scholarly journals 'They are going tomorrow, isn't it?' On the Use of Tag Questions in Indian English and Hong Kong English

10.29007/3jr2 ◽  
2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Miriam Criado Peña
Keyword(s):  
Hong Kong ◽  
Sociolinguistic Variation ◽  
Indian English ◽  
Standard Pattern ◽  
British English ◽  
Text Types ◽  
Standard Rule ◽  
Tag Questions ◽  
Hong Kong English ◽  
Positive Statement

Tag questions in standard British English (BrE) follow a standard pattern consisting of an operator and a subject. This operator generally coincides with the preceding statement while the auxiliary “do” is the choice when the operator is absent. More importantly, a negative tag is generally attached to a positive statement and vice versa (i.e. you know her, don’t you?) (Quirk et al. 1985: 810).The Asian varieties of English are an exception insofar as apparently no standard rule is observed. The present paper investigates the use and distribution of regular and irregular tag questions in Indian English and Hong Kong English with the following objectives: a) to analyze the distribution of the construction of regular and irregular tag questions across these varieties; b) to assess their frequency across speech and writing, text types included; and c) to evaluate the sociolinguistic variation, if any. For the purpose, the Indian and Hong Kong components of the International Corpus of English (ICE-Ind and ICE-HK) will be used as sources of analysis.

Language variation in the West Midlands

English Today ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 31 (2) ◽  
pp. 59-60
Author(s):  
Natalie Braber
Keyword(s):  
Hong Kong ◽  
New Zealand ◽  
Newfoundland And Labrador ◽  
Language Variation ◽  
The West ◽  
Indian English ◽  
North Eastern ◽  
West Midlands ◽  
The Uk ◽  
Hong Kong English

West Midlands English: Birmingham and The Black Country forms part of the series Dialects of English which has so far included volumes on varieties such as: Urban North-Eastern English, Hong Kong English, Newfoundland and Labrador English, Irish English, Indian English, New Zealand English, Singapore English and Northern and Insular Scots. As such, it follows the general format of the series which covers the history and geography of a region, chapters on phonetics and phonology, grammar, lexis and a survey of previous works and bibliography. This contribution to the series follows this same general format and makes it applicable to the West Midlands region of the UK.

Sociolinguistic variation in Asian Englishes

2016 ◽  
Vol 37 (2) ◽  
pp. 138-167 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jette G. Hansen Edwards
Keyword(s):  
Hong Kong ◽  
Viet Nam ◽  
Consonant Clusters ◽  
Sociolinguistic Variation ◽  
Proficiency Level ◽  
Study Results ◽  
China English ◽  
New Varieties ◽  
Hong Kong English

This paper examines coronal stop deletion (CSD), the deletion of word-final /-t, -d/ in consonant clusters, in three new varieties of Asian English: China English, Hong Kong English, and Viet Nam English. The study seeks to determine to which extent the linguistic and extralinguistic constraints found to govern CSD in other varieties of English also impact CSD in emerging Englishes such as those examined in the current study. A total of 60 tertiary students, 20 from each variety of English, participated in the study. Results indicate that, while new Englishes such as China English, Hong Kong English, and Viet Nam English are affected by constraints such as linguistic environment and morphological conditioning, the proficiency level of speakers impacts CSD rates and the effects of the various constraints.

Grammaticalization of semi-modals of necessity in Asian Englishes

2019 ◽  
Vol 40 (2) ◽  
pp. 115-143 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lucía Loureiro-Porto
Keyword(s):  
Hong Kong ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
The Philippines ◽  
Current Paper ◽  
British English ◽  
Inner Circle ◽  
Hong Kong English

Abstract The decline of central modal must and the increase in frequency of the semi-modals have (got) to, need (to), and want to is one of the most conspicuous grammatical changes that inner-circle varieties of English underwent in the second half of the 20th century. Such a replacement correlates with the increasing grammaticalization of the semi-modals in terms of semantic and quantitative developments. The current paper explores the differential grammaticalization of these items in four Asian varieties of English – those spoken in India, Hong Kong, Singapore, and the Philippines – with the aim of building a grammaticalization index that will allow us to measure the extent to which the replacement of modal must with the semi-modals is completed in each of the varieties as compared to British English. After analyzing data from the private dialogue sections of the corresponding ICE corpora, Hong Kong English is shown to be the variety in which the replacement is closest to British English, followed by the Philippines, Singapore and India.

Innovative conversions in South-East Asian Englishes

2016 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 278-301 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephanie Horch
Keyword(s):  
Hong Kong ◽  
Dynamic Model ◽  
Language Use ◽  
East Asian ◽  
British English ◽  
Outer Circle ◽  
Usage Frequency ◽  
The Status ◽  
Institutional Status ◽  
Hong Kong English

Singapore English and Hong Kong English started out as contact varieties and developed into ESL varieties belonging to the Outer Circle (Kachru 1985). Both varieties show a similar contact ecology (Chinese), but differ in their socio-institutional status in the Dynamic Model (Schneider 2003, 2007). By analyzing innovative verb-to-noun conversion in these two varieties, and comparing them to British English, this study shows that despite the obvious similarities in substratum, the usage frequency of conversion in both varieties differs considerably. These findings, similar to — most recently — Deshors (2014) and Gilquin (2015), call into question the established notion of ESL in general and the status of SgE and HKE as ESL varieties in particular. In order to accurately reflect contemporary language use, it is reasonable to conceptualize the notion of ESL as a continuum and to situate HKE and SgE at opposite ends.

scholarly journals Concord patterns with collective nouns in Hong Kong English. With illustrative material from the International Corpus of English (Hong Kong component)

2009 ◽  
Vol 37 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
May Lai-Yin Wong
Keyword(s):  
Hong Kong ◽  
British English ◽  
Verb Agreement ◽  
Hong Kong English ◽  
Illustrative Material ◽  
Collective Nouns

This corpus-based study reports on both a quantitative and qualitative account of the use of collective nouns in Hong Kong English, with particular reference to subject-verb agreement/concord patterns. Singular concord was found to be the preferred pattern among thirty-five collective nouns under interrogation in the ICE-HK corpus. It is argued that the preference for singular concord serves as a signal that Hong Kong English might be less conservative than British English in converging towards the norm of using singular concord with collective nouns across the globe.

Lexical bundles in conversation across Englishes

2019 ◽  
Vol 40 (3) ◽  
pp. 299-324
Author(s):  
Zeping Huang ◽  
Gavin Bui
Keyword(s):  
Hong Kong ◽  
Dynamic Model ◽  
Common Ground ◽  
Building Blocks ◽  
World Englishes ◽  
Canadian English ◽  
British English ◽  
Lexical Bundles ◽  
Using Data ◽  
Hong Kong English

Abstract This study adopts Nelson’s (2014) methodological framework to investigate core and peripheral lexical bundles (i.e. recurrent multi-word sequences) in conversation, using data from the British, Canadian, Singapore, and Hong Kong components of the International Corpus of English (ICE). The overlap and non-overlap comparisons reveal (dis)similarities in the use of bundles across the four World Englishes (WEs). Our findings suggest that in terms of discourse building blocks, the more advanced a variety is according to Schneider’s (2007) Dynamic Model of New Englishes, the more lexical bundles it shares with the common core in conversation. Canadian English (CanE) shares the most common ground with British English (BrE). As a nascent variety, Hong Kong English (HKE) differs most from BrE, while Singapore English falls between CanE and HKE. Though the results do not correlate with Schneider’s Dynamic Model at the level of recurring chunks, they allow us to test predictions of WEs models. Quantitative and qualitative analyses enable the identification of bundles with significantly high frequency in each regional variety, thus enriching comparative research of WEs.

(Un)democratic Epicene Pronouns in Asian Englishes: A Register Approach

2020 ◽  
Vol 48 (3) ◽  
pp. 282-313
Author(s):  
Lucía Loureiro-Porto
Keyword(s):  
Hong Kong ◽  
Gender Equality ◽  
Language Use ◽  
Women's Movements ◽  
Sharp Contrast ◽  
Indian English ◽  
Outer Circle ◽  
High Preference ◽  
Cultural Terms ◽  
Hong Kong English

The search for gender equality in language use is one of the most frequently cited cases of linguistic democratization (e.g., Farrelly & Seoane 2012:394). At the grammatical level, this process implies, for example, that pronouns such as generic he used with epicene antecedents are being replaced by singular they or by combined he or she, at least in inner-circle varieties of English. However, outer-circle varieties remain underexplored in this regard. For this reason, this paper analyzes three Asian English varieties, namely Hong Kong English (HKE), Indian English (IndE), and Singapore English (SgE), based on the relevant ICE corpora. More than 58,000 examples were retrieved from the corpora and manually filtered, resulting in 2120 tokens of epicene pronouns. The results show a very different picture for each variety. While overall HKE shows a high preference for the more democratic options they and he or she, IndE and SgE exhibit different patterns. IndE shows singular they in speech, but it is almost non-existent in writing, while in SgE there is a sharp contrast between the most spontaneous spoken register and all other registers. After testing different hypotheses, the findings are explained in socio-cultural terms, as a result of democratization possibly related to women’s movements in those territories.

Canonical Tag Questions in Asian Englishes

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sebastian Hoffmann ◽  
Anne-Katrin Blass ◽  
Joybrato Mukherjee
Keyword(s):  
Hong Kong ◽  
Comparative Study ◽  
Evolutionary Model ◽  
British English ◽  
Patterns Of Use ◽  
Tag Questions

The present chapter provides a comparative study of canonical tag questions in Hong Kong, Indian, and Singapore English on the basis of their respective spoken components of the International Corpus of English (ICE). These three postcolonial Asian Englishes represent different phases in the evolutionary model of variety-formation proposed by Schneider (2003, 2007). The present-day manifestation of their shared historical input variety British English is used as a basis of comparison. Differences across these four varieties in terms of forms, functions, and frequencies of tag questions are described and interpreted from a variational-pragmatic perspective. The findings reveal considerable intervarietal differences, with the variety that has furthest progressed in Schneider’s model, Singapore English, displaying preferences that diverge markedly from the patterns of use in British English. This suggests that a process of ‘pragmatic nativization’—in parallel to well-documented processes of structural nativization—can be observed in the development of New Englishes.

scholarly journals Empirical perspectives on two potential epicenters: The genitive alternation in Asian Englishes

ICAME Journal ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 41 (1) ◽  
pp. 111-144 ◽  
Author(s):  
Benedikt Heller ◽  
Tobias Bernaisch ◽  
Stefan Th. Gries
Keyword(s):  
Hong Kong ◽  
Great Britain ◽  
Random Forest ◽  
Sri Lanka ◽  
South Asia ◽  
The Philippines ◽  
World Englishes ◽  
Indian English ◽  
British English ◽  
Deviation Analysis

Abstract The present study seeks to contribute to two sparsely examined areas of World Englishes research by (i) quantitatively evaluating two potential linguistic epicenters in Asia (Indian and Singapore English) while (ii) investigating the English genitive alternation in a cross-varietal perspective. In a corpus-based bottom-up approach, we evaluate 4,200 interchangeable genitive cases of written English from Great Britain, Hong Kong, India, the Philippines, Singapore and Sri Lanka, as represented in the International Corpus of English. We use a new method called MuPDARF, a multifactorial deviation analysis based on random forest classifications, to evaluate to what extent and with which factors the Asian varieties differ from British English in their genitive choices. Results show conspicuous differences between British English and the Asian varieties and validate the potential epicenter status of Indian English for South Asia, but not unanimously that of Singapore English for Southeast Asia.

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