Jan Svartvik

A Grammar of contemporary English

The publication of this important volume fills the need for an up-to-date survey of the entire scope of English syntax. Though it falls short of a perfectly balanced treatment of the whole system, it touches upon all the essential topics and treats in depth a number of crucial problems of current interest such as case, ellipsis, and information focus. Even the publishers’ claims are vindicated to a surprising degree. The statement that it “constitutes a standard reference grammar” is reasonably well justified. Recent investigations, including the authors’ own research, are integrated into the “accumulated grammatical tradition” quite effectively. But whether it is “the fullest and most comprehensive synchronic description of English grammar ever written” is arguable. No one acquainted with Poutsma’s work would agree with that. Very advanced foreign students o r native speakers of English who want to learn about basic grammar will find some of thel sections suitable for their needs, such as the lesson about restrictive and nonrestrictive relative clauses, though even here some of the explanations require very intensive study. Most of the chapters are rather like an advanced textbook for teachers or linguists. The organization and viewpoint give the impression of a carefully planned university lecture supplemented by diagrams, charts, and lists. A good example is the lesson on auxiliaries and verb phrases, which starts with a set of sample sentences demonstrating that “should see” and “happen to see” behave differently under various transformations and expansions. After the essential concepts are explained and exemplified-lexical verb, semi-auxiliary, operator, and the like-lists and paradigms are given as in the usual reference work. A particularly useful feature of this chapter is the outline of modal auxiliaries with examples of their divergent meanings.

A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language

An indispensable store of information on the English language, written by some of the best-known grammarians in the world.

English corpus linguistics : studies in honour of Jan Svartvik

Part 1 Goals and methods: the state of the art in corpus linguistics, Geoffrey Leech corpus studies and probabilistic grammar, M.A.K.Halliday intuition-based and observation-based grammars, Jan Aarts. Part 2 Corpus design and development: toward a new corpus of spoken American English, Wallace L.Chafe, et al the development of the international corpus of English. Part 3 Exploration of corpora: between and through - the company they keep and the functions they serve, Graeme Kennedy a mint of phrases, Goran Kjellmer collocational frameworks in English, Antoinette Renouf and John McH.Sinclair the modals of obligation and necessity in Australian English, Peter Collins a corpus-based study of apposition in English, Charles F.Meyer syntactic evidence for semantic distinctions in English, Dieter Mindt on having a look in a corpus, Gabriele Stein and Randolph Quirk on the exploitation of computerized corpora in variation studies, Douglas Biber and Edward Finegan stylistic profiling, David Crystal expletives in the London-Lund corpus, Anna-Brita Stenstrom conversational style in British and American English - the case of backchannels, Gunnel Tottie on the history of that/zero as object clause links in English, Matti Rissanen a point of verb syntax in South-western British English - an analysis of a dialect continuum, Ossi Ihalainen. Part 4 Prospects for the future: times change, and so do corpora, Stig Johansson. Appendix: List of computer corpora.

Types and uses of non‐finite clause in Chaucer

(1970). Types and uses of non‐finite clause in Chaucer. English Studies: Vol. 51, No. 5, pp. 393-411.

English, Pidgins and Creoles

This chapter has two themes: first, the English language in the Caribbean, and second, the English-based creole languages on the islands of the West Indies and elsewhere in the world. These themes are closely related: although English-based creoles are widely spread across the tropical or subtropical parts of the world, they are concentrated most densely in the Caribbean, and their historical development cannot be better exemplified than by Jamaican creole in that region. The first question to answer is: ‘What is a creole?’ But before that, here is a little Caribbean history (Figure 9.1).

From Caribbean English to Creole

This chapter has two themes: first, the English language in the Caribbean, and second, the English-based creole languages on the islands of the West Indies and elsewhere in the world. These themes are closely related: although English-based creoles are widely spread across the tropical or subtropical parts of the world, they are concentrated most densely in the Caribbean, and their historical development cannot be better exemplified than by Jamaican Creole in that region. The first question to answer is ‘What is a creole?’ But before that, here is a little Caribbean history. (The word Caribbean can be pronounced with two stress patterns: usually with the stress on the third syllable as Caribbean, but in connected speech also as Caribbean — a phenomenon known as ‘stress shift’.)

The Standard Language Today

It is a paradox of late Modern English that the language seems to have been changing more, and yet it seems to have been changing less. The speed of change seems to have been accelerating, if we look at the massive growth of variation in English worldwide. With geographical spread have come divergences, especially in the form of new Englishes and creoles, as we saw in Chapters 6 and 9. But if we look only at standard English, the language seems to have been changing more slowly.

English into the Future

In this book we have followed the English language throughout its history over a period of some 1,500 years. It’s a remarkable story: from a Germanic embryo came a small insular language, which in time grew into a world language. So what will happen to English now? Will there be many Englishes, or just one? Will the international use and learning of English continue to grow? Or will other languages take its place? It is difficult to predict the future of languages - some would say impossible. But at least we can examine the linguistic situation as it is developing today and try to make informed speculations about the future.

Linguistic Change in Progress: Back to the Inner Circle

If you ask native speakers of English how the language is changing today, after hesitation they will probably mention new vocabulary, or possibly some changes in pronunciation, but it is unlikely that grammar will appear on the agenda. This is probably for two reasons. First, most native English speakers are ignorant about the grammar of their mother tongue. Ask them about a grammatical problem, and they will dissolve into joking embarrassment. Second, grammar is an aspect of language that changes slowly, so it is popularly assumed to be unchanging, its rules set in stone. No one who has read this book, we are sure, will make that mistake. The grammar of standard English keeps changing, as it always has. However, within one generation there are likely to be few dramatic changes: what we can observe are changes of preference, of frequency. Interestingly, changes in recent English grammar tend to follow particular patterns, which we list as follows: Grammaticalization — Items of vocabulary are gradually getting subsumed into grammatical forms, a well-known process of language change. Colloquialization — The use of written grammar is tending to become more colloquial or informal, more like speech. Americanization — The use of grammar in other countries (such as the UK) is tending to follow US usage.

English: The Working Tongue of the Global Village

Ahead of his time, the Canadian writer Marshall McLuhan predicted that electronically connected media would eventually transform the world into a huge ‘global village’. English has become the working tongue of that village.