Corpus-based Analysis of Verbal and Nominal Reduplication in Colloquial Singapore English

Abstract

Reduplication has always been an important subject of morphology and language typology. Cross-linguistic studies have identifi ed 45 functions of reduplication in 108 languages. Total reduplication is recognised as productive and systematic in Colloquial Singapore English (CSE), possibly due to language contact. The paper aims to present the cases of verbal and nominal reduplication in CSE described in the linguistic literature, and juxtapose them with the examples from the Singapore component of the International Corpus of English (ICE-SIN), which seem to be indicative of discrepancies in form and functions.