Syntactic distinctions within present day English (ePub)

Seminar paper from the year 2002 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Linguistics, grade: 2 (B), University of Marburg (Anglistics), course: Advanced Seminar in English Linguistiks, language: English, abstract: A national variety is a variety of a language (as native language or second language) which is characteristic for a specific country.1 This term is necessary to keep in mind for the description of linguistic situations in anglophone countries. English has spread over many countries as no other language had done before. The English language is spoken at present as a native language by approximately 270 million speakers spread over four continents. The number of speakers of English as a second language is estimated to be around 135 million.2 The number of English speakers is consistently increasing. Nearly all of the English speakers have regional features in the way they speak English. The majority of the population speak in a manner which identifies them as coming from a particular place.The English language consists of the sum of all its dialects, not of one correct version and a number of substandard varieties.3 But even if Standard English is defined as one dialect among many, it is no longer a regional dialect. It has spread throughout the world as the educated variety of English. It is natural that people may regard dialects as imperfect versions of English. This term paper tries to examine several linguistic varieties in England in comparison to Standard English. The present discussion will be limited to Standard British English. The discussion about the linguistic varieties, which includes their grammar in general, will consistently be contrasted with the standard syntactic pattern in Standard British English. Before that a short overview about some of the peculiarities of Standard British and Standard American English in the fields of spelling, vocabulary and grammar will be given in detail.