Ishamina Athirah & Deterding, D. (2015). The role of noun phrases in misunderstandings in Brunei English in ELF settings. Journal of English as a Lingua Franca, 4(2), 283–308. DOI: 10.1515/jelf2015-0021. The Role of Noun Phrases in Misunderstandings in Brunei English in ELF Settings Ishamina Athirah and David Deterding Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, Universiti Brunei Darussalam ishamina.athirah@gmail.com dhdeter@gmail.com Abstract Innovative usage of noun phrases is among the most widely reported features of new varieties of English throughout the world and also in discourse in ELF settings, but its effect on intelligibility has not been extensively investigated. In an attempt to remedy this, 10 conversations in English between Bruneians and people from elsewhere were recorded, and a total of 153 tokens were identified in which the non-Bruneians did not understand the Bruneian speakers. In 20 of these tokens, the grammar of a noun phrase may be one factor in giving rise to the misunderstanding, involving added or absent articles, innovative use of plurals, and the unexpected gender of a pronoun. Further analysis suggests that non-standard grammar was probably the main factor in just four of these tokens, two involving an added article before a proper noun, one with a spurious -s on the end of other, and one in which she was used to refer to a male. There were many instances of non-standard grammar in noun phrases throughout the conversations, but this rarely caused a problem, which suggests that the innovative structure of noun phrases seldom impacts on the intelligibility of Brunei English in ELF settings. Keywords: misunderstandings, intelligibility, noun phrases, Brunei English 1 Kesan frasa-frasa kata nama terhadap kebolehfahaman Inggeris Brunei dalam konteks ELF Abstrak Penggunaan inovatif frasa kata nama adalah antara ciri-ciri varieti baru Bahasa Inggeris yang paling banyak dilaporkan di seluruh dunia dan juga dalam wacana dalam konteks Bahasa Inggeris sebagai bahasa perantaraan (ELF), namun kesannya terhadap kebolehfahaman belum disiasat secara meluas. Dalam usaha untuk memperbaiki sebahagian perkara ini, 10 perbualan dalam Bahasa Inggeris diantara orang-orang Brunei dan orang asing telah dirakam, dan sebanyak 153 token telah didapati di mana orang-orang bukan rakyat Brunei tidak memahami pembicaraan orang Brunei. Dalam 20 token tersebut, tatabahasa yang digunakan dalam frasa kata nama mungkin menjadi satu faktor yang menimbulkan salah fahaman, yang melibatkan penambahan atau ketiadaan artikel, penggunaan inovatif perkataan jamak, dan pemberian jantina yang tidak dijangka kepada kata ganti. Analisis lebih lanjut menunjukkan bahawa tatabahasa yang tidak standard mungkin menjadi faktor utama dalam empat token sahaja, dua melibatkan penambahan artikel sebelum kata nama khas, satu menggunakan –s palsu pada hujung perkataan other, dan satu menggunakan kata ganti she untuk merujuk kepada seorang lelaki. Terdapat banyak contoh tatabahasa tidak standard yang digunakan dalam frasa-frasa kata nama sepanjang perbualan-perbualan, tetapi ianya jarang menyebabkan masalah. Ini mengusulkan bahawa struktur inovatif frasa kata nama jarang mempunyai kesan terhadap kebolehfahaman Inggeris Brunei dalam konteks ELF. Kata kunci: salah fahaman, kebolehfahaman, frasa kata nama, Inggeris Brunei 2 1 Introduction Since Jenkins’ (2000) seminal work on pronunciation and Seidlhofer’s (2001) call for more research on the description of ELF, many studies have discussed features that are important for maintaining intelligibility in ELF communication (Jenkins, Cogo and Dewey 2011). While Seidlhofer (2004) points out that plenty of research has focused on phonology and pragmatics, there has been less work on grammar. Cogo and Dewey (2006: 73) suggest that this may be because of the requirement for a larger corpus in order for reliable findings to emerge. Over the last decade, certain grammatical structures that do not conform to the standard rules of English have been identified as commonly occurring in ELF, and it has been suggested that many of them may be communicatively effective rather than a hindrance to intelligibility (Jenkins 2009: 145; Seidlhofer 2011: 124). Hülmbauer (2013: 48) similarly notes that ELF speakers commonly use unconventional lexicogrammatical features which should be regarded as linguistically creative rather than deviations from a standard, and this usage often enhances successful communication. However, it is important to investigate these issues further, to try to evaluate the effect of unconventional grammar on intelligibility in ELF settings. Here, we will adopt the terms ‘non-standard’ and ‘innovative’ to refer to unconventional use of grammar. Morphemes associated with noun phrases, particularly the plural -s morpheme and the use of articles a and the, are some of the earliest grammatical morphemes acquired by children, and it has been claimed that second language learners usually follow a similar order in their learning (Krashen 1987: 12). However, these grammatical morphemes often seem to be communicatively redundant, so for example the meaning of two book is clear without a plural -s suffix, and superfluous morphemes like this are regularly omitted by ELF speakers. Moreover, it has been reported that logical plurals such as furnitures and equipments occur widely in the various Englishes spoken throughout Asia and Africa (Mesthrie and Bhatt 2008: 53) as well as in ELF corpora (Pitzl, Breiteneder and Klimpfinger 2008), and even Ban Ki Moon was reported to use the plural evidences when urging more research on a vaccine for swine flu (Seidlhofer 2011: 125). For article usage, Cogo and Dewey (2006) note that the occurrence of a and the in ELF communication may be determined more by the emphasis intended for the noun rather than the rules of standard grammar. Finally, speakers of Malay and Chinese get by perfectly well with no distinction between male and female third person pronouns, and so some speakers of English in Southeast Asia sometimes seem not to be too concerned about the distinction between he and she. One may also note that the plural -s suffix is nearly always phonetically salient, the presence or absence of an article results in a change in the number of syllables, and the distinction between he and she is usually perceptually quite clear, so the auditory salience of these morphemes contrasts with some other grammatical morphemes such as the past tense -ed suffix. Not only is the past tense morpheme often hard to detect at the end of words such as helped and walked in conversational speech, but we might note that native speakers also regularly omit it in phrases like finished them, pushed now, raised gently and loathed beer (Cruttenden 2014: 314). Given the widespread use of innovative grammar in noun phrases in ELF discourse and also its phonetic salience, it is important to investigate the extent to which it interferes with intelligibility. Cogo and Dewey (2012: 77) note that there are almost no cases in their ELF corpora in which misunderstandings are caused by the use of non-standard features of grammar, such as the innovative use of articles and the morphology of nouns, but this claim should be examined further. Even though it 3 seems likely that use of innovative features of grammar like these do not cause too many misunderstandings in ELF settings, it is important to find out whether this is true or not, using corpora of ELF conversations. English language teachers often place considerable emphasis on ensuring that plurals, articles, and the standard use of pronouns follow the normative rules of English grammar; but for the purpose of maintaining intelligibility in ELF communication, it is possible that these efforts are misguided. This paper therefore investigates the extent to which innovative grammar in noun phrases affects intelligibility when Bruneians are talking in English to non-native speakers from elsewhere. Feedback obtained from the non-Bruneian participants was used to identify instances where misunderstandings occurred, and we will just focus on those that might have arisen from innovative grammatical usage involving noun phrases, specifically the non-standard use of articles, plural marking on nouns, and the gender of pronouns. But first we will provide an overview of Brunei English and then a brief discussion of the nature of misunderstandings. 2 Brunei English Brunei English refers to the variety of English spoken in Brunei Darussalam. Malay is the official language of Brunei and various dialects of Chinese are used by most of the minority Chinese population, but English is also widely spoken and has for long had an official place in the mass media with two daily English newspapers as well as several local English-language radio stations (Ożóg 1996). This is due to the country’s historical links with Britain as a British protectorate from 1888 to 1984 (Hussainmiya 2006) and also the introduction of a bilingual education system in 1985 (Jones 2012). Under this system of education, Malay was the medium of instruction for the first three years of primary school, and then, from Primary 4 onwards, all subjects were taught in English with the exception of Malay language, religious studies and physical education. In 2009, a new education system was introduced called SPN21 (Sistem Pendidikan Negara Abad ke-21, ‘National Education System for the 21st Century’), which saw a partial shift in the medium of instruction, so mathematics and science that were previously initially taught in Malay are now taught in English right from the start in Primary 1 (Jones 2012), but it is too early to determine what effect these changes will have on the use of English in Brunei. Although it has been observed that the commonly used lingua franca in Brunei is Brunei Malay (Martin and Poedjosoedarmo 1996), English is sometimes the language of choice between different ethnic groups, notably between the Malays and Chinese, and also for Bruneians of all ethnic origins with people from elsewhere (Poedjosoedarmo 2004). Descriptions of the features of Brunei English include the analysis of its grammatical features by Cane (1996) and a recent study by Deterding and Salbrina (2013) that explored a wide range of features, including the phonology, lexis and discourse as well as grammar. Some grammatical features of Brunei English are shared with forms employed in ELF interactions elsewhere, including pluralising uncountable nouns like furnitures and stuffs, the omission or addition of articles, the innovative use of a preposition between some verbs and their objects, the use of the present tense to describe past events, and the intermittent absence of the -s suffix on third-person present-tense verbs (Cane 1996: 221; McLellan and Noor Azam 2012: 80; Deterding and Salbrina 2013: 70). 4 Despite this descriptive work, there has been little research on how intelligible Brunei English is in international settings. Deterding and Salbrina (2013: 122) briefly note that, based on the Lingua Franca Core (LFC) proposed by Jenkins (2000), misunderstandings might arise as a result of some features of pronunciation in Brunei, such as a lack of distinction in vowel length and the variable placement of the intonational nucleus, but they note that there is no evidence that pluralising nouns such as furnitures and advices causes a problem. However, the suggestions about any effect on intelligibility of grammatical features such as these need to be investigated. 3 Misunderstandings Kaur (2010) proposes a difference between ‘misunderstandings’ and ‘nonunderstandings’: a ‘misunderstanding’ occurs when the listener interprets a word or utterance with a meaning that is not intended by the speaker, whereas there is a ‘nonunderstanding’ when the listener is unable to make sense of a word or utterance. However, Pitzl (2005) shows that the categorisation of failures in comprehension is in many cases not absolute, as instances range from a total lack of understanding to more or less complete understanding, and Deterding (2013: 13) notes that in reality it is often difficult to classify instances as misunderstandings or non-understandings, as listeners may make a guess about the meaning of words or utterances but not be certain. This paper will therefore use the term ‘misunderstandings’ to refer to all instances in which some words are not understood by the listener, and we will not attempt to differentiate between misunderstandings and non-understandings. Mauranen (2006: 135) found little evidence of misunderstandings in her study of ELF communication in an academic setting because there was a tendency for the speakers to prevent them occurring by rephrasing their utterances and by providing additional explanations. However, it is also probable that some misunderstandings that occurred in her data were not detected because her analysis was based on instances of misunderstanding that were signaled by one of the interlocutors, and participants were likely to have been following the ‘let-it-pass’ strategy (Firth 1996) and therefore not have indicated cases where they did not understand something. We will now discuss how the tokens of misunderstanding in the current study were identified. 4 Data and methodology The corpus used in this study consists of ten audio recordings collected over a period of six months in late 2013 and early 2014. Each recording involved two participants, a Bruneian and a non-Bruneian, so we are concerned with how well the latter understood the former. A total of seventeen participants took part in the study and they are identified by their gender (F or M) followed by a two-letter code representing their country of origin. Details of the participants are shown in Table 1. Sixteen of the participants were students at Universiti Brunei Darussalam (UBD) and one, MFr, was a visiting researcher at the university. All the non-Bruneian participants had been in Brunei for less than one year when the recordings took place. All participants listed English as either their second or foreign language. When asked to rate their fluency and proficiency in English, they gave a range from ‘very good’ to ‘fair’. These participants were selected partly because they were all able subsequently to meet the researchers to help identify instances of misunderstanding and also to clarify speech that was unclear to the researchers. 5 Table 1: Participants, with the Bruneians listed first Participant FBr1 FBr2 FBr3 FBr4 FBr5 MBr1 MBr2 MBr3 FCh1 FCh2 FCh3 FCh4 FMd FOm FVn MFr MKo Sex F F F F F M M M F F F F F F F M M Country Brunei Brunei Brunei Brunei Brunei Brunei Brunei Brunei China China China China Maldives Oman Vietnam France Korea Age 33 31 24 19 19 24 26 30 28 21 21 19 32 33 28 30 23 L1 Malay Malay Malay Malay Malay Malay Malay Malay Cantonese Cantonese Mandarin Mandarin Dhivehi Arabic Vietnamese French Korean Occupation Undergraduate student Undergraduate student Undergraduate student Undergraduate student Undergraduate student Masters student Masters student Undergraduate student PhD student Exchange student Exchange student Exchange student Masters student Masters student Masters student Visiting researcher Exchange student In each recording, the Bruneian participant was being interviewed by the nonBruneian. The researchers prepared a set of questions for the non-Bruneian participants, but this only served as a guideline to help give them some ideas, as many of them were able to come up with their own questions spontaneously and did not use the questions prepared by the researchers. A total of just over 3 hours and 39 minutes of recordings was collected, with each recording lasting an average of about 22 minutes. The recordings are listed in Table 2. The identifying code for each recording consists of two-letters representing each of the countries of origin of the participants, the first country listed being the country of the interviewee and the second being that of the interviewer. Three participants took part in two separate recordings: MBr3 in Br+Fr and Br+Ko; FMd in Br+Md1 and Br+Md2; and MBr1 in Br+Md2 and Br+Om. Table 2: Recordings Code Br+Ch1 Br+Ch2 Br+Ch3 Br+Ch4 Br+Fr Br+Ko Br+Md1 Br+Md2 Br+Om Br+Vn Participant 1 MBr2 FBr3 FBr4 FBr5 MBr3 MBr3 FBr1 MBr1 MBr1 FBr2 Participant 2 FCh1 FCh2 FCh3 FCh4 MFr MKo FMd FMd FOm FVn Duration (min:sec) 20:48 22:46 20:56 20:27 22:28 21:04 21:45 21:31 22:29 25:12 Total : 3:39:26 The conversations took place in a quiet room at UBD. A Handy H4n recorder was used, and the data was saved in WAV format. After the recordings were completed, the researchers transcribed them. Where there were unclear words and 6 phrases, the researchers went back to the participants to ask for clarification. As noted by Deterding (2013: 25), it is important to be able to obtain feedback from participants because it allows one to correct transcription that is not clear, and it also enables one to identify instances of misunderstanding that are not signaled in the recordings. In fact, the majority of instances of misunderstandings in ELF communication such as this do not result in any obvious communication breakdown, as speakers in ELF interactions have a tendency to adopt a ‘let-it-pass’ strategy in the hope that failure to understand a few words will not matter in the long run (Firth 1996; Kirkpatrick 2010: 130; Mortensen 2013: 35). Since the aim of the study is to investigate the intelligibility of Brunei English for listeners from elsewhere, the researchers relied substantially on this feedback from the non-Bruneian participants. In obtaining the feedback, instances were identified in which misunderstandings might have occurred. This was done by selecting short extracts from the recordings and asking the non-Bruneians to listen to them and transcribe what they heard, though we should admit that we cannot be sure on the basis of this kind of subsequent feedback that a misunderstanding did actually occur in all instances. In this study, we will use the term ‘token’ to refer to a word or phrase that was identified as been misunderstood by the non-Bruneian participants. A total of 153 tokens of misunderstanding have been identified from the corpus. A few are signaled in the recordings, but the majority only emerged via feedback from the non-Bruneian participants. Only the tokens that involve the grammar of noun phrases will be discussed in this paper. In many cases, it is likely that the innovative grammar actually had little or no part in causing the misunderstanding. However, we present all tokens in which non-standard noun phrase usage occurred as part of or close to words that were misunderstood. In some cases, the grammar seems to have played some part even if it was not in fact the main factor in causing the misunderstanding, though in other instances it probably had little role in causing the misunderstanding. As noted by Pitzl, Breiteneder and Klimpfinger (2008) in their discussion of the <pvc> (‘pronunciation variations and coinages’) tag for transcribing the VOICE corpus, it is often hard to determine what the precise cause of a misunderstanding is, and multiple factors are regularly implicated. 5 Results Of the 153 tokens of misunderstanding, 36 were found to include non-standard grammatical usage. As already mentioned, in some cases the innovative grammar may not actually have been a major factor in causing the misunderstanding, but it is important to investigate the tokens in detail in order to determine the extent to which innovative grammar impacts on intelligibility. Here, we will only attempt to analyse 20 out of these 36 tokens since this paper will just focus on tokens involving noun phrases. Although this just deals with a small proportion of the data, and other factors such as unexpected pronunciation and unfamiliar lexicon are more important in loss of intelligibility, it is beyond the scope of the current paper to provide a comprehensive analysis of all the misunderstandings that occurred. These 20 tokens will be discussed in sub-sections based on a classification of grammatical features. These subsections are: added articles with proper nouns, added articles with common nouns, absence of articles, unexpected plural marking, omitted plural marking, and the gender of pronouns. 7 5.1 Added articles with proper nouns Kirkpatrick (2010: 104) reports that distinctive article use is common in Asian varieties of English. However, in his study of misunderstandings in ELF in Southeast Asia, Deterding (2013: 114) found that in a total of 183 tokens of misunderstanding, just one might have been partly caused by the unexpected use of an article, as he suggests that the use of an article with a proper noun may have contributed to a failure to understand the words Black Swan (the title of a film). In fact, even in this case, the main factor causing this misunderstanding was almost certainly pronunciation, with [r] instead of [l] in the first word, so the added article was probably a minor contributory factor. In the current study, six tokens of misunderstanding have been identified in which there was a non-standard occurrence of the definite article the before a proper noun. These are listed in Table 3, in which the location of the extract in seconds from the start of the recording is also shown. In these examples, the misunderstood words are bold and underlined. Table 3: Occurrence of a definite article before proper nouns Tok. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Location Br+Om:353 Br+Om:704 Br+Vn:852 Br+Vn:867 Br+Ch2:141 Br+Ko:1004 Context the kick one? the kick (.) you know the kick-ass two @ you know like the an- atlantis city (.) the @ i love to see erm food channel in the astro or the hell's kitchen yeah the (.) korea was the last one i: not only visited to take me <@> to the </@> to the <spel> u b d </spel> In Token 1, the listener FOm explained to the researcher that although she knew that Kick-Ass Two referred to a film, she was not familiar with the phrase. In Token 2, when asked about the kind of books he likes to read, MBr3 talked about the seven wonders of the world and mentioned Atlantis City. FOm was not familiar with Atlantis City and she heard it as Atlantic City. As with Token 1, we conclude that the cause of these words not being understood is lexical. In two examples from Table 3, Tokens 3 and 4, FBr2 was telling FVn about how she likes to cook and also watch television programs on cooking. FBr2 used an article before the proper nouns Astro, the name of a television cable company based in Malaysia, and Hell's Kitchen, the name of a television show. FVn was not familiar with these names and therefore failed to understand FBr2. Furthermore, she heard house kitchen instead of Hell's Kitchen because FBr2 had L-vocalisation in Hell's, pronouncing the word as [heʊs]. Therefore, although the speakers had an unexpected definite article in both these examples, the main cause of the misunderstanding was the use of unfamiliar names, although pronunciation also contributed to the misunderstanding of Hell's Kitchen. In Token 5, the speaker FBr3 was talking to FCh2 about her last vacation. FCh2 explained that she heard previous year instead of Korea partly because of the definite article before Korea in FBr3’s speech. In discussing this token, FCh2 explained that previous year made sense since she knew that FBr3 was talking about her last vacation. The wider context is shown in (1). 8 (1) Token 5 (Br+Ch2:141) Context: FBr3 is talking about the countries she had travelled to 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 FCh2: FBr3: FCh2: FBr3: FCh2: FBr3: FCh2: FBr3: yeah ah how how many countries have you been travel <1> have travelled </1> <1> e:rm </1> probably three erm three yeah malaysia singapore and korea AH yeah the korea was the last one i: not only visited but i studied there? also like <2> the erm what you did </2> <2> ah discovery year? </2> yes yes at discovery year Finally, in Token 6, the listener MKo explained that he heard today instead of to the because he did not expect the before the proper noun UBD. Furthermore, the speaker MBr3 used a plosive [d] for the consonant at the start of the. Although pronunciation may also have been a contributing factor in this misunderstanding, the main cause was probably the insertion of the unexpected article before the proper noun. In conclusion, it seems that the unexpected use of the article may have been the main cause of misunderstanding in two tokens: 5 and 6. However, innovative use of the before proper nouns is not usually a problem. Deterding and Salbrina (2013: 68) report that the non-standard addition of an article before the names of countries is rare in Brunei English, though omission of the before UK and USA does often occur. In contrast, this study did find a few examples of unexpected the with the names of countries and other places. Some examples that did not result in misunderstandings are summarised in Table 4. It can be seen that there are two occurrences involving the names of countries, Singapore (Br+Md2:62) and Oman (Br+Om:1027), and two others refer to places in Brunei, Temburong (Br+Om:527) and Bangar (Br+Om:555). In all the examples in Table 4, the article in question is shown in italics, but it is not bold or underlined as no misunderstanding occurred. Table 4: Instances of an unexpected article with names of places and countries that did not cause misunderstandings Location Br+Ch1:76 Br+Fr:285 Br+Md2:62 Br+Md2:139 Br+Om:527 Br+Om:555 Br+Om:1027 Context it was the middle the june until the end of june it close to the what do you call that the big mall the parkson? my last vacation i went to:: (.) the singapore with my family i am excited (.) to go ah to go to? was erm the universal studio most of the temburong are you know uh (.) hh filled with forest the bangar? bangar area? how how about (.) at the oman at oman is it yeah 5.2 Added articles with common nouns In this study, only one token of misunderstanding has been found in which there is the unexpected use of an article with a common noun. This is shown in (2). Here, the speaker FBr2 was telling the listener FVn that one of her hobbies is fishing and therefore she talked about where she goes fishing and what she likes to catch. In this 9 case, in standard usage, an article would not precede shrimp, and FVn heard trip instead of shrimp. (2) Token 7 (Br+Vn:100) Context: FBr2 is talking about one of her hobbies 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 FBr2: FVn: FBr2: FVn: FBr2: FVn: FBr2: FVn: FBr2: FVn: FBr2: i like to travel a::nd (2) fishing and fishing? yeah a::h i love i love to erm fish erm <tsk> the shrimp the big shrimp ah yeah but is there any place here erm you can go fishing? yeah <1> you can </1> <1> at the </1> at the sea at the beach right? yeah yeah we have ah (.) but i often go to the river? not the beach Although this innovative use of an article may have contributed to the misunderstanding, one other factor might be the pronunciation of the listener. FBr2’s pronunciation of shrimp has the expected fricative [ʃ], but FVn heard [t]. Perhaps FVn has a problem with [ʃ], as this voiceless fricative does not occur in Vietnamese (Maddieson 1984: 322). Indeed, Honey (1987: 240) reports that one of the consonant sounds that Vietnamese speakers of English have particular difficulty with is [ʃ]. This example illustrates that one should consider the role of the listener as well as the speaker when analysing tokens of misunderstanding. The conclusion that the addition of unexpected articles does not have a big impact on intelligibility concurs with the findings of Cogo and Dewey (2012) and also with Deterding (2013: 114) and several other studies. In fact, in the ten recordings analysed in this study, in total there are 16 occurrences of the unexpected use of an article with a common noun, but apart from Token 7 involving the shrimp discussed above, these did not seem to cause any problems. A few examples are listed in Table 5, where once more the spurious articles are shown in italics. Table 5: Some instances of unexpected articles with nouns that did not cause misunderstandings. Location Br+Ch1:321 Br+Ch1:252 Br+Fr:762 Br+Ko:141 Br+Om:567 Context we’re so exposed to the filipino food i don't really have much of a spare time right now she has <spel> p h d </spel> in the criminologist i’m giving a counseling to my students there is some sort of a resort 5.3 Absence of articles Let us now consider the unexpected absence of articles. In his ASEAN ELF data, Kirkpatrick (2010: 105) found several examples of the absence of articles before nouns, and Deterding and Salbrina (2013: 66) reported that the absence of articles also occurs in Brunei English, both in conversational speech and in news reports in local newspapers. In this study, five tokens of misunderstanding were found in which there was the innovative absence of an article before a noun, and they are listed in 10 Table 6. (The symbol Ø indicates the missing article, and ‘…’ in Token 12 indicates that some words have been omitted from the context that is shown.) Table 6: Misunderstandings involving the absence of articles before nouns Tok. 8 9 10 11 12 Location Br+Md2:1137 Br+Ch2:428 Br+Ko:1265 Br+Fr:72 Br+Fr:802 Context well ah it’s (.) Ø role playing strategy game you know it’s quite nice it (.) from Ø cuisine (.) ah traditional games she’s erm Ø criminologist working with <spel>j p m</spel> because i have Ø lack of confidence when (.) speaking i have Ø certificate … so i’ve taught in primary school In Token 8, the speaker MBr1 was describing video games that he likes to play. The listener FMd explained that she did not understand role playing strategy game because she was not familiar with the phrase, so the main cause of this misunderstanding is lexical usage. In Token 9, the listener FCh2 explained that she heard playing instead of cuisine. The wider context is shown in (3). When asked by the researchers, FCh2 said that she was familiar with the word cuisine, so in this case lexical knowledge was not a factor. (3) Token 9 (Br+Ch2:428) Context: FBr3 is talking about cultural things in Brunei 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 FBr3: FCh2: FBr3: local magazine that covers erm everything about brunei at the same time i was learning about my country as well like even though like brunei is a small country but there's actually so much more? to to it like some cultures that i never like learn when i was younger? it was really nice to: learn that now ah cause i'm i'm like i'm grown up and i understand better? so it's quite it's quite nice k- from cuisine ah traditional games like do you know about gasing? The main issue here is that FCh2 could not find a link between cuisine and games, and she explained to the researchers that she guessed FBr3 said playing because it was followed by the word games. Perhaps if the speaker had inserted the before cuisine, there is a chance that the listener would have heard the word correctly. In Token 10, the misunderstood word is the initialism JPM (which stands for Jabatan Perdana Mentiri, ‘the Prime Minister’s Office’). Earlier in the utterance, there is the absence of the article a before criminologist, but it seems unlikely that this contributed to the misunderstanding of JPM. In Token 11, the speaker MBr3 described how he feels about speaking English. MFr heard less instead of lack and the main cause of this mishearing is pronunciation, as MBr3 used a mid-vowel [e] instead of the expected open vowel [æ]. Although the main factor here is pronunciation, it is possible that if the speaker had inserted a before lack, MFr might have understood the word correctly. The context of Token 12 is shown in (4). The misunderstood words are i’ve taught, for which the listener MFr heard after. MBr3 was speaking fast and pronounced [f] instead of [v] in i’ve, and he also dropped the final [t] in taught, using instead a glottal stop at the end of the word, so this token of misunderstanding almost certainly arises from pronunciation. A little earlier in the extract, there is no the before certificate. Although there is no indication that this omission of the article before certificate contributed to the misunderstanding of i’ve taught a few seconds later, it is 11 included here because it involves the innovative absence of an article near to a token of misunderstanding. (The occurrence of educations in line 1 of this example will be discussed in the next section.) (4) Token 12 (Br+Vn:802) Context: MBr3 is talking about his previous jobs 1 2 3 MBr3: i have Ø certificate in erm in <tsk> diploma in primary educations? MFr: mm MBr3: so i’ve taught in primary school so during my time In all the five tokens shown in Table 6, it appears that the absence of articles did not play a major role in the misunderstandings, though it is possible that it was a contributory factor in Tokens 9 and 11. In the ten recordings analysed in this study, in total there are 57 occurrences of the innovative absence an article, but it seems that almost none of these caused a misunderstanding. Some examples are listed in Table 7. Table 7: Absence of articles before nouns that did not cause misunderstandings. Location Br+Ch2:682 Br+Ch3:79 Br+Fr:112 Br+Ko:118 Br+Md2:313 Br+Vn:967 Context china has the best players in Ø badminton world i’ve read maybe Ø couple of books my father? got married with Ø indonesian woman where we can have Ø discussion with the lecturers you know it’s difficult for bruneians to get Ø job i’m giving him Ø chance until this primary one In conclusion, out of twelve tokens of misunderstanding in the vicinity of nonstandard article use discussed in this section and the two previous sections, only two tokens (Token 5 the Korea and Token 6 the UBD) of the innovative occurrence of an article before a proper noun are suggested to be the main cause of the misunderstanding. In a few other examples, such as Token 9 Ø cuisine and Token 11 Ø lack of confidence, the absence of articles may have contributed to the misunderstanding, but we have identified other features as the probable main cause (though, as always, and as noted by Pitzl et al [2008], it is often hard to be sure exactly what the cause of a misunderstanding is). We can therefore conclude that in ten out of the twelve tokens, the presence or absence of an article probably played only a minor role in the misunderstanding. In fact, Kirkpatrick (2010: 105) notes that identifying non-standard forms of article usage is often problematic as many varieties of English treat uncountable nouns such as furniture and stuff as countable, and omission of an article before a plural noun is standard usage. The plural marking of nouns will be discussed in the next section. 5.4 Added plural marking Previous studies have shown that the non-standard use of plural forms for uncountable nouns is common in many new varieties of English including Brunei English (Cane 1996; Deterding and Salbrina 2013) and Singapore English (Deterding 2007: 42). In their analysis of a corpus of ASEAN speech, Kirkpatrick and Deterding (2011) reported that the regularisation of the count/non-count distinction on nouns did not cause any problems. In this study, there are occurrences where non-standard 12 plural marking of uncountable nouns was used by the Bruneian speakers, such as stuffs, foods, fictions and musics, and in these cases, there is no evidence that this nonstandard plural marking caused any misunderstanding. However, there are a few other occurrences of unexpected plural marking that may have contributed to misunderstandings. These are listed in Table 8. Table 8: Non-standard plural marking Tok. 12 13 14 15 16 Location Br+Fr:802 Br+Ko:196 Br+Ko:835 Br+Fr:17 Br+Fr:726 Context diploma in primary educations? … so i’ve taught in primary i have a good grades … grades my <spel> c g p a </spel> the others part is the sungai? i mean the ri:ver in forensic linguistics? … her tutorial students i have five siblings … from one parents … from my father Token 12 has already been discussed in Section 5.3, and the wider context was shown in (4). MBr3 pluralised educations but this almost certainly had no impact on the misunderstanding, because the misunderstood words were i’ve taught. MFr heard after instead of i’ve taught because of MBr3’s pronunciation. As noted in the previous section, it is sometimes difficult to classify whether some examples represent non-standard use of an article or innovative plural marking. We can see this in Token 13, the wider context of which is shown in (5). It is unclear whether it should be regarded as an unexpected article a before good grades or an unexpected plural noun. Furthermore, it is possible that what sounded like an article a could actually just be a pause particle. (5) Token 13 (Br+Ko:196) Context: MBr3 is talking about his current undergraduate studies 1 2 3 MBr3: erm hopefully hopefully i have a good grades have hopefully i can maintain grades my <spel> c g p a? </spel> and then get some recommendations from lecturers? In fact, it is unlikely that the usage of a together with grades contributed to the misunderstanding, because the misunderstood word is actually the initialism CGPA (Cumulative Grade Point Average, referring to a grade system used in the undergraduate programs at UBD). We can therefore classify the main issue as lexical. In Token 14, the speaker MBr3 inserted the suffix -s in others and the listener MKo heard other spot instead of other part. It is likely in this example that the insertion of the -s suffix on others is the main cause of the listener’s mishearing, though one might alternatively analyse this spurious [s] as an issue of pronunciation rather than grammar. Token 15 is shown in (6). MBr3 pluralised students while referring to himself. However, this almost certainly had no impact on the misunderstanding. In fact the misunderstood word was forensic, a word that the listener MFr was not familiar with, so the problem is lexical. (6) Token 15 (Br+Fr:17) Context: MBr3 and MFr are talking about a tutor at UBD 1 2 3 4 MFr: ah so how did you:: know with ah ishamina MBr3: a::h she's my tutor? in forensic linguistics? erm his erm her tutorial students and then i know her for: i think two months ah since two month yeah 13 Token 16 is shown in (7). MBr3 pluralised parents after using the singular one. It is however not clear if this caused any misunderstanding, because the misunderstood word was five, caused by MBr3’s pronunciation. MFr explained that he heard four because MBr3 was speaking fast. He pronounced five as [fʌʔ], using the short vowel [ʌ] instead of the expected diphthong [aɪ] and a glottal stop instead of the final consonant [v]. (7) Token 16 (Br+Fr:726) Context: MBr3 is talking about his family members 1 2 MBr3: erm some of because ah my siblings are (.) i have s- erm i have five siblings from my one from one parents i mean from my father We may also observe that all five tokens listed in Table 8 are from MBr3’s speech, so it seems that a spurious -s is typical for this speaker rather than a common feature of Brunei speech. We can concur with the findings of Deterding (2013: 110) that unexpected plural marking is not a major issue affecting intelligibility in ELF communication. In fact, in the ten recordings analysed in this study, 14 occurrences of plural marking on singular and uncountable nouns have been found, and none of them suggested any evidence of misunderstanding. Some examples involving musics, foods, stuffs and parts are shown in Table 9. Table 9: Some plural marking on singular and uncountable nouns that did not cause misunderstandings. Location Br+Ch3:521 Br+Ko:469 Br+Md1:897 Br+Om:706 Br+Vn:1094 Context actually it's because of the idols i'm into korean s- musics plus erm with erm foods with the meals and then compared to they give you themes to teach erm like foods or family it's more cheaper in brunei yeah the (.) the stuffs that they sell we have a parts time study as well my friend in ah my school 5.5 Absence of plural suffix In addition to the spurious addition of plural -s, there are also three tokens where the absence of a plural suffix may have contributed to a misunderstanding. They are listed in Table 10. Table 10: Absence of plural suffix Tok. 17 18 19 Location Br+Vn:223 Br+Ko:96 Br+Ko:97 Context well i bought a lot of key chai::n several linguistic program … interested in? sociolinguistic erm neurolinguistic? and then there’s er one language and Token 17 is shown in (8). FBr2 used the singular key chain after the plural quantifier a lot of. Although this may have contributed to the misunderstanding, the main cause is probably the speaker’s pronunciation. FBr2 lengthened the word chain and this made it unintelligible to the listener FVn. 14 (8) Token 17 (Br+Vn:223) Context: FBr2 is talking about her trip to Paris. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 FBr2: FVn: FBr2: FVn: FBr2: FVn: FBr2: well i bought a lot of key chai::n <1> a:nd </1> <1> you bought </1> a a lot of what? key chains key ch<2> key chains yea:h </2> <2> key ah: key </2> key chains <3> yeah ah ah: </3> <3> i- key chains for your keys? yeah </3> It seems that FBr2 realised not only that her pronunciation was problematic but also that the absence of a plural marker in key chain was unexpected, because when she repeated the phrase in line 5, she used the plural form key chains. We may also consider that the purchase of key chains as souvenirs might have contributed to the misunderstanding. It is currently a popular thing for Bruneians to buy, but for someone from elsewhere, it may seem to be an odd choice for souvenirs. Perhaps we could conclude that this misunderstanding actually occurred for cultural reasons. Tokens 18 and 19 are shown in (9). MBr3 did not have a final plural -s in program even though it follows the quantifier several, but there is no indication of a misunderstanding here. The two words that were misunderstood are sociolinguistic and neurolinguistic, and we might note that MBr3 did not have a final -s in either of them. However, it seems unlikely that the absence of a final -s in these two words is what caused the misunderstanding. (9) Tokens 18 and 19 (Br+Ko:96) Context: MBr3 is talking about linguistics courses that he is interested in. 1 2 3 4 5 MBr3: yes erm there ARE several erm there are several linguistic program that i'm interested in? sociolinguistic MKo: sociolinguistics MBr3: yeah sociolinguistic erm neurolinguistic? and then there's er one language and society? In fact, the misunderstanding lies in socio and neuro, as MKo heard for sure and nearer respectively, and the main causes of the misunderstandings are pronunciation. For Token 18, MKo explained that he heard for sure because he was not familiar with MBr3’s pronunciation [sɒʃɒlɪŋgwɪstɪk] and was only familiar with the standard General American (GA) pronunciation [soʊsɪoʊlɪŋgwɪstɪk] (Wells 2008: 755). In this case, MBr3’s use of medial [ʃ] may reflect RP pronunciation rather than the GA pronunciation that MKo was more familiar with. In addition, of course, the use of [ɒ] in the first two syllables of sociolinguistic may have been a factor. For neurolinguistic in Token 19, MKo explained that he heard nearer instead of neuro. This probably occurred because he was confused by MBr3’s pronunciation [niːrɒlɪŋgwɪstɪk], in which the first syllable is not too dissimilar from the RP [njuː]. MKo was only familiar with the standard GA pronunciation [nʊroʊlɪŋgwɪstɪk] with no [j] after the initial [n] (Wells 2008: 537). From (9), it can be seen that MKo actually understood MBr3 correctly, as he said sociolinguistics in line 3. It seems that he was checking to see if the word he guessed was correct, so it is uncertain if sociolinguistic should be classified as a token of misunderstanding or not. It is classified as one because MKo appears to be asking for clarification. 15 In the tokens above, it appears that the absence of plural marking did not play a major role in causing the misunderstandings, and pronunciation seems to be the main cause. We can concur with Deterding (2013: 110) that the absence of plural marking is not a major issue affecting intelligibility in ELF communication. In fact, in the recordings analysed in this study, there are 63 occurrences of the absence of an expected plural suffix that did not show any evidence of causing a misunderstanding. Some examples are listed in Table 11. Table 11: Absence of plural suffix that did not cause misunderstandings Location Br+Ch3:704 Br+Ko:67 Br+Ko:947 Br+Md2:139 Br+Md2:1146 Br+Vn:279 Context my other family members the adult one they they have like okay i have erm (.) six sibling? my sister-in-law is a lecturer in one of the university most of the place that i: i am excited (.) to go to maybe @@ (.) we’ve done a lot of thing together well (.) obviously i have a lot of assignment to do In conclusion, out of the eight tokens involving plurals discussed in this section and in Section 5.4, there is only one token (Token 14, others part) in which the unexpected occurrence of a plural suffix may have been the main cause of the misunderstanding, though even this token might be classified as idiosyncratic pronunciation on the part of MBr3. 5.6 Gender In the speech of some Bruneians, there seems to be a tendency to confuse the pronouns he and she. In this study, there is one token in which the gender of a pronoun causes a misunderstanding. As shown in (10), the speaker MBr3 was talking about his father, but then in line 3 he used a female pronoun to refer to him. This caused confusion for MKo who asked for clarification in line 6. (10) Token 20 (Br+Ko:876) Context: MBr3 is talking about his father’s religious beliefs. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 MBr3: MKo: MBr3: MKo: MBr3: MKo: MBr3: since erm my father is not the is not ah originally muslim? mhm erm she's erm erm she's no religion at all actually? mhm ah your father my father erm and then i am converted to islam? In fact, two other instances have been found in which an unexpected pronoun was used, but neither seemed to cause a problem. In line 3 of (11), MBr1 refers to his brother as her, but this does not seem to confuse FOm; and in line 4 of (12), MBr1 surprisingly corrects himself and ends up referring to his brother as she; but FMd did not report a problem with this. 16 (11) Br+Om:846 Context: MBr1 is talking about where his brother’s live 1 2 3 4 5 6 yeah about the house you know my (.) my brother that’s that’s married (.) the the third (.) the third brother (.) he lives with (.) ah he lives at our house sometimes and sometimes he goes to (.) to her wife’s FOm: yeah MBr1: d- yeah FOm: so it’s like that MBr1: (12) Br+Md2:257 Context: MBr1 is discussing traveling on one’s own or with family 1 2 3 4 5 ah is it because is it the culture is like that ah <1> the parents don’t allow </1> MBr1: <1> no no no </1> becau- because my brother ah (.) i think he (.) hshe travel like (.) i i don’t know i lost count already? he travel a lot with his friends FMd: Overall, in the ten recordings, there are 156 uses of third person singular pronouns (93 of he and 63 of she). All apart from those discussed in (10) to (12) have the expected gender, and only token 20 (as shown in [10]) seemed to give rise to a misunderstanding. 6 Discussion The grammar of noun phrases, particularly the standard use of articles and the plural suffix on nouns, is often emphasised by English language teachers. For example, Bitchener, Young and Cameron (2005) reported that, in the writing of 53 adult immigrants to New Zealand, about 25% of the errors that they identified involved articles or other issues with nouns. However, it has regularly been reported that innovative grammar in noun phrases is common in new varieties of English around the world (Mesthrie and Bhatt 2008: 53) as well in ELF interactions (Seidlhofer 2011: 125), and it has also been claimed that non-standard usage can sometimes actually serve to enhance the intelligibility of speech in ELF settings (Cogo and Dewey 2012). It is therefore important to investigate this last claim further and determine the extent to which non-standard grammar might contribute to misunderstandings in ELF interactions. It seems that functional morphemes such as the plural -s suffix are often discounted in ELF contexts when the meaning is already clear, so phrases like six sibling and one of the university do not cause a problem, and plurals such as furnitures and stuffs are also widely used. In fact, use of a singular noun after one of has been reported to be very common in Brunei English (Deterding and Salbrina 2013: 54), and plurals such as equipments, infrastructures, jewelleries and stuffs are widespread (Deterding and Salbrina 2013: 53). The current study confirms that they do not seem to give rise to misunderstandings. Furthermore, the addition or omission of articles does not usually appear to be problematic. Confusion between male and female third person pronouns may also occur quite widely in the English spoken in the region. It might be influenced by Malay, in which there is only one third person pronoun dia to refer to both genders, and in fact the gender of younger siblings is also not distinguished, as adik can be either younger brother or younger sister. Furthermore, although all of the Bruneians in the current 17 study were Malay, the English spoken in the region is probably influenced by Chinese, as there are many Chinese people not just in Brunei but also in neighbouring countries such as Malaysia and Singapore; and spoken Chinese does not differentiate the gender of third person pronouns. Although a distinction is made between the male and female pronouns 他 and 她 in writing, they are both pronounced as [ta] on a high-level tone. It is possible that speakers in Southeast Asia are quite tolerant of variable pronoun usage, partly influenced by the indigenous languages spoken in the region. Overall, out of the 153 tokens of misunderstanding in the 10 recordings analysed in our corpus, we found that only a total of five of them (3%) are mainly caused by innovative use of grammar. In addition to the four tokens discussed in this paper, there is just one further token, in which close and knit spoken by MBr2 to describe his close-knit family was misunderstood as close and neat by FCh1, largely because of the unexpected and in this phrase. FCh1 confirmed that she knew the phrase closeknit, so this was not a lexical issue, and it arose largely because of the spurious conjunction in the middle of the phrase (though the relatively long vowel in knit may also have been a factor). The research reported in this paper therefore lends support to the hypothesis that innovative grammar is rarely a major factor in causing misunderstandings in ELF interactions, and for the purpose of enhancing intelligibility, teachers should focus more on pronunciation and lexis. Of course, teachers will argue that much of their work is concerned with writing, and that adherence to standard grammatical usage is vitally important for written work when their students are taking exams or when they are engaged in other formal activities such as applying for jobs or writing professional reports. Nevertheless, in ensuring the intelligibility of speech in ELF interactions, it seems that there are other factors that are more important. 7 Conclusion The main issues that caused the 20 misunderstandings analysed in the current study are summarised in Table 12. Table 12: Summary of main issues Main issue Tokens Added article 5 (the Korea), 6 (the UBD) Added plural suffix 14 (others part) Gender 20 (she) Pronunciation 7 (shrimp), 11 (lack), 12 (i’ve taught), 16 (five), 17 (key chain), 18 (sociolinguistic), 19 (neurolinguistic) Lexicon 1 (Kick-Ass Two), 2 (Atlantis City), 3 (Astro) 4 (Hell’s Kitchen), 8 (role playing strategy game), 10 (JPM), 13 (CGPA), 15 (forensic) Miscellaneous 9 (cuisine) Altogether, there are only four tokens in which grammar seems to be the main factor. These tokens involve the innovative use of articles with proper nouns, with Korea in Token 5 and with UBD in Token 6, the added suffix on other in Token 14, and the unexpected use of a female pronoun in Token 20. Other innovative grammatical features outlined in this study that occur in the remaining 16 tokens of misunderstanding include the unexpected presence and absence of articles, and the use or absence of the plural -s suffix. In these tokens, 18 however, it seems that the main causes of the misunderstandings are mostly pronunciation and also unfamiliar lexicon. We therefore conclude that non-standard features of the noun phrase may have played only a minor role in the misunderstandings, and we suggest that there is little evidence that such innovative grammar interferes very much with intelligibility in ELF communication by speakers of Brunei English. Further research should look at a wider range of speakers, to investigate if innovation in noun phrases and other aspects of grammar might interfere with intelligibility in various contexts, and also the extent to which listeners from a wide range of different countries might be confused by some aspects of the grammar shared by speakers of English in Southeast Asia. Acknowledgements: We are grateful for the detailed and helpful comments and suggestions made by the two reviewers. References Bitchener, John, Stuart Young & Denise Cameron. 2005. 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Research perspectives on teaching English as a Lingua Franca. Annual Review of Applied Linguistics 24. 209–239. Seidlhofer, Barbara. 2011. Understanding English as a lingua franca. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 20 VOICE. 2007. Voice transcription conventions [2.1]. Accessed 21 November 2014 from: http://www.univie.ac.at/voice/documents/VOICE_mark-up_conventions_v2-1.pdf Wells, John C. 2008. Longman pronunciation dictionary, 3rd edn. Edinburgh: Pearson Education Limited. Appendix: transcription conventions The transcription conventions are based on those outlined in VOICE (2007), with the addition of underlined/bold font to indicate misunderstood words and italics to highlight non-standard usage that was not misunderstood. <1> , </1> : @ ? (.) <tsk> <spel> , </spel> italicised underlined and bold … overlapping speech lengthened sounds laughter rising intonation short pause tutting sound (alveolar click) individual letters spelled out non-standard usage that does not cause misunderstanding words or phrases that are misunderstood omitted speech Bionotes Ishamina Athirah is a PhD research student in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, Universiti Brunei Darussalam. Her research focuses on the intelligibility of Brunei English. Her previous publications include Identification of Bruneian ethnic groups from their English Pronunciation , published in South East Asia: A Multidisciplinary Journal, 11: 37–45. David Deterding is a Professor in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, Universiti Brunei Darussalam. His research focuses on the description of varieties of English in Southeast Asia and also the acoustic description of speech. His most recent books are Brunei English: A new variety in a multilingual society (together with Salbrina Sharbawi), published by Springer, and Misunderstandings in English as a Lingua Franca: An Analysis of ELF Interactions in South-East Asia, published by De Gruyter Mouton. 21