1887
  1. Home
  2. e-Journals
  3. International Journal of Corpus Linguistics
  4. Volume 25, Issue 2
  5. Article
Volume 25, Issue 2
  • ISSN 1384-6655
  • E-ISSN: 1569-9811
PDF

Abstract

Abstract

The present study looks at adverb placement in expert writing and in first-language and second-language novice spoken and written production. The extent to which first-language (L1) transfer is still present in advanced learners’ written production is also investigated. The study uses data from one expert corpus (LOCRA), two native-speaker student corpora (BAWE and LOCNEC) and two learner corpora (VESPA and LINDSEI). The results highlight the importance of taking mode into consideration, as clear distributional differences were found between spoken and written production. In addition, while considerable differences could be noted across L1 background in the spoken data, factors such as presence/absence of auxiliary, verb type (e.g. intransitive, copular/linking) and lexis were found to be most important for predicting adverb placement in the written data. Only very limited evidence of L1 transfer was found in the learners’ writing, suggesting that advanced learners have largely mastered the distributional preferences of adverbs.

© John Benjamins Publishing Company
Available under the CC BY-NC 4.0 license.
Loading

Article metrics loading...

/content/journals/10.1075/ijcl.19131.lar
2020-08-28
2024-10-12

  • From This Site

    /content/journals/10.1075/ijcl.19131.lar
    dcterms_title,dcterms_subject,pub_keyword
    -contentType:Journal -contentType:Contributor -contentType:Concept -contentType:Institution
    10
    5
Loading full text...

Full text loading...

/deliver/fulltext/ijcl.19131.lar.html?itemId=/content/journals/10.1075/ijcl.19131.lar&mimeType=html&fmt=ahah

References

  1. Aijmer, K.
    (2002) Modality in advanced Swedish learners’ written interlanguage. In S. Granger , J. Hung , & S. Petch-Tyson (Eds.), Computer Learner Corpora, Second Language Acquisition and Foreign Language Teaching (pp.55–76). John Benjamins. 10.1075/lllt.6.07aij
     https://doi.org/10.1075/lllt.6.07aij [Google Scholar]
  2. Baayen, H.
    (2008) Analyzing Linguistic Data: A Practical Introduction to Statistics Using R. Cambridge University Press. 10.1017/CBO9780511801686
     https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511801686 [Google Scholar]
  3. BAWE (British Academic Written English corpus)
    BAWE (British Academic Written English corpus). Corpus compiled at the Universities of Warwick, Reading and Oxford Brookesin 2004–2007 www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/al/research/collect/bawe/
  4. Biber, D.
    (2006) Stance in spoken and written university registers. Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 5(2), 97–116. 10.1016/j.jeap.2006.05.001
     https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jeap.2006.05.001 [Google Scholar]
  5. Biber, D. , Johansson, S. , Leech, G. , Conrad, S. , & Finegan, E.
    (1999) Longman Grammar of Spoken and Written English. Longman.
     [Google Scholar]
  6. Callies, M.
    (2009) Information Highlighting in Advanced Learner English: The Syntax-Pragmatics Interface in Second Language Acquisition. John Benjamins. 10.1075/pbns.186
     https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.186 [Google Scholar]
  7. Celce-Murcia, M. , Larsen-Freeman, D. , & Williams, H. A.
    (1999) The Grammar Book: An ESL/EFL Teacher’s Course (2nd ed.). Heinle & Heinle.
     [Google Scholar]
  8. De Cock, S.
    (2004) Preferred sequences of words in NS and NNS speech. Belgian Journal of English Language and Literatures (BELL), New Series, 2, 225–246.
     [Google Scholar]
  9. Diani, G.
    (2008) Emphasizers in spoken and written academic discourse: The case of really . International Journal of Corpus Linguistics, 13(3), 296–331. 10.1075/ijcl.13.3.04dia
     https://doi.org/10.1075/ijcl.13.3.04dia [Google Scholar]
  10. Downing, A.
    (2001) “Surely you knew!” Surely as a marker of evidentiality and stance. Functions of Language, 8(2), 253–285. 10.1075/fol.8.2.05dow
     https://doi.org/10.1075/fol.8.2.05dow [Google Scholar]
  11. Dupont, M.
    (2019) Conjunctive Markers of Contrast in English and French: From Syntax to Lexis and Discourse. [Unpublished doctoral dissertation]. Université catholique de Louvain.
     [Google Scholar]
  12. Faarlund, J. T. , Lie, S. , & Vannebo, K. I.
    (1997) Norsk Referansegrammatikk [Norwegian Reference Grammar]. Universitetsforlaget.
     [Google Scholar]
  13. Fleiss, J. L.
    (1971) Measuring nominal scale agreement among many raters. Psychological Bulletin, 76(5), 378–382. 10.1037/h0031619
     https://doi.org/10.1037/h0031619 [Google Scholar]
  14. Gamer, M. , Lemon, J. , Fellows, I. , & Singh, P.
    (2012)  irr: Various coefficients of interrater reliability and agreement. R package version 0.84.1. https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=irr
  15. Gilquin, G. , De Cock, S. , & Granger, S.
    (Eds.) (2010) LINDSEI: Louvain International Database of Spoken English Interlanguage. UCL Presses.
     [Google Scholar]
  16. Glynn, D.
    (2014) Correspondence analysis: An exploratory technique for identifying usage patterns. In D. Glynn & J. A. Robinson (Eds.), Corpus Methods in Cognitive Semantics: Quantitative Studies in Polysemy and Synonymy (pp.443–485). John Benjamins. 10.1075/hcp.43.17gly
     https://doi.org/10.1075/hcp.43.17gly [Google Scholar]
  17. Granath, S.
    (2002) The position of the adverb certainly will make a difference. English Today, 18(1), 25–30.
     [Google Scholar]
  18. Granger, S.
    (2015) Contrastive interlanguage analysis: A reappraisal. International Journal of Learner Corpus Research, 1(1), 7–24. 10.1075/ijlcr.1.1.01gra
     https://doi.org/10.1075/ijlcr.1.1.01gra [Google Scholar]
  19. Granger, S. & Rayson, P.
    (1998) Automatic profiling of learner texts. In S. Granger (Ed.), Learner English on Computer (pp.119–131). Longman.
     [Google Scholar]
  20. Gries, S. Th.
    (to appear). On classification trees and random forests in corpus linguistics: Some words of caution and suggestions for improvement. Corpus Linguistics and Linguistic Theory.
     [Google Scholar]
  21. Hasselgård, H.
    (2009) Thematic choice and expressions of stance in English argumentative texts by Norwegian learners. In K. Aijmer (Ed.), Corpora and Language Teaching (pp.121–139). John Benjamins. 10.1075/scl.33.12has
     https://doi.org/10.1075/scl.33.12has [Google Scholar]
  22. (2010) Adjunct Adverbials in English. Cambridge University Press. 10.1017/CBO9780511676253
     https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511676253 [Google Scholar]
  23. (2015) Lexicogrammatical features of adverbs in advanced learner English. ITL International Journal of Applied Linguistics, 166(1), 163–189. 10.1075/itl.166.1.05has
     https://doi.org/10.1075/itl.166.1.05has [Google Scholar]
  24. Hawkins, J.A.
    (1986) A Comparative Typology of English and German: Unifying the Contrasts. Croom Helm.
     [Google Scholar]
  25. Heuboeck, A. , Holmes, J. , & Nesi, H.
    (2008) The BAWE corpus manual. www.reading.ac.uk/internal/appling/bawe/BAWE.documentation.pdf
  26. Hunston, S.
    (2007) Using a corpus to investigate stance quantitatively and qualitatively. In R. Englebretson (Ed.), Stance Taking in Discourse: Subjectivity, Evaluation, Interaction (pp.27–48). John Benjamins. 10.1075/pbns.164.03hun
     https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.164.03hun [Google Scholar]
  27. Jacobson, S.
    (1975) Factors Influencing the Placement of English Adverbs in Relation to Auxiliaries: A Study in Variation. Almqvist & Wiksell International.
     [Google Scholar]
  28. Jarvis, S.
    (2000) Methodological rigor in the study of transfer: Identifying L1 influence in the interlanguage lexicon. Language Learning, 50(2), 245–309. 10.1111/0023‑8333.00118
     https://doi.org/10.1111/0023-8333.00118 [Google Scholar]
  29. Jarvis, S. , & Pavlenko, A.
    (2008) Crosslinguistic Influence in Language and Cognition. Routledge. 10.4324/9780203935927
     https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203935927 [Google Scholar]
  30. Johansson, S. , Ebeling, J. , & Oksefjell, S.
    (1999) English-Norwegian Parallel Corpus: Manual. Department of British and American Studies, University of Oslo.
     [Google Scholar]
  31. Landis, J. R. , & Koch, G. G.
    (1977) The measurement of observer agreement for categorical data. Biometrics, 33, 159–174. 10.2307/2529310
     https://doi.org/10.2307/2529310 [Google Scholar]
  32. Larsson, T.
    (2017)  The importance of, it is important that or importantly? The use of morphologically related stance markers in learner and expert writing. International Journal of Corpus Linguistics, 22(1), 57–84. 10.1075/ijcl.22.1.03lar
     https://doi.org/10.1075/ijcl.22.1.03lar [Google Scholar]
  33. Larsson, T. , Paquot, M. , & Plonsky, L.
    (forthcoming). Inter-rater reliability in learner corpus research: Insights from a collaborative study on adverb placement. International Journal of Learner Corpus Research.
     [Google Scholar]
  34. Le, S. , Josse, J. , & Husson, F.
    (2008) FactoMineR: An R package for multivariate analysis. Journal of Statistical Software, 25(1), 1–18. 10.18637/jss.v025.i01
     https://doi.org/10.18637/jss.v025.i01 [Google Scholar]
  35. Levshina, N.
    (2015) How to Do Linguistics with R: Data Exploration and Statistical Analysis. John Benjamins. 10.1075/z.195
     https://doi.org/10.1075/z.195 [Google Scholar]
  36. LOCRA (Louvain Corpus of Research Articles)
    LOCRA (Louvain Corpus of Research Articles). Corpus compiled at the Centre for English Corpus Linguistics, UCLouvain. https://uclouvain.be/en/research-institutes/ilc/cecl/locra.html
  37. Odlin, T.
    (1989) Language Transfer: Cross-Linguistic Influence in Language Learning. Cambridge University Press. 10.1017/CBO9781139524537
     https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139524537 [Google Scholar]
  38. Osborne, J.
    (2008) Adverb placement in post-intermediate learner English: A contrastive study of learner corpora. In G. Gilquin , S. Papp , & M. B. Díez-Bedmar (Eds.), Linking up Contrastive and Learner Corpus Research (pp.127–146). Rodopi. 10.1163/9789401206204_006
     https://doi.org/10.1163/9789401206204_006 [Google Scholar]
  39. Paquot, M.
    (2007) EAP Vocabulary in EFL learner Writing: From Extraction to Analysis: A Phraseology-oriented Approach [Unpublished doctoral thesis]. Université catholique de Louvain.
     [Google Scholar]
  40. Quirk, R. , Greenbaum, S. , Leech, G. , & Svartvik, J.
    (1985) A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language. Longman.
     [Google Scholar]
  41. R Core Team
    R Core Team (2019) R: A language and environment for statistical computing [Computer software]. R Foundation for Statistical Computing, Vienna, Austria. https://www.R-project.org/
     [Google Scholar]
  42. Rankin, T.
    (2010) Advanced learner corpora data and grammar teaching: Adverb placement. In M. C. Campoy , B. Belles-Fortuno , & M. L. GeaValor (Eds.), Corpus-based Approaches to English Language Teaching (pp.205–215). Continuum.
     [Google Scholar]
  43. Selinker, L.
    (1969) Language transfer. General Linguistics, 9, 67–92.
     [Google Scholar]
  44. Strobl, C. , Boulesteix, A.-L. , Kneib, T. , Augustin, T. , & Zeileis, A.
    (2008) Conditional variable importance for random forests. BMC Bioinformatics, 9(307). www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2105/9/307. 10.1186/1471‑2105‑9‑307
     https://doi.org/10.1186/1471-2105-9-307 [Google Scholar]
  45. van Vuuren, S.
    (2017) Traces of Transfer? Pragmatic Development in the Use of Initial Adverbials in the Interlanguage of Advanced Dutch Learners of English. LOT.
     [Google Scholar]
  46. VESPA (Varieties of English for Specific Purposes dAtabase)
    VESPA (Varieties of English for Specific Purposes dAtabase). Corpus administered at the Centre for English Corpus Linguistics at Université catholique de Louvain. www.uclouvain.be/en-cecl-vespa.html
  47. Waters, C.
    (2013) Transatlantic variation in English adverb placement. Language Variation and Change, 25, 179–200. 10.1017/S0954394513000082
     https://doi.org/10.1017/S0954394513000082 [Google Scholar]
  48. White, L.
    (1991) Adverb placement in second language acquisition: Some effects of positive and negative evidence in the classroom. Interlanguage Studies Bulletin ( Utrecht ), 7 (2), 133–161.
     [Google Scholar]
  49. Zifonun, G. , Hoffmann, L. , & Strecker, B.
    (1997) Grammatik der Deutschen Sprache [Grammar of the German Language]. Mouton de Gruyter.
     [Google Scholar]
/content/journals/10.1075/ijcl.19131.lar
Loading
Adverb placement in EFL academic writing
International Journal of Corpus Linguistics 25, 156 (2020); https://doi.org/10.1075/ijcl.19131.lar
/content/journals/10.1075/ijcl.19131.lar
/content/journals/10.1075/ijcl.19131.lar
Loading

Data & Media loading...

  • Article Type: Research Article
Keyword(s): adverb placement; L1 transfer; L2 writing; learner corpus research; novice writing

Most Cited

This is a required field
Please enter a valid email address
Approval was successful
Invalid data
An Error Occurred
Approval was partially successful, following selected items could not be processed due to error