Abstract This paper reports on the state-of-the-art in application of multidimensional scaling (MDS) techniques to create semantic maps in linguistic research. MDS refers to a statistical technique that represents objects (lexical items, linguistic contexts, languages, etc.) as points in a space so that close similarity between the objects corresponds to close distances between the corresponding points in the representation. We focus on the use of MDS in combination with parallel corpus data as used in research on cross-linguistic variation. We first introduce the mathematical foundations of MDS and then give an exhaustive overview of past research that employs MDS techniques in combination with parallel corpus data. We propose a set of terminology to succinctly describe the key parameters of a particular MDS application. We then show that this computational methodology is theory-neutral, i.e. it can be employed to answer research questions in a variety of linguistic theoretical frameworks. Finally, we show how this leads to two lines of future developments for MDS research in linguistics.
{"title":"Generating semantic maps through multidimensional scaling: linguistic applications and theory","authors":"Martijn van der Klis, J. Tellings","doi":"10.1515/cllt-2021-0018","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/cllt-2021-0018","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This paper reports on the state-of-the-art in application of multidimensional scaling (MDS) techniques to create semantic maps in linguistic research. MDS refers to a statistical technique that represents objects (lexical items, linguistic contexts, languages, etc.) as points in a space so that close similarity between the objects corresponds to close distances between the corresponding points in the representation. We focus on the use of MDS in combination with parallel corpus data as used in research on cross-linguistic variation. We first introduce the mathematical foundations of MDS and then give an exhaustive overview of past research that employs MDS techniques in combination with parallel corpus data. We propose a set of terminology to succinctly describe the key parameters of a particular MDS application. We then show that this computational methodology is theory-neutral, i.e. it can be employed to answer research questions in a variety of linguistic theoretical frameworks. Finally, we show how this leads to two lines of future developments for MDS research in linguistics.","PeriodicalId":45605,"journal":{"name":"Corpus Linguistics and Linguistic Theory","volume":"18 1","pages":"627 - 665"},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2020-12-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43426438","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-11-30DOI: 10.1515/cllt-2020-frontmatter3
{"title":"Frontmatter","authors":"","doi":"10.1515/cllt-2020-frontmatter3","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/cllt-2020-frontmatter3","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":45605,"journal":{"name":"Corpus Linguistics and Linguistic Theory","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2020-11-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1515/cllt-2020-frontmatter3","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49157603","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract This study investigates the developmental trajectory of L2 English progressive construction with a focus on frequency, verb-construction contingency and semantic prototypicality. Comparisons were made on the use of the progressive construction in argumentative essays written by Chinese learners at three different proficiency levels and English native speakers. Data of frequency and verb type distribution indicate that L2 learners’ progressive repertoire showed an increase in productivity and variability and a spread from a fixed type to a wider range of verbs. Contingency data demonstrate that, when associating verbs with the progressive, learners’ preference shifted from prototypical progressive verbs which denote specific and dynamic meanings to more marginal members represented by generic verbs. In addition, semantic prototypicality overweighs generality in driving the development of the progressive, which presents an interesting contrast with findings in the verb-argument construction learning literature where semantically general verbs were first predominantly used in the construction.
{"title":"Development of the progressive construction in Chinese EFL learners’ written production: From prototypes to marginal members","authors":"Tianqi Wu, Min Wang","doi":"10.1515/cllt-2020-0029","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/cllt-2020-0029","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This study investigates the developmental trajectory of L2 English progressive construction with a focus on frequency, verb-construction contingency and semantic prototypicality. Comparisons were made on the use of the progressive construction in argumentative essays written by Chinese learners at three different proficiency levels and English native speakers. Data of frequency and verb type distribution indicate that L2 learners’ progressive repertoire showed an increase in productivity and variability and a spread from a fixed type to a wider range of verbs. Contingency data demonstrate that, when associating verbs with the progressive, learners’ preference shifted from prototypical progressive verbs which denote specific and dynamic meanings to more marginal members represented by generic verbs. In addition, semantic prototypicality overweighs generality in driving the development of the progressive, which presents an interesting contrast with findings in the verb-argument construction learning literature where semantically general verbs were first predominantly used in the construction.","PeriodicalId":45605,"journal":{"name":"Corpus Linguistics and Linguistic Theory","volume":"18 1","pages":"307 - 335"},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2020-10-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1515/cllt-2020-0029","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47123585","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract Dutch features several morphemes with “privative” semantics that occur as left-hand members in compounds (e.g., imitatieleer ‘imitation leather’, kunstgras ‘artificial grass’, nepjuwelen ‘fake jewels’). Some of these “fake” morphemes display great categorical flexibility and innovative adjectival uses. Nep, for instance, is synchronically attested as an inflected adjective (e.g., neppe cupcake ‘fake cupcake’). In this paper, we combine an extensive corpus study of eight Dutch “fake” morphemes with statistical methods in distributional semantics and collexeme analysis in order to compare their semantic and morphological properties and to find out which factors are the driving forces behind their exceptional “extravagant” morphological behavior. Our analyses show that debonding and adjectival reanalysis are triggered by an interplay of two factors, i.e., type frequency and semantic coherence, which allow us to range the eight morphemes on a cline from more schematic to more substantive “fake” constructions.
{"title":"Extravagant “fake” morphemes in Dutch. Morphological productivity, semantic profiles and categorical flexibility","authors":"Kristel Van Goethem, M. Norde","doi":"10.1515/cllt-2020-0024","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/cllt-2020-0024","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Dutch features several morphemes with “privative” semantics that occur as left-hand members in compounds (e.g., imitatieleer ‘imitation leather’, kunstgras ‘artificial grass’, nepjuwelen ‘fake jewels’). Some of these “fake” morphemes display great categorical flexibility and innovative adjectival uses. Nep, for instance, is synchronically attested as an inflected adjective (e.g., neppe cupcake ‘fake cupcake’). In this paper, we combine an extensive corpus study of eight Dutch “fake” morphemes with statistical methods in distributional semantics and collexeme analysis in order to compare their semantic and morphological properties and to find out which factors are the driving forces behind their exceptional “extravagant” morphological behavior. Our analyses show that debonding and adjectival reanalysis are triggered by an interplay of two factors, i.e., type frequency and semantic coherence, which allow us to range the eight morphemes on a cline from more schematic to more substantive “fake” constructions.","PeriodicalId":45605,"journal":{"name":"Corpus Linguistics and Linguistic Theory","volume":"16 1","pages":"425 - 458"},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2020-10-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1515/cllt-2020-0024","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41854963","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract This behavioural profiling (BP) study examines the use of the near-synonyms rang (讓), shi (使) and ling (令), three ways to express cause-effect relationships in Chinese. Instead of using an out-of-the-box BP design, we present a modified approach to profiling that includes a range of frame semantic features that aim to capture variation of slot fillers of this construction. The study investigates the intricate semantic variation of rang, shi and ling through a comprehensive analysis of 38 contextual features (ID tags) that characterize the collocational, lexical semantic and frame semantic environment of the near-synonyms. Our dataset consists of around 100.000 data points based on the annotation of 1002 sentences of Mandarin Chinese of three varieties. The BPs of each near-synonym are compared using multidimensional scaling and hierarchical cluster analysis. The results show that rang, shi and ling are each characterized by a combination of distinctive features and how different feature types contribute to setting the near-synonyms apart based on their usage patterns. Methodologically, this study illustrates how behavioural profiling can be modified to include frame semantic features in accordance with the method’s emphasis on producing empirically verifiable results and how these features can aid a comparative analysis of near-synonyms.
{"title":"Profiling the Chinese causative construction with rang (讓), shi (使) and ling (令) using frame semantic features","authors":"Andreas Liesenfeld, Meichun Liu, Chu-Ren Huang","doi":"10.1515/cllt-2020-0027","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/cllt-2020-0027","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This behavioural profiling (BP) study examines the use of the near-synonyms rang (讓), shi (使) and ling (令), three ways to express cause-effect relationships in Chinese. Instead of using an out-of-the-box BP design, we present a modified approach to profiling that includes a range of frame semantic features that aim to capture variation of slot fillers of this construction. The study investigates the intricate semantic variation of rang, shi and ling through a comprehensive analysis of 38 contextual features (ID tags) that characterize the collocational, lexical semantic and frame semantic environment of the near-synonyms. Our dataset consists of around 100.000 data points based on the annotation of 1002 sentences of Mandarin Chinese of three varieties. The BPs of each near-synonym are compared using multidimensional scaling and hierarchical cluster analysis. The results show that rang, shi and ling are each characterized by a combination of distinctive features and how different feature types contribute to setting the near-synonyms apart based on their usage patterns. Methodologically, this study illustrates how behavioural profiling can be modified to include frame semantic features in accordance with the method’s emphasis on producing empirically verifiable results and how these features can aid a comparative analysis of near-synonyms.","PeriodicalId":45605,"journal":{"name":"Corpus Linguistics and Linguistic Theory","volume":"18 1","pages":"263 - 306"},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2020-10-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1515/cllt-2020-0027","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49437724","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract The investigation of linguistic phenomena in corpora of spontaneous speech is sometimes hindered by corpus size or by the complexity of the factors influencing their occurrence. Language Production Experiments (LPEs) can specifically elicit such phenomena and can therefore be used to build corpora that allow for their investigation. Yet experiments are a wide category that covers very different tasks, and there is little empirical research that compares speakers’ response behavior to different task types. In this paper, we compare the responses of a group of 22 speakers to a translation task and a completion task, both of which target the syntactic phenomena complementizer agreement (CA). The results indicate that both experimental methods offer legitimate ways to investigate the phenomenon with specific advantages and disadvantages. However, a comparison of results from both tasks allows for insights that a single task could not have provided.
{"title":"Language production experiments as tools for corpus construction: A contrastive study of complementizer agreement","authors":"Matthias Fingerhuth, L. Breuer","doi":"10.1515/cllt-2019-0075","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/cllt-2019-0075","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract The investigation of linguistic phenomena in corpora of spontaneous speech is sometimes hindered by corpus size or by the complexity of the factors influencing their occurrence. Language Production Experiments (LPEs) can specifically elicit such phenomena and can therefore be used to build corpora that allow for their investigation. Yet experiments are a wide category that covers very different tasks, and there is little empirical research that compares speakers’ response behavior to different task types. In this paper, we compare the responses of a group of 22 speakers to a translation task and a completion task, both of which target the syntactic phenomena complementizer agreement (CA). The results indicate that both experimental methods offer legitimate ways to investigate the phenomenon with specific advantages and disadvantages. However, a comparison of results from both tasks allows for insights that a single task could not have provided.","PeriodicalId":45605,"journal":{"name":"Corpus Linguistics and Linguistic Theory","volume":"18 1","pages":"237 - 262"},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2020-09-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1515/cllt-2019-0075","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49005376","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract In this study, we aim to demonstrate the effectiveness of network science in exploring the emergence of constructional semantics from the connectedness and relationships between linguistic units. With Mandarin locative constructions (MLCs) as a case study, we extracted constructional tokens from a representative corpus, including their respective space particles (SPs) and the head nouns of the landmarks (LMs), which constitute the nodes of the network. We computed edges based on the lexical similarities of word embeddings learned from large text corpora and the SP-LM contingency from collostructional analysis. We address three issues: (1) For each LM, how prototypical is it of the meaning of the SP? (2) For each SP, how semantically cohesive are its LM exemplars? (3) What are the emerging semantic fields from the constructional network of MLCs? We address these questions by examining the quantitative properties of the network at three levels: microscopic (i.e., node centrality and local clustering coefficient), mesoscopic (i.e., community) and macroscopic properties (i.e., small-worldness and scale-free). Our network analyses bring to the foreground the importance of repeated language experiences in the shaping and entrenchment of linguistic knowledge.
{"title":"Words, constructions and corpora: Network representations of constructional semantics for Mandarin space particles","authors":"Alvin Cheng-Hsien Chen","doi":"10.1515/cllt-2020-0012","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/cllt-2020-0012","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract In this study, we aim to demonstrate the effectiveness of network science in exploring the emergence of constructional semantics from the connectedness and relationships between linguistic units. With Mandarin locative constructions (MLCs) as a case study, we extracted constructional tokens from a representative corpus, including their respective space particles (SPs) and the head nouns of the landmarks (LMs), which constitute the nodes of the network. We computed edges based on the lexical similarities of word embeddings learned from large text corpora and the SP-LM contingency from collostructional analysis. We address three issues: (1) For each LM, how prototypical is it of the meaning of the SP? (2) For each SP, how semantically cohesive are its LM exemplars? (3) What are the emerging semantic fields from the constructional network of MLCs? We address these questions by examining the quantitative properties of the network at three levels: microscopic (i.e., node centrality and local clustering coefficient), mesoscopic (i.e., community) and macroscopic properties (i.e., small-worldness and scale-free). Our network analyses bring to the foreground the importance of repeated language experiences in the shaping and entrenchment of linguistic knowledge.","PeriodicalId":45605,"journal":{"name":"Corpus Linguistics and Linguistic Theory","volume":"18 1","pages":"209 - 235"},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2020-08-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1515/cllt-2020-0012","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49468923","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract This paper innovatively charts the analogical influence of the modal auxiliaries on the regulation of periphrastic do in Early Modern English by means of Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs), a flavour of connectionist models known for their applications in computer vision. CNNs can be harnessed to model the choice between competitors in a linguistic alternation by extracting not only the contexts a construction occurs in, but also the contexts it could have occurred in, but did not. Bearing on the idea that two forms are perceived as similar if they occur in similar contexts, the models provide us with pointers towards potential loci of analogical attraction that would be hard to retrieve otherwise. Our analysis reveals clear functional overlap between do and all modals, indicating not only that analogical pressure was highly likely, but even that affirmative declarative do functioned as a modal auxiliary itself throughout the late 16th century.
{"title":"A connectionist approach to analogy. On the modal meaning of periphrastic do in Early Modern English","authors":"Sara Budts","doi":"10.1515/cllt-2019-0080","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/cllt-2019-0080","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This paper innovatively charts the analogical influence of the modal auxiliaries on the regulation of periphrastic do in Early Modern English by means of Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs), a flavour of connectionist models known for their applications in computer vision. CNNs can be harnessed to model the choice between competitors in a linguistic alternation by extracting not only the contexts a construction occurs in, but also the contexts it could have occurred in, but did not. Bearing on the idea that two forms are perceived as similar if they occur in similar contexts, the models provide us with pointers towards potential loci of analogical attraction that would be hard to retrieve otherwise. Our analysis reveals clear functional overlap between do and all modals, indicating not only that analogical pressure was highly likely, but even that affirmative declarative do functioned as a modal auxiliary itself throughout the late 16th century.","PeriodicalId":45605,"journal":{"name":"Corpus Linguistics and Linguistic Theory","volume":"18 1","pages":"337 - 364"},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2020-08-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1515/cllt-2019-0080","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45875956","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract English exerts great influence on other languages at the lexical level, as seen from extensive borrowing of terminology and everyday words into many languages (i.e. Anglicisms such as swap, blog, etc.). Although much less studied, it is also clear that the “phrasicon” (Granger, Sylviane. 2009. Comment on: learner corpora: A window onto the L2 phrasicon. In Andy Barfield & Henrik Gyllstad (eds.), Researching collocations in another language. multiple interpretations, 60–65. Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan) of a language can similarly be affected by such external influence. This paper investigates “the largely unexplored area of phraseological borrowing” (Fielder, Sabine (2017) Phraseological borrowing from English into German: Cultural andpragmatic implications. Journal of Pragmatics 113: 89–102, 90) by introducing the diachronic-contrastive corpus method and exemplifying it with reference to a set of expressions that have been considered the products of language contact between English and Norwegian. I argue that the proposed corpus method can be used efficiently for investigating phraseology across time, for shedding light on the question of whether cross-linguistically parallel structures are the result of borrowing or parallel developments, and – importantly – as a vehicle for rejecting preconceived ideas about a form’s alleged origin in English.
{"title":"Phraseology in a cross-linguistic perspective: A diachronic and corpus-based account","authors":"Andersen Gisle","doi":"10.1515/cllt-2019-0057","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/cllt-2019-0057","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract English exerts great influence on other languages at the lexical level, as seen from extensive borrowing of terminology and everyday words into many languages (i.e. Anglicisms such as swap, blog, etc.). Although much less studied, it is also clear that the “phrasicon” (Granger, Sylviane. 2009. Comment on: learner corpora: A window onto the L2 phrasicon. In Andy Barfield & Henrik Gyllstad (eds.), Researching collocations in another language. multiple interpretations, 60–65. Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan) of a language can similarly be affected by such external influence. This paper investigates “the largely unexplored area of phraseological borrowing” (Fielder, Sabine (2017) Phraseological borrowing from English into German: Cultural andpragmatic implications. Journal of Pragmatics 113: 89–102, 90) by introducing the diachronic-contrastive corpus method and exemplifying it with reference to a set of expressions that have been considered the products of language contact between English and Norwegian. I argue that the proposed corpus method can be used efficiently for investigating phraseology across time, for shedding light on the question of whether cross-linguistically parallel structures are the result of borrowing or parallel developments, and – importantly – as a vehicle for rejecting preconceived ideas about a form’s alleged origin in English.","PeriodicalId":45605,"journal":{"name":"Corpus Linguistics and Linguistic Theory","volume":"18 1","pages":"365 - 389"},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2020-07-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1515/cllt-2019-0057","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45258232","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract This study utilized unidirectional association score ΔP to track perfective morpheme productivity in longitudinal spoken L2 Italian data. Research questions concerned whether early L2 perfectives were contingent upon telicity of predicates, whether lexeme–morpheme association changed as proficiency increased, and whether distribution of perfectives in the L1 input affected the patterns of morpheme emergence. Results showed that (i) the productive use of the perfective was contingent upon a few, infrequent telic predicates but also upon some actionally underspecified, very frequent general-purpose ones; (ii) a generalized decrease in association scores over time accompanied the productivity of the perfective morpheme; (iii) distribution of perfectives in L2 data did not reflect distribution in the L1 input. The statistical analysis adopted in this study is replicable to other domains where contingency of stem-affix alternations may provide cues for observing the developing L2 grammar
{"title":"Contingency learning and perfective morpheme productivity in L2 Italian: A study on lexeme–morpheme associations with ΔP","authors":"Stefano Rastelli","doi":"10.1515/cllt-2019-0071","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/cllt-2019-0071","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This study utilized unidirectional association score ΔP to track perfective morpheme productivity in longitudinal spoken L2 Italian data. Research questions concerned whether early L2 perfectives were contingent upon telicity of predicates, whether lexeme–morpheme association changed as proficiency increased, and whether distribution of perfectives in the L1 input affected the patterns of morpheme emergence. Results showed that (i) the productive use of the perfective was contingent upon a few, infrequent telic predicates but also upon some actionally underspecified, very frequent general-purpose ones; (ii) a generalized decrease in association scores over time accompanied the productivity of the perfective morpheme; (iii) distribution of perfectives in L2 data did not reflect distribution in the L1 input. The statistical analysis adopted in this study is replicable to other domains where contingency of stem-affix alternations may provide cues for observing the developing L2 grammar","PeriodicalId":45605,"journal":{"name":"Corpus Linguistics and Linguistic Theory","volume":"16 1","pages":"459 - 486"},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2020-04-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1515/cllt-2019-0071","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48079688","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}