This volume has its origin in a selection of the papers presented at the Second ELC
International Postgraduate Conference on English Linguistics (ELC2) held at the University of
Vigo in October 2009 and designed and organised by postgraduate students belonging to the
English Departments of the Universities of Vigo and Santiago de Compostela. The purpose of the
conference was to allow young professional researchers to share and survey their current views
on linguistic research. Four of the ten chapters included address the diachronic change
undergone by particular lexical items namely the morphosemantic change illustrated by the
development of the morpheme punk the historical evolution of including and included the
origin and semantics of the expletive form adsheartlikins and the structure and distribution
of nominalisations referring to actions or processes. Variation is also approached from a
diatopic perspective in the study of expressions of obligation and necessity (must and have to)
in New Englishes the distribution and functions of the discourse marker eh in Channel Island
English and regional variability of vowel phonology in Scottish Standard English. Lastly
three studies address semantics and culture in the field of L2 learning. These contributions
focus on the assessment of Lexical Frequency Profile applications in the analysis of Romanian
learner English the role of cultural knowledge in the learning process of English as an
International Language and L1 typicality effects in L2 vocabulary learning.
