Grammaticalization is gradual, innit: question tags in Multicultural London English

Previous studies of the question tag innit, illustrated in (1)-(3), have examined its derivation from isn’t it, its syntactic-semantic distribution, and its spread across social and geographical space (Andersen 2001; Cheshire et al. 2005). This paper builds on these studies to examine innit in the context of its co-variants, i.e., canonical and canonically-derived interrogative tags such as don’t we, haven’t they (henceforth neg-tags). This approach makes it possible to test claims that innit is replacing other variants, and examine the social mechanism of any such changes.

1. It’s like that big actually, innit?
2. They was getting jealous though, innit?
3. We pay them, innit? To rob people, innit? 

The investigation is based on 2,395 neg-tags extracted from the 1.4-million-word Linguistic Innovators Corpus collected between 2005 and 2006 in the ethnically diverse inner-city borough of Hackney and the much less diverse outer-city borough of Havering (Kerswill et al. 2007). Accountable analyses of these data reveal the formal homogenization of the London neg-tag system and weakening of neg-tags’ interrogative force: innit is becoming the default variant irrespective of syntactic-semantic context, and – unlike other neg-tag variants – is increasingly associated with non-conducive functions (e.g. to mark focal points in narratives). Apparent-time distributions provide compelling evidence for the gradualness of these changes and the role of multilingualism in promoting them. I will explore the implications of these findings for theories of grammaticalization and language contact.

References

Andersen, Gisle. 2001. Pragmatic Markers and Sociolinguistic Variation. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Cheshire, Jenny, Paul Kerswill & Ann Williams. 2005. Phonology, grammar and discourse in dialect convergence. In Peter Auer, Frans Hinskens & Paul Kerswill (eds) Dialect Change. Convergence and Divergence in European Languages. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 135-167.

Kerswill, Paul, Jenny Cheshire, Sue Fox & Eivind Torgersen. 2007. Linguistic Innovators: The English of Adolescents in London: Full Research Report. ESRC End of Award Report, RES-000-23-0680. Swindon: ESRC.