Gramley, Stephan; P?tzold, Kurt-Michael. A Survey of Modern English
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13 English in Australia, New Zealand and South Africa 296
13.1 Australian English (AusE) 296
13.2 New Zealand English (NZE) 303
13.3 South African English (SAE) 307
13.4 Further reading 312
14 English as a second language (ESL) 314
14.1 English in Africa 316
14.2 English in Asia 324
14.3 Pidgin and Creole English 335
14.4 Further reading 347
Bibliography of dictionaries 349
General bibliography 355
Index 379
x CONTENTS
Illustrations
MAPS
10.1 Great Britain 233
10.2 Ireland 242
11.1 Canada 254
11.2 The United States 258
11.3 The Caribbean 266
13.1 Australia 298
13.2 New Zealand 304
13.3 South Africa 308
14.1 West Africa 318
14.2 East Africa 322
14.3 South Asia 326
14.4 Malaysia and Singapore 330
14.5 The Philippines 334
14.6 The Pacific Region 344
FIGURES
1.1 The relationship between GenE, StE and the traditional dialects 8
4.1 Examples of phoneme oppositions 68
4.2 Places of articulation 70
4.3 The short vowels 79
4.4 The long vowels 79
4.5 The closing diphthongs 80
4.6 The centring diphthongs 80
10.1 The Great Vowel Shift (GVS) in southern England and in northern
England and Scotland 236
10.2 Cockney diphthongs with a front second element in comparison
with RP 247
10.3 Cockney diphthongs with a back second element in comparison
with RP 247
11.1 The Northern Cities Chain Shift 256
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CONTENTS xi
13.1 The Southern Hemisphere Shift (Australia): the simple or short vowels 299
13.2 The Southern Hemisphere Shift (Australia): long vowels and
diphthongs 300
13.3 The Southern Hemisphere Shift (South Africa) 310
TABLES
2.1 Some dictionary entries for romance 25
2.2 Word formation processes 36
2.3 Processes of meaning change 43
3.1 Some fixed expressions in English 49
4.1 The consonants of English 71
4.2 Final and medial nasal-stop clusters 78
4.3 The vowels of General American and RP 81
4.4 Transcriptional systems 83
4.5 The ‘long’ vowels: spellings and pronunciation 93
4.6 The ‘short’ vowels: spellings and pronunciation 94
4.7 Words with /
ɑ/ in RP, but // in GenAm 94
4.8a–c The pronunciation of vowels before <r> 95
5.1 Noun inflections 99
5.2 The English personal pronouns 100
5.3 The pronouns who and which 101
5.4 Verb morphology 102
5.5 Verb types and the present perfect 120
5.6 Conditional clauses 127
5.7 Articles with count and non-count nouns 129
6.1 The categories of text types 153
7.1 Some discourse markers and their functions 190
14.1 The vowels of WAfrE in comparison with those of RP 320
14.2 The vowels of EAfrE in comparison with those of RP 324
14.3 The personal pronouns of Tok Pisin 346
xii ILLUSTRATIONS
Preface
A Survey of Modern English has grown, over twenty years, from a vague idea in the late
1970s, by way of our German language book Das moderne Englisch and the first, 1992
edition, to what it is here – a sometimes expanded, sometimes abridged and in any case
very differently structured volume.
This book is to a large extent the product of teaching the subjects treated here to several
generations of students in Bielefeld. We need, therefore, to thank them for reminding us
again and again to keep our feet on the ground and to remember what they need and
want: a view of the language related to what they know, explanations for phenomena that
are new for them, insights into structures difficult to analyse immediately, and descrip-
tions of varieties of English never before (or at least not extensively) encountered. It is
because of our students, whom we have constantly had in mind in writing, that we have
tried to be so relatively comprehensive and have made continual efforts to give straight-
forward explanations and to avoid too much unnecessary terminology. Where we have
used the terms of the field, we have tried to be clear about what they designate either by
using short glosses or by providing more extensive discussion.
We have also had our students in mind as we have made the often hard choices
about what to include and what to leave out. Needless to say, the choices could have
been different and not everyone who uses this book will agree fully. Nor, we know, will
everyone agree with us in all of our interpretations. We know this from our own experi-
ence with each other. For although we divided up the work more or less according to
themes and chapters (both: 1, 6, 12; KMP: 2, 3, 7; SG: 4, 5, 8, 9, 10, 11, 13, 14) and
have read and discussed each other’s work critically, there has not always been complete
agreement between the two of us.
For this edition, the text of A Survey of Modern English has been carefully and
completely revised. This has resulted in a tightened text, in which, however, nothing of
importance has been left out. Some old chapters have been amalgamated while others
have been substantially rewritten (new Chapters 1 and 2). All the chapters now end with
notes on further reading and there are full references in the bibliography at the end of the
book, which has been brought up to date to take account of developments over the past
eleven years. Another new feature is a separate bibliography with a classified list of
dictionaries and other reference works. We hope that our book in its new shape will
continue to be found useful as an introduction to modern English and would be grateful
for any suggestions for its improvement.
Extract from Absurd Person Singular by Alan Ayckbourne published by Chatto &
Windus. Used by permission of The Random House Group Limited.
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THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE xiii
Abbreviations
AAVE African American Vernacular English
AdjP Adjectival phrase
AdvP Adverbial phrase
AmE American English
AusE Australian English
BEV Black Vernacular English
BrE British English
CanE Canadian English
CaribE Caribbean English
EAfrE East African English
EFL English as a foreign language
ESL English as a second language
ESP English for special/specific purposes
EST English for science and technology
FN First name
GenAm General American
GenE General English
GVS Great Vowel Shift
H Hearer or High (language)
IndE Indian English
IrE Irish English
KT Kinship term
L Low (language)
LN Last name
ModE Modern English
NP Noun phrase
NZE New Zealand English
OE Old English
PE Pidgin English
PP Prepositional phrase
RP Received Pronunciation
S Speaker
SAE South African English
SingE Singaporean English
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THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE xv
SSE Scottish Standard English
StE Standard English
T Title
VP Verb phrase
WAfrE West African English
WAPE West African Pidgin English
xvi ABBREVIATIONS
Introduction
This is a book about the English language as it exists today. In Chapter 1 we set the scene
by looking at ways in which people view and have viewed English, what kinds of attitudes
they have towards the language and the type of variation which may be found in it.
It is also the only chapter which goes into the historical dimension of the language
at any length. Part 1 is the beginning of our survey of the current language, and each of
the chapters in it deals with an important aspect of the linguistic system of English: its
vocabulary (Chapter 2), including more complex lexical expression (Chapter 3); its
pronunciation and spelling (Chapter 4); and its grammar (Chapter 5).
However, English is more than just the linguistic system. It is also a language used
by all sorts of people in all sorts of situations, as we see in Part 2. How people use the
language – whoever or whatever they are – depends on what purposes they are pursuing
and who they are communicating with. This includes questions of medium, style, purpose,
addressee, subject matter and more. Two chapters deal with English as it is used in the
medium of writing (Chapter 6) and that of speech (Chapter 7). Chapter 5 also looks at
the use of English for specific purposes (ESP), especially the English for science and
technology (EST). English is used by the young and the old, by women and by men, by
the rich and the poor, by people whose skin colour is black, brown, yellow, red or white,
by illiterates and the highly educated, and so on. While it has not proven to be feasible
– in this framework – to look at all of these types of users specifically we have chosen
to touch on most of these (and some other categories) in an illustrative way in Chapter
8 and to deal extensively with one of them in Chapter 9.
Beyond the variation just touched on, English is also realized as an assortment of
national and regional varieties, as discussed in Chapters 10 to 14 of Part 3. Note that this
includes not only Britain and Ireland (Chapter 10), North America and the Caribbean
(Chapter 11), Australia, New Zealand and South Africa (Chapter 13), where there are
millions of native speakers of the language, but also East and West Africa and South and
Southeast Asia (Chapter 14), where there are relatively few native speakers but millions
of users of English as a second language. This even includes language forms which are
only marginally English, namely Pidgin and Creole English (also Chapter 14). We have
only drawn the line at looking at English as a foreign language, not because this does not
belong here, but because it is too mammoth a task to include in this book. Within all the
areas outlined above there is also a diversity of regional, social and ethnic varieties of
the language, and we have endeavoured to provide a glimpse of this as well.
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THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE xvii
Accessing the material in this book can be facilitated by making good use of the index.
But since this book is, of course, limited in what it can cover, we have tried to introduce
you to the study of English by supplying bibliographical material which not only docu-
ments many of our sources, but also gives a starting point for further reading and research
of your own. The bibliography of dictionaries is a new and useful addition to this volume
which lists various types of dictionaries, thesauruses, usage guides and dictionaries of
cultural knowledge. Both this bibliography and the general bibliography contain a short
selection of useful websites.
xviii INTRODUCTION
The English language
Standards and variation
1.1 STANDARD ENGLISH
There is little explicit agreement about just how Standard English (StE) should be
regarded. Almost everyone who works with English assumes at least implicitly that it
exists, but the descriptions made of it – for example, in dictionaries and grammar books,
to say nothing of manuals of style – indicate that there is a certain amount of diversity
in people’s ideas about StE. Yet, there are dictionaries, grammars and manuals of style,
and what they document – some would say prescribe – is what is most often understood
by StE (see 1.3 and 1.4).
A standard language is used as a model in the speech community at large. In 1.3 you
will read about four defining characteristics involved in the process of standardization:
selection, acceptance, elaboration and codification. That this is necessary is evident in the
cases of so many indigenous languages in Third World countries (see Chapter 14) which
for lack of a native standard have adopted a standardized European language
such as English, hoping in this way to ease the path to ‘economic prosperity, science
and technology, development and modernization, and the attractions of popular culture’
and paying the price of loss of self-expression and diminishment in feelings of cultural
worth (Bailey 1990: 87). The result is that ‘the old political empire with its metropolis
and colonial outposts has nearly disappeared, replaced by a cultural empire of “English-
speaking peoples”’ (ibid.: 83). This quotation indicates that codification can also be
overdone if English becomes the instrument of cultural imperialism. In order for English
to occupy a more deeply rooted position within post-colonial societies it must draw on
the everyday usage of its speakers, and this includes the recognition not only of non-
standard forms, but also of non-native ones. While this is a current which moves contrary
to StE, it is also one which is likely to invigorate English worldwide and make it more
flexible.
To look at it from another angle, StE is ‘the kind of English which draws least atten-
tion to itself over the widest area and through the widest range of usage’ (Quirk and Stein
1990: 123). It is most clearly associated with the written language, perhaps because
what is written and especially what is published is more permanent and is largely free
of inadvertent slips and is transmitted in spelling, which is far more standardized
than pronunciation is. Compare the relatively few AmE–BrE differences in orthography
(Chapter 12), but the numerous national and regional accent standards (Chapters 4,
10–14). Two criteria may be set to establish what ‘draws least attention to itself’ over
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Chapter 1