Creole Formation and Second Language Acquisition. Table of Contents
TMA and the process of restructuring in creole formation
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- 5.1. The emergence of the Haitian Creole TMA system.
- Modal categories
- 5.2. The emergence of TMA in Sranan Tongo.
5. TMA and the process of restructuring in creole formation.As Bickerton (1988:278) noted, the elimination of inflectional morphology in the early stages of creole formation results in, among other things, a loss of TMA markers. Hence these have to be reconstituted in the elaboration of creole grammar. The specific sources of these TMA markers, and the nature of the processes involved in their emergence in creole verbal morphosyntax, have long been matters of controversy. Again, most of the disagreement revolves around the comparative contributions of superstrate input, substrate influence and creative innovation to the restructuring of creole TMA systems. There is clear evidence that these three types of contribution varied significantly from one case of creole creation to another. Such differences can readily be found if we compare the evolution of the Haitian Creole (HC) TMA system with that of Sranan Tongo (SN). 5.1. The emergence of the Haitian Creole TMA system.The major functional categories of the Haitian Creole TMA system are shown in Table 1, which is based on DeGraff (1999b) and Spears (1990). Table 1. Haitian Creole TMA categories. Tense/aspect. Perfective aspect Unmarked (Relative) Past te Prospective Future (a)pral(e) Progressive/Immediate Future ap Terminative (Perfect) fin(i)
Possible Future va (a/av/va) Expectation/likelihood pu
On the other hand, researchers like Chaudenson (1992), Fattier (1998), DeGraff (to appear) and others have argued that HC TMA markers as well as other functional heads are derived more or less directly from 17th century French cognates with which they share semantic and distributional properties. DeGraff (to appear) offers a succinct summary of the key points of evidence for this view, which is quite compelling. He offers various comparisons of HC and (earlier) regional French verb structures, which demonstrate close correspondences between HC TMA markers and elements used in periphrastic strategies for marking TMA meanings in the French dialects. A few examples of this will suffice. Note first of all the clear similarities between Past te and French était in sentences like the following (from DeGraff to appear: 39)
3sg PAST (already) go “He had (already) gone” b. FR. Il était (déjà) allé 3sg masc was (already) go (PP)
3sg PAST sick “S/he was/has been sick” b. FR. Il a été malade “He has been sick”
Similar correspondences can be found between HC modal pu and its French cognate, the preposition pou “for” and between Future va and French va(s), the present singular forms of aller, used in the Future construction aller + V “be going to V.” The following examples from DeGraff (to appear, 40) illustrate. (8) a. Mwen pou marye semen pwochèn (HC) 1sg. for marry week next b. Je suis pour me marier la semaine prochaine (Canadian French) 1sg am for me marry the week next “I am to get married next week”
You FUT go tomorrow b. Tu vas aller demain. “You will go tomorrow” Similar (regional) French cognates can be found for other HC TMA markers. For example, Progressive marker ap(e) has its source in the preposition après, employed in the earlier French construction être après à +V “to be V-ing.” HC Prospective (a)pral(e) can be traced to the progressive construction après (de/à) aller + V “to be going to V”. Terminative Perfect fin(i) similarly derives from the lexical verb finir.
(Relative) Past te Imperf. était / PP été Prospective Future (a)pral(e) après (de/à) aller Progressive/Immediate Future ap être après à +V Terminative (Perfect) fin(i) finir “finish” Possible Future va (a/av/va) va(s) + V Expectation/likelihood pu être pour + V In fact, as DeGraff (to appear: 39) points out, “Most of the HC functional heads…have French cognates with which they share substantial distributional and semantic properties.” These facts are in keeping with the view that the input to early HC came from first and second language varieties of regional French dialects that remained available as models during the first stages of HC formation. As DeGraff (to appear), Chaudenson (1995), Detgers (2000) and others have argued, the emergence of these TMA categories can be accounted for in terms of simplification and reanalysis of the French models by second language learners. These processes and outcomes can be found in other cases where Africans and other learners acquire French as a second language (Mather 1995; Prévost & White 2000). All of these situations also allow for a certain degree of L1 influence in the restructuring of the TMA system. As Mather (1995:259) points out:
We would expect that, in cases where superstrate input is more limited, creole creators would compensate for this by drawing more heavily on L1 knowledge as well as the internal resources of their developing IL system. A case in point is Sranan Tongo. 5.2. The emergence of TMA in Sranan Tongo.Like Haitian, Sranan Tongo employs preverbal free forms to express temporal, aspectual and modal meanings. One exception is the perfect marker kaba, which always occurs in VP-final position. The inventory of the major tense/aspect categories and the forms that express them in SN are shown in Table 3. Note that Potential sa is more of a modal than a marker of just future time reference, but it is included here for purposes of comparison with o, the other marker of futurity. Table 3. Major Tense/Aspect categories in Sranan (Winford 2000) Aspect: Perfective ø (the unmarked verb). Imperfective e Terminative Perfect VP-final kaba. Tense: Relative Past. ben Predictive Future o Mood Potential Future sa Obligation musu Root Possibility kan Physical ability man Permission mag Sentences (10 - 15) illustrate the use of each of the tense-aspect categories respectively. The relevant forms are in boldface. (11) A djuku wan man boro en here bere. 3sg. stab Art. man cut.open 3sgposs. whole belly. ‘He stabbed a man and cut open his entire belly’ (12) Wan tu fu den pikin fu owma e wroko gron now ooktu? One two of the-PL child of granny IMP work ground now too “Are some of granny’s children also cultivating the land now too?” (13) A alen disi kan stop now. Yongu, a kon tumsi furu kaba, yere. The rain this can stop now. Man it come too full already, hear “This rain can stop now. Man, it has already rained more than enough.” (14) A ben taigi mi a o kon na fesisey baka. Mi no sabi efu a go ete. he PAST tell me he FUT come LOC front.side back. I NEG know if he go yet “He told me he would come to the front again. I don’t know if he’s gone yet.” (15) Efu yu no wroko, dan yu no o nyan, tog. If you NEG work, then you NEG FUT eat, TAG “If you don’t work, then you won’t eat, right?” (16) Dan te mi miti en mi sa aksi en. Then when I meet him I POT ask him “Then when I meet him I will ask him” It is clear from the above examples that, unlike the preverbal markers of Haitian Creole, those in Sranan Tongo have no cognates in any English tense aspect markers. One possible exception to this is the potential marker sa, which some have claimed to be a form of English shall. However, it is much more probable that it derives from Dutch zal. Table 4 provides an overview of the actual sources of the Sranan tense/aspect markers. Table 4. Major Tense/Aspect categories in Sranan and their English sources. Sranan category Marker Source Perfective Unmarked Bare verb Imperfective e < de English there Terminative Perfect kaba (VP-final) Portuguese acabar “finish” Relative Past. ben Eng. been Predictive Future o Eng. go Potential sa Dutch zal Obligation musu Eng. must (Dutch?) Root possibility kan Eng. can. Physical Ability man Eng. man. Permission mag Dutch mag. This presents a very different picture from that we saw earlier for Haitian creole. In the first place, there are few, if any distributional or semantic similarities between the SN markers and their English cognates. Second, two markers, sa and kaba, have been adopted, not from English, but from Dutch and Portuguese respectively. This can only be explained in terms of the limited access to and input from, varieties of English among the Africans who created Sranan Tongo. These facts suggest, first, that the varieties of English that made up the superstrate input to the creation of Sranan did not have a TMA system or set of TMA markers that could serve as a model for those of Sranan. This of course distinguishes SN clearly from Haitian Creole. As noted earlier, it seems likely that the English input to Sranan consisted of a pidgin-like variety, similar perhaps to the one that provided the input to Hawai‘i Creole English. This pidgin, like Russenorsk, Hawai‘i Pidgin English and others (e.g, early Melanesian Pidgin) had the potential for elaboration of its resources via, for example, processes of reanalysis of available items. In general, the cases of reanalysis that created the TMA system involved substantial substrate influence. In addition, Sranan expanded this system (and other aspects of its grammar) via borrowing (mostly from Dutch), as well as through internally driven processes of change over time. Two categories that are clearly due to borrowing from non-English sources include Potential sa and Perfect kaba. The former appears as early as 1718, and may have been the only marker of futurity until English go was grammaticized to Future (g)o. Unfortunately we have no clear proof of this so far. Perfect kaba (which derives from Portuguese acabar “finish”) is modeled on the semantics and distribution of the verb “finish” in Gbe languages, which occurs in VP-final position and also seems to have been grammaticalized into a kind of Terminative Perfect (Winford, in preparation). Still other TMA categories emerged gradually over time, due to processes of grammaticalization. Some of these, like Relative Past ben < been appear to have emerged earlier than others, e.g., Future o < go and Imperfective e. The latter appears to have emerged via extension of the meaning of an earlier Progressive marker de to cover habitual and generic meanings as well. This kind of development that is has parallels in the development of progressives into imperfectives cross-linguistically. It is likely that de ‘there’ was first reanalyzed as a locative copula and then developed into a progressive marker by analogy with the locative copulas of Gbe languages, which also function as Progressive markers (see, e.g., Jondoh 1980:46). A similar development of locative copula de also occurred in Western Caribbean creoles such as Jamaican and Belizean. Contemporary Sranan also has other TMA markers that evolved via gradual grammaticalization (e.g. modal man ‘be able to’) or were borrowed from Dutch (e.g., modal mag ‘may’). Fuller details of these and other developments in the restructuring of Sranan TMA can be found in Winford (in preparation). The creation of Sranan grammar was clearly a gradual process, in which successive generations of learners contributed in different ways to the elaboration and systematization of the grammar. Children acquiring Sranan Tongo no doubt played an important role in these developments. As Arends (1989) and Baker (1995) have both argued, we cannot assume that all of the features of creole grammar were established in a single generation, as Bickerton (1984) claimed, or even in the first 70 years of settlement. The evidence from the available historical texts suggests that many features, including TMA markers, emerged over a much longer period of time. For SN, the past marker ben and future marker sa were first attested by 1718 (Baker 1995). Van den Berg (2000:50) quotes uses of VP-final kaba from court records in 1745 and of the progressive marker de in 1762. She also provides examples of two-marker combinations (e.g. sa ben) from 1757. Download 98.5 Kb. Share with your friends:
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