Error Analysis of Support Verb Constructions in Written Spanish Learner Corpora

Abstract

This article studies the use of support verb constructions (SVCs) in the written production of learners of Spanish. SVCs are lexical combinations whose content is similar to verbal predicates but is distributed between a verb and a noun, the noun being the carrier of the core lexical meaning of the predicate. Although there is considerable agreement on the importance of these constructions in the learning process, their use in the production of learners of Spanish has so far attracted little attention. This study examines the difficulties posed to learners by this construction by means of a qualitative analysis of the errors registered in 3 samples consisting of essays by learners with 3 different mother tongues (English, Swedish, and Japanese). It focuses on 3 types of error, 2 of which-the support verb choice and the determiner choice-seem to be especially problematic due to the unpredictability of the units involved. The third type-using an SVC instead of a more idiomatic 1-word verb-is regularly found only in the samples of the Japanese speakers, which suggests the influence of a particular mother tongue in its production. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]