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| Main Authors: | , , |
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| Format: | Preprint |
| Published: |
2026
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.09008 |
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| _version_ | 1866914463232294912 |
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| author | Li, Wenxi Wang, Xihao Sun, Weiwei |
| author_facet | Li, Wenxi Wang, Xihao Sun, Weiwei |
| contents | The widespread use of English as a Second or Foreign Language (ESFL) has sparked a paradigm shift: ESFL is not seen merely as a deviation from standard English but as a distinct linguistic system in its own right. This shift highlights the need for dedicated, knowledge-intensive representations of ESFL. In response, this paper surveys existing ESFL resources, identifies their limitations, and proposes a novel solution. Grounded in constructivist theories, the paper treats constructions as the fundamental units of analysis, allowing it to model the syntax--semantics interface of both ESFL and standard English. This design captures a wide range of ESFL phenomena by referring to syntactico-semantic mappings of English while preserving ESFL's unique characteristics, resulting a gold-standard syntactico-semantic resource comprising 1643 annotated ESFL sentences. To demonstrate the sembank's practical utility, we conduct a pilot study testing the Linguistic Niche Hypothesis, highlighting its potential as a valuable tool in Second Language Acquisition research. |
| format | Preprint |
| id |
arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2604_09008 |
| institution | arXiv |
| publishDate | 2026 |
| record_format | arxiv |
| spellingShingle | Towards Linguistically-informed Representations for English as a Second or Foreign Language: Review, Construction and Application Li, Wenxi Wang, Xihao Sun, Weiwei Computation and Language Artificial Intelligence The widespread use of English as a Second or Foreign Language (ESFL) has sparked a paradigm shift: ESFL is not seen merely as a deviation from standard English but as a distinct linguistic system in its own right. This shift highlights the need for dedicated, knowledge-intensive representations of ESFL. In response, this paper surveys existing ESFL resources, identifies their limitations, and proposes a novel solution. Grounded in constructivist theories, the paper treats constructions as the fundamental units of analysis, allowing it to model the syntax--semantics interface of both ESFL and standard English. This design captures a wide range of ESFL phenomena by referring to syntactico-semantic mappings of English while preserving ESFL's unique characteristics, resulting a gold-standard syntactico-semantic resource comprising 1643 annotated ESFL sentences. To demonstrate the sembank's practical utility, we conduct a pilot study testing the Linguistic Niche Hypothesis, highlighting its potential as a valuable tool in Second Language Acquisition research. |
| title | Towards Linguistically-informed Representations for English as a Second or Foreign Language: Review, Construction and Application |
| topic | Computation and Language Artificial Intelligence |
| url | https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.09008 |