Morphology of Creole Languages Tracing the Origins of Inflection
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Morphology of creole languages Tracing the origins of inflection Fabiola Henri University of Kentucky [email protected] LSA Summer Institute July 7th, 2017 Partly in collaboration Olivier Bonami, Ana R. Luís Henri (Lexington) Morphology of creole languages July 2017 1 / 70 Review Outline Review On Creole morphology Comparing lexifier to creole Organization of the French paradigm Quantitative take on paradigm opacity Verb form alternation in FLC Mauritian Verb form alternation in FLC Indo-portuguese Henri (Lexington) Morphology of creole languages July 2017 2 / 70 Review Basic assumptions Ï Creoles emerged in a particular context Ï Multiple factors participate in its development Ï Creoles are not nativized pidgins + Developmental sciences: examine the ingredients that contribute to the outcome Henri (Lexington) Morphology of creole languages July 2017 3 / 70 Review Language ideology “Anomaly” doesn’t exist in language, rather, lurk- ing behind it are anomalous presumptions and convictions that obtain in linguistic theory. ACKERMAN & NIKOLAEVA 2010, 304 [QUOTE FROM A. E. KIBRIK] Henri (Lexington) Morphology of creole languages July 2017 4 / 70 On Creole morphology Outline Review On Creole morphology Comparing lexifier to creole Organization of the French paradigm Quantitative take on paradigm opacity Verb form alternation in FLC Mauritian Verb form alternation in FLC Indo-portuguese Henri (Lexington) Morphology of creole languages July 2017 5 / 70 On Creole morphology The inflectional complexity of Creoles Ï Long history of claims on the morphology of Creole languages: Ï Creoles have no morphology (Seuren 1986) Ï Creoles have simple morphology (McWhorter 2001) Ï Creoles have simpler inflection than their lexifier (Plag 2006) Ï Belongs to a larger family of claims on the simplicity of Creole languages (Bickerton 1988) + Claims on Creoles need to be substantiated by quantitative analysis and deeper examination of the data. Henri (Lexington) Morphology of creole languages July 2017 6 / 70 On Creole morphology Historical bases Creoles are characterized as corrupted versions of their lexifier languages during the colonial period. (Degraff 2005) Henri (Lexington) Morphology of creole languages July 2017 7 / 70 On Creole morphology Historical bases Creole languages result from the adaptation of a language, especially some Indo-European lan- guage, to the (so to speak) phonetic and gram- matical genius of a race that is linguistically infe- rior. DEGRAFF 2005, 297 [QUOTE FROM VINSON 1889] Henri (Lexington) Morphology of creole languages July 2017 8 / 70 On Creole morphology Historical bases Le maniement du verbe français avec ses flexions de mode, de temps, de nombre et de personne, offrait des complications que le créole devait néc- essairement écarter. Ici la simplification a été poussée à ses dernières limites. Le thème verbal n’a qu’une forme unique : mo vini je viens; to té vini tu es venu; li va vini il viendra; etc., etc. BAISSAC 1880 Henri (Lexington) Morphology of creole languages July 2017 9 / 70 On Creole morphology Creole Simplicity The world’s simplest grammars are creole gram- mars MCWHORTER 2001 Henri (Lexington) Morphology of creole languages July 2017 10 / 70 On Creole morphology Creole Simplicity Ï Morphology as a measure of language complexity in both creoles and non-creoles revived in the last decades Ï Traditional grammar Æ Morphology Proto Indo-European ! ... ! Latin ! ... ! French Ï The comparative method has been used in creolistics for typological classification but also complexity classifications Ï Creoles form a natural class distinct from other languages (McWhorter 2001, Bakker et al. 2017) Henri (Lexington) Morphology of creole languages July 2017 11 / 70 On Creole morphology Creole Simplicity Ï Complexity is evaluated on the basis of Ï Paradigm size, 51 cells in French vs 2 FLC Ï Number of features, 6 in French vs undecidable in FLC Ï Number of processes, in French stem selection + affixation vs stem selection in FLC Ï Complexity in terms of description length (Degraff 2005) Ï Not all languages can be described withing the morphemic approach. Henri (Lexington) Morphology of creole languages July 2017 12 / 70 On Creole morphology Form and content paradigms Ï Important distinction drawn by (Ackerman 2004) and later work: Ï The content paradigm of a lexeme is the structured collection of sets of morphosyntactic properties the lexeme inflects for Ï The form paradigm of a lexeme is the structured collection of forms the lexeme exhibits Ï The distinction is useful because of the existence of mismatches between content and form. Ï A prime example of such a mismatch is syncretism: a single form-paradigm cell for two content-paradigm cells. PRST.IND FUT.IND PRST.SUBJ 1SG reg-o: reg-a-m reg-a-m 2SG reg-i-s reg-e:-s reg-a:-s ... Example of syncretism in Latin : REGO ‘rule’ Henri (Lexington) Morphology of creole languages July 2017 13 / 70 Comparing lexifier to creole Outline Review On Creole morphology Comparing lexifier to creole Organization of the French paradigm Quantitative take on paradigm opacity Verb form alternation in FLC Mauritian Verb form alternation in FLC Indo-portuguese Henri (Lexington) Morphology of creole languages July 2017 14 / 70 Comparing lexifier to creole Our claim for today’s class 1. Statistically prevalent features of the lexifier system shape the creole system 2. This is partly independent of the actual forms the creole inherits Heavy use of quantitative data on the lexifiers and, where available, on the creoles to show that + French lexified creoles and Indo-Portuguese Henri (Lexington) Morphology of creole languages July 2017 15 / 70 Comparing lexifier to creole Organization of the French paradigm Outline Review On Creole morphology Comparing lexifier to creole Organization of the French paradigm Quantitative take on paradigm opacity Verb form alternation in FLC Mauritian Verb form alternation in FLC Indo-portuguese Henri (Lexington) Morphology of creole languages July 2017 16 / 70 Comparing lexifier to creole Organization of the French paradigm Sources: French vs Mauritian Ï Linguistic descriptions Mauritian (Henri 2010) Ï Lexica Mauritian Database of inflected verbs compiled on the basis of (Carpooran 2011) French Lexique 3 (New 2007): database of French inflected words with frequency data compiled from post-1950 novels + film subtitles Ï Corpora Written French 2 years of the newspaper Le Monde (2003–2004; 38.5M words), tagged and lemmatized using MElt (Denis 2009) Spoken French C-ORAL-ROM (Cresti 2004), collection of balanced corpora of spoken French, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese (» 300000 words for each language), transcribed, tagged and lemmatized + Assumption that the frequency distribution of verb forms did not vary heavily in French since the time of colonization. Henri (Lexington) Morphology of creole languages July 2017 17 / 70 Comparing lexifier to creole Organization of the French paradigm The French conjugation system Ï 51 cells + laver ‘wash’: Finite forms TAM 1SG 2SG 3SG 1PL 2PL 3PL PRS.IND lav-e lav-es lav-e lav-ons lav-ez lav-ent PST.IND.IPFV lav-ai-s lav-ai-s lav-ai-t lav-i-ons lav-i-ez lav-ai-ent PST.PFV lav-ai lav-as lav-a lav-ˆa-mes lav-ˆa-tes lav-`er-ent FUT.IND lav-er-ai lav-er-as lav-er-a lav-er-ons lav-er-ez lav-er-ons PRS.SBJV lav-e lav-es lav-e lav-i-ons lav-i-ez lav-ent PST.SBJV lav-ass-e lav-ass-es lav-ˆat lav-ass-i-ons lav-ass-i-ez lav-ass-ent COND lav-er-ais lav-er-ais lav-er-ait lav-er-i-ons lav-er-i-ez lav-er-aient IMP --- lav-e --- lav-ons lav-ez --- Nonfinite forms PST.PTCP INF PRS.PTCP M.SG F.SG M.PL F.PL lav-er lav-ant lav-´e lav-´ee lav-´es lav-´ees Henri (Lexington) Morphology of creole languages July 2017 18 / 70 Comparing lexifier to creole Organization of the French paradigm The French conjugation system Ï 51 cells + laver ‘wash’: Finite forms TAM 1SG 2SG 3SG 1PL 2PL 3PL PRS.IND lav-e lav-es lav-e lav-ons lav-ez lav-ent PST.IND.IPFV lav-ai-s lav-ai-s lav-ai-t lav-i-ons lav-i-ez lav-ai-ent PST.PFV lav-ai lav-as lav-a lav-ˆa-mes lav-ˆa-tes lav-`er-ent FUT.IND lav-er-ai lav-er-as lav-er-a lav-er-ons lav-er-ez lav-er-ons PRS.SBJV lav-e lav-es lav-e lav-i-ons lav-i-ez lav-ent PST.SBJV lav-ass-e lav-ass-es lav-ˆat lav-ass-i-ons lav-ass-i-ez lav-ass-ent COND lav-er-ais lav-er-ais lav-er-ait lav-er-i-ons lav-er-i-ez lav-er-aient IMP --- lav-e --- lav-ons lav-ez --- Nonfinite forms PST.PTCP INF PRS.PTCP M.SG F.SG M.PL F.PL lav-er lav-ant lav-´e lav-´ee lav-´es lav-´ees Henri (Lexington) Morphology of creole languages July 2017 19 / 70 Comparing lexifier to creole Organization of the French paradigm Orthography vs Speech The distinctions seen in the French orthography differ from those in speech. Henri (Lexington) Morphology of creole languages July 2017 20 / 70 Comparing lexifier to creole Organization of the French paradigm The French conjugation system Ï 51 cells + laver ‘wash’: Finite forms TAM 1SG 2SG 3SG 1PL 2PL 3PL PRS.IND lav lav lav lav-˜O lav-e lav PST.IND.IPFV lav-E lav-E lav-E lav-j-˜O lav-j-e lav-E PST.PFV lavE lava lava lava-m lava-t lavE-K FUT.IND lav@-K-E lav@-K-a lav@-K-a lav@-K-˜O lav@-K-e lav@-K-˜O PRS.SBJV lav lav lav lav-j-˜O lav-j-e lav PST.SBJV lava-s lava-s lava lava-s-j-˜O lava-s-j-e lava-s COND lav@-K-E lav@-K-E lav@-K-E lav@-K-j-˜O lav@-K-j-e lav@-K-E IMP --- lav --- lav-˜O lav-e --- Nonfinite forms PST.PTCP INF PRS.PTCP M.SG F.SG M.PL F.PL lave lav-˜A lave lave lave lave Henri (Lexington) Morphology of creole languages July 2017 21 / 70 Comparing lexifier to creole Organization of the French paradigm The French conjugation system Ï 51 cells + laver ‘wash’: