Noun Phrase Complexity in Advanced L2 Compared to L1 English Speech

Abstract

Noun phrase complexity is investigated in the spoken production of two groups of advanced L2 English speakers (L1 Swedish), who are compared to a group of L1 English speakers. One L2 group was resident in London, the other L2 group studied the L2 English teacher’s program at a Swedish university. There were ten participants in each group. Noun phrase complexity involved two types of postmodifiers, preposition phrases (the man in the suit),  and non-finite relative clauses (the man reading a paper). The spoken material consisted of a simultaneous retelling of a 14½ minute film clip from Charlie Chaplin’s silent movie Modern Times. Two questions were addressed. 1) What is the distribution on the group level of the number of ‘single’ (one postmodifier) and ‘multiple’ (two or more) postmodifiers? 2) What is the distribution on an individual level of the total number of the two postmodifiers? Results showed that only the group resident in London performed like the native speakers on both single and multiple preposition phrase postmodifiers. Both L2 groups were nativelike on single non-finite relative clause postmodification, while they used significantly fewer multiple non-finite relative clauses than the L1 group. Furthermore, individuals from both L2 groups were in the native range on the total number of both types of postmodification, although the London Swedes had more overlapping results with the L1 individuals. The main implication of the results is that residing in the target language country contributed to the London group performing more like the L1 group on both group and individual levels.