Comparative Studies in Australian and New Zealand English: Grammar and beyond (Varieties of English Around the World General Series)

419 Pages·2009·3.09 MB·English

by  Pam Peters

Comparative Studies in Australian and New Zealand English
Varieties of English Around the World (VEAW)
A companion monograph series devoted to sociolinguistic research, surveys and
annotated text collections. The VEAW series is divided into two parts: a text series
contains carefully selected specimens of Englishes documenting the coexistence of
regional, social, stylistic and diachronic varieties in a particular region; and a general
series which contains outstanding studies in the field, collections of papers devoted to
one region or written by one scholar, bibliographies and other reference works.
General Editor
Edgar W. Schneider
Department of English & American Studies
University of Regensburg
Universitätsstraße 31
D-93053 REGENSBURG
Germany
[email protected]
Editorial Assistant
Alexander Kautzsch
Editorial Board
Laurie Bauer
Wellington
Manfred Görlach
Cologne
Rajend Mesthrie
Cape Town
Peter Trudgill
Fribourg
Walt Wolfram
Raleigh, NY
General Series, Volume G39
Comparative Studies in Australian and New Zealand English. Grammar and
beyond
Edited by Pam Peters, Peter Collins and Adam Smith
Comparative Studies in Australian
and New Zealand English
Grammar and beyond
Edited by
Pam Peters
Macquarie University
Peter Collins
University of NSW
Adam Smith
Macquarie University
John Benjamins Publishing Company
Amsterdam / Philadelphia
TM The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of
8
American National Standard for Information Sciences – Permanence of
Paper for Printed Library Materials, ansi z39.48-1984.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Comparative studies in Australian and New Zealand English grammar and beyond /
edited by Pam Peters, Peter Collins, Adam Smith.
       p. cm. (Varieties of English Around the World, issn 0172-7362 ; v. G39)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1.  English language--Australia--Grammar. 2.  English language--New Zealand--
Grammar. 3.  Grammar, Comparative and general. 4.  Language and culture.  I.
Peters, Pam. II. Collins, Peter, 1950- III. Smith, Adam Michael.
 PE3601.C66 2009
 427'.994--dc22 2009011793
isbn 978 90 272 4899 2 (hb; alk. paper)
isbn 978 90 272 8940 7 (eb)
© 2009 – John Benjamins B.V.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, by print, photoprint, microfilm, or any
other means, without written permission from the publisher.
John Benjamins Publishing Co. · P.O. Box 36224 · 1020 me Amsterdam · The Netherlands
John Benjamins North America · P.O. Box 27519 · Philadelphia pa 19118-0519 · usa
Table of contents
List of abbreviations vii
List of contributors ix
Prologue 1
Peter Collins
section i. Morphology
Irregular verbs: Regularization and ongoing variability 13
Pam Peters
Pronoun forms 31
Heidi Quinn
Hypocoristics in New Zealand and Australian English 49
Dianne Bardsley & Jane Simpson
section ii. Verbs and verb phrases
Modals and quasi-modals 73
Peter Collins
The perfect and the preterite in Australian and New Zealand English 89
Johan Elsness
The progressive 115
Peter Collins
The mandative subjunctive in spoken English 125
Pam Peters
Light verbs in Australian, New Zealand and British English 139
Adam Smith
section iii. Nouns and noun phrases
Non-numerical quantifiers 159
Adam Smith
vi Table of contents
From chairman to chairwoman to chairperson: Exploring
the move from sexist usages to gender neutrality 183
Janet Holmes, Robert Sigley & Agnes Terraschke
section iv. Clauses and sentences
Concord with collective nouns in Australian
and New Zealand English 207
Marianne Hundt
No in the lexicogrammar of English 225
Pam Peters & Yasmin Funk
Zero complementizer, syntactic context, and regional variety 243
Kate Kearns
Infinitival and gerundial complements 263
Christian Mair
Commas and connective adverbs 277
Peter G. Peterson
section v. Discourse
Information-packaging constructions 295
Peter Collins
Like and other discourse markers 317
Jim Miller
Final but in Australian English conversation 339
Jean Mulder, Sandra A. Thompson & Cara Penry Williams
Swearing 361
Keith Allan & Kate Burridge
Epilogue 387
Pam Peters
Index 401
List of abbreviations
ACE Australian Corpus of English (data from 1986)
AmE American English
ART Australian Radio Talkback corpus (data from 2004–6)
AusE Australian English
B-LOB Before LOB corpus (British English from the 1930s)
BNC British National Corpus (data from 1975–1990s)
BrE British English
Brown Brown Corpus (American English from the 1960s)
COLT Corpus of London Teenager Language (spoken data from 1993)
FLOB Freiburg corpus modeled on LOB (with data from the 1990s)
Frown Freiburg corpus modeled on Brown (with data from the 1990s)
ICE International Corpus of English
IDG indigenized (variety of English) i.e. an “outer circle” English
LOB Lancaster—Oslo/Bergen corpus (British English from the 1960s)
NZE New Zealand English
SBC Santa Barbara Corpus of Spoken American English
(data from the 1990s)
STL settler (variety of English) i.e. an “inner circle” English
WSC Wellington Spoken Corpus (New Zealand English from the 1980s)
WWC Wellington Written Corpus (New Zealand English from 1986)

List of contributors
Keith Allan Kate Kearns
Monash University, University of Canterbury,
Melbourne Christchurch
[email protected] [email protected]
Dianne Bardsley
Christian Mair
Victoria University,
University of Freiburg,
Wellington
Germany
[email protected]
[email protected]
Kate Burridge
Jim Miller
Monash University,
University of Edinburgh
Melbourne
[email protected]
[email protected]
Peter Collins Jean Mulder
University of New South Wales University of Melbourne
[email protected] [email protected]
Johan Elsness Cara Penry Williams
University of Oslo, University of Melbourne
Norway [email protected]
[email protected]
Pam Peters
Yasmin Funk
Macquarie University,
Macquarie University,
Sydney
Sydney
[email protected]
[email protected]
Janet Holmes Peter G. Peterson
Victoria University, University of Newcastle,
Wellington NSW
[email protected] [email protected]
Marianne Hundt Heidi Quinn
University of Zurich, University of Canterbury,
Switzerland Christchurch
[email protected] [email protected]