English World-Wide - Volume 37, Issue 2, 2016

We sketch a project that marries probabilistic grammar research to scholarship on World Englishes, thus synthesizing two previously rather disjoint lines of research into one unifying project with a coherent focus. This synthesis is hoped to advance usage-based theoretical linguistics by adopting a large-scale comparative and sociolinguistically responsible perspective on grammatical variation. To highlight the descriptive and theoretical benefits of the approach, we present case studies of three syntactic alternations (the particle placement, genitive, and dative alternations) in four varieties of English (British, Canadian, Indian, and Singapore), as represented in the International Corpus of English. We report that the varieties studied share a core probabilistic grammar which is, however, subject to indigenization at various degrees of subtlety, depending on the abstractness of the syntactic patterns studied.

This paper examines coronal stop deletion (CSD), the deletion of word-final /-t, -d/ in consonant clusters, in three new varieties of Asian English: China English, Hong Kong English, and Viet Nam English. The study seeks to determine to which extent the linguistic and extralinguistic constraints found to govern CSD in other varieties of English also impact CSD in emerging Englishes such as those examined in the current study. A total of 60 tertiary students, 20 from each variety of English, participated in the study. Results indicate that, while new Englishes such as China English, Hong Kong English, and Viet Nam English are affected by constraints such as linguistic environment and morphological conditioning, the proficiency level of speakers impacts CSD rates and the effects of the various constraints.

This paper analyzes the attestations in Antiguan of the diagnostic features of English-lexifier contact languages, as proposed by Baker and Huber (2001). It compares the distribution of these features in Antiguan and the seven Atlantic English-lexifier Pidgins and Creoles considered by Baker and Huber (2001). The features identified serve as quantitative measures of the affinity between Antiguan and two Creoles, Bajan and Kittitian, which contributed to its emergence, and between Antiguan and Vincentian, a Creole with significant Antiguan input. A number of selected diagnostic features found in Antiguan are discussed. It is shown that data from Antiguan are relevant to the distribution of diagnostic features across English-lexifier Pidgins and Creoles as well as to their adequate classification.

Existing second language acquisition research converges on a picture where learners of English exhibit marked divergence from native speakers in their use of information-packaging constructions, even at advanced stages of acquisition. This study extends the investigation of these constructions to an emerging institutionalised second language variety, Hong Kong English. Based on the Hong Kong and British components of the International Corpus of English, the study examines the formal and functional properties of it-clefts and wh-clefts, revealing regional variation in a number of areas, particularly in the use of that’s why constructions. Importantly, the grammar of the contact variety is found to be shaped by the transfer of gradient grammatical rules from the substrate language, and by stratification along stylistic parameters.