Investigating Diachronic Change in New Varieties of English (Section: Communications Theory, Ch.104). In: Mehdi Khosrow-Pour (ed.), Encyclopedia of Information Science and Technology - 4th Edition, Hershey/New York: Information Science Reference.

This contribution focuses on processes of language feature convergence which gradually lead to linguistic stabilization over time whereby specific attention will be given to the process of Englishization in the South-Asian area. The chapter outlines some basic concepts pertaining language universals, contact and change as well as descriptive approaches to world varieties of English by referring to the feature classification proposed by Meshtrie & Bhatt (2008, p. 47). Then, as an explanatory case it presents the results of a study of verb-particle constructions in a well-established variety of English, i.e. Indian English, obtained by sampling data from sources varying in time, genre and register with a special focus on the methodological procedures and the analysis tools adopted to extract specific information from the data. Finally, the implications of those findings for future research on the process of language standardization in new varieties of English will be further explored.