'Intrusive as' in Asian Englishes

Description of Project

Complex-transitive constructions with the so called “intrusive as” (Nihalani et al. 1979: 256) are considered a pan-Asian feature (cf. Lange 2014). In Asian varieties, they are also used alongside standard language constructions such as known as in phrases with verbs like name or call and with the complement attaching to the object by means of as. This phenomenon can be illustrated by the following examples obtained from the SAVE corpus:

• The new board declared him as the chairman (SAVE-IN_SM_2004-07-15.txt)
• They termed it as a 'tragic event' (SAVE-LK_DM_2005-02-28.txt)

Based on data drawn from the South Asian Varieties of English (SAVE) corpus and other corpora, the project tries to fathom the causes of the highly frequent use of the “intrusive as”-construction. One line of argumentation rests on the quotative which is present in the contact languages: in certain Dravidian and Indo-Aric languages, some verbs of naming and denoting are followed by a particle that might have entered the English language through replication caused by interaction of superstratum and substratum. Another theory, puts more stress on the so-called “semantico-structural analogy” (Mukherjee 2007) which leads us to assume that speakers of variety apply the pattern of a known construction like known as to other varieties.

Apart from the question of the structure’s origin, it is still uncertain what weight should possibly be attached to variety status: Thas is, is the “intrusive as” a feature, that occurs more frequently with learners of English or is it used in equal measure in ESL (English as a Second Language) and EFL (English as a Foreign Language) contexts alike?

PUBLICATIONS RELATING TO THE PROJECT

Lange, Claudia, Christopher Koch & Sven Leuckert (2016). ""This hair-style called as 'duck tail'": The 'intrusive as'-construction in South Asian varieties of English and Learner Englishes." International Journal of Learner Corpus Research 2(2): 151-176.

Lange, Claudia (2016). "The 'intrusive as'-construction in South Asian varieties of English." World Englishes 35(1): 133-146.
 

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Lange, C. (2014): “’People call it as city of garden’ – tracing the ‘intrusive as’-construction in South Asian varieties of English”. Paper presented at SALA 30, Central University Hyderabad, 06 08 February 2014.

Mukherjee, J. (2007): “Steady states in the evolution of New Englishes: Present-day Indian English as an equilibrium”, Journal of English Linguistics 35(2): 157-187.

Nihalani, Paroo, R. K. Tongue and Priya Hosali (1979): Indian and British English: A handbook of usage and pronunciation. New Delhi: Oxford University Press.