Register variation in Indian English.

摘要

This project is a corpus-based investigation of register variation in Indian English, and is the first investigation of its kind. The corpus used was compiled for this project, and consists of 22 registers, 12 written, and 10 spoken.; The study reports the results of analyses of 16 linguistic features, 10 grammatical, and 6 lexical. These lexical features analyzed in this study include the following: (1) The verb put meaning keep; (2) The verb stay meaning live ; (3) Initial and non-initial existential there; (4) Tags isn't it and no; (5) Circumstance adverbials also and too; (6) Indian words. The grammatical features analyzed include the following: (1) Stative verbs in the progressive, (2) Patterns of occurrence of the present and past perfect, (3) Prepositional verbs and prepositions, (4) Article use, (5) Use of future instead of simple present, (6) Progressive versus simple tense and perfect aspect, (7) Absence of subject-auxiliary inversion in WH-questions, (8) Transitive verbs used intransitively, (9) Relative clauses, (10) Modals.; Based on the results of these analyses, the study first shows that there are differences between the spoken and written varieties of Indian English. Further, within the spoken and written varieties, the study shows that there are differences between different registers of Indian English.; The study concludes with limitations and directions for further research on Indian English.