High-frequency Verbs across World and Learner Englishes

Laporte, Samantha
(2011) 17th annual Conference of the International Association for World Englishes (IAWE) — Location: Monash University, Melbourne, Australie (23.November.2011)

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  • Laporte, SamanthaUCLouvain
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Abstract
Both World Englishes (ESL) and Learner Englishes (EFL) have benefited from a great deal of attention in linguistic research over the past few decades. Yet, they have mainly been dealt with separately and very little consideration has been given to the features that they might share and to the ways in which they “might be combined to develop explanations of both sets of phenomena” (Ritchie, 1986: 15). Recently however, Nesselhauf (2009) has highlighted that some features thought to be variety-specific are in fact shared by world and learner varieties. This paper explores the relationship between these varieties a little further by taking a look at their use of the high-frequency verb make in samples of corpora (ICE and ICLE, 350,000 words) of student writing of eight different L1 backgrounds and one native(ENL)control sample. The different uses of make are analyzed, with particular emphasis on causative and light-verb constructions. It seems that, despite some differences,ESL and EFL seem to be rather close to each other, both quantitatively and qualitatively. The overall results of this study point towards a continuum in the use of make between EFL, ESL and ENL, with ESL being often closer to EFL than to ENL. This ties in with some of Nesselhauf’s (2009) findings and does not only shed further light on parallels and differences between ESL and EFL, but also shows how combining those two fields can enhance our understanding of both and help gain more insight into the overall SLA paradigm.
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Laporte, S. (2011). High-frequency Verbs across World and Learner Englishes. 17th annual Conference of the International Association for World Englishes (IAWE), Monash University, Melbourne, Australie. https://hdl.handle.net/2078.5/225818