Investigation into Tense-Aspect Patterns of Chinese ELF Academic Writing—a Variationist’s Approach

Abstract

English as a lingua franca (ELF) has become a crucial research topic in language teaching in the past decade. The rise of ELF has also influenced teaching practices in academic settings. From the perspective of English worldwide, the exponential growth of Chinese speakers of English and the characteristics of their English use are part of a phenomenon that needs to be paid attention to. The present study investigated the pattern of variation of one morphosyntactic feature, past tense unmarking in ELF academic writing among Chinese speakers of English. By adopting variable rule (VARBRUL) analysis, the researcher attempted to include linguistic and extralinguistic factors and generate a parsimonious model of past tense unmarking variation. The findings revealed that phonetic saliency and lexical aspect were the significant factor groups. Specifically, copulas, regular verbs, and non-state verbs could predict the uses of past tense unmarking. However, genres did not contribute to the variation. The results thus indicated that the variants were governed by universal linguistic constraints such as phonetic saliency and lexical aspect. Therefore, the variant uses can be viewed as natural and legitimate. The findings also have some pedagogical implications for assessment and ELF awareness raising pertaining to teaching in ELF contexts.