Ying Wang, The Idiom Principle and L1 Influence: A contrastive learner-corpus study of delexical verb + noun collocations.

2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 115-119
Author(s):  
Gaëtanelle Gilquin
Keyword(s):  
Corpus Study ◽  
Learner Corpus ◽  
L1 Influence

scholarly journals What drives learner errors in written L2 production?

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
James Algie
Keyword(s):  
Structural Complexity ◽  
Spanish Speakers ◽  
Target Structure ◽  
L2 Acquisition ◽  
Corpus Study ◽  
Learner Corpus ◽  
Two Factors ◽  
L1 Influence ◽  
L2 Production ◽  
Accuracy Rates

Accuracy in written L2 production can be influenced by many factors, including: (a) the relative similarity of the target structure to equivalent structure in the learner’s L1, and (b) the complexity of the target structure itself. The question of which of these two factors plays a stronger role is fundamental to theories of L2 acquisition. This written learner corpus study uses the English genitive alternation – s-genitives (‘the country's future’) and of-genitives (‘the future of the country’) – to attempt to shed light on this issue. L1 Spanish speakers lag behind L1 Japanese speakers in terms of accuracy rates when the target structure is an s-genitive. This L1 influence appears secondary to structural complexity effects; learners in both groups consistently use the simpler of-genitive with far higher accuracy. Both L1 and complexity effects are stronger in plural possessor contexts, with the plural feature apparently exacerbating learner difficulties with the s-genitive.

scholarly journals Plural Marking in Spoken and Written Narratives: A Corpus-based Study of Japanese Learners of English

2017 ◽  
Vol 6 (5) ◽  
pp. 224
Author(s):  
Yumiko Yamaguchi ◽  
Hiroko Usami
Keyword(s):  
Picture Book ◽  
Developmental Sequence ◽  
Corpus Study ◽  
Written Narratives ◽  
Learner Corpus ◽  
Japanese Learners Of English ◽  
L2 Development ◽  
Plural Marking ◽  
Japanese Learners ◽  
Linguistic Structures

This paper aims to present the results of a learner corpus study on spoken and written narratives by Japanese learners of English using Processability Theory (PT) (Pienemann, 1998). PT assumes that there is a universal hierarchy of second language (L2) development and many studies (e.g., Di Biase, Kawaguchi, & Yamaguchi, 2015; Pienemann, 1998) have shown support for PT stages for English L2. However, few PT studies have addressed the issues of whether learners use linguistic structures in the same way in spoken and written tasks. The current study focuses on learners’ use of plural marking on nouns, since contradictory results have been reported for the developmental sequence of lexical plural -s and phrasal plural -s (Charters, Dao, & Jansen, 2011). The participants in this study comprised 291 university students learning in English programs in Japanese universities. Each of them performed spoken and written narratives using a picture book titled Frog, where are you? (Mayer, 1969) containing 24 wordless pictures. The learner corpus including both 291 audio-recorded and transcribed spoken narratives and 291 written narratives was compiled. The results of the analyses showed a connection between learners’ use of plural marker -s in speaking and that in writing, while a small number of students were found to perform differently in two different tasks. Moreover, this study demonstrated support for the developmental sequence of lexical and phrasal plural marking predicted in PT. 

scholarly journals Multi-Word Expressions in Second Language Writing: A Large-Scale Longitudinal Learner Corpus Study

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anna Siyanova ◽  
S Spina
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Language Learning ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Second Language Writing ◽  
Low Frequency ◽  
University Of Michigan ◽  
Corpus Study ◽  
Learner Corpus ◽  
Language Writing ◽  
Complex Picture

© 2019 Language Learning Research Club, University of Michigan In the present study, we sought to advance the field of learner corpus research by tracking the development of phrasal vocabulary in essays produced at two different points in time. To this aim, we employed a large pool of second language (L2) learners (N = 175) from three proficiency levels—beginner, elementary, and intermediate—and focused on an underrepresented L2 (Italian). Employing mixed-effects models, a flexible and powerful tool for corpus data analysis, we analyzed learner combinations in terms of five different measures: phrase frequency, mutual information, lexical gravity, delta Pforward, and delta Pbackward. Our findings suggest a complex picture, in which higher proficiency and greater exposure to the L2 do not result in more idiomatic and targetlike output, and may, in fact, result in greater reliance on low frequency combinations whose constituent words are non-associated or mutually attracted.

scholarly journals L1 INFLUENCE ON THE ACQUISITION ORDER OF ENGLISH GRAMMATICAL MORPHEMES

2015 ◽  
Vol 38 (3) ◽  
pp. 365-401 ◽  
Author(s):  
Akira Murakami ◽  
Theodora Alexopoulou
Keyword(s):  
Absolute Accuracy ◽  
L2 Acquisition ◽  
Proficiency Levels ◽  
Learner Corpus ◽  
Grammatical Morphemes ◽  
L1 Influence ◽  
Acquisition Order ◽  
The Absolute ◽  
Universal Order

We revisit morpheme studies to evaluate the long-standing claim for a universal order of acquisition. We investigate the L2 acquisition order of six English grammatical morphemes by learners from seven L1 groups across five proficiency levels. Data are drawn from approximately 10,000 written exam scripts from the Cambridge Learner Corpus. The study establishes clear L1 influence on the absolute accuracy of morphemes and their acquisition order, therefore challenging the widely held view that there is a universal order of acquisition of L2 morphemes. Moreover, we find that L1 influence is morpheme specific, with morphemes encoding language-specific concepts most vulnerable to L1 influence.

scholarly journals A Corpus Study of the English Suffixes -ness and -acy: Productivity, Genre, and Implications for L2 Learning

2021 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 115-137
Author(s):  
Ben Naismith ◽  
Matthew Kanwit
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
American English ◽  
Corpus Study ◽  
Word Structure ◽  
Learner Corpus ◽  
Academic Texts ◽  
Construction Morphology ◽  
L2 Learning ◽  
British National Corpus ◽  
The Relationship

Despite substantial scholarship relating to word structure (Anderson, 2018), for English affixes the relationship between productivity, genre, and second language (L2) learning remains unclear. Analysis of the existing literature reveals that deadjectival noun suffixes (i.e., nouns derived from adjectives such as appropriacy or goodness) have been underexamined. To address this gap, we examine two rival suffixes, -acy and -ness, through the lens of Construction Morphology (Booij, 2010), considering numerous factors which might condition their varying usage. Critically, corpus data in the Corpus of Contemporary American English and the British National Corpus (Davies, 2008-) reveal the importance of considering these affixes’ productivity in relation to genre, since -acy is especially frequent in academic texts, principally within certain social sciences. The implications for learners and teachers of English as a second language are discussed, particularly higher-level learners building communicative competence in academic contexts, along with a preliminary learner corpus comparison of the two variants.

scholarly journals Does EAP affect written L2 academic stance? A longitudinal learner corpus study

System ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 69 ◽  
pp. 92-107 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Crosthwaite ◽  
Kevin Jiang
Keyword(s):  
Corpus Study ◽  
Learner Corpus
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