%0 Journal Article %A Gries, Stefan Th. %A Deshors, Sandra C. %T EFL and/vs. ESL?: A multi-level regression modeling perspective on bridging the paradigm gap %D 2015 %J International Journal of Learner Corpus Research %V 1 %N 1 %P 130-159 %@ 2215-1478 %R https://doi.org/10.1075/ijlcr.1.1.05gri %K EFL %K dative alternation %K ESL %K regression modeling %I John Benjamins %X The study of learner language and that of indigenized varieties are growing areas of English-language corpus-linguistic research, which are shaped by two current trends: First, the recognition that more rigorous methodological approaches are urgently needed (with few exceptions, existing work is based on over-/under-use frequency counts that fail to unveil complex non-native linguistic patterns); second, the collective effort to bridge an existing “paradigm gap” (Sridhar & Sridhar 1986) between EFL and ESL research.This paper contributes to these developments by offering a multifactorial analysis of seventeen lexical verbs in the dative alternation in speech and writing of German/French learners and Hong Kong/India/Singapore English speakers. We exemplify the advantages of hierarchical mixed-effects modeling, which allows us to control for speaker and verb-specific effects, but also for the hierarchical structure of the corpus data. Second, we address the theoretical question of whether EFL and ESL represent discrete English varieties or a continuum. %U https://www.jbe-platform.com/content/journals/10.1075/ijlcr.1.1.05gri