Abstract
This article investigates factors that underlie the discrepancies in article omission between Maltese English (MaltE) and British English (BrE), with reference to further ENL, ESL and EFL varieties. We investigate seasons of the year, ordinal numbers, languages, proper nouns, titles, institutions and common nouns. Our sources include text corpora, and web and questionnaire-based data. Our key proposal is that MaltE has innovated a rule that the definite article may be omitted when the uniqueness or identifiability of a referent is salient in context. Furthermore, MaltE avoids the definite article commonly when the referent is generic rather than definite. The resulting MaltE system is regulated according to fewer parameters than in BrE, but more consistently.
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Appendix: Internet searches for in a/the/Ø majority of in ENL, ESL and EFL varieties in 2003 and 2017
| Google searches January 2017 | ||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Region: | United Kingdom | Australia | USA | India | Singapore | South Africa | ||||||
| .uk | % | .au | % | .us | % | .in | % | .sg | % | .za | % | |
| in majority of | 17,000 | 0.28% | 9,210 | 0.22% | 17,300 | 0.93% | 38,500 | 0.75% | 2,840 | 0.27% | 5,410 | 0.19% |
| in the majority of | 5,380,000 | 87.8% | 3,140,000 | 74.2% | 1,030,000 | 55.3% | 4,630,000 | 90.4% | 935,000 | 90.0% | 2,770,000 | 95.8% |
| in a majority of | 734,000 | 12.0% | 1,080,000 | 25.5% | 816,000 | 43.8% | 454,000 | 8.9% | 101,000 | 9.7% | 115,000 | 4.0% |
| Sum | 6,131,000 | 100.0% | 4,229,210 | 100.0% | 1,863,300 | 100.0% | 5,122,500 | 100.0% | 1,038,840 | 100.0% | 2,890,410 | 100.0% |
| Google searches February 2003 (from Sedlatschek 2009: 210) | ||||||||||||
| Region: | United Kingdom | Australia | USA | India | Singapore | South Africa | ||||||
| .uk | % | .au | % | .us | % | .in | % | .sg | % | .za | % | |
| in majority of | 560 | 0.09% | 832 | 0.46% | 573 | 0.88% | 779 | 37.82% | 82 | 9.57% | 95 | 0.37% |
| in the majority of | 574,000 | 95.8% | 161,000 | 88.1% | 49,200 | 75.6% | 653 | 31.7% | 670 | 78.2% | 24,200 | 95.0% |
| in a majority of | 24,900 | 4.2% | 20,900 | 11.4% | 15,300 | 23.5% | 628 | 30.5% | 105 | 12.3% | 1,170 | 4.6% |
| Sum | 599,460 | 100.0% | 182,732 | 100.0% | 65,073 | 100.0% | 2,060 | 100.0% | 857 | 100.0% | 25,465 | 100.0% |
| Region: | Malta | New Zealand | Republic of Ireland | Germany | Poland | China | ||||||
| .mt | % | .nz | % | .ie | % | .de | % | .pl | % | .cn | % | |
| in majority of | 144 | 0.27% | 2,510 | 0.19% | 1,800 | 0.17% | 20,800 | 0.75% | 17,500 | 1.31% | 4,980 | 1.40% |
| in the majority of | 46,700 | 87.8% | 999,000 | 74.0% | 886,000 | 83.9% | 2,270,000 | 81.7% | 1,180,000 | 88.2% | 141,000 | 39.5% |
| in a majority of | 6,340 | 11.9% | 348,000 | 25.8% | 168,000 | 15.9% | 488,000 | 17.6% | 141,000 | 10.5% | 211,000 | 59.1% |
| Sum | 53,184 | 100.0% | 1,349,510 | 100.0% | 1,055,800 | 100.0% | 2,778,800 | 100.0% | 1,338,500 | 100.0% | 356,980 | 100.0% |
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