Grammatical change in Philippine English over time

IN the last few weeks, we have been talking about variation, how Philippine English varies from American English and other varieties of the language. However, we have only talked about how Philippine English differs from other varieties in contemporary times. Fortuitously, in 2011, when I was still an assistant professor at De La Salle University, I built a database on Philippine English of the 1960s. There exists the Brown University Standard Corpus of Present-Day American English — or the Brown Corpus — which was created in the 1960s, and I compiled parallel Philippine data for this American data. There are also 1990s data for both varieties, as well as British English (both 1960s and 1990s). With these available data, it is therefore possible to track changes in Philippine English from the 1960s to the 1990s and compare these with what is happening in American English and British English. In doing so, I had the privilege of working with esteemed Australian linguist Peter Collins, an honorary professor at the University of New South Wales in Sydney.

In making such comparisons, not only are we simply describing change in Philippine English, but we are also able to answer important questions regarding it and other varieties as well, such as:

– Having originated from American English, does Philippine English still follow that variety’s norms?

– Earlier research on Philippine English (but most especially that of the late Bro. Andrew Gonzalez, FSC) has claimed Philippine English to be “overly formal,” even “textbookish,” that Filipinos speak English the way they write or that there is no distinction between spoken and written Philippine English. Does this still hold true up to now?

Our first exploration of grammatical change in Philippine English is the one on modals. This study, published in 2014, compares the so-called central modals (may, might, must, ought to, shall, should) with quasi-modals (be able to, be going to, be supposed to, have to, need to, want to). We observed a slower decline in the use of modals in Philippine English than in American English and British English. Meanwhile, the increase in the use of quasi-modals is faster in Philippine English than in the two older varieties. It is said that quasi-modals are slowly replacing the central modals. In terms of modal usage, we did not observe textbookish Philippine English. In fact, the new English shows the distinction in the use of modals across genres and registers.

We also investigated the subjunctive mood, one of the few remnants of the complex morphology of Old English initially said to be disappearing but being revived through American leadership. Philippine English patterns closely with American English in its preference for the subjunctive, while British English retains “should,” even though it is also beginning to show an increase in subjunctive use. In subjunctive use, the formality connotations associated with Philippine English are once again disproven.

The present perfect alternates with the simple past in referring to future time, but not always, of course. This was the subject of one study I published with another linguist, Dr. Robert Fuchs of the University of Bonn. This time, we compared Philippine English with Indian English, a new variety of English with British lineage. We notice the decrease in present perfect in Philippine English when it has increased in Indian English.

Finally, I mention the study of Prof. Peter Collins and Dr. Xinyue Yao of Renmin University of China in Beijing. They investigated colloquial features in Philippine English and found out that, indeed, our variety is able to make stylistic distinctions between speech and writing and that the new English is not simply following patterns of its parent American English.

What all of these tell us is not only that Philippine English is becoming more independent from American English and that the new English has speech and writing differences but also that comparable data across time could allow us to verify our hypotheses regarding the nature of language, particularly, change and change in progress.

Ariane Macalinga Borlongan is one of the leading scholars on English in the Philippines and is also doing pioneering work on language in the context of migration. He is the youngest to earn a doctorate in linguistics, at 23, from De La Salle University, and has had several teaching and research positions in Germany, Japan, Malaysia, the Philippines, Poland and Singapore. He is currently an associate professor of sociolinguistics at the Tokyo University of Foreign Studies in Japan.