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.

This article reports on the use of the Eighteenth-Century English Phonology Database (ECEP) as a teaching resource in historical sociolinguistics and historical linguistics courses at the University of Sheffield. Pronouncing dictionaries are an invaluable resource for students learning about processes of standardisation and language attitudes during the Late Modern English period (1700–1900), however they are not easy to use in their original format. Each author uses their own notation system to indicate their recommended pronunciation, while the terminology used to describe the quality of the vowels and consonants differs from that used today, and provides an additional obstacle to the student wishing to interrogate such sources. ECEP thus provides a valuable intermediary between the students and the source material, as it includes IPA equivalents for the recommended pronunciations, as well as any metalinguistic commentary offered by the authors about a particular pronunciation. This article demonstrates a teaching approach that not only uses ECEP as a tool in its own right, but also explores how it can be usefully combined with other materials covering language change in the Late Modern English period to enable students to undertake their own investigations in research-led courses.

Vowel nasalisation in American English has been the subject of a long discussion as to whether it is a phonological process or whether it should better be analysed as phonetic coarticulation. As a predictable allophonic process, vowel nasalisation also provides a testing ground for theories of lexical representation, since if it turns out that language users store this predictable information in long-term memory, there is no reason to assume any kind of phonological underspecification. In this article, experimental studies on this phenomenon are reviewed with these two questions in mind: is the phenomenon a phonological process at all and is this predictable information, i.e. vowel nasalisation, stored in the mental lexicon. The majority of studies provide evidence supporting the phonological view and underspecified lexical representations.

This study reports on recent changes in the use of the hedges kind of and sort of in spoken British English over the past twenty years. A quantitative analysis of these features within subsets of the original BNC 1994 (BNC Consortium 2007) and BNC 2014 (Love et al. 2017) suggests a systematic encroaching of kind of into contexts that are traditionally occupied by sort of. This is highlighted in apparent-time patterns in which younger speakers are leading in use as well as real-time patterns that show a significant increase in use between 1994 and 2014.

The hedges sort of and kind of are often treated as semantically equivalent, yet show distributional differences across different varieties of English. This article reports on an ongoing shift in the use of kind of as well as a relatively stable use of sort of. Its main focus is a detailed sociolinguistic analysis of both variants, which, in addition to social factors involved, teases apart some of the linguistic aspects of this shift.

In line with the theme of this special issue, the article draws attention to the usefulness of comparable, or comparably made, corpora that allow for focused studies of linguistic change across speakers, generations, registers and communities.

This article investigates the emergence and early use of possessive havegot in English. Two hypotheses about its emergence are tested on historical data (c.1460–1760). One hypothesis is based on communicative functionality, suggesting that got was inserted as a ‘pattern preserver’ to compensate for the increased reduction of have. The other hypothesis invokes the conventionalization of an invited inference, thus a (non-functional) semantic shift which does not immediately serve to support a communicative function. The diachronic evidence is found to support only the latter hypothesis.

In the second part the early stage of the variation of have and havegot is investigated (c.1720–50). The results show a strong register difference, but also a division of labour between the variants that can be explained by the syntactic and semantic properties of havegot as having emerged out of a present perfect of get. Thus, the variation is organized in a functionally motivated way.

It is concluded that in the development of possessive havegot functional constraints apply to the variation early on, but do not play an evident role in the emergence of the new variant. This suggests that functional motivations are a directing force but not necessarily a driving force in language change.

In English there are a variety of causal adjunct phrases such as because of, as a result of, on account of and in spite of. It was reported recently that a new structure because X is thriving in colloquial registers including conversations and blogs. The complement X is not only restricted to nominals but also includes other lexical categories such as adjectives, adverbs and even verbs. This article delves into the history of this usage and its reasoning, and conducts a survey on other causal adjuncts to determine whether the same kind of innovation is observed with other adjunct phrases. The survey shows that the new usage started from NP complements and has been extended to include complements of other lexical categories, and that the new usage attested in because X is also observed with in case X. The truncation of the final preposition is verified with all the adjunct phrases in the survey, but the category of the complement is basically restricted to nominals in the case of other phrases. We will look into the factors segregating the two groups of adjuncts, namely because/in case X, and other causal adjuncts.

From Old English to Middle English inflection is gradually lost. It is assumed that this is mainly due to phonological and syntactic changes. This article, however, argues that the loss of inflection is not a linear process but new systems can emerge, and that morphological changes play an important role. The nominal inflection of the Lambeth Homilies – an Early Middle English manuscript from the southwest Midlands and dated around 1200 – is investigated in detail. It will be shown that analogical changes within and across inflection classes do not simply lead towards a reduction of inflection. The increase in syncretism and decrease in allomorphy result in a new inflectional system. This new system distinguishes singular from plural, feminine from non-feminine (in the singular and plural), and possessive from non-possessive (in the singular and plural). Additionally, the original inflection classes related to different stems are almost lost, except the weak inflection classes. The inflection classes are instead related to gender; that is, gender is the information that best predicts how a noun is inflected.

Recent areal and typological research has brought to light several syntactic features which English shares with the Celtic languages as well as some of its neighbouring western European languages, but not with (all of) its Germanic sister languages, especially German. This study focuses on one of them, viz. the so-called it-cleft construction. What makes the it-cleft construction particularly interesting from an areal and typological point of view is the fact that, although it does not belong to the defining features of so-called Standard Average European (SAE), it has a strong presence in French, which is in the ‘nucleus’ of languages forming SAE alongside Dutch, German, and (northern dialects of) Italian. In German, however, clefting has remained a marginal option, not to mention most of the eastern European languages which hardly make use of clefting at all. This division in itself prompts the question of some kind of a historical-linguistic connection between the Celtic languages (both Insular and Continental), English, and French (or, more widely, Romance languages). Before tackling that question, one has to establish whether it-clefting is part of Old (and Middle) English grammar, and if so, to what extent it is used in these periods. In the first part of this article (sections 2 and 3), I trace the emergence of it-clefts on the basis of data from The York–Toronto–Helsinki Corpus of Old English Prose and The Penn–Helsinki Parsed Corpus of Middle English, second edition. Having established the gradually increasing use of it-clefts from OE to ME, I move on to discuss the areal distribution of clefting among European languages and its typological implications (section 4). This paves the way for a discussion of the possible role played by language contacts, and especially those with the Celtic languages, in the emergence of it-clefting in English (section 5). It is argued that contacts with the Celtic languages provide the most plausible explanation for the development of this feature of English. This conclusion is supported by the chronological precedence of the cleft construction in the Celtic languages, its prominence in modern-period ‘Celtic Englishes’, and close parallels between English and the Celtic languages with respect to several other syntactic features.

This article develops a functional classification of the different uses of English premodifying present participles and applies it to historical corpus data to show that premodifying present participles have undergone functional change. It is argued that three core functions can be distinguished: identifying uses (e.g. the following evening); type-oriented uses (e.g. a talking dog) and situation-oriented uses (e.g. a passing car). Historically, the use of premodifying present participles has shifted from predominantly identifying and type-oriented uses, to predominantly situation-oriented uses, particularly in narrative discourse. This means that premodifying present participles have come to fulfil a function that is less typical of noun-phrase-internal modification, instead being increasingly used to denote backgrounded situations that are temporally aligned to the situation evoked by their main clause. The shift can be interpreted as an instance of functional clausalization.

Prior research has identified a large number of processing-related factors that affect language users’ choices between two (or more) competing linguistic variants. However, one factor that up until now has not been taken into account is the reliance on formulaic language. This is surprising given a growing body of evidence demonstrating that recurrent multiword units – formulaic sequences and low-scope constructional patterns – play a key role in language learning and processing. Building on insights from research on formulaic language and usage-based constructionist models of language, we take a first step towards determining whether and to what extent formulaicity affects choices language users make in encoding the preverbal message. Focusing on clause ordering in English complex sentences with adverbial clauses (ACs), we investigate whether the choice between a preposed and a postposed AC is affected by the degree of formulaicity of the clause, as measured by (1) the amount of formulaic sequences in the AC and (2) the degree of entrenchment of an AC when treated as a low-scope pattern. Based on a reanalysis of the data in Diessel (2008), we found that the likelihood of an AC being produced in the cognitively more demanding sentence-initial position increased with higher degrees of formulaicity for both measures investigated. We conclude that reliance on formulaic language can be conceived of as a ‘support strategy’ compensating for increased processing effort.

For grammarians, acquiring some understanding of ‘finiteness’ as a linguistic concept has been a longstanding problem, even if frequently unacknowledged as such. It seems to me that the problem derives, in particular, from the fact that arriving at a universally applicable characterization of the syntactic status of finiteness is difficult to reconcile with how it has been claimed to be manifested morphosyntactically in different languages. In what follows I explore the consequences for our understanding of the role of morphological and periphrastic subjunctives in English of drawing a distinction between finiteness as a syntactic property and the possible signalling of this property in the morphology. The discussion presents no novel data or novel claims concerning the interpretation of the sentences cited (at least, not intentionally); it merely confronts the familiar with the characterization of finiteness proposed here. And I have also tried, in the interests of accessibility and generality of application, to minimize appeal to parochial theoretical assumptions beyond that involving finiteness and the recognition of grammatical periphrasis, i.e. analytic expression of a category otherwise signalled morphologically, and of the traditional concept of reaction.

The present corpus-based study deals with eight sets of rivalling prepositions in verb-dependent prepositional phrases. The two or three members of these sets, though equivalent in specific uses, differ in terms of functional explicitness. For instance, in directional uses, into can be regarded as more explicit than in. The main objective is to demonstrate for each of these sets that, in line with the Complexity Principle, the more explicit items are favoured in more complex grammatical environments. The contexts under scrutiny include those produced by passivisation, Heavy NP Shift, object relativisation, the use of full object NPs rather than personal pronouns, and preposition stranding. Thus, we observe that – compared with basic active clauses – preposition stranding in the active induces increased shares of the more explicit prepositions in question. Predictably, even higher degrees of prepositional explicitness are found with the combination of preposition stranding and passivisation. Also, it is shown that Heavy NP Shift tends to trigger greater proportions of the more explicit prepositions than object relativisation. The observed tendencies hold for Present-day English and earlier stages of English as well as for morphologically related and unrelated rival prepositions.

This study presents a corpus-based analysis of adjective phrases consisting of a grading element (‘grader’), a deadjectival adverb and an adjectival head. The interest of this pattern derives from the fact that these three constituents can occur in three different orders, as exemplified by more cognitively complex, cognitively more complex and more complex cognitively. The analysis builds primarily on the distinction between domain and non-domain adverbs. ADJPs with domain adverbs have different patterns from ADJPs with other adverbs. Whereas the adverb–grader–adjective order predominates in ADJPs with domain adverbs, the grader–adverb–adjective order is the most frequent type in ADJPs with non-domain adverbs. Within the set of non-domain adverbs, a secondary distinction is made between lexical and more grammatical types. Lexical adverbs are found to preferentially associate with the grader–adverb–adjective order while the more grammatical adverbs gravitate towards the adverb–grader–adjective order. The following five factors account for the empirical results: branching direction, the frequent-unit-first hypothesis, proximity, analogy/uniformity and modifier–head order. Structural representations are argued to draw on lexical information which is not coded by terminal nodes.

This article has two main goals: (i) to show how nasal–obstruent clusters interact with a Canadian-Raising-type pattern in Liverpool English and (ii) to provide evidence that fine phonetic variation in the realisation of nasal–obstruent clusters influences the production of the preceding vowels. I present quantitative evidence from an acoustic study on price and mouth vowel realisations before nasal–obstruent clusters in Liverpool English. The investigation looks at price and mouth separately before obstruents, nasals and nasal–obstruent clusters, in order to demonstrate that nasal–obstruent clusters influence vowels differently depending on the quality of the vowel. Price realisations before nasal–obstruent clusters are similar to productions before singleton obstruents with the same voicing. Specifically, price has a raised realisation before nasal–voiceless obstruent clusters, but a non-raised realisation before nasal–voiced obstruent clusters, which is the same pattern as before singleton obstruents. Mouth realisations preceding nasal–obstruent clusters show evidence of a greater influence from the nasal. The nucleus formant measurements are similar to those before singleton obstruents, but there is frequent monophthongisation preceding nasal–obstruent clusters in mouth, which is mainly found before singleton nasals. Furthermore, I show that the variation in nasal–obstruent clusters in Liverpool English helps to explain the differences in realisation of the target vowels. Nasal deletion is more frequent in nasal–voiceless obstruent clusters following price, leading to vowel productions similar to those before singleton voiceless obstruents. However, nasal durations are longer in nasal–obstruent clusters following mouth, leading to a greater influence of the nasal in the form of more monophthongal vowel productions.

Most studies of genitive variation in English have considered only the choice of two variants ('s versus of), based on analysis of only tokens that are judged to be interchangeable. We argue in the present article that research on genitive variation can be usefully extended in both respects: including premodifying nouns as a third variant; and attempting to account for all tokens of the genitive. In addition, we extend the scope of analysis to explore the possibility of contextual constraints having different importance in different registers.

First, we carry out a text-linguistic analysis comparing the rates of genitive variants in texts from three registers (conversation, newspaper reports, academic articles), showing that genitives overall are much more frequent in written registers, with the premodifying noun variant being especially frequent. Then, a variationist analysis is undertaken to account for the choice of genitive variant in particular contexts and registers. A total of 3,425 genitive tokens were coded for ten contextual characteristics (e.g. length of the Modifying NP, semantic category of the Modifying noun and the Head noun, final sibilancy of the Modifying noun). Statistical analyses with random forests and conditional inference trees are triangulated, showing how contextual factors interact in predicting the use of each genitive variant – and how patterns of variation differ across registers.

This article provides a constructional (CxG) analysis of N-ADJ compounds in which the noun receives a degree reading (e.g. bullet-straight, Kennedy-handsome). A semantic analysis based on similes and scale matching is provided, and the recent history and increased productivity of the construction are examined in light of data from both the Corpus of Historical American English and a range of present-day corpora. The article introduces new evidence of the increased functional flexibility of both common and proper nouns in English and discusses the ongoing conventionalisation of proper noun degree modifiers in both American English and other varieties of English. The results of the study suggest that the recent introduction of proper noun degree modifiers has been supported by both constructional (semantic) change and macro-trends that have affected English usage more generally.

We propose an explanation for a traditional puzzle in English linguistics involving the use of articles with the nominal modifiers same, identical and similar. Same can only take the definite article the, whereas identical and similar take either the or a. We argue that there is a fundamental difference in the manner in which a comparison is made with these modifiers. Identical and similar involve direct comparisons between at least two entities and an assertion of either full property matching (identical), or partial property matching (similar). The comparison with same proceeds differently: what is compared is not linguistic entities directly, but definite descriptions of these entities that can be derived through logical entailments. John and Mary live in the same house entails the house that John lives in is the (same) house that Mary lives in. There must be a pragmatic equivalence between these entailed definite descriptions, ranging from full referential equivalence to a possibly quite minimal overlap in semantic and real-world properties shared by distinct referents. These differences in meaning and article co-occurrence reveal the sensitivity of syntax to semantic and pragmatic properties, without which all and only the grammatical sentences of a language cannot be predicted.

This article investigates differences between Scottish Standard English (SSE) and Southern British Standard English (SBSE) in the semantic domain of strong obligation. Focusing on the modal verbs must, have to, need to and (have) got to, we use new corpus material from nineteen written and spoken genres in the Scottish component of the International Corpus of English (ICE-SCO) and corresponding texts from ICE-GB. Data are analysed using a mixed-effect multinomial regression model to predict the choice of verb. Language-internal factors include mode of production (written/spoken), grammatical subject (first/second/third person) and source of obligation (objective/subjective). Our results show that, as previous research suggests, SSE is much more likely to employ need to for the expression of strong obligation, and less likely to employ must and (have) got to. This general pattern remains essentially unaffected by language-internal factors. To account for our findings, we draw on the sociologically motivated process of democratisation and the language-internal process of grammaticalisation.

This article offers an account of i-umlaut in Old English based on lexical minimality: the elimination of redundancies from, in this case, the phonological subentries in the lexicon. And the notation is that of Anderson & Ewen (1987), which is based, crucially for the present formulation, on simplex features which may combine in varying proportions. These assumptions combine to favour system-dependent underspecification. In accord with lexical minimality, the approach taken here is also polysystemic: thus, for instance, Old English vowels, even Old English accented vowels, do not enter into only one system of contrasts. The phonology is a system of systems sharing some but not all contrasts. The article attempts to show that on this basis some of the many apparent anomalies that the evidence has been thought to suggest can be resolved in terms of a simple coherent formulation. Concerning the interpretation of this evidence, it is the intention of the article to minimize appeals to phonetic features and phonetic processes not warranted by textual and comparative testimony. It is suggested that lack of attention to polysystemicity and a pervasive indulgence on the part of historical phonologists in phonetic fantasies undermine the conclusions reached by generations of scholars concerning the development of phonological systems, both in general and in particular.