Syntactic complexity and language contact: A corpus-based study of relative clauses in British English and Indian English
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Title: | Syntactic complexity and language contact: A corpus-based study of relative clauses in British English and Indian English |
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Authors: | Tamaredo, Iván |
Keywords: | Syntactic complexity | Language contact | Relative clauses | British English | Indian English | Variation |
Knowledge Area: | Filología Inglesa |
Issue Date: | 2017 |
Publisher: | Universidad de Alicante. Departamento de Filología Inglesa |
Citation: | Alicante Journal of English Studies / Revista Alicantina de Estudios Ingleses. 2017, 30: 149-182. doi:10.14198/raei.2017.30.06 |
Abstract: | The aim of the present paper is to test the claim that contact simplifies language (cf. Kusters, 2008) by comparing the domain of relative clause formation in British English, a L1 variety, and Indian English, a L2 variety. According to Hawkins (1999), the processing cost of relativizing a noun phrase increases down the Accessibility Hierarchy (Subject > Direct Object> Indirect Object > Oblique > Genitive> Object of Comparison) proposed by Keenan and Comrie (1977). Subject relative clauses are thus easier to process than direct object relatives, and so on. The results of a corpus study of the British and Indian components of the International Corpus of English show that the Accessibility Hierarchy has an indirect effect on the production of relative clauses in British English and Indian English: whereas the distribution of relative clauses with respect to the hierarchy is very similar in both varieties, the number of complex relatives, i.e., with coordination or further embedding, decreases in the lower positions in Indian English. These results thus suggest that language contact plays a significant role in relative clause use and accounts for certain differences between L1 and L2 varieties of English in this grammatical domain. |
Sponsor: | For generous financial support, I am grateful to the European Regional Development Fund and the following institutions: Regional Government of Galicia (Directorate General for Scientific and Technological Promotion, grant GPC2014/004); Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (grants FFI2014-52188-P and BES-2015-071233). |
URI: | http://dx.doi.org/10.14198/raei.2017.30.06 | http://hdl.handle.net/10045/72172 |
ISSN: | 0214-4808 | 2171-861X (Internet) |
DOI: | 10.14198/raei.2017.30.06 |
Language: | eng |
Type: | info:eu-repo/semantics/article |
Rights: | This document is under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license (CC BY 4.0) |
Peer Review: | si |
Publisher version: | http://raei.ua.es/ |
Appears in Collections: | Revista Alicantina de Estudios Ingleses - 2017, No. 30 |
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