THE ACQUISITION ORDER OF L2 ENGLISH INFINITIVE AND GERUND COMPLEMENTS BY L1 THAI LEARNERS: A USAGE-BASED APPROACH

Abstract

The current study aimed to investigate the frequency effects on the acquisition of L2 English infinitive and gerund complements among L1 Thai learners. The participants were first-year undergraduate students from Chulalongkorn University. They were categorized into the low and the high proficiency groups based on their CU-TEP scores. Each group consisted of 30 participants. The participants were required to complete the Word Selection Task (WST) and the Grammaticality Judgement Test (GJT). Two research hypotheses were formulated based on the usage-based theory. First, it was hypothesized that Thai learners would acquire the infinitive complements before the gerund complements and the findings conformed to the hypothesis. It was claimed that the learners acquired the infinitive complements first because they were the high type frequency construction. In contrast, the learners acquired the gerund complements later because they were the low frequency construction. In other words, the high type frequency construction facilitated L2 English learners because they were exposed more to this construction type. Second, it was hypothesized that the frequency of verbs occurring in the target complements constructions would contribute to the entrenchment of the Thai learners’ low level constructional schemas (i.e. the abstract representations of constructions which were lexically specific) and their language. The results, however, partially confirmed the second hypothesis as the findings indicated that the frequency of verbs occurring in the target complements constructions did not contribute to the strengthening of the Thai learners’ low level constructional schemas and affect their language use. The results of the study contributed to the concept of frequency and its vital role in the SLA context.