A corpus-based error analysis of Korean learner English: from a cognitive linguistic perspective to the L2 mental lexicon

This thesis investigates lexical errors in a learner corpus that consists of essays written by Korean learners of English. Taking a cognitive linguistic perspective, it first presents the L2 lexical development model as a conceptual framework. Then, based on this framework, it proposes a new error taxonomy in which errors from the four lexical domains in the L2 mental lexicon can be categorised as either interlingual or intralingual errors. In order to identify whether the taxonomy is well-grounded, this thesis selects four error features, one from each of the four lexical domains: collocational errors of dimensional adjectives in the semantic domain; over-passivisation errors of non-alternating unaccusative verbs in the syntactic domain; derivational morphological errors in the morphological domain; spelling errors in the phonological/orthographic domain. The results, obtained through corpus-based error analysis, suggest that there is evidence of both interlingual and intralingual influences on the four error features from the four lexical domains. Based on the findings, this study provides pedagogical implications for English classrooms in Korea and recommends that the findings should be used to improve teaching materials and to raise awareness of the influences on the lexical errors