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This is a contribution from Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages 25:1© 2010. John Benjamins Publishing Company

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Bazaar Malay topics*

Bao Zhiming and Khin Khin AyeNational University of Singapore / Swinburne University of Technology, Kuching, Malaysia

Bazaar Malay is a Malay-lexified pidgin with a Chinese substratum spoken in the marketplace of Singapore (and elsewhere in Southeast Asia). Although it is no longer a lingua franca in Singapore today, it is nevertheless still spoken by older Singaporeans. Like Chinese and Malay, Bazaar Malay is a topic-prominent language. We document three types of the Bazaar Malay topic construction and show that they are identical to the topic structures found in Chinese. The degree of convergence in the topic construction between Chinese and Bazaar Malay, and between Chinese and Singapore English, supports the systemic view of substratum transfer.

Keywords: Bazaar Malay, pidgin, Malay, Chinese, topic prominence, contact-induced change, substratum transfer

1. Introduction

Bazaar Malay is a Malay-lexified pidgin which was widely used as a lingua franca in the Malay peninsula and the Indonesian archipelago before the British East In-dian Company annexed Singapore as a trading port in 1819. In the early decades of the crown colony, Bazaar Malay continued to play that role, and the British government officers were often advised to learn it when they first arrived to as-sume office (Dennys 1878). Unlike Baba Malay, which is the mother tongue of the Peranakan community in the Straits Settlements,1 Bazaar Malay has never had

* We wish to express our gratitude to Umberto Ansaldo, Lionel Wee, Donald Winford, and the anonymous referees for their insightful comments, discussions, and encouragement. Khin Khin Aye also wishes to thank Umberto Ansaldo and Anne Pakir for their guidance in her work on Bazaar Malay. All errors of facts and interpretation are our own.

1. Peranakan is a Malay word that means ‘locally born’. The Peranakan Chinese, or Babas, are descendents of early settlers from the southern Chinese coast who married local Malay-

Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages 25:1 (2010), 155–171. doi 10.1075/jpcl.25.1.06baoissn 020–0 / e-issn 156–70 © John Benjamins Publishing Company

© 2010. John Benjamins Publishing CompanyAll rights reserved

156 Bao Zhiming and Khin Khin Aye

native speakers. The Chinese, Malay, and Indian communities that comprise the population of Singapore (and Malaysia) retain their respective mother tongues. From the beginning of the 20th century English started to replace Bazaar Malay as the lingua franca of choice in Singapore, and the process accelerated after Singa-pore gained independence in 1965. Although Bazaar Malay is no longer a lingua franca in Singapore, many older Singaporeans can still speak it fluently.

As expected, most of the words in Bazaar Malay come from Malay, without the usual affixation active in Malay morphology. There are words of Chinese ori-gin, such as lu ‘you,’ wa (or gwa) ‘I,’ tauge ‘bean sprouts’, and lang ‘person,’ some of which are also used in Baba Malay and other local languages. Many of the Chinese loanwords are of Hokkien pronunciation, betraying the influence of the dialect in the early days of Singapore, and indeed of the region. There are also English-derived words in Bazaar Malay (persen ‘percent,’ tayar ‘tyre,’ aksiden ‘accident’). Like the Chinese loanwords, the English loanwords are also in active use in the vocabularies of the languages spoken in Singapore.

Broadly speaking, the basic word order of Bazaar Malay is SVO, consistent with other pidgins, and with the contributing languages — Malay, the lexifier, and Chinese, the main substratum language. The basic clause structure is exemplified by the data shown in (1).2

(1) a. Saya sudah tujoh puluh lima umur 1sg perf seven ten five age ‘I am already seventy five years old.’ b. Saya tengok itu orang jantan. I see this person male ‘I saw the man.’ c. Baru tahu badan semua sakit sampai tak boleh tahan. recently know body all sick until not can bear

speaking women (Vaughn 1879, Turnbull 1977, Tan 1988, Rudolph 1998, Ansaldo, Lim, & Muf-wene 2007). The Babas speak a Malay-lexified patois called Baba Malay, which, according to Shellabear (1912, 1913), mixes Malay words with Chinese idiom or grammar. In Singapore, the community is among the first to shift to English from Baba Malay. The website peranakan.org.sg contains interesting information about the community.

2. The Bazaar Malay data reported in this paper were collected by Khin Khin Aye between 2002 and 2004 from 10 informants, aged between 49 and 77 at the time of data collection. Four of the informants are Chinese, four Indian, and two Malay. The data gathering sessions were conduct-ed in community centers and coffee shops in Geylang, a Malay enclave during the colonial days. Details of the data collection are explained in Aye (2005). The data are cited without regard to the ethnicity of the source, and are understood by all our informants. We assume that the topic construction is a stable grammatical construction of Bazaar Malay, and is therefore part of the structural repertoire of a fluent speaker.


Bazaar Malay topics 157

‘Recently (he) noticed that the whole body ached so much he could not bear (it).’

d. Dia angkat ini besi. 3sg lift this iron ‘He lifted this iron.’

As far as the basic SVO word order is concerned, there is not much difference among the languages in contact.

Like Baba Malay, Bazaar Malay has strong Chinese influence in its grammar, which has not escaped the notice of keen observers of the vernacular (Dennys 1878, McHugh 1948, Winstedt 1957, Asmah 1982, 1987, Collins 1987, Lim 1988, Adelaar & Prentice 1996, Aye 2005, Rekha 2007). Winstedt (1957) lists many Chi-nese-derived features, two of which are displayed in (2) (mod, modifier).3

(2) a. Dulu punya pasar old mod market ‘old market’ b. Saya kasi dia tahu awak datang I give 3sg know you come ‘I let him know that you have come.’

In (2a), the Malay verb punya ‘own, possess’ is used as a grammatical morpheme that links the pre-modifier dulu with the nominal head pasar, modeled on the Hokkien particle e (Mandarin de). Here, it has lost its lexical meaning, and its function in Bazaar Malay is to introduce modifiers. In (2b), kasi ‘give’ is used in the causative sense, consistent with the usage pattern of the Hokkien verb ho (Manda-rin gei) with the same lexical meaning. Not surprisingly, these features also appear in Baba Malay; see Shellabear (1912, 1913), Pakir (1986), Lim (1988), Ansaldo & Matthews (1999), and Lee (1999).4

3. The influence, of course, extends to pronunciation as well. In Bazaar Malay, words such as tahu ‘know’ and mahu ‘want’ are pronounced without the intervocalic h, and banyak ‘many’ is pronounced as manyak. Despite the obvious differences in pronunciation, we adopt stan-dard Malay spelling conventions in spelling Malay-derived words from our database of Bazaar Malay.

4. The Chinese influence in the use of punya to express the possessive has been noted by early students of Baba Malay and Malay. Shellabear (1912: 6–7) warns: ‘The frequent use of punya, however, is a Chinese idiom, and, though common with the Straits-born Chinese, should be avoided by Europeans who wish to speak with any approach to correctness.’ Straits-born Chi-nese are the Peranakans.



2. Topic prominence

In this paper, we focus on topic prominence, another salient feature of Bazaar Malay. Although the topic construction is common among pidgins and creoles generally (Holm 2000, Winford 2003), Bazaar Malay topic prominence is heavily influenced by Chinese, the main substratum language.5 We document the whole range of topic structures in our Bazaar Malay database, and show that the Bazaar Malay topic structures are point-to-point identical with those of Chinese. Our analysis provides further empirical evidence in support of the role of grammatical system in substratum transfer (see Bao 2005).

Three structural properties have been associated with Chinese topic promi-nence in the literature (Chao 1968, Chafe 1976, Li & Thompson 1976, 1981, Xu & Langendoen 1985, Bao 2001, Bao & Lye 2005). These are exemplified in (3):

(3) a. English-style Nà-ge nü-hái, Zhāngsān xĭhuān tā/e that girl Zhangsan like her/e ‘That girl, Zhangsan likes her/e.’ b. Chinese-style Shǔiguǒ, Zhāngsān xĭhuān píngguǒ fruit Zhangsan like apple ‘As for fruits, Zhangsan likes apples.’ c. Bare conditional Nĭ xĭhuān tā, nĭ yīnggāi zìjĭ gàoshù tā you like her you should self tell her ‘If you like her, you should tell her yourself.’

The topics are set in italics. The data are transcribed in pinyin in accordance with Mandarin pronunciation.6 In the English-style topic structure, the topic is semanti-cally related to a resumptive or null pronominal in the comment, marked respectively

5. As pointed out by two anonymous referees, typologically Malay is topic-prominent as well, which weakens the argument that the topic prominence of Bazaar Malay derives from Chinese. We are not in a position to discuss Malay topic structures here. Our focus is on the structural manifestation of topic prominence in Chinese, shown in (3). Any degree of convergence in the topic construction between Chinese and Malay will only facilitate the stabilization of the topic structures in Bazaar Malay.

6. The numerically dominant native dialects of early Chinese immigrants to Singapore are Can-tonese and the Southern Min dialects of Hokkien and Teochew. The role of Mandarin in early lan-guage contact in Singapore should not be dismissed entirely, since it was the medium of instruction in Chinese vernacular schools before the government introduced nation-wide English-medium education. As far as the topic construction is concerned, there is no difference among the dialects.



by tā ‘her’ or e in (3a). In generative linguistics, the English-style topic structure is derived through movement, leaving behind a trace marked by e. The process is of-ten referred to as topicalization. In the Chinese-style topic structure, the comment contains no pronominal, null or otherwise, to which the topic is related, as shown in (3b). For this reason, the Chinese-style topic structure resists movement analysis (Xu & Langendoen 1985). (3c) is an example of what Bao & Lye (2005) call bare conditional, where the conditional clause is not marked by an if-word.

Chinese conditionals are typically marked by a host of adverb-like expressions such as yàoshì, rúguǒ, tángruò, or jiărú, all of which can be glossed with English ‘if ’; see Chao (1968) and Li & Thompson (1981). The position of these if-words is not fixed — they may appear clause-initially (4a), or clause-medially (4b), or be missing (4c) (examples cited from Bao & Lye 2005).

(4) a. Yàoshì kăoshì yánqī, wǒ jiù bù néng qù Yīngguó if exam postpone I then not able go England ‘If the exam postpones, then I won’t be able to go to England.’ b. Kăoshì yàoshì yánqī, wǒ jiù bù néng qù Yīngguó exam if postpone I then not able go England ‘If the exam postpones, then I won’t be able to go to England.’ c. Kăoshì yánqī, wǒ jiù bù néng qù Yīngguó exam postpone I then not able go England ‘If the exam postpones, then I won’t be able to go to England.’

Such flexibility in the use of if-words in the Chinese conditional is not found in English, where the conditional clause is introduced by if in clause-initial posi-tion, and the bare conditional construction is used only for special effect (Say that again and you’re fired; see Huddleston & Pullum 2002). Chao (1968) uses topic and the associated notion comment as pragmatic notions, and treats all Chinese conditionals, marked or bare, as topics. For descriptive convenience we will dis-cuss bare conditionals only. Following Xu & Langendoen (1985), we treat topic and comment as structural constructs. So the crucial difference between English-style and Chinese-style topic structures can be expressed as follows (top, topic; s, comment):

(5) a. English-style: […]TOP […e…]S b. Chinese-style: […]TOP […]S

top is the syntactic position that can be occupied by all major phrasal categories. The bare conditional structure obtains when the topic is interpreted as a condi-tional, without the use of any of the if-words. Structurally, it is identical to the Chi-nese-style topic, since the conditional clause typically does not originate within the comment clause, now interpreted as the consequent.



The three types of topic structure shown in (3) are diagnostic of Chinese topic prominence. We now proceed to show that Bazaar Malay has precisely these three types.

3. English-style topic structure

We first look at the English-style topic structure, which is exemplified below:

(6) a. [Anjing]TOP [dia gigit sama dia punya tangan]S dog 3sg bite with 3sg mod hand ‘The dog, it bit his hand.’ b. [Itu gemuk punya orang]TOP [dia cakap dia boleh angkat naik]S that fat mod person 3sg speak 3sg can lift up ‘The fat man, he said he could lift (it) up.’ c. [Kerja punya pasal]TOP [dia tanya e]S work mod matter 3sg ask ‘(A) work-related matter, he asked (about).’ d. [Itu]TOP [dia tak suka e]S that 3sg not like ‘She does not like it. e. [Itu panggil apa]TOP [saya pun tak tahu e]S that call what I also not know ‘What it is called, I also don’t know.’ f. [Apa sayur dia cakap]TOP [saya tahu e]S what vegetable 3sg speak I know ‘What vegetables he mentions, I know.’ g. [Di cina]TOP [sudah ada bini e]S in China already have wife ‘In China, (he) had already had a wife.’

Punya is the grammatical particle that introduces pre-modification, see (2a). In (6a,b), the comment contains the resumptive pronoun dia; in (6c–g), it contains the null pronominal e. In terms of grammatical category, top is occupied by a noun phrase in (6a–d), by a sentence in (6e,f) and by a preposition phrase in (6g). In terms of grammatical function, top is the subject in (6a,b), the object in (6c–f) and the adjunct in (6g).7 The English-style topics have their direct counterparts in English, as indicated by the English translations in (6).

7. We assume that the basic constituent order of a Malay verb phrase is as follows:

V – (Object) – Locative – Temporal



4. Chinese-style topic structure

Unlike English-style topic structure, the topic in Chinese-style topic structure does not originate in the comment. We have seen one example in (3b). More examples are given in (7).

(7) a. Nèi-xiē shùmù shùshēn dà. those tree tree-trunk big ‘Those trees, the trunks are big.’ b. Rénjiā shì fēng nián others be bumper year ‘As for those people, (it) is a bumper year.’

(7a) is cited from Li & Thompson (1981: 462) and (7b) from Chao (1968: 71). (Tone marks are ours). In (7a), the subject of the comment sentence is part of the topic; in (7b), the topic provides the reference frame for the interpretation of the comment. The two semantic relationships between the topic and comment exem-plified in (7) are the typical relationships that characterize the Chinese-style topic structure.

Chinese-style topic structure is also attested in Bazaar Malay (part, particle):

(8) a. [Bangsa ni Singapore]TOP [Teochew, Hokkien, Fouchow, Kwanton race in Singapore Teochew Hokkien Foozhou Cantonese

sini datang bangsa punya orang lah]S here come race mod person part ‘As for races of Singapore, Teochew, Hokkien, Foozhou, Cantonese are

immigrants.’ b. [Singapore punya orang]TOP [terlinga dia dengar mana yang barang Singapore mod people ear 3sg hear where that goods

murah, dia pergi]S cheap 3sg go ‘As for Singaporeans, if his ear hears where things are cheap, he will go.’

The locative and temporal adjuncts appear after the main verb, and the object, if any. The ex-ample below illustrates this order (Mintz 1994: 37):

Sofiah ada pergi ke mana-mana besok? Sofiah have go to anywhere tomorrow ‘Is Sofia going anywhere tomorrow?’

For this reason, we analyze the prepositional phrase di Cina ‘in China’ to be topicalized from its canonical position marked by e.



c. [Itu barang ah]TOP [ada kali mahal, ada kali murah, itu that goods part have time expensive have time cheap that pasar sana]S market there ‘As for those goods, sometimes expensive, sometimes cheap, that

market.’ d. [Tapi saya minya tempat keraja]TOP [bukan Melayu lang Burma, but I mod place work no Malay person Burma

Indonesia, Bangladesh, China, India]S Indonesia Bangladesh China India ‘But, as for my work places, (there are) no Malay people, only Burmese,

Indonesians, Bangladeshis, Chinese, and Indians.’

In (8d), minya is a variant of punya, and lang ‘person’ is a Hokkien loanword. As the English translations suggest, none of the topics in (8) can be plausibly analyzed as originating in the respective comment clause. Instead, the comment provides information about the topic. In (8b) the comment clause, which may be given the structure shown below, contains a topic of its own:

(9) [Terlinga dia dengar mana yang barang murah]TOP [dia pergi]S ear 3sg hear where that goods cheap 3sg go ‘(If) his ear hears where things are cheap, he will go.’

The topic here is interpreted as a conditional clause, even though it is not so marked (see the bare conditional construction below). In (8c), the subject of the comment clause, itu pasar sana ‘that market there,’ appears at the end of the clause.

5. Bare conditionals

Conditionals in Bazaar Malay are typically introduced with the Malay word kalau. Two examples are shown below:

(10) a. Kalau itu Hokkien, kita cakap Hokkien sama dia lah if that Hokkien we speak Hokkien with 3sg part ‘If that (person) is Hokkien, we speak Hokkien with him.’ b. Kalau mahu minum, minum kope satu paket if want drink drink coffee one packet ‘If (we) want to drink, (we) drink one cup of coffee.’

However, the conditional marker kalau need not be used to introduce the condi-tional clause. Indeed, the bare conditional construction is very productive in our database. We have seen one example in (9); more data follow.



(11) a. [Kita cerita perkara sedikit]TOP boleh we story matter little can ‘(If) we talk little, (we) can.’ b. [Dia tahu lu bukan Hokku lang]TOP tak mahu cakap ah, tak 3sg know you no Foozhou person not want speak part not

mahu cakap lain punya bangsa want speak other mod race ‘(If) he knows you are not a Foozhou, (he) does not want to speak, does

not want to speak to other races.’ c. [Duluk sana leh]TOP apa-apa pun boleh dapat sit there part anything also can get ‘(If you) stay on, (you) can get everything.’ d. [Lu mahu sekarang]TOP lu tengok you want now you look ‘(If) you want now, you look.’ e. [Ada orang mahu masuk]TOP susah lah have person want enter difficult part ‘(If) people want to come in, (it’s) difficult.’ f. [Tak tahu ah]TOP tengok orang cakap apa, lu tahu diaorang not know part look person speak what you know they cakap ah speak part ‘(If you) don’t know, check what people say, you know what they say.’

In (11), we analyze the bare conditional as top, and the consequent as comment, which is not bracketed. Naturally, these examples are felicitous if the topic clause is marked by kalau. The bare conditionals may also be followed by particles that typi-cally mark topics, such as leh in (11c) and ah in (11f). This is to be expected, since structurally they occupy the top position, allowing the particles to be attached.

6. Multiple topics and multiple comments

In the preceding sections we documented the three basic types of topic construc-tion in Chinese and Bazaar Malay: the English-style topic structure, Chinese-style topic structure, and the bare conditional as topic. The data we have seen contain single topics and single comments, even though the comment clause may itself be analyzable as topic-comment, as in (9). In topic prominent languages, a sentence may contain more than one topic to be used with a single comment clause, and more than one comment clause commenting on a single topic. Relevant examples are shown below (Li & Thompson 1981, Xu & Langendoen 1985, Bao 2001):



(12) a. Zuótiāni, Lĭ xiānshēngj, wǒ ei kànjiàn ej le. yesterday Li Mr. I see asp ‘Yesterday, Mr. Li, I saw.’ b. Zhèjiàn shìi, Lĭ xiānshēngj, wǒ gàosù ej ei guo this event Li Mr. I tell asp ‘This event, Mr. Li, I have told about.’ c. Zhè-kē shù, yè duō, huā shăo this-cl tree leaf many flower few ‘This tree, the leaves are many, the flowers are few.’ d. Nèi-kuài tiáni, dàozi zhăngde hĕn dà, suóyĭ ei hĕn zhíqián that-cl land rice grow very big so very valuable ‘That piece of land, rice grows very big, so (it) is very valuable.’

(12a,b) contain two topics, and (12c,d) two comments. Note that both (12a,b) are English-style topic structure, with the topics originating in the comment clause. (12c) is Chinese-style, whereas (12d) is a mixture of the English-style (the first comment clause) and Chinese-style (the second comment clause).

As in Chinese, Bazaar Malay employs clauses with multiple topics and multiple comments as well. The multiple-topic data are displayed in (13), and the multiple-comment data in (14).

(13) a. [Bazaar Malay]i [itu jam]j, [semua boleh cakap ei di kampong ej]S Bazaar Malay that time all can speak in village ‘Bazaar Malay, at that time, all could speak in the village.’ b. [Pasal minya lu]i, [saudagar pergi datang pergi datang]j matter mod you merchant go come go come [dia tanya sama ei ej]S 3sg ask with ‘About you, from the merchants who went to and fro, he asked.’

(14) a. [Toto]TOP [mana-mana pun ada e]S, [e bukan di satu tempat]S Toto anywhere also have not in one place ‘Toto, (it is) everywhere, not in one place.’ b. [itu perempuan]TOP [e banyak jahat]S, [tak boleh tahan e]S that woman many vicious not can endure ‘That woman, (she) was vicious, (I) could not stand (her).’ c. [Orang tua]TOP [e pergi angkat payong ah]S, [e pukul lumbu ah]S person old go carry umbrella part hit buffalo part ‘The old man, (he) left carrying an umbrella, hit the buffalo.’ d. [Niaga]TOP [Indonesia punya barang ambil keluar Singapore]S, business Indonesia mod goods take out Singapore



[Singapore punya barang ambil masuk Indonesia]S Singapore mod goods take enter Indonesia ‘As for business, Indonesian goods were exported to Singapore,

Singapore goods were imported into Indonesia’.

In (13) and (14), multiple topics are differentiated with subscripts, and the null pronominals (ei and ej) appear in the canonical positions of the topics, see foot-note 7. In some cases, the same sentence may contain more than one topic and more than one comment as in the following example:

(15) [Dia cakap apa]TOP [Singapore panggil apa]TOP [dia tahu e]S, 3sg speak what Singapore call what 3sg know [saya tahu e lah]S I know part ‘What he says, what Singapore calls, she knows, I know.’

In (15), the two topics serve as the object within each of the two comment clauses.

7. Comparing topic prominence in Singapore English

In the preceding sections, we have demonstrated the close fit in topic prominence between Bazaar Malay and Chinese — the whole range of topic structures in Chi-nese is transferred from Chinese to Bazaar Malay. The same topic structures are found in Singapore English, the vernacular variety that is now being acquired as mother tongue by a growing segment of Singapore’s population (cf. Gupta 1994). It has long been recognized that Singapore English is topic prominent (cf. Platt & Weber 1980). The relevant data are displayed below.

(16) a. English-style topic structure Certain medicine, we don’t stock in our dispensary. (Platt & Weber

1980: 73) b. Chinese-style topic structure My family everybody is educated in English. ‘In my family everybody is educated in English.’ (Platt, Weber, & Ho

1983: 47) c. Bare conditionals Don’t care lah. Want to eat, eat; don’t want to eat, then don’t eat. ‘Don’t worry. If you want to eat, eat; if you don’t want to eat, then don’t

eat. (Bao & Lye 2005: 283)



d. Multiple-topic structure One time, the flats, nobody want. (Platt, Weber & Ho 1983: 48) e. Multiple-comment structure That fish, I bought last week, spoiled already. (Bao 2001: 307)

For detailed description and analysis, see the references cited above.The clustering effect exhibited in the topic prominence of Bazaar Malay and

Singapore English raises interesting questions about the nature of substratum transfer and the role of the contact ecology. Most studies of substratum transfer in the contact linguistics literature focus on identifying the source of individual novel lexical and grammatical features in the contact language; for example, see Muysken & Smith (1986), Mufwene (1990, 1993), and Lefebvre (1998). Unfortu-nately the clustering tendency in substratum transfer has not received its due at-tention. The convergence in topic prominence between Chinese and Bazaar Malay (and Singapore English) supports the argument, proposed by Bao (2005) and Bao & Lye (2005), that the grammatical subsystem is the locus of substratist explana-tion. Systemic substratum transfer takes place in contact environments where the contact language interacts with all the input languages throughout its history. This is the case with both Bazaar Malay and Singapore English.

Throughout its short history, Singapore has had the same mix of languages, and the same sociolinguistic relations among the languages; see Lim (2007) for a recent view on the history of the language situation in Singapore. The four ‘official’ languages, English, Chinese, Malay, and Tamil, have had a constant presence in Singapore, although their communicative functions have varied over time. Ba-zaar Malay and Singapore English emerged and developed in the same linguistic ecology, albeit at different times. For both Bazaar Malay and Singapore English, Chinese constitutes the main linguistic substratum. The early Chinese dialects are Southern Min (Hokkien, Teochew, Hainanese), Hakka, and Cantonese, and since the turn of the 20th century, Mandarin. All the contributing languages — the substratum languages and the lexifiers — are spoken along with the developing contact languages, albeit for different communicative purposes. Bazaar Malay and Singapore English are constantly being shaped by the same linguistic resources in the contact ecology.8 This crucial contact condition ensures robust substratum

8. The systemic transfer of Chinese topic prominence to Bazaar Malay and Singapore English is complete, as we have seen. In other cases of grammatical transfer, the lexifier language plays an important role in shaping the eventual outcome. Bao (2005) shows that the aspectual system of Singapore English is not identical to the Chinese system or to the English system, the two main input languages. It is in fact shaped by both languages: the Singapore English aspectual system is the Chinese system filtered through English morphosyntax. Lee (2009) explores the grammar and use of ada ‘have’ in Baba Malay, got in Singapore English, and u ‘have’ in Chinese (Hokkien),



influence, resulting in the transfer of the entire cluster of topic structures from Chinese to Bazaar Malay and Singapore English.

Ansaldo (2004: 132) argues for a more nuanced linguistic matrix for Singapore English, shown below:

(17) a. Lexifier: English vernacular b. Substrate: restructured Malay (Bazaar or Baba Malay) c. Early adstrates: Min varieties: Hokkien, Teochew, Hainanese d. Late adstrates: Yue varieties: Cantonese

To this list we may add Malay, Tamil, Hindi, and other Indian languages, as well as minor Chinese dialects such as Hakka and Hokchia, as early adstrates. In this matrix, Bazaar Malay and Baba Malay are placed as the linguistic substratum to Singapore English, with the Chinese dialects (and other languages) forming the adstratum. It is not clear why Cantonese is classified as a late adstrate, given the fact that Cantonese-speaking immigrants arrived at roughly the same time as oth-er immigrants, and made up roughly 19% of the Chinese community as early as the late 19th century (Bao 2001: 283).

There is no doubt that the languages listed in (17), Malay, Tamil, and Indian languages, have been active in the speech community of Singapore to varying degrees. But the distinction between the substratum and adstratum of Singapore English is not easy to maintain for two reasons. First, English has always been the dominant language, with the rest assuming less important roles in the political and economic life of Singapore. As far as Singapore English is concerned, all these languages form the linguistic substratum. Second, the novel linguistic features in Singapore English are mostly Chinese in origin. Although Bazaar Malay and Baba Malay predate Singapore English, they have made negligible contribution to the grammar of Singapore English. For Chinese grammatical constructions that have transferred to Bazaar Malay, Baba Malay, and Singapore English, we would expect that they are transferred to Singapore English directly from Chinese, rather than indirectly through Bazaar Malay or Baba Malay.

In this connection, let us consider punya, which we first saw in (2) (see also footnote 4), and one in Singapore English. It has been shown beyond doubt that the punya construction in Baba Malay and Bazaar Malay is appropriated from Chi-nese (Hokkien e, Mandarin de) (Shellabear 1913, Pakir 1986, Aye 2005). If Baba Malay or Bazaar Malay were the substratum for Singapore English, one would expect the punya construction to transfer to Singapore English, to be realized as

and shows that although ada and got have the same substratum source in u, their usage patterns are different, and the difference can be explained in terms of the filtering effect of the respective lexifier languages.



the one construction. Through careful analysis of the constructions in question, we can show that this is not the case. One crucial difference between the two con-structions is that the one construction is productively used for emphasis in Singa-pore English (Gupta 1992, Bao 2009), but the punya construction does not have the emphatic use in Baba or Bazaar Malay. One specimen of the emphatic one is shown below (Gupta 1992: 332):

(18) Senior never come and help one ‘Seniors did not come and help!’

If the punya construction is the substratum source of the one construction, we need to explain how one acquires the grammatical function as an emphatic mark-er. Prima facie, the most reasonable explanation is that Singapore English one is modeled directly on Chinese de, which has the emphatic use, rather than indi-rectly through the punya construction.

Ansaldo’s (2004) substrate and adstrate classification is based on the histo-ries of the languages in the contact ecology of Singapore English, rather than on the linguistic effect of the distinction on Singapore English. Two historical facts are important. First, Bazaar Malay was the lingua franca before Singapore English took over that function; second, the Peranakan community is among the first to switch to English. These two facts could potentially give the restructured Malay varieties an opportunity to exert on the emerging Singapore English influence out of proportion to their number or position within the early Singaporean commu-nity, as predicted by the Founder Principle (Mufwene 2001). As we have shown, the founder effect in Singapore English is obscured by the continued presence of the very languages that have contributed to Bazaar Malay and Baba Malay.

8. Conclusion

In the preceding pages we have demonstrated the complete convergence in topic prominence between Chinese and Bazaar Malay. The salient properties of the Ba-zaar Malay topic prominence are summarized in (19).

(19) Topic structures in Bazaar Malay a. English-style topic structure b. Chinese-style topic structure c. Bare conditionals d. Multiple-topic structure e. Multiple-comment structure



This degree of convergence is also observed in Singapore English, which shares the same linguistic substratum as Bazaar Malay.

It is not surprising that Bazaar Malay, like Singapore English, has such robust Chinese-derived topic structures. Speakers of Bazaar Malay maintain their na-tive languages. Our Chinese informants speak their native dialects and Mandarin as the primary means of communication at home, and Bazaar Malay as a lingua franca between people who do not share a common language. Moreover, Malay, especially spoken Malay, is also topic prominent, as noted by Rafferty (1987). The broad typological proximity between the two contributing languages — Chinese the substratum, and Malay the lexifier — facilitates the transfer of the topic struc-tures qua system from Chinese to Bazaar Malay, and the subsequent stabilization of the transferred grammatical system in Bazaar Malay. Bao (2005) argues for a systemic approach to substratum transfer, which places the explanatory locus on the grammatical system. The Bazaar Malay topic prominence provides further evi-dence in support of this approach. The typological closeness between Chinese and Malay with respect to topic prominence allows the entire array of Chinese topic structures to filter through and become part of the grammar of Bazaar Malay.

Received: 1/26/09 Revised: 7/17/09

Accepted: 7/29/09

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