Particle stacking in Singlish – New data from the National Speech Corpus

Abstract

Particle stacking, a phenomenon that sees more than one sentence-final particle used to mark an utterance, occurs in various languages, including Singlish, also commonly known as Colloquial Singapore English (CSE) or Singapore Colloquial English (SCE). In this paper, we provide novel empirical data on particle stacking in Singlish using the National Speech Corpus (NSC). A frequency analysis of particle stacks containing the Singlish particles hor, lah and meh in the NSC shows that most of the particle stacks are declarative-interrogative pairs where the first particle is used in assertions while the second particle has a backchannelling function, which is consistent with particles stacks observed in other languages. We also identify two particle stacks in Singlish – lah dey and lah sia – where the second particle does not overtly solicit the addressee’s response. We propose that dey and sia, together with the backchannelling particles, form a larger class of addressee-oriented particles based on their shared function of targeting the addressee’s attention.