'Will' and 'would' in selected New Englishes: general vs. variety-specific tendencies

Abstract

This paper presents a quantitative and qualitative investigation of the use of the modal verbs will and would in six New Englishes (Fiji, Indian, Singapore, Trinidadian, Jamaican and Bahamian English), with British English considered for comparison; will/would in their future use are also compared to other markers of futurity. The database consists of conversations from the respective components of the International Corpus of English or comparable data. The results show that the use of will versus would tends to be more variable in all New Englishes than in British English but that there are differences between the New Englishes in the type and degree of variation. Thus, both general and variety-specific tendencies seem to be at work in our data. Keywords: New Englishes; International Corpus of English; will/would; frequency; semantic