Morphosyntactic Variations in Asian Indian English: A Comparative Corpus Analysis of Spoken and Written Register Differences
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.24113/53c4gq21Keywords:
Asian Indian English, Morphosyntax, Corpus Linguistics, Register Variation, Language Contact, Postcolonial EnglishesAbstract
This manuscript investigates the morphosyntactic variations characterizing Asian Indian English (AIE) through a comparative corpus analysis of spoken and written register differences. As a institutionalized second-language (L2) variety, Indian English exhibits systemic structural features that reflect sustained language contact and internal grammaticalization. Utilizing cross-register data, this study examines how specific morphosyntactic phenomena—including aspectual extension, invariant tag questions, prepositional complementation, and topic-fronting—manifest across formal written texts and informal spoken exchanges. The findings demonstrate that while formal written registers align more closely with standard international paradigms, spoken registers exhibit a higher frequency of localized morphosyntactic innovations. These results illuminate the systematic nature of register variation within postcolonial Englishes.
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References
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Sedlatschek, A. (2009). Contemporary Indian English: Variation and Change. John Benjamins Publishing Company. https://doi.org/10.1075/veaw.g38
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Copyright (c) 2015 Henry Marwick
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