New Zealand English Grammar – Fact or Fiction?
A corpus-based study in morphosyntactic variation
Author
New Zealand English (NZE) is one of the younger post-colonial varieties of English. It is therefore not surprising that previous research focused on lexical and phonological aspects of NZE and practically neglected grammatical peculiarities. New Zealand English Grammar — Fact or Fiction? presents a careful comparative analysis of parallel corpora of New Zealand, British, American and Australian English in order to single out morphological, syntactic and lexico-grammatical features typical of an emerging New Zealand standard. In addition to corpus data on regional variation, the author uses data on short-term diachronic change within British and American English to show how regional variation is closely related to both stylistic variation (a world-wide colloquialisation of the written norms of English) and ongoing linguistic change leading to temporal regional differences. NZE is different from other national varieties of English in terms of preferences for certain variants rather than categorically different grammatical rules. Nevertheless, it is a standard in its own right in so far as it is a typical mix of variants available in World English. The methodological approach combines both qualitative analyses and statistical evidence. The question in how far statistically significant differences in word frequencies can be shown to be linguistically significant is also relevant for other quantitative research into emerging national standards.
[Varieties of English Around the World, G23] 1998. xvi, 212 pp.
Publishing status: Available
© John Benjamins Publishing Company
Table of Contents
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List of Figures and Tables | p. x
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Abbreviations | p. xii
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Preface | p. xiii
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Introduction | p. 1
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Theoretical and methodological foundations | p. 9
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Morphology | p. 29
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Syntax | p. 51
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Lexico-grammar | p. 105
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Statistical significance and linguistic relevance | p. 123
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Conclusion | p. 133
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Appendix 1 | p. 159
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Appendix 2 | p. 177
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Appendix 3 | p. 185
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Appendix 4 | p. 191
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Index | p. 209
“Hundt's book represents a much-needed move in English dialect studies to consider the less salient but no less interesting issue of grammatical variation.”
James A. Walker, York University, in Language 78(3), 2002
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2014. Appendix 1. Written questionnaire. In Grammatical Variation and Change in Jersey English [Varieties of English Around the World, G48], ► pp. 229 ff.
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2014. Acknowledgements. In Grammatical Variation and Change in Jersey English [Varieties of English Around the World, G48], ► pp. ix ff.
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2014. 4. Methods and data. In Grammatical Variation and Change in Jersey English [Varieties of English Around the World, G48], ► pp. 43 ff.
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2014. Index. In Grammatical Variation and Change in Jersey English [Varieties of English Around the World, G48], ► pp. 235 ff.
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2014. 2. Theoretical foundations. In Grammatical Variation and Change in Jersey English [Varieties of English Around the World, G48], ► pp. 7 ff.
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2014. 5. Discourse marker eh. In Grammatical Variation and Change in Jersey English [Varieties of English Around the World, G48], ► pp. 69 ff.
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2014. References. In Grammatical Variation and Change in Jersey English [Varieties of English Around the World, G48], ► pp. 213 ff.
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2014. 8. Standardization, levelling and identity in Jersey: A bird’s eye perspective. In Grammatical Variation and Change in Jersey English [Varieties of English Around the World, G48], ► pp. 181 ff.
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2014. Appendix 2. Excerpt from a transcript. In Grammatical Variation and Change in Jersey English [Varieties of English Around the World, G48], ► pp. 233 ff.
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2014. 1. Introduction. In Grammatical Variation and Change in Jersey English [Varieties of English Around the World, G48], ► pp. 1 ff.
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2014. List of maps, figures and tables. In Grammatical Variation and Change in Jersey English [Varieties of English Around the World, G48], ► pp. xi ff.
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2014. 7. Other grammatical features: An overview. In Grammatical Variation and Change in Jersey English [Varieties of English Around the World, G48], ► pp. 147 ff.
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2014. 9. Conclusion. In Grammatical Variation and Change in Jersey English [Varieties of English Around the World, G48], ► pp. 205 ff.
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2014. 3. Jersey English in context. In Grammatical Variation and Change in Jersey English [Varieties of English Around the World, G48], ► pp. 25 ff.
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Subjects
Main BIC Subject
CF: Linguistics
Main BISAC Subject
LAN009000: LANGUAGE ARTS & DISCIPLINES / Linguistics / General