Phraseological Use and Development During a Stay Abroad: Exploring Sensitivity to Frequency and Cue Contingency

Abstract

Usage-based approaches to additional-language acquisition have identified numerous determinants of language learning, two of which were the focus of our study: frequency and cue contingency. Specifically, we examined how an immersion experience may impact sensitivity to these two determinants as reflected in the production of 4,808 pairs of nouns (N) and adjectives (ADJ) by 50 anglophone learners of Spanish and French. We analyzed the use of N/ADJ combinations using mixed linear regressions for frequency and two measures of delta P, a unidirectional measure of lexical association strength reflecting cue contingency. In all three models, we explored the impact of time and four additional variables: task, initial proficiency, target language, and phraseological unit. Our analysis revealed stasis over time. Additionally, our analysis revealed phraseological unit, task, and target language each to be significant in at least one model; initial proficiency did not contribute to significantly predicting phraseological use.