Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-94fs2 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-05T21:04:19.720Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

23 - World Englishes from the Perspective of Dialect Typology

from Part III - Linguistics and World Englishes

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 December 2019

By
Benedikt Szmrecsanyi  and
Melanie Röthlisberger
Edited by
Daniel Schreier ,
Marianne Hundt  and
Edgar W. Schneider
Daniel Schreier
Affiliation:
Universität Zürich
Marianne Hundt
Affiliation:
Universität Zürich
Edgar W. Schneider
Affiliation:
Universität Regensburg, Germany
Get access

Summary

Linguistic typology is concerned with classifying human languages and with identifying structural similarities and differences between these languages. Dialectology is the study of typically vernacular and regionally restricted and/or distinctive forms of language. Dialect typology focuses on the intersection between typology and dialectology. In this chapter, we (1) review the set of language-external factors (variety type, world region, exposure to contact) that has been used to categorize World Englishes, (2) summarize the literature about (vernacular) universals, angloversals, and related notions in World Englishes, and (3) discuss work on parameters of structural diversity in World Englishes (analyticity versus syntheticity, complexity versus simplicity).

Keywords

typologydialectologydialect typologyarealityuniversalsangloversalsvarioversalsanalyticitysyntheticitycomplexity
Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge Handbook of World Englishes , pp. 534 - 558
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2020

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Aikhenvald, Alexandra Y. and Dixon, Robert M. W., eds. 2001. Areal Diffusion and Genetic Inheritance: Problems in Comparative Linguistics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Anderwald, Lieselotte. 2003. Negation in Non-Standard British English: Gaps, Regularizations and Asymmetries (Routledge Studies in Germanic Linguistics). London, New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Baayen, R. Harald. 2011. Corpus linguistics and naive discriminative learning. Revista Brasileira de Linguística Aplicada 11(2): 295–328. doi:10.1590/S1984-63982011000200003.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Callies, Marcus. 2016. Towards a process-oriented approach to comparing EFL and ESL varieties: A corpus-study of lexical innovations. International Journal of Learner Corpus Research 2(2): 229–250. doi:10.1075/ijlcr.2.2.05cal.Google Scholar
Chambers, Jack K. 2003. Sociolinguistic Theory: Linguistic Variation and Its Social Implications. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Chambers, Jack K. 2004. Dynamic typology and vernacular universals. In Kortmann, Bernd, ed. Dialectology Meets Typology: Dialect Grammar from a Cross-Linguistic Perspective. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 127–145.Google Scholar
Crystal, David. 2004. The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language (2nd ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Dryer, Matthew S. and Haspelmath, Martin, eds. 2013. WALS Online. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. http://wals.info/Google Scholar
Dunn, Michael, Levinson, Stephen C., Lindström, Eva, Reesink, Ger and Terrill, Angela. 2008. Structural phylogeny in historical linguistics: Methodological explorations applied in Island Melanesia. Language 84(4): 710–759.Google Scholar
Filppula, Markku, Klemola, Juhani and Paulasto, Heli, eds. 2009. Vernacular Universals and Language Contacts: Evidence from Varieties of English and Beyond (Routledge Studies in Germanic Linguistics 14). New York: Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gil, David. 2008. How complex are isolating languages? In Miestamo, Matti, Sinnemäki, Kaius and Karlsson, Fred, eds. Language Complexity: Typology, Contact, Change. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 109–131.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gilquin, Gaëtanelle. 2015. At the interface of contact linguistics and second language acquisition research: New Englishes and Learner Englishes compared. English World-Wide 36(1): 90–123.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Greenberg, Joseph H. 1960. A quantitative approach to the morphological typology of language. International Journal of American Linguistics 26(3): 178–194.Google Scholar
Greenberg, Joseph H. 1963. The Languages of Africa. Bloomington: Indiana University.Google Scholar
Greenberg, Joseph H. 1966. Language Universals, With Special Reference to Feature Hierarchies. The Hague: Mouton.Google Scholar
Harris, Alice C. 2010. Explaining typologically unusual structures: The role of probability. In Wohlgemuth, Jan and Cysouw, Michael, eds. Rethinking Universals: How Rarities Affect Linguistic Theory. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton, 91–104.Google Scholar
Hinrichs, Lars, Szmrecsanyi, Benedikt and Bohmann, Axel. 2015. Which-hunting and the Standard English relative clause. Language 91(4): 806–836. doi:10.1353/lan.2015.0062.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Huber, Magnus. 2012. Syntactic and variational complexity in British and Ghanaian English: Relative clause formation in the written parts of the International Corpus of English. In Kortmann, Bernd and Szmrecsanyi, Benedikt, eds. Linguistic Complexity: Second Language Acquisition, Indigenization, Contact. Berlin: Mouton De Gruyter, 218–242.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hundt, Marianne. 1998. New Zealand English Grammar – Fact or Fiction? A Corpus-Based Study in Morphosyntactic Variation (Varieties of English Around the World G23). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Hyltenstam, Kenneth. 1984. The use of typological markedness conditions as predictors in second language acquisition: The case of pronominal copies in relative clauses. In Andersen, R., ed. Second Languages. Rowley, MA: Newbury, 39–58.Google Scholar
Kachru, Braj B., ed. 1992. The Other Tongue: English across Cultures (2nd ed.). (English in the Global Context). Urbana: University of Illinois Press.Google Scholar
Kortmann, Bernd, ed. 2004. Dialectology Meets Typology: Dialect Grammar from a Cross-Linguistic Perspective. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Kortmann, Bernd and Lunkenheimer, Kerstin. 2012. The Mouton World Atlas of Variation in English. Berlin: de Gruyter Mouton.Google Scholar
Kortmann, Bernd and Lunkenheimer, Kerstin, eds. 2013. eWAVE. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. http://ewave-atlas.org/Google Scholar
Kortmann, Bernd and Szmrecsanyi, Benedikt. 2004. Global synopsis: Morphological and syntactic variation in English. In Kortmann, Bernd, Schneider, Edgar, Burridge, K., Mesthrie, R. and Upton, C., eds. A Handbook of Varieties of English, Vol. 2. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 1142–1202.Google Scholar
Kortmann, Bernd and Szmrecsanyi, Benedikt. 2009. World Englishes between simplification and complexification. In Siebers, Lucia and Hoffmann, Thomas, eds. World Englishes – Problems, Properties and Prospects: Selected Papers from the 13th IAWE Conference. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 265–285.Google Scholar
Kortmann, Bernd and Szmrecsanyi, Benedikt. 2011. Parameters of morphosyntactic variation in World Englishes: Prospects and limitations of searching for universals. In Siemund, Peter, ed. Linguistic Universals and Language Variation. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 264–290.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kortmann, Bernd and Szmrecsanyi, Benedikt. 2012. Linguistic Complexity: Second Language Acquisition, Indigenization, Contact. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Kortmann, Bernd, Schneider, Edgar, Burridge, Kate, Mesthrie, Raj and Upton, Clive, eds. 2004. A Handbook of Varieties of English. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kruskal, Joseph B and Wish, Myron. 1978. Multidimensional Scaling (Quantitative Applications in the Social Sciences). Newbury Park, CA: Sage Publications.Google Scholar
Kusters, Wouter. 2003. Linguistic Complexity: The Influence of Social Change on Verbal Inflection. Leiden: Leiden University.Google Scholar
Laporte, Samantha. 2012. Mind the gap! Bridge between World Englishes and Learner Englishes in the making. English Text Construction 5(2): 265–292. doi:10.1075/etc.5.2.05lap.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lê, Sébastien, Josse, Julie and Husson, François. 2008. FactoMineR: An R package for multivariate analysis. Journal of Statistical Software 25(1): 1–18.Google Scholar
Leufkens, Sterre. 2013. The transparency of creoles. Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages 28(2): 323–362.Google Scholar
Levshina, Natalia. 2015. How to Do Linguistics with R: Data Exploration and Statistical Analysis. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Mair, Christian. 2003. Kreolismen und verbales Identitätsmanagement im geschriebenen jamaikanischen Englisch. In Vogel, E., Napp, A. and Lutterer, W., eds. Zwischen Ausgrenzung und Hybridisierung. Würzburg: Ergon, 79–96.Google Scholar
Mair, Christian. 2013. The World System of Englishes: Accounting for the transnational importance of mobile and mediated vernaculars. English World-Wide 34(3): 253–278. doi:10.1075/eww.34.3.01mai.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Matras, Yaron. 2009. Language Contact. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McMahon, April, Heggarty, Paul, McMahon, Robert and Maguire, Warren. 2007. The sound patterns of Englishes: Representing phonetic similarity. English Language and Linguistics 11(1): 113–142.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McWhorter, John. 2001. The world’s simplest grammars are creole grammars. Linguistic Typology 5: 125–166.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mesthrie, Rajend. 2006. Anti-deletions in an L2 grammar: A study of Black South African English mesolect. English World-Wide 27(2): 111–145.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Miestamo, Matti. 2008. Grammatical complexity in a cross-linguistic perspective. In Miestamo, Matti, Sinnemäki, Kaius and Karlsson, Fred, eds. Language Complexity: Typology, Contact, Change. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 23–41.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Miestamo, Matti, Sinnemäki, Kaius and Karlsson, Fred, eds. 2008. Language Complexity: Typology, Contact, Change. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Murelli, Adriano and Kortmann, Bernd. 2011. 28 Non-standard varieties in the areal typology of Europe. In Kortmann, Bernd and van der Auwera, Johan, eds. The Languages and Linguistics of Europe. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. www.degruyter.com/view/books/9783110220261/9783110220261.525/9783110220261.525.xmlGoogle Scholar
Nerbonne, John and Kleiweg, Peter. 2007. Toward a dialectological yardstick. Journal of Quantitative Linguistics 14(2): 148–166.Google Scholar
Nesselhauf, Nadja. 2009. Co-selection phenomena across New Englishes. English World-Wide 30(1): 1–26.Google Scholar
Newmeyer, Frederick J and Preston, Laurel B., eds. 2014. Measuring Grammatical Complexity. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nichols, Johanna. 1992. Linguistic Diversity in Space and Time. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nichols, Johanna. 2009. Linguistic complexity: A comprehension definition and survey. In Sampson, Geoffrey, Gil, David and Trudgill, Peter, eds. Language Complexity as an Evolving Variable. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 64–79.Google Scholar
Sampson, Geoffrey. 2001. Empirical Linguistics. London: Continuum Press.Google Scholar
Sampson, Geoffrey. 2009. A linguistic axiom challenged. In Sampson, Geoffrey, Gil, David and Trudgill, Peter, eds. Language Complexity as an Evolving Variable. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1–18.Google Scholar
Sampson, Geoffrey, Gil, David and Trudgill, Peter, eds. 2009. Language Complexity as an Evolving Variable. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sapir, Edward. 1921. Language: An Introduction to the Study of Speech. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company.Google Scholar
Schlegel, August Wilhelm von. 1818. Observations sur la language et la littérature provençales. Paris.Google Scholar
Schneider, Agnes. 2015. Aspect and modality in Ghanaian English: A corpus-based study of the progressive and the modal WILL. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Freiburg.Google Scholar
Schneider, Edgar. 2004. Global synopsis: Phonetic and phonological variation in English world-wide. In Kortmann, Bernd, Schneider, Edgar, Burridge, K., Mesthrie, R. and Upton, C., eds. A Handbook of Varieties of English, Vol. 1. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 1111–1137.Google Scholar
Schneider, Edgar. 2007. Postcolonial English: Varieties Around the World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Schreier, Daniel. 2016. A true split? Typological and sociolinguistic considerations on contact intensity effects. In Baechler, Raffaela and Seiler, Guido, eds. Complexity, Isolation, and Variation (Linguae and Litterae 57). Berlin, Boston: Mouton de Gruyter, 139–157.Google Scholar
Shackleton, Robert G. Jr. 2007. Phonetic variation in the traditional English dialects: A computational analysis. Journal of English Linguistics 35(1): 30–102.Google Scholar
Shosted, Ryan. 2006. Correlating complexity: A typological approach. Linguistic Typology 10. 1–40.Google Scholar
Siegel, Jeff, Szmrecsanyi, Benedikt and Kortmann, Bernd. 2014. Measuring analyticity and syntheticity in creoles. Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages 29(1): 49–85. doi:10.1075/jpcl.29.1.02sie.Google Scholar
Siemund, Peter. 2008. Language contact: Constraints and common paths of contact-induced language change. In Siemund, Peter and Kintana, Noemi, eds. Language Contact and Contact Languages. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 3–11.Google Scholar
Siemund, Peter. 2013. Varieties of English: A Typological Approach. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Siemund, Peter and Kintana, Noemi, eds. 2008. Language Contact and Contact Languages. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Sinnemäki, Kaius. 2011. Language Universals and Linguistic Complexity: Three Case Studies in Core Argument Marking. Helsinki: University of Helsinki.Google Scholar
Sinnemäki, Kaius. 2014. Complexity trade-offs: A case study. In Newmeyer, Frederick J. and Preston, Laurel B., eds. Measuring Grammatical Complexity. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 179–201.Google Scholar
Steger, Maria and Schneider, Edgar W. 2012. Complexity as a function of iconicity: The case of complement clause constructions in New Englishes. In Kortmann, Bernd and Szmrecsanyi, Benedikt, eds. Linguistic Complexity: Second Language Acquisition, Indigenization, Contact. Berlin: de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Szmrecsanyi, Benedikt. 2009. Typological parameters of intralingual variability: Grammatical analyticity versus syntheticity in varieties of English. Language Variation and Change 21(3): 319–353. doi:10.1017/S0954394509990123.Google Scholar
Szmrecsanyi, Benedikt. 2012. Typological profile: L1 varieties. In Kortmann, Bernd and Lunkenheimer, Kerstin, eds. The Mouton World Atlas of Variation in English. Berlin: de Gruyter, 826–843. www.degruyter.com/view/books/9783110280128/9783110280128.826/9783110280128.826.xmlCrossRefGoogle Scholar
Szmrecsanyi, Benedikt. 2017. Featurometry. In Wieling, Martijn, Bouma, Gosse and van Noord, Geertjan, eds. From Semantics to Dialectometry: Festschrift in Honor of John Nerbonne. Berlin: Language Science Press.Google Scholar
Szmrecsanyi, Benedikt and Kortmann, Bernd. 2009a. Vernacular universals and angloversals in a typological perspective. In Filppula, Markku, Klemola, Juhani and Paulasto, Heli, eds. Vernacular Universals and Language Contacts: Evidence from Varieties of English and Beyond. London: Routledge, 33–53.Google Scholar
Szmrecsanyi, Benedikt and Kortmann, Bernd. 2009b. Between simplification and complexification: Non-standard varieties of English around the world. In Sampson, Geoffrey, Gil, David and Trudgill, Peter, eds. Language Complexity as an Evolving Variable. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 64–79.Google Scholar
Szmrecsanyi, Benedikt and Kortmann, Bernd. 2009c. The morphosyntax of varieties of English worldwide: A quantitative perspective. Lingua 119(11): 1643–1663.Google Scholar
Szmrecsanyi, Benedikt and Wälchli, Bernhard, eds. 2014. Aggregating Dialectology, Typology, and Register Analysis: Linguistic Variation in Text and Speech (Lingua and Litterae 28). Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Trudgill, Peter. 1996. Dialect typology: Isolation, social network and phonological structure. In Guy, Gregory R., Feagin, Crawford, Schiffrin, Deborah and Baugh, John, eds. Towards a Social Science of Language: Papers in Honor of William Labov, Vol. 1: Variation and Change in Language and Society. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 3–22.Google Scholar
Trudgill, Peter. 2001. Contact and simplification: Historical baggage and directionality in linguistic change. Linguistic Typology 5: 371–374.Google Scholar
Trudgill, Peter. 2004. Linguistic and social typology: The Austronesian migrations and phoneme inventories. Linguistic Typology 8: 305–320.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Trudgill, Peter. 2006. Dialect mixture versus monogenesis in colonial varieties: The inevitability of Canadian English? Canadian Journal of Linguistics-Revue Canadienne De Linguistique 51: 265–286. doi:10.1353/cjl.2008.0002.Google Scholar
Trudgill, Peter. 2008. The role of dialect contact in the formation of Englishes. In Locher, Miriam A. and Strässler, Jürg, eds. Standards and Norms in the English Language. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 69–83.Google Scholar
Trudgill, Peter. 2009a. Sociolinguistic typology and complexification. In Sampson, Geoffrey, Gil, David and Trudgill, Peter, eds. Language Complexity as an Evolving Variable. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 98–109.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Trudgill, Peter. 2009b. Vernacular universals and the sociolinguistic typology of English dialects. In Filppula, Marrku, Klemola, Juhani and Paulasto, Heli, eds. Vernacular Universals and Language Contacts: Evidence from Varieties of English and Beyond. London: Routledge, 302–329.Google Scholar
Trudgill, Peter. 2010. Contact and sociolinguistic typology. In Hickey, Raymond, ed. The Handbook of Language Contact. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 299–319.Google Scholar
Trudgill, Peter. 2011. Sociolinguistic Typology: Social Determinants of Linguistic Complexity. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Trudgill, Peter. 2016. The sociolinguistics of non-equicomplexity. In Baechler, Raffaela and Seiler, Guido, eds. Complexity, Isolation, and Variation. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 159–170.Google Scholar
Trudgill, Peter, Gordon, Elizabeth, Lewis, Gillian and Margaret, MacLagan. 2000. Determinism in new-dialect formation and the genesis of New Zealand English. Journal of Linguistics 36(2): 299–318.Google Scholar
Wohlgemuth, Jan and Cysouw, Michael, eds. 2010. Rara and Rarissima: Documenting the Fringes of Linguistic Diversity (Empirical Approaches to Language Typology [EALT] 46). Berlin: de Gruyter Mouton.Google Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×