[:en]Kathleen Bardovi-Harlig in Barcelona[:]

[:en]Members of the GRELL and GRAC research groups attended a talk by the SLA researcher, Kathleen Bardovi-Harlig from Indiana University. The talk was entitled “Unconventional expressions: Productive syntax in the L2 acquisition of formulaic language” and was held on 11th May 2016 at 5pm at UB in Barcelona. The talk was organised by UVic-UCC’s Dr Llorenç Comajoan (GRELL), who had worked with Dr Bardovi-Harlig in Indiana during his early career and Dr Carmen Muñoz (UB).

Dr Bardovi-Harlig’s research on second language grammar and pragmatics includes an investigation on conventional expressions, such as “Nice to meet you,” “(I’m) sorry I’m late,” “I’m just looking,” and “I gotta go.” Her results show that learners display interlanguage syntax which contradicts claims that formulaic expressions are memorised in L2, eventually leading to targetlike grammar use (Ellis, 2003, 2012; Eskildsen & Cadierno, 2007; Myles, 2004; Wray, 2008). Bardovi-Harlig’s conclusions are supported by her data containing several interlanguage forms and she suggests that learners’ expressions are based primarily on lexis and are driven by pragmatics.

Of particular interest in this talk was the data collection method used in the study. A total of 314 learners participated resulting in an oral dataset of 5500 tokens. Confounding variables such as proficiency and exposure to English were accounted for and preliminary piloting of the elicitation tasks was very carefully conducted in order to uncover the interlanguage forms learners employed.[:]