Student Research in English Linguistics is an open-access peer-reviewed online journal that showcases outstanding research by students of English linguistics in Germany, Austria and Switzerland.
“There is many criteria that I’m studying”: There-Existentials in African Englishes
This study investigates existential there-constructions in three African Englishes, namely Ugandan (UgE), Nigerian (NiE), and Kenyan-Tanzanian English (K&TE). Extending Collins’ (2012) comparative analysis of World Englishes, five morphosyntactic constraints on existential non-concord are examined to assess alignment with Inner and Outer Circle patterns, using spoken data from the International Corpus of English: subject-verb agreement, verb tense, copula contraction, covert plural marking, and bare vs. extended existentials. Findings reveal low overall existential non-concord rates characteristic of Outer Circle varieties, with tense emerging as a conditioning factor, though patterns vary depending on analytical perspective. UgE and K&TE exhibit conservative profiles aligning with Non-South-East Asian Outer Circle Englishes, reflecting Phase 3 prescriptivism in Schneider's Dynamic Model. NiE shows greater flexibility, converging with South-East Asian and select Inner Circle norms, indicative of early Phase 4 hybridization and American influence. The results challenge uniform “African English” assumptions, highlighting intra-continental diversity in structural nativization and underscoring the need for expanded corpus representation of underrepresented varieties.
Copyright (c) 2026 Lara Keser (Author) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0
Great Vowel Shift(s)? Diatopic variation and the problem of structural coherence in the Great Vowel Shift debate
The long vowel changes generally associated with the Great Vowel Shift (GVS) differed significantly amongst the varieties of English, especially between northern and southern dialects (Prichard 2015: 60; Smith 2007: 127). Against this backdrop, some scholars (Boisson 1982: 10–13; Smith 2004: 326; Stockwell & Minkova 1988: 371; Western 1912: 3) have contested the notion of the GVS as a coherent phenomenon, instead advocating for the view that the long vowel changes are arbitrary and structurally independent (Stockwell & Minkova 1988: 371) or arguing in favour of a distinct northern shift (Smith 2007: 138). This paper enquires into the implications of diatopic variation for our understanding of the GVS. It looks at Prichard’s (2014) evaluation and discussion of data from Eduard Kolb’s Phonological Atlas of the Northern Region (1966), which finds that the changes of the Middle English (ME) close and half-close front, and back vowels ē, ī, ō, and ū can be considered the result of one coherent shift, whilst the developments of the ME half-open and open front and back vowels ɛ̄, ā, and ɔ̄ do not display a similarly coherent pattern.
Copyright (c) 2025 Johannes Kreiselmeier (Author) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0