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Article published In: International Journal of Corpus Linguistics
Vol. 30:1 (2025) ► pp.79–105

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Adverb placement in L1 and L2 spoken production

The effect of linguistic and extralinguistic factors

ORCiD logo with link | Northern Arizona University
ORCiD logo with link | University of Bremen
ORCiD logo with link | Oxford College of Emory University
ORCiD logo with link | University of Oslo
 | University of Bremen
 | University of Barcelona
ORCiD logo with link | Radboud University
ORCiD logo with link | University of Barcelona
ORCiD logo with link | FNRS/Université catholique de Louvain
Published online: 27 June 2025
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/ijcl.23047.lar
Abstract
Most existing research on adverb placement has focused exclusively on writing. This is unfortunate, given that the spoken mode offers limited opportunity for pre-planning and post-editing and may thus more readily reveal patterns of L1 transfer. Further, previous studies rarely consider the impact of the linguistic context surrounding the adverb. This study broadens our understanding of (i) the potential role of L1 transfer, and (ii) the extralinguistic and linguistic factors that influence adverb placement. We look at spoken English produced by students from seven L1 backgrounds: Dutch, English, French, German, Norwegian, Spanish, and Swedish. The results show that the most influential factors in explaining differences in adverb placement were the presence or absence of auxiliaries and the type of adverb. We find only very limited evidence of L1 transfer, suggesting that upper-intermediate to advanced learners have largely mastered the positional preferences of adverbs in English, even in restrictive production contexts.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Adverb placement and adverb use
  • 3.Corpora and method
    • 3.1Corpora
    • 3.2Method
      • 3.2.1Coding for adverb position and linguistic features
      • 3.2.2A framework for the study of L1 transfer
  • 4.Results and discussion
    • 4.1The impact of extralinguistic and linguistic variables
    • 4.2L1 transfer
  • 5.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
References (42)
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