This thesis describes the development of Dapper (`Determiner And PrePosition Error Recogniser'), a system designed to automatically acquire models of occurrence for English prepositions and determiners to allow for the detection and correction of errors in their usage, especially in the writing of non-native speakers of the language. Prepositions and determiners are focused on because they are parts of speech whose usage is particularly challenging to acquire, both for students of the language and for natural language processing tools. The work presented in this thesis proposes to address this problem by developing a system which can acquire models of correct preposition and determiner occurrence, and can use this knowledge to identify divergences from these models as errors. The contexts of these parts of speech are represented by a sophisticated feature set, incorporating a variety of semantic and syntactic elements. DAPPER is found to perform well on preposition and determiner selection tasks in correct native English text. Results on each preposition and determiner are discussed in detail to understand the possible reasons for variations in performance, and whether these are due to problems with the structure of DAPPER or to deeper linguistic reasons. An in-depth analysis of all features used is also offered, quantifying the contribution of each feature individually. This can help establish if the decision to include complex semantic and syntactic features is justified in the context of this task. Finally, the performance of DAPPER on non-native English text is assessed. The system is found to be robust when applied to text which does not contain any preposition or determiner errors. On an error correction task, results are mixed: DAPPER shows promising results on preposition selection and determiner confusion (definite vs. indefinite) errors, but is less successful in detecting errors involving missing or extraneous determiners. Several characteristics of learner writing are described, to gain a clearer understanding of what problems arise when natural language processing tools are used with this kind of text. It is concluded that the construction of contextual models is a viable approach to the task of preposition and determiner selection, despite outstanding issues pertaining to the domain of non-native writing.

Le principal objectif de cette thèse est d'étudier l'incidence des erreurs prépositionnelles sur l'intelligibilité de productions en L2 anglais par des apprenants francophones. Après un résumé des caractéristiques sémantiques et morpho-syntaxiques des prépositions en anglais et en français, nous abordons les questions liées à l'acquisition d'une langue seconde en général et à l'acquisition des prépositions en particulier, afin d' identifier les facteurs qui peuvent rendre leur acquisition problématique en L2. Nous proposons également des solutions pédagogiques pour améliorer l'apprentissage des prépositions en anglais. Afin de mesurer l'intelligibilité, nous analysons un corpus de productions orales et écrites contenant des emplois erronés, répartis entre erreurs lexciales et erreurs lexico- grammaticales (additions, omissions ou substitutions). Les résultats de cette analyse permettent de voir dans quelle mesure les erreurs prépositionnelles affectent l'intelligibilité du message. / The main objective of our thesis paper is to examine the intelligibility of erroneous prepositional uses produced by French learners of English. We begin with an overview of the semantico-syntactic properties of English and French prepositions. Then we give an account of second language acquisition theories, and we highlight the acquisition of English prepositions by listing a number of reasons that are likely to make them problematic for L2 learners. We also propose certain effective pedagogical approaches to teaching English prepositions/particles. To measure intelligibility, we assess an oral and a written corpus containing L2 erroneous constructions. Our error tagset is divided into lexical and lexico-grammatical errors (addition, omission and substitution). The results of our corpus analysis allow us to observe the extent to which erroneous spatial prepositions may affect the intelligibility of the transferred message.

過去多數英文介系詞語意之研究皆以介系詞為多義詞，並藉由語意網絡去分析其詞義（e.g. Lindner, 1983; Tyler and Evans, 2001），或透過意象圖式理論（image schema theory）來探究介系詞語意，依不同的前景名詞（figure）與背景名詞（ground）組成可產生不同的形貌結構，從而衍生出其特殊語意（e.g. Lakoff, 1987）。然而，有關介系詞片語中詞彙搭配詞組如何影響介系詞使用之研究則較不多見。故本論文著重在分析前景與背景名詞等搭配詞組之語意特徵，探究其對介系詞in和on語意及介系詞片語組成之影響。以英國國家語料庫（British National Corpus）和政治大學外語學習者語料庫（The NCCU Foreign Language Learner Corpus）作分析，比較學習者與以英語為母語者使用in和on介系詞片語在語意上的差異。 本研究共分三部分。第一部分的詞義分析比較學習者與母語人士在使用in與on之詞義之異同，在介系詞in的部分，學習者與母語人士語料相較之下僅有細微的差異，多數語料皆為原型場景（proto-scene）之詞義的使用。介系詞on的詞義使用則稍有不同；學習者較傾向作具體位置的指涉，然母語者則較傾向呈現此介系詞的抽象意涵。第二部分的語意特徵分析則比較介系詞in和on在具體（literal）與抽象（metaphorical）片語組成上，前景與背景語意特徵之異同。研究結果顯示不同的介系詞片語會由特定類型的前景與背景名詞組成，故在組成不同語意之介系詞片語時，特定語意特徵出現的頻率會呈現顯著性地差異。第三部分為學習者語料的錯誤分析，探究學習者誤用in和on介系詞片語之情形。 綜合上述研究結果可得知，組成介系詞片語的名詞詞組會依上下文語意而產生不同之語意偏好（semantic preferences），介系詞的語意除了會受到後接名詞的影響，周圍名詞也可能造成語意上的差異。這些名詞可能會選擇特定的介系詞來使用，亦會影響介系詞在片語中之語意。 本論文深入地探討了介系詞片語詞組之組成，透過大量的語料分析，為英語介系詞複雜的語意層面提出了一個較系統化且完整之解釋，期能將研究發現應用於教材設計上，希望能在學習介系詞使用上有所幫助，也供未來介系詞相關研究作為參考。 / The meanings of English preposition have been explored greatly through vast directions of research. Most studies agree that preposition is a polysemous lexical item whose senses can be construed from the semantic network (e.g. Lindner, 1983; Tyler and Evans, 2001). Its senses has also been examined under the image-schema theory from the cognitive perspective (e.g. Lakoff, 1987), in which the figure (or trajector) and ground (or landmark) interact differently to form various configurations that contribute to sets of distinct senses. Though these studies attempt to provide a comprehensive network for the meanings of prepositions, how the semantic features of the figure and ground might influence the choice of a preposition and the construction of a prepositional phrase is hardly seen. The thesis adopted a native speaker corpus (British National Corpus, BNC) and a learner corpus (The NCCU Foreign Language Learner Corpus, NCCU) to probe into how the semantic features of the figure and ground nouns can help explicate the semantic profiles of the preposition in and on, and to compare learners’ understanding of them with that of the native speakers’. Based on the corpora, the study is composed of three major analyses. The sense analysis compared the sense distributions of in and on, from which similarities and differences may be found between BNC and NCCU. The result of this analysis showed that in the sense categories of in, the distribution did not differ greatly since most of the data were categorized into the proto-scene sense in both BNC and NCCU, and only slight variations could be found in other categories. In the sense categories of on, in senses that refer to location, higher frequency could be found in NCCU, while more metaphorical constructions of on were identified in BNC. In the second analysis, the semantic feature analysis, the distribution of the semantic features are compared between literal and metaphorical constructions of in and on and between BNC and NCCU respectively. For the comparison of in and on, the statistical results showed that different types of nouns could be observed in the data of particular prepositions. Thus, for nouns in prepositions of different meanings, there may be significant differences in the semantic features identified in these nouns This result implied that the nouns surrounding a preposition might have some influences toward the meaning of this preposition. In the third analysis, the errors in the learner data were identified and examined. Based on the results, we proposed that in a prepositional phrase formed by a particular meaning of a preposition, there exist a range of semantic preferences shown in their co-text. The meanings of a preposition are influenced by the lexical words surrounding the preposition, rather than by the word that goes after the preposition (the ground). This thesis extends from the previous studies on the semantics of prepositions and includes the important linguistic elements in forming the prepositional phrases in the analysis. By incorporating a large amount of data, it also provides a systematic analysis and a more comprehensive explanation toward the complex semantics of English prepositions. The findings can be applied to the design of English teaching materials and techniques and may hopefully bring some insights to further preposition-related studies.