Singapore English: A grammatical description provides a vivid account of current, contemporary Singapore English, complementing older seminal accounts of this variety. Drawing primarily on the Grammar of Spoken Singapore English Corpus, which comprises naturally-occurring conversational speech, the contributions in this volume not only provide comprehensive and systematic descriptions of the structural features characterising colloquial Singapore English of the young, native speaker of today, but also propose the likely substrate sources of these features through insightful linguistic and historical examination. Clearly illustrating the particular rules of grammar that characterise Singapore English as a variety in its own right, this volume presents its evolution as a perfectly natural linguistic phenomenon which is best understood within the multiethnic and multilingual society that Singapore is and has been for the past two centuries. Theoretical linguists, sociolinguists, dialectologists, variationists, typologists and creolists, as well as those involved in education and policy-making, should find this description relevant and vital.

Table of contents

Acknowledgements xi Tables & Figures xiii 1. English in Singapore and Singapore English: Background and methodology 1 2. Souding Singaporean 19 3. Nouns and noun phrases 57 4. The verbal cluster 75 5. Reduplication and discourse particles 105 The evolution of Singapore English: Finding the matrix 129 References 153 Name Index 167 Subject Index 169