THE USE OF OR NOT" IN SINGAPORE COLLOQUIAL ENGLISH"

Abstract

Or not forms a part of interrogatives as well as embedded questions. The way in which it is used in Singapore Colloquial English is different from that in Standard British English. This study aims to provide as full a linguistic acco1mt as possible of the uses of or not in Singapore Colloquial English. Firstly, this study hopes to describe the syntactic environment of or not, that is, the syntactic constituents that occur with it. Secondly, a description of the Semantic environment and function of or not sentences will be given. Thirdly, the study aims to describe the various intonational patterns found on the or not. And lastly, the use of or not in Singapore Colloquial English will be compared and contrasted with its use in Standard British English as well as parallel forms in Chinese dialects in the aim of showing the distinctiveness of the use of or not in Singapore Colloquial English. Where appropriate, references are made to other features of Singapore Colloquial English such as copula deletion and the use of is it as an invariable tag question. A total of one hundred samples was collected for analysis. These were supplemented by a small-scale survey. It is hoped that this study will show the unique and systematic way in which or not is used in Singapore Colloquial English. Chapter 1 introduces the background of Singapore and defines or not and describes the forms in which it is realized. Also, a description of the methodology and objectives of the study are described. Chapter 2 examines the syntactic environment of or not in terms of the syntactic constituents which occur with it. Chapter 3 describes the semantic environment and intonation of or not in relation to its function. And chapter 4 compares the use of or not in Singapore Colloquial English with that in British English and parallel forms in the Chinese dialects. Chapter 5 contains a summary of the findings as well as limitations and directions for further study.