Comparative Studies in Australian and New Zealand English Varieties of English Around the World (VEAW) A companion monograph series devoted to sociolinguistic research, surveys and annotated text collections. The VEAW series is divided into two parts: a text series contains carefully selected specimens of Englishes documenting the coexistence of regional, social, stylistic and diachronic varieties in a particular region; and a general series which contains outstanding studies in the field, collections of papers devoted to one region or written by one scholar, bibliographies and other reference works. General Editor Edgar W. Schneider Department of English & American Studies University of Regensburg Universitätsstraße 31 D-93053 REGENSBURG Germany [email protected] Editorial Assistant Alexander Kautzsch Editorial Board Laurie Bauer Wellington Manfred Görlach Cologne Rajend Mesthrie Cape Town Peter Trudgill Fribourg Walt Wolfram Raleigh, NY General Series, Volume G39 Comparative Studies in Australian and New Zealand English. Grammar and beyond Edited by Pam Peters, Peter Collins and Adam Smith Comparative Studies in Australian and New Zealand English Grammar and beyond Edited by Pam Peters Macquarie University Peter Collins University of NSW Adam Smith Macquarie University John Benjamins Publishing Company Amsterdam / Philadelphia TM The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of 8 American National Standard for Information Sciences – Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ansi z39.48-1984. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Comparative studies in Australian and New Zealand English grammar and beyond / edited by Pam Peters, Peter Collins, Adam Smith.        p. cm. (Varieties of English Around the World, issn 0172-7362 ; v. G39) Includes bibliographical references and index. 1.  English language--Australia--Grammar. 2.  English language--New Zealand-- Grammar. 3.  Grammar, Comparative and general. 4.  Language and culture.  I. Peters, Pam. II. Collins, Peter, 1950- III. Smith, Adam Michael.  PE3601.C66 2009  427'.994--dc22 2009011793 isbn 978 90 272 4899 2 (hb; alk. paper) isbn 978 90 272 8940 7 (eb) © 2009 – John Benjamins B.V. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, by print, photoprint, microfilm, or any other means, without written permission from the publisher. John Benjamins Publishing Co. · P.O. Box 36224 · 1020 me Amsterdam · The Netherlands John Benjamins North America · P.O. Box 27519 · Philadelphia pa 19118-0519 · usa Table of contents List of abbreviations vii List of contributors ix Prologue 1 Peter Collins section i. Morphology Irregular verbs: Regularization and ongoing variability 13 Pam Peters Pronoun forms 31 Heidi Quinn Hypocoristics in New Zealand and Australian English 49 Dianne Bardsley & Jane Simpson section ii. Verbs and verb phrases Modals and quasi-modals 73 Peter Collins The perfect and the preterite in Australian and New Zealand English 89 Johan Elsness The progressive 115 Peter Collins The mandative subjunctive in spoken English 125 Pam Peters Light verbs in Australian, New Zealand and British English 139 Adam Smith section iii. Nouns and noun phrases Non-numerical quantifiers 159 Adam Smith vi Table of contents From chairman to chairwoman to chairperson: Exploring the move from sexist usages to gender neutrality 183 Janet Holmes, Robert Sigley & Agnes Terraschke section iv. Clauses and sentences Concord with collective nouns in Australian and New Zealand English 207 Marianne Hundt No in the lexicogrammar of English 225 Pam Peters & Yasmin Funk Zero complementizer, syntactic context, and regional variety 243 Kate Kearns Infinitival and gerundial complements 263 Christian Mair Commas and connective adverbs 277 Peter G. Peterson section v. Discourse Information-packaging constructions 295 Peter Collins Like and other discourse markers 317 Jim Miller Final but in Australian English conversation 339 Jean Mulder, Sandra A. Thompson & Cara Penry Williams Swearing 361 Keith Allan & Kate Burridge Epilogue 387 Pam Peters Index 401 List of abbreviations ACE Australian Corpus of English (data from 1986) AmE American English ART Australian Radio Talkback corpus (data from 2004–6) AusE Australian English B-LOB Before LOB corpus (British English from the 1930s) BNC British National Corpus (data from 1975–1990s) BrE British English Brown Brown Corpus (American English from the 1960s) COLT Corpus of London Teenager Language (spoken data from 1993) FLOB Freiburg corpus modeled on LOB (with data from the 1990s) Frown Freiburg corpus modeled on Brown (with data from the 1990s) ICE International Corpus of English IDG indigenized (variety of English) i.e. an “outer circle” English LOB Lancaster—Oslo/Bergen corpus (British English from the 1960s) NZE New Zealand English SBC Santa Barbara Corpus of Spoken American English (data from the 1990s) STL settler (variety of English) i.e. an “inner circle” English WSC Wellington Spoken Corpus (New Zealand English from the 1980s) WWC Wellington Written Corpus (New Zealand English from 1986) List of contributors Keith Allan Kate Kearns Monash University, University of Canterbury, Melbourne Christchurch [email protected] [email protected] Dianne Bardsley Christian Mair Victoria University, University of Freiburg, Wellington Germany [email protected] [email protected] Kate Burridge Jim Miller Monash University, University of Edinburgh Melbourne [email protected] [email protected] Peter Collins Jean Mulder University of New South Wales University of Melbourne [email protected] [email protected] Johan Elsness Cara Penry Williams University of Oslo, University of Melbourne Norway [email protected] [email protected] Pam Peters Yasmin Funk Macquarie University, Macquarie University, Sydney Sydney [email protected] [email protected] Janet Holmes Peter G. Peterson Victoria University, University of Newcastle, Wellington NSW [email protected] [email protected] Marianne Hundt Heidi Quinn University of Zurich, University of Canterbury, Switzerland Christchurch [email protected] [email protected]