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Conference presentations by Susanne Wagner

ICAME 39, Tampere, Finland, 2018

UKLVC 11, Cardiff, 2017

Pretty good but so bad: on the role of ΔP or cueness in pretty + adjective bigrams in GloWbE Ampl... more Pretty good but so bad: on the role of ΔP or cueness in pretty + adjective bigrams in GloWbE Amplifiers modifying adjectives are certainly among the most prominent means of intensification in English. For the past few decades, very, really and so seem to have shared the 'intensification labour' in terms of relative frequency. Pretty is a relative newcomer, mostly associated with (North) American English cf. 1-3).

ICAME 38, Prague, 2017

Among the most prominent means of intensifying in English are amplifiers modifying adjectives. Fo... more Among the most prominent means of intensifying in English are amplifiers modifying adjectives. For the past few decades, very (1), really (2) and so (3) seem to have shared the top slots in terms of relative frequency. Pretty (4) is a relative newcomer, mostly associated with American English (Biber et al. 1999).

Methods in Dialectology XVI (Tachikawa), 2017

conference panel at SS21, Murcia

Frequency effects in English null subjectsdon't ignore the underdog!

From dialect feature to local identity marker: Converging patterns of verbal -s in two Newfoundla... more From dialect feature to local identity marker: Converging patterns of verbal -s in two Newfoundland communities Variable verbal -s (as in I goes there) has remained relatively stable in its sociolinguistic distribution around the world. Dialects of English tend to share social constraints on -s, including age (nonstandard -s declines in apparent time, part of a broader trend toward loss of regionally marked features), gender (males tend to favour the non-standard variant, a typical finding) and regional origin (in the case of dialect comparison). Linguistic constraints, on the other hand, vary in their application across dialects. In one of its homelands (present-day Scotland and northern England), verbal -s is generally constrained by the Northern Subject Rule (pronoun subjects adjacent to the verb disfavour -s, other subjects favour). In other dialects, variation is constrained by verb semantics, with habitual and non-stative contexts favouring -s. Previous studies have found that the relative contribution of these constraint types may vary, but the constraint ranking within each factor group generally remains constant.

The variable realisation of verbal -s has been investigated in a large number of English varietie... more The variable realisation of verbal -s has been investigated in a large number of English varieties, including traditional dialects as well as pidgins and creoles (see Clarke 1997 and van Herk & Walker 2005 for literature reviews). Its use is commonly associated with habituality, contrasting with the non-habitual bare form. However, a number of syntactic constraints, chiefly among them the Northern Subject Rule, also play a role, although to differing degrees in different varieties.

While it is well-known that (pronominal) subjects can be omitted not only in pro-drop languages s... more While it is well-known that (pronominal) subjects can be omitted not only in pro-drop languages such as Russian or Italian, but also in certain registers of English (e.g. diaries), non-overt subjects in casual spoken English have not (yet) received any substantial attention in the literature. One of the reasons for this is certainly the overall low frequency of null subjects in colloquial English, averaging a mere 5%. Those studies that include data from English have generally reduced the total of overt subjects to a more manageable total by using an extraction procedure for overt subjects that created an artificial distribution of 1 to 2 of null to overt subjects (e.g. Harvie 1998; Leroux & Jarmasz 2006). While extraction and coding is greatly simplified by this, side effects of such a procedure are immediate and should be carefully assessed.

ICAME 39, Tampere, Finland, 2018

UKLVC 11, Cardiff, 2017

ICAME 38, Prague, 2017

Methods in Dialectology XVI (Tachikawa), 2017

conference panel at SS21, Murcia

Frequency effects in English null subjectsdon't ignore the underdog!

Topics in English Linguistics, 2005

… on the English Language in the …, 2004

... introduction it is stated that 'it may well be that syntax will perforce remain the ... more ... introduction it is stated that 'it may well be that syntax will perforce remain the Cinderella of Middle English dialectology' (McIntosh et al ... to record items of the dialect lexicon before they disappeared, ultimately serving as input for the English Dialect Dictionary (EDD; Wright 1898 ...

Topics in English Linguistics, 2005

... Kortmann, Bernd, Edgar W. Schneider in collaboration with Kate Burridge, Rajend Mesthrie, and... more ... Kortmann, Bernd, Edgar W. Schneider in collaboration with Kate Burridge, Rajend Mesthrie, and Clive Upton (eds.) 2004 A Handbook of Varieties of English, Vol. ... In Determinants of Linguistic Variation, Günter Rohdenburg, and Britta Mondorf (eds.), 531554. ...

Eighteenth-Century English: Ideology and Change, 2010

A Comparative Grammar of British English Dialects: Agreement, Gender, Relative Clauses. , 2005

Creating and Digitizing Language Corpora, 2007

While it is well-known that (pronominal) subjects can be omitted not only in pro-drop languages s... more While it is well-known that (pronominal) subjects can be omitted not only in pro-drop languages such as Russian or Italian, but also in certain registers of English (e.g. diaries), non-overt subjects in casual spoken English have not yet been analysed in any detail. This paper will discuss the factors possibly influencing the choice of overt or non-overt pronouns in a recently collected corpus of vernacular Newfoundland English. The results of variable rule analyses of some 10,000 (overt and null) tokens show that the presence/absence of pronouns is not solely dependent on factors previously discussed in literature on pro-drop languages. Rather, features such as VP length which are known to have an impact on subject realisation in first language acquisition (cf. e.g. Bloom 1990) should also be taken into consideration. It can be shown that complexity in one part of the sentence such as a complex multi-word/multi-morpheme verb phrase favours simplicity such as null subjects in anothe...

Linguistica Atlantica, Sep 30, 2014

English World Wide, 2007

This article discusses possible reasons for the (near-)absence of a feature from Newfoundland Ver... more This article discusses possible reasons for the (near-)absence of a feature from Newfoundland Vernacular English (NVE) that was present in both of its major donor dialects, namely the varieties of Southwest (SW) England and Ireland. Unstressed periphrasticdo, the feature under investigation, is used as a tense carrier and marker of habituality in Southwestern dialects and — in a more restricted context — in Irish English (IrE). Modern NVE shows only traces of periphrasticdo. All of these uses are (a) of IrE origin and (b) recessive (cf. e.g. Clarke 2004b: 305). If all settlers had used the feature at the time they emigrated to Newfoundland, it is extremely unlikely that it should have been lost in NVE, one of the most conservative varieties of English, but maintained, at least to a certain extent, in the much less conservative modern varieties of SW English and IrE. This paper suggests possible stages of the life of periphrasticdoin Newfoundland. With the help of evidence from literature on SW English dialects from the 19th and 20th centuries, it is argued that it is unlikely that all settlers weredousers when arriving in Newfoundland. Moreover, a competing variant, generalized verbal‑s, a pattern typical of NVE to the present day, existed in some of the settlers’ grammars (both SW English and IrE). It is assumed that periphrasticdo, if it ever existed in NVE in those uses typical of SW English dialects, has been eradicated through contact with dialects that either used generalized‑sor a more standard system.

Topics in English Linguistics, 2005

Ideology and Change, 2010

International Journal of Corpus Linguistics 24:4, 2019

Situated at the interface of several sub-disciplines (corpus linguistics, World Englishes, variat... more Situated at the interface of several sub-disciplines (corpus linguistics, World Englishes, variationist sociolinguistics), this study investigates patterns of adjectival amplification (very good, so glad, pretty cool) in the Corpus of Global Web-Based English (GloWbE). It highlights regional distributions/ preferences of amplifier-adjective 2-grams and the idiosyncratic status of certain bigrams according to their frequency status. Globally, clear regional preferences in amplification patterns as well as possible trends concerning change are identified. Regionally, L1 varieties contrast starkly with some regions (Africa, Indian subcontinent) but – maybe unexpectedly – not with others (Southeast Asia). The results offer insights into current trajectories of change concerning the investigated amplifiers in certain regions and 2-grams: North American varieties are leading a trend away from very towards so and possibly pretty in the future.

Lingua, 2017

Previous work on adjectival intensification (e.g. very good, so glad, really great) has mostly fo... more Previous work on adjectival intensification (e.g. very good, so glad, really great) has mostly focussed on the adverbs in question, showing that different (native) varieties of English display distinctive preferences concerning intensifier choice. However, little is known so far about the role that intensifier-adjective units (bigrams) play. The present paper offers a first contribution to fill this research gap by focussing on a data-driven approach to (mostly) high-frequency bigrams and their collocational behaviour in the Corpus of Global Web-based English (GloWbE). Asymmetric and symmetric measures are employed to establish attraction and repulsion between adverb and adjective, while highlighting regional similarities and differences.

English Language and Linguistics, 2016

While null subjects are a well-researched phenomenon in pro-drop languages like Italian or Sp... more While null subjects are a well-researched phenomenon in pro-drop languages like Italian or Spanish, they have not received much attention in non-pro-drop languages such as English, where they are traditionally associated with particular (written) genres such as diaries or are discussed under a broader umbrella term such as situational ellipsis. However, examples such as the one in the title – while certainly not frequent – are commonly encountered in colloquial speech, with first-person singular tokens outnumbering any other person.

This article investigates the linguistic and non-linguistic factors influencing the (non-) realisation of first-person singular subjects in a corpus of colloquial English. The variables found to contribute to the observed variation are drawn from a variety of linguistic domains and follow up on research conducted in such different fields as first language acquisition (FLA), cognitive linguistics, discourse analysis, sociolinguistics and language variation and change. Of particular interest is the finding regarding the link between null subjects and complexity of the verb phrase, which patterns in a clearly linear fashion: the more complex the verb phrase, the more likely is a null realisation. Not discussed in this form before, this finding, given its high significance and its robustness in light of alternative coding, may prove to be an important candidate for inclusion in future studies on (English) null subjects.

Pronominal systems are among those with the highest degree of variability in varieties of English... more Pronominal systems are among those with the highest degree of variability in varieties of English. This may in part be due to the fact that many standard English varieties display some irregularity which is often 'remedied' in speech and/or informal written registers of both native (L1) and non-native (L2) varieties.

chapter 9 of my Habilitationsschrift (post-doctoral thesis), TU Chemnitz 2012

Pronoun Exchange - a feature of English dialects?, 2002

Although English dialects have been analysed for centuries, little or no attention has been paid ... more Although English dialects have been analysed for centuries, little or no attention has been paid to grammatical and/or syntactical variation until fairly recently. The Survey of English Dialects (Orton et al. 1962-1971; SED) and most of the other major publications concentrated on variation in (a) phonology and (b) lexis, many being based on questionnaire evaluation.
With the advent of modern technology, many dialectologists started to make use of tape recorders etc. to record conversations with or among dialect speakers. The advantage of such a procedure is basically that it results in long stretches of (largely2) uninhibited speech, which can be analysed not only in terms of phonetic and lexical variation, but also allow a closer look at variation in grammar. Obviously, analysis of grammatical variation requires a much larger amount of data than phonetic or lexical analysis – every sentence contains usually just one verb that is marked for tense and aspect, whereas a particular sound can usually be found for a number of times in the same amount of data. With the help of machine-readable corpora, syntactic analysis has been made yet a bit easier – words and even parts of words can be searched for in combination, which facilitates the process of analysis immensely. However, although many grammatical features can be searched for even in an untagged corpus (e.g. double or multiple negation with a combination search of .*n't + no.*3), other still have to be found by simply reading through texts, as they involve sequences that cannot be formulated as simple word or word part searches.
The phenomenon of pronoun exchange is one of these rather difficult-to-find features; this paper will look at this feature, its history, present-day situation, and try to make certain claims about its future.

unpublished draft, 2019

The title quote, taken from a Nigerian newspaper (NOW 17-05-07, Davies 2013a), exemplifies the cr... more The title quote, taken from a Nigerian newspaper (NOW 17-05-07, Davies 2013a), exemplifies the crux of gender neutrality in English (cf. Ehrlich & King 1994, Hellinger 2001, Romaine 1999): while a large class of occupational nouns have been marked for gender in a number of different ways for centuries (e.g. steward vs. stewardess, chairman vs. chairwomen, doctor vs. woman/female doctor), over the past decades, a drive towards gender neutrality in language to mirror a changed perspective of occupational predilections has resulted in the emergence of gender neutral terms such as-person compounds or, ultimately, the complete loss of any signs of a +human form (e.g. chair; e.g. Holmes & Sigley 2002, Holmes et al. 2009). However, while a certain amount of 'democratisation' (Farrelly & Seoane 2012) seems to have taken place with nouns, pronouns in general and personal pronouns in particular are still lagging behind: In the title quote, the gender neutrality of chairperson is immediately revoked by the subsequent use of 'old-fashioned' she only two words onward rather than more modern singular they ("the chairperson said they …"). Based on over 3,000 tokens extracted from GloWbE (Davies 2013a), the present paper analyses the patterns of use regarding the correlation between the type of chair noun employed (gender-marked chairman, chairwoman; gender-neutral chairperson, also vis-à-vis spokesperson; non-human chair) and other factors such as the mention of a (genderidentifiable?) name (first, last) and pronoun choices (he, she, they; other gender-markable pronouns such as possessives) in 16 varieties of English worldwide. The major question to be answered is whether 'democratisation' patterns differ in inner and outer circle varieties. The results, supported by significant differences in conditional inference trees, are surprising in that they indicate that the use of chair-nouns follows a continuum-like pattern: while only chair is truly gender-neutral in inner circle (L1) varieties, the use of chairperson in the outer circle is not gender-neutral at all, but rather marked as +female, whereas chairs are (almost exclusively) male. Moreover, in only a small minority of instances can the gender of the referent not be inferred from the immediate context, counteracting any attempts at gender neutrality. A relative lack of instances of chair to denote women in outer circle varieties compared to inner circle varieties supports the suggestion that chairperson is the most likely label to be used amongst outer circle countries to signify female presence. Furthermore, linguistic undermining of the gender-neutral functionality of chair in outer circle varietiesfor instance by including +female pronouns or terms of address such as Mrs/Ms-compared to a conscious maintenance of this function in inner circle varieties suggests the label loses its status as a true generic in outer circle varieties of English. Overall, the results indicate that speakers of inner circle varieties are more aware of the gender-neutral functionality of chair as an occupational role, a notion which has not been extended yet to the outer circle.

‘Of Varying Language and Opposing Creed’: New Insights into Late Modern English. , 2007