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Measuring The Distributional Characteristics Of L2 Input Essay

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Given the two necessary conditions for measuring the distributional characteristics of L2 input stated above, it becomes obvious that input variability differs fundamentally from the variability in a TL construction (cf. section 2.3.2). The same conclusion can be drawn from the fact that non-robust input and the TL variable structure are proposed as two different, though closely related and interacting, forces of interlanguage fossilization (Han, 2013) (see section 2.3.1). For simplicity, variability in a TL construction will be referred to as “construction variability” in the remainder of this dissertation proposal. To recapitulate, Han’s (2014) conceptualization of the variability dimension of L2 input robustness consists of the following levels: (a) one-to-one, or one TL form encoding one meaning; (b) one-to-many, namely one TL form encoding multiple meanings across multiple contexts, or (c) within the same context; and (d) many-to-one, or multiple TL forms encoding the same or a similar meaning (see section 1.3). Though identical in terminology and entailment on the surface, construction variability signifies (in)consistency in the form-meaning-function relations of the TL in the prescriptive, categorical sense, and is generally stable in distribution. Input variability denotes a TL construction’s (in)consistency in the form-meaning-function mappings in discourse episodes that make up the primary linguistic data immediately accessible to L2 learners. Whereas naturalistic

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