Typological Studies in Language
Creoles, their Substrates, and Language Typology
edited by Claire Lefebure
95
Creoles, their Substrates, and Language Typology
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
Creoles, their Substrates, and Language Typology
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
The problem of the typologic:al classification of creoles
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.
The problem of the typologic:al classification of creoles
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).
The problem of the typologic:al classification of creoles
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
Table 1. The pronomlnal system ofKriol (adapted from Munro 2004: 123) Singular
Dual
Plural
yunduhala dubala
yumop
yunmi
wi
mindubalalminbala
melabat/mela
ailmi
yu
2 3
im inclusive exclusive
olabat
Table 2. The pronominal system of Haitian Creole (from Valdman et al. 1981; Fattier 1998, vol. 2: 850)
mwen ou/[wu]
li nou
yo
'I, me' 'you (sG)'
HAITIAN
'he/she/it/him/her' 'we/UB/you (PL)' 'they/them'
2. Note that, as is reported in Lefebvre (1998: 142), traditional Fongbe grammars (e.g., Anonymous 1983) sometimes represent the form meaning 'we' as ml (bearing a complex1ow-high tone) and the form meaning 'you (PL)' as mi (bearing a mid-tone). Mid and low-high tones are phonetic variants (see Capo 1991); the distinction between the two is thus phonemically irrelevant Furthermore, extensive fieldwork by Brousseau (1995) on the tonological specification of the form m{ reveals that this form always bears a phonological high tone.
The problem of the typologic:al classification of creoles
Table 3. The pronominal system of Alawa (Munro 2004: 122) Singular
Dual
Plural
wurru yirrurla
wulu yilurla
nyanu ngarru
nyalu ngalu
ngina
nyagana nurla (M) nga durla (F)
2 3
inclusive exclusive
Table 4. The pronominal system ofKriol substrate languages (adapted from Munro 2004: 121)
2 3
Singular
Dual
Plural
"
""" "
"" ""
"
inclusive exclusive
Table 5. The pronominal system ofFongbe (= (18) in Brousseau 1995) ny£ hwe
e(ye) m{
>-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).
The problem of the typologic:al classification of creoles
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 (
3- The TMA system of Papiamentu used to be seen as departing from that of the other Caribbean creoles (e.g., Muysken 1981b). The analysis in Kouwenberg and Lefebvre (2007), however, shows that the TMA system of this language is in fact quite similar to those of the other Caribbean creoles and thus to those of its Gbe substrate languages.
15
16
Claire Lefebvre
In his comparison of SLM with its superstrate and adstrate (Sinhala) languages, Ansaldo concludes that the TMA system of SLM draws from both its sources. Slomanson argues in his comparison of SLM with its superstrate and Shonam substrate language, that, in SLM, TMA categories are pre-verbal bound markers modelled on Shonam: "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 (... )." Furthermore, he shows that SLM manifests contrastive tense marking, just as Shonam does. The fact that Ansaldo and Slomanson do not reach exactly the same conclusion appears to be linked to the fact that they do not evaluate the role of the various contributing languages in the same way. While Ansaldo emphasises the role of Sinhala and Tamil, Slomanson focuses on Shonam. 3.2.4 Negation Negation, which is discussed for several creoles - Ternate Chabacano (Sippola), China Coast Pidgin (Ansaldo, Matthews and Smith), Belizean Creole (Escure), Mindanao Chabacano (Grant) and Sri Lanka(n) Malay (Slomanson) - is another subsystem of the grammar in which creoles manifest the typological differences of their substrates. For example, Sippola shows that the properties of the negation system in Ternate Chabacano, namely standard clausal negation and negation of existentials and possession, are analogous to what is observed in Tagalog. Another example comes from Belizean Creole which encodes past negation by a morpheme (neva) that is different from that used to encode general negation. Past negation markers are also found in the Mrican substrate languages of Belizean Creole such as lbibio, Mandinka and Swahili. In Sri Lanka(n) Malay, there is an interaction between the expression of negation and finiteness. Slomanson shows that SLM has two etymologically unrelated negation markers, the choice of which is solely determined by the finiteness of an associated verb. He further shows that overt tense morphology is suppressed when a lexical verb is negated. Both these features of negation are attributed to Shonam. As Slomanson mentions, the second feature is not found in other substrate languages of Sri Lanka(n) Malay such as Sinhala. 3.2.5 Semantic case systems Some creoles manitest overt semantic cases and some do not Creoles that do manifest overt semantic cases are those whose substrate languages do so as well. In this book. the case systems of three creoles are documented: Sri Lanka(n) Malay and its Sinhala adstrate (Ansaldo), Kriol and its Australian substrate languages such as Alawa (Munro), and CAAE and its Australian substrate languages such as Kaytetye (Koch a). As will be seen below, all three reproduce the case inventories of their respective substrate languages. Ansaldo shows that the case system of SLM reproduces the Sinhala case system almost to perfection. This is shown in Table 9. Ansaldo sees one difference between the creole and the Sinhala case systems: "In SLM, Genitive and Locative receive different marking; SLM therefore has a specialised Possessive marker, an innovation in relation to the adstrates." Munro and Koch (a) both show that the Australian creoles they study reproduce the case inventories of their respective substrate languages. In this case, however, the inventories are realised as prepositions instead of as suffixes. Table 10, from Munro, shows the similarity in the case systems of Kriol and Alawa. There is one difference: In Alawa, "Accompaniment is [... ] not marked
The problem of the typologic:al classification of creoles
Table 9. The semantic case systems ofSLM and ofSinhala (adapted from Table 2 inAnsaldo) Functions expressed Agent Experiencer Goal Beneficiary Possessor Patient Possession Location Instrwnent Source Assodation
SINH ALA
SRI LANKA(N) MALAY
Case suflrus (forms not given)
Case suffixes
Nominative Dative Dative Dative Dative Accusative Genitivenocative Genitivenocative Instrwnental/ablative Instrwnental/ablative Comitative
Nominative Dative Dative Dative Dative Definite object marking Genitive Locative Instrwnental/ablative Instrwnental/ablative Comitative
-"
_,umg -1Jang _,Jang -1Jang -yang
-pe -ka
-ring -ring
-le
Table 10. The semantic case systems of Kriol and Alawa (from Munro) Functions expressed
ALAWA
KR.JOL
Case suffixes
Prepositions
Location
-rru 'allative'
langa, la
Goal
-rru 'allati ve'
langa, la
Source
-yunu 'ablative'
burrum, brom
Possession
-ja 'genitive'
blang, bla
Purpose
-ja 'genitive'
blonJY bla
Instrwnent
-rri 'instrwnental'
garra
Accompaniment
(no case; nominal suffix -wanjt)
garra
through a case suffix as such. The fact that Accompaniment is expressed with the same form as Instrument in Kriol is therefore unexpected:'4 Table 11 from Koch (a) shows the similarity in the case systems of CAAE and Kaytetye. As Table 11 shows, however, some CAAE prepositions may correspond to more than one form in the substrate language. As Koch (a) comments: "The syncretism in the expression of the Locative and Allative by longa and the use offrom to express a number of semantic functions that are distinguished in Kaytetye does not seem to indicate a simplification of the system of semantic functions so much as the lack of available lexical items in English that could be recruited for their expression" (see Section 3.4).
4· Harold Koch (p.c.) comments: i believe the Location function should be -rri 'locative' (Sharpe 1972: 62)- the same form as Instrwnent. If this is correct, a second difference between Alawa and Kriol is the fact that Location and Instrwnent are expressed differently in the latter. (This may reflect the grammar of other substrate languages rather than Alawa: Australian languages differ as to whether they express Instrwnent by a form identical to Locative or something else (usually Ergative or the 'having' case); it seems that Kriol garra (from gotfem) reflects the latter strategy, which was probably present in some of the Kriol substratwn languages.")
17
18
Claire Lefebvre
Table 11. The case systelll8 ofCAAE and Kaytetye (adapted from Table 3 in Koch a) Functions expressed Location Instrumental Goal Purpose Specific location/goal Terminative Perlative Source Cause Comparison Material source Prior condition Aversive Possessive Purpose Purpose Recipient Proprietive Proprietive Privative
Case suffixes
CAAE Prepositions
-le, -nge 'locative' -le, -nge 'locative' -warle 'allative' -warle 'allative' x N -let-nge/-warle -wartetye 'terminative' -a,Jgkwerre 'perlative' -theye 'ablative' -theye 'ablative' -theye 'ablative' -penhe 'sequentive' -penhe 'sequentive' -ketye 'aversive' -arenge 'possessive' -warle 'allative' -we 'dative' -we 'dative' -akake 'proprietive' -akake 'proprietive' -wanenye 'privative'
longa longa longa longa x longa right up longa through lo,Jga from from from from from from blong(int)a blong(int)a for for with gottem,got (got) no
KAYTJ!TYJ!
To sum up, the data on semantic case discussed above show that SLM, Kriol and CAAE feature different subsets of cases. Each subset in the creoles corresponds to the respective subset of the creoles' substrate languages, within the limits imposed by the constraints that act on the processes responsible for this state of affairs (for further discussion, see Section 3.4).
Transitivity markers Creole languages vary with respect to the availability of transitivity markers, which attach to transitive verbs, thus allowing for a grammatical distinction between transitive and intransitive verbs. By hypothesis, transitivity markers should manifest themselves in creoles whose substrate languages make a grammatical distinction between transitive and intransitive verbs. Thus, this feature is expected not to appear in creole languages with a West African substrate since the latter do not feature this distinction. This expectation is borne out by the data, as no Caribbean or West Mrican creole has been reported to have transitivity markers. However, transitivity markers are expected to appear in creole languages with Austronesian substrate languages such as Tangoan, Kwaio or Tolai, since the latter do feature this distinction. Siegel identifies the availability of transitivity markers as a Pan-Pacific Pidgin feature. For example, they are found in the three dialects of Melanesian Pidgin reported on in (1) to ( 3) (= (82) to (84) in Siegel). 3.2.6
The problem of the typologic:al classification of creoles
(1)
(2)
(3)
stll 'commit theft' kuk'cook.' bon 'be burning'
stll-im 'steal [something]' kuk-um 'cook [something]' bon-em 'burn [something]'
luk1ook' stil 'commit theft' dig 'dig'
luk-im 'see' stil-im 'steal [something]' dig-im siton 'dig up a stone'
bruk 'break, be broken' kuk'cook.' wok 'work, be busy>
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.
The problem of the typologic:al classification of creoles
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
(= (2) in Lefebvre 1994)
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):
(= (4) in Lefebvre 1994)
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
(Lefebvre's field notes)
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.
(Lefebvre's field notes)
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.
The problem of the typologic:al classification of creoles
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).
The problem of the typologic:al classification of creoles
(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
The problem of the typologic:al classification of creoles
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).
The problem of the typologic:al classification of creoles
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).
The problem of the typologic:al classification of creoles
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
The problem of the typologic:al classification of creoles
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
Tjerk Hagerneijer and Ota Ogie
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
Ed6 influence on Santorne
(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
Tjerk Hagerneijer and Ota Ogie
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
(Hagemeijer's field notes)
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
(Hagemeijer's field notes)
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
(Hagemeijer's field notes)
mina tlegt,.
lady POC 3SG lift-up child give-3SG
(Hagemeijer's field notes)
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
Tjerk Hagerneijer and Ota Ogie
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).
Ed6 influence on Santorne
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
(Hagemeijer's field notes)
se.
SANTOMB
he ASP introduce put mouth-door sP 'He puts (it) in the keyhole.'
(Hagemeijer's field notes)
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
(Hagemeijer's field notes)
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
Tjerk Hagerneijer and Ota Ogie
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).
Sd6 influence on Santorne
(32)
a
La11ta
mundja.
SANTOME
to raise stand/stop 'Get up: I 'Pull yourselftogether: b.
Kpaa
(Hagemeijer's field notes)
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
Tjerk Hagerneijer and Ota Ogie
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
(Hagemeijer's field notes)
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
(Hagemeijer's field notes)
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
En6 (Ogie's field notes)
Sd6 influence on Santorne
(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!
(Hagemeijer's field notes)
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
(Hagemeijer's field notes)
Degree constructions are also attested in Ed6, where the verb is different from the verb used in the overtaking construction.
49
so
Tjerk Hagerneijer and Ota Ogie
(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?'
En6 (Ogie's field notes)
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.'
(Hagemeijer's field notes)
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.
Sd6 influence on Santorne
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
Tjerk Hagerneijer and Ota Ogie
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!
(Hagemeijer's field notes)
:en6 (Ogie's field notes) SANTOME
(Hagemeijer's field notes)
En6 (= (25) inAgheyisi 1990:94) SANTOME
(Hagemeijer's field notes)
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.
Ed6 influence on Santorne
(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.'
(Hagemeijer's field notes)
53
54
Tjerk Hagerneijer and Ota Ogie
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)
Ed6 influence on Santorne
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
Tjerk Hagerneijer and Ota Ogie
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.
Ed6 influence on Santorne
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
Tjerk Hagerneijer and Ota Ogie
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<;:alves & C. Nunes Correia (eds),17-30. Lisboa: APL. Alexandre, N. & Hagerneijer, T. 2004. The nominal domain in Santome. In Los criollos de base iberica: ACBLPE 2003, M. Ferrul..ndez, M. Fernandez-Ferreiro & N. Vazquez Veiga (eds), 85-100. Frankfurt/Madrid: Vervuert/ Iberoamericana. Alexandre, N. & Hagemeijer, T. 2007. Bare nouns and the nominal domain in Santome. In Noun Phrases in Creole Languages: A Multi1aceted Approach [Creole Language Library 31], M. Baptista & J. Gueron (eds), 37-59. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Almeida Mendes, A. de. 2008a. Les reseaux de la traite iberique dans l'Atlantique nord. Aux origines de la traite atlantique ( 1440-1640 ). Les Annales. Histoire, Scimces sociales 4: 739-7 68. Almeida Mendes, A. de. 2008b. The foundations of the system: A reassessment of the slave trade to the Spanish Americas in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In Extending the Frontiers: Essays on the New Transatlantic Slave 'frade Data Base, D. Eltis & D. Richardson (eds), 63-95. New Haven CT: Yale University Press. Ameka, E 2005. Multiverb constructions in areal typological perspective. TROSS 03 Proceedings. Trondheim: NTNU. Awoyale, Y. 1988. Complex predicates and verb serialization. MIT Lexicon Project, Paper 29. Cambridge MA: MIT Center for Cognitive Science. Baker, M. & Stewart, 0. T. 1999. Verb movement, objects, and serialization. Ms, Rutgers University. Baker, M. & Stewart, 0. T. 2002 A serial verb construction without constructions. Ms, Rutgers University. Bamgbose, A. 1982. Issues in the analysis of serial verb constructions. Journal of West African Languages 12(2): 3-21. Beermann, D., Hellan, L. & Ogie, 0. 2002 Extraction in Edo. Ms, NTNU. Caldeira, A. 2006. Uma ilha quase desconhedda. Notas para a hist6ria de Ano Born. Studia Africana - Revista bJteruniversitt:iria tfEstudis Africans 17: 99-109. Coelho, A. 1880-1886. Os dialectos romA.nicos ou neo-latinos na Africa, Asia e America. In Crioulos, J. Morais Barbosa (ed.) 1967. Lisboa: Academia International de Cultura Portuguesa. Elugbe, B. 1989. Comparative Edoid: Pho,wlogy and Lexicon [Delta Series 6]. Port Harcourt: University of Port Harcourt Press. Ferraz, L I. 1975. African influences on Principense creole. Otlprint of Misceldnea luso-africana, 153-164. Ferraz, L I. 1979. The creole of Siio Tome. Johannesburg: Witwatersrand University Press. Fontes, C. 2007. Estudo do lexico do sao-tomense com didonario. MA thesis, Universidade de Coimbra. Grimshaw, J. & Mester, A. 1988. Light verbs and ®-marking. Linguistic Inquiry 19: 205-232. Giinther, W. 1973. Das Portugiesische Kreolisch der ilha do Principe. Mar burg an der Lahn: Marburger Studien zur Afrika und Asienkunde. Hagemeijer, T. 1999. As Ilhas de Babel: a crioulizac;:ao no Golfo da Guine. Revista Cam6es 6: 74-88. Hagemeijer, T. 2000. Serial verbs in sao-tomense. MA thesis, Universidade de Lisboa. Hagemeijer, T. 2001. Semi-lexicality and underspedfication in serial verb constructions. In Semi-lexical Heads, N. Corver & H. van Riernsdijk (eds ), 415-451. New York NY: Mouton de Gruyter. Hagemeijer, T. 2003. A negac;:ao nos crioulos do Golfo da Guine: aspectos sincr6nicos e diacr6nicos. Revista Internacional de Lingiiistica Iberoamericana 2: 151-178. Hagemeijer, T. 2007. Clause Structure in Santome. PhD dissertation, Universidade de Lisboa. Ladhams, J. 2003. The Formation of the Portuguese Plantation Creoles. PhD dissertation, University of Westminster.
Sd6 influence on Santorne
Ladharns, J. Forthcoming. Article agglutination and the African contribution to the Portuguese-based Creoles. In Black through White, A. Bartens & P. Baker (eds). London: Battlebridge. Lord, C. 1993. Historical Change in Serial Verb Constructions ['I}rpologi.cal Studies in Language 26]. Amsterdam: John Be.ojamins. Lorenzino, G. 1998. The Angolar Creole Portuguese of Sao Tome: Its Grammar and Sociolinguistic History. PhD dissertation, City University of New York. Matos, R C. 1842 Corographia his~rica das ilhas deS. Thome, Principe, Anno Bom e Fernando P6. Porto: Typographia da Revista. Maurer, P. 1995. EAngolar: Un creole r.ifro-portugaise parle aSilo Tome. Hamburg: Helmut Buske. Maurer, P. 1999. El verbo locativo poner en santomense, principense y angolar. In Lmguas criollas de base lexical espatiola y portuguesa, K Zimmermann (ed.), 89-100. Frankfurt/Madrid: Vervuert/Iberoamericana. Maurer, P. 2005. La preposition for di du papiamento et le verbe f6 des creoles du Golfe de Guinee. La linguistique 41 (1): 57-66.
Maurer, P. 2008. A first step towards the analysis of tone in Santomense. In Roots of Creole Structures, S. Michaelis (ed.), 253-261. Amsterdam: John Be.ojamins. Maurer, P. 2009. Principense. Grammar, Text and Vocabulary of The Afro-Portuguese Creole of the Island ofPr£ncipe, Gulf of Guinea. London: Battle bridge. McWhorter, J. 1992. Substrata! influence in Saramaccan serial verb constrUL"ti.ons. Jourt'lal ofPidgin and Creole Languages7(1): 1-53.
Melzian, H. J. 1937. A CotiCise Dictiot'lary af the Bini Language af Southern Nigeria. London: Kegan Paul, Trench Trubner & Co. Melzian, H. J. 1942. Vergleichende Charakteristik des ~lrbums im Bini. Leipzig: Otto Harrassowitz. da Mota, A. T. 1976. Alguns aspectos da colonizafilo e do comercio mar(timo dos Portugueses na Africa Ocidental ,ws seculos XV e XVI. Lisboa: Junta de Investiga¢es Cientfficas do Ultramar. Muysken, P. & Smith, N. 1994. Reflexives. In Pidgins and Creoles: An Introduction, J. Arends, P. Muysken & N. Smith (eds), 271-288. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Negreiros, J. A. de. 1895. Historia eth,wgraphica da ilha deS. Tome. Lisbon: Antiga Casa Bertrand- Jose Bastos. Ogie, 0. 2002. NP focus and non-canonical arguments in Edo. 1n Papers in Linguistics from the University of Manchester: Proceedings of the 9th Postgraduate Conference in Linguistics, 25 March 2000, K. Hiietam & C. R Schubert (eds), 78-89. Manchester: Department of Linguistics, University of Manchester. Ogi.e, 0. 2004. About multi-verb constructions in Edo: Multi-verb construction, past tense suffixation and syntactic representation in Edo. TROSS 03 Proceedings. Trondheim: NTNU. Ogie, 0. 2008. Multi-verb constructions in Edo: A typology. In Proceedings of the Second PhD-conference in Linguistics and Philology in Bergen, M. D. Cardona et al. (eds), 359-388. Bergen: University of Bergen. Post, M. 1992. The serial verb construction in Fa d'AmblL In Aetas do Col6quio sobre Crioulos de Base Lexical Portuguesa, E. d~drade & A. Kihm (eds), 153-169. Lisboa: Colibri Rouge, J.-L. 2004. Dictionnaire etymologique des creoles portugais d:4.frique. Paris: Karthala. Ryder, A. 1977. BenbJ and the Europewu 1485-1897. London: Longman. Schaefer, R P. & Egbokhare, F. 2002 On Emai's causative motion parameter. Jourt'lal af African Languages and Linguistics 23(1): 63-76. Schang, E. 2000. Ilmergence des creoles portugais du Golfe de Guinee. PhD dissertation, Universite de Nancy 2. Schuchardt, H. 1882. Kreolische Studien I. Ober das Negerportugiesische von S. Thome ~Westafrika). In Sitzungsberichte der philosophisc.h-historisc.hen Classe der Kaiserlichen Akademie der Wissenschaften Wien 101: 889917. Stewart, 0. T. 1997. Object agreement and the serial verb construction: Some minimalist considerations. In Object Positions in Benue-Kwa, R-M. Dechaine & V. Manfredi (eds), 153-168. Leiden: HIL. Stewart, 0. T. 1998. The Serial Verb Constructions Parameter. PhD dissertation, McGill University. Valkhofl; M. 1966. Studies in Portuguese and Creole. Johannesburg: Witwatersrand University Press.
59
6o
Tjerk Hagerneijer and Ota Ogie
Veenstra, T. & den Besten, H. 1994. Fronting. In Pidgins and Creoles: An Introduction [Creole Language Library 15), J. Arends, P. Muysken &N. Smith (eds), 303-315. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Watters, J. R. 2000. Syntax. In African Languages: An Introduction, B. Heine & D. Nurse (eds), 194-230. Cambridge: CUP. Wescott, R. W. 1962 A Bini Grammar. East Lansing Ml: African Language and Area Center, Michigan State University. Williamson, Kay. 1965. A Grammar of the Kolokuma Dialect of ljo. Cambridge: CUP.
A Wolof trace in the verbal system of the Portuguese Creole of Santiago Island (Cape Verde)* Ji.irgen Lang University of Erlangen-Ntirnberg
A few cases of simple relexification of elements from Wolof in Santiago Creole suggest that the Wolofs were the dominant linguistic group amongst the "creolisers" in Santiago. Two arguments taken from the history of the slave trade will be proposed to confirm this hypothesis. In a final section, we present a case of the survival, in a simplified form, of a verbal category ofWolof in Santiago Creole: The imperfective variety of the Wolof'situative' survives in a semantically simplified form in the progressive of Santiago Creole. Both categories are marked by a series of two verbal particles, the second of which is the marker of imperfectivity. However, the Santiago Creole progressive has retained only the progressive meaning of the imperfective variety of the Wolof'situative: abandoning its 'situative' meaning. Such cases suggest that, in the creolisation process, the language structures of the group dominant amongst the creolisers more often survive in a modified form (generally, simplified) than as simple calques. Arguably, these modifications/simplifications are intended to ease the joining of other groups. Keywords: Santiago Creole, Wolof, Manding, Mandinka, relexification, calque, 'situativl!, progressive, imperfectivity, simplification
By way of introduction, some background information will be given on the early history of Santiago (Section 1). It is followed by a brief survey of the literature that has focussed on the contribution of African languages to the formation of Santiago Creole (Section 2 ). A few cases of relexification ofWolof elements in Santiago Creole are mentioned here. Based on these examples, we propose the hypothesis, since confirmed (see Section 1.4 ), that the Wolofs must have constituted the dominant linguistic group amongst the slaves at the time of the creolisation of Portuguese in Santiago. In the final section ( 3), we present a case of the survival, in a simplified form, of a verbal category of Wolof (the imperfective variety of the Wolof 'situative') in a verbal category of Santiago Creole (the Santiago Creole progressive).
I would like to express my thanks to Claire Lefebvre, Lisa Lim and Alain Kihm for their valuable comments on the initial draft ofthis paper, to Sheila Regan for translating the text from French into English and to Zofia Laubltz for her final revision.
62.
Jilrgen Lang
1
Santiago in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries
1.1
Overview
The Cape Verde archipelago, situated approximately 500 km to the west of Dakar, is today an independent state. Although Portuguese (Pg) remains the official language of this state, the local inhabitants - almost half a million people - all speak, as their first language, a creole based on Portuguese, which varies from island to island. Santiago, the main island in the Leeward group (Sotavento ), where both the old capital ( Cidade Velha, previously known as Ribeira Grande) and the new capital (Praia) are located, is home to half of the inhabitants, followed by Sao Vicente which, including its town of Mindelo, is the predominant population centre among the Windward islands (Barlavento ). Only half of all Cape Verdeans reside on the islands themselves. The other half live in various countries bordering on the Atlantic. Those who have emigrated do not all have a camp lete command of the creole. The history of the Cape Verdean archipelago from the time of its discovery up until today can be subdivided into four periods: (1) from the discovery until the crisis at the end of the sixteenth century; (2) a period of abandonment by the mother country (seventeenth and eighteenth centuries); (3) a period in which Portugal again strengthened its ties with the archipelago (from around 1800 until independence, which occurred in 1975); and (4) the period of Cape Verde's independence. We will limit our historical overview to the first of the four periods, which witnessed the development of Santiago Creole (SC). The Cape Verde islands were discovered purely by chance, between 1456 and 1460, during the voyages of exploration along the West African coast coordinated by the Portuguese prince, Henry the Navigator (Albuquerque 1991). The discovery of these uninhabited islands provided the Portuguese with a port of call to protect them from possible attacks launched by African rulers whilst they followed maritime routes along the African coast and, a little later, towards the East Indies and Brazil. The settlement of the islands, which was greatly desired by the crown, proved difficult due to a lack of mineral deposits or conditions favourable to agriculture. In order to attract settlers (moradores), a privilege granted in 1466 gave future Santiago colonists the right to trade under extremely favourable conditions with countries along the west coast of Africa (Albuquerque & Madeira Santos 1988: 19-22). The wealth of the colonists thus grew to such an extent that, six years later, the king imposed a very restrictive interpretation of the freedoms granted in 1466 (Albuquerque & Madeira Santos 1988:22-28), as follows: The part of the coast along which the moradores from Santiago were given the right to trade was limited to what had already been discovered in 1466. The ships belonging to the moradores were obliged to leave from Santiago and return there directly after having landed on the coast. On the coast, the moradores were only allowed to exchange goods that had been produced on the island. In spite of these restrictions, which were frequently violated, the population of Santiago and the wealth of its moradores continued to increase spectacularly, thanks to this trade.
A Wolof trace in the verbal system of the Pol1:ugllese Creole
The moradores were generally merchants, ship owners, and landowners at the same time. On the coast, they exchanged cloth and horses for a range of goods, but mostly for slaves. Only a minority of these slaves remained on the island, as the majority were resold to Portuguese, Spanish and Italian merchants who dispatched them to the European markets and, from 1507, to American markets (in Santo Domingo, Cartagena, Veracruz and Brazil). The manufacture of cloth destined for export to Africa gave a large boost to the cotton industry (Albuquerque & Madeira Santos 1991 [henceforth HGCV I]: 183-186) and, by the same token, to the settlement of Santiago and the neighbouring island of Fogo, which was particularly suited to the cultivation of this crop (HGCV I 1991: 143-146).1 The other islands remained unpopulated for a long period, except for a few shepherds to tend the herds of goats that had been brought there (HGCV I 1991: 146-148). The re-exporting of goods and slaves acquired on the coast became the main source of wealth for the moradores, and thus a situation of complementarity emerged between the commercial port towns (Ribeira Grande, Praia) and the inland areas dedicated to the raising ofhorses and the production of merchandise (cotton, cloth) destined for Africa. The increase in the population of Santiago (see Section 1.3) and in the wealth of the moradares could only last as long as the Portuguese were able to protect their monopoly along the West African coast, which the treaties of Alc~ovas (1479) and ofTordesillas (1494) had granted them. From 1565 on, they became less and less successful at this. 2 An economic crisis thus ensued which became ever more pronounced. The loss of control over the seas left Ribeira Grande at the mercy of English, French and Dutch corsairs.3 Assisted by the lan(:ados, Portuguese and Cape Verdean traders who had established themselves on the continent in defiance of the Portuguese government ban, the African rulers increasingly dealt directly with the Dutch, the English and the French, who were able to supply them with any type of European goods they desired. The Portuguese crown was finally forced to lift this ban, which led to the rapid marginalisation of Santiago in respect of commercial routes: Even the Portuguese merchants were no longer obliged to land at Santiago be.tore setting off again for Europe or crossing the Atlantic. The loss of the island's role in the Atlantic trade had serious repercussions for Santiago society. Due to a lack of financial reserves, the effects of periodic droughts could no longer be offset by importing supplies. The landowners, less and less inclined to live on the island, freed a large proportion of their slaves in order to relieve themselves of the responsibility of feeding them. Some of these emancipated slaves left tor other islands (Brava, Santo Antao, Sao Nicolau) in search of land that could support them. A system of slavery was replaced with a system of tenancy, with small tenants working the lands of absentee landowners. On the islands, the social boundaries between the freed and the enslaved and between white, mixed race and black inhabitants became blurred. Around 1507, Valentirn Fernandes wrote on the subject of Santiago island, «Ern esta ilya nat;:e muyto algodorn" [On this island much cotton is grown] and on the subject of Fogo "Nat;:e aqui muyto algodom" [Here much cotton is grown] (Ed. 1997:157, 158-159). 1.
2.
See Boulegue (1989:37,footnote 1) and HGCV I (1991: 140).
3· Between 1583 and 1598, the island sustained at least five attacks by corsairs and Ribeira Grande was twice pillaged (see Madeira Santos 1995 [henceforth HGCV 11]: 153-162).
63
64
Jilrgen Lang
Because of the isolation of the archipelago that took place at the end of this period, the ethnic composition of the population of Santiago has changed little since that time. During the second period, the number of Africans arriving and departing declined and only the number of departing Europeans rose. In the third and fourth periods, the influence of Portuguese on the creole spoken in Santiago increased considerably.
1.2
The population of Santiago
The sources available on the settlement of Santiago allow us to identify several main strands: The colonists arrived with very few servants, and those who were married, without their spouses.4 In these circumstances, close cohabitation between the white master and several people of African origin (temale partner(s) and servants of both sexes) must have been established immediately. From the second generation on, there were already more "mulattos" than whites, even amongst non-slaves, thanks to the freeing of children born of the union of a white master and an African slave. In Ribeira Grande, the population was composed of the following groups: the settlers (moradores); the Portuguese, Spanish and Italian visiting merchants and sailors (estantes) who provided the moradores with any goods they needed from Europe or America and took with them the slaves and goods that the mora.dores brought from Africa; some administrators and clerics; freed slaves; and, finally, the slaves who served their masters at home, in business, on the ships or as interpreters. In the inland areas there were some administrators of land and properties (generally, freed slaves); slaves who tended the goats, worked in the fields or wove cloth at home; one priest per parish. As regards the slave population, three groups can be identified: those who lived in close contact with their masters, those who worked inland on the island on properties lfazendas) far away from their masters and- probably living among the latter group - those who were soon to leave. Among the first group. the acquisition of Pg would have begun immediately, leading to an acrolectal creole and possibly resulting, in some cases, in perfect mastery of the language used by the masters.5 In the second group, the African languages would have been maintained for longer and the crystallisation of a new language would have taken more time. The result would have 4· According to the corregedor P~ro de Guimaraes, in 1513, there were four households (vizinhos) with white, unmarried women (mulheres branquas solteiras) in Ribeira Grande and 10 with black women (negras). Ant6nio Correia e Silva assumes that these were prostitutes (HGCV 11991:235). In 1588, Philip II called home the men of Santiago who had left their wives in Portugal- without the least success (HGCV11991:235). In 1620, the king ordered that exiled women be sent to Santiago to eradicate as far as possible the persons of mixed -race ("... a fun que se extinga, quanto possivel, a ra~ de mulatos·; HGCV 111995: 255-256). 5· Dulce Pereira (2006: 169) doubts whether at all creolisation of Portuguese took place in Ribeira Grande. We should notforget, however, that Portuguese creoles even developed in the Portuguese factories on the Indian coast. We will see a little later that the Africans soon formed the majority in Ribeira Grande: The colonists there did not prepare their meals themselves; did not plant or harvest their vegetables themselves; did not fetch water from the
A Wolof trace in the verbal system of the Pol1:ugllese Creole
been a more basilectal creole, an approximation of the language of the overseers, which, in turn, was an approximation of the language of the masters. Pereira (2006: 174-175) is undoubtedly correct in her assumption that the relative levelling of the differences between masters and slaves, and town and country, at the time of the crisis at the end of the sixteenth century must also have involved a similar levelling in linguistic terms. This levelling most likely favoured rural, basilectal varieties of the creole at the expense of urban, acrolectal varieties. The slaves who were en route would only have been able to acquire a more or less elaborated variety of pidgin Portuguese if their stay with the lanfados on the coast or on the fazendas in Santiago or Fogo was extended. These pidginised varieties of Portuguese may have left traces in Caribbean creoles.
1.3
Some statistics
The documents available do not allow us to follow in detail the growth in the population of Santiago during the first period. However, we are able to present some useful information. In 1513, the corregedor Pero de Guimaraes provided the king with some figures concerning Ribeira Grande. According to his account, Ribeira Grande possessed 58 "vizinhos homens honrados brancos" [honourable white neighbours], 16 "vizinhos negros" [black neighbours], 56 "estantes estrangeiros, naturais dos vossos Reinos" [overseas visitors, originating from your kingdoms] (these were legally not real vizinhos as they had no permanent residence), 4 "mulheres brancas solteiras" [white unmarried women], around 10 "negras" [black women], 12 "clerigos" [clerics] (including the priest) and 3 "moines" [monks] (HGCV I 1991: 137). The term vizinho [neighbour] denotes a 'free person, head of a household'. Together with other overseas visitors mentioned in the text, the heads of households could thus have numbered around 170 in 1513, according to the Cape Verdean historian Ant6nio Carreia e Silva (HGCV I 1991:233). As can be seen, there were already a considerable number of emancipated Africans. The total number of inhabitants of Ribeira Grande could then have been close to 500, if we estimate that there was an average of five slaves in the households of those colonists with a permanent residence (home1ts honrados brancos) but far fewer in the other households. Towards the middle of the sixteenth century an anonymous piloto estimated that there were "mais de quinhentos fogos" [more than 500 fires] at Ribeira Grande (HGCV I 1991:147, 233). If we assume that one fire represented one household, then the population must have increased almost five-fold in the space of under 40 years. In 1582, the report by sargento-mor Francisco de Andrade to the king provides, for the first time, a reliable estimate of the population of the whole of Santiago Island and the neighbouring island of Fogo. According to this remarkable piece of evidence, approximately 13,400 people were then living in Santiago and 2,300 on the neighbouring island, not including children, fugitive slaves or other marginalised persons. There were 508 vizinhos residing in Ribeira Grande, who had around 5,700 slaves working for them in their households and in the fields on the outskirts well themselves, etc. And there must necessarily have been many people who carne and went between the town and the inland area of the island.
65
66
Jilrgen Lang
of the town. In Praia, there were approximately 200 vizinhos, with some 1,000 slaves. Taken as a whole, these two urban centres, therefore, accommodated more than half the entire population of the island (HGCV I 1991:230-236). As regards the inland areas of the island, Andrade documents circa "600 home[n]s branq[u]os e pardos [600 whites and free mulattos] e 400 pretos forros casados [400 emancipated Africans], os quaes terao em suas fazendas de serui<;:o de suas casas 5v [5,000) escravos, ..."[who may employ in their properties and houses some 5,000 slaves]. This scattered population of6,000 was distributed across eight parishes. Inland and in Praia, there were therefore around five slaves for every one free person; in Ribeira Grande, around ten. The fact that, again according to Andrade, in the capital all the slaves had been baptised, whereas in Praia one in five, and inland even two out of five were prepared for baptism, seems to confirm that the socialisation of the slaves who had recently arrived from the continent took place in the inland areas of Santiago and in Fogo. The estimates made by Francisco de Andrade provide us with an overall figure and most likely a true picture of the social composition of the population of Santiago at the beginning of the major crisis. Yet they tell us nothing about the ethnic composition of its African element 1.4
The role of the Wolofs in the populating of Santiago
The silence of Francisco de Andrade on the subject of the ethnic origin of the slaves is not exceptional. There are no documents that provide direct information on the origin of the slaves who were deported to Santiago during the first hundred years of its history.6 We believe, however, that we have demonstrated elsewhere, albeit indirectly, that speakers of Wolof formed the majority amongst the first groups of slaves who disembarked at Santiago (Lang 2006). Two arguments will be given to support this idea. 1.4.1
The Wolofo and the slave market at Valencia
The city of Valencia in Spain preserves all the documentation concerning the local market of slaves under the reign of the Catholic Kings (1479-1516). According to Vicenta Cortes Alonso (1964), who studied these documents in detail, 2,452 of the approximately 4,275 slaves who were sold there in the period in question declared themselves to be Jalofos (this is the name under which the Wolofs appear in writings from this period). Of these Wolofs, 2,258, that is 92%, arrived before 1500.1he ethnonyms Mandiga, Mantinga, Ma.ndenga and Mantenga. appear in only 43 of these documents. And among the slaves sold before the year 1500, only three used one of these terms to indicate their origin. The ethnonyms Beni, Benne and Bennich appear in 45 documents, all of these later than 1500. Unfortunately, similar documents are not available for the slave markets at Seville and Lisbon, which were larger than the Valencia market Alfonso Franco Silva nevertheless maintains in his work, La escla.vitud en Sevilla y su tierra. a finales de la. Edad Media. (1979), that there were
6. "... , praticamente nao h3. referancias sobre a identidade etnica da massa escrava entrada nas ilhas [caboverdianas] ate meados de Quinhentos" [There is hardly any information concerning the ethnic identity of the masses of slaves who entered the [Cape Verdean] islands before 1550] (Didio Cabral Baleno in HGCYI1991: 155).
A Wolof trace in the verbal system of the Pol1:ugllese Creole
many more Wolofs amongst the African slaves (los guineanos) than there were speakers of Manding languages (Franco Silva 1979: 69).
The evidence of descriptions of the African coast All Cape Verdean authors writing at around 1600- Francisco de Andrade (1582), Andre Alvares d'Almada (1594) and Andre Donelha (1625) -lamented the passing of the times when the Dutch, French and English had not yet replaced them as the privileged commercial partners of the Wolof kings (see quotations in Lang 2006: 56-58). Jean Boulegue describes more precisely the time of the loss of the Portuguese quasi-monopoly over this trade: "Portugal suffered a decisive fall in influence on the "Petite C6te" [the Wolof coast south of Cape Verde, J. L.] around the time 15651570, as Francisco de Andrade, a well-placed witness, wrote to the king in 1582~ 7 So, against their will the Cape Verdean merchants had relocated the centre of their activities to the south. For Valentim Fernandes (before 1507) and Pacheco Pereira (between 1505 and 1508) who, although not from Cape Verde, nonetheless had access to excellent information, the past that Andrade, d'Almada and Donelha yearned for was still present They only regretted that in the Wolof lands they no longer received 15 or 14 slaves for a horse, as had been usual at the beginning of the trading times, but at most six (cf. quotations in Lang 2006: 58-59). 1.4.2
Conclusions To conclude, we can state two irrefutable facts:
1.4.3
Among the slaves sold at the market at Valencia in the final two decades of the fifteenth century, those who declared themselves to be "Jalofos" were greatly in the majority. 2. In the same period, Portuguese and Cape Verdean merchants continued to maintain close commercial ties with the Wolof kings. According to sources, the whites mostly provided horses in exchange for slaves. 1.
Considering the privileged position for trade along the African coast which Santiago enjoyed at this time, it would appear highly probable that the majority of black slaves at the Valencia market would have passed through Santiago. This leads us to believe that most of the slaves who were kept in Santiago in the fifteenth century were also Wolof, as it is difficult to believe that the Cape Verdean merchants would have systematically re-exported Wolofs so as only to keep slaves of other ethnic groups on the island. Indeed, nothing would be more natural than for the momdores of Santiago to favour trade with the Wolofs for as long as was possible. The Royal Charter of 1466 granted them important privileges for trade between the Senegal River and Sierra Leone. And it was in tact the Wolofs who inhabited the section of this part of the coast that lay directly opposite the archipelago. Let us examine some possible objections to these conclusions.
7. J. L?s translation. In a footnote, Boulegue translates a passage from Francisco de Andrade into French: "Maintenant, depuis quinze ans [Le. since 1567], cette traite ne peut plus se faire dans cette region [on the Petite COte] acause des nombreux navires fran¢s qui se trouvent toute fanmle sur 1a cOte de ces quatre lieux de traite" [For fifteen years, this trade has been impossible in this region because of the many French ships that are found on the coast of these four trading areas all year long] (Boulegue 1989:37, footnote 1).
67
68
Jilrgen Lang
First of all, rather than really declaring themselves "Jalofos': the slaves at Valencia could have been labelled "Jalofos" by the merchants involved. The label "Jalofo" could, therefore, have signified "bought and boarded in Wolof territory': without implying that the slave in question was a member of the Wolof linguistic community. Would it not be surprising if the Wolof kings had sold their own people? This is a valid argument The Wolof were able to sell to the Portuguese and Cape Verdeans numerous slaves who spoke Ndut, Noon, Saafen, Serer and Manding languages, slaves who had been taken prisoner during their last conquests.8 However, their contact with the Portuguese and the economic interest that these contacts brought to the coast immediately prompted the disintegration of the Grand Jolof. The slaves sold by the kings could, therefore, very soon be provided from the internal conflicts that accompanied this disintegration of the empire. Moreover, the inordinate thirst for goods offered by the Europeans soon encouraged the Wolof kings to find the pretexts necessary to condemn certain of their subjects to slavery and to declare war on their nearest Wolof neighbours. If we accept the account ofValentim Fernandes, often a pretext was not even sought: "Quando quer que as carauellas dos christaos vern e algliu senhor [gyloffo] quer cauallos comprar logo ho dito senhor salta em a primeyra aldea que acha tanto manta de amjgos como de emmjgos E apanha homens e molheres quanta lhe abasta pera aquella vez e quanta pode escapar" [When the caravels of the Christians arrive and some [Wolof] gentleman wants to buy horses, this gentleman heads for the first village he finds, regardless of whether it is friendly or hostile, and seizes the number of men and women sufficient to his needs at that time and as many as he is able to take] (Valentim Fernandes, ed. 1997: 66). Even if certain kings were more scrupulous with regard to their own subjects, the idea that ethnic solidarity would have prevented a Wolof king from selling another's subjects, who were also Wolot~ certainly does not correspond to the attitudes common at that time. This does not mean, however, that on interro galion at Valencia, there might not actually have been speakers of Serer, Ndut, Noon, Saafen or Mandinka (a Manding dialect) who were declared Wolof simply because they came from a region that was part of the "Grand Jolof". This is true. Yet one might suppose that belonging to the Grand ]olaf would necessarily imply some minimal knowledge ofWolot~ Alone or along with other languages, Wolofis thought to have functioned as a lingua franca across the lands dominated by the Wolof for a period (Boulegue 1989: 22). It even seems reasonable to assume that it was precisely the creation of the Grand Jolof that produced a certain linguistic levelling among speakers of different West Atlantic dialects, under the leadership of the Djolof proper. The limited knowledge ofWolof that speakers of Serer or of Ndut had would have been more useful for them than knowledge of their mother tongue, once they were transported to Santiago or to Valencia.
8. "Enclavees panni les Wolof ou sur les franges meridionales de leur domaine, il faut signaler de petites ethnies, les Ndut, les Noon and les Safen, qui ont ete probablement partiellement refoulees ou assimilees par leurs voisins et, al'epoque dont nous traitons, ont plus que les autres souffert de la traite esclava.giste" [In enclaves among the Wolof or on the southern fringes of their territory, we should note some small ethnic groups, the Ndut, Noon and Safen, who were probably partially suppressed or assimilated by their neighbours and who, at the time we are speaking of, suffered more than other peoples from the slave trade] (Boulegue 1989: 22).
A Wolof trace in the verbal system of the Pol1:ugllese Creole
Thus, history does not appear to refute the idea that there was an initial preponderance of Wolof speak.ers,9 as is suggested in the grammar ofSC (see below). This idea is also not refuted by the fact that the lexemes of Manding origin seem to be more numerous in SC than those ofWolof origin (see below): the Wolof slaves laid the structural foundations of SC to which those who arrived later had to conform, 10 but the merchants and the slaves who came from more southerly regions were able to continue to introduce African vocabulary following the end of the period of trade with the Wolofs.
2.
Research on the contribution of Mrican languages to the development of Santiago Creole
Research on traces of African languages in Portuguese creoles was undertaken earlier for the creole varieties of the West African coast (Guinea-Bissau and Casamance) than for the varieties of the Cape Verde islands. For research on the former, we refer the reader to the work of Kihm (1980, 1988, 1994) and Rouge (1985, 1988), which centers on the discovery of cases of conjlation (or of convergence, to use the term from Baptista 2006) of Portuguese and '~ican" lexemes and the identification of creole lexemes of African origin. The affinity between creole varieties on the continent and those found on the archipelago, particularly those of Santiago and Fogo, is undeniable. When studies on the traces of African languages were extended to SC (Baptista 2006; Bartens 2006; Couto & Souza 2006; Lang 2004, 2005; Quint 2000, 2006; Rouge 1994, 1999, 2006), it was naturally thought that the African languages involved in the development of this creole must have been the same as those involved in the development of the continental creoles, namely Mandinka, a Mande language spoken in Gambia, and, to a lesser extent, Wolof, a West Atlantic language spoken to the north of the Gambia River, and several other West Atlantic languages spoken to the south of the Gambia, including Temne, native to Sierra Leone but used in a wider area due to its historical role as a lingua franca (see Rouge 1994: 142, 145; claims that are repeated in Quint 2000: 25, 32 ). The results of research concerning the provenance of lexemes of "African" origin in SC, moreover, seemed to confirm the preponderance ofMandinka (see Rouge 1999, 2004; also Quint 2000). Given that the impact ofWolof (W) on the creole of Casamance was slight and its impact on tlle creole of Guinea- Bissau almost nonexistent, this interpretation has long led to an underestimation of the role of this language in the development of SC. As early as 2000, Nicolas Quint nevertheless drew attention to the parallels between tlle verbal pair ten - tene 'to have' of SC and theW pair am - ame, respectively used for essential possession and temporary possession (Quint 2000: 55). We have shown elsewhere that the SC pair mimics (semantically as well as morphologically) that in W to such an extent tllat an acknowledgement of a direct role ofW in the creolisation of Portuguese in Santiago becomes unavoidable (Lang
9· For more details, see Lang (2006).
We have just formulated a new "founder principle~ The founders that are envisaged here are not the founders of the colony, as in Mufwene (1996), but rather the founders of the creole.
10.
69
70
Jilrgen Lang
2005). The same can be seen in the case of the oppositions [±imperfective] and [±anterior] in the two languages: The SC marker of imperfectivity t(a) corresponds to theW di (variants d-and-y); the SC marker of anteriority -ba corresponds to theW -(w)oon (Lang 2004). 11 And it would be difficult to explain the reinterpretation of the Pg deictic adverbs ali [-e'li], la ['la] (both indicating distance) in the SC forms of li ['li] (proximity) and la ['11il] (distance), without taking into account the deictic value of the Wvowels [i], for proximity, and [-e), for distance (Lang 2005).IZ Furthermore, a comparison of the grammatical structures of our creoles with those of Mandinka led Jean-Louis Rouge to the conclusion that there was evidence at this level of some influence from Mandinka on the creoles of the coast, but that Mandinka influence was "quasi inexistante au Cap-Vert" [all but nonexistent in Cape Verde] (Rouge 2006: 73). The leading language amongst the ancestral languages of the creolisers in Santiago must, therefore, have been a Wolof dialect of that time or at the very least a West Atlantic language closely related to Wolof. This realisation prompted us to revisit the question of the settlement of the island - the results of which can be seen in 1.4. These results encourage us now to take a further step. The reader will recall that two central categories of the verbal system of SC bear a striking resemblance to those ofW; what about the third central verbal category of SC?
3·
The trace of the Wolof 'situative' in the progressive of the Santiago Creole
The African, West Atlantic and, most likely, Wolof character of the two central categories of the verbal system of SC would appear, therefore, to have been proven. In our opinion, it is possible to speak of a relexification of the W markers di (variations: d-, -y), for the imperfective, and -(w)oon, for the anterior, by t(a) and -ba, respectively in SC, in the sense given to this term by Claire Letebvre (1998, 2001) and John Lumsden (1999). However, the strict parallels between the two verbal systems end there. Many verbal categories in modern W do not exist in SC, while some categories that can be found in both languages are similar in certain respects but different in others. A less rigorous observer might claim that the similarities are simply those that one always finds when comparing two languages. And yet, is it really conceivable that the Wolof imprint, which is so evident in particular parts of SC grammar, could be completely absent from other parts? A careful comparison of the Wolof'situative' with the progressive in SC allows us to answer this very question. 3.1
Wolof
We will first reproduce a table diagramming the verbal system ofW (see Table 1), taken from the Dictionnaire Woloffran~is by Fal et al. (1990:25) and slightly modified in accordance with
11.
For the Wolof markers, we refer the reader to the table in Section 3.1.
12. See also the SC so 'only, alone~ of which certain very common uses correspond to theW rekk 'onlY, but not to the Pg so 'only, alone' (Lang 2008).
Table 1. The verbal system of modern Wolof according to Pal et a1. (1990: 25) ASSERTIF
Dependant
"t::
~
q
::a
terminatif
subjectif
objectif
processif
situatif
desider.
rna bey (dugub) nga bey mubey nubey ngeen bey iiu bey
beynaa beynga beyna beynanu beyngeen bey na.iiu
maabey yaa bey moo bey noo bey yeena bey iioo bey
dugub laa bey ... nga bey ... la bey lanubey ... ngeen bey ... laiiu bey
damabey danga bey dafa bey danubey dangeen bey daiiubey
maangi bey yaangi bey mungibey nungi bey yeena ngi bey iiungi bey
naa bey nanga bey na bey nanubey nangeen naiiu
beyoonnaa
maabeyoon
... laa beyoon
damabeyoon
maa ngi beyoon
may bey ngaybey muybey nuybey ngeen bey fiuybey
dinaa bey dinga bey dina bey dinanubey dingeen bey dinafiu bey
maaybey yaaybey mooybey nooybey yeenaybey flooy bey
... laaybey ... ngaybey lay bey ... lanuybey ... ngeen di bey ... laiiuybey
damaybey dangaybey dafaybey danuy bey dangeen di bey daiiuybey
maangiybey yangiybey mungiybey nungiybey yeena ngiy bey flungiy bey
doonnaa bey
maadoon bey
... laa do on bey
dam a doon bey maa ngiy doon bey
beyuma
maa beyul
... laa beyul
damabeyul
mabeyul
beyuma
maa beyul
damabeyul
WOOD
WOOD
WOOD
... laa beyul woon
duma bey
maadul bey
dumawoon bey
maadul woonbey
~ :!l Passe rna beyoon
~ ~
'Tj
~ "t::
~
q
' Tj
Passe rna doon bey
"t::
~
z
~ ~
'Tj
rna beyul
madul bey
~
"t::
~
Injonctif
madul woon bey
rna ban bey
madiban bey
laa dul bey laa dulwoon bey
WOOD
damadul bey dam a dul woon bey
imper. beyal
beyleen
naaybey nangaybey dilbey nay bey nanuybey nangeen di bey dileen nafiuy bey bey
> ~
a:
s!;: 5'
burna bey, buL .. , bwnu... , bumu. .. , buleen ... , bunu ... Perfectif: action envisagee dans sa globalite: je1al garab gii « Prends ce medicament ! • Imperfect.if. action envisagee dans son deroulement: dil je1 garab gii « Prends ce medicament (regulierement) ! »
..S" ~
0"
~
1 g,
g.
I "'"'
Q
"'~ ..... ...
72
Jilrgen Lang
other published works. The table shows the conjugation of the W bey (dugub ), in English, 'to grow (millet): accompanied byW subject pronouns. As there are no forms corresponding to the forms of theW 'situative' in English, French approximations are used in the translation ofW examples below. 3.1.1
The 'situative' in Wolof
Table 1 shows that the marker indicating the 'situative'- Sauvageot (1965), Robert (1991) and Diouf (2001) use the term 'presentative'- in W is formed by using a "presenter" ng-, followed by a variable deictic element. The deictic element shown in the table is the vowel [i], which indicates proximity. An alternative to this vowel would be the vowel [-e] to indicate distance; other deictic elements, such as -ii and -oogo, can also appear in this position. We therefore have, for the thirdperson singular of bey (dugu.b) (French: 'cultiver du mif): (1)
.Mu ngi bey dugub. 3sG presenter-near grow millet 'Voici qu'il cultive du mil.' Mu nga bey dugub. 3sG presenter-far grow millet 'Voila qu'il cultive du mil.'
WoLOF
(Fal et aL 1990: 25) WOLOF
In the first- and second-person singular, as well as in the second-person plural, we find the morpheme -a combined with the personal pronoun. In the Kajoor region, we also find the same phenomenon in the first- and third-person plural (Robert 1991: 168). In Dakar, however, we find: sa 1. Maa ngi ... , 2. Yaa ngi... , 3. Mu ngi... , PL 1. Nu ngi ... , 2. Yeena ttgi ... , 3. Nu ngi .... This -a resembles that which is found in the subjective for all persons (see Table 1; -u+a regularly appears as -oo in Wolof). It can also be found in the third person of the 'situative' following a lexical subject, where the personal pronoun mu may be used as an alternative. We, therefore, have either lexical subject+ mu + ngi ... , orlexical subject+ a+ ngi ... (Robert 1991:166, 168): (2)
(3)
Xaj bi mu ngi lekk yapp. dog CLF-near 3PS presenter-near eat meat 'Void que le chien mange de 1a viande: Pierre a 11gi ak Omar. Jar Peter a presenter-near take-sides with Omar 'Voici que Pierre prend parti pour 0 mar.'
WOLOF
(Robert 1991: 166) WoLOF
(Diouf & Yaguello 1991: 87)
It is not easy to formulate the rules that determine the choice between ngi and nga. It would appear that speakers should choose nga (which is in fact much less frequent than ngi), if they wished to indicate that the action is outside of the immediate or current field of vision of their interlocutor, that is to say, located firr away or in the recent past For more on this subject, see Robert (1991: 195-197) and the following example taken from Diouf & Yaguello (1991:63), where the 'far' meaning of ca and wale echoes that of nga:
A Wolof trace in the verbal system of the Pol1:ugllese Creole
(4)
Mu ngay
dem ca
wall wale.
WoLOF
3sG presenter-far-IPFV go at-far side DEM-far ·n vade l'autre c6te l.A-bas: (Literally: 'Voila qu'll vade l'autre cru:e la-bas.')
In stories, ngi seems to bring us spatially nearer to the action, in a manner similar to the effect, in temporal terms, of the historical present in English. 3.1.2
Use of the imperfective marker in the Wolof'situative'
Theoretically, it is only possible to point to something that is still there. Semantically, the 'situative' is therefore intrinsically imperfective. 13 As can be seen from the examples (1 )-(3) above, this intrinsic imperfectivity of the spatial deixis does not need to be marked explicitly in W by the imperfective marker di. This does not, however, prevent us from finding frequent examples in which the imperfective marker, in the form of -y, combines with the element ngi or nga indicating the 'situative~ The resultant forms are ngiy, which occurs frequently (this form appears in Table 1), and ngay, which is more rarely seen (see (4)). In this particular context, the marker allows the expression of a sub-type of the imperfective. Ngom (2003:76) explains: "When the NGI form is in the perfective aspect, the sentence is interpreted as present tense in English. When it is used in the imperfective aspect, the sentence is interpreted as present progressive:' Stephane Robert made the same assertion as early as 1991, without using a comparison with English. According to Robert, the forms of the 'situative' with the imperfective marker indicate that "at the moment of speaking TO' the process has begun, is continuing and is not yet completed" (Robert1991: 190; J. L:s translation). It therefore follows, among other things, that, "... whenever the verb takes a plural object which implies both duration and progression, the tendency is towards the use of the imperfective marker" (Robert 1991: 190). This phenomenon is confirmed by examples found in dictionaries and texts: (5)
Mu ngiy
bey
dugub.
3sG presentative-near-IFFY grow millet 'Le voici en train de cultiver du mil'
WoLOF
(Fal et al. 1990: 25)
Robert further explains that the form without the imperfective marker and with a present meaning, "is by no means incompatible with processes which suppose a certain duration" (Robert 1991: 190). None of this is surprising. It must be remembered that forms that are not marked morphologically are almost always also not marked semantically. That is to say, rather than indicating the opposite of the marked forms, they remain in principle indefinite (or semantically neutral) compared with the predse meaning the marker would give (Robert 1991: 191: "In sum, the simple form of the presentative would not seem to be really completed or incomplete:';]. L:s translation). If there is no reason to emphasise the progressive aspect or if it is clearly evident from the context, it is not necessary to use a specific marker.
13. Only in exceptional circumstances could a 'situative' produce a past tense meaning. The examples given in Robert (1991: 187-189)involve resultative verbs and indicate the results in question.
73
74
Jilrgen Lang
3.2
Santiago Creole
3.2.1
Ihe presentative construction in SC
Let us now turn our focus to SC, which has a clear presentative construction: (6)
Ale
-l
ADV-near
3PS
[-e'lel] ta IPFV
pi/a
midju.
pound
COrn
SANTIAGO CREOLE
'Le voici qui pile du ma:is.'
Ala
-l [-e'l-el] ta
ADV-far 3PS
IPFV
pila
midju.
pound
corn
SANTIAGO CREOLE
'Le voila qui pile du m.als? One would expect to findAli-1 ta ... ,in place of Aie-l ta ... , given that the two deictic adverbs in SC are (a)li [(-e)'li] 'here' and (a)la [(-e)'l-e] 'there~ Nicolas Quint may well be correct in his interpretation of this construction as containing verbal uses of ali and ala (pc). Essentially, the unstressed [-i] of SC verbs is changed to a stressed [e] in front of verb endings and enclitic pronouns. The opposition of'near' and 'far' in the presentative construction in SC does indeed call to mind the W 'situative: but the characteristics that make the SC construction similar to the presentative construction of Pg Ei-lo a pilar milho 'Le voici qui pile du m.a'is' are much more numerous: The order and the function of the elements (firstly a presenter, then a clitidsed object pronoun) are the same as in Pg; In both the SC and the Portuguese constructions, there is a localisation of the subject of the action and not a localisation of the process; Contrary to the case ofWolof, in the SC construction, the verb is automatically introduced by the imperfective marker ta, which corresponds to the preposition a in the Portuguese construction (see once again, Pg Ei-lo a pilar milho ); The 'situative' is found much more frequently in Wolof texts than SC and Portuguese presentative constructions in SC and Portuguese texts. All of these factors lead us to believe that the presentative construction in SC does not stem from the process of creolisation. Instead, it would seem to have developed later according to the Portuguese model and using available creole elements. On this occasion. the speakers would have substituted for the Pg ei, the creole forms ali!ala and - as in a number of verbal periphrases that SC has borrowed from Pg (Lang 2000: 470)- the creole ta for the Portuguese preposition a. Thus, the W 'situative' has not survived in SC in a relexified form. We hope, however, to demonstrate that it has nonetheless profoundly influenced the verbal system ofSC. 3.2.2
Ihe progressive aspect in Santiago Creole
Strangely, the aspectual system of SC is richer than that ofW: Only SC has a progressive aspect within the impertective aspect The aspectual system of SC thus has the forms as shown in Table 2. As can be seen, the marker of the progressive in SC is sa (variation: s'), invariably followed by the marker of the imperfective, ta. This is because the progressive presupposes imperfectivity.
A Wolof trace in the verbal system of the Pol1:ugllese Creole
Table 2. SC pila midju 'to pound corn' N
bu e nu nhos es Imperfective
Progressive
Imperfective
N
ta
bu e nu nhos es
ta ta ta
N
bu e nu nhos es
3·3
ta ta
sa sa sa sa sa sa
ta ta ta ta ta ta
pila rnidju pila rnidju pila rnidju pila rnidju pila rnidju pila rnidju pila rnidju pila rnidju pila rnidju pila rnidju pila rnidju pila rnidju pila rnidju pila rnidju pila rnidju pila rnidju pila rnidju pila rnidju
Birth of the progressive in Santiago Creole under the influence of Wolof
SC forms beginning with sa ta or s'ta therefore have the same meaning as 'situative' forms in W in cases where they are accompanied by the marker of the imperfective - apart from the situative or presentative effect itself. It is as if, in functional terms, the speakers ofW had, in the process of creolising Pg in Santiago, abandoned their 'situative. but not relinquished the possibility that this forms provided to express the progressive aspect. This supposition would remain purely hypothetical if certain material clues were not available to support it. In the Portuguese progressive periphrasis, est a fazer 'he is (in the process of) doing: it is esta a that provides the expression of the progressive aspect Two ways of pronouncing esta a would have already been in competition at the time of creolisation: (Ele) esta a [s'ta-e] (comer) 'He is (in the process of) eating' 14 and (Ele) ta a ['ta-e] (comer). Nowadays, the variant with the elided [s] is very common in informal language. In search of a phonic sequence in the Portuguese utterances that they heard, which was likely to be the equivalent of their imperfective marker di (modern variants d-, -y, although these may not yet have existed at this time), they came across the popular and very common ['ta-e] in the progressive periphrasis in Pg. The reinterpretation of this Pg string as a verbal particle in SC brought with it the loss of its stressed character and the transformation of its open [a] into a closed [-e]. SC does not, in fact, have any open vowels [s], [a], [:JI in unstressed syllables. The resulting [-eI merged with the second [-e]. In this way, the marker of the imperfective aspect in SC was born:
a
14. The pronunciation [' fta-e] did not yet exist at that time. By contrast, the variant with the elided e- already appears after a vowel twice in a Portuguese document dating back to 1280 and reproduced in Maia (1986: 186-187, no. 97).
75
76
JilrgenLang
OldPg
*(Ele)
taa ['tall]
(comer.)
sc
(El)
ta [t"e]
(kume.)
OldW.
*(Mu)
di
(lekk.)
•
~
ModernW.
+
/
(lekk.)
Muly
Figure 1. Development of the imperfective marker in SC
(Cf. modern W Muy bey (dugub) in the third person of the imperfective of the 'dependant' in Table 1.) In this account, the phonic substance of the marker of the imperfective in SC originated from 'above' (from Pg), and its phonic form (a monosyllabic unstressed particle) came from 'below' (fromW). Searching for a phonic sequence in the Portuguese utterances that they heard that could be the equivalent of their complex marker *ngi di (nowadays, ngiy), the speakers ofW must ahnost inevitably have come across the same periphrasis. Yet this time they had good reason to favour the longer variant [stag]. In effect, this choice of the longer variant, subjected to the same phonic analysis as the one reconstructed for the transformation ['tag] > [tl:'!], and thus ['stag] > [stl:'!], allowed them to identify two parts: The first, [s), was not required to be the marker of the 'situative: but the distinctive sign of the progressive and the second, [tl:'!], was identified as the marker of the imperfective. Thus, the complex marker of the progressive aspect in SC was born: staa ['stall]
(comer.)
sl ta [ste]
(kume.)
OldPg
*(Ele)
sc
(El)
OldW.
*(Mu)
ngi I di
(lekk.)
ModernW.
Mu
ngil y
(lekk.)
• •• tt
Figure 2. Development of the progressive marker in SC
From s'ta [s I t1:'!], we would arrive at sa ta [81:'! I t1:'! ], which is closer to the canonical syllable structure ofSC (cf. Pg escuro [(e)s'kuru] 'dark'> 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
Substrate influences in Kriyol
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
Substrate influences in Kriyol
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.
Substrate influences in Kriyol
(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.
Substrate influences in Kriyol
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).
Substrate influences in Kriyol
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
Substrate influences in Kriyol
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
Substrate influences in Kriyol
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.
KRIYOL (Kihm 1994: 108)
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.
KRIYOL (Kihm 1994: 114)
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):
Substrate influences in Kriyol
(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-
Substrate influences in Kriyol
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<;i.o Caminho. Bakker, P. & Muysken, P. 1995. Mixed languages and language intertwining. In Pidgins and Creoles: An Introduction [Creole Language Library 15], J. Arends, P. Muysken & N. Smith (eds), 41-52. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Baptista, M. 2002. The Syntax of Cape Verdean Creole: The Sotavento Varieties (Linguistik AktueWLinguistics Today 54]. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. de Barros, M. Marques. 1882. Guine portuguesa ou breve notkia sobre alguns dos seus usos, costumes, lfnguas e origem dos seus povos. Boletim da Sociedade de Geografta de Lisboa 12:707-731. Bazin, H. 1906. Dictionnaire bambara-.fra11fais, precede d'un ab:rege de grammaire bambara. Paris: Imprirnerie nationale (Reprint 1965, Farnborough, Gregg Press). Bocande, B. 1849. De la langue creole de la Guinee portugaise (notes sur la Guinee portugaise ou Senegambie meridionale). Bulletin de la Societe de Geographie 12: 73-77. Boulegue, J. 1987. Legrand Jolof (XHI"-XVP siecles). Paris: Karthala. Boxer, C. R. 1969. The Portuguese Seaborne Empire: 1415-1825. London: Hutchinson. Buis, P. 1990. Essai sur la langue manjako de Ia zone de Bassarel. Bissau: INEP. Chataignier, A 1963. Le creole portugais du Senegal: Observations et textes. Journal of African Languages 2: 4471. Church, F. 1981. Le systemeverbal du wolof. Dakar: Universite de Dakar. Clements, J. C. 1992. Foreigner talk and the origins of Pidgin Portuguese. Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages 7:75-92. Clements, J. C. 2007. Korlai (Creole Portuguese). In Comparative Creole Synta;~~:: Parallel Outlines of 18 Creole Grammars,J. Holm & P. L Patrick (eds),153-173. London: Battlebridge. DeGratt: M. 2007. Krey61 Ayisyen, or Haitian Creole (Creole French). In Comparative Creole Syntax: Parallel Outlines of18 Creole Grammars, J. Holm & P. L Patrick (eds), 101-126. London: Battlebridge. Intum bo, I. 2007. Estudo comparativo da morfossintaxe do crioulo guineense, do balanta e do portugub. Disserta<;:ao de Mestrado, Universidade de Coirnbra. Keesing, R. 1988. Melanesian Pidgin and the Oceanic Substrate. Palo Aho CA: Stanford University Press. Kihm, A 1989. Lexical conflation as a basis for relexifu:ation. The Canadian Journal of Linguistics I Revue canadienne de linguistique 36: 351-376. Kihm, A. 1994. Kriyol Syntax: The Portuguese-based Creole Language of Guinea-Bissau [Creole Language Library 14]. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Kihm, A. 2007. On the interpretation of bare noun phrases in Guinea-Bissau Portuguese Creole (Kriyol). In Noun Phrases in Creole Languages: A Multi-faceted Approach [Creole Language Library 31], M. Baptista & J. Gueron (eds),145-169. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Kihm, A 2008a. The two faces of creole grammar and their implications for the origin of complex language. In Variaticm, Selectio,J, Development: ProbbJK the Evolutionary Model ofLa'JgUQge ChwJge, R. Eckardt, G. Jager & T. Veenstra (eds), 253-305. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Kihm, A 2008b. Nubi plural formation: How a creole may become more complex than its lexifier and what it irnplies for creolization theory. Paper presented at the Berkeley Linguistic Society Conference. Kihm, A & Gomes, A. 1990. The structure of INFL in Manjalru: A first study. Ms, UQAM. Kihm, A. & Rouge, J.-L. 2009. Lingua de Preto: The basic variety at the root of West African Portuguese Creoles. Ms. Klein, W. & Perdue, C. 1997. The basic variety. Second Language Research 13: 301-347. Kouwenberg, S. 1994. A Grammar ofBerbice Dutch Creole. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Lefebvre, C. 1998. Creole Genesis and the Acquisition of Grammar: The case ofHaitian Creole. Cam bridge: CUP.
Substrate influences in Kriyol
McWhorter, J. H. 1998. Identifying the creole prototype: Vindicating a typological class. Language 74: 788-818. da Mota, A. Teixeira. 1946. A descoberta da Guine, Boletim Cultural da Guine Portuguesa I, 1-3: 11-68,273-326, 457-509.
Muysken, P. 1981. Creole tense/mood/aspect systems: The unmarked case? In Generative Studies on Creole Languages, P. Muysken (ed.), 181-199. Dordrecht: Foris. Naro, A. 1978. A study of the origins of pidginization. Language 54: 314-347. PAIGC. 1974. HistOria da GuinC e Jlhas de Cabo Verde. Porto: Edi<;:<)es Afrontamento. Perdue, C. 1993. Adult Language Acquisition: Crosslinguistic Perspecth•es. Strasbourg: European Science Foundation. Pinto Bull, B. 1989. 0 crioulo da GuinC-Bissau: filosojia e sabedoria. Lisboa!Bissau: Instituto de Cultura e Lingua portuguesa (Portugal)/Instituto nacional de estudos e pesquisas (Guine-Bissau). Reichenbach, H. 1947. Elements af Symbolic Logic. New York NY: Macmillan. Reinecke, John E. 1937. Marginal Languages: A Sociological Survey of the Creole Languages and Trade Jargons. PhD dissertation, Yale University. Rouge, J.-L 1986. Uma hip6tese sobre a forma~o do crioulo da GuiDe-Bissau e da Casamansa. Soronda 2: 2849.
Rouge, J.-L. & Kilun, A. 2008. As origens de ba. Paper presented at the ACBLPE Conference, Lisbon, July 3-5. Rowlands, E. C. 1969. A Grammar of Gambian Mandinka. London: SOAS. Sapir, J. D. 1969. A Grammar ofDiola-Fogny: A Language Spoken in the Basse-Casamance Region ofSenegal. Cambridge: CUP. Saraiva, J. H. 1991. HistOria concisa de Portugal. Lisboa: Publica¢es Europa-America. Schuchardt, H. 1888. Beitrage zur Kenntnis des kreolischen Romanisch II: Zum Negerportugiesischen Senegambiens. Zeitschrift fUr romanische Philologie 12: 301-322. da Silva, A. A. 1959. Apontamentos sobre as popula¢es oeste-africanas segundo os aut:ores portugueses dos seculos XVI e XVII. Boletim Cultural da GuinC Portuguesa XIV: 373-406. da Silva, M. da Gra~ Garcia Nolasco. 1970. Subsl:dio para o estudo dos 'lan~dos' na Guine. Boletim Cultural da Guine Portuguesa XXV: 97-100: 25-40,217-232,397-420, 13-63. Teyssier, P. 1959. La langue de Gil Vicente. Paris: Klincksieck. Tinhorao, J. R 1988. Os Negros em Portugal: Uma prese11fa silenciosa. Lisboa.: Caminho. Weinreich, U. 1953. Languages in Contact. The Hague: Mouton. Wellens, I. 2005. The Nubi Language of Uganda: An Arabic Creole in Africa. Leiden: Bri11 Wilson, W. A. A. 1961. Outline of the Balanta language. African Language Studies 2. London: SOAS. Wilson, W. A. A. 1962 The Crioulo ofGuine. Johannesburg: Witwatersrand University Press. Wilson, W. A. A. 1989. Atlantic. In The Niger-Congo Languages, J. Bandor-Samuel (ed.), 81-104. Lanham MA: University Press of America.
103
One substrate, two creoles The development of segmental inventories in St. Lucian and Haitian* Anne-Marie Brousseau University of Toronto
In this paper, I compare the segmental inventories of Haitian and St. Lucian with those of their contributing languages, in order to evaluate the impact of the substrate languages on the development of these systems. I show that the segmental inventories of the creoles display many features that were inherited from the Gbe languages through transfe~ which suggests a massive impact of the substrate in the development of the segmental inventories of the creoles. In a nutshell, the phonological systems of Haitian and St. Lucian appear as a compromise between those of their contributing languages, Fongbe and other Gbe languages (the substrate), and French (the superstrate). Whlle both creoles have essentially the same vowel inventory as the substrate, their consonantal inventory is closer to the superstrate. This hybrid character of the creoles is s lmllar to what is found in an interlanguage. in the more canonical cases of second language acquisition. I propose scenarios where the differences between the two creoles and their superstrate result from phonological and phonetic processes that are typical of interlanguages - e.g., segmental substitution under phonological equivalence, transfer of L1 allophonic rules. The scenarios assume that the emergence of a creole is a particular case of second language acquisition (Andersen 1983). They also assume the Full Transfer/Full Access model of Second Language Acquisition (Schwartz & Sprouse 1996; White 2000), according to which second language learners assume the grammar ofL1 as a starting point - Full Transfer- and progressively restructure this initial grammar using principles and parameters of Universal Grammar- Full Access. It is shown that the features of the substrates have guided the acquisition (or non acquisition) of the segmental inventories of French, even in cases where Universal Grammar may have been at play. Keywords: Haitian Creole, St. Lucian Creole, French, Gbe, phonology, consonant inventory, vowel inventory, transfer, segmental substitution, parameter resetting, second language acquisition, universal grammar
A previous version of this paper was presented at the workshop The Genesis of Creole Languages, XVIIIth International Conference on Historical Linguistics {Montreal, August 2007). I wish to thank the audience at the workshop, as well as the reviewers of the paper for their useful comments and suggestions. Part of this research was funded by the Social Sciences and Hwnanities Research Council of Canada (#410990735).
to6
Anne-Marie Brousseau
1.
Introduction
Haitian and St Lucian, two Caribbean French-based creoles spoken in Haiti and St Lucia respectively, are very similar in many aspects of their respective grammars, including phonology. This should come as no surprise since both languages share the same main substrate languages (Gbe languages) and the same superstrate language (French). However, there are differences between the two phonological systems, which need to be accounted for if we are to seek a plausible explanation for the emergence of the properties of a given creole language. In this paper, I compare the segmental inventories of Haitian and St Lucian with those of their contributing languages, in order to evaluate the impact of the substrate languages on the development of these systems. While the contribution of Gbe languages has yet to be documented forSt Lucian, it has been shown to be central to the development of Haitian. & shown extensively in Lefebvre (1998) and the numerous references therein, a large number of substrata! features are found in the syntax, morphology and lexical semantics of Haitian. Substrata! features are also found in phonology (Brousseau 2003; Brousseau & Niltiema 2006; Steele & Brousseau 2006). In a nutshell, the phonological systems of Haitian and St. Lucian appear as a compromise between those of their contributing languages. This hybrid character of the creoles is similar to what is typically found in an interlanguage, in the more canonical cases of L2 acquisition (Archibald 1988; Broselow & Finer 1991; Devonish 1989 for phonology). The similarities between the creoles and their substrates are too striking to constitute a mere coincidence. Wode (1986) proposes that transfer occurs in all contact situations, since it is a major component oflanguage processing abilities. Different speakers who share a common language background- either L1 or substrate- use the same substitution patterns in different situations. Below, I propose scenarios where the differences between the two creoles and their superstrate result from phonological and phonetic processes that are typical of interlanguages emerging in more canonical cases of second language acquisition. The scenarios assume that the emergence of a creole is a particular case of second language acquisition (Andersen 1983) and that creolisation is the "crystallization and subsequent elaboration of an autonomous interlanguage system" (Valdman 1983:214). This assumption has proved enlightening in the field of creole studies, as attested by a number of publications that draw parallels between creolisation and L2 acquisition (Alber & Plag 2001; Mather 2000; Muysken 2001; Plag & Uffmann 2001; Uffmann 2003; Veronique 1994; and the various contributions in Lefebvre et al. 2006). The remainder of this article is structured as follows. Section 2 provides some background information regarding theoretical assumptions and data. Sections 3 and 4 present the segmental inventories of the languages under study, focusing on vowels (Section 3) and consonants (Section 4) in turn, and propose scenarios of second language acquisition that explain the differences between the inventories of the creoles and those of their contributing languages. 1 Section 5 assesses the role of transfer from the substrate in the development of the two creoles. It is shown
1. Given space limitations, prosodic properties will not be discussed here. See Brousseau (2003), Brousseau & Nikiema (2006), and Steele & Brousseau (2006) for comparisons of the accentual and syllabic systems of Haitian with those of its contributing languages.
One substrate, two creoles
that the features of the substrates have guided the acquisition (or non acquisition) of the segmental inventories of French, even in cases where Universal Grammar may have been at play.
2.
Some background
This section provides the theoretical background for the analyses presented in this chapter, as well as information on the languages under study and the source of the data.
2.1
Creole formation as 12 acquisition
If an emerging creole equates to an interlanguage in a contact situation, we need to determine what mechanisms set the grammar of the creole/interlanguage apart from both the substrate/first language and the superstrate/second language. These mechanisms may involve general properties determined by Universal Grammar and transfer from the substrate/L1.2 Therefore, assessing precisely the role of transfer in the genesis of creole languages is certainly not a trivial task. Recent developments in SLA theory acknowledge the role of both Universal Grammar and transfer. According to the Full Transfer/Full Access model (Schwartz & Sprouse 1996; White 2000), second language learners assume the grammar ofL1 as a starting point- Full Transferand progressively restructure this initial grammar using principles and parameters of Universal Grammar - Full Access. Learners maintain the parameter settings of L1 in the interlanguage unless they are exposed to evidence to the contrary: Positive evidence in the target language triggers the resetting of the parameters in the interlanguage. In this view, an interlanguage is the "combination of (incorrect) L1 parameter settings, and the effect of Universal Grammar manifested in parameters that have been reset to the (correct) L2 value" (Archibald 1998:283). Markedness conditions act as guiding principles in SLA. They determine the order in which structures are acquired and they constrain the transfer from L1. Hyltenstam ( 1987) shows that in the early stages of acquisition, the interlanguage is immune to L1 and L2 influences: Unmarked categories are preferred.3 This explains the similarities found in all Ll- L2 situations. In later stages, differences arise which reflect the various interactions between the markedness values of the two languages. Thus, Hyltenstam (1987) makes the following predictions for a given parameter or set of parameters: (1) When both L1 and L2 are unmarked, the acquisition is straightforward; (2) when L1 is unmarked and L2 is marked, the unmarked category is transterred and will often remain for a while as a feature of the interlanguage; (3) when L1 is marked and L2 is unmarked, transfer is not likely to occur and, if it does, the marked category will not remain; (4) when both
2. See Sprouse (2006) for a discussion of the convergent developments in creolistics and SLA, represented respectively by the Relexification hypothesis and the Full Transfer /Full Access model
3- While the terms "marked" and "unmarked" may give the impression that markedness is an absolute, binary property, it is in fact relative. Segments are more or less marked than others in a given hierarchy - e.g., place or articulation for consonants, nasality for vowels, etc. Hence, these terms are to be understood as Kmore marked" and iess marked" respectively (see de Lacy 2006, especially the first chapter, for an extensive discussion).
107
to8
Anne-Marie Brousseau
L1 and L2 are marked, the unmarked value can occur, but will be abandoned rapidly in favour of the marked value. Markedness conditions also guide the process of parameter resetting, given the kind of evidence needed to reset the value of a parameter. It is easier for the learner to reset a value from the subset (unmarked value) to the superset (marked value) than vice versa, since only positive evidence is needed in this case (Dresher & Kaye 1990; White 1989). This leads to the following paradox. 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 L1 remains (Hyltenstam 1987) or the marked value ofL2 is adopted, following parameter resetting (Dresher & Kaye 1990).
2.2
The data
Haitian is by far the most widely spoken among the French-based creoles. It has almost 7 million speakers or 94% of the population of Haiti (2001 data) and is spoken worldwide by members of the diaspora. St Lucian, also a French-based creole, has roughly 159,000 speakers in St Lucia, or 44% of the population (2001 data) and has also 43,000 speakers in Dominica (1998 data). While the vehicular language in Haiti is the creole, it is English in St Lucia.4 The French colonies of Haiti and St. Lucia are both believed to have started in the mid-seventeenth century: 1659 for Haiti (Singler 1996), 1651 for St. Lucia (Breen 1844; Rogozinski 1992). Singler (1996) hypothesises that Haitian was created between 1680 and 1740. It is during this period - the beginnings of the sugar economy- that the social conditions required for the emergence of a creole were present: a high ratio of slaves/Europeans, multilingualism among the slave population leading to the need for a lingua franca and very limited exposure to the superstrate language. For St. Lucia, no date has been proposed in the literature for the emergence of the creole, but if the development of a sugar economy is assumed to provide the required social conditions, we can conjecture that the creole was formed between 1765 (establishment of the first sugar plantations in Vieux-Fort) and 1815 (permanent cession of the island to Britain by France). Singler (1996) shows that, despite the widespread multilingualism found in the slave population, the majority of slaves in Haiti during the crucial period of formation (1680-1740) were speakers of Gbe languages (among other Kwa languages and, in a lesser proportion, Bantu languages). The Gbe dialect cluster comprises five main varieties (Capo 1991): Fongbe, Vhegbe (also known as Ewe), Gengbe (or Mina), Ajagbe, and Phla-Phera. These dialects are hypothesised to have played a major sub stratal role in the formation of Haitian creole. Among those, special attention has been given to Fongbe in the comparison, because, among others reasons, of the impact the Fon people have had on the history and culture of Haiti (see Lefebvre 1998: Chapter 3, for a detailed discussion). In the absence of detailed information regarding St Luda tor the relevant period and given that demography was similar across French colonies in the Antilles (Singler 1995), I will assume that Gbe languages played a major role in the formation of St Lucian as well.
4· Source: Ethnologue database, SIL International.
One substrate, two creoles
Due to the scarcity of historical data and to the tact that early written texts provide no consistent or credible clues about the phonology of the languages, the systems of Haitian, St. Ludan and Gbe were established on the basis of contemporary data. As for French, historical data is abundant enough to provide information on the phonology of seventeenth and eighteen century French. But what varieties of French should be considered to represent the superstrate of the two creoles? In keeping with current views on the French spoken by the settlers in America, I assume that the French who emigrated to New France and to the Antilles shared common sodal and geographical origins. French settlers in America were mainly from the western and central regions of France (Brasseur 1997; Chaudenson 1994), Poitou-Charentes being the region that exported the highest numbers of settlers to New France. I assume further that these French emigrants constituted a fairly homogeneous speech community; they all spoke a mesolectal variety of French showing some regional peculiarities (mainly Ile-de-France and western France), a local variety of the Parisian norm, referred to as Regional Standard French (see the contributions by Chaudenson, Hul~ Morin and Poirier in Mougeon & Beniak 1994).5 Thus, the inventories for seventeenth and eighteenth century French have been reconstructed within this perspective. 6
3·
Comparison of the vowel systems
The vowel inventories of the four languages under study are presented in this section without further justification of the segments they comprise, unless these segments are directly relevant to the comparison.
3.1
Vowel inventories
The vowel systems of Haitian and St. Lucian are almost, if not completely, identical (see Table 1). They consist of seven oral vowels and five nasal vowels, with a possible eighth oral vowel, the low back Ia!? Carrington (1984: 19-20) argues tor the presence in St. Ludan of two low vowels, /a/ and I oJ, on the basis of minimal pairs such as those in ( 1) below, despite the tact that I oJ appears only in a few words. He notes that /a/ is lax and long, similar to the Ia/ of French. The few examples
5-
See Brousseau (2005) for language-internal arguments supporting this view.
6. The inventories for the three languages were devised based on my work with informants and on the available literature. See Brousseau (2005), Brousseau & Nikiema (2006), and Lefebvre (1998) for the references that were consuhed to devise the inventories.
7In Tables 1 through 6, the following coding has been used: (i) brackets - e.g., (a) - indicate marginally attested segments; (ii) vertical slashes- e.g., lhl- signal segments that are found in St Lucian but not in Haitian; (iii) angular brackets -e.g., - signal segments that are found in Haitian but not in St Lucian; (iv) square brackets - e.g., [j] - identify allophones.
109
110
Anne-Marie Brousseau
Table 1. Vowel inventory of Haitian and St. Lucian Oral Front
Nasal
Back
Central
Front
Back
Central
u
e
ii
0
5
:l
£
a
(a)
Table 2. Vowel inventory of seventeenth-eighteenth century French Oral
Nasal
Front rounded
Back
y
u
e
0
0
£
a/re a
a
Front
Front
Front rounded
£
re
a
Back
d
provided suggest that the distribution of Ia! is limited to forms where the postvocalic !HI of the French etymons has been deleted. (1)
[pa]
'not' [lam] 'blade'
[pa]
'through'
l.lam]
'tear'
(French [paH]) (French l.laJim])
(Carrington 1984:20)
However, the distinction between the two low vowels is hard to find in contemporary St. Lucian. None of the two available dictionaries of St Lucian make the distinction. In his introduction to Mondesir's dictionary, Carrington justifies his decision not to represent the distinction by the fact that it has become "tenuous~ an observation that is consistent with my own observations during fieldwork. Interestingly, Valdman (1978) proposes the existence in Haitian of a back I a/ which appears in the same restricted contexts as in St. Lucian, that is, where the French etymon has either /rur/ or /aH/. However, most of the literature on Haitian agrees that there is only one low vowel and the dictionaries - including Valdman et al. (2007) - do not recognise any distinction. Haitian and St. Lucian have phonetic nasal variants of the high vowels, resulting from either regressive or progressive nasalisation - e.g., St. Lucian [wasin-ni], Haitian [yasin-ni], 'his/her roof. For Haitian, most of the consulted sources also recognise the phonemic status of Iii and fill, attested in a small number of words, most of them of African origin e.g., /hilga/ 'voodoo priesf. For St. Lucian, Carrington (1984) excludes Iii and/il/ from the phonemic inventory, while recognising them as phonetically derived through nasalisation. The inventory of seventeenth and eighteenth century French contains twelve oral vowels and five nasal vowels (Table 2 ). The inventory clearly contains two "a" vowels: Back /a/ and central /a/. Back /a/ became part of the phonemic inventory of French during the sixteenth century (Fouche 1966) and was also found in the regional dialects spoken in the Centre and the West of France of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, including Poitou and Saintonge (Morin 1994).
One substrate, two creoles
Table 3. Vowel inventory of Gbe Oral Front
Central
Nasal
Back
Front
Central
u
e
ii.
0
e
:l
£
a
Back 0 5
a
The vowel system of Gbe consists of seven oral and seven nasal vowels, including two high nasal vowels (Table 3). Following Capo (1991), the inventory includes the two phonemic vowels, tel and /6/. However, these vowels are always realised phonetically as [il) and [3) respectively in Fongbe. In fact, only two Gbe dialects show a straighttorward phonetic realisation of these vowels as [e] and [6]. 3.2
Vowels: From Gbe to Haitian and St. Lucian
A comparison of Tables 1 and 3 shows that the vowel inventory of Gbe is strikingly similar to those of the two creoles. The differences are that the two creoles lack the nasal vowels lei and /6/ found in Gbe, while Gbe lacks the distinction between the two "a"' that is marginally found in the creoles. The first difference is linked to an empirical problem. The phonemes /e/ and /6/, in most Gbe dialects, are always realised as [e] and [3] respectively. Given that/et and 161 are not attested in French, neither phonemically nor phonetically, the creators of the creoles had two possible ways to interpret the [£] and [3] they encountered as part of the phonetic strings of French: either as transparent/Sf and /3/ or as the realisation of the underlying phonemic let and /6/. Of course, the allophony being categorical, there is no empirical way to determine which of the two analyses is correct In the first case, the phonemic vowels would most probably have disappeared, finding no role to play in the realisation of phonetic strings. In the second case, the phonemic vowels could correspond to the underlying representation of some, if not all, nasal mid-vowels. It is theoretically unlikely, however, that such abstract representations would have subsisted in the languages as they render the forms in which they appear unnecessarily opaque. It thus seems more reasonable to adopt the first option and to explain the absence of tel and /6/ in the creoles by the fact that French provided no data that could be interpreted as targets for the transfer of these phonemes. The second difference involves the interaction of segments with syllable structure. It is not a mere reflex of the equivalent distinction in French, as the vast majority of the French etymons including /a/ are realised in the creoles with /a/. In both creoles, the back /a/ appears only in some forms where the postvocalic !HI of the French etymons has been deleted. Given that Ia/ is the only low vowel that is phonemically long in French, the presence of I a/ in the creoles could a priori be explained by a process of compensatory lengthening: /a/ would spread to the syllable slot left empty by the deletion of the postvocalic !HI, hence being realised as I a/. This explanation is dubious for the following reasons. First, it seems that the distribution of Ia/ is scarce, even for the authors who report its existence. It appears only in a small subset of the torms that provide
111
112
Anne-Marie
Brousseau
the appropriate context (etymons containing Irurl or /ax/) and this subset does not form a natural class that would allow a sound characterisation of the phonological environment of Ia!. If Ia! were to be analyzed as a reflex of compensatory lengthening, we would expect it to appear systematically in forms where a postvocalic !HI has been deleted, which is not the case. Second, in order to recognise I a/ as the only low vowel that is phonemically long, the creators of the creoles would have had to acquire the abstract relationships between length and place of articulation for the low vowels of French. A cluster of factors would have rendered this acquisition extremely difficult, including the low degree of exposition to French, the absence of any distinction for low vowels in the substrate and the fact that the distinction is both phonemic and phonetic in French. 'Third, even if the creators had been successful in acquiring the abstract properties of the two "a"s of French, we would expect the forms in the creoles to pattern more closely to those of French. As shown in (2), this is not the case: There is no correspondence neither for place of articulation nor for length between the French and the creole forms. (2)
a
HAITIAN
ST. LUCIAN
FRENCH
[lam]
[lam]
lame grave pas larme par
[gyav]
[gwav]
[pa] [lam] [pa]
[pa] [lam] [pa]
GLOSS
[lam] [gHa:v] [pa:] [lllB'm] [pa:B']
'blade' 'serious' 'not'
'tear' 'through'
This leads me to conclude that [a] is at best an idiosyncrasy, a phonetic variant that appears sporadically in some specific lexical forms. Summing up, the inventory of Haitian and St. Lucian does not include a back /a/ after all. Depending on the status of /e/ and /6/ in the creoles, this leaves a single possible difference (if any), which applies only at the phonemic level. Vowels: The French input to Haitian and St. Lucian
3·3
Comparing the creoles with French (Tables 1 and 2) reveals many differences, notably the lack in the creoles of the whole front rounded series. As illustrated in (3), the rounded vowels of French etymons are realised as front unrounded vowels, or, in a few cases, as back rounded vowels. (3)
i
HAITIAN
ST. LUCIAN
FRENCH
[lim&] [mi] [3is]/[Jus] [bule] [suse] [dife] [m(i)sje] [agjo]
[limS:] [mi]
allwner mO.r juste brftler sucer feu monsieur adieu aveugle peuple voleur
[Jis]
[bwile] [suse] [dife] [misje]
[avs.g]
[avs.g]
[pep] [v:lle]
[pep] [~Is.]
GLOSS
[alyme] [myr] [3ys(t)] [bB'yle] [syse] [f0]
'to light' 'ripe'
[m(~)sy0]
'mister'
'until'
'to bunt 'to suck' 'fire'
[ady0] 'farewell' [avceg(l)] 'blind' [pcep(l)] 'people' [~leer] 'thief
One substrate, two creoles
:>
< 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,e<::~
e<::~
HAITIAN
ST. LUCIAN
FRENCH
Uem€/fime] [five/feve] [demi] [menas] [leve]
[(ime] [(ive] [dimi] [menas] [leve]
chemin cheveu demie menace lever
GLOSS ij(::~)me] ij(::~)v0] [d(::~)mi] [m(::~)nas] [l(::~)ve]
'road' 'hair' 'half' 'threat' 'to raise'
The presence of two substitutes reflects the ambiguous behaviour of schwa in French. Schwa has two possible phonetic outputs: It may either be realised as [ce]/[0] 8 or be phonetically null (deleted). In many French torms, a given schwa may be realised or not, depending on factors such as properties of the neighbouring syllables, speech rate and register. If the input form to which the creators of the creoles were exposed contained a realised schwa- e.g., [sariz] 'cherry'-, the expected outcome would be [e], on a par with the other cases of substitution of front-rounded vowels. However, if the input was a form with deleted schwa- e.g., [sriz] 'cherry'-, there was no segment to substitute. The presence of [i] thus requires a different line of explanation, namely syllable structures. The syllable structures of Gbe languages are far simpler than those of French. Codas are prohibited while a limited set of syllable-initial clusters are allowed. Specifically, a cluster may consist of almost any consonant followed by a liquid or a small subset of consonants followed by yod. As noted in Steele and Brousseau (2006), L2 learners typically do not acquire all clusters of the target language with equal ease. Learners who are exposed to clusters that are not allowed in their native grammar and/or are marked resort to two strategies to adapt the target clusters: consonant deletion and vowel epenthesis. 9 This second strategy is precisely the one used in adapting loanwords from French in contemporary Gbe languages and the epenthetic vowels that shows up 8. The phonetically realised schwa is subject to variation across dialects and sodolects of French, being realised as [ce] and [0].
9- See Plag and Uffinann (200 1) and U.ffinann (2003) for discussion of these strategies in 12 acquisition and the development of phonology in creoles.
113
114
Anne-Marie Brousseau
in loanwords is precisely /if, the default vowel of the system- e.g., Fongbe [minisite] from French [mini~teH] .10 The third difference between the vowel inventories is that French lacks the nasal high vowels that are found in the two creoles and in Gbe. Again, this situation parallels more canonical cases ofSLA. According to Steele and Brousseau (2006), L2leamers may acquire target-language sounds in a native-like manner yet apply allophonic rules transferred from the Ll, resulting in non-target-like realisations. Transferred allophonic rules may be fossilised and hence exist even in the grammars of advanced learners. Regressive nasalisation is a rule that applies in the four languages under study and, in fuct, in a wide variety of languages. However, the rule typically applies to all vowels except high, as is the case in French. The fuct that high vowels are nasalised in the two creoles, a marked option, can only be the result of transfer from the substrate language. 11 In the case of Haitian, the presence of nasalised high vowels may have helped the preservation of high vowels that are phonemically nasal, in forms of African origin. The fourth difference is the absence of a back low vowel in the creoles. As discussed in 3.2, the few occurrences of I a/ found in the creoles do not correspond in any systematic fashion to the I a/ of French etymons. Again, this is a clear case of substitution, where a segment that is not part of the native grammar is replaced by its closest equivalent. in this case /a/, which is both perceptually and phonologically similar.
3·4
Vowels: Summary
As concerns vowels, Haitian and St. Lucian share the same inventory, with the possible exception of nasal high vowels, which may have a phonemic status in Haitian only. This inventory is identical to that of Gbe, with the possible following exception: the nasal mid-vowels /e/ and /5/. It~ indeed, these segments are not part of the phonemic inventory of the creole - a state of affairs that cannot be substantiated-, their absence results from the fuct that French provided no data that could be interpreted as targets for the transfer of these phonemes. In other words, there was nowhere to transfer to, a situation that prevents transfer to apply, following Andersen's Transfer to Somewhere Principle. According to this principle,
10. Of course, there is no way to tell what was the pronundation to which the creators of the creoles were exposed when they adapted a French lexical containing a schwa. We can reasonably hypothesise variation among the creators of the creoles as the result of the variation in the input, which would have lead to the variation we still see in modern creoles - e.g., demi vs. dimi. The fact that many lexical items of the creoles do not show variation can be either the result of an homogeneous input at the moment of the creation of the creoles or the result of a later process of dialect levelling.
11. In his investigation of the inventories of317languages, Maddieson (1984: 131) notes that/I/, /ft/ and /a/ are the most common nasalized vowels. If typological frequency were to be used as a diagnostic for markedness, this would entail that the high nasal vowels are unmarked. However, I assume with de Lacy (2006: 20-30) that the frequency of a given segment across inventories is influenced by many factors- e.g., conflicting constraints such as Preservation of the Marked, performance factors - and thus does not constitute a valid diagnostic of markedness.
One substrate, two creoles
A grammatical form will occur consistently and to a significant extent in the !nterlanguage as a result of transfer if and only if ( 1) natural acquisition principles are consistent with the L1 structure or (2) there already exists within the L2 input the potential for (mis- )generalisation from the input to produce the same form or structure. (Andersen 1983: 182)
The inventory of French is larger and more complex than those of the two creoles, and reveals more important differences. To adopt the phonetic strings of French in the process of creating the emerging creoles, the creators resorted to typical L2 acquisition strategies: substitution of new sounds by their closest native equivalents (front-unrounded vowels, realised schwas, back /a/), vowel epenthesis (unrealised schwas) and transfer of an allophonic rule (retention of nasal high vowels).
Comparison of the consonant systems
4·
The inventories of consonants presented below comprise phonemes and allophones. The inventories do not include phonetic variants in free variation or superficial phonetic variants, which may occur, for example, as a result of rapid speech.
Consonant inventories
4.1
The consonant inventories of Haitian and St. Lucian are almost identical (see Table 4). To the common set of 22 consonants (20 phonemes and two allophones), St Lucian adds the laryngeal/hi and the labialised velars /yw/ and /w/, while Haitian adds the fricative /y/ and the sonorant /y/. Most authors agree that the velar nasal [I)] does not have a phonemic status in Haitian, being the nasalised allomorph of /g! in word-final position - e.g., /repsg! > [rep'SIJ] 'pili Carrington (1984) analyses the St. Lucian velar nasal as phonemic, but notes that it has a limited occurrence. However, an examination of the forms involved reveals that it appears in the same contexts as the equivalent in Haitian. On the basis of the examples given, I contend that [IJ] is best analyzed as the result of the progressive nasalisation of I g! in St Lucian and Haitian alike. The two creoles also have in common a nasalised version of yod resulting from progressive nasalisation. which alternates with the nasal/]1/. In Haitian, /y/ behaves as the language's rhotic. As is the case in Gbe, French, and many other languages, the "r-like" rhotic may behave both as a fricative and as a sonorant (liquid or Table 4. Consonant inventory of Haitian and St. Lucian Bilabial
Labio-dental
p,b f,v
Alveo-dental Alveo-palatal
t,d s,z
Palatal
Velar
J1
[IJ]
j [J]
lwl
{.3
tf, d3 rn w
n
Laryngeal
115
116
Anne-Marie Brousseau
Table 5. Consonant inventory of Gbe Bilabial
Labio-dental
Alveo-dental
Alveo-palatal
Palatal
t,d
f, v
s,z
Velar
Labio-velar
k,g x,y
xw,yw
kp,gb
tf, d3
d. [n]
b[m]
)l
1 [r] j [j]
w
y
Table 6. Consonant inventory of seventeenth and eighteenth century French Bilabial
Labio-dental Alveo-dental Alveo-palatal
p,b
t,d
tv
s,z
J~3
[tf,d3]
n
w
r
Velar
Uvular
Laryngeal
1f
h
k.g
[ts,dz] m
Palatal
Jl
[IJ] 1f
semi-vowel). In St. Lucian, the rhotic has the same ambiguous status, but differs in its articulatory properties. According to Carrington (1984: 27), "labialization of this consonant is a prominent feature of St. Lucian Creole, to such an extent that more often than not/yw; resembles back semivowel/w/." The Gbe inventory includes 23 phonemes, plus four allophones (Table 5). In Gbe, /b/ and I d/ are best analysed as sonorants. First, they pattern with the other sonorants with respect to tone. Second, they are in complementary distribution with the nasals [m] and [n]: /b/ and /d/ appear before oral vowels, while the nasals appear elsewhere. The fact that /b/ is a sonorant explains that, even though all voiced stops have a voiceless counterpart, there is no /pi in the inventory. As for /y/, it exhibits the ambiguous behaviour of a rhotic, being both a fricative and a sonorant, whereas [r] is an allophone of IV in the context of a preceding coronal consonant. The inventory of seventeenth and eighteenth century French possesses 22 consonant phonemes, including the language's rhotic, which has two variants (the coronal/r/ and the dorsal velar /JJ/) (see Table 6). In contrast with contemporary French, it includes the laryngeal fricative /hi, the realisation of the so-called "h aspire in words of Germanic origin e.g., haut [ho] 'high: hacher [hafe] 'to chop' (Brousseau 2005). The inventory also includes two sets of allophones. The affricates [ts] and [dz] are allophones of It/ and /d/ in the context of a following Iii or lyl while the affricates [tf] and [d3] are palatalised variants of It/ and I dl, lkl and I gl.
One substrate, two creoles
4.2
Consonants: From Gbe to Haitian and St. Lucian
A comparison of the two consonant inventories (Tables 4 and 5) reveals several mismatches. First, whereas the creoles have the two bilabial stops /pi and /b/, Fongbe has no /pi but has a sonorant lbl. Second, while Haitian has the fricatives If/ and /3f, Fongbe does not. Third, many of the Gbe consonants are missing from the creole inventories: the sonorant /dj, the fricative /x/, and the whole series of labio-velars. This may come as a surprise, given the striking similarity between the vowel systems. Andersen's "Transfer to Somewhere Principle" provides an explanation for the absence oflabio-velars, /x/ and I d/ in the creoles. The French input did not include any sounds that resembled these consonants; hence the transfer had nowhere to apply. The emergence of the stops /p/ and /b/ in the creoles can be viewed as the result of a regularisation of the phonemic system of Gbe. While some Gbe dialects have it in their phonemic inventory- e.g., Gen dialects -, Fongbe and the other dialects that lack a phonemic /pi allow [p] in ideophones and loan words. Given this situation, it is possible that the seventeenth and eighteenth century Gbe speakers also manifested the variation we observe today. On the assumption that this was the case, these Gbe speakers were faced with French phonetic strings containing /pi and they obviously integrated /p/ in the system that they were creating. This is attested by the large number of words containing /pi in the modem creoles. The reason they integrated /p/ is either because they already had it in their phonemic inventory- e.g., Gen dialects - or in their phonetic inventory - e.g., Fongbe. A likely hypothesis, then, is that the presence of /pi in French phonetic strings only helped accelerating an incipient change which had already begun to take place in the grammar of substratum speakers at the time the creoles were formed. 12 The presence of an obstruent /pi in the creoles raises the question of the status of /b/ within the system. This question bears on the assumption that the default case will produce a system where gaps are avoided. According to Clements (2003 and previous work), this avoidance of gaps in inventories follows from the Principle of Feature Economy. "According to this principle, languages tend to maximise the combinatory possibilities of features across the inventory of speech sounds: Features used once in a system tend to be used again" (Clements 2003:287). In all three languages, stops all appear in voiced/voiceless pairs. We thus expect that, given that the creoles have /p/, they will also have its voiced counterpart, namely the stop /b/. This is exactly what we find. In contrast with Gbe, but on a par with French, /b/ does not behave like a sonorant in the creoles. It thus appears that the creators of the creoles modified the feature specification of /b/ from its L1 value to the L2 value. Presumably, the target provided an abundance of positive evidence showing that /b/ was not in complementary distribution with /m/ - French forms such as lbaJ ,/bf./, /b3/ -, hence allowing the acquisition of the values of French. The change from sonorant to stop had the effect of filling a gap in the new consonant system.
Maddieson ( 1984: 32) notes that 99.1% of the 317languages under study have at least one bilabial stop, which could suggest an unmarked value for /pl. On the other hand, de Lacy (2006: 2) provides the following hierarchy for major places of articulation (where> means "is more marked than"): !dorsal> labial> coronal> glottal!. This makes /p/ relatively marked. 12.
117
118
Anne-Marie Brousseau
As for the acquisition of the fricatives If/ and /3f, I propose to link it to the presence of the affricates /tf/ and /dy, as will be seen in the next section.
Consonants: The French input to Haitian and St. Lucian
4·3
The consonant inventories of the two creoles parallel French more closely than Gbe. The differences are as follows. First, the affricates [ts I and [dzl are missing in the creoles and the affricates [tf) and [d3] have phonemic status in the creoles. Second, whereas French has /H/ and /hi, Haitian has /y/ and St. Ludan has /w/ and /hi. The first difference is the result of straightforward transfer from the substratum. The French input to which the creators of creoles were exposed offered occurrences of [tn and [d3l, as well as [ts] and [dz], both pairs being allophones of It/ and I d! respectively. Of course, whether it is a phoneme or an allophone in the system, an affricate will be perceptually identical. Given that [tn and [d3] were part of the native inventory, the affricates were transferred into the system of the emerging creoles with their native values, i.e. as the phonemes /tf/ and/d3f. In contrast, since they were missing from the native inventory, [ts I and [dzI did not make their way into the creoles. The adoption of the fricatives If/ and /3f may be linked to the existence of the affricates in the system. Both pairs of consonants share the same place of articulation and, in part, the same manner of articulation: In terms of perception and articulation, an affricate is the fusion of a fricative and a homorganic stop. Given the fact that Gbe had the affricates !tf/ and /dy, it was only natural to expand the system so as to include the fricatives If/ and /y. Once more, as was the case for the introduction of /p/, this choice may have been quite straightforward as it had the effect of making better use of the available phonological features for consonants, following the Principle of Feature Economy. To explain the second difference that sets the creoles apart from French, I first provide an account of the Haitian system. I adopt the analysis of Steele and Brousseau (2006), which involves the substitution of postcoronal fricatives (/HI and /hi) under equivalence classification by the creators of Haitian. In contemporary French, the label Kh-aspire refers to a subset of these words which pattern like consonant-initial words in blocking liaison. In contrast, "h-muef' words behave phonologically like any other vowel-initial word. The initial/hi ofh-aspire items was historically realised in French, including in the seventeenth and eighteenth century varieties to which the Gbe-speaking creators of the creoles would have been exposed (Brousseau 2005). Such differences manifest themselves in the HC adaptation of French h-aspire and h-muet etymons. In adapting the h-aspire targets in (5), HC substituted the voiced velar fricative [y]. (5)
FRENCH
HAITIAN
rach ranch ranni rayi
[yaj] [yil.j] [yil.ni] [yaji]
hache hanche hennir hair
GLOSS
[haj] [hil.j] [henJH] [ha(j)ilr]
'axe'
'hip' 'to neigh' 'to hate'
In contrast, the adaptations ofh-muet etymons are phonetically vowel-initial- e.g., French habitude [abityd] 'habif, HC abitid [abitid]; French heureuse [0B'121Z] 'happY, HC erez [eysz].
One substrate, two creoles
Since laryngeals were not part of their native inventory, Gbe learners of seventeenth and eighteenth century French would have had to acquire /hi. In order to do so, they proceeded to adapt target lhl via equivalence classification, equating French /h/ with /y/, an L1 segment that shares the manner and has the closest place of articulation to that of the target segment. The equivalence classification hypothesis is further supported by the adaptation of targets involving/HI, which is substituted with /yl in HC, as illustrated in (6). Gbe languages have a velar but no uvular series. Accordingly, in an attempt to master target hr/, native speakers of both languages substitute the perceptually equivalent velar /y/. (6)
HAITIAN
rim trete erez ipokrit
[yim]
[tyete] [ey&z] [lpokyit]
FRENCH
GLOSS
[:sym] rhwne [tB'ete] traiter heureuse (0H0Z] hypocrite [ipokB'it:]
'cold (n.)' 'to treat' 'happy' 'hypocrite'
The fact that this substitution also occurs after a coronal- e.g., trete [tyete] -, that is, in the only context where Gbe allows the coronal/r/, confirms that the target !HI is substituted by a sound that is perceptually equivalent and not phonologically equivalent. In other words, the creators of Haitian have privileged the perceptual similarity of lyl and !HI over the phonological rho tic status of lrl and /HIP The allophonic variation of I y/ can also be understood as a case of the transfer and fossilisation of an Ll-based allophonic rule. As shown in (8) and (9), in both singleton and complex onsets, HC /yl is realised as [w] in front of a rounded vowel. In all other contexts, as in (7), it is realised as [y]. No such alternation exists in French. where [H] can occur before any vowel. (7)
HAITIAN
ra chire pouri debraye prete (8)
HAITIAN
nimero parol ronfie roulo trop (9)
FRENCH
[ya] [fiye] [puyi] [debyaje] [pyete]
p~ter
GLOSS
(HaJj'] [defiB'e] [pwrl] [debHaje] [pHete]
'rare
[nymeHo] [pu:>l] [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
Anne-Marie Brousseau
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
One substrate, two creoles
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
Anne-Marie Brousseau
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.
One substrate, two creoles
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.
Substrate features in the properties of verbs in three Atlantic creoles
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.
Substrate features in the properties of verbs in three Atlantic creoles
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)
Substrate features in the properties of verbs in three Atlantic creoles
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)
HAITIAN (= (17) in Dumais 1988)
HAITIAN (= (18) 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,
Substrate features in the properties of verbs in three Atlantic creoles
(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).
Substrate features in the properties of verbs in three Atlantic creoles
(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)
Substrate features in the properties of verbs in three Atlantic creoles
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
Substrate features in the properties of verbs in three Atlantic creoles
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.
Substrate features in the properties of verbs in three Atlantic creoles
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.
Substrate features in the properties of verbs in three Atlantic creoles
(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).
Substrate features in the properties of verbs in three Atlantic creoles
(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
Substrate features in the properties of verbs in three Atlantic creoles
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.
Substrate features in the properties of verbs in three Atlantic creoles
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
Assessing the nature and role of substrate influence in the creoles of Suriname
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).
Assessing the nature and role of substrate influence in the creoles of Suriname
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
Assessing the nature and role of substrate influence in the creoles of Suriname
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.
Assessing the nature and role of substrate influence in the creoles of Suriname
(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 1) NDYUKA
(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 1) NDYUKA
(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 1) NDYUKA
(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.
Assessing the nature and role of substrate influence in the creoles of Suriname
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:
Assessing the nature and role of substrate influence in the creoles of Suriname
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
Assessing the nature and role of substrate influence in the creoles of Suriname
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.
Assessing the nature and role of substrate influence in the creoles of Suriname
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)
Assessing the nature and role of substrate influence in the creoles of Suriname
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
Assessing the nature and role of substrate influence in the creoles of Suriname
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.
Assessing the nature and role of substrate influence in the creoles of Suriname
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.
African substrata! influence on the counterfactual in Belizean Creole
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).
African substrata! influence on the counterfactual in Belizean Creole
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).
African substrata! influence on the counterfactual in Belizean Creole
(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
African substrata! influence on the counterfactual in Belizean Creole
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.
African substrata! influence on the counterfactual in Belizean Creole
(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
African substrata! influence on the counterfactual in Belizean Creole
(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.
African substrata! influence on the counterfactual in Belizean 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
African substrata! influence on the counterfactual in Belizean Creole
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.
Substrate features in Nicaraguan, Providence and San Andres Creole Englishes
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 (
Nominal plural marking (APiCS 23, 25)
3·3
Nominal plural marking is achieved by means of postposing the third person plural personal pronoun in many Atlantic creoles (Holm 1988: 193):8 (1)
bwai dem boy 3PL 'the boys'
SA
(Bartens' notes) 9
As can be gleaned from the preceding example, the WCCEs are no exception to the rule although espedally present-day NK increasingly makes use of the English plural suffix {-s}. In SA, the suffix mostly occurs in fossilised forms like wan shuuz 'a shoe'. PR also features somes-plurals. In the Twi substrate, there is overlap of functions: nominal plurals are usually marked by means of a change in the prefixation and possibly also suffixation ( Christaller 1875: 33-35 ). However, the morpheme -nom, which derives from the third person plural pronoun for inanimates, is "also used in apposition or as a suffix with nouns and pronouns to provide for, or strengthen their plural form"- e.g., obi 'some one, anothet, ebfnom 'some/other people' (Christaller 1875:42-43). In Twi, this plural formation strategy is most typically used in the associative plural where -nom is postposed to the name of a person in order to express company. This structure with a postposed third person plural pronoun is wide-spread in the Atlantic creoles (Holm 1988: 193):
8. There are some exceptions to this word order: Principense Creole Portuguese and. for instance, Yoruba among the putative substrate languages prepose the pronoun to the noun (Holm 1988: 193 ). 9- For the abbreviations used in the interlinear glosses, see http://www.eva.mpg.de/lingua/resources/glossingrules.php.
205
206
Angela Bartens
(2)
Paulo nom
TWI
Paul 3PL 'Paul and his company' (3)
(Chr!staller 1875:44)
Mls Aurora dem
PR
Miss Aurora 3PL 'Miss Aurora and her folks/family/friends' (4)
(Bartens 2003:31)
Dama dem
NK
Dama 3PL 'Dama and his family>
(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
Substrate features in Nicaraguan, Providence and San Andres Creole Englishes
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
Substrate features in Nicaraguan, Providence and San Andres Creole Englishes
(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).
Substrate features in Nicaraguan, Providence and San Andres Creole Englishes
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
(Chrlstaller 1875: 59)
m6-m-mil :rm-fa 3PL-IMP-let 3SG-IMP-take 'let (pl) him take'
TWI
(Chrlstaller 1875: 59)
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.
Substrate features in Nicaraguan, Providence and San Andres Creole Englishes
(35)
Silcd bi w:> me JOto mil. gold some coP.LOC 1sG.Poss moneybag within 'There is some gold in my bag:
TWI
(Christaller 1875: 119)
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
(Christaller 1875: 116)
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.
Substrate features in Nicaraguan, Providence and San Andres Creole Englishes
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
(Chrlstaller 1933: 178)
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.
Substrate features in Nicaraguan, Providence and San Andres Creole Englishes
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
(Christaller 1875: 163)
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
(Chrlstaller 1933: 433)
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.
Substrate features in Nicaraguan, Providence and San Andres Creole Englishes
(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
(Chrlstaller 1933: 336)
'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."
Substrate features in Nicaraguan, Providence and San Andres Creole Englishes
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)
(Chrlstaller 1875: 32)
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.
Substrate features in Nicaraguan, Providence and San Andres Creole Englishes
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,~.$09;rc ~,/,.o a 1•C>r!~oc/n 1St(} ~ "'' n011( ''-"" / tJ.:fll•ll i"' 2 'c. I (i l.rul,cuo-qb/o•.~.ulo1C' It Cr:J• olo oJU'nf.~ fltn J. lr 1"\ ff •u l t .., 1 ,,,
r'"""'"' .,)
r
'>I":C\
l.r• 1" ~o - rf~t$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 ·
l'ka"?_- r~da:;r; dt ro~ne /:n~
<.hooya, 11/!l. ~- moj t•
'(;/Jo
r~~v • f'1G 'f;:I>~JtJOio .,C
c/>od10=-lo/(IC \.he fO'· - 'P.,ofq
The last word on this list Is chepa ['tfepa] 'clothes, clothing (usually of lower quality or elegance), rags~ Ued strictly In Palenque, chepa bas never been documented before. Derived from Knc. kl-pa8 'rag, piece of cloth that one bas sewn,, lt Is yet another of Palenque's Afrlcanlsms. Word Usts like this one regularly contain Africanlsms also found elsewhere in Colombia For example, chopo 'small revolver' (fourth word from the bottom in Figure 4) Is common in popular Spanish of Cartagena9 Chopo too is from Kikongo, namely kyo 'small' + po 'noise made by a small firearm (onomat): thus literally 'small firearm~ In Kikongo, kyo routinely undergoes palataUsation to ['tfo]; hence, the phonetic outcome PAL./SPAN. rtJopo]ls entirely logical A similar phonetic development can be observed in Knc. kyo+ nkUiu 'small+ (old) jug' > 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 ba- wa 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:
Convergence-to-substratum and the passives in Singapore English
(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:
Convergence-to-substratum and the passives in Singapore English
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
Convergence-to-substratum and the passives in Singapore English
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).
Convergence-to-substratum and the passives in Singapore English
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
Convergence-to-substratum and the passives in Singapore English
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.
Convergence-to-substratum and the passives in Singapore English
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
Convergence-to-substratum and the passives in Singapore English
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
Umberto Ansaldo, Stephen Matthews and Geoff Smith
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 Cantonese substrate in China Coast Pidgin
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
Umberto Ansaldo, Stephen Matthews and Geoff Smith
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
The Cantonese substrate in China Coast Pidgin
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
Umberto Ansaldo, Stephen Matthews and Geoff Smith
(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.
The Cantonese substrate in China Coast Pidgin
(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
Umberto Ansaldo, Stephen Matthews and Geoff Smith
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'.
The Cantonese substrate in China Coast Pidgin
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
Umberto Ansaldo, Stephen Matthews and Geoff Smith
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.
The Cantonese substrate in China Coast Pidgin
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
Substrate influences in Mindanao Chabacano
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
Substrate influences in Mindanao Chabacano
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
•
Substrate influences in Mindanao Chabacano
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
Substrate influences in Mindanao Chabacano
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.
Substrate influences in Mindanao Chabacano
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
Substrate influences in Mindanao Chabacano
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
Substrate influences in Mindanao Chabacano
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'<8.o Creole Conference, World Trade Center, Willemstad, August 2004. Forman, M. L. 1972 Zamboanguefio Texts with Grammatical Analysis. PhD dissertation, Cornell University. Frake, C. 0. 1971. Lexical origins and semantic structures in Philippine Creole Spanish. In Pidginizatio,J and Creolization ofLanguage, D. Hymes (ed.), 223-242. Cambridge: CUP. Frake, C. 0. 1980. Zamboangueiio verbal expressions. In Language and Cultural Description: Selected .Essay.s of Charles 0. Frake, A. S. Dil (ed.), 275-310. Stanford CA: Stanford University Press. Grant, A. P. 2002a. El chabacano zamboangueiio, una lengua mezclada. Papia 12: 7-40. Grant, A P. 2002b. Fabric, Pattern, shift and dl1fusion: What change in Oregon Penutian Languages can tell historical linguists. In Proceedings of the Meeting of the Hokan-Pe,Jutian Workshop, June 17-18, 2000, U. of California at Berkeley [Survey of California and Other Indian Languages, Report 11), L. Buszard-Welcher (ed.), 33-56. Berkeley CA: Department of Linguistics, University of California at Berkeley. Grant, A. P. 2003. Reduplication in Mindanao Chabacano. In TWice as Meaningfuk Reduplication in Pidgin and Creole Languages, S. Kouwenberg (ed.), 213-220. London: Battlebridge. Hassan, I. U., Seymour A., Ashley, M. & Ashley, L. 1994. Tausug-&Jglish Dictionary: Kabtangan iba,J maana, 2nd edn. Jolo: Notre Dame of Jolo College and the Summer Institute of Linguistics. Holm, J. & Patrick, P. (eds). 2007. Comparative Creole Syntax. London: Battlebridge. Ing. R. 0. 1967. A brief outline of Chabacano phonology. (in IPA). Le maitre phomltique, 3rd series, 45: 26-33. Lipski, J. M. 1987. Modern Spanish once removed in Philippine Creole Spanish: The case of Zamboanga. Language in Society 16:91-108. Lipski, J. M. 199 2 New thoughts on the origins of Zamboanguefio (Philippine Creole Spanish). Language Sciences 14: 197-231. Lipski, J. M. 200 1. The place of Chabacano in the Philippine linguistic identity. Estudios de SociolingiUstica 2: 119-163. Lipski, J. M. n.d. (post-2000). When does 'Spanish' become 'creole' and vice versa? The case of Chabacano (Philippine Creole Spanish). Ms. Lipski, J. M. & Santoro, M. 2007. Zamboangue.fio Creole Spanish. In Comparative creole syntax. J. Holm & P. Patrick (eds), 373-398. London: Battlebridge. McKaughan, H. P. 1954. Notes on Chabacano grammar. U,Jiversity of Manila Journal of East Asiatic Studies 3: 205-226. Molony, C. H. 1973. Sound changes in Chabacano. In Parangal kay Cecilia Lopez, A. B. Gonzalez (ed.), 38-50. Quezon City: Linguistic Society of the Philippines. Nolasco, R. M. 2005. The Chabacano challenge to Philippine ergativity. In Linguistics and Language Education in the Philippines and Beyond: A Festschrift in Honor ofMa. Lourdes S. Bautista, D. T. Dayag & J. S. Quakenbush (eds), 401-433. Manila: De La Salle University Press. Pi, P. 1894. Letter written to Brother Francisco de A. Al6s, at Zamboanga, 8 August 1894. In Cartas de los PPs de la Compafifa de Jeslis de laMisiOn de Filipinas, Cuaderno 10. Manila: M. Perez. Reid, L.A. 1971. Philippine Minor Languages: Phonologies and Word Lists [Oceanic Linguistics Special Publications 8]. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.
Substrate influences in Mindanao Chabacano
Riego de Dios, M. I. 1989. A Composite Dictionary ofPhilippine Creole Spanish. Manila: Linguistic Sodety of the Philippines. Ross, M. 1996. Contact-induced change and the comparative method: Cases from Papua New Guinea. In The Comparative Method Reviewed: Regularity and Irregularity in Language Change, M. Durie & M. Ross (eds), 180-217. Oxford: OUP. Schlegel, S. F. 1971. nruray-English Dictionary. Berkcley CA: University of California Press. Smith, N. S. H. 1987 The Origin of the Creoles of Surinam. PhD dissertation, Universiteitvan Amsterdam. Smith, N. S. H. 1999. Younger languages: genetically modified? Paper from the Second International Workshop on Mixed Languages, University of Aarhus, Denmark, May 1999. Spitz, W. 2001. Hiligaytwn/flongo. Munich: Lincom. Sullivan, R 1986. A Maguindanaon Dictionary. Cotabato City: Notre Dame University. Tirona, T. 1923. An account of the Ternate dialect of Cavite, P. I. Term paper, University of the Philippines, kept as Tagalog Paper 487 in H. Otley Beyer Collection, Philippine National Library, Manila. Whinnom, K. 1956. Spanish Contact Vernaculars in the Philippines. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press. Zorc, RD. P. 1977. The Bisayan Dialects of the Philippines. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics.
Appendix 1. Function words in Mindanao Chabacano (after Smith 1987)
la 1b 2 3 4 5 6
personal pronouns possessive pronouns nominal possession: NP + NP numerals other prenominal quantifiers ('all the X') quantifier nouns ('a lot of X') relative pronouns reflexives
6a
redprocals
6b 7 8 9 9a 10 lOa 11 lla llb 12 13 13a 14 14a 14b
indefinite pronouns question words 'quantifying' adverbs place adverbs deictic adverbs temporal adverbs phrasal adverbs adpositions/locational nouns adpositions of place adpositions of time dative word instrumental word 'and' conjoining NPs = 'with'? coordinators in general 'and' 'or'
Spanish in singular, Hiligaynon in plural Spanish in singular, Hiligaynon in plural NP + Spanish de(l) + NP Spanish (but ordinal morph is Tagalog) Spanish Spanish Spanish Spanish (though construction 'my body' is un-Spanish and unPhilippine) Philippine verbal drcumfix used, or periphrasis 'the one with the other' with Spanish morphs in uniquely Zam pattern Creole Portuguese maskin + Spanish interrogative Spanish; 'why?' < Creole Portuguese mainly Spanish (some are Philippine) Spanish Spanish Spanish Spanish, or Spanish + Philippine mixed forms (nway pa 'not yet') Spanish; core preposition na < Cr. Port. Spanish Spanish Spanish Spanish (also denotes direct object) no;Hiligaynon Spanish (few are Philippine) Spanish; Hiligaynon form (13a) links NPs Spanish (borrowed into Philippine)
321
322
Anthony P. Grant
14c 15 1Sa 1Sb 1Sc 1Sd 1Se 16
'but' subordinators in general complementisers (i:haf, 'whether/if')
'if' 'because' 'in order to'
'when' (temporal) copulas
16a 'to have'
17 17a 18 18a 19 19a 19b 20
21 22 23
24
25
TMA particles modal verbs negative particles focus particle determiners definite articles demonstratives plural NP markers question particle adverbs of manner 'as' 'very X' comparison, superlation of adjectives
Spanish (borrowed into Philippine) Spanish (but Philippine kay 'because') Philippine + Spanish merger kay - ke Spanish, Creole Portuguese maskin Hiligaynon, Spanish Spanish (often borrowed into Philippine) Spanish mostly zero; Spanish forms for exposed copulas, also untensed amo from Hiligaynon Spanish Caviteiio Creole Spanish Spanish Spanish + Tagalog Hiligaynon amo; see copula Spanish Spanish, Philippine (indef. art. < Sp) Spanish Philippine Philippine Spanish Spanish Hiligaynon Spanish(= Philippine)
Appendix 2. Stratification of elements in Mindanao Creole Spanish, after Smith (1999) Mindanao Creole Spanish Basic lexicon (fabric) Peripheral lexicon (fabric) Cuhurallexicon (fabric) Derivational morphology (fabric) Function words (fabric) Inflectional morphology (fabric) Syntax (pattern) Suprasegmental phonology (pattern) Segmental phonology (pattern) Allophonic system (pattern)
Spanish, 10-15% Philippine (Hiligaynon, Tagalog) Spanish, 10-1591. Philippine Philippine (i:ninorlty from Spanish) Philippine (for the most part), Spanish Spanish, Philippine (Philippine, but TMA markers are Caviteiio) Philippine as to element and constituent order Philippine (and Spanish?) Philippine + Spanish + increasingly English Philippine
Substrate influences in Mindanao Chabacano
Appendix 3. Languages which influenced Zamboangueiio at various times Language
Period of influence
Manila Bay Creole Spanish Lusoasian Creole (Mexican) Spanish Tagalog Hiligaynon Samalan languages Tausug Cebuano Hokkien
pre-1719 pre-1719 (via Manila Bay Creole Spanish) 1635pre-1719 (via Manila Bay Creole Spanish), post-WWII (as national language) c. 171918th century and afterwards? after 1719? 20th century (dates uncertain; most words ofHokkien origin are also found in other Philippine languages) post-WWII
Philippine English
Appendh: 4. Lipski's model of the development of MC from Lipski (200 1: 21) "At least the following stages may be tentatively proposed, based on direct docwnentation,indirect reconstruction,
and chronological extrapolation: (mid 1700's). Z arises in the Zam boanga garrison, as the common intersection of Spanish-laden Philippine languages. STAGE II: (mid-late 1700's). Z absorbs grammatical and lexical structures from Manila Bay PCS, as the Spanish military presence in Zamboanga is consolidated. Additional migrations of civilians from Cavite have a trickle-down effect on Z STAGE III: (1800's?). llongo lexical elements are introduced into Z, possibly as the resuh of the LJSe of lloilo as a stopover for ships bound from Manila to Zamboanga. llongo grammatical forms could have been introduced at this time. STAGE IV: (most of 1800's). Increasing presence of (civilian) native Spanish speakers in Zamboanga City results in incorporation of additional Spanish items, with structural differences between Z and (Philippine) Spanish reaching their all-time low point STAGE V: (Thrn of twentieth century onward). Large-scale immigration from the central Visayan region to southwestern Mindanao makes Cebuano Visayan the de facto number two language in Zamboanga City. Spanish lexical items are increasingly replaced by Visayan items. Word order begins to shift towards Visayan. STAGE VI: (1930's onward). Increasing use of English in Zamboanga, not only in schools but even in casual conversations, results in growing incorporation of Anglicisms into Z In the last two generations, this is leading the way to an eventual relexification of Zamboanguefio away from its Hispanic lexical basis." STAGE I:
323
324
Anthony P. Grant
Appendix 5. Etymological strata of Cotabato Chabacano lexicon as presented in Riego de Dios (1989: 188) Number
Percentage
Spanish 'Local' Tagalog English Cebuano Others Hiligaynon Incomplete data
5396 318 308 164 139 85 83 49
82.49 4.86 4.7 25 212 1.3 1.27 0.72
Total
6542
99.00
Negation in Ternate Chabacano* Eeva Sippola University of Helsinki
This paper examines negation patterns in Ternate Chabacano and compares them to negation in Tagalog. Ternate Chabacano is a Spanish-lexified creole spoken in Manila Bay in the Philippines. Tagalog is its main adstrate language. The main pattern in negation is one of the features that has been attributed to the Philippine languages, but it has not been systematically compared with the adstrate language. The comparison reveals that the properties of the Tagalog negator wala in particular have influenced the use of nway in Ternate Chabacano in existential negation and in negative indefinite constructions. Also, certain features related to negation follow Tagalog patterns.
Keywords: negation, Ternate Chabacano, Tagalog
1.
Introduction
In this paper, I study negation in Ternate Chabacano and compare it to negation in its adstrate language Tagalog. Chabacano is a name used for all Philippine Creole Spanish varieties that have Malay and Philippine languages as their substrate and adstrate. On the Island of Luzon in the Northern Philippines, this includes the endangered varieties ofTernate and Cavite on the Manila Bay, and the already extinguished variety of Ermita, which was spoken until the Second World War in a central neighbourhood of Manila. On Mindanao, in the Southern Philippines, the Chabacano varieties are Chabacano of Davao, Cotabato and Zamboaguefio of Zamboanga, which is the most vital and largest speech community of all the Chabacano varieties. The varieties are mutually intelligible (Molony 1977b: 153), even though they should not be considered a uniform language because of the lexical and structural differences due to the different substrates, as well as the history of the settlements of the creole communities. Philippine Creole Spanish has been influenced by Philippine languages, particularly Tagalog in the northern part of the archipelago, and by Central Philippine languages in the south. The most evident feature is the preferred initial predicate. Many particles and syntactic structures also have a Philippine origin (see examples in Section 2). The main pattern in negation is one of the features that can clearly be attributed to the Philippine languages (Forman 1972: 235 ), even
I would like to thank Enjoe Nigoza, Enelita Pascua Lozada and Dolores J. Dlnglas for providing me with Ternate Chabacano data, information and especially for their help during my stays in Ternate.
326
Eeva Sippola
though the labels of the negative particles quite apparently have their origins in the Iberian lexifier language. However, up until now, the Chabacano negation has not been compared systematically with Tagalog. The aim of this paper is to give a precise description of the negation patterns in Ternate Chabacano and study the relation of this feature to negation in the adstrate language. This comparison could tell us to what extent negation in Chabacano is a result of relexification of the Philippine patterns and how much Tagalog has actually influenced Ternate Chabacano negation. The paper is structured as follows. Firstly, I present the current situation ofTernate Chabacano with a historical overview of its origins and a discussion on the languages present in the area during the period of the formation of Chabacano. I also present the findings of earlier research on Ternate Chabacano and its substrate and adstrate features. Secondly, I concentrate on the negation patterns and compare them with negation in the adstrate language Tagalog. The conclusion summarises the findings.
2.
The current situation and a historical overview
Ternate Chabacano is spoken by approximately 3000 persons in the central parts ofTernate, which is a small town two hours from Manila situated on the coast at the mouth of the River Maragondon.1 The speakers of Chabacano represent a traditional local speech community in the town. They generally use the name Bah,.a to reter to their language and the locality in Chabacano. However, the Chabacano speakers are a minority of the town's 20,000 inhabitants. They are bilingual in Tagalog and Chabacano, and some also speak English. Dominant social groups in the area speak English and Tagalog, but traditional local families have Chabacano as their home language inTernate. The language of the younger speakers has especially been influenced by these adstrates. Ternate Chabacano is considered the earliest surviving variety of the Philippine Creole Spanish that resulted from the contact between Spanish and a Portuguese-based pidgin spoken in the Moluccas, the present-day North Maluku province in eastern Indonesia, in the seventeenth century (Molony 1973: 39; Whinnom 1956: 17).1his is mainly based on the historical data on immigrationand the settlement of the speech community (Blair & Robertson 1909 vol. 7:174, vol. 36:237; de la Concepci6n 1788-1792: 102-103; Philippine Reports 1909; Whinnom 1956: 11-12). The linguistic evidence of the Moluccan origins in Molony (1973) and Tirana (1924) consists of only a few features, such as historical sound shifts and some lexical items derived from Portuguese, Malay and Bahasa Ternate, the languages spoken in the Moluccas in the seventeenth century. 2 The theory of the Moluccan origins ofTernate Chabacano seems very probable, but the historical
Reliable figures on the number of Chabacano spea.lrers are difficuh to obtain (see Fernandez (2001:vii) for a discussion of the problems encountered with census data in the Philippines). A conservative estimate puts the number at a few thousands for Cavlte City, Ternate, Cotabato and Davao and more than 300,000 in Zamboanga. 1.
Tlrona (19 24: 19-21) listed some 50 mardika words that are of Malay and Ternate origins. In addition, Molony (1973: 43) demonstrated bay 'uncle' and yay 'aunt' to be of Moluccan Malay origin, sakaleli 'war dance' and chub{ 'to touch someone to call his attention' to be of Bahasa Ternate origin, and buneka 'doll', bung. bong. beng 'very, too (much)' and agv.•elu 'grandfather' to be of Portuguese origin. In the Portuguese items can be included prietu 'black' and agora 'noW, which are common lexical items in Ternate Chabacano. 2.
Negation in Ternate Chabacano
linguistic analysis done so far is rather limited, and no substrate language of the Moluccan period has been attested.3 The languages that have influenced the formation of present-day Ternate Chabacano are therefore Tagalog, as the adstrate language, and Spanish, as the lexifier language (Frak.e 1971; Whinnom 1956). Unfortunately, the role of Portuguese or other languages present in the area, such as Chinese as a trade language, remains unclear, if at best probable. There is hardly any published research on Ternate Chabacano and published texts written in the language are rare as well. Up until now, the research done through fieldwork has concentrated on the lexicon (Molony 1973, 1977a, b) and brief general presentations on the Ternate Chabacano grammatical features and on the current situation (Tirona 1924; Sippola 2006; Steinkri.iger 2007). Molony (1973) lists a tew Moluccan and Portuguese terms, but at least the entries defined as mardika vocabulary items by Tirona (1924: 19-21) are currently rarely used in Ternate Chabacano (Sippola 2006). Currently, the language is changing towards a more Philippine vocabulary, including both English and Tagalog terms, especially in modern domains. Molony (1977 a, b) also discusses the Tagalog lexicon in Ternate Chabacano. In Sippola (2006: 46-48, 51) and Steinkri.iger (2007: 370, 372), some grammatical features of the Tagalog influence are briefly mentioned, such as: the nominal plural manga; the intensification of adjectives with pinaka, as in pinaka durokabesa 'very stubborn/stupid'; the reduplication of nouns, e.g., kasa kasa 'every house~ adjectives, as in gragrandi 'very bir(, and verbs, as in iskribi-iskribf 'write intensively'; the derivational affixes ika-, as in ika-tres 'third~ and ma-, as in ma-pwersa 'strong'; and the negators no, nin6, nway and ninway which will be discussed in this paper. Also, pragmatic features such as discourse markers have a strong Tagalog influence, e.g., the discourse marker raw in (1) indicates reported information- something told by someone else- and is used similarly in Tagalog (Sippola 2010). (1)
Koriy6su raw mi kdsa. beautiful ENC my house 'It's said that my house is beautiful'
TC (Slppola's field notes)
However, the Tagalog influence is only mentioned as an evident source in these works, but no comparative analysis has been made. Fortunately, there is more research on embedded Philippine features on other Chabacano varieties (see Forman 1972; Fernandez 2004, 2007b; Grant 2007; Ogiwara 2002).
3·
Negation in Temate Chabacano
I have limited my presentation to the basic ways a language has to negate a clause: standard negation, negation of non-verbal clauses and negation of existentials in Ternate Chabacano (i.e.
3· Lipski (1988:39) has shown that the connections between the Portuguese pidgin in Southeast Asia and Chabacano are not irrefutable: It is not certain that the language spoken by the Moluccan soldiers evacuated to Manila was a Portuguese or Spanish creole, nor that the number of its speakers was sufficient to transmit the language further, even though they could have brought with them some creolised constructions. Also Fernandez (2007a: 5-6) points out some weaknesses of the historical dates presented in Whinnorn (1956) and calls for a revision of the supposed continuity between Ternate Chabacano and the other Chabacano varieties.
327
328
Eeva Sippola
negation of an entire proposition).4 Following Payne (1985: 198), I identify clausal negation in more complex sentences which may permit more than one type of negation and also discuss the negative indefinites and negative adverbs. These are defined more precisely with the examples in Section 3.3. The examples in Ternate Chabacano that follow are from a corpus collected in Ternate on several occasions between 2003 and 2008, if not specified otherwise. 5 The main source for the Tagalog data is Schachter and Otanes' 1972 Tagalog Reference Grammar, as indicated in the examples. 6 I first present the Chabacano patterns of negation followed by the corresponding Tagalog entries and structures, and discuss the parallels between the languages. Negation in declarative and in imperative clauses
3.1
The common Ternate Chabacano negative particle no (or nong) is used in standard negation. By standard negation, I mean the simple negation of an entire declarative clause, as shown in (2), compared with the negative example (3). (2)
(3)
~veri yo fhu, ihu muher. want lsG child. child woman 'I want a daughte.t:'
kyerl yo kel. want 1SG that 'I dolft want that:
No
TC (Sippola's field notes)
TC
NEG
(Sippola's field notes)
The unmarked word order in Ternate Chabacano is VSO and, in verbal negation, the negator always precedes the verb. Generally. the negative particle closely precedes the TMA particles or the verb as shown in (3) and (4). However, pronouns can occur after the negator preceding the verb, as in (5) . .Ma can be placed after the negator, preceding the pronoun or the verb, thus forming noma (6) to express 'no more, not anymore. from Spanish no mas 'no more'. In other positions, noma functions also as a discourse marker meaning 'only, just' (Sippola 2010).
4· See Miestamo (2005: 3-5) for definitions on negation. According to Miestamo, negation is generally taken to be a universal category and. in terms of propositional logic, propositional negation changes the truth-value of a proposition. Miestamo considers sentential negation, which has the whole sentence in the scope of the negation, to be the linguistic counterpart of the logical concept of propositional negation. However, he considers the term to be not completely straightforward and uses a definition of standard negation instead. Standard negation refers to the basic clausal negation construction(s) in a language, i.e. the basic way(s) a language has for negating declarative verbal main clauses. 5· The spelling of my own material follows Philippine conventions used in Forman (1972) and primary stress is mar.lred. The spelling of other sources follows the original, but all glosses are mine. 6. However, as their work does not include glosses, I have glossed the Tagalog example phrases in this paper, even though the translations follow the originals.
Negation in Ternate Chabaca.no
(4)
(5)
chabakd,w.
TC
my PL chUd NEG IPFV understand chabacano 'My chUdren do not understand Chabacano:
(Sippola's field notes)
Mi ma11ga fhu
No eli ta
no ta
entendt
TC
entende.
he IPFV understand 'He doesn't understand: Nl!G
(6)
Noma
yo
(Sippola's field notes)
TC
entrd.
no.more 1sG go.in 'I didn't go (to school) anymore:
(Sippola's field notes)
The negation of non-verbal phrases is similar to that of verbal phrases. The negative particle is positioned before the topic. In example (7), lfhim is a borrowing from Tagalog, but negation follows the typical Northern Chabacano pattern with no. In Ternate Chabacano, the Tagalog borrowing hindi is used only by speakers who have heavy interference from Tagalog and the form is not considered to be Chabacano by first language speakers, even though it is commonly used in the southern variety of Mindanao Chabacano (Forman 1972: 163). In example (8), nin6 is an intensified form of no that can be used in many of the same contexts as no. (7)
TC
No ese lfhim. that secret 'That is not a secret: NEG
(8)
Mdhki kory6su
su kdra, su karakter
(Sippola's field notes)
nin6
kory6su.
even.if beautiful his face, his character INT.NEG beautiful 'Even if his face is pretty,. his character is not nice:
TC (Sippola's field notes)
In Tagalog, the standard negation is done by placing hindi before the predicate or the topic, as illustrated in (9), (10) and (11). It is the most common and versatile of the Tagalog negators (Schachter & Otanes 1972: 517-518). When the subject or the object or both are pronouns, as in example (9), they come after the negator and an optional enclitic particle. The placement of pronouns right after the negator is reflected also in Chabacano, as shown in (5) and (7) (see also Steinkriiger 2007: 372). An intensified form of hindi is hinding-hindi 'not at alL certainly nof, which occurs in most of the same contexts as hindi (Schachter & Otanes 1972: 520). This form of intensification is not used in Ternate Chabacano. (9)
Hindi raw siya para kay Gomez.
TAGALOG
for MR Gomez 'They say he isrlt for Gomez.'
(Schachter &Otanes 1972: 518)
Nl!G
(10)
l!NC 3SG
Hindi tama
!)ion.
correct that 'That isn't right'
TAGALOG
NEG
(11)
(Schachter & Otanes 1972: 517)
dumatlng ang bus.
TAGALOG
came FOC bus 'The bus didn't come:
(Schachter &Otanes 1972: 518)
Hb1di Nl!G
329
330
Eeva Sippola
The negative imperatives or prohibitive expressions in Chabacano make use of the same negative particle no, which is placed before the verb, as seen when comparing the imperative in (12) with the prohibitive in (13). Also, in the prohibitives the personal pronoun can be placed between the negative particle and the verb, as exemplified in (14). (12)
0, isplrd bo muna! Oh, walt 2SG first 'Oh, wait!'
TC
(Sippola's field notes)
(13) No habld bos, bong myedu! NBG speak 2SG, very afraid
TC
'Dorlt speak, I get so afraid!' (14)
No bo olbidd ddli el
(Sippola's field notes)
sweldu
del
pddri.
TC
NEG 2sG forget give the payment ofthe priest
'DoItt forget to give the payment for the Father:
(Stppola's field notes)
In Tagalog, the negative imperatives differ from negation with hindi and have another negator
huwag, which has the main uses of negating imperatives, as in (15), hortatives and optatives, as in (16). It also adds the meaning of negative desire to statements, including those that already have a negator. As with hindi, in addition to the pronouns, it is frequently followed by enclitic particles, as in (16) (Schachter & Otanes 1972: 523-524). (15)
Huwag mong basahin iyang liham. 2sG read that letter 'Dorlt read that letter:
TAGALOG
NBG
(16)
Huwag sana siyang pumarito. ENC 3SG come.here 'I hope he does Itt come here.'
(Schachter & Otanes 1972: 523) TAGALOG
NBG
(Schachter & Otanes 1972: 524)
The main difference between Ternate Chabacano and Tagalog negation in the prohibitive is that Temate Chabacano uses the same negator as in standard negation, while Tagalog has a different negator huwag for negative imperatives. The parallels are the possibility of placing the pronouns and enclitic particles right after the negator. There is also a small class of adjectivals in Tagalog which have verb-like meanings, but which are incapable of inflection to show variation in aspect (Schachter & Otanes 1972:261)? Ogiwara (2002) has shown that these pseudo-verbs have a connection with the use of the verbs that often occur without TMA markers in Chabacano, as in example (2). In Tagalog, the pseudo-verbs gusto, ibig and nais 'like/want' have a special negative counterpart ayaw, as in example ( 17), even though they can also be negated by hindi (Schachter & Otanes 1972: 525 ). Ternate Chabacano has no parallel to this special negative word, for the verbs without TMA markers are negated with no.
7. The Tagalog pseudo-verbs are ayaw 'doesn't like/Wllllt', kailang 'needs, ought to, must, should', dapat 'ought to, maaari 'can, may, could, mi.ghf, nais 'like, would like, want' and must, should', gusto and ibig'like, would like, puwede 'can, may, could, might' (Schachter & Otanes 1972: 261). Some Ternate Chabacano parallels are kybi 'like, want: ddbli 'must, should: pwedi 'can, may' and sdbi 'can, know'.
want:
Negation in Ternate Chabaca.no
(17)
Ayaw 11g mans1mas si Juan. NEG.like/want MR apples FOC Juan 'Juan doesn't like/want apples:
TAGALOG (Schachter & Otanes 1972: 265)
A comparison between the Chabacano negator no and the negators that have corresponding functions in Tagalog reveals that no combines the functions of various Tagalog negators and differs from the Tagalog pattern for the imperative and the pseudo-verbs, or verbs without TMA markers in Chabacano. It can be noted, however, that some related issues, such as the word order, reflect the adstrate structures.
3.2
Negation of existentials and possession
A different type of negator that connects Chabacano interestingly with its Iberian lexifier and the adstrate languages is nway. The Spanish locative existential hay 'there is' is only used in the negative derivation nway >no hay (Sp.). The corresponding affirmatives use different constructions with the existential tyeni or the locative 'ta + locative demonstrative, as demonstrated in example (18). Nway is used in the negation of existential clauses, as in (19) and (20), and the former also gives an example of the placement of the enclitic particles after the negator. (18)
Mi segUndo tak{, tyeni neg6syu, I ml buns6, ikatres, talya na Naik. TC my second be.here, have business, and my youngest, third, be.there Loc Naic 'My second (son) is here, he has a business and my youngest, the third (son), he is in NaiC: (Sippola's field notes)
(19)
Nway pa haisku:l akf na Bahra kwdndu kel. NEG ENc.yet hlgh.school here we Ternate when that 'There was no high school here in Ternate at that time:
TC (Slppola's field notes)
Similarly as for the negator no, the intensification of nway is done by placing ni before the negator, as in example (20). (20)
Ninwdy akl lrendslaid. INT.NEG.E.X here landslide 'No, there are no landslides here:
TC (Sippola's field notes)
The same negative particle nway is also used for the negation of possession, as in (21 ). The combination with the enclitic particle pa 'yet' is very common for both negators no and nway, especially in yes-no answers. 8 Affirmative possession is expressed with the verb tybti from Spanish tener 'to have, as in example (18). (21)
Nway pa yo fhu. NEG.E..."'< yet lSG child 'I do not have children yet.'
TC (Sippola's field notes)
8. E.g., 7ybJi (ba) bo ihu? 'Do you have children?' Nwdy pa. 'No (I don't yet): A yegtf ya L6let? 'Did Lolet come?' No pa. 'No, (not yet)'.
331
332
Eeva Sippola
The Philippine languages make a distinction in negative particles between standard negation, as seen above, and negation of existence. Wala is used in existential and indefinite constructions, as well as in possessive constructions, as in (22) and (23) (Schachter & Otanes 1972: 521). As in Ternate Chabacano, the positive counterpart of the existential negator is a different word. (22)
(23)
Wala ngang bahay doon. Nl!G.l!X really house there. 'There really isn't a house there: Walang pera si Mr.Ruiz. Nl!G.l!X.LK money Foe Mr. Ruiz 'Mr. Rulz doesn't have any money:
TAGALOG (Schachter & Otanes 1972: 521) TAGALOG (Schachter & Otanes 1972: 521)
The negation of existentials and possession differs from standard negation in both Ternate Chabacano and Tagalog. The languages have a specific negator for these functions, but the labels are clearly from different sources. Tagalog has only influenced the use of the negator, but not the form in Temate Chabacano.
3·3
Negative indefinite constructions
The negative indefinite terms are nominal or adverbial expressions that translate to English as 'nobodY, 'nothing, 'nowhere!, 'nevef, etc. These indefinites need not be inherently negative, but the negative sense can be contributed exclusively by a negator in the clause. In Ternate Chabacano, the negative indefinite constructions generally use the existential pattern with nway, as shown in (24). (24)
Nwdy kyb1 di minyd Icon bo. NEG.l!X who IRR bother OBJ 2SG 'Nobody will bother you:
TC
(Sippola's field notes)
The interrogative-based negative indefinite constructions are nway kyen 'nobody' as in (24), nway d6ndi 'nowhere' as in (25). A generic noun-based negative indefinite construction is for example nuay jente (nway henti in my spelling) 'nobody, no one' in (26) and nway... k6sa 'nothing (27). The word k6sa also means 'whaf, so this could also be categorised as an interrogative-based indefinite construction. Note that the negative 'even' ni can replace maski 'even' (> 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
(Sippola's field notes)
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?
(Sippola's field notes)
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:
(Sippola's field notes)
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
June Jacob and Charles E. Grimes
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.
Aspect and directionality in Kupang Malay serial verb constructions
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
June Jacob and Charles E. Grimes
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
Aspect and directionality in Kupang Malay serial verb constructions
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
June Jacob and Charles E. Grimes
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.
Aspect and directionality in Kupang Malay serial verb constructions
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
June Jacob and Charles E. Grimes
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.
Aspect and directionality in Kupang Malay serial verb constructions
(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
June Jacob and Charles E. Grimes
(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'<