Change in Contemporary English

Abstract

Based on the systematic analysis of large amounts of computer-readable text, this book shows how the English language has been changing in the recent past, often in unexpected and previously undocumented ways. The study is based on a group of matching corpora, known as the 'Brown family' of corpora, supplemented by a range of other corpus materials, both written and spoken, drawn mainly from the later twentieth century. Among the matters receiving particular attention are the influence of American English on British English, the role of the press, the 'colloquialization' of written English, and a wide range of grammatical topics, including the modal auxiliaries, progressive, subjunctive, passive, genitive and relative clauses. These subjects build an overall picture of how English grammar is changing, and the linguistic and social factors that are contributing to this process.

Non-empirically Based Teaching Materials Can be Positively Misleading: A Case of Modal Auxiliary Verbs in Malaysian English Language Textbooks

“…An analysis of the spoken part of five Malaysian English textbooks' coverage of modal auxiliary verbs reveals a mismatch between the corpus-based cross register studies on modal auxiliaries and what is covered in the textbook (Figure 2). Contrary to what was assumed about the higher share of modal auxiliary verbs in spoken rather than written English (Coates, 1983;Kennedy, 2002;Leech et al, 2009;Mindt, 1955;Quirk et al, 1985;Romer, 2004a ) the data indicate that in this spoken mini-corpus, speech contains much less shares of modal auxiliary verbs than writing. If we look at the frequencies of individual forms of modal auxiliary verbs in textbook's conversation, we can clearly see that there is a considerable difference between the two registers for all modals.…”

“…Will which is supposed to be given the most emphasis in a pedagogic corpus reaches second while can that is ranked third in three major corpora has been overused by standing as the most frequent modal used in the textbook. Indeed, can is well overrepresented throughout Form 1 to 5 textbooks because although it is among the top four used modal auxiliaries, it is well below will and would in terms of frequency occurrence (Leech et al 2009;Biber et al 1998). It is interesting to see that although based on KBSM curriculum modals must, will, may, might and should are the ones that are stipulated to be taught in Form 1, Form 4 and Form 5 textbook, still modal can is used more than any other modals.…”

“…Finally, shall as the lowest frequent modal is lopsided throughout Malaysian textbooks. Although shall has been reported by Biber et al (1998) and Leech et al (2009) to be obsolete in current English, according to Mindt (1995) and Romer (2004a) the prediction meaning of shall (31%) is among one of the most widely used meanings in spoken British English. In the ESL environment, students need to be exposed to the language as much as possible to gain sufficient input and exposure.…”

Curious Legal Conditionals

“…Given the contrast between the survival of SHALL in drafting contracts and legislation (Goźdź-Roszkowski forthcoming) and its almost complete disappearance from other kinds of written and spoken texts during the previous century (Leech et al (2009), it is no wonder that it has attracted quite much research. Based on extensive corpora scholars have studied the development of SHALL as a modal verb and future marker, e.g.…”

“…: van Ostade (1985), Arnovick (1990), Gotti et al (2002) or Wischer (2006), its current standing in English, e.g. : Gotti (2003), Bergs (2008) or Leech et al (2009), the rise of SHALL in legal English, e.g. : Rissanen (2000) and its present use in legal drafting, e.g.…”