This study examines the use of terminology related to syntactic variation in six linguistic journals (i.e., Corpora, the Journal of English Linguistics, the Journal of Germanic Linguistics, the Journal of Historical Linguistics, the Journal of Linguistics, and Syntax). Our analysis is based on a corpus consisting of articles published between 2012 and 2021. Subjecting these contributions to quantitative and qualitative analyses of the three target word pairs ‘canonical’ vs ‘non-canonical’, ‘marked’ vs ‘unmarked’, and ‘standard’ vs ‘non-standard’ revealed that the non-negated forms outmatch the negated forms in frequency. The collocation analysis showed that this can also be related to ‘marked’ being used as a past-tense verb form and ‘standard’ being used as a noun. Even though there are clear differences between journals, individual authors are also prone to favour specific terminology over other. Bigram analysis additionally revealed that the words of the three pairs are used with partially overlapping but also distinct meanings, at times reflecting ideological underpinnings. This might make it advisable for authors to explicitly reflect on their terminological choices when it comes to the description of syntactic phenomena related to (non-)canonicity.

Discontinuous forms are non-canonical options where the choice of the form cannot immediately be related to discourse functions. Rather, the choice between a continuous and a discontinuous variant has been linked to cognitive complexity – speakers will use that form that is easier to process for the hearer. Usually, the non-canonical (i.e., discontinuous) variant is associated with a higher degree of cognitive complexity, which raises the question of why these variants exist in the first place, especially since discourse functions are not as obvious as with other non-canonical word orders. Putting to the test processing-based explanations in two experiments, this chapter investigates the choice between a continuous and a discontinuous particle verb. While the data from a rating task are aligned with previous findings from corpus studies, the data from a reading experiment are not, showing that the continuous variant does not always facilitate reading. This suggests that the non-canonical (i.e., the discontinuous) form might serve functions apart from information-structural ones.

English as a Lingua Franca (ELF) encounters are often characterised by innovative but non-canonical syntactic constructions. This has frequently led to ELF being dismissed as a simplified learner code, a topic for English language teaching rather than linguistics. However, ELF interactions can also be understood as contact situations in which non-canonical syntactic structures could be the result of dynamic restructuring and might even constitute a preferred and conscious choice. This study aims to bring this idea to a test. Focusing on minus-plural marking in spoken Asian and European ELF, as represented in the Asian Corpus of English (ACE) and the Vienna-Oxford International Corpus of English (VOICE), we investigate whether non-canonical constructions might be the result of typological pressure, i.e., whether they are selected over canonical structures because of their dominance in the linguistic ecology of the speech situation. The study at hand extends previous analyses by applying sophisticated statistical methodology to variation in the (non-)realisation of plural markers in ELF. In the theoretical context of the volume, the chapter addresses the question in which sense minus-features can be considered ‘canonical’ or ‘non-canonical’ in ELF based on their individual frequency and, by extension, their systematicity across ELF conversations.

Interest in linguistic alternatives was triggered by Labov’s sociolinguistic studies in the early 1960s, which showed that linguistic variation was not random but systematic. Typically, one of the variants is regarded as the default and the others as deviations. This introduction presents an approach to syntactic variation from the perspective of (non‑)canonicity. It first approaches the term ‘non-canonical’ from a morphological and etymological perspective before outlining the frequency- and the theory-based approaches to the notion. The introduction then defines as a canonical syntactic construction a default which under general circumstances will be chosen with the highest likelihood, while any deviation from the default is called ‘non-canonical’. The paper classifies these deviations into five basic but combinable types. While the status of one variant as default is typically stable in research on syntactic variation, research on syntactic (non‑)canonicity places particular emphasis on the elusive character of canonicity depending on, for instance, the variety, register, or mode of English. Thus, an infrequent deviation from the basic SXV order like topicalisation is clearly non-canonical in Standard British English but may well be canonical in another regional variety like Indian English. An overview of the structure of the volume concludes the introduction.

This chapter investigates the syntactic development of full-verb inversion in the history of English. It aims to connect so-called late subjects in Old English (OE) and Middle English (ME) to full-verb inversion in Present-Day English (PDE), also known as locative inversion. They share crucial characteristics – occurrence with unaccusative verbs and passivised transitive verbs and an information-structural function – but have so far been studied as distinct phenomena. Crucially, PDE inversion is non-canonical, but late subjects are only one of the many inversion orders in earlier English, raising questions regarding the status of late subjects in OE and ME and full-verb inversion throughout the history of English. Using data from four syntactically parsed corpora of historical English, the study shows that (i) late subjects are already a somewhat non-canonical pattern in OE/ME, infrequent and not part of the dominant verb-second system; (ii) full-verb inversion becomes more non-canonical, limited to certain initial elements and verbs, while other inversion patterns are lost. Full-verb inversion is thus a continuation of existing patterns and it also emerges as a more non-canonical word order option over time. Further research needs to establish whether the information-structural function can explain the continued presence of this inversion pattern throughout the history of English.

This chapter provides an overview of ways to study, categorise, and analyse non-canonical syntactic patterns in registers of English. It introduces two distinct approaches to studying the role of discourse and register in determining syntactic variation. The first (‘variationist’) approach looks at non-canonical syntax as a case of grammatical variation with register as the predictor. The second (‘text-linguistic’) approach takes register as its proper object of investigation and looks at non-canonical constructions as frequent and pervasive features of a register. We classify non-canonical syntactic constructions according to their form as either reduced, expanded, or re-ordered versions of canonical clauses. Each of these patterns is exemplified in one of the studies that constitute the section of the volume introduced by this chapter (ellipsis as reduced constructions, clefts as expanded constructions, and particle placement as reordering). Comparing these studies, this chapter also elaborates on the role of corpus methods as well as experimental data in shaping research questions regarding the motivation for non-canonical patterns. A final part discusses trends and open questions, such as problems of register classification for text from media and new challenges presented to the field by generative AI tools.

Two major conceptualisations of non-canonical syntax can be distinguished: constructions that represent a departure from ‘basic’ grammar, and constructions that represent a departure from typical or normal use. The present paper documents a case where both perspectives are important: the use of Non-Canonical Reduced Structures (NCRSs) in TV news broadcasts. NCRSs are long, elaborated utterances with no main finite verb, but many embedded phrases and non-finite clauses. As such, they represent a striking departure from the rules of basic/canonical grammar. However, these structures are also non-canonical in that they are rare or virtually unattested in most other registers – both spoken registers (including conversation) and written registers. Surprisingly, though, the corpus analysis shows how a heavy reliance on NCRSs is becoming the norm in certain types of TV news broadcasts, and thus in that sense, these structures are becoming canonical in that register.

This chapter introduces key themes in non-canonical syntax in non-native Englishes. It reviews narrow and broad definitions of non-canonicity as well as the challenge of defining non-nativeness. The latter requires fine-grained understandings of communicative situations in which English is used by speakers of other languages, as those situations govern the relative balance of different kinds of syntactic innovation. Innovation is discussed in terms of three broad sources of change in syntax in contact settings: transfer from the first language and discourse-driven restructuring; inherent variability in English; and pragmatic innovation under selected communicative conditions.

Given its information-structural value, the introductory it-pattern has received quite a bit of scholarly attention in English as a Native Language (ENL) and English as a Foreign Language (EFL) contexts, where it has been shown to entail versatile functional and structural possibilities but also to occur in preferred registers of employment. When it comes to English as a Second Language (ESL) varieties, however, research is surprisingly scarce. This also applies to the Englishes spoken in South Asian regions, whose speakers, in fact, constitute the largest number of ESL speakers across the globe. In the present chapter, these six varieties, namely Indian (IndE), Bangladeshi (BgE), Nepali (NpE), Maldivian (MvE), Pakistani (PkE), and Sri Lankan English (SLE), are employed to fill the existing gap in academic discourse concerning the use of the intro-it in outer-circle varieties in general and newspaper language in particular. Our findings reveal similarities, such as the increased likelihood of the structure in longer sentences, but also significant regional differences. Examples include the fact that MvE and SLE exhibit notably higher usages of the construction than the other varieties. Likewise, it has been proven that South Asian varieties show distinct structural and semantic preferences.