British-American Differentiations in Syntax and Idiom

Abstract

I TIS FREQUENTLY said that the only important differences between British and American English are those in pronunciation and vocabulary. The proportionate space given to these subjects in Professor Krapp's English Language in America may, it seems fair to assume, be taken as representative of the usual belief that other variations are relatively negligible: 256 pages are devoted to vocabulary and kindred topics, 251 to pronunciation, 22 to spelling, and 16 to 'inflection and syntax.' The arrangement of Mr. Mencken's American Language makes it impossible to state the proportions of his treatment so precisely, but in general it may be said that he too gives very little attention indeed to syntactical variations-at least on the level of cultivated speech. It perhaps should be added that a third, and far briefer, treatment of the subject, H. W. Horwill's 'American Variations' (S. P. E. Tract no. 45) does give much greater emphasis to 'difference in grammatical usage'-roughly five pages, as compared with sixteen on vocabulary-though this is partly explained, as the author himself points out, by the fact that an earlier tract, by Sir William Craigie, had dealt with the American vocabulary and (as the author does not indicate) another tract, by Professor Kurath, had discussed American pronunciation. The purpose of the present paper is to catalog some of the variations in syntax and idiom to which but little attention has been given. I shall not attempt to explore the entire field of 'grammatical usage,' since the rehearsal of morphological and inflectional variations would be far beyond the scope of a brief paper, but shall limit myself as far as possible to strictly syntactical differentiations and related variations in idiom. I have no idea that I shall treat exhaustively even this limited aspect of the subject; what I propose to do, rather, is confessedly tentative and suggestive only. As a means of bringing the subject within workable bounds I have based what I have to say largely on one summary of the grammar of present-day