The morpho-syntax of Standard Scottish English

Abstract

With empirical research on Standard Scottish English showing a bias towards phonology, the aim of the current study is to contribute to the morpho-syntactic documentation of this variety. Relying on Standard Southern British English for comparison, we concentrate on four eWAVE features on which the varieties have been noted to diverge: (i)  youse as a second person plural pronoun, (ii) extended uses of the progressive, (iii) epistemic mustn’t , and (iv) quotative like . We use questionnaire data, where respondents indicate how many speakers in their home country use a particular feature. Ratings are elicited from 43 English and 61 Scottish participants (mostly university students) for two usage contexts, (informal) speech and (semi-formal) writing. Our findings corroborate expert ratings in eWAVE and show that the reported currency of all features is higher in Standard Scottish English, albeit to varying degrees. Our study draws attention to the complementary potential of questionnaire data in World Englishes research.