This special volume is concerned with the syntax of nonstandard varieties of (mainly British) English, and how such syntactic variation is accounted for within a range of theoretical models. There has been a growing interest in the modelling of dialect syntax (a) in a number of languages and (b) in a number of syntactic theories (see, for instance, the research on syntactic microvariation in some Germanic languages in Barbiers, Cornips & van der Kelij, 2002, or the construction-based approach to variation in Leino & Östman, 2005). We have brought together five articles written in different theoretical frameworks (Principles and Parameters, Stochastic Optimality Theory, Head-driven Phrase Structure Grammar, Word Grammar, and Construction Grammar), together with an introduction written by the editors, who themselves adopt very different theoretical frameworks.

It is with great sadness that we inform our readers of the death of Richard Hogg at the age of just sixty-three. He had been one of the three founding editors of English Language and Linguistics and was set to continue in the role until his retirement in 2009. His death has come as a great shock. We wish to share with readers of ELL at this earliest opportunity our appreciation of, and affection for, our fellow-editor, colleague and friend.

In our first editorial note, published in ELL 1.1 in 1997, we said: There has until now been no one journal which covers the range that ELL is intended to cover, a ‘natural class’ of research interests which deserves to be treated in one place, and at the highest level. English Language and Linguistics exists to promote knowledge and inquiry in the interlocking fields of its title. We hope that ELL will prove so useful that authors will come to regard it as their first choice for submission, while readers turn to it readily because they know it is bound to contain work of value and interest.

This study of present-day English genitive variation is based on all interchangeable instances of s- and of-genitives from the ‘Reportage’ and ‘Editorial’ categories of the ‘Brown family’ of corpora. Variation is studied by tapping into a number of independent variables, such as precedence of either construction in the text, length of the possessor and possessum phrases, phonological constraints, discourse flow, and animacy of the possessor. In addition to distributional analyses, we use logistic regression to investigate the probabilistic factor weights of these variables, thus tracking language change in progress as evidenced in the language of the press. This method, married to our large database, yields the most detailed perspective to date on frequently discussed issues, such as the relative importance of possessor animacy and end-weight in genitive choice (cf. most recently Rosenbach 2005), or on the exact factorial dynamics responsible for the ongoing spread of the s-genitive.

In this corpus-based article we explore the development of evidential meanings in English verbs of appearance, together with their acquisition of evaluative meanings. We explore the relationship of these semantic changes to the question of whether there is an increase in subjectivity diachronically, and we show that subjectivity is orthogonal to both develop-ments: an increase in subjectivity appears rather to go with the spread of small clause constructions.

This article provides an overview of the relationship between studies of syntactic variation in dialects of English and theoretical accounts of language structure. In the first section of the article, we provide a discussion of the place of syntactic variation within various subdisciplines of linguistic enquiry: we address issues such as I- and E-language, the place of Standard English in linguistic theory, and interfaces between traditional dialectology, variationist sociolinguistics, and theoretical linguistics. These interfaces suggest the need for a clarification of the nature and status of the (morpho)syntactic variable, which we provide in section 3; and in section 4, we examine the way in which (morpho)syntactic variation is treated within a number of theoretical models – for instance, Principles and Parameters theory, HPSG, OT, and cognitive linguistics (including Word Grammar and Construction Grammar) – all of which feature in the other articles in this special issue.

This article addresses the question of why certain epistemic verbs, particularly (I) think, have very high rates of zero complementizer in their clausal complements. I consider and reject the influential proposal from Thompson & Mulac (1991b) that the occurrence of zero complementizer in these contexts is associated with syntactic reanalysis of the epistemic verb and its subject to an adverbial-like epistemic phrase. Instead, I propose that zero complementizer signals a shift in the informational structure of the utterance, in which the embedded clause conveys the main assertion, but the syntactic structure of the sentence need not be altered. Further routinization is evident with I think but not with other epistemic verbs. Results from a study of newspaper prose are presented in support of the analysis.

The historical development of the English reciprocal expression each other exemplifies different aspects of language change, both morphosyntactic and semantic. This article examines the formation of the reciprocal marker from the perspective of grammaticalization theory, with a special focus on the relationship between grammaticalization and lexicalization. It will be argued that an adequate distinction between lexicalization and grammaticalization can only be achieved if we define the two concepts with reference not to an expression's grammatical status before and after the change, but rather to the diachronic processes involved, namely context expansion in the case of grammaticalization, and univerbation combined with fossilization in the case of lexicalization. The development of each other provides evidence for this view. It has its origin in syntactic structures of the type Each of the kings hates the others and has undergone univerbation and fossilization as well as context expansion. It will also be shown that definitions of lexicalization and grammaticalization that are too closely linked to the opposition between lexicon and grammar are problematic for an analysis of the changes undergone by the reciprocal marker. Furthermore, our analysis regards the development of each other as a case of simultaneous lexicalization and grammaticalization.

This article discusses the existence of transitive expletives in a variety of English. Belfast English has none of the features previously proposed as licensing transitive expletives, but nevertheless allows these, calling into question previous analyses of the licensing of this structure. This article considers the properties of transitive expletives in this variety, showing that they are restricted to sentences where the associate is quantified, and that the associate can appear in a range of positions, similar but not identical to those available to ‘floated’ quantifiers. It is argued that Belfast English has a higher merge position for the expletive than does Standard English, and that the general availability in English of quantifier positions between T and vP – perhaps because auxiliaries in English head phases, and phases can be closed by a quantification – means that, even though Belfast English is not a Verb Second language, a position is available for both the expletive and the associate.

A case is made for the derivation of the regional word eagre ‘tidal surge’, ‘bore’, and relatives or variants found in other contexts, from OE ē(a)gor- meaning ‘flood’ or the like, despite the phonological difficulty. A Latin source is proposed. The evidence for the word is considered alongside place-name evidence, and explanations are tentatively reaffirmed, and proposed, respectively, for two problematic names in Nottinghamshire and Gloucestershire.

In this article I present extensive quantitative evidence showing that it is possible to distinguish different Middle English varieties on the basis of the treatment of word-initial h-, and that it is necessary to postulate that, in some varieties, word-initial h- fails to surface in given contexts, though being present as a consonantal phoneme in the underlying representation. This casts a new light on the old problem of whether word-initial h- was lost in Middle English and restored at a later stage: the data presented here suggest that h- loss was never generalized, though h-less forms did surface as contextual variants of h-ful forms.

Variation within grammars is a reflection of variation between grammars. Subject agreement and synthetic negation for the verb be show extraordinary local variation in the Survey of English Dialects (Orton et al., 1962–71). Extracting partial grammars of individuals, we confirm leveling patterns across person, number, and negation (Ihalainen, 1991; Cheshire, Edwards & Whittle, 1993; Cheshire, 1996). We find that individual variation bears striking structural resemblances to invariant dialect paradigms, and also reflects typologically observed markedness properties (Aissen, 1999). In the framework of Stochastic Optimality Theory (Boersma & Hayes, 2001), variable outputs of individual speakers are expected to be constrained by the same typological and markedness generalizations found crosslinguistically. The stochastic evaluation of candidate outputs in individual grammars reranks individual constraints by perturbing their ranking values, with the potential for stable variation between two near-identical rankings. The stochastic learning mechanism is sensitive to variable frequencies encountered in the linguistic environment, whether in geographical or social space. In addition to relating individual and group dialectal variation to typological variation (Kortmann, 1999; Anderwald, 2003), the findings suggest that an individual grammar is sensitively tuned to frequencies in the linguistic environment, leading to isolated loci of variability in the grammar rather than complete alternations of paradigms. A characteristic of linguistic variation that has emerged in distinct fields of enquiry is that variation within a single grammar bears a close resemblance to variation across grammars. Sociolinguistic studies, for instance, have long observed that ‘variation within the speech of a single speaker derives from the variation which exists between speakers’ (Bell, 1984: 151). In the present study, individual patterns of variation in subject–verb agreement with affirmative and negative be extracted from the Survey of English Dialects(SED, Orton et al., 1962–71) show striking structural resemblances to patterns of interdialectal, or categorical, variation.

This article sets out to clarify the contribution of syntactic properties and subject weight for variation between verb–subject and subject–verb order in a database of fourteenth- and fifteenth-century prose. It sets out the syntactic structures which are assumed, and investigates the impact on ordering of a set of factors, using established quantitative methodologies. A series of conclusions includes the continuing distinct status of initial then, the systematic importance of clause-final position, the different impacts of subject length in different contexts, and the presence of a definiteness effect for the late placement of a subject after a nonfinite unaccusative.

This article investigates the history of what Wells (1982), in his account of present-day accents of English, calls ‘hyper-rhoticity’. That is, the appearance, in rhotic accents, of epenthetic, unetymological rhyme-/r/, usually taking the form of /r/-colouring in modern accents. It is attested most commonly in final unstressed syllables, but may also occur in syllable rhymes after a long, stressed vowel. The article traces the history of this phenomenon and attempts to show that Early Modern English data which have hitherto been interpreted as evidence for loss of /r/ in such contexts are better attributed to hyper-rhoticity. It is also argued here, in an addendum, that not to accept claims for early /r/-loss in unstressed syllables has wider implications for the history of English phonology. That is, to reject theories of loss of /r/ in final unstressed syllables demands rejection of the notion of early articulatory weakening of /r/ in this context, which has been seen as a prelude to the spread of weakening to other contexts, leading ultimately to loss of rhoticity.

In this article, I investigate the implications of socially meaningful sociolinguistic variation for competence grammar, working from the point of view of HPSG as a kind of performance-plausible sign-based grammar. Taking data from African American Vernacular English variable copula absence as a case study, I argue that syntactic constraints and social meaning are intertwined. I present an overview of the literature on social meaning, discuss what grammars are models of, and argue that in order to model socially meaningful variation, competence grammars need to be extended to include social meaning, precompiled phrases, and probabilistic or frequentistic information. I then explore different heuristics for defining the boundaries of competence grammar and discuss the commonalities between the proposed additions and the kind of linguistic knowledge which is generally assumed to comprise competence grammar.

This article tries to fill a descriptive gap in the literature on English possessive NPs by offering a systematic description of indefinite possessive NPs (e.g. a friend's house, a widow's pension, men's suits). Specifically, two descriptive issues are dealt with. Firstly, the different types of determining indefinite genitives are discussed. It is shown that indefinite determiner genitives can have specific reference, generalized reference or generic reference. Moreover, it is argued that in all of these cases, the indefinite genitive specifies a reference point (Langacker 1993) for the identification of the ‘possessee’ and functions as a grounding predication. It is also proposed that subsective gradience (Aarts 2004, 2007) can be diagnosed for determining genitives, i.e. that more central and more peripheral members can be distinguished within this category. Secondly, the distinction between determining and nondetermining, classifying genitives (e.g. a [woman's magazine] ‘a magazine for women’) is re-examined. This distinction is relevant to the description of indefinite possessive NPs, since they have been considered as evidence for a fuzzy boundary between determining and nondetermining genitives (Taylor 1996, Rosenbach 2006). It is argued, against such an analysis, that the two functions of the genitive can be clearly distinguished, even in ‘bridging contexts’ (Evans & Wilkins 2000), i.e. contexts in which both a determining and a nondetermining reading are supported. Consequently, there is no intersective gradience (Aarts 2004, 2007) between determining and nondetermining genitives on the level of the constructional semantics.

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).

Linguists are able to describe, transcribe, and classify the differences and similarities between accents formally and precisely, but there has until very recently been no reliable and objective way of measuring degrees of difference. It is one thing to say how varieties are similar, but quite another to assess how similar they are. On the other hand, there has recently been a strong focus in historical linguistics on the development of quantitative methods for comparing and classifying languages; but these have tended to be applied to problems of language family membership, at rather high levels in the family tree, not down at the level of individual accents. In this article, we outline our attempts to address the question of relative similarity of accents using quantitative methods. We illustrate our method for measuring phonetic similarity in a sample of cognate words for a number of (mainly British) varieties of English, and show how these results can be displayed using newer and more innovative network diagrams, rather than trees. We consider some applications of these methods in tracking ongoing changes in English and beyond, and discuss future prospects.

This article discusses the emerging variation between determiner genitives and noun modifiers in Present-day English. Based on the results of corpus analyses and previous studies I show that this variation (1) was not present in earlier English, and (2) results from the fact that determiner genitives have come to be used with nouns low in animacy while noun modifiers have come to be used with nouns high in animacy (mainly) in the course of Modern English. This semantic shift (or rather ‘convergence’) of genitives and noun modifiers has helped to create contexts which are compatible with both determiner and classifier function, i.e. the functions typically expressed by determiner genitives and noun modifiers, respectively. The article complements earlier work on the gradience between s-genitive constructions and noun+noun constructions (Rosenbach, 2006a), providing fur-ther evidence for the claim that semantic overlap may give rise to constructional gradience.

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.