Colloquialization of American English: A case of restrictive relative clauses in the novel ‘Pachinko’
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This paper has investigated the colloquialization of American English in a best-seller novel Pachinko written in English by a well-recognized Korean-American writer Lee Min Jin. American English has been undergoing a language shift called ‘colloquialization’ for several decades. Written American English has deviated from using the formal, prescriptive, scholarly structures and preferred the use of informal, vernacular, oral speech-like structures, among which is restrictive relative clauses (RCs) (Leech & Smith, 2006, Hinrichs et al., 2015). While the animacy constraint is respected for animate and inanimate head nouns, the that-rule, preferring that over other relative heads such as which or ø, is reportedly observed in general and public writings such as novels. But that was the result from the data collected and reported over 30 years ago. According to the 948 restrictive RC data elicited from the novel Pachinko, it was obvious that the colloquialization of American English has furthered towards more economical RCs as doing away with overt relative heads. Surprisingly, while which was virtually non-existent in the novel, ø was predominantly preferred in all types of RCs (81.5% for object RCs, 70.6% for object RCs of preposition, and 59.2% for adjunct RCs) except for subject RCs where a Head must be overtly present. In that case, who was selected for animate Heads and that was selected for inanimate Heads. Overall, the that-rule was out of fashion, and the ø-rule was applied literally wherever and whenever possible. Contrary to Quirk et al. (1985), despite an intervening phrase between the Head and an RC and despite the complexity of the subject of RCs, ø was preferred. This paper concludes that the colloquialization of American English has rather simplified and systematized the choices of relative heads: maximally use ø if grammatical, maximally avoid which if possible, and respect the animacy constraint if ø can’t be enforced.
Abstract
This paper has investigated the colloquialization of American English in a best-seller novel Pachinko written in English by a well-recognized Korean-American writer Lee Min Jin. American English has been undergoing a language shift called ‘colloquialization’ for several decades. Written American English has deviated from using the formal, prescriptive, scholarly structures and preferred the use of informal, vernacular, oral speech-like structures, among which is restrictive relative clauses (RCs) (Leech & Smith, 2006, Hinrichs et al., 2015). While the animacy constraint is respected for animate and inanimate head nouns, the that-rule, preferring that over other relative heads such as which or ø, is reportedly observed in general and public writings such as novels. But that was the result from the data collected and reported over 30 years ago. According to the 948 restrictive RC data elicited from the novel Pachinko, it was obvious that the colloquialization of American English has furthered towards more economical RCs as doing away with overt relative heads. Surprisingly, while which was virtually non-existent in the novel, ø was predominantly preferred in all types of RCs (81.5% for object RCs, 70.6% for object RCs of preposition, and 59.2% for adjunct RCs) except for subject RCs where a Head must be overtly present. In that case, who was selected for animate Heads and that was selected for inanimate Heads. Overall, the that-rule was out of fashion, and the ø-rule was applied literally wherever and whenever possible. Contrary to Quirk et al. (1985), despite an intervening phrase between the Head and an RC and despite the complexity of the subject of RCs, ø was preferred. This paper concludes that the colloquialization of American English has rather simplified and systematized the choices of relative heads: maximally use ø if grammatical, maximally avoid which if possible, and respect the animacy constraint if ø can’t be enforced.
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