Grammatical Variation in British English Dialects


Book Description

An exploration of grammatical differences between British English dialects, drawing on authentic speech data collected in over thirty counties. The book presents a new approach known as 'corpus-based dialectometry', which focuses on the joint quantitative measurement of dozens of grammatical features to gauge regional differences.




Real English


Book Description

While it is accepted that the pronunciation of English shows wide regional differences, there is a marked tendency to under-estimate the extent of the variation in grammar that exists within the British Isles today. In addressing this problem, Real English brings together the work of a number of experts on the subject to provide a pioneer volume in the field of the grammar of spoken English.




Modals, Pronouns and Complement Clauses


Book Description

This is the second volume of the multi-volume set A Contemporary Grammar of British English Dialects. The book again offers qualitative as well as corpus-based quantitative studies on grammatical variation in the British Isles. The three parts investigate complement clauses (Daniela Kolbe), personal pronouns (Nuria Hernández) and modals (Monika Edith Schulz). The volume is of interest to dialectologists, sociolinguists, typologists, historical linguists, grammarians, and anyone working on the structure of spontaneous spoken English.




Dialects of English


Book Description

What is the difference between We goes to Bristol, and We do go to Bristol? Why do some English speakers say I'm gonna get some money? This major collection consists of 15 articles by an international group of linguists and 7 essays by the editors, tackling a broad range of issues and representing some of the best and most recent work in English dialect grammar.




Agreement, Gender, Relative Clauses


Book Description

This volume offers qualitative as well as corpus-based quantitative studies on three domains of grammatical variation in the British Isles. All studies draw heavily on the Freiburg English Dialect Corpus (FRED), a computerized corpus for predominantly British English dialects comprising some 2.5 million words. Besides an account of FRED and the advantages which a functional-typological framework offers for the study of dialect grammar, the volume includes the following three substantial studies. Tanja Herrmann's study is the first systematic cross-regional study of relativization strategies for Scotland, Northern Ireland, and four major dialect areas in England. In her research design Hermann has included a number of issues crucial in typological research on relative clauses, above all the Noun Phrase Accessibility Hierarchy. Lukas Pietsch investigates the so-called Northern Subject Rule, a special agreement phenomenon known from Northern England, Scotland and Northern Ireland. His study is primarily based on the Northern Ireland Transcribed Corpus of Speech, but also on the FRED and SED data (Survey of English Dialects) for the North of England. Susanne Wagner is concerned with the phenomenon of pronominal gender, focussing especially on the typologically rather unique semantic gender system in the dialects of Southwest England. This volume will be of interest to dialectologists, sociolinguists, typologists, historical linguists, grammarians, and anyone interested in the structure of spontaneous spoken English.




The Cambridge Handbook of English Corpus Linguistics


Book Description

The Cambridge Handbook of English Corpus Linguistics (CHECL) surveys the breadth of corpus-based linguistic research on English, including chapters on collocations, phraseology, grammatical variation, historical change, and the description of registers and dialects. The most innovative aspects of the CHECL are its emphasis on critical discussion, its explicit evaluation of the state of the art in each sub-discipline, and the inclusion of empirical case studies. While each chapter includes a broad survey of previous research, the primary focus is on a detailed description of the most important corpus-based studies in this area, with discussion of what those studies found, and why they are important. Each chapter also includes a critical discussion of the corpus-based methods employed for research in this area, as well as an explicit summary of new findings and discoveries.




English Accents and Dialects


Book Description

English Accents and Dialects is an essential guide to contemporary social and regional varieties of English spoken in the British Isles today. Together with invaluable overviews of numerous regional accents and dialects, this fifth edition provides a detailed description of key features of Received Pronounciation (RP) as well as several major non-standard varieties of English. Key features: main regional differences are followed by a survey of speech in over 20 areas of the UK and Ireland, audio samples of which are available to download at www.routledge.com/cw/hughes recent findings on London English, Aberdeen English and Liverpool English contains new entries on Hull, Manchester, Carlisle, Middlesbrough, Southampton, London West Indian, Lancashire and the Shetlands additional exercises with answers online accompany the new varieties clear maps throughout for locating particular accents and dialects. This combination of reference manual and practical guide makes this fifth edition of English Accents and Dialects a highly useful resource providing a comprehensive and contemporary coverage of speech in the UK and Ireland today.




Grammatical Variation and Change in Jersey English


Book Description

Situated at the crossroads of dialectology, sociolinguistics and contact linguistics, this volume provides a first comprehensive description of the morphosyntactic inventory of the variety of English spoken on Jersey, the largest of the Channel Islands. Based on a specially compiled corpus of spoken material containing both present-day sociolinguistic and archive data, it thereby reveals an intricate network of variation and change in this language-shift variety. The study adopts a cross-varietal approach for its analyses, which enables a first more systematic comparison between the Englishes spoken on Jersey, on its sister island Guernsey and beyond. In addition, it discusses the implications of identity aspects for language use in Jersey. The book will therefore be of major interest to any researcher or student working in the areas of language variation and change, language contact or dialectology and to those interested in sociolinguistic methodology and the relationships between language and identity.




English Accents and Dialects


Book Description

This is a unique introductory survey of the main regional and social varieties of English spoken in the British Isles. In the book, the authors discuss accent and dialect in the broader framework of language variation, including phonetic, phonological, grammatical, lexical, historical and stylistic differences. This is followed by a survey of the speech of twelve different areas of the British Isles. The cassette which accompanies the book consists of edited interviews (all transcribed in the book) with speakers from each of the different areas. The third edition has been thoroughly revised and includes an entirely new chapter on Received Pronunciation. The cassette now includes recordings of three different varieties of RP speech. Entirely new sections, with corresponding recordings, have been added on Lowland Scots, Devon and Dublin speech.




English in the Southwest of England


Book Description

Seminar paper from the year 2008 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Linguistics, grade: 1,7, University of Duisburg-Essen (Department of Anglophone Studies ), course: Language, Variation and Change, language: English, abstract: Since English is one of the most widespread languages in the world, a vast number of varieties can be found all over the world. These varieties all differ from each other and are marked by regional and social aspects. Investigating these aspects helps to prevent misunderstandings (e.g. the same words meaning different things in different varieties) and offers a lot of information on historical topics. Very often research is done on geographically far away territories as it is the case between Britain and America. This is a pity since there are a lot of varieties within British border which are worth being discussed. That is why this paper deals with a regional variety situated in England: The south-western variety. This essay will give an overview on the English spoken in the Southwest of England. But before the essay is focused on this regional variety chapter two will present dialectology to the reader. What is dialectology? Which are its aims? Where is the difference between Dialect and Accent? Why is observing regional variation so important? To what extend influences social status the occurrence of a social variation? All these questions will be dealt with in chapter two in order to make the reader aware of the importance of language study and especially dialectology. Chapter 3 then will deal with ‘English in the Southwest’. After a short presentation of the difficulties of locating exactly ‘south-western’, the boundaries of the regional variation are defined. Next will be a presentation of characteristics of the region in order to make the in the next chapter presented features of south-western language easier to understand. The presentation of linguistic features will include phonetics, grammar and lexis. It will be based on Martyn F. Wakelin’s The Southwest of England, since not much research has been done on that topic and the work of Wakelin seems to be the most adequate for this paper. Furthermore, this essay will not present every feature which can be found when talking about the dialect. Mentioning all would not be capable for an essay of this size, hence shall the reader keep in mind that the features and examples are only a subjective selection by the author and could be extended endlessly. The last part of this essay will be a conclusion, summing up what was said in the term paper.