26.5215, Review: General Ling; Historical Ling; Socioling; Text/Corpus Ling: Collins (2015)

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Subject: 26.5215, Review: General Ling; Historical Ling; Socioling; Text/Corpus Ling: Collins (2015)

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Date: Fri, 20 Nov 2015 12:00:25
From: Julie Bruch [jbruch at coloradomesa.edu]
Subject: Grammatical Change in English World-Wide

 
Discuss this message:
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Book announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/26/26-1311.html

EDITOR: Peter  Collins
TITLE: Grammatical Change in English World-Wide
SERIES TITLE: Studies in Corpus Linguistics 67
PUBLISHER: John Benjamins
YEAR: 2015

REVIEWER: Julie Bruch, Colorado Mesa University

Reviews Editor: Helen Aristar-Dry

SUMMARY

This eighteen-paper collection contains corpus-based research on diachronic
variation in the grammar of Inner Circle and Outer Circle Englishes.  Many of
the papers present new perspectives based on newly expanded or created corpora
(post Leech et al.’s 2009 Change in Contemporary English).  

Much of the work on grammatical change in English has focused on British and
American varieties, due in large part to lack of diachronic corpora for other
regional varieties of English.  A main aim of this collection is to use
quantitative approaches to gain fresh insights into diachronic developments
within not only the British and American “supervarieties” (Collins & Peters
608), but also within other World Englishes.  A second aim is to compare rate
and direction of change and to explore discourse and sociolinguistic factors.

This overview of new research will hold interest for leaders in the field of
diachronic research as well as for students entering the field.  It provides a
comprehensive overview of previous studies and can serve as an introduction to
research design in corpus-based work.  Sociolinguists will also find it a
valuable resource as it amply addresses ways in which factors such as contact
and power influence changes in regional varieties of English.  

Two sections in the book follow Kachru’s distinction of Inner and Outer Circle
Englishes.  Ten papers include work on American, British, Canadian, Irish,
Australian, and New Zealand varieties, and eight papers focus on World
Englishes, including: Philippine, Indian, Nigerian, Caribbean, Pakistani, Sri
Lankan, Hong Kong, and Black South African English.  Three papers go beyond
purely grammatical categories to cover morphology and the interface between
grammar and lexis, pragmatics, and discourse.  All chapters attempt to measure
rates and directions of change within and between “parent” and other varieties
of language.  They also try to identify causes of change and examine
universals vs. individual mechanisms of change. 

Part 1.  Inner Circle Englishes

“Diachronic variation in the grammar of Australian English: Corpus-based
explorations” (Peter Collins):  This study employs two new corpora to examine
developments in ten morphosyntactic variables in the genres of news and
fiction in Australian English using fifty-year increments over the period 1788
to 2000.  The results indicate a shift toward American English (AmE) and away
from British English (BrE) in most variables.  The author supplements Hundt’s
typology of “colonial lag/innovation” with notions of revival, survival,
divergence, parallel change, and overtake and suggests that the
“Americanization” of morphosyntactic structures in Australian English (AusE)
is due to the economic, political, and cultural pull of AmE.

“At the crossroads of change: Possession, periphrasis, and prescriptivism in
Victoria English” (Alexandra D’Arcy):   Newspaper data from British Columbia
in the period from 1858 to 1935 were analyzed to find developments in the use
of stative possessives “have/have got/got.”  The author finds that Canadian
English (CanE) is closer to AmE than BrE and suggests that while
sociohistorical factors such as prestige, prescriptivism, and even
journalistic word count may have inhibited the use of “have got” in North
American varieties, competing language internal forces may be even more
relevant.  Results indicate that “do-support” and the lexicalization of “have”
seem to have prevented the expansion of the more innovative British form “have
got” in both AmE and CanE.  

Do-support in early New Zealand and Australian English (Marianne Hundt):  
History points toward Australian (AusE) and New Zealand English (NZE) being
similar to BrE.  This study examines mid-19th century genres of fiction,
science writing, newspapers, and letters to compare negative and interrogative
“do-support” in “antipodean” English with that of BrE and AmE.  Results show
the use of “do-support” varied by verb.  For “have,” AmE was ahead of AusE and
NZE in developing “do-support,” with BrE lagging.  However, bare negation was
found in all genres, including AmE.  For interrogatives in all four language
varieties, “do-support” was a minority variant.  The author concludes that
parallel development, while rare, seems to have occurred in this case.

The progressive in Irish English: Looking both ways? (John M. Kirk):   This
author compares Irish English (IrE) progressive verb frequencies and functions
to those in BrE in the late 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries, using spoken,
broadcast, and correspondence data.  He finds spoken progressives were nearly
similar in IrE and BrE until the late 18th century, but in contemporary IrE,
they are significantly more frequent than in BrE.  Functions of the
progressive peculiar to Irish appear to have influenced both IrE and BrE
starting after the late 18th century, and the author finds that
Irish-influenced forms, rather than declining or Americanizing, are being
adopted and exported to other varieties of world Englishes and that the
increasing frequency of progressives in BrE, particularly, is attributable to
the influence of Irish.

Cross-variety diachronic drifts and ephemeral regional contrasts: An analysis
of modality in the extended Brown family of corpora and what it can tell us
about the New Englishes (Christian Mair):   This is the first study to use
“Brown family” corpora that include new AmE data from 1930 to 1960.  The study
compares modals and semi-modals for 1930, 1961, and 1991 for BrE, AmE, AusE,
NZE, and Indian English (IndE).  Previous studies suggested that modals are
decreasing but semi-modals are increasing due to grammaticalization,
colloquialization, and Amercianization.  This study finds that diachronic
changes are “ephemeral” (p. 126) and that biases (time periods and genres
under study and differing sizes of corpora for “other Englishes”) can produce
incoherent results.  Some findings here coincide with previous work, but the
distribution of modals within and across language varieties is more broadly
heterogeneous.   

Passives of so-called ‘ditransitives’ in nineteenth century and present-day
Canadian English (Matthias L. G. Meyer):   The data on passives in this study
are from: newspapers (which are innovative yet regional), fiction (close to
spoken forms), and non-fiction (more formal) and from two time periods: 19th
century and 1971 to 2000.  Findings for CanE indicate an overall decline in
passives which is even more pronounced than in BrE and AmE.  There is also a
shift from preference for prepositional passives (“The letter was given to
him”) to a preference for first passives (“He was given the letter”).  CanE is
found to be closer to AmE than BrE in loss of second passives (“The letter was
given him”).  Future parallel development is suggested for all three
varieties.

Dual adverbs in Australian English (Pam Peters):   Peters investigates five
fully interchangeable dual form adverbs (such as “quick/quickly”) from the
late 19th to the late 20th century in AusE and BrE focusing on increases in
zero forms and divergences in the two varieties.  Genre and syntactic location
of the adverb were among several variables considered.  While results differed
by adverb, an overall bias for “-ly” forms was stronger in BrE than in AusE. 
Interchangeability of the dual forms was found to decline less in AusE than in
BrE.  The author interprets this as “colonial lag” with subsequent
nativization of AusE.   

The evolutions of epistemic marking in West Australian English (Celeste
Rodriguez Louro):   This paper uses oral history interviews of people from
Perth born between 1874 and 1983 to show shifts in epistemic/evidentials
(especially “think”) from a lexical use to a more formulaic parenthetical use.
 Among several variables studied, deletion of the complementizer “that”
resulted in grammaticalization of “think,” and increased preference for
initial position and negative polarity suggest pragmaticization of “think”
parentheticals for discourse functions of stating opinions and mitigating
negative judgments.  The paper also finds that since “guess,” which has always
been strong in AmE, entered AusE only after the beginning of the 20th century
exonormative influences on AusE began to shift from BrE to AmE.

May and might in nineteenth century Irish English and English English (Marije
Van Hattum):   This paper compares IrE “may/might” modals to those of English
English (EngE) using data from trial proceedings and personal letters from the
late 17th to the 20th century.  Notable in both varieties is the loss of
“might” to signal past time; however, by mid 19th century, IrE used “might”
for present tense more than EngE.  This is attributed to grammaticalization
and semantic bleaching, in combination with prescriptivism which favored “may
have” for the past tense.  The author concludes that Irish influence may have
been a factor in earlier changes in IrE, and that there were both diachronic
and regional influences in the processes of change.

The present perfect and the preterite in Australian English: A diachronic
perspective (Xinue Yao):   This paper discusses the decline in use of the
present perfect in proportion to the preterite in BrE and AmE since the 18th
century.  Data from the genre of fiction were used here to compare functional
shifts and fluctuations in frequency of use of present perfect and preterite
verbs in AusE in two time periods (1850 – 1899 and 1950 – 1999) and to compare
results to tendencies in BrE and AmE.  Among the variables studied, temporal
specification was found to increase use of present perfect in all three
regional varieties over time, indicating grammaticalization of the form.  
Negation and non-transitivity were favored by present perfect only in AmE, but
this functional specialization was not found in AusE or BrE.  Telicity
(endpoint) was found to be a strong influence.  AmE was found to have a larger
overall decline in present perfect forms, and AusE was found to pattern more
conservatively with BrE with retention of older patterns.   

Part 2.  Outer Circle Englishes

Recent diachronic change in the progressive in Philippine English (Peter
Collins):   This paper compares data from from Philippine English (PhE), BrE,
and AmE within the genres of press, prose, learned use, and fiction for the
1950s – 1960s and early 1990s to discover shifts in the frequency and
distribution of progressive verb forms.  The article summarizes previous
findings that indicate increased frequency and colloquialization of the
progressive aspect and its attitudinal use in addition to aspectual usage. 
The results were mixed, with data indicating both an exonormative influence
from AmE and endonormative stabilization of “colonial innovations.”

Linguistic change in a multicultural setting: A case study of quotatives in
Indian English (Julia Davydova):   Davydova explores restructuring and
proliferation of quotative markers introducing direct speech in Indian English
(IndE).  She focuses on sociolinguistic factors inherent in multilingual
settings such as New Delhi, including added creativity and need to communicate
across barriers.  The author transcribed speech from 26 informants in 2007 and
2011 and analyzed the resulting corpus assessing the variables of gender,
degree of contact with English, lect of speaker (meso, upper meso, or
acrolect), and grammatical person of subject used in the quotative.  Five
types of quotatives were analyzed, including the superstrate global innovation
“be like” and the substrate local innovation “okay.”  Results show “colonial
lag” in use of “be like,” but innovation over time with “okay.” Female
acrolectal speakers were found to be the most innovative in IndE, which aligns
with findings for AmE and indicates the importance of sociolinguistic
influences.

Patterns of regularization in British, American and Indian English: A closer
look at irregular verbs with t/ed variation (Bernard De Clerck & Klaar
Vanopstal):   In addition to historical corpora, this study employs
contemporary global web data to quantify shifts in competing past tense forms
(“-t/ -ed”) in 13 verbs.  It includes synchronic comparisons between IndE and
BrE and AmE and compares diachronic data from the late 20th century to the
present.  Synchronic data suggest that IndE has the strongest overall
preference for “-t” forms, but in all varieties, there is variation based on
individual verbs, so opposing trends of progression and conservatism were
found.  Diachronic data also presented mixed results with IndE showing weakest
“-t” preference in the 1970s.  The authors conclude that “-ed” is increasing
in all three language varieties.  However, for the dual patterning verbs
studied, the accepted generalization that less frequent verbs regularize more
easily does not hold.  Instead, features such as vowel change or spelling
change are strong factors.  The authors conclude that past tense verbs in IndE
reveal a hybrid mix of “colonial lag” and “colonial innovation.”  

An apparent time study of the progressive in Nigerian English (Robert Fuchs &
Ulrike Gut):   With Nigerian English (NigE) serving as a lingua franca among
multilinguals, various factors influence how grammatical forms develop. The
authors use an “apparent time” design to measure how age, gender, ethnicity,
and text genre influence use of the progressive aspect.  While gender is not
significant, the other variables are, with speakers under 30 using the
progressive forms significantly more than people over 50.  Informal,
persuasive texts contain more progressives, and ethnicity was significant,
with Yoruba using progressives the most.  Similar to BrE and AmE, NigE shows
an increase in frequency of progressives, but the authors suggest that
specific cross-variety comparisons await further real time studies.

American influence on written Caribbean English: A diachronic analysis of
newspaper reportage in the Bahamas and in Trinidad and Tobago (Stephanie
Hackert & Dagmar Deuber):   This study compares 1960s corpus-data from
national newspapers in two Caribbean countries with data from AmE, BrE, and
Caribbean newspapers from 2002-2012 to explore the question of Americanization
in the Caribbean varieties (CarE).  Increases in the frequency of contractions
provide evidence of parallel processes of colloquialization in AmE, BrE, and
CarE, but on a much smaller scale for CarE.  Decreases in the frequency of
passives appear in AmE and BrE, but no significant decrease in CarE is
evident.  Both findings lead to the conclusion that a certain degree of
formality lingers in CarE and Americanization is not a factor.  However, an
increase in frequency of the informal “which” over “that” in certain types of
relative clauses appears in Bahamian English, similar to American journalistic
trends.  Usage trends in titles and pseudo-titles, showing democratization,
also indicate similarities between Bahamian English and AmE.  The authors
conclude that results for the degree of Americanization in CarE are mixed.

Cultural keywords in context: A pilot study of linguistic acculturation in
South Asian Englishes (Joybrato Mukherjee & Tobias Bernaisch):   This study
examines positive and negative connotations of three key cultural words
(“government, terror, religion”) in IndE, Pakistan English (PakE), and Sri
Lankan English (SLE) using corpus-data to determine collocational types and
frequencies.  Findings indicate cross-varietal stability in positive
connotations of “government,” but “terror” has undergone linguistic
acculturation in markedly variety-specific ways, and “religion” showed no
shared collocates.  Although no diachronic data was used, the authors
demonstrate variety-specific structural nativization of the keywords and
explore sociolinguistic explanations for the differences found.

Recent quantitative changes in the use of modals and quasi-modals in the Hong
Kong, British and American printed press: Exploring the potential of Factiva
for the diachronic investigation of World Englishes (Dirk Noel & Johan Van der
Auwera):   This paper introduces use of a new tool, “Factiva,” for corpus
studies.  Factiva is a massive collection of news from 200 countries in 28
languages.  The authors use this search engine to measure dispersion data and
frequency counts of modals and quasi-modals in 1990, 2000, and 2010.  They
compare AmE, BrE, and Hong Kong English (HKE) and further compare newspapers
to a news magazine (Time Magazine) as a sub-genre.  Their findings suggest
that while HKE newspapers are closer to BrE newspapers than to AmE, HKE is its
own variety.  They also find that while modals are decreasing overall, AmE
newspapers show an increase, and Time Magazine shows distinct patterns from
the newspapers, so both regional variety and sub-genre differences are
apparent.

The development of an extended time period meaning of the progressive in Black
South African English (Bertus Van Rooy & Caroline Piotrowska):   In spite of
numerous challenges in obtaining historical data for Black South African
English (BSAfE), the authors collected corpus data from three sources: Imvo,
an isiXhosa language newspaper that contained up to one third of its articles
in English for 1884-1888, 1914-1918, and 1944-1948, Drum Magazine (1951-1959),
and various 2000-2012 newspapers and works of fiction.  The study compares
development in the use of the progressive by second language users in BSAfE
(especially with stative verbs).  Preliminary findings report possible
semantic transfer from the substrate Bantu languages into BSAfE and also
similarities to trends in other native varieties, including an overall
increase in frequency of progressives over time.  Due to instability and
fluctuations shown in the data, no endonormativization is apparent at this
time.

EVALUATION

This book achieves its goal of providing fresh insights into diachronic
changes in English grammar around the world.  It also convincingly shows
linguistic and extra-linguistic factors affecting these changes.  The papers
are accessible yet at an appropriate level of technicality; they provide clear
overviews of past work and how the new studies extend or contrast with earlier
work.  They also illustrate possibilities for future work, pointing out the
importance of: “real” vs. “apparent” time, genre and register, sources for
corpora from outside the traditional realm of linguistics, extended time
spans, and additional World Englishes. 

Overall, the papers cohere effectively, with a representative balance within
and among the Inner and Outer Circle languages.  Two of the three papers that
go beyond grammar “proper” fit seamlessly.  The third, “Cultural keywords in
context,” is relevant but might be better fit for a separate volume dedicated
specifically to lexico-grammatical-cultural research.  In fact, such a volume
addressing questions that arise from the lexis-grammar interface would be a
logical next step for follow-up on Noel and Van der Auwera’s study, which
identifies some modal “outliers” such as “can, should” which do not follow the
general developments of other modals.  Could cultural factors be at work?  

All the contributors to the volume are established leaders in the field of
diachronic studies, and the articles reflect their deep understanding of
theory and methodology.  Six papers are particularly strong in thoroughness,
clarity, and accessibility.  Hundt’s work on antipodean English contains
particularly careful definitions and descriptions of design and methodology. 
Mair presents particularly clear, strong conclusions.  The Louro paper on
epistemic marking is especially accessible reading.  Rich explanatory
commentary is included in the Collins’ paper on Philippine English.  The sole
paper on morphology (by De Clerck and Vanopstal) explores a wealth of
variables and contains excellent “further research” ideas.  The Noel and Van
der Auwera article is remarkable for its careful and detailed commentary on
previous work.  RoomYouust told

Notable merits of the volume are its careful descriptions of: corpora,
processes of data selection, collection, and normalization, analytical
methodology, and statistical significance of the results.  While the papers
clearly indicate caveats and weaknesses, the reliability of findings is
well-supported throughout.   All papers are rich in comparisons to extant
work.  For readers not familiar with previous corpus-based diachronic studies,
the book is a valuable resource for finding representative foundational work
from the 2000s to the present.  

One shortcoming of the book, in this reviewer’s opinion, is its need for
greater clarity in five of the papers.  Because Kirk’s study of the
progressive in Irish English was somewhat dense and redundant in parts, the
separation between the functions of the progressive was not entirely clear,
nor was it clear whether the conclusions were fully supported by the
data,Going to help me make up the bed as the results were variously presented
as raw token scores, percentages, or generalized descriptive adjectives (such
as “infrequent”).  The Mair article describing data from the extended “Brown
family” of corpora assumes that all readers are familiar with the
acronym-names of the six corpora.  A footnote later in the paper provides more
description, but including more explicit details of what each corpus covers
would be helpful.  (The Collins’ paper on Philippine English is much more
helpful in this aspect.)  Yao’s study of Australian English verbs states, “The
past participle acted as a complement of either the object (in intransitives)
or the subject (in transitives) . . .” (p. 249).  This reviewer had difficulty
understanding the sentence as stated; should “intransitives” and “transitives”
be reversed in this statement?  In the Davydova article on quotatives, it
would be useful to clarify the degree of validity of having only 12 and 14
oral interview informants respectively for the two time periods studied and to
comment on the comparability of this to other studies in the volume.  Finally,
the Fuchs and Gut study on Nigerian English, while intriguing, could have used
additional figures or charts to summarize data.  Parts of the data were
explained only in the narrative, while other parts were represented in
figures.  This would add to ease of comparison within the study.

Two easy fixes are also suggested:  1) Collin’s paper on Philippine English
places the Spanish-American war in 1998 (p. 271) rather than 1898, and 2)
Davydova’s study on quotatives in Indian English refers aptly to the variable
of gender on p. 314, but as “sex” earlier in the paper (p. 302-303).  

One question that arises regards terminology.  Commonly-used terms for AmE and
BrE are: “parent varieties, super-varieties, reference varieties, native
Englishes,” and for other Englishes terms include: “postcolonial, non-native
Englishes, New Englishes, World Englishes, sub-varieties, regional varieties.”
 Some terms are used in quotes, some not.  Certainly, each term implies
specific socio-historical features or nuances, and the terms are tied closely
with processes traditionally described in the literature (such as colonial lag
and innovation).  It would be useful for this volume (and within the field as
a whole) to explicitly clarify and perhaps reconsider the nuances suggested by
the varying terms.  An example of terminology that might hint of anachronism
is in the Collins’ paper on Australian English: “Having emancipated itself
from the hitherto prestigious variety spoken in the motherland, AmE has become
the centre of gravity of much grammatical change in English world-wide” (p.
18).  Having occurred 239 years ago, the “emancipation” from the “motherland”
may no longer be relevant in the general consciousness or in linguistic
analysis.  As a final example, the phrases “more advanced, more developed”
follow extant literature in describing grammatical features that are most
changed.  Consistency in terminology is important, however, the term
“advanced,” has connotations of “superiority” in other contexts, and thus,
might be a candidate for a shift to phrases that are less apt to be
misconstrued such as “more divergent, more changed.” 

This overview of current leading work has made great strides in addressing the
paucity of historical data for “other Englishes.”  It will encourage further
development of corpora and research design and stands as an important
contribution to the field of diachronic studies.

REFERENCES

Collins, Peter & Peters, Pam. 2004. Australian English: Morphology and syntax.
In A Handbook of Varieties of English, Vol 2, Bernd Kortmann, Edgar Schneider,
with Kate Burridge, Rajend Mesthrie & Clive Upton (eds), 593-610. Berlin:
Mouton de Gruyter.

Hundt, Marianne. 2009. Colonial lag, colonial innovation, or simply language
change? In One Language, Two Grammars, Gunter Rohdenburg & Julia Schluter
(eds), 13-37. Cambridge: CUP. COI: 10.1017/CB09780511551970.002

Kachru, Braj. 1985. Standards, codification, and sociolinguistic realism: The
English language in the outer circle.  In English in the World, Randolph Quirk
& Henry Widdowson (eds), 11-30. Cambridge: CUP.

Leech, Geoffrey, Hundt, Marianne, Mari, Christian & Smith, Nicholas. 2009.
Change in Contemporary English: A Grammatical Study. Cambridge: CUP.DOI:
10.1017/CBO9780511642210


ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Julie Bruch holds a Ph.D. in Linguistics from the University of Kansas. She currently teaches Linguistic Diversity, History of English, Structure of English, and Beginning Japanese at Colorado Mesa University. Her principle research interests are the language-culture interface and language change and diversity.




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