Pronoun forms

This paper compares the distribution of pronoun case forms (I/me, he/him, she/her, we/us, they/them), non-reflexive myself, and second person plural variants in corpora of New Zealand, Australian, American, and British English, with a view to identifying possible regional differences in pronoun use. While low token numbers prevent a detailed comparison of the four varieties, the corpus data suggest that the use of I and myself in coordinates is most strongly favoured in Australian English. Similarly, possessive me is significantly more frequent in the written Australian English corpus than elsewhere. The second person plural variant y’all would seem to be confined to American English, whereas yous(e) occurs only in the New Zealand, Australian, and British English corpora.