Cover not available

In:Corpus-based Approaches to Register Variation
Edited by Elena Seoane and Douglas Biber
[Studies in Corpus Linguistics 103] 2021
► pp. 111–142

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

Chapter 5
Between context and community

Regional variation in register effects in the English dative alternation

 | University of Zurich
Published online: 8 December 2021
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/scl.103.05rot
Abstract
This paper investigates the relationship between the stylistic context of utterance production and the language user’s regional background as influencing factors in one syntactic alternation, i.e., variation between the double object and the prepositional dative construction. To that end, this chapter zooms in on (1) the competition between stylistic context and regional community regarding dative choice, (2) cross-regional inter-register variation, and (3) register-specific coherence (aka intra-register variation). Comparing data from nine varieties of English using corpora that presumably share the same structure (and registers) reveals that community is more important than context, that the effect of register is regionally variable and that registers are largely but not fully coherent. These findings do not only stress the variable nature of probabilistic grammars but also point to the importance of regional effects when studying register variation (all scripts at https://​osf​.io​/3djkr/).
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Combining the variationist perspective with register studies
  • 3.Data and methodology
    • 3.1The data
    • 3.2Coding of variables: Language-internal and -external constraints
    • 3.3Statistical measures
  • 4.Results
    • 4.1Overall distribution by register and variety
    • 4.2The importance of context vs community
    • 4.3Cross-regional variation in register effects
  • 5.Discussion
  • 6.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
  • Appendix
References (81)
References
Baayen, R. Harald. 2008. Analyzing Linguistic Data: A Practical Introduction to Statistics using R. Cambridge: CUP. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Balasubramanian, Chandrika. 2009. Register Variation in Indian English [Studies in Corpus Linguistics 37]. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bao, Zhiming & Hong, Huaqing. 2006. Diglossia and register variation in Singapore English. World Englishes 25(1): 105–114. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bates, Douglas, Mächler, Martin & Bolker, Benjamin M. 2013. lme4: Linear Mixed-effects Models Using Eigen and S4 (R Package Version 1.1–7). <[URL]> (26 May 2021).
Bates, Douglas, Mächler, Martin, Bolker, Benjamin M. & Walker, Steve. 2015. Fitting linear mixed-effects models using lme4. Journal of Statistical Software 67(1): 1–48. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Behaghel, Otto. 1909. Beziehungen zwischen Umfang und Reihenfolge von Satzgliedern. Indogermanische Forschungen 25: 110–142.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Belsley, David A., Kuh, Edwin & Welsch, Roy E. 1980. Regression Diagnostics: Identifying Influential Data and Sources of Collinearity. New York NY: John Wiley and Sons. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bernaisch, Tobias, Gries, Stefan T. & Mukherjee, Joybrato. 2014. The dative alternation in South Asian English(es): Modelling predictors and predicting prototypes. English World-Wide 35(1): 7–31. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Biber, Douglas. 1988. Variation Across Speech and Writing. Cambridge: CUP. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 1995. Dimensions of Register Variation: A Cross-linguistic Comparison. Cambridge: CUP. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2012. Register as a predictor of linguistic variation. Corpus Linguistics and Linguistic Theory 8(1): 9–37. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Biber, Douglas & Conrad, Susan. 2012. Register, Genre and Style. Cambridge: CUP.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Biber, Douglas & Gray, Bethany. 2013. Being specific about historical change: The influence of sub-register. Journal of English Linguistics 41(2): 104–134. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Breiman, Leo. 2001. Random forests. Machine Learning 45: 5–32. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bresnan, Joan, Cueni, Anna, Nikitina, Tatiana & Baayen, R. Harald. 2007. Predicting the dative alternation. In Cognitive Foundations of Interpretation, Gerlof Boume, Irene Kraemer & Joost Zwarts (eds), 69–94. Amsterdam: Royal Netherlands Academy of Science.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bresnan, Joan & Hay, Jennifer. 2008. Gradient grammar: An effect of animacy on the syntax of give in New Zealand and American English. Lingua 118(2): 245–259. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bybee, Joan. 2006. From usage to grammar: The mind’s response to repetition. Language 82(4): 711–733. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bybee, Joan & Hopper, Paul. 2001. Introduction to frequency and the emergence of linguistic structure. In Frequency and the Emergence of Linguistic Structure [Typological Studies in Language 45], Joan Bybee & Paul Hopper (eds), 1–24. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Collins, Peter. 1995. The indirect object construction in English: An informational approach. Linguistics 33(1): 35–49. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Davies, Mark. 2013. Corpus of Global Web-Based English: 1.9 billion Words from Speakers in 20 Countries. <[URL]> (26 May 2021).
Diwersy, Sascha, Evert, Stefan & Neumann, Stella. 2014. A weakly supervised multivariate approach to the study of language variation. In Aggregating Dialectology, Typology, and Register Analysis: Linguistic Variation in Text and Speech [Linguae & Litterae 28], Benedikt Szmrecsanyi & Bernhard Wälchli (eds), 174–204. Berlin: De Gruyter. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Finegan, Edward & Biber, Douglas. 1994. Register and social dialect variation: An integrated approach. In Sociolinguistic Perspectives on Register, Douglas Biber & Edward Finegan (eds), 315–347. Oxford: OUP.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Fox, John. 2003. Effect displays in R for generalised linear models. Journal of Statistical Software 8(15): 1–27. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Fox, John & Weisberg, Sanford. 2011. An R Companion to Applied Regression, 2nd edn. Thousand Oaks CA: Sage. <[URL]> (26 May 2021).
Fuchs, Robert & Gut, Ulrike. 2016. Register variation in intensifier usage across Asian Englishes. In Discourse-pragmatic Variation and Change in English, Heike Pichler (ed.), 185–210. Cambridge: CUP. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Garretson, Gregory, O’Connor, M. Catherine, Skarabela, Barbora & Hogan, Marjorie. 2004. Coding practices used in the project “Optimality Typology of Determiner Phrases”. Ms.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Gelman, Andrew. 2008. Scaling regression inputs by dividing by two standard deviations. Statistics in Medicine 27(15): 2865–2873. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Grafmiller, Jason. 2014. Variation in English genitives across modality and genres. English Language and Linguistics 18(3): 471–496. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Greenbaum, Sidney (ed.). 1996. Comparing English Worldwide: The International Corpus of English. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Gries, Stefan T. 2015. The most under-used statistical method in corpus linguistics: Multi-level (and mixed-effects) models. Corpora 10(1): 95–125. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Guy, Gregory R. 2005. Letters to Language. Language 81(3): 561–563. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
2013. The cognitive coherence of sociolects: How do speakers handle multiple sociolinguistic variables? Journal of Pragmatics 52: 63–71. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Guy, Gregory R. & Hinskens, Frans. 2016. Linguistic coherence: Systems, repertoires and speech communities. Lingua 172–173: 1–9. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Heller, Benedikt, Szmrecsanyi, Benedikt & Grafmiller, Jason. 2017. Stability and fluidity in syntactic variation world-wide: The genitive alternation across varieties of English. Journal of English Linguistics 45(1): 3–27. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hilbert, Michaela & Krug, Manfred. 2012. Progressives in Maltese English: A comparison with spoken and written text types of British and American English. In Mapping Unity and Diversity World-wide [Varieties of English around the World G43], Marianne Hundt & Ulrike Gut (eds), 103–136. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hinrichs, Lars & Szmrecsanyi, Benedikt. 2007. Recent changes in the function and frequency of Standard English genitive constructions: A multivariate analysis of tagged corpora. English Language and Linguistics 11(3): 437–474. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hosmer, David & Lemeshow, Stanley. 2000. Applied Logistic Regression. New York NY: Wiley. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hothorn, Torsten, Hornik, Kurt & Zeileis, Achim. 2006. Unbiased recursive partitioning: A conditional inference framework. Journal of Computational and Graphical Statistics 15(3): 651–674. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hundt, Marianne & Mair, Christian. 1999. “Agile” and “uptight” genres: The corpus-based approach to language change in progress. International Journal of Corpus Linguistics 4(2): 221–242. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hundt, Marianne, Röthlisberger, Melanie & Seoane, Elena. 2021. Predicting voice alternation across academic Englishes. Corpus Linguistics and Linguistic Theory. 17(1): 189–222. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Janitza, Silke, Strobl, Carolin & Boulesteix, Anne-Laure. 2013. An AUC-based permutation variable importance measure for random forests. BMC Bioinformatics 14(119): 1–11. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Koch, Peter & Oesterreicher, Wulf. 1985. Sprache der Nähe – Sprache der Distanz: Mündlichkeit und Schriftlichkeit im Spannungsfeld von Sprachtheorie und Sprachgeschichte. Romanistisches Jahrbuch 36: 15–43. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Labov, William. 1972. Sociolinguistic Patterns. Philadelphia PA: University of Philadelphia Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Levin, Beth. 1993. English Verb Classes and Alternations: A Preliminary Investigation. Chicago IL: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Lohmann, Arne. 2011. Help vs help to: A multifactorial, mixed-effects account of infinitive marker omission. English Language and Linguistics 15(3): 499–521. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Loureiro-Porto, Lucía. 2017. ICE vs. GloWbE: Big data and corpus compilation. World English 36(3): 448–470. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
McDonough, Kim. 2006. Interaction and syntactic priming: English L2 speakers’ production of dative constructions. Studies in Second Language Acquisition 28(2): 179–207. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Menard, Scott. 2010. Logistic Regression: From Introductory to Advanced Concepts and Applications. Thousand Oaks CA: Sage. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Mesthrie, Rajend & Bhatt, Rakesh M. 2008. World Englishes: The Study of New Linguistic Varieties. Cambridge: CUP. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Neumann, Stella. 2012. Applying register analysis to varieties of English. In Anglistentag 2011 Freiburg: Proceedings, Monika Fludernik & Benjamin Kohlmann (eds), 75–94. Trier: WVT.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2013. Contrastive Register Variation: A Quantitative Approach to the Comparison of English and German. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Neumann, Stella & Fest, Jennifer. 2016. Cohesive devices across registers and varieties: The role of medium in English. In Variational Text Linguistics: Revisiting Register in English, Christoph Schubert & Christina Sanchez-Stockhammer (eds), 195–220. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Oushiro, Livia. 2016. Social and structural constraints in lectal cohesion. Lingua 172–173: 113–130. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Pinheiro, José C. & Bates, Douglas M. 2000. Mixed-effects Models in S and S-PLUS. New York NY: Springer. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
R Core Team. 2018. R: A Language and Environment for Statistical Computing. Vienna, Austria: R Foundation for Statistical Computing. <[URL]> (26 May 2021).
Röthlisberger, Melanie. 2018a. Regional Variation in Probabilistic Grammars: A Multifactorial Study of the English Dative Alternation. PhD dissertation, KU Leuven.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2018b. The dative dataset of World Englishes (Version v1) [Data set]. KU Leuven. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Röthlisberger, Melanie, Grafmiller, Jason & Szmrecsanyi, Benedikt. 2017. Cognitive indigenization effects in the English dative alternation. Cognitive Linguistics 28(4): 673–710. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Schaub, Steffen. 2016. The influence of register on noun phrase complexity in varieties of English. In Variational Text Linguistics: Revisiting Register in English, Christoph Schubert & Christina Sanchez-Stockhammer (eds), 251–271. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Schilk, Marco, Mukherjee, Joybrato, Nam, Christopher & Mukherjee, Sach. 2013. Complementation of ditransitive verbs in South Asian Englishes: A multifactorial analysis. Corpus Linguistics and Linguistic Theory 9(2): 187–225. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Schneider, Edgar W. 2007. Postcolonial English: Varieties around the world. Cambridge: CUP. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Schubert, Christoph. 2016. Introduction: Current trends in register research. In Variational Text Linguistics: Revisiting Register in English, Christoph Schubert & Christina Sanchez-Stockhammer (eds), 1–15. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Scott-Phillips, Thomas C. & Kirby, Simon. 2010. Language evolution in the laboratory. Trends in Cognitive Sciences 14(9): 411–417. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Seoane, Elena. 2006. Changing styles: On the recent evolution of scientific British and American English. In Syntax, Style and Grammatical Norms: English from 1500–2000, Christiane Dalton-Puffer, Dieter Kastovsky, Nikolaus Ritt & Herbert Schendl (eds), 191–211. Bern: Peter Lang.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Strobl, Carolin, Boulesteix, Anne-Laure, Kneib, Thomas, Augustin, Thomas & Zeileis, Achim. 2008. Conditional variable importance for random forests. BMC Bioinformatics 9(307). <[URL]> (26 May 2021).
Strobl, Carolin, Boulesteix, Anne-Laure, Zeileis, Achim & Hothorn, Torsten. 2007. Bias in random forest variable importance measures: Illustrations, sources and a solution. BMC Bioinformatics 8(25). <[URL]> (26 May 2021).
Szmrecsanyi, Benedikt. 2006. Morphosyntactic Persistence in Spoken English [Trends in Linguistics. Studies and Monographs 177]. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2017. Variationist sociolinguistics and corpus-based variationist linguistics: Overlap and cross-pollination potential. Canadian Journal of Linguistics/Revue Canadienne de Linguistique 42(4): 685–701. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2019. Register in variationist linguistics. Register Studies 1(1): 76–99. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Szmrecsanyi, Benedikt, Grafmiller, Jason, Heller, Benedikt & Röthlisberger, Melanie. 2016. Around the world in three alternations: Modeling syntactic variation in varieties of English. English World-Wide 37(2): 109–137. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Szmrecsanyi, Benedikt, Grafmiller, Jason, Bresnan, Joan, Rosenbach, Anette, Tagliamonte, Sali A. & Todd, Simon. 2017. Spoken syntax in a comparative perspective: The dative and genitive alternation in varieties of English. Glossa: a journal of general linguistics 2(1). 86: 1–27. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Szmrecsanyi, Benedikt, Grafmiller, Jason & Rosseel, Laura. 2019. Variation-based distance and similarity modeling: A case study in World Englishes. Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence 2. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Tagliamonte, Sali A. 2012. Variationist Sociolinguistics: Change, Observation, Interpretation. Malden MA: Wiley-Blackwell.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Tagliamonte, Sali A. & Baayen, R. Harald. 2012. Models, forests and trees of York English: Was/were variation as a case study for statistical practice. Language Variation and Change 24(2): 135–178. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Tamaredo, Iván, Röthlisberger, Melanie, Grafmiller, Jason & Heller, Benedikt. 2019. Probabilistic indigenization effects at the lexis-syntax interface. English Language and Linguistics. 24(2): 413–440 Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
van Rooy, Bertus, Terblanche, Lize, Haase, Christoph & Schmied, Joseph. 2010. Register differentiation in East African English: A multidimensional study. English World-Wide 31(3): 311–349. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Wälchli, Bernhard & Szmrecsanyi, Benedikt. 2014. Introduction: The text-feature-aggregation pipeline in variation studies. In Aggregating Dialectology, Typology, and Register Analysis: Linguistic Variation in Text and Speech [Linguae & Litterae 28], Benedikt Szmrecsanyi & Bernhard Wälchli (eds), 1–25. Berlin: De Gruyter. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Wolk, Christoph, Bresnan, Joan, Rosenbach, Anette & Szmrecsanyi, Benedikt. 2013. Dative and genitive variability in Late Modern English: Exploring cross-constructional variation and change. Diachronica 30(3): 382–419. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Xiao, Richard. 2009. Multidimensional analysis and the study of World Englishes. World Englishes 28(4): 421–450. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Zaenen, Annie, Carletta, Jean, Garretson, Gregory, Bresnan, Joan, Koontz-Garboden, Andrew, Nikitina, Tatiana, O’Connor, Mary Catherine & Wasow, Thomas. 2004. Animacy encoding in English: Why and how. In Proceedings of the 2004 ACL Workshop on Discourse Annotation, Barcelona, July 2004, Donna Byron & Bonnie Webber (eds), 118–125. East Strouddsburg PA: Association for Computational Linguistics. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Cited by (4)

Cited by four other publications

Zehentner, Eva
2025. The English conative alternation between complexity effects and lexical biases: a historical perspective. Language and Cognition 17 DOI logo
Li, Yi, Benedikt Szmrecsanyi & Weiwei Zhang
2024. Across time, space, and genres: measuring probabilistic grammar distances between varieties of Mandarin. Linguistics Vanguard 10:1 ► pp. 427 ff. DOI logo
Röthlisberger, Melanie
2023. Exploring variation in the dative alternation across World Englishes. In Ditransitives in Germanic Languages [Studies in Germanic Linguistics, 7], ► pp. 226 ff. DOI logo
Engel, Alexandra, Jason Grafmiller, Laura Rosseel & Benedikt Szmrecsanyi
2022. Assessing the complexity of lectal competence: the register-specificity of the dative alternation aftergive. Cognitive Linguistics 33:4 ► pp. 727 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 1 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