Français Tirailleur Pidgin —acorpusstudy Hedvig Skirgård Department of Linguistics, Stockholm Univeristy Thesis submitted for Master of Arts in Linguistics (30 HE credits) Spring 2013 Supervisor: Mikael Parkvall Examiner: Henrik Liljegren Expert reviewer: Bernhard Wälchli Abstract Swedish Français Tirailleur (FT) är ett pidginspråk som talades av västafrikanska sol- dater och deras vita officerare i den franska kolonialarmen cirka 1857-1954. Den här uppsatser beskriver denna språkvatietet utifrån ett korpus som består av de doku- menterade yttranden som hittills hittats. Studien visar bland annat att standard negation uttrycks med en pre-verbal partikel (pas ), ja/nej-frågor uttryckts främst genom intonation, genussystemet är inte produktivt, det finns ingen skillnad mellan subjekt och objekt i pronomensystemet och attributiv ägande uttrycks med possessiva pronomen, juxtaposition eller prepositioner. Den standardiserade type-token-ration är 26%, vidare forskning om ordförråd i pidginspråk och jämförelser med talat språk behövs. Det finns två former som är väldigt frekventa och som anses vara mycket karakteristiska för FT: ya och yena. Dessa former har tidigare beskrivits som stativa verb, relativmarkörer och finithetsmarkörer. De förekommer i majoriteten av alla dokument i korpuset. De fungerar som stativa verb, kopula eller kopulalika markörer, samt potentiellt även som predikatsmarkörer. Frågan om huruvida adjektiv är en relevant språklig kategori i denna pidgin diskuteras också i denna uppsats. Nyckelord: lingvistik, litet korpus, pidgin, tiraljör, andra världskriget, västafrika, senegal, petit nègre, moi-ya-dit, anonym manual 1916, Charles Mangin, Lucie Cous- turier, kolonialism English Français Tirailleur (FT) is a pidgin language that was spoken by West African soldiers and their white officers in the French colonial army approximately 1857-1954. The aim of this study is to investigate a corpus of previously unanalyzed utterances of FT in order to discern linguistic structures and test previous statements about the nature of FT. Much of previous literature on FT is based on an anonymous manual published by the French military in 1916, this thesis aims to provide new informa- tion to our understanding of this pidgin. These are some of the findings: standard negation is expressed by means of a preverbal particle (pas ), polar interrogation by intonation, grammatical gender is not a productive category and attributive posses- sion is expressed by possessive pronouns, juxtaposition (possessum - possessor) and prepositional constructions. The standardized type-token-ratio of this corpus, 26%, suggests that the lexicon of pidgins needs to be further studied. Comparisons with corpuses of spoken language are needed. There are two very frequent pre-predicate markers that are considered characteristic of FT: ya and yena. These two markers have previously been described as stative verbs, relativizers and markers of finiteness. The two markers are very frequent in a majority of the sources and are highly poly- semous, functioning as stative verbs, copula or copula-like markers and possibly also predicate markers. The status of adjectives as a part-of-speech in FT is also discussed. Keywords: Linguistics, Corpus, Pidgin, Tirailleur, Sénégalais, West Africa, Petit- Nègre, Moi-Ya-Dit, Charles Mangin, Lucie Cousturier, Dakar 1944, First World War, WW1, Second World War, WW2, APiCS, Senegal, colonialism i Contents 1Introduction 1 2Researchquestions 2 3Background 3 3.1 Theoretical background ............................. 3 3.1.1 Theory, assumptions and frameworks ................. 3 3.1.2 Pidgins and contact languages ..................... 5 3.1.3 Summary of theoretical background .................. 7 3.2 Les Tirailleurs Sénégalais,WestAfricaandFrance.............. 7 3.2.1 Brief account of the history of contact between France and West Africa 8 3.2.2 The pidgin of Français Tirailleur ................... 11 3.2.3 Summary of previous statements about the grammar of FT ..... 12 3.2.4 The linguistic makeup of the Français Tirailleur troops ....... 16 3.2.5 Summary: Les Tirailleurs Sénégalais, West Africa and France ... 18 4Method 20 4.1 Source material ................................. 20 4.2 Reliability of the sources ............................ 23 4.3 Comparison with other languages ....................... 23 4.4 Limitations of the study – the nature of corpus ............... 23 4.5 Annotation of the data ............................. 24 5Resultsandanalysis 26 5.1 Data makeup .................................. 26 5.1.1 Clause-types and stative/dynamic ................... 26 5.1.2 Type-token-ratio in the corpus ..................... 27 5.1.3 Summary: data makeup ........................ 31 5.2 Function seeking form ............................. 31 5.2.1 Polar Interrogative ........................... 31 5.2.2 Standard Negation ........................... 34 5.2.3 Non-standard negation (jamais, rien, personne, plus) ........ 37 5.2.4 Grammatical gender .......................... 38 5.2.5 Personal pronouns ........................... 40 5.2.6 Attributive possession ......................... 43 5.2.7 Predicative possession ......................... 45 5.2.8 Copula relations ............................. 46 5.2.9 ‘Being able’ — moyen and pouvoir .................. 47 5.2.10 Summary: function seeking form ................... 48 5.3 Form seeking function ............................. 48 5.3.1 Drop of overt subject .......................... 48 ii 5.3.2 Polysemous form ya .......................... 51 5.3.3 Polysemous form yena ......................... 55 5.3.4 Gagner —toget,becomeorhave? .................. 56 5.3.5 Wanting, liking and being happy — content and vouloir ...... 57 5.3.6 Reduplication .............................. 57 5.3.7 Summary: form seeking function ................... 59 5.4 Notes on diachrony ............................... 60 5.4.1 Order of modifier and head ...................... 60 5.4.2 Aspectual fini? ............................. 60 5.4.3 Pre-verbal qui/que ........................... 60 5.4.4 Summary: notes on diachrony ..................... 61 6Discussion 62 7Conclusions 64 iii List of Figures 1 Map of European expansion in Africa in 1914 (Guillaume Balavoine 2013) after the Scramble for Africa c 2002 Guillaume Balavoine. ......... 9 2 Cover of the anonymous manual of FT. c 1916 Imprimerie Militaire Universelle 11 3 Cover of La Force Noir by Mangin (1910). c 1910 Charles Mangin. .... 16 4 Cover of Épopées Africaines by Baratier (1912)featuringanillustrationby Lucien Pouzargues. c 1912 Albert Baratier and Lucien Pouzargues. .... 22 5 Type-frequency-ratio of the FT-corpus. X-axis = types ranked by freq, Y- axis=frequency. Non-Logarithmic. ....................... 29 6 Type-frequency-ratio of the FT-corpus. Non-logarithmic, zoomed in at first 100 types. .................................... 30 7 Type-frequency of the FT-corpus. X-axis = types ranked by freq, Y-axis=frequency (log-log=10) ................................... 30 8 Advertisement for chocolate powder. c 1915 Giacomo de Andreis. ..... 51 List of Tables 1BriefhistoricaloverviewofimportanteventsinthehistoryofLes Tirailleur Sénégalais .................................... 10 2 Languages proposed as involved in the multilingual situation of FT. .... 18 3FTmaterialsortedbyyearofproductionofutterance............ 21 4 The eight largest documents of the corpus .................. 21 5Independent/subordinateclauses....................... 26 6Declarative/interrogative/imperative/other.................. 26 7Stativeanddynamicclauses.......................... 27 8Types/tokensinFT............................... 28 9PolarinterrogativesincertainWestAfricanlanguages............ 32 10 Expression of Standard Negation based on Dryer (2011c,i,e). ........ 35 11 Expression of Standard Negation in FT .................... 35 12 Expression of non-standard Negation in FT ................. 38 13 Gender marking in FT ............................. 39 14 French pronouns ................................ 41 15 Pronouns in FT ................................. 41 16 French possessive pronouns ........................... 43 17 Expression of attributive possession in FT .................. 44 18 Predicate possession in FT ........................... 45 19 Copula relations distinguished in this study ................. 46 20 Expression of copula relations in FT ..................... 47 21 Drop of overt subject .............................. 49 22 Null subject distributed over person and number ............... 50 23 Ya in FT .................................... 53 iv 24 Ya besoin and ya moyen. ............................ 54 25 Yena in FT ................................... 55 26 Loans with reduplication ............................ 58 List of glosses 1sg 1st person singular 2sg 2nd person singular 3sg 3rd person singular 1pl 1st person plural 2pl 2nd person plural 3pl 3rd person plural ACC Accusative case AP Adjective Phrase COP Copula DAT Dative case DEF Definite article DEM Demonstrative DN Double Negation FUT Future tense INDEF Indefinite article NEG Negation NOM Nominative case NP Nominal Phrase PASS Passive POSS Possessive PP Prepositional Phrase PROG Progressive aspect PRS Present tense Pro Pronoun PST Past tense (“Simple” Past) PTCP Participle SN Standard Negation Ya the auxiliary/stative verb/predicate marker ya. 1 Yena the auxiliary/stative verb/predicate marker yena v List of abbreviations APiCS Atlas of Pidgin and Creole Structures (see Michaelis et al. 2013) BLT Basic Linguistic Theory (see
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