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Negation and Contact: With special focus on Singapore English
Edited by Debra Ziegeler and Zhiming Bao
[Studies in Language Companion Series 183] 2017
► pp. 151–170

Chapter 7
Negative raising in Singapore English

editor
| National University of Singapore
| National University of Singapore

Negative raising is common in English and Singapore English, and a casual visitor to Singapore can easily observe instances of this phenomenon. It is not attested in Chinese, the main heritage language of Singapore. We know that Singapore English has incorporated grammatical constructions from Chinese, and to a lesser extent, Malay. The question is: do English-derived features, such as negative raising, exhibit the influence from Chinese? The answer is a qualified yes. Based on corpus data, we show that while negative raising maintains its morphosyntax in Singapore English, its use exhibits statistically significant change. We attribute the change to the influence of Chinese.

Article outline
  • 1.The issue
  • 2.Negative raising in English and Singapore English
  • 3.Negation in Chinese
  • 4. Know in Singapore and British Englishes
  • 5.Concluding remarks
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 31 May 2017
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/slcs.183.07bao
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