Phraseology and Culture in English

Christian Mair 
Four, if the UN emerges intact from the crisis, it would be far better to see the 
cost of any future war channelled through New York. (ICE-GB, press W2E-
003)
Given that the Government is militantly opposed to monopolies – to the ex-
tent that it has just negotiated rights for a second British airline to fly to the 
US – it would surely not wish to see all this traffic funnelled into the maw 
of a single, rather greedy airport. (ICE-GB, press W2E-008) 
The New Zealand material, currently the only ICE corpus documenting a 
native-speaker variety other than British English, yields 6 clear instances, 
which are very similar to the British material in kind (see Appendix II). 
It is impossible to establish statistically significant trends for frequencies 
so small, but it is certainly worth mentioning that this highly idiomatic us-
age is attested in all the second-language ICE corpora. Thereby, the frequen-
cies are consistently lower (with one exception which will be discussed be-
low) than in the British or New Zealand material. In all, there are four cases 
in ICE-India, three
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in ICE-Singapore, and five in ICE-Philippines: 
The additional commissioner of police (traffic), P.S. Pasricha, had earlier 
granted the park permission to remain open only till 5 pm for fear of con-
gestion. However, after seeing the traffic arrangements made, he has now 
allowed it to operate till 8 pm. (ICE-India, press W2C-014) 
It showed even lesser interest in fully utilising the paltry grants received 
from the State Government (incidentally given more of compulsion than with 
a view to see the GHB flourish). (ICE-India, press W2C-019) 
Cousin Abhijit Rajan’s hand in the Gammon India takeover controversy
saw the Bachchans scripting an indeterminate role as industrialists for them-
selves – with a little help from the financial institutions, of course. (ICE-
India, press W2C-018) 
This is the fourth time that they have been postponed even after both the rul-
ing Congress and the opposition Bharatiya Janata party had loudly pro-
claimed that they were keen to see grassroots democracy flourish in accor-
dance with the new law that allows reservation for all the weaker sections, 
including women. (ICE-India, press W2E-008) 
The SDU and SDS have also seen the number of old members rise faster 
than those of other age groups.  
KINDERGARTENS run by the PAP Community Foundation are seeing a 
rush of toddlers some as young s 18 months being enrolled for classes. 

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Varieties of English around the world
455
A watershed not just because it produced three more opposition members
of parliament but because it was an election that saw Mr Goh Chok Tong 
getting the endorsement of his prime ministership from Singaporeans rather 
than just his People’s Action Party colleagues. 008>
Finally, experts see the Philippines heading towards recovery after more than 
a year of suffering from the effects of the Asian financial crisis, but Filipi-
nos will find rebuilding the economy can be very expensive. nes, W2C-010> 
Maceda does not see Nationalist People’s Coalition founding chairman Edu-
ardo Cojuangco supporting Angara, and since most NPC members take the 
cue from Cojuangco, he believes it is unlikely that Angara will get the back-
ing of NPC stalwarts.  
The past few weeks have seen MILF units and the Army’s 39th Infantry 
Brigade trade mortar fire at Buldon.  
“For those of us who signed the accords in Paris, we would not be very happy 
seeing the results of the elections set aside, especially by use of force,” says 
Foreign Secretary Domingo Siazon, Jr.  
Yet recent tragic events saw parents lose their sons over senseless loyalties 
and abusive initiation rites.  
At least as far as these grammatically motivated uses of see are concerned, 
second-language varieties of English can thus be shown to resemble native-
ly spoken varieties more closely than learner language, from which such uses 
are largely absent.
15
An interesting case is represented by ICE-Jamaica, because the status of 
Jamaican English as a native or second language is controversial. Techni-
cally, the language situation in Jamaica could be classified as a diglossic one, 
with official English complementing the local English-lexifier creole as a 
“high” variety. However, in practice there is extensive mixing of the two 
codes along a continuum, and most Jamaicans, whatever their attitude to-
wards the local creole and creolised English, see themselves as English-
speaking. It would thus be reasonable to expect the see-phraseologisms stud-
ied here to occur freely, possibly even at the relatively higher rates found in 
the New Zealand and British data. This, however, is not the case, as the 
material yields a single relevant example: 
These include the introduction of the new fee structure on a phased basis, 
which would see undergraduate students at Mona paying 5 percent of their 

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Christian Mair 
economic cost in 1993–1994, 7.5 percent in 1994–1995 and 10 percent in 
1995–1996; (...)  
The other result that is difficult to interpret (already hinted at above) is 
from ICE-East Africa, where the Tanzanian data produces rather fewer 
examples than expected (two), whereas Kenyan usage (eight examples) 
conforms to British and New Zealand expectations.
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Of course, it would be 
foolhardy to take this as conclusive proof of the different degree of institu-
tionalisation of English in the two countries. On the other hand, if the pat-
tern were to repeat itself in the analysis of a large number of comparably 
sensitive constructions, such a conclusion would certainly gain in convic-
tion.