Superlative Objoid Constructions in British and American English

This large-scale corpus study documents the use of zero subject relative constructions in spoken American and British English. For this purpose, it makes extensive use of automated retrieval strategies. It shows that zero subject relatives are still present in spoken American and British English, as represented in the British National Corpus and the Longman Spoken American Corpus. Moreover, there is a sharp difference between American English with 2.5% and British English with 13% of subject relatives with zero relativizer. Although zero subject relative constructions are frequently found with existentials and it–clefts they are by no means limited to these constructions. The social variables of the study (most notably age) come from speaker annotation which is used to provide the apparent time dimension.

Reviewed by: American and British English: Divided by a Common Language? by Paul Baker, and: The Prodigal Tongue: The Love-Hate Relationship Between American and British English by Lynne Murphy Orin Hargraves (bio) American and British English: Divided by a Common Language?, by Paul Baker. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017. Pp. xiii + 264. $24.99 (paperback). ISBN: 978-1-107-46088-1. The Prodigal Tongue: The Love-Hate Relationship Between American and British English, by Lynne Murphy. New York: Penguin Books, 2018. Pp. 360. $17.00 (paperback). ISBN: 978-0-1431-3110-6 (also published in the U.K. by Oneworld Publications). The differences between the varieties of English spoken in the United States and the United Kingdom have been remarked on since colonial times. In public discourse, it’s a regular trope of journalists and columnists to remark on differences, often as a pretext for some other agenda. At the scholarly level, articles, papers, and books have been written to address diverse aspects of these dialectal differences and what they mean or portend. Many past and current DSNA members are among the contributors to this genre: John Algeo, Richard Bailey, Carol-June Cassidy, Edward Finegan, Paul Heacock, and myself, to name a few. Now two new books have appeared in this genre, and they are as different as chalk and cheese, to use a decidedly British expression. STILL DIFFERENT AFTER ALL THESE YEARS Paul Baker, a professor at Lancaster University in England, has written American and British English: Divided by a Common Language? It is a much more technically oriented book than the title might suggest; those who geek out on corpus statistics and the arcane ways in which they can be wrung from data will find much to examine in his book. Baker sets out to determine “to what extent are British and American English different, in what ways, and how have these differences altered over the last 100 years” (3). His approach to these questions is constrained by the data he examines, which is limited to the Brown family of corpora—a set of eight corpora comprising published material in separate collections of British and American English drawn from writing at different time periods. Baker’s claim is that comparisons between them have “high validity” (6) because they were all built using the same sampling frame. The corpora offer a view into the state of the dialects in 1931, 1961, 1991, and 2006. [End Page 115] To give a flavor of the highly technical analysis that Baker undertakes, you will be a third of the way through the book before there is much discussion of words and what they mean in one dialect or the other. Up to that point, his discussion centers on a more atomic view of the dialects’ components: spelling differences, morphemes, affixes, letter sequences. The results are laid out in tables, charts, and graphs, with accompanying interpretive discussion. Baker’s sophisticated analysis of the corpus data is far beyond what a casual corpus user might discover. It is based on algorithmic queries of the corpora that make a simple wildcard search feel like child’s play. You will learn, for example, that in the Brown corpora, mean sentence length in British English began a slow increase in 1961 that did not begin to taper off until 1991, but even in 2006 it remained significantly longer than sentence length in American English. Americans, for their part, come out on top of the “standardised type token ratios” (22; a measure of lexical diversity), an achievement in which the data suggests that they surpassed the British in about 1980. For the most part, Baker is examining corpus language through a more abstract lens than the one that lexicographers use. He generates statistics about language based on changing frequencies of semantic categories, syntactic functions, and parts of speech, as indicated in the corpora by computer-driven tagging schemes. The findings in Baker’s book will be of interest mainly to corpus linguists, who are also the readers most likely to find fault with them. His analysis of the Brown corpora are novel and ingenious, and his interpretations of his results often show great imagination. But are they...

This large-scale corpus study charts differences between British English and American English as regards the use of “canonical” tag questions such as It's raining, isn't it?, It's not raining, is it?, or It's raining, is it? Several thousand instances of question tags were extracted from the British National Corpus and the Longman Spoken American Corpus, yielding nine times as many tag questions in colloquial British English as in colloquial American English (but also important register differences in British English). Polarity types and operators in tags also differ in the two varieties. Preliminary results concerning pragmatic functions point to a higher use of “facilitating” tags involving interlocutors in conversation in American English. Speaker age is important in both varieties, with older speakers using more canonical tag questions than younger speakers.

This study examines the differences between British English and American English in the preference for should or the possibility of indicative forms in British English versus the overwhelming preference for be-subjunctives in American English is confirmed by the present- day data. The Mandative subjunctive is used to express suggestion, wishes, and demands and its usage has become subject to variation across various English dialects. The research uses data from the British National Corpus (BNC) on one hand, and from the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA) on the other, searching for contexts with similar triggers, like "requested that," "demanded that," and "urged that." The findings show that there is still an obvious preference for should in British English and for synthetic forms in American English, even though this paper also reveals there is a significant number of synthetic forms in the British English which contradict the traditional view that differentiates the two varieties. In contrast, the use of be-subjunctive is still strongly favored in American English. The results partially support statements regarding the distinctions between British and American English in terms of the mandative subjunctives.

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.

Try and V construction is prevalent in British and American English. This construction is found in both spoken and written English, although with different frequencies. The verb in this construction only appears in in the base form. The lack of research on this verb formation leaves many aspects unexplored, one of which is the transitivity of the verb. Therefore, this study is intended to find out the number of arguments informed by this construction by matching the number of arguments to the verb try and the verb following it after the conjunction and. Two verbs were used to test this match, i.e., give and bring, which are three-place predicate verbs, and other two two-place predicate verbs, i.e., see and answer, were used to validate the finding. British National Corpus (BNC) and Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA) were used to collect the data. The findings show that the number of arguments matched the verb following the conjunction and. Therefore, it can be concluded the number of arguments in try and V construction is not unique to this construction, but it is similar to the try to V, where V is the non-finite verb which selects the number of arguments. This result suggests that try and V construction needs to be included in English grammar textbooks in order that non-native speakers can use and understand this rare grammatical rule in appropriate contexts.

This article investigates the relationship between the terms show up and turn up in the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA) and the British National Corpus (BNC). In the COCA, the terms exhibit a 25% similarity in ranking, while in the BNC, this similarity is 14.28%. In terms of genre-specific usage, show up and turn up are most distant in the fiction genre in the COCA, while in the BNC, they are furthest apart in the spoken genre. The closest similarity occurs in the TV/movie genre for the COCA and in the magazine genre for the BNC. Frequency analysis reveals significant national variation. In American English, show up shows greater fluctuation from the mean, while turn up displays more consistent frequency. In contrast, British English usage demonstrates a more stable frequency for show up, while turn up exhibits more erratic variation. The standard deviations for show up in the COCA (1,134) and the BNC (18) further highlight this disparity, as turn up frequencies in both corpora show opposite trends. Statistically, the COCA reveals a strong positive correlation (r = 0.7375) between the two terms, suggesting a significant relationship in American English. However, the BNC’s correlation coefficient (r = 0.0669) indicates no meaningful connection between the terms in British English. This comparison underscores notable national variations in the usage and relationship between show up and turn up across the two varieties of English.

This research was a descriptive research which was aimed at finding out the similarities, dissimilarities and the contributions of the contrastive analysis on teaching English as a foreign language. The data of this research were collected through library and internet sources. The researchers use comparative descriptive method to analyse the data. The obtained results was the comparison of American and British English in vocabulary, grammar, spelling, pronunciation and the contributions of them in teaching English as a foreign language. The research finding shows that British and American English are very similar in many aspects. Even though British and American English are mostly similar, they also have some differences. The difference of British and American English can be found in terms of vocabulary, grammar, spelling and pronunciation. Among them, vocabulary is the largest one. It is suggested that lecturers and teachers aware of the similarities and differences between British and American English in teaching English as a foreign language so that it will lead to the successful teaching of English including its varieties.

Semantics is the field of linguistic concerned with the study of meaning in language. The aims of the research are to analyze the forms and meanings of the stative verbs in progressive tense in corpora. The data of this research were obtained from Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA) and British National Corpus (BNC). The data of the corpora used descriptive qualitative. The result of the research shows that the stative verbs are found and used in progressive tense. The stative verbs appeared in all types of progressive tense except future perfect progressive. The use of the stative verbs in progressive tense took place due to overgeneralization in the use of the native speakers’ form of American and British English. The stative verbs in progressive tense used to express temporariness, emotiveness, comprehension and mixed categories of meaning; temporariness and emotiveness, temporariness and tentativeness. Temporariness meaning almost appeared in all types of progressive. Stative verbs in progressive tense indirectly stated temporariness in stative sense of meaning, is contrary to the rules of English grammar.

The objective of our article is to present the selected results of the research which was conducted for the purpose of our master’s thesis. We focused on the transfer of the functions of the present perfect into the domain of the preterite in informal British and American English. We put together a British and an American corpus and analysed the differences and similarities between British and American English in this transfer. We examined some factors that may influence this transfer either in American or British English, or in both varieties. The major factors will be presented in this article. The results show that the differences between both varieties mostly occur in the frequency of this transfer. Moreover, in American English there are more significant factors than in British English. Nevertheless, we can observe that the general tendency is the same in both varieties. This fact may indicate that this phenomenon, which was first noticed in informal American English, is spreading to informal British English.

ABSTRACT: The aim of this paper is to compare the distribution of prepositions in American and British English. Two machine‐readable 1 million word corpora, the BROWN Corpus of American English and the LOB Corpus of British English are used as a basis of comparison. The prepositions that occur in both American and British English account for more than 99% of all the occurrences of prepositions in both corpora. Moreover, the distribution of the six most commonly used prepositions (representing more than 70% of all the occurrences of prepositions in both corpora) is almost identical in American and British English. As far as prepositions are concerned, there is on the whole a very close distributional correspondence between British and American English.

This paper explores the comparative analysis of vowel systems within British, American, and Irish English accents, examining their phonetic characteristics, historical roots, and social implications. English has evolved into numerous varieties worldwide, primarily influenced by regional and social factors. The paper focuses on Received Pronunciation (RP) in British English, General American in American English, and Supraregional Irish English in Irish English, highlighting their distinct phonological features. Rhoticity and lexical sets are examined as key aspects of variation. Differences in the pronunciation of /r/ contribute to unique phonetic landscapes, with British English exhibiting non-rhoticity and American and Irish English maintaining rhoticity. The presence of centering diphthongs in British English and vowel contrasts before /r/ in Irish and American English further distinguishes these accents. Analysis of lexical sets reveals variations in vowel quality and realization, emphasizing the dynamic nature of phonological systems across accents. By examining these differences, the paper underscores the intricate interplay of historical, geographical, and social factors in shaping linguistic diversity. Understanding these nuances is essential for appreciating the complexity of English language variations and their cultural significance.

A number of recent studies of grammatical categories in English have identified regional and diachronic variation in the use of the present perfect, suggesting that it has been losing ground to the simple past tense from the eighteenth century onwards ( Elsness, 1997 , 2009 ; Hundt and Smith, 2009 ; and Yao and Collins, 2012 ). Only a limited amount of research has been conducted on non-present perfects. More recently, Bowie and Aarts’ (2012) study using the Diachronic Corpus of Present-Day Spoken English has found that certain non-present perfects underwent a considerable decline in spoken British English (BrE) during the second half of the twentieth century. However, comparison with American English (AmE) and across various genres has not been made. This study focusses on the changes in the distribution of four types of non-present perfects (past, modal, to-infinitival and ing-participial) in standard written BrE and AmE during the thirty-year period from the early 1960s to the early 1990s. Using a tagged and post-edited version of the Brown family of corpora, it shows that contemporary BrE has a stronger preference for non-present perfects than AmE. Comparison of four written genres of the same period reveals that, for BrE, only the change in the overall frequency of past perfects was statistically significant. AmE showed, comparatively, a more dramatic decrease, particularly in the frequencies of past and modal perfects. It is suggested that the decline of past perfects is attributable to a growing disfavour for past-time reference in various genres, which is related to long-term historical shifts associated with the underlying communicative functions of the genres. The decline of modal perfects, on the other hand, is more likely to be occurring under the influence of the general decline of modal auxiliaries in English.

It is well known that vowels are shorter before voiceless consonants than voiced ones in English, as in many other languages. Research has shown that the ratio of vowel durations in voiced and voiceless contexts in English is in the range of 0.6~0.8. However, little work has been done as to whether the ratio of vowel durations varies depending on English variety. In the production experiment in this paper, seven speakers from three varieties of English, New Zealand, British, and American English, read 30 pairs of (C)VC monosyllabic words which differ in coda voicing (e.g. beat-bead). Vowel height, phonemic vowel length, and consonant manner were varied as well. As expected, vowel-shortening effects were found in all varieties: vowels were shorter before voiceless than before voiced codas. Overall vowel duration was the longest in American English and the shortest in New Zealand (NZ) English. In particular, vowel duration before voiceless codas is the shortest in New Zealand English, indicating the most radical degree of shortening in this variety. As a result, the ratio of vowel durations in varying voicing contexts is the lowest in NZ English, while American and British English do not show a significant difference each other. In addition, consonant closure duration was examined. Whereas NZ speakers show the shortest vowel duration before a voiceless coda, their voiceless consonants have the longest closure duration, which suggest an inverse relationship between vowel duration and closure duration.

The present study provides an empirical analysis of British-American contrasts in the overall use of the past perfect as well as its functional distribution. Studies on variation according to national variety report a decline of the past perfect spearheaded by American English (cf. Elsness, J. 1997.The Perfect and Preterite in Contemporary and Earlier English(Topics in English Linguistics 21). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyte; Bowie, J., S. Wallis, and B. Aarts. 2013. “The Perfect in Spoken British English.” InThe Verb Phrase in English. Investigating Recent Language Change with Corpora, edited by B. Aarts, J. Close, G. Leech, and S. Wallis, 318–52. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press: 348; Yao, X., and P. Collins. 2013. “Recent Change in Non-present Perfect Constructions in British and American English.”Corpora8 (1): 115–35: 121f.). However, these findings still await an explanation as to possible motivations for the decline. The present study is able to provide novel insights by taking the semantic functions of past perfect structures into account (anteriority, backshifting in indirect speech, hypothetical past). A functional quantitative and qualitative analysis of newspaper corpora comprising 112 million words (27 million British English and 85 million American English) reveals that the overall decline results in a reduction of redundant information at the cost of potential ambiguity. Finally, our findings will be related to the four dichotomies of British-American differences outlined in Rohdenburg and Schlüter (2009 “New Departures.” InOne Language, Two Grammars? Differences between British and American English(Studies in English Language), edited by G. Rohdenburg, and J. Schlüter, 364–423. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press: 421), i.e. progressiveness, formality, consistency and explicitness.