The mandative subjunctive in spoken English

Pam Peters | Macquarie University

Regional variation of the mandative subjunctive has come to light during the twentieth century, with corpus-based research showing it to be standard usage in American English whereas its currency in British English was limited. This research reviews the use of the mandative in spoken data from six ICE-corpora, to show marked regional differences among both settler and indigenized varieties of English. While its currency in spoken data from New Zealand is relatively low, it is on a par with written usage in Australian English, as well as Singaporean and Philippine English. However spoken instances of the mandative are typically found in public and institutional dialogue/monologue, rather than private conversation, so that it cannot be said to have become vernacularised.

Published online: 29 July 2009
https://doi.org/10.1075/veaw.g39.08pet

Cited by

Cited by 11 other publications

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Collins, Peter

2015. In Grammatical Change in English World-Wide [Studies in Corpus Linguistics, 67], ► pp. 15 ff.

Deshors, Sandra C. & Stefan Th. Gries

2020. Mandative subjunctive versus should in world Englishes: a new take on an old alternation. Corpora 15:2 ► pp. 213 ff.

Deuber, Dagmar, Stephanie Hackert, Eva Canan Hänsel, Alexander Laube, Mahyar Hejrani & Catherine Laliberté

2021. The Norm Orientation of English in the Caribbean. American Speech ► pp. 1 ff.

Hundt, Marianne

2018. In Modeling World Englishes [Varieties of English Around the World, G61], ► pp. 217 ff.

Kastronic, Laura & Shana Poplack

2021. Be that as it may: The Unremarkable Trajectory of the English Subjunctive in North American Speech. Language Variation and Change 33:1 ► pp. 107 ff.

La Peruta, Roberta

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Peters, Pam

2008. International english and its construction. Australian Review of Applied Linguistics 31:3 ► pp. 35.1 ff.

Peters, Pam

2019. In The Cambridge Handbook of World Englishes, ► pp. 587 ff.

Peters, Pam

2022. International English and its construction. Australian Review of Applied Linguistics ► pp. 35.1 ff.

Vaughan, Jill & Jean Mulder

2014. The Survival of the Subjunctive in Australian English: Ossification, Indexicality and Stance. Australian Journal of Linguistics 34:4 ► pp. 486 ff.

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 28 june 2022. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.