Individual variation and the role of L1 in the L2 development of English grammatical morphemes : insights from learner corpora
The overarching goal of the dissertation is to illustrate the relevance of learner corpus research to the field of second language acquisition (SLA). The possibility that learner corpora can be useful in mainstream SLA research has a significant implication given that they have not been systematically explored in relation to SLA theories. The thesis contributes to building a methodological framework to utilize learner corpora beneficially to SLA and argues that learner corpus research contributes to other disciplines. This is achieved by a series of case studies that quantitatively analyze individual variation and the role of native language (L1) in second language (L2) development of English grammatical morphemes and explain the findings with existing SLA theories. The dissertation investigates the L2 development of morphemes based on two largescale learner corpora. It first reviews the literature and points out that the L2 acquisition order of English grammatical morphemes that has been believed universal in SLA research may, in fact, vary across the learners with different L1 backgrounds and that individual differences in morpheme studies have been relatively neglected in previous literature. The present
Murakami, Akira
second language acquisition ; corpus linguistics ; statistical modeling ; grammatical morphemes ; L1 influence
Individual variation and the role of L1 in the L2 development of English grammatical morphemes : insights from learner corpora. The overarching goal of the dissertation is to illustrate the relevance of learner corpus research to the field of second language acquisition (SLA). The possibility that learner corpora can be useful in mainstream SLA research has a significant implication given that they have not been systematically explored in relation to SLA theories. The thesis contributes to building a methodological framework to utilize learner corpora beneficially to SLA and argues that learner corpus research contributes to other disciplines. This is achieved by a series of case studies that quantitatively analyze individual variation and the role of native language (L1) in second language (L2) development of English grammatical morphemes and explain the findings with existing SLA theories. The dissertation investigates the L2 development of morphemes based on two largescale learner corpora. It first reviews the literature and points out that the L2 acquisition order of English grammatical morphemes that has been believed universal in SLA research may, in fact, vary across the learners with different L1 backgrounds and that individual differences in morpheme studies have been relatively neglected in previous literature. The present
individual variation role development english grammatical morpheme insight learner_corpus overarch goal illustrate relevance learner_corpus field_second language_acquisition sla possibility learner_corpus useful mainstream sla significant_implication give systematically explored relation sla theory contributes build methodological_framework utilize learner_corpus sla argue learner_corpus contributes discipline achieve series_case study quantitatively analyze individual variation role native_language second_language development english grammatical morpheme explain finding exist sla theory investigates_development morpheme base largescale learner_corpus first review_literature point acquisition order english grammatical morpheme believe universal sla may fact vary_across learner different background individual_difference morpheme study relatively neglect previous_literature present