DFG-Project: PD Dr. Michael Percillier

Project description

This project will apply a real-time approach and test the claims made by current models of World Englishes with regard to the development of colonial and postcolonial varieties using historical data, thus filling a research gap as the state of the art generally relies on modern synchronic data. The current models of World Englishes include a diachronic dimension to account for the existence of distinct structural features and their variation, but are mainly limited to a language-external perspective in this regard. When language-internal developments are addressed, an apparent-time approach is generally resorted to. As the project will investigate a historical language contact situation that led to the emergence of postcolonial varieties of English by using empirical corpus methods, it is situated at the interface of the research fields of (1) World Englishes, (2) language contact and diachronic change, and (3) corpus linguistics. More specifically, by accessing and analyzing linguistic data from British Malaya during the colonial period, this project will make considerable contributions to the state of the art with respect to (1) Theory: (a) the modelling of the development of colonial and postcolonial varieties of English; (b) the question of internal differentiation within postcolonial varieties of English; (c) the emergence of distinctive features in postcolonial varieties of English and their status as retentions or innovations; (2) Methodology: (a) the availability of data for earlier stages of varieties of English; (c) data-driven approaches to diatopically and diachronically varied data.