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Volume 17, Issue 1
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Abstract

Abstract

This article reports empirical evidence of constructional priming effects in L2 learners of English and Italian. The well-known pioneering experiment carried out by Bencini and Goldberg (2000) with L1 speakers of English paved the way for our investigation. We employed the same protocol to ascertain whether constructions have an ontological status also in the mind of L2 learners. We conducted experiments with four groups of learners whose language proficiency levels correspond to the B1 and B2 levels of the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR). The results we obtained in our cross-linguistic experiments demonstrate that learners are reliant on constructional templates when they are required to produce linguistic generalizations.

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2019-08-20
2023-09-23

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Constructions at work in foreign language learners’ mind
Review of Cognitive Linguistics. Published under the auspices of the Spanish Cognitive Linguistics Association 17, 219 (2019); https://doi.org/10.1075/rcl.00032.bai
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  • Article Type: Research Article
Keyword(s): construction-based L2 pedagogy; constructional priming; L2 learners; language typology; sentence-sorting experiments

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