Contact Linguistics. Chap

Exercise: Find out which features of creole grammar Bickerton (see his 1981 book, chapter 2) attributed to a putative language bioprogram. Focussing on TMA or any other of these features, discuss alternative explanations for the similarities found across creoles. [on TMA similarities, see Winford 2001 for Caribbean English-lexicon creoles and DeGraff to appear for French-lexicon creoles]


6.5. Creole Syntax.

Unlike prototypical pidgins, creoles have elaborate syntactic systems, including movement rules, relativization strategies, various types of complementation and other forms of subordination, for example temporal and conditional clauses. Once more, however, creoles differ considerably in the extent to which these syntactic resources diverge from those found in their lexifiers. In the more radical creoles, as we would expect, such divergence is partly a reflection of substrate influence and partly due to internal developments.

A brief look at the more radical Atlantic creoles should suffice to illustrate some of the more definitive aspects of their syntax. Those that show clear evidence of substrate influence include identificational (contrastive) focus constructions and a variety of serial verb constructions.


6.5.1. Contrastive focus constructions.

Contrastive focus involves the fronting of a constituent introduced by a focus marker identical to the equative copula. Consider the following sentence from Jamaican Creole, for example:

(11) Jan tiff di mango yesidee.

“John stole the mango yesterday.”

Any one of the constituents of this sentence can be fronted, yielding the following:

(12) a. a jan tiif di mango yesidee.

FOC John steal the mango yesterday
“It was John who stole the mango yesterday”

b. a di mango jan tiif yesidee

“It was the mango that John stole yesterday.”

c. A yesidee jan tiif di mango

“It was yesterday that John stole the mango.”

Interestingly also, even the verb can be fronted, though a copy must appear in its original position. This construction, sometimes referred to as “predicate clefting,” is illustrated in (13)

(13) a tiif jan tiif di mango.

“John STOLE the mango”

There is some evidence that these focus constructions have models in the substrate languages of the Atlantic creoles (see Section 8.2.2 below).

6.5.2Serial verb constructions.

Among the best known aspects of Atlantic creole syntax are serial verb constructions (SVC’s) in which the serial verb (usually appearing after a main verb) performs functions associated with categories like prepositions and complementizers in the lexifier languages. Examples of the former type include “directional” as well as “dative/benefactive” SVC’s.

In directional SVC’s, a main verb of motion requires a serial verb such as ‘go’, ‘come’ etc. to indicate the direction of motion. The following sentences from Jamaican Creole illustrate (Winford 1993:231-2):

(14) a. dem bring di pikni kom a tong

They bring Det child come LOC town
“They brought the child (hither) to town”

b. Dem a waak go a maakit

They PROG walk go LOC market.
“They’re walking (thither) to the market.”

In dative/benefactive SVC’s, the serial verb “give” marks either the recipient or the beneficiary of the action of the main verb. The following examples from the Paamaka variety of the Eastern Maroon Creole illustrate (Migge 1998:236-8):

(15) a. A langa a buku gi mi (Recipient)

3sg hand Det. book give me
“S/he handed the book to me.”

b. A bai wan moi doo gi Saafika (Benefactive)

3sg buy a nice door give Saafika
S/he bought a nice door for Saafika.

Other types of SVC shared across the Atlantic EC’s include comparative constructions in which a serial verb meaning ‘surpass’ conveys the comparison, and “instrumental” SVC’s in which a verb “take” governs the instrument of the action expressed by a following verb. Examples (16) and (17) illustrate the two respective types:

(16) Amba tranga pasa/moro Kofi (Sranan, Sebba 1987:52)

Amba strong pass/surpass Kofi
“Amba is stronger than Kofi.”

(17) Mi tek naif kot di bred. (JC. Winford 1993:263)

I take knife cut Det bread
“I cut the bread with a knife.”

Again, not all CEC’s display the same range of SVC’s. Moreover, even for a particular type of SVC there are differences in the productivity of the construction. For instance, the Surinamese creoles use serial verb “give” in a wider range of functions than the most divergent varieties of GC, JC, etc (Migge 1998). The Surinamese creoles also have a richer inventory of serial verbs expressing directionality (Winford 1993:233-4).

There are many other areas of creole grammar that cannot be explored fully here. They include strategies of question formation, relativization, factive and purposive complementation, passivization and so on. All of these show significant divergence from superstrate syntax in the more radical creoles.
Let us now turn our attention to current theories or hypotheses about how creoles came into being.


7. Theories of creole formation.

Contemporary scholars remain divided over the relative contribution of superstrate and substrate languages as well as the role of language universals in creole formation. Some still adhere to Bickerton’s LBH or some version of it that ascribes the primary role in creole creation to innate universal principles (Bickerton 1999). Others maintain that, contra the LBH, creoles did not develop from pidgins but began as second language varieties of the lexifier or “superstrate” languages and gradually diverged more and more from the latter via a process of “basilectalization” (Mufwene 1996a, b). Some scholars who hold this view maintain that most of creole grammar can be traced to the lexifier language (Chaudenson 1992, 2001). Others allow for significant influence from substrate languages (Mufwene 1990). Then there are those who claim that the major influence on the grammar of “radical” creoles in fact came from the substrate languages (Lefebvre & Lumsden 1994; Lefebvre 1996; Lumsden 1999, etc.).

Recently, however, there has been a trend toward a compromise which acknowledges that creole formation involved varying degrees of “input” from both superstrate and substrate sources, and was guided by principles that regulate all cases of language contact (Mufwene 1990; DeGraff 1999b). More specifically, there is now wide agreement that creole formation was akin in many respects to a gradual process of group second language acquisition.
Exploring the precise nature of the similarities and differences between creole formation and (other) cases of group SLA promises to enrich our understanding of both. The main question that arises is what differences in the social contexts and linguistic inputs set creole formation apart from cases of shift (group SLA) such as we examined in Chapter 7. Before attempting to answer this question, we must again take into account the differences among the creoles themselves. As noted already, intermediate creoles like Bajan and Reunionnaise are essentially similar to “indigenized” varieties such as Hiberno English, Indian English and Singapore English. Indeed, it is arguable that Singapore English is more divergent from its superstrate source that either Bajan or Reunionnaise. It seems reasonable to treat these creoles as cases of shift in which access to the TL was not severely limited. Radical creoles, however, pose a more difficult problem. But before we attempt to reconstruct their history, some caveats are in order.


7.1. Reconstructing creole formation: a caveat.

Several problems arise in the attempt to faithfully reconstruct the ways creoles came into being. One, already mentioned, is the unavailability of data from the earliest stages of the process. This makes it difficult to determine not only the nature of early creole grammar, but also the nature of the linguistic inputs to it. We are still not sure of the exact superstrate input, though we know something about the settler dialects that were involved. As far as the substrates are concerned, we can assume that their structure was essentially the same then as it is now. As Thomason (1993) reminds us, three hundred years is not a very long time in the history of a language. With regard to the creoles, however, such an assumption may be dangerous. Many creoles (e.g., Jamaican, Guyanese, etc.) have been subject to continuing influence from their European lexifiers, and have changed in their direction. There is evidence, for instance, that earlier JC phonology and morphosyntax may have diverged more from English than contemporary JC does (Lalla & Da Costa 1990:37-46). Moreover, because earlier creoles were dynamic and developing systems, they have continued to change both under internal motivation and external contact, sometimes with languages other than their lexifiers. For example, Haitian Creole (Baker 1993) and Sranan (Arends 1989) show evidence of several recent internal developments. In addition, Sranan has borrowed a great deal of vocabulary and some grammatical formatives and patterns from Dutch.

Finally, as Arends (1989, 1993) and Baker (1995, 1997) have argued, we cannot assume that all of the features of earlier creole grammar were established in a single generation, as Bickerton claimed. The evidence from available historical texts of Sranan, for instance, suggests that many features, including some TMA markers and combinations, relativization strategies, etc., emerged over time. In short, the process of creole formation was a gradual one (Arends 1993). All of these caveats must be kept in mind in any attempt to reconstruct early creole formation.