The syntactic complexity of the Inner Circle English varieties

Abstract

Drawing data from the International Corpus of English (ICE) and employing 14 quantitative syntactic complexity metrics, this study investigates the relationships between British English (BrE), Canadian English (CanE), American English (AmE), Northern Ireland English (IreNE), Southern Ireland English (IreSE), Australian English (AusE) and New Zealand English (NZE). The study found that: 1) Compared with BrE, the other six varieties demonstrate a measurable trend towards structural simplification, primarily characterized by a lower proportion of subordinate clauses (DC/T, DC/C, CT/T, C/T), fewer verb and complex noun phrases (VP/T, CN/T), shorter mean length of sentence and T-unit (MLS, MLT), and simpler sentence structure (C/S). Meanwhile, they exhibit complexification features in coordination structures (CP/C, T/S) and clause length (MLC). 2) CanE, AmE, IreNE, IreSE, AusE and NZE show similar syntactic complexity patterns, which differ from BrE. Language history and language contact resulting from population mobility are important factors influencing CanE, AmE, IreNE, IreSE, AusE and NZE to present more similar syntactic complexity patterns. The insight provided by this study is that although these English varieties all belong to the Inner Circle in Kachru’s Three Circles Model, they still show differences in syntactic complexity. This finding once again shows that language is a human-driven complex adaptive system.