The development of light verb constructions in spoken learner English
(2017) Light verb constructions in Germanic languages — Location: Bruxelles (17.November.2017)
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- High-frequency verbs like make, do, give or take are often “lexical teddy bears” (Hasselgren 1994) for learners of English, being part of their repertoire of preferred words because they are considered to be safe and easy to use. Yet, there is at least one use of high-frequency verbs that tends to be problematic for learners, namely light verb constructions (see Sinclair 1991, Lewis 1993). Several studies based on written learner corpora of English have brought to light a certain underuse of light verb constructions (e.g. Altenberg & Granger 2001 for Swedish and French-speaking learners, or Juknevičienė 2008 for Lithuanian learners). It has also been shown that learners often misuse light verb constructions, choosing the wrong verb or using a light verb construction when the corresponding single verb would be more appropriate, for example (cf. Nesselhauf 2005), and that transfer from the mother tongue may explain the presence of certain light verb constructions in learners’ production (e.g. Gilquin 2007). In this presentation, I would like to explore two aspects of light verb constructions in learner English that have been under-researched so far, namely their use in spoken production and their patterns of development. My analysis will be based on data from the Trinity Lancaster Corpus, a new resource including transcribed recordings of the Graded Examination in Spoken English organised by Trinity College London (see Gablasova et al. 2015). Using the candidates’ production as a learner corpus and the (native) examiners’ production as a reference corpus, the frequency of light verb constructions with make, give and take in learner and native speech will be compared, as well as the types of nouns that are used with each verb. I will then use the CEFR scores that are assigned to each learner as part of the metadata to compare the use of the light verb construction at B1, B2 and C1/C2 levels and see how the construction evolves with increased proficiency, in both quantitative and qualitative terms. This study should cast a new light on a construction that is important for learners, because it “contribute[s] to the impression of fluency in English given by a foreign user” (Sinclair 1990: 147).
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Gilquin, G. (2017). The development of light verb constructions in spoken learner English. Light verb constructions in Germanic languages, Bruxelles. https://hdl.handle.net/2078.5/221556