No in the lexicogrammar of English

Pam Peters*, Yasmin Funk

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingChapterpeer-review

Abstract

This paper analyzes the continuing uses of no in negative collocations in three varieties of English: Australian, New Zealand and British, using their respective ICE corpora. In all three varieties of English, the use of no as determiner in nominal phrase collocations far outnumbers its use in adverbial collocations, though the latter cluster high in the frequency rankings for both speech and writing. Comparative analysis finds that while Australian English makes more use of no as a reaction signal (No!) and its emphatic counterparts (e. g. No way!), the New Zealand English data present a wider range of freely formed no collocations, especially in writing. Thus the two southern hemisphere varieties diverge, with no increasingly fixed into Australian lexical idiom, while it remains a well-utilized syntactic resource in New Zealand English.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationComparative studies in Australian and New Zealand English
Subtitle of host publicationgrammar and beyond
EditorsPam Peters, Peter Collins, Adam Smith
Place of PublicationAmsterdam; Philadelphia
PublisherJohn Benjamins Publishing Company
Pages225-241
Number of pages17
ISBN (Electronic)9789027289407
ISBN (Print)9789027248992
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2009

Publication series

NameVarieties of English Around the World
PublisherJohn Benjamins Publishing Company
VolumeG39
ISSN (Print)0172-7362

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