An Exploration of ‘kan’ in Singaporean Colloquial Malay

The morpheme kan in Singapore Colloquial Malay has often been described as having diverse, unpredictable functions and variable syntactic positions. In this talk, I present preliminary evidence of its ongoing grammaticalization, drawing from four age cohorts. In particular, I highlight a novel syntactic distribution found among native speakers in their twenties which, for the first time, renders kan’s pattern of usage systematic and predictable. Building on this, I propose a unified account to explain kan’s ability for positional variability and its underlying grammatical functions. Lastly, I consider the broader implications of this emerging distribution within Singapore Colloquial Malay.

Nur Amirah Hakim is a Research Assistant in Linguistics & Multilingual Studies at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. Her research integrates historical linguistics, typology, and theoretical grammar to examine language change in context. Her current focus is on Singapore Colloquial Malay, where she explores ongoing morphosyntactic developments and processes of grammaticalization within the language.