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Constraints on Language Variation and Change in Complex Multilingual Contact Settings
Edited by Bertus van Rooy and Haidee Kotze
[Contact Language Library 60] 2024
► pp. 120–152

Chapter 5
Lexical use in spoken New Englishes and Learner Englishes

The effects of shared and distinct communicative constraints

| Université catholique de Louvain

This chapter, set within the framework of constrained communication, investigates the linguistic effects, in terms of lexical use, of a number of shared and distinct communicative constraints that are thought to play a role in New Englishes and Learner Englishes. Relying on corpora of spoken Hong Kong English (HKE) and Mainland Chinese English (MCE), as well as native British English as a reference, it adopts a twofold methodology combining automatic measures of lexical complexity and a manual examination of lexical choices in a picture description task. The vocabulary used by HKE speakers appears to be more varied and sophisticated than that of MCE speakers, but otherwise the two groups display similar traces of potential L1 influence and employ the same strategies to compensate for limitations on proficiency. Native speakers’ vocabulary tends to be less complex and less formal, which is explained by their better stylistic awareness and possibly their lower task expertise.

Keywords: New Englishes, Learner Englishes, Hong Kong English, Mainland Chinese English, communicative constraints, lexical complexity
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.New Englishes and Learner Englishes
    • 2.1The continuum between New Englishes and Learner Englishes
    • 2.2HKE and MCE
  • 3.Corpora of New Englishes and Learner Englishes and the communicative constraints they reflect
    • 3.1The corpora: NESSI, LINDSEI and LOCNEC
    • 3.2Communicative constraints
  • 4.Automatic measures of lexical complexity
    • 4.1Automatic analysis
    • 4.2Results of the automatic analysis
  • 5.Manual analysis of lexical choices in the picture description
    • 5.1Manual annotation
    • 5.2Results of the manual analysis
  • 6.Discussion
  • 7.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 20 June 2024
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/coll.60.05gil
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