Negation in Singapore English

Abstract

Singapore English is a new variety of English that has developed unique grammatical characteristics due to contact with the heritage languages of Singapore, especially Chinese. In this paper, we document the morphosyntax of negation in Singapore English, using data culled from available databases, including the Singaporean component of the International Corpus of English. There is little doubt that the negation system is inherited from English, but there is strong Chinese influence in the interaction between negation and aspect, and between negation and quantification. Other features of negation will also be described, including the novel use of no and no need, also due to Chinese influence.