Year-end Sale % OFF 
Abstract
The aim of the present paper is to test the claim that contact simplifies language (cf. Kusters, 2008) by comparing the domain of relative clause formation in British English, a L1 variety, and Indian English, a L2 variety. According to Hawkins (1999), the processing cost of relativizing a noun phrase increases down the Accessibility Hierarchy (Subject > Direct Object> Indirect Object > Oblique > Genitive> Object of Comparison) proposed by Keenan and Comrie (1977). Subject relative clauses are thus easier to process than direct object relatives, and so on. The results of a corpus study of the British and Indian components of the International Corpus of English show that the Accessibility Hierarchy has an indirect effect on the production of relative clauses in British English and Indian English: whereas the distribution of relative clauses with respect to the hierarchy is very similar in both varieties, the number of complex relatives, i.e., with coordination or further embedding, decreases in the lower positions in Indian English. These results thus suggest that language contact plays a significant role in relative clause use and accounts for certain differences between L1 and L2 varieties of English in this grammatical domain.
Highlights
Language and dialect contact is a pervasive situation in the world nowadays
Relative clauses will be analysed in two varieties of English, British English (BrE) and Indian English (IndE), since they represent two different types of varieties: BrE is a native variety, and IndE is a L2 variety that developed under contact conditions and with a strong exonormative pressure
The frequency of simple and complex relative clauses will be examined in the two varieties at hand, in order to discover contact effects.1The inclusion of relativizer choice and preposition placement in the study is motivated by the intrinsic interest that variation with respect to these different structural options has for a study of relative clause formation
Summary
Language and dialect contact is a pervasive situation in the world nowadays. Bilingualism and multilingualism are the norm, while monolingualism is a restricted phenomenon (Valdés, 2012). The frequency of simple and complex relative clauses will be examined in the two varieties at hand, in order to discover contact effects.1The inclusion of relativizer choice and preposition placement in the study is motivated by the intrinsic interest that variation with respect to these different structural options has for a study of relative clause formation. It serves an additional function: previous research on relative clauses in English has focused mostly on the factors underlying the selection of relativizers and the placement of the preposition in prepositional complement relatives. This analysis can be used to compare the present results with what has been found in earlier studies, and to test their validity and generalizability
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callDisclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
