Full Description
The analysis of newly or recently emerged grammatical and lexical forms in Colloquial Singapore English is the main objective of this Element. Using corpus, survey, and interview data from different age groups, we shed light on the spread of language change across generations and ethnicities. Existing descriptions of CSE as a high-contact L1 variety of English in the late stages of endonormative stabilisation do not fully capture Singapore's continued multilingual ecology: source languages remain in active use alongside CSE, enabling ongoing cross-linguistic influence. Innovative uses resulting from contact can be observed in apparent and real time. In this volume, we use a range of sources to look at recent changes in the lexicon and grammar of CSE, pointing to a dynamic variety that is difficult to fully capture with existing models of variation. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.
Contents
1. Introduction; 2. Corpus approaches to CSE change; 3. Integrating corpus and survey methods to examine CSE use and change; 4. Structural and stylistic variation in the use of (bo)jio; 5. Variation and change in CSE passive marking; 6. Conclusion; Glossing conventions; Reference.
