Previous research has identified and studied a wide range of non-standard syntactic constructions in global varieties of English. However, there is currently a lack of large-scale corpus-based evidence on non-standard syntactic variation in English from a global perspective. The present study seeks to fill this gap through an analysis of a set of syntactic constructions across the fourteen L2 and six L1 varieties of English included in the Corpus of Global Web-based English, totalling 1.9 billion words. We conceptualise non-standard features as lying outside the "core" of the language that represents the object of description in English grammars, including those that might be regarded as "colloquial" or "vernacular", such as there-existentials with singular agreement. The methodological approach is onomasiological, modelled on the alternation between non-standard features and corresponding standard forms. Across 28 morphosyntactic features drawn from eWAVE 3.0, a total of 289,827 non-standard and more than 37 million standard occurrences were analysed in a logistic mixed effects regression model. Register variation was accounted for by means of a co-variate for involved discourse following Biber's Multidimensional Analysis. Results indicate a relatively low degree of non-standardness across both L1 and L2 varieties. The register dimension of involved discourse is the most important variable governing non-standard variation, followed by differences between world regions. These results were further confirmed by a hierarchical clustering model and a multidimensional scaling analysis. (c) 2025 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

Over the last few decades, a good deal of empirical research has been conducted on the distribution in the English-speaking world of morphosyntactic features considered to be non-standard (in the sense of not being part of the common core of standard written English), Insights have been achieved using elicitation methods (interviews and ques-tionnaires), dialect corpora and open-access online atlases. There is, however, a dearth of large-scale corpus-based research, one that the present special issue seeks to address, with contributors drawing data from corpora - mainly derived from recordings of spoken English, and in some cases recently-compiled - representing mostly "New Englishes" (indigenised-national-L2 varieties, spoken in "outer circle" countries where English is established as an important lan-guage, even though it is not the native language of the majority of the population). Most contributions adopt a macro approach, investigating a set of features in a wide range of L2 English varieties, but some adopt a micro approach, zero-ing in on a single feature or a small number of features. @2025 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

This study seeks to address what Bernd Kortmann has recently identified as a deficit in the corpus-based study of non-standard syntactic variation in English from a global perspective. Its findings are drawn from the 1.9-billion-word Corpus of Global Web-based English, with predictions relevant to patterns identified in the twenty English varieties represented therein derived from Edgar W. Schneider’s influential Dynamic Model. The most prominent non-standard features in the ‘Inner Circle’ varieties were found to be those that have long been attested in English, found in systematic dialectal use, and preferred in colloquial style. The stigma that is often associated with their use is reinforced by prescriptive censure based on social class prejudice and perceptions of stylistic inappropriateness. By contrast, the factors underling use of non-standard features in the ‘Outer Circle’ varieties are mainly Second Language Acquisition phenomena such as overgeneralisation, regularisation and simplification, which are prevalent among speakers of lower English proficiency. A tendency was noted for the less evolved South Asian and African varieties to embrace non-standard usages less extensively than the more evolved South-East Asian and Caribbean varieties.

The dual foci of the present study of double modals are their semantic characteristics and their distribution across regional varieties of English world wide. Tokens were extracted from GloWbE:Blogs, a database whose great size and informal tenor facilitated the investigation of this low‐frequency non‐standard feature. Double modals were found to be more common in the New Englishes of the ‘Outer Circle’ than in the ‘Inner Circle’ varieties, a finding ascribed to such factors as evolutionary status, prescriptivism and simplification. Substrate influence is suggested to be in operation for the strong frequencies for Bangladeshi English and Hong Kong English. Combinatorial preferences diverged across the two Circles: that for will can in the Outer Circle versus would could in the Inner Circle can be claimed to reflect general differences in epistemicity, with the tendency for epistemic modals in double modals to be more frequent than root modals—especially in first position—noted to be stronger in the Inner Circle.

This article reports the findings of a study of negation across varieties of English worldwide, with data derived from the Global Web-Based Corpus of English. Three general categories are explored: negative polarity-sensitive expressions (lexical verbs such as bother, and idioms such as give a damn); negators (idioms such as be not half bad, boilerplate no-collocations such as no worries, and implicit negators such as bugger all); and non-standardised features such as invariant don't and multiple negation. The findings provide support for the Inner Circle versus Outer Circle distinction, with results ascribable to such factors as evolutionary status, SLA phenomena, colloquiality, and tolerance of vulgarity. Further areal findings are suggestive of linguistic epicentrality.

In today’s Australia, English is, as it has been since the commencement of White settlement in 1788, the dominant language. Accordingly, I shall focus in the first part of this chapter on the mainstream variety of Australian English (‘AusE’), rooted in the country’s Anglo-Celtic heritage and recognizable as the national language. At the same time Australia ranks as one of the world’s most multilingual countries. Appropriately, therefore, the second part of the chapter is devoted to an examination of the migrant and Aboriginal languages that are in use by more than two million speakers, and in particular the varieties that have developed as a result of contact between these languages and AusE.

This study adopts an onomasiological, alternation-based approach to the exploration of grammatical variation across World Englishes, using data sourced from the 1.9 billion-word GlobalWeb-based English corpus. The macro-orientation of the study, which investigates a set of ten alternations known to be susceptible to diachronic change, facilitates identification of a number of general trends, including the typical advancement of the Inner Circle varieties and of the South-East Asian varieties, the hypercentrality of American English, and the epicentrality of Indian English in South Asia. Possible explanatory factors include colloquialisation, grammatical simplicity/complexity, developmental status, and areal proximity.

This study explores the distribution of modals and quasi-modals in the twenty English dialects represented in the Global Web-based English Corpus (GloWbE). Intervarietal trends are observed across and within the Englishes of the "Inner circle" and "Outer circle." Ratios calculated for onomasiological pairings of modal expressions suggest that Inner circle varieties tend to be associated more closely than Outer circle varieties-and "epicentral" varieties more so than non-epicentral ones-with trends of frequency change that have been identified in previous diachronic studies of the reference varieties, British and American English. A further type of change is revealed by semantic analysis: Inner circle varieties tend to embrace epistemic modality more readily than Outer circle varieties. Possible explanations considered for intervarietal differences include areal proximity, epicentrality, evolutionary status, and colloquiality.

This article aims to provide a fresh approach to the study of hypercorrection, the misguided application of a real or imagined rule – typically in response to prescriptive pressure – in which the speaker's attempt to be ‘correct’ leads to an ‘incorrect’ result. Instead of more familiar sources of information on hypercorrection such as attitude elicitation studies and prescriptive commentary, insights are sought from quantitative and qualitative data extracted from the 2-billion-word Global Web-based English corpus (GloWbE; Davies 2013). Five categories are investigated: case-marked pronouns, - ly and non- ly adverbs, agreement with number-transparent nouns, (extended uses of) irrealis were , and ‘hyperforeign’ noun suffixation. The nature and extent of hypercorrection in these categories, across the twenty English varieties represented in GloWbE, are investigated and discussed. Findings include a tendency for hypercorrection to be more common in American than in British English, and more prevalent in the ‘Inner Circle’ (IC) than in the ‘Outer Circle’ (OC) varieties (particularly with established constructions which have been the target of institutionalised prescriptive commentary over a long period of time).

This study, an exercise in varietal pragmatics, compares the frequencies and uses of four categories of comment markers - 'evaluative', 'epistemic', 'style', and 'hearsay' - across the 20 world Englishes represented in the Global Web-based Corpus of English. Predictions drawn from the models of world Englishes formulated by Kachru, Schneider, and Mair are used to formulate a set of research questions. The possible covariation of comment marker use with levels of textual informality is explored via comparison of the General and Blogs macro-genres of GloWbE. The implications of the findings for the evolutionary development of varieties, their stylistic preferences, areal co-patterning, and directions of intervarietal influence are investigated.

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This chapter contains section titled: Introduction Syntax vs. Semantics vs. Pragmatics A Semantic Level? Declaratives and Statements Interrogatives, Questions, and Inquiries Imperatives and Directives Exclamatives and Exclamatory Statements Conclusion

A number of studies have found that grammatical differences across registers are more extensive than those across dialects. However, there is a paucity of research examining intervarietal register change, exploring how registers change differently over time in different regional varieties. The present study addresses this diachronic deficit, focusing on grammatical developments - from the early 20th to the early 21st century - in corpora representing three written registers and two speech-based registers in Australian, British and American English. We conducted a factor analysis on 68 lexicogrammatical features to identify six dimensions of register variation, and subsequently investigated the diachronic change of the five registers across these dimensions. We interpret our findings in terms of the differential effects of broad social changes on individual registers, in light of existing findings on trends of change in different registers and varieties.

This chapter examines the uses and development of the present perfect, the progressive, modals and semi-modals - categories of the tense/aspect/modality systems of the verb phrase - in Australian English. All of these categories are known to have been undergoing major change for centuries in English and have been the subject of numerous corpus-based studies of contemporary varieties of English. Factors involved in these developments include grammaticalisation, colloquialisation and Americanisation. Most studies of Australian English have found the development of these categories to be less advanced than that in American English, which tends to be in the box seat of grammatical change in English worldwide, but more advanced than that in the postcolonial parent variety, British English. Our survey of the study of tense, aspect and modality in Australian English incorporates new findings derived from "AusBrown", a recently compiled diachronic corpus of Australian English. The incorporation of AusBrown enables us to extend the scope of analysis to the early 20th century and make comparisons with British and American English of the same time period.

This article reviews Processes of Change: Studies in Late Modern and Present-Day English EUR 1059789027204141

This study investigates overall grammatical developments of written Australian English (AusE) across the twentieth century. Adopting an aggregate approach to language variation and change, it examines the distribution of a range of grammatical features which have previously been shown to be sensitive to variation over time. Multi-generic data were drawn from “AusBrown,” a set of balanced diachronic corpora following the design of the Brown family of corpora. Multivariate techniques such as hierarchical cluster analysis and multidimensional scaling were employed to outline the developmental path of AusE in relation to those of British and American English in order to shed light on the possible emergence of regional patterns. The results suggest that the period from the 1960s to the 1990s was one critical for the evolution of written AusE, preceded by a period of relative stagnation and followed by one characterized by a coalescence of the three varieties. Such a developmental path is largely compatible with significant sociohistorical trends that have shaped the language attitudes of Australians, including strong connections with its British legacy in the first few decades, political independence and rapid social progress in the mid-twentieth century, and accelerated globalization as a result of major technological advances towards the end of the century. Additionally, the findings reveal the dominance of features contributing to colloquialization and densification in the texts examined.