Abstract
The punctual never is a classic vernacular universal, widespread among varieties of English across the globe. However, corpus data from the UWA Corpus of English in Australia (2012–2015) reveals its surprising rarity in Australian English. Where could this vernacular universal be hiding? Drawing on the categorisation established in Lucas and Willis (2012), this chapter argues that the punctual never is mostly restricted to the ‘window of opportunity’ usage in Australian English, where its punctuality is better camouflaged than in classic nonstandard use. In addition to drawing on corpus data, this chapter investigates acceptability survey data from 170 linguistics students, which indicates the social stigmatization of the nonstandard punctual never among Australian English speakers, as well as the importance of formulaic chunks like never get around to, in which the punctuality of never remains unanalysed and therefore more acceptable.
Original language | English |
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Title of host publication | Dynamics of Language Changes |
Subtitle of host publication | Looking Within and Across Languages |
Editors | Keith Allan |
Place of Publication | Singapore Singapore |
Publisher | Springer |
Chapter | 2 |
Pages | 23-36 |
Number of pages | 14 |
Edition | 1st |
ISBN (Electronic) | 9789811564307 |
ISBN (Print) | 9789811564291 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 2020 |
Keywords
- Vernacular universal
- punctual never
- negation