Search

Whilst the links between learner corpus research (LCR) and Second Language Acquisition (SLA) have long been debated, McEnery et al. (2019. "Corpus Linguistics, Learner Corpora, and SLA: Employing Technology to Analyze Language Use." Annual Review of Applied Linguistics 39: 74-92. doi:) claim that learner corpus data are not yet sufficiently integrated in SLA research. This article aims to go one way towards bridging the LCR/SLA gap by illustrating the benefits of collecting and analyzing data sets that better document multiliteracy practices. We first contextualize our work within the field of LCR where calls for more multidimensional data sets have been made. We then present a new database called MulTINCo - Multilingual Traditional, Immersion, and Native Corpus - collected in the framework of a project on Content and Language Integrated Learning in French-speaking Belgium. As our data set contains rich metadata and blends corpus data with other data types, we illustrate its potential for SLA research. In Sections 3 and 4, we describe the data collected and the interface. In the last section of the paper, we wrap up with a discussion on the methodological assets of such multidimensional data sets for SLA studies, and present directions for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the longitudinal development of the phrasicon (i.e. phraseological lexicon) of French-speaking learners of Dutch in two different educational settings: Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) and traditional foreign language learning contexts (non-CLIL). We followed 195 pupils and analyzed a corpus of 390 written texts gathered at two data collection points: at the beginning of their fifth year of secondary school education (Grade 11) and at the end of their sixth year (Grade 12). We examined both frequency and accuracy of the phrasicon. Whilst SLA research often supports the fact that learners at a higher proficiency level have a larger phrasicon and that CLIL learners' overall language competence is higher than their non-CLIL peers, our results show no significant increase in the frequency of use of phraseological units in CLIL; a significant decrease for two categories (referential phrasemes and lexical collocations) is even noticed. non-CLIL learners display no significant change in the use of various types of phrasemes. Regarding accuracy, both CLIL and non-CLIL learners' phrasicon become more accurate (fewer errors) over time in more than 50% of the categories. Here again, no statistically significant improvement was noted among the groups between the two data collection points. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Speech perception involves segmenting a continuous stream of speech into its word components. This can be challenging in the case of homophonous utterances only differing in non-contrastive subphonemic features. Yet, the speech perception system seems able to discriminate subphonemic deviation in homophonous utterances, since it has been shown to elicit a mismatch response (MMN). Here, we focused on the oscillatory correlates, namely phase resetting and power, of non-contrastive subphonemic deviation processing in language. An oddball task that considered natural intraspeaker variability was used. Subphonemic deviance elicited intertrial phase coherence (ITC) differences in the theta band at Fz during the time window of the MMN. No differences in power were found. This suggests that the processing of subphonemic deviation in speech signals, reflected by the MMN, might rely on mechanisms of phase resetting. ITC might facilitate the synchronous firing of functional networks involved in the processing of subphonemic deviance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Can regular and irregular verb forms be accommodated by a single representational mechanism or is a dual mechanism account required? In a first experiment, we used a cross-modal repetition priming paradigm to investigate the mental representation of regular and irregular verb forms in French. Participants heard a spoken prime (such as aimons , 'we love') immediately followed by lexical decision to a visual probe (such as aimer , 'to love'). We contrasted four types of French verbs, varying in the regularity and degree of allomorphy of their verb form inflection. These were (i) fully regular verbs ( aimons/aimer , 'we love/to love') (ii) regular verbs that undergo minor and phonologically predictable allomorphic changes ( sèment/semer , 'they sow/to sow') (iii) irregular verbs exhibiting subregularities ( peignent/peindre , 'they paint/to paint') and (iv) irregular verbs with idiosyncratic alternations ( vont/aller , 'they go/to go'). The infinitive forms of these verbs were presented as targets in three prime conditions, preceded either by a regular form, an allomorphic form (except for the fuller regular verbs), or an unrelated prime. Morphologically related primes significantly facilitated lexical decision responses for all four verb classes, irrespective of regularity and allomorphy. The same pattern of results was observed in a second experiment using a masked priming paradigm. These results contrasted with English, where regularly inflected verbs prime their stems but irregular verbs do not. We argue that this reflects cross-linguistic differences in the morphophonological decomposability of French irregular forms, and that the current results enable us to deconfound regularity/irregularity distinctions from language-specific morphophonological differences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]