THE RESTRUCTURING OF TENSE/ASPECT SYSTEMS IN CREOLE FORMATION. DONALD WINFORD, DEPARMENT OF LINGUISTICS, THE OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY, 1712 NEIL AVENUE, COLUMBUS OH 43210. Tel. (614) 292 0362. E-mail:
[email protected] 1 ABSTRACT. Current controversy over the nature of creole formation revolves around the relative roles of L1 and target language (TL) input, the nature of the target involved, and the processes of language acquisition by which creole grammar emerged. This paper attempts to reconcile conflicting views on these issues by examining the developmental processes that characterize creole formation, with special attention to the emergence of tense/aspect systems in Haitian French Creole and Sranan Tongo. I describe the creation of creole grammar as involving a process of restructuring, that is, the process by which interlanguage (IL) grammars are created and elaborated in the course of acquisition. This process of restructuring involves three major components: input (intake) from the TL, L1 influence, and internally motivated innovations. These factors operate in varying degrees in different cases of creole formation, yielding differences in the outcomes. I argue that such differences result primarily from the nature of the superstrate input, and the degree of access that learners had to it, which depended in turn on such aspects of the contact situation as demographics, degree of social interaction among superstrate and substrate speakers. Greater degrees of access to superstrate models led to more input from the latter, while reduced access led to greater degrees of substrate influence. This is reflected in the differences that Haitian Creole and Sranan Tongo display, not only in their inventory of tense/aspect categories, but also in the forms that they use to express them.