Book contents
- Data-Intensive Investigations of English
- Studies in English Language
- Data-Intensive Investigations of English
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Tables
- Contributors
- Acknowledgments
- Chapter 1 Data-Intensive Approaches to English Linguistics
- Chapter 2 What Big Data Tells Us about American English Phonetics
- Chapter 3 Do You Reckon?
- Chapter 4 ‘Scots for the Masses’?
- Chapter 5 Combining Collocation Measures and Distributional Semantics to Detect Idioms
- Chapter 6 Using Data-Intensive Methods for Unlocking Expressiveness in Word Formation
- Chapter 7 Modals of Future Time Reference across Native and Non-native Englishes
- Chapter 8 Bayesian Multivariate Analysis of Complement Selection
- Chapter 9 Statistical Modelling of Syntactic Complexity of English Academic Texts Using Ensemble Machine Learning
- Chapter 10 Implications of the Replication Crisis
- Index
- References
Chapter 7 - Modals of Future Time Reference across Native and Non-native Englishes
A Variationist Analysis
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 03 December 2025
Book contents
- Data-Intensive Investigations of English
- Studies in English Language
- Data-Intensive Investigations of English
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Tables
- Contributors
- Acknowledgments
- Chapter 1 Data-Intensive Approaches to English Linguistics
- Chapter 2 What Big Data Tells Us about American English Phonetics
- Chapter 3 Do You Reckon?
- Chapter 4 ‘Scots for the Masses’?
- Chapter 5 Combining Collocation Measures and Distributional Semantics to Detect Idioms
- Chapter 6 Using Data-Intensive Methods for Unlocking Expressiveness in Word Formation
- Chapter 7 Modals of Future Time Reference across Native and Non-native Englishes
- Chapter 8 Bayesian Multivariate Analysis of Complement Selection
- Chapter 9 Statistical Modelling of Syntactic Complexity of English Academic Texts Using Ensemble Machine Learning
- Chapter 10 Implications of the Replication Crisis
- Index
- References
Summary
Focusing on the variation between modal auxiliaries indicating future time reference in recent spoken data, this study examines whether advanced EFL learners have adopted ongoing changes in core versus semi-modals, and whether the choice of the modal auxiliary is governed by similar structural variables as in native varieties, in this case, British and American English. We adopt a generalized linear mixed model tree analysis in two steps: (1) the alternation between will and be going to, with their different forms collapsed together, and (2) the alternations between be going to versus gonna, and will versus its contracted forms separately. Our results indicate that the English of foreign language learners is shaped by similar processes of change that influence native language varieties, but also that some learner groups are more similar to native speakers than others. Methodologically, the two-step approach ensures that subtle grammatical conditioning is not masked by uneven distribution of variants.
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- Data-Intensive Investigations of English , pp. 167 - 195Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2025
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