Tense in Speakers of English as a Contact Language: World Englishes and First Generation Long-immersed Immigrants

Abstract

ABSTRACT This paper aims to build bridges between different varieties of English. It reports the findings of two independent studies on the expression of perfect meaning in varieties of English world-wide. The first is a corpus-based, comparative study of native English vs institutionalised L2 varieties of English. Study 2 is a grammaticality judgement task involving first-generation immigrant speakers of English living in Mallorca in Spain. It is found that L2 speakers produce more variant forms for expressing present perfect meaning. L2 speakers are also similar to long-immersed immigrants in that both show greater variability in their choice of verb forms in recent past contexts. The paper insightfully combines research on World Englishes and on language attrition, arguing that language variation in both World Englishes and in long-immersed immigrant speakers can be analysed and interpreted as a possible sign of an emerging new variety.