Naslov
Strategic construal of particle verbs (PVs) in Croatian secondary-school learners of English

Autori
Petanjak Dedić, Ana ; Geld, Renata

Vrsta, podvrsta i kategorija rada
Sažeci sa skupova, sažetak, znanstveni

Skup
The Second International Conference on Situating Strategy Use: Present Issues and Future Trends

Mjesto i datum
Komotiní, Grčka, 28.09.2017. - 30.09.2017

Vrsta sudjelovanja
Predavanje

Vrsta recenzije
Međunarodna recenzija

Ključne riječi
strategic construal ; PVs ; compositionality ; lexical determination ; topological determination

Sažetak
The aim of this study was to investigate strategic construal of particle verbs (PVs) in Croatian secondary school learners of English. Previous research on the topic, involving Croatian and Mexican university students (Geld 2011, Geld and Maldonado 2011) as well as blind and sighted Croatian teenagers (Geld and Čutić 2014), has shown that there are two groups of factors that affect strategic meaning construal: (1) language-internal factors (verb- framed vs. satellite-framed languages, semantically “light” vs. semantically “heavy” lexical components, and degree of informativeness of the particle), and (2) language-external factors (general language proficiency, years of learning L2, etc.). The major factor under the scrutiny in the present study was age. Considering the fact that after the age of 11 children's cognitive development displays some major qualitative changes, the assumption was that children aged 12 and 14 would be able to explain cognitive motivation underlying the meaning of the selected PV constructions. However, due to their age and, consequently, lower language proficiency, we expected certain differences in strategic meaning construal in comparison to older language learners. The sample consisted of two groups of learners: 43 12-year-olds and 47 14- year-olds. The instrument consisted of 10 English PVs with in and out. Participants were provided with the meaning of each PV construction and asked to try to explain why each particular combination produces the given meaning. The corpus collected consisted of 900 answers and the analysis has shown that younger learners employ the same strategies in meaning construction as older learners of English. Their answers imply either compositionality or lexical vs. topological determination. However, contrary to older learners, their default strategy, irrespective of the semantic “heaviness” of the lexical components, tends to be compositionality. In other words, they first attend to both components of the PV construction, and only then tackle them individually.

Izvorni jezik
Engleski

Znanstvena područja
Filologija

POVEZANOST RADA