International Journal of Learner Corpus Research - Volume 1, Issue 1, 2015

Since its introduction in 1996, Contrastive Interlanguage Analysis (CIA) has become a highly popular method in Learner Corpus Research. Its comparative design has made it possible to uncover a wide range of features distinctive of learner language and assess their degree of generalizability across learner populations. At the same time, however, the method has drawn criticism on several fronts. The purpose of this article is threefold: to provide a brief overview of CIA research, to discuss the main criticisms the method has faced in recent years and to present a revised model, CIA², which makes the central role played by variation in interlanguage studies more explicit and is generally more in line with the current state of foreign language theory and practice.

The German subjunctive mood (‘Konjunktiv’) is a grammatical feature that attests to the freedom of human beings to step out of the boundaries of their immediate situation and explore new possibilities in hypothetical scenarios. It therefore plays a pivotal role in advanced learner argumentative writing, but due to its highly complex nature regarding both form and usage, the ‘Konjunktiv’ challenges learners on virtually all levels of linguistic knowledge. This paper presents the first learner corpus-based study of this phenomenon with a two-pronged Contrastive Interlanguage Analysis approach: comparing learner data to native-speaker data and learner data at different levels of proficiency using the Corpus of Learner German (CLEG). The investigation seeks to explain the detected patterns of over-, under- and misuse and developmental paths by drawing on cognitive theories of second language acquisition.

This cross-sectional study investigates task variability focusing on the use of Spanish past tense morphology in a spoken learner corpus. Sixty L2 learners of Spanish (English L1) from three different proficiency levels (20 per group) and fifteen native speakers completed three communicative tasks (a guided interview, a picture-based narrative, and a historical figures description) and an experimental task, all designed to investigate the acquisition of tense and aspect in L2 Spanish. Data were transcribed in CHAT, and analysed and coded using a specially created interactive coding program that works in combination with the CLAN program (MacWhinney 2000). Results demonstrate significant differences in the emergence and accurate use of past tense morphology across tasks. An additional analysis showed that the less controlled tasks encouraged few instances of more advanced features, suggesting that not all task types are equally successful at eliciting the range of tense-aspect morphological contrasts theoretically relevant for SLA research on tense and aspect.

We consider the opportunities presented by big educational learner corpora for Second Language Acquisition (SLA). In particular, we focus on the EF Cambridge Open Language Database (EFCAMDAT), an open access database of student writings submitted to Englishtown, the online school of EF Education First. EFCAMDAT stands out for its size (33 million words, 85 thousand learners) and a range of 128 writing tasks covering all CEFR levels with data from learners from varying nationalities. We discuss methodological issues arising from analyzing big data resources generated in educational contexts and argue that Natural Language Processing (NLP) is essential for the automated processing of such datasets. As a study case, we follow the developmental trajectory of relative clauses, a construction that necessitates deeper syntactic analysis. We consider specific issues that can affect the developmental trajectory, including task effects, formulaic language and national language effects.

The study of learner language and that of indigenized varieties are growing areas of English-language corpus-linguistic research, which are shaped by two current trends: First, the recognition that more rigorous methodological approaches are urgently needed (with few exceptions, existing work is based on over-/under-use frequency counts that fail to unveil complex non-native linguistic patterns); second, the collective effort to bridge an existing “paradigm gap” (Sridhar & Sridhar 1986) between EFL and ESL research.This paper contributes to these developments by offering a multifactorial analysis of seventeen lexical verbs in the dative alternation in speech and writing of German/French learners and Hong Kong/India/Singapore English speakers. We exemplify the advantages of hierarchical mixed-effects modeling, which allows us to control for speaker and verb-specific effects, but also for the hierarchical structure of the corpus data. Second, we address the theoretical question of whether EFL and ESL represent discrete English varieties or a continuum.