Tracing nativised irregular verbs in Malaysian English

Abstract

The alternate use of suffix –t and –ed among Malaysians has become a concern since it can denote conformity towards British English, American English or be deemed as a form of grammatical nativisation. This study aims to reveal the preferred suffix variant used by Malaysians when forming the past tense and past participle. A Malaysian online English newspaper corpus representing acrolectal Malaysian English was built to facilitate this study. Twelve irregular verbs that can take suffix –t and –ed were analysed using WordSmith Tools 5. Findings showed that Malaysians generally prefer to use suffix –ed when forming the past tense but opt for suffix –t when forming the past participle. The integration of morphological elements from both British English and American English into everyday use by Malaysians seems to be contributing towards grammatical nativisation, ultimately a standardised variety if it persists.