Exploring the misuse, underuse and overuse of lexical sequences in English L2 student essays
Résumé
Although the study of phraseology isn’t a recent phenomenon, the last 30 years has witnessed
its transition into an increasingly promising area of linguistic investigation (Robert 1993).
Recourse to corpus linguistics methods has undoubtedly played an active role in this
development (Sinclair 1991, McEnery & Wilson 2001). However, in spite of various studies
highlighting the importance of lexical sequences as an integral part of language use,
independent of culture, register and genre (Cowie 1998, Biber, Conrand & Cortes 2003,
Lamiroy 2006, Skandera 2007, Ellis 2008, Mejri 2008), research on phraseology has not been
met with positive response from the wider community of second language teachers. This
refusal may in part be explained by the fact that research on phraseology has generally
examined native speaker data and consequently very little attention has been paid to authentic
use of phraseological sequences by L2 learners.
The current study attempts therefore to supplement existing information on phraseology in
learner corpus research by examining two main aspects: i.e. problematic usage of frozen and
semi-frozen lexical sequences and differences in L1 vs L2 usage of attested sequences. The
dataset used can be separated into two groups: an L1 corpus of student essays written by
native speakers of English (cf. Locness corpus) and an L2 corpus of student essays written by
native speakers of French (cf. Hamilton 2015). Both corpora are comparable in size and
genre.
The preliminary results show clear instances of interferences in both grammaticalised and
non-grammaticalised expressions by the French learners of English and a tendency to misuse
specific sequences. Three examples are provided below.
1. So men and women are still not *on equal foot. (t022_sm2)
2. It seems clear that the *true problems here is(sic] to know if [...]. (t026_sm1
3. We are going to see *in a first part the sacrifices made by the member state [...]. (t029_sm2)
Domaines
Linguistique
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