Formulaic Language in Learner Corpora

Abstract

Formulaic language is at the heart of corpus linguistic research, and learner corpus research (LCR) is no exception. As multiword units of all kinds (e.g., collocations, phrasal verbs, speech formulae) are notoriously difficult for learners, and corpus linguistic techniques are an extremely powerful way of exploring them, they were an obvious area for investigation by researchers from the very early days of LCR. In the first part of this article, the focus is on the types of learner corpus data investigated and the most popular method used to analyze them. The second section describes the types of word sequences analyzed in learner corpora and the methodologies used to extract them. In the rest of the article, we summarize some of the main findings of LCR studies of the learner phrasicon, distinguishing between co-occurrence and recurrence. Particular emphasis is also placed on the relationship between learners’ use of formulaic sequences and transfer from the learner's first language. The article concludes with some proposals for future research in the field.