Introduction

South African Indian English (SAIE) illustrates the rich syntactic variation characteristic of an English dialect that has arisen from a process of language shift. Once a second or third language spoken by a group of indentured and merchant Indians in Natal, SAIE is today, 125 years after the first immigrations, a first language sharing a great deal with other English varieties of South Africa (SAE), while having a host of linguistic features of its own. Despite many features in common with the English of India, SAIE has, on the whole, the characteristics of a new dialect born on South African soil, rather than those of a transplanted Indian English variety (Mesthrie 1988).

Sources of variation in SAIE

The following typology of Englishes according to the (decreasing) degree of variability in syntax can be posited:

The break in tradition between ancestral languages and the new variety of English is less rapid in language shift than in pidginisation, and one may consequently expect less variation than that reported for creole and post-creole Englishes. I believe that the transfer of terms like basilect, mesolect, acrolect from creology is, however, appropriate in the study of language shift varieties, perhaps more so than for L2 Englishes, to which the extension was first made by Platt (1977).