This paper seeks to explore the extent of definite article usage variation in several varieties of English based on a classification of its usage types. An annotation scheme based on Hawkins and Prince was developed for this purpose. Using matching corpus data representing Inner Circle varieties and Outer Circle varieties, analysis was made on…

Some pronunciation features that are not found in Inner Circle varieties of English are shared by the Englishes of Singapore, the rest of ASEAN, and China, and in some cases they serve to distinguish pairs of words which are no longer differentiated by many speakers in Britain. As these features of pronunciation do not interfere with comprehension…

Singapore English has been, and still is, an enigma for many scholars and researchers. In recent years, much attention has been given to the analysis of its particles. However, rather than focusing on the analysis of one particle or several particles and how they operate at the level of the sentence, this paper looks at a particular phenomenon in…

It has been recently argued that the particles in Colloquial Singapore English (CSE) constitute a grammatical category that actively draws new members to it. Drawing on distributional and collocational evidence, this paper establishes that CSE has a new particle, "ya". The paper then proceeds to analyse the discourse pragmatic function…

This paper investigates whether the rhythmic properties of varieties of English found in each of the concentric circles of Kachru's model can, in any way, be elucidated by the "Three Circles" model. A measurement and comparison of the rhythm of three varieties of English: British English (from the Inner Circle), Singapore English (from…

This paper reports on a comprehensive corpus-based study of regional and stylistic variation in the distribution of the English present perfect. The data represents ten English varieties of both the Inner Circle and Outer Circle, covering four major text types: conversation, news reportage, academic and fictional writing. The results are discussed…

This paper considers the problems, the properties, and the prospects of using "English as a lingua franca" as a construct and as a reality. It will therefore focus on what is meant by the term "lingua franca", what is represented as a "lingua franca", and what the debates are about English as a lingua franca. The…

Singapore is placed in the Outer Circle of the Kachru's Three Circles Model, and has over the years developed an English which is uniquely Singaporean. This paper argues that in order to understand the ways in which Singapore English is developing its own standards and ways of speaking, a new model needs to be developed that takes culture, capital…

Language attitude studies have shown that the majority language and its speakers tend to be rated positively along status, intelligence, and power dimensions ("Educated", "Successful", "Intelligent"), while the minority variety and its speakers elicit positive responses in the solidarity semantic category…

Research into Singapore English (SgE) has undergone many paradigm shifts from the 1970s to the present. This paper first begins with a consideration of how variation in the English language used in Singapore has been studied. It then identifies the two main varieties of English commonly described in Singapore, namely, Standard SgE (SSE) and…

This paper examines the problem of a curriculum which promotes a standard linguistic variety in a context where non-standardisms are common in the learners' milieu. There have been curricula which try to incorporate the non-standard and have its function discussed; some have considered the non-standard a stepping-stone towards the standard; and…

This paper reports on an investigation into the international intelligibility of the English of educated Hong Kong speakers whose L1 is Cantonese. Samples of recordings of extended discourse obtained from three female and three male final-year English majors studying at the Hong Kong Institute of Education were played to groups of university…

Singapore is unique in that it has not only embraced English as one of its official languages, but has made the language of its colonizers the "de facto" working language of the nation and the sole medium of instruction in all its schools, while assigning its other three official languages, Mandarin, Malay, and Tamil, an L2 status in the…

Provides data showing that "know" in colloquial Singapore has distributional and collocational properties that distinguish it from "you know," even though their discourse-pragmatic functions are similar. Differences between "you know" and "know" indicate that the latter has become a member of a linguistic…

Attempts to show that the move to stem the popularity of Singlish (Singapore English) is another manifestation of the notion of creative destruction, currently being proposed as a strategy to improve partial destruction of existing economic ideas and structures that rapidly obsolesce with the emergence of new ones. Argues that attempts to replace…