Relativization strategies in Gibraltar English

Abstract

[eng] This study explores the distribution of restrictive adnominal relative clauses functioning as subjects in the written register of Gibraltar English in contrast to that of the Inner Circle varieties, namely British and United States English. Relative clauses are linguistic structures that function as postmodifiers of a nominal antecedent and are typically introduced by an explicit relativizer, a freely interchangeable variant that has animacy constraints. While who and that can be used if the antecedent is animate (e.g. The researcher who/that has written this study is interested in Gibraltar English), which and that are used with inanimate antecedents (e.g. The study which/that has been conducted is centered on relativization strategies). Several studies have observed that due to the colloquialization and Americanization of Present-day English, the prototypical distribution of relativizers has suffered an alternation, illustrated by the expansion of the invariable that to most registers and the subsequent decrease in use of the relative marker which (Leech et al., 2009; Leech, 2014; Hinrichs et al., 2015; Xu and Xiao, 2015, etc.). Although this language shift has been observed in other nativized varieties of English (Huber, 2012; Suárez-Gómez, 2014), the colloquialization of relativization strategies remains underexplored in the case of Gibraltar English, a nativized variety that has become a linguistic inquiry in current research after its inclusion in the International Corpus of English. After conducting a comparative corpus-based study and comparing the usage patterns of relative markers in the English varieties of Gibraltar, Britain and United States, the analysis shows that relativization strategies are subject to morphosyntactic variation and colloquialization in Gibraltar English, since that has a higher frequency than which in the sample. This language shift has been ascribed to the influence of the variety of United States, which has become an agent of linguistic change due to globalization and the upward of social networks, as well as to the cognitive processes stemmed from language contact which favor language transparency.