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- Volume 34, Issue, 2013
English World-Wide - Volume 34, Issue 2, 2013
Volume 34, Issue 2, 2013
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“We just don’t even know”: The usage of the pragmatic focus particles even and still in Nigerian English
Author(s): Robert Fuchs, Ulrike Gut and Taiwo Soneyepp.: 123–145 (23)More LessThis study investigates the usage of the pragmatic focus particles even and still in Nigerian English (NigE). A comparison of ICE-Nigeria and ICE-GB showed diverging frequencies of both particles across different registers between the two varieties of English and a significantly higher overall usage of even in NigE. Qualitative analyses revealed that even has acquired a wide range of new pragmatic meanings in NigE, such as emphatic, affirmative, particularising and epistemic meanings, and that still can be used to express promises and predictions. It is shown that these usages mirror meanings of the equivalents of even and still in the Nigerian languages Yorùbá and Igbo; their spread across a wide range of speakers in Nigeria attests to the status of even and still as nativised structures rather than learner errors.
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Natural language change or prescriptive influence?: Throve, dove, pled, drug and snuck in 19th-century American English
Author(s): Lieselotte Anderwaldpp.: 146–176 (31)More LessThis paper investigates five morphological Americanisms in their diachronic development since 1810 on the basis of data from the Corpus of Historical American English, namely the past tense forms of THRIVE, DIVE, PLEAD, DRAG, and SNEAK. THRIVE is a clear case of an irregular verb becoming regular; in the other four lexemes (DIVE, PLEAD, DRAG and SNEAK), the irregular forms are actually a new development, as the corpus analysis can show. Present-day Americanisms can thus be the result of different historical processes that diverge from British English: differential speed in the same process, or change in a different direction. In both cases of change, it is a valid question to ask whether they might have been the result of prescriptive pressure. In order to investigate the question in how far prescriptive grammars may have influenced this trend towards more regular or towards newly irregular forms, my corpus-linguistic data is correlated with changing recommendations in historical grammar books of English, based on a quantitative investigation of my collection of 258 grammars. I propose that prescriptive influence both on the regularization of THRIVE and on the process of ‘irregularization’ of DIVE, PLEAD, DRAG and SNEAK is minimal, and that we are most likely dealing with genuine changes from below. These changes are then, with some time lag, reflected in the (not so) prescriptive grammars of the time.
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Intelligibility and attitudes: How American English and Singapore English are perceived around the world
Author(s): Ying-Ying Tan and Christina Castellipp.: 177–201 (25)More LessThis paper investigates international responses to Singapore English (SgE), in terms of both intelligibility and attitudes toward the speaker, and compares it to responses to American English (AmE). It surveys 200 respondents from over 20 countries as they listen to a set of 15 sound recordings, including read SgE, spontaneous SgE, and read AmE. The results suggest that the intelligibility of SgE and AmE does differ between informants from different regions. However, the intelligibility of the test stimuli does not correlate simply to positive and negative attitudes. While SgE elicits generally positive attitudes, what is interesting is that the judgments of respondents from South-East Asia and East Asia are often more negative than those of English speakers of Inner Circle varieties. This seems to suggest not only an impenetrable mindset of these traditionally “non-native” English speakers, who seem to be still clamoring to speak an idealized “standard”, but also an inferiority complex over their own varieties of English.
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Temporal adverbials and the present perfect/past tense alternation
Author(s): Valentin Wernerpp.: 202–240 (39)More LessSpecification by certain temporal adverbials has been shown to be one of the typical triggers of the present perfect in British English. Often, however, L2 varieties display different patterns of temporal co-occurrence, especially using the simple past tense. This study is based on corpus data from twelve components of the International Corpus of English and analyzes the distribution between present perfect and past tense for a number of co-occurring temporal adverbials. In addition, it establishes three measures of similarity across the varieties (hierarchical cluster analysis, phylogenetic networks and a distribution-based measure). On the basis of 6 353 adverbials in total, this paper suggests (1) that there is a L1–L2 divide, (2) that the difference between “traditional” and “transplanted” L1 varieties is less pronounced, (3) that L2 varieties allow more variation, which indicates that in these varieties, the present perfect is partly used as a tense (sensu Quirk et al. 1985), and (4) that some temporal adverbials are less categorically attached to either present perfect or past tense than others. Finally, some conclusions with regard to the importance of geographical and socio-cultural proximity of certain varieties can be drawn.
Volumes & issues
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Volume 45 (2024)
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Volume 44 (2023)
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Volume 43 (2022)
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Volume 42 (2021)
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Volume 41 (2020)
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Volume 40 (2019)
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Volume 39 (2018)
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Volume 38 (2017)
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Volume 37 (2016)
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Volume 36 (2015)
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Volume 35 (2014)
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Volume 34 (2013)
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Volume 33 (2012)
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Volume 32 (2011)
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Volume 31 (2010)
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Volume 30 (2009)
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Volume 29 (2008)
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Volume 28 (2007)
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Volume 27 (2006)
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Volume 26 (2005)
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Volume 25 (2004)
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Volume 24 (2003)
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Volume 23 (2002)
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Volume 22 (2001)
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Volume 21 (2000)
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Volume 20 (1999)
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Volume 19 (1998)
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Volume 18 (1997)
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Volume 17 (1996)
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Volume 16 (1995)
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Volume 15 (1994)
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Volume 14 (1993)
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Volume 13 (1992)
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Volume 12 (1991)
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Volume 11 (1990)
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Volume 10 (1989)
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Volume 9 (1988)
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Volume 8 (1987)
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Volume 7 (1986)
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Volume 6 (1985)
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Volume 5 (1984)
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Volume 4 (1983)
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Volume 3 (1982)
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Volume 2 (1981)
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Volume 1 (1980)
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English in Hong Kong: Functions and status
Author(s): K.K. Luke and Jack C. Richards
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