Dative alternation in Ghanaian and British varieties of English

Abstract

Despite the many studies on Ghanaian English, the structure of the verb phrase and, particularly, the relationship between the verb and its arguments have not featured prominently in these kinds of studies. Meanwhile, researchers in probabilistic linguistics who have shown some interest in non-native varieties of English have indicated that studies in dative alternation are crucial in affirming the validity and viability of a variety of English, as well as hold the key to the determination of specific varieties of English (Bresnan et al. 2007). This study thus focuses on the use of the dative alternation in Ghanaian English to determine the differences between the native British and non-native Ghanaian varieties. It also examines the contextual features which influence the dative choices. The corpus-based methodology is used to examine the lemmas of the verb give in dative alternation patterns in the International Corpus of English-Ghana (ICE-GH), and the Lancaster-Oslo/Bergen Corpus of British English (FLOB). The study reveals that the dative alternation of the forms of the verb give are manifested in both corpora, and the Ghanaian English dative alternation choices and their predictor variables are not considerably different from those of the British English. The study observes a common grounds of significance with regard to complexity at the levels of both few and lengthy, pronominality at the level of pronoun, definiteness at the level of definite, animacy at the level of animate, person at the levels of both local and non-local, number at the level of plural, and concreteness at the level of concrete. The implications of the findings are that the Ghanaian variety shares many resemblances than differences with the British English.