33.170, Review: Applied Linguistics; Text/Corpus Linguistics: Granger (2021)

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Subject: 33.170, Review: Applied Linguistics; Text/Corpus Linguistics: Granger (2021)

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Date: Tue, 18 Jan 2022 09:17:04
From: Mohsen Shirazizadeh [mohsenshirazizadeh at gmail.com]
Subject: Perspectives on the L2 Phrasicon

 
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Book announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/32/32-2328.html

EDITOR: Sylviane  Granger
TITLE: Perspectives on the L2 Phrasicon
SUBTITLE: The View from Learner Corpora
SERIES TITLE: Second Language Acquisition
PUBLISHER: Multilingual Matters
YEAR: 2021

REVIEWER: Mohsen Shirazizadeh, Alzahra University

SUMMARY

The past two decades have witnessed an upsurge of interest in the
phraseological aspects of language. While words and grammar have been
traditionally viewed as the two building blocks of language learning,
phraseological knowledge has proved itself to be of equal, if not higher,
significance (Kremmel, Brunfaut, & Alderson, 2017; Li, Xu, & Zhang, 2020). A
look at the most credible journals in the area of applied linguistics in the
past years shows how the significance of phrases or formulas has been
increasingly recognized in the literature (Siyanova-Chanturia, &
Pellicer-Sanchez, 2018). Standing at the intersection between syntax and
lexis, formulaic phrases are reported to enjoy processing advantage as they
are analyzed as single chunks by language users. Familiarity with these
phraseological units by L2 learners is therefore significant as it improves
automaticity and leads to native-like selection in language use (Skehan,
1998). Given the ever-growing importance of learners’ phraseological
knowledge, ''Perspectives on the L2 Phrasicon: The view from Learner Corpora''
aims at reviewing the various dimensions of the development of phraseological
competence among L2 learners.

Edited by Sylviane Granger, one of the most well-known scholars of learner
corpus research, this volume is divided into four parts with the first and
fourth devoted to introduction and postface chapters. The second section of
the volume, which includes three chapters (Chapters 2 to 4), deals with the
synchronic studies of L2 phrasicon whereas the five chapters in the third part
(Chapters 5 to 9) focus on developmental and pseudo-longitudinal studies of
learners’ phraseological knowledge. In the introduction chapter, Granger sets
the scene by first describing the different approaches to phraseology and then
providing an overview of the studies on L2 phrasicon. Adopting an Integrated
Contrastive Model, Chapter 2 by Ebeling and Hasselgård explores the use of 
n-grams in a bilingual corpus of Norwegian and English research papers in
Linguistics in order to examine the degree to which Norwegian learners’
interlanguage phrasicon is influenced by their L1.  The quantitative phase of
this study gave inconclusive results as similarities in the functions of the
used n-grams were found not only between Norwegian learners and English
experts but also between L1 English students and Norwegian experts.
Qualitative explorations, however, revealed that Norwegian learners of English
are influenced by their L1 in their academic writing as they share “lexical
and discursive features with L1 expert Norwegian which distinguish their
academic writing from L1 English academic writing” (p. 43).

In Chapter 3, entitled ‘Exploring Learner Corpus Data for Language Testing and
Assessment Purposes: The Case of Verb + Noun Collocations’, Gyllstad and
Snoder examine the extent to which learner corpus data can inform the
development of language tests. Focusing on verb-noun collocations in the
Italian and Swedish sub-corpora of the international corpus of learner
English, the authors show that learners overuse collocations based on high
frequency words and underuse those featuring lower frequency words. They also
demonstrate, with concrete examples, how learners’ L1 influences their use of
collocations and how such insights can inform the design of English tests for
learners from different L1 backgrounds.

Chapter 4, by Gaëtanelle Gilquin and Sylviane Granger, explores the use of
passive verbs across 8 learner corpora and a comparable native English corpus.
Twenty most frequent verbs which appear in passive voice were selected from
the tagged version of the academic component of BNC Baby and their use across
the 9 corpora was investigated. In general, learners were found to underuse
passives as compared to the native baseline. There were, however, significant
differences between and among the 9 corpora, not only in the total ratio of
passives but also in the frequency of particular verbs in the passive form.
For example, the authors reported that although French learners of English
underused the passive form of “use”, “see”, and “show” compared to their
native peers, they overused “find”, “say”, “concern”, and “interest” in their
passive forms. The finding also shows that the use of patterns by learners of
English is not influenced by whether they are learning it as a second or
foreign language.

The next 5 chapters of this volume are dedicated to developmental studies on
learners’ phrasicon. Chapter 5 is a partial replication study exploring
phraseological complexity as an index of writing proficiency among L2 Dutch
learners. Given the findings of the previous studies that phraseological
complexity indices are significant predictors of language proficiency among
EFL learners (Paquot, 2018 & 2019), Rubin, Housen and Paquot set out to assess
the validity of these findings in a corpus of L2 Dutch writing. Employing a
multifactorial regression model, the authors explore 19 lexical, syntactic and
phraseological variables as predictors of Dutch proficiency. The findings of
the phraseological explorations were in agreement with the previous studies on
English, as many indices of phraseological sophistication and diversity were
proven to have a significant predictive power of L2 Dutch written proficiency,
much beyond that of lexical and syntactic measures. Investigation of lexical
and syntactic indices as predictors of L2 Dutch written competence, however,
did not confirm previous findings on English. While syntactic and lexical
complexity did not play a significant role in L2 English proficiency in
Paquot’s (2018, 2019) analyses, these indices, particularly the syntactic
complexity measures, contributed to the modelling of written proficiency as
measured through the Certificate of Dutch as a Foreign Language exam.

Chapter 6, entitled ‘Automatically Assessing Lexical Sophistication Using
Word, Bigram, and Dependency Indices’ is very similar in its methodology to
its preceding chapter, as both used regression models to examine the
contribution of a set of lexicogrammatical and phraseological measures to L2
written competence. Coauthored by Kristopher Kyle and Masaki Eguchi, this
chapter evaluated the contribution of word frequency, contextual
distinctiveness, concreteness, bigram strength of association, and dependency
bigram strength of association to L2 English written competence as measured
through holistic scores assigned to TOEFL essays. The findings of this study
showed that there is a small relationship between the examined indices and
writing score. Regression analysis also demonstrated that the best model for
the prediction of writing quality includes two word-level indices of
contextual diversity and dependency bigram strength of association. Compared
to less competent learners, proficient L2 writers were found to use words
which are more context-specific. They also used noun-adjective, verb-direct
object, and verb-adverb combinations that were more strongly associated. The
findings demonstrated that dependency bigrams may be better indicators of
phraseological knowledge than adjacent bigrams.

Vaclav Brezina and Lorrae Fox, in Chapter 7, ‘Adjective + Noun Collocations in
L2 and L1 Speech: Evidence from the Trinity Lancaster Corpus and the Spoken
BNC2014’ compare the adjective-noun collocations used by L2 learners of
different proficiency levels with those used in an L1 English baseline corpus.
As far as the frequency of collocations is concerned, the findings showed that
L2 learners at B1 level used significantly fewer adjective-noun collocations
compared to their B2, C1/C2, and L1 peers. The differences in the relative
frequency of colocations per 1000 nouns between B1 and B2 or among the
B2-C1/C2-L1 groups were not significant. In terms of the types of
adjective-noun combinations across learner and L1 corpora, the authors
reported a large overlap in the most frequent nouns as well as their
collocates across the proficiency levels. The L1 baseline group, however, used
different frequent adjectival collocates for the same nouns when compared to
the L2 speakers. The findings of this chapter imply that the development of
collocation knowledge is slow among learners.

‘Development of Formulaic Knowledge in Learner Writing: A Longitudinal
Perspective’ By Taha Omidian, Anna Siyanova-Chanturia, and Stefania Spina is a
logical progression from the previous chapter. There are two features which
distinguish this study from the other chapters in this section. First, this is
the only chapter that focuses on learners from a non-English L1 background
(i.e., Chinese) learning an L2 other than English (i.e. Italian). Second, it
is a genuinely longitudinal study which tracks the development of the same
learners over time and not a pseudo-longitudinal one that focuses on learners’
development cross-sectionally where different learners at various proficiency
levels are employed to represent different stages of L2 development. Focusing
on three aspects of phraseological knowledge, exclusivity, phrase frequency,
and phrasal diversity, the researchers explored how learners’ knowledge of
verb-noun collocations changed as a function of time. Descriptive analysis of
the data revealed an increase in the use of certain infelicitous verb-noun
combinations in learners’ end of the period essays. Regression analysis,
however, showed that this negative effect of time on the exclusivity scores
was not statistically significant. While longitudinal changes in phrase
frequency were also found to be statistically insignificant, learners’
proficiency level appeared to play a key role in phrase frequency, indicating
that more proficient learners produced more frequent combinations than their
less competent peers. Unlike the other two phraseological dimensions explored
in this study, phrasal diversity was found to be influenced by the interaction
of time and proficiency level of the learners, which implies that time
affected learners differently depending on their proficiency level.

Chapter 9, the final chapter of the third section of this volume, is entitled
‘Tracing Collocation in Learner Production and Processing: Integrating Corpus
Linguistic and Experimental Approaches’. This chapter stands out in the whole
volume as it is primarily a psycholinguistic study which has employed
corpus-based and corpus-attested examples as the materials of its experiments.
In the study reported in this chapter, Marco Schilk explores the processing of
collocations by German-speaking advanced learners of English using combined
eye tracking/ electroencephalography experimental setup. Using three types of
collocations, native-like, interference-based, and incongruous as input
stimuli presented to the participants, Schilk showed that native-like
collocations are processed faster than the other two types, as fixation times
on these phraseological units are comparatively shorter. The findings also
revealed that while less advanced learners followed a sequential style in
their processing of interference-based collocations, more advanced learners
made a summary scan of the sentences including these units. This led to
shorter fixation times in the more advanced group but a higher probability of
revisiting in the case of problematic items.

Part 4 of the volume is dedicated to Chapter 10 which is a postface by David
Singleton. In this final chapter, Singleton gives an overview of the
definition and history of the term ‘phrasicon.’ He then gives some warnings,
drawing on the words of Stephen Pit Corder (1973), about the possible
misinterpretations and misgenralizations of the findings of any research that
is based on frequency treatment of linguistic data. He closes the chapter by
relating the works reported in this volume to his own research on L2 learners’
lexicon and sharing some personal thoughts on the contents of the volume.

EVALUATION

I consider this volume a valuable contribution to the research on learners’
phrasicon as it has covered some of the areas of inquiry in phraseology which
have far-reaching implications for second language teaching and learning. The
design and data analysis methods used in the reported studies are rigorous and
can stand as excellent models for future researchers who intend to explore
similar paths of inquiry. As with any other edited volume, the present one is
not without shortcomings. First, I believe that the editor could have expanded
the scope of the volume to include further themes, like the processing of L2
phrasicon, in addition to the ones already covered (i.e. developmental and
synchronic studies). The other underexplored issue in this volume is the role
of phraseological knowledge in receptive language skills, listening and
reading. Exploration of the role of phraseology in these two skills can shed
better light on how learners’ phraseological repertoire is employed in
response to different modes of language and probably different types of tasks.
As to the focus of the chapters, I personally expected to see more studies on
languages other than English and on learners from a wider range of L1
backgrounds.  By the same token, I personally preferred to see some chapters
authored by researchers not based in the US and Europe. This, I believe, would
have added to the diversity of perspectives reflected in this volume.
 
In all, this volume is a unique collection of high quality research on L2
phraseology, one for which it is difficult to find a substitute. The book is
therefore a must-read for scholars and students who wish to know more about
the most recent updates of research on L2 phrasicon.

REFERENCES

Kremmel, B., Brunfaut, T., & Alderson, J. C. (2017). Exploring the role of
phraseological knowledge in foreign language reading. Applied Linguistics,
38(6), 848-870.

Li, L., Xu, H., & Zhang, X. (2020). Exploring the role of phraseological
knowledge and syntactic knowledge in L2 listening comprehension. Lingua, 248,
102957.

Paquot, M. (2018). Phraseological competence: A missing component in
university entrance language tests? Insights from a study of EFL learners’ use
of statistical collocations. Language Assessment Quarterly, 15(1), 29–43.

Paquot, M. (2019). The phraseological dimension in interlanguage complexity
research. Second Language Research, 35(1), 121–145.

Siyanova-Chanturia, A., & Pellicer-Sanchez, A. (Eds.). (2018). Understanding
formulaic language: A second language acquisition perspective. Routledge.

Skehan, P. (1998). A cognitive approach to language learning. Oxford
University Press.


ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Mohsen Shirazizadeh is an Assistant Professor of Applied Linguistics at
Alzahra University, Tehran, Iran. His areas of research include corpus
linguistics, English for academic purposes and formulaic language. His
writings have appeared in some of the internationally visible venues including
the Journal of English for Academic Purposes, RELC, Applied Linguistics, and
Journal of Language, Identity and Education.





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