Colloquial Singapore English has a novel conditional construction in which the conditional clause is not marked morphosyntactically, and must precede the consequent clause. We show that Singapore English, like Chinese, the main substrate language, is topic prominent, and the novel conditional construction is a direct consequence of this new typological status. We analyze the unmarked conditional clause as topic, a basic syntactic position in topic prominent languages. Our analysis shows that substrate influence is systemic: the entire cluster of properties associated with topic prominence is transferred from Chinese to Singapore English.
2012. Radical pro drop and the role of syntactic agreement in Colloquial Singapore English. Lingua 122:8 ► pp. 858 ff.
ZHIMING, BAO
2012. Substratum transfer targets grammatical system. Journal of Linguistics 48:2 ► pp. 479 ff.
Leimgruber, Jakob R. E.
2011. Singapore English. Language and Linguistics Compass 5:1 ► pp. 47 ff.
Sato, Yosuke
2011. Radical Pro Drop and Fusional Pronominal Morphology in Colloquial Singapore English: Reply to Neeleman and Szendrői. Linguistic Inquiry 42:2 ► pp. 356 ff.
SATO, YOSUKE
2014. Argument ellipsis in Colloquial Singapore English and the Anti-Agreement Hypothesis. Journal of Linguistics 50:2 ► pp. 365 ff.
Sato, Yosuke
2016. Remarks on the Parameters of Argument Ellipsis: A New Perspective from Colloquial Singapore English. Syntax 19:4 ► pp. 392 ff.
Bao, Zhiming
2010. Must in Singapore English. Lingua 120:7 ► pp. 1727 ff.
LEE, NALA HUIYING, LING AI PING & HIROKI NOMOTO
2009. Colloquial Singapore English got: functions and substratal influences. World Englishes 28:3 ► pp. 293 ff.
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