Identification and measurement of noun suffixes in text corpus produced by learners of Spanish as a second language

Abstract

This study aims to analyze and to record the number of words with noun suffixes in a corpus produced by learners of Spanish as second language. Obtaining the suffix index is of utmost importance to draw conclusions about both, the number of nominalizations and the percentage of occurrences coincident with Spanish suffixes as well as idiosyncratic forms. The study is based on the theoretical framework of the interlanguage hypothesis within the theories of second language acquisition and the latest research on automatic handling of errors in Spanish corpus, particularly lexicons. The text corpus is divided in groups according to the proficiency level of the students, who have different native languages. Regarding the methodology, the Nooj system will be used so as to identify the terms that have noun suffixes, and then two different statistical techniques will be implemented to measure the data: the non-parametric test of Wicoxon for independent samples and the non-parametric test of Kruskal-Wallis. The obtained results will show substantial differences in the use and distribution of Spanish noun suffixes among the corpus that do not share the same level of proficiency. Indeed, a significant increase in matching nominal suffixes will be found in the intermediate level sample as compared to the initial level. However, the examined corpus will not show considerable differences in two other cases: existing suffixes in Spanish not combinable with bases and non-existent suffixes.