Constraints on substrate transfer revisited

Abstract

In an article in this journal, Bao (2005) proposes a constraint on functional transfer that he claims accounts for features of colloquial Singapore English (and other language contact varieties) better than the congruence constraint proposed by Siegel (1999) and subsequently developed in later works (e.g. Siegel 2003, 2008a). More specifically, Bao argues that the requirement of surface syntactic similarity for transfer is too strong. His analysis uses Mandarin to exemplify the Chinese substrate languages that were the source of transfer, following the view that there is a universal Chinese grammar (Chao 1968: 13). However, the present article shows that Bao's claim is unjustified because the actual source of transfer was a variety of Chinese that differs significantly from Mandarin in the area of grammar he examined.