A Corpus-based Review of Philippine English Grammatical Constructions in ESL Master’s Theses from 2019-2025

Nimfa Dimaculangan; Michelle Sarmiento

doi:10.63931/ijchr.v7iSI2.239

Authors

Nimfa Dimaculangan Laguna State Polytechnic University
Michelle Sarmiento Laguna State Polytechnic University

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.63931/ijchr.v7iSI2.239

Keywords:

English, Philippine English, PhE Grammatical Features, SDG 17

Abstract

Shaped and colored by Filipino culture, Philippine English (PhE) is one of the Philippine languages, and its grammatical forms have endured over time. This paper argues that new PhE constructions arise from the linguistic knowledge and communication needs of their speakers. It utilized the corpus linguistics method to build a 300,000-word corpus of unpublished MAED-English theses written during the Academic Years 2019-2020 to 2024-2025, from which PhE grammatical forms were extracted. The use of unpublished theses was deliberate for authentic PhE grammatical constructions, since published research is edited for either American or British English. The PhE grammatical constructions were analyzed using early studies’ findings, particularly Bautista’s (2000), Borlongan’s (2024), Hernandez’s (2023), Salazar’s (2022), Dita et al.’s (2022), and Dita’s (2025) qualifications of PhE grammatical features. The corpus revealed 731 common grammatical features of PhE, such as wordiness, split infinitives, unidiomatic verb-preposition combinations, subject-verb agreement deviances, the interchange use of relativizes that and which, absence of pronoun-antecedent agreement, and the mixed AmE/BrE spellings. Interestingly, the corpus disclosed three new patterns: comma splices, sentence theme/subject redundancy, and unparalleled forms of linguistic units that express ideas of equal importance. It is therefore recommended that a more thorough analysis of PhE grammatical features using a new corpus of both published and unpublished texts be done. The paper reiterates the PhE scholars' recommendation for the inclusion of New English’s and PhE in the ESL curriculum, to enable PhE users to gain a deeper understanding of the grammatical identity of PhE and express themselves more freely.

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