Papia Revista Brasileira De Estudos Crioulos E Similares, Oct 5, 2014
In this work, we analyze aspects of the phonology, morpho-syntax and lexico-semantics of the Afro... more In this work, we analyze aspects of the phonology, morpho-syntax and lexico-semantics of the Afro-Atlantic Creoles to show how, by taking advantage of formal, structural, and functional convergence between and among African languages, European languages, a Proto Atlantic Portuguese lexifier Creole, and universals of language use, speakers of the Atlantic Creoles have shaped and deployed their creolized languages as instruments of double and multiple voicing (Du Bois 1903; Bakhtin 1930). This pluri-voicing has allowed Atlantic Creole speakers to equip themselves with a linguistic repertoire that has enabled them to use what appear at first glance to be the exact same words and structures to simultaneously assert Afro-Atlantic identities, Euro-Atlantic identities, Atlantic Creole identities and other identities. Following one of the many immensely helpful and intellectually sound approaches adopted by Holm (2000), we demonstrate how, as research on the Atlantic Creoles progresses, it becomes increasingly difficult to identify a single source for many Atlantic Creole words and constructions. We argue that linear, mono-causal and mono-dimensional accounts of creole genesis must therefore give way to multi-directional, multi-causal and multiplex scenarios of convergence among
The tendencies toward decontextualization, mono-causal scenarios, and the erasure of the agency o... more The tendencies toward decontextualization, mono-causal scenarios, and the erasure of the agency of marginalized peoples that have been identified and criticized in the preceding chapters are more often than not due more to the outmoded paradigm of science within which most linguists and other social scientists still do their work, rather than being due to any lack of intelligence, preparation, honesty, or social conscience on the part of creolists. In this chapter we make a preliminary case for moving beyond the ‘Cartesian Linguistics’ model which still dominates our field toward new ways of looking at languages and accounting for the complex behaviors of their speakers.
Because of their extreme marginalization in dominant colonial society, in more cases than not the... more Because of their extreme marginalization in dominant colonial society, in more cases than not the significant role of people of African descent in shaping the history, politics, economics, cultures, and languages of the Caribbean and the rest of the Atlantic World has been consistently and systematically ignored, trivialized, underestimated and otherwise erased in academic teaching, research and writing. This erasure is usually perpetuated and replicated unconsciously by scholars who for a variety of reasons find it difficult to critically question some of the many erroneous assumptions that simultaneously underpin and undermine our efforts to account for the facts. In this chapter, we deconstruct four of these assumptions which have had a particularly negative impact on our work as creolists: (1) that West African and Caribbean societies were not pluri-lingual, pluri-cultural, and pluri-identified throughout the colonial period; (2) that the languages spoken along the West African coast are less genetically and typologically related than they actually are; (3) that African influences on the Atlantic Creoles can/must be traced to a single African language; and (4) that the acknowledgement of African influences must be restricted to cases where no other influences (superstrate, universals, etc.) can be plausibly invoked.
NIGER-CONGO NOUN CLASS AND AGREEMENT SYSTEMS IN LANGUAGE ACQUISITION AND HISTORICAL CHANGE KATHER... more NIGER-CONGO NOUN CLASS AND AGREEMENT SYSTEMS IN LANGUAGE ACQUISITION AND HISTORICAL CHANGE KATHERINE DEMUTH NICHOLAS FARACLAS Boston ... conjunction with an adjective: Example 3.(Cook & Ita 1967) noun adjective+ noun bjà'yam'akanı à ...
By considering the emergence of Houma French in its political, social, and cultural context and b... more By considering the emergence of Houma French in its political, social, and cultural context and by avoiding mono-causal scenarios for its development, we demonstrate how indigenous language patterns and indigenous agency can be traced, detected and validated in Houma French. An acknowledgement of indigenous agency not only helps to deepen our understanding of both the historical and linguistic factors that led to the emergence of languages like Houma French in the colonial era, but helps as well to alert us to new possibilities for the survival of these languages in the future.
Reduplication is an extremely widespread process in Niger-Congo lan-guages. Table l illustrates i... more Reduplication is an extremely widespread process in Niger-Congo lan-guages. Table l illustrates its functions and forms äs found in a sample of languages representing the major branches of the family (see Appendix 2 for the subclassification employed). Sapir (1921:79) observes ...
The anomalous behavior of Spanish (s) relative to other Spanish consonants presents a problem for... more The anomalous behavior of Spanish (s) relative to other Spanish consonants presents a problem for Spanish syllable division. The occurrence of (s) word internally sometimes forces a choice between a two-consonant coda and a two-obstruent onset, both of which are disallowed at word edge. Previous work by Schnitzer (1999) utilizing illiterate informants suggested an ambisyllabic analysis of such forms. It
The now extinct indigenous languages of the insular Caribbean belonged to the North Arawakan sub-... more The now extinct indigenous languages of the insular Caribbean belonged to the North Arawakan sub-family. Given that no written grammatical descriptions seem to have survived of these languages, one of the only ways to gain some idea of what constituted their grammatical features is to make a comparison of the languages most closely related to them. A comparison of the grammatical features which are commonly found in the Atlantic Creoles with those found in the languages most closely related to the North Arawakan languages of the insular Caribbean reveals considerable similarities in structure between the two groups of languages. These similarities are sufficiently systematic and pervasive to suggest some influence of the indigenous languages of the Caribbean on the grammars of the Atlantic Creoles.
Contrary to most of the dominant discourses on Caribbean history, a close and critical re-examina... more Contrary to most of the dominant discourses on Caribbean history, a close and critical re-examination and re-analysis of historical, archaeological, genetic, and other evidence suggests that the indigenous peoples of the insular Caribbean and their descendants were in the right places, at the right times, in sufficient numbers, and in positions of sufficient power and prestige to have had a significant impact not only on the lexicon, but also on the grammatical structures of the Caribbean Creoles. By acknowledging that throughout the colonial history of the Caribbean, Indigenous and other marginalized peoples had their own demographic, social, economic, political, and cultural agendas, and that they were often successful in implementing these agendas, it becomes apparent that the multiplex matrix from which the Caribbean Creoles emerged must be further complicated and elaborated to include Indigenous influences on creole grammatical structures.
This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-No... more This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 Unported (CC-BY-NC 3.0) License.
Although most creolists agree that the Atlantic and Pacific colonial era English-lexifier Creoles... more Although most creolists agree that the Atlantic and Pacific colonial era English-lexifier Creoles have a number of linguistic forms and functions in common, no agreement has as yet been reached concerning the extent, the significance, or the source of these shared features. Over the past decades, the list of these Atlantic-Pacific features identified by creolists has steadily increased in length from a handful of words in 1980 to an inventory of almost one hundred lexical and grammatical items in 2005. Utilizing new sources, we propose that this list be extended by at least 50% to include most of the creole functions and forms that linguists had previously thought to be exclusive either to the Atlantic or to the Pacific. These findings are strongly suggestive of linguistic diffusion from the Atlantic to the Pacific (and back) during the colonial era. A re-analysis of the social, political and economic history of the colonial incursions of Great Britain and the United States into the Pacific from the 18th century onward to include the agency of marginalized peoples allows us to re-contextualize the emergence of the Pacific English-lexifier creoles in a way that clearly validates diffusion from the Afro-Atlantic as an important element in multi-causal and multi-dimensional scenarios for Pacific creole genesis.
In this chapter, it is demonstrated that although the Tense, Modality, and Aspect (TMA) system of... more In this chapter, it is demonstrated that although the Tense, Modality, and Aspect (TMA) system of Papiamentu has been cited by a number of researchers (Andersen 1993; Bickerton 1980, 1981) both as being exceptional in relation to other Creoles of the Caribbean and as being deviant from universal strategies for marking TMA attributed by some to Creole languages worldwide, Papiamentu TMA operates essentially on the basis of the same system found in most Atlantic Creoles as well as in most of their West African substrate languages. All of the features which Andersen (1993: 89–91) and others cite as ‘aberrant’ in Papiamentu, including: (1) the near obligatory use of the markers a or ta before verbs; (2) the absence of a ‘Ø marker’ for perfective aspect; (3) the existence of two irrealis markers (lo and Ø) and the ‘deviant position’ of lo; (4) the dual (tense and aspect) function of the marker tabata; and (5) the lack of a specifi c morpheme that functions exclusively as an anterior marker; are all shown to be the result of features and patterns of grammatical change found throughout the Afro-Atlantic.
The complex contact situation that developed among speakers of Niger-Congo and Indo-European lang... more The complex contact situation that developed among speakers of Niger-Congo and Indo-European languages in the Caribbean during the era of colonial plantation slavery gave rise to creoles with similarly complex pitch-related suprasegmental systems. In Afro-Caribbean creoles, the reinterpretation of stress in European superstrate languages in terms of the tone and stress systems that typify West African substrate languages often leads to greater complexity than that found in either the superstrate or the substrate languages. Despite this complexity, the general characteristics of tone and stress in Afro-Caribbean creoles resemble much more those found along the west coast of Africa than those found in other regions where tone systems are commonly encountered, such as East Asia and Mesoamerica. This suggests that in any scenario for the emergence of creole languages, consideration should be given to linguistic and cultural continuity from the substrates. Sprachtypol. Univ. Forsch. (STUF), Berlin 59 (2006) 2, 148-169 * We would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their comments, especially those regarding tone levels in Saramaccan and the inclusion of references relevant to our work. Comments from participants at the 2 nd International Workshop on the Phonology and Morphology of Creole Languages provided important insights into some issues. We would like to thank especially those native speakers who have participated in the studies from which we have gathered the data.
Papia Revista Brasileira De Estudos Crioulos E Similares, Oct 5, 2014
In this work, we analyze aspects of the phonology, morpho-syntax and lexico-semantics of the Afro... more In this work, we analyze aspects of the phonology, morpho-syntax and lexico-semantics of the Afro-Atlantic Creoles to show how, by taking advantage of formal, structural, and functional convergence between and among African languages, European languages, a Proto Atlantic Portuguese lexifier Creole, and universals of language use, speakers of the Atlantic Creoles have shaped and deployed their creolized languages as instruments of double and multiple voicing (Du Bois 1903; Bakhtin 1930). This pluri-voicing has allowed Atlantic Creole speakers to equip themselves with a linguistic repertoire that has enabled them to use what appear at first glance to be the exact same words and structures to simultaneously assert Afro-Atlantic identities, Euro-Atlantic identities, Atlantic Creole identities and other identities. Following one of the many immensely helpful and intellectually sound approaches adopted by Holm (2000), we demonstrate how, as research on the Atlantic Creoles progresses, it becomes increasingly difficult to identify a single source for many Atlantic Creole words and constructions. We argue that linear, mono-causal and mono-dimensional accounts of creole genesis must therefore give way to multi-directional, multi-causal and multiplex scenarios of convergence among
The tendencies toward decontextualization, mono-causal scenarios, and the erasure of the agency o... more The tendencies toward decontextualization, mono-causal scenarios, and the erasure of the agency of marginalized peoples that have been identified and criticized in the preceding chapters are more often than not due more to the outmoded paradigm of science within which most linguists and other social scientists still do their work, rather than being due to any lack of intelligence, preparation, honesty, or social conscience on the part of creolists. In this chapter we make a preliminary case for moving beyond the ‘Cartesian Linguistics’ model which still dominates our field toward new ways of looking at languages and accounting for the complex behaviors of their speakers.
Because of their extreme marginalization in dominant colonial society, in more cases than not the... more Because of their extreme marginalization in dominant colonial society, in more cases than not the significant role of people of African descent in shaping the history, politics, economics, cultures, and languages of the Caribbean and the rest of the Atlantic World has been consistently and systematically ignored, trivialized, underestimated and otherwise erased in academic teaching, research and writing. This erasure is usually perpetuated and replicated unconsciously by scholars who for a variety of reasons find it difficult to critically question some of the many erroneous assumptions that simultaneously underpin and undermine our efforts to account for the facts. In this chapter, we deconstruct four of these assumptions which have had a particularly negative impact on our work as creolists: (1) that West African and Caribbean societies were not pluri-lingual, pluri-cultural, and pluri-identified throughout the colonial period; (2) that the languages spoken along the West African coast are less genetically and typologically related than they actually are; (3) that African influences on the Atlantic Creoles can/must be traced to a single African language; and (4) that the acknowledgement of African influences must be restricted to cases where no other influences (superstrate, universals, etc.) can be plausibly invoked.
NIGER-CONGO NOUN CLASS AND AGREEMENT SYSTEMS IN LANGUAGE ACQUISITION AND HISTORICAL CHANGE KATHER... more NIGER-CONGO NOUN CLASS AND AGREEMENT SYSTEMS IN LANGUAGE ACQUISITION AND HISTORICAL CHANGE KATHERINE DEMUTH NICHOLAS FARACLAS Boston ... conjunction with an adjective: Example 3.(Cook & Ita 1967) noun adjective+ noun bjà'yam'akanı à ...
By considering the emergence of Houma French in its political, social, and cultural context and b... more By considering the emergence of Houma French in its political, social, and cultural context and by avoiding mono-causal scenarios for its development, we demonstrate how indigenous language patterns and indigenous agency can be traced, detected and validated in Houma French. An acknowledgement of indigenous agency not only helps to deepen our understanding of both the historical and linguistic factors that led to the emergence of languages like Houma French in the colonial era, but helps as well to alert us to new possibilities for the survival of these languages in the future.
Reduplication is an extremely widespread process in Niger-Congo lan-guages. Table l illustrates i... more Reduplication is an extremely widespread process in Niger-Congo lan-guages. Table l illustrates its functions and forms äs found in a sample of languages representing the major branches of the family (see Appendix 2 for the subclassification employed). Sapir (1921:79) observes ...
The anomalous behavior of Spanish (s) relative to other Spanish consonants presents a problem for... more The anomalous behavior of Spanish (s) relative to other Spanish consonants presents a problem for Spanish syllable division. The occurrence of (s) word internally sometimes forces a choice between a two-consonant coda and a two-obstruent onset, both of which are disallowed at word edge. Previous work by Schnitzer (1999) utilizing illiterate informants suggested an ambisyllabic analysis of such forms. It
The now extinct indigenous languages of the insular Caribbean belonged to the North Arawakan sub-... more The now extinct indigenous languages of the insular Caribbean belonged to the North Arawakan sub-family. Given that no written grammatical descriptions seem to have survived of these languages, one of the only ways to gain some idea of what constituted their grammatical features is to make a comparison of the languages most closely related to them. A comparison of the grammatical features which are commonly found in the Atlantic Creoles with those found in the languages most closely related to the North Arawakan languages of the insular Caribbean reveals considerable similarities in structure between the two groups of languages. These similarities are sufficiently systematic and pervasive to suggest some influence of the indigenous languages of the Caribbean on the grammars of the Atlantic Creoles.
Contrary to most of the dominant discourses on Caribbean history, a close and critical re-examina... more Contrary to most of the dominant discourses on Caribbean history, a close and critical re-examination and re-analysis of historical, archaeological, genetic, and other evidence suggests that the indigenous peoples of the insular Caribbean and their descendants were in the right places, at the right times, in sufficient numbers, and in positions of sufficient power and prestige to have had a significant impact not only on the lexicon, but also on the grammatical structures of the Caribbean Creoles. By acknowledging that throughout the colonial history of the Caribbean, Indigenous and other marginalized peoples had their own demographic, social, economic, political, and cultural agendas, and that they were often successful in implementing these agendas, it becomes apparent that the multiplex matrix from which the Caribbean Creoles emerged must be further complicated and elaborated to include Indigenous influences on creole grammatical structures.
This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-No... more This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 Unported (CC-BY-NC 3.0) License.
Although most creolists agree that the Atlantic and Pacific colonial era English-lexifier Creoles... more Although most creolists agree that the Atlantic and Pacific colonial era English-lexifier Creoles have a number of linguistic forms and functions in common, no agreement has as yet been reached concerning the extent, the significance, or the source of these shared features. Over the past decades, the list of these Atlantic-Pacific features identified by creolists has steadily increased in length from a handful of words in 1980 to an inventory of almost one hundred lexical and grammatical items in 2005. Utilizing new sources, we propose that this list be extended by at least 50% to include most of the creole functions and forms that linguists had previously thought to be exclusive either to the Atlantic or to the Pacific. These findings are strongly suggestive of linguistic diffusion from the Atlantic to the Pacific (and back) during the colonial era. A re-analysis of the social, political and economic history of the colonial incursions of Great Britain and the United States into the Pacific from the 18th century onward to include the agency of marginalized peoples allows us to re-contextualize the emergence of the Pacific English-lexifier creoles in a way that clearly validates diffusion from the Afro-Atlantic as an important element in multi-causal and multi-dimensional scenarios for Pacific creole genesis.
In this chapter, it is demonstrated that although the Tense, Modality, and Aspect (TMA) system of... more In this chapter, it is demonstrated that although the Tense, Modality, and Aspect (TMA) system of Papiamentu has been cited by a number of researchers (Andersen 1993; Bickerton 1980, 1981) both as being exceptional in relation to other Creoles of the Caribbean and as being deviant from universal strategies for marking TMA attributed by some to Creole languages worldwide, Papiamentu TMA operates essentially on the basis of the same system found in most Atlantic Creoles as well as in most of their West African substrate languages. All of the features which Andersen (1993: 89–91) and others cite as ‘aberrant’ in Papiamentu, including: (1) the near obligatory use of the markers a or ta before verbs; (2) the absence of a ‘Ø marker’ for perfective aspect; (3) the existence of two irrealis markers (lo and Ø) and the ‘deviant position’ of lo; (4) the dual (tense and aspect) function of the marker tabata; and (5) the lack of a specifi c morpheme that functions exclusively as an anterior marker; are all shown to be the result of features and patterns of grammatical change found throughout the Afro-Atlantic.
The complex contact situation that developed among speakers of Niger-Congo and Indo-European lang... more The complex contact situation that developed among speakers of Niger-Congo and Indo-European languages in the Caribbean during the era of colonial plantation slavery gave rise to creoles with similarly complex pitch-related suprasegmental systems. In Afro-Caribbean creoles, the reinterpretation of stress in European superstrate languages in terms of the tone and stress systems that typify West African substrate languages often leads to greater complexity than that found in either the superstrate or the substrate languages. Despite this complexity, the general characteristics of tone and stress in Afro-Caribbean creoles resemble much more those found along the west coast of Africa than those found in other regions where tone systems are commonly encountered, such as East Asia and Mesoamerica. This suggests that in any scenario for the emergence of creole languages, consideration should be given to linguistic and cultural continuity from the substrates. Sprachtypol. Univ. Forsch. (STUF), Berlin 59 (2006) 2, 148-169 * We would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their comments, especially those regarding tone levels in Saramaccan and the inclusion of references relevant to our work. Comments from participants at the 2 nd International Workshop on the Phonology and Morphology of Creole Languages provided important insights into some issues. We would like to thank especially those native speakers who have participated in the studies from which we have gathered the data.
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