On sentence-final "what" in Singlish: Are you the Queen of England, or what?

Abstract

This article focuses on one particular linguistic feature of Singapore Colloquial English (sce), sentence-final what, which has been referred to as an 'objection particle'. sce (Smith, 1985: 126) Context: Discussion of a student who is going overseas for one month and will be missing classes. a. He'll never pass the third year. b. It's only for one month what. Sentence-final what in sce is analyzed in its (synchronic) behavior and (diachronic) development, and the proposal made by the authors is that sentence-final what is a result of a process which started in British English.