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Part of
Modeling World Englishes: Assessing the interplay of emancipation and globalization of ESL varieties
Edited by Sandra C. Deshors
[Varieties of English Around the World G61] 2018
► pp. 245–280

A corpus-linguistic account of the history of the genitive alternation in Singapore English

| University of California at Santa Barbara
| Justus Liebig University Giessen
| Liebig University Giessen

In this paper, we are exploring the history of the genitive alternation (of- vs. s-genitive) in Singapore English based on corpus data covering both British English (as the historical input variety) and Singapore English (as the target variety whose diachronic development we are interested in). Specifically, while earlier research has produced partly diachronic accounts of genitive variability, the diachronic development of the genitive has so far not been studied in ESL contexts, a gap which this study attempts to fill. Nearly 7000 instances of of- and s-genitives were annotated for a large number of predictors including phonetic variables (e.g. final sibilancy of possessor), semantic variables (e.g. animacy of possessor/possessum), syntactic variables (e.g. length of possessor/possessum), and pragmatic variables (e.g. discourse accessibility of possessor/possessum). We then applied the method of Multifactorial Prediction and Deviation Analysis with Regressions/Random Forests to the data to explore (i) how genitive choices in Singapore English differ from those in British English and, after a methodological interlude, (ii) how genitive choices changed over time in Singapore English. We conclude with some important recommendations regarding diachronic studies of structural nativization and their theoretical implications in models such as those of Moag (1982) or Schneider (2003, 2007).

Keywords: genitive alternation, Singapore English, diachrony, probabilistic grammar, MuPDAR
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
    • 1.1Theoretical considerations
    • 1.2Methodological considerations
  • 2.A MuPDAR analysis of SinE 1990 with reference to BrE 1990
    • 2.1Methods
      • 2.1.1Generating and annotating the concordance data
      • 2.1.2Statistical analysis
    • 2.2Results of R2
      • 2.2.1FinSib × Animacy
      • 2.2.2LengthDiff × FinSib
      • 2.2.3LengthDiff × Definiteness
      • 2.2.4TTR × Animacy
    • 2.3Discussion
  • 3.A diachronic MuPDAR analysis of SinE
    • 3.1Methods
      • 3.1.1Generating and annotating the concordance data
      • 3.1.2Statistical analysis
    • 3.2Results part 1: ‘Positives’
      • 3.2.1LengthDiff × FinSib
      • 3.2.2LengthDiff × Definiteness
      • 3.2.3FinSib × Animacy
      • 3.2.4TTR × Animacy
    • 3.3Results part 2: ‘Negatives’
      • 3.3.1Definiteness × Animacy
      • 3.3.2LengthDiff × PrevChoice
      • 3.3.3TTR × PrevChoice
  • 4.Concluding remarks
  • Acknowledgement
  • References
Published online: 13 September 2018
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/veaw.g61.10gri
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