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Tense and Aspect in Second Language Acquisition and Learner Corpus Research
Edited by Robert Fuchs and Valentin Werner
[Benjamins Current Topics 108] 2020
► pp. 83–110

Progressive or not progressive?

Modeling the constructional choices of EFL and ESL writers

| University of Eastern Finland
| Michigan State University

This multifactorial analysis of progressive marking contrasts native English to two Asian Englishes and Dutch English. Specifically, we (i) model writers’ constructional choices (progressive vs. non-progressive) across Englishes based on several linguistic predictors simultaneously, (ii) assess how those factors impact the progressive vs. non-progressive alternation, (iii) how several linguistic factors determine, simultaneously, writers’ constructional choices and (iv) how those choices differ across varieties and genres. Based on 4,661 verb constructions from five comparable multi-genre corpora, we ran a logistic regression analysis to determine which factors cause English-speaking populations to differ in their constructional choices and in which specific contexts. While the model strongly predicts speakers’ choices, within individual genres, tense and modality are found to influence speakers’ choices differently. Overall, our results yield nuanced insights into the (dis)similarities among and within ESL/EFL varieties and contribute to the broader issue of the native-foreign-second language continuum across genres.

Keywords: progressive vs. non-progressive, English as a native language, English as a second language, English as a foreign language, multivariate analysis
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.The progressive in the ENL-ESL-EFL continuum: Previous research
  • 3.Progressive marking as a multifactorial phenomenon: Some theoretical and methodological insights
  • 4.Data and statistical approach
    • 4.1Corpora and extraction of data
    • 4.2Factors
    • 4.3Statistical modeling
  • 5.Results
    • 5.1Main effect: Semantic domain
    • 5.2Interactions
      • 5.2.1Interactions with genre
      • 5.2.2Constructional choices in the ENL-ESL-EFL continuum
  • 6.Discussion
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 1 July 2020
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/bct.108.ijlcr.16019.rau
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