Creoles, their Substrates, and Language Typology

Typological Studies in Language Creoles, their Substrates, and Language Typology edited by Claire Lefebure 95 Creol...

Author: Prof. Claire Lefebvre

56 downloads 2006 Views 43MB Size Report

This content was uploaded by our users and we assume good faith they have the permission to share this book. If you own the copyright to this book and it is wrongfully on our website, we offer a simple DMCA procedure to remove your content from our site. Start by pressing the button below!
Report copyright / DMCA form

DOWNLOAD PDF

Typological Studies in Language

Creoles, their Substrates, and Language Typology

edited by Claire Lefebure

95


Typological Studies in Language (TSL) A companion series to the journal Studies in Language. Volumes in this series are functionally and typologically oriented, covering specific topics in language by collecting together data from a wide variety of languages and language typologies.

Editor Spike Gildea University of Oregon

Editorial Board Balthasar Bickel Leip1ig

John Haiman St Paul

Marianne Mithun Santa Barbara

Bernard Comrie Leip1ig I Santa Barbara

Martin Haspelmath Leipzig

Doris L. Payne Eugene, OR

Denis Creissels Lyon

Bernd Heine Koln

Franz Plank Konstanz

William Croft Albuquerque

Paul J. Hopper Pittsburgh

Anna Siewierska Lancaster

Nicholas Evans Canberra

Andrej A. Kibrik Moscow

Dan I. Slobin Berkeley

Carol Genetti Santa Barbara

Franti.Sek Lichtenberk Auckland

Sandra A. Thompson Santa Barbara

Volume95

Creoles, their Substrates, and Language Typology Edited by Claire Lefebvre

Creoles, their Substrates, and Language Typology Edited by

Claire Lefebvre University of Quebec at Montreal

John Benjamins Publishing Company Amsterdam I Philadelphia

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences - Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI z39.48-1984.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Creoles, their substrates, and language typology I edited by Claire Lefebvre. p. em. (Typological Studies in Language, ISSN 0167-7373 ; v. 95) Includes bibliographical references and index. Creole dialects. 2. Typology (Linguistics) I. Lefebvre, Claire.

1.

PM7831.C737 417:22--dC22

2011 2010042474

ISBN 978 90 272 o676 3 (Hb ; alk. paper) ISBN 978 90 2;72 8743 4 (Eb) © 2011 -John Benjamins B.V. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, by print, photoprint, microfilm, or any other means, without written permission from the publisher.

John Benjamins Publishing Co.· P.O. Box 36224 · 1020 ME Amsterdam· The Netherlands John Benjamins North America· P.O. Box 27519 ·Philadelphia PA 19118-0519 ·usA

Table of contents

Preface

IX

Part I. Introduction The problem of the typological classification of creoles

3

Claire Lefebvre Part II. Creoles spoken in Africa and in the Caribbean :hd6 influence on Santome: Evidence from verb serialisation

37

Tjerk Hagemeijer and Ota Ogie A Wolof trace in the verbal system of the Portuguese Creole of Santiago Island (Cape Verde)

61

!Urgen Lang Substrate influences in Kriyol: Guinea-Bissau and Casamance Portuguese-related Creole

81

AlainKihm One substrate. two creoles: The development of segmental inventories in St. Lucian and Haitian

105

Anne-Marie Brousseau. Substrate features in the properties of verbs in three Atlantic creoles: Haitian Creole, Saramaccan and Papiamentu

127

Claire Lefebvre Assessing the nature and role of substrate influence in the formation and development of the creoles of Suriname

Bettina Migge

155

VI


African substrata! influence on the countertactual in Belizean Creole

181

Genevieve Escure Substrate features in Nicaraguan, Providence and San Andres Creole Englishes: A comparison with Twi

201

Angela Bartens Palenque(ro ): The search for its African substrate

225

Armin Schwegler Part III. Creoles spoken in Asia Convergence-to-substratum and the passives in Singapore English

253

BaoZhiming Tone in Singlish: Substrate features from Sinitic and Malay

271

Lisa Lim The Cantonese substrate in China Coast Pidgin

Umberto Ansaldo, Stephen Matthews and Geoff Smith Substrate influences in Mindanao Chabacano

303

Anthony P. Gra.nt Negation in Ternate Chabacano

325

Eeva Sippola Aspect and directionality in Kupang Malay serial verb constructions: Calquing on the grammars of substrate languages

June Jacob a.nd Cha.rles R Gtimes Sri Lanka Malay and its Lankan adstrates

Umberto Ansaldo Dravidian features in the Sri Lankan Malay verb

Peter Slomanson

337

Table of contents

Part IV. Creoles spoken in the Pacific Papuan Malay of New Guinea: Melanesian influence on verb and clause structure

413

Mark Donohue The influence of Arandic languages on Central Australian Aboriginal English

437

Harold Koch Roper River Aboriginal language features in Australian Kriol: Considering semantic categories

Jennifer Munro Substrate influences on New South Wales Pidgin: The origin of -im and -fela

Ha.rold Koch Limits of the substrate: Substrate grammatical influence in Solomon Islands Pijin

513

Angela Terrill Substrate reinforcement and the retention of Pan-Pacific Pidgin features in modern contact varieties

531

Jeff Siegel The copula in Hawai'i Creole English and substrate reinforcement

557

Sarah ]. Roberts KOn traduit Ia langue en fran~ais": Substrate influence in the TMA system ofTayo

575

Ba.rbara. Sandeman Part V. Conclusion Creoles and language typology

599

Bernard Comrie Index of authors

613

Index of languages and language families

619

Index of subjects

623

vn

Preface

This book is about creoles, their contributing languages, and language typology. At the tum of the millennium, the issue of the typological classification of creoles gave rise to a relatively large body of literature. It soon became evident to me that discussions on the topic would benefit a great deal from detailed case studies of creoles and their contributing languages, with special attention to their substrate languages. I therefore organised a one-day workshop on creoles and their substrates within the context of the 2007 International Conference on Historical Linguistics. In view of the success of the workshop, and given the interest in the theme, I decided to enlarge the scope of the originally planned book to a much wider sample of creole languages. This initiative resulted in the project that eventually led to this book. The bulk of the content of this book consists of 25 chapters comparing some 30 creoles and their respective substrate languages. As the substrate languages of these creoles are typologically different. the detailed investigation of substrate features in the creoles leads to a particular answer to the question of the typological classification ofcreoles. Thus, the first chapter, by myselt~ introduces the material analysed in the various chapters of this book from the point of view of language typology. The last chapter, by Bernard Comrie, which echoes the first, provides the typologist's point of view on the problem of the typological classification of creole languages and on the theoretical questions at stake in the discussion of this issue. I would like to thank all the authors who contributed to this book for bearing with the comparative approach set forth as a methodological tool at the beginning of this project and for their collaboration in reducing the length of their chapters and in addressing comments and questions by several reviewers. This brings me naturally to the review process adopted tor the production of this book. Each chapter was commented on by at least three readers. I would like to thank the following scholars for their thorough reviews of a subset of chapters: Umberto Ansaldo, Angela Bartens, Anne-Marie Brousseau, Hugo Cardoso, Clancy Clements, Marta Dijkhoff, Genevieve Escure, Antony Grant, Tjerk Hagemeijer, Christine Jourdan. Alain Kihm, Harold Koch, Lisa Lim, Angelika Lutz, Stephen Matthews, Bettina Migge, Robert Papen, Kevin Rottet, Jeff Siegel, Anand Syea, and Bao Zhiming. Naturally, I also commented on all the chapters. Lucie Kearns and Zofia Laubitz copy-edited the manuscript. I would like to thank them for the wonderful job they have accomplished considering the number oflanguages involved in the book, as well as the large number of non-native speakers of English who authored chapters of this book. Thanks to Annie Trudel for her assistance in the preparation of the indexes and in the submission of the final manuscript to the publishers. Finally, I would like to express my gratitude to the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada for its financial contribution to the production of the final manuscript. Claire Lefebvre Universite du Quebec aMontreal, Montreal, December 1, 2009

Introduction

The problem of the typological classification of creoles* Claire Lefebvre Universite du Quebec aMontreal

This book contains 25 chapters bearing on detailed comparisons of some 30 creoles and their substrate languages. AB the substrate languages of these creoles are typologically different, the detailed investigation of substrate features in the creoles leads to a particular answer to the question of how creoles should be classified typologically. The present chapter therefore introduces the material analysed in the chapters of this book from the point of view oflanguage typology. I begin with a discussion of the problem of the typological classification of creole languages, and of the aims and limitations of this chapter. The bulk of the chapter provides an overview of the results of the research contained in the various chapters. First, I outline the ways in which the typological features ofthe substrate languages are manifested in the creoles. Second, I lay out a global picture of the variation found among creoles for various subsystems of the grammar. To a great extent, this variation reflects that displayed by the substrate languages of the creoles. Third, based on each author's proposals, I review the processes that led to such a situation and the constraints that are acting upon them. The chapter ends with my overall evaluation of the problem of the typological classification of creoles.

1.

The problem

Since creole languages draw their properties from both their substrate and superstrate sources, the typological classification of creoles has long been a major issue for creolists, typologists, and linguists in general Several proposals have been put forward in the literature. Because the labels of the lexical entries of creoles are derived from their superstrate languages, creoles have often been genealogically classified with their superstrate language. For example, Hall ( 19 50: 20 3) classifies Haitian Creole as a French dialect: "Haitian Creole is to be classified

The research underlying this chapter was partially financed by SSHRCC. I would like to thank Renee LambertBretiere for her assistance in documenting various aspects of the content ofthis chapter, and Annie Trudelfor contributing to producing the map showing the distribution of the creoles under investigation in this book. I am also grateful to the following colleagues for their insightful comments on an earlier version of this chapter: Umberto Ansaldo, Chuck Grimes, Harold Koch, Jiirgen Lang, Usa Urn, Stephen Matthews, Jeff Siegel, Armin Schwegler, Peter Slomanson and Bao Zhiming. Thanks to Andree Belanger for formatting the manuscript

4

Claire Lefebvre

among the Romance languages, and especially among the northern group of the Gallo- Romance branch, on the basis of its systematic phonological, morphologicaL syntactical and lexical correspondences:' Goodman (1964: 136) makes a similar statement: "I do feel impelled to restate, however, that on the basis of no purely linguistic criteria for genetic relationship which have thus far been advanced, including that of'parente syntaxique' advanced by Sylvain (1936: 121-122), can Creole French be classified with any specific language other than French:' Some authors have further claimed that, even from a typological point of view, creoles pair with their superstrate languages. Chaudenson (2003: 38), for example, writes: "[Les creoles sont] des idiomes issus des langues europeennes et qui se sont formes dans les societes coloniales entre le XVIe et XVIIIe siecles" ["[Creoles are] idioms that emerged from European languages and were formed in colonial societies between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries"] [our translation from French] . He further writes: "Si fon se place un point de vue typologique, la distance entre le fran~ais et les cn~oles fran~ais est assez restreinte" (p. 177) ["From a typological point of view, the distance between French and the French creoles is quite small"] [our translation from French]. Because the properties of a creole's lexical entries are derived from those of its substrate languages, some scholars have classified creoles as hybrid languages. Adam (1883:47) makes the following statement: "I go so far as to claim ... that the so-called patois of Guyana and Trinidad constitute Negro-Aryan dialects. By that I mean that the Guinean Negroes who were transported to the colonies adopted the words of French but. as much as possible, kept the phonetics and grammar of their mother tongues ... Such a formation is clearly hybrid ... The grammar is no different from the general grammar of the languages of Guinea" [our translation from French]. Speaking of Haitian Creole, Sylvain ( 19 36: 178) observes that: "We are in the presence of a French that has been cast in the mould of African syntax or ... of an Ewe language with a French vocabulary" [our translation from French]. Lefebvre (1998) shows at some length that. even though the phonological representations of Haitian Creole lexical entries are drawn from French phonetic strings, Haitian Creole shares its lexical properties, morphosyntax, concatenation prindples and the salient features of its parametric values with its West African substrate languages. In this approach, creole languages would pair typologically with their substrate languages rather than with their superstrate. A third approach is Bickerton's (1984) proposal that children, who are exposed to the impoverished pidgin grammar and lexicon spoken by their parents, fill in the gaps by drawing on language universal principles, thus creating a creole. The resulting creole languages are claimed to manifest only the unmarked values oflanguage. Further, due to the way they emerge, all creole languages are claimed to be alike. This may suggest that, from a typological point of view, creole languages constitute an identifiable group of languages that can be set apart from other natural languages. To my knowledge, Bickerton never went as far as to making this claim. McWhorter (2001), however, did, very specifically, as he wrote that: "Creole grammars constitute a synchronically identifiable class." This claim builds on an earlier one (McWhorter 1998:790) that creole languages constitute a "synchronically definable typological class." As can be seen from this brief summary of the major positions on the typological classification of creole languages, the topic is a controversial one. It has been the subject of hot debates as witnessed by the papers in, for example, the following volumes: Muysken and Smith (1986), Substrata 1'ersus Universals in Creole Genesis; the special issue of Linguistic Typology: "Creoles: A

a

The problem of the typologic:al classification of creoles

Structura-l Typer (2001); Michaelis (2008), Roots of Creole Structures: Weighing the Contribution ofSubstrates and Superstrates; Neumann-Holzschuh and Schneider (2001), Degrees ofRestru.cturing in Creole Languages; and Ansaldo et al (2007), Deconstructing Creole. 1

2.

Aims and limitations of this chapter

This chapter explores the problem of the typological classification of creole languages on the basis of a representative sample of some 30 creoles that have emerged from typologically different substrate languages. Creoles that have African languages as their substrates are Belizean Creole, Haitian Creole, Kriyol, Ndyuka, Nicaraguan, Palenque(ro), Pamaka, Papiamentu, Portuguese Creole of Santiago Island, Providence Island Creole, Saramaccan/Saamaka, San Andres Islands Creole, Santome, Sranan Tango and St. Lucian; those that have Asian languages as their substrates are China Coast Pidgin, Kupang Malay, Mindanao Chabacano, Singapore English or Singlish, Sri Lanka(n) Malay and Ternate Chabacano; those that have Pacific languages as their substrates are Central Australian Aboriginal English (CAAE), Hawai'i Creole, Kriol, New South Wales Pidgin (NSWP), Papuan Malay, Solomon Islands Pijin and Tayo. The location of these languages is indicated on the world map below. As can be seen above, for ease of presentation, the creoles have been grouped by geographical area. In the case of creoles spoken in Africa or in the Caribbean, the substrate languages are all from the same language family: Niger-Congo. However, in the case of creoles spoken in Asia and in the Pacific, the situation is not as simple. For example, several Malay-based creoles are described in this volume. While Malay itself is an Austronesian language (western branch), the substrate languages that are involved in the Malay-based creoles are varied. Kupang Malay has other Austronesian languages (central branch) as its substrate languages. Papuan Malay has various (non-Austronesian) Papuan languages as its substrate languages. Sri Lanka(n) Malay has substrate languages that belong in different language families, with Tamil, a Dravidian language, and Sinhala, an Indo-European language, as two major substrate languages (in Slomanson's view) or adstrate languages (in Ansaldo's view). CAAE, Kriol and NSWP have Australian languages as their substrate languages. Tok Pisin, Bislama, Solomon Islands Pijin and Tayo, spoken in the Pacific, have mainly Austronesian languages as their substrate, as does Chabacano spoken in the Philippines. In the list of creole languages enumerated above, all except four are commonly referred to as creoles. China Coast Pidgin and New South Wales Pidgin are commonly referred to as pidgins on the basis of the fact that they do not have native speakers (as opposed to creoles, which do have native speakers). In the literature on the "New Englishes" of the world, Singapore English and Central Australian Aboriginal English are generally considered to be varieties of English. In this chapter, I will use the term Kcreole" as an overall term for the languages referred to as such, as well as for these two pidgins and these two varieties of"New Englishes': In doing this, I do not want to open a debate on the status of these four contact languages. The reason for using the term "creole" is merely practical. But it is also in line with the fact that scholars have started referring to 1.

See also Lim and Gisborne (2009), The 7ypology of Asian Englishes.

Q\

()

j[

-

~

~,,;=~

·•

."'• ..•

.

-~· "'"'

41&

~ ~

-

~

r

~

-~

'\loo

~

8'

• .,•

•

Cl

"''

~

otj~~"1~ •. ...... - ,•,-

i

•

•

'e

.., @!I /;. -.... 1. Hawai'i Creole 2. Belizean Creole 3. Nicaraguan Creole 4. San Andres Creole

5. Palenque(ro) 6. Hatitian Creole 7. Providence Creole

8. St. lucian Creole 9. Papiarnentu 10. Sararnaccan!Saamaka Pam aka Ndyuka Sranan Tongo 11. Santiago Island Creole

Map 1. Creole languages discussed in this book

12. Casamance Creole 13. Kriyol 14. Santome 15. Sri Lanka(n) Malay

19. Mindanao Chabacano 20. Ternate Chabacano 21. Melanesian Pidgin 22. Kupang Malay

16. China Coast Pidgin 17. Chinese Pidgin English 18. Singapore English

23. Papuan Malay 24. Tok Pisin 25. Solomon Island's Pijin

26. 27. 28. 29.

Bislarna Kriol New South Wales Pidgin Tayo


pidgins and creoles as PCs, suggesting that they fall within a single category (e. g., Hancock 1980; Mufwene 1990; Mi.ihlhausler 1980, 1986). The rationale behind this grouping is that the creation of pidgins and of creoles involves the same processes (e.g., Lefebvre 1998). As for the two varieties of English referred to above, the context in which they emerged differs from that in which the plantation creoles were created. These two contexts, however, share an important feature. They both involve multilingual communities in need of a lingua franca. Hence, Singapore English was created in a multilingual community- involving Malay and several Sinitic languages- in need of a lingua franca. Likewise, Central Australian Aboriginal Pidgin was also created in a multilingual community- involving several Australian languages - that needed a lingua franca. Furthermore, the creation of these New Englishes makes use of the same processes that are at work in the formation of pidgins and creoles (see the chapters by Baa, Koch and Siegel). Finally, this grouping is in line with Koch (a), who considers the variety of CAAE he is reporting on in this volume as a post-pidgin variety that is quite distinct from other varieties also referred to as CAAE (such as those discussed in Eades 1991, 1996), which in fact constitute dialects of English. The book contains 25 chapters that set out detailed comparisons of subsystems of the above sample of creoles with their respective major substrate languages. The major subsystems of ereales' grammars and lexicons discussed in this book include segmental inventories, pronouns, case systems, the syntactic properties of verbs, copulas, Tense-Mood-Aspect (TMA), negation, serial verbs and discourse structures. The results of these comparisons constitute test cases for the various positions summarised above on the typological classification of creoles. As will be seen below, the bulk of the data argue that creoles are best typologically classified with their substrate languages. As will be further discussed in Section 4.2, this may reflect the fact that, except for two chapters, all the chapters in this book discuss data that belong in the lexical or in the syntactic components of the grammar. These are two components in which we expect substrate features to manifest themselves in the creoles, due to the processes that create creoles' lexicons and syntax (see Section 3.3). As for the phonological component of the grammar, it is discussed in only two chapters. Brousseau addresses the source of the segmental inventories of Haitian and St. Lucian creoles, and Lim discusses the source of tones in Singlish. More detailed comparisons of segmental inventories, prosodic and syllabic structures of creoles and their contributing languages are needed for a thorough discussion of the typological features of creoles in this component of the grammar. The same remark applies to word order. The fact that there are so few chapters on the phonological component of the grammar and none on word order is not intentional. It simply reflects the fact that few authors volunteered chapters on the phonology and none on word order. I now turn to a discussion of the results from a global perspective.

3·

Overview of the results

First, I will summarise the various ways in which the typological features of the substrates are manifested in creoles. Next I will consider data from various subsystems of the grammar across creoles from different substrate languages, showing that the typological differences between these data reflect the typological differences between the substrate languages. Then I will review the various processes proposed to account for the presence of substrate features in the creoles.

7

8

Claire Lefebvre

Finally, I will provide an overview of the various constraints invoked by authors to explain why some substrate features did or did not make their way into the creoles.

3.1

Ways in which the typological features of the substrate are manifested in creoles

3.1.1

Creoles spoken in Africa and in the Caribbean

Hagemeijerand Ogie study the inventory of serial verb constructions (SVC) in Santome and Edo. They conclude that "pretty much the full range of types ofSVCs in Edo can also be found in Santome." They note, however, that "the languages often differ with respect to the more fine-grained properties of SVCs, which is expected from many centuries of independent development and, foremost, due to the creolisation process itself.' Lang compares the manifestation of Aspect in Santiago Creole and in Wolof. He shows that "... the Santiago Creole progressive has retained only the progressive meaning of the imperfective variety of the Wolof'situative~ abandoning its 'situative' meaning:' He suggests that levelling accounts for the difference between the two: "This simplification would have occurred to ease the joining of other groups whose language may have had a progressive, but not a 'situative' with a progressive meaning in the imperfective." In the same vein, Migge compares the Tense, Mood and Aspect systems of the Surinamese creoles with those of the Gbe languages. While the com paris on between the two sets manifests many similarities, Migge notes that substrate influence is not a "unified process" since "its operation and outcomes appear to take different forms, most likely due to its interaction with other processes and sources:' Escure studies the influence of the substrate languages ofBelize Creole on its tense and mood system: "... maintenance of African elements, including the intact preservation of some essential verbal morphology such as ANT me and its counterfactual structure. Direct African antecedents have been found for this structure (Ibibio/Efik, Kituba, Swahili and generally Bantoid languages). Its anteriority morpheme, the specific shape of its futurity/irrealis marker and its related counterfactual combinations appear to closely mirror aspects of Bantu morphology, as well as the semantics of hypothetical events." In her chapter on the phonology of Haitian and St Lucian, Brousseau compares the segmental inventories of the two creoles with those of French and of Fongbe in order to evaluate the impact of the substrate languages on the development of these systems. She concludes that "The influence of the substrate is pervasive in the inventories of the two creoles, even for cases where we could convincingly argue for the role of Universal Grammar:' Lefebvre compares the properties of verbs in three Atlantic creoles - Haitian, Saramaccan and Papiamentu - with those of their contributing languages: Fongbe, an important substrate language, and French, English and Spanish, the respective lexifier languages of the three creoles. The verbal properties that are compared are the following: BODY-state expressions, WEATHER verbs, raising verbs, control verbs, double-object verbs and serial verbs. The three-way comparison shows that first, the properties of verbs in the three creoles often contrast with those of the corresponding verbs in their respective superstrate languages; second, these properties systematically parallel those of the corresponding verbs in their substrate languages; and third, the properties of the substrate verbs manifest themselves in all three creoles, in spite of the fact that they have different superstrate languages.


Bartens compares some 30 phonological, morphosyntactic and lexical features in Twi and in the English-based creoles spoken on San Andres and Old Providence (Colombia) and on the Atlantic coast of Nicaragua. Her conclusion is the following: "In a number of cases, it was impossible to make a case for exclusive substrate influence and it seems preferable to speak of convergence. However, there are also many language structures for which substrate influence offers the most likely explanation:' As for Schwegler, he compares Palenquero and Kikongo. His assessment of the situation is as follows: "... We have noted that substrata! influence can be detected in multiple domains: in the creole's lexicon, where dozens of words are traceable to Kikongo etyma; in its phonology, where several features (including prenasalisation, the free [d], [r] and [1] alternations, and peculiar intonational patterns) point to Kikongo roots; and in its morphosyntax, where nominal pluralisations with ma and reiterative PIN marking in the singular (e.g., yo i kele-lo 'I want it'), and a host of other traits are similarly suggestive of Kikongo input." However, Palenquero has not preserved the class-concord agreement system that characterises many Bantu languages. To sum up, the creoles with a Niger-Congo substrate discussed in the first part of the book all appear to manifest features of their substrate languages. As some authors note, however, certain substrate features may not appear in the creole due to interaction between various processes (e.g., transfer and levelling in Lang's chapter, several processes in Migge's chapter) (see also Section 3.3). Kriyol. spoken in Guinea-Bissau, departs from this general tendency. Kihm's explanation of why this is so will be discussed in Section 3.4. 3.1.2

Creoles spoken in Asia

Two chapters concern Singapore English!Singlish (two appellations for the same language variety), one about syntax, the other about phonology. Bao compares the patterns of the passive constructions in the Singaporean component of the International Corpus of English with the substrate passive constructions. He shows that the substrate passives are adversative and that the Singapore English passives exhibit a clear adversative bias. Furthermore, he shows that the quantitative analysis supports two distinct mechanisms of substratum influence: "the abrupt substratum transfer (the locally derived passives) and the gradual convergence-to-substratum (the English-derived passives):' Lim's chapter focuses on the origin of tones in Singlish, the mesolectal!basilectal variety of English spoken in Singapore. Singlish has two major substrate languages: the Sinitic substrate languages, which have tones, and Malay, which does not A first hypothesis would posit that the tone observed in Singlish originates in the Sinitic substrate languages. As Lim points out, however, the situation is more complex. As she puts it, "even when the foa.ture of tone may be ascribed to the tone language substrates, the actual realisation in terms of prosodic patterns - for instance, in the case of Singlish, the location of the H tone at word or phrase level- can be influenced by the prosody of a non-tone language; in the case of Singlish, this is Malay. What is also significant is that this is the language of a population - the Peranakans - that is recognised as having been an earlier or founder population in the ecology, which therefore exerts a significant influence on the structure of the emergent contact language." In their comparative study of serial verbs, classifiers, properties of verbs, copulas, negation, TMA, pronouns, Wh-interrogatives, topic-comment structures and compounds, Ansaldo, Matthews and Smith argue that Cantonese typological features are reproduced in China Coast Pidgin.

9

10

Claire Lefebvre

Grant and Sippola study two creole varieties spoken in the Philippines: Mindanao Chabacano (MC) and Ternate Chabacano (TC), respectively. Grant concludes that "between Spanish, Central Philippine languages and some sort of Manila Bay Creole, almost all the grammar of MC could be included as 'substrate features:' As for Sippola, she concludes her study of negation as follows: "... It can be affirmed that the main pattern of Ternate Chabacano negation follows its adstrate language Tagalog when distinguishing the standard clausal negation and the negation of existentials and possession." The chapter by Jacob and Grimes describes the serial verb constructions of Kupang Malay and those ofits substrate languages. The parallel between the structures, functions, and semantics of SVCs in Kupang and those in the substrate languages is quite striking, whereas there are simply no parallels found with standard Malay grammar. There are two chapters on Sri Lanka(n) Malay (SLM). Ansaldo shows that the Lankan case system has been reproduced in SLM: "SLM has developed agglutinative morphology with incipient fusional tendencies in the nominal system, which indicates a typological shift away from the isolating type." As for Tense and Aspect, the results are split between the two contributing languages. While tense reflects the Lankan tense system, the as pectual system retains some of the aspectual categories of Malay. Slomanson's study of the morphosyntax of SLM leads him to the following conclusion: "... The morphosyntax of SLM substantially reflects influence from the Sri Lanka(n) sprachbund [... ] While a small number of features and processes from vehicular Malay persist in SLM, such as the fixed pre-verbal position of those functional contrasts directly marked on lexical verbs and the categorial flexibility of adjectives, the language's morphosyntax has incorporated more features from its Shonam model language than it has retained from vehicular

Mala}( To sum up, the creoles spoken in Asia all appear to manifest features of their substrate languages. 3.1.3

Creoles spoken in the Pacific

Donohue investigates the serial verb constructions of Papuan Malay and its substrate languages. His conclusion is that Papuan Malay SVCs manifest the properties of its New Guinea Papuan substrate languages. The first chapter by Koch (hereafter Koch a) discusses data from three areas of the grammar of CAAE, and compares it with Kaytetye, one of the Arandic substrate languages. It shows how two relatively exotic grammatical categories found in Kaytetye (and other Arandic languages) -"dyadic" in kinship nouns and "associated motion" in verbs- are replicated in CAAE using formal material derived from English. Koch (a) further compares the use of CAAE prepositions, whose forms are from English, with Kaytetye case functions. He concludes that "the organisation of the semantic 'functions' of the cases is replicated in considerable detail in the use of the CAAE prepositions" (see Section 3.2.5). Munro considers pronouns, TMA markers and case in Kriol and its substrate Australian languages. She reaches a conclusion similar to that ofthe aforementioned authors: The properties of the lexical items involved in the Kriol subsystems of the grammar reproduce those of its substrate languages. She emphasises the fact that Aboriginal languages are agglutinating languages and how the properties of the affixes are reproduced in free morphemes in the creole (see Section 4.3).


In his study of N SWP and its contributing languages, Koch (hereafter Koch b) shows that the grammatical features of zero expression third-person singular objects and Noun Phrase head nouns are indirectly reflected in -im and -fela, respectively. Siegel considers pan-Pacific Pidgin features in modern contact varieties. Many grammatical features of Pacific Pidgin English, NSWP and Chinese Pidgin English were attested in the New Hebrides (now Vanuatu), Solomon Islands, New Guinea Islands, Hawai'i and the Northern Territory of Australia in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In the creole that later developed in each of these locations, a different subset of these "Pan-Pacific" features was retained. Siegel examines nine of these features to see whether their presence or absence in each of the five modern contact varieties can be accounted for by the presence or absence of the same features in the substrate languages. The results show that "for at least seven of the nine Pan- Pacific features, when the feature is present in the contact variety, a corresponding feature is also present in the substrate languages, and when it is absent in the contact variety, it is absent in the substrate languages." The chapter by Roberts "presents comparative and diachronic evidence indicating that substrate patterns played a significant role in the development of the copula in Hawai'i Creole English (HCE). The predominantly Cantonese, Portuguese, Hawaiian, and Japanese substrate did not contribute much to the innovation oflexical forms since HCE drew on a pre-existing pidgin, but the transference and reinforcement of semantic and syntactic properties from these languages with the exception of Japanese - is detectible in the copula system that arose in H CE:' About Tayo, Sandeman writes: "Research carried out to date on Tayo indicates that many of its structures depart radically from what has been considered a 'typical' creole pattern; instead, they appear to more closely resemble structures in the substrate languages:' Her specific study of the TMA subsystem illustrates this more general claim. To sum up, here again the creoles appear to manifest the properties of their substrate languages. Since the last chapter of this section, by Terrill on Solomon Islands Pijin, is dedicated to constraints on transference, it will be discussed in Section 3.4. 3.1.4

Summary

The data reported on in this section show that, to a great extent, creoles reproduce the features of their substrate languages. This conclusion becomes even more evident when we compare subsystems of the grammar across creoles.

3.2

Subsystems of the grammar across creoles

This section considers subsystems of the grammar across creoles from typologically different substrates. The following subsystems will be discussed in tum: pronominal forms, classifiers, TMA systems, negation, semantic case systems, transitivity markers, the properties of verbs, serial verbs, verb-doubling phenomena and discourse structures. In the paragraphs that follow, it is shown that typological differences between subsystems of the grammar across creoles reveal typological differences between their respective substrate languages.

11

12

Claire Lefebvre

3.2.1

Pronomina.l fm·ms

Creole languages differ with respect to their pronominal inventories. For example, Kriol has a pronominal system that distinguishes between singular, dual and plural pronouns, and also between first-person plural inclusive and exclusive. These forms are all constructed on the basis of English pronominal forms (e.g., mi < me, yu -e

i,me' 'you (so)' 'he/she/it/him/her' 'we/us/you (PL)' 'they/them'

for second-person singular and plural, and it has a first-person plural inclusive/exclusive distinction, like the Philippine languages. 3.2.2

Classifiers

Not all creole languages have classifiers. As expected, classifiers are found only in those creoles whose substrate languages have them. For example, noun phrases in China Coast Pidgin (Ansaldo, Matthews and Smith) have the patterns [NUM-CL-N] and [DEM-CL-N), reproducing the classifiers of its Sinitic substrate languages. 3.2.3

TMA systems

The TMA systems of creole languages exhibit variation. This is supported by the comparison of the Kriol TMA system reproduced in Table 6 from Munro, with that of Haitian Creole in Table 7 from Lefebvre (1996). In this book, TMA systems are documented for the following creoles: Surinamese (Migge), Tayo (Sandeman), Sri Lanka(n) Malay (Ansaldo, Slomanson), Kriyol (Kihm), China Coast Pidgin (Ansaldo, Matthews and Smith), Santiago Creole (Lang) and Kriol (Munro). Again, all authors agree that the features of the TMA systems of these creoles most resemble those of their

13

14

Claire Lefebvre

Table 6. The TMA system ofKriol (=Table 6 in Munro) Realis tense

bin 0

Irrealis mood

Aspect

oldei stil stat onli jes -bat

Past Present

Continuative Durative Incipient Limitational Proximal Pro12:essive Habitual

yusdu

garra -l mait gin

gan lafda

Obligatory (Future) Definite lsG Potential Abilitive Inabilitive Necessary

Table 7. The TMA system ofHaitianCreole (from Lefebvre 1996:239) ANTERIOR

IRREALIS

NON-COMPLETE

Past or Past perfect

Definite future

Imperfective

te

ap

ap

Indefinite future

a-va Subjunctive pou

Table 8. Irwentories of'IMA markers in Haitian Creole and Fongbe (= (115) in Lefebvre 1996:263) NON-COMPLETE

ANTERIOR

IRREALIS

Past or Past perfect

Definite future

H

F

H

F

te

kO

ap

n4

Habitual H

Imperfective F

H

F

n3

ap

c(O••• we

Indefinite future H

F

a-va

na-wd

Subjunctive H

F

pou

n{

respective substrates, such that, the typological differences between them manifest typological differences between their substrate languages. Munro shows that the semantics associated with the categories of tense, mood and aspect reflects substrate features, such as the distinction between past punctual and past continuous aspect, and the expression of future and potential mood. She remarks that "evitative" mood, tound in TMA systems of the substrate languages, is not manifested in Kriol She explains this absence by the unavailability of an appropriate form in the superstrate language to transfer evitative mood to (see Section 3.4). The TMA systems of Atlantic creoles reproduce the particularities of their West African substrate languages. This is illustrated in Table 8 for Haitian Creole and Fongbe from Lefebvre (1996 and the references therein).


Except for the fact that it does not distinguish between definite and indefinite future, the TMA system of Saramaccan is very similar to those of Haitian and Fongbe. It encodes tense, mood and aspect by means of an inventory of TMA markers made up of the marker of anteriority bi (< English been), the future marker 6 (< English go), the subjunctive marker fu (< English for), and the imperfective marker ta (

bruk-im 'break. tear' kuk-im 'cook [something]' wok-im 'to make [something], build'

BISLAMA (Crowley 2004: 77) PIJIN (Keesl..ng n.d.) ToKPISIN (Mosel1980:41)

The presence of a transitivity marker in these dialects of Melanesian Pidgin reproduces the pattern of their substrate languages, as is shown in (4) to (6) ( = (86) to (88) in Siegel). (4)

(5)

For Btslam.a:

sua-i 'paddle [something]' inu-mi 'drink, swallow [something]'

keco 'be hanging'

keco-ci 'hang [something]'

For Pijin:

aga 1ook' beri 'commit theft' takwe 'dig' (6)

TANGOAN

sua 'to paddle' inu 'drink'

KWAIO

aga-si-a 'see (it)' beri-a 'steal it' takwe-a fou 'dig up a stone'

For Tok Pisin:

gumu 'dive, bath' tang! 'cry, weep' ngarau 'be afraid'

(Camden 1979:90)

(Keesing n.d.) To LAI

gumu-e 'dive for [something]' tani-e 'mourn for [someone or something]' ngarau-ane 'be afraid of [someone or something]' (Mosel1980: 42-43)

This would appear to be just like the other cases discussed so far were it not for the fact that some creoles spoken in the Pacific region do manifest transitivity markers while their substrate languages do not This is the case, for example, of creoles that have Australian languages as their substrate languages. For example, Kriol manifests a transitivity marker, as shown in (7) (= (85) in Siegel). (7)

rid 'read'

kuk'cook.'

barn 'be burning'

rid-im 'read [something]' KRioL kuk-um 'cook [something]' barn-im 'burn [something or someone]' (Sandefur & Sandefur 1979)

CAAE and NSWP also manifest transitivity markers (Koch a and b). These three creoles all have Australian languages as their substrates that do not manifest transitivity markers. A possible conelusion would be that, in these cases, the presence of transitivity markers on the verb cannot be claimed to reproduce a feature of the substrate languages. Nevertheless, Koch (b) argues that the development of transitivity markers on verbs in these creoles was motivated by the properties of their substrate languages. His argument can be summarised as follows: Australian languages have a syntactic ergative case system whereby the subject of a transitive verb bears Ergative case

19

20

Claire Lefebvre

and that of an intransitive verb bears Nominative case (Blake 1987; Koch 2007). This case system reflects a deeper typological characteristic of Australian languages: Every verb "is either strictly transitive ... or strictly intransitive" (Dixon 1980: 378). Koch (b) thus suggests that Kergative casemarking of NPs is a surface manifestation of a deep lexico-grammatical principle of language organisation, namely the rigid distinction between transitive and intransitive verbs (and hence clause types). And it is this grammatical principle, ingrained in the consciousness of AL speakers, that was influential in promoting, in the developing pidgin, the polarisation in form between transitive verbs (VERBim) and intransitive verbs (VERB). The existence of a recognisable termination -im (and perhaps its minor variant -it) was exploited by native speakers of 'ergative' languages to keep separate the two categories of verbs which their internalised grammars led them to expect in the pidgin they were learning, and whose distinctiveness could not otherwise be signalled." Siegel further comments: "lt seems clear that having a marked distinction between transitive and intransitive verbs may have reinforced the use of the feature." At the end of this discussion, there remains the question of whether the syntactic ergative case system of these Australian languages has been reproduced in the relevant creoles. The answer to this question is no. This topic will be addressed in Section 3.4. 3.2.7 The properties of1'erbs In the same vein, verbs and verb classes do not have the same properties in all creoles. Again, the properties of creole verbs manifest those of their substrate languages. This is evidenced by data presented by Lefebvre and by Bartens for Caribbean creoles, by Koch (a) for CAAE, and by Ansaldo, Matthews and Smith for China Coast Pidgin. For example, CAAE has associated motion verbs modelled on its substrate Australian languages (Koch a). Creoles without such substrate languages do not manifest this feature. Caribbean creoles have double-object verbs, like their substrate languages (Lefebvre). As Michaelis and Haspelmath (2003) note, double-object verbs are found only in those creoles whose substrates manifest the construction. 3.2.8 Serial verbs Serial verb constructions are available in some creoles but not in others. They exist in creoles whose substrate has the construction (e.g., creoles with a West African or a Sinitic substrate). They are not available in creoles whose substrate does not have the construction (e.g., creoles with an Australian substrate). Furthermore, although there might be some overlap between the concatenation of verbs in languages that teature this construction, by hypothesis, the concatenation of verbs might not necessarily be the same for all the languages that manifest the construction. In this book, serial verbs are documented for Santome (Hagemeijer and Ogie), Kupuang Malay (Jacob and Grimes), Papuan Malay (Donohue), and China Coast English (Ansaldo, Matthews and Smith). According to all these authors, the concatenations of verbs in the above-mentioned creoles replicate those found in their respective substrates. While the authors do provide the possible concatenations of verbs in the languages they study, they do not list the impossible ones (a task which would have been far beyond what was expected of them). The fuller identification of differential concatenations of verbs among the creoles under investigation will therefore have to await future research.


3.2.9 Verb -doubling phenomena Creole languages also vary with respect to the availability of verb-doubling phenomena. These are partially discussed in Hagemeijer and Ogie, and in Bartens. They involve four constructions: temporal adverbial, causal adverbial and factive clauses, as well as the predicate cleft construction. The full range of these constructions is shown in (8) for Haitian Creole and Fongbe. (8)

a

TEMPORAL ADVERBIAL

Wd Jan wa Rive Jan rive

(tr616)

bj epi

Mar£ yl. Mari patL

FoNGBE HAITIAN

arrive John arrive as-soon-as and-then Mary leave ~ soon as John arrived, Mary left' b.

(= (1) in Lefebvre 1994)

CAUSAL ADVERBIAL

Wii Jan wa utU Mar£ yl. Rive Jan rive Marl paN. arrive John arrive cause Mary leave 'Because John arrived, Mary left: C.

FONGBE HAITIAN


FACTIVE

Wii q_e,eJan wa 6 Vivf nU nj tjn. FONGBE Rive rJ Jan rive fo manman li kontan. HAITIAN arrive oP John arrive DEF make(-happy) for mother his happy 'The fact that John arrived made his mother happy.' (= (3) in Lefebvre 1994) d.

PREDICATE CLEFT

Wd Se rive

we

Jan Jan

wa.

FONGBE

rh•e.

HAITIAN

it-is arrive it-is John arrive 'It is arrive that John did (not e.g. leave):


Saramaccan also exhibits these four constructions, as is illustrated in (9). (9)

a.

TEMPORAL ADVERBIAL

Ko Rohit ko a wosu pala, hen Rowe go. arrive Rohit arrive Loc house as-soon-as and.then Rowe leave 1\s soon as Rohit arrived at the house, Rowe left: b.

(Lefebvre's field notes)

CAUSAL ADVERBIAL

Waka a

waka, a

ko wei.

SARAMACCAN

walk 3rd walk 3rd get tire 'Because she wa1ked, she got tired: C.

SARAMACCAN


FACTIVE

Di waka a waka, hen mel a

ko wei.

walk 3rd walk it cause 3rd get tire 'The fact that she walked caused her to get tired:

SARAMACCAN

DEF

d.


PREDICATE CLEFT

Waka a waka loutu dl wosu. walk 3rd walk go around DEF house 'He really wa1ked around the house:

SARAMACCAN

(= (llb) in van den Berg 1987: 104)

21

22

Claire Lefebvre

Papiamentu exhibits the same four constructions, as is shown in (10). (10)

a

TEMPORAL ADVERBIAL

Yega ku Juan a

yega, Maria a

arrive LOC John PERF arrive Mary ~ soon as John arrived, Mary left: b.

PERF

PAPIAMl!NTU

(Kearns 2008)

CAUSAL ADVERBIAL

E

yegt~

ku

Juan a

yega, Maria a

arrive COMP John PERF arrive Mary 'Because John has arrived, Mary left: DEF

C.

bal. go

PERF

bal. go

PAPIAMl!NTU

(Kearns 2008)

FACTIVE

E

yega ku

Juan a

yega

a

hasi su

mama fells.

arrive COMP John PERF arrive PERF make POSS mother happy 'The fact that John has arrived made his mother happy.'

PAPIAMl!NTU

DEF

d.

(Kearns 2008)

PREDICATE CLEFT

Ta kome el

a

kome.

it.is eat 3SG 'He has eaten:

PERF

eat

PAPIAMl!NTU

(= (332) in Maurer 1988: 141)

The fact that verb-doubling phenomena are available in Haitian Creole, Saramaccan, Papiamentu, and other Caribbean creoles such as Martinican Creole (Bernabe 1983), as well as in Santome, cannot be attributed to their superstrate languages (French, English, Portuguese, Spanish) since the latter do not manifest these phenomena. The fact that Caribbean creoles and Santome do manifest verb-doubling phenomena is most probably due, however, to their substrate languages, in which verb doubling is a typological feature. Not surprisingly, this particular cluster of phenomena are found only in creoles that have a West African substrate; they are not found in creoles spoken in Asia or in the Pacific. 3.2.10

Discourse structures

Discourse structures also vary among creoles. Once more, creoles reflect the typological differences of their substrate languages. For example, China Coast Pidgin reproduces the pattern of Cantonese, whereas Papuan Malay reproduces that of Melanesian languages. While China Coast Pidgin has a topic-comment discourse structure similar to the one tound in Cantonese (Ansaldo, Matthews and Smith), Papuan Malay makes use of tail-head linkage, a discourse strategy widely observed in the languages of Melanesia (Donohue). 3.2.11

Summary

The sample of data discussed in this section shows that creole languages vary with respect to their typological features and that this variation reflects the typological differences manifested by the respective substrate languages. I now turn to a discussion of the processes identified by the various authors to account for this state of affairs.


3·3

Processes

Several processes have been called upon by various authors, as the means by which the substrate features are reproduced in the creoles. Most authors claim that the process of transfer plays a role (Ansaldo, Bao, Brousseau, Hagemejier and Ogie, Ansaldo, Matthews and Smith, Munro, Roberts, Schwegler, Siegel, and Terrill). This process, which goes back to Weinreich (1953: 1), refers to the use of features of their first language by learners who are speaking a second language. For Andersen (1983: 7), this process may also manifest itself in second language acquisition: "Transfer from a learner's previously acquired language (... ) is assumed to interact with the normal acquisitional process by causing the learner to perceive input in terms of certain aspects of the structure of the previously acquired language." For Siegel (1997: 120, 2001), transfer is the main process in the formation of creole languages: "Here I am defining substrate influence as the evidence of transfer (or interference) at an earlier stage of development. Transfer refers to speakers unconsciously carrying over teatures from one language (usually their first) when speaking (or trying to speak) another language." Other authors appeal to the process of calquing (Ansaldo, Hagemejier and Ogie, Jacob and Grimes, Ansaldo, Matthews and Smith, Migge). Keesing (1988) defines calquing as the process by which creole speakers copy the properties of their native languages when speaking a creole. A similar definition is given by Holm ( 1988: 86): "Calquing is a process whereby words or idioms in one language are translated word-for-word (or even morpheme-by-morpheme) into another." Jacobs and Grimes appeal to the process of relexification. Muysken (1981 a: 61) defines relexification as follows: "Given the concept oflexical entry, relexification can be defined as the process of vocabulary substitution in which the only information adopted from the target language in the lexical entry is the phonological representation." The process is presented in (11), adapted from Muysken's schema. (11)

J

SOURCE LANGUAGE

[

/phonology/1 [semantic] 1 [syntactic] 1

LEXIPffiR LANGUAGE

[

~

/

NEW LANGUAGE

[

/phonology/i [semantic]j [syntactic].

/phonology/1 [semantic], [syntactic];

J

1

J

This process is exemplified in (12) on the basis of Media Lengua. The lexical entry derived from Quechua and Spanish has the semantic and morphosyntactic properties drawn from the corresponding Quechua lexical entry, but a phonological form derived from a semantically related Spanish word.

23

24

Claire Lefebvre

(12)

[

[;E: l

=-~A

SPANISH

+V

NP-ta NPBEHUNGRY NP =

HUNGER

+ animate

/

MEDIA LENGUA

~a;-bri-na-/ [

NP-ta

l

NPBEHUNGRY NP =

+ animate

(= (18) in Muysken 1981a:62)

According to this definition, relexification is a mental process that builds a new lexical entry by copying a lexical entry, and by replacing its phonological representation with a new representation derived from another language. Lefebvre also appeals to the process of relexification, which, she argues, is best characterised as relabelling (Lefebvre 2008). Relabelling can be represented as in ( 13 ). Given a lexical entry, as in (13)a, assign this lexical entry a new phonological representation drawn from another language, as in ( 13b ), and eventually remove the original phonological representation, yielding (13c ). (13) a

[

/phonology/1 [semantic], [syntactic] 1

J

b.

[ /phonology/1 ,/phonology/y [semantic]; [syntactic],

c.

[

/phonology/y [semantic]; [syntactic];

J

J

The new lexical entries so formed have the semantic and syntactic properties of the original ones, and phonological representations derived from phonetic strings drawn from another language. 5 An example of a lexical entry formed by means of relabelling is provided in (14) on the basis of Haitian Creole and its source languages, French and Fongbe (taken as representative of the substrate languages). (For a detailed discussion of the semantics of the lexical entries involved, see Lefebvre 1997:69-70.)

5· The phonological representation derived from another language is identified as l rather than as j. The prime represents the fact that the new phonological fonn associated with a lexical entry is not that of language j, but rather a phonological form established on the basis of a phonetic form in language j interpreted with the phonological principles of language i (see Brousseau).


(14)

a

b.

c.

!hU/1 'to murder' 'to mutilate' !hU/1, /ansasinen/j' (< Fr. assassiner 'to murder') 'to murder' 'to mutilate' /ansasinen/f 'to murder' 'tomutUate'

FoNGBB

PoNG BE/HAITIAN

HAITIAN

As has been pointed out in the literature, relexification/ relabelling may be viewed as a particular case of transfer (Naro 1978:337). Migge uses the term "reinterpretation": "... Substrate influence emerged in creoles because the creators of creoles structurally reinterpreted the kinds of superstrate structures that they encountered on the plantations according to the grammatical patterns and strategies of their L1s." I believe that Migge's use of the term "reinterpretation" corresponds to the process referred to as relexification/ relabelling above (see Lefebvre 2008 for further discussion of this point). Are all these processes equivalent? From a cognitive point of view, transfer/ calquing and relexification/relabelling are not entirely equivalent. While the former means that L1 material (e.g., phonological, semantic, syntactic properties) is dragged along into the L2 versions of individual speakers, the latter entails that L2 material (the labels oflexical entries) is incorporated in the L1 lexicon as a parallel label. In spite of this difference, the processes are similar in that they take the individual, that is the second language learner, as the locus where the processes take place. Furthermore, these processes are semantically driven; indeed, the lexical items that are associated by these processes must share at least partial semantics. For example, in (12), ya.rika.- be hungry' and ambre 'hunger' are semantically related, although they are not of the same syntactic category. Likewise, in (14) hit 'to murder, to mutilate' and assassiner 'to murder' overlap semantically, though they are not entirely equivalent The relevance of this state of affairs will be further explored in Section 3.4. Another process, "restructuring" (of the target language), is referred to by a few authors in the book (Ansaldo, Donohue and Slomanson). In my view, "restructuring" is conceptually different from the other processes discussed above. First. it refers to the learner acting upon the structure of L2 (see also Mufwene 2006, and the references therein). Thus, the process is not defined in terms of the individual, but in terms of the second language itself. Second, the semantic constraint (see below) involved in the first group of processes is absent from the concept of "restructuring:' Since the nature of the processes that determine the presence of substrate features in a given creole is still a matter of debate in the literature (see the references in Section 1), I shall leave further discussion of this issue to future research. In light of the above review, I now tum to a discussion of the constraints that favour or disfavour transfer/relabelling.

25

26

Claire Lefebvre

3·4

Constraints on transfer/relabelling

In this section, I shall use the terms "transfer/relabelling" to refer to all the processes discussed in Section 3.3 except "restructuring." The first constraint imposed on transfer/relabelling is provided by the very nature of the processes themselves. Indeed, as we saw above, these processes are semantically driven. Consequently, items that have semantic content can be transferred/relabelled. Those that do not, cannot be. A striking example of this state of affairs is provided in this book by data pertaining to case. As we saw in Section 3.2.5, the semantic case systems of creoles' substrate languages have been transterred/relabelled in the creoles either as suffixes (e.g., Sri Lanka(n) Malay) or as prepositions (e.g., Kriol and CAAE). In contrast, the syntactic case systems of substrate languages have not made their way into the resulting creoles. Siegel, Koch (a) and Munro all mention that the ergative case system of Australian languages has no parallel in Kriol, CAAE or in NSWP. Speaking of Mindanao Chabacano, Grant writes: Up till now, as Nolasco (2005) points out, MC and other varieties of PCs have not developed an ergative model of syntax despite the fact that Austronesian Philippine languages, in which many MC speakers are fully bilingual. customarily use ergative syntactic models which are more complex than the Spanish and MC nominative-accusative syntax.

The contrast between the transfer/relabelling of semantic and syntactic cases follows straightforwardly from the fact that transfer/relabelling is semantically driven. On this account, semantic cases are predicted to be transferred/relabelled, and so they are (see Section 3.2.5). In contrast, syntactic cases, which are deprived of semantic content, are predicted not to be transferred/relabelled, and they are not. Note, however, that, as we saw in Section 3.2.6, the creators of creoles, who were native speakers of syntactic ergative case languages, found a way to manifest the distinction between transitive and intransitive verbs that is pervasive in their native languages by developing transitivity markers in their respective creoles. The fact that the processes of transfer/relabelling are semantically driven requires the starting point item to have semantic content, as we just saw above. It also requires that there be a form in the superstrate language that can be semantically associated with the substrate item. Transfer/relabelling is thus constrained by whether the superstrate language has a form available to transfer or relabel a substrate lexical entry. The first formulation of this constraint is known as the "transfer to somewhere principle" of Andersen (1983). This inspired Siegefs (1999) Availability Constraint, which states that the superstrate language must have a form that is available for a substrate feature to transfer to (see also Munro). Likewise, relexificationl relabelling is constrained by what the superstrate language has to offer to relexif)r/relabel a substrate lexical entry (see Lefebvre 1998 for an extensive discussion of this point). The chapter by Terrill on Solomon Islands Pijin (SIP) illustrates this constraint. Terrill addresses the following question: "What grammatical elements of a substrate language find their way into a creole?" She writes: "Grammatical features of the Oceanic substrate languages have been shown to be crucial in the development of Solomon Islands Pijin and of Melanesian Pidgin as a whole (Keesing 1988), so one might expect constructions which are very stable in the Oceanic tamily of languages to show up as substrate influence in the creole:' Terrill's chapter investigates three Oceanic language constructions which have been


stable over thousands of years and persist throughout a majority of the Oceanic languages spoken in the Solomon Islands. She shows that, in the case of the locative, possessive and transitive constructions, "there was no congruent construction or available lexical item to be brought in to express any of these distinctions:' She therefore concludes that "despite the ubiquity, stability and uniformity of the locative, possessive and transitive constructions in the substrate languages, none of them appear in SIP': Her study argues that the constraint imposed by the superstrate language in terms of availability of linguistic material is more important than the ubiquity, stability or uniformity of the structure in the substrate languages as a predictor of linguistic transfer from a substrate into a creole. Munro also appeals to this constraint in accounting for why "evitative" mood is not manifested in Kriol although it is part of the TMA system of its substrate languages. As we saw in Section 3.2.5, Koch (a) appeals to the same constraint in explaining the range of meanings covered by a single creole form while the substrate languages have different forms to encode their various meanings. The convergence of substrate and superstrate languages on a given feature is assumed to favour transfer/relabelling of a substrate feature in a creole (see Bartens, Kihm, Siegel, Sandeman and Escure). In such a case, semantic and phonological features are con.flated to produce a creole's lexical entry. An example of con.tlation is given by Kihm in his account of the sources of the negation marker ka in Kriyol. This word has a form similar to the negative form nunca 'never' in Portuguese. The reason why the form of the negation is ka can be explained by the presence of this syllable as a negative morpheme in substrate languages, such as kaka 'negative imperfective imperative' in Mandink.a, ke 'negation marker' in Balanta, and dika. 'negative imperfective' in Manjaku. Kihm goes so far as to claim that substrate influence in creoles occurs precisely in cases of semantic and phonological conflation. The typological congruence of the substrate languages (Ansaldo) is also claimed to favour transfer of a substrate feature into a creole. Siegel speaks of substrate reinforcement: "Substrate reinforcement occurs when a particular variant has a corresponding feature in a numerically or socially dominant substrate language or languages. By a corresponding feature, I mean one that occurs in the same surface syntactic position and that can be interpreted (or misinterpreted) as having the same or a closely related function." In his study of the nine Pan-Pacific teatures, Siegel finds that when a feature is present in the contact variety, a corresponding feature is also present in the substrate languages, and when it is absent from the contact variety, it is absent from the substrate languages. He concludes that "the presence or absence of substrate reinforcement during levelling can account for the retention of particular features:' A last constraint on transfer is discussed by Kihm. This one appears to be social rather than linguistic. Kihm shows that, in contrast to other creoles with an African substrate, which reproduce the typological features of their Mrican substrate (e.g., Haitian Creole), Kriyol does not reproduce many features of its African substrate: "In fact, substrate influence, although readily visible, turns out to be limited as can be shown by comparing core grammatical phenomena between Kriyol and a selection oflocallanguages (Balanta, Diola, Manjaku, Mankanya)." Kihm proposes that there are two main reasons for this state of affairs: First, the creole-creating grumetes soon formed a tightly united group with its own culture; second, they were perfectly bilingual in Kriyol and one or more local languages and therefore able to keep their grammars separate. This study claims that, if the creators of a creole are very bilingual, speaking the creole and the

27

28

Claire Lefebvre

substrate languages fluently, this will constrain (negatively) the amount of transfer from substrate languages into a creole. 3·5

Summary

This section was dedicated to a discussion of the results of the comparisons of some 30 creoles and their substrates from a global perspective. The various ways in which the typological features of the substrate languages are manifested in creoles were first considered. Then, several subsystems of the grammar across creoles were discussed, showing that creole languages vary among each other with respect to typological features. The variation among creoles was shown to reflect the typological differences manifested by their respective substrate languages. The cognitive processes of transfer/calquing or relexification/relabelling were identified as the means by which substrate features enter creole languages. These processes were shown to be constrained in various ways, both linguistically and socially, such that not all the features of substrate languages can be reproduced in the creoles. & a result, creole languages cannot be claimed to be exact replicas of their substrate languages. 6 Other processes were identified by some authors as playing a role in the development of creoles. For example, levelling and its interaction with transfer are briefly discussed by Lang, Migge and Siegel. Reanalysis and its role in a creole's development are discussed by Koch (b). In light of the contents of this section, I now turn to a more general discussion of creoles and language typology.

4·

Creoles and language typology

In this section, I shall address three questions: Do creoles constitute an identifiable typological class? To what extent do creoles replicate the typological features of their substrate languages? Why are creole languages typologically isolating? 4.1

Do creoles constitute an identifiable typological class?

In Section 3.2, it was shown that pronominal forms, classifiers, TMA systems, negation, case systems, transitivity markers, the properties of verbs, serial verbs, verb-doubling phenomena, and discourse structures are not the same in the various creoles. This argues that creoles cannot be claimed to be "alike." Furthermore, it was shown that the variation among creoles reflects the variation observed among their respective substrate languages, such that creoles largely reproduce the typological features of their substrate languages. This argues that creoles cannot be claimed to constitute an identifiable typological class. Assuming this general conclusion, I will now turn to further discussion of the typology of creole languages. 6. Creoles cannot be said to be exact replicas of their substrate languages not only because some substrate features cannot be transferred/relabelled, but also because, as is the case in other languages, creoles may innovate and diverge from their contributing languages (see Ansaldo).


4.2

To what extent do creoles replicate the typological features of their substrate languages?

The data discussed in this book show that creoles massively replicate the typological features of their substrate languages. This conclusion may, however, reflect the fact that the great majority of the chapters consider data related to the lexicon and to syntactic constructions (e.g., serial verb constructions, verb-doubling phenomena, etc.). The fact that the properties of creole lexicons should replicate those of their respective substrate languages follows from the analysis that creole lexical entries are, to a great extent, created by means of transfer/ calquing or relexification/relabelling (see Section 3.3 ). The tact that the syntactic constructions of creoles should replicate those of their respective substrate languages follows from the fact that, to a great extent. these are adopted wholesale in the creoles (by a process, or processes, not discussed here)? Would the same conclusion hold for the phonological component of the grammar or for word order phenomena? Below, I briefly discuss these two areas of the grammar and identify topics for future research. The phonological inventories of creoles are derivable in a straightforward way from those of their respective substrate languages. This is what the chapter by Brousseau convincingly shows on the basis of Haitian Creole, St. Lucian and their contributing languages. However, it cannot be claimed that these creoles are typologically similar to their substrate languages in all aspects of their phonology. For example, Brousseau shows that in the formation of the Haitian and St. Lucian creoles, the complex consonants (/kp/, I gb/, etc.) of the substrate languages were abandoned. For this feature at least the creoles typologically diverge from their substrate languages. Likewise, the prosodic systems of substrate languages are not necessarily reproduced in the creoles. For example, most West Mrican languages have tones. Saramaccan has tones, but its tonal system does not reproduce that of its substrate languages, according to the analyses in Good (2004) (see also Ham 1999). In contrast. Haitian Creole does not have tones but it has a complex accentual system (Brousseau 2003). Another complexity of the prosodic systems of creoles is brought up by Lim. In her study of tones in Singlish, Lim investigates the possibility that the presence of a high tone in Singlish might not be attributable only to its tonal substrate languages, but also to the intonation pattern of Malay, its non-tonal substrate. In the same vein, the syllable structures of creoles constitute a problem for typologists. For example, Saramaccan and Haitian Creole both have Gbe languages as their main substrate languages. Gbe languages exhibit V and CV but no *CVC syllable structures (Capo 1991). While the syllable structures of Saramaccan replicate those of the Gbe languages in manifesting V and CV structures but no *CVC structures (Smith 1987), Haitian Creole exhibits CVC structures as well as V and CV ones (e.g., Brousseau & Nikiema 2006). So, with respect to syllable structure, Saramaccan is typologically like its Gbe substrate languages but Haitian Creole is not It thus seems that. as regards the phonological component of the grammar, creoles do not reproduce the typological teatures of their substrate languages as straightforwardly as they do in the lexicon and the syntax.

7. One account of this fact lies in the relexifu:ation/relabelling of functional categories (see Lefebvre 1998). Another account, based on construction grammar, advocates the transfer of whole construction frames. The latter view is explored by Aboh (n.d.) and by Gerrit Dirnrnendaal (p.c.).

29

30

Claire Lefebvre

Word order is another area of creole grammars that presents a challenge for the typological classification of creoles. Although none of the chapters in this book are dedicated entirely to word order, there are some observations on word order in various chapters. For example, in China Coast Pidgin, some word orders follow Cantonese, thus the word order of its substrate language (Matthews, Ansaldo and Smith). Likewise, Sri Lanka(n) Malay has adopted the OV ordering of its adstrate languages Sinhala and Tamil (Ansaldo). Koch (a, b) and Munro, however, claim that creoles' word order generally follows that of their superstrate languages. Kihm shows that this claim is borne out in some cases but not in others, where the word order seems to follow that of the substrate languages.8 So, as is the case with the phonological component of the grammar, word order in creoles does not appear to straightforwardly reflect the properties of the substrate languages. I leave this matter for future research. It therefore appears that creole languages do not equally reflect the typological features of their substrate languages in all components of the grammar. Furthermore, a striking feature of creoles is that. regardless of the typological option of their substrate languages, creoles are typologically isolating, a topic to which I now turn. 4·3

Why are creole languages typologically isolating?

With a few exceptions (Ansaldo on case suffixes, Koch (b) on -im and -fela and Siegel on -im), creoles tend to be typologically isolating languages regardless of whether their substrates are isolating or agglutinating languages. The three varieties of creoles- CAAE, NSWP and Kriol- that have evolved from a hundred agglutinating Aboriginal languages in Australia, discussed in the two chapters by Koch and the chapter by Munro, illustrate this clearly. For example, the bulk of the TMA suffixes of the Australian languages have been reproduced as preverbal periphrastic markers in Kriol. Likewise, the properties of the case suffixes of the Australian languages have been reproduced in prepositions in both CAAE and Kriol. In the same vein, Bartens shows that Twi affixes have not been reproduced as such in the Caribbean creoles that she studies. The fact that substrate affixes are generally realised as free morphemes in creoles follows from the way the processes that play a role in their formation apply in creole genesis (see Section 3.3). All authors agree that the superstrate forms that are selected for transfer/calquing or for relexification/relabelling must be free forms. Hence, person markers are transferred/relabelled on the basis of personal pronouns, case markers on the basis of prepositions, and so on. This explains why creoles are isolating languages (see also Lumsden & Lefebvre 1994).

5·

Conclusion

As we saw throughout this chapter, creoles manifest a great deal of variation among themselves. Thus, they cannot be claimed to be "alike" in any sense of the word, nor to constitute a typological class as such. As regards the semantic and syntactic properties of their lexical entries and their

8. For a detailed discussion of word order in creole languages, see Plag (2008).


syntactic constructions, creoles generally manifest the typological features of their substrate ianguages. This rules out the claim that creole languages should be typologically classified with their superstrate languages. As for the phonological component of the grammar (segmental inventories, tonaVprosodic systems and syllable structures), as well as word order, the extent to which the creoles reproduce (or not) the typological features of their substrate languages remains to be further documented. My general conclusions open up a whole new set of questions. For example, from a typologist's perspective, are substrate features in a given creole important enough to lead one to conclude that creoles should be typologically classified with their substrate languages? What should be the parameters involved in measuring the weight of features favouring one or the other view? These are but a few questions raised by the results of the research discussed in this chapter. The concluding chapter by Comrie provides the typologist's point of view on these issues.

References Aboh, E. n.d. Serial verb constructions: A Trans-Atlantic Sprachbund? Ms. Adam, L. 1883. Les idiomes negro-arytm et maleo-arytm. Paris: Maisonneuve. Andersen, R W. 1983. A language acquisition interpretation of pidginisation and creolisation. In Pidginisation and Creolisation as Language Acquisition, R W. Andersen (ed.), 1-59. Rowley MA: Newbury House. Anonymous. 1983. Blemmts de recherche sur la langue Fo,J. Cotono\L Ansaldo, U., Matthews, S. & Lim, L. 2007. Deconstructing Creole [Typological studies in Language 73). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Bally, A.-S. 2004. t:interpretation aspectuo-temporelle des enonces en Saramaccan. MA thesis, Universite du Quebec aMontreal Bernabe, J. 1983. Fo,Jdal-Natal [Grammaire basilectale approchee des creoles guadeloupeen et martiniquais 3]. Paris: t:Harmattan. Bickerton, D. 1984. The language bioprogram hypothesis. The Behavioral and Brain Sciences 7: 173-221. Blake, B. 1987. Australian Aborigi1ml Grammar. London: Croom Helm. Brousseau, A.-M. 1995. Les pronoms en creole hai:tien, en fran~ et en fongbe. In Research report prepared for FCAR on the projectlbrganisation des lexiques et des mtrees lexicales, Volume IV, C. Lefebvre (ed.). Montreal: Universite du Quebec aMontreal Brousseau, A.-M. 2003. The accentual system of Haitian Creole: The role of transfer and markedness values. In The Phonology and Morphology of Creole Languages, I. Plag (ed.), 3-23. Tiibingen: Niemeyer. Brousseau, A.-M. & Nikiema, E. 2006. From Gbe to Haitian: The multi-stage evolution of syllable structure. In L2 Acquisition and Creole Gtmesis: Dialogues [Language Acquisition & Language Disorders 42), C. Lefebvre, L. White & C. Jourdan (eds), 292-331. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Byrne, F. 1987. Grammatical Relations in a Radical Creole. Verb Complementation in Saramaccan [Creole Language Library 3]. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Camden, W. G. 1979. Parallels in structure of lexicon and syntax between New Hebrides Bislama and the South Santo language as spoken at Tangoa. In Papers in Pidgin and Creole Linguistics No. 2, P. Miihlhausler and others (eds), 51-117. Canberra: Australian National University. Capo, H. B. C. 1991. A Comparative Pho,wlogy of Gbe [Publications in Mrican Languages and Linguistics 14]. Dordrecht: Foris. Chaudenson, R 2003. La creolisation: Theories, applications, implications. Paris: t:Harmattan. Crowley, T. 2004. Bislanm Reference Grammar. Honolulu HI: University ofHawai'i Press. Dixon, R M. W. 1980. The Languages of Australia. Cambridge: CUP.

31

32

Claire Lefebvre

Eades, D. 1991. Aboriginal English: An introduction. Vox: Journal of the Australian Advisory Council on Languages

and Multicultural Education (AACLAME) 5: 55-61. Eades, D. 1996. Aboriginal English. In Atlas ofLanguages of Intercultural Communication in the Pacific, Asia, and the Americas, S. A. Wurm, P. Miihlhii.usler & D. T. Tryon (eds), 133-141. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Fattier, D. 1998. Contribution afetude de la genese d'un creole. Atelier national de reproduction des theses. Good, J. 2004. Tone and accent in Saramaccan: Charting a deep split in the phonology of a language. Lingua 114: 575-619.

Goodman, M. F. 1964. A Camparative Study of Creole French Dialects. The Hague; Mouton. Hall, R A. 1950. The genetic relationships of Haitian Creole. Ricerche Linguistiche 1: 194-203. Ham, W. H. 1999. Tone Sandhi in Saramaccan: A case of substrate transfer? Joumal ofPidgi,J wJd Creole LwJgUages 14; 45-91.

Hancock, I. F. 1980. Gullah and Barbadian: Origins and relationships. American Speech 55: 17-35. Holm, J. A. 1988. Pidgins and Creoles, VoL 1: Theory and Structure. Cambridge: CUP. Kearns, L. 2008. Terrain sur Ia la'JKUC Papiwnentu (par Internet-Curafao ). Keesing, R M. 1988. Melanesian Pidgin wJd the Oceanic Substrate. Palo Alto CA: Stanford University Press. Koch, H. 2007. An overview of Australian traditional languages. In The Habitat ofAustralids Aboriginal Languages: Past, Present, wJd Future [Trends in Linguistics. Studies and Monographs 179), G. Leitner & I. G. Malcolm (eds), 23-56. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Kouwenberg, S. & Lefebvre, C. 2007. A new analysis of the Papiamentu clause structure. Probus 19: 37-75. Lefebvre, C. 1994. On spelling out R 1ravaux de recherche sur le creole hai"tien 23: 1-33. Lefebvre, C. 1996. The tense, mood and aspect system of Haitian Creole and the problem of transmission of grammar in creole genesis. Journal ofPidgin and Creole Languages 11:231-313. Lefebvre, C. 1997. Relexifi.cation in creole genesis: The case of demonstrative terms in Haitian Creole. Journal of

Pidgin a,Jd Creole Languages 12: 181-203. Lefebvre, C. 1998. Creole Genesis and the Acquisition of Grammar. Cambridge: CUP. Lefebvre, C. 2008. Relabelling: A major process in language contact. Joumal ofLanguage Contact 2. . Lefebvre, C. & Loranger, V. 2006. On the properties of Saramaccan fu: Synchronic and diachronic perspectives. Journal ofPidgin wJd Creole Languages 21:275-337. Lim, L. & Gisborne, N. (eds). 2009. The Typology of A.sianEnglishes. &Jglish World-Wide 30. (Special issue). Lumsden, J. & Lefebvre, C. 1994. The genesis of Haitian Creole. In The Central Role ofRelexification in Creole Genesis: The Case of Haitian Creole. Research Report, C. Lefebvre & J. Lumsden (eds), 3-15. UQAM. Maurer, P. 1988. Les modifications temporelles et modales du verbe dans le papiwnento de Curafao (Antilles NeerlwJdaises). Hamburg: Buske. McWhorter, J. H. 1998. Identifying the creole prototype: Vindicating a typological class. Language 74: 788-818. McWhorter, J. H. 200 1. The world's simplest grammars are creole grammars. Linguistic T}pology 5: 125-166. Michaelis, S. (eel.). 2008. Roots of Creole Structures: Weighing the Contribution of Substrates and Superstrates [Creole Language Library 33]. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Michaelis, S. & Haspelmath, M. 2003. Ditransitive constructions: Creole languages in a cross-linguistic perspective. Creolica 2003-04-23 <WWW.creolica.net>. Mosel, U. 1980. Tolai wJd Tok Pisin: The Influence of the Substratum on the Developme,Jt of New Guinea Pidgin. Canberra: Australian National University. Mufwene, S. S. 1990. Transfer and the substrate hypothesis in creolistics. Studies in Second La'Jgtlage Acquisition 12: 1-23.

Mufwene, S. S. 2006. The Ecology of Language Evolution. Cambridge: CUP. Miihlhli.usler, P. 1980. Structural expansion and the process of creolisati.on. In Theoretical Orientations in Creole Studies, A. Valdman & A. Highfield (eds), 19-56. New York NY: Academic Press. Miihlhli.usler, P. 1986. Pidgin and Creole Linguistics [Language in Sodety II]. Oxford: Basil BlackwelL


Munro, J. M. 2004. Substrate Language Influence in Kriol: The Application of Transfer Constraints to Language Contact in Northern Australia. PhD dissertation, University of New England, Armidale NSW. Muysken, P. C. 1981a. Half-way between Quechua and Spanish: The case for relexification. In Historicity and Variaticm in Creole Studies, A Highfield & A Valdrnan (eds), 52-79. Ann Arbor MI: Karoma. Muysken, P. C. 1981b. Creole Tense/Mood/Aspect systems: The unmar.lred case? In Gtmerative Studies o,J Creole Languages, P. C. Muysken (ed.), 181-199. Dordrecht Foris. Muys.lren, P. & Smith, N. (eds). 1986. Substrata versus Universals in Creole Gtmesis [Creole Language Library 1]. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Naro, A J. 1978. A study of the origins ofpidginisation. Language 54:314-347. Neumann-Holzschuh, I. & Schneider, E. W. (eds). 2001. Degrees of Restructuring in Creole Languages [Creole Language Library 32]. Amsterdam: John Benj amins. Nolasco, R. M. 2005. The Chabacano challenge to Philippine ergativity. In Linguistics mul LmJguage Education in the Philippines and Beyo,ul: A Festschrift in Honor of Ma. Lourdes S. Bautista, D. Dayag & S. Qua.lrenbush (eds), 401-433. Manila: De La Salle University Press. Plag. I. 2008. Creoles as interlanguages: Syntactic structures. Journal of Pidgin am Creole LmJguages 23: 307-329. Rountree, C. S. 1992. Saramaccan Grammar Sketch. Paramaribo: Summer Institute ofLinguistics. Sandefur, J. R. & Sandefur, J. L 1979. Beginnings ofa Ngukurr-Bamyili Creole Dictionary. [Work Papers ofSIL-AAB B4]. Darwin: Summer Institute of linguistics. Sharpe, M. C. 1972 Alawa Phonology mJd Grmnmar. Canberra: Australian Institute of Agoriginal Studies. Siegel, J. 1997. Mixing, levelling and pidgin I creole development In The Structure am Status ofPidgins and Creoles [Creole Language Library 19], A K. Spears & D. Winford (eds), 111-149. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Siegel, J. 1999. Transfer constraints and substrate influence in Melanesian Pidgin. journal of Pidgin am Creole Languages 14(1): 1-44. Siegel, J. 2001. Koine formation and creole genesis. In Creolization mul Contact [Creole Language Library 23], N. Smith & T. Veenstra (eds), 175-197. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Smith, N. 1987. The Genesis of the Creole Languages of Surinam. PhD dissertation, University of Amsterdam. Sylvain, S. 1936. Le creole haftitm: Morphologic et syntaxe. Wetteren: Irnprirnerie De Meester/Port-au-Prince: By the author. Valdrnan, A et al. 1981. Haitian Creole-English-French Dictionary, 2 Vols. Bloomington IN: Indiana University, Creole Institute. van den Berg, H. 1987. A note on predicate cleft in Saramaccan. In Studies in Sarmnaccan LmJguage Structure [Caribbean Culture Studies 2], M. Alleyne (ed.), 103-112 Amsterdam: Universiteit van Amsterdam. Veenstra, T. 1996. Serial Verbs in Saramaccan: Predication and Creole Genesis. Dordrecht: Holland Institute of Generative Linguistics. Weinreich, U. 1953. LmJguages in Contact. The Hague: Mouton. Winford, D. & Migge, B. 2007. Substrate influence on the emergence of the TMA systems of the Surinamese creoles. journal of Pidgin am Creole Languages 22: 73-100.

33

Creoles spoken in Africa and in the Caribbean

Ed6 influence on Santome Evidence from verb serialisation Tjerk Hagemeijer and Ota Ogie Centro de Lingufstica da Universidade de Lisboa I Notwegian University of Science and Technology

Ferraz (1979) convincingly shows the impact of two typologically distinct African strata in the making of Santome: ed6 and Klkongo. In this paper, it will be shown that the extensive verb serialisation found in Santome shows a significant amount of typological overlap with Ed6 multi-event and compound verb constructions. Since the impact of Ed6 on Santome goes dearly beyond verb serial!sation and Is also found in the other Gulf of Guinea creoles, the findings strongly suggest an early ed6 founder impact in detriment ofKikongo and Bantu in general Keywords: ed6, Santome, verb serialisation

1.

Introduction

Santome (Sao-Tomense) is a Portuguese-related creole language spoken on the island of Sao Tome, in the Gulf of Guinea, and the short name for Lungwa Santome (language of Sao Tome). Locally, the language is also known as F6l6 or its Portuguese counterpart Farro, as well as Dialecto (dialect). The social group associated with the language is the so-called Forros, which is the historical designation for freed slaves. According to the 2001 census, 72.4% of the total population older than 5 of the country Sao Tome and Principe (137,599 inhabitants in the same census) speaks Santome, but no distinction is made between native and non-native use. The census suggests that the rate ofSantome speakers is dropping considerably among young people. Santome is the diachronic continuation in space and time of the proto-Gulf of Guinea Creole (PGGC) whose formative period starts at the end of the fifteenth century, in 1493, when the northeast of the island ofS. Tome was permanently settled. In addition to Santome, three other creoles are offshoots ofthis PGGC, namely Lung'ie (Principense, spoken on the island ofPrincipe), Fa d'AmM (Annobonense. spoken on the island ofAnnob6n) and Lunga Ngola or, in short. Ngola (Angolar). 1

Ferraz (1979:9): "This first Creole, the original Sao Tomense, later changed into four Creoles through geographical separation, and possibly also because of differences which might have existed to some extent in the substratum."

1.

38

Tjerk Hagerneijer and Ota Ogie

In the former two cases, the PGGC or a variety thereofwas exported to the islands of Principe and Annob6n, whereas Ngola is nowadays generally considered a maroon creole that was formed by slaves who constantly escaped from the plantations from the very early stages on (Lorenzino 1998). While Ngola was long thought of as a Bantu language that was becoming creolised (Valkhoff 1966, among others), at least as far back as the nineteenth century, writers have noted that there are considerable similarities between Santome, Lungie and Fa d'AmM (Matos 1842, among others). Notwithstanding the earliest brief descriptions of Santome by Schuchardt (1882), Coelho (1880-1886) and Negreiros (1895 ), Ferraz' (1979) The Creole of Sao Tomt is the first monograph on Santome and still an important reference work for scholars working on the GGCs. Other work mostly focuses on the morphosyntax of Santome (Alexandre & Hagemeijer 2002, 2007; Hagemeijer 1999, 2000, 2001, 2003, 2007), on several GGCs at the same time (Lorenzino 1998; Schang 2000) or on the lexicon (Fontes 2007; Rouge 2004). Ferraz' (1979) study also stands out because of its discussion on the historical and linguistic relevance of two African strata for Santome: :bd6 and Kikongo. The present paper focuses primarily on so-called serial verb constructions (SVCs), which constitute a core feature of Santome's grammar where particularly strong impact from the Niger Delta typology, and .td6 in particular, is felt 2

1.1

Historical background

Between 1487 and 1507, the period that coincides with the settlement of the island ofS. Tome, a Portuguese trading post functioned intermittently in Ughoton (Gwato ), a village on a side arm of the Benin River (Rio Formoso) (Mota 1976; Ryder 1977) from where intensive contact was established by land with the Ed6 speaking Kingdom of Benin. The first permanent settlers of S. Tome were granted trade privileges in the Niger Delta. Ryder (1977: 35) writes that "[King] John II had given the captain of the island a licence to import 1.080 slaves from the 'slave rivers' [which includes Benin River] over a period of five years. By July 1499 about 920 of this number had been landed." Many of the slaves imported to S. Tome were traded for gold at the fortress of Sao Jorge da Mina (Ghana). In the will of Alvaro de Caminha, the first donatory captain of the island, dating back to 1499, several references are made to "Bini" CBd6) slaves. In what is probably the most reliable historical descriptive source on slave areas from the early sixteenth century, Esmeralda Situ. Orbis (ca. 1505), written by eyewitness Duarte Pacheco Pereira (ca. 1506), it is mentioned that most slaves were from the Kingdom of Benin and few from the area between Rio Real (eastern Nigeria) and the Congo. Therefore, there is a small but important time lapse between the settlement stage (societe d'habitation) and the shift towards a plantation economy (societe de plantation), around 1520, which coincides roughly with the shift of the slave trade from the Niger Delta towards the Congo and, slightly later, Angola (Almeida Mendes 2008a, b). The island of Principe was permanently settled around 1500, from S. Tome. At least 1514 to 1518 slaves were directly imported from the Kingdom of Benin during the period known as

2. Note that in the past, Edoid belonged to the Kwa branch of Niger-Congo. Although Edoid is now considered an independent branch, it shares many features with the Kwa languages.

Ed6 influence on Santorne

Carneiro's contract (Ladhams 2003). As for Annob6n, permanent settlement occurred in the mid-sixteenth century (Caldeira 2006).

1.2

:Bd6 and Santome in a typological perspective

This subsection provides a brief overview of a few typological features of Ed6 and Santome. :Ed6 is a north-central Edoid language. It exhibits seven oral vowels and five nasal vowels, tones (high and low), strictly consonant-initial verbs and strictly vowel-initial nouns, and absence of consonant clusters (Agheyisi 1990; Elugbe 1989 ). Ed6 exhibits preverbal TMA-marking and uses suffixes and tone for temporal distinctions and is further quite productive in derivational processes and verbal and nominal compounding (Agheyisi 1990). :Bd6 is a SVO language exhibiting widespread verb serialisation and allows for Double Object Constructions. The DP is strongly head-initial. Only determiners precede the head noun, whereas modifiers (possessives, adjectives, nominals, quantifiers and demonstratives, clauses) are post-nominal (Agheyisi 1990). Santome exhibits seven oral and five nasal vowels and is a pitch-accent language (Ferraz 1979). Maurer (2008), however, argues that Santome is a tone language, a claim he also makes for Ngola and Lung'ie (Maurer 1995, 2009). All verbs are strictly consonant-initial. While Santome exhibits consonant clusters (Ferraz 1979 ), these are absent in the three sister creoles, which means that they were arguably missing in the proto-creole of the Gulf of Guinea. Santome is a strongly isolating SVO language exhibiting preverbal TMA-marking, widespread verb serialisation and Double Object Constructions. With respect to the DP, determiners and quantifiers precede the nouns whereas other modifiers (demonstratives, possessives, adjectives, nominals, clauses) are postnominal (Alexandre & Hagemeijer 2004, 2007). Note that in sister creoles Lung'ie and Fa d'AmM, quantifiers are postnominal and therefore possibly constituted a feature of the protocreole of the Gulf of Guinea.

1.3

A few specific :Bd6 features in the Gulf of Guinea creoles

Lexicon The first study of the African lexicon in Santome was carried out by Ferraz (1979:90-97), who provides a Bantu etymology, mostly from Kikongo, for 60 items, and a Niger Delta etymology, almost without exception from E,d6, for 36 items. Rouge (2004) lists 381 items which he considered to be of non-Portuguese origin (African, other, unknown, in his classification). Ladhams (forthcoming) presents an appendix of slightly more than 100 African lexical items, based on Ferraz (1979) and Rouge (2004), and concludes that 37% of the etymologies can be assigned to :Bd6 and 63% to Bantu. In closely related Lung'ie, Ladham's calculated that these percentages are 76% and 24% respectively. In the introduction to his Lung'ie glossary, Maurer (2009:211) mentions that the African lexicon in this creole is almost exclusively Edoid-related. These percentages

39

40


are consistent with a few phonological features that are exclusively found in Lungie and refer to the Niger Delta, such as labial velars3 and trills (Gunther 1973; Ferraz 1975; Maurer 2009). Since several Edoid items in Santome are also found in the other GGCs, whereas shared Kikongo items are clearly less common, this is a strong indication that Ed6 constitutes an older lexical layer.

Interrogation The GGCs exhibit a specific interrogative structure with a final interrogation marker of place that questions DPs only: ( 1)

Lomba e, moto b6 b6? Lomba VOC motorbike POS INT 'Oh Lomba, where ls your motorbike?'

(2)

P.le b6? 3SG

SANTOME

(Hagemeljer's field notes) SANTOMJ!

INT

'Where ls he?'

(Hagemeijer 2007: 25)

This structure and the interrogative marker itself are calqued on :Bd6 1'b06 [u06], where this marker also questions the locus ofDPs and, similarly to ST, requires the use of strong pronouns: (3)

Owa rut vb06? house 2sG INT 'Where ls your house?'

(4)

Ren vb06? 3SG INT

'Where ls he?'

En6 (Agheyisi 1986: 160)

En6 (Melzlan 1937:218)

Furthermore, with respect to the paradigm of fronted interrogatives, STand Ed6 follow basically the same Wh-formation strategy, which consists of a question word and a noun. However, Ed6 exhibits one simplex Wh-word, namely gha 'whO, in alternative to domwim (from: de + Om.wan = Q +person) (Agheyisi 1990). ST also exhibits a simplex and a complex forms for 'whO, namely ken and k€ nge (lit. Q +person), as well as for 'where' (andji-ke xitu-k€ kamya) and 'how'

(kuma-ke modu). Reflexivisation Like many other creole languages (Muysken & Smith 1994), ST exhibits so-called body-part reflexives. The four GGCs are exceptional among creole languages in the sense that not only the reflexive strategy can be assigned to .td6 but also the word for 'bodY, ubwe in ST and igbe in Lung'ie, both from Ed6 egbe.

3- Labial velars are typologically rare phonemes that constitute an areal feature of Kwa and Niger Delta languages. Considering the common etymologies, the Proto-Gulf of Guinea Creole on the island of S. Tome must have exhibited labial ve1ars as well at some stage. This phonological feature survived in Lung'ie, but not in the other c.reoles arguably because of later massive contact with Bantu slaves. In Santome, in particular,/gb/ became labial /kw/ or /bw/- e.g., Lung'ie [igbe] 'body', ST [ukwe], from Ed6 ikpe 'seed, gram


(5)

a

E

mat'ubw~ d~

buta.

SANTOMB

3SG kill-body POS throw b.

(Hagemeijer's field notes)

'S/he committed suicide? 0 gbUgbe ere rua.

En6

3sG kill-body 3sG away

(Ogie's field notes)

'S/he committed suicide? (6)

a

b.

E toma

ubw~ d~

3SG take

body POS give PRJ!P-Stone

da

n'budu.

'S/he bumped against a stone.' 0 mu-egbe gbe okutd.

SANTOMB

(Hageme~jer's

field notes) En6

3sG carry-body against stone

'S/he bumped against a stone?

(Ogie's field notes)

So far, we have argued that Ed6 was both historically and linguistically important for the formation of the GGCs. In the remainder of this paper, it will be shown that evidence from verb serialisation in Santome reinforces this claim.

2.

Verb serialisation

So-called serial verb constructions (SVCs) constitute a distinctive areal feature essentially restricted to the Kwa area (Watters 2000) and a number of Nigerian language clusters, such as Yoruboid (Awoyale 1988; Bamgbose 1982), Edoid (Agheyisi 1990; Melzian 1942; Ogie 2004; Stewart 1998) and Ijoid (Williamson 1965), but are atypical of Bantu languages. Assuming McWhorter's (1992) typological claim that SVCs occur in creole languages with serialising substrates, it follows that widespread verb serialisation found in the GGCs (Gunther 1973; Hagemeijer 2000, 2001; Maurer 1995, 1999, 2009; Post 1992) ought to be related to the oldest slave trade area, namely the Niger Delta. The classification of SVCs and even the label itself is not uncontroversial For comparative purposes, we will adopt mostly traditional labels such as 'give'-serials, 'take'-serials, locative serials, which are mostly based on the meaning of the fixed or most grammaticalised verb in the construction. It should be noted, however, that in the Ed6 tradition the label multi-verb has now often been adopted as a means to distinguish between different types of constructions according to certain morphosyntactic properties (Baker & Stewart 2002; Ogie 2004).4 Moreover, Ed6 exhibits so-called compound verbs, which do not pertain to the class of multi-verb constructions. Agheyisi (1990: 42) defines them as the set of derived verbs forming a tight semantic unit which are made up of either two basic verbs, or a verb plus an adverbial particle. In sum, the label "serial verb construction" ranges over both multi-verb and compound verb constructions. In fact, any typology of verb sequences relies heavily on the degree of grammaticalisation of one of the verbs

4· The term multi-verb constructions is defined as consisting of verbs in series that can function as independent verbs in simple sentences, with at least one shared argument and no marking of syntactic dependency (Ameka 2005:2).

41

42


in the series, as mentioned by Lord (1993) for SVCs in general, Melzian (1942) and later authors for £d6, and by Hagemeijer (2000, 2001) for Santome. We assume the following basic criteria for the constructions under discussion: two (or more) verbs expressing a single event; a single overt subject; one specification for tense and negation; one negation marker on Vl; no subordinate or coordinate conjunctions; no discursive pauses; objects can be extracted from both VPl and VP2. In addition. it is illustrated in (7) that both :Bd6 and Santome allow for verb clefting with a verb copy, which is a property common to many other serialising languages, with the difference that the clefted verb in .td6 is overtly nominalised. (7)

a b.

K6le so

inen kOM lentla ke.

run Foe

3PL

SANTOMB

run enter house

1-rhulf

Qrf ira11 rhUle lad awd. NOM-run Foe 3PL run enter house Both: 'It is running they ran into the house.'

En6 (Hagemeijer/Ogie's field notes)

The possibility ofverb clefting from serial verb constructions depends on the type of construction and the status of the verb in verb series, since V2s typically tend to be gramrnaticalised to some extent. This also follows from the fact that some V2s can take an aspect marker. Table 3 (Section 3) summarises how the different serial verb constructions in .td6 and Santome behave with respect to clefting and aspect marking. 'Give' -construction

2.1

In Santome, da. functions both as a main verb ('to give') and as a prepositional element with the meaning 'for, to, from: introducing benefactive, goal, experiencer and recipient, as in (8) to (11) respectively: (8)

Sela pa n

toma zawa pa n

ba pya da b6.

must for 1so take urine for 1so go look for 2sG 'I must take urine to go check you out: (9)

Po se kye da son.

(Hagemeijer 2000: 25) SANTOMB

tree sP fall hit ground 'The tree in question fell down.' (10)

SANTOMB

Fogon sa kentxi da non. kitchen be hot for 1PL 'The kitchen is hot for

us:

(Hagemeijer's field notes) SANTOMB

(Hagemeijer 2000: 101)

Sd6 influence on Santorne

(11) N gdg6 da sa11 6. 1sG please for you CTP 'I'm pleased for you.'

SANTOME


A number of syntactic tests, such as subject drop, null VPs or predicate cleft, show that prepositional da. exhibits the same properties as the limited number of prepositions proper in Santome (Hagemeijer 2000).5 In this sense, these constructions are not true SVCs. There is, however, one property that distinguishes prepositional da. above from prepositions proper, namely preposition stranding. In Santome, prepositions proper are obligatorily stranded with an invariable element corresponding to the third person singular, also labelled spelled-out trace in the literature (Veenstra & den Besten 1994). This is illustrated in (12), where the interrogative construction leaves the preposition proper stranded with spelled-out trace~ (ku ~).but in (13), da has to be stranded without this trace. (12)

Ke

kwa

ku

e

va nha

ku e!*ku?

what thing coMP 3sG cut wood with 3sG/with 'What did he cut the wood with!' (13) Ke nge ku e tlaba dal*dH what person coMP 3sG work for/for-3sG 'Who does he work for?'

SANTOMB

(Hagemeijer's field notes) SANTOME


In this respect, da behaves like the second verb in SVCs, which can readily be stranded, showing that this is not a case of covert coordination. (14)

a

San 1 so e ligi mina tlega [-lr lady POC 3SG lift-up child give 'It was the lady she handed the child to:

b.

"San 1 so

2 ligi

SANTOMB


mina tlegt,.

lady POC 3SG lift-up child give-3SG


With respect to .td6, Melzi.an (1942: 33) argues that net is a verb that always occurs in the second position of verb combinations. However, Ed6linguists nowadays agree that ne!na is a preposition (Agheyisi 1986:99, 1990: 63; Baker & Stewart 2002:26, 36; Ogie 2002:85; Stewart 1998: 169) which always occurs in second positions in compound verb constructions. In addition, :Bd6

5· Note that da can be preceded by aspect marker ka, but this implies a change in meaning, as follows from the contrast between (i) and (ii): (i) E

ka

aaba da mu. work give me 'He (habitually) works for me:

SANTOME

3SG ASP

(ii) E ka aaba ka da mu. ~he works, he gives me (his earnings): *'He (habitually) works for me:

SANTOME

Crucially, then, repeated ka triggers a proportional reading, which does not qualify as a unitary syntactic event

43

44


uses both da(a) and gbe for Goal arguments. The following examples illustrate the uses of these items in Ed6. Ne/Na 'for, to, from' (15)

1

rh!e

~e nu~n. 6

(16)

(Melzian 1937: 127)

nwlmi 11d

En6

(Recipient)

work for 'To work for' (17)

:en6

(Benefactive)

1SG take.PST 3SG PREP-2SG.OBL 'I gave it to you.'

(Melzian 1942: 103)

(Source)

l€re na

6n6 (Melzian 1942: 103)

'to hide from'

Daa 'stretch out toward~ 'toward' (18)

Mu ar6 dad m~n. take eye toward 1so 'Turn (your) face towards me:

(Goal) (Agheyist 1986: 16)

(19) gi~ dad mw~n laugh towards 1so 'Laugh towards me:

(Goal)

En6 (Melzian 1937:22)

Gbe 'againsf (20) Erhdn de gbe fk~n. tree fallPsT against wall 1\. tree fell against the wall:

(Goal) (= (34) inAgheyisi 1990:66)

Similarly to ST da, Ed6 ne can also be stranded in final position, where it has to be obligatorily realised as na, as illustrated in the following focus construction. (21)

[0z6]i ~re Q rhie {gh6 nd Ozo Foe 3so take.PST money to 'It was Ozo s/he gave money to:

a. (Agheyisi 1986:99)

But, as in Santome, true prepositions - i.e. elements that lack verbal features - cannot be stranded in .Bd6, as follows from the case of vbe in (22a) and (22b ). (22)

0 rre

a

vbe Owi(. 3so came in morning 'He came in the morning:

b.

Ow~

g,e

9

(= (30) inAgheyisi 1990:65)

yal na rre.

morning FOC 3SG SEQ come.PST 'It was in the morning that he

came:

En6 (= (32) inAgheyisi 1990:65)

Upon extraction of the object of a preposition proper, owie 'morning: the preposition vbe in .Bd6 is deleted and replaced by an adverbial clitic particle. In order to tormalise this distinction, we

6.

Nutn is composed of the following morphemes ne (prep) + rU4 (second person direct object pronoun).


will adopt the label "dynamic preposition" for cases like .Ed6 ne!na and "prepositions proper" for cases like 1'be. It is highly suggestive that dynamic prepositions are derived from verbs. Note further that Wescott (1962: 151) claims that of all .Ed6 verbs, nan 'to give' is "phonetically the most affix-like" with the behaviour of a lexicalised compound verb construction, as in: (23)

mu-na

En6

take/carry-to 'to give (something big or bulky) to'

In fact, this also applies to da in ST, where at least the following two items are fully lexicalised: (24)

a b.

fa-da 'to tell' (lit. speak-give) tan-da 'to hand over' (lit take-give)1

SANTOMB SANTOMB

Note finally that Ed6 na also means 'to narrate!, a meaning also associated to ST da. - e.g., da ua soya 'narrate a story'. In sum, ST da conflates a number of functions that are expressed by different items, typically dynamic prepositions, in :Bd6. The exclusive use of ST da, derived from Portuguese dar 'to give, is not surprising, since not only is it the prototypical verb of transfer, but it also has the secondary meaning 'to hit' (cf. (9), Ed6 gM).

Locative constructions

2.2

To express the endpoint of movement, the GGCs use a highly productive construction with the partly grammaticalised verb p~ 'to put' (from Old Ptg. poer 'to put') in the second position (Hagemeijer 2000, 2001; Maurer 1999). (25)

N ga zuga

kupi pe son.

SANTOMB

I ASP throw saliva put ground 'I spit on the ground' (26)

Sun ka vumba

pi! boka-poto


se.

SANTOMB

he ASP introduce put mouth-door sP 'He puts (it) in the keyhole.'


In Hagemeijer (2000, 2001), it is shown that~ as V2 in an SVC exhibits properties of verbs and prepositions with respect to a number of syntactic tests. One of the tests shows that pe patterns with verbs with respect to stranding (cf. da). (27)

e

[Djelu] 1 so tufu jibela pe [-] 1• money Foe 3sG stick pocket put 'It was money that he stacked in his pocket'

SANTOMB


Note further that locatives that do not imply movement typically make use of locative preposition ni 'in, at, on, frotn: which is briefly addressed in Section 3.

7.

Note that tan 'to take' is the reduced form of toma 'to take:

45

46


ST locative~ above corresponds to .td6 ye!yf. Melzian (1937, 1942) argues that yfis a verb, because it is tonally marked for imperfective and perfective, indicating the direction in which an action is performed. However, as in the case oftd6 na, nowadays the prepositional status of ye/y{ is generally accepted (Agheyisi 1990:64; Baker & Stewart 2002:36; Stewart 1998: 169). Agheyisi (1990:64) further states that ye is a preposition that expresses location, which takes on the form yf when it occurs in sentence-final position. Differently from Santome pe, Ed6 ye!yf does not operate as a main verb. (28) 1 rhie ~re ye evba. 1sG take.PsT 3so on there 'I put it there:

En6 (Melzlan 1937: 228)

Extraction of the object leaves ye stranded with the extraction being marked by vowel and tonal changes, yielding y£ in the final position, as exemplified by the following sentences. (29) a

b.

lgan (Ire Oz6 rhie ye l}ok6ro. feather Poe Ozo take on small.chair 'It's a feather that Ozo put on the small chair: ~iok6ro (Ire Oz6 rhie lgan yf. smallchair Poe Ozo take feather on 'It's on a small chair that Ozo put the feather:

En6 (= (41b) in Stewart 1998: 169)

En6 (= (41c) in Stewart 1998: 169)

However, as shown above, prepositions proper do not strand in td6 which shows that yetyf still has properties that are reminiscent of a former verbal status.8 In sum, both languages exhibit locative construction with substantial overlap of semantic and syntactic properties, but to which applies a different degree of grammaticalisation. 2.3

Resultative constructions

As illustrated in examples (30) to (32), Ed6 and ST both exhibit resultative constructions, where VP2 indicates the resultative state of the event expressed by VP 1. (30)

a

Budu

b.

Okutd gbe ukpu guqgh9. stone hit cup break 'The stone broke the cup:

(31) a b.

Zon

da

kopu kebla.

kye m6le. Oz6 de wu. ZI:Jn/Ozo fall die ''ZI:Jnl Ow fell to his death:

SANTOMJ!

En6 (Hagemeijer's field notes;= (39a) in Stewart 1998: 131) SANTOMR

En6 (Hagemeijer's field notes;= (11a) in Stewart 1998: 18)

8. A monosyllabic transitive verb (or preposition) subcategorising for an extracted direct object, adopts the tonal (morphological) signature of an intransitive predicate (Beermann, Hellan & Ogie 2002: 1).


(32)

a

La11ta

mundja.

SANTOME

to raise stand/stop 'Get up: I 'Pull yourselftogether: b.

Kpaa


En6

mudia.

to raise stand/stop 'Get up: I 'Put in upright position.'

(Melzlan 1937: 116; Ogie's field notes)

Note that in (32a), mu.ndja not only occurs in an identical td6 construction, it is also a lexical item borrowed from Ed6. Interestingly, mz'uiia is a compound form in Ed6 (mu+dia), which was integrally borrowed into Santome. Directed motion

2.4

As in most serialising languages, combinations of directed motion and manner of motion are highly productive in Santome and Ed6, where the following types can be found: Direction away/towards (33) a P. nda be nda bi. b. Q khia11 v6 khian rre. 3sG walk go walk come ST: 'He walked to and fro: EDO: 'He is walking to and fro: (34)

a b.

a b.

En6 (Hagemeijer's field notes) (Melzi.an 1937: 228)

Inen Mle lentla ke.

SANTOMB

owa.

En6

fran rhUlt. /eM 3PL ran enter house

'They ran into the house: (35)

SANTOME

Inen x~ ka fran kpag a

ba

( = ( 36)

in Agheyisi 1990: 66; Hagemeijer's field notes)

poson.9

SANTOMJ!

En6

rrie EkO.

leave TMA go town/Lagos 'They left and went to town/Lagos: 3PL

(36)

a b.

Zon Oz6

(Agheyisi 1986: 90; Hagemeijer's field notes)

sata vala ubwa. saan rra 6gba.

'ZI:Jn!Ozo jump cross fence 'ZI:Jn!Oz6 jumped over the fence:

SANTOMB

En6 (HagemeijeriOgie's field notes)

9· Unlike other motion verbs, the verb kpa::> 'to leave' does not take a direct locative object but an object preceded by preposition vbe. A similar restriction can be found in ST: (i) N

1

X~

ni

ke

kpaa vbt! owa

1SG leave PREP house 'I left the house:

(SANTOME,

Hagerneijer's field notes) (Sn6, Ogie's field notes)

47

48


Circwnvention (V +modifier) (37) a E fe ubwa loja b. 0 gbd 6gba legda

ke ~Owa re. 3sG bulld fence go-around house his/her 'S/he built a fence around his/her house:

SANTOME

En6 (Agheyisi 1986: 90; Hagemeijer' field notes)

Accompaniment (V+modifier) (38) a lema 1~1~ awa. b. gua lele ~ze.

row follow river 'to row alongside the river:

SANTOME

En6 (Hagemeijer's field notes; Melzlan 1942:98)

Not only do accompaniment constructions in STand td6 exhibit identical syntax, this SVC is yet another case where STuses a lexical item, lt!le, drawn from Ed6 in the second position, which was also the case of mundja, in (32a) above. Overtaking (V+modifier) (39)

a.

b.

Orne se nda vala mu ni lwa. man sP walk surpass me on street 'The man (in question) overtook me on the street: Dkpid nif khidn gbemi.a mwtn vbe ukpO. man DBM walk.PsT pass 1sG on street 'The man overtook me on the street:

Origin (40) E vwa

xe matu. he fly leave bushes 'He rushed out of the bushes:

(41)

.fo

tluvisu ba ke. come-out work go home 'I go home from work:

N

ga

SANTOME


En6 (Ogie's field notes)

SANTOME

(Hagemeijer's field notes) SANTOMB

1sG ASP

(42)

N bi .fo tluvisu. I come from work 'I came from work:

(Hagemeijer's field notes) SANTOME


F6 is interesting because it is arguably derived from a nominal item, namely Portuguese fora 'outside' (Maurer 2005). However, the possibility of aspect marking onfo (ka.fo) shows that this item exhibits verbal properties. Although td6 also exhibits origin constructions, the origin (ke) precedes the motion verb. Similarly to nMne and ye/yf, Melzian (1937) considers ke a verb, but recent work on Ed6 (Agheyisi 1986, among others) assumes that we are dealing with a preposition. Word order shows that itis likely that kewas originally a verb, since PPs in Ed6 typically follow the V(P). (43)

ke iwinna y6 owa. 1sa from work go house 'I go home from work'

I



(44)

&16

1 1ce dee Edo lsG from come.PROG 'From Benin I am coming:

En6

(Melzian 1937: 1109)

Ed6 ke is further used as a verb meaning 'to be next to/neat, which is expressed by (nominal) preposition bodo in ST. Although serialisation involving directed motion is one of the most common types crosslinguistically, several of its subtypes, such as accompaniment or origin, occur less frequently and show that there is a significant amount of overlap between the full range of constructions. 2.5

Comitatives

ST may use a SVC with the verb zu.nta. 'to join to express togetherness: (45)

( 46)

Bamu zunta kopla minjan. let's join buy remedy 'Lefs buy the remedy together: Nen zunta kume. 3PL join eat 'They ate together.'

SANTOMI!

(Hagemeijer's field notes) SANTOMJ!


More often, however, adverb zuntu 'together' expresses togetherness- e.g., zuga bola zuntu 'play (foot) ball together'. In Ed6 this construction (V +infinitival complement) appears to be far more prolific, to the extent that it can be expressed by three different verbs that can be found in free variation: gbti, kokO and kugbe 'to jom. (47)

k~gbe-re

rr£ izf.

En6

they join.together.PsT-rv eat rice 'They ate the rice together:

(= (10) in Ogie 2004: 5)

Iran

Despite this difference between ST and Ed6, the base line is once more that both languages exhibit a typologically less common type of serial verb construction. 2.6

Degree constructions

ST has two verbs that can be used in comparative constructions: pasa. and vala. The latter is also used for overtaking constructions (Section 2.4). (48)

.Mwala sa glavi pasa/vala woman be pretty surpass 'The woman is prettier than the man:

SANTOME


Degree constructions are also attested in Ed6, where the verb is different from the verb used in the overtaking construction.

49

so


(49)

Oz6 mase

Azari.

En6

Ow be-beautiful surpass Azari 'Ow is more beautiful than Azari.'

(= (21) in Ogie 2004:7)

An interesting property of comparative constructions is that they allow Wh-movement, as illustrated in the following example: (50)

Ke

kali

inen mina mosu Zon sa maxi tamen pas'e?

what which 3PL little boy Zon be more big 'Zon is taller than which boys?' (lit: ..Which boys is Zon taller than him?')

SANTOME surpass-3sG (= (15) in Alexandre & Hagemeijer 2002: 24)

:Bd6 also allows this type ofWh-movement but, unlike in Santome, there is no invariable spelledout trace (Veenstra & den Besten 1994) in the locus of extraction. (51) De fbi~ka lkpiti ne Oz6 tan-r~n sM? INT.PRON little boy.PL COMP Ow tall.PST-rV surpass 'Ow is taller than which boys?'


In ST, pasa 'surpass' is also used in excessive constructions, a use not found in Ed6: (52)

Maya sa glavi pasa.

SANTOME

Maya be pretty surpass 'Maya is very pretty.'


These constructions in Ed6 and ST do not exhibit the properties of true SVCs because pasa., vala, on the one hand, and on the other, fail to respond to tests that determine their verbal status, such as the possibility of aspect marking or verb clefting. It also follows that Ed6 and ST do not fully overlap with respect to these constructions. In fact, the broad typological overlap observed in general is not a warranty for overlap of fine-grained details of each construction.

see

2.7

Completive constructions

The items kaba in ST and fo6 in Ed6 both modify predicates and have the meaning 'to finish' as main verbs. The emphasis of the construction lies in the completion of the event (53)

a b.

Zon Oz6

fla

kaba.

guan-r~n

fo6

SANTOME (11~)

ZonJOw speak finish (perfective) 'Zon/Ozo spoke once and for all/had finished talking?

En6 (Hagemeijer/Ogie's field notes)

Thus, both Santome and :Bd6 use the verb meaning 'to finish' in the second slot but, as in the case of pasa/vala in the previous section, in neither language does the respective item exhibit verbal properties.


2.8

'Particle' -constructions

:bd6 exhibits compound verbs in which typically a 'launch' -verb is followed by the adverbs/particles foa!kiui 'away, off' (Agheyisi 1986; Melzian 1942; Stewart 1997). According to Stewart (1997), the choice depends on the plurality of the object (count versus mass). In ST, this function is rendered exclusively by buta 'away, off' - from Portuguese botar 'to throw' - which also behaves like a particle in the sense that it is intransitive and lacks verbal properties overall. (54)

a

Zon bloka awa buta.

b.

Oz6 tue ame kua. Ozo pour water away 'Ozo poured water away.'

(55) a b.

En6 (Hagemeijer's field notes; = (26a) in Stewart 1997: 164)

Zon zuga budu buta. Oz6 fi ugbe foa. Ozo throw stone away 'Ozo threw the stone away.'

(56) a b.

SANTOMI!

SANTOMJ!

:En6 (Hagemeijer's field notes; = (29a) in Stewart 1997: 165)

kota buta. fian foa.

SANTOME

'to cutoff'

(Hagemeijer's field notes; Melztan 1937: 60)

:En6

It follows from the descriptions that :bd6 foa and kua and ST buta are unable to select for objects. If the location of the 'launch'-verb is indicated, the transitive locative construction (Section 2.2) is typically used: (57) Omali klaga lodoma zuga p~ ple. sea carry bottle throw put beach 'The sea threw the bottle on the beach!near the river: (58) Oje slla 61£ udO fi o vbi ukp6de. Oje push the stone throw cL we road 'Oje pushed the stone onto the road:

SANTOME (Hageme~Jer's

field notes)

(Schaefer & Egbokhare 2002: 67)

There are also cases where movement is expressed differently in td6 and ST. In fact, it follows that ST buta is used more restrictively than bd6 fM/kua. (59) ElfkhilkhU tin fod. pigeon fly.PsT away 'The pigeon flew away.' (60) Bisu vwa be. bird fly go 'The bird flew awaY:

:En6 (Agheyisi 1986: 143) SANTOME (Hageme~Jer's

field notes)

In sum, both languages exhibit similar constructions, but .Bd6 exhibits a semantically more finegrained system to distinguish between mass and count nouns. On the other hand, ST uses, for

10.

Emai is a North-Central Edoid language.

Sl

52


instance, a directed motion verb to indicate movement away from the deictic centre, whereas Ed6 uses a particle for this meaning. 2.9

'Take' -serials

STand Ed6 exhibit all types of what is sometimes labelled in the literature as 'take-serials. Depending on the type of taking/carrying, a significant number of other verbs fulfils the 'take'-function in ST: ligi 'lift. up. pega 'to take, to grab: klaga 'to carrY, etc. These are all syntactically fullfledged verbs in and outside SVCs and essentially vary with respect to their semantics. In Ed6, these constructions are extremely productive, with the difference that some of the 'take'-verbs, such as mu and ya, exhibit clear signs of grammaticalisation and are better accounted for as light verbs (Grimshaw & Mester 1988), forming lexical chunks with other verbs. (61)

a

b.

(62)

a

b.

(63)

a

b.

Z.m tom~ bi. Zon take-3so come 'Zon brought herlhim/if. Oz6 rhie ~re rre. Ozo take.PsT 3so come 'Ozo brought her/him/if. ZiJn toma basola bali. Zon take broom sweep 'Zon swept with a broom.' Atlti ya 6wt kpol6. .Atiti use.PsT broom sweep 'Zon/.Atiti swept with a broom.' ZiJn toma faka kota Ianza. Zon take knife cut orange 'Zon cut the orange with a knife: Oz6 rhltf ehq fian alfm6f. Ozo take.PsT knife cut orange 'Ozo cut the orange with a knife:

SANTOMl!


:en6 (Ogie's field notes) SANTOME


En6 (= (25) inAgheyisi 1990:94) SANTOME


En6 (= (14) in Ogle 2004: 5)

Although both languages exhibit the same range of 'take' -constructions, none of the 'take'-verbs in ST shows the signs of grammaticalisation found in Ed6.

2.10

Consequential constructions

Both Ed6 and Santome exhibit consequential constructions. Irrespective of the analysis for these constructions, these structures are characterized by the absence of a pronominal object following V2 co-referent with the object ofVl. Neither Ed6 nor Santome exhibit object drop.


(64)

(65)

a

Thma mpo11 va.U

b.

Mu

ebredi fian. take bread cut 'Slice the bread' I 'Take and slice the bread'

a

Zon ka

b.

Oz6 le ~ze re. Ozo ASP cook rice eat 'Ozo cooks rice and eats it'

kuji

1656 kume.

SANTOMB

En6

(Hagemeijer/Ogie's field notes) SANTOMB

En6

(Hagemeijer/Ogie's field notes)

In :bd6, consequential constructions are considered true SVCs (Baker & Stewart 1999, 2002; Ogie 2008; Stewart 1998 ).

Summary

3·

It follows from the previous sections that there is a significant amount of typological overlap between SVCs in STand bd6. Although SVCs constitute an areal feature that goes far beyond :bd6, historical and other linguistic evidence pinpoint :bd6 as the crucial stratum where these structures were transferred from. In fact, in a few constructions the verb in V2, the most grammaticalised slot, was directly borrowed from f;d6 (/€M, mzmdja). Since the prepositional function in strongly serialising languages is typically rendered by verbs and not by a special class of prepositions, inclusion of the following table summarily shows how E.d6 and ST behave in this respect and comparatively to each other. It tallows that both languages typically use nominals and verbs for the prepositional function, exhibiting a low number of prepositions proper, [-N, - V] . Although it was argued that some verbs in the second slot of SVCs do not exhibit verbal properties or only vestiges of verbal behaviour, we have included these items in the class of elements with the specification [-N, +V]. In addition to the prepositional function represented in Table 1, ST and :bd6 also exhibit a number of common complex elements with the structure Prep+Noun that function as complex prepositions. Finally, Table 3 contrastively sums up the properties of the different serial constructions in :bd6 and Santome considered throughout this paper for the features aspect marking on V2, verb clefting and stranding. The most striking contrast between serialising constructions in E.d6 and San tome arises within the class of directional constructions. In :bd6, these constructions are typically Verb+ Modifier constructions, with a grammaticalised item in the V2 slot, as tallows from the impossibility of aspect marking and verb cleft; in Santome, however, it can be concluded that, according to the

11. The difference between Ed6 and ST is that mu is a more grammaticalised item than toma (cf. Table 3). Yet, Santome also exhibits a more grammaticalised use of toma, as illustrated in the following example:

(i)

Toma ope be.

(SANTOME)

take foot go 'Goon foot.'


53

54


Table 1. The prepositional function in tld6 and Santome [-N,-V] (prepositions/particles)

[+N,-V] (nominals)

~6

Santome

~d6

di'of'

aro 'in front of, 'in front of, the front, eye' the front, eye' oddro 'front, forward direction, ahead

1ifle 'in, from, ni 'in, from, at' on, at' yadn'on' an~

'until, to'

[-N, +V] (V2/d:ynamic preposition in serialising structures)

Santome

we

iyeke 'behind,

.t\d6

Santome

ne/nd 'to, for'

da 'for, from, to, on'

ghee 'towards, in the (to give, to hit) direction'

tlaxi 'behind, the back part, back'

ye!y!'on, in at'

p~ 'in'

back'

uwa 'inside'

gMntu 'inside,

yo/rrie'tci (to go)

be/ba 'to' (to go)

(to put)

the inside'

ftna 'from, since'

s~ 'without'

leu 'with, and'

kild/fild 'away, buta 'away, off'

off'

pla 'for'

iikhUnmwim 'on top. above' ilhUnmwim 'head, upside, upward, on top' odUkhunmwim 'top(side), up, skies'

liba 'on top of, upper part' (e.g., ST liba oke, ~d6

OtotlJ 'under, bottom of' otQ 'bottom of, floor, ground'

basu 'beneath,

rre 'from' (to come) bi 'from' (to come)

t'thtlnmwun ilk£ Cup-hill')

hin 'up, go up, from' subli 'up' (to go up)

under(neath), lower part'

ades~ 'centre, middle, between, core, kernel'

dm~ 'centre, middle, between'

tuore 'to hang low, descend'

d~~ 'down' (to go down)

egpe 'side, body'

bodo 'next to, side'

l~gaa

'around' (to surround, to go around) sikM 'next to, by side'

loja 'around'

lele 'along, with, after'

We 'alongside'

kt 'from, since'

fd 'from, since'

q~n

'side of, edge of'

(to encircle, to go around)

(to follow, to accompany) (to come from)

gberrad, rrd 'to pass, vala 'across' to cross, to go through'

(to pass)

de 'to fall'

kyt 'in(side), on' (to fall)


Table 1. (continued) [-N, -V] (prepositions/par- [+N, -V] (nominals) tides) Santome

:ado

[-N, +VI (V2/d.ynamic preposition in serialising structures)

Santome

~6

Santome

kpaa 'away from'

x~ 'away from,

(to leave)

of' (to leave)

out

lad 'inside' (to enter) lentla 'inside' (to enter)

f6 'finish'

kaba 'finisH

s~~ 'than'

pasa!vala 'than'

(to surpass)

(to surpass)

mitdid 'to stop. stand'

mundja 'up(right)' (stop, stand)

d:Jd 1oin together' kild:Je 'join together'

zunta 'together,

to join'

k0k6 'gather together'

Table 2. Examples of the use of nl/vbe+N ~6

Santome

Gloss

Meaning

vbe-awu vbe-tmwdn vbe-evbd 1ifle-aro, 1ifle-odaro vbe-!yektl 1ve-obQ vbe-illdnmmwUn vbt!-QJcM:n

n-gMntu rfai rfala niwt ,Ji tlaxi nimon niliba nibodo

'inside' 'here' 'there' 'in front' 'behind'

vbe-ades~

r(iJ~

P +inside P+here P+there P+eye P + back/behind P+hand P+ above P+ side P+ centre

'from' 'on top'

'by the side of' 'in the centre'

same tests, V2 in directional constructions exhibit verbal properties, despite signs of grammaticalisation. It also follows that resultative serial constructions do not exhibit the same behaviour in Santome and Ed6: In the latter language, none of the verbs in resultative constructions can be clefted (Baker & Stewart 1999: 24) nor is possible to license an aspect marker before V2; in Santome, these restrictions do not apply.

4·

Conclusions

The linguistic impact of Ed6 (Bini) on Santome and the Gulf of Guinea creoles in general was first proposed by Ferraz (1979), especially for the lexicon, but also with respect to a few grammatical

55

56


Table 3. Properties of verbs in verb serialisation Dynamic prepN2 V2 give-construction

~6

nd (nt)

Aspect marking

,.

diuf

Stranding

Verb cleft VI

./ ./

V2

,.

./

gbe V2locative construction V2 completive Degree

ST

da

~6

ye ()of)

ST

pe

~6

ST

fo6 kaba

~6

see

ST ST Directional

~6 ST

,.

vala

pasa y6, me, rre

Mli

./

~6

gberraa

ST

vala lee 'next to' (V2) lee 'from' (VI)

,.

./

,. ,.

./

,.

ST ~6 ST

fo

~6 ST

h!n subli

~6

tuere

ST

dese

~6

de

,.

ST

kye

./

~6

lad lentla

./

ST ~6

foa leU a

ST

buta

~6

gbd

ST

./

??!*

,.

??

./ ./ n.a. n.a. ./ ./ ./

./ ./ ./ ./ ./ ./ ./

./

./ ./ ./

,.

./

,.

./ ./

kpaa

kyi

./ ./ ./ ./ ./ ? ./ ./

./

ST

~6

Vl comitat:ive

./

./

~6

V2partide

./

ba-be, bi Iegaa loja lele

~6 ST

./

./

,.

./

,.

./

,. ,.

./

./ ./ ./ ./ ./ ./ ./

./ ./ ./

,.

kOkO kUgbe

./

./

zunta

./

./

./

,.

./

,.

./ ./ ./ ./ n.a. ./ n.a. ./ ./ ./ ./ n.a. ./ ./ ./ n.a. n.a. n.a. n.a. n.a. n.a. n.a.


Table 3. (continued) Dynamic prepfV2 Aspect marking

Verb cleft VI

~6

VI-take

Consequential Resultative

ST Ed6 ST Ed6 ST

Stranding

V2

..

rhie ya

./

..

./

mu

./ ./ ./ ./

./ ./ ./ ./

.

./

./

./

./

toma, klaga, pega

.

..

./

n.a. n.a . n.a. n.a. ./

..

n.a. n.a .

./ = grammatical; * = ungrammatical; ? = marginal; ?? = unlikely; n.a. =not applicable.

properties. In this paper, we have shown that Santome verb serialisation (in a broad sense), the categories used for the prepositional function (Tables 1 and 2) and several other features briefly addressed in Section 1.3 underscore the typological impact of Ed6 and possibly other, generally less well described languages from the Edoid cluster. These findings are consistent with a founder effect that brought in contact Ed6 and Portuguese-speaking people in the early settlement. In fact, it was shown that pretty much the full range of types of SVCs in Ed6 can also be found in Santome. Nevertheless, the languages often differ with respect to the more fine-grained properties of SVCs, which is expected from many centuries of independent development and, foremost, due to the creolisation process itself. It can be noted that Ed6 exhibits a richer variety within several types of constructions, for instance 'take'-serials, comitatives and particle constructions. But not only does Ed6 use a greater number of verbs to the same end, it is also more prolific with respect to compound verb constructions (not studied in this paper), which have lexicalised and therefore become semantically opaque. Thus, our contribution intends to show that partial substrate transfer of, or calquing on, the substrate typology played an important role in the making of a new language.

List of abbreviations ASP

CL COMP CTP DEM DET FOC INT

NOM OBL

aspectmarker clitic complementiser clause-typing particle demonstrative determiner focus particle interrogative particle nominalizer oblique

POS PRI!P PRN PROG PST

rv SEQ

SP TMA

voc

possessive preposition pronoun progressive marker past root vowel sequential marker specific marker tense-mood-aspect vocative

S7

58


References Agheyisi, R.N. 1986. An Edo-English dictionary. Benin City: Bthiope Publishing Corporation. Agheyisi, R.N. 1990. A grammar ofEdo. Ms. Unesco. Alexandre, N. & Hagemeij er, T. 2002 Pronomes reswnptivos e abandono de preposic;:ao nos crioulos at:IAnticos de base lexical portuguesa. In Aetas do XVII Encontro da .Associtlflio Portuguesa de Lingufstica, A. Gon SC sukuru [su'kuru]). Once again, the phonic substance of the markers of the progressive in SC originated from 'above' (from Pg), and their phonic form (a succession of two particles, s'ta transforming into sa ta) came from 'below' (from W). However, here we are no longer dealing with a simple case of relexi:fication: The signijie of ngiy (or *ngi di), that is to say, its semantic "form~ situative + imperfective, has not remained intact. It has been simplified into progressive(+ imperfective). Let us stress at this point that, provided that this analysis is correct, in this interpretation of the Portuguese phonic chain modelled on W *ngi di or ngiy we are dealing with a false

A Wolof trace in the verbal system of the Pol1:ugllese Creole

segmentation. As we know, such segmentation errors are often produced at the beginning of the unassisted acquisition of a second language. A creole generally retains a fairly large number of such errors. However, these segmentation errors are rarely completely arbitrary. In the present case, the make-up ofW *ngi di, ngiy suggested a segmentation of [srn], while the competition within Portuguese between the variants ['sta] and ['ta] suggested a break of the [sIte] type, rather than of the [st 1-e] type. After sa. tawas promoted to the rank of complex marker of the progressive, its use was extended to the optative in order to create optative forms with a progressive meaning. The modal content of an optative naturally implies imperfectivity. This inherent imperfectivity does not, therefore, require a specific marker. It is only when there is a need for a progressive meaning that the marker sa ta is added to the optative. One final observation seems to confirm the validity of our conclusions: If the progressive implies imperfectivity, why is it not ever possible, in accordance with the theory just expounded, to dispense with the marker ta after the progressive marker sa? Most likely because, in the relevant contexts of their masters' utterances, the slaves sometimes heard [sta] and sometimes [ta], but never [s] without [ta). Finally we arrive at the following verbal system (see Table 3). Table 3. SC pila 'to pound' Indicative

Optative

N bu e nu nhos es Ant

Imperfective

Ant

Progressive

Imperfective

Ant

pila

N

aJ.

pila pila pila pila

bu e nos nhos es

al al al al al

pila pila pila pila pila pila

pilaba

N

al

piJ.aba

pila

N N bu e nu nhos es

ta ta ta ta ta ta

pila

N

ta

pilaba

pila pila pila pila

pila

N bu e nu nhos es

sa sa sa sa sa sa

ta ta ta ta ta ta

pila

N

pila pila pila pila pila

bu e nos nhos es

al al al al al al

sata sata sata sata sata sata

pila pila pila pila pila pila

N

sa

ta

pilaba

N

al

sata

piJ.aba

77

78

Jilrgen Lang

In order to gain an idea of the full extent of verbal forms that SC speakers have at their disposal, we need only add to all of these forms the corresponding passive forms. As can be seen, the SC system is much simpler than that of modem-day W, but at the same time much closer to it than to the Pg verbal system of any era.

Conclusions At the point of embarking on this research, the extensive presence ofWolof speakers in Santiago at the time of the birth of its creole and the existence of certain calques from Wolof in SC (evident from surviving forms in modem Wolof) was no longer in doubt. The question that remained to be addressed was whether it was possible, considering these circumstances, that we might find less visible traces of ancient Wolof in SC, in other domains. Given that these varieties had no written form, we had to base our comparisons on modem Wolof. We believe that we have shown that the SC progressive can be explained as resulting from a simplification of the imperfective version of the Wolof 'si tuative'. In semantic terms, the progressive meaning of these Wolof forms was preserved, yet their strictly situative meaning was lost. Morphologically, there would have been the usual replacement of Wolof material with Portuguese material, along with the retention of the Wolof morphological structure (in this case: two particles, the second of which identical with the imperfective marker). The semantic simplification would have occurred to ease the joining of other groups whose language may have had a progressive, but not a 'situative' with a progressive meaning in the imperfective. It is not possible, however, tor us to identify these groups at present. Our explanation of the SC progressive remains hypothetical. How could it be anything else at this stage? A new methodology will undoubtedly have to take shape gradually that will clarify which criteria need to be fulfilled by such a reconstruction if it is to be accepted by the academic community. We believe that there is no alternative. To reject any investigation of the impact on creoles of the ancestral languages of the creolisers would probably amount to a complete renunciation of historical explanation (Lang 2008). For the time being, we propose that research on the traces of the ancestral languages of the creolisers in a creole should begin with the identification of creole elements that are more or less pedtd matches with forms found in these languages, but that it should be extended to other domains if and when such calques are discovered.

List of abbreviations AJJV

CLP

Dl!M IPFV

Pg

adverb classifier demonstrative imperfective Portuguese

PS

SC

person Santiago Creole (Cape Verde)

SG

singular

W

Wolof (Senegal)

A Wolof trace in the verbal system of the Pol1:ugllese Creole

References de Albuquerque, L. 1991. 0 descobrimento das illias de Cabo Verde. In HGCV I: 23-39. de Albuquerque, L. & Madeira Santos, M. E. (eds). 1988. Hist6ria Geral de Cabo ~rde, Corpo documental, Vol. I. Lisbon & Praia: lnstituto de Investiga~o Cientlfica Tropical - Dire~o-Geral do Patrirn6nio Cuhural de Cabo Verde. de Albuquerque, L. & Madeira Santos, M. E. (eds). 1991. Hist6ria Geral de Cabo Verde, Vol. I [HGCVI]. Lisbon & Praia: Instituto de Investiga~ao Cientffica Tropical- Direq:ao-Geral do Patrirn6nio Cultural de Cabo Verde. Baptista, M. 2006. When substrates meet superstrate: The case of Cape Verdean Creole. In Cabo Verde. Origem da Sua Sociedade e do Seu Crioulo, J. Lang, J. Holm,J.-L. Rouge & M. J. Soares (eds), 91-116. Ttibingen: Narr. Bartens, A. 2006. A contribui~o do substrato africano para a genese dos crioulos caboverdianos: 0 caso dos ideofones. In Cabo V?.rde. Origens da Sua Sociedade e do Seu Crioulo, J. Lang, J. Holm, J.-L Rouge & M. J. Soares (eds), 117-131. Tiibingen: Narr. Boulegue, J. 1989. Les Luso-Africains de Senegambie: XVI-~ siedes. Lisbon: Ministerio da Educa~o, Instituto de Investiga~o Cientffica Tropical Cortes Alonso, V. 1964. La esclavitud en Valencia durante el reinado de los Reyes Cat6licos (1479-1516). Valencia: Ayuntamiento. do Couto, H. H. & de Souza, U. R. 2006. As consoantes pre-nasalizadas no crioulo caboverdiano: Por uma interpreta~o bifonematica. In Cabo Verde. Origens da Sua Sociedade e do Seu Crioulo, J. Lang, J. Holm, J.-L Rouge & M. J. Soares (eds), 133-146. Tiibingen: Narr. Diouf, J.-L 200 1. Grammaire du wolaf contemporain. Tokyo: University of Foreign Studies. The Institute for the Study ofLanguages and Cuhures (ILCAA). Diouf, J.-L. & Yaguello, M. 1991. fapprends le wolof, 1 vol. etune cassette. Paris: Karthala. Fal, A, Santos, R. & Doneux, J.- L 1990. Dictionnaire wolof-fratlfais, suivi d'un index franfais-wolof. Paris: Karthala. Fernandes, V. 1997. Codice Valentim Fernandes. Ofrecido Pelo Academico Titular Fundador Joaquim Bensaude (1859-1952), Leitura Paleogrdfica, Notas e lndice Pelo Academico de NUmero Jose Pereira da Costa. Lisbon: Academia Portuguesa da Hist6ria. Franco Silva, A. 1979. La esclavitud en Sevilla y su tierra a finales de la Edad Media. Seville: Diputact6n Provincial. Kihm, A. 1980. Aspects d'une syntaxe historlque: Etude sur le creole portugais de Guinee-Bissau. PhD dissertation, Universite Paris III. Kihm, A. 1988. Conflation as a directive process in creolization. In Beitrage zum 4. Essener KDlloquium Sprachkontakt, Sprachwandel, Sprachwechsel, Sprachtod 1987, N. Boretzky, W. Enniger & T. Stohz (eds), 111-137. Bochum: Brockmeyer. Kihm, A. 1994. Kriyol Syntax: The Portuguese-Based Creole Language of Guinea-Bissau. Amsterdam: Jolm Benjamins. Lang, J. 2000. Centre africain et peripherie portugaise dans le creole santiagais du Cap Vert. In Degrees of Restructuring in Creole Languages, I. Neumann-Holzschuh & E. W. Sclmeider (eds), 469-482 Amsterdam: Jolm Benjamins. Lang, J. 2004. Affinites grammaticales entre le creole portugais de l'lle de Santiago (Cap Vert) et le wolof (Senegal): Aspect et temps. In Los Criollos de Base Iberica. ACBLPE 2003, M. Fernandez et al. (eds), 137-147. Frankfurt/ Madrid: Iberoamericana/ Vervuert. Lang, J. 2005. Zwei Fiille, in denen das portugiesische Kreol von Santiago (Kapverde) mit dem Wolof iibereinstimmt. In Portugiesische Kreolsprachen: Entstehung. Entwicklung, Ausbau und Verwendung, A. Endruschat & A. Schonberger (eds), 45-56. Frankfurt: Domus Editoria Europea. Lang, J. 2006. I:influence des Wolof et du wolof sur la formation du creole santiagais. In Cabo Verde. OriguiS da Sua Sociedade e do Seu Crioulo, J. Lang, J. Holm, J.-L Rouge & M. J. Soares (eds), 53-62 Tiibingen: Narr.

79

So

Jilrgen Lang

Lang, J. 2008. Explications universelles et explications historiques. Les emplois de so en creole santiagais. In Romanische Syntax im Wandel, E. Stark et a1 (eds), 487-497. 'llibingen: Narr. Lefebvre, C. 1998. Creole Genesis and the Acquisition of Grammar. The Case ofHaitian Creole. Cambridge: CUP. Lefebvre, C. 2001. Relexification in creole genesis and its effects on the development of the creole. In Creolization and Co,Jtact, N. Smith & T. Veenstra (eds), 9-42. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Lwnsden, J. S. 1999. Language acquisition and creolization. In Language Creation and Language Change. Creolization, Diachronyand Development, M. DeGraff(ed.),129-157. Cambridge MA: The MIT Press. Madeira Santos, M. E. (ed.). 1995. Hist6ria Geral de Cabo Verde, Vol II [HGCYII]. Lisbon & Praia: Instituto de Investiga~o Cientifica Tropical- Direq:ao-Geral do Patrim6nio Cultural de Cabo Verde. Maia, C. de A. 1986. Hist6ria do Galego-Portuglds. Estado Li1Jguistico da Galiza e do Noroeste de Portugal desde o Seculo XIII ao Seculo XVI (Com Refertncia a Situas:ao do Galego Modemo), reprint. Coimbra: Gulbenkian - JNICT. Mufwene, S. 1996. The founder prindple in creole genesis. Diachronica 13: 83-134. Ngom, R 2003. Wolof. Munich: Lincom. Pereira, D. 2006. Contributes da Hist6ria Geral de Cabo Verde para o estu.do da forma~o e da difusao do crioulo caboverdiano. In Cabo ~rde. Origms da Sua Sociedade e do Seu Crioulo, J. Lang, J. Holm, J.-L. Rouge & M. J. Soares (eds), 161-178. Tiibingen: Narr. Quint, N. 2000. Le cap-verdien: origines et devenir d'une langue metisse. Paris: I:Harmattan. Quint, N. 2006. Un bref aper~Tu des radnes africaines de la langue c:apverdienne. In Cabo Verde. Origens da Sua Sociedade e do Seu Crioulo, J. Lang, J. Holm, J.-L Rouge & M. J. Soares (eds), 75-90. Tiibingen: Narr. Robert, S. 1991. Approche enonciative du systhne verbal: Le cas du wolof. Paris: CNRS. Rouge, J.-L. 1985. Formation et evolution du creole de Guinee Bissao et de Casamance. PhD dissertation, Universite Lyon II. Rouge, J.-L 1988. Petit dictiommire etymologique du Kriol de Gumee-Bissau et Casamance. Bissau: Instituto Nadonal de Estu.dos e Pesquisa. Rouge, J.-L. 1994. A propos de 1a formation des creoles du Cap-Vert etde Guinee.PAPIA 3: 137-149. Rouge, J.-L. 1999. Apontamentos sobre o lexico de origem africana dos c.rioulos da Guine e de Cabo Verde (Santiago). In Lmguas Criollas de Base Lexical Espafiola y Portuguesa, K. Zimmermann (ed.), 49-65. Frankfurt/ Madrid: Vervuert/Iberoamericana. Rouge, J.-L. 2004. Dictionnaire etymologique des creoles portugais d'Afrique. Paris: Karthala. Rouge, J.-L. 2006. !:influence manding sur 1a formation des creoles du Cap-Vert et de Guinee-Bissau et Casamance. In Cabo Verde. Origens da Sua Sociedade e do Seu Crioulo, J. Lang, J. Holm, J.-L. Rouge & M. J. Soares (eds), 63-7 4. Tiibingen: Narr. Sauvageot, S. 1965. Description sychronique d'un dialecte wolof: Le parler du Dyolof. PhD dissertation, Universite de Dakar/IFAN.

Substrate influences in Kriyol Guinea-Bissau and Casamance Portuguese-related Creole AlainKihm CNRS, Paris

Kriyol is a Portuguese-related creole language spoken in Guinea-Bissau (former Portuguese Guinea) and Senegalese Casamance. Besides being the primary language of an important community, tt also serves as a lingua franca in a multilingual country where Portuguese, although being the official language, actually has little currency. Kriyol counts among the oldest Creoles in the world, having emerged probably during the sixteenth century from a pidginised variety of Portuguese used by the local intermediaries (grumetes) between the few Portuguese settlers and the local populations. Given this situation, one would expect a high degree of substrate influence. In fact, substrate influence, although readily visible, turns out to be limited as can be shown by comparing core grammatical phenomena between Kriyol and a selection oflocallanguages (Balanta, Diola, Manjaku, Mankanya). It is proposed that the main reasons for such a limitation are ( 1) that the creole-creating grumetes soon formed a tightly united group with its own culture; and (2) that they were perfectly bilingual in Kriyol and one or several local languages, therefore able to keep their grammars separate. Keywords: adstrate, Atlantic languages, Basic Varieties, Creoles, creolisation, grumetes, lanfados, Mande languages, pidgins, Portuguese-related Creoles, substrate, West-African history

1.

Introduction

According to the now conventional division of creole languages into plantation and fort ereales (Reinecke 1937), the Portuguese-related Creole of Guinea-Bissau and Casamance (West Africa), Kriyol by its vernacular name, clearly belongs to the latter category.1 Its present-day speakers live in the same place as did their forebears who initiated the language some four centuries ago. It therefore never lost contact with the languages these initiators spoke before the creole existed and which are still spoken today alongside the creole. Indeed, contact is not only spatial - the "local" languages and Kriyol sharing the same territory -, but it is mental insofar as every "native" Kriyol speaker is fully bilingual in at least one local language, and few local language speakers lack competence in Kriyol. In fact, as suggested by the inverted commas, the 1.

For detailed descriptions of the language, see Wilson (1962); Kihrn (1994).

82

Alain IGhm

notion "native speaker" is moot in an environment where extensive bilingualism almost from the cradle has always been the rule. In such a situation we expect pervasive sub stratal (or ad stratal) influences, such as are evident in all varieties of Melanesian Pidgin English (Keesing 1988) or, even more so, in Korlai, another Portuguese-related fort Creole (Clements 2007). One would even expect Kriyol to result from relexification of one (or more) of the local languages, in the sense that relexification of Gbe languages is claimed to have played a crucial role in the formation of Haitian Creole (Lefebvre 1998). If fifty to a hundred years of spatial and mental contact of the lexifier with the substrate languages are deemed sufficient in that case, how much more should four hundred years achieve? The extent to which such expectations are frustrated is actually surprising. It is not that Kriyol does not exhibit features taken from or betraying the influence of the surrounding languages, but how many of them really pertain to what can be considered core grammar, i.e. major constituents order, NP and VP structure, TMA marking, complementation, etc, is open to debate. As far as such phenomena are concerned, Kriyol indeed turns out to be a rather typical creole, not in McWhorter's (1998) technical sense of (proto )typicality, but in the simple, pre- theoretical sense that, in all these domains, it looks very much like the other Atlantic creoles with different substrates and other or the same lexifiers. Even lexical borrowings from local languages are few. Many features not analysable as "creole" are clearly identifiable as coming from the lexifier. Like most if not all known creole languages, however, Kriyol exhibits the noun-verb split that seems to characterize this pseudo-family. 2 In the nominal domain, NP morphosyntax does not diverge significantly from that of the lexifier and, where Kriyol and European Portuguese (EP) do differ, the substrate is at most indirectly responsible. In the verbal domain, in contrast, the morphosyntax of the verbal complex (VC) is just as clearly not inherited from the lexifier.3 In its main outlines the Kriyol VC looks very much like what is found in many other creoles, crucially including some of non-Indo-European provenance such as Arabic-based Nubi (Wellens 2005; Kihm 2008b ), so one would rather lean towards explanations in terms of internal developments specific to creole genesis. Nonetheless, the fact that in most surrounding languages the VC structure is at least partly (never fully) compatible with this "creole template" must certainly be taken into account The relative scarcity of morphosyntactic influences from the substrate does not mean, however, that Kriyol is not perfectly embedded in its sociolinguistic and cultural environment. Quite the opposite in fact: in terms oflexical semantics, discourse strategies, pragmatics, and language uses in general, Kriyol is just as "African" as the surrounding languages - scare quotes necessary since the epithet is not susceptible of a precise definition, but it is an impressionistic label for a very complex set of cultural attitudes and practices, shared beliefs, etc. Two questions must therefore be raised, if not answered, in the present study. First, we would like to know why not more of Kriyol morphosyntactic structure can be traced back to direct substrate influence in an environment seemingly so favourable to it. Is it a consequence of the

2. See Kihm (2008a) for a precise characterization of this split and its significance for any theory of creole formation.

3· By verbal complex (VC) I mean the VP minus its internal NP arguments and PP adjuncts, ie. the verb itself, auxiliaries, TMA markers, predicate adverbs, object ditics, and predicate negation.

Substrate influences in Kriyol

particular circumstances in which Kriyol was formed, or should it be taken as evidence that the substrate does not play such a crucial role in creole formation after all? Secondly, we must ask why the features that are due to substrate influence occur precisely where they do. Why these influences rather than others, in other words? With these goals in mind, the study will proceed as follows. First, I will describe the history and sociolinguistic situation of Kriyol from its inception to the present. Then, switching from an e-language to ani-language perspective, I will review the two main domains of Kriyol morphosyntax, the nominal and the verbal. For each domain, I will contrast those features that certainly or possibly reflect substrata! influence with those that come from the lexifier or from creolisation itself. This will enable me to at least partially answer the second question above. Finally, I will capitalise on the historical and the morp hosyntactic surveys in order to find an answer to the first question as well, which will lead me to a reassessment of the role and nature of the substrate, at least for creole languages having the same ecology as Kriyol.

2.

A historical and sociolinguistic sketch

2.1

Before the Europeans

In the first half of the fifteenth century, on the eve of the first direct contacts with Europeans, the populations of present-day Guinea- Bissau and Casamance seem to have been established roughly in their present locations (Silva 1959; PAIGC 1974). Then as now the principal divide was between the coast and the interior. The interior was theoretically a province of the Empire of Mali which had extended to the Rio Geba during the fourteenth century. This province, Gabu, was placed under the authority of governors lfa.rins) named by the emperor (ma.nsa). ru the Empire of Mali began to decline at the end of the fourteenth century, however, the governors shook off its authority and proclaimed themselves kings (mansa). The Manding kingdom of Gabu then continued as a highly hierarchised society based on extensive agriculture and cattle raising. It thrived until the end of the nineteenth century, when it was finally conquered by the Fula Muslim State of Futa Jalon in 1867, the Fula almami (imam) Umaru taking pretext of the Mandings' animism to launch an all-out jihad against them. The last mansa, Diank.e Walli, chose to die rather than surrender by blowing up his gunpowder reserve together with his last followers and himself. The coastal peoples may have come from the interior, pushed forward by the conquering Mandings under whose dominion part of them had stood tor a time. To name only the most numerous and most likely to have entertained regular contacts with the Europeans, these peoples are the Diolas (most of them across the present border with Senegal), the Manjakus, the Mankanyas, the Papels, and the Balantas. All of them live between the Casamance River and the Rio Geba. At the time we are concerned with, they constituted traditional societies with no state power, except for some hierarchy perhaps retained from the period when the Mandinkas ruled: they had kings, called regulos 'chieftains' by the Portuguese, with exclusively religious powers. We may also cite the Biafadas, more to the south, then a kingdom organised after the Mali imperial model. The

83

Bijag6s were isolated on their islands then as now and stood aloof from any contact before and after the coming of the Europeans. As far as Guinea-Bissau and Casamance (and Senegambia more generally) are concerned, nothing could therefore be farther from the truth than the popular image of helpless, traditional (read "primitive"!) Africans being raided over by superiorly organised Europeans. Actually, one cannot insist too much on the fact that the technological and socio-cultural gap between Europe and West Africa in the late Middle Ages and beginning of the Renaissance was anything but wide (Albuquerque 1991). The only obvious technical superiority the Europeans had were firearms, and they did not keep it very long. Politically, a still largely feudal Europe and the West African kingdoms were not worlds apart. As we saw, even the stateless peoples had regular exchanges with powerfully hierarchised states: the Empire of Mali, the Kingdom of Gabu, and also the Jolof Kingdom to the north (Boulegue 1987). Language diversity was and still is quite important. All the languages involved belong to the Niger-Congo phylum. Whereas the Mandings speak various dialects of Mandinka, a language cluster belonging to the Mande family, all other peoples speak languages of the Atlantic family. Diola (actually a language cluster), Manjaku, Mankanya, Papel, and Balanta are closely related within the Bak subgroup of the Northern branch (Wilson 1989). Manjaku, Mankanya, and Papel may even be considered dialects (or rather dialect clusters) of one language, with some degree of intercomprehension. Diola and Balanta, the latter also a dialect cluster, are overtly quite different, however. Biafada belongs to a different subgroup, the Eastern Senegal-Guinea languages, and Bijag6 is an isolate. Wolof and Serer, two languages of the Senegambian subgroup spoken north of the Casamance river, should probably be brought into the picture as well. Finally, Fula, also a Senegambian language, is now spoken in Guinea-Bissau, but that is probably fairly recent (see above). Despite such diversity, there is not the slightest doubt that, given their constant interchanges, the peoples of Guinea-Bissau and surrounding lands never had any problem communicating with each other (Rouge 1986). Extended bilingualism was probably the solution, plus possibly the use of Mandinka as a trade language. There is no question, therefore, of the European language coming in to fill a gap. Kriyol did not emerge because the local people needed it in order to talk to each other. Did it emerge because they needed to talk with the European newcomers? This is what we shall now examine.

2.2

The first European settlements

The coast of present-day Guinea-Bissau and Casamance was touched in 1446 by Portuguese ships under the command of Nuno Tristao or Alvaro Fernandes (Mota 1946; Boxer 1969; Pinto Bull 1989: 31). Conquest proceeded at a very slow pace. The first fortified settlement (praf!J), Cacheu, was not founded until1 588. It was the first capital (capitan ia) of the province. Bissau, also a fortified settlement, was founded in 1686, but it became the capital only in 1941. For a very long time, actually until the beginning of the twentieth century, Portuguese presence was scant, it did not reach into the interior, and there was no real attempt at effective colonisation. Until the end of the eighteenth century, slave trade was the main economic activity, although there also was some export of rice, leather, gold, and ivory. The slaves from inland were shipped to


Portugal or to Brazil. During the whole period from the sixteenth to the late eighteenth centuries, the flux of slaves to Portugal was quite significant According to serious estimates, about 150 000 slaves coming from Guine, that is the whole West Mrican coast from Senegal to Angola, entered Portugal between 1441 and 1505 (Tinhorao 1988:Chapter 6). In 1551 their number in Lisbon alone was estimated at 9950, i.e. 10% of the city's total population of 100 000 (Saraiva 1991: 194; Tinhorao 1988: 112). Most of them probably came from the Guinea area, whereas slaves shipped to Brazil after 1500 came from further south. 'This is important because, among the tasks imposed on the slaves, there was that of serving as interpreters and/or crew aboard Portuguese ships on trading expeditions, which gave them the prospect of earning their freedom provided they helped in securing a certain number of new slaves (see Ca da Mosto's relation of his 1455 voyage as published in Academia Portuguesa da Hist6ria 1948/1988; Tinhorao 1988). These African interpreters (turcima.ni inCa da Mosto's terms), having stayed not more than a decade in Portugal, must have spoken, not "proper" ER but the Basic Variety of it that came to be known as Lfngua de Preto "language of the Black" (Kihm & Rouge 2009 ). Although Ca da Mosto's relation is unclear on this count, it is therefore very possible that successful interpreters were released on the spot, thus providing an entrance for pidgin EP on the West Mrican coast.4 All trade from Guinea was officially in the hands of companies authorized by the Royal Court and endowed with a theoretical monopoly. The Portuguese government, however, never had the means to enforce its own regulations, given the dearth of administrative personnel and regular troops that lasted until the end of the nineteenth century. Offical trade then had to compete with smugglers, the so-called lan~dos, meaning literally "men who cast themselves away (into the bush)" (Silva 1970). They were adventurers who landed clandestinely on the coast - an easy job at the time - and settled in villages where they began to trade in slaves and other goods with crews of any European nationality without paying taxes to the Portuguese Crown. Many of them were converted Jews (cristaos novos) who thus put safe distance between themselves and a growingly suspiscious Inquisition. They seem to have been easily accepted by the local people, who were not prone to feel any moral scruples in trading with slaves since slavery was part of the economy of all West Mrican societies at the time. The lan~dos went native in a few years, married local wives and begot children. It can hardly be doubted, therefore, that they constituted the other channel, besides manumitted interpreters (see above), through which pidgin EP penetrated Senegambia and Guinea, where it soon became a lingua franca. The mixed offspring of the lanfados are called filhos da terra "children of the land". They soon formed a mixed caste that actually constituted the bulk of the Portuguese presence in Guinea, as very few "true" Portuguese ever came from the homeland to this forlorn province, at least until the beginning of the twentieth century. (This shows they had inherited a good share of lusitanity from their lan~do fathers.)

4· I speak of Basic Variety for the form of EP acquired by slaves in Portugal, and of pidgin for what resulted from carrying this Basic Variety EP over to Africa. It should be clear that both terms cover very much the same reality. Notice moreover that Basic Variety research (Perdue 1993; Klein & Perdue 1997) leaves no room for Naro's (1978) unli.lrely asswnption that the Portuguese discoverers deliberately contrived the pidgin to serve as a 'reconnaissance language' (also see Clements 1992).

85

86

Alain Kihm

In and around the prUfas a new society slowly took form. At its classical stage, say in the middle of the eighteenth century, it consisted of three social groups (see Rouge 1986). First there were the so-called Portuguese, many of whom, as just mentioned, were actually "assimilated" (assimi/ados) individuals with mixed or African phenotypes, more or less direct descendants of the filhos da terra. They were practicing Christians, lived in the European fashion (except for keeping local wives), and spoke EP. All the trade with the surrounding populations, whose independence was still intact, was in their hands despite the companies' official monopoly. Then there were the troops, apparently a rabble made up of the refuse of the Cape Verdean garrison. Finally there was the most interesting group from our point of view, namely the so-called grumetes meaning "ship's boys': They were Africans with fiunily ties in the local populations, who lived in the outskirts of the prUfas and worked for the Portuguese, either as sailors on the boats that plied the rivers (hence their name) or as go-betweens in trade relations. They were nominally Christian, submitted to a special legislation, and notoriously disorderly and riotous. Quite possibly, many of them were also "re-Mricanized" descendants from the lan~dos (Silva 1970). Given their in-between position, neither European (or "assimilated") nor fully African, since they did not live in the ancestral villages but kept to their own quarters next to the cities, the grumetes form the only community within which a creolised variety may have developed. Among them it served a double purpose. On the one hand it allowed them to communicate with the members of the Portuguese group who, precisely because of the grumetes' role as intermediaries, had no reason to learn the local languages. This emerging creole was rooted in the pidgin EP the la.n~ados must have used with the villagers among whom they had settled (although probably not with their own children, as suggested above). The other function of the creole among the grumetes has to do with group identity (Rouge 1986). Clearly, indeed, they would not have used it to communicate with the local peoples, Manjakus, Balantas, etc., since they always retained native or near native command of the latter's respective languages. On the other hand, one would not understand why they kept to it and never switched to "true" EP, to which they had ready access, if the creolised variety had not functioned as an in-group code with a double benefit: identifYing them with the economically powerful Portuguese community in the opinion of the local peoples; keeping the same Portuguese community at a profitable arm's length which allowed them to get their own returns from the businesses they transacted in its behalf. Besides, Kriyol is not so different from EP, at least in the outward form of the lexemes, that basic exchanges are out of the question between speakers of each language. Some understanding remains possible, but not too much. Because of that, the Portuguese never had any incentive to learn Kriyol since they believed they understood it sufficiently for what it was worth in their eyes. The grumetes, on their side, had no good reason to speak EP since they did not need it to make themselves understood as much as and no more than was useful Kriyol therefore developed at the same pace that the grumetes built up a distinct community, of whose identity it became the most conspicuous sign. Creolisation in the present instance is therefore certainly not a consequence of restricted access to the lexifier on the part of the creole initiators. For one thing, insofar as the immediate lexifi.er was not EP, but a pidgin variety thereof, the creole initiators had full access to it at this stage. Next, when both a Portuguese and a grumete community had come into existence and were living in close, if segregated, contact with each other, full access to non-pidgin EP could not have


been barred. Creolisation was actually a matter of restricting access in order to construct and preserve a separate community. Within that community, Kriyol was obviously necessary also as a common language between people of diverse origins, who could have communicated without it given generalised bilingualism, but did it even better through a medium where the practical and the symbolic functions were fully reconciled. Given this situation, it seems dear that no particular substrate language could exercise a predominant influence on the emerging creole. What influences took place were either due to properties the substrate languages had in common or to the fact that they all expressed a common civilisation involving largely shared speech habits and cultural uses of language over and beyond language diversity.

2.3

Colonisation and after

Kriyol seems to have stabilised rather early. The first documents we have date back from the first half of the nineteenth century, and they show a language not significantly different from what is heard nowadays (Bocande 1849; Barros 1882; Schuchardt 1888). Between that period and the present, however, the sociolinguistic environment changed drastically. When the Portuguese settlements turned into a Portuguese colony at the beginning of the twentieth century, after a series of "pacification wars" had subdued the previously independent peoples of the territory, the gmmete community had probably already disappeared as such. The main divide then was and still is between city dwellers and farmers. The former, many of them but not all ex-grumetes, had Kriyol as a native or primary language, whereas the latter used it as a vehicular language. Another effect of colonisation was to cut the Kriyol-speaking domain asunder when, following the (in)famous 1886 Berlin conference, the French and Portuguese governments signed a treaty that devolved Casamance to the former. Henceforth, a European-style border, never tight but nevertheless effective, cut across what had always been one country so far. Casamance became part of the French Senegalese colony, with a resulting influx of Muslim Wolof-speakers from the north. The linguistic consequences were that Casamance Kriyol was isolated from Guinea-Bissau Kriyol and Portuguese, preserved archaisms that have disappeared from the more southern dialects, and became the distinctive native language of the Christian community (Chataignier 1963). In Portuguese Guinea, then Guinea-Bissau, in contrast, the number of first or primary speakers grew significantly during the twentieth century because of the expansion of the cities, especially Bissau, and the role of Kri yol as a lingua franca increased accordingly. The war of independence ( 1963-1975) contributed enormously to the diffusion of Kriyol, as the language was widely used in the PAIGC Liberation Army (as well as by the Portuguese military's propaganda to the Guinean population). 5 At the same time, EP influence made itself felt more strongly, especially and somewhat paradoxically after independence, due to the development of school education and the mass media. (EP remained the official language ofindependent Guinea-Bissau, Kriyol being granted the status of"nationallanguage" along with the other languages of the country- with few

5· PAIGC: Partido Africano da Independtncia da Guine e Cabo Verde.

87

88

Alain IGhm

practical consequences.) Speech levels thus appeared, which can be described as mesolectal and which probably did not exist previously, as Kriyol never was - and still is not - in a continuum situation with respect to its lexifier.

3·

Kriyol compared to its lexifi.ers and its substrate

Having thus reviewed the origin and evolution ofKriyol as a sociolinguistic object (e-language), we shall now explore some of its inner grammatical mechanisms (i-language) from a contrastive perspective, setting them up against their counterparts in the contributors to their coming about, namely EP and its Basic Variety known as Lingua de Preto- hence the plural of'lexifiers' in the heading of this section - and the substrate languages. As for Lingua. de Preto (Ld P) we shall have to rely on the only relics of it we have at our disposal, namely the not insignificant traces it left in Portuguese literature, especially sixteenth and early seventeenth century theatre (Teyssier 1959; Tinhorao 1988; Kihm & Rouge 2009). As explained at length in the third reference, "literary" Ld.P can be taken as a faithful representation of what Mrican slaves in Portugal actually spoke, and consequently (see above) of sixteenth century Senegambian and Guinean pidgin EP. Finally, I will limit myself to five local languages, namely Balanta, Diola, Mandinka, Manjaku, and Wolof The main reason is opportunistic: those are languages for which good descriptions are available. On the other hand, those are also languages with many speakers, now and presumably six centuries ago already, so they are the most likely sources of influences. Also noteworthy is the fact that the four Atlantic languages (Balanta, Diola, Manjaku, and Wolof) are agglutinative languages characterised by great morphological complexity, inflectional as well as derivational, which sets them conspicuously apart from the languages usually invoked as substrates for the Atlantic Creoles, namely the largely isolating Kwa languages. Mandinka, albeit not so complex, is also quite well provided in derivational processes. As indicated above, we shall review the two main domains of the morphosyntactic set-up: the noun phrase and the verbal complex.

3.1

The noun phrase

The most striking property ofKriyol noun phrases is the frequency ofbare nouns potentially multiply ambiguous between a definite or indefinite, singular or plural interpretation (Kihm 2007). This is due to (1) the absence of a definite determiner; (2) the specific meaning of the indefinite determiner un "a certain"; (3) the dependency of number marking in count nouns on specificity of reference and position in the individualisation hierarchy. 6 In principle, then, a sentence such as (1) should be susceptible of seven translations:

6. By this I mean the degree to which viewing instances of a countable entity as individuals is psychologically mandatory. It is maximal with human beings, minimal with small things such as rice grains.


(1) Minjer kumpra kabra. KRIYOL woman buy goat (a) The woman bought the goat I (b) The woman bought a goat I (c) The woman bought the goats I (d) The woman bought goats/ (e) A woman bought the goat I (f) A woman bought a goat I (g) A woman bought the goats I (h) A woman bought goats.

Notice however that (c) and (g) are highly unlikely because goats stand high in the individualisation hierarchy, so kabra would almost obligatorily be marked for plurality (kabras) if several specific individuals were being referred to. For similar reasons, no reading where mi njer instead of pluralised minjeris denotes several women, specific or not ("the women" or "women"), is acceptable. Add to this that, minjer being subject, indefinite interpretations as in (e)-(h) are strongly disfavoured. All together, actual ambiguity boils down to the equal possibility (out of context) of readings (a), (b), and (d), meaning that the object kabra "goat" may be understood as definite or indefinite ((a) vs. (b)), singular or plural ((a)-(b) vs. (d)). Both dimensions interact insofar as kabra's plurality implies indefiniteness ("goats", not "the goats"). And even so, plural indefinite kab ra could very well be overtly marked for Number. In fact, given the individualisation hierarchy, only entities on the lowest rungs, e.g. objects such as pratu "dish", are commonly abstracted from the Number contrast to be given a transnumeral, neither singular nor plural reading (Acquaviva 2008). Things are of course quite different in EP where there is a definite determiner o(s)la(s), plural marking of count nouns is automatic as soon as more than one token is involved, and there are no bare nouns (except in quite restricted syntactic environments), but only bare plurals. Three different sentences therefore correspond to (a), (b), and (d): A mulher comprou a cabra; A mulher comprou uma cabra; A mulhercomprou cabms. One will have noticed in passing that plural marking in Kriyol proceeds through the same morphological device as in EP, namely suffixation of -s after a vowel, -es/-is after a consonant The form thus did not change in comparison to the lexifier, although the semantics did quite significantly, along the lines pointed to above. Yet, this change has little to do with substrate influence. For one thing, linking overt plural marking with referent speci:fidty and the fact that count nouns denoting human beings or familiar animals are generally pluralised when more than one because collections of them are not felicitously viewed as undifferentiated aggregates, these phenomena are quite widespread in nearly all creole languages and many non-creole ones (Acquaviva 2008 ). Actually, it might well be languages like EP and its "arithmetic" pluralisation that are exceptional Interestingly, the putative substrate languages of Kriyol pertain to that typology. Before turning to them, though, let us have a look at LdP. Things there are extremely simple: nouns are not marked for Number ever; and there are no determiners at all. Definiteness and plurality were thus entirely left to the discourse context to ascertain, as is customary in Basic Varieties and pidgins. The continued absence of a definite determiner in Kriyol is therefore probably a legacy from the pidgin period. On the other hand, the complex morphosemantic pattern of Number marking and definiteness interpretation can only be seen as an inner development in the creolising language, which nothing in the pidgin allowed one to predict. Did the substrate contribute in some measure to this development? The four Atlantic languages Balanta, Diola, Manjaku, and Wolof are noun class languages, meaning that roots are realised as nouns via association with affixes, the cumulative exponents of

89

90

Alain Kihm

two morphosemantic features: Class and Number. Count nouns therefore switch affixes depending on whether they refer to one or more than one token, irrespective of any other considerations. In such languages there can be no transnumeral bare nouns. So much seems to be true in the Mande language Mandinka, where count nouns (not divided into classes) referring to more than one token of the denoted entity seem to be obligatorily marked for plurality through a dedicated suffix (Rowlands 1969: 38). As far as definite determiners are concerned, Balanta and Manjaku pattern like Kriyol in having none. Diola and Wolof. in contrast, overtly distinguish definite from indefinite noun phrases. In Mandinka, there is what may be called a specific determiner -oo interpreted as definite or indefinite. Non-suffixed nouns (so-called "stem forms") are "rarely used" (Rowlands 1969: 38). Diola and Wolof are thus the only languages in Kriyofs surrounding with something resembling the EP definite article. Keeping to a strict definition of bare nouns as bare roots, morphologically unmarked for any feature beyond lexical meaning, we conclude that only Wolof and Mandinka offer the possibility. In both languages, bare nouns so defined appear to be limited to generic contexts, unlike what we see in Kriyol. In no language do we observe the effect of anything like an individualisation hierarchy. The definiteness ambiguity of Kriyol bare nouns is therefore similar to that of Balanta and Manjaku, except that, as we just saw, there are no strictly bare nouns in these languages. The Number ambiguity, on the other hand, finds no equivalent in the surrounding languages, even in Wolof where, given the genericity condition on bare nouns and the apparent absence of an individualisation hierarchy, all plural indefinites are overtly marked. The most we can say, then, is that the similarity with Balanta and Manjaku as tar as the absence of a definite article is concerned may have contributed in the maintenance of a state of affairs that dates back to the pidgin stage and is ultimately explained by it. Not only was the pidgin deprived of such an article, but the EP lexicon offered no item capable of replacing it, like the French postposed deictic Ia "there" reanalysed as a determiner did in all French-related Creoles. One item for which substrate influence seems to be more likely is the specific indefinite determiner. First, all relevant Atlantic languages, as we saw, show the contrast of bare truly indefinite or generic nouns ("any x") and noun phrases involving an item that conveys specific indefiniteness ("a certainx"). In Kriyol the item is un, from EP um(a), which fuses both kinds ofindefiniteness, so the semantic change proceeded definitely in the direction of the substrate. As other Creoles with quite different substrates and the same fusion in the lexifier (e.g. English and French) present the same configuration, however, the evidence might still be taken as unconvincing. More particular, hence stronger evidence comes from the fact that the meaning "a certain goat" may not only be expressed by un kabra, but also by utru kabra also meaning "another goat". Such an overlap of the meanings "other" and "a certain" is a property of Balanta and Manjaku as well: cf. Balanta -olo, Manjaku -lon "a/another': The parochiality of the phenomenon makes it therefore quite plausible that utru relexifies Balanta -olo and Manjaku -Ion. Can the complete absence of the Gender category and agreement processes in Kriyol be ascribed to substrate influence? One reason to doubt it is that all creole languages share this property with very few exceptions, so that loss of Gender contrasts (if present in the lexifier) appears as one of the most constant consequences of creole formation, however it is conceived.


Furthermore, the only substrate language that also lacks Gender and agreement processes is Mandinka; all others, as we saw, are noun class languages with far-ranging Class-Number agreement processes inside and outside the noun phrase. Since noun class and Gender are kin categories, one would imagine that speakers of such languages should have no difficulty with EP gender marking and agreement- unless of course such phenomena were not part ofKriyol's immediate lexifier, which seems indeed to be the case judging by what we know of LdP. The absence of Gender distinctions in LdP, in turn, points to the apparently true fact that EP Gender-related endings were never recognized as such by the African slaves who acquired EP as a BV. Being competent, as most LdP speakers probably were, in noun class systems such as those of Atlantic languages may therefore have been no help in acquiring the binary gender contrast of EP. This would not be surprising since the basis for classifying entities is quite different in such noun class systems than it is in gender systems like that of EP. Gender loss in LdP and afterwards in Kriyol might then be substrate-influenced, if not exactly substrate-driven, after all. Other features ofthe noun phrase are identical with what is found in the lexifier. I am referring to the positions of adjectives, demonstratives, numerals and quantifiers with respect to the head noun, as exemplified below: (2) '&a amigus r!ku kwnpra kil des kabra branku. KRIYOL my friends rich buy that ten goat white My rich friends bought those ten white goats I Os meus amigos ricos compraram estas dez cabras

brancas. To sum up, four features separate the Kriyol from the EP noun phrase: (1) no across-the-board plural marking; (2) absence of a definite determiner; (3) obligatory specificity of the indefinite determiner; (4) lack of gender contrasts. Of these, the first one constitutes, I believe, a pure product of creolisation with no roots in the lexifier or the substrate languages. The second one is partly an accident and partly the consequence of substrate reinforcement. The third one, including the a-other overlap, can also be brought back to substrate influence, although the fact that many Creoles do not fuse specific and non-specific indefiniteness cannot be ignored. Finally (4) most certainly results from a conjunction of all causes together, namely accident, (passive) substrate influence, and creolisation itself. For the remainder, Kriyol noun phrase morphosyntax appears quite similar to that of its lexifier. 3.2

The verbal complex

The marking of aspect As already mentioned, the VC consists in the main verb and its functional cortege comprising auxiliaries, Tense-Mood-Aspect (TMA) markers, predicate adverbs, object clitics, and predicate negation. As tar as structure is concerned, Kriyol appears as a run-of-the-mill creole insofar as preverbal particles realise Aspect values and negation is conveyed by a negative head preceding the aspect particles. As in Kihm (1994), I take the Aspect values to result from the combinations of two features: [±Pertective] and [±Punctual] (henceforth abbreviated to [±PF] and [±PT] - also see Muysken 1981). Here too Kriyol is unexceptional in having the simple perfective ([ +PF, +PT] unmarked on dynamic verbs, then interpreted as referring to past, accomplished events, whereas

3.2.1

91

92

Alain IGhm

bare stative verbs are understood as denoting presently obtaining states of affairs. This is shown below (Kihrn 1994:85): (3)

Jugude c!ga

elf.

KRIYOL

vulture arrive smoothly The vulture landed smoothly. (4) N sibi so kuma na pirkitu karu. I know only that my parrot be.expensive. All I know is that my parrot costs a lot.

KRIYOL

Under no circumstances can Kriyol bare dynamic verbs reter to nonpast events as is the case in, e.g., Haitian when the predicate involves a generic internal argument (DeGraff 2007). This is shown by (5), where ta, glossed Imperfective (IPF), is the exponent of the feature complex [-PF, -PT]: (5)

ta hindi kabra. s/he IPP sell goat S/he sells goats.

KRIYOL

In addition, Kriyol expesses the feature complex [-PF, +PT] with the particle na as in (6): (6)

na bindi kabra(s). s/he PROG sell goat-(PL) Slhe's selling I will sell (the) goats.

KRIYOL

The gloss PROG for "progressive" is for convenience. The point is that an event modified by na is seen as both non-accomplished ([-PF]) and punctual in the sense that it is either taking place entirely at speech time (E, R, S in Reichenbachian notation) or at some future time if the actual speech time context demonstrates it is not (yet) taking place? With stative predicates na assumes an inchoative meaning as in (7) (Kihm 1994:87): (7)

Gera na forti kada byas mas. war PROG be.strong each time more The war is becoming fiercer all the time.

KRIYOL

The ta vs. na contrast sets Kriyol apart from its closest relative, Sotavento Cape Verdean, where na has no counterpart, and ta's uses straddle those ofKriyol ta and na (see Baptista 2002:76ff.). Whereas ta obviously comes from the EP imperfective copula estar, na must be analysed as a further grammaticalization of the locative preposition na "in, on, at: itself from the EP cumulation na =*/em a! "in theFEM". The progressive form thus clearly originates in a locative, be-in/at-Ving-type construction which calls for several remarks. First, it is noticeably ubiquitous. Secondly, more to the point, it exists in EP: estarfazendo or estar a fazer 'to be (a-)doing: using the imperfective-locative copula estar. This form constitutes the direct source of a sta na V construction still encountered in the

7. See Reichenbach (1947). For a general application of Reichenbach's system to creole TMA, see Muysken (1981).


CasamancevarietyofKriyoland in old Kriyol texts (Barros 1882), and of which the modem na V form probably represents a reduction. Thirdly, and just as much to the point, similar constructions occur in the substrate languages, as shown in the following examples: (8)

(9)

(10)

(11)

N ga a til-a. 1sG.s be in write-INP I am writing.

BALANTA (Intumbo 2007: 65)

Na-lako a-jaw. 3sG.s-stay 3sG.s-go Slhe/it was going.

DIOLA (Sapir 1969: 104)

Bu-ci ri u-kiy. 3PL.S-be in INP-dancing They are dancing. be maani-katoo le M la. 1sG.s be rice-cutting EMPHin I am cutting rice.

MANJAKU (Buis 1990:63)

MANDINKA (Rowlands 1959: 97)

In Balanta as in Kriyo~ the progressive construction may refer to a future event: (12)

A ga a to-a a odn de bluthn. 2sG.s be in go-INP in house 2sG tomorrow You'll go home tomorrow I Bu na bay na bu kasa amaiian. (KRIYoL)

BALANTA (Intumbo 2007: 67)

This does not seem to be the case in the other languages, nor in EP. Conceivably, therefore, the fact that many creole initiators were Balanta native speakers may have been crucial in steering the semantics of the Kriyol na V construction, whereas the other languages contributed to the entrenchment of the construction in the emerging creole. Note, however, that the construction is fully grammaticalised only in the latter, in the sense that it no longer looks like a locative predicate, and na has become a pure aspect particle, disjoint from the homophonous preposition. This, I surmise, represents the specific contribution of creolisation itselt~ Another way that Balanta is especially close to Kriyol is in having an imperfective nonpunctual aspect, realised as the preverbal marker ma(t), which does not seem to be liable to any interpretation but habitual/ iterative, as shown in ( 13): (13)

Bi-iian ma(t) to a sinema. cL-person IPF go to cinema People go to the cinema I ]inti ta bay sinema. (KRIYoL)

BALANTA (Intumbo 2007:71)

Mandinka looks very much like Balanta in this area, with its preverbal marker ka called "simple imperfective" by Row lands ( 1959: 80). In Manjaku, in contrast, the feature set [-PF, - PT] realized as preverbal kamay also refer to a future event (Buis 1990:62; Kihm & Gomes 1990), which the progressive construction cannot do, as I mentioned. Manjaku thus appears to be semantically closer to Cape Verdean than to Kriyol (Baptista 2002). To return to the bare verb form exemplified in (3)-(4), Balanta and Manjaku again present the most similar systems. To (3)-(4) we may compare (14)-(17):

93

94

Alain IGhm

(14) N us ki-garte. 1sG.s buy cL-book I bought a book IN kumpra libru. (15)

(16)

U-kac a yits. CL-bird AGR fly-away The birds flew away I Pastru bua e bay. (KRIYoL)

ten ki-til 1sG.s have cL-pen I have a pen IN tene kaneta. (KRIYOL)

N

(17) A

wara.

be.good Thafs good I I bon. (KRIYoL)

BALANTA

(Intumbo 2007: 58) MANJAKU

(Klhm & Gomes 1990: 358) BALANTA

(Intumbo 2007: 58) MANJAKU

AGR

(Buis 1990: 61)

In Diola, on the other hand, "An utterance entirely unmarked for tense is assumed to indicate a recent past or a present" (Sapir 1969: 31). In Mandinka and in Wolof, there are no bare verb forms - meanings forms that bear no affix or do not stand in the scope of a TMA particle - at least in matrix sentences. Looking now at the lexifier, Kriyol verb stems come from EP infinitives having lost their final -r. LdP confirms it, as nearly all verbs appear in the infinitive (with -r), so we can be pretty sure it was a feature of the pidgin that anteceded the creole. Needless to say, LdP shows none of the creole TMA markers, except one to which I return below. The question then is why verb forms referring to perfected events or present states remained bare when Tense-Aspect values began to be overtly marked. The presence of Balanta and Manjaku in the linguistic landscape certainly played a role, but neither a necessary nor a sufficient one. This is so because the same allotment of bare form values is found in many other creoles with quite different substrates. Actually it could be that perfective or accomplished is the default- i.e. assumed unless there is evidence to the contrary- Tense-Aspect value for event-denoting items, while imperfective is the default value for state-denoting ones. In the creolisation process, these values would then be spontaneously alloted to unmodified stems having the adequate semantics. The fact that part of the Kriyol initiators were native speakers of languages that conform to the default setting in that area was of course a reinforcing factor, although not a triggering cause. To sum up, the substrate probably was a causal factor in the setting up of the Kriyol TMA system, but not at the level of the main distinction between bare perfective and marked imperfective. Where it did play a crucial role was in the further division, quite special to Kriyol, of the imperfective into a nonpunctual (habitual-iterative) form and a punctual (progressive-future) form. Only part of the substrate contributed to this, it seems, namely Manjaku, Mandinka, and Balanta, the latter two more than the former. That the ever-varying substrate should be responsible for what makes creole languages different from each other, not for what they have in common, seems indeed a reasonable assumption. 3.2.2

Tense marking: The anterior

Here too Kriyol appears as a typical creole language in having a tense form, the anterior to use a now well-entrenched term, that refers to entirely past events or states as distinct from perfected or accomplished events or states. "Entirely past" events or states are not only over and done with


in the present equated to speech time, but they are separated from the latter by some intermediate, often implicit event or state that sets a reference time distinct from speech time and from the time at which the event took place or the state obtained. In Reichenbachian notation, anterior events or states are described by the formula E_ R_ S. Where Kriyol is less typical is in the formal marking of the anterior tense. Contrary to other Romance-based Creoles, the exponent is not a preverbal marker clearly related to the past form of the lexi.fier's copula, but it is a postverbal morpheme ba. Sotavento Cape Verdean has the same morpheme, with a crucial difference: Cape Verdean -ba is a bound form attached to the verb stem and it is adequately analysed as an inflectional suffix. Kriyol ba, in contrast, is a free form that can be separated from the verb, usually by a clitic object pronoun as in (18), but possibly as well by a noun phrase as in (19), a recorded utterance: (18) N oja-1 ba. 1SG.S see-3SG.O ANT I had seen her/him/it (19)

N tene bu toto tudu ba. 1SG.S have 2SG.POSS picture all ANT I had all your pictures.

KRIYOL

KRIYOL

Ba is not even limited to verb phrases: cf. na J..il tempu ba "in that time': This feature raises the issue of ba's origin (Rouge & Kihm 2008 ). At first blush the answer seems straightforward: ba's etymon is EP -1% i.e. the first or third person singular indicative imperfect ending of conjugation I verbs - compare EP Olhava-a/o KI looked at her/him" with (18)- generalised to all verb forms, probably due to its greater phonological saliency (cf. Kriyol N durmi ba "I had slept" vs. EP Dormia "I slept"). Perhaps nothing more need be said concerning Sotavento Cape Verdean. For Kriyol, however, two facts call for an explanation: (1) that ba became a free form of uncertain category; (2) that in so doing it did not change its location with respect to the verb. that is after it. This is where the substrate languages enter the stage. First, the TMA systems of nearly all of them include a tense form referentially similar to the Kriyol anterior, the exponent of which is a free form that can be separated from its verb in some, a bound morpheme in others. Thus in Wolof and Balanta we find (20) and (21) to be compared with (18) and (19): (20) Gis-u-ma ko woon. see-NI!G-1 SG 3SG.O ANT I hadn't seen her/him/it (21) N ten g-garte ge. 1sG.s have CL-book ANT I had a book.

WOLOF (Church 1981) BALANTA (Intumbo 2007: 64)

Notice that Gisuma.woon ko and N ten ge g-garte are equally grammatical alternatives to (20) and (21), just like Kriyol N tene ba libru is an acceptable and actually more usual variant of N tene libru ba. In Diola, in contrast, only (22) seems to be grammatical as the anterior marker -een is a first-position suffix that must immediately follow the verb stem:

95

(22)

Sunksn ni-baj-ssn-baj b~ori. lastyear 1sG.s-have-ANT-have money Last year I had money.

DIOLA (Sapir 1969:33)

All three languages, however, share the property that the marker is ordered to the right of the verb stem. Mandink:a and Manjaku also share this property, but in addition the free-form markers they use happen to be phonetically similar to the Kriyol marker ba. More accurately, Mandink:a ban and Manjaku ba., to which one must add Diola ban, are verbs meaning "to finish" appearing in various sorts of constructions, but always following the main verb they modify. Their contribution to the meaning of the predicate is that the event referred to is indeed "finished': completed, no longer relevant for defining the situation at speech time: (23)

(24)

(25)

ke-ra ka ban wa? Dani reckoning do-PF INF finish Q Has the reckoning been done completely? Ku-tok ja ku-ban ... 3PL.s-bury c 3PL.S-finish When they finished burying... A-reala ba. 3so.s-eat finish S!he ate already.

BAMBARA (Bazln 1906/1965) DIOLA (Sapir 1969: 104) MANJAKU (Buis 1990:51)

Admittedly, the semantics of the forms is not entirely identical to that of Kriyol ba - nor probably is it entirely identical from one language to the next In particular, more emphasis seems to be laid on the "finished" character of the event, less on its being cut off from speech time. Formally, Manjaku stands closest to Kriyol insofar as ba in the construction exemplified in (25) has clearly been reanalysed as an adverbial particle, as shown by the fact that it does not take an agreement prefix contrary to its cognate ban in the Diola equivalent construction (see (24)). Adverbial particle seems indeed to be the best definition we can reach for Kriyol ba looking at examples (18) and (19). In Mandinka, ka ba.n is a nonfinite verb form. Morphosyntactically distinct as it is, this latter form gives us our best lead towards Kriyol ba's possible origin, however. The verb meaning "to finish" in Kriyol is kaba from EP acaba,.. Actually, kaba is more accurately translated as "to be finished': as transitive "to finish something" is rendered by the derived causative kabanta (Kihm 1994:251ff.). Besides being a main verb, kaba is also used in ways that make it look very much like its counterpart in the substrate languages illustrated above. Take for instance the following sentence: (26)

Bajudas fididu jinjirba tudu i kaba, e say. girls be.split gum all it be.finished they leave All the girls had their gums tattooed and then they left

KRIYOL (Kihm 1994: 245)

The first clause appears structurally very similar to (23) except that instead of being nonfinite as Bambara ban, Kriyol ka.ba is a finite (perfective) form with an expletive subject i 'it'. Given this, there are two (non-exclusive) routes leading from kaba to ba. First, the use of verb forms meaning "to be finished" in order to express past or completedness is a well-attested phenomenon of the transitory grammars that make up BVs. Sentence (26) could thus well


represent the creolised end-result of a construction dating back to the pidgin stage. Clearly the fact that many pidgin users had constructions like (23) in their native competence and the striking similarity of Mandinka ka ban and pidgin kaba would have been crucial to ensure the stabilisation and retention of the form. In other words, kaba. was identified with ka. ban through lexical conflation (Kihm 1989). Secondly, stray past forms in -va must have occurred in pidgin utterances. One instance of sa.ba < esta.va 'was' is found in the LdP text analysed in Kihm & Rouge (2008 ). Frequency was probably higher in actual speech. Moreover, as we saw, the pidgin, then the creole were in constant contact with EP. One can therefore assume another, parallel conflation process between the EP and/or pidgin ending and Diola-Manjaku ba(n) shown in (24) and (25). Such a process, however, would have guaranteed the survival of the -ba ending where it occurred, it does not account for its generalisation or its change into a free form. These two developments, we assume, were triggered by the triple conflation ofDiola-Manjaku ba(n)- already or simultaneously conflated with EP -va - with Mandinka ka ban and pidgin I early Kriyol kaba. The overall process was therefore a complex one. At the same time that kaba. continued as a full verb or a completion auxiliary as in (26), it was also identified with the emerging ba morpheme resulting from the -va I ba(n) conflation. The latter, that inherited its anterior meaning mostly from the EP imperfect, could be retained precisely because of its phonetic similarity and semantic kinship with substrate verb-modifYing morphemes similarly ordered with respect to the verb head. The same phonetic similarity and semantic kinship, this time with kaba, explain why the morpheme not only was retained, but it was recategorised as a free form, probably best defined as a time adverbial. Notice that such a story does not force us to hypothesize an actual change from kaba to ba, even though such a change (e.g., kaba > *kba. > ba.) does not raise any practical difficulty. It is just unnecessary given the logic of conflation where the mere presence of a form may act as a catalyst for a reanalysis process that imp lies a minimum of formal rebuilding. Sub stratal contacts therefore played a crucial role in the emergence of the anterior category in Kriyol, the exponent of which, although basically lexi.fier-inherited in form and meaning, managed to win the day thanks to its accidental resemblance, in form as well as in meaning, with substrate items. As this similarity covers real semantic differences, however, the said exponent cannot be regarded as relexifyi.ng any of the substrate items. 3.2.3

Tense marking: The future

As mentioned above, futurity is a possible interpretation besides actual present for predicates involving the progressive particle na. The following example unambiguously shows both meanings in succession: (27) J.illu Sapu na kuda kuma ku na paila si jintis. Mr. Toad PROG think how that he PROG catch his people Mr. Toad is wondering how he will catch his men.

KRIYOL

(Kihm 1994: 86)

The usual interpretation of (27)'s second clause is that the catching event will take place once (if ever) at some point in time to come. Yet, this does not inhere in the meaning of na predicates, it is only an inference probably related to the lexical meaning ofpaiia "to catch~ but in no way obligatory. Predicates involving na. can equally well refer to events of which one may assume they will

97

occur repeatedly in the future. In other words, na with a future meaning is perfectly unassuming as to the possible definiteness of the denoted event. If the speaker wishes to make it known that she conceives of the future event as destined to occur once at some definite moment, she does so by using bin "to come" as an auxiliary in conjunction with na: (28)

Kin kunsi si nomi, el ku na bin kasa L Who know her name he that PROG come marry her Whoever guesses her name will marry her.


This example shows event definiteness to be relative: the marrying event is predicted to take place at a definite juncture in future time, the location of which is determined relative to the performance of the name guessing task. The certainty overtone often sensed in such futures is an effect of their definiteness. Kriyol grammar also allows the speaker to suggest that the future event she's talking about will occur an indefinite number of times in the open-ended future, that it is indefinite in other words. This she does by putting the main verb in the scope of the habitual particle ta, preceded by the auxiliary ba, a reduced form of bay "to go': itself in the scope of progressive na if the clause is finite, by itself if it is non-finite. The following two examples speak by themselves and illustrate both possibilities: (29) Kunformu no na ba ta skirbi 1, asin ku no na ba ta minjorya L KRIYOL according we PROG go HAB write it so that we PROG go HAB improve it According to how we shall write it (Kriyol), we shall improve it (Kihm 1994: 113) (30)

Bail.as gosi ta misti ba ta bibi manera ku omi ta blbi you-girls now HAB want go HAB drink manner that man HAB drink You girls now, you want to be drinking the way a man drinks.


Neither of these constructions finds a direct equivalent in EP, which does not make a grammaticalised distinction between definite and indefinite futures in any event Although ir "to go" is regularly used as a future auxiliary preceding an infinitive main verb, the difference between the [ir VINF] construction and the inflectional future not only does not replicate that between Kriyol [na ba ta V] and [na V], but it is ordinarily hard to assess. Moreover, [ir VrnFl qua periphrastic construction never appears as the complement of a control verb as [ba ta V] does in (30). EP grammar thus cannot produce the direct equivalent of (30 ), unless ir is given its full meaning "to go": ... querem ir beber... "... want to go and drink ..." A connection between EP vai "s/he/itgoes" and Kriyol ba(y), both used as future auxiliaries, cannot be denied, nevertheless. What changed most was not so much the syntax as the tense-aspect system within which the respective constructions are embedded. EP vir "to come" (1'em "s/he/itcomes"), in contrast, does not enter any future periphrasis. The link with the future auxiliary use of Kriyol bin is more roundabout than in the preceding case. The ultimate source probably lies in the uses of vir with a consecutive meaning: cf. Veio a saber que ... "S/he came to know that. .." This meaning is preserved and fully grammaticalised in Kriyol as shown in (31):


(31) Asin me ku Fulas bin kunsigi ciga Kansala So therefore that Fulas come manage reach Kansala It was therefore thus that the Fulas finally managed to reach Kansala

KRIYOL (Klhm 1994: 109)

In such sentences, bin expresses the notion that there is a final event that immediately follows and is the result of a certain chain of preceding events. From there it was but a short semantic jump to having it express the fact that a certain event will immediately follow a chain of future events including (or reduced to) the present moment It is therefore possible to account for the Kriyol future forms by viewing them as semantic modifications of lexifier resources. Such an account will remain partial, however, unless two other factors are considered. One is the surprising ubiquity within and outside the realm of creole languages of verbal constructions involving 'to go and/or 'to come' and conveying some kind of future meaning, which seems to point towards some universal spatia-temporal metaphor. The second factor that must be taken into account is the substrate, as it probably played a role, at least for the definite future [na bin V] construction. Most surrounding Atlantic languages as well as Mandinka indeed have the option of indicating successivity or futurity by means of periphrastic constructions involving the verb meaning "to come". Only the first meaning is attested in Mandinka. Balanta and Manjaku have both meanings. Moreover, the verbs "to come" - bin in both languages with some dialect variation in the timbre of the vowel - show a remarkable phonetic similarity with Kriyol bin: (32)

(33)

Bu ka bin pero wuL they IPF come do it They will do it Ngaa bin sifa. I be PROG come work I shall work.

MANJAKU (Buis 1990)

BALANTA (Intwnbo 2007:74)

Since it would be unreasonable to suppose that Kriyol borrowed its bin from Balanta and/or Manjaku, given the obvious EP etymology of the item, we are led to acknowledge the role of the substrate here to have been crucially reinforcing. I mean by that that the weakly grammaticalised successive vir a V of EP could give rise to the fully grammaticalised successivity and futurity auxiliary bin of Kriyol only because of the possible semantic and phonetic conflation with corresponding items in the substrate languages. On the other hand, it is not clear from the available descriptions that these languages make the definite-indefinite distinction that Kriyol does in the domain of futurity. "To come" in them implies no more than that the event so qualified will happen "later" relative to speech time. They show no counterpart to the use of "to go" as a distinct future auxiliary. If it is so, we must conclude that the ultimate force that drove the evolution was indeed the spontaneous reorganisation of the TMA system of emerging Kriyol following a default blueprint, not fully instantiated in the lexifier or the substrate. What the latter two did in their accidental collusion was to provide the material to express the meaning required by the creolisation process.

99

100

Alain IGhm

3.2.4 Negation Here is another case where the reinforcing contribution of the substrate and the steering role of lexical conflation are especially clear. Kriyol predicates are negated by means of the negation ka which must occur at the very beginning of the VC, preceding all TMA markers. It thus seems to occupy the same position as its EP counterpart niio. The latter, however, is also the negative sentence word meaning "no': whereas ka is kept strictly separate from naw "no': This is illustrated in the example below:

(34) Naw, i ka na bin kasa L no s!he NEG PROG come marry him/her No, s/he won't marry him/her I Nio, nio val casa-la (EP)

KRIYOL

Such a separation may be considered a substrate effect, as it constitutes a constant feature of all surrounding languages. Beyond that, ka's syntax is sufficiently accounted for by analysing it as identical to that of its lexifier's counterpart and/or as realising the universal default or unmarked position for a negative head. No appeal to the substrate is necessary. There remains a question, however: where does ka come from? The only plausible EP etymology is nunca "never': It is quite probably right, and it is supported by a few passages in the LDP texts where nunca seems indeed to replace standard EP niio. There is a hitch, however: why did Kriyol inherit the second, unstressed syllable of nunca? And note that the EP item survived in full as the negative polarity adverb nunka "never". Lexical conflation is the answer: all the doubtless most influent substrate languages negate predicates by means of items that happen to include a /k.a/ syllable or something that sounds very much like it: cf. Mandinka buka "negative simple imperfective indicative': kana "negative subjunctive': kaka "negative imperfective imperative"; Manjaku dika. "negative imperfective': katsa. "no longer" ( Buis 1990: 41-42 ); Balanta ke NEG (Wilson 1961 ), keya "negative imperfective': kam "negative imperative" (Intumbo 2007: 90). Whether /kal is the negative morpheme in these items is irrelevant; it is enough there should be an association between the sound /k.a/ and the idea of negation for conflation to get triggered. One would therefore be wrong in claiming that ka comes from or relexifies substrate forms. Reality is more complex: ka. comes from EP nu.nca, but it does so via an unusual sound change (dropping the stressed rather than the unstressed syllable). In this deflection from expected evolution lies the substrate's contribution.

4·

Conclusion: Trying to answer one more question

Recall the remaining question we would like to be able to answer: why can so comparatively little of Kriyol morphosyntactic structure be traced back to direct substrate influence in an environment seemingly so favourable to it? Shall we take it as a consequence of the particular circumstances in which Kriyol emerged, or as evidence that the substrate does not or not always play a central role in creole formation? I think both conclusions are actually warranted. In defense of the first one, the most important factor, I believe, is precisely the fact that the linguistic environment of Kriyol at its inception was so rich and varied. This had the con-


sequence that no particular language or tightly knit dialect cluster was in a position to exert a predominant influence like Gbe or Eastern Ijo did on emerging Haitian and Berbice Dutch respectively (Lefebvre 1998; Kouwenberg 1994). One should always beware of metonymies: languages do not influence each other, systems represented in the minds ofbilingual individuals do (Weinreich 1953). Given their origin and social role, the initiators of Kriyol, the filhos da te"a and the grumetes, had to be perfectly bilingual and even multilingual: they spoke the developing creole language and were fluent in one or more local languages, one of which may have been their mother tongue. Such a situation has been going on since the beginning of Kriyol and it is still going on. Now it seems to be a fact that (near) perfect bilinguals are more capable to keep their languages separate than are imperfect bilinguals. 8 Little leakage between internalised systems is therefore to be expected in such a situation, beyond conscious borrowings (actually rare as we saw) and influences made ahnost inevitable by the reinforcing effect of confl.ation. The second conclusion, on the other hand, follows from the status of the substrate as one factor among several, the importance of which is therefore expected to vary according to the sociolinguistic setting of each creole emergence. Given a mental view of the substrate (as collective bilingualism), the primary cause of the variation resides in the social role and the relative proficiency of the bilinguals embodying possible substrate influences. In Guinea-Bissau and Casamance, these individuals came to form a relatively self-contained group with a well-defined social function: that of serving as intermediaries between the local populations and the Europeans. They thus constituted the in-between group generally needed for a creole language to emerge. Three distinctive characteristics of this group then explain why substrate influences remained limited: it endured as a stable, endogenously reproducing group for a very long time; the creole language was its exclusive mark of identity also for a long time; its members were (near) perfectly bilingual in Kriyol and one or several of the numerous local languages. As each of these attributes (and also the number of languages composing the substrate) will vary in different situations, the extent and depth of the substrate's influence will be modified accordingly.

List of abbreviations AGR ANT BV CL

EMPH EP HAB

INF

IPF LdP

Agreement Anterior Basic Variety Noun class marker Emphatic European Portuguese Habitual Infinitive Imperfective Lingua de Preto

NEG

PF PROG PT Q

VC 3PLS 3SG.O 3SG.S

Negation Perfective Progressive Punctual Question Verbal complex 3rd person plural subject pronoun 3rd person singular object pronoun 3rd person singular subject pronoun

8. Which does not mean they cannot dedde to mix them, giving rise to intertwined languages or to code switching. See Bakker & Muysken (1995) for an argument to the effect that language intertwining requires profidency.

101

102

Alain IGhm

References Academia Portuguesa da Hist6ria. 1948/1988. VwgulS de Luis de Cadamosto e de Pedro de Sintra. Lisboa. Acquaviva, P. 2008. Lexical Plurals: A Morphosemantic Approach. Oxford: OUP. de Albuquerque, L. (ed.). 1991. 0 con_fronto do olhar: 0 encontro dos povos na epoca das navegllf6es portuguesas. Lisboa: Edi

< ce

s: < re

[dpl] [bit']

gueule brun

[gcel]

'mouth'

[brre]

'browrl

This constitutes a clear case of substitution, as is often observed in more canonical cases of SLA. Substitution is a process that consists in replacing a phoneme of the target language by a phoneme of the native inventory that is the closest to the target segment, in terms of perceptual similarity or classificatory equivalence in the phonological system. Since they are absent from the Gbe inventory and since they constitute a marked option cross-linguistically, the front-rounded vowels of French were substituted by vowels that are similar either in terms of place of articulation (frontunrounded vowels) or in terms of manner of articulation (back-rounded vowels). These two sets of vowels are both good candidates since in each case the native segment differs from the target segment by only one feature. The lack of schwa in their inventory also sets the creoles apart from French. As shown in (4), the schwa of French etymons is realised as /e/ or, less frequently, as /if in the corresponding creole torms. (4) i,el] [K3fie] [Kulo] [tHo]

'number' 'words' 'to snore' 'roll' 'too (much)'

l.ho] l.h5t] l.hu]

'high' 'shame' 'hoe'

FRENCH

[nimewo] [paw:>l] [w5fie] [wulo] [tw:>p]

nwnero parole ronfier rouleau trop

[wo] [w3t]

haut honte houe

HAITIAN

ro ront rou

rare dechirer pourri debraille

GLOSS

FRENCH

[wu]

'to shred' 'rotten' 'sloppy' 'to lend'

GLOSS

13. Another property may have accentuated the phonetic similarity between /y/ and /Jr/. Ladefoged and Maddieson (1996) note that the velar fricative is often like an approximant and that uvular rhotics have a tendency to weaken, hence being realised as fricatives or approximants.

119

120

Anne-Marie Brousseau

The identical allophonic variation occurs in some Gbe dialects. In these varieties, the distribution is identical to that observed in Haitian: [w] occurs before back vowels, [y] is found elsewhere. As such, the HC variation in the realisation of /y/ is a dear case of the transfer of an L1 allophonic rule. This transfer might provide the key to explaining how St. Lucian differs from Haitian in the substitution of French /JJ/ and the adoption of French /hi. In St Lucian, /w/ (or /yw/) appears in place of the French /Jr/, regardless of the quality of the following vowel. Hence, the forms equivalent to those in (7) above are realised with /w/ where Haitian has /y/. However, as Carrington (1984:27) notes, /y/ is observed in the speech of older rural dwellers, particularly word-initially- e.g., [yi] 'to laugh: [diyi] 'rice, [yete] 'to remain: all contexts where the following vowel is not rounded. It thus seems reasonable to assume that historically St Lucian was similar to Haitian, exhibiting the very same allophonic variation between /y/ and /w/. While this variation is still robust in Haitian, it would have started to erode in St. Lucian at some point in time, possibly under the influence of English. The influence of English as a contributing factor is plausible for two reasons. The first one is language external. Besides French, St Lucians have been exposed to another colonising language quite early, namely English. The island changed hands between France and England many times between 1635 and 1815, when it definitely became a British possession. The censuses of 1911 and 1921 already indicate that approximately 40% of the population had the ability to speak English, a rate that steadily increased to almost 60% in 1946 (Carrington's data was gathered in 1964-1966). In fact, in the most densely populated area of the island (Castries), many speakers of the "patwa" acknowledge an influence of English in their creole speech. The second reason is language internal. If, as I have shown above, perceptual similarity is at play in determining the equivalencies between phonemes of different languages, then it is plausible that the rhotic of English, being perceptually similar to St. Lucian /w/ and I ywI, has influenced St. Lucian in promoting the allophone to the rank of phonemes in all contexts. The influence of English may also explain the presence of /hi in St Lucian. While St. Lucian patterns with Haitian in exhibiting an allophonic variation between [w] and the reflex of the French /hi, it departs from Haitian in generalising the [w] variant to contexts where there is no back vowel, that is, contexts where the only possible realisation should be /hi. In many forms, the two realisations are acceptable, as shown below: (10)

ST. LUCIAN

FRENCH

[hafl/[wafl [.hele]/[wele] [h5t]/[w3t] [.hu]/[wu]

hache heler honte houe

GLOSS

[.haJJ [.hele] [.h5t] [.hu]

'axe' 'to call' 'shame' 'hoe'

This suggests that the same phenomenon of erosion applied to the allophonic distribution that may have characterised an earlier state of the language where, exactly as in Haitian, /y/ would have alternated with [w]. If this is the case, the expected variation in forms such as those in (10) would be /y/and [w] rather than and /hi and [w]. Where does this /hi come from? The direct adoption of French /hi by the creators of St. Lucian is unlikely for the same reasons that explain the substitution of /hi by /y/ in Haitian. Given that the creators of the creole

One substrate, two creoles

had very limited exposure to French, it is doubtful that they could have managed to acquire this segment, missing from their native inventory. An influence from English offers a better line of explanation. As mentioned earlier, the British have been recurrently present in St. Lucian as early as 1635. The creators of St Lucian may thus have been exposed, at least minimally, to some variety of English at different points in time. The combining pressure of the two colonising languages would have expanded the exposure to the target segment /hi, especially since this consonant is widespread in the English vocabulary- which is not the case in French, where h-aspire is restricted to a small set of words. This combined pressure may have provided a more salient exposure to /hi, resulting in its introduction in the consonantal inventory. The consistent presence of English, starting in the mid-nineteenth century, would have helped preserve /hi, despite its alternation with /w/. In contrast. since neither French nor English provided data involving /y/, the alternation between /y/ and /w/ resulted in the gradual disappearance of the velar fricative.

4·4

Consonants: Summary

The consonant inventories of Haitian and St Lucian are more similar to that of French than to that of Gbe languages. They lack many of the consonants of their substrate, namely all those that do not have a French counterpart. This follows from the Transfer to Somewhere Principle. Again, the creators of the creoles resorted to typical L2 acquisition strategies when faced with sounds that were not part of their native grammar. The segments corresponding to the /JJ/ and /h/ of French are the result ofboth the substitution of new sounds by their closest native equivalents and the transfer of an allophonic rule. Other consonants of French were more directly adopted as part of a process of regularisation of the consonant system (!pi, If/ and /y), resulting in an inventory that is even closer to that of French.

5·

Conclusion

Transfers that are typical of L2 acquisition suffice to explain how the inventories of Haitian and St. Lucian acquired the features they have, given the features of their contributing languages. But is this the only plausible explanation? Could the role of Universal Grammar provide as good an explanation as transfer does? In order to answer these questions, I first recapitulate the relevant features. Table 7 lists the differences between the two creole and French inventories, with the L2 processes involved in the emergence of the creole features. The last column indicates the markedness of each given feature, relatively to French (where M indicates marked or more marked, U indicates unmarked or less marked). To measure the impact of the substrate in the development of the segmental inventories of the creoles, the question that really needs answering is the following: Of all the features of the creole inventories that depart from those of French, what features are the result of transfer from the Gbe languages? Assuming the Full Transfer/Full Access hypothesis, the answer to the latter question is straightforward: All the features of L1 ( Gbe) that were not later restructured - i.e. all

121

122


Table 7. Differences in the inventories of the creoles and French French

Haitian

St Lucian

Front rounded V s

Front unrounded V s (back rounded Vs)

Back/a/

Front/a/

Realised schwa

/e/

Deleted schwa

!if

L2 acquisition process

M/U

Under equivalent classification, substitution of the target by its closest equivalent (each candidate departing from the target by one feature, roundedness or place).

u

Repair strategy to break consonant clusters and to accommodate Ll syllable.

u

[i, ii]

Transfer of Ll allophonic rule.

M

[ts, dz] [tf, d3]

!tf, d3/

Transfer with phonemic value of Ll.

M

!hi

/y/

Substitution of the target by its closest equivalent

u

!hi

(Haitian).

/JI/

/y/

/w/

Erosion of variation and influence of English (St. Lucian).

?

/JI/

[w]

[w]

Transfer of Ll allophonic rule.

M

the parameters that have not been reset. In other words, all the differences listed in Table 7 must be the result of transfer. Indeed, Table 7 shows that parameter resetting has been not overly successful. It did not happen with the following segments of French: (1) front rounded vowels; (2) back /a/; (3) realised schwa; (4) some consonants clusters (V epenthesis for deleted schwa); (5) the affricates [ts] and [dz]; (6) postvelar fricatives, including the rhotic. In the first three cases, as in the case of the substitution of /h/ and lKI in Haitian, acquiring the features of French would have involved resetting parameters from less marked (Gbe) to more marked (French), a paradoxical situation whose outcome can go both ways. & we have seen at the beginning of this chapter, when L1 is unmarked and L2 is marked for a given parameter, the interlanguage can show one value or the other: Either the unmarked value transferred from Ll remains, precisely because it is less or not marked (Eckman 1977; Kellerman 1987), or the marked value of L2 is adopted after parameter resetting is achieved on the basis of positive evidence (Archibald 1988). It thus seems that exposure was not sufficient to constitute positive evidence in all theses cases. However, the case of /hi in St. Lucian shows that parameter resetting towards a marked value has succeeded, contrary to Haitian. The fact that the creators of St. Lucian were exposed to a second European language, English, where /hi is considerably more frequent, could explain this difference: The higher exposure to the segment here could have constituted enough positive evidence to allow the resetting of the parameter. In Table 7, the cases involving transfer of allophonic rules (nasal high vowels and rounding of IKI) or phonemic value have reversed markedness values. Acquiring the features of French, rather than transferring the values of Gbe, would have involved resetting parameters from more marked (Gbe) to less marked (French), a situation unlikely to occur, according to Hyltenstam (1987), but that has indeed occurred here. However, parameter resetting was indeed involved in the development of the creole inventories, in all the cases where the creoles pattern with French but not with Gbe. This includes the


following segments: (1) the affricates [tf] and [d3] (marked as phonemes but probably not as allophones); (2) the fricatives If/ and /y (marked); (3) the obstruents /p/ and /b/ (unmarked). Unmarked as well as marked parameters have been successfully transferred. Since the success of parameter resetting - as the lack of success for the cases in Table 7 - cannot be attributed to markedness values, what can account for it? In each case, the success of parameter resetting seems to be linked to a common property: the presence of similar segments in Ll, if not phonemically, at least phonetically. Gbe languages have phonemic affricates [tf] and [d3] while French has the perceptually identical phonetic counterpart, which also facilitates the adoption of the homorganic fricatives If/ and /y. The majority of Gbe dialects have a phonetic /p/ and an approximant /b/. In sum, the vowel and consonant inventories of the creoles show features that were inherited from the Gbe languages through transfer, irrespective of the markedness value of these features. So, in the end, how significant was the impact of the substrate on the development of the segmental inventories of the creoles? The answer is quite clear: It was massive. The influence of the substrate is pervasive in the inventories of the two creoles, even for cases where we could convincingly argue for the role of Universal Grammar.

References Alber, B. & Plag, I. 2001. Epenthesis, deletion and the emergence of the optimal syllable in Creole: The case of Sranan. Lingua 111:811-840. Andersen, R. W. (ed.). 1983. Pidginization and Creolization as Language Acquisition. Rowley MA: Newbury House. Archibald, J. 1998. Seco,Jd Language Phonology [Language Acquisition and Language Disorders 17]. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Brasseur, P. 1997. Creoles abase lexicale fran~se et fran~ marginaux d'Amerique du Nord: Quelques points de comparaison. In Contacts de langues, contacts de cultures, creolisation, M.-C. Hazael-Massieux & D. de Robillard (eds), 141-166. Paris: I:Harmattan. Breen, H. H. 1844. St. Lucia. Historical, Statistical and Descriptive. Frank Cass [1970]. Broselow, E. & Finer, D. 1991. Parameter setting in second language phonology and syntax. Second Language Research 7: 35-59. Brousseau, A.-M. 2003. The accentual system of Haitian creole: The role of transfers and markedness values. In Phonology and Morphology of Creole Languages, I. Plag (ed.), 123-147. Tlibingen: Niemeyer. Brousseau, A.-M. 2005. The sociolect of 17th-18th century French settlers: Phonological clues from French Creoles. In Selected Papers from NWAVB 32 [Penn Working Papers in Linguistics Volume 10(2)], K. Evans & G. Nguyen (eds), 45-60. Philadelphia PA: Penn Linguistics Club. Brousseau, A.-M. & Nikierna, E. 2006. From Gbe to Haitian: The multi-stage evolution of syllable structure. In L2 Acquisition wJd Creole Genesis: Dialogues [Language Acquisition and Language Disorders 42] C. Lefebvre, L. White & C. Jourdan (eds), 295-331. Amsterdam: Jolm Benjamins. Capo, H. B. C. 1991. A Comparative Phonology of Gbe. Dordrecht: Foris. Carrington, L D. 1984. St. Lucian Creole. A Descriptive Analysis of its Phonology and Morpho-Syntax. Hamburg: Helmut Buske. Chaudenson, R 1994. Fran~s d'Amerique du Nord et cn!oles fran~: Le fran~s parle par les immigrants du XVII" siede. In Les origines dufranfais quebecois, R Mougeon & R Bemak (eds), 167-180. Quebec: Presses de fUniversite Laval. Clements, G. N. 2003. Feature economy in sound systems. Phonology 20: 287-333.

123

124


de Lacy, P. 2006. Markedness: Reduction and Preservation in Phonology. Cambridge: CUP. Devonish, H. 1989. Talking in Tones: A Study of Tone in Afro-Europea,J Languages. London: Karia Press. Dresher, E. & Kaye, J. 1990. A computational learning model for metrical phonology. Cognition 34: 137-195. Eckman, F. R.1977. Markedness and the contrastive analysis hypothesis. Language Learning 27:315-330. Ethnologue database, SIL International . Hull, A 1994. Des origines du franr;ais dans le Nouveau Monde. In Les origines du fr&mfais quebecois, R. Mougeon & E. Beniak (eds ), 183-198. Quebec: Presses de l'Universite Laval. Hyltenstam, K. 1987. Markedness, language universals, language typology, and second language acquisition. In First and Second Language Acquisition Processes, C. Pfaff (ed.), 55-81. Cambridge MA: Newbury House. Kellerman, E. 1987. Aspects of Transferability in Seco,Jd Language Acquisition. Nijmegen: Katholieke Universiteit te Nijmegen. Ladefoged, P. & Maddieson, I. 1996. The Sounds of the World~ Languages. Oxford: Blackwell Lefebvre, C. 1998. Creole Genesis a,Jd the Acquisition of Grammar: The Case of Haitian Creole. Cambridge: CUP. Lefebvre, C., White, L. & Jourdan, C. (eds). 2006. L2 Acquisition and Creole Genesis: Dialogues [Language Acquisition and Language Disorders 34]. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Maddieson,l. 1984. Patterns of SowJds. Cambridge: CUP. Mather, P.-A. 2000. Cross-linguistic Influence in Second Language Acquisition and in Creole Genesis. PhD dissertation, University of Pittsburgh. Mondesir, J. E. 1992 Dictionary of St. Lucian Creole. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Morin, Y.-C. 1994. Les sources historiques de 1a prononciation du franr;ais du Quebec. In Les origines du franrais quebecois, R. Mougeon & E. Beniak (eds), 199-236. Quebec: Presses de l'Universite Laval. Mougeon, R. & Beniak, E. 1994. Les origines du fr&mfais quebecois. Quebec: Presses de l'Universite Laval Muysken, P. 2001. The origin of Creole languages: The perspective of second language learning. In Creolization and Contact, N. Smith &T. Veenstra (eds),157-173. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. P1ag, I. & Uffmann, C. 2001. Phonological restructuring in Creole: The development of paragoge in Sranan. In Degrees of Restructuring in Creole Languages, I. Neumann-Holzschuh & E. W. Schneider (eds), 309-337. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Rogozinski, J. 1992 A BriefHistory of the Caribbean. New York: Facts on File. Schwartz, B. & Sprouse, R. 1996. L2 cognitive states and the full transfer/full access mode. Second Language Research 12: 40-72 Singler, J. V. 1995. The demographics of Creole genesis in the Caribbean: A comparison of Martinique and Haiti In The Early Stages ofCreolisation [Creole Language Library 13], J. Arends (ed.), 203-232 Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Singler, J. V. 1996. Theories of Creole genesis, sociohistorical considerations, and the evaluation of evidence: The case of Haitian creole and the relexification hypothesis. Journal of Pidgin and Creole La''lgullges 11: 185-231. Sprouse, R. A 2006. Full transfer andrelexification: Second language acquisition and Creole genesis. In L2 Acquisition and Creole Genesis: Dialogues [Language Acquisition and Language Disorders 34], C. Lefebvre, L. White & C. Jourdan (eds), 169-183. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Steele, J. & Brousseau. A.-M. 2006. Parallels in process: Comparing Haitian Creole and French learner phonologies. In L2 Acquisition and Creole Genesis: Dialogues [Language Acquisition and Language Disorders 34], C. Lefebvre, L. White & C. Jourdan (eds), 331-355. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. U.ffmann, C. 2003. Markedness, faithfulness, and creolization: The retention of the unmarked. In The Phonology and Morphology of Creole Languages, I. Plag (ed.), 3-23. Tiibingen: Niemeyer. Valdman, A. 1978. Le creole: statut et origine. Paris: Klincksieck. Valdman, A. 1983. Creolization and second language acquisition. In Pidginization and Creolization as Language Acquisition, R. Andersen (ed.), 212-234. Rowley MA: Newbury House. Valdman, A, Iskrova, I., Pierre, J. & Andre, N. 2007. Haitian Creole-English Bilingual Dictionary. Bloomington IN: Creole Institute, Indiana University.


Veronique, D. 1994. Naturalistic adult acquisition of French as L2 and French-based Creole genesis compared: Insights into creolization and language change. In Creolization and Language Change, D. Adone & I. P1ag (eds), 297-311. Tiibingen: Niemeyer. White, L. 1989. Universal Grammar and Second Language Acquisition [Language Acquisition and Language Disorders 1]. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. White, L 2000. Second language acquisition: From initial to final state. In Second Language Acquisition and Linguistic Theory, J. Archibald (ed.), 130-155. Oxford: Blackwell. Wode, H. 1986. Language transfer: A cognitive, functional and developmental view. In Crosslinguistic Influence in Second Language Acquisition, E. Kellerman & M. Sharwood Smith (eds), 173-186. New York NY: Pergamon Insti lute of English.

125

Substrate features in the properties of verbs in three Atlantic creoles Haitian Creole, Saramaccan and Papiamentu* Claire Lefebvre UQAM and MPI-EVA

The aim of this paper is to investigate a subset of the properties of verbs in three Atlantic creoles, Haitian Creole, Saramaccan and Papiamentu - all three created around the same time and sharing the same core substrate languages, but having different lexifier/superstrate languages - and to compare these properties with those of verbs in their contrlbutinglanguages, that is, their substrate languages, on one hand. and their superstrate languages, on the other. The three-way comparison undertaken in this paper shows in a dear way that first, the properties of verbs in the three creoles often contrast with those of the corresponding verbs in their respective superstrate languages; second, these properties parallel those of the corresponding verbs in their substrate languages; and third. in spite of the fact that the three creoles under investigation have different lexifier languages, the properties of the substrate verbs manifest themselves in the three creoles. Keywords: properties of verbs, Haitian Creole, Saramaccan, Papiamentu. Fongbe and other West African languages, French, English, Spanish

1.

Introduction

The three creole languages under investigation are Haitian Creole (Haiti), Sararnaccan (Surinam and French Guiana) and Papiamentu (Aruba, Bonaire and Cura~o). These three creoles are also spoken in countries that have welcomed creole speakers of the diaspora, mainly Canada, France,

The research reported on in this paper was financed by SSHRCC. I thank all the participants in this research, who are cited in the paper, for their contribution to the research. I express my gratitude to the munerous informants of all the languages involved for their most important contribution. Thanks to Bettina Migge for discussing the Saramaccan data with me, and to Marta Dijkhott; Silvia Kouwenberg, Philip Maurer and Mirto Lade for fruitful exchanges on the Papiamentu data. Preliminary versions of this paper were presented at the Leipzig Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in May 2008, and at the Koln SPCL conference in August 2009. I thank the participants for most useful comments and questions on my presentations. More particularly, I want to thank Martin Haspelmath, Sylvia Kouwenberg and Mirto Lade. Thanks to four reviewers for their comments on a prefinal draft to this paper, to Andree Belanger for formatting the manuscript and to Lucie Kearns for copy-editing it.

128

Claire Lefebvre

the Netherlands and the United States. According to Grimes (2000), Haitian has 7,800,000 speakers, Saramaccan 26,000 and Papiamentu 329,000. All three Atlantic creoles studied in this paper were created during the second half of the seventeenth century. They all share a core pool of substrate languages: West African language families with a significant input from Kwa and more particularly from Gbe languages (for Haitian Creole, see Singler 1996; for Saramaccan, see Arends 1995; Migge 1998; Smith 1987; for Papiamentu, see Parkvall2000; Postma 1990). However, these three creoles have different superstrate languages. Haitian Creole has French, Saramaccan has English (50% of basic vocabulary), Portuguese (35% of basic vocabulary) and Dutch (10% of basic vocabulary) (Smith 1987), and Papiamentu has Portuguese and Spanish (60%) and Dutch (30%) (Maurer 1986). The fact that these three creoles share a common core of substrate languages while having different superstrate languages constitutes an advantage in trying to identify the contribution of the substrate languages (and eventually of the superstrate languages) to these three creoles. Furthermore, the three creoles display varying degrees of radicalness, as defined by Bickerton (1981), with Saramaccan being closest to the substrate, followed by Haitian (Muysken 1994), followed by Papiamentu (Maurer 1986). This paper shows that. regardless of the superstrate language and regardless of the degree of radicalness of the creole, the substrate features manifest themselves in the same way in the properties of verbs in the three creoles. The West Mrican languages spoken by the creators of the Atlantic creoles were numerous. They include several language families such as Kwa, West Atlantic, Kru, Mande and Gur languages (Singler 1993, 1996). In tum, each of these language families involves several clusters of languages. For example, the Kwa family alone comprises the following language clusters: Lagoon (including Abbey); Akan, which includes three dialect clusters, Twi-Fante, Anyi-Baule and Guang; the Gan-Adangme dialect cluster; the Yoruba or Ede cluster; the Ewe or Gbe cluster; the Nupe languages, which divide up into several dialect clusters; the Bini languages; and the Igbo dialect cluster. In spite of the fact that the large majority of these languages are not mutually intelligible, they share a significant number of typological features (Westerman & Bryan 1970, among others). In fact. these languages have semantic and syntactic properties that are so similar as to lead Koopman (1986: 233) to treat them as a coherent linguistic group which she refers to as West Mrican. Considering the properties of verbs in a sample of Kru and Kwa languages, as well as a Mande and a Gur language, Koopman writes:"( ... ) these languages share a number of characteristics, which are also characteristic of many other West African languages, such as Yoruba for instance. The presence of a number of common properties will allow us to refer to general West African properties." Considering a number of features such as the availability of logop boric pronouns, labial-velar consonants (/gb/), ATR vowel harmony, labial flap consonants and specific word orders, Gtildemann (2007) also concludes that West Mrican languages constitute a significant typological area. Thus, in spite of the fact that the substrate languages of the three creoles under study in this paper were not mutually intelligible, they were typologically quite similar. As for the superstrate languages which were spoken by the colonisers of the Atlantic islands, French and Portuguese/Spanish are Romance, and English and Dutch are Germanic. Romance and Germanic languages are typologically distinct. Regardless, from a typological point of view, neither have much in common with West African languages (for further discussion of this issue, see Lefebvre 1998: 58-65).

Substrate features in the properties of verbs in three Atlantic creoles

So, during the formation period of the three Atlantic creoles, speakers of numerous but typologically similar West African languages were faced with colonial languages that were typologically different from their own. It is worth mentioning here that, in contexts where creoles are formed, substrate speakers have reduced access to superstrate languages. Without doubt, this situation creates conditions that favour the manifestation of substrate properties in the creoles. The methodology required by the topic of this paper calls for a three-way comparison between the properties of the creoles' verbs and those of their contributing languages. Due to constraints of space, this paper presents the following limitations. First, the paper will consider only a subset of verbs: BODY-state expressions, WEATHER verbs, object to subject raising verbs, the selectional properties of verbs meaning 'to wanf, the selectional properties of verbs meaning 'to promise~ the selectional properties of verbs meaning 'to ask' or 'to requesf. double object verbs and serial verbs. The properties of verbs in this subset all have syntactic incidences. Furthermore, data were available on these topics for all the languages involved. A comparison of other verbal properties, such as argument structures, case assigning properties, etc. will have to await future research. Second, only the main superstrate languages of all three creoles are being considered: hence, French for Haitian, English for Saramaccan and Spanish for Papiamentu. Third, only one substrate language is being taken into account: Fongbe, a Gbe language of the Kwa family, taken as representative of the substrate languages. This is compatible with Koopman's view above. Furthermore, as per the above cited authors, Fongbe is one of the Gbe languages identified as having had an important input into all three creoles. Finally, Fongbe has been extensively documented (Lefebvre & Brousseau 2002 and references therein) making data on its verbs' properties readily available (for further discussion of this general methodological choice based on Haitian and its source languages, see Lefebvre 1998: 65-70). A fourth limitation consists in the fact that not all the variation in the data can be reported on in this paper. The languages under discussion have a number of native speakers that is large enough so as to manifest the linguistic variation expected of complex linguistic communities ( Labov 1972 ). I will limit the discussion of the properties of verbs to data that are "typical" of each of the languages involved. For example, there is more than one way to express 'It rains' in Papiamentu: Awaseru ta kayendo/kai 'Rain is falling' and Ta yo be 'It is raining'. I retain the first expression because it is the typical weather expression in this language. Likewise, while it is possible to say 'The rain is falling' in English, the expression is not a typical weather expression. 'It is raining' rather is. A second aspect of variation has to do with variation between speakers. Whenever available, variation between speakers will be pointed out in notes. The data presented in this paper come from various sources. Some come from the literature and they are identify as such in the text. Original data have also been collected by myself and members of my research team. In addition to extensive fieldwork on Haitian Creole and Fongbe over the past thirty years, I collected original data on Saramaccan in California with a native speaker from Surinam and in French Guiana in the Saramacca village; I refer to this corpus as Lefebvre (2005). Bally collected original data in the Saramacca village in French Guiana. This corpus is cited as part of Bally, Dionne and Olguin (2006). Olguin (2006) has gathered original data on Papiamentu. Finally, over the year 2008, Kearns collected data in the Saramacca village in French Guiana, a corpus referred to as Kearns (2008a), and on Cura~aoan Papiamentu, a corpus referred to as Kearns (2008b ). The source of each piece of data presented in the paper is identified.

129

130

Claire Lefebvre

The findings presented here add to other published work involving a detailed comparison of the three creoles in question with their contributing languages: for Haitian Creole, see Koopman (1986) and Lefebvre (1998, 2004 and references therein); for Saramaccan, see Aboh (2006a, b), Lefebvre and Loranger (2006, 2008) and Migge (1998, 2003 and references therein); for Papiamentu, see Lefebvre and Therrien (2007a, b and references therein).

BODY-state expressions

2.

In Haitian, BODY-state expressions typically involve the following structure: a body part occurring in subject position, an active verb and an experiencer occurring in object position, as shown in (1). (1)

Dan ap manje m. tooth IMP eat 1so 'I have a toothache.' [Lit.: 'tooth is eating me']

HAITIAN

(= (4c) in Lefebvre 1998:250)

This contrasts with French where BODY-state expressions typically involve an experiencer occurring in subject position, a stative predicate a.voir ma.l (lil 'have pain) and a body parl (2)

ai mal a la tete. I have pain at DEF head 'I have a headache:

J'

FRENCH

In Saramaccan, BODY-state expressions are typically built on the same model as in Haitian, as shown in (3). (3)

Hedi ta n}dn mf. head IMP eat 1SG 'I have a headache.' [Lit.: 'head is eating me']

SARAMACCAN

(Kearns 2008a)

This contrasts with English where BODY-state expressions involve an experiencer occurring in subject position, the verb have followed by a body-part+ ache, as illustrated in (4). (4)

I have a headache.

ENGLISH

In Papiamentu, BODY-state expressions are typically built on the same model as in Haitian and Saramaccan, as shown in (5). (5)

a

Cabes ta

morde mi. 1

PAPIAMENTU

head IMP eat 1SG 'I have a headache: [Lit: 'head is eating me1 b.

Mi cabes ta

1sg head IMP eat 'I have a headache: [Lit: 'my head is eating']

1.

(Mamerpc)

morde.

PAPIAMENTU

Ouliana 1970, cited in Maurer 1988: 354)

Not all speakers consulted accept (Sa). Mirto Lade (pc) has mi tin dolor di cabes.


This partially differs from Spanish where the corresponding expression typically involves a bodypart occurring in subject position, the stative verb doTer 'to hurt, and an experiencer, as shown in (6). Note, however, the contrast between the Papiamentu structure involving an active verb and the Spanish structure involving a stative verb. (6)

Me duele la cabeza. 1SG hwt DEP head 'I have a headache: [Lit: 'the head hwts me']

SPANISH

The above data show that in each creole, the structure of typical BODY-state expressions contrasts with that found in their respective superstate languages. They also show that the same structure is used in the three creoles to encode BODY- state expressions. Interestingly enough, this structure is typical of West Mrican languages, as exemplified in (7) based on Fongbe. (7)

Aqu c(o

qucfu

mi

we.

tooth be.at eating 1SG PART 'I have a toothache? [Lit.: 'tooth is eating me']

FoNGBB (= (6) in Lefebvre 1998:251)

WEATHER verbs

3·

Haitian Creole does not have WEATHER verbs. 2 Typically, Haitian expresses various atmospheric phenomena by means of a construction involving a natural element occurring in the subject position of a non WEATHER verb. This is illustrated in (8). (8)

Lapli ap

tonbe.

rain IMP fall 'It is raining.'

HAITIAN

(= (3) in Dumais 1988)

Both Koopman (1986) and Dumais (1988) point out that the above Haitian data contrast with French, where the same concepts are rendered by means of WEATHER verbs that select an expletive subject, as shown in (9). (9)

Il pleut. 3 'It is raining.'

FRENCH

Saramaccan does not have WEATHER verbs either. Typically it expresses atmospheric phenomena in the same way Haitian does, as shown in (10). (10)

2.

'ISuba ttl kai.

SARAMACCAN

rain IMP fall 'It is raining.'

(= (9b) in Byrne 1987:74)

Fe fret [Lit: 'do cold'] 'It is cold' is an exception to the general pattern.

3· Ahhough the expressions La pluie tombe 'Rain is fallin!(. or La chaleur m'accable 'Heat is killing me' are grammatical in French, they are not typically used as a statement about the weather. The same holds for the corresponding English expressions.

131

132

Claire Lefebvre

This contrasts with English where atmospheric phenomena are rendered by WEATHER verbs that select an expletive subject, as shown in (11 ). (11)

It rains. /It is raining.

ENGLISH

In Papiamentu, there are no WEATHER verbs either and atmospheric phenomena are typically rendered as in Haitian, as shown in (12) (see also Henriquez 1954, cited in Maurer 1988: 394). (12)

Awaseru ta kai. rain IMP fall 'It is raining:

PAPIAMI!NTU

(Kearns 2008b)

This contrasts with Spanish where atmospheric phenomena are rendered by WEATHER verbs, that select an expletive subject realised as a suffix on the tensed verb, as shown in (13). (13)

Estd

llaviendo.

SPANISH

AUX.3SG raining

'It is raining:

What about expressions conveying atmospheric phenomena in the substrate languages? Koopman (1986:245) points out that WEATHER verbs selecting an expletive subject do not exist in West African languages. On the basis of examples from Vata and Abe, she shows that West African languages generally express the various atmospheric phenomena in a construction involving a natural element in subject position and a non WEATHER verb. The Fongbe data in (14) illustrate this pattern. (14)

/{ qo jija rain be.at falling 'It is raining:

wt.

FoNGBl!

POC

(Segurola & Rassinoux 2000: 278)

In contrast to their respective superstrate languages, Haitian, Saramaccan and Papiamentu do not have a paradigm of WEATHER verbs. Like their substrate languages, these three creoles typically express atmospheric phenomena by means of a construction involving a natural element occurring in the subject position of a non WEATHER verb.

4·

Object to subject raising verbs

A subset of verbs in a subset of languages allow raising of their object to the subject position, as in An apple remains in the basket(< There remains an apple in the basket). In this section, object to subject raising is discussed for verbs meaning 'to remain/to be left' and for verbs meaning 'to be missing/to lack' in all the languages under comparison in this chapter.


4.1

Object to subject raising for verbs meaning 'to remain/to be left'

In Haitian, the argument of the verb rete 'to remain/to be left' (Valdman et al 2007: 636) may appear in two surface positions, as shown in (15). In the (a) sentence, the argument follows the verb and the subject position is optionally filled with the expletive subject li. In the (b) sentence, the argument of the verb rete appears in subject position, and the postverbal position is empty. (15)

a

(LI) rete yon sepan nan pannye an. it remain a snake in basket DEF 'There remains a snake in the basket:

b.

Yon sepa11 rete

11an pannye an.

a

snake be-left-over in basket ~ snake remains in the basket:

HAITIAN

(= (14) in Dumais 1988) HAITIAN

DEF

(= (15) in Dumais 1988)

In French, the argument of the verb rester 'to remain/to be left' (Correard & Grundy (eds) 1994: 71) appears in the position following the verb and the subject position is obligatorily filled by the expletive subject il, as in (16a), which parallels (lSa). The ungrarnmaticality of (16b) shows that, unlike in Haitian, the argument of the verb rester cannot be raised to subject position. (16)

a

11 reste

un serpent dans le panier. snake in DEF basket 'There remains a snake in the basket: *Un serpent reste dans le panier a snake remain in DEF basket

FRENCH

it remain a

b.

(= (30a) in Lefebvre 1998: 263) FRENCH

(= (30b) in Lefebvre 1998: 263)

In Sararnaccan, the argument of the verb fika 'to remain/to be left ovei (Rountree et al. 2000: 36) may appear in two surface positions, as shown in (17). In the (a) sentence, the argument follows the verb and the subject position is obligatorily filled with the expletive subject pronoun a. In sentence (b), the argument appears in the subject position and the postverbal position is empty. (17)

a

A

jika

wan sindeki a

di

manda dandu.

remain a snake LOC DEF basket inside 'There remains a snake in the basket:

SARAMACCAN

3SG

b.

Wan sindeki jika

a

di

manda dandu.

snake remain Loc DEF basket inside ~ snake remains in the basket:

(Kearns 2008a; Lefebvre 2005) SARAMACCAN

a

(Kearns 2008a; Lefebvre 2005)

In English, the argument of remain 'to remain/to be left' (Flexner & Hauck (eds) 1987: 1629) may also occur either after the verb, or in subject position. (18)

a b.

There remains a snake i11 the basket. A snake remains 111 the basket.

ENGLISH ENGLISH

In Papiarnentu, the argument of the verb keda. 'to remain/to be left' (Websteis online Dictionary 2008) may appear in two surface positions, as shown in ( 19 ). In (a), the argument follows the verb and the subject position is phonologically null In (b), the argument appears in the subject position and the postverbal position is empty.

133

134

Claire Lefebvre

(19)

a

- a

keda

ocho alumno de11 klas.

PAPIAMENTU

ASP remain eight student in dass 'There remained eight students in the class? b.

Ocho alumno a

keda

( = (52a) in Olguin 2006: 25; Kearns 2008b)

de11 klas.

PAPIAMENTU

eight student ASP remain in dass 'Eight students were left in the dass:

( = (52b) in Olguin 2006: 25; Kearns 2008b)

Olguin (2006: 28) remarks that the Papiamentu data contrast with the Spanish data involving the verb qu.edar 'to remain/to be left' (Alvarez Garcia et al. 1998: 418). As is shown in (20), the argument of quedar has to remain in the position following the verb. (20)

a

Quedaron ocho alumnos en la

dase.

SPANISH

remain.3PL eight student in DEF class 'There remained eight students in the class?

b.

*Ocho alumnos quedaron

en Ia

(= (53a) in Olguin 2006:25)

dase'

SPANISH (= (53b) in Olguin 2006:25)

eight student remain.3PL in DEF class

All three creoles display the same pattern of argument raising to subject position. While the Saramaccan and English data match in this case. both the Haitian and the Papiamentu data differ from those of their respective superstrate languages. What about the corresponding substrate data? For example, in Fongbe, the verb kpo means 'to remain/to be left' (Segurola 1963: 339). As is the case in the three creoles, the argument of this verb may surface in two positions. In (21a), it occurs after the verb and the subject position is filled with the expletive subject In (21b), it occurs in the subject position of the verb kpO and the post-verbal position is empty.

e.

(21)

a

E kpo

dtbl

q6kp6

qo

xasun :5

mt.

it remain snake one be.at basket DEF in 'There remains a snake in the basket?

b.

Da11 q6kp6 kpo

qo

xa5Un :5

FoNGBE

(= (14) in Dumais 1988)

me.

snake one remain be.at basket DEF in 1\. snake remains in the basket:

FoNGBE

(= (15) in Dumais 1988)

It thus appears that the object to subject raising property of the creole verbs meaning 'to remain/ to be left' follows that of the corresponding verbs in the substrate languages.

Object to subject raising for verbs meaning 'to be missing/to lack'

4.2

The verbs meaning 'to be missing/to lack' in the languages under consideration present a similar pattern. In Haitian, manke 'to be missing/ to lack' (Valdman et al. 2007: 460) takes two arguments:

4· Olguin (2006: 28) remarks that in specific contexts and with a particular emphatic intonation, the sentence in (i) could be grammatical (i)

en la clase

SPANISH

only eight student rernain.3PL in the class 'Only eight students remained in the clasS:

Solamente ocho alumnos quedaron

(= (53c) in Olguin 2006)


one referring to the object that is missing and one referring to the object which is deprived of the missing object. Both arguments may follow the verb, in which case the subject position is optionally filled by the expletive li, as shown in (22a). The verb manke also allows for either of its two arguments to appear in subject position. In (22b ), the argument referring to the missing object occupies the subject position and, in (22c), the argument referring to the object which is deprived of the missing object fills this position. (22) a

Li manke set 11an soup la. it lack salt in soup DBP 'There lacks salt in the soup:

b.

Set manke nan soup la. salt lack in soup DBF 'Salt is lacking from the soup: Soup la manke sel. soup DBP lack salt 'The soup lacks salt:

c.

HAITIAN (= (16) in Dumais 1988)



As is the case in Haitian, the French verb manque,- 'to be missing/to lack' (Atkins et al. 1987: 426) also takes two arguments. Both arguments may follow the verb, in which case the subject position is obligatorily filled by the expletive subject il. This is shown in (23a), which parallels Haitian (22a). Unlike the Haitian verb ma.nke, however, French manque,- does not allow the argument referring to the missing object to occur in subject position. The ungrammaticality of (23b) thus contrasts with the grammaticality of Haitian (22b). Finally, French manquerallows the argument referring to the deprived object to occur in subject position, as shown in (23c).This corresponds to Haitian (22c). (23) a

n maJ~que

de sel dansla soupe. of salt in DBP soup 'There lacks salt in the soup: *Du sel manque da,IS la soupe DBP salt lack in the soup La soupe manque de sel. DBP soup lack PART salt 'The soup lacks salt:

FRENCH

it lack

b. c.

(= (16) in Dumais 1988)

FRENCH (= (17) in Dumais 1988)

FRENCH (= (18) in Dumais 1988)

The data in (22) and (23) thus show that the syntactic properties of the Haitian verb manke do not correspond entirely to those of the French verb manquer. As we will see below, however, the syntactic properties of the Haitian verb manquer are like those of the corresponding verb in Fongbe. As is the case in Haitian, Saramaccan offers the three possibilities in (24). (24) a.

b.

A ta makeI satu a di baafu. 3SG ASP lack salt LOC DBP SOUp 'There lacks salt in the soup: Satu ta makeI a di baafu. salt ASP lack LOC DBF SOUp 'Salt is missing from the soup:

SARAMACCAN (Kearns 2008a) SARAMACCAN (Kearns 2008a)

135

136

Claire Lefebvre

c.

Di baafu ta makei satu. DEF SOUp ASP lack salt 'The soup lacks salt:

SARAMACCAN

(Kearns 2008a)

These parallel the English data in (25). (25)

a b. c.

There lacks salt In the soup. Salt Is lacking from the soup. The soup lacks salt.

ENGLISH ENGLISH ENGLISH

In Papiamentu, the verb falta 'to be missing/to lack' (Webster's online dictionary 2008) takes two arguments. In (26a), the two arguments occur after the verb and the subject position is empty. This verb also allows for either one of the two arguments to appear in subject position, as is shown in (26b) and (26c). Note that not all speakers accept (26b). (26)

a

b.

c.

folta salu den e si'Jpi. lack salt in DEF soup 'There lacks salt in the soup: Salu folta 11a/de11 slJpi. salt lack in soup 'Salt ls lacking from the soup: E slJpi (ta) folta salu. DEF SOUp IMP lack salt 'The soup lacks salt:

PAPIAMENTU

(Kearns 2008b) PAPIAMENTU

(= (56) in Olguin 2006: 26; Kearns 2008b) PAPIAMENTU

(= (55c) in Olguin 2006: 26; Kearns 2008b)

In Spanish,faltar 'to be missing/to lack' (Jarman et al. (eds) 1998:333) also takes two arguments. In (27a), the two arguments follow the verb and the expletive subject is expressed as a suffix onto the verb. None of the two arguments can occur in subject position, as can be seen from the ungrammaticality of (27b) and (27c). (27) a

b. c.

(Le) falta sal a la sopa. lack.3sG salt to DEF soup 'There lacks salt in the soup:

*sal folta a la sopa salt lack to DEF soup *Ia sopa falta sal DEF soup lack salt

SPANISH

(= (54a) in Olguin 2006:26) SPANISH

(= (54b) in Olguin 2006:26) SPANISH

(= (54c) in Olguin 2006:26)

The ungrarnmaticality of (27b) and c in Spanish contrasts with the grarnmaticality of (26b) and (26c) in Papiarnentu. The following data show that the properties of the creoles' verbs parallel those of the corresponding verbs in the substrate languages. For example, Fongbe has a verb hwe meaning 'to be missing/to lack' (Hoftmann 2003:231). This verb may take two arguments. Both arguments may be realised after the verb, in which case the subject position is filled by the expletive as in (28a). As is the case in the creoles, but not in their superstrate languages (except for English), the verb hwe allows for either of its two arguments to appear in subject position. In (28b ), the argument referring to the missing object occupies the subject position and, in (28c ), the argument referring to the argument deprived of the missing object fills this position.

e,


(28)

a

E hwt

zt cfo

11usUm~

it be-missing salt be.at soup 'There lacks salt in the soup:

b.

c.

5

mf..

DBF

in

Zl hwt cfO 11asUnu mf.. salt be-missing be.at soup In 'Salt is lacking from the soup: Nusunu :S hwE. zt. soup DBF be-missing salt 'The soup lacks salt:

FoNGBB

(= (16) In Dumais 1988) FoNGBB

(= (17) In Dumais 1988) FoNGBB

(= (18) in Dumais 1988)

The Haitian, Saramaccan, and Papiamentu data in (22), (24) and (26), respectively, parallel the Fongbe data in (28), regardless of the possibilities offered by their superstrate languages. 5

The selectional properties of verbs meaning 'to want'

5·

The verbs meaning 'to want' display variable properties among the languages of the world. This section discusses the properties of the verbs meaning 'to want' in the languages under comparison. Since these are linked to the selectional properties of these verbs, the section is structured around these. Verbs meaning 'to want' selecting an infinitival CP complement

5.1

Typically, verbs meaning 'to want' select a [-tense] CP complement. In this context, the verbs meaning 'to want' function as control verbs. Control verbs allow a matrix verb argument to be coindexed with the non-expressed subject of the infinitival complement clause of the matrix verb. The non-expressed subject is represented as PRO, a label that stands for an abstract pronoun. For example. in the English sentence ]ohni wants PROi to leave, John controls the phonologically empty subject of the embedded clause represented as PRO. The controller and the controlee are coindexed. In all the languages under comparison, verbs meaning 'to want' may take an infinitival complement whose subject is controlled by the matrix verb subject This is illustrated in (29) to (35), where the control relationship between the two elements is represented by indices. (29) Jan 1 vle PRO; kraze manchln nan. John want destroy car DBF 'John wants to destroy the car: (30)

]ean 1 veut

PRo 1

detruire l'

auto.

HAITIAN

(= (50a) in Lefebvre 1998: 272) FRENCH

John want destroy DBF car 'John wants to destroy the

car:

5· Due to the complexity of the data and to the space required to analyse them, the facts involving subject to subject raising will be discussed in a separate paper. For a preliminary discussion, see Lefebvre (1998: 266-269) and the references therein.

137

138

Claire Lefebvre

(31)

MaUtd; ke PRO; njan df de. Malita want eat DEF DEM 'Malita wants to eat that one:

(32)

John 1 wants PRo1 to leave.

(33)

E;

(34)

ke PRO; bini. 3sG want come 'He wants to come:

(= (74) in Bally, Dionne & Olguin 2006:21) ENGLISH PAPIAMENTU (= (68) in Bally, Dionne & Olguin 2006:21)

El1 quiere PRo1 comer. 3sG want 'He wants to

(35)

SARAMACCAN

SPANISH

eat

eat:

K3ku1 jl6 PRo1 nd gba

m5tO 5. Koku want MO destroy car DEF 'Koku wants to destroy the cal:'

FoNGBE (=(SOc) in Lefebvre 1998:272)

Verbs of the want-class in all seven languages may thus select an infinitival complement whose subject is controlled by the matrix verb subject The above facts are not exceptional. Verbs meaning 'to wan~ however, have other properties that are not shared by all the languages under scrutiny in this paper.

5.2

Verbs meaning 'to want' selecting a tensed CP complement

The Haitian verb vle 'to want' may select a tensed complement introduced by the tensed complementiser pou (Koopman & Letebvre 1982). The embedded subject may be either coreferential with the matrix subject or disjoint in reference from it (Koopman 1986; Sterlin 1988, 1989), as shown in (36). (36)

111 vle

pou

l11J vlni.

he want coMP he come 'He1 wants PRo 1to come: 'He1 wants~ to come:

HAITIAN

(= (18b) in Koopman 1986)

The two interpretations available for Haitian vie are not available for the corresponding French verb vouloir 'to want' (Koopman 1986: 240). The French verb vouloir 'to want' only allows for disjoint reference of the subjects, as shown in (37). (37)

Il1

veut qu'

ilJ

vienne.

3rd want coMP 3rd come # 'He1 wants PRO 1to come: 'He1 wants himj to come:

FRENCH

(= (1Sb) in Koopman 1986)

In Saramaccan, the verb ke 'to want' may select a tensed complement introduced by the tensed complementiserfu (Lefebvre & Loranger 2006 and references therein). The embedded subject may be either coreferential with the matrix subject or disjoint in reference from it, as shown in (38).


(38)

fu au1 bi sa baja. 3sg want COMP 3SG TNS MOD dance 'She; wanted PRO; to be able to dance.' 'She; wanted~ to be able to dance.'

SARAMACCAN

A 1 ke

(= (49) in Wijnen&Alleyne 1987:48) (Lefebvre 2005)

In contrast, in English, the verb want typically takes an infinitival complement- e.g., Maty wants to come. It does not take a tensed complement, as is shown in (39). Note, however, the difference in grammaticality judgements between sentences (39a and b). While (a) is clearly ungrammatical, (b) is questionable. As pointed out in Chomsky (1981: 19), such sentences are not idiomatic English "but we may assume this to be an accidental gap reflecting properties that are not part of core grammar:' (39)

a b.

*Ma1)'t wanted that she1 come. ?Mary1 wanted that John1come.

ENGLISH ENGLISH

In Papiamentu, the verb ke 'to want' may select a tensed complement introduced by the tensed complementiser pa (Lefebvre & Therrien 2007b ). For some speakers, the embedded subject may be either coreferential with the matrix subject or disjoint in reference from it, as shown in (40). ( 40)

ke pa e111 bini. 6 3SG Want COMP 3SG come 'He1wants PRo1to come.' 'He1wants heri to come.'

E,

PA PIAMl!NTU

(Kouwenberg pc) (Kearns 2008b)

In Spanish, however, the subject of the tensed complement of the verb querer 'to want' is obligatorily disjoint from that of the matrix clause, as shown in (41). (41)

Bl1 desea que

el1 venga. 3SG Want COMP 3SG come # 'He1wants PRO 1to come.' 'He1 wants himi to come.'

SPANISH

(= (68) in Olguin 2006: 33)

All three creoles allow for the subject of the tensed complement clause of verbs of the ·want-class to be either coreferential with or disjoint in reference from the subject of the main clause. This contrasts with the corresponding verbs in the respective superstrate languages of the creoles, which only allow for a disjoint reference of the two subjects. As shown below, however, the referential properties of subjects of verbs of the want-class in the three creoles parallel those of the corresponding verbs in the substrate languages. For example, in Fongbe, the verb jl6 'to want' may select a tensed complement introduced by the tensed complementiser (Lefebvre & Brousseau 2002: 116-118). As is the case in the three creoles, the embedded subject can either be coreterential with or disjoint in reference from the matrix subject. Koopman (1986:241) provides similar examples from Vata and Akan.

nu

6. The speakers in Kearns (2008b) accept only the second interpretation.

139

140

Claire Lefebvre

(42)

nu

jl6 ei/1 n£ yl. 3rd want coMP 3rd suB leave 'He1 wants PRo 1to leave: 'He1 wants him i to leave:

E;

FoNGBB

(= (49) in Lefebvre 1998:272)

Verbs meaning 'to want' selecting a IP complemenf

5·3

Both Haitian and Fongbe may select an IP complement containing an overt subject This embedded overt subject in (43a) must be referentially disjoint from the matrix subject. As can be seen by the ungrammaticality of (43b ), French does not offer this option. In contrast, Fongbe, like Haitian, does, as shown in (43c). (43)

a

Ll1 vle 11 vini.

b.

'He wants him to come: *II veut lui venir [Lit.: 'He wants him to come.1

c.

E; ba e1 wa. 'He wants him to come:

HAITIAN

(= (5la) in Lefebvre 1998:273)

FRENCH (= (51b) in Lefebvre 1998:273) FONGBB (= (5lc) in Lefebvre 1998:273)

Sterlin (1988, 1989) shows that, in Haitian, complements of verbs of the want-class may, in some cases, appear without the complementiser pou, as in (44b). She points out the difference in the referential properties of the embedded subjects between (44a) and (44b). In (44a), the subject of the embedded clause may be either coreferential with or disjoint in reference from the matrix subject. In (44b ), however, the subject of the embedded complement must be referentially disjoint from the matrix subject (44)

a.

Li1 vle

pou

1111 vini.

HAITIAN

he want coMP he come 'He wants for him to come: b.

Li1 vle

11 vini.

he want he come 'He wants him to come:

HAITIAN

(= (8) inSterlin 1988)

Sterlin argues that, while the embedded clause in (44a) is tensed, the embedded clause in (44b) is tenseless. First, (44a) allows for the expression of the anterior marker te, as shown in (45a). This marker is disallowed in a tenseless clause (Lefebvre 1998: 116). Second, the extraction site of the embedded subject of (44a) requires the resumptive form ki, as is shown in (45b ). Since resumptive ki is inherently [+nominative] and since nominative is the case assigned to the subject of tensed clauses, ki is only allowed in tensed clauses (Lefebvre 1998:193-208 and references therein). (45)

7.

a

Li1 vie pou 1111 te vini. he want coMP he ANT come 'He wants him to have come:

For a discussion on verbs selecting an IP complement, see Wiirmbrand (2001).

HAITIAN

(= (22a) inSterlin 1988)


b.

(Se) ki moun1 li vle pou ki; vini? (it-is) which man he want coMP RBS come 'Who does he want to come?'

HAITIAN

(= (19c) inSterlin 1988)

By contrast. the embedded clause in (44)b is not tensed because it does not allow for the expression of the anterior marker te, as shown by the ungrammaticality of (46a), nor for ki in the extraction site of the embedded subject, as shown by the ungrammaticality of (46b ). (46)

a b.

*Li vle 1 te vini [Lit.: 'He wants him to have come.'] *(Se) ki moun Jan vle ki vini? [Lit.: 'Who does John want to come?']

HAITIAN

(= (21a) inSterlin 1988) HAITIAN

(= (19d) inSterlin 1988)

Sterlin (1988) shows that the difference in the referential properties of the embedded subjects in the sentences in (44) follows directly from the difference in finiteness between (44a) and (44b ). In (44a), the embedded clause is introduced by the [+tense] complementiser pou.This complementiser creates, for the embedded clause, a binding domain which is distinct from that of the main clause. Hence, the subject of the embedded clause may be interpreted as being either coreferential with, or referentially disjoint from, the subject of the main clause. By contrast, in (44b), the embedded clause is not introduced by any complementiser, such that the subject of the embedded clause is in the same binding domain as the subject of the main clause. Consequently, it must be referentially disjoint from the matrix subject The difference in the finiteness of the two sentences in (44) raises the question of what case is assigned to the overt subject of the infinitival complement clause in (44b). Sterlin proposes that, because there is no complementiser in this sentence, the embedded subject of the non-finite clause is in the case-assigning domain of the matrix verb. She proposes that the embedded subject in (44b) is assigned accusative case by the matrix verb, just like him is in the English sentence John ·wants him to come under Exceptional Case Marking. This analysis, though theoretically motivated (e.g., Chomsky 1981 ), is not reflected in the morphology of the Haitian pronominal forms, as pronominal forms are not morphologically distinguished on the basis of case in this language. Thus, the two pronominal forms occurring in the subject position of the embedded clause in (44a and b) are phonologically identical. Nevertheless, a look at the substrate data provides support for the above proposal. As is the case of Haitian vle, Fongbe jl6 may select either a tensed complement, as in (47a), or a tenseless complement as in (47b). The Fongbe embedded clause in (47a) has the same properties as the Haitian embedded clause in (44a). First, itis introduced by the tensed complementiser nf (or nu) which corresponds to Haitian pou (Lefebvre 1998: 118-119). Second, the embedded subject pronoun may be either coreterential with or referentially disjoint from the main clause subject. The Fongbe embedded clause in (47b) has the same properties as the Haitian embedded clause in (44b ). It is not introduced by a complementiser. Its subject is thus in the domain of the main verb and, therefore, it must be disjoint in reference from the matrix subject. (47)

a

E1

j/6

nflnu

e11J

nf

yi.

3rd want coMP 3rd sUB leave 'He1 wants that he11i leave:

FONGBR

(= (55a) in Lefebvre 1998: 275)

141

142

Claire Lefebvre

b.

Ei jl6

eJ yi. 3rd want 3rd leave 'He1 wants~ to leave.'

FoNGBB (= (55b) in Lefebvre 1998:275)

Strikingly enough, the embedded subject pronouns in (47a) and b are distinguished for Case. In Fongbe, the third person pronoun bears a low tone when it occurs in a [+objective] context and a high tone elsewhere. In (47b ), the embedded subject pronoun bears a low tone, showing that it is in the objective case. In (47a), however, the pronoun bears a high tone, as does a pronoun in the subject position of any tensed clause. The Fongbe facts can be accounted for straightforwardly along the lines of the analysis proposed by Sterlin for Haitian. In (47a), the embedded subject is assigned nominative case within the tensed embedded clause, whereas in (47b) it is assigned accusative case by the matrix verb. There are several striking facts about the data discussed in this section. First, while French verbs of the wa.n t-class select only one type of infinitival complement (without an overt subject as in (30)), both Haitian and Fongbe select two types of such complements. In the first type, there is no overt subject in the embedded clause, but the embedded clause subject is understood as coreferential with that of the matrix clause (see (29) and (35), respectively). In the second type, in both languages, an overt subject must be referentially disjoint from the matrix subject (see (43a and c), respectively). The selectional properties of the Haitian verb thus follow the properties of the substrate verb. Furthermore, the availability of an overt subject is attributable to the fact that the Haitian and Fongbe verbs can assign accusative case to the subject of the embedded clause, a property that the French verb vou.loir does not have. What about Saramaccan? For some speakers, Saramaccan is like Haitian and Fongbe, as they accept ke with an infinitival complement manifesting an overt subject, as shown in (48). (48) A1 ke henJ go 3SG want 3SG go 'He1 wanted hlmi to go:

SARAMACCAN (Kearns 2008a)

I assume that, as is the case in Haitian and Fongbe, the subject pronoun of the embedded clause is assigned accusative case by the matrix verb. In this respect, Saramaccan is like English, its superstrate language, as shown in (49 ). (49) He1 wanted him 1 to go.

ENGLISH

As for Papiamentu, it appears to be like Haitian, Fongbe and Saramaccan. In this language as well, the verb meaning 'to want' takes an infinitival complement with an overt subject that must be disjoint in reference from the matrix subject This is shown in (50). (50) E ke e bini. 3sG want 3sG come 'He1 wants himj to come.'

PAPIAMBNTU (Kearns 2008b)

This option is not available in Spanish, as shown by the ungrammaticality of (51). (51) *Qulere1 e/1/leJ venir want.3sG 3sG come

SPANISH


So, again, all three creoles display the same pattern, which replicates that of their substrate languages, regardless of what their superstrate languages allow.

6.

The selectional properties of verbs meaning 'to promise'

A three-way comparison of the selectional properties of verbs meaning 'to promise' shows that the properties of the creoles verbs differ from those of their superstrate languages, but match those of their substrate languages. In Haitian, the verb pwomet 'to promise' does not select an infinitival complement, as is shown by the ungrammaticality of (52a). However, it does select a tensed complement introduced by the tensed complementiser pou. In this case, the embedded subject is referentially free, as shown in ( 52b) and ( 52c), respectively. (52) a.

*M; pmmet Ja11 PRO; vini

HAITIAN

promise John come [lit.: 'I promised John to come:] M 1 pmmet Ja11 pou m1 vini. I promise John coMP I come 'I promised John that I will come: M pwc}met Jan 1 pou liuJ vini. I promise John coMP 3so come 'I promised John that he will come: I

b.

c.

(= (56a) in Lefebvre 1998:276)

HAITIAN (= (56b) in Lefebvre 1998:276)

HAITIAN (Lefebvre's field notes)

In contrast to the Haitian verb pwomet, the French verb promettre 'to promise' may take an infinitival complement, as shown by the grammaticality of (53a). It may also take a tensed complement and, in this case as well, the embedded subject is referentially free, as shown in (53b) and (53c), respectively. (53) a

/'1 al

promis

a

Jean de

PRo 1 venlr. come

I AUX promise CASE John COMP 'I promised John to come:

b.

C.

/'! al promis a

Jean que jei viendrai. I AUX promise CASE John COMP I come.PUT 'I promised John that I will come: J' ai promis a fean 1 qu' ilVj viendra. 1SG AUX promise CASE John COMP 3SG come.PUT 'I promised John that he will come:

FRENCH (= (57a) in Lefebvre 1998: 276) FRENCH (= (57b) in Lefebvre 1998:276)

FRENCH

So, although the French (see (53)) and Haitian (see (52)) data are similar for (b) and (c), they differ for (a). The Fongbe data in (54) present the same pattern as the Haitian in (52). As shown in (54), the notion 'to promise' in Fongbe is rendered by the verb q3 which basically means 'to say'. This verb does not select an infinitival complement, but rather a tensed complement Here also, the embedded subject is reterentially free, as shown in (54b and c).

143

144

Claire Lefebvre

(54) a

b.

c.

*N1 q:J m4 K:Jku PRo1 nd wd 1sG say to Koku MO come [lit.: 'I promised Koku to come.1 N1 q:J 11u K:Jku q:J n1 11d wd. 1sG say to Koku coMP 1sG MO come 'I promised Koku that I will come? N q:J 11u K:Jku 1 q:J eui 11d wd. 1SG say to Koku COMP 3SG MO come 'I promised Koku that he will come?

FoNGBB (=

(58a) in Lefebvre 1998: 277) FoNGBB

(=

(58b) in Lefebvre 1998: 277) FoNGBB (Lefebvre's field notes)

Thus, while the subcategorisation properties of the Haitian verb meaning 'to promise' in (52) do not entirely match those of the corresponding French verb in (53), they correspond exactly to those of the corresponding Fongbe verb in (54). The Saramaccan data present a pattern that is similar to that of the Haitian and Fongbe data. Afl shown in (SSa), the verb paamisi 'to promise' does not select an infinitival complement. It selects a tensed complement whose subject is referentially free, as shown in (SSb) and (SSe). (55) a

*Mi 1 paamisi di

mii PR0 1 baja 1sG promise DBP child dance [lit.: 'I promised the child to dance.1

b.

Mi 1 paamisi di

c.

1SG promise DBP child COMP 1SG come help 3SG 'I promised the child to help him: (= (4c) in Wijnen&Alleyne 1987:47; Kearns 2008a) Mi paamisi di mii1 tda au1 6 baja. SARAMACCAN 1SG promise DBP child COMP 3SG PUT dance (Kearns 2008a; Lefebvre 2005) 'I promised the child that he will dance:

mii fu

mi1 ko

SARAMACCAN

heepi hen.

(Lefebvre 2005) SARAMACCAN

This contrasts with the selectional properties of the English verb 'to promise' which selects either an infinitival complement, as in (56a), or a tensed complement, as in (56b and c). (56) a b. c.

I 1 promised John PRo 1 to come.

ENGLISH ENGLISH ENGLISH

I1 promised John that I; would come. I promised John 1 that hev1 would come.

In Papiamentu, the verb priminti 'to promise' does not select an infinitival complement, as shown by the ungrammaticality of(S7a). It selects a tensed complement introduced by the tensed complementiser ku (Lefebvre & Therrien 2007a). In this case, the embedded subject is referentially free, as shown in (57b) and (57 c), respectively. (57) a

*Nan 1 a 3PL

b.

Nan 1 a

primlntf Juan PRo1 bini

ASP promise Juan

primlntf Juan ku

PAPIAMI!NTU (= (79a) in Olguin 2006: 36)

come

bini. 8

PAPIAMI!NTU

3PL ASP promise Juan COMP PUT 3PL ASP come 'They promised Juan that they will come?

lo

nan 1 a

(= (79b) in Olguin 2006: 37)

8. Marta Dijkhoffnotes that (57b) is rather marked in Papiamentu.


c.

Nan a

prlml11ff Juan1 ku

lo

el11i a

bl11i.

3PL ASP promise Juan COMP FUT 3SG ASP come 'They promised Juan that he will come?

PAPIAMENTU

(= (79c) In Olguin 2006: 37)

In contrast to the Papiamentu verb priminti, the Spanish verb prometer 'to promise' may take an infinitival complement, as shown by the grammaticality of (58a). As in Papiamentu, the Spanish verb may also take a tensed complement whose subject is referentially free, as shown in (58b) and (58c), respectively. (58)

a

(Ellos) 1 Le

prometleron PRo 1 venlr a Juan.

SPANISH

they 3sG promise.3PL come to Juan 'They promised Juan to come:

(= (7Sa) In Olguin 2006: 36)

b.

(Ellos) 1 Le

c.

they 3sG promise.3PL to Juan coMP they come.3PL 'They promised Juan that they would come: (Ellos) Le prometleron a Juan 1 que (el) 11J vendrfa. they 3SG promise.3PL to Juan COMP 3SG come.3SG 'They promised Juan that he would come:

prometleron a Juan que

(ellos) 1 vendrfan.

SPANISH

(= (78b) In Olguin 2006: 36) SPANISH

(= (78c) In Olguin 2006: 36)

So, although the Spanish (see (58)) and the Papiamentu (see (57)) data are similar for (b) and (c), they differ for (a). The Papiamentu data in (57), however, match the Fongbe data in (54). Summarising: while the three creoles' verbs select only a tensed complement, the superstrate corresponding verbs also select an infinitival complement. Once again, the creole verbs manifest the properties of their substrate languages.

7·

The selectional properties of verbs meaning 'to ask' or 'to request'

Let us first consider Haitian, French and Fongbe. While the French verb selects an infinitival complement, the Haitian and Fongbe verbs do not, as shown in (59). (59) a

~Yo

mande Marl1 PRo 1 patl

3PL request Mary b.

c.

1/s

ont demandf

HAITIAN

(= (20b) In Koopman 1986)

leave

a

Marie1 de

3PL AUX request to Mary COMP 'They asked Mary to leave: ~Ye by:S Marl1 PRo 1 yl 3PL request Mary leave

PR01 partir.

FRENCH

leave FONGBE (= (59c) in Lefebvre 1998: 277)

On the other hand, while the French verb does not select a tensed complement with the coreferential properties in (60b ), the Haitian and Fongbe verbs do. (60) a

b.

mande Marl1 pou 11 paN. 3PL request Mary coMP 3sG leave 'They asked Mary to leave: Yo

*fls ont demande

a

3PL

to Mary

AUX

request

Marle1 qu'

HAITIAN

(= (20a) in Koopman 1986) elle 1 parte

COMP 3SG leave

FRENCH

145

146

Claire Lefebvre

c.

Ye by:S Mari 1 cf3 e; 11! yl. 3PL request Mary coMP 3sG MO leave 'They asked Mary to leave.'

FoNGBB (= (60c) in Lefebvre 1998:33)

Thus, the properties ofboth the Haitian and Fongbe verbs differ from those of the French verb in the same way. The Saramaccan, English and Fongbe data manifest the same pattern. While the English verb selects an infinitival complement, the Saramaccan and Fongbe verbs do not, as shown in (61). (61)

a

b. c.

*De takl da Mary1 PRo 1 ~ they ask to Mary leave [Lit.: 'They asked Mary to leave:] They asked Mary1 PROt to leave *Ye by.J Mari1 PRo 1 yl 3PL request Mary leave

SARAMACCAN

(=

(Lefebvre 2005) ENGLISH FONGBB (59c) in Lefebvre 1998: 277)

On the other hand, while the English verb does not select a tensed complement with the coreferential properties in (62b ), the Saramaccan and Fongbe verbs do. (62)

a

Ml taki da hen 1gbee a1 bi go. 9 1SG tell give blm COMP 3SG PA go 'I told him to go:

b. c.

*They asked Mary that she leave Ye by:S Mari 1 cf3 e1 11! yi. 3PL request Mary coMP 3sG MO leave 'They asked Mary to leave.'

SARAMACCAN (= (3j) in Wijnen & Alleyne 1987:46) ENGLISH FoNGBB (= (60c) in Lefebvre 1998:33)

Finally, let us consider the data from Papiamentu, Spanish and Fongbe. While the Spanish verb selects an infinitival complement, as in (63b), the Papiamentu and the Fongbe verbs do not, as shown in (63a) and (63c), respectively. (63)

a

b.

c.

*nan a

suplika nan mama1 pa PROt bini 10

3PL ASP ask 3PL mother for PRO come [Lit.: 'They asked their mother to come.'] Le suplicaron PRo1 venir a su mama1 3sG ask.3PL come to their mother 'They asked their mother to come.' *Ye by.JMari1 PRo 1yi [Lit.: 'They asked Mary to leave.']

PAPIAMI!NTU (= (77a) in Olguin 2006: 35)

SPANISH

(=

(Olgufnpc) FONGBB (59c) in Lefebvre 1998: 277)

Thus again, the properties ofboth the Papiamentu and Fongbe verbs differ from those of the Spanish in the same way. As for the coreferential properties in (64), all three languages are similar.

9· Note that the informants in Kearns (2008a) have a question mark on or reject (62a). 10.

Marta Dijkhoffnotes that this sentence is grammatical for her.


(64)

a

Nan pidi Ana1 pa

e1

bini.

PAPIAMENTU

3PL ask Anna COMP 3SG come 'They asked Anna to come:

b.

Ellos le

pide11

a A11a; que

(adapted from (76) In Olguin 2006: 34)

venga1•

they 3SG ask3PL to Anna COMP come. SUB.3SG 'They ask Anna to come: c.

Ye by:S Marii

q:3

el

n{ yi.

3PL ask Mary COMP 3SG MO leave 'They asked Mary to leave:

SPANISH

(= (75a) In Olguin 2006: 34) FoNGBB

(= (60c) in Lefebvre 1998:278)

The selectional properties of the verbs meaning 'to ask/to request' in the three creoles under study are not always the same as those of the corresponding verbs in their respective su perstrate. They are, however, systematically parallel to those of the corresponding verbs in their substrate languages.

Double object verbs

8.

There are two manifestations of the double object verbs. John sent Mary a letter is an example of the Recipient-Theme construction (NP NP), whereas John sent a letter to Mary is an example of the Theme-Locative/Goal construction (NP PP). These two constructions are semantically and syntactically distinct as is extensively argued for in Lefebvre (1994 and references therein).n This section focuses on the Recipient-Theme construction. It is shown that, although all three ereales under study have the Recipient-Theme construction, only one of the su perstrate languages, namely English, displays this construction. The construction is however available in the substrate languages of all three creoles. The sentence in (65) illustrates the Recipient-Theme construction for Haitian. (65)

Mwen bay Pol liv

la.

give Paul book Dl!P 'I gave Paul the book:

HAITIAN

I

(= (19) in Lumsden 1994)

French does not have the Recipient-Theme construction (Kayne 1984; Tremblay 1991), as is shown by the ungrammaticality of the sentence in (66).12

For example, it is argued that the semantics of the NP NP construction may be represented as ~ent CAUSE Recipient BECOME in possession of Theme' as opposed to that of the NP PP constrUL""tion which may be represented as ~ent CAUSE Theme undergo change of location/possession to Goal: Further, it is argued that this semantic difference is reflected in several ways in the syntax, such that the two constructions have different syntactic representations which are not derivable from one another.

11.

12. One of the reviewers remarks that French seems to have the NP NP constrUL""tion when the two objects of the verb appear as clitics as in (i):

(i)

Je le lui ai envoye 1st 3rd 3rd AUX send 'I sent it to him:

FRENCH

147

148

Claire Lefebvre

(66)

*J' ai

donne Paul le

livre

I

give

book

AUX

Paul

DEF

FRENCH

French only has a Theme-Goal construction where the Goal is either assigned Dative Case by or marked for dative case a, depending on one's analysis of a. This is illustrated in (67). (67) J' ai dom11? le livre a Paul. I AUX give DEF book to Paul 'I gave the book to Paul.'

a.,

FRENCH

In Sararnaccan, the Recipient-Theme construction is available, as exarnplified in (68). (68) Mi da Carlo wan fisi. 1sG give Carlo a fish 'I gave Carlo a fish:

SARAMACCAN

(= (188) in Bally, Dionne & Olguin 2006:48)

The Recipient-Theme construction is also available in English, as shown in (69). (69)

I gave John a book.

ENGLISH

In Papiamentu, the Recipient-Theme construction is available, as shown in (70). (70)

B~

duna Michiel un doshi di lusaft. Michael a box of matches 'You gave Michel a box of matches:

PAPIAMENTU

2sG.ASP give

(Maurer 1988: 378)

However, it is not available in Spanish, as shown by the ungrammaticality of (71 ). (71) *Marfa le dio Juan el libro Maria 3so give.3so Juan DEF book

SPANISH

(Olguin 2006:43)

Spanish is like French in having only a Theme-Goal construction, as illustrated in (72 ). (72)

Marfa le

dio

e1

libro a Juan

SPANISH

Maria 3so give.3so DEF book to Juan 'Maria gave the book to Juan:

(Olguin 2006:40)

Where do all three creoles draw the Recipient-Theme construction from? Even though one could claim that Saramaccan draws this property from English, it could not be claimed that Haitian and Papiamentu draw it from their respective superstrate languages, for neither of them have the Recipient-Theme construction. As pointed out in Koopman (1986:235), with the exception of Mande languages, West African languages all display the Recipient-Theme construction, illustrated in (73), based on Fongbe (Lefebvre 1992, 1993, 1994).

In my view, an analysis of (i) as an instantiation of the NP NP construction would be erroneous. Typically, in the NP NP construction, the two NPs both bear accusative case. This is visible in languages with overt case such as Quechua (Lefebvre & Muysken 1988). In French, pronominal ditics are marked for case. Thus, in (i), leis accusative (and refers to the Theme), whereas lui is dative (and refers to the Goal). The sentence in (i) is thus an instantiation of the NP PP construction, illustrated in (67).


(73)

K3ku ml Asl'bd :~.we :5. Koku give Asiba house DEF 'Koku gave Asiba the house:

FoNGBE

(= (la, b) in Lefebvre 1994)

I thus conclude that the availability of the Recipient-Theme construction in all three Atlantic creoles has been inherited from their West African substrate languages (Lefebvre 1998: 287-302, 357-360). This is in line with the conclusion in Michaelis and Haspelmath (2003), based on a sample of250 languages, according to which the Recipient-Theme construction is found only in those creoles whose substrate languages have the construction, regardless of whether superstrate languages have it (contra Bruyn et al. 1999 ). 13

9·

Serial verbs

While serial verbs are not available in French, English nor Spanish, they are available in all three creoles under analysis in this paper and in West African languages. I thus assume the availability of this construction to have been inherited from the West Mrican substrate languages of the creoles (Lefebvre 1998: 355-357). Due to space limitations, the details concerning the verbs participating in this construction will have to be discussed elsewhere. For further discussion on the relationship between the serial verb construction in creoles and their substrate languages, see Donohue (this volume), Jacob and Grimes (this volume), Lefebvre (this volume a).

10.

Conclusion

This paper has investigated the properties of a subset of verbs in three Atlantic creoles: Haitian Creole, Saramaccan and Papiamentu, which share a basic core of substrate languages (among which the Gbe languages), but have different superstrate languages: French, English and Spanish, respectively. It was shown that for each class of verbs, the creoles' verbs have the same properties as those of corresponding verbs in the substrate languages, and among themselves, regardless of the properties of the corresponding verbs in the superstrate languages. These findings are summarised in Table 1. Furthermore, it was shown that, in most cases, the properties of the creoles' verbs are different from those of the superstrate verbs from which they draw their label Therefore, my conclusion is that the properties of the West African substrate languages verbs have been carried over into the Atlantic creoles. This conclusion may not be surprising for Haitian Creole and Saramaccan, generally considered as "radical creoles" in the literature, but it is more surprising for Papiamentu, which is not considered a "radical" a creole. The data show that, even in this case, have the substrate properties of verbs made their way into the creole.

13. The question of the range of the double object verbs in the languages under study is addressed in Lefebvre (2009).

149

150

Claire Lefebvre

Table 1. Swnmary of the properties of verbs in three creoles and in their source languages H

BODY-state expressions • body part + active verb + experiencer • experiencer + stative verb + body part

Fr

+

Sa +

+

Object to subject raising verbs • verbs meaning 'to remain/to be left' • verbs meaning 'to be missing/to lack' • raising of the argument referring to the missing object • raising of the argwnent deprived of the missing object Verbs meaning 'to want' • selecting a [-T] CP complement • selecting a [+T] CP complement free reference of embedded subject • selecting a IP complement: ECM

+

+

+

+ +

+

+

+

+

+ +

+ +

+ +

+

+

+

+

+

+

+ +

+

+

+

+ +

+

Verbs meaning 'to ask' or 'to request' • selecting a [-T] complement • selecting a [+T] complement and matrix object and embedded subject are coreferential

+

+

Availability of the NP N P construction Availability of serial verbs

+ +

+ +

+

+

+

+

+

+

+

+ +

Fongbe

+

+ +

+

Sp

+

+

+

+ +

Verbs meaning 'to promise' • selecting a [-T] complement • selecting a [+T] complement

Pa

+

+

WEATHER verbs/expressions • Wl!ATHER verbs • natural element + non Wl!ATHER verb

E

+ + + +

+

+ +

+

+

+

+

+

+ + +

List of abbreviations ANT ASP AUX

CASI! COMP DI!F DEM FOC FUT

IMP

we MO

marker of anteriority aspect auxiliary case complementiser definite determiner demonstrative determiner focus future imperfective aspect locative mood

MOD OP PA PART PL PRO 3rd RES SG

SUB TNS

modal operator past partitive plural pronominal without a phonemic representation third person resumptive pronoun singular subjunctive marker tense


References Aboh, R 0. 2006a. Complementation in Saramaccan and Gungbe: The case of C-type modal particles. Natural languages and Linguistic Theory 24(1): 1-55. Aboh, R 0. 2006b. The role of the syntax-semantic interface in language transfer. In L2 Acquisition and Creole Genesis: Dialogues [Language Acquisition and Language Disorders 34], C. Lefebvre, L White & C. Jourdan (eds), 221-253. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Alvarez Garcia, T. et al 1998. Collins Spanish-English, English-Spanish Dictionary. New York NY: Harper Collins. Arends, J. 1995. Demographic factors in the formation ofSranan. In The EarlyStage.s ofCreolisation [Creole Language Library 13], J. Arends (ed.), 233-277. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Atkins, B. et al1987. Collins-Robert French-English, English-French Dictionary. New York NY: Harper Collins. Bally, A-S., Dionne, C. & Olguin, M. 2006. Les constructions verb ales dans q uatre langues creoles de fAtlantique et leurs langues contributrices. Research report, Universite du Quebec a Montreal Bickerton, D. 1981. Roots of Language. Ann Arbor MI: Karoma. Bruyn, A., Muysken P. & Verrips, M. 1999. Double-object constructions in the creole languages: Development and acquisition. In Language Creation and Language Change, M. A. F. DeGraff (ed.), 329-337. Cambridge MA: The MIT Press. Byrne, F. 1987. Grammatical Relations in a Radical Creole. Verb Complementation in Sarwnaccan [Creole Language Library 3]. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Chomsky, N. 1981. Lectures on Gavernment and Binding. Dordrecht: Foris. Correard, M.-H. & Grundy, V. (eds). 1994. The Oxford-Hachette Dictionary: French-English, English-French. New York/Paris: OUP/Hachette. Dumais, D. 1988. INFL en creole hailien. In Etudes syntaxiques, morphologiques et phonologiques, Research report prepared for SSHRCC, FCAR and PAFAC on the project Haiti-Fan, C. Lefebvre (ed.), 242-265. Montreal: Universite du Quebec aMontreal Flexner, S. B. & Hauck, L. C. (eds). 1987. The Random House Dictionary of the English Language. New York NY: Random House. Grimes, B. F. 2000. Ethnologue: Languages of the World. 14th edn. Dallas TX: SIL. Giildemann, T. 2007. The Macro-Sudan belt: Towards identifying a linguistic area in northern sub-Saharan Africa. In A Linguistic Geography ofAfrica, B. Heine & D. Nurse (eds), 151-185. Cambridge: CUP. Henriquez, M. 1954. Laiza porko sushi. Un fantasia basa riba e komedia 'Pygmalioti di G. B. Shaw. Korsou. Hoftmann, H. 2003. Dictionnaire Fon - FratJfais avec esquisse grwnmaticale. Koln: RUdiger Koppe. Jarman, B. G., Russell, R., Styles Carvajal, C. & Horwood, J. (eds). 1998. The Oxford Spanish Dictionary: SpanishEnglish, English-Spanish. Oxford: OUP. Juliana, R 1970. Echa cutmta. Amsterdam. Kayne, R S. 1984. Comrectedness atJd Binary Branching. Dordrecht: Foris. Kearns, L 2008a. Corpus Saramaka. Universite du Quebec a Montreal. Kearns, L 2008b. Corpus Papiamentu. Universite du Quebec a Montreal Koopman, H. 1986. The genesis of Haitian: Implications of a comparison of some features of the syntax of Haitian, French and West Mrican languages. In Substrata Versus Universals in Creole Genesis [Creole Language Library 1], P. Muysk.en & N. Smith (eds), 231-258. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Koopman, H. & Lefebvre, C. 1982. PU: Marqueur de mode, preposition et complementeur. In Syntaxe de l'hailien, C. Lefebvre, H. Magloire-Holly & N. Piou (eds), 64-91. Ann Arbor MI: Karoma. Labov, W. 1972. Sociolinguistic Patterns. Philadelphia PA: The University of Pennsylvania Press. Lefebvre, C. 1992. The double object construction and the DP hypothesis. McGill Working Papers in Linguistics 7: 113-131. Lefebvre, C. 1993. Dominance versus precedence in the double object construction: New facts from Fongbe. Revue canadienne de linguistique 38: 395-425. Lefebvre, C. 1994. New facts from Fongbe on the double object constructions. Lingua 94: 69-163.

151

152

Claire Lefebvre

Lefebvre, C. 1998. Creole Genesis and the Acquisition of Grammar: The Case ofHaitian Creole. Cambridge: CUP. Lefebvre, C. 2004. Issues in the Study of Pidgin and Creole Languages. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Lefebvre, C. 2005. Corpus Sararnaka. Universite du Quebec a Montreal Lefebvre, C. 2009. On the prindpled nature of the respective contribution of substrate and superstrate languages to a creole's lexicon. In Roots of Creole Structures: Weighing the Contributions of Substrates and Superstrates [Creole Language Library 33], S. Michaelis (ed.), 197-223. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Lefebvre, C. & Brousseau, A-M. 2002. A GrammarofFongbe [Mouton Grammar Library 25]. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Lefebvre, C. & Loranger, V. 2006. On the properties of Saramaccan .fu: Synchronic and diachronic perspectives. Joumal of Pidgin and Creole Languages 21(2): 275-337. Lefebvre, C. & Loranger, V. 2008. A diachronic and synchronic account of the muhifu.nctionality of Saramaccan tda. Linguistics 46(6): 1167-1228. Lefebvre, C. & Muyslren, P. C. 1988. Mixed Categories: Nominalisations in Quechua [Studies in Natural Language and Linguistic Theory]. Dordrecht: Kluwer. Lefebvre, C. & Therrien, I. 2007a. The various dimensions of Paplamentu ku. Creolica. Lefebvre, C. & Therrien, I. 2007b. On the properties of Papiamentu pa: Synchronic and diachronic perspectives. In Synchronic and Diachronic Perspective on Contact Languages [Creole Language Library 32], M. Huber & V. Velupillai (eds), 215-256. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Lumsden, J. S. 1994. Possession: Substratum semantics in Haitian Creole. Jounud of Pidgin a,ul Creole Languages 9:25-51. Maurer, P. 1986. Le paplamento de Cura.;:ao: Un cas de creolisation atypique? Etudes moles 9(1): 97-113. Maurer, P. 1988. Les modifications temporelles et modales du verbe dans le papiamento de Curafao (Antilles Neerlmulaises). Hamburg: Buske. Michaelis, S. & Haspelmath, M. 2003. Ditransitive constructions: Creole languages in a cross-linguistic perspective. Creolica. Migge, B. M. 1998. Substrate Influence in the Formation of the Surinamese Plantation Creole: A Consideration of Sodohistorical Data and Linguistic Data from Ndyuka and Gbe. PhD dissertation, Ohio State University. Migge, B. M. 2003. Creole Formation as Language Contact: The Case o_fSuriname Creoles [Creole Language Library 25]. Amsterdam: John Benjarnins. Muyslren, P. C. 1994. Sararnaccan and Haitian: A comparison. JounJal of Pidgin and Creole La''lgullges 9: 305-314. Olguin, M. 2006. Analyse comparative des proprietes lexicales de dix classes de verbes en papiamentu et en espagnol MA thesis, Universite du Quebec a Montreal Parkvall, M. 2000. Out ofAfrica: African Influences in Atlantic Creoles. London: Battle bridge. Pinalie, P. 1992. Dictionnaire elementaire franfais-creole. Paris: L'Harmattan. Postma, J. 1990. The Dutch in the AtlmJtic Slave Trade, 1600-1815. Cambridge: CUP. Rountree, C., Asodanoe, J. & Glock. N. 2000. Saramaccan-English Word list (with idioms). Paramaribo: SIL Segurola, R P. B. 1963. Dictionnaire fon-franfais. Cotonou: Procure de fArchidiocese. Segurola, B. & Rassinoux, J. 2000. Dictionnaire Fon-Franfais. Madrid: Sodete des Missions africaines. Singler, J. V. 1993. The African presence in Caribbean French colonies in the seventeenth century: Documentary evidence. Travaux de recherche sur le creole haftien 16-17: 1-236 [UQAM]. Singler, J. V. 1996. Theories of creole genesis, sodohistorical considerations, and the evaluation of evidence: The case of Haitian creole and the relexification hypothesis. Joumal ofPidgin and Creole languages 11: 185-231. Smith, N. 1987. The Genesis of the Creole Languages of Surinam. PhD dissertation, University of Amsterdam. Sterlin, M.-D. 1988. Les di.fferentes caracteristiques de pou en creole hailien. Travaux de recherche sur le creole haftien 3: 1-34 [UQAM]. Sterlin, M.-D. 1989. Les caracteristiques de pou: Un modal en position de complementeur. Le creole haftien. Spedal issue of Ret'l.le quebecoise de linguistique 18(2): 131-147. 'fremblay, M. 1991. Possession and Datives: Binary Branching from Lexicon to Syntax. PhD dissertation, McGill University.


Valdman, A et a1 2007. Haitian Creole-English Bilingual Dictionary. Bloomington IN: Indiana University Creole Institute. Webster~ online Dictionary with Multilingual Thesaurus Translation. 2008. . Westerman, D. & Bryan, M. A 1970. The Languages of West Africa. Folkestone: Dawsons, The Gresham Press (new edn). Wijnen, B. & Alle}'Ile. M. C. 1987. A note on fu in Saramaccan. In Studies in Saramaccan Language Structure [Caribbean Culture Studies 2], M. C. Alleyne (ed.), 41-49. Amsterdam: Universiteit van Amsterdam. Wilrmbrand, S. 200 1. Infinitives: Restructuring and Clause Structure. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

153

Assessing the nature and role of substrate influence in the formation and development of the creoles of Suriname* Bettina Migge University College Dublin

Over the last 30 years or so, a significant amount of research has been carried out on the genesis and development of creoles. This research has shown that the creators of creoles' first languages made an important contribution to creole grammars, but that their overall role in any specific case was largely dependent on the social circumstances in which the creole emerged. This suggests that substrate influence always interacted with other sources. However, to date, relatively little research has been done on the various ways in which the creators' first languages influenced specific creole features and how this interaction was determined or constrained by other processes and sources. The aim of this paper is to investigate these issues in more detail in the light of ongoing research on the formation and development of the Tense, Mood and Aspect system of the creoles of Suriname. Keywords: language contact, substrate influence, creoles of Suriname (Ndyuka, Pamaka, Saamaka, Sranan Tongo), Gbe (Ajagbe, Pongbe, Gengbe, Maxigbe, Wacigbe, Xwelagbe, Xwlagbe), Tense, Mood and Aspect system

1.

Introduction

A significant amount of research on substrate influence in creole genesis has been carried out over the past 30 years. This research has mainly focused on the morphosyntactic system and, to a much lesser extent, on the lexicosemantic or even phonological subsystems of grammar. In addition to demonstrating the importance of substrate influence in creole genesis, this research has led to a continuous elaboration of the methodology for establishing substrate influence and to a better understanding of its role. While there exists by now widespread agreement that the This research was carried out within the framework of a 200 1-2004 research grant from the NSF entitled «The influence of West African Languages on the tense/mood/aspect (TMA) systems of two Surinamese creoles" (PI Donald Winford). I would like to hereby gratefully acknowledge the funding of the National Science Foundation (NSF Grant #BCS-0 113826). I would also like to thank informants in Benin, Suriname and French Guiana for generously giving their time.

156

Bettina Migge

creators of creoles' first languages played an important role in the emergence and development of creoles, there is still a fair amount of disagreement about several issues: a. b. c.

the nature of substrate features, the procedures to establish substrate influence and its interaction with other sources and processes.

In this paper, I address these three issues but particularly issues (a) and (c) in light of recent research I have been conducting with Donald Winford and Laurence Goury on the origin and development of the Tense, Mood and Aspect system (TMA) in the creoles of Suriname. The paper argues that substrate influence is not a uniform process, but affected creole grammars in a range of different ways, to different degrees and at different stages in a creole's development. While some creole features appear to be complete or near-complete calques of corresponding substrate features, in the case of others, only the structures from which a particular creole feature must have derived are based on substrate patterns. The differential role and effects of substrate influence are directly linked to its interaction with other factors and processes, namely influence from the superstrate(s) and processes of language-internal change. The paper assumes that substrate influence emerged in creoles because the creators of creoles structurally reinterpreted the kinds of superstrate structures that they encountered on the plantations according to the grammatical patterns and strategies of their Lls (Migge 2003a). The creoles of Suriname is a cover term for seven related languages, all ofwhich descend from the varieties that emerged on the plantations of Suriname between roughly 1680 and 1720 (Migge 2003a). Sranan Tango is associated with the descendants of slaves that remained on the plantations and are currently settled on the coastal strip and in the capital of Suriname, Paramaribo. In modern day Suriname, Sranan Tonga also functions as the national language and lingua franca of its multilingual population. The other six languages- Aluku, Ndyuka, Pamaka, Kwinti, Matawai and Saamaka- are each associated with a Maroon group of the same name. The Maroon societies emerged roughly between the late seventeenth century and the middle of the eighteenth century when slaves defected from the plantations and set up their own societies in the rainforest, out of the reach of the plantation society. The first three languages are highly mutually intelligible and are best characterised as dialects of a common language called Nenge( e) by its speakers and Eastern Maroon Creole (EMC) or Ndyuka by linguists (Goury & Migge 2003; Leglise & Migge 2006). The traditional villages of Eastern Maroons are located in the eastern part of Suriname and the western part of French Guiana along the Maroni River and its tributaries, the Lawa and the Tapanahoni Rivers, in the interior of the rainforest. Today, the majority of Maroon populations live in and around the urban centres of Suriname and French Guiana. However, the traditional villages retain great sociocultural value. Matawai and Saamaka are equally highly mutually intelligible, but there are important lexical differences between the former and the latter group- about 30% of the latter group's lexicon derives from Portuguese - which inhibits full mutual intelligibility with the other four creoles. The main Saamaka villages are located on the banks of the Suriname River and the Matawai villages are on the banks of the Saamaka River in the centre of Suriname. Kwinti shares features with both groups. The traditional villages are on the Coppename River and the Saramaka River in western Suriname. Mutual intelligibility between Sranan Tango and the

Assessing the nature and role of substrate influence in the creoles of Suriname

Maroon creoles is only partial, though the similarities are greater between the EMC and Sranan Tongo than between Saamak.a/Matawai and Sranan Tongo. The creoles of Suriname are generally classified as English-lexified creoles since the majority of their lexical items derive from English. The other two European languages that played a role in their formation, though to a lesser extent, are Portuguese and Dutch. In terms of non-European languages, varieties of Gbe and Kikongo and, to a lesser extent, Akan varieties were the main L1 s spoken by the creators of these creoles (Arends 1995). Local Amerindian languages also contributed vocabulary items related to flora, fauna and food-production processes (Goury 2003). The creoles of Suriname have figured prominently in the research on substrate influence (Migge & Smith 2007 and references therein). The main reason for this is that they are widely considered to be very conservative. They are quite distinct from their European input languages and arose and developed under extreme social conditions. This has greatly promoted the survival of African language patterns. Moreover, unlike many other creoles in the region, they have had very little or no contact with their main lexical source language - English - throughout their history because Suriname changed from an English to a Dutch colony in 1667, only 17 years after its foundation, which led to the slow exodus of English planters. Equally important is the fact that throughout most of the period of their emergence and early development, the ratio of Europeans to African slaves was quite low, effectively leading to the Africans' lack of exposure to the language( s) of the Europeans. The overwhelming majority of the slaves would have only had access to reduced second language and pidgin varieties of the European languages (Migge 2003a). The Maroon populations in particular have until recently lived in relative isolation in the interior of the rainforest and have had relatively little extensive contact with the other population groups and urban mainstream cultures in the region. Being the language of the coastal and urban population, urban varieties of Sranan Tongo have however undergone a significant amount of change due to contact with Suriname's official language, Dutch. Migge and Winford (2009), for instance, show that the difference between the Maroon creoles and Sranan Tongo in the expression of notions of possibility are related to influence from Dutch. A few other examples are discussed in de Kleine (2002).1 Most of the research on substrate influence on the creoles of Suriname has tocused on the Eastern Maroon Creoles (EMC), Saamaka and Sranan Tango and on morphosyntactic properties. There are studies on the role of substrate influence in the emergence of copula elements (McWhorter 1995, 1997; Migge 2002, 2003a), property items (Migge 2000), serial verb constructions (McWhorter 1992; Migge 1998a, b, 2003a), the Tense, Mood and Aspect system (Migge 2006; Migge & Goury 2008; Migge & Winford 2009; Winford & Migge 2007), focus constructions (Smith 1996), question words (Smith 2001), noun derivation (Migge 2003a), predicate reduplication (Migge 2003b), locational phrases (Bruyn 1995, 1996; Migge 1999). There is also some work on lexical similarities between creoles and West African languages (Huttar 1981, 1985, 1986). To date, few studies have systematically explored the structure and origin of the phonological system (but see Smith & Haboo 2007; Uffmann 2008), and particularly semantic (but see Essegbey 2005; Essegbey & Ameka 2007; Huttar, Essegbey & Ameka 2007) and

The differences between the Bakra and Nengre varieties of Sranan posited by Schwnann (1778 in Schuchardt 1914) and Riemer (1779 in Arends & Perl1995) may be largely due to differential Dutch influence.

1.

1S7

158

Bettina Migge

pragmatic notions in creoles. Overall these studies demonstrate that substrate influence played a vital role in the emergence of a great number of grammatical features in the creoles of Suriname. The first languages of the slaves appear to have influenced Maroon creoles most strongly. This research also points to the importance of other sources though. Superstrate influences and language-internal change, for instance. also contributed in many ways to the emergence and development of the properties of modem creoles. This paper is organised as follows: Section 2 briefly presents the research methodology for the project; Section 3 assesses the overall impact of substrate influence in the TMA system; Section 4 discusses the different ways in which the main substrate sources influenced the emergence of different TMA categories in the creoles of Suriname; Section 5 assesses the relationship between substrate influence and other inputs and processes; and Section 6 summarises the findings and discusses their implications for creole genesis theories.

2.

Methodology and data for the study

The research on the origin of the TMA system in the creoles of Suriname used the methodology for investigating contact-induced language change presented in Thomason (199 3: 2871f. ). She suggests that any credible claim for substrate influence has to be based on the following evidence: 1.

2.

Evidence that the source language( s) for the feature was present and played a significant role in the setting at the time of its proposed emergence, based on a careful analysis of the contact setting. Evidence that the feature emerged due to influence from the proposed source language, based on a detailed comparison of the feature in the creole, the proposed source language and possibly other languages that played a role in the setting.

In terms of the research process, this meant that we first constructed a scenario of creole formation in Suriname based on the available sociohistorical evidence (Migge 1998a, b, 2002, 2003a). We focused on demographic and ethnolinguistic data on West Africa and Suriname (Arends 1995) and on various sources dealing with the social context in Suriname- e.g., interactional patterns, codes of interaction, work distribution). These data suggest that the plantation varieties emerged roughly between 1680 and 1720. During this period, speakers of varieties of Gbe and, to a lesser extent, speakers of Kikongo made up the overwhelming majority of the slaves in Suriname. In the pre-1680 period, the Europeans were mainly speakers of English and a subgroup were also speakers of Portuguese. In the later period, they were speakers of various languages. Dutch hardly played an important role in seventeenth and eighteenth century Suriname (de Kleine 2002). It was only in the eighteenth century that Dutch started to be more widely diffused in the colony. The main agents in this process were descendants of mixed Afro-Surinamese-European unions who were quite wealthy, welleducated and occupied important sodal positions. They adopted Dutch as their main language to distinguish themselves from the slave population (de Kleine 2002:211). Dutch was rapidly gaining in importance during the nineteenth century. According to de Kleine (2002), well-situated families increasingly sent their children to Holland tor their education and a growing number of


non-white intellectuals and members of the middle class adopted Dutch as their main means of expression, teaching it as a first language to their children. The vast majority of Afro-Surinamese, however, had little opportunity to learn Dutch until1876 when it was made the obligatory medium of instruction in Surinamese schools. The Maroons and Amerindian populations residing in the interior of Suriname have generally had little or no access to Dutch. L2 and pidgin varieties of English were most likely used by both early planters and the slaves who had arrived prior to 1680. With regards to the social matrix, the data suggest that the overwhelming majority of the slaves came directly from Africa. Due to their numerical strength and patterns of segregation, these newcomers had little substantial contact with the small number of Europeans and existing slaves. While the early slaves and the Europeans shared common social and linguistic conventions established during the previous period, the new slaves had to newly forge such conventions. The inputs were their native social and linguistic conventions and those they encountered on the plantations. Access to the latter was quite restricted though, due to absence of dose contact with the other two social groups, i.e. Europeans and existing slaves (Migge 2003a). According to Thomason ( 199 3), the linguistic data should ideally come from the time period when the contact occurred. Since there are no historical documents available, this study is based on modern data and, to a lesser extent, on historical data from the periods immediately following. The modern data come from recordings of natural interactions, formal elicitations using an adapted version of Dahl's (1985) questionnaire for comparative research on TMA (Migge 2006) and from discussions of constructions with informants and native Gbe linguists. This paper focuses on data from the Maroon creoles, Ndyuka (ND) and Pamaka (PM), but also considers relevant data from Saamaka (SM) and Sranan Tango (SN). With respect to the varieties of Gbe, the study investigated data from representatives of the five main subclusters (Capo 1988). The varieties were Ajagbe, Fongbe, Gengbe, Gungbe, Wacigbe, Xwelagbe, Xwlagbe, Maxigbe. The analytical framework is modelled after typological studies ofTMA systems such as Dahl (1985) and Bybee et al. (1994). The analysis focuses on establishing the semantic domains- e.g., Necessity- and the various strategies- e.g., grammatical markers, modal verbs, adverbs, etc.that are employed to express the meanings that are part of such a domain. In relation to each strategy, the study aimed to determine its dominant or prototypical uses and the contextually determined interpretations that arise from more peripheral uses.

3·

Impact of substrate influence on TMA in the creoles of Suriname

Substrate influence in the context of creole formation is defined here as a process whereby the creators of a creole fully or partially functionally reinterpreted constructions they encountered from (Ll, L2, pidgin, etc.) varieties of the European superstrate language(s) in the setting- and the elements that make them up- according to the principles and patterns of their first language(s) (Migge 2003a). In historical linguistic and typological/descriptive approaches to language contact, it is commonly believed that a claim for substrate influence has to necessarily involve showing that a given contact phenomenon cannot have come about due to language-internal change or derive from a

159

160

Bettina Migge

secondary feature or a less widely distributed feature associated with regional varieties. In relation to the first claim, this essentially means that, in these traditional approaches, valid instances of contact-induced language change are only those changes that contradict so-called cross-linguistically regular changes and tendencies. However, Thomason & Kaufman argue that

though adopting this criterion is useful as a methodological strategy for convincing sceptics, it is not promising as a general theoretical approach to the analysis of linguistic change, because [... ] there is every reason to suppose that external causation is responsible for common and natural changes as well as for uncommon changes. (Thomason & Kaufman 1988: 59-60) With regard to the second claim, it has long been shown in the literature on L2 acquisition and in research on creole genesis (e.g., Valdman 1977) that the retention of substrate features is much dependent on or enhanced by the existence of semantically somewhat similar structures in the superstrate with which the substrate constructions can be identified. Such constructions maximally lend themselves for reinterpretation according to substrate patterns and principles. This then suggests that substrate features are generally not out of the ordinary linguistic features and, in a good number of cases, emerged due to multiple causes. The findings from current research on the TMA system in the creoles of Suriname (Migge 2006; Migge & Goury 2008; Migge & Winford 2009; Winford & Migge 2007) show that the overall structure of the system closely resembles that of Gbe varieties. However, this does not mean that the Surinamese system is a direct copy of the Gbe system. In fact, there are interesting differences that appear to be due to the interaction of substrate influence with other sources and processes, such as superstrate influence and language-internal change. I discuss this in more detail in Section 5.

Table 1. Tense and Aspect in the creoles of Suriname (Winford & Mlgge 2007: 78) Forms

Category

Meanings

hi

Relative Past

0

0

Future

Past events 'distanced' from Speaker background past or 'framepast' especially in narratives. Past in relation to another reference point in the past. Later time reference; Intention or prediction. Predictability.

e

e

e

e

e

ta

Perfective Imperfective

kaba

kaa

Completive2

ND

SM..

Tense ben be

be

0

0

e e

SN

PM

Aspect

k(a)ba kaba

States or events seen as unanalysed wholes. Situations (both states and occurrences) seen as 'unbounded' and ongoing at reference time, which encompasses situations that are repeated, habitual, in progress or continuous. Situations seen as completed. Conveys the meaning 'already: Expresses the sense of a 'perlect of result' with non-stati ves, and the sense of a state beginning in the past and continuing to the reference point with statives.

*Note: SN: Sranan Tongo, PM: Pamak:a, ND: Ndyuka. SM: Saamak:a.

2.

This category might also be labelled "Perfect': It is a subtype of the category PERFECT (Dahl1985).


Tables 1 to 4 show that there are important similarities between Gbe and the Surinamese creoles in the area of Aspect and Modality. The similarities are less strong in the case of Tense. With respect to Perfective Aspect, we see that both the Gbe languages and the Surinamese creoles employ the unmarked verb to express states or events seen as unanalysed wholes. They also express Completive Aspect; the postverbal strategy for expressing Completive Aspect used in the Surinamese creoles appears to closely resemble the strategy used in western Gbe varieties, Pattern 2. In relation to Progressive Aspect, both the Gbe languages and the Surinamese creoles employ the verb to be-at also found in existential contexts. Differences are found with respect to Table 2. Tense and Aspect categories in Gbe languages (Winford & Migge 2007: 80) Category

Form

Meanings/uses

dV ldV ndV

Later time reference.

fJ

States or events seen as unanalysed wholes. Simple past with non-statives, present with statives (when reference point is Speaker).

Tense

Future

Aspect

Perfective

Completive Pattern (1)

Pattern (2)

kO V (Maxi-, Fongbe) m3 V (Xwelagbe) n:5 V (Xwlagbe) VP + v3 (Aja-, Gen-, Wacigbe)

Progressive Pattern (1)

Pattern (2)

(ll) VV (.ld) (Ajagbe) (/a) VV!) {Wacigbe) (le) VV nu (Xwlagbe) (Mt)) vv we (Maxigbe) le XP V (.ld) (Ajagbe) laXPV!) (Wacigbe) le XP V nu (Xwlagbe) VV wtl (Maxigbe) n:5 V (Xwelagbe) lee (Gengbe)

Situations seen as completed. Conveys the meaning 'already'. Expresses the sense of a 'perfect of resuh' with non-statives, and the sense of a state beginning in the past and continuing to reference point with statives. Events in progress. In cases where the Progressive element immediately precedes the verb, e.g., intransitive verbs or transitive verbs taking a Pronominal object (SVO order).

In other transitive sentences.

o Pattern (3)

Habitual Pattern (1) Pattern (2) Pattern (3)

Customary or habitual situations. V nd (Gen-, Wacigbe) V n::i (Ajagbe) n:5 V (Maxi-,Xwlagbe) High tone on V (Xwelagbe)

Prospective Pattern (1) Pattern (2) Pattern (3)

With intransitive and transitive verbs.

Events about to occur.

o(XP) na V (Maxi-, Fongbe) le (XP) v ge/gbe (Ewe. Gengbe) Ia (XP) jd V (Wacigbe)

161

162

Bettina Migge

Table 3. Modality in the creoles of Suriname (based on Migge 2006: 341f. and Winford 2000: 70ff.) Forms SN

PM

ND

LEARNED

sabifu

Sabi

Category

Meanings

SM

ABILITY sabi sd

Ability or skills acquired through learning or training.

POTENTIAL sa sa man poy

sa sa

Positive Negative

Physical ability (Deontic) ability subject to physical or natural law.

sa man

sa poy

sa sa

Positive Negative

sa man

sa poy

sa sa

Positive Negative

Deontic (root) possibility ability/possibility subject to moral or social law, involving situations under the agent's control Permission Deontic possibility imposed by authority (social, legal, etc.).

sa sa kande

Positive Negative

manlkan

kan

mag!kan

kande

sa sa man/sa poy/sa kande kande

NECI!SSITY musu/sa mtt mu musu musu musu rmtsu fu mustt fit sa musu musu

wani

DI!SIRI! wani wani

musu musu musu tt musu

ke

(stronger)

(strong)

Epistemic possibility Possible situations or situations to the certainty of which the speaker is not committed. Deontic necessity or obligation "Existence of external, social conditions compelling an agent to complete the predicate action" Bybee et a1 (1994: 177). Epistemic necessity Inference based on sound evidence (prior knowledge, experience, etc.). Expresses a high degree of certainty on the speaker's part about some situation. Expresses speaker's desire and need.

Nl!l!D a(bi) fanoudtt (fit}*

Expresses speaker's need.

fmwttdu * Note: This construction is found in all the creoles in question.

Habitual Aspect and Prospective Aspect They are separate categories in Gbe languages while they are subsumed in part under the Imperfective category in the creoles. There are also close similarities between the two language groups in the area of Modality. In relation to Potential Modality, we find the following similarities. First, an ability or a skill acquired through specific training is expressed using a verb meaning 'to know'. Second, with the possible exception of Sranan Tonga (but see Migge & Winford 2009), the notions of physical ability, root possibility, permission and epistemic possibility are expressed by the same element( s) in the two language groups. Moreover, the different notions subsumed under Necessity- such as obligations, admonition, unfulfilled obligation, inferred certainty, probability- are all expressed by the same element in both the Gbe languages and in the Surinamese creoles. Finally, Desire and Need are also conveyed by different elements with similar meanings in the two language groups. The


Table 4. Modality in varieties of Gbe (Migge 2006: 35) Forms

A*

G

w

Category

Meanings

physical ability

Xwl

M

ny:J

np

ten

sixu3

Pos

kpeji

sixu

Neg

hen fe1)(U)

ten

sixu

Pos

kpego

kpeji

sixu

Neg

ten

si.xu

Pos

kpeji

sixu

Neg

ten

sixu

Xwe

LEARNED ABILITY

nya

nya

nya

ttr}tt

teT)

WJ

Sen1)tt

te1)

ti1)

np POTENTIAL

hen te'}(tt) kpego S1t

m1u

te1)

ti1]

Sen1JU

te1)

ti1]

deontic (root) possibility

su fe1)u

tet}

ti1]

SetiT)U

te1)

ti1]

fe1)(U) hen kpego

permission

su tet}lt

te1)

te'}

ti1]

epistemic possibility

NECESSITY

MOa

Mola

MOfa

Mola

MOa

MOna

deontic necessity

MOa

Mola

MO fa

Mola

MOa

MOna

epistemic necessity

ne

ne

na

ne

ni

optative, hortative, jussive

lea

jlo

SUBJUNCTIVE

ni DESIRE

ji

ji

ji

din

ba

ro NEED

MO_

wudo

hya ji

hinyii

hyii

kii

ba

din

*A: Ajagbe, G: Gengbe, W: Wacigbe, Xwe: Xwelagbe, Xwl: Xwlagbe, M: Maxigbe.

main difference emerges in relation to the subjunctive category. While Gbe seems to have such a category, it is not well attested in the Surinamese creoles (but see Lefebvre & Loranger 2006 for a discussion ofSaamaka data). In the subsystem of Tense, the correspondences between the two language groups are less strong. First, while the Surinamese creoles have a Future and a Past category, Gbe only has a Future category. Second, the Future category in the creoles most likely developed gradually from a possible earlier Prospective Aspect category, but was not directly calqued on the Gbe Future. Third, while the past-marking element in the creoles seems to be based on a superstrate form, the 3· Besides sixu, the conversational data from Maxi also contain the element sikii. It occurs much less frequently than sixu in the conversational data. The native informant never employed sikii in the elicitations.

163

164

Bettina Migge

past participle been, its functions show significant similarity with the adverbial construction used to express past time reference in Gbe. Overalt this overview suggests that substrate influence definitely had an important impact on the emergence of the TMA system in the creoles of Suriname. However, this discussion also makes very clear that substrate influence affected different categories at different stages of their emergence, to different degrees and in different ways. This strongly suggests that substrate influence is not a homogeneous, unified process. Its operation and outcomes appear to take different forms, most likely due to its interaction with other processes and sources.

Nature of substrate influence

4·

In this section, I outline the different ways in which substrate influence played a role in the emergence of the meanings and functions of Surinamese creole TMA categories.

Direct calque

4.1

In some instances, the creole feature very closely resembles its counterpart in the substrate language in structure, form and meaning. A case in point is the Perfective category in the Surinamese TMA system (Winford & Migge 2007). In both languages- creole and substrate- it is expressed by the unmarked verb. It has a sense of'presenf time reference with stative verbs (1) and property items (2) and 'simple past' with non-stative verbs (3) in the default cases, where the point of reference is speech time. (1)

a.

b.

Sunu :Jn t:Jnwun ny:Jnuvi :J. boy DET know girl DET

'The boy knows the girl' A b!!)l sabi a meise.

boy know DET girl 'The boy knows the girl'

MAXIGBE

(Elicitation 1)4 NDYUKA

DET

(2)

[Speaker looks at a house and exclaims:] a :o ey:J dagba. house this big 'The house is big: b. A osu bigi. DET house big 'The house is big:

(Elicitation 2) MAXIGBE

(Elicitation 1) NDYUKA

(Elicitation 2)

4· (Elicitation 1) refers to elicitations carried out in 2002 in Benin with native speakers of different Gbe varieties using a modified version of the Dahl (1985) questionnaire. (Elicitation 2) refers to such elicitation with native speakers of Ndyuka, Pamaka and Saamaka carried out in St. Laurent du Maroni, French Guiana, in 2002. The reference (field notes) indicates constrUL"t.ions overheard during natural conversations.


(3)

[What did your sister do last night?]

a

E

wlan wema.

she write letter 'She wrote a letter?

b.

A

sikitfi wa11 biifi.

she write one letter 'She wrote a letter?

MAXIGBB


(Elicitation 2)

The unmarked verb is also used to convey the sense of current relevance (4). (4)

[Have you heard the news?]

a

Axus.J king

.J

wa/jawe.

come 'The king has come?

b.

MAXIGBB

DBT

A

kownu ko11. DET king arrive/come 'The king has come?


(Elicitation 2)

The main difference between the Gbe languages and the Surinamese creoles is that in Gbe, unmarked stative-type verbs may also have past time reference, while they are generally preceded by the past time marker be!bilben in the creoles (5). (5)

[Did you know my fathe~ who died last year?]

a

b.

enen, un t.Jnwun in. yes I know him 'Yes, I knew him: Eyee, mi be sabi en. Yes I PAST know him 'Yes, I knew him:

MAXIGBB


(Elicitation 2)

The main reason for this difference seems to be that the Gbe varieties, unlike the creoles, do not have a past time category. Past time marking is therefore generally retrieved from the context. However, in cases where such marking becomes necessary, an adverbial form can be employed (see Section 4.5).

4.2

Direct calque on one of several available substrate constructions

In the literature, it is often assumed that heterogeneity in substrate strategies tends to disfavour substrate influence (Singler 1988). Our data suggest this is not necessarily the case. Speakers can either select one among the different strategies or retain both. I discuss the first case in this section and the second in Section 4.3. In Gbe, Completive Aspect is either expressed by a construction where a main verb meaning 'to finish', 1'-'• occurs in VP-final position (6a) or by a structure employing a preverbal element (6b).

165

166

Bettina Migge

(6)

a

a

b.

she read book finish 'She has finished reading the book.' Ee, e ";; xlt xwema 3. yes she COMPL read book DET 'Yes, she has already read this book.'

hliJ11

wamd v:S.

WACIGBE (Elicitation 1) XWLAGBE (Elicitation 1)

In the Surinamese creoles, by contrast, only the first option is attested: Completive Aspect is conveyed by an element that is formally similar to a main verb meaning 'to finish: ka.ba, occurring in VP-final position (7). (7)

[I want to give her a book. Has she read this one?] Eyee, a leisi disi ya kaba. Yes she read this here coMPL 'Yes, she has already read this:

PAMAKA (Elicitation 2)

The creole strategy does not only resemble the Gbe strategy in overall structure, but also in meaning. It conveys a sense of a 'perfect of result' ((6)- (7)) and the sense of a state beginning in the past and continuing to the reference point (8). (8) a

b.

U tan ya wantu yall kaba. we stay here one-two year coMPL 'Wf1ve already lived here for several years: a d amd v:) ye 6 gb;; liv:) d dn. he stay naked coMPL then they return pagne take run 'He was already naked when they came back and dressed him in a pagne:

PAMAKA (Elicitation 2) WACIGBE (Waci- Migge 1)5

Moreover, in both language groups, the Completive is not used in sentences expressing lack of completion of an activity or state. Instead, the main verb is preceded (Gen, Waci kp:;, Xwla kp::m) or followed (Aja h!>."-E:, Xwela gba, Ndyuka, Pamaka, Sranan ete, Saamaka yete) by another form translating as 'yet' (Winford & Migge 2007). (9)

a

b.

A kownu an doo ete. DET king NEG arrive yet 'The king has not yet arrived: aft:S, ma kp:J va o. king NEG yet come INSIST 'The king has not even come/arrived yet:

PAMAKA (Elicitation 2) WACIGBE (Elicitation 1)

This example demonstrates that, in cases where the substrate involves a certain degree of heterogeneity, creators of creoles may just select one of the available constructions. In this case, the choice of the postverbal construction was promoted by the following factors. First, since v-1, like kaba, is a lexical verb and has the same lexical meaning 'to finish', it was easy to interlingually identify it with kaba.. Second, even if the structure was not part of the Ll, it was semantically 5· (Waci-Migge 1) and similar codes refer to transcriptions of recorded conversations between native speakers of the indicated variety. The recordings involving the Surinamese Creoles were made in Suriname and French Guiana between 1994 and 2007. The recordings for the varieties ofGbeweremade in Benin between 1997 and 2002.


transparent (i.e. action + to finish = completion of an action). Third, it was also reinterpretable from a consecutive construction such as "I work and finish".

4·3

Retention of more than one of the available substrate constructions

In Gbe, possibility is expressed preverbally. In some varieties (Wacigbe, Gengbe, Maxigbe), the same element is used in positive and negative constructions (lOa, b), while in others (Ajagbe, Xwelagbe, Xwlagbe), two distinct forms are employed (lOc, d). (10)

a

b.

c.

d.

(I)ye

tuwe slxu s:J

basiya

MO.

mother your can take container put 'Your mother can put the container here? eme co ma slxu m::> vuvo. person all NEG can find free-time 'Everybody could not find the time [to repair the pump]: :Jjl11 t€11 MU :Jgo n5. mouse can eat bag for. you 'The mouse can eat your bag? 00 kpe a kp:!m im ki.sln o. no he-NEG can PUT see I DEM INSIST 'No, he cannot even see me like that'

un

MAXIGBB

(Maxi-Migge1) MAXIGBB

(Maxi-Migge2) XWLAGBB

XWLAGBB

(Xwlagbe-NSF4)

The Gbe patterns closely mirror the distribution of possibility elements in the Surinamese creole where Aluku, Ndyuka and Pamaka distinguish negative and positive possibility (lla, b), while Saamaka does not (llc, d). (11)

a

b.

c.

d.

I

sa wasi koo wata anda.

you can wash cold water over.there 'Will you be able to wash with cold water there? Fu a pikin nenge, i na man foni en for DET small person you NEG can find her/him enke fa i wani. like how you want ~out the child. you cannot find it the way you want it' Mi a moni nou mi sa go a booko di dia. I have money now I can go Loc break DET day 'I have money, now I can go to the party? Me a moni nou mi a sa go a booko di dia. I-NEG have money now I NEG can go we break DET day 'I doItt have money thus I cannot go to the party;'

PAMAKA

(Pamaka-Migge5) PAMAKA

(Pamaka-Migge5) SAAMAKA

(Elicitation 2)

SAAMAKA

There are also close similarities in function and meaning. Migge (2006) demonstrated in detail that these elements do not only express root possibility, but are also used to express ability, permission and epistemic possibility. Moreover, the negative forms derive from phrases denoting (lack of) physical strength:

167

168

Bettina Migge

(12) a b. c.

ma11 <man va V 'man to do s.tbJhave the ability to do' kpU-ji 'reach-its-summit/top' kpU-(e)IJu-(ci) 'reach-its-body-tree/body, be as strong as'

(Van den Berg 2001:249) (Xwlagbe) (Ajagbe)

Ma.n in the creoles has become a modal verb, while the negative Gbe forms are not fully verbal (Migge 2006). Finally, the negative forms in the creoles and in Gbe are also used to express a challenge (in questions) and to assert ability (13). (13)

a

A:.

1

man sikiifi a

biifi de?

PAMAKA

you MOD write DBT letter there 'Do you (really) think that you'll be able to write that letter?'

B:

Eeye, mi man. yes I can 'Yes, I am able to do it?

b.

fln:3

we a

kpe-ji d

g:3 ba

a

kpe :31JkUsl do suklu wu.

(Elicitation 2) XwuaBB

where Poe PUT can PUT still come PUT can eye put school on '[talking to a girl who had a child while still at school] Where can you still go, how will you be able to take care of your studies?' (Xwla- NSF 1)

These data suggest that the two strategies that are used in the Surinamese creoles closely mirror those found in their main substrate input, the varieties of Gbe. This in turn confirms that substrate heterogeneity does not necessarily lead to an absence of substrate influence, but may lead to the instantiation of several different strategies.

4·4

Partial calque

A good number of creole features are what could be termed partial substrate calques. They resemble a certain substrate feature in several important respects only. There are two main reasons for this. On one hand, this could be due to the fact that the substrate makes categorical subdivisions that were not instantiated in the creole or that the creole has categories that are not found in the substrate. On the other hand, this could be due to influence from another source such as the superstrate. An example of the first type is the Imperfective category in the creoles. In the Gbe varieties, Progressive Aspect is marked by one of the three related constructions in (14). Pattern 1 is used in cases where the existential or locative verb meaning 'be-af preceded the main verb. 6 Pattern 2 is employed where this verb does not directly precede the main verb. Pattern 3 is found in Gen and Xwela in both transitive and intransitive constructions. (14)

a

Pattern 1: (existential!locative V) +reduplicated V +Progressive Particle

e.g., (le) VV (b) (Ajagbe) E hltnhltn wema w6. he RED.read book PL 'He is reading books?

AJAGBB

(Elicitation 1)

6. Note that some varieties of Gbe, such as Fongbe and Maxigbe, have separate verbs for expressing existence and the notion of 'be-at' while other varieties, such as Wacigbe, use the same verb in both functions. In the examples, I gloss it as 'be-at:


b.

c.

Pattern 2: existential/locative V + XP V + Progressive Particle e.g., ltXP V (k.:3) (Ajagbe) AJAGBB

A le enu hlf:n. he-PUT be-at thing read 'He is reading something: Pattern 3: existential/locative V + V e.g., leeV (Gengbe)

E lee

po-te yebe

X:J

(Elicitation 1)

me.

GBNGBB

he be-at clean his room in 'He is cleaning his room:

(Elicitation 1)

While there are differences between the three constructions, they all share one important similarity: The locative verb precedes the main verb. The construction in the Eastern Maroon Creoles closely resembles this common denominator. The preverbal marker of Progressive Aspect, e, derives from the locative and existential verb de (Winford & Migge 2007). (15)

leisi wan buku.

PAMAKA

she PROG read a book 'She is reading a book.'

A

e

(Elicitation 2)

The creole and Gbe constructions are also similar semantically. Besides expressing Progressive Aspect with activity verbs, they also convey Inchoative Aspect with property items (Migge 2000) and some state-denoting elements (16); a longer period in the present (beyond the time of speaking) (17); and a future meaning with motion verbs (18). (16)

a

b.

(17)

a

Da 11a foluku ne en e bigi a ko11de. then FOC people FOC it PROG big DBT village 'Ifs the people who are making the village important' eho :; e ba le sif.n 11~. money DBT it come be-at hard PART 'The price [needed for food] is getting problematic? Nounou na a

baafu hangl

e

kil u.

now FOC DBT meat hunger PROG kill US 'Now, we are suffering from lack of meat.' b.

sit

mi-tttt

gble ml le

aya

ftiU-n~.

now DET thing-all spoil we be-at misery eat-thing 'Now, everything is spoiled and we are suffering? (18) a

b.

A

tamaa a e gwe kaba. Foe tomorrow she PROG leave already 'It's tom or row she is already going to leave? (lit. : .. she is leaving already.. ?) Me le jo}o-t;. I be-at RBD.leave-PART 'I will be/am going to leaving (soon).' (lit. 'I am leaving?)

PAMAKA (Pamaka-~igge18)

XWLAGBB (Xwla-NSF1) PAMAKA (fieldnotes) XWLAGBB (Xwla-NSF2) PAMAKA

(fieldnotes) WACIGBB (Elicitation 1)

169

170

Bettina Migge

There is an important difference between the progressive elements in Gbe and e (and ta) in the Surinamese creoles. While e in the Eastern Maroon Creoles is regularly used to express habitual (19a) and generic (19b) meanings, the Gbe elements do not ( 19) a

[What does your brother do after dinner?]

A e

b.

leisi wan buku.

NDYUKA

he IMPF read one book 'He (usually) reads a book.' [What do dogs do?]

(Elicitation 2)

howhow.

NDYUKA

they IMPF make.noise wauwau 'They make wauwau/bark.'

Den e

bali

(Elicitation 2)

In Gbe, habitual and generic meanings are typically expressed by a separate habitual element. In Xwlagbe, Maxigbe and other Fongbe varieties, n:J occurs preverbally (20a) while in others- such as Ajagbe, Gengbe, and Wacigbe- the habitual marker, na (Gengbe, Wacigbe) or n:J (Ajagbe), occurs postverbally (20b ). Xwelagbe marks habitual aspect with a high tone on the verb. (20)

a

E n:J xa

b.

he HAB read book 'He always reads: [What do dogs do?]

6

nu.

gbo net

they bark HAB 'Dogs bark.'

c.

I fin "ie gan atrokpome. I wake- HAB LOC hour 6 'I (usually) wake up at six in the morning:

MAXIGBR

(Elicitation 1) WACIGBR

(Elicitation 1) XWRLAGBR

(Elicitation 1)

Based on the evidence presented above (see also Winford & Migge 2007) and in relation to the emergence and development of the locational verb and existential verb de in the Surinamese creoles (Migge 2002, 2003a), it seems most likely that the emergence of de as a locational and existential verb triggered its extension to the marking of progressive meanings. Essentially, the slaves identified existential constructions in Gbe (2la) with copula-less L2 English constructions (2lb) and thereby created the existential verb de (2lc). (21)

a

Mallk::Jcwe Me. banana exlst 'There's a banana'

b.

Mastra scopie de. master rhum there [adv] 'Master, there is rhum:

c.

Mastra scopie de.

XWI!LAGBI!

(Elicitations 1997) Early Sranan (Van Dyk 1765; Arends & Perl1995: 170) Early Sranan

master rhum exist [V] 'Master, there is rhum:

Once de had emerged as an existential verb, it came to be used in all the meanings in which its substrate counterpart was used. Thus, in addition to becoming a predicator of locational


phrases and stative reduplicated adjectives, it came to function as a Progressive Aspect marker. Its habitual and generic function seems to have emerged later, possibly due to language-internal change- a process widely attested cross-linguistically. The main reason for this later extension of de to habitual and generic contexts rather than the emergence of a separate Habitual Aspect category seems to have been that the creators of the creole did not find a suitable English form in the English constructions available to them which could have been reinterpreted as a Habitual Aspect marker on the model of the Gbe Habitual marker.

4·5

Some semantic impact

In Goury and Migge (2008: 322), we argued that, both etymologically and functionally, the past time markers ben!be!bi in the Surinamese creoles derive from the English past participle been. The slaves most likely encountered the form in English (regular) present perfect (I've been here before.), polite (I\•e been wanting to see you.), past perfect (Il:J been there ... ) and counterfactual (If HI been there ... ) constructions in which the auxiliary (have/had) was contracted and thus not at all or little perceptible to them.

Since the Gbe languages, unlike English, do not have a Present Perfect Aspect category and the slaves' contact with English was relatively minor, they would have only picked up on the past temporal reference of English Present Perfect constructions and not on its durational aspect As a result, been came to be reinterpreted as a past time marker associated with past time reference, past before past, polite and counterfactual meanings. This scenario then argues that ben!bin!bi in the Surinamese creoles is a superstrate retention which has undergone a contextually or pragmatically driven process of semantic and structural reinterpretation. However, an analysis of past time marking in Gbe also reveals interesting similarities between the Gbe and the creole strategy. While Gbe does not appear to have an established Past category and past time reference is generally retrieved from contextual clues, all varieties of Gbe also make use of a postverbal adverbial form meaning 'before' to convey past meanings. This strategy shares the tollowing similarities with ben!bin!bi. First, it is used to express a past before past activity (22): (22)

[regarding a window that is now closed: You OPEN the window (and closed it again?)] a A:. E h(m sejle b sa a? AJAGBB you open window DET before Q 'Have you opened the window (and closed it)?' B: oo, n-hw-in sa gO. no I-open-it before NEG (Elicitation 1) 'No, I have not opened it' b. A:. I be opo a fense? PAMAKA you PAST open DET windOW 'Had you opened the window (and close it)?' B: No, mi an be opo en. no I NEG PAST open it (Elicitation 2) 'No, I have not open it'

171

172

Bettina Migge

Second, it is used to convey that a state no longer exists:

(23) [person talks about a house were they used to live which has been dismantled] a AipJ d lol6 san. house DET big before 'The house was big: b. Di wosu bi bigl. DET house PAST big 'The house was big:

WACIGBE (Elicitation 1)

SAAMAKA (Elicitation 2)

Third, in several varieties, it also regularly occurs in conditional clauses to express counterfactuality in the if-clause (24): (24)

a. b.

N:) " MO ehO sa, Jla xwle ehUn Mfkd. if I have money before I-PUT buy car one

Yee mi bi

a

moni

,wu mi bi o bai wa wagi. PAST PUT buy a car

if I PAST have money then I 'Ifl had the money, Hi buy a

car:

AJAGBE (Elicitation 1)

SAAMAKA (Elicitation 2)

Finally, although ben!bin!bi express the Past category in the creoles, it is not the only strategy for expressing past time reference. As in the Gbe varieties, past time reference is commonly conveyed by the unmarked verb form in conjunction with contextual clues (25): (25)

Di mi go doo, a doo f' en de, a booko a booko en. when I go arrive DET door Poss him there Poe break he break it 'The other day he ate three pieces of cake:

PAMAKA (Pamaka11)

These data show that, even though ben!bin!bi was clearly reanalysed from the English Present Perfect construction, there are close similarities in meaning with the adverbial Gbe construction. This clearly suggests that the emergence and retention of its meanings and broad distribution in the creoles was reinforced by substrate influence.

4.6

Conclusion

The discussion demonstrated that substrate influence affected the emergence and development of creole features in different ways. At one end of the continuum, we find (near-)perfect copies of substrate features and, at the other end, cases where substrate influence was only one of the contributing factors in the emergence and maintenance of certain semantic properties of a creole feature. Most features would lie between these two extreme poles. Moreover, the investigation showed that absence of homogeneity in substrate strategies for expressing a particular category does not necessarily inhibit the occurrence of substrate influence; speakers either pick one of the available options or instantiate both. In relation to conceptualising creole genesis, this suggests that substrate influence played an important role in the emergence of creole grammars, but did not affect each creole feature in the same way or to the same extent. Other sources and processes interacted with substrate influence and thus came to affect them in different ways. In Section 5, I look in more detail at how the different sources and processes intersected with substrate influence.


5·

The interaction between substrate influence and other sources

In discussions about creole genesis, one of the questions that has received much attention is the relative contribution of each of the main inputs - namely, substrate influence, superstrate influence and language-internal change- to the formation and development of creole grammar. In some theories, such as the substrate theory and the relexification theory, the substrate contributed the bulk of the semantic and syntactic information, while superstrate influence is primarily responsible for the lexical shape and some word order phenomena (Lefebvre 1998). In other theories, such as the superstrate theory, the lexical shape and the bulk of the semantic and syntactic information are argued to come from superstrate varieties while substrate influence was seen to mainly reinforce similar superstrate features (Mufwene 2006). Language-internal change is responsible for new features that diverged from superstrate and substrate patterns.

5.1

The interaction between superstrate and substrate influence

The discussion of the emergence of the TMA system in the creoles of Suriname so far suggests that superstrate and substrate influences interacted in different ways. In the case of some TMA features, such as the Perfective Aspect category, superstrate influence does not seem to have played a role at all. In other cases, the superstrate provided the structure from which the element expressing a category- and, ultimately, also the category itself- was reinterpreted due to substrate influence. A case in point is the emergence of the Progressive (Imperfective) marker. Although English also has a verb meaning 'to exisf, it is lexically, semantically and dis tributionally different from its counterpart in the creoles. De was reinterpreted from the distallocational adverb 'there' in copulaless locational phrases of the sort given in (21b). Once it had been interpreted as an existential verb (21c) due to its identification with its substrate counterpart, it also came to function as a Progressive marker- and locational copula, predicator of stative reduplicated adjectives, etc. (Migge 2002)- by analogy with the substrate counterpart with which it had become identified. In other cases, there are similarities in form and function between the superstrate and the creole feature and these meanings overlap to a certain degree with those found in the substrate. The past marker ben/be/bin, for instance, clearly emerged from been in English present perfect constructions. While its primary and secondary functions in the creoles- past-time marking and marking of counterfactuality and politeness -are clearly not synonymous with its English functions, the creole functions can be easily derived from the English functions, as seen above. However, they also overlap with those of its substrate counterpart This suggests that the two sources acted together or reinforced each other. ln yet other cases, such as the category of Necessity, there are definite similarities in form and meaning between the superstrate and the creole feature. The semantic similarities between the creole teature and Gbe are slightly stronger, however. In the creoles, Necessity is expressed by the elements mu (Ndyuka, Pamaka) and musu (Saamaka, Sranan Tongo) which both derive from English must. In English, must conveys strong obligation. but the creole and Gbe forms express both weak and strong obligation.

173

174

Bettina Migge

(26)

a

b.

c.

(27)

a.

b.

c.

Ml anga yu, a moyti u mu meki a den baka. me with you it effort we must make we their back '[talking about relationship to Europeans:] Me and you, we must make an effort to keep up with them: Yee i lee di moni fi i, nou tide ndeti if you want DET money for you then today night you musu ko a mi. must come Loc me 'If you want your money, you must come to me tonight: ijfbet:J MO na nu est human must PUT drink water 'Hwnans must drink water:

PAMAKA

(Pamaka-NSF 1)

SAAMAKA (Elicitation 2) MAXIGBE (Elicitation 1)

tbl mu membe taki nd wan sani di a e du fu a go anga you NEG must believe that NEG One thing REL he IMPP do for he go with baka [...]. A SIJSIJ a Jesi a e gwe. PAMAKA back POC only DET fuce he IMPF go 'You should not believe that he [European] is doing anything that makes him go backwards, (Pamaka-NSF1) he only moves forwards.' Di sembe de a musu suku muyee bifo a gaandi. SAAMAKA DET person there he must search woman before he old 'That man should find a wife before he is old: (Elicitation 2) 0 MO na kple akw:) tuwe. MAXIGBE you must FUT collect money your (Elicitation 1) 'You should save your money.'

I

In English, Gbe and the creoles, this element is also used to express admonition and forbidding (28), probability (29), inferred certainty (30). (28)

a

b.

(29)

a

b.

(30)

Den lanti an mu koli den foluku fu den. DET government NEG must fool DET people POSS them 'The government must not fool its people: PC mJ M6 ld flu agblad?Jt:J w6 o. com.party NEG must PUT fool furmer PL INSIST 'The communist party must not fool the peasants.' A mu de a osu nounou. he must be-at we house now 'He must be at home now.' Jan M6 ld n:) ax6me fiJian. Jean must PUT coP house now. 'Jean must be at home right now:

[you see a totally destroyed motorbike at a tree] A man musu dede (tuutuu/ye). DET man must dead true-true/assertion 'The man must (surely) be dead.'

a

b.

Kakat:J a M6

Ia ku

kpo e.

driver DET must FUT dead SUre INSIST 'The driver must surely be dead.'

PAMAKA (Elicitation 2) WACIGBE (Capo, pc, 2003) PAMAKA (Elicitation 2) GENGBE (Elicitation 1) PAMAKA (Elicitation 2) WACIGBE (Capo, pc, Nov. 2003)


Note that there are also similarities in the categorical status. The Gbe and the Ndyuk.a and Pamak:a Necessity elements, mu and M6la respectively, seem to be markers in that they cannot be extraposed without the main verb following. The Saamaka, Sranan Tongo and English forms, musu and must, are modal verbs. 5.2

Substrate influence and language-internal change

Substrate influence also interacts with language-internal change. Our discussion so far suggests that language-internal change essentially operates on structures that had previously emerged due to the interaction of substrate and su perstrate structures. Cases in point are the emergence of the Imperfective marker in the Surinamese creoles (Migge 2003a and above). Once de had emerged as a Progressive marker due to the substrate-driven reinterpretation of the English distallocational adverb there in locational phrases, de was extended to habitual and generic contexts. Since there are no clear models for this usage in any of the source languages, it most likely occurred due to the language-internal process of semantic extension that is cross-linguistically commonly attested. In a few cases, the emergence of a category seems to be entirely due to language-internal change. An example is the emergence of the Future category and marker in the Surinamese ereales. Migge and Goury (2008) and others (Van den Berg 2007 and references therein) argue that the contemporary future marker o developed from the construction de go V and the Saamak.a equivalent ta.n go V attested in the early texts written in Sranan Tango and Saamak:a, respectively. Superstrate sources do not seem responsible for the emergence of these constructions since this kind of Progressive Future construction is not attested in Dutch, and the 'be going to' construction in English emerged only at the end of the seventeenth century. However, there is a possible model in the Gbevarieties, namely the Prospective Future construction (see Table 2). In the latter construction, the verb is juxtaposed with the existential/locative verb and a particle expressing Progressive Aspect (see Table 2). It seems quite likely that when the creators of the creoles reinterpreted the adverb de as an existential verb on the basis of the existential verb in their native Gbe (Migge 2002), de also came to be extended to constructions expressing prospective future. Evidence in favour of this can be seen in the fact that modern e < de does not only express Progressive and Habitual Aspect. but also Intentional Future notions (31), as a secondary meaning. (31)

a

a

tamaa

mi e

dongo.

tomorrow I IMPF go.d.own-river 'It's tomorrow that I'll go down river? mi e begin den examen taa wiki. I IMPF start DET exam other week 'I'm going to start the exams next week.'

PAMAKA

Foe

b.

(Elicitation 2) PAMAKA

(field.notes 2008)

Once this prospective future construction had been instantiated, the combination de + movement verb go emerged as a future-marking strategy. De go then reduced to go and finally to o. This analysis is supported by two pieces of evidence. First, grammaticalisation of a 'movement towards a goal construction' (I'm going to ... ) to a Future construction is a well-attested path of development (Bybee et al. 1994; Heine & Kuteva 2002). Second, all three stages (de go, go and o) are attested in the early texts.

175

176

Bettina Migge

Finally, the only case that may possibly contradict the hypothesis that language-internal change takes place after the initial emergence of creole features due to substrate and superstrate influence is the emergence scenario for the Past marker. This case suggests that the initial Kinterpretation" of been as a past marker was due to a contextually driven reinterpretation of English Present Perfect constructions involving been.

6.

Conclusion

The discussion in this paper suggests that substrate influence was clearly central to the emergence of the TMA categories in the creoles of Suriname. However, substrate influence played a different role in the formation of the different categories. We can establish a continuum ranging from features that were completely due to substrate influence to those for which only the initial construction from which the category derived had emerged due to substrate influence while emergence was mainly driven by a different process. The study also shows that substrate influence interacted in many different ways with the European input(s) and language-internal change. While the former interacted with substrate influence to give rise to the initial categories and elements, the latter mainly affected them after their initial instantiation. The research on the TMA system in the creoles of Suriname then challenges views that conceptualise creolisation or creole tormation as a separate, unitary and abrupt process of language creation (Thomason & Kaufman 1988) and supports those that conceptualise creole formation as a gradual and multilayered process (Arends 1993; Bruyn 1995) involving processes oflanguage change that also operate in other so-called "normal" contact settings (Lefebvre 1998; Thomason & Kaufinan 1988; Winford 2003).1he present-day TMA system emerged in several stages involving first, "interference through shift" - speakers of Mrican languages reinterpreted strings and elements from L2 English according to L1 models - and retention of superstrate models. Second, other elements, categories and functions later emerged either as a result of gradual language-internal change (and contact) affecting elements that had previously emerged due to interference through shift or as a result of retention.

List of abbreviations COMPL Completive aspect Dl!T Determiner FOC Focus marker HAB

IMPF INSIST

MOD Nl!G

Habitual aspect Imperfective aspect Marker of insistence and emphasis Modality Negative marker

PAST PL POSS PROG Q

Rl!D Rl!L

Past time marker Plural Possessive marker Progressive Question particle Reduplication Relative marker


References Arends, J. 1993. Towards a gradualist model of creolization. In Atlantic meets Pacific [Creole Language Library 11), F. Byrne & J. Holm (eds), 371-380. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Arends, J. 1995. Demographic factors in the formation ofSranan. In The Early Stages of Creolization [Creole Language Library 13], J. Arends (ed.), 233-285. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Arends, J. & M. Perl. 1995. Early Suriname Creole texts: A collection of 18th-century Sranan and Saramaccan docwnents. Frankfurt: Vervuert Bruyn, A. 1995. Grammaticalization in Creoles: The Development of Determiners and Relative Clauses in Sranan [Studies in Language and Language Use 21). Amsterdam: IFOTT. Bruyn, A. 1996. On identifying instances of grammaticalization in Creole languages. In Changing Meanings, Changing Functions: Papers Relating to Grammaticalization in Contact Languages, P. Baker & A. Syea (eds), 29-46. London: University of Westminster Press. Bybee, J., Perkins, R & Pagliuca, W. 1994. The Evolution of Grammar: Tense, Aspect, and Modality in the Languages of the World. Chicago IL: University of Chicago Press. Capo, H. B. C. 1988. Renaissance du gbe: Rejlexions critiques et constructives sur lble, le fan, le gen, Iilja, le gun, etc. Hamburg: Helmut Buske. Dahl, 0. 1985. Ttmse and Aspect Systems. Oxford: Blackwell. de Kleine, C. 2002 Surinamese Dutch. In The Atlas of the Languages of Suriname, E. Carlin & J. Arends (eds), 209-230. Leiden: KITLVPress. Essegbey, J. 2005. The 'basic locative construction' in Gbe languages and Surinamese Creoles. Journal ofPidgin and Creole languages 20: 229-268. Essegbey, J. & Ameka, F. 2007. 'Cut' and 'break' verbs in Gbe and Sranan. Journal ofPidgin and Creole languages 22:37-56. Goury, L 2003. Le ndyuka. Une langue creole du Surinam et de Guya,re franfaise. Paris: I:Harmattan. Goury, L & Migge, B. 2003. Grammaire du nengee: Introduction awe langues aluku, ndjuka et pamaka [Collection Didactique]. Paris: Editions IRD. Goury, L. & Migge, B. 2008. Between contact and internal development: Towards a multi-layered explanation for the development of the TMA system in the Creoles of Suriname. In Roots of Creole Structure: Weighing the Contribution of Substrates and Superstrates [Creole Language Library 33], S. Michaelis (ed.), 301-332. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Heine, B. & Kuteva, T. 2002 World Lexicon of Grammaticalization. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Huttar, G. 1981. Some Kwa-li.ke features of Djuka syntax. Studies in African Linguistics 12: 291-323. Huttar, G. 1985. Sources ofNdjuka African vocabulary. De Nieuwe We.st-Indische Gids 59: 45-71. Huttar, G. 1986. KiKongo, Saramaccan, and Ndyuka. In Language in Global Perspective: Papers in Honour of the 50th Anniversary of the Summer Institute of Linguistics 1935-1985, B. Elson (ed.), 563-586. Dallas TX: Summer Institute of Linguistics. Huttar, G., Essegbey, J. & Ame.ka, F. 2007. Gbe and other West African sources of Suriname Creole semantic structures: Implications for Creole genesis. Journal of Pidgin and Creole languages 22(1): 57-72 Lefebvre, C. 1998. Creole Genesis and the Acquisition of Grammar. The Case of Haitian Creole. Cambridge: CUP. Lefebvre, C. & Loranger, V. 2006. On the properties of Saramaccan FU: Synchronic and diachronic perspectives. Journal ofPidgin and Creole Languages 21:275-335. Leglise, I. & Migge, B. 2006. Language naming practices, ideologies and linguistic practices: Toward a comprehensive description oflanguage varieties. Language in Society 35: 313-339. McWhorter, J. H. 1992 Substrata! influence on Saramaccan serial verb constructions. Journal ofPidgin and Creole Languages7: 1-53. McWhorter, J. H. 1995. Sisters under the skin: A case for genetic relationship between the Atlantic English-based creoles.Journal ofPidgin and Creole Languages 10:289-333.

177

178

Bettina Migge

McWhorter, J. H. 1997. Lost in transmission: A case for the independent emergence of the copula in Atlantic ereoles. In Pidgins and Creoles: Structure and Status [Creole Language Library 19], A. Spears & D. Winford (eds), 241-261. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Migge, B. 1998a. Substrate Influence in the Formation of the Surinamese Plantation Creole: A Consideration of Sociohistorical Data and Linguistic Data from Ndyuka and Gbe. PhD dissertation, Ohio State University. Migge, B. 1998b. Substrate influence in Creole formation: The origin of give-type serial verb constructions in the Surinamese Plantation Creole. journal ofPidgin and Creole Languages 13: 215-265. Migge, B. 1999. The Origin ofPrepositional Phrases in the Surinamese Plantation Creole. 9th International Colloquium on Creole Studies. Universite de Aix-en-Province, Aix-en-Province, France. Migge, B. 2000. The origin of property items in the Surinamese Plantation Creole. In Language Change and Language Contact in Pidgins and Creoles [Creole Language Library 21], J. H. McWhorter (ed.), 201-234. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Migge, B. 2002 The origin of the copulas (dln)a and de in the Eastern Maroon Creole. Diachro,Jica 19:83-136. Migge, B. 2003a. Creole Formation as Language Contact: The Case of the Suriname Creoles [Creole Language Library 25]. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Migge, B. 2003b. The origin of predicate reduplication in the Suriname Eastern Maroon Creole. In Twice as Meaningful. Reduplication in Pidgi1u, Creoles and other Contact Languages, S. Kouwenberg (ed.), 61-71. London: Battle bridge. Migge, B. 2006. Tracing the origin of modality in the creoles of Suriname. In Structure a,Jd Variation in Co,Jtact Languages [Creole Language Library 29],A. Deumert &S. Durrleman-Tame (eds), 29-59. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Migge, B. & Goury, L. 2008. Between contact and internal development; ToWllfds a multi-layered explanation for the development of the TMA system in the Creoles of Suriname. In Roots of Creole Structures [Creole Language Library 33], S. Michaelis (ed.), 301-331. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Migge, B. & Smith, N. 2007. Introduction: Substrate influence in creole formation. In Substrate influence in creole genesis. journal o_fPidgin and Creole Languages 22(1): 1-15. Migge, B. & Winford, D. 2009. The origin and development of possibility in the Surinamese creoles. In Roots of Creole Structures: Weighing the Contribution of Substrates and Superstrates [Creole Language Library 34], R. Selbach, H. C. Cardoso & M. Van den Berg (eds),129-154. Amsterdam: John Benjamlns. Mufwene, S. 2006. Albert Valdman on the development of creoles. In History, Society a,Jd Variation: In Ho,wr of Albert Valdman, J. C. Clements et al. (eds.), 203-223. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Schuchardt, H. (ed.). 1914. Die Sprache der Saramakkaneger in Surinam. Amsterdam: Johannes Milller. Singler, J. 1988. The homogeneity of the substrate as a factor in pidgin/creole genesis. Language 64: 27-51. Smith, N. 1996. Focus-marking we in Saramaccan: Grammaticalization or substrate. In Changing Meanings, Changing Punctio,u: Papers Relating to Grammaticalization in Co,Jtact Languages, P. Baker & A. Syea (eds), 113-128. London: University of Westminster Press. Smith, N. 2001. Voodoo Chile: Differential substrate effects in Saramaccan and Haitian. In Creolization and Language Contact, N. Smith & T. Veenstra (eds), 43-80. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Smith, N. & Haboo, V. 2007. The Saramaccan implosives: Tools for linguistic archaeology. journal of Pidgin and Creole languages 22: 101-122 Thomason, S. G. 1993. On identifying the sources of creole structures. In Africanisms in Afro-AmericmJ Language Varieties, S. Mufwene (ed.), 280-295. Athens GA: University of Georgia Press. Thomason, S. G. & Kaufman, T. 1988. Language Contact, Creolization, and Genetic Linguistics. Berkeley CA: University of California Press. Uffmann, C. 2008. Vowel epenthesis and Creole syllable structure. In Roots of Creole Structures, S. Michaelis (ed.), 123-152 Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Valdman, A. 1977. Creolisation sans pidgin: Le systeme des determinants du nom dans les parlers franco-creoles. In Langues en contact: Pidgin-Creoles-Languages in contact, J. Meisel (ed.), 105-136. Tiibingen: Narr.


van den Berg, M. 2001. 'Mingo, joi'l no man': Oud-Sranan in verhoren en verslagen van rechtsza.ken. Oso 20: 241-253. van den Berg, M. 2007. A Grammar of Early Sranan. PhD dissertation, University of Amsterdam. Winford, D. 2000. Irrealisin Sranan: Mood and modality in a radical creole. Journal ofPidgin and Creole Languages 15(1): 63-126. Winford, D. 2003. An Introduction to Contact Linguistics. Oxford: Blackwel1 Winford, D. & Migge, B. 2007. Substrate influence on the emergence of the TMA systems of the Surinamese creoles./oumal of Pidgin and Creole languages 22: 73-99.

179

African substrata! influence on the counterfactual in Belizean Creole* Genevieve Escure University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, USA

Belizean Creole (BC) has a counterfactual structure expressed by a preverbal combination of the past and future morphemes (me wan V). There is no equivalent structure in the English superstrate of Belizean Creole, so the possibility of the continuity and transmission of African substrata! features (especially from Bantu) is explored here. Furthermore, although many creoles mark counterfactuality in one way or another, the only English-based creoles exhibiting a past+ future sequence - albeit with different morphemes - are Krio, Sranan and Guyanese Creole, and they are all geographically distant from Bellze. I will attempt to explain the unique presence of BC me wan in terms of the particular sociolinguistic history of Belize. Belize differs from other West Indian colonies in the sense that it was never a plantation society, but rather a settlement (British Honduras) that was exclusively dedicated to the exploitation oflogwood Due to the woodcutting economy, African slave-labourers remained relatively isolated from European influences in forest camps and may therefore have retained more African linguistic characteristics than the plantation slaves in other colonies. In addition, the territory of British Honduras was particularly exposed to interethnic contacts within Central America and the possibility that such contacts impacted the linguistic development of the creole cannot be discounted Keywords: counterfactual, past negation, Belize history, Belizean Creole, Kwa, Benue-Congo, Garifuna, interethnic contacts

Introduction

1.

Belizean Creole has a special counterfa.ctual structure - expressed by a past+future preverbal combination [me wa.n V]. Some African languages also exhibit parallel sequences, so the presence of this feature in Belizean Creole (BC) may well represent the continuity and transmission of the African substrate, considering that there is no equivalent structure in superstrate Indo-European languages. Although many creoles have counterfactual structures, BC differs from them in its distinctive use of the past+future morphological combination. I will attempt to

Many thanks to Urnberto Ansaldo, Anthony Grant and Claire Lefebvre for their insightful comments on this chapter.

182

Genevieve Escure

explain the (probably conservative) presence of this idiosyncratic sequence in terms of the sociolinguistic history of Belize, in particular with reference to the origin and ethnicity of its African labour force, but also the potential impact oflocal interethnic contacts in Central America. Section 2 reviews the sociohistorical and linguistic background of Belize. I then outline and illustrate the counterfactual feature in BC and other creoles in Section 3 and its reflexes in some West African (Kwa and Benue-Congo) languages, including a special negative allomorph in Section 4. Other putative substrates are briefly explored in Section 5 before the concluding overview of findings in Section 6.

2.

The sociolinguistic background

Belize, the former British colony of British Honduras, is a complex society in spite of its small size. It has the lowest population density in Central America (240,204 according to the 2000 Population Census) for a territory covering barely 13,000 square kilometres. However, because of its pivotal geographical position at the juncture of Central America and the West Indies as well as its complicated history, it exhibits both multiculturalism and multilingualism. It is also the Central American country with the highest percentage of English-speakers, since the Creole group currently amounts to almost one third of the total population. The population is generally identified as including four major groups: Creoles, Mestizos, Amerindians (Maya) and Garinagu (see Note 2). All speak different native languages as shown in Table 1. Although the Creole group is now statistically exceeded by the Mestizo group (who are generally Spanish speakers), Belizean Creole is in fact a thriving lingua franca, constantly gaining speakers thanks to its popularity and identity value even in the non-Creole population (Escure 2004a, b, 2005).

2.1

A tumultuous history

The Yucatan peninsula was largely peripheral to Spain's economic policy in Latin America, and yet the Bay of Honduras, a remote stretch of the Central American coast, was for a long time a subject of dispute between Spain and England. Unlike other Caribbean regions, Belize was not Table 1. Ethnic groups in Belize in 2000 (Escure 2004a)

%

Ethnic group

Language

Population

Mestizo Creole Maya Garifuna.. Mennonite East Indian Other TOTAL

Spanish,BC Belizean Creole Maya,BC Garifuna,BC German,BC Bellzean Creole Chinese, Arabic

112,935

47.0

67,480

26.1

24,400

10.2

15,685

6.5

8,125 8,020

3.4 3.3

3,559

1.5

240,204

* Garifima is the language, its speakers are Garinagu (previously Black Caribs).

African substrata! influence on the counterfactual in Belizean Creole

initially a plantation society, but was primarily exploited for its precious woods, such as Iogwood, mahogany, rosewood and sapodilla that were in great demand in Europe. 1 The Spaniards were the first to conduct the wood trade. The Bay of Honduras also offered convenient shelters for British buccaneers, usually based in Jan1aica, from which they could launch their attacks on the Spanish galleons transporting cargoes of precious woods. However, exploitation of the areas natural forestry resources soon became the primary activity of the English privateers when buccaneering was outlawed in 1685. The beginning of the British settlement in the Bay of Honduras (in the 1620s) is not well documented. The "colony of Honduras" is qualified as an "isolated possession [... ] to be classed among the lesser chapters in the development of the Empire, for the number of those engaged were always small and their adventures were little known even to their contemporaries" (Burdon 1935:xii). Determining the origin of the slave force brought to Belize to work in the Iogwood camps is a challenging issue, as it is in most other colonial societies. Consequently, the search for putative African substrata! influence is primarily speculative and based on indirect evidence. In the seventeenth century, the labour force in the colonial British West Indies was primarily supplied by white indentured servants. A stable economy based on African slave labour did not emerge until1740 in Jamaica. This was probably the case for Belize as well. It is generally assumed that the slaves employed as woodcutters in Belize were imported from Jamaica, which was the closest British colony, rather than directly from Mrica, but there is no clear record of the time of arrival of the first slaves or their origin. Burdon ( 19 35) rarely mentions slaves in his Archives of British Honduras (three volumes) that record significant events spanning a period ranging from 1667 to 1884. He refers to the King of Spain's orders (1766) to grant freedom to slaves who escaped their British masters and often mentions the "fatal effects of slave seduction on the wood-cutting industry" (Burdon 1935: 15, 111). Indeed, the Spanish systematically attempted to harass the British by promising freedom to a slave population that certainly outnumbered their masters. During 1773, there were several insurrections along the Belize River. The rebels, in groups ranging from six to fifty, took five settlements and killed six white men (Burdon 1935: 121-123). Considering the rugged, sparsely populated geography of the mahogany forests, it is very likely that slaves scattered in largely unsupervised camps had "a better chance of complete escape than on the islands of the Caribbean" (de Groot et al. 1997: 169). Maroon groups. such as the runaway slaves who rebelled in 1673 and fled the sugar plantations ofJantaica (Alleyne 1980: 142) must have formed isolated groups, which would have tacilitated the retention of African features in the developing creole. As the Iogwood trade was expanded to other British settlements along the Central American coast, such as the Bay Islands of Honduras and the Mosquito Shores of Nicaragua, there were extensive internal migrations, mostly due to various skirmishes between the Spanish and the British, which complicates tracing the roots of the contemporary local people. Africans escaped from Spanish mines or English plantations - especially after the English Puritans were routed out of Providence Island by the Spaniards- and found refuge on the eastern Nicaraguan coast.

1. The Belize Estate and Produce Company Ltd from London was established in 1875 and owned more than one fifth of the country in 1942. The forest was so voraciously plundered that it was mostly exhausted by the end of the nineteenth century, leaving behind bare northern and central areas (Grant 1976).

183

184

Genevieve Escure

A mixed black-Indian population emerged, the Miskito-Zambo, who established commercial links with the British in the early part of the eighteenth century, conducting slave raids and selling captives to the British for the Jamaican slave market or to foreign settlers on the Miskito Coast (Helms 1983: 184). When the English colonists were forced by the Spanish to evacuate the British Settlement of the Mosquito Coast in 1787, Miskito Indians joined them in British Honduras. The arrival of new settlers - K537 free and 1777 slaves from the evacuated Mosquito Shore" - is noted by Burdon (1935: 45). The Miskito had close links with Belize (Miskito kings were crowned in Belize City), so their slaves may have added to the Belize work force. Finally, another Mro- Indian group contributed to the ethnic and linguistic melting pot. Mter a failed rebellion, the "Black Caribs" or Garinagu were deported by the British in 1797, from the Eastern Caribbean (St Vincent) to Central America (specifically to the island of Roatan, in the Bay Islands of Honduras). This group developed out of contacts and intermarriage between Amerindians and runaway slaves from British or French plantations in the vicinity of Barbados or St Lucia, as well as a cargo of slaves shipwrecked near St Vincent Like the Jamaican Maroons, the Mrican forebears of the Garinagu may have been Cromantees from the Akan-speaking area, according to Craton (1997:238). Following their deportation to Central America, many moved from their original settlements in Honduras northward to Belize, and others southward to the Miskito Coast (now Nicaragua). Those who lived along the Miskito Coast were involved in trading with the Miskito/Zambo. It is therefore impossible to discount multiple, multiethnic linguistic influences that resulted from the complex population movements that swept across the Caribbean from East to West into Central America (Escure 2004b ). 2 Approximations of Belize's population development can be inferred from various occasional references. According to the Colonial Office (1803), Belize's population in 1800 numbered 4,000 people, including 3,000 slaves and only 300 whites. Table 2 shows an approximation of the demographic expansion of the settlement of British Honduras. This table is a reduced version ofintormation on Caribbean populations, 1700-1900, which was culled from various sources (Engerman & Higman 1997: 48-54). The British Honduras Settlement became a Crown colony in 1862 and gained independence in 1981. Table 2. British Honduras population, 1750, 1830, 1880

Year 1750 1830 1880

White

so 302 375

Slave

Free persons of colour

Total

114 1,898

6 1,999

170 4,200 27,452*

?

* Including 2,037 Black Caribs.

The Garinagu probably spoke a creole that they learned in the Eastern Caribbean, but they also preserved their own language Garifuna, which is an Arawak/Carib contact language with extensive French borrowing (due to lengthy alliances with the French in St Vincent). They are still fluent speakers of Belizean Creole, even in Spanish-speaking Honduras. 2.


2.2

The language context

Africans brought to the Caribbean between 1650 and 1900 had diverse origins, although most came from West Africa. African captives in the early eighteenth century originated mostly from the stretch of coast ranging from the Senegambia to the Bight of Benin. More than half of the slaves taken by the British and the French came from the Akan people of the Gold Coast (Engerman & Higman 1997: 79-80; Vila Vilar 1999: 161). lf creoles display any linguistic influence traceable back to ancestral languages, the most likely candidates would belong to languages spoken along the Atlantic coast ofWest Africa- in parts of Ghana, Ivory Coast, Benin, Nigeria and Liberia - and thus belonging to the Kwa and Benue Congo phyla (e.g., Gbe, Ga, Yoruba, Igbo, Ashanti) or Ijoid.3 In addition, Bantu languages - a large subgroup of the Benue-Congo family, spoken throughout Central and South Africa - may have been ancestral languages of the transported slaves, as well as other non-Bantu languages spoken in Nigeria and Cameroon. The range of possibilities is enormous and the usual approach is to look at features common to several West African languages as likely candidates for transmission into the creoles invented by the slaves. There are a tew traces of African language retentions (mostly Yoruba varieties) in religious contexts in Cuba and Brazil, and Twi/Akan was once spoken by the Jamaican Maroons. Besides some relatively rare lexical items (e.g., nyam 'eat'), African influences are likely to be reflected in more subtle structural patterns, represented in morphological or syntactic features. The most extreme version of the substrate hypothesis for creole formation was first expressed by Sylvain (1936), who claimed that Haitian Creole was Ewe (part of the Gbe cluster) grammar with French lexicon. This approach was more recently refined and developed in the relexification theory (Lefebvre 1996). Some creolists have defined a cline of English-based creoles showing variable African influence, in descending order from most to least influenced by African features: Saramaccan and Sranan; next, Krio and Gullah; then, rural varieties ofJamaican, Antiguan and Guyanese; and finally, urban African-American varieties in the United States and middle class speech everywhere (Alleyne 1980: 18). BC is not included in this cline, but it is probably a more conservative variety than Jamaican Creole (JC). 4 It would tallow from the (unconfirmed but plausible) hypothesis of the importation of slaves from Jamaica that an early stage of Jamaican Creole was brought to Belize and became the basis of what is now BC. The relative isolation of the Iogwood camp slaves in Belize may have contributed to the preservation of African linguistic characteristics, especially if the slaves had a common ethnic heritage. Jamaican and Belizean offer many structural similarities (also occurring in other Caribbean creoles), but they are not identical, especially in their morphological realisation. For example, BC's impertective morpheme - continuative and habitual- is de and its tocusing particle is da, butJC uses the morpheme a for both. 5 There are other differences between JC and 3· Thanks to Anthony Grant for pointing out the ambiguous status of Ijo, which was originally classified as Kwa by Greenberg, but has been reclassilied in a "co-ordinate branch of Central Niger-Congo" (Heine & Nurse 2000a: 16, 22).

4· Jamaican rural varieties have been reported to use (rarely) the distinctive- and widespread- Belizean morphemeda.

5· There are rare instances of the morpheme a functioning as a topic particle in BC (whereas dais widespread).

185

186

Genevieve Escure

BC, but the principal Belizean singularity to be examined here involves the counterfactual that JC does not have. In fact, the closest equivalents to the BC counterfactual occur in far-flung areas (South America and West Africa), for example in Sranan, Guyanese Creole and Krio, whereas the closest neighbours- JC and Gullah- do not have a counterfactual. Variations between BC and JC suggest that different social factors or linguistic influences may have operated in the two areas. The most obvious reason for the difference relates to the fact that Belize is not an island nation like Jamaica, but has always maintained close links with other Central American British settlements. As indicated above, the language may thus have been subjected to multiple influences from other mainland slave populations, as well as from local mixed Afro-Indian groups that lived in close contacts with the African slaves (Miskito/Zambu and Garinagu). The evidence for African - or for that matter Amerindian6 - language presence in the Bay of Honduras during colonisation is non-existent, in contrast to Jamaica and Trinidad where traces ofYoruba, Kikongo and Kromanti have been clearly identified. Although there were strong pressures on the slaves to discontinue the use of their native languages, African languages continued to be spoken for a considerable time in the New World (Alleyne 1980: 141-142; Lovejoy 2004: 33 ). In spite of the absence of information on language usage in Belize in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, it is plausible to assume that African languages survived in the isolated Iogwood camps and contributed to the development of the local creole. Substrata! African influence is apparent in Belizean Creole, as in other creoles in many aspects of its verbal and nominal representation. African languages present elements that are widespread in creoles, such as prefixal verbal inflection, including perfective vs. imperfective aspect, as well as other subtle tense/ aspect categories, foreground vs. background marking, serialisation and topicalisation. Many of those features occur in languages belonging to the Niger-Congo phylum, but are rare outside Africa (Creissels 2000:239).

3·

The counterfactual in Belize

Although TMA features and their connection to West African languages are relatively well documented in creoles in general, the counterfactual feature represented as a past+future morphological sequence is not often mentioned in the literature. This counterfactual (i.e. contrary to fact) pattern is often used in creoles to capture an unrealised event, often conditional to another. This is mostly reflected after an "if clause': An approximate equivalent in English is the "past conditional" ('would have come') in the consequent clause ['(if I had known) I would have come']. However, I will show that the Belizean counterfactual covers a broader range of meanings than the English equivalent structures. Caribbean creoles (e.g., JC, Gullah, Miskito Coast Creole) do not have the past+future counterfactual at all, using instead the English modals wuda or J..-uda, or even a simple past auxiliary ('did' or 'was'), but the past+future structure is widespread and stable in BC and merits close

6. By the time of the Spanish conquest of Central America, there were no longer signs of important Amerindian population around the great archeological sites of the Peten area (Guatemala and Belize).


examination because of its connection to African languages. It is illustrated in (1) and following examples: 7 (1)

a

b.

If yu

si an hai pantap a mangru no go luk i gaan lang taim Be if 2s see 3s high on.top of mangrove NEG go look 3s gone long time sambadi me wcm pik it in somebody ANT FU pick it up 'If you see [a rope] on top of the mangrove, don't even look, ifs no good, somebody would have already picked it up: (Escure 1983a: 36)

In (la), a hypothetical situation is evoked ('if you can see a rope lying on the mangrove'); (1b) proposes a hypothetical event to explain why 'it's no good' (the rope is not usable). The imagined event ('someone would have already taken it'- if it were usable) is represented in BC by the me wan combination.

Representations of the counterfactual

3.1

Counterfactuals have generally been briefly mentioned, and minimally discussed, by Alleyne (1980: 11, 86), Bickerton (1975:42), Escure (1997:48, 2004a: 536), Holm (1983b: 103, 2000: 189), Robertson(1990: 179), Voorhoeve (1957: 383) and Winford (1993: 359-360). Lefebvre (1996:28329 5) offers the most thorough treatment of this feature (referred to as "conditional"). In her comparison of Fongbe and Haitian Creole, she shows that "in both languages, the interpretation of a clause containing both the marker of anteriority and the definite future marker is conditional" (Lefebvre 1996: 283). In English-based creoles, the counterfactual is represented as bin go (Krio), bin sa (Sranan), bin sa I bin go (Guyanese Creole) - all located far from Belize-, but it is uniquely me wan in Belizean Creole. In creoles with a different lexical base, it is, for example, wa malsa in Berbice Dutch and te ap I tava in Haitian Creole. The lexical variations of the past and future markers in English-based creoles are illustrated below: (2)

(3)

Ef a ben kon eside, mi ben sa aksi en dati. if Is ANT come inside ls ANT FU ask 3s that 'If he had come yesterday, I would have asked him that.' If dem bin si am, dem bin sa biit am baad. if 3P ANT see 3S 3P ANT FU beat 3S bad 'If they had seen him, they would have beaten him badly.'

(4) If ren no bin kam, a bin go t-~ooaka. if rain Nl!G ANT come Is ANT FU walk 'If it hadn't rained, I would have walked:

SRANAN

(Alleyne I980: 86) GUYANESE

(Alleyne 1980: 86) KRIO

(Alleyne I980: 86)

7. Regardless of their tense or aspectual values (to be discussed), me will be abbreviated as ANT (anterior) and wan as FU (future). When quoting data from other authors, I conform to their chosen term -for example Pl!RF for past perfective, which I assume to be equivalent to ANT for the purpose of this discussion.

187

188

Genevieve Escure

(5) Dat da we a me wtm tel you, man. That TOP what ls ANT FU tell 2s man 'That's what I would have told you (if you had listened): (6)

a

b.

c.

If

dey me wan dig wan ship auta de a mean 8 if 3P ANT FU dig a ship out.of there 1s mean you me wan ga wan lang channel,

BC

(Escure 1980: R 1.6) Be

2s ANT FU get a long channel den an me wan put dat san op de. then 3P ANT FU put that sand up there 'If you had dug out a ship out of that spot, I mean, you would have needed (to excavate) a long channel, then you would have put that sand away up there? (Escure 1980: 5.1.15)

Individual functions of me and wan

3.2

In Belize at least, and apparently in other varieties as well, the ANT morpheme that constitutes the first element of the counterfactual is not a simple indicator of past, or perfect, or past-before-past. When used by itself in preverbal position (independently from the counterfactual), it indicates a relative past, sometimes denoting anteriority, but mostly indicating relevance to the context of the conversation. It is therefore a type of aspect rather than a simple tense marker. The following examples illustrate the various grammatical contexts of preverbal me in the real life conversations collected in Belize. It combines with a continuative morpheme (me de) in imperfective situations (7), in which it has a backgrounding function; with a locative verb phrase and before the locative verb (8); or it occurs directly before a noun phrase (9) in a predicate without a copula. In (10) the interaction of me+ V and me wan +Vis illustrated. The same morpheme me occurs in Miskito Coast Creole (MCC) (11 ), but in this variety, the past+future counterfactual has not been recorded to my knowledge: (7)

Wi me de luk fu rop wan taim an a fain di bes rop. lP ANT IMP look for rope one time and IS find the best rope 'We were looking for some rope. and I found the best rope:

Be

(Escure 1983a: 34)

(8)

Lata pipl me awt de, me de de9 da shalo paat. Be lot.of people ANT out there ANT we there at shallow part 'There were lots of people down there, (they) were at the shallow part: [before something happened] (Escure 1997: 105)

(9)

Wen a da 10 me wan grup lida de a now dem gyal. when ls TOP ANT a group leader there ls know 3P girl 'When I was a group leader there, I knew those girls:

BC

(Escure 1980:R2.10)

8. Note the presence of the counterfactual in the conditional clause as well.

9· The locative verb de is homophonous with the imperfective particle. There is a slight phonetic difference in the adverbial de 'there' (lower mid vowel) - not represented here. 10. It is dear in this sentence that da is a topic marker and not a copula, since it precedes me that is necessarily a preverbal auxiliary (Escure 1983 b).


(10)

Tmli kaal mi tel mi dey me gat tu pipl we me wan kum in. sc Toni call 1s tell 1s 3s ANT get two people REL ANT FU come in 'Toni called me to tell me that they had two people who might come in.' (Escure 1997: 101-1 02)

In (10), it is clear that Toni called to refer to a prior event- two tourists had been in touch to ask if they could come on the island. This is mar ked by me get. The actual visit of the two people is unrealised, whence the use of me wan kum. 11 (11)

If a me ded a go12 pan di ship an haal yu af if 1s ANT dead 1s go on the ship and haul you off 'Ifl died, I would go to the ship and haul you ofP.

MCC

(Holm 1983a: 103)

The etymology of bin (as past or anterior marker) in many English-based creoles is a straightforward adaptation of the borrowed English morpheme 'been' (as in "he's been eating"). But what of the etymology of me in BC (also appearing occasionally as men, wen or ·we in other Central American varieties such as Nicaragua's Miskito Coast Creole and Providencia Creole)? The hypothesis that me was derived from 'been' (Alleyne 1980: 85) requires several phonetic changes modification of the bilabial onset (/b/ > /m/), of the vowel (Iii > /e/) and loss of the final nasal. However, such changes (especially the first) have not operated anywhere else in the lexicon (phonotactic constraints allow word-initial bilabial voiced stops, as in [bwai] 'boy' or [be] 'bay'). This explanation is also unsatisfactory because it assumes that ben is older than me, which is counterintuitive.13 I will therefore consider other possible etymological sources for BC me, in particular that of a direct Mrican loan. As to the future marker contained in the counterfactual, it generally functions as a straightforward tense marker. Its origin is unambiguous. Creole future markers are based on words indicating either direction or volition. This is a familiar pattern which accounts for the English future 'will' (volition), or the French future in -rai (je ma.ngera.i 'l will eat'), obviously derived from a grammaticalised form of'go'). So the differences between the wi future(< 'will' in Jamaican Creole),go (in Krio), sa(< 'shall' in Sranan and Guyanese) and wan(< 'want' in Belizean and Nicaraguan Miskito Coast Creole) simply reflect various choices oflexical forms selected from the superstrate. In this respect, BC is closer to JC, but still constitutes an exception among Caribbean English creoles, since all other varieties derive their future from a motion 'go' verb: (12)

a b.

A tel dem pipol dat nobodi els wcm de da kam 1s tell 3s people that nobody else FU Loc at camp A wan mek im now dat.

BC

1s FU make him know that 'I told those people that nobody else will be at the camp, I'll let him know that: (EscW'e 1997: 105)

11. Wan also exists as a separate verb, with the semantic value of 'want There is sometinles semantic ambiguity in the use of the future particle and, in fact, the irrealis value of the particle and the word 'want' overlap. 12. Ahhough Miskito Coast Creole has the anterior me like BC, it does not seem to have a past+ future counterfactual (at least not in the available data). Here, the bare verb has counterfactual value.

13. Some Jamaican Creole rural varieties are reported as having a min variant (Alleyne 1980: 85).

189

190

Genevieve Escure

(13)

Az mi nuo

di ruod, im wi se11

mi.

JAMAICAN CREOLE

as 1s know the road 3s FU send 1s 1\.s I know the road, she will send me.'

3·3

(Winford 1993:58)

Functions of the countertactual

Not all Caribbean varieties have a past+future counterfactual. They may use instead a variant of 'would have' (wuda/kuda ), even in the most basilectal varieties. This is the case for Jamaican Creole and Gullah. In addition, the English-style conditional also occurs in the mesolectal versions of those creoles that regularly use the specific countertactual. In Belizean varieties (especially in a basilect/mesolect borderline variety), wuda and kuda occasionally combine with the anterior morpheme me, thus producing a new hybrid counterfactual especially in intermediate varieties: (14)

Dey kuda me gu bak n tla. 3P could ANT go back and tear 'They could have gone back and fled.'

BC

(Escure 1980: 5.1.2)

The following short conversation illustrates the productive use of me in BC. which can denote various types of unrealised, imagined or reported events: ( 15)

[S. (43-year old woman) discusses with E (26- year old man) the professional future of her son R., who is E's friend]: a. R. wan tek wan korespondens kos, uc R FU take a correspondence course

b.

i

me wan tek it bifo

i kum owt.

3s ANT PU

c.

d. e.

take 3s before 3s come out I me de plan Ju tek it dat 3s ANT IMP plan to take it that da taim di tern dan di kos dan. TOP time the term done the course done

A tink

i

se

i

wuda

me

wan kos

ina kowntin.

1s think 3s say 3s would ANT a course in accounting f. I kuda me gEt wan djab da big krik. 3s could ANT get a job at Big Creek 'R will (may) take a correspondence course (hoping that) he might complete it before they go out (for the start of the lobster season). He was planning to take it so that the course might (hopefully) be finished by the time the term is over. I think he said that it would be (possibly) an accounting (Escure 1997: 48) course. He might (possibly, hopefully) get a job at Big Creek.'

BC makes active use of me and uses it for a range of functions. Although it clearly refers to some time prior to the conversation (backgrounding) when combined with the imperfective - i me de plan 'he was/had been planning in (lSc), the combination me wan in (15b)- i me wan tek it 'he would have taken it/ he would hope to take it' - expresses a complex kind of irrealis, a hypothetical outcome, simply wishful thinking, or the reported intentions of R by his mother. It is difficult to express those hypothetical nuances in the English translation. The morpheme wan also clearly denotes something else than definite futurity or volition, even when occurring alone in preverbal


position as in (lSa). It then has a hypothetical value that overlaps with an epistemic modality. When me and wan are combined, the expression of uncertainty is heightened, but there is still a possibility of realisation, so in this case the structure is not a past conditional, or a statement of unrealised events, such as a. me wan tel yu. (5), which refers to a finite unreality ('I would/could/ might have told you, but didn't because you didn't let me'). On the other hand, in (10), there is a potential realisation of the event expressed in tu pipl we me wan J..-um in ('Two people might have come I or might come' [to an isolated island] ... if conditions are met, ifit's not too late, if a boat is available). In conclusion, me wan covers an extensive range of hypothetical situations not directly expressed as such in English and, consequently, BC uses the counterfactual to express subtle perceptions of events, anticipated or imagined, in a manner than cannot be derived directly from the superstrate. In the next section, I will examine how some African languages express hypothetical situations of the type illustrated above.

4·

African sources of the Belizean counterfactual

In spite of the European masters' efforts to separate slaves from their compatriots so as to avoid communication and therefore rebellion and com plots, retention of African languages may have been quite common while a new lingua franca or creole was developing. If multilingualism was present, then the incipient creole would have coexisted with African languages, and it is then much easier to explain the transmission of sub stratal features as an integral part of the language acquisition process. I will first identify some putative sources tor BC tense and aspect markers, more specifically as they involve the past/ anterior and future BC morphemes, then I will investigate the presence of counterfactual structures in Niger-Congo languages. The task is admittedly ambitious, considering that the Niger-Congo phylum numbers 1,436languages, including the Bantu tamily, which in itself has about 500 members (Heine & Nurse 2000b: 1). Of particular interest are members of the Kwa/Benue-Congo/Bantu families, so I will restrict the scope of this brief overview to those languages that appear to offer similarities with the counterfactual feature under consideration. 4.1

Tense/aspect in Kwa and Bantu languages and the source tor me

Across the enormous spectrum of African languages, tense and aspect inflections may appear in prefixal or suffixal positions in relation to the verb and can also be discontinuous morphemes (before and after the verb), but preverbal positions prevail overall. A majority of languages resort to a short set of verbs - sometimes called auxiliary verbs such as 'want/like, come, be, go, finish, have, be with' -which are grammaticalised as tense/aspect markers in a manner directly reflected in creoles. Typically 'go or 'want' lexical items mark future and a 'finish' verb becomes past. anterior or completive marker, to mention only elements relevant to this discussion. Although this pattern is widespread in world languages, its occurrence in African languages is bound to have at least contributed to its diffusion in developing contact languages.

191

192

Genevieve Escure

Nurse (1989) documents linguistic changes across three Bantu varieties (Gikuyu, Ganda and Standard Swahili) that range over a continuum of "tense" marking from conservative to innovative- three pasts, three futures, one present in Gikuyu, but only one past and one future in Standard Swahili (Ganda is intermediate with two pasts, two futures). While some tense morphemes are "pre-stem" and other suffixes in Gikuyu, Swahili uses only pre-stem elements (Nurse 1989). The past and future markers are derived as follows in the three Bantu varieties (Nurse 1989:286):

taka 'want' > ta (future marker) mele 'finish' > me (past marker) The use of Swahili me as a perfective preverbal morpheme is illustrated below. It shows that the development of a simpler system in Swahili matches exactly what happened in BC: (16)

u me kata 14 2s PERF cut 'you have cut'

(17) Ni me ji ju11za Ki-swahili. 1S PERF REFL learn Swahlli 'I have learned Swahlli.'

SWAinll

(Dimmendaal2000: 161) SWAinll

(Dimmendaal2000: 161)

Niger-Congo languages generally exhibit more complex tense-aspect systems in which it is often difficult to neatly separate tense from aspect (not to mention mood). In that regard, they are quite distinct from Indo-European verbal systems that can be more simply categorised. Different types of past and future - proximate, remote, definite or indefinite - are represented through a broad range of distinct flexions or tone contours. The concept of"relative tense" is often invoked in descriptions of African languages, a notion that is readily applicable to creoles as seen with BC in the previous section. The ambiguous nature of African "tense/aspect" is illustrated in Ibibio (a language of Nigeria related to Efik, East Benue-Congo, Cross River subgroup of Bantu). Ibibio has a "neutral" tense allomorph or past (ma-), whereas another allomorph (me-) ranges over present tense, perfect aspect and past tense functions. Me- indicates that a past (extended now) action has present relevance. The Ibibio structure differs from the English present perfect in that "the essence of me in Ibibio is to emphasise not so much the continuing present relevance of a situation as indicating the proximity of the past in relation to the moment of the speaking" (Essien 1987: 159): (18)

Ime a-ma-k£p.

IBIBIO

Ime C+PA+hear 'Ime heard.' 15

14. All diacritics (tone marks, special phonetic symbols) are omitted from the African examples, since I am merely dealing with simple morphemes that are not distinguished phonetically. Otherwise examples are presented as in the original text 15. C in the Ibibio sentence corresponds to a concord marker.


(19)

Ami m-me-dep moto. I c+PBRF+buy a car 'I have bought a car:

(20)

Mm-me-tolyo

awo ado.

c+PRBS remember that man 'I remember that man: (21)

M-me-wewet

nwed. C+IMPA Write+RBDUPL book 'I have already written a book (before some other situation):

(Essien 1983: 330- 336)

Kituba, an African creole related to Bantu also has a "relative tense system" marking a variety of temporal delimitations - transient duration, concomitant duration, subsequent - according to Mufwene (1990). Kituba also uses a me(ne) particle as a sort of perfect that denotes current relevance and functions very much like Ibibio me: (22)

(23)

Bo me kanga yandi. [they have caught him (and he is still in their hands)] 'They have him: Ya11di me lala. [he finish- fall asleep] 'He is asleep:

KITUBA (Mufwene 1990: 105)

KITUBA (Mufwene 1990: 105)

The resemblance, both phonetic and grammatical, between the Swahili, Ibibio and Kituba particles, and the Belizean me (labelled ANT) is of course striking and perhaps not coincidental. In fact, similar me/mi/ma morphemes occur in parallel preverbal positions in several languages ranging from West to East Africa. 4.2

The expression of counterfactuals in African languages

In addition to the spectrum of tense and aspect options carried by independent past and future elements, several West African languages also combine markers of anteriority with future markers to indicate various types of irrealis functions. Lefebvre (1996) offers the most comprehensive illustration of parallels between Haitian Creole and Fongbe (Kwa). Fongbe uses a ko+na (anterior+de.finite future) or ko+nawa (anterior+indefinite future) to mark various types of conditional (more or less definite). Haitian Creole has transferred the Fongbe constructions, with relexification of the African morphemes, choosing superstrate (French) items that have some overlapping semantic value. In the case of Haitian Creole (te+ap ), creole speakers selected the French past auxiliary 'ete' > t/te and the future adverbial 'apres' > ap, or a variant of the 'go verb> a.-va. (used as indefinite future marker). The parallel Fongbe/Haitian structures are illustrated in (24) and (25): (24)

Mari ko na da wo. Mari te ap prepare pat. Mary ANT DBP-PUT prepare dough 'Mary would prepare/would have prepared dough:

PONGBB HAITIAN (Lefebvre 1996: 283)

193

194

Genevieve Escure

(25)

Mari leo Mari t' Mary

na-wa a-va

ANT IND-FUT

da wo. prepare pat

FONGBB HAITIAN

prepa1e dough

'Ma~y might prepare/might have prepaied the

dough:

(Lefebvre 1996: 285)

Other Niger-Congo languages such as Bambara (Mande group) and Yoruba (east Kwa or BenueCongo group) also exhibit similar structures (Bamgbose 1966:94), although they may be in a different order (a ti is fu ture+past in Yoruba ). In a study ofYoruba counterfactuals, Salone (1987) shows that "future" markers (yio, o, a, maa) play an important role in the expression of conditions and thus function as counterfactuals. Their definite aspectual qualities merge with the set of unreality markers often marked by iba, which in (27) combines with the past marker ti. That is because "what is imaginary, what is contrary to reality and what is predicted are all unreal" (Salone 1987: 348): (26)

(27)

Bi m ba ri esin to m IJie maa daku. if I INDBF see horse which has wings I-Fu fuint 'Ifl saw a winged horse, I would filint::

Bi o ba se pe o le so Y ni won iba ti gba a. if it INDEF be that he can speak Y COP they UNR PBRF accept him 'If he had been able to speak Yoruba, they would have accepted him:

YORUBA

(Salone 1987:343) YO RUB A

(Salone 1987: 343)

Not all African languages have the past+future (or future+past) combinations, but the expression of unrealised conditions appears to be represented through various strategies, including the extension of"tense" markers like the future, as shown in Yoruba. This extension is also common in pidgins and creoles, for example in Kru Pidgin English which uses the future particles go and we as irrealis markers (Singler 1990:207). 4·3

Past negation

The structure of Belizean negative sentences with ANT reference strengthens the Mrican substrate hypothesis. BC has a negative particle no in preverbal position (as well as occasional double negation), except when an irrealis ANT notion is involved. A special negative structure is required in unrealised/hypothetical contexts. So the negative equivalent of me is never *no me, but invariably neva - which does not mean simply 'never. but usually negates a past event. 16 Furthermore, neva. functions as the negative allomorph of both me and me wan. By the same token, me and neva never co-occur: 17

16. However, neva may also have the meaning of 'never: depending on the context

trip de me neva tu bad 'That trip (there) wasn't too bad' (Escure 1980: D.5.1.4). This is an emphatic sentence ('It was a great trip'). I attribute this «duplication" to the emphatic nature of the sentence. 17. I found a single exception in my Belizean corpus: da


(28) If dey neva get tu an kwik I me wtm drown. if 3P NBG.PA get to 3s quick 3s PA FU drown 'If they hadift got to him fast he would have drowned.'

BC (Escure 1980: 5.1.21)

This usage also appears in the traditional ending of Anansi Stories, in which neva has an irrealis function in both the hypothetical and the consequent clauses of the following sequential conditional statement: (29) Di pin neva ben di story neva en. the pin Nl!G.PA bend the story NBG.PA end '(10 the pin hadn't bent, the story wouldn't have ended.'

BC (Anansi Story)

Negation is often treated as an aspect in African languages. Not uncommonly, negation is expressed through a specific negative allomorph of the verb that parallels a positive and an interrogative form rather than with a negative affix attached to the verb base. Some languages have a single morpheme that merges tense, aspect and negation function. For example, Zarma uses si as IMPERF/NEG morpheme and Mandinka mat1 as PERF/NEG (Creissels 2000:238, 244). lbibio has two allomorphs for the past marker: rna (or me as discussed above) in simple affirmative sentences (without any form of negation, emphasis, marked modality, or Wh-question) and ke in negative, emphatic and modally marked sentences, as well as Yes-No questions: (30) a

b.

c.

Affirmative Ime amakop. Ime c+PA+hear 'Imeheard? Negative Ime ikikoppo. Ime c+PA+hear+NBG 'Ime didn't hear? Emphatic Ime akekop. BMPHime C+PA+hear 'It was Ime (not any other person) who heard.'

IBIBIO

(Essien 1983: 330-331)

This pattern also occurs in Mandinka: ye (positive) alternates with ma.n (negative): (31)

a

b.

I ye kulun-o }e. they PBRF boat-DBF see 'They saw the boat: I man kulun je. they PBRF-NBG boat see 'They did not see the boat:

MANDINKA

(Creissels 2000: 244)

Finally, Swahili has a three-way distinction between an anterior verb form (marked with me) and a past tense (marked with li) in the affirmative. When one negates these verb forms, the two types merge in a different form with siku:

195

196

Genevieve Escure

(32)

a

Nl!lWifunza kiswahili.

SWAiflLI

'I have learned K!swahlli'

b.

Nilijifunza kiswahili. 'I learned Kiswahlli.'

c.

Sikuiiju11za kiswahili. 'I havelft learned/ didlft learn K!swahlli'

(Dimmendaal2000: 173)

This convergence of negation in past contexts is mirrored in BC. It is represented in the sentence: di pin neva ben di stori neva en (29), in which neva. functions as negative simple past or negative anterior past, as well as negative counterfactual. The first clause could be translated as either 'if the pin didn't bend' or 'if the pin hadn't bent' and the second clause as 'the story would not end' or 'the story would not have ended'. The sequence neva. wan is impossible as a negative counterfactual. This usage of neva as negator in past sentences is common, at least in Caribbean creoles.

Garifuna reinforcement

5·

A final question arises in the Central American context: How could local populations not have had an impact on the development of Belizean Creole? I noted earlier the frequent interactions between the African slaves and at least two independent Afro-Amerindian groups: those that were natives of Central America (Miskito) and those that originated from the Amazon area and were then deported to Central America after extensive miscegenation with African maroons (Garinagu). The possibility of Mrican influence via Garifuna arises because of the presence in the language of a me morpheme (with variants meha/meti) 18 indicating remote past in preverbal position: (33)

Dan-11Wei mehc1 h-eidin mutu ouchaha. time-PT ANT 3P-go people fish 'In the old days, people would go fishing:

GARIPUNA (Escure 2004b: 57)

One can therefore speculate that the unique selection of me in BC (and other Central American creoles) was strengthened by language convergence. 19 If anterior me existed in the languages spoken by the African ancestors of the Garinagu, then this element may have been loaned to the Amerindian language that the Africans adopted in the seventeenth and eighteenth century after they merged with the Arawaks/ Caribs in the Eastern Caribbean. When the Mro- Indian group moved to Central America by the end of the eighteenth century, the Black Caribs, as they were then called, regularly interacted with the Creoles. The co-occurrence of a grammatically and phonologically similar item in BC and in Garifuna could have reinforced its presence in the developing Central American creole. The Garinagu were, and still are, fluent speakers of the creole- partly because of their low social status vis-a-vis the Creole group (Escure 1979, 1983c). On 18. -ha and -ti are generally emphatic particles (they also have other functions).

19. I have previously explained the presence of me in Garifuna - apparently not derived from Amazonian languages - as the result of BC influence, but the direction of the putative borrowing is uncertain due to the absence of earlier language data. Instead of being influenced by BC, Garifuna may have provided independent support to the creole.


the other hand, the Creoles do not speak Garifuna. Bantu substrata! influence in Garifuna is not obviously widespread, but there are at least a few clearly identifiable Bantu lexical items in Garifuna - mutu 'person, people' in ( 33) is one of them. Garifuna may well have transmitted more African components than is currently assumed. There is clearly a need for further investigation of possible sub stratal reflexes in the contact languages of Central America.

6.

Overview of African substrate influence

The evidence for substrata! influence in the case of Belizean Creole is indirect On one hand, it is inferred from the scant, incomplete historical records of the European colonisation of the Bay of Honduras and its practice of slavery. On the other hand, it is based on contemporary data from modem African languages, with the additional caveat that available data are often limited, restricted to brief sentences or sentence fragments that hardly convey an accurate rendering of native speakers' intent and complete use of their languages. This is particularly problematic in the case of Mrican languages that express perceptual capabilities that are not exactly matched in Indo-European languages. I believe that these perceptual divergences, especially in the case of the marking of reality or unreality (including counterfactuality) are at the core of the issue discussed here. Nevertheless, the possibility of an Mrican transmission of irrealis markers is supported. The discrepancy noted between the perception of events in Belizean Creole- especially in the expression ofhypotheticals and conditionals- and its English counterpart seems to have developed out of Mrican linguistic representations of perceptual patterns, rather than out of su perstratal or even universal ways of expressing unrealised events. The ANT morpheme me in BC marks the relative sequencing of events from the speaker's viewpoint and is more aspectual than tense-linked, especially when combining with a future/irrealis marker. It effectively serves to express the speakers' perceptions or their interpretations of others' viewpoints - as for example in the case of the woman talking about her son's plans in (15). BC is like other Caribbean creoles in that it shows African substratal influence in the case of relexified countertactuals and particles that have preserved special temporallaspectual ways of referring to related events, including separate ways of expressing negation through allomorphic verbal variations. But the extent of the continuity of the African substrate in BC is particularly convincing in the case of me, which is likely to be a direct transter from one or several BenueCongo languages. Homophonous elements denoting relative past, perfect or anterior occur not only in Ibibio/Efik (Nigeria) and Kituba (a lingua franca of Central Africa), but also in Swahili. This direct transmission would make Belizean Creole unique. Its maintenance over the centuries - and resistance to relexification as bin - may be due to the active presence of a similar morpheme in Garifuna, which may itself have been brought independently from Africa. There is one aspect of the putative Mrican substrate that is rarely discussed: the potential impact of Mrican trade languages and pidgins/creoles that have long existed on the Mrican continent Even if the majority of slaves were native speakers of Gold Coast languages, it is possible, and even likely, that they had been fluent in one of several African lingua francas prior to their exile. The Efik of Calabar were among the earliest groups along the Guinea Coast to trade with Europeans. They were involved in the transatlantic trade and had extensive commercial links

197

198

Genevieve Escure

from southeastern Nigeria to western Cameroon (Faraclas 1989: 377). Efik was therefore a lingua franca in the region, and it is therefore quite possible that many of the slaves had some knowledge ofEfik, closely related to lbibio, whose similarities with Belizean Creole I have shown above. The same may be said about Kituba and Swahili. The African creole Kituba, now widely spoken in Central and South Africa, may also have been used by Africans in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries as a language of wider communication. As to Swahili, it is a contact language with extensive Arabic borrowings, the result of centuries of contact between Arabic traders and Bantu speakers. It was used as a trade language in commercial and slavery contacts between Arabs and Africans long before Western slavery was established in the seventeenth and eighteenth century. Lingua francas such as Efik, Kituba, Swahili or a general West African Pidgin English must have had commonalities (as they do now) and would have presented practical reference points for the Central American slaves developing a new creole language.

7·

Conclusion

Belize was not a plantation slave society. The relative isolation oflogwood camp slaves and their limited contacts with whites facilitated the maintenance of African elements, including the intact preservation of some essential verbal morphology such as ANT me and its counterfactual structure. Direct African antecedents have been found for this structure (lbibio/Efik, Kituba, Swahili and generally Bantoid languages). Its anteriority morpheme, the specific shape ofits futurity/irrealis marker and its related counterfactual combinations appear to closely mirror aspects of Bantu morphology, as well as the semantics of hypothetical events. Finally, the counterfactual and its iconic African representation may have been reinforced through the convergence with a phonetically and semantically similar structure in Garifuna - perhaps itself traceable back to Bantu through independent migration.

List of abbreviations Anterior Belizean Creole c Concord COP Copula Dl!F Definite Dl!F-FUT Definite Future EMPH Emphasis FU Future IMPA Immediate Past IMP Imperfective IND-FUT Indefinite Future INDEF Indefinite Jamaican Creole JC we Locative MCC Miski.to Coast Creole ANT

BC

NEG NEG.PA p

PA Pl!RF PRJ!S PT

Rl!DUPL Rl!FL RilL

s TOP UNR

v

Negative Negative Past Plural Past Perfective Present Particle Reduplication Reflexive Relative Pronoun Singular Topic Particle Unrealised Verb


References Alleyne, M. 1980. Comparative Afro-American. Ann Arbor MI: Karoma. Bamgbose, A. 1966. A Grammar ofYoruba. Cambridge: CUP. Bickerton, D. 1975. Dynamics of a Creole System. Cambridge: CUP. Burdon, J. A. 1935. Archives of British Honduras. London: Sifton Praed & Company. Colonial Office (London). 1803. British Honduras Population as of1803. CO 123/15. Craton, M. 1997. Forms of resistance to slavery. In General history of the Caribbean, Vol. III: The Slave Societies in the Caribbean, E W. Knight (ed..), 222-270. London: UNESCO Publishing. Creissels, D. 2000. Typology. In African Languages, B. Heine & D. Nurse (eds ), 231-258. Cambridge: CUP. de Groot, S., Christen, C. & Wright, F. 1997. Maroon communities in the circum-Caribbean. In Grneral History of the Caribbean, Vol. III: The Sltm Societies in the Caribbean, F. W. Knight (ed.), 169-193. London: UNESCO Publishing. Dirnmendaal, G. 2000. Morphology. In African Languages, B. Heine & D. Nurse (eds), 161-193. Cambridge: CUP. Engerrnan, S. & Higman, B. W. 1997. The demographic structure of the Caribbean slave societies in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. In Grneral History of the Caribbean, Vol III: The Slave Societies in the Caribbean, F. W. Knight (ed.), 45-104. London: UNESCO Publishing. Escure, G. 1979. Linguistic variation and ethnic interaction in Belize: Creole/Carib. In Language and Eth,Jic Relatiom, H. Giles & B. Saint-Jacques (eds), 101-116. Oxford: Pergamon Press. Escure, G. 1980. Belizean Creole corpus (Unpublished). Escure, G. 1983a. Belizean Creole. In Central American English, J. Holm (ed..), 29-70. Heidelberg: Julius Groos. Escure, G. 1983b. The Belizean copula: A case of semantactic shift In Studies in Caribbean Language, L. Carrington (ed.), 190-202 Trinidad: Society for Caribbean Linguistics. Escure, G. 1983c. The use of creole as interlanguage by the Black Caribs of Belize. In 1982 Mid America Linguistics Conference Papers, F. Ingemann (ed..), 271-282. Lawrence KS: University of Kansas Press. Escure, G. 1997. Creole and Dialect Continua: Standard Acquisition Processes in Belize and China (PRC) [Creole Lanuage Library 18]. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Escure, G. 2004a. Belize and other Central American varieties: Morphology and syntax. In A Handbook of Varieties ofEnglish, Vol 2, B. Kortmann, E. W. Schneider, K. Burridge, R. Mesthrie & C. Upton (eds), 517-544. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Escure, G. 2004b. Garifuna in Belize and Honduras. In Creoles, Contact and Language Change, G. Escure & A. Schwegler (eds), 35-65. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Escure, G. 2005. Belize: Language situation. The Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics. 2nd edn. Oxford: Elsevier. Essien, 0. 1983. The tense system of Ibibio. In CurmJt Approaches to African Linguistics, Vol 2, J. Kaye, H. Koopman, D. Sportiche & A. Dugas (eds), 329-344. Dordrecht: Foris. Essien, 0. 1987. The aspectual system of Ibibio. In Current Approaches to African Linguistics, Vol4, D. Odden (ed..), 151-166. Dordrecht: Foris. Faraclas, N. 1989. Cross River. In The Niger-Congo Languages, J. Bendor-Samuel (ed.), 377-399. Lanham MD: University Press of America. Grant, C. H. 1976. The Making of Modern Belize. Cambridge: CUP. Heine, B. & Nurse, D. (eds). 2000a. African Languages. Cambridge: CUP. Heine, B. & Nurse, D. 2000b. Introduction. In African Languages, B. Heine & D. Nurse (eds), 1-10. Cambridge: CUP. Helms, M. 1983. Miskito slaving and culture contact: Ethnldty and opportunity in an expanding population. Journal of Anthropological Research 39(2): 179-197. Holm, J. (ed.). 1983a. Central American English. Heidelberg: Julius Groos. Holm, J. 1983b. Miskito Coast Creole. In Central American English, J. Holm (ed..), 95-114. Heidelberg: Julius Groos.

199

wo Genevieve Escure

Holm, J. 2000. An Introduction to Pidgins and Creoles. Cam bridge: CUP. Lefebvre, C. 1996. The tense, mood and aspect system of Haitian Creole: Problem of transmission of grammar in creole genesis. Journal o_fPidgin and Creole Languages 11(2): 231-311. Lovejoy, P. 2004. The Yo.ruba factor in the trans-Atlantic slave trade. In The Yotuba Diaspora in the Atlantic World, T. Faiola & M.D. Childs (eds), 40-55. Bloomington IN: Indiana University Press. Mufwene, S. 1990. Time reference in Kikongo-Kituba. In Pidgin and Creole TuiSe-nwod-aspect SystertiS [Creole Language Library 6], J. V. Singler (ed.), 97-117. Amsterdam: John Benjamlns. Nurse, D. 1989. Change in tense and aspect Evidence from Northeast Coast Bantu languages. In Current Approaches to African Linguistics, VoL 6, I. Halk & L Fuller (eds), 277-291. Dordrecht: Foris. Robertson, I. 1990. The tense-mood-aspect system of Berbice Dutch. In Pidgin and Creole Tense-mood-aspect Systems [Creole Language Library 6], J. V. Singler (ed.), 169-184. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Salone, S. 1987. Unreality in Yoruba. In Current Approaches to African Linguistics, Vol. 4, D. Odden (ed.), 339-346. Do.rdrecht: Foris. Singler, J. V. 1990. The impact of decreolization upon T-M-A: Tenselessness, mood, and aspect in Kru Pidgin English. In Pidgin and Creole Tense-nwod-aspect Systems [Creole Language Library 6], J. V. Singler (ed.), 203-230. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Sylvain, S. 1936. Le creole hai"tien. Wettern: Irnprimerie de Meester. Vila Vilar, E. 1999. Forced African settlement. The basis offorced settlement: Africa and its trading conditions. In General History of the Caribbean, VoL II, New Societies; The Caribbean in the Lo'Jg Sixteenth Century, P. Emmer (ed.), 159-179. London: UNESCO Publishing. Voorhoeve, J. 1957. The verbal system ofSranan. Lingua 6: 374-396. Winford, D. 1993. Predication in Caribbean English creoles [Creole Language Library 10]. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Substrate features in Nicaraguan, Providence and San Andres Creole Englishes* A comparison with Twi Angela Bartens University of Turku and University of Helsinki

This paper investigates the influence ofthe substrate as represented by the Kwa language Twi on the English-based creoles spoken on San Andres and Old Providence (Colombia) and on the Atlantic coast of Nicaragua. Thirty phonological, morphosyntactic and lexical features were selected for scrutiny. In a number of cases, it was impossible to make a case for exclusive substrate influence and it seems preferable to speak of convergence. However, there are also many language structures for which substrate tnfiuence offers the most likely explanation.

Keywords: English-based creoles, San Andres, Providence, Nicaragua, substrate influence, morphosyntax, lexlcosemantics, phonology

1.

Introduction

In this paper, I aim at presenting an overview of a number of structures which potentially reveal substrate influence in the three English-based Western Caribbean creoles spoken on San Andres and Providence (henceforth SA and PR) and on the Nicaraguan Atlantic Coast (Nicaraguan Kriol, i.e. NK, formerly called Mosquito Coast Creole English, Holm 1978). It is generally assumed that the foundations of the actual population of the archipelago 1 were laid around 1730 with the arrival of colonists from other parts of the British Caribbean especially Jamaica - and directly from the British Isles - above all from Scotland and Ireland - as well as from West Atrica. The cultivation of the island's cash crop, cotton, required a continual influx of slaves. The predominance of Jamaica as a source of origin created an important historical

* I would like to thank the Finnish Academy of Science and Letters for supporting my research in 2001-2002 through an individual grant for research on San Andres and Providencia Creole English (grant number 73187), in 2006-2008 through a research project on language and language use in Nicaragua and Guatemala (grant nwnber 111544), and in 2008 through the position of a senior research fellow (grant nwnber 119750 ). 1. In reality, the archipelago consists of three islands: San Andres, Old Providence and Santa Catalina. In this paper, the term (Old) Providence includes Santa Catalina.

202

Angela Bartens

link with Jamaica and Jamaican Creole (Edwards 1970:29). The Akan cluster including the Twi language has been long established as the most important single substrate of Jamaican Creole English (Alleyne 1986: 313; Patrick 2007: 127) and therefore also constitutes the key substrate language cluster for all the varieties in the region (Parkvall2000: 123, 150), including SA, PR and NK. The Miskitu Coast of Nicaragua was settled by the British during the 1630s. As settlement was more continuous than on San Andres and Old Providence, NK may be considered one of the oldest English-based varieties in the Americas (Holm 1978:5, 1983:95). During its short existence - until1641 -, the Puritan community of Old Providence traded with the Miskitu Coast and the Puritans obtained permission from the Miskitu chiefs for taking Miskitu wives (Petersen 2001: 26). It also seems likely that the first Africans to be incorporated into the Miskitu nation fled from Old Providence in 1641 (Holm 1978:179-180, 1983:97, 1986:7, 10). The paper is organised as follows. In Section 2, I will discuss the methodology adopted for the selection of the linguistic features presented and analysed in Section 3, the main part of the paper. I will close the paper in Section 4 with some brief concluding remarks and suggestions for further research.

2.

Methodology

In order to give a panoramic view of the impact of the substrate on present-day SA, PR and N K - henceforth also WCCEs (Western Caribbean Creole Englishes) which, for reasons of space, stands for the three varieties under survey unless otherwise specified-, the framework adopted here is the feature catalog of the APiCS (Atlas of Pidgin and Creole Language Structzu-es), an international research project coordinated by the Max Planck Institute in Leipzig and aiming at the compilation of a typological language atlas of a large number of Pidgin and Creole languages modelled after the WALS (World Atlas of La.nguage Structzu-es) previously coordinated by the same institution.2 This seemed a logical choice for three reasons: the range of features covered is quite wide (120 in the final version of the APiCS); the choice of features is a result of a process in which specialists in the field have participated tor several years, i.e., it is not based on the subjective insights of one single person like myself; and I am one of the contributors to the project to which I am supplying the data on SA (with notes on divergent structures in PR) and NK. The APiCS teature catalog concentrates on morphosyntax although the description of each language includes a presentation of its segmental phonemes and some observations on syllable structure and suprasegmentals. The lexicon, the area where documenting substrate influence is in a certain way most straightforward in spite of the sometimes precarious tools for searching for etyma,3 plays a marginal role in the APiCS, amounting to a few entries on calques and/or lexica-

2.

See the project homepage at: https:/ /lingweb.eva.mpg.de/apics/index. php/APiCS:About:.

3· It is common knowledge among c.reolists that many of the African substrate languages of the Atlantic c.reoles lack any language sketch or word list whatsoever and that even for the best researched ones, only diachronic stages much more recent than the time of c.reolisation are described.

Substrate features in Nicaraguan, Providence and San Andres Creole Englishes

semantics and two on specific lexical items, the wide-spread words piknini 'child' < Port. pequeninho 'small (diminutive)' and sa11e 'to know' (and related meanings) < Port saber 'to know'.4 Encountering a "parallel structure" is obviously not enough in order to unequivocally demonstrate substrate influence, although structural convergence between the super- and substrate has undoubtedly facilitated the consolidation of many creole structures (see Thomason 2001: 181). As a result, I am obliged to evaluate the probability of substrate influence in many cases I have nevertheless chosen to include instead of leaving them out altogether. After identifying the Twi equivalent of all120 APi CS features, I selected a third of them for scrutiny in this paper. Because of the impossibility of surveying all putative substrate languages in the case of each structure within the limits of this paper, I have checked as many features as possible with Christaller (1875, 1933).5 As far as the WCCEs are concerned, one option would have been to concentrate on the basilectal varieties, represented most prominently by SA. However, even in the SA community, different lects coexist in the speech of the same speakers. Due to this enormous heterogeneity of actual speech and for the sake of including all three geographic varieties, meso- and acrolectal examples are also included.

3·

Substrate influence in the language structure of SA, PR and NK

In this section, the language structures discussed follow the numerical order of the A PiCS questionnaire and are not divided, for example, according to the level of the language structure they occur in. 3.1

No gender distinction in third person singular personal pronoun (APiCS 13)

As far as subject pronouns are concerned, basilectal SA does not make a gender distinction in the third person singular (ihn, him)- or any other person, for that matter. Overall, mesolectal NK and acrolectal PR, on the other hand, employ different variants for the masculine, feminine and neuter (ihn!him, shi, it). Besides gender distinctions, case distinctions are also supposed to be lacking in typical creoles to the effect that subject, object and adnominally used possessive

4· I have conducted some research on the lexicon, specifically on possible African retentions, in all three varieties (Bartens 2003: Appendi~ Bartens & Farquharson forthcoming). African lexical retentions persist in the WCCEs although their proportion of the entire lexicon is not as big as, for instance, in the Suriname creoles, and many terms are nowadays obsolete. 5· It is true that Christaller's description ofT'wiis based on the Akuapem dialect which probably was not the most important one spoken by the slaves. The selective use of the data supplied by Christaller (1875, 1933[1888]) by creolists is criticised by Frajzyngier (1984: 208). The fact remains that we dispose of little data on substrate languages, espedally earlier stages, and Christaller (1875) is a better reference than nothing, last but not least because it goes back approx. 130 years.

203

204

Angela Bartens

Table 1. Pronominal system of SA, PR and NK

Adnominal POSS ADJ

Person

Subject

Object

8G

PL

SG

PL

SG

PL

1st

rni (A, Ai)

m

mi

m

mi

m

2nd

yu

unu

yu

unu

yo

unu

(yu-aal) 3rd

ibn (h)im (shi,it)

dehn dem (dey)

yu ibn (h)im (bar, it)

dehn dem

ibn (h)im (bar, it)

dehn dem

Table 2. Independent personal subject pronouns in Twi (Christaller 1875: 39, 41)

1st 2nd 3rdanimate 3rd inanimate

8G

PL

me w6 :m6 en6

y£1) m6 ~

en6,en6nom

pronouns all have the same form (Holm 1988:201 ). 6 There is a tendency to distinguish between subject vs. object and possessive third person singular pronouns in all three varieties although case-neutral pronouns can still be found in SA. NK and PR have a separate third person singular female pronoun whereas SA and PR make a case distinction with regard to the second person singular adnominally used possessive pronoun. The second person plural subject pronoun yu-aal is typical ofN K. As a result, in Table 1 we obtain the pronominal system where meso- and acrolectal varieties are given in brackets? As far as the lack of gender distinctions in the basilect is concerned, the same situation obtains in Twi. However, in Twi, subject pronouns may be used both as independent pronouns and as verbal prefixes. There is some morphonological and distinctive tonological variation according to following context and case. In the third persons, a distinction is made between animate and inanimate reterents (Christaller 1875:40-41). In Table 2, I list only the independent subject pronouns. If only the basilectal SA system is compared with Twi, the parallels are striking.

6. When used as a pronoun, the possessive consists offi (SA) or fa (NK, PR) and the invariable pronoun. However, some spea.lrers of SA use fi + pronoun even in the adnominal position. 7- The variation of him - im is essentially morphonologicaL For the sake of a more elegant presentation, I have omitted the brackets in (h )im in the text above.


Compound interrogatives (APiCS 19)

3.2

Bimorphemic interrogatives consisting of a general interrogative particle and a noun are sometimes interpreted as a case of substrate influence in Atlantic creoles. However, since they also occur in creoles spoken outside the Atlantic area as well as other languages quite frequently, the case for substrate influence is not very strong and it seems preferable to speak of a convergence of semantic transparency and substrata! and even superstrata! influence (Muysken & Smith 1990; Parkvall2000: 101). While there are indeed compound interrogatives formed in the manner described above for Twi- e.g., ehlna 'who' (lit 'which person'), den 'what' (lit. 'what thing'), ehe 'where' (lit 'which place'), daben 'when' (lit. 'what day'; Christaller 1875:42-43) -, among the creoles under survey, SA features wepaat/wapaat (< where/what + part) 'where' and wentaim (<when+ time) 'whet\ we...fa (<where/what ... for), wa meik (<what+ make) 'whY, alongside with we 'where, wen 'when' and wai 'why' (Bartens 2003: 70). Holm ( 1978: 228-229) reports wen tai m 'whet\ wich paat (< which part) and wat/wich said (< what/which side) 'where. fo wat (

(FOREIBCA 2005b)

In this case, the Twi substrate serves above all to explain the occurrence of the associative plural, but not the general plural construction. However, as Hohn (1988: 193) notes, marking nominal plurality with the third person plural pronoun "is so frequent in Kwa and other West African languages and so unusual among the world's languages" that other substrate languages may account for the formation of WCCE nominal plurals in general.

3·4

Reduplication (APiCS 26)

Reduplication in Atlantic creoles is frequently attributed to substrate influence (Hohn 1988: 88; Parkvall2000:79-80). In the WCCEs, reduplication is used for intensification and diverse augmentative and distributive meanings (see also APiCS feature 34 below): (5)

Bikaaz di

chrukta

difrent difrent.

because ART.DEP structure different different 'Because the structure is totally different: (6)

AI

yuustu go huom tranquilo tranquilo.

1SG.SUBJ HAB.PST go home calm calm 'I could go home without anyone bothering me:

NK

(FARP2007) NK

(FARP2007)

However, apart from the remnants of a distributive reading discussed below, it may be possible to account for WCCE reduplication without recourse to the substrate. The substrate languages feature much more idiosyncratic uses of reduplication, among them a wide range of grammatical functions. In Twi, this includes for example the formation of absolutive superlatives of predicative adjectives or the iterative or frequentative forms of verbs which at times entail semantic shift, e.g., pono 'to bend~ ponopono 'to wrinkle' (Christaller 1875:48, 64). 3·5

The indefinite article homophonous with numeral 'one' (APiCS 29)

In the basilectal varieties of the WCCE s, the indefinite article is homophonous with the cardinal number 'one', which makes it at times difficult to decide whether one is dealing with an article or a numeral. The more one moves to the acrolect, the more wan is replaced by (invariant!) a and the sense 'one' is definitely lost In the substrate language Twi, there is slight overlap between the postposed indefinite pronoun bi 'a, a certain, another' which is also used to form numerals


denoting any individual of a kind when used with most nouns or when counting a number of items superior to 'three' (Christaller 1875:49-50, 52-53). Considering the wide-spread grammaticalisation of'one' to 'a' in the languages of the world (Heine & Kuteva 2002:220-221), on the one hand, and the fact that the substrate languages frequently do not make use of an indefinite article where a creole would (Holm 1988: 192), the case for substrate influence is not exactly conclusive.

3.6

Generic noun phrases in subject function (APiCS 30)

Since Bickerton (1981: 56), it has been established that creole article use reflects the [±specific] rather than[± definite] opposition to the effect that presupposed NPs receive the definite, existentially asserted NPs the indefinite article. ~ a result, generic reading may be expressed by means of bare nouns. This is the standard solution in NK (Holm 1978: 277) and apparently also in PR: (7)

Aligieta gou ap tu footiin

jilt.

NK

alligator go up to fourteen feet ~ators measure up to fourteen feet'

(FARP2007)

(8) Naansl tel Breda Monkl fi luk hou fi Anansi tell Brother Monkey coMP look how for ~nansi told Brother Monkey to look how

him

PR

ded dag hed kyan kech hag.

3sG.Poss dead dog head can catch hog his dead dog's head could catch hogs.'

(Bartens' notes)

The same structure exists in many substrate languages (see Holm 1988:192 for Yoruba) - e.g.• Twi: (9)

Opete te fonu nkli a, na :rre-bd vulture perceive carcass smell PTCL 10 coMP 3so-PROG-come 'When the vulture smells a carcass, it comes forthwith.'

TWI

(Christaller 1875: 162)11

However, in SA generic NPs take both the definite article and the plural marker: (10)

Dl

dag dem baak.

ART.DEF dog PL 'Dogs bark.'

SA

bark (Bartens' notes)

As a result, whereas NK and PR appear to retain the substrata! structure, SA complies neither with the substrata! nor the superstrata! pattern.

The particle a at the end of a subordinate clause signifies that the time frame of the event or state is indefinite (Christaller 1875: 161). PTCLis an abbreviation for "particle" not included in the Leipzig glossing rules.

10.

11. In spite of the definite article in the English gloss given by Christaller, this seems to be a statement about vultures and carcasses in general

207

208

Angela Bartens

3·7

Pronominal and adnominal demonstratives (APiCS 32)

In the WCCEs under survey, pronominal and adnominal demonstratives are identical: (11)

(12)

So dis die Beda Taiga gaa11 sii hou ih11 muma de. so DEM.SG day Brother Tiger go.ANT see how 3sG.Poss mother coP.LOC 'So on this day Brother Tiger went to see how his mother was doing: Dilz yong pitpl du-in dis. DEM.PL young people do-GER DEM.SG 'These young people are doing it:

sA (Bartens' notes) NK

(PARP 2007)

The same obtains in Twi: (13)

(14)

E-hb1a tdm ne yi? which-person doth COP DEM 'Whose cloth is this?' :Jtdm yi w~ me doth DEM COP.LOC 1SG.POSS 'This doth belongs to me:

TWI

(Christaller 1875:43) AKAN

(Christaller 1875:43)

In addition, adnominal demonstratives have emphatic forms. In SA. these forms are disya Nand

dat de N, inN K disya N and dat N de: 12 (15)

Dis-ya leta da fi mi. DEM-ENF letter POC for lSG 'This (very) letter is for me/mine:

SA

(Bartens 2003:48)

In Twi, adnominal demonstratives take the suffix -ara for emphasis: (16)

Abofra no-ara

ni! child DEM-ENP COP! 'This is just that boy!'

TWI

(Christaller 1875:49)

The existence of emphatic adnominal demonstratives constitutes an important parallel between the Twi substrate and the WCCEs under survey.

3.8

Distributive numerals through reduplication (APiCS 34)

The expression of distributive meaning by means of reduplication in numerals is generally acknowledged as being a substrate feature in the Atlantic creolesY In SA, PR and NK. the most common occurrence is wan-wan 'one by one, one at a time':

dis N ya strange or even unacceptable and, as a matter of fact, the sequence is nearly impossible to pronounce. NK speakers also dislike the variant dat deN.

12. Note that both SA and NK speakers find

13. Parkvall (2003:22) argues that universal tendencies cannot be ruled out and observes that wan-wan appears to be semi-lexicalised in many English-based creoles - e.g., Jamaican. The semi-lexicalised status of Jamaican


(17)

Dehn

kom

ii11 wan wan.

SA

3PL.SUBJ come in one one 'They came in one by one:

(Bartens 2003: 65)

However, sporadically, also other numerals occur in this apparently archaic structure: (18)

Mary an Peter keerl tril

tril

grip.

Mary and Peter carry three three suitcase 'Mary and Peter carried three suitcases each:

SA

(Bartens' notes)

Considering examples such as (19) below, there is a dear case for substrata! influence. (19)

mmofra du

:Jmtia

110

nhl'na mman du du

3SG-PRET.give PL. boy ten DEM all string ten ten 'He gave those ten boys each of them ten strings:

3·9

TWI

(Christaller 1875: 53)

Ordinal numbers (APiCS 35)

The number of ordinal numbers distinct from cardinals has been drastically reduced in many creole languages when compared to their lexifier languages. This may be due to several factors: substrate influence- e.g., Twi does not possess separate cardinals (Christaller 1875: 54)14 -, simplification in the syllable coda as far as English-based creoles are concerned (set'en vs. seventh), for instance, or morpho syntactic and conceptual simplification. The WCCEs are no exception as distinct cardinals exist only up to 'the fifth' (Bartens 2003: 64). However, there is a parallel which makes it possible to suggest some minor influence from substrate languages like Twi: both in it as well as in the creoles under survey, it is possible to use 'the next' or a related item for 'the second': (20)

(21)

neks wan A gwain gill yu ... ART.INDF next one 1SG.SUBJ FUT give 2SG.OBJ ... ~second/another [story] I will tell you .. .'

A

6di

hi

3sG.be that.place 'He occupies the next place (=he is second):

PR (Bartens' notes) TWI

(Christaller 187 5: 54)

As a result, the dearest instance of substrate influence in relation to cardinals appears to occur in the form of'the next= the second~ 15

wan-wan is preswnably due to the fact that the meaning has been extended to cover 'occasionally, sporadically; occasional, isolated: To my knowledge, this semantic extension has not occurred in the creoles under survey. 14. Note, however, that the Portuguese-based Gulf of Guinea creoles as well as Papiamentu. for example, have ordinals calqued on the Bantu construction GBN + cardinal nwnber (Bartens 1996: 122). 15. Another meaning of neks in the WCCEs under survey is 'another'.

209

210

Angela Bartens

3.10

Nominal possession (APiCS 37, 38, 39)

In Twi, the possessor NP precedes the possessed NP. This entails changes in the prefixation and tonality of the possessed N P. When the possessor is the name of a person, the third person singular possessive pronoun ne introduces the possessed NP ( Christaller 187 5: 37-38, 108-109): (22)

Y6sef ne

nud-nom bae.

Joseph 3SG.POSS slbling-PL come.PST 'Joseph's brethren came.'

TWI

(Chrlstaller 1875: 109)

The aforementioned construction, known in many creoles such as Papiamentu (Kouwenberg & Murray 1994:50), is not used in the WCCEs in which the possessor NP precedes the possessed NP, both NPs being invariable. Acrolectal varieties of NK feature some superstrata! possessives with English genitive-s attached to the possessor (example (23) as opposed to (22)): (23) Das di bleb! mada langwij. DEM.COP ART.DEF baby mother language 'That's the baby's mother tongue: (24)

di

Ki11gcz

NK

(FARP2007)

data

NK

ART.DEF King-GEN daughter 'the King's daughter'

(FARP2007)

As a result, possession expressed by full NPs seems to lack substrate influence. The same applies to dependent pronominal possessors which precede the possessed NP in all language groups involved (WCCEs, English, Twi). However, the WCCE structure involving independent pronominal possessors mirrors a Twi structure: whereas the creoles use filfa +personal pronoun, Twi employs personal pronoun + de: (25) Dem bell no big laik fo wii. 3PL.POSS belly NI!G big like for 1PL 'Their bellies weren't as big as ours: (26)

e-ye

me

3SG.SUBJ-COP 1SG.POSS 'It is mine:

NK

(FARP2007)

de

TWI

thing.INDF

(Christaller 1875: 43) 16

Independent pronominal possessors therefore appear to reflect substrate influence.

3.11

The TMA system (APiCS 49, 51, 54)

Creole TMA systems constitute the area where the case for substrate influence- or any other origin scenario, for that matter- has been debated the most vigorously (Holm 1988: 1481f.; Parkvall

16. The possessive is constructed with ft (SA) or fa (PI, NK) also in the following contexts: with adnominal pronominal possessors when the sentence is introduced by the topicaliser da and occasionally with full NP possessors as in ft Jack ftnga 1ack.'s finger' (SA, Bartens' notes).


2000: 84). In the case of the WCCEs vis-a-vis Twi, it is impossible to claim that, for instance, relexification has occurred since Twi operates with a combination of prefixation and suffixation as well as tonal modifications in marking tense and aspect. Other significant differences compared to the creole systems include the tact that the negative marker intervenes between the verb stem and its aspecto-temporal prefix (usually stem-alternation occurs as well) and the fact that the forms are mutually exclusive. While creoles permit marker combinations, there is no habitual aspect- which does not exist in all creoles, either- or conditional (Christaller 1875: 58-60).17 However, if one chooses to search for similarities, one can conclude that both Twi and the WCCEs have mixed aspectual-temporal systems (APiCS feature 49) and that weak suppletion occurs in tense and aspect (APiCS feature 54; Christaller 1875:60-61, 65). In addition, the cornerstone of creolist wisdom with regard to the unmarked forms of verbs, i.e. that stative verbs tend to have a present, dynamic verbs a past reading (APiCS feature 51; Holm 1988:150-151), has a parallel, albeit not exact correspondence, in Twi in which certain verbs only have a continuous form. Those verbs correspond to items which in the WCCEs are statives- copulas, verbs denoting holding, possessing, existence and motion in a place, qualities, and states of mind (Christaller 1875: 66-67).

3.12

(Imperative) and prohibitive (APiCS 56)

In the WCCEs, the bare verb serves as imperative and the prohibitive is formed by means of ordinary negation of the predicate. However, when the person addressed is the second plural, both the imperative and the prohibitive adopt an explicit subject pronoun much more frequently than SE: (27)

Unu no worl! 2PL.SUBJ NI!G worry

'Do.tft you worry!'

NK

(FOREIBCA 2005b)

When adhortatives are addressed at the first and third persons, alternative constructions are used: monomorphemic 1es (+pronoun)+ verb for the first plural and meik +pronoun+ verb for all first and third persons: (28)

(29)

Les wl gou lie dong a likl bit. let.s lPL.SUBJ go lie down ART.INDF little bit 'Lefs go and lie down a little bit' Meik Ai giv yu a nekswan JIOU. make lSG.SUBJ give 2SG.OBJ ART.INDF next one now 'Let me tell you another one [story]:

SA

(Bartens' notes) PR

(Bartens' notes)

17. Nevertheless, the future proximate is marked with a sequence of the prefixes of the progressive aspect re- and the general future be-. The present tense includes habitual actions (Christaller 1875:59, 101-102).

211

212

Angela Bartens

As a result. only the imperative addressed at the second person singular does not take an explicit subject pronoun. 18 Crucially, Twi manifests striking parallels: the imperative directed at the second person singular is constituted by the bare verb stem without any prefixes whatsoever. For all other persons, a compound imperative has to be used. It is formed with a nasal prefix and the verb stem or with a compound imperative consisting of ma 'to lef and the verb. If the compound imperative is addressed to the second person singular, ma is again used without a prefix (Chris taller 1875: 58-60, 99). (30)

(31)

ma :rm-fa let 3SG-IMP-take 'let him take'

TWI


m6-m-mil :rm-fa 3PL-IMP-let 3SG-IMP-take 'let (pl) him take'

TWI


On the other hand, as all Twi verb forms are negated by means of infixation - and possibly stem alternation (see above) -,there is parallelism with the creole prohibitives only with regard to the explicit marking of the subject, not the nature of the negation itself.

3.13

Existential clauses (APiCS 64, 78)

English-type existential clauses with expletive pronouns are disallowed in basilectal WCCEs, which resort to other constructions: (32)

(33)

Tu moch hous iina Nort End. too much house in North End 'There are too many houses in North End.'

SA

(Bartens 2003: 46)

San Andres gat plenty biich. San Andres get plenty beach 'There are many beaches on San Andres:

SA

(Bartens 2003: 46)

The verb get which is typically used in these sentences is the same which is used to express possession: (34) Jack memba

se

ih11

get seven okro iina ih11

pakit.

SA

Jack remember coMP 3sG.SUBJ get seven okra in 3so.Poss pocket jack remembered he had seven pods of okra in his pocket:

(Bartens' notes)

Note also that basilectal WCCEs do not differentiate between 'to have' and 'to get' but use get for both. Hav occurs in acrolectal varieties. In our point of comparison, Twi, constructions with the locative copula w.J are used to render the contents of English existential sentences:

18. Ahhough the les-construction appears quite acrolectal at first sight, the subject pronoun becomes optional only when one moves toward the acrolect.


(35)

Silcd bi w:> me JOto mil. gold some coP.LOC 1sG.Poss moneybag within 'There is some gold in my bag:

TWI


The equivalent of 'to get' is not used in existential constructions. Interestingly enough, however, the perfect tense of nyii 'to get, receive, obtain' is to be translated into English as 'to have, possess' (Chris taller 19 33: 35 5). This type of aspectual conditioning of the verb's semantics may not be a phenomenon cross-linguistically unheard ot~ but it may have reinforced the establishment ofWCCEget.

3·14

'Headache' (APiCS 66)

The semantic notion of having a headache is rendered by the construction 'my head hurts me' both in SA and in Twi, whereas NK has adopted the superstrata! construction with the experiencer in the subject position. It seems likely that SA conserves a sub stratal calque which may have been lost in NK: 19 (36)

(37)

Mi hed de hot mi. lSG.POSS head PROG hwt lSG.OBJ 'I have a headache:

Me

ti

SA (Bartens' notes)

beiJ me.

TWI

1SG.POSS head hwt 1SG.OBJ 'My head aches: (38)

Ih

get a


hediek.

NK

3SG.SUBJ get ART.INDF headache 'He got a headache:

3.15

(FOREIBCA 2005b)

Comitative = NP conjunction (APiCS 71)

The homophony of the comitative preposition and the NP conjunction is generally recognised as a case of substrate influence in the Atlantic creoles. For instance, in Haitian, the same element joins also verbs (Holm 1988: 206-207). In Twi, expresses the comitative and joins NPs (Christaller 1875:90). In the WCCEs, only the NK as documented by Holm (1978) possesses this feature which may nevertheless have existed in all of them:

ne

19. Ahhough Spanish likewise expresses the concept as la

cabeza me

ART.DEF head 'my head hurts'

duele

lSG.REFL 3SG.hurt

I consider it unlikely that the SA structure be borrowed from Spanish. Having historical data from the WCCEs would be of great help in such instances.

213

214

Angela Bartens

(39)

Di

kaptin wi evibadi waz der. captain with everybody COP.PST there 'The captain and everybody was there.'

NK

ART.DEF

(Holm 1978:291)

By consequence, at an earlier stage, all WCCEs under survey may have featured this clearly substratal structure. 3.16

Copulas (APiCS 75, 76, 77)

According to traditional analyses of Caribbean ECs, three different copulas could be distinguished in SA: da is used in equational constructions, the 0-copula may be postulated with stative predicates and in certain other constructions, and de is used in locative constructions (Bartens 2003:76). However, instead of postulating two homophonous morphemes da, functioning as an equational copula and a topicaliser or focusing particle, both functions can be successfully resumed under the label "topicaliser" (Escure 2004: 149-150). A further argument in favour of this analysis is that the past marker wehn follows da but precedes de. Acrolectal varieties, especially PR and NK, conserve the English copulas iz. woz and the infinitive bii. (40)

Hi

man Breda Taiga da

guud fren.

SA

3sG.SUBJ and Brother Tiger Foe good friend

(Bartens' notes)

'He and Brother Tiger were good friends: (41)

(42)

(43)

Neks talm Beda Taiga mama sik. next time Brother Tiger mother sick ~nother time Brother Tiger's mother was sick.'

SA

(Bartens' notes)

Beda

Naansi djos de. Brother Anansi just coP.LOC 'Brother Anasi was right there:

lin dem taim piipl

had

SA

(Bartens' notes) tu

in DEM time people have.PST COMP 'In those days people had to be good:

bii

gud.

COP.INF

good

NK

(FARP2007)

The WCCEs' substrate languages typically feature several copula verbs, functionally distributed along the same lines as in the creoles. Twi has an equational copula ne which according to Christaller (1875: 110) has evolved from de which again is one of four emphatic particles used in topicalisation (Christaller 1875: 146). There is a locative copula w\ whereas ye appears to correspond to the 0-copula of the WCCE basilect. Sono andfanim are reserved for the expression of difference of existence (Christaller 1875:111-112, 118). In particular, the historical link between topicalisation particle and equational copula constitutes an important parallel between the Twi substrate and the WCCEs under survey.


3.17

Coming from and going to named places (APiCS 81, 82)

The WCCEs and Twi differ in that coming from and going to named places is expressed by means of the prepositionfaa.n,fram <Engl. from in the first case and, in the case of'going t~ mostly by 0 in the basilect and tu in the acrolecl At the same time, Twi uses serial verb constructions with fi 'to come' and b'to go (Christaller 1875:71,74, 132). However, the meaningofboth Twifiand WCCE faan, fram has been extended from spatial to temporal contexts: (44)

0-fi

ne

mme.frdase yare.

TWI

3sG.PRs-to.come.forth coP childhood sick 'He is sick from his infancy.' (45)

Ai

neva

(Christaller 187 5: 134)

went bak dier agen fram fuo yier-z.

NK

lSG.SUBJ Nl!G.PST go.PST back there again from four year-PL 'I have not gone back there since I was four years old'

(FARP2007)

While the same semantic shift has occurred in other languages as yet another instance of the grammaticalisation of spatial into temporal concepts (Heine & Kuteva 2002: 35), I would suggest substrate influence in this specific case.

3.18

Serial verbs meaning 'come: 'go' (APiCS 84)

The occurrence of serial verbs in the Atlantic creoles is attributable to substrate influence, especially from Kwa languages, although their degree of lexicalisation is lower than in the substrate languages (Holm 1988: 183-184; McWhorter 2004:88-91 ). In the WCCEs, the use of serial verbs is quite limited. It is virtually restricted to verb pairs in which one of the elements, usually the first one, is 'come' or 'go: (46) An wan die ihn

kom sie ihn

nou gat notn

fi

kuk.

and one day 3sG.SUBJ come say 3sG.SUBJ Nl!G get nothing coMP cook ~d one day she came and said she didrlt have anything to cook.'

sA

(Bartens' notes)

As a matter offact, Washabaugh (1981) argues that PRgo. gaan, and kom have been grammaticalised into infinitive markers. SA has a recurrent structure where gaan, the anterior/past ofgo, is repeated as in the following example: (47)

gaan .fish in.

SA

Brother Anansi and Brother Tiger 3PLSUBJ go.PsT go.PsT fish 20 ' [Once upon a time,] Brother Anansi and Brother Tiger went fishing.'

(Bartens' notes)

Beda

Naansi an

Beda

Taiga, dem

gaan

Since it is the first sentence of an oral narrative, the function of the repetition appears to go beyond emphasis, conveying a directional meaning as the above-mentioned serial verb structures do.

20. In the creoles under survey,fishbJ is not a gerund but the basic verb form. The gerund would be .fishinin and occurs in acrolectal varieties like PR.

215

216

Angela Bartens

Albeit less frequent, serial verb constructions where the directional verb comes in second position also occur: (48)

Di

uman

tek ihn

piknini dem an ron gaan.

ART.DEF woman take 3SG.POSS child PL 'The woman took her children and ran away.'

SA

and run go.ANT

(Bartens' notes)

Twi makes quite ample use of serial verbs, among them ba 'to come' and b 'to go' (Christaller 1875:69-73): (49)

0-fil

Osu gualj b!J

3so-come.forth.PsT Osu flee 'He fled from Osu to Adi:

Adi.

TWI

go.PsT Adi (Chrlstaller 1875: 132)

As a result. the modest occurrence of serial verbs in the WCCEs by necessity constitutes a carryover from substrate languages such as Twi.

3.19

Body-part reflexives (APiCS 87)

The formation of reflexives with terms denoting body parts in the Atlantic creoles can be traced to the substrate languages- e.g., Twi e-h6 'the human frame, the whole body' (Holm 1988:204205; Christaller 1933: 177)- as in example (50). (50)

onipa bi-ara d:1

ne

hli

man any-ENF love 3SG.POSS body 'every one loves himself'

TWI


In the WCCEs, body-part reflexives occur in certain expressions in NK (Holm 1978:230): (51)

wori

yu

hed

NK

worry 2SG.POSS head 'to worry' (52)

wash yu

(FARP2007)

skin

NK

wash 2SG.POSS skin 'to wash yourself'

(FARP2007)

Body-part reflexives no longer appear to exist in SA or PR: Dittman (1992:76) only reports the formation of reflexives by suffixing -seifto the personal pronouns: (53)

Wi

haft

difon

wlself.

1PL.SUBJ have.to defend 1PL.REFL 'We have to defend ourselves:

SA

(Bartens' notes)

However, this does not exclude that they have existed at some previous stage oflanguage development in all the WCCEs under survey.


3.20

Passive (APiCS 90)

The lack of morphological passives in basilectal Atlantic creoles may be the result of the structural simplification in creolisation. Incidentally, it is also a feature of the substrate languages which resort to two alternative structures that can also be found in the creoles, namely the use of transitive verbs as intransitive ones or the adding of a pronominal subject to the corresponding verbal form, usually in the third person plural (Holm 1988: 83 ), here exemplified with data from SA: (54)

(55)

Da hous peint ogly. DEM house paint ugly 'That house is painted in an ugly color: Dem kil im. 3PL.SUBJ kill 3SG.OBJ 'They killed him:

SA

(Bartens 2003: 93) SA

(Bartens 2003: 93)

Christaller (1875: 101) informs us that these are the very structures which in Twi correspond to the passive of languages like English: (56)

W:>-t~ Y6sef n6, na wa-di m-Jf. duns6tj. 3PL-sellPsT Joseph DBM and coNSEc-have PL-year seventeen 'Joseph was seventeen years old when he was sold.'

TWI


The English get-passive constitutes a third alternative construction employed by the WCCEs: (57)

Ihn get biit op. 3SG.SUBJ get beat up 'He got beaten up.'

SA

(Bartens 2003: 93)

The acrolectal varieties of the WCCEs make use of superstrata! passive constructions: (58)

Dehn woz laik fours tu du diiz ting-z an so... 3PL.SUBJ COP.PST like force COMP do Dl!M.PL thing-PL and SO 'They were kind of forced to do these kinds of things .. :

PR

(Bartens' notes)

Nevertheless, overall the WCCE data corresponds to the Twi structures.

3.21

Complementiser clauses (APiCS 95, 96, 98)

The complementiser se which occurs in many English-based Atlantic creoles has frequently been traced to the substrate, specifically to Twise 'to say, that' (Holm 1988: 185-188) in spite of the fact that Frajzyngier (1984:208), for instance, argues for its origin in English say. As a matter of fact, whereas the phonetic form seems to come from English, the semantic properties correspond to those of Twi se. In this context it is important to recall that the grammaticalisation of the verb 'to say' to a complementiser is an areal feature of West African languages (Giildemann 2005). In the WCCEs, se introduces subordinate clauses which follow verbs of saying, knowing and thinking. However, waa.n 'to want' takes a different complementiser: SAfi, PRfa., NKja or 0:

217

218

Angela Bartens

(59)

Yu

11uo se

Taiga freed a waata.

2sG.SUBJ know coMP Tiger afraid of water 'You know that Tiger ls afraid of water.' (60) Mi waahn John fi go kech guana. 1SG.SUBJ want John COMP go catch iguana 'I want John to go to catch iguanas:

SA

(Bartens 2003: 122) SA

(Bartens 2003: 131)

Twi employs se even in such purpose clauses:21 (61) Ma-b:J obi paa st: 6mo/igye me ba. 1SG.PRP-hire somebody contract COMP IMP.nurse 1SG.POSS child 'I have hired a person to nurse my child.'

TWI


As a result, the match with substrata! structures is not complete as the above-mentioned purpose clauses introduced by 'to want' take a different complementiser in the WCCEs. However, one detail points again into the direction of Twi as the original source of the WCCE structures: SA- but not PR nor NK - omits se when the verb which governs the complement clause is se(i) 'to say'. This is precisely what happens in Twi: after se as the governing verb, se in the function of complementiser is omitted (Christaller 1875: 156).

3.22

Indefinites and negation (APiCS 102)

The fact that, in most creole varieties, indefinite pronouns and adverbs have the same form in affirmative and negative sentences - i.e. they are not affected by negation- is usually called "negative concord" in the creolist literature (Holm 1988: 172). Although pertinent substrate languages like Twi feature negative concord - "few, fwefwe 'anything, with neg. verb 'nothing"' Christaller 1875:42) -,it also occurs, for example, in Spanish and Portuguese and, as Patrick (2007: 137) observes, in many dialects of English, albeit not in SE. Therefore, substrate influence may have helped consolidate a structure that was latent in the lexifier language. Negative concord occurs in all three creoles in the basilect while the acrolects conform to the SE norm: (62) A no sii non-bady no-we. 1SG.SUBJ Nl!G see NEG-body Nl!G-Where 'I did not see anybody anywhere:

3.23

SA

(Bartens 2003:61)

Verb doubling for focus (APiCS 105)

The doubling of verbs for focus results in structures which do not exist in the European superstrate languages. However, their existence in Atlantic creoles and their substrate languages suggests that we are dealing with a case of substrate influence (Holm 1988: 179-180 ):

In some rather exceptional cases, the final clause is introduced by the conjunction na 'and (then)' (Christaller 1875: 173-174).

21.


(63) Da Jaam ihn wehn de foam. FOC pretend 3SG.SBJ ANT FROG pretend 'Pretending, she was just pretending: (64) :rydw nk6 ara nil w:rte h:J yaw INF-abuse only just Foe 3PL-live there abuse 'They live in continual quarreling:

SA (CU 2001: 57) TWI (Chrlstaller 1875: 147)

This structure which is fairly rare in present-day WCCEs appears to be of substrata! origin.

3.24

Vocative marker (APiCS 107)

A number of creoles, for example Seychellois CF, Principense CP and Nigerian Pidgin (English), feature postposed vocative markers. These are carry-overs from the African substrate languages: if a vocative marker can be postulated for a language like English at all, it is always a preposed exclamation, most commonly Hey! ln the creoles under survey, l have encountered postposed vocative markers only in SA and they occur extremely rarely: (65) Ma-yo! mother-voc 'Hey, old lady!' (66) Alma-oi! Alma-voc 'Hey, Alma!'

SA (Bartens' notes) SA

(Bartens' notes)

In Twi, the postposed vocative particle is e, in the Fante dialect also o: (67) Kwasi-e! Kwasi-voc 'Hey, Kwasi!'

TWI (Chrlstaller 1875: 37)

Clearly, postposed vocative markers are a substrata! feature in SA.

3.25

Clicks (APiCS 108)

Probably all Atlantic creoles make use of clicks to convey mostly affective meanings, most frequently contempt, irritation, disapproval, etc. The seminal paper by Rickford and Rickford (1980) established the substrata! origin of this feature and to the adoption of the term "suck-teeth" for describing it In Caribbean ECs, it is rendered orthographically as {cho!} or {chups!} In Twi, we find the interjections in examples (68) to (70 ). (68) tweaa 'interjection expressing utmost disregar-d or contempt'

TWI (Chrlstaller 1933: 551)

(69) ntw:Jm TWI 'a dick or smacking with the tongue from displeasure, indignation, annoyance, grief, etc: (Chrlstaller 1933: 556)

219

220

Angela Bartens

(70)

Md, tWew 'of course, exactly!'

TWI

(Chrlstaller 1875:95)

The feature "suck-teeth" is used to mark contempt and related meanings in all the three varieties studied here: (71)

hia di stuori? - Tshoo! hear ART.DEF story Choo 'Have you heard the story? - Choo!' Unu

SA

2PL.SUBJ

3.26

(Bartens' notes)

'Eye water' (APiCS 111)

'Eye water' for 'tears' is one of the well-known and widespread calques from West African languages into the Atlantic creoles (Holm 1978: Appendix sub voce). In all three varieties, ai waata persists. The same expression exists in a number of West Mrican languages, among them Twi, Ewe, Yoruba, Igbo, Bambara and KishiKongo (Bartens 2003:170 and references within), which explains its diffusion in creoles.22 The Twi counterpart is ani suo 'eye water = tears' according to Holm and Shilling (1982). Also: (72)

n-ani

taata

nsu

3sG.Poss-eye to.be.filledwith water 'Hls eyes filled with tears.'

3.27

TWI


'Hand, arm' (APiCS 112)

The existence of a single term which denotes both 'hand' and '(lower) arm' is widespread in the African substrate languages and the Atlantic creoles. Han 'hand, arm' occurs in all three WCCEs. Holm (1978: 217) notes that according to the Oxford English Dictionary, English hand was used by anatomists until1750 to refer to the entire arm. According to him, the fact that the cutting point of NK han was located approximately at the elbow as in the substrate languages suggests the latter ones were to be held responsible for the semantic extension. In modern Twi, there is partial overlap: nsa 'hand, finger(s), arni, :Jbasa 'arm' (Christaller 1933:8, 416). Holm (pc) quotes Koelle (1854:40) who lists Twi a.l6nu 'arm from the elbow'. However, fieldwork results revealed that at least in SA and NK, han at present refers to the entire arm. The same observation applies to WCCE fut 'foot, leg'.

3.28

Animal names (APiCS 117)

Both in creole languages of all regions and in Mrican languages, at least part of the names of animals are formed by means of adding a term corresponding to 'male' and 'female' to the basic

22. AB a matter of fact, Migge and Smith (2007: 9) observe that it is very difficult to determine a single substrate source in the area oflexical semantics."


term. This is often attributed to African substrate languages although the same procedure has been employed in European languages as well: Holm (1988:86-87) mentions Scots but does not rule out that returning immigrants from the Caribbean may have contributed forms like lad-bain, lass-ba.in to il Until today, Portuguese, especially Brazilian Portuguese, employs terms like cabra ftmea 'female goat'. However, these structures are more common in the substrate languages, so we may consider them at least another case of convergence: (73)

na11tWi-nl11i

TWI

cow-male 'a bull' (74)


nantWI-bere

TWI

cow-female 'a cow'

(Chrlstal1er 1875: 32)

Note that in the creoles, the masculine constitutes the default category and often only the female has to be explicitly marked as in the following example: (75)

Wen di shii monki si di monki shi when ART.DEF FEM monkey see ART.Dl!F monkey 3SG.SUBJ.Fl!M 'When the female monkey saw the [male] monkey, she

get in lov

wid

im.

get in love With 3SG.OBJ.MASC fell in love with him:

3·29

NK

(FOREIBCA 2005a)

Syllable onsets and codas (APiCS 118, 119)

According to Christaller (1875: 13), "A principal [Twi] syllable consists of a consonant, simple or compound, and a vowel or diphthong (or triphthong [ ... ]),which may be followed by one or two nasal consonants." This basic CV syllable structure predominates in the Atlantic creoles' West African substrate languages in general (Holm 1988: 108). In the WCCEs, there is a tendency towards a basic syllable structure CVin the more basilectal varieties (Parkvall 2000:52). However, PR and NK feature less syllable onsets with three consonants than SA, above all because /str-/ has been palatalised to Ur-] -SA strang, PR, NK shrang 'strong'.

3.30

Tonal contrasts (APiCS 120)

Twi manifests three tones: low, high, and middle (Christaller 1875: 15). Considering that no lexifier language possesses tonal oppositions nor do they tend to surge spontaneously in language contact situations, it is fair to assume that they must be of substrata! origin. Until now, tonal oppositions were not identified for any of the WCCEs studied here. However, just as in Tobagoman (James 2003: 170), SA distinguishes between kyan 'can' and its negative form kyaan 'can't' by

221

222

Angela Bartens

falling vs. rising tone (rather than by vowel quantity).Z3 This analysis can be extended to other minimal pairs as for instance the basic negative particle no (falling tone) vs. the emphatic negator noh (rising tone). In addition to these grammatical and pragmatic minimal pairs, SA also employs tonal oppositions to distinguish between lexical pairs such as hu61 'to hold' vs. huol 'whole'. Marcia Dittman (pc, December 2008) confirmed that tonal oppositions also exist in PR. So far, tonal oppositions have not been found in NK.

4·

Conclusions

As noted above, the final version of the APi CS questionnaire consists of 120 features. After identifying the Twi counterparts for all of them, I selected approximately a third of them as susceptible of revealing some substrate influence. 24 As can be gleaned from the preceding remarks, in several cases substrate influence can be considered to have had a converging effect at best, although I initially aimed at excluding features in which superstrate and substrate converge - e.g., because both are SVO-languages. I would say that based on the data from nineteenth century Twi as described by Christaller, the following appear relatively clear manifestations of substrate influence: the associative plural (4.3); the existence of emphatic demonstratives (4.7); distributive numerals (4.8); the use of next as an ordinal (4.9 ); the formation of imperatives and prohibitives, especially as far as subject marking is concerned (4.12); the equivalent of 'to have a headache' (4.14); the homophony of the comitative and the conjunction joining two NPs (4.15); the distribution of different copulas and the link between a topicaliser and the equational copula (4.16); the temporal acceptation offaa.n 'from' (4.17); the existence of serial verbs formed with 'come' and 'go (4.18); the remains ofbody-part reflexives in certain NK expressions (4.19); the complementiser se (4.21); verb doubling for focus (4.23); the existence of postposed vocative markers (4.24); the use of paralinguistic clicks (4.25); the calque 'eye water= tears' (4.26); the semantic extension ha.n 'hand, arm' (4.27); and the existence of tonal oppositions (4.30). The formation of independent pronominal possessors (4.10) and the existence of stative vs. dynamic predicates in the WCCEs (4.11) may also at least in part betray sub stratal influence. The fact that Twi employs the perfect of the verb 'to get' with the meaning of 'to have' (4.13) seems also an interesting "coincidence". In any case, it is clear that much more research needs to be conducted in order to enable us to indicate with more precision the areas of the WCCE language structure influenced by the substrate languages. The obvious approach to start with is to not limit oneself to a closed list like the APiCS feature catalogue. For example, the second person plural personal pronoun unu which

23. James (2003: 170) postulates low vs. high tone for Tobagonian but according to my experience ofWCCE, it is rather falling vs. rising tone. Obviously, I am talking about basilectal varieties here.

24. To be precise, 41 APiCS features are addressed but at times with an emphasis not on the definition of the APiCS feature but a related issue. This is the case of 5.17: APiCS feature nwnber 81 seeks to establish how the concept of 'corning from named places' is rendered in creole languages whereas my observations concern the extension of the meaning ofWCCE faan, fram from the spatial to the temporal domain.


occurs in many Atlantic CEs, including basilectal WCCEs, 25 and is attributable to Igbo (Parkvall 2000: 102-103), is not listed in the APiCS. Many more examples could be given. All levels of the language structure need to be examined equitably. Based on a scrutiny of the sociohistory of the WCCEs, other putative substrate languages have to be identified and compared with the creoles. If possible, sources on other varieties (geographic, chronological) of Akan should be contrasted with the WCCEs as well. Finally, the WCCEs under survey need to be documented better, especially with regard to variation within the individual geographical varieties (SA, PR, NK).

List of abbreviations APiCS CE FOREIBCA lit NK

NP PR SA

SE WCCE

Atlas of Pidgin and Creole Language Structures Creole English Fortalecimiento de Education Intercultural Bilingiie en la Costa Atlintica literally Nicaraguan Krlol Noun Phrase Providence Creole English Saintandrewan Standard English Western Caribbean Creole English

For abbreviations used in interlinear glosses, see link in Note 9.

References Alleyne, M. C. 1986. Substrate influences- Guilty until proven innocent. In Substrata versus Universals in Creole Genesis. Papers from the Amsterdam Creole Workshop, April1985 [Creole Language Library 1), P. Muysken & N. Smith (eds), 301-315. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Bartens, A. 1996. Der kreolische Raum: Geschichte und Gegenwart. Helsinki: Die Finnische Akademie der Wissenschaften. Bartens, A 2003. A Contrasth•e Grammar Islander - Caribbean Standard English - Spanish. Helsinki: The Finnish Academy of Science and Letters. Bartens, A. & Farquharson, J. T. Forthcoming. Lexical Africanisms in Western Caribbean English(-based) Creoles. In Black Through White. African Words and Calques in Creoles and 'Iransplanted European Languages, A Bartens & P. Baker (eds). London: Battlebridge Press. Bickerton, D. 1981. Roots of Language. Ann Arbor MI: Karoma. Chris taller, J. G. 1875. A Grammar of the Asante and Fante Language called Tshi [ Chwee, Twi] Based on the Akuapem Dialect with Referet~ces to the Other (Akan and Fa,Jte) Dialects. Basel: Basel Evangelical Missionary Society. Christaller, J. G. 1933 [1888]. Dictionary of the Asante and Fante Language called TShi (I'wi), 2nd edn, revised and enlarged. Basel: Basel Evangelical Missionary Society.

25. Acrolectal varieties ofWCCE make use of yu-aal.

223

224

Angela Bartens

CU [The Christian University Corporation of San Andres, Providence and Kathleen]. 2001. ABC Stuoriz. An blander English Reader. San Andres Island: The Christian University Corporation of San Andres, Providence and Kathleen Islands, Colombia. Dittman, M. L. 1992. El criollo sa11a11dresa110: Lengua y cultura. Cali: Universidad del Valle. Edwards, J. 1970. Social Linguistics on San AJJdres and Providence Islands. PhD dissertation, Tulane University (University Microfilms International 1979). Escure, G. 2004. A review of~ Contrastive Grammar Islander-Caribbean Standard English-SpanisH by Angela Bartens. English World- Wide 25(1): 148-152. FARP. 2007. Finnish Academy Research Project 111544, field recordings. FOREIBCA. 2005a. Kuos Riijan Stuoriz I, Bhrufiilz: IPILC/URACCAN/MECD. FOREIBCA. 2005b. Kuos Riijan Stuoriz II, Bluufiilz: IPILC/URACCAN!MECD. Frajzyngier, Z. 1984. On the origin of say and se as complementizers in black English and English-based Creoles. American Speech 59(3): 207-210. Giildemann, T. 2005. The alleged grammaticallzation of quotative-complementi.zers in Atlantic creoles: A West African substrate perspective. Paper presented at the conference Creole Language Structure between Substrates atul Superstrates, Leipzig. 3-5 June 2005. Heine, B. & Kuteva, T. 2002 World Lexicon of Grammaticalization. Cambridge: CUP. Holm, J. 1978. The English Creole of Nicaragua's Miskitu Coast: It's Sociolinguistic History and a Comparative Study of it's Lexicon and Syntax. PhD dissertation, University of London. Holm, J. 1983. Nicaragua's Miskitu Coast Creole English. In Central American English [Varieties of English Around the World T2], J. Holm (ed.), 95-130. Heidelberg: Julius Groos. Holm, J. 1986. The Spread of English in the Caribbean Area. In Focus on the Caribbean [Varieties of English Around the World G8], M. Gorlach & J. A. Holm (eds), 1-22. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Holm, J. 1988. Pidgin and Creole Languages, VoL I: Theory and Structure. Cambridge: CUP. Holm, J. A. & Watt Shilling. A. 1982. Dictionary of Bahatnian English. Cold Spring NY: Lexi.k House. James, W. 2003. The role of tone and rhyme structure in the organisation of grammatical morphemes in Tobagonian. In Pho,wlogy and Morphology in Creole LatJgUages, I. P1ag (ed. ), 165-19 2 !Ubingen: Niemeyer. Koelle, S. W. 1854. Polyglotta Africana, or a Comparative Vocabulary ofNearly Three Hundred Words atJd Phrases, in More Than one Hundred Distinct African Languages. London: Church Missionary House. Kouwenberg. S. & Murray, R 1994. Papiatnentu. Munich: Lincom. McWhorter, J. 2004. Saramaccan and Haitian as young grammars: The pitfalls of syntactocentrism in Creole genesis research. Journal ofPidgin and Creole LatJgUage.s 19(1): 77-137. Migge, B. & Smith, N. 2007. Introduction: Substrate influence in creole formation. Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages 22(1): 1-15. Muys.lren, P. & Smith, N. 1990. Question words in Pidgin and creole languages. Linguistics 28: 883-903. Parkvall, M. 2000. Out o_fAfrica. African Influences in Atlantic Creoles. London: Battlebridge. Parkvall, M. 2003. Reduplication in the Atlantic creoles. In Th'ice as Meaningful. Reduplication in Pidgins, Creoles atJd Other Contact Languages, S. Kouwenberg (ed.),19-36. London: Battlebridge. Patrick, P. L. 2007. Jamaican Patwa (Creole English). In Comparative Creole Syntax. Parallel Outlines of 18 Grammars, J. Holm & P. L. Patrick (eds),127-152. London: Battlebridge. Petersen, W. G. 200 1. The Province of Providence. San Andres Island, Colombia: The Christian University of San Andres, Providence and Kathleen Islands, Colombia. Rlckford, J. R. & Rlckford, A. 1980. Cut-eye and suck-teeth: African words and gestures in new world guise. In Perspecth'es on American English, J. L. Dillard (ed.), 347-365. The Hague: Mouton. Thomason, S. G. 2001. LatJgUage Contact: An Introduction. Washington DC: Georgetown University Press. Washabaugh, W. 1981. Pursuing Creole roots. In Generative Studies in Creole Languages, P. Muysken (ed.), 85-102. Dordrecht: Foris.

Palenque(ro) The search for its African substrate* Armin Schwegler University of California, Irvine

In memary of German de Granda ( 1932-2008), friend and pioneer ofPalenquero studies This article examines substrata! influences in Palenquero (Colombia). It begins with an explanation of why research on the origins of Palenque and its language has been particular! y challenging, and what these challenges mean in terms of how convincing the reigning hypothesis of a sole Klkongo substrate can (or cannot) be. The study then concentrates on relevant external and inter nallanguage data, as these are in many ways complementary. Language-internal features tied to Klkongo will be shown to come from all domains of grammar (phonology, morphology and syntax). Three fundamental conclusions will be reached: (1) Kikongo speakers must indeed have been a dominant force in the early Palenque; (2) lacunae in our historical and linguistic knowledge are, however, so great that we should keep a guarded attitude toward the current substrate hypothesis; and (3) there are multl:ple reasons to be optimistic about future attempts to refine substratist investigations into the creole. Part of that optimism rests on ongoing DNA research (based on comparison of the DNA ofPalenqueros and Central West Africans), as well as on an astonishing turnaround of sociolinguistic attitudes in twenty-first -century Palenque. This turnaround has prompted a rapid re-evaluation and never-before seen appreciation oflocal Africanlsms. Local enthusiasm for Palenquero is currently bringing to the fore a corpus of hitherto undocumented ancestral words that may help us advance explorations into the orlgins of the language.

This is a much abridged version of Schwegler (2009b). I thank Marlyse Baptista, Ernesto Bassi, Alejandro Correa, Tobias Green, Bart Jacobs, Alain Kihm, Carol Myers-Scotton, Rafael Orozco, Constanza Rojas-Primus, and two anonymous referees for their constructive comments on earlier versions of this paper. I owe a special debt of gratitude to William Samarin for his insightful remarks on early and late drafts of this study. I am also grateful to the many Palenqueros who in one way or another have assisted me in my research over the years. Among them are Sebastian Salgado Reyes, JesU.S Perez Palomino, Julia Simarra, Maria Luisa Simarra, and VIctor Simarra. My friend and colleague Yves Mofiino (CNRS, Paris) has provided me with pertinent materials and information that I could not otherwise have obtained easily. Finally, I wish to thank Claire Lefebvre, the editor of this volume. Without her extraordinary patience and enthusiasm for the project, I could not have contributed to this book. As is natural, any shortcomings in this study are entirely my responsibility.

226

Armin Schwegler

Keywords: Palenque, Palenquero, Africanlsms, African infiuence, substrate, Kikongo, Bantu infiuence, DNA population study

1.

Introduction

Research into the African origins ofPalenquero (henceforth PAL.) began in earnest in the 1970s and especially the 1980s, after Bickerton & Escalante (1970) and Granda (1968) had first identifiedLengua. (local name of PAL.) as acreoleratherthan "simply" as a Spanish dialect. At first, the search for the African origins of PAL. seemed daunting indeed. The task appeared particularly difficult, in part because the ancestors of this maroon community had escaped from nearby seventeenth-century Cartagena de Indias, then Latin America's major slave trade centre. As such, Cartagena (founded in 1533) was the "blackest" and most ethnically diverse city in the New World, a fact that the well-informed contemporary observer Alonso de Sandoval made clear in his enlightening De instauranda aethiopum salute. Un tratado sobre Ia escla.vitu.d (Sandoval1627/1987). Additional historical records as well as subsequent twentieth-century investigations by historians such as Arnizola (1955, 1970), Borrego Phi (1973, 1983, 1994), Friedemann (1993: Ch. 3), Green (2007) and Vidal Ortega (2002) further corroborated the fact that, during Cartagena's heyday (ca. 1600-1700), boza.les (newly imported slaves) from virtually every corner of West and Central West Africa arrived in the city, thereby contributing to an unusually rich situation of New World multilingualism. (As Del Castillo 1982: 19 notes, Sandoval reported that in his time over 70 African languages were spoken in Cartagena.) Obtained from historical records and, in some instances, eyewitness accounts, information about the provenance of Cartagena's unusually heterogeneous Black population was later advanced by Del Castillds incisive Esclavos negros en Ca.rtagena y sus aportes lexicos (1982). 1 More recently, Navarrete (1995a, 1995b, 2003, 2008a, 2008b, 2009) further broadened our understanding of Cartagena's Black history by studying how maroon slaves established their first palenques (fortifications) in Cartagena's hinterland during the seventeenth century. When viewed against this backdrop of Cartagena's seventeenth-century multilingual Black population, it is easy to understand why researchers originally held working assumptions that conceived of Palenque's early inhabitants as a mix of profoundly diverse ethnicities, each endowed with its own separate language. The search for substrate influences in PAL. thus seemed unusually daunting, and the expectation persisted that pertinent research would eventually lead to the discovery of several dominant substrates (rather than a single one). As it turns out, to date these expectations have not been met Instead, investigations carried out over the past quarter century (1985-2009) suggest that Kikongo (Map 1) may have been Palenque's only significant African substrate. This conclusion has, however, never been subjected to rigorous debate. The goal of this study is twofold: First, it aims to outline how and why Kikongo has emerged as a convincing primary (and maybe sole) substrate. (For a fuller account, I refer readers to the unabridged version of this study (Schwegler forthcoming], where language-external and other

1.

See also the companion study, Del Castillo (1984).

Palenque(ro)

Kikongo encompasses several more or less mutually intelligible Bantu dialects including tsiVili, kiSolongo, kiYombe, kiSansala, kiNtandu, til.ari, kiNdibu, kiBembe, and kiSundi. For the genetic filiation of Kikongo within Bantu, see Guthrie (1971): H10 as well as subbranch H16.

Map 1. Approximate area in which Klkongo is spoken: northern Angola, the Democratic Republic (D. R.) of the Congo, and the Republic of the Congo evidence is considered in greater depth.) Second, it seeks to explain why the question of"African input" into PAL. is far from settled and thus deserves renewed attention. As will become evident in the course of this paper, a major reason for casting some doubt on the hypothesis that Kikongo is the only substrate - a hypothesis that I myself have advanced on multiple occasions - rests on the fact that so much about Palenque's formative period remains unknown. This study will highlight critical lacunae in our historical and linguistic knowledge, and explain why we should maintain a guarded attitude toward the currently reigning hypothesis. The article is structured as follows: Section 2 explains how language-external evidence has helped specialists narrow down the origins of early Palenqueros. The article then segues into what can (and cannot) be gleaned from eighteenth-century documentary sources about Palenque's early history. Section 3 is dedicated to language-internal evidence. Here, the creole's substrate is studied by focusing successively on African elements in its lexicon (3.1), phonology (3.2) and morphosyntax (3.3). A conclusion completes the study.

2.

Origins of the Palenqueros: Language-external evidence

My multiple extended stays in Palenque (1985 to 1996, and 2008) confirmed that, prior to the first arrival of scholars in the community in the 1950s and then again in the 1970s and 1980s, the Palenqueros had no collective memory of the slave trade in general, nor of any other historical events that predated the 1900s. Since that time (i.e., the 1970s and 1980s), a good deal of ethnohistorical re-inventing has taken place inside and outside of Palenque, so much so that nowadays many locals claim to possess rather predse ideas about their supposed African origins and history as maroons. Especially among youngsters, some of these ideas have been brought to the community in scholarly

227

228

Armin Schwegler

Statue ofBeokos Bioho, located in the central plaza of Palen que. The text reads: BENKos• BIOHO, FOUNDER OF PALEN QUE

1603 • Word-final-s in Benk~ is a hypercorrection, common in Palenque (d: PAL. sinkos 'five' < SPAN. cinco).

Figure 1

Figure2

publications (my own included) and/or magazine and newspaper articles. Of late, other "origin ideas,. have been introduced by the aforementioned pan-Colombian movement of negritud (Black awareness), which, among other things, led UNESCO in 2005 to proclaim Palenque as a "Masterpiece of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity." This newly afforded international recognition has triggered additional rewriting of Palenque's heroic past Paid for by UNESCO and placed in the centre of town, a large and aesthetically pleasing statue (Figures 1 and 2) now informs locals and visitors alike that Benko Bioho (also Bioo or Biho ), a legendary maroon leader, was the supposed founder of the community. Moreover, an inscription on the pedestal of the statue firmly anchors the date- 1603 -when Benko Bioho presumably established Palen que. As I have already hinted, none of these recent claims about the origins ofPalenque and its inhabitants is based on verifiable historical documentation. As we shall see in Part 2 of this study, it is true that Bantu-speaking maroons must have played a dominant role in the formation of Palen que. It is also true that Benko Bioho was indeed a historic figure and a rebel maroon leader (he was captured and drowned by the governor of Cartagena shortly before 1620; seeNavarrete 2008a: 43). But, as Del Castillo (1984:80-85) makes clear in his little-known study "El Iexico negro-afrkano de San Basilio de Palenque:' Escalante's claim that Benko Bioho was the founder of Palenque is fiction rather than fact. 2 :u

What is known about Palenque's early history

The first reliable documentary evidence about the existence of Palenque dates from the Noticia historial of 1772, written by Diego de Peredo, bishop of Cartagena, and his secretary Francisco Escudero (Del Castillo 1984:83). The document makes two relevant points: ( 1) The Palenqueros already spoke among themselves a "peculiar local tongue; 3 as well as fluent Spanish, and (2) their 2.

The claim is embraced in Escalante (1954 [1979]: 22-25) as well as in Bickerton & Escalante (1970: 255).

3· • [H]ablan entre sf un particular idioma en que a sus sol as instruyen a los muchachos; sin embargo de que cortan con mucha expedicron el castellano ... "(Hemmdez De Alba 1982: 219-220).

Palenque(ro)

[Catholic] priest oversaw 178 families with 396 converted souls and 90 slaves ( 1\dm inistra su cura

178 familias con 396 almas de confesi6n y 90 esclavos"4). The approximate time (ca. 1650-1750) ofPalenque's formative years situates us within aperiod when (1) Cartagena had already risen to great prominence as a heavily multilingual slave trade centre, and (2) West Central Africa (Kongo, Angola, etc.) was already providing large slave contingents to Colombia and other parts of Latin America (Heywood & Thornton 2007).

2.2

What is not known about Palenque's early history

Much about Palenque's early history is mired in uncertainty, so much so that a search for its African roots is inherently subject to considerable speculation (but see Navarrete 2003, 2008a). Contrary to other situations of creole formation (e.g., Suriname) where historical demographic information on bozal and creole societies is plentiful (see, for instance, the pioneering work by Arends 199 5), the case of Palenque is so poorly documented that scholars have never had at their disposal language-external evidence like birth or church records, information about the ratio of bozales to creoles, detailed accounts of slave voyages directly linkable to maroons who escaped Cartagena, or other pertinent historical data that might enlighten us about the maroons' ethnolinguistic provenance. Moreover, there remains the nagging question of whether the creole is possibly a vestigial remnant of a once fairly widespread creole, as I have proposed on several occasions (Schwegler 1991b, 1993c, 1996b, 1999, 2002c), or whether PAL. is strictly the result of an in situ formation, fostered by exceptional sodohistorical circumstances of maroonage. This second hypothesis has been espoused by Lipski (among others), who recently argued that "(c]onditions favoring the formation of a stable creole never existed in the Spanish Caribbean" (2005: 302). But he too admits that the question is far from settled, and that, "[m]uch as in physical archaeology, the reconstruction of prior linguistic epochs is an evolving science that relies on methodological improvements, theoretical refinements, and ongoing discovery of raw materials" (2005: 304). No matter what the exact evolutionary steps were in the formation of Palenque's language and society, one thing is certain: Today, more than SO years after Escalante's pioneering 1954 (1979) book, we are still woefully lacking in verifiable historical information about Palenque's early inhabitants. In terms of documentary evidence, we are thus left with a situation in which approximately 200 years (1700-1900) of its history remain essentially unrecorded. As is natural, in the absence of such evidence, substratist research is bound to be more tenuous than usual. Nonetheless, as the following sections show, sufficient progress has been made to allow for a set of well-grounded conclusions.

4· By the early 1830s, Palenque already had 1,073 residents (Helg 2004:38).

229

230

Armin Schwegler

3·

Origins of Palenqueros: Linking language-external evidence with language-internal clues

Over the last hundred years, PAL. has undergone neither decreolisation nor other substantial internal change (for details, see Schwegler 2001), with the exception of its Mrican vocabulary. which in the twentieth century underwent substantial reduction (see 3.1). The morphosyntactic features described in this section are, therefore, not of recent vintage, and must have characterised the creole for centuries.

3.1

Palenque's African lexicon

The search for the ethnic and linguistic origins of Palenque seemed daunting indeed when linguists (Bickerton and Granda) first set foot in the village in the late 1960s. Facing a bewildering and undocumented array of African languages that could potentially have exerted substrata! influences on PAL., scholars gradually sifted through language-internal data in order to build their claims on a more solid footing. Clinging to the hypothesis of a heavily multiethnic and multilingual early Palenque, Escalante's pioneering El Palenque de San Basilio (1954/1979) provided a key observation that later led Granda (1968) and Bickerton & Escalante (1970) to suspect that speakers of Bantu languages must have played a key role in the genesis of the creole. While attending funeral rites in Palenque, Escalante noticed the prominence of a fossilised ritual chant whose main stanzas contain the words Kongo, Luango and Angola (Escalante 1954/1979: 8, 1988) - three toponyms or ethnic names that could readily be linked to an area of Central West Africa where early Portuguese slaving activities are known to have been intense (Arbell2002; Bottcher 1995; Granda 1971:87, and sources therein). Subsequent fieldwork (Schwegler 1996a) revealed three critical facts: (1) Already in the 1980s, Palenqueros no longer understood the literal meaning of the stanzas in question, (2) Escalante's early transcriptions were partially faulty but nonetheless sufficiently transparent to confirm the existence of Kongo, Luango and Angola in the stanzas in question (see below), and- importantly perhaps for substratist research- (3) in Palenque, there is no collective memory of additional African place names or ethnonyms. The text and translation of the song containing Kongo, Luango and Angola are as follows (the first three lines are in the Palenquero creole, but have no literal meaning to Palenqueros; the last two lines are in local Spanish;5 for the location ofLoango- both the region and the city, see Map 2): Chi rna nkongo [Palenquero funeral chant] Chi rna nkongo, Chi rna luango, Chi rna ri Luango di Angou1 e; Huan GungU me flamo yo; Huan GungU me a de nyama, ee.

From the Kongo [Palenquero funeral chant] From the Kongo [people I am], From the Loango [people I am], From the Loango of Angola [people I am], eh; Juan Gungu is my name; Juan Gungu I shall be called, eh. (Schwegler 1996a: 524-537)

s.

The Spanish of Palenque differs in significant respects from regional Spanish. For a detailed discussion and examples, see Schwegler & Morton (2003).

Palenque(ro)

Taking as a point of departure these ritual data as well as a short list of (presumably) African vocabulary, 6 Bickerton & Escalante also concluded that"... the Palenqueros came mainly from Angola and Congo" (1970:261). In the first detailed article dedicated to the African provenance of the Palenquero community, the Spanish creolist Granda reached a similar verdict. arguing that "the conclusions obtained by Aquiles Escalante on the basis of ethnological data are evidently solid, and his claim of a predominantly Angolan origin of the Palenque maroons is confirmed by the mention in Palenquero chants of Angola, Congo and Loango" (1971: 86, my translation). Granda then proceeded to provide additional well-founded arguments (see 1971:86, n. 12) that helped cement the idea that the ritual lines in question must be of considerable antiquity. At a time when linguists and others interested in Palenque had not yet acquired an advanced knowledge of the creole, it seemed logical that efforts to advance substrate research should concentrate on the creole's esoteric local vocabulary, especially that which had a distinct nonHispanic configuration. "Notas sobre lexico palenquero de origen bantU" (1978) by Granda, who by then had briefly visited Palenque, was written with this purpose in mind. While the resulting list of words remained modest (totalling about 40 items) and some of the proposed etymologies were tenuous or, in some instances, misguided, this expanded lexical corpus of words once again pointed to Kikongo as the principal substrate. However, to gain greater clarity about potential Kimbundu and other contributions, a larger corpus of Afro- Palenquerisms (henceforth called simply KAfricanisms") was clearly needed. From approximately 1950 to 2000, the number of actively used African words was surprisingly low, barely more than a dozen. Included among these active words are those listed below (examples are uniformly derived from Kikongo; references to etymological sources are given in Schwegler 2002b ). chimbumbe 'water spirit'

< KIK. ki 'plural class PREP' + mbumba 'mythological figure of the lower Congo/Zaire river' < KIK. ma 'plural class PREP: Class 6 in Guthrie's classification (pluralia tantum) < KIK. lu (class PREP) + Knc. mbalu 'memory, recol-

rna

'plural particle'

lumbalti

'name oflocal funeral rite'

mahan a

< KIK. ma (class PREP)+ aana or d-ana PL of youngsters' mwdna 'child. descendant, offspring, etc: 'child. adolescent, youngster' < KIK. mwdna 'child. descendant, offspring, etC: 'steer I cow' (rna ngombe 'cattle') < KIK. ngombe 'cow, steer' 'father' < KIK. tdata 'father, uncle, chief'

lection'

mona ngornbe

tata

'children, adolescents,

During the second half of the twentieth century, prevailing negative attitudes towards anything local made members of the community feel ashamed of their speech, so much so that many began to altogether abandon the creole, and along with it overt Africanisms (Del Castillo 1984:89; Patino Rosselli 1983: 188-191; for a sample of earlier outside attitudes, consult Ochoa Franco 1945:62). Given such sociolinguistic attitudes, it should not be surprising that many

6. I say "(presumably) African" because some of the supposed Africanisms turned out to be Hispanisms. One such Hispanism is kasariambe 'cemetery', derived from Spanish casa de hambre, lit 'house of hunger: For detailed etymological explanations of this and related items, see Schwegler (1989, 2000, 2002b).

231

232

Armin Schwegler

older Palenqueros - then the best source of archaisms of putative African origins - were often reticent to provide outsiders (linguists included) with lexical gems that could potentially elucidate substratist research. Aware of these challenges, during the late 1980s and 1990s, I sought to use my extended stays in Palenque to undertake a systematic collection of remaining Mro- Palenquero vocabulary. The search confirmed that Palenque still offered fertile grounds for the retention of Africanisms, yielding about 200 autochthonous lexical items of putative Mrican origin (Schwegler 2000, 2002b). As we will see shortly, at present there is reason to believe that additional fieldwork could significantly expand this corpus, especially if the task were undertaken with the assistance oflocal consultants. The approximately 200 Afro-Palenquero words analysed in Schwegler (2000, 2002b) fall into essentially two categories: ritual (lumbalzt) and extra-ritual vocabulary. The latter constitute the vast majority of the corpus, and are more useful for determining Palenque's substrate (ritual lexicon is less useful since its literal meaning has often been lost, rendering etymological work more speculative). Of the extra-ritual words (mostly archaisms), about half have been etymologised (Schwegler 2002b: 176-216). The remainder consists of words whose origin(s) are unknown or are in doubt (Schwegler 2002b: 218-220). This etymological research leads to a surprising and important conclusion: As mentioned earlier, Granda, Del Castillo, Bickerton & Escalante and other scholars (myself included) had long suspected that multiple Bantu languages could eventually be shown to have contributed to the formation of PAL. Besides Kikongo, the Kimbundu language of Angola in particular was viewed as a potentially rich source of Mro- Palenquerisms. Scholars assumed this position in part because (1) Mbundu slaves were known to have been shipped to Cartagena in relatively large numbers, and (2), as mentioned earlier, Palenque's most famous lumbalzt songexplicitlymentions Angola (see KChi rna nkongo, chi rna ri ANGOLA" above). As it turns out, however, these expectations of multiple Bantu origins have not been met Instead, Kikongo has emerged as virtually the only demonstrable donor of African lexicon? Although it is true that several Africanisms could plausibly be traced to Kimbundu, the same words are always cognates in Kikongo as well (e.g., anguba. 'peanut(s)' < KIK. ng(tba. I KIMB. nguba). The opposite is, however, not the case, as many Africanisms have irrefutable Kikongo etyma that lack plausible Kimbundu derivations. This finding naturally leads to the question of why Kikongo-speaking maroons would refer to Angola. The answer may be simpler than expected: As the travel account by Degranpre (1801) shows, during the slave trade, "Angola" had a wider geographic meaning than it does today, and included the Loango Coast Old ritual expressions like Chi ma ri LuANGO di ANGOLA are thus perhaps best translated as 'From the Loango [people] of the West Central African Coast" Table 1 presents a sampling of 10 Kikongo-derived Palenquero words (for etymological sources, see Schwegler 2002b ). All etymologies shown therein exhibit regular sound change.

7.

See also Schwegler (1989, 1990, 1992b, 1993b, 1994, 1996a).

Palenque(ro)

Table 1. Sampling of ten Palenquero words and their Klkongo etymologies Palenquero

Gloss

Kikongo etymology

Lhasa

'chamber pot (traditionally made of one half of a gourd)'

KIK. baasu 'something cut in half; the half of something. for example half a coconut'

2.binde

i:bree stones (on the ground) on which a cooking pot is perched so that the firewood can be pushed in below it'

KIK. wiindi (PL bi-wii1Jdi) 'perch'

3.bongo

bonga 'Ceiba penta,Jdra' (big Ceiba tree with a KIK. v(mga 'big. large' very large trunk). Note: ENGL. bongo (drum) is a cognate. The same is true of La Bonga 'toponym near Palen que that received its name from a big Ceiba tree'

4. buru - mbulu

'money, change'

KIK. mvil.lu 'riches, wealth'

5. cherre-cberre

'ear of corn that has defective growth (on kernels)'

KIK. nzeJ.e-nzele 'apoplexy'

6.eroe

'interjection meaning "yes, of course!·

KIK. eJ.oe 'yei

7.indende

'stupid, slow (of mind), retarded'

KIK. ndende 'slow (to take off or obey), insupportable, dragging down'

8. imba-imba

'argument without value; stupid or unsupported claim'

KIK. ba-ba 'onornat for speaking fast, like a retarded or deaf person' (the prenasal [m] and word-initial [i-] are non-etymological phonetic accommodations)

9. gere-gere

'mule, donkey'

KIK. ngeele (REDUPL) '(hard) worker'

'a lie, an excuse, something invented'

KIK. (ny)yaJ.a 'to have an inclination to be corrupted or dishonest, to be of poor character'

10. iftala

All words are from Palenque's extra- ritual lexicon. Atthe time of their collection (approx. 1985-1995), only binde (2)

and bongo (3) were commonly used. the others being archaisms that were recalled by only a few speakers.

3.1.1

Pa.lenque's lexicon today: Revival of Africanisms

As mentioned earlier, throughout much of the twentieth century, persistent linguistic and social stigmatisation and marginalisation exerted enormous pressure on PAL. As a result, Africanisms viewed as anticu.ados ('outdated') -were shunned with increasing frequency. Since the tum of the millennium, an astonishing reversal of fortunes has occurred, giving PAL. renewed vigour. As my recent visit (November 2008) to Palenque has revealed, the once dire situation has been dramatically changed: Adolescents now take pleasure in learning the creole, and gone are the days when local Lengu.a was heavily stigmatised both inside and outside of Palenque (Schwegler 2009; see also Morton 2005; Pfleiderer 1998). Partly as a result of this shift in language attitudes, most of today's Palenqueros take considerable pride in conversing in their Lengua, whether in a fragmented manner or with full competence. And contrary to past practice, most residents of the community now proudly display their creole and especially its "Africanisms"

233

2.34

Armin Schwegler

lhls store Is owned by Bernadino Perez Miranda, former Instructor of Lengua In Palenque~ lnstitud6n Educativa Benkos Biobo. It bas been given the name of Ma Cbaramuka because of Its Afrlcanlslng ring rather than Its denotative meaning (In creole, ma charamuka means 'dry, chopped twigs used to start or fan a [kitchen] fire'). The adornmentofpublicbuUdings with creole expressions Is a very recent development, and an overt expression of local acceptance of and pride In the vernacular. Charamuka Is also known In other parts of Colombia (Alario de Filippo 1983:222, charamusqu/na) , but Palenqueros tend to view It as a strictly local word.

Figure 3. Ma Charamuka, one of Palenque's local stores

rOn,

ell

f"4o

1.0 hablli'\TI)

)_

0

~{)I:~• cJ,~.$I":C\

l.r• 1" ~o - rf~t$cl)t:1 ~-/l•mo/ ck,...,bfl~r.A~:o Jdfr ("~r1i 5o/f1tJ•bo dfa·.tt~~iu· ~dt.l, rr1la. 'i'O= dd orr clio cVt~nQ · CoL. cb6corolcb6colo '(small) jug, container' (intermediate phonetic steps were KIK. •[tJ]yo nkolo > •[tJ]6-kolo > cb6coro/ ch6colo).

Figure 4. Creole word list drawn up in 2008 by a Palenquero middle-school student

to national and international visitors. In addition, Palenque's teachers (especially those who grew up in the community) and their students (about 800 in all) now routinely engage in enthusiastic "Palenquero word hunts," some of which yield precious, hitherto undocumented Afrtcanisms (see Rgure 4). There can be no doubt: Words with an "African ring" are currently in high fashion in Palenque, thereby giving once antiquated vocabulary renewed and unexpected vitality.

8. Articulated ['kipa] or ['tfipa], depending on the Kikongo dialect. For kipa, see Laman (1936/1964: 290) and Swartenbroeckx (1973 :177). For the [ki] I (tfi] alternation in Kikongo, see the first entry in Laman (1936/1964: 99). 9· Alario di Filippo (1983) does not list chopo, but does include chopa 'small rifle', similarly derived from Kikongo: kyo 'small' + pa 'onomat. "paf' for the smaU noise made by a fire arm' (Laman 1936/1964:371 and 841, respectively) .

Palenque(ro)

3.1.2

Palenque's African lexicon: Is Kikongo its only substrate?

We can be highly optimistic that additional data collection will yield further Africanisms. As is natural, the larger the corpus, the firmer our overall conclusions will be. The collection of additional Africanisms may help us discover etymologies from African languages other than Kikongo; or, conversely, the expanded corpus may lend further support to the established theory of Kikongo as the lone substrate. A preliminary informal perusal of Palenquero word lists collected by students has already revealed this potential, and led to the "discovery" of additional Kik.ongo etymologies. One such recent "discovery" is, for instance. PAL. guatina [mtati'na - wati'na] 'to watch, to observe, to listen in, to spy upmi, 10 whose root morpheme gua- is derived from KIK. "M'ii 11 'to hear, to observe, to listen (in) (PERF)' (Laman 1936/1964: 1089). Another example taken from the same source (student notebook, November 2008) is juandana [wan'dana] 'jerk, asshole [insult directed at females]: derived from KIK. wandama.- ba.ndama, an insult literally meaning 'turning the buttocks in the air, in the direction of someone in order to insult the individuaf (Laman 1936/1964: 16; for the bawa alternation, see Laman 1936/1964: 1091 wanda). Also strongly suggestive of Kikongo origin are other recently collected words such as PAL. pola 'blood (of an animal): derived from KIK. paula- baula 'cut open (an aninlal), make (blood) run, etc: (Laman 1936/1964:67, 854); 12 motundo 'bundle, package or merchandise that is carried or balanced on the head (by women)' < KIK. mu ntzt-ntu. lit 'on the head-head' (Laman 1936/1964:799-800), easily reconstructed in a straightforward manner by positing the intermediate steps KIK. mu ntu-ntu > *montunto > *montundo > motundo. 13 More transparent is the derivation of PAL. sokola 'to weed, to free a plot of agricultural land of debris' (Schwegler 2002b: 213) < KIK. sitkula 'to clean, to clear land, etc: (Laman 1936/1964: 921). All of these words point to Kik.ongo as the principal and potentially sole African substrate.

3.2

Substrata! features in Palenquero phonology

As regards phonology, PAL. closely matches Caribbean Spanish, especially its informal registers. The creole thus exhibits relatively few substrata! features. Given the above-mentioned dearth of documentary evidence surrounding the formative period of the creole, and in light of the fact that substrata! phonological features - especially those originating in Western Bantu languages -

10.

See also the nominal derivation PAL. guatinero 'an observer, someone who watches/spies:

The base form of KIK. wa is KIK. wiidi, which has left numerous traces in the ritual speech of Cuban Palo Monte (cf. Palero wiri or gi.iiri 'to listen: documented in Cabrera 1984: 112).

11.

12. ln Laman, see also KIK. ma bftula 'wound' as well as ki.k. bUla 'to become adult, to reach puberty (women), to menstruate for the first time:

13. Each step exhibits regular sound changes; the voicing of -nto > -ndo is a substrata! feature attested in words like SPAN. sentir > PAL sind{). KIK. nta 'head' is also the root of other PAL words, including tukuta 'strong headache, migraine' < KIK. ntilku 'trouble' + nta 'head' (Schwegler 2002a:215). KIK. nta is widely attested in Palo Monte (Cuba) ritual language (see Cabrera 1984:36, where ntuchando < ntu+chando 'moving one's head' is of particular interest, as it shows the integration of KIK. nta into Spanish verb morphology). This and other evidence (not listed here) have convinced me that the etymology proposed here for PAL motundo is no longer in doubt.

235

236

Armin Schwegler

tend to be large(r)-scale areal phenomena (Park.vall2000), scholars have understandably deemed Palenqueros' articulatory practices to be not particularly helpful for pinpointing their precise African origin(s). To date, Granda (1989) and (1992) remain the most useful panoramic investigations on the topic (see also Park.vall2000; Schwegler 1998:264-267). There, Granda links several Palenquero articulatory characteristics to a putative Bantu and Kwa substrate. Included among these characteristics are (1) the preference for CV syllable structure and the related phenomenon of vowel paragoge in words like dioso 'God'< SPAN. dios; (2) the sonorisation of /p, t, kJ +NASAL (e.g., kombla 'to buy'< SPAN. comp_rar;flende 'front, forehead'< SPAN.frente, Palengue <SPAN. PalemJ_ue); (3) occasional vowel harmony (jiri 'to hurt'< SPAN. hf.rir; minf.'to come'< SPAN. Vf.nir; sibiri 'to serve'< SPAN. s~rvir); (4) the at times free interchange of apico-alveolar [d]/[Cl], [r] and [1] in words like do- ro -lo 'two'< SPAN. dos; 14 and (5) the frequent vowel elision at word junctures in rapid speech (e.g., p' uto kum' asina < P!l (s)uto kumj_ a.sina. 'for us to eat this way'). By far the most recurrent and noticeable non-Hispanic phonetic feature of PAL. is, however, found in (6) the productive prenasalisation (always homorganic) of word-initial stops /b, d, gl. applicable in free variation to lexemes of African as well as Spanish origin (e.g., PAL. mboka. 'mouth'< SPAN. boca., PAL.n.do 'two'< SPAN. dos, ngota ('l)gota] 'drop'< SPAN. gota, etc.). 15 All of the aforementioned phonological features are productive in Kikongo. Given the importance ofKikongo to Palenque's ancestral lexicon, this is not surprising. Patifio Rosselli had already characterised Palenquero prenasalisation as "a feature of clear African origin(s)" (1983: 101), and Granda (1989) correctly linked it to Kikongo, albeit not without mentioning other Sub-Saharan languages as possible contributors. Even a cursory look at Lamarls (1936/1964) Dictionna.ire reveals that such prenasalisations are indeed very common, which probably explains, at least in part, why the feature eventually spread to the entire Palenquero lexicon. Similarly likely to represent a direct Kik.ongo influence is the free interchange of apicoalveolar [d), [r) and [l) in expressions such as do, ro, lo 'two'< SPAN. dos, ore di ele- e ri eleeli ele (SPAN. es de el) 'ofhim/hei, first studied in depth by Granda (1989). 16 As can be gleaned from the Introduction to Laman (1936/1964) and, more succinctly, also from his entry on the letter r, the same sounds exhibit similar behaviour among the Bakongo: Kr is found in (S[outhem] B[antu]) instead of d betore i, y, for example ria. (dia), eat; riambu. (dyambu), word"; and "r or l, retroflex din Bembe is found only in word-interior position, for example uru, ulu, udu" (Laman 1936/1964:860, my translations)P

Granda (1989) is dedicated entirely to the study of the [d], [t] and [l]in PAL. As noted by Mofiino (2002: 228), [d] - [r] - [1] alternations have their most common application when followed by a high front vowel, as in PAL. di, ri, li 'of.

14.

15. For additional details, see Patifio Rosselli (1983: 100-103) and Schwegler (1998:264). 16. Elsewhere in the Americas, Bakongo slaves produced the same [d] [t] - [1] alternations in their Spanish. Cuban Bozal Spanish, for instance, is a rich source for the further study of this phenomenon (Castellanos 1990: 77; Schwegler 2006b: 83).

17. Limitations of space preclude me from showing that the [t -1] interchange in PAL. must also have Andalusian Spanish dialectal sources.

Palenque(ro)

Not all specialists agree that the phonological phenomena under analysis can be plausibly linked to African substrate languages. In a section dedicated to vowel harmony, Parkvall notes, for instance, that the feature is often commented upon in studies on Atlantic Creole phonology, but that, with the exception of Cape Verde Portuguese Creole, "no form of harmony is productive in any Atlantic Creole, and show [sic] no signs of ever having been so either" (2000: 55). In Atlantic Creoles (PAL. included), says Parkvall (p. 55), one can therefore speak of slight tendencies towards vowel harmony, but these tendencies mainly manifest themselves in determining the quality of the paragogic vowels (e.g., PAL. dioso 'God'< SPAN. dios). While acknowledging that vowel harmony is common in some West African languages (see his list of sources on p. 55), Parkvall cautions that "it is possible, but by no means certain, that the tendencies towards vowel harmony in the Atlantic Creoles are due to the presence of harmonising vowel systems in West Africa [ ... ]"and "[a] part from the existence of a similar tendency in Portugal, the absence of anything similar in the putative substrates makes it reasonable to suspect that these harmony rules developed after Creolisation, and independently of substrata! input" (2000: 55-56). There are, however, at least four considerations that rehabilitate the sub stratal explanation. Limitations of space prohibit me from listing them here, but readers can find them in the unabridged version of this study (Schwegler forthcoming). Of the phonological traits listed as potential substrate phenomena, Palenqueros' preference for an open syllable structure may, upon further analysis, turn out to be the weakest link in substratist theories. As Parkvall shrewdly points out, the proportion of CV syllables is rather similar in PAL. and Spanish, "the main difference being a higher proportion ofCVC syllables in Spanish, and a higher proportion ofV syllables in Palenquero, with non-nasal codas being very sparse" (2000: 52). This stands in rather sharp contrast to Bantu and Kru languages, which typically accept no codas at all. This last observation makes it clear that, during the formative phase of PAL., creole speakers did not impose phonotactic Bantu rules in a wholesale fashion. Parkvall is therefore right to argue that the tendency to an open syllable structure is "not necessarily a substrate feature, since it could have been brought about by pidginisation tendencies alone" (2000: 55). Moreover, as I pointed out earlier, even if the feature under analysis could ultimately be linked to an African substrate, it would not point to any specific West African language(s). In Sub-Saharan Africa, CV syllables are too widely distributed to be useful for narrowing down the Palenqueros' provenance. 3.2.1

Palenquero intonation: A substratal feature?

The least understood aspect of PAL. phonology is its intonational system. This is a serious gap, as it is precisely in the realm of prosody that the most striking phonological differences between PAL. and (Caribbean) Spanish are apparent Several authors (e.g., Montes Giraldo 1962: 450, cited in Patiiio Rosselli 1983: 110) speculated that African influence might be at the source of Palenqueros' peculiar intonation, but until recently, published research offered no detailed information on the matter. The joint effort by Hualde & Schwegler ("Intonation in Palenquero," 2008) seeks to remedy this situation. The main thrust of Hualde & Schwegler (2008) is to identify several specific intonational features whereby conservative (or older-generation) PAL. differs from (Caribbean) Spanish. As such, the article is not primarily concerned with the possible origins of these intonational

237

238

Armin Schwegler

features, though it does address the question to some extent in the concluding section. There, several notable suprasegmental patterns are identified and tentatively linked to a Bantu substrate (see Schwegler forthcoming for a partial summary of these patterns; also relevant is Moiiino forthcoming).

3·3

Substrata! features in Palenquero morphosyntax

PAL. displays many of the morphosyntactic traits associated with Atlantic creoles (Bickerton & Escalante 1970; Granda 1968, 1978; Patino Rosselli 1983, 2002; Schwegler 1998; and especially Schwegler & Green 2007). For some of these features, substrata! influence has been invoked, especially from Bantu languages and Kikongo in particular. The amount of morphosyntax that can confidently be traced to Kik.ongo and/or other African languages is, however, fairly limited, and includes: 1.

2. 3.

nominal pluralisation (MA hende '(the) people, un MA hende 'some people'); person/number marking (e.g., YO Ita abla 'I am speaking); possessive constructions of the type webo ri ele 'his/her egg( s): literally 'egg( s) of his/her.

Similarly of clear Kikongo origin but not examined in this paper are: 4. 5. 6. 7.

the "singularising" value of PAL. un in constructions such as k'UN mano 'with one [of the two] hands' vs. ku mano 'by hand' (Moiiino 2007 a: 45-47, 2007b: 61-63); the suffix -eno (2nd PL) in commands like jabl-eno! 'speak!: /k-um-eno! 'eat!: jtnin-eno! 'come!' (Schwegler 2002a "-enu - enu - enu" and references therein); certain aspectual functions held by preverbal tense/mood/aspect markers, studied in Moiiino (1999); reduplication in approximately 30 documented nouns, verbs, adverbs and interjections. Most if not all of these have certain or probable African origins. Examples: imba-imbtt. 'bullshit, talk without value: lombo-lombo 'black bird:foi-foi 'to jump (from place to place): kapa-kapa 'almos~ kachi-kachi 'come and eat; come to the table!' (Schwegler 2002b; for a convenient list, see Moiiino & Ortiz 1999:Section 3).

Arguably also ofKikongo and other African provenance are: 8. 9.

embracing and/or postverbal negation such as ele (NU) kelt kume NU 's/he does not want to eat (not)' (Dieck 2000, 2002; Patiiio Rosselli 2002:27; Schwegler 1991a, 1996c); postnominal placement of possessive pronouns (mona mi 'son/daughter my= my sonldaughter'; cp. KIK. mwana aami 'son/daughter my= my son/daughter').

As is the case with most if not all Atlantic creole languages, PAL. may have received much additional substrata! input. But attempts to unequivocally trace such "deep" influence to a substrate typically founder because structural adaptations (e.g., paradigmatic simplification, impoverishment of morphology) may well have been triggered by pidginisation rather than substrata! input (or by both), especially in localities where Spanish and other languages were an L2 for a large proportion of the population, as was the case in the Cartagena area. In examining key morphological

Palenque(ro)

characteristics of Lengu.a, one notes, for instance, the structural simplicity of its verbal paradigms (when compared to Spanish), the non-inversion of subject and verb in interrogatives (e.g., lk' o kelt? 'what you want?= what do you want?'), and the absence of gender marking on nouns, adjectives and pronouns (e.g., mailo!muhe goddo si 'husband/wife overweight your= your overweight husband/wife'). Creolists have long known that these three features are found in many if not most creoles, and deliberations about what and how much can be ascribed to substrate influence, pidginisation, language acquisition, the bioprogram, and/or universals continue unabated. Of late, the pendulum appears to be swinging back in the direction of a greater appreciation of sub stratal positions (as in the recently released Roots of Creole Structures, Michaelis 2008). Clearly, much work remains to be done on the topic. But that PAL. morphosyntax received at least some Kik.ongo and possibly other Bantu input at an early period is beyond doubt This is so in no small measure because, in some instances, Kikongo grammatical particles actually survived into modern-day PAL., thereby tacilitating the identification of the substrate-driven functions with which they are associated. The following sections, necessarily abridged for reasons of space, will highlight two such features (additional data can be found in Schwegler forthcoming). To date, their Kik.ongo provenance has never been contested. 3·3·1

Palenquero morphosyntax: The pluraliser MA

Patino Rosselli (1983: 138-149 ), Megenney ( 1986: 149-150) and other early investigations of PAL. uniformly reported that ma 'definite particle' and zm ma 'indefinite particle' (lit 'one PL') regularly mark the plural, thereby presumably yielding a system in which the singular alone allows bare nouns. Representative examples (from my field notes) with plural ma. are given in (1) to (3). (1)

nima ta a£. animal be there 'The animals are there.' MA

PL

(2)

To ese MA kusa Jue malo. all that PL thing be bad 1\11 these things are bad'

(3)

MA

ri Marfa e

meh6.

of Maria be better 'Those of Maria are better= Maria's are better: PL

Scholars' early and repeated attention to PAL. ma can readily be understood: On one hand, this particle is a prominent. highly frequent element of the creole; on the other hand, it was identified early on as an "exotic" Africa.n feature, one that I and others have deemed especially useful for tracing the substrata! (Kikongo) origins of PAL. As mentioned earlier, PAL. ma must have originated in the Kikongo class prefix ma (Class 6 in Guthrie's classification), 18 after which it was assigned wider functionality as a universal pluraliser of all PAL. nouns (as well as pronouns, see ma ri 'those' in (3) above).

18. For references to etymological inquiries about ma, see Schwegler (2002b: 198) and Mofiino (2002:245-246).

The latter provides convincing arguments as to why KIK. ma rather than SPAN. mds more' (Megenney 2002: 109111) must be the source of PAL. ma.

239

240

Armin Schwegler

In a recent article (Schwegler 2007a), I have shown that the traditional analysis of the t\mctionality of rna is seriously flawed in that it posits rna as an obligatory and predictable marker of definite plural nouns. While it is true that rna -whenever it is present- explicitly signals Kplura~" it is equally true that the particle is a non-obligatory, and therefore non-predictable, component of PAL. grammar (on this point, see also Moftino 2007a:47-52, 2007b:64-68). Context, it turns out, rather than overt morphology or lexical structure is key to conveying pluralisation in PAL. This new approach represents a radical departure from earlier analyses, as it renders all PAL. nouns ~ansnume~" as can be seen in the examples in (4) from Schwegler (2007a: 211 ). Readers will note that decontextualised expressions like puetta ri kasa lit. 'door(s) of house(s)' can have any of the following singular and/or plural meanings: (4)

puetto ri kdsa a b. c. d.

'the door' OR 'the doors ... of the house' 'a door' OR 'doors ... of the house' 'the door' OR 'the doors ... of a house OR houses' 'a door' OR 'doors ... of a house OR houses'

Returning to the question of substrate origins, in this new analysis, PAL. nominal pluralisation presents us with a seemingly conflicting situation: On one hand, Kikongo influence in terms of form and (partial) function of PAL. rna is beyond doubt, and its impact on the creole is substantial given its high frequency of use (in well over half of all plural noun phrases, rna is expressed even though discourse content clearly signals plural meaning [Schwegler 2007a: 211]). On the other hand, the optional placement of PAL. rna does not appear to mirror behavioural patterns typically associated with Kikongo and other Central West Mrican class prefixes (which are mostly obligatory and predictable). Why that should be so is a mystery, and points to the need for further investigation (Moftino 2007b: 53-68 serves as an excellent point of departure). 3.3.2

Palenquero morphosyntax: Pronouns and person/number marking

As Schwegler (1993a, 2002a) and Schwegler & Green (2007) reveal, the PAL. paradigm strongly resembles that of other creoles in that the expression of person/number (henceforth P/N) is realised by preverbal subject pronouns. Drawing on Schwegler (2002b ), the following paragraphs briefly delineate the main ways in which not just Kik.ongo forms (enu 'you' [PL], ane 'they') but also morphosyntactic patterns have been transferred into the creole. PAL. P/N markers generally occur in preverbal position (e.g., YO kelt kurne 'I want to eat'; SUTO a-ten ke bae 'we got to go'). In addition to this pattern of PIN MARKER +VERB, there exists a common syntagmatic construction that prior to 2002 had received virtually no attention in the literature. In these sentences, the verb phrase contains not one but two preverbal subject PIN markers (with the number being the same). The syntagm exhibits the structure PIN MARKER+ PIN MARKER + VERB, with the PIN markers always occurring in juxtaposition (see the conceptual examples in (5) below). In this respect, the creole resembles the better-known informal spoken French, where sets like rnoi (free)- je (bound), toi- tu, lui- il, etc., are employed for purposes of topicalisation or "highlighting" (as in informal FR. MOI JB crois pas 'I [topic] don't think so'). No known dialect of Spanish exhibits such juxtapositions.

Palenque(ro)

As examples (5) to (11) illustrate, the form of the PAL. clitic marker can vary. For instance, first person singular forms are i, yo, andy-. The origins of this variation are complex, and not directly relevant to the discussion. What matters here is above all the reiterative nature of PIN marking, and the fact that the clitics in question can take on the phonetic forms i or y- (1st s), o (2nd s), and e (3rd s). (5) yo

i a yo yo a yo y- a

kele- lo. kele- lo. kele- lo.

ls I PAST want them 'I (emphatic/topic) wanted them:

Its (6)

Yo yosabe-lo nu. 'I don't know that:

(7)

Yo y-ase-a sal£ a la kuatro. 'I used to go out at four (o'clock):

(8)

Yo i-sabt eso nu. 'I don't know that:

(9) Jl boo- ase kanda-lo? ~d do you (s.) usually sing it?' (10)

Eleele a degobbe tambif.n. 'He/she/it also returned (it):

(11)

Eli e- ta akf nu. 'He/she/it ls not here:

A plausible hypothesis concerning the origin( s) of the above PIN reiteration in PAL. can be formulated with data from Kikongo. where PIN marking is similarly achieved via the concatenation of an INDEPENDENT PRONOUN (optional)+ COMBINED PERSONAL PRONOUNS+ VERB. As a comparison between (12) and (13) below illustrates, the resulting Kikongo syntagms exhibit a "one-to-one correspondence" with their PAL. counterparts. Moreover, the phonetic alternation i - y- (before vowel [a]) is tound in both languages (in PAL., this alternation is seemingly free). These formal and semantic coincidences, taken in conjunction with other paradigmatic parallelisms examined in Schwegler (2002a), constitute persuasive evidence of a link between Kikongo and PAL. Kikongo (12) mono mono

I I

yy-

aa-

bazola. bazola. bazola. bazola.

'I (emphatic/topic) love them.' (PRESENT) 'I love them: (PRESENT) 'I (emphatic/topic) loved them: (PAST) 'I loved them.' (PAST) (Kikongo examples are from Laman 1912: 123-124)

241

242

Armin Schwegler

Palenq;-ue_ro_----,---,---, (13) yo I I

yo ls

Y-1 Y-1

a a

kele-lo. kele-lo. kele-lo. kele-lo.

ls CUTIC

PAST

loved/want them

'I (emphatic/topic) love them.' 'I love them.' 'I (emphatic/topic) loved them.' 'I loved them.'

(PRESENT) (PRESENT) (PAST) (PAST)

Importantly, the formal and functional parallelism exemplified above between PAL. and Kikongo obtains in second- and third-person singular constructions as well (for examples, see (9) to (11) above). ln the singular, the two languages thus share paradigmatic homophony for PIN clitics: i or y- for first person, o for second person, and e for third person (for a fuller presentation of data and Kik.ongo etyma, see Schwegler 2002b ).

4·

Conclusions

Early on in this study, I argued that critical lacunae in our historical and linguistic knowledge should compel us to keep a guarded attitude concerning the hypothesis that Kikongo is the sole substrate of PAL. I have said so in part because the circle of researchers who have examined PAL:s origins in earnest has been rather small (half a dozen scholars at most), and because, to date, not a single African-born Bantuist has participated in the debate. Naturally, these are two limiting factors that, I trust. our field will overcome in the near future. These limitations notwithstanding, a fundamental conclusion emerges from the data and considerations presented in this study: Half a century of research has solidly established the central role that Kik.ongo-speaking maroons must have played in the formation ofPalenque's society. As we have seen, language-external and internal evidence has gradually cemented this conclusion to the point where it currently reigns- justifiably- as the best hypothesis. Moreover, we now also have a better understanding of how it is possible that no Kimbundu words have been unearthed in Palenque even though "Angola" (where Kimbundu is spoken) figures prominently in time-honoured lumbalu chants. Contemporary travel accounts (e.g., Degranpre 1801) clarifY that "Angola" once had a far wider geographic application, and included the Loango Coast, where Kik.ongo has been the dominant indigenous language for centuries. With regard to language-external data, this paper has limited itself mostly to reviewing an early eighteenth-century document- the Noticia historial- which provided us with a terminus ab quo of 1713-1716 for the existence ofPalenque and its creole. Additional external data were adduced from a brief citation of a locally famous funeral dirge (lumbalu), in which Palenqueros chant Angola, Kongo and Loango. 1 should, however, remind readers that one finds in Palenque a plethora of additional cultural patterns that are similarly suggestive of Western Central African and especially Kongo influence (Schwegler 1992a, 2006a, 2007b). Although we do not know when Palenque was founded, historical considerations relating to the slave trade suggest 1660 to 1713 as a likely period. I base my argument on the fact that, as explained in Martin's (1970) elucidating study, the slave trade on the Loango coast remained very modest until about the 1660s, after which it grew substantially in volume, so much so

Palenque(ro)

that by 1670, the Dutch West India Company exported 3,000 slaves annually from that region (Martin 1970: 148). We know that the Dutch shipped slaves to Cartagena (Del Castillo 1982:98101, 108), and some of them may well have been responsible for inserting chi rna ri loango ('from the Loango [people we are]') into Palenque's originallumba.lzt chants. Fortunately, reconstructing Palenque's past does not rely on oral tradition alone. Documentary evidence and linguistic and ethnographic considerations have provided the necessary background for understanding that the contemporary oral accounts of a 1601 foundation by Benko Bioho are a historical myth. While one must agree with Harms that "the relationship between recollections of the past and historical myth is a complex one which needs to be dealt with carefully" (1979:65), we can be confident that in the case ofPalenque, we have successfully sorted out fact from symbol. Turning to language-internal data, we have noted that sub stratal influence can be detected in multiple domains: in the creole's lexicon, where dozens of words are traceable to Kikongo etyma; in its phonology, where several features (including prenasalisations, the free [d], [r] and [1] alternations, and peculiar intonational patterns) point to Kikongo roots; and in its morphosyntax, where nominal pluralisations with rna and reiterative PIN marking in the singular (e.g., yo i kele-lo 'I want it'), and a host of other traits are similarly suggestive of Kikongo input. That said, it is also worth pointing out that PAL. has not preserved the extensive agreement system (class concord, etc.) that characterises many Bantu languages. No New World creole has done so (Holm 1988-1989), and PAL. is thus no exception. Still undetermined is the degree to which Africans from non- Kikongo territories may have contributed to the formation of Palenque(ro). This lack of clarity is due, in part, to the paucity of historical records as well as our continued inability to etymologise half of the documented Africanisms. We can, however, be optimistic that this current impasse may be broken, because additional fieldwork should soon help us solve etymological riddles. The recent radical shift in local language attitudes in the direction of a greater appreciation of Africanisms bodes well for future research for two reasons: On one hand, it promises to augment a database of ancestral vocabulary that has been key to PAL. substratist investigations; on the other, it is currently reviving Africanisms that had been almost completely abandoned. There is an additional consideration that convinces me of the imminence of further rapid advances in substrate inquiries: I am referring here to ongoing population genetic research in which Palenque plays a significant role. At University College London, the Centre for Genetic Anthropology (TCGA) 19 has collected DNA samples (from mouth-swabs) in Palenque as well as among five Bakongo populations (Beembe, Laari, Vili, Yombe and Kunyi), each of which either has been identified as a potential contributor to Palenque's substrate or is directly adjacent to such a population (for comparative purposes, DNA samples have also been obtained in two non- Bakongo populations from the interior of the Congo). A total of 700 samples were collected (1 00 for each population) in Africa, and 166 in Palenque. The DNA data are currently being analysed, and the

19. TCGA is working in collaboration with several research centres in sub-Saharan Africa. Project members include Neil N. Bradman (geneticist), Chairman of TCGA; Jean Akiana (biologist) of the Laboratoire National de Sante Publique, Brazzaville; and Yves Mo.ii.ino, Research Director at the CNRS, Laboratoire de langues et cultures d~ique Noire, Villejuif, France.

243

244

Armin Schwegler

first results should become available within a year. The extent to which this genetic research will confirm (or cast doubt on) our linguistic findings remains to be seen. But judging from historical documentation of the slave trade, and basing ourselves on substratist research into PAL. and Palero ritual speech (Cuba), we should not be surprised if the Palenqueros' principal ancestral lands coincided squarely with the small western Congo area that Jesus Fuentes Guerra and I recently identified as the source of Palo Monte traditions (Fuentes Guerra & Schwegler 2005: 34, Map 4; see also Schwegler 2002d, and Schwegler & Rojas-Primus 2010). This same DNA research may also clarify whether Kongo people indeed constitute Palenque's first human stratum. Although the currently available data put the presence of a strong Kongo substrate beyond doubt, we do not know exactly when the bulk of Kikongo-speaking maroons arrived in Palenque. For this reason, the question remains of the chronological age of the dominant African influence in the creole. While clearly ancestral, Kikongo features may have been grafted onto an existing Spanish-based creole. If this was so, then the DNA data may illuminate whether Kikongo restructured (rather than simply "structured") original PAL. The Kikongo-speaking region of Mayombe (Map 2, shaded area) and its adjacent territories (including coastal Loango) may be particularly rich in genetic and linguistic connections with Palenque. Much like today, already at the time of the slave trade, "all these peoples spoke the same language [i.e., Kikongo]" and in the second half of the seventeenth century, the provinces of Malemba, Cabinda, and Loango may have constituted "some 600,000 people" (Degranpre 1801: 167 and 216, respectively; my translation). As Heywood & Thornton note, "there is no continuous record of slave exports from Central Africa for most of the 17th century, though the Portuguese government did keep detailed tax books that have not survived" (2007: 160). Piecing together records from both the New and the Old World, the authors are nonetheless able to show that slave exports from the area in question were substantial, numbering in the thousands per

Mayombe L

CONGO

0 Loan go

A N

River

Pointe Noire

G

DEMOCRAT I C REPUBL I C OF THE CONGO

ANGOLA •

Ambrizete

Ambriz

Map adapted from Fuentes & Schwegler (2005:33)

Map 2. General area of West Central Africa from where many ofPalenque's maroons may have come

Palenque(ro)

year. They note, for instance, that for the mid-1630s, annual exports from Luanda were around 15,000 slaves, before falling to 10,000 annually. The impact of this trade was felt in the Spanish West Indies, as well as elsewhere in Latin America where the slave trade was in full swing. As Martin (1970) explains, the hinterland of Loango (the Mayombe included) was probably only thinly populated prior to the middle of the seventeenth century. when Kongo groups started to move into the area of the Niari valley on the eastern side of the Mayombe. The Mayombe played an important role in the slave trade, in part because "the roads from Loango to the interior had to pass through the treacherous Mayombe region, where the good paths were few and the routes passed along the sides of mountain slopes, by deep precipices, and through dense tropical forest" (Martin 1970: 153). Most of the slaves were brought in caravans to the coast from afar, as described by Degranpre (1801), a French slave trader in the area for 30 years.

List of abbreviations CoL ENGL FR. KIK. KIM B. L2 lit. onomat.

Colombian English French Kikongo Kimbundu second language literally onomatopoeic

PAL PERF

Palenquero Pertective

PL

plural

PIN

person/number

PREP

prefix

RBDUPL

reduplicated, reduplication of singular Spanish

s SPAN.

References Alario di Filippo, M. 1983. Lexicon de colombianismos, 2 Vols., 2nd edn. Bogota: Banco de 1a Rep(tblica. Arbell, M. 2002. The jewish Nation of the Caribbean. The Spanish-Portuguese Jewish Settlements in the Caribbean and the Guianas. Jerusalem: Gefen Publishing House. Arends, J. 1995. Demographic factors in the formation ofSranan. In The Early Stages of Creolization [Creole Language library 13], J. Arends (ed.), 233-285. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Arrazola, R. 1955. Historial de Cartagena (datos biogr4ficos sobre los personajes hist6ricos), 2d edn. Cartagena: Tall. Grtf. de Casa National del Periodista. Arrazola, R. 1970. Palenque, primer pueblo libre de America: Historia de las sublevaciones de los esdavos de Cartagena. Cartagena: Ediciones Hernandez. Biclrerton, D. & Escalante, A. 1970. Palenquero: A Spanish-based creole of northern Colombia. Lingua 24: 254267.

Borrego Pla, C. 1973. Palenques de negros en Cartagena de lndias a fines del siglo XVII. Prologo del Dr. Don Luis Navarro Garda. Seville: Escuela de Estudios Hispano-Americanos. Borrego Pla, C. 1983. Cartagena de lndias en el siglo XVI. Seville: Escuela de Estudios Hispano-Americanos de Sevilla. Borrego Pla, C. 1994. La conformaci6n de una sociedad mestiza en la epoca de los Austrias, 1540-1700. In Historia econ6mica y social del Caribe colombiano, A. Meisel Roca (ed.), 59-108. Bogota: Ediciones Uninorte. Bottcher, N. 1995. Aufttieg und Fall eines atlantischen Hamielsimperiums. Frankfurt, Madrid: Vervuert, lberoamericana.

245

246

Armin Schwegler

Cabrera, L. 1984. Vocabulario congo: E1 banta que se habla en Cuba. Miami: Edlciones CR Castellanos, I. 1990. Grammatical structure, historical development, and religious usage of Afro-Cuban bozal speech. Folklore Forum 23: 57-84. Del Castillo, N. 1982. Esclavos negros en Cartagena y sus aportes lexicos. Bogota: lnstituto Caro y Cuervo. Del Castillo, N. 1984. Ellmco negro-africa.no de San Basilio de Palenque. Thesaurus 39: 80-169. Degranpre, L. 1801. Voyage ala CfJte Occidentale d'Afrique,fait dans les annees 1786 et 1787, Vol. 1. Paris: Imprimeur-Libraire Palais de Tribunal. Dieck, M. 2000. La negacion en palenquero. Andlisis sincronico, estudio comparativo y consecuencias teoricas. Madrid: Iberoamericana. Dieck, M. 2002. Distribuci6n y escopo de la negaci6n en palenquero. In Palen que, Cartagena y Afro-Caribe: Historia y lengua, Y. Mofiino & A. Schwegler (eds), 149-167. Tli.bingen: Niemeyer. Escalante, A. 1954/1979. El Palenque de San Basilio. Barranquilla: Editorial Mejoras. [First published in 1954 as 'Notas sobre El Palenque de San Basilio, una comunidad negra de Colombia: Divulgaciones Etnologicas 3: 207-358.]

Escalante, A 1988. Influencia bantU en la cultura popular de la costa atlAntica colombiana. Desarrollo 87: 37-47. Friedemann, N. S. De 1993. La saga del negro. Prese,JCia africana en Colombia. Bogota: Instituto de Gent\tica Humana, Facult:ad de Medicina, PontffK:a Universidad Javeriana. Fuentes Guerra, J. & Schwegler, A 2005. Lengua y ritos del Palo Monte Mayombe: Dioses cubanos y sus fuentes africanas. Frankfurt/Madrid: Vervuert/Iberoamericana. de Granda, G. 1968. La tipologia 'criolla' de dos hablas del area lingillstica hispamca. Thesaurus 23: 193-205. de Granda, G. 1971. Sobre la procedencia africana del habla 'criolla' de San Basilio de Palenque (Departamento de Bolivar, Colombia). Thesaurus 26: 84-94. de Granda, G. 1978. Estudios luJgU.isticos hispdnicos, afrohispdnicos y criollos. Madrid: Gredos. de Granda, G. 1989. Condicionamiento kik6ongo de un fen6meno fonetico en el criollo palen quero.Anuario de LingUistica Hispdnica 5: 49-57. (Reprinted in Granda 1994, 412-423). de Granda, G. 1992 Retenciones africanas en el nivel font\tico del criollo palenquero. In Actes du XVIIIe Congre.s bJternational de Linguistique et de Philologie Romanes (I'rier 1986), no editor, 542-552. Tli.bingen: Niemeyer. (Reprinted in Granda 1994, 399-411 ). de Granda, G. 1994. Bspafiol de America, espatiol de Africa y hablas criollas hispdnicas. Cambios, contactos y contextos. Madrid: Editorial Gredos. Green, T. 2007. Masters of Difference: Creolization and the Jewish Presence in Cabo Verde, 1497-1672 PhD dissertation, Centre of West African Studies, University of Birmingham. Guthrie, M. 1971. Comparative Bantu, 4 Vols. Farnborough: Gregg International Publishers. Harms, R 1979. Oral tradition and ethnicity. Journal ofInterdisciplinary History 10:61-85. Heywood, L. M. & Thornton, J. K. 2007. Central Africans, Atlantic Creoles, and the FowJdatio,J of the Americas, 1585-1660. Cambridge: CUP. Helg, A 2004. Liberty and Equality in Caribbean Colombia, 1770-1835. Chapel Hill: UNC Press. Hernandez De Alba, G. (ed.). 1982. Poemas en alabanza de los defmsores de Cartagena de lndias en 1741. Bogota: Publicaciones dellnstituto Caro y Cuervo. Holm, John. 1988-1989. Pidgins and Creoles, I. Theory and Structure. II. Reference Survey. Cambridge: CUP. Hualde, J. I. & Schwegler, A. 2008. Intonation in Palenquero. Joumal of Pidgin and Creole Languages 23: 1-31. Laman, K. E. 1912 Grammar of the Kongo Language (Kikongo). New York NY: The Christian Alliance Publication Company. Laman, K. E. 1936/1964. Dictionnaire kilwngo:ffarifais, 2 Vols. Ridgewood NJ: The Gregg Press. Lipski, J. 2005. A History ofAfro-Hispanic Language. Cambridge: CUP. Martin, P. 1970. The trade of Loango in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In Pre-Colonial African Trade, R Gray & D. Birmingham (eds), 139-161. London: OUP. Megenney, W. W. 1986. E1 palenquero. Un lenguaje post-criollo de Colombia. Bogota: Instituto Caro y Cuervo.

Palenque(ro)

Megenney, W. W. 2002. Sobre los or.fgenes de algunas estructuras grarnaticales del palenq uero. In Palenque, Cartagena y Afro-Caribe: Historia y lengua, Y. Moilino & A. Schwegler (eds), 103-115. Tlibingen: Niemeyer. Michaelis, S. (ed.). 2008. Roots of Creole Structures. Weighing the Contribution of Substrates and Superstrates [Creole Language Library 33]. Amsterdam: John Benjarnins. Moilino, Y. 1999. I.:aspect en palenquero: Une semantaxe africaine. Actances 10: 177-190. Mo.ii.ino, Y. 2002. Las construcciones de genitivo en palenquero: tUna semanta:xis africana? In Palenque, Cartagena y Afro-Caribe: Historia y lengua, Y. Mo.ii.ino & A. Schwegler (eds), 227-248. Tlibingen: Niemeyer. Mo.ii.ino, Y. 2007a. Convergencias lingillsticas iberocongolesas en palenquero: tlntegrarse a la sociedad mayoritaria o distinguirse de ella? In Language Contact and Language Change in the Caribbean and Beyond - Lenguas en contacto y cambio lingiifstico en el Caribe y mds alltf, W. Mihatsch & M. Sokol (eds), 37-58. Frankfurt: Peter Lang. Mo.ii.ino, Y. 2007b. Les rl'lles du substrat dans les cn!oles et les langues secretes: Le cas du palenquero, creole espagnol de Colombie. In Grammaires creoles et grammaire comparative, K Gadelii & A. Zribi-Hertz (eds), 49-72. Saint-Denis: Presses Universitaires de Vincennes. Mo.ii.ino, Y. Forthcoming. Tons et accents en palenquero. To appear in Dynamique des contacts de langues en Afrique et dans les Amenques ,Joires, Y. Mofiino & M.-C. Sirneone-Senelle (eds ). Special issue of Joumal des

Africanistes. Mo.ii.ino, Y. & Ortiz, C. 1999. Reevaluation de deux procedes de morphologie evaluative en palenq uero. Silexicales 2: 253-261. de Montes Giraldo, J. J. 1962. Sobre el habla de San Basilio de Palenque (Bolivar, Colombia). Thesaurus 17: 446450. Morton, T. 2005. Sociolinguistic Variation and Language Change in ffi Palenq ue de San Basilio (Colombia). PhD dissertation, University of Pennsylvania. Navarrete, M. C. 1995a. Historia social del negro e,J la colonia. Cartagena siglo XVII. Cali: Universidad del Valle. Navarrete, M. C. 1995b. Prdcticas religiosas de los negros en la colonia: Cartagena, siglo XVII. Santiago de Cali: Universidad del Valle, Editorial Facultad de Hurnanidades. Navarrete, M. C. 2003. Cimarrones y palenques en el siglo >..'VII. Cali: Editorial Facultad de Hurnanidades. Navarrete, M. C. 2008a. San Basilio de Palenque: Memoria y tradici6n. Cali: Prograrna Editorial Universidad del Valle. Navarrete, M. C. 2008b. 'Por haber todos concebido ser generalla libertad para los de su color: Construyendo el pasado del palenque de Matudere. Historia Caribe 13. Barranquilla: Universidad del AtJ.antico. Navarrete, M. C. 2009. Nuevos aspectos en 1a historia de los palenq ues y los cimarrones del Carlbe negroandino, siglos XVI-XVII. MS, Universidad del Valle, Cali. Ochoa Franco, J. V. 1945. Consideraciones generales sobre costumbres y luJgUaje palenqueros (precedidas de un estudio sobre el indio goajiro). Cartagena: Direcci6n de Educaci6n PUblica de Bolivar. Parkvall, M. 2000. Out o_fAfrica. African Influences in Atlantic Creoles. London: Battlebridge. Patifio Roselli, C. 1983. El habla en El Palenque de San Basilio. In Lengua y sociedad en El Palen que de San Basilio, N. S. de Friedernann & C. Patifio Rosselli (eds), 83-287. Bogota: Instituto Caro y Cuervo. Patifio Roselli, C. 2002. Sobre orlgen y composici6n del criollo palenquero. In Palenque, Cartagena y Afro-Caribe: Historia )' lengua, Y. Mo.ii.ino & A. Schwegler (eds), 21-32. Tiibingen: Niemeyer. Pfleiderer, B. 1998. Sprachtod und Revitalisierung der spanisch basierten Kreolsprache Palenquero (Kolumbien). Berlin: Freie Universitiit Berlin. de Sandoval, A. 1627/1987. De instauranda aethiapum salute. Un tratado sobre la esclmlitud. Introduction and transcription by Enriq ueta VIla Vilar. Madrid: Alianza Editorial Schwegler, A. 1989. Notas etlmol6gicas palenqueras: Casariambe, tUnganand, agae, nwnicongo, maricongo y otras voces africanas y pseudo-afrlcanas. Thesaurus 44: 1-28. Schwegler, A. 1990. Abrakabraka, suebbesuebbe, tando, kobbej6, lunga y otras voces palenqueras: Sus orfgenes e irnportancia para el estudio de dialectos afrohispanocaribe.iios. Thesaurus 45: 690-731. Schwegler, A. 1991a. Negation in Palenquero: Synchrony. Joumal o.fPidgi,J and Creole Languages 6: 165-214.

247

248

Armin Schwegler

Schwegler, A. 1991 b. Zur Problematik der afroportugiesischen Kontaktsprache in Am erika: Neues aus El Palenque de San Basilio (Kolumbien). Lusorama 15: 54-79. Schwegler, A. 1992a. Haci.a una arqueologfa afrocolombiana: Restos de tradidones religiosas bantt1es en una comunidad negroamerlcana. America Negra 4: 35-82. Schwegler, A. 1992b. Afrohisp. mariandd 'tipo de baile (negro)': Su etimologfa e importanci.a para los estudios lingiilsticos caribefios. Anuario de LingU{stica Hispdnica 8: 259-271. Schwegler, A. 1993a. Subject pronouns and person/number in Palenquero. In Atlantic Meets Pacific: A Global View ofPidginization and Creolization [Creole Language library 11], F. Byrne & J. Holm (eds), 145-161. Amsterdam: John Benjamlns. Schwegler, A. 1993b. El origen de esp. mo,Jicaco 'hombre de poco valor': Un ejemplo de convergencia hispana, criolla y africana. Romance Philology 46: 284-296. Schwegler, A. 1993c. Rasgos (afro-) portugueses en el criollo del Palen que de San Basilio (Colombia). In Homenaje a Jose Perez Vidal, C. Diaz Alay6n (ed.), 667-696. La Laguna, Tenerife: Litografia A. Romero S. A. Schwegler, A. 1994. El Palenque de San Basilio (Colombia): Persistencia africana y problemas de (auto-) identificaci6n de elementos llngillsticos subsaharicos. Papia 3: 6-30. Schwegler, A. 1996a. Chima "ko,Jgo: Lmgua y rito ancestrales en El Palenque de San Basilio (Colombia), 2 Vols. Frankfurt: Vervuert Schwegler, A. 1996b. Lenguas criollas en Hispanoamenca y la contribud6n africana al espafiol de America. Contactos y transferendas lingiUsticas e,J Hispanoamerica. Signo y Se1la 6: 295-346. Schwegler, A. 1996c. La doble negad6n dominicana y la genesis del espafiol caribeiio. Hispanic Linguistics 8: 246315. Schwegler, A. 1998. Palenquero. In America negra: Panordmica actual de los estudios lingiUsticos sobre 11ariedades criollas yafrohispanas, M. Perl & A. Schwegler (eds), 220-291. Frankfurt/Madrid: Vervuert/Iberoamericana. Schwegler, A. 1999. Monogenesis revisited: The Spanish perspective. In Creole Genesis, Discourse and Attitudes: Studies Celebrating Charlene Sato [Creole Language Library 20], J. Rickford & S. Romaine (eds), 235-262. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Schwegler, A. 2000. The African vocabulary ofPalenque (Colombia). Part 1: Introduction and corpus of previously undocumented Afro-Palenq uerisms.Journal ofPidgin and Creole Language 15: 241-312. Schwegler, A. 2001. The myth of decreolization: The anomalous case of Palenquero. In Degrees of Restructuring in Creole Languages [Creole Language Library 22], I. Neumann-Holzschuh & R Schneider (eds), 409-436. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Schwegler, A. 2002a. On the (African) origins ofPalenquero subject pronouns. Diachronica 19: 273-332 Schwegler, A. 2002b. El vocabulario africano de Palenque (Colombia). Segunda Parte: compendio de palabras (con etimologias). In Palenque, Cartagena y Afro-Caribe: historia y luJgUa, Y. Mofiino & A. Schwegler (eds), 171-227. Tiibingen: Niemeyer. Schwegler, A. 2002c. Creolistics in Latin America: Past, present, and future. In Pidgin and Creole Linguistics in the 21st Century, G. Gilbert (ed), 121-171. Frankfurt: Peter Lang. Schwegler, A. 2002d. El vocabulario (ritual) bantU de Cuba. Parte I: Acerca de la matriz africana de la 1engua congo' en El Monte y Vocabulario Congo de Lydia Cabrera. Parte II: Apendices 1-2 In La Romania americana. Proce.sos lingiUsticos m situaciones de contacto, N. Dfaz, R Ludwig & S.l'flinder (eds), 97-194. Frankfurt/Madrid: Vervuert/Iberoamericana. Schwegler, A. 2006a. Bantu elements in Palenque (Colombia): Anthropological, archeological and linguistic evidence. In African Re-genesis: Confronting Social Issues in the Diaspora, B. Haviser & K. C. MacDonald (eds), 204-222 London: University College London Press. Schwegler, A. 2006b. Bozal Spanish: Captivating new evidence from a contemporary source (Afro-Cuban 'Palo Monte'). In Studies in Contact Linguistics: Essays in Honor of Glmn G. Gilbert, J. Fuller & L. L. Thornburg (eds), 71-101. Frankfurt: Peter Lang.

Palenque(ro)

Schwegler, A 2007a. A fresh consensus in the malting: Plural MA and bare nouns in Palenquero. In Noun Phrases in Creole Languages: A Multi-Faceted Approach [Creole Language Library 31), M. Baptista & J. Gueron (eds ), 205-222. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Schwegler, A 2007b. ffiack ritual insulting in the Americas: On the art of 'vociferar' (Colombia), 'vadlar' (Ecuador) and 'snapping, 'sounding' or 'playing the dozens' (USA). Indiana 24: 105-155. Schwegler, A. 2009. Extraordinary revival of a creole: Palenquero in the 21st century. Paper presented at the joing summer meeting of the SPCL and ACBLPE, Cologne, August 11-15, 2009. Schwegler, A. Forthcoming. Sobre el origen africano de 1a lengua criolla de Palenque (Colombia). To appear in Palenque (Colombia): oralidad, identidad y resistencia. Un enfoque interdisciplinario, ed. Graciela Maglia & A. Schwegler. Bogota: lnstituto Caro y Cuervo & Universidad Javeriana. Schwegler, A. & Green, K. 2007. Palenquero (Creole Spanish). In Comparative Creole Syntax: Parallel Outlines of 18 Creole Grammars, J. Holm & P. Patrick (eds), 273-306. London: Battlebridge. Schwegler, A. & Morton, T. 2003. Vernacular Spanish in a microcosm: Kateyano in E1 Palenque de San Basilio (Colombia). Revista Internacional de Lingiiistica Iberoamericana (RILl) 1: 97-159. Schwegler, A & Rojas-Primus, C. 2010. La iengua' ritual del Palo Monte (Cuba): Estudio comparativo (Holgufn! Cienfuegos). To appear in Revista lnternacional de Lingiifstica lberoamericana (RILl) 15. Swartenbroeckx, P. S. J. 1973. DictiomJaire kikongo et kituba- frar!fais (vocabulaire compare des latJgages kongo traditioMels et vehiculaires). Bandundu: Ceeba Publications. Vidal Ortega, A 2002 Cartagena de lndias y la regi6n hist6rica del Caribe, 1580-1640. Seville: Universidad de Sevilla, CSIC.

249

Creoles spoken in Asia

Convergence-to-substratwn and the passives in Singapore English Bao Zhiming National University of Singapore

Singapore English is a non-native variety of English that has emerged from intense contact with the local languages, mainly Chinese and Malay. It has two passive forms appropriated from the local languages, In addition to the English passives (be V-en and get V-en). In this paper, I study the usage patterns of the four passives in the Singaporean component of the International Corpus of English, and show that the locally derived passives are adversative and the English-derived passives exhibit dear adversity bias. The quantitative analysis supports two distinct mechanisms of substratum influence: the abrupt substratum transfer (the locally derived passives) and the gradual convergence-to-substratum (the English-derived passives). Keywords: contact linguistics, Singapore English, New English, non-native variety of English, frequency of use, convergence-to-substratum, passive voice

1.

Introduction

Singapore, a former British colony. is a city-state with a resident population of four million. Since its founding by the British in 1819, it has been a thriving multi-racial and multilingual entrepot. Ethnically, about three quarters of the population are Chinese. The remaining quarter are Malay, Indian and other smaller ethnic groups. This population mix has been constant since the latter half of the nineteenth century (Turnbull1977). The main languages spoken in Singapore are Chinese, Malay. Tamil and English, all of which are recognised as the official languages of Singapore. English has the additional title of working language. Linguistically, the Chinese community was diverse, speaking a plethora of mutually unintelligible dialects, mainly Southern Min (Hokkien and Teochew) and Cantonese. Thanks to the annual Spea.k Ma.ndarin campaigns that the government organises to encourage Chinese Singaporeans to speak Mandarin instead of the native dialects, Mandarin is now the most spoken Chinese dialect in Singapore (see Census of Popula.tion 2000, available from the Government of Singapore website www.gov.sg). Malay played the role of lingua franca in the colonial days of Singapore, giving rise to a pidginised variety commonly referred to as Bazaar Malay. Bazaar Malay is no longer spoken among younger Singaporeans (Daw Khin Khin 2005 and references therein). English is now the language of choice.

254

Bao Zhirning

Table 1. Languages most often spoken in the Chinese community, by age group, in percentage* 5-14

15-24

25-39

40-54

55-

Mandarin

59.6

59.8

46.5

43.9

17.8

English

35.8

21.5

25.1

9.9

Dialects

4.3

18.4

25.2 28.0

30.7

71.8

Source: Singapore Census of Population 2000, Advance Data Release No. 3, Literacy and Language.

* Less than 1% of the Chinese population speak other languages.

The spread of English among the three major ethnic groups in Singapore started as soon as the British annexed the island. At first, it was the language of the political and economic elite. The masses spoke their native languages for intragroup communication and Bazaar Malay for intergroup communication. Their children went to vernacular schools. After independence, the government adopted an English-centric language policy which stipulated English as the medium of instruction in all educational institutions, at the expense of vernacular schools. At the turn of the twenty-first century, according to the Census af Population 2000, English is widely spoken, especially among the post-independence generations. Singapore has effectively shifted to English-dominant bilingualism. The Chinese community has experienced double language-shift: from dialects to Mandarin and from Chinese to English. The effect of the government-mandated language shift can be seen from the census data taken in 2000, summarised in Table 1. For a growing segment of the population, English is acquired as mother tongue, with a stabilising indigenous grammatical norm (Gupta 1991 ). Still, there is enormous variation in English proficiency among Singaporeans. At the top end of the proficiency cline, the so-called acrolectal variety is not much different from standard English elsewhere, but at the other end, the basilectal varieties, and the mesolectal varieties to a lesser extent, contain unique grammatical features as a result of contact with the local languages, as has been noted by early researchers of Singapore English (Platt 1977; Tay 1982). Gupta (1991) adopts a diglossic view of Singapore English a. la. Ferguson ( 1959), identifying the basilectal end of the proficiency cline as the L variety in opposition to Standard English, the H variety. Here, we adopt Gupta's diglossic view and use the term SINGAPORE ENGLISH to refer to the L variety unique to the community. In Schneider (2003), Singapore English is characterised as having reached Stage 4 along a five-stage developmental path. It is a New English with a stable endonormative grammatical norm. Given Singapore's sociolinguistic and linguistic environment, Singapore English exhibits the effect of linguistic restructuring under the influence of the local languages, which collectively form the substratum. There are essentially two basic types of substratum influence: substratum grammatical features may be appropriated into the emerging contact vernacular (substratum transfer), or English grammatical features may converge with similar substratum features (convergence-to-substratum). In the contact linguistics literature, substratum transfer is well understood (see Keesing 1988; Lefebvre 1998; Thomason & Kaufinan 1988; and contributions in Muysken & Smith 1986). Convergence-to-substratum has so far not received the attention it deserves (but see the so-called superstratist arguments in Chaudenson 2001; Mufwene 200 1). Part of the reason is the availability of suitable quantitative data that reveal the process of convergence. In this paper, I show that the usage patterns of four forms of the passive construction in Singapore English demonstrate these two types of substratum influence. The four passive forms are exemplified below:

Convergence-to-substratum and the passives in Singapore English

(1)

a b. c. d.

John was scolded by his boss John got scolded by his boss John give his boss scold John kena scolded by his boss

SINGAPORE ENGLISH

(Bao & Wee 1999: 1 (2a))

The four forms have the same meaning. I will refer to these forms as be, get, give and kena. passives, respectively. To varying degrees, the four statements are judged acceptable by native speaker informants. The first two passives are inherited from English and the other two borrowed from Chinese and Malay, the dominant local languages- the give passive from the southern Chinese dialects ofHokkien and Cantonese, and the kena passive from Malay. By the intuitive judgment of native speakers, both the give and kena passives are adversative, describing actions with unpleasant consequences for the subject of the passive form. Adversity is not only a property of the give and kena passives in Singapore English, it is also a salient property of their respective sources in Chinese and Malay, and indeed a property of the passive construction in the languages of the region (Matisoff 1991; Matthews & Yip 1994; Mintz 1994). The question is, do the English-derived passives converge with the give and kena passives - and the passive constructions of the substratum languages - and become adversative? On native speaker intuition, the answer is unequivocally negative. Examples like (2) can be easily observed by casual visitors to Singapore: (2)

a. b.

John is frightened. John is impressed.

(2a) is adversative, but (2b) is not Native-speaker judgment does not provide reliable data on the convergence of the English-derived passives in Singapore English. The availability of computer corpora of linguistic data, such as the International Corpus of English, makes it possible to investigate the usage pattern of grammatical innovations through quantitative analysis. 1 The corpus is a useful tool for comparative studies ofhow English adapts to The International Corpus of English, ICE for short, was started in the 1990s by the late linguist Sidney Greenbaum (Greenbaum 1988, 1996). It is a compendium of separate country corpora that follow the same design structure. Each country corpus consists of 500 2,000-word texts, for a total of 1,000,000 words. For a description of the ICE project and works based on the ICE corpora, see Greenbaum (1988, 1996), Greenbaum and Nelson (1996) and Nelson, Wallis and Aarts (2002). Bao and Hong (2006) group the 500 texts into four registers, as follows: 1.

PRIVATE DIALOGUE., face-to-face

and telephone conversations; 100 texts, 200,000 words DIALOGUE, classroom lessons and formal debates; 80 texts, 160,000 words MoNOWGUB, prepared speeches and broadcast news; 120 texts, 240,000 words WRITING, short stories and student essays; 200 texts, 400,000 words. PUBLIC

The data cited from the International Corpus of English are referenced by filenames in the country corpus: GB refers to the British component and SIN to the Singaporean component The term 'Singapore Englisli is often used in two senses in the literature on Singapore English In the broad sense, it refers to the variety represented in the entire ICE-SIN; in the narrow sense, it refers to the vernacular variety re-presented in the PRIVATE DIALOGUil subcorpus and is often called Singapore Colloquial English or Singlish. It is the L variety in diglossic opposition to standard English, the H variety. In this paper, the term is used mainly in the narrow sense and occasionally in the broad sense; context of use disambiguates it.

255

256

Bao Zhirning

Table 2. Frequencies of the four passives in PRIVATE DIALOGUE, ICE-SIN and ICE-GB

ICE-SIN beV-en getV-en give kena

ICE-GB

token

type

token

type

686 56 0 6

309 47 0 4

708

320

64

43

new sociolinguistic and linguistic environments and evolves into distinct local varieties, the socalled New Englishes. The corpus-based quantitative data complement the qualitative data based on field notes and on native speaker grammaticality judgment. The quantitative data also reveal the extent to which grammatical innovations have stabilised or converged with the languages in the contact ecology. The frequencies of the passives are shown in Table 2. The token frequency measures the actual number of times a passive form is used. The type frequency measures each verb exactly once, regardless of the number of times it is used in the passive construction. The top three verbs in the ICE-SIN corpus are call (26 tokens), give (15 tokens) and involve/worry (each 13 tokens); in ICEGB. they are call (57 tokens), involve (20 tokens) and allow/use (each 15 tokens). The complete list of verbs used in the be V-en form is provided in the Appendix. Table 2 shows that the English-derived passives are dominant in Singapore English and their substratum -derived counterparts are hardly used in daily interaction. As mentioned earlier, on the basis of native speaker intuition, the give and kena passives are adversative, but the be/get V-en passives are not In what follows, I report the results of a corpus-based quantitative study that reveals a convergent trend on the adversity reading among the tour passives in Singapore English. The English -derived passives have a higher incidence of adversative usage in Singapore English than in British English, but the difference is not yet statistically significant at a high confidence level. I argue that the four Singapore English passives exemplify two distinct types of substratum influence, convergence-to-substratum and substratum transfer. Adversity is not yet a semantic condition on the use of the be/get passives in Singapore English, indicating that the convergence-to-substratum process is gradual. By contrast, the adversity effect piggybacks on the givelkena passives as they transfer from the substratum languages. The influence from the substratum language is abrupt. In addition, we study the usage patterns of already and also, which are the exponents of Chinesederived grammatical features. Both words have high inddence of use in the ICE corpora. The usage patterns clearly demonstrate the abrupt nature of substratum transfer.

2.

The give and kena passives

The give and kena passives have been discussed in the literature (see Baa & Wee 1999 and references therein). Baa and Wees work (1999) is based on data obtained through native speaker judgment and occasional field notes. According to their analysis, the syntactic templates of the give and kena passives are shown below:


(3) a b.

The give passive The kena passive

NP 1 giveNP 2 V NP 1 ke11a V (byNP2)

Here, NP 1 is the patient (the logical object) and NP 2 the agent (the logical subject), which is optional in the kena passive, but obligatory in the give passive. Kena. has the lexical meaning of 'strike' in Malay as well as in Singapore English, as we shall see shortly. The examples below are cited from Bao and Wee (1999): (4) a b. c. d.

(5) a. b.

c. d.

Johngivehisbossscold(=(lc)) The dog give the boy kick *The dog give the boy stroke *John give his boss praise John kena scolded by his boss(= (lc)) The condominium kena destroyed by the typhoon yesterday *John kena praised by his boss *The condominium ke11a built by the developer last year

The starred examples show the adversity effect of the give and kena. passives, respectively. Adversity is a strong characteristic of the passive construction in Chinese and Malay as well, as illustrated in examples (6) and (7) (PART, particle). 2 (6) a

b.

c.

d.

(7) a

b.

c.

Zh.angsangei ren du-shi le Zh.angsan give people poison-die PART 'Zh.angsan was poisoned to death by people: wo gege gEl xian-li na-le qu brother give county-inside take-PART go 'My brother was arrested by the county.' *Zhangsan gEi Lisi xihuan Zh.angsan give Lisi like 'Zh.angsan is liked by Lisi: *Zhangsan gEi ren yi-hao le Zh.angsan give people cure PART 'Zh.angsan was cured by people: Budak jahat itu kena pukul oleh ibu-nya boy naughty the beat by mother-his 'The naughty was beaten by his mother: Ali kena tangkap oleh polis Ali catch by police ~i was caught by the police: *Budak itu kena suap Boy the feed 'The boy was fed:

2. The data are adapted from Bao and Wee (1999) (on Chinese, see also Bodman 1955; Matthews & Yip (1994); Wang 1982; on Malay, see Sulainlan 1990). The Mandarin passive is marked by bei 'suffer' and gei 'give'; both carry the adversative reading. In the southern Chinese dialects of Hokkien and Cantonese, the preferred marker of the passive is the etymon ofgei. For the sake of simplicity, I cite the Mandarin data with gei.

2S7

258

Bao Zhirning

d.

*Kamb!ngnya kena pegang Goat-his touch 'His goat was touched.'

In addition to the adversative reading, the Singapore English gi1'e passive expresses other meanings which are consistent with its substratum source. We will not discuss here the whole range of meanings associated with the give passive; the interested reader should consult Bao and Wee (1999) and references cited therein. The same range of meanings is observed with the passive marked by kasi 'give' in Baba Malay (Pakir 1986; Shellabear 1913) and Bazaar Malay (Daw Khin Khin 2005), both of which have Hokkien as the substratum. Incidentally, Malay also uses kasi and beri- both have the meaning of'give'- to mark the passive, in addition to kena (Mintz 1994; Shellabear 1913 ). It is a robust feature among the local languages active in the contact ecology of Singapore English. Although the give passive has been cited as a substratum-derived feature in the literature, it is hardly used in daily interaction. I have not personally encountered a single token of the give passive in any real-life communicative context in Singapore. The kena passive is much more noticeable. Bao and Wee (1999) reported the results of an informal survey of ten Singaporeans on their familiarity with the give and kena passives. While all were familiar with the latter, only five had heard the tormer. These results are consistent with the usage profile of the two passives in the PRIVATE DIALOGUE subcorpus of the ICE-SIN, displayed in Table 2. Out of the 177 tokens of give in the conversational corpus, not a single token marks the passive construction. Incidentally, give is passivised in the be V-en form 15 times, earning a top-two spot in PRIVATE DIALOGUE, ICE-SIN. Kena fares better, with a total of six tokens in the corpus: (8)

a

I mean they're like there is guy who must be sixty over then always kena teased by this other (SIN: s1a-079) His taillike like kena caught In the In the ... hut. (SIN: s1a-052) I kena sexual harassed again you know. (SIN: s1a-031) (on the topic ofharassment) She just said she kena, right? (SIN: s1a-031) I feel like ke11a sexual harassed (SIN: s1a-031) I kena shocked you know (SIN: s1a-096)

guy.

b. c. d. e. f.

The verbs which are passivised, tease, catch, ha.rass and shock, all have adversative readings. The ICE-SIN corpus does not contain a single token of kena that can be interpreted with a neutral or positive connotation. This is not surprising, given the fact that it is adversative in Malay, the source language. The lack of attestation of the give passive in the PRIVATE DIALOGUE of ICE-SIN deserves some comment. The give passive, like the kena passive, is heavily stigmatised. It is therefore not surprising that it is rarely used. The extremely low frequency of the gi1'e passive has serious consequences for its stabilisation. The grammatical intuition on the construction will inevitably weaken as fewer and fewer people use it in daily interaction. To determine the effect of frequency on intuition-based grammaticality judgment. I conducted an Internet-based survey among students of the National University of Singapore. The survey contains ten passive sentences with ken a and give, half adversative and the other half non-adversative. Four are shown below:


Table 3. Adversative and non-adversative passive sentences containing give and kena judged as acceptable by respondents, in percentage* Adversative

Non-adversative

give

21.8

26.8

kena

78.3

11.8

* Nwnber of respondents: 127.

(9) a a'. b. b'.

I kena caught speeding last night The condominium kena build last year The house give fire destroy last year John give his boss praise

(9a, b) are adversative, and (9a', b') are neutral, i.e. non-adversative. For each sentence. therespondents were asked to decide whether it was acceptable or unacceptable in Singapore English. The survey results are displayed in Table 3. The results are revealing. The respondents show a clear preference for the kena passive in adversative context over non-adversative context. 78.3% vs. 11.8%. This distribution is within our expectation. The distribution of the give passive, however, is surprising. Here, the majority of the respondents reject the form regardless of context of use. Furthermore. non-adversative context is preferred over adversative context, albeit by a small margin, contrary to our expectation of an adversative passive construction. The most reasonable interpretation of this result is that, due to its low frequency of use, the give passive is no longer part of the grammar of Singapore English.

The English passives

3·

In English and Singapore English, the passives are not known to exhibit the adversativity effect. The examples in ( 10) are tokens of the be passive cited from ICE: (10)

a b. c. d.

Ham did something wrong and he was cursed by his father I was introduced to Celeste, uhm who is on the board of Aspire I was actually rather disappointed that they stopped the film The sale of my fiat has been approved

(GB: s2a-053) (GB: sla-004) (SIN: sla-075) (SIN: sla-040)

Obviously, (lOa, c) are adversative and (lOb, d) are not Adversity does not affect the acceptability of the be passive forms in English and, prima facie, not in Singapore English either. The same is true of the get passive. In the contact ecology of Singapore English, the passive construction is adversative in Chinese and Malay, the major contributing languages. An interesting issue is whether the be and get passives, which are not adversative in English, converge with the locally derived passives and exhibit an adversity bias in the contact vernacular. Convergence is a gradual process. To address the issue, data based on native speaker intuition, which is typically categorical need to be complemented by quantitative evidence. The ICE corpora offer a rich source of naturally occurring data for quantitative analysis of convergence in the usage of the English-derived passives in Singapore

259

26o

Bao Zhirning

English. If the English passives exhibit a tendency toward convergence, we expect a higher incidence of usage in adversative contexts in Singapore English than in British English, which is free from the conformative pressure unique to the contact ecology of Singapore English. This is the question we proceed to answer. We construe adversity broadly to refer to contexts which are generally unpleasant and need to be avoided under normal circumstances. Even under such broad categorisation, the evaluation of a passive token is not an easy matter. For verbs such as curse/disappoint and introduce/approve (see (10)), the adversative and non-adversative effect is lexically obvious. For many others, the matter is not as straightforward. Take, for example, the verbs cancel and condition in the following tokens of the passive construction: (11) a b.

I'm afraid yeah last week's cricket was cancelled So w~re condiNoned to like this type of watch

(GB: s1a-095) (GB: s1a-049)

Cancellation and conditioning are normal events which may carry adversative or non-adversative connotations. Since the token in (lla) has a weak adversative reading- the speaker does not like the cancellation of the cricket match - we consider cancel to be adversative. The token in (11b) is neutral. For practical reasons our evaluation relies more on the lexical meaning of the verb or verb phrase than on the immediate context of the passive token. Lexically neutral verbs are classified neutral even if they are used in sentences with undesirable connotations: (12) Oh outside Shaw Centre uhm and all the cars are parked Illegally there

(SIN: s1a-079)

Here, the unfavourable reading derives from the adverb illegally rather than from the passivised park. Some apparently neutral verbs, such as leave, are typically used with their usual collocational phrases. In such cases, the evaluation is based on the verb and its immediate collocational complement The following tokens are deemed adversative: (13)

a b.

Two boys were left mauled here I mean the introductions were left in a very vague way anyway

(SIN: s la-087) (GB: s la-060)

The passive to be left is often accompanied with a resultant state. The complements mauled and in a 1'ery vague way make the tokens adversative. Incidentally, all passive tokens of leave in the ICE-SIN and ICE-GB corpora can be interpreted in an unfavourable light. The token and type frequencies of the be and get passives in the PRIVATE DIALOGUE subcorpora ofiCE-SIN and ICE-GB are displayed in Tables 4 through 7. The frequencies of the two passives, especially the type frequencies, do not differ much between Singapore English and British English. This is partially due to the fact that our adversity evaluation relies more on the lexical meanings of the verbs rather than on the immediate contexts Table 4. Token frequencies of the be passive.

Neutral Adversative Total

x2 = 3.41, p < 0.05

SIN

GB

465 221

512

686

708

196


Table 5. Token frequencies of the get passive. x2 = 2.75, p < 0.05 Neutral Adversative Total

SIN

GB

23

36 28 64

33 56

Table 6. 'IY:Pe frequencies ofthe be passive. x2 = 0.09, p < 0.20 Neutral Adversative Total

SIN

GB

204

105

215 105

309

320

Table 7. 'IY:Pe frequencies of the get passive. x2 = 0. 34, p < 0.20 Neutral Adversative Total

SIN

GB

19

20

28

23

47

43

of the passive tokens. A chi-square test indicates that the frequency differences are not significant, suggesting that adversity has not yet evolved to the point where it affects the grammaticality judgment of passive tokens by native speakers. Nevertheless, the adversity bias of the be and get passives is unmistakable. In tact, the chi-square values of the token frequencies of the be and get passives (see Tables 4 and 5), while not statistically significant, are close to the critical value (X2 = 3.84, p < 0.05), where they would be deemed significant at 95% confidence level. The quantitative data presented in Tables 4 through 7 show that the English -derived passives are not immune to the adaptive pressure from the languages active in the contact ecology of Singapore English. In such an environment, the competing languages exert antagonistic pressures on the passive construction in the emerging contact vernacular. Consequently, convergence-to- substratum is a gradual and slow process.

4·

Excursion: Already and also

The weak adversity bias of the be and get passives contrasts sharply with the strong adversity effect of the kena passive- all six tokens of the kena passive are adversative. While this contrast supports the view that substratum transfer is responsible for abrupt substratum influence, unfortunately only six tokens were present in the ICE-SIN corpus. To show that substratum transfer is abrupt, in opposition to the gradual adaptive convergence-to-substratum, we diverge from the passives and turn to already and also, two words which have acquired Chinese-derived grammatical functions. The analysis here follows from Bao and Hong (2006 ). We look at already first

261

262

Bao Zhirning

Already has been analysed extensively in the growing literature on Singapore English (see Bao 1995, 2005; Brown 1999; Ho & Platt 1993; Ho & Wong 2001; Kwan-Terry 1989; and references therein). It marks the perfective and inchoative aspects, as shown in the two examples below:3 (14)

Perfective I bought a place already. b. They have all moved towards disposables already.

a

Inchoative c. So are you spring-cleaning already? d. It's like kind of oldish already. 'It is oldish now.' I *'It was/has been oldish.'

(SIN: sla-035) (SIN: sla-022) (SIN: sla-091) (SIN: sla-076)

The perfective use of already emphasises the completion of an event. corresponding to the English simple past or perfect. The inchoative use emphasises the start of a state or an event. or a change of state, which is not expressed by the English simple past or perfect, see (14d). Already is the exponent of the multiple aspectual functions of Chinese le, which is part of the aspectual system that has transferred from the substratum language to Singapore English (Bao 2005). In English, already can occur at the beginning, in the middle or at the end of a sentence, but its canonical position is sentence-medial. Likewise, in Singapore English, already can occur in all three positions. We have already seen already in sentence-final position in (14). The examples in (15) show already in the other two positions (lah, particle).4 ( 15)

a

b.

Sentence-initial

Already it has been taken that day. Already he can do freelance lah.

(SIN: sla-001) (SIN: sla-012)

Sentence-medial That one I already got. My boss already did not give me a lot of work.

(SIN: sla-086) (SIN: sla-036)

As noted in Brown (1999), a.lrea.dy is typically sentence-medial in English, but sentence-final in Singapore English. Bao and Hong (2006) study the usage pattern of already in the ICE corpora. They show that the distribution of a.lt-ea.dy in English and Singapore English varieties exhibits significant difference only in the informal, spontaneous register of PRIVATE DIALOGUE. In the

3· The data on already are cited in Bao and Hong (2006), with added references to ICE-SIN. They are glossed only when their meanings are not transparent. 4· Already may occur in negative sentences in Singapore English, see (15b). More spedrnens follow (lor, partide): (i)

If reject then she wouldn't get her PP already lor. 'If (her proposal is) rejected, then she wouldn't get her PP.'

(SIN:s1a-051)

(ii)

What else to watch? No more already.

(SIN:s1a-049)

(iii)

Sure but they want don't want already.

(SIN:s1a-089)

These uses betray the substratum influence on already (see Bao 1995, 2005). In English, already does not occur in negative sentences (Biber et a1. 1999; Quirk et a1. 1972).


Table 8. Frequencies of already by position in four registers, ICE-SIN and ICE-GB Initial

PRIVATE DIALOGUE, f = 44.21, p < 0.001 SIN 6 GB 2 PuBUC

DIALOGUE, f

SIN GB

WRITING, f SIN GB

Total

84

194 7

284 44

89 47

14 4

106 53

74 96

14 4

91 104

156 148

6 7

169

=256, p < 0.20 1 2

MONOLOGUE, f SIN GB

Final

Medial

=7.71, p < 0.025 3 4

=6.69, p < 0.05 7 0

155

more formal registers, there is little difference. The distribution of already in PRIVATE DIALOGUE is summarised in Table 8.5 Of the four registers shown above, the token counts are higher in Singapore English in PRIVATE DIALOGUE and PUBLIC DIALOGUE, and are roughly the same in the remaining two registers. In PuBLIC DIALOGUE, MoNOLOGUE, and WRITING, the usage pattern is similar between the two varieties of English: Sentence-medial is the preferred position. The differences in these registers are not significant at 99% confidence level (p < 0.01), as indicated by the chi-square values. 6 In PRIVATE DIALOGUE, Singapore English and English have diverged significantly in the usage of already, not only in terms of token counts, 284 vs. 44, but also in terms of position. The chi-square test shows that the distribution is significant at a confidence levelof99.9% (p < 0.001). The results in Table 8 show that substrate influence is abrupt when the feature involved is due to substratum transfer, in contrast to the be/get passives. We now proceed to examine the usage pattern of also, which is the exponent of the universal quantifier that transfers from Chinese, the substratum. Like a.lready, also's preferred position is sentence-medial in English, but sentence-final in Singapore English (Biber et al. 1999; Brown 1999): Compare He also sells cars vs. He sells cars also. In addition to the sentence-final position, also has acquired subtle grammatical meanings associated with universal quantifiers or expressions with additive and concessive functions. These are illustrated below (what, hedging particle) (Bao & Hong 2006):

5· The data in Table 8 are raw frequencies adapted from Table 2 ofBao and Hong (2006), which displays the data in ratio per text. Tokens of already in negative sentences are excluded.

6. Due to the low frequencies in the initial position, the chi-square values in PUBuc DIALOGUE, MoNOLOGUE and WRITING, and their interpretation, should be treated with care. In the WRITING register of ICE-GB, for example, if there is a single token of sentence-initial already, we obtain f = 4.27, p < 0.20.

263

264

Bao Zhirning

(16)

Universal a Everythi11gl also want (title oflocal comic strip) b. Every day also have to go through this what Concessive c. Even Mandarin is also not standard. d. After sixty-five even if you want to pay also we don't want to accept the money.

Also reinforces the universal quantification meaning in (16a, b) and the concessive meaning of even in (16c, d). This use of also is derived from Chinese, specifically Cantonese. The Cantonese particle dou 'all, too' reinforces the quantification and additive/concessive meanings. The examples below are typical (Bao & Hong 2006): (17) a

b.

mo-ye ngodou oi everything I want 'I want everything' Yingmen dou m tsun English not standard 'English is also not standard'

See Matthews and Yip (1994) for a full treatment of dou in Cantonese. In Singapore English, as in English, also occurs in all three positions: ( 18) a b. c.

Initial: Also in Holland Village. Medial: Kang Heng also lost the bet to us. Final: He'll run away also what

(SIN: S1a-037) (SIN: S1A-013) (SIN: S1A-008)

The difference lies in the distribution of also in three positions. Table 9 summarises the frequencies of also in PRIVATE DIALOGUE of the International Corpus of English (adapted from Table 3 of Bao and Hong 2006).

Table 9. Frequencies of also by position in four registers, ICE-GB and ICE-SIN Initial PRIVATE DIALOGUE,

PuBUC DIALOGUE,

MONOLOGUE,

SIN GB WRITING,

SIN GB

Total

130 77

147 0

322 101

351 129

22

5

399 148

564 315

7 3

606 345

"f = 2.28, p < 0.20 26 14

SIN GB

Final

f = 70.83, p < 0.001 45 24

SIN GB

Medial

f = 1.66, p < 0.20 35 27

i =0.73, p < 0.20 57 32

952 642

1010 675


Like already, also enjoys a much higher incidence of use in Singapore English, but only in PRIVATE DIALOGUE does

the sentence-final position become dominant In all other registers, the dominant position is sentence-medial, and except for the higher token counts, the usage pattern of also in Singapore English is generally in line with that in English. Singapore English differs significantly from English in the distribution of also in the PRIVATE DIALOGUE subcorpus, which contains materials gathered through spontaneous conversation. Like already, also is the morphosyntactic exponent that expresses the Chinese-derived universal quantification or concessive meanings. The influence from the substratum on also is abrupt.

5·

Concluding remarks

In the preceding sections, we analysed the usage patterns of the four passives in Singapore English and showed that two distinct types of substratum influence are at work. The give and kena passives are transferred from the local languages and the adversity effect is transferred along with the passive forms. Like their sources in the substratum languages, these passives are judged as adversative by native speaker intuition. This conclusion is supported by the corpus-based usage data on kena, as well as on the substratum-derived aspectual marker already and universal or concessive marker also. Quantitative data and intuition-based data are not mutually exclusive. They are indeed complementary. & our analysis shows, the quantitative method should be part of an adequate theory of contact-induced linguistic change. It is not surprising that Singapore English contains grammatical constructions, or features, inherited from English and grammatical constructions appropriated from the local languages. Since its early days in the nineteenth century, the vernacular has developed in a contact environment with a constant linguistic substratum. English has always enjoyed the status of power and prestige. The grammar of vernacular Singapore English shows the imprint of this contact dynamic. Its feature pool, in the sense of Mufwene (2001), is made up of grammatical features from Chinese, Malay, Tamil and, of course, English, the four designated 'officiaf languages. An adequate theory of linguistic change under such contact conditions must take into consideration the contribution of the substratum, the superstratum and linguistic universals. The analysis of the usage patterns of the passives in Singapore English, and of already and also, shows that we need a holistic approach to the contact phenomena that occur in contact ecologies, such as the one for Singapore English, in which the same substratum and superstratum languages compete to influence the development of the contact vernacular. Usage plays an important role in the development of 'normaf linguistic change (Bybee 2002, 2006; Bybee & Hopper 2001). It plays a significant role in the success of contact-induced linguistic change as well. Furthermore, the usage-based quantitative data reveal the two mechanisms of substratum influence at work in the linguistic ecology of Singapore English: the abrupt substratum transfer and the gradual convergence- to-substratum.

265

266

Bao Zhirning

References Bao, Z. 1995. Already in Singapore English. World Englishes 14(2): 181-188. Bao, Z 2005. The aspectual system of Singapore English and the systemic substrati.st explanation. Journal ofLinguistics 41(2): 237-267. Bao, Z. & Hong, H. 2006. Diglossia and register variation in Singapore English. World Englishes 25(1 ): 105-114. Bao, Z. & Wee, L. 1999. The passive in Singapore English. World Englishes 18( 1): 1-11. Biber, D., Johansson, S., Leech, G., Conrad, S. & Finegan, R 1999. Longman Grammar of Spoken and Written English. London: Longman. Bodman, N.C. 1955. Spoken Amoy Hokkien. Kuala Lumpur: Charles Grenier. Brown, A 1999. Singapore English in a Nutshell. Singapore: Federal Publications. Bybee, J. 2002. Word frequency and context of use in the lexical diffusion of phonetically conditioned sound change. Language Variation and Change 14(3): 261-290. Bybee, J. 2006. From usage to grammar: The mind's response to repetition. Language 82(4): 711-733. Bybee, J. & Hopper, P. (eds). 2001. Frequency and the Emergence of Linguistic Structure. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Chaudenson, R 2001. Creolization of Language and Culture. Translated from the French by S. Pargman. London: Routledge. Daw Khin Khin, A 2005. Bazaar Malay: History, Grammar and Contact PhD dissertation, National University of Singapore. Ferguson, C. A. 1959. Diglossia. Word 15: 325-40. Greenbaum, S. 1988. A proposal for an international computerized corpus of English. World Englishes 7(3 ): 315. Greenbaum, S. (ed.). 1996. Comparing English Worldwide: The International Corpus of English. Oxford: Clarendon. Greenbaum, S. & Nelson, G. 1996. The International Corpus of English (ICE) Project. World Englishes 15(1): 3-15. Gupta, A F. 1991. Acquisition of diglossia in Singapore English. In Child Language Development in Singapore and Malaysia, A Kwan-Terry (ed.), 119-160. Singapore: Singapore University Press. Ho, M. L. & Platt, J. T. 1993. Dynamics of a Contact Continuum: Singapore English. Oxford: OUP. Ho, M. L. & Wong, I.E H. 2001. The use of ever in Singaporean English. World EngJishes 30(1): 79-87. Keesing, R. M. 1988. Melanesian Pidgin and the Oceanic Substrate. Stanford CA: Stanford University Press. Kwan-Terry, A. 1989. The specification of stage by a child learning English and Cantonese simuhaneously: A study of acquisition processes. In Interlingual processes, H. W. Dechert & M. Raupach (eds), 33-48. Tiiliingen: Narr. Lefebvre, C. 1998. Creole Genesis and the Acquisition of Grammar: The Case ofHaitian Creole. Cambridge: CUP. Matisott; J. A 1991. Areal and universal dimensions of gramrnatization in LahiL In Approaches to Grammaticalization, Vol II [Typological Studies in Language 19], R C. Traugott & B. Heine (eds), 383-453. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Matthews, S. & Yip, V. 1994. Cantonese: A Comprehensive Grammar. London: Routledge. Mintz, M. W. 1994. A Student's Grammar of Malay Indonesian. Singapore: EPB Publishers. Mufwene, S. S. 2001. The Ecology of Language Evolution. Cambridge: CUP. Muysken, P. & Smith, N. (eds). 1986. Substrata Versus Universals in Creole Genesis [Creole Language library 1]. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Nelson, G., Wallis, S. & Aarts, B. 2002 Exploring natural language: Working with the British Component of the International Corpus of English [Varieties of English across the World G29]. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Pakir, A. 1986. A Linguistic Investigation ofBaba Malay. PhD dissertation, University of Hawaii. Platt, J. 1977. A model for polyglossia and muhilingualism (with special reference to Singapore and Malaysia). Language in Society 6(3): 361-378. Quirk, R., Greenbaum, S., Leech, G. & Svartvik, J. 1972 A Grammar of Contemporary English. London: Longman.


Shellabear, W. G. 1913. Baba Malay: An introduction to the language of the Straits-born Chinese. Journal of the Straits Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society 65: 49-63. Schneider, E. W. 2003. The dynamics of new Englishes: From identity construction to dialect birth. LtmgUage 79(2): 233-281. Sulaiman, 0. 1990. Malay for Everyone: Mastering Malay through English. Selangor: Pelanduk Publications. Tay, M. W. J. 1982 The uses, users and features of English in Singapore. In New Englishes, J. B. Pride (ed.), 51-70. Rowley MA: Newbury House. Thomason, S. G. & Kaufman, T. 1988. LtmgUage Contact, Creolization, and Genetic Linguistics. Berkeley CA: University of California Press. Thrnbull, C. M. 1977. A History of Singapore 1819-1975. Singapore: 0 UP. Wang, L. 1982 Hanyu yufa gangyao (An outline of Chinese grammar). Shanghai: Shanghai Education Press.

Appendix Usted below are the token frequencies of the verbs used in the be passive form in the PRIVATE DIAWGUE subcorpora of ICE-SIN and ICE-GB. Past participles which are normally used as adjectives are excluded. The top two are interested (SIN 40, GB 46) and married (SIN 15, GB 13). Format: verb, use (a, adversative, n, neutral), SIN tokens, GB tokens. abuse, a, 0, 1 account, n, 0, 1 add,n, 1,1 advance, n, 0, 1 affect, a, 2, 2 allow, n, 3, 15 analyse, n, 0, 1 annoy, a, 4, 0 appreciate, n, 0, 1 arrest, a, 1, 0 associate, n, 2, 3 attack, a, 0, 1 avoid, a, 1, 0 base, n, 4,6 bind, n, 0,1 bond,n,2,0 bore, a, 2, 2 break, a, 1, 0 broadcast, n, 1, 0 cancel, a, 3, 1 carve up, n, 0, 1 cause, n, 0, 2 change, n, 0, 2 cheese off; a, 1, 1 clasp, n, 0, 1 cloister, a, 1, 0 commission, n, 0, 2 complete, n, 1, 0 condition, n, 0, 1

accelerate, n, 1, 0 accuse, a, 0, 1 admit, a, 1, 0 advertise, n, 0, 2 affiliate, n, 0, 1 amaze, a, 5, 3 anglicise, n, 0, 1 apply, n, 0, 1 approve,n, 4, 0 article, n, 0, 1 assure, n,1, 0 attack, a, 1, 0 balance, n, 0, 1 batter, a, 0, 1 bleach out, n, 0, 1 book, a, 1, 2 bother, a, 9, 11 break up, n, 1, 0 build, n, 2, 1 cane, a, 1, 0 cast,n, 0, 1 censor, a, 2, 0 channel. n, 0, 1 chop up, a, 1, 0 classify, n, 2, 1 dose,n,2,4 commit, n, 1, 0 concentrate, n, 1, 0 conduct, n, 1, 0

accept, n, 1, 0 achieve, n, 1, 0 adopt, n, 0, 1 advise, n, 0, 1 allocate, n, 1, 0 amputate, a, 1, 0 announce, n, 1, 0 appoint, n, 0, 1 arrange, n, 1, 0 ask,n, 2, 2 attach, n, 2, 2 attract, n, 1, 0 ban,a,1,0 bend,n,0,1 blow, a,0,3 book,n, 1, 0 brand, n, 0, 1 bring, n, 8, 9 call, n, 26, 57 carry out, n, 0, 1 catch, a, 2, 1 certify, n, 1, 1 charge, n, 0, 2 chuck out, n, 0, 1 clear,n, 1, 3 commercialise, n, 1, 0 compare,n, 1,0 concern, n, 5, 9 confine, a, 0, 1

267

268

Bao Zhirning

confirm, n, 6, 0 congest, a, 1, 0 consider, n, 3, 0 convert, n, 2, 1 cook,n, 2, 1 cram, a, 1, 1 cross, a, 0, 1 curse, a, 0, 1 cut out, a, 1, 0 delay, a, 2, 1 depress, a, 1, 4 desert, a, 1, 1 develop, n, 2, 3 disabuse, n, 0, 1 discuss, n, 1, 1 disorganise, a, 1, 0 distort, a, 0, 1 divorce, a, 0, 1 dress, n, 0, 2 dry,n,O, 1 dye,n,0,2 edit,n, 0, 1 elevate, n, 0, 1 embarrass, a, 1, 6 encode, n, 0, 1 enlarge, n, 0, 1 entertain, n, 1, 0 equip, n, 1, 0 exclude, n, 0, 2 expect, n, 4, 1 expose, a, 1, 1 face with, a, 1, 0 fax,n, 1, 0 file,n, 0, 1 fiher, n, 0, 1 flatter, n, 1, 1 follow, n, 1, 0 forward, n, 1, 0 freeze, a, 1, 3 fund,n,O, 1 gear up, n, 1, 0 gore, a, 0, 1 handicap, a, 1, 0 head,n, 1, 0 highlight, n, 0, 1 hold,n, 4, 3 hound, a, 1, 0 identify, n, 0, 1 impress, n, 5, 3 include, n, 2, 1 indicate, n, 1, 0

confront, a, 0, 2 conjoin, n, 1, 0 constrict, a, 0, 1 convince, n, 1, 1 cost,n, 0, 1 cramp, a, 1, 0 crowd, a, 7, 1 cut,n, 1, 0 debrief, n, 0, 1 delight, n, 1, 1 deprive, a, 1, 0 design, n, 1, 2 dictate, a, 1, 0 disappoint, a, 5, 6 disgust, a, 1, 1 dissatisfy, a, 0, 1 disturb, a, 2, 0 do,n,l3,2 drive, n, 1, 0 dump,a,O, 1 eat,n, 1, 1 educate, n, 0, 2 elevate, n, 1, 0 employ, n, 1, 1 engage, n, 1, 2 enrol, n, 1, 0 entitle, n, 0, 1 establish, n, 0, 1 excrete to, a, 1, 0 o.:plain, n, 1, 0 expose (photo), n, 0, 1 fascinate, n, 0, 3 feature, n, 1, 0 fill,n, 1, 0 find,n, 2, 1 flood, a, 1, 0 force, a, 2, 0 foster,n, 1, 0 frighten, a, 5, 3 gain, n, 1, 0 get over, a, 0, 1 grade, n, 1, 0 handle, n, 1, 1 help,n,3,0 hire, n, 1, 1 hoover, n, 0, 1 hurt,a,3, 2 implement, n, 4, 0 improve, n, 0, 1 incorporate, n, 1, 0 infest, a, 0, 1

confuse, a, 4, 5 connect, n, 3, 3 contain,n,0,2 convolute, a, 0, 1 cover, n, 3, 8 crook, a, 1, 0 cube,n, 1,0 cut oft; a, 0, 1 dedicate, n, 0, 1 demolish, a, 0, 1 describe, n, 0, 1 devastate, a, 0, 1 direct, n, 2, 0 discipline, n, 1, 1 dismantle, a, 1, 0 distinguish, n, 1, 0 divide, n, 1, 2 dominate, n, 0, 2 drop,a,O, 1 dump,a,1,0 edge,n,O, 1 elect,n, 2, 0 emancipate, n, 1, 0 empty out, n, 0, 1 engross, a, 1, 0 entail. n, 1, 0 entrench, a, 1, 0 excite, n, 1, 0 execute, a, 0, 1 export, n, 0, 1 extend, n, 1, 0 fashion, n, 1, 0 feed,n, 0, 3 film,n, 1, 0 finish,n,5,6 focus, n, 2, 1 forewarn, a, 0, 2 fragment, a, 1, 0 frustrate, a, 0, 1 gear, n, 0, 1 give,n, 15, 10 hand,n,0,2 hang, a,1, 0 hide, a, 2, 0 hit, a, 0, 1 horrify, a, 0, 1 hype,a,O, 1 import, n, 3, 0 incline, n, 0, 1 increase, n, 0, 1 inflame, a, 0, 1


influence, n, 1, 4 install, n, 0, 1 insure, n, 0, 2 interview, n, 0, 1 inure, n, 0, 2 involve, n, 13, 20 keep,n,0,1 knacker, a, 0, 2 label, n, 1, 0 layer, n, 1, 0 limit, a, 0, 3 list, n, 1, 1 lock out, a, 1, 0 lose, a, 1, 2 mark,n,3, 1 mean,n,5,4 merge, n, 0, 1 mlx,n, 1,2 name,n, 1,1 note,n,O, 1 obscure, a, 0, 1 offer,n,6,1 oppress, a, 1, 0 orientate, n, 0, 1 own,n, 1,1 pamper, n, 1, 1 park,n,1,0 pay,n, 11,2 perceive, n, 0, 1 phrase, n, 1, 0 place, n, 1, 1 pollute, a, 1, 0 possess, a, 0, 1 prefer, n, 0, 1 prick, a, 1, 0 produce, n, 1, 2 prove, n, 0, 1 publish, n, 1, 3 punish,a,2,0 quorate, n, 0, 1 rape,a,0,3 recommend, n, 2, 1 reinforce, n, 0, 1 release, n, 0, 1 renew, n, 1, 0 report, n, 2, 0 restrict, a, 0, 2 revise, n, 1, 0 rule,n,0,3 sandwich, a, 1, 0 scare, a, 11, 3

inform, n, 1, 0 instruct, n, 2, 2 integrate, n, 1, 2 intrigue, n, 1, 2 invert, n, 0, 2 isolate, a, 0, 3 keep (provide), a,1, 0 knock, a, 1, 0 laminate, n, 1, 0 leave, a, 7, 10 line up, n, 1, 0 load,n, 0, 1 log on, n, 7, 0 make,n,4,8 match, n, 0, 1 measure, n, 0, 1 mess, a, 0, 1 molest, a, 1, 0 need,n,O, 1 notify, n, 1, 0 occupy, a, 1, 0 open,n,1,0 order, n, 0, 1 overplay, a, 0, 1 packl' n, 1, 0 parallel,n, 0, 1 pass,n,O, 1 peeve, a, 0, 1 perplex, a, 0, 1 pig off; a, 0, 1 please, n, 0, 7 portray, n, 2, 0 post, n, 7, 0 prepare, n, 4, 3 prise, n, 0, 1 promote, n, 2, 0 provide, n, 0, 1 pull, n, 0, 1 put:,n, 4, 4 quote, n, 1, 0 rate,n, 1, 0 record, n, 9, 5 reject, a, 2, 2 relieve, n, 1, 0 renovate, n, 0, 1 require, n, 2, 0 return, n, 3, 0 rough up, a, 0, 1 run,n,0,2 satisfy, n, 1, 0 schedule, n, 0, 1

injure, a, 0, 1 insult, a, 0, 1 interrupt, a, 1, 0 introduce, n, 2, 6 invite, n, 2, 4 lssue,n, 1, 1 kill, a, 5, 1 know,n, 1,1 laugh at, a, 1, 0 light,n, 1, 0 link,n, 1, 1 lock, n, 0, 1 look,n, 1, 3 marginalise, a, 1, 0 maximise, n, 1, 0 mention, n, 2, 3 mistake, a, 2, 0 muffle, a, 1, 0 nominate, n, 2, 0 number, a, 1, 0 offend, a, 0, 1 oppose, a, 0, 1 organise, n, 7, 4 overstate, a, 0, 1 pads. a, 1, 0 paralyse, a, 0, 1 paste, n, 1, 0 penetrate, n, 0, 1 petrify, a, 1, 0 piss off, a, 1, 0 polson, a, 0, 1 pose,n, 1,0 predict, n, 1, 0 press, a, 0, 1 process, n, 0, 1 prompt, n, 0, 1 publicise, n, 1, 1 puncture, a, 1, 0 quilt, n, 1, 0 raise, n, 2, 1 recognise, n, 3, 0 reduce, a, 2, 2 relate, n, 3, 4 remove, a, 1, 1 replace, a, 1, 0 reserve, n, 2, 0 reverse, n, 0, 1 rub off, n, 0, 1 rush, a, 1, 0 save,n,0,2 screen, n, 1, 1

269

270

Bao Zhirning

scrunch up, a, 0, 1 see,n,5,6 sell, n, 3, 2 share, n, 0, 1 shock, a, 6, 1 show,n,3,0 slice, n, 0, 1 solve, n, 1, 0 specialise, n, 1, 0 spend, n, 2, 0 sponsor, n, 1, 0 stamp, n, 0, 1 steal, a, 2, 2 stitch, n, 0, 1 stress, a, 6, 0 stuff, a, 0, 1 surprise, a, 10, 11 sweep, a, 0, 3 take,n, 6, 10 teach, n, 5, 1 tempt, n, 1, 2 think, n, 2, 1 tickle, n, 0, 1 tieto,n,1,0 tour,n,0,1 transport, n, 1, 0 trivialise, a, 0, 1 try,n,0,2 type,n, 0, 1 unsweeten, n, 0, 1 upset, a, 9, 6 vet,n,0,1 wag,a,1,0 wash away, n, 0, 2 wipe out, n, 0, 1 write, n, 6, 10

season, n, 1, 0 segregate, a, 0, 1 send,n,1,8 shield, n, 0, 1 shoot, a, 2, 0 shut out, a, 0, 1 slot,n, 0, 1 sort out, n, 1, 0 specify,n, 1, 0 splash, n, 1, 0 spread, n, 0, 1 start, n, 0, 1 stick, a, 2, 2 stop, a, 1,2 stretch, a, 1, 0 subscribe, n, 0, 1 surround, n, 1, 0 swell, a, 1, 1 talk to, a, 0, 1 tear, a, 1, 2 terrify, a, 1, 0 thrill, n, 1, 0 tidy up. n, 1, 0 tie up, a, 2, 1 track down, n, 1, 0 trap, a, 2, 0 trouble, a, 1, 0 tune,n, 1,0 understand, n, 1, 0 untoudJ, n, 0, 1 use,n,8,15 vote away, a, 0, 1 wake,n,0,1 waste, a, 0, 1 word,n,O, 1

seat, n, 4, 0 select, n, 2, 0 set, n, 3, 7 shift, n, 2, 0 short list, n, 3, 0 sink. a, 0, 1 solemnise, n, 1, 0 speak, n, 0, 2 spell,n, 1, 0 spoil, a, 4, 0 stagger, n, 1, 0 state, n, 0, 1 stimulate, n, 1, 0 store, n, 2, 0 structure, n, 1, 0 supply, n, 1, 0 swallow, a, 0, 1 switch, n, 0, 1 tape,n,4, 1 tell, n, 7, 11 test, a, 2, 1 throw, a, 2, 1 tie down, a,1, 0 topple off, a, 0, 1 train,n, 10,2 treat, n, 0, 3 trust,n, 0, 1 tutor, n, 1, 0 unhinge, n, 0, 1 update, n, 1, 0 vary,n,O, 1 waft,n,0,1 warn,a,0,1 wear,a,0,1 worry, a, 13, 9

Tone in Singlish Substrate features from Sinitic and Malay* Lisa Lim The University of Hong Kong

This paper focuses on aspects of tone in Singlish, the (mesolectal/basllectal) variety of English spoken in Singapore and takes up the claim of tone being a marked feature in contact varieties. While the source of tonal properties may well be the dominant Sinitic substrates, the actual patterning, at both word and phrase level, would appear to actually be a consequence of prosodic patterns found in another, non-tone language substrate, Bazaar/Baba Malay. Such observations support the notion of the founder population in the ecology paradigm: This paper suggests that, as the early English speakers in Singapore, the Peranakans, with Baba Malay as their vernacular, may well have been the community of speakers whose influence on Singlish has been most significant and persistent Keywords: Singlish, Singapore English, Bazaar Malay, Baba Malay, Hokkien. Cantonese, tone

1.

Ecology and scholarship of Singlish

Singlish1 is the mesolectaVbasilectal variety of Singapore English (SgE); it is widely spoken by Singapore's population, which comprises approximately 4 million people made up of76.8% Chinese, 13.9% Malay, 7.9% Indian and 1.4% persons of other races. English formally entered the ecology during colonial rule of the trade/ exploitation colony of Singapore, which may be dated to 1819 when Sir Stamford Raffles acquired the island as a British trading post for the British East India Company. Singapore consequently became part of the

An earlier version of these ideas is foWld in L. Lim (2009a); this paper extends the idea of the contribution of a non-tone language, Malay, in influencing the tonal patterning in Singlish. I thank the anonymous reviewer for comments on this paper and Umberto Ansaldo for comments and discussions, in particular on creole languages and contact dynamics. While the majority of scholarship refers to the variety of English spoken in Singapore as Singapore English (SgE), and the term Singlish, which tends to have more layman's circulation, is avoided for its negative connotations, it is used here for the mesolectal!basilectal variety ofSgE to underline the fact that extensive divergence from standard English is found in this variety, and that much of its grammar can be explained by the features of the non-English languages. 1.

272

Usa IJrn

Straits Settlements, which at that time consisted of Penang and Malacca. From a few hundred people, largely indigenous fishing communities, the population grew to some 10,000 in the first years, the majority (some 60% in 1824) being "Malays; which included peoples from the Riau islands, Malacca, Sumatra, and Java. The Chinese population very soon started growing swiftly, coming to form the largest ethnic proportion of the population within two decades of British colonisation (45.9% by 1836), reaching its current proportion of three-quarters of the population by 1921. The vast majority of Chinese immigrants were from southern China, mainly Chaozhou in eastern Guangdong (the Teochews), Xiamen in southern Fujian (the Hokkiens), and Guangdong (the Cantonese), as well as sizeable numbers ofHakkas and Hainanese. While the school system of the Malays was established before Raffies' arrival, and traditional Chinese schools were set up by the communities themselves (through clans, voluntary associations and philanthropic individuals), the first English-medium school was established by the British in 1834. In the beginning, the tew English-medium schools were for the purpose of educating and cultivating a minority of English-speaking elites in the local population; by the end of the nineteenth century, though, with the increasing recognition of the advantages that the English language afforded, enrolment in such schools increased rapidly. By the 1950s, education was effectively universal and English-medium education increasingly the norm, with 43% of school enrolment being in English-medium schools by 1952. Leading up to independence in 1965, the 1956 White Paper on Education advocated a bilingual system of education, in which English became a compulsory language in schools, either as a first language or, in the vernacular (Chinese-, Malay- or Tamil-medium) schools, as a second language. Just two decades later, in 1987, English was institutionalised as the medium of instruction in all schools, resulting in new generations of Singaporeans who have been described as English-knowing bilinguals. Also instituted as the primary working language in Singapore, English has spread in use in all domains, beyond those of education (as above), government and administration, to become an interethnic lingua franca (taking on a role held by Bazaar Malay pre-1970s ), especially amongst younger and more educated people. Such a widespread usage of English, not just in education, but also in informal domains, by a multilingual community of speakers, has resulted in the development of a nativised variety of Singapore English. (For a comprehensive overview of the sociohistorical and political details of English in Singapore, see L. Lim 2007a, 2009b, 2010a; L. Lim & Foley 2004.) In the evolution of English in Singapore, then, we must recognise influences from a number of languages in a highly multilingual contact situation, within which three substrates have been identified as particularly influential (L. Lim 2007a, 2010a): ( 1) Hokkien, the southern Sinitic variety of the most prestigious and powerful group of Chinese traders in the early days of the colony, which was the intra-ethnic lingua franca for the Chinese; (2) Bazaar Malay, the de facto lingua franca of the region from precolonial times to the middle of the twentieth century; and (3) Cantonese, another southern Sinitic variety which has become more dominant in more recent years. (See L. Lim 2007a, 2010a, for an extensive account of the linguistic ages of Singapore's ecology.) Curiously, in a manner seemingly counter-intuitive to the multilingual ecology of Singapore, much of the research on Singlish has been from the perspective of English. The majority of ear1y research in the 1970s emphasised error analysis and how SgE deviated from Standard British English (StdBrE) - which was, in any case, the exonormative standard in Singapore's language

Tone in Singlish

and education policies. At the same time, even while the view arose (launched by Tongue's 1974 classic study) that there were forms of English spoken in Singapore (and Malaysia) that might be considered standard in their own right- this "standard variety" being that of English-educated Singaporeans, who at that point were still not a majority - there was also the recognition of a "sub-standard variety" used by Singaporeans from all language media in informal situations with their peers or as a lingua franca within the community. This would have been Singlish, though the name would not have been widely used then. It should also be noted that the English developing at that time could be viewed as an L2 variety, since the majority of Singaporeans had some other language(s) as dominant home language(s) and mostly acquired English in school. Later scholarship in the 1980s (starting with Tay and Gupta's 1983 work) recognised SgE as a variety in its own right- but this was still couched in terms of deviations from StdE, with little reference to features being the result of contact with the other languages in the ecology. The exceptions to the English-focused pattern in previous scholarship deserve mention here. Recognition that Singlish could in fact be viewed as a creole dates back to the 1970s, when Platt (1977) and Platt and Weber (1980) described the development of English in Singapore (and Malaysia) in terms of a lectal continuum within a post-creole continuum, with a basilect showing many features of creoles. 2 There is then a lull when SgE research seemed uninterested in contact dynamics, as mentioned above. lt is only in the new century that scholars - notably with nonEnglish linguistics and/or contact linguistics influences- have highlighted the contribution of the substrates: Work has addressed substrate influence on the sound system (e.g., L. Lim 2001, 2004a, 2004b, 2009a; Tan 2003 ), and focused on Singlish as the outcome of relexification of Chinese grammar (e.g., Bao 2001, 2005; Bao & Lye 2005), and as the result of typological congruence between Hokkien and Malay (e.g., Ansaldo 2004, 2009a, 2009b ). The majority of scholarship from the contact linguistics perspective has focused on areas such as tense and aspect, passivisation, topic-comment structure, and reduplication (Ansaldo 2004, 2009a, 2009b; Bao 2001, 2005; Bao & 4"e 2005; Bao & Wee 1999; Wee 2004), as well as stress and intonation (L. Lim 2001, 2004a, 2004b, 2009a; Tan 2003). In this paper, I examine the feature of tone in Singlish, which is significant and intriguing for both theory and practice for a number of reasons. In the first place, to investigate the presence of tone in a grammar that derives from languages in contact is to look deeper into claims that tonal features are complex or marked, as suggested by McWhorter (2005), for example. Second, in spite of the recognition of tone languages in Singapore's ecology, tone in Singlish is a topic that has not been addressed - a phenomenon barely recognised, in fact- until very recently (L. Lim 2007a, 2007b, 2008a, 2008b, 2009a, 2009c).3 Finally, what is particularly curious is that, while the obvious source for tone must

2.

Platt (1975) labelled it a «creoloid."

3· To my knowledge, the idea that SgE, as a New English, can be considered a tone language was seriously postulated for the first time in L. Lim (2007a: 468-469), and then more e":plicitly proposed in L. Lim (2007b, 2008a, 2008b). (Note though that Killingey 1968 suggests that SgE word stress should not be discussed on the grounds that Malayan [Singapore+ Malaysia] English is "a tone language" but later (Killingey 1972) withdraws the statement; cited in Bloom 1986:428. Note also that the ~alayan English" of four decades ago is a different animal from SgE today.) Later, other similar statements have been independently proposed or assumed (Ng 2008, 2009; Siraj 2008; Wee 2008a, 2008b ).

273

274

Usa IJrn

be the Sinitic languages- thatis, the tone languages- in the ecology (L. Lim 2008b), the actual patterns manifested in Singlish seem to derive from another substrate, (Bazaar/Baba) Malay.

2.

Tone in Singlish

This section presents a summary overview of the evidence derived from a number of fronts: discourse particles, words and utterances. The apparent brevity of the literature addressed is due to the fact that, as outlined above, little work has been done to date in the area.

2.1

Discourse particles

The most obvious presence of tone in Singlish is that found in discourse particles. These Singlish particles have long been acknowledged in most scholarship as coming from the (southern) Chinese languages (e.g., Gupta 1992; Platt 1987; and see L. Lim 2007a for a comprehensive overview of their origins), though no specific language( s) tended to be identified or acknowledged as the source(s) of the particles. Since the Chinese languages are tone languages, it is not surprising that in early scholarship on the particles the question of whether the particles themselves carry (lexical) tone was posed (Platt 1987); what is surprising is that this question was not investigated further. It is only in very recent work that these two issues have been seriously addressed (L. Lim 2007a, 2007b, 2008b, 2009a). It has been argued that. compared to the earlier particles lah, ah and what, the larger set of Singlish particles, namely hor, leh, lor, rna and meh, have their origins in Cantonese, and were acquired in Singlish in a later era. In contrast to the earlier set, which either (1) came by route ofBazaar/Baba Malay and thus were transferred without Sinitic tone, or (2) have lost their tonal qualities over time, since they appeared in Singlish earlier (L. Lim 2007a, 2009b ), the particles of the later, larger set (for convenience. referred to as the "Cantonese set") have carried their original Sinitic tone into Singlish (L. Lim 2007a, 2009a, 2009c), and are thus of more direct interest to this paper. We therefore focus here on this Cantonese set, examples of which are provided below in (la) to (le), from the Grammar of Spoken Singapore English Corpus (GSSEC). Note that, in contrast to most other scholarship on SgE, which does not represent the particles with tone, here the particles are transcribed together with their tones, represented as pitch level numbers, a practice proposed in L. Lim (2007a).4 These examples are accompanied in each case by an example of the corresponding particle in Cantonese from which each one derives (from Matthews & Yip 1994: 347, 348, 352). 5 A comparison of the SgE and Cantonese particles in the (a) and (b) pairs (the relevant

4· Singlish data for particles and utterances derive from the naturally occurring data in the Grammar of Spoken Singapore English Corpus (GSSEC; L. IJrn & Fo1ey 2004), except (4a), which is from Wong (1994). The tones of the particles are represented as pitch level numbers 1 to 5 where, in the Asianist tradition, the larger the number the higher the pitch; thus 55 represents a high level tone, 24 represents a rising tone, and so on.

s.

The transcription of examples (lb) to (Sb) is as in the source (Matthews & Yip 1994), which uses the Yale system. Rising and falling tones are shown by rising and falling accents; high level tone is indicated by a level accent;

Tone in Singlish

particles are in boldface) reveals striking parallels in segmental form, tone and meaning. In (1), for example, the SgE particle h:J24, which always occurs with a rising tone, and which asserts a proposition, making it clear that a positive response from the addressee is expected (L. Lim 2007a; Wee 2004: 124), is matched by the Cantonese h6 particle, which has the same rising tone and also indicates an expectation of the addressee's confirmation (Matthews & Yip 1994: 347). The SgE particle b33 in (3a), which occurs with mid level tone, and which indicates obviousness, and in negative contexts inevitability or resignation (L. Lim 2007a; Wee 2004: 123), is similarly matched by the Cantonese particle lo in (3b) with mid level tone and suggesting resignation (Matthews &Yip 1994:352). (1)

a

A:

B: b.

A:.

But ifs beautiful in that ... how... I mean, Finn got a chance to realise himself, right? SGE He's quite innocent la21 h:J24? Innocent. 'He's quite innocent, don't you agree?' [asserting proposition, expecting agreement] Gei leng a

h6?

CANTONESE

quite nice PRT PRT 'Pretty nice, huh?' [expecting confirmation] B:

Haih a.

is PRT 'Yes, it is: (2) a

A:.

b.

A:.

Dl

B:

furniture sell all to people 'The furniture has all been sold: Ga che It?

My parents will disown me a22 if I marry someone Caucasian or Indian My parents very what. SoE 'My parents will disown me lf I marry someone Caucasian or Indian. My parents are really impossible: B: *** very old-fashion a21. A:. My parents very old-fashion a21! Then your parents leSS? ~e you saying that my parents are old-fashioned? Then what about your parents?' [indicating comparison, 'what abouH1

gast

cL

maaih saai bel ydhn

la.

CANTONESE

PRT

CL car PRT

What about the car?' [meaning 'what about'?] (3) a

A: But um I might stop working for a while if I need to, if I need to la21, especially forlooking after kids. SoE B: But for me, I wolit stop working b33. The most I won't give birth to kids b33. For the most I dolit marry b33. 'In my case, (even if I have children to look after) I won't stop working. In the worst of cases, I won't have children. In the worst of cases, I won't get married: [indicating obviousness, resignation]

no tonal indication is given for the mid level tone, and is inserted after the vowel to indicate all low-register tones (low rising, low level and low falling).

275

276

Usa Lim

b.

Ng6h mjf d{m syun lo I not- know how act PRT

CANTONESE

'I really don't know what to do' [indicating resignation] (4)

a

A:.

B:

b.

A:.

How come you call me? SGE 'Why did you call me?' You page for me ma22. 'You paged for me. after all (as you know) (so naturally I'm returning your call)' [indicati.ng obviousness]

Bingo leihga?

CANTONESB

who PRT 'Who's that?

B:

Ngdhdeih san l6uhbaan ama. our new boss PRT 'Our new boss, of course: [indicating obviousness]

(5)

a

b.

No la21! He's using Pirelli. you don't know m£55? SGE 'No, he has Pirelli tyres; didn't you know that?' [indicating surprise, scepticism] B: Really? Dori't bluff. slnsaang wah mh dak ge me? CANTONESE teacher say not okay PRT PRT 'What, did the teacher say it wasri't okay?' [expressing surprise]

A:

As evidence for the claim that the particles occur in SgE with their original (Cantonese) tones, Figure 1 provides an illustration of the pitch contour of one SgE particle, from the utterance maybe it like what you say b33, with the particle b33 visualised clearly as being realised with level tone; instrumental analysis confirms that the particle lies in the middle of speakers' pitch range, and hence can be categorised as mid-level. 500...--------------------,

""----~--------0+------------------~

0.901655

1.71591

Time (s)

Figure 1. Mid-level tone ofSgE particle b33

Tone in Singlish

Figure 2. MH tones in SgE word 'normal, in sentence-initial, -medial and -final position (from Ng 2008b)

Word level

2.2

At the level of the word, some very recent work has suggested that SgE has tone in addition to stress, with tone being predictable from stress (Ng 2008), and with a high level tone assigned to the final syllable (Ng 2008; Wee 2008a), as can be seen in the words in example (6) (from Ng 2008; Wee 2008a, 2008b). 6 (6)

cat, see 'manage, 'teacher in 'tend, a 'round 'Singapore, 'managing 'origin, bi'lingual o 'riginal, se 'curity o 'riginally

55/ H 33-55/ MH 11-55 /LH 33-33-55/ MMH 11-33-55 /LMH 11-33-33-55/ LMMH 11-33-33-33-55/ LMMMH

This word-level tonal pattern has been shown to be independent of sentence position (Ng 2009), as illustrated in Figure 2.

2.3

Phrase/utterance

Finally, let us consider SgE prosody at the phrase level, where, echoing the observation in L. Lim (2004a:42ff.), a characteristic pattern in the intonation contour may be analysed as comprising sequences of sustained level steps or level tones which step up or down to each other, rather than glide more gradually from one pitch level to another. An illustration of such a pattern is provided in Figure 3, which depicts the intonation of the utterance I think happier, where it is evident that the pitch steps up abruptly to a high level pitch for think, and then steps down again for happier. Similarly, in Figure 4, the utterance You told me moves in a series of sustained level tones, each of which is at a slightly higher pitch than the previous one.

6. The tones on each syllable in example (6) are represented in pitch level numbers as well as in the phonological tradition where L = Low tone, M = Mid tone, and H = High tone.

277

278

Lisa Lim

I

ai

I

hrepi~

til]

Figure 3. Sustained level step pattern in SgE utterance I think happier (from L. Lim 2004a) SP. Ol

s fswin lsrate=l6000 1

300

2SO

-~ 200

-t

ju

I

-i

to!

Figure 4. Sustained level step pattern in SgE utterance You told me (from L. Lim 2004a)

mi

Tone in Singlish

3·

Tone meSS?

Some may be sceptical that what is observed in Singlish is tone 7 - the SgE particle meSS in the section heading indicates (often mock-) surprise or incredulity concerning the proposition it is attached to, as illustrated in example (Sa); thus, the translation of the section heading would be 'Is there/it really tone?!' The presence of tone, or some kind of mixed prosodic system, in creole languages is in fact not an especially difficult idea to accept. We know, of course, that suprasegmental features, including tone, are susceptible to being acquired in contact situations (Curnow 2001 ). Tone is often acquired in a non-tonal language by borrowing or imitation due to the presence of tone in the broader linguistic environment (Gussenhoven 2004:42ff.); consequently, tone has been noted to be an areal feature, occurring in genetically unrelated languages spoken by geographically contiguous speech communities, as in Africa and Southeast Asia (Nettle 1998; Svantesson 2001). A number of well-known creoles whose substrates involve tone languages - in particular languages arising from contact situations involving European accent languages and African tone languages - have been documented as possessing tone. One oft-cited example is Saramaccan, which is English- and Portuguese-based, with Gbe and Kikongo as substrates; it has been shown to have a split lexicon, with the majority of its words marked for pitch accent, and a significant minority marked for true tone (Good 2004a, 2004b, 2006). Just as widely acknowledged is Portuguese-lexified Papiamentu, which shows the use of both contrastive stress and contrastive tonal features that operate independently from stress (Kouwenberg 2004; Remijsen & van Heuven 2005; RiveraCastillo & Pickering 2004). The Austronesian language Ma'ya has also been documented as a hybrid system involving both contrastive stress and tone, the result of contact with tonal Papuan languages (Remijsen 2001: 43 ). What is interesting is that such findings have been widely accepted tor "creoles" for a while now;8 but because Singlish is always considered to be a variety of English (as opposed to an KEnglish-based creole"), there tends to be resistance in English linguistics circles to the idea that tone exists in Singlish (but see L. Lim 2009a). Nonetheless, "non-creole" languages have also been observed with similar manifestations of tone: Roermond Dutch has been found to have a Germanic-style stress system but also a lexical tonal contrast, in that words may have no tones or

7. .N. is increasingly recognised, distinguishing between so-called stress languages, accent(ual) languages and tone languages is in fact not clear-cut, and many scholars have become more amenable to regarding these categories as being more loosely or broadly defined. For instance, most now agree that the category of accent languages does not group languages of a typologically coherent class (Gussenhoven 2004; Hyman 2001 a), and take the position that the so-called accentual languages are just a subclass of tone languages (Yip 2002: 4). And tone languages are most recently defined much more broadly than before: following Hyman (2001b: 1368), Ka language with tone is one in which an indication of pitch enters into the lexical realisation of at least some morphemes; regardless of the density of lexically contrastive tones on words; lexical tonal marking, after all, has been noted to be of gradient nature (e.g. van der Hulst & Smith 1988). 8. Creole exceptionalism, ie., the view that creole languages might follow unusual developmental paths, has been seriously questioned on theoretical and empirical grounds (see especially the work by DeGraff 200 1, 2003, 2005 ), and recent trends such as studies in language evolution show that creole exceptionallsm is indeed flawed (e.g., Ansaldo 2009a; Ansaldo et al 2007; Mufwene 200 1, 2008).

279

280

Usa IJrn

a single H tone (Yip 2002:257); and the prosody of Nigerian English is suggested to be a mixed system that stands "between" an intonation/stress language and a tone language (Gut 2005), with its pitch inventory reduced compared to StdBrE, and the domain of pitch being the word, with high pitch triggered by stress, thus resembling a pitch accent language. The linguistic feature of tone is certainly present in the ecology of Singapore. The languages which are recognised as dominant in Singapore's ecology are Bazaar Malay and Hokkien in the earliest era, which were interethnic and intra-ethnic lingua franca respectively; later, Mandarin and Cantonese came to dominate (Ansaldo 2009a, 2009b; L. Lim 2007a, 2010a). As the latter three languages are Sinitic varieties, tone languages are clearly in the majority. Tone is thus a salient typological aspect of the feature pool; in other words, it is high in type- and token-frequency in the internal ecology. Other work has shown that dominant traits do influence the output (Thomason & Kaufman 1988). For example, considering the word order of the adstrates in Sri Lankan Malay, while Pidgin-Derived Malay is SVO, Sinhala and Tamil are both SOV, and the resulting Sri Lankan Malay is also SOV. Similarly, agglutinative morphology emerged in Sri Lankan Malay because it is salient in two of the three adstrates, Sinhala and Tamil (Ansaldo 2008, 2009a, 2009c). Moreover, if we consider external ecology, in Singapore it is the Chinese who form the largest ethnic group, accounting for 78% of the population, and they have been a majority since the early twentieth century (L. Lim 2007a, 2010a). On both counts, then, namely the proportion of tone languages and the proportion of speakers of these languages, tone dominates in the ecology. Moreover, tone is high in markedness, in the sense that the feature bears a heavy functional load; in other words, put in terms of Matras's (2000) model of categorial fusion, it is pragmatically dominant, which also makes it a more likely target for acquisition (Matras 2000: 577). Overall, it is very likely for tone to be acquired in SgE, given the feature's dominant presence in the ecology, both internal and external. When we consider the particles, the data presented above clearly show that the later Singlish particles were acquired in the Singlish system in their entirety, including the tone they have in Cantonese; further, they must be used in that form, and not with any other pitch pattern, for the meaning required, regardless of the intonation pattern of the utterance in which they are found. These tonal items are situated within what is possibly a different prosodic system - one that may be more of a stress/intonation language, in which pitch functions in a system of intonation relatively comparable to the forms and functions identified in other "standard" varieties of English such as StdBrE (L. Lim 2004a: 39-42; Zhu 2003; Zhu & Lim 2002). Such a phenomenon is noted by Gussenhoven (2004: 46) as one of three typologically special cases where tone languages are concerned, namely when there is lexically specified tone in intonation-only languages.9 1he observation of tone at the Singlish word level, which specifies an H-tone on the final syllable of each

9· An example of this situation is when there are tonal specifications in the "segmental-lexicon for particles that invariably appear with a particular intonation contour, such as Dutch sentence-final [he], which expresses an appeal for agreement and always appears with H after the pitch accent H*L on the preceding word (Kirsner & van Heuven 1996). Similarly, Bengali has focus-governing particles which come with their own pitch accent (Lahiri & Fitzpatrick-Cole 1999), Le., they must be lexically specified for tones, which crucially constitute morphemes in their own right and do not form part of the representation of the segmentally represented morphemes, unlike lexical tone (Gussenhoven 2004: 46).

Tone in Singlish

word, corresponds to the second of the typologically special cases identified by Gussenhoven (2004:45-46) in which languages have non-distinctive word-based tone. 10 Some clarification is perhaps necessary here. The observation above and elsewhere that Singlish has prosodic patterns that generally resemble an intonation language may in fact need elaboration: Alongside such patterns, which resemble other StdEs, one also notes a number of"characteristic CSE [Colloquial Singapore English] forms" ( L. Lim 2004a: 421f. ), such as the sustained level steps and tone patterns at word level, as illustrated above. This is not a contradiction, but instead can be understood on two levels: First, Singlish is capable of displaying a continuum of possibilities in prosodic phonology, of more mesolectal and more basilectal features; and second, in line with Singapore's extremely dynamic ecology (L. Lim 2007a, 2008a, 2010a), Singlish may in fact be viewed as changing, in the more Sinitic-dominant ecology of the recent era, to display more Sinitic features, including tone.

Tone from Sinitic?

4·

An automatic assumption would indeed be that the tone observed in Singlish originates in the Sinitic substrates, as opposed to the other substrates- notably Malay- which are not tone languages. A slightly more complex and intriguing situation emerges, however, when we dig a little deeper. In this endeavour, we shall set aside the particles (discussed in Section 2.1), which, at least in the case of the later Cantonese set. are clearly of Sinitic origin, and tum to the tone patterns at word and phrase level (presented in Sections 2.2 and 2.3). In investigations of the Englishes of Hong Kong and China, which have ecologies in which Sinitic varieties are dominant, the influence of tone on the emergent contact English variety is clearly noted and, at least superficially, is comparable to the presence of tone in Singlish; the phonological patterning, however, is distinct (L. Lim 2009a). In Hong Kong English (HKE), tor example, H tones are located on stressed syllables and L tones on unstressed ones (Chen & Au 2004; Luke 2000, 2008; Wee 2008a), illustrated in example (7); this contrasts with the pattern for wordlevel tone in Singlish, described in example (6), where H tones are located on the final syllable. (7)

in'tend 'origin, 'photograph o 'riginal

11-55/LH 55-11-11/ HLL 11-55-11-11/ LHLL

(8)

I saw the manager this morni11g

LHHHHHHHL!

Similarly, at phrase level, while HKE would have a pattern involving a sequence of tones as in (8), based on the basic LHL template and subsequent computation (Luke 2008), 11 Singlish tends to prefer prominence on the phrase-final syllable such that the pitch is perceived as relatively high: No significant decrease in fundamental frequency is measured compared to the initial syllable

10. An example of this is Noon, a language of Senegal. which predictably has an H -tone on the penultimate syllable of every word (Soukka 2000). 11.

Different boundary tones of H% or L% would then apply depending on the context (Luke 2008).

281

282

Usa IJrn

of the phrase-final word (Low 2000); such a maintenance of pitch or movement to high(er) tone phrase-finally is also observable in Figure 4. 12 One approach to accounting for this apparent disparity is to examine the ecology for other languages that may be influencing the prosody of Singlish. Languages that are or have been dominant in the ecology are the obvious candidates, one of which is clearly (Bazaar) Malay, the main interethnic lingua franca in Singapore from the earliest era until as recently as the 1970s (L. Lim 2007a, 2010a). While no comprehensive study of the prosody of (Bazaar) Malay in Singapore is available,D there has been much research on other Malay/Indonesian varieties (e.g., see various chapters in Gensler & Gil to appear). 14 Findings concerning word stress are diverse, but a number of studies do point to prominence on the penultimate and/or final syllable; at phrase level, there is a general consensus that prominence is located phrase-finally (with acceptability increasing closer to the right edge of phrase-final word) (e.g., Goedemans & van Zanten to appear). Closer to home, such a pattern of phrase-final prominence - in the form of an utterance-final rise- tall (in declaratives and wh-interrogatives), often manifested as "step-up progressions" across the final syllables of the utterance - has also been documented in Singapore's Baba Malay (Wee 2000). It would appear then that, as suggested in L. Lim (2009a), the word- and phrase-final prominence noted in Singlish is due to influence from (Bazaar) Malay. At first glance, it may indeed seem curious that Malay should have exerted this influence on Singlish, for three reasons. First, Malay-speaking Malays have comprised a minority of the population (no more than 15%) since the second decade of the populating of Singapore under British colonial rule, starting in the early 1800s; thus, numerically, and consequently socially, they have not been dominant in Singapore's ecology. (This is not to downplay the significant presence of the early Malay royalty as well as numerous influential and wealthy Malays and Arabs, such as the late-nineteenth-century community leaders; L. Lim 2010a.) Second, even if Bazaar Malay was the interethnic lingua franca, it was dominant only until around the 1970s, when English started assuming this role, especially in the new generations of native English speakers. Malay is no longer widely spoken by Singaporeans outside of the Malay community, although in that community the language is still very vital, being the most frequently spoken home language in 91.5% of Malay homes in 2000 (L. Lim 2007a, 2010a). And finally, even if we assume that Malay did influence Singlish through the first and second points, that is, in the earlier era when Bazaar Malay was a dominant language in the ecology, how is it that this earlier Malay influence appears to be maintained in spite of more recent Sinitic dominance? Quite feasible answers can be found if we consider the ecology of Singapore, as well as the founder principle in the ecology paradigm (Mufwene 2001), which suggests that the founder population in an ecology exerts a strong influence on teatures, an influence which persists in the emergent variety. A feasible reconstruction is thus as follows. Another community of peoples in Experiments investigating emphatic and contrastive stress in SgE also demonstrate that spea.lrers do not place prominence on the contrastive element as in "standard" Englishes but systematically locate pitch prominence utterance-finally (L. IJrn 2004b; L Urn & Tan 1999). 12.

13. Though Ng (2009) is now doing instrumental work on Singapore Malay word prosodic patterns. 14. What is represented in this paragraph is necessarily an extremely summarised account of the Malay/Indonesian prosodic patterns documented in the literature.

Tone in Singlish

Singapore who were also Malay speakers- and crucially also comprised the early English speakers - are the Peranakans. 15 Descendants of southern Chinese traders who settled in Southeast Asia and local Malay/Indonesian women, they comprised one of the earliest and largest groups of the influential class of Chinese capitalists in the region. By the time of European exploitation colonisation in the nineteenth century, they had accumulated much wealth and become a prestigious subgroup. Baba Malay was their vernacular. A detailed discussion of the distinction between Baba Malay and Bazaar Malay is beyond the scope of this paper, but for purposes of the argument here, suffice it to say that Baba Malay can be considered a more focused variety than Bazaar Malay (seeS. Lim 1988 and Ansaldo 2009a for good discussions of this issue). However, they were one of the earliest groups in Singapore to have held a high regard for English-medium education, and who sent their children to English-medium schools; their ability in the language further strengthened their prominent socioeconomic position within other local communities in relation to the British, and their knowledge of Malay and local ways allowed them to assume a significant role as intermediaries. (See Ansaldo et al. 2007 and L. Lim 2010b for more details on the Peranakan community and their languages Baba Malay and Peranakan English. 16) Taking into consideration their status, which would mean dominance in the external and consequently internal ecology, plus the fact that their features, which were influenced by their vernacular Malay, would have been the early features influencing the emerging variety Singlish, we find this a plausible explanation for the prosodic patterns observed in Singlish. In fact, this is not mere speculation: Investigations into structural features of naturally occurring Peranakan English speech have noted, amongst other features such as topic-comment structure, that the variety exhibits word- and utterance-final prominence in the form of pitch peak on the final syllable, which can be traced to the Baba Malay influence (L. Lim 2010b)P

5·

Final reflections

To conclude, this investigation of tone in Singlish demonstrates two main phenomena concerning substrate influence. First, the presence of tone, or the evolution of a tone-language prosody, is perfectly possible in a contact variety, if the feature pool of its ecology allows for it; such mixed prosodic systems have been documented in a number of other creoles, though they have been far less acknowledged in varieties considered to be New Englishes. In other words, in an ecology where tone is an unmarked or dominant feature, then tonal features can indeed spread into a contact language, despite McWhorter's (2005) characterisation of tone as a marked feature in contact situations.

15. They are also known as Peranakan Chinese, Babas or Straits(-born) Chinese. 16. I thank Umberto Ansaldo and Salikoko Mufwene for first pointing out to me the likelihood that the Peranakans were the founder population for Singlish.

17. Similar patterns of utterance-final rise-fall and level-fall pitch movements in both read and conversational speech have also been documented (Wee 2000).

283

284

Usa Lim

Second, even when the fea.ture of tone may be ascribed to the tone language substrates, the actual realisation in terms of prosodic patterns - for instance, in the case of Singlish, the location of the H tone at word or phrase level- can be influenced by the prosody of a non-tone language; in the case of Singlish, this is Malay. What is also significant is that this is the language of a population- the Peranakans - that is recognised as having been an earlier or founder population in the ecology, which therefore exerts a significant influence on the structure of the emergent contact language.

List of abbreviations

HKE L M

classifier Grammar of Spoken Singapore English Corpus high Hong Kong English low mid

PRT

particle

SgE

Singapore English Standard British English Standard English

CL

GSSEC H

StdBrE Std.E

References Ansaldo, U. 2004. The evolution of Singapore English: Finding the matrix. In Singapore English: A Grammatical Description, L. Lim (ed.),129-151. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Ansaldo, U. 2008. Revisiting Sri Lanka Malay: Genesis and classification. In A World of Many Voices: Lessons from Documtmting Endangered Languages, A. Dwyer, K. D. Harrison & D. Rood (eds), 13-42. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Ansaldo, U. 2009a. Contact Languages: Ecology and Evolution in Asia. Cambridge: CUP. Ansaldo, U. 2009b. The Asian typology of English: Theoretical and methodological considerations. In The Typology ofAsian Englishes, L. Lim & N. Gisborne (eds). Special issue of English World- Wide 30(2): 133-148. Ansaldo, U. 2009c. Complexity and the age of languages. In Complex Processes in New Languages, E. 0. Aboh & N. Smith (eds). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Ansaldo, U., Lim, L. & Mufwene, S. S. 2007. The sociolinguistic history of the Peranakans. What it tells us about 'creolization'. In Deconstructing Creole, U. Ansaldo, S. Matthews & L. Lim (eds), 203-226. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Ansaldo, U., Matthews, S. & Lim, L (eds). 2007. Deconstructing Creole [Typological Studies in Language 73]. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Bao, Z. 2001. The origins of empty categories in Singapore English Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages 16: 275-319. Bao, Z. 2005. The aspectual system of Singapore English and the systemic substrati.st explanation. Journal of Linguistics41: 237-267. Bao, Z. & Lye, H. M. 2005. Systemic transfer, topic prominence, and the bare conditional in Singapore English. Journal ofPidgin and Creole Languages 20: 269-291. Bao, Z. & Wee, L. 1999. The passive in Singapore English. World Englishes 18: 1-11.

Tone in Singlish

Bloom, D. 1986. The English language and Singapore: A critical survey. In Singapore Studies: Critical Surveys of the Humanities and Social Sciences, B. A. Kapur (ed.), 337-452 Singapore: Singapore University Press. Chen, C. C. Jr. & Au, C.-P. 2004. Tone assignment in second language prosodic learning. Speech Prosody 2004. Nara, Japan. 23-26 March 2004. . Curnow, T. J. 200 1. What language features can be 'borrowed'? In Areal Diffusion and Genetic lnherita,JCe: Problems in Comparative Linguistics, A. Y. Aikhenvald & R. M. W. Dixon (eds), 412-436. Oxford: OUP. DeGratt: M. 2001. On the origins of creoles: A Cartesian critique ofNeo-Darwinian linguistics. Linguistic 'I}pology 5:213-230. DeGratt: M. 2003. Against Creole exceptionalism. Discussion note. Language 79: 391-410. DeGratt: M. 2005. Linguists' most dangerous myth: The fallacy of Creole exceptionalism. Language i1J Society 34: 533-591. Gensler, 0. & Gil, D. (eds). To appear. Malay/Indonesian Linguistics. London: Curzon Press. Goedemans, R. & van Zanten, F. To appear. Stress and accent in Indonesian. In Malay/lndonesia,J Linguistics, 0. Gensler & D. Gil (eds), 35-62 London: Curzon Press. Good, J. 2004a. Split prosody and creole simplicity: The case of Saramaccan. Journal of Portuguese Linguistics 3: 11-30. Good, J. 2004b. Tone and accent in Saramaccan: Charting a deep split in the phonology of a language. Li1Jgua 114: 575-619. Good, J. 2006. A twice-mixed creole? TI:acing the history of a prosodic split in the Saramaccan lexicon. Ms, MPI EVA.

Gupta, A. F. 1992 The pragmatic particles of Singapore Colloquial English. Journal o_fPragmatics 18:31-57. Gussenhoven, C. 2004. The Phonology ofTone and Intonation. Cambridge: CUP. Gut, U. 2005. Nigerian English prosody. English World- WJde 26: 153-177. Hulst, H. van der & Smith, N. (eds). 1988. Autosegmental Studies on Pitch Accent. Dordrecht: Foris. Hyman, L. M. 200 la. Privative tone in Bantu. In Proceedings from the Symposium Cross-Linguistic Studies of Tonal Phenomena: Historical Development, Phonetics o_fTone, and Descripth!t! Studies, S. Kaji (ed.), 237-257. Tokyo: Tokyo University of Foreign Studies, Institute for Language and Cultures of Asia and Africa. Hyman, L. M. 200 lb. Tone systems. In Language Typology and Language Universals: An International Handbook, M. Haspelmath, F. Konig, W. Oesterreicher & W. Raible (eds), 1367-1380. Berlin: Walter de Grt!fter. Kirsner, R. S. & van Heuven, V. J. 1996. Boundary tones and the semantics of the Dutch final particles he, hoor, zeg, and joh. In Linguistics in the Netherlands 1996, C. Cremers & M. den Dikken (eds), 133-145. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Kouwenberg, S. 2004. The grammatical function of Papiamentu tone. Journal of Portuguese Linguistics 3: 55-69. Lahiri, A. & Fitzpatrick-Cole, J. 1999. Emphatic clitics and focus intonation in Bengali In Phrasal Phonology, W. Zonneveld & R. Kager (eds), 119-144. Nijmegen: Nijmegen University Press. Lim, L. 2001. Ethnic group varieties of Singapore English: Melody or harmony? In Bl•olving Identities: The English Language in Singapore and Malaysia, V. B. Y. Ooi (ed.), 53-68. Singapore: Times Academic Press. Lim, L. 2004a. Sounding Singaporean. In Singapore English: A Grammatical Description [Varieties of English Around the World G33], L. Lim (ed.), 19-56. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Lim, L. 2004b. Everything you wanted to know about how stressed Singaporean Englishes are. In Papers from the Eleve,Jth kmual Meeti1Jg of the Southeast Asian Li1'1guistics Society, S. Burusphat (ed.), 429-444. Tempe A'Z:. Program for Southeast Asian Studies, Arizona State University. Lim, L. 2007a. Mergers and acquisitions: On the ages and origins of Singapore English particles. World Englishe.s 26; 446-473. Lim, L. 2007b. Singapore English is a tone language meh55? SE particles and the hybrid prosody of a contact variety of English. English Language Research Seminar Series, Department of Linguistics and English Language, University of Edinburgh. 30 Nov 2007. Lim, L. 2008a. Dynamic linguistic ecologies of Asian Englishes. Asian Englishes 11: 52-55.

285

286

Usa Lim

Lim, L. 2008b. Revisiting English prosody: Sinitic tone in Singapore English. The Typology of Asian Englishes Workshop. First International Conference on the Linguistics of English (ISLE I). Freiburg, Germany, 4-6 October 2008. Lim, L. 2009a. Revisiting English prosody: (Some) New Englishes as tone languages? In The Typology of Asian Englishes, L Lim & N. Gisborne (eds). Special issue of English World-Wide 30: 218-239. Lim, L. 2009b. Beyond fear and loathing in SG: The real mother tongues and language policies in multilingual Singapore. In Multilingual, Globalising Asia: Implications for Policy and Education, L. Lim & E. L Low (eds ). Special issue of AILA Review 22: 52-71. Lim, L 2009c. Not just an 'Outer Circle~ ~ian' English: Singapore English and the significance of ecology. In World Englishes: Problems, Properties, Prospects [Variaties of English Around the World G40], T. Hofiinann & L. Siebers (eds), 179-205. Amsterdam: John Benjarnins. Lim, L. 2010a. Migrants and 'mother tongues': fu.:tralinguistic forces in the ecology of English in Singapore. In English mSingapore: Modernity and Management, L. Lim, A. Pakir & L. Wee (eds), 19-54. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press. Lim, L. 2010b. Peranakan English In Lesser Known Varieties of English, D. Schreier, P. Trudgill, E. W. Schneider & J. P. Williams (eds), 327-347. Cambridge: CUP. Lim, L & Foley, J. A. 2004. English in Singapore and Singapore English: Background and methodology. In Singapore English: A Grammatical Description [Varieties of English around the World G33], L. Lim (ed), 1-18. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Lim, L. & Tan, Y. Y. 200 1. How are we stressed?! Phonetic correlates and stress placement in Singaporean English. In Proceedings ofPTLC2001: Phonetics Teaching and Learning Conference 2001, J. A. Maidment & R Estebas i VIl.aplana (eds), 27-30. London: University College London. Lim, S. 1988. Baba Malay: The language of the 'Straits-born' Chinese. In Papers in Western Austronesian Linguistics No.3 [Pacific Linguistics Series A, No. 78], Hein Steinhauer (ed.). Canberra: Department of Linguistics, Research School of Pacific Studies, The Australian National University. Low, R L. 2000. Is lexical stress placement different in Singapore English and British English? In The Engiish Language mSingapore: Research on Pronunciation, A. Brown, D. Deterding & E. L Low (eds), 22-34. Singapore: Singapore Association of Applied Linguistics. Luke, K K. 2000. Phonological re-interpretation: The assignment of Cantonese tones to English words. Ninth International Conference on Chinese Linguistics, National University of Singapore, Singapore, June 2000. Luke, K K. 2008. Stress and intonation in Hong Kong English. Fourteenth Conference of the International Association for World Englishes (IAWE), Hong Kong, 1-5 December 2008. McWhorter, J. 2005. Defining Creole. Oxford: OUP. Matras, Y. 2000. How predictable is contact-induced change in grammar? In T11ne Depth mHistorical Linguistics, Vol. 2, C. Renfrew, A. McMahon & L. Trask (eds), 563-583. Oxford: The MacDonald Institute for Archaeological Research. Matthews, S. J. & Yip, V. 1994. Cantonese; A Comprehensive Grammar. London: Routledge. Mufwene, S. S. 2001. The Ecology of Language Evolution. Cambridge: CUP. Mufwene, S. S. 2008. Language Evolution: Contact, Competition and Change. London: Continuum. Nettle, D. 1998. Linguistic Diversity. Oxford: OUP. Ng, R-C. 2008. Malay meets Chinese meets English: Where does colloquial Singaporean English word-level tone come from? Language Contact workshop, Bristol, 11 July 2008. Ng, R-C. 2009. Borrowing tones: Word-level tone in Colloquial Singaporean English. The Society for Pidgin and Creole Languages (SPCL) conference, San Francisco, January 2009. Platt, J. 1975. The Singapore English speech continrnun and its basilect 'Singlish' as a 'Creoloid: AJJthropological Linguistics 17: 363-374. Platt, J. 1977. The sub-varieties of Singapore English: Their sociolectal and functional status. In The English Language mSingapore, W. J. Crewe (ed), 83-95. Singapore: Eastern Universities Press.

Tone in Singlish

Platt, J. 1987. Communicative functions of particles in Singapore English. In Language Topics: Essays in Honour of Michael Halliday, Voll, R. Steele & T. Threadgold (eds), 391-401. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Platt, J. & Weber, H. 1980. English in Singapore and Malaysia - Status, Features, Functions. Kuala Lwnpur: OUP. Rernijsen, B. 2001. Word Prosodic Systems of Raja Ampat Languages. Utrecht: LOT. Remijsen, B. & van Heuven, V. J. 2005. Stress, tone and discourse prominence in Cura~o Papiamentu. Ms, Leiden University. Rivera-Castillo, Y. & Pickering. L. 2004. Phonetic correlates of stress and tone in a mixed system. Journal ofPidgin and Creole Languages 19: 261-284. Siraj, P. 2008. Intonation in Singaporean English is stress dependent The 3rd conference on Tone and Intonation (TIE3), Lisbon. Soukka, M. 2000. A Descriptive Grammar of Noon: A Cangin Language of Senegal. Munich: Lincom. Svantesson, J.-0. 2001. Tonogenesis in South East Asia: Mon-Kinner and beyond. In Proceedings from the Symposium Cross-Linguistic Studies of Tonal Phenomena: Historical Development, Pho,Jetics of Tone, and Descriptive Studies, S. Kaji (ed.), 45-58. Tokyo: Tokyo University of Foreign Studies, Institute for Language and Cuhures of Asia and Africa. Tan, Y. Y. 2003. Acoustic and Perceptual Properties of Stress in the Ethnic Subvarieties of Singapore English. PhD dissertation, National University of Singapore. Tay, M. W. J. & Gupta, A F. 1983. Towards a description of Standard Singapore English. In Varieties of English in Southeast Asia, R. B. Noss (ed.). Singapore: Regional Language Centre (RELC). Thomason, S. G. & Kaufman, T. 1988. Language Contact, Creolization and Genetic Linguistics. Berkeley CA: University of California Press. Tongue, R. K. 1974. The English ofSingapore and Malaysia, 1st edn. Singapore: Eastern Universities Press. Wee, K. S. G. 2000. Intonation of the Babas: An Auditory and Instrwnental Approach. BA honours thesis, National University of Singapore. Wee, L. 2004. Reduplication and discourse particles. In Singapore English: A Grammatical Description [Varieties of English Around the World G33], L Lim (ed.), 105-126. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Wee, L. 2008a. More or less English? Two phonological patterns in the Englishes of Singapore and Hong Kong. World Englishes 27: 480-50 1. Wee, L. 2008b. Notes on SgE tone. Ms. Hong Kong Baptist University. Wong. J. 0. 1994. A Wierzbickan Approach to Singlish Particles. M A dissertation, National University of Singapore. Yip, M. 2002. Tone. Cambridge: CUP. Zhu, S. 2003. Intonation in Singapore English: An Auditory and Acoustic Analysis of Four Sentence 1fpes. PhD dissertation, National University of Singapore. Zhu, S. & Lim, L 2002. Intonation in Singapore English declaratives: An auditory and acoustic analysis. Thirteenth World Congress of Applied Linguistics (AILA 2002), Singapore, 16-21 December 2002

287

The Cantonese substrate in China Coast Pidgin Umberto Ansaldo, Stephen Matthews and Geoff Smith The University of Hong Kong

The "Chinese" character of Chinese Pidgin English, or China Coast Pidgin (CCP) has been debated in previous work. While some Chinese-based features such as the use ofpiece(e) as a classifier are widely acknowledged, the extent of substrate infiuence has remained unclear. This paper surveys the role of the Cantonese substrate based on a recently transcribed Chinese source, the Chinese English Instructor. Substrate infiuence is demonstrated in a wide range of grammatical domains including serial verbs, topic- comment structure, and placement of prepositional phrases. In certain domains such as placement of adverbs and in-situ wh-phrases, the Chinese source shows substrate influence which is rare or absent from the English language sources, a pattern which suggests systematic variation between Sinophone and Anglophone lects within CCP. Keywords: substrate influence, Cantonese, Chinese Pidgin English

o.

Introduction

China Coast Pidgin, also known as Chinese Pidgin English, has been called the "mother of all pidgins" for a number of reasons ( Li, Matthews & Smith 2005: 79 ). 1 In particular, it seems to have given the name "pidgin" to functionally restricted codes that arise in predominantly bilingual communities (Reinecke 1937). China Coast Pidgin (CCP) has also been associated with the expansion of English-lexifier pidgins in the Pacific (Tryon, Miihlhliusler & Baker 1996: 485). While typically stereotyped and ridiculed in the popular British imagination and literature, it functioned as a lingua franca in the communities of Western traders found in the ports of the China Coast (and some inland markets). Moreover, it was available in written sources for the purpose of transmission among the Chinese.

1. We have chosen to use China Coast Pidgin (CCP) rather than Chinese Pidgin English (CPE) because we prefer not to imply that CCP be seen as a variety of English, for reasons which will become clear in the paper.

290

Umberto Ansaldo, Stephen Matthews and Geoff Smith

1.

Contexts of formation

The seeds ofCCP were most likely sown in the early days of the Canton Trade in the mid-seventeenth century along the Pearl River Delta, particularly in two settings: the harbour ofWhampoa (H uangpu), which functioned as a sort of customs for the foreign merchandise, and the "factories" of Canton (Guangzhou), i.e. the places of residence of the commercial representative of Western trading companies (Bolton 2003: 156; Martino 2003:24; Van Dyke 2005). At the beginning of the nineteenth century, there would have been three main contexts of intercultural communication (Bolton 2003: 147-148): communication between Chinese and (1) East-India company traders; (2) country-traders; (3) Americans. At the beginning of the Canton Trade, Western merchants were completely controlled by Chinese authorities and had to comply with strict regulations or be expelled. Among other things, learning Chinese was forbidden and whoever was found teaching it could receive a death sentence. Since the late eighteenth century. however the role and function of the East-India Company in the region grew steadily, due to an expansion of trade and further recognition of its key role by the international community. The First Opium War (1839-1842), fought in order to force Chinese authorities to release the grip on their monopoly and open up the Opium Trade, saw Western forces emerging as victors who forced China to open a total of five treaty ports (Canton, Amoy, Fuchow, Shanghai and Ningpo), where the British were free to trade with any Chinese party. It also resulted in Hong Kong becoming part of the British Empire. With further concessions resulting from the second Opium war (1856-1860), CCP spread to other parts of China. This was helped by a series of booklets, written by Chinese in Chinese characters for the purpose of teaching and learning CCP. Among the many sources, two manuals are known to us today: (1) M4§;5!ffli1HI!i The Common language of the Red-haired Foreigners (henceforth Red-haired Glossary) published in Canton around 1835 and (2) ~~MIH:: The Chinese and English Instructor (henceforth Instructor) written by Tong King-sing around 1862 (see also Leland 1876; Selby & Selby 1995; Williams 1836). CCP was thus reportedly used not only in East-West encounters and within Western circles but also among Chinese of different linguistic backgrounds. We must therefore recognize a fourth group to the three mentioned above for the nineteenth century: Chinese traders, merchants and servants. In the twentieth century. CCP started declining, a fact that can be attributed to (a) the impact of English-medium instruction becoming available in missionary schools, (b) the dissolution of the Canton Trade from around 1830 as a result of the East India Company closing their activities there; (c) the Japanese occupation of Hong Kong and the new migrants that flowed into Hong Kong after WWII (see Baker & Miihlhausler 1990: 158).

2.

Previous scholarship

While grammatical features of CCP are discussed in detail in Sections 3 and 4, we briefly sketch here the general views expressed on CCP in the relevant literature so far. Typically, two somewhat divergent positions can be identified in relation to the origin of CCP grammar: (i) A substantial number of CCP features can be traced back to Chinese, especially Cantonese grammar (Bisang 1985; Selby & Selby 1995; Shi 1986, 1991) and (ii) CCP shows little Chinese influence, but some

The Cantonese substrate in China Coast Pidgin

clear influences from English can be found and otherwise "universals of pidginisation" can be detected (Baker & Miihlhausler 1990; Tryon, Miihlhausler & Baker 1996). As argued below, as well as in Li, Matthews and Smith (2005), both Chinese and English influence can be found, mostly due to the tact that two different genres of CCP can be identified: the Chinese genre, as in the Chinese-authors booklets, and anglophone CCP, as represented in the literature and possibly the speech used within Western circles. In addition, it has been noted that if pidginisation involves loss of morphology, then it becomes indistinguishable from the effect of feature transfer of isolating typology in the contact situation, in our case influence of Chinese grammar (Ansaldo 2007). Related to this is the issue of the genesis of CCP.

3·

Grammar

The "Chinese" character of CCP has been noted in previous work. Speaking of the Instructor, for example, Selby and Selby observe that "Much of the syntactic structure of Pidgin follows that of Cantonese" (Selby & Selby 1995:128). However, some of the more specific claims which have been put forward have proved to be controversiaL Shi (1986, 1991) attributed several features of CCP to structural influence from Cantonese, which is assumed to be the mother tongue of most nonEuropean users of the pidgin. The features discussed by Shi include topic-comment structure, the use of piece(e) as a classifier, the interrogative pronoun what fashion meaning 'how?' (Cantonese dfm yeuhng), compounds with 'man as in ta.ilorma.n and the distribution of belong as copula, which (as in Chinese) is not used before predicative adjectives. Baker and Mtihlhausler (1990) call a number of these teatures into question. In some cases their argument is based on the occurrence of parallel features in other pidgins. For example, Tok Pisin has compounds with -man which are comparable to CCP tailorman, etc. They nevertheless acknowledge that some expressions appear to be calqued on Cantonese. In particular, the use of piece(e) as a classifier between the demonstrative and the noun is distinctively Chinese.

3.1

Words and sounds

CCP words are derived mostly from English, with some Portuguese, Malay, Hindi and, as would be expected, Cantonese influences. Some examples are given below (from Martino 2003): pidgin < business (E.); catchee < ca.tch 'tetch' (E.); two muchy < too much 'extremely' (E.); Joss< Deus (P. 'God'); sabbee <saber (P. 'to know'); chop< chapa (M. 'chop'); well-known Cantonese words are: taipan (C. 'supercargO, lit 'big class');fankuei (C. 'Westerner, lit 'foreign devil'). Words of clear Portuguese origin are less common than one would expect considering the potential influence that Macao could have had in the early days of the Canton Trade: Bolton (2003:286) identifies 20 to 22 Portuguese words out of 372 in the Red-haired Glossary. This suggests a rather limited influence ofMacanese on CCP (Ansaldo 2009). It is difficult to present a definitive account of the phonology of CCP for a number of reasons. In the English sources, sounds are likely to have been heavily anglicised, while in the Chinese sources, there are a number of other problems: (i) Different dialectal readings of the characters

291

292


yield different sounds; in some cases, it is clear that a character was not used in the Cantonese but rather in the Mandarin reading (Shi 1991) and (ii) The transcription system makes it difficult to know what the actual pronunciation ofwords was, as the Chinese characters in the texts may have served to provide an approximation of the sound. The actual local pronunciation of the characters may well have become the target by users of the booklets, but that is difficult to establish. One of the most robust features was replacement of [r] by [l); the former does not exist in Cantonese and is thus replaced by the only non-nasal sonorant of Cantonese (Shi 1991: 14): 'rice' >'lice'. Another wide-spread feature is deletion of final consonants, again a clear influence of Cantonese phonology where syllable final consonants are restricted to nasals and unreleased stops. Baker and Miihlhausler (1990) find no significant influence of Cantonese in the vowel system, but heavy restructuring of syllable structure due to influence of Cantonese so that CCV > CVCV - e.g., 'stop'> 'sitap' (Bolton 2003: 162). z Nouns and NPs

3.2

The structure of the NP reveals variation between Sinitic and non-Sinitic constituent order, as well as typical Sinitic features such as the use of the classifier pisi (or piecee). (1)

Sixty pisi head

CCP

60 CL head 'Sixty heads'

(Shi 1991:20)

The patterns [NUM-CL-N] and [DEM-CL-N] are typically Sinitic: (2)

Yat go yahn.

Ni

go yahn

1 CL man 'One marl

DEM

CL

CANTONESE

man

'This marl

This pattern is very frequent in CCP. One other item, chop, appears to be used as a classifier in the [DEM-CL-N] position in the Instructor:-3 (3)

1hisee chop tea what name4

CCP

tea what name 'What is the name of this tea?'

DEM

cL

Considering the methodological difficulties in analysing Romanisation, as well as the inherent variability to be expected in phonology, we do not intend to discuss phonology of CCP in detail here, in particular because it is too early at this stage to have comparable data from The Instructor in terms of phonology. 2.

3· The examples from the Instructor are transcribed as in :U. Matthews and Smith (2005). The English translations follow those given in the original phrase book (Tong 1862). 4· Reconstructed pronundation following nineteenth century English sources (see :U. Matthews & Smith 2005 ). The data are here presented according to the original transcriptions with, at times, minor modifications for ease of reading. Translations also follow the original text.


The fact that a single classifier accounts for the vast majority of cases implies "reduction" of the classifier system of Cantonese. However, it is also true that while many more classifiers are technically available in the language, in discourse, there is an overwhelmingly frequent one of generic use (go in Cantonese, ge in Mandarin), which can substitute for the more specialised classifiers. This applies to other Sinitic languages as well (Erbaugh & Yang 2006), but it is clear that CCP takes the tendency a step further by reducing the system to virtually one classifier which is not necessarily obligatory (see (19)). The pronouns of CCP have attracted some attention in the literature. In particular, besides what appear to be regular English forms, Baker and Mi.ihlhausler (1990: 104) and Tryon, Mi.ihlhausler and Baker (1996:488) note that, in a first phase, three first person singular forms were found, I, my and me. All three of them could be found in subject position, while my and me were used in object position. Eventually, only my emerged in both functions. This could be taken as evidence of stabilisation in the grammatical system of CCP. Smith (2008) shows that while second and third person forms were almost invariant in the Instructor, there was considerable variation in first person forms, with some differentiation of subject and object forms. The emergence of my as the canonical first person form is somewhat surprising considering the almost universal adoption of mi in pidgins and creoles worldwide. Baker and Mi.ihlhausler (1990) note that this took place rather rapidly only after the 1830s, before which I and me were normally encountered. They hypothesise that the change was brought about by the introduction of written instructional materials and, while the timing strongly suggests this, hard evidence is difficult to pin down. It is possible that the character*· which is pronounced maih in Cantonese, was entered in the booklets by someone with the Mandarin pronunciation (mi) in mind. Another confusing factor is the superficial similarity in appearance between the character 7K: and (mi in nineteenth century Cantonese), which could have been confused during the printing process. Compounding is frequently found in CCP, particularly in reference to people and functions. A compound with thetorm ma.n ('mati, calqued on Cantonese yahn) is found: ba ba ma.n 'barber'; se lei man 'sailor'; gu.k ma.n 'cook' (Martino 2003: 86). Other compounds of the type Modifier-N can also occur- e.g., Joss pidgin 'religion' (lit God business); Joss hou.se 'temple'. Another calque of a Cantonese word is found in the term 'fashioU: rendered as fasi (Cantonese yeu.hng 'mannei, as in dfm yeuhng 'what manner' or 'hoW. Shi 1986) - e.g., wat fa si 'what fashion or what way'; niu fasi 'new fashion or new way' (Martino 2003: 87). In the Instructor, how fashion (4) is used in a way parallel to dfm yeuhng (5) in Cantonese:

*

(4)

(5)

My sawy how fashion do. 1s know how fashion do 'I will know how to act'

Ng6h jl

dim yeuhng jouh.

ls know how fashion do 'I know how to do (it):

CCP

(Instructor IV.33) CANTONESE

293

294


3·3

Copulas, zeros and existence

Baker and Mtihlhausler (1990) report at least two different types of copula: (a) have, as in (6), usually realised as hap, as in (7) - this can also be used as a possessive verb as well as an aspectual marker-; and (b) belong, as in (8). According to Baker and Mtihlhausler (1990: 103), belong took over as a copula while the aspectual usage of have increased. Eventually, hap and habgot were used in possessive constructions. (6)

Chinese man very great rogue truly but have fashion no

can help.

CANTONESE

Chinese man very great rogue truly but have fashion NEG can help 'Ch.lnese men are real rogues but that's how it is, can't help it' (Anson 1748 in Baker & Mtihlhiiusler 1990: 103) (7) My hap go court one time. 1s have go court 1 time 'I have been to court once.' (8)

CCP

(Instructor IVA)

You belong honest man.

CCP

2s COP honest man 'You are a honest man.'

(Selby & Selby 1997: 136)

Note that copula constructions are rare as more often than not CCP is zero-copula, like Sinitic languages in general, as in (9) (this was already noted in Hall1944): (9)

Englishman very good talkee all heart bad no

talkee true too mucha proudy

ccP

Englishman very good talk all heart bad NEG talk true too much proud 'Englishmen speak well but are insincere, lie and are proud.' (Selby & Selby 1995: 138)

It should be borne in mind that existential verbs in Sinitic can also be used to mark aspect and as emphatic markers. Here, the parallel with CCP is clear as hab is first and foremost an existential verb. The verb got is likewise used in existential phrases (10), just like the Cantonese verb yau.h (11), which indicates location, possession and existence (Matthews & Yip 1994): (10)

You got how muchee piece children. 2s have how much cL children 'How many children have you?'

go salmanjai? (11) Leih yauh gel do you have how many cL children 'How many children do you have?'

CCP

(b1structor IV.55) CANTONESE

It may also be the case that hab (or hap) as an emphatic marker could be mistaken for a copula. In example (6) above the second phrase but have fashion, no can help is difficult to interpret, because fashion can mean many things in CCP and is difficult to translate. For example, in the following: so fashion you buy some beefoo 'well, you better buy some beef' (Instructor VI.26), the item fashion clearly has no literal meaning, as is often the case in CCP, but is calqued on gam yeuhng'so, in that case'. Therefore, the phrase but ha1'e fashion in the example above could just mean 'well~ and not indicate a copula at all. In the Instructor, all occurrences of hap, many of which occur together with got, follow the Sinitic existential pattern 'there is' and are thus not clear-cut copulas. The


same was found already in Hall's data (1944) and strongly suggests that CCP is predominantly zero copula. As far as belong is concerned, it is worth noting that in most occurrences in the Instructor, it is either used in its lexical function, 'to belong td, or as a possessive marker. The example above can either be read as 'you are an honest man' or 'you belong to the honest ones'. This is similar to pidgin Malay varieties where punja- or related forms such as pun, pe- 'to possess' is used as a possessive marker as well as for attributive predication and as a relative marker (Adelaar & Prentice 1996). In examples (12) to (14), we see that similar usages are possible in CCP. This could either be an independent development or an influence of Bazaar Malay into CCP (it is not attested in Macanese).5 (12)

These belong you? these POSS you 'Is this yours?'

(13)

CCP

(b1structor IV. 53)

The tea belong first crop.

CCP

tea POSS first crop 'This is first crop tea'

(Instructor VI.14)

ART

(14)

This belong

~v

plum cashee.

CCP

ls plum money 'That is what I paid for it'

(Instructor Vl.3)

DBM COP

Be that as it may, it is unclear to what extent belong really represents a copula or whether a sentence with belong can be read as attributing a relation between two phrases (Shi 1991:24). In terms of negation, no (sometimes realised as lo) or no got are used in CCP; the negative existential which is typical of Sinitic is also found in CCP ( 16):

no got houso. (15) Missy(ter) _ Mr NBG be house 'Mister X is not at home.' (16)

No got suchee thing. be such thing 'There is no such thing:

CCP

(Instructor Vl.38) CCP

NEG

3·4

(Instructor IV. 51)

Verbs and VP

Another reason to be cautious about the status of the copula in CCP is the fact that adjectival and adverbial phrases behave predicatively, like property verbs, a feature that usually correlates typologically with zero-copula, and which is typical of Sinitic- e.g., Ieih h6u faai, [you very fast] 'you are (very) fa sf- and attested frequently in the Instructor:

5· This would suggest that a Portuguese Pidgin was not a necessary precursor of CCP considering the availability of Bazaar Malay in the ecology of the region.

295

296


(17)

Court e:~.pe11se too muchee. court expense too much 'The court fees are very heavy.'

(18) My too muchee trouble. 1s too much trouble

'I was very much bothered' (19)

1hisee wine gtassee no dean. wine glass NEG dean 'This wine glass Is not dean.'

CCP

(b1structor IV.32) CCP

(Instructor IV.32) CCP

this

(b1structor IV.32)

An area of variation in which we find a difference between the English sources and the Instructor is adverbial modification. Selby and Selby (1995) note that time and place adverbs follow English syntax, but the Instructor offers many examples of preverbal adverbs, as in (20) and (21), in line with Cantonese syntax, as inNg6h deih tfng yaht ban, [we tomorrow move] 'we move tomorrow' (see Matthews & Yip 1994: 187): (20)

(21)

We tomorrow make move. 1PL tomorrow make move 'We move tomorrow? He every day tipsy. 3s every day tipsy 'He gets drunk every day.'

CCP

(b1structor IV.49) CCP

(Instructor IV.55)

From a typological point of view, one of the clearest Sinitic features is the preverbal prepositional phrase, as can be seen in the patterns found in (22) to (25) with long: (22) My no long you buy any more. 1s Nl!G PREP 2s buy any more

'I won't have anymore to do with you? (23)

You can (a)long my catchee one piece good boy. can PREP 1s get 1 cL good boy 'You can get me a good boy.'

CCP

(Instructor Vl.26) CCP

2s

(24) My long he borrow. 1s PREP 3s borrow 'I borrowed from him.' (25)

My long you take alia. 1S PREP 3s take all 'I will buy the whole from yoU:

(Instructor VI.51) CCP

(lnstr uctor IV. 57) CCP

(Instructor VI.8)

It can be seen that the preposition lmtg, derived from English 'along (with)~ behaves like Cantonese tUhng 'with: since it covers the same three functions of comitative (26), benefactive (27) and ablative (28), as in:6

6. There are intriguing similarities between CCP and Tok Pisin long (Smith 2002) which could result from either historical relationship or common grammaticalisation paths.


(26)

Keuih tuhng yat go pah11gyauh g6ng. S/he with one cL friend 'He's talking with a friend.'

(27)

Ng6h tUhng leih 16

CANTONESE

talk

yat go.

CANTONESE

I with you take one cL 'I'll get one for you: (28)

Ng6h

tUh,~g

lf.ih maaih yen.

CANTONESE

I with you buy things 'I buy things from you:

With regard to the structure [PP-V-NP], it should be borne in mind that this is typologically rare, as described in Dryer (2003), which leaves little doubt as to the Sinitic origins of this feature in CCP. It can be seen that Cantonese does indeed allow for variation between preverbal and postverbal prepositional phrases, though the latter is a minority pattern, as noted in Kwan (2005): (29)

Ng6h hdi Gauluhng g6bihn jyuh. at Kowloon that-side live

CANTONESE

Ng6h jyuh hdi Gduluhng g6bihn. I live at Kowloon that-side 'I live in Kowloon:

Note the item g6bihn 'there' following a location in (29). This is calqued in CCP with side- e.g., come Sydney side '(she) comes from Sydney; bring that egg come thisee side 'bring the eggs here' -, a very common feature of CCP and indeed the use of side in this way is still commonly heard in Hong Kong English. Serial verb constructions are frequent in CCP and follow a number of patterns (Escure 2009). A well-known example is look see (from Cantonese tai gin, look-see= 'look'): (30)

My wantchee look see counta. 1s want look see account 'I want to check the accounts:

(31)

You look see dog no bitee you. look see dog NEG bite 2s 'Do.tft let the dog bite yoU:

CCP

(instructor VI.6l) CCP

2s

(Instructor VI.58)

Escure (2009) also notes the frequency of directional serial verbs, as in (32) and (33), based in particular on go and come. SVCs can denote single as well as multiple events in CCP: (32)

(33)

Bring come here.

CCP

bring come here 'Bring it here:

(Instructor I VA3)

Catchee one piece man go.

CCP

get 1 cL man go 'Engage a man to go:

(Instructor IV.66)

297

298


Directional serial verbs are also a feature of Sinitic languages; compare (34) with the Cantonese counterpart (35): (34)

What time you sendee tea come? what time 2s send tea come 'When are you going to send the tea?'

(35) Uih geisih su11g chah laih? You when send tea come 'When will you send the tea?'

CCP

(Instructor VI.16) CANTONESE

There seems to be only one tense/aspect marker in CCP, the perfective marker hap (or hab), as in: (36)

(37)

My hab sick.

CCP

1s have sick 'I am/got sick.'

(Shi 1991:23)

Coolie hap shutee alla wb1dow?

CCP

coolie have shut all window 'Has the coolie shut all windows?'

(Instructor VI.53)

In interrogatives such as (38), Cantonese uses the existential verb yauh 'have' for this function: (38)

Yduh m6uh

saan saai cheung a?

have not.have dose all window 'Have you dosed all the windows?'

CANTONESE

SFP

In CCP, alla can be used as a resumptive quantifier following a Noun Phrase, as in (39) to (41), just like the equivalent Cantonese dou (42) which replicates (41): (39)

(40)

Green tea black tea alla hap got.

CCP

green tea black tea all have got 'I have both green and black tea.'

(Instructor VI.13)

You houso alla man velly well? 2s house all man very well 'Is your family all well?'

(41)

(42)

TWo man alla same. two man all same 'We are both alike.' Leuhng go yahn

CCP

(Instructor VI.76) CCP

(Instructor VI.77) dou yat yeuhng.

two cL person all 'They are both the same:

CANTONESE

one same

Note also the use of houso 'house' in (40) to indicate family, which is identical to the Cantonese word ga 'house/family'.


3·5

Wh-interrogatives

In terms of interrogative phrases, there is some variation between WH in situ (43) and WH movement (44). In alternative pidgin renderings in different dialogues, the same wh-phrase appears variably in situ or fronted: (43)

You wantchee how muchee? 2s want how much 'How much do you want?'

(44)

How muchee more you wantchee? how much more 2s want 'What more do you want?'

CCP

(Instructor IV. 54) CCP

(b1structor IV. 54)

In the Instructor, 21% of tokens of how muchee are fronted and 79% in situ. While English-language sources typically show wh-phrases fronted as in English, the Instructor data show frequent use ofwh-in situ (45) following Chinese syntax (46): (45)

1hisee justee now sellum what pricee this just now sell what price 'What is the current price?'

(46) Ni go ylhga gel do chl11? This cL now how much money 'How much is this now?

3.6

CCP

(Instructor VI.7) CANTONESE

Topic-comment and discourse structure

Finally, a note on CCP discourse structure, which is clearly topic-comment in many of the Instructor entries. In the examples below, the topic (in brackets) is the part that is being spoken of in the comment: (47)

(48)

[Good cargo] how can sellum cheap? [good cargo] how can sell cheap 'How can good things sell cheap?'

[thatpricee] he no sellum. [that price] 2s NEG sell 'He won't sell at that price?

CCP

Instructor VI.ll) CCP

(Instructor IV.77)

As in Chinese, two kinds of topic can be distinguished: Some are understood as the object of the verb, like good cargo in (47); others are more loosely related to the predicate, like that pricee in (48).

299

300


4·

Conclusions

From the brief historical discussion and the data presented above, we can address some of the interpretations that have been offered about the formation of CCP. Considering the structural parallels shown between Cantonese and CCP, it is safe to say that the CCP of The Instructor exhibits substantial Cantonese influence. The grammar ofCCP can thus be accounted for first and foremost in terms of syntactic and semantic feature transfer from Cantonese. Since Cantonese is the dominant language, we can also explain why CCP is mostly isolating in morphology, without necessarily involving simplification as a cognitive strategy. For example, zero-copula patterns are not a result of faulty reproduction of English patterns, but rather an expression of Sinitic feature transfer. The existence of Chinese Pidgin English data that show less Cantonese influence leads us to suggest that there were two, related registers of CCP: a European and a Chinese register, probably reflecting the influence of the dominant languages of its users. This is consistent with the idea of an "expanded phase" in Hall (1944: 95) and Baker and Miihlhausler (1990: 112), that is a development from an initial pidgin used mostly within the context of the Canton trade to an expanded variety widely used among Chinese. Independently of the features of the early pidgin, the existence of the chapbooks and the spread of CCP among Chinese around the mid-nineteenth century obviously resulted in significant influence of Sinitic grammar, vocabulary and pronunciation as shown in the Instructor.

List of abbreviations 1PL

1s 2s 3s CL

first person plural pronoun first person singular pronoun second person singular pronoun third person singular pronoun classifier

COP DBM Nl!G

POSS PRI!P

copula demonstrative negative possessive preposition

References Adelaar, A. & Prentice, D. J. 1996. Malay: Its history, role and spread. In Atlas of Languages of Intercultural Communication in the Pacific, Asia and the Americas, S. A. Wunn, P. Miihlha.user & D. 'fryon (eds), 673-693. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Anon. -1835. M.'Biiffl1Ui5 (hUhng mouh tUng yuhng f3.an wah). The Common La'JgUage of the Red-haired Foreigners. GuangzhotL Ansaldo, U. 2007. Review of John McWhorter 200 5 'Defining creole: Journal ofPidgin and Creole Languages 22(1 ): 170-176. Ansaldo, U. 2009. Contact Languages. Ecology and Evolution in Asia. Cambridge: CUP. Anson, G. 1748. A voyage arowul the world: in the years MDCCXL, I, II, Ill, IV. Dublin: G. and A Ewing. Baker, P. & Miihlha.usler, P. 1990. From business to pidgin. Journal ofAsian Pacific Communication 1(1): 87-115. Bisang, W. 1985. Das chinesische Pidgin-Englisch. Ziirich: Universitiit Ziirich. Bolton, K. 2003. Chi1rese Englishes: A Socioli1Jguistic History. Cambridge: CUP.


Dryer, M. S. 2003. Word order in Sino-Tibetan languages from a typological and geographical perspective. In SinoTibetan Languages, G. Thurgood & R. LaPolla (eds), 44-55. Richmond: Curzon Press. Erbaugh, M. & Yang, B. 2006. Two general classifiers in the Shanghai Wu dialect: A comparison with Mandarin and Cantonese. Cahiers de Linguistique Asie Orientale 35(2): 169-207. Escure, G. 2009. Is serialization simple? Evidence from Chinese Pidgin English. In Simplification bJ Pidgins and Creoles, T. Klein &N. Faraclas (eds.), 109-123. London: Battlebridge. Hall, R. A J. 1944. Chinese Pidgin English grammar and texts. journal of the American Oriental Society 64: 95113.

Kwan, W. M. S. 2005. On the word order oflocative prepositional phrases in Cantonese: Processing, iconicity and grammar. M. Phil, University of Hong Kong. Leland, C. 1876. Pidgin English sing-song. London: Kegan Paul. Li, M., Matthews, S. & Smith, G. P. 2005. Pidgin English texts from the Chinese Instructor. Hong Kong Journal of Applied Linguistics 10(1): 79-168. Martino, E. 2003. Chinese Pidgin English. Genesis and et•olution ('Chinese pidgin English Genesi ed evoluzione'). Tesi di Laurea, La Sapienza, Universiti di Roma. Matthews, S. & Yip, V. 1994. Canto,rese; A Comprehensive Grammar. London: Routledge. Reineclre, J. E. 193 7. Marginal Languages: A Sociological Survey of the Creole Languages and 'frade Jargons. PhD dissertation, Yale University. Selby, S. & Selby, A. 1995. China Coast Pidgin English journal of the Ho'Jg Ktmg BrmJch of the Royal Asiatic Society 35: 113-141. Shi, D. X 1986. Chinese Pidgin English: Its Origin and Linguistic Features. MA thesis, University of Pittsburgh. Shi, D. X 1991. Chinese Pidgin English: Its Origin and Linguistic Features. journal of Chinese Linguistics 19(1 ): 1-40. Smith, G. P. 2002 Growb~g up with Tok Pisin: Contact, Creolizatio,J, and Chm~ge i1J Papua New Guwa's National LmJgUage. London: Battlebridge. Smith, G. P. 2008. Chinese Pidgin English Pronouns Revisited. Hong Kong journal of Applied L»Jguistics 11(1): 63-76. Tong, K.-s. 1862. The Chinese and English Instructor. GuangzhoLL Tryon, D., Miihlhii.usler, P. & Baker, P. 1996. English-derived contact languages in the Pacific in the 19th century (excluding Australia). In Atlas of Languages ofbJtercultural Commu,Jication in the Pacific, Asia and the Americas, S. A. Wurm, P. Miihlhiiusler & D. Tryon (eds), 471-495. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Van Dyke, P. A. 2005. The Canton 1rade: L~fe and Enterprise on the China Coast, 1700-1845. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press. Williams, S. W. 1836. Jargon spoken at Canton. Chinese Repository 4: 428-435.

301

Substrate influences in Mindanao Chabacano* Anthony P. Grant Edge Hill University

Mindanao Chabacano (henceforth MC), a duster of varieties of Philippine Creole Spanish with almost 600,000 speakers recorded in the 2000 Philippines census, is rather unusual among creole languages because it has been in constant contact both with its chieflexifier Spanish, and with the languages which most strongly shaped it typologically, the Central Philippine languages, for most of the 300 or so years it is generally assumed to have existed. In this paper, I look at some substrate influences on MC, especially on the more widely spoken variety Zamboanguefto (hereafter Zam). I also ask what is meant by "substrate" and "superstrate~ what the potential substrate languages ofMC have been, and what it means for a creole language to be in contact with some of its component languages since its inception. M the history of MC raises questions about what can be regarded as a substrate, I explore the known and surmised history of the creole too. Keywords: Zamboanguefto, Cotabatefto, substrate, superstrate, adstrate, Tagalog, Samalan, Bisayan. Hiligaynon. Cebuano, Tausug, Hokkien

1.

Philippine Creole Spanish and MC

Philippine Creole Spanish (or PCS) is itself-a cover term for two groups ofSpanish-lexifier creoles which are used in two main areas in the Philippines. Use of this term should not be taken as prima facie evidence that these groups of creoles have a common origin or that PCS is a tamily of languages. Varieties of Philippine Creole Spanish are generally referred to as Chabacano (Chabakano, Chavacano), literally "uncouth". These creoles are supposed by many (e.g., Whinnom 1956) to have evolved from the interaction of speakers of Spanish with a Portuguese-lexifier creole used by Catholic refugees from the Moluccan (Maluku) island ofTernate in 1655, who fled to Manila Bay. Subsequently, the creoles came into contact with Tagalog and, in the case of Mindanao creoles, also with Bisayan varieties such as Hiligaynon and other Philippine languages, absorbing many features from Philippine languages. They form two groups. The first group of creoles is situated on Luzon and specifically in Manila (one such was formerly used in the old suburbs of Ermita and lntramuros) and its I wish to thank Aireen Barrios, Angela Bartens, Mauro Fernandez, John Green, Claire Lefebvre, Paz B. Naylor, Jeff Siegel Eeva Sippola, Patrick Steinkriiger, Ida Wagner, and R David Zorc for information in and comments on this paper, and Dr Naylor for Hiligaynon data.

304

Anthony P. Grant

outskirts (the towns of Cavite and Ternate), where these varieties, Cavite:fio, Ermite:fio (now extinct) and Ternate:fio, are or were spoken. They are usually called the Manila Bay Creoles. However, Ternate:fio contains numerous lexical and other features not found elsewhere on Manila Bay or even in MC.1 The second group of creoles is found in southern and western Mindanao. especially Zamboanga City and much of Zamboanga del Sur, but to a lesser extent in Cotabato City and in Davao City. These varieties - Zamboangue:fio, Cotabate:fio and Davaue:fio respectively - may be described as MC. They share a great deal of material - certainly the first two varieties - and appear to descend from a single creole.2 Given that Zamboanga City was the earliest of these settlements with a creolophone population (from 1719, with the establishment of a permanent garrison), that creole is likely to have originated in or around Zamboanga City. The only Philippine languages spoken in Zamboanga in 1719 were Tausug, Sinama and Yakan. Hiligaynon and Cebuano speakers arrived there as communities over a century later, though Cebuano is now a widespread lingua franca in the region. Zamboangue:fio, henceforth Zam, is the most widely-spoken and deeply studied PCS variety and has numerous speakers on Basilan Island and elsewhere in the region (Frake 1971). Among them, over 290,000 are native speakers and perhaps as many are L2 speakers, whose first languages are Tausug, Samalan languages, Hokkien- among people whose roots go back a long time in the area- as well as Cebuano and Tagalog- among people who have relocated to the area more recently (in the case of Tagalog speakers, often as a response to heightened military and security concerns in an area disfigured by terrorism). Zam is also spoken in Kampong Air (Malay: Water Village'), a village in the Semporna region ofSabah, Malaysia. Davaue:fio is little studied and the number of its speakers in Davao is unknown, though probably few. On the other hand, there is a certain amount of documentation on the endangered language Cotabate:fio. preeminently in Riego de Dios (1989), a lexical and grammatical work by a native speaker of that variety. The work also contains plentiful lexical material, with phonemic transcriptions for each word, from Zam, Ternate:fio and Cavite:fio, from fieldwork conducted by the author. In decreasing order of quantity, the major lexical components of MC are Spanish, Bisayan languages (especially Hiligaynon),3 Tagalog, and Philippine English. The influence of Bisayan languages and Tagalog on MC has been profound and stretches well beyond mere acculturational lexical borrowing. It has provided the creole with un-Spanish features such as more consistent

1.

These include the use of yeismo, in which the earlier Spanish sound elle, the voiced palatal lateral continuant,

is realised as /j/ - a sound-change which other forms of creole Spanish spo.lren on Manila Bay do not exhibit - and

the presence of a few dozen words of Moluccan Malay, Portuguese and Bahasa Ternate origin (a non-Austronesian Trans New Guinea Phylum language) in the lexicon. Tirona (1923) dtes many ofthe selfsame words of these disparate origins which Molony lists. The creole spea.lrers in the town ofTernate are supposed to descend from Mdrdikas (literally 'freemen', a name of ultimately Sanskrit origin for Christians from the Moluccas who immigrated from Ternate in the 1680s); this is discussed in depth in Frake (1971). We need not assume that the origin of creolephone people in Cavite is similar to that of creolophone people in Ternate. 2.

.N. will be seen, their historical relationship to one another is not quite clear.

3· The Visayas are home to the V!Sayan (or Bisayan) languages, named for the Indian kings Vy"aya.

Substrate influences in Mindanao Chabacano

VSO marking, a distinction between personal and other nouns, three semantically defined negators (one of them of Philippine origin), and general zero-marking of copulas. Appendix 1 provides a table of common MC structural features (inspired by the features presented in Smith 1999) with indications of origins. In Appendix 2, the sources of major features in MC as a whole are presented by linguistic stratum. Appendix 3 gives information on approximate periods of contact which speakers ofMC had with relevant languages. Lexical influence from Philippine languages is manifest. About 15% of the items on the Swadesh lists and the 200-item Hudson-Blust list used for classifying Austronesian languages are of non-Spanish but Philippine origin. The lexical influence ofTausug (an important local lingua franca), Samalan languages (including Sinama, the original language of the Zamboanga area) and Hokkien Chinese on MC may also be mentioned. 4 Many people in rural parts of the provinces of Zamboanga del Sur and Zamboanga del Norte who know Zam are L2 speakers of Zam whose L1 is one of the varieties of Subanun, which did not influence Zam. MC in general also contains a number of important lexical and structural elements found in creoles such as Cavitei'io, but not modern Philippine Spanish. Tausug, Tagalog and the Bisayan languages are all classified genetically as Central Philippine languages, together with languages such as Bikol which have not played a part in the formation of these creoles. The small Subanun family is regarded by Blust (1991) as part of his Greater Central Philippine hypothesis (a group which includes the Central Philip pine languages), but he does not see it as part of Central Philippine as more narrowly defined. Samalan languages such as Sinama (the original language of Zamboanga City) and Yak.an (widely spoken in the Tawitawi area) are seen by Blust as members of the Sarna-Bajaw family, a member of the Western Malaya- Polynesian linguistic anti-group, 5 just as Greater Central Philippine is. These are not among the languages of the Greater Central Philippine Hypothesis as formulated by Blust The MC variety of Cotabato City or Cotabatefio -which, according to the historical account in Riego de Dios (1989), may have a partially independent history from that ofZam with which it later converged - also contains some lexical items from indigenous Mindanao languages of the Cotabato area. The words in Cotabatefio of local origin are said by Riego de Dios to come from Tiruray and Magindanaw, the first being a Bille language spoken by animists, while the second is a Danaw language spoken by Muslims (see Blust 1991). Riego de Dios suggests they entered Cotabatefio from the original languages of ransomed children. In 1872, the Tamontakareduction just outside Cotabato City was established by Jesuits who ransomed Tiruray and Magindanaw children from Tausug slave markets, put them in sexually segregated dormitories and raised them 4· Tausug, which itself borrowed heavily from Samalan languages when its speakers moved westwards, has provided Chabacano with vocabulary dealing with Islam, much of which is itselftaken from Brunei Malay- and much of that ultimately from Arabic. Hokkien has provided a small number of words - of which sen 'money' is the most notable - while Samalan languages have furnished a few terms such as munduhin 'pirate: Samalan languages are the source of the name Zamboanga itself, sambwanggan meaning 'landing-stage' or 1etty' in Sinama (Reid 1971). Some lexical influence has gone in the other direction. Tausug and Sinama,languages which normally look to Malay rather than Spanish for additional vocabulary, do contain a few loans from Zam, such as tyangge 'market An anti-group or paraphyletic taxon is a group of languages historically related to one another at a higher level, but lacking any evidence of shared innovations which demonstrate that they shared a period of joint development This is the case with 'Western Malayo-Polynesiarf, for instance (Blust 1992).

5-

305

306

Anthony P. Grant

as Catholics. Riego de Dios claims the children developed a rudimentary (and undocumented) Magindanaw-Spanish pidgin. In 1882, when a cholera epidemic affected the area, 148 children were living there, many of whom had been relocated from Zamboanga City because of the epidemic. These children brought their creole with them and this affected the speech of the ex- slaves. Riego de Dios took Cotabate:iio (her Ll) to have linguistic developed from that interaction. The reduction at Tamontaka closed in 1899. The two creoles are certainly very similar. This argues for a development of Zam from before the late nineteenth century since, if a form of Zamboangue:iio influenced the speech used by children at Cotabato, it must have had a similar structure to that of modern Cotabate:iio. Cotabate:iio speakers were always a minority in their own city, more so nowadays, as theirs is an endangered language.

2.

The origins of Mindanao Chabacano varieties: Endogenous or otherwise?

The origin of Zam (and of Cotabate:iio) is naturally relevant if we consider substrate influences. Two major schools of thought exist on its origins. The first theory, outlined for example in Frak.e (1971), states that Zam derives from the interaction of a number of language varieties- Spanish, probably including restructured Spanish, Manila Bay Creoles, Tagalog and Hiligaynon- brought to Zamboanga during the building and reestablishment there of Fort Pilar in the seventeenth or early eighteenth centuries, specifically the periods around 1635, when the fort was first established, and 1718-1719, when it was rebuilt after its destruction by the Tausugs. The factor of the Hiligaynon- speaking city of Iloilo serving as an important way station on the journey from Cavite to Mindanao, including its role in serving as a source of locally born (or at least Philippine) Catholic wives for the members of the Catholic garrison from Manila Bay on its way to a non-Catholic area (Frak.e 1971) is important in this theory. This is because it accounts for many Philippine-style features of Zam if it arose in households where both restructured or creole forms of Spanish and Hiligaynon were available as home languages for acquisition by children and where a bisayanised form of creole Spanish could have emerged as the basis for modern Zam. The second theory asserts that Zam is of much more recent origin, maybe dating only from the late nineteenth century - betore which a less heavily restructured form of Spanish was in everyday use in Zamboanga City-, and that it arose then not from a pidgin but as the result of the dynamic interaction between Spanish, Bisayan languages and latterly Tagalog (Lipski 1992; Fernandez 2004). The American Hispanist John Lipski's published work on Zam (Lipski 1987, 1992, 2001, n.d.) and more specifically on its origins has received much attention and deserves especial discussion here. Lipski sees Zam as emerging from a process of convergence of features of various languages: Spanish, Bisayan, Tagalog, local languages. This viewpoint was first put forwards in Lipski (1992) and has been presented in a number of subsequent pieces (e.g., Lipski 2001). As Lipski points out, the origin ofZam could, if one so chose, be seen as the culmination of a series of processes involving language creation. This viewpoint- presented from the version given in


Lipski (2001: 21), Appendix 4- has been influential and is still mentioned, for instance, in Lipski and Santoro (2007). But it overlooks certain issues: The presence of Hiligaynon and Tagalog lexicon in Zam - including items recorded in Zam materials gathered in the pre-1990 period - which cannot be explained as effects of recent influence from incursive Cebuano. The presence of some structural and lexical features - e.g., certain TMA markers such as ta 'habitual~ but also Portuguese-derived prepositional na, common to many Lusoasian creoles complete with a rule embargoing its use with definite articles; Portuguese-derived kilaya 'how?'; older Spanish ansina 'so, thus~ gum ita. 'to vomif, 6 etc. These forms link Zam to Manila Bay varieties such as Cavitefio which also include these. They cannot be easily explained as being from forms of non-creolised Philippine Spanish which might have quite coincidentally and independently found their way into creoles at opposite ends of the archipelago. They look more like shared innovations (note Lipski 1987). The fact that Bisayan/Visayan and Cebuano are not mutually interchangeable terms to refer exclusively to the dominant language of the island of Cebu, although Lipski uses them that way. As Zorc (1977) shows, the Bisayan varieties are far from being mere dialects of one language and, what is more, the Bisayan elements in Zam can frequently be safely assigned to particular groups within Bisayan that do not always include Cebuano- Hiligaynon/Ilongo is as Bisayan a language as Cebuano is. The total absence of textual materials from the earlier stages of the development of Zam in Lipski's model. This raises the question of attestation and publications of materials representing earlier, more hispanised varieties of Zam. Lipski has yet to publish any sizeable tranche ofhis data from older and more rural speakers ofZam which he has claimed has a far greater number of Spanish features than the material from Frake,7 Forman, etc. It is always possible that the hispanising language in Whinnom's song texts (Whinnom 1956) is similar to the hispanised variety recorded by Lipski from his oldest consultants- but till Lipski publishes texts in the "older" forms of Zam ( some have been waiting two decades for him to do so), it remains unsure. Lipski (1987) has written of the widespread use of Spanish in official notices in Zamboanga until WWII and points out that non-creolised Spanish, in both spoken and written forms, seems to have had a higher and more persistent profile at a public level in Zamboanga City than elsewhere in the Philippines. For his part. Fernandez (2004) discussed the documentation by Jesuits and others of the sociolinguistic situation of nineteenth century Zamboanga City, showing that little evidence was available for the presence of a Spanish-lexifier creole rather than for a more traditional form of 6. This form, a popular reshaping from Latin VOMITARE. is found in the "Manila Bay Creole?, as well as in MC, Papiamentu, the Portuguese-lexifier creoles of West Africa, and also as gumbitd in the Portuguese lexical stratum in Saramaccan. 7- For example, Charles Frake (1980) used Zam as field language for his fieldwork in the 1960s among Western Subanen speakers and members of other ethnic groups in the rural parts of Zamboanga del Norte and Za.m boanga del Sur.

307

308

Anthony P. Grant

Spanish- the major exception being comments by one Fr Pio Pi, writing in Spanish in a letter about Zamboanga in 1894, which indicate that the people of Zamboanga spoke a mixture of Spanish (including elements of Andalusian origin), Tagalog, "Mora" (presumably Tausug or Yakan here, as both were spoken by Muslim groups), and Chinese (Pi 1894). But he did point out that speakers of Hiligaynon from Iloilo City on the island of Panay, a language which Frake (1971) showed as having provided much lexicon to MC, were present in large numbers in aregion of the city called Tetuan after the Moroccan city.

3·

On the documentation of Zam

The first attestation of Zam of more than a few words in length is relatively late, namely Henry Broad's handful of sentences and phrases, documented in 1929. McKaughan's texts (published in 1954, but probably collected some time earlier) are the first large sample of Zam, with some insightful grammatical notes, collected by a specialist in southern Philippine languages from an MC speaker raised in the eastern Visayas who was in her mid-twenties at the time. Many sentences and textlets in the Zamboanga variety of MC are also provided in the discussion of the MC verbal system in Frake (1980). Furthermore, a short text in IPA phonemic transcription is available in Ing (1967), the work of a native Sino-Filipina speaker ofZam. Whinnom's 1956 handful of song texts (the only Zam material provided in his book) are very different from all other published Zam material. These may, but need not, reflect an earlier stage of Zam of the kind Lipski has suggested. In contrast, Broad's and McKaughan's works represent a variety of Zam which is lexically and structurally very similar to what Ing spoke and documented and which Frake recorded in the 1960s, and to the spoken and written Zam data which Forman was to collect shortly thereafter (Forman 1972). A recently published typological sketch of Zamboanguefio with information on issues and effects of language contact, in Spanish, is found in Grant(2002a), while Grant (2003) deals with reduplication. Lipski and Santoro (2007) present much grammatical information, some gathered by Santoro from a native speaker of the language, a woman who was living in New York. Lipski and Santoro's treatment is presented in the comparative framework used in other sketches in the volume in which their work appeared (Holm & Patrick (eds) 2007). Two collections of papers on Chabacano have recently appeared (Fernandez (ed.) 2001, do Couto (ed.) 2002). There have been several collections oflexical materials. The most important of these are Camins (1989) and Riego de Dios ( 1989), the latter being the primary source ofCotabato Chabacano data, while Chambers (Wee (ed.) 2003) is an EnglishChabacano dictionary. More work on Zam is currently underway, much of it by native speakers.

4·

Philippine languages in contact with Zam- which and when?

We must not lose sight of the fact that Zam has been in constant contact with speakers of Central Philippine languages, though maybe also influenced by a Samalan substrate, throughout its history. Contact was firstly with Hiligaynon and probably Tagalog in the early days of Fort Pilar; then with Tausug, consistently through the years; then with Cebuano, but only from the late nineteenth


century onwards as Cebuano speakers bought up land in Mindanao; and finally with Tagalog in its nationalist avatar of Filipino, especially since post-WWII independence. This has been emphasised in recent decades given the rise of the Muslim separatist organisation Mora National Liberation Front - and latterly that of the Abu Sayyaf terrorists (the Arabic name means the Fathers of the Sword) on Jolo and in Tawitawi province-, the states of emergency and consequent military intervention by government and military forces in Manila, which have characterised life in this region since the 1970s. But Tagalog also exerted indirect influence on the language in the early days, as it is a crucial component of the lexicon of Manila Bay creoles such as Cavite:iio. As stated previously, the one Central Philippine language which has shaped MC most strongly and deeply is Hiligaynon, a western Bisayan language spoken on the islands of Panay and Negros. Most importantly, it is the native language of Iloilo City on Panay. the most important staging point on voyages between Manila - where the Spanish-speaking soldiers who helped found Zamboanga as a permanent garrison in 1719 sailed from - and Zamboanga itself. The first locally born generation of the permanent garrison community of Zamboanga appears to have arisen through the intermarriage of Hiligaynon-speaking women from Iloilo City with soldiers and mariners from Manila Bay. Many families of Hiligaynon origin in Zamboanga maintained connections with Iloilo City for a long time. Fernandez (2004) says many labourers from Panay went to Zamboanga in the nineteenth century to find work, and settled there permanently. Hiligaynon is probably not the first Philippine language to have left its imprint on MC. If the language has its roots in a form of Manila Bay Creole - and all linguistic evidence that points in any direction suggests that it does - then the Tagalog influence on such creoles will have historical precedence. But Hiligaynon is the source of the most profound Philippine lexical influence on the creole. The other Central Philippine languages which influenced MC, namely Tausug and Cebuano, largely just donated vocabulary rather than structural features. Some speakers of MC would have known Tausug in earlier decades, as it was a lingua franca in southwestern Mindanao, but MC speakers would be unlikely to shift to Tausug as their first language, as it was closely associated with Islam. By contrast. M C was the language of intrusive soldiers and their families, an island of Catholics in a sea of Islam. Zam is therefore one of a rather small group of creoles which has been in continued and unbroken contact with what traditional creolists would call its sUBSTRATE languages (Yakan, Sinama, Hiligaynon, Tagalog, earlier possibly Cavitefto, which itself blends elements of Spanish, Tagalog, and a Lusoasian or Malayo-Portuguese creole), SUPERSTRATE language(s) (possibly Cavite:iio or something like it and certainly some form of Spanish) and ADSTRATE languages ( Cebuano, Spanish, Tagalog, English) simultaneously at various times in its history. The same language has often been both substrate and superstrate or substrate and adstrate language, and the same language has served as both superstrate and adstrate. This raises problems for any model of creole formation which assumes that substrate, superstrate and adstrate are categories usually containing or involving different languages. And the pattern of interinfluences outlined above says nothing of the possible influences that fluent L2 speakers of Zam may have wrought on the creole in recent decades, as they constitute and have long constituted a sizeable proportion of the Zam speech community and often use Zam on a daily or even an hourly basis. What the changes through L2 transmission actually are is as yet a matter for speculation, as most published work on Zam deals with the language as it is used

309

310

Anthony P. Grant

by native speakers of Zam. However, an increasing number of fluent speakers of Zam speak one or more Philippine languages natively. Metatypy (Ross 1996) with Philippine languages is not complet- MC does not have a topic and focus system, for example -but it is extensive. Typologically Zam's greatest similarities with Philippine languages are with those of the Central Philippine group. The distinction of transfer offabric and transfer ofpattern (Grant 2002a) is relevant here. The transfer ofpa.tterns- the borrowing of actual morphs - from Philippine languages to Zam, a process which has been going on for a long time, is accompanied ever more by transfer of Philippinelanguage fabric into MC in the form of Bisayan-origin morphemes which are structural rather than lexical, but this too has been going on for centuries.

5·

Just what do we mean by a substrate?

Baker (2001) has sagely raised the question of whether "substrate" (or indeed "superstrate") is a useful concept in creolistics. In his view, the distinction between pidgin and creole is generally not primary. Rather, what he calls a Medium for Interethnic Communication results from the successful attempts of people who have been thrown together without a common language to communicate with one another using items of vocabulary whose general meanings are recognised, agreed upon and understood by the majority of the people engaged in this intercultural communication. Such a state of affairs suggests that the early stages of a creole are similar to what Lipski describes for stage I in his model, although we have no evidence that this ever occurred in Zamboanga. When such a language has gained a body of native speakers who identify with it as their own language. it is likely to develop further as what Baker calls a Medium for Community Solidarity (MCS). In neither case and at neither stage is there a clearcut way in which the grammar, especially the inflectional morphology, of the chief lexifier can be transmitted to people developing this language. Much of the lexicon may have been transmitted, but the structure of the grammar has arisen independently. Furthermore, the same language can be both superstrate and adstrate. If Baker's view of creole genesis is correct, the nearest to "substrate languages" will be the languages of the speakers who were involved in the genesis and early evolution of this new speech form, including people whose language provided most of the lexical items, generally regarded by most creolists as a major "superstrate" contribution. We cannot be sure ofthe first languages of the various peoples who helped create MC, as we do not know what the languages of the parents of the first speakers of MC were - Spanish, Hiligaynon, Tagalog, a Manila Bay Creole, Sinama, Yakan, and Tausug are all possible first languages for some members of the founder population and there could be others. To talk about substrate influences on MC, one needs to tread carefully. Grant (2002b: 22-28) compared a number of typological features, especially syntactic features, of Zam, Mexican Spanish and Hiligaynon, in addition to paying some attention to salient typological features in other Philippine languages. Almost all the features examined for Zam could be found either in Spanish or Hiligaynon and frequently in both. The considerable

•


Philippine lexicon in MC is only part of the story. Typologically and syntactically, MC is as Philippine as itis Spanish. Recent loans into MC from Tagalog and Cebuano and from Philippine English, as well as literary borrowings from Spanish, will be adstratal forms since they entered Zam after it was established. But other forms of Spanish or Philippine origin- or the few forms which go back to Portuguese more readily than they do to Spanish - are arguably substrate forms if we assume they go back to the original set oflanguages whose interaction gave rise to M C. Substrate features discussed in this paper are mainly of Central Philippine origin, but one may note that MC TMA markers, namely habitual ta and probably also irrealis ay, have close formal and functional parallels in Manila Bay Creole TMA systems.

6.

"Substrate" Philippine features in Zam

The history ofZam, its contact with other languages, and the nature of relationships between these languages and Zam, make the concept of"substrate" a matter for debate. Yet the impact of Philippine languages on Zam and Cotabatefio is beyond debate, even if 15% or so of lexicon derived from these languages is set aside. Between Spanish, central Philippine languages and some sort of Manila Bay Creole, almost all the grammarofMC could be included as "substrate features"; I shall be selective in my choices. Frake ( 1971) gives details of many but not all these features. For instance: 1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

The borrowing from Philippine languages and the use with personal names of a "personal article" in singular subject form si and in plural form kanda, which can be distinguished from the definite and indefinite articles, eland un (Riego de Dios 1989), as in: si Juan 'John: kanda Juan 'John's people, el gato 'the caf, un gato 'a caf, el ma.nga. gato 'the cats~ ma.nga gato 'cats'. The marking of plural noun groups with a preposed Philippine-derived manga which may be used with or without definite articles, el manga gato 'the cats, the kinds of cats' (see discussion in Lipski & Santoro 2007: 389-390). The complexity of the personal pronominal system, which has absorbed borrowed material from Hiligaynon for most plural pronouns and makes mostly Central Philippine-type case and, in the second person, status distinctions, and a reconstrual on Central Philippine lines of the semantics of some Spanish personal pronouns (see Section 10 for more details). The use of three negators, hindi' (borrowed from a Central Philippine language), nway and no, each employed under different syntactic circumstances, as found in Philippine languages, whereas Spanish only uses no (see illustration below, taken from Frake 1971: 2 35 ). The use of many Philippine particles, both singly and in Spanish-Philippine blends: for instance, postposed emphatic gayot 'very' ( bweno gayot 'very good'), post-head lang 'only' (dos lang 'only two'), the interrogative particle ba, the emphatic pa, and the blend nway pa 'not yet' (Riego de Dios 1989). The borrowing of a sizeable proportion ( 10+%) of everyday lexicon from Central Philippine languages despite the fact that the concepts which the terms express were already adequately expressible by Spanish words (Frake 1971).

311

312

Anthony P. Grant

7.

Despite the presence of numerous derived forms of Spanish origin in these languages, the bulk of productive items of derivational morphology in MC are also of Central Philippine origin, from the reciprocal verbal affix -han (man-ayuda-han 'to help one another') to the ordinal numeral marker ika.-laka-: ika.-dos 'second'. Central Philippine languages also inspired the verbal prefix man- which does not correspond to any Philippine prefix of that form and meaning, but is used to assimilate most verbs of non-Spanish origin- including those from English: man gip-ap 'to give up' (Ing 1967)- into the creoles' pronoun and TMA markerbased verbal structures. 8. There are also transfers of pattern without transfers of fabric: for instance, the use of kon 'with' or konel, literally 'with the' to indicate direct object in the manner of a Philippinestyle object marker, a usage not restricted to human nouns as Spanish personal a is (Lipski & Santoro 2007: 390), for instance ta-m ira si Juan konel el kasa 'John sees the house'. 9. Similar remarks could be made about the greater or lesser philippinisation of the structure of numerous semantic fields, such as food namesy, kinship terms and the semantic field of time- byeho 'old, of people' versus Hiligaynon da'a.n 'old, of things: a Philippine distinction-, even if most forms in these fields are of Spanish etymological origin (Frak.e 1971:232-233). 10. The use of reduplication to express habitual or continuous action and intensity- sometimes also more attenuated states: byeho-byeho 'quite old'- reflects usages in Philippine languages (Grant 2003). Object marking is not the only feature of Philippine syntax which may sometimes be transferred. For instance, as the sentential examples in this paper show, the general constituent order in Zam is VSO, commonplace in Philippine languages and much less frequent in Spanish. Many of these features make these aspects of Zam structure more complex than that found in corresponding situations in Spanish, and make Zam structure increasingly isomorphic with those of Central Philippine languages. In Sections 7-10, I discuss a few of them: some phonological and phonetic features involving borrowed consonants, a borrowed copular construction, negation, the borrowed elements among personal pronouns, and sources of"local" lexicon in Cotabateiio.

7·

Substrata! features in segmental (and canonical) phonology

Zam segmental, and canonical, phonology is a compromise between those of a variety of Spanish with seseo (Spanish 19/ becomes Is!), but not yeismo (Spanish palatalised IV becomes /lj/ in Zam) and those of Bisayan languages and Tagalog. Words from Spanish and Central Philippine languages, usually preserve the original pronunciation; for less educated Zam speakers, Spanish /f/ becomes /p/ (fin- pin 'end'). Spanish palatal lateral and post-alveolar voiceless affricate remain, but are not found in native words in most Philippine languages. As a result we find a five-vowel system used in words from Spanish and a reduced three- or four-vowel system in words of Philippine origin (/e/ is missing from such words, and /o/ is usually replaced by /ul). These last items may also use consonant clusters such as /-'b-/ (mata'bang 'insipid'), word-final voiced and voiceless plosives, and word-final bilabial nasals, in addition to those typically Philippine sounds, glottal stop 1'1 and velar nasal /ngl. These sounds are not found


at phonemic level in the Spanish component ofMC which does however retain lei, a sound found in Hiligaynon and other Central Philippine languages only in loans from Hokkien, Spanish and English./'/ can furthermore occur before another consonant: An example would be mata'bang 'tasteless, insipid: a word of Central Philippine origin (Frake 1971: 232). We note that !b d gj in Zam are always voiced plosives, but may devoice word-finally: Hiligaynon 'anud 'to float' gives Zam man-anut. They are never pronounced as fricatives, as in many Spanish phonological environments; most Philippine languages lack voiced fricatives. Other phonological influences are clearly adstratal. Molony (1973) mentions a few sounds, such as /v, s, dZ/, borrowed from English into some Chabacano varieties, which occur primarily in English words and only secondarily, if at all, in pre-English words. The data in Ing (1967) suggest that some people say sete, dzente for others' syete, djente 'seven, tooth'. Ing (1967) notes some by-forms, beginning with /sC-I or sometimes with /sCC-/, of words of mostly Spanish origin and which, for others, begin with /esC( C)-/. This is the borrowing of a syllabic onset pattern permissible in English but not in Spanish or Philippine languages. Ing (1967) describes the increasing permissibility of complex consonantal codas - impermissible in both Spanish and Philippine languages - through borrowings from English such as kard Ikard/ 'card'.

Copulas and negation, including the copula amo

8.

The expression of the copula in Zam interacts with processes of negation and predication in ways which reflect the impact of Central Philippine languages on Zam structure. Zam handles equivalents of the verb 'to be' in a number of ways. Locative expressions involving 'be'-verbs, for example, may use talyf or talya: (1)

Na principlo amo el Palabra, y el Palabra talli junto co11 e1 Dios, wc beginning coP the word and the word be.at together with the God y el Palabra amo el Dios.

ZAM

and the word coP the God 'In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God. and the Word was God.' (Gospel ofJohn 1:1 (de Rivas (ed) 1982), or!ginalhispanising spelling preserved)

Other contexts in Zam call for other constructions, such as tyene (='have') 'there is' and its negative form nway: (2)

a

T)'ene komida. have food

b.

Nway komida.

'There is (sell. some) food' is.not food 'There is no food'

ZAM

(Frake 1971: 235) ZAM

(Frake 1971: 235)

Nway in Zam (< Spanish no hay 'there is nof) is also used to negate anterior statements, to mean 'there is not' and by extension 'there was not' and 'not to have'. Such patterns of copulas and negators correspond very closely with what is found in Hiligaynon (Spitz 2001), where the form

313

314

Anthony P. Grant

meaning 'have' is negated not by a simple negator, but by a particle wala' meaning 'there is not'. Translations of the above sentences into Hiligaynon would be as follows: (3)

a

kan'un. May There.is food 'There is food, I have food.'

b.

Wala' kan'un. Not.there.is food 'There is no food.'

HILIGAYNON

(after Spitz 200 1) HILIGAYNON

(after Spitz 200 1)

Hiligaynon has different negators for different purposes: irrealis indi means 'will not, does not' and existential wa.la.' or waay means' 'there is not' but also 'did not'. These map on closely to the semantics of M C hindi' and nway respectively. M C uses the original Spanish negator no to negate modal verbs and imperatives: (4)

No kome.

ZAM

eat 'Dori'teat!' Nl!G

(5)

No pwede yo kome. NEG can I eat 'I can't eat:

ZAM

(after Frake 1971: 235)

Notable among the 'be'-constructions is the use of the untensed copular form amo. This feature is discussed in extenso in Aoto (2002), in which the author points out its role in distinguishing the relations between grammatical and semantic subjects in Zam sentences. The form amo can be used before NPs and in pseudo-cleft sentences such as (6), but not before adjectives; it negates with nway: (6)

Esos dos amo el que

fa

destrosa el

buen Imagen dedi atun

Mayor

ZAM

those two be he who PRES destroy the good image of of 1PL Mayor 'those two are the people who are destroying the good Image of our Mayor' (Aoto 2002; the Spanish-based orthography of the original is retained) The form amo derives from a Bisayan language: It occurs in Hiligaynon with the form amu while in Cebuano, its general form is mau. It was first recorded in Zam both as a discourse marker- as it is in Hiligaynon- and in the form amuya (with past reference) in the short text in Ing (1967), where it is used as a copula. Amo, now mostly construed as a copula, was in earlier times a discourse marker which could serve as a full lexical item meaning 'that's right': Forman (1972:243) lists ta-m-pa-amo-am6 as meaning 'to pretend to be correct'. The generalisation of use of amo as a copula in certain syntactic contexts in Zam texts seems to have taken place from the 1970s onwards. Its infrequency as a copula can be noted in texts before then. Furthermore, Frake (1980) does not even mention the amo construction in his discussion of Zam verbal expressions and none of his 150 sentences and phrases contains it in any of its senses. This suggests that the spread of amo as a copular form has occurred since the late 1960s and continued throughout the 1970s.


Borrowing amo as a discourse particle from a Bisayan language and regrammaticalising it by extending its range of meanings has added another way of forming one kind of copular sentences. However, the borrowed copula cannot be used in all grammatical contexts. The rise of amo as a copula brought in extra variation into Zam in a realm where less variation previously existed. By adding an optional rule to the grammar, it has made rules for copula use and non-use more complex, as one can choose not to use the copula. Note the irony that Zam syntax comes to resemble a little more those of Spanish and English by grammaticalisation and expansion of the role in Zam of a discourse particle of Bisayan origin.

9·

Personal pronouns

MC has borrowed or copied the most commonly used plural pronouns from Hiligaynon. This applies not only to the subject forms, but also to the other case forms. In fact, MC exhibits a complex, multilayered case of contact in the form of a mixed pronominal system (see Forman 1972: 107): Plurals are from Hiligaynon, singulars from Spanish. This applies also to the forms used in the oblique cases: Paradigms have been transmitted from both languages into the personal pronominal system. Possessives are special as, in the form most widely used, they incorporate a marked periphrastic Spanish construction with a Hiligaynon form, thus combining transfer of fabric with transfer of pattern. By contrast, the personal pronominal systems in Manila Bay Creoles derive exclusively from Spanish elements, although their forms are not always the same as those in Spanish (Frake 1971: 226). As Table 1 shows, most possessive forms in MC can either precede or follow their possessed noun, so that the speaker has a choice of possessor. In addition, Hiligaynon, like MC, marks three levels of politeness or formality in the second person singular pronoun. As in Philippine languages, the third person pronouns have a single form which does not mark sex-gender or indeed neuter status, unlike in Spanish. The Austronesian distinction between inclusive and exclusive first person plural is brought into M C together with the requisite sets of Hiligaynon forms.

Table 1. MC personal and possessive pronoun systems Subject

Object

Possessive

lsG

yo

2sG

tu (normal)

konmigo kont{go konbos konuste konele

(N) dimfyo (N), (N) miyo N, (di)mi N (N) ditUyo (N), (N) tUyo N, (di)tu N N dihos/debos (N) diuste (N) (N) disUyulo (N), (N) suyu stlyo (N), (di)su N (N) diilmon (N), limon N (N) diilton (N), ifto,J N (N) di'iny6 (N), 'iny6 N (N) di'ustedes (N)N dtild (N), 'ild N

3SG lPL l!XCL lPL INCL 2PL 3PL

'ebos (familiar) 'uste (formal) 'ele/-V le; siyd (Whinnom 1956:88, from Bisayan) kamt-kame kanamon kitd kandton kam6 kaniny6 'ustedes (formal) konustedes sild kanild

315

316

Anthony P. Grant

The longer possessive forms seem to be used much more frequently, especially in modern materials, and tend very much to occur after the noun, though they may also precede it The singular prenominal forms are the ones most commonly found in Spanish. The presence of kan- in the oblique forms of plural pronouns is paralleled for Hiligaynon in the other Bisayan languages. This has interacted with a use of kon-, deriving originally from Spanish 'with: to mark direct and indirect objects in MCS. Note the adoption of the forms konmfgo, kontfgo, morphologically correct from a Spanish point of view. These have been semantically reinterpreted from being as so ciatives, as they are in Spanish, to object markers. We should further note the presence in MCS of the typically Philippine usage of having three forms to express the second person singular, graded according to familiarity and politeness (Frak.e 1971:227; see also Table 1), though all the forms used in this politeness hierarchy are Spanish in origin. Furthermore, the free-choice indefinite maskin X 'any X, as in maskin kosa. 'whatever' (and also maskin 'even if) probably derives from a Lusoasian creole component (ultimately from mais que 'more than'). This component found its way into the Manila Bay Creole which provided so much material to MC. lt is also found in Philippine languages such as Tagalog maskin, while kilaya 'why?' derives from Portuguese que laia 'what kind'.

10.

Items of "local" lexicon in Cotabato Chabacano

The presence oflocallexicon from Western Mindanao languages is one of the features supposed to help set Cotabatefio apart from Zam. This section examines how far this is the case. In an attempt to see the extent of possible substrate lexical influence in Cotabatefio, I decided to examine the 38 forms (out of 530 main entries, omitting 233 subentries) starting with the letter k listed as being Klocal" in Riego de Dios (1989). k represents a sound unchanged from Proto-Austronesian *kin all the Philippine languages cited in Table 2. Non-penultimate stressed syllables are marked. The dictionaries used are the materials on Zamboanga and Cotabato Chabacano in Riego de Dios (1989), Camins (1989) for Zamboanguefio; Schlegel (1971) for Tiruray; Hassan etal. (1994) for Tausug; Sullivan (1986) for Magindanaw; and the Boka.bu.la.ryo (2005) for Yakan. Forms marked with # are also found in Tagalog, though Tagalog words are allegedly marked separately from these in Riego de Dios' dictionary. Appendix 5 lists Riego de Dios' percentages of etyma in Cotabatefio. The handful of international words is easily accounted for- one might add kasuy 'cashew nut' to this group, given its origins in Tupf acaju. Some of the other "local" words are themselves clearly loans into Zam from other languages which, in turn, borrowed them from other languages. The term karahay is a Wanderwort; note Persian and Urdu karahi, a term often found on the menus of British Indian restaurants. Kacha is also a Wanderwort, but this word derives ultimately from a North Indian language, such as Hindi, where kaccaa means 'unripe, unprocessed' of food or fabrics, and where it is the opposite of the much better known pakka, where it has lodged firmly in British English (spelt pukka). The word for 'Muslim cleric' goes back to Arabic qadi 'Muslim judge'; different pronunciations in Tausug and Zamboanga Chabacano reflect different pronunciations of the second consonant in the Arabic word - possibly filtered through Malay qazi. This is of course the same Arabic etymon which provided Spanish alcalde, Zam alkalde 'mayor'. Few


Table 2. Words oflocal origin listed under the letter k for Cotabato Chabacano in Riego de Dios (1989:99-114)* Word

kabalyas kaba'u kacha kachubt:lng kagang kagi kakal kana' kanga' karahdy karangkardng /casu)•# katingkat£ng katumbdl kawag kayumdt kinehay kingke kisame kitik kudyapi Tt.:ugd' kugita kukit kukung kulambitay kulintang kulinut kulipat kulumbat Tt.:'ulyakung kumu kunsi' kupytf kusmut kwako# kwan# kyawkydw

Meaning 'saltwater fish' 'turtle' 'unbleached muslin' 'asthma relief plant' 'germs' 'Mualim cleric' 'to extort cash' 'sweetened berries' 'bald head' 'frying pan' 'to dare' 'cashew' 'to squat' 'chilli pepper' 'to grate' 'nit' 'celery' 'wicklamp' 'ceiling' 'to tickle' 'stringed instrwnent' 'to throttle' 'octopus' 'to hook fingers' 'yoke for animals' 'to hold onto' 'Muslim gong' 'curly' 'to tweak ears' 'to huddle' 'millipede' 'to crwnple' 'to rig a game'

RiegoZam y y (ba:'u) y

'fe:i

y

'to .frown' 'tobacco pipe' 'wotsit, thingamajig' 'fuss'

y y y

Caminsf y y y y

Tausug

Tirur.

y

Magin.

Yk.

y

y y

y y y y y y y y

y y y

y y y y

y y y y y y y

y y

y

y y y y y

y y y

y y

y y

y

y y y y y

y y y

y y

y

y y y y

* In this table, primary stress is penultimate unless otherwise indicated. secondary stress is indicated with grave accents; y =word is recorded in dictionary used for language in question.

317

318

Anthony P. Grant

if any terms in this collection can be attributed safely and exclusively to Tiruray or Magindanaw, though it appears that the latter, a language whose speakers are Muslim, received more loans from Malay than that of the animist Tirurays did. The Tiruray's main source languages for loans are the Danaw languages such as Maranaw (Blust 1992). The major conclusion here, of course, is methodological rather than purely linguistic. We note the remarkable lack of overlap between the contents of the various dictionaries examined had they been completely homogeneous, many more words would be listed for many local Philippine languages- and also the questionable reliability of the linguistic labels applied to words in the Riego de Dios dictionary.

n.

Conclusions and a glimpse into the future

Superficially Zam's substrate languages are Yakan, Sinama and arguably Hiligaynon, with Philippine features reinforced by the Manila Bay Creole superstrate. Cotabatefio's substrates would be Tiruray and Magindanaw, with Zam as superstrate. What we seem to find, as far as variation within Zam and MC in general is concerned, is an increasing use and privileging of those features in MC similar to, or even isomorphic with, corresponding features in whichever non-creolised Philippine language - e.g., Cebuano or Tagalog - the MC speaker knows most fully. This does not just involve issues in typology, such as element order or the semantic range of certain morphemes, but increasingly particular morphemes. Indeed the impact of Philippine languages upon MC has to be seen in terms of the totality of all kinds of features borrowed, not just in terms of the morphemes transferred. All aspects of MC have been influenced by Philippine languages, often at several levels. Absorption of Philippine linguistic features into MC is preserving its distinctiveness from Spanish, even though the bulk of MC vocabulary is still of Spanish origin. Zam is retaining its own identity as a creole language with a mostly "creole" and certainly non-Spanish and non-Philippine predicate structural system - e.g., operating with preverbal markers and indicating tense and aspect without infixation - while privileging more and more Philippine linguistic features in syntax, morphology, phonology and lexicon insofar as these teatures are easy enough to borrow. This should not surprise us: MC has been interacting with Philippine languages for centuries - see the chronological details of the various periods of contact in Appendix 3 - and Philippine languages have themselves been changing, especially through lexical expansion, under the influence of Spanish and now English. Many of the same changes - for example, the increasing absorption of alloglot sounds and syllable canons - are affecting "Christian" languages of the Philippines across the board, whether they be of Austronesian or creole heritage. As a result, MC is becoming metatypised - that is, typologically modified through contactinduced change at various levels, including syntax- more and more in the direction of Bisayan languages (see Ross 1996 for a discussion of metatypy). There are exceptions to this openness to borrowing of features into MC. Up till now, as Nolasco (2005) points out, MC and other varieties of PCS have not developed an ergative model of syntax despite the fact that Austronesian Philippine languages, in which many MC speakers are fully bilingual, customarily use ergative syntactic models which are more complex than the Spanish and MC nominative-accusative syntax. Nor have they developed Philippine-style ligatures to be used between nominal heads


and their modifiers of the sort found in Tagalog matanda.ng bahay 'old house' (mata.nda 'old', bahay 'house'). But even that development may occur some time in the future. MC is following the same direction as the Philippine languages which influenced it, inasmuch as many have long since absorbed lots of features from Spanish and English (and vast amounts of lexicon), making them seem more homogeneous, and to MC, and to the languages which exerted such influence. Also, more speakers ofMC know Tagalog and other languages than did 60 years ago. With the post-WWII spread of Tagalog as an educational, military and national language, and the spread of English, Filipinos are becoming increasingly polyglot. MC typology is moving more closely towards Tagalog and other Central Philippine languages, with greater isomorphism and typological similarity with languages whose millions of speakers surround the Zam speech community. The small number of Cotabato Chabacano forms which originate in Tiruray or in Magindanaw give some indication of the local connections of the creole. But it is not a primordial creole which is endogenous, because it developed in situ in Cotabato from a Spanish-Magindanaw pidgin - all the linguistic evidence shows hat this was not the case. Instead it was mostly transplanted thence as a full-fledged creole from Zamboanga, where it was not primordial and home-grown (or endogenous) but, derived largely from creoles, many of whose speakers had come from Manila , with additional input at Zamboanga from Hiligaynon - as what Baker's work would style a Medium for Community Solidarity. But to see how MC developed originally, the substrata! stratum we need to examine is not any form of Philippine language; it is the slender stratum of forms which were always part of these creole languages, as they originate in dialectal Spanish or in a (non-)creolised form of Portuguese - na, ansina, gumita, kilaya and so on - which MC inherited from earlier forms of its probable sisters Cavitefio and Ermitefio on Manila Bay or from sister creoles now utterly lost.

Abbreviations COP

copula

we

locative NEG negator 1, 2, 3SG first, second, third person singular

MC MCS PCS+

Mindanao Chabacano Mindanao Creole Spanish Philippine Creole Spanish

References Aoto, S. 2002 La copula AMO del chabacano de Zamboanga. Papia 12: 84-106. Baker, P. 2001. Theories of creolization and the degree and nature of restructuring. In Degrees of Restructuring in Creole Languages [Creole Language library 22], I. Neumann-Holzschuh & R Schneider (eds), 41-63. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Blust, R 1991. The Greater Central Philippine hypothesis. Oceanic Linguistics 30: 73-129. Blust, R. 1992 On speech strata in Tiruray. In Papers in Austro,resian Linguistics 2, M. Ross (ed.), 1-5 2. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics A-82. Bokabularyong Yakan-Filipino-lngles. 2005. Manila: Komisyon sa Wikang Filipino.

319

320

Anthony P. Grant

Broad, H. P. 1929. Chabacano. The Philippine Magazine XXVI: 142, 160. Camins, B. 1989. Chabacano de Zamboanga Handbook and Chabacano-English-Spanish Dictionary. Zamboanga City: First United Broadcasting Company. Chambers, J., S. J. 2003. English-Chabacano dictionary, with Tagalog and Spanish Equivalents Together with a Simple Grammar and a Chabacano-English Wordlist, S. Wee (ed.). Zamboanga: Ateneo de Zamboanga University Press. De Rivas, C. (ed.). 1982. El buen noticia na Chabacano. Zamboanga City: Claretian. Do Couto, H. H. (ed.). 2002 Papia 12 (special edition on Chabacano). Fernandez, M. A. (ed. ). 200 1. Shedding light on the Chabacano language. Estudios de Sociolingi.iistica 2(2). Fernandez, M. A. (ed.). 2004. Las lenguas de Zamboanga seglln los padres jesuitas y otros observadores occidentales. Paper presented at the Cura' mas que in Sp.), as in (27). (25)

(26)

(27)

Nway d6ndi di indd. Nl!G.l!X where IRR go 'Nowhere to go.'

TC

(Sippola's field notes)

Nuay jente aqui na Bahra no ta conoce con Antonio Grande. NEG.l!X people here Loc Ternate Nl!G IPPV know OBJ Antonio Grande 'There is no one here in Ternate that doesn't know Antonio Grande.' Nway tamyen ni kOsa. Nl!G.l!X also Nl!G.even thing/what 'There was nothing (wrong).'

TC (Nigoza 2007: 39)

TC


Negation in Ternate Chabaca.no

Sometimes, the negative indefinites are directly from Spanish, as nada in (28) and (29), ninguna in (30), even though they are generally combined with the pattern for existential negation, as in (29) and (30). (28)

(29)

TC

No sabe nada. NEG know nothing '(He) does not know anything?


TC

Nuay

nada con eli quel cen. nothing OBJ 3SG that money 'That money was nothing to him:

NEG.EX

(30)

... nwdy

manga 6mbri, nway

••• NEG.EX PL

man.

ningt1na

(Nigoza 2007: 39)

6mbri.

TC

NEG.EX NEG.INDEF man

'... there are no men. no men at an:


The Spanish negative adverb nunca 'never' can also be used independently, as in (31), but a similar negative meaning could be expressed by negating the verb in the imperfective aspect. (31)

Nunca eli ta en.ferma. never 3sG IPFV getsick 'She never gets sick.'

TC (Nigoza 2007: 39)

Regarding differences among registers, Spanish indefinites are very rare in natural speech samples in Temate Chabacano. The literary sources in written Ternate Chabacano - and in Cavite Chabacano in general - have occurrences of Spanish negative indefinites nunca, nada and ninguno!ninguna.9 More research is needed in order to investigate the frequency of use of different negative indefinite constructions and their distribution. In Tagalog, the negative indefinite expressions are formed with a negator - hindi, wala or hu.wag in the appropriate constructions, as in (32), (33) and (34)- and an indefinite adverbial construction, which can include any interrogative word other than bakit 'why' and kumusta 'how' (Schachter & Otanes 1972:506, 518, 531): (32)

Hindi siya giniglsing ng anuman. 3sG awaken MR whatsoever 'Nothing awakens him.'

TAGALOG

NEG

(33)

(34)

Huwag kang pumunta saa11ma11. NEG.IMP 2SG.LK go anywhere 'Dont go anywhere.' Walang

dumaNng kahapon. came yesterday 'No one came yesterday.'

(Schachter & Otanes 1972: 533) TAGALOG

(Schachter &Otanes 1972: 518) TAGALOG

NEG.EX.LK

(Schachter & Otanes 1972: 521)

Tagalog also has the particle ni, which together with another negator in the sentence expresses the meaning 'not even: as in (35) or, preceding each element of a coordinate construction ni ... ni ... , 9· Also, Formans work (1972: 226-228) on Zamboanga Chabaca.no presents both Spanish and Philippine forms, but makes no statements as to the frequency or style.

333

334

Eeva Sippola

expresses the equivalent of English 'neither... not: as exemplified in (36) (Schachter & Otanes 1972: 527).1his is also probably the source for Ternate Chabacano ni, as in (27) above. (35) Hindi siya nagdala ni lapis. Nl!G 3sG brought NEG.even pencil 'He did not bring even a pencil.' (36) Hindi dumating ni sl Pedro. Juan ni si Nl!G came NEG FOC Juan Nl!G FOC Pedro. 'Neither Juan nor Pedro came:

TAGALOG (Schachter & Otanes 1972: 527) TAGALOG (Schachter & Otanes 1972: 526)

Tagalog indefinite expressions in which a construction is used with an appropriate negator are reflected in the formation of Ternate Chabacano negative indefinites, which also partly make use of interrogatives or nouns with nway. There are differences, however, for the Spanish forms nu.nca, nada, ningu.no!a and the generic noun construction nway henti. In Tagalog nway henti can be expressed without a noun in the corresponding sentence, as in (34).

4·

Conclusions

We have now had a look at negation in Ternate Chabacano with a comparison to the parallel Tagalog features. A summary is as follows: The forms of the lexical entries for the negators are provided by the lexifier language and derivations of the Iberian negative particle are normally used in Ternate Chabacano negation. No is used for standard negation in declarative clauses, imperatives and non-verbal clauses. Nway is used for the negation of existential clauses and possessive clauses. Negative indefinite constructions are formed with the existential nway and an interrogative or generic noun. In addition, the rare Spanish-based negative indefinites occur following the above patterns. Intensification is formed by placing the particle ni before the negator. The same particle also has the meaning of'not even' if used independently, corresponding to the positive 'even' maski. According to Lipski (1988: 32), the general divergence between existentials and standard clausal negation patterns presented above is not paralleled among the Portuguese creole dialects of Asia or Africa, but the claim that Chabacano would closely follow received Spanish patterns cannot be sustained for Ternate Chabacano. As seen above, the lexifier language shares many features with Chabacano, especially the forms of the lexical entries for the negators. The Ternate Chabacano negator no reproduces the properties of Spanish no in declarative and imperative clauses. However, the properties of nway correspond more closely to the use of Tagalog wala. All three languages - Ternate Chabacano, Spanish and Tagalog- have a preverbal negator. In Spanish, both the predicate negation with no and negative indefinite pronouns can be used in a clause, or only a negative indefinite pronoun, but there can be only one negator before the verb. In Ternate Chabacano and Tagalog, the most common indefinites are not inherently negative, but rather constructions in which negation is expressed with an appropriate negator. Many features related to negation, such as the distribution of pronouns and enclitics after the negator and the intensification, follow Tagalog patterns. On the other hand, Tagalog has many features that are not reflected in Chabacano negation, such as the different negator huwag for

Negation in Ternate Chabaca.no

imperatives and aya.w for pseudo-verbs, which have influenced the omission of TMA markers in affirmative sentences in Ternate Chabacano. In conclusion, it can be affirmed that the main pattern of Ternate Chabacano negation follows its adstrate language Tagalog when distinguishing the standard clausal negation and the negation of existentials and possession. However, the adstrate structure has not been the only factor determining negation in Chabacano.

List of abbreviations ENC

EX FOC IMP

INDEF INT IPFV IRR LK

enclitic particle existential focus marker imperative indefinite intensifier imperfective aspect irrealis aspect linker

we MR NEG

OBJ PL SG

1 2 3

locative preposition non focus markers, oblique negator, negative object marker plural singular first person second person third person

References Blair, E. H. & Robertson, J. A. 1909. The Philippine Islands: 1493-1898. Cleveland OH: A. H. Clart. de la Concepci6n, J. 1788-1792. Historia General de Philipinas; conquistas espirituales y temporales de estos espaiwles dominios establecimientos, progresos y decadencias, Vol VII. Manila: A. de 1a Rosa y Balagtas. Philippine National Library. (Microfilm). Fernandez, M. 2001. tPor que e1 Chabaca.no? In Shedding Light on the Chahacano Language [Estudios de Sociolingillstica 2:2], M. Fernandez (ed.),i-xil. Vigo: Universidade de Vigo. Fernandez, M. 2004. Plurifuncionalidad de 1a particula na en e1 chabacano de Zamboanga. In Los criollos de base ibirica ACBLPE 2003, M. Fernandez, M. Fernandez-Ferreiro & N. Vazquez Veiga (eds), 41-60. Madrid: Iberoamericana. Fernandez, M. 2007a. Chabacano en Tayabas: Implicaciones para lahistoria de los criollos hispano-:filipinos. Paper presented at the CILPR 2007, Innsbruck.. Fernandez, M. 2007b. Sobre e1 origen de con en chabacano. Romania en interacciOn: entre historia, contacto y politica. Ensayos en homenaje a Klaus Zimmermann, M. Schrader-Kniflki. & L. Morgenthaler Garda (eds), 457-478. Madrid: Iberoamericana. Forman, M. 1972. Zamboangueiio Texts with Grammatical Analysis. A Study of Philippine Creole Spanish. PhD dissertation, Cornell University. Frake, C. 1971. Lexical origins and semantic structure in Philippine Creole Spanish. In Pidginization and Creoliza-

tion ofLanguages. Proceedings of a conference held at the University of West Indies, Mona, Jamaica, April1968, D. Hymes (ed.), 223-242. Cambridge: CUP. Grant, A. 2007. Some aspects ofNPs in Mindanao Chabacano. Structural and historical considerations. In Naun Phrases in Creole Languages: A Multi-faceted Approach [Creole Language Library 31], M. Baptista & J. Gueron (eds), 173-204. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Lipski, J. 1988. Philippine Creole Spanish: Reassessing the Portuguese element. Zeitschrift fUr romanische Philologie 104: 25-45.

335

336

Eeva Sippola

Miestarno, M. 2005. Standard Negation: The Negation ofDeclarative Verbal Main Clauses in a TYPological Perspective. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Molony, C. 1973. Sound changes in Chabacano. In Parangal Kay Cecilio Lopez, A. Gonzalez (ed.), 38-50. Quezon City: Linguistic Society of the Philippines. Molony, C. 1977a. Recent relexifu:ation processes in Philippine Creole Spanish. In Sociocultural Dimensions of Language Change, B. Blout & M. Sanches (eds), 131-159. New York NY: Academic Press. Molony, C. 1977b. Semantic changes in Chabacano. In Langues en Contact -Pidgins-Creoles - Languages in Contact, J. Meisel (ed.), 153-166. 'Itibingen: Narr. Nigoza, E. 2007. Bahra: The History, Legends, Customs and 'ITaditions ofTemate, Cavite. Cavite: Cavite Historical Society. Oglwara, Y. 2002 Aparlci6n del sustrato en el predicado del caviteiio. PAPLA Revista de criollos de base iberica 12: 67-83. Payne, J. R. 1985. Negation. In Language Typology and Syntactic Descriptio,'!, T. Shopen (ed.), 197-242 Cambridge: CUP.

Philippine Reports. 1909. Reports of Cases determined in the Supreme Court of the Philippine Islands from November 10, 1908 to February 13, 1909. Manila. Schachter, P. & Otanes, F. 1972. Tagalog ReferuJCe Grammar. Berkeley CA: University of California Press. Sippola, E. 2006. Hacia una descripci6n del ternateiio. &vista Intemacional de LingUfstica lberoamericana Vol IV, 1(7): 41-54. Sippola, E. 2010. Sobre los marcadores discursivos en el chabacano de Ternate. In XXVe CILPR Congres International de Linguistique et de Philologie Romanes Innsbruck, 3-8 septembre 2007, M. Iliescu, H. SillerRunggaldier & P. Danler (eds), 1-431-1-440. Berlin, New York: De Gruyter. Steinkriiger, P. 0. 2007. Notes on Ternateiio (A Philippine Spanish Creole ).Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages 22(2): 367-377. Tirona, T. T. 1924. An account of the Ternate dialect (of Cavite P.I.). Tagalog Paper 487 of the Beyer's Collection, Philippine National Library. Whiimom, K 1956. Spanish Contact Vernaculars in the Philippine Islands. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press.

Aspect and directionality in Kupang Malay serial verb constructions Calquing on the grammars of substrate languages* June Jacob and Charles E. Grimes Artha Wacana Christian University at Kupang I Australian National University at Canberra and SIL

Kupang Malay is a stigmatised Malay-based creole spoken in eastern Indonesia While it shares some linguistic features with other contact varieties of Malay in the region, it is also distinguished by its own contact history and unique features in its phonology, lexicon and grammar, all showing evidence of significant influence from substrate languages. One notable feature is the pervasiveness and variety of its serial verb constructions (SVC). This paper explores the forms and functions of a limited set of Kupang SVCs, showing dose parallels with similar forms and functions of SVCs in nearby substrate languages (illustrated by data from Helong, Amarasi, Dhao, and Lole). While Kupang is in a post-creole continuum with Indonesian functioning as the "high~ the Kupang SVCs described in this paper have no dose parallels in Indonesian. We condude that this presents strong evidence that Kupang is indeed a creole that has calqued at a deep level on the grammars oflocallanguages. Since the phenomena here are previously undescribed for any of the languages - and all of them are poorly documented - this paper is deliberately rich in data The examples given are not rare, were taken from computer searches of a text corpus, and have been doubled-checked for naturalness with groups of native speakers, given the inherent pitfalls of working in a post-creole continuum. Keywords: Kupang, Malay, creole, post-creole continuum, Malay-based creole, eastern Indonesian Malays, serial verb constructions, calque on grammar, contact induced change, aspect, verbal semantics, accomplishment verbs, directionality, discourse pragmatics, relexification, Helong, Amarasi, Dhao, Lole, Rote, Uab Meto

June Jacob ~M.A. applied linguistics) is a native speaker of Kupang Malay. She is also a lecturer at Artha Wacana Christian University in Kupang. Charles E. Grimes (Ph. D. linguistics) is an Adjunct Professor in Linguistics, Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, Australian National University, and a linguist with SIL International Both authors work with the Language and Culture Unit of the GMIT church synod in Kupang. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 4th International East Nusantara Linguistics Conference held in Leiden, 30 June and 1 July 2005. We are grateful to Barbara Dlx Grimes, Claire Lefebvre and Anne-Marie Brousseau for comments on earlier drafts of this paper. A number of discussions with YoungSoo Ko Cha on properties ofSVCs in Western Cham also sharpened our thinking. Comments from two anonymous referees also helped clarify the presentation of information.

338

June Jacob and Charles E. Grimes

1.

Sociolinguistic profile

In this paper, we describe aspects of serial verb constructions In Kupang Malay (Ethnologue/ISO code mkn), a Malay-based creole spoken around the western end of Timor Island In eastern Indonesia KupangMalay (bahasa Kupang) has around 200,000 native speakers and tens of thousands of second-language speakers In and around the cityofKupang (B. E Grimes 2000: 510). We have met famlhes who claim at least three generations of native speakers of Kupang Malay. There Is anecdotal evidence of native speakers at least by the early 1900s and possibly much earlier. Most people from outlying areas who have had significant schoohng or work experience In Kupang have learned It as a second (or third or fourth) language for social survival A few from western parts of Indonesia resist learning Kupang as merely "bad Indonesian" and relegate themselves as forever being outsiders. Kupang has long been the capital city of the province of Nusa Tenggara Timor, comprised of the islands of Flores, Sumba, AI or, Sabu, West Timor, Rote, Solar, and other small islands (illustrated In Map 1). Although It Is a relatively small city, Kupang Is the fastest growing regency (ktJbupaten) In eastern Indonesia It attracts migrants from all over NTT province who come to study or seek work. This hvely city had around 217,000 inhabitants In 1999 (Mayor S. K Lerrlk, pc, 1999) and has grown by over 50% since then.

Map 1. Primary Kupang Malay speaking area In eastern Indonesia

Aspect and directionality in Kupang Malay serial verb constructions

The Kupang area was traditionally inhabited by the Helong people and this continued well into the colonial period. In the seventeenth century, the Helong were pushed out by the Atoni people (speaking Uab Meto) from the nearby Sonbai kingdom to a small coastal strip at the westem tip of Timor island. Later, most of the Helong migrated to the small island of Semau, located in Kupang Bay, because of the migration to Kupang of Dutch-supported mercenaries and their families from the nearby islands of Rote and Sabu (Schulte Nordholt 1971). It is therefore not surprising that Kupang developed into "a polyglot town" (Fox 1991:249) concentrated around the Dutch fort supporting the sandalwood trade. C. Grimes et al. (1997: 1) describe the region as "... richly blessed with variety and complexity." Reid (1984), Ricklefs (1993) and Wheatley (1961) describe the broader historical and political contexts in which this all happened. Today, the different ethnic backgrounds of the citizens of Kupang bring together considerable social diversity, but they have a common identity and a common language derived from Malay, the lingua franca of trade used before and during the Dutch colonial period (Brugmans 1938; Fox 1991:249). ThisvarietyofMalay, referred to locally as "Basa Kupang': "Bahasa Kupang" or "Bahasa Melayu Kupan(, was established long before "Bahasa Indonesia" was declared to be the national language of the new Republic of Indonesia in 1945, and even before the arrival of the Europeans (Adelaar & Prentice 1996; B. D. Grimes 1991; C. Grimes 1996a; Sneddon 1996, 2003; Teeuw 1959, 1961 ). Kupang Malay now functions as a language of wider communication in the city of Kupang and the surrounding region as well as a symbol of regional identity seen in advertisements and emblazoned on local transportation. It is appearing in a few locally produced television shows. Its legitimacy and role is also increasingly debated in leading newspapers. In addition to the most common form of Kupang Malay, there is a unique dialect spoken in Air Mata and numerous subdialects associated with various ethnic group origins (C. Grimes 2001; Jacob 2001a, b). Steinhauer (1983, 1991) has described some aspects ofKupang Malay. As a living language, Kupang Malay plays important roles in the society where it is spoken. However, it has usually been ignored and often despised not only by some of its own speakers, but also by many teachers, government officials and church leaders who have a tendency to look down on it as a stigmatised language (B. D. Grimes 2005; Jacob & B. D. Grimes 2006). As is common with many stigmatised creoles in a post-creole continuum, a significant portion of its speakers have limited ability in the "high", namely standard Indonesian. Even university students attempting to target standard Indonesian are often unaware that they are mixing the two registers, resulting in repeated complaints by their lecturers. More often than not, the lecturers themselves and most school teachers, government officials and other decision-makers are completely unaware of the typical and well documented dynamics of a post-creole continuum (Adler 1977; Bickerton 1975, 1981, 1983; Fasold 1984; Ferguson 1959; Fishman 1967; Holm 1988, 1989; Mi.ihlhausler 1986; Todd 1974; Wardaugh 1992) and its impact on education (PACE; Siegel2000, 2001, 2005, 2006; UNESCO 1963, 2003; World Bank 2005). Speakers ofKupang residing elsewhere often admit they regularly go online to the Tapaleuk column written in mesolectal Kupang Malay in the Pos Kupang daily newspaper when they feel homesick. As is predictable with stigmatised creoles in a post-creole continuum, the 2007 publication of the Kupang New Testament (UBB 2007) was met with enthusiasm and appreciation by many, as well as with dismay and vocal opposition by others.

339

340


Ku pang Malay, like many creoles, developed through contact with genetically diverse types of languages. The Austronesian vernaculars spoken around Kupang are classified as Central Malaya-Polynesian (or CMP) (Blust 1978, 1993; B. F. Grimes (ed.) 2000; C. Grimes et al. 1997), however problematic that classification may be (C. Grimes 1991b, 2000, 2007; Donohue & C. Grimes 2008; Ross 1995). Malay, however, is a Western Malaya-Polynesian language whose homeland is around 3,000 km away. The Malay from which Kupang Malay developed emerged from contact with varieties of trade Malay which tended to be used in trading centres and for interethnic communication. As noted above, the people around Kupang were originally not native speakers of any form of Malay. They learned Malay imperfectly, mostly from merchants and sailors who themselves used it imperfectly. They used the Malay that they learned in limited speech domains (see also Adelaar & Prentice 1996; B. D. Grimes 1991; C. Grimes 1996a, b; Prentice 1978; Sneddon 2003). The historical roots of Indonesian, however, are in a different type of Malay. Prentice (1978 ), C. Grimes (1996a) and Sneddon (2003) note that Indonesian is based on the varieties of official la.nguage Malays of the courts, government and literature of the sultanates ofRiau and Johore (near present-day Singapore). How Indonesian developed from official language Malays into its modem form as a national language in the context of nationalism and through additional language engineering is described by Abas (1987), Alisjahbana (1956, 1971, 1974) and Moeliono (1986). Thus, Kupang Malay developed from varieties of trade Malay in the context of trade and interethnic communication by people who spoke it imperfectly. and calqued on local substrate languages with which it was in contact around the fort at Kupang- including varieties of Helong, Rote, Dhao, Sabu/Hawu, and Uab Meto/Atoni/Timorese - to develop a fuller system of communication, now functioning as a unique variety of creole Malay. The variety of standard Malay with which Kupang is now in contact in a post-creole continuum is Indonesian. ln contrast to the trade Malay from which Kupang developed, Indonesian is modelled on a fully developed official language Malay with its own literary traditions. Jacob (2001a, b) has demonstrated that Kupang Malay (KM) is: (a) a well organised linguistic system that, (b) exhibits several types of simplification in contrast to varieties of standard Malay in its phonology, morphology and grammar, 1 (c) has calqued on local languages in its lexicon and grammar, (d) has a complex community of native speakers, (e) has important roles in the home, for interethnic communication and for communicating local solidarity, ethnic identity, vitality and stability, (f) functions in a post-creole continuum, with the Indonesian variety of standard Malay functioning as the "high" or acrolect. Jacob and C. Grimes (2003) and C. Grimes and Jacob (2008) have documented in greater detail that: (g) while there is much vocabulary shared with standard Malay, there is also, (h) different phonology, (i) significant semantic shift in a number of Malay-based terms, (j) significant lexical borrowing from local languages. 2

Some of these types of simplification are shared with other regional varieties of Malay in eastern Indonesia (Adelaar & Prentice 1996).

1.

2. Lexical borrowing from local languages is far more prevalent in Kupang Malay than in Ambon Malay. For example, 10% of the entries in Jacob and C. Grimes (2003) are from varieties of Rote.


Serial verbs in Kupang Malay (general)

2.

Gleaning from the general literature on serial verb constructions (SVC), Kupang SVCs share a number of properties that have also been identified for SVCs in other languages.3 These are: (a) sequences of two or more verbs or VPs act together as a single clause without a complementiseror intervening conjunction between them (Durie 1997; Foley & Van Valin 1984); (b) the prosodic properties of serial verbs are the same as those of a single clause (Durie 1997); (c) a single SVC describes a single notional event (Aikhenvald 2006; Durie 1997); (d) a single SVC has shared aspect, mood, modality, illocutionary force and polarity values (Aikhenvald 2006; Durie 1997; Schiller 1990)- this paper describes how certain verbs internal to some Kupang SVCs can also have an aspectual function in addition to the "normal" markers of aspect-mood but, nevertheless, aspect is shared over the whole SVC, regardless of how it is marked; - (e) serial verbs share at least one core argument (Aikhenvald 2006; Durie 1997; Schiller 1990)- how this works is different for core-layer serialisation than for nuclear-layer serialisation (Foley & Van Valin 1984) -; (f) one of the verbs/VPs is not embedded within the other(s), nor does it function as an argument ofthe other(s) -complement clauses would be an example of this (Durie 1997; Foley & Van Valin 1984; Schiller 1990). In addition to features listed in Section 1, serial verbs are another feature ofKupang Malay that has calqued on local vernaculars. They show a degree of interclausal integration (Foley & Olsen 1985) that does not occur and has no structural parallel in Indonesian. In the examples below, serial verbs are underlined. The first example shows the local vernacular (Helong), then Kupang Malay to demonstrate parallels with the vernacular, and then Indonesian to provide contrast between Kupang Malay and standard Malay. It should be noted that the KM SVCs in the examples throughout this paper have all been discussed with two or more groups of Kupang speakers from a variety of ethnic origins who affirmed they were acceptable and represented good Kupang. (1)

Oen maa nakbua se

ona11 na

lam.

HE LONG

come gather PREP beach that also 'They also gathered on the beach? 3P

Dong datang kumpul di 3P

2.1

come

ltu pante ju.

KUPANG

gather Loc that beach also

Mereka berkumpul di

pantai itu juga.

3P

beach that also

REFL-gather

LOC

INDONESIAN

Case, aspect-mood and other complexities in Kupang SVCs

While this study focuses primarily on a very narrow range ofKM SVCs (in Section 3), a number of examples here illustrate the broad variety of functions that can be performed using SVCs. The

3· Aikhenvald (2006) also uses the terms "symmetric" and "asymmetric" in discussing SVCs, depending on whether the word classes involved are dosed or open. We are still investigating whether or not this is a relevant issue in Kupang SVCs, and in the SVCs of surrounding languages.

341

342


following examples show some of the case roles performed by KM SVCs. The examples in this section are drawn primarily from Jacob (1999).

Kale pikQ .IHm:a. karanjang pi (di) pasar. Father Kale carry bring basket go at market 'Father Kale carries the basket to the market'

(2)

Ama

(3)

Usi

KUPANG (locative-goal)

Di11a bekin ame kue sarabi kasi dia pung ana dong.

Aunt Dina make take pancakes give 3s Poss child PL ~nt Dina made some pancakes for her children.' (4)

Laki-laki lari turun

(dative-benefactive)

gtmung.

male run descend mountain 'The man is run.nin,g down the mountain: (5)

Dong belcin

(path)

mati tikus pake batu.

3P make=cAus die mouse use stone 'They killed the mouse with a stone:

(instrument)

The following examples illustrate some of the aspect-mood roles that can be performed by KM SVCs. A specific type of aspectual function is discussed in Section 3. (6)

Dia manyapu kasi

barisi kintal balakang.

3s sweep give=cAus dean yard back 'She SWEWt the backyard clean: (lit. sweep causing to become dean) (7)

Bemo

len

Tarus maen

pulang

bale

an~a

(cause-resulting state)

panumpang.

minibus route Tarus play=rrER go.home come. back pick up passenger 'The mini bus on the Tarus route r~ly/rEWeatedlylkeEWs goingbackandforth taking passengers home.' (iterative) (8)

Opa

nae

ame pohon paffk kalapa

dua boa.

grandfather climb take tree pick coconut two fruit 'Grandfather climbed up a coconut tree to pick two coconuts: 'Grandfather climbed up a coconut tree and picked two coconuts:

(purpose/irrealis) (result/realis)

The following example illustrates some of the structural complexities that can be found in stringing together Kupang SVCs in perfectly natural speech. (9)

Poho11 ya11g sonde kasi kaluar boa, tantu tree

REL NEG

datang poto11g ko

tukang kab6n dong

give go out fruit certain worker garden PL

lempar buang

maso Pi dalam api.

come cut IRR throw throw out enter go inside fire '(As for) trees which don't produce fruit, surely the gardeners will come and cut off (their branches) to throw them into the fire:

2.2

Transitivity issues in KM SVCs

The examples below show what happens to transitivity and argument structure in various combinations. No attempt is made to be exhaustive here, as there are many combinations that are


beyond the scope of this study. Only a tew combinations of non-active intransitive verbs (Subject= Undergoer, BE-oriented verbs) and active intransitive or active transitive verbs (Subject= Actor, DO-oriented verbs) are presented here. The terminology is adapted from the frameworks of Foley and Van Valin (1984) and Dowty (1979). Imati/ 'die' is used as a canonical non-active BE-oriented verb. Note that when unmarked for aspect, such verbs can have multiple readings. (10)

Dia mati. 3s die 'She is dying. I She is dead. I She died. I She will die?

When two non-active verbs are used in an SVC, the first indicates a resulting state, the other indicates manner. Non-active+ non-active--+- result+ manner. Note that/mati lapar/ also occurs in standard Malay, and I mati baranakl occurs in other regional varieties of Malay. (11)

mati lapar mati karfng mati barana mati tanggalam

'die ofhunger' 'die by drying up (as plants in drought)' 'die in childbirth' 'die by drowning'

(12)

takonci matl tasegel matl

'locked up /locked tight' 'sealed tight'

[literally 'die hungry'] [die dry] [die birthing] [die drown] [lit 'locked die'] [sealed die]

We use /pi/ 'go as a canonical active intransitive DO-oriented verb. 4 (13)

Dia pt 3s go 'He is going I He went I He will

go:

Active intransitive+ non-active--+ action+ purpose OR action+ result (14)

pi mati iko matl

'go to die I went and died' 'go to die (with someone) I went and died (with someone)'

[lit. 'go die'] [follow die]

Active intransitive + active intransitive --+-action + direction/path OR action+ scope. Note that

lnaik kembali/ also occurs in standard Malay. (15)

pi 11ae lari turun turunpi turun datang naekambali

'go up' 'rundown" 'descend (away from locus of discourse)' 'descend (coming toward locus of discourse)' 'come back up'

[lit 'go ascend'] [run descend] [descend go] [descend come] [ascend return]

4· In KM /pi/ 'go' functions as a simple active intransitive DO-oriented verb on the merits of the morphosyntax of the language. We are aware that elsewhere in the world its equivalent can be analysed as an unaccusative verb and, in several languages in eastern Indonesia and the Pacific, the verb 'go' is analysed as an intradirective verb which is morphologically transitive, with the Actor who is doing the verb being coreferential with the Undergoer whose location is being changed (see Pawley 1973). Neither is the case for KM.

343

344


When the first verb is a verb of motion or posture and the second is also an active (intransitive or transitive) verb, the combination is often a tightly related sequence of events in which the first functions as an inceptive (inchoative) pbase. In other words, the location of the Actor has to be moved before the second action can take place. Nevertheless, it is seen as a single notional event. The examples below are unmarked for irrealis-realis or perfective-imperfective, so they can indicate either purpose or resulting action or state. Note that the examples in (16) also occur in other eastern Indonesian Malays. (16) pidudu

pi tidor pi tenga pipasiar kambali tidor tidor kambali (17) piame

pisemba pi bawa pi badame pi taro pi urus dudu makan badiri sambayang badiri mangada

'go to sit I went and sat' 'go sleep' 'go live' 'go for a stroll' 'return to sleep (at location)' 'go back to sleep (after having awakened)'

[lit. 'go sit1 [go sleep] [go stay] [go wander soclally] [return sleep] [sleep return]

[lit. 'go take'] 'go to fetch I went and fetched' [go worship] 'go worship' 'go take' [go carry] 'go make peace I go restore right relationships' [go RECIP-peace] [go place] 'go put' 'go arrange' [go arrange/manage/handle] [sit eat] 'sit to eat I sit and eat' [stand pray] 'stand to pray I stand and pray [stand facing] 'stand to face I stand and face I stand facing'

lpapoko/'beat up' is used as a canonical active transitive DO-oriented verb. Example (18) is not an SVC; it merely illustrates a simple use of Ipapoko/. (18)

Dong~

dengpapoko orang-orang dari XX. 3P catch and beat DUP-people from (location) 'They captured and beat up various people from xx:

Like many other active transitive verbs in KM, Ipapokol uses the preposition Isang! to indicate a specific human object complement This preposition often functions to mark dative-benefactive roles, but also commonly marks direct objects.5 (19)

Dong papoko sang dia. 3P beat PREP 3s 'They beat him up:

(20)

Dong papoko sang Pe'u. 3P beat PREP Peter 'They beat up Pete.'

Active transitive+ active transitive in KM SVCs is discussed and illustrated below in Section 3 with limited focus. The widespread use of /bekinl 'make, do' and /kasi/ 'give' as paraphrastic

s.

The syntactic status of apparent core arguments marked with the preposition /sang/ in KM requires further investigation.


causatives is not discussed in this paper. Their use as paraphrastic causatives is common to most non-standard regional varieties of Malay (Adelaar & Prentice 1996).

The use of lame/ and lbuang/ in serial verb constructions

3·

The core ofthis paper focuses on the use of lame! 'take' and /bua.ngl 'throw ouf in Kupang serial verb constructions. We look at their roles as: (a) main verbs in SVCs, (b) adding directionality as a modifying verb in SVCs, (c) adding aspect as a modifYing verb in SVCs. The following examples are restricted to adjacent verbs in SVCs, looking only at nuclear-layer serialisation.

3.1

As main verbs

Kupang lame/ and I buangl can each function as simple verbs, as well as the main verb in SVCs. 3.1.1 I ame/ 'take, get, bring, fetch' lame/ can be used as a simple transitive verb. The complement clauses in examples (21) and (24)

are incidental to the present discussion. (21)

Ais ju

dia arne tana

sadiki ko taro pi pot.

so then 3s take ground little IRR put go flower pot 'So then she took a little soil to put in the flower pot: (22)

Ais do11g dua ame satu salimut,ju dong buka kasi taga11to11g di pintu. then 3P two take one blanket and 3P open cAus suspend we door 'Then the two of them fetched a blanket and opened it up hanging it across the doorway.'

(23)

Amper sadikl beta ame sang dla jadi

beta pung bini!

almost little ls take PREP 3s become ls 'I nearly took her as my wife!'

Poss wife

lame/ can be used as a main verb in SVCs. (24)

Dong ame bawa samua parampuan deng ana-ana

dari itu kampong.

3P take carry all female and DUP-child from DIST village 'They carried off (took away) all the women and children from that village.' (25)

Lu ame kambali beta pung barang-barang yang dia ada pegang. 2s take return ls POSS DUP-thi.ngs REL 3s DUR hold 'You retrieve (fetch back) my various belongings which she is keeping:

(26)

Ais dia ator

ko dong arne kasi dia pung kaka-adi dong salimut yang paling bae. then 3s arrange IRR 3P take give 3s Poss siblings PL blanket REL most good 'Then he arranged so they would ~ the best blankets for his siblings?

345

346


3.1.2 !buanw 'throw out, get rid of, dispose of' !buangl can be used as a simple transitive verb. (27)

Kalo samua su if

kasi

all

makan sampe kinyang, baru bm.mg dia pung sisa until full only then throw out 3s Poss excess

PRF eat

an}lng.

give=PREP dog 'When everyone has eaten until they are satlsfied, then (they) throw out the leftovers to the dogs: (28)

(29)

itu

pante.

boat PL come from everywhere IRR throw out anchor we 'Boats come from many places to dr!m anchor at that beach.'

Parau dong datang dari mana-ma11a ko

buang

jangkar di

DIST

beach

lkan yang su

sa!

busu dong, dla pung guna apa? Kotong buang

fish REL PRP rotten PL 3s Poss use what lPI throw out just '(As for) fish which are already rotten, what good are they! We just get rid of them!'

/buangl can be used as a main verb in SVCs. (30)

Dong papoko bekin luka

sang dia, ais

dong buang

kaluar sang dia.

3P hit make wound PREP 3s then 3P throw out go out PREP 3s 'They beat and wounded him, and then they (physically) threw him out: (31)

3.2

Ana-ana dong ra'u

ame abu, ko buang jli atas. children PL scoop take dust IRR throw out go top 'The children were scooping up dust to throw it up (into the alr).' Adding element of directionality

As a secondary verb in Kupang SVCs, Iarne/ and !buangl often add an element of directionality (energy or motion directed toward or away from the Actor) to the action or event 6 Frequency of occurrence in our text corpus is provided with some examples to show that these combinations are not rare. The directionality described above is illustrated below in Sections 3.2.1 and 3.2.2. 3.2.1 (32)

I ame/ 'toward Actor' Ais dia lari Pi di

dia pung sapi dong, ko

dia J211i

ame sapi gumuk satu.

then 3s run go we 3s Poss cow PL IRR 3s choose take cow fat one 'Then he ran to where hls cows were, to select a fat cow: (pili ame = 51 occurrences) (33) Dia sorong dia pung tangan, ko tarima ame itu burung pi dalam ruma. 3s stretch 3s Poss hand IRR receive take DIST bird go inside house 'He reached out hls hand to receive the bird into the house.' (tarima ame = 21 occurrences)

6. Adding the element of direction toward or away from speaker or Actor is also part of the grammar of other Austronesian languages, such as many Philippine-type languages (Pittman 1966) and some Sulawesi languages. The grammatical mechanisms there, however, are very different.


(34)

Dia su kumpul ame dia pung kelu

deng dia pung taman satu kaki dong di

situ.

3s PRF gather take 3s POSS family with 3s POSS close friend (ID.) PL LOC there (kumpul ame= 27 occurrences) 'She had gathered her family and her close friends there.'

Other frequently occurring examples illustrating energy or motion directed toward the Actor: (35)

3.2.2 (36)

rampas ame tangkapame kodo ame ketu arne koru ame dengarame pal6ame pegangame

[lit. 'snatch take'] [catch take] [swallow take] [pick take] [strip take] [hear take] [hug take] [hold take]

'snatch, steal (for oneselt)' 'catch, ar resf 'swallow, tngesf 'pick by breaking off (fruit, grain)' 'pick by stripping off (grain head)' 'hear something or someone' 'hug, embrace' 'touch, hold'

lbuangf 'away from Actor' Dia pung kelu

mau tola

buang

sang dla.

3s

Poss family want push away throw out PREP 3s 'His family was going to reject him.' (37)

Dia lempar buang

itu

dol

3s throw throw out msT money go inside house 'She (forcefully) threw away that money into the kiosk.' (38)

Dong ~ arne sang dia, ais

(tola buang= 37 occurrences)

Pi dalam kios.

dong ru'i buang

(lempar bua11g = 40 occurrences) dia pung baju.

3P hold take PREP 3s then 3P tear throw OUt 3s POSS shirt 'They grabbed him and then they ripped off his clothes:

Some other examples illustrating energy or motion directed away from the Actor: (39)

kabds bua11g tapisbuang kasi parsen buang jualbuang

[lit. 'brush throw away>] [winnow throw away] [give free throw away] [sell throw away]

'brushoff' 'winnowouf 'give away' '(1) sell off, (2) betray'

3.2.3 Contrasts bet·ween lame/ and I buangf The element of directionality can perhaps most clearly be illustrated with lame/ and /huang/ in contrast modifying the same verb in SVCs. There is sometimes a higher-level discourse function with Iarne/ implying ongoing usefulness or ongoing relevance in the discourse. In contrast, I huang/ imp lies the intended end of the role or relevance of the argument in question by the Actor:agent (40)

Ais dia ang!ca ame galas yang ada isi

laru.

then 3s lift take glass RilL DUR contents palm juice 'Then he picked up a glass which was filled with palm juice.' (41)

(angka ame = 17 occurrences)

Ais dia angka ame itu a11a ko dia piara sama ke dia pung ana sandiri. then 3s lift take DIST child IRR 3s care for like llke2 3s Poss child own 'So then she ad.qpted that child to raise as if it were her own: (common figurative sense)

347

348


(42)

(43)

Tukang dong su angka buang itu batu. craftsman PL PRF lift throw out DIST rock 'The craftsmen had already discarded that rock.' Te

beta pikir

elaborate ls

ini

orang

dong su

think PROX person PL

kotong pung atoran

(angka bua11g= 38 occurrences)

angka buang

PRF lift

throw out

agama.

lPI POSS regulation religion 'Cause I had been thinking that these people had rejected our religious regulations: (44)

Tempo hari beta suru potong ame dia pu11g kapala. time

day ls

order cut

take 3s Poss head

~that (previous) time I had ordered that his head be cut off: 7

(45)

Nantl raja suru orang datangpotong buang

bapa

pung kapala.

later king order person come cut throw out father Poss head 'The king is going to order people to come and cut off your head.'8

Other examples of contrasts that carry a higher-level discourse function of ongoing purpose or relevance, versus no ongoing role or relevance: (46)

maka11ame maka11 bua11g

'eat up (for strength)' 'consume wastefully'

[lit 'eat take'] [eat throw away]

(47)

galiame gall buang

'dig up (for use)' 'dig up (to get rid of)'

[dig take] [dig throw away]

(48)

sakOp ame sakOp buang

'shovel up (e.g. feces to put in a certain place)' 'shovel up and throw away'

(49)

bakarame bakar buang

'bake, roast (food)' 'burn off'

(50)

hela ame hela buang

'lead, drag (toward a goal, for a purpose)' 'drag away, pull away (to separate)'

(51)

ra'u ame ra'u buang

'scoop up (with hands, for use)' 'scoop up and throw away'

(52) pollame

pohbuang 3.2.4

'pour out (into container for use)' 'pour out (to get rid of; e.g. dirty dishwater)'

[shovel take] [shovel throw away] [burn take] [burn throw away] [pull take] [pull throw away] [scoop take] [scoop throw away] [pour take] [pour throw away]

Semantic constraints on collocational possibilities

There are restrictions on the collocational possibilities of some serial verb sets because of the "real world" semantics of the main verb clashing with the semantics of lame/ or /huang/. Some verbs which already have an inherent sense of motion or energy directed away from the Actor (or loss) built into their lexical semantics can collocate with /huang! but not lame/. Some verbs

7. Use of lame! here implies that the head is to be brought back or kept for a purpose, or has ongoing relevance in the discourse. 8. Use of lbuangl here implies that the head is to be discarded and serves no further purpose, and no ongoing relevance in the discourse.


which already have a sense of motion or energy directed toward the Actor (or acquisition) built into their lexical semantics can collocate with lame/ but not /huang!. (53)

bJpJ;l .bmmg orang pung sala sang bosong. want forget throw out person Poss wrong PREP 2P 'You(pl) don't want to forget (completely) the wrongs people have done to you.'

Bosong sonde 2P

1l1rul

NEG

Note that /lupa buangl has 33 occurrences in our text corpus, whereas !lupa ame/ has none and is rejected by most native speakers who were asked to find a context in which it could be used. Only one native speaker could find one context in which it could be considered acceptable. (54)

Dong ~ ame sang dia, ju lempar buang sang dia Pl. dalam bui. 3s catch take PREP 3s then throw throw out PREP 3s go inside jail 'They arrested him, and threw him in jail:

Note that!tangkap amel has 27 occurrences in our text corpus, whereas!tangkap huang/ has none but is considered possible given the right context 9 Similarly /lempar buangl has 40 occurrences, whereas /lempar amel has none but is considered possible. (55)

Abis dong usir buang sang dia pulang deng tangan kosong. after 3P evict throw out PREP 3s go home with hand empty 'Then they kicked him Q!!t sending him home empty-handed (=unsuccessful):

Note that lusir buangl has 15 occurrences, whereas lusir amel has none but is considered possible.

3·3

Aspect with lame/ and !huang/: Activity (imperfective)-+ Accomplishment (perfective) 10

As mentioned above, a useful distinction for KM is between active and non-active verbs. 11 Nonactive verbs are those whose syntactic Subject (i.e. the preverbal core argument) is semantically Undergoer (BE-oriented). Active verbs are those whose syntactic Subject is semantically Actor (DO-oriented). While claiming this basic division, however, it must be recognised that the semantic role structure of unmarked verbs is indicated neither by morphology nor by choice of pronoun sets. How then can we justify a claim that KM verbs make a distinction between active

9· When the verb is used as an imperative, and the direction of the action is with reference to the person being ordered rather than the speaker, the use of lame/ or !huang! can be changed to shift directionality. Much of the discussion in this section on verb typology and aspect is built on the work of Dowty (1979), Foley and Van Valin (1984) and Glv6n (1984). A similar framework has proven very useful for describing the verbal system ofBuru, a CMP language of central Malulru, eastern Indonesia (C. Grimes 199la).

10.

We prefer the terminology of "non -active/active" to that of"stative/active" as we reserve the terms "state" and "process" for interpretations within the "non-active" verbs. Giv6n (1984: 149ti) discusses a similar typology of subjectisation called active/non-active, but says the non-agent subject is marked differently from the agent subject In KM, there is no direct difference in marking agent subject (Actor) and non-agent subject (Undergoer).

11.

349

350


Table 1. Framework for Kupang verb classes

Name of basic verb class

Number of core arguments

Macrorole of subject

Dowty's verb classes

Non-Active Active transitive Active intransitive

1 2

Undergoer Actor &;:or/Undergoer

States, Processes 12 Activities (x, y), Accomplislunents Activities (x)

and non-active types? The solution lies in looking first at distinctions made when there is marking on the verb roots -for example, with prefixes ba- 'reciprocal' and ta- 'agentless passive'- and then for correlations between those patterns and the morphosyntactic behaviour of unmarked roots, patterns of interaction with the Tense-Aspect-Mood system and patterns of interaction with other verbs in SVCs. However, that task is beyond the scope of this paper. Up to this point, we have demonstrated some broad patterns of behaviour in Section 2.2 above. Basic parameters of major verb classes are laid out in Table 1. Unmarked non-active verbs are ambiguous in that they may have either a stati11e [BE] or a process [BECOME, change-of-state] interpretation. (56)

Dia mati.

'He's dead? 'He's dying?

(state-BE dead) I (process-BECOME dead)

Non-active verbs can be given an unambiguous stative [BE] interpretation with the use of the perfective preverbal/sui 'already'. The use of su here imp lies a state resulting from a process. (57)

Dia su mati.

'He's (already) dead: (resulting state)

Non-active verbs can be given an unambiguous process interpretation with the use of the duralive preverbal/ada/ '(1) exist, (2) be in process of' which has a continuous imperfective sense that something is occurring over a span of time and has internal temporal structure (see Comrie 1976: 24ff.) .13 The verb I maul 'want, desire' functions here to mark irrealis, in this case giving the aspectual sense of immediacy 'is about to' as can also be seen in example (58b ). (58)

a.

b.

Dia ada mau maN. Mau uja11.

'He's dying./ He is going to die./ He's about to die? (process) 'It's going to rain I It's about to rain.'

Active verbs in KM may have either one or two core arguments. One place core-argument active verbs are called active intransitive verbs. Two place core-argument verbs are called acti11e transitive verbs. In both cases, the core argument immediately preceding the verb is in the macrorole of Actor. Some verbs like I makanl 'eat' can be used with either transitivity. When used intransitively,

The type of functional-semantic distinction that we are labelling process is Dowty's (1979) and Foley and Van Valin's (1984) "achievement" verb type. The basic type is referred to in the general literature by the terms "process': «change-of-state~ "inchoative" or «achievement" verbs. The semantic primitive generally associated with these terms is BECOME. 12.

13. There are other mechanisms available as well, including the use of /jadi! 'be, become:


Table 2. Aspectual parallels in verbal subtypes

PERFECTIVE IMPERFECTIVE

NON-ACTIVE (S = U: BE) State Process

ACTIVE (S =A: DO) Accomplishment Activity

the Object:Undergoer is deemed irrelevant to the discourse and it is the action that is in focus. This is driven primarily by discourse pragmatics, rather than by the syntax or lexicon. Just as non-active verbs are ambiguous between a state [BE] and process [BECOME] interpretation, so are active verbs in that they may have either an activity [DO] or an accomplishment [CAUSE (to do/be/be-at/become)] interpretation. In general aspectual terms, the ambiguity is between perfective and imperfective interpretations (see Comrie 1976). This is summarised in Table 2. Similar to the non-active verbs, active verbs can be given an unambiguous activity (imperfective) interpretation with the use of the durative /ada./ and an unambiguous accomplishment (perfective) interpretation with the perfective /sui.

(activity-DO cutting) I (accomplishment-CAUSE [to become cut])

(59)

Dia poto11g kayu.

'He is cutting wood' 'He cut wood'

(60)

Dia su potong kayu.

'He (already) cut wood' (accomplishment)

(61)

Dia ada potong kayu.

'He is cutting wood'

(activity)

There are many SVCs in KM in which the aspectual functions seems to be the primary function of lame/ or /bu.ang/, whereas directionality seems to be secondary, irrelevant, bleached or backgrounded. The activity is brought to its full or intended conclusion or completion. (62)

Dia potong ame kayu.

(63)

Dia potong buang kayu. 'He cut away the wood (and discarded it)? (accomplishment)

3.3.1

'He cut up the wood (for use)?

(accomplishment)

Verb +Iame/ ~Accomplishment

In addition to the aspectual function, there is often an implication of deliberation or force on the part of the Actor, or degree of effectedness on the part of the Undergoer that is not present without the I arne/ and not accomplished with perfective I sui. (64) Activity (imperfective)

Dia pung waktu barana su

sampe. Ma dia barana susa.

time birth PRF arrive but 3s birth difficult 'Her time for giving birth had come. But she gave birth/was giyipg birth with difficulty.' 3s

(65)

Poss

Accomplishment (perfective result)

Ana-ana

yang dong barana ame tu,

beta pung cucu

samua.

DUP-children RRL 3P birth take DIST ls POSS grandchild all 'The children that they have born. are all my grandchildren?

351

352


(66) Activity

Ais dla bekin pagar kuliling. then 3s make fence surround 'Then he built/was build! ng (but did not necessarily complete) a fence around

tt:

(67) Accomplishment

Ais dong bekin ame itu

sosonggo. Dia pung model sama ke manusla.

then 3P make take DIST idol 3s Poss shape like human 'Then they made/created that idol (for traditional worship). It was shaped like a human:

Some additional examples of lame/ used to mark accomplishment verbs are given below. Directionality 'toward Actoi can still be involved, but it is often secondary to the aspectual function. (68) gigi ame

beliame tipu ame hela ame pangeame ikaame bawaame sonto ame cuciame 3.3.2

[lit. 'bite take'] [buy take] [trick take] [pull take] [call take] [tie take] [carry take] [touch take] [wash take]

'bite, bite off' 'buy up, buy off, pay off' 'deceive, trick (successfully)' 'pull out, pull away' 'call, summon' 'tie up, bind' 'carry off, take away' 'touch (successfully)' 'wash (until dean)'

Verb + !buang! ~ Accomplishment

In addition to the aspectual function, there is often an implication of deliberation or force on the part of the Actor, or degree of effectedness on the part of the Undergoer, that is not present without the lbuangl and not accomplished with perfective /sui. (69) Activity (process)

Dia pung mama

hapus kasi

karfng dla pung aer mata.

3s Poss mother wipe give=cAus dry 'Her mother was wipin,g her tears dry:

3s Poss tear

(70) Accomplishment (result)

Beta su

hapus buang

lu pung utang dong samua.

1S PRF Wipe throw OUt 2s POSS debt PL all 'I have wiped out/canceled out all of your debts: (71) Activity (process) ltu malam dlmg bakar lampu bam-banya. DIST night 3P burn lamp DUP-many 'That night they lit many lamps: (72) Accomplishment (result)

Ais dla simpan padi yang barisi dalam sokal, ma bakar buang

dia pung kotoran.

then 3s store rice REL dean inside basket but burn throw out 3s Poss dirt 'Then he stored the dean rice in a basket, but burned up the unwanted bits:


Some additional examples of /bua.ngl used to mark accomplishment verbs are given below. Directionality 'away from Actor' can still be involved, but it is often secondary to the aspectual function. (73)

ila11g buang ancor buang cerebua11g malele buang lapdsbuang ganti bua11g bongkar buang layu buang

'disappear (completely)' 'destroy (completely)' 'divorce, separate (totally)' 'leak out (completely)' 'freed. released' 'totally replace' 'tear down' 'wither away>

[lit. 'disappear throw away>]

[destroy throw away] [separate throw away] [liquify throw away] [release throw away] [replace throw away] [tear apart throw away] [wither throw away]

3·3·3 Perfective with /sui versus Perfective with I ame/ and !huang! The question naturally arises: If the use of lame/ and /huang/ makes activity verbs into accomplishment verbs by making them perfective, how are they different from using the simple "normal" preverbal perfective aspect marker /sui? We have noted several functions ofI amel and /buangl as a modifying verb in KM SVCs: (a) marking directionality, 14 (b) marking perfective aspect (the only function of canonical/sui), (c) an implication of deliberation or force on the part of the Actor, (d) degree of effected ness of the Undergoer (thoroughly, completely), (e) assumption of ongoing use or relevance in the discourse of the Undergoer with la.me/, (f) assumption of no more ongoing use or relevance in the discourse of the Undergoer with /huang/. These latter functions relate to discourse pragmatics and are almost modal in nature. The perfective aspect marker /sui does not have these discourse and modal functions. These are illustrated in the examples below. (74)

Dia makan. 'He is eating. I He ate:

Dia makan }agong bose. 'He is eating hominy.' 'He ate hominy.' (76) Dia su makan jagong bose. 'He (already) ate hominy.'

(activity-DO eating; Undergoer irrelevant)

(75)

(activity-DO eating) I (accomplishment-CAUSE [to become eaten]) (accomplishment)

(77)

Dia makan ame }agong bose. 'He ate up the hominy (for nourishment): (accomplishment)

(78)

Dia makan buang}agong bose samua. 'He ate up the hominy (all the rest of it).'

(accomplishment)

There appears to be an additional subtle distinction happening in discourse. Note that the direct object in examples (59)-(61) is glossed in English as a generic, indefinite or mass noun, but as definite in examples (62)-(63). A similar contrast is found between examples (75)-(76) and

14. The general literature has long observed that in languages like English, direction words can also mark aspect For example: eat up, beat up. finish off, shrug off, kill off, even in idioms such as pig out, fed up, and so forth.

353

354


(77)-(78). 15 All of these examples could add the definite anaphoric deictic !itu./ 'that' to the direct object. so the issue is not just about definiteness. The contrast seems to be more in the area of given and new information- examples (62)-(63) and (77)-(78) are assuming the hearer(s) are generally familiar with, knowledgeable about. or understand the situation, event or condition being referred to, whether or not they know the specific wood or hominy involved. 3·4

Frequency of functions and distribution

In our text corpus, lame/ functions as the main verb meaning 'take, get. fetch' (a simple verb or main verb in SVCs) in only 21% of occurrences (136 out of 649 occurrences in sentences). It functions as a secondary verb in SVCs modifying verbs for directionality or aspect in 79% of occurrences (513 out of 649 occurrences in sentences ). 16 Similarly, /huang/ functions as the main verb meaning 'throw away, get rid of (a simple verb or main verb in SVCs) in only 8% of occurrences (36 out of 431 occurrences in sentences). It functions as a secondary verb in SVCs modifying verbs for directionality or aspect in 91% of occurrences (395 out of 431 occurrences in sentences)P It should thus be obvious that the functions of Iarne/ and Ihuang/ adding directionality and aspect to the main verb in Kupang SVCs are a significant feature of the grammar of Kupang Malay. It is also worth noting that this feature has no close parallel in the grammar of standard Malay (Indonesian).

4·

Parallels in surrounding languages

If there is no grammatical parallel in standard Malay to the Kupang Malay feature of using Iarne/ and /huang/ to add directionality and aspect to the main verb in Kupang SVCs, then where did KM get this feature? The answer, of course, is to be found in local substrate languages with which KM has been in contact since its early development. Directionality is found widely in the grammars of the very diverse vernacular languages in the surrounding region. The use of verbs similar to KM lame/ and lbua.ngl to mark aspect and discourse pragmatic or modal features parallel to those noted for KM in Section 3 above is also

15. We are grateful to Anne-Marie Brousseau for pointing this out. 16. Our text corpus has over 10,000 sentences. They are from a daily newspaper column (74 days' worth), tran-

scripts of recorded radio broadcasts and translated material that has been carefully checked for acceptability and naturalness mth several groups of native speakers ofKM from varying ethnic backgrounds. For a discussion of the special challenges relating to obtaining reliable data in creole languages, see B. F. Grimes (1989). We feel the very presence of these SVCs in our data are an indication of naturalness and non-interference from standard Malay (Indonesian). 17. Concordance searches of our text corpus were done using Toolbox version 1.4d. (Toolbox is the program that represents the ongoing developments of Shoebox. See www.sil.org/computing!toolbox for recent versions).


Map 2. Local languages showing similar patterns in their grammars

widespread. We use four very different local languages to represent the patterns found: Helong, Amarasi, Dhao and Lole. 18 The general locations of these four languages can be seen on Map 2. 4.1

Helong

Helor~g (Ethnologue/ISO code beg) is spoken on the island of Semau in Kupang bay and in several communities on the Timor mainland. 19 The traditional landowners around the city of Kupang are Helong. The mainland dialects are endangered (C. Grimes & Cameron 2002). Very little descriptive work has been done until recently (Balle 2007: C. Grimes & Beeh 1995). Helong does not easily cluster with surrounding languages in the way that many others do. Below we look at mechanisms for directionality and aspect in Helong verbs and SVCs. The munples that follow show directionality in Helong SVCs, but do not unravel the underlying morphology, nor identify the unmetathesised forms such as Idak -daek! ,/hapu -haup/, etc.

(79)

Un pgit. ~ lui la lo. 3s return come boat DIST NEG 'He did not return to the boat~

(80)

Kon oen km. le Jr.i1 11Qkm .mgg, also 3P untie IRR hold take come 'Then they untied (the cow) to lead it back here~

[HELONG]

18. Ifwe look farther afield In eastern Indonesia at another CMP language like Buru (C. Grimes 1991a), we find It does not use SVCs to accomplish the aspectual functions discussed above, but rather uses an applicative /-kl suffix. So a parallel function Is there, but It Is accomplished by very different grammatical means.

19- Our Helong data are primarily from Pleter Pong, and Yusuf Bul Mestunl for the Semau dialect; Ever Tit!

and Rev. Salmun Ale-Holballa (deceased) for the Bolok dialect. Misrlanl Balle also checked the examples for naturalness.

3SS

356


Helong uses Ina.ll 'take' and Isolengl 'throw away' to mark perfective accomplishment verbs in much the same way KM uses lame! and!buangl in SVCs (described in Section 3). These are high frequency constructions in Helong. (81)

Mo eta ku hull

nal

dale

se

hali11 kanan nia, ...

but if 2s choose take ground Loc side right PROX 'But if you choose the land on the right side, .. :

sau nal 'bite off' daek nal 'make, create' koet nal 'accomplish' sap nal 'wed, marry' kat nal 'carry off, take away' haup nal 'hold ori kaih nal 'count thoroughly' (83) Oen hutun soleng una.

[lit. 'bite take'] = KM gigl arne [make take]= KM bekin arne [do take]= KM bekin arne [marry take]= KM kawin arne [carry take]= KM bawa arne [hold take] = KM pegang arne [count take]= KM itongarne

(82)

3P

push throw away 3s

(1) 'They pushed him away (physically): (2) 'They rejected him: (84)

4.2

(like KM pili arne)

nang so/eng nulut soleng kosesoleng pasang so/eng daitsoleng heesoleng niklt soleng

'abandon, leave behind' 'evicf 'wipe away, wipe out, erase' 'throwaway' 'cut off' '(1) sell off, (2) betray' 'lift off, get rid of'

(like KM

tola buang)

[lit. 'go throw away'] = KM jalan kasi tenga [evict throw away] = KM uslr buang [wipe throw away] = KM hap us buang [throw throw away] = KM lempar buang [cut throw away] = KM potong buang [sell throw away]= KMjual buang [lift throw away] = KM angka buang

Amarasi

Amarasi (Ethnologue/ISO code aaz) is spoken in southwest Timor.20 Linguistically, it is at one end of the camp lex Uab Meto language-dialect chain and is representative of the rest of the chain. Because it is often subsumed as part of Uab Meto, very little attention has been paid to it until recently (Middelkoop 1939 is an exception). Below, we look at mechanisms for directionality and aspect in Amarasi verbs and SVCs. In order to not skew the focus away from the purpose of this discussion, only the surface forms are given and the complex Amarasi morphology is not unraveled. (85)

Manse nmaeb on nana te, kor-kefi

nana n(ai11

neem.

[AMARASI]

sun fall like that bird-dove DIST 3-return 3s-come 'During the late afternoon the dove came back.'

20. Our Amarasi data are primarily from Heronimus Bani, Rev. Wilfred Fini Ruku, Zacharias Renati, and Nikanor Taunu. The Amarasi data are from the Kotos dialect Christian scriptures in the Amarasi language can be seen at www.e-alkitab.org.


(86)

Rari te,

ri' munif

sin Jauk

antaam neman

rna sin nllum

in

aon,

after that young men PL many 3-enter 3P-come and 3P 3-envelop 3sP body-3G

ma neik

je

nnao he ,ISuub.

and 3-take 3s0 3-go IRR 3-bury 1\fter that, several young men came in and wrapped up his body, and took it to go bury it' (87)

Nal'

Petrus nbukae nrari te, in nfeen

annao kuun.

HON-male Peter 3s-eat finish 3s 3-get up 3s-go immediate 'When Peter had finished eating, he got up and left immediately.'

Amarasi uses /neik/'take' and lnporinl 'throw away' (with their various inflections) to mark perfective accomplishment verbs in much the same way KM uses lame/ and /buangl in SVCs (described in Section 3). These are high frequency constructions in Amarasi. (88)

Onalm bi

Omi

nabaak neik In aamf ee In

then HON-female Naomi steal take 3sP father 'Then Naomi stole her fathers belongings: (89)

(90)

musiik rneik mipoo'meik nheek 11eik naitneik nnaa'neik ntoup 11eik nroi neik Usif of

naan je

baer eln.

3sP thing PL (like KM curl arne)

l.lit. 'snatch take'] = KM rampas arne [herd take]= KM bawa arne orfoo arne [catch take]= KM ta11gkap arne l.lifttake] = KM a11gka arne [hold take]= KMpega11garne [receive take]= KM tarima arne [shoulder carry take]= KMpikol bawa

'2s-retrieve' '2P-herd (flock)' '3-kidnap. snatch' '3-take' '3-hold' '3-receive, obtain' '3-carry'

naiti nporin

DI!P

na'ko

In inl,

rna nakrait

ee.

king later 3-lift 3-throw out DIST 3s0 3s-from 3sP possession and 3-destroy 3s0 'The king will exclude him from his people, and destroy him: (like KM angka buang) (91)

4·3

am1ao nporin an'ipu nporin anmate nporin maiti mporb1 mketu mporin mro'i mporin

'3-abandon' '3-break off' '3-die leaving behind s.t: '2-throw out, exclude' '2-cut off' '2-gouge out'

l.lit 'go throw away'] = KM jalan kasi te11ga [shatter throw away] = KM kasi pica buang [die throw away] = KM mati kasi te11ga l.lift throw away] = KM angka buang [cut thiow away] = KM potong buang [gouge throw away] = KM cungkil buang

Dhao

Dhao (Ethnologue/ISO code nfa) is a little described language spoken on the tiny island ofNdao, in the regency ofRote-Ndao.21 It is most closely related to Hawu (Sawu, Walker 1982), but a comparison of several subsystems shows it is a distinct language (C. Grimes, forthcoming). A sketch

21. Our Dhao data are primarily from Rev. Dr. Ayub Ranoh, Michael Sina, LazarLJS Aplugi. and LazarLJS Lusi In the practical orthography, grave accented e is schwa/~/. A stressed (penultimate)/~/ triggers phonetic lengthening of the following consonant./dh/ represents a slightly retroflexed, lightly affricated d./bh/ indicates a lightly affricated b. A consonant followed by an apostrophe indicates an implosive. A double vowel onset represents a non-glottal, slightly pharyngeal fricative onset. More details can be found in C. Grimes (forthcoming).

3S7

358


of the complex Dhao phonology is also included in C. Grimes (1999). Ranoh et al. (2000) and C. Grimes, Ranoh and Aplugi (2008) provide an introductory dictionary. Below we look at mechanisms for directionality and aspect in Dhao verbs and SVCs. (92)

Jah puru ls

madha ku

descend eye

!1!{lj, se11a ka kedhi unu ku, first come purpose ls-see self first

[DHAo]

ngaa dhu ja}l tadtngi sera, tareh, do aadb. what RBL ls hear 3P true or NEG 'I will come down so I can see for myself whether the things I have been hearing about are true or not: (like KM turun data11g) (93)

Heia na pacal?

ana-dheu emu na asa dedha jara lasl.

then 3s cAus-ascend child-spouse 3s DAT top horse go-3P 'Then he set his wife and children up on top of the horses: (94)

Rengu maso lasi

asa dara emu.

3P enter go-3P DAT inside house 'They went into the house.'

(like KM

maso p{)

Dhao uses lnarel 'take' (with its various inflections) and leele! 'away, completely'- related to !elel 'lose, disappear' - to mark perfective accomplishment verbs in much the same way KM uses lame/ and /huang/ in SVCs (in Section 3). These are high frequency constructions in Dhao. (95)

(96)

(97)

Heia 1.lJnl nare ka hua aj'u ee11a, ka na~. then pick 3s-take PRF fruit tree DIST then2 3s-eat 'Then he picked the fruit off that tree and ate it' saguru nare nat: nare hutu nare kepe nare pili nare hag!? more paramemore taokore suri tare Nengu

~

'cover over' 'eaten completely' 'wrap up' 'grab, hold' 'choose, select' '2s-select out from group' '2s-selze' 'Is-make' '!PI-write (a complete letter, book. etc.)'

eele

jaa 11eti

era

core eele bhokeeele palaho eele tule eele bhelu eele saku eele paceri eele pahie eele patabuli eele

[lit. 'cover take'] = KM tutu ame

[eattake] = KM makan ame [wrap take] = KM bungkus ame !.hold take] = KM pegang ame [select take]= KMpili ame [pick take]= KMpili ame [snatch take] = KM tangkap ame [do take]= KM bekin ame [write take] = KM tulis ame

nel?.

3s evict throw out ls 3s-from place PROX 'He kicked me out of this place: (98)

(like KM ketu ame)

'throw out, get rid of' 'open wide, completely reveal' 'totally destroy' '(1) push away, (2) rejecf 'completely forgotten' 'w.lpe away, erase completely' 'separate, divorce' '(1) sell off, (2) betray' 'free, release, liberate, save'

(like KM

usir bua11g)

[lit. 'throw away disappear'] = KM liang buang [open disappear] [destroy disappear]= KM kasi ancor buang [push disappear] = KM tola buang [forget disappear] = KM lupa buang [w.lpe disappear] = KM hapus buang [separate disappear]= KM cere buang [CAUS-sell disappear]= KMjual buang [release disappear] = KM lapds buang


4·4

Lole

Lole (Ethnologue/ISO code lle) is spoken in south-central Rote. 2Z Rote language and cultt.rre (primarily the Termanu variety) are most thoroughly described in Jonker (1915) and Fox (1977) respectively, with a sketch in Fox and C. Grimes (1995). Linguistically, Lole is near the centre of the complex Rote language-dialect chain and with regards to directionality and aspect in SVCs is representative of the rest of the chain. Below, we look at mechanisms for directionality and aspect in Lole verbs and SVCs.

Boe ma Yohanis kalua neme uma dale maL then John exit from house inside come 'Then John came out from inside the house.' (100) Hataholi ndia boe oo neni uma dale neu. person DIST also 3s-go1 house inside 3s-go2 'That person also went into the house.' (101) De ala leni matan leu. SO 3PA 3P-go1 front-3sG 3P-go2 'So (consequently) they went to face him.' (99)

[LoLl!]

Lole uses lnala/ 'take' (with its various inflections) 23 and lhenil 'throw away' to mark perfective accomplishment verbs in much the same way KM uses lame/ and !bua.ngl in SVCs (described in Section 3). These are high frequency constructions in Lole. (102) Hataholi 11dia ha'i nala ib: boak kadua, ... person DIST pick up 3s-take fish cLAss two 'That man picked up the two fish, .. : (103) nokenala to'u nala kob nala holu nala ketu lala tao lala kel?.lala mbal:l lala (1 04)

'call, summon' 'grab, hold' 'hold (child)' 'embrace' '3P-pick (fruit, grain) by breaking off' '3P-make' '3P-press out, squeeze' '3P-chisel out (fully, successfully)'

(like KM angka ame) [lit. 'call take'] = KM pange ame [hold take]= KMpegangame [hold in arms take] = KM koko ame [hug take] = KM pal6 ame [pick take] = KM ketu ame [do take]= KM bekin ame [squeeze take]= KMparesame [chisel take] = KM pahat ame

Te neu ko sambak ndia sidb:n de loo hen I tua nasu. elaborate later leaf bucket DIST break so leak throw away palm juice 'Because later the lontar leaf bucket will break and the palm juice will all leak out' (like KM malele buang)

22. Our Lole data are primarily from Albert Zacharias and Martinus Dilak. Note that the final-h on the spelling of Loleh from the Dutch-era literature has no linguistic justification in the language itself. 23. This verb lnala! must be distinguished from the noun phrase level plural enclitic /nala! which has a different function and distribution. The latter is extrametrical and does not participate in word stress.

359

3()o


(105)

do'i heni husi he11i nafalende heni tete heni lab: heni koka heni naketu heni sebhenl mbo'ihenl

'dig out, tear apart' 'evict, kick out'

l.lit. 'dismantle throw away'] = KM bongkar buang

'completely forget' 'cut off' '3P-eat up, consume' 'wjpe away, erase completely' 'breakoff' '(1) sell off, (2) betray' 'free, release, liberate, sav~

[evict throw away]= KM usir buang [forget throw away] = KM lupa buang [cut throw away]= KMpotong buang [eat throw away] = KM makan buang [wipe throw away] = KM hap us buang [break throw away] = KM pata buang [sell throw away]= KMjual buang [release throw away] = KM lapas buang

The neighbouring Termanu language on Rote is showing an interesting development in this area. The use of the verb I na.la./ is often simplified to Inaal when used as a modifying verb in SVCs. This does not happen when Inala/ is used as a main verb, perhaps indicating it is already beginning to move along the grammaticisation cycle.24 (106)

5·

Jon sao naa hataholi mate sao na. John marry take person dead spouse 3sG-DEF john married the dead man's wife.'

[TERMANU] (naa- nala) (like KM kawin ame)

Summary

In this paper, we have described: 1.

Grammatical mechanisms in Kupang Malay SVCs for indicating aspect and directionality that have no close parallels in the grammar of standard Malay (Indonesian).

We have demonstrated that: 2. There are close semantic, functional and structural parallels in the SVCs of four local vernacular (substrate) languages with which Kupang Malay has been in contact since its early development as a creole. More specifically, we have shown that: Kupang can use Iame/ 'take, get, fetch' and lbuangl 'throw out. throw away, discard' as simple transitive verbs; b. Kupang can use Iamel and Ihuang/ as the main verb in SVCs; c. Kupang can use Iame/ and /buangl as secondary or modifying verbs in SVCs; d. Kupang can use Iame/ in SVCs to indicate energy, motion, direction, or semantic orientation toward the Actor or action of a verb; e. Kupang can use /buangl in SVCs to indicate energy, motion, direction, or semantic orientation away from the Actor or action of a verb; a.

24. We are grateful for discussions with B. D. Grimes and Erasmus Zacharias that led us to see this pattern for TermanLL


Kupang can use lame/ and lbua.ngl in SVCs to indicate perfective aspect. changing an activityverb into an accomplishment verb in ways that are slightly different than the force of the normal preverbal TAM perfective marker /sui; g. Kupang can use Iamel and /buangl in SVCs to indicate an implication of deliberation or force on the part of the Actor, or degree of effected ness on the part of the Undergoer; h. Kupang can use I arne/ in SVCs to indicate ongoing usefulness or relevance in the continuing discourse; i. Kupang can use /buangl in SVCs to indicate there is no ongoing usefulness or relevance in the continuing discourse; j. Functions (a)-(i) above have close structural and functional parallels in at least four local substrate languages with which Kupang Malay has been in contact since its earliest development; functions (d)-(e) have been clearly illustrated in this paper; functions (f)-(j) are implied by the examples given and are found widely in our texts, but space prevents us from fleshing them out further here; k. Functions (c)-(i) have no structural parallels in standard Malay (Indonesian); (b) has some very limited parallels in Indonesian (Balai Pustaka 1988; Moeliono & C. Grimes 1995; Sneddon 1996); L ln the major regional varieties of Malay in eastern Indonesia, functions (d)-(i) appear to be unique to Kupang Malay.2s f.

It is striking that the equivalent lexical items, glossed 'take' and 'throw away', are used for the

same functions in SVCs both in Kupang and in the four languages exemplified in Section 4. This is an unmistakable case of relexification (Lefebvre 2001, 2004), using phonetic representation derived from the superstrate Malay, but with the same semantics and range of functions as in the substrate languages, in contrast to the semantics and functions of the equivalent words in standard Malay. Therefore we conclude that this provides unmistakable evidence of calquing on the grammars of substrate languages, lending further weight to our broader claim made here and elsewhere that Kupang Malay is a Malay-based creole that has calqued on local substrate languages not only in its phonology and lexicon, but also in significant ways in its grammar. This is contra those who claim that none of the contact varieties of Malay in eastern Indonesia are creoles because they have not seen evidence of them calquing on the grammars of substrate languages (Scott Pauw, pc, August 2007). We feel the data and analysis in this paper provide very strong evidence that Kupang shows significant contact-induced change (B. D. Grimes 2001; Thomason & Kaufinan 1988) and is a full-fledged Malay-based creole, as we have been claiming all along.

25. We are excluding Larantuka Malay (Kumanireng 1982) and Alor Malay which have been in relatively close contact with Kupang Malay. Studies of serial verbs or "verb sequences" in Ambon Malay (Tjia 1997; van Minde 1997), for example, do not document functions (d)- (i) or anything similar.

361

362


List of abbreviations (for Jacob-Grimes Kupang SVCs) 1s 1PI 2-

first person singular first person plural inclusive second person (unmarked for sg or pl) 2s second person singular 2P second person plural 3third person (unmarked for sg or pl) 3G third person genitive 3P third person plural 3PA third plural Actor 3s third person singular 3sG third singular genitive 3s0 third singular object 3sP third singular possessive CAUS causative CLASS classifier CMP Central Malayo-Polynesian DAT dative DBF definite DIST distal (deictic) DUP reduplication DUR durative GMIT Gereja Masehi l.njili di Timor HON honorific

(m.) IRR ISO ITBR KM lit.

idiom irrealis International Organization for Standardization iterative Kupang Malay literally we locative NEG negative NTT Nusa Tenggara Timur PL plural POSS possessive PRI!P preposition PRF perfective PROX proximal (deictic) RBCIP redprocal RBFL reflexive RBL relativizer S=A Subject= Actor S=U Subject= Undergoer svc serial verb construction TAM tense-aspect-mood UBB Unit Bahasa dan Budaya, GMIT VP verb phrase

References Abas, H. 1987. bulonesian as a Unifying Language of Wider Communication: A Historical and Sociolinguistic Perspective. Canberra: Padfu: linguistics D-73. Adelaar, A K. & Prentice, J. 1996. Malay: Its history, role and spread. ln Aftas of Languages ofIntercultural Communication in the Pacific, Asia, and the Americas ['frends in Linguistics, Documentation 13], S. A Wurm, P. Miiblhii.usler & D. 'fryon (eds), 673-694. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Adler, M. K. 1977. Pidgins, Creoles and Lingua Francas. Hamburg: Helmut Buske. Aikhenvald, A Y. 2006. Serial verb constructions in typological perspective. ln Serial Verb Constructions. A Crosslinguistic 'I)pology, A. Y. Aikhenvald & R. M. W. Dixon (eds), 1-68. Oxford: OUP. Alisjahbana, S. T. 1956. Sedjarah bahasa bulonesia. Djakarta: Pustaka Rakjat. Alisjahbana, S. T. 1971. Some planning processes in the developnent of the Indonesian-Malay language. In Can Language be Planned? Sociolinguistic Theory and Practice for Develaping Nations, J. Rubin & B. H. Jernudd (eds ), 179-187. Honolulu HI: University of Hawaii Press. Alisjahbana, S. T. 1974. Language policy, language engineering and literacy in Indonesia and Malaysia. In Advances in Language Planning, J. Fishman (ed.), 391-416. The Hague: Mouton. Balai Pustaka. 1988. Tata Bahasa Baku Bahasa Indonesia. Jakarta: Departemen Pendidikan dan Kebudayaan. Balle, M. 2007. Multiple words (homonymy) or multiple senses (polysemy)? Exploring the semantics ofHelong. Paper presented at the 5th International East Nusantara Conference on Language and Culture. 1-3 August 2007. Bickerton, D. 1975. Dynamics of a Creole System. Cambridge: CUP.


Bickerton, D. 1981. Roots oflanguage. Ann Arbor Ml: Karoma. Bickerton, D. 1983. Creole languages. Scientific American 249(1): 108-115. ffiust, R. A 1978. Eastern Malayo-Polynesian; A subgrouping argument. Pacific Linguistics C-61: 181-234. ffiust, R. A 1993. Central and Central-Eastern Malayo-Polynesian. Oceanic Linguistics 32(2): 241-293. Brugmans, I. J. 1938. Geschiedtmis vtm het Onderwijs in Nederlandsch-lndiif. Batavia: Wolters. Comrie, B. 1976. Aspect. Cambridge: CUP. Donohue, M. & Grimes, C. E. 2008. Yet more on the position of the languages of eastern Indonesia and East Timor. Oceanic Linguistics 47(1}. 114-158. (Also online: http;//muse.jhtLedu/journals!oceanic_linguistics/toc/ o147.1.html). Dowty, D. R. 1979. Word Meaning and Montague grammar. The Semantics of Verbs and Tunes in Generative Semantics and in Montague~ PTQ. Dordrecht: D. Reidel. Durie, M. 1997. Grammatical structures in verb serialization. In Comple." Predicates, J. B. A Alisna. & P. Sells (eds), 289-354. Stanford CA: CSU. Fasold, R. 1984. The Sociolinguistics ofSociety. Oxford: Basil ffiackwelL Ferguson, C. 1959. Diglossia. Word 15: 325-340. Fishman, J. 1967. Bilingualism with and without diglossia; diglossia with and without bilingualism. Journal of Social Issues 32: 29-38. Foley, W. A & Olson, M. 1985. Clausehood and verb serialisation. In Grammar Inside and Outside the Clause, J. Nichols & A. Woodbury (eds), 17-60. Cambridge: CUP. Foley, W. A & van Valin Jr., R. D. 1984. Functional Synta:c and Universal Grammar [Cambridge Studies in IJnguistics 38]. Cambridge: CUP. Fox, J. J. 1977. Han1est of the Palm: Ecological Change in Eastern Indonesia. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Fox, J. J. 1991. History and people: The flow of life in Nusa Tenggara. In East of Bali: From Lombok to Timor, D. Pickell (ed.), Berkeley CA: Periplus Editions. Fox, J. J. & Grimes, C. R 1995. Roti introduction. In Comparative Austronesian Dictionary: An Introduction to Austronesian Studies, ['frends in IJnguistics, Documentation 10, Part l, Fascicle 1], D. 'fryon (ed.), 611-622. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Glv6n, T. 1984. Syntax: A Functional-typological Introduction, Voll. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Grimes, B. D. 1991. The development and use of Ambonese Malay. Pacific Linguistics A-81: 83-123. Grimes, B. D. 200 1. A framework for understanding language change in contact situations. Paper presented at Seminar or Regional Malays. Held in Yogyakarta, 8-10 January 2001. Grimes, B. D. 2005. How Bad Indonesian becomes Good Kupang Malay: Articulating Regional Autonomy in West Timor. Paper presented at Anthropology Symposium, Universitas Indonesia, Jakarta, 12-15 July 2005. Grimes, B. F. 1989. Special considerations for creole surveys. Notes on Linguistics 47: 41-63. Grimes, B. F. (ed.). 2000. Ethnologue: La'JgUllges of the World, 2 vols, 14th edn. Dallas TX: SIL International (Online: <www.ethnologue.com> ). Grimes, C. R 1991a. The Buru Language of Eastern Indonesia. PhD dissertation, Australian National University. Grimes, C. R 1991 b. Central Malayo-Polynesian: An interim evaluation. Paper presented atthe Sixth International Conference on Austronesian IJngulstics, Honolulu, May 1991. Grimes, C. R 1996a. Indonesian - the official language of a multilingual nation. In Atlas of Languages ofIntercultural Communication in the Pacific, Asia, a,ul the Americas ['frends in Linguistics, Documentation 13], S. A. Wurm, P. Miililhausler & D. Tryon (eds), 719-727. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Grimes, C. R 1996b. Languages used in the domain of religion in Indonesia. In Atlas of Languages of Intercultural Communication in the Pacific, Asia, and the Americas [Trends in IJnguistics, Documentation 13], S. A. Wurm, P. Miihlhiiusler & D. Tryon (eds), 633-635. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Grimes, C. R 1999b. Implikasi penelltian fonologis untuk cara menulis bahasa-bahasa daerah dl Kawasan Timur Indonesia (Implications from phonological research for ways of writing vernacular languages in eastern Indonesia). In PELBBA 12: Pertemuan Linguistik (Pusat Kajian) Bahasa dan Budaya Atma Jaya Kedua Belas, S. Dardjowidjojo &Y. Nasanius (eds), 173-197. Kanisius: Yogyakarta, Indonesia.

363

364


Grimes, C. E. 2000. Introduction: New information filling old gaps in eastern Indonesia. In Spices from the East: Papers in Languages of Eastern Indonesia, C. E. Grimes (ed.), 1-8. Canberra: Pacifu: Linguistics 503. Grimes, C. E. 2001. Cow's udders as a model for understanding creoles. Paper presented at Seminar on Regional Malays, Yogyakarta, Indonesia, 8-10 January 2001. Grimes, C. E. 2007. Building the jigsaw puzzle: Seeing the big picture still depends on solid descriptive work for individual languages and cultures. Keynote address at the Fifth East Nusantara Conference. Universitas Nusa Cendana, Kupang, Nusa Tenggara Timur, Indonesia, August 1-3,2007. Grimes, C. E. Forthcoming. Hawu and Dhao in eastern Indonesia: Revisiting their relationship. In T}pological and Areal Analyses: Contributions from East Nusantara, M. Ewing & M. Klamer (eds). Canberra: Pacifu: Linguistics. Grimes, C. E. & Cameron, S. 2002 Dialect variation in an endangered language: The case of Helong, West Timor. Paper presented at the Ninth International Conference on Austronesian Linguistics. Held at the Australian National University, Canberra, Australia, January 2002. Grimes, C. E. & Beeh, M 1995. Kamus Pe,'lgantar Bahasa Helo''lg (Introductory dictionary ofHelong). Kupang: Centre for Regional Studies, Universitas Kristen Artha Wacana. Grimes, C. E. & Jacob, J. 2008. Kupa"'g Malay online dictionary. Australian Society for Indigenous Languages and UBB-GMIT. <www.e-kamus2orglhtml/dictionaries_.html>. Grimes, C. E., Ranoh, A. & Aplugi., H. 2008. Lii Dhao (Ndao) online dictionar,v. Australian Sodety for Indigenous Languages and UBB-GMIT. <WWw.e-kamus2.org!html/dictionarles_.ht:ml>. Grimes, C. E., Therik. T., Grimes, B. D. & Jacob, M. 1997. A Guide to the People and LmJgUages of Nusa Tenggara [Paradigma B-1). Kupang: Artha Wacana Press. Holm, J. 1988. Pidgins and Creoles, Vol. 1. Cambridge: CUP. Holm, J. 1989. Pidgins and Creoles, Vol. 2 Cambridge: CUP. Jacob, J. 1999. Verb serialisation in Kupang Malay. Term paper. Asia SIL, Darwin, Australia. Jacob, J. 2001a. A sodolinguistic profile of Kupang Malay, a creole spoken in west Timor, eastern Indonesia. Special topic paper towards the requirements for the degree of Master of Applied Linguistics, Northern Territory University. Jacob, J. 2001b. Kupang Malay Creole: The case for its use in bilingual education. Spedal topic paper towards the requirements for the degree of Masters in Applied Linguistics, Northern Territory University. Jacob, J. & Grimes, B. D. 2006. Developing a role for Kupang Malay; The contemporary politics of an eastern Indonesian creole. Paper presented by June Jacob at the lOth International Conference on Austronesian Linguistics held in Puerto Princesa, Palawan, Philippines, January 2006. (Online: <www.silorg!asialphilippines/ical/papers/ Jacob-Grimes%20Kupang%20Malay.pdf>. Jacob, J. & Grimes, C. E. (comp.). 2003. Kamus pe"'gantar Bahasa KJipang, 2nd edn [Paradigma B-10]. Kupang: Artha Wacana Press. Jonker, J. C. G. 1915. Rottineesche Spraakkunst (Rote Grammar). Leiden: E.J. Brill Kumanireng, T. Y. 1982 Diglossia in Larantuka, Flores: A study about language use and language switching among the Larantuka community, Papers from the third international conference on Austonesian linguistics. Pacific Linguistics C-76: 131-136. Lefebvre, C. 2001. Relexification in creole genesis and its effects on the development ofthe creole. In Creolization and Contact [Creole Language Library 23], N. Smith & T. Veenstra (eds), 9-42. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Lefebvre, C. 2004. Issues in the Study of Pidgin and Creole Languages [Studies in Language Companion Series 70). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Middelkoop, P. 1939. Amarassische-11moreesche teksten. Verhandelingen van het Bataviaasch Genootsc.hap11oor Kunsten en Wetenschappen 74(2). Moeliono, A. 1986. LmJgUage Development m'ld Cultivation: Alternative Approaches in Language Planning. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics D-68. Moeliono, A & Grimes, C. E. 1995. Indonesian introduction. ln Comparative Austronesian Dictionary: An Introduction to Austronesian Studies [Trends in Linguistics, Documentation 10, Part 1, Fasdcle 1), D. 'fryon (ed.), 443-457. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.


Miihlhii.usler, P. 1986. Pidgin and Creole Linguistics. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Pawley, A. K. 1973. Some problems in Proto-Oceanic grammar. Oceanic Linguistics 12(1-2): 103-188. PACE, Pidgins and Creoles in Education Newsletter. University of Hawai'L <www.hawaiieduJspcl03/pace/> (12 December, 2006). Pittman, R. 1966. Tagalog -um- and mag-. Pacific Linguistics A-8: 9-20. Prentice, D. J. 1978. The best chosen language. Hemisphere 22(3): 18-23; 22(4): 28-33. Ranoh, A, Aplugi, L, Sina, M. & Grimes, C. E. 2000. Kamus Pengantar Bahasa Ndao (Introductory dictionary of Ndao ), Kupang; Centre for Regional Studies, Universitas Kristen Artha Wacana. Reid, A 1984. The Islamization of Southeast Asia. In Historia; Essays in Commemoration of the 25th Anniversary of the Departmmt ofHistory, !AJiversity ofMalaya, M. Abu Bakar et aL (eds). Kuala Lumpur: University of Malaya. Ricklefs, M. C. 1993. A History ofModern Indonesia Since c. 1300, 2nd edn. London: The MacMillan Press. Ross, M. 1995. Some current issues in Austronesian linguistics. In Comparative Austronesian Dictionary; An Introduction to Austronesian Studies [Trends in linguistics, Doaunentation 10, Part 1, Fascicle 1), D. Tryon (ed.), 45-120. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Schiller, E. 1990. The typology of serial verb constructions. Chicago Linguistics Society 26: 393-406. Schulte Nordholt, H. G. 1971. The Political System of the Atoni ofTinwr [Verhandelingen van bet Koninklijk Instituut voor Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde 60]. The Hague: Martinus NijhofE Siegel, J. 2000. Introduction. In Processes of Language Contact: Studies from Australia and the South Pacific, J. Siegel (ed.). Montreal: Fides. Siegel, J. 2001. Pidgins, creoles and minority dialects in education. In Concise Encyclopedia ofSociolinguistics, R Mesthrle (ed.), 747-749. Oxford: Elsevier. Siegel, J. 2005. literacy in pidgin and creole languages. Current Issues in Language Planning6(3). Siegel, J. 2006. Keeping creoles out of the classroom: Is it justified? In Dialects, Englishes, Creoles, and Education, S. Nero (ed.), 39-67. Mahwah NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Sneddon, J. N. l996.Indonesian Reference Grammar. Brisbane; Allen & Unwin. Sneddon, J. N. 2003. The Indonesian Language: Its History and Role in Modern Societ)! Sydney: UNSW Press. Steinhauer, H. 1983. Notes on the Malay of Kupang (iunor). In Studies in Malay Dialects, Part II, J. T. Collins (ed.), NUSA: linguistic Studies in Indonesian and Languages in Indonesia, Vol17, 42-64. Jakarta: Universitas Atma Jaya. Steinhauer, H. 1991. On Malay in eastern Indonesia in the 19th century. Pacific Linguistics A-81: 197-225. Teeuw, A 1959. The history of the Malay language: A preliminary survey. Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- e11 Volkenkunde 115: 138-156. Teeuw, A 1961. A Critical Survey o_fStudies on Malay and Bahasa Indonesia [Koninklijk Instituut voor Taal-, Landen Vollrenkunde Bibliographical Series 5]. 's-Gravenhage: Martinus Nijhoff Thomason, S. G. & Kaufman, T. 1988. Language Contact, Creolizatio,J and Genetic Linguistics. Berkeley CA: University of California Press. Tjia, J. 1997. Serial Verbs in Ambonese Malay, MA thesis, University of Oregon. Todd, L. 1974. Pidgins and Creoles. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul Unit Bahasa dan Budaya. 2007. Tuhan Allah pung ]anji Baru: Bahasa Kupang. Kupang; UBB-GMIT. (New Testament in the Kupang language, online version with concordance function at <www.e-alkitab.org> ). UNESCO. 1963. The use of vernacular languages in education: Monographs on fundamental education 8. Paris: UNESCO. UNESCO. 2003. The mother-tongue dilemma. Education Today6: 4-7. van Minde, D. 1997. MalayuArn bong; Phonology, Morphology, Syntax. PhD dissertation, Research School CNWS, School of Asian, African, and Amerindian Studies, Leiden. Walker, A. T. 1982. A Grammar of Sawu. NUSA: Linguistic Studies in Indonesian and Languages in Indonesia. Vol13. Jakarta: Universitas Atma Jaya. Wardhaugh, R 1992 An Introduction to Sociolinguistics, 2nd edn. London: Blackwell

365

366


Wheatley, P. 1961. The Golden Khersonese: Studies in the Historical Geography of the Malay Peninsula before A. D. 1500. Kuala Lumpur: University of Malaya Press. World Bank. 2005. In their own language... education for all In Education Notes, June 2005. .

Sri Lanka Malay and its Lankan adstrates* Umberto Ansaldo The University of Hong Kong

Sri Lanka Malay is the vernacular language of the descendants of the Malay-Javanese diaspora of Sri Lanka It is a restructured varlety of Malay, which emerged from the prolonged contact between speakers of Malay varieties and speakers of Sinhala and Tamil varletles. The grammar shows a typological shift from the Austronesian to the Lankan type, a shift that can be explained by the typological pressure that the adstrates Sinhala and Tamil - which are highly congruent- exercise in the trilingual environment. This paper discusses the prevalent grammatical patterns of Sri Lanka Malay in terms of frequency, typological congruence and trilingual admixture. I show that, for a complete understanding of Sri Lanka Malay grammar, we must approach it by taking into full consideration the typological matrix in which it has developed. which includes a Malay-based lexifier and two adstrates, namely Sinhala and Tamil. This argues against a view of Sri Lanka Malay as the product of a bilingual admixture. Keywords: Sri Lanka Malay, typology, Sinhala, Tamil, Case, Tense, Aspect, frequency, trllingualism

1.

Background

Sri Lanka Malay (SLM) is the restructured vernacular spoken by the Malays of Sri Lanka: the descendants of soldiers, political prisoners and slaves brought to Sri Lanka under Dutch and British colonial rule (in particular during the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries). Note that "Malay" is a misnomer here; the term was used during British rule to classify people who came from Java and other parts of the Indonesian archipelago. Indeed the clearest identification is usually with Java for two reasons: (1) the fact that many soldiers, prisoners and convicts were stationed at the Dutch fort in Batavia (Jakarta) before being deported, and (2) the fact that Java was a generic identification for people originating in the Indonesian archipelago (Haan 1922). The Sri Lanka Malays, like other members of the Malay diaspora such as the Cocos Malays, typically refer to their vernaculars as Ja.va (Ansaldo 2008, 2009a). This research was supported by the Volkswagen Stiftung's initiative for the docwnentation of endangered languages (DoBeS). The core argument of this paper is already put forward in Ansaldo (2005). I would li.lre to thank Christine Jourdan, Alain Kihm and Sebastian Nordhoff for their useful comments on this version.

368

Umberto Ansaldo

From the late 1800s, census data show that the Malays consistently comprised approximately 0.33 percent of the population of Sri Lanka. The largest group of people assigned a Malay origin came as soldiers from such disparate places as Bali, Java, Riau, Ambon, the Maluku Islands and peninsular Malaysia; it was a common practice for Malay and Indonesian women to accompany the soldiers (Ansaldo 2008, 2009a; Hussainmiya 1987; Schweitzer 1931). Overall, three different communities could be distinguished in the past: (1) a rather sophisticated diaspora of noblemen and their families; (2) a "Malay" garrison, which would become the Ceylon Rifle Regiment under the British (Ricklefs 1974); and (3) a group of convicts of whom little seems to be known. As far as the first two groups are concerned, contacts between them were quite frequent (Ansaldo 2008), due among other reasons to the practice of employing noblemen as officers of the troops, as well as to intermarriages (Hussainmiya 1987, 1990). The Malay diaspora was characterised as a closeknit community during colonial rule; the contacts between the different Indonesian ethnicities and different social extractions were maintained in particular through the ranks of the army as well as through common religious practices (Ricklefs 1974). Though linguistically diverse, the Malay diaspora used a Malay lingua franca as a language ofinterethnic communication; this language has been identified as a Bazaar Malay variety (Hussainmiya 1987), a type ofBatavian Malay (Haan 1922), a variety of Moluccan Malay (Adelaar 1991), or a type of Trade Malay (Paauw 2003; Smith et al. 2004). In the ecology of Sri Lanka, this Pidgin Derived Malay (PDM) variety came into contact with two adstrate 1 languages: colloquial Sinhala and Lankan Tamil. The former was, and is to this day, the dominant language of the majority of the population, the Sinhalese, who see themselves as the legitimate inhabitants of the island. The latter was the language of the largest minority group, as well as a widespread language of trade throughout Monsoon Asia (Ansaldo 2008, 2009a). The Sri Lanka Malay diaspora, 50,000 strong, is at present distributed among various communities located around the island, which vary in socioeconomic and educational status and in their linguistic repertoire and communicative practices. Although SLM appears to comprise perhaps five different varieties (Lim & Ansaldo 2006), and there is also a sense of separate identity for each of the different communities (SLM community p.c. 2003-2006), the speakers nonetheless identifY themselves as the same ethnic group and have been predominantly endogamous. The various communities show different degrees and types of multilingualism, depending on their locality and network. The population is trVquadrilingual to varying degrees of competence, or at least semi-trilingual in SLM, Sinhala or Tamil and English. Although some SLM communities are geographically quite remote, there is no linguistic isolation from the adstrates (Lim & Ansaldo 2006, 2007). This paper argues that the evolution of SLM can only be properly explained by considering the linguistic interactions that occur within a trilingual ecology, in which Malay, Sinhala and Tamil features come into contact (Ansaldo 2008, 2009a, 2009b; Ansaldo & Nordhoff 2009). The argument is structured as follows: Section 2 discusses previous scholarship and methodology.

1. The term "adstrate" is preferred to the dichotomy implied by the terms "substrate/superstrate" considering that, until independence from the British, Malay, Sinhala and Tamil existed on a par as the languages spoken by colonial subjects (Ansaldo 2008).

Sri Lanka Malay and its Lankan adstrates

Section 3 offers an analysis of SLM grammar. Section 4 evaluates the data and their significance for theories of SLM genesis.

2.

Previous scholarship and methodology

The evolution of SLM has been captured in terms of (1) bilingual admixture or intertwining (Bakker 2000), (2) creolisation as well as monosubstratal genesis (Smith & Pauuw 2006; Smith et al. 2004), and (3) convergence under trilingual admixture (Ansaldo 2008). Views (1) and (2) have in common the assumption that a Malay-Tamil Moor bilingual admixture due to intermarriage was the origin of SLM grammar, based on the claim, particularly strong in (2), that no Sinhala influence is found in SLM. Both claims are seriously questioned by the analysis presented below, in which the presence of Sinhala features is obvious. In addition, claims (1) and (2) are criticised in Ansaldo (2008) for being ahistorical and methodologically weak. In relation to history, Tamil-Malay intermarriage rarely features in historical records or oral history and appears to be neither more nor less common than Sinhala-Malay intermarriage. 2 This position can be more properly evaluated after the discussion presented below, and I therefore return to previous scholarship in the conclusions (see Section 3). To be sure, it is impossible to know with certainty which Malay variety was used in the formative stages of SLM since variation was very high, documentation of contact- Malay varieties is still incomplete, and there is no accurate reconstruction available at this time. What is clear is that a PDM variety was spoken, in the sense of Adelaar and Prentice (1996) and Adelaar (2005). SLM has been shown to derive from PDM varieties (Adelaar 1991, 2005; Adelaar & Prentice 1996), and it is certain prototypical PDM features that can be most reliably used in discussing the early lingua franca of the Malay diaspora in Sri Lanka (Ansaldo 2008, 2009a). As argued in Ansaldo and Nordhoff (2009), it is also important to appreciate that, while descriptions of colloquial Sinhala are available in the literature (e.g., Gair & Paolillo 1997; Karunatillake 2004), very limited information on Sri Lankan (Muslim) Tamil is available at present. We do not have detailed intormation of these languages and we must therefore rely on descriptions of contemporary varieties, despite the great diversity of the latter (Ansaldo 2008, 2009a). Fortunately, for the sake of typological comparison, there are descriptions of Indian Tamil available, which offer just as precise - if not more accurate - comparison data as contemporary Sri Lankan Muslim Tamil; after all, the Muslim Tamil variety the Malays encountered was a 300-year-old version of the language currently spoken on the island and indeed originated in South India. Moreover, the extent and importance of dialectal variation in Sri Lankan Tamil is not known, and a reconstruction of a historic form of Sri Lankan Muslim Tamil is not available at this stage. In this paper, the focus is on the case system of SLM, which is obviously of Lankan origin, and on the Tense and Aspect categories, which emerged partly under the influence of Lankan Tense systems but retain some aspectual categories of Malay origin.

2.

The Tamil Moors were in particularly close contact with the Malays due to their shared Muslim belief.

369

370

Umberto Ansaldo

3·

SLM grammar

3.1

Case

Case systems are common and robust features of South Asian grammars and appear to spread relatively easily in intense contact situations, as shown by the development of case markers in vernacular varieties such as Diu Indo-Portuguese (Cardoso 2009), Sri Lanka Creole Portuguese (Smith 1979) and SLM. Indeed, the most striking feature of the SLM NP is a full set of post-nominal case markers; this must be considered a unique feature among restructured Malay varieties, since Malay languages are typically isolating to mildly agglutinative and do not feature nominal case morphology. We do of course find case systems in Indo-Aryan grammars, to which Sinhala belongs, as well as in Dravidian languages, to which Sri Lankan Tamil belongs. Both languages show agglutinative morphology with fusional tendencies. Note also that, because of more than a millennium of intense contact. Sinhala and Tamil grammars have converged typologically and show substantial similarities (Emeneau 1980; Masica 1976). As the rest of this section shows, SLM has developed agglutinative morphology with incipient fusional tendencies in the nominal system, which indicates a typological shift away from the isolating type, as briefly illustrated in (1) (Ansaldo 2009a; Ansaldo & Nordhoff2009): (1)

ni

aanak-nWJ

baek buku-yaiJ attu aada

This student-nAT good book-Ace one exist 'This student has a good book.'

As we can see in the example, Dative and Accusative are marked by suffixes attached to the noun. Note also the verb-final order, which follows Sinhala and Tamil (or "Lankan") typology, and not Malay/Indonesian, which is strongly verb-medial. 3.1.1

Morpheme sources

It is typical ofPDM varieties (Adelaar & Prentice 1996) to derive the lexicon primarily from material of generic Malay origin. Table 1lists the SLM case markers and their probable etymology:3 As can be seen, the lexical origin of these grammatical markers is clearly Malay (see Nordhoff 2009 for alternative etymological origins).

Table l. Etymology of case markers in SLM Case

Marker

Dative "Accusative" or definite object marker (noM) Possessive Locative Instrumental/Ablative Comitative Nominative

-nang -yang

-pe -ka

-ring -le 0

Etymology Malay ,umg 'towards'

Malay-nya [+defmarker] PDM pe [from possessive punya] Malay directional ke Jakarta bikin 'to make' (Malay de < dengan 'with')

3· Exact etymologies are difficult to obtain considering the diversity of Malay/Indonesian features involved in Bazaar Malay varieties.


Table 2. Functions of case in Sinhala, Tamil and SLM* Case Nominative Dative

Accusative Genitive-Locative Instrumental-Ablative Comitative

Sinbala Agent Experience.r GoaJ.. Beneficiary Possessor Patient Location Temporary possession Instrument/Source Association

Tamil Agent Expe.rience.r Goal Beneficiary Possessor Patient Location Path/Temporary poss. Source Association/Instrument

SLM Agent Experience.r Goal Beneficiary Possessor Patient Possession Location Instrument/Source Association

* See Ansaldo (2009a) for details.

3.1.2

Structural features of case in SLM, Sinhala and Tamil

As this section shows, the syntactic and semantic features of SLM are predominantly of the Lankan type. Table 2 illustrates the functions of case in SLM and its adstrates, Sinhala and Tamil. In comparing thematic roles in the three languages, we derive the following observations: 1. Prototypical Agents in SLM, Sinhala and Tamil are unmarked. 2. Experiencers and Goals in SLM, Sinhala and Tamil cover the same functional range: They correspond to Dative case in the adstrates and have lack of Volition or Control as the key semantic feature. 3. Accusative marking is really definite object marking in SLM and shares the feature [+definiteness] with Tamil and its optionality with Sinhala (Nordhoff 2009). 4. SLM shares the Instrumental-Ablative syncretism with Sinhala. 5. In SLM, Genitive and Locative receive different marking; SLM therefore has a specialised Possessive marker, an innovation in relation to the adstrates.

It is clear that the SLM case system is heavily influenced by Sinhala and Tamil grammatical categories; the Sinhala influence is particularly obvious in (4), and the combined influence of both adstrates is argued for below. 3.1.3

Frequency and function

While syntactically, case is realised post-nominally in SLM, congruent with Lankan grammar, semantically it has aspects that can be considered innovative. In what follows, I focus on the core cases of SLM and the grammatical relations they mark. Arguably the most prominent case in Sinhala and Tamil is Dative, which is highly versatile grammatically, as Table 2 shows. A particular feature of Dative in these languages is that it codes Experiencers, namely subjects that are not in complete control of the event predicated and therefore are not prototypical Agents. How this works is illustrated in Figure 1 below. This alignment is clearly present in the grammar of SLM: Dative case is assigned in the same way as in the adstrates Sinhala and Tamil, as shown in Table 3 and illustrated in examples (2) and (3).

371

372

Umberto Ansaldo

NOM-DAT alignment NOM< Agent [+Control]

>DAT Experlencer [-Control] Psych Vs; modal predication

F.igure 1. The Control feature Table 3. Assignment of Dative in SLM and adstrates Sinhala and Tamil Theta-role Experiencer Goal/Benefactive Possession

SLM

Sinhala

Tamil

.r .r .r

.r .r .r

.r .r

(2) go-daiJ Mr. falaldeen-yaiJ kutumun 1-DAT Mr. J-ACC see 'I see Mr. Jalaldeen.' (3)

Sir

aanak-pada-yaiJ ruma-naiJ e-luppa

teacher chlld-PL-ACC house-DAT PAST-send 'The teacher sent the chlldren home:

Note that the conflation of Experiencer, Benefactive, Goal and Possession is not peculiar or unique to South Asian languages, but can be seen as a universal tendency of Dative case marking, as clearly shown by Blake (1994: 145), who describes Dative as the main non-core case used to mark complements. When we turn to the functions of Accusative, we find that, unlike Dative, Accusative is not very versatile. In Sinhala, Accusative is only used with animate objects. Moreover, even with animate nouns, this case is very likely to be optional in Sinhala (Gair & Paolillo 1997). In Tamil, Accusative case is only obligatory for a human direct object With non-human referents, this case is only used to mark definite objects. In SLM, Animacy appears not to be widely marked, though the pronominal system shows variable case marking for Dative first and second person singular, a manifestation of the Animacy distinctions captured in Silverstein's (1976) hierarchy: While first- and second-person pronouns are marked with the DAT suffix da.ng, the rest of the paradigm receives the suffix nang: go-dang, lu-dang 'I: 'you' vs. dia-nang 's!ht!, kitang-nang 'wt!, lorangnang 'you-PL' and dera.ng-nang 'they' (see also Ansaldo 2005, 2008, 2009a; Ansaldo & Lim 2004; Nordhoff2009 presents a diverging analysis). As in Tamil, Accusative tends to mark definiteness in SLM; however, as in Sinhala, it is quite optional Moreover, Accusative marking is also used sporadically for what appears to be emphasis, an innovative trait of SI.M when compared to its adstrates: (4)

inni kendera-yaiJ bapi This chair-Ace take.go 'Take this chair away.'

Interestingly, in Colloquial Malay varieties, an emphatic marker -nya is found that closely resembles the SLM Accusative marker -yang (or -ya).


The contrast between Dative and Accusative in SLM is particularly revealing of the forces behind contact-induced change and can be conceptualised as follows. In both Sinhala and Tamil (the Lankan adstrates ), Dative covers identical functions, leading to high type frequency in the contact situation; due to its grammatical versatility, Dative markers are also very prominent in discourse, leading to high token frequency. On the contrary, the functions of Accusative do not overlap completely in the Lankan adstrates, so its type frequency is lower. Moreover, Accusative marking can be optional and is functionally restricted, so that its discourse frequency in the contact environment is lower. The picture is thus quite clear: High token and type frequency causes SLM- which is based on an ancestral language that lacks nominal morphology- to adopt identical Dative functions as in the adstrates. Low type and token frequency, on the other hand, results in the partial adoption of adstrate features, as well as innovation in SLM. Moving our analysis outside the core cases, we can make two more interesting observations. In SLM, we find InstrumenVAblative syncretism, meaning that the Instrumental case marker -ring may indicate Source: (5)

market-riiJ a is- tra baaru ilckaiJ billi bawa market-ABL ice-NEG new fish buy bring

'Get me some fresh (lit. 'not frozen, new') fish from the market:

This parallels the functions of Instrument in Sinhala, but not in Tamil in which Instrument and Ablative are clearly distinct (Ansaldo 2005, 2008; Silva 2003); clearly, in this divergence between Sinhala and Tamil, SLM seems to follow the former. However, this is not always the case: ln the realisation of Possessive, a different outcome is found. As Table 2 shows, SLM has two distinct cases for Locative and Possessive; the SLM possessive case suffix is -pe, a derived form of the Malay pu.nya 'to possess': (6)

goppe tumman go-yQIJ e-tolak I.POSS frlend 1-ACC PAST-push 'My friend pushed me:

Reduced variants of punya are well attested as distinguishing features of contact-Malay varieties (PDM) such as Bazaar Malay, Baba Malay, etc. This possessive marker is one of the most robust features of Bazaar Malay varieties (Ansaldo 2009a), which leaves little doubt that its retention in SLM must be a manifestation of the Founder Principle invoked by Mufwene (1996), whereby the influence of early settlers and features of their language varieties can have a long-lasting in.tl uence on the new language. As an archaic feature of a Malay lingua franca, it is most likely that this teature was maintained from the original vernaculars of the SLM community and its adaptation led to the development of a new case that distinguishes SLM from its adstrates. 3.1.4 Evaluation The case system ofSLM indicates that overall frequency determines selection in the typological matrix (TM) (Ansaldo 2009a). The general congruence of Sinhala and Tamil leads to the high type frequency of the Lankan grammatical features that are selected, as seen in morphology, constituent order and case marking.

373

374

Umberto Ansaldo

In the case of Dative, Tamil and Sinhala essentially show total congruence in the contact matrix of a typical South Asian Dative; moreover, Dative has very high discourse-frequency, as it is obligatory and employed in a wide range of functions. The result can be captured as follows: High type/token frequency features are likely to be replicated in the new grammar.

In the case of Accusative, however, there is less typological congruence between Sinhala and since the former is more sensitive to Animacy than Definiteness. Therefore type frequency is undermined. Moreover, Accusative appears less prominent in terms of discourse semantics, being more limited in its functional range and optional in most cases. This results in low discourse frequency, as is also revealed by its absence from other analyses of SLM case (Smith et al. 2004; see also Slomanson 2006). In this case, the SLM Accusative emerges as an adaptive innovation, which only partially combines the dominant features of the adstrates and also exhibits a novel function. We can therefore generalise as follows: Tami~

Low type/token frequency features are likely to be recombined innovatively in the new grammar.

Finally, in the non-core cases, we see two interesting patterns emerging. First, we note that, where there is a significant lack of typological congruence between the adstrates, as with the Instrument/ Ablative case, SLM patterns with the dominant language, Sinhala. This can be attributed to token frequency, confirming the general pattern in which frequent features are more robust in the evolution of grammar (Ansaldo 2009b; Bybee 2006), in this case justified by prestige and numerical majority. However, this is not always the case: A different pattern can be observed in the possessive. Here an early possessive morpheme retained from the ancestral language - one of the most robust PDM features across contact varieties of Malay -leads to the formation of a new case marking, which I have attributed to the Founder Principle. These different outcomes show that typological analysis based on frequency can explain much of what happens in the restructuring process, but not necessarily everything.

3.2

Aspect and Tense

While Malay varieties do not mark semantic roles through case, they do exhibit Tense/Mood/ Aspect (TMA) distinctions; the result is a more complex interaction between Lankan and Malay features than is observed in the case system. In both Sinhala and Tamil, Tense is a more salient semantic domain than Aspect On the other hand, Malay varieties in general do not mark Tense, but have elaborate aspectual systems. For these reasons, I focus on temporal distinctions in the adstrates rather than aspectual ones; the latter domain is optional and variable. For example, Tamil Aspect is optional and is usually marked through aspectual verbs, rather than grammatical markers; therefore, it is not fully grammaticalised (Schiffman 1999). When we look into how Tense is realised in the adstrates, we see that while Sinhala has two tense categories, Past and Non-past, Tamil has three, namely Past, Present and Future. As shown in Table 4, SLM has over


time adopted tense distinctions that follow the Sinhala pattern;4 also shown in Table 4 is the fact that aspectual distinctions still play a significant role in the marking of events in SLM. Table 4 illustrates the predominantly Malayic origin of Aspectual (and Tense) markers in SLM (Nordhoff 2009). As can be seen, all TMA markers can be etymologically identified in varieties of Malay, particularly PDM (see Adelaar 1991 for a detailed discussion): Ambonese Malay for the perfective and past markers, Moluccan, Baba and Bazaar Malay for the present/progressive, and Bazaar and Moluccan Malay for the negation marker. The only non-evident marker is the Continuous form ambe(l)dudu, illustrated in (7): (7)

Go market-naiJ

(e)pi ambe ar-dudu si-jato market-towards (PAST).go go PROG-Sit PFV-fall 'While I was going to the market I fell'

The form ambil exists in Indonesian Malay as a pre-verbal particle with identical functions (Slomanson 2006). As Table 5 shows, the resemblance between SLM and other contact Malay varieties is quite strong in terms of their aspectual systems and indicates the retention of ancestral language features. While SLM has predominantly aspectual marking, it does mark at least Past vs. Non-Past, a fact that implies a closer functional alignment with Sinhala. At the same time, Tense in general is not obligatory in SLM and Aspect marking is clearly more frequent in discourse. Considering the relatively scanty information we have on Aspect in Sinhala and especially (Lankan) Tamil, it is difficult to generalise. But the lexical and structural isomorphy with PDM categories leaves little doubt that Malay aspectual functions are reflected in SLM. Still, the fact that, morphologically, TMA in this creole is more agglutinative than isolating reveals the depth of congruence with the Lankan type in the overall grammar ofSLM. Note also that TMA morphology in SLM is pre-verbal, while it is post-verbal in Lankan typology; this yields a certain variation in the Table 4. Morpheme sources for TMA markers in SLM (Ansaldo 2009a) Function

Morpheme

Etymology

Perfective/past Past Perfect Progressive/habitual/present/non-past Future/irrealis Completive Continuous Negation

si-

PDM su(dah), (perfective) si > se > e? PDM ada 'to have' (emphatic) 5 PDM ada (progressive)

ada (post-verbal) ar(e)ati-/aiabis (post-verbal) amhe.(er)dudu.(wattu) (post-verbal) tada

M. nanti 'soon' M. habis 'finisH amhel + duduk 'take sit' PDM tar/tra 'no(t)' {M. tidak ada 'not have')

4· There appears to be some variation in SLM varieties here: Ansaldo and Nordhoff (2009) find evidence of a hybrid system in the Kandy variety, where a third tense seems to have emerged. However, the argument in favour of a clear future marker is weak: It is very infrequent and more likely to be a matter of irrealis modality (Ansaldo & Nordhoff 2009; Smith & Pauuw 2006: 168-169 ).

5· Similar functions are found in Ambonese Malay (though there it is preverbal; van Minde 1997: 191).

375

376

Umberto Ansaldo

Table 5. Aspect in PDM varieties (Ansaldo 2009a)

Function Perfective lncompletive Recentive Future Irrealis Progressive Past/habitual

Baba Malay (BM) suda belum

mo/nanti nw/nanti lagi (. . .lagi) dulu

Bazaar Malay (BZM) sudalhabis belum baru nanti mahu lagi!ada dulu

Cocos Malay (CM) (su)dah b(e)lum baru nanti maulmu lagi

constituent-order of the SLM VP which, though predominantly V-final, also allows for V-medial structures (Slomanson 2006). 6 3.2.1

Discussion

We have observed the following in the evolution of the verbal domain in SLM: 1.

2.

3.

Sinhala and Tamil do not show overall congruence in Aspect; moreover, there are PDM aspectual features in the matrix. SLM maintains Malay aspectual features due to (a) low type and token frequency of Lankan aspectual features; this is the result of the lack of typological congruence between the adstrates and the optionality of Aspect marking; and (b) vitality of the ancestral language, which can be seen as another manifestation of the Founder Principle. Sinhala and Tamil Tense categories have a relative degree of functional congruence and are salient semantic categories in discourse. This results in Tense development in SLM along Lankan lines. TMA is a less tightly organised system than case.

In relation to the third point, it must be noted that there is an important systemic difference between Case and TMA. The systemic organisation of case is tightly structured as a declension system around interdependencies ofTheta-role assignments (e.g., Haspelmath 2006), while TMA really involves different semantic domains. As aptly observed by Matras (2000, 2003), among others, in contact-induced change a whole system can be transferred from one language to the other, especially when the system has high semantic/pragmatic visibility. This type of "categorical fusion" has been documented in other contact environments, such as discourse particles in Singlish (Ansaldo & Lim 2004; Lim 2007; Lim & Ansaldo 2006). The contrast between the evolution of Case and TMA in SLM also shows that tightly organised systems are likely to be selected in toto in the restructuring process. Without such clear systemic organisation, there is less typological pressure from the Lankan adstrates on the PDM features; this pressure is also diminished by the well-developed aspectual system ofPDM varieties that are rich in aspectual categories.

6. This could be either a case of retention of Malayic V-medial order or a result of the fact that spoken Sinhala allows substantial word-order variation in the VP (Silva 2003), which may trigger selection ofVO-OV patterns from the matrix. This is a common observation in contact language formation (see Chapter 7), and perhaps a general reflection of the fact that constituent order is not always as fixed as grammatical theories like to portray it.


3.2.2

VP and NP compa.red

In terms of constituent order, the VP shows less congruence with Lankan grammar than the NP (Slomanson 2006, 2007).7 The only way to explain the contrast between the N and V domains lies in the notion of typological "gang-up" (Ansaldo 2005, 2008): It is the congruence of the two adstrates, combined with the lack of PDM marking of grammatical relations, that leads to an overall restructuring of the NP towards the Lankan type in SLM. Likewise, it is the lack of adstratal congruence, together with the presence of PDM aspectual material, that leads to limited restructuring of the VP in the SLM TM. This shows that any plausible explanation of the evolution of SLM must be derived from the observation and analysis of the trilingual situation, in which all the three languages present in the TM are given serious consideration. & we will see, this corroborates the claim that previous accounts that rely on bilingualism alone (Slomanson 2006: 156) and the overwhelming influence of Tamil (Smith & Pauuw 2006) need to be revised (see also Ansaldo 2008).

4·

Genesis of SLM and the role of the adstrates

In what follows, I retrace and critically evaluate the claims put forward to account for the genesis of SLM. Apart from the work of Slomanson (2006), who recognises the influence of Lankan languages in the evolution of SLM grammar, other accounts have taken the view that SLM resulted from bilingual contact between Tamil Moors and Malays. This view was born out of historical speculations found in the work ofHussainmiya (1987, 1990), as well as the idea that SLM might be the product of language intertwining (Bakker 2003); it has led to a problematic methodological approach in which Sinhala data are discounted from the analysis (Smith & Pauuw 2006; Smith et al. 2004). This state of affairs has been referred to as the KTamil bias"; it is summarised below (Ansaldo 2008, 2009a): 1.

2.

3.

7-

Hussainmiya (1987), the first extensive account ofSLM history, notes that the Dutch Thornbas (records of marriage kept under the Dutch) list some mixed marriages, including MalayTamil Moor, Ambonese-Malabarese and Malay-Sinhalese; he also suggests that SLM may be influenced by Sinhala, Tamil or both. 8 Hussainmiya (1990) notes frequent episodes of religious and cultural exchange between Malays and Moors that could have taken place in the mosque because of their shared Muslim faith. Based on the above tacts, Bakker (2000) argues for rapid typological convergence and admixture with Sinhala and Tamil as a recent development; he assumes that "creolisation" may account for the earlier stages of SLM's history and postulates an evolutionary path from a Malay-Tamil jargon to contemporary SLM. This argument rests on the assumption that SLM's genesis may have followed the same route as that of Sri Lankan Creole Portuguese (SLCP).

This is corroborated by the generative analysis of the SLM VP (Sloman son 2006).

8. Hussainmiya humbly adds that his Kexercise is not undertaken with any formal training in linguistic techniques..." (1987: 157-158).

377

378

Umberto Ansaldo

4.

Based on (2) and (3), Smith (2003) investigates Accusative markers in SLM in order to prove the substantial influence of Tamil. He concludes that one can only argue for a lack of Sinhala

evidence, and not for a positive Tamil influence. Smith et al (2004) present a slightly revised position, claiming a general influence of Tamil and a general Lankan influence in the evolution ofSLM. 6. Based on (3), Heine and Kuteva (2005) simply present SIMas a Tamil-Malay creole. 7. Smith and Pauuw (2006) argue for a monosubstratal (i.e., Tamil) genesis ofSLM. 8. Slomanson (2006) argues for convergence between SLM, Sinhala and Tamil (though MalayTamil bilingualism is invoked to explain some aspects of tense marking). 5.

In order to assess the original historical claims found in Hussainmiya's work, Ansaldo (2008) investigates the same marriage records referred to in the historical sources. The results show that many of the records for the period up to 1796 were damaged by water, making significant parts of the entries impossible to assess. While the most revealing information for identification here is the parties' signatures, there is hardly any information on ethnic groups, which makes it difficult to identify Malays/Indonesians and Moors, considering that both groups share the practice of adopting Arabic names. In a particularly interesting section in the Thombas dedicated to mixed marriages (Hussainmiya 1987), only five of 238 entries clearly refer to individuals of Javanese origin: Of these, two records refer to a Javanese-Moor marriage, one to a Javanese-Javanese marriage, and the remaining two are unclear. From 1796 until1919, mixed marriages were still very rare, with a majority involving Western parties, not Moors; there are two clear entries involving Malays, one married to a Eurasian (between 1867 and 1897), and one to a Burgher (1885-1897). From 1897 onwards, race is dearly specified; of 196 entries, only one is Malay. Clearly, this evidence is not adequate to support a claim ofbilingual admixture or of privileged contacts with the Moors on the part of the Malays. On the contrary, it indicates a very low degree of intermarriage, a fact that is fully corroborated by the oral history collected from 50 Malay families of Sri Lanka (Ansaldo 2008), from which it clearly emerges that endogamy was and still is widely practised in the Malay diaspora. To be fair, in steps (1) and (2) there was only a weak suggestion of a possible Tamil influence in the evolution ofSIM; however, subsequent linguistic literature has stubbornly developed this claim and turned it into a truism, notwithstanding the fact that direct attempts at proving it have basically failed. The parallel with the Portuguese Creole of Batticaloa expressed in (3) is likewise historically inaccurate. SLCP is the variety of Indo- Portuguese developed in Batticaloa, a traditionally Tamil-inhabited territory on the Eastern coast of Sri Lanka. This variety, like SLM, displays a strong influence of Sinhala/Sri Lankan Tamil typology, but may well show a stronger influence of Tamil than of Sinhala. 9 However, it cannot be assumed that what may hold true of the genesis of SLCP can be extended to the history of SLM, as the environments in which the two varieties evolved are markedly different (in fact, no two ecologies of contact are ever the same; Mufwene 2001). SLCP may have developed in a small, focused community in contact with predominantly Tamil-speaking communities, where predominantly Portuguese males would have

9· Though Bakker does not present any evidence in favour of this latter point, a historical explanation might be found if we consider that the Batticaloa area has typically been Tamil-dominated.


come into contact with Tamil speakers, though Sinhala influence has not been ruled out SLM, on the other hand, evolved in Malay-speaking communities, including women, in more diffuse settings in Sinhala- and Tamil-speaking areas of Sri Lanka. Therefore, while SLCP may be aresult of Portuguese-Tamil admixture through intermarriage, in the case of SLM, intermarriage and admixture with specifically Tamil speakers is neither attested nor historically plausible. It is crucial to consider that, although intermarriage was a common, quasi-institutionalised practice in Portuguese domains overseas (Bethencourt 2005; Chapter 7 this volume), it was clearly discouraged in SLM communities, and especially with Tamil Moors, who had low social status. Postulating development from an early jargon is likewise historically unfounded and theoretically problematic: Why would the communities of Malays, who were socially fully functional as soldiers, guards, planters and fishermen, speak a "jargon"? The most serious attempt to date to argue for Tamil as a primary "substrate" is claim (4) which, crucially, failed to find any evidence. The fact that absence of Sinhala influence is found, rather than presence of Tamil influence, is not surprising at all considering that the focus was on finding proof of Tamil not Sinhala, influence. The same methodological problem affects a more recent attempt underlying the claim of a Tamil-based TMA system (8), as only Tamil was investigated and Sinhala data are absent As this paper shows, the emergence of case in SLM is largely due to a process of typological congruence of the Lankan adstrates that imposes a new grammatical system in the emerging grammar. This is most vividly visible in the emergence of Dative, where high type and token frequency leads the SLM to develop identical functional properties to Sinhala and Tamil. While typological congruence also causes the emergence of other cases, a lower frequency of types and tokens leads to only partial adoption of Accusative functions. As shown above, there are clear functional- typological reasons why the SLM Accusative, one of whose functions is to mark definiteness, looks the way it does. It is the result of lower type/token frequency and behaves crosslinguistically like other typical Accusative cases. A direct intiuence of Sinh ala is also found in the case system, in the Ablative-Instrumental syncretism. Likewise, I have shown that the aspectual system of SLM is mostly replicated from PDM, a conclusion also reached following a different, generative approach by Slomanson (2006). Finally, the analysis of Tense presented above argues for congruence with Sinhala, not Tamil, in SLM's basic Tense categories, as confirmed for the Kandy variety ofSLM by Ansaldo and Nordhoff (2009). Considering the overwhelming linguistic and historical evidence in tavour of a trilingual admixture, it seems fair to suggest that the only way to explain the genesis of SLM is through trilingual admixture and typological pressure from the Lankan adstrates that caused a major restructuring in which a typological shift from Austronesian to Lankan grammar took place. The same thing happened to word order: Sinhala and Tamil are verb-final, while PDM varieties are V-medial; in the contact matrix, the following shift occurs: SOV + SOV + SVO = SOV (Ansaldo 2009b ). Heavy restructuring followed by typological shift is a documented development in situations where a community faces strong cultural pressure from the outside (Thomason & Kaufmann 1988). This is often the cause oflanguage death, unless the community in question shows strong ethnolinguistic vitality. This picture accounts strikingly well for the past and present situation of the Malays in Sri Lanka: A tiny minority, not officially acknowledged, has to negotiate its way between two powerful ethnicities. In fact, the Malays have traditionally been by far one of

379

380

Umberto Ansaldo

the most multilingual groups of the island, often trilingual if not quadrilingual (speaking Dutch or English as well), a skill that has allowed them to prosper as middlemen in different historical periods (Ansaldo 2008, 2009a; Lim & Ansaldo 2006, 2007). At the same time, the Malay diaspora has always been culturally prominent and keen to preserve its unique identity; this can be seen in recent attempts to revitalise SLM through the introduction of (Standard) Malay classes as well as revitalisation attempts initiated by the community. SLM is thus the result of a process of acculturation in which a minority group on the one hand accommodates to the linguistic practices of the majority while on the other hand tries to preserve its ancestral identity.

List of abbreviations ABL

BM

BZM CM DAT

DOM NBG

PDM

ablative BabaMalay Bazaar Malay Cocos Malay dative definite object marker negation Pidgin Derived Malay

PL PFV

Pass PROG

SLCP SLM TM TMA

plural perfective possessive progressive Sri Lankan Creole Portuguese Sri Lanka Malay typological matrix Tense/Mood/Aspect

References Adelaar, K. A. 1991. Some notes on the origin of Sri Lankan Malay. In Papers in Austronesian Linguistics, no. 1, H. Steinhauer (ed.),l-22. Canberra: The Australian National University. Adelaar, K. A. 2005. Structural diversity in the Malayic subgroup. In The Austronesian Languages of South East Asia and Madagascar, K. A. Adelaar & N. P. Himmelmann (eds), 202-226. London: Routledge Curzon. Adelaar, K. A. & Prentice, D. J. 1996. Malay: Its history, role and spread. In Atlas of Languages ofIntercultural Communication in the Pacific, Asia and the Americas, S. A. Wurm, P. Miihlhauser & D. T. 'fryon (eds), 673-693. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Ansaldo, U. 2005. Typological admixture in Sri Lanka Malay: The case of Kirinda Java. Ms, University of Amsterdam. Ansaldo, U. 2008. Revisiting Sri Lanka Malay: Genesis and classification. In A World ofMany Voices: Lessons from Documenting Endangered Languages [Typological Studies in Language 78], K. D. Harrison, D. S. Rood & A. Dwyer (eds), 13-42. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Ansaldo, U. 2009a. Contact Languages. Ecology and Evolution in Asia. Cambridge: CUP. Ansaldo, U. 2009b. Contact language formation in evolutionary terms. In Complex Processes in New Languages [Creole Language Library 35], E. 0. Aboh & N. Smith (eds). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Ansaldo, U. & Lim, L. 2004. Kirinda Java and the Malay creoles of Sri Lanka. Cura.;:ao Creole Conference, Cura.;:ao, Netherlands Antilles. 11-15 August 2004. Ansaldo, U. & Nordhoff; S. 2009. Complexity and the age of languages. In Complex Processes in New Languages [Creole Language Library 35], E. 0. Aboh & N. Smith (eds). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Bakker, P. 2000. Rapid language change: Creolization, intertwining, convergence. In Tune Depth in Historical Linguistics, C. Renfrew; A. McMahon & L. 'frask (eds), 585-620. Cambridge: McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research.


Bakker, P. 2003. Mixed languages as autonomous systems. In The Mixed Language Debate: Theoretical and Empirical Advances, Y. Matras & P. Bakker (eds), 107-150. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Bethencourt, F. 2005. Low cost empire: Interaction between Portuguese and local societies in Asia. In Rivalry and Conflict: European Traders and Asian Trading Networks in the 16th and 17th Centuries, E. van Veen & L. Blusse (eds), 108-130. Leiden: CNWS Publications. Blake, B. 1994. Case. Cambridge: CUP. Bybee, J. 2006. From usage to grammar: The mind's response to repetition. Language 82: 711-733. Cardoso, H. 2009. Diu Indo-Portuguese. A Grammatical Description. PhD dissertation, University of Amsterdam. Emeneau, M. B. 1980. Language and Linguistic Area. Palo Alto CA: Stanford University Press. Gair, J. & Paolillo, J. 1997. Sinhala. Munich: Lincom. Haan, F. de. 1922. Oud Batavia. Gedulkboek. Batavia: Kol:fi Haspelmath, M. 2006. Against markedness (and what to replace it with). Joumal of Linguistics 42: 25-70. Heine, B. & Kuteva, T. 2005. Language Contact and Grammatical Change. Cambridge: CUP. Hussainmiya, B. A. 1987. Lost Cousins: The Malays of Sri Lanka. Kuala Lumpur: Universiti Kebangsan Malaysia. Hussainmiya, B. A. 1990. Orang Rejimen: The Malays of the Ceylon Rifle Regiment. Kuala Lumpur: Universiti Kebangsan Malaysia. Karunatillake, W. S. 2004. An Introduction to Spoken Sinhala. Colombo: Gunasena. Lim, I. 2007. Mergers and acquisitions: On the ages and origins of Singapore English particles. World Englishes 26: 446-473. Lim, L. & Ansaldo, U. 2006. Keeping Kirinda vital: The endangerment- empowerment dilemma in the documentation of Sri Lanka Malay. Amsterdam Center for Language and Communication Working Papers 1: 51-66. Lim, L. & Ansaldo, U. 2007. Identity alignment in the multilingual space: The Malays of Sri Lanka. In Linguistic lde,Jtity in Multilingual PostcolmJial Spaces, E. A. Anchim be (ed.), 218-243. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. Masica, C. 1976. Defining a Linguistic Area: South Asia. Chicago IL: University of Chicago Press. Matras, Y. 2000. Fusion and the cognitive basis for bilingual discourse markers. International Joumal of Bilingualism 4: 505-528. Matras, Y. 2003. Mixed languages: Re-examining the structural prototype. In The Mixed Language Debate: Theoretical and Empirical Advances, Y. Matras & P. Bakker (eds), 151-176. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. van Minde, D. 1997. Malayu Ambong: Phonology, Morphology, S..vntax. Leiden: CNWS. Mufwene, S. S. 1996. The founder principle in creole genesis. Diac.hronica 13: 83-134. Mufwene, S. S. 2001. The Ecology o_fLanguage Evolution. Cambridge: CUP. Nordhoff, S. 2009. A Grammar of Sri Lanka Malay. PhD dissertation, University of Amsterdam. Paauw, S. 2003. What is Bazaar Malay? The 5th International Symposium on Malay/Indonesian Linguistics, Nijmegen, June 2003. Ricklefs, M. C. 1974. Jogjakarta under Sultan Mangkubumi, 1749-1779: A History of the Division ofJava. London: OUP. Schi1fman, H. 1999. A Reference Grammar o_fSpoken Tamil. Cambridge: CUP. Schweitzer, C. 1931. Reise nach Java und Ceylon 1675-1682. The Hague: Nijhoff Silva, A. W. I. 2003. Teach Yourself Tamil: A Complete Course for Beginners. Kandana, Sri Lanka: Pubudu Printers. Slomanson, P. 2006. Sri Lankan Malay morphosyntax: Lankan or Malay? In Structure and Variation in Language Contact [Creole Language Library 29], A. Deumert & S. Durrleman (eds), 135-158. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Slomanson, P. 2007. The perfect construction and complexity drift in Sri Lankan Malay. Lingua 118: 1640-165 5. Smith, I. 1979. Substrata versus universals in the formation of Sri Lanka Portuguese. Papers in Pidgin and Creole Linguistics 2A-57: 183-200.

381

382

Umberto Ansaldo

Smith, I. 2003. The provenance and timing of substrate influence in Sri Lanka Malay: Definiteness, animacy and munber in accusative case marking. The South Asian Language Analysis Roundtable XXIII, Austin, Texas, 10-12 October 2003. Smith, I. & Paauw; S. 2006. Sri Lanka Malay: Creole or convert? In Structure and Variation in Language Contact [Creole Language Library 29], A. Dewnert & S. Durrleman (eds), 159-181. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Smith, I., Pauuw, S. & Hussainrniya, B. A. 2004. Sri Lanka Malay: The state of the art In Yearbook of South Asian Languages 2004, R. Singh (ed.),197-215. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Thomason, S. & Kaufman, T. 1988. Language Contact, Creolization and Genetic Linguistics. Berkeley CA: University of California Press.

Dravidian features in the Sri Lankan Malay verb* Peter Slomanson University of Aarhus

The variety of Malay brought to Sri Lanka from Indonesia beginning in the mid-seventeenth century was a largely isolating SVO language, whose grammar has changed radically over time. Modern Sri Lankan Malay (SLM) remains a language of predominantly Austronesian lexical inventory. but its grammar is now highly Dravidianised. This development is plausibly accounted for by postulating the convergence of L1 and 12 varieties in the many Muslim communities in which the interaction of Malay speakers and speakers of the Dravidian language Shonam (Sri Lankan Muslim Tamil) was intensive and the communal and cultural role ofShonam in the life ofthe Malay communities significant. This infiuence is noticeable from the diffusion of a number of Dravidian morphosyntactic features into SLM, including inter alia the accretion of a threeway morphological tense contrast where none was previously present, its suppression in negated clauses, and a robust finiteness contrast that marks the divergent status of matrix and non- matrix clauses. The SLM verb phrase. conservative in linear order, nevertheless strongly reflects a Shonam morphosyntactic model. A plausible catalyst for this development is accommodation of the discourse culture associated with the Sri Lankan sprachbund, in which the most recent event must appear last and must be realised as a matrix clause dominating one or more non-finite clauses. Those non-finite [adjunct] clauses represent preceding events. Keywords: Sri Lankan Malay, Shonam, Tamil, Dravidian, verb morphosyntax

1.

Introduction

The goal of this article is to describe a subset of the linguistic effects of contact with Shonam (Sri Lankan Muslim Tamil) on the language of Malay-speaking communities in Sri Lanka, and to

This article has benefited greatly from the linguistic consultant skills of Mohamed Jaffar and Mohammed Thowfeek Mohammed Rihan, from discussions of the social and cultural history ofSLM speakers with Dr. B. A. Hussainmiya, from discussions of Malay dialectology with Scott Paauw, from friendly debates on glottogenesis and model language identification with Sebastian Nordhott: and from countless providers of naturalistic data in Sri Lankan communities, particularly in the Colombo area, Kurunegala, and Kirinda, to whom I am greatly indebted. I also wish to thank Dr. Marcel den Dikken and the Professional Staff Congress of the City University of New York for funding fieldwork performed in 2005, and the American Institute for Sri Lankan Studies for a research fellowship that supported fieldwork performed in Sri Lanka during the academic year of 2006-2007.

384

Peter Slomanson

focus specifically on the effects of this contact on the morphosyntax of the verb in Sri Lankan Malay (henceforth SLM). 1 SLM verb morphosyntax is superficially conservative in the sense that its functional markers appear pre-verbally, rather than post-verbally. Shonam has nevertheless served as a model in the development of the SLM verb. Further more SLM has developed independent properties that constitute generalisations of phenomena found in Shonam. For example, SLM rigidly distinguishes between finite and non-finite markers of negation, with the finite marker jang usable in all non-finite contexts and no finite ones. In Shonam, there are different types of non-finite negation markers based on the status of the verb being negated. Matrix lexical verbs that would be finite in declarative contexts appear as negative infinitives. This article will introduce a subset of the morphosyntactic properties of SLM that have entered the language as a consequence of the collective modelling of the discourse structure of Shonam and of the restructuring of the syntax of vehicular Malay to accommodate the changes. This process was facilitated by widespread Malay/Shonam bilingualism in the Sri Lankan Malay communities, which was universal well into the twentieth century, and which remains universal in a small number of conservative SLM communities.

2.

Thelanguage

SLM is spoken by a population of approximately 30,000 people in small communities throughout the territory of Sri Lanka, an island nation in which the majority of individuals are native speakers ofSinhala (Indo-Aryan, SOV) and a large minority are native speakers of Tamil (Dravidian, SOV). Vehicular Malay2 (Austronesian, SVO), from which SLM draws most of its open and all of its closed class lexical inventory, is a highly analytic language. As a result of language contact. SLM has become a predominantly SOV language of Dravidian type. The development and grammaticalisation of new functional contrasts in SLM is a matter of great interest, as it involves morphological complexification to an extent that is relatively uncommon in radical contact languages. In that respect, careful descriptive research on SLM, as well as diachronic research on SLM, can serve as a valuable testing ground for theories of grammatical change and second language acquisition.

Ahhough the motivation for treating the contact with Shonam as primary will be discussed to some extent, space limitations do not permit a discussion of the entire sociohistorical case for the primacy of Shonarn influence over that of the language ofthe Sinhala majority. Similarly, discussion of the effects of contact with Shonarn on the morphosyntax of the SLM noun phrase can only be dealt with in passing. Of particular si.gnifu;ance, however, is the fact that accusative case marking, clearly a contact linguistic accretion in SLM, is obligatory in both SLM and Shonarn, at least in definite noun phrases. Conversely, accusative case marking in Sinhala is highly optional, and limited to animate noun phrases. 1.

This term first appeared in Smith et al. (2004). It refers to the morphologically levelled contact varieties of Malay historically used in Java and parts of eastern Indonesia as languages of wider communication. Based on phonological evidence (Adelaar 1991) and lexical evidence (Paauw 2004), these are the Malay varieties most likely to have been brought to Sri Lanka by Indonesians, beginning in the mid -seventeenth century. 2.

Dravidian features in the Sri Lankan Malay verb

The greatest concentrations of SLM speakers reside in the larger urban areas with Sinhalaspeaking majorities (Colombo and Kandy), in a larger number of smaller municipalities with Sinhala-speaking majorities (Badulla, Kurunegala, Negombo, Hambantota, Matale, Nawalapitiya), and notably in a handful of predominantly Malay rural communities in Hambantota district, including the villages of Kirinda and Bolana. There are also Malays living in Tamilmajority areas, but most such individuals have shifted to Tamil, with the exception of those individuals who were born elsewhere and members of their families. 3 Native speakers ofSLM are of ethnically mixed Indonesian origin and of Malaysian origin; however, there has historically been considerable intermarriage with indigenous Sri Lankans, particularly with Sri Lankan Muslims, also known as Moors (Hussainmiya 1987, 1990/2008), who are overwhelmingly native speakers of Shonam. This history has not necessarily led to the abandonment of Malay by the children of such unions, and language contact within the family is likely to have been a factor in the development of SLM, as has the use of Shonam in religious process and traditional education among Malays (Slomanson & Hussainmiya in preparation).4 I will discuss selected morphosyntactic features in the complex SLM verb that reflect the influence of a Shonam model. Features attributable to Sri Lankan influence permeate the morphosyntax of SLM and are far more numerous than retentions from vehicular Malay. 2.1

SLM as a restructured Malay variety

The case of SLM brings with it a number of intriguing anomalies. In the first place, there has been relatively little research on radical contact languages that were not lexified by a European language, adding to the value of research on SLM to contact linguistics. In the second place, most of the literature that there is has dealt with pidgins and creoles specifically. In the case of SIM, profound grammatical change has gone hand in hand with a surprising degree of etymological conservatism. This had been regarded as a case of relexification, in a broad sense (rather than in the theoretically elaborated sense associated with Lefebvre and colleagues). The implication was that SLM is a morphologically less elaborated relexified Tamil variety. The relexification characterisation is not accurate, however, if a substantial proportion of modem speakers are descended from Malay speakers who continued speaking Malay in Sri Lanka. It was the grammar of Malay

3· This includes, for example, Kinniyai, a large Muslim community in Trincomalee district, where I recorded fluent familial SLM speakers in 2007. There are also at least two small and isolated eastern communities in which SLM has been maintained, including the Champa Lane community, where Romola Rassool recorded speakers in 2010. 4· Ansaldo (2008: 19-22) dismisses Hussainmiya's historical research that provides evidence for a close cultural and communal relationship between the SLM and Shonam-speaking communities, under the section heading 'The Tamil Bias'. Ansaldo's claim to have evaluated potential evidence of interethnic Muslim marriages in the tombos (Sri Lankan population registries) which he found to be lacking, is questionable. Ansaldo claims to have examined tombos associated with a period of over a century after they ceased to be kept. and in which the colonial marriage records were kept. starting in the eighteenth century in mosques. The Muslim evidence then for highly frequent Malay - «Mloaish" (Shonam-speaking) intermarriage is completely clear and unambiguous. In reality, authorities no longer recorded Muslim marriages. The total period included in Ansaldo's claim is 1678-1919.

385

386

Peter Slomanson

speakers that changed, rather than their lexical inventory. Furthermore, Tamil varieties, including Shonam, display a broader range of aspectual and other grammatical contrasts than does SLM, and those features demonstrably borrowed from Shonam have not been assimilated by the grammar of SLM in a way that could be characterised as unmodified. Another view, and one that seems most plausible, given what we know of the social history of the Sri Lankan Malay people, is that L2 speakers created restructured varieties with which native varieties merged over time, through the diffusion of grammatical features, such as tense. This has led to the creation of a new grammar, drawing heavily from Shonam sources, in ways that sometimes involve innovation.

3·

Morphosyntax

There are extensive morphosyntactic contrasts between vehicular Malay and SLM that are straightforwardly attributable, directly or indirectly, to Shonam influence. This is due on the one hand to the social history of the SLM-speak:ing population in which Shonam and its speakers played a critical role, and on the other hand to the fact that a majority of substantive changes are typologically consistent with the languages in the Sri Lankan sprachbund, and not with vehicular Malay. Sri Lankan influence on SLM morphosyntax is likely to be due to convergence with Shonam L2 Malay; however, there are numerous parallels in the grammar of Sinhala, which has also been strongly influenced by Tamil historically. None of the features described here is directly attributable to adstratal influence from Sinhala specifically, whereas some, such as asymmetrical negation, are clearly Dravidian (i.e. Shonam) and have no parallel in Sinhala. By convergence, I am reterring to the diffusion of grammatical properties and devices, including functional contrasts with associated morphology and syntax, such as tense, (non- )finiteness, and case, that are relatively resistant to borrowing across languages.

3.1

Linear order in the SLM verb phrase

A majority of clauses in SLM manifest XV string order, with the main verb following all constituents, including direct object complements, adjunct clauses, and frequently a clausal complement as well. Verb-object (and other VX) clauses do occur, however. Consequently, the verb is frequently, but by no means always, the final element in its clause. Both the predominance of this order as a canonical declarative order and the fact that the order is flexible in practice are teatures of Shonam and of the Sri Lankan sprachbund generally. They are manifestly not features of vehicular Malay, which supports the idea that OV orders are the result ofShonam influence. The extraposition of embedded complement clauses is motivated by ease of processing, rather than by a syntactic or information-structural factor. VO orders in which the object is a non-heavy NP participial adjunct clauses do not have the same motivation. They are non-motivated for most fluent speakers by the Sri Lankan sprachbu.nd generalisation that right extraposition is a focusing device. The processing need to extrapose heavy NPs has not obstructed the transition from aVO grammar to a predominantly OV grammar.


Tense and aspect

3.2

In the expression of temporal contrasts, SLM differs from vehicular Malay, which has no tense morphology. Furthermore, vehicular Malay aspect markers are not phonologically bound to lexical verbs. In SLM, bound morphology associated with lexical verbs marks tense and aspect Tense and aspect morphemes in SLM are obligatorily adjacent to associated lexical verbs, with or without phonological reduction. SLM verbs are pre-verbally tense-marked as in (1). Example (2) demonstrates pre-verbal functional marking in SLM, a residual distributional parallel with vehicular Malay, and (3) demonstrates functional and structural parallels in Shonam, specifically the phonological dependence of functional markers on the verb (contra vehicular Malay), and explidtcontrastive5 tense morphology. (1)

(2)

Farida nasi su-makan. Farida rice PST-eat 'Farida ate rice? Farida su makan nasi. Farida ASP eat

SLM

VRH. MALAY

rice

'Far ida has eaten rice? (3)

Farida Soor tin-daa.6 Farida rice eat-PsT 'Farida ate rice:

SHONAM

Shonam, and Tamil varieties generally, feature agglutinative verbs in which contrastive tense is obligatorily encoded in non-negated contexts. It is sometimes difficult to argue based on linguistic evidence alone, rather than based on sociohistorical factors, that an apparent model language property is diachronically associated with the influence ofShonam, rather than with influence from Sinhala. Tense and aspect, however, are morphologised in a manner that much more strongly reflects contact with Shonam than with Sinhala. SLM and Shonam verbs are similarly agglutinative, whereas the colloquial Sinhala verb has no future tense, marks past tense partly with ablaut and other morphophonemic alternations, rather than with affixation, and makes greater use of separable periphrastic constructions. Most significantly, Sinhala requires negated verbs to be explicitly tense-marked using elements that are phonologically independent of negation

5· The use of the term contrastive here is needed in order to distinguish between the explicit marking of three tenses and the presence of a tense feature in which no contrast between tenses is communicated. Pre-verbalmodals are only grammatical in SLM in contexts that would be contrastively tense-marked if such modals and contrastive tense morphology were permitted to co-occur. This suggests that the finite verb bears a non-visible tense feature in SLM, since infinitival verbs cannot be preceded by modal markers. The infinitival marker ma is variably deleted, so this does not seem to be the result of a stacking constraint. 6. There are several strategies for representing SLM and other Sri Lankan languages in transcription. A common strategy in Sri Lanka itself is to represent dental stops with th and dh and retroflex stops as simply t and d. In deference to linguists unfamiliar with these conventions, and likely to asswne that aspiration is intended, I have chosen to represent dental stops as simply t and d, while I have capitalised retroflex segments. CapitalS represents UJ and the doubling of vowels and consonants is an indication of length, which may or may not be contrastive.

387

388

Peter Slomanson

elements. By contrast, discrete contrastive tense morphology and negation cannot co-occur in either SLM or Shonam, a matter that will be discussed in greater detail below. Sinhala verbs also mark additional contrasts that lack an analogue in the grammar ofSLM. These include obligatory marking on the verb to indicate that an argument is in focus, as well as marking of the degree of subject agency in the performance of an action. There is no evidence of explicit Sinhala influence in the verb morphosyntax of fluent native speakers, a fact that supports the known social history of the language. Distributional differences between SLM and Shonam remain, notably including the position of verbal affixes, as demonstrated in (1) and (3). This is consistent with a reasonable expectation that a contact language, as an autonomous grammatical system, will not necessarily adopt the linear morphosyntax of its model language, although we are likely to find substantial approximations, particularly in (other) surface configurations. As shown above, there are clear parallels in the functional contrasts that are explicitly morphologised in SLM, using processes comparable or identical to those that we find in Shonam, such as inflection and agglutination, as seen in the TMA and negation systems of SLM. It is worth mentioning parenthetically that the contrast between SLM and Shonam in the distribution of the relevant functional morphemes in relation to lexical verbs is a tenacious one that permits no variation at all for the majority of fluent speakers, for whom SLM tense morphology is uniformly pre-verbal. Aspect morphology, however, as we will see, is not uniformly pre-verbal. There is no pre-verbal temporal morphology in Shonam, whose morphologically complex verbs encode a range of functional information, including tense, aspect, mood and negation, by affixation to the right of a lexical or auxiliary verb, rather than to the left of the verb stem, as in SLM. In fact, there is no pre-verbal functional morphology in Shonam at all. The fact that a functional element such as tense has not been realised as a postverbal element in SLM, whether freely or atfixally, demonstrates the incomplete convergence of the Malay verb system on the Shonam system, although the accretion of overt tense affixation 7 demonstrates functional-semantic convergence.

3·3

SLM tense morphology

Functional morphemes that mark tense on SLM verbs must be expressed in unnegated verbal matrix clauses in which the verb is not otherwise marked by a modal morpheme. They obligatorily precede the finite verb, although a number of the most common verbs may be variably

7. There are theoretically well motivated reasons for questioning the status of bound functional elements as prefixes; these have to do with the syntax of adjunction in inflected words, a matter which is beyond the scope of this article. Elsewhere I have referred to prefixation in SLM as pseudo-affixaticm, and analyse the contrast with Shonam tense suffixation as an effect of broader syntactic differences between Shonam and SLM. The morphosyntax is in this respect a compromise between the grammar of vehicular Malay, spoken natively or near-natively by part of the early SLM population, and the grammar of the model language, spoken natively by another part. This theoretical approach, in which a lesser degree of verb movement in SLM than in Shonam is proposed, has the benefit of demonstrating covert parallels between the complex verb in SLM and the complex verb in Shonam. Clearly, though, other theoretical approaches are possible. I will treat these pre-verbal elements as prefixes here, in keeping with the descriptive nature of the present account


marked. The pre-verbal surface distribution of functional morphemes in the verbal domain is typical of non-Lankan Malay varieties in which adverbial particles cognate with SLM functional elements mark aspectual contrasts. In Shonam, temporal morphemes follow the verb, mostly as affixes. SLM tense elements, such as su!si (past), nya(ng) (past), ana (past, Kandy-area dialect), e(ng) (past, southeastern dialect), ara (present), and (a)(n)ti (future), are themselves affix-like, being phonologically dependent on the left edge of a lexical verb. The vehicular Malay varieties that were brought to Sri Lanka from Indonesia also feature phonologically reduced TMA elements such as su (from sudah); however, in those varieties, no adjacency of su and verb is required. In Ambonese Malay, for example, su occurs at the left edge of a functional complex which includes negation (van Minde 1997: 227-232). SLM does not permit the stacking of functional elements at the left edge of a finite (or non-finite) verb. It is not possible to separate SLM tense morphemes from a verb. In casual prosody, these elements are never accented, and the vowel is typically reduced, so that in the case of su, the vowel nucleus is often reduced to schwa or deleted. The right edge of a finite SLM verb is frequently unmarked, as in (1). 3·4

Are they affixes?

Phonologically dependent morphemes at the left edge of a verb are affixes in the sense that they are inseparable from their lexical (i.e. not phrasal) hosts and of fixed distribution. The pertinent evidence is the fact that the lexical host cannot be elided and an ad verb or focus particle (jo) cannot intervene, even with a prosodic break. This mirrors the phonological and syntactic status of functional affixes in Shonam. Paratactic sequences of events require repetition of the prefix on each non-matrix verb, even where this is redundant In vehicular Malay and similarly analytic languages, notably including a range of creole languages, free- standing functional elements such as TMA markers do not exhibit this requirement, whereas in those languages that have phonologically dependent functional elements, repetition of those elements is obligatory. In this respect, the pre-verbal markers in SLM behave as straightforward inflections. 3·5

The Functional Stacking Constraint

The Functional Stacking Constraint (FSC) is a generalisation in SLM of the Shonam constraint that prohibits the co-occurrence of tense and negation morphology- strong evidence for Shonam influence. Neither vehicular Malay nor Sinhala displays such a constraint. Although vehicular Malay varieties mark temporal contrasts that are essentially aspectual, ma.u and its variants in vehicular Malay are future tense markers and that element freely co-occurs with modality, negation and other functional modifiers of verbs. Mau itselfhas been (re-)grammaticalised as an infinitival marker in SLM, to encode the Shonam finiteness contrast that is absent from the morphology ofvehicular Malay. The FSC in SLM constrains the co-occurrence of tense, negation, modality and the temporal subordinator kapan ('when') in the position at the left edge of a verb, to which each of these elements binds, placing them in complementary distribution. Although the left edge of the verb does not permit affixation of any kind in Shonam, note

389

390

Peter Slomanson

that similar contrasts are also associated with prefixation in Batticaloa Portuguese, another Sri Lankan contact language with a Tamil variety as its model (Smith 1979). Aspectual morpho syntax

3.6

Completive aspect The distribution of full and phonologically reduced variants of the Malay perfect marker abbis (asa, as, ai, e) depends on whether the element is expressed in a matrix clause. The non-matrix context is exemplified in (4), and the matrix context in (5).

3.6.1

(4)

se [masigit nang a(bbils-pi] ruma nang su datang. ls mosque to ASP-go house to PST come 'Having gone to the mosque, I came home:

SLM

(5)

se masigit na11g su-pi-abbis. ls mosque P PST-go-ASP 'I have finished going to the mosque.'

SLM

The linear contrast between SLM and Shonam, in which only SLM has functional prefixes, masks significant parallels. What varies across the two languages is the position of the verb relative to the functional elements that modifY it In suffixing languages such as Shonam, aspect is typically closer to the lexical verb than is tense. The tact that tense precedes the verb in finite contexts in SLM and aspect precedes the verb in non-finite contexts shows us that the development of a morphological finiteness contrast, a Shonam feature, has had a profound effect on the syntax of SLM, although the resulting agglutinative grammar is not coextensive with that of Shonam. The presence of a morphosyntactic contrast in the position of an aspect marker suggests that the position of the verb relative to its modifiers is responsive to the position of tense and finiteness in matrix clauses, features that are themselves attributable to Shonam influence, even if the resulting linear configurations obscure this.

Progressive aspect Progressive aspect in SLM is marked with a temporal subordinator. In certain aspectual constructions in SLM, the aspect-marked verb appears within a non-finite clause, and consequently needs to be supported by an auxiliary. In order to show this, in 3.6.3, I will discuss the components that make up the construction in question, and their respective analogues in Shonam.

3.6.2

Auxiliaries in periphrastic aspectual constructions Post-verbal aDa is an auxiliary verb, analogous with iru in Shonam. Those elements are etymologically existential in both languages and continue to function as existential verbs in non-auxiliary contexts. Sinhala, by contrast, has two existential verbs, a contrast that serves inter alia to distinguish between animate subjects (innawa.) and inanimate ones (tiyenawa.). An additional auxiliary in SLM, Du.uDuk (variant form: Du.uDung), encapsulates more of the nuances of the existential auxiliary in Shonam and in Sinhala, including the absence of motion, and persistence. The animacy contrast associated with the Sinhala auxiliaries is, however, lacking. Pre-verbal ada 3.6.3


(ara) in SLM, which marks tense, is the product of functional reanalysis of a progressive aspect marker in vehicular Malay. The existential verb in vehicular Malay is also ada.

3·7

Temporal properties of subordinators

3·7·1

The distribution of non-temporal left-branching subordinators

In Shonam, complementisers are left-branching, as are the majority of complementisers and subordinating elements in modern SLM. The com plementiser kata is historically a quotative particle, but it occurs more frequently as a non-quotative complementiser. It is obligatorily left-branching, as in (6). (6)

Sini ka attu teacher a-blajar-king kJta e-biila11g (aDa).

SLM

here in IND teacher PRS-study-csT QliT ASP-say (AUX) '(He) has said that a teacher teaches here: (7)

Inge oru teacher-mar paDi-pp-ikk-iranga enDu sonnaa.

SHONAM

here IND teacher-HON study-NMN-CST-AUX QUT say '(He) said that a teacher teaches here:

The complementiser subbat, as in (8), meaning 'because~ is also obligatorily left-branching. (8)

lttu sunami-na

pica

e-pi

subbat. ... sini kubaalile e-kinja kasi.

that tsunami-DAT broken ASP-go because ... this back 'Having been destroyed by the tsunami, ... they did this for

3.7.2

SLM

ASP-do BEN

us:8

The tense foature-bearing subordinator kapan

One subordinator, kapan, attaches to the left edge of a verb, although it has scope over its entire clause. The fixed pre-verbal distribution of kapan reflects the distribution of SLM tense morphemes. Kapan is a cliticised element with tense specification, meaning 'when' (as opposed to 'while'). Although the presence ofkapan as a cliticised subordinator contrasts with functionally analogous elements in both vehicular Malay and Shonam, we may regard the innovation as an artefact of the integration of tense - an obligatory morpho syntactic contrast in Shonam - into the restructured Malay grammar in Sri Lanka. ln data from Colombo, Kirinda and Kurunegala, representing the three major dialect areas, kapan is always pre-verbal in adjunct clauses, and follows an overt subject if one is present, as in (9). (9)

lnclan iSkuul attu kapan-kuttumun, go layen building attu si-kuttumun. school IND when-see ls otherbullding 'When he saw a school, I saw a different building: 3s

IND

SLM

PST-see

SLM kapan appears in the same surface position as SLM tense morphemes, and is similarly both bound and subject to phonological reduction.9 We can see this by comparing (10) and (11),

8. The reference is to a school building in Kirinda which was destroyed and later rebuih.

9· The most frequent realisation is bm(-3), conditioned by the first segment in the verb.

391

392

Peter Slomanson

which demonstrate both identical surface position and phonological reduction. The underlined pre-verbal elements in (1 0) and ( 11) are in complementary distribution. (10) lncian iskuul attu .rW:ru.-kuttumun. 3s school IND PRS-see 'He sees a school' (11)

Incia11 iskuul attu

ka~-kuttumun.

SLM

SLM

3s school IND when-see 'When he {seeslsawlwillsee} a school'

Kapa.n obeys the SLM generalisation that pre-verbal functional elements cannot stack, showing that it is responsive to the Shonam-derived FSC. Consequently. kapan cannot co-occur with a past tense marker (12), for example, although this renders the tense property in the assodated verb non-contrastive ([+/-PAST] etc.) with respect to tense sped:fication. (12)

Incia11 iskuul attu kapa11-(*si-)kuttumun ...

SLM

3s school IND when-PsT-see 'When he saw a school, .. :

As an ordinary WH-word, the position of kapan is variable and there is no constraint blocking adjacency with a tense morpheme, or with any other verbal morphology. As we have seen, this is impossible when kapan is a subordinator. (13) lncian iskuul attu kapan si-kuttumun? 3s school IND when PST -see 'When did he see a school?'

SLM

The subordinator kapan is a syntactic head, since it cannot occur with any type of phrasal material. The clitic -le in (14) is ungrammatical. Nothing can intervene between kapan and the verb to which it is bound. (14)

Incian iskuul attu kapan(*-le)-kuttumun ...

SLM

3s school IND when(-ever)-see ... 'Whenever he saw a school, .. :

It is also the case that there is no analogous subordinator prefix in vehicular Malay. On the contrary, kapan occurs at the left edge of its clause in those varieties, as in (15). (15)

kapan dia ada makan nasi, .. .

VBH.MALAY

when 3s ASP eat rice, .. . 'When s/he is eating rice, .. :

The kapan that obligatorily binds to the left edge of lexical verbs is an innovation in SLM, since its component languages do not share this particular construction; however, it can nevertheless be correlated with a Shonam feature. Shonam has clitidsed temporal subordinators, but these bind to the right edge of a verb only. In (16), we see an example of phonologically reduced kapan.


(16)

kummaren Iorang kam 345> 368-370, 375> j84, 414 M. K. 339

Adle~;,

Adone, D. 563 Agheyisi, R.N. 39-41. 43-44> 46-48, 51-52

Aikhenvald, A. Y. 341 Alario di Filippo, M. 234 Albe~;.B.

106

Albuquerque, L. de 62-63> 84 Alexandre, N. 38-39. 50 Alisjahbana, S. T. 340 Alleyne, M. C. 139> 144o 146, 183> 185-18;; 189, 202

Allridge, c. 439 Almeida Mendes, A. 38 Alvarez Garda, T. 134 Ameka, F. 41, 157 Amer~ R. 438, 458, 491 Andersen, R. W. 23> 26, 105-106, 114-115. 11;; 578, 592

Andre, N. 110 Annamalai, E. 404 Anon 300 Anonymous 12 Ansaldo, u. 5> 9-10, lj, 16-t;; 20, 22-2J, 25> 2;; 28, 30, 2;73. 279-280, 28J, 291, 368-379. 385> 601-602 Anson, G. 294

Aoto, S. 314 Aplugi, H. 358 Aplugi, L. 357-358, 365 Arbell, M. 230 Archibald, J. 106-10;; 122 Arends, J, uS, 157-158, 1]'0. 176, 229 Arclzola, R. 226

ArthUJ;. J. M. 507 Asod.anoe, J, 133> 152 Ash,A.

Blai~;, E. H.

Blake, B.

493

326 2o, 372,

448, 452, 491. 493>

502, 505

Ashe~;, R. E. 404 Ashley, L. 316, 320 Ashley, M. 316, 320 Atkins, B. 135 Au, C.-R 281 Awoyale, Y. 41 Aye, K. K. 6o7

Bloon1, D. 273 Blust, R. A. 305. 318, 340 Bocande, B. 87 Bodman, N.C. 257 Borrego Phi, C. 226 Bottche~;, N. 230 Boulegue, J, 63> 67-68, 84

B

BrasseUJ;. P. 109 Breen, H. H. to8 Broad, H. R 308 Broselo\\; E. 106 Brousseau, A.-M. 7-8, 13> 23- 2.4>

Boxe~;,C.R.

Baker, B. J, 535> 542 Baker, M. 41, 43> 46, 53> 55 Baker, P. 289-291. 293-294. 310, 46;; 489-490. 494. 503-504> 506,

29, 1o6, 109. 113-114. 116, 118, 129.

532-533> 552> 559. 565

Baker, S. J. 490 Bakker, P. 101, 369. 377-378. 6o7 Balle, M. 355 Bally, A.-S. 15. 129. 138, 148 Bamgbose, A. 41,194 Bao, Z. J, ;; 9. 23> 255-258, 261-264.

139.354

Brown, A. 262-263 Brown, D. 519 Brugmans, I. J, 339 Bruyn, A. 149, 15;1:. 176 Bryan, M. A. 128 Buis, R

2;73. 457

Baptista, M. 69. 92-93 Barros, M. Marques de 8;; 93 Bartens, A. 9. 20-21. 2;1:. 30. 69.

84

93-94. 96, 99-100

Burdon, J. A. 183-184 Bybee, J, 159, 162, 175. 265. 374 Byrne, F. 15. 131

205-220, 303

Bazin, H. 96 Beaumont, C. H.

c 535> 53;; 545>

547-548, 555 Beeh, M. 355

Beermann, D. 46 Beimers, G. 536, 544 Bennett, G. 499. 507-508 Bernabe, J. 22 Bethencourt, F. 379 Bibe~;, D.

262-263

Bickerton, D. 4o 128, 18;1:. 2o;; 226, 228, 230-232, 238, 339> 536, 558559. 56J, 565> 577-578 Bisang, W. 290

Cabrera, L. 235 Caldeira, A. 39 Camden, W. G. 19 535, 544-546, 551 Cameron, S. 355 Cam ins, B. 3o8, 316-317 Capo, H. B. C. 29. 108, 111. 159. 174 Cardoso, H. 370 Carr, E. B. 565 Carrington, L. D. 109-110, 115-116, 120 Carter, G.

568

Castellanos, I. 236 Chambers, J~ S. J, 308

614


Charpentier, J, M. 491, 533 Chataignier, A. 87 Chau.de.nson, R. 4. 109. 2.54, 578 Chen, C. C. Jr. 281 Christaller, J. G. 203-2.22. Christen, C. 183. 199 Church, E. 95 Clark. I. D. 438 Clark. R. 524 Cleeland. H. 567 Clements, J, C. 82, 85, 607 Clements, G. N. 117 Clouse, D. 413 Cochran, R. C. 414, 435 Codrington, R. H. 527 Coelho, A. 38 Cole, P. 42.6 Comrie, B. 350-351. 515. 607-609 Conrad. S. 262.-263> 266 Cook. K. W. 568 Coote, W. 533> 541 Come, C. 575-578. 581-582, 595 Correard. M.-H. 133 Corston-Oiiver, S. 523 Cortes Alonso, V. 66 Couto, H. H. do 69 Craton, M. 184 Creissels, D. 186, 195 Croft. W. 424 Cromar, J, 540 Crowley, T. 19, 502-504. 516-51;1 519-520, 529. 533> 535> 538-539. 541, 544· 546-54)1 551. 556. 56J, 58J, 595 Curno~ T. J, 279

D daSilva. A. A. 83 da Silva. M. da Gra~a Garcia Nolasco 85-86 Dahi,O. 159 Davis, K. 521 Daw Khin Khin, A. 253. 258 Dawson, R. 494> 498-501. 506-507 de Groot, S. 183 de La~ P. 107> 114, 117 Deck. N.C. 535> 538 DeGraff, M. 92 Degranpre, L 232. 242, 244-245 Del Castillo, N. 226, 22.8, 231-232, 243 den Besten, H. 43> 50 Dench, A. 456

de Rivas, C. 313 Devnnish, H. 106 De Vries, L. 431 Dieck, M. 238 Dimmendaal, G. 192, 196 Dionne, C. 138, 148 Diouf. J.-L. 72 Dittman, M. L. 2.16, 222 Dixon, R. M. W. 2o, 452. 493> 502 Dixon, T. S. 440, 451 do Couto, H. H. 308 Donaldson, T. 493> 502. 505> 507 Donewr. J.-1. 70-73> 79 Donohue, M. 10, 20, 22, 25> 149. 34o. 413> 415-41)1 419 Dowty, D. R. 343> 349-350 Dresher, E. 108 Dryer, M. S. 29;; 6o6-6o8 Dumais, D. 131, 133-135- 137 Dunn,M. 514 Durie, M. 341 Dutton, T. 490, 500, 506, 536. 544> 546 E Eades, D. ;1440, 492-493- 496-49;; 505 Eagleson, R. D. 492 Early, R. 514 Eckman, F. R. 1.22 Edwards, J. 202 Egbokhare, F. 51 Ehrhart, S. 575-583 Elbert, S. H. 541 Ellison, F. P. 56;; 569 Elugbe, B. 39 Elwell, V. M. R. 448, 492. Emeneau. M. B. 370 Engerrnan, S. 184-185 Erbaugh, M. 293 Escalante, A. 226, 228-232, 238 Escure, G. 8, 16, 2;; 182, 184. 187190, 194-196, 214. 297 Essegbey, J. 157 Evans, N. 442, 455> 456. 481

F Pal, A. 70-73 Faradas, N. 198 Farquharson, J, T. Fasold. R. 339

203

Fattier, D. 1.2, 6oS Ferguson, C. A. 254. 339 Fernandes, V. 6J, 67-68, 84 Fernandez. M. A. 306-309. 327 Ferraz. L. I. 37-4o. 55 Finegan, E. 262.-2.63> 266 Finer,D. 106 Fishman, J, 339 Fitzpatrick-Cole, J. 28o Flemer, S. F. 133 Foley, J. A. 272, 274 Foley, R. A. 514. 529 Foley, W. A. 272, 274- 34l.. 343> 349-35D, 420 Fontes, C. 38 Forman, M. L. 307-308, 314-315> 325> 327-329· 333 Foster, R. 438 Fox. C. E. 535> 538-539 Fox. J, J, 339. 359 Frajz}'Ilgier, Z. 203> 217 Frake, C. 0. 304. 3o6-3o8, 311-316 327 Franco Silva, A. 66-67 Franklin, K. J. 535, 537 Fraser, J. 463 Friedemann, N. S. De 226 Fuentes Guerra. J, 244 G Gair, J. 369. 372 Gale, J. 504 Gensler, 0. 282 Giacon, J. 493> 509 Gil, D. 282, 285 Giles, W. E. 533 Gilligan, G. 399 Gisbome, N. 5 Giv6n, T. 349 Glock, N. 133,152 Goedemans, R. 282 Good. J, 29. 279 Goodman, M. F. 4, 559 Gour}' L. 156-15;1160, 171, 175 Govett, W. R. 501 Graham, Rev. J. 501. 507 Granda. G. de 226, 2.30-232, 236, 238 Grant, A. P. 10, 11., 16, 26, 183> 18s, 308, 310, 312., 32)1335 Grant, C. H. 183 Green, K. 2.38, 240

Index of authors

Green, T. ~25-~26, 238, 240 Greenbawn, S. 255> 262, 266 Grimes, B. D. 339-340. 36o-36J.. 413 Grimes, B. F. uS, 338, 340. 354> 557 Grimes, C. E. 10, 20, 23> 149> 33934o. 349> 355> 357-359> 361. 365> 414 Grimshaw; J, 52 Grote, E. 439> 492 Grund~ V. 133 Giildemann, T. uS, 21;1:. 603-605 Gunn, J. 46:; 482 Giinther, Rev. J. 493 Giinther, W. 40-41 Gupta. A. F. 254. 273-274 Gussenhoven, C. ~79-281 Guthrie, M. 22;1:. 231. 239 Gut. U. 280

H Haan, F. de 367-368 Haboo, V. 157 Hagemeijer, T. 8, 20-21, 38-43> 45-53 Hale, H. 493 Hale, K. 443 HalL R. A. J. 3. ~94-295> 300 Ham, W.H. 29 Hancock, I. F. i1 563 Harkins, J. 439-440. 448, 490. 492 Harms, R. 243 Harris, J. 463> 46;1 482, 491-492, 533> 544> 550 Hashimoto, M. J, 567 Haspelmath, M. 20, 149. 376, 6oo, 611 Hassan, I. 316

u.

Hauck. L. C. 133 Hawkins, E. 399> 568 Hawkins, J. A. 399 Heath, J, 442,464. 469-47l.. 4784 79> 535> 539> 542, 552 Heine, B. 175> 185> 191, 20;1:. :us, 378 Helg, A. 229 Hellan, L. 46, 58 Helms, M. 184 Henrique7. M. 132 Hernandez De Alba, G. u8 Heywood, L. M. 229, 244 Higman, B. W. 184-185 Hill, D. 5~-523 Hoftmann, H. 136

Holmer, N. M. 493. 502 Holm, J. A. 23> 18:;~189. 201-202, ~04-~0j1210-~ll, ~13-218,

220-221, 243> 3Q8, 339> 4% 559> 563> 565 Ho,M.L.262 Hooper, R. 567 Hookoomsing, V. Y. 578 Hong, H. 255> 261-264 Hopkins, A. P. 567-568 Hopper, P. 265 Horoi, R. 535> 539. 548 Horwood, J, 136, 151 Hosking, D. 507 Hualde, J, I. 237 Huber, M. 533> 559> 565> 6oo, 611 Hudson, J. 305> 439, 448-449> 463. 480, 490. 539. 549 HuiLA. 109 Hussainmiya. B. A. 368-369> 374. 377-378. 382-384. 385> 409 Hutchinson, A. P. 535> 5311 548 Huttar;. G. 157 Hyltenstam, K. 107-108, 122 Hyman, L. M. 279

Ing, R. 0. 308, 312-314 Intumbo, I. 93-95> 99-100 Iskrova. I. 110

J Jacob, J, 10, 20, 23. 149. 339-340, 34~ Jacob, M. 339-340, 364 James, W. 221-2~2, 501 Jarman, B. G. 136 Johanson, S. 262-263> 266 Jonker, J, C. G. 359 Joredie, M.-A. 589 Jourdan, C. 106, 124. 518-519. 521-523> 538, 546 Juliana, E. 130

K Kaapu. M. K. 558, 566 Kaldor, S. 492 Karunatillake, W. S. 369 Kaufman, T. 16o, 176, ~54. 28o, 36!, 379

Kaye, J, 1o8 Kayne, K. S. 147

Kearns, L. 22, u9-130. 132-136, 139. 142, 144, 146 Kearns, Y. 543 Keesing, R. M. 12, 19. 23- 26, 82, 254, 467-468, 513-515> 525> 533> 535> 541-542. 544-545> 547-548, 551 Kellerman, E. 122 Kerr, H. B. 535> 5311 555 KihnJ, A. 9. 13. 15- 2;;; 30. 69. 81-82, 85> 88, 91-99. 577-578 Kim, H. 414. 435 Kirsner, R. S. 28o Klamer, M. 524 Klein, W. 85 Kluge, A. 414 Knowlton, E. C. 558-559 Koc[J, H. ;o. 10-11, 16-20, 26-28, 30. 438-439. 44Q-441, 443> 448-449> 463> 489-490, 492 Koelle, S. W. 2~0 Koopman, H. 128-132, 138-139, 145> 148 Kouwenberg, S. 15> 101, 139. 210, 279 Kumanireng, T. Y. 361 Kuteva. T. 175> 20J1215> 378 Kwan-Terry; A. 262 Kwan, W. M. S. 262, 297

L Labov, W. 129 Ladefuged, P. 119 Ladhams, J. 39 Lahiri, A. 280 Laman, K. E. 234-236, 241 Lang, J, 8-CJ, 13> 28, 66-6;7, 69-70. 74.78 Leech, G. 262-263> 266 Lefebvre, C. 4, 7-8, 13-15> 20-~1, 24-26, 30, 70, 82, 101, 106, 108109> 128-131, 133> 137-149, 163> 173> 176, 185> 18j1193-194· 254,361, 385> 462, 525. 600-601, 603-606 Uglise, I. 156 Leland, C. 290 Levinson, S. C. 514 Li, M. 289, 291-292 Lichtenberk, F. 531, 535. 537-538, 540. 546-547 Lim, L. 5> 7> 9> 29, 31. 271-275. 277-284. 368, 372o 376. 602 Lim, 283

s.

615

616


Lipski, J. M.

~29. 306-308, 31o-312,

323> 32;h 334

Lissarrague, A. 493> 509 Lindstrom, B. 51.4, 529 lloyd. J. 535> 53:h 548 Longacre, R. B. 419, 448 Loranger, V. 15> 138, 163 Lord, C. 4~ Lorenzino, G. 38 Lovejoy, P. 186 Lo~ B. L. 282, 373-374 luke, K. K. 281 Lumsden, J, S.

30, 70, 147

Lye, H. M. 273 Lynch, J. 516-51;; 519-5~0, 523. 534-535> 539. 547-548. 583

M Ma.ddieson, I. 115> 11;. 119. 602 Madeira Santos, M. B. 62-63 Maebiru, B. 518-519. 521-523 Maia, c. de A. 75 Malcolm, I. G. 439. 492 Manns, H. 414 Martino, B. 290-291. 293 Martin, P. 243> 245 Martin,

s.

563

Masica, c. 370 Masuda, H. 558

Mather, P.- A. 106 Matiso:fl; J. A. 255 Matos, R. C. 38 Matras, Y. 280, 376 Matthews, s. 5> 9. 13> 16, 20, 22-23> 30, 255> ~5jl; 279. 264, 274-~75> 279. 283-284. 289, 291-292, 2% 535> 53?; 548. 567-570 Maurer, P. 22, 39-41. 45> 48, 128, 130, 132, 148, 6oo, 6o8, 611

McKaughan, H. P. 308 McNicoL S. 507 McWhorter, J, H. 4. 41. 8:~, 15;;o; 215> 273> 283> 525

Meakins, F. 601 Megenney, W. W. 239 Melzian, H. J. 4o-44. 46-49. 51 Meredith, C. 506-507 Merlan, F. 442,464.469-471. 478-479. 535> 543> 550. 552

Mester, A. 52 Meyerho:fl; M. 494 Michaelis, S. 5> ~o. 149, ~39. 6oo

Middelkoop, P. 328, 356 Miestamo, M. 328 Migge, B. M. 8-9. 13. 15. ~3> 25> 28, 128, 130, 156-164, 166-171. 173> 175> 220

Mihalic, F. 504. 544, 563 Mint7. M. W. 255> 258 Moeliono, A. 340, 361 Molony, C. H. 313> 325-327 Monaghan, P. 438, 459 Mondesir, J. B. 110 Moiiino, Y. 236, 238-240, 243 Montes Giraldo, J, J, de 237 Moore, B. 507 Morin, Y.-C. 109-110 Morris, B. B. 490 Morton, T. 230, 233 MoseL U. 19. 514-515> 535-537> 539. 541-542, 546. 551

Mota, A. T. da 38, 84 Moyse-Fanrie, C. 589.591 Mufwene, S. S. ,; 25, 69, 173, 193. 254, 279. 282.-284. 373> 378· 462. 483-484. 525> 593 Miihlhii.usler, P. ;;o; 289-294. 300, 339. 437-439. 458-459. 489-492, 494. 504> 5o6, 512, 532-533> 552 Munro, J. M. 10. 12-1.4, 16-1;;o; 23. ~6-2:;;

30, 46J, 469. 47h 49o. 492,

533-534. 539-540, 543> 549. 552

Murray, B. ~10 Muysken, P. C. 4. 15> 23-~ 40. 91-92, 101. 106, 128, 148-149. 151. ~05>

254, 559. 607

N Nagara, S. 558, 565 Naro, A. J. 25> 85 Navarrete, M. C. 226, 229 Negreiros, J. A. 38 Nelson, G. 255 Nettle, D. 279 Neumann- Holzschuh, I. Ng, B.-C. 273. 277

Ngorn, F. 73 Nigoza, B. 332-333 Nikiema, B. 29. 1o6, 109 Nolasco, R. M. 26, 318 Nordho1t S. 368-372, 375> 379 Nurse, D. 185> 191-192 Nussy; C. G.

414. 435

0 Oba:ta, K. 525-527 Ochoa Franco, J. V. 231 Odo,C. 561 Ogie, 0. 8, 2o-21. 23. 41-43. 46-5o. 52-53,58

Ogiwara, Y. 32;;o; 330 Olgu_fn, M. 129, 134. 136, 138-139. 144-148

Orti7. C. 238 Otanes, F. 328-334

p Paa~

s.

368-369. 374-375> 377-

378· 382-384. 409

Palta, Y. 587 Pagliuca, W. 159. 162, 177 Pakit; A. ~58 Palmer, B. 519-520 Paolillo, J. 369. 372 Parkhouse, T. A. 550 Parkva!L M. 128, 202, 205-206, 208, 210, 221. 223>

~36-237

Pa:tiiio Roselli, C. 236 Patrick, P. L. 202, 218, 308 Pawle~ A. K. 343> 522 Payne, J. R. 328 Perdue, C. 85 Pereira, D.P. 38, 64-65> 67 Perekhvalskaya. B. 607 Perini, M. A. 535> 543 Perkins, R. 159. 162, 177 PerL M. 15;; 170 Petersen, W. G. 202 Petrie, c. c. 501 Pfleiderer, B. 233 Pickering, L. 279 Pierre, J. 110 Pinto BulL B. 84 Pi, P. 3o8 Pittman, R. 346 Plag, I. 30, 106, 11J, 601. 603 Pla:t.t. J. 254, 262. 273-274 Post. M. 41, 390 Postma, J, 128 Potts, A. 501. 510

Prentice, D. J,

~95> 339-340, 345>

369-37o. 414

Prista, A. R. 535> 53i> 56i> 569 Fukui, M. K. 541

Index of authors

Q Quint, N. Quirk. R.

69> 74 2.62

R Ramson, W. S. 490. 507-508 Ranken, G. 501,506-507 Rannie, D. 540 Ranoh, A. 357-358 Rassinou:x, J. 132 Read, J, 452 Read, P. 452 Reesink, G. 514 524. 529 Reichenbach, H. 92 Reid, A. 339 Reid, L. A. 305 Reinecke, J. 81, 289> 558, 569 Remijsen, B. 2.79 Renard, G. C. 501, 510 Rickford, A. 219 Rickford, J, R. 2.19 Ricklefs, M. C. 339> 368 Riego de Dios, M. I. 304-306, 308, 311, 316-318, 324 Rivera-Castillo, Y. 279 Rivierre, J.-C. 584 Robert, S. 72-73 Roberts, S. J, 11, 23> 533> 535> 543> 545> 558-560, 562-565> 571 Robertson, I. 187 Robertson, J. A. 326 Rogozinski, J, 108 Rojas Primus, C. 244 Romaine, S. 466 Roosrnan, R. S. 413 Ross, M. 310. 318, 340, 516-520, 529>

535· 547-548. 556. 583> 595 Rouge, J.-1. 38-39> 69-70. 84-86, 88, 95> 97 Rountree, C. 15> 133 Rowlands, E. C. 90, 93 Rurnaropen, B. E. W. 414. 435 Russell, R. 136, 151 Ryder, A. 38

s Sakoda. K. 543> 548, 561-562, 564 Salone, S. 194 Sandefur, J, L. 19> 442, 463> 491, 551

Sandefur, J, R. 19> 439-440.442, 448 -449> 456. 463> 490-492, 507. 504. 536, 539-540. 543> 551 Sandeman, B. 575> 578. 595 Sandoval, A. de 226 Santoro, M. 311-312 Santos, R. 70-73 Sapir, J, D. 93-94. 96 Saraiva, J, H. 85 Sasi Rekha dio Muthiah 421 Saunders, K. 533> 550 Sauvageot, S. 72 Sawaki, Y. 413. 416, 419 Schachter, P. 328-334 Schaefer, R. R 51 Schang, E. 38 Schapper, A. 415 Schiffman, H. 374. 404 Schiller, E. 341 SchlegeL S. F. 316 Schneider, E. W. 5> 254 Schuchardt, H. 38, 8;1; 157 Schulte Nordho\t, H. G. 339 Schiit7. A. J. 535-536, 540, 542 Schwar1z, B. 105- 107 Schwegler, A. 9> 12. 23, 225-226, 229-233> 235-242, 238, 244 Scott. E. L. 414 Scott. G. R. 414 SearC)!: A. 482, 544 Segurola. B. 132. 134 Seiler, W. 413 Selb~ A. 290-291, 294 Selby, S. 29o-291, 294 Seymour, A. 316, 320 Sharpe, M. C. 1::; 440. 46o, 463464.469-471.479-480. 49l.. 502, 534-535> 538-539> 541. 550 Shellabear, W. G. 258 Shi, D. X. 290-293- 295. 298 Shintani, T. L. A. 587 Siegel, J, ;; 11. 18-20, 23> 26-28, 30, 339> 462, 466, 483> 491, 513-516, 531-532, 534· 541. 543> 548. 558-562, 564, 570-571. 575> 578· 592-593 Silva, A. W. L. 373> 376 Silzer, P. 413 Simon-Mayer, C. 577 Simons, L. 536 Sirnpson, J. 492

Sina. M. 357-358, 365 Singler, J, V. 108, 128, 165> 194. 559 Sippola. E. 10, 16, 32.7-333 Siraj, P. 273 Slomanson, P. 5> 10, 13> 16, 2.5, 374-379> 385> 399.404. 40ft 601, 607 Smith, G. P. 9> 13> 16, 20, 22-2.3, 30. 289> 291-293> 296 Smith, I. 368-3;ro. 374-375> 377-378. 384. 390. 607 Smith, J. c. 417 Smith, M. E. 570-571 Smith, N. 4, 29> 40, 128, 15;; 205> 2.20. 254, 279> 305> 321-322 Sneddon, J, N. 339-34o. 361 Son, M.- J. 426 Soukka. M. 2.81 Souza, U. R. 69 Speed~ K. 578 Spencer, B. 46;; 501 Spit7. W. 313-314 Spriggs, M. 516 Sprouse, R. A. 105- 107 Steele, J, 106 Steinhauer, H. 339 Steinkriiger, P. 0. 32;; 329 Sterlin, M.-D. 138,140-142

Stewart. 0. T. 41, 43> 46, 51, 53> 55 Stolz, T. 6o6 Styles CarvajaL C. 136, 151 Suharno, I. 413 Sulairnan, 0. 257 Sullivan, R. 316 Svantesson, J.-0. 279 Svartvik, J, 262, 266 Swartenbroedor. P. S. J, 234 Sylvain, 4, 185

s.

T 'Thn, Y. Y. 273 Taylor, P. M. 414 TaJ M. W. J. 254. 273 Teem~ A. 339 Terrill, A. 11, 23> 26, 513-514, 525> 527 Teyssier, P. 88 Therik, T. 339-340. 364 Therrien, I. 139> 144 Thieberge~;, N. 531, 536, 547

617

618


Thomas, D. 536. 544. 546 Thomason. S. 158-160, 176. 203> 254. 280, 361. 379. 601

Thornton, J, K. 229. 244 Threlbld. L. E. 493> 497 Tinhorio, J, R. 85> 88 Tirona. T. T. 304. 326-327 Tjia. J, 361 Todd, L. 339 Tokimasa, A. 569 Tong, K.-S. 29o. 422 Tongue, R. K. 273 Tremblay; M. 147 TroJ J. 43~ 448, 49D-49:1o

van Minde, D. 361. 389. 415 van Staden, M. 524. 529 van Valin Jr~ R. D. 341, 343> 349-350 van Velzen. P. 426 van Zanten, E. 282 Veenstra. T. 15> 43> 50 Velupillai, V. 563 Verhaar, J, W. M. 502, 504 Veronique. D. 106 Verrips, M. 149. 151 Vidal Ortega. A. 226 Vila Vilar, E.

494-495>

185

Voorhoeve, J. 187 Voorhoeve, C. L. 414

500-50:1, 506-507

Tryon. D. 491. 533 Thnbridge, D. 443 Thrnbull, C. M. 253 Thrner, G. W. 490 Thrpin, M. 441. 443

u Uffinann. C. 1o6, 113- 157

v Valdman, A. 12., 106, no, 133-134. 160

Valkhott; M. 38 van den Berg, H. 21 van den Berg, M. 168, 175 van der Hulst. H. 279 van Dyke, P. A. 290 van Heuven. V. J, 279-280

w Walker, A. T. 357 Wallis, S. 255 Wang.L. 257 Washabaugh, W. 215 Watt Shilling, A. 220 Watters, J. R. 41 Wawn, W. T. 533> 538, 545-546 Weber, H. 273 Wee, K. S. G. 282-283 Wee, L. 255-258, 273- 275> 27h 281 Weinreich, U. 23- 101 Wellens, I. 82 Wehners, W. E. 603 Wescott. R. W. 45 Westerman, D. 128 WheatleJ P. 339

Whinnom, K.

303-307--308, 315>

326-327

White, L. 105> 107-108, 1.24 Wijnen, B. 139.144.146 Wilkins, D. 443 Williams, C. J, 493> 498, 502 Williams, W. S. 290 Williamson, Kay 41 Willis, R. C. 569 Wilson, W. A. A. 81, 84. 100 Wilson, W. H. 559. 569 Winfurd. D. 15. 156-15~ 160-162., 164. 166, 169-170. 176. 18:;o:. 190, 603

Wode,H. 1o6 Wong, I. F. H. 262 Wong, J, 0. 274 Wright. F. 183- 199 Wiirmbrand. S. 140 Wurm, S. A. 492

y Yaguello, M. 72 Yallop. C. 448, 493 Yang. B. 293 Yip, M. 255> 25;1 264. 274-275> 279-280, 294. 296. 535. 53;; 548, 567-570

Young. H.

536

Yumbi, A. C. M.

414. 435

z Zho,S.

28o

Zorc, R. D.P.

307

Index of languages and language families

A Afro-Caribbean creoles 603-604 Ajagbe 108, 155> 159. 161, 163> 167-172 Akan 128, 139, 15~ 184-185> 202, 223 Alawa 1.2.-13> 16-1~ 33> 461-464. 469-471> 476. 478-479> 481, 48;7; 535> 538-539. 541, 550. 556 Amarasi 33~ 355-357 Ambai 416 Ambonese Malay 363, 365> 375> 389. 413-414. 418,435 Angolar n 59. 6o8-609. 611 Arabic 82, 103> 182, 198, 309. 316, 378.603 Arandic languages

10, 43:h 441-442,

450 Arosi 523> 529> 535> 538-539. 548, 555 Atlantic languages 15> 69. 81, 88-91, 99

Australian languages

5>;; 10, 19-20,

26, 30. 438-439> 443> 448. 450. 452, 454> 456-459. 489-490, 495> 502-503> 505> 601 Australian Pidgin 43~ 457-458, 463> 486, 489> 491, 494· 503-504> 509. 511, 555 Austronesian languages 5> 305> 416, 433> 534 Awabakal 493> 497> 510

B Baba Malay 258, 266-26;;; 271> 274> 282-283> 286, 373> 376. 380 Balanta 15> 2,; 81, 84> 88-90, 93-95, 99-100,103 Bantu languages 9> 41, 108, 185> 191, 200, 230, 232, 235> 238, 243 Barunga Krio I 539 Bazaar Malay 253-254. 258, 266, 271-271, 280, 282-283> 295> 368, 373> 375-376. 38o-381, 6o;;; 610

Belizean Creole

5-6, 16, 181-182,

186-18:; 196-199 Benue-Congo 181-182, 185> 191-192, 194.197 Bilua 525-52~ 529 Bisayan 303-30;;; 309-310. 312, 314-316, 318,321 Bislama 5-6, 19. 31, 489. 504. 509. 514· 531-536, 538-542., 544-54l 551, 553> 555· 563> 572, 603

c Cantonese 9. 11, 22, 30. 253> 255> 264, 266, 271-272, 274-276. 280-281, 286, 289-294, 296-298, 300-301, 534-535> 53;7; 541-542, 548-549. 556-558, 566-571> 573 Caribbean creoles 15. 20, 22, 30. 65> 185-186, 196-19l 201, 603-605 Casamance Creole 6 Cebuano 303-304, 307-309. 311, 314. 318, 323-324 cem.uht 15- 575-576. 578. 583-584. 58;;; 589-593 Central Australian Aboriginal English 5> 437-439, 458-459. 510 Central Australian Aboriginal Pidgin h 437-439· 458 Central Eastern Oceanic

516, 528

Central Philippine languages

10,

303> 305> 3o8-309, 311-313> 319. 325 China Coast Pidgin 5-6, 13> 16, 2o, 22, 30. 289, 301 Chinese 6, 11, 182, 253-25;;; 259. 261-265> 26j; 271-274. 280, 283> 286, 289-292, 294. 299-301, 305> 308, 327> 494. 531-532, 558-559, 565-566, 568, 571> 6o;;; 611 Chinese Pidgin EngUsh 6, 11, 289. 300-301, 494. 531-532, 558-559. 565 Chinese Russian Pidgin

6o;;; 611

Cocos Malay 376, 380 Cotaba:tefio 303-306, 311-312, 316, 318

D Dhao 33~ 340. 355> 357-358, 364 Dharawal 493> 496-49;;; 510 Diola 271 81, 84, 88-90, 93-~ 103 Dravidian languages 370· 402-404 Drubea 15. 575-576. 578, 583-584. 58;;; 589-593 Dutch 63, 67> 101-102, 128, 151. 157-159, 175> 177> 187> 200, 243> 279, 285> 339. 367> 377> 380, 431, 6o6

E Eastern Indonesian Malays 37-57 Efik 8, 192, 197-198

33;; 344

:t!d6

Emai 51,59 English 5-12, 15> 17: 20, 22, 32-33> 58, 61, 63> 6jr, 72-73> 82, 90. 108, 120-122, 124-125> 127-130, 132-134, 136-139· 141-142, 144> 146-149. 151-153> 157-159> 17D-177> 181-187> 189-192, 194> 197-202, 205> 209210, 212-214, 217--220, 223-224. 245> 253-26;; 271-274, 279-28~ 289-291, 293> 296-29;7; 299-301, 304. 3o8-309. 311-313> 315-316, 318-324. 326-32l 332, 334· 353> 368, 380-381, 42~ 437-442, 444-450. 452-454. 456-463> 466-468, 471, 474-47l 481-483> 486, 489-495> 497-500. 502-514, 516, 518, 524525> 531-532, 539. 548. 550. 554o 556-560, 562. 565> 570-573> 593> 595> 602-606, 6o8 English-lexifier creoles 605 European languages 4. 15;;; 181, 1971 221, 6o5-6o6, 6o8 Ewe 4 108, 128, 161, 185> 220

62.o


F Fitzroy Kriol 463> 480, 539, 549 Fongbe 8, u-15. ~1, ~4-~5. 105. 108, 111, 114, 11:;>; l~j; U9, 131-13~ 134-15~ 155. 159> 161. 171J, 187> 193 French 3-4 8, 2~ ~ 3~-33- 61, 63> 6jr, 72, 8;;o:. 90, 10~ 105-124 127-131. 133> 135. 137-138, 14D, 142-149> 151-15~ 155-156, 184-185. 189, 193> 240, 245> 266, 514 558. 575- 579> 581-582, 593-595> 605-606, 609 French-le:xifier creoles 605

Igbo 128, 185. uo, ~23> 603 Indo-European languages 181. 197 Indonesian (standard) 266, 282~83> 285. 337-341, 344 354> 360365. 367-368, 370> 375. 381, 385. 413-42~ 424 426-431, 433-435

Jakarta Indonesian

414

Jakarta Malay 414 Jamaican Creole 185> 189-190, 198, 20:1,604 Juba Arabic 603

G Garifuna t81-182, 196-199 Gbe 8, 15. 29. 31, 82, 101, 105-106, 108-109, 111, 113-123> 1~8-129, 149> 152, 155> 157-175> 177-178,

K Kaytetye

10, 16-18, 43;;o:. 44D-45S.

490 Kikongo

9> 1~ 37-40, 157-158, 186,

185.~79

~00, ~25-~2j!. 231-~36, ~38-246,

see also Fongbe, Gengbe, Ewe, Maxigbe, Wacigbe, Xwelagbe Gela 5~7-5~8 Gengbe 108, 155. 159. 161, 163> 167: 169-lliJ, 174 German 182, 514 533 Guinea-Bissau Creole 81, 87 Gurindji 601, 603> 611 Gurindji Kriol 601, 603> 611 Guyana Patois 4 Guyanese 181, 185-18;; 189. 573

H Haitian Creole

3-5> 12-15. 21-~~ ~

~7> ~9>

31-33- So, 8~ 1~ 105. 1~ 127-131, 149. 152-153> 17ft 185. t8;;o:. 193> 200, ~66, 486, 58~ 6o8-610 Hakka 558, 566-56j!. 570-5~ Hawaiian 11, 534 555-560, 566-573 Hawai'i Creole (English) 11. 531-53~ 534-537: 539-541, 543-546, 548-550. 553> 557 Helong 33i> 339-341. 355-356, 36~

364 Hiligaynon

30, 33> So, 201. 223- 438-439. 448-449> 454> 459-469> 471-47h 479-484 486-48;; 489> 491-49~ 504> 510-5~ 531-5J6, 538-546. 549-553· 555-556. 601, 603> 611 Kriyol 5-6, 9> 13- 15. 2;;o:, 79. 81-84, 86-102 Kupang 5-6, to, 337-34~ 345-346, 350,354-355. 36D-36S. 414 Kupang Malay 5-6. 10, 337-341, 354 360-364. 414 Kwa 15. 41. 59> 88, 1o8, 128-129. 17ft 181-18~ tSs, 191, 193-194. 201, 206, 215.236 Kwaio 18-19. 535. 54~ 545> 547-548,

280, 303-305> 313> 323

8, 16, 192-193- 195. 197-199

414 Malay-based creole 5> 337-338,361 Malay(standard) 5-;;o:. 9-10, 13> 16-1;;; 20, 2~ 26, 29-30, 253-255. 257-259> 265-26:;>; 271-274, 280-286, 291. 295> 300.304.316,

318, 325-3~6, 337-341. 343> 345. 354· 360-370> 3~-394· 396-400, 403> 405. 407-409, 413-435> 601, 60ji; 610-611 Malay Papua see Papuan Malay Manado Malay 414 Mande languages 81. 148 Mandinka 16, 2j!. 61. 68-;oo, 84, 88, 90-91. 93-94, 96-9:;>; 99-100, lOJ, 195 Manjaku 2ji; 81, 84 88-90, 93-94, 96-9j!. 99-100, 102 Mankanya 27> St. 84

Marra 461-46:1, 464. 469-470> 476. 478-479. 481. 535> 542 Maxigbe 155. 159. 161, 163-165. 16:;>; 17D, 174 Maya so, 182 Media Lengua 23-24 6ot. 6o;; 611 Melanesian languages 2~ 413- 534 583 Melanesian Pidgin

Lani

6, 18-19. 26,

32-33> 8~ 1~ 266, 466-468, 486, 489> 491. 494. 509> 511, 513-516, 524. 528-529, 53:1. 534 538-541, 543-544> 546. 548, 550-55~ 555556. 571· 595 Michif 603> 6o;;o:. 610 Mindanao Chabacano 5-6, 10, 1~ 16, 26, 30J, 3o6. 319-321, 329> 335 Mindanao Creole Spanish 319, 32~ Miskito Coast Creole 186, 188-189. 198-199

551. 555

N

L 303-304. 306-316,

318-319> 3~1-324 Hoava 521, 528 Hokkien ~53> 255. ~58, 266, 271-273.

Ibibio

279 Kinubi 603 Kituba 8, 193- 197-198, 200, 484 Kokota 520, 529 Korlai 82, 102, 6o,; 610 Kriol 5-6, 10, 12-14, 16-19, 26-2;;

M Mak:asar Malay

416

Lan 535. 539> 555 Lavukaleve 525-527: 529 Lengo 517-518 Lole 33;;o:. 355> 359 Longgu 520-523-529

Ndyuka 5-6. 15~ 155-156. 159-160, 164-16j!. 170> 173> 175> 177-178 Negro-Aryan dialects 4 New South Wales Pidgin 5-6, 437: 457-458, 460, 489-490, 509> 5~ 531-532 Ngalakgan 461-46~ 464. 469-471. 476. 478-479> 481. 486, 535. 542543> 550, 55:1. 554

Index oflanguages and language families

Ngbandi

602

Ngiyampaa 493> 505> 5o;; 510 Nguna 535-536, 540, 542. 556 Nicaraguan Creole 6 Niger-Congo languages 191-192, 194 Non-native variety of English 253 Northern Territory English 440, 458 North Moluccan Malay 414 435 Northwest Solomonic 516, 520 Nunggubuyu 461-462, 469> 471, 4:;6. 478-479> 481,486, 535> 539> 551-552. 555

0 Oceanic languages 2::; 513-514 516-51:h 519> 521-523> 525-52;1:. 529> 575-578. 583

p Paanlese 535> 54 7 Pala 535> 539 Palenque(ro) I Lengua 5-6, 23-24. 224-226, 233-234. 239, 243> 246248, 601, 60;1:. 611 Pamak:a 5-6, 155-156, 159-160, 166-169> 171-175 Papiamentu 5-6, 8, 22, 32. 127-134. 136-139. 141, 144-149. 151-151., :no, 224, 279, 285> 28ji; 563 Papuan languages 5o 279. 416, 428, 433-434> 514 526 Papuan Malay 5-6, 10, 20, 21., 413-422,424-435 Philippine Creole Spanish

303>

319-321, 325-326, 335-336 Pidgin Derived Malay 368, 380 Pidgin English 6, 11, 81., 194, 198, 200, 289, 300-301. 458-460, 463> 486, 489> 491, 494· 504. 509-510, 531-532, 554> 557-559> 565> 570-573 Pidgin Hawaiian 557> 568, 573 Pijin 5-6, 11-12, 19. 26, 468, 489. 513-514 528-529, 531-532. 534-542. 544-548, 551. 553> 555-556 Port Sandwich 535> 54:0. 555 Portuguese 5o 11, 15- 22, 2::; 37-39. 45> 48, 51, 57-59> 61-65> 67-69> 74-79. 81-88, 101-102, 128, 156158, 218, 221. 230, 23:h 244-245>

279, 285> 291, 303> 30?1 309> 311, 316, 319, 321-322, 326-32;1:. 334-335> 370· 377-381,390, 534-535· 53:0. 541-543> 548-549, 555-559· 566-567> 569573> 6o5-6o:; 609> 611 Portuguese-lexifier creoles 30;1:. 6o6 Portuguese-related creoles 81 Proto Oceanic 516 Providence Island Creole 5

Q QW!chua

23-24. 33> 151., 601

R Raga 539· 555 Riau Indonesian 414 Romance 4o 128, 6o6 Roper River Kriol 462, 483 Rote 337-340. 35:0. 359-360, 364 Roviana 523> 528 Russian 604. 60;1:. 6u

s Saanlak:a see Saramaccan Saintandrewan

223

Samalan 303-305. 308, 323 San Andres Creole English 201 Sango 601., 611 Santiago Island Creole 6 Santome s-6, 8, 20, 22, 37-55> 57-58 Saramaccan 5-6, 8, 15. 21-22, 29, 31-33> 59> 127-139, 141., 144, 146. 148-149, 151-153· 155-15?; 159-160, 163> 166-16;1:. 172-175> 177-178, 18S, 224, 279> 285 Seychelles Creole 6o6 Singlish see Singapore English Siar 535> 547-548, 556 Singapore Bazaar Malay

6o;; 610

Singapore English 5o 6-;; 9> 29. 253-266, 271-274. 279-28;1:. 376. 381, 458, 602, 610 Singapore Indian Malay 414 435 Singapore Malay 414 Singapore Pidgin Malay 418 Shonam 10, 16, 383-409 Sinhala 16-1;; 30, 280, 367-379. 381, 384-390, 405> 408, 6os, 607 Sinitic ;; 9> 13> 20, 271-272, 274. 280-282, 286, 292-298, 300, 607

s.

Skou 415-419. 422,425-426, 428, 432.435 Solomon Islands Pijin

s. 11-12, 26,

513-514 532. 556 Southeast Solomonic languages

515.

534.538 South Efate 535-536. 54:0. 556 Spanish 8, 10, 22-24. 26, 33> 58, 63-64. 127-129, 131-131., 134. 136, 138-139> 142, 145-149> 151. 1.82-184, 218, 223-224. 226, 228-231. 234-240, 244-245> 248-249, 303-316, 318-328, 331, 333-336. 601, 6o5-6o6 Sranan (tongo) 5-6, 123-124.151, 155-15ji; 159-160, 162, 166, 170, 1;'3. 175> 17ft 179> 181, 185-18;; 189, 200, 245> 559> 563> 603> 611 Sri Lankan Creole Portuguese 37:h 380 Sri Lanka(n) Malay 280, 284, 367-368, 380-384> 386, 409, 601, 6o;o. 6u Sri Lanka Portuguese 381, 6os, 60;1:. 611 St. Lucian creole 6-;; 29, 105. 116 Surinamese creoles 8, 15. 33> 155. 161-163, 165-166, 168, 170-171. 175> 178-179 Swahili 8, 16, 192-193- 195. 197-198 Sydney language 491-492. 495-49;; 50ji; 512

T Tagalog

10, 16, 303-312, 316, 318-

336, 365> 607 Tamil 16, 30, 253, 265, 272, 280,

s.

367-379> 381, 383-38;1:. 390, 39;1:. 399> 401, 404-405> 407-409> 601, 6os, 607 Thngoan 18-19, 535> 545-546, 551 Tausug 303-305. 3o8-310, 316-31:; 320,323 'Thyn s-6. 11, 13- 15- 575-584, 592595> 603 Tennanu 359-360 Temate Chabacano 5-6, 10, 16, 325-330, 332-335 Thai 602 Tibeto-Burman 607 Tigak

535-53;; 545> 547-548, 554

621

62.2


To'aba'ita I Toqabaqita 535> 537-538 Toba:l.i 416 Tok Pisin 5-6, 19. 3~ ~91. 301, 489. 504. 512, 514. 5~9. 531-532. 534-536. 539-542. 544-548. 551, 553> 555556. 56J, 600, 603 Tolai 18-19, 32, 514. 5~9. 535> 53~ 539. 541-542., 546. 551, 555-556 Twi 9. 30. 1~8, 185> 201-223

w Wacigbe 155> 159. 161, 163> 166-16;7. 169-170, 1;'2. 174

West African creoles 603 West African languages 29,127-129. 131-13~

X Xiri.cU.u 575-576. 583-584. 589-593 Xwelagbe 155> 159. 161, 163> 166-170

y

148-1.49, 151. 15jl; 1115-186, 193> 206, 21j', 220, 23;7. 558. 56J, 602-605 West African Pidgin 198

Yoruba 128, 185-186, 194. 199-200,

Wolof 8, 15> 61, 66-75> 78-80, 84,

Zamboanga Chabacano 316, 603 Zamboanguefio 303-304. 306, 308.

87-90, 94-95

20jl; 220, 602

z 316, 320, 323> 335

Index of subjects

A accomplishment verbs 33:; 352-353> 356-359 accLISative case alignment 601 adjective marking 489. 503 adstrate 5> 10, 16, 30. 81. 303> 309310, 325-32~ 331. 368, 373 African influence 185-186, 196, 226, 23~ 244 Africanisms 225-226, 231-235> 243 APiCS 202-203- 205-222, 6oo-6o8, 610 aspect 7-S. 10, 1.4-15> 42, 48, 5o. 53> 55-5~ 73-76. 91, 93-94> 98. 155-15~ 160-163> 165-166, 168-171. 173> 175-176.188, 191-193> 195> 1~ 211. 237-238. 273> 280, 294. 298. 318. 33o. 333> 33~ 341-343> 345> 349-350. 353-356. 358-361, 369, 374-376. 380, 387-388. 390-391, 393-394. 396-397> 405> 408, 41~ 419-421, 443> 461,469. 471-474. 4 76. 484. 545> 560, 562-564, 569-571, 575> 578. 581-585> 58~ 589, 592. 594 associated motion 10, 20, 43~ 441, 443-44~ 457-460 availability constraint 26 see constraint on transfer I relabelling B Bantu inflwmce 226 bare verb form 93> 603 Belize history 181

c Calquing 23> 337 Canton trade 300 case ~ 9-11, 16-20, 26-28, 30, 44. 78. 91-92, 129, 139-143> 148-1.49, 161, 164-165> 173> 183> 190-191, 193> 203-2~ 209-211.

213> 218, 221, 294· 304. 310-311, 315-316, 341-342, 350. 361, 369-374. 376. 379-380, 385-386, 389, 392,404. 407-408, 42o, 428. 44o. 448-45~ 462-465> 468. 470-471. 474-475> 477484. 502-503> 505> 518. 524 534. 562. 5n 590-591. 593> 6oo-6036o5-6os semantic case 11, 16-18, 26, 457 syntactic case 26, 457-458 classifiers 9. 11, 13> 28, 293- 519-520 clause linkage 419. 429. clefting 42, 50. 53> 604 rode switching 101 romitative 1~ 56, 213> 222, 296, 370-371. 479. 517> 605-606 romplementisers 322, 391, 6o6 romplexification 384. 40~ 414-415 complex morphology 601 compounds 9. 291, 293 ronflation 2~ 69. 9~ 99-102, 372 congruence of substrate and superstrate 27 see constraints on transfer I relabelling conjunction of NPs 213> 222 consonants 29, 1o6, 113> 115- 117-118, 121-122, uS, 221. 292, 312, 495> 502 constituent order 82, 292, 312, 32:1. 373> 376-3~ 558. 602, 605-608 constraints on transfer I relabelling 11,26,464 see availability constraint see ronflation see congruence of substrate and superstrate see convergence of substrate and superstrate see substrate reinforcement see transfer to somewhere principle contact induced change 337

contact linguistics 248, 253-254. 273>385 convergence ofthe substrate and superstrate 9. 2~ 203> 253254. 256, 261, 265 see constraints on transfer I relabelling convergence-to-substratum 9. 253-254, 256, 261. 265 copulas ~ 9. 211, 214, 222, 294. 305> 313> 322, 564. 566, 570 counterfactual 8, 171, 181-182, 186-191, 196, 198. 580

seeTMA creolisation 8, 5~ 61, 69. 74-75. 81, 8J, 86-8~ 91, 93-94. 99> 106, 176, 21~ 23~ 369, 37~ 524-525> 599. 606

D demonstrative 57> 78. 291. 331, 506. 526,594 directionality 33~ 345-34~ 351-356, 358-360 discourse particles 274> 287> 376, 602 discourse pragmatics 33~ 351, 353 discourse structures ~ 11. 22, 28 see tail-head linkage see topic-comment distributive numerals 2o8, 222 dyadic in kinship terms 10, 437> 442-443> 45~ 459 E ergative case alignment 601 existential clauses 212, 331, 334

F focus 44> 15::; 218, 22:1. 274> 310, 322, 344 351. 356. 379. 384, 388-389, 39~ 44Q, 44~ 464 469, 490. 558. 560, 570, 578, 582, 586, 604

62.4


~ 233. 240, 253. 256, 258 -259> 261. 266, 280-281.

lexical semantics 82, 1o6, 348-349.

29)1333> 346, 354> 356-359> 36)1

lexicon 4, 9> 25. 29. 38-39. 55> 9o.

frequency 88,

413

238, 295> 312-313> 325-336. 375> 384. 386-389> 395> 397-409> 562. 568 nominal predication 605

371.373-374.376. 379> 393> 399> 421., 433> 461-462, 465> 468, 471,

156, 185> 189. 202, u;; 230,

474-47)1479> 481., 500-501. 516,

307-312, 316, 318, 322, 324. 32;;

0 ordinal numbers 209

571, 593

33)1 340. 351., 361. 370> 426, 491.,

ov

232-233> 235-236, 243> 279·

functional stacking constraint 389.

see also superstrate lexifier 8, 23> 82-83. 86, 88-91.,

408

G grammatical categories 10, 371. 437>

94-95> 9)199-100, 12j!. 209> 218, 221., 289> 303> 30ft 310. 326-327> 331, 334. 36ji; 415> 433> 45i> 516, 531. 601-602, 6Q5-606

45i> 593

grammaticalisation 41.. 46, 52, 55> 175> 20)1 215> 217> 315> 384. 481. 563> 57'0> 605-6o6

grammatical tone 602 grumetes 2;1 81, 86, 101

30. 386, 399> 433> 607

514. 571- 572· 606

Umits of substrate 513 see constraints on transfer I relabelling locative 16-18, 2:;>; 41, 45-46, 51,

p parameter resetting 105- 108, 122 passive voice 253 past negation 16, 181., 194 phonology 7-9, 23-24. 29, 105-1o6, 109. 201., 224-225> 22j!. 235> 23j!. 243> 281, 291-292,312,318, 322, 33j!. 340. 358. 361. 365> 48;;o:. 491, 556. 572-573> 6oo-6o2

pidgins

5> ;; 32-33. 81., 89. 194. 19;1

56, 92-9J, 147> 150, 168-169, 175>

224, 289, 291, 29J, 336. 362, 364-

H

17ft 188, 198, 212, 2J4, 313> 331., 342,

head-final 607 head- initial 39> 607

370-371. 373> 42j!. 434. 448-451.

365> 385> 433> 439> 489. 506, 524. 531-532, 543> 550. 552, 599-601., 603-605> 607

456-45)1 478. 480-481, 517-519> 525-526. 554> 55i> 561-566, 568571, 594. 605> 611

imperative

210, 294-295> 315-316,321. 332>

2;1 100, 211-212,328,

330-331. 334-335> 401, 485> 587 imperfectivity 61. 70. 73-74. 77

inclusive/exclusive 12-13. 315- 416,

M

Macro-Sudan Beh 603 markedness 107-1o8, 121-123. 280, 381,516

464-466,484. 524-525> 540-541., 603

indefinite article 206-207 inflectional morphology 310, 322, 40)1415> 601. 611

instrumental 17-18, 276, 370-371, 373> 379> 432, 434. 449-450. 456, 478-481.484. 51j!. 523, 605-606 intonation 29. 23;1 273> 27;; 280281. 39i> 429> 602

metatypy 310, 31.8 mixed languages 102, 321. 381, 573> 599-601.,607

mixing 339> 531 mood 7-8, 14-15- 27- 5;1 91, 155-15;;o:. 192, 238,341-342,350. 374. 380, 388,409, 443· 458, 461.469-476.

K

kin relation marker 442

435> 599

553> 55)1 562, 564-568, 571 10, 16-1;; 69> 120, 183>

possession

210, 212, 294.331-332, 335> 35;; 371-372, 425> 454. 478-482, 484. 51j!. 519-521. 526, 536. 54;; 549-550. 554. 560, 562-565> 567

post-creole continuum 273> 33;;o:. 339-340

225> 238, 240. 280, 291. 310, 312,

43-46. 53-55> 407: 43)1 440-441.,

373> 375> 386-389> 392.395-396. 399> 402, 404. 407-408, 415> 426, 476,484.601-602, 6o6

448-450. 454. 456-458, 47ft 479-

91., 201-202, 22ji; 238-240, 243>

levelling 8-9, 27-28, 65> 68, 461-

525-526, 528, 534-538, 546-550.

318, 322, 340. 349> 355-356, 37 28, 285. 336,

334. 370-371. 373-374. 425> 444. 449> 453-454. 456, 516, 519-521.,

predicate cleft 21-22, 43> 603-604 see also verb doubling prepositions 10, 16-18, 26, 30.

483-484. 579. 584. 58;; 592 morphology 8, 10, 16, 106, 141., 198,

isolating languages, Creoles as 484

L

pluralisation 89. 238, 240 possessive 16, 18, 27> 39. 203-204.

483> 517-518, 609

principle offeature economy 117118

processes 7-10, 16, 18, 22-23. 25-26,

381, 38J-386, 388, 390. 394. 401.,

28-30, 39· 73> 88, 9D-9lo 105-106,

408-409. 413. 6o8

121. 155-158, 160, 164, 172, 176, 266, 306, 313> 336. 362, 365> 388,

462, 465> 468,471. 474-47)1 479> 481.486, 512, 515> 531-532, 550. 553·

N

560, 570-571

negation ;;o:. 9-11, 16, 27-28, 42, 91.

407-4o8, 490. 524. 558-559· 566, 10Q-101., 181, 194-1911 211-212, 218,

578. 594. 599

Index of subjects

progressive 8, 14. 5i> 61, 70, 73-78. 92-94. 97-98. 101, 110, 115> 161, 168-171> 173> 175-176.375-376. 390-391. 394. 396. 472- 502, 563-564. 566, 569, 571> 578. 581, 584-585> 58;7, 589-594 pronominal forms 11-12., 28, 141, 417>464 pronoWI systems 315> 603 properties of verbs 7-9, 11, 20, 28,

217> 238. 340. 457> 466, 44 513. 524-525> 593> 599-602., 610 situative aspect 8, 61. 7o. 72-76, 78 280,379. 34 422., 558. 605 stress ;6. 270, 2;73. 27ft 279-280, 282., 317> 602 substrate 3-5> 7-20, 22-30, 5i>

sov

279-280

28, 9;; 391, 407-4o8, 45i>

232., 235-240. 242-244, 263. 266,

489-490· 495> 49i> 500, 504. 519. 571 see also reinterpretaton reduplication

157> 176, 198, 206, 208,

238, 273. 308, 312., J20, 327> 362., 446,469 reflexives 40, 216, 222, 321 reinforcement prindple 11, 2;; 91, 196, 461-462., 465> 471, 479. 515> 529. 531-532., 54Q, 542-545> 549. 552-553> 557-558. 560, 578. 593-594 reinterpretation 25. 70. 75. 160, 171, 175-176 see also reanalysis relabelling 24-30

second language acquisition

23.

105-106, 384. 407> 462., 515> 572- 592 segmental inventories 7-8, 105-107> 121 segmental substitution 105 serial verb constructions 8, 10, 20, 29. 31, 38.41-41. 58-59· 157>

328, 33Q-331, 374-376· 379-380, 388-389. 40;;!. 461-464, 469. 471-472- 47'4> 476. 478. 483-484,

354. 360-361, 379. 415> 433-434. 437> 448-449.461-466, 468-471> 474-484.489-490, 49:;>; 501. 511,

tones ;;!. 9. 29. 39. 221, 274. 276-277> 279.281 topic 4. 9. 12., 20, 22, 30. 129. 198,

513-516, 518-519, 524-52i> 531-532.,

236, 239-242., 258. 273. 283-284, 289, 291, 299. 310, 329. 431, 463. 470.485, 515, 526, 528. 610 topic-comment 9. 22., 2;73. 283- 289>

534-553. 557-560. 566, 57o. 575> 577-578. 583. 592-594. 599-609 substrate reinfurcement 2;; 91, 515>

291,299

529. 531-532., 540. 542-544, 549. 552-553. 556-557> 56o see reinforcement principle superstrate 3-4, 8, 14. 16, 22., 25-2ji; 30. 105-109. 127-129. 132., 134,

19ji; 253-254. 256, 261, 263> 265> 291, 310, 315> 421, 425> 428-429, 461-469. 471· 474-477> 479. 481-487> 500, 511, 514-518,

171> 1;73. 175-176. 181, 189, 191, 193. 218, 222., 303. 309-310, 318.

528-529. 531-532., 552. 558-559.

see also lexifier suprasegmental phonology see intonation, tones

svo

transfer 9· 14, 23. 25-30. 45> 5;;!. 105-10ji; 111.114-115.117-122.,

136-13:;>; 139. 142-143. 145. 147-149. 156, 158-160, 163> 168,

361, 434. 462., 475> 477> 483. 489. 497> 525> 559. 561-562, 564. 571, 575> 577-578· 592-593> 599-603. 605-606, 608-610

25-26, 254. 292., 374,

s

27-28. 30. 39. 47> 5i> 82., 91, 94-95> 99-100, 155-156, 158-160, 164, 1;73. 176-178, 186, 210, 30ji; 311-312., 322.,

575> 578. 580, 583-54 58;; 589. 592., 594 tonal system 29, 602

323. 326, 337> 361, 385, 57o. 602, 605-606 see relabelling 376-377> 379. 384. 407-408, 433> 438-439.459

443. 458. 461, 469-47:h 44 533> 543> 560-¢4, 566, 570-571> 575> 578-580, 583-54 58;; 589-590. 592., 594-595> 603 tense, mood and aspect markers I system (TMA) ,; 9-11, 13-16,

271. 273-27'4> 283. 289. 303. 306, 308-311, 316, 318. 325-32ji; 33i> 340.

see relexifica:l.ion relative clause 6o6-61o relative pronoWI 198, 6o8-6o9 relexification 23-26, 28-30, 61. 7o. 76, 82., 1;73. 18s, 193> 197> 211, 2;73.

restructuring

318. 350. 36ji; 369, 374-376, 378380, 383> 386-4o6, 408, 434. 44o.

134, 136, 139. 141-143. 145> 14i> 149. 152., 155-160, 164-168, 170. 172-173. 175-176. 1.81, 185> 194. 19;; 201-203> 205-210, 213-227> 231-

R reanalysis

191-195> 197> 211, 213. 238. 2;73. 298.

81-83. 87-91, 93-97> 99-101. 105-10ft 112., 114. 121, 127-129. 132.,

45> 56, 127-129, 137> 143. 145> 149

see verbs prosodic system

160-161, 163. 171> 1.86, 188-189.

177-178, 215-216, 29:;>; 337-338. 341, 345> 414. 420-421,427-428 sinlplification 8, 1ji; 61, 78, 209,

322

39. 161, 222., 280, 379. 383-34

57o. 575> 578· 592-594. 599

see also constraints on transfer transfer to somewhere prindple

26,

114. n;; 121, 578

see constraints on transfer I relabelling transitivity markers

11, 18-19. 26,

28,494-495 typological classification of creoles

464-465> 485> 605 sytlable structure 29. 31, 76. 111, 202, 221, 236-237> 292., 602, 611

3.;; 30 typological congruence of substrates

T

u

tail-head linkage tense

22., 419

7-8, 10, 14-16, 42, 5i> 73> 91.

94-95> 97-98. 1CJ3, 137> 141, 155-157>

27

Wiiversal grammar 363.572

8, 105. 107> 121,

625

62.6


v

serial verbs 7-9> u, 20. 28, 129>

verb classes

20. cq-155> 350

BODY-state verbs I eJqll"essions 8,129-131

149> 215-216, 222., 289> 297-298, 341, 413> 421. 434 weather verbs 8, 129, 131-132., 150

control verbs 8, 137 double object verbs 129, 147

verb doubling

raising verbs

vo

8, 129> 132., 150

22., 218, 222., 604

see also predicate deft 386. 399> 433> 6Ql-6o8 vowels 39, 7D, 75. 106, 109- u6, 120. 122., 23~ 490

w WALS

202.,

6oo, 602-603- 6o6-

6o8, 610

wh- interrogatives 9> 282, 299 word order ;;; 29-31., 48, 173> 280, 323> 328, 331. 379> 435> 462. 464, 569-571

see also OV, VO, SVO, SOV

Typological Studies in Language A complete list of titles in this series can be found on the pub lishers' website, www. benjamins.com 97

GIJN, Rik VIlli, Katbario.a HAUDE 1111d Pieter MUYSKEN (eds.): Subordination in Native SouthAmerican Languages. viii, 306 pp. + index Expected May 2011

96 YAP, Foong Ha, Karen GRUNOW-llARsTA and Janick WRONA (eds.): Nominalization in Asian Languages. Diachronic and typological perspectives. xvii, 792 + index. Expected May 2011 95 LEFEBVRE, Oaire (ed.): Creoles, their Substrates, and Language Typology. 2011. ix, 626 pp. 94 VAN UNDEN, An, Jean-Cbristophe VERSTRAETE and Kristin DAVIDSE (eds.): Formal Evidence in Grammaticalization Research. In collaboration with Hubert Cuyckens. 2010. viii, 344 pp. 93 AMIRIDZE, Nino, Boyd H. DAVIS and Margaret MACLAGAN (eds.): Fillers, Pauses and Plw:.eholders. 201 o. vii. 224 pp. 92 ZlllaGA,Femando and Seppo KITTILA (eds.): Benefactives and Malefactives. Typological perspectives and case studies. 2010. x. 440 pp. 91 FIEDLER, Ines and Anne SCHWARZ (eds.): The Expression of Information Structure. A documentation of its diversity across Africa. 2010. xii, 38 3 pp. 90 TRAUGOTT,Eiiubetb Closs and Gneme TROUSDALE (eds.): Gradience, Gradualness and Grammaticalization. 2010. ix, 306 pp. 89

GILDEA, Spike and Francese QUEIXALOS (eds.): Ergativity in Amazonia. 2010. v, 319 pp.

88 SCHMIDTKE-BODE,Kanten: A Typology of Purpose Clauses. 2009. xii, 229 pp. 87 CYFFER, N orbert,Erwin EBERMANN and Georg ZIEGELMEYER (eds.): Negation Patterns in West African Languages and Beyond. 2009. vi, 368 pp. 86 MAIDEU, Man:-Antoine and Nicole TERSIS (eds.): Variations on Polysynthesis. The Eskaleutlanguages. 2009. ix, 312 pp. 85 GIVON, T. and Masayosbi SHIBATANI (eds.): Synta..-tic Complexity. Diachrony, acquisition, neurocognition, evolution. 2009. vi. 553 pp. 84 NEWMAN, John (ed.): The Linguistics of Eating and Drinking. 2009. xii, 280 pp. 83 CORRIGAN, Roberta, Editb A. MORAVCSIK,Hamid OUAU a ad Katbleen M. WHEATLEY (eds.): Formulaic Language. Volume 2. Acquisition, loss, psychological reality, and functional explanations. 2009. .xxiv, 361 pp. 82 CORRIGAN,Roberta,Editb A. MORAVCSIK,Hamid OUAU and Kathleen M. WHEATLEY (eds.): Formulaic Language. Volume 1. Distribution and historical change. 2009 . .xxiv, 315 pp. 81 CORBETT, Greville G. and Michael NOONAN (eds.): Case and Grammatical Relations. Studies in honor of Bernard Comrie. 2008. ix, 290 pp. 8o LAURY, Ritva (ed.): Crosslinguistic Studies of Clause Combining. The multifunctionality of conjunctions. 2008. xiv, 253 pp. 79

ABRAHAM, Werner 1111d Elisabeth LEISS (eds.): Modality-Aspect Interfaces. Implications and typological solutions. 2008. xxiv, 422 pp.

78 HARRISON, K. David, DavidS. ROOD and Arienne DWYER (eds. ): Lessons from Documented Endangered Languages. 2008. vi, 375 pp. 77

SEOANE, Flena and Maria Jose LOPEZ-COUSO (eds.): Theoretical and Empirical Issues in Grammaticalization. In collaboration with Teresa Fanego. 2008. x. 367 pp.

76 LOPEZ-GOUSO, Maria Jose and Flena SEOANE (eds.): Rethinking Grammalicalization. New perspectives. In roUaboration with Teresa Fanego. 2008. x. 355 pp. 75 FRAJZY"NGIER, Zygmunt and Erin SHAY (eds.): Intera..-tion of Morphology and Syntax. Case studies in Afroasiatic. 2008. v. 234 pp. 7 4 KURZON, Dennis and Slvia ADLER (eds.): Ad positions. Pragmatic, semantic and syntw:tic perspectives. 2oo8. viii, 307 pp. 73 ANSALDO, Umberto, Stephen MATTHEWS and Lisa IJM (eds.): Deronstructing Creole. 2007. xii, 292 pp. 72

NJESS, Ashid: Prototypical Transitivity. 2007. x, 240 pp.

71

NEDJALKOV, Vladimir P. (ed.): Reciprocal Constructions. With the assistance of Emma S. Geniuiiene and Zlatka Guentcheva.. 2007. xxiii, 2219 pp. (5 vols. ).

70 .zthaGA, Perna ado: Deixis and Alignment Inverse systems in indigenous languages of the Americas. 2006. xii, 309 pp. ARANOVICH, Ra61 (eel.): Split Auxiliary Systems. A cross-linguistic perspective. 2007. vii. 277 pp. ABRAHAM, Werner and Larisa LEISIO (eels.): Passivization and Typology. Form and function. 2006. x. 553 PP· 67 VESEUNOVA,Ljaba N.: Suppletion in Verb Paradigms. Bits and pieces of the puzzle. 2006. xviii, 236 pp. 69 68

66 lllCKMANN, Maya and Stephane ROBERT (eels.): Space in Languages. Linguistic Systems and Cognitive Categories. 2006. x, 362 pp. 65 TSUNODA, Tasalm and Tam KAGEYAMA (eels.): Voice and Grammatical Relations. In Honor of Masayoshi Shibatani. 2006. x:viii, 342 pp. 64 VOELTZ, F. K. Erhard (ed.): Studies in African Linguistic Typology. 2006. xiv, 426 pp. 63 FIIJMONOVA,Eiena (ed.): Clusivity. Typology and case studies of the inclusive-exclusive distinction. 2005. xii, 436 pp. 62 COUPER-KUHLEN,FJiubeth a ad Cecilia E. FORD (eels.): Sound Patterns in JnteiaJ.-tion. Crosslinguistic studies from conversation. 2004 viii, 406 pp. 61 BHASKARARAO,Peri and Karumuri Venkata SUBBARAO (eels.): Non-nominative Subjects. Volume 2. 2004 xii, 319 pp. 6o BHASKARARAO,PeriandKarumuri Venkata SUBBARAO (eels.): Non-nominative Subjects. Volume 1. 2004 xii, 325 pp. 59 FISCHER, Olga, Muriel NORDE and Harry PERRIDON (eels.): Up and down the Cline -The Nature of Grammaticalization. 2004 viii, 406 pp. 58 HASPELMAm, Martill (eel.): Coordinating Constructions. 2004. xcv, 578 pp. 57 MATTISSEN, Johanna: Dependent-Head Synthesis in Nivkh. A contribution to a typology of polysynthesis. 2003. x, 350 pp. 56 SHAY, Erin and Uwe SEIBERT (eds.): Motion, Direction and Location in Languages. In honor of Zygmunt Fl:ajzyngier. 2003. xvi, 305 pp. 55 FRAJZ¥NGIER, Zygmunt and Erin SHAY: Explaining Language Structure through Systems Interaction. 2oo 3· :1:viii, 309 pp. 54 AIKHENVALD, Alex:andn Y. and R.M. W. DIXON (eels.): Studies in Evidentiality. 2003. xiv, 349 pp. 53 GIV6N, T. and Bertram F. MAILE (eds.): The Evolution of Language out of Pre-language. 2002. x, 394 pp. 52 Gtll.DEMANN, Thm and Manfred von RONCADOR (eels.): Reported Discourse. A meeting ground for different linguistic domains. 2002. xii, 425 pp. 51 NEWMAN, John (ed.): The Linguistics of Silting. Standing and Lying. 2002. xii, 409 pp. 5o FEIGENBAUM, Susanne and Dennis KURZON (eels.): Prepositions in their Syntactic, Semantic and Pragmatic Context 2002. vi, 304 pp. 49 WISCHER, Dse and Gabriele DIEWALD (eels.): New Reflections on Grammaticalization. 2002. xiv, 437 pp. 48 SHIBATANI, Masayoshi (ed.): The Grammar of Causation and Interpersonal Manipulation. 2002. xviii, 551 pp. 47 BARON, Irene, Michael HERSLUND a ad Finn S0RENSEN (eels.): Dimensions of Possession. 2001. vi, 337 PP· 46 AIKHENVALD,Aiex:andn Y.,R.M.W.DIXON and Masayuki ONISHI (eels.): Non-canonical Marlting of Subjects and Objects. 2001. xii, 364 pp.

45 BYBEE, Joan and Paul J. HOPPER (eds.): Frequency and the Emergence of Linguistic Structure. 2001. vii, 492 pp. 44 VOELTZ, F. K. Erhard and Christa KILIAN-HATZ (eels.): Jdeophones. 2001. x, 436 pp. 43 GILDEA, Spike (ed.): Reconstructing Grammar. Comparative Linguistics and Grammaticalization. 2ooo. xiv, 269 pp. 42 DIESSEL, Holger: Demonstratives. Form, function and grammaticalization. 1999. xii, 205 pp. 41 FRAJZ¥NGIER, Zygmunt and Traci WALKER (eels.): Reciprocals. Forms and functions. Volume 2. 2000. xii, 201 pp. 40 FRAJZ¥NGIER, Zygmunt and Traci WALKER (eels.): Reflexives. Forms and functions. Volume 1. 2000. xiv, 286 pp. 39 PAYNE, Doris Land Immanuel BARSill (eds.): External Possession. 1999· i.x, 573 pp. 38 SIEWIERSKA, Anna and Jae Jung SONG (eels.): Case, Typology and Grammar. In honor of Barry J. Blake. 1998. 395 pp.

37 GIACALONE-RAMAT, Aaaa a ad Paul J. HOPPER (eds.): The Limits of Grammaticalization. 1998. v~ 307 pp. 36 NEWMAN, Joho (eel.): The Linguistics of Giving. 1998. xv, 373 pp. 35 GIV6N, T. (ed.): Grammatical Relations. A functionalist perspective. 1997. viii. 350 pp. 34 GIV6N, T. (ed.): Conversation. Cognitive, communicative and social perspectives. 1997. viii, 302 pp. 33 FOX, Barbara A. (eel.): Studies in Anaphora 1996. xi~ 518 pp. 32 BYBEE, Joao aod Suzaaae FLEISCHMAN (eds.): Modality in Grammar and Discourse. 1995. viii. 575 pp. 31 GERNSBACHER, Morton ADo aod T. GIV6N (eds.): Coherence in Spontaneous Text 1995. x. 267 pp. 30 DOWNING, Pamela A. aod Michael NOONAN (eds.): Word Order in Discourse. 1995. x, 595 pp. 29 KAHREL,Peter aod Reohao dea BERG (eds.): Typological Studies in Negation. 1994- x-. 385 pp. 28 GIV6N, T. (ed.): Voice and Inversion. 1994- vii~ 402 pp. 27 FOX, Barbara A. aod Paul J. HOPPER (eds.): Voice: Form and Function. 1994. xiii, 377 pp. 26 LORD, Carol: Historical Change in Serial Verb Constructions. 1993. x, 27 3 pp. 25 SVOROU,Soteria: The Grammar of Space. 1994- xiv, 290 pp. 24 PERKINS,RelereD.: Deixis, Grammar, and Culture. 1992. x-. 245 pp. 23 KEMMER, Suzaooe: The Middle Voice. 1993. xi~ 300 pp. 22 PAYNE, Doris L (ed.): Pragmatics ofWord Order Flexibility. 1992. vii~ 320 pp. 21 DOWNING, Pamela A., Susao D. LIMA aod Michael NOONAN (eds.): The Linguistics of Literacy. 1992. xx. 334PP· 20 CROFT, WWiam, Suzaaae KEMMER aod Keith DENNING (eds.): Studies in Typology and Diacllrony. Papers presented to Joseph H. Greenberg on his 75th birthday. 1990. n:xiv, 243 pp. 19:2 TRAUGOTT, Elizabeth Closs aod Bemd HEINE (eds.): Approaches to Grammaticalization. Volume IT. Types of grammatical marlr.ers. 1991.xii, 558 pp. 19:1 TRAUGOTT, Elizabeth Closs aodBemd HEINE (eds.): Approw:hes to Grammaticalization. Volume l Theoretical and methodological issues. 1991. xii, 360 pp. 18 HAIMAN, Joho aod Sandra A. THOMPSON (eds.): Clause Combining in Grammar and Disc.ourse. 1988. xiii, 428 pp. HAMMOND, Michael, Edith A. MORAVCSIK aod Jessica WIRTH (eds.): Studies in Syntactic Typology. 1988. xiv, 380 pp. 16 SHIBATANI, Masayoshi (ed.): Passive and Voice. 1988. xi. 706 pp. 15 AUSTIN, Peter (ed.): Complex Sentence Constructions in Australian Languages. 1988. vii. 289 pp. 14 HINDS, Joho, Sboichi IWASAKI aod Seoko K. MAYNARD (eds.): Perspectives on Topicalization. The case of Japanese WA. 1987. xi, 307 pp. 13 Never published. 12 NEDJALKOV, Vladimir P. (ed.): Typology of Resu ltative Constructions. Translated from the original Russian edition (1983). Translation edited by Bernard Comrie. 1988. XX"o 573 pp. TOMLIN, Russell S.: Coherence and Grounding in Discourse. Outcome of a Symposium, Eugene, Oregon, June 1984- 1987. viii, 512 pp. 1o RANSOM,Evelyo N.: Complementation: its Meaning and Forms. 1986. xii, 226 pp. 9 BYBEE, Joao: Morphology. A Study of the Relation between Meaning and Form. 1985. xii, 235 pp. 8 SLOBIN, Dao I. aod Kad ZIMMER (eds.): Studies in Turkish Linguistics. 1986. vi, 294 pp. CRAIG, Colette G. (ed.): Noun Classes and Categorization. Proceedings of a symposium on categorization and noun classification, Eugene,Oregon,Octoben983.1986. vii,481 pp. 6 HAIMAN, Joho (eel.): !conicity in Syntax. Proceedings of a symposium on iconicity in syntax. Stanford, June 24-26. 1983. 1985. vi, 402 pp. 5 RUTHERFORD, William F. (ed.): Language Universals and Second Language Acquisition. 1984ix, 264 pp. 4 CHISHOLM, William, Louis T. MILIC aod Joho A. C. GREPPIN (eds.): Interrogativity. A coUoq uium on the grammar, typology and pragmatics of questions in seven diverse languages, Cleveland, Ohio, October 5th 1981-May 3rd 1982. 1984- v, 302 pp. GIV6N, T.: Topic Continuity in Discourse. A quantitative cross-language study.1983. vi, 492 pp. HAIMAN, Joho aod Pamela MUNRO (eds.): Switch Reference and Universal Grammar. Proceedings of a syntposium on switch reference and universalgrammar,Winnipeg, May 1981. 1983.xv, 337 pp. HOPPER, Paul J. (eel.): Tense-Aspect Between semantics&: pragmatics. 1982. x. 350 pp.

Creoles, their Substrates, and Language Typology

Creoles, their Substrates, and Language Typology (Typological Studies in Language)

Language Typology: A Functional Perspective

Language Complexity: Typology, contact, change

Pidgins and Creoles

Passivization And Typology: Form And Function (Typological Studies in Language)

Language Universals and Linguistic Typology: Syntax and Morphology

Language universals and linguistic typology: syntax and morphology

Grammatical Relations: A Cross-Linguistic Perspective on Their Syntax and Semantics (Empirical Approaches to Language Typology)

Language Complexity: Typology, contact, change (Studies in Language Companion Series)

Creoles, Contact, and Language Change: Linguistics and Social Implications (Creole Language Library)

Language Typology and Syntactic Description: Volume 1, Clause Structure

Language Typology and Syntactic Description: Volume 2, Complex Constructions

Case, Typology and Grammar (Typological Studies in Language)

An introduction to pidgins and creoles

Neuronal Substrates of Sleep and Epilepsy

Roots of Creole Structures: Weighing the contribution of substrates and superstrates (Creole Language Library)

Markedness And Language Change: The Romani Sample (Empirical Approaches to Language Typology)

Language, Cognition and Identity. Extensions of the endocentric exocentric language typology

Creole Formation as Language Contact: The Case of the Suriname Creoles (Creole Language Library)

Studies in African Linguistic Typology (Typological Studies in Language)

A Typology of Purpose Clauses (Typological Studies in Language)

Creoles of Color in the Bayou Country

Creole Discourse: Exploring Prestige Formation and Change Across Caribbean - English-lexicon Creoles (Creole Language Library)

Adjective Classes: A Cross-Linguistic Typology (Explorations in Linguistic Typology)

Word Order Typology and Comparative Constructions

The typology and dialectology of Romani

Genitives in Early English: Typology and Evidence

On Comitatives and Related Categories: A Typological Study With Special Focus on the Languages of Europe (Emprical Approaches to Language Typology 33) (Emprical Approaches to Language Typology)

Thinking About Literacy: Young Children and their Language

Creoles, their Substrates, and Language Typology