American and British English: a corpus-based analysis of phrasal verbs

The purpose of this dissertation is to present the main differences between the two principal national varieties of English, namely American and British English. The two varieties have surely different ways to say things but are indeed mutually intelligible. Speaking the same language, people living in the United States and in the United Kingdom are in constant contact with one another thanks to all the means of communication and forms of entertainment. Nevertheless, the two countries are developing independently, are geographically separated and are culturally different in many ways. The dissertation provides the presentation of many differences between the two varieties regarding three different aspects of language, spelling, vocabulary and grammar. The differences that are displayed rely largely on corpus-driven analysis, thus on the comparison between corpora from different periods of time. Finally, there is an analysis focused on phrasal verbs that is based on the comparison between American and British English; it is carried out using the Corpus of Global Web-Based English (GloWbE). First, general findings on the most common phrasal verbs are shown, then the outcomes of the investigation of two specific phrasal verbs are examined, which are figure out and carry out.