The dative alternation refers to the alternation between two constructions that denote some type of transfer: the double object construction ("I give my sister a book") vs. the to-dative construction ("I give a book to my sister"). We examined the motivations behind the dative alternation in Indian English. A corpus study was…

The variety of English spoken by about half a million people in the Canadian province of Quebec is a minority language in intensive contact with French, the local majority language. This unusual contact situation has produced a unique variety of English which displays many instances of French influence that distinguish it from other types of…

This paper reports on a comprehensive corpus-based study of regional and stylistic variation in the distribution of the English present perfect. The data represents ten English varieties of both the Inner Circle and Outer Circle, covering four major text types: conversation, news reportage, academic and fictional writing. The results are discussed…

Considers a selection of discourse and rhetorical norms of Modern Standard Chinese and contrasts them with a comparable selection of discourse and rhetorical norms of an "inner circle" variety of English. Because transfer of discourse and rhetorical norms from a first to a second language commonly occurs, predicts that a Chinese variety…

Suggests second language writing research on English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) learners' transfer of registers into their academic written discourse is predicated on a native speaker/nonnative speaker dichotomy. Addresses shortcomings of this strict native speaker/nonnative speaker ESL dichotomy by examining the extent to which creole-English…

Examines the linguistic features of Tok Pisin (the Papua New Guinea variety of Melanesian Pidgin) resulting from decreolization and the linguistic features of Papua New Guinea English. Discusses code-switching and transference between Tok Pisin and English and concludes that an English-to-pidgin continuum does not exist in Papua New Guinea or in…

English as spoken as a second language in India has developed distinct sound patterns in terms of both segmental and prosodic characteristics. We investigate the differences between two groups varying in native language (Gujarati, Tamil) to evaluate to what extent Indian English (IE) accents are based on a single target phonological-phonetic…