Review article
Singapore Mandarin Chinese
Its variations and studies
Given the historical and linguistic contexts of Singapore, it is both theoretically and practically significant to study Singapore
Mandarin (SM), an important member of Global Chinese. This paper aims to present a relatively comprehensive linguistic picture of
SM by overviewing current studies, particularly on the variations that distinguish SM from other Mandarin varieties, and to serve
as a reference for future studies on SM. This paper notes that (a) current studies have often provided general descriptions of the
variations, but less on individual variations that may lead to more theoretical discussions; (b) the studies on SM are primarily
based on comparisons with Mainland China Mandarin; (c) language contact has been taken as the major contributor of the variation
in SM, whereas other factors are often neglected; and (d) corpora with SM data are comparatively less developed and the evaluation
of data has remained largely in descriptive statistics.
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 2.Singapore Mandarin: History
- 3.Singapore Mandarin: Its variations
- 3.1Lexical variation
- 3.2Grammatical variations
- 3.2.1Grammatical categories
- 3.2.2Grammatical process and structures
- 3.2.2.1Reduplication
- 3.2.2.2Aspect marking
- 3.2.2.3Special constructions
- V + directional complement
- Comparative construction
- Double object construction
- Other constructions
- 3.2.2.4Word order
- 3.3Pragmatic and discourse variations
- 3.3.1Code-switching and mixing
- 3.3.2Sentence-final particles
- 3.3.3Variations in conjunctive devices
- 4.Possible gaps in current research
- 4.1Factors leading to variation
- 4.2Data sources and analysis
- 4.3The varieties under comparison
- 5.Summary
- Acknowledgements
-
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