Article published In:
English World-WideVol. 44:2 (2023) ► pp.184–218
Grammatical variation in World Englishes
An onomasiological study
This study adopts an onomasiological, alternation-based approach to the exploration of grammatical variation across World Englishes, using data sourced from the 1.9 billion-word Global Web-based English corpus. The macro-orientation of the study, which investigates a set of ten alternations known to be susceptible to diachronic change, facilitates identification of a number of general trends, including the typical advancement of the Inner Circle varieties and of the South-East Asian varieties, the hypercentrality of American English, and the epicentrality of Indian English in South Asia. Possible explanatory factors include colloquialisation, grammatical simplicity/complexity, developmental status, and areal proximity.
Keywords: onomasiology, alternation, grammatical variation, World Englishes, GloWbE, colloquialisation, epicentrality
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 2.Data and methodology
- 3.Explanatory considerations
- 4.Findings
- 4.1Perfect aspect
- 4.2Progressive aspect
- 4.3Passive voice
- 4.4Subjunctive mood
- 4.4.1The subjunctive mandative
- 4.4.2The subjunctive-were conditional
- 4.5Non-finite complementation
- 4.5.1 Prevent NP (from) Ving
- 4.5.2 Help NP (to) V
- 4.5.3 Start Ving vs start to V
- 4.6Concord with collective nouns
- 4.7First person inclusive imperatives
- 5.Discussion of findings
- 6.Conclusion
- Notes
-
References
References
Aarts, Bas, Joanne Close, and Sean Wallis
2013 “Choices
over Time: Methodological Issues in Investigating Current
Change”. In Bas Aarts, Joanne Close, Geoffrey Leech, and Sean Wallis, eds. The
Verb Phrase in English: Investigating Recent Language Change with
Corpora. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 14–45. 
Biber, Doug, Stig Johansson, Geoffrey Leech, Susan Conrad, and Edward Finegan
1999 Longman
Grammar of Spoken and Written English. Harlow: Pearson ESL.
Collins, Peter
2008 “The
Progressive Aspect in World Englishes: A Corpus-Based Study”. Australian Journal of
Linguistics 281: 225–249.
2015 “Diachronic
Variation in the Grammar of Australian English”. In Peter Collins, ed. Grammatical
Change in English World-Wide. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 15–42.
Collins, Peter, and Xinyue Yao
2013 “Colloquial
Features in World Englishes”. International Journal of Corpus
Linguistics 181: 479–505.
2018 “Colloquialisation
and the Evolution of Australian English: A Cross-Varietal and Cross-Generic Study of Australian, British and American English
from 1931 to 2006”. English
World-Wide 391: 253–277.
Collins, Peter, Ariane Borlongan, Joo-Hyuk Lim, and Xinyue Yao
2014 “The
Subjunctive Mood in Philippine English: A Diachronic
Analysis”. In Daniel Schreier, Olga Timofeeva, Anne Gardner, Alpo Honkapoja, Marianne Hundt, and Simone Pfenninger, eds. Contact,
Variation and Change in the History of
English. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 259–280.
Davydova, Julia
2011 The
Present Perfect in Non-Native Englishes: A Corpus-Based
Study. Berlin: De Gruyter.
Deshors, Sandra C., and Stefan T. Gries
2020 “Mandative
Subjunctive vs. Should in World Englishes: A New Take on an Old
Alternation”. Corpora 151: 213–241.
Elsness, Johan
1997 The
Perfect and the Preterite in Contemporary and Earlier
English. Berlin: De Gruyter.
2009 “The
Perfect and the Preterite in Australian and New Zealand
English”. In Pam Peters, Peter Collins, and Adam Smith, eds. Varieties
of English Around the World. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 89–114.
Fanego, Teresa
1996 “The
Development of Gerunds as Objects of Subject-Control Verbs in English
(1400–1760)”. Diachronica 131: 29–62.
Fernández-Pena, Yolanda
2017 “Exploring
the Patterns of Verbal Agreement of Collective Noun-Headed Subjects in a Parsed Corpus of Present-Day
English”. EPiC Series in Language and
Linguistics 21: 325–334.
Fuchs, Robert
2016 “The
Frequency of the Present Perfect in Varieties of English around the
World”. In Valentin Werner, Cristina Suárez-Gómez, and Elena Seoane, eds. Re-Assessing
the Present Perfect in English: Corpus Studies and
Beyond. Berlin: De Gruyter, 223–258.
García-Castro, Laura
2020 “Finite
and Non-Finite Complement Clauses in Postcolonial Englishes”. World
Englishes 391: 411–426.
Harsh, Wayne
1968 The
Subjunctive in English. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press.
Heller, Benedikt, Benedikt Szmrecsanyi, and Jason Grafmiller
2017 “Stability
and Fluidity in Syntactic Variation World-Wide: The Genitive Alternation across Varieties of
English”. Journal of English
Linguistics 451: 3–27.
Huddleston, Rodney
1988 English
Grammar: An Outline. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Huddleston, Rodney, and Geoffrey Pullum
2002 The
Cambridge Grammar of the English
Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Hundt, Marianne
2009 “Concord
with Collective Nouns in Australian and New Zealand
English”. In Pam Peters, Peter Collins, and Adam Smith, eds. Varieties
of English Around the World. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 205–222.
2013 “The
Diversification of English: Old, New and Emerging
Epicentres”. In Daniel Schreier, and Marianne Hundt, eds. English
as a Contact Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 182–203.
Kachru, Braj
1985 “Standards,
Codification, and Sociolinguistic Realism: The English Language in the Outer
Circle”. In Randolph Quirk, and Henry G. Widdowson, eds. English
in the World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 11–30.
Kranich, Svenja
2010 The
Progressive in Modern English: A Corpus-Based Study of Grammaticalization and Related
Changes. Amsterdam: Rodopi.
Leech, Geoffrey, Marianne Hundt, Christian Mair, and Nicholas Smith
2009 Change
in Contemporary English: A Grammatical
Study. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Levin, Magnus
2001 “
Concord
with Collective Nouns Revisited
”. ICAME
Journal 231: 21–33.
Loureiro-Porto, Luisa
2017 “ICE
vs GloWbE: Big Data and Corpus Compilation”. World
Englishes 361: 448–470.
Mair, Christian
2013 “The
World System of Englishes: Accounting for the Transnational Importance of Mobile and Mediated
Vernaculars”. English
World-Wide 341: 253–278.
Mair, Christian, and Geoffrey N. Leech
2021 “Current
Changes in English Syntax”. In Bas Aarts, April McMahon, and Lars Hinrichs, eds. The
Handbook of English Linguistics. Hoboken: Wiley Blackwell, 249–276.
Meyerhoff, Miriam, and Nancy Niedzielski
2003 “The
Globalisation of Vernacular Variation”. Journal of
Sociolinguistics 71: 534–555.
Pariña, Jose Cristina M., and Selwyn Cruz
2015 “An
Investigation of the Complexity of Verb Phrases in the ICE of Four Asian Countries”. Malaysian
Journal of Languages and
Linguistics 41: 43–54.
Rautionaho, Paula
2014 Variation
in the Progressive: A Corpus-Based Study into World
Englishes. Tampere: Tampere University Press.
Schneider, Edgar
2007 Postcolonial
English: Varieties around the
World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Sharma, Devyani
Smitterberg, Erik
2005 The
Progressive in 19th-century English: A Process of
Integration. Amsterdam: Rodopi.
Steger, Maria, and Edgar W. Schneider
2012 “Complexity
as a Function of Iconicity: The Case of Complement Clause Constructions in New
Englishes”. In Bernd Kortmann, and Benedikt Szmrecsanyi, eds. Linguistic
Complexity: Second Language Acquisition, Indigenization,
Contact. Berlin: De Gruyter, 156–191.
Szmrecsanyi, Benedikt, and Bernd Kortmann
2012 “Introduction:
Linguistic Complexity”. In Bernd Kortmann, and Benedikt Szmrecsanyi, eds. Linguistic
Complexity: Second Language Acquisition, Indigenization,
Contact. Berlin: De Gruyter, 6–34.
Szmrecsanyi, Benedikt, Jason Grafmiller, Benedikt Heller, and Melanie Röthlisberger
2016 “Around
the World in Three Alternations: Modeling Syntactic Variation in Varieties of English”. English
World-Wide 371: 109–137.
Yao, Xinyue
2015 “The
Present Perfect and the Preterite in Australian English: A Diachronic
Perspective”. In Peter Collins, ed. Grammatical
Change in English World-Wide. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 247–268.
Yao, Xinyue, and Peter Collins
2012 “The
Present Perfect in World Englishes”. World
Englishes 311: 386–403.
Yip, Virginia, and Stephen Matthews
2009 “Contact-Induced
Grammaticalization: Evidence from Bilingual Acquisition”. Studies in
Language 3321: 336–395.