- Sociophonetics, experimental phonetics, description of Brunei English, language policy and planning, variations in World Englishes and New Englishesedit
Previous accounts on Brunei English have all revealed that speakers of this variety show tendency to rhotacise instances of postvocalic-r, leading to the general conclusion that Brunei English (BrunE) is rhotic, at least insofar as... more
Previous accounts on Brunei English have all revealed that speakers of this variety show tendency to rhotacise instances of postvocalic-r, leading to the general conclusion that Brunei English (BrunE) is rhotic, at least insofar as comparison to the neighbouring English varieties of Singapore and Malaysia is concerned. One of the cited reasons for the prevalence of rhoticity in the English of the Bruneians is the transfer effect from the subjects’ first language (L1), the rhotic Brunei Malay. This paper aims to further assess this claim by looking at a segment of the Brunei population known to speak a non-rhotic Malay dialect – the Kedayans. Read speech samples from 10 Kedayan speakers comprising two different age groups were analysed, the results of which were then compared to the subjects’ responses in a survey on their lingua-identity percepts. The findings reveal a variety of English that is non-rhotic, and what appears to be an age-grading effect with regard to r-vocalisation. ...
Research Interests:
Author, Salbrina Haji Sharbawi. Title, An acoustic investigation of the segmental features of educated Brunei English speech. Institute, Thesis (Ph.D.) National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University. Year, 2009. ...
Research Interests:
Mossop (1996a) is an early work offering a concise description of the sounds of Brunei English. His study concluded that speakers of Brunei English tend to reduce final consonant clusters by plosive deletion, realise the TH sounds as... more
Mossop (1996a) is an early work offering a concise description of the sounds of Brunei English. His study concluded that speakers of Brunei English tend to reduce final consonant clusters by plosive deletion, realise the TH sounds as alveolar plosives, conflate the TRAP and DRESS vowels, and pronounce FACE, SQUARE and GOAT as monophthongs. In the current study, the features of Brunei English identified in Mossop‟s paper are explored further. Whereas Mossop relied on impressionistic analysis, this study analyses the data using both perceptual and acoustic means. This has indeed been one of the biggest shifts in investigations on pronunciations since 1996 given that acoustic software such as Praat are now easily available. Other features not reported in Mossop‟s paper are also examined in the present study, including L-vocalisation, rhoticity, and the Voice Onset Time (VOT) of plosives. The current findings confirm many of the findings of the previous research, but there are also some...
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Author, Salbrina Haji Sharbawi. Title, An acoustic investigation of the segmental features of educated Brunei English speech. Institute, Thesis (Ph.D.) National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University. Year, 2009. ...
Research Interests:
Studies on Brunei Malay have made inconsistent findings: while some have asserted that this variety is thriving and is in no way endangered, others have found that its use is now waning. As the dyn...
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
We might expect Brunei English to be non-rhotic, as the Englishes of both Singapore and Malaysia are non-rhotic and Brunei has strong ethnic, historical, economic and cultural ties with those two countries. The current study com-pares the... more
We might expect Brunei English to be non-rhotic, as the Englishes of both Singapore and Malaysia are non-rhotic and Brunei has strong ethnic, historical, economic and cultural ties with those two countries. The current study com-pares the R-colouring of read data from female ...
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
This paper provides an acoustic description of the vowels of Brunei English (BrunE). Ten female BrunE speakers were recorded readingThe North Wind and the Sun(NWS) passage. The formant values of the eleven monophthong vowels and the rate... more
This paper provides an acoustic description of the vowels of Brunei English (BrunE). Ten female BrunE speakers were recorded readingThe North Wind and the Sun(NWS) passage. The formant values of the eleven monophthong vowels and the rate of change (ROC) of the diphthong /eI/ were measured and compared with the data of seven British English (BrE) speakers and also the results of similar studies on Singapore English (SgE). It was found that BrunE shares some common features with SgE as both groups do not distinguish between /i˜/ and /I/, /e/ and /æ/, and /f˜/ and /#/. The high back vowels of BrunE, however, are unlike the SgE vowels. Whereas in SgE /u˜/ and /~/ are fully back, in BrunE these two vowels are fronted, so they are similar to the vowels of the BrE speakers. The data also shows that BrunE /f˜/ is more open and less back than BrE /f˜/. For /eI/, the average ROC for Bruneian speakers is considerably less negative than that for British speakers, which indicates that in BrunE, just as in SgE, this vowel is less diphthongal than its counterpart in BrE.
Research Interests:
Previous accounts on Brunei English have all revealed that speakers of this variety show tendency to rhotacise instances of postvocalic-r, leading to the general conclusion that Brunei English (BrunE) is rhotic, at least insofar as... more
Previous accounts on Brunei English have all revealed that speakers of this variety show tendency to rhotacise instances of postvocalic-r, leading to the general conclusion that Brunei English (BrunE) is rhotic, at least insofar as comparison to the neighbouring English varieties of Singapore and Malaysia is concerned. One of the cited reasons for the prevalence of rhoticity in the English of the Bruneians is the transfer effect from the subjects' first language (L1), the rhotic Brunei Malay. This paper aims to further assess this claim by looking at a segment of the Brunei population known to speak a non-rhotic Malay dialect – the Kedayans. Read speech samples from 10 Kedayan speakers comprising two different age groups were analysed, the results of which were then compared to the subjects' responses in a survey on their lingua-identity percepts. The findings reveal a variety of English that is non-rhotic, and what appears to be an age-grading effect with regard to r-vocalisation. Whereas there are almost zero instances of rhoticity in the speech of the older speakers, the younger speakers, who also have lesser affiliations with the Kedayan dialect, show variability in their r-realisations. In addition to challenging the view that rhoticity is an effect of spelling pronunciation, this paper concludes that rhoticity in BrunE can be explained as an effect of contact from the L1, and that it appears to be an age-associated pattern that manifests with decreasing age.
Research Interests:
This paper provides an acoustic description of the vowels of Brunei English (BrunE). Ten female BrunE speakers were recorded readingThe North Wind and the Sun(NWS) passage. The formant values of the eleven monophthong vowels and the rate... more
This paper provides an acoustic description of the vowels of Brunei English (BrunE). Ten female BrunE speakers were recorded readingThe North Wind and the Sun(NWS) passage. The formant values of the eleven monophthong vowels and the rate of change (ROC) of the diphthong /eI/ were measured and compared with the data of seven British English (BrE) speakers and also the results of similar studies on Singapore English (SgE). It was found that BrunE shares some common features with SgE as both groups do not distinguish between /i˜/ and /I/, /e/ and /æ/, and /f˜/ and /#/. The high back vowels of BrunE, however, are unlike the SgE vowels. Whereas in SgE /u˜/ and /~/ are fully back, in BrunE these two vowels are fronted, so they are similar to the vowels of the BrE speakers. The data also shows that BrunE /f˜/ is more open and less back than BrE /f˜/. For /eI/, the average ROC for Bruneian speakers is considerably less negative than that for British speakers, which indicates that in BrunE, just as in SgE, this vowel is less diphthongal than its counterpart in BrE.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
This paper provides an acoustic description of the vowels of Brunei English (BrunE). Ten female BrunE speakers were recorded readingThe North Wind and the Sun(NWS) passage. The formant values of the eleven monophthong vowels and the rate... more
This paper provides an acoustic description of the vowels of Brunei English (BrunE). Ten female BrunE speakers were recorded readingThe North Wind and the Sun(NWS) passage. The formant values of the eleven monophthong vowels and the rate of change (ROC) of the diphthong /eI/ were measured and compared with the data of seven British English (BrE) speakers and also the results of similar studies on Singapore English (SgE). It was found that BrunE shares some common features with SgE as both groups do not distinguish between /i˜/ and /I/, /e/ and /æ/, and /f˜/ and /#/. The high back vowels of BrunE, however, are unlike the SgE vowels. Whereas in SgE /u˜/ and /~/ are fully back, in BrunE these two vowels are fronted, so they are similar to the vowels of the BrE speakers. The data also shows that BrunE /f˜/ is more open and less back than BrE /f˜/. For /eI/, the average ROC for Bruneian speakers is considerably less negative than that for British speakers, which indicates that in BrunE, ...
Research Interests:
We might expect Brunei English to be non-rhotic, as the Englishes of both Singapore and Malaysia are non-rhotic and Brunei has strong ethnic, historical, economic and cultural ties with those two countries. The current study compares the... more
We might expect Brunei English to be non-rhotic, as the Englishes of both Singapore and Malaysia are non-rhotic and Brunei has strong ethnic, historical, economic and cultural ties with those two countries. The current study compares the R-colouring of read data from female undergraduates in Brunei and Singapore, and it finds that the Brunei data is substantially more rhotic than that of Singapore. It is suggested that this is for two reasons: the main indigenous language of Brunei is Brunei Malay, which is rhotic; and Brunei English is at an earlier stage of development than Singapore English and so it is more susceptible to outside influences, particularly from American media.