Abstract
This article investigates differences between Scottish Standard English (SSE) and Southern British Standard English (SBSE) in the semantic domain of strong obligation. Focusing on the modal verbsmust,have to,need toand(have) got to, we use new corpus material from nineteen written and spoken genres in the Scottish component of theInternational Corpus of English(ICE-SCO) and corresponding texts from ICE-GB. Data are analysed using a mixed-effect multinomial regression model to predict the choice of verb. Language-internal factors include mode of production (written/spoken), grammatical subject (first/second/third person) and source of obligation (objective/subjective). Our results show that, as previous research suggests, SSE is much more likely to employneed tofor the expression of strong obligation, and less likely to employmustand(have) got to. This general pattern remains essentially unaffected by language-internal factors. To account for our findings, we draw on the sociologically motivated process of democratisation and the language-internal process of grammaticalisation.
Highlights
This article starts from the premise that not enough is known about grammatical differences between the standard Englishes of Scotland and England, here referred to as Scottish Standard English (SSE) and Southern British Standard English (SBSE), respectively.2 In terms of its grammar, SSE is only theoretically recognised as a Standard variety, while empirical evidence concerning specific grammatical features is scarce
The pattern is relatively stable across the four varieties under investigation (Australian, New Zealand, British and US-American English), with high frequencies of higher relative frequencies of (HAVE) TO and MUST, lower frequencies of NEED TO, and low frequencies of (HAVE) GOT TO – see results from Smith (2003) in figure 2
There are both similarities and systematic differences between SSE and SBSE concerning the use of the four modal verbs of strong obligation, MUST, HAVE TO, NEED TO and (HAVE) GOT TO
Summary
This article starts from the premise that not enough is known about grammatical differences between the standard Englishes of Scotland and England, here referred to as Scottish Standard English (SSE) and Southern British Standard English (SBSE), respectively. In terms of its grammar, SSE is only theoretically recognised as a Standard variety, while empirical evidence concerning specific grammatical features is scarce. Research on the grammar of Scottish Englishes tends to focus on grammatical and/or lexical phenomena that are part of the inventory of Scots features ( the ‘Scots bias’ discussed below; cf Schützler, Gut & Fuchs 2017). This may partly reflect a subconscious bias: Scotland and England are directly adjacent but form a political union. We will look into relevant theoretical aspects of the core grammatical category of modality
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