The Syntax of Spoken Indian English

Erscheinungsjahr 2012
ISBN: 978-90-272-4905-0
Verlag: John Benjamins Publishing Company

Buch, Englisch, Band G45, 265 Seiten, Gewicht: 660 g

Reihe: Varieties of English Around the World

This book offers an in-depth analysis of several features of spoken Indian English that are generally considered as ‘typical’, but have never before been studied empirically. Drawing on authentic spoken data from the International Corpus of English, Indian component, the book focuses on the domain of discourse organization and examines the form, function and distribution of invariant tags such as isn’t it and no/na, non-initial existential there, focus markers only and itself, topicalization and left-dislocation. By focusing on multilingual speakers’ interactions, the study demonstrates conclusively that spoken Indian English bears all the hallmarks of a vibrant contact language, testifying to a pan-South Asian ‘grammar of culture’ which becomes apparent in contact-induced language change in spoken Indian English. The book will be highly relevant for anyone interested in postcolonial varieties of English, contact linguistics, standardization, and discourse-pragmatic sentence structure.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Lange, Claudia

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Sprachwissenschaft Grammatik, Syntax, Morphologie
• Geisteswissenschaften Sprachwissenschaft Einzelne Sprachen & Sprachfamilien
• Geisteswissenschaften Sprachwissenschaft Sprachkontaktforschung
• Geisteswissenschaften Sprachwissenschaft Mehrsprachigkeit

Inhaltsverzeichnis

List of figures and tables

List of abbreviations

Acknowledgments

Chapter 1. Introduction

Chapter 2. Conceptual background

Chapter 3. Multilingualism in India

Chapter 4. The syntax of spoken Indian English

Chapter 5. Conclusion

References

Author index

Language index

Subject index