International Journal of Learner Corpus Research - Volume 2, Issue 2, 2016

This paper focuses on the ‘intrusive as’-construction in complex-transitive verb complementation which was so far only attested for Indian English. Our data show that ‘intrusive as’ is a common feature in South Asian Englishes generally, albeit to different degrees. Comparing the South Asian data with data from Learner Englishes allows to test several hypotheses concerning the origin of ‘intrusive as’; the most robust correlation within the data points to redundancy as a motivating factor for both ESL and EFL contexts.

In research on L2 English, recent corpus-based studies indicate that some non-standard forms are shared by indigenized (ESL) and foreign (EFL) varieties of English, which challenges the idea of a clear dichotomy between innovation and error. We present a data-driven large-scale method to detect innovations, test it on verb + preposition structures (including phrasal verbs) and adjective + preposition structures, and describe similarities and differences between EFL and ESL. We use a dependency-parsed version of the International Corpus of Learner English to automatically extract potential innovations, defined as patterns of overuse compared to the British National Corpus as reference corpus. We measure overuse by means of collocation measures like O/E or T-score, and compare our results with similar results for ESL. In both quantitative and qualitative analyses, we detect similarities between the two varieties (e.g. discuss about) and dissimilarities (e.g. accuse for, only distinctive for EFL). We report more verb/adjective + preposition combinations than previous studies and discuss the roles of analogy and transfer.

Conflicting findings are reported for New Englishes and Learner Englishes: similarities are identified mainly on psycholinguistic grounds and differences on sociolinguistic grounds. This article offers an analysis of the progressive form in Black South African English, in which the interaction between gradual increases in proficiency and normative interventions by explicit feedback and editing of published texts is examined to establish the route towards conventionalisation of innovative features. The results indicate that one innovative feature, the extension of the progressive to longer time spans, becomes established as a feature of the variety, but other potential innovations gradually disappear under normative influence and with increased proficiency. Innovations are likely to be accepted if they are insufficiently salient to be targeted for normative correction and sufficiently present in the written and spoken input to become entrenched in the grammatical representations of learners as they turn into advanced users of the New English.

This paper adopts a process-oriented approach to comparing EFL and ESL varieties and examines to what extent they are driven by general cognitive processes of language acquisition and production. A comparative corpus-study of lexical innovations in derivational morphology brings to light two general types of innovations: 1) interlingual, L1-based innovations, resulting from cross-linguistic influence, and 2) intralingual, L2-based innovations, resulting from various other processes. While the first type is virtually absent in ESL varieties, it is in the second type where similar types of innovations in EFL and ESL varieties can be observed. The paper argues that these innovations can be explained in terms of several underlying cognitive processes that serve to create and maximise morphological transparency and increase explicitness of form-meaning relations.

This paper addresses the equivalence often drawn between labels such as ESL, New Englishes and Outer Circle on the one hand, and between EFL, Learner Englishes and Expanding Circle on the other. It argues that this mapping takes insufficient account of both intra-varietal variation and inter-varietal similarities. We compare the two non-native varietal types with each other and with native English on the basis of ‘user’ data from the International Corpus of English and the Corpus of Dutch English, focusing on three-word clusters in academic writing. Quantitative analyses reveal no clear grouping per circle, but rather a regional East Africa grouping. Case studies of four specific clusters (in case of, due to the, the fact that and the other hand) mostly show a native/non-native divide. Characteristics of both ESL and EFL, including innovative processes as well as learner strategies, are shown to be at play in the Outer and Expanding Circle alike. The findings are consistent with the notion of neither a strict divide between varietal types, nor a continuum.

Singapore English and Hong Kong English started out as contact varieties and developed into ESL varieties belonging to the Outer Circle (Kachru 1985). Both varieties show a similar contact ecology (Chinese), but differ in their socio-institutional status in the Dynamic Model (Schneider 2003, 2007). By analyzing innovative verb-to-noun conversion in these two varieties, and comparing them to British English, this study shows that despite the obvious similarities in substratum, the usage frequency of conversion in both varieties differs considerably. These findings, similar to — most recently — Deshors (2014) and Gilquin (2015), call into question the established notion of ESL in general and the status of SgE and HKE as ESL varieties in particular. In order to accurately reflect contemporary language use, it is reasonable to conceptualize the notion of ESL as a continuum and to situate HKE and SgE at opposite ends.

Drawing on spoken corpus data, this study traces the emergence and development of Norman French-influenced innovations in the nativised L2 variety of Jersey English and compares them to features in the speech of French-speaking learners of English. The comparison shows that such innovations do not differ from errors in a learner variety on a formal linguistic level and that they arguably result from the same processes as are present in foreign language acquisition, such as transfer or simplification. The paper therefore argues that innovations can only be identified reliably in retrospect, once they are more widely accepted in the speech community. It also points to the social factors that are crucial in shaping the use and probable fates of former innovations in Jersey English and suggests a typology of innovations according to their developments.

The article discusses linguistic creativity in informal Skype conversations between university students from eight different European countries. The basis for the study is the Corpus of Academic Spoken English (CASE), a corpus of Skype conversations in an English as a Lingua Franca (ELF) context. With the help of qualitative examples, the article examines innovative language use and proposes a taxonomy for functionally accepted innovations, distinguishing instances of L1 influence, approximations and ad hoc innovation. Our findings point towards an assertive and creative perspective on language use, which seems to have a positive influence on the communicative setting, e.g. illustrated by code-switching in combination with laughter. CASE participants use non-standard forms and innovations freely, accommodating to each others’ language use. They also establish their own ephemeral communication strategies and showcase and emphasize their respective language and cultural backgrounds.