Focus marking and semantic transfer in Indian English

Focus marking in Indian English (IndE) with adverbs such as only, also, and too has been investigated recently by several authors. Based on the Indian and British sections of the International Corpus of English, this article argues that usage of also in IndE differs significantly from British English (BrE). Also often follows its focus immediately, has developed a presentational use, and is often used in negative contexts, corresponding to either. All these innovations are shown to be more frequent in spoken and informal than in written and formal language, respectively. Finally, evidence for substrate influence from Indo-European and Dravidian languages is presented.