The Kena Passive in Singapore English

In Standard English (StdE), passives are formed using a be passive auxiliary verb or a form of get.  By contrast, Singapore English (SgE), which does not have as complex a system of auxiliary and main verbs, uses kena (a word of Malay origin) to form the passive.  The SgE examples above may therefore be phrased in StdE as I was once fined, I got fined once, or If I was fined.  (The quote may be translated as ‘I was once fined for jaywalking. Quite embarrassing. If I’d been fined for speeding, then that would’ve been cool.’)

Interestingly, the SgE kena passive is what is known as an ‘adversative passive’ — one used for negative or undesirable outcomes.  Hence, The baby kena fed is all right if the baby had been fed poison, but not if it had been fed milk.  Likewise, if one were to say I kena appointed leader, it suggests the speaker did not want to be leader.

A Clarification on Clarify

In Standard English (StdE), the verb clarify is a transitive verb, meaning that it has the pattern ‘someone clarifies something’, or Subject-Verb-Object.

In Singapore English (SgE), however, clarify is usually intransitive, meaning it does not take an object.  We see this very clearly in the above example, taken from a letter explaining overcrowding on the trains:

We hope this clarifies, and thank Dr Lim for his feedback. 

In StdE, the first half of the sentence might have read: We hope this clarifies the matter.

The Passive Construction

It is said that children, once they’ve acquired the passive construction, soon discover its usefulness when they’ve done something wrong and wish to avoid taking responsibility for it.

In an active sentence, the subject (underlined) is the agent or doer of the action: I made mistakes. 

In a passive sentence, the subject (underlined) is the patient or undergoer of the action: Mistakes were made.  Note that the passive construction allows the speaker to avoid mentioning the agent.  However, the agent may be mentioned using a so-called ‘agent by-phrase’ (underlined): Mistakes were made by me.

This comic strip is doubly funny because Zoё’s utterance sounds very adult.  If it sounds familiar, it’s probably because we associate it primarily with bungling politicians, CEOs, bankers and celebrities who’ve been forced to admit their mistakes publicly!

Edit: A few days after this post, the exact phrase was used by a ‘top banker’ in an interview with the UK’s Sunday Telegraph.  One wonders why he didn’t say, ‘We made mistakes’!

Phonics *Are Interesting

The highlighted verb is wrong (The Times, 30 November 2009).  Since phonics is the name of a subject, it should take a singular verb, is.  It is puzzling that the teacher — if she was indeed quoted correctly — chose a plural verb for phonics but a singular one for maths.  (And while we’re being pedantic, there should be a semicolon and not a comma after excellent.)

Words like mathematics, economics, acoustics and politics take singular verbs when they refer to the name of a subject or topic of study, but they take plural verbs when they refer to aspects, attributes, qualities and so on.  Hence:

Politics is my strongest subject at university.

but

The politics at work are unbearable.

Stress

A rather unusual typo here: the headline (Independent on Sunday website, 29 November 2009) should have read The war was illegal, with was rather than war underlined for emphasis.  The typo was no doubt due to the superficial similarity of the two words.  (And no, in case you’re wondering, it was not a hyperlink.)

As the first paragraph of the article shows, the issue at hand was the legality of the war:

‘Tony Blair will be quizzed over a devastating official memo warning him that war on Iraq would be illegal eight months before he sent troops into Baghdad, it was claimed last night.’

While it would be possible to stress the word war, the effect would be to contrast it with something else, for example occupation.  This is known as contrastive stress.  But as we can see from the article, there was no such intended contrast.

Colons

The above colon (Straits Times, 6 November 2009) is wrong and should be deleted, since colons are not to be used after linking verbs (in this case were).

Colons may be used to introduce main clauses (i.e. clauses that are grammatically complete and can stand on their own), as in the two examples above (Straits Times, 12 November 2009).  But does one use a small or capital letter after the colon?  Interestingly, in North America, the preference is for a capital letter, whereas British English prefers a small letter.  As can be seen from the above, however, Straits Times (and, by extension, Singaporean?) practice is inconsistent.

A Slight Problem

The headline (Straits Times, 21 November 2009) is wrong: make it Sleight of hand.  The expression means ‘skilful movements of [the] hand that other people cannot see’ (Oxford) — in this case the France striker Thierry Henry’s main de Dieu (‘hand of God’), which cost Ireland its place in next year’s football World Cup.

Slight and sleight are pronounced alike, so the misspelling — assuming it was not a weak attempt at a pun — is perhaps understandable.  The formal equivalent of sleight of hand is the French leger de main.

Weak Forms of Function Words

Online discussion forums are a rich source of authentic language data, particularly where linguistically insightful misspellings and other errors are concerned.

In the above extract, the poster (an American) writes would of when he means would have. This misspelling would probably be rather baffling to non-native speakers of English or to speakers of new varieties of English (e.g. Singaporean), but it is very common among ‘traditional’ native speakers such as the British, Canadians and Americans.  In these traditional native varieties of English, the function words of and have have identical weak forms — /əv/ — hence the confusion in spelling.  However, this misspelling does not arise in Singapore English and other newer varieties of English since they do not generally use weak forms of function words.

Similarly, this extract suggests that the poster (British) rhymes you’re (the spelling needed in the first instance) with your.  Again, this is because in British English are has the weak form /ə/ — so both you’re and your are pronounced /jʊə/ or /jɔː/. Likewise, this does not arise in Singapore English since it generally avoids weak forms.