A STUDY OF MODAL AUXILIARIES IN SINGAPORE ENGLISH WITH COMPUTERISED CORPORA

Abstract

This thesis is a computer-assisted analysis which attempts to reveal a wide range of semantic meanings of modal auxiliaries: can, could, may and might used in the private and public dialogues collected in the Singapore component of the International Corpus of English (ICE-SIN) through the investigation of computerized data. The previous studies of modal semantics are quoted to establish the framework for my investigation of the various meanings of the proposed modals. With this theoretical framework, the numerous instances of the respective modals in the corpora are observed as evidence to carry out statistical classification of the modals. The semantics of the proposed modals are then interpreted under the categories of classification, revealing how modals are pragmatically used in the spoken interaction of different registers in Singapore. The evidence from the corpus investigation which combines quantitative analysis of computerized counting and qualitative analysis of the semantic meanings will shed light on the characteristics of the modal auxiliaries used in Singapore English private and public dialogues and they reveal the communicative behaviour of the speakers of English in Singapore. As the social, interactional characteristics of spoken language are interpreted from the study of the comparisons between Singapore English and two dominant national norms, British English, and American English, it is hoped that the study is to contribute to our knowledge of the pragmatic usage of modal auxiliaries for various purposes in Singapore spoken English.