2. Detecting L2 Writers’ L1s on the Basis of Their Lexical Styles

Jarvis, Scott; Castañeda‐Jiménez, Gabriela; Nielsen, Rasmus

doi:10.21832/9781847696991-003

Cited by 8 publications

(5 citation statements)

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“…At the same time though, research on the acquisition of the English article has shown clear L1 effects (e.g., J. A. Hawkins & Buttery, 2010; Jarvis, Castañeda Jiménez, & Nielsen, 2012; Snape, 2005, 2008; Zdorenko & Paradis, 2012).…”

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

L1 Influence on the Acquisition Order of English Grammatical Morphemes

Murakami

Alexopoulou

2015

Stud Second Lang Acquis

139

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We revisit morpheme studies to evaluate the long-standing claim for a universal order of acquisition. We investigate the L2 acquisition order of six English grammatical morphemes by learners from seven L1 groups across fi ve profi ciency levels. Data are drawn from approximately 10,000 written exam scripts from the Cambridge Learner Corpus. The study establishes clear L1 infl uence on the absolute accuracy of morphemes and their acquisition order, therefore challenging the widely held view that there is a universal order of acquisition of L2 morphemes. Moreover, we fi nd that L1 infl uence is morpheme specifi c, with morphemes encoding language-specifi c concepts most vulnerable to L1 infl uence.

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Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

L1 Influence on the Acquisition Order of English Grammatical Morphemes

Murakami

Alexopoulou

2015

Stud Second Lang Acquis

139

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“…Each morphological gram contains all the morphological information of one word, so that each gram may consist of several morphological tags, such as the grammatical number and case marking. Then, following the example of earlier similar studies (see Jarvis, Castañeda-Jimenez & Nielsen 2012, Pepper 2012, Ivaska 2015b), we focused solely on fairly frequent features, in this case on morphological forms that were among the 100 most common forms in any of the six L1-specific subcorpora.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Learner language morphology as a window to crosslinguistic influences: A key structure analysis

Ivaska

Siitonen

2017

Nord J Linguist

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The study of crosslinguistic influences (CLI) has proven that morphosyntactic features exhibit CLI. Technical development and novel resources have enabled detection-based approaches, where potential CLI are revealed based on their observed frequencies and on differences between learners with different language backgrounds. The two research questions are as follows: (i) How construction-specific typological (dis)similarities between L1 and L2 affect the frequencies of linguistic features? (ii) Can such (dis)similarities be detected by comparing feature frequency data of L2? The data come from the International Corpus of Learner Finnish, and the methodology applied is the key structure analysis. The results support the applicability of the method: they show that constructional similarities may trigger CLI construction by construction, irrespective of the general similarities or genealogical categorizations. The results further imply the importance of controlling the genre-related and topical variation to account for skewed nature of the data when dealing with naturally occurring learner language data.

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“…Some evidence regarding this comes from studies of word choice transfer , a type of lexical transfer whereby a person’s knowledge of a language influences their choice of words in another language [ 21 – 24 ]. This transfer means that learners’ use of specific words and phrases—referred to as lexical signature , lexical style , or wordprints —can be used in stylometry to aid L1 identification [ 21 , 22 ]. This applies both to relatively constrained settings such as TOEFL essays (which we will call task-based settings ), where communication is fairly limited in terms of factors like the permissible topic and style, as well as to more spontaneous settings , where the topic and style of communication are not as constrained (e.g., when people are allowed to talk about almost whatever they want).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…To summarize, there is clear evidence of a facilitative effect of L1-L2 lexical similarity on L2 processing, comprehension, and learning, particularly at the early stages of SLA [ 2 , 17 ], and there is also evidence that learners’ L1 can influence their L2 word choice [ 13 , 22 ]. However, evidence regarding the influence of crosslinguistic similarity on L2 word choice is limited and less clear, especially in task-based settings.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Examining the potential influence of crosslinguistic lexical similarity on word-choice transfer in L2 English

2023

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We examined whether and how L1-L2 crosslinguistic formal lexical similarity influences L2 word choice. Our sample included two learner subcorpora, containing 8,500 and 6,390 English texts, written in an educational setting, by speakers of diverse L1s in the A1–B2 CEFR range of L2 proficiency. We quantified similarity based on phonological overlap between L1 words and their L2 (English) translations. This similarity relates to psycholinguistic cognancy, which occurs when words and their translations share a high level of formal similarity, often due to historical cognancy from shared etymology or language contact. We then used mixed-effects statistical models to examine how this similarity influences the rate of use of the L2 words; essentially, we checked whether L2 words that are more similar to their L1 translations are used more often. We also controlled for potential confounds, including the baseline L1 frequency of the English words. The type of crosslinguistic similarity that we examined did not influence learners’ choice of L2 words in their writing in the present sample, which represents a type of educational setting that many learners encounter. This suggests that the influence of such similarity is constrained, and that communicative needs can override transfer from learners’ L1 to their L2, which raises questions regarding when and how else situational factors can influence transfer.

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2. Detecting L2 Writers’ L1s on the Basis of Their Lexical Styles

Cited by 8 publications

References 0 publications

L1 Influence on the Acquisition Order of English Grammatical Morphemes

L1 Influence on the Acquisition Order of English Grammatical Morphemes

Learner language morphology as a window to crosslinguistic influences: A key structure analysis

Examining the potential influence of crosslinguistic lexical similarity on word-choice transfer in L2 English

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