In a recent study, Wulff & Gries (2011) put forward the constructionist definition of accuracy in... more In a recent study, Wulff & Gries (2011) put forward the constructionist definition of accuracy in L2 production as the selection of a construction in its preferred context within a particular target variety and genre. By focusing on the use of concessive adverbial clauses in L2 academic writing, the current study takes up this definition of accuracy in L2 production and sets out to explore whether, and to what extent, the 'genre-specific construction' (i.e. genre-specific repository of symbolic form-function alignments) of advanced German learners of academic English is similar/different to that of native expert academic writers of English. To this end, all instances of concessive adverbial clauses were extracted from a 216,418 word-token learner corpus and coded for the various factors proposed in the literature. For comparison purposes, a data set of all relevant data points was distilled from a native expert corpus of the same size and annotated in terms of the same facto...
"Although Bilingual First Language Acquisition research has increased considerably over the ... more "Although Bilingual First Language Acquisition research has increased considerably over the past few decades, there is still much controversy regarding the rate of development, i.e. the question whether bilinguals lag behind their monolingual peers in various aspects of language. Some studies have found similar rates of development, whereas others have found that bilingual children lag behind their monolingual peers. The current study contributes to this discussion of (dis)similar rates of development by investigating bilingual children’s acquisition of German complex sentence constructions involving adverbial clauses (ACs). Our findings are consistent with usage-based approaches to language acquisition, which predict that bilingual acquisition should proceed slower due to learners having less exposure, on average, to each language."
English permits adverbial subordinate clauses to be placed either before or after their associate... more English permits adverbial subordinate clauses to be placed either before or after their associated main clause. Previous research has shown that the positioning is conditioned by various factors from the domains of semantics, discourse pragmatics and language processing. With the exception of Diessel (2008), these factors have never been investigated in concert, which makes it difficult to understand their relative importance. Diessel's study, however, discusses only temporal constructions and identifies iconicity of sequence as the strongest predictor of clause position. Since this explanation is, in principle, unavailable for other types of subordinate clauses, the generalizability of Diessel's findings is somewhat limited. The present study offers a multifactorial analysis of 2,000 concessive constructions from the written part of the BNC and assesses the variable importance of six factors for the ordering choice, showing that semantic and discourse-pragmatic factors are much stronger predictors of clause position than processing-based, weight-related ones. On a methodological note, the study proposes that random forests using conditional inference trees constitute the preferred tool for the general type of problem investigated here.
One of the most fundamental goals in linguistic theory is to understand the nature of linguistic ... more One of the most fundamental goals in linguistic theory is to understand the nature of linguistic knowledge, that is, the representations and mechanisms that figure in a cognitively plausible model of human language-processing. The past 50 years have witnessed the development and refinement of various theories about what kind of ‘stuff’ human knowledge of language consists of, and tech- nological advances now permit the development of increasingly sophisticated computational mod- els implementing key assumptions of different theories from both rationalist and empiricist perspectives. The present special issue does not aim to present or discuss the arguments for and against the two epistemological stances or discuss evidence that supports either of them (cf. Bod, Hay, & Jannedy, 2003; Christiansen & Chater, 2008; Hauser, Chomsky, & Fitch, 2002; Oaksford & Chater, 2007; O’Donnell, Hauser, & Fitch, 2005). Rather, the research presented in this issue, which we label usage-based here, conceives of linguistic knowledge as being induced from experience. Articles in the special issue can be found at: doi:10.1177/0023830913484896, doi:10.1177/0023830913484891, doi:10.1177/0023830913484901, doi:10.1177/0023830913484902, doi:10.1177/0023830913484897, doi:10.1177/0023830913484899, and [one article pending]
ABSTRACT In the present study we investigate the use and function of prefabricated chunks in acad... more ABSTRACT In the present study we investigate the use and function of prefabricated chunks in academic writing by focusing on what we will term "research predicates", i.e. high-frequency lexical items designating the research process with its key stages. We conducted a manual analysis of these predicates in the academic subcomponent of the British National Corpus and extracted a set of partially lexically filled constructions. Adopting a usage-based constructionist approach and exmining its ability to study prefabricated chunks in the register of academic writing, we show that research predicates are part of more complex partially substantive constructions which commonly occur inthe register of academic texts and have acquired a more or less formulaic status. The function of these constructions is to mirror the key phases of an idealized research process.
In a recent paper, Biber and Gray (2010) provide empirical evidence for the dramatic increase of ... more In a recent paper, Biber and Gray (2010) provide empirical evidence for the dramatic increase of compressed structures in English academic writing over the last 100 years. According to their corpus findings, the grammatical complexity of academic writing displays a phrasal rather than clausal character, the corollary of which is a compressed rather than elaborated discourse style (the latter one being typical of spoken registers). Given this finding, the question arises as to how far the traditional view that information structure should be viewed as a single partition of information within a given utterance adequately accounts for genre-specific information packaging strategies. To provide an answer to this question, the current study sets out to explore and compare information structuring within what will be referred to here as ‘compression strategies’, namely the use of adverbial subordinate clauses, -ING constructions, and complex NP constructions across two different genres: th...
The aim of the present study is twofold: (1) to assess the degree of register flexibility in adva... more The aim of the present study is twofold: (1) to assess the degree of register flexibility in advanced second language (L2) learners of English and (2) to determine whether and to what extent this flexibility is impacted by inter-individual variability in experiential factors and personality traits. Register flexibility is quantitatively measured as the degree of differentiation in the use of linguistic complexity – gauged by a range of lexical, syntactic, and information-theoretic complexity measures – across three writing tasks. At the methodological level, we aim to demonstrate how a corpus-based approach combined with natural language processing (NLP) techniques and a within-subjects design can be a valuable complement to experimental approaches to language adaptation.
In a recent study, Wulff & Gries (2011) put forward the constructionist definition of accuracy in... more In a recent study, Wulff & Gries (2011) put forward the constructionist definition of accuracy in L2 production as the selection of a construction in its preferred context within a particular target variety and genre. By focusing on the use of concessive adverbial clauses in L2 academic writing, the current study takes up this definition of accuracy in L2 production and sets out to explore whether, and to what extent, the 'genre-specific construction' (i.e. genre-specific repository of symbolic form-function alignments) of advanced German learners of academic English is similar/different to that of native expert academic writers of English. To this end, all instances of concessive adverbial clauses were extracted from a 216,418 word-token learner corpus and coded for the various factors proposed in the literature. For comparison purposes, a data set of all relevant data points was distilled from a native expert corpus of the same size and annotated in terms of the same facto...
"Although Bilingual First Language Acquisition research has increased considerably over the ... more "Although Bilingual First Language Acquisition research has increased considerably over the past few decades, there is still much controversy regarding the rate of development, i.e. the question whether bilinguals lag behind their monolingual peers in various aspects of language. Some studies have found similar rates of development, whereas others have found that bilingual children lag behind their monolingual peers. The current study contributes to this discussion of (dis)similar rates of development by investigating bilingual children’s acquisition of German complex sentence constructions involving adverbial clauses (ACs). Our findings are consistent with usage-based approaches to language acquisition, which predict that bilingual acquisition should proceed slower due to learners having less exposure, on average, to each language."
English permits adverbial subordinate clauses to be placed either before or after their associate... more English permits adverbial subordinate clauses to be placed either before or after their associated main clause. Previous research has shown that the positioning is conditioned by various factors from the domains of semantics, discourse pragmatics and language processing. With the exception of Diessel (2008), these factors have never been investigated in concert, which makes it difficult to understand their relative importance. Diessel's study, however, discusses only temporal constructions and identifies iconicity of sequence as the strongest predictor of clause position. Since this explanation is, in principle, unavailable for other types of subordinate clauses, the generalizability of Diessel's findings is somewhat limited. The present study offers a multifactorial analysis of 2,000 concessive constructions from the written part of the BNC and assesses the variable importance of six factors for the ordering choice, showing that semantic and discourse-pragmatic factors are much stronger predictors of clause position than processing-based, weight-related ones. On a methodological note, the study proposes that random forests using conditional inference trees constitute the preferred tool for the general type of problem investigated here.
One of the most fundamental goals in linguistic theory is to understand the nature of linguistic ... more One of the most fundamental goals in linguistic theory is to understand the nature of linguistic knowledge, that is, the representations and mechanisms that figure in a cognitively plausible model of human language-processing. The past 50 years have witnessed the development and refinement of various theories about what kind of ‘stuff’ human knowledge of language consists of, and tech- nological advances now permit the development of increasingly sophisticated computational mod- els implementing key assumptions of different theories from both rationalist and empiricist perspectives. The present special issue does not aim to present or discuss the arguments for and against the two epistemological stances or discuss evidence that supports either of them (cf. Bod, Hay, & Jannedy, 2003; Christiansen & Chater, 2008; Hauser, Chomsky, & Fitch, 2002; Oaksford & Chater, 2007; O’Donnell, Hauser, & Fitch, 2005). Rather, the research presented in this issue, which we label usage-based here, conceives of linguistic knowledge as being induced from experience. Articles in the special issue can be found at: doi:10.1177/0023830913484896, doi:10.1177/0023830913484891, doi:10.1177/0023830913484901, doi:10.1177/0023830913484902, doi:10.1177/0023830913484897, doi:10.1177/0023830913484899, and [one article pending]
ABSTRACT In the present study we investigate the use and function of prefabricated chunks in acad... more ABSTRACT In the present study we investigate the use and function of prefabricated chunks in academic writing by focusing on what we will term "research predicates", i.e. high-frequency lexical items designating the research process with its key stages. We conducted a manual analysis of these predicates in the academic subcomponent of the British National Corpus and extracted a set of partially lexically filled constructions. Adopting a usage-based constructionist approach and exmining its ability to study prefabricated chunks in the register of academic writing, we show that research predicates are part of more complex partially substantive constructions which commonly occur inthe register of academic texts and have acquired a more or less formulaic status. The function of these constructions is to mirror the key phases of an idealized research process.
In a recent paper, Biber and Gray (2010) provide empirical evidence for the dramatic increase of ... more In a recent paper, Biber and Gray (2010) provide empirical evidence for the dramatic increase of compressed structures in English academic writing over the last 100 years. According to their corpus findings, the grammatical complexity of academic writing displays a phrasal rather than clausal character, the corollary of which is a compressed rather than elaborated discourse style (the latter one being typical of spoken registers). Given this finding, the question arises as to how far the traditional view that information structure should be viewed as a single partition of information within a given utterance adequately accounts for genre-specific information packaging strategies. To provide an answer to this question, the current study sets out to explore and compare information structuring within what will be referred to here as ‘compression strategies’, namely the use of adverbial subordinate clauses, -ING constructions, and complex NP constructions across two different genres: th...
The aim of the present study is twofold: (1) to assess the degree of register flexibility in adva... more The aim of the present study is twofold: (1) to assess the degree of register flexibility in advanced second language (L2) learners of English and (2) to determine whether and to what extent this flexibility is impacted by inter-individual variability in experiential factors and personality traits. Register flexibility is quantitatively measured as the degree of differentiation in the use of linguistic complexity – gauged by a range of lexical, syntactic, and information-theoretic complexity measures – across three writing tasks. At the methodological level, we aim to demonstrate how a corpus-based approach combined with natural language processing (NLP) techniques and a within-subjects design can be a valuable complement to experimental approaches to language adaptation.
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Papers by Elma Kerz