Symposium Language Contact and the Dynamics of Language: Theory and Implications. Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. Leipzig. May 10-13, 2007.
Processes of creole formation and related contact-induced language change. Donald Winford. The Ohio State University. [email protected]
It is to some extent arguable that creole formation has always been at the center of the study of contact languages. In the first place, creoles and pidgins were among the first foci of attention for 19th century historical linguists who challenged orthodox Stammbaum theories of language change. The most important of these scholars was undoubtedly Hugo Schuchardt 1882, 1883(, whose work on pidgins creoles and other outcomes of language contact explicitly challenged the conventional wisdom concerning the rarity of language mixture and affirmed the universality of contact-induced change. Schuchardt and other pioneers of creole studies such as Coelho (1880-6) and Hesseling (1897) explored many of the issues that are still topics of debate today, including the relationship between creoles and first and second language acquisition, and the role of substrate influence and universals in creole formation. Secondly, the processes of creole formation and the typological characteristics of creoles have long been a point of reference and comparison for other outcomes of language contact. During the last four decades of the 20th century, creole linguistics in many ways dominated the emerging field of contact linguistics, and it was commonplace for scholars to extend the term “creolization” to a variety of contact languages that arose under very different sociohistorical circumstances from those that produced creoles. The first major publication devoted to the ‘pidginization and creolization of languages” (Hymes 1971) contained several papers on contact situations that had not hitherto been treated as related to creole formation. For instance, Gumperz & Wilson (1971) described the well-known situation of language contact between Urdu, Kannada and Marathi in Kupwar, India, suggesting that the Kupwar varieties have processes of reduction and convergence
1 suggestive of pidginization and creolization” and that “the present state of the varieties is creole-like, in that one finds grammatical structure and lexical shape pointing to different sources, quite like the stereotype of a pidgin or creole as the words of one language used with the grammar of another” (1971:165). Similarly, Southworth (1971) suggested that, “whether or not Marathi qualifies as a true creole, its present characteristics are probably the result of a prolonged process of mutual adaptation between an Aryan language and a local pidgin-creole (or more likely, a series of pidgin-creoles)” (1971:268). Finally, Bailey & Maroldt (1977) argued that Middle English emerged as a result of processes of creolization involving influence from Old Norse and Norman French on Anglo-Saxon. They note that Middle English displays features typically associated with creoles, such as analyticity, simplification of bound morphology, and the use of Anglo- Saxon words in French functions. They describe creolization in a very broad sense, as follows:
By creolisation, the authors wish to indicate gradient mixture of two or more languages; in a narrow sense, a creole is the result of mixing which is substantial enough to result in a new system, a system that is separate from its antecedent parent systems. (1977:21).
In short, “creolization” became a cover term for different types of language mixture in a variety of contact situations. This generalization of the term seems at odds with its traditional use to refer to the elaboration of a pidgin, which Hymes (1971:84) referred to as “that complex process of sociolinguistic change comprising expansion in inner form, with convergence, in the context of extension in use,” The extension of the term to various contact situations was, in a sense, a reflection of its indeterminacy and lack of clear definition. There was no clear articulation of the precise nature of the linguistic processes that were shared across the claimed cases of “creolization,” or of the similarities and differences that led to such varied outcomes. Inconsistency in the use of the term among creolists themselves did not help. On the one hand, “creolization” has been used to refer to social processes such as the nativization or the vernacularization of a pidgin or expanded pidgin. On the other, it refers variously to a process of restructuring
2 of a target language by adults in second language acquisition, a process of “second language acquisition by several generations of …adults” (Arends 1995:235), and a process of first language acquisition by children targeting impoverished input. Moreover, there emerged a number of dubious assumptions about the nature of creoles and the process of creole formation. Among these are the view that there are specific linguistic features that are definitive of creoles as a type, and specific processes of change and restructuring peculiar to creole formation. Yet, until recently, neither the linguistic features nor the processes have been carefully explained or documented. The work of the last two decades has certainly filled the gap in our understanding. There is now growing recognition that the kinds of linguistic processes found in creole formation are common to other kinds of restructuring under contact. Such processes include various forms of ‘simplification’, varying degrees of structural convergence, the reanalysis of lexical items of one language in terms of the grammatical categories of another, and various other phenomena that are due to internally and externally motivated change. The more we understand about these phenomena, the closer we get to a unified framework in which to describe them. Henceforth, I focus my attention on those aspects of creole formation that have to do with substratum influence, which I will argue manifests itself in a wide variety of contact situations not traditionally treated as involving the creation of creoles. Creolists now generally degree that creole formation represents a somewhat unusual type of group second language acquisition, and therefore shares much in common with other cases of “natural” second language acquisition in terms of the processes of restructuring and the principles underlying them. Significant progress has been made of late in understanding these principles, particularly as they relate to the role of substrate influence. However, there is still no consensus on any one theoretical framework that might best explain the processes of creole formation. Various frameworks and models have been proposed for the description and analysis of substratum influence. Among them are Siegel’s (1999, 2000) Transfer Model, Lefebvre’s (1998) Relexification model, and Myers-Scotton’s (2002) Convergence model. The variety of terms and labels that have been used to describe the workings of substrate influence testifies to the apparent lack of consensus. I will argue that, in fact, the lack of agreement is only
3 apparent, and that these frameworks are all concerned with essentially the same process, and complement one another in various ways. The transfer model provides good insight into the constraints on the way L1 influence works under contact. The relexification hypothesis provides insight into the linguistic processes involved. The convergence model provides insight into the psycholinguistic processes that underlie the changes that occur. Hence, the three models can be integrated into a coherent picture of one of the primary mechanisms involved in creole formation – the transfer type that van Coetsem (1988) refers to as “imposition.” I will argue that imposition is the transfer type involved in the processes of change that have been referred to variously as relexification, transfer and convergence in Creole formation.
Van Coetsem’s framework
In order to address this issue, there is need for a consistent general framework within which processes of contact-induced change can be distinguished and categorized. The framework I employ here was introduced by van Coetsem (1988, 2000), who distinguishes between two types of cross-linguistic influence, or what he calls ‘transfer types”, namely, borrowing and imposition. The latter is largely equivalent to terms like ‘interference via shift’, ‘transfer’ ‘indirect diffusion’, and ‘substratum influence’ that appear in the literature. Borrowing and imposition, in this framework, are not seen as ‘mechanisms’ or ‘processes’, but rather as transfer types, or vehicles of contact-induced change. In both cases, there is a source language (SL) and a recipient language (RL). The direction of transfer of linguistic features is always from the SL to the RL, and the agent of transfer can be either the RL or the SL speaker. In the former case, we have borrowing (recipient language agentivity), in the latter, imposition (source language agentivity). Lexical borrowing is a typical example of the former kind of transfer, as illustrated in the many lexical items that have been adopted by English from various languages. Source language agentivity is exemplified in cases of second language acquisition, where learners transfer features of their first or primary language (the source language) into their version of the second (recipient) language.
4 Van Coetsem’s distinction refines the traditional distinction between borrowing and ‘interference’ by defining these types of cross-linguistic influence more precisely, and above all, by distinguishing the kinds of agentivity they involve. Also highly relevant to the distinction between borrowing and imposition is the notion of language dominance. As Van Coetsem (2000:84) explains, difference in linguistic dominance is the main criterion for distinguishing between RL and SL agentivity. In the former case, the RL is the dominant language of the speaker, while in the latter case, the SL is the dominant language. When we speak of dominance here, we are referring to linguistic dominance, that is, the fact that the speaker is more proficient in one of the languages in contact. This must be distinguished from social dominance, which refers to the political or social status of one of the languages. The socially dominant language may or may not be the linguistically dominant language of the speaker. Of course, dominance relationships may change over time, both in the individual speaker. And such shifts in dominance may result in different outcomes, or lead to attrition of the previously dominant language. These considerations require us to distinguish the agents of change from the kinds of agentivity they employ in introducing changes to a recipient language. The fact is that the same agent can employ either type of agentivity, and hence both transfer types, in the same contact situation. This is particularly true of highly proficient bilinguals, though not restricted to them alone. As we will see, this has significant implications for taxonomies of contact phenomena, and for the ways in which we analyze them. Differences between RL and SL agentivity are also related to what Van Coetsem (1988:25) calls the ‘stability gradient’ of language. This refers to the fact that certain components of a language, such as phonology, morphology and syntax, tend to be more stable and hence resistant to change, while others, such as vocabulary, are less stable and thus more amenable to change. The less stable nature of the lexicon explains lexical borrowing tends to be much more common than structural borrrowing. In addition, borrowing usually has little if any effect on the recipient language’s grammar. In imposition, on the other hand, it is the source language grammar that is more stable and resistant to change, and hence its grammatical features tend to be retained, leading to significant structural change in the speaker’s version of the recipient language. There may well be differences in degree of stability within different aspects of the grammar,
5 which may lead to different potential for transfer. Thus certain function morphemes tend to be transferred more readily than others, and word order, for instance, seems to be transferred more readily than, say, embedding strategies. Van Coetsem’s approach represents a departure from taxonomies based on socio- historical criteria, such as that introduced by Thomason and Kaufmann (1988), in favor of classifications based on the actual mechanisms involved in contact-induced change, as well as the constraints on their operation. Moreover, Van Coetsem’s approach emphasizes the difference between the results of such change, and the processes or ‘mechanisms’ underlying them. This remedied a serious weakness in previous approaches, where terms like ‘borrowing’, ‘transfer’ and the like had long been used (and still are) to refer both to the outcomes of contact, and the mechanisms that produce them. Van Coetsem’s approach is based on the conviction that language contact studies should focus on the transmission mechanism, which is an individual phenomenon, and not just on the diffusion of change, which is a social phenomenon. The former has to do with the (psycho)linguistic processes of change that reside in individual minds, while the latter has to do with processes of diffusion, leveling and focusing (conventionalization) within speech communities, which are sociolinguistically motivated. This emphasis on the cognitive processes involved in the contact-induced change is equally as important as the traditional concern with socio-historical and sociolinguistic aspects of contact. It allows for new connections to be made between purely structural and sociolinguistic approaches to contact, and psycholinguistic models of plurilingual speech production.
Prototypical cases of borrowing.
Prototypical cases of borrowing include lexical borrowing, such as the borrowing of lexical items from English into Japanese (Loveday 1996) or from classical languages into English. The crucial fact about borrowing is that it has little or no effect on the structure of the rl, at any level. Imported items are integrated phonologically, morphologically and syntactically into the rl, via a process van Coetsem calls “adaptation.” This is also true of the process by which single morphemes from an external “embedded” language are inserted into the morphosyntactic frame of a “matrix
6 language” in what Myers-Scotton (2002:86) refers to as “classic” code switching. In terms of Van Coetsem’s framework, such insertion also constitutes a case of the transfer type borrowing under rl agentivity. Researchers are in general agreement that this type of codeswitching is practically indistinguishable from lexical borrowing (Winford 2003:107-108). The following examples illustrate:
(1) Hata siku hizi ni-me-decide kwanza kutumia sabuni ya miti.
even days these 1s-PERF-decide first to use soap of stick. "[But] even these days I've decided first to use bar soap." (2) Hij komt uit ne sens unique. He comes out a direction unique “He comes out of a one-way street” (Treffers-Daller 1994:214)
Prototypical cases of imposition. The effects of imposition are quite different. As Van Coetsem (1988:18) notes, this process is typical of second language acquisition, and, as noted earlier, corresponds to what has traditionally been called “transfer’ in that area of study. Learners usually employ features of their L1 to compensate for their limited proficiency in an L2, especially in the early stages of acquisition. Such L1 (sl) features are, in Van Coetsem’s terms, imposed on the L2 (rl). They may include vocabulary and semantics, as well as phonology, morphology, and syntax. Further examples are provided by Nemser’s (1991) study of the acquisition of L2 English by German-speaking Austrian students. For instance, they produced English sentences in which the argument structure of the verb corresponded to that of German rather than English. The following illustrate (Nemser 1991:360):
(3) Explain me something (compare German Erklar mir was) (4) You just finished to eat (Cf G. Du hast gerade aufgehört zu essen)
7 Nemser (356) also provides examples of phonological imposition on the part of his students, such as substitution of German /e/ [ε] for English /µ/ in words like sat, /s/ for /θ/ in words like thin, and /a/ for /⁄/ in words like luck.
Imposition and language contact.
We are now in a position to extend the insights and findings on creole formation to other cases of contact. I argue here that the processes of change typical of imposition are to be found in a wide variety of contact situations, including second language acquisition, creole formation, the formation of ‘indigenized’ varieties of English, cases of convergence such as those described for Kupwar (Gumperz & Wilson 1971) and NW New Britain (Thurston 1987); “converted languages such as Sri Lanka Portuguese and Sri Lanka Malay (Bakker 2003); and cases of “metatypy” (Ross 2007). The phenomena we observe in all these cases bear striking resemblances to each other, and illustrate the processes associated with imposition, which have been referred to variously as “transfer”, “relexification” and “convergence.” Among the results we observe are: the imposition of SL grammatical functions on RL morphemes,the imposition of the argument structures of SL verbs onto RL lexemes; the imposition of SL word order on to the RL; and, in surprisingly many cases, the imposition of the entire morphosyntactic frame (metatypy). These phenomena form a cline, representing varying degrees of convergence between languages.
Imposition of grammatical categories: The process by which recipient language lexical items have been re-interpreted to express the grammatical categories expressed by corresponding forms in the source language have been referred to variously as ‘calquing’ or “reanalysis.” We find cases of these in a wide variety of contact situations.
Melanesian Pidgin
8 Siegel (1999) discusses seven core morphosyntactic features of Melanesian Pidgin (MP) and argues that they derive their functions directly from Central Eastern Oceanic (CEO) languages, the relevant substrates. The features include the use of a subject-referencing marker in the VP and the use of property items as verbs, as illustrated in the following examples, which compare Bislama with Tangoa, a language of Vanuatu (14–15).
(5) 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’
Sranan Tongo.
In Sranan and other Surinamese creoles, the category of completive aspect is conveyed by a marker that is formally similar to a main verb meaning ‘finish’ kaba (< Portuguese acabar ‘finish’) Unlike other TMA markers, it occurs in VP-final position, and indicates that a situation is completed, yielding the sense of a perfect of result with non-statives, including activities, accomplishments and achievements, and the sense of a state beginning in the past and continuing to the reference point with statives . In all these cases, kaba etc. can be interpreted as a relational adverb conveying the sense of “already.”
(6) SN yu ben pai en kaba? ‘Have you already paid him?’
Both the completive category, and its syntactic expression are modeled on a similar construction in the Gbe languages:
9 (7) Ajagbe A·xO·su lO a·, e vafl lOfl vO·.
king the TOP he come arrive COM ‘As for the king, he has already come.’
(8) Fongbe kO·kufl …u· mO·li·nkufln Ofl vO· Koku eat rice DET finish Koku finished eating the rice. (Da Cruz 1995:361).
Several other TMA categories in the Surinamese creoles are also modeled on Gbe categories.
Hiberno-English
In Hiberno-English we find evidence of the imposition of Irish Gaelic aspectual categories and morphosyntactic patterns in verb phrase structure, as in the following example:i
(9) HE: She's after selling the boat
“She's just sold the boat”.
(10) Irish: Tá sí tréis an bád a dhíol.
Be + non-past she after the boat selling.
Singapore English.
Boa (2005) demonstrates how the use and meaning of already in Singapore English parallels that of the Chinese Completive Perfect marker le. Thus, both already and le convey the sense of incompletive with a non-stative verb, as in the following examples (I label le as COMPL): (11) I wash my hand already (Bao, p. 239) ‘I (have) washed my hand’ (12) wo#men chi‡ le liúlián (Bao, p. 242) We eat COMPL durian
10 “We ate durian’ The only difference here is that completive le follows the verb, while already is VP-final. Similarly, both already and le convey the sense of an ‘inchoative’ with statives (including habituals). (13) a. The wall white already. (Bao p. 239) ‘The wall (has) turned white/ *The wall was white’ b. Last time John was a housing agent. Now he drive taxi for a living already. (p. 241)
Compare Chinese:
(14) a. qiáng bái le (p. 242) wall white COMPL The wall is whitened’ b. zha‡ngsa‡n ka‡i ché móu she‡ng le Zhangsan drive car for life COMPL ‘Zhangsan now drives for a living’
Finally, both VP-final already and VP-final le convey the sense of ‘inceptive’ (the start of an event):
(15) It rain already (p. 241) ‘It has started to rain’ (16) xià yu# le (p.242) down rain COMPL “It started/is about to rain’
Imposition of subcategorization frames: Lefebvre and her associates provide many examples of ‘relexification’ in Haitian Creole, much of whose grammar they claim is based on that of Gbe languages such as Fongbe and Ewegbe. Many of these deal with the transfer of subcategorization frames to
11 HC verbs. For instance, verbs like voye ‘send’ assume the subcategorization properties of the corresponding Fongbe verbs, e.g., tE · ‘send’ as in the following examples (1998:284):
(17) a. Fongbe: é tE· ka·n sE·dofl Mari b. Haitian: Li voye telegram bay Mari he send telegram send/give Mary ‘He sent a telegram to Mary.’ c. French: Il a envoyé un télégramme à Marie. ‘He sent a telegram to Mary.’
Lefebvre (284) argues that, in these and other cases, “the Case properties of the Haitian verbs.. should be considered as having been transferred from the substratum language into the creole through relexification.” Similar changes in the argument structure and subcategorization of superstrate verbs on the model of substrate verbs are well documented for other cases of creole formation. For example, Caribbean creoles preserve abstract Kwa syntactic patterns in their SVC's, as illustrated in the following example of "give"-type serial constructions in Sranan Tongo, whose primary substrate influence came from Gbe dialects.
(18) ND. mi seli a osu gi en. I sell the house give him. Ewe. ye òra maSên-a ne Amba. they sell machine-the give Amba. Twi me tOOn me dan ma-a no nnera.
I sell-PAST my house give-PAST him yesterday. “I sold the house to him yesterday.”
(19) Sranan: Kofi hari a ston puru na ini a olo Kofi pull the stone removeLOC in the hole. "Kofi pulled out the stone from the hole" (Sebba 1987:123)
12 (20) Xwela-Gbe: kOku yi xoma lO le sO oxi-me Koku take book the pl. go market-LOC. "Koku brought the book to the market.”
But we find similar changes in many other situations not traditionally associated with creole formation, such as the following:
Second Language Acquisition. Helms-Park (2003) discusses examples like the following, from the L2 English of elementary-level Vietnamese learners.
(21) L2 English: Suzie cooked butter melted (2003:228) ‘Suzie melted the butter’ Vietnamese: Hoà dun nu’ó’c soi (2003:217) Hoa cook(liquid) water boil ‘Hua boiled the water”
(22) L2 English: Harry is shake the bell rang ‘Harry rang the bell.’ Vietnamese: Giáp rung cái chuông reo Giap shake CLAS bell ring ‘Giap rang the bell.’
In attempting to produce L2 sentences with causative verbs, the Vietnamese learners are clearly transferring the lexicalization patterns of their L1 onto their L2 English, creating serial verb constructions similar to those in their L1. In these cases, this goes hand in hand with the transfer of the L1 argument structures. As Helms-Park ” (2003:213). notes, this is a fairly common strategy in SLA, by which learners “treat TL verbs as though they had the lexico-semantic structure and accompanying argument structures of their ostensible L1 translation equivalents.
13 Indigenized” Englishes: Ho & Plattt (1993) document a variety of features particularly in the morphosyntax and syntax of Sg.E. which are due to L1 retention from Chinese in particular, or to processes of simplification and regularization, or to the combined effects of both. Thus we find serial verb constructions like the following, which reflect the syntax of both
Mandarin and Hokkien, the two principal Sg.E. substrates.
(23) Sg.E. That book on the tv, take come here.
Compare:
(24) Mandarin: na la‡i
bring come
(25) Hokkien: gîa/théh lâi
bring/take come.
(26) Sg.E. You sit car come here, ah?
“Did you come here by car?”
Compare:
(27). Hokkien: lí che chhia lâi chit-tau ah?
you sit car come here QP
“Did you come here by car?”
Similarly, Sg.E. employs Chinese-style question tagging as in the following:
(28) "Our chicken also the same, all came from one chicken, right or not?"
Other features which are clearly due to Chinese substratum influence (sometimes reinforced by Malay) include the use of "emphatic" got;ii use of one as a relative marker, or as a marker of emphasis in sentence-final position;iii the use of “topic-comment
14 structures”;iv and the use of several discourse particles, e.g., ma, ah, lah, etc., borrowed directly from Chinese. Similarities such as these have led some scholars such as Ritchie (1986) to suggest that basilectal Sg.E. is in some respects typologically closer to Chinese than to English.
Taiwanese Mandarin. We might compare the retention of native Taiwanese morpho-syntactic patterns in the vernacular Mandarin acquired as a second language in Taiwan, as in the following examples from Lin.v Note how Taiwanese Mandarin (TM) retains the syntactic patterns of native Taiwanese (TW), departing from standard (Beijing) Mandarin (BM).
(29) TW: wa iung gyan-e ki hakhao.
I use walking go school
TM: wo yòng zou-de qù xuéxiào.
I use walking go school
BM: wo zoulu dào xuéxiào
I walk go school
“I walk to school”
Language attrition: Silva-Corvalán discusses several changes in Los Angeles (LA) Spanish that can be attributed to influence from English, which is the socially dominant language, and has become, for many speakers, the linguistically dominant language as well. We find examples such as the following (Silvia-Corvalán 1998:233):
(30) LA Spanish. Yo gusto eso I like-1s that
15 Gen Span. A mi me gusta eso. To me pro please-3s that “I like that.”
Here, gustar, which has a theme or patient subject and an indirect experiencer object in general Spanish, is reanalyzed as a transitive verb with an experiencer subject and an accusative theme, on the model of English like.
Syntactic convergence
Word order in Asia Minor Greek. Grecophone communities in Asia Minor Greek spoke a form of Greek that was so heavily influenced by Turkish, that it led Dawkins to make the famous pronouncement that “the body has remained Greek, but the soul has become Turkish” (1916:198). Turkish influence was pervasive and heavy in all domains of the language, lexicon, phonology, morphology and syntax. The following examples come from Janse (to appear). SOV order is far more frequent than others, reflecting the fact that this is the norm in Turkish (Section 4.2.3.1).1 (31) eto naiki eto to korits dhen do thelixen that woman that the child didn’t it want “That woman didn’t want the child.”
MG. Ekeini i gynaika dhen ithele ekeino to koritsi That the woman didn’t want that the girl
In copula constructions, the copula is frequently clause-final, as in Turkish (Section 4.2.3.3). (32) isy ena fikare sai you a poor man are “You are a poor man.”
1 I am very grateful to Dimitris Kritsotakis for supplying Modern Greek translations of the Cappadocian Greek sentences.
16 (33) MG eisai enas ftochos anthropos you-are a poor man
Syntactic isomorphism.
Convergence in Sri Lanka Portuguese and Malay. Bakker notes, Sri Lanka Portuguese emerged out of contact between a Portuguese lexicon creole and Tamil, and has become a completely different language from its creole ancestor due to heavy influence from Tamil. He argues that “the language makes use of Portuguese forms or elements to express Tamil grammatical categories,” and also that it “changed from an analytic, prepositional and SVO language to an agglutinative, postpositional and SOV language, undoubtedly under the pressure of Tamil (2003:117). He cites examples like the following, from Smith (1979).
(34) a. E:w eli-p« diñe:ru ja:-dá (SL Portuguese) b. Na:n avan-ukku calli-ya kúTu-tt-an (SL Tamil) I him-DAT money-ACC past-give-PAST-CNC ‘I gave him the money’ (Portuguese: (Eu) dei o dinheiro para/a ele)
(35) a. «k«-ntu fu:l« p«-bota: na:poy na: (SL Portuguese) that-LOC` flower INF-put NEGPOT-can TAG At-ila pu: po:T-a e:l-a:t e: (SL Tamil) That-LOC flower put-INF can-NEGPOT TAG ‘[You] can’t embroider [lit. put flowers] on that [sewing machine]’ (Portuguese: Naquilo nu€o se pode bordar, nu€o é)
On the whole, Bakker concludes, SLP “is semantically Tamil, grammatically close to Tamil, but all the morphemes are Portuguese and not Tamil” (2003:118). A similar process of change has affected Sri Lanka Malay, also because of heavy influence from Tamil. Hussainmiya
17 (1987:168) characterizes it as a language “of Malay words with a syntactic structure of [Sri Lanka Tamil].” Bakker refers to languages like these as converted languages, which he defines as “languages which changed their typological outlook radically, kept their vocabulary and used native language material in order to copy the grammatical structure of another language” (2003:116). Bakker does not describe exactly how this process of conversion came about, but it seems clear that it represents another extreme case of imposition, in which the abstract semantic-syntactic structure of Tamil (as SL) was imposed via SL agentivity to the Portuguese creole that was the target of learning (RL).
Convergence in NW. New Britain
Thurston (1987:27) argues that “all the languages of NWNB, whether NAN, Siasi, Whiteman or Bibling, share a common grammatical and semantic structurethat varies only in detail from one language to another. The major difference distinguishing one language from another in this area is the form of lexical items.” He provides numerous examples, including the following (1987:76): (36) Anem (NAN) onu i-i a-x-î agonu bizaN Mouk (BIB) osep ti-poulou tan axmok kodoN Lamogai (BIB) oduk ti-gel pe itar kodoN Lusi (SIASI) pana ti-out pa tuaNa gasili Amara (WHITE) otodgoio ki-pod ne eivin ma People 3p-arrive at village completive “People have already arrived at the village.”
As Thurston (1987:68) notes, “in switching between languages, a speaker is mostly switching between wordlists while using the same semantic and syntactic structures.” The situation here involved very complex patterns of contact resulting in massive borrowing as well as imposition at all levels of structure. Thurston (1987:91) notes that the direction of influence has been from NAN to AN, from AN to NAN, and from AN to AN. But it would appear that most of the
18 semantic-syntactic transfer was from NAN to AN languages. The results here are quite similar to the other cases of extreme structural imposition discussed above.
Toward a synthesis: As noted earlier, all of the models proposed to explain creole formation shed their own light on the process, and complement one another. First, the research of Siegel (1997, 2000, 2003) builds on the insights of research in second language acquisition to explore the various constraints on the role of transfer (L1 influence) in creole formation. Siegel argues that such constraints fall into two broad categories, ‘availability constraints’ and ‘reinforcement principles.’ The former have to do with whether there is a salient morpheme or string of morphemes in the superstrate input, which “can be used or reanalyzed according to the rule of the substrate” (2000:83). Superstrate morphemes that are perceptually salient and bear resemblance in meaning or function to substrate morphemes are especially likely to be selected and reinterpreted in terms of the latter. These availability constraints are based ultimately on Andersen’s (1983, 1990) “Transfer to Somewhere Principle” for SLA, which states that transfer will occur only if “natural acquisition principles are consistent with the L1 structure”, and … “there exists within the L2 input the potential for (mis)generalization from the input to produce the same form or structure” (1990:61). In other words, L2 forms that are congruent in meaning and/or position with L1 forms acquire the properties of the latter. Reinforcement principles determine which features will be retained and which discarded. A key principle seems to be that features shared across the individual IL’s will be retained. In case where (the majority of) the substrate languages are typologically similar, such features occur frequently as a result of similar kinds of L1 influence. Similarly, in situations where the population of learners shares a common L1, it is more likely it is that similar strategies of L1 retention etc will be found across the shifting group. In cases where competing variants arise, the more transparent or salient ones survive. In both instances, then, features that are less marked by virtue of similarity, frequency and transparency are most likely to be retained in the emerging community language. This would explain, for instance, why Melanesian Pidgin grammar retains a common core of features shared across its CEO substrates (Keesing 1988:123).
19 The most significant contribution of Siegel’s Transfer model is that it addresses the possible constraints on transfer in great detail and provides a rationale for why some changes occur, while others don’t. The model offers us a sound empirical method of testing substrate influence by comparing the surface structure configurations of creole and substrate languages. But it does not really explain the mechanism of “transfer” in any principled way, or offer a testable hypothesis about the linguistic process underlying that mechanism. The relexification hypothesis (RH) (Lefebvre & Lumsden 1994; Lefebvre 1998, 2001: 375) offers such a hypothesis about the linguistic process itself. It proposes that, “in creole genesis, the process of relexification is used by speakers of the substratum languages as a tool for acquiring a second language, the superstratum language.” Like the transfer approach, the relexification hypothesis offers a testable way to demonstrate similarities between substrate and creole semantic and syntactic patterns, via a close comparison of their structures. Moreover, it acknowledges that the role of relexification in creole genesis is similar to its role in (adult) second language acquisition, where learners also link “the semantic and syntactic properties of a lexical entry of [their] native language with a phonological form derived from the data of a target language” (133). Lefebvre and her associates describe relexification as a process whereby the creators of a creole retain their L1 lexical entries more or less intact, while replacing their phonetic shapes with those of superstrate lexical items. This means that the resulting creole lexical entry has the semantic and syntactic properties of a corresponding entry in the substrate language. The process of assigning a new phonological representation to a copied lexical entry is referred to (375) as ‘relabeling.’ However, it is almost never the case that substrate or L1 lemmas in their entirety become associated with the relevant TL or RL phonetic forms, as both Lefebvre and Lumsden seem to imply. For instance, the ‘relexification’ concept fails to provide an explanation for the fact that crucial aspects of these L1 lemmas, including diacritic features (morphological expression of grammatical categories such as case, agreement, number and the like) are not transferred to forms selected from the superstrate. Nor, for that matter, does it explain why the diacritic features of L2 lexical items are not acquired. From a language production perspective, the first of these facts can be explained by
20 noting that the simplest processing solution available to the learner in both SLA and Creole formation, is to abandon L1 diacritic features altogether (see Pienemann 1999:81). The second fact can be explained similarly by noting that the early learner has no access to the lemmas associated with L2 words, and in fact has to reconstruct the set of properties, including diacritic features, associated with such words. Creole creators fail to reconstruct these properties because of the limited access to the L2 referred to earlier. Moreover, we have to recognize that, in Creole formation, there is usually input from both TL and L1 in lemma construction. In many cases, a significant part of the “syntactic and semantic information” that Lumsden refers to is not derived from the substrate (L1) lexicon alone, but either comes from the superstrate, or is created in the course of Creole grammar restructuring. This raises the question of how creole lexical entries, along with their lemmata, are created. Myers-Scotton’s model addresses that question. Myers-Scotton’s approach to creole formation is based on the premise that creole lexical entries are reconstituted via input from both substrate and superstrate sources. Myers-Scotton (2002: 101) refers to this reconstruction as “convergence,” which she describes as both an outcome and a process. She notes (ibid.): “As an outcome, it is a linguistic configuration with all surface morphemes from one language, but part of its abstract lexical structure from another language. As a process, convergence involves the splitting and recombining of different aspects of the abstract lexical structures of the languages involved. To account for this process, she proposes an Abstract Level Model based on psycholinguistic models of language production as formulated by researchers such as Levelt (1989). Essentially, the Abstract Level Model of convergence makes the same claim as the relexification model concerning the reconstruction of creole lexical entries. However, the former model claims to provide a more specific account of this reconstruction in terms of the recombination of syntactic and semantic properties of lexical items drawn from the languages in contact. The “Abstract Level Model” is based on the assumption that “all lemmas in the mental lexicon include three levels of abstract lexical structure,” namely (1) lexical-conceptual structure (semantic and pragmatic information), (2) predicate-argument structure (the mapping of thematic structure onto syntactic relations), and (3) morphological realization patterns (surface realizations of
21 grammatical structure). Myers-Scotton argues that, in cases of convergence such as found in creole formation, one or more of these levels from a lexical entry in one language can be split and recombined with levels in another language (2002:99). According to her, persons creating a Creole could easily access superstrate content morphemes, particularly when they matched the semantics of their own L1 lexical items, but they could not access the grammatical frame of the superstrate. Hence they “had to fall back on their L1s for the morphosyntactic frame” (2002:278). She describes the Creole morphosyntactic frame as a composite of abstract features from two or more substrate languages (2002:277). Though she is vague about how this frame arises, it seems clear that an important aspect of this has to do with the splitting and recombining of elements of the abstract lexical structure of both substrate and superstrate lexical items to create new lemmas for the Creole lexical items. Myers-Scotton does not explicitly link this process to the construction of the Creole morphosyntactic frame, but it seems clear that the latter depends to a large extent on the former. An approach that combines the insights of the three models discussed here, can lead to further progress in our understanding of one of the major factors involved in creole formation, substratum influence due to imposition. The process by which Creole grammar is built is of course far more complex than what has been sketched here, and there are aspects of it that we cannot fully account for because we lack the kinds of data we need, exemplifying actual production by learners during Creole formation. Hence we need to rely on well-documented patterns of acquisition in the more typical cases of SLA, and try to infer similarities in the types of transfer that occur in Creole formation. Many questions remain unanswered about the precise details by which elements of abstract lexical structure from the superstrate language become combined with those of the substrate. How and why different aspects of abstract lexical structure are recombined in Creole lexical entries will probably remain matters of mystery. But we at least have a broad understanding of the processes involved and how they relate to similar processes of restructuring in more typical SLA.
22 References:
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iJ. Harris, “Syntactic Variation and Dialect Divergence”, Journal of Linguistics 20 (1984), 319. ii Ibid., 77. iii Ibid., 10. iv Ibid., 18. v H. Lin, “Taiwan Mandarin - a Case of Substratum Influence” (The Ohio State University, Dept. of Linguistics: unpublished research paper, 1997).
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