 Okay, my pleasure to welcome you to today's department of seminar given by Tania Kutheve, who is a professor of English linguistics in Düsseldorf in Germany, and also a research associate in our department, and a honorary professor next door, I believe, at UCL. Is that still true? Well, I was a visiting professor at UCL, and I'm going to be also next year, perhaps. And it's also a very personal pleasure for me to have Tania here, because we go back a very long time. That's right. Because I met Tania when I was an undergraduate student of African linguistics in Cologne, and she was a research associate there, working with Fern Heiner and pioneering their approach, combining grammaticalization and language context in order to see how these two forces have kind of architectural properties of language and influences through contact, convert, and checking language. And so it's a great delight, really, that I introduce her today, and she is presenting... What? Or should I say, what? On what? It's not emotional emotive subject. On the emotive particle word in English. And this is collaborative work, I was told, that really spans continents. That's true. And now the floor is yours. Thank you very much. Thank you. Well, I've spent wonderful and very rewarding months and years here. It's always a delight for me to be back. So thank you very much for the opportunity and for the nice introduction as well. So today I'm going to talk on an emotive particle in English. English is the Singapore colloquial variety of English. And this particle is actually sentence final what? As used in English. As Frédéric mentioned already, this is a joint work with Sandra Lee from Hong Kong University, Deborah Sigler from Paris, and Jessica Sabin, a PhD student of mine. Well, let me tell you a few words first of all about the structure of the presentation after a very brief introduction. I'll be talking about the Singlish sentence final what? From a synchronic perspective, then we'll take a diachronic perspective, and then we'll have a discussion. Finally, we'll come to the conclusions of this study. I also have to say that this is an ongoing study. So the object of investigation is what? Used at the end of the sentence in Singapore colloquial English or Singlish. Now, the primary function of this particle is objection. Hence, you come across the term the objection particle what? In the specialist literature. It is also referred to most of the time actually as an emotive particle. The function, objection, let me exemplify it to you with this example here. Coming from actually the most detailed and very insightful study of sentence final what in Singlish. So far, a study which was carried out in 1985 by Ian Smith. The context that we have here is a discussion of a student who is going overseas for one month and missing classes. So we have A and B talking about that and A says he'll never pass the third year. But then B says it's only for one month what? So it is this use of what that we're going to discuss. Smith describes this use of sentence final what as an emotive particle which is characterized by the following features. First of all, which is its fixed position at the end of the sentence. Then you have intonation drop plus low pitch and also some kind of indication that the speaker objects to something in the context. Now the aim of our study is to actually unravel the mystery of this weird use of what in Singlish. And we will do this. So we want to explain the synchronic behavior of sentence final what. In terms of its diachronic development and for this purpose we're also going to situate it within functional network of uses of interrogative what across languages which are genetically and geographically related and unrelated. So now, in previous studies, sentence final what has been treated as the result of language transfer from the local substrate language such as Hokkien Chinese, for example, or Cantonese Chinese. Our proposal differs radically from this kind of treatment of the particle because we propose that Singlish sentence final what originated in the lexifying the non-local language, namely British English. And we also propose that it is the result of a process that started in British English and then went further on in Singlish. So let me first give you some very, very brief information on Singapore colloquial English. This is the colloquial variety of Singaporean English. Now it is a nativeized contact dialect of English and the current generation of Singlish speakers have acquired this language from Infancy. This is the local vernacular and since August last year it actually also has the status of one of the five main languages spoken in Singapore. The major influences on this high contact variety come from Chinese dialects but also we have influence from other Indian minority languages. Such as Malay, Bazaar Malay, Baba Malay, Tamil and other minority languages spoken in India. Now let's come to the second part which is we're going to take a look at the major uses nowadays in Singlish. So that's our synchronic perspective on the phenomenon we are investigating. And we have to say here that there are five basic uses of Centres Final What in Singlish. The first one as I mentioned already is objection, then we have discontent, then there is also the use for agreement, solidarity or appeal for agreement or solidarity. Then there is also the mitigating use on Centres Final What as a mitigator. And number five, emphasis. As a mark of objection, that's the first use. There is another example here. This is from a conversation actually between the author of the study that I mentioned to Ian Smith and his colleague in Singlish. She is a colleague who was collecting authentic data from Singlish about the use of what so Ian Smith is saying. If this is a real example, but then she says, it is what? Yeah, well, I mean truly it sounds like the most natural thing in the world, right? To me it didn't, at least not when I started studying this use of what. So the context is, as I said already, this discussion. And you see how what is used to mark the objection of person B who objects to person A. This is Ian Smith's doubt that the example they're discussing might not be authentic. Then we have the second use of Centres Final What which is discontent. And there is another example. The context is a student wants to post a notice on the notice board. So this is a conversation between the secretary and the student and the student says, can I have some pins R? Well, this R is one of the very frequently used emotive particles in Singlish. Then the secretary says, notice both got pins what? Now, the way that Ian Smith describes the use of what here is. Here the secretary brands the student's request as unjustified since there are thumbtacks available in the notice board. There is in addition the implication that the student should know this and therefore should not have felt necessary to ask in the first place. Something is very obvious, so why the hell are you bothering me with your question? Then we have the third function, namely what use as a marker of appeal for agreement or for solidarity. So we have Centres Like Not Bad What, the show. Here what is very much like attack question. And obviously the speaker invites the interlocutor to ascend. Then there is this function of Centres Final What as a mitigator. Something used in order to tone down, to soften the statement made by the speaker himself or herself. So here is a conversation between A and B. Have I been to the restaurant? Yes, therefore there is not bad word. So the example is, as I said, this is used in order to tone down or to subdue the speaker's own statement. And you can paraphrase this by, in my opinion, I think so. Then we come to the final major use of Centres Final What, namely it is also a marker of emphasis in a context where we have three people talking about one of them, C, who is ill. Here is a conversation. Person A says, then have you seen the doctor or not? Have, what did she say? Sorry, what did she say? Then B, nothing, then C. I tell you the doctor sees me, I tell her everything, that's all. True what? They don't know what's wrong with you. You go, sorry, you got to tell them first, right? Now, this is, well, just a, that was a bird's eye view of the major functions of Centres Final What, from a Now, we want to explain or we want to, yeah, to make sense of how come what came to be used in this way. And we're taking now a diachronic perspective because as I mentioned already, our goal here is to explain the synchronic behavior of Centres Final What in Singlish in terms of its diachronic development. But we need some historical information first about Singapore colloquial English or Singlish. Well, this is, I mean, the counterpart of Singlish is a standard Singapore English, which is actually held to be not very different from other international standard English varieties. What we have to know about Singlish spoken in Singapore is that the present generations of Singaporeans is in daily contact with Mandarin Chinese. And Mandarin Chinese has actually been promoted through this campaign, the Speak Mandarin campaign, as the standard Chinese lingua franca to be used among the Chinese citizens who have various Chinese dialect backgrounds. Mandarin Chinese has been replacing, therefore, the Southern dialects of Chinese, because this is a place where you have Hokkien Chinese, Hakka, Teochu, Cantonese as well. And these were actually Southern Chinese varieties which earlier were much more prominent, much more present in Singapore than they are now after the Speak Mandarin campaign was launched back in 1979. Now, we know that Singapore was a British colony up to 1963. It is also important to point out that Bazaar Malay and Hokkien Chinese were the lingua francas in the early 20th century. And, very importantly, English was only spoken by a very minor portion of the population, namely by the very upper class and British colonial masters. Actually, they say it's no more than just two percent. Now, scholars have identified the structure of Central Sign Language in English as coming from the languages that they happen to be most familiar with. So this is what Andrea Gupta, back in 1990, writes. Obviously, depending on what kind of linguistic background we have as scholars, we have particular biases, right? So there have been a number of opinions on where exactly Central Sign Language originated from and depending on which languages the scholar is most familiar with, you have different proposals. So the major proposals in the literature, first, that this is the result of linguistic transfer from Mandarin, Hokkien and Cantonese-Chinese. The second proposal is that it comes from Hokkien and Cantonese. Then the third one is that the origins to be found in Bazaamalei and Hokkien Chinese. And then there is also a fourth proposal that it comes from Tamil. And in all these proposals, the underlying argument is that, as a matter of fact, Singlish has quite a large inventory of particles which have indeed been borrowed from some southern Chinese variety. And this is easy to trace back simply because there is a formal similarity and there is also overlap in meaning, in function, you know, speaking about the set in its quite a large set of emotive particles in Singlish. Hence, it should be unlikely that Central Sign Language, which is yet another emotive particle in Singlish, came from English. I mean, if you have a whole battery of emotive particles, we know that they have been regularly transferred from the local substratal languages, then why should we make an exception for what? So the reasoning is it should have come either from a Chinese dialect or some other regional variety, but it should be some substratal language. And the logic behind this is, of course, an argument which, in fact, we very often use in contact linguistics. We say that if, I mean, what has been repeated many times is most likely to be repeated again. Or this is, of course, something even more universal significance. But in contact linguistics, we are very, I mean, we like thinking that if we can observe a lot of linguistic material being transferred from one particular language, then we are much more prone to expect that yet another and another piece of material will enter the replica language. So in our standpoint, however, is different from the one existing in the literature, namely that Centres Final Wap, just like all the other emotive particles, has been transferred from the substratal local varieties. And objections to this logic are actually several. First objection is that now thinking about the argument what has been repeated many times is most likely to be repeated again. We can also say that there is another line of logic. There is a first time for everything. It also is valid in linguistics. Occasional items from colonial British usage have entered the language and we know that for a fact. And certain markers of learned colonial usage have been entrenched as, for instance, phrases like to pluck fruit from a tree. Well, this is something that you find in English and we know that this came from British English. Or to purchase said with a diphthong instead of a schwa on the second syllable, which is used instead of to buy. Our second objection is the following. Now we know that there are, well, in the literature, the number that is given about that is something between 8 and 11. So there are a number of emotive particles, pragmatic particles that are often too, which are borrowed in the narrow sense of the word from Chinese varieties or other substratal varieties spoken in the region. And these are, You see, it's a set of emotive particles. What is considered as part of the whole set of these pragmatic particles. And so linguistic transfer as the cause for the existence of what seems plausible when we look at all the pragmatic particles above, borrowed from Southern Chinese dialects and other regional varieties at first sight. Right, because we know that there has been massive borrowing from the substratal varieties. However, at a second, I mean, if we think about it, actually what is the only pragmatic particle with a phonological shape which comes from colonial usage? So you see, I mean, the phonological shapes of all the other particles, they're clearly not British, they're clearly not English, right? But what is an English form? And obviously, it makes it different from all the rest. Its form makes it different. The other particles are clear instances of adoption of form meaning pairings from the contact language varieties. There have been a lot of studies on that. And they really comply with the textbook definition of what borrowing is when we have adoption of both phonological material and also meaning. So because of this difference between what and all the other emotive particles, namely the formal, I mean, the phonological shape of the particle, we believe that it is plausible to assume that singlish centesfinal what comes from British English and not from the substratal local varieties. Most likely British English had a mediating role in the genesis and evolution of singlish centesfinal what. Substrate language varieties may have also exerted some influence as they also have centesfinal particles with similar functions, however. But now we also have a third objection and it has to do with a closer look at what you find in British English in earlier times in British English. So while in present-day British English, centesfinal use of what is acceptable only in very restricted types of context, if we take a closer look at British English prior to the foundation times of singlish, it turns out that four out of the five functions of singlish centesfinal what were in place already. Only the function of objection cannot be attested. So all the other four functions that we spoke about in the beginning are actually to be found in British English from, I mean, going back to, as we will see, the 18th and 19th century. And it is only the objection function which is something that we only come across in singlish. The same four functions of centesfinal what in British English. Oh, excuse me. Here I need to ask you to take a look at the handout. The examples from one to four, as you can see, are from British English prior to the foundation times of singlish. I don't know if I ask you right away. In what kind of context would you use centesfinal what in modern British English? Our informants tell us that it actually sounds very posh and it also sounds like a very pseudo-upper class in modern British English. Our American English informants tell us, oh, this doesn't exist in American English. Although we actually, we found a couple of examples of centesfinal what used in the contemporary copper, sorry, in the corpus of contemporary American English. However, when we talk, I mean, we have the examples there right in the corpus, but when we ask colleagues from the States, they say, oh, oh, this is certainly because people here are imitating this posh British English speakers or others say, well, look, I actually listened to the example on the, you know, because you can also listen to these examples in Kolker. But I'm 100% sure that this lady here who uses what at the end of the sentence, actually she has been distracted by somebody else in the room and she's just turning to that other person. This is not part of her utterance, right? So American English speakers have that strong an attitude against centesfinal what being used in authentic American speech. But please take a look at the handout and the first four examples come from, as you can see. Well, the first one is 18th century. We see what uses a mitigator. Then the next one is again the beginning of the 18th century. Here we have appeal for agreement or solidarity. We also have the function of discontent going back to the 18th century, second half of 18th century. As an emphasis, it could also be used as an emphasis and we see an example from the 18th century. And mind you, this is not only, you know, British English prior to the Foundation times, but also later on British English contemporaneous with Singlish, there again we see uses of what at the end of the sentence fulfilling four of the five functions we talked about. So our proposal is actually that the Singlish centesfinal what should be regarded as the continuation of a development which started in the non-local lexophile language, British English. And we propose a full stage development of what to be traced back to the foundation time of the Singlish dialect where stage, I mean the initial stage, the origins is actually interrogative questions, interrogative clauses. Then at the next stage you have rhetorical question of discontent. At the next stage discourse marker of discontent. And then at the final stage which is not reached in British English, but in Singlish it is objection marker. So that's our proposal. And in fact you can, I mean this particular branch of development of interrogative clauses ultimately into objection marker, what is an objection marker, is only one branch of a branching development of interrogative what, which you can see on the second page of your handout. So what I'm going to talk about now in the rest of this presentation is namely one, the lowest branch of the development that you have graphically represented on the second page of your handout. And this lowest branch starts with interrogative clauses. Right, so you can see the lowest branch. So stage zero, ground zero, stage zero interrogative question. Then at the next stage it is a rhetorical question of discontent. An example of that could be for instance you have a conversation between father and son. And the context is son was driving drunk and crashed into a tree. And then here is a rhetorical question of discontent that a father could come up with very naturally. What the hell were you thinking, right? So obviously this is not something that the father is expecting an answer for. It's a rhetorical question beginning with what. Now at stage two we have a discourse marker of discontent. Not a rhetorical question, but a discourse marker of discontent. Where only the what word of the clause remains and the rest is emitted. Here is an example which comes from Singlish. This is an interview with a national serviceman. So we have the interviewer, we have the national serviceman and the interviewer says, suppose you were a millionaire and passed away leaving a fortune for your children. Now you were the one to bring up this fortune, not your children. So do you think it is fair for the government to tax your children heavily on the inheritance? Well my intonation contour is not the right one here. But you get the meaning, right? Now the national serviceman, completely taken by surprise by the idea, know that must never happen. This is your money what? The government should not tax anything at all. So here we have what as a discourse marker of discontent. The sentence final what in Singlish results from the phonological erosion of the interrogative, exclamatory construction, something like what could you say against that? Or what are you thinking? Or what were you thinking? Or what do you expect? You could very well imagine rhetorical questions like that, which are questions of discontent which got phonologically eroded, so that only the first element, the what, remains. And in some languages the discourse marker of discontent is a fixed, idiomatic expression which really has the structure of a clause beginning with the interrogative what. What gives us the right or the justification actually to have this idea, I mean to propose the rhetorical questions of discontent may give rise naturally to discourse markers of discontent. And such examples are such examples where the morphological structure of the discourse marker very transparently manifests the structure of an earlier clause. So we do have such examples and we actually have examples from languages as different genetically and geographically as Bulgarian, which happens to be my own mother tongue, and Korean, which happens to be the mother tongue of one of my co-authors. So now I need to ask you to take a look at the examples on the handout, examples 9 and 10 where from Bulgarian and Korean where the discourse marker of discontent is a fixed, idiomatic expression having the structure of a clause which begins with interrogative what. So that's what gives us the right, as I said, to argue that rhetorical questions of discontent naturally develop into discourse markers of discontent. And in fact, let's take a look at the English expression, well, the English example that we have here. Are we the, sorry, are we the, no, are you? I think you can, you can, who should I, Rachel, would please read this aloud. Okay, good. So, it seems to us that here we're dealing with two rhetorical clauses which were combined. And the second of these is something like, what are you thinking? What were you thinking, right? It is discontent in some sense, right? And due to high frequency and accordingly high predictability, only the initial interrogative wh element of the second clause remained being preceded by the conjunction all, and the rest of the second clause was omitted. Well, this is an example from English, or what, Lutus here. And he knows very well, but in German we also, oh, Friederike of course, in German we also have oder was in very, very similar context. And this really seems to happen in a number of languages. You also have it in Coloco, French. You see how in Coloco, French, if you use what at the end? Oh, well, I have somebody to ask here too. Would you please? There are many people here. Okay. Anyway, so as you can see, in Coloco, French, using what at the end of a sentence like this sounds very natural as well. And here again, it expresses discontent. This has been actually very nicely studied by Kate Beeching, I mean, French. Well, here we have an example from Korean, maybe I'll have to skip that, where you can see Korean very nicely shows how it is in fact possible to fuse a sentence final word to a preceding interrogative clause via what the authors here call and refer to as pragmaticalization, so that you get to a sentence final particle of discontent. So that's an even further development for this course marker of discontent. A very important one. And it even adds something new to the verbal morphology of Korean, but I don't think that we have enough time to discuss this in detail now. Okay, now the next stage, once we've reached the stage of discontent, at the next stage we have a branching development. We can either go the way to the objection use, or emphatic markers, but here we will be focusing on the development from discos marker of discontent to general objection marker. So that's what we are taking a closer look now, discos marker of discontent to objection marker. Well, this development is accompanied by the process of generalization, where due to the frequency of use, the meaning of a discos marker of discontent fades out and it serves to indicate a general objection to something in the discos situation. Here is an example. Again from Singlish, we have A and B, and these are two people, actually they are students, trying to find their way from one building on campus to another. Well, I don't know about this campus here, but I can tell you the campus in Disseldorf is horrible. You feel lost almost all the time. So the first student says, that way cannot la. Well, la is one of these emotive particles in Singlish, which is a whole set of pragmatic emotive particles in Singlish. And then the second, the other student says, can what, right? B uses what to refute or to reject the previous utterance. And this is a general indication of objection by the speaker to relevant utterances or actions. Now, what is unexpected for us as students of contact linguistics, right, is the following observation that we can make. Interrogative Watt has developed further. It has developed one step further, one stage further in the replica language. Well, replica language, well, I assume that, actually this is terminology going back to Weinreich, replica language and model language model is the language which gives the donor and replic is the language which receives the linguistic material in a language contact situation. So, interrogative Watt has developed further in the replica language, which in this particular case is Singlish, than in the model language. That is to say British English, the lexifier, does not have Watt used at the end of the sentence as a marker of objection, but you have it in Singlish, which is the replica language, right? And this is actually unexpected. Singlish speakers not only replicate stage one and stage two of the development that started in the lexifier language, we argue, and thus Singlish speakers recapitulate the whole historical path in the model language, namely the lexifier, British English. In fact, Singlish speakers go a step further. They have reached, so to speak, stage three, namely the objection marker stage. And at stage three, as we pointed that out already, Watt functions as a pragmatic particle with the general meaning of speakers' rejection to something in the context. So, this is contradiction to what has been considered to be a well-established fact in contact linguistics, namely that the language change process in the model language is, as a rule, more advanced than the one in the replica language. So, we should expect, actually, that the objection function should have appeared in the model language in the lexifier, and Singlish should have taken only the first stages, all of them, but certainly not further than what he have in the model language. One of my co-authors, Debbie Ziegler, attributed cases like this to communicative pressures inherent to the very dynamics of the language contact situation. She uses the term hypergrammaticalization in Singapore. Then she makes an even stronger argument for that in her Morrison publication, replica grammaticalizations as recapitulation. And, in fact, there is also a recent study by Weimar and Weichli, Bernard Weimar and... sorry, Bjorn Weimar and Berhard Weichli, in 2012, who also give examples for a more advanced stage of contact-induced language change in the replica than in the model language. That is to say, things are happening, new observations, new conclusions, new analyses are there now in contact linguistics, and what we find here in this particular study is in support of this newly made observations. Now, the theoretical implications of our study. We may very well be dealing with the bias of analysts of language, depending on what their language background is. This might be due to the emblematic function of language. Singapore Colloquial English has colonial English as the lexifier language. The recognition or appreciation of substrate's language identity in the ongoing attempt to eradicate Singapore Colloquial English might be another source for bias. One can expect bias towards over-weighting the influence of either pre-colonial language varieties spoken in the region like Malay, Cantonese, Hokkien, or Mandarin Chinese, instead of the multifarious Chinese dialects, once spoken on the island. In some cases, the exact source of a particular construction becomes more and more difficult to trace. Scholars have a tendency to associate a certain usage with whatever language is most familiar to them. And I have to say, the present study does not claim to be an exception in this regard, as you can see, obviously. Yet, in terms of its origins, the use of sentence final word has so far remained inconclusive in much of the literature to date. And to us, on the basis of the arguments that I pointed out here, the lexifier British English appears to be the most plausible source. Our reasons for these are the following. First, the absence of a formal similarity with any of the substrate Chinese dialects, ruling out borrowed forms. And two, the curious affinities with earlier functions of a similar, now archaic, utterance final discourse marker in British English. Those now archaic, utterance final discourse markers could have been transferred in a situation resembling the retentionist contact situations described by Peach in the development of Heberno English, for example. So, okay. I'm really being on time this time. Our conclusions are that we need not look for the source of Singapore Colloquial English sentence final word in the local, substratal varieties in Singapore. The process that brought about its existence originated in the lexifier language, we argue colonial British English. Because four of the five major functions of sentence final word were already in place in the lexifier language, in the pre-contact period, as well as during the foundation period of Singapore Colloquial English. Well, thank you very much. I'm happy to take your questions if you have some. Absolutely, absolutely. I certainly think that it is important that, you know, Singlish is a high-contact variety in that Singlish language users are in contact with these substratal languages. And certainly the fact that, you know, there exist other emotive particles used at the end of the utterance, it has enhanced the entrenchment of sentence final word. It's just that what is different from the rest, in fact, Cantonese, Chinese, has been claimed a number of times to be the origins of this particular use of word, also because there is a particle in Cantonese which is very near, it is a near homophone, it is what, right? However, there is a difference phonologically because in the Cantonese form what you have, the vowel that you have is a mid-back rounded vowel, whereas in the Singlish what, which is actually pronounced not what, not the way that I pronounce it, I'm not good at that, it's what, or what. There are a number of pronunciations. However, most of the time the vowel in the Singlish what is, it is a central open, unrounded vowel. And very importantly, most of the time with Singlish final word you have a dentalized, an unreleased dentalized stop, but not in the Cantonese form. And moreover, if you compare the functions of the Cantonese form and the Singlish one, they're very different, they're much more different than similar simply because the Cantonese one stands for what they refer to as a noteworthy discovery. It's a bit different from what we have been discussing here, but I think this is a very good point, yes. The presence of, I mean the existence of similarly functioning particles in the local varieties is certainly an additional factor. However, we're talking here about the origins, right, of this particular particle. Yes, please. I was wondering if you looked up the ethnology of the Singlish word one? Yeah. Because that's also under debate where they say it comes from English as similar property to the English use of one. But then that puts under doubt because it's also got similar property to the Chinese particle death. Yeah, yeah, they're associated as well. So it could be that maybe the Watson Singlish is a mix between the rectifier and the substring. Okay, Oli, it is not exactly clear to me. I mean there is very interesting literature on one, especially as a marker of the relative clause. We have it also as a double, double marking of the relative clause in Singlish. But it is not exactly clear to me how you relate the use of one to the functions that we discussed here. I mean the, how does it... You're saying there's some other function. You're saying about the font, yeah. Right. You can trace it to English, so you might be, if you were just looking at one, you might be tempted to think that it's a continuation of the process that happened in English. So actually it was also influenced by Chinese. So you're saying you're talking about the continuation of the process that happened in English. Right. But perhaps it's also... Yeah, I get your point. Oh yeah, this makes perfect sense to me. This makes absolutely perfect sense because the very fact that we do not have it in British English, but we have it in Singlish and we know for a fact that Singlish is in intense contact with the Chinese varieties, this is a very good point and it makes perfect sense. Yeah. So basically what you're saying is that most likely... And this, I catch myself using the expression in fact all the time. I apologize for that. So it is worthwhile, it's certainly a worthwhile study to see exactly which functions of which particles could have brought about the rise of this particular function, the objection function in the case of what. Well, thank you very much for this. Thank you. Yeah. I'm curious, I think, in your use between sentence, final and utterance. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, I was very sloppy here. I was very, very sloppy. Potentially. Yeah. I'll take you up on that because it seems to me one thing actually would be really nice if you have more intonation data because the notion of sentences, it's a tricky one to have. But if you look at your English data, it's interesting because often people use punctuation sort of mirror intonation. And I think all of the examples you have have a clear orthographic segmentation between the preceding stretch of sentence clause and the what element. So actually I think the English examples are not at all clear evidence that this is sentence final or indeed even utterance final because it may well be utterance and then another utterance, like an adverbic formation, have usage of what. Yeah. Re-analyzed in this English based on precisely the substrate influence we have because there you have systems which have sentence final particles. So you take the substance of what, but we interpret that now really as a sentence final particle. Yeah. And that allows to treat it and then precisely that that's the only question. Then what you're looking for is in one of the subject languages functional semantics which has the shift to the object completely irrespective of the form. So just the form which gets taken over by English. But then it's integrated with the system which is based on the substrate and only that becomes the sentence final particle. Yeah. But in English you would never have to postulate either sentence final or needs utterance final particle. Yeah. So are you saying, okay that's a hard one. Are you saying that the English examples because the one that you have here for example from one to four or then the first nine examples well, we have those in an orthographic form, right? So are you saying that you wouldn't interpret these examples the way that we have interpreted them? I think so. I think the first one is that's what. So this is the or what which we still have. The second one has a semicolon. Yeah. So let's say it's a pause. The third one has a dash which again is a pause. Then the next one has a semicolon again. And actually this has a very nice parallelism. So this has, guess this is my wish. What? Marta will convey me privately into the process. Delightful. The what actually aligns with the delight. Right? Aha. Then you have a high full stop. Clearly this is a different information. Six you have again the long dash. Seven you have a dash. And then again the comma. And then eight you have a comma. And that's all of them. You will find that there's a clear orthographic representation of at least the pause. Oh, I see what you mean. Well, in the British in the British English examples the sentence final what is not, I mean it's not as established as it is in English. Because in English the prosody is very different. You're right. The prosody is absolutely different. It is an entrenched usage in English. Whereas in English you're right. Things are not as established and things are much more dependent on the context. This is clear. However wouldn't you how would you but what how would you interpret the use of what let's say the first example for you it is problematic to consider it as a marker of mitigation. You've said something. This is obviously an exclamation. My dear friend but what happens before the father's face and mitigation is again it's like I'm ashamed for having said that or I'm ashamed to have to say that. It is true. In English you don't have to use the exclamation mark. In English usually you have a question mark or you have the exclamation mark. This is true. But do you have a serious problem for instance in the first sentence as a mitigation marker? I'm not sure about the function. I think it would be nice to have more context actually. I'm more concerned about the structure and here I think this is Brum. This is a person named Prismabee which is Brum. What does it mean? Let's say it's a name. Oh like in Brum. Oh okay, Birmingham. So it's a city mitigation but what all this happened actually for me that goes to the next one but what all this happens before the father's face is a subjunctive? Will it happen? Let's say it's a subjunctive. We're talking about 1796. It's a very audience. Yeah. I can get you a point. I'm not convinced but what really is the sentence final or indeed utterance final. It's either independence utterance or it goes with this or it's utterance initial going with what follows. I think. I can see a point. Alright, so basically you're calling into question our interpretation of the earlier uses of what at the end of the sentence in British English. Right. Yes Peter. You have to be careful during too much conclusions based on the punctuation the variations in punctuation. Because this is a non-standard feature of English and people writing may not know how to deal with it. The only one that I can relate to is the kind of Terry Thomas number eight in which there is no intonation breakers jolly fine shooting what? And there's no jolly fine shooting what? No, that's not possible at all. It has to run on exactly. Yeah, although there is a comma here and we've just taken this up but you're right. Writing a form that's not standard English You're absolutely right. That's a possible hypothesis to counter what Professor Martin has suggested. Yeah. You're being very helpful here. I have the devil's head with it, yes. A jolly good topic. A jolly good topic what? Yes, please. Yes. My God, what a nice question. Of course I am aware that in China you have over 600 synitic varieties. So actually Cantonese Chinese is what but you know people other colleagues are being very stopping when you write about you know, Chinese varieties. So what I meant here is Cantonese Chinese. Okay. I was going to raise the same question. I think many linguists these days would refer to these as synitic languages. Synitic languages. They avoid entirely the term Chinese dialects. I suggest you have being very helpful again Peter Thank you very much. Yes, I agree really. And of course the area hasn't been properly investigated until recently but we have Hewlett Chappelle now and other people who have done excellent research on that. Who should I take now? Thank you. I am not familiar with those proponents that say that there has to be a rested development of a kind so once the replica language has adopted something as opposed to change and I think it should be fairly easy to find counter examples of that. I mean I think about the French of Africa for instance. There are many many examples actually of things that are seemingly French but that have had their own development along by the substrate languages. So I was wondering about the reason to assume the model and also I wanted to ask you about Zebra Siegler's work and is that the only reason that she calls this hyper grammaticalization? Because plain grammaticalization it's only because I mean things grammaticalize from discourse and it's just that this particular discourse happens to be multilingual but you know I perfectly agree with you going back to the history of contact linguistics in the first years Ben and myself included and we were following here also other people the traditional assumption is that if you have a replication of a particular process from a model language then in the model language it is much longer much more advanced process and the replica language is somehow lagging behind but there has come new research and obviously the one I mean what you're talking about this adds to this new body of data which just shows that that's a old Schnee from Gestern We're following up on that It would be interesting to see to what extent what behaves differently in the discourse of speakers who are more in contact with salient languages or more in contact with standard English or other varieties of English That would be very interesting and then we can isolate different factors about that's true that would be a sophisticated continuation of the study but as you can see we have to do our homework with some basic things there for example the two of you here the standpoint about how seriously should one take the the prosody the way that we find it and actually we have to look more at examples but if you're dealing with earlier stages of the language and if you do not have any spoken language what do you do you have this you know the established opinion that it can be very misleading especially when it comes to earlier historical adaptations simply because people didn't know how to point this so we have a serious methodological problem exactly exactly exactly yes yes it's really hard just a couple of comments your earlier points about the transition with Mandarin the Speak Mandarin campaign my understanding from Lisa Lim is that the result of the Speak Mandarin campaign is not a switch from speaking Hokkien, Cantonese, Hakka to Mandarin it's to speaking English so she shows in if you look at the census figures 70% of the ethnic Chinese communities spoke like 30 years ago various Chinese dialects and now and 30% spoke English and now it's 30% speak Mandarin and 70% speak English so the shift has actually been to English not to Mandarin at all and the impact of the Singaporean Government policy has been to actually reduce the amount of Chinese that's being spoken by all communities and the second comment would be that the models for in the Singaporean context I don't think the models were just upper class British because there was a whole group of compedores who were actually ended up being native English speaking who were the interface between the colonial office and the local communities Lisa Lim her grandfather was a native speaker of English because he'd been employed his father had been employed by the government to work as a compedore trading person so she actually comes from several generations of native speakers of English and I think that's the interface and probably through school teaching and that kind of thing you've got the spread of Singaporean English not necessarily from the colonial level so you have to be careful the story has to be a little more articulated about where these things come from Yes, there are different also Andrea Gupta says that Singapore English originated very late like at the beginning of the 20th century in the schools forget the exact phrase now but different opinions on when and where exactly singlish arose as for your first question the Speak Mandarin campaign which started in 1979 just a moment this is about using Mandarin Chinese as a lingua franca among the Chinese but it's not about eliminating English or anything like that they should My point was it was to push the use of Chinese Mandarin as the lingua franca but the effect was that English became the lingua franca as your point now Yes, Julia Interesting development just in the last week or so I've heard reports that the Singapore government decided now to promote singlish I know August last year absolutely, absolutely but singlish was officially celebrated as now the new I mean they have several I think it is the fifth official language so it's a major event Yeah Thank you, thank you very much this was very helpful