Epicentres in World Englishes: empirical diachronic studies of present-day South Asian Englishes

世界英语的震中：当今南亚英语的实证历时研究

• 批准号: 456646144
• 负责人: Dr. Tobias Bernaisch
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: Institut für Anglistik
• 依托单位国家: 德国
• 项目类别: Research Grants
• 资助国家: 德国
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://gepris.dfg.de/gepris/projekt/456646144?language=en
• 关键词: Epicentres; World; Englishes; empirical; diachronic

This project dedicates itself to determining the extent to which short-term diachronic linguistic change in Anglophone South Asia comprising Bangladeshi, Indian, Maldivian, Nepali, Pakistani and Sri Lankan English is empirically and sociolinguistically reconcilable with a linguistic epicentre of the region. The concept of a linguistic epicentre accounts for linguistic commonalities of several varieties in a given region by suggesting that these shared linguistic structures originate in a model variety of the region – its linguistic epicentre – and subsequently permeate to neighbour varieties of the epicentre, which integrate and establish them. With a focus on South Asian Englishes, three research gaps motivate this project: a) the lack of multifactorial empirical research into South Asian Englishes, b) the lack of diachronic studies in World Englishes in general and South Asian Englishes in particular and c) the insufficient empirical research into linguistic epicentres. Relevant contributions to the closing of these research gaps will be devised with the help of a corpus environment consisting of short-term diachronic newspaper texts representing the six South Asian Englishes – as well as American and British English for control purposes. Short-term diachronic linguistic change will be studied at the structural interface between lexis and grammar, which is a central indicator for the development of postcolonial Englishes, by conducting multifactorial analyses of and devising statistical models for the alternations covering a) analytic vs. synthetic adjective comparison, b) mandative subjunctive vs. should construction, c) particle placement and d) genitives. These short-term diachronic structural observations will be complemented with sociolinguistic profiles of the individual South Asian Englishes – with a particular focus on determining their evolutionary status – and their connections with one another to ultimately offer an empirically and sociolinguistically reliable evaluation of the extent to which the notion of a linguistic epicentre explains short-term diachronic linguistic developments in South Asian Englishes.

该项目致力于确定南亚英语国家（包括孟加拉国语、印度语、马尔代夫语、尼泊尔语、巴基斯坦语和斯里兰卡语）的短期历时性语言变化在多大程度上在经验和社会语言学上与该地区的语言中心相协调。语言震中的概念解释了特定地区几个变体的语言共性，表明这些共同的语言结构起源于该地区的一个模式变体——它的语言震中——随后渗透到震中的邻近变体，这些变体整合并建立了它们。以南亚英语为重点，有三个研究缺口促使本项目：a)缺乏对南亚英语的多因素实证研究；b)缺乏对世界英语的总体研究，特别是南亚英语的历时研究；c)对语言震中的实证研究不足。在语料库环境的帮助下，将设计出对弥补这些研究差距的相关贡献，该语料库环境包括代表六种南亚英语的短期历时报纸文本，以及为控制目的而使用的美国和英国英语。短期历时语言变化将在词汇和语法之间的结构界面上进行研究，这是后殖民英语发展的一个中心指标，通过多因素分析和设计统计模型，包括a)分析与合成形容词比较，b)强制性虚拟语气与应该结构，c)粒子位置和d)动词。这些短期历时性结构观察将与个别南亚英语的社会语言学概况相补充——特别关注确定它们的进化状态——以及它们彼此之间的联系，最终为语言震中的概念在多大程度上解释南亚英语的短期历时性语言发展提供经验和社会语言学上可靠的评估。