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CHAPTER II SELECTED DIFFERENCES IN BRITISH AND AMERICAN ENGLISH GRAMMAR


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CHAPTER II SELECTED DIFFERENCES IN BRITISH AND AMERICAN ENGLISH GRAMMAR
In this chapter we will concentrate on selected grammatical differences between British and American English. It is not our goal to cover all differences in the area of grammar;rather, we will focus on selected common differences and demonstrate the different usage with examples.Topics which are covered in this chapter are the different use of Present Perfect and Past Simple tenses, the use of have and have got, the verb get and its forms, the use of the subjunctive, collective nouns and, in the final section, the differences in compound words and their form and use in British and American English, which is one of the most common grammatical differences between these two dialects. Crystal claimsĽ in The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English LanguageĽ that “gotten is probably the most distinctive of all the British/American English grammatical differences.” (CrystalĽ 1995Ľ p. 311) He’s got much taller since we last saw him in 2008. (British English) He’s gotten much taller since we last saw him in 2008. (American English)Some authors consider the form gotten an Americanism, despite the fact that its origins are traced back to the 4th century by the Oxford English Dictionary. The word gotten has been used in works of famous authors including Shakespeare and was brought to America by the first colonists. It has since then vanished from British vocabulary and the form got is used in the past participle.To the contrary, in One Language, Two Grammars, Rohdenburg and Schlüter claim that “evidence from ARCHER indicates that the use of gotten in AmE is not a straightforward case of colonial lag. InitiallyĽ the apparently ‘conservative’ form was also occasionally used in BrE (British English). That it fell out of use in BrE in the course of the LModE (Late Modern English) period is also attested by data from the In British English, have got is the preferred phrase to express possession, relationships and other states. This double form is often used in conversations and informal writings.
E.g. I have got a throbbing headache. Have got; in this case, means exactly the same as the present tense of have. It is not the present perfect of get. Have got is not common in American English. Instead, American English uses the single form have to express possession or ownership. E.g. I have a throbbing headache. In informal American speech, speakers may use the contracted form ’ve got, e.g. I’ve got a problem with that.
The difference in use of Present Perfect and Past Simple Tense
In ɑ Student’s Grammar of the English language Quirk states that “the Present Perfect is used to refer to a situation set at some indefinite time within a period beginning in the past and leading up to the present.” (Greenbaum, S. – Quirk, R., 1993, p. 51) When comparing the Present Perfect with the Past Simple tense in British English, the general rules state that we use the present perfect when thinking about the past in connection with the present or when referring to a period of time “up to nowĽ” when announcing news (but not when telling a detailed story which happened in the past) and we do not use the present perfect with words which imply a finished period of time, like last week,Have you hThe students have met with the dean; they discussed the social event planned for the month of May and agreed that more volunteers were needed.Marry Anne broke her leg a month ago.Finished period of time implied.In British English the Present Perfect tense is used with the adverbials since, already, just and yet. On the other hand, American English has a tendency to use both Present Perfect and Past Simple.
Have you already eaten lunch? (British English) Generally, we can say that both British and American English have gone through a change in the use of Present Perfect tense. It is often suggested that the cause of the tendency to use the Past Simple tense instead of Present Perfect is becoming more common in ɒritain because of “the fairly rapid decline in the use of the present perfect which appears to have occurred in American English over the past 20 to 30 years.” Jonathan has not come to school since the car accident.
They have been busy working on the research lately.
The number of illegal immigrants to the United States was lower last year.
The Democratic Party agreed on a presidential candidate yesterday.
I always knew I couldn’t trust her.
I have always known I couldn’t trust her.
In One Language, Two Grammars, the subjunctive is defined as a term which “refers to the base form of the verb (except were), which lacks tense and agreement features and does not take DO support. The mandative subjunctive can occur in subclauses dependent on mandative verbs and nouns and emotive adjectives expressions of wishing, desiring, commanding, insisting, praying, asking, suggesting, forbidding and the like.”Swan defines the subjunctive as “special verb forms, which are used to talk about ‘unreal’ situations: things which are possibleĽ desirable or imaginary.” He also notes that these verb forms used to be common in Older EnglishĽ “but in Modern English they have been replaced by uses of should, would and other modal verbs, by special uses of past tensesĽ and by ordinary verb forms.”There are two forms of the subjunctive. The present subjunctive is expressed by the base form of the verb or by its bare infinitive. Thus for the verb be, the subjunctive form is be in all persons – I be, you be, he/she/it be, we be, they be. “For other verbsĽ the subjunctive is distinctive only in the 3rd person singular.”Mr. Johnson insisted that I be the one responsible for our new project.

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