Features

One of the main objectives of the BSLVC project is to explore the grammar data and discover patterns of variation. This is done through the detailed study of individual morpho-syntactic features with regard to their patterning within a specific variety or across varieties. Given the wide scope of the database (62 eWAVE features, inter alia), our choice of linguistic structures will necessarily be selective. To exploit the advantages of the BSLVC database relative to other data sources, the focus lies 

(i) on features that are rare in language use or difficult to detect in textual data, and 

(ii) on features that offer opportunities for methodological triangulation with corpus data. 

The most promising candidates were selected from a list of a total of 76 morphosyntactic features found in Kortmann et al. (2004) on account of global spread, theoretical import, occurrence in interaction and mentions in the relevant literature. The grammar sections mainly investigate colloquial, non-standard and dialectal features, many of which are stigmatized among the well-educated layers of the investigated speech communities. Most of the investigated features can be connected to one or more categories used in the eWAVE, such as

• Pronouns
• Tense and Aspect
• Verb Morphology
• Negation
• Agreement
• Complementation
• Discourse and Word Order

A full list of the investigated features connected to the respective questionnaire items and eWAVE categories can be found in this table(71.1 KB).