In this study, we apply Gries and Divjak’s Behavioral Profile approach to compare
native English can and may, learner English can and may, and French pouvoir.
We annotated over 3,700 examples across three corpora according to more
than 20 morphosyntactic and semantic features and we analysed the features’
distribution with a hierarchical cluster analysis and a logistic regression. The
cluster analysis shows that French English learners build up fairly coherent categories
that group the English modals together followed by pouvoir, but that they
also consider pouvoir to be semantically more similar to can than to may. The
regression strongly supports learners’ coherent categories; however, a variety of
interactions shows where learners’ modal use still deviates from that of native
speakers.
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Bębeniec, Daria
2024. In search of methodological standards for corpus-based cognitive semantics: The case of Behavioral Profiles. Studia Neophilologica► pp. 1 ff.
2023. Alternation phenomena and language proficiency: the genitive alternation in the spoken language of EFL learners. Corpus Linguistics and Linguistic Theory 19:3 ► pp. 427 ff.
2015. EFL and/vs. ESL?. International Journal of Learner Corpus Research 1:1 ► pp. 130 ff.
Hall, Christopher J., Jack Joyce & Chris Robson
2017. Investigating the lexico-grammatical resources of a non-native user of English: The case of can and could in email requests
. Applied Linguistics Review 8:1 ► pp. 35 ff.
2017. What learner corpus research can contribute to multilingualism research. International Journal of Bilingualism 21:6 ► pp. 734 ff.
ÖZBAY, Ali Şükrü & Zehra GÜRSOY
2023. Computerized corpus as a tool for educational technology and learning in the analysis of four-word recurrent expressions. Journal of Educational Technology and Online Learning 6:1 ► pp. 249 ff.
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