1. Data The data reveals a stark division. The frequency of 'equipments' is consistently low in Inner Circle Englishes (United States, Canada, Great Britain, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand). In contrast, its usage is dramatically higher—often by a factor of ten or more—in Outer Circle varieties, particularly those in South Asia (India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka), Southeast Asia (Singapore, Malaysia, Philippines, Hong Kong), and Africa (Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya, Tanzania). South Africa and Jamaica occupy an intermediate position, with frequencies higher than the Inner Circle but lower than most other Outer Circle nations.

2. Possible explanation This variation is best explained by a fundamental grammatical difference. In standard Inner Circle Englishes, 'equipment' is a non-count (or mass) noun. Like 'water' or 'information', it does not typically have a plural form; it refers to the category as a whole. The high frequency of 'equipments' in South Asian, Southeast Asian, and African Englishes indicates that in these dialects, the noun has been reanalyzed as a count noun. This is a common linguistic process in the development of New Englishes, where the often-complex rules of English non-count nouns are regularized, allowing for pluralization to denote multiple items or types.

3. Competing constructions In dialects where 'equipments' is infrequent, the primary competing construction is the non-count noun 'equipment' itself. Speakers in the US or UK would say, "The lab has new equipment," not "new equipments." To refer to individual items, they would use a partitive phrase, with the most likely competitor being "piece(s) of equipment." Therefore, where a speaker in Bangladesh might say "We bought three equipments," a speaker in Britain would likely say "We bought three pieces of equipment