Introduction

Variation, development and pragmatic uses ofinnitin the language of British adults and teenagers

“…From the above data, our tentative conclusions are that: (i) innit is quite a recent development in the English language, only 50 or 60 years old at most, according to the OED ; (ii) it is typical of British English, particularly of the varieties spoken in the south of England, Wales and London (Kortmann & Schneider 2004; Kortmann & Lunkenheimer 2013), being found only rarely in other well-established native English varieties, such as American English and Australian English, although it is recorded in varieties of English spoken in Papua New Guinea, Asia and South Africa; (iii) it stands out as especially common in the discourse of British teenagers, more particularly those living in certain districts of London; (iv) when used in the language of the press, it occurs mainly in the sports and blogs sections, and where journalists want to emulate spoken English and, more particularly, in the language of teenagers; and finally, (v) while it functions as an invariant question tag to check or confirm comprehension, or to keep the interlocutors’ attention, on many occasions it may also perform certain other functions.…”

“… 5 Some of the studies included in Kortmann & Schneider's handbook (2004: 786, 817, 1050, 1094) acknowledge the existence of the invariant isn't it, in't it and innit in a number of varieties of English, including Fijian, Nigerian and Pakistani English, and in creoles in the Pacific and Australasian regions. Furthermore, in the Electronic World Atlas of Varieties of English (eWAVE) (Kortmann & Lunkenheimer 2013), invariant non-concord tags, including innit , are attested in 47 different varieties with a pervasiveness of 0.777. Thus, contrary to what one might suspect, the invariant non-concord tags are quite common in English worldwide.…”

Which comes first in the double object construction?

“…Broadly speaking, Hughes et al (2012: 20) note that the pronominal pattern of (3), as in She gave it him , is ‘very common indeed’ in northern England, but it is ‘also quite acceptable to many southern speakers’. For their part, Kortmann & Lunkenheimer (2013: feature 232) report that alternation between canonical V–O i –O d and dialectal V–O d –O i is ‘neither pervasive nor extremely rare’ in dialects of the North of England, ‘pervasive or obligatory’ in dialects of the Southwest, and extant but ‘extremely rare’ in East Anglia and in dialects of the Southeast of England.…”

The present perfect in Nigerian English

“…To our knowledge, at present the only information on the PP and the PT in NigE on which the generation of hypotheses can be based stems from a limited set of sources. The first one is eWAVE (Kortmann & Lunkenheimer 2013), where it is stated that leveling in terms of PT use for PP, as illustrated in (1) exists, but is rare (rated C), while other nonstandard features in the domain of perfect contexts (apart from the use of the simple present and already as a perfect marker, see section 3.1) are thought to be absent (rated D) 2 Were you ever in Kano?…”