2015-08-21
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Many New Englishes show a greater preference for forming yes/no questions by a rising intonation pattern, rather than by auxiliary inversion.
l She’s coming tomorrow? (=‘Is she coming tomorrow?’ – IndSAf Eng)
l She promised you? (Sgp Eng;
l Anthony learned this from you or you learned this from Anthony? (Sgp Eng;
l To my sister sometime I speak English. (Sgp Eng;
l Q: Zulu? (i.e. Do you speak Zulu as well?)
l A: Yah, and Zulu I speak.
Bokamba (1992:138--40) notes a common tendency in sub-Saharan African Eng to reduplicate adjectives to form adverbs:
l Quickquick ‘quickly’;
l small-small ‘in small doses’;
l slow-slow ‘slowly’.
l Kachru notes examples like different-different things and one-one piece.
l The semantics here is distributive, with a stylistic nuance of emphasis.
l In IndSAf Eng wh- words can be reduplicated with the semantics ‘plural/distributive’ based on details of the syntax of the Indic substrates.
l Who-who came? (= ‘Who (of several people) came?)
l What-what they said? (= ‘What (different) things did they say?’)
l The use of -s plural markers is overgeneralized. luggages, furnitures, firewoods, or grasses/ discontents, informations
Singlish
l English in Singapore = English –based creole spoken colloquially in Singapore
l Numerous cases of code-switching (Chinese, Malay, Tamil)
l Broken English/ bad English → Speak Good English Movement
l Schools discourage students from taking Singlish, but Singlish is often used for humorous effect, when the audience is local., in the Army, in coffee-shops & restaurants
l Singlish as a sociolect phenomenon. Sometimes, analysts prefer to use the terms basilang, mesolang and acrolang, rather than basilect, mesolect and acrolect, to emphasise that they are dealing with developing competence in an L2
Acrolectal - high-class form, well-educated people in informal situations, close to BrE
This guy’s Singlish is very good
Mesolectal – middle class, semi-formal situations
Dis guy Singlish very powerful one
Basilectal – colloquial, unique lexical, phonological & grammatical features
Dis guy Singlish is bey powerful one
