Pronoun omission in high-contact varieties of English

This study explores the awareness and attitudes of English teachers in South Korea (ETSK) toward eight selected varieties of English: American English (AmE), British English (BrE), Canadian English (CaE), Singaporean English (SiE), Indian English (InE), Chinese English (ChE), Japanese English (JaE) and Korean English (KoE). Data, consisting of 204 questionnaires and 63 interviews, is collected from both Korean and non-Korean English teachers, from two major regions, Busan Gyeongnam and Seoul Gyonggi in South Korea. The results are analysed using a number of quantitative data analysis methods (e.g., One way ANOVA, Post hoc test, and Crosstab multiple comparison) as well as applying qualitative data analysis. Little statistical differences in both awareness and attitude were found between three categorical groups (i.e., gender, Korean and non-Korean English teachers, area of residence). The findings are presented thematically from the perspective of the paradigm of English as an International Language (EIL), using a theoretical framework incorporating cognitive, affective and behavioural components of attitude (Baker, 1992; Garrett, 2010). The findings indicate that ETSK lack awareness of different varieties of English, as indicated by the frequent statement made by ETSK: ‘I don’t know about these Englishes’. Aspects of phonology appear to be a salient dimension in determining participants’ self-assessment of awareness of different varieties of English. There is a marked preference for Inner Circle varieties of English in attitude. In particular, AmE firmly remains the most sought after English variety in South Korea, being described as ‘the most powerful, practical and the Base of English’. The ideologically laden notion of AmE superiority is deeply rooted in the minds of a large number of ETSK’s, while Expanding Circle English varieties are disfavoured, with JaE in particular, rated as the least favourable. KoE was found to be more favoured than all other selected Outer and Expanding Circle varieties of English, and was considered to be a ‘friendly’ and ‘pleasant’ English, thereby displaying participants’ positive attitude to KoE in the affective component of attitudes. However, because of the internal conflicts found in the behavioural component of participants’ attitudes, they were unwilling to speak in KoE. The presented study confirms the absolute favouritism shown by the Korean Ministry of Education (KME) and ETSK towards Inner Circle varieties of English and towards AmE in particular, as ideal teaching models. The findings indicate that teachers’ lack of awareness may have a negative impact on the way they react to other varieties of English and their lack of awareness would be considered as a kind of ‘handicap’, under which teachers operate with varying degrees of success in international communication. There is a very complex interrelationship within the various factors which influence attitudes towards these issues. The special position of AmE has been allowed to develop uncritically and the stigmatisation of ‘other’ Englishes has deeply penetrated the mindset of ETSK. The findings also suggest that a greater awareness and understanding of language variation and its processes would play a significant role in the development of positive attitudes towards English varieties and to the acceptance of a pluralistic model of the English language. This thesis argues that disclosing and questioning the hidden discursive practices embedded in the English education policy in South Korea may be the first step in changing negative attitudes and in embracing diversified Englishes. The findings are also discussed in relation to the implications that researching awareness and attitude has for pedagogical considerations and for teacher training.

Szmrecsanyiet al.(2016) define probabilistic indigenization as the process whereby probabilistic constraints shape variation patterns in different ways, which eventually leads to more heterogeneity in the constraints governing syntactic variation across different varieties of English. The present study extends our knowledge of the heterogeneity of probabilistic grammars by sketching a corpus-based variationist method for calculating the similarity between varieties thereby drawing inspiration from the comparative sociolinguistics literature. Based on linguistic material from theInternational Corpus of English, we ascertain the degree of regional variability of five probabilistic constraints on the genitive, dative, particle placement and subject pronoun omission alternations across three varieties of English, namely British, Indian and Singapore English. Our results indicate that, of the four alternations under study, the genitive alternation is the most homogeneous one from a regional perspective, followed – in increasing order of heterogeneity – by subject pronoun omission, dative and particle placement alternations. On the basis of these findings, we evaluate claims in the literature according to which the extent of probabilistic indigenization is proportional to the lexical specificity of the syntactic phenomenon under study, a hypothesis that is borne out by our data.

It has been frequently noted that many characteristic features of New Englishes tend to cluster around the interface between lexis and grammar. Focusing on present-day standard Indian English, the largest second-language variety of English, Olavarria de Ersson and Shaw (2003) and Mukherjee and Hoffmann (2006) have shown in recent corpus-based pilot studies that there are also significant differences between Indian and British English in the complementation of ditransitive verbs. In the present paper, we will make use of a large web-derived corpus of Indian English newspapers and extend the analysis of verb complementation in Indian and British English from ditransitive verbs to a semantically and syntactically related class of verbs. Specifically, we will analyse some verbs that are typically associated with the ‘transfer-caused-motion construction’ (cf. Goldberg 1995), which we refer to as ‘TCM-related verbs’. Our findings show that Indian English also displays some interesting deviations from the verb-complementational profile of British English with regard to TCM-related verbs, which raises some more general questions about divergent transitivity trends in the two varieties.

Changes in the modal domain in different varieties of English as potential effects of democratization

This chapter examines the use of the so-called were-subjunctive in hypothetical counterfactual conditional clauses in three varieties of English: British, Irish and Indian English. Some recent studies have suggested that the were-subjunctive has declined in frequency in the last half-century or so and is being replaced by indicative was. Another change, possibly connected with the decline of the were-subjunctive, is the increasing use of would in the subordinate clause of conditional sentences. The database of this study consists of the written and spoken components of the International Corpus of English (ICE) corpora from British, Irish and Indian English. Existing studies of American, Australian and some South Asian Englishes are used as further points of comparison. The results show that in British English the distribution between subjunctive were and indicative was is fairly even, although there is a slight majority for the was option. Indian English behaves much like British English, retaining a firm place for the were-subjunctive in its grammar. In Irish English, by contrast, the were-subjunctive is a clear minority choice as compared with British English or Indian English.

The emergence of varieties of English over the years has been the outcome of some prolonged and sustained struggles for their acceptance and linguistic legitimacy. These varieties which include not only Indian, Pakistani, Singaporean English but also American, Australian, New Zealand, Welsh, Scottish and Irish English among others have had to struggle against the perceived superiority of British English to assert their legitimacy even among their people (Choudhury, 2018). We have a well-documented record of the struggles for linguistic independence of American English. Studies conducted among the users of different varieties of English have, in recent times, shown greater acceptability of their own varieties of English. However, the acceptability is not universal and a large number of users of the language still regard their own varieties to be “low” in comparison to the native varieties. Baumgardner states that had similar studies on American English been done in the nineteenth century, a similar disparity of views would have been found (Baumgardner, 1996 , p. 262). Although Indian English has gained legitimacy as a variety with its distinct lexical, morpho-syntactic and discourse features, its acceptability among the users of the language needs to be ascertained. The purpose of the study is to examine the acceptability of Standard Indian English usage among the people very closely associated with the English language through an analysis of subject response to a questionnaire comprising Standard Indian English morpho-syntactic items.

This paper explores the prevalent simplification of morphosyntactic features occurring in Postcolonial Englishes (cf. e.g. Williams 1987) by addressing the hypothesis that finite complement clauses (CCs) should be more common in these varieties than a non-finite counterpart due to their higher explicitness. The hypothesis is tested in two varieties of English, British English as a reference variety and Indian English, exploring the complementation profile of REMEMBER by means of a corpus-based approach. In addition, a variable analysis aims at shedding light on the language-internal features potentially conditioning the choice between CCs in competition. The results partially confirm the hypothesis; there is a larger proportion of finite CCs in Indian English than in British English but non-finite CCs are the most common option in the two varieties. Furthermore, not only simplification, but also other factors such as substrate influence or second-language acquisition processes may be responsible for the distribution found in Indian English. As for language-internal features, while some factors condition the choice across varieties, others are variety-specific.

This article deals with pronoun omission in subject position and its connection with subject-verb agreement in Indian English and Singapore English. Agreement morphology has been found to be a predictor and facilitator of pronoun omission cross-linguistically in that it aids in the identification and retrieval of the referents of omitted pronouns. The results of a corpus study partly confirm this trend, since they show that agreement morphology does have a weak facilitating effect in both varieties examined; that is, pronoun omission increases when the subject and the verb agree in person and number. However, this is only true for lexical verbs; non-modal auxiliaries (i.e., be, have, do), on the contrary, show a low percentage of omitted pronouns and no facilitating effect of agreement morphology. To account for this finding, the possible inhibiting effect on pronoun omission of the frequency of co-occurrence of pronouns and non-modal auxiliaries was also explored.

Introduction It has been repeatedly illustrated that the mandative subjunctive (e.g. He demanded that I be there on time ) has seen a re-emergence in different varieties of English (Turner 1980 for British English, Overgaard 1995 for British and American English, Peters 1998 for Australian English). Some studies have shown the subjunctive to be alive and well and living (primarily) in American English (Overgaard 1995, Albakry and Crawford 2004) or that American English is leading in its revitalization and that British English is ‘lagging behind’ (Hundt 1998b: 171). These studies have reached the general consensus that American English prefers the subjunctive form (e.g. They suggested that he be reprimanded ) while British English favours the modal construction ( They suggested that he should be reprimanded ). The present chapter is also concerned with describing subjunctive contrasts in British and American English through a close examination of a finite set of words (i.e. subjunctive triggers) which co-occur with the subjunctive. The focus of this chapter is not wholly concerned with whether American English has more subjunctives than British English or whether British English uses more modal forms than American English; instead, this chapter illustrates the distributional differences of complement clause types in both American and British English in a fairly large corpus of news writing.

The relationship between language and culture is complex and the subject of several chapters in this Handbook (e.g. Chapters 2, 30, and 32 this volume). This chapter will consider how different varieties of English reflect the culture and pragmatic norms of their speakers. While different varieties of English can be distinguished by their distinctive use of morphosyntactic and phonological features, although many share non-standard forms, it is the reflection of the local culture and the pragmatic norms of its speakers that really create a distinctive variety of English. This process has been called acculturation (Kachru 2005; Sridar 2012) which is the process by which a language takes on the cultural cloak of its speakers. In the case of varieties of English, acculturation is often accompanied by deculturation, where the new variety of English divests itself of cultural references to older varieties, such as British English. And when the new varieties of English are postcolonial, this typically occurs at what Schneider has called the ‘nativisation’ stage of a new variety of English, a stage at which ties with the country or origin are weakening and interethnic contacts are strengthening (2007, 2010: 381) Acculturation is accomplished through several means. These are presented below, along with examples.

India and Singapore have developed radically different varieties of English, despite somewhat comparable British colonial histories. Why has English transformed so much more radically in Singapore, when it has been embedded in India for twice as long? This chapter compares the historical ecologies of English in India and Singapore in terms of major factors that might explain the dramatic differences in how the two varieties have developed. It shows how key differences led to distinct dialect formation dynamics in the two settings. Certain historical similarities appear to have been less influential than other markedly distinct ecological factors, which have driven divergent outcomes in the two regions.

This paper is a corpus-based comparative analysis of conversational routines in spoken British and Singapore English. It investigates the linguistic realizations, frequencies, distribution and distributive features of the conversational routines of requesting in the five text types of the two parallel corpora of the ICE project, ICE-SIN and ICE-GB. Corpus analysis tools, ICECUP and WordSmith, are used in the search and analysis of conversational routines in the two corpora. The theoretical framework for the analysis of conversational routines is mainly provided by speech act theory and Gricean pragmatics. It has been found that, although some differences in the use of conversational routines can be seen in some of the text types in the corpora, there are, on the whole, more similarities than differences between British and Singapore English.

ABSTRACTThis study examines language attitudes towards different varieties of English through listener judgments of speaker and speech traits; in addition, the study explores the relationship of these judgments to the intelligibility, as well as the perceived accentedness and comprehensibility, of varieties of Asian English and General American English. While a great deal of research has examined the intelligibility, accentedness, and comprehensibility of English, including varieties of Asian English, no research to date has examined the relationship between language attitudes and the aforementioned dimensions of Asian English speech. That is, little is known about how listeners’ judgments regarding speaker and speech traits relate to intelligibility, as well as how such judgments relate to the way in which the listener evaluates the accentedness and comprehensibility of the speaker's speech. The current study addresses these issues through an examination of listener reactions to three varieties of Asian English (Hong Kong English, Singapore English, and China English), as well as American English.

2013). It details research carried out on the production and perception of speech rhythm in Indian English (IndE) and British English (BrE) among students at two Universities in Hyderabad, India, at the start of this decade, the development of "a multidimensional model of rhythm" (Fuchs, 2016: 4), and of an approach to speech rhythm perception research which modifies existing practice.From the outset, and just by reading the Preface to the volume (Fuchs, 2016: v-vii), one gets a sense of the enthusiasm Fuchs has for India, the people, the variety, and the research he has undertaken.This is a promising opening to what is basically a write-up of a research study, boding well for the rest of the book, and leading on to the introductory chapter in which the scene is set.The book is organised into eight chapters, as follows: a) Chapter 1 is a general introduction, outlining the available research at the time the study was undertaken and justifying the book's focus on speech rhythm in IndE, i.e., the lack of work on prosodic features of the variety.It also serves to situate the study firmly in a World Englishes paradigm, referring to Kachru's (1985) terminology of Inner, Outer and Expanding Circles, and Schneider's Dynamic Model of Postcolonial Englishes (2003, 2007).b) Chapter 2 starts by giving a historical and social description of English in India, including an account of the different varieties of IndE and of the Dravidian and Aindo-Aryan languages spoken.It further elaborates on IndE with respect to Kachru and Schneider's models, before going on to give a comparison of the phonologies of BrE and IndE based on existing descriptions.

For colonial and historical reasons, Indian academia has been following British English since Independence. Though American English has become the norm internationally due to the global status that it is currently enjoying, Indian academia has not yet recognized this new emergent phenomenon. Of course, Indian learners of English are increasingly exposed to American English outside of the curriculum. Meanwhile, Indian English has evolved as a distinct, literary and non-native, national variety over a period of 400 years because of its peaceful co-existence with Indian languages and cultures. Code-mixing and code-switching, phonological and morphological mix and syntactic and grammatical features have made Indian English a distinct variety. It is high time that Indian academia focussed its attention on Indian English as an alternative to the decayed (Received) British English. This paper focuses its attention on the description of Indian English as a distinct variety and the feasibility of exploring possibilities to make it prescriptive for teaching-learning-testing purposes.