The conditional subjunctive

ICE vs GloWbE: Big data and corpus compilation

“…For this reason, this section studies the frequency of a series of Americanisms in both corpora. While previous studies on Americanisation have focused on grammatical variation (Meyerhoff & Niedzielski 2003;Schlüter 2009;Leech et al 2009), for the purposes of this article, I will mainly concentrate on spelling and vocabulary variation, inspired by Mukherjee's (2015: 35-6) preliminary findings on the frequencies of theater/theatre and color/colour. For this reason, a list of American and British features was compiled from sources such as Gramley andPätzold (2004 [1992]) and Oxford Dictionaries Online, among others.…”

Be that as it may: The Unremarkable Trajectory of the English Subjunctive in North American Speech

“…This misleadingly inflates subjunctive rates, since overtly marked tokens are, in actuality, vanishingly rare in comparison with their unmarked counterparts. To complicate matters, many (e.g., Auer, 2006Auer, , 2009Crawford, 2009; 110 L A U R A K A S T R O N I C A N D S H A N A P O P L A C K Fillbrandt, 2006;Grund & Walker, 2006;Mahmood et al, 2011;Övergaard, 1995;Peters, 2009;Schlüter, 2009;Schneider, 2000Schneider, , 2011 consider a variety of other modal variants to convey subjunctive "meaning" when embedded under a subjunctive trigger. Most prominent among them is should, but also sometimes included are can, could, will, might, and may, among others (see Huddleston & Pullum [2002:996-8] for further discussion).…”

“…There has been no dearth of studies of the English subjunctive since Övergaard's, in many varieties and corpora, and, while some results do not fully jibe with hers, there is nonetheless overwhelming consensus on the following points: the demise of MS has been reversed, AmE initiated and is still leading the change (currently at completion, according to Övergaard) and the subjunctive is now the "norm" in AmE (e.g., Algeo, 1992;Berg, Zingler, & Lohmann, 2019;Crawford, 2009;Hornoiu, 2019;Hundt, 1998aHundt, , 1998bHundt, , 2009Johansson & Norheim, 1988;Kjellmer, 2009;Leech, Hundt, Mair, & Smith, 2009;Nichols, 1987;Schlüter, 2009;Serpollet, 2001). 3 So widely have these findings been espoused that their implications have generated considerable scholarly attention to auxiliary issues like colonial lag, distinguishing revival from retention and the directionality of linguistic change (e.g., Hundt, 2009;Kjellmer, 2009;Leech et al, 2009;Serpollet, 2001).…”

Special issue on support strategies in language variation and change

“…The notion of ‘support’ has subsequently been extended to other variation phenomena, such as comparative alternation for which 26 processing-related factors have been shown to trigger more -support (see Mondorf 2009). Similarly, the broader concept of analytic support (Mondorf 2014) relates to functionally motivated choices between synthetic and analytic options: English comparative alternation: fuller vs more full (see Mondorf 2009) English genitive alternation: the topic's relevance vs the relevance of the topic (see Rosenbach 2003) English future tense alternation: will vs going to (see Szmrecsanyi 2003) English mood alternation: on the condition that he agree- ∅ (subjunctive) / on the condition that he agrees (indicative) vs on the condition that he should agree (modal periphrasis) (see Schlüter 2009) Spanish future tense alternation: comeré vs voy a comer (see Lastra & Butragueño 2010) German past tense alternation: Er brauchte Geld vs Er hat Geld gebraucht (see Jäger 1971) …”

“…English mood alternation: on the condition that he agree- ∅ (subjunctive) / on the condition that he agrees (indicative) vs on the condition that he should agree (modal periphrasis) (see Schlüter 2009)…”