Grammatical Differences Between British and American English 1
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 23672002 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Britta Mondorf (corresponding author) |
| Year | 2025 |
| Pages | 1-14 |
| Publication date | 2025-12-02 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | CHAPTER |
| Venue | Encyclopedia of Applied Linguistics (SOURCE_BOOK) |
| Publisher | Wiley (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1002/9781405198431.wbeal1472.pub2 |
| OpenAlex | W4416919967 |
| ISBN | 9781405198431 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 43 |
The present article provides an overview of 63 grammatical differences between British English (BrE) and American English (AmE), ranging from well‐documented phenomena to contrasts that have only recently caught the eye of scholars. In addition to exemplifying each of these differences, the paper also highlights underlying generalizations. Such generalizations partly emerge from observable tendencies toward regularization and colloquialization, which generally affect AmE more strongly than BrE, but more recently also from findings suggesting that AmE is more sensitive to cognitive complexity effects than BrE. Thus, while AmE generally prefers less explicit variants in run‐of‐the‐mill contexts, it compensates more strongly than BrE for an increased processing load.
Affect (linguistics) · American English · British English · Cognition · North American English
Emerging English Modals
English Phonology
Change in Contemporary English
British-American Contrasts in the Use of the Past Perfect
Variation and change in English resultative constructions
Cognitive complexity and increased grammatical explicitness in English
Stress Variation in British and American English
Colonial Lag? The Alleged Conservative Character of American English and Other Colonial' Varieties
A Textual Comparison of British and American Writing
Relative Clauses of Reason in British and American English
Which -hunting and the Standard English relative clause
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |