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One Substrate, Two Lexifiers and the Lexifier Effect View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by ScholarBank@NUS ONE SUBSTRATE, TWO LEXIFIERS AND THE LEXIFIER EFFECT LEE HUIYING NALA B.A. (Hons), NUS A THESIS SUBMITTED FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE NATIONAL UNIVERSITY OF SINGAPORE 2009 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I am indebted to my thesis advisor at the Department of English Language and Literature. Associate Professor Bao Zhiming gave me autonomy to think (which people do so little of these days), encouraged debate, shared with me the joys of research, pointed out very important resources to me and adeptly put me back on course whenever I had veered away from it. I could not have chosen a better mentor to work with, and it has been both a privilege and a pleasure to be able to work under his guidance. I am also very grateful to Mom, for having piqued my interest in all things Peranakan since I was a child. She has always been ready to share Dad’s rich, colourful and admittedly, very different family history with me. On top of that, Mom had put me in touch with Peranakan family and friends, from whom I began learning bits of Baba Malay. I am especially thankful to Ronnie and family. My original research intentions involved documenting Ronnie and his mother’s very colourful patois exchanges but this was not to be, for the bibik unexpectedly passed on the year before in the midst of recording. This thesis is dedicated to her strong spirit and to all wonderful ways of the resilient Nyonyas. In addition, I would like to thank my parents for their love, patience and understanding, and for believing in what I do. My sister, Raeanne and close friend, Desiree Wee, deserve special mention for being the unrelenting (and unforgiving) proofreaders that they are. Finally, to my friends, Cherie Ng, Geoffrey Wells, Hiroki Nomoto, Keith Tan, Mark Lu, Philina Ng, Renee Lee, Rodney Sebastian and Sorelle Henricus-Marchand: Thank you for your support, concern and kind words of encouragement. There are so many other people who have extended their help to me in one way or another, and I apologize for not being able to list all your names here. ii Preparing this thesis has been somewhat exhausting but the lessons I have learnt and the satisfaction I have derived from it makes up for so much more than that. I would not have it any other way. And most importantly, it would not have been the same if not for all of you. Thank you. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgements………………………………………………………………………………......... ii Table of Contents……………………………………………………………………………….............. iv List of Tables………………………………………………………………………………....................... vii List of Figures………………………………………………………………………………..................... vii List of Abbreviations…………………………………………………………………………………... viii Abstract……………………………………………………………………………….................................. ix Chapter 1 ­ Introduction ………………………………………………………………………... 1 1.1 Socio‐historical background of Singapore 1 1.2 Contact languages in Singapore 2 1.2.1 Baba Malay 3 1.2.2 Singapore Colloquial English 4 1.3 Baba Malay ada and Singapore Colloquial English got 6 Chapter 2­ Approach…………………………………………………………………………….... 9 2.1 Theories in Creole Formation 9 2.1.1 The Universalist Approach 9 2.1.2 The Substratist Approach 11 2.1.3 The Superstratist Approach 13 2.1.4 Systemic Subsystem Transfer and the Lexifier Filter 15 2.2 Description of Data 17 2.2.1 Hokkien u 17 2.2.2 Malay ada 18 2.2.3 Baba Malay ada 20 2.2.4 British English got 20 2.2.5 Singapore Colloquial English got 21 iv 2.3 Method of Analysis 22 Chapter 3­ Hokkien u…………………………………………………………………………….. 23 3.1 Possession 23 3.2 Existential/ Location 24 3.3 Copula 26 3.4 Progressive 28 3.5 Perfective 31 3.6 Summary of Hokkien u features 34 Chapter 4­ Malay ada and Baba Malay ada……………………………………………. 35 4.1 Malay ada 35 4.1.1 Possession 35 4.1.2 Existential/ Location 36 4.1.3 Copula 37 4.1.4 Progressive 38 4.1.5 Summary of Malay ada features 38 4.2 Baba Malay ada 39 4.2.1 Possession 39 4.2.2 Existential/ Location 40 4.2.3 Copula 41 4.2.4 Progressive 42 4.2.5 Perfective 43 4.2.6 Negation 44 4.2.7 Summary of Baba Malay ada features 46 Chapter 5­ British got and Singapore Colloquial English got………………… 47 5.1 British English got 47 5.1.1 Possession 47 v 5.1.2 Obtain/ Receive 48 5.1.3 Cause/ Become/ Move/ Reach 49 5.1.4 Passive 51 5.1.5 Deontic modality 54 5.1.6 Summary of British English got features 55 5.2 Singapore Colloquial English got 55 5.2.1 Possession 58 5.2.2 Existential/ Location 59 5.2.3 Copula 60 5.2.4 Receive/ Obtain 60 5.2.5 Cause/ Become/ Move/ Reach 61 5.2.6 Passive 62 5.2.7 Deontic modality 63 5.2.8 Perfective 64 5.2.9 Summary of Singapore Colloquial English got features 65 Chapter 6­ Findings………………………………………………………………………………... 67 6.1 Summary of Comparison 67 6.2 Relexification and the Lexifier Effect 69 6.3 Prestige and Frequency of Occurrence 71 Chapter 7­ Concluding Remarks……………………………………………………………. 75 Works Cited………………………………………………………………………………………………… 78 vi LIST OF TABLES Table 1. Summary of Hokkien u features 34 Table 2. Summary of Malay ada features 39 Table 3. Summary of Baba Malay ada features 46 Table 4. Summary of British English got features 55 Table 5. Summary of Singapore Colloquial English got features 66 Table 6. Summary of Comparison of Features 67 LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1. The process of relexification 12 Figure 2. Basic tree structure of possession type construction 23 Figure 3. Basic tree structure of existential/location type construction 24 Figure 4. Basic tree structure of copula type construction 26 Figure 5. Basic tree structure of progressive VP 29 Figure 6. Basic tree structure of perfective VP 31 Figure 7. Basic tree structure of obtain/ receive type construction 48 Figure 8. Basic tree structure of cause/ become/ move/ reach type construction 50 Figure 9. Basic tree structure of passive VP 51 Figure 10. Basic tree structure of deontic mood VP 54 vii LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS Adv: Adverb AP: Adjectival Phrase Asp: Aspectual marker CL: Classifier Deg: Degree Neg: Negation marker NP: Noun Phrase OBJ: Object OBL: Oblique Part: Particle Poss: Possessive Prep: Preposition PP: Prepositional Phrase SUBJ: Subject V: Verb VP: Verbal Phrase viii ABSTRACT Baba Malay ada and Singapore Colloquial English got are highly related since both verbs express the semantic notion of possession and occur in creoles that share the same substrate but different lexifiers. Structurally, the common substrate of Baba Malay and Singapore Colloquial English is Hokkien, while the lexifiers are Malay and British English respectively. Sociologically, Baba Malay had been perceived by its speakers as a prestigious variant of Malay in its heyday, while Singapore Colloquial English is viewed by its speakers as being inferior to standard English. Both Baba Malay ada and Singapore Colloquial English got manifest lexical and grammatical features of their substrate counterpart, Hokkien u. However, while all features of Hokkien u are transferred over to Baba Malay ada during relexification, the same cannot be said of Singapore Colloquial English got. Essentially Singapore Colloquial English got is unable to express the progressive, and rarely used to express the perfective, as opposed to Hokkien u and Baba Malay ada. This paper attempts to explain the first phenomenon, using the concept of a lexifier filter that constrains systemic transfer – all features that are transferred from the substrate to the contact language must be harmonic with the morphosyntactic properties of the lexifier form. The progressive feature of Hokkien u does not find exponence in Singapore Colloquial English got because it is not compatible with the perfective morphosyntactic form of the lexifier equivalent, British English got. The same lexifier filter does not apply to Baba Malay which has a different lexifier, and all features of Hokkien u are transferred over to Baba Malay ada. In addition, an investigation of the usage profiles of Baba Malay ada and Singapore Colloquial English got shows that although the perfective aspect of Hokkien u ix had been transferred over to both creole forms, the transfer had not taken place uniformly. Baba Malay ada is much more frequently used to express the perfective aspect than Singapore Colloquial English. This phenomenon can be accounted for by the notion of prestige. As opposed to Baba Malay speakers who had perceived their language as being prestigious, Singapore Colloquial English speakers do not have this perception of their own language, and prefer to use standard English forms to express the perfective aspect since it is also available to them. Usage of this got feature, which had been derived solely from the substrate, would otherwise mark the speakers distinctively as Singapore Colloquial English speakers. This comparative study primarily demonstrates the lexifier effect in creole formation, and extends from this, an investigation of how the notion of prestige can affect frequency of occurrence of substrate features in creoles. x CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION 1.1 Socio-historical background of Singapore Singapore is a small island state in Southeast Asia with a population of close to 5 million people (Singapore Department of Statistics: 2008). As of 2001, the population comprised 76.8% Chinese, 13.9% Malay, 7.9% Indian and 1.4% persons of other races (Leow 2001). The language of administration and medium of education is English. Besides English, the other official languages are Mandarin, Malay and Tamil. The Singapore government recognizes these languages to be the respective ‘mother tongues’ of the Chinese, Malays and Indians.
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