Modality in Contact: Necessity and Obligation in New Englishes
Carmelo Alessandro Basile
Sep 2024 · Language Contact and Bilingualism [LCB] Book 36 · Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
Ebook
300
Pages
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About this ebook
This book explores the evolution of modal constructions of necessity and obligation in New Englishes. Focusing on Singapore English, analysis of corpus data reveals lower levels of grammaticalization compared to its lexifier, British English. This trend is explained through the lenses of a “pan-stratist” model, which considers a spectrum of forces influencing the dynamics of contact. On the one hand, cognitive mechanisms seem to favour the selection of less grammaticalized (and more transparent) variants from the lexifier. On the other hand, the substrate is positioned as a background force, actively contributing to the selection of new material to address functional gaps in the system.
About the author
Carmelo Alessandro Basile, Université Sorbonne Nouvelle and Université Paris Cité, Paris, France.
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