In the present study, we sought to advance the field of learner corpus research by tracking the development of phrasal vocabulary in essays produced at two different points in time. To this aim, we employed a large pool of second language (L2) learners (N = 175) from three proficiency levels—beginner, elementary, and intermediate—and focused on an underrepresented L2 (Italian). Employing mixed‐effects models, a flexible and powerful tool for corpus data analysis, we analyzed learner combinations in terms of five different measures: phrase frequency, mutual information, lexical gravity, delta P_forward, and delta P_backward. Our findings suggest a complex picture, in which higher proficiency and greater exposure to the L2 do not result in more idiomatic and targetlike output, and may, in fact, result in greater reliance on low frequency combinations whose constituent words are non‐associated or mutually attracted.

中文翻译：

---

第二语言写作中的多词表达：大规模纵向学习者语料库研究

在本研究中，我们试图通过跟踪在两个不同时间点所撰写的论文中的短语词汇的发展来推进学习者语料库的研究领域。为了达到这个目标，我们从三个熟练程度（初学者，初级和中级）中聘请了大量第二语言（L2）学习者（N = 175），并专注于代表性不足的第二语言（意大利语）。利用混合效果模型（一种灵活而强大的语料库数据分析工具），我们根据五种不同的量度对学习者组合进行了分析：短语频率，互信息，词法引力，_前向增量P和_后向增量P。我们的发现表明情况复杂，其中较高的熟练度和对L2的更多暴露不会导致更多惯用和类似目标的输出，并且实际上可能导致对低频组合的依赖更大，低频组合的构成词是不相关或相互关联的被吸引。