Selected Papers from the 44th Conference of the Australian Linguistic Society, 2013

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    Relative clauses in Australian English: a cross-varietal diachronic study
    Collins, Peter (University of Melbourne, 2014)
    Research on grammatical change in the Late Modern English period has concentrated almost exclusively on British and American English. This study traces developments in the category of relative clauses in Australian English, seeking to determine whether historical exonormative ties with the ‘Mother Country’ are still in evidence and, if not, whether there is evidence of any alignment with American English, the current centre of gravity in English world-wide. Data derived from two recently compiled Australian corpora, COOEE and AusCorp, which together cover the period of approximately two centuries from the foundation of the first British colony in Australia in 1788 to the present day, are compared with that from ARCHER, a diachronic corpus of British and American English. The results indicate that in developments such as the rise of that-relatives and decline of wh-relatives, Australian English patterns closely with innovative American usage, eschewing the conservatism of its colonial parent.
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    Folklinguistic explorations of modals and quasi-modals in Australian English
    MACFARLAN, ALICE (University of Melbourne, 2014)
    Changing usage patterns of modal and quasi-modal auxiliaries in English varieties in the past 50 years (Collins 2009; Leech 2003 Millar 2009) have been given explanations in terms of theories of politeness, democratisation and decolonisation (Collins 2005; Leech 2003; Millar 2009; Myhill 1995). This paper uses a folklinguistic approach to explore how Australian English speakers attend to these ideas in their associations with these words. An online survey and eight interviews were conducted, containing an imitation section, which looked specifically at what modal auxiliaries participants thought the identity categories BOGAN, LARRIKIN, and POSH would use in both a high and low obligation context; and an interpretation section, which asked participants for their views on the speakers in four quotes containing a modal auxiliary verb. The results indicate that participants held three main associative groupings around the modal and quasi-modals, which are discussed in this paper in conjunction with ought to, must, had better and need to.