Nala H. Lee
List of John Benjamins publications for which Nala H. Lee plays a role.
2024 The early Baba Malay continuum Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages 39:2, pp. 339–364 | Article
Baba Malay today is an endangered creole perceived to be a less flexible, easily identifiable language entity with static ascribed qualities. An investigation of resources from the late 1800s and early 1900s shows that such a characterization of early Baba Malay is not possible. Three novels and… read more
2023 Variability or its loss in creole endangerment: The case of Baba Malay Asia-Pacific Language Variation 9:1, pp. 59–82 | Article
A language’s endangerment is said to be typified by variation accompanied by some degree of unpredictability. This paper examines if this characterization is appropriate of Baba Malay, an endangered creole, as it is spoken in Singapore. Recent work suggests that the language is much less… read more
2020 Style variation in the second formant: What does it mean to be “refined” in Baba Malay? Styles, Standards and Meaning in Lesser-Studied Languages, Horesh, Uri, Jonathan R. Kasstan and Miriam Meyerhoff (eds.), pp. 115–130 | Article
Baba Malay speakers perceive words ending with [al], [aɾ], and [as] as kasar ‘coarse’, and their counterparts ending with [ɛ] as halus ‘refined’. The contrast is neither phonetic, phonological or morphological. Instead, it may be mitigated by sound symbolism operationalized by F2. The frontness… read more
2018 Baba Malay: Diverging trends in two ecologies Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages 33:1, pp. 136–173 | Article
This article sheds light on the systematic differences between the variety of Baba Malay spoken in Malacca and that spoken in Singapore. In the literature, the creole is usually discussed as if it is a single homogeneous variety. Language documentation work conducted in both Malacca and… read more