Research On Philippine English From The Perspective Of Language Ecology And Language Contact

Philippine English was produced in the American colonial period.It is the official language of the Philippines and one of the varieties of English.Under the influence of languages like Tagalog,Spanish,and Hokkien,Philippine English has formed its own characteristics during its development and now it plays an important role in fields of culture,economy,and international affairs.Currently,most researchers focus on the evolution and varieties of Philippine English,while the studies exploring its evolutional factors from perspectives of language ecology and language contact are far from enough.This thesis studies Philippine English under theories of language ecology and language contact with research methods of literature analysis and case analysis.It starts from the development features of Philippine English,exploring Philippine English’s phonetic,lexical,and grammatical characteristics and language system changes in its ecological evolution and language contact process.Language ecology theory suggests that the language ecological system is composed of the internal and external environments of language.And,both language and language components need to keep moving and adjusting to adapt to the constantly changing natural,cultural,and social environments,so that they can survive and develop better in the language ecological system.Language has the ecological characteristics of adaptation,hybridization,and competition,attenuation and intensification,assimilation and alienation,and permeation and coordination.Language contact includes natural and nonnatural contact.Through the natural integration of groups within or beyond different regions and various languages,and the non-natural permeation of social compulsive system,common phenomena like language borrowing and code-switching are produced,which form the complicity and variety of language contact.After literature arrangement and case analysis,there are some findings:Firstly,influenced by environments of geography,culture,language policy,language education,language attitudes,and so on,Philippine English shows phonetic characteristics of attenuation,intensification,assimilation,and alienation,presenting as consonant absence like the replacement of /f/ by /p/,special management of the final position consonant like “gift” is pronounced as /gif/,vowel coalescence like the pronunciation of “a” in both “mass” and“stadium” is /ɑ/,and the generation of varieties like acrolect,mesolect and basilect.A lot of specific new words like “yaya”,“viand”,and “basi” are produced through approaches like extension and coinage after the adaptation,hybridization,and competition of vocabulary.Grammatical and syntactic phenomena like the lack of subject-verb agreement,the omission of articles,and the wrong use of prepositions are generated through the permeation and coordination of other languages like “The shortest path,as well as the distance,are easily obtained with standard graph theory algorithms”,“She is nurse”,and “In Italy,where Abano specialized on sacred art and the Church’s cultural patrimony,…”.Secondly,through natural and non-natural language contact between Philippine English and Spanish,Tagalog,and Hokkien,a lot of vocabularies and structures are borrowed into Philippine English system,like those Tagalog words about food and customs like“bagoong”and“barangay”(“咸鱼酱”、“巴郎盖社团”),Spanish religious and colonial words like“baptism”and“encargado”(“洗礼”、“代理人”),and Hokkien syntactic structures like“Are you able to sell already?”.What’s more,code-switching and mixing of different kinds of languages like“I’ll go home na”is also generated with the prevailing of bilingual and multilingual phenomena in the Philippines.In conclusion,under the evolution and influence of Philippine English’s language ecology and language contact,Philippine English system integrates language characteristics of colonization and localization,and generates varieties in aspects of voice,vocabulary,grammar,and syntax.Through study and analysis,this thesis can help more readers learn features of Philippine English and offer some advice for the exploration of China English’s characteristics and application.