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The study aims to work towards a diachronic reconstruction of pragmatic particles in Colloquial Singapore English (CSE, also known as “Singlish”) by exploiting an unused historical data source: The Oral History Interviews held by the National Archives of Singapore (OHI-NAS). We investigate the distribution of five pragmatic particles (ah, lah, leh, lor, and meh) in 101 interviews conducted between 1979 and 2009 in speakers born between 1899 and 1983. Lim (2007) reconstructs the origin of these particles in different substrate languages, with the first two particles (ah and lah) being traceable to earlier Bazaar Malay and/or Hokkien, while the latter three (leh, lor, and meh) are of later Cantonese origin. The results of the present study show that ah and lah are the most frequent particles attested earliest. Their frequency of use increases over time, being additionally contingent on the gender and age of the speakers, their educational level, and their ethnic background. The particles ah and lah are mostly used in assertive contexts.

English as a global lingua franca interacts with other languages across a wide range of multilingual contexts. Combining insights from linguistics, education studies, and psychology, this book addresses the role of English within the current linguistic dynamics of globalization. It takes Singapore, Hong Kong, and Dubai as case studies to illustrate the use of English in different multilingual urban areas, arguing that these are places where competing historical assessments, and ideological conceptions of monolingualism and multilingualism, are being acted out most forcefully. It critically appraises the controversial concept of multilingual advantages, and studies multilingual cross-linguistic influence in relation to learning English in bilingual heritage contexts. It also scrutinises multilingual language policies in their impact on attitudes, identities, and investment into languages. Engaging and accessible, it is essential reading for academic researchers and advanced students of bi- and multilingualism, globalization, linguistic diversity, World Englishes, sociolinguistics, and second/third language acquisition.

Foreign language learners frequently use words from their previously acquired language(s) in the target language, especially if these languages are related (Ringbom, Håkan. 2001. Lexical transfer in L3 production. In Jasone Cenoz, Britta Hufeisen & Ulrike Jessner (eds.), Cross-linguistic influence in third language acquisition: Psycholinguistic perspectives, 59–68. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters). Such insertions are referred to as ‘lexical transfer’, commonly divided into ‘transfer of form’ and ‘transfer of meaning’ (Bardel, Camilla. 2015. Lexical cross-linguistic influence in third language development. In Hagen Peukert (ed.), Transfer effects in multilingual language development, 111–128. Amsterdam: John Benjamins; Ringbom, Håkan. 2001. Lexical transfer in L3 production. In Jasone Cenoz, Britta Hufeisen & Ulrike Jessner (eds.), Cross-linguistic influence in third language acquisition: Psycholinguistic perspectives, 59–68. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters). Lexical transfer challenges the monolingual habitus prevailing in foreign language classes which requires students to rely exclusively on the target language and inhibit other influences. Thus, in such English classes, students should avoid the use of different languages and ideally only produce monolingual English output. In this context, the current study investigates the use of lexical transfer instances in short English texts written by bilingual (Russian/Turkish-German) and monolingual (German) secondary school students (initially attending year 7) from a longitudinal perspective. It assesses i) whether the students increasingly adhere to the imposed normative rules and ii) what influence background variables such as language background (mono- vs. bilingual), type of school (higher vs. lower academic track), gender (female vs. male), or age (four measurement points over a period of 2.5 years) exert on the use of lexical transfer instances. Apart from gender, all factors impact lexical transfer in a statistically significant way, evoking different norm-based explanations.

This study investigates whether English in instructed settings is more successfully acquired by learners who are already bilingual in comparison to those with a monolingual background. There remains substantial controversy regarding potential advantages of bilingual speakers in their acquisition of additional languages, especially in heritage speaker contexts. We here contribute to this discussion by analysing the English C-test results of 1,718 bilingual and monolingual students of grades 7 and 9, sampled in schools across Germany. The bilingual students speak either Russian or Turkish (heritage language) and German (majority language). The monolingual control group was raised in German only. The main predictor variables are reading fluency and comprehension in German and the heritage languages. Additional predictor variables include school type, school year, socioeconomic status, cognitive ability, amongst others. Using correlation and regression analyses we test if reading fluency and comprehension impact proficiency in English and if bilingual students enjoy advantages over their monolingual German peers. The results reveal no systematic advantage of bilingual students, although we find significant correlations between reading fluency and comprehension and C-test results. School type, cognitive skills, among others, are predictors for English performance, whereas socioeconomic status returns no significant effect.

This study investigates the relationship between (extra)linguistic variables and proficiency in a foreign language. Based on 1,403 secondary school students in Germany (age 12/13 and 14/15), we assess whether proficiency in German, if applicable also Russian or Turkish, cognitive ability, school type, gender, socio-economic status, self-concept, motivation, and self-assessment function differently in predicting English language proficiency when monolingual German learners of English (n = 849) are compared to their bilingual peers (Russian-German:n = 236; Turkish-German:n = 318). Two comprehensive structural equation models capture the multitude of factors influencing foreign language acquisition and contribute to the discussion on multilingual advantages or effects. The results reveal that most variables are statistically significant, but the models function comparably across the three language groups with only minor contrasts regarding effect sizes. We submit that the three language groups are more similar than different and that the heritage languages Russian and Turkish add comparatively little to predicting English language proficiency.

The last decades have seen the active embracement of classroom multilingualism in educational settings. The relevance of this study is justified by the increasing cultural and linguistic diversity in Western societies, the high demand for teachers who understand the value of multilingualism, have deep knowledge of multilingual language practices, are able and willing to provide an appropriate learning environment for language learners. The main objective of the study is to investigate the pre-service language teachers’ beliefs about crosslinguistic pedagogy, code-switching, and codemixing as the leading examples of this pedagogy in educational settings. An online questionnaire was shared among teacher candidates (n=20) enrolled in teacher education programs at the University of Hamburg. The respondents were asked to answer the questions concerning their background and to mark on a Likert scale whether they agreed with the statements provided to them or would find the implementation of certain methodology useful. The findings suggest positive attitudes towards multilingualism and a high level of awareness regarding the importance of previously acquired languages for subsequent language teaching and learning. However, some discrepancies between knowledge, beliefs, and practice are indicated. The results allow us to conclude that target-language-only use in language classes is still a highly desirable goal for pre-service language teachers. Some possible implications for curriculum development arising from the study are discussed.

The current study adds to research investigating the influence of bilingualism on third language (L3) acquisition, more specifically the assumption that the two previously acquired languages enhance the acquisition of an additional language. We here rely on data from 1,409 bilingual (Russian-/Turkish-German) and monolingual (German) students of grades seven and nine, sampled in schools across Germany. The relevant literature yields mixed and controversial results regarding bilingual advantages, yet it also suggests that L3 acquisition is a multidimensional process potentially affected by various linguistic and extra-linguistic factors. Thus, we examine the relationship between English proficiency (L2 or L3), reading comprehension in German and the heritage languages Turkish and Russian along with cognitive ability and socio-economic status by using several multi-group path analyses, a type of structural equation modelling. The proposed structural equation model of English proficiency can be successfully fitted for all participants investigated, i.e. for both the monolingual and bilingual learners, with the exception of the Turkish-German group when analyzed separately. Overall, the results do not suggest any obvious bilingual facilitation effects or general differences across the learner groups, yet minor differences between the monolingual and bilingual groups in various componential relationships are detected.

This chapter discusses non-standard grammatical features of regional varieties of English in relation to their Standard English functional equivalents. It pursues a cross-linguistic typological approach in the classification and interpretation of these features. This approach helps to reveal the often highly systematic relationship between standard and non-standard variants as well as the universal basis of the underlying cognitive principles. Illustration is drawn from reflexive marking, pronominal gender and case, tense and aspect, negation and negative concord, subject–verb agreement, and clause structure, which here includes ditransitive constructions, embedded inversion, and the formation of relative clauses.

Aims and objectives:The main objective of this study is to find evidence for the Linguistic Proximity Model, which allows for facilitative and non-facilitative cross-linguistic influence (CLI) from all previously known languages in third language (L3) acquisition. We target CLI in L3 English based on bilingual heritage speakers (Russian-German and Turkish-German) in comparison with second language acquisition of monolingual German speakers.Methodology:We examine the outcome of an English word order test. The participants produced sentences based on randomly ordered words. The focus of this study is the placement of direct and indirect pronominal objects with varying ditransitive verbs.Data analysis:195 students in school years 7 and 9, separated into three language groups, participated in the study: German monolinguals ( nG7= 47; nG9= 64), Russian-German bilinguals ( nR7= 19; nR9= 30) and Turkish-German bilinguals ( nT7= 19; nT9= 16). The placement of pronominal objects in the sentence task is compared to results from equivalent word order tests in English, German, Russian and Turkish that were repeated with native speakers.Findings:We find some support for the Linguistic Proximity Model because the outcome shows that facilitative and non-facilitative CLI is possible from both the heritage language and the majority language. Determining factors are the background languages, the age of the participants and frequency. However, the majority language, German, displays the strongest influence of both background languages due to its dominant status.Originality:This study provides further support for the Linguistic Proximity Model, by using a sentence completion task with unbalanced bilingual heritage speakers.Significance/implications:We provide evidence for showing that both facilitative and non-facilitative influence from all previously known languages of bilingual heritage speakers is possible and verifiable. We therefore add to the field of L3 acquisition and the discussion about current models of CLI.

Singapore has received a large amount of scholarly interest with regards to the structural and sociolinguistic properties of its local variety of English. In contrast, there is comparatively less empirical data on individual linguistic repertoires and usage patterns. Building on previous research into the linguistic and sociological background of young Singaporean adults, our study examines 450 students recruited from three distinct educational institutions: a university, polytechnics, and vocational training schools. A detailed language background questionnaire reveals the degree of multilingualism, patterns of language use, as well as language attitudes towards different languages. We find important differences between the three student cohorts examined here and are able to relate them to their social and ethnic backgrounds.

Communicative interaction may be conceived of as a give and take of information that partners in conversation assign a value to and track carefully. The social value of information gives rise to a complicated microeconomic system in the sense of Levinson (2012) in which asking for information is associated with social costs that speakers try to minimize. Such a social economic model of communication makes two predictions, namely that asking questions should be generally avoided in conversation and that content questions are less likely to be used than yes–no questions, since the former ask for more substantial information. These predictions are tested based on a sample of 4108 tokens of interrogative clauses taken from the International Corpus of English , British Component , that encode various direct and indirect questions. The data offer support for Levinson's model, as polar interrogatives outnumber constituent interrogatives in both direct and indirect uses, especially in the spoken registers. I offer an explanation for the high number of polar interrogatives in indirect uses and also try to motivate the highly skewed distribution of interrogative words using the social economics of questions. There remain problems, though, since the predicted large proportion of tag questions is not supported by the data.

The aim of this paper is to look for differences between second language and third language acquisition and to assess the notion of multilingual advantages. We investigate the use of the progressive aspect in a written picture description task by 209 school-aged monolingual and bilingual learners of English. The results point to the possibility of cross-linguistic influence from both previously acquired languages in third language acquisition, since production patterns could be identified that can be explained with transfer from the majority language German and the heritage languages Russian, Turkish and Vietnamese. The study does not support a general multilingual advantage that would result in an overall more target-like performance of the bilingual participants in comparison with the monolingual learners; yet, individual benefits from the heritage languages could be revealed. Knowledge of previously acquired languages—besides other influencing factors such as social status, educational opportunities and intelligence—shapes the acquisition of other languages.

In the present study, I investigate the grammar and usage of English exclamative clauses of the typeWhat a wonderful journey this is!andHow wonderful this journey is!Building on existing research, I argue that the exclamative clause type can be motivated both syntactically and semantically/pragmatically. In the main part of my study, I offer a usage-based analysis of English exclamative clauses drawing on data from theBritish National Corpusand theInternational Corpus of English, British Component. I consider 703 tokens ofwhat-exclamatives and 645 tokens ofhow-exclamatives. My analysis reveals that English exclamatives typically occur in reduced form lacking an overt verbal predicate, i.e.What a wonderful journey!orHow wonderful!I provide an explanation for the predominance of reduced forms based on the semantico-pragmatic properties of exclamations. Moreover, I argue that the usage properties of exclamatives render it a marginal clause type, as it is highly infrequent and predominantly appears in non-clausal forms. Usage data point to a cline of clause types as the more appropriate approximation of reality instead of the familiar distinction between major and minor clause types.

The focus of research on Singapore English has traditionally been on its structural features, while the relationship between English and other official languages of the Republic within the individual speaker has attracted much less interest, and comparatively little empirical data exist on the actual linguistic ecology of individual Singaporeans. The present study explores the results of detailed language background questionnaires eliciting the linguistic and sociological background of 300 Singaporean university and polytechnic students. The questionnaires assess not only how many languages a speaker is proficient in, but also when and how they acquired each language, how often and in which contexts speakers make use of which language, as well as their attitudes to different languages. The data depict a fine-grained picture of language use among Singaporean students that challenges the notion of the typical multilingual Singaporean. On the whole, students exhibit bilingual or trilingual identities and report positive attitudes towards both English and their respective mother tongue. Attitudes towards Singapore Colloquial English (Singlish) are also generally positive, especially among university students, as Singlish evidently continues to serve as an important marker of Singaporean identity.

Present-Day English is generally assumed to possess only a handful of lexicalized reflexive verbs (absent oneself from, pride oneself on, etc.) and to use reflexive pronouns neither for the marking of motion middles nor the derivation of anticausative (decausative) verbs. Such middle uses of reflexive markers (non-argument reflexives) are widespread in other European languages. Based on corpus evidence, Geniušienė (1987), Peitsara (1997) and Siemund (2010) demonstrate that English reflexive pronouns do occur in these functions and offer extensive lists of the verbs involved. I here follow up the historical development of these verbs from Middle English to Present-Day English. My analysis is based on a survey of the relevant verb entries in the Oxford English Dictionary (222 verbs), complemented by an examination of the OED quotation base. My study shows that the number of reflexive verbs in English has gradually, but steadily, increased since the emergence of complex reflexives (myself, yourself, etc.) in Middle English. They often result from lexicalization processes, but the data also show more regular patterns indicative of grammatical processes. The Oxford English Dictionary proves to be a rich and highly valuable data source for carrying out serious grammatical analyses.

In our contribution, we discuss language variation observed in the field of World Englishes from the perspective of language typology and universals research. The major motivation behind this approach is the assumption that, as contained linguistic systems, varieties are constrained by essentially the same mechanisms as languages. Taking the idea of cross-linguistic, and in that sense universal, generalizations as a starting point, we proceed to discussing patterns of variation in different Englishes encountered worldwide. In so doing, we draw on the concepts of markedness relations, frequency, semantic maps, and implicational hierarchies, feature bundles, and complexity, offering possible (and plausible) explanations for the patterns of forms encountered in language data. Our contribution also includes an assessment of angloversals and vernacular universals, as these are generalizations specifically related to World Englishes. We conclude our study with a discussion of postcolonial Englishes in relation to language contact, second language acquisition, and contact-induced grammaticalization.

Bi- and multilingualism has been shown to have positive effects on the attainment of third and additional languages. These effects, however, depend on the type of bi- and multilingualism and the status of the languages involved (Cenoz, 2003; Jessner, 2006). In this exploratory trend study, we revisit Cummins' Threshold Hypothesis (1979), claiming that bilingual children must reach certain levels of attainment in order to (a) avoid academic deficits and (b) allow bilingualism to have a positive effect on their cognitive development and academic attainment. To this end, we examine the attainment of English as an academic language of 16-years-old school children from Hamburg (n = 52). Our findings support the existence of thresholds for literacy attainment. We argue that language external factors may override positive effects of bilingualism. In addition, these factors may compensate negative effects attributable to low literacy attainment in German and the heritage languages. We also show that low attainment levels in migrant children's heritage languages preempt high literacy attainment in additional languages.

SUMMARY Based on some well-established insights into the historical development of English and on a broad typological survey of the relevant domain, an analysis of the development of reflexive anaphors is provided, which raises and answers a number of new questions. The traditional assumption that reflexive anaphors in English developed as a result of combining personal pronouns with the intensifier self is put on solid foundations by a semantic analysis of intensifiers which makes such a development plausible. We argue that the development of complex reflexives in English is also semantically motivated insofar as it started in the context of “unexpected co-reference”, i.e. in the object position of other-directed predicates. The further propagation of this development is in complete harmony with some well-known typological hierarchies: 3rd person > 1st/2nd person; direct object > indirect object; argument > adjunct. Our analysis, which assigns the central role in the development and renovation of reflexive anaphors to intensifiers, also throws some interesting light on the form, meaning and distribution of anaphors, intensifiers and so-called ‘locally-free reflexives’ in Modern English, as well as on some theoretical controversies. RÉSUMÉ Nous allons tenter une analyse de l’évolution historique des pronoms réfléchis en anglais sur la base de quelques faits historiques connus ainsi que sur celle d’une vaste enquête typologique dans le domaine en question. Dans le cadre de cette analyse des questions d’un genre nouveau seront posées auxquelles nous allons essayer de répondre. L’opinion fréquemment énoncée selon laquelle les pronoms réfléchis se développeraient à partir d’une fusion de pronoms personnels et d’intensificateurs (ae. self) reçoit une base solide par une analyse sémantique des intensificateurs qui rend plausible une telle évolution. Le développement des pronoms réfléchis complexes en anglais est motivé selon nous sémantiquement entre autres par le fait que l’on observe ce phénomène d’abord dans le contexte d’une ‘co-référence inattendue’, c’est-à-dire dans les positions d’objets de ‘außengerichteter Prädikate’. La propagation ultérieure de cette innovation correspond aux prévisions d’hiérarchies typologiques connues: 3e pers. > 1ère/2e pers.; c.o.d. > c.o.i.; actant > circonstant. Notre analyse, qui attribue le rôle principal aux intensificateurs quant au développement et à l’innovation de la réfléxivité, jette une lumière différente sur quelques controverses théoriques ainsi que sur les propriétés des pronoms réfléchis, les intensificateurs et les soi-disant pronoms ‘réfléchis localement libres’ (réfléchis indirect). ZUSAMMENFASSUNG Auf der Grundlage von bekannten historischen Fakten sowie einer breit angelegten typologischen Bestandsaufnahme in dem relevanten Bereich wird eine Analyse der historischen Entwicklung von Reflexivpronomina im Englischen entwickelt, die neue Fragen stellt und beantwortet. Die häufig geäußerte Auffassung, daß sich Reflexiva durch eine Fusion von Personalpronomina und Intensifikatoren (dt. selbst; ae. self) entwickelten, erhält eine solide Fundierung durch eine semantische Analyse von Intensifikatoren, die eine solche Entwicklung plausibel macht. Die Entwicklung von komplexen Reflexiva im Englischen ist unserer Auffassung nach auch insofern semantisch motiviert, als zunächst im Kontext von “unerwarteter Ko-referenz”, d.h. in Objektpositionen von außengerichteten Prädikaten zu beobachten ist. Die weitere Verbreitung dieser Innovation entspricht den Voraussagen von bekannten typologischen Hierarchien: 3. Person > 1./2. Person; direktes Objekt > indirektes Objekt; Argument > Adjunkt. Unsere Analyse, die den Intensifikatoren die zentrale Rolle in der Entwicklung und Erneuerung von Reflexivität zuweist, wirft auch neues Licht auf die Eigenschaften von Reflexipronomina, Intensifikatoren und die sog. ‘lokal freien Reflexiva’ im heutigen Englisch, ebenso wie auf einige theoretische Kontroversen.

The article discusses the distribution and meaning of ‘locally free reflexives’ (‘untriggered reflexives’, ‘viewpoint reflexives’, ‘perspective logophors’) in English. After a thorough assessment of the contextual constraints on the use of such locally free self-forms, three analyses are discussed and compared: (a) the view that such self-forms are bound by a minimal subject of consciousness within their discourse (Zribi-Hertz, 1989); (b) the view that the relevant forms exhibit essentially the same distribution as pronouns and that the choice between the two is motivated by discourse considerations (Reinhart & Reuland, 1993); and (c) the view that locally free self-forms are intensifiers without pronominal heads (Baker, 1995). It is shown that the third analysis is by far the most adequate one, and that both the distribution and the meaning of such expressions can be explained on the basis of this analysis if it is combined with a suitable semantic analysis of intensifiers.

1. Introducing a new series 2. Multilingualism, language contact, and urban areas: An introduction (by Gogolin, Ingrid) 3. Language acquisition, contact and change 4. Voice onset time across the generations: A cross-linguistic study of contact-induced change (by Nagy, Naomi) 5. Investigating second language pronunciation (by O'Brien, Mary Grantham) 6. Ethnolects in Northern Norway: From national negligence to local linguistic pride (by Sollid, Hilde) 7. Two gender systems in one mind: The acquisition of grammatical gender in Norwegian-Russian bilinguals (by Rodina, Yulia) 8. Multilingual identities 9. Selfing and othering through categories of race, place, and language among minority youths in Rotterdam, The Netherlands (by Cornips, Leonie) 10. Multilingualism and identity: What linguistic biographies of migrants can tell us (by Krumm, Hans-Jurgen) 11. Ethnolect studies in the German and the Netherlandic area: An overview (by Muysken, Pieter) 12. Urban spaces 13. The delicate search for language in spaces: Multilingualism as a resource in urban development? (by Breckner, Ingrid) 14. The management of multilingualism in a city-state: Language policy in Singapore (by Leimgruber, Jakob) 15. Multilingual communication in Hamburg: A pragmatic approach (by Redder, Angelika) 16. Education 17. Current research on language transfer: Implications for language teaching policy and practice (by Cummins, Jim) 18. Multilingual education in India: Overcoming the language barrier and the burden of the double divide (by Mohanty, Ajit) 19. Fostering early literacy learning using dual language books: Language as a cultural amplifier (by Naqvi, Rahat) 20. Measuring success when English isn't your native language: Perspectives from Canada (by Ricento, Thomas) 21. Index 22. Name index 23. Subject index