Books by Kofi Yakpo
Yakpo, Kofi. A grammar of Pichi (Studies in Diversity Linguistics 23). Berlin: Language Science Press, 2019
Pichi is an Afro-Caribbean English-lexifier Creole spoken on the island of Bioko, Equatorial Guin... more Pichi is an Afro-Caribbean English-lexifier Creole spoken on the island of Bioko, Equatorial Guinea. It is an offshoot of 19th century Krio (Sierra Leone) and shares many characteristics with West African relatives like Nigerian Pidgin, Cameroon Pidgin, and Ghanaian Pidgin English, as well as with the English-lexifier creoles of the insular and continental Caribbean. This comprehensive description presents a detailed analysis of the grammar and phonology of Pichi. It also includes a collection of texts and wordlists. Pichi features a nominative-accusative alignment, SVO word order, adjective-noun order, prenominal determiners, and prepositions. The language has a seven-vowel system and twenty-two consonant phonemes. Pichi has a two-tone system with tonal minimal pairs, morphological tone, and tonal processes. The morphological structure is largely isolating. Pichi has a rich system of tense-aspect-mood marking, an indicative-subjunctive opposition, and a complex copular system with several suppletive forms. Many features align Pichi with the Atlantic-Congo languages spoken in the West African littoral zone. At the same time, characteristics like the prenominal position of adjectives and determiners show a typological overlap with its lexifier English, while extensive contact with Spanish has also left an imprint on the lexicon and grammar.
Yakpo, Kofi & Pieter Muysken (eds.). Boundaries and Bridges: Language Contact in Multilingual Ecologies. (Language Contact and Bilingualism (LCB) 14). Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton, 2017
Multidirectional language contact involving more than two languages is little described. However,... more Multidirectional language contact involving more than two languages is little described. However, it probably represents the most common type of contact in the world, where colonization, rapid socioeconomic and demographic change, and society-wide multilingualism have led to dramatic linguistic change. This book presents fascinating cases of multidirectional contact and convergence between highly diverse languages in an emerging linguistic area in Suriname and the Guianas and proposes a framework for comparable studies.
Stell, Gerald & Kofi Yakpo (eds.). Code-switching between structural and sociolinguistic perspectives. (Linguae et Litterae 43). Berlin: De Gruyter, 2015
This volume brings together linguistic, psycholinguistic and sociolinguistic perspectives on code... more This volume brings together linguistic, psycholinguistic and sociolinguistic perspectives on code-switching. Featuring new data from five continents and languages with a large range of linguistic affiliations, the contributions all address the role of social factors in determining the forms and outcomes of code-switching. This book is a significant addition to the empirical and theoretical foundations of the study of code-switching.
Yakpo, Kofi. Gramática del Pichi. Barcelona: Ceiba Ediciones, 2010
El Pichi es uno de los idiomas de la isla de Bioko, Guinea Ecuatorial. Es el idioma predominante ... more El Pichi es uno de los idiomas de la isla de Bioko, Guinea Ecuatorial. Es el idioma predominante en los barrios más populosos de Malabo, la capital y en algunos pueblos situados a lo largo de la costa de Bioko, entre los que destaca Luba, el segundo pueblo más importante de la isla. Aunque no existen cifras oficiales, podemos aseverar que el Pichi es hoy en día el segundo idioma africano más hablado en el país, solo por detrás del Fang y seguido de cerca por el Bubi, el idioma del pueblo original de Bioko.
El Pichi pertenece a la rama africana de la vasta familia de idiomas criollos Afro-Caribeños de base lexical inglesa, idiomas entre los cuales se observan muchas similitudes léxicas y estructurales. El Pichi está relacionado más directamente con el Krio de Sierra Leona. Existen, además, suficientes evidencias lingüísticas e históricas para suponer que el pichi, el Krio y el Aku –su descendiente en Gambia– comparten su origen, al menos parcialmente, con los del Nigerian Pidgin, el Cameroonian Pidgin, y el Ghanaian Pidgin English.
Book Chapters by Kofi Yakpo
In Kofi Yakpo & Pieter Muysken (eds.), Boundaries and Bridges: Language Contact in Multilingual Ecologies, 129–149. (Language Contact and Bilingualism (LCB) 14). Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton, 2017
Sarnami, spoken in Suriname, is the only variety of Caribbean Hindustani that still has a sizeabl... more Sarnami, spoken in Suriname, is the only variety of Caribbean Hindustani that still has a sizeable speaker community. Sarnami is the result of the koineization of several northern Indian languages during Dutch colonial rule. A comparison of Sarnami with its closest Indian relatives suggests that contact with Sranan and Dutch has led to syntactic change, with an inherited head-final order giving way to head-initial order. SVO is far more frequent in Sarnami than in the Indian control group. In relative constructions and with certain types of modal and aspectual auxiliary constructions, the transition has been made to NRel (post- posed relative clauses) and AuxV (auxiliary-verb order). However, diachronically more stable constituent orders like noun vs. adjective, noun vs. adposition and noun vs. genitive have not been affected by change. Constituent order change in Sarnami is an example of the kind of convergence that characterizes Suriname as a linguistic area, where the two dominant languages Sranan and Dutch simultaneously exert pressure toward typological change.
In Kofi Yakpo & Pieter Muysken (eds.), Boundaries and Bridges: Language Contact in Multilingual Ecologies, 3–19. (Language Contact and Bilingualism (LCB) 14). Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton, 2017
This book deals with multilingualism, language contact, language change and convergence in the Gu... more This book deals with multilingualism, language contact, language change and convergence in the Guianas of South America, with a focus on Suriname. The Guianas are a very complex region. The national identity of the countries in the Guianas involves both a sense of common destiny and of multiple ethnic affiliations. We have named our volume Boundaries and bridges because it reflects at the same time the maintenance of ethnic and linguistic boundaries, through the languages involved, but also the numerous instances of cross-linguistic influence across these boundaries. It illustrates the point that in the complex multilingual and multiethnic area of the Guianas, the languages spoken have been part of an effort of groups to keep themselves apart, as boundaries, but have also undergone numerous changes in the presence of other languages, and thus form bridges. The Guianas, or any part of them, do not form a single language community, but rather a chain of interacting and intersecting communities, which have very diverse and complex relations among themselves. Hence the term multilingual ecologies in our subtitle. However, these cases of cross-linguistic influence are very diverse in nature, and involve many parts of language. They result from different contact scenarios and include maintenance, shift, and creation.
In Kofi Yakpo & Pieter Muysken (eds.), Boundaries and Bridges: Language Contact in Multilingual Ecologies, 57–85. (Language Contact and Bilingualism (LCB) 14). Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton, 2017
Most Surinamese today acquire a heterogeneous variety of Sranan characterized by extensive admixt... more Most Surinamese today acquire a heterogeneous variety of Sranan characterized by extensive admixture with Dutch. The analysis of a corpus of contemporary Sranan reveals variation in the expression of spatial relations and the realiza- tion of arguments in ditransitive constructions. Both domains feature syntactic rearrangements and semantic changes that replicate Dutch structures. Pattern replication has led to alterations in the frequency and distribution of Sranan elements and structures, as well as innovations with Sranan and Dutch borrowed elements fulfilling new, previously unattested functions. Sranan is undergoing a substantial typological shift from more substrate-oriented Kwa-like structures to ones similar to those found in the West Germanic superstrate Dutch. Society- wide multilingualism involving Dutch, Sranan and often additional languages provides the socio-linguistic backdrop to contact-induced variation and change in Sranan.
In Cecilia Cutler, Zvjezdana Vrzic & Philipp Angermeyer (eds.), Language contact in Africa and the African diaspora in the Americas. In honor of John V. Singler, 225–250. (Creole Language Library 53). Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2017
John Singler's principle of the homogeneity of the substrate can account for the rise of locative... more John Singler's principle of the homogeneity of the substrate can account for the rise of locative structures in the AECs modelled on typologically highly uniform substrate and adstrate structures across a broad swath of West and Central Africa. Common to the creoles and the African languages are the scarcity of Path-incorporating prepositions, the use of general locative prepositions in static and motion events, as well as the use of pre-or postpositional relator nouns. At the same time, the grammars of space of individual AECs like Sranan (Suriname) and Pichi (Equatorial Guinea) have diverged from each other due to differing lengths of contact with the lexifier English, and contact with different European superstrate languages.
In Gerald Stell & Kofi Yakpo (eds.), Codeswitching between structural and sociolinguistic perspectives, 1-16. (Linguae et Litterae 43). Berlin: De Gruyter., 2015
The present volume emphasizes commonalities of approaches to code- switching. Despite the theoret... more The present volume emphasizes commonalities of approaches to code- switching. Despite the theoretically and methodologically eclectic character of code-switching studies, it seems feasible to bring together various approaches to code-switching spanning all three perspectives as long as they meet the cri- terion of allowing for social explanations. This is the point of view that we took while editing this volume. This volume also seeks to widen the empirical basis of the study of code-switching by including a richly diverse range of contact settings encompassing countries such as Cameroon, Hong Kong, Suriname, Burkina Faso, Dutch Antilles, French Guiana, Netherlands, Papua New Guinea, United Kingdom, South Africa, Luxembourg and Australia, and using primary data from languages representing a broad variety of linguistic types and affilia- tions (Niger-Congo, Sinitic, Germanic, Indic, Austronesian, Pama-Nyungan, Celtic, as well as Afro-Caribbean and Pacific English-lexifier Creoles and Mixed Languages).
In Gerald Stell & Kofi Yakpo (eds.), Codeswitching between structural and sociolinguistic perspectives, 259–287. (Linguae et Litterae 43). Berlin: De Gruyter, 2015
The majority of the population of Suriname uses elements stemming from at least two languages in ... more The majority of the population of Suriname uses elements stemming from at least two languages in everyday, informal interactions. While language contact between the languages of Suriname manifested itself chiefly through lexical borrowing in earlier times, the range of present contact phenomena also includes alternational and insertional code- switching, as well as code-mixing patterns shared across language boundaries. I analyze characteristics of the evolving mixed code that draws on Sranan and Dutch elements by looking at how it manifests itself in Sarnami, Surinamese Javanese and Sranan. I show that socio-economic changes in the past five decades with respect to urbanization, education, migration and mass media have contributed to obscuring ethno-linguistic boundaries, dramatically increased exposure to Dutch and Sranan, and driven the spread of language mixing practices into new domains. I conclude that mixing practices in Suriname are converging in a common communicative space that transcends linguistic boundaries.
In Pieter Muysken & Norval Smith (eds.), Surviving the Middle Passage: The West Africa-Surinam Sprachbund, 135–75. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton, 2015
Spatial relations in Sranan are expressed through a broad range of constructions. Some of these r... more Spatial relations in Sranan are expressed through a broad range of constructions. Some of these reflect the influence of the Dutch superstrate, others clearly reflect the influence of the substrate languages of Sranan. These “Niger-Congo” structures are markedly different from equivalent “Indo-European” ones. Pattern relexification is held responsible for the wholesale carry-over of substrate semantics plus morpho-syntactic specifications into Sranan locative constructions. The synchronic variation in Sranan is partially explained by the equally broad variety of constructions found within and across the African languages and language families that participated in the creation of Sranan. However, much of the apparent diversity is superficial in nature, for it chiefly concerns constituent order. In contrast, morphosyntactic features like the nature of dependency, as well as the semantic structure of spatial descriptions remain highly similar in Sranan and the substrates.
In Eithne Carlin, Isabelle Léglise, Bettina Migge & Paul B. Tjon Sie Fat (eds.), In and out of Suriname: Language, mobility and identity, 164–195. (Caribbean Series 34). Leiden: Brill, 2015
Suriname is often represented as a stratified mosaic of cultures and languages. The country boast... more Suriname is often represented as a stratified mosaic of cultures and languages. The country boasts languages from two major indigenous Amerindian families, several Afro-Caribbean English Lexifier Creoles and further dialectal varieties of Indo-European languages belonging to the Germanic cluster (English, Dutch) and the Italic cluster (French, Portuguese), and futher representatives of major linguistic families of the world, namely Indic (Sarnami), Austronesian (Javanese) and Sino-Tibetan (Hakka or Keija). In this chapter, we challenge this somewhat static view of Suriname’s cul- tural and linguistic diversity. The linguistic data that we present will show that languages in Suriname do not merely co-exist. There are ongoing changes in the distribution of languages across functional domains and new mixed codes are emerging. In this chapter, we focus on convergence, the emergence of (partial) similarities at the expense of diffferences between the languages in contact. Specifically, we look at language mixing phenomena and language change involving Surinamese Dutch, Sranan, Sarnami (Suriname Hindustani), the Maroon Creole language Ndyuka and Surinamese Javanese.
In Isabelle Buchstaller, Anders Holmberg & Mohammad Almoaily (eds.), Pidgins and Creoles beyond Africa-Europe encounters, 101–140. (Creole Language Library (CLL) 47). Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2014
The South American nation of Suriname features a situation of multiple language contact in which ... more The South American nation of Suriname features a situation of multiple language contact in which speakers use various languages in changing constellations, and often simultaneously. Sarnami (Surinamese Hindustani) shows traces of koineization of various Indian languages, and the effects of multilingualism involving Sranan Tongo and Dutch, the two dominant languages of Suriname. Sarnami has undergone substantial contact-induced change in its lexicon and grammar, including the rise of SVO alongside the inherited SOV basic word order. We conclude that the ever growing influence of Sranan Tongo and Dutch may lead to more extensive restructuring with similar outcomes as “creolization”. Traditional labels are therefore not always adequate beyond the realm of the canonical creoles involving European lexifiers and (West) African substrate languages.
In Michaelis, Susanne Maria, Philippe Maurer, Martin Haspelmath & Magnus Huber (eds). The Survey of Pidgin and Creole Languages: English-based and Dutch-based languages, vol. 1. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 194–205, 2013
Pichi belongs to the African branch of the family of Afro-Caribbean English-Lexifier Creoles. It ... more Pichi belongs to the African branch of the family of Afro-Caribbean English-Lexifier Creoles. It is spoken on the island of Bioko, Equatorial Guinea. Pichi is an offshoot of Krio, which first arrived in Bioko, the former Fernando Po, with African settlers from Freetown, Sierra Leone in 1827. It is the most widely used language of Bioko next to Spanish. No official figures exist but by extrapolation from population data, there is reason to assume that Pichi is used by at least a 100’000 people as a first and second language.
In Michaelis, Susanne Maria, Philippe Maurer, Martin Haspelmatch & Magnus Huber (eds.). Atlas of Pidgin and Creole Language Structures Online, 2013
Pichi is used as a home or vernacular language by the vast majority of the old-established popula... more Pichi is used as a home or vernacular language by the vast majority of the old-established population of the island of Bioko. It is most often used as a primary home language in the Equatoguinean capital Malabo (located on Bioko), as well as in Luba (the second largest agglomeration of Bioko). There are no language-specific census data on Equatorial Guinea. By extrapolation from population figures it may however be safe to assume that at least seventy percent of the population of Bioko, hence more than 150,000 people, use Pichi regularly. On one end, the lectal continuum of Pichi features a variety rather close to Sierra Leone Krio in terms of phonology, morphosyntax, lexicon and idiomatic usage. This variety tends to be characteristic of older speakers, who grew up in the centre of Malabo in the ambit of Fernandino creole culture. On the other end, we find a variety characterized by phonological and morphosyntactic innovation, the absence of older layers of Krio-derived vocabulary, some convergence with West African English lexifier creoles like Nigerian Pidgin, and considerable lexical and structural admixture from Spanish. This variety, which is the default lect documented in APiCS, tends to be spoken by the younger urban working-class population of Malabo, often with a Bubi cultural background, who have adopted Pichi as a primary language, and whose families have been accultured in more recent decades into the Pichi-speaking urban culture of Malabo. The former variety is spoken by much fewer people than the latter one and continues shrinking at the expense of the latter variety.
In Robert Borges, The life of language: dynamics of language contact in Suriname. Utrecht: LOT Publications, 115-162, 2013
Various proposals have been made with regards to stability, or conversely borrowability, of parti... more Various proposals have been made with regards to stability, or conversely borrowability, of particular aspects of languages’ lexicons and structures. In this paper, we investigate the stability and borrowability of forms and patterns of tense, mood, and aspect systems of the Surinamese creoles, Surinamese Dutch, Sarnami, and Surinamese Javanese. Our investigation reveals that Sranan and Dutch tend to be the source language in the cross-linguistic transfer of forms and patterns in the Surinamese context, and that typological distance and socio-cultural factors play a role in determining contact induced developments in the languages studied. This suggests that, although our results loosely match various stability scales, language system external considerations so far largely preclude the construction of universally applicable stability and borrowability scales.
In Aboh, Enoch, Norval Smith & Anne Zribi-Hertz (eds). The morphosyntax of reiteration in creole and non-creole languages. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 251-284, 2012
Pichi, an Afro-Caribbean English-lexifier Creole spoken on the island of Bioko, Equatorial Guinea... more Pichi, an Afro-Caribbean English-lexifier Creole spoken on the island of Bioko, Equatorial Guinea, features four types of reiteration. Amongst them, reduplication and repetition can be distinguished on formal and semantic grounds. Reduplication is a derivational operation consisting of self-compounding and tone deletion. It is restricted to dynamic verbs and yields iterative, dispersive and attenuative meanings. Repetition occurs with all major word classes, renders more iconic meanings and is analyzed as semi-morphological in nature. A comparison with verbal reiteration in a cross-section of West African languages and two of its sister languages in the Caribbean allows the conclusion that Pichi reduplication reflects an areal pattern. I conclude further that Pichi reduplication is not exceptionally iconic nor specifically “creole” in nature.
In Leino, Jaako & Ruprecht von Waldenfels (eds). Analytical causatives: from 'give' and 'come' to 'let' and 'make'. München: Lincom Europa, 9-39., 2012
Causative formation in the family of Afro-Caribbean English-lexicon Creoles (AECs) can be ordered... more Causative formation in the family of Afro-Caribbean English-lexicon Creoles (AECs) can be ordered along a continuum with an “African” and a “European” pole. On one end we find biclausal structures: A causative main verb takes a clausal complement marked for subjunctive mood. These structures appear to conform to a West African areal pattern in which subjunctive mood, instantiated in a modal complementizer, appears in a range of deontic contexts, including causatives. At the other end, causative formation involves English-style “raising”, hence reduced clauses. The prevalence of either pattern strongly correlates with the contact trajectory of an individual AEC. Languages that have been in continuous contact with English generally feature a more fragmented modal system in which causative formation follows idiosyncratic strategies. AECs that have been insulated from English for a longer period, and the African AECs in general, feature more unitary modal systems in which causative constructions are formally part of a larger functional domain of deonticity.
In Faraclas, Nicholas & Thomas Klein (eds) Simplicity and complexity in pidgins and creoles. London: Battlebridge, 183-215, 2009
Recent attempts to prove the simplicity of Creoles with respect to non-Creoles have, like precedi... more Recent attempts to prove the simplicity of Creoles with respect to non-Creoles have, like preceding ones concentrated on describing the assumed paucity of selected surfacephenomena in quantitative terms. None of these accounts has taken into consideration that typically, Creoles are languages in contact. In the multilingual speech communities of West Africa but equally so in other regions, Creoles are in contact with lexifier superstrates, with historically unrelated non-lexifier superstrates and with a host of adstrate and substrate languages. This paper attempts to provide answers to two questions. (1) Can we reconcile the complexity of the mixed grammar and lexicon of a language like Pichi withthe notion of simplicity given that code-mixing of the type presented here forms an integral partof the linguistic system of the language? (2) Can we reconcile the restructuring (or “elaboration” in terms of the simplicity hypothesis) of Pichi grammar and lexicon through code-mixing within the short time-span of a hundred and seventy years with the notion that the youth of Creoles makes them simpler than non-Creoles?
Journal Articles by Kofi Yakpo
Africa Spectrum, 2024
West African Pidgin ("Pidgin") is a cluster of related, mutually intelligible, restructured Engli... more West African Pidgin ("Pidgin") is a cluster of related, mutually intelligible, restructured Englishes with up to 140 million speakers in Nigeria, Cameroon, Ghana, Sierra Leone, Equatorial Guinea, and The Gambia. Spoken by just few thousand people two centuries ago, "modernisation" and "shallow social entrenchment" have driven the transformation of Pidgin into a "super-central" world language. Demographic growth, migration, the expansion of West African cultural industries and economies, and people-to-people contacts are likely to expand Pidgin further. Already the largest language of West Africa, Pidgin may be spoken by 400 million people by 2100. The rise of Pidgin goes against the grain. World languages like English, French, Chinese, or Arabic mostly spread through colonisation, elite engineering, and state intervention. The trajectory of Pidgin, therefore, holds great potential for exploring the dynamics of large-scale natural language evolution in the twenty-first century.
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Books by Kofi Yakpo
El Pichi pertenece a la rama africana de la vasta familia de idiomas criollos Afro-Caribeños de base lexical inglesa, idiomas entre los cuales se observan muchas similitudes léxicas y estructurales. El Pichi está relacionado más directamente con el Krio de Sierra Leona. Existen, además, suficientes evidencias lingüísticas e históricas para suponer que el pichi, el Krio y el Aku –su descendiente en Gambia– comparten su origen, al menos parcialmente, con los del Nigerian Pidgin, el Cameroonian Pidgin, y el Ghanaian Pidgin English.
Book Chapters by Kofi Yakpo
Journal Articles by Kofi Yakpo
El Pichi pertenece a la rama africana de la vasta familia de idiomas criollos Afro-Caribeños de base lexical inglesa, idiomas entre los cuales se observan muchas similitudes léxicas y estructurales. El Pichi está relacionado más directamente con el Krio de Sierra Leona. Existen, además, suficientes evidencias lingüísticas e históricas para suponer que el pichi, el Krio y el Aku –su descendiente en Gambia– comparten su origen, al menos parcialmente, con los del Nigerian Pidgin, el Cameroonian Pidgin, y el Ghanaian Pidgin English.
Nuno Lourenço. Dragomir Christinel, Amadeu Antonio Kiowa, Mustafa Demirel, Hülya Genc. Saime Genc. Mohamed Ahmad Ageeb, Ahmed Tahir. Zhou Zhe Gun. Ihr mögt in Frieden ruhn.
Ich hab' geträumt dass sie alle nicht umsonst starben, mal feiertage, schulen, straßen ihre namen tragen, ich hab' geträumt dass sich jeder hier mit jedem verstand, doch mussten wir zuerst feuer legen in diesem land.