Influence of Communicative Situation Variables on Linguistic Form
Ruddy Lelouche, Diane Huot · Computer Assisted Language Learning · 1998
Language teachers and learners are increasingly aware of the effects of sociolinguistic variables on the form of a message. What is less clear, though, is the detailed nature of these effects: what pragmatic variable affects what linguistic form? Even though language learners may have understood that each situation variable has a bearing on individual linguistic forms, they are unlikely to know which specific rules guide the native speaker in order to come up with a given message in a given situation, since such rules have not been explicitly formulated. In response to this difficulty of language learners, we have built a computer program to provide them with the relevant knowledge which should ultimately enable them to recognize or produce linguistic forms appropriate to a given setting, and to choose one form among a set of apparently similar alternatives. In designing the system we defined what we call communicative situation variables. The main goal of this paper is to show how we explore the influence of pragmatic factors (i.e., the way these variables function) by contrasting learner usage with a computer-based model. We make explicit the implicit rules that a French native speaker may follow intuitively. We also show how a further set of rules, resulting from our model, appears to be necessary in order to organize these variables. Finally, we discuss how our system prototype generates forms appropriate to a given situation and how it analyses submitted linguistic forms.