Lexicogrammar
One of the most frequently found features of ELF lexicogrammar in all ELF corpora
is zero marking of third person –s in the present tense. This feature, which would be
described as a ‘failure to use -s’ or ‘omission of -s’ according to an EFL perspective,
is one that East Asian ELF speakers share with many others across the Expanding
Circle, as well as with some speakers of both Outer and Inner Circle Englishes. In
removing the marking of this redundant morpheme, ELF users are continuing a
process that has been in progress for almost a thousand years, i.e. the regularisation of
the simple present tense endings from the original six inflected endings down to the
remaining single one, the third person –s. Put like this, zero marking of the –s
inflection is part of an entirely natural linguistic process, and could be said to
represent simply an acceleration (through increased language contact) of a process
that is already taking place, albeit more slowly, in the English language, as it is predisposed
to evolve in this direction (see Breiteneder 2005).