Tracing the Diachronic Development of Indian English through a Corpus of Historical Indian English (CoHind)
Previous research on new dialects of English, so-called New Englishes, in general, and Indian English (IndE) in particular, has primarily focused on their contemporary structure, and how it differs from established varieties such as British English (BrE). Researchers have identified three main sources of these differences: the interaction of linguistic structures from input varieties (usually forms of BrE), local languages, and general language learning mechanisms. However, the actual historical processes of language change involved in the development of New Englishes are difficult to trace without the availability of historical data.
This project addresses the existing research gap by collecting a corpus of historical IndE and BrE newspapers over a time period from 1780 to 2016. This data allows us to
- trace the historical development of IndE
- assess the importance of influence from contemporary BrE
- assess the interplay between the indigenous and the settler strand of IndE (i.e. the sub-varieties used by Indians and the British in India, respectively).
On this basis, widely used models of the development of New Englishes such as Schneider's (2007) Dynamic Model can be empirically tested and further refined.