The grammatical features of English in a Chinese Internet discussion forum

Recent research in world Englishes shows that the lexis-grammar interface, or lexicogrammar, constitutes an important area for investigating structural nativisation of local varieties of English (Schilk ). While most studies of lexicogrammar have focused on Inner Circle and Outer Circle varieties, the study presented in this paper focuses on an Expanding Circle variety, China English, and explores some of its patterns of structural nativisation. Utilising large-scale corpus data collected from an online discussion forum, this study examines several locally emergent linguistic patterns in China English, including new ditransitive verbs, verb-complementation, and collocation. The results suggest that there exist certain associations between specific lexical items and grammatical constructions in this local variety.