English World-Wide - Volume 24, Issue 2, 2003

Where English has two or more alternative complementation patterns for the same verb, their relative frequencies might vary among national varieties. This article investigates the relative frequencies of various complementation patterns among nine verbs whose complementation may differ between British and Indian English: provide, furnish, supply, entrust and present ; pelt, shower, pepper, bombard. A method was devised to use on-line Indian and British newspaper archives as a source of more examples than could be obtained from corpora. The results showed consistent differences between varieties. The construction “NP1-V-NP3-NP2” (he provided them money), though not common, was more likely to occur in Indian than in British newspaper English. The construction “NP1-V-NP3-with-NP2” (he provided them with money) was considerably more common for most verbs in British English than in Indian, relative to the alternative “NP1-V-NP2-to/for/at-NP3” (he provided money to them), illustrating the systematic nature of structural nativisation.

This article investigates the widespread conviction that during the period on which the study is based, 1980 to 2002, English spread faster and much more widely in Hunza than in Chilas, two political sub-districts of the Northern Area of Pakistan that have many similarities. In the absence of data, it was decided to study the expansion of formal education during the period 1980–2002, cross-referenced against the changing language content of curricula. Based on the data, a number of propositions were formulated for each area. Finally, the propositions were checked by means of a survey. The conclusion is that the proposition is correct. In Hunza there is convincing evidence of more widespread use of, and more favourable attitudes towards, English. The main reason for the differences between Chilas and Hunza seems to be the different expressions of Islam that pertain in each area.

This paper undertakes the investigation of the disposition to stress of Nigerian users of English and the nature of spoken Nigerian English rhythm. The subjects of the study were sixty Nigerians of varied socio-economic, educational and ethno-linguistic backgrounds and a native (British) English speaker, whose productions from reading a passage and speaking freely for three minutes on a common topic were analysed metrically and statistically, using a modified version of the Metrical Theory, the Wilcoxon Matched Pairs Signed Ranks Test and the Analysis of Variance (ANOVA). In spite of earlier classifications, the study assumes the existence of three varieties of spoken Nigerian English characterized by their disposition to stress and speech rhythm: the “Non-Standard”, the “Standard” and the “Sophisticated” varieties, which are individually different but collectively similar yet different from Standard British English, represented by the control’s performance. The existence of the three varieties is confirmed by the data. The common performance features include a tendency to stress more syllables in words than the native speaker. This feature, which is traceable to the influence of the syllable-timing rhythm of the subjects’ mother tongues, tends to characterize the Nigerian accent of English; but whereas the Non-Standard Variety conforms to the syllable-timing description the Standard and Sophisticated Varieties require further investigation.

This paper aims to examine the English of Xhosa speakers (a significant proportion of speakers of Black South African English, since Xhosa is the second largest indigenous black language in South Africa), in terms of Williams’ (1987) criteria for Non-native Institutionalised Varieties of English (NIVEs). Using a corpus-based approach, the article reports on the results of analyses of a range of linguistic features in the newly-developed corpus of spoken Xhosa English (over 500 000 words), in an effort to go some way towards providing the evidence so necessary for the endorsement of newly established norms, and to counteract the pull of native English norms, “which tend to result in the stigmatisation of some of the major indexical markers of the non-native varieties” (Bamgbose 1998:3).

This paper investigates the regional dimension of new-dialect formation and feature maintenance and loss in early 20th century New Zealand English (NZE). Examining the distribution and status of voiceless labiovelar /hw/ fricatives (which results in an articulatory contrast between Wales and whales, or witch and which) in three selected regions of New Zealand (Otago/Southland, Canterbury, and the North Island), we show that the overall distribution of this feature represents population demographics and ancestral effects, and that its loss and maintenance are conditioned by social criteria (total input of /hw/ retaining donor dialects, settlement type) as well as by linguistic factors (preceding environment, word type). Usage of labiovelar fricatives is strongest in areas that had a high contingent of Scottish settlers and lowest in regions that were predominantly settled by English settlers. Moreover, in all three areas women have higher usage of /hw/ than men, which is of relevance for the reputedly high social status of /hw/ usage and gender-based language differentiation.

This article considers patterns of modal verb usage, based on data collected from twenty informants from Newcastle-upon-Tyne in the north-east of England, which show differences from material taken from the Survey of English Usage, used as data in Coates (1983, 1995). The paper therefore attempts to describe and explain differences in the use of the modals between authoritative accounts of Standard English on the one hand and the informal spoken English of a sample of speakers from Tyneside on the other. I argue that the reason for these differences may be in part due to increased markedness (systemic, sociolinguistic and stylistic) of certain forms, which induces simplification (the (re)creation of regularity within the system, through focussing) and redistribution (where modalities previously expressed by certain modal verbs come to be expressed by other modals within the system). Throughout, I try to suggest an approach to variation which considers language-internal and language-external factors.