A syntactic universal in a contact language:
The story of Singlish alreadyMichael Yoshitaka ERLEWINE (mitcho)
National University of Singapore, mitcho@nus.edu.sg
Linguistic Society of America, January 2018
Today
I investigate the syntax/semantics of Singlish sentence-final already.
(1)Mary live in New Orleans already.
(Bao, 2005:240)‘Mary lives in New Orleans (now) but didn’t before.’

Bao (2005) proposes that already is a relexification that combines the functionsof Chinese perfective -le and sentence-final particle (SFP) le.
1

Singlish already can given a unified semantics equivalent to that ofChinese SFP le/liao/laa. Chinese SFP le/liao/laa can be the sole substratesource for already.

2The syntax of Singlish already (subtly) differs from the behavior ofcognate SFP le/liao/laa in substrate Chinese languages.
 Lessons for the Final-over-Final Constraint (FOFC), a proposed universal on structure-building and linearization: FOFC is enforced
within Spell-out domains (Erlewine, 2017), which may vary with thepresence or absence of verbal inflection.

Singlish (Colloquial Singapore English; CSE) refers to the basilectal variety spoken in Singapore, resulting from contact between English, Chinese
languages, Malay, a.o. See e.g. Platt and Weber (1980); Lim (2004).
Singlish has been hypothesized to be a creoloid with a dominantly Chinese
substrate syntax (Platt, 1975), but this characterization remains controversial.
Data here comes from native speaker elicitations, in part previously reported
in Phoebe Cheong’s honors thesis (Cheong, 2016).
Roadmap§1 Semantics§2 Syntax
1§3 Comparison§4 FOFC

1

The semantics of Singlish alreadyBao (2005) observes that the semantics of already differs descriptively basedon the aspectual class of the predicate: (I do not discuss Bao’s “inceptive”
uses here.)(2)

Event ‘wash my hand’ ⇒ completive already:
I wash my hand already.
‘I washed / have washed my hand.’(3)

State ‘white’ ⇒ inchoative already:
The wall white already.
‘The wall turned / has turned white.’Bao (2005) observes that these functions overlap with Mandarin Chineseverbal -le (completive) and sentence-final particle (SFP) le (inchoative).
He proposes that Singlish already is the relexification (Lefebvre, 1998) of both(Mandarin) Chinese verbal -le and SFP le, using the English surface form
already and with a uniform sentence-final position.
Mandarin SFP le can also ensure completion given a telic event predicate, forexample with compound verbs which encode an end state:(4)

Women dao-da
shan-dingle.
wego.to-reach mountain-top le‘We have reached the top of the mountain.’(Soh and Gao, 2006)

We can therefore give Singlish already a uniform semantics based on thesemantics for Mandarin SFP le from Soh and Gao (2006, 2008); Soh (2009):(5)

already/le(p)a. asserts: p is true at the reference time Rb. presupposes: p is false before the reference time R

The interaction of aspect with already can be demonstrated with aspectually
underspecified predicates:(6)

It rain already. (ambiguous)2

a. p = it is raining (state)i. already(p) asserts: ‘It is raining’ is true now
ii. already(p) presupposes: ‘It is raining’ was false before⇒ ‘It has started to rain.’(inchoative)b. p = perf(rain) = it has rained (event)i. already(p) asserts: ‘It has rained’ is true now
ii. already(p) presupposes: ‘It has rained’ was false before⇒ ‘It rained / has rained.’(completive)

 Given the unified semantics for already based on that of SFP le in (5), wecan simplify Bao’s proposal by identifying Chinese SFP le as the single
substrate source for the semantics of Singlish already.
(Mandarin) Chinese:
Singlish:English: syn
 syn
→  synSFPSFPadverb  sem→  sem
(5)
(5)
...

 sem
 phon le/liao/laa  phon already  ←  phon already 
The Chinese substrate influences of Singlish are a range of Southern Chinese
languages, not Mandarin Chinese (see e.g. Wong, 2014). But relevant Southern Chinese languages have cognates of Mandarin SFP le with equivalentsemantics: liao in Southern Min and laa in Cantonese.

2The syntax of Singlish alreadySinglish already is a sentence-final particle (SFP) like its substrate cognates
le/liao/laa. A SFP is a right-adjoining adjunct or head-final head on theclausal spine. But where exactly is already? The linear position of alreadydoes not tell us about its syntactic position. For example, already could be
adjoined to the entire clause (TP) or to the VP:
TPTP

alreadysubject

subject

TVP

T

VP

already Cheong (2016): already unambiguously scopes over the entire clause.
3

Consider the scope of already with respect to negation:(7)

already > notI don’t wash hand already.
a. asserts: I do not wash my hands now.
b. presupposes: I used to wash my hands before.
= ‘I do not wash my hands’ was false before.

not > already would raise the presupposition that ‘I wash my hands’ wasfalse before, as presuppositions project through negation. This meaning ispossible with a biclausal negation:(8)

not > already

Is not [that I wash hand already].
a. asserts: It’s false that I have washed my hands.
b. presupposes: I did not wash my hands before.

Consider the scope of already with respect to subject quantifiers:(9)

No one go school already.

already > no one

a. asserts: No one goes to school (now).
b. presupposes: Someone used to go to school before.
= ‘No one goes to school’ was false before.
If no one > already, we would have a presupposition trigger (already) within
the scope of a quantifier.
We know that presuppositions under negative quantifiers “project” over theentire domain of quantification (Heim, 1983; Chemla, 2009):(10)

No student knows that he’s lucky.
Presupposition: Every student is lucky.

(Chemla, 2009)

Similarly, if no one > already in (9), we would predict it to presuppose thateveryone went to school before, which is not a possible reading of (9).
Summary: Singlish already always adjoins to the entire clause (TP), notto a lower position on the clausal spine.

It’s not simply the case that Singlish disallows modifiers to the right, lower
in the clause (Cheong, 2016).
4

3

The syntax of Chinese le/laa/liao

Recall the relexification theory of already, modified from Bao (2005):
Chinese:
 syn

SFP

 sem

(5)

 phon le/liao/laa →→Singlish: synSFP at TP 
 sem

(5)

 phon already ←English: synadverb 
 sem

...

 phon already Lefebvre’s (1998) relexification theory, adopted in Bao’s discussion of already,predicts that the syntactic specification of Singlish already, like its semantics,
came from the specification of its substrate cognates le/liao/laa. But Chinese
SFP le/liao/laa are not adjoined to TP!
Erlewine (2017): Mandarin SFP le is uniformly clause-medial, in a position
between TP and VP.
TPsubject
TVP

leEvidence again comes from semantic scope. For example, le scopes above thelow negator bù but below búshì (Soh and Gao, 2006):(11)

a. Wǒ bù xiǎng jiāle.
I neg miss home leasserts: ‘I do not miss home now.’
presupposes: ‘I did miss home before.’le > negb. Wǒ búshì xiǎng jiāle.
I neg miss home leasserts: ‘I do not miss home now.’
presupposes: ‘I did not miss home before.’neg > leSee Erlewine (2017) for additional evidence from the scope of modals, subjects, and disjunction.

5

But recall that Mandarin Chinese was probably not a dominant substrateinfluence in the development of Singlish.
Len & Erlewine (in prep): SFP liao/laa take scope clause-medially in Hokkien,
Teochew, Hainanese (Southern Min) and Cantonese spoken in Singapore, justas Mandarin SFP le does.
For example, Len & Erlewine (in prep) show scope interactions with negationthat parallel the behavior of Mandarin le (11):(12) Liao in Hokkien (Southern Min) with two negators:
a. Gua bo suka iliao.
Ineg like him liao
asserts: ‘I do not like him now.’
presupposes: ‘I liked him before.’liao > neg

b. Gua msi guanliong iliao.
Ineg forgive
him liao
asserts: ‘I have not forgiven him.’presupposes: ‘I did not forgive him before.’neg > liaoChinese: syn
SFP at vP 
 sem

(5)

 phon le/liao/laa →→Singlish: syn
SFP at TP 
 sem

(5)

 phon already ←English: synadverb 
 sem

...

 phon already How did this happen?

4The syntax of Chinese le/laa/liao

Chinese SFPs have been important in the discussion of the Final-over-Final
Constraint (FOFC; Holmberg 2000; Biberauer, Holmberg, and Roberts 2008,2014; Biberauer, Newton, and Sheehan 2009; a.o.), a proposed universal onstructure-building and linearization.
(13) The Final-over-Final Constraint (FOFC) (Holmberg, 2000, p. 124):
If a phrase α is head-initial, then the phrase β immediately dominating
α is head-initial. If α is head-final, β can be head-final or head-initial.
6

(14)

Predictions of the Final-over-Final Constraint:
XHI over HF: *HF over HI:
XHF over HF: XHI over HI:
βPβP
βPβPβαP
XPαβαPαβ

XPαP
XPαPααβ

XPFor example, this gap is observed across possible orders of verb, object,and auxiliary across modern and historical Germanic languages (Biberauer,Holmberg, and Roberts, 2008, 2014).
At the same time, we know FOFC does not hold over entire utterances:(15)

Head-final VP over head-initial DP in German (BHR 2008):
Johann hat [VP [DP den Mann] gesehen].
John hasthe man seen
‘John has seen the man.’

A common intuition for accounting for such data is that FOFC holds only overcertain domains.
Biberauer, Newton, and Sheehan (2009); Biberauer and Sheehan (2012); Biberauer, Holmberg, and Roberts (2014) propose that FOFC holds over the entireclausal extended projection.
 But clause-medial Chinese SFPs like le/liao/laa seem to counteexemplify this.
Erlewine (2017): FOFC is enforced over Spell-out domains. Morphologicaldependencies can suspend Spell-out, causing FOFC to be enforced over lower(vP) and higher (CP) phasal material together.1 Chinese languages have noinflectional dependencies between the higher and lower phase.
1Richards (2016) also discusses FOFC as being enforced within but not across Spell-out
domains or phases. See also Den Dikken (2007) and Gallego (2007, 2010) for the idea that phaseboundaries can be extended or merged.

7Prediction: (Apparent) FOFC violations might be more likely in isolating/analytic languages and less likely in agglutinating/synthetic languages.
• Philip (2013, p. 206) cites Matthew Dryer (p.c.) in stating that “for manyof the VO languages exhibiting final uninflected tense or aspect particles, there is simply no verbal inflection in the language at all.”• The FOFC-violating V-O-Aux order is attested by an ability modal inMiddle Chinese and in a number of Southeast Asian languages (Simpson, 2001), with are indeed very analytic.
Following work on Chinese SFPs, I consider the hypothesis that already is ahead-final head in the clausal spine—a potential FOFC violation. Ask me
about the alternative in the question period.
(16)

Wait lah, John say [∅ speak(s) Hokkien].

(Sato, 2014)

Many previous works note the optionality of Singlish past tense -ed and third
singular -s (Ho and Platt, 1993; Gupta, 1994; Lai et al., 2013, a.o.), but what’srelevant here is that Singlish has (the option of) verbal inflection from T.
 The inflectional link between T and V blocks the availability of FOFCviolating head-final heads (SFPs) in the middle of the clause.
Therefore Singlish already unambiguously appears at the clause periphery, not clause-medially.

5Conclusion
1

Singlish already can be given a unified semantics equivalent to that ofChinese SFP le/liao/laa. Chinese SFP le/liao/laa can be the sole substratesource for already.

2

The syntax of Singlish already differs from the behavior of cognate SFP
le/liao/laa in substrate Chinese languages:– Singlish already scopes over the entire clause (Cheong, 2016)– Chinese le/liao/laa are clause-medial (Erlewine, 2017, Len & Erlewine, in prep)8

3Singlish already derives from relexification of Chinese le/liao/laa (following Bao, 2005), but was reanalyzed under pressure from a syntactic
universal, the Final-over-Final Constraint (FOFC), and the presenceof verbal inflection in Singlish, unlike in Chinese languages.
 This difference between Singlish already and its cognate Chinese
le/liao/laa offers new support for FOFC enforcement over Spell-outdomains.

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