ABSTRACT

Written by one of Britain's most distinguished linguists, this book is concerned with the phenomenon of variance in English grammar and vocabulary across regional, social, stylistic and temporal space.

chapter 1|9 pages

Variance in English: the global context

chapter 2|11 pages

Variance and the concept of good usage

chapter 3|11 pages

Language varieties and standard language

chapter 4|10 pages

Language spread and language variation

chapter 5|13 pages

Linguistic variance: nature and art

chapter 6|8 pages

Orwell and language engineering

chapter 8|15 pages

A case study of multiple meaning

chapter 9|20 pages

Non-finite clauses in Chaucer

chapter 10|7 pages

On having a look in a corpus

chapter 12|11 pages

Grammatical data by elicitation

chapter 13|5 pages

A problem of modality

chapter 14|12 pages

Acceptability experiments in spoken English

chapter 15|4 pages

A tough object to trace

chapter 16|11 pages

Activating latent contrasts

chapter 17|20 pages

Contrasts in lexical semantics

chapter 18|15 pages

Aspect and variant inflexion

chapter 19|6 pages

Taking a deep smell: sex and a single verb