Hypothetical Modality
Grammaticalisation in an L2 dialect
- Author(s): Debra Ziegeler 1
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View Affiliations Hide AffiliationsAffiliations:1 National Tsing Hua University, Taiwan
- Format: PDF
- Publication Date July 2000
- e-Book ISBN: 9789027298713
- DOI: https://doi.org/10.1075/slcs.51
This book marks a new development in the field of grammaticalisation studies, in that it extends the field of grammaticalisation studies from relatively homogeneous languages to those possessing well-established and institutionalised second language varieties. In Hypothetical Modality, special reference is made to Singaporean English, a native-speaker L2 dialect of considerable importance in the South-East Asian region, and to the expression in the dialect of hypothetical modality, which appears to be indistinguishable from non-hypothetical modality in terms of the use of preterite or past forms of modal verbs. Within a grammaticalisation
framework, a number of factors can be seen to be relevant to an explanation, including substratum and contact features such as tense/aspect marking, levels of lexical retention as an individual (psychological) phenomenon, and the fact that such dialects have a discontinuity in their development. In addition, the book defines pragmatic approaches to the understanding of hypothetical modality, in both diachronic and synchronic terms.
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