Article published in:
English in the Indian Diaspora
Edited by Marianne Hundt and Devyani Sharma
[Varieties of English Around the World G50] 2014
► pp. 105–130

Imperfectives in Singapore’s Indian community

| University of Freiburg
| Kings College London
This chapter examines the sociolinguistics of the Indian community in Singapore, with a particular emphasis on the use of the -ing marker among Tamils. The Indian diaspora in Singapore is of interest because the community differs from others in many respects: although a minority of less than 10 percent, Indians enjoy constitutional recognition, primarily through the use of Tamil as one of the four official languages. Furthermore, they are a firmly established ethnic group within the country, both socially and economically, having been instrumental in early colonial times and during the foundation phase of present-day Singapore English. Our study, drawing on data collected from 96 informants coming in equal parts from the Tamil, Chinese, and Malay communities, investigates the use of ­over-extension of -ing as a marker of all imperfectives, including statives and non-delimited habituals. We found the Tamils rating -ing as acceptable significantly more frequently than the other two groups in the case of statives and non-delimited habituals. As this parallels the Tamil aspectual system, our findings strongly support a substratist explanation for the Indian Singapore English aspect system.
Keywords: ethnic variation, Indian diaspora in Singapore, Singapore English, sociolinguistics of Indian Singaporeans, Tamil
Published online: 28 August 2014
https://doi.org/10.1075/veaw.g50.06lei
References

References

Alsagoff, Lubna
2010 English in Singapore: Culture, capital and identity in linguistic variation. World Englishes 29: 336–348. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Annamalai, E.
1997 Adjectival Clauses in Tamil. Institute for the Study of Languages and Cultures of Asia and Africa (ILCAA). Tokyo: Tokyo University of Foreign Studies.Google Scholar
Ansaldo, Umberto
2004 The evolution of Singapore English: Finding the matrix. In The evolution of Singapore English: Finding the matrix [Varieties of English Around the World G33], Lisa Lim (ed.), 127–149. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Bao, Zhiming
2005 The aspectual system of Singapore English and the systemic substratist explanation. Journal of Linguistics 41(2): 237–267. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
2009  One in Singapore English. Studies in Language 33(2): 338–365. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Bao, Zhiming & Hui Min, Lye
2005 Systemic transfer, topic prominence, and the bare conditional in Singapore English. Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages 20 (2): 269–291. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Bokhorst-Heng, Wendy
1999 Singapore’s speak Mandarin campaign: Language ideological debates in the imagining of the nation. In Language Ideological Debates, Jan Blommaert (ed.), 235–265. Berlin: de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Chappell, Hilary
1992 Towards a typology of aspect in Sinitic languages. Zhongguo Jingnei Yuyan ji Yuyanxue: Hanyu Fangyan (Chinese Languages and Linguistics: Chinese Dialects) 1(1): 67–106.Google Scholar
Comrie, Bernard
1976 Aspect. Cambridge: CUP.Google Scholar
Deterding, David
2007 The vowels of the different ethnic groups in Singapore. In English in Southeast Asia: Varieties, Literacies and Literatures, David Prescott (ed.), 2–29. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars.Google Scholar
Deterding, David & Poedjosoedarmo, Gloria R.
2000 To what extent can the ethnic group of young Singaporeans be identified from their speech? In The English Language in Singapore: Research on Pronunciation, Adam Brown, David Deterding & Ee Ling Low (eds), 1–9. 
Singapore: Singapore Association for Applied Linguistics.Google Scholar
Dixon, L. Quentin
2005 The bilingual education policy in Singapore: Implications for second language acquisition. In 4th International Symposium on Bilingualism, James Cohen, Kara T. McAlister, Kellie Rolstad & Jeff MacSwan (eds), 625–635. Somerville MA: Cascadilla Press.Google Scholar
Gut, Ulrike
2005 The realisation of final plosives in Singapore English: Phonological rules and ethnic differences. In English in Singapore: Phonetic Research on a Corpus, David Deterding, Adam Brown & Ee Ling Low (eds), 14–25.Singapore: McGraw-Hill.Google Scholar
Ho, Mian Lian & Platt, John
1993 Dynamics of a Contact Continuum. Oxford: OUP.Google Scholar
Huang, Vivien Shu Jun
2003 Distinguishing between the Chinese, Malay and Indian Ethnic Varieties of Singapore English: A Study of Voice Onset Time. Honours thesis. Department of English Language and Literature, National University of Singapore.Google Scholar
Hundt, Marianne & Vogel, Katrin
2011 Overuse of the progressive in ESL and learner Englishes – Fact or fiction? In Exploring Second-Language Varieties of English and Learner Englishes: Bridging a Paradigm Gap [Studies in Corpus Linguistics 44], Joybrato Mukherjee & Marianne Hundt (eds), 145–166. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Kortmann, Bernd & Szmrecsanyi, Benedikt
2004 Global synopsis. Morphological and syntactic variation in English. In A Handbook of Varieties of English, Vol. 2: Morphology and Syntax, Bernd Kortmann, Kate Burridge, Rajend Mesthrie, Edgar W. Schneider & Clive Upton (eds), 1122–1182. Berlin: De Gruyter.Google Scholar
Lal, Brij V.
(ed) 2006 The Encyclopedia of the Indian Diaspora. Singapore: Editions Didier Millet.Google Scholar
Leimgruber, Jakob R.E.
2009 Modelling Variation in Singapore English. DPhil thesis, University of Oxford.
2013 The management of multilingualism in a city-state: Language policy in Singapore. In Multilingualism and Language Diversity in Urban Areas: Acquisition, identities, space, education [Hamburg Studies on Linguistic Diversity 1], Peter Siemund, Ingrid Gogolin, Monika Schulz & Julia Davydova (eds), 227–255. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Leow, Bee Geok
(ed.) 2001 Census of Population 2000: Statistical Release 2: Education, Language and Religion. Singapore: Department of Statistics.Google Scholar
Leimgruber, Jakob R.E. & Sankaran, Lavanya
2011 Imperfectives in Singapore English: New evidence for ethnic varieties? Poster presented at the 2nd triennial conference of the International Society for the Linguistics of English, Boston, MA, USA, 17–21 June 2011.
Li, Ping & Shirai, Yasuhiro
2000 The Acquisition of Lexical and Grammatical Aspect. Berlin: De Gruyter.Google Scholar
Lim, Lisa
1996 Prosodic Patterns Characterising Chinese, Indian and Malay Singapore English. PhD dissertation, University of Reading.
2000 Ethnic group differences aligned? Intonation patterns of Chinese, Indian and Malay Singaporean English. In The English Language in Singapore: Research on Pronunciation, Adam Brown, David Deterding & Ee Ling Low, 10–21. Singapore: Singapore Association for Applied Linguistics.Google Scholar
Mani, A.
1993 Indians in Singapore society. In Indian Communities in Southeast Asia, Kernial Singh Sandhu & A. Mani (eds), 787–809. Singapore: Times Academic Press.Google Scholar
Mufwene, Salikoko S.
1995 The founder principle in Creole genesis. Diachronica 13: 83–134. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Pakir, Anne
1991 The range and depth of English-knowing bilinguals in Singapore. World Englishes 10: 167–179. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
2001 Bilingual education with English as an official language: Sociocultural implications. In Georgetown University Round Table on Language and Linguistics, 1999: Language in our Time, James E. Alatis & Tan Ai-Hui (eds), 11–30. Washington DC: Georgetown University Press.Google Scholar
Pecotich, Anthony & Shultz, Clifford J.
(eds) 2006 Handbook of Markets and Economies: East Asia, Southeast Asia, Australia, New Zealand. New York NY: Sharpe.Google Scholar
Pfaff, Meike, Bergs, Alexander & Hoffman, Thomas
I was just reading this article – On the expression of recentness and the English past progressive. In The Verb Phrase in English: Investigating Recent Language Change with Corpora, Bas Aarts, Joanne Close, Geoffrey Leech & Sean Wallis (eds) 217 239 Cambridge CUP
Rappa, Antonio L. & Wee, Lionel
2006 Language Policy and Modernity in Southeast Asia: Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, and Thailand. New York NY: Springer.Google Scholar
Sandhu, Kernial Singh
1969 Indians in Malaya: Immigration and Settlement. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
1993 Indian immigration and settlement in Singapore. In Indian Communities in Southeast Asia, Kernial Singh Sandhu & A. Mani (eds), 775–788. Singapore: Times Academic Press.Google Scholar
Schiffman, F. Harold
1999 A Reference Grammar of Spoken Tamil. Cambridge: CUP.Google Scholar
Shantakumar, G.
1993 “The Indian Population of Singapore: Some Implications for Development. In Indian Communities in Southeast Asia, Kernial Singh Sandhu & A. Mani (eds), 866–909. Singapore: Times Academic Press.Google Scholar
Sharma, Devyani
2009 Typological diversity in new Englishes. English World-Wide 30(2): 170–195. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Sharma, Devyani & Rickford, John
2009 AAVE/Creole copula absence: A critique of the imperfect learning hypothesis. Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages 24(1): 53–90. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Siegel, Jeff
2012 Constraints on substrate transfer revisited. Journal of Linguistics 48(2): 473–478. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Soh, Hooi Ling & Nomoto, Hiroki
2009 Progressive aspect, the verbal prefix meN-, and stative sentences in Malay. Oceanic Linguistics 48(1): 148–171. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Sun, Chaofen
2006 Chinese: A Linguistic Introduction. Cambridge: CUP. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Suzanna, Bte Hashim & Brown, Adam
2000 The [e] and [æ] vowels in Singapore English. In The English Language in Singapore: Research on Pronunciation, Adam Brown, David Deterding & Ee Ling Low (eds), 84–92.Singapore: Singapore Association for Applied Linguistics.Google Scholar
Svalberg, Agneta M.-L. & Hjh Fatimah Bte Hj Awg Chuchu
1998 Are English and Malay Worlds apart? Typological distance and the learning of tense and aspect concepts. International Journal of Applied Linguistics 8: 27–60. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Tan, Ying Ying
1999 Intonation Patterns of the Chinese, Malay and Indian Varieties of Singapore English: A Substratist Approach. Honours thesis, National University of Singapore.
2012 Age as a factor in ethnic accent identification in Singapore. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development 33(6): 569–587. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Turnbull, Constance Mary
1996 A History of Singapore: 1819–1988, 3rd edn. Singapore: OUP.Google Scholar
Wee, Lionel
2003 Linguistic instrumentalism in Singapore. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development 24: 211–224. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
2006 The semiotics of language ideologies in Singapore. Journal of Sociolinguistics 10: 344–361. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Wong, Wee Kim
(ed.) 2011a Census of Population 2010. Statistical Release 1: Demographic Characteristics, Education, Language and Religion. Singapore: Department of Statistics.Google Scholar
(ed.) 2011b Census of Population 2010. Statistical Release 2: Households and Housing. Singapore: Department of Statistics.Google Scholar
Yang, Guowen & John A. Bateman
2002 The Chinese Aspect System and its Semantic Interpretation. COLING ‘02 Proceedings of the 19th International Conference on Computational Linguistics , Vol. 1, 1–7. Crossref