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This book offers a study of the use of phrasal verbs in English as a lingua franca (ELF). It gives insights into how ELF speakers use specific phrasal verbs based on an empirical study in the VOICE corpus. The study reveals that most of the phrasal verbs analyzed in VOICE seem to be used in a conventional way. However, there are several instances of phrasal verb use that seem to be different to an ENL use for a variety of reasons. The analysis of these utterances indicates that although ELF speakers sometimes seem to use phrasal verbs differently than ENL speakers, and that some instances of phrasal verb use may even be considered incorrect in terms of ENL standards, a non-conventional phrasal verb use does not seem to affect the conversations. Moreover, the interactions suggest that the phrasal verb use in VOICE sometimes seems to be based on the open-choice principle rather than the idiom principle . The findings are exemplified by reference to corpus extracts. The analysis of the utterances scrutinized for this study indicates that some claims about the phrasal verb use of native speakers do not seem to hold with regard to the use of phrasal verbs by ELF speakers.

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Katrin Märzinger studied German and English studies at the University of Vienna and at King´s College, London. She is currently teaching German as a second language in Vienna.

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