Chapter 3 Notes – The Emergence of New Englishes

New Englishes and Theories of Language Genesis

Historical context & contact:
- New Englishes (NEs) emerged through colonial contact between English and indigenous languages worldwide, often in situations of power imbalance. These varieties are not simply errors but systematically different linguistic systems.
- Two principal theoretical accounts explain their genesis:
- Substratist Hypothesis
  - Posits that the structural shape of NEs is primarily determined by the grammatical and phonological features of the substrate (local) language(s).
  - Features like word order, semantic extensions, or pragmatic particles from indigenous languages are thought to be transferred or re-interpreted into the new English variety.
- Language Bioprogramme Hypothesis (LBH)
  - Argues that new codes, particularly in conditions of rapid pidgin/creole formation or intense language contact, arise from Universal Grammar (UG), which is the innate human genetic blueprint for language.
  - Under the LBH, the human mind constructs language based on inherent principles when input is inconsistent or limited, leading to systematic, rule-governed systems.
Complementarity, not rivalry:
- Rather than being mutually exclusive, evidence suggests that both hypotheses contribute to the formation of NEs, and are best seen as complementary.
- UG is always accessible, either directly or indirectly through both substrate and superstrate (English) languages. Accessing substrate settings to influence NEs is still a manifestation of UG in action.

Human Agency in Code-Creation

People, not abstract codes, meet and innovate.
Language creation is an active process driven by speakers’ goals for effective, self-empowering communication within their unique socio-historical realities.
Linguists’ abstract models (substratist, LBH) are useful tools for analysis but deliberately detach from the fluid, lived experience of language use.
Analogy: Just as astronomers’ heliocentric model simplifies and explains planetary motion by abstracting from everyday perception, linguistic theories similarly abstract from the complex social interactions of language actors.
Nevertheless, while UG provides the foundational cognitive resources for language acquisition and creation, it does not act as a deterministic strait-jacket; human creativity, innovation, and adaptation remain central to language development (a concept rooted in Chomskyan linguistics).

Socio-historical Paradox & Empowerment

Colonizers imposed English, asserting proprietorship and controlling its norms (primarily through educational institutions and official discourse).
Despite this initial dispossession of linguistic autonomy, local users actively fashioned enabling codes that satisfied their evolving semantic, interactional, and pragmatic needs within their communities.
Interaction soon extended beyond the direct colonizer–colonized interface, expanding into intra-community communication, which significantly amplified the local adaptation and innovation of English.
Resources exploited for development of NEs were multifaceted:
- Superstrate structures: Features directly inherited from the colonial English.
- Substrate structures: Elements influenced by the indigenous languages of the area.
- UG potentials: Innate human linguistic capacities that guide language formation.
- Contextual realities: The specific social, cultural, and communicative needs of the local communities.
Evidence of this multi-source input pervades the lexical, syntactic, and pragmatic features of New Englishes.

‘Deviationist’ Accounts & Their Limits

Mainstream descriptors like “deviation,” “interference,” “transfer,” and “simplification” were commonly used to describe features of NEs.
These terms inherently presupposed Standard Older English (SOE), typically British or American English, as the sole legitimate target norm for all English varieties.
Consequence: Features unique to NEs were often framed as inherent errors or imperfections stemming from substrate language intrusion or incomplete learning.
This perpetuated the continuous positioning of NE users as perpetual “non-native” speakers, implying a permanent linguistic deficit.
Prator (1968), for example, explicitly viewed NE codes as evidence of imperfect learning and fossilization of errors among second language learners.
Kachru’s attempt to rehabilitate these alleged deviations aimed to legitimize NEs:
- He distinguished between mistakes (random errors) and deviations (systematic, rule-governed features that are contextually justified within the NE).
- Yet, in his early work, he still implicitly adopted British English as an idealized norm, stating that there were “strong reasons” for treating British English as the norm against which Indian English should be described.
- Görlach (1988) criticized this, arguing that such an approach risked normalizing what he considered to be grammatical deviance rather than affirming autonomous linguistic systems.

The Cline of Bilingualism (Kachru)

Scale of proficiency for bilinguals in English in multilingual Anglophone settings:
- At one theoretical end is a “monolingual” individual with $0\%$ English proficiency and $100\%$ indigenous language proficiency.
- At the other end is an “ambilingual” individual, theoretically $100\%$ proficient in both English and an indigenous language (a state often considered rare or practically impossible).
- Standard New English users were typically placed around $50{-}75\%$ competence on this continuum, suggesting they were proficient but not fully “native-like” in a traditional sense.
Critiques of the Cline model:
- Includes non-proficient usage: This approach tends to include a wide range of usage, including learner errors, in the definition of a variety. However, varieties should ideally be characterized by the output of their competent users, a principle upheld in sociolinguistics (e.g., Labovian principle).
- Confuses variety development (phylogeny) with individual acquisition (ontogeny): The model conflates the historical evolution of a language variety across a community (phylogeny) with how an individual child or learner acquires that language (ontogeny).
- Assumes every learner must reenact cross-linguistic negotiations: It implies that each new learner of a NE would need to re-negotiate features from substrate languages, ignoring the natural transmission of already arrived, stable codes (e.g., Gupta 1994 demonstrated how children acquire Colloquial Singapore English directly at home).
- Treats bilingual competence as an additive sum of two monolingual norms: This misrepresents the complex, creative nature of bilingualism, where mixed norms and innovative code-switching often define the linguistic landscape rather than a simple combination of two separate, complete systems.

Fulguration: Creative Fusion

Definition (Kandiah 1987): Fulguration refers to the spontaneous fusion of superstrate and substrate features into new, organic, and rule-governed linguistic elements. Crucially, the semantic and grammatical values of these new elements cannot be traced linearly or reductively back to either source language alone; they possess emergent properties.
Example 1 – Lankan English ‘uncle’
- This term denotes the standard English sense of a paternal or maternal brother and extends to encompass multiple culturally specific male relatives or elder male acquaintances who are not necessarily kin. This expanded semantic range is not directly inherited from British English or a single indigenous term.
- It accepts a wide range of pre- and post-modifiers, such as “those two silly uncles wearing thick specs,” demonstrating its integration into native syntactic patterns.
- It gains humorous, affectionate, or respectful overtones depending on context, which are emergent properties largely absent from both British English ‘uncle’ and direct indigenous equivalents, showcasing its unique pragmatic and social values within Lankan English.
Example 2 – Singapore English ‘cheem’ (from Hokkien 鉴)
- This adjective, derived from the Hokkien word for ‘profound’ or ‘deep,’ primarily means “deep/profound” but often carries an ironic or dismissive connotation in Singapore English (‘too profound to understand,’ ‘pretentious’).
- It distributes syntactically like other Singapore English adjectives: “very cheem books,” “the lecture very cheem.”
- It allows for morphological innovations, forming comparative/superlative forms (cheemer, cheemest) and a noun cheemness, which are not present in original Hokkien.\
- It also innovates a derived noun cheemology /cheeminology, which is often used exclamatorily to comment on intellectual pretension.
- Significantly, its literal sense “physically deep” is blocked in Singapore English; one cannot say $*$ “The drain is very cheem,” demonstrating a distinct semantic specialization within the new system.
Implication: These examples illustrate that NE systems are truly autonomous, not mere mosaics of passively ‘borrowed’ or ‘transferred’ parts. They generate their own internal rules and meanings.

Autonomous, Rule-Governed Systems

NE structures display internal regularity and consistency, with shared communal judgments of grammaticality among their speakers.
They cannot be exhaustively or adequately described solely via references to superstrate or substrate languages, as their distinct features transcend mere combinations.
While comparative discussion of differences between NEs and Older English varieties is a rhetorical convenience for linguistic analysis, it is not a denial of the inherent linguistic autonomy and systematicity of NEs.

Two Challenges to Autonomy Claim

Problem 1 – Shared Surface Features
- The apparent identity of a word form (e.g., the word bring in Singapore English vs. Standard British English) can misleadingly suggest a lack of autonomy.
- Firthian ‘system’ notion: Meaning and value in language derive from the contrastive relations a word has within its own specific linguistic system. Therefore, even if the form is the same, if its network of relations or contextual use differs, it is functionally a distinct element.
- Example: bring in Singapore English (demonstrated in examples 9 & 10) contrasts with take differently from British English. It lacks the strict “motion towards the speaker” constraint often found in British English, being used more broadly for transfer of objects, regardless of speaker's location relative to the destination. This shows a distinct system despite surface similarity.
Problem 2 – Substrate Overlap vs. Transfer
- Shared structures or communicative strategies between NEs and their substrate languages are better explained as speakers’ preferred communicative modes shaped by cultural attitudes, rather than mechanical grammatical transfer.
- Deletion/Ellipsis strategy: Many NEs, like Singapore English, frequently employ extensive deletion or ellipsis of explicit grammatical elements, making utterances highly reliant on context and shared knowledge.
- Utterance (11) “Why so slow one? Wait, got no more, then you know.” This overtly violates SOE deletion rules, but it relies on the hearer’s inference within a communal context that values non-explicitness, shared understanding, and indirect communication.
- This same communicative strategy (valuing implicitness, relying on context) appears in both NEs and many substrate languages. It reflects a pervasive cultural communicative propensity rather than a direct, rule-for-rule grammatical transfer.

Speech Communities & Transmission

Normal transmission of NEs occurs primarily through home and community interactions, supplemented by classroom input, leading to the formation of stable speech communities.
Competent members of these communities share:
- Linguistic competence: A shared mastery of the grammar, lexicon, and phonology of their specific NE variety.
- Communicative competence: The ability for situationally appropriate language usage across various registers and social contexts.
Functional versatility of NEs greatly increased post-independence, as their domains widened beyond the restrictive colonial spheres of “offices, drawing rooms & clubs” to encompass all aspects of public and private life, including government, media, arts, and everyday discourse.
Early critiques (e.g., Gunatilleke 1954: “language without metaphor”; de Souza 1969) are now outdated, as the lexicon and metaphorical reach of NEs have vastly expanded, demonstrating their dynamism and expressive power.

Variability: Beyond Lectal Continuum

Traditional continuum model (basilect–mesolect–acrolect), often adopted from creole studies, describes language variation along a scale.
- It typically places the acrolect (most prestigious variety) closest to Standard Older English (SOE), while the basilect (most divergent variety) is deemed creole-like and sometimes implicitly labeled as ‘wrong’ or ‘deviant.’
Issues with this model when applied to NEs:
- NE genesis differs: Many NEs did not emerge from a pidgin precursor but rather from formal education and bi-directional transmission, making the creole-centric continuum less applicable.
- Arbitrary feature lists: The model often relies on arbitrary lists of features, making it difficult to establish principled cut-offs between different ‘lects’ along the continuum.
- Superstrate standard external to NE norms: The ultimate target norm for NE users is often their locally developed standard, not an external SOE, making comparisons to SOE less relevant for internal description.
Alternative view: Many NEs are better understood as exhibiting a diglossic-like split between a Standard NE (often labeled ‘High’) and a Colloquial NE (often labeled ‘Low’), each of which is internally rule-governed and stable.

Diglossia in NEs

Diglossia in NEs involves distinct High vs. Low distinctions:
- High variety: Associated with prestige, formal schooling, and formal domains such as official communication, academic writing, and broadcast news.
- Low variety: Used in everyday, informal spoken contexts and creative writing; notably, it shares its orthography with the High variety, which differs from classic diglossia definitions (e.g., Arabic).
Boundaries between High and Low are fluid; speakers often code-switch according to participant relations, formality levels, and communicative purpose (Gupta 1994), demonstrating dynamic linguistic competence.
Example of Low variety innovation: the use of friend as a verb, as in “I won’t friend you” (meaning ‘I won’t be friends with you’ or ‘I won’t add you as a friend on social media’). This innovative verb usage highlights the creative capacity of the Low variety.
Singapore English complexity: Singapore English exhibits multiple Low subvarieties, including educated colloquial English and more restricted-domain Low varieties used by hawkers, taxi drivers, etc.
- Innovations like particles such as hor (example 15: “The mee you want hor, no more already”; example 16: “Angeline, my sister hor, she won the car”) mark focus, relative clauses, or seeking confirmation, and are integral to the Low varieties’ grammar.

Proficiency vs. Variety Definition

The non-proficient English use by some community members (e.g., learners making errors) should not be used to define the core structure and characteristics of a language variety.
However, competent users of restricted-sphere varieties (e.g., transactional Low speakers who only use English for specific practical purposes) are legitimate community members whose usage contributes to the overall spectrum of the variety.

Rethinking ‘Native User’

The traditional notion of a ‘native user’ often equates nativeness with ancestral lineage and monolingual ownership, typically reserving the title for speakers of Inner Circle Englishes (e.g., British, American English).
However, NE users fulfill crucial functional criteria of nativeness:
- They are the ultimate arbiters of grammatical acceptability within their specific NE variety, determining what sounds ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ internally.
- They actively innovate and reshape the code to effectively meet their local communicative goals, demonstrating dynamic ownership.
- They exhibit the highest proficiency in their own system; outsiders (even native speakers of SOE) cannot outperform them in the nuanced, contextually appropriate use of their particular NE.
- Importantly, NE users are often bilingual, demonstrating that monolingualism is not a prerequisite for authentic nativeness or full linguistic competence.

Identity & Voice

NE codes are not just linguistic systems but also powerful vehicles that encode and express hybrid cultural experiences, which can sometimes be in tension (reflecting colonial legacies) and at other times complementary (blending local traditions with global influences).
They provide essential tools for self-representation, acts of resistance against linguistic hegemony, creative expression in literature and arts, and effective participation in global discourse.
NEs are essential in countering linguistic hegemony (the dominance of one language variety over others), as they permit the global use of English without requiring speakers to surrender their unique local identities (Parakrama 1995; Kandiah 1995), thereby promoting linguistic diversity and cultural preservation.

Key Numerical / Statistical References

The cline of bilingualism posits theoretical ends of “ $100\%$ indigenous / $0\%$ English” and vice-versa.
NE proficient users were estimated at $50{-}75\%$ English competence on Kachru’s original proficiency scale (though this scale faces significant critiques).

Representative Example Sentences

$*$ Along the man was running the road? (This ungrammatical formation demonstrates impossible question formation under Universal Grammar constraints, highlighting what is not allowed in a typical English system.)
The man was running along the road. (A grammatically correct sentence in Standard English.)
Some very cheem books (can be) found there. (Singapore English: ‘Some very profound/pretentious books’)
Aiyah, lecture very cheem, what. (Singapore English: ‘Oh my, the lecture is very profound/difficult, isn’t it?’)
$*$ The drain is very cheem. (Ungrammatical in Singapore English; ‘cheem’ is not used for physical depth.)
$*$ The lecturer stated it cheemly. (Ungrammatical; ‘cheemly’ is not a valid adverbial form in Singapore English for this meaning.)
He stated it deeply/profoundly. (Standard English equivalent of the intended meaning in example 6/8.)
$*$ He does not like cheem(in)ology. (This phrase reflects a unique noun coinage in Singapore English, often used exclamatorily.)
You wait quietly in bed … and I’ll bring you to England next year. (Lankan English: illustrates a broader use of ‘bring’ not restricted to motion towards the speaker.)
… and I bring you expensive toy, right? (Lankan/Singapore English: another example of the broader ‘bring’ use.)
Why so slow one? Wait, got no more, then you know. (Singapore English: demonstrates extensive ellipsis and reliance on shared context, a common communicative strategy in NEs.)
That was a ridiculously deep lecture, right? (Standard English paraphrase of Singapore English cheem in example 4.)
I won’t friend you. (Singapore English: innovative use of ‘friend’ as a verb.)
You want what? Tomorrow-eating banana or today-eating banana? (Illustrates a distinctive NE syntactic pattern, possibly involving nominalization or compound formation.)
The mee you want hor, no more already. (Singapore English: use of particle ‘hor’ for emphasis/interrogation/relative clause marking.)
Angeline, my sister hor, she won the car. (Singapore English: use of particle ‘hor’ within a sentence to highlight information or topic.)