scholarly journals L2 learner production and processing of collocation: A multi-study perspective

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
A Siyanova ◽  
N Schmitt
Keyword(s):  
Social Services ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
English Word ◽  
Study Data ◽  
Advanced Learners ◽  
Modern Language ◽  
L2 Production ◽  
Study Perspective ◽  
British National Corpus ◽  
National Corpus

This article presents a series of studies focusing on L2 production and processing of adjective-noun collocations (e.g., social services). In Study 1, 810 adjective-noun collocations were extracted from 31 essays written by Russian learners of English. About half of these collocations appeared frequently in the British National Corpus (BNC); one-quarter failed to appear in the BNC at all, while another quarter had a very low BNC frequency. Based on frequency data and mutual information (MI) scores, it was discovered that around 45% of all learner collocations were, in fact, appropriate collocations, that is, frequent and strongly associated English word combinations. When the study data were compared to data from native speakers, very little difference was found between native speakers (NS) and non-native speakers (NNS) in the use of appropriate collocations. Unfortunately, the high percentage of appropriate collocations does not mean that NNSs necessarily develop fully native-like knowledge of collocation. In Study 2, NNSs demonstrated poorer intuition than NS respondents regarding the frequency of collocations. Likewise, Study 3 showed that NNSs were slower than NSs in processing collocations. Overall, the studies reported here suggest that L2 learners are capable of producing a large number of appropriate collocations but that the underlying intuitions and the fluency with collocations of even advanced learners do not seem to match those of native speakers. © 2008 The Canadian Modern Language Review.

scholarly journals L2 learner production and processing of collocation: A multi-study perspective

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
A Siyanova ◽  
N Schmitt
Keyword(s):  
Social Services ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
English Word ◽  
Study Data ◽  
Advanced Learners ◽  
Modern Language ◽  
L2 Production ◽  
Study Perspective ◽  
British National Corpus ◽  
National Corpus

This article presents a series of studies focusing on L2 production and processing of adjective-noun collocations (e.g., social services). In Study 1, 810 adjective-noun collocations were extracted from 31 essays written by Russian learners of English. About half of these collocations appeared frequently in the British National Corpus (BNC); one-quarter failed to appear in the BNC at all, while another quarter had a very low BNC frequency. Based on frequency data and mutual information (MI) scores, it was discovered that around 45% of all learner collocations were, in fact, appropriate collocations, that is, frequent and strongly associated English word combinations. When the study data were compared to data from native speakers, very little difference was found between native speakers (NS) and non-native speakers (NNS) in the use of appropriate collocations. Unfortunately, the high percentage of appropriate collocations does not mean that NNSs necessarily develop fully native-like knowledge of collocation. In Study 2, NNSs demonstrated poorer intuition than NS respondents regarding the frequency of collocations. Likewise, Study 3 showed that NNSs were slower than NSs in processing collocations. Overall, the studies reported here suggest that L2 learners are capable of producing a large number of appropriate collocations but that the underlying intuitions and the fluency with collocations of even advanced learners do not seem to match those of native speakers. © 2008 The Canadian Modern Language Review.

L2-constructions that go together – more on valency constructions and learner language

2019 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 9-30
Author(s):  
Armine Garibyan ◽  
Evelin Balog ◽  
Thomas Herbst
Keyword(s):  
Argument Structure ◽  
Stimulus Word ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
Language Teaching ◽  
Verbal Stimulus ◽  
Test Battery ◽  
Advanced Learners ◽  
British National Corpus ◽  
Learner Language ◽  
National Corpus

Abstract This paper sets out to illustrate differences between learner language and the language of native speakers by a number of tests carried out with students of English at the Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg. The first part of the experiment aims at testing knowledge of collocations: In order to compare to what extent combinations of certain words are stored in the constructica of native speakers and advanced learners of English, we used the test battery developed by Dąbrowska (2014): although, as was to be expected, on the whole, native speakers displayed a much greater competence at judging which combinations of words can be regarded as established collocations, interestingly, some learners outperformed some native speakers. The second part of the project was designed to explore the number and types of different valency constructions informants produce on being provided with a verbal stimulus. It is very interesting to see that, given the stimulus word caught, for example, the non-native speakers would predominantly produce sentences with police, thief, murderer, suspect etc. which do not rank amongst the 50 top collexemes of caught in the British National Corpus. We would thus argue that an analysis of the words used in particular slots of argument structure constructions (i.e. the collexemes or itecxes) provides a useful means of characterizing the language of advanced learners and to underscore the importance of collo-phenomena in language teaching.

Genitive coordinations with personal pronouns

2011 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 363-385 ◽  
Author(s):  
JOHN PAYNE
Keyword(s):  
Single Unit ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
The Other ◽  
Personal Pronoun ◽  
Personal Pronouns ◽  
Web Based ◽  
British National Corpus ◽  
Insight Into ◽  
Genitive Case ◽  
National Corpus

English genitive noun-phrase coordinations follow two patterns. The first is the single genitive, in which exponence of the genitive case occurs solely on the final coordinate, e.g. Mary and Jane's; and the second is the multiple genitive, in which exponence of the genitive case occurs on all coordinates, e.g. Mary's and Jane's. When either of the coordinates is a personal pronoun, difficult choices have to be made about the form of the pronoun. These difficulties arise especially with the single genitive, which is judged to be totally ungrammatical in coordinations like *my wife and I's or *my wife and my. On the other hand, the alternative use of the multiple genitive, my wife's and my, conflicts with a preference for the single genitive when the coordinates are felt to constitute a single unit. In this article, we first conduct a corpus-based analysis for genitive coordinations with personal pronouns, based on the British National Corpus. This, supplemented by some non-standard examples from web-based sources, gives some insight into the choices actually made by native speakers. We then provide a theoretical account of the syntactic problems that genitive coordinations with pronouns create. This account is shown to be compatible solely with an analysis of the English ’s genitive as an inflectional affix.

scholarly journals The Metaphorical Use of Collocations: A Corpus-Based Study

2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 107
Author(s):  
Yanqin Cheng
Keyword(s):  
Physical World ◽  
English Word ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Conceptual Metaphors ◽  
Bodily Experience ◽  
Efl Learners ◽  
The World ◽  
British National Corpus ◽  
Insight Into ◽  
National Corpus

The meanings of collocations, which have been accepted as an abstraction at the syntagmatic level, may have been defined by the way human beings conceptualize the world. The patterns in the use of the English word “contain” are summarized using the British National Corpus and an attempt is made to use conceptual metaphors to interpret how these patterns came into being and how they could have derived from human beings’ earliest bodily experience in the physical world. Such insight into English collocations may help improve the teaching of collocations to EFL learners.

scholarly journals How large a vocabulary is needed for reading and listening?

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Nation
Keyword(s):  
Vocabulary Size ◽  
Written Text ◽  
Modern Language ◽  
Spoken English ◽  
Spoken Text ◽  
British National Corpus ◽  
National Corpus

This article has two goals: to report on the trialling of fourteen 1,000 word-family lists made from the British National Corpus, and to use these lists to see what vocabulary size is needed for unassisted comprehension of written and spoken English. The trialling showed that the lists were properly sequenced and there were no glaring omissions from the lists. If 98% coverage of a text is needed for unassisted comprehension, then a 8,000 to 9,000 word-family vocabulary is needed for comprehension of written text and a vocabulary of 6,000 to 7,000 for spoken text. © 2006 The Canadian Modern Language Review/La Revue canadienne des langues vivantes.

scholarly journals SEMANTICS OF THE CONSTRUCTIONS WITH SPLIT INFINITIVE

2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (34) ◽  
Author(s):  
E.A FROLOVA ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Native Speakers ◽  
American English ◽  
Standard English ◽  
Semantic Features ◽  
Exact Number ◽  
Expert Assessments ◽  
British National Corpus ◽  
The Difference ◽  
Integral Feature ◽  
National Corpus

Objective of this article is to define the exact number of split infinitives and the most common splitters in the construction, identify groups of studied constructions united by an integral feature and to determine the semantic features of constructions with a split infinitive. Applied methods. For the purpose of this research language material is collected on the basis of the corpora of texts such as the British National Corpus and the Corpus of Contemporary American English. The examples of the phenomenon are selected to conduct a semantic experiment using the method of expert assessments, which will reveal the semantic features of constructions with a split infinitive. The informants (native speakers) are asked to grade the sentences with the reference to the norm of standard English and leave their personal comments on the use of split infinitive constructions. Results The acquired data is analyzed from the viewpoint of semantics. As a result of the research the semantic features of split infinitives are described and the difference in semantics of split and usual infinitives is established. Conclusion. The construction with a split infinitive in comparison with the usual infinitive introduces different information to the sentence. Putting an adverb directly before a verb allows to clarify the statement, gives a narrow focus and establishes a semantic connection with a specific verb.

LEARNING ENGLISH WORD CLASS BY USING CONCORDANCE SOFTWARE

ELT in Focus ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 19-23
Author(s):  
Yogi Setia Samsi
Keyword(s):  
Corpus Linguistics ◽  
English Word ◽  
Word Class ◽  
Teaching English ◽  
English Teaching ◽  
British National Corpus ◽  
National Corpus ◽  
Learning English

Concordance is one of the software based corpus linguistics which aims to analyze the unlimited data. This software caused the lecturing delivered comprehensively and understood easily by students. Regarding to this application, it will always make easier the student to learn, identify, and analyze the data in order to determine English word class within various texts. This study is about morphology to get how the process of teaching English word class with concordance software is, and how are the students’ responses toward teaching English word class with concordance software. Corpus is taken from BNC/ British national corpus analyzed byword class categories as Thomas (1993) theory, to achieve the focus comprehensively in recognizing English word class categories. Concordance is available to use either English teaching or linguistics one.

The Production of Word-Final Voiced Obstruents in English by L1 Speakers of Japanese and Cantonese

1991 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 377-393 ◽  
Author(s):  
Beverly A. Edge
Keyword(s):  
Comparison Group ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
Native Speaker ◽  
English Word ◽  
Study Data ◽  
Partial Replication ◽  
Japanese Speakers ◽  
Native Speakers Of English ◽  
Japanese Subjects

This study is a partial replication and extension of Eckman's (1981a) study on the production of English word-final voiced obstruents by native speakers of Japanese and Cantonese, in which he reported evidence of an interlanguage rule of schwa paragoge for Japanese speakers and one of terminal devoicing for Cantonese speakers. In the current study, data from subjects performing three tasks varying in the speech style elicited were compared to the broad transcription of English and to data from a comparison group of native speakers of English performing the same tasks. The inclusion of native speaker data allowed the identification of variants in non-native production as either interlanguage phenomena or native-like simplified or assimilated forms. Results showed that devoicing was significant for the Japanese subjects, as well as for the Cantonese subjects. In addition, the Japanese subjects approximated target variants significantly more often than the Cantonese subjects, raising questions about the sources of the variants observed.

scholarly journals Transitivity of Try and V Construction in British and American English

2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 197
Author(s):  
Faisal Mustafa ◽  
Syamsul Bahri Yusuf
Keyword(s):  
Native Speakers ◽  
American English ◽  
English Grammar ◽  
Base Form ◽  
Grammatical Rule ◽  
British National Corpus ◽  
National Corpus ◽  
Finite Verb

Try and V construction is prevalent in British and American English. This construction is found in both spoken and written English, although with different frequencies. The verb in this construction only appears in in the base form. The lack of research on this verb formation leaves many aspects unexplored, one of which is the transitivity of the verb. Therefore, this study is intended to find out the number of arguments informed by this construction by matching the number of arguments to the verb try and the verb following it after the conjunction and. Two verbs were used to test this match, i.e., give and bring, which are three-place predicate verbs, and other two two-place predicate verbs, i.e., see and answer, were used to validate the finding. British National Corpus (BNC) and Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA) were used to collect the data. The findings show that the number of arguments matched the verb following the conjunction and. Therefore, it can be concluded the number of arguments in try and V construction is not unique to this construction, but it is similar to the try to V, where V is the non-finite verb which selects the number of arguments. This result suggests that try and V construction needs to be included in English grammar textbooks in order that non-native speakers can use and understand this rare grammatical rule in appropriate contexts.

scholarly journals Forms and Meanings of Stative Verbs in Progressive Tense: a Corpus Linguistics Research

2018 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 184-190
Author(s):  
Upi Laila Hanum
Keyword(s):  
Corpus Linguistics ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
American English ◽  
British English ◽  
English Grammar ◽  
British National Corpus ◽  
Mixed Categories ◽  
National Corpus ◽  
Descriptive Qualitative

 AbstractSemantics is the field of linguistic concerned with the study of meaning in language. The aims of the research are to analyze the forms and meanings of the stative verbs in progressive tense in corpora. The data of this research were obtained from Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA) and British National Corpus (BNC). The data of the corpora used descriptive qualitative. The result of the research shows that the stative verbs are found and used in progressive tense. The stative verbs appeared in all types of progressive tense except future perfect progressive. The use of the stative verbs in progressive tense took place due to overgeneralization in the use of the native speakers’ form of American and British English. The stative verbs in progressive tense used to express temporariness, emotiveness, comprehension and mixed categories of meaning; temporariness and emotiveness, temporariness and tentativeness. Temporariness meaning almost appeared in all types of progressive. Stative verbs in progressive tense indirectly stated temporariness in stative sense of meaning, is contrary to the rules of English grammar.

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