Short-term diachronic perspectives on the lexis-grammar interface of Indian and Sri Lankan English

Among the South Asian Englishes, Indian English and Sri Lankan English share long histories of varietal development. Indian English is the oldest variety of South Asia, and Sri Lankan English is the only South Asian English that displays a degree of sociolinguistic institutionalisation comparable to Indian English. Against this background, the present chapter zooms in on the most recent short-term diachronic developments of Indian and Sri Lankan English. Lexicogrammatical features provide relevant indications for structural nativisation. In this study, we focus on a lexicogrammatical alternation phenomenon that has so far not been documented extensively, namely the choice between light-verb constructions like GIVE a smile as opposed to simplex verbs like SMILE. 992 annotated examples have been modelled via a random forest, indicating that (a) the phonological principles of rhythm and segment alternation provide strong cues for the choice between light-verb constructions and simplex verbs, which are stable across varieties and time periods, and (b) the presence of modifiers, the telicity of the action encoded and the length of the turn exert more variety- and time-specific effects. These findings are discussed with regard to potential L1 transfer in India and Sri Lanka and related to the modelling of World Englishes.