ABSTRACT
This paper examines regional and grammatical effects on the English particle verb alternation. We report on an acceptability judgment experiment and a Twitter corpus study designed to address Hughes et al.’s claim that the VPO order (She turned off the light) is favoured in Scotland while the VOP (She turned the light off) order is favoured in Southern England. The results from both the judgment study and the Twitter corpus revealed no support for a North-South difference across UK dialects, but instead show a trans-Atlantic difference: respondents from the UK and Ireland favoured VOP orders, while US participants favoured VPO orders, and Canadians were intermediate between the two. Evidence from the Brown corpus and the Corpus of Historical American English suggests that this difference reflects change toward an innovative VOP order that has proceeded more quickly in Old World dialects than in North America. The results contrast with previous findings that changes toward more “colloquial” word orders across English varieties are being led by American dialects, and support scepticism toward such a process as a general principle governing divergence of global Englishes.
