DEICTICS IN PIONEER GENERATION COLLOQUIAL ENGLISH IN SINGAPORE: DOWN, UP, HERE, THERE

Abstract

This thesis focuses on four deictic terms: down, up, here, and there in Colloquial Singapore English (CSE). I focus on one particular group of CSE speakers – the pioneer generation – and refer to the pioneer generation’s CSE as Pioneer Generation Colloquial English (PCE). I do not treat CSE and PCE as distinct varieties but argue for the position that PCE is more basic than CSE based on Lyons’s (1977) ‘localism’ hypothesis, which was corroborated by the findings of this thesis, where PCE speakers show preference for more basic spatial expressions. The main finding of this thesis highlights substrate influence in the deictic terms of PCE. Two main types of non-standard examples are observed: (i) calques of Chinese expressions, and (ii) novel inventions that cannot be directly attributed to calquing.