Bertus Van Rooy
Biographic Data
| ID | 164380 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Bertus Van Rooy |
| GIVEN NAMES | Bertus |
| FAMILY NAME | Van Rooy |
| SIGNATURE | VAN ROOY B |
| AFFILIATIONS | North-West University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-3301-4914 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 33 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 79 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 33 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2002 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 6 |
Worldwide Perspectives on English Usage
The study of English usage has to take account of changes in grammar, word choice and nuances of communication. In recent decades, developments in linguistic methodologies have catalysed modifications In our approach to linguistic variation, with perspectives changing from a primarily prescriptive to a more descriptive approach. Bringing together contributions from a team of distinguished scholars, this book explores sociolinguistic and structura…
The modal shall is still alive and well in East African English
For several decades the use of the modal shall has been reported to be inexorably declining, especially in Inner Circle varieties of English. Some authors have even talked of its demise outside legal texts. This article set out to argue that inexorable decline and demise do not apply to the fortunes of shall in three East African varieties of English, namely, Kenyan, Tanzanian and Ugandan English. The literature reports that the decline of shall …
Reduplication in South African Englishes
Contrast, Contact, Convergence? Afrikaans and English Modal Auxiliaries in South African Parliamentary Discourse (1925–1985)
This article investigates modal auxiliaries in original and translated Afrikaans and South African English parliamentary discourse in the period 1925–1985. Against the background of the sociolinguistic history of language contact in the bilingual South African parliament (1910–1994), it analyses (a) the contrastive differences in the use of modal auxiliaries in South African English and Afrikaans, (b) potential cross-linguistic influence in the u…
“Linking the Dots”
Former South African President Jacob Zuma recently delivered his opening statement at the Zondo Commission in order to address his implication in state capture. Instead of systematically addressing factual aspects, Zuma narrated events in a manner which set him up as strategic key in understanding the “true” reasons for South Africa's current situation. This article aims to understand the metaphors that build up the conceptual system in terms of …
Researching South African Englishes
In this paper we provide an overview of the current status as well as broad functions of Englishes in South Africa. We also provide a discussion of some of the contemporary concerns related to the complex and multivaried nature of English in the country. This paper further serves to introduce the major themes that are of concern to those researchers that are interested in the study of South African Englishes, through an introduction of the papers…
Grammatical change in South African Englishes
This article investigates whether grammatical change in South African English (SAfE) leads to convergence or divergence in the different varieties within SAfE. Contact between speakers of English and other languages potentially leads to divergence from varieties beyond SAfE, and to convergence within SAfE. Modal auxiliaries show convergence between White SAfE (WSAfE) and Afrikaans, but not between WSAfE and Black SAfE (BSAfE). No convergence is o…
South African Englishes
The bibliography presented here is a list of contemporary research publications that provide the details of books, research articles, as well as other research outputs that were published between 1994 and 2020. The main aim of this bibliography is to provide scholars interested in researching South African Englishes with sources of major works published internationally as well as in core journals from South Africa. Despite the problems concerning…
Democratisation in the South African parliamentary Hansard? A study of change in modal auxiliaries
Learner Corpus Research in South Africa (1989–2019)
This article reviews published research on South African learner corpora, focussing on available corpora and a synthesis of research themes and findings. Previous corpora for English amount to 4.2 million words of undergraduate writing and 1.85 million words for Afrikaans. Research yielded findings on cohesion, coherence, metadiscourse, grammatical features, vocabulary, spelling errors, and learner errors. Cross-cutting trends indicate the overus…
Reconsidering Kachru's work on Englishes in their multilingual ecologies
This paper revisits Kachru's views on variability in English and the multilingual contexts in which English came to be used in the Outer Circle. Criticism of his views are considered, and shown to be invalid, often because of partial readings of Kachru's overall set of ideas. Variability arises due to nativisation and indigenisation in new contexts, and not only the failure of learners to acquire the target language. Variants are often selected i…
Register variation in written contact varieties of English
Previous research suggests there are register differences between native and non-native varieties of English, as well as translated English. This article reports on a multidimensional (MD) analysis of register variation in the published written registers of 16 varieties of English, and tests expectations for register variation in contact varieties evident from existing research. The study finds that the effects of variety and register are largely…
The Afrikaans of the Cape Muslims from 1815 to 1915 (Achmat Davids)
Tydskrif vir Letterkunde is an online, peer-reviewed, accredited scholarly journal which publishes original, previously unpublished research and overview articles on theoretical, applied or comparative aspects of African literatures and cultural practices
Constrained language
Translation and non-native indigenised varieties of English are produced in contexts where heightened constraints operate on them. Recurrent features of translated language include explicitation, normalisation or conventionalisation, simplification, and homogenisation. Similar features in non-native indigenised varieties of English include hyperclarity, anti-deletion, regularisation, simplification and register shifts. This article adopts a multi…
Syntactic and pragmatic transfer effects in reported-speech constructions in three contact varieties of English influenced by Afrikaans
Metaphors in the Freedom Day addresses of South African presidents (1995–2012)
Political discourse draws quite extensively on metaphor in construing a range of issues. Previous research on South African politicians has focussed mainly on the metaphor of A RAINBOW NATION, except Malan (2008) who analysed a wider range of metaphors. This study analyses the use of conceptual metaphors in the annual Freedom Day (celebrated on 27 April) addresses by post-apartheid presidents. The most frequently used domain is WARFARE, within wh…
Progressive aspect and stative verbs in Outer Circle varieties
The extension of the progressive form to stative verbs is a widely discussed feature of Outer Circle varieties of English. This paper examines the semantics of the stative progressive in three corpora, representing spoken and written Indian (IndE), Kenyan (KenE) and Black South African English (BSAfE). The results reveal that the progressive form is used more frequently in spoken than written data, and most frequently in BSAfE, followed by KenE, …
Corpus linguistic work on Black South African English
Black South African English (henceforth BSAfE) has received more attention from corpus linguists than any other variety in the country. In the early 2000s, two corpus projects were initiated more or less simultaneously: the corpus of spoken Xhosa-English, compiled by Vivian de Klerk at Rhodes University, and the Tswana Learner English corpus that I compiled. A number of further corpora have also been compiled in the more recent past, many of whic…
Register and the features of translated language
Against the background of current corpus-based research on the features of translated language, this study investigates two research questions that emerge as “gaps” in existing research: (1) What are the occurrence patterns for the different hypothesised features of translated language, investigated together? (2) What is the relationship between register and the features of translated language? Utilising a comparable corpus of translated and orig…
World Englishes
Diachronic changes in modality in South African English
In this paper we aim to contribute to both the synchronic and diachronic description of the grammar of South African English (SAfE) in its written register. In the handful of previous studies on the variety’s grammar (e.g. Bowerman 2004b) the traditional method of pointing out peculiarities has restricted its research potential to a great extent, whereas we now endeavour to move in the opposite direction of full description in the hope of creatin…
Dutch and Afrikaans as post-pluricentric languages
The relationship between Afrikaans and Dutch cannot be captured adequately by the construct of pluricentrism. However, to deny a connection of a similar kind would leave aspects of the historical and current relationship unaccounted for. In comparison to typical pluricentric relations, such as those between metropolitan and postcolonial Englishes, Afrikaans shows more differences from Dutch. This is because there were more non-native speakers con…
Social and linguistic perspectives on variability in world Englishes
Linguistic variability is a peripheral concern to many linguistic approaches. This paper argues that much is gained by taking variability seriously. An examination of the views of Trudgill and Schneider leads to a number of insights into new varieties of English, which may have wider implications for a general understanding of variability in language. Trudgill's claim that the stabilisation of colonial varieties of English is achieved determinist…
Register differentiation in East African English
The article examines register variation in East African English by submitting the East African component of the International Corpus of English (ICE) to a complete multidimensional analysis (Biber 1988). A six-factor model was extracted using 67 linguistic features (Biber 1988). The results show that the extent of register variation is not less in ICE-East Africa than in Biber (1988). However, East African English displays unique stylistic featur…
A multidimensional analysis of student writing in Black South African English
Evidence for the status of Black South African English (BlSAfE) as a variety of English is ambiguous. This paper examines 67 linguistic features of a corpus of BlSAfE student writing, the Tswana Learner English Corpus (TLE), in comparison to a Standard English reference corpus, the Louvain Corpus of Native English Speaking Students (LOCNESS), within the framework of Biber’s (1988) multidimensional model, to determine if evidence for indigenisatio…
The extension of the progressive aspect in Black South African English
The extension of the progressive aspect to stative verbs has been identified as a characteristic feature of New Varieties of English across the world, including the English of black South Africans (BSAfE). This paper examines the use of the progressive aspect in BSAfE, by doing a comparative analysis of three corpora of argumentative student writing representing BSAfE (an outer circle variety), inner circle English and German Learner English as a…
Towards a norm in South African Englishes
In this article, we investigate the perception and application of the norm in South African English with specific reference to Black South African English. In terms of the model of three phases for the development of an indigenised norm proposed by Gill (1999), we hypothesise that South African English is in the liberation and expansion phase. Our notion of language standards and the context of the acquisition of Black South African English are p…
Constrained language
Translation and non-native indigenised varieties of English are produced in contexts where heightened constraints operate on them. Recurrent features of translated language include explicitation, normalisation or conventionalisation, simplification, and homogenisation. Similar features in non-native indigenised varieties of English include hyperclarity, anti-deletion, regularisation, simplification and register shifts. This article adopts a multi…
Progressive aspect and stative verbs in Outer Circle varieties
The extension of the progressive form to stative verbs is a widely discussed feature of Outer Circle varieties of English. This paper examines the semantics of the stative progressive in three corpora, representing spoken and written Indian (IndE), Kenyan (KenE) and Black South African English (BSAfE). The results reveal that the progressive form is used more frequently in spoken than written data, and most frequently in BSAfE, followed by KenE, …
South African English
Racial or ethnic labels are common practice in South African English, but in recent years some criticism has been levelled against this practice, particularly as far as the label Black South African English is concerned. This article investigates the labelling practices of ordinary, non-linguist South Africans to determine what may be acceptable to them, following a bottom-up approach to categorisation. Data were elicited from 167 black first yea…
Syntactic and pragmatic transfer effects in reported-speech constructions in three contact varieties of English influenced by Afrikaans
Register variation in written contact varieties of English
Previous research suggests there are register differences between native and non-native varieties of English, as well as translated English. This article reports on a multidimensional (MD) analysis of register variation in the published written registers of 16 varieties of English, and tests expectations for register variation in contact varieties evident from existing research. The study finds that the effects of variety and register are largely…
Emphasizer now in colloquial South African English
The British ICE corpus (ICE-GB) shows that now normally functions as either time adjunct or conjunct in Standard English, and never as subjunct. The South African ICE corpus (ICE-SA) shows that South African English (SAE) generally conforms to Standard English (StdE) usage, but that a significant minority of instances in colloquial registers show now functioning as subjunct, specifically as emphasizer. These instances conform more or less closely…
Grammatical change in South African Englishes
This article investigates whether grammatical change in South African English (SAfE) leads to convergence or divergence in the different varieties within SAfE. Contact between speakers of English and other languages potentially leads to divergence from varieties beyond SAfE, and to convergence within SAfE. Modal auxiliaries show convergence between White SAfE (WSAfE) and Afrikaans, but not between WSAfE and Black SAfE (BSAfE). No convergence is o…
Register differentiation in East African English
The article examines register variation in East African English by submitting the East African component of the International Corpus of English (ICE) to a complete multidimensional analysis (Biber 1988). A six-factor model was extracted using 67 linguistic features (Biber 1988). The results show that the extent of register variation is not less in ICE-East Africa than in Biber (1988). However, East African English displays unique stylistic featur…
Stress placement in Tswana English
This paper investigates stress placement in one variety of Black South African English (BSAE), namely Tswana English. Current research points to two possible hypotheses about stress in BSAE. The penult-hypothesis holds that the penult syllable is stressed in BSAE, while the random-hypothesis suggests that a variety of stress assignment strategies are employed by BSAE speakers, without the possibility of predicting stress placement. A data corpus …
Diachronic changes in modality in South African English
In this paper we aim to contribute to both the synchronic and diachronic description of the grammar of South African English (SAfE) in its written register. In the handful of previous studies on the variety’s grammar (e.g. Bowerman 2004b) the traditional method of pointing out peculiarities has restricted its research potential to a great extent, whereas we now endeavour to move in the opposite direction of full description in the hope of creatin…
A multidimensional analysis of student writing in Black South African English
Evidence for the status of Black South African English (BlSAfE) as a variety of English is ambiguous. This paper examines 67 linguistic features of a corpus of BlSAfE student writing, the Tswana Learner English Corpus (TLE), in comparison to a Standard English reference corpus, the Louvain Corpus of Native English Speaking Students (LOCNESS), within the framework of Biber’s (1988) multidimensional model, to determine if evidence for indigenisatio…
Democratisation in the South African parliamentary Hansard? A study of change in modal auxiliaries
An alternative interpretation of tense and aspect in Black South African English
Terminology for identifying and describing what counts as a linguistic feature is identified as a problem that prevents an understanding of tense and aspect features in Black South African English (BSAE). In this paper, an alternative set of assumptions is proposed for linguistic analysis of new varieites. Grammar should not be regarded as aprioristic, but rather as emergent. The syntagmatic structure of language in context is highlighted as a mo…
Stress placement in Tswana English
This paper investigates stress placement in one variety of Black South African English (BSAE), namely Tswana English. Current research points to two possible hypotheses about stress in BSAE. The penult-hypothesis holds that the penult syllable is stressed in BSAE, while the random-hypothesis suggests that a variety of stress assignment strategies are employed by BSAE speakers, without the possibility of predicting stress placement. A data corpus …
Towards a norm in South African Englishes
In this article, we investigate the perception and application of the norm in South African English with specific reference to Black South African English. In terms of the model of three phases for the development of an indigenised norm proposed by Gill (1999), we hypothesise that South African English is in the liberation and expansion phase. Our notion of language standards and the context of the acquisition of Black South African English are p…
Emphasizer now in colloquial South African English
The British ICE corpus (ICE-GB) shows that now normally functions as either time adjunct or conjunct in Standard English, and never as subjunct. The South African ICE corpus (ICE-SA) shows that South African English (SAE) generally conforms to Standard English (StdE) usage, but that a significant minority of instances in colloquial registers show now functioning as subjunct, specifically as emphasizer. These instances conform more or less closely…
South African English
Racial or ethnic labels are common practice in South African English, but in recent years some criticism has been levelled against this practice, particularly as far as the label Black South African English is concerned. This article investigates the labelling practices of ordinary, non-linguist South Africans to determine what may be acceptable to them, following a bottom-up approach to categorisation. Data were elicited from 167 black first yea…
A corpus-based analysis of Involved aspects of student writing
Previous research on student writing in South Africa, particularly Black South African English (BSAE) speakers, tends to focus on differences between BSAE writing and Standard varieties of English, and to fail to notice similarities. There is also a trend to focus on multiple linguistic features, but usually in isolation, without attempting an analysis of features as coherent subsets or subsystems. This article adopts the multifunctional-multidim…
The extension of the progressive aspect in Black South African English
The extension of the progressive aspect to stative verbs has been identified as a characteristic feature of New Varieties of English across the world, including the English of black South Africans (BSAfE). This paper examines the use of the progressive aspect in BSAfE, by doing a comparative analysis of three corpora of argumentative student writing representing BSAfE (an outer circle variety), inner circle English and German Learner English as a…
Consonant Clusters and Resyllabification in Black South African English
Consonants have not been a significant focus of research in Black South African English (BSAE), apart from work on final devoicing and regressive voicing assimilation. Pronunciation differences between the acrolect and mesolect varieties have also not been examined in much detail, nor has attention been paid to spontaneous speech. This article examines the realisation of consonant clusters and the resyllabification of consonants in BSAE, comparin…
A multidimensional analysis of student writing in Black South African English
Evidence for the status of Black South African English (BlSAfE) as a variety of English is ambiguous. This paper examines 67 linguistic features of a corpus of BlSAfE student writing, the Tswana Learner English Corpus (TLE), in comparison to a Standard English reference corpus, the Louvain Corpus of Native English Speaking Students (LOCNESS), within the framework of Biber’s (1988) multidimensional model, to determine if evidence for indigenisatio…
An alternative interpretation of tense and aspect in Black South African English
Terminology for identifying and describing what counts as a linguistic feature is identified as a problem that prevents an understanding of tense and aspect features in Black South African English (BSAE). In this paper, an alternative set of assumptions is proposed for linguistic analysis of new varieites. Grammar should not be regarded as aprioristic, but rather as emergent. The syntagmatic structure of language in context is highlighted as a mo…
Social and linguistic perspectives on variability in world Englishes
Linguistic variability is a peripheral concern to many linguistic approaches. This paper argues that much is gained by taking variability seriously. An examination of the views of Trudgill and Schneider leads to a number of insights into new varieties of English, which may have wider implications for a general understanding of variability in language. Trudgill's claim that the stabilisation of colonial varieties of English is achieved determinist…
Register differentiation in East African English
The article examines register variation in East African English by submitting the East African component of the International Corpus of English (ICE) to a complete multidimensional analysis (Biber 1988). A six-factor model was extracted using 67 linguistic features (Biber 1988). The results show that the extent of register variation is not less in ICE-East Africa than in Biber (1988). However, East African English displays unique stylistic featur…
Dutch and Afrikaans as post-pluricentric languages
The relationship between Afrikaans and Dutch cannot be captured adequately by the construct of pluricentrism. However, to deny a connection of a similar kind would leave aspects of the historical and current relationship unaccounted for. In comparison to typical pluricentric relations, such as those between metropolitan and postcolonial Englishes, Afrikaans shows more differences from Dutch. This is because there were more non-native speakers con…
Register and the features of translated language
Against the background of current corpus-based research on the features of translated language, this study investigates two research questions that emerge as “gaps” in existing research: (1) What are the occurrence patterns for the different hypothesised features of translated language, investigated together? (2) What is the relationship between register and the features of translated language? Utilising a comparable corpus of translated and orig…
World Englishes
Diachronic changes in modality in South African English
In this paper we aim to contribute to both the synchronic and diachronic description of the grammar of South African English (SAfE) in its written register. In the handful of previous studies on the variety’s grammar (e.g. Bowerman 2004b) the traditional method of pointing out peculiarities has restricted its research potential to a great extent, whereas we now endeavour to move in the opposite direction of full description in the hope of creatin…
Corpus linguistic work on Black South African English
Black South African English (henceforth BSAfE) has received more attention from corpus linguists than any other variety in the country. In the early 2000s, two corpus projects were initiated more or less simultaneously: the corpus of spoken Xhosa-English, compiled by Vivian de Klerk at Rhodes University, and the Tswana Learner English corpus that I compiled. A number of further corpora have also been compiled in the more recent past, many of whic…
Metaphors in the Freedom Day addresses of South African presidents (1995–2012)
Political discourse draws quite extensively on metaphor in construing a range of issues. Previous research on South African politicians has focussed mainly on the metaphor of A RAINBOW NATION, except Malan (2008) who analysed a wider range of metaphors. This study analyses the use of conceptual metaphors in the annual Freedom Day (celebrated on 27 April) addresses by post-apartheid presidents. The most frequently used domain is WARFARE, within wh…
Progressive aspect and stative verbs in Outer Circle varieties
The extension of the progressive form to stative verbs is a widely discussed feature of Outer Circle varieties of English. This paper examines the semantics of the stative progressive in three corpora, representing spoken and written Indian (IndE), Kenyan (KenE) and Black South African English (BSAfE). The results reveal that the progressive form is used more frequently in spoken than written data, and most frequently in BSAfE, followed by KenE, …
Constrained language
Translation and non-native indigenised varieties of English are produced in contexts where heightened constraints operate on them. Recurrent features of translated language include explicitation, normalisation or conventionalisation, simplification, and homogenisation. Similar features in non-native indigenised varieties of English include hyperclarity, anti-deletion, regularisation, simplification and register shifts. This article adopts a multi…
Syntactic and pragmatic transfer effects in reported-speech constructions in three contact varieties of English influenced by Afrikaans
The Afrikaans of the Cape Muslims from 1815 to 1915 (Achmat Davids)
Tydskrif vir Letterkunde is an online, peer-reviewed, accredited scholarly journal which publishes original, previously unpublished research and overview articles on theoretical, applied or comparative aspects of African literatures and cultural practices
Register variation in written contact varieties of English
Previous research suggests there are register differences between native and non-native varieties of English, as well as translated English. This article reports on a multidimensional (MD) analysis of register variation in the published written registers of 16 varieties of English, and tests expectations for register variation in contact varieties evident from existing research. The study finds that the effects of variety and register are largely…
Learner Corpus Research in South Africa (1989–2019)
This article reviews published research on South African learner corpora, focussing on available corpora and a synthesis of research themes and findings. Previous corpora for English amount to 4.2 million words of undergraduate writing and 1.85 million words for Afrikaans. Research yielded findings on cohesion, coherence, metadiscourse, grammatical features, vocabulary, spelling errors, and learner errors. Cross-cutting trends indicate the overus…
Reconsidering Kachru's work on Englishes in their multilingual ecologies
This paper revisits Kachru's views on variability in English and the multilingual contexts in which English came to be used in the Outer Circle. Criticism of his views are considered, and shown to be invalid, often because of partial readings of Kachru's overall set of ideas. Variability arises due to nativisation and indigenisation in new contexts, and not only the failure of learners to acquire the target language. Variants are often selected i…
Grammatical change in South African Englishes
This article investigates whether grammatical change in South African English (SAfE) leads to convergence or divergence in the different varieties within SAfE. Contact between speakers of English and other languages potentially leads to divergence from varieties beyond SAfE, and to convergence within SAfE. Modal auxiliaries show convergence between White SAfE (WSAfE) and Afrikaans, but not between WSAfE and Black SAfE (BSAfE). No convergence is o…
Linguistics (31 works) · Linguistic Variation and Morphology (27 works) · Computer Science (21 works) · Sociology (20 works) · History (18 works) · Philosophy (18 works) · Multilingual Education and Policy (13 works) · Artificial Intelligence (12 works) · Philosophy (11 works) · Psychology (10 works)