Cover not available

Article published In: English World-Wide
Vol. 43:1 (2022) ► pp.1–32

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

Into-causatives in World Englishes

 | Catholic University of Eichstätt-Ingolstadt
Published online: 16 November 2021
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/eww.21068.bru
Abstract
The paper analyses the frequency and use of the relatively rare, yet highly productive into-causative construction in twenty varieties of English on the basis of the 1.9-billion word Corpus of Web-based Global English (GloWbE; Davies, Mark. 2013. Corpus of Global Web-Based English. <[URL]>.)
and 2007. Postcolonial English: Varieties around the World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar Dynamic Model. It hypothesises differences in frequency, variation in the preference for particularly frequent fillers as well as productivity differences in line with Schneider’s stages of linguistic evolution. However, it shows that only frequency differences reflect the Dynamic Model; with regard to the preference for frequent realisations and productivity, postcolonial varieties turn out to be very similar to British English. These results come as a surprise against the background of similar studies of the way-construction, where all of these effects have been documented convincingly. It is argued that the properties of into-causatives themselves (e.g. their idiomatic and semantic simplicity) might contribute to their more native-like usage patterns in postcolonial varieties of English.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Background
    • 2.1The dynamic model of the evolution of New Englishes
    • 2.2Construction grammar
      • 2.2.1Into-causatives from a construction grammar perspective
      • 2.2.2Dimensions of constructional variation in World Englishes
        • 2.2.2.1Frequency of non-compositional constructions in New Englishes
        • 2.2.2.2Preference for frequent fillers
        • 2.2.2.3Productivity of constructions in World Englishes
    • 2.3Hypotheses
  • 3.Methods and data
    • 3.1Corpus and data extraction
    • 3.2Annotation
    • 3.3Statistical methods
      • 3.3.1Correspondence analysis
      • 3.3.2HCFA tests
      • 3.3.3LRNE models
  • 4.Results
    • 4.1The frequency of into-causatives (hypothesis I)
    • 4.2Filler preferences (hypothesis II)
      • 4.2.1Broad overview of associations: Correspondence analysis
      • 4.2.2Fillers of the cause slot
        • 4.2.2.1Verbal lemmas in the cause slot
        • 4.2.2.2Semantic classes in the cause slot
      • 4.2.3Semantic classes of the fillers in the result slot
      • 4.2.4Correlations between the fillers of the cause slot and the result slot
    • 4.3Productivity (hypothesis III)
      • 4.3.1Productivity of the cause slot
      • 4.3.2Productivity of the result slot
  • 5.Discussion
  • 6.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
References (35)
References
Baayen, Rolf Harald. 2008. Analyzing Linguistic Data. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Baayen, Rolf Harald, and Elnaz Shafaei-Bajestan. 2019. languageR: Analyzing Linguistic Data: A Practical Introduction to Statistics. R package version 1.5.0. <[URL]> (accessed January 21, 2021).
Biber, Douglas, Stig Johansson, Geoffrey Leech, Susan Conrad, and Edward Finegan. 1999. Longman Grammar of Spoken and Written English. Harlow, Essex: Longman.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bruckmaier, Elisabeth. 2017. Getting at Get in World Englishes. A Corpus-Based Semasiological-Syntactic Analysis. Berlin: De Gruyter. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Brunner, Thomas, and Thomas Hoffmann. 2020. “The Way-Construction in World Englishes”. English World-Wide 411: 1–32. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Callies, Marcus. 2011. “Widening the Goalposts of Cognitive Metaphor Research”. In Marcus Callies, Wolfram R. Keller, and Astrid Lohöfer, eds. Bi-Directionality in the Cognitive Sciences: Avenues, Challenges, and Limitations. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 57–81. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Croft, William, and D. Alan Cruse. 2007. Cognitive Linguistics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Davies, Mark. 2013. Corpus of Global Web-Based English. <[URL]>.
Evert, Stefan. 2004. “A Simple LNRE Model for Random Character Sequences”. Proceedings of the 7èmes Journées Internationales d’Analyse Statistique des Données Textuelles. Louvain-la-Neuve, 411–422.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Evert, Stefan, and Marco Baroni. 2014. The zipfR Package for Lexical Statistics: A Tutorial Introduction. <[URL]> (accessed June 21, 2020).
. 2017. zipfR: User-friendly LNRE Modelling in R. R package version 0.6-70. <[URL]> (accessed November 27, 2017).
Goldberg, Adele E. 1995. Constructions. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
2003. “Constructions: A new Theoretical Approach to Language”. TRENDS in Cognitive Sciences 71: 219–224. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Gries, Stefan Thomas. 2004. HCFA 3.2 – A Program for Hierarchical Configural Frequency Analysis. <[URL]> (accessed 11 July 2014).
. 2009. Statistics for Linguistics with R: A Practical Introduction. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Gries, Stefan Thomas, and Anatol Stefanowitsch. 2004. “Covarying Collexemes in the Into-Causative”. In Sally Rice, and John Newman, eds. Empirical and Experimental Methods in Cognitive/Functional Research. Stanford: CSLI Publications, 225–236.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hoffmann, Thomas. 2011. Preposition Placement in English. A Usage-Based Approach. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2014. “The Cognitive Evolution of Englishes: The Role of Constructions in the Dynamic Model”. In Sarah Buschfeld, Thomas Hoffmann, and Magnus Huber, eds. The Evolution of Englishes: The Dynamic Model and Beyond. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 160–180. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2019. English Comparative Correlatives: Diachronic and Synchronic Variation at the Lexicon-Syntax Interface. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2020. “Marginal Argument Structure Constructions: The [Vthe Ntaboo-word out of]-construction in Post-Colonial Englishes”. Linguistics Vanguard 61: 1–8. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hundt, Marianne. 2020. “On Models and Modelling”. World Englishes 401: 1–20.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Lange, Claudia. 2020. “English in South Asia”. In Daniel Schreier, Marianne Hundt, and Edgar W. Schneider, eds. The Cambridge Handbook of World Englishes. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 236–262.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Mair, Christian. 2015. “Response to Davies and Fuchs”. English World-Wide 361: 29–33. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Mukherjee, Joybrato. 2015. “Response to Davies and Fuchs”. English World-Wide 361: 34–37. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Mukherjee, Joybrato, and Stefan Thomas Gries. 2010. “Lexical Gravity Across Varieties of English: An ICE-Based Study of N-Grams in Asian Englishes”. International Journal of Corpus Linguistics 151: 520–548. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Mukherjee, Joybrato, and Sebastian Hoffmann. 2006. “Describing Verb-Complementational Profiles of New Englishes: A Pilot Study of Indian English”. English World-Wide 271: 147–173. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Rinker, Tyler W. 2018. Textstem: Tools for Stemming and Lemmatizing Text. R package version 0.1.4. Buffalo, New York. <[URL]> (accessed January 21, 2021).
Rudanko, Juhani. 2011. Changes in Complementation in British and American English: Corpus-Based Studies on Non-Finite Complements in Recent English. Houndsmills: Palgrave MacMillan. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Schneider, Edgar W. 2003. “The Dynamics of New Englishes: From Identity Construction to Dialect Birth”. Language 791: 233–281. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
2004. “How to Trace Structural Nativization: Particle Verbs in World Englishes”. World Englishes 231: 227–249. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
2007. Postcolonial English: Varieties around the World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
The IMS Open Corpus Workbench. 2017. Version 3.2.30. <[URL]> (accessed January 21, 2021).
Wulff, Stefanie, Anatol Stefanowitsch, and Stefan Thomas Gries. 2007. “Brutal Brits and Persuasive Americans: Variety-Specific Meaning Construction in the Into-Causative”. In Günter Radden, Thomas Köpke, Thomas Berg, and Peter Siemund, eds. Aspects of Meaning Construction. Amsterdam: Benjamins, 265–281. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Zeldes, Amir. 2013. Productive argument selection: “Is Lexical Semantics Enough?”. Corpus Linguistics and Linguistic Theory 91: 263–291. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Zipp, Lena, and Tobias Bernaisch. 2012. “Particle Verbs Across First and Second Language Varieties of English”. In Marianne Hundt, and Ulrike Gut, eds. Mapping Unity and Diversity Worldwide: Corpus-Based Studies of New Englishes. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 167–196. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Cited by (2)

Cited by two other publications

Tamaredo, Iván
2025. Testing lexical specificity hypotheses in world Englishes: evidence from the null subject alternation. Folia Linguistica DOI logo
Vartiainen, Turo, Marcus Callies & Aatu Liimatta
2025. The productivity of the Complex Modifier Construction in World Englishes. English Language and Linguistics 29:2 ► pp. 389 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