Redundancy in ELF: A Corpus-Based Study on Negative and Modal Concord

Abstract

English as a lingua franca (henceforth ELF) is a contact language that has attracted great attention due to its unique global role. Thus, numerous studies have been conducted to determine its characteristics, among which research on such processes as, for example, simplification, added prominence or redundancy underlying language use in the ELF context is of the main interest. Therefore, the paper aims to broaden the perspective on redundancy in ELF, focusing on negative and modal concord in spoken and written data. With the reliance on VOICE, ELFA, and WrELFA corpora, the analysis shows that both phenomena are noticeable in ELF; however, while redundancy in terms of modal concord appears in spoken and written ELF, negative concord is characteristic only of spoken data.

Keywords

• english as a lingua franca
• contact languages
• redundancy
• negative concord
• modal concord