English World-Wide - Volume 47, Issue 1, 2026

There is a dearth of studies on existential there-occurrence in written Nigerian English. Based on the 400,796-word written sub-corpus of International Corpus of English Nigeria (ICE-Nigeria) and its 17 genres containing 510 files, this study examines existential there-clauses (ETCs) in written Nigerian English. The material was printed for data extraction and was revisited several times, focusing on distribution and frequency, syntactic positions, predicators, complements, and adjuncts. Systemic Grammar underlies the study. The data comprises 661 ETCs. The occurrence rate is 1.65 in 1000 words and is highest in Exams (2.62). ETCs are most frequent as independent clauses and least as subjects. While BE represents 98 percent of predicators, and indefinite pronouns account for 6.3 percent of complements, a (n) and no are the highest modifiers. 53 percent of ETCs derive from kernel sentences, but their 0.5 percent occurrence as complements of let-type imperative clauses questions existing theory and description.

This paper examines was/were variation in a corpus of naturalistic Australian Aboriginal English (AE), a post-invasion contact-based variety spoken by First Nations people in Australia. While a tendency towards was levelling was attested in earlier descriptions of AE, quantitative sociolinguistic studies are yet to be offered. We draw on the speech of 31 First Nations girls aged 12–17 from across Western Australia and the Northern Territory, collected as part of a sociolinguistic ethnography at a boarding school in Southwest Western Australia. We find that most of the linguistic factors considered in the existing literature are not significant when social factors are included. Subject type emerges as the only significant linguistic constraint, with the first plural pronoun we favouring levelled was, an effect operational for speakers who grew up in monolingual homes. Additionally, levelled was is employed across social groups to assert their Aboriginal identity in a white-led institution.

This study analyzes unstressed /tən/ in words like button, kitten, and mountain. In Utah, there are three variants: North American mainstream [ʔn̩], forticized [t^hɨn], and local [ʔɨn]. While previous work in Utah has focused on [ʔɨn], I use an auditory analysis of wordlist data from 117 Utahns to show that [t^hɨn] is the majority variant in Utah and is twice as common as in other regions. I argue that fortition is a hypercorrection in response to the stigmatized local variant, [ʔɨn]. This aligns with what other studies have reported about the correctness associated with /t/-release in other phonological environments and appears to be just one instance of a broader process of fortition in Utah English.

This paper examines the variation in rhoticity in both casual and careful speech of Singaporeans, who are representative of the general population of educated Singapore English (SgE) speakers. This study expands the scope of previous research on rhoticity in SgE, e.g. Tan and Gupta (1992) and Tan (2012), by analysing both language-external and language-internal factors. While earlier studies primarily explored social correlates such as age, gender, ethnicity, and educational level, this research addresses a critical gap by examining phonological environments that condition /r/ realisation. Speech data were drawn from two distinct registers — read-aloud speeches and informal conversations — produced by SgE speakers of varying first language (L1) backgrounds. Statistical modelling identified three significant predictors of /r/ realisation: phonological context, preceding vowel, and dominant language. The findings underscore the unique status of the realised /r/ in SgE and the importance of both stylistic and phonological considerations in its distribution.