The Emergence of Second Language Categorisation of the English Article Construction

Helen Zhao

doi:10.3390/languages5040054

Abstract

This study examines the emergent cognitive categorisation of the English article construction among second language (L2) learners. One hundred and fourteen Mandarin-L1 learners of English, divided into two L2 proficiency levels (low-to-intermediate and advanced), were measured by a computer-based cloze test for the accuracy and response time of appropriate use of English articles in sentential contexts. Results showed that when learners acquired the polysemous English article construction they demonstrated stronger competence in differentiating individual form-function mappings in the article construction. L2 learners’ patterns of article construction usage were shaped by semantic functions. Learners performed better on the definiteness category than on the non-definiteness categories, suggesting that learners were sensitive to the prototypicality of nominal grounding. Advanced learners demonstrated an increased sensitivity to semantic idiosyncrasy, but they lacked contextualised constructional knowledge. Competition among the functional categories and restructuring of functional categories are important ways of regularization that learners go through to acquire semantically complex systems such as articles.

Highlights

This study examines the emergent cognitive categorisation of the English article construction among second language (L2) learners
Drawing analogy based on input exemplars allows learners to formulate the formal schematic representation of the construction and come to understand the associated polysemous meanings
The current study addresses the gaps identified in the existing literature on usage-based L2 acquisition of constructional knowledge by analysing changes in learners’ use of the English article construction in a lab-based experimental task at two proficiency levels from low-to-intermediate to advanced

Summary

Introduction

This study examines the emergent cognitive categorisation of the English article construction among second language (L2) learners. Form-meaning mappings that are conventionalised become language constructions as a result of frequent usage in the community. Grammar is a combination of such abstract structures that operate at levels of words, morphemes, phrases, and clauses Such an approach to grammar shreds the traditional boundary between lexicon and syntax with an attempt to apply the generalisation commitment of cognitive linguistics to the study of language and language acquisition (Evans and Green 2006). To acquire a construction (i.e., a system of form-function mappings) involves extracting structural and semantic regularities from large amounts of exemplars in the input. The studies have adopted online processing methods such as recognition and naming tasks and acceptability judgment tasks, as well as free or structured production tasks Their findings reveal that as L2 proficiency increases, learners gradually expand their VAC repertoire and productivity and approximate native usage. Learners develop implicit knowledge on the VACs that are influenced by factors such as VAC verb frequency, verb contingency (strength of form-meaning association), prototypicality of meaning, etc

Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion