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Bah in Singapore English
Author(s) -
LEIMGRUBER JAKOB R. E.
Publication year - 2016
Publication title -
world englishes
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.6
H-Index - 49
eISSN - 1467-971X
pISSN - 0883-2919
DOI - 10.1111/weng.12175
Subject(s) - linguistics , variety (cybernetics) , malay , mandarin chinese , class (philosophy) , world englishes , sociology , history , computer science , artificial intelligence , philosophy
Colloquial Singapore English (‘Singlish’) is well known, among other features, for its class of discourse particles derived from substrate languages. These particles have been ascribed to various languages, chief among them Southern Min, Malay, and Cantonese. Previous research has also shown this class to be open to newcomers, with Lim (2007) concentrating on particles of Cantonese origin appearing in the 1980s. In this paper, I present evidence of a previously undocumented particle, bah , whose origins are suspected in Mandarin, a variety that has hitherto contributed only little to the grammatical structure of Singlish. Using corpus data complemented by data from online discussion forums, as well as responses to an online survey, the paper describes bah 's pragmatic meanings and the socio‐historical and sociolinguistic reasons for its emergence.