Abstract
This paper investigates frequency effects in the L2 acquisition of the catenative verb construction by German learners of English from a usage-based perspective by presenting findings from two experimental studies and a complementary corpus study. It was examined if and to what extent the frequency of the verb in the catenative verb construction affects the choice of the target-like complement type and if the catenative verb construction with a to-infinitive complement, which is highly frequent in English, is more accurately acquired and entrenched than the less frequent variant with an -ing complement. In all three studies, the more frequent construction with a to-infinitive yielded higher numbers of target-like complement choices. Furthermore, it was shown that the verb’s faithfulness to the construction made a significant prediction of a target-like complement preference. It is argued that a higher faithfulness promotes a target-like entrenchment of the construction and motivates a taxonomic generalisation across related exemplars. Furthermore, the results provide support for the idea that the mental representation of language is comprised of item-specific as well as more abstract schema knowledge, where frequency determines the specificity with which the construction is entrenched.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank the editors of Cognitive Linguistics and the anonymous reviewers for their constructive and invaluable feedback on an earlier version of this paper. I also wish to thank Petar Milin and Gero Kunter for their helpful advise on the statistics.
References
Abbot-Smith, Kirsten & Michael Tomasello. 2006. Exemplar-learning and schematization in a usage-based account of syntactic acquisition. The Linguistic Review 23(3). 275–290.10.1515/TLR.2006.011Search in Google Scholar
Alexopoulou, Theodora, Jeroen Geertzen, Anna Korhonen & Detmar Meurers. 2015. Exploring big educational learner corpora for SLA: Perspectives on relative clauses. International Journal of Learner Corpus Research 1(1). 96–129.10.1075/ijlcr.1.1.04aleSearch in Google Scholar
Ambridge, Ben, Evan Kidd, Caroline F. Rowland & Anna L. Theakston. 2015. The ubiquity of frequency effects in first language acquisition. Journal of Child Language 42(2). 239–273.10.1017/S030500091400049XSearch in Google Scholar
Ambridge, Ben, Julian M. Pine, Caroline F. Rowland, Daniel Freudenthal & Franklin Chang. 2014. Avoiding dative overgeneralisation errors: Semantics, statistics or both? Language, Cognition and Neuroscience 29(2). 218–243.10.1080/01690965.2012.738300Search in Google Scholar
Ambridge, Ben, Julian M. Pine, Caroline F. Rowland & Chris R. Young. 2008. The effect of verb semantic class and verb frequency (entrenchment) on children’s and adults’ graded judgements of argument-structure overgeneralization errors. Cognition 106(1). 87–129.10.1016/j.cognition.2006.12.015Search in Google Scholar
Ambridge, Ben, Anna L. Theakston, Elena V. M. Lieven & Michael Tomasello. 2006. The distributed learning effect for children’s acquisition of an abstract syntactic construction. Cognitive Development 21(2). 174–193.10.1016/j.cogdev.2005.09.003Search in Google Scholar
Anderson, Janet I. 1983. An accuracy order of English of English sentential complemts for native speakers of Persian and Spanish. Papers and Studies in Contrastive Linguistics (16). 16–30.Search in Google Scholar
Anthony, Laurence. 2015. AntConc. Tokyo, Japan: Waseda University.Search in Google Scholar
Azazil, Lina. 2015. Frequency effects in L2 acquisition of English syntax: The case of the catenative verb construction. Siegen: University of Siegen. MA thesis.Search in Google Scholar
Baayen, R. H. 2008. Analyzing linguistic data: A practical introduction to statistics using R. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.10.1017/CBO9780511801686Search in Google Scholar
Baayen, R. H., D. J. Davidson & D. M. Bates. 2008. Mixed-effects modelling with crossed random effects for subjects and items. Journal of Memory and Language 59(4). 390–412.10.1016/j.jml.2007.12.005Search in Google Scholar
Barton, Kamil. 2018. MuMIn: Multi-model inference: R package version 1.40.4.https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=MuMIn.Search in Google Scholar
Bates, Douglas, Martin Mächler, Ben Bolker & Steve Walker. 2015. Fitting linear mixed-effects models using lme4. Journal of Statistical Software 67(1). 1–48.10.18637/jss.v067.i01Search in Google Scholar
Bourke, James M. 2007. Verb complementation: A pedagogical challenge. Reflections on English Language Teaching 6(1). 35–50.Search in Google Scholar
Boyd, Jeremy K. & Adele E. Goldberg. 2011. Learning what “NOT” to say: The role of statistical preemption and categorization in A-adjective production. Language 87(1). 55–83.10.1353/lan.2011.0012Search in Google Scholar
Brooks, Patricia J. & Michael Tomasello. 1999. How children constrain their argument structure constructions. Language 75(4). 720–738.10.2307/417731Search in Google Scholar
Brooks, Patricia J., Michael Tomasello, Kelly Dodson & Lawrence B. Lewis. 1999. Young children’s overgeneralizations with fixed transitivity verbs. Child Development 70(6). 1325–1337.10.1111/1467-8624.00097Search in Google Scholar
Bybee, Joan L. 2006. From usage to grammar: The mind’s response to repetition. Language 82(4). 711–733.10.1353/lan.2006.0186Search in Google Scholar
Bybee, Joan L. 2007. Frequency of use and the organization of language. Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press.10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195301571.001.0001Search in Google Scholar
Bybee, Joan L. 2008. Usage-based grammar and second language acquisition. In Peter Robinson & Nick C. Ellis (eds.), Handbook of cognitive linguistics and second language acquisition, 216–236. New York, London: Routledge.Search in Google Scholar
Bybee, Joan L. 2013. Usage-based theory and exemplar representations of constructions. In Thomas Hoffmann & Graeme Trousdale (eds.), The Oxford handbook of construction grammar (Oxford handbooks in linguistics), 49–69. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press.10.1093/oxfordhb/9780195396683.013.0004Search in Google Scholar
Bybee, Joan L. & Sandra Thompson. 1997. Three frequency effects in syntax. In Proceedings of the Twenty-Third Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society: General Session and Parasession on Pragmatics and Grammatical Structure, 378–388.Search in Google Scholar
Casenhiser, Devin M. & Adele E. Goldberg. 2005. Fast mapping between a phrasal form and meaning. Developmental Science 8(6). 500–508.10.1111/j.1467-7687.2005.00441.xSearch in Google Scholar
Celce-Murcia, Marianne & Diane Larsen-Freeman. 1999. The grammar book: An ESL/EFL teacher’s course. Boston: Heinle and Heinle.Search in Google Scholar
Council of Europe. 2009. Common European framework of reference for languages: Learning, teaching, assessment, 10th edn. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press.Search in Google Scholar
Dąbrowska, Ewa & Dagmar Divjak. 2015. Introduction. In Ewa Dąbrowska & Dagmar Divjak (eds.), Handbook of cognitive linguistics, 1–9. Berlin, München, Boston: De Gruyter.10.1515/9783110292022Search in Google Scholar
Davies, Mark. 2004–. BYU-BNC (Based on the British National Corpus from Oxford University Press). https://corpus.byu.edu/bnc/ (accessed 29 August 2017).Search in Google Scholar
de Smet, Hendrik & Hubert Cuyckens. 2005. Pragmatic strengthening and the meaning of complement constructions: The case of like and love with the to-Infinitive. Journal of English Linguistics 33(1). 3–34.10.1177/0075424204273959Search in Google Scholar
Diessel, Holger. 2004. The acquisition of complex sentences. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.10.1017/CBO9780511486531Search in Google Scholar
Diessel, Holger. 2007. Frequency effects in language acquisition, language use, and diachronic change. New Ideas in Psychology 25(2). 108–127.10.1016/j.newideapsych.2007.02.002Search in Google Scholar
Divjak, Dagmar & Antti Arppe. 2013. Extracting prototypes from exemplars: What can corpus data tell us about concept representation? Cognitive Linguistics 24(2). 221–274.10.1515/cog-2013-0008Search in Google Scholar
Divjak, Dagmar & Catherine L. Caldwell-Harris. 2015. Frequency and entrenchment. In Ewa Dąbrowska & Dagmar Divjak (eds.), Handbook of cognitive linguistics, 53–75. Berlin, München, Boston: De Gruyter.10.1515/9783110292022-004Search in Google Scholar
Duffley, Patrick J. 2000. Gerund versus infinitive as complement of transitive verbs in English: The problems of “Tense” and “Control”. Journal of English Linguistics 28(3). 221–248.10.1177/00754240022005018Search in Google Scholar
EF Education First Group. 2015. EF Englishtown. http://www.englishtown.de/en-de/learn-english-online/.Search in Google Scholar
Egan, Thomas. 2008. Non-finite complementation: A usage-based study of infinitive and -ing clauses in English. Amsterdam, New York, NY: Rodopi.10.1163/9789401205542Search in Google Scholar
Ellis, Nick 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(02). 143–188.10.1017/S0272263102002024Search in Google Scholar
Ellis, Nick C. 2006. Language acquisition as rational contingency learning. Applied Linguistics 27(1). 1–24.10.1093/applin/ami038Search in Google Scholar
Ellis, Nick C. 2013. Construction grammar and second language acquisition. In Thomas Hoffmann & Graeme Trousdale (eds.), The Oxford handbook of construction grammar (Oxford handbooks in linguistics), 365–378. Oxford: Oxford University Press.10.1093/oxfordhb/9780195396683.013.0020Search in Google Scholar
Ellis, Nick C. & Diane Larsen-Freeman. 2009. Constructing a second language: Analyses analyses and computational simulations of the emergence of linguistic constructions. Language Learning 59(1). 90–125.10.1111/j.1467-9922.2009.00537.xSearch in Google Scholar
Ellis, Nick C., Matthew B. O’Donnell & Ute Römer. 2014a. Second language verb-argument constructions are sensitive to form, function, frequency, contingency, and prototypicality. Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism 4(4). 405–431.10.1075/lab.4.4.01ellSearch in Google Scholar
Ellis, Nick C., Matthew B. O’Donnell & Ute Römer. 2014b. The processing of verb-argument constructions is sensitive to form, function, frequency, contingency and prototypicality. Cognitive Linguistics 25(1). 55–98.10.1515/cog-2013-0031Search in Google Scholar
Ellis, Nick C., Ute Römer & Matthew B. O’Donnell. 2016. Usage-based approaches to language acquisition and processing: Cognitive and corpus investigations of construction grammar (Language learning monograph series). West Sussex: Wiley.Search in Google Scholar
Ellis, Nick C. & Stefanie Wulff. 2015. Second language acquisition. In Ewa Dąbrowska & Dagmar Divjak (eds.), Handbook of cognitive linguistics, 409–716. Berlin, München & Boston: De Gruyter.10.1515/9783110292022-020Search in Google Scholar
Fox, John. 2003. Effect displays in R for generalised linear models. Journal of Statistical Software 8(15). 1–27.10.18637/jss.v008.i15Search in Google Scholar
Gass, Susan M. & Larry Selinker. 2008. Second language acquisition: An introductory course. 3rd edn. New York, London: Routledge.10.4324/9780203932841Search in Google Scholar
Geertzen, Jeroen, Theodora Alexopoulou & Anna Korhonen. 2013. The EF-Cambridge open language database. https://corpus.mml.cam.ac.uk/efcamdat/ (accessed 20 October 2015).Search in Google Scholar
Gilquin, Gaëtanelle. 2015. From design to collection of learner corpora. In Sylviane Granger, Gaëtanelle Gilquin & Fanny Meunier (eds.), The Cambridge handbook of learner corpus research (Cambridge Handbooks in Language and Linguistics), 9–34. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.10.1017/CBO9781139649414.002Search in Google Scholar
Goldberg, Adele E. 1995. Constructions: A construction grammar approach to argument structure (Cognitive theory of language and culture). Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press.Search in Google Scholar
Goldberg, Adele E. 2006. Constructions at work: The nature of generalization in language. Oxford: Oxford University Press.10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199268511.001.0001Search in Google Scholar
Goldberg, Adele E. Devin M. Casenhiser & Tiffani R. White. 2007. Constructions as categories of language. New Ideas in Psychology 25(2). 70–86.10.1016/j.newideapsych.2007.02.004Search in Google Scholar
Goldberg, Adele E. & Devin Casenhiser. 2008. Construction learning and second language acquisition. In Peter Robinson & Nick C. Ellis (eds.), Handbook of cognitive linguistics and second language acquisition, 197–215. New York, London: Routledge.Search in Google Scholar
Goldberg, Adele E., Devin M. Casenhiser & Nitya Sethuraman. 2004. Learning argument structure generalizations. Cognitive Linguistics 15(3). 289–316.10.1515/cogl.2004.011Search in Google Scholar
Gries, Stefan T. & Dagmar Divjak (eds.). 2012. Frequency effects in language learning and processing (Trends in linguistics Studies and monographs 244,1). Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton.Search in Google Scholar
Gries, Stefan T. & Stefanie Wulff. 2009. Psycholinguistic and corpus-linguistic evidence for L2 constructions. Annual Review of Cognitive Linguistics 7. 163–186.10.1075/arcl.7.07griSearch in Google Scholar
Harrell, Frank E. 2017. rms: Regression modeling strategies. http://CRAN.R-project.org/package=rms.Search in Google Scholar
Huddleston, Rodney D. & Geoffrey K. Pullum. 2002. The cambridge grammar of the English language. Cambridge, UK, New York: Cambridge University Press.10.1017/9781316423530Search in Google Scholar
Kay, Paul & Charles J. Fillmore. 1999. Grammatical constructions and linguistic generalizations: The What’s X doing Y? construction. Language 75(1). 1–33.10.2307/417472Search in Google Scholar
Kidd, Evan, Elena V. M. Lieven & Michael Tomasello. 2006. Examining the role of lexical frequency in the acquisition and processing of sentential complements. Cognitive Development 21(2). 93–107.10.1016/j.cogdev.2006.01.006Search in Google Scholar
Kidd, Evan, Elena V. M. Lieven & Michael Tomasello. 2010. Lexical frequency and exemplar-based learning effects in language acquisition: Evidence from sentential complements. Language Sciences 32(1). 132–142.10.1016/j.langsci.2009.05.002Search in Google Scholar
Madlener, Karin. 2015. Frequency effects in instructed second language acquisition (Applications of Cognitive Linguistics /ACL] 29). Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter Mouton.10.1515/9783110405538Search in Google Scholar
Madlener, Karin. 2016. Input optimization: Effects of type and token frequency manipulations in instructed second language learning. In Heike Behrens & Stefan Pfänder (eds.), Experience counts: Frequency effects in language acquisition, language change, and language processing (Linguae & litterae Volume 54), 133–173. Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter.10.1515/9783110346916-007Search in Google Scholar
Martinez-Garcia, Maria T. & Stefanie Wulff. 2012. Not wrong, yet not quite right: Spanish ESL students’ use of gerundial and infinitival complementation. International Journal of Applied Linguistics 22(2). 225–244.10.1111/j.1473-4192.2012.00310.xSearch in Google Scholar
Mazurkewich, Irene. 1988. The acquisition of infinitive and gerund complements by second language learners. In Suzanne Flynn & Wayne O’Neil (eds.), Linguistic theory in second language acquisition, 127–143. Dordrecht [etc.]: Springer Netherlands.10.1007/978-94-009-2733-9_9Search in Google Scholar
Menard, Scott. 2002. Applied logistic regression analysis (Sage university papers: Quantitative applications in the social sciences 106), 2nd edn. Thousand Oaks Calif. u.a.: Sage.10.4135/9781412983433Search in Google Scholar
Palmer, Frank R. 1974. The English verb. London, Beccies, Colchester: Longman.Search in Google Scholar
Perek, Florent & Adele E. Goldberg. 2015. Generalizing beyond the input: The functions of the constructions matter. Journal of Memory and Language 84. 108–127.10.1016/j.jml.2015.04.006Search in Google Scholar
Perek, Florent & Adele E. Goldberg. 2017. Linguistic generalization on the basis of function and constraints on the basis of statistical preemption. Cognition 168. 276–293.10.1016/j.cognition.2017.06.019Search in Google Scholar
Petrovitz, Walter. 2001. The sequencing of verbal-complement structures. ELT Journal 55(2). 172–177.10.1093/elt/55.2.172Search in Google Scholar
Quirk, Randolph, Sidney Greenbaum, Geoffrey Leech, Svartvik & Jan. 1985. A comprehensive grammar of the English language. London, New York: Longman.Search in Google Scholar
Rescorla, Robert A. 1968. Probability of shock in the presence and absence of CS in fear conditioning. Journal of comparative and physiological psychology 66(1). 1.10.1037/h0025984Search in Google Scholar
Robenalt, Clarice & Adele E. Goldberg. 2015. Judgment evidence for statistical preemption: It is relatively better to vanish than to disappear a rabbit, but a lifeguard can equally well backstroke or swim children to shore. Cognitive Linguistics 26(3). 69.10.1515/cog-2015-0004Search in Google Scholar
Schmid, Hans-Jörg. 2000. English abstract nouns as conceptual shells: From corpus to cognition. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.10.1515/9783110808704Search in Google Scholar
Schmid, Hans-Jörg (ed.). 2017a. Entrenchment and the psychology of language learning: How we recognize and adapt linguistic knowledge. Washington DC, Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.10.1037/15969-000Search in Google Scholar
Schmid, Hans-Jörg. 2017b. A framework for understanding linguistic entrenchment and its psychological foundations. In Hans-Jörg Schmid (ed.), Entrenchment and the psychology of language learning: How we recognize and adapt linguistic knowledge, 9–35. Washington DC, Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.10.1037/15969-002Search in Google Scholar
Schwartz, Michael & Pei-ni L. Causarano. 2007. The role of frequency in SLA: An Analysis of gerund and infinitives in ESL written discourse. Arizona Working Papers in SLA & Teaching (14). 43–57.Search in Google Scholar
Stefanowitsch, Anatol & Stefan T. Gries. 2003. Collostructions: Investigating the interaction of words and constructions. International Journal of Corpus Linguistics 8(2). 209–243.10.1075/ijcl.8.2.03steSearch in Google Scholar
Tagliamonte, Sali A. & R. H.Baayen. 2012. Models, forests, and trees of York English: Was/were variation as a case study for statistical practice. Language variation and change 24(2). 135–178.10.1017/S0954394512000129Search in Google Scholar
Taylor, John R. 2012. The mental corpus: How language is represented in the mind. Corby: Oxford University Press.10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199290802.001.0001Search in Google Scholar
Team, R. Core. 2017. R: A language and environment for statistical computing. Vienna, Austria: R.Search in Google Scholar
Theakston, Anna L. 2004. The role of entrenchment in children’s and adults’ performance on grammaticality judgment tasks. Cognitive Development 19(1). 15–34.10.1016/j.cogdev.2003.08.001Search in Google Scholar
Tomasello, Michael. 2003. Constructing a language: A Usage-based theory of language acquisition. Cambridge, Massachusetts, London: Harvard University Press.Search in Google Scholar
Winter, Bodo. 2013. Linear models and linear mixed effects models in R with linguistic applications. https://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1308/1308.5499.pdf.Search in Google Scholar
© 2020 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
