Syntactic differences between dialects of English

ABrE

ABraver's English shall henceforth be called "ABrE"

Argument order

• "replace"
  • To show that item A has taken the place of item B, both of the following are acceptable in ABrE:
    • I replaced item A with item B
    • I replaced item B with item A
  • But:
    • Item A was replaced by item B
    • # Item B was replaced by item A

• This phenomenon was discussed by Aaron in his blog

Pronuncimamations

'Regular'

• abraver: [ɻejgjɯlɻ]
• jonw: [ɻɛgjɯlɻ]

[and for the record, jonw is stupid]

TaMclE

Tristan's dialect of AusE.

Argument of "stop"

•  %"but will usually stop other places if hailed"

Aspectual differences

• *"Did you eat yet?" ("Have you eaten yet?")
• —whereas JNW: √"Did you eat yet?" ("Have you eaten yet?")

"That one"

• "I didn't want that one either, oh well" (as person puts ketchup on a wrap)
• —whereas JNW: "I didn't want that stuff either, oh well"
• apparent grammaticalised use of "that one" as a demonstrative, whereas JNWEnglish differentiates between "that one" and "that stuff", and if grammaticalised, are grammaticalised separately for mass and count nouns

"Meant to" vs "Supposed to"

JNW has some distinction here that TAMcL doesn't have.

"Wonder about"

• *"I wonder about why the sky is blue". The word "about" doesn't work there...

Other people

Things that other people say that freak me out that they're grammatical

• "Here's the beauty part"
  • Should be "Here's the beautiful part"
• "…does that supposed to…"
  • Should be "…is that supposed to…"
• "The more, the miserable"
  • Should be "The more, the miserabler", right?

Vocabulary

isogloss	explanation	JNWE	ABrE	TaMclE	MTE
scarf (down) v.	eat (consume) very crudely	√		*	√
scoff (down) v.	eat (consume) very crudely	*		√	*
cark it	die	*		√	*
wonder about		√		*
did...yet		√		*