1. `Prolegomena to the history of Indian languages in South Africa’. Journal of the University of Durban-Westville, New Series 1, 57-72. 1984.
  2. `From OV to VO in language shift: South African Indian English and its OV substrates’. English World Wide. 8:2, 263-276. 1987.
  3. `South African Indian English: some characteristic features’. English Usage in Southern Africa. 19,1: 1-11. 1988.
  4. `Toward a lexicon of South African Indian English’. World Englishes. 7:1, 5-14. 1988.
  5. `The Origins of Fanagalo’. Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages. 4:2, 211-240. 1989.
  6. `Did the Butler do it?: on an analogue of Butler English in Natal, South Africa’. World Englishes. 9:3, 282-288. 1990.
  7. `Syntactic variation in language shift: the relative clause in South African Indian English’. Language Variation and Change. 2:1, 31-56. 1990. (with Timothy T. Dunne).
  8. `The linguistic reflex of social change: Caste and kinship among people of Indian descent in Natal’. Anthropological Linguistics 32:3-4, 335-353. 1992.
  9. `South African English’, 3000 word article commissioned by the CUP magazine, English Today. January 1993. (Reproduced in UNISA English II course book for 1995, and in UCT English I reader, 1995.)
  10. `Koineization in the Bhojpuri-Hindi diaspora, with special reference to South Africa’, International Journal of the Sociology of Language. 99: 25-44. 1993.
  11. `Gandhi and language politics’. Bua. 8,4: 4-7. 1993.
  12. `Nineteenth-century attestations of Afrikaans-English code-mixing in the Cape’. Language Matters. 24:47-62. 1993.
  13. `South African Indian English’ English Today. April 1993, 12-16.
  14. `English language studies and social history in South Africa’. English Academy Review. 1994.
  15. (with K. McCormick) ‘Standardisation and variation in South African English’, in Stellenbosch Papers in Linguistics Plus (SPIL Plus), 26:181-201. 1994.
  16. `Towards a grammar of proto South African English’, English World-Wide, 16,2: 105-134. 1995. (with Paula West).
  17. `Reversing language shift: problems and possibilities’. Journal of the Indological Society of South Africa. 2 & 3:1-20. 1995.
  18. `Putting some Linguistics into Applied Linguistics: a sociolinguistic study of left dislocation in South African Black English’. SPIL Plus. (Stellenbosch papers in Linguistics), 29: 260-283. 1996.
  19. `Lessons in Survival: 120 years of Makhuwa and Yao in South Africa’. Bua. 10,2: 14-16. 1996.
  20. `Imagint excusations: `Missionary English in the nineteenth-century Cape colony, South Africa’. World Englishes, 15,2:139-157. 1996.
  21. `Lexicography from below’. Studia Anglica Posnaniensa. 31:154-161. 1997.
  22. Indian Languages in Africa: a field report, 1900-1995. In Yearbook of South Asian Languages, 1997.
  23. `The Cape’s neglected languages: a review essay arising out of Y. Mohammed (ed.) A History of Arabic Language Teaching in South Africa. Journal for Islamic Studies, 17:74-85. 1997.
  24. `Words across Worlds: aspects of language contact and language learning in the eastern Cape, 1800-1850’. African Studies, 57:1, 1998.
  25. `Fifty ways to say “I do”: tracing the origins of unstressed do in Cape Flats English’. South African Journal of Linguistics, 17(1): 58-71, 1999.
  26. `Male workers’ English in the western Cape – interlanguage, code-switching, pidginisation’, Indian Journal of Applied Linguistics, special issue on South Africa (edited by S. & E. Ridge & S. Makoni). 2000: 151-174.
  27. Dravidian Hindi in South Africa: an historical variety. The Yearbook of South Asian Languages. 2000: 49-59.
  28. South Asian languages in Mauritius. Yearbook of South Asian Languages. 2000: 205-8.
  29. Endogeny versus contact revisited: aspectual busy in South African English. Language Sciences, 2002. 24(3-4): 345-358.
  30. Mock languages and symbolic power: the South African radio series ‘Applesammy and Naidoo’. World Englishes, 2002. 21(1):99-112.
  31. `The World Englishes paradigm and contact linguistics – refurbishing the foundations’. World Englishes. 2003 . 22 (4): 449-62.
  32. `Children in language shift: the syntax of fifth-generation South African Indian English speakers’. South African Journal of Linguistics and Applied Language Studies. 2003. 21(3):119-26.
  33. `Putting back the cart before the horse: the spelling form fallacy in Second Language Acquisition Studies, with special reference to the treatment of schwa in Black South African English’. English World Wide, 2005. 26 (2): 127-151.
  34. `Assessing representations of South African Indian English in writing: an application of Variation theory’. Language Variation and Change, 2005. 17: 303-326.
  35. Anti-deletions in a second language variety: a study of Black South African English mesolect. English World Wide, 2006, 27(2):111-146.
  36. Language, transformation and development: a sociolinguistic appraisal of post-apartheid South African language policy and practice. Southern African Linguistics and Applied Language Studies 2006, 24(2): 151-163.
  37. ‘Subordinate immigrant languages and language endangerment: two community studies from KwaZulu-Natal’ Language Matters. 2006, 34:75-99.
  38. ‘Undeletions in Black South English’, SPIL (Stellenbosch Papers in Linguistics) Plus. 2006.
  39. ‘World Englishes and the multilingual history of English’. World Englishes, 2006, 25(3/4): 381-90.
  40. ‘The origins of colloquial South African Tamil’. Oriental Anthropologist. 2007, 7(1): 17-38.
  41. ‘Differentiating pidgin from early interlanguage: pidgin Nguni (Fanakalo) versus second language varieties of Xhosa and Zulu. Southern African Linguistics and Applied Language Studies 2007, 25(1):75-89.
  42. A bird’s eye view of South African Tamil. Language Matters. 2007, 38(2):179-94.
  43. ‘Language shift, cultural change and identity retention: Indian South Africans in the 1960s and beyond’. South African Historical Journal. 2007, 57: 134-152.
  44. Necessary versus sufficient conditions for using new languages in South African higher education: a linguistic appraisal. Journal of Multilingual & Multicultural Development. 2008, 29(4):325-340. Selected by the publishers as Routledge’s best article on the thinking of Michael Halliday (50 Key thinkers in Linguistics); and for an e-collection on language in Africa.
  45. Is English a glottophagic language in South Africa? English Today. 2008. 24(2):13-19.
  46. South Africa. In Yearbook of South Asian Languages. 2008: 237-41.
  47. The risks of crossing: a retrospect from apartheid South Africa. SPIL PLUS. 2009.
  48. Socio-phonetics and social change: deracialisation of the GOOSE vowel in South African English. Journal of Sociolinguistics. 2010. 14(1):3-33. Listed on the Journal website as number 1 article over the 3 year period 2010-13.
  49. New Englishes and the native speaker. Language Sciences. 2010. 32(6):594-601. (listed as no. 14 of the top articles in Language Sciences in the 12 year period 2000-2011).
  50. Ethnicity, substrate and place: the dynamics of Coloured and Indian English in five South African cities in relation to the variable (t). Language Variation and Change. 24(3):371-396. 2012.
  51. (with Ellen Hurst) Slang registers, code-switching and restructured urban varieties in South Africa: an analytic overview of tsotsitaals with special reference to the Cape Town variety. Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages, 28(1): 103-130. 2013.
  52. Where does a New English dictionary stop?: on the making of the Dictionary of South African Indian English. English Today. 29(1):36-43. 2013.
  53. “When you hang out with the guys it keeps you in style” – the case for considering style in South African tsotsitaals. Language Matters 44(1): 3-20. 2013.