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The applied linguistics challenge MAGNITUDE ESTIMATION

المؤلف:  Alan Davies

المصدر:  An Introduction to Applied Linguistics

الجزء والصفحة:  P152-C8

2026-08-05

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The applied linguistics challenge

MAGNITUDE ESTIMATION

A way round the definition problem may be to acknowledge that we can at least agree on who is a non-native speaker (NNS). This in essence is the approach Sorace takes in the experiments she has reported in a number of papers (Sorace 2003). What she does is to study advanced NNS (whom she terms near-natives) judgements of grammatical acceptability using magnitude estimation. This methodology, which she has pioneered with colleagues and students for interlanguage grammars, is a highly sensitive and reliable technique for the measurement of change and therefore for establishing stages in the development of an interlanguage grammar. Her conclusion, based on experiments with a number of languages, is that ‘even learners who are capable of native-like performance often have knowledge representations that differ systematically from those of native speakers’ (Sorace and Robertson 2001: 267). In other words, there is an absolute distinction between NSs and NNSs, a gap that can never be bridged. Although I have suggested that Sorace’s approach is unlike that proposed by Escudero and Sharwood-Smith, in fact they are not so different. Sorace’s magnitude estimations are not a world away from prototypes; and although her study is of near-natives, she needs for all her experimental studies to obtain comparative judgements also for native speakers. She uses students drawn from secondary schools and universities. Now what Sorace, unlike Escudero and Sharwood-Smith, does is to take for granted that we know what/who a native speaker is. Does she therefore avoid the failure to define which Escudero and Sharwood-Smith grapple with? I think not: in the first place, her NNS studies provide results not unlike prototypes and in the second place her choice of educated NS subjects biases her claims for the knowledge representations of NSs.