Schedule 72. StuTS

Unlike other varieties of English, Indian English was long thought not to have any syntactic structures that were unique to the variety (Lange, 2007). However, Indian English is now developing into a more distinctly unique variety with emerging syntactic structures of its own. Its most striking example is the use of the exclusive emphatic particle “only” in positions where it is unequivocally deemed ungrammatical by native speakers of for example American English, or where they are interpreted differently by a non-Indian audience.
I argue that L1 influence from Hindi causes an increased frequency of the use of “only” in postpositive position, with a partial semantic shift from exclusive emphatic particle to emphasis marker. The Hindi equivalent “hee” can appear exclusively in postpositive position, whereas English allows for variability in the positioning of “only”. At first glance, Indian English use of emphatic articles in general appears to be a calque (Fuchs, 2012). Such an analysis, however, does not take variability nor intended meaning into account. Grammaticality judgments by speakers of Indian English show that “only” in postpositive position can have both the standard English meaning as well as that of a lexically bleached emphasis marker. This makes a phrase like “But I'll confirm the timings tomorrow only” in Indian English a statement with added emphasis on the mentioned timeframe, but confusing and ungrammatical to those who don’t speak the variety.

Lange, C. (2007). Focus marking in Indian English. English World-Wide, 28(1), 89-118. doi: 10.1075/eww.28.1.05lan
Fuchs, R. (2012). Focus marking and semantic transfer in Indian English. English World-Wide, 33(1), 27-53. doi: 10.1075/eww.33.1.02fuc

Info

Day: 2022-11-05
Start time: 14:15
Duration: 00:30
Room: Wiwi-Bunker —Room 3016
Track: Theoretical Linguistics
Language: en

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