Syntactic complexity and language contact: A corpus-based study of relative clauses in British English and Indian English

Iván Tamaredo

doi:10.14198/raei.2017.30.06

Authors

Iván Tamaredo University of Santiago de Compostela, Spain

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.14198/raei.2017.30.06

Keywords:

Syntactic complexity, Language contact, Relative clauses, British English, Indian English, Variation

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.

References

Arnold, Jennifer, Thomas Wasow, Anthony Losongco and Ryan Ginstrom (2000): “Heaviness vs. newness: The effects of structural complexity and discourse status on constituent ordering”. Language, 76(1): 28-55.

Biber, Douglas; Stig Johansson, Geoffrey Leech, Susan Conrad and Edward Finegan (1999): Longman Grammar of Spoken and Written English. Essex: Longman.

Dahl, Östen (2004): The Growth and Maintenance of Linguistic Complexity. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Dahl, Östen (2009): “Testing the assumptions of complexity invariance: The case of Elfdalian and Swedish”. In G. Sampson, D. Gil and P. Trudgill, ed., Language Complexity as an Evolving Variable. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 50-63.

Denison, David and Marianne Hundt (2013): “Defining relatives”. Journal of English Linguistics, 41(2): 135-167.

Diessel, Holger (2009): “On the role of frequency and similarity in the acquisition of subject and non-subject relative clauses”. In T. Givón and M. Shibatani, ed., Syntactic Complexity: Diachrony, Acquisition, Neuro-cognition, Evolution. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 251-276.

Diessel, Holger and Michael Tomasello (2005): “A new look at the acquisition of relative clauses”. Language, 81(1): 1-25.

Givón, Talmy (2009): The Genesis of Syntactic Complexity: Diachrony, Ontogeny, Neuro-Cognition, Evolution. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Gries, Stefan Th. (2004): HCFA 3.2. A program for R. Available at: <http://www.linguistics.ucsb.edu/faculty/stgries/>.

Gut, Ulrike and Lilian Coronel (2012): “Relatives worldwide”. In M. Hundt and U. Gut, ed., Mapping Unity and Diversity World-Wide: Corpus-based Studies of New Englishes. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 215-241.

Hawkins, John A. (1994): A Performance Theory of Order and Constituency. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Hawkins, John A. (1999): “Processing complexity and filler-gap dependencies across grammars”. Language, 75(2): 244-285.

Hawkins, John A. (2004): Efficiency and Complexity in Grammars. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Hilpert, Martin (2013): Constructional Change in English: Developments in Allomorphy, Word Formation, and Syntax. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Hofmann, Thomas (2005): “Variable vs. categorical effects: Preposition pied piping and stranding in British English relative clauses”. Journal of English Linguistics, 33(3): 257-297.

Huddleston, Rodney, Geoffrey K. Pullum, Laurie Bauer, Betty Birner, Ted Briscoe, Peter Collins, David Denison, David Lee, Anita Mittwoch, Geoffrey Nunberg, Frank Palmer, John Payne, Peter Peterson, Lesley Stirling and Gregory Ward (2002): The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Izumi, Shinichi (2003): “Processing difficulty in comprehension and production of relative Clauses by learners of English as a second language”. Language Learning, 53(2): 285-323.

Karlsson, Fred (2009): “Origin and maintenance of clausal embedding complexity”. In G. Sampson, D. Gil and P. Trudgill, ed., Language Complexity as an Evolving Variable. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 192-202.

Keenan, Edward and Bernard Comrie (1977): “Noun phrase accessibility and universal grammar”. Linguistic Inquiry, 8(1): 63-99.

Keenan, Edward and Bernard Comrie (1979): “Data on the noun phrase accessibility hierarchy”. Language, 55(2): 333-351.

Kortmann, Bernd and Benedikt Szmrecsanyi (2009): “World Englishes between simplification and complexification”. In L. Siebers and T. Hoffmann, ed., World Englishes – Problems, Properties and Prospects: Selected Papers from the 13th IAWE Conference. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 265-285.

Kortmann, Bernd and Benedikt Szmrecsanyi (2011): “Parameters of morphosyntactic variation in World Englishes: Prospects and limitations of searching for universals”. In P. Siemund, ed., Linguistic Universals and Language Variation. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter, 264-290.

Kusters, Wouter (2003): Linguistic Complexity: The Influence of Social Change on Verbal Inflection. Utrecht: LOT.

Kusters, Wouter (2008): “Complexity in linguistic theory, language learning and language change”. In M. Miestamo, K. Sinnemäki and F. Karlsson, ed., Language Complexity: Typology, Contact, Change. Amstredam: John Benjamins, 3-22.

Maas, Utz (2009): “Orality versus literacy as a dimension of complexity”. In G. Sampson, D. Gil and P. Trudgill, ed., Language Complexity as an Evolving Variable. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 164-177.

Matras, Yaron (2009): Language Contact. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

McWhorter, John H. (2001): “The world’s simplest grammars are creole grammars”. Linguistic Typology, 5(2-3): 125-166.

McWhorter, John H. (2007): Language Interrupted: Signs of Non-native Acquisition in Standard Language Grammar. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Miestamo, Matti (2008): “Grammatical complexity in a cross-linguistic perspective”. In M. Miestamo, K. Sinnemäki and F. Karlsson, ed., Language Complexity: Typology, Contact, Change. Amstredam: John Benjamins, 23-41.

Miestamo, Matti; Kaius Sinnemäki, and Fred Karlsson (2008): Language Complexity: Typology, Contact, Change. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Mukherjee, Joybrato (2007): “Steady states in the evolution of New Englishes: Present-day Indian English as an equilibrium”. Journal of English Linguistics, 35(2): 157-187.

Mukherjee, Joybrato and Stefan Gries (2009): “Collostructional nativization in World Englishes: Verb-construction associations in the International Corpus of English”. English World-Wide, 30(1): 27-51.

Parkvall, Mikael (2008): “The simplicity of creoles in a cross-linguistic perspective”. In M. Miestamo, K. Sinnemäki and F. Karlsson, ed., Language Complexity: Typology, Contact, Change. Amstredam: John Benjamins, 265-285.

R Core Development Team (2015): R: A Language and Environment for Statistical Computing. Viena: The R Foundation for Statistical Computing. URL: <http://www.R-project.org>.

Quirk, Randolph (1957): “Relative clauses in educated spoken English”. English Studies, 38(1-6): 97-109.

Quirk, Randolph, Sidney Greenbaum, Geoffrey Leech and Jan Svartvik (1985): A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language. Essex: Longman.

Sharma, Devyani (2010): “Indian English”. In B. Kortmann and K. Lunkenheimer, eds., The Mouton World Atlas of Variation in English. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter, 523-530.

Schneider, Edgar (2007): Postcolonial English: Varieties around the World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Schröter, Verena and Bernd Kortmann (2016): “Pronoun deletion in Hong Kong English and colloquial Singaporean English”. World Englishes, 35(2): 221-241.

Sinnemäki, Kaius (2009): “Complexity in core argument marking and population size”. In G. Sampson, D. Gil and P. Trudgill, eds., Language Complexity as an Evolving Variable. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 126-140.

Suárez-Gómez, Cristina (2014): “Relative clauses in Asian Englishes”. Journal of English Linguistics, 42(3): 245-268.

Suárez-Gómez, Cristina (2017): “Transparency and language contact in the nativization of relative clauses in World English”. English World-Wide, 38(2): 211-237.

Szmrecsanyi, Benedikt (2004): “On operationalizing syntactic complexity”. In G. Purnelle, C. Fairon and A. Dister, ed., Le poids des mots. Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Textual Data Statistical Analysis. Louvain-la-Neuve, March 10-12, 2004. Louvain-la-Neuve: Presses Universitaires de Louvain, 1032-1039.

Szmrecsanyi, Benedikt and Bernd Kortmann (2009a): “The morphosyntax of varieties of English worldwide: A quantitative perspective”. Lingua, 119(11): 1643-1663.

Szmrecsanyi, Benedikt and Bernd Kortmann (2009b): “Between simplification and complexification: Non-standard varieties of English around the world”. In G. Sampson, D. Gil and P. Trudgill, ed., Language Complexity as an Evolving Variable. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 64-79.

Szmrecsanyi, Benedikt and Bernd Kortmann (2012): “Introduction: linguistic complexity – Second language acquisition, indigenization, contact”. In B. Kortmann and B. Szmrecsanyi, ed., Linguistic Complexity: Second Language Acquisition, Indigenization, Contact. Berlin/Boston: Walter de Gruyter, 6-34.

Thomason, Sarah and Terrence Kaufmann (1988): Language Contact, Creolization, and Genetic Linguistics. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Tottie, Gunnel (1997): “Relatively speaking: Relative marker usage in the British National Corpus”. In T. Nevalainen and L. Kahlas-Tarkka, ed., To Explain the Present: Studies in the Changing English Language in Honour of Matti Rissanen. Helsinki: Société Néophilologique, 465-481.

Trudgill, Peter (2009): “Sociolinguistic yypology and complexification”. In G. Sampson, D. Gil and P. Trudgill, ed., Language Complexity as an Evolving Variable. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 98-109.

Trudgill, Peter (2011): Sociolinguistic Typology: Social Determinants of Linguistic Complexity, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Valdés, Guadalupe (2012): “Multilingualism”. Linguistic Society of America. Available at: <http://www.linguisticsociety.org/resource/multilingualism> [accessed 24 November 2017].

Wasow, Thomas (1997): “Remarks on grammatical weight”. Language Variation and Change, 9(1): 81-105.

Wasow, Thomas and Jennifer Arnold (2003): “Post-verbal constituent ordering in English”. In G. Rohdenburg and B. Mondorf, ed., Determinants of Grammatical Variation in English. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter, 119-154.