Abstract
This paper concerns preposition use in oral language produced by advanced Norwegian learners of English, using primary data from an oral learner corpus (LINDSEI-NO). We investigate the frequency of inappropriate preposition use in approximately 13 hours of transcribed informal interviews, as well as the possible extent to which L1 transfer may play a role in production. The contextually inappropriate prepositions were categorized in terms of factors that may influence preposition use, with particular focus on the congruence between L1 and L2 with respect to syntactic structure and basic meaning. These results about spoken preposition use are then contrasted with results from a corresponding investigation into preposition use in a written learner corpus (NICLE), allowing for comparison of preposition usage across modes.
Highlights
This paper concerns preposition use in oral language produced by advanced Norwegian learners of English, using primary data from an oral learner corpus (LINDSEI-NO)
Concluding remarks The findings presented in this paper may seem surprising in light of the widespread perception that English prepositions are difficult to acquire
The Norwegian learners who contributed to the LINDSEI-NO data employed most prepositions appropriately; they produced contextually inappropriate prepositions in less than 5% of the cases, which represents only 0.3-0.4% of the total number of words in the material
Summary
This paper concerns preposition use in oral language produced by advanced Norwegian learners of English, using primary data from an oral learner corpus (LINDSEI-NO). The contextually inappropriate prepositions were categorized in terms of factors that may influence preposition use, with particular focus on the congruence between L1 and L2 with respect to syntactic structure and basic meaning. These results about spoken preposition use are contrasted with results from a corresponding investigation into preposition use in a written learner corpus (NICLE), allowing for comparison of preposition usage across modes. The corpus material used in the investigation is first presented, along with our methodological approach: All prepositions in the spoken data were categorized for contextual appropriateness, while those prepositions judged to be inappropriate were further classified according to syntactic congruence between the learners’ first language (L1) and second language (L2), and for possible L1 transfer.
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