The verb in Philippine English: A preliminary analysis of modal would

College

Br. Andrew Gonzalez FSC College of Education

Department/Unit

English Language Education

Document Type

Article

Source Title

World Englishes

Volume

23

Issue

1

First Page

113

Last Page

128

Publication Date

1-1-2004

Abstract

Taking its inspiration from a study conducted by Svalberg of Brunei English verb usage (1998), this paper examines the responses of a sample of 205 Filipino university freshmen to grammatically correct and incorrect verb forms in a 20-item Grammaticality Judgment Test. The test covered tense harmony, verb forms, tenses, and modals. Except in the area of modal use, the students on the whole performed fairly adequately on the items. As in the Svalberg study, the results showed that both the high proficiency and the low proficiency group had difficulty recognizing non-standard uses of modal would. Similar would non-standardisms were subsequently also found in a sample of printed material collected from local newspapers and journals. A possible explanation for this finding might be the convergence of imperfect learning, an expressive need to communicate non-assertiveness, and the tendency in a second-language variety to simplify complex structure and semantics. © 2004 Wiley. All rights reserved.

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Digitial Object Identifier (DOI)

10.1111/j.1467-971X.2004.00338.x

Disciplines

English Language and Literature

Keywords

English language—Philippines—Modality; Modality (Linguistics)

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