New Zealand English grammar, fact or fiction?: a corpus-based study in morphosyntactic variation

228 Pages·1998·17.912 MB·English

by  Hundt, Marianne

NEW ZEALAND ENGLISH GRAMMAR
FACT OR FICTION?
Varieties of English Around the World
General Editor:
Edgar W. Schneider
Department of English & American Studies
University of Regensburg
Universitätsstraße 31
D-93053 REGENSBURG
Germany
[email protected]
Editorial Assistants:
Alexander Kautzsch, Melanie Schäfer (Regensburg)
Editorial Board:
Michael Aceto (Puerto Rico); Laurie Bauer (Wellington)
J.K. Chambers (Toronto); Jenny Cheshire (London)
Manfred Görlach (Cologne); Barbara Horvath (Sydney)
Jeffrey Kallen (Dublin); Thiru Kandiah (Singapore)
Vivian de Klerk (Grahamstown, South Africa)
William A. Kretzschmar, Jr. (Athens, GA)
Caroline Macafee (Aberdeen); Michael Montgomery (Columbia, SC)
Peter Mühlhäusler (Adelaide); Peter Patrick (Washington, DC)
GENERAL SERIES
Volume 23
Marianne Hundt
New Zealand English Grammar - Fact or Fiction?
A corpus-based study in morphosyntactic variation
NEW ZEALAND
ENGLISH GRAMMAR
FACT OR FICTION?
A CORPUS-BASED STUDY IN
MORPHOSYNTACTIC VARIATION
MARIANNE HUNDT
University of Freiburg
JOHN BENJAMINS PUBLISHING COMPANY
AMSTERDAM/PHILADELPHIA
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of
bo
American National Standard for Information Sciences — Permanence of
Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1984.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Hundt, Marianne.
New Zealand English grammar, fact or fiction? : a corpus-based study in morphosyntactic
variation / Marianne Hundt.
p. cm. - (Varieties of English around the world. General series, ISSN 0172-7362 ;
v. 23)
Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index.
1. English language-New Zealand-Grammar. 2. English language-Variation-New
Zealand. 3. English language-New Zealand-Discourse analysis. I. Title. II. Series.
PE3602.H86 1998
427' 993--dc21 98-23346
ISBN 90 272 4881 8 (Eur.) / 1 55619 721 7 (US) (alk. paper) CIP
© Copyright 1998 - John Benjamins B.V.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, by print, photoprint, microfilm, or any
other means, without written permission from the publisher.
John Benjamins Publishing Co. · P.O.Box 75577 · 1070 AN Amsterdam · The Netherlands
John Benjamins North America · P.O.Box 27519 · Philadelphia, PA 19118-0519 · USA
To Markus

vii
Contim ts
List of Figures and Tables
X
Abbreviations xii
Preface xiii
1. Introduction 1
1.1 Previous research 1
1.1.1 NZE and its relation to other national varieties 3
1.1.2 NZE and language change 6
1.1.3 Stylistic variation within NZE 6
1.2 Aim and scope of the study 7
2. Theoretical and methodological foundations 9
2.1 The notion of'standard' in English 9
2.2 International English and national standards
11
2.3 Variation studies and corpus linguistics 19
2.3.1 Corpus linguistics and statistics
21
2.3.2 The corpora - sampling principles 22
2.3.3 The corpora - corpus size
24
2.3.4 Corpus linguistics and variation studies: An integrated approach 25
2.3.5 Corpus linguistics and elicitation tests
26
3. Morphology 29
3.1 Irregular Verbs 29
3.1.1 Burn, learn and dream in New Zealand, British and American
English 29
3.1.2 Regularization of irregular past tense forms: A comparison of New
Zealand, Australian and British English 31
3.1.3 Prove 33
3.1.4 Gotten 36
3.2 Comparison of adjectives
38
3.2.1 Periphrastic comparison of monosyllabic adjectives 39
3.2.2 Double comparatives 41
.3.3 The s-genitive 42
3.4 Summary 49
4 Syntax 51
viii
4.1 Have 51
4.1.1 Corpus data - occurrences of have 52
4.1.2 Have to with modal meaning 53
4.1.3 Full verb have 55
4.2 Shall and will 58
4.3 Marginal modals 61
4.3.1 Need and dare 61
4.3.2 Ought (to) 65
4.3.3 Used to 68
4.4 Aspect 69
4.4.1 Preterite and perfect 70
4.4.2 The progressive 75
4.5 A note on the get-passive
78
4.6 Collective nouns 80
4.6.1 Regional variation 80
4.6.2 Verbal, pronominal and mixed concord 81
4.6.3 Diachronic change and stylistic variation 81
4.6.4 Corpus data 82
4.7 The mandative subjunctive 89
4.7.1 Comparing NZE with BrE and AmE 92
4.7.2 Mandative constructions in NZE and AusE 96
4.8 For-to-infmitive constructions 98
4.9 Summary 101
5 Lexico-grammar 105
5.1 Different 105
5.2 Protest and appeal
108
5.3 Chance and provide 113
5.4 Farewell 114
5.5 Screen 115
5.6 Look 118
5.7 Summary 121
6. Statistical significance and linguistic relevance 123
6.1 Because 124
6.2 Would 124
6.3 Not 125
6.4 Summary 130
7. Conclusion 133
7.1 Regional variation and diachronic change 133
ix
7.2 Regional and stylistic variation 135
7.3 On the role of frequency as a defining criterion for variety-specific
variants 137
7.4 New Zealand English - a separate national standard? 138
7.5 Representativeness of the sample and the validity of results 140
7.6 Results of elicitation tests and findings based on corpus data 141
References 145
Appendix 1 159
Appendix 2 177
Appendix 3 185
Appendix 4 191
Index 209
χ
Figures and tables
Figures
2.1 NZE and its relation to BrE, AmE and AusE
16
2.2 NZE and a pluricentric model of English: Synchronic perspective 17
2.3 NZE and a pluricentric model of English: Diachronic perspective 18
7.1 Locating NZE in relation to other varieties with respect to ongoing
change 135
Tables
2.1 Orthography: per cent vs. percent 20
2.2 Size of the press sections
23
2.3 Per cent vs. percent in a British and an American newspaper 24
3.1 Irregular and regular past tense forms of bur, learn and dream
30
3.2 Preterite vs. past participle: burnt and learnt
30
3.3 Functional analysis of burned and burnt 31
3.4 Irregular and regular past tense forms in NZE, AusE and BrE 32
3.5 Proved vs. proven 34
3.6 Suffixation and periphrastic comparison of monosyllabic adjectives 39
3.7 The s-genitive in LOBpress and FLOBpress: Significance levels
44
3.8 The s-genitive: Corpus evidence 45
4.1 The verb have 52
4.2 Have (got) to 53
4.3 Full verb have in negations and interrogatives 56
4.4 Full verb have in interrogatives and negations in the WCNZE 56
4.5 Shall and will 59
4.6 Dare 62
4.7 Need 63
4.8 Ought (to) 66
4.9 Ought (to) in larger newspaper corpora 66
4.10 Progressive forms: Overall frequencies 75
4.11 Future tense: Progressive vs. simple form 77
4.12 Going to-future 77
4.13 Get-passives 78