THE NASALIZATION OF THE HAITIAN CREOLE DETERMINER LA IN NON-NASAL CONTEXTS: A VARIATIONIST SOCIOLINGUISITIC STUDY David Tézil Submitted to the faculty of the University Graduate School in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of Linguistics, Indiana University July 2019 Accepted by the Graduate Faculty, Indiana University, in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Doctoral Committee _____________________________________ Albert Valdman, Ph.D., Co-Chair _____________________________________ Julie Auger, Ph.D., Co-Chair _____________________________________ Ken de Jong, Ph.D. _____________________________________ Kevin J. Rottet, Ph.D. May 22, 2019 ii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS One of the most popular Haitian Proverbs that has shaped my character emphasizes the importance of supportive people: “Men anpil chay pa lou” or “no matter how heavy the load is, with the help of others it feels lighter.” Without the help of Dr. Julie Auger and Dr. Albert Valdman, I would have been lost. Professor Auger, who has been my advisor from the start, was always there to advise and guide me. She is a great mentor and someone who never lets her students wander in the wrong direction. Professor Valdman is another person that has taught me a lot. He has become like a second father to me. I would like to thank both Professors Auger and Valdman for their sincere and selfless support, prompt and indispensable advice during my time at IU. I very much appreciate their benevolence, patience, intelligence, diligence and generosity. I am very honored to have had them as my teachers, advisers and mentors. I would also like to express my immense gratitude to the rest of my committee: Professors Ken de Jong and Kevin J. Rottet for their support, critical feedback and comments that have undoubtedly improved the quality of this thesis. I am very thankful for their service on the research committee. I would also like thank various departments, such as the IU Center for Latin and Caribbean Study, the IU Creole Institute, the Department of Linguistics, and the Rev. Father Kesner Ajax, Dean of the Business and Technology Institute (BTI) of Les Cayes for hosting me at the Parish of Béraud during my fieldwork in Haiti. I would have been lost without the help of Tabitha Wilbur who has been tirelessly supportive of me. I am very appreciative of the many hours that she spent on the statistical analyses and her willingness to do more analyses as new questions arose. I am very thankful for her expertise, and most of all, her patience. iii Finally, my gratitude goes to my family, particularly to my parents Etienne and Ginette Tézil, who have always been there to provide me with their support both emotionally and logistically during my trips to Haiti. There were times they went beyond their ability so as to allow me to have all of the resources they had at their disposal (e.g. electricity, transportation, food, etc.) so I could continue conducting the research. I wish I had enough space and time to mention all of those who had played a role in making this thesis happen. From the motorcyclists who took me all around the villages, to the family who hosted me, to Adeline who greeted me with the smell of a strong Haitian coffee and a local tea when I was exhausted. From close friends in my community of Carrefour as well as acquaintances, I honor the kindness of each one of them with a chapo ba! Though their name may not figure on these pages, I will forever remember the voice, the smile, and the kindness of each participant of this study who put their faith in me, even when they did not understand what I was doing. With my heart filled with gratitude for your priceless support, I say, THANK YOU, MERCI, and MÈSI! iv David Tézil THE NASALIZATION OF THE HAITIAN CREOLE DETERMINER LA IN NON-NASAL CONTEXTS: A VARIATIONIST SOCIOLINGUISITIC STUDY This study focuses on the nasalization of the postposed determiner /la/ (LÃ) after an oral segment (e.g. chat la/lã [ʃatla/lã] ‘the cat’, and peyi a/an [pejija/ã), a linguistic environment where the nasal variants generally do not occur. In his 1991 pilot study, Valdman demonstrated that there was a correlation between younger middle-class Port-au-Prince speakers and the nasalization of the determiner when following an oral segment. I used a variationist sociolinguistic approach to investigate the issue more extensively and to provide substantive answers to three research questions: (1) Has this linguistic change extended to other social groups, for example, to monolingual speakers of Haitian Creole? (2) Are there linguistic factors conditioning the change, for example, the phonological features of vowels in word-final syllables? (3) Is there a correlation between Frenchified features (e.g. front rounded vowels, postvocalic [r]) and the nasalization of the determiner in non-nasal environments? The corpus includes three sets of data gathered from pair interviews (P), individual interviews, (I) and data elicitation (E) conducted with 32 natives of Haitian Creole. The speakers’ social profiles were coded for age, sex, geographical location, occupation, education and level of bilingualism. The results show that the nasalization of the determiner LA in non-nasal contexts has been extended to speakers of different social status, particularly to monolingual speakers as well as those living in different geographical areas of the country (i.e. urban and rural). Regarding the v effect of linguistic environments, the results reveal that high vowels favor LÃ across the board. However, LÃ does not occur with low vowels in open syllables as a result of vowel lengthening, which then blocks vowel nasalization (e.g. papa a [papa:]/*papa an [papaã] ‘the father’). Finally, the study indicates a link between Frenchified features and nasalization of the determiner for some speakers and not for others. Even though Frenchified features occurred less frequently among the monolingual speakers, those with average or higher level of education nasalized the determiner more than their peers when these features were present. vi Table of Contents Chapter I: Introduction ................................................................................................................ 1 1.1 Overview of the sociolinguistic landscape in Haiti ...................................................... 2 1.1.1 The status of French and HC in Haiti ............................................................................. 2 1.1.2 Language and education ................................................................................................. 4 1.2 Variation in HC ................................................................................................................... 5 1.2.1 Diatopic variation ........................................................................................................... 5 1.2.2 Diastratic (sociolinguistic variation) .............................................................................. 9 1.2.3 Frenchified HC or Kreyòl swa ...................................................................................... 10 1.2.4 Standard Haitian Creole (SHC) .............................................................................. 11 1.3 The nasalization of the post-determiner LA in non-nasal contexts. ............................. 11 1.4 Outline of the thesis ........................................................................................................... 13 Chapter II: Review of Literature .............................................................................................. 15 2.0 Introduction ....................................................................................................................... 15 2.1 Variation and change ........................................................................................................ 16 2.1.2 The effect of internal and external factors on language change ................................... 19 2.1.3 Change in progress ....................................................................................................... 21 2.2 Variation and change in creole languages....................................................................... 22 2.2.1 Creoles and language change ....................................................................................... 22 2.2.2 Post-creole continuum .................................................................................................. 23 2.2.3 Diglossia ....................................................................................................................... 25 2.2.4 Decreolization ............................................................................................................... 26 vii 2.3 Regional and sociolinguistic variation ............................................................................. 28 2.3.1 Regional variation in HC .............................................................................................. 29 2.3.2 Orjala’s survey (1970) .................................................................................................. 30 2.3.3 Fattier’s dialect survey (1998) ...................................................................................... 30 2.3.4 Sociolinguistic studies in HC ....................................................................................... 33 2.3.5 The Northern dialect or Capois ...................................................................................