It is widely believed that listeners understand some dialects more easily than others, although there is very little research that has rigorously measured the effects. This study investigated whether listeners experience more difficulty with regional, ethnic, and international

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This is a corpus-based investigation of also and too in 11 registers of Indian English. The corpus used for this study is a combination of a Corpus of Contemporary Indian English (CCIE), and certain sections of ICE-India. The study: (1) determines the proportions of also and too with respect to each other in the Indian corpus; (2) compares the proportions of the adverbials in registers of Indian English versus registers of British and American English; (3) compares the position preferences (medial, initial, final) of the adverbials in registers of Indian English versus registers of British and American English; and (4) determines the position of also and its relationship to the element in semantic focus in the clause in different registers of Indian English. The study shows that there are: (1) significant differences between Indian English and British and American English in the patterns of occurrence of the circumstance adverbials studied; and (2) there are substantial differences in patterns of occurrence of the circumstance adverbials among the registers of Indian English. This study makes a contribution to the study of Indian English as it shows: (1) that Indian English is different from British and American English with respect to a core grammatical characteristic; and (2) that registers of Indian English are substantially different from each other.the Kolhapur Corpus, and the Indian section of the International Corpus of English (ICE India). Table 1 provides a summary of several relatively recent studies on Indian English conducted through corpus analysis.It is clear from Table 1 that Indian English has been extensively studied for several decades. What is also clear from Table 1 is that thus far, few studies have focused on register differences in the variety; few studies, therefore, have focused on the variation within Indian English. Schneider proposes a model for understanding the shared processes that he explains all new Englishes go through in their development. He explains that the development of any new English entails five processes: "Foundation, Exonormative Stabilization, Nativization, Endonormative Stabilization, and Differentiation" (Schneider 2003: 243). He explains that the first process, foundation, is the initial phase where "English begins to be used on a regular basis in a country that was not English-speaking before" (Schneider 2003: 244); he characterizes this phase as a "complex contact situation" (Schneider 2003: 244). In this phase, contact between the two language groups, he explains, remains restricted, with cross-cultural communication being achieved by just a few people. Further, during this phase, indigenous languages do not influence the English spoken by the settlers. During Phase 2, exonormative stabilization, the "external norm, usually written and spoken British English as used by educated speakers, is accepted as a linguistic standard of reference"

Prescriptivism and descriptivism are two different schools of thought concerned with language usage and propelled by historical and sociopolitical factors. Invasions of the British Isles throughout the medieval period produced numerous vernaculars which prevailed for centuries until the London dialect began to dominate in the 15th century. As British imperialistic interests grew, external influences increased concerns about language corruption and initiated the demand for a language reformation and standardization. Hence, prescriptivism gradually rose to prominence during the Enlightenment and language purism started to inform many English rule‐based grammars. However, growing nationalistic tendencies in America and the intellectual environment of the 19th century challenged prescriptivism and fostered the rise of descriptivism, which continued to grow in popularity in the 20th and 21st centuries largely due to new sociopolitical views in the teaching of grammar, style, and usage embodied in the English as a global language and the World Englishes phenomena. Further, developments in corpus linguistics have enabled the study and description of register‐specific grammars. Today, both schools have immediate pedagogical implications. While many teachers and linguists encourage the adoption of a descriptive approach in the language classroom, this is accompanied by practical considerations such as which particular English variety to teach.

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