Morphological translation equivalence for TLA development in the teacher trainee classroom

The research question this study addressed was whether and to what extent morphological translation equivalence might contribute TLA in the teacher training class. We have therefore attempted to look at some features of intensifying and evaluative morphology and their functional counterparts within and across languages. Though the following conclusions must be viewed as partly tentative given the initial stage of our research, the importance of morphological translation equivalence for TLA and of explicit knowledge of overlapping L1 and L2 types beyond formal equivalence is uncontroversial. This, we have argued, can be assumed to apply especially to the Italian teacher trainee. More specifically, being educated in a country that affords limited opportunities for L2 use, teacher trainees enrolled in TFA/SPA programmes in Italy group similarly not only according to proficiency level, type and length of learning experience but also according to exposure to L1 and (to a minor degree) L2 explicit instruction (e.g. in high school). Also, having completed minors in General and Applied Linguistics and majored in Language and Translation, teacher trainees are (relatively) well equipped with terminology, knowledge of theoretical notions and awareness of practical applications, and can thus be assumed to group together in terms of skills and ability to explore and reflect on different types and language paradigms. Participant (i.e. teacher trainee) and contextual characteristics, therefore, invite work on explicit instruction along the lines suggested in Task 1 and Task 2, which concentrate on difference ‒ rather than similarity – of morphological types and intensifying and evaluative paradigms in particular, within and across languages. This is evidenced by one-to-many equivalence in the case English and Italian super-, which do not overlap, or by Italian elative -issimo, which is ubiquitous for English intensifying adverbs, implicit superlatives and intensifying prefixes in complex words. Formal differences across languages may also pair with similarity of subsenses and functions, as in jocular uses of Italian -one and English little in It. birbone > dirty/little rascal, and show up in one language, as in It. -ino and -one, in ‘Che bel gelatino/gelatone!’. Importantly, we have shown that explicit knowledge of intensifying and evaluative morphology minimally requires generalizations and verbalization of rules along semantic roles and features such as degree, emphasis and affect. In this context, it is clear that, if we want to eventually come out with effective tasks that can build and encourage TLA, we first need to isolate specific form-function connections for all the L1 and L2 types involved, at the morphological and phraseological level.