Form-Class & Task-Type Effects in Learner English
A Study of Advanced Swedish Learners
By Marie Kallkvist
October 1999
Lund University Press
Distributed by
ISBN: 9179665489
226 pages, Illustrated
$79.50 Paper Original
This book presents a study which examines lexical infelicities and errors in the English of adult advanced Swedish learners. The study focuses on the distribution of errors/infelicities among nouns, lexical verbs and adjectives in a range of different written tasks: free composition, written retelling, and translation. It is revealed that lexical verbs, in particular monosyllabic and semantically general verbs such as get, make and put, constitute the main source of lexical infelicity in tasks where word selection is relatively unconstrained. As a contrast, it is shown that stative verbs such as think, believe etc and frequent nouns denoting physical entities are rarely used wrongly. Why, then, is the correct (native-like) usage of dynamic, frequent and simple verbs so elusive for learners of English?
