Category Archives: usage features

British or American – or doesn’t it matter?

Posted on October 28, 2018 by

I’d never have thought I would read a Young Adult novel, but I did, and here is why. At ICEHL-20, two months ago in Edinburgh, Jane Hodson presented a paper in the course of which she referred to The Knife of … Continue reading →

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Well, up to a point, Lord Copper!

Posted on July 27, 2018 by

I can’t even read read a Raymond Chandler novel without a pencil, I told Carol Percy when she was interviewing me for the Journal of English Linguistics (to appear in December this year). It is the fate of the linguist, … Continue reading →

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Hen and hun in Dutch. Or: How to Make a Usage Problem Go Away

Posted on July 25, 2018 by

This is Amos van Baalen’s second blogpost for last semester’s MA course Non-Standard English: Modern Dutch technically does not have a case system anymore. Remnants of this system occur in many set expressions, such as te allen tijde “at all … Continue reading →

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Hisself: should we allow it or not?

Posted on April 30, 2018 by

And here is another blogpost from one of my MA students. Maha Khalil would like to know why the non-standard reflexive pronoun hisself remains non-standard today. The blogpost was inspired …  … by an article published by the Scottish writer … Continue reading →

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I come, I seen, I chased him up the street

Posted on April 10, 2018 by

And here is Amos van Baalen’s first blogpost. And if you are a native speaker of Australian or British English, do take the time to contribute to his research by filling in the survey below. It won’t take a lot … Continue reading →

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Singular they and women

Posted on March 26, 2018 by

Back and forth to Berlin last week, for the Wild Publics conference organised by Theresa Heyd and Britta Schneider. There were two papers on prescriptivism, my own (Codification – prescription – prescriptivism: The authority of the lay-person) and one by … Continue reading →

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You say Ke-no-ah and I say Keen-wah

Posted on March 14, 2018 by

And here is Lizi Richards’s first blogpost (again, it isn’t as far as I know an issue in The Netherlands!):  Even in 2018, a strong argument can be made that the British general public are obsessed with accents. Lesley Milroy, … Continue reading →

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