Errors shared by two language families

As for 28 types of errors shared by two language families, 12 types were from Indo-European/Altaic, 5 from Altaic/Sino-Tibetan, 6 from Indo-European/ Dravidian and 3 from Altaic/Dravidian, as discussed below.

1. Errors made by learners of Indo-European/Altaic

There are 12 types of errors produced by Indo-European and Altaic language family, occurring 70 times in total. The errors are ranked by the number of the L1s making the errors.

6 of them were made by five L1 groups, 1 from four L1 groups, 4 from three L1 groups and 1 from two L1 groups, as can be seen in Table 4.22. Half of them is deviant prepositions of verbs.

Table 4.22 Errors made by learners ofIndo-European/Altaic language family

No. Language families L1s Miscollocations Suggested forms

Learner corpus

*look your products look at your products

2 *look the advertisement look at the advertisement 15

3 *look the surface look at the surface

4

FRA/JPN/KOR/

ITA/TUR

*prepare the travel prepare for the travel

5 *prepare an 8

*earn knowledge acquire knowledge 5

7 FRA/HIN/JPN/TUR *earn their life earn money 11

8 DEU/FRA/TUR *make internships have internships 6

9 ITA/SPA/KOR *contract a guide contract with a guide 4

10 FRA/SPA/TUR *leave my routine change my routine 3

11 FRA/ KOR/ TUR *earn the facts learn the facts 3

12 DEU/JPN *retire their jobs retire 15

Total Frequency 70

*The underlined ones are deviant prepositions of verbs.

The most frequent types of errors are related to the usage of look. French, Spanish and Altaic learners produced the errors, such as *look your products, *look the advertisement and

*look the surface, with 15 occurrences in TOEFL 11, and neglected the preposition at. Like

some deviant prepositions of verbs among universal errors, such as listen, search, go and

participate discussed before, the possible reason for learners to make these mistakes might be

attributed to the ignorance of TL rules. The second frequent errors, *prepare the travel/ an

advertisement (prepare for…), made by learners of five L1s, were probably also caused by

the same reason.

Among the rest of eight errors, 3 of them are concerned about the usage of earn, referring to *earn knowledge, *earn their life and *earn the facts.

The miscollocations may

be attributed to two reasons for the misuse of earn for acquire and earn for learn. As can be seen, earn and acquire are synonyms, which makes learners resort to the OP principle and use these two words interchangeably in collocations, leading to the collocation errors. On the other hand, the misuse of earn for learn might be due to their similar forms and the certain degree of shared meanings, resulting in the approximation of the two words’ meanings for learners (Liu, 1999).

As for the most frequent error *make internships shared by learners of three L1s, the more appropriate verb is have. Since both make and have are delexical verbs, which do not have very specific meanings, thus make learners confuse the two words’ usage and feel that it

is acceptable to add any nouns after delexical verbs (Zinkgräf, 2008). The internship is not created by learners; instead, they own this position. Therefore, the more appropriate usage is

have internships rather than *make internships.

Lastly, the error *retire their jobs (retire) was made by learners from two countries (Germany/ Japan), occurring 15 times in the learner corpus. Since retire is an intransitive verb, learners should simply write retire, which may result from learners’ ignorance of TL rules.

2. Errors made by learners of Altaic/Sino-Tibetan

5 out of 26 error types with 33 occurrences were produced by Altaic and Sino-Tibetan learners. According to Table 4.23, three errors are deviant prepositions of verbs which might originate from learners’ ignorance of TL rules, such as *stay the place (stay at the place),

*adapt the society (adapt to the society) and *arrive the place (arrive at the place). Japanese,

Korean and Chinese learners shared two types of errors regarding deviant verb or noun usages, which are *face accidents (have accidents) and *help neighborhood (help neighbors).

Table 4.23 Errors made by learners ofAltaic/Sino-Tibetan language family

No. Language families L1s Miscollocations Suggested forms

Learner corpus Frequency

1

Altaic/Sino-Tibetan

JPN/KOR/TUR/ZHO *stay the place stay at the place 12

2

JPN/KOR/ZHO

*face accidents have accidents 5

3 *help neighborhood help neighbors 5

4 KOR/TUR/ZHO *adapt the society adapt to the society 4

5 KOR/ZHO *arrive the place arrive at the place 7

Total Frequency 33

3. Errors made by learners of Indo-European/Dravidian

Among errors made by Indo-European and Dravidian language family, three are concerned about deviant verbs as follows. *Reach the destiny (reach the destination) and

*see hardships (experience/encounter hardships) were made by Hindi and Telugu learners

while German and Telugu learners made the errors of *outnumber the decrease (exceed the

decrease). Three types of errors are related to the misuse of think, with 21 occurrences

overall, produced by learners of five L1s, as indicated in Table 4.24.

Table 4.24 Errors made by learners ofIndo-European/ Dravidian language family

No. Language families L1s Miscollocations Suggested forms

Learner corpus

*reach the destiny reach the destination 5

2

*learn thinks learn thoughts 3

5 *try thinks try thoughts 3

6 *know the thinks know the thoughts 3

Total 21

In terms of *reach the destiny, it can be seen that learners confuse destiny with

destination, which can be attributed to learners’ approximation of these two words since the

two words share a similar form. As for *outnumber the decrease, the more proper verb would be exceed. Since outnumber and exceed are synonyms, the reason that learners made this error might originate from the erroneous use of synonyms.

Regarding the misuse of think, identical to the cause of the misuse of sharp/sharpen,

learners tended to confuse the verb “think” and the noun “thought.” Thus, they made the mistakes, like *learn thinks, *try thinks and *know the thinks. This points out that not only learners of Indo-European, but also Dravidian learners, would confuse with the part of speech of think and thought.

4. Errors made by learners of Altaic/Dravidian

Three types of errors, *concentrate subjects, *meet accidents and *travel a tour, occurring 13 times in total, were made by Altaic and Dravidian learners, as presented in Table 4.25. Japanese, Korean and Telugu learners neglected on when using concentrate and ignored

with when using meet with accidents, which are deviant prepositions of verb usages, resulting

from the ignorance of TL rules as mentioned previously. In addition, Japanese and Telugu learners produced one deviant verb usage, *travel a tour, whose correct usage should be go

on a tour.

Table 4.25 Errors made by learners of Altaic/Dravidian language family

No. Language families L1s Miscollocations Suggested forms

Learner corpus Frequency

1

Altaic/Dravidian

JPN/KOR/TEL *concentrate subjects concentrate on subjects 8

2

JPN/TEL

*meet accidents meet with accidents 3

3 *travel a tour go on a tour 2

Total 13

在文檔中 不同母語之英語學習者動名搭配詞錯誤分析 (頁 89-93)