Question words in pidgin and creole languages

Abstract

This article is concerned with the question of what the study of function words in pidgin and Creole languages can contribute to the study of pidgin and Creole genesis. Four main questions will be discussed: (a) to what extent could substratum languages have made a contribution to the analytical systems in Creoles? (b) do the question words perhaps reflect universal tendencies toward semantic transparency in the Creole languages? (c) what was the role of the lexicon of the colonial languages? (d) is there any evidence about the periodization of the genesis of question words? Superstate effects are easily identified, although not often present in non-creole-continuum situations. Substrate items are rare — at least where the phonetic form of the substrate is preserved, and in many cases the substrate is different from the Creole and pidgin forms. We are left with a large residue of cases where we cannot always distinguish between semantic transparency and relexification from a substrate source. This article is concerned with the question of what the study of function words in pidgin and Creole languages cai> contribute to the still ongoing debate about how Creoles emerge. Function words are of special interest for several reasons: being morphosyntactically defined, they have a central status in the lexicon; they are normally less susceptible to replacement due to processes of historical change than content words, as is demonstrated in the study of Indo-European languages; despite this, as we will see below, they tend to be innovative in Creole languages with respect to the relevant lexifier languages. As is well known, the majority of known Creole languages have adopted their vocabulary to a large extent from colonial languages. For this reason we often speak of French, English, Portuguese, etc., Creoles. The content Linguistics 28 (1990), 883-903 0024-3949/90/0028-0883 $2.00 © Walter de Gruyter Brought to you by | Radboud University Nijmegen Authenticated | 131.174.248.224 Download Date | 1/28/13 2:55 PM 884 P. Muysken and N. Smith words of French and Dutch have remained, in Haitian and Negerhollands respectively, as follows: (1) a. Haitian vini b. French venir (2) a. Negerhollands kom b. Dutch komen 'come' 'sleep' domi tab dormir table slap tavl slapen tafel made demander vraeg vragen 'table' 'ask' For function words there is a much more indirect correspondence. Here we will study a class of function words that has been recently discussed in the literature: question words. The most striking characteristic of question words in a number of Creole languages is their analytical character. In (3) we give some examples: (3) a. wa tit (Q-time) Negerhollands when (compare Dutch 'wanneer') b. o pe (Q-place) Sranan where (compare English 'where') c. ki za (Q-genre) Haitian how (compare French 'comment') In all these examples we find a form that can be represented abstractly as QUESTION PARTICLE (Q) + QUESTIONED SEMANTIC UNIT (QSU). This question particle we will indicate as Q in the glosses. We will analyze question words from a number of perspectives, reflecting current approaches to lexicon formation in Creole studies. Four main questions will be discussed: a. To what extent could substratum languages have made a contribution to the analytical systems in (3) and to possible other non-European forms (Alleyne 1981; Lefebvre 1986; Boretzky 1983)? We reject any gradual 'relexification' under monogenesis (from a West African Portuguese pidgin) or Afrogenesis, in situations of communal linguistic confrontation between, for example, a European planter class and an African slave class. We do accept the possibility of relexification as a mechanism in forming a new language in a bilingual situation. b. Do the question words perhaps reflect universal tendencies toward semantic transparency in the Creole languages (Seuren and Wekker 1986; Bickerton 1988)? c. What was the role of the lexicon of the colonial languages? In which Brought to you by | Radboud University Nijmegen Authenticated | 131.174.248.224 Download Date | 1/28/13 2:55 PM Question words in pidgins and Creoles 885 way did they contribute the building blocks for the Creole question-word systems? d. Is there any evidence about the periodization of the genesis of question words? Are they characteristic of the mature Creole stage, or do they occur in developing pidgins as well? Our paper is organized as follows. In section 1 we analyze a number of Creole question-word systems. In the following sections, the four research questions mentioned will be discussed in turn. We present some conclusions and a list of questions for further research in section 6. 1. The analysis of question words Next to forms such as (3), presented above, we also find other types, such as those in (4): (4) a. wen taym 'when' Jamaican b. ken 'who' Papiamentu c. andi 'what' Saramaccan These forms deviate in various ways from the analytical model in (3). They may be a direct reflex of a form from the colonial language, as in (4b), or consist of a mixture of the full colonial language form and a questioned element, as in (4a). Finally, there is the possibility that they reflect neither the colonial language nor the analytical model in (3), as in (4c). After having presented a more complete typology of Creole questionword systems, we look at these systems in the following sections from the four different perspectives mentioned above. To begin with, some terminology. We will refer to an opaque Q system when the various Q words are not analyzable into smaller units, when we encounter forms that we must represent morphologically as X?, Y?, Z?. On the other hand, we will refer to a transparent Q system when the various Q words are analyzable into a Q element and an element indicating what is questioned (QSU= questioned semantic unit): that is, Q-X?, Q-Y?, Q-Z?. For example Margi wa 'who' and mi 'what' are opaque, while Igbo onye olee 'who' (person-Q) and ihe olee 'what' (thing-Q) are transparent. In Table 1 we present the transparent system of Chinese Pidgin English, and in Table 2 the opaque system of KiNubi. A transparent system can also become opaque through time. Latin quis, quid, quando, cur, and other Q words represent the historical reflex of a transparent system, but only a few forms are still transparent in Brought to you by | Radboud University Nijmegen Authenticated | 131.174.248.224 Download Date | 1/28/13 2:55 PM 886 P. Muysken and N. Smith Table 1. The transparent question-word system of Chinese Pidgin English (Bisang 1985)

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