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Part of
The Evolution of Englishes: The Dynamic Model and beyond
Edited by Sarah Buschfeld, Thomas Hoffmann, Magnus Huber and Alexander Kautzsch
[Varieties of English Around the World G49] 2014
► pp. 301–311

At the crossroads of variation studies and corpus linguistics

The analysis of past tense and past participle forms

Past tense and past participle forms of the type learned / learnt or burned / burnt have been studied both in variationist and corpus linguistics. As the variation is based on a phonological difference in the spoken language, it is rather important to ascertain whether the forms analysed in the different corpora reliably represent the pronunciation of the verb-forms. It will therefore be a major aim of this contribution to explore the relationship between the written verb-forms and their actual pronunciation in the spoken language. A variety of sources are used, namely pronouncing dictionaries, some traditional descriptions of the verb-forms and dialectological studies on both British and American varieties. Finally, the results of a pilot-study with a group of American students are presented in detail.
Keywords: American English, British English, dialectological studies, grammatical variation, past participle forms, past tense forms, spoken vs. written English, verb-forms, verb-forms in pronouncing dictionaries
Published online: 12 September 2014
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https://doi.org/10.1075/veaw.g49.17ram
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