The Present Perfect in Non-Native Englishes: A Corpus-Based Study of Variation

Davydova (U. of Hamburg) analyzes the category of the English present perfect in light of data from second-language varieties such an Indian and East African, and English learned as a foreign language by speakers of other languages. She also contributes to the neglected study of non-native English by establishing a methodologically sound and theoretically useful framework within which non-native varieties of English can be examined and compared across the board. Among her topics are towards a theoretical explanation for variation between the present perfect and preterit, metrics of complexity, the acrolectical variety of Indian English, the upper-mesolectic variety in Singapore, the mesolectical variety of English spoken in Russia, and developing a bird's-eye perspective on the variability of the present perfect across non-native Englishes. Annotation 穢2011 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)