Cover not available

Article published In: English World-Wide
Vol. 44:2 (2023) ► pp.184–218

Get fulltext from our e-platform
JBE logo with link
PDF logo with download linkDownload PDF
EPUB logo with download linkDownload EPUB
authorization required

Grammatical variation in World Englishes

An onomasiological study

 | University of New South Wales
Published online: 7 November 2022
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/eww.21055.col
Abstract
This study adopts an onomasiological, alternation-based approach to the exploration of grammatical variation across World Englishes, using data sourced from the 1.9 billion-word Global Web-based English corpus. The macro-orientation of the study, which investigates a set of ten alternations known to be susceptible to diachronic change, facilitates identification of a number of general trends, including the typical advancement of the Inner Circle varieties and of the South-East Asian varieties, the hypercentrality of American English, and the epicentrality of Indian English in South Asia. Possible explanatory factors include colloquialisation, grammatical simplicity/complexity, developmental status, and areal proximity.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Data and methodology
  • 3.Explanatory considerations
  • 4.Findings
    • 4.1Perfect aspect
    • 4.2Progressive aspect
    • 4.3Passive voice
    • 4.4Subjunctive mood
      • 4.4.1The subjunctive mandative
      • 4.4.2The subjunctive-were conditional
    • 4.5Non-finite complementation
      • 4.5.1Prevent NP (from) Ving
      • 4.5.2Help NP (to) V
      • 4.5.3Start Ving vs start to V
    • 4.6Concord with collective nouns
    • 4.7First person inclusive imperatives
  • 5.Discussion of findings
  • 6.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
References (41)
References
Aarts, Bas, Joanne Close, and Sean Wallis. 2013. “Choices over Time: Methodological Issues in Investigating Current Change”. In Bas Aarts, Joanne Close, Geoffrey Leech, and Sean Wallis, eds. The Verb Phrase in English: Investigating Recent Language Change with Corpora. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 14–45. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Biber, Doug, Stig Johansson, Geoffrey Leech, Susan Conrad, and Edward Finegan. 1999. Longman Grammar of Spoken and Written English. Harlow: Pearson ESL.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Collins, Peter. 2008. “The Progressive Aspect in World Englishes: A Corpus-Based Study”. Australian Journal of Linguistics 281: 225–249. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2015. “Diachronic Variation in the Grammar of Australian English”. In Peter Collins, ed. Grammatical Change in English World-Wide. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 15–42. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Collins, Peter, and Xinyue Yao. 2013. “Colloquial Features in World Englishes”. International Journal of Corpus Linguistics 181: 479–505. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Collins, Peter, Ariane Borlongan, Joo-Hyuk Lim, and Xinyue Yao. 2014. “The Subjunctive Mood in Philippine English: A Diachronic Analysis”. In Daniel Schreier, Olga Timofeeva, Anne Gardner, Alpo Honkapoja, Marianne Hundt, and Simone Pfenninger, eds. Contact, Variation and Change in the History of English. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 259–280. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Davydova, Julia. 2011. The Present Perfect in Non-Native Englishes: A Corpus-Based Study. Berlin: De Gruyter. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Deshors, Sandra C., and Stefan T. Gries. 2020. “Mandative Subjunctive vs. Should in World Englishes: A New Take on an Old Alternation”. Corpora 151: 213–241. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Elsness, Johan. 1997. The Perfect and the Preterite in Contemporary and Earlier English. Berlin: De Gruyter. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2009. “The Perfect and the Preterite in Australian and New Zealand English”. In Pam Peters, Peter Collins, and Adam Smith, eds. Varieties of English Around the World. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 89–114. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Fernández-Pena, Yolanda. 2017. “Exploring the Patterns of Verbal Agreement of Collective Noun-Headed Subjects in a Parsed Corpus of Present-Day English”. EPiC Series in Language and Linguistics 21: 325–334. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Fuchs, Robert. 2016. “The Frequency of the Present Perfect in Varieties of English around the World”. In Valentin Werner, Cristina Suárez-Gómez, and Elena Seoane, eds. Re-Assessing the Present Perfect in English: Corpus Studies and Beyond. Berlin: De Gruyter, 223–258. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
García-Castro, Laura. 2020. “Finite and Non-Finite Complement Clauses in Postcolonial Englishes”. World Englishes 391: 411–426. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Harsh, Wayne. 1968. The Subjunctive in English. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Heller, Benedikt, Benedikt Szmrecsanyi, and Jason Grafmiller. 2017. “Stability and Fluidity in Syntactic Variation World-Wide: The Genitive Alternation across Varieties of English”. Journal of English Linguistics 451: 3–27. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Huddleston, Rodney. 1988. English Grammar: An Outline. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Huddleston, Rodney, and Geoffrey Pullum. 2002. The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hundt, Marianne. 2009. “Concord with Collective Nouns in Australian and New Zealand English”. In Pam Peters, Peter Collins, and Adam Smith, eds. Varieties of English Around the World. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 205–222. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2013. “The Diversification of English: Old, New and Emerging Epicentres”. In Daniel Schreier, and Marianne Hundt, eds. English as a Contact Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 182–203. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kachru, Braj. 1985. “Standards, Codification, and Sociolinguistic Realism: The English Language in the Outer Circle”. In Randolph Quirk, and Henry G. Widdowson, eds. English in the World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 11–30.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kranich, Svenja. 2010. The Progressive in Modern English: A Corpus-Based Study of Grammaticalization and Related Changes. Amsterdam: Rodopi. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Leech, Geoffrey, Marianne Hundt, Christian Mair, and Nicholas Smith. 2009. Change in Contemporary English: A Grammatical Study. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Levin, Magnus. 2001. “Concord with Collective Nouns Revisited”. ICAME Journal 231: 21–33.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Loureiro-Porto, Luisa. 2017. “ICE vs GloWbE: Big Data and Corpus Compilation”. World Englishes 361: 448–470. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2016. “Response to Davies and Fuchs”. English World-Wide 361: 29–33. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Mair, Christian, and Geoffrey N. Leech. 2021. “Current Changes in English Syntax”. In Bas Aarts, April McMahon, and Lars Hinrichs, eds. The Handbook of English Linguistics. Hoboken: Wiley Blackwell, 249–276.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Meyerhoff, Miriam, and Nancy Niedzielski. 2003. “The Globalisation of Vernacular Variation”. Journal of Sociolinguistics 71: 534–555. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Pariña, Jose Cristina M., and Selwyn Cruz. 2015. “An Investigation of the Complexity of Verb Phrases in the ICE of Four Asian Countries”. Malaysian Journal of Languages and Linguistics 41: 43–54. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Rautionaho, Paula. 2014. Variation in the Progressive: A Corpus-Based Study into World Englishes. Tampere: Tampere University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Schneider, Edgar. 2007. Postcolonial English: Varieties around the World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Sharma, Devyani. 2009. “Typological Diversity in New Englishes”. English World-Wide 301: 170–195. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Smitterberg, Erik. 2005. The Progressive in 19th-century English: A Process of Integration. Amsterdam: Rodopi. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Steger, Maria, and Edgar W. Schneider. 2012. “Complexity as a Function of Iconicity: The Case of Complement Clause Constructions in New Englishes”. In Bernd Kortmann, and Benedikt Szmrecsanyi, eds. Linguistic Complexity: Second Language Acquisition, Indigenization, Contact. Berlin: De Gruyter, 156–191. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Szmrecsanyi, Benedikt, and Bernd Kortmann. 2012. “Introduction: Linguistic Complexity”. In Bernd Kortmann, and Benedikt Szmrecsanyi, eds. Linguistic Complexity: Second Language Acquisition, Indigenization, Contact. Berlin: De Gruyter, 6–34. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Szmrecsanyi, Benedikt, Jason Grafmiller, Benedikt Heller, and Melanie Röthlisberger. 2016. “Around the World in Three Alternations: Modeling Syntactic Variation in Varieties of English”. English World-Wide 371: 109–137. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Yao, Xinyue. 2015. “The Present Perfect and the Preterite in Australian English: A Diachronic Perspective”. In Peter Collins, ed. Grammatical Change in English World-Wide. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 247–268. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Yao, Xinyue, and Peter Collins. 2012. “The Present Perfect in World Englishes”. World Englishes 311: 386–403. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Yip, Virginia, and Stephen Matthews. 2009. “Contact-Induced Grammaticalization: Evidence from Bilingual Acquisition”. Studies in Language 3321: 336–395.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Cited by (8)

Cited by eight other publications

Collins, Peter & Adam Smith
2025. The double modal construction in English world wide. World Englishes DOI logo
Collins, Peter Craig
2025. Infinitival and Gerund-Participial Catenative Complement Constructions in English World-Wide. Languages 10:6 ► pp. 134 ff. DOI logo
Fuchs, Robert, Xinyue Yao, Peter Collins & Adam Smith
2025. Non-standard morphosyntactic variation in L2 English varieties world-wide: a corpus-based study. Lingua 322 ► pp. 103948 ff. DOI logo
Long, Yijun & Haitao Liu
2025. Measuring complexity of the objects of the verb give across English varieties: a study of constituent length and dependency distance. Poznan Studies in Contemporary Linguistics 61:3 ► pp. 285 ff. DOI logo
Neels, Jakob, Sven Leuckert & Arne Lohmann
2025. Grammaticalisation of habitual aspect in World Englishes: assessing trajectories, areal patterns and rates of change with synchronic corpora. Corpus Linguistics and Linguistic Theory DOI logo
Almohawes, Monera
2024. Virtual social media communities and their effects on World Englishes. Journal of Language and Cultural Education 12:1 ► pp. 22 ff. DOI logo
Collins, Peter
2023. Modals and Quasi-Modals in English World-Wide. Journal of English Linguistics 51:3 ► pp. 265 ff. DOI logo
Collins, Peter
2024. Variation in world Englishes through the lens of negation. World Englishes 43:1 ► pp. 47 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 9 december 2025. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.

Mobile Menu Logo with link to supplementary files background Layer 1 prag Twitter_Logo_Blue