Grammatical change in South African Englishes

Abstract

This article investigates whether grammatical change in South African English (SAfE) leads to convergence or divergence in the different varieties within SAfE. Contact between speakers of English and other languages potentially leads to divergence from varieties beyond SAfE, and to convergence within SAfE. Modal auxiliaries show convergence between White SAfE (WSAfE) and Afrikaans, but not between WSAfE and Black SAfE (BSAfE). No convergence is observed between the innovative use of the progressive in BSAfE and WSAfE, except for similar long-term frequency increases. The omission of the complementiser that shows similar long-term frequency changes between WSAfE, Afrikaans and BSAfE. The findings indicate that higher degrees of contact between speakers result in closer convergence, especially as far as constructional semantics are concerned, but convergent frequency changes seem to be possible without the same closeness of contact.