Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of figures and maps
- List of tables
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- List of abbreviations
- 1 Historical background: the shaping of a New English
- 2 Variation in SAIE: a first glimpse
- 3 Syntactic variation: the relative clause
- 4 Word-order principles
- 5 Non-syntactic variation
- 6 Perspectives from second-language acquisition
- 7 Perspectives from pidgin and creole studies
- Appendix A Comparison between SAIE sample and census data for Indians in Natal
- Appendix B Types of relative clauses used by individual speakers
- Appendix C Rank orders for relative clauses, topics and morphology
- Notes
- Sources and references
- Index
Preface
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 03 December 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of figures and maps
- List of tables
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- List of abbreviations
- 1 Historical background: the shaping of a New English
- 2 Variation in SAIE: a first glimpse
- 3 Syntactic variation: the relative clause
- 4 Word-order principles
- 5 Non-syntactic variation
- 6 Perspectives from second-language acquisition
- 7 Perspectives from pidgin and creole studies
- Appendix A Comparison between SAIE sample and census data for Indians in Natal
- Appendix B Types of relative clauses used by individual speakers
- Appendix C Rank orders for relative clauses, topics and morphology
- Notes
- Sources and references
- Index
Summary
This is the first study of the syntax of South African Indian English, as spoken in its natural home and neighbourhood surroundings. It is my belief that language study of this sort cannot be divorced from a historical and social context. Earlier studies of the dialect and prescriptive judgements by educators suffer in this regard. Unlike most earlier commentators, I do not believe that the dialect is deficient in any way. It is as systematic and logical as any other. If it has evolved many rules of its own, we must seek to understand the nature of these rules and establish the reason for their existence, rather than condemning them by some simplistic comparisons with the formal norms of upper-middle-class speech and writing. This work is both an attempt at understanding and a celebration of those rules, many of which turn out to co-exist in (new and old) English dialects all over the world.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- English in Language ShiftThe History, Structure and Sociolinguistics of South African Indian English, pp. xviiPublisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1993