Hostname: page-component-7479d7b7d-k7p5g Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-13T08:51:59.108Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Exploring multiple constraints on second language development of English polysemous phrasal verbs

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 April 2019

Xiaopeng Zhang Open the ORCID record for Xiaopeng Zhang [Opens in a new window]  and
Ju Wen
Xiaopeng Zhang*
Affiliation:
North Minzu University
Ju Wen
Affiliation:
North Minzu University
*
*Corresponding author. Email: zhxpnwnu@126.com
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The present study examined Chinese speakers’ knowledge of English polysemous phrasal verbs (PVs) and factors that may constrain the development of PVs. The intermediate and advanced learners judged the acceptability of 100 senses of 50 PVs. Results indicate that both the intermediate and the advanced learners tended to favor the high-frequency senses (51.2%∼67.2%) of PVs but disfavor the low-frequency senses (32.9%∼46.3%) of PVs. PV frequency, semantic transparency, and time spent reading books and watching films/TV could predict the advanced learners’ mastery of the high-frequency senses, while PV frequency and preemption could predict their mastery of the low-frequency senses. Semantic transparency, PV frequency, and preemption could predict the intermediate learners’ knowledge of the high-frequency senses, while semantic transparency, frequency of high-frequency senses, and preemption could predict their acceptance of the low-frequency senses. No reliable relationship was detected among the learners’ PV knowledge, entrenchment, time spent in second language immersion, listening to music, and communicating with others for the two groups.

Keywords

Chinese speakersEnglish polysemous phrasal verbsentrenchmentextra-linguistic factorspreemptionsemantic transparency
Type
Original Article
Information
Applied Psycholinguistics , Volume 40 , Issue 5 , September 2019 , pp. 1073 - 1101
Copyright
© Cambridge University Press 2019 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Adolphs, S., & Durow, V. (2004). Social-cultural integration and the development of formulaic sequences. In Schmitt, N. (Ed.), Formulaic sequences: Acquisition, processing, and use (pp. 107–126). Amsterdam: Benjamins.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Alderson, C. (2005). Diagnosing foreign language proficiency: The interface between learning and assessment. London: Continuum.Google Scholar
AlHassan, L., & Wood, D. (2015). The effectiveness of focused instruction of formulaic sequences in augmenting L2 learners’ academic writing skills: A quantitative research study. Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 17, 51–62.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ambridge, B. (2013). How do children restrict their linguistic generalizations? An (un-)grammaticality judgment study. Cognitive Science, 37, 508–543.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ambridge, B., Bidgood, A., Twomey, E., Pine, J. M., Rowland, C. F. & Freudenthal, D. (2015). Preemption versus entrenchment: Towards a construction-general solution to the problem of the retreat from verb argument structure overgeneralization. PLOS ONE, 10, e0123723.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ambridge, B., Pine, J. M., & Rowland, C. F. (2012). Semantics versus statistics in the retreat from locative overgeneralization errors. Cognition, 123, 260–279.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ambridge, B., Pine, J. M., Rowland, C. F., Jones, R. L., & Clark, V. (2009). A semantics-based approach to the “no negative evidence” problem. Cognitive Science, 33, 1301–1316.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ambridge, B., Pine, J. M., Rowland, C. F., & Young, C. R. (2008). The effect of verb semantic class and verb frequency (entrenchment) on children’s and adults’ graded judgments of argument structure overgeneralization errors. Cognition, 106, 87–129.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Arnon, I., & Christiansen, M. H. (2017). The role of multiword building blocks in explaining L1-L2 differences. Topics in Cognitive Science, 9, 621–636.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Barr, D. J., Levy, R., Scheepers, C., & Tily, H. J. (2013). Random effects structure for confirmatory hypothesis testing: Keep it maximal. Journal of Memory and Language, 68, 255–278.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bates, D., Maechler, M., Bolker, B., &Walker, S. (2015). Fitting linear mixed-effects models using lme4. Journal of Statistical Software, 67, 1–48.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Biber, D., Johansson, S., Leech, G., Conrad, S., & Finegan, E. (1999). Longman grammar of spoken and written English. Harlow, UK: Longman.Google Scholar
Boers, F., & Lindstromberg, S. (2009). Optimizing a lexical approach to instructed second language acquisition. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bowerman, M. (1988). The “no negative evidence” problem: How do children avoid constructing an overly general grammar? In Hawkins, J. A. (Ed.), Explaining language universals (pp. 73–101). Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Boyd, J. K., & Goldberg, A. E. (2011). Learning what not to say: The role of statistical preemption and categorization in a-adjective production. Language, 87, 55–83.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Braine, M. D. S., & Brooks, P. J. (1995). Verb argument structure and the problem of avoiding an overgeneral grammar. In Tomasello, M., and Merriman, W. E. (Eds.), Beyond names for things: Young children’s acquisition of verbs (pp. 352–376). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Brooks, P. J., Tomasello, M., Dodson, K., & Lewis, L. B. (1999). Young children’s overgeneralizations with fixed transitivity verbs. Child Development, 70, 1325–1337.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chen, M. (2013). Overuse or underuse: A corpus study of English phrasal verb use by Chinese, British and American university students. International Journal of Corpus Linguistics, 18, 418–442.Google Scholar
Clark, E. V., & Clark, H. H. (1979). When nouns surface as verbs. Language, 55, 767–811.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dagut, M., & Laufer, B. (1985). Avoidance of phrasal verbs: A case for contrastive analysis. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 7, 73–79.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
David, B. (1991). Conditioning diagnostics: Collinearity and weak data in regression. New York: Wiley.Google Scholar
Dirven, R. (2001). English phrasal verbs: Theory and didactic application. In Putz, M., Niemeier, S., and Dirven, R. (Eds.), Applied cognitive linguistics: II. Language pedagogy (pp. 3–27). Berlin: de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Dornyei, Z., Durow, V., & Zahran, K. (2004). Individual differences and their effects on formulaic sequence acquisition. In Schmitt, N. (Ed.), Formulaic sequences: Acquisition, processing, and use (pp. 87–106). Amsterdam: Benjamins.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dowman, M. (2000). Addressing the learnability of verb subcategorizations with Bayesian inference. In Gleitman, L., and Joshi, A. (Eds.), Proceedings of the 22nd Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society (pp. 101–112). Austin, TX: Cognitive Science Society.Google Scholar
Ellis, N. C. (2002). Frequency effects in language processing: A review with implications for theories of implicit and explicit language acquisition. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 24, 143–188.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Foster, P. (2001). Rules and routines: A consideration of their role in the task-based language production of native and non-native speakers. In Bygate, M., Skehan, P., and Swain, M. (Eds.), Researching pedagogic tasks: Second language learning. Teaching and testing (pp. 75–93). Harlow, UK: Longman.Google Scholar
Freeborn, D. (1995). A course book in English grammar. London: Macmillan.Google Scholar
Gardner, D., & Davies, M. (2007). Pointing out frequent phrasal verbs: A corpus-based analysis. TESOL Quarterly, 41, 339–359.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Garnier, M., & Schmitt, N. (2015). The PHaVE List: A pedagogical list of phrasal verbs and their most frequent meaning senses. Language Teaching Research, 19, 645–666.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Garnier, M., & Schmitt, N. (2016). Picking Up polysemous phrasal verbs: How many do learners know and what facilitates this knowledge? System, 59, 29–44.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gonzalez Fernandez, B., & Schmitt, N. (2015). How much collocation knowledge do L2 learners have? The effects of frequency and amount of exposure. ITL International Journal of Applied Linguistics, 166, 94–126.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gyllstad, H., & Wolter, B. (2016). Collocational processing in light of the phraseological continuum model: Does semantic transparency matter? Language Learning, 66 (2), 296–323.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Horst, M., Cobb, T., & Meara, P. (1998). Beyond a clockwork orange: Acquiring second language vocabulary through reading. Reading in a Foreign Language, 11, 207–223.Google Scholar
Howarth, P. (1996). Phraseology in English academic writing: Some implications for language learning and dictionary making. Lexicographica Series Maior, Volume 75. Tübingen: Niemeyer.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hulstijn, J. H., & Marchena, E. (1989). Avoidance: Grammatical or semantic causes? Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 11, 241–255.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kording, K. P., & Wolpert, D. M. (2011). Bayesian statistics and utility functions in sensorimotorcontrol. In Doy, K., Ishii, S., Pouget, A., and Rao, R. P. N. (Eds.), Bayesian brain: Probabilistic approaches to neural coding (pp. 299–316). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Kurtyka, A. (2001). Teaching English phrasal verbs: A cognitive approach. In Putz, M., Niemeier, S., and Dirven, R. (Eds.), Applied cognitive linguistics: II. Language pedagogy (pp. 29–54). Berlin: de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Kurvers, J., & Uri, H. (2006). Metalexical awareness: Development, methodology or written language? Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 35, 353–367.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Langacker, R. W. (1987). Foundations of cognitive grammar: Theoretical prerequisites (Vol. 1). Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Laufer, B., & Eliasson, S. (1993). What causes avoidance in L2 learning: L1-L2 difference, L1-L2 similarity, or L2 complexity? Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 15, 35–48.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Liao, Y., & Fukuya, Y. J. (2004). Avoidance of phrasal verbs: The case of Chinese learners of English. Language Learning, 54, 193–226.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Liu, D. (2011). The most frequently used English phrasal verbs in American and British English: A multicorpus examination. TESOL Quarterly, 45, 661–688.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Macis, M., & Schmitt, N. (2017). The figurative and polysemous nature of collocations and their place in ELT. ELT Journal, 71, 50–59.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Matthews, D., Lieven, E., Theakston, A., & Tomasello, M. (2005). The role of frequency in the acquisition of English word order. Cognitive Development, 20, 121–136.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Meara, P. (2005). Y_lex [computer software]. Swansea, UK: Lognostics.Google Scholar
Nation, I. S. P. (2001). Learning vocabulary in another language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pigada, M., & Schmitt, N. (2006). Vocabulary acquisition from extensive reading: A case study. Reading in a Foreign Language, 18, 1–28.Google Scholar
Pinker, S. (1989). Learnability and cognition. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
R Development Core Team. (2015). R: A language and environment for statistical computing. Vienna, Austria: R Foundation for Statistical Computing. Available at http://www.R-project.org/Google Scholar
Robenalt, C., & Goldberg, A. E. (2016). Nonnative speakers do not take competing alternative expressions into account the way native speakers do. Language Learning, 66, 66–94.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schmitt, N. (2014). Researching vocabulary: A vocabulary research manual. Beijing: Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press.Google Scholar
Schmitt, N., & Redwood, S. (2011). Learner knowledge of phrasal verbs: A corpus-informed study. In Meunier, F., de Cock, S., Gilquin, G., and Paquot, M. (Eds.), A taste for corpora. Amsterdam: Benjamins.Google Scholar
Sinclair, J. (1991). Corpus, concordance, collocation. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Siyanova, A., & Schmitt, N. (2007). Native and nonnative use of multi-word vs. one-word verbs. International Review of Applied Linguistics, 45, 119–139.Google Scholar
Siyanova-Chanturia, A., Conklin, K., & Schmitt, N. (2011). Adding more fuel to the fire: An eye-tracking study of idiom-processing by native and non-native speakers. Second Language Research, 27, 251–272.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Taylor, J. R. (2004). Why construction grammar is radical. Annual Review of Cognitive Linguistics, 2, 321–348.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tomasello, M. (2003). Constructing a language: A usage-based theory of language acquisition. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Waibel, B. (2007). Phrasal verbs in learner English: A corpus-based study of German and Italian students (Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg).Google Scholar
Wang, M., & Koda, K. (2005). Commonalities and differences in word identification skills among learners of English as a second language. Language Learning, 55, 71–98.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zhang, X. (2010). Function of sense typicality in the representation and retrieval of English polysemous words. Modern Foreign Languages, 33, 395–402.Google Scholar
Zhang, X. (2017). Second language users’ restriction of linguistic generalization errors: The case of English un-prefixation development. Language Learning, 67, 569–598.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zhang, X., & Mai, C. (2018). Effects of entrenchment and preemption in second language learners’ acceptance of English denominal verbs. Applied Psycholinguistics, 39, 413–436.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zhao, C. (2010). The representation of ambiguous words in Chinese EFL learners’ mental lexicon: A developmental model. Modern Foreign Languages, 33, 55–63.Google Scholar