Which factors influence clausal verb complementation in World Englishes – and to what extent is there variation in complementation in the first place? Raquel P. Romasanta investigates these questions for the example of regret in a broad range of World Englishes as represented in the Corpus of Global Web-based English (GloWbE, Davies & Fuchs Reference Davies and Fuchs2015), a big data resource that has become popular in large-scale studies of variation in World Englishes. The study presented by Romasanta falls squarely within the trend of investigating grammatical variation in varieties of English using corpus-linguistic methodology, offering, in particular, statistically informed insights into cross-varietal differences and similarities.

The book begins with an Introduction (pp. 1–8), which explains the motivation behind the study: Romasanta aims to provide ‘a detailed analysis of the potential predictors of syntactic variability in 16 varieties of English worldwide’ (p. 1), including both first- and second-language varieties of English. The chapter also gives a first idea of verb complementation and presents the five research questions at the heart of the study. Two of the research questions (i and ii) deal with the availability of complementation patterns; three deal with cross-varietal differences and the factors that affect variation (iii, iv and v) (p. 6):

1. i. Are all the canonical complementation patterns described for regret in reference grammars, dictionaries and databases available in all 16 varieties of English?

2. ii. Are there any new complementation patterns for regret apart from those covered in reference grammars, dictionaries and databases?

3. iii. Do speakers of different varieties select the same clausal complementation patterns and with the same frequency with the verb regret? If not, are the differences statistically significant? What factors are responsible for these differences?

4. iv. What factors determine the choice of clausal complementation pattern with regret in each of the varieties studied? What is the relative contribution of the factors in each variety? What is the constraint hierarchy in each variety?

5. v. How do different varieties of English cluster together in terms of the factors that condition the choice between the two non-categorical complementation patterns available for the verb regret?

This set of research questions invites variationist methodology, which is also teased out in the Introduction. The chapter concludes with an outline of the book’s structure.

Chapters 2 and 3 establish the theoretical framework of the study, starting with chapter 2 on ‘The English complementation system and regret’ (pp. 9–51). In addition to providing a historical overview of the complementation system in English, the chapter also offers some background on regret and previous studies investigating it. Historically, -ing participle clauses in verb complementation have expanded gradually as competition to that-clauses due to a range of factors and mechanisms, including analogy and text formality. Previous work dealing specifically with regret is scarce, meaning that an extensive study such as the one presented in this book fills a relevant research gap.

Chapter 3 introduces ‘World Englishes’ (pp. 53–142), starting with an overview of models of World Englishes. The chapter first outlines a set of ‘geopolitical and chronological models’ (p. 56) before giving more comprehensive descriptions of Schneider’s (Reference Schneider2007) Dynamic Model of Postcolonial Englishes and Buschfeld & Kautzsch’s (Reference Buschfeld and Kautzsch2017) Extra- and Intra-Territorial Forces Model. The model overview is extensive, but perhaps some details on older models and terms, such as Strang’s A-, B- and C-speakers (Strang Reference Strang1970), could have been left out or shortened, since these do not play a role in the analysis and the discussion of the findings. A great level of detail is also present in the description of contact scenarios involving the variety under investigation, with the author carefully examining the complementation systems of relevant contact languages. A very useful tool is the resulting overview provided at the end of this section (pp. 126–7), which highlights the complex nature of complementation in the contact languages – including the fact that, for several varieties of English, the main contact languages behave quite differently. Finally, the chapter also provides a kaleidoscopic overview of factors that are potentially relevant in explaining variation in World Englishes. These factors are summarised under the headings of ‘continuity’, ‘innovation’, ‘contact’ and ‘Second Language Acquisition’, already signposting the multifactorial nature of variation in verb complementation.

Chapter 4 describes the ‘Methodology’ of the study (pp. 143–74). The chapter first introduces GloWbE, a corpus of computer-mediated language from a range of World Englishes. GloWbE contains roughly 1.9 billion words and features language from six ‘Inner Circle’ countries (United States, Canada, Great Britain, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand) and 14 ‘Outer Circle’ countries (India, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Singapore, Malaysia, the Philippines, Hong Kong, South Africa, Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya, Tanzania, Jamaica), making it one of the most comprehensive corpora of World Englishes to date. As Romasanta points out, GloWbE has been criticised for some potential inaccuracies in terms of author origin and other issues, but she ‘expect[s] that its size will statistically overcome them’ (p. 149). Another aspect justifying her choice is that, compared to GloWbE, other popular corpora of World Englishes only contain very few instances of the feature under investigation. Following the corpus description, the chapter comments on how relevant tokens of regret were extracted and sampled. While a random sample of 2,000 examples was used from the United States and Great Britain, all tokens were included for the non-native varieties. The next part of the chapter describes the variables that went into the statistical analysis, including semantic and syntactic factors, and a description of the statistical analysis itself. Three semantic predictors and eight syntactic predictors were taken into account, promising a detailed look at the factors influencing clausal verb complementation patterns. The chapter outlines the various statistical methods that were applied, including binary logistic regression, conditional inference trees, random forests, hierarchical cluster analysis and non-hierarchical phylogenetic networks. This is a rich set of methods for an equally ambitious dataset, illustrating the great efforts the author put into the empirical analysis. A noteworthy (and praiseworthy) aspect of this chapter is that Romasanta addresses the drawbacks of her data and is also transparent about the many tokens that had to be excluded for one reason or another.

Chapters 5 and 6 represent the empirical chapters. First, chapter 5 on ‘The complementation profile of regret in World Englishes’ (pp. 175–99) shows results for the first two research questions of the book, asking whether canonical complementation patterns can be found across the 16 investigated varieties of English, and if there are any new complementation patterns. The results reveal that the canonical patterns occur across the dataset, but there are also new complementation patterns and, interestingly, new uses of canonical patterns. In addition to uses of -ing participle clauses that match information found in grammars of English, ‘examples with anterior and simultaneous temporal relations also occur’ (p. 199). This is an important finding, since it emphasises that variation in World Englishes is (a) often subtle and (b) often not covered by ‘traditional’ grammars. Next, chapter 6 reports on ‘Variability in clausal verb complementation: regret in World Englishes’ (pp. 201–84) and offers results for the next two research questions. These investigate variation in the dataset with regard to the choice of complementation patterns and the factors that determine these choices. To this end, the author used different state-of-the-art statistical techniques. The results illustrate that English as a Second Language and English as a Second Dialect varieties tend to prefer that-clauses, which can be explained, at least to an extent, by processes of Second Language Acquisition. Various factors, however, are relevant in explaining variation, with subject coreferentiality and the complexity of the complement clause showing up as relevant factors for almost all varieties. As described in chapter 4, the hypothesis for the role of complexity was that ‘longer complement clauses would show a stronger tendency for that-clauses over -ing participle clauses’ (p. 166). This principle of being more transparent thus holds up for the results.

Chapter 8 considers ‘The broader perspective’ (pp. 285–93) by addressing the final research question of the book, that is, how varieties cluster together ‘in terms of the factors that condition the choice between the two non-categorical complementation patterns available for the verb regret’ (p. 285). For this purpose, the author applies hierarchical cluster analysis and looks at the data in non-hierarchical phylogenetic networks. Clustering the varieties reveals that they pattern mostly according to their development in Schneider’s (Reference Schneider2007) Dynamic Model of Postcolonial Englishes, with the further advanced varieties in one cluster and the less advanced varieties in another. The NeighborNet, in turn, confirms a finding from chapter 6: somewhat surprisingly, ‘[v]arieties with similar complementation systems in their substrate languages do not exhibit similar choices in the clausal complementation of regret’ (p. 292). Overall, the chapter concludes that multiple factors are relevant in explaining verb complementation, with a variety’s developmental status and geographical proximity between varieties emerging as particularly important.

Closing the book, chapter 9 provides ‘Concluding remarks and suggestions for further research’ (pp. 295–303). In addition to offering a summary of the individual chapters and the results, this chapter also comments on some potential improvements and future directions for research. Future research could be based on, for instance, ‘attitude studies, perception studies, and acceptability judgements’ (p. 303), all of which would complement the corpus-based work presented in this study. Romasanta also makes a case for combining qualitative and quantitative approaches for more robust results, which is in line with recent developments in linguistics.

This monograph is impressive in several ways. The author showcases in-depth knowledge in a variety of fields, including, of course, World Englishes, but also variationist sociolinguistics, language history and language typology. The analysis is complex and illustrates the author’s skills in statistics, with multiple statistical methods used to approach the data from different angles. I particularly appreciated the in-depth typological descriptions in chapter 3, since the impact of language contact is so often invoked as a major reason for variation in World Englishes but relatively rarely backed up with typological evidence. There are, however, some noticeable flaws resulting from the level of detail with which both the theoretical framework and the results are presented. In a sense, it appears as though little was done to make the transition from PhD dissertation to monograph. This becomes apparent in various ways. For instance, while extensive coverage of sources on a given topic may be expected of a PhD thesis, it does not seem necessary in a monograph aimed at a specialist audience. Similarly, while examples are a great tool for illustration, their use in this book almost overwhelms the reader. In the same vein, the statistics are rich and mostly informative, but the amount of figures and tables almost seems to hide the broader picture. These are all issues that could have been dealt with by focusing on the overall narrative of the book, which is certainly not an easy task, but one that can contribute to making research more accessible. Stylistically, the book is pleasant to read, and the structure is transparent, although chapter 8 is comparatively short. Overall, this is a mostly appealing case study of variation that is sure to be of interest to the World Englishes community. The book also highlights an area that, so far, has not received enough attention, so that the book most certainly ‘contribute[s] to the fields of clausal verb complementation and World Englishes’ (p. 301).