scholarly journals Compromiser - a notional paradigm

2017 ◽  
Vol 7 (13) ◽  
pp. 157 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carita Paradis
Keyword(s):  
Moderate Degree ◽  
Intensity Scale ◽  
British English ◽  
Lexical Items ◽  
Degree Modifiers ◽  
English I

On the basis of an investigation of the lexical forms quite, rather, fairly, and pretty in contemporary spoken British English, I postulate that these lexical items form a notional paradigm of compromiser within the category of degree modifiers. Compromisers are cognitive synonyms that occupy the middle of an abstract intensity scale, approximating a mean degree of another word, eg quite / rather / fairly / pretty dirty. They are all polysemous and poly-functional words, whose meanings are determined by a crucial semantic trait ‘to a moderate degree’ on the paradigmatic axis, and by a semantic-syntactic, selection-licensing mechanism on the syntagmatic axis.

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.

Carita Paradis. Degree Modifiers of Adjectives in Spoken British English

1997 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 312-314
Author(s):  
Anne-Marie Simon-Vandenbergen
Keyword(s):  
British English ◽  
Degree Modifiers

When answer-phone makes a difference in children's acquisition of English compounds

2006 ◽  
Vol 33 (3) ◽  
pp. 677-691 ◽  
Author(s):  
VICTORIA A. MURPHY ◽  
ELENA NICOLADIS
Keyword(s):  
Truck Driver ◽  
British English ◽  
English Speaking ◽  
Lexical Items ◽  
Pass Through ◽  
British Children

Over the course of acquiring deverbal compounds like truck driver, English-speaking children pass through a stage when they produce ungrammatical compounds like drive-truck. These errors have been attributed to canonical phrasal ordering (Clark, Hecht & Mulford, 1986). In this study, we compared British and Canadian children's compound production. Both dialects have the same phrasal ordering but some different lexical items (e.g. answer-phone exists only in British English). If influenced by these lexical differences, British children would produce more ungrammatical Verb–Object (VO) compounds in trying to produce the more complex deverbal (Object–Verb-er) than the Canadian children. 36 British children between the ages of 3;6 and 5;6 and 36 age-matched Canadian children were asked to produce novel compounds (like sun juggler). The British children produced more ungrammatical compounds and fewer grammatical compounds than the Canadian children. We argue that children's errors in deverbal compounds may be due in part to competing lexical structures.

scholarly journals English in the 2010s – Getting up Close and Personal

2011 ◽  
Vol 42 (2) ◽  
pp. 343
Author(s):  
John Jamieson
Keyword(s):  
Subject Matter ◽  
Specific Reference ◽  
First Person ◽  
English Speaker ◽  
British English ◽  
The World ◽  
Polynesian Languages ◽  
The Way ◽  
English I

The following is a personal enquiry into how our view of the world may be affected in some very specific ways by the language we speak, and more particularly the way we write, with specific reference to consensus and norms. These musings have arisen over many years of working as a translator, and are based on my interactions as an English speaker with texts in many European, and to a lesser extent, Polynesian languages. The English I speak of here is mainly my English, perhaps my idiolect as a 58-year-old New Zealander. Some of the preferences I mention may be less applicable in British English, for example, but every native speaker's idiolect reflects something of the language as a whole, and I hope my readers will identify linguistically with some of what I am saying. I hope I may be forgiven for writing rather colloquially and in the first person. This choice is entirely consistent with my subject-matter, however, as will become evident.

scholarly journals Degree Modifiers of Adjectives in Spoken British English

Language ◽  
2000 ◽  
Vol 76 (1) ◽  
pp. 227
Author(s):  
Winnie Sze Man Yiu ◽  
Carita Paradis
Keyword(s):  
British English ◽  
Degree Modifiers
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