This article suggests that in the investigation of World Englishes, which has tended to focus on syntactic, phonological and lexical preferences, the analysis of shifts in word meanings (and meaning–form relations in lexical items) needs to be incorporated. Exemplary small-scale studies show that in polysemic words certain varieties come to prefer specific meanings, and in word fields some varieties begin to prefer certain forms over others. Based on analyses of different ICE corpora, a set of prospective verbs, their meaning relationships and their varying correlations with syntactic construction choices in different varieties are investigated quantitatively (using HCFA and conditional inference trees) and qualitatively (showcasing interesting innovative, possibly emerging uses in some countries). Regionality is consistently shown to be a weakly conditioning significant factor. Thus, it is suggested that lexicosemantic variability and diffusion in the evolution of World Englishes deserve and need to be investigated systematically.

本文建议，在对世界英语的研究中，往往侧重于句法、语音和词汇偏好，需要纳入词义变化（以及词汇项中的意义-形式关系）的分析。典型的小规模研究表明，在多义词中，某些变体开始偏爱特定的含义，而在词领域中，某些变体开始比其他词更喜欢某些形式。基于对不同 ICE 语料库的分析，对一组预期动词、它们的含义关系以及它们与不同变体中句法结构选择的不同相关性进行了定量（使用 HCFA 和条件推理树）和定性（展示有趣的创新、可能新兴的用途）研究。一些国家）。区域性始终被证明是一个弱调节的重要因素。因此，有人认为世界英语演变中的词汇语义变异和扩散值得并且需要进行系统研究。