Patterns of lexis in learner language:

Lithuanian learners of English vs. native speakers

Rita JuknevičienėDepartment of English Philology

Vilnius University

2-6 September 2010, SLE Conference in Vilnius

Research focus

• Structural features of written learner English.

• Contrastive analysis of multi-word units, i.e. lexical bundles in learner language.

• Structural differences at different levels of achievement.

Research questions

1. Structural features of lexical bundlesDistribution across major structural types:

verbal, clausal, phrasal (Biber 2006), e.g. it is obvious that, to take into account, the nature of the, in the case of.

2. Patterns in lexical bundles:Do lexical patterns get “bundlized”? If so, is

it proficiency level-related? Which patterns are most frequent, e.g. V n “to write a letter” or V to-inf “want to do sth.” (Hunston & Francis 2000).

Previous studies

• De Cock (2004): lexical bundles in English produced by French EFL learners and NS learners

• Biber et al. (2004), Biber (2006): structural and functional classification

• Cortes (2004) and Hyland (2008): lexical bundles in articles from different research fields

• Chen & Baker (2010): lexical bundles in L1 and L2 academic writing (BAWE corpus)

Lexical bundles

• Terminology: – recurrent sequences (Altenberg 1998, De Cock 1998), – lexical bundles (Biber et al. 1999, 2004, Cortes 2008, Hyland

2008), – clusters (Scott 1999), – chunks (O’Keeffe et al. 2007).

• Established exclusively on frequency criteria

• Structurally and semantically incomplete

• Examples: in the, and then, one of the, and this is, I think that, in addition to this, or something like that

Corpora of learner English

• NNS corpora (Lithuanian learners):– AFK1

• 1st year students of English Philology• 92 050 words, 226 essays

– LICLE• 3rd-4th year students of English Philology• 137 004 words, 253 essays

• NS corpus– LOCNESS

• native speakers of English (British and American)

• 164 684 words, 197 essays

Lexical bundles in this study

– Length: 2-, 3-, 4- and 5-word bundles• Examples: I think, people are not, it is better

to, becoming more and more, one of the most etc.

– Frequency: 4 times per 100,000 words– Distribution: at least 4 texts– Method:

• automatically extracted with WordSmith Tools (v.5)

• manually revised eliminating topical and identical bundles of varying lengths

Structural types of lexical bundles

• Structural types:– Bundles incorporating

noun/prepositional phrases, e.g. the way in which, a little bit more

– Bundles incorporating verb phrases, e.g. you know it was, is going to be

– Bundles incorporating dependent clause phrases, e.g what I want to, to come up with

Findings: structural types

41%

24%

35% 33%

19%

48%

20%18%

62%

0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

70%

AFK1 LICLE LOCNESS

VPDep. Cl.N/ PrepP

Most significantly overused subtypes in NNS corpora: (connector) + 3rd person pron + VP fragment (there are a lot, it is not, it is the most, as it was mentioned);VP with non-passive verb (be one of the, become more and more, will not be able, do not have to)

Most significantly overused subtypes in NNS corpora:(verb/adj+) to-clause fragment:In order to be, do not want to, to be able to(verb/adj+) that-clause fragment:that there is a, that it is not, that it should be

Most significantly underused subtypes in NNS corpora:NP with of-phrase fragment: the number of the, the end of the, the idea of thePrepositional phrase expressions: at the end of, at the same time, due to the fact

Findings: verbal bundles

• Lexical bundles contain patterns of complementation of individual words:– Belong to, people claim that, go to the

etc.• Could they reveal any differences

among the corpora?• Each bundle examined and coded for

a specific verbal pattern:– V n, V prep, V that etc. (Hunston and

Francis 1999)

think about the – V prepdo not think that – V that

to understand the – V nto understand what you – V wh to understand that – V that

Findings: verbal patterns in lexical bundles (% of the total in the

corpus)

0

5

10

15

20

25

30

35

40

45

AFK LICLE LOCNESS

V nV prepV thatV to-infbe V-ed prepbe V-ed to-inf

Findings: verbal bundles

• Numbers of bundles (both types and tokens) containing complementation patterns are significantly different:– AFK: 159 occurrences (norm. per 100 000 words)– LICLE: 112 occurrences – LOCNESS: 111 occurrences

• But NS language has more different patterns per lexeme while in AFK and to a lesser extent LICLE there are fewer patterns per lexeme.

LOCNESS:

To see the

See how

See that

Be seen as

Is seen to be

AFK1:

See the

See that

LICLE:

See the

See that

Seen as a

Findings: clustering tendencies

they want towe want to

I thinksome people thinkmany people thinkit is thought

want to bewanted to

think it isto think that thethinks about thethought that it was

Which co-text, left or right, builds a bundle with the node word?

Example: BELIEVE

AFK1:

BELIEVE THAT (34)PEOPLE BELIEVE THAT (13)BELIEVE IN (9)BELIEVED THAT (7)IT IS BELIEVED THAT (7)TO BELIEVE (7)MANY PEOPLE BELIEVE THAT (5)PEOPLE WHO BELIEVE THAT (5)SOME PEOPLE BELIEVE THAT (5)I BELIEVE (4)

BELIEVE THAT (26)I BELIEVE THAT (16)BELIEVED THAT (6)TO BELIEVE (5)BELIEVE IN (4)BELIEVED IN (4)I STRONGLY BELIEVE (4)

LOCNESS:

BELIEVE THAT (26)BELIEVE IN (17)I BELIEVE THAT (11)BELIEVED THAT (10)TO BELIEVE (8)NOT BELIEVE (7)THEY BELIEVE THAT (7)BELIEVE IT (4)

LICLE:

Verbal patterns in lexical bundles

Number of verbs used in full sentence stems is significantly different:– AFK1: 42 lexemes of which 27 recur in stem

bundles “Subj+Verb” (64%)– LICLE: 57 lexemes of which 13 recur in stem

bundles (23%)– LOCNESS: 61 lexemes of which 15 recur in stem

bundles (24%)

CONCLUSION: In the AFK1 corpus verbs tend to cluster with subjects of the sentences more often than with their complements.

Related studies

• Altenberg 1998: – In speech, sentence stems form the ‘springboard’ of

utterances and lead to communicatively more important elements which express the rheme of the sentence.

• Granger 1998:– NNS learners significantly overuse the active sentence

structure, e.g. I/we/ think, one/we could say/notice etc.• Herriman and Boström Aronsson 2009:

– The structural segment consisting of ”SUBJECT+VERB” is overused for the expression of theme.

• Hasselgård 2009: – I as subject overused in thematized stance

expressions.

Hunston’s (2009) semantic sequences (‘what is often

said’)

• A verbal pattern (e.g. “V that” as in believe that) can be studied as a single word for its collocates.

• Collocates of verbal patterns in learner language may be very different from NS data.

Examples of semantic sequences from lexical

bundles• AFK1 corpus:

– SOME / MANY PEOPLE believe that– IT IS said that / PEOPLE say that– (SOME) PEOPLE / THEY / I think

• LICLE/LOCNESS corpus:– believe that / in– say that / is said TO BE– think about / that

Conclusions

1. Structural analysis of lexical bundles informs about discourse features of learner language.

2. Distribution of structural types suggests that lower-level learner language is closer to spoken English while more advanced learner writing bears more resemblance to written academic English.

Conclusions

3. Patterns of lexis as represented in lexical bundles offer insights into text construction strategies used by the learners.

4. Verbal lexical bundles in NNS language reveal not a verb complementation pattern but a full sentence stem, so in writing NNS learners are more worried about message construction rather than its development.

ReferencesAltenberg, B. 1998. On the Phraseology of Spoken English: The

Evidence of Recurrent Word-Combinations. In Cowie, A. P. (ed.) Phraseology: Theory, Analysis and Applications. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 101-122.

Biber, D. 2006. University Language. A Corpus-Based Study of Spoken and Written Registers. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company.

Biber, D., Conrad, S. and Cortes, V. 2004. If You Look at…: Lexical Bundles in University Teaching and Textbooks. Applied Linguistics 25, 371-405.

Cortes, V. 2004. Lexical Bundles in Published and Student Writing in History and Biology. English for Specific Purposes 23 (4), 397-423.

Cortes, V. 2008. A Comparative Analysis of Lexical Bundles in Academic History Writing in English and Spanish. Corpora 3 (1), 43-57.

De Cock, S. 2004. Preferred Sequences of Words in NS and NNS Speech. BELL (Belgian journal of English language and literature), 225-246.

Granger, S. 1998b. Prefabricated patterns in advanced EFL writing: collocations and formulae. A. P. Cowie (ed.) Phraseology. Theory, Analysis, And Applications. Oxford: Clarendon. 145-160.

References Hasselgård, H. 2009. Thematic choice and expressions of stance in

English argumentative texts by Norwegian learners. K. Aijmer (ed.) Corpora and Language Teaching. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company. 121-139.

Herriman, J. & M. Boström Aronsson. 2009. Themes in Swedish advanced learner writing in English. K. Aijmer (ed.) Corpora and Language Teaching. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company. 101-120.

Hyland, K. 2008. As Can Be Seen: Lexical Bundles and Disciplinary Variation. English for Specific Purposes (27). 4-10.

Hunston, S. 2009. The usefulness of corpus-based descriptions of English for learners. K. Aijmer (ed.) Corpora and Language Teaching. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company. 141-154.

Hunston, S. & G. Francis. 1999. Pattern Grammar: A Corpus-driven Approach to the Lexical Grammar of English. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.