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Abstract

Abstract

This study investigates the influence of language contact on morphosyntactic variation in World Englishes, specifically focusing on the joint variation of case and agreement in -clefts with pronominal clefted constituents. Employing a multifactorial approach within the framework of probabilistic grammar, we examine the distribution of the four relevant -cleft variants in the GloWbE corpus. We find that language contact, as a language-external factor, impacts the strengths and rankings of language-internal factors but not their directions. Additionally, we observe an intricate interplay between language contact and language-internal factors in shaping morphosyntactic patterns: low-contact varieties tend to display feature-based case and agreement with a high degree of variability, while high-contact varieties tend to exhibit position-based case and agreement with a low degree of variability. These findings shed light on the mechanisms underlying the development of language diversity and structural simplification in World Englishes.

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2024-04-25
2024-10-06

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Case and agreement variation in contact
John Benjamins ; https://doi.org/10.1075/ijcl.22119.zha
/content/journals/10.1075/ijcl.22119.zha
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  • Article Type: Research Article
Keywords: case variation ; probabilistic grammar ; agreement variation ; language contact ; it-clefts

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