This chapter examines grammatical features in Northern varieties of English. With the notable exception of Kortmann and Szmrecsanyi (2004), typologies of English dialects adduce dialect regions according to phonological or lexical criteria. The dearth of systematic knowledge about features “above… read more
This chapter investigates eight discourse-pragmatic markers in a corpus of
Northern Irish English, some of which are interesting on account of their
absence or rarity and others because they appear to index social categories
like age and sex.1 Although some of these (particularly like) have already… read more
This paper investigates the relative frequencies of the two major syntactic markers of future time expression (FTE), be going to and will in the Diachronic Electronic Corpus of Tyneside English (DECTE). In particular, the rise in the frequency of be going to will be examined in the light of current… read more
Hickey (2005) has argued that there are three social varieties of Dublin English (‘Local’, ‘Mainstream’ and ‘New Dublin’) and that younger females are key players in the shift towards the ‘New Dublin’ type. With a view to further investigating some aspects of Hickey’s proposals, this article… read more
Irish-English (IrE) as a contact vernacular permits tense, mood and aspect categories to be marked in a manner which distinguishes this variety from all other world Englishes. Researchers, however, have been preoccupied with its distinctive tense and aspect markers and much less is known about the… read more