Acquisition of L3 Spanish combinations: development in multilingual contexts

Hui-Chuan Lu

doi:10.30827/portalin.vi38.22338

Authors

Hui-Chuan Lu National Cheng Kung University

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.30827/portalin.vi38.22338

Keywords:

collocation, L3, learner corpus, parallel corpus, Spanish

Agencies: Ministry of Science and Technology of Taiwan with project grant (MOST103-2410-H-006-059-MY2)

Abstract

There has been little research on the acquisition of Spanish collocation, particularly concerning collocation combinations in a multilingual context. Therefore, this corpus-based study attempted to provide new insights for learning Spanish collocation. The research questions are: (1) What are the usage and error tendencies in acquiring Spanish combinations by learners of L3 Spanish? (2) How do the contrasts between L3 Spanish and the learners’ prior languages (L1 Chinese and L2 English) play a role in acquiring L3 Spanish collocation? The results showed a developmental sequence moving from N-Adj, V-N, to Adj-N combinations. Furthermore, the results of the qualitative analysis suggested that most errors were associated with the learners’ L1 (Chinese) and L2 (English). On the other hand, lexical errors might be attributed to the formal similarity between L2 English and L3 Spanish and the meaning transfer between Chinese (L1) and English (L2). Finally, the analysis suggested the similarity among the three languages in form, and the connections among the linguistic features played an essential role in learning L3 Spanish combinations.

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