Multidimensional Perspectives on Interlanguage

Sommaire

Table of Contents
Acknowledgments 13
List of abbreviations and acronyms 15
List of tables 16
List of figures 18
Chapter 1: Towards a multidimensional study of may and can in learner language 21
1.1 Scope of the book 21
1.2 Background 21
1.3 Methodological and theoretical assumptions 23
1.4 Outline 26
Chapter 2: May and can: Some preliminaries 29
2.1 Introduction 29
2.2 May and can as modal auxiliaries 30
2.3 May and can and their traditional meanings 33
2.4 The grammatical contexts of modal verbs: Insights from qualitative studies 41
2.5 The grammatical contexts of modal verbs: Insights from quantitative studies 46
2.6 Conclusion and outlook 52
Chapter 3: Ways of investigating interlanguage 55
3.1 The nature of interlanguage 55
3.1.1 The psycholinguistic facet of interlanguage systems 56
3.1.2 The linguistic facet of interlanguage systems 58
3.1.3 Interim summary: Towards a tripartite approach to interlanguage 59
3.2 Some methodological considerations 60
3.3 Second language corpus work 63
3.3.1 The contrastive analysis and contrastive interlanguage analysis approaches to learner language 63
3.3.2 Ready-made corpus tools for learner corpus research 65
3.3.3 Insights from traditional corpus-based studies on modals 66
3.3.4 From description to prediction:
Towards a methodological shift in learner corpus research 71
3.4 On the relevance of cognitive usage-based approaches to interlanguage 72
3.4.1 Cognitive approaches to language and grammar: Some basic assumptions 73
3.4.2 Usage-based approaches 75
3.4.3 Grammatical contexts and speakers' lexical choices 76
3.4.4 Prototype formation and construction acquisition in L2 78
3.5 Conclusion 80
Chapter 4: Methodological issues 81
4.1 Introduction 81
4.2 An approach to semantic similarity: Behavioral Profiles 83
4.3 Approaches to alternation phenomena:
Description and prediction 86
4.4 Interim summary 88
4.5 The present study: Material and annotation 89
4.5.1 Introduction 89
4.5.2 Corpora and retrieval 89
4.5.3 Annotation of the semantic variables 96
4.5.4 Annotation of the syntactic variables 111
4.5.5 Annotation of the morphological variables 112
4.5.6 Annotation of other variables 115
4.6 The present study: Statistical approaches 117
4.6.1 Behavioral profile vectors 118
4.6.2 Monofactorial statistical tests 118
4.6.3 Multifactorial statistical approaches 119
4.6.4 Distinctive collexeme analysis 122
Chapter 5: Interlanguage variation: Constraints on the production of written interlanguage 125
5.1 Introduction 125
5.2 The patterning of French pouvoir: A brief overview 126
5.3 May vs. can vs. pouvoir 128
5.4 The data sample and its statistical treatment 130
5.5 Results 133
5.5.1 An overall look at the monofactorial results 134
5.5.2 Monofactorial exploration: The semantic variables 136
5.5.3 Monofactorial exploration: The morphological variables 148
5.5.4 Monofactorial exploration: The syntactic variables 153
5.5.5 Monofactorial exploration: Other variables 156
5.5.6 Cluster analysis 157
5.5.7 Binary logistic regression 164
5.6 Conclusion: How grammatical contexts constrain the
lexical choices of French learners of English 171
Chapter 6: Interlanguage variation across learner English varieties 173
6.1 Introduction 173
6.2 A brief note on the grammatical contexts of
modal verbs in Chinese 173
6.3 The data sample and its statistical treatment 175
6.4 May and can constructions:
Assessing (dis)similarities across French- and
Chinese-English interlanguage and native English 177
6.4.1 French- vs. Chinese-English interlanguage 178
6.4.2 French- and Chinese-English interlanguage vs.
native English 182
6.5 Conclusion: Towards an understanding of the different conventionalization patterns of may and can across learner varieties 188
Chapter 7: Speech, writing and interlanguage variation 191
7.1 Introduction 191
7.2 The conventionalization of grammatical patterns across the spoken and written registers 192
7.3 Quantitative approaches to co-occurrence patterns in spoken and written registers 194
7.3.1 Studies based on native language 194
7.3.2 Studies based on learner language 195
7.4 Methodological considerations 197
7.5 The data sample and its statistical treatment 198
7.6. Results 200
7.6.1 General results 200
7.6.2 Effects that apply to both English learner varieties and native English 202
7.6.3 Effect that distinguish Englishes varieties 206
7.7 Conclusion: Towards an understanding of the different conventionalization patterns of may and can in L2 speech and writing 210
Multidimensional Perspectives on Interlanguage
Chapter 8: A closer look at the verb complementation
patterns of may and can across L1 and L2 213
8.1 Introduction 213
8.2 Which lexical verbs do English learners modalize? 213
Chapter 9: The benefits of a multifactorial approach
to interlanguage 223
9.1 Introduction 223
9.2 Evaluating the usefulness of the BP approach and the use of sophisticated statistical techniques 225
9.2.1 The BP approach and may and can as lexical items 226
9.2.2 The BP approach and the (cross-linguistic) influence of grammatical contexts on interlanguage may and can 227
9.3 A corpus-based exploration of the processing and acquisition of interlanguage may and can 229
9.3.1 May, can and the notion of a default term 229
9.3.2 Further arguments in favor of a default can 232
9.3.3 Default can across speech and writing and learner varieties 235
9.3.4 May, can and their acquisition in L2 238
9.4 Future work and concluding remarks 242
References 247
Appendices 259
Appendix A: Frequency tables
Table A.1 Frequency table for the semantic variable
VerbSemantics before conflation 259
Table A.2 Frequency table for the semantic variable
SpeakPresence 259
Table A.3 Frequency table for the semantic variable
VerbType (after conflation) 259
Table A.4 Frequency table for the semantic variable
RefAnim (no conflation) 260
Table A.5 Frequency table for the semantic variable
AnimType (after conflation) 260
Table A.6 Frequency table for the morphological variable
SubjMorph (after conflation) 260
Table A.7 Frequency table for the morphological variable
SubjPerson (no conflation) 261
Table of Contents
Table A.8 Frequency table for the morphological variable
Voice (no conflation) 261
Table A.9 Frequency table for the morphological variable
Aspect (no conflation) 261
Table A.10 Frequency table for the morphological variable
Elliptic (no conflation) 261
Table A.11 Frequency table for the syntactic variable
Neg (no conflation) 262
Table A.12 Frequency table for the syntactic variable
SentType (no conflation) 262
Table A.13 Frequency table for the syntactic variable
ClType (no conflation) 262
Table A.14 Frequency table for the data variable
GramAcc (no conflation) 262
Table A.15 Frequency table for the data variable
Corpus (no conflation) 263
Appendix B: Tables of distinguishing collexemes
Table B.1 Collexemes distinguishing between can and may
in native English 264
Table B.2 Collexemes distinguishing between can and may
in French-English IL 268
Table B.3 Collexemes distinguishing between can and may
in Chinese-English IL 272
Appendix C: Tables of Behavioral Profile vectors
Table C.1 Behavioral Profile vectors for canil , cannative, mayil,
maynative and pouvoir for all semantic predictors 275
Table C.2 Behavioral Profile vectors for canil , cannative, mayil,
maynative and pouvoir for all syntactic predictors 276
Table C.3 Behavioral Profile vectors for canil , cannative, mayil,
maynative and pouvoir for all morphological predictors 277
Appendix D: Summaries of regression models with coefficients
Table D.1 Summary of the regression model for the first case study 278
Table D.2 Summary of the regression model for the second case study 280
Table D.3 Summary of the regression model for the third case study 283
Subject Index
Author Index