GRAMMATICAL FEATURES OF NEW ZEALAND AND BRITISH ENGLISH

The article presents the description of differences and similarities in the grammar of the two variants of English, the British Standard and the New Zealand variant of the English language. The colonists' influence from the continent throughout history is enormous. The British Standard substantially affected the formation of all the linguistic sections of NZE; however, each one has been changing at its own pace. The lexical layer of the language has undergone the most significant changes in comparison with others. Due to insufficient knowledge and a small amount of data, New Zealand English attracts huge attention from scientists who focus all their efforts on the identification of its specific features. Grammar, though, is considered to be stable, and, as a result of this fact, it has been little studied. Therefore, this topic is very relevant and acute. The purpose of this survey is to reveal grammatical features of NZE and British English, confirming the existence of differences and the predominance of the British Standard, and collecting and analysing the opinion poll data based on the online RUDN University survey of bachelors and magistrates. English has been used in New Zealand for over 200 years, from the first visit of Captain James Cook and his English-speaking crew in 1769. Its history is profound as a wide-spoken and dominating language on both islands of New Zealand. The new variant of English has formed with regional specifics being influenced by the language of the indigenous tribe called Maori, various immigrants' dialects together with the speeches of their neighbours and trade partners. NZE's linguistic core lies in British Standard; however, some crucial features present how to distinguish these two variants of the English language. Considering the comparison of NZE and British grammatical layers, the survey acknowledged the stability of the grammar part of NZE and revealed small differences in the usage of certain words. For instance, in verbs "shall-will," "should-would"; "would" is usually replaced with "should," and shall is practically not used. The online statistics indicate the fact that people can hardly differentiate two grammar systems.