1) L2 Teacher talk: the language used by teachers while addressing their students.
2) Foreigner talk: the language used by native speakers while addressing non-native speakers
3) Caregiver talk: the language used in addressing young children
[FOREIGNER TALK OUTSIDE THE CLASSROOM]
It has been observed that native speakers (NSs) adjust their speech in conversation with non-native speakers (NNSs) in various ways. This modified register has been termed 'foreigner talk' (Ff) coined by Charles Ferguson (1971, p. 1), and defined as:
“A register of simplified speech ... used by speakers of a language to outsiders who are felt to have very limited command of the language or no knowledge of
it at all.”
His pioneering study (Ferguson 1975) set the tone for much of the subsequent research by highlighting phonological, lexical and grammatical adjustments. University students
were asked to rewrite ten English sentences as they would address them to illiterate non-Europeans and comment on other features of the communication. These data, along with some literary material, were the basis for his extensive catalogue of FT features.
Among them are:
• slow rate of delivery
• loudness
• cleaner articulation
• exaggerated pronunciation
• more pauses
• more emphatic stress
• use of loan words and pidginized forms
• omission of articles, copula and do-support
• multiple negation
• uninverted questions
shorter utterances
* lower syntactic complexity
* more avoidance of low frequency items and idiomatic
expressions
The focus of research shifted once again when Michael Long (198Ia, p. 259) made an important distinction between input modifications to the linguistic forms used, and interactional modifications to the func- tions served by those forms, which occur at the level of discourse. Dis- course modifications include such phenomena as increased numbers of self-repetitions and confirmation checks.
An example (Long 1983a) will serve to illustrate both what is meant by this distinction, and the fact that input and interaction modifications can occur independently.
(1) NS-NS speech
NS: When did you finish?
NS: Ten.
(2) Foreigner Talk-modification in form only
NS: What time you finish?
NNS:Ten o'clock.
(3) Foreigner Talk-modification in function only
NS: When did you finish? NNS: Urn?
NS: When did you finish? NNS: Ten clock.
NS: Ten o'clock?
NNS: Yeah.