Corpus Linguistics and Second Language Acquisition: Rules and Frequency in the Acquisition of English Multiple wh-Questions

Abstract

Existing research in second language acquisition has speculated that the grammatical systems of learners may be heavily affected by the relative frequency of grammatical structures. Learners rely on what they have heard and how often. Native speakers, in contrast, may be better able to extract abstract principles from the input and are therefore less dependent on frequency. If a structure follows a principle, native speakers will readily accept it even if it has seldom been encountered, while non-native speakers may reject it if it is rare. However, this speculation has not been tested in studies that use the techniques of corpus linguistics to analyze relative frequency. The present study investigates the acquisition of English multiple wh-question, in particular the relationship of frequency to grammaticality judgements in English native speakers and in advanced Japanese learners of English. Certain types of multiple wh-questions are grammatical in English, but others are not. Among the grammatical types, there are large differences in frequency, as shown by an analysis of the COBUILD Bank of English. In an acceptability judgement task, the ratings of native speakers of English clustered according to principled grammaticality while the ratings of non-native speakers clustered according to frequency, providing confirmation for the hypothesis that native speakers operate more on principle while nonnatives operate more on the basis of what they have heard often.