Australasia and the Pacific encompass a range of diverse native and non-native Englishes, including contact varieties such as pidgins and creoles. The chapter provides a new approach to these varieties by focusing on their geographical closeness and structural patterns that have the potential of being areal features of Australasian and (South) Pacific Englishes. Owing to the interaction of conditioning factors in language evolution, such features are not only difficult to define but also difficult to trace. Therefore, a significant section of the chapter provides a detailed theoretical discussion on areal features in Australasia and the South Pacific. Finally, three different scenarios are outlined in which the emergence of areal features for at least a number of these varieties seems to be apparent: parallel developments of Australian and New Zealand English; the possible influence of Pasifika Englishes in New Zealand on other varieties; and the effect of similarities in substrate languages, cultural practices, and in the external ecology as a precursor to areal features for ESL, EFL, ethnic varieties, pidgins, and creoles in Australasia and the Pacific.

Linguistic typology is concerned with classifying human languages and with identifying structural similarities and differences between these languages. Dialectology is the study of typically vernacular and regionally restricted and/or distinctive forms of language. Dialect typology focuses on the intersection between typology and dialectology. In this chapter, we (1) review the set of language-external factors (variety type, world region, exposure to contact) that has been used to categorize World Englishes, (2) summarize the literature about (vernacular) universals, angloversals, and related notions in World Englishes, and (3) discuss work on parameters of structural diversity in World Englishes (analyticity versus syntheticity, complexity versus simplicity).