Familiarity with Catenative Verb Constructions through a JEFLL Corpus Analysis

This study investigates Japanese EFL learners' relative familiarities with thirteen catenative verb constructions (henceforth, CVC) through an analysis of the JEFLL Corpus (Tono, 2007). The results of 4-gram analyses show that learners tend to use SV, SVC, and SVO patterns in six timed narrative essays. Furthermore, correspondence analysis reveals that learners are mainly familiar with be+ed, be+-ing, like+to-infinitive, and like+-ing. On the other hand, they are unlikely to use the "accusative with infinitive" constructions (Jespersen, 1933, p.340) such as like+(person/thing)+to -infinitive (SVO). These results suggest that on the basis of four familiar constructions, Tow and intermediate learners at the Japanese university level should gradually enrich their productive catenative verb constructions through pedagogical examples and also use them fluently.