1. Lina Bikelienė Vilnius University 3 September, 2010 Connector usage in advanced Lithuanian learners’ English writing

2. Introduction Foreign-soundingness (Granger, 1999:192) Controversial findings: –No overall connector overuse in IL (Granger and Tyson 1996, Altenberg and Tapper 1998) –Overuse in IL (Tankó 2004)

3. Aim Quantitative analysis of the use of adverbial connectors by Lithuanian learners Comparison with native speakers’ usage Brief comparison with non-native speakers’ usage

4. Material LICLE – 154,992 words LOCNESS :  LOCNESS-BR – 95,695 words

5. Material 2 Learners with other mother-tongue background :  Swedish - Altenberg and Tapper (1998)  French - Granger and Tyson (1996)  Hungarian - Tankó (2004)  Chinese - Ai and Peng (2006)  Polish - Leńko-Szymańska (2007)  Taiwanese - Chen (2006)  Japanese - Narita et al (2004)

6. Methodology CIA (Contrastive Interlanguage Analysis) – ‘establishes comparisons between native and learner varieties of one and the same language’ (Granger, 1996: 43)

7. Connectors extracted using TextSTAT-2 and AntConc3.2.1w Grouped into the categories distinguished by Quirk et al (1991: 634-636) Log-likelihood calculator (http://ucrel.lancs.ac.uk/llwizard.html) p<0.01, critical value 6.63

8. (a)LISTING (i) enumerative (first of all, finally) (ii) additive:equative (in the same way) reinforcing (moreover) (b)SUMMATIVE (in conclusion, altogether) (c)APPOSITIONAL (namely, for example) (d)RESULTIVE (consequently, so) (e)INFERENTIAL(otherwise, in that case) (f)CONTRASTIVE (i) reformulatory(more precisely, rather) (ii) replacive(again, alternatively) (iii) antithetic(instead, on the contrary) (iv) concessive(however, nevertheless) (g)TRANSITIONAL (i) discoursal(by the way, incidentally) (ii) temporal(meanwhile,in the meantime) Quirk et al (1991:634-636)

9. Overall figures LICLELOCNESS-BR Total number of connectors 27101381 Number of connectors (10 000 words) 174.85144.31 Number of connectors per essay 10.1115.34 Essay length (in words) 5781063

10. Ratio of connector usage LICLE : LOCNESS-BR 1.22 : 1 FRENCH NNS : NS 0.92 : 1 SWICLE : LOCNESS 0.74 : 1 HUNGARIAN CORPUS : LOCNESS 2.13 : 1

11. ...the learners use most frequently those connectors which add to, exemplify, or emphasize a point, rather than those which change the direction of the argument or take the argument logically forward. Granger and Tyson (1996: 20)

12. CategoryLICLELOCNESS-BR LL 1.Listing63.743.50+44.71 2.Summative10.320.63+113.80 3.Appositive17.6810.76+19.72 4.Resultive37.4938.87-0.30 5.Inferential1.871.67+0.13 6.Contrastive43.0345.77-1,00 7.Transitional1.233.13-19,07 Total174.85144.31+34.36

13. Top four semantic categories LICLELOCNESS-BRSWICLEHungarian Corpus 1ListingContrastive Listing 2 Contrastive ListingResultive 3 AppositiveContrastive 4 Appositive ListingSummative

14. Commonly overused connectors

15. Commonly underused connectors

19. Top ten

20. Types of connectors

21. Sentence position

22. Position in LICLE (semantic categories)

23. Possible explanation Features of interlanguage SI position Developmental errors Register confusion seems to be as much part of the process of acquiring a foreign language as it is art of the process of becoming an expert writer. (Guilquin and Paquot, 2007:7) e.g. Number of listing connectors in LICLE and LOCNESS-A-level L2 instruction Non-native teachers’ discourse L1 transfer Inadequate material Lack of clear information in dictionaries and grammars –lists of connectors in textbooks

24. Conclusions The Lithuanian learners overuse connectors. The Lithuanian learners tend to rely on the most frequent connectors. The Lithuanian learners share a set of under- and overused connectors with the learners from different mother-tongue backgrounds. Sentence distribution of connectors in LICLE is similar to distribution in other NNS corpora.