The Use of Progressives in Pakistani Learners’ English: A Corpus Based Study

Abstract

English language has many varieties, one of its, is Pakistani English. There are some deviations from the Standard English in Pakistani English. It has been noted that Pakistani users of English had been found using Perfectives (stative verbs) in Progressive situation and the present research aims at finding out the hypothesis. For this purpose, data had been collected from Pakistani learners of English as second language at graduation level from various universities and colleges in the form of argumentative essays keeping in view the instructions given by ICLE (International Corpus of Learners English) for compilation of learners’ argumentative essays. Hand written text was converted into text files. Antconc 3.2.1 was used to extract specific examples from the bulk of data. Data was further manually processed and results were compiled. The research approved this hypothesis as set out earlier; the Pakistani learners of English language use certain progressives frequently in place of perfectives.

Keywords: Perfectives, Progressives, Stative, Pakistani English, Second language learners