Innovation at the Grammar-lexis Intersection in World Englishes1

Abstract

It has often been claimed that the English complementation system lies at the intersection of grammar and lexis, an area where, in the process of nativization in new varieties of English, innovation and change commonly occur (Olavarría de Ersson and Shaw 2003; Schneider 2007). The current study aims to contribute to this field by looking at the complementation profile of the verb REGRET as used on the internet (Corpus of Global Web-Based English (GloWbE), Davies 2013). The manual analysis of more than 18,000 examples unveils new distributions, uses and patterns of complementation with this verb in 16 different L1 and L2 varieties of English worldwide, for which tentative cognitive explanations are offered.