Based on micro-analysis of a set of British English telephone calls, seven different uses of the phrase never mind are distinguished in terms of (a) sequence type, (b) speaker role, (c) sequential position, and (d) prosodic configuration. It is argued that the methodology employed here is widely applicable not only for ready-made expressions but also for less idiomatic forms such as ‘lexicalized sentence stems’ and other prefabricated chunks of language. Through such a methodology analysts can lay bare what it is that speakers ‘do’ with language and thus come to understand what it is they ‘know’ about its procedural deployment in interaction.

Review of Tony Bex & Richard J. Watts (eds), Standard English: the widening debate. London: Routledge. 1999. Pp. xi + 312. Hardback £50, ISBN 0 415 191629; paperback £15.99, ISBN 0 415 191637.

According to D'Souza (1999) the question of standard English ‘is one of the great, unresolved problems that we are carrying into the twenty-first century’ (p. 271). Why should this question be so important and why so unresolved? And what does the book under review here add to our possible understanding of this issue? There are a number of significant issues here. First, there is the question of definition: what is a standard language? From this follows the ontological question as to whether they actually exist or are merely convenient (or inconvenient) fictions. Are we talking about spoken or written language? And in the global context, there are questions such as whether a global standard of international English exists or is emerging? Or is international intelligibility always a negotiation of possibilities with no obvious standard? And how do the new standard Englishes of Singapore, India, or Hong Kong relate both to all the other forms of English within those countries and to the other regionalized standards as well as the possible international standard? From definitional questions we move on to more political and pedagogical ones: Are standard languages hegemonic forms to be opposed? Are standard languages hegemonic forms to be acquired? Does access to standard language give people greater social and economic mobility, or is this another myth associated with standard languages?

Adele Goldberg, Constructions at work: The nature of generalization in language. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006. vii + 280.

Goldberg's new work ‘investigates the nature of our knowledge of language, how that knowledge is acquired by children, and how crosslinguistic and language-internal generalizations can be explained’. It builds on earlier research on Construction Grammar (CxG) by Fillmore (1986), Lakoff (1987), Fillmore, Kay & O'Connor (1988), and Goldberg (1995), among others. Since the mid-1990s constructions have become more and more popular as an alternative to Chomsky's (1995) Minimalist Program, but it was not until the new millennium that CxG reached a new level of interest that resulted in an ever-growing body of research (for an overview, see Fried & Östman 2004). Besides numerous articles and monographs, the increased interest in CxG is evidenced by a book series and an e-journal devoted to constructional research, as well as the bi-annual International Conference on Construction Grammar (ICCG). The publication of Goldberg (1995) inspired much constructional research over the past decade, most notably Croft's (2001) typologically oriented approach to CxG and Tomasello's (2003) constructional account of language acquisition.

Two main hypotheses have been proposed to account for the word order of negative inversion (NI) in varieties of non-canonical English (e.g. Don't nobody else care). An auxiliary inversion analysis argues that the word order is derived via movement of the auxiliary to the left periphery, whereas an existential analysis argues that the word order is an artifact of deletion of the expletive subject, paralleling there-insertion existential constructions. After reviewing these hypotheses, I provide empirical evidence that neither of these theories adequately explains the peculiarities of NI. I advance a third hypothesis, namely that NI is the result of negative movement to the specifier of NegP, and that this movement is pragmatically motivated by an existential meaning in NI constructions. Syntactically, NI is made possible through the Neg-Criterion (Haegeman & Zanuttini 1991, 1996). This analysis explains problems encountered by prior analyses, and offers a unified analysis for variation in NI across dialects. Finally, I explain cross-dialectal differences in NI by considering the relationship between subject requirements and agreement.

This paper challenges the view that subject-orientation in English de-adjectival -ly adverbs is a syntactic attribute, and favours the hypothesis that orientation is, rather, a lexico-semantic feature. An important part of the evidence supporting this hypothesis derives from the examination of constructions in which an -ly adverb modifies an adjectival head (as in his genially informal manner) and displays a (potential) orientation to a co-occurring noun. The discussion is based on examples from the LOB Corpus.

Salkie & Reed (1997) offer a ‘pragmatic hypothesis’ of tense in reported speech which runs counter to Jespersen's & Comrie's quotative or ‘sequence of tenses’ analysis as well as to the more semantically based analysis proposed by Declerck (1990b, 1991a). In doing so they also cast doubt on the model of the English tense system which was proposed by Declerck (1991a) and has since been further refined and elaborated in a number of articles and in Declerck (1997).

The present article goes into the many arguments that S&R advance, refutes them, and adduces additional evidence for D's theory and against S&R's ‘pragmatic hypothesis’.

This article presents diachronic corpus analyses of causative bring (bringcaus) which provide new insights into a fairly novel research paradigm in language change: the role of ‘Moderate Transitivity Contexts’ (MTCs) as a refuge for waning verbs and as a breeding ground for waxing verbs (see Mondorf 2010, 2011, 2016; Rohdenburg 2014b; Schneider & Mondorf 2015). It argues that the modulation of transitivity serves as a support strategy for a formerly well-established verb that is leaving the language.

The potential of semantic transitivity for the development of explanatory principles in language change has been hinted at by Hopper & Thompson (1980: 279). Empirically investigating the diachronic stages of detransitivisation for a recessive English verb we gain first systematic, empirically validated insights into the link between transitivity and language change.

This article adduces support for the claim that bringcaus + to-infinitive has (almost completely) lost its ability to take fully fledged direct objects. There are, however, at least three, partly overlapping contexts, in which this verb can stand its ground: with reflexives, modals and negation. What these contexts have in common is that they reduce the clause's transitivity, defined by Hopper & Thompson (1980: 251) as ‘the effectiveness with which the verbal action takes place’. Assuming that the higher the transitivity, the stronger the effect of the verbal action is on the object, these detransitivised contexts can be interpreted as alleviating the effect of the verbal action.

While null subjects are a well-researched phenomenon in pro-drop languages like Italian or Spanish, they have not received much attention in non-pro-drop languages such as English, where they are traditionally associated with particular (written) genres such as diaries or are discussed under a broader umbrella term such as situational ellipsis. However, examples such as the one in the title – while certainly not frequent – are commonly encountered in colloquial speech, with first-person singular tokens outnumbering any other person.

This article investigates the linguistic and non-linguistic factors influencing the (non-) realisation of first-person singular subjects in a corpus of colloquial English. The variables found to contribute to the observed variation are drawn from a variety of linguistic domains and follow up on research conducted in such different fields as first language acquisition (FLA), cognitive linguistics, discourse analysis, sociolinguistics and language variation and change. Of particular interest is the finding regarding the link between null subjects and complexity of the verb phrase, which patterns in a clearly linear fashion: the more complex the verb phrase, the more likely is a null realisation. Not discussed in this form before, this finding, given its high significance and its robustness in light of alternative coding, may prove to be an important candidate for inclusion in future studies on (English) null subjects.

Compared to German Ja and Nein, English Yes and No are used less frequently, and often in combination with short sentences consisting of a pronoun and an auxiliary or modal verb: Yes I will; No I won't. When such a short sentence is used, Yes and No may be omitted: I will; I won't; I do; I don't; He can; They certainly won't. This difference in usage is established (1) by comparing the marriage vow in German and English, where the officiant's question is answered by Ja in German but by I will or I do in English; (2) by citing material from a practical grammar for German students of English; and (3) by studying the way Shakespeare has his figures answer decision questions, or Yes/No-questions, in comparison with Schlegel's way of rendering their answers in his German translation. Next it is shown that Shakespeare's way, which is essentially the same as modern usage, differs radically from earlier English usage up to Chaucer's Canterbury Tales (1388–1400) and Troilus and Cresseide (1382–6) and the anonymous York Plays (fourteenth century) and Towneley Plays (late fourteenth century), which all reflect the Germanic usage, essentially the same as in German. It is concluded that the modern English usage arose during the two centuries between Chaucer and Shakespeare, as a Late Middle English and Early Modern English innovation. As for the reason why English developed this un-Germanic way of answering decision questions, reference is made to Insular Celtic: decision questions are answered with short sentences in both Irish and Welsh, and this usage is old in both languages. The viability of this contact explanation is underlined by Irish English, where Yes and No are used even less frequently than in Modern Standard English, and short sentences are the normal way of answering decision questions.

The term end-weight refers to the tendency for bulkier constituents to occur at the end of sentences. While end-weight has occasionally been analysed as a more general short-before-long principle in the sense of Behaghel's (1909–10) Law of Growing Constituents, the operation of end-weight in absolute sentence-final position has until recently lacked empirical verification. This article shows that end-weight effects can be observed in grammatical variation contexts in which language users have a choice between variants that differ in terms of length and degree of explicitness. Using two variation phenomena as a testing ground, we empirically investigate the hypothesis that the more explicit and hence bulkier variant occurs preferably in final position. The first variation context concerns semi-reflexive verbs that can take either an explicit self-pronoun or a zero variant. It turns out that the rapid decline of the self-pronoun is delayed in end position. The second case study focuses on Early Modern English affirmative declarative clauses, which may alternate between finite verb forms or do-supported ones. This study reveals that do-support is favoured in end position. These findings ultimately contribute to an empirical validation of end-weight, the implications of which are discussed against the backdrop of processing-related support strategies.

This article proposes a hierarchy of functional heads encoding the features [±control], [±initiation], [±state], [±change] and [±telic] (see Ramchand 2008). It is argued that this allows for a superior analysis of split intransitivity in English than the traditional notion of ‘unaccusativity’ – the idea that there are two classes of intransitive verbs which differ in relation to the underlying status/positions of their arguments. Rather, it is shown – on the basis of a systematic consideration of a wide range of English verbs – that the proposed diagnostics for unaccusativity in English identify multiple classes, whose behaviour can be captured in terms of the proposed hierarchy. Good correlation is found between the classes identified by the English diagnostics and Sorace's (2000) Auxiliary Selection Hierarchy (ASH), providing further support for the cross-linguistic applicability of the ASH to split intransitive patterns.

Across Englishes, frequently used epistemic/evidential complement-taking predicates (e/e ctps) have undergone conventionalisation, whereby subject + e/e verb constructions are reanalysed as formulaic stance markers. However, the system of e/e ctps in Australian English (AusE) – and the degree to which they have grammaticalised – remains unexplored. In this article, we offer a quantitative analysis of the most frequent e/e ctps in the spoken portion of the International Corpus of English – Australia. Multivariate analysis shows that think and guess stand as canonical encoders of speaker attitude, and reckon is multifunctional, encoding epistemic modality and evidentiality. Assuming that (inter-)subjective meaning represents the last stage in semantic change, our results indicate that AusE reckon is less grammaticalised than think and guess.

The article focuses on inherent variability in syntax and the challenge that it presents for theories of language structure, using illustrative data from the Scottish town of Buckie (Smith, 2000). Inherent variability challenges a linguistic theory at three levels of theoretical adequacy: structural (Does the theory distinguish the relevant structures?), contextual (Does it allow structures to be related directly to their social context?), and behavioural (Does it allow an explanation for the observed frequencies?). The article summarizes the relevant claims of Word Grammar and shows (1) that it has at least as much structural adequacy as any other theory, (2) that it has more contextual adequacy than other theories because it formalizes the theory of Acts of Identity, and (3) that it at least provides a theoretical foundation for future advances towards behavioural adequacy. The article also argues against the minimalist analysis of the was/were alternation in Buckie (Adger, 2006).

In this article we address a hitherto unstudied causal conjunction in English, seeing as though. Occurring predominantly in informal registers, the conjunction is typically used to introduce information which the speaker takes to be self-evidently true and on whose basis some further comment, or query, is made. Drawing on data derived from internet searches we draw up a semantic profile of the expression in comparison and contrast with other reason connectives, namely, seeing (that) and since. The data suggest that seeing as though is associated with highly subjective construals of the reason relation. We also address the internal structure of the expression. The use of seeing in a reason conjunction is traced to a common conceptual metaphor, whereby knowing is seeing. More puzzling is the occurrence of as though. While rejecting the possibility of a compositional analysis of the expression, we note that as though is only one of a number of items which can occur with causal seeing. These items have to do with the appearance of things and are in fact able to occur as complementizers after predicates of seeming and appearing. To this extent, as though is consistent with the subjectivity associated with the complex conjunction. In the course of our investigation, we also document the extraordinary proliferation of reason connectives that involve lexical items such as seeing, as, though, and several others, and suggest that this exuberance of new forms may not be unrelated to the subjectivity inherent in the construal of causal relations.

The question of equivalence of constructions with determiner genitives (the FBI's director, the chair's leg) and noun modifiers (the FBI director, the chair leg) is a crucial one for Rosenbach's (2007a, 2010) approach to the gradience between genitive and noun + noun constructions as well as for any study of grammatical variation treating the two constructions as syntactic variants (Szmrecsanyi et al. 2016). However, the assumption that there is such equivalence has recently been challenged by Breban (2018) for English and Schlücker (2013, 2018) for German. The present article defends the view that determiner genitives and identifying noun modifiers are sufficiently similar to alternate in certain choice contexts from a variationist perspective, which, as will be shown, proceeds from a notion of equivalence different from the one adopted by in-depth semantic–pragmatic studies. Proper noun modifiers take a prominent role among identifying noun modifiers in their ability to alternate with determiner genitives, but the argument and analysis in this article is not restricted to them.

This article offers a syntactic analysis of the construction [be done NP], e.g. I am done dinner, I am finished my homework, as found in Canadian English and some US dialects. After situating this construction in the context of a productive transitive be perfect in Scots/English dialects, [be done NP] will be distinguished from a set of its conceptual and structural relatives, and ultimately be shown not to be reducible to a surface realization of another underlying structure. From the perspective of syntactic theory, the article problematizes the parsimony of the mainstream generative approach (most recently in MacFadden & Alexiadou 2010) in accounting for the facts of [be done NP] on strictly compositional grounds, as well as the mainstream view of lexical items as projecting theta grids and subcategorization frames (as e.g. in Grimshaw 1979; Emonds 2000). Following Fillmore et al. (1988), Goldberg (1995, 2005) and others, what will be suggested instead is a construction grammar approach to [be done NP], under which a construction holistically licenses its argument structure. Along these lines [be done NP] will be characterized as an abstract construction with some fixed material.

This article studies the emergence of a grammatical pattern, the proper noun modifier construction shown in the Obama administration, an Edinburgh restaurant. The only dedicated historical corpus study, by Rosenbach (2007, 2010), is limited in terms of time depth and data included, and suggests that only proper noun modifiers denoting places such as Edinburgh are found in the early seventeenth century. Using corpus data that span the full history of English, we trace the construction back to two Old English precursors, genitival modifiers without inflectional marking, e.g. Jericho feldes ‘the fields of Jericho’, and compounds, e.g. Easter æfen ‘Easter eve’. We combine macro-level visualisations of distributions and qualitative micro-analyses to show how these source constructions developed into the present-day English construction. The development defies simplistic views on grammatical change, but illustrates that grammatical patterns develop out of multiple sources under the influence of a multiplicity of factors. New patterns only emerge gradually and exploit existing ambiguities in the language.

What do we know about the past? For at least some languages, we have textual (or archaeological) evidence from various periods – beyond that, there is only reconstruction. But even when we have some textual evidence, what does it tell us? The answer to this question crucially depends on the way we approach the question: we can treat texts as decontextualized, linguistic evidence, as Neogrammarian or Structuralist studies have done (see McMahon 1994: 17–32). Such an approach already allows us to discover important generalizations about the linguistic state of affairs of a particular language or historical period. Using decontextualized historical evidence, for example, we can already ascertain with a high degree of certainty that in Old English voiced and voiceless fricatives were allophones, rather than phonemes, that there was no do-periphrasis in Middle English, and that in Early Modern English there was some variability between third-person singular present tense {-s} and {-th} – just as we know that present-day Japanese and Korean use postpositions, rather than prepositions.

This contribution provides a corpus-based investigation of the history of adjectival resultative constructions (RCs), e.g. He wiped the table clean, with special reference to Old English and Middle English. The article first briefly discusses some of the parameters relevant to a synchronic analysis of RCs, namely causativity, causality and force-dynamics, as well as the distinction between adjectival and adverbial RCs (collectively referred to as ARCs since the two types cannot always be differentiated diachronically). The article then shows that the diachronic data point to an expansion of the ARC from very specific instantiations, involving a limited set of verbs and adjectives/adverbs (i.e. the washing and cutting scenarios), to progressively more general types (which, however, set up a coherent network of analogical extensions). It is observed that this evolutionary path correlates with the metaphorical interpretation of actions as forces and the emergence of ‘proper’ causative examples, i.e. examples where the verb only symbolises the causing subevent in the causal chain evoked by the RC. Further, it is argued that this investigation highlights the importance of the usage-based model in linguistic analysis.