A corpus perspective on the development of verb constructions in second language learners

Abstract

This article reports initial findings from a study that uses written data from second language (L2) learners of English at different proficiency levels (CEFR A1 to C1) in a large-scale investigation of verb-argument construction (VAC) emergence. The findings provide insights into first VACs in L2 learner production, changes in the learners’ VAC repertoire from low to high proficiency levels, and changes in learners’ dominant verb-VAC associations from low to high proficiency levels. The article also addresses the question what role formulaic sequences play in the L2 acquisition of VACs. Data analyses indicate that, from lowest to highest proficiency levels, the VAC repertoire of L2 English learners shows an increase in VAC types, growth in VAC productivity and complexity, and a development from predominantly fixed sequences to more flexible and productive ones. The findings help to expand our understanding of the processes that underlie construction acquisition in an L2 context.

Investigating the Use of Article-Adjective-Noun Constructions in EFL Writing

“…Present findings of L2 construction development appear to be largely consistent with those found for L1 development, including growth in construction variety and productivity (Eskildsen, 2009;Römer, 2019), movement from more fixed sequences to flexible constructions (Li et al, 2014;Römer, 2019) and from semantically general, high-frequency words to more specific, lower-frequency words in specific constructions (Ellis & Ferreira-Junior, 2009b). Despite the valuable insights these studies offer to L2 development, the scope of this research is limited.…”

Using the Relative Entropy of Linguistic Complexity to Assess L2 Language Proficiency Development

“…For this reason, C2 learners will not be considered in the present study. Following [45], the current study took advantage of the information on L2 learner proficiency (A1, A2, B1, B2, and C1) to perform a number of cross-sectional comparisons. The texts in the EFCAMDAT2 came from learners categorized according to 16 proficiency levels that correspond to the six levels of the CEFR: A1 "beginner" (levels 1-3), A2 "elementary" (levels 4-6), B1 "intermediate" (levels 7-9), B2 "upper intermediate" (levels 10-12), C1 "advanced" (levels 13-15), and C2 "proficiency" (level 16).…”

Assessing Lexical Psychological Properties in Second Language Production: A Dynamic Semantic Similarity Approach

“…The 16 levels correspond to the six levels in the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR) as follows: A1 “beginner” (levels 1–3), A2 “elementary” (levels 4–6), B1 “intermediate (levels 7–9), B2 “upper intermediate” (levels 10–12), C1 “advanced” (levels 13–15), and C2 “proficiency” (level 16). Following Römer (2019) , we included all texts produced by learners from the levels A1 through C1 in the current study but excluded those by learners at the C2 level, due to the relatively small number of texts in that category. Table 1 summarizes the composition of the five EFCAMDAT2 sub-corpora used in the current study.…”