It has been argued that in language contact situations both transfer processes from the substrate languages (Thomason, 2008) and cognitive effects derived from the language contact situation itself (Schneider, 2012(Schneider, , 2013 can constitute important catalysts for language variation and change. Regarding the verbal complementation system, Steger and Schneider (2012: 172), for example, notice a preference for finite patterns over non-finite structures in World Englishes (WEs), that is, a preference for more explicit forms (hyperclarity and isomorphism). On the contrary, Schneider's study (2012) does not confirm such a preference for more explicit forms in WEs in the competition between finite and non-finite patterns. This article intends to shed some light on the differences between the distribution of finite and nonfinite complementation patterns in WEs by exploring the complementation profile of the verb REGRET in two metropolitan varieties, British and American English, and comparing them to three geographically distant varieties with different substrate languages, historical contexts, and degrees of language contact: on the one hand, two ESL varieties, Hong Kong English and Nigerian English, and on the other, one ESD variety, Jamaican English, where contact is more pronounced. The main aim of this paper is, therefore, to investigate whether potential differences in the verbal complementation systems between varieties of English are product of cognitive processes derived from the language contact situation, a matter of transfer-induced change, or a combination of both.
This study aims to contribute to the body of work on the effects of substrate languages and language transfer in World Englishes by asking whether the clausal verb complementation systems of the verb regret in eight Asian postcolonial varieties are affected by the substrate languages. An examination of the most widely spoken substrates in each variety does not seem to indicate that these have an effect on the respective complementation systems, since varieties with similar substrate languages have different distributions. In view of this, a further two factors are explored. First, the role played by the phase of development in the Dynamic Model (Schneider 2007), which also seems not to explain the different distributions: varieties in the same phase of development exhibit distinct distributions. Second, geographical proximity, which appears to explain similarities and differences between varieties, since South Asian varieties display similar characteristics, whereas these differ from those found in Southeast Asian varieties.
Research on complementizer selection has shown that the presence of a negative particle in a subordinate complement clause influences complement choice, leading to a relatively higher proportion of finite complementation patterns by increasing the complexity of the syntactic environment. Studies have also shown that different types of negation, namely not- and no-negation, increase the tendency towards more explicit complementation options (Rohdenburg 2015). The current study focuses on the effect of not- and no-negation on the complementation profile of the verb regret, which allows variation between finite that/zero-complement clauses and nonfinite (S) -ing clauses. The GloWbE corpus was used to create a data set of more than 4,000 examples from 16 varieties of English. The results of the analysis support previous findings that the presence of a negative marker in the complement clause increases the preference for finite patterns, especially in L2 varieties of English. However, contrary to the expectations of this study, no-negation was found to have a stronger effect on complement choice than not-negation.
It has often been claimed that the English complementation system lies at the intersection of grammar and lexis, an area where, in the process of nativization in new varieties of English, innovation and change commonly occur (Olavarría de Ersson and Shaw 2003; Schneider 2007). The current study aims to contribute to this field by looking at the complementation profile of the verb REGRET as used on the internet (Corpus of Global Web-Based English (GloWbE), Davies 2013). The manual analysis of more than 18,000 examples unveils new distributions, uses and patterns of complementation with this verb in 16 different L1 and L2 varieties of English worldwide, for which tentative cognitive explanations are offered.
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