Analysing English as a lingua franca: a corpus-driven investigation

摘要

This book about the analysis of English as a Lingua Franca (ELF) consists of seven chapters. Chapter 1 clarifies what is meant by ELF and why studying it is important. Chapter 2 describes the corpora of data on which the book is based and the methodology of the analysis. Chapter 3 investigates formal patterns found in the data and how they differ from comparable patterns in corpora of English as a Native Language (ENL), including the absence of the 3rd person singular -s inflection on present tense verbs, the occurrence of the preposition about between verbs such as discuss and study and their objects, the use of articles with various nouns and the patterns of occurrence of relative pronouns such as which and that. Chapter 4 considers the motives for the patterns that are found, and it is suggested that some of them represent a process of regularisation in the use of English, while others exploit redundancy in order to achieve enhanced intelligibility.