Formulaic expressions and functional categories in classroom SLA: Evidence from a longitudinal corpus

This study applies the usage-based notion of “formulaicity” to examine the nature of L2 initial state through transitional state grammars in taught-classroom settings. Tracking longitudinal production data from nine bilingual Spanish/Catalan pupils (ages 10–17) with limited exposure to classroom English, we observe that evidence for knowledge of L2 functional categories at the initial state is represented by formulaic expressions (FEs) only. Outside of these, learners’ production data are consistent with an incremental development of L2 knowledge. We also find a relationship between earlier and more frequent FE use and better knowledge of underlying syntactic properties related to L2 functional categories, which the FEs exemplify. Adopting the Modular Cognition Framework (MCF) (Truscott & Sharwood Smith, 2019), we propose that FEs derived from classroom input in instructed settings could provide learners with the syntactic distributional evidence necessary to trigger the establishment of L2 FCs. We discuss how these findings can be implicated within traditional debates surrounding L2 initial and transitional state grammars.