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In:Learner Corpora and Language Teaching
Edited by Sandra Götz and Joybrato Mukherjee
[Studies in Corpus Linguistics 92] 2019
► pp. 51–74

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Complexity and qualitative lexical knowledge

A corpus-based study on the use of TAKE in German learner English

 | Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn
Published online: 6 May 2019
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https://doi.org/10.1075/scl.92.04bie
Abstract
This paper presents research that investigates differences in the use of the high-frequency verb TAKE between German learners of English and American English native speakers. This study examined 724 instances of TAKE and their respective lexical-syntactic structures in the German part of the ICLE and a comparable American English speaker corpus (LOCNESS). The sentences are classified according to a framework of complexity of lexical-syntactic structures adopted from Liu and Shaw (2001). The results of this research suggest that there are no significant differences in usage between both groups. The general conception that non-native speakers overuse simple verbs due to restricted vocabulary does not hold true for TAKE in the German learner data in this study.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Vocabulary knowledge and English verbs: A theoretical frame
    • 2.1Quantitative knowledge
    • 2.2Qualitative knowledge
    • 2.3English verbs: High frequency and grammatical patterns
  • 3.Method
    • 3.1Data extraction
    • 3.2Data analysis
  • 4.Findings
    • 4.1Complexity and grammatical distribution
    • 4.2Collocations
  • 5.Implications for language teaching
  • 6.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
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