The Syntactic Development of the students in an immersion setting at an early stage - The Analysis of the spoken data in English at Katoh Immersion School

Abstract

This study is aimed at investigating the development of syntax by immersion students at Kato Gakuen immersion school. The spoken data was examined in terms of sentence structures based on five sentence patterns; SV, SVC, SVO, SVOO, SVC. And it was compared with L1 and 12 acquisition findings. As a result, the first graders development in second language was depicted. Also the order of acquisition was not the same as either L1 or L2's. Especially, regarding dative structures the finding showed the similarity with that of lennerbility theory or markedness theory. This may require further investigation.