亚洲第二语言型英语口语变体中的There Be结构类型——基于国际英语语料库的比较研究

A Corpus-Based Contrastive Study on There Be Constructions in Outer-Circle Varieties of English in Asia

英语是印度、菲律宾、新加坡、香港等亚洲国家和地区的官方语言之一,在相应区域内扮演着第二语言的角色。长期深入的语言接触使得这些亚洲第二语言型(下简称"二语型")英语产生了诸多异于母语型英语的特征,形成地域性新英语变体。研究选取国际英语语料库(ICE)中新加坡、菲律宾、香港和印度分库中的口语语料作为二语型英语的样本来源,以母语型英语的加拿大分库作为对比参照,对亚洲二语型英语口语变体中there be存在结构的变异类型进行描写和对比,并对变体间差异进行卡方检验。数据显示,相比母语型英语,四个亚洲二语型英语变体的存在结构在语法化进程、主谓单复数一致、后接关系代词、反意疑问句附加部分等方面均出现显著变异。这些变异类型与该地区多语言深度接触的社会生态密切相关,大部分可从底层语言影响得到相应解释。

English serves as an official language and/or second language in several Asian countries and regions （ aka. the Anglophone ＂Outer circle＂ ）. The present study focuses on the syntax of there be constructions in these ＂Outer-circle＂ varieties of English in Asia. To describe and compare the variations of such constructions for a Chi-square test of the inter-variation differences, spoken data were taken from the Interna- tional Corpus of English （ICE）, with the Canadian subcorpus （ICE-CAN） representing the ＂Inner-circle＂ or native variety of English, and the subcorpora of Singapore （ICE-SIN）, Philippine （ICE-PHI）, Hong Kong （ICE-HK） and India （ICE-IND） selected as the sample for Outer-circle Asian Englishes. The results show that significant variations have emerged in the use of there be constructions in these Asian varieties in terms of grammaticalization, the subject-verb （dis）agreement in number, the presence or absence of follow- ing relativizers, the tags in tag questions, etc.. The paper further demonstrates that these variations are largely induced by language contact in the multilingual ecology in these areas and can be accounted for mostly by the influence of local linguistic substrata such as Chinese, Malay and Hindi.