Mergers and acquisitions: on the ages and origins of Singapore English particles1

Lim, Lisa

doi:10.1111/j.1467-971x.2007.00522.x

Cited by 94 publications

(122 citation statements)

References 43 publications

(76 reference statements)

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“…Schneider 2007;Ansaldo 2009;Lim and Gisborne 2009), and that these should not be viewed as "negative interferences". (ii) That language policies can be -and indeed usually are -a very significant force in the external ecology (Lim 2007, fc a), in raising or lowering the profile of different languages, and consequently affecting language choice and language shift; but that other forces in the ecology also have a role to play, demography, strongly impacted upon by migration patterns, being another force to reckon with (Lim 2007, fc a). (iii) That, in language acquisition, the learning of one language is not at the expense of the mastering of others.…”

Section: Multilingual Mattersmentioning

confidence: 98%

“…This has resulted in a population of people who have been described as English-knowing bilinguals (for an overview of the sociohistorical and political details of English in Singapore, see e.g. Bloom 1986;Gupta 1994;Lim and Foley 2004;Lim 2007, fc a).…”

Section: The Singapore 'Success Story'?mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Where the endogenous languages are concerned, while the multilingual situation in Singapore involves numerous Chinese languages, Indian languages, and Malay (see e.g. Lim 2007, fc a for a fuller account of these), this paper focusses on the Chinese languages.…”

Section: The Singapore 'Success Story'?mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Beyond fear and loathing in SG

Lim

2009

AILA

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This paper considers the real mother tongues of Singapore, namely the Chinese 'dialects' and Singlish, the linguistic varieties which, respectively, arrived with the original immigrants to the rapidly developing British colony, and evolved in the dynamic multilingual ecology over the decades. Curiously these mother tongues have been regarded with fear and treated with loathing in the official language policies and accompanying prestige planning that have been developed and executed in Singapore since independence, being actively denigrated and discouraged in official discourse, viewed as not having a place in the globalization goals of the nation. Looking beyond the official line and census figures, actual linguistic practices of the community of speakers testify to the vitality of these varieties, in spite of the official sanctions; moreover, in spite of itself, the government does in fact allow itself the use of these mother tongues when certain contexts call for it. This paper suggests that an enlightened consideration of native 'dialects' and nativized Singlish and the plurilingual practices in which they are used, as well as of the question of intelligibility, must point policy makers in directions where fears are assuaged and spaces made for the natural existence and evolution of such varieties in multilingual ecologies. Fear and loathing in SGIn an age where vernaculars, whether endangered languages spoken by a last community or languages with minority status in larger nation states, are receiving greater (positive) recognition, support and funding, from linguistic organizations and bodies such as UNESCO, it is always intriguing to examine a context where the mother tongue of a people is regarded with fear and loathing. This paper has as its focus the real mother tongues of Singapore's multilingual population -not the officially designated 'Mother Tongues' (MTs) of English, Mandarin, Malay and Tamil, which are the linguistic varieties which are officially associated with the official races of the state, namely Chinese, Malay and Indian, and learnt as second languages in school, but the actual linguistic varieties that arrived with the original immigrants to Singapore or that have evolved in the Singapore context.While this paper has as its main focus the English language, the situation with the Chinese languages is also examined, first because it parallels that of English, as will be seen in the sections following, and second because the possibility of (a) Chinese language(s) as competitor to English needs to be considered. In examining English, a significant aspect involves the contact dynamics of Singapore's multilingual context and the emergent variety of English which has been nativized and

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Section: Multilingual Mattersmentioning

confidence: 98%

Section: The Singapore 'Success Story'?mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Beyond fear and loathing in SG

Lim

2009

AILA

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“…None of the key particles are derived from Singlish. In fact, Lim (2007) points out an interesting pattern emerges when we examine the particles in a chronological fashion. The most recent particles seem to be of Cantonese origin, although officially Cantonese has no official status in Singapore.…”

Section: Rpmentioning

confidence: 99%

English in Singapore

Lim

Pakir²,

Wee³

2012

IJLTIC

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This article discusses the various ways in which it is possible to theorise about the varieties of English in the world, in particular Kachru’s (1982) concentric circle model and Schneider’s (2007) phases of development in post-colonial varieties of English and I try to fi t Singapore English into these models, although in both cases there are some difficulties. I then provide the historical background to how English was spread to South-East Asia and note that English is moving towards first-language status. The key phonological, grammatical, lexical and discourse are outlined. I end by discussing some of the key elements to remember when considering non-Anglo Englishes like Singapore English.

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“…This line of research has spawned a wide range of studies on various linguistic variables across New Englishes (see e.g. Gut 2007; L. Lim 2007;Bao & Khin Khin Aye 2010;Mesthrie 2012). However, there have been only a few studies in this domain which combine the analysis of linguistic influences from indigenous languages in particular contact varieties of English with the broad comparative focus of language typology, i.e.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Structural nativization, typology and complexity: noun phrase structures in British, Kenyan and Singaporean English

Brunner¹

2014

English Language and Linguistics

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Two much-cited explanations for linguistic innovations in varieties of New Englishes are cross-linguistic influence (see Gut 2011) and simplification (see Schneider 2007: 82). Using these two notions as starting points, the present study seeks to detect effects of structural nativization in noun phrase (NP) modification in two varieties of English whose substrate languages differ strongly from a typological point of view: Singaporean and Kenyan English. The results yielded by the comparison of random samples extracted from the relevant components of the International Corpus of English in the first part of the study show striking correspondences between the preferred NP structures in the varieties at hand and NP structures in the local languages concerned, which, in the light of Mufwene's (2001Mufwene's ( , 2008 ecological theory of language change, can be interpreted as effects of language contact. The second part of the study shows that the NPs from the three varieties also differ in terms of variables which can be viewed as measures of NP complexity. What is more, the different degrees of complexity found in the samples correspond closely to predictions about the evolutionary status of the varieties at hand made by Schneider's (2007) Dynamic Model.

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Mergers and acquisitions: on the ages and origins of Singapore English particles¹

Cited by 94 publications

References 43 publications

Beyond fear and loathing in SG

Beyond fear and loathing in SG

English in Singapore

Structural nativization, typology and complexity: noun phrase structures in British, Kenyan and Singaporean English

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