Kuidas areneb eesti õppijakeel ja miks just nii - kas õppijakeelekorpus annab neile küsimustele vastused?
Estonian learner language development – how and why: addressing an interlanguage corpus

Summary/Abstract: The article addresses the development of lexicogrammatical competence in written Estonian (learnt as a second language) from the B1 to B2 CEFR levels. The research material consists of performances in the writing tasks of the state exams of Estonian as a second language and it comes from the Estonian Interlanguage Corpus (EVKK). The study is focused on constructions with the modal verb võima ‘can, may, be allowed’ and the conditional mood constructions, whose frequency in the B2 level increases significantly compared to the B1 level. Based on the CAF-triad (Housen et al. 2012) and using the DEMfad model (Franceschina et al. 2006; Martin et al. 2010) the morphological, syntactical, lexical and functional distribution and the accuracy of the constructions have been analysed, while signs of rapid development have been revealed in most of the areas explored. The development of the two construction types is explained using constructional grammar (Goldberg 1995; Croft 2001) and the usage-based approach to second language acquisition (Larsen-Freeman 1997; Firth, Wagner 1997; Tomasello 2003; MacWhinney 2004; Ellis 2013). The conclusion reads that between the B1 and B2 levels the development of conditional mood constructions as well as of the constructions with the modal verb võima follow the main principles of development of second language constructions.

• Details
• Contents