Review

Reviewed Work(s): One language, two grammars?

Differences between British and American English by Günther Rohdenburg and Julia
Schlüter
Review by: Stig Johansson
Source: Language , JUNE 2010, Vol. 86, No. 2 (JUNE 2010), pp. 462-467
Published by: Linguistic Society of America

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/40666337

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462 LANGUAGE, VOLUME 86, NUMBER 2 (20 1 0)

and culture over twenty-five years with frequent long visits in the field righ
months of his life.
The volume finishes with a complete bibliography of R's papers (441-56), a jo
ences for all of the papers in the book (457-73), and author and subject indi
beautifully produced publication, for which most papers (some of them typ
complex) had to be reset. I have noticed only very few errors: 'pertured' > '
156); 'Rischel 1969' > 'Rischel I960' (line 9, 168); 'phonological when inform
'phonological information when compared' (line 4, 181); / at the end of the lin
to the following line (line 4, 189); 'KF- = CWG' > 'KF = CWG' (line 4, 190);
kind of cross-over of the expected tone contours in these dialects: the initial pi
old voiced initial ... than with an old voiceless aspirated initial', 'lower' should
pp. 239, 241; this may be a slip in the original paper (line 8ff, 219); 'aroun
200' (line 11, 273); in ''*doomian > *doomian > *doomian > *d00mign > *d00
the last square bracket should be placed before the preceding asterisk (line 19,
The editors have aptly dedicated the volume to Jörgen Rischel's wife Anna-G
very active part in his work, and finally went out to his field station in Thaila
of his invaluable material when he was no longer able to travel himself. This
for every linguistics library, and is highly recommended to all linguists who ta
empirical interest in the integration of levels of linguistic description, in the r
language system and language usage in cultural settings, and in the integratio
guistics with the social and cultural sciences.

REFERENCES

Fischer- J0RGENSEN, Eli. 1961. Some remarks on the function of stress with special reference t
manic languages. Congrès international des sciences anthropologiques et ethnologiques, C
rendus, Ule Session, Brussels 1948, 86-88.
Haugen, Einar. 1967. On the rules of Norwegian tonality. Language 43.1.185-202.
Hjelmslev, Louis. 1957. On unit accentuation. Bulletin du Cercle Linguistique de Cope
1941-65.202-5.

Jespersen, Otto. 1934. Modersmâlets Fonetik. Copenhagen: Gyldendal.

Institute of Phonetics and Digital Speech Processing

University of Kiel
Holm 4

24113 Kiel, Germany

[kjk@ipds.uni-kiel.de]

One language, two grammars? Differences between British and American English.
Ed. by Günther Rohdenburg and Julia Schlüter. Cambridge: Cambridge Univer-
sity Press, 2009. Pp. xxiv, 461. ISBN 9780521872195. $108 (Hb).
Reviewed by Stig Johansson, University of Oslo
The use of English across the world is a theme that is currently attracting a great deal of inter-
est among language researchers. Some of these, such as Crystal (2003), discuss the phenomenal
spread of English and its increasingly world- wide role. Others, such as Kortmann and Schneider
(2004, The handbook of varieties of English), focus on varieties of English across the world. The
book under review belongs to the second category, though its coverage is more limited than the
Handbook: a comparison of grammatical differences between the two major national varieties of
English commonly referred to as British (BrE) and American (AmE) English. As neither BrE nor
AmE are monolithic entities, such a comparison is far from straightforward. To make the task
manageable, the book examines standard forms of the two varieties, chiefly as represented in

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 REVIEWS 463

written sources produce

ation within the two na
The study of AmE vs. B
comparable text materia
Brown Corpus and the
theearly 1990s, usually
a million words each. The
ily' to find matching elec
mentation and the detaile
another book?', and ans
founded contrastive stu
Before dealing with the
the publication. Many o
search project 'Determin
burg and supported by
apparently presented at
themselves are responsi
This provides some unit
The bulk of the book c
Grammar is taken in a
topics in morphology an
lexis and grammar: corp
ing, there is a progressi
chapter that are more g
dress some more genera
Ch. 1, 'Colonial lag, co
discusses the popular n
relation to BrE. She fin
must distinguish betwe
servative features, and
ported by her own ca
distinguishing as many
BrE is corroborated by m
Traditionally, AmE has
tion than BrE. This is
amines compound verb
both corpus evidence an
more frequent and mor
in orthography, prosody
Ch. 3, 'The formation
well-known difference b
ple in cases such as drea
is considered, including
tween individual verbs.
erally more frequent i
observed in previous re
calvariants, forms in -e
observation made by Le
distinction, the aspectua
morphological contrast.

1 See http://icame.uib.no/n

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464 LANGUAGE, VOLUME 86, NUMBER 2 (20 1 0)

A point that has rarely been raised in the discussion of differences between
taken up in Ch. 4, 'Synthetic and analytic comparatives' by Britta Mondorf: th
thetic (-er) vs. analytic (more) comparison of adjectives. The latter type is sho
in cognitively more complex contexts (premodified adjectives, adjectives with
etc.). Mondorf finds that analytic comparison is more common in AmE. Sur
finds that comparative forms of adjectives are on the whole less frequent in A
ences can, she claims, be interpreted in terms of complexity and style. AmE a
higher proclivity than BrE towards either compensating for or avoiding co
structures, a property which it shares with informal styles' (107).
In spite of the general nature of the title 'Phonology and grammar', Ch. 5 (b
is a study of the alternation of the participle forms of two verbs, lighted vs. lit a
and of the pre- and postdeterminer placement of the degree modifier quite, t
quite plus head noun. Both phenomena are explained in light of the principle of
tion, 'i.e. the tendency to separate stressed syllables by intervening unstressed
torical and present-day data are examined, showing that there is overall simila
and BrE, but also differences in detail. Potential explanations are discussed in
lag, regularization, and colloquialization, but these alleged characteristics of A
to account for the differences in relation to BrE.
Ch. 6, 'Prepositions and postpositions', is also much more specific than its ti
Eva Berlage examines pre- vs. postpositional placement of the form notwithst
present-day data shows that postpositional placement, as in good opponents no
the majority option in AmE and is approximately twice as common as in B
achronic data, Berlage finds that postpositional placement existed as a minorit
but then virtually vanished. AmE reintroduced the postpositional pattern in the tw
during which there was a sharp rise, a case of 'postcolonial revival'. The choice
postpositional placement is explained in terms of Rohdenburg's complexity pr
to which more explicit variants tend to be preferred in cognitively more comp
Differences between AmE and BrE are clearest with simple noun phrases a
longer and more complex noun phrases, which prefer the more explicit prepos
A recent development in 'Argument structure' is dealt with in Ch. 7 by Dav
center of discussion is the exchange verb substitute, which in addition to its st
tute new for old) may be treated in the same way as replace (substitute old wit
there is also a reversal, using the same preposition as in the standard pattern
new). The reversal is common in BrE, but rare in AmE. Accounting for the dev
draws attention to BrE usage in sports as well as to more general linguistic fac
In Ch. 8, 'Reflexive structures' by Günther Rohdenburg, the focus is on the
flexive verbs in English. Rohdenburg shows that the reduction of reflexive str
zero variants is more advanced and more extensive in AmE than in BrE. Reflex
used less often in AmE, a fact that Rohdenburg attributes to 'the stronger ten
avoid comparatively complex and formal structures' (180).
Ch. 9, 'Noun phrase modification' by Douglas Biber, Jack Grieve, and
compares patterns of noun-phrase modification in AmE vs. BrE newspaper text
torical and a present-day perspective. Overall, there is great similarity in usage
increase of more compressed noun modification, a development that is somew
in AmE. The authors argue that 'the stronger influences are functional, associa
nology of literacy and the communicative demands of the "informational age"
Ch. 10, 'Nominal complements' by Günther Rohdenburg, examines the rivalr
nal and prepositional complementation with a range of adjectives and verbs, f
immediately fled the border area vs. They immediately fled from the border
the constructions dealt with, AmE favors the simpler, formally less explicit opt
thus in line with the findings of the study of zero vs. reflexive variants in Ch. 8.
Ch. 11, by Uwe Vosberg, deals with 'Non-finite complements'. Difference
infinitives vs. -ing complements are studied in light of a long-term change in
plements, referred to as the 'great complement shift'. This process is in opera

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 REVIEWS 465

and BrE, though to a dif

further advanced than
mal . . . and less explicit
One of the best-known
present perfect and the
preterite form of verbs
rules are the same, the
corpus data and by an el
increase in the frequency
reversal, with a decrease
under the influence fro
The next three chapters
that there are differen
Kjellmer, who sadly pas
in They demanded that
preterite, there is a rev
morphological subjuncti
Kjellmer discusses poss
there is also an increasi
In Ch. 14, 'The mandat
that trigger the use of a
of a corpus of British an
junctive triggers, includ
junctive in AmE is conf
lexical choice. The patte
ford concludes that 'th
made its way into BrE i
Ch. 15, 'The conditional
junctive in conditional c
large set of material, in
riod and a selection of B
finds a parallel between
chapter. Again there is
Ch. 16, 'Tag questions',
Here D. J. Allerton surv
tags and invariable tags.
alizations on difference
tional mini-clause tags i
we have to turn to Ch. 18.

Ch. 17, 'The pragmatics of adverbs' by Karin Aijmer, examines the development and use of
adverbs of certainty, in particular sure. A comparison of a spoken AmE corpus and the spoken
texts of the British National Corpus shows that sure is far more common in the AmE material.
Uses characteristic of AmE are routinized responses to speech acts such as offers, invitations, re-
quests, thanks, and apologies. Also important are sequences like sure do and sure can. The dis-
course uses are accounted for from a grammaticalization perspective.
In Ch. 18, by Gunnel Tottie, we find a general discussion of the questions 'How different are
American and British English grammar? And how are they different?', as well as three support-
ing case studies. Tottie stresses that differences between AmE and BrE grammar are rarely cate-
gorical, but represent different choices within the same system. A typical example is tag
questions, the topic of one of the case studies. The corpus study revealed that tag questions were
more than five times as frequent in BrE as in AmE. A detailed examination of spoken corpora for
the two varieties revealed that there are differences both in the choice of forms and in the fre-
quency of discourse functions. How does AmE compensate for the low frequency of tag ques-
tions? Is it just a question of the choice of forms? Or do the quantitative findings reflect

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466 LANGUAGE, VOLUME 86, NUMBER 2 (20 1 0)

differences in culture and communicative needs? These are questions that need f
tion. As for the questions asked in the title of the chapter, Tottie's answers are
different than we used to think and in more ways than we can anticipate'. Mo
the point that 'the more delicate the analysis, the more differences we will fin
Tottie's remarks can be regarded as the real conclusion of the book. In contras
ter by the two editors, comprising almost sixty pages, is forward-looking and
enues of research, as the title of the chapter suggests: 'New directions'. Forty-s
presented covering a range of restricted topics, most of them dealing with lexi
sues. Findings on AmE vs. BrE choices are viewed in light of four parameters t
to distinguish the two varieties: +progressive/-conservative, +formal/-colloq
-irregular, +explicit/-opaque. A summary of the findings shows that AmE is
and BrE is more formal, whereas results are more balanced for the other two
denburg and Schlüter warn against indulging in preconceived generalizations wi
ularity and explicitness. As for the 'colonial lag' hypothesis, this 'has to be refu
tendency for AmE to assume the leading role in more recent and ongoing chan
As the survey above has shown, this book has a lot to offer for those who wan
understanding of the relationship between AmE and BrE grammar. Unlike diffe
ogy, orthography, and lexis, not much has been known about grammatical diffe
ume on English in North America of the Cambridge history of the English lan
disappointingly short account of the grammatical structure of AmE (Butters 2
isting account of BrE vs. AmE differences is no doubt given in John Algeo's
book on word and grammar patterns (Algeo 2006), which lists a larger numb
grouped by grammatical category, as viewed from the point of view of an Ame
As compared with Algeo's work, the present book is less comprehensi
strength, in addition to the wealth of documentation and the detailed analysis o
emphasis on explanation. The historical dimension that we find in many of the
the understanding of present-day differences and, as we have seen, undermines
ceptions of historical developments leading to AmE vs. BrE contrasts. Gene
often brought in, such as the principle of rhythmic alternation (Ch. 5) and the
ple (Chs. 4, 6, etc.). Although the index provides some guidance, it would have b
editors had included a discussion of these principles and how they have been ap
vidual studies.

The emphasis on corpus analysis is crucial, as most of the differences are gradual rather than
absolute. Although statistical testing is regularly used, one sometimes wonders whether there are
sufficient data to justify a conclusion. To quote Tottie, '[w]e still need more, bigger and better
corpora ... if we wish to investigate less frequent syntactic phenomena' (362). Above all, we need
annotated corpora, both written and spoken, if we wish to investigate phenomena that are not eas-
ily retrievable from raw electronic text. With unannotated corpora, there is a tendency to focus on
lexico-grammar, whereas central syntactic aspects, such as word order, tend to be overlooked. It
is no coincidence that the content of many of the chapters in the book is much more restricted
than suggested by the title.
Ideally, one would like to have parallel annotated corpora for a range of text types within both
AmE and BrE, as it is likely that there is far more intra- varietal than inter- varietal variation. This
must be a goal for the future. What we find in this book is rich enough at this stage. New differ-
ences between AmE and BrE are revealed. Where we read about well-known differences, more
depth is provided in the form of data analysis and explanation. We could not ask for more. The
reader who wants to get a general, easily accessible overview of AmE and BrE differences is rec-
ommended to read Algeo 2006. But those who are concerned with further research and with re-
search methodology will find a good basis and much inspiration in this important new book.
Finally, do we get an answer to the question asked in the title of the book? Are we justified in
talking about two grammars? There is no doubt that there are a great many differences in gram-
matical choices. But if we speak of different grammars for each congregation of choices, we will
end up with an indefinite number. The closest we get to an answer is, to speak with Tottie, that

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 REVIEWS 467

'most of the time, Ame

ventory of forms and
(342).

REFERENCES

Algeo, John. 2006. British or American English: A handbook of word and grammar patter
Cambridge University Press.
Butters, Ronald B. 2001. Grammatical structure. The Cambridge history of the English l
English in North America, ed. by John Algeo, 325-39. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Crystal, David. 2003. English as a global language. 2nd edn. Cambridge: Cambridge Unive
Kortmann, Bernd, and Edgar W. Schneider (eds.) 2004. A handbook of varieties of
Phonology. Vol. 2: Morphology and syntax. In collaboration with Kate Burridge, Rajend M
Clive Upton. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

Department of Literature, Area Studies and European Languages

University of Oslo
P.O. Box 1003, Blindem
N-0315 Oslo, Norway
[k.a.s.johansson@ilos.uio.no]

Sign languages and linguistic universais. By Wendy Sandler and Dia

Martin. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006. Pp. xxi, 5
139780521483957. $55.

Reviewed by Josep Quer, ICREA-Universitat Pompeu F abra

The study of sign languages (SLs) as natural languages has a relatively short life compared to
other areas in linguistics with a much longer tradition. Despite the relatively short history of the
field, its growth has been steady over the past four decades, both in the number of languages stud-
ied and in the range of linguistic phenomena described and analyzed. At the same time, SLs have
been progressively incorporated as objects of study by different linguistic approaches to language
structure (generative, cognitive, or typological, for instance), as well as by other research areas
such as language acquisition, language impairment, neurolinguistics, or sociolinguistics. The
field of sign linguistics and especially linguistics in the broadest sense could not welcome a more
timely publication than the book by Wendy Sandier and Diane Lillo-Martin, as it meets several
goals in a single attempt. On the one hand, this work can be read as a handbook containing a com-
prehensive and up-to-date state of the art of the existing body of research on the linguistic struc-
ture of SLs. As such it can be used as a thorough advanced introduction to the field that remains
accessible to sign and nonsign linguists, because it contains detailed descriptions of the phenom-
ena tackled and the main lines of analysis that intend to explain them. On the other hand, it is also
an original monograph, because in leading the reader through different proposals of analysis,
concrete positions are defended over others and detailed arguments are offered from the general
perspective that is put forth by the authors throughout this work: linguistic universais are unques-
tionably realized in sign languages, even though some specific effects of the gestural-visual
modality must be acknowledged, and in fact they should be addressed from the perspective that
both spoken and sign languages display clear modality effects in certain domains of their struc-
ture. In this respect, the authors' stand - shared by most researchers in the field in one way or an-
other - places the challenge in the widest domain of linguistic theory (without qualifications
referring to the physical modality of production/perception of specific languages) and, from a
broader perspective, of cognitive science. The challenge that putting together such a book repre-
sents could only be taken up - and most importantly, successfully met - by two leading sign lin-
guists like Sandier and Lillo-Martin, who have decisively contributed to the development of the

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