Circumstance adverbials in registers of Indian English

Abstract

This is a corpus-based investigation of also and too in 11 registers of Indian English. The corpus used for this study is a combination of a Corpus of Contemporary Indian English (CCIE), and certain sections of ICE-India. The study: (1) determines the proportions of also and too with respect to each other in the Indian corpus; (2) compares the proportions of the adverbials in registers of Indian English versus registers of British and American English; (3) compares the position preferences (medial, initial, final) of the adverbials in registers of Indian English versus registers of British and American English; and (4) determines the position of also and its relationship to the element in semantic focus in the clause in different registers of Indian English. The study shows that there are: (1) significant differences between Indian English and British and American English in the patterns of occurrence of the circumstance adverbials studied; and (2) there are substantial differences in patterns of occurrence of the circumstance adverbials among the registers of Indian English. This study makes a contribution to the study of Indian English as it shows: (1) that Indian English is different from British and American English with respect to a core grammatical characteristic; and (2) that registers of Indian English are substantially different from each other. © 2009 The Author(s). Journal compilation © 2009 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.