Linguistic Circle
Speaker: Heike Pichler (Newcastle University)
Title: Grammaticalization is gradual, innit: question tags in Multicultural London English
Abstract: Previous studies of the question tag innit, illustrated in (1)-(3), have examined its derivation from isn’t it, its syntactic-semantic distribution, and its spread across social and geographical space (Andersen 2001; Cheshire et al. 2005). This paper builds on these studies to examine innit in the context of its co-variants, i.e., canonical and canonically-derived interrogative tags such as don’t we, haven’t they (henceforth neg-tags). This approach makes it possible to test claims that innit is replacing other variants, and examine the social mechanism of any such changes.
- It’s like that big actually, innit?
- They was getting jealous though, innit?
- We pay them, innit? To rob people, innit?
The investigation is based on 2,395 neg-tags extracted from the 1.4-million-word Linguistic Innovators Corpus collected between 2005 and 2006 in the ethnically diverse inner-city borough of Hackney and the much less diverse outer-city borough of Havering (Kerswill et al. 2007). Accountable analyses of these data reveal the formal homogenization of the London neg-tag system and weakening of neg-tags’ interrogative force: innit is becoming the default variant irrespective of syntactic-semantic context, and – unlike other neg-tag variants – is increasingly associated with non-conducive functions (e.g. to mark focal points in narratives). Apparent-time distributions provide compelling evidence for the gradualness of these changes and the role of multilingualism in promoting them. I will explore the implications of these findings for theories of grammaticalization and language contact.
References
- Andersen, Gisle. 2001. Pragmatic Markers and Sociolinguistic Variation. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
- Cheshire, Jenny, Paul Kerswill & Ann Williams. 2005. Phonology, grammar and discourse in dialect convergence. In Peter Auer, Frans Hinskens & Paul Kerswill (eds) Dialect Change. Convergence and Divergence in European Languages. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 135-167.
- Kerswill, Paul, Jenny Cheshire, Sue Fox & Eivind Torgersen. 2007. Linguistic Innovators: The English of Adolescents in London: Full Research Report. ESRC End of Award Report, RES-000-23-0680. Swindon: ESRC.
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