Module 01 SLA: From Linguistic Perspectives

Lesson 03 Functional Approach

Lesson objectives
By the end of this lesson, you will be able to:
Ö Demonstrate sufficient understanding of the key tenets of the Functional Approach to SLA
Ö Use the above understanding to account for some real-life instances of SLA
Ö Synthesize prior research findings to critically evaluate the merits and demerits of this theory

While UG has been the dominant linguistic approach to SLA for many years, many researchers
have rather chosen to take an external focus on language learning. The more influential of these
approaches are based on the framework of Functionalism.
Functional models of analysis date back to the early twentieth century and have their roots
in the Prague School of linguistics that originated in Eastern Europe. They differ from structuralist
and early generative models by emphasizing the information content of utterances, and in
considering language primarily as a system of communication rather than as a set of rules.
The term function has several meanings in linguistics, including both structural function
(such as the role which elements of language struc- ture play as a subject or object, or as an actor
or goal) and pragmatic func- tion (what the use of language can accomplish, such as convey
informa- tion, control others’ behavior, or express emotion). Approaches to SLA which are
characterized as functional differ in emphasis and definition but share the following characteristics
in general opposition to those in the Chomskyan tradition:
• Focus is on the use of language in real situations (performance) as well as underlying
knowledge (competence). No sharp distinction is made between the two.
• Study of SLA begins with the assumption that the purpose of lan- guage is communication,
and that development of linguistic knowl- edge (in L1 or L2) requires communicative use.
• Scope of concern goes beyond the sentence to include discourse struc- ture and how
language is used in interaction, and to include aspects of communication beyond language
(Tomlin 1990).
Three of the functional approaches which have been influential in SLA are Systemic
linguistics, Function-to-form mapping, and Information organization.

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1. Systemic linguistics
Systemic Linguistics has been developed by M. A. K. Halliday, beginning in the late 1950s. This
is a model for analyzing language in terms of the interrelated systems of choices that are available
for expressing meaning. Basic to the approach is the notion, ultimately derived from the anthro-
pologist Malinowski, that language structures cannot be idealized and studied without taking into
account the circumstances of their use, including the extralinguistic social context.
From this functional view,
language acquisition ... needs to be seen as the mastery of linguistic functions. Learning
one’s mother tongue is learning the uses of language, and the meanings, or rather the
meaning potential, associated with them. The structures, the words and the sounds are the
realization of this meaning potential. Learning language is learning how to mean.
(Halliday 1973:345)
To relate this notion to the question about what language learners essentially acquire, in Halliday’s
view it is not a system of rules which govern language structure, but rather “meaning potential”:
“what the speaker/hearer can do (what he can mean, if you like), not what he knows” (1973:346).
The process of acquisition consists of “mastering certain basic functions of language and
developing a meaning potential for each” (1975:33).
Halliday (1975) describes the evolution of the following pragmatic functions in early L1
acquisition (he calls them “functions of language as a whole”), which are universal for children:
• Instrumental – language used as a means of getting things done (one of the first to be
evolved): the “I want” function.
• Regulatory – language used to regulate the behavior of others: the “do as I tell you”
function.
• Interactional – use of language in interaction between self and others: the “me and you”
function.
• Personal – awareness of language as a form of one’s own identity: the “here I come”
function.
• Heuristic – language as a way of learning about things: the “tell me why” function.
• Imagination – creation through language of a world of one’s own making: the “let’s
pretend” function.
• Representational – means of expressing propositions, or communicating about something
(one of the last to appear): the “I’ve got something to tell you” function.

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Linguistic structures which are mastered in the developmental process are “direct reflections” of
the functions that language serves; their development is closely related to the social and personal
needs they are used to convey.
One application of Halliday’s model to the study of SLA comes with seeing L2 learning as
a process of adding multilingual meaning potential to what has already been achieved in L1. Thus,
it can be concluded that “Second language acquisition is largely a matter of learning new linguistic
forms to fulfill the same functions [as already acquired and used in L1] within a different social
milieu” (Saville-Troike, McClure, and Fritz 1984:60). In studying children who had just arrived in
the USA from several different countries, for instance, it has been found that all of them could
accomplish a wide range of communicative functions even while they still had very limited English
means at their disposal. What researchers observed and recorded over a period of several months
for every child in their studies was not the emergence of new functions (as they would expect in
early L1 development), but emergence of new language structures to augment existing choices for
expressing them. This structural emergence follows the same general sequence for each function
(not unlike early stages of L1). For example:
Nonverbal
Regulatory: (Hitting another child who is annoying.)
Interactional: Unh? (Uttered as a greeting.)
Heuristic: (Pointing at an object [with a questioning look] to request the
English term for it.)
L2 formula or memorized routine
Regulatory: Don’t do that!
Interactional: Hi!
Heuristic: What’s it?
Single L2 word
Regulatory: He! (Pointing out another child’s offending behavior to a teacher.)
Interactional: Me? (An invitation to play.)
Heuristic: What? (Asking for the English term for an object.)
L2 phrase or clause
Regulatory: That bad!
Interactional: You me play?

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 Heuristic: What name this?
Complex L2 construction
Regulatory: The teacher say that wrong!
Interactional: I no like to play now.
Heuristic: What is name we call this?

Stop and check

According to Saville-Troike, McClure and Fritz (1984), second language acquisition is mainly
learning how to use new linguistic (L2) forms to fulfil the same functions (already acquired and
used in L1) in a different context. In groups, generate as many L1 and L2 expressions as possible
to serve the following functions:
Functions L1 L2
Instrumental
Regulatory
Interactional
Personal
Hueristic
Imagination
Representational
Based on your lists of generated expressions, discuss to draw implications for your L2 teaching
and learning.

2. Function-to-form mapping
Another functional approach which has been applied to the description and analysis of
interlanguage emphasizes function-to-form mapping in the acquisitional sequence. A basic
concept from this perspective is that acquisition of both L1 and L2 involves a process of
grammaticalization in which a grammatical function (such as the expression of past time) is first
conveyed by shared extralinguistic knowledge and inferencing based on the context of discourse,
then by a lexical word (such as yesterday), and only later by a grammatical marker (such as the
suffix -ed). For example, if you ask a beginning learner of English what he did the day before he
might say I play soccer, relying on context to convey the meaning of past time; a somewhat more

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advanced learner might say Yesterday I play soccer, using an adverb to convey the meaning of
past; and a still more advanced learner might say I played soccer, using the grammatical inflection
-ed.
The general principle of increasing reliance on grammatical forms and reducing reliance
on context and lexical words to express functions such as time is followed in all languages. In
Chinese L2, for example, learners tend to use the lexical adverb jiu ‘then’ to express temporal
sequencing of events before they use the grammatical marker le ‘finished’ in expressing this
notion. The following utterances were produced by a beginning learner (a) and a more advanced
learner (b) who were retelling the same event in a film (The Pear Story) that they had viewed
(Yang 2002):

Talmy Givón (1979) proposed the distinction between a style of expressing meaning which
relies heavily on context (which he calls a pragmatic mode) and a style which relies more on
formal grammatical elements (a syntactic mode), and the notion that change from one to the other
is evolutionary in nature. He lists a number of contrasts in addition to the evolution from no use of
grammatical morphology to elaborate use of grammatical morphology, which has already been
illustrated above. Additional developmental contrasts include:
• From topic-comment to subject-predicate structure. A subject-predicate structure
involves more grammatical marking because of the agreement it requires between sentence
elements, while a topic-comment structure requires no such marking in stating what the
topic is and then giving some information about it.
• From loose conjunction (with elements merely juxtaposed or connected with and) to tight
subordination (with elements connected by words like since or because).
• From slow rate of delivery (under several intonation contours) to fast rate of delivery
(under a single intonational contour).

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 • From word order governed mostly by the pragmatic principle of old information first,
followed by new information (as in topic-comment structures) to word order used to signal
semantic case functions (such as subject or object).
• From roughly one-to-one ratio of verbs to nouns in discourse to a larger ratio of nouns over
verbs. The increase in the ratio of nouns to verbs indicates that more semantic case
functions are being expressed: e.g. not just subject (only one noun with one verb), but also
object and indirect object (a total of three nouns).
According to this approach, language acquisition importantly involves developing linguistic forms
to fulfill semantic or pragmatic functions. Grammaticalization is driven by communicative need
and use and is related to the development of more efficient cognitive processing (e.g. via
automatization) as part of language learning.

Stop and check

In Tieng Anh 5 – English Discovery (Tran Thi Lan Anh and Cao Thuy Hong), there are three units
focusing on the past simple. Study the following extract from their Scope and Sequence/Bookmap
and then discuss whether the natural sequence of grammar acquisition above (grammatization) is
appreciated. If yes, give specific evidence for it. If no, suggest relevant improvements.
Unit Topic Structure
5 My place then and Many years ago, when I was very small, this town was very
now quiet and safe. It isn’t the same now at all.
6 Technology: Then Jack: Was life very different thirty years ago?
and now Nam: Yes, it was. People listened to music with a CD player.
They called each other by a telephone. They didn’t use a tablet.
7 Celebrations A: What did you eat at your birthday party?
B: We ate a lot of good food like pizza and spring rolls.

3. Information organization
Information organization refers to a functional approach which focuses on utterance structure,
or “the way in which learners put their words together” (Klein and Perdue 1993:3). The task of
studying SLA from this perspective includes describing the structures of interlanguage (called
learner varieties by Klein and Perdue), discovering what organizational principles guide learners’

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production at various stages of development, and analyzing how these principles interact with one
another.
The evidence for this description and analysis comes primarily from the European Science
Foundation (ESF) project (e.g. Klein and Perdue 1992; Perdue 1993). Over a period of almost
three years, Klein, Perdue, and other linguists regularly recorded the L2 production of speakers of
six L1s who were learning five different L2s. All of the learners were adult immigrants in Europe
who needed to use the L2 to communicate but did not receive a significant amount of formal
instruction in that language.
The number of L1s and L2s in this study is important because it allows the researchers to
make generalizations about the nature of interlanguage (or learner varieties) which would not be
possible if all of the participants were speakers of the same L1, or if all were learning the same L2.
The combinations of native and target languages are shown in Figure 3.2 (adapted from Klein and
Perdue 1992:5).

This list indicates that the participants are native speakers of both Punjabi and Italian learning
English, of Italian and Turkish learning German, of Turkish and Arabic learning Dutch, of Arabic
and Spanish learning French, and of Spanish and Finnish learning Swedish. Most of the L2s are
related Germanic languages, but the L1s represent several very different language families: Turkic
(Turkish), Semitic (Arabic), Indo- Iranian (Punjabi), Romance (Italian and Spanish), and Finno-
Ugric (Finnish).

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Developmental levels
All of the learners in this study, no matter what their L1 and L2, go through a remarkably similar
sequence of development in their interlanguage. The examples are from narratives about a Charlie
Chaplin film that were told by learners in English L2 (as reported in Huebner, Carroll, and Perdue
1992).
• Nominal Utterance Organization (NUO). Learners generally begin with the seemingly
unconnected naming of subjects and objects (i.e. with nouns and pronouns, or “nominals”). They
may also use adverbs and adjectives or other elements but seldom use a verb to help organize an
utterance.
PUNJABI L1: charlie and girl accident
ITALIAN L1: this man one idea from the window

• Infinite Utterance Organization (IUO). Learners increasingly add verbs to their utterances, but
they seldom use grammatical morphemes to convey the meaning of tense, person, or number (i.e.
the verb is uninflected, or “infinite”). There is also increasing use of grammatical relators such as
prepositions. At this stage, learners have constructed an interlanguage grammar which is called
the Basic Variety. They may be able to express themselves adequately at this stage in some
contexts, and not all continue development beyond this level.
PUNJABI L1: charlie and girl and policeman put on the floor
ITALIAN L1: the blonde friend tell other woman about the son

• Finite Utterance Organization (FUO). Learners who continue interlanguage development

beyond the IUO level next add grammatical morphemes to the verb (i.e. the verb becomes
inflected, or “finite”). This is the process of progressive grammaticalization, which was
described in the previous section on function-to-form mapping.
PUNJABI L1: after she said to charlie “you eat dinner”
ITALIAN L1: he has finished the work

The sequence of structural development shows minimal cross-linguistic influence for the NUO
and IUO levels; speakers of all languages follow the same pattern. More L1 transfer occurs as
learners increase their L2 resources and produce more complicated utterances (Perdue 2000).

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Organizing principles
There is a limited set of principles which learners make use of for organizing information. These
interact, and the balance or weight of use among them shifts during the process of interlanguage
development. These principles may be classified as follows:
• Phrasal constraints, or restrictions on the phrasal patterns which may be used. Once the
verb has emerged, for example, a basic pattern is noun phrase plus verb (NP + V), with a
second NP after the verb possible. There are also restrictions on the composition and
complexity of each phrasal category. For example, at one stage of development a noun
phrase (NP) may consist only of a noun (N) or a pronoun. At the next stage of development,
it may consist of a determiner (e.g. the) plus noun (D + N) or an adjective plus noun (Adj
+ N), but not D + Adj + N. Possible phrasal composition increases in complexity with
developmental level.
• Semantic constraints, or features of categories like NP which determine their position in a
sentence and what case role they are assigned (e.g. agent or “doer” of the action, or patient
or recipient of the action). When an utterance has more than one NP, learners use such
semantic factors to decide which one should come first. The principle that learners follow
is to put the agent first, or the NP that refers to the thing that is most likely to be in control
of other referents.
• Pragmatic constraints, including restrictions that relate to what has been said previously,
or to what the speaker assumes that the hearer already knows. The general pragmatic
principle is to put what is known (the topic) first, and new information or what the speaker
is focusing on last.
While all learners follow essentially the same principles in organizing their utterances, there is
individual variation, in part attributable to how the principles apply in their L1 and influence
interlanguage use. These constraints are therefore not seen as deterministic, but as “something like
‘guiding forces’ whose interplay shapes the utterance” (Perdue 1993:25).
In summarizing results, Klein and Perdue (1993:261–66) offer four “bundles of
explanations” for the sequence of acquisition they find, and for why some L2 learners are more
successful than others:

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 • Communicative needs. Discourse tasks push the organization of utterances, in part to
overcome communicative inadequacies. Linguistic means are acquired to overcome
limitations of earlier levels or stages of expression.
• Cross-linguistic influence. Influence from L1 affects rate of interlanguage development
and ultimate level of success, although not order of acquisition. L1 influence is a factor in
rate and achievement because it more or less facilitates learners’ analysis of L2 input and
plays a role in their selection from among possible L2 organizational devices.
• Extrinsic factors. Progress beyond the basic variety is dependent both on “propensity”
factors such as attitudes and motivation, and on “environmental” factors such as extent and
nature of learners’ exposure to L2. The everyday environment has more influence on
progress at this level than does classroom learning.
• Limits on processing. Learners’ current internalized interlanguage system must be ready to
integrate new linguistic features or they cannot be put to immediate use in communication.
Learners cannot attend to all communicative needs at the same time.
Klein and Perdue conclude:

In addition to understanding the information organization of the developmental structures

of learner language, linguists at least since Talmy (1975) have considered the typological
classification of language according to how semantic components of events are encoded in verbs
or other grammatical structures. Languages have different preferred patterns for conveying such
concepts as (1) what manner of motion occurs in an event, (2) how the time of speaking about an
events relates to the time of its occurrence, and (3) what spatial perspective the speaker takes on
an event.

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 Examples of different patterns of encoding manner of motion include the English
preference for lexicalizing the manner of motion in the verb and the path in a prepositional phrase
(e.g. The girl danced into the room) contrasted with the Japanese preference for lexicalizing the
path of motion in the verb and the path in an adjunct or satellite structure (e.g. Shojo-ga heya-ni
odori-nagara haitta ‘The girl entered the room while she was dancing’).
Decisions on which component(s) of a concept should be lexically anchored and which
should be expressed in a more peripheral structure are normally expected only of very advanced
L2 learners. (A discussion of different patterns and of factors involved in L1 and L2 selection are
found in Carroll and von Stutterheim 2003).
Implications of this functional approach for teaching are discussed by Cadierno and
Robinson (2009). Learning to use appropriate L2 linguistic forms for some events (such as those
expressing types of motion) may require learning to think about them differently, such as learning
to attend to different details. Likelihood of success in instruction is clearly dependent on the
typological relation of L1 and L2, but the level of learner L2 proficiency is more problematic.
All of the functional approaches discussed here basically agree on the following:
• what is being acquired in SLA is a system for conveying meaning,
• how language is acquired importantly involves creative learner involvement in
communication, and
• understanding of SLA processes is impossible if they are isolated from circumstances of
use.
However, for many who take a functional approach, concern with communicative meaning
and context does not preclude belief in the existence of an innate (and possibly language-specific)
faculty as an explanatory mechanism, nor does it rule out concern with addressing the “logical
problem,” that learners somehow know much more about language than can be accounted for by
the input they receive.

4. Performance task
As stated in the Information Organization Model above, language development (regardless of L1
or L2) tends to follow the same pattern from NUO to IUO and yet to FUO as well as the phrasal,
semantic and pragmatic constraints. Use the following data about the development of tense and

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aspect in English among three groups of Spanish-English bilingual learners: (a) kindergarten, (b)
Grade 1 and (c) Grade 2 to evaluate the validity of the above pattern and constraints.
Kindergarten

Grade 1

Grade 2

Forground: New/key information; Background: Additional information

Kang & Uchokoshi (2022) (doi:10.1017/S0142716422000145)

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5. Self-assessment log
Have you by now been able to: YES NO
Ö Demonstrate sufficient understanding of the key tenets of the Functional
Approach to SLA?
Ö Use the above understanding to account for some real-life instances of
SLA?
Ö Synthesize prior research findings to critically evaluate the merits and
demerits of this theory?

------THE END-----

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