Has Singlish changed? A study on age-based variation in Singlish
Singlish is an output language formed from a pool of features contributed by various languages in Singapore’s linguistic ecology (Tan, 2017). As the composition of Singapore’s linguistic ecology changes, it should follow that Singlish changes and evolves accordingly, leading to age variation in Sing...
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| Format: | Final Year Project (FYP) |
| Language: | English |
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Nanyang Technological University
2020
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| Online Access: | https://hdl.handle.net/10356/138287 |
| _version_ | 1811679475777142784 |
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| author | Lee, Xiao Yu |
| author2 | Tan Ying Ying |
| author_facet | Tan Ying Ying Lee, Xiao Yu |
| author_sort | Lee, Xiao Yu |
| collection | NTU |
| description | Singlish is an output language formed from a pool of features contributed by various languages in Singapore’s linguistic ecology (Tan, 2017). As the composition of Singapore’s linguistic ecology changes, it should follow that Singlish changes and evolves accordingly, leading to age variation in Singlish. To investigate if Singlish has changed, this paper seeks to establish the presence of variation in the Singlish spoken by Singaporeans across different age groups. Tokens of syntactic features of Singlish including copula-deletion, topic prominence, subject omission, construction of interrogatives and the use of the perfective ‘already’ were studied and compared across the speech of three age groups of Singaporean speakers from the National Speech Corpus. This study has found that broadly speaking, there seems to be little to no variation in the Singlish spoken by Singaporeans across different age groups as most of the features studied are still present and used by the speakers. However, by delving deeper into the linguistic contexts surrounding the features studied, variation across the age groups can be observed. The results show that English has an increased influence on the Singlish that younger Singaporeans speak, which highlight Singlish’s potential to evolve and change. |
| first_indexed | 2024-10-01T03:09:45Z |
| format | Final Year Project (FYP) |
| id | ntu-10356/138287 |
| institution | Nanyang Technological University |
| language | English |
| last_indexed | 2024-10-01T03:09:45Z |
| publishDate | 2020 |
| publisher | Nanyang Technological University |
| record_format | dspace |
| spelling | ntu-10356/1382872020-04-30T04:07:09Z Has Singlish changed? A study on age-based variation in Singlish Lee, Xiao Yu Tan Ying Ying School of Humanities yytan@ntu.edu.sg Humanities::Linguistics Humanities::Language Singlish is an output language formed from a pool of features contributed by various languages in Singapore’s linguistic ecology (Tan, 2017). As the composition of Singapore’s linguistic ecology changes, it should follow that Singlish changes and evolves accordingly, leading to age variation in Singlish. To investigate if Singlish has changed, this paper seeks to establish the presence of variation in the Singlish spoken by Singaporeans across different age groups. Tokens of syntactic features of Singlish including copula-deletion, topic prominence, subject omission, construction of interrogatives and the use of the perfective ‘already’ were studied and compared across the speech of three age groups of Singaporean speakers from the National Speech Corpus. This study has found that broadly speaking, there seems to be little to no variation in the Singlish spoken by Singaporeans across different age groups as most of the features studied are still present and used by the speakers. However, by delving deeper into the linguistic contexts surrounding the features studied, variation across the age groups can be observed. The results show that English has an increased influence on the Singlish that younger Singaporeans speak, which highlight Singlish’s potential to evolve and change. Bachelor of Arts in Linguistics and Multilingual Studies 2020-04-30T04:07:09Z 2020-04-30T04:07:09Z 2020 Final Year Project (FYP) https://hdl.handle.net/10356/138287 en application/pdf Nanyang Technological University |
| spellingShingle | Humanities::Linguistics Humanities::Language Lee, Xiao Yu Has Singlish changed? A study on age-based variation in Singlish |
| title | Has Singlish changed? A study on age-based variation in Singlish |
| title_full | Has Singlish changed? A study on age-based variation in Singlish |
| title_fullStr | Has Singlish changed? A study on age-based variation in Singlish |
| title_full_unstemmed | Has Singlish changed? A study on age-based variation in Singlish |
| title_short | Has Singlish changed? A study on age-based variation in Singlish |
| title_sort | has singlish changed a study on age based variation in singlish |
| topic | Humanities::Linguistics Humanities::Language |
| url | https://hdl.handle.net/10356/138287 |
| work_keys_str_mv | AT leexiaoyu hassinglishchangedastudyonagebasedvariationinsinglish |