scholarly journals Multiword units lead to errors of commission in children's spontaneous production: “What corpus data can tell us?*”

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stewart M. McCauley ◽  
Colin Bannard ◽  
Anna Theakston ◽  
Michelle Davis ◽  
Thea Cameron‐Faulkner ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Spontaneous Production ◽  
Multiword Units ◽  
Corpus Data

Perspectives on the L2 Phrasicon

2021 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Cutting Edge ◽  
Learner Corpus ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Multiword Units ◽  
Corpus Data

This is the first book to investigate the field of phraseology from a learner corpus perspective. It includes cutting-edge studies which analyse a wide range of multiword units and extensive learner corpus data to provide the reader with a comprehensive theoretical, methodological and applied perspective onto L2 use in a wide range of situations.

scholarly journals Academic Phraseology: A Key Ingredient in Successful L2 Academic Literacy

2017 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Sylviane Granger
Keyword(s):  
Academic Language ◽  
Mother Tongue ◽  
Academic Literacy ◽  
Potential Contribution ◽  
Critical Survey ◽  
Academic Vocabulary ◽  
Learner Corpus ◽  
Multiword Units ◽  
Corpus Data

One of the weaknesses of most current academic word lists is that they fail to do justice to the large stock of multiword units that are typical of academic language. The objective of this chapter is to raise awareness of the importance of phrasal academic vocabulary. After a brief critical survey of three recently compiled phrasal academic lists, the chapter highlights the potential contribution of learner corpus data to identifying the most useful units for teaching purposes. The approach is illustrated with a case study of phrasal metadiscourse based on corpora of novice and expert native writing, and subcorpora from the International Corpus of Learner English representing L2 writers from six different mother tongue backgrounds.

scholarly journals Analyzing free variation with harmony – A case study of verb-cluster serialization

2020 ◽  
Vol 39 (3) ◽  
pp. 407-437
Author(s):  
Markus Bader
Keyword(s):  
Native Speakers ◽  
Initial Position ◽  
Experimental Results ◽  
Modal Verbs ◽  
Weighted Constraints ◽  
Corpus Data ◽  
Frequency Relationship ◽  
Zero Frequency ◽  
Free Variation

Abstract In German, a verb selected by another verb normally precedes the selecting verb. Modal verbs in the perfect tense provide an exception to this generalization because they require the perfective auxiliary to occur in cluster-initial position according to prescriptive grammars. Bader and Schmid (2009b) have shown, however, that native speakers accept the auxiliary in all positions except the cluster-final one. Experimental results as well as corpus data indicate that verb cluster serialization is a case of free variation. I discuss how this variation can be accounted for, focusing on two mismatches between acceptability and frequency: First, slight acceptability advantages can turn into strong frequency advantages. Second, syntactic variants with basically zero frequency can still vary substantially in acceptability. These mismatches remain unaccounted for if acceptability is related to frequency on the level of whole sentence structures, as in Stochastic OT (Boersma and Hayes2001). However, when the acceptability-frequency relationship is modeled on the level of individual weighted constraints, using harmony as link (see Pater2009, for different harmony based frameworks), the two mismatches follow given appropriate linking assumptions.

scholarly journals Multilab Direct Replication of Flavell, Beach, and Chinsky (1966): Spontaneous Verbal Rehearsal in a Memory Task as a Function of Age

2021 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 251524592110181
Author(s):  
Emily M. Elliott ◽  
Candice C. Morey ◽  
Angela M. AuBuchon ◽  
Nelson Cowan ◽  
Chris Jarrold ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Development ◽  
Young Children ◽  
Memory Performance ◽  
Critical Role ◽  
Memory Task ◽  
Older Children ◽  
Continuous Increase ◽  
Verbal Rehearsal ◽  
Picture Memory ◽  
Spontaneous Production

Work by Flavell, Beach, and Chinsky indicated a change in the spontaneous production of overt verbalization behaviors when comparing young children (age 5) with older children (age 10). Despite the critical role that this evidence of a change in verbalization behaviors plays in modern theories of cognitive development and working memory, there has been only one other published near replication of this work. In this Registered Replication Report, we relied on researchers from 17 labs who contributed their results to a larger and more comprehensive sample of children. We assessed memory performance and the presence or absence of verbalization behaviors of young children at different ages and determined that the original pattern of findings was largely upheld: Older children were more likely to verbalize, and their memory spans improved. We confirmed that 5- and 6-year-old children who verbalized recalled more than children who did not verbalize. However, unlike Flavell et al., substantial proportions of our 5- and 6-year-old samples overtly verbalized at least sometimes during the picture memory task. In addition, continuous increase in overt verbalization from 7 to 10 years old was not consistently evident in our samples. These robust findings should be weighed when considering theories of cognitive development, particularly theories concerning when verbal rehearsal emerges and relations between speech and memory.

The traceback method and the early constructicon: theoretical and methodological considerations

2020 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
Nikolas Koch ◽  
Stefan Hartmann ◽  
Antje Endesfelder Quick
Keyword(s):  
Language Acquisition ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
Child Language ◽  
Critical Evaluation ◽  
Methodological Choices ◽  
Corpus Data ◽  
Methodological Considerations ◽  
Language Corpus

AbstractUsage-based approaches assume that children’s early utterances are item-based. This has been demonstrated in a number of studies using the traceback method. In this approach, a small amount of “target utterances” from a child language corpus is “traced back” to earlier utterances. Drawing on a case study of German, this paper provides a critical evaluation of the method from a usage-based perspective. In particular, we check how factors inherent to corpus data as well as methodological choices influence the results of traceback studies. To this end, we present four case studies in which we change thresholds and the composition of the main corpus, use a cross-corpus approach tracing one child’s utterances back to another child’s corpus, and reverse and randomize the target utterances. Overall, the results show that the method can provide interesting insights—particularly regarding different pathways of language acquisition—but they also show the limitations of the method.

scholarly journals Transitivity prominence within and across modalities

2019 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 666-689
Author(s):  
Carl Börstell ◽  
Tommi Jantunen ◽  
Vadim Kimmelman ◽  
Vanja de Lint ◽  
Johanna Mesch ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Sign Language ◽  
Sign Languages ◽  
Corpus Data ◽  
Direct Objects ◽  
Positive Correlations ◽  
Verb Meaning

AbstractWe investigate transitivity prominence of verbs across signed and spoken languages, based on data from both valency dictionaries and corpora. Our methodology relies on the assumption that dictionary data and corpus-based measures of transitivity are comparable, and we find evidence in support of this through the direct comparison of these two types of data across several spoken languages. For the signed modality, we measure the transitivity prominence of verbs in five sign languages based on corpus data and compare the results to the transitivity prominence hierarchy for spoken languages reported in Haspelmath (2015). For each sign language, we create a hierarchy for 12 verb meanings based on the proportion of overt direct objects per verb meaning. We use these hierarchies to calculate correlations between languages – both signed and spoken – and find positive correlations between transitivity hierarchies. Additional findings of this study include the observation that locative arguments seem to behave differently than direct objects judging by our measures of transitivity, and that relatedness among sign languages does not straightforwardly imply similarity in transitivity hierarchies. We conclude that our findings provide support for a modality-independent, semantic basis of transitivity.

scholarly journals ‘Almost people’: A Learner Corpus Account of L2 Use and Misuse of Non-numerical Quantification

2016 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Crosthwaite ◽  
Lavigne L.Y. Choy ◽  
Yeonsuk Bae
Keyword(s):  
English Learners ◽  
English Speakers ◽  
L2 Proficiency ◽  
L1 Transfer ◽  
Learner Corpus ◽  
Proficiency Level ◽  
Closed Class ◽  
Corpus Data ◽  
Noun Number ◽  
L1 English

AbstractWe present an Integrated Contrastive Model of non-numerical quantificational NPs (NNQs, i.e. ‘some people’) produced by L1 English speakers and Mandarin and Korean L2 English learners. Learner corpus data was sourced from the ICNALE (Ishikawa, 2011, 2013) across four L2 proficiency levels. An average 10% of L2 NNQs were specific to L2 varieties, including noun number mismatches (*‘many child’), omitting obligatory quantifiers after adverbs (*‘almost people’), adding unnecessary particles (*‘all of people’) and non-L1 English-like quantifier/noun agreement (*‘many water’). Significantly fewer ‘openclass’ NNQs (e.g a number of people) are produced by L2 learners, preferring ‘closed-class’ single lexical quantifiers (following L1-like use). While such production is predictable via L1 transfer, Korean L2 English learners produced significantly more L2-like NNQs at each proficiency level, which was not entirely predictable under a transfer account. We thus consider whether positive transfer of other linguistic forms (i.e. definiteness marking) aids the learnability of other L2 forms (i.e. expression of quantification).

Tiger Woods as a linguistic role model?

English Today ◽  
2008 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 59-61
Author(s):  
Brian Poole
Keyword(s):  
Role Model ◽  
British English ◽  
The Media ◽  
Corpus Data ◽  
Tiger Woods

ABSTRACTInternational sports stars are often required to speak to the media after their performances. When Tiger Woods does so, it is noticeable that he makes use of the formulaic expression ‘I feel/felt like I’ as a means of introducing descriptions of, or generalizations about, his actions or motivations. Drawing on corpus data, this paper offers some observations about this expression in relation to its use by speakers (and to a lesser extent writers) of both American and British English, and also investigates the apparent disparity in frequency between instances of ‘she’ and ‘he’ when it is used.

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