Extraposition in learner and expert writing Exploring (in)formality and the impact of register

Tove Larsson, Henrik Kaatari

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

17 Scopus citations

Abstract

Subject extraposition (e.g. it is important to remember) is generally considered to be a formal construction that learners, whose writing is often said to be overly informal, have been found to struggle with. This study investigates to what extent register and text type can be used to explore learners’ reportedly “informal” use of this construction. Learner writing is compared to expert writing from several different registers and to native-speaker student writing. The results show that there are important differences across both registers and text types. Furthermore, while the learners’ use is most like that of the experts’ academic writing, certain similarities to the non-academic registers were also noted. The results additionally suggest that earlier claims about the informal status of learner writing seem mainly to have been influenced by the text types included in the corpora previously investigated.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)33-62
Number of pages30
JournalInternational Journal of Learner Corpus Research
Volume5
Issue number1
DOIs
StatePublished - Mar 13 2019
Externally publishedYes

Keywords

  • Expert writing
  • Extraposition
  • Informality
  • Learner writing
  • Register

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Language and Linguistics
  • Education
  • Linguistics and Language

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