is overrun (Swain, Dumas & Naiman, 1978: 71): 'accurate imitation of the syntactic structures involves both decoding of the structure, followed by encoding according to the child's own productive system'. In the transcript of 1E2, there are a few examples of full verb sentences as distinct from those which are simply answers which pick up the verb of the question, but they are all well modelled in the preceding exchanges. I in no way want to belittle the task of the learner in assembling the correct elements of a full verb sentence but it would argue

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a distinct lack of language ability if the gradual tuition observed did not bring about learning. The following is a good example. The topic being discussed is a bear who put on his clothes wrongly, a simple story for very young children. The same nouns and verbs recur constantly in similar contexts. E produces two correct full verb sentences: L.159

Chuir sé t-shirt air. He put on a t-shirt Chuir sé na bríste air. He put on the trousers

L.162

but is given considerable help in the preceding exchange. The verb first appears in answering position in both positive and negative forms, with a demand for confirmation and an explicit acceptance of the verb form used: L.120 M: E: M: E: M: E: M: E: L.153 M: E: M: E: M: E:

Ar chuir sé an hata ar a cheann? Did he put the hat on his head? Chuir He did Ar chuir sé na briste air féin? Did he put on the trousers? Ní chuir (pres. neg. part.) He didn't Ar chuir? Did he? Ní chuir He didn't Ní chuir. Cad a chuir sé ar a chluasa? He didn't. What did he put on his ears? Bróga . . . Shoes . . . Anois ar chuir sé na bríste air? Now did he put on his trousers? Chuir He did Níor chuir sé na bríste air go fóill He didn't put on the trousers yet Chuir sé t-shirt air He put on a t-shirt Chuir sé t-shirt air. Ar chuir sé na bróga air? He put on a t-shirt. Did he put on the shoes? Ní chuir. Chuir sé na bríste air.

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He didn't. He put on the trousers. There are three other full verb sentences (= verb + subj. (+)) in this transcript and it is worth noting that like the above, two express contradiction of what has immediately preceded. As above also, they are clearly modelled within the preceding exchange but they constitute the first voluntary combination of verb and subject, context linked but still self-assembled: Ar dhein a L.401M: Did his ( ) make E: dhein did (positive echoing of correct past tense of to do) M: an granny an tower sin? (Did) the granny (make) that tower E: Níor dhein (She) didn't M: Níor dhein. Ar dhein Tom é? She didn't. Did Tom make it? Dhein Lucy é; E: Lucy made it The other example is very similar: L.439

Féach cad tá ins an cófra sin. M: Look what's in that cupboard E: Hata A hat M: Ar oscail Tom an cófra sin? Did Tom open that cupboard? E: Oscail Granny é Granny opened it. Oscail Granny é M: Granny opened it.

In the context of language lesson, it is worth noting that M at this point, accepts E's version of the past tense without correcting it to the standard d'oscail; she is obviously satisfied that progress has been made, adequate communication achieved for one day. Whereas questions allow for easy participation in an ongoing interaction, statements which are untrue call for a little more formulation by the learner. Their inclusion by M reflects the suggestion made by Snow (1979) that different stages in the child's progress will call for different levels of input, in this case a variation of the cue once an acceptable level of participation has been established.

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The fourth sentence in this group is again clearly modelled in the context. As with the others, it uses a verb which recurs frequently throughout E's production: Anois, cad a fuair Eithne ansin? L.685 M: Now, what did Eithne get then? E: ( )uair mise cóta gorm, fuair mise cóta glas I got a blue coat, I got a green coat M: Fuair tusa cóta gorm agus cé fuair an cóta glas? You got a blue coat and who got the green coat? E: Tomás Killeen M: Fuair Tomás an cóta glas. Agus cad a dúirt Tomás ansin? Tomás got the green coat. And what did Tomás say then? Bhfuair mise cóta glas and Eithne said 'Fuair mise cóta gorm' I got a green coat and Eithne said 'I got a blue E: coat' She demonstrates some confusion of reference in this sectionfor the Eithne of the book she uses the first person pronoun, repeating it for the third party where sé or sí is required. In Chapter 5 I will describe her confusion of these two pronouns; for the moment it is interesting to note that despite the similarity of si to English 'she' she made no attempt to use it in her Irish production. There is no question of her confusing the characters; they were clearly distinguishable by the colour of the coats they wore. She was making a very simple story more interesting by attributing the roles in it to herself and a friend from school and thereby allowing the use of the two pronouns she felt confident of, i.e. mise and tusa. Note her express indication of indirect speech which she marks with a code-switched 'and Eithne said'. The combining of verb and subject is clearly a task which she is avoiding despite her ability to do so in her L1 and the availability of names and pronouns. Verbs in answering position provide an easier task. Some indication has been given then of where Eithne found the means of expressing verb-related meanings. She drew first of all on various pragmatic strategies which allowed her to avoid using verbs at all. In this she was considerably assisted by the shape of the discourse which provided scaffolding and accepted her strategies. She was allowed to determine the level of discourse and to reject topics which she felt were beyond her competence. The scaffolding provided by M and the acceptance by repetition, of forms which constituted a step in the right

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direction led her in easy stages to put together some very basic, simple, full-verb sentences. It is quite clear that she set the pace and that she was involved in building up a system from first principles. She shows no reliance on her LI experience except that she reverts to it when the L2 formulation is beyond her means. While there was never any question of 'teaching' E the L2, it is clear that a form of 'lesson' is in action in these transcripts. The object of the 'lesson' was communication between mother and child even though the medium was not the normal one. It is equally clear that in most respects the input was no different from that which can be observed in exposure to a first languageabsence of input from a peer group and less intensive exposure constitute the two most significant variables. Despite these differences, the success of the method can be measured in the development of the system.

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4 The Verbal System An Outline of the Verbal System of Irish This is an outline of the Irish verbal system in so far as it is relevant to the patterns and forms which occur in Eithne's production throughout the period being studied. I have excluded more complex elements, e.g. conditional, subjunctive as being outside the scope of the study. I have also given only the bones of the system, making no reference to exceptions and variations which exist. I have tried to incorporate those aspects which are treated in the text and to give examples of relevant forms. Verbs are divided into two groups/conjugations: First Conjugation verbs which have a one-syllable root. Second verbs which have a root of more than one Conjugation syllable. There are eleven irregular verbs and some other exceptions to the above classification. Tense: The indicative has five simple tenses: expressed bystem + -ann, -onn Present stem + initial lenition (or d' before Habitual present Past f- and vowels) Habitual past stem + initial lenition + -(e)adh, -odh Future stem + f(a)idh, (e)oidh In the case of a small number of verbs the present form denotes punctual aspect as well as habitual. Traditional grammar books state that most of these refer to the senses, but they might better be described as non-stativefeic (see), clois (hear), deir (say), ceap (think), meas (hold an opinion), tuig (understand), iarr (ask), geall (promise), There are also compound tenses which use the verb bheith as an auxiliary verb + a verbal noun or verbal adjective. Progressive aspect is expressed by bí + ag + verbal noun bí + verbal adjective Perfective aspect bí + preposition + verbal noun

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stem (singular) Imperative mood is expressed by stem + (a)igi (plural) Questions are formed by prefixing a particle to the verb: Present, Future Past

an, nach + eclipse (and dependent form) ar, nár + lenition

Negatives are formed by prefixing a particle to the verb: Present, Future Past

ní + lenition níor + lenition

Some irregular verbs use the present particles also in the past: Regular Verbs Pres. tógann, an dtógann, ní thógann, Past thóg, ar thóg, nior thóg Future tógfaidh, an dtógfaidh, ní thógfaidh Imp. tóg, tógaigí Verb. noun tógáil Pres. prog. tá sé ag tógáil First Conj. tóg (build, take) Perf. aspect tá sé tar éis teach a thógáil

Second Conj. bailigh (gather)

Pres. bailíonn, an mbailíonn, ni bhailíonn Past bhailigh, ar bhailigh, níor bhailigh Future baileoidh, an mbaileoidh, ní bhaileoidh Imp. bailigh, bailígí Verb. noun bailiú Pres. prog. tá sé ag bailiú Perf. aspect tá na leabhair bailithe aige

Irregular verbs Pres. tá, an bhfuil, nil (note three separate verb stems) Pres. Hab. bíonn, an mbíonn, ni bhíonn Past bhí, an raibh, ní raibh Bheith Past. Hab. bhíodh, an mbíodh, ni bhíodh Future beidh, an mbeidh, ní bheidh (be) Cond. bhéadh, an mbéadh, ni bhéadh Abair (say) Clois (hear)

Pres. deireann, Past dúirt, Future déarfaidh Verb. noun rá Pres. cloiseann, Past chuala, Future cloisfidh Verb. noun cloisteáil

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Dean (do)

Pres. déanann, Past rinne/dhein, an ndearna/ar dhein ni dhearna/níor dhein, Future déanfaidh Verb. noun déanamh Faigh Pres. faigheann, Past fuair, an bhfuair, ni fhuair (get) Future gheobhaidh, ni bhfaighfidh Verbal noun fáil Feic Pres. feiceann, Past chonaic, an bhfaca, ní fhaca (see) Future feicfidh Ith Pres. itheann, Past d'ith, ar ith, níor ith, Future (eat) iosfaidh Verb. noun ithe Tabhair Pres. tugann, Past thug, Future tabharfaidh (give) Verb. noun tabhairt Tar Pres. tagann Past tháinig Future tiocfaidh (come) Verb. noun teacht Teigh Pres. téann, Past chuaigh, an ndeachaigh, ní dheachaigh (go) Future rachaidh Verb. noun dul As well as the analytic forms given above, the dialects (including the standard) maintain to varying degrees, the old synthetic system where pronouns form part of the verb form. Of these, the only one which is of importance in the system developed by E is the first person singular, present tense which generally takes the form stem + (a)im e.g. tógaim, bailim, táim, bím, feicim, tugaim, cloisim etc. The defective verb Is, the copula, is used in classification and identification sentences and combines with prepositions and adjectives in certain constructions, e.g. expresses ownership is + le to like is + maith + le = It has the following forms: Is, ni Question An, nach Present and Future Ba, nior(bh) Ar(bh), nárbh Past Lenition and eclipse: Irish uses a system of initial mutationthe consonants p,t,c,b,d,g,m,f, s can be lenited (aspirated) shown in writing by the insertion of -h- after the consonant in question; voiceless consonants p,t,c,f become voiced and voiced consonants b,d,g nasalised by eclipsis, marked in writing by prefixing the new consonant to the old. This no longer carries grammatical function in itself but acts as an additional marker of some functions, e.g. initial lenition on the stem form marks the past tense; the only other use

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of the stem form is the imperative and context would normally preclude its confusion with past. Nic Fhionnlaoich (1984) comments that the children she studied failed to carry out initial mutation when indicating possession; E seems to ignore it in the tense system presumably because it has no unambiguous function and moreover involves the beginning of words. A possible exception is the eclipsis which follows the interrogative particle and may be a more salient marker than the latter. This will be discussed in a later section. Most grammars of Irish have tended to be prescriptive, drawn up for traditional type instruction. Following recent trends in language teaching, however, there is a very simple and useful outline grammar in English in the handbook Bunghaeilge do Thuismitheoiri published jointly by An Comhchoiste Réamhscolaíochta and Institiúid Teangeolaíochta Eireann in 1985. A further indication of what is available is to be found in Little, O Murchú & Singleton (1985: 39) which lists the publications consulted in drawing up the functional-notional syllabus. Eithne's Acquisition of Formal Tense Markers As can be seen from Table 4.1, the data base is unfortunately extremely limited. This is due partly to the fact that no attempt was made specifically to elicit full verb forms; the project was always intended to be based on naturally occurring speech. Such deliberate ploys as I resorted to were occasioned by the need to provide contexts in which E would speak in L2. It is however also the result of E's ability to converse without requiring more than a handful of full verbs. Similar columns for IE are almost blank, witness to a considerable period of interaction without need for full verbs. In addition E appears to require a very limited number of verbs, and they are not always marked for tense. Combination with modals and other constructions accounts for some of the usage and these are discussed elsewhere. The object of the present section is to review E's development of the formal devices for marking present, past and future tense. As far as regular verbs are concerned, this involves the discovery and allocation of three basic morphemes (with allomorphic variation in the case of second conjugation verbs), which have to be attached to the stem of the verb. The fact that the imperative and the past tense both make use of the stem form should facilitate discovery. Complications might be expected from the absence of the tense morpheme in first person singular forms (these use a synthetic form for present tense) and from irregular verbs.

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TABLE 4.1 Tense markers used Present

Past

Future

Other

2E1 Feicidh mise (see) feicidh mí léim sé (jump) ithithidh mé (eat) itheann sí d'ith caithfidh mé oscail (open) (must) toss tú rachaidh (go) 2E2 Imp. faigh (get) cuir féach (see) cuir ith

thit (fall) d'oscail (open)

níor cuire (put) cuir ( ) idh mise

cuir sé thar la (happen)

2E3

bhris mé (break) chuaigh (go)

2E4

dhéanaidh mise (do) caithfidh tú (must) dúirt sé (say) caithfimid (must)a Cár chuiridh Dadaí? (put)dhéan( ) aidh mé Feicidh tusa? (see) ar chualaidh tusa? (hear)

Imp. cuir (put) deanaidh muid (do) ní théim (go) ni déanaidh tusa (do)

dulfaidh me (go) gearrfaidh mé (cut) déanfaidh mise (do) dúnfaidh mé (shut)

2E5 tánn siad (be) déanann sé (do) Imp. tar anseo (come) caithfidh mise (must) déanaidh mise (do) ?cuire mé (put) cuiridh tú teacht (come) dul (go) tar isteach (come)

chuaigh sé (x10) (go) oscail sé (open) d'ith sé (x4) (eat) tháinig NP (came) deir NP (say) rith (run) d'eirigh siad (rise) dún sé (close) thit mé (fall)

thiocfadh liom? (can)

2E6 Imp. ith (eat) féach (look)

thit sé (fall) bhris sé (break)

leigh mé(read) an oscail tú? (open)

dúirt (say) cuiridh sé (put) cuir sé (put) cas sé (turn) bhfuair sé (get) chuaidh mé (go) (table continued on next page)

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Page 70 TABLE 4.1 (continued) Present

Past

Future

2E7 déanann sé (do) thit sé (fall) tellannse sciorr se (slip) tabhair sé (give)chuaigh sé (go) thug (give) tóg sé (take) cuir sé (put) bhfuair sé (get) chuir sé (put) glán sé (clean)

gheobhaidh mé (get) tabhairfidh mé (give) tarfaidh mé (come)

2E8 léann tú (read) fuair mé (get) ?deir sé (say) ? deir sé nior thug (give) rinne sé (do) dhein sé (do) chuir sé (put) chuaigh sé (go) whish sé rith sé (run) chuir NP (put) d'ith sé é (eat) ceannóidh siad (x 2) (buy) bhfuair Peter (get) cóirigh sé (fix) ith siad (eat) faigh sé (get) nuair a chonaic sé (see) tháinig (come)

tógfaidh mé (take) dulfaidh mé (go) caithfidh mise (must)

Other

2E9 itheann tú (eat) bhfuair mé (get) déanfaidh mé léamhann tú ith mise (x4) (eat) (read) chuaigh mé/sé/siad (go) (do) éisteann (listen) gheobhaidh mé cuir ort (put) dúirt an Dadaí (say) (get) ólann tú (drink) thit sé (fall) feicfidh mé (see) smókann sé léimt sé (jump) caithfidh tú déanann sé (do) bhris (break) (must) leigh-1éann sé níor thit sé (fall) (read) dhein a Mhamaí (do) léimeann sé nior lig (let) (jump) tháinig a fairy godmother (come) thug sé (give) bhfuair sé (get) chaill sé (lose) chuir siad (put) (table continued on next page)

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TABLE 4.1 (continued) Present

Past

Future

Other

dhéanfaidh mise 2E10 Imp. Tar anuas thit Mary Anne (fall) (do) (come) bhuail mé (hit) Cond. ó1faidh tú dhéanann Dadaitháinig M agus D (drink) (come) (do) níor lig siad (let) imriimreoidh mé chuaigh mé (go) (play) ligidh mé (let) óil siad (x2) (drink) ithfimid (eat) thóg sé (take) rachaidh tú (go) fuair sé (get) gheobhaidh mé (get) bhfaca sé (see) ni tabharfaidh (give) caithfidh sé (must) tabharfaidh mise dhein an éan (do) give tógtóig an éan (take) dúirt sé (say) chonaic sé (see) d'óil na éiníní (drink) óld'ól 2E 11

bhris sé (break) thit mé (fall)

2E12

An ndéanfaidh tusa? (do) caithfidh mé (must) Cá cuirfidh mé é? (put) Cá gcuirfidh mé é?

Fuair sé é (get) ní rachaidh (go) lend sé dom é ni bhfuair (get) níor dhein muid (do) ní dheinimid (do)

2E13 Feiceann siad (see)

dhein mé (do) scriobh mé (write)

Cad a rá (VN)dheireann siad dhein muid (do)

Cond. gheobhaidh mé (get) nior an ndéarfaidh tú dheinfe (say) (do) a' labhrann tú? (speak) b'fhéidir go dtabharfaidh (give) an labhróidh mé (speak)

(say) rinne mé (do) An bhfeiceann? cé dúirt é? (say) (see) fuair mé (get) Imp. féach ghlán sé (clean) (look) nigh Mamaí é (wash) ni bhrisfidh sé (break) dúirt sé (say) ni bhfásfaidh (grow) cad a dhéanfaidh mé? (do) imreoidh mé (play) (table continued on next page)

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TABLE 4.1 (continued) Present 2E14

caithfidh mé (must)

2E15faicim (see) Imp.féach (look) croitheann sé (shake)

Past

Future

Other

chuaigh muid (go) gheobhaidh sé (get) dhein mé (do) tabhair mé (give) fuair mé (get) an léifidh tú? (read) imirt (play) léifidh mé (read) an gheobhaidh mé? (get) gheobhaidh Eithne é (get) tógfaidh mé (take) d'ith mé (eat) an leigh tú? (read) bhuail duine é (hit) thit piosa de (fell) chuir tusa (put) nior bhfaca (see) bhfaca mé é (see) a dúirt mé (say) faighfidh mé (get) ni bhfuair si (get) an léifidh tú?(read) fuair mé (get) thóg mé (take)

ni feiceann misebhuaigh (win) (see) dhein mé (do) Imp. cuir (put) chuaigh mé (go)

feicifidh mé (see) an osclóidh tú? (open) rachaidh mé (go) dhéanfaidh mé (do) gheobhaidh mé (get)

ni cónaíonn (live) ni caithfimid (must) ceapaim (think) faicidh tusa? 2E16 (see) hit NP An bhfeiceann nior chonaic mé (see) tú? (see) léimeann sé (jump) feiceann mise (see) feicim (see)

suífidh mé (sit)

These instances of verb use are roughly in the order in which they occur in the transcripts; some indication is given of contextpronouns, questions, negatives etc. although these will be outlined more fully in a later section. I determined the functions, i.e. present, past etc., from the context. In most cases this was quite clear but where there was any doubt I have underlined and prefixed a? Although I have marked some items as recurring (x 2/4 etc.), in most instances I have given only the first occurrence in a transcript of a particular form; this applies especially to verbs which have clearly been acquired and where there is no further evidence of error. In a few cases the transcripts include verbs used in casual interaction in or around the same time. Errorsunder- and overgeneralisation, wrong stem or ending etc.are emboldened. Borrowings from English are italicised as is the gloss in brackets after each example. Other types of variability such as lenition, eclipse,

broad/slender consonants are not specially marked.

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Although there are only 11 irregular verbs, they account for almost 50% of E's usage. The verb 'to be' will be treated separately, its forms are highly irregular. The rest all have regular featuressome are irregular only in that they use a separate verb stem for past tense (deir, clois, déan, feic)others for future tense (ith)and some vary the stem in all three tenses (faigh, tabhair, tar, teigh). E's attempts to incorporate these into a system show up as errors in her production (indicated by emboldening) and a further source of error is the existence of dependent forms which are used with question particles. There is no evidence to suggest that she was ever put off by the existence of such variation or that she used strategies to avoid irregular verbs. In fact, as already mentioned, they were among the verbs she found most useful and needed most. The chart refers only to the 2E period. Some indication is given in Owens (1986) of her verb usage in the previous period but as is pointed out, full verbs were used mainly in answering position, where they echo the verb of the question and are therefore omitted in this discussion. With one exception, the first two months under consideration contain only examples of first conjugation verbs. The one exception is the verb oscail. During this period it appears only in past tense where it is not significantly different from first conjugation anyway. But she had used it with a future ending as a past tense form (see 1E4 L.41) which argues some awareness of the distinctive features of the conjugation. Her selection of -idh as a preliminary tense morpheme may also owe something to second conjugation forms. It appears in both conjugations as part of the future marker, i.e. f(a)idh, (e)oidh but it is also salient in second conjugation verbs in various other forms e.g. Imp. bailigh, Pres. bailíonn Past bhailigh The long [i:] represented by the letters -idh could equally well be written in other ways. I chose this orthography because E clearly used it en route to the future morpheme which is written thus. A few second conjugation verbs appear in the second half of the period studied and will be discussed later. In this attempt to focus on formal features alone, any conclusion can only be tentative since, as is obvious from the table, the evidence is scanty. Such casual interactions as I happened to record add substantially to the picture; omissions may well distort it. For example one short session in the kitchen in October 1984 recorded by chance, produced four verbs with clear future forms, unsolicited, unprompted. These constitute a substantial block on the chart, indicating that the future marker was established well before evidence from the transcripts would

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suggest. The question of where the transcripts lie on a formal/informal continuum and whether they are more or less consciously monitored will be discussed elsewhere. Unmarked Stem Form The first set of transcripts to be considered 2E1-7, show three forms of the verb: (1)

unmarked stem form

(2)

stem + -idh

(3)

stem + -ann

I will look at these in some detail, starting with (1) unmarked stem forms. This can be seen used correctly as Imperative in 2E2three examples faigh, cuir, féach. It is also used for past tense, including one code-mixed toss tú where the slightly uncommon English 'toss' is taken over in the absence of an Irish word meaning 'throw'. Lenition is missing in most of the past tense forms, except where it obviously (to E) is part of the unmarked form, e.g. thit, bhí, bhris. The d' which should be prefixed to verbs beginning with a vowel sound is randomly present, but is not extended to present or future forms in this period as it had been in one of the earlier recordingsd'oscail was also used as an imperative in 1E. The stem form also occurs for present tense in 2E1 and 2E2léim sé, cuir miseand for future as late as 2E6leigh mé, an oscail tú? While its use as present tense in the earlier transcripts causes no surprise, it is rather strange that it should recur as late as 2E6. By this stage it appears to be firmly established as a past tense form and there are indications that the future ending has also been acquired. It is difficult to know if it should be attributed to imperfect understanding of the system or to a momentary lapse. The stem form of the verb is obviously particularly salient, especially if the initial mutation is ignored as in E's case. Being able to use it both as imperative and as past tense must provide an easy way into the system. Bowerman (1973: 104) reported that her Finnish subject Seppo used a single invariant verb form in the early stages, a form which was similar to verb stem, infinitive and imperative. It is also a feature of the holophrastic stage in L1 acquisition that children will use the meaning element of a word in an invariant form with a range of different functions. In the case of Irish it seems as though a pragmatic, universal strategy finds reinforcement from the system.

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An important additional feature to observe is shown in 2E5-6 where there is a sudden increase in the number of past tense full verbs, correct (apart from initial lenition in two instances) with only one exceptioncuiridh sé, and even that is later amended to cuir sé. 2E7 shows only correct stem forms used for past tense, again an increased number of them, and there are indications that initial lenition is coming in as an additional marker. Listening to the tapes one can detect a gradual moving closer to the lenited forms and from this point onwards there is no deterioration in use of stem forms in appropriate conditions. The significance of this 'blossoming' is heightened by the fact that it occurs exactly at the time where E has determined the function of the simple past. Function and form demonstrate their interdependence; discovery of one gives a boost to the other. The details of this mastery of function will be looked at more fully in the section on Aspect. Stem + -idh As with initial lenition, it is only as it develops, that one realises that this ending is a step on the way to the future -(f)(ó)idh marker. E eventually developed full future forms complete with aspiration (f) and looking back one can trace an unbroken line of development where she gradually abandons deviant uses of the morpheme and imperceptibly moves closer to the correct form in its appropriate function. At the beginning of the period laid out in Table 4.1, stem + -idh is used in all three tenses; there are examples of the same form feicidh doing duty for both present and past. The past tense d'ith alternates with ithidh mé while there is also an instance of a correct present itheann. That she has isolated -idh as a morpheme rather than imitated an unanalysed sound combination is shown in this instance because ith(f)idh does not occur in the language; the future of this verb makes use of a separate stem íos iosfaidh. The use of -idh as a past tense marker is perhaps the strangest aspect of the overextension of this morpheme. 2E4 has three examples, two of which were elicited by asking for a translation'How would you say? Did you hear? Did you see?' In reply she produced Feicidh tusa? and Ar chualaidh tú? The third example was a freely posed question, recorded in a note-book, Cár cuiridh Dadaí na gúnaí?, a genuine request for information. The first two examples involve irregular verbs; feicfidh exists as a future form but chuala involves a separate past tense stem and there is no precedent for attaching an -idh morpheme to

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it. Cuirfidh, like feicfidh exists as a future form. All three verbs are among the most frequently used by E and occur often in the answering system. Another frequently used irregular verb occurs in 2E4 with a similar endingdhéanaidh mise. It is perhaps not surprising that it is particularly with the irregular verbs that E tends to overextend inappropriate endings. A source for the particular shape of morpheme chosen may, as suggested above, be looked for in the endings of second conjugation verbs or in the future form. A further source of influence might well be the defective verb caith. The most common use of this is in its future form caithfidh as a modal similar to 'must' in English. It may have present or future reference but not past. In 2E4 E, in fact, uses caithfidh to refer to a past event. Its frequency of use as a present tense may well have caused some confusion for her. A final possibility in the search for the source of this error may relate to the use of the synthetic first person singular form with an object pronoun, again a frequent occurrence. Forms like Feicim é 'I see it' could be taken for feicidh mé in line with the rest of an analytic paradigm. Some combination of all these possible explanations seems likely to be responsible for this particular set of errors. The cluster of deviant past tense forms in 2E4 together with two instances of déanaidh for present tense actually occur after a period where only correct past tenses are shown. The ability to use the correct forms may be a result of memorisation and the paucity of data may well conceal a more varied system than is obvious in the chart. 2E5 however shows -idh still in demand as a present ending but 2E6 marks clearly its demise outside correct future contexts. It is surely no accident that 2E5 marks the point where the real present marker -ann begins to appear. As -idh is restricted, -ann takes its place. There are occasional relapses2E10 ligidh mé, and a later Ní tuigidh mé. These in fact lend credence to the suggestion made above that E did not clearly distinguish the presence of an object pronoun with the synthetic first person forms of verbs like tuig and feic. Less easily explained is the occurrence of a present tense question form in 2E16feicidh tusa? Again this is an irregular verb with fluctuating forms but its use had been target-like for some time previously. The difficulty experienced in discovering the interrogative marker (see Chapter 5 under 'Negatives and Questions'), might possibly have some bearing on the form. The -idh ending alternates with a neutral -e attached to the verb cuir in 2E2 but it appears as a clear future in four examples in mid-October 1984dulfaidh, gearrfaidh, déanfaidh, dúnfaidh.These were unmistakably future forms both formally in that there was some evidence

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of the -f- and functionally in that they fitted the context of use exactly. In the form dulfaidh one can see evidence of an interlanguage rule that future is formed by adding the morpheme to a familiar part of the verb. She makes a similar error in 2E7 where she attaches the future ending to the imperative of the verb tar, producing tarfaidh mé; in the case of dul she has chosen the salient verbal noun which in fact is quite separate from the tense paradigm. In addition there is the factor of a highly irregular special future stem for this verbrachaidh, a form of which she was aware, having confused it with the similarly irregular past tense form in 2E1. The ability to form a future tense as evidenced here, does however indicate the existence of an established rule, one that would yield correct results in a large number of cases. With the exception of some examples of stem forms used as future in 2E5-6 which have already been mentioned, the future appears to be firmly established by 2E7. It is regrettable that there is so little evidence in the columns for 2E4-6 but I would tend to delay setting the point at which the future seems secure until 2E7 on the grounds of the use of the future morpheme as past and present in 2E5 and 2E6. It seems eminently clear here that while one may fix a point at which a morpheme first appears, the function of that morpheme can be said to be acquired only when its use becomes appropriate. The relatively simple system of Irish where there are three morphemes to be assigned to three tenses nonetheless shows the interplay of a range of factors and it seems to me that one cannot establish an order for the emergence of the morphemes. It is only when, as in 2E7, each has been correctly assigned to its correct function and there is no overlapping that one can deem them acquired. Acquisition of an individual morpheme cannot be so significant if its place in the total system is not clearly differentiated, both formally and in function, from other morphemes operating in the same general domain. Dulay & Burt (1975) make a case for grouping morphemes but in their Acquisition Hierarchy, each proposed group contains only one tense/aspect morpheme; i.e. they perceive the progressive -ing as preceding past irregular which precedes the perfect auxiliary and past participle. The data from E indicate a complex interplay among forms which is further complicated by consideration of stem forms which carry no overt marker but which are nevertheless part of the system. Although one would have to separate this initial sorting out of primary tense/aspect from the later development of the remainder of the system (i.e. past habitual, conditional, subjunctive), all the items mentioned are dependent on one another.

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Stem + -ann Unlike the previous morpheme, this one does not appear to have been overextended by E. It occurs only for present tense and I have no memory or record whatever of her using it in any other context. I was aware that for a considerable period she appeared to have no present forms in her productive repertoire. In another section I will look at the factors which determine why the simple present should be so little used. I have referred already to her use of stem forms for present tense and also to the reasons why she may have mistaken the -idh endings as belonging to the present tense. In 2E7 two present forms occur, one of them a code-mix tellann. This ability to attach a morpheme to a verb stem from another system suggests that in fact E was well aware of the mechanism for forming the present tense at this stage. Succeeding transcripts reinforce this suggestion. The present tense turns up as required, any lapse being swiftly self-corrected as in 2E10 leighléann sí and there are examples of systematic generation as when she produces léamhann tú iad, where she has taken the verbal noun and added -ann, in this instance arriving at an incorrect form. Data from 2E9 on, shows verb use from an additional three month period. There is little evidence of error; in particular verbs of the first conjugation are used perfectly correctly. She uses more verbséisteann, nior lig, chaill sé, bhuaigh, cónaíonn, ní bhrisfidh, ní fhásfaidhand they occur in a wider range of sentence types. Among the few incorrect forms are her use of the stem laighas future in 2E13 and a present form made from the verbal noun + -ann in 2E9 which is later revised to the correct version. The former had occurred before, but in the subsequent transcript there are two examples of correct future usean léifidh tú?, and léifidh me.It is possible that the confusion was caused by the similarity of sound in the two syllables. A self-correction in 2E13 Cad a rádeireann siadshows that as with leamh, the shape of the verbal noun is connected in her system with tense formation. Its influence appears also in her extensive use of léimt sé in 2E10. In the same session she did however use the correct present léimeann.There is no regular VN formation although some patterns may be observed. There are several examples of code mixed verbsa composite smokann sé in 2E9, whish séin 2E8 and land séin 2E12, both recognisable stem past forms. In these code-mixes it is noticeable that she confines herself to borrowing words of one syllable; it may simply be the case that these lend themselves easily to the other system whereas longer

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words would be more problematic. It may also be, however, that she is aware of the distinction made in the target language, single syllable verbs belonging to the first conjugation, multisyllable to the second. Her system further shows its variability in the alternation of forms for the verb ól in 2E11she first produces a slender consonant past tense form óil siad which is repeated, then in a later version remembers to add the obligatory d' and finally produces ól which she corrects to d'ól. There are rather more instances of errors in the forms of the irregular verbs, quite predictable errors. The verb faigh uses separate stems in the future, gheobhaidh for declarative and faighfidh for negative and question. In 2E8 she used a past form faigh mé in place of the irregular fuair. Gheobhaidh occurs several times and had done so in the earlier period also, but in 2E13 she simply adds the question particle to it to give An gheobhaidh mé? (Dependent future interrogative form an bhfaighfidh?)The same form recurs in 2E14 and 2E15 she changes the declarative to Faighfidh tú. The latter is of course a regularisation based probably on the imperative singular. Obviously she is aware of the two forms but has not yet discovered their range of use. She still demonstrates some confusion with the verb tabhair, using the stem form incorrectly for the past tense in 2E14 tabhairmé. Although in 2E10 she is still producing the incorrect bhfacaas a past tense of feic, she does also produce a freely formed chonaic sé, for the first time according to the recorded evidence. It is a form that I consciously reminded her of quite often. In 2E10 and 13 she alternated the different past tense forms (really different dialect forms) of the verb déan rinne and dhein without any apparent reason or difficulty. For negative though, she sticks to nior dhein rather than attempting the more complex ni dhearna. Her repetition, ni dheinimidmay however indicate some awareness of the other form. A further feature of her use of this verb is her tendency to lenite both present and future forms as well as pastsee 2E11 and 2E15; glancing through other forms of the verb, e.g. questions like Cad a dheanfaidh mé? and the negative, her acceptance of the dh as the unmarked form is hardly surprising. As well as consolidation of the system established in the earlier period, there is evidence of continuing progress. In particular she produces several examples of second conjugation verbs. Self-correction shows that the rule is not yet secure although there is very little error to be seen. In 2E8 she produces a correct past tensecóirigh sé and in 2E10 she moves from imri-,possibly a start to a present tense, to the required

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future imreoidh mé. 2E13 has two attempts at a future for the verb labhair, not one of the easiest verbs to handle since the second syllable is syncopated in both present and future tenses. Her A'labhrann tú? does not quite fit the context in which she tries to use it, either semantically or formally but her second effort, An labhróidh mé? is quite accurate. In the same transcript there is a further use of imreoidh. There are however insufficient examples in either of the other two tenses to determine if she has mastered the whole paradigm of these verbs or only a part of it, possibly the most salient ending. (It was this future ending which cropped up in one of the preliminary transcripts 1E4). One further development is worth mentioning. In 2E10 I had asked her a hypothetical question which she first misunderstoodor possibly avoided answering by reverting to the previous question to which she had answered Nil fhios agam 'I don't know': Cad a dhéarfainnse dá mbeadh na buidéil go léir 2E10 M: folamh? L.188 What would I say if all the bottles were empty E: D'óil anna éinini Thethe birds drank ... M: Cad a dhéarfása mura mbeadh aon bhainne ann do do bhricfeasta? What would you say if there was no milk for your breakfast Ólfaidh tú tae E: You'll drink tea The context appears to make clear that the question is hypothetical and ignoring the new forms of the verb which M produces, she answers with a simple future. Despite repetition and extension of the scenario of what M would do if there was no milk for breakfast because the birds had taken it all, she sticks to her simple future: E: Beidh me crosta I'll be cross She also very quickly takes up M's lead in using direct speech in scolding the birds E: Gheobhaidh an cat tú! The cat will get you But whereas she did not feel able at this stage to take up the proposed conditional, in 2E13 she perceives a need for it herself and finds a form

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which while not entirely correct is certainly distinct from any she had used previously and has some of the features of the conditional notably the future f and a neutral vowel in the ending. Her use of the past negative particle níor is also unusual. She is telling about a boy in school who disrupted a game played by herself and some friends: E: Agus dúirt sé níor dheinfe sé arís é leisleis an 2E13 múinteoiragus dhein sé And he said he wouldn't do it again toto the teacher L.354 and he did Notice how clearly a distinct form is called for in the context, where the iniquity is that he said he wouldn't and then he did. As in so many examples, it is where she feels a strong compulsion to make her meaning clear that she is best able to find the forms to do so, whereas the facilitating presence of a sympathetic interlocutor often allows her to sit back and have some of the work done for her. In summary then, the picture at the end of this second period is of a comprehensive ability to cope with a wide range of verbs in a wide range of contexts. It is quite impressive to observe the growth in her usage of verbs from the meagre few that emerged in the first sessions to the clusters in the later ones. As I have emphasised already, there was no change in policy on my part, but as E grew in confidence and ability, she took over more and more of the discourse and the final transcripts are very much of her making and determining. Progressive Aspect Need for Progressive Irish, like English, has a usage involving the verb 'to be' and the verbal noun to express progressive aspect Bi + NP + ag VN + (NP) although since, unlike English, Irish distinguishes a past habitual for all verbs and both present and past habitual of the verb bi, there are some differences in the range of uses of the two constructions. Stenson (1981: 138) points out that there is quite a difference between the English marking of auxiliary and main verb 'be . . . ing' and the use in Irish of the substantive verb bi as auxiliary with the 'overtly nominalised form VN'. She also notes the use of other verbs as auxiliary, notably verbs of

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perception, starting, stopping and continuing as is, in fact, also the case in English. Kallen (1985) on the other hand, suggests that some aspects of Hiberno-English syntax may be due to the existence in Irish of aspectual categories and that the use of a tense-marked aspectual marker plus a verbal noun in Irish (tá/bíonn . . . VN) converges with the tense-marked aspectual do plus unmarked predicative verb of the do + be V-ing type in Hiberno-English. This convergence deemphasises the canonical word-order differences between the two languages, in separating tense/aspect marking functions from those of the main verb, and in placing the main verb, in both cases at the end of the verbal unit. (Kallen, 1985: 144) No one in E's immediate environment is a frequent user of the Hiberno-English 'do-be' construction but I occasionally feel the need to express habituality and would employ it in a fairly self-conscious way. Despite Stenson's emphasis on the grammatical differences, I think this construction has to be seen as less alien to the speaker of English, particularly of English as spoken in Ireland, than other aspects of the tense system with radically different word order. In the case of the past progressive, since Irish distinguishes a past habitual inflected form, Irish is spared some of the confusion noted by Comrie (1976) in English. Being able to separate out the habitual aspect in Irish means that the Irish progressive can be termed 'a situation in progress', or a 'continuous' aspect. It seems that right from the beginning, our discourse, shaped as it was by a process of looking at and interpreting pictures, demanded the use of progressive aspect. In discussing E's development of this I will be looking at the earlier set of transcripts, as well as the first few from the later series. It will become clear that in fact, her usage only barely begins to take account of habitual action, that the complexities of the system are really irrelevant to the present discussion. These initial transcripts show up bunches of code-switches where E tries to describe the action in the pictures we were looking at. In most cases they were elicited by the question Cad tá á dhéanamh ag N? 'What's N doing?' The following is a fairly typical sample from 1El. Sin éan beag deascad tá á lorg ag na héin ansin? That's a nice little birdwhat are the birds looking for L.309 M: there? E: féachaint

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looking M:Tá siad ag féachaint They're looking E:ar an sneachta at the snow M:Ar mhaith leo rud éigin? Do they want something? E:Nior No M:Níor mhaith leo rud deas? They wouldn't like something nice? E:He's looking at the footprints M:An bhfuil seisean ag féachaint ar na coiscéimeanna? Cé d'fhág na coiscéimeanna sin? Is he looking at the footprints? Who left those footprints? E:Mise Me M:Tusa? Cad a bhí á dhéanamh agat? You? What were you doing? E:Walking into the house M:Abair é sin i nGaeilge Say that in Irish E:ag dul going M:Sea, ag dul Yes, going E:ar an teach on the house The exchange had begun with identification of the main feature of the picturea snow-scene with house, bird-table and birds. At this stage labelling was E's best accomplishment; she tended to concentrate on picking out features, describing them or simply mentioning them. M's questions attempt to draw her further into description, in particular trying to elicit action words, what's happening, going on etc. E had focused on one particular bird and M asked what the birds were doing. E replied with VN, without the required ag. On several occasions during the recording she demonstrated an awareness of the function of ag but could attach it only to some verbs, as she does later with ag dul. Féachaint ar an sneachta is obviously only a part of what she sees in the picture, perhaps not even a very precise expression of her meaning but the nearest she can find words for. Her codeswitch shows a much more intricate

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reading of the picture, expanding her féachaint into 'He's looking at the footprints' (subj. + aux. + VN + pred.). It is clear from studying her production at this point that she had neither the vocabulary nor the means of combining the elements of this sentence in L2. The exchange quoted above, shows this one expanded code-switch and another contracted one'walking into the house'. Many of these switches are in this contracted form as though they were part of the language being acquired. They lack subjects as above; use two semantically connected terms as though the listener might have difficulty understanding or E herself had to search for a term more appropriate than that which first came to mind, e.g. 'baking, cooking' when asked when she has occasion to wear an apron; or they omit a morpheme, e.g. 'run, walking into the house'. In the second transcript of this series, these simplifications increase in number, e.g. nose on geraniums, lunch, eat their lunch wave hand with Lucy all in answer to the stock question Cad tá á dhéanamh ag N? 'What is N doing?'. These strip her English of morphemes, confuse prepositions and are semantically vague. There is no reason why she couldn't expand them'He's smelling the geraniums', 'They're eating their lunch', 'She's waving to Lucy' aren't sentences which would tax a vocal four-year old. A further strategy she uses is to fill a gap with a rote-learnt Irish phrase, e.g. Ith suas do dhinnéar 'Eat up your dinner', where Tá sé ag ithe a dhinnéar was required, and on another occasion she chanted a line from a song when asked why one wears an apron: Ag rolladh is ag rolladh is ag rolladh 'Rolling and . . . '. Similar switches appear in her attempts to formulate other tense and aspect markers. The incorporation of chunks in L2 interlanguage is well attested as a production strategy; part of the process of language acquisition is the memorising of such chunks, a growing awareness of their meaning and the gradual breaking down into their component parts. I have not been able to trace in the literature, however, any reference to the modification of the L1 as a strategy in L2 production. My only explanation is that it is part of a conscious effort to produce L2 and that she felt somehow that reducing her English in this way would be an acceptable compromise where she was unable to find words in Irish. Whatever the explanation, these code-switches and chunk usage show E's desire to express continuous action. This is governed by the

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nature of the discourse, shaped by the type of question being asked. To decide whether it is a natural development of verb usage is an intricate problem. Studies of L1 acquisition in English show that the progressive '-ing' is the first verb morpheme to appear (Brown, 1973). Cromer (1974) talks of children inventing the words to carry their meaning and interprets the early emergence of progressive 'ing' as encoding the child's observation of action. In the data from Irish L1 acquisition, studied by McKenna & Wall (1986) there is no indication of the order in which structures were acquired since the time span considered is only three weeks. Certainly both children show a more varied use of progressive forms, e.g. Aoife ithe bruitín Aoife eating porridge Dadaí amuigh baint prátaí Daddy out digging potatoes Tá Mamaí g'iarraidh Mammy is wanting sea caint Eugene yes talking Eugene tá Páid codladh Paid is sleeping than of other verbal forms. Áine confines herself in the main to forms of the verb tit 'fall' and questions in the form (cá) deachaigh Dadai? 'where did Daddy go?' and cá bhfuil X? 'where is X?', while Máire in addition to questions of the cá bhfuil X? sort has a whole string of imperatives but all using the same verb amharc X! 'look at X!', McKenna & Wall, 1986: (39, 42, 63, 67, 70). From a formal perspective, the verbal noun in Irish is not the most easily managed verb form; that has to be the verb stem which is used for imperative and with only slight modification (i.e. initial lenition where possible) for the past tense. Verbal nouns are irregular in formation although they are preceded by the invariant ag. As interlocutor, I made no conscious effort to elicit this form; unconsciously, as I have already mentioned in Chapter 3 I allowed the conversation to veer to topics and aspects of topics on which she might be able to speak in L2. Given that my ultimate aim was to elicit as much of the L2 from her as possible, the fact of her code-switching when progressive aspect was required would certainly not have encouraged me to concentrate on this structure. On

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balance it seems to me that the tendency towards this structure was of her own initiative and that the reason for this is that it encodes a simple aspect of activity. It is of course, as already mentioned, a structure which has a parallel in English. It further minimises the difference in word order, especially if looked at from a semantic angle, preserving what is held to be the basic psychological order conceptAgentActionObject, the preliminary auxiliary being merely of syntactic importance. While S. Mac Mathúna's (1979) Máirtín appears to insist on the preliminary tá/beidh, Eugene Wall's (McKenna & Wall, 1986) subjects produced sentences which omitted the auxiliary, thus adhering entirely to this 'psychological' order. Both sets of data are however too meagre to allow for comparison. Acquisition of Formal Markers of Progressive An examination of some of the processes E went through to reach the stage of using this structure in Irish suggests to me that she was not aware of its similarity to English, or at least, that she did not draw on prior knowledge as a strategy either short or long term but that she worked it up from first principles. She may, however, have found the discovery of its formal structure less problematic than that of 'simple' verbs. In its simplest form, the structure is: + NP + ag VN Bi NP

® Pronoun N Det. + N

Some of these elements are present in a simple form in E's production from the time I began observation. Tá/nil emerged first as positive/negative elements which begin sentences (see Owens, 1986). Simple structures of the type Tá + NP + adjective/adverb provide the necessary combination of bheith and subject. The VN appears as a content word in 1El, expressing action: titim 'falling', féachaint 'looking', codladh 'sleeping', rith 'running'. As she attempts to combine these elements, she initially omits the obligatory ag:

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L.616

E:

Tá mise runrith rith rith I'm runrun run run

(as though repetition of the word rith could express the continuousness of the action). It appears, however, elsewhere in the same transcript, tied to some VNs but without auxiliary or subject: ag féachaint 'looking', ag dul 'going'. There is also an example where she begins: L.115 ag, ag, ag, ag, ag as though aware of its function but unable to supply a content word to give it meaning. The VN seems to be learnt as a content word. While there are regular VN endings, there is no obvious pattern in the ones she uses. The only productive ending she seems to acquire is -ail. This, significantly, is the one used most often in mixing and is therefore easily analysed for re-use. In 2E2 she uses péinteáil 'painting', pointeáil 'pointing', shoutáil 'shouting' and cniotáil 'knitting', all of which have an easily recognisable first element, freeing the suffix as the aspect indicator. Despite availability of all the elements, despite her apparent desire to use progressive aspect as shown by the code-switching, examples of the structure in the first set of recordings are sparse in the extreme. 1E1 L.616 Tá mise runrith rith rith L.401 Tá tusa ag shuí You're sitting Tá ( ) ag féachaint ar an mála scoile 1E2 L.766 ( ) is looking at the school-bag (produced with major hesitation under some pressure) Beidh mise ag snámh 1E3 L.113 I'll be swimming L.145 Beidh tusa ag snámh You'll be swimming 1E4 L.168 Beidh mé ag playing I'll be playing Bhí mise le súgradh le gaineamh I was playing with sand 1E5 L.62 Bhí sé ag gáire . . . Bhí daoine ag gáire ar an sweater He was laughing . . . People were laughing at the sweater L. 102 Tá sé ag fetcháil orange He's getting orange Bhí sé ag féachaint cá bhfuil an sweater L.235 He was looking where the sweater is These show development of auxiliary to include present, past and future

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tense; there are no examples of use of the negative although she was using it at this time in simple sentences. She uses an extremely limited range of verbal nouns but already there is an example of the productive mixing mentioned above ag fetcháil. A later section will deal with her slow discovery of the means to combine verb with subject. In the above examples she can be seen showing a preference for the emphatic first and second person pronouns mise and tusa and is unable to supply a subject of any kind in the example from 1E2. In contrast, by 1E5 she is able to find a third person pronoun, although in fact she used a singular to denote a plural subject in the first of the series, and she is also able to combine the collective daoine with tá and to extend the sentence to include a direct object, albeit a code-switched orange, an indirect object ar an sweater and an indirect question cá bhfuil an sweater. After a slow start, she is beginning to make progress. At this point there was a break in the recordings, the next occurring almost four months later. This break took in the summer holidays when, for various reasons, she had no regular contact with Irish. Yet while she may have forgotten some vocabulary items, overall she shows distinct signs of consolidation and advance in numerous syntactic areas. 2E1 shows a marked increase in structured use of L2. Though full verbs are still few in number, there are indications of an awareness of the basic mechanism for marking tense. There is a substantial increase in usage of the progressive aspect in this transcript, an extension of the range of verbs and use of much more complex constructions than appeared in 1E. In particular, S now often has four elements S ® Bi + NP1 + ag VN + NP2 NP1 ®Pronoun ®N /det. + N NP2 ®N (invariant form)/Code switched N ®Prep. Phrase PP ®Prep. + NP e.g. tá siad ag imirt marbles, they're playing marbles tá siad ag imirt len teach beag, they're playing with the little house Most of the examples are in present tense, but there are some past and the range of VN used includes many which had not previously appeared in transcripts. tá siad ag imirt (playing) tá siad ag caint (talking) tá siad ag fanacht (waiting)

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bhi (past) mé ag canadh (singing) cá bhfuil (pres. interrogative) mé ag dul? (going) tá sise ag fuáil (sewing) tá sise ag cniotáil (knitting) tá siad ag dul sios (going down) Although she was describing the details of pictures, most of the subjects are expressed as pronouns; only a few nouns occur: Tá an báibín ag caoineadh (the baby is crying) Bhi an cow ag rithe (the cow was running) As I have demonstrated already, features are constantly modelled in the discourse and then used productively by E, as in the following example from 2E1 where the original vertical exchange is quickly taken up by E and the initial VN extended by similar NPs: L.325

L.341

Tá siad ag imirt E: They're playing M: Cad tá á imirt acu? What are they playing? E: Fichille Chess ... Tá sise ag imirt marbles . . . She's playing marbles Bhi si ag imirt polo E: She was playing polo

There are some preliminary attempts to compound the structure into complex sentences Tá sise ag fuáil gúna deas agus tá an gúna ró-mhór She's sewing a nice dress and the dress is too big Tá siad ag fanacht becausetá siad ag fanacht go dtí antá an bhean reidh le an gúna agus an stoca. They're waiting becausethey're waiting till thetill the L.183 E: woman is ready with the dress and the sock. While these more complex attempts have no direct bearing on the development of the structure, they suggest that it was by now, well established, leaving her free to concentrate on extensions to the sentence. 2E2shows further extension of the structure with negative examples: Níl tusa ag léamh an leabhair L.380 You're not reading the book

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Future: L.33 L.226

Beidh mé ag péinteáil I'll be painting beidh mé ag dul I'll be going

The subject pronoun extended to include plural reference: L.117 L.46 L.431 L.473

Bhí muid ag imirt teach We were playing house Beidh mise agus mo bord ag péinteáil I and my table will be painting The VN modified by adverbs: Tá an traen ag dul i bhfad The train's going a long way Bhí an traein ag dul amach The train was going out

And an increase in the number of verbs which require more complex complements, e.g. use of various prepositions: L.9

Bhi mé ag labhairt le I was speaking to

The second NPs, which I suggested were originally only chunk-learnt, appear in more productive use in 2E4, where stock phrases like Bhi sé ag cur fola 'bleeding' are supplemented by others with free object: L.253 L.333

Bhí siad ag déanamh aghaidheanna They were making faces g Beidh mé ag fháil scéal I'll be getting a story

She shows no awareness at this stage, that the VN should be followed by the genitive, in this case by modification of the final consonant to scéil. In addition some of her VNs have an idiosyncratic form: - ag fháil for ag fáil is probably influenced by the combination a fháil which is used as an infinitive word and as a VN complement (see Chapter 5) - ag thugwhich should be ag tabhairt. It is strange that she should prefer thug to tabhair which is the imperative, frequently used and in fact overextended by E for a past tense, see 1E5 L.126. There is little further evidence of an intermediate stage in the development of this structure. It remains in E's production with an increasing number of VNs as she acquires more lexis together with an increasingly more complex usage of those already observed.

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Separation of Function of Various Tense and Aspect Markers Although on the whole, E's use of the progressive was target-like in the transcripts discussed, there is some evidence that she over-used it. Back in 1E2, she had used it as follows: L.591 M: Nach raibh tú thuas ag teach Deirdre inné? Weren't you at Deirdre's house yesterday? E: Bhí I was M: Agus cad a dhein sibh? And what did you do? E: Bhi Mamaí ag dul ar an lochta Mammy was going to the attic M: An raibh? Agus cad a dhein tusa agus Deirdre agus Roisin? Was she? And what did you and Deirdre and Roisin do? E: Deirdre's Mammy went up to the lochta and she got some toys and . . . M: Océn saghas bréagáin a fuair si? Ohwhat sort of toys did she get? M understands from E's statement that D's mother spent the afternoon going up and down to the attic, accepts that as background information and asks what the girls did (during that time). E clearly realises her mistake but isn't able to correct it; she has to switch to English to convey her meaning. E shows that she understands the simple past function of dhein when questioned by M, realises that her progressive Bhi Mamaí ag dul means something other than she intended, is able to use English to restate her meaning and accepts the offered fuair as a correct reformulation. In this she was helped by the fact that the context clearly required simple past. Other instances are less obvious. Twice in 2E1 she is asked Cad a dhein . . .? 'What did ( ) do?', and in different ways appears not to have understood the simple past or to experience some confusion. L.456 M: Cad a dhein an lacha insan Zú? What did the duck in the zoo do? E: eating bread M: Cad a dhein sé? What did he do? E: ithe arán eating bread

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The second example Inis dom cúig rud a dhein tusa ar scoil L.705 M: inniú. Tell me five things you did in school today. E: Bhuel, bhí mé ag cabhí mé ag canadh. WellI was singing The problem here may well be related to the durative aspect of these activities; she correctly encodes the activities as something that went on for some time but she isn't answering the question as put to her. When the question is put more precisely, she finds a more precise answer: M: An ndeachaigh tú áit éigin? Did you go somewhere? E: Rachaidh mé san clós agus 'sin, ith moithidh mé mo 16n. I went (lit. will go)into the yard and then, I ateeat my lunch The same confusion is apparent in 2E2. Initially her use of past progressive expresses real duration, quite appropriately: L.5 M: Inis dom cad a dhein tú ar scoil inniú. Tell me what you did in school today E: Bhi mé ag labhairt le daoine I was talking to people M: Cé leis a raibh tú ag labhairt? Who were you talking to? E: Le mo mhúinteoir to my teacher but she then continues to use it inappropriately to denote a completed event and a passing action: L.23M: Agus an raibh tú ag labhairt le éinne eile? And were you talking to anyone else? E: Ni raibh agus bhi mé ag ithe mo 16n agus bhi mé ag féachaint ar daoine ag péintáil. No and I was eating my lunch and I was looking at people painting The first of these is definitely a completed action, of no real duration, the second could conceivably be accurate when considered together with the subsequent exchange: L.31

M: E:

Ni raibh tusa ag péintáil? You weren't painting No

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M:Cén fáth? Why not? E:Beidh mé ag péintáil. Bhí bord Deirdre ag péintáil agus (an)sin beidh mise ag péintáil. I will be painting. D's table were painting and then I'll be painting She is finding it difficult to express the sequence she has in mind, where it will be her table's turn to paint after D's table. When I first noticed her overuse of the progressive form, I took it to be a simplification strategy, the use of a form over which she had a fair control where she couldn't, or was too lazy to find the correct past form. A common strategy observed among children reluctant to make a real effort in learning Irish, is to begin every utterance with tá sé, feeling that enough to constitute an Irish sentence. It is not uncommon to hear and to read sentences like Tá sé standing to reason', 'Bhí an victim strangled le aprún'. Such experiences led me to suspect that E was taking the easy way out but closer examination has made me revise this opinion substantially. Apologies to Eithne! In 2E3, she relates the story of a picture book, Tomás ag an Dochtúir using what seems to become an established pattern. She launches into a description, ignoring M's question: L.238 M: An dochtúir deas é sin? Is that a nice doctor? E: Tá. Anois tá sé ag tógáil temperature Tomás. Anois tá sé ag féachaint sa chluas Tomás. Tá sé ag féachaint ar cos Tomáisí. He is. Now he's taking Tomás' temperature. Now he's looking in Tomás' ear. He's looking at Tomás' foot. Tá sé ag gáire. Anois tá sé ag léamh. He's laughing. Now he's reading. [Tá sé . . .The doctor in question was in fact female. See later for a discussion of E's inability to distinguish gender when using third person pronouns.] In the subsequent passage, she uses in addition to the four VNs quoted above ag glanadh (cleaning), ag cur plastar ar a lámh (putting a plaster on his hand), ag dul abhaile (going home), ag imirt le dochtúir set sa bhaile (playing with a doctor set at home). Her ability to extend the basic construction has developed considerably with complex NPs, e.g. cos

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Tomáisí (where she has even made some attempt at a genitive form for the second N) and the extension of the VN by a preposition phrase, e.g. ag imirt le dochtuir set sa bhaile. On the one hand, her ta sé ag is like the 'island' discussed by Dechert (1983), a familiar stepping stone which can be attained without too much effort; it comes readily to her tongue leaving her free to concentrate on varying the detail. On the other hand there are real grounds for confusion, because the progressive is appropriate in some cases. Her mistake is in using it exclusively and in not distinguishing events of some duration from those that were quickly completed. It is obviously simpler to treat all nine verbs in the same fashion than to have to vary the treatment. Some of the verbs involved are irregular or require individual adjustment such as a change in the initial consonant in the case of d'fhéach and d'imir. But it is the need to know which form is most appropriate that seems to be the biggest stumbling block. In some instances, the action is best expressed in Irish by progressive. Bhí sé ag caoineadh 'he was crying', bhí sé ag gáire 'he was laughing', for example, have no real simple past forms. A native speaker might possibly narrate, focusing on the commencement of the action Thosaigh sé ag caoineadh/ag gáire 'he began to cry/laugh', but the simple past forms have a connotation inappropriate to the story. In other instances she may have been describing each picture as she came to it, and not in fact, making an effort to narrate. The progressive is quite appropriate to description; it is only in the context of prolonged description that one begins to look for more subtlety in the variation of forms. Later in this same recording, similar confusion is apparent, particularly where the action was of some duration: L.322 M: Cén saghas rud a dhein tú i Donegal? What sort of thing did you do in Donegal? E: Bhi mé snámh agus bhi me sa caravan agus bhí mé ag imirt leis an gaineamh agus bhi mé ag féachaint amach an fuinneog. I was swimming and I was in the caravan and I was playing with the sand and I was looking out the window. That these represent a conscious effort to convey events that continued for some time or occurred often rather than evidence of simplification strategies, is indicated by her alternation with simple past in the following section. L.332 E: Bhi an bhrúitín agam agus bhris mé tinn agus ní raibh mé

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ag dul amach aon uair I had the measles and I broke (lit.) sick and I wasn't going out any time Here becoming sick with the measles is seen as something which happened, an event which was completed, while the days when she wasn't able to go out clearly fit the durative criterion. That it was also a useful formula, however, receives some support in the subsequent: E: agus bhí mé ag dul amach lá amháin and I was going out one day clearly a case for simple past. Subsequently though, movement towards simple past is emphasised by M and taken up by E: L.342 M: Agus ar tháinig aon duine chun tú a fheiscint? And did anyone come to see you? E: tháinig agus bhí . . . They did and () was M: Nár tháinig an dochtúir? Did the doctor not come? E: Ní tháinig No M: Níor tháinig He didn't? E: agus fuair mé . . . and I got . . . suggesting that with help she was willing and able to use certain simple past forms. Her confusion is not confined to past events. In a context firmly established as future, she starts off with the familiar progressive, modifying the structure to include future reference. L.385 M: Cad a dhéanfaidh tú ar an trá? What will you do on the beach? E: Beidh snámh agus imirt leis an gaineamh. () will be swimming and playing with the sand Here again, there is some excuse in that while imreoidh mé leis an gaineamh would be a better statement of her meaning, both actions are of some duration and the only alternative to Beidh mé ag snámh would be beidh snámh agam 'I will have a swim', which may indeed have been in her mind since she omits any trace of a pronoun. During subsequent recording sessions, narrative begins to take the place of the simpler description that had been the norm up to now. Given

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a book, E proceeded to tell the story as best she could, making up details to fit the pictures where necessary. There is considerable evidence that use of the progressive was an established formula which, despite M's best efforts she was reluctant to relinquish. 2E4, however, shows the pattern beginning to change. Initially E is still using the past progressive but in an appropriate context and during the discussion about school she volunteers a simple past form: L. M: Inis dom cupla rud faoi scoil inniú Tell me a few things about school today E: bhí mé ag péinteáil inn . . . I was painting yesterday Dúirt sé go raibh sé pota salann He said it was a pot of salt In this latter example past progressive would be inappropriate and also difficult to arrive at formally, the VN ag ra being completely separate from the verb stem. In the story she tells, there is much more variation showing; she uses two simple past tense verbs thug 'gave' and sleamhain 'slipped' and also demonstrates a clear appreciation of the difference in usage between the two constructionswhile someone was doing one thing, something else happened: L.58 Bhí séan lá cheanna bhí sé ag dul go dtí scoil agus bhi an leabhar scoile aige an (dog) madra agus bhí sé a thabhairt go dtí Niamh agus thug Niamh go dtí Pó1 é. Agus bhi sé ag dul amach an doras agus bhisleamhain si ar an, ar an (leac oighir) nuair a bhí sé ag dul amach. Agus ansin bhí na leanaí eile sa scoil ag gáire. It wasthe other day he was going to school and the dog had the school book and he was giving it to Niamh and Niamh gave it to Pól. And he was going out the door and () wasshe slipped on theon the ice when he was going out. And then the other children in the school were laughing. There are indications that form and function are being carefully extracted from the various possibilities in the preliminary bhi before sleamhain sí and the revision of bhi sé a thabhairt go dtí Niamh, nicely altered to Agus thug Niamh go dtí Pól é. Later in the session she repeats her use of sleamhain sé, but she can't get the thug right a second time: L.131

Bhí sé ag dul go dtí anbhí sé ag dul go dtí an múinteoir He was going to thehe was going to the teacher

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thabhairt milseáin go dtí agus sleamhain si agus thit na to give sweets to and she slipped and the sweets fell and milseáiní agus bhí anni raibh an múinteoir sásta. the teacher wasn't pleased. It is perhaps because she is attempting a more complex structure, trying to emphasise the setting for the events of slipping and the sweets falling; notice that she does produce the correct thit to go with sleamhain. Examples from a further story, in which she reverted entirely to the progressive: L.237 ff.

Bhí Nancy ag dul (going), bhi siad ag déanamh (doing), bhí Nancy ag féachaint air (looking at him), bhí sé ag labhairt (speaking), bhi Nancy ag rith (running)

cause one to wonder if these constructions are really simpler for her than the corresponding simple pastchuaigh N; dhein siad; d'fhéach N. air; labhair sé; rith N. On this occasion it must be said that she was tiring and possibly for this reason preferred the patterned sequence to the task of sorting out which forms were most appropriate in which contexts or even what she knew from what she was unsure of. In free conversation about this time came the following utterance: 8/11

E: Tá mé ag cur iad seo i mála agus ansin tá mé ag thug do Máire agus ansin tarfaidh mé thar n-ais I'm putting these in a bag and then I'm giving (them) to Máire and then I'll come back

a decidedly curious mixture of tense and aspect. I have no record of the utterance which prompted it, but the complexity of her reply suggests that it wasn't a straightforward Cad tá á dhéanamh agat? but rather an oblique command from M, perhaps a command to finish what she was doing and clear up. The first Tá mé ag cur iad seo i mála correctly uses present progressive as she carries out the action. She then details two actions she is about to perform in succession but the first she encodes as present progressive, the second a simple future. Curiously both carry formal overgeneralisation errors which hints that they are not selected as forms of which she is quite certain (ag thugsee note in the next section; tarfaidh takes the imperative tar as stem for the future tense, whereas the correct future form is tiocfaidh). Is she rather, trying to convey a different kind of semantic distinction? The aspect/tense selection in the first and third clauses shows a target-like understanding of the functional difference between the forms, the progressive aspect being

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punctuated by the future relating what she will then do. The middle one is more problematic. There is some reason to her choice, in that while giving the items to Máire may seem a transitory action, in fact it involved leaving the house, going up the road, ringing the bell and negotiating the handing over of the items, a process, she possibly feels, not sufficiently conveyed by a simple future tabhairfidh mé. A previous example showed that she was well capable of lexifying such complexities in English, her gloss on Bhí Mamaí ag dul ar lochta. Her use of progressive in the present example may be an attempt to approach such clarification in L2. Some further light is thrown on the developing system in 2E6. Telling a story, mostly in past progressive, she sets the scene; when it is clearly required, she moves to simple past: L.A18

Thit sé agus bhris sé a cos He fell and broke his leg

This is followed by an indeterminate section where her use of progressive might possibly be justified as a description of the pictures. The verbs involved in this section: L.A16 f.

Bhí sé ag dul go, bhí sé ag cur put; bhi sé ag fháil get

are all ones used frequently by E and her interlocutors and there is no reason at this stage that she should find chuaigh, chuir or fuair any more difficult of access than thit or bhris. The difference seems to be that she can clearly see in the latter a quickly completed past action. There is no grey area with either of these verbs as there is with the others and in fact she has never used them in progressive form. They are perfect examples of simple, completed action in the pastproto-past tenses. Slobin (1985) in fact, in his summary of a wide range of L1 acquisition data, makes a similar comment: We have noted that children focus on events that have been realised and actually completed. Taking a perspective on immediate results has consequences for the meanings underlying the first uses of forms used for marking tense, aspect and voice cross-linguistically. For example, the first uses of past-tense, perfect or perfective verb inflections seem to comment on an immediately completed event that results in a visible change of state of location of some object, with later development into a more general past tense. (Slobin, 1985)

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The verbs he notes as being among the first to be marked for past tense are 'fall', 'drop', 'break', 'spill', two of which are also among E's first simple pasts and the others are very similar. From this point on, it is quite clear that E is mounting an ongoing search for the exact match of form and function in this area. Her extensive use of past progressive forms a continuum from appropriate to inappropriate with intervening stages which one has to consider carefully, a process in which she herself obviously participated. In her narratives, the number of simple past verb forms, gradually increases and is extended to include verbs which sometimes occur in progressive form, sometimes in simple past form. Later in 2E6 she is able to tell a story varying tense and aspect in appropriate ways: L.A70 E: Lá amháin bhí cailínlá amháin bhí cailín agus ba mhaith léi picnic agus dúirtemis féidir leat picnic agus cuiridh sé lemonade istigh sa pota agus biosbrioscaí ar an pláta agus bhí siad ag ithe. Agus bhi sécuir sé an bhí duine amháin agus cas sé timpeall agus bris sé anan rud eile. Agus an oíche deireannach bhfuair sé píosa cnó agus fairy agus babóg agus cártaí . . . . agus cuir na éiníní beaga air sa teapot i gcóir nest beag agus bhí sé go deas. One day there was a girlone day there was a girl and she wanted a picnic and () saidyou can picnic and he put lemonade into the pot and biscuits on the plate and they were eating. And he washe put thethere was one person and he turned round and he brokethe other thing. and the last night he got a piece of nut and a fairy and a doll and cards . . . and put the little birds in the teapot for a little nest and it was nice. As well as the proto-past bris, she uses the simple past of several verbs, she had previously substituted progressive for and she leaves Bhi siad ag ithe as a scene setting and finishes appropriately with a descriptive Agus bhi sé go deas. Subsequent stories show a complete drop-off in over-use of the progressive and a development of the ability to vary tense and aspect to make an interesting narrative. In fact in one instance, where she was asked to tell the same story in both Irish and English, her English version: And then in the summer time one day, they danced on the river bank doesn't convey the same sense of duration as her Irish:

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Agus ansin sa Samhradh bhi siad ag damhsa ar an river bank. And then in the summer they were dancing on the river bank. There will be a more detailed description of some of these narratives in Chapter 6. Table 4.1 also shows a huge increase in past tense forms just at this point. Some of these had been used sporadically by her before then, others appear out of the blue. The real impetus though, comes from a new confidenceshe has discovered why these forms need to be different and uses them accordingly. The evidence quoted above suggests the following in relation to E's selection of verb forms. (1) She quickly achieved control of present, past and future progressive in a wide range of verbs and was obviously happy to be able to express such a range of time distinctions with a minimum of formal variation with only auxiliary needing to be modified. (2) Simple past forms first appeared in verbs which typified simple completed actions, e.g. thit, bhris, chas, sleamhain where there was no hint of duration. Unless simple past was patently obvious she tended to stress duration by selecting a progressive form. In some cases this durative aspect was correct, in others it was overstated. (3) Simple past forms then spread to other verbs and she limited her use of the progressive to its target parameters. (4) Whereas in free exchanges, she was able to use simple past at an earlier stage because the context was clear, in her attempts to narrate from pictures and to establish her own framework of reference she found it more difficult to distinguish the function of the separate forms. Figure 4.1 attempts to show the continuum of past reference with a shady area, the rules of which she had to discover. While the extremes of the continuum were always clear, her tendency to overextend the past progressive initially was partly a result of the type of discourse which did not provide clear indications and also possibly because it constituted a more regular pattern. In increasing the area of reference of the simple past, it is clear that not only had she acquired the forms but also their rules of application. Present TensePresent Habitual In Table 4.1 evidence of use of present tense is least evident. I think there are strong reasons for this, relating to the nature of the discourse and the particular circumstances of the interaction.

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Figure 4.1 The continuum of past reference Small children use present tense in an egocentric way, monitoring and directing their own actions. Joan Tough (1977) has drawn up a list of categories of children's language use and in it there seems to me to be little absolute need for present tense apart from that quoted. Her 'Self-maintaining strategiesReferring to physical and psychological needs and wants, justifying behaviour, explaining a process' could conceivably require present tense but in Irish could also be expressed by other means, e.g. Ba mhaith liom, caithfidh mé etc. I have no record of E, at this stage, speaking Irish with other children which further excludes major areas of language use and in addition, 'self-maintaining' is a psychological need more likely to have been expressed in L1. The limited use of L2 which she experienced goes a long way towards explaining her avoidance of present forms. The Irish tense/aspect system might also be expected to play a role in this avoidance. Irish (see the first page of this chapter) uses a morpheme to mark habitual aspect for all verbs in the past, and for the verb bi in both present and past. For most verbs the present tense expresses habitual aspect, but in a few instances, the same morpheme denotes punctual aspect. This complication may well have caused E to avoid using present forms until she discovered what their exact function might be. The verb bí with its separate forms for separate functions was simpler to deal with and there is evidence that she was making efforts to sort it out quite early in phase two of the project. As already noted, bi is also of considerable importance as an auxiliary in progressive forms and as a component in ''bi + prep'' constructions. The first example of interest comes from 2E3: L.414 M: Inis dom cad a dhéanann tú nuair a bhíonn tú sa chlós gach lá. Tell me what you do when you're in the yard every day.

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E: Beidh mé ag imirt. Ansin bhí jockey-backs agus swings agam. I will be playing. Then I had jockey-backs and swings. At this point she had normally full control of past and future forms of bheith and her confusion here is clearly a sign that she is searching for a reply which will convey the meaning of the gach lá of the question. It is a familiar processshe shows first an awareness of the problem, searches to find an appropriate reply and seizes initially on a known form in a familiar structure, or in this case tries out several possibilities to test which fits best. Her vacillation between future and past here may stem partly from the fact that they each resemble the correct form but there may also be some measure of cognitive immaturity at work. She shows in several instances, a tendency to slip from a general statement to the relating of a more specific occurrence: 2E4 M: Cad eile a dhéanann leanaí ar scoil? L.95 What else do the children in school do? E: Obhi siad ag léamh agus a lán rudaí mar sin Ohthey were reading and lots of things like that M: Cad a dhéanann sibhse ar scoil? What do you do in school? E: Odéanaímid painting le rainbows agus hataí cailleach i gcóir Oiche Shamnha Ohwe do painting and witches' hats for Hallowe'en M: Cad eile a dhéanann sibh gach lá? What else do you do every day? Beidh mébeidh scéal againn agus bhi mé (ag foghlaim) focal I'll beI'll have a story and I was (learning) words agus bhí focal nua againn. Bhí sé anagus bhí -eman lá cheana what's a couple of days? and we had new words. It was theand ( ) wasthe other day She went on then, to relate an incident that had taken place a few days previously. It is perhaps expecting too much of a fiveyear-old, that from the experience of six weeks of school, she be able to sort out the regular from the occasional and encode it in any language! She does however make some attempt to differentiate the various activities by varying verb forms and of particular interest is the fact that she does so appropriately. There is no actual semantic difference in the type of activities involved in 'reading' and 'painting' but she, quite correctly, makes no attempt to form a compound tense for déan for habitual aspect. (In so far as she

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had discovered a present morpheme at this stage, -idh was the prevalent form). A similar understanding of present habitual is revealed in her treatment of the verb teigh in another example: M: An dtéann tusa abhaile ar an mbus? Do you go home on the bus? E: Níor No M: An dtéann tú? Do you go? E: Ní théim I don't go It is of course also possible that she was simply using her answering strategy here. The confusion in the forms of bheith appears again towards the end of the exchange: Cad faoi na cailiní as Rang a sé, an insíonn siadsan L.346 M: scéalta maith What about the girls from 6th class, do they tell good stories? E: Sea agus beidhbhí Elaine agus Niamh Yes and () will beElaine and Niamh were In fact the confusion, as before, is not simply formal, but also mental. At this point even M lost the track and referred back to a more specific incident: M:

Ar inis Elaine scéal díbh inniú? Did Elaine tell you a story today?

An interesting side-view on this development shows in some altercations with her sister during the recording. M requested E to tell R not to be talkingan elicitation of negative command: L.148 M: Abair le Roisín gan bheith ag caint. As Gaeilge! Tell Roisín not to be talking. In Irish! E: Ná bhí . . . Don't (past tense, to be) What is required here is the bí of the present habitual. As already remarked, bhi is for her the unmarked form. Otherwise she makes a fair attempt at the imperative: L.152

M:

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Sea, sin ceart Yes, that's right

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E: M:

Ná bhí caint, Roisin Don't be talking Roisin Ná bí ag caint, Roisín! Don't be talking Roisin.

A later interruption led to the following: L.173 M: Abair le Roisin bheith ciúin led thoil Say to Roisin to be quiet please E: Roisín, bí ciúin Roisín be quiet M: agus gan a bheith ag caint and not to be talking E: Sea Yes M: agus gan a bheith ag cur isteach orainn and not to be interrupting us E: Sea Yes M: Abair léi Say to her E: Roisin, ni bheidh tú in ann caint n6 cur isteach orainn. Roisín, you won't be able to talk or interrupt us Several points can be made about this exchange. The first, as witness her sea shows the lack of compulsion on E to say anything, R having heard for herself what M had said. The second is that Bi ciúin is undoubtedly a phrase heard many times over at home and at school and probably not yet analysed or at least not reconciled with the indirect form of M's request. Finally E's Ní bheidh tú in ann is clearly an avoidance strategy, perhaps tailored to or elicited by the bheith of the previous utterance. This awareness of and attempt to fuse bheith into the system may be a general factor in her selection of beidh as a vehicle for the habitual and in fact for her confusion because while it has the vowel sound of beidh, it begins with the lenited bh making it also similar to bhí. Bheith would occur frequently in statements of the type Nil cead agat bheith ag . . . 'You're not allowed to be . . .' This 'interruption' seems to have registered with E because in her subsequent narrative she re-uses one of the phrases: L.197 M: Bhí Mamaí ag rá le Pó1 'Ná bí ag canadh' mar caithfidh sé a dinnéar a ithe

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Mammy was saying to Pól 'Don't be singing' because he has to eat his dinner although the complex perspective leads to the suspicion that the Ná bí ag canadh is an unanalysed chunk. A similar chunk comes shortly afterwards, together with an interesting attempt at a side-step: L.212 M: Abair le Roisin a pajamas a chur uirthi. Tell Roisín to put on her pajamas E: Roisín, cuir ort do chuid pajamas no nightie ort. Agus bígí ciúin agus ni bheidhnior ceadnil cead agat dul embheith ag caint. Roisín, put on your pajamas or nightie on. And be (pl.) quiet and ( ) won't benot allowedyou're not allowed to be talking She is showing an increasing awareness of how the chunks fit the system and using a much more complex construction to avoid the simple but unattainable Ná bí ag caint. Curiously she manages to find Ná bí when looking for the plural imperative Ná bígí: L.270

E: ag rá le daoine 'Ná bí ag léimt ar an trampoline!' saying to people 'Don't be (sing.) jumping on the trampoline!

From the transcript 2E6, it is clear that E has observed a variation in form of the substantive verb, close to the past bhi, in function somewhere that is both past and futuresomething that has happened and will happen again. Without prompting she produces a response to a present form of déan. The question provides a clue in the adverb an lá ar fad; when the focus is changed in the next exchange, she switches to the future form and retains that for several other instances. Since the verb form remains the same, it seems that the change is caused by the adverb; she interprets ag an deireadh seachtaine as referring to a specific time in the future: L.142

M: Agus inis dom cad a dhéanann tú ag an deireadh seachtaine. And tell me what you do at the week-ends E: Beidh mé ag snámh . . . I'll be swimming M: Cad a dhéanann tú leis na cosa móra sin What do you do with those big legs? E: Beidh mé ag léimt, beidh mé ag rith

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I'll be jumping, I'll be running Where there is no habitual form, she correctly makes no attempt to invent one: L.188

E:

. . . féidir liomehehtumbles a dhéanamh I can do tumbles

Subsequently she correctly isolates a present habitual and returns it in answering: L.289

M: E:

An mbíonn sibh ag súgradh le chéile? Do you play together? Bíonn We do

and in a further exchange she self-repairs to a fully formed present habitual albeit the form almost identical to that given in the question: L.419 M: Cad a bhíonn agaibh de gnáth don dinnéar? What do you usually have for dinner? E: Beidh cairéad ag Mrs Tittlemouse agus beidhbíonn cáis ag Miffy Mrs T will have a carrot and Miffy will havehas cheese Despite this indication of progress, she reverts in 2E7 to using future: L.160 M: Agus cad a dhéanann do Granny an t-am ar fad? And what does your Granny do all the time? E: Nil fhios agamb'fhéidirnil fhios agam I don't knowmaybeI don't know M: Cad a dhéanann sí nuair a thagann si anseo? What does she do when she comes here? E: Eh( n) sé carta agus níl fhios agam. Beidh si ag cniotáil. Níl fhios agam cad eile. She (s) cards and I don't know. She'll be knitting. I don't know what else. M: An mbíonn si crosta? Is she cross? E: Bíonn agus déanann si brochán dom agus Roisin. She is and she makes porridge for me and Roisin The first question, despite its clear adverbial clue an t-am ar fad, may have been too complex or not contextualised enough. E can't find an

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answer; her nil fhios agam generally denotes an inability to understand the question or to find the means of replying. Her replies, when they come, show confusion, perhaps formal, perhaps cognitive. Her first verb is indistinguishable but it is clearly a verb, a present tense form of sorts and the later déanann sé is quite clear. There is no obvious difference between these and beidh sé ag cniotáil as regards Granny's habitual activities. The beidh sé is possibly not far from bi sé and as before, she is able to pick out the form of the last question for answering purposes. That this is done automatically is indicated by the fact that I doubt she meant to imply the Granny is habitually bad-tempered; it certainly doesn't fit the rest of her description. The incidence of use of present forms increases in this transcript, and she seems to have accepted fully their habitual meaning: L.276 M: Inis na rudaí deasa a dhéanann sí Tell the nice things she does E: Tellann sí scéalaí . . . She tells stories . . . E: Nodéan sédéanann sétabhair sé Teagasc Críostaí agus Gealáins dínn agus tabhair sé leabhar dínn le léamh. Nach bhfuil sé go deas? Nohe doeshe gives us Teagasc Críostaí and Gealáins and he gives us books to read. Isn't he nice? Without that final tag, one might be inclined to interpret the tabhair sé as past but given her comment it has to be taken as present. That some uncertainty still exists is shown in the following exchange where she feels a need to be more precise and specify that the action took place yesterday and will happen again tomorrow: L.291 M: Agus cad a dhéanann an múinteoir sa tráthnóna nuair a théann sibhse abhaile? And what does the teacher do in the evening when you go home? E: Déanann sé obair dínn He does work for us M: Cé ghlánann an seomra? Who cleans the room? E: An múinteoir. Tá sé ag -, glán sé an seomra ranga innétá sé ag déanamh é amáireach The teacher. He'sing, he cleaned the classroom

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yesterdayhe's doing it tomorrow Despite an increasing security in the area of present tense and her ability to use appropriate forms of bheith on some occasions, 2E9 shows up the old confusion with the future: L.151 M: Cad a dhéanann tusa de domhnaigh? What do you do on Sundays? E: Chuaigh mé go dtí Aifreann agus b'fhéidir some Sundays I went to Mass and maybe some Sundays M: ar aghaidh leat go on E: Beidh cuairteoir againn agus beidh muidne ag dul go dtí cuairteoir We'll have a visitor and we'll be going to a visitor One cannot be sure whether in fact the confusion is in the forms or due to her inability to keep separate the habitual and possible future occurrences. The transcripts show no further instances of E using the present habitual of bíonn. I have no explanation for this except that in the final sessions, she was very much the determining factor and shaped the discourse herself. She obviously did not choose to focus on items of habitual duration and so avoided the need for ' bíonn + ag VN' constructions. The present tense however settles into normal use; it is still infrequent but relatively target-like. The foregoing analysis suggests then, that E to some degree, avoided using the present tense because it was more complex and took some time for her to understand its ramifications. Some of the confusion was formal, due to the existence of the synthetic, first-person forms and the frequency of use of caithfidh which, though future in form, is present in meaning. Discourse factors, in particular the activity around which most of the transcripts are based, description of pictures and narrative, also played a role in excluding present tense. Finally the need to separate out the habitual from the punctual was clearly also a factor. Where this distinction was marked by separate verb forms, as in the case of bíonn, she had something to work on but where the one morpheme signified different aspect with different verbs, the task was less clearly demarcated and therefore more of a problem. As pointed out in previous sections, it is only by looking at all these factors that one can arrive at an assessment of the process of acquisition.

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Use of the Copula Irish distinguishes between the substantive verb bi and the copula is. Most learners experience difficulties in distinguishing between the conditions of use of the two verbs; the forms of is present no major problems in themselves. The copula is used to express identification or classification: Is fear é, 'He is a man' Is é Seán an dochtúir, 'Sean is the doctor' Other common constructions involving is are those where it is used in combination with the preposition le to express a. ownership b. like/dislike c. possibility/impossibility d. attitude e. preference f. surprise g; remember

Is le Seán an teach (It's Sean's house) Is maith liom (I like) Is féidir liom (I can) Is dóigh liom (I think) Is fearr liom (I prefer) Is ionadh liom (I'm surprised) Is cuimhin liom (I remember)

Reading through the lists of 'functions' in Toward a Communicative Curriculum (Little, O Murchú & Singleton, 1985) the copula seems to be of particular importance in 'coping with the mechanics of conversational interaction'; many of the uses listed above are involved in such functions asintroducing people, expressing sympathy, inviting, accepting, responding to request, expressing (dis)pleasure/like, hostility, asking for an example, announcing pleasure/thanks (see previous section). The importance of copula + adjective + le constructions in conversation is undoubtedly the reason for E's early concentration on the details of their use. Ba mhaith liom she found particularly serviceable, using it in a variety of contexts in the very early stages of this study from the simple expression of want, Ba mhaith liom briosca, 'I'd like a biscuit', to the expression of St Joseph's need for lodgings as she perceived it (see lEl), Ba mhaith liom teach, 'I want a house'. At this early stage, it was one of her few possibilities of forming sentences. Whereas in 1E1, she betrays some confusion as to the distinction between An maith leat 'Do you like' and Ar mhaith leat 'Would you like', it is under control by 1E2 and remains so from that point onwards. This early control may have been facilitated by the fact that in answering position, these constructions have the exact form of the declarative:

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An maith leat? An féidir leat?

Is maith (liom) Is féidir (liom)

Such constructions bear considerable surface resemblance to verbs in the question and negative forms, using the same particles, an/ar for questions, ni níor for negatives, but E never gave any indication of trying to impose verb patterns on them. When used, she always preserved the combination with le and never attempted to substitute any other subject form. In fact the only blurring of distinctions occurred in the opposite direction in 2E6 L433 when she produced Is bhfaigheann (Is + eclipse + pres. tense to get) in answer to a straight question. The development of her ability to combine le with various pronouns and NPs will be discussed in the next chapter. In lEl she shows some confusion regarding the expression of ownershipIs + le X + NP. As with Ba mhaith liom, in the Naionra, the children were encouraged to claim their possessions, practising the phrases Is liomsa é or Is le X é in response to the question Cé leis é seo? While she could use this in the context of the Naíonra and understand a range of questions as to ownership, her answers in lEl show that she has not yet full control of the construction. From casual interaction a few days later, comes clear evidence of how incomplete her system is: M: E: M: E:

Cé leis an Sindy sin? Whose Sindy is that? Roisin An leatsa í? Is it yours? Ní leatsa mise. She's not mine. (lit. I'm not yours)

but with an awareness of some of the required changes, M: E:

Ná tóg an páipéar sin. Is liomsa iad. Don't take that paper. They're mine. O, is leatsa iad. Oh, they're yours

Her initial answer shows the same omission as those in lEl, the NP should be preceded by le but yet the fact that there is no possessive /s/ indicates that she is attempting the target system. She demonstrates some understanding of the opposition liomsa/leatsa (in the emphatic form) and is able to contribute, with help. Her Ní leatsa mise however, glossed by herself as 'She's not mine' shows the ability to switch positive to negative

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and some awareness of the first person mine = mise but otherwise the phrase is unanalysed, probably simply picking up the question leatsa. The subsequent liomsa-leatsa switch again shows some manipulative ability but it is clear that her control is not complete. A correct rendering of 'She's not mine'Ni liomsa i would seem to be within E's competence, she has all the elements, but she declines to refer to a third person in this form, preferring to fall back on a chunk. Her ability to refer in this way develops during the 1E period: Is le Roisín, 'It's Roisin's'. There is no further evidence of error in her use of the construction. She continues to use it and other copula + adjective + le constructions in an ever-increasing range of usage. The basic use of the copula, i.e. its function as connector between two nouns, causes considerably more problems over a much