Exploring subtlety: collocational variation of the definite article in Inner and Outer Circle varieties of English

Article usage variation is often said to manifest itself in terms of token omission and insertion e.g. American take me to the hospital vs. British take me to Ø hospital. Quantitative evidence, however, can only offer little support for the extensiveness of such variation (e.g. Sand, 2004). Given th...

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Main Author:	Abdul Wahid, Mohd Ridwan
Format:	Conference or Workshop Item
Language:	English English
Published:	2012
Subjects:	P Philology. Linguistics PE English
Online Access:	http://irep.iium.edu.my/29122/ http://irep.iium.edu.my/29122/1/ICLLICRidwan_Wahid.pptx http://irep.iium.edu.my/29122/2/icllicprogramme_3nov_.pdf

id	iium-29122
recordtype	eprints
spelling	iium-291222013-04-18T07:26:53Z http://irep.iium.edu.my/29122/ Exploring subtlety: collocational variation of the definite article in Inner and Outer Circle varieties of English Abdul Wahid, Mohd Ridwan P Philology. Linguistics PE English Article usage variation is often said to manifest itself in terms of token omission and insertion e.g. American take me to the hospital vs. British take me to Ø hospital. Quantitative evidence, however, can only offer little support for the extensiveness of such variation (e.g. Sand, 2004). Given that syntactic variation in different varieties of English is rarely categorical in that one form exists in one variety but absent in another (e.g. Kortmann, 2006), this paper seeks to explore an aspect of the subtlety of article use variation by describing differences in collocational patterns of the in eight varieties of English available in the International Corpus of English: British, American, Australian, New Zealand, Indian, Singaporean, Philippine and Kenyan Englishes (Greenbaum and Nelson, 1996). Following Kachru (1982), the eight varieties are divided into two groups: a four-member Inner Circle and a four-member Outer Circle. The paper will show that while there are a number of common high-frequency collocates of the quite naturally shared by the varieties, they also crucially demonstrate preferences for different complementation patterns at two- and multiple-word levels – arguably a type of variation that is not visible in terms of frequency. More importantly the Inner Circle varieties are shown to share more complementation patterns among them, demonstrating greater stability in terms of variation. The Outer Circle varieties, on the other hand, are found to display a higher degree of individual creativity in their complementation patterns. It will be argued that some of the heterogeneity found in the Outer Circle can be attributed to nativisation. Social-cultural content appears to be the best factor to explain a large number of the variety-specific collocations. 2012-11-07 Conference or Workshop Item PeerReviewed application/pdf en http://irep.iium.edu.my/29122/1/ICLLICRidwan_Wahid.pptx application/pdf en http://irep.iium.edu.my/29122/2/icllicprogramme_3nov_.pdf Abdul Wahid, Mohd Ridwan (2012) Exploring subtlety: collocational variation of the definite article in Inner and Outer Circle varieties of English. In: International Conference on Linguistics, Literature, and Culture 2012 (ICLLIC 2012), 7 - 9 November 2012, Park Royal Hotel Penang. (Unpublished)
repository_type	Digital Repository
institution_category	Local University
institution	International Islamic University Malaysia
building	IIUM Repository
collection	Online Access
language	English English
topic	P Philology. Linguistics PE English
spellingShingle	P Philology. Linguistics PE English Abdul Wahid, Mohd Ridwan Exploring subtlety: collocational variation of the definite article in Inner and Outer Circle varieties of English
description	Article usage variation is often said to manifest itself in terms of token omission and insertion e.g. American take me to the hospital vs. British take me to Ø hospital. Quantitative evidence, however, can only offer little support for the extensiveness of such variation (e.g. Sand, 2004). Given that syntactic variation in different varieties of English is rarely categorical in that one form exists in one variety but absent in another (e.g. Kortmann, 2006), this paper seeks to explore an aspect of the subtlety of article use variation by describing differences in collocational patterns of the in eight varieties of English available in the International Corpus of English: British, American, Australian, New Zealand, Indian, Singaporean, Philippine and Kenyan Englishes (Greenbaum and Nelson, 1996). Following Kachru (1982), the eight varieties are divided into two groups: a four-member Inner Circle and a four-member Outer Circle. The paper will show that while there are a number of common high-frequency collocates of the quite naturally shared by the varieties, they also crucially demonstrate preferences for different complementation patterns at two- and multiple-word levels – arguably a type of variation that is not visible in terms of frequency. More importantly the Inner Circle varieties are shown to share more complementation patterns among them, demonstrating greater stability in terms of variation. The Outer Circle varieties, on the other hand, are found to display a higher degree of individual creativity in their complementation patterns. It will be argued that some of the heterogeneity found in the Outer Circle can be attributed to nativisation. Social-cultural content appears to be the best factor to explain a large number of the variety-specific collocations.
format	Conference or Workshop Item
author	Abdul Wahid, Mohd Ridwan
author_facet	Abdul Wahid, Mohd Ridwan
author_sort	Abdul Wahid, Mohd Ridwan
title	Exploring subtlety: collocational variation of the definite article in Inner and Outer Circle varieties of English
title_short	Exploring subtlety: collocational variation of the definite article in Inner and Outer Circle varieties of English
title_full	Exploring subtlety: collocational variation of the definite article in Inner and Outer Circle varieties of English
title_fullStr	Exploring subtlety: collocational variation of the definite article in Inner and Outer Circle varieties of English
title_full_unstemmed	Exploring subtlety: collocational variation of the definite article in Inner and Outer Circle varieties of English
title_sort	exploring subtlety: collocational variation of the definite article in inner and outer circle varieties of english
publishDate	2012
url	http://irep.iium.edu.my/29122/ http://irep.iium.edu.my/29122/1/ICLLICRidwan_Wahid.pptx http://irep.iium.edu.my/29122/2/icllicprogramme_3nov_.pdf
first_indexed	2023-09-18T20:42:44Z
last_indexed	2023-09-18T20:42:44Z
_version_	1777409473388740608

Exploring subtlety: collocational variation of the definite article in Inner and Outer Circle varieties of English

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