Collostructional nativisation in New Englishes

Abstract

The present paper investigates the strength of verb-construction associations across various New Englishes on the basis of comparable corpora. In contrast to previous studies into verb complementation in New Englishes, we start off from three basic constructions in English — the intransitive, the monotransitive and the ditransitive construction — and analyse the co-occurrences of the three constructions and a wide range of verbs. The present study is based on the Hong Kong, the Indian, and the Singapore components of the International Corpus of English (ICE) because the three varieties represent markedly different stages in the process of the evolution of New Englishes with British English as the historical input variety. Our quantitative analysis includes multiple distinctive collexeme analyses for the different varieties. The results show,inter alia, that, firstly, processes of structural nativisation of New Englishes can also be observed at the level of verb-construction associations, which can be subsumed under the notion of “collostructional nativisation”, and that, secondly, there are identifiable intervarietal differences between British English and New Englishes as well as between individual New Englishes. In general, there is a correlation between the evolutionary stage of a New English variety and its collostructional nativisation: The more advanced a New English variety is in the developmental cycle, the more dissimilar its collostructional preferences are to British English.

Syntactic complexity and language contact: A corpus-based study of relative clauses in British English and Indian English

“…For instance, despite the fact that, of all grammatical components, morphology and syntax have been traditionally considered the least vulnerable to the effects of language contact (Thomason and Kauffmann, 1988: 51-52), recent studies (e.g. Mukherjee and Gries, 2009;Schröter and Kortmann, 2016;Suárez-Gómez, 2017) have shown that contact languages or dialects tend to contain grammatical structures that are the result of transfer from one of the languages/dialects involved in the contact situation to the other(s). These innovations introduce new variants in the grammar and, therefore, increase its complexity from a systemic point of view by expanding the set of rules/constructions available.…”

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“…For instance, despite the fact that, of all grammatical components, morphology and syntax have been traditionally considered the least vulnerable to the effects of language contact (Thomason and Kauffmann, 1988: 51-52), recent studies (e.g. Mukherjee and Gries, 2009;Schröter and Kortmann, 2016;Suárez-Gómez, 2017) have shown that contact languages or dialects tend to contain grammatical structures that are the result of transfer from one of the languages/dialects involved in the contact situation to the other(s). These innovations introduce new variants in the grammar and, therefore, increase its complexity from a systemic point of view by expanding the set of rules/constructions available.…”

“…However, further work on variation in clausal complementation is still needed, especially in Present-Day English "where comparatively little work has been done" (Fanego, 2007: 161), and also in World Englishes, since, as Schneider (2007: 86) argues, "a classic example [of innovations in varieties in phase 4, nativization] is the complementation patterns which verbs and also adjectives typically enter". Thus far, studies on verbal complementation in World Englishes (WEs) are scarce and have centered mainly on nominal complementation with focus on ditransitive verbs and Transfer-Caused-Motion (TCM) constructions (see Olavarria de Ersson and Shaw, 2003;Mukherjee and Hoffman, 2006;Mukherjee andSchilk, 2008, 2012;Mukherjee and Gries, 2009;Bernaisch, 2013;Deshors, 2014); as for clausal complementation, only quantitative studies on the competition between gerunds and infinitives are currently available (Deshors, 2015;Deshors and Gries, 2016).…”

Contact-induced variation in clausal verb complementation: the case of REGRET in World Englishes

“…However, further work on variation in clausal complementation is still needed, especially in Present-Day English "where comparatively little work has been done" (Fanego, 2007: 161), and also in World Englishes, since, as Schneider (2007: 86) argues, "a classic example [of innovations in varieties in phase 4, nativization] is the complementation patterns which verbs and also adjectives typically enter". Thus far, studies on verbal complementation in World Englishes (WEs) are scarce and have centered mainly on nominal complementation with focus on ditransitive verbs and Transfer-Caused-Motion (TCM) constructions (see Olavarria de Ersson and Shaw, 2003;Mukherjee and Hoffman, 2006;Schilk, 2008, 2012;Mukherjee and Gries, 2009;Bernaisch, 2013;Deshors, 2014); as for clausal complementation, only quantitative studies on the competition between gerunds and infinitives are currently available (Deshors, 2015;Deshors and Gries, 2016).…”