The Lexis and Lexicogrammar of Sri Lankan English

Tobias Bernaisch | Justus Liebig University Giessen

Hardbound – Available

ISBN 9789027249142 | EUR 99.00 | USD 149.00

e-Book –

ISBN 9789027268228 | EUR 99.00 | USD 149.00

This book offers the first in-depth corpus-based description of written Sri Lankan English. In comparison to British and Indian English, lexical and lexicogrammatical features of Sri Lankan English are analysed in a complex corpus environment comprising data from the respective components of the International Corpus of English, newspapers and online sources to explore the status of Sri Lankan English as a variety in its own right. The evolution of Sri Lankan English is depicted against the background of historical as well as sociolinguistic considerations and allows deriving a fine-grained model of the emergence of distinctive structural profiles of postcolonial Englishes developing in a multitude of norm orientations. This book is highly relevant to readers interested in Sri Lankan English and South Asian Englishes. It also offers more general sociolinguistic perspectives on the dynamics of postcolonial Englishes world-wide and on the inextricable link between language and identity.

[Varieties of English Around the World, G54] 2015. xiv, 248 pp.

Publishing status: Available
Published online on 4 September 2015

https://doi.org/10.1075/veaw.g54

Table of Contents

List of figures | pp. vii–viii

List of tables | pp. ix–x

List of abbreviations | pp. xi–xii

Acknowledgments | pp. xiii–xiv

Chapter 1. Sri Lankan English and Sri Lankan Englishes | pp. 1–18

Chapter 2. The development of Sri Lankan English | pp. 19–54

Chapter 3. Methodology | pp. 55–82

Chapter 4. Sri Lankan English lexis | pp. 83–136

Chapter 5. Sri Lankan English lexicogrammar | pp. 137–204

Chapter 6. A model of (the emergence of) distinctive structural profiles of semiautonomous varieties of English | pp. 205–224

References | pp. 225–232

Appendix | pp. 233–244

Index | pp. 245–248

“This first book-length study of acrolectal English in Sri Lanka taps into a wealth of electronic corpora and databases for an in-depth description of lexical and lexico-grammatical features of this semi-autonomous variety of English. It is a very welcome addition to the growing body of literature on (South) Asian Englishes and the discussions about norm developments, standardization and nativisation.”

Marianne Hundt, University of Zürich

“Sri Lankan English claims its place in the World Englishes arena: a thorough, richly corpus-based study of the evolution and distinctive properties of this hitherto underresearched variety, profiled in its South Asian context, with theoretically attractive insights into the emergence process of semiautonomous varieties.”

Edgar W. Schneider, University of Regensburg

“This volume makes an excellent contribution to the study of Asian Englishes, from both a sociolinguistic and corpus linguistic perspective. The empirical research for this study is meticulously done, and is complemented by insightful and nuanced analysis, while the volume also serves as an excellent introduction to the sociolinguistics of English in contemporary Sri Lanka. It is highly recommended to all those interested in corpus linguistics, Asian Englishes and world Englishes.”

Kingsley Bolton, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore

Cited by (29)

Cited by 29 other publications

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2023. Requests in Indian and Sri Lankan English. World Englishes 42:3 ► pp. 523 ff.

Degenhardt, Julia

2024. Parentheticals in spoken Indian and Sri Lankan English. World Englishes

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2022. Pragmatic nativisation of thanking in South Asian Englishes. World Englishes 41:2 ► pp. 136 ff.

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2022. Post‐protectorate Uganda and current models of influence across Englishes. World Englishes 41:3 ► pp. 429 ff.

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2020. The Statistics of English across Asia. In The Handbook of Asian Englishes, ► pp. 49 ff.

Ekanayaka, Tanya N. I.

2020. Sri Lankan English. In The Handbook of Asian Englishes, ► pp. 337 ff.

García‐Castro, Laura

2020. Finite and non‐finite complement clauses in postcolonial Englishes. World Englishes 39:3 ► pp. 411 ff.

Gries, Stefan Th., Benedikt Heller & Nina Funke

2020. The Role of Gender in Postcolonial Syntactic Choice-Making. In Gender in World Englishes, ► pp. 121 ff.

Mukherjee, Joybrato & Tobias Bernaisch

2020. Corpus Linguistics and Asian Englishes. In The Handbook of Asian Englishes, ► pp. 741 ff.

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2020. The pragmatic nativisation of pauses in Asian Englishes. World Englishes 39:1 ► pp. 135 ff.

Lange, Claudia

2019. English in South Asia. In The Cambridge Handbook of World Englishes, ► pp. 236 ff.

Gries, Stefan Th., Tobias Bernaisch & Benedikt Heller

2018. A corpus-linguistic account of the history of the genitive alternation in Singapore English. In Modeling World Englishes [Varieties of English Around the World, G61], ► pp. 245 ff.

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2017. Empirical perspectives on two potential epicenters: The genitive alternation in Asian Englishes. ICAME Journal 41:1 ► pp. 111 ff.

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Evans, Stephen

2016. Introduction: Exploring the Diffusion and Diversification of English. In The English Language in Hong Kong, ► pp. 1 ff.

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2016. Exploring epicentres empirically. English World-Wide. A Journal of Varieties of English 37:1 ► pp. 1 ff.

Horch, Stephanie

2016. Innovative conversions in South-East Asian Englishes. International Journal of Learner Corpus Research 2:2 ► pp. 278 ff.

[no author supplied]

2021. Corpora, Constructions, New Englishes [Studies in Corpus Linguistics, 100],

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 13 january 2025. 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.

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