Learner Corpus Research and Second Language Acquisition: an attempt at bridging the gap

Learner corpora are traditionally defined as ‘systematic collections of authentic, continuous and contextualized language use (spoken or written) by L2 learners stored in electronic format’ (Callies & Paquot 2015). With this characterization, it appears very clearly that learner corpus researchers have always been interested in exploring the output of the more open-ended types of contextualized production tasks assigned to L2 learners (e.g. Granger 2008; Tracy-Ventura & Myles 2015). The term ‘learners’ here refers to Foreign and/or Second Language learners rather than to learners acquiring their native language (L1)

Des N comme partitif nu

Dans des études diachroniques et synchroniques récentes, on constate une convergence vers l’idée que l’analyse de des fonctionnant comme article (« article-like » des, désormais desal) ne doit pas être fondée sur une relation avec les partitifs. Cette contribution reprend ce débat et montrera que les approches proposées pour contourner une analyse partitive de desal entraînent pourtant un certain nombre de défis. L’identification de ces défis nous mène à élargir notre perspective vers les partitifs nus (c’est-à-dire des structures partitives sans déterminant « upstairs », p. ex. de ces N) en français, italien et néerlandais. Surtout cette dernière langue est particulièrement intéressante, vu que les partitifs nus ne s’y sont pas fossilisés. Sur la base de ces données, nous proposerons une analyse de desal comme faisant partie de la famille des partitifs nus. Cette approche partitive de desa, qui rend compte de faits synchroniques et diachroniques, s’avère théoriquement plus élégante et a une couverture empirique plus large.Recent synchronic and diachronic studies agree on the fact that ‘article-like’ des in French (henceforth desal) should not receive a partitive analysis. This paper zooms in on this debate and shows that the approaches put forward to circumvent a partitive analysis of desal come with a number of challenges. After having identified these challenges, we broaden our perspective towards bare partitives (i.e. partitive structures without an upstairs determiner) in French, Italian and Dutch. Especially this latter language is particularly interesting as its bare partitives have not undergone a process of fossilisation. On the basis of these comparative data, we present an analysis of desal as a member of the family of bare partitives. We argue that this partitive approach of desal not only adequately accounts for the synchronic and diachronic facts, but is also more elegant from a theoretical point of view and has a larger empirical coverage

Exceptional wide scope of bare nominals

One of the strongest arguments in favor of the kinds approach to bare nominals is that they always take narrow scope with respect to other scope bearing operators in the sentence (Carlson 1977; Chierchia 1998; Dayal 2011). The publications supporting the obligatory narrow scope of bare nominals in a wide range of typologically different languages vastly outnumber the ones that claim the opposite. In this paper, we survey the facts from the literature, work out how the kinds approach deals with them, and identify scrambled bare plurals as the ultimate challenge for the kinds approach. Dutch examples illustrate that scrambled bare plurals unambiguously take wide scope with respect to quantifiers and negation, while maintaining kind reference. The kinds approach proves unable to derive the wide scope reading of bare plurals under a surface-oriented composition of scrambled objects. Once we abandon the default kind shift, following Krifka (2004), and allow bare plurals to directly shift to an existential interpretation, we can easily derive the wide scope reading with a local type repair. We conclude that a flexible type shifting approach to bare nominals is preferred over a default kind shift for empirical reasons

The theory of argument formation: between kinds and properties

Abstract Chierchia (1998) developed a cross-linguistic extension to Carlsons seminal work on bare nouns (BNs), producing the most influential theory of argument formation to date, henceforth the Kinds Approach (KA). The core achievements of the KA included the derivation of the generalized narrow scope behavior of BNs and of the existence of generalized classifier languages. There are cracks in the picture, though. The narrow scope behavior of BNs is more fine-grained than is generally assumed and the KA lacks the flexibility to deal with it (Le Bruyn & Swart 2022). The appeal of the KAs derivation of the existence of generalized classifier languages heavily relied on all nouns in these languages being mass-like, an assumption that has since been abandoned (Chierchia 2010; Jiang 2020). These developments call for a reassessment of the KA and one of its closest competitors: Krifka 2003. Krifka assumes nouns never start life as kinds but as predicates, leading us to qualify his approach as a Properties Approach (PA).We adopt a translation corpus approach and assess the explanatory potential of the KA and the PA by comparing the distribution of BNs and related expressions in (in)definite contexts across six typologically different languages. Our results show that the PA has a distinct advantage over the KA and identify pseudo-incorporation and the way it varies across languages as a primary focus for future research

'Have', 'with' and 'without'

The research reported in this paper is part of our attempt to get to a deeper understanding of why 'with' and 'without' are special prepositions in taking singular bare nouns more easily than other prepositions. The paper focuses on the semantics of existential and incorporation 'have', which we take to be the same and to constitute the verbal counterpart of 'with' and 'without'. We propose existential/incorporation 'have' builds relations: it selects one-place predicates and turns them into two-place predicates

Perfect variations in dialogue: a parallel corpus approach

The variation in distribution and meaning of the English Present Perfect compared to its counterparts in other European languages raises a puzzle for the cross-linguistic semantics and pragmatics of tense and aspect. We apply Translation Mining, a form-based approach, to analyze the meaning of the HAVE-PERFECT across languages in a parallel corpus based on "Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone" and its translations in Swedish, Spanish, Dutch, German and French. We use the alternation in the Harry Potter novel between narrative discourse (storytelling) and dialogue (the characters talking to each other) to establish the PERFECT as an indexical tense-aspect category that appears exclusively in dialogue. We then link the proposed information management roles of the Present Perfect (Portner 2003, Nishiyama & Koenig 2010) to moves in the language game. We find different distributions of PERFECT use across the sentence types corresponding to these moves (declarative vs. interrogative). This lends support to a cross-linguistically common rhetorical structure in sequences of PERFECT sentences (de Swart 2007)

A multilingual corpus study of the competition between past and perfect in narrative discourse

The western European present perfect is subject to substantial crosslinguistic variation. The literature, however, focuses on individual languages or on comparisons of a restricted number of languages. We piece together the puzzle and do so in a data-driven way by comparing the use of the present perfect through a parallel corpus based on the French novel L'Étranger and its translations in Italian, German, Dutch, European Spanish, British English, and Modern Greek. We introduce and showcase Translation Mining, a software suite combining a parallel corpus database with annotation and analysis tools. Translation Mining allows us to generate descriptive statistics of tense use across languages but also to visualize variation through its multidimensional scaling component and to link the variation we find to the underlying data through its integrated setup. We confirm that the present perfect competes with the past and we reveal the fine-grained scalar nature of the variation. To complete the puzzle, we ascertain the dimensions of variation, ranging from lexical and compositional semantics to dynamic semantics and pragmatics.

'Articleless' languages are not created equal

We adopt a translation corpus approach based on the first chapter of 'Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone' to evaluate Dayal’s updated version of the neo-Carlsonian framework and the predictions it makes for bare nouns in Hindi, Russian and Mandarin (Dayal 2004). Our Hindi data turn out to be overall in line with Dayal’s predictions but the same does not hold for our Russian and Mandarin data, leading us to explore a number of extensions and modifications of Dayal’s analysis. For Mandarin, our data lead us to hypothesize a role for the numeral 'yi' (‘one’) as an indefinite article and for demonstratives as definite articles. For our Hindi and Russian bare noun data, we argue that the only way to account for them is to reverse at least part of Dayal’s updates to the neo-Carlsonian framework and to hypothesize that Hindi – unlike Russian – is developing an indefinite article

Perfect variations in Romance

The morpho-syntactic configuration auxiliary (have or be) + past participle known as the HAVE-PERFECT functions as a tense-aspect category in many Western European languages. Synchronic variation within Romance nicely illustrates the developmental pattern described as the aoristic drift, whereby the PERFECT develops over time into a PERFECTIVE PAST with full-fledged past meanings. A parallel corpus study of L’Étranger by Albert Camus (1942) and its translations using the Translation Mining methodology provides empirical data supporting the view that modern French, Romanian and Italian make a more liberal use of the PERFECT, whereas the PERFECT distribution in Spanish is closer to (but not identical to) English. Catalan occupies an intermediate position and Portuguese has the most restricted PERFECT among the Romance languages. We argue that this variation is best captured by a PERFECT scale, without a clear cut-off point between perfect and perfective past meaning. The meaning ingredients that govern the distribution of the HAVE-PERFECT across Romance languages emerge from the parallel corpus. They include lexical, compositional and discourse semantics, and range from sensitivity to aspectual class, pluractionality, hodiernal and pre-hodiernal past time reference to narration

Perfect variations in Romance

The morpho-syntactic configuration auxiliary (have or be) + past participle known as the have-perfect functions as a tense-aspect category in many Western European languages. Synchronic variation within Romance nicely illustrates the developmental pattern described as the aoristic drift, whereby the perfect develops over time into a perfective past with full-fledged past meanings. A parallel corpus study of L’Étranger by Albert Camus (1942) and its translations using the Translation Mining methodology provides empirical data supporting the view that modern French, Romanian and Italian make a more liberal use of the perfect, whereas the perfect distribution in Spanish is closer to (but not identical to) English. Catalan occupies an intermediate position and Portuguese has the most restricted perfect among the Romance languages. We argue that this variation is best captured by a perfect scale, without a clear cut-off point between perfect and perfective past meaning. The meaning ingredients that govern the distribution of the have-perfect across Romance languages emerge from the parallel corpus. They include lexical, compositional and discourse semantics, and range from sensitivity to aspectual class, pluractionality, hodiernal and pre-hodiernal past time reference to narration.