Modality in Contact / Modality in Contact: Necessity and Obligation in New Englishes
- Authors
- Publication Date
- Nov 21, 2023
- Source
- HAL
- Keywords
- Language
- English
- License
- Unknown
- External links
Abstract
The present thesis aims to investigate the development of modality of necessity and strong obligation in “New Englishes”, and especially in Singapore English. The investigation is carried out on two separate dimensions. First, a synchronic cross-dialectal corpus analysis, based on data from The International Corpus of English, aims to describe the distribution of different modal constructions (i.e. must, have to, have got to, gotta, and need to) in four dialects of English (British English, Singapore English, Indian English, and Hong Kong English). Second, a diachronic intra-dialectal corpus analysis, based on Singapore English data from four corpora collected from the 1990s to 2021, investigates, for the first time in the literature, the evolution of the same modal constructions over time.The development of modal verbs in postcolonial territories is studied by testing both the contact grammaticalization approaches and the substratist approaches. It is thus tested whether modal constructions of necessity in New Englishes, and more specifically in Singapore English, are replicating earlier diachronic stages of the English language, its historical parent variety, according to a process known as replica grammaticalization as recapitulation. Additionally, the impact of substrate languages on modal production is explored by considering data collected from a sociolinguistic survey, distributed to target different ethnic groups in Singapore. The innovative combination of corpus and survey data is proposed as a valuable approach to assessing how (and if) different substrate languages influence the production of specific grammatical constructions in a contact variety.This thesis also includes an analysis of the comparative modal better (in the forms had better, ‘d better, and plain better), which has been found to be more grammaticalized in Singapore English than in other world Englishes. The hypothesis of a functional need in Singapore English for deontic better is tested. It is shown why Singapore English “needs” alternative deontic constructions in a modal system where (semi-)modals of necessity (i.e. must, have (got) to, and need to) have been shown to express higher rates of dynamic modality than inner-circle English dialects. Finally, the thesis describes the emergence of the BE having to construction in British English and its lower rate of productivity in postcolonial varieties of English, by testing the hypothesis of “negative retentionism”.By investigating these various modal constructions, the thesis advocates for the introduction of a new “pan-stratist” approach, which posits that a fusion of intricate cognitive principles and the substratum force (or Sub-Force) collectively wield pivotal roles in the dynamics of contact. These factors contribute to contact-induced changes that seem to characterize the evolution of grammatical domains such as that of modality.
