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Structural variation (PHONOLOGY (There are phonological differences across…

- - - - Stress assignment in words in the Outer and Expanding Circles does not follow the rules that operate in the Inner-Circle varieties. Word stress in the Outer- and Expanding-Circle varieties may seem idiosyncratic from the perspective of a speaker from the Inner Circle
        Rhythm in varieties of SAE is based on the morae of the syllables; long syllables are twice as long as short ones, but the quality of the vowels in long as well as short syllables remains the same. In the case of a word with several long syllables, all the syllables are pronounced long, irrespective of their stressed or unstressed character. This is in contrast to the Inner-Circle varieties, where the stressed syllable in a word has a longer duration as compared to the unstressed syllable; in fact, the characteristic rhythmic pattern of British English is such that in a multi-syllabic word, the duration of the several unstressed syllables is roughly equivalent to that of the one stressed syllable.
    - - In pronunciation, most Outer- and Expanding-Circle varieties display differences from the Inner-Circle varieties, similar to those found between regional dialects within the Inner-Circle varieties. Some of these differences lead to grammatical consequences which may affect comprehension. One such feature is the simplification of final consonant clusters in Singapore-Malaysian English, e.g., [lef] for left. By itself, in most contexts, there will probably be no serious difficulty. It is noteworthy, however, that this feature leads to the loss of past tense endings on verbs, e.g., pick for picked, and to the loss of plural markers on nouns, bed for beds. There is potential for misunderstanding in such cases. These features occur not only in the Outer- and Expanding-Circle varieties, but also in certain varieties of American English.
- - - - The grammar of nouns deals with the dependency between articles and singular count nouns and the distinction between count/mass and singular/ plural.
        
        ◆ Articles and determiners
        English articles belong to a category that is defined in relation to nouns.
        The basic grammatical functions are listed below:
        
        a count noun in the singular must be preceded by an article if not preceded by some other determiner (e.g., A dog makes a good pet);
        
        a predicate nominal in the singular must be preceded by the article a or an (e.g., My friend is a graduate student);
        
        certain proper nouns must be preceded by the article the (e.g., The Hague, The Rhine). The semantic functions are basically related to reference, signalling the meanings of definite/indefinite and specific/non-specific as well as generic/ non-generic reference.
        The conventions of use of articles with nouns can be stated as follows:
        • a(n): indefinite non-specific, or indefinite specific, or generic (with count nouns in the singular)
        • the: definite specific (with count and mass nouns), or non-specific generic (with count nouns only)
        • some: indefinite non-specific, or indefinite specific (with count nouns in the plural, with mass nouns)
        • ø: generic (with count nouns in the plural, with mass nouns)
        
        ◆ Count/mass
        There are eight different classes of nouns in English in view of: (a) their potential for combining with the following types of determiners: the zero determiner; unit determiners such as a(n), one; fuzzy quantifiers such as several, about fifty; the determiner all in the sense of ‘completely’; and (b) their potentiality for being marked as plural, either inflectionally or in terms of agreement features. There are six classes of nouns exemplified by equipment (fully mass), knowledge (almost mass, but occurs with a, e.g., a good knowledge of Latin), clothes (occurs with fuzzy quantifiers such as many, few, hence is more count-like), cattle (occurs with fuzzy quantifiers and large round numbers, e.g. a thousand [head of] cattle), people (collective nouns which have plural forms, e.g., peoples, but are not fully countable, as they do not occur in a singular form), and dog (fully count).
    - - ◆ Stative vs. dynamic
        The distinction in terms of stativity is central to the grammar of verbs in English. Stativity of the verb interacts with the aspectual and mood systems of the English verbal construction. Many languages of the world, however, do not express stative vs. dynamic meanings through verbs, and the Outer- and Expanding-Circle varieties of English most often do not make such a distinction, either. Many languages of the world, however, do not express stative vs. dynamic meanings through verbs, and the Outer- and Expanding-Circle varieties of English most often do not make such a distinction, either.
      - ◆ Factivity and volitionality In addition to the stative/dynamic distinction discussed above, there are other distinctions, partly semantic and partly grammatical, that are made in the verb systems of human languages. For instance, English makes a distinction between factive and non-factive verbs as in Peter regrets that he was rude to Bill vs. Peter believes that he was rude to Bill. Negating the main-clause factive verb regret does not affect the interpretation that it was a fact that he was rude to Bill, but negating the non-factive believe negates the whole sentence, cf. Peter did not regret that he was rude to Bill (from the perspective of the person who utters this, Peter was, in fact, rude to Bill); Peter did not believe that he was rude to bill (the speaker is not asserting that Peter was, in fact, rude to Bill). Other languages may make a distinction between volitional and non-volitional verbs, i.e., verbs that assert that the subject was responsible for the action expressed by the main verb of the sentence and those that do not imply such responsibility. Declarative sentences such as ‘Bill is sick’ may have grammatical markers that indicate whether the speaker is asserting it as a fact or merely reporting it as something she heard. Such distinctions may be reflected in the English sentences produced by speakers of such languages as well.
      - ◆ Tense and aspect In East Asian as well as Southeast Asian languages, verbs are not inflected for tense. The distinction between present and past time reference, for example, is expressed by adverbs. In several South Asian languages, tense, aspect and mood have complex interactions which are not exhibited in the Inner-Circle English tense/aspect systems. Matters are further complicated by the fact that most English language teaching texts do not explain the semantic and pragmatic factors involved in the choice of a tense form. The multilingual users of English base their systems on the system they know best, that of one or more of the other languages in their repertoires. As a result, there is a great deal of variation in the use of the tense-aspect markers of English across its varieties.
    - - ◆ Question-answering systems
        There are two types of question-answering systems in human languages. In one, the answer follows the polarity of the question, i.e., if the question is in the positive, the answer confirming the assumption of the questioner is in the positive, the answer disconfirming the assumption is in the negative. If, however, the question is in the negative, the answer confirming the assumption of the questioner is in the negative as well, while the answer disconfirming the assumption of the questioner is in the positive. This is called the positive-negative system. There is another system, which many languages in various parts of the world follow, in which an answer confirming the assumption of the questioner is always in the positive to signal agreement, while a negative answer expresses disagreement with that assumption. This is called the agreement-disagreement system.
    - - Tags are used with question intonation following statements, e.g., You are coming to the party, aren’t you? The tags are formed in AmE or BrE following very general principles, e.g., the subject of the sentence is copied as an appropriate pronoun form, the tense and aspect are copied in an auxiliary, and the polarity is reversed; e.g., John hasn’t arrived yet, has he? There is agreement between John and he, the present perfect auxiliary has is repeated in the positive form, instead of the negative of the statement.
        In the Outer- and Expanding-Circle varieties, a general tag, is it, isn’t it or no, is often used universally: the following are grammatical in SAE, SME, and many other varieties.
    - - The Outer- and Expanding-Circle varieties of English use adjective, noun and verb complements differently from the Inner-Circle varieties. The differences are attributable to two major grammatical factors. In the Inner-Circle Englishes, complements are either full clauses, or, if reduced, either gerunds or infinitives. Specific verbs, prepositions and adjectives are associated with specific forms of complements: the verb say takes a full clausal complement, enjoy takes a gerund as a complement, and want takes an infinitive as a complement. In many languages, complements have only two forms: full clause and infinitive. In South Asian English, for example, infinitives and gerunds are used differently from the way they are used in the Inner-Circle Englishes.
    - - In the Outer- and Expanding-Circle varieties, various types of linkers are used in ways that are unfamiliar to the speakers of the Inner-Circle varieties. This feature is illustrated with prepositions as they are used to link nouns with each other, or predicates with adjuncts in a sentence. ◆ Prepositions the meaning of place prepositions in English can be described in terms of location at a point, along a line on a surface, or in three-dimensional space. Also, prepositions signal location as well as motion. Whereas signalling location vs. motion is important in all languages, signaling the difference between dimensions — location at a point or on a surface — may not be as important since that distinction is contextually obvious. The orientation for location, etc., may be with reference to the person of the speaker rather than to the reference point established in the utterance by the speaker. The semantic extensions of the place prepositions to time and other dimensions may not follow the same principles either. All these divergences lead to difficulties in the use of prepositions across varieties, especially because the use of prepositions is determined partly by their meaning and partly by formal grammatical requirements with no reference to meaning. And grammars of English have very little to say about their use in general.