459
4
Pronouns
-Someone they want to relax first. (Guide J)
Someone wants to relax first.
The local people they use it for climbing up for collecting the bird nests.
(Guide A)
The local people use it for
climbing
Based on Table 10, Guide A’s expression infringes the grammar rule for the noun ‘fish’ by adding
the suffix ‘s’. Likewise, Guide F added an article ‘a’ to this noun. Moreover, Guide J inserted the suffix
‘s’ after the singular noun with a quantifier ‘one hour’. Then, Guide E used the noun ‘symbol’ as an
adjective. Finally, Guides J and A got used to thinking in Thai when expressing the subjects ‘someone’
and ‘the local people’ by adding the pronoun ‘they’, resulting in redundancy.
(3)
Omission
Omission concerns an absence of main elements in sentences such as the copula
CF
, subject and
object pronouns, prepositions, auxiliary verbs, determiners, infinitives, as well as marking of plural
nouns and present-past tense verbs (Wong, 1983; Low & Brown, 2005 as cited in Bennui, 2013a).
Table 11: Omission
No. Aspects
of Omission
Excerpts (Thai English sentences)
Standard English Sentences
1
Suffix ‘s’
- Brown team, brown team. Nine person right? (Guide J)
Nine persons, right?
- Everyone, too many boat from many company. (Guide F)
Too many boats
- Name of Pipi island, they are composed of two island, Pi Pi Don and Pi Pi
Lae. (Guide A)
…they are composed of two
islands….
- Ok, er today the boat stop four islands. (omission) (Guide E)
The boat stops at four islands.
2
Auxiliary ‘do’
- Tourist: We all stay here.
Guide: You all stay here? . (Guide J)
Do you all stay here?
- You know why we call Bamboo Island? (Guide A)
Do you know….?
-Why you have to remember me or the name of the boat? (Guide F)
Why do you have to …..?
3
Copula-Be
I think not good for swimming. (Guide A)
I think it is not good for swimming.
- And when you walking to another side of this island …(Guide A)
When you are walking to another..
-Our boat coming over there. Our boat coming, over there. (Guide E)
Our boat is coming over there.
- The first stop the island number nine. The second stop the island number
eight. The third stop the island number seven…. (Guide F)
The first stop is the island number
nine. The second stop is….
4
Preposition
-So we are just going three main different islands today. (Guide A)
We are just going to three main…..
Table 11 presents the absence of the suffix‘s’ by the guides which is influenced by the Thai
structure in which plurality of nouns is not marked the way it is in English. The missing auxiliary ‘do’
shows that the guides ordered the English words as in Thai. Further, three aspects of the copula-be
were omitted. Guide A deleted the expletive ‘it is’ and the modal ‘is’ (done by Guide E) due to placing
words with Thai structure. Likewise, Guide F’s phrase exhibited its missing main verb of
CF
; this phrase
is acceptable in Thai though it requires the main verb ‘is’ according to Standard English form. Finally,
Guide A’s expression is related to Thai structure in which the verb ‘go’ /pai/ without its preposition is
acceptable.
(4)
Reduction
Like omission, reduction involves a lack of grammatical forms, but a newer and much shorter
sentence is formed regarding ‘tense system’ with the existing meaning. For instance, the auxiliary ‘can’
in a Malaysian English expression ‘You can drive ah’ (Can you drive ah) is reduced by reversing
modality and subjects (Wong, 1983). The following guides, however, reduced some sentences in
another way.
