Diasporic populations offer unique opportunities for the study of language variation and change. This volume is the first collection of sociolinguistic studies of English use across the historically complex and widely dispersed Indian diaspora. The contributions describe particular sociohistorical contexts (the UK, Fiji, South Africa, Singapore, and the Caribbean) and then use this rich empirical base to examine diverse questions in theory and method, such as the extent to which different settings see different or similar linguistic outcomes; the role of community structures, transnational ties, attitudes, and identity; reasons for differing rates of change, adaptation, and focussing; and the relevance of endonormative stabilization of Asian Englishes. These themes do not simply further our understandings of diaspora. They can ultimately feed into wider theoretical questions in language contact studies, including universals, selection and adaptation of traits, and interactions between social contact, identity, and language change.

The papers in this volume aim at facilitating exchange between three fields of inquiry that are of great importance in historical linguistics: language change, (socio)linguistic research on variation, and contact linguistics. Drawing on a range of recently-developed methodological innovations, such as methods for quantifying the linguistic variation (that is a prerequisite for language change) or new corpus-based methods for investigating text-type variation, the contributors are able to trace linguistic change in different periods and contact situations, demonstrate how variation occurs, and in how far language change results out of this variation. Thus, the chapters go beyond core issues of language variation and change, focusing on the boundary between word and grammar, discourse and ideology in the history of the English language.

This volume presents a collection of in-depth cross-varietal studies on a broad spectrum of grammatical features in English varieties spoken all over the world. The contributions explore the structural unity and diversity of New Englishes and thus investigate central aspects of dialect evolution and language change. Moreover, this volume offers new insights into the question as to what constrains new dialect formation, and examines universal trends across a wide range of contact situations. The contributions in this volume further study the possibilities and limitations of quantitative and qualitative corpus analyses in comparative studies of New Englishes and exemplify novel approaches, e.g. the contribution of syntactic corpus annotation (tagging and parsing) to the description of New English structures; the use (and limitations) of web-derived data as an additional source of information; and the possibility to complement corpus data with evidence from sociolinguistic fieldwork.

New Zealand English (NZE) is one of the younger post-colonial varieties of English. It is therefore not surprising that previous research focused on lexical and phonological aspects of NZE and practically neglected grammatical peculiarities. New Zealand English Grammar — Fact or Fiction? presents a careful comparative analysis of parallel corpora of New Zealand, British, American and Australian English in order to single out morphological, syntactic and lexico-grammatical features typical of an emerging New Zealand standard. In addition to corpus data on regional variation, the author uses data on short-term diachronic change within British and American English to show how regional variation is closely related to both stylistic variation (a world-wide colloquialisation of the written norms of English) and ongoing linguistic change leading to temporal regional differences. NZE is different from other national varieties of English in terms of preferences for certain variants rather than categorically different grammatical rules. Nevertheless, it is a standard in its own right in so far as it is a typical mix of variants available in World English. The methodological approach combines both qualitative analyses and statistical evidence. The question in how far statistically significant differences in word frequencies can be shown to be linguistically significant is also relevant for other quantitative research into emerging national standards.

Diasporic populations offer unique opportunities for the study of language variation and change. This volume is the first collection of sociolinguistic studies of English use across the historically complex and widely dispersed Indian diaspora. The contributions describe particular sociohistorical contexts (the UK, Fiji, South Africa, Singapore, and the Caribbean) and then use this rich empirical base to examine diverse questions in theory and method, such as the extent to which different settings see different or similar linguistic outcomes; the role of community structures, transnational ties, attitudes, and identity; reasons for differing rates of change, adaptation, and focussing; and the relevance of endonormative stabilization of Asian Englishes. These themes do not simply further our understandings of diaspora. They can ultimately feed into wider theoretical questions in language contact studies, including universals, selection and adaptation of traits, and interactions between social contact, identity, and language change.

The papers in this volume aim at facilitating exchange between three fields of inquiry that are of great importance in historical linguistics: language change, (socio)linguistic research on variation, and contact linguistics. Drawing on a range of recently-developed methodological innovations, such as methods for quantifying the linguistic variation (that is a prerequisite for language change) or new corpus-based methods for investigating text-type variation, the contributors are able to trace linguistic change in different periods and contact situations, demonstrate how variation occurs, and in how far language change results out of this variation. Thus, the chapters go beyond core issues of language variation and change, focusing on the boundary between word and grammar, discourse and ideology in the history of the English language.

This volume presents a collection of in-depth cross-varietal studies on a broad spectrum of grammatical features in English varieties spoken all over the world. The contributions explore the structural unity and diversity of New Englishes and thus investigate central aspects of dialect evolution and language change. Moreover, this volume offers new insights into the question as to what constrains new dialect formation, and examines universal trends across a wide range of contact situations. The contributions in this volume further study the possibilities and limitations of quantitative and qualitative corpus analyses in comparative studies of New Englishes and exemplify novel approaches, e.g. the contribution of syntactic corpus annotation (tagging and parsing) to the description of New English structures; the use (and limitations) of web-derived data as an additional source of information; and the possibility to complement corpus data with evidence from sociolinguistic fieldwork.

New Zealand English (NZE) is one of the younger post-colonial varieties of English. It is therefore not surprising that previous research focused on lexical and phonological aspects of NZE and practically neglected grammatical peculiarities. New Zealand English Grammar — Fact or Fiction? presents a careful comparative analysis of parallel corpora of New Zealand, British, American and Australian English in order to single out morphological, syntactic and lexico-grammatical features typical of an emerging New Zealand standard. In addition to corpus data on regional variation, the author uses data on short-term diachronic change within British and American English to show how regional variation is closely related to both stylistic variation (a world-wide colloquialisation of the written norms of English) and ongoing linguistic change leading to temporal regional differences. NZE is different from other national varieties of English in terms of preferences for certain variants rather than categorically different grammatical rules. Nevertheless, it is a standard in its own right in so far as it is a typical mix of variants available in World English. The methodological approach combines both qualitative analyses and statistical evidence. The question in how far statistically significant differences in word frequencies can be shown to be linguistically significant is also relevant for other quantitative research into emerging national standards.