Ishamina Athirah & Deterding, D. (2015).

The role of noun phrases in misunderstandings in Brunei

English in ELF settings. Journal of English as a Lingua Franca, 4(2), 283308. DOI: 10.1515/jelf-
2015-0021.

The Role of Noun Phrases in Misunderstandings in Brunei

English in ELF Settings

Ishamina Athirah and David Deterding

Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, Universiti Brunei Darussalam

[email protected]
[email protected]

Abstract
Innovative usage of noun phrases is among the most widely reported features
of new varieties of English throughout the world and also in discourse in ELF
settings, but its effect on intelligibility has not been extensively investigated. In
an attempt to remedy this, 10 conversations in English between Bruneians and
people from elsewhere were recorded, and a total of 153 tokens were identified
in which the non-Bruneians did not understand the Bruneian speakers. In 20 of
these tokens, the grammar of a noun phrase may be one factor in giving rise to
the misunderstanding, involving added or absent articles, innovative use of
plurals, and the unexpected gender of a pronoun. Further analysis suggests that
non-standard grammar was probably the main factor in just four of these
tokens, two involving an added article before a proper noun, one with a
spurious -s on the end of other, and one in which she was used to refer to a
male. There were many instances of non-standard grammar in noun phrases
throughout the conversations, but this rarely caused a problem, which suggests
that the innovative structure of noun phrases seldom impacts on the
intelligibility of Brunei English in ELF settings.

Keywords: misunderstandings, intelligibility, noun phrases, Brunei English

1
Kesan frasa-frasa kata nama terhadap kebolehfahaman Inggeris Brunei
dalam konteks ELF

Abstrak
Penggunaan inovatif frasa kata nama adalah antara ciri-ciri varieti baru Bahasa
Inggeris yang paling banyak dilaporkan di seluruh dunia dan juga dalam
wacana dalam konteks Bahasa Inggeris sebagai bahasa perantaraan (ELF),
namun kesannya terhadap kebolehfahaman belum disiasat secara meluas.
Dalam usaha untuk memperbaiki sebahagian perkara ini, 10 perbualan dalam
Bahasa Inggeris diantara orang-orang Brunei dan orang asing telah dirakam,
dan sebanyak 153 token telah didapati di mana orang-orang bukan rakyat
Brunei tidak memahami pembicaraan orang Brunei. Dalam 20 token tersebut,
tatabahasa yang digunakan dalam frasa kata nama mungkin menjadi satu faktor
yang menimbulkan salah fahaman, yang melibatkan penambahan atau
ketiadaan artikel, penggunaan inovatif perkataan jamak, dan pemberian jantina
yang tidak dijangka kepada kata ganti. Analisis lebih lanjut menunjukkan
bahawa tatabahasa yang tidak standard mungkin menjadi faktor utama dalam
empat token sahaja, dua melibatkan penambahan artikel sebelum kata nama
khas, satu menggunakan s palsu pada hujung perkataan other, dan satu
menggunakan kata ganti she untuk merujuk kepada seorang lelaki. Terdapat
banyak contoh tatabahasa tidak standard yang digunakan dalam frasa-frasa kata
nama sepanjang perbualan-perbualan, tetapi ianya jarang menyebabkan
masalah. Ini mengusulkan bahawa struktur inovatif frasa kata nama jarang
mempunyai kesan terhadap kebolehfahaman Inggeris Brunei dalam konteks
ELF.

Kata kunci: salah fahaman, kebolehfahaman, frasa kata nama, Inggeris Brunei

2
1 Introduction
Since Jenkins (2000) seminal work on pronunciation and Seidlhofers (2001) call for
more research on the description of ELF, many studies have discussed features that
are important for maintaining intelligibility in ELF communication (Jenkins, Cogo
and Dewey 2011). While Seidlhofer (2004) points out that plenty of research has
focused on phonology and pragmatics, there has been less work on grammar. Cogo
and Dewey (2006: 73) suggest that this may be because of the requirement for a larger
corpus in order for reliable findings to emerge.
Over the last decade, certain grammatical structures that do not conform to the
standard rules of English have been identified as commonly occurring in ELF, and it
has been suggested that many of them may be communicatively effective rather than a
hindrance to intelligibility (Jenkins 2009: 145; Seidlhofer 2011: 124). Hlmbauer
(2013: 48) similarly notes that ELF speakers commonly use unconventional lexico-
grammatical features which should be regarded as linguistically creative rather than
deviations from a standard, and this usage often enhances successful communication.
However, it is important to investigate these issues further, to try to evaluate the effect
of unconventional grammar on intelligibility in ELF settings. Here, we will adopt the
terms non-standard and innovative to refer to unconventional use of grammar.
Morphemes associated with noun phrases, particularly the plural -s morpheme
and the use of articles a and the, are some of the earliest grammatical morphemes
acquired by children, and it has been claimed that second language learners usually
follow a similar order in their learning (Krashen 1987: 12). However, these
grammatical morphemes often seem to be communicatively redundant, so for
example the meaning of two book is clear without a plural -s suffix, and superfluous
morphemes like this are regularly omitted by ELF speakers. Moreover, it has been
reported that logical plurals such as furnitures and equipments occur widely in the
various Englishes spoken throughout Asia and Africa (Mesthrie and Bhatt 2008: 53)
as well as in ELF corpora (Pitzl, Breiteneder and Klimpfinger 2008), and even Ban Ki
Moon was reported to use the plural evidences when urging more research on a
vaccine for swine flu (Seidlhofer 2011: 125). For article usage, Cogo and Dewey
(2006) note that the occurrence of a and the in ELF communication may be
determined more by the emphasis intended for the noun rather than the rules of
standard grammar. Finally, speakers of Malay and Chinese get by perfectly well with
no distinction between male and female third person pronouns, and so some speakers
of English in Southeast Asia sometimes seem not to be too concerned about the
distinction between he and she.
One may also note that the plural -s suffix is nearly always phonetically salient,
the presence or absence of an article results in a change in the number of syllables,
and the distinction between he and she is usually perceptually quite clear, so the
auditory salience of these morphemes contrasts with some other grammatical
morphemes such as the past tense -ed suffix. Not only is the past tense morpheme
often hard to detect at the end of words such as helped and walked in conversational
speech, but we might note that native speakers also regularly omit it in phrases like
finished them, pushed now, raised gently and loathed beer (Cruttenden 2014: 314).
Given the widespread use of innovative grammar in noun phrases in ELF
discourse and also its phonetic salience, it is important to investigate the extent to
which it interferes with intelligibility. Cogo and Dewey (2012: 77) note that there are
almost no cases in their ELF corpora in which misunderstandings are caused by the
use of non-standard features of grammar, such as the innovative use of articles and the
morphology of nouns, but this claim should be examined further. Even though it

3
seems likely that use of innovative features of grammar like these do not cause too
many misunderstandings in ELF settings, it is important to find out whether this is
true or not, using corpora of ELF conversations. English language teachers often
place considerable emphasis on ensuring that plurals, articles, and the standard use of
pronouns follow the normative rules of English grammar; but for the purpose of
maintaining intelligibility in ELF communication, it is possible that these efforts are
misguided.
This paper therefore investigates the extent to which innovative grammar in noun
phrases affects intelligibility when Bruneians are talking in English to non-native
speakers from elsewhere. Feedback obtained from the non-Bruneian participants was
used to identify instances where misunderstandings occurred, and we will just focus
on those that might have arisen from innovative grammatical usage involving noun
phrases, specifically the non-standard use of articles, plural marking on nouns, and the
gender of pronouns. But first we will provide an overview of Brunei English and then
a brief discussion of the nature of misunderstandings.

2 Brunei English
Brunei English refers to the variety of English spoken in Brunei Darussalam. Malay is
the official language of Brunei and various dialects of Chinese are used by most of the
minority Chinese population, but English is also widely spoken and has for long had
an official place in the mass media with two daily English newspapers as well as
several local English-language radio stations (Og 1996). This is due to the
countrys historical links with Britain as a British protectorate from 1888 to 1984
(Hussainmiya 2006) and also the introduction of a bilingual education system in 1985
(Jones 2012). Under this system of education, Malay was the medium of instruction
for the first three years of primary school, and then, from Primary 4 onwards, all
subjects were taught in English with the exception of Malay language, religious
studies and physical education. In 2009, a new education system was introduced
called SPN21 (Sistem Pendidikan Negara Abad ke-21, National Education System
for the 21st Century), which saw a partial shift in the medium of instruction, so
mathematics and science that were previously initially taught in Malay are now taught
in English right from the start in Primary 1 (Jones 2012), but it is too early to
determine what effect these changes will have on the use of English in Brunei.
Although it has been observed that the commonly used lingua franca in Brunei is
Brunei Malay (Martin and Poedjosoedarmo 1996), English is sometimes the language
of choice between different ethnic groups, notably between the Malays and Chinese,
and also for Bruneians of all ethnic origins with people from elsewhere
(Poedjosoedarmo 2004).
Descriptions of the features of Brunei English include the analysis of its
grammatical features by Cane (1996) and a recent study by Deterding and Salbrina
(2013) that explored a wide range of features, including the phonology, lexis and
discourse as well as grammar. Some grammatical features of Brunei English are
shared with forms employed in ELF interactions elsewhere, including pluralising
uncountable nouns like furnitures and stuffs, the omission or addition of articles, the
innovative use of a preposition between some verbs and their objects, the use of the
present tense to describe past events, and the intermittent absence of the -s suffix on
third-person present-tense verbs (Cane 1996: 221; McLellan and Noor Azam 2012:
80; Deterding and Salbrina 2013: 70).

4
 Despite this descriptive work, there has been little research on how intelligible
Brunei English is in international settings. Deterding and Salbrina (2013: 122) briefly
note that, based on the Lingua Franca Core (LFC) proposed by Jenkins (2000),
misunderstandings might arise as a result of some features of pronunciation in Brunei,
such as a lack of distinction in vowel length and the variable placement of the
intonational nucleus, but they note that there is no evidence that pluralising nouns
such as furnitures and advices causes a problem. However, the suggestions about any
effect on intelligibility of grammatical features such as these need to be investigated.

3 Misunderstandings
Kaur (2010) proposes a difference between misunderstandings and non-
understandings: a misunderstanding occurs when the listener interprets a word or
utterance with a meaning that is not intended by the speaker, whereas there is a non-
understanding when the listener is unable to make sense of a word or utterance.
However, Pitzl (2005) shows that the categorisation of failures in comprehension is in
many cases not absolute, as instances range from a total lack of understanding to more
or less complete understanding, and Deterding (2013: 13) notes that in reality it is
often difficult to classify instances as misunderstandings or non-understandings, as
listeners may make a guess about the meaning of words or utterances but not be
certain. This paper will therefore use the term misunderstandings to refer to all
instances in which some words are not understood by the listener, and we will not
attempt to differentiate between misunderstandings and non-understandings.
Mauranen (2006: 135) found little evidence of misunderstandings in her study of
ELF communication in an academic setting because there was a tendency for the
speakers to prevent them occurring by rephrasing their utterances and by providing
additional explanations. However, it is also probable that some misunderstandings
that occurred in her data were not detected because her analysis was based on
instances of misunderstanding that were signaled by one of the interlocutors, and
participants were likely to have been following the let-it-pass strategy (Firth 1996)
and therefore not have indicated cases where they did not understand something. We
will now discuss how the tokens of misunderstanding in the current study were
identified.

4 Data and methodology

The corpus used in this study consists of ten audio recordings collected over a period
of six months in late 2013 and early 2014. Each recording involved two participants, a
Bruneian and a non-Bruneian, so we are concerned with how well the latter
understood the former. A total of seventeen participants took part in the study and
they are identified by their gender (F or M) followed by a two-letter code representing
their country of origin. Details of the participants are shown in Table 1. Sixteen of the
participants were students at Universiti Brunei Darussalam (UBD) and one, MFr, was
a visiting researcher at the university. All the non-Bruneian participants had been in
Brunei for less than one year when the recordings took place. All participants listed
English as either their second or foreign language. When asked to rate their fluency
and proficiency in English, they gave a range from very good to fair. These
participants were selected partly because they were all able subsequently to meet the
researchers to help identify instances of misunderstanding and also to clarify speech
that was unclear to the researchers.

5
Table 1: Participants, with the Bruneians listed first
Participant Sex Country Age L1 Occupation
FBr1 F Brunei 33 Malay Undergraduate student
FBr2 F Brunei 31 Malay Undergraduate student
FBr3 F Brunei 24 Malay Undergraduate student
FBr4 F Brunei 19 Malay Undergraduate student
FBr5 F Brunei 19 Malay Undergraduate student
MBr1 M Brunei 24 Malay Masters student
MBr2 M Brunei 26 Malay Masters student
MBr3 M Brunei 30 Malay Undergraduate student
FCh1 F China 28 Cantonese PhD student
FCh2 F China 21 Cantonese Exchange student
FCh3 F China 21 Mandarin Exchange student
FCh4 F China 19 Mandarin Exchange student
FMd F Maldives 32 Dhivehi Masters student
FOm F Oman 33 Arabic Masters student
FVn F Vietnam 28 Vietnamese Masters student
MFr M France 30 French Visiting researcher
MKo M Korea 23 Korean Exchange student
In each recording, the Bruneian participant was being interviewed by the non-
Bruneian. The researchers prepared a set of questions for the non-Bruneian
participants, but this only served as a guideline to help give them some ideas, as many
of them were able to come up with their own questions spontaneously and did not use
the questions prepared by the researchers. A total of just over 3 hours and 39 minutes
of recordings was collected, with each recording lasting an average of about 22
minutes.
The recordings are listed in Table 2. The identifying code for each recording
consists of two-letters representing each of the countries of origin of the participants,
the first country listed being the country of the interviewee and the second being that
of the interviewer. Three participants took part in two separate recordings: MBr3 in
Br+Fr and Br+Ko; FMd in Br+Md1 and Br+Md2; and MBr1 in Br+Md2 and Br+Om.
Table 2: Recordings
Code Participant 1 Participant 2 Duration (min:sec)
Br+Ch1 MBr2 FCh1 20:48
Br+Ch2 FBr3 FCh2 22:46
Br+Ch3 FBr4 FCh3 20:56
Br+Ch4 FBr5 FCh4 20:27
Br+Fr MBr3 MFr 22:28
Br+Ko MBr3 MKo 21:04
Br+Md1 FBr1 FMd 21:45
Br+Md2 MBr1 FMd 21:31
Br+Om MBr1 FOm 22:29
Br+Vn FBr2 FVn 25:12
Total : 3:39:26
The conversations took place in a quiet room at UBD. A Handy H4n recorder
was used, and the data was saved in WAV format. After the recordings were
completed, the researchers transcribed them. Where there were unclear words and

6
phrases, the researchers went back to the participants to ask for clarification. As noted
by Deterding (2013: 25), it is important to be able to obtain feedback from
participants because it allows one to correct transcription that is not clear, and it also
enables one to identify instances of misunderstanding that are not signaled in the
recordings. In fact, the majority of instances of misunderstandings in ELF
communication such as this do not result in any obvious communication breakdown,
as speakers in ELF interactions have a tendency to adopt a let-it-pass strategy in the
hope that failure to understand a few words will not matter in the long run (Firth
1996; Kirkpatrick 2010: 130; Mortensen 2013: 35).
Since the aim of the study is to investigate the intelligibility of Brunei English for
listeners from elsewhere, the researchers relied substantially on this feedback from the
non-Bruneian participants. In obtaining the feedback, instances were identified in
which misunderstandings might have occurred. This was done by selecting short
extracts from the recordings and asking the non-Bruneians to listen to them and
transcribe what they heard, though we should admit that we cannot be sure on the
basis of this kind of subsequent feedback that a misunderstanding did actually occur
in all instances.
In this study, we will use the term token to refer to a word or phrase that was
identified as been misunderstood by the non-Bruneian participants. A total of 153
tokens of misunderstanding have been identified from the corpus. A few are signaled
in the recordings, but the majority only emerged via feedback from the non-Bruneian
participants.
Only the tokens that involve the grammar of noun phrases will be discussed in
this paper. In many cases, it is likely that the innovative grammar actually had little or
no part in causing the misunderstanding. However, we present all tokens in which
non-standard noun phrase usage occurred as part of or close to words that were
misunderstood. In some cases, the grammar seems to have played some part even if it
was not in fact the main factor in causing the misunderstanding, though in other
instances it probably had little role in causing the misunderstanding. As noted by
Pitzl, Breiteneder and Klimpfinger (2008) in their discussion of the <pvc>
(pronunciation variations and coinages) tag for transcribing the VOICE corpus, it is
often hard to determine what the precise cause of a misunderstanding is, and multiple
factors are regularly implicated.

5 Results
Of the 153 tokens of misunderstanding, 36 were found to include non-standard
grammatical usage. As already mentioned, in some cases the innovative grammar may
not actually have been a major factor in causing the misunderstanding, but it is
important to investigate the tokens in detail in order to determine the extent to which
innovative grammar impacts on intelligibility. Here, we will only attempt to analyse
20 out of these 36 tokens since this paper will just focus on tokens involving noun
phrases. Although this just deals with a small proportion of the data, and other factors
such as unexpected pronunciation and unfamiliar lexicon are more important in loss
of intelligibility, it is beyond the scope of the current paper to provide a
comprehensive analysis of all the misunderstandings that occurred.
These 20 tokens will be discussed in sub-sections based on a classification of
grammatical features. These subsections are: added articles with proper nouns, added
articles with common nouns, absence of articles, unexpected plural marking, omitted
plural marking, and the gender of pronouns.

7
5.1 Added articles with proper nouns
Kirkpatrick (2010: 104) reports that distinctive article use is common in Asian
varieties of English. However, in his study of misunderstandings in ELF in Southeast
Asia, Deterding (2013: 114) found that in a total of 183 tokens of misunderstanding,
just one might have been partly caused by the unexpected use of an article, as he
suggests that the use of an article with a proper noun may have contributed to a failure
to understand the words Black Swan (the title of a film). In fact, even in this case, the
main factor causing this misunderstanding was almost certainly pronunciation, with
[r] instead of [l] in the first word, so the added article was probably a minor
contributory factor.
In the current study, six tokens of misunderstanding have been identified in
which there was a non-standard occurrence of the definite article the before a proper
noun. These are listed in Table 3, in which the location of the extract in seconds from
the start of the recording is also shown. In these examples, the misunderstood words
are bold and underlined.
Table 3: Occurrence of a definite article before proper nouns
Tok. Location Context
1 Br+Om:353 the kick one? the kick (.) you know the kick-ass two @
2 Br+Om:704 you know like the an- atlantis city (.) the @
3 Br+Vn:852 i love to see erm food channel in the astro
4 Br+Vn:867 or the hell's kitchen
5 Br+Ch2:141 yeah the (.) korea was the last one i: not only visited
6 Br+Ko:1004 to take me <@> to the </@> to the <spel> u b d </spel>

In Token 1, the listener FOm explained to the researcher that although she knew
that Kick-Ass Two referred to a film, she was not familiar with the phrase.
In Token 2, when asked about the kind of books he likes to read, MBr3 talked
about the seven wonders of the world and mentioned Atlantis City. FOm was not
familiar with Atlantis City and she heard it as Atlantic City. As with Token 1, we
conclude that the cause of these words not being understood is lexical.
In two examples from Table 3, Tokens 3 and 4, FBr2 was telling FVn about how
she likes to cook and also watch television programs on cooking. FBr2 used an article
before the proper nouns Astro, the name of a television cable company based in
Malaysia, and Hell's Kitchen, the name of a television show. FVn was not familiar
with these names and therefore failed to understand FBr2. Furthermore, she heard
house kitchen instead of Hell's Kitchen because FBr2 had L-vocalisation in Hell's,
pronouncing the word as [hes]. Therefore, although the speakers had an unexpected
definite article in both these examples, the main cause of the misunderstanding was
the use of unfamiliar names, although pronunciation also contributed to the
misunderstanding of Hell's Kitchen.
In Token 5, the speaker FBr3 was talking to FCh2 about her last vacation. FCh2
explained that she heard previous year instead of Korea partly because of the definite
article before Korea in FBr3s speech. In discussing this token, FCh2 explained that
previous year made sense since she knew that FBr3 was talking about her last
vacation. The wider context is shown in (1).

8
(1) Token 5 (Br+Ch2:141)
Context: FBr3 is talking about the countries she had travelled to
1 FCh2: yeah ah how how many countries have you been travel <1> have
2 travelled </1>
3 FBr3: <1> e:rm </1> probably three erm
4 FCh2: three
5 FBr3: yeah malaysia singapore and korea
6 FCh2: AH
7 FBr3: yeah the korea was the last one i: not only visited but i studied
8 there? also like <2> the erm what you did </2>
9 FCh2: <2> ah discovery year? </2>
10 FBr3: yes yes at discovery year
Finally, in Token 6, the listener MKo explained that he heard today instead of to
the because he did not expect the before the proper noun UBD. Furthermore, the
speaker MBr3 used a plosive [d] for the consonant at the start of the. Although
pronunciation may also have been a contributing factor in this misunderstanding, the
main cause was probably the insertion of the unexpected article before the proper
noun.
In conclusion, it seems that the unexpected use of the article may have been the
main cause of misunderstanding in two tokens: 5 and 6. However, innovative use of
the before proper nouns is not usually a problem.
Deterding and Salbrina (2013: 68) report that the non-standard addition of an
article before the names of countries is rare in Brunei English, though omission of the
before UK and USA does often occur. In contrast, this study did find a few examples
of unexpected the with the names of countries and other places. Some examples that
did not result in misunderstandings are summarised in Table 4. It can be seen that
there are two occurrences involving the names of countries, Singapore (Br+Md2:62)
and Oman (Br+Om:1027), and two others refer to places in Brunei, Temburong
(Br+Om:527) and Bangar (Br+Om:555). In all the examples in Table 4, the article in
question is shown in italics, but it is not bold or underlined as no misunderstanding
occurred.
Table 4: Instances of an unexpected article with names of places and countries that
did not cause misunderstandings
Location Context
Br+Ch1:76 it was the middle the june until the end of june
Br+Fr:285 it close to the what do you call that the big mall the parkson?
Br+Md2:62 my last vacation i went to:: (.) the singapore with my family
Br+Md2:139 i am excited (.) to go ah to go to? was erm the universal studio
Br+Om:527 most of the temburong are you know uh (.) hh filled with forest
Br+Om:555 the bangar? bangar area?
Br+Om:1027 how how about (.) at the oman at oman is it yeah

5.2 Added articles with common nouns

In this study, only one token of misunderstanding has been found in which there is the
unexpected use of an article with a common noun. This is shown in (2). Here, the
speaker FBr2 was telling the listener FVn that one of her hobbies is fishing and
therefore she talked about where she goes fishing and what she likes to catch. In this

9
case, in standard usage, an article would not precede shrimp, and FVn heard trip
instead of shrimp.
(2) Token 7 (Br+Vn:100)
Context: FBr2 is talking about one of her hobbies
1 FBr2: i like to travel a::nd (2) fishing
2 FVn: and fishing?
3 FBr2: yeah
4 FVn: a::h
5 FBr2: i love i love to erm fish erm <tsk> the shrimp the big shrimp
6 FVn: ah
7 FBr2: yeah
8 FVn: but is there any place here erm you can go fishing?
9 FBr2: yeah <1> you can </1>
10 FVn: <1> at the </1> at the sea at the beach right?
11 FBr2: yeah yeah we have ah (.) but i often go to the river? not the beach
Although this innovative use of an article may have contributed to the
misunderstanding, one other factor might be the pronunciation of the listener. FBr2s
pronunciation of shrimp has the expected fricative [], but FVn heard [t]. Perhaps FVn
has a problem with [], as this voiceless fricative does not occur in Vietnamese
(Maddieson 1984: 322). Indeed, Honey (1987: 240) reports that one of the consonant
sounds that Vietnamese speakers of English have particular difficulty with is []. This
example illustrates that one should consider the role of the listener as well as the
speaker when analysing tokens of misunderstanding.
The conclusion that the addition of unexpected articles does not have a big
impact on intelligibility concurs with the findings of Cogo and Dewey (2012) and also
with Deterding (2013: 114) and several other studies. In fact, in the ten recordings
analysed in this study, in total there are 16 occurrences of the unexpected use of an
article with a common noun, but apart from Token 7 involving the shrimp discussed
above, these did not seem to cause any problems. A few examples are listed in Table
5, where once more the spurious articles are shown in italics.
Table 5: Some instances of unexpected articles with nouns that did not cause
misunderstandings.
Location Context
Br+Ch1:321 were so exposed to the filipino food
Br+Ch1:252 i don't really have much of a spare time right now
Br+Fr:762 she has <spel> p h d </spel> in the criminologist
Br+Ko:141 im giving a counseling to my students
Br+Om:567 there is some sort of a resort

5.3 Absence of articles

Let us now consider the unexpected absence of articles. In his ASEAN ELF data,
Kirkpatrick (2010: 105) found several examples of the absence of articles before
nouns, and Deterding and Salbrina (2013: 66) reported that the absence of articles
also occurs in Brunei English, both in conversational speech and in news reports in
local newspapers. In this study, five tokens of misunderstanding were found in which
there was the innovative absence of an article before a noun, and they are listed in

10
Table 6. (The symbol indicates the missing article, and in Token 12 indicates
that some words have been omitted from the context that is shown.)
Table 6: Misunderstandings involving the absence of articles before nouns
Tok. Location Context
8 Br+Md2:1137 well ah its (.) role playing strategy game you know
9 Br+Ch2:428 its quite nice it (.) from cuisine (.) ah traditional games
10 Br+Ko:1265 shes erm criminologist working with <spel>j p m</spel>
11 Br+Fr:72 because i have lack of confidence when (.) speaking
12 Br+Fr:802 i have certificate so ive taught in primary school
In Token 8, the speaker MBr1 was describing video games that he likes to play.
The listener FMd explained that she did not understand role playing strategy game
because she was not familiar with the phrase, so the main cause of this
misunderstanding is lexical usage.
In Token 9, the listener FCh2 explained that she heard playing instead of cuisine.
The wider context is shown in (3). When asked by the researchers, FCh2 said that she
was familiar with the word cuisine, so in this case lexical knowledge was not a factor.
(3) Token 9 (Br+Ch2:428)
Context: FBr3 is talking about cultural things in Brunei
1 FBr3: local magazine that covers erm everything about brunei at the same
2 time i was learning about my country as well like even though like
3 brunei is a small country but there's actually so much more? to to it
4 like some cultures that i never like learn when i was younger?
5 it was really nice to: learn that now
6 FCh2: ah
7 FBr3: cause i'm i'm like i'm grown up and i understand better? so it's
8 quite it's quite nice k- from cuisine ah traditional games like do
9 you know about gasing?
The main issue here is that FCh2 could not find a link between cuisine and games,
and she explained to the researchers that she guessed FBr3 said playing because it
was followed by the word games. Perhaps if the speaker had inserted the before
cuisine, there is a chance that the listener would have heard the word correctly.
In Token 10, the misunderstood word is the initialism JPM (which stands for
Jabatan Perdana Mentiri, the Prime Ministers Office). Earlier in the utterance,
there is the absence of the article a before criminologist, but it seems unlikely that this
contributed to the misunderstanding of JPM.
In Token 11, the speaker MBr3 described how he feels about speaking English.
MFr heard less instead of lack and the main cause of this mishearing is pronunciation,
as MBr3 used a mid-vowel [e] instead of the expected open vowel []. Although the
main factor here is pronunciation, it is possible that if the speaker had inserted a
before lack, MFr might have understood the word correctly.
The context of Token 12 is shown in (4). The misunderstood words are ive
taught, for which the listener MFr heard after. MBr3 was speaking fast and
pronounced [f] instead of [v] in ive, and he also dropped the final [t] in taught, using
instead a glottal stop at the end of the word, so this token of misunderstanding almost
certainly arises from pronunciation. A little earlier in the extract, there is no the before
certificate. Although there is no indication that this omission of the article before
certificate contributed to the misunderstanding of ive taught a few seconds later, it is

11
included here because it involves the innovative absence of an article near to a token
of misunderstanding. (The occurrence of educations in line 1 of this example will be
discussed in the next section.)
(4) Token 12 (Br+Vn:802)
Context: MBr3 is talking about his previous jobs
1 MBr3: i have certificate in erm in <tsk> diploma in primary educations?
2 MFr: mm
3 MBr3: so ive taught in primary school so during my time
In all the five tokens shown in Table 6, it appears that the absence of articles did
not play a major role in the misunderstandings, though it is possible that it was a
contributory factor in Tokens 9 and 11.
In the ten recordings analysed in this study, in total there are 57 occurrences of
the innovative absence an article, but it seems that almost none of these caused a
misunderstanding. Some examples are listed in Table 7.
Table 7: Absence of articles before nouns that did not cause misunderstandings.
Location Context
Br+Ch2:682 china has the best players in badminton world
Br+Ch3:79 ive read maybe couple of books
Br+Fr:112 my father? got married with indonesian woman
Br+Ko:118 where we can have discussion with the lecturers
Br+Md2:313 you know its difficult for bruneians to get job
Br+Vn:967 im giving him chance until this primary one
In conclusion, out of twelve tokens of misunderstanding in the vicinity of non-
standard article use discussed in this section and the two previous sections, only two
tokens (Token 5 the Korea and Token 6 the UBD) of the innovative occurrence of an
article before a proper noun are suggested to be the main cause of the
misunderstanding. In a few other examples, such as Token 9 cuisine and Token 11
lack of confidence, the absence of articles may have contributed to the
misunderstanding, but we have identified other features as the probable main cause
(though, as always, and as noted by Pitzl et al [2008], it is often hard to be sure
exactly what the cause of a misunderstanding is). We can therefore conclude that in
ten out of the twelve tokens, the presence or absence of an article probably played
only a minor role in the misunderstanding.
In fact, Kirkpatrick (2010: 105) notes that identifying non-standard forms of
article usage is often problematic as many varieties of English treat uncountable
nouns such as furniture and stuff as countable, and omission of an article before a
plural noun is standard usage. The plural marking of nouns will be discussed in the
next section.

5.4 Added plural marking

Previous studies have shown that the non-standard use of plural forms for
uncountable nouns is common in many new varieties of English including Brunei
English (Cane 1996; Deterding and Salbrina 2013) and Singapore English (Deterding
2007: 42). In their analysis of a corpus of ASEAN speech, Kirkpatrick and Deterding
(2011) reported that the regularisation of the count/non-count distinction on nouns did
not cause any problems. In this study, there are occurrences where non-standard

12
plural marking of uncountable nouns was used by the Bruneian speakers, such as
stuffs, foods, fictions and musics, and in these cases, there is no evidence that this non-
standard plural marking caused any misunderstanding. However, there are a few other
occurrences of unexpected plural marking that may have contributed to
misunderstandings. These are listed in Table 8.
Table 8: Non-standard plural marking
Tok. Location Context
12 Br+Fr:802 diploma in primary educations? so ive taught in primary
13 Br+Ko:196 i have a good grades grades my <spel> c g p a </spel>
14 Br+Ko:835 the others part is the sungai? i mean the ri:ver
15 Br+Fr:17 in forensic linguistics? her tutorial students
16 Br+Fr:726 i have five siblings from one parents from my father
Token 12 has already been discussed in Section 5.3, and the wider context was
shown in (4). MBr3 pluralised educations but this almost certainly had no impact on
the misunderstanding, because the misunderstood words were ive taught. MFr heard
after instead of ive taught because of MBr3s pronunciation.
As noted in the previous section, it is sometimes difficult to classify whether
some examples represent non-standard use of an article or innovative plural marking.
We can see this in Token 13, the wider context of which is shown in (5). It is unclear
whether it should be regarded as an unexpected article a before good grades or an
unexpected plural noun. Furthermore, it is possible that what sounded like an article a
could actually just be a pause particle.
(5) Token 13 (Br+Ko:196)
Context: MBr3 is talking about his current undergraduate studies
1 MBr3: erm hopefully hopefully i have a good grades have hopefully i can
2 maintain grades my <spel> c g p a? </spel> and then get some
3 recommendations from lecturers?
In fact, it is unlikely that the usage of a together with grades contributed to the
misunderstanding, because the misunderstood word is actually the initialism CGPA
(Cumulative Grade Point Average, referring to a grade system used in the
undergraduate programs at UBD). We can therefore classify the main issue as lexical.
In Token 14, the speaker MBr3 inserted the suffix -s in others and the listener
MKo heard other spot instead of other part. It is likely in this example that the
insertion of the -s suffix on others is the main cause of the listeners mishearing,
though one might alternatively analyse this spurious [s] as an issue of pronunciation
rather than grammar.
Token 15 is shown in (6). MBr3 pluralised students while referring to himself.
However, this almost certainly had no impact on the misunderstanding. In fact the
misunderstood word was forensic, a word that the listener MFr was not familiar with,
so the problem is lexical.
(6) Token 15 (Br+Fr:17)
Context: MBr3 and MFr are talking about a tutor at UBD
1 MFr: ah so how did you:: know with ah ishamina
2 MBr3: a::h she's my tutor? in forensic linguistics? erm his erm her tutorial
3 students and then i know her for: i think two months ah since two
4 month yeah

13
 Token 16 is shown in (7). MBr3 pluralised parents after using the singular one. It
is however not clear if this caused any misunderstanding, because the misunderstood
word was five, caused by MBr3s pronunciation. MFr explained that he heard four
because MBr3 was speaking fast. He pronounced five as [f], using the short vowel
[] instead of the expected diphthong [a] and a glottal stop instead of the final
consonant [v].
(7) Token 16 (Br+Fr:726)
Context: MBr3 is talking about his family members
1 MBr3: erm some of because ah my siblings are (.) i have s- erm i have five
2 siblings from my one from one parents i mean from my father
We may also observe that all five tokens listed in Table 8 are from MBr3s
speech, so it seems that a spurious -s is typical for this speaker rather than a common
feature of Brunei speech.
We can concur with the findings of Deterding (2013: 110) that unexpected plural
marking is not a major issue affecting intelligibility in ELF communication. In fact, in
the ten recordings analysed in this study, 14 occurrences of plural marking on singular
and uncountable nouns have been found, and none of them suggested any evidence of
misunderstanding. Some examples involving musics, foods, stuffs and parts are shown
in Table 9.
Table 9: Some plural marking on singular and uncountable nouns that did not cause
misunderstandings.
Location Context
Br+Ch3:521 actually it's because of the idols i'm into korean s- musics
Br+Ko:469 plus erm with erm foods with the meals and then compared to
Br+Md1:897 they give you themes to teach erm like foods or family
Br+Om:706 it's more cheaper in brunei yeah the (.) the stuffs that they sell
Br+Vn:1094 we have a parts time study as well my friend in ah my school

5.5 Absence of plural suffix

In addition to the spurious addition of plural -s, there are also three tokens where the
absence of a plural suffix may have contributed to a misunderstanding. They are listed
in Table 10.
Table 10: Absence of plural suffix
Tok. Location Context
17 Br+Vn:223 well i bought a lot of key chai::n
18 Br+Ko:96 several linguistic program interested in? sociolinguistic
19 Br+Ko:97 erm neurolinguistic? and then theres er one language and
Token 17 is shown in (8). FBr2 used the singular key chain after the plural
quantifier a lot of. Although this may have contributed to the misunderstanding, the
main cause is probably the speakers pronunciation. FBr2 lengthened the word chain
and this made it unintelligible to the listener FVn.

14
(8) Token 17 (Br+Vn:223)
Context: FBr2 is talking about her trip to Paris.
1 FBr2: well i bought a lot of key chai::n <1> a:nd </1>
2 FVn: <1> you bought </1> a a lot of what?
3 FBr2: key chains
4 FVn: key ch-
5 FBr2: <2> key chains yea:h </2>
6 FVn: <2> key ah: key </2> key chains <3> yeah ah ah: </3>
7 FBr2: <3> i- key chains for your keys? yeah </3>
It seems that FBr2 realised not only that her pronunciation was problematic but also
that the absence of a plural marker in key chain was unexpected, because when she
repeated the phrase in line 5, she used the plural form key chains. We may also
consider that the purchase of key chains as souvenirs might have contributed to the
misunderstanding. It is currently a popular thing for Bruneians to buy, but for someone
from elsewhere, it may seem to be an odd choice for souvenirs. Perhaps we could
conclude that this misunderstanding actually occurred for cultural reasons.
Tokens 18 and 19 are shown in (9). MBr3 did not have a final plural -s in
program even though it follows the quantifier several, but there is no indication of a
misunderstanding here. The two words that were misunderstood are sociolinguistic
and neurolinguistic, and we might note that MBr3 did not have a final -s in either of
them. However, it seems unlikely that the absence of a final -s in these two words is
what caused the misunderstanding.
(9) Tokens 18 and 19 (Br+Ko:96)
Context: MBr3 is talking about linguistics courses that he is interested in.
1 MBr3: yes erm there ARE several erm there are several linguistic
2 program that i'm interested in? sociolinguistic
3 MKo: sociolinguistics
4 MBr3: yeah sociolinguistic erm neurolinguistic? and then there's er one
5 language and society?
In fact, the misunderstanding lies in socio and neuro, as MKo heard for sure and
nearer respectively, and the main causes of the misunderstandings are pronunciation.
For Token 18, MKo explained that he heard for sure because he was not familiar with
MBr3s pronunciation [slgwstk] and was only familiar with the standard
General American (GA) pronunciation [sosolgwstk] (Wells 2008: 755). In this
case, MBr3s use of medial [] may reflect RP pronunciation rather than the GA
pronunciation that MKo was more familiar with. In addition, of course, the use of []
in the first two syllables of sociolinguistic may have been a factor.
For neurolinguistic in Token 19, MKo explained that he heard nearer instead of
neuro. This probably occurred because he was confused by MBr3s pronunciation
[nirlgwstk], in which the first syllable is not too dissimilar from the RP [nju].
MKo was only familiar with the standard GA pronunciation [nrolgwstk] with
no [j] after the initial [n] (Wells 2008: 537).
From (9), it can be seen that MKo actually understood MBr3 correctly, as he said
sociolinguistics in line 3. It seems that he was checking to see if the word he guessed
was correct, so it is uncertain if sociolinguistic should be classified as a token of
misunderstanding or not. It is classified as one because MKo appears to be asking for
clarification.

15
 In the tokens above, it appears that the absence of plural marking did not play a
major role in causing the misunderstandings, and pronunciation seems to be the main
cause. We can concur with Deterding (2013: 110) that the absence of plural marking
is not a major issue affecting intelligibility in ELF communication. In fact, in the
recordings analysed in this study, there are 63 occurrences of the absence of an
expected plural suffix that did not show any evidence of causing a misunderstanding.
Some examples are listed in Table 11.
Table 11: Absence of plural suffix that did not cause misunderstandings
Location Context
Br+Ch3:704 my other family members the adult one they they have like
Br+Ko:67 okay i have erm (.) six sibling?
Br+Ko:947 my sister-in-law is a lecturer in one of the university
Br+Md2:139 most of the place that i: i am excited (.) to go to
Br+Md2:1146 maybe @@ (.) weve done a lot of thing together
Br+Vn:279 well (.) obviously i have a lot of assignment to do
In conclusion, out of the eight tokens involving plurals discussed in this section
and in Section 5.4, there is only one token (Token 14, others part) in which the
unexpected occurrence of a plural suffix may have been the main cause of the
misunderstanding, though even this token might be classified as idiosyncratic
pronunciation on the part of MBr3.

5.6 Gender
In the speech of some Bruneians, there seems to be a tendency to confuse the
pronouns he and she. In this study, there is one token in which the gender of a
pronoun causes a misunderstanding. As shown in (10), the speaker MBr3 was talking
about his father, but then in line 3 he used a female pronoun to refer to him. This
caused confusion for MKo who asked for clarification in line 6.
(10) Token 20 (Br+Ko:876)
Context: MBr3 is talking about his fathers religious beliefs.
1 MBr3: since erm my father is not the is not ah originally muslim?
2 MKo: mhm
3 MBr3: erm she's erm erm she's no religion at all actually?
4 MKo: mhm
5 MBr3: ah
6 MKo: your father
7 MBr3: my father erm and then i am converted to islam?
In fact, two other instances have been found in which an unexpected pronoun was
used, but neither seemed to cause a problem. In line 3 of (11), MBr1 refers to his
brother as her, but this does not seem to confuse FOm; and in line 4 of (12), MBr1
surprisingly corrects himself and ends up referring to his brother as she; but FMd did
not report a problem with this.

16
(11) Br+Om:846
Context: MBr1 is talking about where his brothers live
1 MBr1: yeah about the house you know my (.) my brother thats thats married
2 (.) the the third (.) the third brother (.) he lives with (.) ah he lives at
3 our house sometimes and sometimes he goes to (.) to her wifes
4 FOm: yeah
5 MBr1: d- yeah
6 FOm: so its like that

(12) Br+Md2:257
Context: MBr1 is discussing traveling on ones own or with family
1 FMd: ah is it because is it the culture is like that ah <1> the parents dont
2 allow </1>
3 MBr1: <1> no no no </1> becau- because my brother ah (.) i think he (.) h-
4 she travel like (.) i i dont know i lost count already? he travel a lot
5 with his friends
Overall, in the ten recordings, there are 156 uses of third person singular pronouns
(93 of he and 63 of she). All apart from those discussed in (10) to (12) have the
expected gender, and only token 20 (as shown in [10]) seemed to give rise to a
misunderstanding.

6 Discussion
The grammar of noun phrases, particularly the standard use of articles and the plural
suffix on nouns, is often emphasised by English language teachers. For example,
Bitchener, Young and Cameron (2005) reported that, in the writing of 53 adult
immigrants to New Zealand, about 25% of the errors that they identified involved
articles or other issues with nouns. However, it has regularly been reported that
innovative grammar in noun phrases is common in new varieties of English around
the world (Mesthrie and Bhatt 2008: 53) as well in ELF interactions (Seidlhofer 2011:
125), and it has also been claimed that non-standard usage can sometimes actually
serve to enhance the intelligibility of speech in ELF settings (Cogo and Dewey 2012).
It is therefore important to investigate this last claim further and determine the extent
to which non-standard grammar might contribute to misunderstandings in ELF
interactions.
It seems that functional morphemes such as the plural -s suffix are often
discounted in ELF contexts when the meaning is already clear, so phrases like six
sibling and one of the university do not cause a problem, and plurals such as
furnitures and stuffs are also widely used. In fact, use of a singular noun after one of
has been reported to be very common in Brunei English (Deterding and Salbrina 2013:
54), and plurals such as equipments, infrastructures, jewelleries and stuffs are
widespread (Deterding and Salbrina 2013: 53). The current study confirms that they
do not seem to give rise to misunderstandings. Furthermore, the addition or omission
of articles does not usually appear to be problematic.
Confusion between male and female third person pronouns may also occur quite
widely in the English spoken in the region. It might be influenced by Malay, in which
there is only one third person pronoun dia to refer to both genders, and in fact the
gender of younger siblings is also not distinguished, as adik can be either younger
brother or younger sister. Furthermore, although all of the Bruneians in the current

17
study were Malay, the English spoken in the region is probably influenced by Chinese,
as there are many Chinese people not just in Brunei but also in neighbouring countries
such as Malaysia and Singapore; and spoken Chinese does not differentiate the gender
of third person pronouns. Although a distinction is made between the male and female
pronouns and in writing, they are both pronounced as [ta] on a high-level tone.
It is possible that speakers in Southeast Asia are quite tolerant of variable pronoun
usage, partly influenced by the indigenous languages spoken in the region.
Overall, out of the 153 tokens of misunderstanding in the 10 recordings analysed
in our corpus, we found that only a total of five of them (3%) are mainly caused by
innovative use of grammar. In addition to the four tokens discussed in this paper,
there is just one further token, in which close and knit spoken by MBr2 to describe his
close-knit family was misunderstood as close and neat by FCh1, largely because of
the unexpected and in this phrase. FCh1 confirmed that she knew the phrase close-
knit, so this was not a lexical issue, and it arose largely because of the spurious
conjunction in the middle of the phrase (though the relatively long vowel in knit may
also have been a factor).
The research reported in this paper therefore lends support to the
hypothesis that innovative grammar is rarely a major factor in causing
misunderstandings in ELF interactions, and for the purpose of enhancing
intelligibility, teachers should focus more on pronunciation and lexis. Of course,
teachers will argue that much of their work is concerned with writing, and that
adherence to standard grammatical usage is vitally important for written work when
their students are taking exams or when they are engaged in other formal activities
such as applying for jobs or writing professional reports. Nevertheless, in ensuring the
intelligibility of speech in ELF interactions, it seems that there are other factors that
are more important.

7 Conclusion
The main issues that caused the 20 misunderstandings analysed in the current study
are summarised in Table 12.
Table 12: Summary of main issues
Main issue Tokens
Added article 5 (the Korea), 6 (the UBD)
Added plural suffix 14 (others part)
Gender 20 (she)
Pronunciation 7 (shrimp), 11 (lack), 12 (ive taught), 16 (five),
17 (key chain), 18 (sociolinguistic), 19 (neurolinguistic)
Lexicon 1 (Kick-Ass Two), 2 (Atlantis City), 3 (Astro)
4 (Hells Kitchen), 8 (role playing strategy game),
10 (JPM), 13 (CGPA), 15 (forensic)
Miscellaneous 9 (cuisine)
Altogether, there are only four tokens in which grammar seems to be the main
factor. These tokens involve the innovative use of articles with proper nouns, with
Korea in Token 5 and with UBD in Token 6, the added suffix on other in Token 14,
and the unexpected use of a female pronoun in Token 20.
Other innovative grammatical features outlined in this study that occur in the
remaining 16 tokens of misunderstanding include the unexpected presence and
absence of articles, and the use or absence of the plural -s suffix. In these tokens,

18
however, it seems that the main causes of the misunderstandings are mostly
pronunciation and also unfamiliar lexicon.
We therefore conclude that non-standard features of the noun phrase may have
played only a minor role in the misunderstandings, and we suggest that there is little
evidence that such innovative grammar interferes very much with intelligibility in
ELF communication by speakers of Brunei English. Further research should look at a
wider range of speakers, to investigate if innovation in noun phrases and other aspects
of grammar might interfere with intelligibility in various contexts, and also the extent
to which listeners from a wide range of different countries might be confused by some
aspects of the grammar shared by speakers of English in Southeast Asia.

Acknowledgements: We are grateful for the detailed and helpful comments and
suggestions made by the two reviewers.

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Appendix: transcription conventions

The transcription conventions are based on those outlined in VOICE (2007), with the
addition of underlined/bold font to indicate misunderstood words and italics to
highlight non-standard usage that was not misunderstood.

<1> , </1> overlapping speech

: lengthened sounds
@ laughter
? rising intonation
(.) short pause
<tsk> tutting sound (alveolar click)
<spel> , </spel> individual letters spelled out
italicised non-standard usage that does not cause misunderstanding
underlined and bold words or phrases that are misunderstood
omitted speech

Bionotes

Ishamina Athirah is a PhD research student in the Faculty of Arts and Social
Sciences, Universiti Brunei Darussalam. Her research focuses on the
intelligibility of Brunei English. Her previous publications include Identification
of Bruneian ethnic groups from their English Pronunciation, published in South
East Asia: A Multidisciplinary Journal, 11: 3745.

David Deterding is a Professor in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences,

Universiti Brunei Darussalam. His research focuses on the description of
varieties of English in Southeast Asia and also the acoustic description of speech.
His most recent books are Brunei English: A new variety in a multilingual society
(together with Salbrina Sharbawi), published by Springer, and Misunderstandings
in English as a Lingua Franca: An Analysis of ELF Interactions in South-East Asia,
published by De Gruyter Mouton.

21