The Replacement of Direct Objects and Directly Linked Gerunds by Prepositional ones after shirk, refrain and lack in Modern English, with Special Reference to Clause Negation

2020 ◽  
Vol 138 (4) ◽  
pp. 561-585
Author(s):  
Günter Rohdenburg
Keyword(s):  
Special Reference ◽  
American English ◽  
Eastern European ◽  
British English ◽  
European Languages ◽  
Preposition Stranding ◽  
Direct Objects ◽  
Weak Tendency

AbstractIn most Eastern European languages, clause negation typically triggers the replacement of a “direct” case such as the accusative by a less direct one like the genitive. In English, the contrast is – with several verbs – partially paralleled by that between directly linked complements and their prepositional counterparts. This corpus-based paper explores the relevant behaviour of three verbs which possess an intrinsic negative semantics: shirk, refrain (in earlier stages of Modern English), and lack. It is found that negated clauses definitely promote a) prepositional objects with all three verbs and b) prepositional gerunds after shirk. In the case of refrain, the historical British database displays only a weak tendency for negated clauses to favour the increasingly common prepositional gerund. The prepositional variant turns out to be virtually absent from the passive of shirk, a fact assumed to be due to the general avoidance of preposition stranding in favour of available transitive structures. With lack, the rivalry between the two object variants is additionally constrained by two prosodic tendencies, the preference for phrasal upbeats and sentence end-weight. Throughout, American English displays a distinctly greater sensitivity to clause negation than British English.

Recent change in non-present perfect constructions in British and American English

Corpora ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 115-135 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xinyue Yao ◽  
Peter Collins
Keyword(s):  
American English ◽  
Recent Change ◽  
Past Tense ◽  
Present Perfect ◽  
British English ◽  
Spoken English ◽  
Communicative Functions ◽  
General Decline ◽  
Modal Auxiliaries

A number of recent studies of grammatical categories in English have identified regional and diachronic variation in the use of the present perfect, suggesting that it has been losing ground to the simple past tense from the eighteenth century onwards ( Elsness, 1997 , 2009 ; Hundt and Smith, 2009 ; and Yao and Collins, 2012 ). Only a limited amount of research has been conducted on non-present perfects. More recently, Bowie and Aarts’ (2012) study using the Diachronic Corpus of Present-Day Spoken English has found that certain non-present perfects underwent a considerable decline in spoken British English (BrE) during the second half of the twentieth century. However, comparison with American English (AmE) and across various genres has not been made. This study focusses on the changes in the distribution of four types of non-present perfects (past, modal, to-infinitival and ing-participial) in standard written BrE and AmE during the thirty-year period from the early 1960s to the early 1990s. Using a tagged and post-edited version of the Brown family of corpora, it shows that contemporary BrE has a stronger preference for non-present perfects than AmE. Comparison of four written genres of the same period reveals that, for BrE, only the change in the overall frequency of past perfects was statistically significant. AmE showed, comparatively, a more dramatic decrease, particularly in the frequencies of past and modal perfects. It is suggested that the decline of past perfects is attributable to a growing disfavour for past-time reference in various genres, which is related to long-term historical shifts associated with the underlying communicative functions of the genres. The decline of modal perfects, on the other hand, is more likely to be occurring under the influence of the general decline of modal auxiliaries in English.

An Historiographical Guide to Subcarpathian Rus'

1973 ◽  
Vol 9 ◽  
pp. 201-265
Author(s):  
Paul R. Magocsi
Keyword(s):  
The United States ◽  
General Nature ◽  
Eastern European ◽  
European Languages ◽  
Article Deal ◽  
Enormous Amount ◽  
History Of ◽  
Roman Jakobson ◽  
Political Economic ◽  
Cultural Developments

It is customary among western scholars who have written about the Carpatho-Rusyns to consider them “the most forgotten among the forgotten.”2 Little is known in the West about the political, economic, and cultural developments of Subcarpathian Rus', especially before 1918. Yet such an enormous amount of material has been written in eastern European languages about this territory that as early as 1931 the noted Slavic linguist Roman Jakobson could write: “In the whole east Slavic world, there is hardly any other marginal area whose past has been examined with such affectionate meticulousness and scholarliness as Carpatho-Russia.”3The present study is intended as an introductory guide to the voluminous historiography of Subcarpathian Rus'. The material has been arranged according to the following topical and chronological subdivisions: bibliographical aids; general historical studies; early history to 1514; 1514 to 1711; 1711 to 1848; 1848 to 1918; 1918 to 1938; October, 1938, to March, 1939; 1939 to 1944; 1945 to the present; cultural developments; Rusyns in Hungary; Rusyns in Jugoslavia; and Rusyns in the United States. Works will be discussed under the heading which most nearly describes the period dealt with in the text regardless of the date of publication. The time periods were not designated arbitrarily but are based on certain historical events the significance of which will be clarified in the appropriate subsection. Most studies treated in this article deal exclusively or primarily with Subcarpathian Rus' only a few are concerned with problems of a more general nature. Many studies dealing with the recent history of the area are not necessarily included because they represent sound historical research but because they are valuable, highly selective accounts of crucial events, many of them written by the participants themselves.

The Norm Orientation of English in the Caribbean

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-40
Author(s):  
Dagmar Deuber ◽  
Stephanie Hackert ◽  
Eva Canan Hänsel ◽  
Alexander Laube ◽  
Mahyar Hejrani ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
21St Century ◽  
American English ◽  
Media Exposure ◽  
Quantitative Investigation ◽  
British English ◽  
Mass Tourism ◽  
The Caribbean ◽  
Newspaper Writing ◽  
British Colonies ◽  
Do So

This study examines newspaper writing from ten Caribbean countries as a window on the norm orientation of English in the region. English in the former British colonies of the Caribbean has been assumed to be especially prone to postcolonial linguistic Americanization, on account of not just recent global phenomena such as mass tourism and media exposure but also long-standing personal and sociocultural links. We present a quantitative investigation of variable features comparing our Caribbean results not just to American and British reference corpora but also to newspaper collections from India and Nigeria as representatives of non-Caribbean New Englishes. The amount of American features employed varies by type of feature and country. In all Caribbean corpora, they are more prevalent in the lexicon than in spelling. With regard to grammar, an orientation toward a singular norm cannot be deduced from the data. While Caribbean journalists do partake in worldwide American-led changes such as colloquialization, as evident in the occurrence of contractions or the tendency to prefer that over which, the frequencies with which they do so align neither with American English nor with British English but often resemble those found in the Indian and Nigerian corpora. Contemporary Caribbean newspaper writing, thus, neither follows traditional British norms, nor is it characterized by massive linguistic Americanization; rather, there appears to be a certain conservatism common to New Englishes generally. We discuss these results in light of new considerations on normativity in English in the 21st century.

Art. XII.—Studies on the Comparative Grammar of the Semitic Languages, with Special Reference to Assyrian

1878 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 244-252 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Haupt
Keyword(s):  
Special Reference ◽  
Not Given ◽  
Semitic Languages ◽  
European Languages

When we consider the progress made by comparative Indo-European philology, we can only wonder that even after the discovery of Assyrian, which undoubtedly represents the Sanskrit of the Semitic languages, no attempt has been made to form a comparative Semitic grammar. Assyrian has hitherto been regarded as at most useful for the explanation of certain questions of Hebrew lexicography; as for the morphology of the Semitic tongues, scholars have been content with simply stating the analogies which exist between Assyrian and the allied languages. The cause of this lies mainly in the fact that Assyrian is regarded as a corrupt branch of the Semitic family of speech; and much that is peculiar in its structure, the preservation of which really implies the highest antiquity, is treated as so many new formations, so that the possibility of properly utilizing Assyrian grammatical forms for the explanation of Semitic grammar is at the outset taken away. Hence, as long as such thoroughly perverse views are not given up, a scientific philology of the Semitic languages can never take its place by the side of that of the Indo-European languages.

scholarly journals The Use of American and British Lexis in Brunei English

2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 73
Author(s):  
Mohamad Nur Raihan
Keyword(s):  
American English ◽  
Age Groups ◽  
School Students ◽  
British English ◽  
Recorded Data ◽  
Lexical Items ◽  
Power Point ◽  
Casual Speech ◽  
University Undergraduates ◽  
Age Range

In pronunciation, influenced by American English, a shift in Brunei English can be observed in the increasing use of [r] in tokens such as car and heard particularly among younger speakers whose pronunciation may be influenced by American English. In contrast, older speakers tend to omit the [r] sound in these tokens as their pronunciation may be more influenced by British English. However, it is unclear whether American English has influenced the vocabulary of Brunei English speakers as the education system in Brunei favours British English due to its historical ties with Britain. This paper analyses the use of American and British  lexical items between three age groups: 20 in-service teachers aged between 29 to 35 years old, 20 university undergraduates aged between 19 to 25 years old, and 20 secondary school students who are within the 11 to 15 age range. Each age group has 10 female and 10 male participants and they were asked to name seven objects shown to them on Power point slides. Their responses were recorded and compared between the age groups and between female and male data. The analysis is supplemented with recorded data from interviews with all 60 participants to determine instances of American and British lexical items in casual speech. It was found that there is a higher occurrence of American than British lexical items in all three groups and the interview data supports the findings in the main data. Thus, providing further evidence for the Americanisation of Brunei English and that Brunei English is undergoing change.

scholarly journals Indirectness in the Age of Globalization: A Social Network Analysis

2019 ◽  
Vol 23 (4) ◽  
pp. 930-949
Author(s):  
Marina Terkourafi
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
American English ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Theory Building ◽  
Network Ties ◽  
British English ◽  
Theoretical Predictions ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Individual Self

Indirectness has traditionally been viewed as commensurate with politeness and attributed to the speaker’s wish to avoid imposition and/or otherwise strategically manipulate the addressee. Despite these theoretical predictions, a number of studies have documented the solidarity-building and identity-constituting functions of indirectness. Bringing these studies together, Terkourafi 2014 proposed an expanded view of the functions of indirect speech, which crucially emphasizes the role of the addressee and the importance of network ties. This article focuses on what happens when such network ties become loosened, as a result of processes of urbanization and globalization. Drawing on examples from African American English and Chinese, it is argued that these processes produce a need for increased explicitness, which drives speakers (and listeners) away from indirectness. This claim is further supported diachronically, by changes in British English politeness that coincide with the rise of the individual Self. These empirical findings have implications for im/politeness theorizing and theory-building more generally, calling attention to how the socio-historical context of our research necessarily influences the theories we end up building.

scholarly journals Orientations towards English among English-medium Instruction Students

2015 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-38 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ali Karakaş
Keyword(s):  
Undergraduate Students ◽  
Language Use ◽  
Language Ideologies ◽  
Native Speaker ◽  
American English ◽  
Main Body ◽  
Structured Interviews ◽  
British English ◽  
Spoken English ◽  
English Medium Instruction

Abstract Based on the empirical data of my PhD research, this paper analyses the perceptions of 351 undergraduate students enrolled at English-medium universities towards English in terms of the language ideology framework. The students were purposively sampled from three programs at three Turkish universities. The data were drawn from student opinion surveys and semi-structured interviews. The findings paint a blurry picture, with a strong tendency among most students to view their English use as having the characteristics of dominant native varieties of English (American English & British English), and with a high percentage of students’ acceptance of the distinctiveness of their English without referring to any standard variety. The findings also show that many students’ orientations to English are formed by two dominant language ideologies: standard English ideology and native speaker English ideology. It was also found that a large number of students did not strictly stick to either of these ideologies, particularly in their orientation to spoken English, due, as argued in the main body, to their experiences on language use that have made them aware of the demographics of diverse English users and of the diverse ways of using English.

Formal Asymmetries between Active and Passive Clauses in Modern English: The Avoidance of Preposition Stranding with Verbs Featuring Omissible Prepositions

2017 ◽  
Vol 135 (4) ◽  
pp. 700-744 ◽  
Author(s):  
Günter Rohdenburg
Keyword(s):  
Restricted Range ◽  
British English ◽  
Preposition Stranding ◽  
The Voice ◽  
Diachronic Changes ◽  
Potential Use

AbstractThis paper reports on the results of a corpus-based study that deals with a hitherto neglected kind of formal asymmetry between active and passive clauses involving two-place prepositional verbs like agree. These contrasts are found in the context of two satisfied conditions: a) The preposition in question is omissible, which holds for agree in present-day British English as in They agreed (on/upon/to/with) the proposal. b) Unlike active uses, passivization of relevant prepositional options necessarily results in preposition stranding as in The proposal has been agreed on/upon/to/with. It is shown that – in both passive and active clauses – stranded prepositions tend to be omitted more often than non-stranded ones. Unlike the passive, the active provides only a restricted range of contexts compatible with the potential use of stranded prepositions. What is more, these environments are relatively infrequent with most verbs. This is what largely explains the active-passive asymmetries with the verbs explored in this paper. Crucially, however, stranded prepositions can in several cases be demonstrated to be more strongly avoided in the passive than the active, thus mirroring their cross-linguistic distribution (see e. g. Maling and Zaenen 1985; Truswell 2009). The voice contrast is found to be independent of diachronic changes resulting in either the loss or the acquisition of the prepositions involved.

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