Grammatical Change in English World-Wide
Edited by Peter Collins
[Studies in Corpus Linguistics, 67] 2015. vi, 488 pp.
Peter Collins
List of John Benjamins publications for which Peter Collins plays a role.
Subjects Corpus linguistics | English linguistics | Germanic linguistics | Historical linguistics | Sociolinguistics and Dialectology | Theoretical linguistics
Comparative Studies in Australian and New Zealand English: Grammar and beyond
Edited by Pam Peters, Peter Collins and Adam Smith
[Varieties of English Around the World, G39] 2009. x, 406 pp.
Subjects Comparative linguistics | English linguistics | Sociolinguistics and Dialectology | Syntax | Theoretical linguistics
English in Australia
Edited by David Blair and Peter Collins
[Varieties of English Around the World, G26] 2001. vi, 366 pp.
Subjects English linguistics | Germanic linguistics | Sociolinguistics and Dialectology
The Clause in English: In honour of Rodney Huddleston
Edited by Peter Collins and David Lee
[Studies in Language Companion Series, 45] 1999. xxii, 327 pp.
Subjects English linguistics | Germanic linguistics | Syntax
2023 Grammatical variation in World Englishes: An onomasiological study English World-Wide 44:2, pp. 184–218 | Article
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… read more
2021 Diachronic register change: A corpus-based study of Australian English, with comparisons across British and American English Register Studies 3:1, pp. 33–87 | Article
A number of studies have found that grammatical differences across registers are more extensive than those across dialects. However, there is a paucity of research examining intervarietal register change, exploring how registers change differently over time in different regional varieties. The… read more
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 39:3, pp. 253–277 | Article
This paper investigates whether colloquialisation – a stylistic shift by which written genres come to be more similar to spoken genres – has played a role in the endonormativisation of the grammar of Australian English, a variety which has long been noted for its penchant for colloquialism. The… read more
2015 Diachronic variation in the grammar of Australian English: Corpus-based explorations Grammatical Change in English World-Wide, Collins, Peter (ed.), pp. 15–42 | Article
This chapter uses data extracted from two recently compiled historical corpora of Australian English, the Corpus of Oz Early English (19th century) and AusCorp (20th century) to examine developments in ten morphosyntactic variables over the past two centuries. At the same time comparisons are drawn… read more
2015 Recent diachronic change in the progressive in Philippine English Grammatical Change in English World-Wide, Collins, Peter (ed.), pp. 271–296 | Article
This chapter reports a diachronic study of the progressive aspect in Philippine English based on the Philippine component of the International Corpus of English and the new ‘Phil-Brown’ corpus which provides insights into evolutionary changes in Philippine English between the 1960s and the 1990s.… read more
2015 Introduction Grammatical Change in English World-Wide, Collins, Peter (ed.), pp. 1–12 | Article
2014 The subjunctive mood in Philippine English: A diachronic analysis Contact, Variation, and Change in the History of English, Pfenninger, Simone E., Olga Timofeeva, Anne-Christine Gardner, Alpo Honkapohja, Marianne Hundt and Daniel Schreier (eds.), pp. 259–280 | Article
American English has been observed to be leading the way in the revival of the (mandative) subjunctive, leaving behind British English and its postcolonial “children”. Drawing on data from two sets of corpora, sampled in the 1960s and the 1990s, this paper examines the extent to which Philippine… read more
2013 Colloquial features in Word Englishes International Journal of Corpus Linguistics 18:4, pp. 479–505 | Article
A powerful discourse-pragmatic agent of grammatical change in English since the mid-twentieth century has been the increasing acceptance of colloquialism. Little is known, however, about its influence on grammatical developments in regional varieties of World English other than the two inner circle… read more
2012 Singular agreement in there-existentials: An intervarietal corpus-based study English World-Wide 33:1, pp. 53–68 | Article
The phenomenon of “singular agreement” (“SA”) in there-existentials — the combination of a plural post-verbal notional subject and a singular verb — has been the subject of a number of studies which have confirmed its covariation with a range of social, stylistic and grammatical factors. Whereas… read more
2012 Modals and quasi-modals in New Englishes Mapping Unity and Diversity World-Wide: Corpus-Based Studies of New Englishes, Hundt, Marianne and Ulrike Gut (eds.), pp. 35–54 | Article
Recent research on modals and quasi-modals has identified two complementary trends: a rise in the popularity of quasi-modals and a decline in that of modals. There is a strong tendency for American rather than British English to be leading the way in these developments. Furthermore, quasi-modals… read more
2009 Information-packaging constructions Comparative Studies in Australian and New Zealand English: Grammar and beyond, Peters, Pam, Peter Collins and Adam Smith (eds.), pp. 295–316 | Article
The study whose findings are reported in this chapter compares the frequencies and uses of five “information-packaging” constructions across four Englishes (Australian, New Zealand, British and American) and a range of registers (informal dialogue, learned writing, news reportage, editorials and… read more
2009 The progressive Comparative Studies in Australian and New Zealand English: Grammar and beyond, Peters, Pam, Peter Collins and Adam Smith (eds.), pp. 115–124 | Article
The progressive aspect has enjoyed spectacular growth in English since late Modern English, but its spread has not been uniform across all varieties. The study compared the frequency and uses of the progressive in Australian, New Zealand, British and American English across a range of variables.… read more
2009 Modals and quasi-modals Comparative Studies in Australian and New Zealand English: Grammar and beyond, Peters, Pam, Peter Collins and Adam Smith (eds.), pp. 73–88 | Article
The findings of the present study of selected modals and quasi-modals in matching corpora of Australian, New Zealand, British and American English reinforce those of diachronic investigations attesting to the rising popularity of the quasi-modals and declining fortunes of the modals in recent… read more
2009 Prologue Comparative Studies in Australian and New Zealand English: Grammar and beyond, Peters, Pam, Peter Collins and Adam Smith (eds.), pp. 1–10 | Article
The characteristic phonological and lexical features of Australian English (AusE) and New Zealand English (NZE) have attracted a good deal of scholarly interest for about half a century, e.g., Mitchell and Delbridge 1965; Ramson 1966; Delbridge et al. 1981; Horvath 1985; Gordon and Deverson 1985;… read more
2008 Review of Fritz (2007/1788-1900): From English in Australia to Australian English English World-Wide 29:3, pp. 364–369 | Review
2008 The English modals and semi-modals: Regional and stylistic variation The Dynamics of Linguistic Variation: Corpus evidence on English past and present, Nevalainen, Terttu, Irma Taavitsainen, Päivi Pahta and Minna Korhonen (eds.), pp. 129–145 | Article
This paper reports a study of the uses of modal auxiliaries (can, may, will, shall,must, ought and need), plus a set of related semi-modals (need (to), have got (to),have (to), be going (to) and want (to)), in three parallel corpora of contemporary American, British, and Australian English.… read more
2007 Modality across World Englishes: The modals and semi-modals of prediction and volition Functional Perspectives on Grammar and Discourse: In honour of Angela Downing, Butler, Christopher S., Raquel Hidalgo Downing and Julia Lavid-López (eds.), pp. 447–468 | Article
This paper reports a corpus-based study which examined the uses of the modals and semi-modals which express meanings associated with prediction and volition (will, shall, be going to/gonna, want to/wanna, and be about to) in British, American and Australian English. Quantitative findings relating… read more
2007 15. Modal wars: Some ascendant semi-modals in Australian English Language Description, History and Development: Linguistic indulgence in memory of Terry Crowley, Siegel, Jeff, John Lynch and Diana Eades (eds.), pp. 197–208 | Article
2004 Let-imperatives in English International Journal of Corpus Linguistics 9:2, pp. 299–319 | Article
This paper reports the findings of a corpus-based study oflet-imperatives in English. Unlike the ordinary lexical verbletmeaning “allow”, theletoflet-imperatives serves merely to mark illocutionary meaning. In ‘first person inclusives’, the variant with us-contraction is found to have increased in… read more
2004 Reversed what-clefts in English: Information structure and discourse function Australian Review of Applied Linguistics 27:2, pp. 63–74 | Article
On the basis of 572 examples taken from seven million-word corpora of written English the present study—which complements the spoken data-based studies of Oberlander & Delin (1996) and Weinert & Miller (1996)— explores the relationship between information structure and discourse role with reversed… read more
2003 Storying Self and Others: The construction of narrative identity Studying Identity: Theoretical and Methodological Challenges, pp. 243–264 | Article
Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork undertaken among British Quakers this article attempts to elucidate some of the connections between the narrative quality of everyday interaction and the local construction of self. Focusing on the Quaker Meeting, we find that the social identity of individual… read more
2001 Grammars and corpora Australian Review of Applied Linguistics 24:2, pp. 35–41 | Article
This paper surveys developments that have occurred in the major ‘corpus-informed’ English reference grammars of the past three decades. During this time there has occurred not simply a massive increase in the size of the corpora available to grammarians and an increasing sophistication in the… read more
2001 Language and identity in Australia English in Australia, Blair, David and Peter Collins (eds.), pp. 1–13 | Article
1999 The deictic-presentation construction in English The Clause in English: In honour of Rodney Huddleston, Collins, Peter and David Lee (eds.), pp. 67–80 | Article
1999 Introduction The Clause in English: In honour of Rodney Huddleston, Collins, Peter and David Lee (eds.), pp. ix–xvi | Miscellaneous
1997 English grammar in school textbooks: A critical survey Australian Review of Applied Linguistics 20:2, pp. 33–50 | Article
This paper reports findings from a project involving the critical analysis of English grammar books (and language books with grammatical content) used at Primary and Secondary levels in NSW schools. The books surveyed betrayed a low level of awareness of developments in contemporary linguistics,… read more
1994 Extraposition in English Functions of Language 1:1, pp. 7–24 | Article
This paper, which is based on a corpus of contemporary Australian English, investigates the structural and communicative properties of extraposed clause constructions. Such constructions will often be superficially similar to right-dislocated constructions, but are generally distinguishable from… read more
1993 Aspects of later language development* Australian Review of Applied Linguistics 16:2, pp. 15–26 | Article
This paper reports some findings of a study of six year old and ten year old children which suggests that the process of language acquisition is by no means complete at the age of five (a popular misconception in some of the early literature). In particular, it is suggested that the later years… read more
1989 Cleft and pseudo-cleft constructions: A corpus-based account Australian Review of Applied Linguistics 12:2, pp. 89–106 | Article
This paper reports findings from a study of clefts and pseudo-clefts in two standard corpora of English, one spoken and one written. The distributional patterns of the constructions across the various genres of the two corpora are explored, and explanations offered in terms of their distinctive… read more
1988 The Australian corpus project: Findings on the distribution of some functional variants in the Australian press Australian Review of Applied Linguistics 11:1, pp. 22–33 | Article
The functional variants of International English are often differently distributed in the different regional standards. With evidence from the corpus of Australian English, this has already been shown for lexical variants such as will/shall, maybe/perhaps etc. In this paper evidence from the… read more
1987 Computer corpora in English language research: A critical survey Australian Review of Applied Linguistics 10:1, pp. 1–19 | Article
This paper provides an overview of various English language corpora. It examines the relationships between the various extrant corpora and also indicates some of the features of a corpus of written English being developed in Australia. The article considers some of the linguistic and theoretical… read more
1982 Cleft sentences in English discourse Australian Review of Applied Linguistics 5:1, pp. 60–83 | Article