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The Typology of Asian Englishes
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Volume 33
Edited by Lisa Lim and Nikolas Gisborne
These materials were previously published in English World-Wide 30:2 (2009),
under the editorship of Edgar W. Schneider.
Edited by
Lisa Lim
The University of Hong Kong
Nikolas Gisborne
University of Edinburgh
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The typology of Asian Englishes / edited by Lisa Lim, Nikolas Gisborne.

p. cm. (Benjamins Current Topics, issn 1874-0081 ; v. 33)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. English language--Asia. 2. English language--Variation--Asia. 3. English language--
Social aspects--Asia. 4. English language--Study and teaching--Asia. I. Lim, Lisa.
II. Gisborne, Nikolas, 1966-
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Table of contents
Acknowledgments vii
The typology of Asian Englishes: Setting the agenda 1
Lisa Lim and Nikolas Gisborne
The Asian typology of English: Theoretical and methodological
considerations 11
Umberto Ansaldo
Aspects of the morphosyntactic typology of Hong Kong English 27
Nikolas Gisborne
Typological diversity in New Englishes 49
Devyani Sharma
Thai English: Rhythm and vowels 75
Priyankoo Sarmah, Divya Verma Gogoi and Caroline Wiltshire
Revisiting English prosody: (Some) New Englishes as tone languages? 97
Lisa Lim
Index 119
Acknowledgements
The papers in this volume were originally presented at the 1st International
Conference for the Linguistics of English (ISLE1), with the theme “Setting the
Agenda”, in Freiburg in October 2008, in the workshop “The Typology of Asian
Englishes”, organized by Lisa Lim, and we thank the conference organizers,
Bernd Kortmann and Christian Mair, for their most positive support. The col-
lection of papers was then published in 2009 as a special issue of English World-
Wide 30:2. We wish especially to express our gratitude to the editor of English
World-Wide, Edgar Schneider, not only for being so amenable to a thematic
issue – the first special issue in EWW – but also, and more crucially, for appre-
ciating the significance of the innovativeness of the topic and embracing our
work on it; we thank him for his enthusiasm, support and trust throughout the
project, and are glad to have had EWW as an ideal platform for this collection.
We are very pleased that our special issue has now been selected for inclusion
in the series “Benjamins Current Topics”, and we extend our thanks to Anke
de Looper for her support in both this and the original publication. We also
thank Umberto Ansaldo for his comments on the papers as well as his advice
on other aspects of this project.
The typology of Asian Englishes
Setting the agenda
Lisa Lim and Nikolas Gisborne

The University of Hong Kong / University of Edinburgh
1. Why typology? Why Asian Englishes?
The emergence of myriad varieties of English world-wide has resulted over the
decades in scholarly approaches to categorizing the varieties into broad types, for
example, the well-known and widely used Three Circles of English (Kachru 1985),
or into regional groupings of Asian Englishes, African Englishes, etc. (e.g. Kort-
mann et al. 2004; Schneider et al. 2004; the journal Asian Englishes; the book series
Asian Englishes Today; etc.). But while such categorizations are revealing when
used in the ways they were originally intended, namely, for grouping and appreci-
ating English varieties according to their diffusion, status, functions, or geography,
i.e. as sociohistorical entities, they are not meant to imply that members of a group
by definition share structural properties, which can only be established after close
scrutiny of all aspects of grammar; nor do the groupings mean common genesis,
an extremely unlikely possibility considering the diversity of contexts from which
such varieties emerge. This may seem to be stating the obvious, but a substantial
amount of research still examines structural features of specific English varieties
on the basis of their being an “Inner Circle” or “Outer Circle” variety, as if their
membership of that class defined their grammatical structure; the New Englishes
have long had a list of linguistic features ascribed to them as tendencies (e.g. Platt,
Weber and Ho 1984), and regional groups like “Asian” or “African Englishes” have
also often been described as exhibiting common features with the implication that
this is by virtue of their belonging to that group (see e.g. Lim 2009 for further
discussion on this). If the object of enquiry comprises the structural features of
English varieties though, then other factors — and not a reliance on such classifi-
cations — are more material. Even if the approach goes further in establishing that
a certain group does have certain linguistic features in common, as in Kortmann
2 Lisa Lim and Nikolas Gisborne
and Szmrecsanyi’s (2004) survey of shared features in varieties of English,1 the

question is whether these should indeed be viewed as “universals of New Eng-
lishes” or in fact be accountable for by other factors.
When considering the structure of New Englishes which have evolved in —
multilingual, mostly postcolonial — contexts of Asia (thus, Asian Englishes), the
significant factors to be considered are: 1) the varietyâ•›/â•›ies of the English lexifier
that entered the local context; 2) the nature of transmission of English to the local
population; and 3) the local, i.e. substrate, languages of the community in which
the New English emerges (also see Hickey 2005: 506).2 It is worth noting that, as
pointed out by Schneider (2007), settlement and transmission types are clear-cut
and important mostly for the early phases of settlement, but tend to become in-
creasingly blurred with time in the increasing complexity in the development of
society (2007: 25). On the other hand, the substrate languages may be seen to be
the more germane factor for accounting for the grammar of the emergent English,
in particular at a later — e.g. current — point in time. With this third factor being
the focus of this issue, only a brief elaboration of the first two factors follows.
With regard to the type of English which comes into contact with the ver-
naculars, in Asian Englishes, the role of the lexifier can, at least superficially, be a
“control”, for the most part being 19th-century British English, in the role of mis-
sionaries, teachers, administrators, at the time of formal colonization3 in India,
Singapore and Hong Kong, or a variable, e.g. in comparison with the 20th-century
American English lexifier of the Philippines. We should of course be cautious of
over-simplification; after all, much regional and dialectal variation would have
1.â•‡ Kortmann and Szmrecsanyi (2004) calculate the relative strength of representation of a fea-
ture across varieties by averaging its “feature value” for all English varieties and world regions
examined; this means that, for instance, even if a feature is not found in all but in three out of
a total of four Asian varieties, it receives a high “feature ratio” score (0.75) for Asia and is in-
cluded as “typical” for the region. The point is that these Asian varieties have a particular feature
because one or some of their substrates do, and not simply because the feature is typical for the
region, i.e. it is not necessarily a “universal” of New (or here, Asian) Englishes (for detailed ex-
ploration into this, see Sharma’s paper in this volume).
2.â•‡ It should be noted at the outset that an evaluation of the factors relevant to the evolution of a
variety must of course also involve the recognition, first, that there are other important param-
eters involved, such as historical and political events, sociolinguistic determinants, and identity
constructions, and, next, that these may be and often are distinct across the different phases or
eras in evolution, which affect the dynamics of contact and the structural features that emerge
in the evolving English differently at different points in time (see e.g. Schneider 2007 for a model
for Postcolonial Englishes; Lim 2007 and 2010a for the situation for Singapore English).
3.â•‡ Though Asia’s initial contacts with English date back to the 1600s with the East India Com-
pany (Mesthrie 2008: 24).
The typology of Asian Englishes 3
been present, e.g. in Irish priests and nuns in the mission schools, and non-stan-
dard varieties would also have been part of the initial input, e.g. of sailors, soldiers,
tradesmen, etc.4 Attention should also be paid to the second-generation users, and
thus transmitters, of the emergent English, as well as the other Asian Englishes
that would have been in the equation too, e.g. the varieties spoken by Indian and
Ceylonese teachers in Singapore, the Eurasian varieties spoken throughout the
region, and the English of the Peranakans in the Malay peninsula; more recently,
the English varieties available via the media also play a important role for all Asian
Englishes.
Where the nature of transmission of English is concerned, while originally
via the education system and thus acquired as an L2, consideration must also be
given to the subsequent spread and evolution of the variety outside of the school,
for instance, in the playground between children who have acquired (a variety
of) English, and amongst the local population themselves, e.g. the early adoptors
such as the Peranakans speaking Peranakan English (Lim 2010b). These are clearly
extremely intriguing and significant directions for investigation, but are not the
focus of this collection.
What the five papers take on in this volume is the third factor: they investigate
the structure of Asian varieties of English by exploring the relationship between
the typological profile of substrate languages in the specific linguistic ecology and
the grammatical features of the emerging contact variety of English — in-depth
studies of which have been noted to be in need (Kachru 2005: 119) — which are
argued to be an illuminating way of exploring the similarities and differences be-
tween contact varieties of English (e.g. Ansaldo 2009; Lim 2009).
Why are Asian Englishes particularly interesting as an object of enquiry in this
regard? We can identify a number of reasons for why they make for an exciting
read, mentioning just three here.5
4.â•‡ Mesthrie (2008: 27) warns that the target language was often “a varied, vexatious and moving
target”.
5.â•‡ The reasons listed here are those most closely relevant to the issue at hand, i.e. a typological
investigation of the structural features of Asian Englishes. Obviously many other factors may
be identified for why Asian Englishes are interesting objects of (sociolinguistic, cultural, etc.)
study; Bolton (1992), for example, highlights three obvious connections: 1) all major states in
the Asian region are confronting questions related to language policy and planning, which in
many cases involves the adoption of English; 2) many Asian societies share linguistic and ethnic
similarities, and co-opt in language planning; and 3) in all Asian societies the English language
still has strong association with higher education, internationalism, modernity, job mobility
and career development; these three connections may be seen, as pointed out by Kachru (2005),
as contributing to a regional profile of English in Asia and to the gradual process of accultura-
tion of Asian Englishes. An additional factor for why Asian Englishes call for attention is their
Table 1. Summary of range of lexifiers and substrates of Asian Englishes

Asian English Substrate(s)b
Englisha lexifier(s)
Austronesian Dra- Indo-Aryan Sinitic
vidian
BrE AmE Other Malay Filipino Tamil Hindi Sinhala Can- Hok- Man-
tonese kien darin
Hong Kong ✓ ✓ ✓
Singapore ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓
Malaysia ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓
India ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓
Sri Lanka ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓
Philippines ✓ ✓
aâ•‡ The list of Asian Englishes reflected here is not exhaustive. Here they are listed in an order so as to group
the Asian Englishes with similar substrates together. Of course, in some cases there may be distinguishable
regional subvarieties which have different substrates and exhibit different features, e.g. north, south, and
northeast IndE varieties.
bâ•‡ The list of substrates reflected here is not exhaustive but is meant to represent the main or dominant
varieties in each ecology; obviously many other languages are present in each ecology. The relative domi-
nance of each substrate is also not reflected in this table, nor is any change in dominance at different time
periods shown.
1) Diverse typologies.
First, Asian Englishes show diversity on two fronts: they develop in contact with a
rich range of languages, which are, for the most part, genetically unrelated to Eng-
lish, and which have typologically different grammars, such as Indo-Aryan, Dra-
vidian, Austronesian and Sinitic, examples of which are summarized in Tableâ•¯1.
This means that the emergent Englishes have the potential for displaying features
typologically distinct from those of English. It also means that the collection of
substrates offers us a comprehensive range of languages in which to view the dy-
namics of typologies in contact. For example, if Asian Englishes A and B have
substrates X and Y respectively, with features P and Q respectively, do we see P and
Q in A and B respectively (but not the other way around)? Or if Asian Englishes
A and B both exhibit feature Q, is it because we find Q in substrates X and Y? In
all permutations afforded, such careful and specific investigation permits us to
query the universality question. Also evident in the table is the fact that different
Asian Englishes have certain substrates in common, which afford a comparison to
demographic profile, which is overwhelming and historically unparalleled (Kachru 2005: 206):
the total English-using population of Asia is now more than that of the Inner Circle, and Eng-
lish is the main medium in demand for bi-â•›/â•›multilingualism in the region (Kachru 2005: 15); in
other words, comprising 60% of the world population (Kachru 2005: 206), English users in Asia
are a heavyweight, and warrant serious consideration in World Englishes.
attempt to answer questions such as, for example, if Asian Englishes A and B both
have substrate X with feature Q, will feature Q be selected in both A and B? Singa-
pore English (SgE) and Hong Kong English (HKE) both having Sinitic substrates
Cantonese and Mandarin are a case in point, and a question may be whether the
features of Cantonese particles and Sinitic tone manifest in both SgE and HKE
(Lim this volume). Whatever the answers, the possibilities afford a contemplation
of the contribution of substrate typology alongside other factors in the mechan-
ics of contact. Related to this is the fact that the contexts in which the majority
of Asian Englishes emerge involve multilingual communities: such linguistic and
cultural pluralism certainly holds implications not only for bilinguals’ competence
and creativity in appropriating a new variety (Kachru 2005) but also for the kind of
identity alignments that multilingual speakers engage in (Ansaldo 2009).
2) Dynamic ecologies.
The ecologies of emerging Englishes are always dynamic, as explicitly recognized
in Schneider’s (2007) Dynamic Model of the evolution of Postcolonial Englishes.
What is perhaps notable for Asian (and African) Englishes is how rapidly their
ecologies have changed and continue to do so, in some cases within a matter of de-
cades. Post-independence policies in Asia have had significant and swift impact on
the ecologies, and consequently on the structure, of Asian Englishes. For instance,
during colonial rule, the sociopolitical situations in Singapore and Malaysia were
comparable, and the long-standing lingua franca of the region, Bazaar Malay, was
dominant in both ecologies, and SgE and Malaysian English were seen as simi-
lar. However, language policies in Singapore in the second half of the 20th cen-
tury meant not only that English became lingua franca especially in the younger
generation but also that Mandarin became dominant; this together with a later
ascendance of Cantonese, due in part to immigration policies, has led to a change
in Singapore’s ecology to one that is more Sinitic-dominant and much closer, for
example, to that of Hong Kong (see e.g. Lim 2009, 2010a, this volume for details)
— does SgE then become more similar to HKE? Such dynamism makes for inter-
esting investigations of Asian Englishes at different points in time.
3) Different phases.
The various Englishes found in Asia represent different phases of the “spread” of
English and thus of evolution: many of them, e.g. those of Brunei, Hong Kong,
India, Philippines, Singapore, Sri Lanka, to name a few, are institutionalized vari-
eties of the Outer Circle, where the English lexifier has been present in the ecology
since colonial times and certainly very much entrenched in the ecology. However,
because of other factors — date of independence, post-independence language
and education policies, resources for English education, proportion of population
having access to the language — the state of the evolution of the emergent English
differs, with SgE considered as having already attained endonormative stabiliza-

tion in Phase 4 of the Dynamic Model, while Indian English and HKE are still
only in Phase 3 of nativization (Schneider 2007).6 At the same time there is the
other group of Englishes in Asia, non-institutionalized varieties of the Expanding
Circle, where the presence and significance of English is increasing. Such a range
of stages of nativization and stabilization of the emergent English affords reflection
on whether patterns of features observed may be considered L2 learners’ acquisi-
tional patterns or patterns not significantly different from features deriving from
the substrates of nativized varieties.
2. Thrusts and themes of the collection
Rather than provide a blow-by-blow account of the five papers in this volume
— by Umberto Ansaldo; Nikolas Gisborne; Devyani Sharma; Priyankoo Sarmah,
Divya Verma Gogoi and Caroline Wiltshire; and Lisa Lim, in that order — here we
present the collection in terms of its thrusts and foci — its typology, as it were. The
first paper in this volume, however, needs special mention at the outset. Intended
to set the theoretical scene, Ansaldo’s paper presents a summarized but detailed
account of an evolutionary perspective needed for viewing Asian Englishes, which
involves a reflection of the typological matrix in which each variety evolves, in
the sense of the pool of features that defines the multilingual speech community
in which language contact takes place (Mufwene 2001, 2008; Ansaldo 2009); this,
the paper proposes, is best achieved by seriously considering the typology of the
substrate language(s) involved in the contact situation and the competition and
selection between features of different grammars in the multilingual pool. It is in
this spirit that the collection of papers in this volume is best appreciated.
In terms of linguistic focus, the contributions in the volume span a range of
structural features: two papers delve into the sound system, both segmental and
suprasegmental, examining vowel realization and rhythm (Sarmah, Gogoi and
Wiltshire), and tone and intonation (Lim); the other three papers take up various
aspects of morphology and syntax, such as finiteness (Gisborne), tense and aspect
(past tense and progressive marking for perfective and imperfective expressions)
(Sharma), the copula (Ansaldo; Gisborne; Sharma), predicative adjectives, and
topic prominence (Ansaldo); and discourseâ•›/â•›pragmatics is not neglected either,
with attention to discourse particles (Lim). This range of topics demonstrates how
the influence of the typologies of the substrates is evident at all levels of structure
in the emergent Asian English.
6.â•‡ In fact, it is only very recently that the existence of a “Hong Kong English”, as opposed to a
variety of “English in Hong Kong” has been recognized.
A trio of Asian Englishes is converged upon by all the papers: Indian English
(IndE; Sharma), Singapore English (SgE; Ansaldo; Lim; Sarmah, Gogoi and Wilt-
shire; Sharma) and Hong Kong English (HKE; Gisborne; Lim; Sarmah, Gogoi and
Wiltshire). As mentioned earlier, all Outer Circle varieties, SgE is considered as
having already attained endonormative stabilization, while IndE and HKE are still
only in the phase of nativization; this allows us a look at potential differences in
emerging patterns. The apparent “outlier” which is the focus of one of the papers
(Sarmah, Gogoi and Wiltshire) is a variety which has not garnered much attention
to date; English in Thailand is a relatively recent phenomenon and considered an
L2 variety, and in this sense is a valuable inclusion as an example of an Expanding
Circle variety. In short, the papers provide a view of Asian Englishes which range
from extremely established and nativized varieties such as IndE and SgE to very
much newer ones still considered L2 varieties, like Thai English (ThaiE). Interest-
ingly, both similarities and differences in the patterns observed across the varieties
— e.g. in vowel realizations and rhythmic patterns respectively in ThaiE and SgE
— find explanation in comparable features of the substrates, lending support to
the argument for looking at typologies and not at “classifications” or “universals”.
Where data is concerned, the various papers conduct their investigations us-
ing a range of methods and corpora: e.g. carefully controlled data are elicited for
instrumental phonetic analysis (Sarmah, Gogoi and Wiltshire for ThaiE), spoken
corpora are used for intonation patterns of spontaneous speech (Lim for SgE),
and the International Corpus of English (ICE) of a number of varieties is utilized
for close quantitative analysis of morphosyntactic features (Gisborne for HKE;
Sharma for IndE and SgE).
Finally, the papers are not just descriptiveâ•›/â•›analytical, but also boldly take
on what are traditional classifications or analyses. For instance, the idea of “an-
gloversals” is challenged, with specific investigation into three of Kortmann and
Szmrecsanyi’s (2004) “candidates for universals of New Englishes” (Sharma); and
it is proposed that the traditional classification of English as a stressâ•›/â•›intonation
language be reconsidered and, instead, that some Asian Englishes be considered
tone languages (Lim).
3. To conclude, but only for now
We end this introduction with a note of caution: that even while we proceed a step
further in taking the typology of the substrate languages seriously in a consider-
ation of Asian Englishes, we must not fall into yet another trap of reductionism or
assume a view that is blinkered.
It is important to recognize, first, that it is not just the presence (or absence)
of a feature in a substrate that determines the pattern in the emergent English,
but also its frequency and consistency of use in each of the substrates, as Sharma’s
paper clearly demonstrates. Even if two different substrates of two Asian Englishes
may have the same feature, e.g. imperfectivity marking, one needs to scratch below
the surface: a different distribution of the feature in the different substrates can
indeed lead to different configurations in each Asian English. Hindi has a narrow
progressive form and a robust, obligatory imperfective marker, and IndE speakers
consequently interpret English -ing as a global imperfectivity marker; in contrast,
Chinese has highly restricted and optional imperfective markers, and SgE -ing us-
age thus approximates that of Standard English. The importance of frequency of
a feature across substrates is also seen in instances where typological congruence
can shift the balance and increase the likelihood that certain features get selected
over others, as shown in Ansaldo’s paper, where the congruence between features
in Hokkien and Bazaar Malay leads to those features emerging in SgE.
Finally, in line with the ecology paradigm (after Mufwene 2001, 2008) explic-
itly ascribed to in a number of the papers (Ansaldo; Gisborne; Lim), as well as
approaches such as the dynamic model (Schneider 2007) and those which contex-
tualize Asian Englishes in their functional realities (Kachru 2005), it is also cru-
cial to recognize that the typologies of the substrates (and of the superstrates, or
adstrates) are by no means the sole or main determinant of the emergent English,
constituting only a component of the internal ecology. Factors of the external ecol-
ogy are just as crucial in the process of selection and subsequent replication and
reinforcement of features: these include the proportion that speakers of a language
comprise in a population, and their prestige; the status and penetration that the
New English has in the society; whether speakers adopt an endo- or exonorma-
tive standard; the kind and extent of identity construction, and consequent stabil-
ity and focussing of the emergent English; and so on; and embracing all aspects
of both internal and external ecology and its dynamism (see e.g. Mufwene 2001,
2008; Kachru 2005; Schneider 2007; Ansaldo 2009) must certainly take place for a
complete appreciation of Asian Englishes.
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The Asian typology of English
Theoretical and methodological considerations*
Umberto Ansaldo
This paper looks at the emergence of Asian English varieties in terms of the evo-
lution of new grammatical features. I propose that, in order to reach a thorough
understanding of how the unique combination of grammatical features that
define specific Asian Englishes come about, we must approach these features
from a typological and evolutionary perspective which allows us to contrast
them not only with Standard English varieties but also with the Asian languages
with which these come into contact. As restructured vernaculars, Asian English
varieties are de facto contact languages, and, as such, evolve as a consequence
of selection of features from a multilingual pool. In this pool, features of Asian
varieties play a significant role in determining the output grammar and must
therefore be appreciated in their own right. In order to illustrate these points, I
introduce an evolutionary view of contact language formation, and I present a
set of features typical of Singlish, which are all instances of replication of Asian,
not English, features.
Keywords: Asian Englishes, Singapore English, Singlish, Malay, Sinitic,

evolution, ecology, contact languages, multilingualism, frequency, congruence
1. Introduction
What are Asian English varieties (AEVs)? They are the product of the presence of
English in ecologies where other non-English, non-Standard Average European
(SAE) languages are also spoken. They can be cases of English L1 in contact with
other languages, English L2 usage, or instances of English L2/L3 transmitted in-
formally within a linguistically diverse ecology. In any case, looking at AEVs falls
under the study of language change, in particular, change where contact between
*â•‡ I thank Nik Gisborne, Raymond Hickey, Lisa Lim, Stephen Matthews and Devyani Sharma
for comments on this and other versions of this paper.
12 Umberto Ansaldo
structurally very different languages takes place. As such, AEVs can be regarded
as partially restructured vernaculars (Holm 2004) and, in order to be understood,
require a theoretical approach to contact language formation.
Contact language formation, simply put, is a case of language change which
leads to structural differences between the input and the output grammars. We can
understand these types of changes in at least three ways:
1. Change as departure from the norm, i.e. the product of something gone wrong.
This typically requires “negative” explanations, in the sense of imperfect ac-
quisition or broken transmission.
2. Change as system-internal. In this reading, speakers are passive; changes hap-
pen to the grammar because of structural imbalances, system realignments,
etc. In a radical interpretation of this, context does not matter in order to un-
derstand why change happens.
3. Change as evolutionary. Here, change is a core aspect of complex adaptive
systems. The reason for change is ecological variation, and the mechanisms of
change are selection and replication.
In light of the fact that languages normally change over time, and that there is vari-
ation within speech communities of all types, interpreting changes to a grammar
as indications of abnormal acquisition or transmission, i.e. in sense (1) above, ap-
pears to go against common sense. In fact, even in cases of radical restructurings
such as those observed in creole languages, it has been pointed out that explana-
tions that rely on exceptional circumstances are usually ideologically biased rather
than empirically grounded (DeGraff 2001, 2003, 2005). In relation to (2), historical
linguists have time and again pointed out that it is speakers who change languages,
and that explanations for language change lie ultimately in the social history of a
speech community, not in its grammar (Thomason and Kaufman 1988; Janda and
Joseph 2003). While system-internal dynamics may indeed influence the direction
of change depending on the congruence (or lack thereof) between the systems in
contact, these dynamics are ultimately heavily dependent on circumstances that
are external to the grammar and originate in the history of the speakers. We can
thus say that there is good reason to be critical of (1) and cautious about (2); we
thus turn our attention to (3). In Sectionâ•¯2, I introduce the basic assumptions of an
evolutionary approach to the study of contact language formation and grammati-
cal innovation. In Sectionâ•¯3, I apply these ideas to the study of Singlish grammar,
and in Sectionâ•¯4, I draw the conclusions and implications for the study of AEVs.
The Asian typology of English 13
2. Evolution and ecology
The link between evolutionary biology and language change is an old one: the par-
allels go back to the use of the Stammbaum model to describe language speciation
(see Mufwene 2008), and are explicitly drawn out in Lass’ (1997) idea of language
as an evolving system. Within grammaticalization theory, we note a strand that
looks at the evolution of grammar as an instance of ritualization (Haiman 1994), a
possibility already implied, for example, in Givón’s (1979a) inherently diachronic
approach to grammar. But perhaps the most significant development in terms of
evolutionary theory can be seen in the work of Hull (1988), who extends the basic
assumptions of evolutionary theory to account for the development of all concep-
tual systems, in particular the development of scientific thought. In diachronic
linguistics, Croft (2000) proposes a model of language change as a complex adap-
tive system; Mufwene (2001, 2008) approaches the evolution of new languages
as products of competition and selection in differential ecologies; and Schneider
(2007) draws on these evolutionary and ecological perspectives in his detailed
model specifically of the evolution of Postcolonial Englishes. What these studies
have in common is the recognition that languages exist in a context that is inher-
ently variable, i.e. linguistically diverse; variability means that speakers have a cer-
tain degree of choice as to which variables, whether phonological, lexical or syn-
tactic, to use in a given instance. While some of these choices may be conscious,
for instance in terms of variables that are assigned high social value, others are
unconscious, and depend on matters of cognitive salience, typological dominance
as well as frequency (see Ansaldo 2009). In this sense, features of different varieties
in contact can be seen as being in competition with one another; it is the cumula-
tive result of different choices, or different outcomes of competition, that explains
why languages change and why speakers vary in their usage. Let us take a closer
look at the processes involved.
2.1 Selection and replication
In a theory of language that acknowledges the evolutionary dimension of lan-

guage, usage implies linguistic variation and thus language change. Variation can
occur at three different levels (Croft 2000, 2006). First-order variants are indi-
vidual variants that occur in all subdomains of grammar (phonological, semantic,
syntactic, etc.) and represent the natural individual differences in speaking (the
same language); first-order variation manifests itself in idiolects. When first-order
variants take on a sociological significance in a community, they become second-
order variation; second-order variation can be detected in registers that are an
14 Umberto Ansaldo
indication of social class, gender, profession, etc. When second-order variation

becomes conventionalized in a speech community and leads to divergence, we
have third-order variation, i.e. dialects, or languages, depending on their political
status. Just like in other complex evolving systems, change is caused by selection
and replication. When communicating, speakers select among the available vari-
ables and replicate linguistic features they have been exposed to. Selection can be
influenced by a combination of factors, notably the social capital of the variables,
the degree of congruence between the systems in contact, and the frequency of
exposure to the different variables that speakers have (Croft 2000; Mufwene 2001,
2008; Ansaldo 2009). Replication can be more or less faithful, and can result in
quasi-identical or innovative replication. Whether replication is identical or inno-
vative is largely dependent on whether the groups in contact are engaged in social
convergence or divergence; the most radical instances of innovative replication,
i.e. the formation of a new grammar, is the result of a process of identity forma-
tion whereby a group sets itself aside from others by projecting a completely new
cultural profile, of which language is a strong indicator (Ansaldo 2009). This is also
related to the linguistic diversity of the contact ecology: the more diversity there
is in the features available for selection, the more potential there is for innovative
replication. More often than not, identical and innovative replication are com-
bined in contact ecologies, as contact language formation often arises out of the
tension between, on the one hand, the convergence to external linguistic norms,
and, on the other, the preservation of a degree of linguistic differentiation for the
purpose of in-group identification (Ansaldo 2009).
2.2 Multilingual ecologies and transmission
It is obvious that the selection and replication patterns of linguistic features avail-
able to speakers differ from society to society. In particular, the ecology in which
transmission of features happens determines the options available (Mufwene
2001): in a monolingual ecology there will be a limited set of similar features,
while in a diverse multilingual ecology there will be many features in competi-
tion with one another, i.e. many different ways of saying the same thing. We can
visualize this in Figuresâ•¯1 and 2 (from Ansaldo 2009), which illustrate the differ-
ence between the options available for selection in a monolingual and a multilin-
gual ecology, respectively, where monolingual ecologies tend to be much more
homogeneous than multilingual ones. Because of the diversity of options available,
multilingual ecologies are by definition a natural locus of change, and multilingual
speakers are natural innovators.
Figureâ•¯1. Monolingual transmission (Ansaldo 2009)
Figureâ•¯2. Multilingual transmission (Ansaldo 2009)
2.3 The abnormality of monolingual ecologies for our theories of evolution
Recall the fact that most societies around the globe have been and still are mul-
tilingual (Edwards 1996). Note also that schooling and regulated language trans-
mission is predominantly a recent feature of modern societies and, where it ex-
isted in the past, it was mostly directed at small, privileged groups. This makes
monolingual, normative ecologies, such as those that have existed in Europe for
the past two centuries, extremely marked from the point of view of human his-
tory. The type of language acquisition that happens in these ecologies is not “nor-
mal”, because for thousands of years this is not how languages were transmitted. If
we want to understand how contact vernaculars such as AEVs develop, we must
bear in mind that they evolve in multilingual ecologies in which some variety of
English represents only one set of features available to speakers. In the same ecol-
ogy, other grammars are present, be they Chinese, Malay, Filipino or Hindi, and
16 Umberto Ansaldo
grammatical features of these languages also play a role in the selection and rep-
lication processes — in line with Weinreich’s (1963) observation that in contact
situations superficial multilingualism is enough for language interference. There-
fore, we should not assume that English was the one and only target for non-native
speakers in the evolution of AEVs; rather, the speakers that contributed to the
development of AEVs were busy selecting and replicating linguistic features from
a pool within which English grammar constituted but a subset of choices available.
It is important to realize that normal transmission is untutored, creative and in-
volves more than one language in most colonial settings where AEVs emerge. That
all these elements need to be taken into serious consideration is clear when we
look at the evolution of Singlish (basilectal Singapore English, SgE)2 in Singapore.
3. Singlish typology
The variety of English spoken by a majority of Singaporeans on an everyday basis

has been referred to as Singapore English (SgE), Singapore Colloquial English and,
most intimately, simply Singlish. All these terms indicate that it is a spoken variety
related to English that is unique to Singapore. The uniqueness is easily detected
in all those aspects of its usage that distinguish different languages, or different
dialects, from one another: pronunciation (or sound system), words in usage (or
vocabulary), and ways in which sentences are constructed (grammar). It is con-
sidered a variety of English because much of its vocabulary is drawn from English,
even if words of Malay, Hokkien and Tamil origin are also part of it.
In mixing elements of different languages, Singlish takes its place among so-
called contact languages, i.e. grammatical systems that evolve in multilingual
ecologies (Platt 1975; Gupta 1994; Ansaldo 2004). Singapore’s ecology has been
characterized by communicative systems of this type since its foundation. During
colonial rule, Bazaar Malay varieties, in which Malay and Chinese features blend,
flourished in the region; in Singapore, such a colloquial variety of Malay played
an important role as de facto lingua franca that allowed interethnic communica-
tion until very recently (Ansaldo 2004; Lim 2007, 2010a), a function it still has in
certain parts of society (Khin Khin Aye 2005). A related variety is Baba Malay, a
unique blend of Hokkien and (Bazaar) Malay, typical of the Peranakan communi-
ties of Malaysia and Singapore (Ansaldo, Lim and Mufwene 2007).
2.â•‡ While the majority of scholarship, including the other papers in this volume, refer to this
variety as Singapore English (SgE), I adopt the term Singlish, largely to underline the fact that
extensive divergence from standard English is found in the basilectal variety of SgE, and it is in
the features of the non-English languages that much of its grammar finds explanation.
In addition to the above, Hokkien (southern Min group, spoken originally in

Fujian province and Taiwan) and Cantonese (Yue group) have been the most im-
portant Sinitic influences in the ecology in which Singlish evolved, with Mandarin
a more recent addition (Lim 2007, 2010a).
With post-independence language and education policies in the 1960s and
after (for details see e.g. Lim 2007, 2010a), eventually English replaced Bazaar Ma-
lay as lingua franca, and what was first an English-based lingua franca became
Singlish. Today Singlish is the native language of a majority of young Singapor-
eans, which, together with (Singapore) Mandarin, forms the bilingual profile that
defines a majority of Singaporean citizens (though additional languages are also
spoken, such as Malay, Hokkien, Cantonese, Tamil, etc.), and is used in the home,
on the streets, in the playground and in school.
Perhaps the best way to approach Singlish grammar is to realize a fundamental
difference between, on one side, English and, on the other side, Sinitic3 and Malay.
While English is classified as a mildly inflectional language, meaning that it makes
a certain use of morphology for grammatical purpose, Sinitic and Malay, the dom-
inant languages of Singapore’s linguistic ecology, are typically isolating, meaning
that there are hardly any morphological processes to speak of. This is true of many
creole languages of the Caribbean, too, as well as of other contact languages, a fact
that has led a number of scholars to argue that morphology is “lost” in the histo-
ries of these languages. However, as already pointed out by Givón (1979b), there
could be another explanation: that the languages that evolve out of specific contact
situation inherit the morphology of the so-called substrate languages. In the case
of Atlantic Creoles these would often involve West African languages of the Kwa
type, typically isolating. In the case of Singapore, as we will see, it is indeed in the
nature of the non-English languages that much grammar finds explanation. In
order to illustrate this, I focus on the following features: (i) zero copula, (ii) pred-
icative adjectives (or property verbs), and (iii) Topic prominence.
3.â•‡ The examples that are used as illustration in the rest of this section are drawn from a number
of different Sinitic languages, such as Cantonese and Mandarin, which, as mentioned earlier, are
part of the Singapore ecology. While different Sinitic languages exhibit significant grammatical
divergence in certain areas of grammar, with regard to the three features addressed in this paper,
the various Sinitic languages behave in similar ways.
18 Umberto Ansaldo
3.1 Three features of Singlish grammar
In the account of Singlish grammar in this paper,4 I have selected the features
of zero copula, predicative adjectives (or property verbs), and Topic prominence
for a number of reasons, primarily because they show innovation with respect
to English varieties (though Irish English, for example, does have zero copula;
see Hickey 2007), but also, importantly, because (a) they are typical of Sinitic and
Malay varieties, i.e. the relevant substrates, and (b) they are typologically related,
i.e. their grammatical functions are, to a degree, interrelated. As such, they are
clear evidence of the fact that typologically prominent features are likely to be
selected from the variables in contact; the prominence is a result of the congru-
ence between Sinitic and Malay type, further strengthened by the systemic relation
between the features in question.
3.1.1 Zero copula

Consider the following sentences in examples (1) and (2).
(1) This your car?
‘Is this your car?’
(2) Careful, laksa very hot.
‘Careful, the laksa is very hot’
From a normative English perspective, it might be observed that the copula to be is

missing. This occurs very frequently in Singlish, and one might conclude that Sin-
glish is incorrect vis-à-vis English (e.g. in the ‘deficit’ view of non-native varieties
of English; Quirk 1990). However, from a typological point of view, what should
first be recognized is that zero copula is in fact a common feature of many lan-
guages spoken in different parts of the world, as illustrated in examples (3) to (6).
(3) Che1 hou2 wu4jou4 (Sinitic, Cantonese; Goddard 2005: 103)
car very dirty
‘The car is very dirty’
(4) Buku itu baru (Malay)
book that new
‘That book is new’
(5) Unnæhee hungak presidde kene-k (Sinhalese; Gair 1970: 145)
he very famous person-nom
‘He is a very famous person’
4.â•‡ The Singlish examples derive from data from informants, except (17) which is from the
Grammar of Spoken Singapore English Corpus (GSSEC; Lim and Foley 2004).
(6) Moskva gorod (Russian; from Stassen 2008b)

Moscow city
‘Moscow is a city’
What should be noted next is that examples (3) and (4) are particularly significant
as they represent two of the languages that come into contact in the linguistic ecol-
ogy of Singapore; unlike Standard English, in which zero copula encoding of pred-
icative nominals is never allowed, Sinitic and Malay varieties hardly ever require an
overt copula. It is therefore reasonable to expect that features from these languages
will be available for selection to multilingual users of English in Singapore.
3.1.2 Predicative adjectives

In Sinitic and Malay, zero copula relates to a second typical feature, namely the
absence of a clear distinction between the word classes we know as verbs and ad-
jectives. In Sinitic and Malay, we also find that not only are copular verbs rare
and usually used for emphasis (Goddard 2005), but also that adjectives behave
predicatively (Stassen 2008a), and are usually referred to as predicative adjectives
(Li and Thompson 1981; Wetzer 1996), as already illustrated in examples (3) and
(4). Languages which lack a distinction between a verbal and an adjectival class are
typologically well-attested; out of 386 languages investigated in Stassen (2008a),
more than half showed verbal behaviour of adjectives.
Crucially, zero copula and predicative adjectives are common typological cor-
relates cross-linguistically, as zero copula is a prerequisite for identifying the ver-
bal encoding of adjectives in a language in the first place (Wetzer 1996; Stassen
1997). Also relevant to the focus of this paper is that, of the languages of the world
in which zero copula and predicate adjectives correlate, there is a particularly high
concentration in the (Southeast) Asian region, as illustrated in Figureâ•¯3 (from
WALS Online; Haspelmath et al. 2008) — the region in which Singlish is found.
We examine this phenomenon by looking at the use of gao1 ‘(to be) tall’ in
Mandarin (Sinitic). As example (7) shows, the fact that ‘tall’ behaves predicatively
is indicated by the absence of the copula verb; (8) confirms the fact that ‘tall’ is
indeed verbal, since it can be modified by aspect, just like other verbs as in (9)
(examples from Goddard 2005: 113).
(7) Ni2 hen3 gao1
you very tall
‘You are very tall’
(8) Ni3 gao1-le yi1dian3
you tall-PERF a.little
‘You’ve gotten taller’
20 Umberto Ansaldo
Figureâ•¯3. Distribution of languages of the world with zero copula and predicative adjec-
tives (from WALS Online; Haspelmath et al. 2008)
(9) Wo3 peng4-dao4-le Lin Hui

I bump-arrive-PERF Lin Hui
‘I ran into Lin Hui’
In considering Singlish, similar patterns can be found, as shown in examples (10)

and (11). Clearly, Singlish grammar follows Sinitic (and Malay) typology, and
should be considered a language in which adjectives behave predicatively.
(10) Today weather very hot.
‘Today’s weather is very hot’
(11) She good a21?
‘Is she good?’
The fact that zero copula and predicative adjectives feature in Singlish grammar
must be seen as a selection of adstrate features (or substrate transfer) from the
multilingual pool; in addition, the fact that both features are selected in the new
grammar is justified by the typological correlation that holds between them noted
above.
3.1.3 Topic prominence

A third property of Singlish which can be explained as a selection of non-English
material from the multilingual pool of variables available in the linguistic ecology
is Topic prominence (Ansaldo 2004; Bao and Lye 2005). There is reason to believe
that languages can be classified as either Topic-prominent or Subject-prominent
(Goddard 2005); while Subject prominence is the prevalent option in SAE, Topic
prominence is typical of isolating languages since they have little morphology to

carry out agreement tasks, often used to identify subjecthood. This is illustrated
in examples (12) to (14) from Mandarin (see Li and Thompson 1981), where zero
copula and predicative adjectives may also be observed.
(12) Zhang1san1 yi3jing1 jian4-guo le
John already see-EXP CRS
‘Zhangsan I have already seen’
(13) Shang4 ge yue4 tian1qi4 fei1chang2 men1
last CL month weather extremely humid
‘Last month the weather was extremely humid’
(14) Xiang4 bi2zi chang2
elephant nose long
‘Elephants have long noses’
While in English subject and topic often align, in Topic-prominent languages,

other grammatical elements can be topics, such as object (‘John’ in 12) and adver-
bial (‘last month’ in 13), in addition to subject (‘elephants’ in 14). Topic-Comment
structure is also a characteristic of Malay varieties, such as Baba Malay (Lim 1988:
39–40).5 As can be seen in examples (15) to (17), speakers of Singlish also fre-
quently structure their discourse in terms of Topic-Comment structure, following
the patterns of other Topic-prominent languages in the ecology.
(15) Fish you wan?
‘Do you want (some) fish (to eat)?’
(16) Expensive the durian here.
‘The durian here is expensive.’
(17) My parents old fashion a21? (GSSEC)
‘Are my parents old-fashioned?’
3.2 Evolution and ecology as explanatory parameters
In order to tie the theory discussed in Sectionâ•¯2 together with the data presented
so far, let us revisit what an ecological approach to Singlish entails. Firstly, as a case
of contact language formation, the study of Singlish requires that we recognize
that the evolution of new grammar occurs in a multilingual ecology. This means
that in investigating how English is restructured in the ecology of Singapore, we
5.â•‡ Peranakan English also exhibits Topic-Comment structure (Lim 2010b), reflecting the Topic-
Comment structure characteristic of Baba Malay.
22 Umberto Ansaldo
assume that features of English are in competition with at least the features of
other dominant languages, in this case Sinitic and Malay varieties. Secondly, in
order to understand what drives selection and replication of features, we need to
consider the social and structural profiles of these languages. Numerically, Sinitic
emerges as the strongest language throughout the history of Singapore, since the
Chinese formed the largest majority from two decades into colonial rule (Lim
2007, 2010a); possibly, this also holds for its prestige, as Chinese merchants were
always very influential in Singaporean society (see Lim 2007). Typologically, Sin-
itic and Malay dominate, because of the typological congruence that renders many
features of these languages more frequent in the pool of variables that define the
ecology. Numerical and typological dominance mean that Sinitic and Malay vari-
ables are more frequent and salient and thus more readily available for selection
and replication. In addition, typological correlation matters in the replication of
zero-copula and predictive adjectives. The competing features discussed in this
section are illustrated in Tableâ•¯1.
Table 1. Competing features in the ecology of Singlish

Sinitic Malay English
Zero copula Zero copula Copular verb
Property verbs Property verbs Verb / adjective distinction
Topic prominence Topic prominence Subject prominence
As can be seen from Tableâ•¯1, Sinitic and Malay adopt the same strategies in all
three instances, while English diverges. In the linguistic ecology of Singapore, the
Siniticâ•›/â•›Malay features win in the competition process because they have a higher
type- and token-frequency in the multilingual context in which speakers of Sin-
glish communicate. Therefore they emerge as typical features of Singlish grammar,
while the English features lose out and are thus discarded (for other instances
of Sinitic transfer in English, see Bao 2001, 2005; Bao and Lye 2005). Note that
Singlish is by no means the only instance of contact language formation in which
frequency determines to a large extent the restructuring process. Another obvious
case of the dominance in particular of type-frequency in the evolution of a new
grammar is found in Sri Lanka Malay, in which the congruence between Sinhala
and Tamil by and large dominates the restructuring process and wins in the com-
petition with Malay features (Ansaldo 2008, 2009; also Aboh and Ansaldo 2007).
If these observations are correct, then we can say that speakers are sensitive to the
dominant grammatical patterns and select congruent, type-frequent features in
constructing their grammar.
4. Final remarks
I do not wish to claim that all features of Singlish are derived from its Asian sub-
strates. This would obviously be incorrect in the light of the lexical influence, for
one thing, as well as the grammatical features of English that trickle into SgE,
especially visible at the mesolectal level. These include wh-movement, residual
tense morphology, modal auxiliaries, etc. (see e.g. chapters in Lim 2004). The main
claim that I wish to make here is that an appropriate description of Singlish gram-
mar, and of any other Asian English variety or any other contact language for that
matter, must take as a point of departure a pool of linguistically diverse features
including all the dominant languages in contact. This is the approach outlined as
the “Typological Matrix” (Ansaldo 2004, 2009), in which it is argued that contact
language formation is the result of typological alignments in the multilingual ecol-
ogy in which contact takes place (see also Mufwene 2001, 2008; Schneider 2007;
Ansaldo 2008, 2009). In this approach, morphological reduction is not necessar-
ily an instance of simplification or faulty acquisition, but rather a reflection of
typological traits of isolating languages (where present) which win in the competi-
tion and selection process. Singlish has many of these, more than illustrated here,
as can also be seen, for example, in the use of final particles and tonal features,
which are defining features of Singlish (Lim 2007, 2009, this volume). From a mor-
phosyntactic perspective, considering the predominantly isolating typology and
the typical Asian grammatical features,6 Singlish, as an Asian English variety, is
more an Asian variety with English influences than a variety of English.
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———. 2007. “Mergers and acquisitions: On the ages and origins of Singapore English particles”.
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Gruyter.
Aspects of the morphosyntactic typology
of Hong Kong English*
Nikolas Gisborne
University of Edinburgh
English and Cantonese are the main two languages in contact in Hong Kong, to-
gether with some other minority Sinitic languages and a variety of Austronesian
languages spoken by domestic helpers. Cantonese and English are typologically
dissimilar in terms of word order, tense, mood and aspect marking, noun phrase
structure, relative clause formation, the formation of interrogatives, and argu-
ment structure. Yet there is no work which systematically explores how these
morphosyntactic typological differences are revealed in Hong Kong English
(HKE). This paper explores how a typological perspective facilitates an analysis
of the expression of finiteness in HKE, a significant feature because it subsumes a
number of other typological facts. The analysis claims that HKE is a new English
variety where the typology of the substrate is more directly responsible for the
morphosyntactic features under analysis than the typology of the lexifier.
Keywords: Hong Kong English, finiteness, typology, ecology, feature pool
1. Introduction
Although English has been spoken in Hong Kong since the British took possession
of Hong Kong Island in 1841, the variety of English known as “Hong Kong Eng-
lish” is really a postwar phenomenon, one of the new varieties of English Kachru
(1985) describes as an “Outer Circle” variety. The sociolinguistic context giving
rise to Hong Kong English (HKE) is complex. Between 1945 and 1997, Hong Kong
was a British Crown Colony with administrative structures — especially those of
education — run by British colonial administrators. At the same time, in the post-
war period, there was significant population growth due to large scale migration
*â•‡ I am grateful to Edgar Schneider, Lisa Lim, Umberto Ansaldo, Claire Cowie, Caroline Wilt-
shire and two reviewers for comments on earlier and present versions of this paper, and Anna
Siewierska, Willem Hollmann and Paul Kerswill for comments on an oral presentation.
28 Nikolas Gisborne
from Mainland China. Hong Kong was never a settler colony: the British admin-
istrators, businessmen, lawyers and teachers who worked there were expected to
return “home”. And so, although English was the language of administration, busi-
ness, law and education in the colonial period, it was not really in contact with the
languages of the indigenous populations in domestic environments.
In the main, most of Hong Kong’s ethnic Chinese population acquire their
English through their experience of education. For this reason, it is fair to say that
English is primarily transmitted in the classroom, although, (perhaps) as there are
local norms, it is not fair to state that HKE is a simple L2 variety which is acquired
afresh with every generation. There is also, arguably, transmission of a local variety
from one generation of HKE speakers to another, although this involves explicit
instruction rather than a classic language acquisition context. These contextual
facts raise a number of questions about how to study this emerging variety. Given
the context, it makes sense to explore HKE as a contact variety which has emerged
in a unique environment and which needs to be understood in terms of the com-
position of that environment.
It is important to understand the typological dimensions of the languages in
contact, in order to understand the linguistic environment where the new variety
emerges. The two main languages which come into contact in Hong Kong are
English and Cantonese — but there are additionally some other Sinitic languages
spoken such as Mandarin, Hokkien and Chui Chow, and a substantial population
of Filipina domestic helpers who bring different Austronesian languages to the
territory. In line with other papers in this issue, I am claiming that the proper-
ties of the emerging New English can be understood in terms of the selection of
a number of grammatical features from a feature pool in the ecology (Mufwene
2001; Ansaldo 2009a, b, this volume).
The ecological approach I am adopting is presented in Mufwene (2001). Croft
(2000) presents a similar treatment of language change in terms of population ge-
netics, where speciation consists of the selection of features from an available body
of features in the linguistic environment. In Mufwene’s (2001) approach, feature
selection is discussed in terms of the external and the internal ecology. The exter-
nal ecology is the sociolinguistic context of language contact; the internal ecology
is the pool of linguistic features which the languages in contact contribute to, and
from which the features of the restructured lexifier are drawn. The approach I am
adopting here has results which show that that the grammatical features under
investigation cannot best be analyzed in terms of “angloversals” (Kortmann and
Szmrecsanyi 2004).
So why a typological perspective? What would you understand differently
or predict? My answer is in line with the other papers in this volume, and agrees
with the line trenchantly argued for by both Ansaldo and Lim in their papers.
If we look at language contact in terms of the ecological approach pioneered by

Mufwene (2001), we can see the innovations in the creation of the new English
as being a kind of selection from a feature pool. It is necessary to see how similar
the varieties are, what kinds of selections speakers make, and what their choices
are if the process of new language formation is supposed to be understood. Not
least, this approach affords us the opportunity of exploring New Englishes in
terms of close and careful grammatical description with a keen eye on the lin-
guistic and sociolinguistic environment, which is a useful corrective to over-
enthusiastic arguments in favour of “angloversals” or the so-called exceptional
properties of contact varieties.
Because of the history of English in Hong Kong, and because of its status,
studies of HKE have primarily focused on the sociology of the variety, attitudes
of the population of Hong Kong to English, codeswitching, learner errors, and the
Hong Kong accent. See, for example, several of the papers in Bolton (2002). There
is some work on the structure of the variety. Gisborne (2000), which looks at rela-
tive clauses, is one case study, and Hung (2000) explores the phonology of HKE as
a system in toto. But there is very little work on the morphosyntax of the variety,
and there are not really any useful paradigms for exploring its morphosyntax.
In this paper I am specifically interested in a core area of morphosyntax. I
look at the distribution of finiteness in HKE in order to establish whether it can
be argued that there is a lack of finiteness in the variety which reflects the lack of
finiteness in Sinitic languages. The argument has two parts: first I justify the claim
that Sinitic languages do not have a finiteness contrast, and then I look at relevant
data from HKE subordinate clauses to establish whether there is a suspension of
the finiteness contrast in this variety.
As the papers in Nikolaeva (2005b) show, finiteness is a central element in the-
orizing about morphosyntax. However, there are good reasons for claiming that it
is not a well defined category cross-linguistically, and Hu, Pan and Xu (2001) argue
that despite a number of claims to the contrary Chinese does not have finiteness. If
HKE has structures like those in Chinese which are associated with the absence of
finiteness, then this will argue for substrate transfer in the morphosyntax. Another
point concerns the status of finiteness as a typological feature. Given its absence
from the World Atlas of Language Structures (WALS; Haspelmath et al. 2008),
there is a question about whether finiteness works as a feature of areal typology, in
the same way as tone, for example (see Lim 2009, this volume).
The rest of this paper has the following structure: Sectionâ•¯2 looks in great-
er detail at the sociolinguistic contexts of HKE, and describes the immediate
background of the variety; Sectionâ•¯3 describes the relevant structures in Can-
tonese — in this section we argue for the position that Cantonese does not have
a finiteness contrast; Sectionâ•¯4 explores the relevant data from HKE; Sectionâ•¯5
30 Nikolas Gisborne
discusses the facts in the context of recent work on the ecology of the language
contact environment and presents the conclusions.
2. The sociolinguistic contexts of HKE
According to Tsui and Bunton (2002: 57), approximately 96% of the population of
Hong Kong is Chinese. Tsui and Bunton show that not all of the Chinese popula-
tion in Hong Kong speak Cantonese, although the vast majority do. They cite the
1996 By-Census where 88.7% of the population “indicated that Cantonese is their
usual spoken language, and 3.1% indicated English”. As Tableâ•¯1 shows, there has
been some change since 1997.1
Tableâ•¯1. HK population aged 5 and over by usual language, 1996, 2001, and 2006
Population Aged 5 and Over by Usual Language, 1996, 2001 and 2006(1)
1996 2001 2006
Usual
Language Number % of total Number % of total Number % of total
Cantonese 5 196 240 88.7 5 726 972 89.2 6 030 960 90.8
Putonghua 65 892 1.1 55 410 0.9 60 859 0.9
Other Chinese
Dialects 340 222 5.8 352 562 5.5 289 027 4.4
English 184 308 3.1 203 598 3.2 187 281 2.8
Others 73 879 1.3 79 197 1.2 72 217 1.1
Total 5 860 541 100.0 6 417 739 100.0 6 640 344 100.0
Note:â•‡ (1)The figures exclude mute persons.

Source:â•‡ 2006 Population By-Census Office, Census and Statistics Department
(Enquiry telephone no. : 2716 8025)
Last revision date: 22 February, 2007
More of the population speaks Cantonese as its home language than in 1996, less of
the population speaks English, and interestingly, the numbers speaking Mandarin
(i.e. Putonghua in the table) have also diminished. Kwok (2004) and Lai (2005)
have both found in language attitudes research that most Hong Kong residents
have an emotional attachment to Cantonese and perceive English and Mandarin
1.â•‡ Tableâ•¯1 is Tableâ•¯140 of the Hong Kong Census and Statistics Department’s Statistical Tables
and Charts, published at <http://www.censtatd.gov.hk/hong_kong_statistics/statistics_by_sub-
ject/index.jsp?subjectID=1&charsetID=1&displayMode=T> (25 Jan. 2009).
to be languages which have instrumental value, but which they are not particularly
attached to.
These facts are suggestive of several reasons why English does not have an
“equivalent of the mesolectal or basilectal speech styles found, for example, in Sin-
gapore … since there is no equivalent range of English speech varieties in regular
use by Hong Kong Chinese” (Luke and Richards 1982: 55–6, cited in Tsui and
Bunton 2002: 58). After all, if local Cantonese-speaking Chinese residents of Hong
Kong have no reason to use English within their community, then there are few
situations of use where a local variety will develop. The broad facts about the so-
ciology of use of English in Hong Kong also raise the question “whose norms?”
— what English is used, by whom and where?
One answer is given by the education system: according to Bolton (2003: 96)
in 1994 “over 90% of all secondary schools were at least nominally English-me-
dium (Johnson 1994)”. In March 1997, all but 100 schools were obliged to teach
through the medium of Cantonese; Bolton (2003: 96–7) says, “[t]he figure of 100
was amended to 114 after predictable protests from schools and parents, but at
present the policy remains one of providing ‘firm guidance’ for secondary schools,
and of encouraging the use of Cantonese as a teaching medium”. English is also
the medium of instruction in the University of Hong Kong, the oldest and most
prestigious university in the territory, as it is at the University of Science and Tech-
nology, while the Chinese University of Hong Kong, the second oldest university,
is officially bilingual, as is the City University of Hong Kong. This means that in
order to receive a higher education, Hong Kong secondary school students need
to become sufficiently proficient in English in order to follow a university course
of instruction. Universities set admission standards for English by requiring an
appropriate grade in the Use of English ‘A’ level.
From this brief survey, it appears uncontentious to suggest that English in
Hong Kong is a colonial legacy, and its presence is an artefact of the education
system, and its prestige an artefact of colonial government — leaving English as
the language of law and government — as well as the practices of international
business.
But the situations of use of English in Hong Kong are not entirely simple: Tsui
and Bunton (2002) go on to cite Bacon-Shone and Bolton (1998), who identify
several reasons for claiming that English is a language which, in the course of the
1980s and 1990s, is used by home speakers of Cantonese in certain socially con-
ditioned contexts. There is a large number of Filipina domestic helpers in Hong
Kong, who speak English with their employers, which makes it necessary to use
English in the home; English is used in written communications such as e-mail
and business memos; and “the percentage of the population who reported that
they knew English quite well, well and very well, rose from 6.6% in 1983 to 33.7%
32 Nikolas Gisborne
in 1993 and to 38.1% in 1996” (Bacon-Shone and Bolton 1998: 76). The 2006 By-
Census shows that more of the population of Hong Kong speak English as a home
language than any single Sinitic variety other than Cantonese;2 it also shows that
the percentage of the population claiming to speak English as either their usual
language or as an additional language rose from 38.1% in 1996, to 43% in 2001, to
44.7% in 2006.3
Bolton (2002, 2003) has claimed that Hong Kong English is a variety with its
own norms and its own local creative activity. It seems true enough to say that
there is a local Hong Kong accent, but it is not obvious that, in terms of the mor-
phosyntax, Hong Kong English is anything other than an L2 variety. Of course,
stable contact varieties show substrate morphosyntactic features, so showing
that Hong Kong English reveals aspects of the morphosyntax of Chinese is not a
knock-down argument that it is an L2 variety. But making the argument that there
are features of Cantonese in the morphosyntax of Hong Kong English makes it far
more possible to establish the dimensions of “autonomy” (Bolton 2002) in Hong
Kong English, and to become clearer about the extent to which it is typologically
similar to the native language of the local Chinese population.
In the next section, we review the arguments for claiming that Cantonese, like
other Chinese varieties, does not have finiteness and we look at the structure of the
Cantonese NP, with a view to establishing the typological facts which will allow us
to explore some of the relevant features of Hong Kong English.
3. Finiteness as a typological category, in English, and in Chinese
In Sectionâ•¯3.1 below, I discuss finiteness in standard native varieties of English;

and in Sectionâ•¯3.2 I argue (following Hu et al. 2001) that there is no finiteness in
the Sinitic languages, and therefore Cantonese does not have finiteness.
First, though, let us think about finiteness as a typological category. Nikolaeva
(2005a) discusses finiteness as a property of clauses: in the western European
tradition, it is associated with tense marking and verbal inflection, verb-subject
agreement and the requirement of clauses to have a subject. Nikolaeva also points
out that finiteness is associated with mood and other semantic notions, so it is
not a category with clearly defined boundaries. In her survey, she observes, “there
2.â•‡ Table A 118 of the 2006 By-Census, “Hong Kong Resident Population by Duration of Resi-
dence in HK, Nationality and Usual Language, 2006”, available at <http://www.bycensus2006.
gov.hk/data/data3/statistical_tables/index.htm#D1> (25 Jan. 2009).
3.â•‡ In connection with these facts, it is worth noting that the percentage of the population claim-
ing to speak Putonghua (i.e. Mandarin) was 25.3% in 1996, 34.1% in 2001, and 40.2% in 2006.
seem to be some cross-linguistically valid correlations between subject require-

ment, subject agreement, tense, syntactic opacity, and independent clausehood”
(Nikolaeva 2005a: 10). Many of the papers in Nikolaeva (2005b) are given over to
the question of how finiteness might be defined theoretically so that it can have
cross-linguistic validity as an analytical notion.
Tense, then, is one of several properties which are possible reflexes of finite-
ness. The World Atlas of Language Structures does not recognize finiteness as a
typological feature. It shows, for example, the distribution of languages with no
pastâ•›/â•›present tense contrast; those that make a pastâ•›/â•›present tense contrast; and
those that have a three-way pastâ•›/â•›presentâ•›/â•›future contrast (Dahl and Velupillai
2008). Sinitic languages are among those that show no pastâ•›/â•›present tense con-
trast, whereas English is listed among those languages which distinguish between
past and present, but which does not have a morphologically realized future. But
WALS’s discussion of these tense distinctions does not consider them in terms of
a supercategory; indeed, it does not treat the more abstract category finiteness as
a discrete category at all.
So why say that Sinitic languages lack finiteness rather than tense alone? The
specific arguments are made below, but we can consider some general observations
here. Just as there are properties which converge under the rubric of finiteness, so,
I hypothesize, are there properties which converge in languages that arguably do
not show a finiteness contrast. For example, lack of finiteness in Sinitic languages
is not only responsible for the lack of tense distinctions, but is also related to other
known typological phenomena. As Ansaldo (2009b) points out, Sinitic languages
are Topic-prominent rather than Subject-prominent. Sinitic languages have copula
omission, which is also related to the lack of finiteness: in a language where there is
no finiteness, there is no need to have a copular verb as a carrier of morphosyntac-
tic information. And finally, it is hard to establish the lexical categories of certain
elements in Sinitic languages, especially those related to predication. The catego-
rial distinction between adjectives and verbs is especially hard to establish. Again,
if a language does not have a finiteness distinction, then it is hard to make the
distinction between these lexical categories, because it is the distribution under
finiteness which establishes the verbal nature of a verb. Although I do not pursue
these claims in a substantial way in this paper, it is likely that if HKE lacks finite-
ness, it will also show the Sinitic typological properties listed here.
Therefore, a number of well known typological properties of Sinitic languages
can be subsumed under a single parameter — which means that these same prop-
erties can be explored in HKE as a way of establishing how HKE speakers have se-
lected from the feature pool. On the other hand, as the quotation from Nikolaeva
(2005a) above shows, there are good reasons for treating tense as a reflex of finite-
ness, as well as the subject requirement, alongside other properties which English
34 Nikolas Gisborne
demonstrably has. It seems sensible therefore to assume that finiteness is the rel-
evant morphosyntactic contrast to explore here.
3.1 Finiteness in standard varieties of English
There are four main areas where English grammar shows the finiteness distinction.
– Finite clauses must have overt subjects; non-finite clauses need not.
– Finite clauses can be independent predications; non-finite clauses cannot.
– Finite clauses encode a speech act function; non-finite clauses do not.
– Matrix predicates select for either finite or non-finite complements.
Let us take the first two points.
(1) a. She ran home.
b. * ___ ran home.
c. I expected [her to run home].
d. I expected [___ to run home].
Note that the finite clauses in (1a) and (1b) must have overt subjects, whereas the
bracketed non-finite clauses in (1c) and (1d) do not need overt subjects. (In (1d),
the “missing” subject of the infinitive clause is shared with the subject of the ma-
trix clause.) Note too that it is not possible to use a non-finite clause outside of a
subordinate context. *Her to run home is not a possible independent sentence of
English.
The third point is a little more complex: the syntax of the finite clauses in (2)
shows that they are in turn imperative, declarative, and interrogative.
(2) a. Be aware!
b. He is aware.
c. Are you aware?
Non-finite clauses do not encode these speech act functions syntactically although
they can be embedded under heads which indicate that their non-finite clausal
complements denote instructions, assertions, or questions.
(3) a. He told [her to be aware].
b. He considered [her to be aware].
c. He wondered whether [___ to be aware].
In (3), tell is a verb which selects a complement that reports the giving of an
instruction; consider is a verb which selects a complement that expresses a state-
ment-like proposition; and wonder whether together select a clause that ex-
presses a reported question. In none of the instances in (3) is the semantics of the
complement encoded in their syntax. It is true that embedded non-finite questions

are slightly more difficult to show because whether does not select for non-finite
clauses with overt subjects.
Finally we can show that clause selection depends on the finiteâ•›/â•›non-finite
contrast. This observation in turn shows that tense is a reflex of finiteness: when
an English verb selects for a subordinate clause, as in (4), it selects for that subor-
dinate clause on the basis of whether it is finite or not, not on the basis of whether
it is past or present. Therefore tense is not the same as finiteness.4
(4) a. I guessed (that) he went.
b. * I guessed him to go.
c. * I want that he goes.
d. I want him to go.
The examples in (4) show that guess and want make different selections for sub-
ordinate clauses on the basis of a finiteness contrast: guess has to have a finite
complement, whereas want has to have a non-finite complement clause. Rules
about sequence of tense are orthogonal to the selection of clause type.
Of these diagnostics, the most straightforward one to search for in a corpus
is the last: if there is a perfect correlation between the complementation of matrix
verbs in standard varieties of English and their correlates in HKE, then HKE main-
tains a finiteness contrast. On the other hand, if the finiteness contrast is levelled
under verbs such as guess, then there is robust evidence that for (some) speakers
of HKE, the morphosyntax feature system of the verb is that of Cantonese, rather
than that of the lexifier.
3.2 Tense and finiteness in Chinese
The argument that Chinese does not have a finiteness contrast begins with the
observation that there is no tense contrast in Chinese. In this section, I follow
Hu et al. (2001), whose arguments are developed for Mandarin, but which follow
through for the other Sinitic languages, including Cantonese. Sinitic languages
share the same relevant typological features in that they are all isolating and they
all lack tense.
The debate about whether Chinese has a finiteness contrast or not is largely
concerned with the question of whether the mood and aspect distinctions that
Chinese has are realizations of finiteness or not. In the generative literature,
Huang (1984, 1987, 1989, 1998) and Li (1985, 1990) have both argued that there
4.â•‡ Of course, the lack of tense contrasts with imperatives such as (2a) above also shows that
finiteness in English is not correlated with tense.
36 Nikolas Gisborne
is a finiteness contrast, taking mood and aspect as the key elements in the Chinese
clause. On the other hand, Hu et al. (2001) have argued systematically against the
claims made by Huang and Li, to present the position that Chinese does not have
finiteness at all.
In this section, I present Hu et al.’s (2001) arguments that the Chinese lan-
guages do not have a finiteness contrast. I have already observed that Chinese does
not have tense. Hu et al. (2001: 1118) start by putting this claim on a systematic
footing. They follow Stassen’s (1997: 350–1) arguments that there is “a typological
distinction between tensed and nontensed languages”. Hu et al.’s definition of the
tensedness parameter is given in (5).
(5) a. If a language has a grammatical category of tense, which
i. is morphologically bound on verbs, and
ii. minimally involves a distinction between past and nonpast time
reference,
then that language is tensed.
b. In all other cases, a language is nontensed.
Hu et al. (2001: 1119) also observe, “Stassen (1997) further argues that in a tensed
language, the obligatory tense marking must be realized not by means of auxil-
iaries or particles, but by means of bound morphology on verbs, and tensed lan-
guages must meet the PAST CONDITION, which stipulates that a tensed language
should have a verbal form exclusively referring to past time”. It follows from Stas-
sen’s arguments that Chinese is non-tensed.
However, as we have seen, tense alone does not determine whether a language
expresses a finiteness contrast, and so showing that a language does not have tense
is not the same as showing that it does not have finiteness. As Hu et al. point out
(2001: 1120), “it is still argued in the literature that there is an implicit distinction
between finiteness and nonfiniteness in Chinese”; the major point of their paper is
to argue against the claims that there is such a contrast in Chinese.
In several works, Huang (1984, 1987, 1989, 1998) argues that the occurrence
of a modal or aspectual element argues for finiteness. He claims that certain verbs
select finite complement clauses, whereas others select non-finite clauses. That is,
Huang claims that the finiteness distinction in Chinese has at least one realiza-
tion which is equivalent to the finiteness distinction in English: clausal selection
by verbal heads. As a consequence of Huang’s assumptions, in his theory non-
finite clauses cannot have lexical subjects; nonfinite clauses cannot take modal
predicates like hui ‘will’; and they cannot take aspectual markers like you5 either.
5.â•‡ Hu et al. (2001: 1122) gloss you as “ASP” because of its status as an aspectual marker; literally
it means ‘have’.
That is, Huang claims that there is a conspiracy of facts that argue together for a
finiteness distinction in Chinese.
Hu et al. (2001) take Huang’s arguments apart. They demonstrate that both
modals and aspectual auxiliaries can occur in the non-finite clauses where they
are predicted not to occur, so Huang’s claims do not have empirical support. Fur-
thermore, they demonstrate that the restrictions on the occurrence of modals that
Huang observes can be accommodated in a semantic story which does not need to
have any recourse to a theory of finiteness.
Li (1985, 1990) argues that the finiteness distinction in Chinese “does not lie
in the potential occurrence of modals in general, but in the possible occurrence of
only those modals that have become tense markers” (Hu et al. 2001: 1123). Hu et
al. make two arguments against this claim: they argue (i) that Li’s arguments about
tense do not fit Stassen’s theory-neutral typology of tense; and (ii) that Li has failed
to capture the relevant generalization because the modals she discusses, hui and
yao, affect the semantics of the subordinate clause, such that they make it incom-
patible with the semantics of the matrix verb. In this case, then, the claim that Chi-
nese does make a finiteness contrast can also be accommodated under a semantic
story, so there is no need to exploit a morphosyntactic theory of finiteness.
I refer the reader to Hu et al. for a full set of arguments. I concur with Hu et al.
(2001) that the claim that there is a finiteness contrast in Chinese is unmotivated.
Note that the specifics of the claim are important: in the next section I look at the
selection of subordinate clauses to see whether finiteness is observable, which is
the strategy that both Huang and Li adopt for Chinese.
4. Analysing the HKE data
In this section, I look at some data which show that there is morphosyntactic
transfer from Cantonese to HKE, including transfer at the relatively abstract level
of finiteness. To get to finiteness, we can start by looking at the kinds of levelling of
morphosyntactic distinctions that are common in HKE. Take the example in (6),
from Gisborne (2000).
(6) a. She like to go there.
b. Have you try?
These examples do not reveal the form of the verb that its syntactic distribution
would normally require. In (6a), the third person singular form likes is required,
but instead we have like. In (6b), the perfect participle tried should be the comple-
ment of have, but instead the base form of the verb is used. There is a simple ex-
planation of (6a) from the point of view of the language contact situation in Hong
38 Nikolas Gisborne
Kong: Cantonese does not have syllable-final consonant clusters (Matthews and
Yip 1994: 19) and so there is often a simplification of these consonant clusters in
HKE. But this explanation does not go through for (6b). The contrast between try
and tried is not one that involves a consonant cluster.
The examples in (6) show some differences from each other. The example in
(6a) involves a failure of person marking: like is a present tense form of the verb,
just not in the third person. And the contrast in (6b) is one where the base form
of the verb is being used instead of a participle. As the base form can realize both
present tense and the infinitive, we might assume that in an example like (6b), it is
an infinitive form which is being used, with the infinitive substituted for the par-
ticiple. As a result, we can only assert that the example in (6b) shows some kind
of levelling of the non-finite morphosyntactic feature system of HKE. Gisborne
(2000: 368) argues that this is an issue of morphosyntactic marking because of
examples such as (7).
(7) I think it’s very difficult to described.
In (7), the complement of to is a participle, rather than the normally expected

infinitive.
From this discussion we can see that there are a few issues to factor out. I look
at the realization of tense in Sectionâ•¯4.1; I discuss finiteness in Sectionâ•¯4.2.
4.1 Tense
Let us begin by looking at tense. If tense contrasts are suspended in HKE, then it is
likely that finite contrasts will be too. In main clauses, the most useful determinant
of whether there is a tense contrast in HKE, as opposed to a finiteness contrast, is
found where a verb is clearly used with past time reference but appears in the base
form of the verb and the difference between the base form and the past form is not
one that relies on a syllable-final consonant cluster for expression. Relatively good
examples involve “strong” verbs, where the vowel changes, such as come and came,
or those verbs where the past-tense morpheme -ed is realized as a syllable rather
than a stop within a syllable cluster. So decide for decided is a good diagnostic of
whether there is tense marking, whereas walk for walked is not, because walked
involves a consonant cluster which may be simplified.
The irregular and syllabic-past verb examples in Gisborne (2000) which are
relevant to the question of tense in HKE are presented in (8)–(10).
(8) In my first year, Cats come to Hong Kong.
(9) He is born in Hong Kong and then just go to Hong Kong.
(10) China want to took … wants to take over.
In (8), the base form of the verb is used with past time reference. In (9), the pres-
ent third person form of be, is, has past time reference in the first clause, and then
in the second clause, the base form of go is used with past time reference. In (10),
want is used as a third person present tense form, which is made clear in the cor-
rection, and the past participle is again used as the complement of to. Interestingly,
in this example there is a self-correction, which suggests that there is an element of
register variation within this variety of English.
I looked at decide in the Hong Kong component of the International Corpus
of English (ICE-HK) in order to follow up the question of whether there was level-
ling of tense expression. There were 63 instances of decide where it has past time
reference. Past time reference is realized with decide in approximately a quarter
of the total instances: 16 instances are realized as decide and 47 are realized as
decided.6 There is an example in (11) which I will walk around. Recall that decide
was chosen because its past tense form does not involve a syllable-final consonant
cluster, so if there is no tense contrast in a HKE example, this cannot be due to
interference from another domain in the grammar.
(11) well we never decide which figure were out even though they out in the bill
… [ICE-HK]
In this example, the past tense were indicates that decide has past time reference
even though it is in the base form. This speaker has two other non-native features:
plural figure (for figures), which could be because Cantonese codas do not permit
fricatives (Bauer and Benedict 1997: 28), and zero copula in they out in the bill. I
come back to this latter fact below.
So what do examples like this indicate, and how should they be understood? It
seems straightforward to claim that tense is not always expressed in HKE but that
its variable expression might be a consequence of the stage of HKE as a nativizing
variety in Schneider’s (2007) formulation. I return to this point in Sectionâ•¯5. One
point which is significant is that tense is one possible realization of an underlying
morphosyntactic category. What evidence is there about the existence of that cat-
egory in HKE? This is the topic of the next section.
6.â•‡ There are 92 tokens of decide and 109 tokens of decided which show the normal distributions
of these forms (as infinitives and participles as well as tensed forms), although some non-finite
instances of decide have passive semantics.
40 Nikolas Gisborne
4.2 Finiteness
As we saw in Sectionâ•¯3.1 above, the best determinant of finiteness was distribu-

tion of subordinate complement clauses. Some verbs such as guess select for
finite clausal complements; others such as want select for non-finite clausal
complements.
Some verbs, such as expect select for both finite and non-finite subordinate
clauses, as (12) shows.
(12) a. We expected him to go.
b. We expected that he would go.
Other verbs, such as guess, realize, and suggest, do not take non-finite subor-
dinate clauses in standard English. The example in (13) gives some examples for
realize.
(13) a. We realized that he was right.
b. We realized what he thought.
c. * We realized him to be right.
In (13), it is clear that realize is another verb which cannot take a non-finite sub-
ordinate clause. In this case the complement clause has to be finite and headed by
that, what, or its finite verb.
In the ICE-HK data, none of the tokens of realize had non-finite comple-
ments, although there were instances with finite complements.7 This shows that
the claim for non-finiteness in HKE is not an absolute claim. Where non-finite
complements were found (with the other verbs studied here), they were never
found in 100% of cases, which shows that the internal ecology of HKE has to be
understood in the context of the external ecology, and that there is a clear pattern
of social distribution for the feature under consideration, which is not surprising,
considering that HKE is at stage 3 of Schneider’s (2007) dynamic model, rather
than the stage 4 of Singapore English. The observation that non-finite comple-
ments were not found with realize, although they were found with guess and
suggest, indicates that there may be lexical distribution (or diffusion) of the
feature. Of course, it could also be an artefact of the corpus: there were 37 to-
kens of realize in the corpus, many of which were from transcripts of legal cases.
As a consequence, it is reasonable to assume that there is an element of register
7.â•‡ The spoken corpus was searched for all the variant forms of the three verbs guess, realize,
and suggest. Examples where the speaker was not a native of Hong Kong were excluded from
the count, as were examples where the complement was a Noun Phrase, parenthetical examples,
and (in the case of guess) instances of the noun.
variation in the facts under discussion.8 The next set of examples shows the stan-
dard pattern for suggest.
(14) a. We suggested that they should go.
b. We suggested that they went.
c. * We suggested them to go.
The examples in (14) show that suggest requires a finite complement clause.9
Example (15), which is taken from the essay of a student at Hong Kong Uni-
versity, is therefore evidence of the absence of a finiteness contrast in HKE.
(15) I suggest him to go.
The complement clause is non-finite, and fails to make the mood or modality con-
trast which is required in normal uses of suggest.10
In a search of ICE-HK, there were several tokens of suggest. Excluding ex-
amples where suggest was not complemented by a clause, as in I suggested the
answer, there were 12 instances of suggest, suggests, suggesting, and suggested with
non-finite complement clauses out of a total of 98 instances where it had a clausal
complement. There are some examples given in (16), all of which are from ICE-HK.
(16) a. It’s a beautiful space and I suggest to turn it to a cyber café but it was
kind of turn down
b. Can I suggest to put bill?
8.â•‡ There was, however, the example But uh <,> as we move along you’ll probably realize that <,>
I <,> not only focusing on the empirical <,> investigation in the corpus data, which shows that
although this speaker has a that-clause as the complement of realize, the complement of that
is not finite. Another example where the subordinate clause had a particular morphosyntax was
this: But Mr Au Yeung we must realise that in Wanchai is big area. Although the clause under that
is finite in this example, as is shows, the subject is not a noun phrase, and the predicate nominal
does not have a determiner. This is not an example of locative inversion. It is clear from the con-
text that it means not ‘there is a big area in Wanchai’, but ‘Wanchai is a big area’.
9.â•‡ There is a complication in that for some speakers suggest may select for the vestigial sub-
junctive of English as in I suggest that he be back by 9 pm. The English subjunctive cannot be
straightforwardly classified for finiteness. However, I think that on the whole this is not an issue
in the case of HKE — Paul Kerswill tells me (p.c. Jan 2009) that the English subjunctive is on the
rise in the US but that this is a recent phenomenon; during the relevant period of history, most
speakers of British English will have hardly had a subjunctive.
10.â•‡ No doubt this works by analogy to standard patterns of non-finite complementation in Eng-
lish. However, that analogy does not obviate the argument that what has happened here is that
the normal selection by suggest of a finite complement has been over-ridden and a non-finite
complement has been chosen.
42 Nikolas Gisborne
c. They think that English is too hard for them so I suggest them to change
to uh an Chinese uh
d. I wont suggest you to to buy from the one word because…
e. According to you it was Madam Ho who suggested to you to have sex
with her for five hundred dollars.
These examples all work in slightly different ways. (16a) involves an arbitrary PRO
subject, whose referent is not in the discourse context. The subject of to turn it to
a cyber café cannot be recovered from the immediate context. The discussion is
about the snooker room in the Senior Common Room at the University of Hong
Kong, and the referent of PRO must be the management committee.
The next example, (16b), has the same kind of structure as (16a). The example
in (16c) involves a lexical subject in the non-finite clause them to change to uh an
Chinese uh, so this is an unequivocal example that has the same structure as (15),
as does (16d). The final example has to you after suggested, but clearly the subject
of to have sex is you.
Apart from the (possibly) doubtful (16b), all of these examples show the kinds
of structure which indicate that the finiteness contrast is suspended for these speak-
ers. They are all non-finite. More to the point, they are not modelled on the kind
of pattern where a finite clause alternates with a non-finite clause which shares its
subject with the subject of the matrix verb, as in (17).
(17) a. We requested that he should go.
b. * We requested him to go.
c. We requested to go.
In (17), request takes a full finite clausal complement or a non-finite clausal com-
plement with subject-sharing as in (17c). This is an alternative pattern to the one
where a finite clausal complement can alternate with a non-finite clausal comple-
ment. However, the examples in (16) do not fit the pattern of (17c) — even the
examples with no overt subject have a PRO subject whose referent cannot be iden-
tified with the subject of the matrix clause.
To summarize the discussion, it seems that the examples in (15) and (16) sus-
pend a finiteness contrast. There are two reasons for making this claim: the gram-
matical patterns we find in these examples are not modelled on patterns like that
in (17), and they are entirely well-formed, except that they occur in a position
where a different kind of clause is normally expected. All of the non-finite clauses
in (15) and (16) are perfectly reasonable examples of non-finite clauses; it is just
that we do not expect non-finite clauses to have this distribution.
Now we can return to the zero copula phenomenon in (11) in Sectionâ•¯4.1
which I repeat here.
(11) well we never decide which figure were out even though they out in the bill
… [ICE-HK]
In the subordinate clause, out is treated as a predicator in the even though clause.
Why does this matter? It matters because the example is on a parallel with the sub-
ordinate clause after decide, which has a tensed were in it. There are two parallel
clauses: which figure were out and they out in the bill. The zero copula in the second
clause suggests that there is no systematicity in the use of different predicators by
this speaker. In one case, a tensed copula is used; in the other, there is no copula.
Note too that even though is a head which normally requires a finite complement
in standard varieties of English: I cannot say *even though they to be out in the bill,
for example. The absence of a finite complement here suggests that the finiteness
contrast is non-systematic for this speaker.11
The example in (18) below supports the general point. In this example, there is
an adjectival predicate under guess.12
(18) Uh I guess his hands his hands too full and uh he had other priorities
[ICE-HK]
The relevant point is that guess requires a finite complement in English, yet here
not only is there a non-finite predicate, but also the predication is non-verbal,
even though there is no possibility of structure sharing in an example like this. The
subject-predicate relationship is between his hands and too full: we can see that the
adjective phrase is a predicate here in a zero copula construction. This is important
in two ways: first, it appears that this speaker does not necessarily make a lexical
category distinction between adjectives and verbs; and, second, predication in this
example does not require finiteness as expressed by a copula verb.
To sum up, in this section I have looked at a set of data which argue that some
varieties of HKE do not make a finiteness contrast, and that recognizing that lack
of finiteness in HKE allows us to bring the complementation of verbs and the zero
copula phenomenon under the same generalization.
11.â•‡ It also suggests that this speaker is capable of treating both verbs and adjectives as predicates,
suggesting that, in their variety, HKE is like Cantonese — a language which does not distinguish
between verbs and adjectives.
12.â•‡ There were only 3 out of 57 tokens of guess with this kind of structure. However, several
of the clausal complements of guess were headed by if, whether and what. Excluding these
examples gives a total of 3 out of 45 tokens. There were also subjectless examples such as I guess
will be at least two and So I guess is just luck or if you try really hard. Finally, I have excluded
examples such as to guess about how it… how it would operate from the count, treating this as an
example of guess complemented by about.
44 Nikolas Gisborne
5. Conclusion: Language contact, typology, and the ecology of the

language-contact environment in Hong Kong
There are two ways of taking the examples with finiteness in the examples above.
One way is to argue that these examples reveal an imperfect transfer of the gram-
mar of Standard English to speakers of HKE. On this argument, HKE would be a
reflex of imperfect L2 acquisition in the Hong Kong context. But such an argument
suggests that there is little or no systematicity in HKE, and furthermore fails to
make the relevant connections between the different reflexes of finiteness and how
they materialize in HKE.
On the other hand, if we recognize that there can be systemic transfers from
the substrate13 then we can see that some speakers’ HKE has a grammar system
which is typologically similar to Cantonese. Furthermore, I have argued that the
right level of generalization is to look at finiteness as a phenomenon, rather than at
individual reflexes of finiteness such as tense marking, copula deletion of the ap-
parent lack of a lexical category distinction between verbs and adjectives.
But, given that Singlish is another variety which shows substrate transfer from
Sinitic varieties to a New English, it is necessary to think about the similarities and
differences between HKE and Singlish. Ansaldo (2009b) observes that the gram-
mar of Singlish (i.e. basilectal Singapore English) also shows systemic transfer of
features of Chinese grammar. These are Topic prominence, zero copula, and blur-
ring of the lexical category distinction between verbs and adjectives. I would claim
that languages which have this bundle of typological features are also likely to be
languages which lack a finiteness contrast, because the alternative bundle of fea-
tures (Subject prominence, mandatory copula, clear lexical category distinctions
between adjectives and verbs) involves reflexes of the finiteness distinction. In this
sense, then, HKE and Singlish are similar.
But there is a complication: the lack of finiteness is not systematic in HKE.
For sure, I have found several examples which lack this morphosyntactic feature
distinction, but it is not at all clear that the grammar has settled on one typologi-
cal pattern over another. What are we to make of this? Considering the different
stability of the two grammars, with HKE at stage 3 of Schneider’s dynamic model
(i.e. nativization) and Singapore English at stage 4 (endonormative stabilization),
we can see that English and Cantonese are still in contact in HK, and what we see
is an emerging system with a considerable degree of variability. Ansaldo (2009b,
this volume) makes a similar point about the two varieties.
Then there are arguments to be made about how features are selected from
the feature pool. I would argue that for there to be the systematic acquisition of a
13.â•‡ As, for example, Siegel (2003) argues.

Standard English finiteness distinction among speakers of HKE, the relevant fea-
ture would need to be strongly entrenched in the environment. As it is, the socio-
linguistics of HK indicate that the most frequently found morphosyntactic features
in the ecology are those of Cantonese so it is unsurprising that Cantonese morpho-
syntax transfers into HKE. However, the feature system of English is typological
marked relative to Chinese, which might account for the relatively high frequency
of finiteness contrasts among some speakers of the variety. In a feature pool ap-
proach one predicts that features that are salient in the ecology will surface in the
contact grammar. Therefore, we do not only allow for the possibility of substrate
transfer, but we expect superstrate features to be very salient where the superstrate
is dominant.
Finally, the evidence surveyed here calls into question the kind of “anglover-
sals” approach of Kortmann and Szmreczanyi (2004) in as much as we can see that
the relevant distinctions in HKE are to be found in the linguistic environment and
do not emerge as a kind of default setting in the emergence of a New (contact)
English. From this point of view, the typological approach, with its focus on what
there is in the ecology, allows us to establish at a fine grain of grammatical descrip-
tion the relevant features of a variety of English such as HKE.
But the most important conclusion is the importance of studying language
contact of a range of diverse kinds; it is important not just to look at L2 varieties
and learner errors, or straightforward examples of a vaguely defined “creolization”
process. It is by exploring the full diversity of language contact situations that we
can establish the processes by which language changes in contact environments
and new varieties emerge.
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Typological diversity in New Englishes*
Devyani Sharma
Queen Mary University of London
Recent research has aimed to integrate the investigation of vernacular universals

in native English dialects with variation in postcolonial varieties of English and
cross-linguistic typology (Chambers 2004; Kortmann 2004). This article assumes
that any search for universals in bilingual varieties must include an assessment
of the grammatical conditioning of features and a comparison with the relevant
substrates. Comparing Indian English and Singapore English, I examine three
proposed candidates for English universals (Kortmann and Szmrecsanyi 2004),
all of which show some presence in the two varieties — past tense omission,
over-extension of the progressive, and copula omission. Past tense omission is
found to be genuinely similar in the two varieties and accounted for by typologi-
cal parallels in the substrates, whereas progressive morphology use and copula
omission are found to be divergent in the two varieties and accounted for by
typological differences in the substrates. All three variable systems are explicable
as substrate-superstrate interactions, tempering claims of universality in both
distribution and explanation.
Keywords: Indian English, Singapore English, typology, past, progressive,

perfective, imperfective, copula, language transfer, universals
1. Introduction
Chambers (2004: 28) describes vernacular universals as “a small number of pho-

nological and grammatical processes [that] recur in vernaculars wherever they are
spoken”. Such universals have been investigated fruitfully in monolingual varieties
*â•‡ I would like to thank Ashwini Deo and John Rickford for earlier collaborations that informed
this work. I am also grateful to Lisa Lim, E-Ching Ng, Stephen Matthews, and Umberto Ansaldo
for many helpful suggestions relating to the Singaporean situation, and E-Ching Ng, Lavanya
Sankaran, and Sue Fox for their assistance in finding native speakers. I am indebted to my con-
sultants, who patiently provided judgments for this study: Huang Zhipeng, Amanda Cheung,
Youping Han, Jiang Dan, Lim Chey Cheng, Huifong Chen, and Dorothy Tan.
50 Devyani Sharma
of English and recent efforts have aimed to incorporate contact varieties of English
and cross-linguistic typology into this enterprise (Kortmann 2004). The search
for “angloversals” in bilingual postcolonial varieties is formalized in Kortmann
and Szmrecsanyi’s (2004; henceforth K&S) typological survey of shared features
in varieties of English.
Chambers observes of vernacular universals that
[t]heir ubiquity has one of two possible explanations. Either the features were dif-
fused there by the founders of the dialect, or they developed there independently
as natural structural linguistic developments … the diffusionist explanation is
implausible because of geographical spread. It is also implausible linguistically,
because these features occur not only in working-class and rural vernaculars but
also in child language, pidgins, creoles and interlanguage varieties. Therefore, they
appear to be natural outgrowths, so to speak, of the language faculty, that is, the
species-specific bioprogram. (2004: 128)
Although Chambers envisions a unified paradigm for the study of sociolinguistic,

acquisitional, diachronic and typological variation (2004: 130), the two explana-
tions above are only appropriate for monolingual situations. Bilingual varieties of
English will always involve a third potential explanation — the substrate. If we find
a property recurring in two unrelated bilingual varieties, it is premature to draw
a universalist conclusion unless substrate transfer has been ruled out. Even if the
emergent feature is known to be typologically unmarked, it may simply be preva-
lent in and transferred from the substrates.
Similar methodological issues arise in K&S’s aggregation of English varieties
to identify potential universals. In classifying the features of a given variety, they
continue the practice in earlier work (Platt, Weber and Ho 1984; Williams 1987) of
relying on broad presence or absence of the feature with little or no consideration
of semantic or other conditioning. They acknowledge that this “bird’s-eye view
approach necessarily abstracts from many details and (partly necessary) qualifica-
tions in individual varieties” (2004: 1143). However, mere presence of a feature in
two grammars cannot be taken to imply genuine typological similarity unless its
grammatical conditioning is comparable (Poplack 2000; Tagliamonte 2002; Rick-
ford 2006).
This article follows two basic criteria in extending the search for vernacu-
lar universals to bilingual cases: i) ascertainment of a shared typological feature
through quantitative examination of its conditioning, and ii) elimination of sub-
strate transfer explanations before making any appeals to universality. The analysis
assesses three of K&S’s “candidates for universals of New Englishes” — null past
tense, over-extension of the progressive, and null copula. All three features are at-
tested to some extent in both Indian English (IndE) and Singapore English (SgE).
First, quantitative analysis reveals systematic patterns in the degree and condi-
tioning of each feature in the two varieties. Second, substrates are found to play a
central part in determining emergent systems: the one instance of closely parallel
patterning in IndE and SgE (past tense omission) is accounted for by typological
parallels in the substrates in that domain; differences in patterning (progressive
and copula use) are accounted for by typological differences in the substrates. De-
spite the challenge of higher levels of variability in multilingual speech communi-
ties (Sankoff 2002: 640), this paper shows that close quantitative and substrate-
sensitive analysis of apparent similarities across new varieties of English can reveal
them to be typologically distinct in important ways.
2. Universals in New Englishes
The three features discussed in the present comparison of IndE and SgE, listed in
(1), are all among K&S’s “candidates for universals of New Englishes” and are all
described as shared across a number of regions, including Asian Englishes (2004:
1193):
(1) a. #40: Zero past tense forms of regular verbs
b. #21: Wider range of uses of the progressive
c. #57: Deletion of be
K&S list zero past tense as a feature typical of Caribbean, American, Pacific, and
Asian varieties (2004: 1189; see also Jenkins 2003: 26), extension of the progressive
to stative verbs as typical of Asian, American and African varieties (2004: 1189;
see also Platt, Weber and Ho 1984: 72–3; Williams 1987: 172–3; Jenkins 2003: 26;
Melchers and Shaw 2003: 22, 158; Trudgill and Hannah 2008: 107, 130, 137), and
deletion of be as typical of Caribbean, Pacific, and Asian varieties (2004: 1193).
Chambers (2004: 129) lists deletion of be as one of his top four candidates for
English vernacular universals.
K&S calculate the relative strength of representation of a feature across vari-
eties by averaging its “feature value” (1 = pervasive, 0.5 = infrequent, 0 = absent)
for all 46 varieties and seven world regions examined. Thus, even if a feature is
not found in all Asian varieties, if it is found in three out of a total four it receives
a high “feature ratio” score (0.75) for Asia and is included as “typical” for the
region. But what does this aggregation represent? If three of four Asian varieties
have zero past marking because each of their substrates shares a narrower use
for past morphology, then the high “feature ratio” score does not reflect univer-
sality. Similarly, if three of four Asian varieties exhibit substantial deletion of be,
but in each case a different grammatical context conditions deletion, based on
52 Devyani Sharma
substrate semantics, the high “feature ratio” again does not reflect any sort of
universality.
Filppula, Klemola and Paulasto (2009) pay closer attention to the question
of whether universals or contact determine new systems, proposing a continuum
between the two and suggesting that stative progressives may fall at the boundary
between these two explanations. Van Rooy (2006) similarly offers a close compari-
son of progressive use in two varieties of English and identifies a Bantu source for
divergence in the South African variety. Examining a different feature, article use,
Sand (2004) pursues a quantitative comparison of several varieties, paying atten-
tion to the substrate in each case. She finds greater substrate influence in spoken
than written genres, and, by ruling out substrate explanations elsewhere, argues
convincingly that a number of semantic extensions in definite article use across
varieties can be accounted for by “a common tendency to expand the rules of
English article use in a certain way” based on universal semantic properties (2004:
295).1 In this paper, I follow these latter approaches in pursuing a quantitative ex-
ploration of semantic conditioning and substrate effects prior to concluding uni-
versality for any feature.
This approach helps to restrict broad universalist appeals to generalized L2
learning strategies as an explanation for surface similarities, as invoked by K&S:
“…it is now possible to give more substance to the notion of angloversals … Mair
explicitly states that some of these angloversals may be the result of learning strat-
egies of non-native speakers, in other words properties typical of L2 varieties”
(2004: 1192). Properties that may appear to be “typical of L2 varieties” may in fact
be parallel cases of transfer of typologically common features in the substrates, or
may be differently conditioned in each variety. This is not to deny the potential for
genuinely substrate-independent universals governing the cross-linguistic behav-
iour of tense-aspect systems (Bybee, Perkins and Pagliuca 1994) or copula systems
(Stassen 1994), but rather to distinguish among degrees of similarity in New Eng-
lishes and types of explanations offered.
3. Data
IndE and SgE have markedly distinct linguistic ecologies in terms of languages
in contact, their functional roles, degrees of nativization, official policies, and
1.â•‡ Sharma (2005) also finds a combination of substrate and universal effects in article use (K&S’s
universal feature #17): some substrate transfer arises from the specificity-marking article system
of Hindi but universal discourse-driven tendencies intervene where the substrate does not sup-
ply an explicit form-meaning pairing.
language ideologies. Within his Dynamic Model of the evolution of postcolonial

Englishes, Schneider (2007: 153, 161) accurately characterizes IndE as currently
at an earlier stage of indigenization (Phase 3, “Nativization”) than SgE (Phase 4,
“Endonormative Stabilization”). In order to compare the syntactic properties of
the two varieties in this study, I try to identify relatively comparable sets of con-
versational data from each speech community.
3.1 Indian English
The IndE data for this study come from 12 individuals, part of a larger bilingual
corpus of IndE speakers. Only the subset of participants who show evidence of
all three features are included here; it is important to note that many balanced
bilingual speakers in the larger corpus do not show nonstandardness in copula
omission and past tense use. The speakers in this study are non-English dominant
and can be considered “basilectal”. None of the participants had English-medium
school education, although five had a limited amount of English-medium tertiary
education and all had English as a school subject. They are all dominant in their
first language but have regular (often work-related), daily use of English, often with
other non-native speakers. All individuals lived in India until adulthood and ac-
quired English through formal and informal modes in India; most are small shop
owners, shop employees, or are unemployed. The speech data consist of naturalis-
tic, sociolinguistic interviews, lasting 0.5–2 hours, and ranging over topics such as
work, leisure, cultural attitudes, and narratives of childhood and migration.
The primary substrate language for Northern IndE is Hindi, a language of
wider communication across North India, but many speakers of IndE have at
least one other additional native language. All participants are speakers of Hindi;
two are additionally native speakers of Gujarati and three are native speakers of
Punjabi. All three languages are identical in terms of copula use and tense-aspect
parameters relevant to this discussion: they all require an overt copula in all predi-
cate contexts (Masica 1991: 336); they all inflect for imperfective and for perfective
with reflexes of the original Sanskrit participles; and they all mark progressive with
an auxiliary verb comparable to Hindi rahna (‘remain’) (Masica 1991: 292–302). I
therefore use only Hindi as the representative substrate system in the analysis.
3.2 Singapore English
The SgE data for this study are drawn from secondary sources, in particular Ho
and Platt (1993; henceforth H&P), Platt (1979), and the ICE-Singapore corpus
54 Devyani Sharma
(with comparisons to the parallel corpus ICE-India).2 H&P use a database of con-
versational interviews with 100 ethnically Chinese speakers of SgE, stratified into
five educational levels. All participants in H&P’s study have completed some level
of English-medium education unlike the IndE participants in my database. In or-
der to ensure comparability I focus on the basilectal end of their data.
As with IndE, SgE has a number of substrate inputs. Bao (2005) takes Manda-
rin as the dominant input due to its promotion in education since 1970; however,
as SgE began to form much earlier than independence in 1965, Hokkien, Teochew,
and Cantonese are widely seen as constituting the most important formative inputs
(H&P 1993: 27; Gupta 1994: 41; Ansaldo 2004; Lim 2007: 452; Yip and Matthews
2007: 236). Bazaar Malay is an additional major lingua franca, the Singaporean
variety of which has been influenced by Hokkien (H&P 1993: 9; Lim 2007: 453).
Kuo (1980: 41, cited in Ng 2008) reports Singaporean home language statistics in
1957 as follows: Hokkien (30%) > Teochew (17.0%) > Cantonese (15.1%) > Malay
(13.2%) > Mandarin (0.1%).3
Mandarin has experienced a dramatic surge in use due to various forms of
institutional promotion since independence. The Singapore Census of Population
(2000) figures for reported home language in 1990 and 2000 indicate the scale of
replacement of Chinese “dialects” (39.6 in 1990; 23.8 in 2000) by Mandarin (23.7
in 1990; 35 in 2000).4 This increase certainly makes Mandarin a relevant substrate
language as well, but it is then important to investigate the Singaporean variety
of Mandarin, which, like Malay, has been affected by contact with other Chinese
2.â•‡ Note that, in comparison to the ICE data, which dates from the 1990s, Ho and Platt’s speak-
ers date from the decades earlier, and are less likely to be native speakers of SgE or of Mandarin
(Ansaldo 2004; Lim 2007). Given the historical background outlined in Sectionâ•¯3.2, Mandarin
may therefore only be an important substrate for the newer ICE data, which is only used in
Tableâ•¯6. The attention to non-Mandarin substrates for SgE elsewhere in this paper is therefore
relevant, given the nature of Ho and Platt’s data (Lisa Lim p.c. 2008).
3.â•‡ Gupta (1994: 41) and Lim (2007: 454) warn against pure demographic inferences, however,
noting that although Hokkien speakers may have dominated numerically in the mid-20th cen-
tury, they may not have been the major Chinese input to SE as the Cantonese adopted English
more readily and may have played a central role in the resulting variety.
4.â•‡ The shift to Mandarin is even more evident across age groups. According to the Singapore
Census of Population, in 2000 only 4.3% ethnically Chinese 5-to-14-year-olds spoke Chinese
“dialects” (18.9% in 1990). By contrast, 71.8% of above-55-year-olds still spoke Chinese “dia-
lects” (87.7% in 1990). It is important to bear in mind that some proportion of these self-report-
ed census data may be influenced by language ideologies rather than actual practice. Census
figures remain fairly steady for Malay (14.3% → 14.1%), Tamil (2.9% → 3.2%), and English
(18.8% → 23%).
languages in Singapore. All of these substrate systems are examined in the analy-
sis, using available published materials and native speaker consultations.
3.3 Substrate grammars for Indian English and Singapore English
For the first two features examined (past and progressive morphology), we need
to first consider the aspectual systems of the three language systems in question
— the Hindi substrate for IndE, the Chinese substrate for SgE, and English as the
superstrate. These systems are presented in Tableâ•¯1. (In all tables in this paper,
parentheses in a cell indicate optionality or variation according to additional con-
textual factors.)
Table 1. Key aspect distinctions in Hindi, Mandarin, and English

Hindi Mandarin English
(i) perfective -(y)a le —
past
(ii) neutral — — -ed
(i) progressive rahna zai -ing
imperfective (ii) non-progressive -ta (-zhe) —
(iii) habitual -ta — —
In the domain of past tense marking, there is a clear parallel between the two
aspect-prominent substrate languages, such that an overt marker is used with per-
fective (completive) reference. This is in contrast to the tense-prominent English
system, in which the marking of past tense dominates any aspectual distinction.
In the domain of imperfective marking, however, the two substrate systems
diverge. The only apparent similarity across all three imperfective systems is pro-
gressive marking. By contrast, Hindi requires overt marking of imperfectivity with
-ta whereas Mandarin has relatively restricted use of the marker -zhe within cer-
tain imperfective contexts. In fact, Yip and Rimmington (2004: 107) suggest that
the treatment of -zhe as an aspectual marker at all is erroneous, and that it is more
precisely a “manner indicator”: “zhe is suffixed to an action verb so that the resul-
tant verbal phrase is used as a descriptive element in sentences to indicate ‘manner
of existence’, ‘manner of movement’, or ‘accompanying manner’”. The form is by no
means used across all imperfective contexts, as Hindi -ta is, but rather is primar-
ily reserved for temporary result states (Sun 2006). Its use is also conditioned by
prosodic factors (Yip and Rimmington 2004: 127), another significant difference
from Hindi -ta, which is strictly obligatory.
As noted, it can be problematic to use published descriptions of mainland
Chinese Mandarin in the study of SgE. Tableâ•¯2 provides the aspectual systems
of Singapore Mandarin, Cantonese, Teochew, Hokkien, and Malay (consultants;
56 Devyani Sharma
Prentice 1990; H&P 1993; Matthews and Yip 1994). The perfective pattern is con-
sistent across Chinese languages and Malay. However, the restricted use of im-
perfective marking in Mandarin (as compared to Hindi) is, if anything, further
reduced in other Chinese imperfective systems, including Singapore Mandarin;
these differences are discussed further in Sectionâ•¯5.3.
Table 2. Comparison of Singaporean substrate tense-aspect marking

Singapore
Cantonese Teochew Hokkien Malay
Mandarin
(i) perfective le tso lio liau sudah
past
(ii) neutral — — — — —
(i) progressive zai gan do tja sedang
imperfective (ii) non-progressive (-zhe) (zyu) (do) — —
(iii) habitual — (hoi) — — —
We can conclude from Tablesâ•¯1 and 2 that, although Indo-Aryan and Chinese lan-
guages can be classified together typologically as perfectivity-marking systems,
they are typologically distinct in the domain of the imperfective. This makes them
a useful comparative case study. If substrate languages in fact drive the emergent
systems, we should expect to see the patterns in (2):
(2) a. SHARED FEATURE (-ed use): IndE and SgE will show a parallel
transfer of perfective meaning to past tense morphology.
b. DIVERGENT FEATURE (-ing use): IndE and SgE will not show parallel
behaviour in the imperfective.
i. IndE will exhibit greater use of -ing as a general marker of
imperfectivity, due to obligatory overt imperfective marking in
Indian substrates.
ii. SgE will exhibit less use of -ing as a general marker of imperfectivity,
due to the limited range and optional use of overt imperfective
marking in Singaporean substrates.
I first turn to a comparison of past tense morphology in IndE and SgE in Sectionâ•¯4,
and then to a similar comparison of progressive morphology in IndE and SgE in
Sectionâ•¯5. In Sectionâ•¯6, I briefly review the final example of copula absence to sup-
port the analysis.
4. Past tense omission (K&S #40)
Perfective sentences denote completed or temporally bounded situations, also

called events, while imperfective sentences denote unbounded, ongoing situations
(Comrie 1976). Clausal perfectivity can be conveyed simply by lexical aspect, i.e.
telic verbs, which contain an endpoint (e.g. complete, build, dismantle, drown) or
by additional grammatical aspect markers, i.e. morphology that imposes a bound-
ed viewpoint on a predicate such as perfective morphology (e.g. Mandarin le) or
perfectivizing adverbials (e.g. in two minutes, all of a sudden).
The emphasis in research on past tense morphology in learning situations has
been on lexical aspect (see Andersen and Shirai 1996). However, Sharma and Deo
(2010) argue that IndE past omission is not a universal lexical effect, but rather in-
volves overt marking of sentential perfectivity modelled precisely on the speakers’
Indo-Aryan L1s.5 Tableâ•¯3 shows that basilectal IndE speakers clearly ascribe per-
fective meaning to English past morphology (modelled on perfectivity-marking
in their native Indo-Aryan), and tend to avoid overt past marking in imperfective
sentences. Although I treat habituals semantically as derived states in my data,
they are grouped with progressives and separated from lexical statives in Tableâ•¯3,
following H&P’s methodology, to ensure comparability of Tablesâ•¯3 and 4.
Table 3. Past tense marking according to clausal aspect in IndE (N=702)

% overt past N
habitual, progressive 29.5 132
imperfective
lexical stative 44.2 224
PERFECTIVE 76.6 346
χ2(2dof)=109.96, pâ•›≤ 0.001
Fortunately, H&P (1993: 81–3, 151) explore the semantic contexts of past omis-
sion in SgE in much the same way. A close examination of their method for clas-
sifying predicates reveals that their analysis goes beyond lexical aspect as well and
incorporates most core elements of clausal aspect. They follow Bickerton (1981)
in using the term punctual “in a very broad sense” to include predicates bearing
the features [+completive] and [+telic]; this corresponds to the standard term per-
fective. Similarly, their category “stative non-punctual” includes predicates bear-
ing the feature [+stative] and their category “non-stative non-punctuals” includes
predicates bearing the features [+duration], [+activity], and [+habitual]; these
correspond to standard categories of “imperfective”. Their results are therefore di-
rectly comparable to the IndE data.
5.â•‡ Drawing on theories of aspect in the semantics literature, Sharma and Deo (2010) criticize the
excessive focus on lexical aspect alone in second language acquisition studies, particularly when
the L1 in question is sensitive to clausal perfectivity. They offer various types of evidence to support
the view that clausal perfectivity conditions past tense use in IndE, including tense choice in cases
of misaligned lexical and clausal aspect and fine conditioning of past tense marking by perfective
and imperfective types. Their analysis examines the data in Tableâ•¯3 and Tableâ•¯5 in more detail.
58 Devyani Sharma
Tableâ•¯4 shows a strikingly similar pattern to the IndE distribution, whereby

past tense is used significantly more with perfective predicates than with imper-
fective predicates.6 Figureâ•¯1 shows how similar the IndE and SgE distributions are
for past tense use.
Table 4.â•‡ Past tense marking according to clausal aspect in SgE (N=8725)

% overt past
habitual, progressive 14.7
imperfective
lexical stative 36.9
PERFECTIVE 56.2
As predicted in (2a), we see a direct replication in both IndE and SgE of perfectiv-
ity marking in the substrate systems. It is possible that a universal preference for
marking perfectivity is emerging; however, having examined the substrates, we
certainly cannot conclude this. Only further comparisons to English varieties with
non-perfectivity-marking substrates can verify this. At present, the IndE and SgE
may be seen as a straightforward instance of strict transfer (Lefebvre 1998; Bao
2005), as in (3), whereby the semantic component of a form-meaning pairing in
the L1 is re-attached to an L2 form.
(3) (i) Hindi: [PERF -a] → IndE: [PERF -ed]
(ii) Chinese: [PERF le] → SgE: [PERF -ed]
One difference that does emerge between IndE and SgE perfectivity marking is
also directly explicable by substrate differences. SgE has grammaticalized already
as an additional perfective marker (Bao 1995, 2005); this usage follows formal
analogy with analytic Chinese and Malay forms le and sudah. Hindi does not have
isolated forms of this kind and consequently IndE has not grammaticalized ad-
verbs for aspectual functions.
5. Over-extension of the progressive (K&S #21)
The predictions in (2b) anticipate divergence between IndE and SgE in the domain
of imperfective marking. Indian speakers of English may experience substrate
pressure to mark both perfectivity and imperfectivity with explicit markers (the
latter is only implicitly signalled by the lack of past marking seen earlier in Tableâ•¯3).
As -ing is the only marker in the imperfective domain in English, it is likely to be
6.â•‡ A chi-square test of significance could not be presented for the SgE data in Tableâ•¯4 as the
original study only provides a composite N value.
100
90
80
Overt past morphology (%)
70
60
Indian English
50 (N=702)
40 Singapore English
30 (N=8725)
20
10
0
Habitual and Stative imperfective Perfective
progressive
imperfective
Predicate aspect
Figure 1.â•‡ Past tense use according to clausal aspect in IndE and SgE
the immediate candidate for this function. SgE speakers, by contrast, are not ex-
pected to encounter this pressure.
5.1 Use of progressive -ing in Indian English
The imperfective categories examined here are progressive, stative, delimited ha-
bituals, and non-delimited habituals. I distinguish between two types of habituals
because of their distinct behaviour in standard varieties of English with respect
to the use of progressive -ing. In general, a sentence with a habitual predicate de-
scribes a generalization over episodes rather than reporting a particular episode (a
habitual operator thus transforms any eventuality type into a state); the sub-type
of delimited habituals asserts or presupposes a time-bound on the habit described,
whereas the sub-type of non-delimited habituals does not. Since the form -ing in
Standard English primarily imposes a dynamic, in-progress reading, the form can
be used with delimited habituals due to their time-bound property, e.g. I’m eating
meat these days, but not with non-delimited habituals, which are not tied to a par-
ticular timespan, e.g. *I’m eating meat.
Thus, of the four imperfective categories only progressive and delimited habitual
environments productively license the use of the progressive form in native Standard
English varieties. A few further uses of the progressive (e.g. with temporary states
I’m wanting to move back) are discussed later, but for the most part the use of the
progressive is non-standard with non-delimited habituals, statives, and perfectives,
e.g. *I’m eating meat, *I’m knowing the answer, *I was moving to Miami in 1998.
60 Devyani Sharma
Table 5. Functions of progressive forms in IndE (N=339)

% overt past N
delimited habitual 33.1 112
non-delimited habitual 30.8 104
imperfective
progressive 18.4 63
stative 14.8 50
PERFECTIVE 2.9 10
Tableâ•¯5 presents the proportion of all progressive -ing forms across the four im-
perfective contexts in the IndE data.7 It is clear that a robust over-extension to
non-delimited habituals and statives, i.e. to the remaining imperfective categories,
has taken place in IndE.8 Examples from the data showing systematic -ing use with
non-delimited habitual reference are given in (4) and with stative reference in (5).
(4) Over-extension to non-delimited habituals9
a. I have got a driver. My son driving his own car. [IA: d103]
b. Generally only dry-cleaning clothes are coming. [PB: d35]
c. There’s no Indian crowd [in Rochester] and it’s snowing. [RS: c123]
d. Every week I’m calling [my parents]. [RS: c171]
(5) Over-extension to statives
a. Some people are thinking it’s a bad job. [MM: d138]
b. For sociology they were asking me for 80% … But I was only having
70%. [DD: d108]
c. Japanese patients… would not be knowing English at all. [AM: d132]
d. Then what they’ll feel is like, we are knowing each other. [RS: c383]
7.â•‡ Note that this approach is the reverse of the approach taken for past tense, where all past con-
texts were examined for use of the past form. This is because for past tense we are interested in re-
strictions on the distribution of the form, i.e. omission, whereas for progressive we are interested
in extensions in the distribution of the form. Furthermore, the optionality of the progressive in
many standard contexts renders an examination of all potential sites of use relatively intractable.
8.â•‡ The few perfective verbs that occur with the progressive are come, start, and begin; although
telic, these verbs are also associated with null marking of past. This may suggest that inceptives
and ingressives present a semantic clash with perfective interpretations for these speakers.
9.â•‡ Non-delimited status was established from the discourse context by, for instance, the absence
of explicit or implied temporal delimiters such as these days.
5.2 Use of progressive -ing in Singapore English
Unfortunately, H&P do not provide quantitative data on semantic contexts of -ing

use, but some indication of SgE usage can be gleaned from corpus data and from
qualitative comments in H&P.
In the SgE corpus ICE-Singapore, very slight over-extension of -ing does oc-
cur, but in quantitative terms it is negligible as compared to the corresponding
IndE uses of -ing in the parallel corpus, ICE-India. As a brief illustration, I present
all be+V uses of having and knowing in ICE-Singapore and ICE-India in Tableâ•¯6.10
The difference between IndE and SgE is dramatic, but it is still noteworthy that two
of the four uses of having in SgE are stative. Standard and non-standard examples
of having from each corpus are given in (6) and (7) respectively.
Table 6. Use of main verb having and knowing in ICE-India and ICE-Singapore
ICE-India ICE-Singapore
standard non-standard standard non-standard
be + having 47 141 4 2
be + knowing 0 24 0 0
(6) Standard examples of having

a. Experiential: Having my hols now and am having a great time.
[ICE-SIN: w1b-010: 545]
b. Experiential: I’m having a real tough time categorizing the sex you
know. [ICE-IND: S1a-048: 1131]
c. Future: This afternoon we are having high tea with the Rustomjees.
[ICE-IND: W2f-016: 238]
d. Habitual: So each and every party is uh having a bandh [strike]
everyday. [ICE-IND: S1a-057: 174]
(7) Non-standard examples of having
a. Maybe that’s why I’m having a crush on him. [ICE-SIN: w1b-010.txt: 342]
b. I’m having a talk [speech] next week. [ICE-SIN: w1b-010.txt: 342]
c. We are having different beaches. [ICE-IND: S1a-065: 670]
d. He therefore uh doesn’t say that the deceased was also having O group.
[ICE-IND: S2a-067: 514]
10.â•‡ Eleven of the 24 uses of knowing by IndE users included modals (e.g. You must be knowing
this all history, don’t you?; As you may be knowing…). These were coded as non-standard based
on eight native British English consultants’ grammaticality ratings, all of which were lower than
ratings given for the non-progressive equivalents. Variation did occur in the degree of ungram-
maticality for these consultants, indicating increasing permissiveness with stative progressives
in standard native varieties.
62 Devyani Sharma
SgE shows no evidence of recasting -ing as a general imperfective marker as IndE

does, but (7a) and (7b) indicate slight variation in use. Further support for the view
that SgE shows slight variation, but not on the scale of IndE, comes from H&P (1993:
64–6). They, too, find a number of instances of over-extension of the progressive to
habitual and lexically stative contexts in their data. Some examples from their data
are listed in (8).11 However, they emphasize that “in general, the state-process dis-
tinction holds for Singaporean Chinese learners of English” (1993: 189).
(8) P13.18. Like sometime dey having dinner.
A18.5. You having excess (cash) in your box.
P5.1. I living here.
P20.37. Most of de time I speaking English down there.
P10.4. I use(d) to go in and flying in and out.
T3.12. Den he carrying an umbrella.
5.3 Discussion
Unlike perfectivity-marking with -ed, which followed a parallel pattern in IndE

and SgE, imperfectivity-marking with -ing is very different in the two varieties. In
both we find some variation with respect to the semantic range of -ing, but in IndE
this leads to a systemic shift to marking all imperfective categories with -ing, while
in SgE such a shift does not happen.
This finding immediately rules out certain types of explanations. First, an ac-
count based on general lexical-semantic levelling in contact situations is unlikely,
e.g.: “South Asian English often uses the progressive … with stative verbs, so that
I am knowing is possible. This can be regarded as neutralization of the stativeâ•›/â•›dy-
namic contrast and is perhaps parallel to the neutralization of the countâ•›/â•›noncount
distinction that produces luggages” (Melchers and Shaw 2003: 141). A universalist
interpretation of such levelling cannot explain the discrepancy between IndE and
SgE usage. It is also unclear why IndE would neutralize a distinction that is main-
tained in the L1, Hindi.
At the other end of explanatory models, a strict substrate reading of stativeâ•›/â•›dy-
namic levelling such as Bickerton’s for IndE is also ruled out: “Native speakers
of Hindi frequently make mistakes such as *I am liking it… Hindi speakers ap-
parently commit [this mistake] because in Hindi imperfective marking can be
used with statives” (Bickerton 1984: 155–6). This view anticipates that SgE should
11.â•‡ An important difference between IndE and SgE is evident in (8), namely the absence of be in
the construction; H&P (1993: 65) observe that this is based on a direct analogy with the lack of
be in Chinese systems. Indo-Aryan languages require a be auxiliary with imperfective markers,
and so this difference can also be ascribed to a difference in the substrates.
also over-generalize the English progressive, as SgE substrates also have stativity
markers such as -zhe. Furthermore, as with Melchers and Shaw’s account, it does
not explain why Hindi speakers level at all, instead of simply equating their own
distinctive progressive form rahna with English -ing.
The puzzle is therefore this: if the substrates and the superstrate all make a
parallel distinction between progressive contexts (rahna in Hindi, zai and related
forms in Chinese, -ing in English) and other imperfective contexts (-ta in Hindi,
-zhe and related forms in Chinese, default absence of marking in English), then
why is a single form adopted for both functions in one variety (IndE) at all, and
why not in the other (SgE)?
In this analysis, I focus on two factors: i) the extended range of uses of -ing in
English, and ii) relative robustness of imperfective forms in the substrate. The first
of these is shared by both varieties (giving rise to the variation we see in both SgE
and IndE) and the second is distinctive in each variety (giving rise to a shift only in
IndE) Together, these factors suggest an explanation based on substrate-superstrate
interaction. I first consider IndE according to these two factors, and then SgE.
The first step in analyzing the IndE progressive is to criticize the view, in Ta-
bleâ•¯1, that all varieties involved have comparable progressive forms. In order to do
this, I move from the core set of imperfective contexts in Tableâ•¯1 to the expanded
set of constructions in Tableâ•¯7. Tableâ•¯7 does not offer a semantically driven group-
ing of construction types; it simply serves to highlight certain differences in the
distribution of imperfective morphology in the three systems in question.
The first important observation in Tableâ•¯7 is the wide range of constructions
involving Standard English progressive -ing as compared to the Hindi progres-
sive rahna. Comrie (1976: 25) notes this unusually wide range and describes the
Standard English progressive as “a kind of imperfective”. Certain statives occur
with -ing in English, for instance, when a change in degree is involved or when
the state is temporary, e.g. I’m living there but plan to move; I’m thinking we should
sell it. The form -ing is also licensed with classes of predicates such as percep-
tion, posture, and location; other languages frequently focus on the result state or
change-of-state properties of such classes (as in Hindi, see Table 7). The English
gerund further extends the uses of -ing, and the form can even escape progressive
meaning altogether in non-finite constructions, instead signalling simultaneity,
e.g. Knowing that Maya was in town, I planned a party. (Comrie 1976: 36–9).
By contrast, the Hindi progressive performs a much stricter function (al-
though it does share the peripheral functions of future and of preliminary stage
interpretation of achievements). In a contact situation, the English superstrate
will always present learners with this complex distribution of -ing; if this distribu-
tion comes up against a narrow progressive form in the L1, this is likely to always
instigate some variation caused by the L1-L2 progressive boundary mismatch and
64 Devyani Sharma
Table 7. Use of imperfective forms in Hindi, Standard English, IndE

Type Example English Hindi IndE
progressive He is WRITING a letter. -ing rahna -ing
preliminary stage He’s ARRIVING now. -ing rahna -ing
future She’s LEAVING tomorrow. -ing rahna -ing
weather It’s RAINING. -ing rahna -ing
delimited habitual She’s DRIVING these days. -â•›/â•›-ing -taâ•›/â•›rahna -ing
adverb over time FLYING all day, the bird got tired. -ing -ta -ing
adverb (simultaneity) He walked towards me SMILING. -ing -ta -ing
persistent activity The wind kept BLOWING. -ing -ta -ing
state You LOVE music. — -ta -ing
habitual I DRIVE. — -ta -ing
dress She is WEARING boots. -ing -a (perf) -ing
posture He is STANDING outside. -ing -a (perf) -ing
location A letter was LYING there. -ing -a (perf) -ing
temporary state He is HOLDING the book. -ing -a (perf) -ing
nonfinite They like SWIMMING. -ing -na (inf) -ing
Note: Progressive forms are marked in bold, and other imperfective forms in italics.
a resulting search for the correct semantic scope of -ing. Here we see potential for
a genuine “angloversal” deriving from a peculiarity of the superstrate.
The second detail to recognize in Tablesâ•¯1 and 7 is that Hindi is a strict im-
perfectivity-marking system, such that all finite clauses must be marked as either
perfective or imperfective. The form -ta is never optional in habitual and stative
contexts. This means that IndE speakers have a pervasive substrate pressure to
mark imperfectivity overtly.
The superstrate and substrate therefore both contribute to the following pro-
cedure. In their search for an overt imperfective marker, driven by the substrate,
IndE speakers encounter -ing as a prominent candidate. Due to its extended range,
the form -ing appears to equally map to rahna and -ta and IndE speakers interpret
it as a global imperfectivity marker.
An intriguing effect is that, although IndE results from an interaction between
two grammars, the resulting system is typologically distinct from both input sys-
tems. It can be classified with other single imperfectivity-marker systems such as
French, as shown in Tableâ•¯8.
How does this procedure play out in SgE? Tableâ•¯7 showed that Hindi has a
narrow progressive form which differs substantially from the broad scope of Eng-
lish -ing, and also that Hindi has a robust, obligatory imperfective marker. Tableâ•¯9
provides a similar range of constructions along with the relevant substrate mor-
phology for SgE.
Table 8. Imperfective marking in Hindi, Standard English, IndE, and French

Hindi Standard English IndE French (PAST)
progressive rahna -ing -ing IMPARFAIT
stative -ta (-ing) -ing IMPARFAIT
habitual -ta (-ing) -ing IMPARFAIT
possession hona (be) have -ing IMPARFAIT
Table 9. Use of imperfective forms in English and Chinese languages

Example Standard English Singapore Hokkien Teochew Cantonese
(and SgE) Mandarin
He is WRITING a letter. -ing zai tja do gan
He’s ARRIVING now. -ing — — — —
She’s LEAVING tomorrow. -ing — — — —
It’s RAINING. -ing — — — (gan)
She’s DRIVING these days. -â•›/â•›-ing — — — —
He walked towards me -ing (-zhe) — (do) (zyu)
SMILING.
The wind kept BLOWING. -ing — — — —
You LOVE music. — (-zhe) — — —
I DRIVE. — — — — —
The car is in the garage. — (-zhe) — (do) zyu
She is WEARING boots. -ing — — — zyu
He is STANDING outside. -ing (-zhe) — (do) (gan)
A letter was LYING there. -ing (-zhe) — (do) (gan)
He is HOLDING the book. -ing (-zhe) — (do) zyu
They like SWIMMING. -ing — — — —
Note: Progressive forms are marked in bold, and other imperfective forms in italics.
First, we can see that the mismatch between the scope of English and Hindi pro-
gressives is repeated in Tableâ•¯9; in fact, the mismatch is even more dramatic as
future and preliminary stage uses of zaiâ•›/â•›tjaâ•›/â•›doâ•›/â•›gan are excluded.12 Tableâ•¯7 and
Tableâ•¯9 thus share an L1-L2 mismatch that gives rise to parallel variation in the
“boundary search” for -ing. H&P (1993: 189) also cite the “extended use of -ing
constructions in the established varieties of English” as an influence on over-ex-
tension of -ing in SgE.
12.â•‡ In Standard Malay, sedang is also not used for future reference or simultaneity and is “much
less frequent than English progressive” (Svalberg and Chuchu 1998: 39). Bazaar Malay is missing
from Tableâ•¯9 due to lack of access to native speakers, but the column would be comparable to
Hokkien as Malay does not have stativity markers. Teochew also has only one primarily progres-
sive marker do, which shows some uses in zhe contexts, such as with posture and location (this
slight difference in the dynamicâ•›/â•›stative boundary is also true for the use of Cantonese gan).
66 Devyani Sharma
By contrast, in the area of imperfective marking, although we find overt mark-

ers such as -zheâ•›/â•›zyuâ•›/â•›do in Chinese, their use is dramatically different from Hindi
-ta. They are strictly markers of continuous states and are not used in many im-
perfective constructions such as habituals, simultaneity, and persistence. There is
also extensive optionality in the use of these forms according to prosodic and word
order factors. Some Singapore Mandarin-speaking consultants for this paper re-
ported total optionality in the use of -zhe, most likely due to contact with Hokkien,
Cantonese, and Teochew. The forms -zheâ•›/â•›zyuâ•›/â•›do are thus semantically highly re-
stricted and frequently omitted in Singaporean usage.13 Convergence across sub-
strates in the Singaporean case may reinforce the lack of pressure to mark imper-
fectivity (Ansaldo 2004).
On the one hand, then, there is a resemblance to the IndE situation in the
L1-L2 mismatch in the scope of the progressive form, caused by the superstrate.
On the other hand, there is an absence of any strong Chinese substrate pressure
to mark imperfectivity overtly, despite the presence of some imperfective markers.
The first of these factors causes some variation due to a “boundary search”, but the
second reduces the pressure among SgE speakers to seek an overt marker for im-
perfectivity, and the variety eventually approximates Standard English usage.
This substrate-superstrate interaction can be schematized as in (9). The trans-
fer of imperfective meaning to -ing — robustly in IndE and negligibly in SgE — is
triggered by the general encroachment of English -ing into non-progressive ter-
ritory. A substrate element remains crucial, however: the robustness of Hindi -ta
as an imperfective marker gives rise to an expanded -ing system; by contrast, the
optional Chinese -zheâ•›/â•›zyuâ•›/â•›do result state markers have little, if any, effect on how
the SgE system stabilizes.
13.â•‡ Published grammars claim that -zhe is required with stative verbs such as love and with
verbs of posture and activity verbs signalling states. My Singapore Mandarin consultants treat
all of these as optional contexts, and so optionality is indicated for all Singapore Mandarin -zhe
use in Tableâ•¯9. H&P and Bao (2005) both rely primarily or exclusively on Standard Mandarin
descriptions (e.g. Li and Thompson 1981; Smith 1991), and assume a “universal Chinese gram-
mar” (Chao 1968: 13). The present discussion shows the importance of other Chinese languages
and the Singaporean variety of Mandarin in further reducing any substrate pressure to mark
imperfectivity in SgE.
(9) a. English [WIDE PROG -ing] â•›

Hindi [NARROW PROG rahna] [IMPERF -ing] IndE
Hindi [ALL OTHER IMPERF -ta]
b. English [WIDE PROG -ing]

Chinese [NARROW PROG zai] [WIDE PROG -ing] SgE
Chinese [opTIONAL STATIVE -zhe]
A lack of attention to semantic properties of morphemes and to quantitative distri-

butions would have obscured aspects of this analysis. For instance, Bao (2005) claims
that SgE is identical to standard native varieties of English in the domain of progres-
sive -ing use due to the similarity of the English and Chinese progressive forms:
Chinese has two imperfective aspect markers, pre-verbal zài and post-verbal -zhe.
The former, like the English progressive, is dynamic, whereas the latter “has a
static focus on states” … The imperfective aspect in Singapore English is unre-
markable. It is formally identical to the English progressive, with the optional use
of a copula … I was not able to collect any data from ICE-SIN which would show
statives (love, believe, know) being used in the V-ing form … The stative imperfec-
tive is not found in Singapore English. (2005: 249–50)
Both the claim that the progressive in Chinese and in English are parallel and the
claim that ICE-Singapore does not have instances of stative uses of -ing are compli-
cated by the present discussion. Bao is correct in suggesting that SgE broadly con-
forms to Standard English behaviour, but the discussion in this section has identi-
fied empirical evidence of microvariation in SgE caused by the non-equivalence
of English and Chinese progressives; this does not stabilize partly due to the influ-
ence of non-Mandarin substrate systems, excluded from Bao’s analysis.
One remaining mystery is why the contact situation in (9b) does not lead to
under-use of the progressive in SgE due to the highly restricted domain of zai.
The sources cited suggest broadly standard rather than restricted use of -ing (al-
though Table 6 does suggest the possibility of quantitative under-use). This can
be accounted for by a version of the Subset Principle (Berwick 1985), whereby if
a learner is starting from a grammar that is a subset of the target grammar, they
can expand straightforwardly to the target based on positive evidence in the input.
Thus, a SgE speaker may restrict English -ing to zai contexts at first, but would
then encounter clear evidence for its wider use. By contrast, an IndE grammar that
uses -ing as an imperfective marker already generates all standard -ing contexts
and would therefore require explicit negative evidence to be restricted.
68 Devyani Sharma
6. Copula absence (K&S #57)
In this final analysis section, I briefly summarize results from an examination of

copula omission to support the present findings. Sharma and Rickford (2009)
compare copula omission in African-American Vernacular English (AAVE), cre-
oles, New Englishes, and childâ•›/â•›adult learner English. This feature has been widely
assumed to be shared across creoles and learner varieties (Winford 1998: 114;
McWhorter 2000: 420; Wolfram 2000: 54; Chambers 2004: 129), but Sharma and
Rickford conclude that the mere fact of variable copula omission in these varieties
belies underlying divergence in the grammatical conditioning of these systems.
Following many studies of the deletion of be (see Rickford 1998 for a sum-
mary), I use the term “copula” here to include strictly copular be (with non-verbal
predicates, e.g. nominal: She is my sister; adjectival: She is funny; locative: She is in
the hall) and auxiliary be (with verbal predicates, e.g. V+ing: She is hiding; future
gonna: She is gonna pay). Figureâ•¯2 draws together rates of copula absence accord-
ing to each predicate type, where possible, with a focus on Indian and Chinese
substrates, and Tableâ•¯10 provides the systems of copula use in each relevant sub-
strate language.14
Table 10. Copula used in equivalent L1 construction?

NOM LOC ADJ VERB
Malay ✗ ✗ ✗ ✗
Cantonese / Mandarin (✓) ✓ ✗ ✗
Tamil ✗ ✓ (✓) ✗
Hindi ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓
It should be clear from Figureâ•¯2 that although each variety has some degree of cop-
ula absence, the underlying system differs substantially in SgE, IndE, and South
African IndE (SAIE). To a great extent, the substrate system in each case can ac-
count for relative frequencies of copula absence.
14.â•‡ Notes for Figureâ•¯2 and Tableâ•¯10: The high Loc values in SgE (Malay) in Figureâ•¯2 are based
on a low total N value of 5. As individual speaker rates cannot be extracted for some of the
datasets in Figureâ•¯2, standard deviation measures could not be included. All of these data sets
are discussed more extensively in Sharma and Rickford (2009). Sources of data in Figureâ•¯2:
Malay L1 SgE (Platt 1979); Chinese L1 SgE (basilectal data, H&P 1993: 48); IndE (Sharma and
Rickford 2009); South African IndE (Mesthrie 1992: 158); AAVE (Labov 1972: 86); Barbadian
Creole (Rickford 1992: 192). Sources of data in Tableâ•¯10: Malay (Platt 1979), Tamil (Pillai 1992:
15; Schiffman 1999: 141), Chinese (Platt 1979), Indo-Aryan (Masica 1991: 336).
100
90
80
70 SgE (L1 Malay, N=88)
Copula absence (%)
SgE (L1 Chinese, N=1764)

60
SAIE (L1 Dravidian, N=199)
50 IndE (L1 Indo-Aryan, N=743)
Creole (Barbados 1991, N=373)
40
AAVE (New York 1969, N=413)
30
20
10
0
NP Loc Adj V-ing gonna
Predicate type
Figure 2. Copula absence by predicate type (based on Sharma and Rickford 2009)
SgE (Malay L1) has the highest absolute rates out of the four bilingual vari-
eties in Figureâ•¯2, and Tableâ•¯10 shows that Malay does not use a copula in any of
the predicate contexts.
SgE (Chinese L1) has lower rates of copula absence than SgE (Malay L1) but high-
er than IndE, and, as Tableâ•¯10 indicates, the relevant substrates have an intermediate
system of copula use as well. The two highest contexts for omission in SgE (Chinese
L1) are the two contexts in which Chinese systems omit the copula.15
Basilectal SAIE (Dravidian L1) shows yet another distribution, mimicking the
two highest contexts for copula absence in Tamil (see Table 10).
IndE (Indo-Aryan L1) shows the lowest rates overall of copula absence, and
indeed, as Tableâ•¯10 shows, the substrate languages involved have an obligatory
copula with all predicate types. Copula absence is not robust in IndE: “mesolectal”
or balanced English-Hindi bilinguals do not have copula omission at all, and each
individual IndE speaker in the composite data in Figureâ•¯2 was found to have a dif-
ferent ordering of contexts, also suggesting no strong underlying system.
In contrast to these four New English varieties, the examples of an AAVE va-
riety and a creole variety in Figureâ•¯2 are striking in exhibiting a genuinely similar
15.â•‡ Ansaldo (2004, 2009) argues that copula absence across SgE substrates has a “ganging-up”
effect on copula absence in the emergent variety. This is certainly true of the effect of Malay
and Chinese, although in Figureâ•¯2 we can still see traces of marginal divergences in Malay and
Chinese in the corresponding sub-varieties of SgE. Ho and Platt’s data are relatively old and it is
possible that SgE sub-varieties have now focussed towards a new, more unified omission pattern
(Lisa Lim, p.c. 2008).
70 Devyani Sharma
distribution. A coarse grouping of all six systems in Figureâ•¯2, merely based on the
fact of copula absence, obscures the genuine similarity between AAVE and creoles
as well as the strong evidence for specific L1 transfer in the other four systems (see
Sharma and Rickford 2009 for further discussion and statistical measures).
As with past omission and progressive over-extension, copula omission occurs
in both IndE and SgE but quantitative analysis reveals a distinct patterning accord-
ing to grammatical context in the two varieties, driven by substrate differences.
7. Conclusions
This paper has argued that, in the search for vernacular universals, we cannot sim-
ply treat varieties that exhibit presence of a particular trait as identical, particularly
where bilingual varieties of English are concerned. Surface similarities across New
Englishes can be skin deep, diverging dramatically upon closer examination, due
to substrate systems or substrate-superstrate interaction. If we genuinely aim to
“identify those features which are the result of language contact, irrespective of the
languages involved” (Sand 2004: 281), then it is inadequate to define a feature as
broadly as “zero past tense forms of regular verbs” (K&S #40), “wider range of uses
of the progressive” (K&S #21), or “deletion of be” (K&S #57). The degree and dis-
tribution of a given feature must be understood in relation to the substrate before
any universal claims can be made regarding “processes [that] recur in vernaculars
wherever they are spoken…” (Chambers 2004: 28).
The quantitative comparison of two features — K&S #40 (past tense use) and
K&S #21 (progressive use) — showed that although both features can be found in
IndE and SgE, their patterning is genuinely similar in one case and substantially
different in the other. The use of past tense marking to indicate perfectivity was
strikingly parallel in IndE and SgE, and the substrate systems were found to be
parallel as well. The use of progressive -ing to indicate imperfectivity was strikingly
different in IndE and SgE, and the substrate systems were found to be different as
well. Finally, K&S #57 (copula omission) was also found to occur in both IndE and
SgE, as well as in other New Englishes, but in each case the grammatical condi-
tioning is heavily influenced by the substrate language, such that some varieties do
not retain copula absence as a feature of mesolectal speech (IndE) whereas others
do (SgE).
Certainly, repeated patterns may indeed derive from universal principles.
Walker (2007) offers syntactic and processing explanations for clear quantita-
tive parallels in variable agreement across native varieties of English, likely to be
repeated regardless of the contact situation. However, for bilingual varieties of
English it is imperative to first investigate and eliminate substrate explanations.

The parallel assignment of perfective meaning to past tense morphology in IndE
and SgE found in this study, for instance, is a genuinely comparable pattern yet
it is not necessarily a universal. A simple substrate explanation accounts for the
pattern, and only further comparison to varieties with distinct substrates can de-
termine whether a substrate or unmarked explanation is appropriate.
Similarly, even though we know that typologically progressive markers regu-
larly grammaticalize into general imperfective markers (Bybee, Perkins and Pa-
gliuca 1994: 140), SgE did not show the same robust over-extension of -ing as IndE
did, thus ruling out a markedness explanation and supporting a substrate explana-
tion. The curious additional complexity here is that, although it arose out of the
contact between the grammars of Hindi and English, the innovative treatment of
-ing as a global imperfective marker by IndE speakers results in a system that is
typologically distinct from both input systems.
Although this article cannot establish whether universals may additionally
reinforce selected patterns found in SgE and IndE, it has shown that substrate-
superstrate interactions can go a long way towards explaining emergent systems in
postcolonial varieties of English, and that highly abstracted aggregations of vari-
eties in the search for universals may obscure these sources of change.
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Thai English
Rhythm and vowels*
Priyankoo Sarmah, Divya Verma Gogoi and Caroline Wiltshire

University of Florida, Gainesville
We explore two aspects of English spoken by native speakers of Thai: rhythm

and the vowel system, and compare each to the substrate language Thai, to
target varieties of English, and to two New Englishes in Asia. Data was collected
from a group of Thai speakers who participated in an interview in English, and
who read a Thai paragraph, and English words, sentences and a paragraph. For
rhythm, we measured the “Pairwise Variability Index” (nPVI, Grabe and Low
2002) and the proportion of time in an utterance devoted to vowels (%V, Ramus,
Nespor and Mehler 1999) of Thai read speech, and English spontaneous and
read speech. We find that the English of Thai speakers had stress-timed values
of high nPVI, like Thai and British English (BrE), and low %V, like BrE but not
Thai. Neither measure of rhythm resembled New Englishes’ more syllable-timed
lower nPVI and high %V. The vowel system of Thai English revealed transfers of
both quality and quantity from the substrate, resulting in a system distinct from
British, American, and New Englishes.
Keywords: Thai, Thai English, Singapore English, Hong Kong English, rhythm,
English vowels, monophthongs
1. Introduction
Although some Englishes in Asia have received extensive attention, the phonetics
of Thai English remain relatively unexamined; Tsukada (2008) seems to provide
*â•‡ We thank Jirapat Jangjamras, Donruethai Laphasradakul, and Ratree Wayland for all their
help with recruiting Thai informants and providing information about English in Thailand.
Thanks, too, to Lisa Lim for organizing the workshop on “The Typology of Asian Englishes” at
ISLE1 in Freiburg, to members of the audience, and to Nik Gisborne, Lisa Lim, and Devyani
Sharma for their comments on this work, which much improved this paper. We regret if we were
unable to address all their suggestions.
76 Priyankoo Sarmah, Divya Verma Gogoi and Caroline Wiltshire
the first acoustic descriptions, and that for only a subset of the vowels. We explore
here two phonetic aspects of this emerging English: rhythm and the monophthong
vowel system. We expect that the phonetic characteristics of this L2 English should
either reflect transfer from the substrate Thai, or reflect cross-linguistic marked-
ness constraints which are said to be shared in New Englishes; hence, we also
compare the phonetics of Thai English to the characteristics of both the substrate
language and to Hong Kong English (HKE) and Singapore English (SgE), two New
Englishes in Asia.
Thai English was chosen for its potential to distinguish transfer from marked-
ness by its rhythmic characteristics. While the dichotomy between stress-timed
and syllable-timed rhythm (Pike 1945; Abercrombie 1967) has been reanalyzed as
a continuum (Roach 1982, 1998; Dauer 1983), New and L2 English varieties are
often claimed to approximate the syllable-timed extreme (Schneider 2004), either
due to transfer from a substrate with syllable-timing, or due to syllable-timing be-
ing unmarked. Thai L2 English may help distinguish between transfer and marked-
ness, since Grabe and Low (2002) report that Thai’s rhythmic characteristics are
mixed, based on two measures, the Pairwise Variability Index (nPVI, Grabe and
Low 2002) and the proportion of time in an utterance devoted to vowels (%V, Ra-
mus, Nespor and Mehler 1999). Using these two measures, we confirm the mixed
values for the Thai substrate, and also test Thai English to compare it with British
English (BrE; very stress-timed) and SgE (more syllable-timed). If transfer from
the rhythmically mixed substrate Thai is dominant, we would expect Thai English
to be mixed, while if unmarkedness determines L2 rhythm, we expect both mea-
sures to resemble other L2 and New Englishes (more syllable-timed).
We also explore the question of transfer from the substrate vs. markednessâ•›/â•›
typology by examining the vowels. In terms of quality, Thai has a more symmetric
vowel system than English, lacking, for example, [ɪ] and [ʊ], and using length for
contrast. We measure and plot the first two formants of the monophthongs of Thai
English to compare inventories; the durations of vowels that are similar in quality
are also measured to determine if length was used contrastively. The Thai English
vowel system is then compared with the L1 Thai system, target native Englishes,
and with New Englishes in the area with different substrates, such as HKE (Hung
2000) and SgE (Deterding 2006), to evaluate the role of direct transfer from the
substrate vs. features shared throughout New Englishes (Schneider 2004).
In the next section, we begin with the necessary preliminaries on English in
Thailand, and the measurement of rhythm and vowels. We then present our meth-
odology in Sectionâ•¯3, and the results in Sectionâ•¯4. The final section reviews the
results in the context of the question of transfer vs. markedness.
Thai English 77
2. Background
In this section, we provide some background information on English in Thailand as

it would be experienced by our speakers. We also discuss measures of rhythm and
vowel quality and quantity as a basis for choosing our methodology in Sectionâ•¯3.
2.1 English in Thailand
Unlike many countries in the South and South-East Asia area, Thailand has no his-
tory of colonization by the British. Thailand thus belongs to the Expanding Circle for
English, rather than the Outer Circle, in the well-known system of Kachru (1985);
that is, English is taught in the schools and used for communication primarily with
foreigners, not for conversation with fellow Thais. Although English has been taught
in the schools in Thailand for decades, according to Bautista and Gonzalez (2006)
a lack of teachers resulted in English not being offered in schools until at least sixth
grade (approximately age 11). However, “in 1996, the curriculum was revised once
more, and English is now taught as a subject in Grade 1 to 12. Thus, about 99 per-
cent of Thai students study English at school, but it appears that not many succeed
in acquiring much English proficiency” (Bautista and Gonzalez 2006:â•›138).
The type of English pronunciation that Thai speakers consider their target is
not clear, or perhaps simply not monolithic. According to our informants, BrE has,
until recently, been the predominant model in primary school and high school,
with textbooks from Cambridge and Oxford University Presses and correspond-
ing audio tapes for listening practice; however, the teachers at that level are gener-
ally native speakers of Thai, and pronunciation was rarely the focus of instruction.
In college and university level English classes, there have always been more native
speaker teachers and a greater variety of backgrounds, including British, Ameri-
can, Canadian and Australian as well. Our informants reported that American
English (AmE) has become more predominant in Thailand within the past five to
ten years. As the subjects recorded here had a mean age of 27, they likely received
more formal instruction in BrE, but they have certainly had some exposure to
AmE even in Thailand, and as they are currently studying in the US, they may have
two models for English pronunciation.
2.2 Rhythm
Prosodic characteristics, including rhythm, are often observed to distinguish na-

tive speakers from learners who transfer the rhythm of their L1 into an L2 (e.g.
Munro 1995; Carter 2005; Tromfimovich and Baker 2006). While Inner Circle
Englishes have been described as stress-timed, the rhythm of New Englishes is
often characterized as syllable-timed, leading to the question of whether New

Englishes tend to be syllable-timed because of typologyâ•›/â•›markedness, if syllable-
timing is less marked, or because of transfer, if only New Englishes with syllable-
timed substrates have been examined. Thai has mixed prosodic characteristics,
leading to the possibility of answering that question.
The division of languages into two rhythmic categories, stress-timed or sylla-
ble-timed, has been reanalyzed as a continuum of rhythmic options, with stress-
timed and syllable-timed as two extremes (Roach 1982; 1998; Dauer 1983; Ramus,
Nespor and Mehler 1999; Grabe and Low 2002; Thomas and Carter 2006). In the
original formulation, a syllable-timed language had approximately equal duration
for each syllable, while a stress-timed language had equal duration for each foot,
to keep the duration from one stressed syllable to the next approximately equal.
Apart from problems such as determining the boundaries of the syllables or feet
in order to test this formulation, the division did not seem to hold true; syllable
durations can be unequal in languages described as syllable-timed, while the in-
tervals between feet were not constant in stress-timed languages (Roach 1982;
Dauer 1983). Dauer (1983) suggested that the perception of rhythm had more to
do with contributing factors such as vowel reduction, the phonotactics of conso-
nant clusters in syllables, and the location and acoustic characteristics of stress. In
languages considered stress-timed, the variation in syllable structure and the pres-
ence of vowel reduction results in greater variability in the length of vowels.
Recent work has developed acoustic measures in order to characterize the
rhythmic properties of languages on a continuum. Two of these measures will
be used here: %V (Ramus, Nespor and Mehler 1999) and the nPVI (Grabe and
Low 2002); each of these correlates well with naïve categorizations of languages
as syllable-timed, stress-timed, or as difficult to classifyâ•›/â•›indeterminate. The %V
characterizes what percentage of an utterance consists of vowels: the more vocalic
an utterance, the more likely it is to be perceived as syllable-timed, as it indicates
a lack of vowel reduction and/or a simple CV structure disallowing lengthy con-
sonant clusters. The nPVI compares the duration of each vowel to an adjacent
vowel, to provide a measure of isochrony that does not depend on syllable or foot
boundaries, but rather one that reflects that vowel reduction and variation in syl-
lable structure contribute to greater variability in vowel duration. The higher the
nPVI, the greater the perception of the variability that characterizes a stress-timed
language; the lower the nPVI, the more equal the length of vowels in adjacent syl-
lables, giving the perception of a syllable-timed rhythm.
In addition to testing these measures on speech produced by native speak-
ers, researchers have begun to investigate the rhythmic characteristics of L2 and
New Englishes. While there have long been impressionistic observations that L2
and New Englishes tend towards syllable-timing, such as Wells (1982) and Kachru
Thai English 79
(1983), more recently acoustic phonetic measures have begun providing support.
Notably, Low, Grabe and Nolan (2000) and Deterding (2001) have investigated
SgE compared with BrE. Although their methodology and the details of their for-
mula differed, both conclude that SgE is more syllable-timed than BrE. Other re-
search includes Udofot (2003) for Nigerian English and Thomas and Carter (2006)
for Jamaican English, Hispanic English, and the African-American English of ex-
slaves (based on preserved recordings), all of which have been found to be more
syllable-timed than native varieties of English.
The generalization that L2 and New English varieties are more syllable-timed
than BrE or AmE is often attributed to transfer or substrate influence from a syl-
lable-timed L1 (e.g. Wells 1982:â•›572 on Carribean Creoles). The languages of Sin-
gapore (primarily Bazaar Malay and Chinese languages), Nigeria (Anaan, Ibibio,
Yoruba), and Jamaican Creole tend to approximate the syllable-timed extreme,
so that speakers may merely carry over a rhythmic pattern or a lack of vowel re-
duction in unstressed syllables. Crystal (1995:â•›176) claims that situations of use of
English as a world language “have resulted in varieties of Modern English in which
the syllable-timing has been transferred from the contact languages, producing
a natural variety of isosyllabic English spoken as a mother tongue by large num-
bers of people, and viewed as a local speech standard”. However, an alternative is
possible: if syllable-timing is a less marked state, it would be natural for learners
to begin with that state in their L2. Crystal (1995) notes also that native speak-
ers of stress-timed varieties use more syllable-timed rhythm in contexts such as
baby-talk, perhaps indicating its status as less marked. To tease out the distinction
between transfer of syllable-timing from substrate L1s and lack of markedness of
syllable-timing, we need to examine the English of speakers of an L1 with mixed
rhythmic characteristics.
Thai English, whose rhythmic properties have not yet been measured, is an
L2 variety based on a rhythmically mixed L1. In pre-acoustic phonetic research,
Thai has been classified as a stress-timed language (Luangthongkum 1977, cited in
Grabe and Low 2002); however, Grabe and Low (2002) report that Thai’s rhythmic
characteristics are mixed. In Tableâ•¯1, we provide their findings for BrE, canoni-
cally stress-timed, and Spanish, canonically syllable-timed. SgE was measured as
less stress-timed than the target BrE, a difference attributed to the syllable-timed
substrate(s). With regard to Thai, their measure of nPVI for vocalic interval was
high, even exceeding that of stress-timed languages such as Dutch and English,
while the Thai %V was also high, resembling languages of the syllable-timed group
such as Spanish and French. If transfer from the substrate is dominant, we would
expect Thai English to be mixed as well. However, if unmarkedness determines L2
rhythm, we might expect both measures to show more syllable-timing than the
target, similar to the values for SgE in Tableâ•¯1.
Tableâ•¯1.â•‡ nPVI and %V for BrE, SgE, Spanish and Thai, from Grabe and Low (2002); read
speech, nâ•›=â•›1 for each row
nPVI (vocalic) %V
BrE (very stress-timed) 57.2 41.1
SgE (more syllable-timed) 52.3 46.9
Spanish (syllable-timed) 29.7 50.8
Thai (mixed) 65.8 52.2
2.3 Vowels
As with rhythm, the vowel systems of L2 and New Englishes are said to be influ-
enced by the L1 or substrate vowel systems. Also as with rhythm, studies of New
and L2 Englishes with distinct substrates have shown commonalities, suggesting
a default system (Schneider 2004). We will compare the system of vowels used in
Thai English with that of Thai and with New Englishes in the area with different
substrates, to evaluate the role of direct transfer from the substrate vs. features
shared throughout New Englishes.
Standard Thai has nine monophthongs, each with contrastive length, as shown
in Tableâ•¯2; there are also three diphthongs, /ɪa/, /ɯa/, and /ua/, which do not con-
trast in length (Roengpitya 2001).
Tableâ•¯2.â•‡ Monophthongs of Standard Thai, from Roengpitya (2001:â•›1)a
Heightâ•›/â•›Frontness front central back
close i, iː ɯ, ɯː u, uː
mid e, eː ɤ, ɤː o, oː
open æ, æː a, aː ɔ, ɔː
a Tingsabadh and Abramson (1993) use the symbols [ɛ, ɛː] for the open front vowel.
According to Abramson (1962), the duration of the vowels provides the primary
cue to their length. Roengpitya (2001), based on three speakers (two male and one
female), provides duration measures for the short vs. long vowels, while Abramson
(1962), based on two male speakers, provides formant values; both are provided
below in Sectionâ•¯4.2.
As Thai speakers are exposed to both British and American models of English,
we consider both as possible targets for vowel quality. Descriptions of the system
of monophthongs that can occur in stressed vowels of the target BrEâ•›/â•›RP and AmE
generally include the vowels in Tables 3a and 3b. The vowel symbols below are
placed in the chart according to their position in the IPA, although the acoustics
of their pronunciation will vary depending on dialect (example measures of their
pronunciation are presented in Sectionâ•¯4.3).
Thai English 81
Tableâ•¯3a.â•‡ Monophthongs of BrE (Wells 1982)

close iː ɪ – ʊ uː
mid-close e ɜː –
mid-open – – ʌ ɔː
open æ – ɒ ɑː
Tableâ•¯3b.â•‡ Monophthongs of AmE (Wells 1982)

close iɪ – ʊu
mid-close – ɜrâ•›/â•›ɚa –
mid-open ɛ – ʌɔ
open æ – ɑ
aWells (1982) provides [ɜr], while Hillenbrand et al. (1995), whose acoustic values for AmE vowels will be
used in Sectionâ•¯4.1, refer to this vowel as [ɚ].
Compared to Thai, both AmE and BrE have a larger number of distinctions in
quality in the open back vowel set; furthermore, BrE never has a distinction of
quantity alone, as quality differences always accompany length differences. The
AmE and BrE varieties also include mid-diphthongs, pronounced as [oʊ] or [əʊ]
in GOAT and [eɪ] in FACE, which in many New or L2 Englishes are pronounced as
long mid monophthongs [oː] and [eː], including in countries from Africa and the
Caribbean (Wells 1982), as well as much of Asia including Brunei, India, Malaysia,
and Singapore. Although this may seem a candidate for a markedness generaliza-
tion, monophthongization may instead be due to substrate influence; for example,
the substrates of SgE do not have [oʊ]â•›/â•›[əʊ]â•›/â•›[eɪ] diphthongs, and nor does SgE
(Lim 2004), while the Cantonese substrate of HKE does have similar diphthongs,
and so does HKE (Hung 2000).
Comparison to other New Englishes may, however, reveal markedness effects
in addition to substrate effects. Some potential candidates from other New Eng-
lishes are that the system is often simpler in terms of quality than BrE or AmE,
with a reduced set of contrasts among the open back vowels [ʌ ɔː ɒ ɑː] and the front
non-high vowels [e ɛ æ] (SgE, Deterding 2005; HKE, Hung 2000; Indian English,
Wiltshire 2005). Many New or L2 Englishes also replace quality differences with
quantity differences, using [iː]â•›/â•›[i] for [i]â•›/â•›[ɪ] and using [uː]â•›/â•›[u] for [u]â•›/â•›[ʊ].
In Sectionâ•¯4.2, the Thai English system is described in terms of both quality
and quantity, and compared with target varieties, the substrate Thai, and other
New Englishes of the area.
3. Methodology
Data were collected from a group of 12 Thai speakers; the group was fairly homog-
enous in terms of age and years of English education. The speakers ranged in age
from 23 to 32 years (meanâ•›=â•›27); seven were from Bangkok (Central Thailand),
and the others from Khon Kaen, Loei (both Northeastern), Chai Nat, Chiang Mai
(both Northern), and Phuket (Southern). While there are regional differences in
the Thai of the four areas, the dialects resemble each other in their systems of vow-
el quality and duration. Furthermore, our subjects were highly educated before
their arrival in the United States (US), and thus are likely to have grown up speak-
ing central Thai at home and/or to have adopted it while studying in Bangkok. All
subjects had studied English in school and at university before their arrival in the
US. They varied primarily in their contact with L1 English speakers: six have spent
fewer than four months in an English-speaking country and six have spent more
than 18 months in the US as of the time they were recorded. We label these two
groups as “new” vs. “veteran” speakers of Thai English.
For measures of Thai English, speakers were recorded reading English words,
sentences, and a short paragraph. Then an interview was conducted, both to ask
questions about their language background and to gather spontaneous speech. As
Grabe and Low’s (2002) nPVI and %V results were on the basis of a single speaker,
we wished to confirm their results for Thai with more data; thus three of the speak-
ers were called back to read a short passage in Thai (from Tingsabadh and Abram-
son 1993). The recorded data of all speakers were digitized with a sampling rate of
45Hz using a CSL4400, a signal processing hardware and software package.
3.1 Rhythm
There are a variety of ways to calculate rhythmic measures (e.g. Ramus, Nespor and
Mehler 1999; Low, Grabe and Nolan 2000; Deterding 2001; Gibbon and Gut 2001;
Grabe and Low 2002; Ong, Deterding and Low 2005; Thomas and Carter 2006),
and these measures have been applied to both spontaneous and read data. As men-
tioned in Sectionâ•¯2.2, two of these measures will be used here: %V (Ramus, Nespor
and Mehler 1999) and the nPVI (Grabe and Low 2002). Grabe and Low’s (2002)
investigation provides measures for, amongst others, the following varieties which
are relevant to this study: one of the target varieties (BrE), the substrate (Thai) and
one New English (SgE); in order to compare our results with theirs, we have ad-
opted their formula for the most part. Note however that Grabe and Low (2002)
measured only one speaker for each language, and measured the rhythm of a read
passage. We have larger sample sizes, and measure both read and spontaneous/
Thai English 83
conversational speech for Thai English, as spontaneous speech may provide more
naturalistic rhythms (Deterding 2001). Further modifications are discussed below.
In order to calculate the nPVI and %V, we measured the duration of vowels and
the duration of intervals between vowels. In the analysis of the spontaneous speech,
three of the speakers were excluded, either because their speech was not fluent or
because their utterances were rarely long enough. As noted in Thomas and Carter
(2006), an insufficiently large number of syllable pairs might allow for deviations
based on segmental factors such as the length of vowels or structure of syllables, so
for the measures of spontaneous speech, we included only speakers for whom we
had at least 200 syllables. Therefore, a total of nine speakers were analyzed for the
spontaneous data; of them, four were speakers who had been in the US more than 18
months (veterans) and five fewer than 4 months (new). We then had an average of
273 syllables per speaker for the veteran speakers group (nâ•›=â•›4) and 280 syllables per
speaker for the new group (nâ•›=â•›5). Following Deterding (2001), we used utterances
only if they had a minimum of seven syllables without any long pause or hesitation;
as these were not native speakers of English, short pauses within a breath group oc-
curred regularly, and were included for analysis (in the intervocalic duration).
The utterances were measured for vocalic duration (d), with the boundaries of
the vowels in most cases determined using standard criteria such as the onset of the
second formant (Peterson and Lehiste 1960). To maintain consistency in the mea-
surements of all utterances, we used the following criterion: the transition of a vow-
el from the preceding consonant was considered in vocalic duration as the starting
boundary, while the transition of a vowel into the following consonant/pause was
not taken as part of the vocalic duration; that is, the final boundary was marked at
the end of the steady state of the vowel. In order to avoid potential effects of English
phrase-final lengthening, we applied the formula only to pre-final syllables.
From these measures, we calculate the nPVI according to the formula in (1),
as measures of variation in vocalic duration, and the %V according to (2), the pro-
portion of time in an utterance devoted to vowels.
â•…
m−1   dk − d k+1  
(1) nPVIâ•›=â•›100 × ∑â•‡ dk   / (mâ•›−â•›1)
â•…â•‡ kâ•›=â•›1
   (dk + d k+1)/2 
Grabe and Low (2002:â•›520)
â•‡
m 
(2) %Vâ•›=â•›100 × ∑â•‡ dk / duration of utterance

kâ•›=â•›1 
Ramus et al. (1999:â•›271–2)
As shown in (1), the nPVI compares the difference in duration of the vowels in
adjacent syllables; dividing this value by the mean of the two vowels’ duration
normalizes for rate. The absolute values calculated for each pair of syllables is di-
vided by the total number of syllables to give a value for each speaker, or group of
speakers. The formula in (2) for %V shows that it merely adds up the duration of
each vocalic portion of an utterance and divides by the total duration of the utter-
ance. Both types of measures will be compared to results reported for BrE (very
stress-timed) and SgE (very syllable-timed) to situate Thai English on the rhyth-
mic scale, and to previous measures for Thai to evaluate the extent of transfer from
L1 in Thai English speakers.1 We furthermore divide our data in terms of years in
an English-speaking country (new vs. veteran). We hypothesize that more experi-
ence with AmE speakers, with their high vocalic nPVI and low %V, could modify
Thai English rhythm in the direction of a lower %V.
3.2 Vowels
For measurements of vowel quality and quantity, the recordings of all 12 speakers
were used. Using the word list of individual words articulated in isolation, the du-
ration of the vowels was measured from the onset to offset of the second formant.
Following Abramson (1962), the first two formants of the vowels were measured
at a point halfway through the vowel, including the mid-close vowels which are
diphthongs in BrE and AmE. Vowel formants are plotted in a table to compare in-
ventories with Thai and varieties of English, while the durations of vowels that are
similar in quality were measured to determine if length was used contrastively.
4. Results
4.1 Rhythm
The results of the calculation of the rhythm measures for Thai English are present-
ed in Tableâ•¯4, along with values from Grabe and Low (2002) for Thai in the first
row. Our measure for Thai shows lower values for both nPVI and %V than that
of Grabe and Low (2002). While our results are thus not as dramatically mixed as
theirs, the nPVI number is still close to the stress-timed, BrE-like end of the scale,
while the %V resembles the high values of a syllable-timed language such as Span-
ish. Thus the rhythmic characteristics of Thai do indeed appear to be mixed.
1.â•‡ We use BrE as the comparison here because available published results on AmE are presented
as median values rather than means; however, AmE, like BrE, falls clearly on the stress-timed
end of the spectrum, in e.g. Carter and Thomas (2006).
Thai English 85
Tableâ•¯4.â•‡ Results of nPVI and %V for Thai, Thai English, and BrE
nPVI (vocalic) %V
Thai (Grabe and Low 2002; nâ•›=â•›1) 65.8 52.2
Thai (read speech, nâ•›=â•›3) 54.5 49.3
Thai English (spontaneous speech, nâ•›=â•›9) 56.5 42.7
Thai English (read speech, nâ•›=â•›10) 59.6 40.0
BrE (Grabe and Low 2002; nâ•›=â•›1) 57.2 41.1
Tableâ•¯4 also includes our results for Thai English, both spoken spontaneously
and from a read paragraph, the latter value being measured in a way comparable
to the value measured for a native BrE speaker in Grabe and Low (2002), except
that we did not include utterances shorter than seven syllables. Thai English, un-
like Thai, appears more consistently stress-timed in its rhythm. The overall value
of the nPVI for Thai English is quite high, remaining on the stress-timed part of
the scale, which not surprisingly reflects both the targets and the substrate. The
values of nPVI for Thai English, whether read or spoken, are higher than those we
measured for Thai, though lower than Grabe and Low report. The values for %V
for Thai English also fall at the stress-timed end of the continuum, with the values
in read Thai English possibly more stress-timed than the values measured for BrE.
The values for spoken Thai English fall between the values of the very stress-timed
read English and the more syllable-timed value of Thai itself.
In Tableâ•¯5 we divide our results by veteran vs. new speakers as well as read vs.
spontaneous speech. Both groups show similar values in the read English, but they
differ on both measures in their spontaneous English.
By transfer from the substrate, we might expect the new speakers to show
rhythmic values closer to the L1 Thai values than the veteran speakers. The fact
that the new speakers have an even higher nPVI than veterans is surprising, as is
the lower value for %V, as it appears that the newer speakers show values closer
to the stress-timed BrE values on both measures, while the more veteran speakers
perform more similarly to the speakers of SgE. None of the Thai English speakers
show a %V approaching that of Thai. It is possible that the structure of Thai itself
Tableâ•¯5.â•‡ Results of nPVI and %V for veteran vs. new Thai English speakers
nPVI (vocalic) %V
Read speech, veterans (nâ•›=â•›5) 59.6 39.7
Read speech, new (nâ•›=â•›5) 59.6 40.4
Spontaneous, veterans (nâ•›=â•›4) 54.3 43.9
Spontaneous, new (nâ•›=â•›5) 58.3 41.7
(length of vowels, form of syllables) contributes to the %V being so high in Thai,

rather than some external prosodic characteristic.
In the surprising direction of the differences between new and veteran speak-
ers, one potential explanation is that the new speakers are more oriented towards
an external norm, so that they overcompensate when interacting with native
speakers. Veterans, on the other hand, may be comfortable with a more nativized
variety which reflects the substrate; by relaxing towards Thai norms, they per-
haps reassert their identity as Thai speakers. In this, we could extend the Norm
Orientation Hypothesis of Gut (2007), who notes that the use and development
of linguistic structures is related to and dependent on the normative orientation
of the speakers. Her evidence comes from two New Englishes, SgE and Nigerian
English; speakers of the former have an endonormative orientation and distinct
patterns of consonant cluster reduction, as opposed to speakers of the latter, whose
exonormative orientation results in patterns of reduction like that of L2 learners.
Similarly, perhaps even speakers of an Expanding Circle English, as they develop
their expertise in English, may move from an attitude of pure allegiance to the
target varieties towards developing a more endonormative attitude, or at least one
that does not overcompensate to avoid transfer. It is also possible to see the vet-
eran speakers as applying a strategy used by bilinguals, trying to find a balance
between the values of Thai and English rhythm, just as bilinguals maintain a bal-
ance between similar segmental speech sounds of their L1 and L2 (Flege, Schirru
and MacKay 2003).
4.2 Vowels
For vowels, we present measures of vowel formants (quality) and duration (quan-
tity) for monophthongs and diphthongs below, for comparison with native and
New Englishes.
4.2.1 Vowel quality

In all the figures that follow, the charts of the vowel spaces are presented with F2
plotted against F1 to represent the vowel spaces in a familiar format.2 In all cases,
formant frequencies in Hz are converted to the auditory Bark scale using the fol-
lowing formula (J. Harnsberger p.â•›c. 2008) to better reflect the relative perceptual
positions of the vowels in the vowel space:
(3) Barkâ•›=â•›7 × LN(Hz / 650 + SQRT (POWER (Hz / 650.2) + 1)
2.â•‡ In this we follow Deterding’s (1997) arguments that this presentation is better than the alter-
native F1 vs. F2-F1 plot.
Thai English 87
First, in order to investigate the role of substrate transfer, we provide acoustic mea-
sures of the Thai L1 vowel system and target systems for the BrE and AmE L2.
Figures 1a and 1b are based on the formant values provided for Thai by Abramson
(1962) for the long and short monophthongs of two male speakers.
Figureâ•¯1a.â•‡ Thai short monophthongs (Abramson 1962)
Figureâ•¯1b.â•‡ Thai long monophthongs (Abramson 1962)
As outlined in Sectionâ•¯2, there are potentially two target Englishes, BrE and AmE,
that serve as norms for Thai English learners; examples of the formant values for
their monophthongs are plotted in Figures 2 and 3. Note that these plots do not
include the normally diphthongal mid-vowels [eɪ] and [oʊ]â•›/â•›[əʊ].
Figureâ•¯2.â•‡ BrE monophthongs, males (Deterding 2006)
Figureâ•¯3.â•‡ AmE monophthongs, males (Hillenbrand et al. 1995)
Comparing the Thai system to that of BrE, we see that amongst the front vow-
els, Thai provides three categories of height, while BrE requires four, possibly five if
the diphthong [eɪ] is also taken into account. For the central and back, mid and low
vowels, the Thai L1 provides a four-way contrast plus length; BrE has a five-way
qualitative contrast among these vowels, some of which contrasts are reinforced by
length as well as quality differences. The AmE system, in Figureâ•¯3, provides slightly
fewer contrasts: in the front vowel system, three heights (four with the diphthong
[eɪ]), and in the centralâ•›/â•›back vowels, four monophthongs plus one diphthong.
Thai English 89
Tableâ•¯6.â•‡ Results of formant measures of Thai English monophthongs

F2 (Hz) F1 (Hz) F2 (Bark) F1 (Bark) vowel word
2463.4 375.1 14.29719 3.843589 iː heat
2377.5 462.6 14.05727 4.635914 ɪ hit
2288.2 532.1 13.79903 5.229974 e hate
2412.1 536.0 14.15468 5.262823 ɛ head
1888.2 813.9 12.51555 7.342769 æ had
1577.4 832.4 11.33786 7.466315 ʌ hut
1532.6 934.1 11.15187 8.115409 ɑː asks
1380.2 536.7 10.48243 5.267856 ɜː hurt
1188.9 608.0 â•⁄ 9.551265 5.844269 ɒ cloth
1117.0 759.1 â•⁄ 9.171095 6.966584 ɔː thought
â•⁄ 919.8 518.9 â•⁄ 8.027021 5.119411 oː coat
1147.7 450.5 â•⁄ 9.335385 4.529141 uː hoot
1038.9 483.9 â•⁄ 8.736383 4.821361 ʊ hook
Figureâ•¯4.â•‡ Thai English vowels, all speakers (nâ•›=â•›12)
Thus the number of contrasts in Thai, as well as the locations of the vowels, differ
from the targets and may provide evidence of transfer to Thai English.
Our formants measures for Thai English monophthongs for each vowel, aver-
aged over all speakers, are presented in Tableâ•¯6 and plotted in Figureâ•¯4.
Most vowels seem to be maintained in distinct locations on the averaged chart,
although [e] vs. [ɛ] are close to being merged. As the BrE and AmE values plotted
Figureâ•¯5a.â•‡ Thai English vowels, male veteran speakers (nâ•›=â•›3)
Figureâ•¯5b.â•‡ Thai English vowels, male new speakers (nâ•›=â•›3)
above were for males, we provide plots for the male speakers alone, breaking them
into groups based on length of their time in the US as in Figures 5a and 5b.
From the figures of more homogeneous subgroups, we see that both groups
show merger of [e] vs. [ɛ], a distinction unavailable in the substrate Thai. Similarly,
the new male speakers also merge [iː] vs. [ɪ], while these two are quite distinct for
the veterans. Note, too, that all speakers clearly have the low front vowel [æ], as does
Thai. So in the front vowels, the new speakers tend to closely reflect the Thai vowel
system, while the veterans have added a distinction for the high tenseâ•›/â•›lax vowels.
Thai English 91
For all speakers, the low and back vowels seem to be kept distinct, although
they are not in the same places for the two groups, nor do they exactly match ei-
ther of the target Englishes. For example, both the [uː] and [ʊ] of the new speakers
are fairly low and central. The [uː] and [ʊ] of the veterans have moved higher and
further back, but the [ʊ] is even more so than the [uː], whose location is some-
where between the BrE and AmE pronunciations.
Figures 6 and 7 for SgE and HKE monophthongs provide for further compari-
sons with nearby New English varieties.
Figureâ•¯6.â•‡ SgE monophthongs (Deterding 2006)
Figureâ•¯7.â•‡ HKE monophthongs (Hung 2000)

The data in both tables lack equivalents for [eː] and [oː] as their authors were
measuring vowels considered to be monophthongs in the target language, BrE. In
the front vowel system of Thai English (Figuresâ•¯4 and 5), [æ] is noticeably distinct
from [eâ•›/â•›ɛ], as in both the Thai L1 and in the target Englishes, but both SgE and
HKE show merger or near merger of these front vowels. However, the substrates
for SgE (Malay, Hokkien, Mandarin, and Cantonese) and for HKE (Cantonese)
also lack the [æâ•›/â•›eâ•›/â•›ɛ] distinction (Lim 2004), so that both the presence and ab-
sence of [æ] in different varieties seems attributable to the influence of the sub-
strate, rather than markednessâ•›/â•›universals.
All three varieties show a tendency to merge [iː] with [ɪ] in quality. In the
back vowel system, [uː] appears more back in all three non-native Englishes than
in BrE. As the fronting of [uː] is relatively recent for BrE speakers, it is possible
that all three have preserved an older pronunciation; for Thai, with its lack of a
historical colonial dialect, this “preservation” could come from the textbookâ•›/â•›for-
mal variety used in schools, or it may reflect the location of the back vowels in the
substrate L1s. Among the non-high back and central vowels, where BrE provides
for multiple contrasts, the New Englishes merge one or more, for example, [ɔː]â•›/â•›[ɒ]
appear merged in HKE and close to it in SgE. Such mergers have been treated as
the influence of the substrate in Hung (2000), Lim (2004), and Deterding (2006).
Similarly for Thai English, both the loss of contrasts in the quality of pairs such as
[iː]â•›/â•›[ɪ] and the maintenance of contrasts such as [ɛ]â•›/â•›[æ] can be attributed in Thai
English speakers to the influence of the substrate Thai vowel inventory.
4.2.2 Vowel durations

The durations of the vowels were measured from the read word list, and although
this data was not gathered with any control for the rate of reading, the average du-
rations as presented in Tableâ•¯7 provide evidence suggesting that the Thai English
speakers maintain a distinction in duration for some vowel contrasts, in support
of Tsukada (2008).
The vowel symbols in Tableâ•¯7 represent the target vowels as they are normally
pronounced in BrE, with key words indicating an example of a word on the read-
ing list for the Thai English speakers. Tsukada (2008) noted that the monoph-
thongs of Thai speakers in Australia [ɪ æ ʊ ʌ] were shorter than the corresponding
monophthongs of Australian speakers, resulting in a lower ratio of short vowels to
diphthongs of approximately 1:2. Tsukada suggests that this reflects a transfer to
the vowel contrasts of English, as the Thai ratio of short to long is also roughly 1:2,
as seen in Roengpitya’s (2001) results also provided in Tableâ•¯7. As the Thai speak-
ers in this study reside in the US, we provide values for AmE vowel durations from
Hillenbrand et al. (1995) for comparison. There are at least two cases in which the
Thai speakers’ monophthongs are notably short: [ɪ] and [ʊ]. In the first case, the
Thai English 93
Tableâ•¯7.â•‡ Vowel duration for Thai English, AmE and comparable Thai vowels; mean dura-
tion in seconds
English Key word Thai AmE (Hillenbrand Comparable Roengpitya
vowels English et al. 1995) Thai vowels (2001)
iː heat .211 .243 iː .298
ɪ hit .106 .192 i .145
e(ː) hate .212 .267 eː .301
ɛ head .233 .189 e .149
æ had .222 .278 æː .332
ɛː hurt .204 .263 ɤː .332
ʌ hut .118 .188 ɤ .175
ɑː asks .212 .267 ɔː .334
ɒ cloth .226 – ɔ .165
ɔː thought .254 .283 ɔː .334
o(ː) coat .208 – oː .320
ʊ hook .106 .192 u .150
uː hoot .175 .237 uː .321
ratio of [ɪ] to [i] in Thai English approximates 1:2, as in the Thai contrast of [i] vs.
[iː].
Thus it is possible that in pairs such as heatâ•›/â•›hit for [iː]â•›/â•›[ɪ] or hootâ•›/â•›hook for
[uː]â•›/â•›[ʊ], the length distinction seems to be transferred from Thai into Thai Eng-
lish as suggested by Tsukada. However, hateâ•›/â•›headâ•›/â•›had show no such length dis-
tinction, at least in isolated monosyllables from the word list. As discussed in Sec-
tionâ•¯4.2.1, [æ] was qualitatively distinct from the other front vowels, but [eː] and
[ɛ] were similar in quality; with similar quantities as well, they appear not to con-
trast at all in Thai English. Thus while the durational contrasts from the substrate
may be transferred into the English of Thai speakers, they are not always, even
when neutralization of a target contrast is the result.
5. Conclusion
An examination of Thai English rhythm and vowels revealed a strong effect of the
substrate Thai. These effects include the L1 rhythmic characteristic of high nPVI
transferred from Thai to Thai English, the presence of the low-front vowel [æ],
the absence of qualitative contrasts such as [e]â•›/â•›[ɛ] and [iː]â•›/â•›[ɪ] (for new speakers),
and the location of the back high vowel [uː]. However, not every characteristic
from Thai survives in the Thai English of even the new speakers. The high value
of %V found in Thai, which normally correlates with a syllable-timed language, is
replaced with a low value resembling that of native varieties, so that Thai English
is uniformly stress-timed rather than mixed in its rhythmic measures. The use of a
1:2 ratio of duration to distinguish vowels plays a more limited role in Thai English
than in Thai.
While a great deal of work remains to be done in describing the complete sys-
tem of Thai English speakers, it is clear that as a result of differences in its substrate,
the resulting L2 variety Thai English stands distinct from not only native varieties
of English but also from the New Englishes provided for comparison here, SgE
and HKE. The rhythm of Thai English far more closely resembles that of BrE than
does SgE, due in part to transfer of Thai’s rhythmic characteristics, while the vowel
systems of each reflect the L1â•›/â•›substrates of each. The presence of commonalities
in the vowel systems of Thai English, SgE and/or HKE, reflect similarities in their
substrates, rather than a lack of markedness or the emergence of universals. Thus,
the examination of Thai English supports the notion that observed similarities
among New Englishes may reflect the similarities of the substrates of the varieties
examined thus far; when Englishes with divergent substrates are studied, the ap-
pearance of uniformity disappears.
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Revisiting English prosody
(Some) New Englishes as tone languages?*
Lisa Lim
Many New Englishes are spoken in what can often be considered multilingual
contexts in which typologically diverse languages come into contact. In several
Asian contexts, one typological feature that is prominent in the multilingual
contact situation (the “ecology”) is tone. Given that tone is recognized as an areal
feature and is acquired easily by languages in contact, the question that arises is
how this is manifested in the prosody of these New Englishes. Recent work has
shown that contact languages, including English varieties, evolving in an ecology
where tone languages are present do indeed combine aspects of tone languages.
This paper attempts to go a step further, in suggesting not only that such vari-
eties should not be viewed as aberrant in comparison to “standard” English but
recognized as having their own prosodic system partly due to substrate typol-
ogy, but also that in the consideration of New Englishes — here, Asian (but
also African) Englishes — the traditional view of English as a stressâ•›/â•›intonation
language need to be revisited and revised, to consider some New Englishes as
tone languages. Singapore English (SgE) is presented as a case in point, with the
presence of tone demonstrated in the set of SgE particles acquired from Canton-
ese, at the level of the word, as well as in the intonation contour which moves
in a series of level steps. A comparison is then made with Hong Kong English,
another New English in a tone-language-dominant ecology, with a consideration
of typological comparability as well as difference due to the dynamic nature of
SgE’s ecology.
Keywords: Singapore English, Hong Kong English, Asian Englishes, New

Englishes, typology, ecology, intonation, tone, tone language
*â•‡ I thank Edgar Schneider, Bao Zhiming, and two anonymous reviewers for comments on an
earlier, slightly different version of this paper, and Umberto Ansaldo, Nik Gisborne, Edgar Sch-
neider and Caroline Wiltshire for comments on this paper. I am grateful to the following for
sharing their work: Zhu Shenfa and Stephanie Wagenaar for some of the instrumental work on
SgE intonation and particles respectively, Ng E-Ching and Wee Lian Hee for their thoughts on
tone in the SgE word, and K.K. Luke for his material on HKE intonation.
98 Lisa Lim
1. Why revisit English prosody?
Why revisit English prosody indeed? This might well be the question that imme-
diately arises upon encountering this paper. It is not particularly novel, after all,
to recognize that the prosodic patterns of varieties of English differ: recent years
have seen extensive attention to intonational variation in English (IViE) within
the British Isles (see e.g. Grabe 2004), and different intonation patterns in varieties
of English around the world, including New Englishes, have long been noted (e.g.
Wells 1982; Schneider et al. 2004). Closer to home — the focus of this issue — in
the past two decades, too, a significant amount of research has made headway in
providing much-needed and important descriptions of various prosodic aspects
of Asian Englishes (see e.g. the summary overviews in Mesthrie 2008b: for Indian
English, Gargesh 2008; Malaysian English, Baskaran 2008; Philippine English,
Tayao 2008). For Singapore English (SgE), research has encompassed areas of in-
tonation (e.g. Deterding 1994; Low 1994, 1998; Lim 1997, 2000, 2001, 2004a; Goh
1998; Zhu 2003), stress (e.g. Low 2000; Lim and Tan 2001; Tan 2003; Lim 2004b),
and rhythm (e.g. Low, Grabe and Nolan 2000; Deterding 2001).
So why is a revisiting of English prosody necessary? The motivation for this is
three-fold. First, as has often been the pattern in some scholarship, such descrip-
tions of structural features of New Englishes have tended to be, at worst, in relation
to what they lack in comparison to native varieties of English, and, at best, how
they differ from native varieties while still adopting notions and terms which may
not be at all relevant for New Englishes, such as tonic stress. While such observa-
tions of prosodic patterns have certainly been valuable in the growing body of
material for the description of a variety, I believe that viewing patterns in New
Englishes from the vantage point of patterns documented for native Englishes can
do a disservice to the New English varieties in that such an approach tends to miss
representing patterns which reflect structural features from the Asian substrates.
Instances where a serious attempt to describe and explain such distinctive pat-
terns in these New Englishes in their own right are few and far between, though in
very recent years, a number of younger scholars have been taking this up (more of
this later). Second, descriptions of structural features of various regional groups of
New Englishes — African, South Asian, Southeast Asian, East Asian, etc. — have
tended to manifest in a list of features which the members in each group — or
across a number of groups — share (e.g. Kachru and Nelson 2006 on Asian Eng-
lishes; Mesthrie 2008a on African and Asian Englishes), as if by virtue of mem-
bership of that particular group (also see Lim 2009). While in (summaries of)
such widely encompassing, ambitious volumes, a certain amount of reductionism
is certainly necessary, even desireable, for providing broad brush strokes of groups
Revisiting English prosody 99
of varieties, and while elsewhere in the volumes (e.g. in the separate chapters on
individual African and Asian Englishes in Mesthrie 2008b) there may be an in-
dication of the factors for such patterns, some mention of why these systematic
phonological similarities or phonetic differences amongst or between the groups
still needs to be made, on the basis of the typologies of the substrate (and super-
strate) languages.1 Finally, a clear recognition of the typologies of the substrate
languages of some New Englishes where one or more of the substrates are tone
languages must surely lead to a serious consideration of what this means for the
New English. While English is classified a stress or intonation language, New Eng-
lishes which manifest some presence of tone in their prosodic system must war-
rant at least some consideration for whether they may be classified instead as tone
languages, as is suggested for SgE (Lim 2007a, b, 2008a, b).2 This paper is thus an
attempt to address these three concerns.
To best appreciate the patterns observed in the prosody of some Asian Eng-
lishes, I find it useful to subscribe to an ecological approach (after e.g. Mufwene
2001, 2008; for a detailed account of applying this approach to the understanding
of Asian Englishes, see Ansaldo 2009a, b, 2010; for a model which assumes this
perspective for Postcolonial Englishes, see Schneider 2007), which adopts ecology
as a metaphor from population genetics and biology. In this approach, the emer-
gence of contact-induced varieties such as SgE can be regarded as speakers making
selections from a pool of linguistic variants available to them in a contact setting.
This feature pool consists of the sum total of the individual forms and variants that
each of the speakers involved, with different language backgrounds and varying
linguistic experiences, brings into the contact situation. Which variants from this
feature pool are chosen as stable elements of the newly emerging variety depends
on the complete ecology of the contact situation, which comprises both external
and internal factors. External ecology involves components such as the numeri-
cal (demographic) relationships between speech communities, the social relation-
ships, involving issues of power or prestige distributions, between the participants,
1.â•‡ I wish to add that, even as I make this point, I have the greatest amount of respect for these
invaluable collections of descriptions of varieties of English and the authors and editors who put
them together.
2.â•‡ To my knowledge, the idea that SgE, as a New English, be considered a tone language was for
the first time seriously postulated in Lim (2007a:â•›468–9), and then more explicitly proposed in
Lim (2007b, 2008a, b). (Note though that Killingey (1968) suggests that SgE word stress should
not be discussed on the grounds that Malayan [Singapore + Malaysia] English is “a tone lan-
guage” but later (Killingey 1972) withdraws the statement, cited in Bloom 1986:â•›428; note also
though that “Malayan English” of four decades ago is a different animal from SgE today.) Later,
other similar statements have been independently proposed or assumed (Ng 2008, 2009; Siraj
2008; Wee 2008a, b).
100 Lisa Lim
as well as attitudes towards the participants and/or their languages; and the quality
and quantity of communicative events. The two main external factors impinging
on the ecology in which SgE has emerged, namely migration patterns and lan-
guage policies, which have both had effects on aspects such as population pro-
portions and dominance of languages over different eras, are explored in other
work (see Lim 2010a). Internal ecology involves the nature of the linguistic input
elements, surface similarities and typological degrees of relatedness between the
languages involved, and it is this aspect of the ecological approach that is relevant
to the investigation undertaken in this paper.
This paper is structured as follows. In Sectionâ•¯2, I first provide a brief illus-
tration of various aspects of the prosody of one Asian English: SgE. Rather than
attempt an analysis which tries to find equivalences to native Englishes — e.g.
describing the frequencies of various intonation contour types or tones, or noting
the placement of tonic syllable or stresses, always compared to patterns in British
English (BrE) — I aim to examine those patterns which are particular to SgE. In
Sectionâ•¯3, I consider an explanation for why such patterns manifest in SgE by ap-
pealing to the internal ecology in which SgE has evolved, specifically examining
the typology of the substrate languages, addressing in particular the idea of the
presence of (Sinitic) tone. In Sectionâ•¯4, I then go on to consider the implications
for understanding the prosodic patterns of other Asian Englishes — but not sim-
ply because these varieties belong to the same regional group, but rather because
it so happens that there are elements of their ecologies, viz. the typologies of their
substrate languages, which share common traits which contribute to such pro-
sodic patterns. I also consider the implications that such findings hold for work on
English intonation, as well as for theoretical classifications of intonation and tone
languages. In this regard, what I argue for is a revisiting of English prosody, in a
more radical reconsideration of the prosody of some Asian Englishes, in terms of
viewing such varieties not as stress or intonation languages but as tone languages.
2. Like Chinese mε55?3
SgE has often been anecdotally described as if it “sounds like Chinese” (Bloom
1986:â•›430, citing Killingey 1968). This intriguing observation has not, however,
until recently, garnered serious investigation based on an examination of substrate
typology as to why this may be the case. This section presents a summary overview
3.â•‡ The SgE particle mε55 indicates (often mock-) surprise or incredulity for the proposition it is
attached to; also see example (5a). Here the translation of the section heading would be ‘Does it
really sound like Chinese?’, in response to the description in the first sentence of this section.
of the evidence derived from a number of fronts: discourse particles, words, and
utterances.
2.1 Discourse particles
Perhaps the most obvious presence of tone in SgE is that found in the discourse
particles. Again, although the particles have long been acknowledged in most
scholarship as coming from the (southern) Chinese languages (e.g. Platt 1987;
Gupta 1992; and see Lim 2007a for a comprehensive overview), and the question
of whether the particles themselves carry (lexical) tone was posed early in scholar-
ship on the particles (Platt 1987), it is only in very recent work that these two issues
have been seriously addressed (Lim 2007a, b, 2008b, 2010a). It has been argued
that the larger set of SgE particles, namely hor, leh, lor, ma, meh, have their origins
in Cantonese, and were acquired into SgE in a later era compared to the earlier
particles lah, ah and what, and have carried into SgE (their original) Sinitic tone
(Lim 2007a). Here we focus on this Cantonese set, examples of which are provided
below in (1a) to (1e); note that the particles are transcribed together with their
tone, represented as pitch level numbers, a practice proposed in Lim (2007a).4
These are accompanied in each case by an example of the corresponding particle
in Cantonese from which it derives (from Matthews and Yip 1994:â•›347, 348, 352).5
A comparison of the SgE and Cantonese particles in the (a) and (b) pairs reveals
striking parallels in segmental form, tone and meaning. In (1a), for example, the
SgE particle hɔ24, which always occurs with a rising tone, and which asserts a
proposition, making clear a positive response from the addressee is expected (Wee
2004:â•›124; Lim 2007a), is matched in Cantonese in its hó particle, with the same
rising tone and indicating an expectation of the addressee’s confirmation (Mat-
thews and Yip 1994:â•›347). The SgE particle lɔ33 in (3a), which occurs with mid-
level tone, and which indicates obviousness, and in negative contexts inevitability
or resignation (Wee 2004:â•›123; Lim 2007a), is similarly matched by a Cantonese
4.â•‡ SgE data for particles and utterances derive from the naturally occurring data of the Gram-
mar of Spoken Singapore English Corpus (GSSEC; Lim and Foley 2004), except (4a), from
Wong (1994). The tones of the particles are represented as pitch level numbers 1 to 5 where, in
the Asianist tradition, the larger the number the higher the pitch; thus 55 represents a high level
tone, 24 represents a rising tone, and so on.
5.â•‡ The transcription of examples (1b) to (5b) is provided as in the source (Matthews and Yip
1994), which uses the Yale system. Rising and falling tones are shown by rising and falling ac-
cents; high level tone is indicated by a level accent; no tonal indication is given for the mid level
tone, and <h> is inserted after the vowel to indicate all low-register tones (low rising, low level
and low falling).
102 Lisa Lim
particle lo in (3b) with mid-level tone and meaning of resignation (Matthews and
Yip 1994:â•›352).
(1) a. A: But it’s beautiful in that… how… I mean, Finn got a chance to
realize himself, right?
B: He’s quite innocent la21 hɔ24? Innocent.
‘He’s quite innocent, don’t you agree?’
[asserting proposition, expecting agreement]
b. A: Géi leng a hó?
quite nice PRT PRT
‘Pretty nice, huh?’
[expecting confirmation]
B: Haih a.
is PRT
‘Yes, it is.’
(2) a. A: My parents will disown me a22 if I marry someone Caucasian or
Indian. My parents very what.
‘My parents will disown me if I marry someone Caucasian or
Indian. My parents are really impossible.’
B: *** very old fashion a21.
A: My parents very old fashion a21? Then your parents le55?
‘Are you saying that my parents are old fashioned? Then what about
your parents?’
[indicating comparison, ‘what about?’]
b. A: Dī gāsī maaih saai béi yàhn la.
CL furniture sell all to people PRT
‘The furniture has all been sold.’
B: Ga chē lē?
CL car PRT
‘What about the car?’
[meaning ‘what about’?]
(3) a. A: But um I might stop working for a while if I need to, if I need to
la21, especially for looking after kids.
B: But for me, I won’t stop working lɔ33. The most I won’t give birth to
kids lɔ33. For the most I don’t marry lɔ33.
‘In my case, (even if I have children to look after) I won’t stop
working. In the worst of cases, I won’t have children. In the worst of
cases, I won’t get married.’
[indicating obviousness, resignation]
b. Ngóh mjī dím syun lo

I not-know how act PRT
‘I really don’t know what to do.’
[indicating resignation]
(4) a. A: How come you call me?
‘Why did you call me?’
B: You page for me ma22.
‘You paged for me, after all (as you know) (so naturally I’m
returning your call).’
[indicating obviousness]
b. A: Bīngo lèih ga?
who PRT
‘Who’s that?’
B: Ngóhdeih sān lóuhbáan āma.
our new boss PRT
‘Our new boss, of course.’
[indicating obviousness]
(5) a. A: No la21! He’s using Pirelli, you don’t know mε55?
‘No, he has Pirelli tyres; didn’t you know that?’
[indicating surprise, scepticism]
B: Really? Don’t bluff.
b. sīnsāang wah mh dāk ge mē?
teacher say not okay PRT PRT
‘What, did the teacher say it wasn’t okay?’
[expressing surprise]
As evidence for the claim that the particles occur in SgE with their original (Can-
tonese) tone, Figureâ•¯1 provides an illustration of the pitch contour of one SgE par-
ticle, from the utterance maybe it like what you say lɔ33, with the particle lɔ33
visualized clearly as being realized with level tone; instrumental analysis confirms
that the particle lies in the middle of speakers’ pitch range, and hence can be cat-
egorized as mid-level.
By virtue of the tones originally from Cantonese — comprising mid-level
and high-level tones as well as rising and falling tones — the particles introduce
very particular pitch levels or contours into the SgE prosodic system. As the par-
ticles occur in phrase-final position, this means that there are thus very particular
boundary tones in SgE.
104 Lisa Lim
500
Pitch (Hz)
0
0.901855 1.71591
Time (s)
Figureâ•¯1.â•‡ Mid-level tone of SgE particle lɔ33
2.2 Word level
At the level of the word, some very recent work, all of which assuming at the outset
that SgE “has tones” (Wee 2008b), has suggested that SgE has tone in addition to
stress, with tone being predictable from stress (Ng 2008), with a high level tone be-
ing assigned to the final syllable (Ng 2008; Wee 2008a), as can be seen in the words
in example (6) (from Ng 2008; Wee 2008a, b).6
(6) cat, see 55 / H
`manage, `teacher 33–55 / MH
in`tend, a`round 11–55 / LH
`Singapore, `managing 33–33–55 / MMH
`origin, bi`lingual 11–33–55 / LMH
o`riginal, se`curity 11–33–33–55 / LMMH
o`riginally 11–33–33–33–55 / LMMMH
H
M H
M M H
Figureâ•¯2.â•‡ MH tones in SgE word `normal, in sentence-initial, -medial and -final position
(from Ng 2009)
6.â•‡ The tones on each syllable in example (6) are represented in pitch level numbers as well as in
the phonological tradition where L = Low tone, M = Mid tone, and H = High tone.
This word-level tonal pattern is also shown to be independent of sentence position

(Ng 2009), as illustrated in Figureâ•¯2.
2.3 Phrase / Utterance
Finally, let us consider SgE prosody at phrase level, where, echoing the observation
in Lim (2004a:â•›42–8), a characteristic pattern in the intonation contour may be
analysed as comprising sequences of sustained level steps or level tones which step
up or down to each other, rather than glide more gradually from one pitch level to
another. An illustration of such a pattern is provided in Figureâ•¯3, which constitutes
the intonation on the utterance I think happier, where it is evident that the pitch
steps up abruptly to a high level pitch for think, and then steps down again for
|â•…â•›â•›aiâ•…â•›â•›|â•…â•…â•…â•…â•… tiŋâ•…â•…â•…â•…â•… | â•…â•…â•…â•…â•…â•…â•…â•… hæpiəâ•…â•…â•…â•…â•…â•…â•…â•… |

Figureâ•¯3.â•‡ Sustained level step pattern in SgE utterance I think happier
|â•…â•… juâ•…â•… |â•…â•…â•…â•…â•…â•…â•…â•… tol â•…â•…â•…â•…â•…â•…â•…â•…â•‡ |â•…â•…â•…â•‡ miâ•…â•…â•…â•… |

Figureâ•¯4.â•‡ Sustained level step pattern in SgE utterance You told me
106 Lisa Lim
happier. Similarly in Figureâ•¯4, the utterance You told me moves in a series of sus-
tained level tones, each of which is at a slightly higher pitch than the previous one.7
3. But is it tone?
Having now viewed the evidence for a tone-like presence in SgE at the levels of
particles, words and utterances, a number of issues need to be addressed. For the
more sceptical amongst us, the first question is what the likelihood is that this is
indeed tone that is observed in SgE. A number of reasons come together to con-
firm that this is in fact a more than credible prospect.
First, suprasegmental features, including tone, are documented as being sus-
ceptible to being acquired in contact situations (Curnow 2001). Tone is often ac-
quired in a non-tonal language by borrowing or imitation due to the presence of
tone in the broader linguistic environment (Gussenhoven 2004:â•›42–3), such as in
Middle Korean due to the prestigious status of Chinese in society then (Ramsay
2001) — here it should be noted how this is related to dominance in the external
ecology. As a result of this, tone has been noted to be an areal feature, occurring in
genetically unrelated languages spoken by geographically contiguous speech com-
munities, as in Africa and South East Asia (Nettle 1998; Svantesson 2001).
The next point to recognize is that the linguistic feature of tone is certainly
present in the ecology of Singapore. If we consider just the main players in the
ecology — by this I mean the languages which are dominant — we have Bazaar
Malay, Hokkien, Mandarin, and Cantonese (Lim 2007a, 2010a; Ansaldo 2009a,
b, 2010), where, with the latter three being Sinitic varieties, tone languages are
clearly in the majority. Tone is thus a salient typological aspect of the feature pool.
Other work has shown that dominant traits do influence the output (Thomason
and Kaufman 1988), as seen, for example, in the case of Sri Lanka Malay (SLM)
where, while pidgin-derived Malay is SVO, Sinhala and Tamil are both SOV, and
the resulting Sri Lanka Malay is SOV; similarly, agglutinative morphology emerges
in SLM because it is salient in two of the three adstrates, Sinhala and Tamil (Ansal-
do 2008, 2009b). Additionally, if we consider external ecology, in Singapore it is
the Chinese who form the largest proportion of 78% of the population, and have
been such a majority since the early 20th century (Lim 2007a, 2010a). On both
counts then, namely, of the proportion of tone languages, and the proportion of
speakers of these languages, tone dominates in the ecology. Moreover, tone is high
7.â•‡ SgE has been described as displaying a frequent use of (BrE) level tones (Goh 1998), but in
such a description the pattern seems to be construed in analytical terminology for native Eng-
lishes, as mentioned in Sectionâ•¯1.
in markedness, in terms of the feature having a heavy functional load, or, put in
terms of Matras’ (2000) model of categorial fusion, it is pragmatically dominant,
which also makes it a more likely target for being acquired (Matras 2000:â•›577). In
all, it is most possible for tone to be acquired in SgE, given the feature’s dominant
presence in the ecology, both internal and external.
Finally, observations similar to the SgE case study have been made for other
contact varieties whose substrates involve tone languages, in particular languages
arising from contact situations involving European accent languages and African
tone languages. One such example which has been argued strongly for in this re-
gard is that of Saramaccan, an Atlantic maroon creole spoken mostly in Surinam,
generally classified as an English-based creole, though its lexicon shows substantial
Portuguese influence, with Gbe and Kikongo as substrates. There is evidence for a
split lexicon in Saramaccan where the majority of its words are marked for pitch
accent, with an important minority marked for true tone (Good 2004a, b, 2006).
Similarly, Portuguese-lexifier Papiamentu shows use of both contrastive stress and
contrastive tonal features which operate independently from stress (Kouwenberg
2004; Rivera-Castillo and Pickering 2004; Remijsen and van Heuven 2005), and
the Austronesian language Ma’ya is also documented as a hybrid system involving
both contrastive stress and tone, a result of contact with tonal Papuan languages
(Remijsen 2001:â•›43). Lest one may argue that “creoles” are categorically different
from “varieties of English” or of any other “language”, there is also the example
of Roermond Dutch, which has a Germanic-style stress system, but also a lexical
tonal contrast, in that words may have no tones or a single H tone (Yip 2002:â•›257),
as well as Nigerian English, whose prosody is also suggested to be a mixed sys-
tem that stands “between” an intonationâ•›/â•›stress language and a tone language (Gut
2005): its pitch inventory is reduced compared to BrE, and the domain of pitch
appears to be the word, with high pitch triggered by stress, thus resembling a pitch
accent language. In short, what is being suggested for SgE is nothing inconceiv-
able, but a phenomenon that has been documented in other contact languages
with substrate typology that is comparable in terms of involving tone languages.
4. Asian Englishes on the agenda
The more significant question, I believe, that follows from all the above is this:
What does this herald for the linguistics of English and the setting of the agenda
for current and future work?8 In what follows I consider two sets of issues arising
8.â•‡ This question is posed in the spirit of the 1st conference for the International Society for
the Linguistics of English (ISLE1), with its theme “Setting the Agenda”; the workshop “The
108 Lisa Lim
from our observations of tone in SgE, which provide a response to the three con-
cerns raised in Sectionâ•¯1, with the first being more theoretical in considering the
implications for descriptive models of English intonation and for categorizations
of intonationâ•›/â•›stress and tone languages, and the second focusing on implications
for the study of Asian Englishes.
4.1 English intonation models and tone language classification
First, in the consideration of New Englishes — here, Asian (but also e.g. African)
Englishes — I believe that we can attempt to stop using BrE- or “native-English”-
based models. Certainly there are models such as ToBI and INTSINT which have
been used for diverse languages; however when it comes to New Englishes, even
if scholars have noted the problems in applying, e.g. the British model of into-
nation to the transcription of New Englishes (e.g. for SgE: Deterding 1994; Low
and Brown 2005), and have suggested that such models are not appropriate for
describing other Englishes, there is still a tendency to describe the system with
regard to a native English standard.
Further, and perhaps more interestingly, the traditional view of English as a
stress/intonation language needs revising. As is increasingly recognized, distin-
guishing between so-called stress languages, accent(ual) languages and tone lan-
guages is in fact not clear-cut. While traditionalists may still cling to the classic
divide, many cutting-edge scholars have become more amenable to regarding
these categories as being more loosely or broadly defined. For instance, most now
agree that the category of accent languages does not group languages of a typo-
logically coherent class (Hyman 2001a; Gussenhoven 2004), and take the position
that the so-called accentual languages are just a subclass of tone languages (Yip
2002:â•›4). More significant for the purpose of this paper, tone languages are most
recently defined much more broadly than before: following Hyman (2001b:â•›1368),
“a language with tone is one in which an indication of pitch enters into the lexi-
cal realisation of at least some morphemes”, regardless of the density of lexically
contrastive tones on words; lexical tonal marking, after all, has been noted to be
of gradient nature (e.g. van der Hulst and Smith 1988). This opens up possibilities
for more fluid considerations of tone languages, and of “combinations” of charac-
teristics of what traditionally are considered stress languages and tone languages.
It has, after all, been noted that tone and stress are “two separate phonological
dimensions — tone being basically a property of segments, and stress not — which
may well occur combined in the same language in quite a variety of ways” (Arends,
Typology of Asian Englishes” in which this paper was presented was organized (by this author)
for the conference.
Muysken and Smith 1995:â•›329); and that drawing a dividing line between languag-
es with contrastive tone on (almost) all syllables and languages with tone contrasts
in more restricted locations in the word is difficult (Gussenhoven 2004:â•›47).
In the light of the possibilities outlined in Sectionâ•¯3 and released from the
constraints of more traditional categorization noted above, how then may we view
the prosodic system of SgE?
For the set of particles, we first return to the question first explicitly raised
by Platt (1987:â•›394) two decades ago: Do the particles have independent (lexical)
tone? Based on the linguistic and sociohistorical evidence presented in this paper
and in Lim (2007a, 2010a), it is quite clear that the later set of SgE particles have
been acquired into the SgE system in their entirety, including the tone they have
originally in Cantonese; further, they must be used with that form, and not with
any other pitch pattern, for the meaning required, regardless of the intonation pat-
tern of the utterance in which they are found. This, I argue, is reason enough for
accepting that they indeed comprise a subset of items which have tone (though
not lexically contrastive tone — note, as outlined in the preceding paragraph, that
this is not necessary for considering this to be tone).9 These tonal items are then
situated within what is possibly a different prosodic system — one that is more of
a stressâ•›/â•›intonation language, in which pitch functions in a system of intonation
relatively comparable to the forms and functions identified in other “standard”
varieties of English such as BrE (Zhu and Lim 2002; Zhu 2003; Lim 2004a:â•›39–42).
Such a phenomenon is noted by Gussenhoven (2004:â•›46) as one of three typologi-
cally special cases where tone languages are concerned, namely when there is lexi-
cally specified tone in intonation-only languages. An example of this situation is
when there are tonal specifications in the “segmental” lexicon for particles which
invariably appear with a particular intonation contour, such as Dutch sentence-
final [hɛ], which expresses an appeal for agreement, which always appears with H
after the pitch accent H*L on a preceding word (Kirsner and van Heuven 1996);
similarly Bengali has focus-governing particles which come with their own pitch
accent (Lahiri and Fitzpatrick-Cole 1999), i.e. they must be lexically specified for
tones, which crucially constitute morphemes in their own right and do not form
part of the representation of the segmentally represented morphemes, unlike lexi-
cal tone (Gussenhoven 2004:â•›46). These both constitute situations not unlike our
case in point.
The observation of tone at the SgE word level matches the second of the typo-
logically special cases identified by Gussenhoven (2004:â•›45–6) in which languages
9.â•‡ Some scholars may still be cautious about whether pitch is being used linguistically here to
warrant calling the phenomenon tone (e.g. Bao Zhiming p.c. Dec 2006), but I hold that the evi-
dence and arguments outlined in sections 3 and 4.1 justify referring to it as tone.
110 Lisa Lim
have non-distinctive word-based tone; an example of this is Noon, a language of

Senegal, which predictably has an H-tone on the penultimate syllable of every
word (Soukka 2000). Again, the SgE word which specifies an H-tone on the final
syllable of each word parallels this pattern, and thus can be considered a tone lan-
guage in this regard, even if typologically peculiar.
4.2 The typology of Asian Englishes
The preceding discussion also leads us to a number of thoughts about the study
of Asian Englishes, which can take us in at least three different, though closely
related, directions. In what follows, I consider 1) typological comparability across
different Asian Englishes, 2) the dynamic nature of ecologies, and 3) the differ-
ences that can arise between Asian Englishes as a result of the changing of ecolo-
gies, and therefore typologies, and therefore feature selection. Each of these can
— and should — be discussed at far greater length, but within the constraints of
this paper can only be very briefly addressed here.
4.2.1 Typological comparability

If we accept the ecological approach, then we can recognize that, in theory, if
emerging English varieties have ecologies which are similar — for example, if the
feature pools for the two ecologies include languages with similar typologies —
then it is neither unlikely nor surprising if the two emergent Englishes exhibit
linguistic features which are similar.10 One does not have to look far to find a real-
life example: the ecology of Hong Kong, in which Hong Kong English (HKE) is
emerging, includes Cantonese, English and Mandarin, where Cantonese is clearly
dominant in both external and internal ecologies; linguistic features such as Sinitic
tone (from both Cantonese and Mandarin) as well as discourse particles (in par-
ticular from Cantonese) can thus be expected to be dominant in the feature pool.
This may be seen to be quite similar to Singapore’s ecology in the recent era where
Mandarin and Cantonese can be seen to be more dominant.
Unsurprisingly then, common features in the emergent varieties may be
identified. Cantonese particles have been observed in HKE (James 2001), which,
as in SgE, are used with their Cantonese tone. Further, already more than two
10.â•‡ We need of course to exercise caution in too easily assuming similarity between different
ecologies: this is underlined in Ansaldo and Lim (2008), who, after noting possible similarities
in the ecologies of SgE and HKE, also point out how they differ, both in terms of external ecolo-
gy — Singapore being English-dominant but Hong Kong being extremely Cantonese-dominant;
SgE having attained Phase 4 of endonormative stabilization, and HKE being only in Phase 3 of
nativization (Schneider 2007) — and internal ecology.
decades ago, it was suggested that “the English intonation system is reinterpreted
on the basis of the Cantonese tone system” (Luke and Richards 1982:â•›60), with
more recent work demonstrating that stress and intonation in HKE is more than
a simple process of approximation, but rather one of transforming the system into
one based on tones, by the assigning of (lexical) tones to syllables for word stress
(Luke 2000), to give a basic template of LHL!, and the applying of a computa-
tion for compound/linking words, phrases and sentences, which results in what
is described as a “choppy” as opposed to a smooth intonation contour for HKE
(Luke 2008). The patterns parallel those of SgE’s level stepping tones, described in
Sectionâ•¯2.3.
4.2.2 Dynamism
The comparability sketched above between SgE and HKE should not, however,
be assumed to have always been the case. Ecologies are dynamic — as modelled
for Postcolonial Englishes in Schneider (2007), and noted for SgE in Lim (2008a)
— and changes in factors in the external ecology can result in changes in the ty-
pological mix of the feature pool and consequently the ensuing competition and
likelihood for feature selection (see Ansaldo 2009a). While Sinitic varieties are
certainly dominant in Singapore’s ecology in recent decades, in an earlier era dur-
ing colonial rule and in the years prior to and just after independence, the dom-
inant language would have been Bazaar Malay, as lingua franca for interethnic
communication (as well as Hokkien for intraethnic communication in the Chi-
nese community) (see Lim 2007a, 2010a for details). In this, and other aspects
of sociopolitical history, Singapore’s ecology was relatively comparable up until
around mid-20th century with Malaysia’s, and certainly not with Hong Kong’s;
correspondingly, SgE and Malaysian English were also considered extremely simi-
lar, evidenced in descriptions of that period (e.g. Platt and Weber 1980; Platt, We-
ber and Ho 1983), at least until around the same time, but perhaps no longer.
4.2.3 Difference
The preceding two points of typological comparability between varieties and dy-
namism in ecologies together help account for instances of lack of fit. Even as we
recognize that SgE and HKE exhibit similarities in terms of the presence of (Can-
tonese) particles and tonal prosody, which are explained by their current compa-
rable ecologies in which Cantonese amongst other (Sinitic) varieties is dominant,
we discover that upon closer examination the patterns start to diverge. In HKE, H
tones are located on stressed syllables, and L tones on unstressed ones (Luke 2000,
2008; Chen and Au 2004; Wee 2008a), illustrated in example (7); this contrasts
with the pattern for word-level tone in SgE, described in example (6), where H
tones are located on the final syllable.
112 Lisa Lim
(7) in`tend 11–55 / LH

`origin, `photograph 55–11–11 / HLL
o`riginal 11–55–11–11 / LHLL
(8) I saw the manager this morning LHHHHHHHL!
Similarly, at phrase level, while HKE would have a pattern involving a sequence
of tones as in (8), based on the basic LHL! template and subsequent computation
(Luke 2008),11 SgE tends to prefer prominence on the phrase-final syllable such
that the pitch is perceived as relatively high: no significant decrease in fundamen-
tal frequency is measured compared to the initial syllable of the phrase-final word
(Low 2000); such a maintenance of pitch or movement to high(er) tone phrase-
finally is also observable in Figureâ•¯4.12
How can we understand these diverging patterns in SgE and HKE? I suggest
that the word- and phrase-final prominence noted in SgE is due to the influence
from Bazaar or Baba Malay in an earlier era when, as mentioned in the preceding
section, it was dominant in the ecology (also see Lim 2008a). While no compre-
hensive study of the prosody of (Bazaar) Malay in Singapore is available,13 there
has been much research on other Malayâ•›/â•›Indonesian varieties (see e.g. various
chapters in Gensler and Gil to appear).14 While findings for word stress are di-
verse, a number of studies do point to prominence on the penultimate and/or final
syllable; and at phrase level there is general consensus that prominence is located
phrase-finally (with acceptability increasing closer to the right edge of phrase-final
word) (e.g. Goedemans and van Zanten to appear); a similar pattern is also noted
in Singapore’s Baba Malay (Wee 2000). While it may indeed seem curious that this
earlier Malay influence appears to be maintained in spite of more recent Sinitic in-
fluence, in the ecology paradigm, the Founder principle suggests that the founder
population in an ecology exerts a strong influence in features which persist in the
emergent variety. A possible hypothesis is thus that it is the Babaâ•›/â•›Bazaar Malay-
speaking Peranakans, as the early English speakers in Singapore, whose influence
11.â•‡ Different boundary tones of H% or L% would then apply depending on the context (Luke
2008).
12.â•‡ Experiments investigating emphatic and contrastive stress in SgE also demonstrate that
speakers do not place prominence on the contrastive element as in “standard” Englishes but
systematically locate pitch prominence utterance-finally (Lim and Tan 1999; Lim 2004b).
13.â•‡ Though Ng (2009) is now doing instrumental work on Singapore Malay and Bazaar Malay
word prosodic patterns.
14.â•‡ What is represented in this paragraph is necessarily an extremely summarized account of

Malayâ•›/â•›Indonesian prosodic patterns documented in the literature.
is seen in SgE in such instances (Lim 2011; see Ansaldo, Lim and Mufwene 2007
and Lim 2010b for details on the Peranakan community and their languages Baba
Malay and Peranakan English);15 similar word-â•›/â•›phrase-final prominence is in fact
noted in Peranakan English (Lim 2010b).16
5. Closing remarks
In conclusion, what has a revisiting of English prosody — in the light of some

Asian Englishes — revealed? We can certainly recognize that there is tone in some
Asian Englishes, if the typological pool of the languages in contact allows for it.
Tone is clearly observed in SgE particles and in the SgE word, and SgE intonation
shows contours constituting sustained level tone movements; similar observations
apply to HKE.
While tone as a structural feature must surely derive from the Sinitic languag-
es in the ecology of SgE, the clearest example being the SgE particles, differences in
actual tonal patterns in SgE vs. HKE at both word and phrase level suggest that the
story is more complex and warrants further, deeper investigation in future work:
for instance, that in SgE it is not just the selection of Sinitic tone (Lim 2008c) from
the feature pool, but an interaction between that and features of pitch prominence
patterns in other languages dominant in the ecology, such as Babaâ•›/â•›Bazaar Malay.
In any case, a revised view of English prosody, even in a weak version, must
still recognize that there can be presence of tone in some New Englishes (here
Asian, but also African), even if English is by traditional definition a stress lan-
guage. In a strong version, we can venture further in rethinking this traditional
classification of English prosody and accept that some Asian Englishes can indeed
be tone languages.
In short, once we recognize the significance of ecology, then it is not difficult to
recognize that anything is possible for the typology of the emergent contact variety
of English — not a cavalier or anarchic free-for-all, but an infinite potential within
the possibilities that the typologies of the substrates afford — including tone.
15.â•‡ I thank Umberto Ansaldo and Salikoko Mufwene for highlighting the likelihood of the Per-
anakans as the founder population for SgE.
16.â•‡ This line of investigation outlined in this section is certainly intriguing and far more com-
plex than can be presented given the scope of this present paper, and is taken up in other work
(Lim 2011).
114 Lisa Lim
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Index
A D inner Circleâ•‡ 1, 4, 77
Angloversalâ•‡ 2, 28, 29, 45, 50, dynamic modelâ•‡ 5, 6, 8, 40, intonationâ•‡ 6, 7, 97, 98, 99,
52, 64 44, 53 100, 105, 107, 108, 109, 111,
Asian Englishesâ•‡ 1–8, 11, 51, 113
75, 97–100, 107, 108, 110, E isolating languagesâ•‡ 21, 23
113, 116 ecologyâ•‡ 3–5, 8, 11, 13–17,
Austronesianâ•‡ 4, 27, 28, 107 19–23, 27, 28, 30, 40, 44, 45, L
auxiliary beâ•‡ 68 97, 99, 100, 106, 107, 110–113 language transferâ•‡ 49, 73
ecologicalâ•‡ 12, 13, 21, 28, 29, lengthâ•‡ 76, 78, 80, 81, 83, 84,
B 99, 100, 110 86, 88, 90, 93
Bazaar Malayâ•‡ 5, 8, 16, 17, 54, English vowelsâ•‡ 75, 89, 90, 93
65, 79, 106, 111–113 evolution/evolutionaryâ•‡ 2, 3, M
5, 6, 11, 12, 13, 15, 16, 21, 22, Malayâ•‡ 3, 4, 5, 8, 11, 15–23, 54,
C 23, 53 55, 56, 58, 65, 68, 69, 70,
Cantoneseâ•‡ 4, 5, 17, 18, 27–32, 79, 81, 92, 98, 99, 106, 111,
35, 37, 38, 39, 41, 44, 45, F 112, 113
54–56, 65, 66, 68, 81, 92, 97, feature poolâ•‡ 27, 28, 29, 33, 44, Mandarinâ•‡ 4, 5, 17, 19, 21, 28,
101, 103, 106, 109, 110, 111 45, 99, 106, 110, 111, 113 30, 32, 35, 54–57, 65–68, 92,
Chineseâ•‡ 8, 15, 16, 22, 28–32, finitenessâ•‡ 6, 27, 29, 32–38, 106, 110
35–37, 42, 44, 45, 54–56, 58, 40–45 monophthongsâ•‡ 75, 76, 80, 81,
62, 63, 65–70, 79, 100, 101, founder principleâ•‡ 112 86–89, 91, 92
106, 111 frequencyâ•‡ 8, 11, 13, 14, 22, 23, multilingualismâ•‡ 4, 11, 16
Chui Chowâ•‡ 28 45, 112
competitionâ•‡ 6, 13, 14, 22, N
23, 111 H New Englishesâ•‡ 1, 2, 7, 29, 49,
congruenceâ•‡ 8, 11, 12, 14, 18, 22 Hindiâ•‡ 4, 8, 15, 52, 53, 55, 56, 50, 51, 52, 68, 69, 70, 75–78,
contact languagesâ•‡ 11, 16, 17, 58, 62–69, 71 80, 81, 86, 92, 94, 97–99,
79, 97, 107 Hokkienâ•‡ 4, 8, 16, 17, 28, 54, 108, 113
contrastâ•‡ 29, 33–39, 41–45, 62, 55, 56, 65, 66, 92, 106, 111 Non-native Englishâ•‡ 92
76, 80, 81, 84, 88, 89, 92, 93, Hong Kong English (HKE)â•‡ 5,
107–109, 112 6, 7, 27–30, 32, 33, 35, 38–41, O
copulaâ•‡ 6, 17–22, 33, 39, 43–45, 75, 76, 97, 110–113 Outer Circleâ•‡ 1, 5, 7, 27, 77
42–44, 49–53, 56, 67–70
copula beâ•‡ 68 I P
creoleâ•‡ 12, 17, 50, 68–70, 79, imperfective (aspect)â•‡ 6, 8, particlesâ•‡ 5, 6, 23, 36, 97, 101,
107 49, 53, 55–60, 62–67, 71 103, 106, 109, 110, 111, 113
creolizationâ•‡ 45 Indian Englishâ•‡ 6, 7, 49, 50, 53, past tenseâ•‡ 6, 38, 39, 49, 50, 51,
55, 59, 81, 98 53, 55–60 70, 71
120 Index
Peranakanâ•‡ 3, 16, 21, 112, 113 Singlishâ•‡ 11, 12, 16, 17–23, 44 Thaiâ•‡ 7, 75–82, 84–90, 92–94
predicative adjectivesâ•‡ 6, Siniticâ•‡ 4, 5, 11, 17–20, 22, 23, Thai Englishâ•‡ 7, 75,-77, 79–85,
17–21 27, 28, 29, 32, 33, 35, 44, 100, 87, 89, 90, 92–94
present tenseâ•‡ 33, 38, 39 101, 106, 110–113 toneâ•‡ 4–7, 29, 97, 99–113
progressive (aspect)â•‡ 6, 8, stressâ•‡ 7, 75–80, 84, 85, 94, tone languageâ•‡ 7, 97, 99, 100,
49–53, 55–67, 69–71 97–100, 104, 107–109, 106–110, 113
prosody, prosodicâ•‡ 55, 66, 77, 111–113 topic prominenceâ•‡ 6, 17, 18,
78, 86, 97–100, 103, 105, 107, stress languageâ•‡ 107, 108, 113 20, 22, 44
109, 111–113 stress-timingâ•‡ 75–80, 84, 85, topic-commentâ•‡ 21
Putonghuaâ•‡ 30, 32 94 typological dominanceâ•‡ 13,
substrateâ•‡ 2–8, 17, 18, 20, 23, 22, 23
R 27, 29, 32, 44, 45, 49, 50–56, typological variationâ•‡ 50
rhythmâ•‡ 6, 7, 75–80, 82–86, 58, 62–64, 66–71, 75, 76, typologyâ•‡ 1, 5, 6, 8, 11, 16, 20,
93, 94, 98 78–82, 85–87, 90, 92–94, 23, 27, 29, 37, 44, 49, 50,
97–100, 107, 113 75, 76, 78, 97, 100, 107, 108,
S superstrateâ•‡ 8, 45, 49, 55, 63, 110, 113
selectionâ•‡ 6, 8, 11–14, 16, 19, 64, 66, 69, 71, 99
20, 22, 23, 28, 29, 35–37, 99, syllable-timingâ•‡ 75,76, 78–80, U
110, 111, 113 84, 85, 94 universalâ•‡ 2, 4, 7, 49–52, 57, 58,
simplificationâ•‡ 23, 38 62, 66, 69–71, 92, 94,
Singapore Englishâ•‡ 2, 5, 7, 11, T
16, 18, 23, 40, 44, 49, 50, tenseâ•‡ 6, 23, 27, 32, 33, 35–39, Z
53, 55, 59, 61, 67, 75, 76, 97, 43, 44, 49, 50–53, 55–60, 70, zero copulaâ•‡ 17–22, 39, 42–44
98, 101â•‡ 71, 90

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The Typology of Asian Englishes

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The typology of Asian Englishes / edited by Lisa Lim, Nikolas Gisborne.

© 2011 – John Benjamins B.V.

Lisa Lim and Nikolas Gisborne

1. Why typology? Why Asian Englishes?

and Szmrecsanyi’s (2004) survey of shared features in varieties of English,1 the

Table 1. Summary of range of lexifiers and substrates of Asian Englishes

differs, with SgE considered as having already attained endonormative stabiliza-

2. Thrusts and themes of the collection

3. To conclude, but only for now

Keywords: Asian Englishes, Singapore English, Singlish, Malay, Sinitic,

2. Evolution and ecology

2.1 Selection and replication

In a theory of language that acknowledges the evolutionary dimension of lan-

indication of social class, gender, profession, etc. When second-order variation

2.2 Multilingual ecologies and transmission

Figureâ•¯1. Monolingual transmission (Ansaldo 2009)

Figureâ•¯2. Multilingual transmission (Ansaldo 2009)

2.3 The abnormality of monolingual ecologies for our theories of evolution

The variety of English spoken by a majority of Singaporeans on an everyday basis

In addition to the above, Hokkien (southern Min group, spoken originally in

3.1 Three features of Singlish grammar

3.1.1 Zero copula

From a normative English perspective, it might be observed that the copula to be is

(6) Moskva gorod (Russian; from Stassen 2008b)

3.1.2 Predicative adjectives

(9) Wo3 peng4-dao4-le Lin Hui

In considering Singlish, similar patterns can be found, as shown in examples (10)

3.1.3 Topic prominence

prominence is typical of isolating languages since they have little morphology to

While in English subject and topic often align, in Topic-prominent languages,

3.2 Evolution and ecology as explanatory parameters

Table 1. Competing features in the ecology of Singlish

Keywords: Hong Kong English, finiteness, typology, ecology, feature pool

If we look at language contact in terms of the ecological approach pioneered by

2. The sociolinguistic contexts of HKE

Note:â•‡ (1)The figures exclude mute persons.

Last revision date: 22 February, 2007

3. Finiteness as a typological category, in English, and in Chinese

In Sectionâ•¯3.1 below, I discuss finiteness in standard native varieties of English;

seem to be some cross-linguistically valid correlations between subject require-

3.1 Finiteness in standard varieties of English

complement encoded in their syntax. It is true that embedded non-finite questions

3.2 Tense and finiteness in Chinese

4. Analysing the HKE data

In (7), the complement of to is a participle, rather than the normally expected

(10) China want to took … wants to take over.

As we saw in Sectionâ•¯3.1 above, the best determinant of finiteness was distribu-

5. Conclusion: Language contact, typology, and the ecology of the

13.â•‡ As, for example, Siegel (2003) argues.

Recent research has aimed to integrate the investigation of vernacular universals

Keywords: Indian English, Singapore English, typology, past, progressive,

Chambers (2004: 28) describes vernacular universals as “a small number of pho-

Although Chambers envisions a unified paradigm for the study of sociolinguistic,

2. Universals in New Englishes

language ideologies. Within his Dynamic Model of the evolution of postcolonial

3.1 Indian English

3.2 Singapore English

3.3 Substrate grammars for Indian English and Singapore English

(6) Moskva gorod (Russian; from Stassen 2008b)