Bazaar Malay topics

Zhiming Bao | National University of Singapore

Khin Khin Aye | Swinburne University of Technology, Kuching, Malaysia

Bazaar Malay is a Malay-lexified pidgin with a Chinese substratum spoken in the marketplace of Singapore (and elsewhere in Southeast Asia). Although it is no longer a lingua franca in Singapore today, it is nevertheless still spoken by older Singaporeans. Like Chinese and Malay, Bazaar Malay is a topic-prominent language. We document three types of the Bazaar Malay topic construction and show that they are identical to the topic structures found in Chinese. The degree of convergence in the topic construction between Chinese and Bazaar Malay, and between Chinese and Singapore English, supports the systemic view of substratum transfer.

Keywords: Chinese, pidgin, Malay, substratum transfer, topic prominence, contact-induced change, Bazaar Malay

Published online: 04 March 2010
https://doi.org/10.1075/jpcl.25.1.06bao

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