Tracing developmental changes in L2 learners’ structuring of phrasal verbs: a corpus study of native and non-native argumentative essays
This study investigates the production patterns of English phrasal verbs (PV) by Korean-speaking foreign language learners of English, with a special focus placed on two structural features of PVs, namely, transitivity and particle placement. It offers a developmental perspective by analysing the...
| Main Authors: | , |
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
Penerbit Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia
2016
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| Online Access: | http://journalarticle.ukm.my/10699/ http://journalarticle.ukm.my/10699/ http://journalarticle.ukm.my/10699/1/11787-39664-1-PB.pdf |
| Summary: | This study investigates the production patterns of English phrasal verbs (PV) by Korean-speaking foreign
language learners of English, with a special focus placed on two structural features of PVs, namely, transitivity
and particle placement. It offers a developmental perspective by analysing the production performance of PVs
for three learner corpora at different proficiency levels (basic, intermediate, and advanced) and a native corpus.
The results show that, while the basic- and intermediate-level learners significantly underused both transitive
and intransitive PVs compared to the native speakers, the proportions of transitive and intransitive PVs in the
advanced-learner corpus were statistically indistinguishable from those in the native corpus. In addition, verbparticle
separation was identified only in the advanced-leaner and native corpora, indicating the specific
developmental aspects underlying the L2 acquisition of PVs. The advanced learners, however, were found to be
less capable of adhering to the end-weight principle and the givenness condition when structuring transitive
PVs compared to the native speakers. These results suggest that associating contextual information with PV
structures may be a major source of difficulty when teaching and learning PVs. |
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