Event

TUJ Distinguished Lecturer Series: On the Role of Multi-Word Expressions in Language Learning and Use (Tokyo)

Saturday, January 25th, 2020, 2:00 PM - 5:00 PM

Speaker: Anna Siyanova (Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand)

The last decade has seen an unprecedented interest in the acquisition, processing and use of multi-word expressions (MWEs). The last few years, in particular, have been instrumental in our gaining better understanding of the role played by elements above word level in first (L1) and second language (L2) learning and use. MWEs are frequent and/or highly familiar phrases that exhibit a degree of fixedness and are recognized as conventional by mature language users. Examples of MWEs include, among others, collocations (strong tea), binomials (bride and groom), phrasal and prepositional verbs (tell off), idioms and proverbs (better late than never), grammatical constructions (this is X), and other phrasal configurations. MWEs constitute a large proportion of authentic spoken and written discourse, which renders them an essential component of proficient language use.

This series of seminars will follow a recently published volume on the various aspects of MWEs. In particular, we will focus on MWEs in the usage-based tradition, corpus linguistics and learner corpus research, L2 pedagogy and academic discourse, and language processing. We will look at some of the L1 and L2 differences, as well as a central place of phrase frequency effects in MWE enquiry. The pertinent evidence will be discussed and analyzed in view of methodological rigor and replicability. The interdisciplinary seminars will be of interest to research students working in the area of vocabulary and second language acquisition, corpus and cognitive linguistics, and psycholinguistics.

Organization: Temple University Japan

Cost: free

Venue: TUJ Tokyo Campus: 1-14-29 Taishido, Setagaya-ku, Tokyo, Japan 154-0004 (map)

Location: Tokyo, Tokyo Metropolis, Japan

Contact Temple University Japan

Temple University Japan

Work phone: 03-5441-9800