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I was sat there talking all night: a corpus-based study on factors governing intra-dialectal variation in British English1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 October 2016

ULRIKE STANGE
ULRIKE STANGE*
Affiliation:
Department of English and Linguistics, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität, Ulrike Stange, Jakob Welder-Weg 18, 55099 Mainz, Germany [email protected]
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Abstract

When it comes to intra-dialectal variation, the factors governing the choice between functionally equivalent variants still require an exhaustive analysis. The construction be sat/be stood with progressive meaning alternates with the standard form be sitting/be standing in a number of British English dialects. The present article investigates to what extent the Complexity Principle (see Rohdenburg 1996) and horror aequi (see Rohdenburg 2003) influence the choice between so-called pseudo-passive and progressive constructions. Empirical analyses of spoken data in the British National Corpus reveal that this variation phenomenon is common in dialects of Northern and Southwest England, and to a lesser degree in the Midlands and in London. Moreover, we find considerable differences in the distribution of these pseudo-passives regarding their relative frequency and the number of dialects that make use of them. Drawing on a total of 106 occurrences for the construction be stood vs be standing and 366 for be sat vs be sitting, the article evaluates how far the principles above can be considered as statistically significant determinants of intra-dialectal variation. To this end, it will be essential to test for other factors potentially influencing the choice of dialectal variants, such as age and gender.

Type
Research Article
Information
English Language & Linguistics , Volume 20 , Special Issue 3: Support strategies in language variation and change , November 2016 , pp. 511 - 531
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2016 

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Footnotes

1

I would like to thank Peter Trudgill for giving me permission to use the map indicating the dialect areas in Britain and two anonymous reviewers for their helpful suggestions and constructive comments.

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