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Four grammatical features of Saudi English

Charting the influence of Arabic on the syntax of English in Saudi Arabia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 May 2012

Maather Al-Rawi
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Extract

Saudi English (also called ‘Arabicised-English’ by Al-Shurafa, 2009) is probably one of the least studied varieties among the ‘New Englishes’. This paper aims to provide an introduction to the main syntactic features of the variety. In order to do this I will use the list of features discernible in varieties of English world-wide as ascertained by two scholars working actively on the typology of the different Englishes, Kortmann & Szmrecsanyi (2004). They use the term ‘angloversals’ for recurrent non-standard features widely found in English across the globe. This paper investigates three such ‘angloversal’ features which I believe to be widespread in Saudi Arabia: (a) #57: deletion of be; (b) #17: irregular use of articles; and (c) #53: invariant present tense forms due to zero marking for the third person singular (Kortmann & Szmrecsanyi 2004: 1146–7). This article also aims to study the effects of the Arabic substrate on the variety of English spoken in Saudi Arabia. The occurrence of the features is investigated among different strata in the society.

Type
Original Article
Information
English Today , Volume 28 , Issue 2 , June 2012 , pp. 32 - 38
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2012

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