L2 Negation Constructions at Work

Abstract

This article explores the usage‐ and exemplar‐based roots of second language (L2) negation construction learning. Based on two longitudinal case studies involving two adult L2 English learners and a corpus of 63 three‐hour sessions of recorded classroom interactions, the study shows that L2 learning follows the predictions of usage‐based models of language knowledge and acquisition, as the two participants’ learning of English negation constructions is found to go from recurring expressions toward an increasingly schematic, dynamic inventory of linguistic resources. Furthermore, exploring the evolution of two negation patterns in ongoing discourse, I suggest that local usage and long‐term learning are inseparable and call for further detailed investigations of how locally contextualized interactions influence L2 development.

The Development of Recipient Design in Bilingual Child-Parent Interaction

“…As an issue this is outside the scope of the current article. However, recent developments in the CA-SLA literature provide evidence of adult L2 speakers' longitudinal development of general interactional competencies (Kasper & Wagner, 2011), specific competencies in syntactic structures through comparisons of the two languages (e.g., Eskildsen, 2012;Hauser, 2013;Ishida, 2009), and the development of recipient design (Nguyen, 2012). Downloaded by [New York University] at 01:47 08 June 2015 FILIPI In describing the process of second language learning, Eskildsen (2011, p. 332) states that "language learning is emergent, constant, and never-ending."…”

Advancing usage-based approaches to L2 studies

“…Questions pertaining to this process are typically investigated in terms of a priori constructions, e.g. locative motion constructions and object transfer constructions (Ellis and Ferreira-Junior 2009;Year and Gordon 2009), can-constructions (Eskildsen, 2009), auxiliary do-constructions (Eskildsen 2011); negation constructions (Eskildsen and Cadierno 2007;Eskildsen 2012), motion constructions (Li 2014;Li, Eskildsen, and Cadierno 2014;Eskildsen, Cadierno, and Li this volume; for a recent overview, see Cadierno forthc. ), relative clauses (Mellow 2006), question formation (McDonough and Kim 2009;Eskildsen 2015), French c'est and Swedish det är constructions (Bartning and Hammarberg 2007), German gehen and fahren (Roehr-Brackin 2014), and constructions based around the use of es que in L2 Spanish (Yuldashev, Fernandez, and Thorne 2013).…”

EFL Learners’ Grammatical Awareness through Accumulating Formulaic Sequences of Morphological Structure (-ing)

“…In the recent study, the importance of learning formulaic sequences was acknowledged (Ellis, 2008(Ellis, , 2012Ellis & Larsen-Freeman, 2009;Myles & Cordier, 2017). Eskildsen (2012) reported that the frequency of FS English negation patterns among Spanish adult learners demonstrated an effect on English learning. Kidd, Lieven, and Tomasello (2010) found that children's (at age 6) repetition of the target sentence in L2 learning depended on the higher frequency input used by the teacher.…”