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Part of
Reconnecting Form and Meaning: In honour of Kristin Davidse
Edited by Caroline Gentens, Lobke Ghesquière, William B. McGregor and An Van linden
[Studies in Language Companion Series 230] 2023
► pp. 145–182

Chapter 6
The compound pronouns someone/somebody and everyone/everybody in present-day spoken English

An analysis based on the Spoken BNC2014 corpus

| University of Huddersfield
| Ghent University
This article builds on previous research on the compound pronoun sets somebody/someone and everybody/everyone to test the hypotheses that the -one and -body forms are semantically identical, but that stylistic and social factors play a role in their relative frequencies. Earlier findings are checked in informal conversation in the Spoken BNC2014. The distribution of the variants is examined in correlation with sociolinguistic parameters, and collocational profiles of the pronouns are compared to test free variation. Our data show further ongoing change towards dominance of the -one forms. Only age significantly affects both pronoun pairs, with a minor effect of gender for the every- pair. Collocation analysis shows significant differences between some- and every- but not between -one and -body.
Keywords: compound pronouns, spoken British English, sociolinguistic variation, collocation, language change
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Previous research reported in the literature
  • 3.Aims of this study
  • 4.Data and methodology
  • 5. Someone and somebody
    • 5.1Frequencies in the corpus
    • 5.2Variation with age, gender, class and educational level
      • 5.2.1Age
      • 5.2.2Gender
      • 5.2.3Social class
      • 5.2.4Highest educational qualification
      • 5.2.5Multinomial logistic regression test
  • 6. Everyone and everybody
    • 6.1Frequencies in the corpus
    • 6.2Variation with age, gender, class and educational level
      • 6.2.1Age
      • 6.2.2Gender
      • 6.2.3Social class
      • 6.2.4Highest educational qualification
      • 6.2.5Multinomial logistic regression test
  • 7.Collocation
    • 7.1Collocation with modal verbs
    • 7.2Collocation with adjectives
  • 8.Discussion and conclusions
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 10 February 2023
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/slcs.230.06but
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