How language contact affects dual language learners phonological development

Session 5More than one language is used in the Hong Kong preschool setting. Apart from acquiring Cantonese which is the majority language of the Hong Kong population, Hong Kong preschoolers are exposed to English regularly through stories, songs and games in the classroom setting. Given the vast differences between Cantonese and English phonology, we were interested in how young children handle simultaneously two different phonological systems, and whether the language contact in question influences these young dual language learners’ phonological development in either or both of the languages. To address these issues, we first administered to 96 four-year-old Hong Kong ...postprin

'There is still life in the old grey mare although she ‘ain’t what she used to be!’ : Peranakan English – Evolution and authenticity

Conference Theme: World Englishes: Contexts, Challenges and OpportunitiesSession 2EDescendants of 18th/19th-century southern Chinese seafaring traders in Southeast Asia and local women, the Peranakans can be viewed as a China-West locus for language and culture. The evolution of their linguistic repertoire involved the development of their vernacular, Baba Malay, a restructured Malay variety with Hokkien influence, with a subsequent shift by early/mid-20th century to English as their dominant language, as a consequence of their social, economic and political status, their being a prestigious and privileged group with pro-British alignments and access to English education. This paper describes Peranakan English (PerE) in Singapore – which has received little attention (except e.g. Lim 2009, 2010) – whose noteworthy features in spoken and written genres include: (a) aspects of the linguistic system that approximate standard British English more closely than contemporary Singapore English, e.g. consonant and vowel realisation, word stress patterns, classic English idioms and archaic turns of phrase; and (b) more vernacular features, e.g. Topic-Comment structure, reduplication, code mixing with Baba Malay/ Hokkien. The recognition of such linguistic variation is significant in the study of New Englishes for several reasons: (i) it provides us with appreciation of the contact dynamics in the formation of New Englishes in the diverse, highly multilingual contexts of Asia, (ii) including the influence of the community’s original vernacular BM via PerE on the emergent Singapore English, demonstrating the persistent influence of a founder population’s features in an ecology; (iii) it is revealing of the identity alignment practices of the community as subjects in a complex, changing sociolinguistic context. Finally this paper examines the current positioning of the Peranqkans in their 21st-century cultural revival, where the linguistic features used in intra-community dialogue as well as representations for a wider audience, e.g. the portrayal of Peranakans in popular culture, raises questions of authenticity and the commodification of language and identity

The vital few: Agents of change in contact varieties of English in multilingual Asia

Plenary speakerThe conference is hosted by the School of Linguistics and Applied Language Studies and the Deaf Studies Research Unit of Victoria University of WellingtonRestructured varieties of English that have emerged in the Asia-Pacific region afford rich explorations for the dynamics of contact in multilingual ecologies. Singapore English (SgE), considered as already having attained endonormative stabilisation by the end of the 20th century, is often analysed as showing influences from the more dominant – economically, numerically – southern Sinitic language(s), e.g. in the emergence of Sinitic-type tone in its prosody. However, while in all other New or learner Englishes with tone language substrates the usual pattern is for high tones to align with accented syllables, SgE’s prosody by contrast is consistently word-/phrase-final-prominent. An explanation may be found in the Peranakans – descendants of 18th/19th-century southern Chinese seafaring traders in Malaya and local women, who then became a prestigious, privileged minority group in the Straits Settlements with pro-British alignments and early access to English education. Word-/phrase-final prominence is found in the Peranakans’ English, which in turn derives from their original vernacular Baba Malay. In this we may note the significance of a founder population’s features as persistent and influential in a multilingual ecology. A counterpoint is the newly emerging variety of Hong Kong English (HKE), whose existence and status as a New variety of English is often queried, primarily because the speakers of this variety are Cantonese-dominant, hardly using English regularly and spontaneously in the majority of their everyday domains, but for two exceptions. In computer-mediated communication (CMC), English is significantly preferred over Cantonese, and in popular culture and the media, Cantonese-based concepts have currency. Both platforms appear to be driving linguistic innovation and the development of HKE, e.g. in the frequency of use of English calques of Cantonese terms, in particular in the younger, university-going community. Even while SgE and HKE are varieties developing in markedly different scenarios – one in a postcolonial era, the other in the current knowledge economy – their evolution appear to exemplify the law of the vital few: although comprising a small minority, the Peranakans and the tertiary students would seem to be the agents of innovation and change, a consequence of being multilingual, early/ primary English adopters/users, and dominant in their ecologies