IMPLICIT ARGUMENTS IN UGANDAN ENGLISH
Vol.7, Issue 2, 2021, pp. 147-166 Full text
DOI: https://doi.org/10.33919/esnbu.21.2.2
Web of Science: 000737013000002
Author:
Bebwa Isingoma https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1203-5951
Affiliation: Gulu University, Uganda
Abstract
In standard British/American English, some transitive verbs, which are ontologically specified for objects, may be used with the objects not overtly expressed (for example, leave), while other transitive verbs do not permit this syntactic behavior (for example, vacate). The former have been referred to as verbs that allow implicit arguments. This study shows that while verbs such as vacate do not ideally allow implicit arguments in standard British/American English, this is permitted in Ugandan English (a non-native variety), thereby highlighting structural asymmetries between British/American English and Ugandan English, owing mainly to substrate influence and analogization. The current study highlights those structural asymmetries and ultimately uncovers some characteristic features in the structural nativization process of English in Uganda, thereby contributing to the growing larger discourse meant to fill the gaps that had characterized World Englishes scholarship, where thorough delineations of Ugandan English have been virtually absent.
Keywords: implicit arguments, Ugandan English, structural nativization, L2 English, substrate influence, analogization
Article history:
Submitted: 7 July 2021
Reviewed: 29 August 2021
Accepted: 30 November 2021
Published: 30 December 2021
Citation (APA):
Isingoma, B. (2021). Implicit Arguments in Ugandan English. English Studies at NBU, 7(2), 147-166. https://doi.org/10.33919/esnbu.21.2.2
Funding
The research leading to these results has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No 754340 through a fellowship at the Freiburg Institute for Advanced Study (FRIAS), University of Freiburg, Germany.
Copyright © 2021 Bebwa Isingoma
This open access article is published and distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC 4.0), which permits non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. If you want to use the work commercially, you must first get the authors' permission.
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