The progressive aspect in the Netherlands and the ESL/EFL continuum

Abstract

ABSTRACTThis paper responds to calls to (i) approach varieties of English as a native (ENL), second (ESL) and foreign (EFL) language in an integrated fashion, and (ii) widen the scope of world Englishes analyses to the Expanding Circle. It describes the development of the Corpus of ‘Dutch English’, the first Expanding Circle corpus incorporating all text types in the written components of the ICE corpora. This corpus has implications for the description of English in the Netherlands in particular and for the investigation of ESL and EFL varieties in general. The paper then reports on a case study of the progressive aspect in this corpus compared to several ENL and ESL varieties. The results show no strict divide between the ESL varieties and the Corpus of Dutch English, which in fact displayed characteristics of both EFL and ESL. These findings provide further evidence in favour of an ESL–EFL continuum rather than a strict divide between varietal types.