A Review on Empirical Studies of Affix Acquisition

A Review on Empirical Studies of Affix Acquisition姓名：张曼学号：2009021090 科目：语言研究设计Abstract: Affix knowledge is an important part of vocabulary knowledge in second language learning. It can help learners enlarge their vocabulary. This paper reviews the empirical researches of affix acquisition, points out their limitations, and provides suggestions for further study.Key words: affix acquisition, L2 language, empirical studyⅠ. IntroductionV ocabulary knowledge is an indispensable part of language. Nation (1990) points out that vocabulary knowledge should be viewed in terms of the extent or degree of knowledge that learners can possess, and full mastery of a word requires more than just knowledge of its meaning and form. English affix knowledge, also as an important aspect of vocabulary knowledge, contributes a lot to reading and vocabulary development. Nagy et al (1993) claims that affix knowledge determines how well a learner reads new words. With the knowledge of affix, readers understand material containing unfamiliar words and improve their ability to analyze and use words. Therefore, it is necessary to have an overall understanding of affix acquisition. But the truth is that there has been little emphasis placed on the acquisition of affix. It has not been a priority in second language acquisition research.Ⅱ. Affix KnowledgeNation (1990) developed a list of various types of knowledge that one must possess both receptively and productively in order to have complete command of a word.(1) The spoken form of a word.(2) The written form of a word.(3) The grammatical behavior of the word.(4) The collocational behavior of the word.(5) How frequent the word is.(6) The stylistic register constraints of a word.(7) The conceptual meaning of a word.(8) The associations a word has with other related words.It is Nation who puts all the issues, like meaning, base word, affixes, homographs and polysemous words into consideration. In 2001, Nation proposes a detailed and specific framework in which many factors are involved. V ocabulary knowledge includes spoken form, written form, word parts, form and meaning, concept and referent, associations, grammatical functions, collocations, constraints on use. From Nation’s vocabulary framework, we know that the form about a word can embrace a variety of things, from its word class to its morphological characteristic. Therefore, affix knowledge is an important part of the vocabulary knowledge. It influences how well a learner reads new words.Affix is linguistic fragment that is attached to word or word element to modify meaning or change function (Zhang Weiyou, 2002). Longman Dictionary of Language Teaching & Applied Linguistics defines affix as a letter of sound, or group of letters which is added to a word, and which change the meaning or function of the world. Affixes may be divided into inflectional and derivational types.There are two kinds of affix, derivational affix and inflectional affix. Affix attached to the end of words to indicate grammatical relationship is inflectional affix. An inflectional affix serves to express such meanings as plurality, tense, and the comparative or superlative degree (Zhang Yunfei, 1986). Inflectional affixes do not substantially change the meaning of the base word. It doesn't form a new word with new lexical meaning when it is added to another word, nor does it change the word class of the word to which it is added to. Inflectional affixes have only their particular grammatical meaning. Derivational affix is affix added to other morphemes to derive new words. They are so called because when they add to another morpheme, they "derive" a new word. Many derivational affixes have a specific lexical meaning, for instance, -ism means "doctrine or point of view" as in socialism. The number of deviational affixes is much larger than that of inflectional affixes. Derivational Affixes can be further divided into prefix and suffix. A prefix is a letter or group of letters or sounds which are added to the beginning of a word, and which changes the meaningof function of the word. Suffix is the letter or sound or group of letters or sounds which are added to the end of a word, and which change the meaning or function of the word.Ⅲ. Studies abroadEmpirical studies of affix acquisition in second language began in 1997. There are 3 influential papers published as follows.Schimitt & Meara (1997), based their study on frameworks raised by Nation (1990) do the first empirical L2 study in Japanese secondary and post-secondary students, which investigates how types of word knowledge, word association and grammatical knowledge change over time both receptively and productively. In their study, verbs are chosen as the class of words used, as verbs take the widest range of affix. In the productive test of affix knowledge, twenty verbs are presented. Subjects are required to write down three associative meanings of the verbs and add to them as many suffixes as possible, which can be attached to the verbs. In the receptive test, the subjects are also shown twenty verbs and asked to choose three associative meanings of the verbs from four options and the allowable suffixes added to them from fourteen suffixes, namely, -ed, -er, -s, -able, -ly, -ion, -ment, -age, -ance/ence, -al, -ee, -ive, -ure. Schimtt & Meara found that the subjects increased their suffix knowledge to 47% on the productive task and to 66% on the receptive task at the end of their research period. The annual increase was by 5% on the productive task and by 4% on the receptive task. They believe that these increases are small and conclude that subjects are little aware of derivational suffixes and their usage, although they do not have a good mastery of inflectional suffixes. They also find that there is a modest correlation between suffix and word association knowledge, and between suffix knowledge and vocabulary size. They attribute this result to the better knowledge of suffix, leading to a greater vocabulary, which brings a wider range of associative meaning. But there are some limits of their research. On the one hand, the study dealt with only 14 suffixes, disregarding prefixes. Thus, it does not show an overall picture of L2 learners affix knowledge. On the other hand, the study only concerns verbs, excluding words of other part of speech. Students are asked to write down all suffixesthat could be attached to verbs on the productive task and to choose all such suffixes out of 14 on the receptive task. This measures a learner's knowledge of what suffixes a particular verb takes and what it does not, in other words, the relation between a particular verb and its allowable suffixes. It seems that the relation depends more on the knowledge of a verb and its derivatives than on knowledge of suffixes. In this sense Schmitt and Meara's method of affix knowledge test is more contributory to explaining a relation between a verb and its allowable suffixes than suffix knowledge itself.Mochizuki (1998) does an empirical study of L2 learners’ affix knowledge, with the aim to explore what affixes are easier or harder to be acquired. He adopts a method different from that of Schmitt and Meara. He picks up twenty-six prefixes and fifty-six suffixes. For each prefix, he offers three common derivational words and four different meanings of the suffix written in Japanese, from which subjects are to choose the meaning most suitable one for the target suffix. For each suffix, he lists three words with low frequency and four choices, written as verb, noun, adjective, and adverb. Subjects are required to choose the part of speech of the low frequent words containing suffix. 127 freshmen as university students majored in English take part in the test. The result shows that score for prefix is 63% on average and 65% for suffix. Learners vary in degrees for the understanding of prefix and suffix and affix could be put order of accuracy. Mochizuki believed that the accuracy order demonstrates some affixes are easier to acquire than others. The establishment of the accuracy order can promote the systematic teaching of affix knowledge. However, the design of Mochizuki’s experiment is somewhat problematic. He offers familiar words containing prefix, so that subjects can infer the meaning of prefix by knowing the meanings of the familiar words. This makes the result of the study not so reliable.Mochizuki & Aizawa (2001) try to find out the order of affix acquisition, and the relationship between affix knowledge and vocabulary size. 403 Japanese high school students and university students with different majors participate the research. Test instruments are the vocabulary size test and affix knowledge test. Affix knowledge test is similar to that of Mochizuki (1998). For each item, three words sharing thesame affix are transformed into pseudo-words by changing their consonants. For a prefix item, subjects have to choose the best Japanese equivalent for the prefix from a set of four choices. For suffix items, subjects are shown three pseudo-words, and they have to indicate which part of speech these words belong to- noun, verb, adjective, or adverb. Thirteen prefixes and sixteen suffixes are targets. To avoid disturbing normal teaching, the two tests above are undertaken at the beginning and the end of the term. Subjects are informed of the goal of the research and told that the test scores have nothing to do with their records of study. Mochizuki & Aizawa find that there is a correlation between affix knowledge and vocabulary size, in other words, learners increase their affix knowledge in proportion to their vocabulary development. There is an accuracy order of prefixes and suffixes in the affix knowledge test. As to prefixes, more subjects understood the meaning of re-, un-, and pre- than semi-, ex-, and en-, which were better understood than counter-, in-, and ante-. As for suffixes, -ation, -ful, and -ment produced more correct responses than -ness, -ism, and -able, which in turn produced more correct responses than -ish, -y, and -ity. Mochizuki & Aizawa regarded these accuracy orders as an acquisition order of prefixes and suffixes on the assumption that affixes known by more learners are acquired earlier than those known by fewer. There are some limitations of this study. First, researchers do not validate the testing method of affixes. Second, their definition of acquisition in this study is that knowing the lexical meaning of a prefix as prefix acquisition and knowing the syntactic role of a suffix as suffix acquisition, but conventionally, most studies on acquisition of grammatical features regard production of particular grammatical feature by a learner as acquisition of the feature. Third, the treatment of polysemous prefixes and polyfunctional suffixes needs to be questioned.Ⅳ. Studies homeChinese scholars have done empirical studies on affix acquisition since 2000.Wu Xudong &Chen Xiaoqing (2000) investigates, within the descriptive framework of word knowledge types (Nation, 1990), how 4 types of word knowledge 一meaning senses, synonym, derivative, and collocation一were acquired receptively and productively by Chinese EFL learners at three different proficiency levels (i.e.,beginning, intermediate and advanced). Eighty-five Chinese high school and university students participated in the study. They are tested on the receptive and productive mastery of the 4 types of word knowledge for each of the following 6 high-frequency nouns: change, use, character, blood, test, and result. A 4* 3*2 factorial design is applied, and the data from the subjects were analyzed quantitatively and qualitatively. The following major findings are obtained: (1) Diachronically, before the subjects' proficiency reached intermediate level, their receptive and productive knowledge of all types of word knowledge, except word meaning, improved significantly. However, the development stagnated as the subjects moved from intermediate to advanced level. (2) Synchronically, the subjects' lexical competence was characterized by (a) a much better receptive mastery than productive mastery of all 4 knowledge types, (b) a better mastery of meaning senses than that of the other 3 types of word knowledge, and (c) a lack of regularity in their receptive and productive mastery of derivatives and collocations. The possible perspectives of cognitive processes involved causes for the above findings are discussed synonyms, from their vocabulary acquisition and the learning environments characteristic of foreign language classroom setting.Liu Shaolong (2002) explores the dimension development and acquisition patterns of EFL word knowledge in terms of affix, meaning and part of speech of English words of high frequency. The study is based on the “Word Knowledge Framework”and “Dimensional Approach”proposed by Nation (2001), and has its focus on the descriptive and quantitative comparison and analysis of correlation, variance of the above three dimensions of the word knowledge against productive and receptive abilities. Subjects are 25 freshmen and juniors in a university and postgraduate. All of them are English majors. The research findings are as follows. First, the productive knowledge of word meaning is moderately correlated with that of affix; the productive knowledge of affix is also moderately correlated with the receptive knowledge of affix. Second, for the freshmen, the productive knowledge of affix, word meaning, and part of speech is greater than that of other groups; for the juniors, the difference of productive knowledge between affix, word meaning, andparts of speech is significantly greater than that of other groups. Third, the difference among learners with varied proficiency is inconsistent.Cui Yanyan & Wang Tongshun (2005) are the first to solely focus on affix knowledge. They aim to explore the derivative affix acquisition characteristics of Chinese learners and the reasons of affix misuses in the hope of shedding light to affix teaching. Based on the compositions collected in CLEC, they find that misuses of derivative affix accompany the whole process of learning; in spite of the advance learning stage. Those mistakes appear quite often. Learners with different proficiency are varied in the characteristics of learning derivative affixes. Cui Yanyan & Wang Tongshun classify the misuses into three kinds, namely, overuse of affixes, confusion of affixes (including confusion of prefixes, confusion of suffixes), and spelling errors. They conclude that reasons of misuses are due to over generalization, ignorance of rules, and the complexity of derivative affixes.Wu Yi & Ma Guanghui (2006) investigate the affix acquisition of Chinese EFL (English as a Foreign Language) learners as revealed from their level of receptive and productive mastery of affix knowledge. The study is try to answer the acquisition order of English affix of Chinese learners and the relationship between the acquisition of English affix and the size of English vocabulary. The subjects chosen for the present study are 49 Senior 1 students from a natural class of a high school; 100 Senior 2 students from a natural class of a high school; 103 Senior 3 students who are also from a natural class from a high school; 48 freshmen from a natural class of a vocational college. In the study, they use three test papers, the "Productive affix knowledge test", the "Receptive affix knowledge test" and the "Vocabulary size test". The results are as follows. First, there is a certain order in the EFL learners' English affix acquisition; for prefixes, the order is non-, re-, un-, pre-, ex-, counter-, in-, re-, post-, anti-, ante-. for suffixes, it is –er, -ation, -ful, -ly, -ize, -able, -al, -ment, -ous, -y, -ness, -ish, -less, -ist, -ity, ism. Second, suffix knowledge is acquired better than prefix knowledge. Third, receptive affix knowledge is acquired better than productive affix knowledge. Lastly, English affix knowledge acquisition is related with vocabulary size.Ⅴ. Suggestions for future studiesFrom the above review, we can make a conclusion of the research results. First, there is a relationship between affix knowledge and vocabulary size. Second, the productive and receptive knowledge of affix slow down at intermediate stage. Receptive knowledge is acquired better than productive knowledge. Third, Misuses of affix run through the whole process of learning. Lastly, there is an order for affix acquisition.Although researches concerning affix acquisition have gained initial precious results, but the number of empirical studies is still deficient. The research method is too single, namely the cross-section study, which can not represent the diachronic development of affix acquisition. Further studies should deal with how the same learners develop their affix knowledge over time in a longitudinal aspect.References:Mochizuki, M. Understanding English affixes by Japanese learners. Reitaku Review, 1998,(4): 100–120.Masamichi Mochizuki, Kazumi Aizawa. An affix acquisition order for EFL learners.Exploratory Study System, 2000, (28): 291-304.Nagy. The acquisition of morphology: learning the contribution of suffixes to the meanings of derivatives, Journal of Reading Behavior, 1993, 25, 155-170. Nation, P. Teaching and Learning V ocabulary. Boston: Heinle & Heinle, 1990, 11-43. Nation, P. Learning V ocabulary in Another Language. 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