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Kim, Hyung-Sun & Heine, Bernd. 2011. Native and Non-native Use of Existential There in CMC. Korean Journal of Linguistics, 36-1, 69-91. This study is an attempt to locate differences in language use between native speakers and Korean learners of English through the existential there constructions occurring in a series of computer-mediated communication (CMC). The data examined were collected from a semester-long CMC interaction held as a supplementary activity of coursework which was jointly offered by a Korean and a US university. Students discussed the course subject through an asynchronous Internet bulletin board system. The discussions were compiled to construct two comparable corpora of native and non-native language use. The existential there constructions were examined for frequency, collocation with verbs, and extensions etc. as appeared in both data. There was no notable difference in word frequency, but some important distinctions in other features were identified: the native use of the construction showed more flexibility in positioning adverbials, and more complexity both in combining with verbs and in the extension of notional subject. More “intermediate items” of there reflecting the dynamics of the morpheme are found in native samples. The last part of the finding is related to the grammaticalization account of language change. (Chonnam National University & University of Cologne)