This study aims to explore the missing link between English textbooks used in high schools (9th-12th grades) and English university entrance exams (2010-2019) in Turkey on lexical and syntactic complexity levels by using corpus linguistics tools: AntWordProfiler, TAALED, and the L2 Syntactic Complexity Analyzer (L2SCA). Official textbooks and complementary materials obtained from the Ministry of National Education have been compared against the official university entrance exams from the past decade. The results show that: (i) differences in lexical sophistication level can be observed between the two corpora, the lexical sophistication level of the exam corpus was higher than that of the textbook corpus, (ii) there is a statistically significant difference between the two corpora in terms of lexical diversity, the exam corpus has a significantly higher level of lexical diversity than the textbook corpus, (iii) statistically significant differences also existed between the two corpora regarding the syntactic complexity indices. The syntactic complexity level of the exam corpus was higher than that of the textbook corpus. The findings suggest that Turkish high school students who have to learn English with the official textbooks throughout their high school years will have to tackle low-frequency and more sophisticated words at a higher level of  syntactic complexity at the time of taking the nationwide exam. This, in return, creates a negative backwash effect, distorts their approach to L2, and raises other concerns about the misalignment between the official language education materials and nationwide exams.

The present paper draws on cognitive lexicography, a relatively new amalgamation of lexicography and cognitive linguistics, to approach the curation of manner of motion verb entries in online bilingual Turkish-English dictionaries. Following Dalpanagioti's methodology and analysis ( 651), the study adopts the following steps in creating an online dictionary entry, as used by Dalpanagioti ( 651): (a) compile a pre-lexicographic database (Atkins and Rundell 100-101), (b) employ Corpus Pattern Analysis (Hanks 404), and (c) utilize Frame Semantics (Fillmore 373-400), the Conceptual Metaphor and Metonymy Theory (Lakoff and Johnson 12) and the Principled Polysemy approach (Evans and Green 342-352) to interpret the data for glide, a manner of motion verb. To this end, this paper is an attempt to improve bilingual dictionary entries for manner of motion verbs using cognitive lexicography and suggesting the use of GIFs to accommodate individual differences in language learning, to contribute to the Turkish lexicography literature by addressing the research gap, and lastly to contribute to the field of cognitive lexicography.

Based on usage-based approaches to second language acquisition, studies point at a statistically significant correlation between type-token frequency, skewed distribution of items, and faster learning. Madlener (2016) shows a positive correlation between a Zipfian distribution of items in a German construction and faster, more accurate learning of the construction. While there are many studies that analyze input in English language teaching materials, no study has scrutinized selected constructions from an input optimization perspective, following Madlener (2016). Thus, using TAASSC (Kyle, 2016), the present paper analyzes four constructions, V in N, V about N, V for N, V with N, and the ditransitive constructions in the high school English textbooks in Türkiye. The results indicate that the input available for these constructions are not viable for generalizations to occur, leaving learners with unproductive one-time instantiations of the constructions, and low token frequency of these constructions also suggest that little to no entrenchment might take place. As such, the study proposes adopting a more corpus-based approach to English teaching materials.

Second language acquisition studies have mainly considered transfer between two or more languages as a binary setting, it either happens or does not. However, research emerging out of usage-based approaches show that such transfer effects might be more gradient than ever thought before (e.g., Goschler & Stefanowitsch, 2019). Investigating a construction that has been reported to pose problems such as overpassivization to L2 English learners, i.e., unaccusatives, this study aims to trace gradient transfer effects between Turkish and English in the intransitive-unaccusative construction in Turkish learners of English. Following Goschler and Stefanowitsch’s (2019) method to analyze, extract experimental items from English and Turkish corpora, and experiment with collostructional transfer effects, the study revealed similar findings. Findings suggest that learners are likely to transfer strongly entrenched L1 items into the L2 even at advanced proficiency levels. Interestingly, when the item is weakly entrenched in L1, speakers attune to the input in L2 with growing proficiency. Furthermore, proficiency or experience helps with preempting non-optimal constructional combinations. Pedagogically, the study suggests that collo-profiles may help teachers and students with mitigating unconventional item-construction combinations at advanced levels.

Coupled with corpora, usage-based construction grammar aims to provide cognitive plausibility for linguistic phenomena. In this vein, this paper combines construction grammar and usage-based approaches to analyze evidentiality in Turkish. While Turkish has been analyzed from a usage-based perspective, evidentiality has not been taken up in a usage-based constructionist approach. By using corpora, association measures, and construction as a notion and a framework, this paper defines the Unevidentiality Construction in a taxonomic space. First, it outlines its semantic properties and then it uses association measures such as faith, delta (∆) p, and ITECX to determine its usage pattern and statistical biases based on corpora. The paper demonstrates a superordinate and lower-level, item-specific instantiations of the construction. The results from association measures and the family of unevidentiality constructions can serve for future linguistic endeavors.