中文遞繫句如何影響新加坡式英文的遞繫句

Abstract

In Singapore, English not only serves as one of their official language, but it also serves as lingua franca to have a common language with other ethnic groups such as Chinese, Malays, and Indians. Because of the diverse culture and substrate languages that have been deeply rooted in Singapore, their English forms a unique variety, which is known as Singlish or Singapore Colloquial English (SCE). This paper aims to determine how Mandarin influences Singapore Colloquial English by focusing on Serial Verb Constructions (SVC). To find whether Mandarin’s SVC associates with Singapore Colloquial English’s SCE, the framework of SVC in Mandarin proposed by Li and Thompson (1989) and SVC framework of Singapore Colloquial English by Khoo (2015) are adopted to be cross-compared and analyzed. The result shows that three out of five categories of SVC in Singapore Colloquial English defined by Khoo are aligned with Mandarin. Furthermore, the result reveals Singapore Colloquial English does not fit some criterion of SVC in Mandarin despite the fact that Mandarin is the most dominant substrate language that shapes SCE.

英文不僅是新加坡的官方語言之一，它也是在新加坡作為與其他種族（例如華人，馬來人和印第安人）的通用語言。由於新加坡被多元文化和語言深深影響，它們的英文形成了獨特的方言。這個方言被稱為Singlish（星式英文）或是新加坡式英文（SCE）。本文旨藉由遞繫句（SVC）來探討中文是如何影響新加坡式英文。因此，為了研究中文的SVC是否與新加坡式英文的SVC相關性，本文採取Li and Thompson（1989）提出的中文SVC的框架與Khoo（2015）提出新加坡式英文SVC的框架進行交叉比較和分析。結果表明，新加坡式英文的五類別的SVC中有三類與中文相符。同時，結果顯出儘管中文是主要影響的語言，但新加坡式英文並不符合每個中文SVC規範。