Contact Linguistics. Chap

Exercise: Lumsden’s (1999) account of the role of relexification in creole formation seems to imply that certain aspects of creole grammar (e.g. syntactic structures) emerged earlier that others (e.g. grammatical categories). What evidence is there that this was true? Does this also apply in the case of extended pidgins?


9.2.2. Substrate influence as “transfer.”

All of the types of substrate influence described in the preceding section have also been explained in terms of the “transfer” of L1 features onto L2-derived forms (Siegel 1999, Wekker 1996). This approach has paid most attention to morphosyntactic than to lexico-semantic or syntactic structures. Siegel (1999) for instance, examines seven core morphosyntactic features of Melanesian Pidgin (MP) and argues that they derive directly from Central Eastern Oceanic (CEO) languages, the relevant substrates. One of his examples is the organization of the MP pronominal system, discussed in Chapter 8. Here distinctions such as exclusiveness and a four-way number opposition, and even the morphemic composition of the pronominal forms, directly parallel those in CEO languages. Other examples include the use of a subject-referencing marker in the VP and the use of property items as verbs. Both of these features are illustrated in the following examples, which compare Bislama with Tangoa, a language of Vanuatu (Siegel 1999:14-15).

(29) a. Bislama. Haos ya i big-fala

house DET 3sg. big-adj.
“This house is big.”

b. Tangoa Tamioci sei mo para mo malokoloko

man DET 3sg fat 3sg tired-tired
“This man is fat and lazy” (Camden 1997:107)

These features are explained in terms of the strategy of transfer, according to which L2 forms that are congruent in meaning and/or position with L1 forms acquire the properties of the latter. Siegel (2000) offers a similar explanation for the emergence of various morphosyntactic features of Hawai‘i English Creole. For example, the selection of stay as copula and progressive marker was due in part to L1 Portuguese learners who identified it with estar, the copula used in such functions in Portuguese. In this case, reinforcing influence may have come from Cantonese, another principal substrate, which uses the verb háidouh “to be (t)here” as a progressive marker Jeff Siegel pc Feb. 2002). Siegel refers to this as “substrate reinforcement”, where features from different substrate languages reinforce the retention of reanalyzed L2 forms.