Ute Römer-Barron

• PhD
• Professor at Georgia State University

The study reported on in this paper uses data from a large, pseudolongitudinal corpus of second language (L2) learner writing to investigate how L2 knowledge of verb-argument constructions (VACs) develops from low-beginner to upper-intermediate proficiency levels. The focus is on learners from two L1 backgrounds (L1 German and L1 Spanish) and on a...

Japanese features a general noun-modifying clause construction (NMCC) with a more versatile range of semantic and pragmatic interpretations than equivalent constructions in other languages. Motivated by the learning challenge NMCCs pose to Japanese as a foreign language (JFL) learners, this article examines speech data from the International Corpus...

A recent trend in corpus-based research emphasizes the importance to examine repeated, discontinuous word sequences in addition to continuous ones. The present study extends this trend into research on the use of phrase-frames (repeated word sequences with variable slots, e.g., it is * to) and their variants (e.g., important, easy) in a large corpu...

This plenary speech provides an overview of applications of corpus research in several core areas of applied linguistics, including second language acquisition and language assessment. It does this by showcasing a number of recent studies carried out by or with involvement of the author. These studies all focus on phraseological aspects of language...

With English being the global language of research, academic English as a Lingua Franca (ELF) research has gained wide recognition. While early research showcased the dynamic nature of spoken academic ELF, written academic ELF, a more recent focus of research, remains to be under-studied. However, not only are there known differences between speaki...

This volume showcases some of the latest research on academic writing by leading and up-and-coming corpus linguists. The studies included in the volume are based on a wide range of corpora spanning first and second language academic writing at different levels of writing expertise, containing texts from a variety of academic disciplines (and sub-di...

This article reports on a study that explored cross-disciplinary variation in the use of metadiscourse markers in advanced-level student writing, put forward as a realistic target for novice writers. Starting from the stance and engagement categories included in Hyland’s model, we first conducted a comprehensive quantitative analysis of interaction...

If a federal official is deliberately violating the Constitution, is it possible that no federal court has the power to halt that conduct? Federal judges have been answering “yes” for more than a century – dismissing certain kinds of lawsuits alleging unconstitutional conduct by ruling that the lawsuits were not “cases” as meant in the phrase “The...

This chapter argues that corpus linguistics has a lot to offer to research and practice in Second Language Acquisition (SLA), especially if different methods and data types are combined in a “methodological pluralism” sense (McEnery & Hardie 2012: 227). The chapter also suggests that progress in corpus-based SLA research will depend to some extent...

Based on datasets of L1 Italian and Spanish learner language culled from the Trinity Lancaster Corpus Sample, this paper investigates how verb-argument constructions (VACs) develop in the spoken English of L2 learners across proficiency levels. In addition to proficiency and L1 effects, we focus on the potential influence of native English usage on...

This article reports initial findings from a study that uses written data from second language (L2) learners of English at different proficiency levels (CEFR A1 to C1) in a large-scale investigation of verb-argument construction (VAC) emergence. The findings provide insights into first VACs in L2 learner production, changes in the learners’ VAC rep...

Based on writing produced by second language learners at different proficiency levels (CEFR A1 to C1), we adopted a usage-based approach (Ellis, Römer, & O’Donnell, 2016; Tyler & Ortega, 2018) to investigate how German and Spanish learner knowledge of 19 English verb-argument constructions (VACs; e.g., “V with n,” illustrated by he always agrees wi...

Using data from the International Corpus of Learner English (ICLE) and the British National Corpus (BNC), this article examines what Turkish learners of English know about a set of frequent verb-argument constructions (VACs, such as ‘V with n’ as illustrated by ‘I like to go with the flow’) and in what ways their VAC knowledge is influenced by nati...

This paper draws on data from learner and native-speaker corpora as well as psycholinguistic data to gain insights into second language speaker knowledge of English verb-argument constructions (VACs). For each of 34 VACs, L1 German and L1 Spanish advanced English learners’ and English native speakers’ dominant verb–VAC associations are examined bas...

This paper aims to connect recent corpus research on phraseology with current language testing practice. It discusses how corpora and corpus-analytic techniques can illuminate central aspects of speech and help in conceptualizing the notion of lexicogrammar in second language speaking assessment. The description of speech and some of its core featu...

Nick C. Ellis, Ute Römer, and Matthew Brook O'Donnell present a view of language as a complex adaptive system that is learned through usage. In a series of research studies, they analyze Verb-Argument Constructions (VACs) in first and second language learning, processing, and use. Drawing on diverse epistemological and methodological perspectives,...

Inspired by my positive experiences gained as a member of cross-disciplinary research teams, this paper explores the value of collaborative work in corpus linguistics. I discuss selected results from three studies that showcase research on phraseology: a study that attempts to measure formulaic language in first- and second-language writing, a stud...

Research on the learning of verb-argument constructions (VACs) emphasizes the importance of item-based patterns and their perceptual groundings in acquisition, with abstract schematic patterns emerging from the conspiracy of particular usage patterns and their interpretations. This chapter explores the distributional properties of three types of co...

Just how proficient are second language learners in using formulaic language? Do formulaic phrases play a role in second language acquisition (SLA)? These are the two questions to be addressed here using evidence from learner corpus research. Whilst Krashen and Scarcella (1978) argued that formulaic language was outside the creative language proces...

Formulaic sequences are recognised as having important roles in language acquisition , processing, fluency, idiomaticity, and instruction. But there is little agreement over their definition and measurement, or on methods of corpus comparison. We argue that replicable research must be grounded upon operational definitions in statistical terms. We a...

https://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/139835/1/HunstonFestschriftOffprint.pdf

https://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/139870/1/EllisRoemerODonnell2015inHandbookofBilingualProcessing.pdf

We used free association tasks to investigate second language (L2) verb-argument constructions (VACs) and the ways in which their access is sensitive to statistical patterns of usage (verb type-token frequency distribution, VAC-verb contingency, verb-VAC semantic prototypicality). 131 German, 131 Spanish, and 131 Czech advanced L2 learners of Engli...

This article examines second language (L2) learner knowledge of English verb–argument constructions (VACs), for example, the ‘V against n’ construction. It investigates to what extent constructions underpin L2 learners' linguistic competence, how VAC mental representations in native speakers and learners differ, and whether there are observable eff...

We used free association and verbal fluency tasks to investigate verb-argument constructions (VACs) and the ways in which their processing is sensitive to statistical patterns of usage (verb type-token frequency distribution, VAC-verb contingency, verb-VAC semantic prototypicality). In experiment 1, 285 native speakers of English generated the firs...

This paper combines data from learner corpora and psycholinguistic experiments in an attempt to find out what advanced learners of English (first language backgrounds German and Spanish) know about a range of common verbargument constructions (VACs), such as the ‘V about n’ construction (e.g. she thinks about chocolate a lot). Learners’ dominant ve...

https://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/139838/1/gurt_2012_chapter_3_-_ellis_odonnell_romer.pdf

The purpose of this study was to uncover sets of co-occurring, lexicogrammatical features to help to characterise successful student writing. The writing was captured by the Michigan Corpus of Upper-level Student Papers (MICUSP, 2009) and was taken from sixteen disciplines. MICUSP is a corpus of A-graded, upper-level student papers of different dis...

Formulaic sequences are recognised as having important roles in language acquisition, processing, fluency, idiomaticity, and instruction. But there is little agreement over their definition and measurement, or on methods of corpus comparison. We argue that replicable research must be grounded upon operational definitions in statistical terms. We ad...

Each of us as language learners had different language experiences, yet somehow we have converged upon broadly the same language system. From diverse, often noisy samples, we have attained similar linguistic competence. How so? What mechanisms channel language acquisition? Could our linguistic commonalities possibly have converged from our shared p...

https://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/139811/1/LanguageLearningCurrentsOffprint.pdf

This paper continues the detailed account of the central steps involved in compiling and distributing the Michigan Corpus of Upper-level Student Papers (MICUSP). In this paper, we discuss the annotation process used to encode MICUSP files in TEI-compliant XML, and the development of MICUSP Simple, the online application through which the corpus is...

This paper introduces the Michigan Corpus of Upper-level Student Papers (MICUSP) as a new resource that will enable researchers and teachers of English for Academic Purposes (EAP) to investigate the written discourse of highly advanced student writers whose written assignments have been awarded the grade ‘A’. The usefulness of two aspects of the de...

This paper addresses the question of what governs the optional attendance of the determiner this by a noun phrase in academic student writing. Previous research on this has largely focused on the noun phrases accompanying this, while the question of what determines writers choice between attended and unattended this in the first place has received...

In this paper, we provide a detailed account of the steps that were central to designing and compiling the Michigan Corpus of Upper-level Student Papers (MICUSP). MICUSP is a new collection of 829 papers (around 2.6 million words) written by University of Michigan students in their final undergraduate year or in their first three years of graduate...

Over the past few decades, corpora have not only revolutionized linguistic research but have also had an impact on second language learning and teaching. In the field of applied linguistics, more and more researchers and practitioners treasure what corpus linguistics has to offer to language pedagogy. Still, corpora and corpus tools have yet to be...

Based on explorations of the Michigan Corpus of Upper-level Student Papers (MICUSP), the present paper provides an introduction to the central techniques in corpus analysis, including the creation and examination of word lists, keyword lists, concordances, and cluster lists. It also presents a MICUSP-based case study of the demonstrative pronoun th...

This collection of papers explores some facets in the areas of Corpus Linguistics and Phraseology which have gone unnoticed so far. With the aid of a range of different corpora and new-generation software tools, the authors tackle specialized domains and discourse in specialized settings, utilizing some innovative approaches to the study of recurre...

Starting from the observation that meaning does not primarily reside in individual words but in the phrase, this paper focuses on the examination of recurring phrases in language. It introduces a new analytical model that leads corpus researchers to a profile of the central phraseological items in a selected text or text collection. In this paper,...

Recent corpus studies have shown that learners of English are aware of systematic associations between verbs and their preferred argument structures to an extent that is similar to that of a native speaker of English (e.g., Gries and Wulff, 2005 ). Given evidence for similarly systematic associations in native speaker data at the lexis–morphology i...

This paper focuses on the interface of lexis and grammar and provides corpus evidence for the inseparability of two areas that have traditionally been kept apart, both in language teaching and in linguistic analysis and description. The paper will first give an overview of a number of influential research strands and model-building attempts in this...

The aspect hypothesis (Andersen & Shirai, 1994) proposes that language learners are initially influenced by the inherent semantic aspect in the acquisition of tense and aspect (TA) morphology. Perfective past emerges earlier with accomplishments and achievements and progressive with activities. Although this hypothesis has been extensively studied,...

This volume showcases studies that recognize and provide evidence for the inseparability of lexis and grammar. The contributors explore in what ways these two areas, often treated separately in linguistic theory and description, form an organic whole. The papers in Section I ( Setting the Scene ) introduce some of the key methodological approaches...

Evaluation is a pervasive element in spoken and written language but its identification poses serious problems to linguistic researchers, especially when they are dealing with larger amounts of text which require the application of computer-assisted analytic techniques. This article explores ways of identifying items of evaluative meaning in a thre...

Based on a large set of data from one of the biggest available corpora of spoken British English (the 10-million word spoken component of the BNC), this article explores central lexical-grammatical aspects of progressive forms with future time reference. Among the phenomena investigated are verb preferences, adverbial co-selection, subject types, a...

DISCOURSE IN THE PROFESSIONS: PERSPECTIVES FROM CORPUS LINGUISTICS. Ulla Connor and Thomas A. Upton (Eds.). Amsterdam: Benjamins, 2004. Pp. vi + 334. $119.00 cloth. Whereas general corpora have been used successfully by linguists and language practitioners for more than 40 years now, corpora that capture the language of particular discourse communi...

LANGUAGE, VOLUME 83, NUMBER 4 (2006)936 a language index (525?26). I hope the only possible concluding remark about this volume has become clear by fast-browsing through its contents: if you are working on or are interested in any of the topics discussed here, this is a fantastic collection of classic and more recent references and discussions on t...

Despite the progress that has been made in the field of corpus linguistics and language teaching, the practice of ELT has so far been largely unaffected by the advances of corpus research, and corpora and concordances are hardly used in the German EFL classroom. This article aims to take stock of developments in this area and formulates tasks for t...

The paper gives a preliminary account of a more extensive study (Römer, 2005) of the use of progressive forms (e.g. 're looking, in "let's say we're looking at carbonates") in huge collections of spoken British English and in a small corpus of 'spoken-type' texts from German EFL textbooks. The starting point for this data-driven approach is an exam...

This paper * refers to selected results from a large-scale corpus-driven analysis of progressives in spoken British English and in the language of teaching materials used in the EFL classroom. It starts from the observation that existing accounts of the progressive either lack a broader empirical basis or mainly focus on written language data. Whil...

This paper refers to selected results from a large-scale corpus-driven analysis of progressives in spoken British English and in the language of teaching materials used in the EFL classroom. It starts from the observation that existing accounts of the progressive either lack a broader empirical basis or mainly focus on written language data. While...

Corpus-aided language pedagogy is one of the central application areas of corpus methodologies, and a test bed for theories of language and learning. This volume provides an overview of current trends, offering methodological and theoretical position statements along with results from empirical studies. The relationship between corpora and learning...

After decades of being overlooked, corpus evidence is becoming an important component of the teaching and learning of languages. Above all, the profession needs guidance in the practicalities of using corpora, interpreting the results and applying them to the problems and opportunities of the classroom. This book is intensely practical, written mai...

The past few years have seen an increasing interest in studies based on new kinds of specialised corpora that capture an ever-growing range of text types. Now that more and larger collections of such specialised texts (or of "restricted languages" in Firthian terms) are becoming available, corpus researchers seem to switch from describing the Engli...

As the growing number of publications (see Evert 2005) on the topic indicates, collocations, which can be defined as frequently occurring contiguous or non- contiguous combinations of words, are of central interest in linguistic analysis and description. Even though corpora and concordance packages offer important insights into the co-selectional t...