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Applied Linguistics 1990 11(2):159-182; doi:10.1093/applin/11.2.159
© 1990 by Oxford University Press
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Another Look at Yes/No Questions: Native Speakers and Non-native Speakers1

JESSICA WILLIAMS

University of Illinois

This study examines the production of Yes{oslash}No questions by native speakers of English and speakers of Singapore English, a non-native regional variety. The results indicate that there are a number of similarities between the two groups; specifically, both groups appear to prefer an invariant SVO order and tend to eliminate syntactic elements which are semantically redundant. Both groups use a variety of devices, including changes in intonation and,final tags, to indicate that these SVO utterances are indeed questions.

The findings suggest that our notions of what constitutes target-like use remain ill-defined. As long as native speaker behaviour.is assumed or intuited, rather than documented, it is difficult to judge the performance of second language learners, in particular, to state when they have achieved a level of target-like production.


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