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 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.

Definite article bridging relations in L2: A learner corpus study

2019 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 297-319 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Robert Crosthwaite
Keyword(s):  
English Language ◽  
Definite Article ◽  
English Learner ◽  
World Knowledge ◽  
Corpus Study ◽  
Learner Corpus ◽  
L2 Production ◽  
L1 And L2 ◽  
Lexical Relations ◽  
Selection Of

Abstract Bridging relations are used when the identity of a discourse-new entity can be inferred via lexical relations from an antecedent (e. g. a cake … the slice) or non-lexically via reference to world knowledge or discourse structure (e. g. a war … the survivors). Such relations are marked in English via the definite article, which is considered a difficult feature of the English language for L2 learners to acquire, particularly for L1 speakers of article-less languages. This paper provides an Integrated Contrastive Model (e. g. Granger 1996) of the L1 and L2 production of definite article bridging relations using L2 English learner corpus data produced by native Mandarin and Korean speakers at four L2 proficiency levels, alongside comparative native English data. The data is taken from the International Corpus Network of Asian Learners of English (ICNALE, Ishikawa 2011, 2013), totalling just under 400,000 words with over 1500 bridging NPs identified. Results suggest subtle but significant differences between L1-L2 and L2-L2 groupings in terms of the frequency of particular bridging relation types and lemmatised wordings identified in the data, although there was little evidence of pseudo-longitudinal development. Such differences may suggest an effect of L1-L2 linguistic relativity, influencing the selection of relational links between given/new discourse entities during L2 production.

Feature-marking in the L2 development of deverbal compounds

1997 ◽  
Vol 33 (2) ◽  
pp. 327-353 ◽  
Author(s):  
DONNA LARDIERE ◽  
BONNIE D. SCHWARTZ
Keyword(s):  
Word Formation ◽  
Spanish Speakers ◽  
Native Spanish Speakers ◽  
Functional Categories ◽  
L2 Acquisition ◽  
Complex Word ◽  
Phonological Form ◽  
L1 Influence ◽  
L2 Development ◽  
Development Proceeds

This study focuses on the development of complex word formation in L2 acquisition. We examine experimentally elicited data on English deverbal synthetic compounding (such as toe-painter) by native Spanish speakers and conclude that: (a) development proceeds in stages which clearly reflect UG-constrained L1 influence; (b) nontargetlike productions (e.g. painter-toes) show attempts to spell out the grammatical features associated with functional categories in deverbal compounding; though nontargetlike, they are nonetheless consistent with the compound's required feature-marking; (c) such attempts implicate the early existence in the Interlanguage of those functional heads and their projections in the (lexical) syntax; i.e., the absence of the correct phonological form cannot be taken to imply lack of knowledge of morphosyntactic features and their corresponding phrase structure.

L2 acquisition of the progressive marker zai in Mandarin Chinese

2012 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 153-192 ◽  
Author(s):  
Feng-hsi Liu,
Keyword(s):  
Mandarin Chinese ◽  
Early Stage ◽  
Native English Speakers ◽  
Judgment Task ◽  
L2 Acquisition ◽  
Acquisition Process ◽  
Aspect Hypothesis ◽  
Lexical Aspect ◽  
Two Factors ◽  
L1 Influence

AbstractTwo studies on L2 acquisition of the progressive marker zai in Mandarin Chinese by native English speakers were conducted to investigate the interaction between L1 influence and the congruence of lexical aspect and tense-aspect morphology, as formulated in the aspect hypothesis. The two factors make opposite predictions with respect to the early stage and the acquisition process. The findings from a judgment task and a production task show that the observed pattern is neither predicted by the aspect hypothesis alone nor entirely conditioned by L1 influence. Rather, it is the result of both forces at work. At the early stage zai is associated with activities and accomplishments involving goal or distance. In the acquisition process, both widening and narrowing of predicate types are observed. The findings also show that the L1 effect does not disappear at the same time, but proceeds in stages. In the case of zai marking, the L1 effect weakening process is governed by the strength of event ending that is part of the meaning of the predicates.

Extravagant “fake” morphemes in Dutch. Morphological productivity, semantic profiles and categorical flexibility

2020 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
Kristel Van Goethem ◽  
Muriel Norde
Keyword(s):  
Driving Forces ◽  
Morphological Properties ◽  
Distributional Semantics ◽  
Corpus Study ◽  
Left Hand ◽  
Semantic Coherence ◽  
Two Factors ◽  
Type Frequency ◽  
Imitation Leather ◽  
Artificial Grass

AbstractDutch features several morphemes with “privative” semantics that occur as left-hand members in compounds (e.g., imitatieleer ‘imitation leather’, kunstgras ‘artificial grass’, nepjuwelen ‘fake jewels’). Some of these “fake” morphemes display great categorical flexibility and innovative adjectival uses. Nep, for instance, is synchronically attested as an inflected adjective (e.g., neppe cupcake ‘fake cupcake’). In this paper, we combine an extensive corpus study of eight Dutch “fake” morphemes with statistical methods in distributional semantics and collexeme analysis in order to compare their semantic and morphological properties and to find out which factors are the driving forces behind their exceptional “extravagant” morphological behavior. Our analyses show that debonding and adjectival reanalysis are triggered by an interplay of two factors, i.e., type frequency and semantic coherence, which allow us to range the eight morphemes on a cline from more schematic to more substantive “fake” constructions.

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.

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