The Effects of Verb Bias in the Written Production of English Sentences by L2 Learners

• Published in: 영미연구, 51(0) pp. 223 - 250
• Main Author: 김지현
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: 영미연구소 01.02.2021
• Subjects: 학제간연구
• ISSN: 2508-4135; 2508-5417

A written production task was used to examine the contributions of frequency-based verb bias information to L2 learners’ production of English sentences. Korean L2 learners of English were instructed to produce a complete sentence for each of forty-three English verbs. The verbs belonged to three categories based on verb bias: direct object (DO) bias, sentential complement (SC) bias, and equibias (EQ-bias). The proportion of DO sentence completions was highest for the DO-bias verbs and lowest for the SC-bias verbs, replicating and extending results found in previous studies with monolingual English speakers. The results also showed a significant positive correlation between the proportion of DO/SC sentence structures for each verb in this study and the corresponding proportion of DO/SC sentence completions reported in a previous study with native English speakers (Garnsey et al., 1997). These results imply that the L2 learners in this study were sensitive to the continuous nature of verb bias and are able to employ this information in their written production. Methodological issues regarding the treatment of verb bias information as a categorical variable in psycholinguistic studies are also discussed. KCI Citation Count: 0