Compounding and Suffixation in World Englishes

Abstract

This paper investigates compounding and suffixation across twelve varieties of English. First, I will show that second language varieties varieties in Asia and Africa use the same frequency patterns as first language varieties. Especially Asian Englishes display a wide range of different types, in many cases even wider than the native varieties. African varieties often feature a reduced set of types, although those types yield high token numbers. On a qualitative level, the ample collection of new coinages found in the International Corpus of English attests to the new varieties’ lexical creativity. In addition, the vocabulary of Asian and African Englishes is continually expanded through hybridization. Finally, I will demonstrate that the lexical trends outlined here are indicative of independent developments.