Get-passive in Singaporean English - A corpus-based study

Seminar paper from the year 2005 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Linguistics grade: 2 University of Sheffield language: English abstract: 1. IntroductionFirst of all and before I proceed with the actual description and basic layout of my term paper it would be quite interesting to quote the thesis that roused by interest and became my first motivation concerning the study of a certain grammatical phenomenon in Singaporean English. As English is the most widely used language in the world and it is used by at least 750 million people in addition to being the mother tongue of about 350 million people it is therefore characterized by a great deal of variation. Nevertheless it is remarkable that although these regional varieties differ from each other in terms of pronunciation and vocabulary their grammar is significantly similar (cf. BACHE/ DAVIDSEN 1997: 4). Before we can go on to find out whether this assumption is also verified in the English of Singapore I will present the main sections of my study.The main and most important part of this term paper is based upon a personal corpus- based study which should from the start be clearly characterized as relatively restrictive and not quite large in size in order to avoid any further problems and misunderstandings. This study I mentioned above concerns and tries to closely examine the overall frequencies of get- constructions and to be more specific we will try to examine the phenomenon of the get- passive in the English of Singapore always with the hidden desire to finally come up with a reasonable conclusion towards the end of the paper. In order to succeed in this procedure after having presented in brief the history of Singapore itself and later on of the English language in this country we will try to give some short definitions of the most basic notions which are used in the following pages. Then we will proceed in describing the corpora as well as the methodology used