The Mouton World Atlas of Variation in English 9783110280128, 9783110279887

Citation preview

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Bernd Kortmann and Kerstin Lunkenheimer (Eds.) The Mouton World Atlas of Variation in English

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The Mouton World Atlas of Variation in English Edited by Bernd Kortmann and Kerstin Lunkenheimer

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ISBN 978-3-11-027988-7 e-ISBN 978-3-11-028012-8 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A CIP catalogue record for this book has been applied for at the Library of Congress. Bibliograhic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available in the internet at http://dnb.dnb.de. © 2012 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston Cover image: iStockphoto/Thinkstock Typesetting: Dörlemann Satz, Lemförde Cartography: Hans-Jörg Bibiko, Leipzig Network diagrams: Christoph Wolk, Freiburg Printing and binding: Beltz Bad Langensalza GmbH, Bad Langensalza ? Printed on acid free paper Printed in Germany www.degruyter.com

Table of contents

Table of contents Abbreviations of the WAVE varieties fi ix List of maps fi xi List of maps sorted by features fi xv List of phenetic networks fi xxi Bernd Kortmann and Kerstin Lunkenheimer Introduction fi 1

Part I: The British Isles Gunnel Melchers Orkney and Shetland English fi 15 Jennifer Smith Scottish English and varieties of Scots fi 21 Markku Filppula Irish English fi 30 Jennifer Kewley Draskau Manx English fi 48 Robert Penhallurick Welsh English fi 58 Graeme Trousdale English dialects in the north of England fi 70 Susanne Wagner Southwest English dialects fi 78 Peter Trudgill East Anglia fi 88 Anna Rosen Channel Island English fi 98

Part II: North America Susanne Wagner Newfoundland English fi 109 Alexander Kautzsch Earlier African American Vernacular English fi 126 Salikoko S. Mufwene Gullah fi 141 Robert Bayley Chicano English fi 156

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Table of contents

Part III: The Caribbean and South America Jeffrey Reaser and Benjamin Torbert English in the Bahamas fi 169 Stephanie Hackert Bahamian Creole fi 180 Stacy Denny and Korah Belgrave Barbadian Creole English (Bajan) fi 197 Andrea Sand Jamaican English fi 210 Peter L. Patrick Jamaican Creole fi 222 Angela Bartens San Andres-Providence Creole English fi 237 Geneviève Escure Belizean Creole fi 255 Hubert Devonish and Dahlia Thompson Guyanese Creole (Creolese) fi 265 Bettina Migge The Eastern Maroon Creoles fi 279 Tonjes Veenstra Saramaccan fi 291 Donald Winford Sranan fi 302 Dagmar Deuber and Valerie Youssef Trinidadian Creole fi 320 Paula Prescod Vincentian Creole fi 329 Part IV: Africa Malcolm Awadajin Finney Sierra Leone Krio fi 343 John Victor Singler Liberian Settler English fi 358 John Victor Singler Vernacular Liberian English fi 369 Magnus Huber Ghanaian English fi 382 Magnus Huber Ghanaian Pidgin English fi 394 Rotimi Taiwo Nigerian English fi 410 Nicholas Faraclas Nigerian Pidgin fi 417

Table of contents

Augustin Simo Bobda Cameroon English fi 433 Anne Schröder Cameroon Pidgin fi 441 Josef Schmied Tanzanian English fi 454 Alfred Buregeya Kenyan English fi 466 Jude Ssempuuma Ugandan English fi 475 Susan Fitzmaurice White Zimbabwean English fi 483 Rajend Mesthrie Black South African English fi 493 Rajend Mesthrie Indian South African English fi 501 Sean Bowerman White South African English fi 511 Part V: South and Southeast Asia Devyani Sharma Indian English fi 523 Ahmar Mahboob Pakistani English fi 531 Michael Meyler Sri Lankan English fi 540 May L-Y Wong Hong Kong English fi 548 Verena Schröter Colloquial Singaporean English (Singlish) fi 562 Stefanie Pillai Colloquial Malaysian English fi 573 Part VI: Australasia and the Pacific Pam Peters and Peter Collins Colloquial Australian English fi 585 Peter Mühlhäusler Aboriginal English and associated varieties: shared and unshared features fi 596 Peter Mühlhäusler Norfolk Island/Pitcairn English fi 620 Rachel Hendery and Sabine Ehrhart Palmerston Island English fi 628 Kent Sakoda and Jeff Siegel Hawai’i Creole fi 643

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Table of contents

Part VII: Isolates Lisa Bonnici, Michaela Hilbert, and Manfred Krug Maltese English fi 653 David Britain and Andrea Sudbury Falkland Island English fi 669

Part VIII: Regional profiles Bernd Kortmann The British Isles fi 678 Stephanie Hackert The Caribbean fi 704 Edgar W. Schneider North America fi 734 Jeff Siegel Australia Pacific region fi 764 Rajend Mesthrie Asia fi 784 Magnus Huber Africa fi 806

Part IX: Typological profiles Benedikt Szmrecsanyi L1 varieties fi 826 Kerstin Lunkenheimer L2 varieties fi 844 Agnes Schneider Pidgins and Creoles fi 874

Part X: Global profile Bernd Kortmann and Christoph Wolk Morphosyntactic variation in the anglophone world: a global perspective fi 906

Index of varieties and languages fi 937 Index of features fi 941 Foldout 1: The WAVE feature set Foldout 2: A world map of the WAVE varieties Foldout 3: Network WAVE_all

Abbreviations of the WAVE varieties

Abbreviations of the WAVE varieties AborE AppE AusE AusVE BahC BahE BelC BlSAfE BrC ButlE CamE CamP ChcE ChlsE CollAmE CollFijE CollSgE EA EAAVE EMarC FijE FlkE GhE GhP GuyC HawC HKE IndE InSAfE IrE JamC JamE KenE Krio LibSE MalE MaltE ManxE NfldE NigE NigP Norf’k North NZE

(Australian) Aboriginal English Appalachian English Australian English Australian Vernacular English Bahamian Creole Bahamian English Belizean Creole Black South African English British Creole Butler English Cameroon English Cameroon Pidgin Chicano English Channel Island English Colloquial American English Pure Fiji English (basilectal) Colloquial Singapore English East Anglian English Earlier African American Vernacular English Eastern Maroon Creole Fiji English (acrolectal) Falkland Island English Ghanaian English Ghanaian Pidgin Guyanese Creole Hawai’i Creole Hong Kong English Indian English, Anglo-Indian Indian South African English Irish English Jamaican Creole Jamaican English Kenyan English Krio (Sierra Leone Creole) Liberian Settler English Malaysian English Maltese English Manx English Newfoundland English Nigerian English Nigerian Pidgin Norfolk Island / Pitcairn English English dialects in the North of England New Zealand English

ix

x

Abbreviations of the WAVE varieties

O&SE OzE PakE PalmE RAAVE RRC SanAC ScE SE SEAmE SlkE StHE SW TdCE TorSC TP TrinC TznE UAAVE UgE VinC VLibE WelE WhSAfE WhZimE

Orkney and Shetland English Ozarks English Pakistani English Palmerston Island English Rural African American Vernacular English Roper River Creole San Andrés Creole Scottish English, Scots English dialects in the Southeast of England South Eastern American English enclave dialects Sri Lankan English St. Helena English English dialects in the Southwest of England Tristan da Cunha English Torres Strait Creole Tok Pisin (New Guinea Pidgin) Trinidadian Creole Tanzanian English Urban African American Vernacular English Ugandan English Vincentian Creole Vernacular Liberian English Welsh English White South African English White Zimbabwean English

List of maps

xi

List of maps Map BrIs_1 Map BrIs_2 Map BrIs_3 Map BrIs_4 Map BrIs_5 Map BrIs_6 Map BrIs_7 Map BrIs_8 Map BrIs_9 Map BrIs_10 Map BrIs_11

Map Car_1 Map Car_2 Map Car_3 Map Car_4

Map Car_5 Map Car_6 Map Car_7 Map Car_8 Map Car_9 Map Car_10

Map Car_11 Map Car_12 Map Car_13

The WAVE varieties in the British Isles Worldwide distribution of F1 (she/her used for inanimate referents) Worldwide distribution of F 232 (either order of objects in double object constructions if both objects are pronominal) Worldwide distribution of F26 (object pronoun forms as (modifying) possessive pronouns (first person singular)) Worldwide distribution of F163 (was/weren’t split) Worldwide distribution of F35 (forms or phrases for the second person singular pronoun other than you) Worldwide distribution of F95 (be sat/stood with progressive meaning) Worldwide distribution of F96 (there with past participle in resultative contexts) Distribution of F121 (double modals) in the British Isles and North America Distribution of F12 (object pronoun forms serving as base for first and/or second person reflexives) in the British Isles and North America Distribution of three distinctly northern features in the British Isles: F69 (yon/yonder indicating remoteness), F102 (be as perfect auxiliary) and F181 (agreement sensitive to subject type: nominal vs. pronominal) The WAVE varieties in the Caribbean Worldwide distribution of F17 (possessive pronouns with prefix fi- + personal pronoun) Worldwide distribution of F18–F27 (subject or object forms of personal pronouns functioning as modifying possessive pronouns) Distribution of F50 (plural marking via preposed elements) and F51 (plural marking via postposed elements) across varieties in the Caribbean Distribution of F90 (invariant be as habitual marker) across varieties in the Caribbean Distribution of F91 (do as habitual marker) and F93 (other non-standard habitual markers: analytic) across varieties in the Caribbean Distribution of F104 (completive/perfective done) and F110 (finish-derived completive markers) across varieties in the Caribbean Distribution of F103 (do as an unstressed tense marker), F111 (past tense/anterior been) across varieties in the Caribbean Worldwide distribution of F112 (anterior had + bare root) Distribution of F142 (distinct forms or phrases for copula be: before adjectives) and F177 (deletion of copula be: before adjectives) across varieties in the Caribbean Distribution of F148-F152 (serial verbs) across varieties in the Caribbean Distribution of F155, F156, and F157 (negation with ain’t) across varieties in the Caribbean Distribution of F174, F175 (deletion of auxiliary be) and F176 (deletion of copula be: before NPs) across varieties in the Caribbean

678 684 685 686 687 688 689 690 693 694 698

704 708 709 710

711 712 713 714 715 716

717 718 719

xii

List of maps

Map Car_14 Map NAm_1 Map NAm_2

Map NAm_3 Map NAm_4 Map NAm_5

Map NAm_6 Map NAm_7 Map NAm_8 Map NAm_9 Map NAm_10 Map NAm_11 Map NAm_12 Map NAm_13 Map NAm_14 Map NAm_15 Map NAm_16 Map AP_1 Map AP_2

Map AP_3 Map AP_4

Map AP_5 Map AP_6 Map AP_7 Map AP_8

Map AP_9 Map As_1 Map As_2 Map As_3

Distribution of F223 (other options for clefting than in StE) and F225 (sentence-initial focus-marker) The WAVE varieties in North America Distribution of F5 (generalized third person singular pronoun: subject pronouns) and F6 (generalized third person singular pronoun: object pronouns) across varieties in North America Distribution of F21 (subject pronoun forms as (modifying) possessive pronouns: third person plural) across varieties in North America Worldwide distribution of F70 (demonstrative this here/them there) Distribution of F51 (plural marking via postposed elements) and F53 (associative plural marked by other elements) across varieties in North America Distribution of F104 (completive/perfect done) across varieties in North America Worldwide distribution of F105 (completive/perfect have/be + done + past participle) Distribution of F90 (invariant be) across varieties in North America Worldwide distribution of F125 (new quasi-modals: core modal meanings) and F126 (new quasi-modals: aspectual meanings) Distribution of F159 (preverbal never for single past events) across varieties in North America Worldwide distribution of F181 (agreement sensitive to subject type) Worldwide distribution of F200 (say-based complementizers) Worldwide distribution of F9 (benefactive “personal dative” construction) Worldwide distribution of F155 (ain’t as the negated form of be) and F156 (ain’t as the negated form of have) Worldwide distribution of F218 (affirmative anymore ‘nowadays’) Worldwide distribution of F226 (“negative inversion”) The WAVE varieties in the Australia Pacific region Distribution of F11 (regularized reflexives paradigm) and F12 (object pronoun forms as base for first and/or second person reflexives) across varieties in the Australia Pacific region Distribution of F233 (presence of subject in imperatives) across varieties in the Australia Pacific region Worldwide distribution of F36 (distinct forms for inclusive/exclusive first person non-singular) and F37 (more number distinctions in personal pronouns than simply singular vs. plural) Worldwide distribution of F76 (postnominal phrases with bilong/blong/long/blo to express possession) Worldwide distribution of F143 (transitive verb suffix -em/-im/-um) Worldwide distribution of F162 (no more/nomo as negative existential marker) Distribution of F5 (generalized 3rd person singular object pronouns) and F110 (finish-derived completive markers) across varieties in the Australia Pacific region Worldwide distribution of F94 (progressive marker stap or stay) The WAVE varieties in Asia Worldwide distribution of pro-drop features (F42-F44) Worldwide distribution of F39 (plural forms of interrogative pronouns: using additional elements) and F40 (plural forms of interrogative pronouns: reduplication)

720 734 738

739 740 741

742 743 744 745 746 747 750 754 755 756 757 764 767

768 770

771 772 773 777

781 784 787 789

List of maps

Map As_4 Map As_5 Map As_6 Map As_7 Map As_8 Map Af_1 Map Af_2 Map Af_3 Map Af_4

Map Af_5 Map Af_6

Map Af_7 Map L1_1 Map L1_2 Map L1_3 Map L1_4 Map L1_5 Map L1_6 Map L2_1 Map L2_2 Map L2_3 Map L2_4 Map L2_5 Map L2_6 Map L2_7 Map P/C_1 Map P/C_2

Map P/C_3 Map P/C_4 Map P/C_5 Map P/C_6 Map P/C_7

Worldwide distribution of F41 (singular it for plural they in anaphoric use) Worldwide distribution of article omission (F62, F63) Worldwide distribution of F127 (non-standard use of modals for politeness reasons) Worldwide distribution of F199 (reduced relative phrases preceding head noun) Worldwide distribution of ‘A’ ratings for F227 (inverted word order in indirect questions) The WAVE varieties in Africa Worldwide distribution of F116 (come-based future markers) Worldwide distribution of F180 (was/were generalization) Worldwide distribution of F74 (phrases with for + noun to express possession: for-phrase following the possessed NP) across P/C varieties in WAVE Worldwide distribution of F217 (use of postpositions) across L2 varieties in WAVE Worldwide distribution of F100 (levelling of the difference between present perfect and simple past: present perfect for StE simple past) across L2 varieties in WAVE Worldwide distribution of F42 (object pronoun drop) across L2 varieties in WAVE Worldwide distribution of L1 varieties in WAVE (high-contact vs. low-contact) Rara and rarissima in L1 varieties Distribution of F188 (relativizer at) across L1 varieties Distribution of F132 (zero past tense forms of regular verbs) across L1 varieties Distribution of F181 (agreement sensitive to subject type) across L1 varieties Distribution of F3 (alternative forms for referential (non-dummy) it) across L1 varieties Worldwide distribution of L2 varieties in WAVE Distribution of F45 (insertion of it) across varieties in WAVE Distribution of F55 (different count/mass noun distinctions) across varieties in WAVE Distribution of F209 (insertion of to) across varieties in WAVE Occurrence of selected P/C-characteristic features across L2 and P/C varieties in WAVE Distribution of subject pronoun drop (F43+F44) across L2 varieties in WAVE Distribution of F214 (double conjunctions) across L2 varieties in WAVE Worldwide distribution of pidgins and creoles in WAVE Worldwide distribution of F5 (generalized third person singular pronouns: subject pronouns) and F6 (generalized third person singular pronouns: object pronouns) Worldwide distribution of F10 (no gender distinction in third person singular) Worldwide distribution of F140 (other forms/phrases for copula be: before NPs) and F141 (other forms/phrases for copula be: before locatives) Worldwide distribution of F149 (serial verbs: go = ‘movement away from’) Worldwide distribution of F177 (deletion of copula be: before AdjPs) Worldwide distribution of F201 (for-based complementizers)

xiii

790 791 796 799 801 806 813 814 815

816 817

818 826 832 833 834 835 836 844 852 853 854 862 866 867 874 882

883 884 885 886 890

xiv

List of maps

Map P/C_8 Map P/C_9 Map P/C_10 Map P/C_11 Map WM Map Global_1 Map Global_2 Map Global_3 Map Global_4 Map Global_5 Map Global_6 Map WM

The Pidgins and Creoles from cluster A and cluster B 895 Worldwide distribution of F69 (yon/yonder indicating remoteness) 898 Worldwide distribution of F103 (do as an unstressed tense marker) and F118 899 (is for am/will in 1st person singular) Distribution of F151 (serial verb constructions with three verbs) and F200 900 (say-based complementizers) in pidgins and creoles A world map of the WAVE varieties 906 Worldwide distribution of angloversal F229 (no inversion/no auxiliaries in 909 main clause yes/no questions) Worldwide distribution of angloversal F34 (forms or phrases for the second 910 person plural pronoun other than you) Worldwide distribution of angloversal F221 (adverbs other than degree 911 modifiers have the same form as adjectives) Worldwide distribution of angloversal F7 (me instead of I in coordinate 912 subjects) Worldwide distribution of angloversal F159 (never as preverbal past tense 913 negator) Worldwide distribution of angloversal F154 (multiple negation/negative 914 concord) A world map of the WAVE varieties Foldout 2

List of maps sorted by features

xv

List of maps sorted by features F1

Map BrIs_2

F3

Map L1_6

F5

Map AP_8

F5

Map NAm_2

F5

Map P/C_2

F6

Map NAm_2

F6

Map P/C_2

F7

Map Global_4

F9

Map NAm_13

F10

Map P/C_3

F11

Map AP_2

F12

Map AP_2

F12

Map BrIs_10

F17

Map Car_2

F18

Map Car_3

F19

Map Car_3

Worldwide distribution of F1 (she/her used for inanimate referents) Distribution of F3 (alternative forms for referential (non-dummy) it) across L1 varieties Distribution of F5 (generalized 3rd person singular object pronouns) and F110 (finish-derived completive markers) across varieties in the Australia Pacific region Distribution of F5 (generalized third person singular pronoun: subject pronouns) and F6 (generalized third person singular pronoun: object pronouns) across varieties in North America Worldwide distribution of F5 (generalized third person singular pronouns: subject pronouns) and F6 (generalized third person singular pronouns: object pronouns) Distribution of F5 (generalized third person singular pronoun: subject pronouns) and F6 (generalized third person singular pronoun: object pronouns) across varieties in North America Worldwide distribution of F5 (generalized third person singular pronouns: subject pronouns) and F6 (generalized third person singular pronouns: object pronouns) Worldwide distribution of angloversal F7 (me instead of I in coordinate subjects) Worldwide distribution of F9 (benefactive “personal dative” construction) Worldwide distribution of F10 (no gender distinction in third person singular) Distribution of F11 (regularized reflexives paradigm) and F12 (object pronoun forms as base for first and/or second person reflexives) across varieties in the Australia Pacific region Distribution of F11 (regularized reflexives paradigm) and F12 (object pronoun forms as base for first and/or second person reflexives) across varieties in the Australia Pacific region Distribution of F12 (object pronoun forms serving as base for first and/or second person reflexives) in the British Isles and North America Worldwide distribution of F17 (possessive pronouns with prefix fi- + personal pronoun) Worldwide distribution of F18–F27 (subject or object forms of personal pronouns functioning as modifying possessive pronouns) Worldwide distribution of F18–F27 (subject or object forms of personal pronouns functioning as modifying possessive pronouns)

684 836 777

738

882

738

882

912 754 883 767

767

694

708 709

709

xvi

List of maps sorted by features

F20

Map Car_3

F21

Map Car_3

F21

Map NAm_3

F22

Map Car_3

F23

Map Car_3

F24

Map Car_3

F25

Map Car_3

F26

Map BrIs_4

F26

Map Car_3

F27

Map Car_3

F34

Map Global_2

F35

Map BrIs_6

F36

Map AP_4

F37

Map AP_4

F39

Map As_3

F40

Map As_3

F41

Map As_4

F42

Map Af_7

F42 F43

Map As_2 Map As_2

Worldwide distribution of F18–F27 (subject or object forms of personal pronouns functioning as modifying possessive pronouns) Worldwide distribution of F18–F27 (subject or object forms of personal pronouns functioning as modifying possessive pronouns) Distribution of F21 (subject pronoun forms as (modifying) possessive pronouns: third person plural) across varieties in North America Worldwide distribution of F18–F27 (subject or object forms of personal pronouns functioning as modifying possessive pronouns) Worldwide distribution of F18–F27 (subject or object forms of personal pronouns functioning as modifying possessive pronouns) Worldwide distribution of F18–F27 (subject or object forms of personal pronouns functioning as modifying possessive pronouns) Worldwide distribution of F18–F27 (subject or object forms of personal pronouns functioning as modifying possessive pronouns) Worldwide distribution of F26 (object pronoun forms as (modifying) possessive pronouns (first person singular)) Worldwide distribution of F18–F27 (subject or object forms of personal pronouns functioning as modifying possessive pronouns) Worldwide distribution of F18–F27 (subject or object forms of personal pronouns functioning as modifying possessive pronouns) Worldwide distribution of angloversal F34 (forms or phrases for the second person plural pronoun other than you) Worldwide distribution of F35 (forms or phrases for the second person singular pronoun other than you) Worldwide distribution of F36 (distinct forms for inclusive/ exclusive first person non-singular) and F37 (more number distinctions in personal pronouns than simply singular vs. plural) Worldwide distribution of F36 (distinct forms for inclusive/ exclusive first person non-singular) and F37 (more number distinctions in personal pronouns than simply singular vs. plural) Worldwide distribution of F39 (plural forms of interrogative pronouns: using additional elements) and F40 (plural forms of interrogative pronouns: reduplication) Worldwide distribution of F39 (plural forms of interrogative pronouns: using additional elements) and F40 (plural forms of interrogative pronouns: reduplication) Worldwide distribution of F41 (singular it for plural they in anaphoric use) Worldwide distribution of F42 (object pronoun drop) across L2 varieties in WAVE Worldwide distribution of pro-drop features (F42-F44) Worldwide distribution of pro-drop features (F42-F44)

709

709

739

709

709

709

709

686 709

709

910 688 770

770

789

789

790 818 787 787

List of maps sorted by features

F43

Map L2_6

F44 F44

Map As_2 Map L2_6

F45 F50

Map L2_2 Map Car_4

F51

Map Car_4

F51

Map NAm_5

F53

Map NAm_5

F55

Map L2_3

F62 F63 F69

Map As_5 Map As_5 Map BrIs_11

F69

Map P/C_9

F70

Map NAm_4

F74

Map Af_4

F76

Map AP_5

F90

Map Car_5

F90

Map NAm_8

F91

Map Car_6

F93

Map Car_6

F94

Map AP_9

F95

Map BrIs_7

F96

Map BrIs_8

Distribution of subject pronoun drop (F43+F44) across L2 varieties in WAVE Worldwide distribution of pro-drop features (F42-F44) Distribution of subject pronoun drop (F43+F44) across L2 varieties in WAVE Distribution of F45 (insertion of it) across varieties in WAVE Distribution of F50 (plural marking via preposed elements) and F51 (plural marking via postposed elements) across varieties in the Caribbean Distribution of F50 (plural marking via preposed elements) and F51 (plural marking via postposed elements) across varieties in the Caribbean Distribution of F51 (plural marking via postposed elements) and F53 (associative plural marked by other elements) across varieties in North America Distribution of F51 (plural marking via postposed elements) and F53 (associative plural marked by other elements) across varieties in North America Distribution of F55 (different count/mass noun distinctions) across varieties in WAVE Worldwide distribution of article omission (F62, F63) Worldwide distribution of article omission (F62, F63) Distribution of three distinctly northern features in the British Isles: F69 (yon/yonder indicating remoteness), F102 (be as perfect auxiliary) and F181 (agreement sensitive to subject type: nominal vs. pronominal) Worldwide distribution of F69 (yon/yonder indicating remoteness) Worldwide distribution of F70 (demonstrative this here/them there) Worldwide distribution of F74 (phrases with for + noun to express possession: for-phrase following the possessed NP) across P/C varieties in WAVE Worldwide distribution of F76 (postnominal phrases with bilong/blong/long/blo to express possession) Distribution of F90 (invariant be as habitual marker) across varieties in the Caribbean Distribution of F90 (invariant be) across varieties in North America Distribution of F91 (do as habitual marker) and F93 (other non-standard habitual markers: analytic) across varieties in the Caribbean Distribution of F91 (do as habitual marker) and F93 (other non-standard habitual markers: analytic) across varieties in the Caribbean Worldwide distribution of F94 (progressive marker stap or stay) Worldwide distribution of F95 (be sat/stood with progressive meaning) Worldwide distribution of F96 (there with past participle in resultative contexts)

xvii

866 787 866 852 710

710

741

741

853 791 791 698

898 740 815

771 711 744 712

712

781 689 690

xviii

List of maps sorted by features

F100

Map Af_6

F102

Map BrIs_11

F103

Map Car_8

F103

Map P/C_10

F104

Map Car_7

F104

Map NAm_6

F105

Map NAm_7

F110

Map AP_8

F110

Map Car_7

F111

Map Car_8

F112 F116 F118

Map Car_9 Map Af_2 Map P/C_10

F121

Map BrIs_9

F125

Map NAm_9

F126

Map NAm_9

F127

Map As_6

F132

Map L1_4

F140

Map P/C_4

F141

Map P/C_4

F142

Map Car_10

Worldwide distribution of F100 (levelling of the difference between present perfect and simple past: present perfect for StE simple past) across L2 varieties in WAVE Distribution of three distinctly northern features in the British Isles: F69 (yon/yonder indicating remoteness), F102 (be as perfect auxiliary) and F181 (agreement sensitive to subject type: nominal vs. pronominal) Distribution of F103 (do as an unstressed tense marker), F111 (past tense/anterior been) across varieties in the Caribbean Worldwide distribution of F103 (do as an unstressed tense marker) and F118 (is for am/will in 1st person singular) Distribution of F104 (completive/perfective done) and F110 (finish-derived completive markers) across varieties in the Caribbean Distribution of F104 (completive/perfect done) across varieties in North America Worldwide distribution of F105 (completive/perfect have/be + done + past participle) Distribution of F5 (generalized 3rd person singular object pronouns) and F110 (finish-derived completive markers) across varieties in the Australia Pacific region Distribution of F104 (completive/perfective done) and F110 (finish-derived completive markers) across varieties in the Caribbean Distribution of F103 (do as an unstressed tense marker), F111 (past tense/anterior been) across varieties in the Caribbean Worldwide distribution of F112 (anterior had + bare root) Worldwide distribution of F116 (come-based future markers) Worldwide distribution of F103 (do as an unstressed tense marker) and F118 (is for am/will in 1st person singular) Distribution of F121 (double modals) in the British Isles and North America Worldwide distribution of F125 (new quasi-modals: core modal meanings) and F126 (new quasi-modals: aspectual meanings) Worldwide distribution of F125 (new quasi-modals: core modal meanings) and F126 (new quasi-modals: aspectual meanings) Worldwide distribution of F127 (non-standard use of modals for politeness reasons) Distribution of F132 (zero past tense forms of regular verbs) across L1 varieties Worldwide distribution of F140 (other forms/phrases for copula be: before NPs) and F141 (other forms/phrases for copula be: before locatives) Worldwide distribution of F140 (other forms/phrases for copula be: before NPs) and F141 (other forms/phrases for copula be: before locatives) Distribution of F142 (distinct forms or phrases for copula be: before adjectives) and F177 (deletion of copula be: before adjectives) across varieties in the Caribbean

817

698

714

899 713

742 743 777

713

714

715 813 899 693 745 745 796 834 884

884

716

List of maps sorted by features

F143

Map AP_6

F148

Map Car_11

F149

Map Car_11

F149

Map P/C_5

F150

Map Car_11

F151

Map Car_11

F151

Map P/C_11

F152

Map Car_11

F154

Map Global_6

F155

Map Car_12

F155

Map NAm_14

F156

Map Car_12

F156

Map NAm_14

F157

Map Car_12

F159

Map Global_5

F159

Map NAm_10

F162

Map AP_7

F163 F174

Map BrIs_5 Map Car_13

F175

Map Car_13

F176

Map Car_13

F177

Map Car_10

F177

Map P/C_6

F180

Map Af_3

Worldwide distribution of F143 (transitive verb suffix -em/-im/-um) Distribution of F148-F152 (serial verbs) across varieties in the Caribbean Distribution of F148-F152 (serial verbs) across varieties in the Caribbean Worldwide distribution of F149 (serial verbs: go = ‘movement away from’) Distribution of F148-F152 (serial verbs) across varieties in the Caribbean Distribution of F148-F152 (serial verbs) across varieties in the Caribbean Distribution of F151 (serial verb constructions with three verbs) and F200 (say-based complementizers) in pidgins and creoles Distribution of F148-F152 (serial verbs) across varieties in the Caribbean Worldwide distribution of angloversal F154 (multiple negation/negative concord) Distribution of F155, F156, and F157 (negation with ain’t) across varieties in the Caribbean Worldwide distribution of F155 (ain’t as the negated form of be) and F156 (ain’t as the negated form of have) Distribution of F155, F156, and F157 (negation with ain’t) across varieties in the Caribbean Worldwide distribution of F155 (ain’t as the negated form of be) and F156 (ain’t as the negated form of have) Distribution of F155, F156, and F157 (negation with ain’t) across varieties in the Caribbean Worldwide distribution of angloversal F159 (never as preverbal past tense negator) Distribution of F159 (preverbal never for single past events) across varieties in North America Worldwide distribution of F162 (no more/nomo as negative existential marker) Worldwide distribution of F163 (was/weren’t split) Distribution of F174, F175 (deletion of auxiliary be) and F176 (deletion of copula be: before NPs) across varieties in the Caribbean Distribution of F174, F175 (deletion of auxiliary be) and F176 (deletion of copula be: before NPs) across varieties in the Caribbean Distribution of F174, F175 (deletion of auxiliary be) and F176 (deletion of copula be: before NPs) across varieties in the Caribbean Distribution of F142 (distinct forms or phrases for copula be: before adjectives) and F177 (deletion of copula be: before adjectives) across varieties in the Caribbean Worldwide distribution of F177 (deletion of copula be: before AdjPs) Worldwide distribution of F180 (was/were generalization)

xix

772 717 717 885 717 717 900

717 914 718 755 718 755 718 913 746 773 687 719

719

719

716

886 814

xx

List of maps sorted by features

F181

Map BrIs_11

F181

Map L1_5

F181

Map NAm_11

F188 F199

Map L1_3 Map As_7

F200 F200

Map NAm_12 Map P/C_11

F201 F209 F214

Map P/C_7 Map L2_4 Map L2_7

F217

Map Af_5

F218 F221

Map NAm_15 Map Global_3

F223

Map Car_14

F225

Map Car_14

F226 F227

Map NAm_16 Map As_8

F229

Map Global_1

F232

Map BrIs_3

F233

Map AP_3

Distribution of three distinctly northern features in the British Isles: F69 (yon/yonder indicating remoteness), F102 (be as perfect auxiliary) and F181 (agreement sensitive to subject type: nominal vs. pronominal) Distribution of F181 (agreement sensitive to subject type) across L1 varieties Worldwide distribution of F181 (agreement sensitive to subject type) Distribution of F188 (relativizer at) across L1 varieties Worldwide distribution of F199 (reduced relative phrases preceding head noun) Worldwide distribution of F200 (say-based complementizers) Distribution of F151 (serial verb constructions with three verbs) and F200 (say-based complementizers) in pidgins and creoles Worldwide distribution of F201 (for-based complementizers) Distribution of F209 (insertion of to) across varieties in WAVE Distribution of F214 (double conjunctions) across L2 varieties in WAVE Worldwide distribution of F217 (use of postpositions) across L2 varieties in WAVE Worldwide distribution of F218 (affirmative anymore ‘nowadays’) Worldwide distribution of angloversal F221 (adverbs other than degree modifiers have the same form as adjectives) Distribution of F223 (other options for clefting than in StE) and F225 (sentence-initial focus-marker) Distribution of F223 (other options for clefting than in StE) and F225 (sentence-initial focus-marker) Worldwide distribution of F226 (“negative inversion”) Worldwide distribution of ‘A’ ratings for F227 (inverted word order in indirect questions) Worldwide distribution of angloversal F229 (no inversion/no auxiliaries in main clause yes/no questions) Worldwide distribution of F 232 (either order of objects in double object constructions if both objects are pronominal) Distribution of F233 (presence of subject in imperatives) across varieties in the Australia Pacific region

698

835 747 833 799 750 900 890 854 867 816 756 911 720 720 757 801 909 685 768

List of phenetic networks

xxi

List of phenetic networks Network BrIs_1 Network BrIs_2 Network Car_1 Network NAm_1 Network AP_1 Network AP_2 Network AP_3 Network As_1 Network As_2 Network Af_2 Network Af_1 Network L1_1 Network L2_1 Network L2_2 Network L2_3 Network P/C_1 Network Global_1 Network Global_2 Network Global_3 Network Global_4 Network Global_5 Network Global_6 Network WAVE_all

NeighborNet clustering of the 11 British Isles varieties in WAVE Detail of the NeighborNet diagram for the complete set of WAVE varieties: main L1-branch NeighborNet clustering of the 13 Caribbean Englishes in WAVE NeighborNet clustering of the 10 North American varieties in WAVE NeighborNet clustering of the 13 Australian Pacific varieties in WAVE Detail of the NeighborNet diagram for all 74 WAVE varieties (right-hand branch) Detail of the NeighborNet diagram for all 74 WAVE varieties (left-hand branch) Detail of the NeighborNet diagram for the complete set of WAVE varieties: L2-branch NeighborNet clustering of the 7 Asian varieties in WAVE Detail of the NeighborNet diagram for the complete set of WAVE varieties: The Southern African perspective NeighborNet clustering of the 16 African varieties in WAVE Visualizing aggregate similarities: NeighborNet clustering of the 30 L1 varieties in WAVE NeighborNet clustering of the 14 L2 varieties in WAVE Detail of the NeighborNet diagram for the complete set of WAVE varieties (right-hand branch) Detail of the NeighborNet diagram for the complete set of WAVE varieties (left-hand branch) NeighborNet clustering of the 26 pidgins and creoles in WAVE Detail of the NeighborNet diagram for the complete set of WAVE varieties: the clusters on the right-hand branches Detail of the NeighborNet diagram for the complete set of WAVE varieties: the bottom left branch Detail of the NeighborNet diagram for the complete set of WAVE varieties: the top left branch NeighborNet diagram for the complete set of WAVE varieties (ab noisy) Detail of the NeighborNet diagram for the complete set of WAVE varieties: left-hand branches (ab noisy) Detail of the NeighborNet diagram for the complete set of WAVE varieties: right-hand branches (ab noisy) NeighborNet diagram for the complete set of WAVE varieties (abc noisy)

700 701 730 761 776 779 779 803 804 809 809 840 859 863 864 894 921 923 925 930 931 932 Foldout 3

xxii

List of phenetic networks

Introduction

1

Bernd Kortmann and Kerstin Lunkenheimer

Introduction 1 Background and history of this atlas This atlas offers a large-scale typological survey of morphosyntactic variation in the Anglophone world, based on the analysis of 30 L1 and 18 indigenized L2 varieties of English as well 26 English-based pidgins and creoles from eight different world regions (Africa, Australia, the British Isles, the Caribbean, North America, the Pacific, South and Southeast Asia and, as the borderline case of an Anglophone world region, the South Atlantic). It is the outgrowth of a major electronic database and open access research tool edited by the present editors in 2011 (The electronic Word Atlas of Varieties of English, short: eWAVE; http://www.ewaveatlas.org/) and is a direct, but far more comprehensive follow-up of the interactive CD-ROM accompanying the Mouton de Gruyter Handbook of Varieties of English (Kortmann et al. 2004). Whereas the grammar part of the latter survey was based on 76 morphosyntactic features in 46 varieties of English and English-based pidgins and creoles worldwide, its successor, the WAVE database (WAVE short for: World Atlas of Variation in English), holds information on 235 morphosyntactic features in 74 data sets, i.e. about five times as much detail and information. The idea underlying the design of WAVE was to create a considerably larger and more fine-grained database and research tool than back in 2004, especially one that is less L1-centred. As a proper atlas should, WAVE is intended to survey and map the morphosyntactic variation space in the Anglophone world and to help us explore how much of this variation space is made use of in different (clusters of) varieties of English, and to what extent it is possible to correlate the structural profiles for individual and groups of varieties with, for example, geography, socio-history, or general processes of language change, language acquisition and language contact. Essentially, WAVE wants to take further the idea of the 2004 CD-ROM of creating a unified platform and database which allows all members of the research community to engage in large-scale typology-style comparisons of the morphosyntactic structures of the spontaneous spoken (nonstandard) Englishes around the world. So eWAVE and the present volume can be considered to be the counterparts of what, on the one hand, the online WALS (The World Atlas of Language Structures Online, Dryer and Haspelmath, eds. 2011; http://wals.info) and the print WALS (Haspelmath et al. 2005) have successfully been doing together for language typology in recent years and what, on the other hand, the APiCS (Atlas of Pidgin and Creole Structures; Michaelis et al., to appear 2013), again both as online tool and print publication, will soon be doing especially for creolists, typologists and researchers on language contact. The parallels pointed to here between WAVE, on the one hand, and the two big atlas projects designed and hosted at the Max-Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig (Germany), on the other hand, are neither a sign of hubris nor a coincidence: WAVE was designed in part in consultation with Susanne Michaelis and Martin Haspelmath of the MPI and, most importantly, not only was eWAVE programmed by and is it hosted at the MPI, all the maps in the present volume have been produced by the same person (well, magician rather) who also signed responsible for all maps in WALS and is currently in charge of all three major MPI-hosted interactive electronic tools (WALS online, eWAVE, and APiCS), Hans-Jörg Bibiko (see Acknowledgements below). In passing, it may also be noted that a sizable number of contributors to APiCS for English-based pidgins and creoles (including one of the editors, Magnus Huber) have also provided the data for WAVE and authored chapters in the present volume. In the following section we will first give some information on the data in WAVE (i.e. details on the choice and classification of the varieties covered, the composition of the feature set, the rating system, strengths and weaknesses of the approach chosen) before opening the curtain, after all, in section 3 and telling the reader about the overall structure of this volume and what they can expect to find in the individual chapters. Suffice it to stress at this point already that, although based on the same dataset, the present volume and eWAVE are stand-alone publications and research tools, whose use in tandem will definitely be of great value since each

2

Bernd Kortmann and Kerstin Lunkenheimer

tool can do what the other cannot. The chapters in the present volume are specifically designed as keys to seeing behind all the variation that is (and is not) documented in eWAVE, both in the 55 chapters on the individual varieties and pidgin and creole languages and, especially, in the 10 synoptic chapters on larger geographical and typological sets of varieties. Suffice it to stress, too, that even though eWAVE clearly replaces the electronic research tool going with the Handbook of Varieties of English from 2004, the chapters in the present volume do not replace, but rather complement, the chapters in the Handbook itself, as will be further detailed in section 3.

2 The data 2.1 Varieties and variety types Table 1 provides an overview of the varieties, pidgins and creoles sampled in WAVE, and their distribution across variety types and world regions. Bold print indicates those data sets covered in one of the 55 descriptive chapters in the present volume:

low-contact L1 (10) British Isles (11):

L1 (30) high-contact L1 (20)

P (7) & C (19)

Irish E, Welsh E, Manx E, Channel Island E

Maltese Ea

British Creole

Colloquial American E, Urban African American Vernacular E, Rural African American Vernacular E, Earlier African American Vernacular E Bahamian E

Chicano E

Gullah

Jamaican E

Africa (16):

Liberian Settler E, White South African E, White Zimbabwean E

South and Southeast Asia (7):

Colloquial Singapore E

Ghanaian E, Nigerian E, Cameroon E, Kenyan E, Tanzanian E, Ugandan E, Black South African E, Indian South African E Indian E, Pakistan E, Sri Lanka E, Hong Kong E, Malaysian E

Jamaican C, Bahamian C, Barbadian C (Bajan), Belizean C, Trinidadian C, Eastern Maroon C, Sranan, Saramaccan, Guyanese C, San Andres C, Vincentian C Ghanaian Pidgin, Nigerian Pidgin, Cameroon Pidgin, Krio, Vernacular Liberian E

North America (10):

Orkney and Shetland E, North of England, SW of England, SE of England, East Anglia, Scottish E Newfoundland E, Appalachian E, Ozark E

L2 (18)

Southeast American Enclave dialects Caribbean (13):

Butler E

Introduction

Australia (5):b

Pacific (8):b

South Atlantic (3):c

Aboriginal E, Australian E, Australian Vernacular E New Zealand E

3

Torres Strait C, Roper River C (Kriol) Colloquial Fiji E, Acrolectal Fiji E

Hawaiian C, Bislama, Norf’k, Tok Pisin, Palmerston E

St. Helena E, Tristan da Cunha E, Falkland Island E

a Obviously, MaltE is not a British Isles variety. It has been grouped with the British Isles in this table for practical reasons, as it is the only non-British European variety in our sample, but of course it has not been included in any of the calculations for the British Isles in the regional and typological profiles in this volume. b Australia and the Pacific have been treated as one region for the purposes of the regional profiles (cf. Siegel, this volume). c With only three varieties, the South Atlantic region is too small to be represented by a regional profile. But note that exactly the same three varieties are also grouped as (lesser-known) varieties of English in the South Atlantic in Schreier et al. (2011).

Table 1: Overview of the 74 WAVE varieties by world region and variety type

The 74 varieties represented in WAVE have been categorized in terms of eight Anglophone world regions and five variety types. Geographically, we distinguish between varieties spoken in the British Isles, North America, the Caribbean, Africa, South and Southeast Asia, Australia, the Pacific, and the South Atlantic. The typological distinctions are inspired by Trudgill’s (2009, 2011) suggestion that the ‘true typological split’ between different kinds of varieties of English involves whether or not language or dialect contact has played an important part in their development. For WAVE, we broadly distinguish between native-speaker varieties (L1), institutionalized second-language varieties (L2), and English-based pidgins and creoles (P/C), with the L1 varieties again divided into traditional dialects (L1t) and high-contact L1 varieties (L1c), while in the P/C group we nominally distinguish between pidgins (P) and creoles (C) (but see the synopses by Siegel and Agnes Schneider, both in this volume, for discussions of the relevance of this distinction). Brief definitions for each type are provided below, and more detailed definitions can be found in the electronic version of WAVE (Kortmann and Lunkenheimer 2011). Low-contact traditional L1 dialects (L1t) Traditional, regional non-standard mother-tongue varieties, e.g. East Anglian English and the dialects spoken in the Southwest, the Southeast and the North of England in the British Isles and Newfoundland English, Appalachian English and Ozark English in North America. High-contact L1 varieties (L1c) This includes transplanted L1 Englishes and colonial standards (e.g. Bahamian English, New Zealand English) as well as language shift varieties (e.g. Irish English) and standard varieties (e.g. colloquial American English, colloquial British English). L2 varieties (L2) Indigenized non-native varieties that have a certain degree of prestige and normative status in their political communities, like Pakistani English, Jamaican English, Hong Kong English, Ghanaian English and Kenyan English, but also non-native varieties that compete with local L1 varieties for prestige and normative status, e.g. Chicano English and Black South African English. Pidgins (P) English-based contact languages that developed for communication between two groups who did not share the same language, typically in restricted domains of use (especially trade). With the exception of Butler English, all the English-based pidgins in WAVE (e.g. Tok Pisin, Nigerian Pidgin and Gha-

4

Bernd Kortmann and Kerstin Lunkenheimer

naian Pidgin) can be considered expanded pidgins, i.e. in contrast to prototypical pidgins they are less restricted in terms of domains of use, and many of them are spoken as native or primary languages by a considerable proportion of their speakers. Creoles (C) English-based contact languages that developed in settings where a non-English-speaking group was under strong pressure to acquire and use some form of English, while access to its L1 speakers was severely limited (e.g. in plantation settings). Many creoles have become the native language of the majority of the population. Examples of English-based creoles in the WAVE set include Jamaican Creole, Belizean Creole, Sranan and Torres Strait Creole. Since it is something that will be central in the three typological profiles on L1 varieties, indigenized L2 varieties, and pidgin and creole languages as well as in the Global Synopsis at the end of this volume, the following is crucial to note: All WAVE informants were asked to classify ‘their’ varieties in terms of these definitions, and although this was by no means easy for some varieties, the typological categorizations in Table 1 represent what the individual informants (!) said they were most comfortable with (and had the opportunity to qualify in their chapters in the present volume). In other words, the classifications of the 74 WAVE varieties in Table 1 above were not imposed by the WAVE editors, but made by the WAVE specialists for the individual varieties themselves. It is also important to note that the distinctions into three broad (L1, L2, Pidgin/Creole) and five narrow variety types (high-contact L1, low-contact L1, L2, Pidgin, Creole) are a priori categorizations based on socio-historical criteria (which may be more or less debatable in the individual case). The point is that these categorizations are the most widespread ones in sociolinguistic, variationist, creolist, etc. publications on varieties of English and World Englishes. Basically, they are of little importance for the present undertaking of identifying the structural profiles of varieties in the Anglophone world (and possibly larger groups thereof). Yet it was one of the express aims of the WAVE project to test the extent to which these distinctions (as opposed to, or possibly in tandem with, geography, i.e. the different Anglophone world regions) are reflected in the morphosyntactic similarities and differences between the varieties (see especially the Global Synopsis by Kortmann and Wolk, this volume). And indeed it will be one important finding that the classification of a given variety on purely structural (i.e. morphosyntactic) grounds may clash with a classification on the basis of socio-historical (to some extent societally sanctioned, politically driven) grounds. For example, a given variety may well pattern with, i.e. exhibit the same overall morphosyntactic profile as English-based pidgins even though it was classified by the relevant WAVE informant as a (high-contact) L1 variety. Or there may be a variety classified as an indigenized L2 variety which, however, turns out to have an overall typological profile characteristic of L1 varieties. This could well be the case of a so-called shift variety which, at least in its morphosyntax, seems to have lost many properties characteristic of L2 Englishes and acquired a significant number of properties typical rather of mother-tongue varieties of English.

2.2 The WAVE feature catalogue Designed as an extension and further development of Kortmann and Szmrecsanyi’s (2004) 76-feature catalogue, the WAVE feature catalogue was compiled drawing on overviews of morphosyntactic variation in English, such as the synopsis chapters in Kortmann, Schneider et al. (2004), or publications like Schneider (2007), Mesthrie and Bhatt (2008), Melchers and Shaw (2003), and Hickey (2004), as well as descriptions of individual varieties, pidgins and creoles. Thus, the vast majority of the features in the WAVE catalogue are features that are not unique to any one variety, and are widely discussed in the literature on morphosyntactic variation in English. Obviously, an almost infinite number of less widespread features had to be excluded, and it is a matter of discussion whether the definitions and descriptions we provided for the features are always ideal. However, the catalogue had to be kept at a format and size that could easily be converted into a questionnaire to be filled in by the contributors. In its final form, the catalogue includes 235 features from 12 different domains of grammar, as shown in Table 2.

Introduction

Grammatical domain1 Pronouns Noun Phrase Tense and aspect Modal verbs Verb morphology Negation Agreement Relativization Complementation Adverbial Subordination Adverbs and Prepositions Discourse organization and word order

Features (number)

Sum features in group

% of total features

1– 47 48– 87 88–120 121–157 128–153 154–169 170–184 185–199 200–210 211–215 216–222 223–235

47 40 33 7 26 16 15 15 11 5 7 13

20.0 % 17.0 % 14.0 % 3.0 % 11.0 % 6.8 % 6.4 % 6.4 % 4.7 % 2.1 % 3.0 % 5.5 %

5

1 In the original feature catalogue we had 13 domains of grammar, with domain VI “Verb Phrase IV: voice” consisting of a single feature, namely F153 (give passive: NP1 (patient) + give + NP2 (agent) + V). This we remedied in Table 2 above, including F153 in the domain “Verb Phrase III: verb morphology”. The original domain numbering (I-XIII) is still found, however, in the Appendices of the 55 chapters on the individual varieties in the present volume. Table 2: Domains of grammar covered in WAVE

The WAVE catalogue expands on Kortmann and Szmrecsanyi (2004) by including more features (particularly such that are characteristic of pidgins and creoles or of indigenized L2 varieties), and by adapting features that had been included already, but had been found to be too all-encompassing to be of much use. For instance, feature [21] in Kortmann and Szmrecsanyi (2004), wider range of uses of the progressive, is split into two features in WAVE: F88 (extension of be V –ing to stative verbs) and F89 (extension of progressive be V –ing to habitual situations).

2.3 The survey Once the feature catalogue had been compiled, it was sent out as a questionnaire to more than 80 scholars known for their expertise on varieties of English, who were asked to provide their judgment of the presence and frequency of each of the WAVE features in ‘their’ variety. The questionnaire with the 235 WAVE features consisted of a spreadsheet, providing the feature descriptions and one or two pertinent examples for each. The ratings had to be inserted by choosing from one of six categories: A B C D X ?

feature is pervasive or obligatory feature is neither pervasive nor extremely rare feature exists, but is extremely rare attested absence not applicable no information available

Respondents were invited to provide authentic examples and comments for each feature in an additional field. Guidelines for filling in the questionnaire included the request to restrict responses to features of spoken language and, for pidgins and creoles, to mesolectal varieties. During the process of data collection, more specific guidelines had to be provided for individual features, to ensure as much consistency as possible in how problems were handled across varieties. For instance, the features relating to multifunctional pronoun forms (F18-F27) and those relating to verbal inflections (especially F128-F131) proved to be particularly troublesome for respondents working on pidgins and creoles.

6

Bernd Kortmann and Kerstin Lunkenheimer

2.4 The feature ratings: caveats and research potential Despite our guidelines and clarifying everything related to the WAVE questionnaire, some variation remains in how features were interpreted by contributors, how A, B and C ratings were assigned to features not categorically present or absent in a variety, and in whether certain features were considered to be applicable at all in a given variety. With regard to pidgins and creoles and L2 varieties, individual contributors also made different choices in whether or not to include features that are found only or mostly in the acrolect or basilect (for P/Cs), or only in low-proficiency speakers (for L2 varieties). A further caveat relates to the fact that in many cases, the ratings provided are impressionistic judgments by the experts, based on their own data and their (specialist and often native-speaker) knowledge of the variety. Only in some cases were larger corpora available to back up these judgments, and even then it was not possible to operationalize all the WAVE features for a corpus search. Thus it has to be said that the ratings (which can be found for all attested features in the appendices to each chapter for the varieties represented in this volume) have to be taken with a pinch of salt. What looks categorical can hardly be more than an abstraction of and a rough approximation to linguistic and social reality. Each of the varieties, pidgins and creoles included in the WAVE dataset is itself subject to (socially and pragmatically meaningful) internal variation so that the profile emerging from the WAVE questionnaire for a given variety is unlikely to perfectly match the linguistic behaviour of any particular subgroup of speakers of that variety (e.g. different age groups), let alone the linguistic behaviour of any particular speaker. This applies especially to very large, internally highly heterogeneous speech communities which have been subsumed under one variety (e.g. ‘Indian English’ or ‘Colloquial American English’), but at least as much to the L2 varieties and English-based pidgins and creoles in the WAVE database. Typically, they have ethnically and socially diverse speech communities, so that features attested in WAVE may not be present in some speakers, or may be present with a different frequency, depending on which other languages they speak, and whether they are mesolectal, acrolectal or basilectal speakers. All of these, however, are notorious and inevitable problems shared by all large-scale typological surveys, such as WALS, APiCS, and this one. At the same time, there is a lot to be gained by adopting a survey approach (cf. also Anderwald and Kortmann in press). Behind each of these caveats, there is an enormous research potential, pointing to the fact that the WAVE database and what is presented in this atlas is at least as much a starting-point for new research as it is the outcome of prior research. For example, for anyone working within variationist sociolinguistics or within the emerging field of variationist pragmatics (especially the pragmatics of grammar) it will be fascinating to zoom in on the individual data points of the WAVE feature set. Especially promising in this respect are all the features rated B or C since they are the prime candidates for glossing over ‘orderly heterogeneity’. Moreover, the C features, in particular, have interesting stories to tell about language change in the past and the present. On a more general level, large-scale typological comparisons hold a lot of potential for gaining new insights and making new generalizations on a more abstract level and, put plainly, for seeing the woods for the trees. This does not only hold for the narrower confines of the study of World Englishes and English dialect grammar, but also for the interfaces between these two fields of linguistic study and creolistics and SLA research, on the one hand, and language typology, on the other hand (cf. for example the (overall spirit of the) contributions in Kortmann 2004 and Kortmann and Szmrecsanyi 2012).

Introduction

7

3 Structure and content of the Atlas 3.1 Organization of the volume and the individual chapters The overall structure is very simple: as to be expected in an atlas, the bulk of the chapters (55 out of 65) is organized regionally according to the Anglophone regions covered by the WAVE dataset.1 Much as we would have loved to see chapters on all 74 WAVE varieties in this volume, not all WAVE informants saw themselves in the position to contribute a chapter within the time window allotted. Some of them who had already authored a chapter on ‘their’ variety in the Handbook of Varieties of English (Kortmann, Schneider et al. 2004) found that chapter still fully sufficient, with too little to add from the WAVE perspective to be worth writing a whole new chapter. For some of these varieties substitute authors were found, but eventually we ended up with descriptions of 55 of the WAVE varieties. There is full coverage of the Caribbean/South America (13 out of 13 WAVE varieties; Part III) and Africa (16 out of 16 WAVE varieties; Part IV) and near-complete coverage for the British Isles (9 out of 11 WAVE varieties; Part I) and South/Southeast Asia (6 out of 7 WAVE varieties; Part V). Underrepresented are the two world regions Australia/Pacific (5 out of 13 WAVE varieties; Part VI) and North America (4 out of 10 WAVE varieties; Part II) as well as the South Atlantic (1 out of 3 WAVE varieties; this variety, Falkland Island English, and Maltese English as the only European variety of English outside the British Isles have been grouped together as isolates in Part VII). In terms of the three broad variety types distinguished in WAVE, the 55 chapters in Parts I-VII cover 19 L1 varieties, 16 L2 varieties, and 20 Pidgins and Creoles. There is a lot of individuality in these descriptive chapters. The vast majority of them is concerned with the relevant variety alone; in exceptional cases, a given variety was systematically compared with other WAVE varieties (cf. Malcolm’s chapter on Aboriginal English, where this high-contact L1 variety is discussed with regard to morphosyntactic features shared or unshared with Roper River Creole and Torres Strait Creole, on the one hand, and with Irish English and the dialects of Southeast England, on the other hand) or with the most important indigenous languages in the relevant part of the world (e.g. Faraclas in his chapter on Nigerian Pidgin). The authors were not committed to following a set structure, apart from the fact that they were asked to include a section on socio-cultural and sociolinguistic background (short if the given variety was already part of the Handbook of Varieties of English (Kortmann, Schneider et al. 2004), longer otherwise). Moreover, the focus of their chapter was clearly to be on the most notable aspects concerning their variety from the WAVE perspective. Which WAVE features or feature sets, however, they put at the centre of their chapter was entirely left to the individual authors. They were also encouraged to highlight potential problems of the WAVE dataset and overall approach, and to point out properties and crucial aspects of the relevant variety which the WAVE feature set fails to capture or may even distort. Thus the first 55 chapters in this book also contribute to a critical debate of the WAVE method and enterprise as a whole. Each of these chapters ends with an appendix which lists all attested WAVE features with their (A, B or C) ratings and, in most cases, authentic examples for the individual features. Following the chapters on individual varieties is a set of altogether ten chapters whose main function is to develop the larger picture and to pool information on the varieties (i) in the individual world regions (these are the six regional profiles in Part VIII) and (ii) belonging to the three different major variety types (cf. the three typological profiles on L1, L2 and Pidgin/Creole varieties in Part IX). It is in these chapters that the reader will, for example, learn about the most distinctive and diagnostic features and feature clusters for the individual world regions (sometimes called areoversals) and variety types (so-called varioversals; cf. Szmrecsanyi and Kortmann 2009), about features notably rare or even absent in the varieties discussed, and about geographical and/or substrate signals within the individual world regions. Three points are particularly im-

1 Thus this atlas is not organized like WALS, i.e. with chapters for each of the individual features and each chapter taking a comparative look at the observable variation. Essentially (only for entire domains of grammar rather than individual features) this is the method that Siemund (2013) uses for morphosyntactic variation in the Anglophone world, largely on the

basis of the Handbook of Varieties of English (Kortmann et al. 2004, vol. 2). For two grammar domains, negation and tense & aspect, the WAVE dataset has also recently been used in comparative survey chapters exploring in particular areal patterns in the Anglophone world (see Anderwald 2012 for negation, Lunkenheimer 2012 for tense & aspect).

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portant about these perspectivizing synopses. First of all, they are based on the entire WAVE data set, i.e. not only on the 55 varieties covered in the individual chapters, but on the ratings of the attested morphosyntactic features in all 74 varieties. Secondly, it is in these chapters that all the eWAVE-based maps will be found (see also section 3.2 below). The authors selected from the thousands of maps that can easily be produced with the help of eWAVE those that are the most telling and capable of visualizing the most distinctive features or feature constellations in the individual regional or typological subsets of varieties – and occasionally designed maps eWAVE cannot produce. Thirdly, all authors of the synoptic chapters were provided with phenetic network diagrams of the ‘splits-tree’ type produced with the help of the NeighborNet algorithm, a powerful method for large-scale cluster analyses that has found its way from bioinformatics to linguistics, especially to dialectology, dialectometry, and quantitative language typology, in the course of the last few years (cf. e.g. the contributions in the volume by Szmrecsanyi and Wälchli (2012); for a description of the algorithm and the reasoning behind it see Kortmann and Wolk, section 4.1, this volume). These network diagrams are ideally suited for setting in relation to each other the overall structural (more exactly, morphosyntactic) profiles of all the varieties in the different subsets (i.e. in a given Anglophone world region or belonging to the same variety type). It cannot be stressed enough that these phenograms are purely designed to capture structural (!) similarities and dissimilarities among the members of the relevant set of varieties considered. That is, for every single pair of varieties in this subset, it is determined with regard to how many features they agree, which in turn is measured in terms of the number of features which are co-present (i.e. have received an A, B or C rating) or co-absent (i.e. have received a D, X, or ? rating) in both varieties. This is the most consistent and neutral way of determining structural (or: typological) (dis)similarity across languages or varieties – and the statistically most reliable one, too: the phenograms presented in this volume account for more than 99 % of the observable variance. In each of the chapters in Parts VIII and IX one phenetic network will be discussed which has been solely produced for the relevant subset of varieties. In addition, each chapter will also comment on the distribution of the members of the relevant subset of varieties in the overall world network diagram for all 74 WAVE varieties. This is Network WAVE_all and can be found in the foldout at the end of this volume. (The reader may note that there are two further foldouts in this atlas. On the one hand, the world map with all 74 WAVE varieties and, on the other hand, the entire WAVE feature set consisting of 235 features, numbered F1 to F235.) This world network diagram will take centre stage in the Global Synopsis by Kortmann and Wolk, which will conclude this atlas. In this chapter they will take yet another step back and try to identify the largest possible picture of morphosyntactic variation in the Anglophone world, addressing among others the following questions: What are vernacular angloversals, i.e. those with the widest spread? What are rara and rarissima in the grammars of the varieties of English around the world? Which varieties attest the largest, which ones the lowest feature totals? What can we say about the explanatory power of geography vs. variety or language type as the major factor accounting for morphosyntactic variation? How do C-rated features (i.e. those that are extremely rare in the relevant variety) influence the overall morphosyntactic type of that variety?

3.2 Maps There is a total of 96 maps in Parts VIII and IX of this atlas. As noted above, they represent a selection of the most informative maps that can be produced in eWAVE, complemented by additional maps going beyond what eWAVE can do. Overview maps at the beginning of each of the regional and typological profile chapters help locate the varieties under discussion, while feature maps illustrate the distribution of selected WAVE features. The vast majority of these feature maps are eWAVE-style maps plotting the occurrence of one feature in a set of varieties. As in eWAVE, red color is used to indicate varieties in which the feature was rated A, orange for B ratings, yellow for C ratings, and grey for varieties in which the feature received an ‘absence’ rating (i.e. D, X or ?). Other feature maps illustrate the distribution of several features simultaneously, and a few show the distribution of a whole set of features - something that can not be done with eWAVE. For practical reasons, the A-B-C distinction had to be abandoned in favour of a binary ‘presence’ vs. ‘absence’ distinction in these combined feature maps.

Introduction

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Thus, the maps visualize information presented in the text of the profile chapters in Parts VIII and IX, and they complement and enhance eWAVE by picking out the cherries from the cake of the thousands of individual feature maps that could be produced, and by providing the additional option of combined maps for larger feature sets. A list of all maps, and the features for which maps exist, is provided in the List of Maps in the front matter. We strongly encourage the reader to consult this list when reading the synopsis chapters, since for a feature for which there is no map in one chapter a map is very likely to exist in one of the other chapters.

Acknowledgements There are many enthusiastic people and highly supportive institutions, to some extent also lucky coincidences, the WAVE project as a whole (eWAVE and the present volume) would have been impossible without. To start with, the two editors gratefully acknowledge the support of the Freiburg Institute for Advanced Studies (FRIAS) in the design and data collection phase of the project. Bernd Kortmann enjoyed an Internal Senior Fellowship at the FRIAS from April 2008 until September 2009 and Kerstin Lunkenheimer joined him there as a research assistant from September 2008 until March 2009. Moreover, several of the consultants and authors enjoyed research fellowships and short-term visits at the FRIAS. Especially in the design phase of the project, but also at various important stages on the way, it was invaluable to have colleagues and friends we could turn to for their professional advice and feedback on our design of the WAVE questionnaire and on crucial questions which arose during the long process of data collection and revision. Among these the following figured prominently: Lieselotte Anderwald, Dagmar Deuber, Magnus Huber, Susanne Michaelis, Peter Mühlhäusler, Jeff Siegel, Benedikt Szmrecsanyi, and Susanne Wagner. Kerstin and Bernd are also most indebted to the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology (Leipzig) for much helpful advice and for letting us piggyback on their database projects with the electronic version of WAVE. More specifically, our thanks go to Martin Haspelmath and, once again, Susanne Michaelis. It was solely due to their support that the MPI allowed their two specialists for programming typological databases and overseeing such ambitious electronic atlas projects as WALS and APiCS to spend a significant amount of time on WAVE. The two programming wizards of the MPI to whom we (like, I trust, the entire research community) will not tire to bow in admiration are Hagen Jung for all his brilliant ideas in the eWAVE design and Hans-Jörg Bibiko in the final stages of eWAVE and the production stage of the present volume. Taking as input the updated WAVE database in the summer of 2012, it was Hans-Jörg (of WALS fame) who also signed responsible for producing all of the maps for the present atlas. You are truly the Lord of the Maps, Hans-Jörg! Furthermore, De Gruyter Mouton (Anke Beck, Birgit Sievert and later Uri Tadmor) are to be thanked for their continuous support of the WAVE project and for their untiring enthusiasm in planning the print publication with us from the cover design to the smallest detail of this atlas. Especially the people in charge of the production (Wolfgang Konwitschny, Angelika Hermann and Julie Miess) are to be thanked for their helpfulness, patience and generosity concerning the extension of deadlines at the various production stages, and for always trying to make the impossible possible. It’s hard to imagine a different publisher this volume could have been published with! A publication project of this dimension requires mutual trust built up over many years of fruitful and successful cooperation. But before something can go in production, it takes an enormous amount of work that goes into producing a manuscript ready for submission. All of the following research and student assistants helped the editors at various stages of the project: Agnes Schneider, Verena Schröter, Marten Juskan, Thilo Weber, Smaran Dayal, Verena Haser, Lina Wallraff, and Imke Deger. Ultimately, however, it was, as usual with all publications authored or edited by Bernd Kortmann, Melitta Cocan – best secretary and office manager in the (at least German academic) world – who prepared a manuscript in mint condition and who, in close consultation with the authors and the publishers, solved many major and minor problems on the way towards submission (and even after that during the proof stage). After all these words of thanks, there is, however, still one more group of people whom the editors wish to thank most profusely. All of them are the true heroes behind the WAVE project, in general, and the present

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atlas, in particular, namely the more than 80 wonderfully meticulous and patient colleagues who served as informants for WAVE, 62 of whom also contributed a chapter (some even two or three) to this volume. Without their readiness to devote a significant amount of their precious time to filling in the WAVE questionnaire, providing examples and answering our questions (in several rounds due to our daring – and predictably vain – attempt at perfection), this atlas project would have been impossible, impossible even to conceive of. Heartfelt thanks and deep gratitude to all of the following: Lieselotte Anderwald (English dialects in the Southeast of England), Umberto Ansaldo (Colloquial Singapore English), Angela Bartens (San Andrés Creole), Robert Bayley (Chicano English), Korah Belgrave (Barbadian Creole), Carolin Biewer (Fiji English), Lisa Bonnici (Maltese English), Sean Bowerman (White South African English), David Britain (Falkland Island English), Alfred Buregeya (Kenyan English), Sandra Clarke (Newfoundland English), Peter Collins (Australian English), Stacy Denny (Barbadian Creole, or: Bajan), Dagmar Deuber (Trinidadian Creole), Hubert Devonish (Guyanese Creole), Sabine Ehrhart (Palmerston English), Michael Ellis (Ozark English), Geneviève Escure (Belizean Creole), Nicholas Faraclas (Nigerian Pidgin), Markku Filppula (Irish English), Malcolm Finney (Krio, or: Sierra Leone Creole), Susan Fitzmaurice (White Zimbabwean English), Ashley Greig (Malaysian English), Stephanie Hackert (Bahamian Creole), Rachel Hendery (Palmerston English), Michaela Hilbert (Maltese English), Priya Hosali (Butler English), Magnus Huber (Ghanaian English, Ghanaian Pidgin), Marianne Hundt (Acrolectal Fiji English), Alexander Kautzsch (Earlier African American Vernacular English), Jennifer Kewley Draskau (Manx English), Manfred Krug (Maltese English), Lisa Lim (Colloquial Singapore English), Ahmar Mahboob (Pakistani English), Ian Malcolm (Aboriginal English, Roper River Creole (Kriol), Torres Strait Creole), Gunnel Melchers (Orkney and Shetland English), Rajend Mesthrie (Black South African English, Indian South African English), Miriam Meyerhoff (Bislama), Michael Meyler (Sri Lankan English), Bettina Migge (Eastern Maroon Creole), Michael Montgomery (Appalachian English), Salikoko Mufwene (Gullah), Peter Mühlhäusler (Norf’k, or: Norfolk Island/Pitcairn English), Peter Patrick (Jamaican Creole), Andrew Pawley (Australian Vernacular English), Robert Penhallurick (Welsh English), Pam Peters (Australian English), Stefanie Pillai (Malaysian English), Paula Prescod (Vincentian Creole), Heidi Quinn (New Zealand English), Jeffrey Reaser (Bahamian English), Anna Rosen (Channel Island English), Kent Sakoda (Hawai’i Creole), Andrea Sand (Jamaican English), Josef Schmied (Tanzanian English), Daniel Schreier (St. Helena English, Tristan da Cunha English), Anne Schröder (Cameroon Pidgin), Mark Sebba (British Creole), Devyani Sharma (Indian English), Jeff Siegel (Hawai’i Creole), Augustin Simo Bobda (Cameroon English), Beth Lee Simon (Colloquial American English), John Singler (Liberian Settler English, Vernacular Liberian English), Geoff Smith (Tok Pisin), Jennifer Smith (Scottish English), Jude Ssempuuma (Ugandan English), Andrea Sudbury (Falkland Island English), Rotimi Taiwo (Nigerian English), Jan Tent (Colloquial Fiji English), Dahlia Thompson (Guyanese Creole), Benjamin Torbert (Bahamian English), Graeme Trousdale (English dialects in the North of England), Peter Trudgill (East Anglian English), Tonjes Veenstra (Saramaccan), Susanne Wagner (English dialects in the Southwest of England), Donald Winford (Sranan), Walt Wolfram (Southeast American enclave dialects, Urban African American Vernacular English, Rural African American Vernacular English), May L-Y Wong (Hong Kong English), Valerie Youssef (Trinidadian Creole), Lena Zipp (Acrolectal Fiji English) Special mention among our authors deserve all those who contributed more than one chapter: Stefanie Hackert, Magnus Huber, Raj Mesthrie, Jeff Siegel, John Singler, and Susanne Wagner. David Britain would have joined this exclusive club, too, had he not been prevented by sudden severe health problems from authoring the regional profile on the British Isles, which he had agreed to write on top of his co-authored chapter on Falkland Island English. We would also like to say a special word of thanks to Verena Schröter for writing the chapter on Colloquial Singapore English on such short notice (and for submitting a perfect ‘editors’ delight’ version just in time to give birth to little Mira Margarita). It is in the name of all of those many people who have worked hard and with a lot of enthusiasm on the WAVE project that the editors express their sincere hope that the present volume (ideally in tandem with eWAVE) will be perceived and appreciated as the powerful research and teaching resource for the present as well as future generations of researchers, graduate and undergraduate students that it was designed to be. May it serve both as a work of reference and a point of departure to innovative research in the study of variation of English around the world!

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References Anderwald, Lieselotte. 2012. Negation in varieties of English. In: Raymond Hickey (ed.), Areal Features of the Anglophone World, 299–328. Berlin/New York: de Gruyter Mouton. Anderwald, Lieselotte, and Bernd Kortmann. in press. Typological methods in dialectology. In: Manfred Krug, and Julia Schlüter (eds.), Research Methods in Language Variation and Change. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Dryer, Matthew S., and Martin Haspelmath (eds.) 2011. The World Atlas of Language Structures Online. Munich: Max Planck Digital Library. Available online at http://wals.info/. Haspelmath, Martin, Matthew S. Dryer, David Gil, and Bernard Comrie (eds.) 2005. The World Atlas of Language Structures. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hickey, Raymond (ed.) 2004. Legacies of Colonial English. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hickey, Raymond (ed.) 2012. Areal Features of the Anglophone World. Berlin/New York: de Gruyter Mouton. Kortmann, Bernd, and Benedikt Szmrecsanyi. 2004. Global synopsis: Morphological and syntactic variation in English. In: Bernd Kortmann, Edgar Schneider, Kate Burridge, Rajend Mesthrie, and Clive Upton (eds.), The Handbook of Varieties of English. Vol. 2: Morphology and Syntax, 1142–1202. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Kortmann, Bernd (ed.) 2004. Dialectology Meets Typology: Dialect Grammar from a Cross-linguistic Perspective. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Kortmann, Bernd, and Kerstin Lunkenheimer (eds.) 2011. The Electronic World Atlas of Varieties in English [eWAVE]. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. http://www.ewave-atlas.org/ Kortmann, Bernd, Edgar Schneider, Clive Upton, Rajend Mesthrie, and Kate Burridge (eds.) 2004. A Handbook of Varieties of English. A Multimedia Reference Tool. 2 volumes and CD-ROM. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Kortmann, Bernd, and Benedikt Szmrecsanyi (eds.) 2012. Linguistic Complexity: Second Language Acquisition, Indigenization, Contact. Berlin: de Gruyter. Lunkenheimer, Kerstin. 2012. Tense and aspect. In: Raymond Hickey (ed.), Areal Features of the Anglophone World, 329–353. Berlin/New York: de Gruyter Mouton.

Melchers, Gunnel, and Philip Shaw. 2003. World Englishes. London: Arnold. Mesthrie, Rajend, and Rakesh M. Bhatt. 2008. World Englishes. The Study of New Sociolinguistic Varieties. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Michaelis, Susanne, Philippe Maurer, Martin Haspelmath, and Magnus Huber (eds.) to appear 2013. The Atlas of Pidgin and Creole Language Structures (APiCS). Munich: Max Planck Digital Library. Information available at http://lingweb.eva.mpg.de/apics/index.php/ About_APiCS Schneider, Edgar W. 2007. Postcolonial English. Varieties Around the World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Schreier, Daniel, Peter Trudgill, Edgar W. Schneider, and Jeffrey P. Williams (eds.) 2011. The Lesser-known Varieties of English: An Introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Szmrecsanyi, Benedikt. in press. Analyzing aggregated linguistic data. In: Manfred Krug, and Julia Schlüter (eds.), Research Methods in Language Variation and Change. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Szmrecsanyi, Benedikt, and Bernd Kortmann. 2009. Vernacular universals and angloversals in a typological perspective. In: Markku Filppula, Juhani Klemola, and Heli Paulasto (eds.), Vernacular Universals and Language Contacts: Evidence from Varieties of English and Beyond, 33–53. London/New York: Routledge. Szmrecsanyi, Benedikt, and Bernhard Wälchli (eds.) in press. Linguistic Variation in Text and Speech, within and across Languages. Berlin: de Gruyter. Siemund, Peter. 2013. Varieties of English: A Typological Approach. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Trudgill, Peter. 2009. Sociolinguistic typology and complexification. In: Geoffrey Sampson, David Gil, and Peter Trudgill (eds.), Language Complexity as an Evolving Variable, 98–109. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Trudgill, Peter. 2011. Sociolinguistic Typology: Social Determinants of Linguistic Complexity. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Disclaimer: The editors would like to point out that in selecting and naming the varieties of English and the English-based pidgins and creoles represented in this volume, in choosing abbreviations, identifying countries, and locating varieties on the various maps, they have been guided exclusively by practical considerations and current scholarly practice. In no case should our usage be taken as representing a particular political stance on our part or on the part of the publisher, or as insulting or disparaging the speakers of any particular variety.

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Part I: The British Isles

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Orkney and Shetland English

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Gunnel Melchers

Orkney and Shetland English 1 Sociohistorical background 1.1 History Orkney and Shetland, Britain’s ‘Northern Isles’ share a unique history, not least reflected in their language situation. In the 10th century the islands were invaded and settled by Vikings from Norway, as described in detail in the Icelandic Orkneyinga Saga, Landnámabok and Historia Norvegiæ. Unlike other Viking settlements in the British Isles, Orkney and Shetland remained all-Scandinavian, with a native language variety known as Norn, until well into the 14th century, when the Scots began making their impact on the community as well as the language. In 1379 a Scotsman was appointed Earl of Orkney, which included the sovereignty of Shetland, and about a century later the islands became part of Scotland. Yet the links with Scandinavia, especially Norway, were never broken and the Scandinavian heritage is an integral part of Orkney and Shetland identity. Norn was the dominant language in Orkney and Shetland for at least 500 years, but a natural consequence of the political changes beginning in the late Middle Ages was a shift from Norn to Scots. There is an ongoing debate considering the actual demise of Norn but judging by the scanty evidence available it died out no later than the second half of the 18th century. Today, the traditional dialects as spoken in the Northern Isles must be described as varieties of Scots, yet with a substantial component of Scandinavian, manifested at all levels of language. It must, however, be borne in mind that Orcadians and Shetlanders today are perfectly conversant with a standard variety of English, in speech as well as writing. Orkney and Shetland can, in fact, be characterized as bidialectal speech communities with access to a choice of two discrete, definable forms of speech: one a form of standard, i.e. Scottish Standard English spoken with localized accents, and the other a traditional regional dialect, partly reflecting a Norse substratum but constituting a variety of Scots. Inevitably, young speakers are increasingly losing a great deal of the traditional dialect.

1.2 Geography The Orkney and Shetland archipelagoes are situated north of the Scottish mainland, separated from each other by some fifty miles (80 km) of North Sea waters. They are closely linked politically (forming one UK Parliament constituency), historically, culturally, and not least linguistically. Hence it makes sense to give a joint presentation of the varieties, yet not underestimating differences between them, ranging from ways of life to linguistic details. The most important difference is probably the fact that Orkney is much closer to the Scottish mainland (the southernmost point of South Ronaldsay is only about a mile north of Caithness). This is, among other things, reflected in language in that Orkney dialect is less distinct from mainland Scots/Scottish English. Orkney and Shetland must be described as minor speech communities, with relatively small land areas (Orkney 990 sq.km, Shetland 1,468 sq.km) and populations (20,000 and 22,000 respectively). In spite of their peripheral location, they are modern British societies, with excellent educational establishments, including some tertiary education, and a highly developed infrastructure. While traditional local industries live on, such as the flourishing production of cheese and whisky in Orkney and world-famous but recently somewhat less successful yarn and knitwear industry in Shetland, the last few decades have seen major changes in occupation and life styles as a result of the decline in fishing, the impact of the North Sea oil discoveries and exploitation, and the rapidly expanding tourism industry.

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2 WAVE Features The data presented here as well as the discussion of grammatical features characteristic of Shetland and, to a lesser extent, Orkney dialect is based on my own extensive fieldwork in the Northern Isles and the study of their dialects since the early 1980’s. Some examples are also taken from John Graham’s The Shetland Dictionary (1993) and Grammar and Usage of the Shetland Dialect (Robertson and Graham (1991). In some doubtful cases I have consulted my friend Dr. Doreen Waugh, a distinguished place-name scholar and native speaker of Shetland dialect. I wish to express my gratitude for her invaluable assistance. I have also consulted some other native speakers for the purpose of verifying the existence of some features of which there were no examples in my data. Before turning to a detailed presentation and discussion of the WAVE features I believe it is essential to draw the reader’s attention to some general problems in defining the varieties here called ‘Orkney and Shetland dialect’. First of all, these dialects are – as here – often presented as a joint linguistic area, sometimes referred to as ‘Insular Scots’ (Johnston 1997, McColl Millar 2007), since their dialects “share more with each other than they do with any other Scots dialects” (McColl Millar 2007:4f.). They are, however, not identical, especially with regard to the lexicon and morphonology; a case in point being the different forms for the second person singular: du in Shetland, thoo in Orkney (F35). For various reasons, this chapter mostly draws on Shetland dialect: as mentioned, it retains more of the traditional, Norse substratal features, it is more solidly documented and researched, and it is much more familiar to the present writer. This presentation focuses on the traditional, local dialects of the Northern Isles, which represent unique and ‘lesser-known’ varieties of language (cf. Schreier et al. 2010). It must, however, be emphasized that these dialects are in a state of flux to a higher degree than many other varieties, losing a great deal of the traditional, localized features in the younger generations (cf. e.g. some recent studies on syntax, e.g., Smith and Durham 2011). Even so, in my experience, a great many of the present-day ‘vernacular universals’ and ‘angloversals’ listed in the WAVE general selection of morphosyntactic features (e.g. multiple negation, including characteristic features of Scots, such as double modals) are not found in Shetland/Orkney dialect as it is spoken (and written in informal texts) today. In his synopsis of the British Isles morphosyntactic section Bernd Kortmann (2008: 478) states that the Orkney and Shetland dialects are the least non-standard of all the varieties covered in the volume (by contrast, Irish English and the dialects in the North of England exhibit the largest number of non-standard features). This is borne out by the detailed account based on the WAVE feature set. Admittedly, I may have supplied too meagre evidence here, due to shortage of present-day data, but on the whole I think it gives a fair picture. Similarly, in the global synopsis (Kortmann and Szmrecsany; 2004), Shetland, together with Orkney, is mentioned regularly, but nearly always as deviating from other varieties in not exhibiting various features and being the least nonstandard of all varieties. Special mention of Shetland features occurs in few places; one of these is in a table entitled ‘Worldwide Bottom 18’ (2004: 1151) where one of the features is the relative particle at (F188). Since Orkney and Shetland dialects are generally viewed as ‘unique’ (cf. McColl Millar 2007; Melchers and Sundkvist 2010) the profile emerging in the synopses may seem rather puzzling. One explanation may be that the Northern Isles speech communities are still strictly bidialectal. The traditional dialect is generally of an archaic character, without most of the ‘vernacular universals’, and ‘Shetland English’ is a form of Standard English which is used when speaking to outsiders and in some formal situations. It should be added that Shetland and Orkney boast first-class educational establishments, including tertiary level. The following subsections offer some comments relating to the WAVE features listed in the appendix.

2.1 Pronouns, pronoun exchange, nominal gender In pronominal reference to certain noun categories, natural gender is very much alive: tools, for example, tend to be viewed as masculine, as are some natural phenomena such as the tide, whereas lamp, fish, kirk, and some time expressions are feminine (da millennium is comin, but shö …) (F1, 2). The generic use of he in

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weather expressions is of particular interest (he’s blowan ap ‘the wind is rising’) (F4). This may well be a substratum effect; there are similar constructions in some Norwegian dialects. The second person singular can be realized either as du (Shetland)/thu (Orkney) or you. The use of these forms is not random, but determined by subtle factors relating to age, status, situation, familiarity, attitude etc. It can be characterized as a conscious code-switching phenomenon. The object forms are dee/thee. The forms are exemplified in F7, F12 and F35.

2.2 Noun phrase NP structure: The indefinite article is always a, i.e. it is used before vowels as well as consonants (a aafil flickament ‘a state of excitement’). The definite article, as in Scots generally, is used with a number of nouns with which it would not be used in Standard English, e.g. names of seasons, meals, and illnesses (da brunt-rift ‘heartburn’) (F64) or where Standard English takes the indefinite article (da caald ‘cold’) (F60). As in other varieties of Scots, the definite article is also used in other time expressions, such as da day, da nicht, da mo(a)rn, da moarn’s nicht, da streen ‘yesterday evening’. Irregular plural forms are, as in other varieties of Scots, often heard: breider ‘brothers’, een ‘eyes’, shön ‘shoes’, kye ‘cows’. Yon is widely used in the dialects, indicating physical as well as emotional distance (cf. Melchers 1997) (F69). The demonstrative pronouns dis and dat, finally, are used in the plural as well as the singular (F71).

2.3 Verb phrase: tense and aspect F102: A remarkable and intriguing feature unique to Shetland and Orkney is the near-categorical use of be rather than have as a perfective auxiliary (I’m been dere twartree times, cf. Melchers 1992). It has sometimes been put forward as a substratum feature but this is hardly borne out by Scandinavian data, with the exception of one particular dialect in SW Norway. In the synopses Shetland is mentioned in connection with the beperfect, which is, however, claimed to be found in several other varieties, notably the Southeast. All in all, be as perfect auxiliary is found to occur in about 15 varieties of English around the world, but on closer examination the construction turns out to be used very differently.

2.4 Verb phrase: verb morphology As in many other traditional dialects, notably Scots/Scottish English, irregular forms differ characteristically from Standard English. A given verb may, for example, be strong in Standard English but weak in the local dialects, and levelling of past tense/past participle (F128) is common. Although the feature is found in various Scots dialects, the actual forms are often characteristic of a specific area, notably the Northern Isles (cf. Graham 1991; 1993). As in Scots generally, the irregular verb system is rather different from Standard English, and the Shetland forms often exemplify the ‘Scandinavian’ /ø/, e.g. cast ‘cast’; ‘dig peats’, cöst, cassen (her man was cassen awa ‘lost at sea’) and geng, göd, gien (the past participle, incidentally, is identical with that of gie ‘give’). There is, in fact, considerable overlap if not confusion between past and present participles: skrivan may stand for ‘writing’ as well as ‘written’, and pitten could be either equivalent to ‘putting’ or the past participle form ‘put’, which may have played a part in the use of be as a perfect auxiliary. A characteristic feature not included in the WAVE list is that a distinction in form is made between verbal adjectives/present participles, on the one hand, and verbal nouns, on the other. Substantial evidence of this distinction is found in the (unpublished) Shetland answers to Question 190 in the questionnaire used by the Linguistic Survey of Scotland (LSS), from which the following example is taken: he likes singeen; he is aye singing. I have, unfortunately, no present-day data to support this feature.

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2.5 Agreement The existence of invariant, nonstandard -s endings in the present indicative is well supported, including the second person singular (du minds), the first person singular in the historic present (So I grips and kerries her ta da hoose (Graham 1993: 12)) (F171). Another point relating to agreement is the use of der corresponding to ‘there is’ as well as ‘there are’ (Der folk here fae Sweden and Norway) (F172). In the past tense, too, a frozen form is used as a dummy subject in existential clauses, viz. dey (Dey wir no money dan) (F173). In the unpublished LSS (Linguistic Survey of Scotland) material, Question 191, investigating dialect constructions corresponding to Standard English these horses pull well and they pull well, is accompanied by the following note: “Shetland verbal usage is rather complicated, in some ways resembling Middle Scots. The third person plural present indicative has an -s ending if the subject is a noun or a pronoun separated from the verb …”. Indeed, typical responses to the question in Shetland were: dis (yon) horses pulls (poos) weel; dey pull (poo) weel. An informant notes: “When we use they, this or these we are using English and would never say these pulls or they pulls”. This is at least reminiscent of the Northern Subject Rule (F181).

2.6 Relativization As exemplified, at is the generally used relativizer (F188).

2.7 Adverbs and prepositions WAVE feature 216, “omission of StE prepositions”, is problematic. Since Shetland/Orkney dialects are traditional dialects in their own right, there can be no issue of ‘omitting StE prepositions’. The prepositions used would mostly differ from StE in form and use, but ‘omissions’ are not frequent.

2.8 Discourse organization and word order Traces of an old Scandinavian type of word order in the negated verb phrase as still existing in Icelandic and Faroese have been elicited in traditional Shetland dialect, notably on Fair Isle, and manifested in LSS (I kenno). Shetland dialect may still display inverted word order and lack of do-support as well as overt-subject imperatives: Sees du yon, boy?, Geng du, my boy! (F233).

3 Concluding remarks As pointed out in the introduction to section 2, the concept of Shetland and Orkney dialects as ‘unique’ is hardly borne out by the WAVE features listed in the overview. Rather, in a World English perspective, they seem to be characterized by comparatively few features. Yet the general feeling among Shetlanders themselves as well as most researchers on the dialect, including myself, is very different. In this tentative conclusion I will suggest some reasons for this ‘mismatch’. The selected features, for one thing, do not include a number of issues which would have done justice to the special character of a contact variety like that of Shetland. The data used for this contribution largely represents traditional Shetland/Orkney dialect, which is rich in Scandinavian substratal features. These in turn are, not surprisingly, not represented among the items in the overview. It is no doubt the Scandinavian heritage which lies behind the uniqueness of the dialect, to be traced in a number of morphosyntactic and phonological features, but above all in the lexicon.

19

Orkney and Shetland English

Appendix: Overview of WAVE features attested in Orkney and Shetland English Please note: Orkney and Shetland dialects are closely related but not identical. The examples given below are mostly taken from Shetland dialect but the features are also represented in Orcadian varieties. # 111 112 114 117 118 112 126 135

156 160 164 169 171 182 188 189 196 102 128 129 136 138 147 171 172 173 181 183

feature O&SE example I. Pronouns, pronoun exchange, nominal gender she/her used for inanimate referents Da millennium is comin, but shö … he/him used for inanimate referents Da tide farder nort, he … alternative forms/phrases for dummy it He’s blowan up me instead of I in coordinate subjects Dee an me’ll draa up da boat myself/meself instead of I in coordinate Me man an mesel wir late subjects object pronoun forms serving as base for Doo’s shuurly mirakilled (injured) desell 1st and/or 2nd person reflexives object pronoun forms as possessive I’m lost me bike pronouns: 1st person singular forms or phrases for the 2nd person Du/thoo singular pronoun other than you II. Noun phrase absence of plural marking only after four pound quantifiers use of definite article where StE has da caald (the cold (disease)) indefinite article use of definite article where StE favours da brunt-rift (heartburn) zero yon/yonder indicating remoteness yon oil company; yon muckle (big) Concorde no number distinction in demonstratives Dis is no very dray paets (These are not very dry peats) as/to as comparative markers He’s a lok (lot) bigger as his faider III. Verb phrase: tense and aspect wider range of uses of progressive be + What is du wantin? V-ing: extension to stative verbs wider range of uses of progressive be + I’m aye goin ta da library V-ing: extension to habitual contexts there with past participle in resultative Dere’s something faain (fallen) doon da sink contexts be as perfect auxiliary I’m seen it V. Verb phrase: verb morphology levelling of past tense/past participle verb sell, selled, selled forms: regularization levelling of past tense/past participle verb write, wret, wret forms: unmarked forms special inflected forms of be Du/thoo is special inflected forms of have Du/thoo hes was for conditional were If I was dee/thee VIII. Agreement invariant present tense due to So I grips and kerries her ta da hoose; du/thoo kens generalization of 3rd person -s existential / presentational there’s/there Der folk here fae (from) Sweden is/there was with plural subjects variant forms of dummy subject there in They were a coo lowse (loose) in the byre (cow-shed); Dey wir no existential clauses, e.g. they, it or zero money dan agreement sensitive to subject type Yon horses pulls weel; Dey pull weel (nominal vs. pronominal) Northern Subject Rule (combination of (cf. the example above, which does resemble the Northern both of the above) Subject Rule)

rating B B B B B B B A

B A B A A B A C B A B B B B B B A B A B

20

188

216 220 221

227 229 232 233

Gunnel Melchers

IX. Relativization relativizer at

Better da piri (small) kol at warms you dan da mukkel (big) ean at burns you

XII. Adverbs and prepositions omission of StE prepositions A’ll come alang Monday. degree modifier adverbs have the same Hit wis gyaan aafil slow form as adjectives other adverbs have the same form as Yun’s aisy gotten adjectives XIII. Discourse organization and word order inverted word order in indirect questions I’m winderin what is du gyaain ta dö. no inversion/no auxiliaries in main Small high school it was? clause yes/no questions either order of objects in double object He couldna gae him it constructions presence of subject in imperatives Geng du awa!

A

B A A

C B C B

References Graham, John. 1993 [1979]. The Shetland Dictionary. Lerwick: The Shetland Times Ltd. Johnston, Paul. 1997. Regional variation. In: Charles Jones (ed.), The Edinburgh History of the Scots Language, 433–513. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Kortmann, Bernd. 2008. Synopsis: Morphological and syntactic variation in the British Isles. In: Bernd Kortmann, and Clive Upton (eds), Varieties of English 1. The British Isles, 478–495. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Kortmann, Bernd, and Benedikt Szmrecsanyi. 2004. Global synopsis: Morphological and syntactic variation in English. In: Bernd Kortmann, and Edgar W. Schneider (eds.), A Handbook of Varieties of English, 1143–1202. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. McColl Millar, Robert. 2007. Northern and Insular Scots. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Melchers, Gunnel. 1992. ‘Du’s no heard da last o’ dis’ – on the use of be as a perfective auxiliary in Shetland dialect. In:

Matti Rissanen, Ossi Ihalainen, Terttu Nevalainen, and Irma Taavitsainen (eds.), History of Englishes. New Methods and Interpretations in Historical Linguistics, 602–610. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Melchers, Gunnel. 1997. This, that, yon: on ‘three-dimensional’ deictic systems. In: Jenny Cheshire, and Dieter Stein (eds.), Taming the Vernacular, 83–92. London: Longman. Melchers, Gunnel, and Peter Sundkvist. 2010. Orkney and Shetland. In: Daniel Schreier, Peter Trudgill, Edgar W. Schneider, and Jeffrey P. Williams (eds.), The LesserKnown Varieties of English, 17–34. Cambridge: CUP. Robertson, Thomas A., and John J. Graham. 1991. Grammar and Usage of the Shetland Dialect. Lerwick: The Shetland Times Ltd. Smith, Jennifer, and Mercedes Durham. 2011. A tipping point in dialect obsolescence? Journal of Sociolinguistics 15: 197–225.

Scottish English and Varieties of Scots

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Jennifer Smith

Scottish English and varieties of Scots 1 Sociohistorical background to varieties of Scots The English language in Scotland has considerable time-depth, with the Old English dialect of Northumbrian established from the 7th century in the southeast of present day Scotland. There was further spread of English to eastern areas from the 13th century through the establishment of the burghs, with further independent development of spoken and written norms from those in England. Although written Scots was gradually supplanted by Standard English from the 17th century onwards, spoken Scots features continue to be used to this day. The term ‘Scottish English’ or more preferably, ‘Scots’ in present day encompasses a wide spectrum of varieties, with Broad Scots at one end and Scottish Standard English (ScStE) – a variety generally described has being ‘standard English with a Scottish accent’ – at the other. This results in a linguistic continuum where the boundaries between Scots, ScStE and even English English are not clearly defined. In describing the features according to the WAVE categories A, B, or C, most of the examples cited here are from the Broad Scots end of the continuum, mostly in rural varieties which are far removed from mainstream norms. However, it is important to note that many speakers of Scots have access to a number of varieties in their linguistic repertoire, allowing them to move up and down this linguistic continuum depending on context of use. Thus a speaker may move from pervasive use of a broad Scots feature in conversation with friends to virtually no use at all in more formal contexts. This is why most of the examples are categorized as B. I make reference to such complexities below, providing comments on quantitative details where possible. Within this dialect continuum, a number of broad dialect areas are identified, with their unique histories reflected in their vocabulary, grammar, lexis and discourse features. For example, Insular Scots, spoken in the Orkney and Shetland Islands (see Melchers, this volume), arose from contact with the Scandinavian language of Norn, resulting in a number of distinct features not found in mainland Scots varieties. The highly differentiated variety of Scots spoken in the north east does not on the whole arise from contact, but instead from time-depth and socio-cultural isolation: many relic features operate alongside independent innovations in the varieties spoken in these areas. In contrast, the spread of the English language in the Highlands and Western Isles is relatively new, and this is reflected in the somewhat standard nature of the morphosyntax of these varieties – although a number of Gaelic/English calques do exist. The Central Belt of Scotland is dominated by the two urban varieties spoken in Edinburgh and Glasgow, and despite their geographic proximity, these varieties differ substantially from each other. Ulster Scots, spoken in more rural areas of Northern Ireland, is a variety which has its roots in the Ulster Plantations of the 16th century, and its links with present day south west Scotland are amply demonstrated in particular structures of use. The majority of the examples in the overview (see appendix) are taken from a number of research projects carried out on varieties of Scots over the years. They encompass a range of dialects from the far north to the south west. The variety spoken in Buckie (BCK) a small fishing town in north east Scotland has been the subject of extensive research over the last few years (e.g. Smith 2000, 2001, 2005, Smith et al. 2007). Because of its geographical and socio-historical isolation, this dialect provides a window into relic features which have disappeared in more mainstream dialects. The extensive contact with the Scandinavian language of Norn makes the variety spoken in Lerwick (LER) in the Shetland Islands very different to those on the mainland, with elements from both Older Scots and the Norn substratum still in evidence today (e.g. Smith and Durham 2011, 2012). Cumnock (CMK), an ex-mining town in south west Scotland (Tagliamonte et al 2005a, 2005b, 2005c, Tagliamonte and Smith 2003) probably represents the most mainstream of the dialects included here, although it is still at the broad end of the linguistic continuum. The variety of Ulster Scots spoken in Cullybackey (CLB), Northern Ireland, has its roots in the Ulster Plantations of the 16th century, and continues to

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have a strong Scottish heritage, as evidenced from the forms used in speech amongst the older generations (Tagliamonte et al 2005a, 2005b). I thank Sali Tagliamonte for use of the last two corpora. Most of the examples used here are stereotypes, structures that people are overtly aware of and comment on, and that tend to be used at the broad Scots end of the continuum. However, there are also a number of ‘covert’ Scotticisms: forms which speakers don’t even recognise as being Scots at all and are in fact surprised when these are pointed out as such. These covert features are used by everyone, including ScStE speakers. Again, these issues are signalled where appropriate in the text below. Where I do not have first hand information, I cite from other examples collected informally over the years. I adhere to the order of the features in the original WAVE questionnaire but focus only on those which may be unique in the Scots context or need some further explanation of use.

2 WAVE features 2.1 Pronouns, pronoun exchange, nominal gender F1 (she/her used for inanimate referents): This is restricted in most varieties of Scots to certain noun categories such as boats and weather, as in She was blowin a gale. In Shetland, a wider range of noun categories are gendered. F34 (forms or phrases for the 2nd person plural pronoun other than you): The plural form yous(e): is used extensively in the Central Belt of Scotland: Edinburgh, Glasgow and surrounding areas. Interestingly, this form may be on the rise in more rural areas: the Buckie data show that yous(e) is absent in older speakers, but marginally present in the younger generations (e.g. Smith et al 2007). F34 You ains: this is you ones, but with Scots phonology. Its use is restricted to 2nd person plural specific contexts only. It is highly prolific in more rural areas in north east and northern Scotland, and is also found in Ulster Scots. This may be the source of the form yins found in Pennsylvania, Pittsburgh and part of the Appalachians. F35 (forms or phrases for the 2nd person singular pronoun other than you): Ee is used in 2nd person singular you contexts only and it is presumably related to the relic form ye/thee. It can only be used in subject position and is possibly found in north east dialects only. F35: The use of du, the familiar form for 2nd person singular, is peculiar to the Insular Scots dialect of Shetland, although its use may be obsolescing (Smith and Durham 2007) F39 (plural forms of interrogative pronouns: using additional elements): The all form may only collocate with what, where and who: (1) Who all did you see yesterday? (2) Where all did you go? It is unclear how widespread this use is, but it is certainly common in varieties spoken in the north east.

2.2 Noun phrase F49 (regularization of plural formation: phonological regularization): Unlike English English varieties, there is no voicing alternation between singular and plural forms in /f/ (knifes) /s/ (houses) and /ù/ (mouths). With the exception of ScStE, these forms are pervasive in all varieties of Scots.

Scottish English and Varieties of Scots

23

F52 (associative plural marked by postposed and them/them all/dem): The associative plural is used pervasively in rural dialects in the north east. It is unclear whether it is used in other areas also. F60 (use of definite article where StE has indefinite article): Article use differs substantially in varieties of Scots. The definite article where Standard English would use an indefinite article as in I’ve got the cold (Ulster Scots, Cullybackey) is used, but much more common is use of a definite article where standard English has no article. This use is restricted to particular semantic sets and includes institutions, certain illnesses and periods of time: (3) (4) (5) (6) (7) (8)

Were they good to you in the hospital? Can we bide at the school? Are you gan to the kirk? He’s got a thinner coat in the summer. Do you want to have a shottie the morn? Can you take this books up the stairs with you?

The possessive pronoun is also used before certain nouns where no pronoun is present in Standard English, as in (9): (9) You’ll have to go to your bed early. All of the above are covert Scotticisms, and are used pervasively. A more unusual use is substitution of the possessive pronoun with a definite article associated with the speaker – usually body parts (inalienable possession). (10) So I trippit and oh the knee! The knee was sare! This is restricted to relic areas, but even in these areas this feature appears to be obsolescing. F68, F69, F71: Demonstrative pronouns present some interesting data in the Scots context. The pandialectal form them in F68 is used in most varieties of Scots, although this may be a more recent use (e.g. Smith and Durham in press). In central belt varieties, the form they is used in plural contexts: (11) I seen they/thae boys yesterday. The use of F71 (no number distinction in demonstratives) is restricted to northeast, northern and insular Scots. In these areas it is highly productive: for example in Buckie the singular form in plural contexts is used almost categorically (e.g. Smith and Durham in press). Yon (and by analogy with the rest of the paradigm thon in some varieties) can be used with singular and plural referents (F69): (12) So I just taen the dog a walk and saw thon little birdies dashing about the bushes. Although it is claimed that yon/thon is used to signal a third, further distance, it is more often used to signal metaphorical distance, as in (13): (13) Thon mannies wasna wise!

2.3 Tense and aspect F88 (wider range of uses of progressive be + V-ing: extension to stative verbs): This group also includes think, want, doubt, like, need, know, care, hear: (14) Are you wanting milk in yours? (15) I’m nae caring what he’s saying. (16) You just run oot and in for anything that you was needin’. This use is widespread and is probably another covert Scotticism, used even by speakers of ScStE.

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Jennifer Smith

F102 (be as perfect auxiliary): The use of be as a perfect auxiliary instead of have is highly restricted in Scots. To the best of my knowledge it only occurs in the Shetland Islands. In terms of linguistic constraints, in this variety it can appear with transitive and intransitive verbs, present and past tense, and with a variety of subject types (e.g. Smith and Durham 2011) but may be in the process of obsolescing (Smith and Durham 2012).

2.4 Modal verbs F121 (double modals): In Scots double modals are restricted to more southern areas. They are used in south west Scotland and also more border regions and are also used in varieties of Ulster Scots. Different varieties may employ different collocations. For example, in southwest Scotland, the main combination found in the data was used to + could (Tagliamonte et al 2005). It should also be noted that the use of double modals in the varieties we have looked at is rare: this could suggest either obsolescence, or highly circumscribed pragmatic use. F124: want/need + -ed are common in all varieties of Scots, even in ScStE and is most likely a covert Scotticism. It also appears in writing as in an advertisement seen in a Glasgow street: (17) Does your house need cleaned?

2.5 Verb morphology F128 (levelling of past tense/past participle verb forms: regularization): As with varieties worldwide, there are sporadic uses of regularised forms with a number of verbs including catched, teached, drawed and fighted: (18) The three teachers that was there all teached me. (19) But if you was catched up the Funn-Roadie … However, a number of verbs may be more particular to Scots: sell/selt, tell/telt, go/gied, give/gied. Selt and telt remain robust in vernacular Scots, while gied for both go and give are obsolescing (e.g. Smith 2000, 2004, 2005). F144: The use of relic gotten with dynamic aspect is in competition with standard got and may be decreasing in use (e.g. Smith 2004).

2.6 Negation F155 (ain’t as the negated form of be) is restricted to tag questions only. The more generalised ain’t in main clauses for both be and have is not used in Scots.

2.7 Agreement F172, F180: As with other varieties, non-agreement in existentials is widespread. In Scots there is both was regularisation and were regularisation in past tense existentials: (20) There were a damie that was with me. F176: In present tense existentials, the copula can be deleted, as in (21): (21) There ø a big market for salt herring, and the pickled herring. Both were regularisation and copula deletion in existential contexts are obsolescing (e.g. Smith 2000).

Scottish English and Varieties of Scots

25

F181, F183: The Northern Subject Rule exists in a number of Scots dialects, where -s is variable with plural NPs, but not permissible with plural pronoun they. The rule of no -s in they remains intact, but there is decreasing use of -s with plural NPs, particularly with main lexical verbs: (22) The teachers asks questions. The use of -s with the auxiliaries have and do, and particularly be is more robust (e.g. Smith et al 2007). (23) Has your granny and them aie been in Rathven? (24) Maybe some churches doesna do it yet. (25) Nearly all the hooses is bought with the English. Integral to the Northern Subject Rule is an adjacency constraint: if the pronoun they is immediately adjacent to the predicate it cannot take -s, but if it is non-adjacent, it can appear with -s. The example in F183 (They never tells you that in the newspaper.) appears to show this constraint. However, in the dialects we have studied, as noted above, there is categorical – s absence in contexts of they (e.g. Smith 2000, 2004; Tagliamonte et al. 2005) except with verbs of communication such as say and tell. Crucially this is regardless of adjacency, as the example in (26) shows (e.g. Adger and Smith 2010): (26) He started being sick and they says ‘positing’. The categorical use of no -s with they could be due to the fact that there are very few contexts of non-adjacency to test the specific Northern Subject Rule constraint. An alternative explanation is that this particular aspect of the rule no longer applies in present day dialects. My own grammaticality judgements for Buckie rule out examples such as They sing and dances, suggesting the latter interpretation.

2.8 Relativization F188: The relativiser at may be part of a larger assimilation process where there is widespread deletion of word initial /./ in function words in certain varieties: (27) ‘at mannie ‘ere for that man there. In other words, this looks like a phonetic/phonological process rather than a morphosyntactic one. In Shetland, the use of at for relativiser function is categorical (see Melchers, this volume). F193 (gapping/zero-relativization in subject position): This structure is largely restricted to existential and cleft constructions (e.g. Tagliamonte et al 2005a): (28) There’s a girl fae Catrine has got all medal. (29) It was an earthen floor was in that house.

2.9 Complementation F202: The use of the for to infinitive form is attested in a number of varieties, including south west Scotland, Northern Ireland and Shetland. To the best of my knowledge, it is not used in northeast or northern Scots. Its use may also be semantically restricted to clauses of purpose, thus it is extremely rare in spoken data compared to the standard infinitive to. For example, Tagliamonte et al (2005b) find less than 2 % use out of all possible infinitive contexts in Culleybackey and Cumnock and none in Buckie.

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Jennifer Smith

2.10 Adverbial subordination Clause final ‘but’ is associated with the west of Scotland, but may be more widespread in use. To the best of my knowledge, none of the other forms are used, although Scots does have a number of other non-standard forms including till for in order to. (30) Gies ower that box till I see that photies.

2.11 Adverbs and prepositions F220 Whether the degree modifier is marked or not depends on the modifier being used (Tagliamonte et al 2005b). For example, awfully rarely or even never appears with -ly, whereas really appears variably. (31) And his mother was aie awful cheery. (32) It was real dark.

3 Conclusion As the above demonstrates, Scots has a number of forms which differ from Standard English, and most of these are situated at the ‘broad’ end of the continuum. Given the complex nature of this continuum, as discussed in the introduction, I have tried to include where possible quantitative patterns of use alongside the qualitative analysis. I hope the examples also demonstrate the diverse range of varieties that exist under the umbrella of ‘Scots’. It should be stressed however that the list here is far from exhaustive: it focuses only on those forms in the WAVE list. A much more comprehensive discussion can be found in e.g. Macafee’s online grammar, the chapters in Kortmann and Schneider (2004) and Millar (2007), all noted in the bibliography.

Appendix: Overview of WAVE features attested in Scottish English # 1 7 8 11 15 28 34 35 39 43 45

feature ScE example I. Pronouns, pronoun exchange, nominal gender she/her used for inanimate referents The boat I had, was a seventy-two foot boat. She was built in Joneses-Slip in nineteen-fifty-five by my father. (BCK) me instead of I in coordinate subjects There was just your mam and your dad and me and Joe. (BCK) myself/meself instead of I in coordinate Doug and myself kind-of tidied up. (BCK) subjects regularized reflexives paradigm So we enjoy it, and he enjoys hisself, too. (BCK) They ’re doing a lot of fundraising theirselves. (CMK) absolute use of reflexives (e.g. as topic And there’s herself in that photie. (BCK) marker) use of us + NP in subject function Us bairns was aie doon the burn.(BCK) forms or phrases for the 2nd person plural Yous are wrang! (CMK) pronoun other than you I na think you ains were there when we came to the Sloch. (BCK) forms or phrases for the 2nd person Div ee ken this quine? (BCK) singular pronoun other than you Du’s here, du’s alive! (LER)) plural forms of interrogative pronouns: What all have you kept out there, now? (BCK) using additional elements Wait ’til I see what all this is? (BCK) subject pronoun drop: referential He did two year there, was it or something like that, went fae pronouns there to London, met up with his wife there. (BCK) insertion of it where StE favours zero And she made it plain till him, she would not marry him. (BCK)

rating B A B B C B B C B B B

27

Scottish English and Varieties of Scots

68 69

II. Noun phrase regularization of plural formation: phonological regularization associative plural marked by postposed and them/them all/dem use of definite article where StE has indefinite article them instead of demonstrative those yon/yonder indicating remoteness

71

no number distinction in demonstratives

72 78

group genitives double comparatives and superlatives III. Verb phrase: tense and aspect wider range of uses of progressive be + V-ing: extension to stative verbs be sat/stood with progressive meaning there with past participle in resultative contexts be as perfect auxiliary loosening of sequence of tenses rule go-based future markers IV. Verb phrase: modal verbs double modals

49 52 60

88 95 96 102 113 114 121 122 124 128

129 130 131

epistemic mustn’t want/need + past participle V. Verb phrase: verb morphology levelling of past tense/past participle verb forms: regularization levelling of past tense/past participle verb forms: unmarked forms levelling of past tense/past participle verb forms: past tense for past participle levelling of past tense/past participle verb forms: past participle for past tense

144

use of gotten and got with distinct meanings (dynamic vs. static)

147

was for conditional were VII. Negation multiple negation / negative concord ain’t as the negated form of be never as preverbal past tense negator

154 155 159 164 165

172 180 181

amn’t in tag questions invariant non-concord tags (including eh?) VIII. Agreement existential / presentational there’s/there is/there was with plural subjects was/were generalization agreement sensitive to subject type (nominal vs. pronominal)

They dinna gie their wifes and athing the cash and athing. (BCK)

A

Pat Broon and them is retiring after twenty-nine year.(BCK)

B

I’ve got the cold. (CLB)

B

That was one of them grograin suits Loch Stoy, thonnner, it is bonny.(BCK) Thon mob that was aside hez. (BCK) He says, ‘Yon silly bugger. Yon silly bugger’. (CMK) Are you going to put this slippers on? (BCK) I’m looking among all that bonny toasters. (BCK) The quine I spoke to’s mother turned up. (BCK) It’s more easier than it used to be. (CMK)

B B

Oh, they’re liking it awful well. (CMK) They ’re wanting a loon to ging and call out the wifies. (BCK) And there were a wee alarm clock sat on the window. (CMK) There’s something wasna coming on very well in the plot. (BCK)

A

I’m no been in Imelda’s in a start. (LER)

B B B

I’m gan to keep out this one of my own to let him see it. (BCK) You used to could go through the estate from Auchinleck side. (CMK) Does your floor need hoovered? (BCK)

B B B

C B

C B A

We gied doon this peerie road. (LER) I selt it a few year ago to the rowp man. Doctor Paterson telt him right up, right oot. (BCK) You just run out and in for anything that you was needing. (BCK)

B

She’d went away back down to London for a while. (BCK)

B

The last time we seen her she was gan out with a guy fae up there. (BCK) I taen it into my head that it was Carol. (BCK) She’s got a lot of ideas in her head about what she wants to do. (BCK) They’ve gotten a new baby. They’ve gotten a loonie this time. (BCK) If he was on injections he would have to stop. (CLB)

B

We never did nothing in here really. (CLB) She’s a bonny lassie, in’t she? (BCK) I never had that the last time. (BCK) I just shut the door, I never spoke till him. (BCK) Oh I’m silly, am’nt I? (BCK) You’re goin there, eh? (CMK)

B C B

There’s seven weeks atween us all. (BCK) There was about six chefs there. (CMK) When you come home fae your honeymoon if you had one, you was ‘kirkit’. (BCK) Mam, my troosers is fallin’ doon … they’re too big. (BCK)

B

B

B

B C

A B B

28

183

188 193

202 204

211 220

221

225 229 233 234 235

Jennifer Smith

Northern Subject Rule (combination of both of the above) IX. Relativization relativizer at gapping/zero-relativization in subject position X. Complementation unsplit for to in infinitival purpose clauses as what / than what in comparative clauses XI. Adverbial subordination clause-final but = ‘though’ XII. Adverbs and prepositions degree modifier adverbs have the same form as adjectives

They never tells you that in the newspaper. (BCK)

B

Now, eh the wifie at bade in here, she’s always standing with her hands in her shawlie. (BCK) But there were a boy in Ballyclare told me this. (CLB) And there were a wee alarm clock sat on the window. (CMK)

B

He must’ve kent I must’ve got tickets for to get through the gate. (CMK) They use more farmer expressions than what we div. (BCK)

C B

They’re no goin’ there, but.

B

He was real pleased, aye. (BCK) And he was awful homesick you know my Uncle Jim. (CMK) That’s terrible good for your blood. (CLB) other adverbs have the same form as If action’s nae taen quick, something drastic is going to happen. adjectives (BCK) XIII. Discourse organization and word order sentence-initial focus marker Well, her, she’s away, she’s away (BCK) And her, she bade across the road there. (BCK) no inversion/no auxiliaries in main clause You nae mind on that? (BCK) yes/no questions presence of subject in imperatives Calm you down I says to her! (CMK) like as a focussing device And I had already like all this like little facts to spit out at her as soon as she said it, ken. (BCK) like as a quotative particle Then she goes ‘Well, what was that black stuff I found in my room?’ And I was like ‘You ken what it was.’ She’s like ‘I dinna.’ I says ‘Aye, you div.’ (BCK)

C

B

B

B B C A A

References Adger, David, and Jennifer Smith. 2010. Variation and agreement: a lexical feature-based approach. Lingua 120: 1109–1134. Melchers, Gunnel. 2004. English spoken in Orkney and Shetland: Morphology, syntax and lexicon. In: Bernd Kortmann, and Edgar Schneider (eds.), A Handbook of Varieties of English, Vol. 2: Morphology and Syntax, 34–47. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Millar, Robert. 2007. Northern and Insular Scots. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Miller, James. 2004. Scottish English: Morphology and syntax. In: Bernd Kortmann, and Edgar Schneider (eds.), A Handbook of Varieties of English, Vol. 2 Morphology and Syntax, 47–72. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Smith, Jennifer. 2000. Synchrony and diachrony in the evolution of English: Evidence from Scotland. Unpublished PhD. University of York. Smith, Jennifer. 2001. Negative concord in the Old and New World: Evidence from Scotland. Language Variation and Change 13(2): 109–134. Smith, Jennifer. 2004. Accounting for vernacular features in a Scottish dialect: Relic, innovation, analogy and drift. In: Christian J. Kay, Simon Horobin, and Jeremy J. Smith

(eds.), New Perspectives on English Historical Linguistics. Volume 1: Syntax and Morphology, 177–193. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Smith, Jennifer. 2005. The sociolinguistics of contemporary Scots: evidence from one dialect. In: John M. Kirk, and Dónall P. ÓBaoill (eds.), Legislation, Literature and Sociolinguistics: Northern Ireland, the Republic of Ireland, and Scotland, 112–125. Belfast: Queen’s University Press. Smith, Jennifer, and Mercedes Durham. 2007. Du’s here, du’s alive! The survival of relic forms in a Scottish dialect. Paper presented at UKLVC Lancaster. Smith, Jennifer, and Mercedes Durham. 2011. A tipping point in dialect obsolescence? Journal of Sociolinguistics 15(2): 197–225. Smith, Jennifer, and Mercedes Durham. 2012. Bidialectalism or dialect death? Explaining change across the generations in Shetland. American Speech 87(1): 57–88. Smith, Jennifer, Mercedes Durham, and Liane Fortune. 2007. Community, caregiver and child in the acquisition of variation in a Scottish dialect. Language Variation and Change 19(1): 63–99. Tagliamonte, Sali, Jennifer Smith, and Helen Lawrence. 2005a. No taming the vernacular! Insights from the relatives in

Scottish English and Varieties of Scots

northern Britain. Language Variation and Change 17(1): 75–112. Tagliamonte, Sali, Jennifer Smith, and Helen Lawrence. 2005b. Disentangling the roots: the legacy of British dialects in cross-variety perspective. In: Markku Filppula, Juhani Klemola, Marjatta Palander, and Esa Penttilä (eds.), Dialects across Borders: Selected Papers from The 11th International Conference on Methods in Dialectology (Methods XI). Joensuu, Finland. August 2002, 87–117. Amsterdam: Benjamins.

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Some excellent web-based resources on varieties of Scots: Macafee, Caroline. Characteristics of non-standard grammar in Scotland. http://www.abdn.ac.uk/~enl038/ Scotsgrammar.pdf. [An extensive checklist of grammatical features of Modern Scots which differ from Standard English.] The Scots Language Centre website, for the promotion of Scots http://www.scotslanguage.com/. [A highly accessible website with sound clips from the different dialect areas. Updated regularly.]

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Markku Filppula

Irish English 1 Introduction The term ‘Irish English’ (IrE) is used here as a cover term for a wide range of the non-standard regional and social varieties of English spoken in the Republic of Ireland and in Northern Ireland. The combined population of these is approximately 6.4 million, with some 4.6 million living in the Republic and 1.8 million in Northern Ireland. In addition to the island of Ireland, IrE, or perhaps more aptly, varieties exhibiting more or less strong IrE inputs are found in other parts of the world as a result of the millions of Irish emigrants settling over the last few centuries in Britain, the United States, Canada (especially Newfoundland), Australia, and New Zealand. Linguistically, present-day IrE can be characterised as one of the ‘Inner Circle’ or ‘L1’ Englishes along with its closest neighbours such as British English, Scottish English and Welsh English. However, IrE can hardly be described as having a ‘standard’ of its own or as being ‘norm-providing’ in the same sense as British or American English, although it is usually mentioned as one of the ‘national’ varieties of English (see, e.g. Quirk et al. 1985). Also, use of the term ‘Irish English’, as in this chapter, should not hide from view the internal heterogeneity of the vernacular dialects or varieties. Because of sociohistorical reasons, IrE is divided into different varieties, following mainly divisions along the northern, more Scottish-influenced, and southern, less Scottish-influenced, varieties. Cutting across the north-south division is one along the east, more urban, and west, more rural, axis. Crude as these divisions are, they describe the amount of variation found even within a relatively small geographical area. The motley terminology used for different IrE varieties is but one sign of this. Thus, apart from Irish English, terms such as Anglo-Irish, Scotch-Irish, Hiberno-English, Ulster English, and Ulster Scots appear in the literature, with each having a different definition depending on the author’s (point of) view (for discussion, see Filppula 1999; Hickey 2004, 2007). Yet another dimension to the present-day and future development of IrE is added by the recent influx of non-Irish nationals into the Republic, and to some extent, Northern Ireland as well. Thus, the 2011 census results for the Republic shows that the number of the non-Irish immigrant population had risen by almost a third from the previous census in 2006 and now accounts for 12 per cent (544,360) of the whole population of the State (visit: http://www.cso.ie/en/ census/index.html). What effect this will have on the linguistic makeup of the Englishes of Ireland remains to be seen and researched, but the fact that there are, for example, more Poles in Ireland today than UK nationals is bound to reflect in the long run, especially in urban varieties of IrE. Similarities and differences between IrE and other varieties have been described in detail in several publications. Some of the most comprehensive accounts can be found in Henry (1957), Harris (1993), Kallen (1994), Filppula (1999), Corrigan (2010), and Hickey (2007, 2005 on Dublin English). The following discussion of the syntax and morphology of IrE is based on data drawn from a number of sources, all representing authentic speech recorded from Irishmen and Irishwomen in various parts of Ireland. The main source for what is here called ‘southern’ IrE consists of recordings made by myself and a number of other people in four different areas: Dublin City, Co. Wicklow, Co. Clare and Co. Kerry (for details of the corpus, see Filppula 1999, ch. 4). For the ‘northern’ IrE varieties, which comprise different varieties of Ulster English and Ulster Scots, I have relied on the so-called Northern Ireland Transcribed Corpus of Speech (henceforth ‘NITCS’ for short; see Kirk 1992 for details). In addition to these, previous studies of IrE, either spoken or written, and my own informal observations on language usage in Ireland over the years have provided useful data for the description undertaken below.

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2 Socio-cultural background From a socio-cultural and historical point of view, IrE can be described as one of the L2 varieties, as it has evolved as a result of long-standing coexistence and contacts with the indigenous Celtic language of the Irish people, Irish. The English language was first introduced into Ireland in the mid-twelfth century, along with the invasions led by the Anglo-Normans, the then rulers of England. At first English had to compete not only with Irish, but with Latin and French, which for quite a long time were used as the languages of administration and education in Ireland as well as in England. However, the mass of the population continued to use Irish, and contemporary reports on the language situation suggest that by the end of the sixteenth century the English-speakers in mediaeval Ireland were almost entirely assimilated to the Irish language and culture. Indeed, it seems that by 1600 English survived only in some of the major towns like Dublin and in few scattered rural areas in the east and south-east of Ireland (see e.g. Bliss 1979). In some of the most recent scholarship, evidence has been brought forward to show that there was, in fact, more continuity between the ‘Old (mediaeval) English’ of Ireland, especially in the so-called English Pale in the eastern coastal regions around Dublin, and that of the later centuries from the early Modern period onwards than had been previously assumed (see especially Kallen 1994). A new phase in the battle between the two languages began with the late-sixteenth-century plantations of Ulster and parts of Munster, and these were soon followed by the large-scale plantations under Cromwell in the mid-seventeenth century. Yet Irish was able to hold on to most of its positions remarkably well right up to the end of the eighteenth century. It was the early part of the nineteenth century which then saw the tipping of the scales in favour of English. By then, bilingualism had become widespread, and the process of language shift, once it got under way, proceeded at a pace scarcely paralleled in linguistic history. By the middle of the nineteenth century, English had made deep inroads into the Irish-speaking communities throughout the country with the exception of the coastal areas in the west of Ireland and some rather isolated inland areas. The setting up of National Schools in 1831 with English as the medium of instruction, the choice of English as the main vehicle of the Catholic Emancipation movement, followed by the Great Famine of the 1840s and the subsequent emigration of about one million Irish men and women, many of them Irish-speaking, were among the major factors which led to a ‘mass flight’ from Irish and a drastic drop in the numbers of especially monoglot speakers of Irish. As de Fréine (1977) and Hindley (1990), among others, have pointed out, it is remarkable that, once set in motion, this process was not so much enforced on the Irish people from above or outside, but rather occurred in the home: parents began to see English as an indispensable way to social and economic success for their children, as “the key to the golden door of America”, to use de Fréine’s eloquent expression (1977: 86). This led them to actively discourage their children from using Irish even in the home. At present, Irish survives as a living community language only in limited areas collectively known as the Gaeltacht; it is, however, widely studied and used as a second language by almost everybody who has gone through the educational system in the Republic, and by large numbers of people in Northern Ireland, too. Because of its language-contact background, IrE dialects reflect the continuing influence of the Irish substratum in many areas of its pronunciation, grammar, and vocabulary. This influence varies a great deal from one place to another. It is at its strongest in the rural areas especially in the west of Ireland, where Irish is still within living memory, whereas the present-day urban varieties show more influences coming from British, American, and increasingly, International or World English. Linguistically, the dialects spoken in the historical northern province of Ulster form a group of their own because of the extensive input from the Scottish dialects introduced into these parts by the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Scottish settlers. The term ‘Ulster Scots’ (or ‘Ullans’) is used to refer to the most Scots-influenced variety, which today enjoys the status of a language in its own right and has been recognised as such by the UK Government. The other forms of English in Ulster are rather variably termed either ‘Ulster English(es)’, ‘northern Irish English’, or ‘northern HibernoEnglish’ (see e.g. Harris 1984a; Hickey 2007).

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3 Notable aspects of the Irish English WAVE profile Out of the 235 morpho-syntactic features listed in the WAVE questionnaire, 24 were rated as A (‘pervasive or obligatory’) and 45 as B (‘neither pervasive nor extremely rare’). Another 13 were rated as C (‘feature exists but is extremely rare’) on the basis of the data available. The remaining 153 features were assigned to category X (‘not applicable’). The relatively small proportion of even the combined total of A’s and B’s suggests that the morphology and syntax of IrE follow in the main the patterns found in the other British Isles Englishes – taking also into consideration the fact that a large part of these two categories can be found to varying degrees in those other varieties, too. This is particularly true of ‘educated’ IrE, which is not surprising considering that (British) Standard English has traditionally provided the principal (though implicit) norm for the teaching of English in Irish schools. However, the regional dialects and also urban working-class varieties present a different picture. They contain many features which distinguish these varieties from most other regional or social dialects of BrE either with respect to their syntactic properties or frequency of use. This is due to four main factors which have affected the development of both southern and northern IrE: (i)

conservatism, which means retention of some features of earlier ‘mainstream’ English that are now mostly archaic or defunct in BrE; (ii) dialect contact with other varieties of English spoken especially in the British Isles; of particular importance here is the diffusion of influences from the Scottish varieties of English to northern IrE (some of these are also found in the southern varieties); (iii) contact influences from Irish, the indigenous language of Ireland, which is still spoken in some parts of Ireland and has for centuries exercised a considerable amount of ‘substratal’ influence upon IrE; though gradually fading away, the vestiges of this influence can still be heard even in the urban varieties of IrE but are better preserved in those dialects which are spoken in, or close to, the earlier and present-day Irish-speaking areas; (iv) universal features associated with second-language acquisition in the kind of intense language shift conditions which existed in Ireland especially from the early nineteenth century onwards and which were characterised by a fairly rapid shift involving large numbers of speakers and general lack of formal schooling up until the latter part of the nineteenth century. The combined effect of these factors makes IrE an interesting mixture of linguistic features derived from one or the other of the mentioned sources. As will be seen, the distinctive nature of IrE is much more visible in syntax than in morphology (which stands to reason in view of the relative poverty of English morphology). Some of the most distinctive features are briefly discussed in the following.

3.1 Pronominal forms Some of the most notable features under this heading include, first, the use of myself/meself instead of I in coordinate subject position (F15 in the WAVE questionnaire). For example: (1)

Myself and my brother went to the house.

(Probably) related to this is the absolute use of reflexive pronouns also in other persons in syntactic contexts where they would normally require the presence in the same clause or sentence of another nominal element with which they stand in a coreferential relation. In IrE, however, reflexives can occur as subject, object, or as prepositional complement in adverbial prepositional phrases, as in the following examples: (2)

And by God, he said, … he’d be the devil, if himself wouldn’ make him laugh. (Kerry: M.C.)

(3)

And d’you hear me, you didn’t know the minute they’d burn yourself an’ the house. (Clare: J.N.)

(4) … when Cromwell came over here … he was s’posed to say, he’d drive the Irish to hell or Connacht … The Irish used to say … the Irish went to Connacht and left hell for himself. (Dublin: W.H.)

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This feature is not restricted to vernacular IrE but also occurs commonly even in ‘educated’ varieties. While the function of an absolute reflexive like himself is sometimes described as a polite form of reference to the ‘man of the house’, in actual usage there appear to be other functions, too. For instance, an absolute reflexive is often used with reference to that person or those persons who constitute the ‘topic’ of the conversation in some way or another. Of the examples cited above, this interpretation seems apt for the subject and prepositional complement reflexives in (2) and (4). Two other noteworthy features of IrE pronominal forms have to do with second-person pronouns. The first is the distinction between singular you and plural yous (sometimes spelt youse or yez/yiz), which is a well-known characteristic of IrE vernacular and many other varieties (F34). A more recent variant, particularly common in the speech of the younger generations, is you guys, which may well be due to AmE influence. The more traditional forms yous/youse/yez/yiz are also found in other varieties like Tyneside English, Scots, and Liverpool dialects. These are addressed by F34. The other feature concerns the second person singular pronoun, which in IrE is often ye instead of you (F35).

3.2 Noun Phrase Perhaps the most notable feature of the IrE noun phrase is frequent use of the definite article in contexts where it is realised as zero in British Standard English and many other regional varieties; F64). In this respect, however, IrE is very similar to Scottish English and Welsh English, and similar usages have been documented in some other, geographically much more remote, varieties such as Indian English (see, e.g. Sand 2004; Sharma 2005). Extensive use of the definite article has long been a recognised feature of IrE, and it has been commented on, for example, in the early work by Joyce (1910/1988: 82–83) and in later works such as Henry (1957: 117), Bliss (1984:149), Harris (1993: 144–145), and Filppula (1999: section 5.2.). Nonstandard uses tend to cluster around certain categories or groups of words and expressions. The most widespread of these are: (i) names of languages and branches of learning: (5)

And err, when I do be listen’ to the Irish here, I do be sorry now, when you’re in a local having a drink, nobody seems to understand it. Whoever is speaking the Irish, might as well be, as the saying says, speaking Dutch … (Dublin: P.T.)

(6) Oh, the maths, the maths nowadays seems to be complicated. (NITCS: RF21) (ii) (unpleasant) physical sensations or states: (7)

I think Jim Larkin, Big Jim, err, brought it [a ship] here, called The Heir, with food … for this, this is the poor people were starved with the hunger. (Dublin: W.H.)

(iii) names of diseases and ailments: (8) And that cured the whooping cough … Some children does be terrible bad with it, whooping cough. (Wicklow: T.F.) (9) But he’s the measles, and he, he’s off school for a while. (NITCS: NK43) (iv) names of social institutions: (10) I left the school in early age, nearly fourteen, you know. (Dublin: W.H.) (11) … mm, best singer now, he’s away in, in, the present time in the hospital [i.e., as a patient]. (NITCS: CM129)

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(v) quantifying expressions involving most, both, half followed by a postmodifying of phrase: (12) Oh, well, down round Arboe the most of them was all small kind of farms, … (NITCS: FC73) (13) I had more brothers, two more brothers there with ‘im at the time. And the both of them is dead. (Wicklow: J.F.) (14) Now Lough Melvin’s a good salmon place. It’s down here, the half of it’s in, eh, Eire, you know, in the Free State. (NITCS: JH80) Less noticeable, but also characteristic of the vernacular forms of IrE, are the following categories: (vi) names of festive days or seasons: (15) Yes. The wren, the wren, the King of all birds, Saint Stephen’s day was caught in the bush. You see, they chased him up here the Saint Stephen’s Day, the chap, boys. (Wicklow: T.F.) (vii) plural count nouns with generic reference: (16) Do they keep the goats? (Kerry: D.B.) (viii) non-count abstract nouns and concrete mass nouns: (17) I don’ know when the coffee came. I s’pose it did, came later. The tea, the tea, the tea weren’t there at all. (Kerry: M.C.) (ix) expressions involving reference to body parts: (18) Well, John Doolan cut a branch off it, and a crowd of birds come and they nearly took the head off him. They all collected round his head. (Wicklow: T.F.) (x) names of geographical areas and localities: (19) But I’m sure now, if you went out to Glendalough, you would get people that’d give you a good deal of the lowdown of the County Wicklow. (Wicklow: M.K.) As is shown in Filppula (1999), most of these usages have parallels in Irish, which has only the zero and the definite articles. Extensive use of the latter in IrE is likely a transfer feature based on the Irish usages, or at least it has been reinforced by the Irish substratum in those cases in which there are similar earlier or dialectal English usages (for a detailed discussion of these, see Filppula 1999, section 5.2). A third possible source is some universal semantic or pragmatic properties associated with the use of articles, which would explain the occurrence of similar usages across geographically distant and socio-historically different varieties (cf. Sand 2004). Another feature where IrE behaves similarly to many other varieties is the use of them as a determiner or ‘demonstrative adjective’ instead of those (F68). This is illustrated in (20) (cf. Harris 1993: 145). Research on other varieties spoken in the British Isles has shown that them in this function is one of the most commonly occurring features of nonstandard British English dialects, both urban and rural (Cheshire et al. 1989): (20) … that time the people were rich that used to live in them houses. (Dublin: J.O’B.)

3.3 The verb system The tense-aspect-modality (TMA for short) systems form an area which perhaps most clearly distinguishes IrE from the other British Isles Englishes and, from the systemic point of view, from most varieties in other parts of the world. This is what could be expected, given the general cross-linguistic evidence from other varieties which have emerged in conditions of intense language contact and shift.

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3.3.1 Perfective aspect The overall coding of tense-aspect distinctions in IrE is more complex than in StE, for example. On the one hand, IrE makes prominent use of the present and past tenses for perfective aspect meanings which are in other dialects expressed by distinct forms such as the so-called ‘periphrastic’ have perfect. On the other hand, IrE has developed, or preserves from earlier English, separate forms for some temporal and aspectual meanings; some of these forms are either not found or no longer used in other varieties. As many as six different categories of IrE perfects can be distinguished, and they are described and illustrated below with examples drawn from the above-mentioned databases. (i) the indefinite anterior perfect (F99), which denotes events or states of affairs which take place at an unspecified point in a period leading up to the moment of utterance; quite common even in educated speech: (21) Were you ever in Kenmare? (Kerry: J.F.) ‘Have you ever been …?’ (22) {And do you go up to see it [a car race]?} I never went till it yet. (NITCS: CM119) (ii) the after perfect (F98), which typically (but not exclusively) refers to events or states in the recent past; generally considered to be a calque on the corresponding Irish tar éis/tréis construction, it is a widely-known hallmark of informal IrE speech avoided by educated speakers at least in formal contexts: (23) You’re after ruinin’ me. (Dublin: M.L.) ‘You have (just) ruined me.’ (24) And when the bell goes at six you just think you were only after going over, and you get out and up again. (NITCS: OM53) (iii) the medial-object perfect (F97), which focuses on the result, or resulting state, of an action rather than the action itself; verbs used in this way are typically dynamic and transitive, as in (25) from northern IrE, but occasional instances of other types also occur especially in the conservative rural varieties, such as the verb of ‘inert perception’ or ‘intellectual activity’ in (26): (25) Take your shoes off then {aye}, and go round the stations on your bare feet. And you … you eat nothing till you’re, have the stations made. (NITCS: OM51) (26) I have it forgot. (Wicklow: T.F.) ‘I have forgotten it.’ (iv) the be perfect (F102), which is the intransitive counterpart of the resultative medial-object perfect described above, and is used with verbs of motion or change such as go, change, leave or die; paralleled by Irish usage, but may equally be a retention from Early Modern English: (27) I think the younger generations are gone idle over it. (Kerry: M.C.) (28) … particularly the valley up the, mm, Cranagh road {mm}, is drastically changed, and improved for the better. (NITCS: JM51) (v) the extended-now perfect (F101), which refers to events or states initiated in the past but continuing at the moment of utterance; probably having mixed origins in earlier English and Irish parallels, it is frequent enough in informal educated speech and occasionally occurs even in writing:

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(29) I’m not in this [caravan] long … Only have this here a few year. (Wicklow: D.M.) ‘I haven’t been/lived … ’ (30) {Well, how long are you [have you been] in here now?} Oh, I’m in, I’m in here about four months. (NITCS: I PT91) (vi) the standard have perfect, which can express all of the above meanings and is so used in StE as well as in educated, especially written, IrE. On the whole, the IrE system and the patterns of variation within it provide a good example of complexification rather than simplification in varieties that have evolved in conditions of intense language contact. For further discussion see, for example, Harris (1993), Kallen (1989), or Filppula (1999).

3.3.2 Progressive aspect The most notable feature of the use of the progressive or -ing form (PF for short) in IrE is the relative freedom with which the PF can be used in IrE dialects, both as a marker of progressivity (as in StE) and in a number of other contexts. Of the latter, the most striking is the use of the PF with stative verbs (F88), such as those denoting ‘intellectual states’ (or ‘cognition’), ‘states of emotion or attitude’, other states of ‘being’ and ‘having’ (so-called ‘relational verbs’), and ‘stance’. These are illustrated in the following: (i) Intellectual states (or ‘cognition’): (31) There was a lot about fairies long ago … but I’m thinkin’ that most of ‘em are vanished. (Clare: M.R.) ‘ … but I think/believe that … ’ (32) I was knowing your face. (North Roscommon; cited in Henry 1957: 169) (ii) States of emotion or attitude: (33) Well, of course, Semperit is a, an Austrian firm … They are not caring about the Irish people, they are only looking after their own interest, … (Dublin: M.L.) (34) There was a school in Ballynew, and they were wantin’ to build a new school. (Clare: C.O’B.) (iii) Other states of being and having (‘relational verbs’): (35) I think two of the lads was lost at sea during the War. They were belonging to the, them men here. (Dublin: P.L.) (36) The money that they had saved they were actually waiting on it then … They were depending on it. (NITCS: PT14) (iv) Stance: (37) [They] call it the Golf Stream … And that’s flowing into the Atlantic. It is flowing into the Atlantic Ocean. (Kerry: M.C.) (38) And it [a road] is going a way up … Up into the mountain. And it is leading up to this … old graveyard. (Kerry: M.McG.) Besides stative verbs, another important context of use of the PF is with inherently dynamic verbs in contexts where StE would use the simple present or simple past tense forms or (in past-time contexts) used to + Infinitive in habitual function (F89), illustrated in (39) below.

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(v) Habitual activity (with dynamic verbs): (39) … but there, there’s no bogland here now. {Yeah. And do people go up there to cut turf?} They were going there long ago but the roads got the, like everything else, they got a bit too-o rich and … (Kerry: M.C.) Thirdly, the PF is commonly found after the auxiliaries would/‘d/ used (to) indicating habitual activity in contexts where the simple infinitive is clearly preferred in StE. This feature is not included in the WAVE questionnaire. For example: (40) So, when the young lads’d be going to bathing, like, they’d have to go by his house, and they used to all … (Clare: M.F.) (41) But they, I heard my father and uncle saying they used be dancing there long ago, like, you know. (Clare: M.F.) Fourthly, the PF is frequently used with other auxiliaries, such as do/does and will/’ll. Like the previous case, this is not directly addressed by the questionnaire. The former usage is generally considered unique to IrE and will be discussed in greater detail in the next section. The latter, exemplified in (42), is a general vernacular feature found in other varieties, too. (42) … this fellow now, Jack Lynch, that’s going to come into power now, that he’ll, he’ll be forgetting the North. (Wicklow: M.K.) The free use of the PF in IrE quite plausibly derives from Irish, which relies heavily on the so-called verbal noun construction in similar contexts; another factor promoting its use is the continually increasing use of the PF in English itself. The role of the Irish substrate is further supported by the fact that some Welsh and Scottish English dialects (especially those spoken in the Hebrides) display the same tendency, suggesting that it is due to similar substrate influence from Welsh and Scottish Gaelic on those varieties.

3.3.3 Habitual aspect Some habitual aspect markers have already been mentioned in the previous section, viz. the use of the progressive form with dynamic verbs, the auxiliaries would/‘d/ used [to] followed by the -ing form, and the auxiliary do/does used with the same form. An example of the last-mentioned is given in (43): (43) Yeah, that’s, that’s the camp. Military camp they call it … They do be shooting there couple of times a week or so. (Wicklow: D.M.) The do be + V-ing construction is one of the most distinctive features of vernacular IrE and not found in other varieties spoken in the British Isles (it does occur, though, in some Caribbean varieties). Besides this construction, another common pattern consists of do(es) followed by the infinitive form of a lexical verb, as in (44), or by be + an adjective or a noun, as in (45). Note that, unlike the do be + V-ing construction, these two types are also listed in the questionnaire (F91): (44) Two lorries of them [turf] now in the year we do burn. (Kerry: M.C.) (45) They does be lonesome by night, the priest does, surely. (Clare: M.R.) All of the do (be) forms are highly stigmatised and carefully avoided in educated speech. Yet they can be regularly heard in the speech of urban working-class people and in southern rural dialects of IrE. Northern IrE dialects, including Ulster Scots, favour somewhat different constructions, viz. be or be’s (sometimes also spelt bees) followed either by the -ing form or by an adjective or a noun. This usage is addressed by F90. As with the do (be) constructions, the meaning is habitual or generic (see, e.g., Harris 1984a; Kallen 1989; Robinson 1997). Examples from the NITCS are:

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(46) {Where do they [tourists] stay, and what kind of pastimes do they have?} Well, they stay, some of them, in the forestry caravan sites. They bring caravans. They be shooting, and fishing out at the forestry lakes. (NITCS: MC16) (47) {And what do you do in your play centre? Do you think it’s a good idea in the holidays?} It’s better, because you be’s bored doing nothing {mm} at home. (NITCS: KO121) In both southern and northern IrE, the negated forms involve non-standard use of the auxiliary do (not covered by the questionnaire), as can be seen from the following examples: (48) Well, it’s [oats] generally cut, but sometimes it gets, it doesn’t be up, to the mark, don’t you know, it’d be bad, like oats, if you met a bad year … (Wicklow: J.F.) (49) And they k(eep), they always keep the horse up above. It doesn’t be usually down in the field now. (NITCS: SM109) While the southern IrE forms have by many scholars been ascribed to the influence of Irish (see especially Henry 1957 and Bliss 1972), there is less agreement about the origins of the northern be/bees forms, with dialect diffusion from the Scottish dialects presenting itself as another possible source (for discussion, see e.g. Montgomery and Gregg 1997). Further parallels to the IrE patterns can be found in Welsh English and in some conservative south-western dialects of English English, but in contrast to IrE, they generally involve the uninflected form of do followed by the infinitive. The possible Celtic influence on all of these varieties has long been a subject of debate but has turned out to be hard to substantiate (for discussion, see Filppula 1999, section 6.3).

3.4 Negation Multiple negation or negative concord, as it is also often called (F154), occurs as a common feature of vernacular IrE, which in this respect is no different from most other nonstandard varieties. Thus, two or more negative items may occur in the same clause, as in the following examples drawn from the northern and southern dialects: (50) Och, I don’t know just, they’re just not the same, nor never will be like the old people. (NITCS: LD77) (51) You’ve not heard of that nothing? (Kerry: M.C.) Rather than being a retention from the earlier stages of English, which allowed negative concord, or a result of transfer from Irish, this feature of IrE is best considered a general vernacular feature widespread in other varieties of English, too.

3.5 Complementation A common feature shared by most vernacular forms of IrE is the use of for to instead of to or in order to in infinitival clauses expressing purpose (F202). This usage is illustrated by the following examples from northern and southern IrE: (52) And there was always one man selected for to make the tea. (NITCS: PM11) (53) I think it was a penny or halfpenny we used to bring to school for to see the Punch an’ Judy Show. (Dublin: P.L.) While this construction is by no means unique to IrE because of its general occurrence in earlier forms of English and in other regional dialects, there are other usages especially in northern IrE dialects which appear to be peculiar to them. Such is, for example, the use of for to after an ‘intentional’ verb like try, as in (54): (54) And the father, he would try for to tell her, like, … (NITCS: LM7)

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Certain kinds of adjectives in predicate position can also lead to for to being used instead of to; witness (55): (55) It’s very important, you know, for to have such a man {ahah} like him. (NITCS: PL23) A detailed description of the for to phenomena in northern IrE, and especially Belfast speech, is provided by Henry (1995), who distinguishes between ‘weak’ and ‘strong’ Belfast English varieties in this respect. Speakers representing the former variety restrict the use of for to to purpose clauses, whereas representatives of the latter group use it in a wider range of contexts, including the usages exemplified in (54) and (55) above. To these, Henry adds exclamations such as For to tell her like that!, infinitives in subject position, as in For to stay here would be just as expensive, and so-called ‘object-control verbs’, as in I persuaded John for to go home (see Henry 1995: 83–84).

3.6 Discourse organisation and word order IrE is known to make extensive use of the cleft construction (or: ‘clefting’ for short) as a means of giving prominence to some element of the clause or sentence. A special feature of IrE clefting is its relative freedom from syntactic constraints found in most other varieties. This is at issue with questionnaire item F223. Thus, IrE allows part of a VP in the focus position of clefts (‘VP-clefting’), as in (56) from the southern IrE corpus. Similarly, subject complement adjectives and certain types of adverbial expressions such as those in (57) and (58) (from Henry 1957), and ‘absolute’ reflexive pronouns, as in (59) from the NITCS, can occur in the same position in IrE vernacular. IrE shares these properties with some other Celtic or IrE-influenced varieties such Hebridean English (Sabban 1982) and Newfoundland English (Clarke 1997). This in itself suggests Irish (and, in the case of Hebridean English, Scottish Gaelic) as the most likely source of this feature. (56) {Have many people left this area at all, or = or given up farming at all or?} Ah, very little’s give up farming round this area. It’s looking for more land a lot of them are. (Wicklow: J.N.) (57) It’s flat it was. (Henry 1957: 193) (58) It’s badly she’d do it, now. Henry (1957: 193) (59) I don’t know why it was now {I know}. I’ll not say that it was {I know} myself was the cause of that … (NITCS: PT86) Another common word order feature of IrE is inverted order in indirect questions (F 227). This feature, which IrE shares with Welsh and Scottish varieties of English, occurs in both Yes/No and WH-embedded questions in all regional varieties of IrE (see, e.g. Bliss 1984; Henry 1995). The following examples illustrate the typical main-clause verbs triggering this phenomenon: (60) I don’ know was it a priest or who went in there one time with a horse-collar put over his neck. (Kerry: C.D.) (61) I wonder what is he like at all. The leprechaun. I don’ know what is it at all. (Clare: M.V.) (62) … oh, how long, wait till I see how long would it be? (Dublin: P.L.) (63) … and the brogue was put in under somebody’s knees this way, but you didn’t … see where it was, and you could shuffle it on here to somebody else. And you were asked where was the brogue. (NITCS: PH17) (64) {You know they had a roof, and they were square at the bottom, and they had a, they weren’t … } Wonder were those actually hay, or was that corn? (NITCS: PH61) It is possible that this feature is inherited from earlier English or is something that is characteristic of colloquial, simplified fast speech regardless of the variety. It has also been suggested that it is a phenomenon of ‘learner English’. A third, and not at all the least likely, source is transfer from Irish, which has no equivalent of the English conjunctions if/whether but retains the interrogative word order in indirect questions just as IrE does. This also holds for the Irish counterparts of the WH-questions, although the parallelism is less obvious

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there because of the relative clause structure required by the Irish WH-questions. In any case, the geographical distribution of the inverted word order phenomenon among the dialects of English spoken in the British Isles, and more specifically, its prominence in the western, north-western and northern varieties such as IrE, ScE, and WE, strongly suggests that the Celtic substrate languages have had some role in promoting this feature in all of these varieties (for further discussion, see Filppula 1999, section 7.3).

4 Problematic issues: What the WAVE profile does not show As in every study of this kind, there were features that were difficult to rate for some reason or other. Either the databases did not contain any or sufficient numbers of instances to judge how frequent a feature is in actual communication, or there was so much variation that it was hard to gauge the rate of pervasiveness of any given variant. One example is F28 (use of us + NP in subject function), which is here rated as ‘B’ mainly because most of the occurrences in the databases involved the first person reflexive instead of the object form. Another difficult-to-rate item was F44 (subject pronoun drop: dummy pronouns), which would have required impractical manual search through all of the corpora to achieve a more conclusive rating (now rated as ‘C’). Group genitives (F72) can be mentioned here as yet another example of a feature which was difficult to rate as it was not readily searchable in my untagged databases (now rated as ‘B’). Other problematic items were regularized comparison strategies involving extension of synthetic marking (F79; here rated as ‘C’) and corresponding structures with analytic marking (F80; here rated as ‘B’). Both were too scarce or non-existent in the databases to allow for more definite ratings. The aspect of variation was particularly relevant to the tense and aspect features listed in the WAVE questionnaire. Many of the IrE perfects, for example, have standard and nonstandard variants, which may occur side by side even in the speech of one and the same individual, or there is evidence of regional differences in the distribution of nonstandard and standard variants. The after perfect (F98) is but one example of such variation. Apart from these problem issues, the IrE data contained features that were not directly addressed by the WAVE questionnaire. Most of these can be explained by substrate influence from the Irish language, which continues to reflect in both southern and, to some extent, northern IrE, too. Some examples of these are briefly discussed in the following subsections.

4.1 Pronominal forms The absolute use of reflexive pronouns in IrE (F15) is not in itself unique to IrE, but what gives this variety a distinctive flavour is the ordering of the conjoined subjects: in IrE, it is typically reflexive-first, as in example (1) above (Myself and my brother went to the house). This is most probably modelled on the corresponding order of conjoined subject pronouns in Irish. The exact source of this IrE usage is hard to ascertain, as parallels exist in both Irish and earlier, Elizabethan, English. Thus, Henry (1957: 120) points out that the Irish system of pronouns allows the same type of usage involving the emphatic pronoun féin. Odlin (1997) compares the IrE usage with Hebridean English, which also has a language shift background involving a Celtic language (Scottish Gaelic), and notes the prevalence of the same reflexive-first tendency there. Another example of a problematic feature is F28 (use of us + NP in subject function), which is here rated as ‘B’ mainly because most of the occurrences in the databases involved the first person reflexive instead of the object form. Yet another notable pronoun feature only partially addressed by the WAVE questionnaire is the independent use of them (but not of other personal pronouns) as subject; its use as a determiner in lieu of those is, however, covered by F68. An example of them as subject is the following: (65) {Mm. And those were cornstacks?} Them was cornstacks … (NITCS: WC15)

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41

4.2 Noun phrase Extensive use of the definite article in IrE was already discussed above. On this point, the WAVE questionnaire remains at an (understandably) general level, which does not probe enough into the factors affecting such usages. As already pointed out above, the likely background to most of the IrE nonstandard usages lies in the corresponding features of Irish, which has only the zero and the definite articles.

4.3 Verb phrase To begin with modal auxiliaries, the WAVE profile hides from view the almost complete non-occurrence of shall (and shan’t) in vernacular IrE, north and south. Even in educated speech shall occurs only rarely. This was to be expected on the basis of the previous studies of IrE, going back to the famous late nineteenth-century treatise by Dr. Molloy, entitled The Irish Difficulty, Shall and Will (Molloy 1897). The perennial problems faced by the Irish in the ‘correct’ use of these auxiliaries are also treated by P.W. Joyce (1910/1988), who mentions the Irish predilection for will even in interrogative phrases like Will I sing you a song? Joyce refers here to the similar American usage, which he considers to derive from the influence of the Irish immigrants to America (Joyce 1910/1988: 77). As a predictable corollary to the avoidance of shall, there is a clear preference for would at the expense of should in any other than the obligation meaning. Thus, instead of phrases like I should think/say most Irish people, north and south, would use I would think/say, as in the following example from the NITCS: (66) Well, they have table tennis, and they have bowls, and, eh, darts. That’s the three main sports, I would think. (NITCS: BC44) Ought (to) is another auxiliary which is virtually non-existent in vernacular IrE dialects, including Ulster Scots (see Robinson 1997: 171 on the latter). No instances were found in the NITCS nor in my southern IrE materials, which suggests that ought (to) is confined to the more formal, written styles. The so-called primary auxiliaries be, have, and do also exhibit some features peculiar to the Irish dialects of English. Be and do have already been dealt with in the section on habitual aspect above. Of their other, main-verb uses, suffice it to mention here that IrE allows the interrogative form amn’t (I) in tag questions. Have as a main verb is in conservative IrE often used on its own without got, and in interrogative or negative contexts, without the do-auxiliary, as in the following example from the NITCS where not even the interviewer’s use of do-support prompts the informant to use the same pattern: (67) {What kind of farms do they have, mostly?} They haven’t all that much. They just have cows, and … (NITCS: SM99) The do be + progressive structure, which was mentioned in the section on habitual aspect markers above, should be noted in this connection as a feature apparently unique to IrE and IrE-influenced varieties such as Newfoundland English.

4.4 Discourse organisation and word order Inverted word order was discussed above under this heading (F227). What remains untreated in the WAVE questionnaire is the distinction between Yes/No and WH-question types. Yet it is important to note that IrE differs with respect to this feature in that, unlike most other varieties, it shows particular predilection for inverted word order in Yes/No type of contexts, whereas the other varieties make clearly more use of the WHtype (see Filppula et al. 2009 for further discussion). As noted in section 3.6 above, the most likely background to this IrE tendency is to be found in the Irish substrate.

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4.5 Complex sentence Another distinctive feature of conservative IrE, not included in the WAVE questionnaire, is the use of the conjunction and to introduce a subordinate instead of the usual coordinate clause. The subordinate clause can contain a subject noun or pronoun (either in the objective or nominative form), a past participle form, an adjective, or an adverbial phrase, followed by the -ing form of a verb, as in (68) to (71): (68) I only thought of him there and I cooking my dinner. (Dublin: P.L.) ‘… while I was cooking …’ (69) I often got them [pheasants] dead out in the middle of the field and they not torn up or anything. There wasn’ a fox got them. (Wicklow: D.M.) (70) ‘Twas in harvest time and the weather bad. (Clare: F.K.) (71) He cum in an me in the middle o ma dinner. ‘He came in as I was eating my dinner.’ (Ulster Scots; cited in Robinson 1997: 111) Besides IrE, subordinating and is also found in Scottish dialects of English. It is plausible to assume that the origins of this feature are to be found in the parallel constructions in Irish and Scottish Gaelic. Most probably it emerged as a calque on a similar construction in Irish involving agus ‘and’ followed by the verbal noun (see Filppula 1999, section 8.3 for a detailed discussion). A special feature of northern IrE and especially Ulster Scots is the use of whenever to refer to a single event or state in the past, instead of indicating ‘indefinite frequency’ as in StE. Montgomery and Gregg (1997: 610), who label this usage as ‘punctual whenever’, describe it as “something of a shibboleth for Ulster”. According to them, it is of Scottish origin, though this is not generally recognised, as they point out. A good example from the NITCS is: I mind whenever we were wee.

4.6 Negation Negation with (-)nae should be mentioned here as a feature which does not show up in the WAVE profile for IrE. Within IrE dialects, it is limited to the most Scots-influenced and conservative varieties of northern IrE. Its origins can be found in Scots negation word nae, which can be used on its own as a negative determiner, as in (72), or as a suffix attached to the primary auxiliaries BE, HAVE, and DO, and to the modal auxiliaries SHALL/ SHOULD, WILL/WOULD, and CAN/COULD, as in (73)–(77): (72) Aye, there were nae motors, or … (NITCS: JA4) (73) He isnae interested. (NITCS: MC22) (74) No, I havenae got one [a harvester] yet. (NITCS: JM25) (75) … but at the same time, at the back of your mind, you think that, maybe they dinnae [do not] want you at all, you know. (NITCS: JM114) (76) Och, I wouldnae mind if she was good enough to me [as a wife]. (NITCS: JM194) (77) … and they cannae sell it [an estate] till she dies, know, she has her day o’ it … so they cannae sell it. (NITCS: JM181) The (colloquial) standard forms isn’t/haven’t/doesn’t etc. and shouldn’t/wouldn’t/couldn’t etc. are by far the most common in northern IrE, too, but the usages illustrated above are preserved especially in areas where Ulster Scots is at its strongest (cf. Robinson 1997: 145). Another notable, but this time less exclusively IrE, feature not covered by the questionnaire is failure of negative attraction with nonassertive and universal pronouns or determiners such as any(-body/-one/thing etc.) and every(-body/-one/-thing etc.) under negation: in StE, whenever such a pronoun/determiner is

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(part of) the subject of a clause (or sometimes even the object), the negation element is ‘attracted’ to it, instead of being left in its usual position after the verb. Thus, in StE negating a structure like anyone goes yields no-one goes, and not *anyone doesn’t go. The latter fails to observe the rule of negative attraction, hence the description of this phenomenon as ‘failure of negative attraction’ (cf. Harris 1984b: 305). Though not a particularly frequent phenomenon, failure of negative attraction occurs in both southern and northern varieties of IrE. Examples of nonassertive pronouns or determiners and universal pronouns from the databases include the following: (78) There is great pity for this, what they call the students now, but I’d have no pity for them, because they’re only howling for a good time, howling … Any country couldn’t stand that. (Kerry: M.C.) ‘No country could stand that.’ (79) Now, a, anything is no sin. But I think myself that the day’s coming fast, in every one of us, when we’ll know whether it is a sin or not. (Kerry: M.C.) (80) Everybody hadn’t a hayshed, they talked about piking the hay. (NITCS: IP57) A possible explanation for the IrE usage is to be found in the similar behaviour of Irish expressions containing negation either with the indefinite determiner aon ‘any’ or its universal counterpart gach aon ‘every’. The Irish negative particle ní/níor always stays in a position before the verb and is not attracted to an indefinite subject, as in English. Thus, the indefinite subject retains the same form in both affirmative and negative contexts, which is then carried over to conservative IrE (for further discussion, see Harris 1984b: 305). It is interesting to note that failure of negative attraction occurs in some other varieties of the British Isles Englishes, too. It has been recorded, e.g., in Tyneside speech where it is possibly due to IrE influence, transmitted by the large-scale immigration of Irish people to the north-east of England starting in the nineteenth century. The same feature has also been observed for Scottish English, including the Gaelic-influenced varieties spoken in the Hebrides (see Filppula 1999, section 7.4, for further discussion and references).

5 Conclusion As has been seen, the WAVE profile manages to reveal a large part of the morpho-syntactic features that IrE shares with other varieties spoken in the British Isles and also further beyond. Yet there remain a sizeable number of other features that distinguish Irish dialects from the other varieties. Many, if not most, of these are ones that have their origins in corresponding syntactic structures in Irish. This confirms that Irish has over the last few centuries exercised considerable substrate influence on IrE. This influence, though clearly on the wane in the present-day urban varieties, is surprisingly persistent in some domains of syntax, such as the tense and aspect systems of IrE, and is still reflected to some extent even in educated informal speech. Written IrE, on the other hand, mostly follows the StE norm. In rural dialects, both northern and southern, the presence of Irish-derived features is very noticeable, as can be predicted. Finally, the Scottish input to Ulster Scots and northern IrE, in general, forms yet another interesting strand in the linguistic make-up of IrE.

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Appendix: Overview of WAVE features attested in Irish English # 1 3 7 8 9 11 12 14 15 16 26 28 29 34 35 38 39 43 44 45 54 56 60 64 66 68 69 70 72

feature IrE example I. Pronouns, pronoun exchange, nominal gender she/her used for inanimate referents She’s a nice bike alternative forms/phrases for referential So this yoke [a microphone] was there (non-dummy) it me instead of I in coordinate subjects And me and Jamesie Clare, we lived in the one house myself/meself instead of I in coordinate I was coming from school one day, meself and three other lads subjects benefactive “personal dative” I get Tess get me the plasters construction regularized reflexives paradigm They made a fool of theirselves object pronoun forms serving as base for See example for F8. 1st and/or 2nd person reflexives no number distinction in reflexives (i.e. plural forms ending in -self) absolute use of reflexives (e.g. as topic and himself and the bull were tuggin’ and wrastlin’ marker) emphatic reflexives with own object pronoun forms as possessive Me brother spent fifty years in it pronouns: 1st person singular use of us + NP in subject function because a few times there were us kids playing around the station use of us in object function (with singular Give us a pint, will you? referent) forms or phrases for the 2nd person plural I know youse all pronoun other than you forms or phrases for the 2nd person Sure it’s no good to ye in England singular pronoun other than you specialized plural markers for pronouns Security guard says to us uh want you guys to sign in the register here plural forms of interrogative pronouns: using additional elements subject pronoun drop: referential and they put a bed, had a bet on pronouns subject pronoun drop: dummy pronouns There was a fairy made an attack on him, was a fellow, he was living next thouse to myself insertion of it where StE favours zero II. Noun phrase group plurals absence of plural marking only after It’s only five mile away quantifiers use of definite article where StE has She’s in bed with the flu (Harris 1993: 144) indefinite article use of definite article where StE favours But he’s the measles, and he, he’s off school for a while zero indefinite article one/wan them instead of demonstrative those That time the people were rich that used to live in them houses yon/yonder indicating remoteness proximal and distal demonstratives with but this here is not a success, though ‘here’ and ‘there’ group genitives

1 Used in traditional dialects for boats, cars, even bicycles. 2 Used particularly with intensifying attributes like bloody, f-ing. Yoke typical IrE for ‘thing’ in traditional working-class and rural speech.

rating B1 A2 B A B B A C A B A B B A A B B B C B B B A A C A C B B

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78 79 80

88 89 90 91 92 93 95 96 97 98 99 101 102 103 109 113 120 122 123 124 129 130 136 147 154 158 159 163 164 171 172 173

174 175

double comparatives and superlatives regularized comparison strategies: extension of synthetic marking regularized comparison strategies: extension of analytic marking III. Verb phrase: tense and aspect wider range of uses of progressive be + V-ing: extension to stative verbs wider range of uses of progressive be + V-ing: extension to habitual contexts invariant be as habitual marker do as habitual marker other non-standard habitual markers: synthetic other non-standard habitual markers: analytic be sat/stood with progressive meaning there with past participle in resultative contexts medial object perfect after-perfect levelling of present perfect and simple past: simple past for StE present perfect simple present for continuative or experiential perfect be as perfect auxiliary do as unstressed tense marker (without habitual or other aspectual meanings) perfect marker already loosening of sequence of tenses rule would in if-clauses IV. Verb phrase: modal verbs epistemic mustn’t present tense forms of modals used where StE has past tense forms want/need + past participle V. Verb phrase: verb morphology levelling of past tense/past participle verb forms: unmarked forms levelling of past tense/past participle verb forms: past tense for past participle special inflected forms of be was for conditional were VII. Negation multiple negation / negative concord invariant don’t for all persons in the present tense never as preverbal past tense negator was – weren’t split amn’t in tag questions VIII. Agreement invariant present tense due to generalization of 3rd person -s existential / presentational there’s/there is/there was with plural subjects variant forms of dummy subject there in existential clauses, e.g. they, it or zero deletion of auxiliary be: before progressive deletion of auxiliary be: before gonna

but it was built more finer

B C B

I was knowing your face

B

They were going there long ago [to cut turf]

B

It’s better, because you be’s bored doing nothing {mm} at home Two lorries of them [turf] now in the year we do burn.

B B C

They do be shooting there couple of times a week or so.

B

There’d been discretions, statutory powers given to local authorities You’ve great news got now? I don’t know where they’re after coming from I never went till it yet

C B B A A

He didn’t live to be very old, he’s dead a good many years

A

And Tom Leary was gone to a neighbour

B C

Oh they come around. There was one now here already … looking

B B B

if we would be passing now Well, Esther Dunne mustn’t have been there at it then

B B

It needs cleaned out

B B

There was a ditch across there in the yard that time, it’s took away now

B

If the sea was rough, they wouldn’t go out then

C A

You’ve not heard of that nothing? she don’t take Rent Allowance at all

B B

See example for 99 I’m old enough to get in, amn’t I? (Harris 1993: 158)

A C B

I says have you got the result?

B

and there’s families that happens, and there’s families that doesn’t happen in

A C

B B

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180 181

185 189 192 193 194 198

202 203 204 208 220 221 222

223 224 227 228 229 230 231 232 233 234 235

Markku Filppula

was/were generalization That place was built when I were going to school them years agreement sensitive to subject type (nominal vs. pronominal) IX. Relativization relativizer that or what in non-restrictive contexts relativizer where or a form derived from where use of analytic or cliticized that his/that’s, There’s a man that his wife leaves him whenever she pleases what his/what’s, etc. instead of whose (Joyce 1910/1988: 52) gapping/zero-relativization in subject I don’t think there was no man ever came since nor will come position resumptive/shadow pronouns But it’s nice fish to eat it deletion of stranded prepositions in relative clauses (“preposition chopping”) X. Complementation unsplit for to in infinitival purpose clauses There was acres and miles of land just for to live in it. for (to) as infinitive marker as what / than what in comparative clauses It was a different construction than what it is now deletion of to before infinitives They were allowed call her XII. Adverbs and prepositions degree modifier adverbs have the same The Kerry now is real healthy form as adjectives other adverbs have the same form as Change me back quick! adjectives too; too much; very much ‘very’ as I didn’t know too much about the Liberties qualifier XIII. Discourse organization and word order other options for clefting than StE It’s badly she’d do it now other possibilities for fronting than StE A story now he told me inverted word order in indirect questions I wonder what is he like at all no inversion/no auxiliaries in wh-questions no inversion/no auxiliaries in main clause yes/no questions doubly filled COMP-position with wh-words superlative marker most occurring before and that’s the most thing that brought me up head noun either order of objects in double object I said, “Give me it, here’s your ass and cart back for you” constructions presence of subject in imperatives Go you ahead just in case like as a focussing device I mean now, like, any home work in a big way, like like as a quotative particle

B B

B B B B B B

A B A B A A B

B B A B A B C B B A A

References Bliss, Alan J. 1972. Languages in contact: Some problems of Hiberno-English. Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy 72: 63–82. Bliss, Alan J. 1979. Spoken English in Ireland 1600–1740. Dublin: The Dolmen Press. Bliss, Alan J. 1984. English in the south of Ireland. In: Peter Trudgill (ed.), Language in the British Isles, 135–151. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Cheshire, Jennifer, Viv Edwards, and Pamela Whittle. 1989. Urban British dialect grammar. English World-Wide 10: 185–225.

Clarke, Sandra. 1997. The role of Irish English in the formation of New World Englishes: The case from Newfoundland. In: Jeffrey L. Kallen (ed.), Focus on Ireland, 207–225. Amsterdam: Benjamins. Corrigan, Karen P. 2010. Irish English, Vol. 1: Northern Ireland. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. de Fréine, Séan. 1977. The dominance of the English language in the 19th century. In: Diarmuid ÓMuirithe (ed.), The English Language in Ireland, 71–87. Dublin: The Mercier Press. Filppula, Markku. 1999. The Grammar of Irish English: Language in Hibernian Style. London/New York: Routledge.

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Filppula, Markku, Juhani Klemola, and Heli Paulasto. 2009. Digging for roots: Universals and contacts in regional varieties of English. In: Markku Filppula, Juhani Klemola, and Heli Paulasto (eds.), Vernacular Universals and Language Contacts: Evidence from Varieties of English and Beyond, 231–261. London/New York: Routledge. Harris, John. 1984a. English in the north of Ireland. In: Peter Trudgill (ed.), Language in the British Isles, 115–134. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Harris, John. 1984b. Syntactic variation and dialect divergence. Journal of Linguistics 20: 303–327. Harris, John. 1993. The grammar of Irish English. In: James Milroy, and Lesley Milroy (eds.), Real English: The Grammar of English Dialects in the British Isles, 139–186. London: Longman. Henry, Alison. 1995. Belfast English and Standard English: Dialect Variation and Parameter Setting. New York/Oxford: Oxford University Press. Henry, Patrick L. 1957. An Anglo-Irish Dialect of North Roscommon. Dublin: University College. Hickey, Raymond. 2005. Dublin English: Evolution and Change. Amsterdam/New York: John Benjamins. Hickey, Raymond. 2007. Irish English: History and Present-day Forms. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hindley, Reg. 1990. The Death of the Irish Language: London: Routledge. Joyce, Patrick W. 1910/1988. English as We Speak It in Ireland. 3rd ed. Dublin: Wolfhound Press. Kallen, Jeffrey L. 1989. Tense and aspect categories in Irish English. English World-Wide 10: 1–39. Kallen, Jeffrey L. 1994. English in Ireland. In: Robert W. Burchfield (ed.), English in Britain and Overseas: Origins and Development. Vol. V of The Cambridge History of the English Language, 148–196. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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Kallen, Jeffrey L., and John M. Kirk. 2008. ICE-Ireland: A User’s Guide. Belfast: Cló Ollscoil na Banríona. Kirk, John M. 1992. The Northern Ireland Transcribed Corpus of Speech. In: Gerhard Leitner (ed.), New Directions in English Language Corpora, 65–73. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Miller, Jim. 1993. The grammar of Scottish English. In: James Milroy, and Lesley Milroy (eds.), Real English: The Grammar of English Dialects in the British Isles, 99–138. London: Longman. Molloy, Gerald. 1897. The Irish Difficulty, Shall and Will. London: Blackie & Son. Montgomery, Michael, and Robert J. Gregg. 1997. The Scots Language in Ulster. In: Charles Jones (ed.), The Edinburgh History of the Scots Language, 569–622. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Odlin, Terence. 1997. Bilingualism and substrate influence: A look at clefts and reflexives. In: Jeffrey L. Kallen (ed.), Focus on Ireland, 35–50. Amsterdam: Benjamins. ÓhÚrdail, Roibeárd. 1997. Hiberno-English: Historical background and synchronic features and variation. In: Hildegard L.C. Tristram (ed.), The Celtic Englishes, 180–199. Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag C. Winter. Robinson, Philip. 1997. Ulster-Scots: A Grammar of the Traditional Written and Spoken Language. Belfast: The Ullans Press. Sabban, Annette. 1982. Gälisch-Englischer Sprachkontakt. Heidelberg: Julius Groos. Sand, Andrea. 2004. Shared morpho-syntactic features in contact varieties of English: Article use. World Englishes 23(2): 281–292. Sharma, Devyani. 2005. Discourse universals in Indian English: article use. Studies in Second Language Acquisition 27: 535–566.

48

Manx English

Jennifer Kewley Draskau

Manx English 1 Socio-historical background Manx English is that variety of English distinct both from Standard English (StE) and other varieties which is used by native Manx people, usually resident on the Isle of Man. This variety is currently undergoing rapid erosion. ‘Traditional’ Manx English developed at a time when members of the speech community would have been familiar with the lexicon and syntax of Manx Gaelic. The variety displayed many typical lexical and syntactic Gaelic features, the latter including inversion, wider use of ‘progressive +-ing’, present participle used in passive constructions, adjective used in place of StE adverb, etc. Manx Gaelic itself has a meagre surviving literary corpus. Official reports were written either in English or in Latin, and schooling was undertaken in English, the only language in which most Manx people were literate. The currency and frequency of Manx Gaelic-derived features has declined sharply since the early 20th century. Manx Gaelic is currently undergoing a revival, with increased numbers of speakers and learners, and substantial Government support in the form of teaching appointments, and a Manx-medium primary school. However, the resurgence of Manx Gaelic will do little to arrest the decline of Manx English. The profile of the last native speakers of Gaelic featured predominantly older, ethnic Manx people, typically engaged in traditional occupations, often living in isolated rural districts. The profile of traditional Manx English speakers was comparable. Just as it was in rural areas that Manx Gaelic lingered longest as a general medium of communication, outlying districts provide the most fruitful sources for contemporary research into Manx English. But there is no longer a wide area of overlap between the demographics of Manx Gaelic speakers and Manx English speakers. The profile of Gaelic speakers today represents almost the precise reversal of this trend: many new learners are urban, comparatively well-educated speakers of StE or other non-Manx varieties; they are typically employed in white-collar jobs. For these speakers, the learning of Manx Gaelic is either a hobby, an ideologically motivated choice, or a means to an end. The last category includes non-Gaelic speaking parents of children attending the Manx-medium primary school who wish to ‘keep up’ with their children, or people hoping to obtain employment as teachers, teaching assistants, or play group workers. Manx English is not their natural medium, and may even be despised by them as a hybrid, echoing the words of folklorist M. Killip: The Anglo-Manx dialect, a hybrid tongue made up of expressions and idioms translated straight out of the Gaelic mixed up with imported elements, is an entirely different kind of speech, and though by now characteristic of the people and entirely Manx in feeling it is still something that has been grafted on and not the original growth. (Killip 1975: 58)

The strengthening of the Gaelic-speaking community thus has a negligible impact on the current forms of Manx English. It does not reinforce the original Manx Gaelic-related features of the variety. The Englishes used by younger speakers in the Island, whether or not they are speakers of Manx Gaelic, are heavily influenced by mass media, education through the medium of StE, work, exogamy, travel and further education off-Island, etc. Manx English, as Orton 1962 recognised, shares many of the characteristics of Northern English. Since the 1930s, a new northern English, that of Liverpool, has been detected in the speech patterns of towns, Douglas (the Island’s capital) especially. All these factors, including the growth of the Island’s prosperous finance sector and consequent immigration, have contributed to the decline of ‘typical’ intonational patterns and other phonetic features, which were the most resilient characteristics of Manx English. These, like syntactic and lexical features described as ‘typical’, are encountered increasingly rarely. They are however still very much part of the passive consciousness of ethnic Manx speakers of English. Manx English vocabulary items and non-standard systems are still

Jennifer Kewley Draskau

49

readily recognised and understood by Manx people, even where these elements may either be used only diglossically by speakers in speech situations involving other Manx people familiar to the speaker, used self-deprecatingly, or where they may not feature actively in the language used by Manx people at all. This is in part owing to the continued popularity of the work of vernacular playwrights and poets such as Thomas E. (T.E.) Brown, the ‘Manx National Poet’ who died in 1897, Josephine Kermode, Kathleen Faragher, and others. The recodification and systematisation which developed as Manx English became the primary socialising language of the Island speech community, replacing Gaelic, displayed characteristic features capable of being recorded by writers, scholars and enthusiastic amateur linguists as the variety they called ‘Anglo-Manx’. This term which will be retained here, since it helpfully creates a distinction between the literary construct, ‘Anglo-Manx’, and the unprocessed speech of informants, ‘Manx English’. The vernacular was not the natural speech of these literary figures and folklorists. Although their work merits attention as being indicative of the degree to which the variety had been codified, systemised and accepted, the elements they employ or upon which they comment have already undergone some measure of informal analysis and synthesis. However, comparison with spontaneous utterances by the increasingly rare speakers of traditional Manx English establishes the authenticity of such elements and features.

2 WAVE features shared with other nonstandard English varieties Many features of non-standard usage are shared with other non-StE varieties. These include the following: F7:

me instead of I in co-ordinate subjects: me husband and meself were late;

F3:

thing, ting for anything not specified or referential (non-dummy) it: An rats an things runnin all over the barn.

F12:

Object pronoun serving as base for reflexive especially first person: I hurt meself; I wouldn demane meself talking to such muck (Moore et al. 1991)

F15:

Himself, herself is used to refer to the boss, the master or lady of the house, and is still widely used, often tongue in cheek: The wife said himself was gone to the herrins [herrings] (Moore et al. 1991: 82)

F26:

Object pronoun forms as modifying possessive pronouns: I’ve lost me marbles;

F28:

Use of us + NP in subject function: us kids’d play roun the place

F29:

Use of us in object function with single referent: show us them boots, then

F41:

Singular it for anaphoric they, group plurals (F54), double comparatives and superlatives (F78), regularised comparison strategies: extension of synthetic marking or analytic marking (F79, F80), be sat/ stood with progressive meaning (F95);

F97:

Medial object perfect: has he the threshing finished?

F128–131: Levelling of past tense/past participle verb forms, regularisation of irregular verb paradigms; unmarked forms; past tense replaces past participle, and vice versa, F139:

distinctive forms for auxiliary vs. full verb meanings of primary verbs especially do: he done it, didn he?

50

Manx English

F154:

Double negation: he’s not no better; he don’t know no more till [than] a pig (Moore et al. 1991: 127): I’m not telling nothing to them newsy gliddher-bags. Min ye don tell no newses (Moore et al. 1991: 126)

F155:

never as preverbal past tense negator: he never come

F147:

was for conditional were: if I was you

F180:

was for second person past were: you was jus a babban that time

F34:

ye, yer for you in second person plural or polite form

F35:

ye for you in second person singular

F69:

Yonder indicating remoteness: yondhar fellow

3 Special properties of Manx English Lexicalised compound verbal expressions: Many Manx English syntactic idioms reflect Gaelic patterns such as lexicalised compound verbal expressions where StE has a monolexical verb, for example ‘take song’ = StE ‘sing’, take ease = StE ‘rest’. Thomson (1981: 21) remarks that because many of these idiomatic expressions in Manx Gaelic are the equivalent of monolexical English verbs, but in Manx Gaelic consist of a common verb-noun (a quasi-nominal form called the verbal noun or verbnoun is a feature of the Celtic languages) and verbal complement, a preposition is often required in Manx Gaelic where none occurs in English. At times the verbal complement comprises a preposition alone; one of the most familiar expressions in Manx English is doing on, from Manx Gaelic jannoo er ‘to worry’: The cows is shoutin shockin/ Is the waitin doin on them all that tejus [tedious]? (Kermode in Radcliffe 1993) Calque compounds abound, as in the following: to take ease/rest = ‘to rest’: Now childher, take res and be quate, (Moore et al. 1991: 183); they wouldn’t take rest but up I should (Brown 1936: 163) to take joy = to delight in, rejoice, be happy: They’ll take joy of one another when they’ll meet (Moore et al. 1991: 183); bein allis in a friendly way with them, and takin joy, and havin my tay with them (Brown 1936: 261) to put a sight on = ‘to visit’: Put a sight on me soon, lah (Moore et al. 1991: 142); to put grief on = ‘to grieve’: This put great grief on him (Moore et al. 1991); to put wonder on = ‘to amaze’: The star put wonder on the shepherds to take anger = ‘to be angry’: Like as if he was takin anger at us. Special uses of the ‘progressive’: In Anglo-Manx, the progressive may be accompanied by an iterative such as habitual would, or a catenative such as going, with the effect of postponing, reinforcing or reducing the punctual dynamic of the verb:

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What call have you to be talkin? (‘What right do you have to make comments?’) Goin a-scutchin as if they didn’t be mindin themselves (‘running about as though without a care in the world’) (‘The King’s Visit’, Kermode in Radcliffe 1993: 10–11) It’s like she’d be reading the laws to him (‘It is as though she were reading the laws to him’) (Kermode in Radcliffe 1993: 10–11) Do not be goin tormentin the creature now! (Do not torment the creature) The extended use in Manx English of the ‘progressive’ with stative verbs (F88), iteratives and habituals (F89) reflects the Gaelic construction comprising substantive verb and verbal noun such as ta mee goll, = it is + I + going: this construction is familiar from other varieties of Celtic English: F88:

You’re lovin a nice young gel and she’s lovin you It’s seemin to me (Brown 1936: 185–186)

Present progressive replaces continuative or experiential perfect (F101): The house is bare at me: it’ll be in the teens of years I’m livin here alone (Kermode in Radcliffe 1993: 40) An active verb may be used to express a passive meaning, using goin(g)-a as an auxiliary, for example: A craythur that’s goin a runnin-over (that gets run over), Brown (1936: 437). Moore et al. state in The Vocabulary of the Anglo-Manx dialect (1991: 187): The English form of Passive Verbs is little used in Anglo-Manx. A sort of progressive passive may, however, be made with the help of the word ‘going’ used as an auxiliary: the gun is goin a-firin, the gun is being fired.

This observation is borne out by examples such as the following: their hearts were goin a-breakin = their hearts were being broken (Kermode in Radcliffe 1993: 35), the Manx was goin a-spakin = Manx was [habitually] spoken (Kermode in Radcliffe 1993: 1); Of course the case will be goin a-tryin (Brown, ‘Tommy Big Eyes’). This usage may well reflect one of the methods of forming the passive in Manx Gaelic, that of using goll, ‘go’, plus the preposition er, ‘on’, plus verbal noun: hed ad er coayl = goll [future tense] + ‘they’ + er + coayl [ruining]. Other passives are formed in Manx English by present participle in place of English past participle, without either go or a-: An the wickedness thass at him is telling far and near = ‘his wickedness is [being] reported far and near’. In ‘Kings’, it’s telling, ould David’s son, the wise he was (Brown, cited in Moore et al. 1991: 186) Special tense usage: By manipulating alternative past tense forms, exponents of Anglo-Manx attempt to echo the flexibility of Gaelic syntax. Gaelic can express aspectual nuances by employing a variety of past tense forms. In this example of ‘vernacular verse’, the writer uses simple past, past iterative/habitual with would, past progressives and simple past again: And Tommy had nice ways with him too Indeed, for his station, there’d be very few That would have such sense and manners both The very way he was suppin his broth Was showin the proper feelins he had (Brown 1936: 257) After V-ing construction (F98): Manx Gaelic can form the perfect in a way similar to Irish, and writers as eminent in their day as the Manx novelist Hall Caine, when writing vernacular dialogue, use after in such expressions as he’s after losing the boat = ‘he has lost the boat’. In reality, however, Manx English informants interrogated maintained that to be after something did not refer to a past event, but was, as in English, expressive of an aim or intention with future force: ‘he’s after getting a good position in the civil service, that’s the why he’s sitting all them examinations.’ Future tense may replace StE present after if or when, or in the apodosis of conditional utterances: Whenever you’ll be goin to write (Brown 1936: 124) I’ll maybe be telling you more, if so be you’ll be carin to listen (Brown 1936: 129) They’ll take joy of one another when they’ll meet (Moore et al. 1991: 183)

52

Manx English

Future perfect conditional replaces pluperfect, Manx English thus following the Gaelic pattern: He’d come to when he would have had … his fun (Moore et al. 1991: 183) He would [volition/habitual] only ever stop talking when he would have had his say Gapping or zero relativization (F193): This relativization strategy may occur in subject position. Manx Gaelic does not require a relative in such cases, the relationship being expressed by means of juxtaposition: I said to the fellow lives/living there: The oul woman owns the place told me; Would he be the fellow owns them cows? Conjunctions if, whether: These are not required in Manx Gaelic, which is reflected in Manx English usage in such examples as: You couldn tell were they scraas (Brown 1936: 42)1 Axed them were they wantin a man (Brown 1936: 237) Hardly noticing was I there [or not] (Brown 1936: 195) Imperatives in Manx English regularly include the second person pronoun (F233). This is still heard occasionally among traditional speakers today: Mind you me (Brown 1936: 179) ‘Sit yer down, Nellie gel’, she said, smiling at me (Faragher 1960) Marking of possession: In Manx English possession is expressed with the verb to be and the preposition at, a direct translation of the Manx Gaelic preposition ec. This is one of the most resilient features of Manx English (F73): The house is bare at me (‘My house is empty’) (Kermode in Radcliffe 1993: 40) Well, theer’s a house full o’visitors at me (Faragher 1967: 10) And a house at him, maybe ten stories high (Moore et al. 1991: 6) The flowers that’s at them At with determiner may replace possessive pronouns especially in contexts involving family relationships or parts of the body: The back at me’s broke Runnin down the street and the head at her bare The brother at her is a desperate fellow Prepositional usage: At can replace by in passive constructions, as in Getting whipt at his mother A stunning job at Jemmy Bluitt (Brown 1936: 173) = ‘done by’ Yer hindrin oul gossip! It’s butched at yer I am! (Faragher 1967: 14) = ‘I am bewitched by you, you have put a spell on me’. At may occur in passive constructions with active meaning: There was me thinking they was all washed up at us = ‘I thought we had washed them all up’. 2 It’s clane forgot at me (Moore et al. 1991: 6) = ‘I have quite forgotten it’ The bit of writin’s done at me = ‘I have done my bit of writing’ (Kermode in Radcliffe 1993: 48) Wheer’s me hanky? It’s lost at yer! = ‘You have lost it’ (Faragher 1967: 40)

1 Scraa, from Gaelic scrah, denotes a strip of sod laid on the rafters under the thatch. 2 ME informant recorded by JKD, 2000

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53

On is used in several Gaelic-based idioms in traditional Manx English: John is the name on me (Moore et al. 1991: 130) The girls is married on farmers (Kermode in Radcliffe 1993: 40) There’s nothing in us that they got need on (Brown 1936: 190) Comin in on the dhure [door] (Kermode in Radcliffe 1993: 40) When he died, the money was divided on the childher What’s the hurry on you? Another typical form of prepositional usage still prevalent in Manx English is the existential use of in, as in There’s plenty of blackberries in this year3 or Is there no bread in? Thomson has remarked that ayn ‘in’ is required by Manx Gaelic in all existential statements. For to is used where StE has to with infinitives (F202+203): Theer seemed to be time then For to do all that had to be done (Faragher 1967: 42) She got them for to come for to lend a hand (Moore et al. 1991: 64) For is also used for ‘the reason why’, the how, similarly, for ‘the manner’, and the when for ‘the time’, reflecting Manx Gaelic patterns: That’s the for I came; No matter the for (Brown, cited in Moore et al. 1991: 64) That’s the for him and me had our first war! (Brown 1936: 118): That’s the how of it! I’ll tell you the when! That’s the when, you’ll see, mind you! (Brown, cited in Moore et al. 1991: 200) Adjective phrases: The is used as intensifier before adjectives: Aw, the tired I am! (Moore et al. 1991: 186) The thin she was, and the wore (Brown 1936: 135) They were nice people, she said, the nice you couldn’ tell (Brown 1936: 18) An Billy, the sorry I am for you! (Brown 1936: 31) Intensifiers may follow adjectives in Manx English as they do in a majority of cases in Manx Gaelic and the StE adverbial marker ‘-ly’ is typically omitted (F220): I was sick awful (Brown 1936: 367) The wumman’s tired thremendjus (Kermode in Radcliffe 1993: 38) Them wans was good thremendjus for the chune (Kermode in Radcliffe 1993: 22) An glad mighty I am that yer ast me (Faragher 1967: 34) In fronting (sometimes also analyzed as clefting) constructions, the provisional impersonal pronominal subject delays the true subject of the utterance in a construction reminiscent of other Goidelic Englishes (F223): Is it devoured you’re wanting to be? (Kermode in Radcliffe 1993: 10) A picnic it was they were plannin (Faragher ca. 1960: 27) Inversion in indirect questions (F227) occurs in examples such as: The Pazon [parson] was knowing what was he about (Brown 1936: 129)

3 ME informant recorded by JKD in 1994

54

Manx English

4 Conclusion Anglo-Manx vernacular verse and plays still enjoy a measure of popularity and regular, well-attended performances today. There are competitions for readings and recitations in the variety. As a community communication code, however, Manx English is rapidly declining. The revival of Manx Gaelic has had little input into the variety, for the reasons outlined above. With the exception of the Anglo-Manx code adopted specifically for ‘traditional’ performance purposes, such as the annual T E Brown celebration by the World Manx Society, where proficiency in respect of speech patterns and intonation are still valued, this is essentially the celebration of a fossilized code, since the material is written and incapable of change. Some new Manx writers, such as Vinty Kneale, are, however, successfully exploiting and expanding the resources of Manx English in their creative work, which is finding a wide audience, and is admired for its political and social values, and for its humour.

Appendix: Overview of WAVE features attested in Manx English # 1 3 7 8 11 12

14 15 16 26 28 29 34

41

48 52

Feature ManxE example I. Pronouns, pronoun exchange, nominal gender she/her used for inanimate referents I left the boat there as she was (Brown 1936: 113) alternative forms/phrases for referential an rats an things runnin all over the barn; turn the thing off! (non-dummy) it me instead of I in coordinate subjects Him and me was partenters [partners] and goin sheers [shares] in everything (Moore et al. 1991: 133) myself/meself instead of I in coordinate me husband and meself were late subjects regularized reflexives paradigm There’s people that turns theirselves inside out (Brown 1936: 221) object pronoun forms serving as base for I hurt meself; 1st and/or 2nd person reflexives I wouldn demane meself talking to such muck (Moore et al. 1991) no number distinction in reflexives laughin themselfsick (i.e. plural forms ending in -self) absolute use of reflexives (e.g. as topic Himself was gone to the herrins (Moore et al. 1991: 82) marker) emphatic reflexives with own she was tall, like my own self object pronoun forms as possessive I’ve los’ me marbles pronouns: 1st person singular use of us + NP in subject function us kids’d play roun the place; us gels was near screamin with fright (Faragher 1967: 56) use of us in object function (with singular Show us them boots! referent) forms or phrases for the 2nd person plural Come here, you ones! Clear out, you all! (Moore et al. 1991: 206) pronoun other than you ye’ll never get to the westhard of yandher falla [you can never get him unawares (Moore et al. 1991: 200) why didn’ yer move to the man, yer big toot, yer? (Faragher 1967: 24) Is it stitchin and sawin [sewing] ye’re callin that? (Moore et al. 1991: 201) singular it for plural they in anaphoric use There’s all manner o’ diseases in; ye can get it anywhere, (with non-human referents) diseases II. Noun phrase regularization of plural formation: The Lord was keepin’ deers on that land extension of -s to StE irregular plurals associative plural marked by postposed Goin down the harbour with Tom-Billy and them; the sthreet here and them/them all/dem on Saturday, crowded with the country an town wans an all (Faragher 1967: 42)

rating C B B B C A

C A C A A A C

C

C B

55

Jennifer Kewley Draskau

54 60 64

group plurals use of definite article where StE has indefinite article use of definite article where StE favours zero

68

them instead of demonstrative those

69

yon/yonder indicating remoteness

70

proximal and distal demonstratives with ‘here’ and ‘there’ group genitives existential construction to express possessive omission of genitive suffix; possession expressed through bare juxtaposition double comparatives and superlatives

72 73 77 78

79 80 87

88 89

95 96 97 99 100 101 102

113 128

regularized comparison strategies: extension of synthetic marking regularized comparison strategies: extension of analytic marking attributive adjectival modifiers follow head noun

III. Verb phrase: tense and aspect wider range of uses of progressive be + V-ing: extension to stative verbs wider range of uses of progressive be + V-ing: extension to habitual contexts

be sat/stood with progressive meaning there with past participle in resultative contexts medial object perfect levelling of present perfect and simple past: simple past for StE present perfect levelling of present perfect and simple past: present perfect for StE simple past simple present for continuative or experiential perfect be as perfect auxiliary

loosening of sequence of tenses rule V. Verb phrase: verb morphology levelling of past tense/past participle verb forms: regularization

You can’t have two Head of Nursings he’s lyin in with the faver [fever] (Moore et al. 1991: 9)

C A

The nither [neither] of us was there (Moore et al. 1991: 126) I’ve only the one chile [child]; I hadn’ been there I couldn’ tell ye the when [I could not tell you how long it was since I had been there], (Brown 1936: 147) past Ballaugh, and Kirk Michael, and the Ballacraine (Brown 1936: 147) The all he got for his pain [trouble] (Moore et al. 1991: 186) D’yer remember them Easthers? (Faragher 1967: 42) Jus’ to kape [keep] all them cousins in luxury (Faragher 1967: 37) it’s allus [always] light in yandhar place [Heaven] (Brown 1936: 31) also yonderways, yandharwheres: livin’ all by meself op yandherways at Mullin y Cleig (Gill 1963: 143) and gool was’n nothing yandherwheres (Moore et al. 1991: 205) This fiddle here is very pleasant (Brown 1936: 261)

A

The fella that told me’s house is a mansion and a house at him, maybe ten stories high (Moore et al. 1991: 6) theer’s a house full o’visitors at me (Faragher 1967: 10) in pigsty Johnny Teare there was three fine sows

C A

A B

B

C

what’s more dearer? (Brown 1936: 215) C more respectablar (Brown 1936: 423) it’s differenter and differenter the two of them got (Brown 1936: 199) The beautifullest and loveliest (Brown 1936: 208); C One of the most pretty babes you would see

C

Usually only in Manx words used in an English context: They would shout as they waved theer ‘Oie-vies’ = nights good = goodnights (Faragher 1967:38); my own baby bogh(t) [poor, a term of endearment] (Faragher 1967: 22)

C

You’re lovin a nice young gel and she’s lovin you; It’s seemin to me (Brown 1936: 185–186) ye’re hardly aver hearin now them gud oul names (Moore et al. 1991: 7); The ones that can’t say ‘saugragh’ is sayin ‘saudhragh’ – more Englified lek. (Moore et al. 1991: 155) The cat was sat on the windowsill there’s something gone wrong with the machine

A

has he the threshing finished? were you ever at the Royal Show?

B B

I’ve done it years ago

B

he’s here forty years

B

it is clane forgot at me [I have quite forgotten it] (Moore et al. 1991: 6): you’re come to see me die (Brown 1936: 437) I saw the ship [that] brought me home

B

So she catched a hold [of his arm] (Brown 1936: 115

C

A

C B

B

56

Manx English

129

levelling of past tense/past participle verb forms: unmarked forms

her heart is broke (Brown 1936: 126); you’d ha’ knew [you would have known] (Brown 1936: 133; ould Anthony Lee, that might have knew better (Brown 1936: 137)

B

130

levelling of past tense/past participle verb forms: past tense for past participle

at last a plan come into my head (Brown 1936: 127

B

134

a-prefixing on ing-forms

and me a-shearing on the Lheargy farm (Brown, 208); and the cock a crowin’ (Brown 1936: 135

C

135

a-prefixing on elements other than ing-forms

with a nice bit of garden aback them each [behind each of them] (Brown 1936: 109); and me a cuddled up (Brown 1936: 135)

B

139

distinctive forms for auxiliary vs. full verb meanings of primary verbs

have ould Higgson rose the rent? (Brown 1936: 124); the place where a strong man have gone down (Brown 1936: 134[. [When have = full verb, StE concord rule is more likely to be followed than when have = Aux]

B

147

was for conditional were

if I was you, and you was me

B

VII. Negation 154

multiple negation / negative concord

he don’t know no more till [than] a pig (Moore et al. 1991: 127)

A

159

never as preverbal past tense negator

he never come

A

163

was – weren’t split

They was all there, but Tommy weren’t

B

VIII. Agreement 171

invariant present tense forms due to generalization of 3rd person -s to all persons

Then we gets to know the marks and the signs [of the fishing grounds] and we leaves the school (Brown 1936: 109) Now, the beauty of the thing, when childer plays is the terrible wonderful length the days is (Brown 1936: 110)

B

172

existential / presentational there’s/there is/there was with plural subjects

there’s no fairies in, [in existence = fairies do not exist] (Moore et al. 1991: 88)

B

180

was/were generalization

You were here early, but she were here first

C

IX. Relativization 185

relativizer that or what in non-restrictive contexts

Ould Anthony Lee, that might have knew better (Brown 1936: 137)

C

190

relativizer what or a form derived from what

all what he’d do (Brown 1936: 122)

C

193

gapping/zero-relativization in subject position

The oul woman owns the place told me;

A

She got them for to come for to len’ a han’ (Moore et al. 1991: 64)

B

X. Complementation 203

for (to) as infinitive marker XII. Adverbs and prepositions

216

omission of StE prepositions

he looked out the window; we’ll see him Friday

B

220

degree modifier adverbs have the same form as adjectives;

and Tommy terrible wantin to get it (Brown 1936: 327); mad awful she was [extremely angry] (Faragher 1967, 23)

B

221

other adverbs have the same form as adjectives

My head was workin’ uncommon hard (Brown 1936: 127); quiet uncommon [unusually quiet] (ibid,); George was larnin with them, an larnin grand, ibid, 199)

B

XIII. Discourse organization and word order 223

other options for clefting than StE

it’s Treasure in Heaven ye’ll be layin’ (Faragher: 36); it’s getting oul I am, and goin down the lhergy [going downhill in life] (Moore et al. 1991: 108)

B

225

sentence-initial focus marker

Jim it was told me

C

227

inverted word order in indirect questions

The Pazon [parson] was knowing what was he about (Brown 1936: 129)

C

229

no inversion/no auxiliaries in main clause yes/no questions

you loved her?

C

232

either order of objects in double object constructions

he gives it him

B

233

presence of subject in imperatives

Jus you clout him! (Faragher 1967: 40); Come you home, Jinny-May! (Faragher 1967: 56)

A

234

like as a focussing device

Betsey was all of a twitter like (Brown 1936: 121)

C

Jennifer Kewley Draskau

57

References Brown, Thomas E.. 1936. The Collected Poems of T.E. Brown. London: Macmillan. Faragher, Kathleen. 1967. In the kitchen. English and Manx Dialect Poems. Douglas: Norris Modern Press. Faragher, Kathleen. ca. 1960. Where Curlews Call: Manx Poems by Kathleen Faragher. Private press. Gill, Walter W.. 1963. Manx Dialect Words and Phrases. London/Bristol: Arrowsmith. Moore, Arthur William, Sophia Morrison and Edmund Goodwin. 1991 [1924]. A Vocabulary of the Anglo-Manx Dialect. Yn Cheshaght Ghailckagh. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Killip, Margaret. 1975. The Folklore of the Isle of Man. London: Batsford. Orton, Harold (ed.). 1962. Survey of English Dialects: Vol I: The Six Northern Counties and the Isle of Man. Leeds: Arnold. Radcliffe, Constance (ed.). 1993. Them Oul’ Times: Poems by ‘Cushag’ (Josephine Kermode). private publication. Thomson, Robert Leith. 1981. Lessoonyn Sodjey ’sy Ghailck Vanninagh. Isle of Man: Yn Cheshaght Ghailckagh.

58

Robert Penhallurick

Robert Penhallurick

Welsh English 1 Introduction The boundary between England and Wales runs north-south for over 200 kilometres and corresponds roughly to the linear earthwork Offa’s Dyke, constructed in the late eighth century, which denotes approximately the western limit of an English-speaking population at that time. By the early twelfth century, English was spoken in parts of Wales. If we take Welsh English to date from this point, then it is one of the oldest varieties of English. By the year 2000, the population of Wales was nearly 3 million, the majority of whom are L1 English speakers. The UK census of 2001 showed about 2.6 per cent of the population of Wales (that is, just over 77,000 people) to have been born outside the UK (BBC Born Abroad website, accessed April 2012). This gives a very rough indication of recent immigrant non-L1-English speakers in Wales. In addition, in the 2001 census about 16 per cent of the population of Wales claimed to be able to speak and read and write Welsh (that is, about 480,000 people; Office for National Statistics, 2004: 5). This gives some indication of the maximum number who might consider Welsh to be their first language and for whom English might be considered an L2 language. Conversely, because of the well-established nature of Welsh English, one can argue that this group nevertheless uses an L1 variety of English. There have been no monoglot Welsh speakers in Wales since at least the mid-twentieth century. From these calculations we deduce between about 2.5 to almost 3 million speakers of Welsh English. This chapter on the WAVE-listed non-standard grammatical features in Welsh English draws on an extensive range of sources, including material collected for the Survey of Anglo-Welsh Dialects (SAWD; see Parry (1999) and Penhallurick (1991, 1996)), and new material from the Millennium Memory Bank (MMB, 1998–1999) and the BBC Voices project (2004–2005) which permits an updated view of Welsh English grammar. For further details and discussion of these and the other sources see section 3 below.

2 Socio-cultural background In the twelfth century, it is thought, following Norman intrusions, communities of English speakers were planted in the Gower Peninsula and Pembroke, which to this day are known as ‘Little Englands beyond Wales’. The Vale of Glamorgan and the eastern areas along the border with England were similarly subject to early anglicization, and no doubt from this time English could also be heard in ‘scattered towns throughout Wales’ where Normans and English merchants were present (German 2009: 27). The late-fifteenth-century English-language poem Hymn to the Virgin, composed at Oxford by the Welshman Ieuan ap Hywel Swrdal using the orthography of Welsh, is suggestive of the basis of the sound-system of Welsh English (see German 2009, Dobson 1957: 2–6). But it was not until the nineteenth century that English became the dominant language in Wales in terms of speaker numbers. Davies (2000: 89) states that between 1801 and 1891 the number of English monoglots in Wales increased seven-fold, and the number of inhabitants with a knowledge of English increased seventy-fold. By 1901 nearly 50 per cent of the population of Wales spoke English only, 15 per cent Welsh only, and nearly 35 per cent were bilingual in English and Welsh (census data obtained via A Vision of Britain Through Time website, accessed May 2012). Welsh-speaking remained widely spread geographically, but became increasingly recessive during the twentieth century. Politically Wales (‘integrated’ with England by the Acts of Union 1536–1543, devolved but not independent since 1997) does not fit into the post-colonial category. Similarly, the history of Welsh English does not correspond comfortably with the five-phase process proposed by Schneider in 2003 for post-colonial Eng-

Welsh English

59

lishes. It is likely that Welsh English was diverse from its beginnings, with its early dialects influenced by the dialects of western and south-western English English. These historical Welsh English dialects in Gower, Pembroke, and the borders remained quite distinguishable from the two chief varieties that gradually developed as English-speaking extended across the territory, that is, northern and southern Welsh English, each of these heavily influenced in phonology by parallel varieties of Welsh. Southern Welsh English tends towards greater transference from Welsh the further west one proceeds (excepting Gower and Pembroke), while the eastern urban dialects of Cardiff and Newport can be judged to be outside the main southern Welsh English variety. Wrexham and Flintshire in the east of north Wales likewise lie outside the main northern variety, having had greater exposure to spreading north-western English English features. Garrett, Coupland and Williams (2003: 94–98) identify six regional ‘community dialects’ of English in Wales, specifically: the Cardiff conurbation, the south-east Valleys, the south-west, mid-Wales, the northeast, and the north-west. This division has a different emphasis, and excludes smaller zones, but it is not fundamentally at odds with that outlined in the paragraph above. The comparatively recent data used in this chapter (MMB and Voices) is drawn from a more heterogeneous informant sample than that used in SAWD, and as such reflects a broader characterization of Welsh English. That said, the impact of the newer immigrant speakers in Wales is yet to be incorporated into the study of Welsh English as a variety. As in England, the transmission of Standard English and RP by the education system has had a historical role in Wales, contributing to the superimposition of social onto regional variation. Partly because of this, Welsh English has yet to develop the prestige that some national varieties of English have acquired. It is true that Welsh English often scores positively in surveys of attitudes in Britain, because of connotations of friendliness, and perhaps because of the associations prompted by high-profile Welsh personalities, but nationhood and national identity in public life in Wales remain tied to the Welsh language rather than to English. Despite its longevity and high speaker-numbers, Welsh English continues to be overtly marginalized.

3 Data Sources The sources can be divided into three groups: those that are SAWD-related; the more recent MMB and Voices surveys; and those that are placed somewhere between these first two groups. The SAWD sources are Parry (1999) and Penhallurick (1991, 1996). The Survey of Anglo-Welsh Dialects (SAWD) was modelled on the earlier Survey of English Dialects (SED). Parry (1999) gives a detailed overview and analysis of data collected for the rural phase of SAWD between 1960 and 1982, dealing with the elderly age-group of speakers throughout Wales. Penhallurick (1991) was a contribution to the original series of datapublications of SAWD, and Penhallurick (1996) focused on the non-standard progressive constructions collected by the Survey. Penhallurick (1994) was not a part of the SAWD project, but it is concerned with one of the traditional regional dialects of Welsh English, that is, the English of the Gower Peninsula. Completing this group of sources describing the older rural dialects is unpublished material from the SED provided to the author by Jonnie Robinson of the British Library. These are linguistic commentaries on audio recordings made in six of the seven Monmouthshire localities in the SED network in 1955 and 1974. The commentaries were compiled in 2004 by Jonnie Robinson in connection with his work on the British Library’s Sounds webpages. The localities in question are: Llanellen (1955), Llanfrechfa (1974), Newport (1974), Raglan (1955), Shirenewton (1955), and Skenfrith (1955). This first group represents a baseline against which to compare the more recent data. The more recent data has also been provided by Jonnie Robinson and his team in the Sociolinguistics section of the British Library. First, there are commentaries on audio recordings made in the UK of all age-groups in 1998–1999 for the Millennium Memory Bank (MMB), which was an oral history project by the BBC and British Library. Used here are linguistic commentaries on 20 Welsh localities done by Jonnie Robinson between 2004 and 2007 in connection with his work on the British Library’s Sounds Familiar? and Sounds web-pages. The localities are:

60

– – –

Robert Penhallurick

north Wales – Bangor, Bethesda, Trefor; mid Wales – Aberhosan, Rhayader; south Wales – Aberbeeg, Aberporth, Brynamman, Cardiff, Cwmfelinfach, Gorseinon, Llanwnda, Maerdy, Monmouth, Mumbles, Mynydd-y-Garreg, Newport (Monmouthshire), Resolven, Swansea, Tremorfa (Cardiff).

Just under half of these are urban localities: Bangor, Rhayader, Cardiff, Gorseinon, Monmouth, Newport, Swansea, and Tremorfa. The remainder qualify as villages, although Bethesda is large for a village, and Mumbles is very close to the city of Swansea. The second new source is the Voices of the UK project at the British Library. BBC Voices was a survey carried out in 2004–2005 under academic guidance: audio recordings of local speakers were made by the BBC’s regional radio departments throughout the UK. The Voices of the UK team have used these recordings to create a searchable electronic database at the British Library. Used here are linguistic descriptions completed in 2010 for 23 Welsh localities in which audio recordings were made of contemporary Welsh English, all agegroups, for BBC Voices. With regard to grammar, the descriptions list non-standard items only, and only 13 of the localities to date have been selected for analysis of grammar, as follows: – – –

north Wales – Bethesda, Flint, Holyhead, Rhos-on-Sea; mid Wales – Builth Wells, Newtown, Tregaron; south Wales – Bonymaen (Swansea), Llanelli, Risca, Splott (Cardiff), Talbot Green, Treorchy.

With the exception of Bethesda (arguably), Tregaron, and Talbot Green, these are all urban localities. (My thanks to Holly Gilbert, Jon Herring, and Jonnie Robinson for making available to me their MMB, SED, and Voices of the UK commentaries.) When comparing the earlier SAWD-related material with the later MMB and Voices data we should remember that the SAWD network was rural and the later surveys more urban than rural. There are also significant differences in the informant profiles. SAWD informants were elderly, MMB and Voices informants came from young, middle-aged, and elderly groups. Furthermore, while all of the MMB and Voices informants were recorded in their respective localities, informant criteria such as lifelong residence and their being born in the locality were less rigorously applied compared with the SED and SAWD. This affects Talbot Green especially. The Talbot Green (Voices) informants were all travelling showpersons with varying degrees of attachment to and life history in Talbot Green itself. This distinguishes the Talbot Green examples from the majority of the others used here, which were elicited from informants who were native or long-term permanent residents of their locality. The final group of sources consists of: two sketches of dialects of southern Welsh English, by Connolly and Lewis, both published in Coupland and Thomas (1989); a 1988 monograph by Coupland on Cardiff English; and a 2006 monograph by Paulasto on the syntax of Welsh English. Each of the first three contains a short list of non-standard grammar. Paulasto’s study uses data collected for SAWD between 1960 and 1987 – its rural phase (elderly age-group; fieldwork 1960–1982) and its urban phase (young, middle-aged, and elderly age-groups; fieldwork 1985–1987) – and data collected by Paulasto herself from all age-groups in north and south Wales between 1995–2000. The SAWD urban material was unexploited until Paulasto’s book, and derived from fieldwork (by Penhallurick) in Caernarfon and Wrexham in the north, and Carmarthen and the Grangetown district of Cardiff in the south. All informants were natives of the locality in question, and very few had gone through higher education.

4 Commentary on the Welsh English features 94 WAVE features can be found in Welsh English, of which 13 are category A, 48 category B, and 33 category C. I have been able to locate authentic examples of most of these features in the sources that I have consulted, but 22 have no authentic instances in the sources and so are included in the overview (see appendix) on the basis of my general observations or ‘tentative opinion’. Below some interpretive comments will be made

Welsh English

61

about the geographical and chronological spread of certain of the features and how some of them got into Welsh English. The majority of the Welsh English WAVE features can be classified into three broad categories (setting to one side those with no examples). These categories are, in summary: i.

features associated with the traditional rural dialects which are attested in the older sources but not in the more recent; those that fall more clearly into this category are the following: F21, F30, F31, F33, F35, F48, F49, F132, F134–F138, F168, F184, F192, F202, F227; ii. features attested by the newer sources but which have not been found in the older: F147, F172, F179, F204, F228, F229, and F234, F235; iii. features which show a continuity between the older and newer sources and which are usually well attested: F11, F56, F68, F78, F88, F89, F91, F92, F128–F131, F133, F154, F158, F159, F165, F170, F171, F180, F187, F190, F193, F220, and F223–F225.

We will now look at each of these categories in more detail. On the face of it, most of the features in category (i) appear to be either obsolete or obsolescent, and were elicited from the rural elderly age-group by SAWD-related fieldwork in the 1960s to early 1980s. Often they are linked with influence from the traditional English dialects of western and south-western England. The a-prefixing features (F134 and F135) exemplify this set: recorded sporadically by SAWD in the borders, Gower, and Pembroke, they are also noted by WAVE for south-western England, though now rare there. Another is F31, which is also recorded in one of Robinson’s commentaries on the SED Monmouthshire localities: Skenfrith, investigated in 1955, has them and us in subject function, e.g. them can ride all day. A further example is F30, an additional instance of which was recorded in 2004 by Voices in Builth Wells, but the information given (as noted by the British Library team) corroborates its obsolescence: “do you want to come with we?” rather than “do you want to come with us?” – the informant says this is something she heard old farmers say when she was a child [1 of 1]. An exception in this set, in terms of its cause, is the instance at F192, for which Parry (1999: 110) favours transference from Welsh-language constructions such as Dyma’r dyn y canodd ei fab yn y côr, literally ‘This is the man that his son sang in the choir’. Although this feature is also attested by WAVE in the north and south of England, the SAWD instances are all from localities with strong Welsh-language presence at the time of fieldwork. Feature F227 perhaps also arises as a result of influence from Welsh-language constructions. One further and cautionary note on category (i): as noted above, there is some disjunction between the type of localities investigated by the first, rural phase of SAWD and the more urban networks of MMB and Voices. One cannot be completely certain, therefore, of the obsoleteness of these features. Similarly, it would be prudent to see the features in my category (ii) as ones which either were overlooked by the earlier sources or eluded the field investigations on which they draw rather than to understand them as innovations. As well as occurring in Welsh English, this comparatively small set of features is associated with general non-standard British English. For example, F234 and F235 are well attested in British English generally and in the Voices data for Wales (which has another 24 instances of like as a focussing device in addition to those listed in the table). This is not a feature targeted by the SAWD/SED questionnaire, but I would be surprised were there not some examples of it in untranscribed SAWD audio recordings or unpublished SAWD field-transcriptions. And yet, one could also argue tentatively that nearly all the features in this set are more common in the younger age-group interviewed by MMB and Voices than in the elderly group interviewed by SAWD. The largest set is category (iii), which shows a continuity between the earlier and later sources despite some disparity in types of locality and informant. Most of these features are not specific to Wales, though some are particularly associated with Welsh English. Among the former are F56 and F68, both of which also show up strongly in English English and Irish English according to WAVE (F68 also in Scottish English). My sources had the following additional instances: number F56, a load of turnip, recorded by Penhallurick (1991: 174) in the north-east, and MMB, Resolven, five-hundred-thousand pound a year [1 of 2]; F68 Voices, Flint, them Irish lads [1 of 2], Talbot Green, in them days [1 of 4, ‘occasional’]. Both features are also recorded for Cardiff by Coupland (1988: 35). Also well attested in other varieties of British English are F129–F131, F154, F158, F159, F180, F187, F190, and F193.

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Robert Penhallurick

Among the remaining features in my category (iii) are a few which have attracted a good deal of attention in the literature on Welsh English. Let us first look at discourse organization and word order (F223–F225). Paulasto (2006: 157–215) provides an in-depth discussion of ‘focus fronting’, a feature given alternative labels elsewhere (for example, ‘sentence-initial emphasis’ in Parry (1999: 119), and ‘predicate fronting’ in Williams (2000)). According to Paulasto (2006: 296) ‘it is the influence of the Welsh MS [mixed or cleft sentence] which lies behind the most characteristic uses of FF [focus fronting] in WE: it allows the fronting of any consitituent, including objects and lexically governed adverbials, and it is obligatory in the very contexts where FF is used more consistently in WE than in other varieties of English, the contrastive and responsive sentences’. Paulasto concludes (2006: 214–215) that focus fronting occurs more often in Welsh English than in English English, that it occurs frequently, and that transference of Welsh-language constructions is a major cause, especially in traditional Welsh-speaking regions. She also affirms that in some anglicized areas the forms of focus fronting have been affected by English English usages, and that a reduction in the functional range of focus fronting was evident in her younger age-groups. Features F88, F89 and F91, F92 lead us to another regularly discussed topic in Welsh English grammar: non-standard realizations of the habitual aspect. Superficially it might seem as if there are three forms in competition (not counting Standard forms): progressive be + V-ing forms (F89; also used for stative aspect, see F88); periphrastic unstressed do forms (F91); and synthetic forms (F92). However, the progressive be forms are associated with transference from Welsh, and regionally with the traditional Welsh-speaking areas of the rural north and west (see Penhallurick 1996). In these areas there is a suggestion of declining use among younger speakers (Paulasto 2006: 269). The do forms have been found mostly in the anglicized south and east, the proposal being that they have spread from neighbouring traditional English English dialects (see Thomas 1985, Ihalainen 1976), although Klemola (2002) argues that they may have arisen in south-western dialects of Middle English as a result of Celtic contact influence – so a deep underlying Welsh influence can also be argued for. Voices provides the following new instances: Talbot Green, it’s just the way I do speak and that’s it [1 of 2]; Treorchy, that’s one Welsh word we have that we do use [1 of 1, unstressed do confirmed by J. Robinson in private correspondence]. The synthetic forms tend towards south-eastern Welsh English and WAVE points towards a connection with south-western English English (though note the example in the north from Penhallurick (1991: 194). Further instances show up in my recent data: Voices, Talbot Green, because we gets our living … I used to … off of each and every one of them [1 of 1]; MMB, Cardiff, the bay that they talks about [1 of 1]. F165 offers a striking example of the combination of Welsh-language and general non-standard British English influence on Welsh English: generalized isn’t it/innit as a confirmatory interrogative tag. This 3rd person singular form, applying to the whole of a preceding statement, irrespective of the main verb, is common in Welsh English. Parry (1999: 115) states that it is ‘fairly widespread’ throughout Wales, except for Monmouthshire. Penhallurick (1991: 204–205) records 14 examples from the Welsh-speaking heartland of the north. It is highly likely that these instances are due to the transfer of the Welsh generalized confirmatory interrogative ydy fe? ‘isn’t it?’. However, Voices and MMB provide a total of nine new instances, including two from the south, and it seems probable that use of the feature in Welsh English, particularly among younger speakers, is being reinforced by influence from English English. WAVE records eh/innit/in’t/isn’t it tags as common in southern English English. Finally, what are the benefits and drawbacks of looking at Welsh English grammar from the WAVE perspective? The main drawback is that the WAVE list of features is not designed specifically with Welsh English in mind, and therefore it fails to harvest all possible items of interest. In my view, this ‘main drawback’ is in fact quite minor, because the WAVE list is well designed and pretty comprehensive. For information, here are the more obvious and well-known features of Welsh English not covered by the WAVE list: – – – – – –

the compounds by here and by there in place of Standard English here and there; the compounds where by? and where to? in place of Standard English where?; there’s + adjective, as in there’s lovely; the use of the preposition on in expressions such as there is a name on it; extended possessive constructions using with, as in it’s always cold with you I suppose (supplied by Paulasto, private correspondence); use of the definite article in the pronominal phrase the both.

63

Welsh English

The great and luxurious benefit of WAVE is the easy comparison with other varieties and tracking of individual features across varieties that it enables. This is an unparalleled resource for students, researchers, teachers and anyone else with an interest in present-day English.

Appendix: Overview of WAVE features attested in Welsh English1 # 1 2 3 7 8 11

12 13 14 15 21 26 27 28 29 30 31 33

34

feature WelE example I. Pronouns, pronoun exchange, nominal gender she/her used for inanimate referents he/him used for inanimate referents SED data from 1955 in Monmouthshire (Shirenewton) shows I thought you’d earned him (= pound). alternative forms/phrases for referential (non-dummy) it me instead of I in coordinate subjects myself/meself instead of I in coordinate Voices: Flint: uh a long long time ago my two brothers George subjects and Ralph and myself went to the Isle of Man [1 of 1]. regularized reflexives paradigm There is evidence of this in traditional WelE: they told me theirselves in north-east Wales at the border with England (Penhallurick 1991: 178); hisself and theirselves in the south-east (Connolly 1989: 127; Lewis 1989: 115). object pronoun forms serving as base for First person only in WelE as far as I can tell: e.g. I wash meself 1st and/or 2nd person reflexives (Penhallurick 1991: 178). subject pronoun forms serving as base for Recorded once by Penhallurick (1991: 178) in north-east Wales reflexives at the border with England: they look after theyselves. no number distinction in reflexives Voices: Talbot Green: and some things which we’ve made up (i.e plural forms ending in -self) ourself [1 of 3]. absolute use of reflexives (e.g. as topic Possibly used mockingly. marker) subject pronoun forms as possessive In south-east Wales, Parry (1999: 109) records they (unstressed pronouns: 3rd person plural modifying possessive); probably now obsolete. object pronoun forms as possessive pronouns: 1st person singular object pronoun forms as possessive In the north-east, have us tea (Penhallurick 1991: 79); pronouns: 1st person plural and with us eyes (Parry 1999: 109) in the south. use of us + NP in subject function Voices: Builth Wells: ’cause uh they’re just like us Welsh [1 of 1, but subject function??]. use of us in object function (with singular referent) non-coordinated subject pronoun forms Come and see we and never heard of they recorded by Parry in object function (1999: 109) in mid-Wales. non-coordinated object pronoun forms in In this function, her recorded in several places along the subject function Wales-England border (Parry 1999: 109). independent possessive pronoun forms Common in traditional WelE of south Pembroke, Gower, and with added nasal the borders, but obsolete or obsolescent now: e.g. second singular yourn, first plural ourn, third plural theirn (all Parry 1999: 109). forms or phrases for the second person Voices: Flint: “all youse lot come with me the rest of you stay plural pronoun other than you where youse is,” that kind of thing [1 of 1, the speaker is quoting how younger speakers in Flint talk – possible Liverpool influence here].

1 For the new and hitherto unpublished Voices and MMB data, in addition to the chosen examples, total numbers of instances of each feature recorded in the locality are given (and also

rating B B B A B C

B C C C C A C A A C C C

C

occasionally a short comment from the compilers of the data at the British Library).

64

35

48 49

52 54 56 60 62 63 68 70 72 78 79 80 83

88

Robert Penhallurick

forms or phrases for the 2nd person singular pronoun other than you

II. Noun phrase regularization of plural formation: extension of -s to StE irregular plurals regularization of plural formation: phonological regularization

associative plural marked by postposed and them/them all/dem group plurals absence of plural marking only after quantifiers use of definite article where StE has indefinite article use of zero article where StE has definite article use of zero article where StE has indefinite article them instead of demonstrative those proximal and distal demonstratives with ‘here’ and ‘there’ group genitives double comparatives and superlatives regularized comparison strategies: extension of synthetic marking regularized comparison strategies: extension of analytic marking comparatives and superlatives of participles III. Verb phrase: tense and aspect wider range of uses of progressive be + V-ing: extension to stative verbs

89

wider range of uses of progressive be + V-ing: extension to habitual contexts

91

do as habitual marker

92

other non-standard habitual markers: synthetic

95 96

be sat/stood with progressive meaning there with past participle in resultative contexts

E.g. subjective thee and thou, and objective thee recorded by Penhallurick (1991: 176) in the north-east; subjective and objective thee, and subjective yee recorded by Penhallurick (1994: 164–165) in Gower; and subjective thee and thou, and objective thee recorded by Parry (1999: 108) in mid and south Wales. All of these probably obsolete or obsolescent now.

C

Parry (1999: 107) records oxens once in south-east Wales.

C

Penhallurick (1991: 157) records examples of [s] plurals added to a stem in which final [f] remains, owing to the tendency to unvoicing found in northern WelE combined with absence of [z] in Welsh. Note, however, that Parry (1999: 105) records calfs and sheafs elsewhere in Wales, including areas with long-standing influence from English English dialects. My very tentative opinion, but to be confirmed by attestation.

B

Common, e.g. three foot (Connolly 1989: 127); two year ago (Parry 1999: 107). E.g. got the headache and got the toothache recorded by Parry (1999: 108). A few instances recorded by Parry (1999: 108) and Penhallurick (1991: 185), e.g. lay table (Parry). A few instances recorded by Parry (1999: 107) and Penhallurick (1991: 182), e.g. could [I] have apple (Penhallurick). E.g. them boys (Connolly 1989: 127); them questions (Penhallurick 1991: 180). This here, that there, them there etc are pretty common.

E.g. more firmer (Parry 1999: 108). Possibly growing in popularity. E.g. horriblest (Parry 1999: 108).

C B B B C C A B B B B B

Possibly growing in popularity among younger speakers.

C

Particularly but not exclusively in northern WelE – see Penhallurick (1996: 325–326, 335–338) and Paulasto (2006: 223–229): e.g. And you’re wanting these words for all these here? (Paulasto 2006: 226) Particularly but not exclusively in northern WE – see Penhallurick (1996: 322–325, 329–335) and Paulasto (2006: 218–223): e.g. we’re not using the funnel for things (Penhallurick 1996: 324). MMB: Aberhosan: and they were all keeping pigs [1 of 6]. Note that periphrastic unstressed do (different from emphatic do) is well attested in southern and borders WelE, e.g. the cows do graze in the fields (Parry 1999: 110); they do put up with it (Connolly 1989: 127). E.g. they drinks gallons (Connolly 1989: 127); I bets on horses (Lewis 1989: 118); things like that sometimes comes along (Penhallurick 1991: 194). My tentative opinion. My tentative opinion.

B

B

B

B

B B

65

Welsh English

99 100

128

levelling of present perfect and simple past: simple past for StE present perfect levelling of present perfect and simple past: present perfect for StE simple past V. Verb phrase: verb morphology levelling of past tense/past participle verb forms: regularization

129

levelling of past tense/past participle verb forms: unmarked forms

130

levelling of past tense/past participle verb forms: past tense for past participle

131

levelling of past tense/past participle verb forms: past participle for past tense

132

zero past tense forms of regular verbs

133

double marking of past tense

134

a-prefixing on ing-forms

135

a-prefixing on elements other than ing-forms

136

special inflected forms of be

137

special inflected forms of do

138

special inflected forms of have

139

distinctive forms for auxiliary vs. full verb meanings of primary verbs use of gotten and got with distinct meanings (dynamic vs. static) use of gotten instead of got

144 145 146

use of verbal suffix -ing with forms other than present participle/gerund

147

was for conditional were

My tentative opinion.

B

Voices: Tregaron: I’ve been born and bred in Tregaron never been away [1 of 2].

C

Parry (1999: 112–113) gives numerous examples of such forms, though not always do they show conclusively full regularization. E.g. past tense catched, past participle catched. Voices: Talbot Green: you see their families growed up [1 of 1]. Parry (1999: 112–113) gives examples, though they do not prove full levelling of forms. E.g. past tense come, run; past participle eat, give. Voices: Builth Wells: a New Zealand girl come first and I come second [2 of 2]. Parry (1999: 113) gives numerous examples: such as ate, broke, took. Voices: Bonymaen: and some haven’t spoke a word of English have they? [1 of 1]. May be restricted to certain verbs only, e.g. seen, which is widespread and common (e.g. see Parry 1999: 112); and done as in I done it yesterday (Connolly 1989: 127). Voices: Bonymaen: and I went back and I done two years [1 of 1]. Parry (1999: 112) records two instances of reach past tense in west Wales in the 1970s. E.g. Parry (1999: 112) records one instance of sawed in Gower from the 1960s. Note also the following past participle from Voices: Talbot Green: which Becky have said the two of them was borned here one just by there and one by there [1 of 3]. Possibly obsolete or obsolescent now. See Parry (1999: 112, 117), who records a few instances from the borders: a-cutting, a-coming, a-taking, a-doing. Parry (1999: 113) records a number of instances from the south-west of past participles with a-prefixing: e.g. a-found, a-had, a-lost. Possibly obsolete or obsolescent now. Parry (1999: 114–115) gives numerous examples of nonstandard forms for be. Many of them, however, were recorded in areas of Wales with long-standing influence from English English dialects, and may now be obsolete or obsolescent. Example of special inflection: thee bist (second singular). Parry (1999: 116) gives examples of non-standard forms for do. A proportion (but not all) can be linked to influence from English English dialects, and may now be obsolete or obsolescent. Example of special inflection: dost thee (auxiliary interrogative unstressed, second singular). Parry (1999: 117) gives examples of non-standard forms for have. A proportion (but not all) can be linked to influence from English English dialects, and may now be obsolete or obsolescent. Example of special inflection: he hath. Difficult to assess on the recorded evidence. My tentative opinion would be: more likely with do. Not in traditional WelE, I would say. A modern import, possibly. My tentative opinion. Not in traditional WelE, I would say. A modern import. My tentative opinion. Penhallurick (1991: 193) records to make it bleeding [‘to make it bleed’] in the north. Such -ing forms may be on the increase in modern WelE owing to influence from other Englishes. Very common. E.g. Voices: Splott: if you was to say like, “oh” every word that you used was … [1 of 1].

B

B

B

B

C C

C

C

B

B

B

B C C C

A

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154

VII. Negation multiple negation / negative concord

155

ain’t as the negated form of be

156 158

ain’t as the negated form of have invariant don’t for all persons in the present tense

159

never as preverbal past tense negator

165

invariant non-concord tags (including eh?)

168

special negative verbs in imperatives

170

VIII. Agreement invariant present tense due to zero marking for the 3rd person singular

171

invariant present tense due to generalization of 3rd person -s

172

existential / presentational there’s/there is/there was with plural subjects

179

deletion of auxiliary have

180

was/were generalization

184

invariant be with non-habitual function

Common. E.g. I don’t know nothing about snakes (Parry 1999: 119). Voices: Bonymaen: you had to speak Welsh else you didn’t have no friends [1 of 2, ‘occasional’]. Penhallurick (1991: 200–201, 203) records a few, possibly idiosyncratic instances in the north-west; Parry (1999: 115) records one further instance, ain’t thee, from the borders, as well as instances of bain’t and binna from the borders and Gower. Tench (1989: 127) also records ain’t in Port Talbot English. My tentative opinion. He don’t recorded by Parry (1999: 116) in mid and south Wales. Voices: Splott: she don’t like the swearing so we don’t [1 of 1]. Common. E.g.: I never done it recorded by Parry (1999: 116) in mid and south Wales; Connolly (1989: 127) also records never to mean ‘didn’t’ in Port Talbot. Voices: Flint: but we never kept the tape unfortunately, would have done really good for this program [1 of 1]. Also noted for Cardiff by Coupland (1988: 35). E.g. we saw some the other day, innit (Penhallurick 1991: 205). Voices: Bonymaen: you turn round and you say, “tidy” isn’t it? [1 of 1]. Also noted for Cardiff by Coupland (1988: 36). Parry (1999: 118) records you munna play with the fire ‘you mustn’t play with the fire’ sporadically, and also lists a number of other non-standard and possibly archaic negative verb-forms – I am not sure, however, that these amount to ‘special negative verbs in imperatives’.

B

Some evidence of this, e.g. in (You don’t care for things like that but … ) he do (Parry 1999: 116); and do she want any? and he have taken the lot (Connolly 1989: 127). Voices: Talbot Green: which Becky have said the two of them was borned here one just by there and one by there [1 of 1]. Also noted for auxiliary have in Cardiff by Coupland (1988: 34). Very common. E.g. some calls it “fern” (Penhallurick 1991: 194); I likes it (Connolly 1989: 127). Voices: Talbot Green: well you says one word [1 of 1]. Also noted for Cardiff by Coupland (1988: 34). Very common. Voices has many examples of invariant presentational there’s/there was, e.g.: Bonymaen: there’s some words in the dictionary that we think are swear words [1 of 1]. Voices: Bonymaen: yeah we got the leisure centre and we got the community centres [2 of 5, ‘very frequent’]; Builth Wells: you know they’re pretty pitiful if they got a problem with somebody else’s accent [1 of 1]. E.g. Parry (1999: 114) records I were, she were, we was, you was (plural), they was – each instance in a number of localities, though no one locality has all these forms. Voices: Bonymaen: and these girls sitting behind me was using the f-word all the way home [1 of 1]. See Parry (1999: 114–115) for examples in areas with long-standing influence from English English dialects – may now be obsolete or obsolescent. E.g. I be, her be, she be, we be, them be, they be.

C

C

C B

B

A

C

B

B

B

B

C

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Welsh English

186

IX. Relativization which for ‘who’

187

relativizer as

188

relativizer at

190

relativizer what or a form derived from what

192

use of analytic or cliticized that his/that’s, what his/what’s, etc. instead of whose

193

gapping/zero-relativization in subject position

202

X. Complementation unsplit for to in infinitival purpose clauses

204

as what / than what in comparative clauses

207

substitution of that-clause for infinitival subclause XII. Adverbs and prepositions omission of StE prepositions

216

220

221

223

224 225

See Parry (1999: 110), who records one instance in south-west Wales from the 1960s: He’s the man which looks after the cows. See Penhallurick (1991: 179–180) and Parry (1999: 110). E.g. one as makes wheels (Penhallurick 1991: 179). Voices: Talbot Green: and he died on the same piece of ground as my wife was borned on [1 of 1]. MMB: Cardiff: all as I can say is, now, that I’ve loved my place of growing up [1 of 1]. Note I’ve never dropped across one yet, he says, at give me a pound, recorded in SED data from 1955 in Monmouthshire (Shirenewton). E.g. I know a man what’ll help you (Penhallurick 1991: 179). Voices: Talbot Green: you might get the odd showman what is really Scotch [1 of 2]. Not tremendously common – see Parry (1999: 110), that’s the man that his/that’s uncle was drowned, who tentatively links its occurrence to possible transfer of a Welsh construction. E.g. he’s the _ man looks after the cows (Parry 1999: 109); Voices: Flint: there uh uh an African fellow _ used to run … run with a big spear [1 of 1]; Holyhead: there’s a lot of English um _ come here to live now [1 of 1]; Treorchy: and there was a lady _ got on I think it was in Taff’s Well [1 of 1].

C

Penhallurick (1991: 208): for to get cheese. Parry (1999: 118) shows instances scattered in north, mid, and south Wales. In addition, SED data for Monmouthshire (Raglan, investigated in 1955) includes we had rennet and that for to turn it. Very common, I would say. E.g. MMB: Swansea: she’s exposed (…) to these foreign foods at a much earlier age than what I ever was [1 of 1].

B

Voices: Bonymaen: and I had the AA man out the front … out the back there … only to mend my car, mind [2 of 2]; Splott: up Glasgow um in March last year [1 of 1]. Also noted for Cardiff by Coupland (1988: 35). degree modifier adverbs have the same E.g. they’ve got to be proper done (Penhallurick 1991: 206). This form as adjectives is a more unusual example of a feature that is very common, e.g. with real (see also Connolly 1989: 127). Voices: Tregaron: oh they are laughing because I’ve got a real prominent Welsh accent [1 of 1]. other adverbs have the same form as Voices: Bonymaen: because I talk so quick [1 of 2, ‘frequent adjectives unmarked manner adverb’]; Builth Wells: he speaks very clear [1 of 2]. XIII. Discourse organization and word order other options for clefting than StE E.g. Dying to go to the toilet I am (Paulasto 2006: 162). Voices: Bonymaen: ‘worn out’ I got [1 of 1]. Also noted for Cardiff by Coupland (1988: 36–37). Clefting/focus fronting is particularly common in WelE – so that 224 and 225 have ‘A’ also. other possibilities for fronting than StE See 223. sentence-initial focus marker See 223.

B

C

B

B

C

B

B

B

B

A

A

A A

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227

inverted word order in indirect questions

228

233 234

no inversion/no auxiliaries in wh-questions no inversion/no auxiliaries in main clause yes/no questions either order of objects in double object constructions presence of subject in imperatives like as a focussing device

235

like as a quotative particle

229 232

See Parry (1999: 119) for a number of instances, particularly from south-west Wales: e.g. I don’t know what time is it. Penhallurick (1991: 209) has you know what’s that, don’t you for the north. Voices: Talbot Green: but like here people say, “oh where you from?” [1 of 1]. Voices: Holyhead: she said, “what do you mean? you off your rocker, like?” [1 of 1].

B

B B B

My tentative opinion – I am not sure. Voices: Bethesda: it’s just we have so many like English influences around us [1 of 8]; Builth Wells: and like Siân’ll be by there by the side [1 of 1, ‘very occasional’]. Voices: Bonymaen: I’m like, “no I haven’t,” and she’s like, “yeah,” and I’m like, “well what kind of accent have I got then?” and she’s like, “well Welsh,” and I’m like, “oh right” [5 of 5, ‘occasional’]; Splott: if you was to say like, “oh” every word that you used was … [1 of 3, ‘occasional’].

C A

A

References BBC Born Abroad: An Immigration Map of Britain. 2005. website at: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/spl/hi/uk/ 05/born_abroad/html/overview.stm. Census of England and Wales. 1901. General Report with Appendices (1904 CVIII (Cd. 2174) 1: Languages in Wales and Monmouthshire. Accessed via A Vision of Britain Through Time website (2009), at: http://www.visionofbritain.org.uk/index.jsp. Connolly, John H. 1989. Port Talbot English. In: Nikolas Coupland, and Alan R. Thomas (eds.), English in Wales: Diversity, Conflict and Change, 121–129. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Coupland, Nikolas. 1988. Dialect in Use: Sociolinguistic Variation in Cardiff English. Cardiff: University of Wales Press. Davies, Janet. 2000. Welsh. In: Glanville Price (ed.), Languages in Britain and Ireland, 78–108. Oxford/Malden, Massachusetts: Blackwell. Dobson, Eric John. 1957. English Pronunciation 1500–1700. Volume I: Survey of the Sources. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Garrett, Peter, Nikolas Coupland, and Angie Williams. 2003. Investigating Language Attitudes: Social Meanings of Dialect, Ethnicity and Performance. Cardiff: University of Wales Press. German, Gary. 2009. Two early examples of Welsh English as a marker of national identity: Ieuan ap Hywel Swrdwal’s Hymn to the Virgin and Shakespeare’s Fluellen. Available at Hyper Article en Ligne – Sciences de l’Homme et de la Société: http://hal.univ-brest.fr/docs/ 00/47/44/20/PDF/German_PDGalles_.pdf Ihalainen, Ossi. 1976. Periphrastic do in affirmative sentences in the dialect of East Somerset. Neuphilologische Mitteilungen 77: 608–622.

Klemola, Juhani. 2002. Periphrastic do: Dialectal Distribution and Origins. In: Markku Filppula, Juhani Klemola, and Heli Pitkänen (eds.), The Celtic Roots of English, 199–210. Joensuu: University of Joensuu. Lewis, Jack W. 1989. Syntax and Lexis in Glamorgan English. In: Nikolas Coupland, and Alan R. Thomas (eds.), English in Wales: Diversity, Conflict and Change, 109–120. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Office for National Statistics. 2004. Focus on Wales: Its People. London: Office for National Statistics. Parry, David (ed.). 1999. A Grammar and Glossary of the Conservative Anglo-Welsh Dialects of Rural Wales. Sheffield: The National Centre for English Cultural Tradition. Paulasto, Heli. 2006. Welsh English Syntax: Contact and Variation. Joensuu: University of Joensuu Press. Penhallurick, Robert J. 1991. The Anglo-Welsh Dialects of North Wales. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang. Penhallurick, Robert J. 1994. Gowerland and its Language. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang. Penhallurick, Robert J. 1996. The grammar of Northern Welsh English: Progressive verb phrases. In: Juhani Klemola, Merja Kytö, and Matti Rissanen (eds.), Speech Past and Present: Studies in English Dialectology in Memory of Ossi Ihalainen, 308–342. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang. Robinson, Jonnie. 2004. SED (Survey of English Dialects) at the British Library: unpublished commentaries. Robinson, Jonnie. 2004–2007. Millennium Memory Bank (MMB) at the British Library: unpublished commentaries. Robinson, Jonnie, Holly Gilbert, and Jon Herring. 2010. Voices of the UK. British Library, Social Sciences Collections and Research, project funded by the Leverhulme Trust. Unpublished linguistic descriptions of English in Wales.

Welsh English

Schneider, Edgar W. 2003. The dynamics of new Englishes: From identity construction to dialect birth. Language 79: 233–281. Sounds web-pages, British Library, at: http://sounds.bl.uk/ Sound-Maps/Accents-and-Dialects. Sounds Familiar? web-pages, British Library, at: http://www.bl.uk/learning/langlit/sounds/.

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Thomas, Alan R. 1985. Welsh English: A grammatical conspectus. In: Wolfgang Viereck (ed.), Focus on: England and Wales, 213–221. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Williams, Malcolm. 2000. The pragmatics of predicate fronting in Welsh English. In: Hildegard L. C. Tristram, The Celtic Englishes II, 210–230. Heidelberg: C. Winter.

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Graeme Trousdale

English dialects in the north of England 1 Introduction: the problem of the linguistic ‘north’ of England Establishing what constitutes the linguistic ‘north’ of England is complex: some morphosyntactic features attested in dialects spoken in the land mass south of the Scottish border and north of an imaginary line from Chester in the west to Cleethorpes in the east actually serve to distinguish one northern sub-variety from another; conversely, there are few pan-northern features which are not present in either the southern or midland English varieties, or in Scots (see further Beal 2004). Add to that the various sociolinguistic factors which have been shown to correlate with the distribution of particular linguistic variants, and it is clear that the notion of a ‘northern English dialect’ is a rather unwieldy abstraction across a set of locally specific features, on the one hand, and general non-standard British English features on the other. Early dialectological work on northern varieties (and indeed other varieties in England) typically focused on the rural north, and traditional northern dialects are usually associated with the traditional county names (e.g. Northumbrian, (North) Yorkshire and so on). More recently, innovations emanating from urban centres have been seen to shape what constitutes a northern variety (e.g. Geordie as the dialect of Newcastle upon Tyne, Scouse as the dialect of Liverpool): changing demographic patterns mean that patterns of dialect leveling are noticeable in the north (see e.g. Watt and Milroy 1999 for aspects of phonological leveling, and Trousdale 2003 for aspects of morphosyntactic leveling), with particular urban centres serving as focal areas (Trudgill 1999). It is sometimes the case that a distinction is made between the ‘far north’ and other parts of the north: in fact, the far north is really the far north-east, and covers the areas of Northumberland, Tyneside, Wearside and some parts of County Durham. This area is one of the most well-studied dialect areas of England, and the varieties spoken there have a number of features in common with Lowland Scots, which may be accounted for by a common point of origin in Old Northumbrian, as well as more recent contact (on which see further Beal 1993). Another area that has been identified is the ‘Scandinavian belt’ (Beal 2004), which includes parts of Cumbria, Durham and Yorkshire, and is distinct in terms of both morphosyntactic and lexical properties from both the far north and the north-west (areas such as Lancashire, and those which include the major cities of Manchester and Liverpool). In sum, then, the linguistic area that is known as ‘northern English’ is highly diverse, both in terms of its linguistic history, and its synchronic patterns of variability. Below I discuss in more detail some of the features which arose as part of the data collection for the questionnaire used as the source for WAVE. The data for the questionnaire was collected from a variety of sources, including existing contemporary corpora (e.g NECTE, the Newcastle Electronic Corpus of Tyneside English; http://research.ncl.ac.uk/necte), older dialect material (e.g. SED, the Survey of English Dialects, Orton (1962–1971)), interviews with speakers from the north of England, and other literature which reports research on morphosyntactic variation in the north.

2 Sociocultural background Contact has had a significant role to play in the historical development of northern English. As mentioned in the introduction, in the earliest period of Germanic influence in the British Isles, the varieties of much of the eastern part of northern England and southern Scotland have a common origin in the Old Northumbrian variety of Old English (Beal 1993) while subsequent influences from Old Norse affected the far north-west and central north (Beal 2004). Migration of northern English speakers to the south in the late Middle and early

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Modern periods resulted in the use of particular northern forms in the standard variety, such as the th- forms of the third-person plural pronouns (e.g. they, them), and the third-person singular present tense -s inflection on verbs (Nevalainen and Raumolin-Brunberg 2003), while the development of the standard language in Britain meant other southern features were introduced to the northern regions as a result of increased education in the later modern period. In contemporary Britain, using the data from the UK government’s State of the English Cities report (www.socd.communities.gov.uk) in 2006, the largest primary urban areas in the north of England are (in descending order of population size) Manchester, Liverpool, Newcastle, and Sheffield. The total population number of those urban areas is approximately 4 million, based on the 2001 census. Many of the larger communities have been the locations for sociolinguistic and dialectological research, but much work remains to be done: there is little research on morphosyntactic variation in the largest urban community in the north, i.e. Manchester. Regional variation is significant, and associated increasingly with the influence of the large urban centres mentioned in the paragraph above (another large urban area of influence is Leeds in Yorkshire), on which see further Trudgill (1999). Associated with the development of such urban centres is the kind of sociolinguistic variation observed in standard urban dialectological surveys; it is clear that both phonological and morphosyntactic variation show patterns of stratification by traditional social parameters such as class and gender. Nevertheless, contact – or lack thereof – plays an important part in the preservation of old morphosyntactic variables, and the development of new ones. As will be shown in the following sections, some of the WAVE features which struck me as relics were said by some of my informants to be attested in their communities, even if used only by older members of the group. This was particularly the case with speakers from rural parts of the north (particularly in Yorkshire). It seems as though, with the growth of the great cities of the north, and the paradigm shift in dialectological work to urban dialectology, there is an opportunity to investigate more thoroughly the degree of morphosyntactic variation in rural communities in the north of England.

3 Notable aspects of the WAVE profile of morphosyntactic variation in the north of England In this section, I discuss some of the features associated with the various categories of the WAVE profile. In section 3.1, I look at some pervasive features (category A); in section 3.2, at a selection of features which are frequent (category B); and in section 3.3, at a selection of features that are rare or absent (categories C and D).

3.1 Some pervasive features When we consider some of the pervasive features associated with the north, it is clear that most of these are not restricted to the north, i.e. that the pervasiveness extends beyond the traditional boundaries, either up into Scots, or down into the Midland and Southern English varieties. Nevertheless, there are also some interesting peculiarities in particular regions. Consider, for instance, the various forms that can be used to signal first-person reference. It is certainly common across the north to hear expressions such as Me and John went (F7; see e.g. Shorrocks 1999, Beal 2004). But the use of me as a subject pronoun for first-person singular is distributionally restricted (to appearance in coordinated NPs, cf. *me went). In non-coordinated NPs with plural referents, there is also evidence of pronoun exchange (again, attested beyond the north, in the east and the south-west of England, Britain 2007), so that us is used as a subject pronoun (F31), and we as an oblique (F30), particularly but not exclusively in the north-east of England. Another pervasive feature associated with pronouns concerns the use of various forms and phrases for the second person plural pronoun (F34). Although it is the case that thou and thee are very occasionally used

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in the (mainly rural) north to distinguish singular referents from plural ones (for which ye and you would historically be used), typically the paradigm had leveled to you. New number distinctions were introduced in some of the northern conurbations like Tyneside, Merseyside and Manchester, primarily as a result of contact with Irish English, according to Beal 2004, who cites Wright’s English Dialect Dictionary (Wright 1898–1905) as stating that the form yous was not found in England or Scotland, despite its occurrence in Irish, American and Australian varieties. The form yous is not the only way of referring to plural number. Newly grammaticalized expressions such as you lot and you guys (acceptable where the referents are all female) are also found, but this is a feature of informal (British) English, including informal standard English, and by no means restricted to the north. However, some of these forms have phonetic variants which do make them more ‘local’ (e.g. yeeze lot in the north-east). A final pan-northern pronominal feature concerns the regularization of the reflexive paradigm (F11): where standard English has his vs. himself, northern English speakers often have his and hisself (i.e. the possessive form is used in the reflexive; Beal 2004). An additional source of variation is the form of the second element, which may undergo consonant cluster simplification (e.g. to hissel). However, even this ‘panlectal feature’ has local wrinkles, since Shorrocks (1999: 91–94) observes that in Bolton the oblique form may be used as a reflexive. This brief summary of some features of the pronoun system of the north of England shows how difficult it is to suggest that there are ‘northern English’ variants – very little is peculiar to the north, and within the north, there are significant variations by region. Thus the notion of pervasiveness is a difficult one to operationalize when it comes to a culturally and linguistically diverse region as the north of England. This holds true for other features, too, such as the form and function of the definite and indefinite articles. Beal (2004) observes that it is important to distinguish between dialects where the form of the article differs from the standard variety, and dialects where the difference lies in distributional range. For instance, in north-east and north-west England (Beal 2004 and Shorrocks 1999, respectively), the definite article may be used where the standard variety has the indefinite (F60; compare northern I’ve got the cold with standard I’ve got a cold), and in the north-east, the indefinite may be used in positions which disallow articles (F65; e.g. I’ve made some scones, would you like a one?). By contrast, elsewhere in the north, particularly in Yorkshire and Lancashire, what varies is the form of the definite article, which may be reduced (to a single consonant [t ~ ù ~ {], or to zero). This has been the topic of a number of studies (e.g. Jones 2002, Hollmann and Siewierska 2011, Rácz 2012). Hollmann and Siewierska (2011), from the perspective of Construction Grammar, illustrate that in Lancashire English at least, both form and distribution may vary. They show how frequency and information structure (as well as potential sociolinguistic factors such as identity marking) correlate with the use of particular variants, from the full article through the reduced forms to zero. Hollmann and Siewierska (2007) show a similar pattern with another of the variables listed in the WAVE questionnaire, namely first-person object pronoun forms as (modifying) personal pronouns (F26; e.g. that’s me bike). Again, these data reveal interesting patterns associated with the relationship between phonetic and morphosyntatic form and various kinds of meaning: in the case of the me-possessive, there appears to be some correlation between the phonetic form of the pronoun, and the marking of (in)alienable possession.

3.2 Some frequent features As the WAVE results show, many of the features listed in the questionnaire are frequently found in at least some northern English varieties. This is particularly problematic to discuss because the frequency of a variant may be linked to regional distribution (i.e. a form may be frequent in Newcastle, but infrequent in Manchester), or may have a pan-northern distribution, but only among certain groups of speakers (in which case it may also not be restricted to the north). A good example of the latter is the extension in the use of progressive aspect with stative verbs (F88; e.g. What are you wanting?). This innovation is by definition not part of the traditional varieties of the north, and seems to be a supralocal development in the speech of younger members of the community. A good example of the former concerns special inflected forms of do: among varieties of English in England, a well-known marker of the north-east dialect concerns the use of the forms div

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and divvent (F137, F139). These forms are in fact not unique to the north-east since they are also found in Scots. Indeed, the Dictionary of the Scots Language (www.dsl.ac.uk), citing the Scottish National Dictionary, suggests that the forms div and divvent in Scots are analogical extensions from the (stressed) form hiv of the Scots verb hae ‘have’. The existence of such a form has implications for patterns of negation across the north. For instance, the presence of divvent in the north-east means that it is impossible for another of the questionnaire features to be pan-northern. This is the use of invariant don’t for all persons in the present tense (F158). This is in fact quite widespread in parts of the north other than the north-east. Sometimes it is questionable whether this kind of variation in the north can be explained by the presence of a particular subregional feature. For instance, Anderwald (2002) observes that multiple negation (F154; e.g. she’ll not eat no veg) is more common in the north-east than is the case in the central north. Beal (2004) suggests that one reason for this may be a peculiarity of north-eastern English negative tag questions, in which negation may be marked twice where the speaker is seeking confirmation of the negative in the main clause (e.g. she can’t dance, can’t she not?). A final point to mention on the topic of negation concerns the refunctionalization of was and were as markers of polarity (F163; with was being used in positive clauses in all persons, and were being used in negative clauses in all persons). This feature is something that appears to be happening in at least one northern community, York (Tagliamonte 1998), but Beal (2004) suggests that a more widespread northern pattern is to have was for all persons in both positive and negative clauses (i.e. a generalization across both person and polarity). In some cases, delimiting the geographical spread of particular features in the north is difficult – the feature is neither pervasive geographically nor socially in the north, but quite how far it reaches is unclear. Good examples of this concern relativization and complementizer patterns. For instance, there is a preference for relativizer what over that in non-restrictive clauses generally in the north (F190), but relativizers as (F187) and at (F188) appear to be much more likely to be found in central northern dialects than in far northern ones (though relativizer at is attested in the SED in Northumberland). Use of for to as a complementizer (F202; e.g. he went for to get his dinner) is also hard to localize: it is certainly a feature of the north-east, but according to some speakers from other parts of the north who I spoke to while completing the questionnaire, the form is more widespread. Beal (2004) notes that Petyt (1985) does not mention this as a feature of West Yorkshire, while Shorrocks (1999) does mention it as a feature of Bolton, for example. Finally in this section, and to return to the issue of local and supralocal innovations, another widespread but not (socially) pervasive feature is the development of quotative like (F235; e.g. she was like ‘Don’t be stupid’). This is attested in various urban centres in the north, but again, like the spread of the progressive with stative verbs, this is not a feature of the traditional dialects, and is more typically associated with the speech of younger members of the community. However, in the urban north-east, another variant appears to be emerging. Pearce (2011), based on a corpus of publicly available webpages from myspace and bebo, explored the use of geet/git on webpages which made reference to at least one of four urban centres in the north-east (Newcastle, Sunderland, South Shields and Durham). The form geet is often used as a degree adverb (in particular, a booster) in the region (e.g. he’s geet lush ‘he’s very attractive’), but Pearce’s data suggests some incipient use as a new quotative (e.g. stacey was git ‘where’s me burger then’). Here we see the reuse of an existing dialect grammar feature in a new construction – the recycling of geet allows the more general quotative construction BE X ‘QUOTE’ to acquire a more ‘local’ indexicality.

3.3 Some rare features A form may be rare because it is incipient or recessive. Some recessive features may be attested in earlier dialectological research (e.g. SED) but not present in more modern corpora such as NECTE. For instance, the use of he/she or him/her for inanimate referents (F1, 2) is attested in the SED for Yorkshire, though this strikes me as very rare, even for rural Yorkshire dialect today. The same holds true for F48 ‘regularization of plural formation: extension of -s to Standard English irregular plurals’. The SED records mices in Yorkshire, but it would be surprising to find this in an urban northern community today.

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As is the case with economic recession, the recession of a linguistic feature may be more extensive in one part of the north than another. The use of the distal deictic marker yon (F69, as in yon book) is still attested in the rural, and to a lesser extent urban, north-east. Shorrocks (1999) suggests that this form is a discourse marker of sorts in the north-west, but it appears to be more recessive in that part of the north than in the north-east. A similar story holds true for double modal constructions (F121; e.g. we might could get there before it shuts), this time within the north-east area: as Beal (2004) notes, double modals are less common in the urban areas of Tyneside and Wearside, and more common (though still infrequent) in the rural parts of Northumberland. Similarly, incipient forms may have a wider currency in some parts of the north than others. As a native of the north-east, leveling of the difference between present perfect and simple past (to either the simple past throughout (F99), or the present perfect throughout (F100)) did not seem to me to be a northern English feature, but other northern English speakers (particularly, younger ones) found either to be acceptable. Another feature which is certainly spreading across the north is F172 ‘the use of existential/presentational there’s/there is/there was with a plural NP following the verb’ (e.g. there’s three students waiting for you outside your office). Beal and Corrigan (2000) show that this feature is spreading across different sociolinguistic groups in the far north.

4 Some problematic issues and possibilities for further study As has been hinted at above, the most difficult issue in writing about dialect features of the north of England is establishing what counts as a genuinely ‘northern’ feature in cases where the form either occurs in one part of northern England and not in another, or because the form is sociolinguistically restricted. It is certainly the case that northern varieties display both archaisms and innovations, and that those innovations may be local or supralocal. Levelling is well-attested, but so is the introduction of innovations which add new complexity to the system. Some areas of the north (such as Newcastle) have been repeatedly and systematically studied, while others (such as Manchester) have yet to be fully explored, to reveal what patterns of morphosyntactic variation exist. Furthermore, patterns of dialect grammar in the rural north could also be investigated in more detail.

Appendix: Overview of WAVE features attested in English dialects in the north of England # 1 2 7 8 9 11 12 19 20 24

feature North example I. Pronouns, pronoun exchange, nominal gender she/her used for inanimate referents he/him used for inanimate referents me instead of I in coordinate subjects Me and my mam and dad are going out for a meal myself/meself instead of I in coordinate subjects benefactive “personal dative” construction regularized reflexives paradigm As long as they keep theirself to theirself object pronoun forms serving as base for I’ll do it meself 1st and/or 2nd person reflexives subject pronoun forms as possessive We mam went to one of those groups pronouns: 1st person plural subject pronoun forms as possessive pronouns: 3rd person singular object pronoun forms as possessive pronouns: 3rd person singular

rating C C A C C A A B C C

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26 27 28 29 30 31 33 34 35 43

48 49 56 60 62 63 64 65 68 69 70 72 77 78 79 80

88 95 96 99 100 102 118

object pronoun forms as possessive pronouns: 1st person singular object pronoun forms as possessive pronouns: 1st person plural use of us + NP in subject function use of us in object function (with singular referent) non-coordinated subject pronoun forms in object function non-coordinated object pronoun forms in subject function independent possessive pronoun forms with added nasal forms or phrases for the 2nd person plural pronoun other than you forms or phrases for the 2nd person singular pronoun other than you subject pronoun drop: referential pronouns II. Noun phrase regularization of plural formation: extension of -s to StE irregular plurals regularization of plural formation: phonological regularization absence of plural marking only after quantifiers use of definite article where StE has indefinite article use of zero article where StE has definite article use of zero article where StE has indefinite article use of definite article where StE favours zero use of indefinite article where StE favours zero them instead of demonstrative those yon/yonder indicating remoteness proximal and distal demonstratives with ’here’ and ’there’ group genitives omission of genitive suffix; possession expressed through bare juxtaposition double comparatives and superlatives regularized comparison strategies: extension of synthetic marking regularized comparison strategies: extension of analytic marking III. Verb phrase: tense and aspect wider range of uses of progressive be + V-ing: extension to stative verbs be sat/stood with progressive meaning there with past participle in resultative contexts levelling of present perfect and simple past: simple past for StE present perfect levelling of present perfect and simple past: present perfect for StE simple past be as perfect auxiliary is for am/will with 1st person singular

Me brother took the opportunity

A

But if we had er us clothes wet

B

Us men’ll do it Give it us

B A C C C

We can’t let yous all in

A

That’s when most of them want thee

B C

C They went through the houses, the roofs

B

Your wages were four pound fifteen

B

I’ve got the cold

A

It’s across road

B

He were ironmonger

B

She’s in the hospital

B C

Look at them kids

A C C

The woman next door’s bin fell over

B C

That’s the most stupidest thing I’ve heard

B C C

I’m not liking this very much

B

I was sat at the bus stop for ages There’s something gone wrong here

B B C C C C

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121 122 124 128 129 130 131 136 137 138 139 146 147 154 155 156 158 159 163 164 165 172 180 181 182 183

185 186 187 188 189 190 192 193 194 197

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Graeme Trousdale

IV. Verb phrase: modal verbs double modals epistemic mustn’t want/need + past participle V. Verb phrase: verb morphology levelling of past tense/past participle verb forms: regularization levelling of past tense/past participle verb forms: unmarked forms levelling of past tense/past participle verb forms: past tense for past participle levelling of past tense/past participle verb forms: past participle for past tense special inflected forms of be special inflected forms of do special inflected forms of have distinctive forms for auxiliary vs. full verb meanings of primary verbs use of verbal suffix -ing with forms other than present participle/gerund was for conditional were VII. Negation multiple negation / negative concord ain’t as the negated form of be ain’t as the negated form of have invariant don’t for all persons in the present tense never as preverbal past tense negator was – weren’t split amn’t in tag questions invariant non-concord tags (including eh?) VIII. Agreement existential / presentational there’s/there is/there was with plural subjects was/were generalization agreement sensitive to subject type (nominal vs. pronominal) agreement sensitive to position of subject Northern Subject Rule (combination of both of the above) IX. Relativization relativizer that or what in non-restrictive contexts which for ‘who’ relativizer as relativizer at relativizer where or a form derived from where relativizer what or a form derived from what use of analytic or cliticized that his/that’s, what his/what’s, etc. instead of whose gapping/zero-relativization in subject position resumptive/shadow pronouns »linking relative clauses« (without direct antecedent) X. Complementation unsplit for to in infinitival purpose clauses for (to) as infinitive marker

He mustn’t have got the message That shirt wants washed

C A A

He catched the ball

B

He run down there dead quick

B

He’s broke his leg

B

He swum in the sea

B

Divven’t be daft He done the job, didn’t he?

C B C B C

If I was you, I wouldn’t stay

A

I never saw none of them

B C C B

He don’t like it I never saw none of them John was there, but Mike weren’t

B B C C C

You were early and he were late

B B

Our young one’s mates talks something like you/we visit her mam

B B

This is Louise, that was meant to come

B

The man as was just here That’s the boy at did it

C B B C

He was a German what run this shop what I worked for

B

She’s the one that’s husband got killed

B C

An aneurysm which they didn’t know how long he’d had it when I get taken off full time which I don’t want to be taken on full time there

B B

That was for me for to get bread in for the bairns We were glad for to get out

B B

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204

211 216 220 221

227 232 234 235

as what / than what in comparative clauses XI. Adverbial subordination clause-final but = ’though’ XII. Adverbs and prepositions omission of StE prepositions degree modifier adverbs have the same form as adjectives other adverbs have the same form as adjectives XIII. Discourse organization and word order inverted word order in indirect questions either order of objects in double object constructions like as a focussing device like as a quotative particle

It’s better than what I thought it would be

B

I’m not sure about that, but

B

I’ll see you Saturday It was total mint

B B

Why are you driving so slow?

B

I was thinking what are you doing there Give it me/Give me it

B B

How did you do that like? I was like ‘Who does she think she is?

B B

References Anderwald, Lieselotte. 2002. Negation in Non-Standard British English: Gaps, Regularizations, Asymmetries. London: Routledge. Beal, Joan. 1993. The grammar of Tyneside and Northumbrian English. In: James Milroy, and Lesley Milroy (eds.), Real English: The Grammar of English Dialects in the British Isles, 187–242. London: Longman. Beal, Joan. 2004. The morphology and syntax of English dialects in the north of England. In: Bernd Kortmann, and Clive Upton (eds.), A Handbook of Varieties of English, volume II: Morphology and Syntax, 114–141. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Beal, Joan, and Karen Corrigan. 2000. Comparing the present with the past to predict the future for Tyneside English. Newcastle and Durham Working Papers in Linguistics 6: 13–30. Britain, David. 2007. Language in the British Isles. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hollmann, Willem B., and Anna Siewierska. 2007. A construction grammar account of possessive constructions in Lancashire dialect: some advantages and challenges. English Language and Linguistics 11: 407–424. Hollmann, Willem B., and Anna Siewierska. 2011. The status of frequency, schemas and identity in cognitive sociolinguistics: a case study of definite article reduction. Cognitive Linguistics 22: 25–54. Jones, Mark. 2002. The origin of definite article reduction in northern English dialects: evidence from dialect allomorphy. English Language and Linguistics 6: 325–345.

Nevalainen, Terttu, and Helena Raumolin-Brunberg. 2003. Historical Sociolinguistics. London: Longman. Orton, Harold et al. 1962–1971. The Survey of English Dialects. Leeds: E.J. Arnold. Pearce, Michael. 2011. ‘It isn’t geet good, like, but it’s canny’: a new(ish) dialect feature in north-east England. English Today 27(3): 3–9. Petyt, Malcolm K. 1985. Dialect and Accent in Industrial West Yorkshire. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Rácz, Péter. 2012. A usage-based approach to salience: Definite article reduction in the North of England. English Language and Linguistics 16: 57–79. Shorrocks, Graham. 1999. A Grammar of the Dialect of the Bolton Area. Frankfurt am Main: Lang. Tagliamonte, Sali. 1998. Was/were variation across the generations: view from the city of York. Language Variation and Change 10: 153–191. Trousdale, Graeme. 2003. Simplification and redistribution: an account of modal verb usage in Tyneside English. English World Wide 24: 271–284. Trudgill, Peter. 1999. The Dialects of England. 2nd edition. Oxford: Blackwell. Watt, Dominic, and Lesley Milroy. 1999. Patterns of variation and change in three Newcastle vowels: is this dialect leveling? In: Paul Foulkes, and Gerard Docherty (eds.), Urban Voices: Accent Studies in the British Isles, 25–46. London: Arnold. Wright, Joseph. 1898–1905. The English Dialect Dictionary. Oxford: Clarendon.

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Susanne Wagner

Southwest English dialects 1 Introduction The traditional dialects of the English spoken in SW England (short: SWE) were originally spoken in the counties of Somerset, Dorset, Devon and most of Wiltshire. Due to the status of English as a foreign or at least second language throughout much of its history, (West) Cornwall is generally excluded. Parts of counties bordering the ones mentioned also display many typically SW features. From a more modern perspective, SWE is endangered both from the North (i.e. Midlands) and the East, with StE features encroaching upon and substituting traditional ones (e.g. rhoticity receding westwards). Dialect levelling and increasing standardisation affect SWE as much as any other traditional BrE dialect. Cornwall is interesting for its political and geographical role at the fringes of the British Isles. In many respects, Cornish English shares some socio-cultural aspects with Scottish English (separatist movements, revival of Celtic language, role of language and identity), possibly leading to increasing diversification of Cornwall English. Major studies on English in the Southwest include Elworthy (1875, 1877), Kruisinga (1906), Rogers (1979) and Wakelin (1976). Historical evidence and data (e.g. SED) largely informs what is known about the dialects (cf. also Wagner 2004). More recent studies tend to focus on broader regions or only particular features; surveys are rare or non-existent.

2 Socio-cultural and linguistic background Trade links were strong between Wales and the parts of the Southwest across the mouth of the Severn; some linguistic features are believed to have made their way across, as well (clefts from Wales to the Southwest; periphrastic do probably from the SW to Wales, but either way is an option). According to historical accounts (particularly Elworthy), variation between the different SW regions used to be very strong, separating e.g. West from East Somerset, West (Gaelic-speaking) Cornwall from East Cornwall (English dialect), etc. Thus, we are not dealing with one homogenous dialect, but rather with many – though ultimately similar – dialects. However, in some situations, it may have been the heterogeneity that was responsible for certain dialect features surviving – or not, as in the case of periphrastic do, which didn’t survive (if it was ever present) in Newfoundland (cf. Wagner 2007 for a detailed look into the hows and whys). Traditional SWE dialects are similar to other traditional BrE dialects in terms of their social and regional distribution – NORMs are typical dialect speakers, often to the present day, while urban variation will be mostly limited along the lines typical of British cities (social variation, variation according to social networks/ communities of practice, some age-related variation). Urban variation will largely be limited to phonological features, only a few – salient, non-regional – morphosyntactic features occur with some frequency (e.g. multiple negation, regularised systems in relativisation, pronouns, etc.). The data in the WAVE questionnaire is based on the SW portion of FRED, the Freiburg English Dialect Corpus (for details see http://www2.anglistik.uni-freiburg.de/institut/lskortmann/FRED/index.htm), as well as the author’s extensive work with the SED Basic Material (Orton and Dieth 1962–1971) and fieldworker notebooks (cf. Wagner 2003).

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3 Notable aspects of the variety’s WAVE profile We can distinguish two basic patterns with regard to the ‘exceptional’ status of some SWE features. First, SWE dialects, at least in their most traditional form(s), display features that are unique not only among British, but World Englishes. To be mentioned here are the old systems for assigning case (Pronoun Exchange, F30 and 31) and gender (Gendered Pronouns, F2 – in its traditional form, NOT F1), which – in this systematic form – are only found in varieties that have a historical connection with SW England (chiefly among them Newfoundland English). Second, according to the WAVE questionnaire, traditional SWE dialects show a number of features which don’t exist in any of the other British Englishes, but figure prominently in varieties outside the British Isles. These features could thus be considered as possible substrate candidates, often coupled with and reinforced by levelling tendencies.

3.1 “The” SW features: pronoun exchange and gendered pronouns Pronoun Exchange in its full version has two complementing components: It refers (a) to the use of ‘subject’ personal pronouns in contexts requiring oblique forms (pattern 1), and (b) to the use of oblique forms in subject contexts. In the traditional system, the explanation behind these uses has to do with a notion of emphasis (pattern 2). Typical examples can be found in (1) and (2), respectively. (1) a. b. c. (2) a. b. c.

… Uncle Willy, they used to call him, you remember he? (FRED Con_006) … they always called I ‘Willie’, see. (FRED Som_009) Well, if I didn’t know they, they knowed I. (FRED Wil_009) ’er’s shakin’ up seventy. ‘She is almost seventy.’ (37 D 1, book VII) Evercreech, what did ’em call it? (FRED Som_031) Us don’ think naught about things like that. (37 D 1, book III)

While a number of varieties display either the pattern in (1) or the pattern in (2), the Southwest is the only region where both (used to) occur together and in what could be called complementary distribution (at least in the dialects’ purest forms) – experts describe this traditional system as absolute. However, based on an analysis of Pronoun Exchange in the Survey of English Dialects (SED; Orton and Dieth 1962–1971) and more modern oral history data (FRED), we can identify certain tendencies and patterns (Wagner 2004: 158–159): – –

– –

– – –

Subject-forms occur in Object-slots (pattern 1) much more frequently (55 % to 20 %) than Object-forms in Subject-contexts (pattern 2). pattern 1 and pattern 2: practically no regional overlap (strong tendency for Subject-forms in Object-position or Object-forms in Subject-slots, NOT both); makes notion of ‘strong’ version of Pronoun Exchange (=absolute system) problematic; ‘true’ Pronoun Exchange area: only regions with less frequent pattern 2; pattern 1 spreading eastwards in SWE from West Cornwall, possibly reinforced by similar tendency in StE (which leads to general ‘confusion’ about case forms in certain contexts, particularly coordinated NPs; between you and I etc.); only remnants of originally highly systematic distribution of Pronoun Exchange in FRED and even in SED; difficult to judge whether systematicity (< Elworthy) was ever that absolute; increasing pressure of rigid SVO word order in StE possibly contributed to “a certain amount of confusion over pronouns which followed verbs” (Rogers 1979: 35), i.e. Subject-forms are ultimately restricted to preverbal contexts.

Similar to Pronoun Exchange, the term ‘Gendered Pronouns’ is often used to refer to two different phenomena. On the one hand, it describes the traditional system of SWE dialects to assign gender-marked pronominal forms not on the basis of (ultimately biological) characteristics of the referent (animacy, sex), but on the

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basis of a semantic distinction, namely that of count (masculine forms) vs. mass nouns (neuter forms). This system generates such famous ‘minimal pairs’ as pass the loaf – he’s over there vs. pass the bread – it’s over there. On the other hand, a number of researchers speaks of ‘gendered pronouns’ in connection with another phenomenon frequently observed in colloquial L1s worldwide, namely the use of feminine forms to refer to inanimate referents (e.g. fill ‘er up referring to a car, or a salesperson talking about their product as she). What makes the whole affair problematic is that the traditional system (masculine and neuter forms) and the modern one (feminine and neuter forms) overlap and interact in some varieties (primarily SW England and Newfoundland, possibly Tasmania; cf. Pawley 2004; Siemund 2008). The situation can be summarised as follows: SWE and Newfoundland daughter lect(s): – gender assigned not on biological, but semantic grounds: mass-count distinction (cf. Clarke 2004b: 312–313; Elworthy 1877, 1886; Wagner 2003: 16–33); – count nouns = he, mass nouns = it: pass the loaf – he’s over there but pass the bread – it’s over there; – feminine forms = [+human]; even cow = he; – traditional system still largely intact in SED/ traditional oral history data (Wagner 2003: 243–247); – changes mostly concern ‘standard’ it encroaching upon traditional he-territory – she rare to non-existent in SWE but typical of North American varieties (Wagner 2003: 129–154). Colloquial English (possibly world-wide): – she = choice for inanimate referent when wishing to add extra information (e.g. positive/negative emotional involvement); – speaker sex may influence pronoun choice (women: masculine forms, males: feminine forms), particularly in gender-marked domains (cars, tools, etc.); – no restrictions, semantic or otherwise, on nouns serving as antecedent for ‘she’ (but concrete nouns more frequent); – she occupies same slot as he in traditional system(s); – Newfoundland English: competition between it and she (not he and it): traditional he not substituted by it (written standard), but she (spoken standard); thus, she a) more frequent in NFE and b) refers to wider range of referents (semantic types; cf. Wagner 2003: 267–269); Schneider (2004: 1113), summarising morphosyntactic variation in the Americas, emphasises the special status of she, noting that [i]nterestingly enough, loosened conditions for uses of gendered pronouns are more widely reported for the North American dialects than for the Caribbean creoles. In particular, she for inanimate referents is fairly common (general in CollAmE, SEAmE, OzE, and NfldE; conditioned in AppE, ChcE, AAVE, and BahE), while generic he seems somewhat more restricted (boldface by present author).

Thus, the “primary function of pronoun gender” is “to represent and express the manner in which a speaker has formed his mental image of the denotatum” (Morris 1991: 175). With pronoun choice largely based on discourse-pragmatic factors, generalizations or predictions are difficult to impossible, since formal choices are based on a speaker’s worldview.

3.2 SWE features shared with non-L1s The features listed here mostly concern universal tendencies based on analogy and/or economy. It is unlikely that there is a ‘genetic’ link between feature use in L1 and non-L1 varieties, although the presence of a feature in an L1 may have enforced / supported its use in a non-L1.

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F14 ‘no number distinction in reflexives’: (3) a. b. c. d.

a scythe that we made for ourself (FRED Som_004) fed them the sort of food that we were having ourself (FRED Con_009) they call theirself A-1 Builders (FRED Dev_001) they’d say theyself (FRED Dev_009)

‘demonstrative they’ (cf. F68 ‘demonstrative them’) – not covered in WAVE: (4) a. Go with they heifers (FRED Som_032) b. years ago they used to bring all of the bricks on they donkeys’ backs over the Donkey Bridge (FRED Wil_011) c. you can sew on some of they labels (FRED Dev_003) F30, 31 (‘non-coordinate S and O forms in reverse position’); due to levelling of case distinctions in non-L1s, due to PE in SWE (see 3.1 above): (5) a. b. c. d. e. f. (6) a. b. c.

Oh, we was gonna talk about him, wasn’t us? (FRED Con_004) us been married forty-one years (FRED Dev_003) We didn’t starve, we used to live on the fat of the land – didn’t us? (FRED Wil_009) And then them crying out they want government help, don’t ‘em? (FRED Dev_001) I can’t afford it, ‘er says, (FRED Som_005) ‘er was sat there by the fire an’ Dad was th’ other side gettin’ ready (FRED Wil_004) Yea, ‘twere to they but ‘twasn’ to I. (FRED Wil_018) So he said, I could do with he for a fortnight. (FRED Con_009) He were always there to meet him but he never interfered with I, but anybody else who came down here, he’d go for. (FRED Som_020) d. Never had no fault at all no, with she. (FRED Som_005) e. She never had such a life as what our Mother had with we. (FRED Som_005)

F92 ‘other non-standard habitual markers: synthetic (verbal -s)’: (7) a.

I know I took I took some down the mill ‘cause I knows eh someone who used to wheel it down there, didn’t I? (FRED Oxf_001) b. But eh I remembers him well. (FRED Oxf_002) c. Oh no we always start off with Jerusalem and er as we haven’t got a piano there, um, then we brings the er thing and put it in. (FRED Som_034)

F179 ‘deletion of auxiliary have’: (8) a. but the old boys been laughing (FRED Con_003) b. they done it for years, I don’t know whether they still do. Always been in the poultry line, I expect they still do. (FRED Som_031) c. I been trying to find them (FRED Wil_001)

4 Problematic issues 4.1 Universal features shared by SWE? It is only natural that the WAVE questionnaire does not focus on widespread features of spontaneous spoken Standard English. However, a comparison of features for which (near-) universal, non-areal status has been claimed in the past seems to be much more interesting than previously assumed. Among these is demonstrative them (F68), which seems to be restricted to L1s and pidgins and creoles orientating towards L1 Eng-

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lish. Another area which is probably best described as change in progress is case assignment in coordinate (and simple?) NPs, both in oblique (object) and non-oblique (subject) contexts. There is only one question in the questionnaire relating to this, namely F7, asking whether me is possible in coordinate subjects – what about other persons and what about coordinate non-subjects? This question is interesting in so far as the ongoing re-organisation of pronominal case assignment (basically, preverbal territory = S case, postverbal = O case, following the it’s I – it’s me path) shows some similarities with Pronoun Exchange (PE). It is not unconceivable that in the long run, given the right context, us and them think it’s a stupid idea, but heemph likes it will be perfectly acceptable. In traditional PE territory, the old system would in fact re-inforce this ‘modern face’ of PE. Right now, the following tendencies can be observed in corpora of spoken English: Patterns and tendencies in case assignment (coordinate S): – –

politeness: me substituting I in S-slots (when > 2 Ss; me and my mother); possibly extended to other persons (him and his brother); possible implicational hierarchy for string PP+and+PP (see Table 1; ‘++’ = syntactically correct case assignment): if the variety has O+O pronouns in coordinate Ss, it will also have S+O and O+S, but sequence S+and+O is rare/unlikely (no hits in British National Corpus (BNC) or Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA)); status of phonological prominence unclear, possible connection to Pronoun Exchange? 2nd pronoun

S pronoun

O pronoun

++ +

– +

1st pronoun S pronoun O pronoun

Table 1. Case assignment in coordinate pronoun + pronoun subjects

Patterns and tendencies in case assignment (prepositional phrases +coordination): – – – – – –

– –

– –

‘irregular’/unexpected case assignment much more frequent in prepositional phrases than in subjects; all patterns allowed: (standard) O+O, S+S (for he and I), S+O (between he and her) and O+S (for her and I); possible implicational tendency (parallel Ss): prep+O+and+O default case; prep+S+and+O as well as prep+S+and+S exist, but prep+O+and+S rare; restriction only applies to pronoun-pronoun sequence: if first constituent = proper name: prep+ ‘name’+and+S most likely; within and+S patterns: ‘name’+and+I most frequent (only two counterexamples), i.e. default sequence in spoken language but negligible in writing; evidence of and I becoming invariant in speech (very frequent in corpora; also examples such as Three days after Matt and I’s encounter, he wrote me a letter … (COCA 1998 Spok CBS_48Hours) and … the last photo I have of Michael and I together (COCA 1996 Spok CBS_48Hours), where the NP is used possessively or in a group genitive and functions as a premodifier of together; and-I clusters might be exception to implicational tendency formulated in Table 1; difference between you and I prominent among and-I data; corpus searches indicate fixed-phrase status (no hit for difference between you and me in BNC; 6.9:1 ratio in .uk-domain search; similar results for other domains); difference between you and I supposedly prone to (hyper)correction, but only in L1s (cf. Redfern 1994, quoted in Grano 2006: 47); possible connection with peculiar rules of case assignment concerning 1st p.sg.: I almost taboo in coordinate NPs preverbally, but acceptable postverbally.

Southwest English dialects

2nd pronoun 1st

O pronoun

S pronoun

++ +

(–) +

83

pronoun

O pronoun S pronoun

Table 2. Case assignment in prepositional phrases with coordinated pronouns

Case in simple prepositional phrases: – – – – –

instances of prep+PP with S-pronoun not preceded/followed by another NP = extremely rare; interpretation of such examples: either ‘sloppy case assignment’ (parallel coordination) or PE (PP emphasised); maybe also extension of principles generating with he and me (from coordinate to simple NPs); occasional examples in ‘non-PE’ regions; contrary to experts’ opinion (Patrick 2004: 428), ii ‘he’ and shi ‘she’ for oblique cases do occur in Jamaica (ICE Jamaica); Patrick (ibid.) also highlights alternative explanation for irregular case assignment – hypercorrection: “Mesolectal speakers use gender- and case-marked 3sg pronouns (when they do use them) in appropriate ways, without hyper-correction.”

4.2 (Non-)representativeness of the WAVE questions One area where the WAVE questionnaire does not seem to be very representative is relativisation strategies. Based on the original (2004) questionnaire’s 7 questions, evidence was inconclusive and sometimes contradicted corpus evidence. Consequently, relativisation didn’t figure very prominently in the feature group ratios (cf. Kortmann and Szmrecsanyi 2004: 1194–1195) – in fact, it came in as very-but last of all feature complexes, i.e. only a minority of the investigated varieties showed any of the features in the 2004 questionnaire. It remains to be seen whether this changes with the (much extended) WAVE questionnaire (now with 15 questions referring to relativisation). The problematic status of relativisation is particularly visible in the responses to F193, gapping in subject position – according to the literature, widespread in L1s but supposedly rare in contact varieties and L2s. However, even in the new questionnaire, many authors discussing L1s assigned this feature C, D or even X status, which is not only unlikely but can easily be proven wrong with a simple corpus search. Of course gapping in S position exists in e.g. CollAmE – witness there’s something needs to be changed (COCA 2004 Spok CNN_Event) or there’s people are watching the debate (COCA 2008 Spok CNN_Cooper).

4.3 Different status of investigated varieties This is a problem that users of WAVE should be made aware of. While some authors such as myself discuss traditional dialects with systems that only survive in remnants, if at all (e.g. strict pronoun exchange, gender assignment in the Southwest), others talk about current varieties. Comparing them with each other, while certainly interesting, can only be done with keeping in mind that these are essentially diachronic, not synchronic comparisons. In the long run, it would be ideal to include two varieties for those dialects with a long history – the traditional and the modern system.

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5 Conclusions Traditional Southwest English dialects display some of the most exceptional dialect systems of L1 Englishes. However, only remnants of these systems remain in present-day varieties. It is noteworthy in this respect that the Southwest has been able to “export” a number of its most distinctive features not only to other L1s (particularly Newfoundland English), but may also have provided input for features now frequently found in contact varieties (e.g. periphrastic do, use of do as tense marker, verbal -s to indicate habituality), giving them a “second life” far away from their homelands. Table 3, taken from Wagner (2004), summarises the status of the most common SWE features. Southwest

universal

– – –

–

pronoun exchange (F30, 31, 32) “gendered” pronouns (F1, 2) unemphatic periphrastic do as tense carrier (F103) mass/count distinction in demonstrative pronouns (?) otiose of (?)

– –

– – – – – – –

regional (British and overseas)

no overt plural marking of some – measurement nouns (after numerals) (F56) – plural demonstrative them (= StE those) (F68) – no overt marking of adverbs derived from adjectives (no -ly) (F220, 221) different inventory of relative pronouns (e.g. as, what) (F187, 190) gapping/zero relative also in subject position (F193) multiple negation ain’t as invariant negative particle (F154, 155, 156) reduced paradigm for irregular verbs (past tense = past participle form) (F130)

regularized reflexive pronouns (possessive pronoun + -self/-selves) irregular use (omission or insertion) of articles (F61, 64) regularized be-paradigm (e.g. was vs. weren’t etc.)

Table 3. Regional, areal and universal features of Southwest English dialects

Appendix: Overview of WAVE features attested in Southwest English dialects #

feature

SW example

rating

I. Pronouns, pronoun exchange, nominal gender 11

she/her used for inanimate referents

This is another pot and saucer. A bit dusty! You see that one isn’t exactly glazed proper, burnt proper is she? (FRED Som_009)

C

12

he/him used for inanimate referents

I ’ve got a barley fork out there and I ’ve had him there for years. I used to have him when I thatched the ricks – push him in the rick to keep the bottom reeds from slipping (FRED Som_022)

B

17

me instead of I in coordinate subjects

Me and old Louise had a lovely day, us got in the train but us slept through Totnes and got out in Plymouth! (FRED Dev_007)

B

18

myself/meself instead of I in coordinate subjects

I can see it now, that my two sisters, myself and Mother around the oil lamp on the table, you know (FRED Wil_015)

C

11

regularized reflexives paradigm

he saved up and got hisself a motor-bike, then he saved up again and got some more money and bought hisself a car (FRED Dev_001)

B

12

object pronoun forms serving as base for 1st and/or 2nd person reflexives

I always thought it was a skilled job miself (FRED Wil_022)

A

13

subject pronoun forms serving as base for reflexives

they’d spout the wet theyselves (FRED Som_011)

C

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Southwest English dialects

114 126 128 130 131 132 133 134 135

156 160 161 162 163 164 165 168 170 178 190 191 192 195 196 197 199 101 102 120 128 130 131 134

no number distinction in reflexives (i.e. plural forms ending in -self) object pronoun forms as possessive pronouns: 1st person singular use of us + NP in subject function non-coordinated subject pronoun forms in object function non-coordinated object pronoun forms in subject function distinction between emphatic vs. non-emphatic forms of pronouns independent possessive pronoun forms with added nasal forms or phrases for the 2nd person plural pronoun other than you forms or phrases for the 2nd person singular pronoun other than you II. Noun phrase absence of plural marking only after quantifiers use of definite article where StE has indefinite article use of indefinite article where StE has definite article use of zero article where StE has definite article use of zero article where StE has indefinite article use of definite article where StE favours zero use of indefinite article where StE favours zero them instead of demonstrative those proximal and distal demonstratives with ‘here’ and ‘there’ double comparatives and superlatives III. Verb phrase: tense and aspect invariant be as habitual marker do as habitual marker other non-standard habitual markers: synthetic be sat/stood with progressive meaning there with past participle in resultative contexts medial object perfect levelling of present perfect and simple past: simple past for StE present perfect simple present for continuative or experiential perfect be as perfect auxiliary would in if-clauses V. Verb phrase: verb morphology levelling of past tense/past participle verb forms: regularization levelling of past tense/past participle verb forms: past tense for past participle levelling of past tense/past participle verb forms: past participle for past tense a-prefixing on ing-forms

they built the pottery theirself (FRED Som_009)

B

I’ll lie down on mi back, he said, with mi mouth under the tap (FRED Con_003) us boys used to be up there (FRED Dev_008) they always called I ‘Willie’ (FRED Som_009)

A

Me and old Louise had a lovely day, us got in the train but us slept through Totnes and got out in Plymouth! (FRED Dev_007) if I didn’t know they, they knowed I (FRED Wil_009)

B

we shall have to get on with ourn (FRED Wil_011)

C

sell that to you people (FRED Som_030)

C

Put un where ye can see ‘im (FRED Wil_024)

B

That’s twelve mile. (FRED Som_030)

B

and it was the cold (FRED Wil_008)

B

B B

C

C C C but I stayed on until the Christmas (FRED Con_008)

C C

There must have been lots of episodes with them things (FRED Con_011) this here canvas would be put down (FRED Som_028) in that there thing that goes back (FRED Wil_017) I’d be more happier out there (FRED Som_005)

B

All they be too slow for the job (FRED Con_004) he do love these old places, oh he do (FRED Wil_012) over 19 pounds I gets every week (FRED Wil_005)

C C B

all the men would be sat outside Ushers Brewery (FRED Wil_017) There’s houses built down there now (FRED Con_004)

C B

There’s houses built down there now (FRED Con_004)

C B

C C

C they was gone (to) bed (FRED Dev_007) I wondered if it would be better in the kitchen (FRED Oxf_002)

C B

he catched a cat (FRED Con_003)

B

I could have went and had a hip replacement (FRED Wil_005)

B

he done several jobs (FRED Dev_010)

B

he kicks up dogs a-dying (FRED Som_014)

C

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135 136 139

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Susanne Wagner

a-prefixing on elements other than ing-forms special inflected forms of be distinctive forms for auxiliary vs. full verb meanings of primary verbs

201 202

was for conditional were VII. Negation multiple negation / negative concord ain’t as the negated form of be ain’t as the negated form of have invariant don’t for all persons in the present tense never as preverbal past tense negator was – weren’t split invariant non-concord tags (including eh?) VIII. Agreement invariant present tense due to zero marking for the 3rd person singular invariant present tense due to generalization of 3rd person -s existential / presentational there’s/there is/there was with plural subjects deletion of auxiliary be: before gonna deletion of auxiliary have was/were generalization agreement sensitive to subject type (nominal vs. pronominal) agreement sensitive to position of subject IX. Relativization relativizer as relativizer at relativizer what or a form derived from what use of analytic or cliticized that his/that’s, what his/what’s, etc. instead of whose gapping/zero-relativization in subject position resumptive/shadow pronouns “linking relative clauses” (without direct antecedent) X. Complementation for-based complementizers unsplit for to in infinitival purpose clauses

203

for (to) as infinitive marker

204

as what / than what in comparative clauses XI. Adverbial subordination clause-final but = ‘though’ XII. Adverbs and prepositions omission of StE prepositions use of postpositions

154 155 156 158 159 163 165

170 171 172 175 179 180 181 182 187 188 190 192 193 194 197

211 216 217 220 221

degree modifier adverbs have the same form as adjectives other adverbs have the same form as adjectives

I’ve a-knowed them there pigs (FRED Wil_010); she would have a-been at Pilton (FRED Som_028) she would have a-been at Pilton (FRED Som_028) the ladies didn’t ride straddle like they does today (FRED Wil_001); he do love these old places, oh he do (FRED Wil_012) I said I was here, I’d push this lot … (FRED Dev_001)

C

he never come back no more (FRED Con_003) I ain’t sure (FRED Con_006) You ain’t got to do it (FRED Wil_017) Now he don’t move, do he? (FRED Som_006) (BUT: caused by 139!) we never thrashed in those days (FRED Con_007) (difficult to illustrate – examples should come from one text) about twelve, in’t there (FRED Wil_001)

A B C C

only because of #139!

C

I says; we brings; they calls etc.

C

there’s trees have fallen down there (FRED Dev_001)

A

don’t say they gonna smell like a rose (FRED Som_001) So they gone rakin’ at the old cheese (FRED Wil_010) (difficult to illustrate – examples should come from one text)

C B C C

C C

A

B B B

C my dear sister as is dead and gone (FRED Wil_005) (occurs in SED, but not in FRED) he got a lady what comes up from Bath (FRED Wil_001)

C C C C

there’s trees have fallen down there (FRED Dev_001)

A

(difficult to search for)

C C

they burnt them for fuel for to keep theirself warm (FRED Dev_001) Always the evenings for to get the men for to do it. (FRED Som_025) we were better than what they were (FRED Wil_015)

C C C B

… he’d get artful to it, but. (FRED Som_001)

C

I went Deny’s Road. (FRED Dev_011) Christmas time we’d have our parties (FRED Con_011); they’d come in dinner time (FRED Som_003) that was real funny (FRED Dev_008); you shouldn’t be real late (FRED Wil_002) This is another pot and saucer. A bit dusty! You see that one isn’t exactly glazed proper, burnt proper is she? (FRED Som_009)

B B B A

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Southwest English dialects

223 224 227 228 229 232 234

XIII. Discourse organization and word order other options for clefting than StE there’s trees have fallen down there (FRED Dev_001) other possibilities for fronting than StE it’s when you get older you appreciate it more) (FRED Wil_017) inverted word order in indirect questions (difficult to find examples with simple searches) no inversion/no auxiliaries in How you going to kill them then? (FRED Som_019) wh-questions no inversion/no auxiliaries in main clause You ever been there? (FRED Som_028) yes/no questions either order of objects in double object she’d teach us it (FRED Dev_007) constructions like as a focussing device it was like moved around (FRED Dev_003); You had to tie your corn behind the strappers like. (FRED Som_006)

C C B B B A A

References Davis, Mark. 2004. BYU-BNC: The British National Corpus. http://corpus.byu.edu/bnc. Davis, Mark. 2008. The Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA): 400+ million words, 1990–present. http://www.americancorpus.org. Elworthy, Frederic Thomas. 1875 [1965a]. The Dialect of West Somerset. (Publications of the English Dialect Society 7.) London: Trübner [Vaduz: Kraus Reprint Ltd.]. Elworthy, Frederic Thomas. 1877 [1965b]. An Outline of the Grammar of the Dialect of West Somerset. (Publications of the English Dialect Society 19.) London: Trübner [Vaduz: Kraus Reprint Ltd.]. Grano, Thomas. 2006. “Me and her” meets “he and I”: Case, person and linear ordering in English coordinated pronouns. BA (honours) thesis, Stanford University: Linguistics Department, School of Humanities and Sciences. Kortmann, Bernd, and Edgar W. Schneider (eds.). 2004. A Handbook of Varieties of English. A Multimedia Reference Tool. Vol. I: Phonology, Vol. II: Morphology and Syntax. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Kortmann, Bernd, and Benedikt Szmrecsanyi. 2004. Global synopsis. In: Bernd Kortmann, and Edgar W. Schneider (eds.), A Handbook of Varieties of English. Vol. II, 1142–1202. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Kruisinga, Etsko. 1905. A Grammar of the Dialect of West Somersetshire: Descriptive and Historical. Bonner Beiträge zur Anglistik, Heft 18. Bonn. Morris, Lori. 1991. Gender in modern English: The system and its uses. Ph.D. thesis, Université Laval (Quebec).

Data sources: BNC COCA FRED SED

British National Corpus. See Davis 2004. Corpus of Contemporary American English. See Davis 2008. http://www2.anglistik.uni-freiburg.de/institut/ lskortmann /FRED/index.htm Orton, Harold and Eugen Dieth (eds.). 1962–1971. Survey of English Dialects. The Basic Material. Leeds: Edward Arnold.

Patrick, Peter L. 2004. Jamaican Creole: morphology and syntax. In: Bernd Kortmann, and Edgar W. Schneider (eds.), A Handbook of Varieties of English. Vol. II, 407–438. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Pawley, Andrew. 2004. Australian Vernacular English: some grammatical characteristics. In: Bernd Kortmann, and Edgar W. Schneider (eds.), A Handbook of Varieties of English. Vol. II, 611–642. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Rogers, Norman. 1979. Wessex Dialect. Bradford-on-Avon: Moonraker Press. Schneider, Edgar W. 2004. Synopsis: morphological and syntactic variation in the Americas and the Caribbean. In: Bernd Kortmann, and Edgar W. Schneider (eds.), A Handbook of Varieties of English. Vol. II, 1104–1115. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Wagner, Susanne. 2003. Gender in English pronouns. Myth and reality. PhD thesis, Freiburg: Albert-LudwigsUniversität. http://www.freidok.uni-freiburg.de /volltexte/1412. Wagner, Susanne. 2004. English dialects in the Southwest: morphology and syntax. In: Bernd Kortmann, and Edgar W. Schneider (eds.), A Handbook of Varieties of English. Vol. II, 154–174. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Wagner, Susanne. 2007. Unstressed periphrastic do – from Southwest England to Newfoundland? English WorldWide 28: 249–278. Wakelin, Martyn F. 1986. The Southwest of England. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: Benjamins.

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Peter Trudgill

East Anglia 1 Sociohistorical background 1.1 History A credible argument could be made for suggesting that East Anglia was the first place in the world where a variety of language that we might call English was ever spoken. If we suppose that we can start talking about “English” from the time when West Germanic groups first started to settle permanently in Britain, then it is significant that the East Anglian county of Norfolk, which is situated just across the North Sea from the coastline of the original West Germanic-speaking area, was the region of England with the highest density of Germanic settlement in the 5th century, during the later decades of the Roman occupation and the earliest years of sub-Roman Britain. Subsequently, East Anglia remained one of the most densely populated areas of England for many centuries, until the Industrial Revolution. This demographic fact, together with patterns of migration over the centuries and the relative proximity of the region, especially its southern areas, to London, meant that a number of features that came to be part of Standard English had their origins in East Anglia. One consequence is that, although East Anglian English is today highly distinctive in many ways, grammatical differences between it and Standard English are relatively few in number. The dialect also played an important role in the development of colonial Englishes, especially the American English of New England. Typologically, as all of this suggests, East Anglian English is clearly a long-established mother-tongue variety.

1.2 Geography Historically, we know that the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of East Anglia was originally bordered in the south by the river Stour – now the border between the counties of Suffolk and Essex – and on the west by the rivers Ouse, Lark and Kennett; but it later expanded further westwards as far as the River Cam, which flows through modern Cambridge. In contemporary England, however, East Anglia has no official administrative status. As with similar cultural terms, like “The Midwest”, the term stands for an area with a prototypical core but no clear boundaries. The English counties of Norfolk and Suffolk are prototypically East Anglian, although the Fenland areas of western Norfolk and northwestern Suffolk have an ambiguous status – the marshy Fens were mostly uninhabited until they began to be drained in the 1600s, and they remain culturally and linguistically rather different; but neighbouring areas of Cambridgeshire and Essex also have a claim to be considered East Anglian. As a distinctive linguistic area, East Anglia is smaller today than it was two hundred years ago; modern linguistic East Anglia has diminished spatially under the influence of geographical diffusion outwards from the London area. Linguistic East Anglia, too, is made up of a core area plus transition zones. As far as more traditional speech is concerned, the core consists of the northeastern area of the county of Essex and the whole of the counties of Norfolk and Suffolk, with the exception of the Fenland areas of western Norfolk and northwestern Suffolk. The transition zones consist of these Norfolk and Suffolk Fens, together with eastern Cambridgeshire, a small area of northeastern Hertfordshire, and central Essex – within living memory, for instance, the fishermen of Leigh-on-Sea on the Thames estuary spoke an East Anglian variety.1 As far as more modern speech is concerned, none of these transition zones, with the exception of northeastern Cambridges-

1 My thanks to Ken MacKinnon for this information.

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hire, can now be considered to be East Anglian. Within the core region, the major urban areas of Norwich (Norfolk – population 136,000) and Ipswich (Suffolk – 120,000) are still solidly East Anglian, but Colchester (Essex – 104,000) shows considerable southeastern/London influence. The local character of some smaller Norfolk and Suffolk towns such as King’s Lynn (35,000), Thetford (22,000) and Haverhill (22,000) was also weakened in the 1950s by officially sponsored “overspill” in-migration from London. It is difficult to say how many people speak any kind of recognisably East Anglian English. Given the relationship between dialect and social class in England, it will never have been the case in recent times that everybody in East Anglia spoke the local dialect. But the sponsored in-migration of the 1950s has been followed in more recent decades by the large-scale private in-migration of people from other areas of England, particularly Londoners, seeking a more congenial, less urban life-style; and by rather large-scale secondhome ownership in coastal areas by wealthier people. The population of Norfolk, for example, has increased by more than 50 % in my lifetime, and that has by no means all been due to natural increase. Norwich now has a “travel-to-work area” population of 377,000; and Ipswich 315,000; latest figures show a population of about 850,000 for Norfolk and 700,000 for Suffolk. My guess, however – and it is no more than a guess – is that rather fewer than a million of those will have recognisably East Anglian features in their speech, even allowing for those who basically speak Standard English but with East Anglian phonological features. We can then add to this figure a few tens of thousands of speakers from the northeastern area of Essex, around Colchester, to suggest approximately one million speakers in total. A reasonable prediction would be that a distinctively East Anglian form of English is likely to survive longest in the county of Norfolk, the part of the area furthest away from London (Norwich is about 120 miles/200 km from the capital). One consequence of this relatively small number of native speakers, in spite of the large area involved (by British standards), is that the variety is not well known, even in England. East Anglians are often not recognised as such (I have been taken for an Australian, for example) by other British people, and actors playing the part of East Anglian speakers often resort to using West Country accents, much to the annoyance of East Anglians. The Friends of Norfolk Dialect society (FOND) was founded in 1999, very many decades indeed after the foundation of other local dialect societies in England (the Yorkshire Dialect Society was founded in 1897), in part to combat this ignorance; it also actively promotes the local dialect and its use. There are no comparable bodies in Suffolk or Essex.

2 WAVE Features The grammatical discussion that follows is based on my own knowledge of East Anglian English, as obtained as result of more than 60 years of speaking the variety natively and of associating with other native speakers, and of rather fewer years than that of studying and investigating it professionally. Many WAVE features are not found in East Anglia. Of those that are, or at least were, to be found in the region – in either traditional or modern speech – it is helpful for the purposes of presentation to divide them into six main groups.

2.1 Genuine East Anglian features Group 1 consists of nonstandard features that are typically and characteristically East Anglian in the sense that they have no significant occurrence anywhere else in England, or perhaps even anywhere else at all. F170: invariant present tense forms due to zero marking for the third person singular: he like it F158: invariant don’t for all persons in the present tense: he don’t like it Probably the best-known morphological East Anglian dialect feature is third-person present-tense singular zero. East Anglian dialects have zero-marking for all persons of the verb in the present tense: he go, she come,

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that say. Of the localities investigated by the Survey of English Dialects, this feature was found in all the Suffolk localities, in northeastern Essex, and in all of Norfolk except the Fens. Third-person singular zero is a social dialect feature, so a number of middle-class East Anglians do not use it at all, and others use it variably. I have argued (Trudgill 2010) that this feature is a consequence of the ‘invasion’ of Norwich in the 16th century by large groups of Protestants fleeing from religious persecution in the Low Countries at the hands of their Spanish Catholic rulers. They were mostly native speakers of Flemish, but there was also a good proportion of speakers of French, and by 1600 they formed about one-third of the population of the city. My hypothesis is that the simultaneous arrival in Norwich of the new he likes form spreading down from the north of England, and a putative he like in the foreigner-English of the refugees, led to a situation where there was competition between three forms: -s, -Ø, and the original -th. This ‘competition’ was eventually won by the most regular unmarked form, which subsequently spread outwards from Norwich to cover the whole of East Anglia. Third-person singular don’t fits into the pattern, of course, but is actually found in almost all nonstandard mother tongue Englishes around the world, apart from Standard English. F233: presence of subject in imperatives The second-person pronoun is usually explicit in East Anglian imperatives: Go you on! Shut you up!

This is true even when the imperative is strengthened by using the auxiliary verb do: Do you sit down!

2.2 Widespread nonstandard features with a particular East Anglian realisation This second class consists of features of nonstandard English which are not confined to East Anglia but which take a distinctive regional form in the area. F32: distinction between emphatic vs. non-emphatic forms of pronouns Unstressed I is pronounced with the reduced vowel [ł], even at the end of a sentence, so that can I? is pronounced as rhyming with banner (the variety is non-rhotic). Unstressed they is pronounced /.i:/: Where are thee? Stressed it in Standard English corresponds to that in East Anglia: Thass rainen Ah, that wus me what done it

= It’s raining. = Yes, it was me that did it.

In unstressed position, however, it occurs: I don’t like it, thass no good.

F34: forms or phrases for the second person plural pronoun other than you You … together functions as a second person plural pronoun: Where are you together? Come you on together!

F163: was-weren’t split F180: was/were generalization: He weren’t there, wus ’e? He wus there, weren’t ’e?

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91

The past tense of to be is wus /wÇz/ for all persons in the positive, but weren’t for all persons in the negative. The word weren’t can be pronounced in a number of different ways: /w”:nt/, /wa:nt/, /wAnt/, /wCnt/, /wÇnt/. The latter form could be interpreted as a form of wasn’t, given that was can be pronounced /wÇz/. The older traditional dialect, however, had war /wa:/ or wor /wO:/ for all persons in the positive. The dialect, then, has gone from being a were-generalisation dialect to a generalised was-weren’t dialect in fairly recent times. F155: ain’t as the negated form of be F156: ain’t as the negated form of have Corresponding to the more geographically widespread ain’t, the negative present tense form of be and of auxiliary have in East Anglia is most often /Ent/ or /Wnt/ for all persons: I in’t a-comen I in’t done it yet

= I’m not coming = I havent done it yet

Forms with /h/ – e.g. /hEnt/ – were found in the older dialect for the negative of have.

2.3 Traditional dialect forms retained in older East Anglian English As a geographically peripheral area, East Anglia has retained a number of older traditional nonstandard dialect features perhaps longer than many other areas. The two relevant WAVE features are: F30: pronoun exchange This is a traditional dialect feature which is no longer extant. The older dialect of Essex, at least, used apparently ‘subject’ pronouns as objects. Charles Benham’s Essex Ballads, first published in Colchester in the 1890s, contains a number of instances of this feature: Tha’s where they’re gooin’, are they? Pas’ the mill, Along the fiel’ path leadin’ tard the woods; I’ll give he what for some day, that I will, For walkin’ out ‘ith that ere bit of goods. J’yer hear him call “Good arternune” to me? He think he’s doin’ of it there some tune. Next time I ketch him out along o’ she, Blest if I don’t give he “good arternune”.

The evidence of these ballads and of the SED records suggests that in southern East Anglia the phenomenon was more restricted than in the English southwest. The southwestern usage of him, her, us as subjects does not seem to have been a possibility; we witness merely the use of he, she, we, they as objects. F134: a-prefixing on ing-forms This is still commonly found even in urban speech (though not of younger speakers), at least in the northern part of East Anglia: Where are you a-goin? ‘Where are you going’. With transitive verbs which have a-prefixing, the verb takes a following on (= of): I wus jest a-doin on it ‘I was just doing it’; What are you a-doin on? ‘What are you doing?’.

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2.4 Widespread features also found in East Anglia Very many of the forms in this section are more or less “pan-world” features of long-established mothertongue nonstandard Englishes – although Scotland and the far north of England are often exceptions. This list then basically supplies information about the oddities of Standard English, rather than informing us about nonstandard varieties. F11: regularized reflexives paradigm (hisself, theirselves) F12: object pronoun forms serving as base for first and/or second person reflexives Hisself, theirselves are normal in nonstandard East Anglian English: he hurt hisself F68: them instead of demonstrative those F70: proximal and distal demonstratives with ‘here’ and ‘there’: them there houses down the road F78: double comparatives and superlatives – that one’s more nicer F79: regularized comparison strategies: extension of synthetic marking – thass the beautifulest one F80: regularized comparison strategies: extension of analytic marking – she’s more tall than what he is F128: levelling of past tense/past participle verb forms: regularization of irregular verb paradigms – they’ve catched it. F129: levelling of past tense/past participle verb forms: unmarked forms – she come home late last night F130: levelling of past tense/past participle verb forms: past tense replacing the past participle – she’ve broke the window F131: levelling of past tense/past participle verb forms: past participle replacing the past tense form – they rung the bell (See Trudgill 2003, 2004 for some further illustrations of East Anglian forms). F39: distinctive forms for auxiliary vs. full verb meanings of primary verbs (i.e. of do, be, have) Standard English is probably the only English dialect which does not distinguish between auxiliary preterite did and full verb preterite done. It is therefore no surprise that nonstandard East Anglian English has You done it, did you? However, East Anglia does not have distinct forms for be, have. F154: multiple negation / negative concord: They didn’t get none. Nonstandard East Anglian English follows the pan-world pattern, but also has multiple negation with hardly: He hadn’t got hardly none. F159: never as preverbal past tense negator: I never see him last night This is widespread in nonstandard British English, perhaps not elsewhere. F185: relativizers that or what in non-restrictive contexts F190: relativizer what or a form derived from what In East Anglia the form in non-restrictive contexts is what, which is the usual relativizer in all contexts: That’s the one what I give him last night. F221: other adverbs have the same form as adjectives: she sing very nice

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2.5 Widespread colloquial but not necessarily nonstandard forms A number of the WAVE features found in East Anglia are also found in educated usage in most other parts of the mother-tongue English-speaking world, and are therefore best described as being typical of spoken and/or informal varieties, rather than nonstandard. F7: me instead of I in coordinate subjects: Her and me went down the city. This extends also to the use of him, her, us, them. Natural spoken mother-tongue English, including Standard English, uses I, he, she, we, they only when these are non-conjoined subjects. In all other cases “object” forms are used, indicating that these are not simply object pronouns but also disjunctive pronouns in the manner of French moi, toi, lui, eux. Questionably grammatical locutions such as? They and she went to London occur as the result of prescriptive influence, which has also, as is well known, led to the development of hypercorrect forms such as She gave it to John and I. F26: object pronoun forms as (modifying) possessive pronouns: first person singular, as in ‘He’s me brother’ This is not the object pronoun me “being used as” a possessive. The phenomenon is phonological. Just as the possessives your, his, her have reduced/weak forms in many contexts (/jł, Wz, ł/), so the “me” shown in the example is not actually me but a weak form of my which just happens to be pronounced /mi:/ or /mW/. This can be shown from the fact that, when stressed – He’s MY brother, not yours – the full, unreduced form of the possessive reappears – /mai/. F29: use of us in object function (with singular referent) Here it is important to distinguish between direct and indirect objects. In most forms of British English us can be used informally as an indirect object: Give us a kiss! Can you lend us a fiver? The use of us as direct object however, is regional and nonstandard and not found in East Anglia. F56: absence of plural marking only after quantifiers: he ewe me five pound This is widespread in mother-tongue Englishes, but the degree to which it can be considered nonstandard is variable depending on linguistic context. Educated speakers would normally say, for instance, in discussing someone’s height, He’s five foot three. F60: use of definite article where Standard English has indefinite article: the toothache This is widespread. The degree to which it can be regarded as nonstandard as opposed to colloquial varies depending on factors such as the particular illness: the flu would be more usual in standard speech than the toothache. F72: group genitives – the girl what stood over there’s broth F95: be sat/stood with progressive meaning This is a recent arrival in East Anglia, but has been common in other areas of England for many decades. F96: there with past participle in resultative contexts: There’s something fallen down the sink. F147: was for conditional were – if that was raining, I’d stay at home This is standard, except perhaps in the frozen expression if I were you.

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F172: existential/presentational there’s/there is/there was with plural subjects In the case of there’s, this is widely and extremely commonly found in Standard English speech throughout the native English-speaking world: there’s a lot of people standing outside. It would be an error to regard it as nonstandard. The status of the forms with there is/there was is less clear in terms of standardness, but these are also found more or less everywhere. F229: no inversion/no auxiliaries in main clause yes/no questions – you bin up the shops?

2.6 Performance features Finally, I cite three features which are probably best regarded as performance phenomena and therefore not excluded from Standard English speech: F194: resumptive/shadow pronouns: my brother he shew it to me last week Resumptive pronouns are perfectly normal in standard speech, though probably more common in nonstandard varieties. F197: “linking relative clauses” (without direct antecedent): … unless you are going to get 88 which some universities are not going to give those marks F198: deletion of stranded prepositions in relative clauses (“preposition chopping”): … like a big yard that you do gardening an’all [in deleted]

3 Conclusion As stated earlier, grammatical differences between East Anglian English and Standard English are relatively few in number, largely because of the historical input from East Anglian English into the development of Standard English. And many of the non-standard features which East Anglian English does have are shared with other varieties of non-standard English in England and indeed around the world. In some cases, as would be expected, features which are in some way distinctively East Anglian result from the retention of features which have been lost in other varieties. Examples would be the presence of a subject in imperatives as in sit you down; and “a-verbing” – what are you a-doin on? In other cases, East Anglian English is distinctive because of innovations. An example of this would be the development of new irregular preterites such as shew (= showed) and snew (= snowed). Also particularly striking is the development of a number of new conjunctions (Trudgill 1995) such as do “otherwise” – you better go now do you’ll be late; and time “while” – do you sit there time I git the tea ready. Third-person singular zero, as discussed above, is also of course an innovation.

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Appendix: Overview of WAVE features attested in East Anglia # 1 4 7 8 11 12 26 28 29 32 34

54 56 68 70 72 78 79 80

95 96 99 100 113 128 129 130 131 134 139 147

Feature EA example I. Pronouns, pronoun exchange, nominal gender she/her used for inanimate referents She’s a nice little runner [of a car] alternative forms/phrases for dummy it Thass rainen ‘It’s raining’ me instead of I in coordinate subjects Me and my brother/My brother and me wus late myself/meself instead of I in coordinate My husband and myself were late subjects regularized reflexives paradigm He often hurt hisself object pronoun forms serving as base for I hurt m’self 1st and/or 2nd person reflexives object pronoun forms as possessive I’ll get m’book. pronouns: first person singular use of us + NP in subject function Us kids used to do that a lot use of us in object function (with singular Give us a look referent) distinction between emphatic vs. Thass nice, I like it non-emphatic forms of pronouns forms or phrases for the 2nd person plural Come you on together pronoun other than you II. Noun phrase group plurals We’ve got two Head of Departments absence of plural marking only after Six pound; five year ago quantifiers them instead of demonstrative those In them days proximal and distal demonstratives with This here book, them there books ‘here’ and ‘there’ group genitives The man what I met’s girlfriend double comparatives and superlatives Thass much more easier to follow regularized comparison strategies: Thass the beautifullest one extension of synthetic marking regularized comparison strategies: Thass one of the most easiest ones extension of analytic marking III. Verb phrase: tense and aspect be sat/stood with progressive meaning He was stood on the corner there with past participle in resultative There’s somethen fallen down the sink contexts levelling of present perfect and simple Wus you ever up London? past: simple past for StE present perfect levelling of present perfect and simple Some on us’ve been to New York years ago past: present perfect for StE simple past loosening of sequence of tenses rule I noticed the van I arrived in V. Verb phrase: verb morphology levelling of past tense/past participle verb catch-catched-catched forms: regularization levelling of past tense/past participle verb He come home last night forms: unmarked forms levelling of past tense/past participle verb She’ve broke the window forms: past tense for past participle levelling of past tense/past participle verb He rung the bell forms: past participle for past tense a-prefixing on ing-forms What are you a-doin on? distinctive forms for auxiliary vs. full verb She done it, din’t she meanings of primary verbs was for conditional were If I wus you

Rating C A A C A A A A A A B

B A A B A A B B

C A C C C A A A A A A A

96

154 155 156 158 159 163 170 172 180 184 185 190 192 193 197 198

204

221

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VII. Negation multiple negation / negative concord ain’t as the negated form of be ain’t as the negated form of have invariant don’t for all persons in the present tense never as preverbal past tense negator was – weren’t split VIII. Agreement invariant present tense due to zero marking for the 3rd person singular existential / presentational there’s/there is/there was with plural subjects was/were generalization

He woon’t do nobody no harm They’re all in there, in’t they? I in’t had a look at em yit He don’t like me

A A A A

He never come ‘He didn’t come’ They wus interested, but I weren’t

A A

That go ever so fast

A

There’s two blokes outside

A

We wus hungry, I wus hungry, We weren’t hungry, I weren’t hungry Here I be (presentational);

A

invariant be with non-habitual function IX. Relativization relativizer that or what in non-restrictive My daughter, what live up London, … contexts relativizer what or a form derived from Thass the man what done my painten what use of analytic or cliticized that his/that’s, The man what’s wife had died what his/what’s, etc. instead of whose gapping/zero-relativization in subject The man live there is a nice bloke position “linking relative clauses” (without direct We had to eat figs which I don’t like figs antecedent) deletion of stranded prepositions in Like a big yard you do gardenen relative clauses (“preposition chopping”) X. Complementation as what / than what in comparative Thass harder than what you think that is clauses XII. Adverbs and prepositions other adverbs have the same form as He run very quick! adjectives XIII. Discourse organization and word order no inversion/no auxiliaries in main clause You get the point? yes/no questions either order of objects in double object He couldn’t give him it constructions presence of subject in imperatives Go you home! like as a focussing device That wus like three quid like as a quotative particle And she wus like “what do you mean”?

A A A B C B C

A

A

A C A B B

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References Benham, Charles. 1960 [1895]. Essex Ballads. Colchester: Benham Newspapers. Britain, David. 2005. Innovation diffusion, ‘Estuary English’ and local dialect differentiation: the survival of Fenland Englishes. Linguistics 43(5): 995–1022. Claxton, Alic Oliver Duncan. 1968. The Suffolk Dialect of the 20th Century. Ipswich: Adland. Fisiak, Jacek. 2001. Old East Anglian. In: Jacek Fisiak, and Peter Trudgill (eds.), East Anglian English, 13–38. Woodbridge: Brewer. Fisiak, Jacek, and Peter Trudgill (eds.). 2001. East Anglian English. Woodbridge: Brewer. FOND http://www.norfolkdialect.com/ Forby, Robert. 1830. The Vocabulary of East Anglia. London. Poussa, Patricia. 1997. Derivation of it from that in eastern dialects of British English. In: Raymond Hickey, and Stanisław Puppel (eds.), Linguistic History and Linguistic Modelling: A Festschrift for Jacek Fisiak on his 60th Birthday, 691–699. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Trudgill, Peter. 1974. The Social Differentiation of English in Norwich. London: Cambridge University Press. Trudgill, Peter. 1988. Norwich revisited: recent changes in an English urban dialect. English World Wide 9: 33–49. Trudgill, Peter. 1995. Grammaticalisation and social structure: nonstandard conjunction-formation in East Anglian English. In: Frank R. Palmer (ed.), Grammar and Meaning: Essays in Honour of Sir John Lyons, 136–147. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Trudgill, Peter. 1997. British vernacular dialects in the formation of American English: the case of East Anglian

do. In: Raymond Hickey, and Stanisław Puppel (eds.), Linguistic History and Linguistic Modelling: A Festschrift for Jacek Fisiak on his 60th Birthday, 749–758. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Trudgill, Peter. 1998. Third-person singular zero: African American vernacular English, East Anglian dialects and Spanish persecution in the Low Countries. Folia Linguistica Historica 18: 139–148. Trudgill, Peter. 2001. Modern East Anglia as a dialect area. In: Jacek Fisiak, and Peter Trudgill (eds.), East Anglian English, 1–12. Woodbridge: Brewer. Trudgill, Peter. 2003. The Norfolk Dialect. Cromer: Poppyland Publishing. Trudgill, Peter. 2004. The dialect of East Anglia: phonology. In: Bernd Kortmann, Edgar Schneider with Kate Burridge, Raj Mesthrie, and Clive Upton (eds.), A Handbook of Varieties of English. Vol. 1: Phonology, 163–177. Berlin/ New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Trudgill, Peter. 2004. The dialect of East Anglia: morphology and syntax. In: Bernd Kortmann, Edgar Schneider with Kate Burridge, Raj Mesthrie, and Clive Upton (eds.), A Handbook of Varieties of English. Vol. 2: Morphology, Syntax, 142–153. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Trudgill, Peter. 2008. English Dialect “default singulars”, was vs. were, Verner’s Law, and Germanic dialects. Journal of English Linguistics 36: 341–353. Trudgill, Peter. 2010. Investigations in Sociohistorical Linguistics: Stories of Colonisation and Contact. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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Anna Rosen

Channel Island English 1 Introduction The small archipelago of the Channel Islands lies off the coast of France at the entrance to the gulf of St. Malo. The five main islands – Jersey, Guernsey, Alderney, Sark and Herm – have a total population of approximately 158,000 and are divided into the Bailiwicks of Jersey and Guernsey, named after the two largest islands. Despite their close vicinity to France, the Channel Islands have been politically associated with the British Crown since 1066. This has led to the islands’ long history of cultural and linguistic contact between local varieties of Norman French, Standard French and various English varieties. Thus, the English spoken on the Channel Islands can be described as a high-contact variety, which has, however, replaced Norman French, the former principal variety of the islands, to such a degree that insular Norman is today classified as a dying language (see, for example, Ramisch 2004: 207, Jones 2010: 42). Linguistic research on the Channel Islands has essentially dealt with insular Norman (e.g. Jones 2001, Liddicoat 2004). There exist only few and for the most part unsystematic studies of the Channel Islands’ English varieties (e.g. Tomlinson 1981, Viereck 1988, Jones 2001; 2010). Notable exceptions are the PhD theses by Heinrich Ramisch (1989) and Pauline Barbé (1993), which focus, however, exclusively on Guernsey English. Hence more in-depth research, especially on Jersey English, is needed, among other things, to settle the question whether Channel Island English (ChIsE) is in fact as homogenous as the literature has hitherto suggested (cf. Jones 2010: 45). After all, the two Bailiwicks have been administered separately from each other since the 13th century and do not form a close political unit so that their local dialects of English developed rather independently.1 A brief introduction to the islands’ socio-cultural setting will provide the backdrop to the following discussion of the WAVE rating and profile of ChIsE. It will be shown that linguistic and social developments currently under way complicate the rating process.

2 Socio-cultural background As dependencies of the British Crown, the Channel Islands are politically autonomous apart from matters of defence and diplomatic representation. The islands, which belonged to the Duchy of Normandy, became associated with the English Crown in 1066. Yet it was not until the 15th century before English had some influence in daily interactions in the Channel Islands. English was then mainly used in the towns of St. Peter Port and St. Helier and among the upper strata of society – through trade relations and contacts with English troops garrisoned in the Channel Islands. Thus, the Islands were primarily francophone (at all levels of society) until the 19th century and Norman French was still widely spoken at the beginning of the 20th century. Since then, however, Anglicization – due to increasing immigration and trade relations, a growing tourism industry and, around 1900, the introduction of English as the medium of instruction – has led to the steady decline of all Norman French dialects in the Channel Islands. Today English is the dominant language on all

1 It may come as a surprise that the Channel Islands do not have any common laws, hardly any common institutions nor a common newspaper or radio station. Pan-island co-operation has only recently increased. Channel Islanders usually do not perceive the archipelago as an entity (cf. Spurway Torode

2001: 96). Detailed accounts of the socio-cultural history of the Channel Islands with an emphasis on linguistically important developments can be found in Ramisch’s (2004) contribution to the Handbook of Varieties of English, in Ramisch (1989) and in Jones (2001; 2010).

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Channel Islands, with only two to three per cent of the resident population still speaking insular Norman French (see 2001 Census data). Standard French, which is taught as a compulsory subject in primary school from the age of seven onwards, is now only used in ceremonial contexts. Jones (2010: 37) tentatively describes the linguistic situation of the Channel Islands today as a triglossia with English assuming ‘High’ functions, Norman French ‘Low’ functions and Standard French being reserved for formulaic official usage. Due to the Islands’ quasi-independent political status, Channel Island English cannot be described as a ‘post-colonial English’, yet it shares the specific type of language-contact situation resulting from the spread of English to new territories (see Schneider 2007: 3–4). Today, though, many Islanders who grew up with Norman French have shifted completely to using English only or in most contexts. There is, however, ongoing dialect contact with various varieties of (mainly British) English, which are brought to the islands by a considerable number of immigrants. The 2001 Census indicated a population of 88,200 for Jersey and 65,228 for Guernsey. Of these only 53 % were actually born on Jersey and 64 % on Guernsey. Intermarriages have been common since the 19th century, which also contributes to the use of non-local features even by island-born children (cf. Jones 2010: 42–43). After centuries of attaching rather low prestige to Norman French (cf., e.g., Spence 2001), Islanders have more recently begun to cherish their Norman heritage and language. Public discourse, therefore, usually revolves around the preservation of the endangered Norman dialects and neither recognizes nor takes pride in any ‘local dialect’ of English. Indeed, discussions while conducting fieldwork brought to light that most Islanders do not feel their English variety is in any way different from Standard British English. It should be added here that due to a generally high standard of living and increasing mobility of its speakers, ChIsE has in many respects become similar to Standard Southern British English. Many academically trained, well-educated British immigrants are recruited to the Channel Islands by the finance industry and public services. Teachers, for example, can only be trained in the UK and all schools follow the UK curriculum and use UK school books (for a discussion of standardization in Channel Island English see Krug and Rosen: forthcoming). The fact that the Channel Islands are very small and closely connected with Britain through family, work and education ties, British media, religion and food heavily influences norm production and linguistic developments. Despite this strong link with Britain, most Channel Islanders feel that their first loyalty lies with their island (see also Jones 2001: 42).

3 WAVE profile of the Channel Islands The WAVE rating for ChIsE is largely based on sociolinguistic interview data and oral history material collected in Jersey in 2008 representing a balanced sample of male and female speakers between 20 and 96 years of age with varying social backgrounds. All data were transcribed and compiled into a 354,172-word corpus of spoken Jersey English. It should be kept in mind that – as no large database of ChIsE exists – frequency distributions can be quite low for some features in the corpus. Additionally, therefore, the entire WAVE feature catalogue was checked against attested forms in the literature on ChIsE. For five features, there is no evidence in my corpus, yet accounts by Barbé (1993) and Jones (2001) confirm their existence in ChIsE. Some features of the WAVE catalogue have not been investigated or mentioned before in the literature on Channel Island English. They do, however, occur in my corpus of spoken Jersey English. An interesting example of such a feature, which appears to be rare in other British English varieties, is the use of present tense forms for future reference (F117). Though it has not been commented on before, this feature could well be the result of influence by a similar usage in insular Norman (see Liddicoat 1994: 163). As the distribution of the A/B/C-rating in the WAVE profile of Channel Island English (31 C-ratings, 17 B-ratings and only 2 A-ratings; see appendix) indirectly shows, not all of the 50 attested features in ChIsE are part of every Islander’s linguistic repertoire. Most of the features have been rated with a ‘C’ and they usually – and sometimes exclusively – exist in the speech of older, Jersey-born Islanders, especially those who are bilingual in Norman French and English. Yet some of these features, even if rare overall, might be quite pervasive in an individual’s speech. Features rated with ‘C’ are often stigmatized and this, as Mari Jones (2001: 167)

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points out, “has also led many Islanders to eliminate them consciously from their speech, a practice often instigated by the education system, which encouraged children to adopt a more standardized English.” Education is only one of the driving forces behind various ongoing linguistic changes in the Channel Islands. A multitude of factors, among them changing circumstances of language contact on the islands and the by now almost complete shift towards a monoglot English society, have contributed and still contribute to a general picture of change which may eventually result in the loss of distinctive ChIsE features (cf. Jones 2010: 54). Many features which were presumably in common use in the 19th and the first half of the 20th century, e.g. the use of she/her and he/him for inanimate referents (F1, F2) or the use of the simple present for continuative perfect (F101), have become very rare today. It should also be stressed that, just as in any other society, several norm orientations, sometimes opposing ones, exist on the Channel Islands. The use of the features rated in the WAVE project heavily depends on formality of speech, register (e.g., written vs. spoken) and social factors. When features rated with ‘C’ are used, they are most likely to occur in rather informal conversations and in the speech of speakers with lower levels of education, who are at least passively familiar with Norman French. While the existence of some ChIsE features can be clearly attributed to direct transfer from Norman French or to general language contact phenomena (such as L2-acquisition strategies, simplification etc.), others are widespread non-standard English features, which might have been brought to the islands by (British) English dialect speakers or could simply be types of universals in the sense of vernacular universals or angloversals (for definitions see, e.g., Kortmann/Szmrecsanyi 2004). For some ChIsE features more than one source, e.g. language and dialect contact, seem to have contributed to their spread and use so that it is often impossible to disentangle the decisive factor(s).

3.1 Widespread features also found in the Channel Islands Among the more frequently, though not pervasively or obligatorily used non-standard features on the islands are multiple negation (F154), adverbs as homomorphic with adjectives (F221), lack of inversion in main clause yes/no-questions (F229), me instead of I in coordinate subjects (F7), the absence of plural marking after measure nouns (F56), special forms for the second-person plural pronoun (F34) or never as a preverbal past tense negator (F159). Every one of these features is listed by Kortmann and Szmrecsanyi (2004: 1154) as widespread in spoken varieties of English. Their occurrence in ChIsE could well be linked to long-standing dialect contact through British immigration movements to the islands since the 19th century and subsequent accommodation processes. Yet the use of some of these features may also have been further reinforced by contact with Norman French. Multiple negation (F154), for example, could possibly have been influenced by the discontinuous negation of (Norman) French, as Jones (2010: 51) argues. It is consistent with this argument that in their empirical studies on Guernsey English both Ramisch (1989: 162–163) and Barbé (1993: 195–202) find double negation more often with bilingual informants. Similarly, the pervasive existential construction there’s/there is/there was with plural subjects (F172) is likely to have been reinforced by the most frequently used presentative construction in Norman, y’a, which also contains a singular verb (see also Ramisch 1989: 100, Jones 2001: 168). There are also some restrictions on the ChIsE use of three features included in the WAVE questionnaire. First of all, in the realm of verb morphology, non-standard past tense verb forms (F129 and F131) occur most frequently in the form of done, come, seen. Even though other forms exist, there is a considerable preponderance of done and come (see also Ramisch 1989: 157–160 and Barbé 1993: 94–100). Secondly, the use of ain’t (F155, F156, F157) is, as the rating shows, very rare indeed and does not seem to be as common as in some other varieties of English. It is mostly used as the negated form of present tense be. In Barbé’s (1993: 192–194) study, its use was by and large restricted to teenage usage. In my 354,172-word corpus of spoken Jersey English, which excludes teenage speech, there is only a single occurrence of ain’t. Thirdly, the deletion of the auxiliary have (F179) refers to its omission before got/got to only (as in example 1). (1) I also got some close friends who did not go to uni.

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3.2 Contact features The emergence and use of features in ChIsE can also be attributed to general linguistic developments in specific contact settings (see, e.g., Thomason 2001, Winford 2003). As Schneider (2007: 83) remarks, the omission of third-person singular -s on verbs (F170) or the extension to stative verbs of progressive be + V-ing (F88), both of which also exist in ChIsE, seem to be cases in point. Among the features that can be more clearly attributed to some form of Norman influence is the use of she/her and he/him for inanimate referents (F1 and F2), which are marked according to the grammatical gender of the Norman French equivalent noun as shown in (2), an example taken from Jones (2001: 173). F1 and F2 do not occur in my corpus. (2) Mind that [the plate], she’s hot eh! (Plate corresponds to Norman French l’assiette, which is feminine.) Further, transfer is almost certainly involved in the use of the definite article in contexts where Standard English favours zero (F64). The definite article is preferred in ChIsE especially with names of languages as in (3), but also in contexts with plural nouns with generic reference (4), with adverbials of direction and position (5) and with adverbials of time expressing a regular repetition (6) as well as in some other idiomatic expressions (cf. Ramisch 1989: 113–124, Jones 2001: 170–171). This usage can mainly be found among bilingual, older speakers. (3) (4) (5) (6)

At home we used to speak the Jersey French. The children wouldn’t do that today. He had a little shop in the Admiral Street. And we would have steak on the Saturday.

The result of Romance influence also manifests itself in the use of the simple present for continuative or experiential perfect (F101) as both Norman and Standard French would rather use a present tense in such contexts (cf. Ramisch 1989: 97–98). What makes this feature especially interesting, however, is its frequent realization within the structure of existential there’s followed by a time reference and the simple present as in (7). (7) There’s sixty years I’m married. The equivalent phrase in Jersey French would be Y’a 60 ans qué j’sis mathié, which shows that this is clearly a syntactic calque (see Ramisch 1989: 97–98, Jones 2001: 168). The same construction can also be found in Guernsey English and Guernsey French. Conditional clauses in ChIsE without subordination by omitting the conjunction if, as illustrated in (8), are another likely case of syntactic transfer. This type of a chaining construction (F213) reflects conditional structures in Norman French, as Jones (2001: 172) confirms. (8) Well, they spoke in English they wanted to say something that they didn’t want me to know. In a similar vein, the use of the relativizer what (F190) also seems to reflect transfer. Barbé (1993: 210–211) argues that Guernsey French que, which can be both an object relative pronoun and an interrogative form whose English equivalent in some contexts is what, might have influenced the use of this relativizer. Furthermore, various prepositional usages in ChIsE are probably due to Norman influence. This can either appear directly as in the expression (I saw it) on the Evening Post instead of ‘in the Evening Post’, the corresponding phrase in Norman being sus l’Evening Post (see Jones 2001: 172–173), or indirectly as in the omission of the preposition at in the phrase at home (F216) shown in (9). (9) I started dressmaking for people home. Tomlinson (1981: 20) suggests that this use is the result of a generalization strategy of Norman French speakers acquiring English, who applied prepositionless patterns as in Standard English I go home now to other contexts (see also Ramisch 1989: 139–141). This specific structure is, again, mainly used by bilingual speakers in the Channel Islands. Example (9), for instance, was produced by a 78-year-old farmer’s wife, who was raised bilingually.

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While some of the transfer features discussed above at times go unnoticed even by those using them every day, other ChIsE features are more salient and at the forefront of speakers’ minds. Among these, invariant nonconcord tags (F165), such as is it?, isn’t it? and the particle eh in particular, clearly stand out (cf. Ramisch 1989: 103–113; 129–133; 149–150, Barbé 1993: 220–234). Ramisch (1989) and Jones (2010) argue that these three invariant tags could have been influenced by similar Norman French tags (e.g. by Norman n’est-che pon? for isn’t it?). Thus, even though the invariant non-concord tag eh, for example, occurs in all spoken English varieties, its frequency of use, pragmatic functions and distribution across all age groups of the Channel Islands speech communities make it quite a distinct ChIsE feature (for a discussion of this see Rosen forthcoming). Its frequent use in ChIsE can presumably be traced back to a reinforcing effect by the corresponding particles hé and hein in (Norman) French. Although there is a tendency for eh to be used less often by younger and well-educated speakers, it is still very much alive in the Channel Islands and can even be depicted as an identity marker which speakers consciously use to signal their Jersey or Guernsey identity. So it may not be unreasonable to say that this function as an identity marker contributes to its relative stability compared to other ChIsE features.

4 Additional features not included in the WAVE questionnaire There are two features which are not captured by the WAVE profile yet are relevant to the morpho-syntactic make-up of ChIsE. Example (10) shows a non-standard coordinated verb structure that is distinctive of ChlsE. (10) I went and buy some pansy plants. Such constructions, first mentioned in Viereck (1988: 474), are described and discussed in some detail in Barbé (1993: 110–138; 1995). Barbé labels them ‘FAP’ after the use of a first verb (mostly go and come) plus the conjunction and followed by the plain infinitive. With regard to the origin of this structure, Barbé (1993) puts forward several hypotheses connected with cross-linguistic influence from Norman French or with phenomena of second language acquisition. It seems indeed likely that Norman-speaking learners of English, influenced by syntactic patterns in their own language, reinterpreted standard verb-and-verb structures and transformed them into FAP. The second feature, which can be regarded as a ChIsE stereotype, involves the very frequent use of an otherwise also widespread phenomenon of colloquial English, namely the emphatic use of a personal pronoun immediately after its antecedent noun (left dislocation). This is demonstrated in (11). (11) And his mother, she was a terrific lady. According to Ramisch (1989: 156–157) and Jones (2010: 50), this might reflect transfer of a widely-used structure in Norman French (Man fréthe, i’pâle lé Jèrriais.). The frequent use of the object form of the personal subject pronouns me, you, him, her, us and them for reasons of emphasis at the beginning or end of an utterance (right dislocation), see example (12), also seems to reflect similar structures in Norman French (or, for that matter, Standard French). (12) I always buy the cheapest, me.

5 Conclusion The influence of Norman French on the English(es) spoken in the Channel Islands in combination with matters of geographical isolation, language shift and local identity have contributed to the emergence of a distinctive variety (see also Barbé 1993: 248, Jones 2010: 53). As was demonstrated in section 3, its distinctiveness manifests itself in a variety of features resulting from language contact, be it through direct transfer or rather through more general contact-induced processes. Some of these features, like the structure termed FAP

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or existential there’s + time reference + present tense, seem to be quite unique. The majority of features, however, can also be found in other English varieties and has probably been influenced by dialect as well as language contact and possibly universal tendencies so that several driving forces have created a distinctive mixture of features. Even though it is indisputable that a distinctive local variety has emerged over the last centuries, its future and stability is less certain. As the WAVE profile and its description above show, many features have become quite rare in everyday speech. More importantly, they are not part of every Islander’s speech inventory. Many transfer features are thin on the ground today and their varying use is readily noticeable across generations even of those born in the Channel Islands (see also Jones 2010: 53–54). The use of the simple past for Standard English present perfect, for example, is solely found among bilingual speakers in the corpus of spoken Jersey English. Thus, while the Norman colouring of ChIsE will almost certainly survive the decline of Norman French, it may not do so by long (see also Jones 2010: 54). Such local speech differences emerge over an extended period of time and by far not all of them have been acknowledged by the ChIsE speech community. Trends towards standardization and/or leveling, which were found in two studies some 20 years ago (see Ramisch 1989, Barbé 1993), have continued (see Rosen forthcoming). At present, the speech of the younger and middle generations, who usually experience even more contact with Britain through university education and/or work in the UK, no longer comprises many of the more traditional features of ChIsE. Standard Southern British English exerts a strong normative influence on the Channel Islands, a development that had already become apparent by the 1980s (see Ramisch 1989: 193). With changing socio-economic circumstances, higher mobility and a high proportion of immigrants in a relatively small place, Channel Island English – as many other English varieties, of course – seems to be changing and moving towards a more leveled and standardized variety. Aspects of dialect and language contact, accommodation and identity will, however, continue to play an important role in the formation of Channel Island English.

Appendix: Overview of attested WAVE features in Channel Island English #

feature

ChIsE example

rating

I. Pronouns, pronoun exchange, nominal gender 11

she/her used for inanimate referents

Mind that [the plate], she’s hot eh! (Jones 2001: 173).

C

12

he/him used for inanimate referents

He [the cart]’s a Jersey cart (Jones 2001: 173)

C

17

me instead of I in coordinate subjects

Me and my cousin were looked after by a nanny.

B

18

myself/meself instead of I in coordinate subjects

And George and myself went there.

B

26

object pronoun forms as possessive pronouns: 1st person singular

I thought I might as well go on me own.

C

28

use of us + NP in subject function

All us kids went down.

B

34

forms or phrases for the 2nd person plural pronoun other than you

You guys can come if you want to.

B

43

subject pronoun drop: referential pronouns

So you worked in the fields? – Oh yes all the time. Picked potatoes.

C

II. Noun phrase 56

absence of plural marking only after quantifiers

I was about ten year old at that time.

B

64

use of definite article where StE favours zero

At home we used to speak the Jersey French.

B

68

them instead of demonstrative those

none of them places after all them years

B

80

regularized comparison strategies: extension of analytic marking

It is lighter and more fluffy, you know. People were more friendly.

C

104

188 199 101 113 117 120

128 129 131 147 154 155 156 157 158 159 165

Anna Rosen

III. Verb phrase: tense and aspect wider range of uses of progressive be + V-ing: extension to stative verbs levelling of present perfect and simple past: simple past for StE present perfect simple present for continuative or experiential perfect loosening of sequence of tenses rule present tense forms for neutral future reference would in if-clauses

V. Verb phrase: verb morphology levelling of past tense/past participle verb forms: regularization levelling of past tense/past participle verb forms: unmarked forms levelling of past tense/past participle verb forms: past participle for past tense was for conditional were VII. Negation multiple negation / negative concord ain’t as the negated form of be ain’t as the negated form of have ain’t as generic negator before a main verb invariant don’t for all persons in the present tense never as preverbal past tense negator invariant non-concord tags (including eh?)

175

VIII. Agreement invariant present tense due to zero marking for the 3rd person singular invariant present tense due to generalization of 3rd person -s existential / presentational there’s/there is/there was with plural subjects deletion of auxiliary be: before gonna

179

deletion of auxiliary have

180

was/were generalization IX. Relativization relativizer that or what in non-restrictive contexts

170 171 172

185

186

which for ‘who’

190

relativizer what or a form derived from what gapping/zero-relativization in subject position

193

I was always wanting to come back.

C

I was never a good golfer. I used to go twice a week, but since last winter I didn’t play. There’s got to be four or five years that we work at the Archive. There’s sixty years we’re married. They only found out about five years after he was caught. That appeared on the front door a few days after we arrived back. It’s performed in March of next year. I go cycling tomorrow. But if I’d have wanted to join the navy, I’d have had to wait seven months. But if that would happen, well it’s quite obvious what would happen then.

C

It blowed [the storm]. I choosed your daddy. The Christian brothers run it [the school] then.

C

I done country dancing during the war.

C

If I was rich, we wouldn’t be living in a council house.

B

Don’t say nothing. I don’t want no money. That ain’t fair.(Barbé 1993: 192) We ain’t got no brownies. (Barbé 1993: 192). I said I ain’t go.

B

It don’t take us much longer, you see.

C

And the boat foundered and he never came back. And they never bothered. eh?, is it?, isn’t it?: They had no transport eh? So you’re almost as far south as you can go, isn’t it? You’ll write about it, is it?

B

Well, he speak English.

C

I remembers he used to start with a big circle.

C

There was two boys and a sister.

A

I just gonna give this out to my lads. They don’t know what they gonna get for it. They [the cows] all got names. I also got some close friends who did not go to uni. They was about that high.

C

My brother, that died, he led the bull around. Well, my mate, that lives up the road there, his wife, she’s a secretary there. We used to go to my granny Vibert, which was my mother’s mother. a law what’s come out (Barbé 1993: 210)

C

He made a wireless for Dad was twelve inches square and, I suppose, seven or eight inches deep. I was the only one spoke English.

B

C C C C

C

C C C

A

C C

C C

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194

resumptive/shadow pronouns

197

“linking relative clauses” (without direct antecedent)

202 204

X. Complementation unsplit for to in infinitival purpose clauses as what / than what in comparative clauses

213

XI. Adverbial subordination no subordination; chaining construction linking two main verbs

216 220 221

229 234 235

Unless there’s someone there that we don’t want them to know what we say. I had an electric organ which I play on that now. The only thing there was was sports, which I was quite good at football. I’m not really aware of the impact it’s had, which I know it has had a big impact on a lot of people, but I haven’t felt it.

C

People would bring their cans for to get the paraffin. It’s harder than what I thought it was. I think there’s probably as many cars as what there are people on the island.

C B

You can live here, you can live anywhere. They spoke in English they wanted to say something that they didn’t want me to know.

C

XII. Adverbs and prepositions omission of StE prepositions I started dressmaking for people home. degree modifier adverbs have the same It’s a real hard job, you know. form as adjectives other adverbs have the same form as I go and see them regular. adjectives XIII. Discourse organization and word order no inversion/no auxiliaries in main clause You like this job you’re doing? yes/no questions like as a focussing device It was just a big rosette like. like as a quotative particle So we were like “Oh yeah, maybe we’ll do that.”

C

C B B

B B B

References Barbé, Pauline. 1993. Exploring variation in Guernsey English syntax. Unpublished PhD Thesis. University of London. Barbé, Pauline. 1995. Guernsey English: A syntax exile? English World-Wide 16.1: 1–36. Jones, Mari C. 2001. Jersey Norman French: A Linguistic Study of an Obsolescent Dialect. Oxford: Blackwell. Jones, Mari C. 2010. Channel Island English. In: Daniel Schreier, Peter Trudgill, Edgar W. Schneider, and Jeffrey P. Williams (eds.), The Lesser-Known Varieties of English, 35–56. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kortmann, Bernd, and Benedikt Szmrecsanyi. 2004. Global synopsis – morphological and syntactic variation in English. In: Bernd Kortmann, Kate Burridge, Raj Mesthrie, and Edgar Schneider (eds.), A Handbook of Varieties of English, Vol. 2: Morphology and Syntax, 1142–1202. Berlin/ New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Krug, Manfred, and Anna Rosen. Forthcoming. Standards of English in Malta and the Channel Islands. In: Raymond Hickey (ed.), Standards of English. Codified Varieties around the World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Liddicoat, Anthony. 1994. A Grammar of the Norman French of the Channel Islands. The Dialects of Jersey and Sark. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Ramisch, Heinrich. 1989. The Variation of English in Guernsey/ Channel Islands. Frankfurt am Main: Lang. Ramisch, Heinrich. 2004. Channel Island English: phonology. In: Bernd Kortmann, and Edgar Schneider in collaboration with Kate Burridge, Raj Mesthrie, and Clive Upton. A

Handbook of Varieties of English. Vol. 1: Phonology, 204–216. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Rosen, Anna. Forthcoming. ‘That’s a real Jersey one, eh?’: Discourse marker eh in Channel Island English. Proceedings of the Second ELC International Postgraduate Conference on English Linguistics (ELC2). University of Vigo (Spain), 30–31 October 2009. Schneider, Edgar W. 2007. Postcolonial English. Varieties around the World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Spence, Nicol C. W. 2001. The language changes in Jersey. Société Jersiaise Annual Bulletin for 2001 28.1: 133–142. Spurway Torode, Annette Mary. 2001. George d’la Forge. Guardian of the Jersey Norman Heritage – A study of the life and writings of George Francis Le Feuvre (1891–1984). Unpublished PhD Thesis. University of Leeds. Thomason, Sarah G. 2001. Language Contact. An Introduction. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Tomlinson, Harry. 1981. Le Guernesiais. Etude grammaticale et lexicale du parler norman de l’Ile de Guernesey. PhD Thesis. University of Edinburgh. Viereck, Wolfgang. 1988. The Channel Islands: an Anglicist’s no-man’s land. In: Josef Klegraf, and Dietrich Nehls (eds.), Essays on the English Language and Applied Linguistics on the Occasion of Gerhard Nickel’s 60th Birthday, 468–478. Heidelberg: Groos. Winford, Donald. 2003. An Introduction to Contact Linguistics. Malden, MA/Oxford: Blackwell.

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Part II: North America

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Susanne Wagner

Newfoundland English 1 Introduction English in Newfoundland is exceptional in a number of respects. For one, it can legitimately be called both the oldest and the newest variety of North American English: the rugged island off the East Coast of the North American continent was settled by English speakers much earlier than what should become the United States, but it became part of Canada only in 1949, when it entered into Confederation as the tenth Canadian province, giving up its status as a dominion of the British Crown. In addition, Newfoundland settlement history has progressed in a number of clearly demarcated waves and along well-documented trade routes, resulting in an almost unique amount of detailed information available on the regional origins of settlers. Furthermore, until fairly recently, religious differences and their consequences (e.g. denominational schools, different areas of settlement in most parts of Newfoundland) prevented any serious degree of mixture of the two main settler groups: the Irish and the Southwest English. Combined with the island effect and general geographic isolation at the fringe of North America, all these factors had two major consequences: first, there is no single variety we could call “Newfoundland English” – at least two major varieties have to be distinguished, namely the English of the settlers with Southwest English (SWE) roots and that of settlers with Irish roots. Second, because of its background, English in Newfoundland is in certain respects uniquely conservative, having maintained certain features (albeit with occasional shifts in usage and/or meaning) that have long since disappeared from the donor varieties. After centuries of relative stability, the face of Newfoundland English is now changing dramatically once more. Known as the poorhouse of Canada after the dramatic consequences of the Cod Moratorium in 1992, the island is currently experiencing an unprecedented economic boom in connection with the discovery and harvesting of offshore oil. For the first time in decades, the province’s population is growing, both because of expatriates returning home and “outsiders” settling in Newfoundland, both groups attracted by new job opportunities. From a linguistic point of view, this new chapter in the history of Newfoundland English is yet to be (and currently is being) explored: the scenarios for effects of mainland Canadian English on Newfoundland English are yet to be ascertained, as are the “reactions” Newfoundlanders will have to the influx and increased contact. This chapter will look at Newfoundland English (NfldE) from a number of different perspectives. On the one hand, hallmark features of traditional NfldE – with its two major subvarieties, Southwest-English-based NfldE (SWNfldE) and Irish-based NfldE (IrNfldE) – will be discussed, since it is those features in particular that set NfldE apart in the WAVE profile, not only from other North American varieties of English, but also from its donor dialects. On the other hand, particular attention will be paid to those features that are currently investigated in connection with the changing face of NfldE: here, traditional NfldE features resurface as “modern” features, often accompanied by re-interpretation and/or re-functionalisation. As a consequence, (rural) levelling tendencies are sometimes counterbalanced by an increased salience of certain features in urban contexts, with young speakers in particular adopting linguistic features for reasons of negotiating their Newfoundland identity in an increasing globalised world. Historically, major studies on English in Newfoundland have originated particularly from Memorial University’s programmes, not only in Linguistics, but also in English and Folklore. MUN’s archive MUNFLA (Memorial University Folklore and Language Archive) is a treasure trove of interviews with people from all over the province, reaching back at least 50 years, but only accessible in situ. Many of the older, often unpublished data, is currently being made available through The Online Dialect Atlas of Newfoundland and Labrador English (DANL1) and the Voices of Newfoundland and Labrador project2. MUN’s Sociolinguistics 1 http://www.mun.ca/linguistics/research/language/ danl.php

2 http://www.mun.ca/linguistics/research/language/ voices_of_nl.php

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Lab MUSL3 and researchers affiliated with it engage in a broad field of topics, largely in the realm of phonology. Most current work focusses on the negotiation of what it means to be a Newfoundlander, with terms such as salience and identity steadily gaining importance in the face of a changing environment. Whether or not (and if yes in how far) typical Canadian features have ‘made it’ to Newfoundland is currently being explored by Hofmann (in progress; cf. also Wagner and Hofmann in progress). These studies make use of a variety of methods from traditional to modern, including perceptual dialectology (focussing on salient phonological and morphosyntactic features), social networks and state-of-the-art sociophonetic analyses. One focus is going to be on the vowel system: how do innovative features of Canadian English and traditional features of Standard Newfoundland English interact? Van Herk, Childs, Thorburn (2007/2009) and Comeau (2011) and Wagner and Van Herk (2011) analyse one of the ‘superstars’ of Newfoundland English grammar (cf. also Van Herk and Childs 2011), verbal -s, which is currently being reinterpreted as an identity marker. Another feature of variable morphosyntax is investigated in detail in Wagner (forthcoming): null subjects in colloquial Newfoundland English.

2 Socio-cultural and linguistic background Traditional NfldE dialects are very similar to other traditional (British) dialects in terms of their social and regional distribution – NORMs are typical dialect speakers, often to the present day, while urban variation will be mostly limited along the lines typical of cities in the Western world (social variation, variation according to social networks/communities of practice, some age-related variation). Urban variation will furthermore be mostly limited to phonological features, and only a few – salient, non-regional – morphosyntactic features occur with some frequency (e.g. multiple negation, regularised systems in relativisation, pronouns, etc.). The data discussed here and in the WAVE questionnaire is based on work by Sandra Clarke (feature ratings), with illustrative examples taken from the present author’s collection of NfldE material. This comprises data from MUNFLA and my own materials (Pouch Cove Corpus) collected during a two-year research grant from the German Research Foundation (grants Wa 2432/1–1,2).

3 Notable aspects of the variety’s WAVE profile What makes NfldE special are not so much individual features, but rather a unique combination of features that do not occur in this exact combination anywhere else in the world. This is in large part owed to NfldE’s settlement history, which – today – has led to a mixture of SWE and Irish features, accompanied by a certain degree of extension (f after perfect; cf. 3.2.1) and re-interpretation/-functionalisation (f verbal -s; cf. 3.2.2) of ‘traditional’ dialect features. Moreover, some of the traditional systems which NfldE inherited from its donor dialects have undergone change as a result of the influence of colloquial (North American) English rather than a ‘standard’. This can be seen in e.g. a higher frequency of shes, the colloquial standard form, to refer to inanimate objects (such as a house or a tape recorder) in comparison with SWE dialects, where the (written) Standard it is much more common in such contexts. First and foremost, it must be emphasised again that there is no single variety “Newfoundland English” – instead, one has to distinguish two (still) rather distinct varieties, namely that of speakers with a Southwest English background and that of speakers with a South(east) Irish background. While some salient features have managed to jump the ‘religious divide’, particularly in the urban setting of the capital St. John’s – cases

3 http://www.mun.ca/linguistics/labs/musl.php; http://musl.ling.mun.ca/

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111

in point are the after perfect (from IrNfldE to SWNfldE) and verbal -s (from SWNfldE to IrNfldE), the speech of the bays is still dominated by patterns owed to the donor dialects. Differences in morphosyntax are of course far outnumbered by differences in phonology, and it is those differences that outsiders will notice first. Given the ‘two-faced’ nature of NfldE, this survey will necessarily include some caveats about generalizations when discussing individual features that make NfldE what it is. With regard to the variety’s WAVE profile, two things are obvious: when comparing feature ratings for NfldE (Clarke) with those for IrE (Filppula) and SWE (Wagner), NfldE patterns exactly like we would expect. Two general observations can be made: 1.

2.

Depending on the ‘localisability’ of the feature in question, NfldE patterns with either one or the other variety (i.e. with SWE for SWE features such as F30/31 pronoun exchange and F2 gendered pronouns, with IrE for e.g. the IrE tense and aspect categories such as the after perfect). In addition, NfldE shows both its conservatism (with some ratings higher than those of the mother lects, i.e. more ‘A’s) and its more progressive nature as part of the North American continent (e.g. F1 feminine forms as gendered pronouns or F235 discourse marker like).

3.1 The ‘SWE features’ of Newfoundland English: pronoun exchange and gendered pronouns Pronoun Exchange in its full – SWE – version has two complementing components: (a) the use of a ‘subject’ personal pronouns in contexts requiring oblique forms (F30), and (b) the use of an oblique form in subject contexts (F31). In the traditional system, the explanation behind these uses has to do with a notion of emphasis. Examples from Newfoundland English can be found in (1) and (2). (1) a. b. c. (2) a. b. c.

that’s the only one ever I heard he tell. (Folktales 006) “That’s not two steps for I. ” (Folktales 025) “Jack” she said “don’t kill they” (Folktales 097) Now how’s us goina get across there?“ (Folktales 007) Could ’em bring the chest (Folktales 098) what uh … name o’ god sort of a man is un (Folktales 025)

Data even from the most traditional NfldE materials such as the collection of Folktales in Halpert and Widdowson (1996) – from which all examples in (1) and (2) are taken – indicate that Pronoun Exchange was either never as systematic as is generally assumed for the Southwest of England (but see Wagner, this volume for a critical evaluation of that systematicity), or that it has been levelled / restricted considerably in the NfldE context. While emphatic forms are reasonably frequent in non-emphatic contexts (i.e. subject forms in object contexts), the reverse option is rare to non-existent in NfldE. The only instantiations of object forms in subject contexts are generally found in questions or question tags, but are very rare even there (cf. also Clarke 2010: 84–85). In fact, the three examples in (2) are the only clear instances in the Folktales corpus, and even the ‘frequent’ version accounts for some 70 examples only (vis-à-vis e.g. some 400 examples of gendered pronouns in the same data). The situation is further complicated by the fact that SWE Pronoun Exchange is by no means a regionally homogeneous system. Consequently, it is difficult to say which type of Pronoun Exchange has been adopted in NfldE (if any), or if it is a mixture of different patterns and levelling tendencies; for an overview of Pronoun Exchange in SWE, see Wagner (this volume). Similar to Pronoun Exchange, the term ‘Gendered Pronouns’ is often used to refer to two different phenomena. On the one hand, it describes the traditional system of SWE dialects to assign gender-marked pronominal forms not on the basis of (ultimately biological) characteristics of the referent (animacy, sex), but on the basis of a semantic distinction, namely that of count (masculine forms) vs. mass nouns (neuter forms). This system (F2) generates such famous ‘minimal pairs’ as pass the loaf – he’s over there vs. pass the bread – it’s over there. On the other hand, a number of researchers speaks of ‘gendered pronouns’ in connection with another phenomenon frequently observed in colloquial L1s worldwide, namely the use of feminine forms to refer to inanimate referents (F1; e.g. fill ‘er up referring to a car, or a salesperson talking about their product

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as she). What makes the whole affair problematic is that the traditional system (masculine and neuter forms) and the modern one (feminine and neuter forms) overlap and interact in some varieties (primarily SW England and Newfoundland, possibly Tasmania; cf. Pawley 2004; Siemund 2008). The situation can be summarised as follows: SWE and Newfoundland daughter lect(s): • • • • • •

gender is assigned not on biological, but on semantic grounds: mass-count distinction (cf. Clarke 2004: 312–313; Elworthy 1877; Wagner 2003: 16–33); count nouns = he, mass nouns = it: pass the loaf – he’s over there but pass the bread – it’s over there; feminine forms = [+human]; even cow = he; traditional system is still largely intact in SED/traditional oral history data (Wagner 2003: 243–247); changes mostly concern ‘standard’ it encroaching upon traditional he-territory; she rare to non-existent in SWE but typical of North American varieties (Wagner 2003: 129–154).

Colloquial English (possibly world-wide): • • • • •

she = choice for inanimate referent when wishing to add extra information (e.g. positive/negative emotional involvement); speaker sex may influence pronoun choice (women: masculine forms, males: feminine forms), particularly in gender-marked domains (cars, tools, etc.); no restrictions, semantic or otherwise, on nouns serving as antecedent for she (but concrete nouns more frequent); she occupies same slot as he in traditional system(s); Newfoundland English: competition between it and she (not he and it): traditional he is not substituted by it (written standard), but she (spoken standard) f she a) more frequent in NfldE and b) refers to wider range of referents (semantic types; cf. Wagner 2003: 267–269; Clarke 2010: 85–87).

Gendered pronouns as found in both traditional (MUNFLA data) and modern NfldE materials (PC Corpus) are illustrated in (3) below (F1, F2). In terms of frequency, out of 62 instances of gender-marked forms in the PC Corpus, 40 are feminine, 22 masculine, corresponding with the expected higher frequency of feminine forms in NfldE than in SWE. Moreover, some speakers show a mixed system of it and she (e.g. reference to a tape recorder in example 3k); traces of the pathways of change are also still visible (see 3i: traditional masculine form in prepositional object position, “modern” it in subject and direct object position; for more details on the connection of case and gendered pronouns, see Wagner 2004b). (3) a. b. c. d.

e. f. g. h. i. j. k. l. m.

so that’s the way she goes (ref.: situation) (MUNFLA C3168&70) well, he (ref.: twine) wouldn’t get any fish (MUNFLA C1309) I got the old lantern, he was hangin’ up for light (MUNFLA C1462) But I had to keep her (ref.: engine) in good order, and every, every spring, I’d have to take her (ref.: engine) down, take her (ref.: engine) all apart and clean her (ref.: engine) up, so that we wouldn’t have any trouble (MUNFLA C1015) get the key and hung him up to the wall. (PC004) Alright, I’ll put ‘im (ref.: recorder) on pause for a little while. (PC007) 20 dollars to the licence. I used ‘im for a year (PC012) Some days you can see ‘n (ref.:: island) and you can see, go out on the fishin’ ground(MUNFLA C1307) there’s a majority of the Dawes lives into ‘n (ref.: lane), and more people call it Coffins Lane, because the Coffins lives into ‘n (ref.: lane). So it goes by the two names. (MUNFLA C1310) I think it better she (ref.: Pouch Cove) stays like she (ref.: Pouch Cove) is right now. (PC005) It’s not on now, is she (ref.: tape recorder), she (ref. tape recorder)’s not – (MUNFLA C10373) you gets the air when she (ref.: pump) gets water logged she (ref.: pump) is suckin’ air some leak somewhere (MUNFLA C2201) And yet she could take the bible and read un (MUNFLA C10373)

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Schneider (2004: 1113), summarising morphosyntactic variation in the Americas, emphasises the special status of she, noting that [i]nterestingly enough, loosened conditions for uses of gendered pronouns are more widely reported for the North American dialects than for the Caribbean creoles. In particular, she for inanimate referents is fairly common (general in CollAmE, SEAmE, OzE, and NfldE; conditioned in AppE, ChcE, AAVE, and BahE), while generic he seems somewhat more restricted (boldface SW).

3.2 The (mostly) ‘Irish features’ of Newfoundland English: tense and aspect Irish Newfoundland English has inherited various ways of marking tense and aspect distinctions from its input lect(s) in Ireland. Chiefly among them are a) the after perfect (F98) and b) verbal -s in all persons of the simple present (F171; which is found in both donor varieties, albeit with different semantics; see below for details). Many more features could be listed here, such as the medial object (or “split”) perfect (F97; I have the book read) or the use of the present tense for “extended-now” uses of the present perfect (F101; we live here since 1980), all based on Irish English input. Some examples are provided in (4). (4) a. b. c. d.

You’re, you’re over 50 years gave up fishing, 60 years gave up fishing (v ‘laughter’). (MUNFLA C14667) You never hear tell o’ that years ago. (PC005) I’m here 35 years now. (PC005) That’s what I’m telling people for years. (PC002)

This section is only going to focus on the after perfect and verbal -s, however, given that it is those two features which are truly salient in present-day NfldE and which play a significant role both in people’s perception of the variety as well as academic research.

3.2.1 The after perfect The feature was brought to Newfoundland by settlers from Ireland, probably in the 19th century. At that time, the Irish were not the only settlers – and given that they probably wanted to fit in in their new home, we could have expected that they would lose all ‘typically Irish’ features, particularly those which would actually impede communication or lead to misunderstandings, which many morphosyntactic features, including the after perfect, do. That is, we would have expected both the Founder Principle (the first dialect in place wins out) and dialect levelling to do their job. Only in the case of the after perfect, they didn’t. Some examples from NfldE are provided in (5). (5) a.

You watch Oprah? No. I’m after watchin’ like, say, probably one or two shows. (PC003) b. … like now, dad is after movin’ on and stuff like that, so. (PC024) c. They’re after dying about 30 years ago. (MUNFLA C1142) d. I’m after being to Edmonton for instance twice this year (PC030)

The after perfect is famous among dialectologists because it is one of the few (and possibly the only safe) candidate(s) for substrate influence in Irish English (IrE): the English construction is modelled on a parallel construction in Irish (Gaelic) practically morpheme-by-morpheme. The Irish construction, like the English one, consists of a form of be, a preposition meaning ‘after’ (Irish tar éis) and a (de)verbal noun (the -ing form in English). Note that in Irish, the unmarked word order is VSO: Irish Tá siad tar éis teach a thógáil. [is they after house build-VN] IrE They are after building a house. ‘They have just built a house.’ (Hickey 2007: 149)

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Tracing the history of the construction offers some interesting insights into its development both in Irish and IrE. Analysing instances of the after perfect in older literature, researchers were able to establish that (cf. Hickey 2007, McCafferty 2006) a) before 1800, future uses dominated in Irish, but were later lost, possibly shortly before the form was transferred to English, as future reference existed, but was rare even in the earliest examples of after Ving in IrE; b) contrary to earlier assumptions, the after perfect was never used exclusively as hot-news perfect in IrE; rather, its semantics paralleled the construction’s Irish semantics; c) in early stages of IrE, after Ving was associated with a wide range of perfect meanings, including resultative, continuative and existential (paralleling its use in Irish); d) later, possibly as a consequence of the rise of yet another aspectual meaning of the perfect, this time the resultative (such as IrE they have the ham cooked or I have the letter written), the after perfect became more and more restricted to ‘immediate’, recent past contexts exclusively, both in Irish and IrE. So we can conclude that, historically, the meaning of the after perfect has actually been narrowed by concomitant changes in other perfect(ive) constructions. The result was a restriction to the use that came to be known as ‘hot news’. Based on evidence from both IrE and NfldE, the after perfect is no longer restricted to the ‘hot news’ meaning (cf. also Clarke 2010: 79). Rather, it seems to follow a path typical of the development of perfects in the world’s languages – it is on its way to becoming a simple past form, following a typical grammaticalisation path. When looking at the history of perfects and perfective forms in the world’s languages, many of them have started out as forms of be and have. From there, they acquire resultative and completive aspect (cf. e.g. he has gone and he is gone) before becoming simple markers of past action. The English present perfect is still mostly in the ‘perfective’ stage, but to different degrees in different varieties. In many other European languages, on the other hand, the present perfect has developed into the narrative tense – thus, in German, it is more usual to say Ich habe gestern Zeitung gelesen ‘I have read the paper yesterday’ than Ich las gestern Zeitung ‘I read the paper yesterday’. Given what we know about the pathways of change, it is likely that the English present perfect will become a narrative tense in the (near) future, as well. Returning to the examples in (5), it is obvious that they are not prototypical cases of the after perfect. Cliché examples would be those where we can add just and by doing so make the ‘hot news’ aspect more obvious. So Barack Obama is after being elected President would have been a perfect example of the after perfect – on November 4, 2008, uttered when it was literally hot news, that is. Even a day later, the appropriateness of the ‘just now’ meaning could already be called into question. As for our examples, (5a) is much more likely to have an experiential reading (‘I’ve only watched Oprah a couple of times in my life’) rather than ‘hot news’ relevance. (5b) could even be read as ‘Dad is about to move on’, mixing prospective (future) and retrospective (past) meanings, and (5c) and (5d) both include definite past time adverbials – 30 years ago and this year. Thus, if we were to ‘translate’ (5c) and (5d), the most likely tense to use is not the present perfect, but the simple past – they died about 30 years ago and I was in Edmonton twice this year (although we could construct the latter example to include ‘already – but I might go a third time’, which would save the present perfect – perfective – reading). So we see in these modern examples of the after perfect that it is by no means restricted to ‘current relevance’ situations anymore. In fact, for most Newfoundlanders, it has adopted a simple past meaning, losing all hints of aspect. This was confirmed in a questionnaire-based survey conducted in 2006, where some 80 Newfoundlanders generally agreed that, without further context, it is impossible to judge for them whether the event in the after clause is recent or not. As for the syntactic constraints that had been identified in previous research, however, the questionnaire results show that they are still very much in place in Newfoundland. One constraint concerns the combination of modal auxiliaries with the after perfect (e.g. I think someone should be after telling them), another the possibility to use after Ving in negated contexts (e.g. They aren’t after leaving), with at least a third of participants classifying such uses as unacceptable. The 2006 questionnaire also provided some interesting insights concerning the perception of non-standard language: although even non-Newfoundlanders accept the ‘traditional’ hot news meaning of the after

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Map 1: Avalon Peninsula with Pouch Cove (northern marker) and Petty Harbour (southern marker) (courtesy of Google Maps)

perfect, they generally reject the more ‘modern’ simple past interpretation. The salience of the form is also revealed by some of the comments that participants made: on dialect in general: This was a very silly questionnaire with very little proper English but I guess that’s what makes us Newfie’s (sic) Hey!! “Unacceptable” here and elsewhere means that I recognize this usage as “incorrect” and would consider it wrong on a student paper, rather than that I find it personally objectionable in informal usage. laymen’s knowledge concerning the regional origins of the form (“bay” in the following two comments simply means “uneducated”, “dialect speaker”, although people who are really from “around the bay” would most likely have a Southwest English background and not use the form): Older men from ‘around the bay’ would say this. Another one I use. God love the bay! However, none of the other social variables proved relevant: neither the age nor the regional origin of the participants mattered – not the contrast between the Avalon peninsula as “Irish” vs. many other bays as nonIrish, nor a family connection to Ireland. Thus, we can conclude that the after perfect (F98) has managed to jump across dialect boundaries and developed from an IrE dialect marker into a feature of general Newfoundland English, which – while clearly above the level of consciousness – is not as heavily stigmatised nor quite as salient as some other markers. This ‘intermediate’ status made possible not only its continuing expansion in meaning, but may also be responsible for the feature’s success story in Newfoundland – as an immigrant who ‘made it’ in the New World and is now even seen as a way to signal to an outsider ‘I’m from Newfoundland’. In other words, the after perfect has become an identity marker. In that, it parallels another feature of NfldE, namely verbal -s.

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3.2.2 Verbal -s Traditionally associated with habituality (see e.g. Clarke 1997), -s-marked forms throughout the present tense paradigm are considered one of the hallmarks of NfldE. Typical examples are provided in (6). (6) a. b. c. d. e.

a place where people barks their traps, in the spring of the year, (MUNFLA C1309) I believes in ghosts, I do (PC005) we used to call it jannying and now we calls it mummering. (PC001) If I figures out how to pause it. (PC007) for every wart you writes down, you puts a line on the back of this (PC024)

Verbal -s (F171) is probably one of the most widely investigated features of dialect morphosyntax in varieties of English (cf. e.g. Godfrey and Tagliamonte 1999; Montgomery, Fuller, and DeMarse 1993; Van Herk and Walker 2005). In ongoing research, Van Herk and Wagner (forthcoming; cf. also Van Herk, Childs, and Thorburn 2007/2009; Wagner 2009) show that the feature is currently changing both its status and function in modern NfldE. Investigating verbal -s in two NfldE communities (Petty Harbour and Pouch Cove), Van Herk and Wagner (2011; for Petty Harbour, also see Comeau 2011) find that the trajectory of change (functional re-interpretation and re-functionalisation as identity marker) is an uncommon one as it goes against ‘conventional sociolinguistic wisdom’: while the disappearance of previous constraints is common (levelling), a reversal of such constraints is not. In fact, the stability of constraint rankings is considered to be at the heart of comparative sociolinguistics (cf. Tagliamonte 2002). In addition, both of the communities show what we call an upside-down linguistic marketplace effect, with speakers from the middle age group – usually the most standard speakers – showing the highest rates of -s use. Based on some socio-economic and historical differences between the communities, changes to the traditional verbal -s system seem to follow the same path, with both villages having progressed along that path to different degrees. As for the role of age and sex, we are witnessing a ‘backward’ linguistic market effect: this market requires traditional speech rather than the ‘standard’. In Pouch Cove, this is relevant for both men and women so far as they were (or still are) working in traditional jobs (men: fishing; women: fish plant). In Petty Harbour, this is somewhat true for men; women, however, are already orienting toward St. John’s (i.e. more standard language). The second part of the constraint reversal concerns the role of habituality or stativity as manifested in the temporal adverbials accompanying -s forms and the verb type (semantic type). Here, Petty Harbour is also further along the projected pathway of change: only when(ever) and related adverbials still favour -s, will other adverbials disfavour the form. This is a replacement or even reversal of the traditional constraints. The same holds for verb type, where statives now favour -s, thus showing the opposite effect of traditional studies (where action verbs favour -s). If we want to look at the systems in relation to each other, it seems that the Petty Harbour system has advanced farthest from the traditional system: as for habitual adverbials, only one subset still favour -s. While there are no significant effects in the Pouch Cove data, there is a clear tendency toward a ‘Petty-Harbour-like’ system. Concerning verb type, Petty Harbour already features a new system which is in fact a reversal of the old system (statives favour, action verbs disfavour -s). In Pouch Cove, the old system is still active, but it is weakening in direction of the Petty Harbour system, indicating that the same forces are at work in both communities, albeit at different speeds.

3.2.3 Language and identity or: the “second life” of dialect features The after perfect (F98) and verbal -s (F171) share a common development: originally regionally restricted dialect features, they have developed into ‘superstars’ (cf. Van Herk and Childs 2011) of NfldE and are now increasingly used to signal a sense of belonging, having lost most (if not all) of their stigma. Identity and local pride are important issues in Newfoundland. The importance of language in creating a sense of identity and belonging, while only one aspect of culture, is supported by a host of research (cf.

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Palmer 2010). That Newfoundlanders are proud of their long history, cultural heritage and traditions is obvious to anyone who has ever met a Newfoundlander or visited Newfoundland. Even today, many Newfoundlanders think that becoming a ‘part of’ Canada was not a very good idea. It has not only cost them their (political) independence, but Confederation also made them the poor house of Canada – or at least that’s what many people think. A number of historical events helped shape and support this view: where seasonal jobs (fishing in the summer, logging in the winter) had been the rule for centuries, the introduction of unemployment benefits led to fishermen only working in the summer and living on unemployment in the winter, making (winter) unemployment rates skyrocket. The cod moratorium crippled the island’s economy, with the majority of the workforce out of a job practically overnight. The discovery of oil off the shores of Newfoundland seemed like a ray of light, but any hopes for a better future were shattered once more when most of the profits (at first) went into federal, not provincial coffers. Most recently, many Newfoundlanders have found work in the Alberta oilfields, creating a Newfoundland diaspora in Fort McMurray. The health risks of working with tar sands are well-known, but salaries are high and most Newfoundlanders hope to save enough money to to be able return to Newfoundland after a couple of years. But they are also very aware of the fact that many people won’t come back – witness the following four statements: (7) I’d like to think my children will live here but yet I don’t see how they can possibly live here and have a, have decent life style. You know they, I think they can’t even live in Newfoundland and have a half-decent life style. They’re gonna have to go away to Alberta somewhere to make the money, then maybe come back when they’ve made money, but they may never come you never know. I hope they don’t go but right now I have nephews who’ve gone and they, you know, they talk of coming back, they were only gone to make money and come back again, but who knows. (PC015) (8) A: Do you think your brother’ll live in (village name) when he graduates, you think he’d move on or? B: Gets older? I don’t know. If, if the fishery, you know if he can stay crabbing with dad, follow in that kind of footstep I’d say he will, but if that shuts down too like everything else, I can see (name) moving to Alberta probably working on the rigs or doing something up there. (PC016) (9) A: B: A: B:

So do you know many people that are havin’ to go away to get a job? Yeah, a few. Where do they go usually? They go to Alberta, the most, most lot of them lately. In the, eh, oil pits. Tar sands too, I think. (PC025)

(10) A: What d’you plan on doin’ now, for the immediate future? B: Might go [to] Alberta for a few years. (PC028)

3.3 Looking ahead: NfldE features that are likely to “make it” Based on what was discussed in the previous paragraphs, the deductions to be made here are obvious. From what we know about their past and current status, we can assume that the following morphosyntactic features of NfldE are going to ‘survive’ prescriptive pressure and levelling tendencies: • • •

F98: after perfect (but with extended semantics) F171: verbal -s (but with new characteristics / constraints) F1, F2: gendered pronouns (but in “modern” system with she taking precedence over he, i.e. a continued strengthening of F1)

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4 Other notable features of NfldE The following examples were chosen to illustrate some of the more frequent morphosyntactic peculiarities of NfldE; the choice is based on frequency in more modern dialect material. All features are described in detail in the respective chapter of the Handbook (cf. Clarke 2004), and Clarke (2010) has a whole chapter on morphosyntax.

4.1 Auxiliary/main verb distinction (F139) Primary verbs are used in their base form as auxiliaries, but always add -s as main verbs (F171): (11) a. b. c. d. e. f. g. h. i. j. k. l. m. n.

it is fallin’ down so it do need a lot o’ work (PC005) So she worked like a horse, always, still do. (PC015) What do he think of being in Pouch Cove? (PC033) He said he don’t know but he still got the one skate. (PC002) Oh, Miss Bradley is lovely, she’ve been able to get home every weekend, she haven’t missed a weekend (MUNFLA C10373) Oh my, what have been done wit’ our land? (PC011) since dad have passed on (MUNFLA C10373) So she have false teeth? (PC019) he never (gap ‘indistinct’) across, Dick, haven’t he? (MUNFLA C14666) Oh I does it now, since I’m here bi myselfish like (PC010) The Moreys doesn’t do any fishin’ (MUNFLA C1309) And every year I has trouble you know. (MUNFLA C14663) we usually has a fire and cook-up over it. (PC018) No, ’cause you has, now like they has no fires. (PC024)

4.2 Over-/underuse, differences in use of definite and indefinite articles (F60, F64) NfldE uses a lot of zero articles where most other varieties would use either a definite or an indefinite article: (12) a. b. c. d. e. f. g. h. i. j. k.

[a] Lot more people living here (PC001) I had him one time for [a] short period of time. (PC002) sometimes they’d take [a] nickel or a dime (PC005) and another one came down from the other end with [a] baby. (PC008) Yeah. [the] Fellow get away off a ship (MUNFLA C2810) [I] Didn’t [the] first year I came here (MUNFLA C10373) I have a big hard patch down in [the] back o’ the house. (PC003) Yeah, and [the] whole twelve days of Christmas they would … (PC010) the stage when you were landed, put ’em in [the] stage (PC020) and he was in [the] merchant Marine. (PC027) Did you really think there was such [a] thing as fairies? (PC010)

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4.3 Prepositions One of the most salient features of NfldE is that prepositions are used differently, omitted (F216), inserted compared with Standard English. In a sequence of two prepositions, the second one is often deleted. (13) a. b. c. d. e. f. g. h. i. j. k. l. m. n. o. p. q. r. s. t.

I can’t remember what happened to the hearse and where it disappeared at [to] (PC005) Sometimes it was accordin’ [to] how many hooks you had on (PC009) from the first day back [in] school again, you know, he took a week off. (PC027) Got to send them back [to] Torbay. (PC024) We moved in here in June and Diane was born (PREP?) [in] November. (PC010) I was born [in] St. John’s (PC029) you know where he came from before he came [to] Shoe Cove? (PC005) when the old fellows died, the old men died [in] Shoe Cove, that’s it, (C14663) that’s where stuff used to end up to, down [in/at] the swimmin’ pool. (PC019) There’s no restaurants here now, down [in] Pouch Cove. (PC003) You know when I left to go [to] church I saw that. (PC002) I was always delicate, when I go [to] school in the morning, (C10373) they used to hold them into the Lion’s Club in there. (PC025) And we stopped like, [in/at] Gros Morne (PC024) I was out on the West Coast, out [in] Corner Brook. (PC009) you used to have ’em go out [to] somebody else (PC027) I was over [on] the mainland the other day (PC029) And I’d be afraid, I’d go up [on] [the] top of Noseworthy’s Hill (PC002) she went up [to] Ontario before I did (PC029) Grew up [in] Pouch Cove. (PC024)

4.4 Clefts (F223) (14) a. b. c. d. e. f. g. h. i. j.

Well it’s a lot of memories at that old school you know? (PC002) it couldn’t have been very many people in Pouch Cove (PC002) there’s a boat come in down here (PC007) there’s none of them looks like the Gruchys (PC007) It was the grandfather had the schooners, he usen’t go. (PC012) It was a malt was given to the schools by [the] government (PC012) There used to be a lot of jannying done (PC012) that’s all we ever did was play cards (PC015) there’s not many jobs offered around here (PC016) there was Vaseline rubbed in them (PC019)

5 Conclusion: A note of caution It has been repeatedly stressed in this chapter that there is no single variety “Newfoundland English”. For WAVE, this has one major consequence: the ratings given to the individual features are mostly for the most traditional vernaculars; they do generally not reflect present-day (urban) Newfoundland English. This is a problem that users of WAVE should be made aware of. While some authors such as myself discuss traditional dialects with systems that only survive in remnants, if at all, others talk about current varieties. Comparing them with each other can only be done with keeping in mind that these are essentially diachronic, not synchronic comparisons. In the long run, it would be ideal to include two varieties for those dialects with a long history – the traditional and the modern system.

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Appendix: Overview of WAVE features attested in Newfoundland English # 1

2 6 7 8 9

11 13 15 16 23 28 29 30 31 32 34

35 39 43 45 49 52

feature NL example I. Pronouns, pronoun exchange, nominal gender she/her used for inanimate referents Now I could be wrong, don’t quote me on that. I could be wrong, but I think it better she [Pouch Cove] stays like she [Pouch Cove] is right now. (PC005) he/him used for inanimate referents she wasn’t allowed to renew ’im [licence], right? (PC032) generalized third person singular pronoun: object pronouns me instead of I in coordinate subjects Like, when I was younger me and my dad and mom and my brother and sister used to sit around the bonfire (PC008) myself/meself instead of I in coordinate Oh I know, myself and (gap ‘first name’) used to have to turn it off subjects and we’d be in hysterics laughin’ (PC017) benefactive “personal dative” construction (using the object form of the pronoun) regularized reflexives paradigm Dad’s best friend shot hisself (PC014) And they were going to do that theirself (MUNFLA C2873–4) subject pronoun forms serving as base for reflexives absolute use of reflexives (e.g. as topic they said, hisself was doin’ all kinds of prancin’ and everything marker) on the bridge (MUNFLA C1312) emphatic reflexives with own Just cut them for your own self like. (PC027) what they kept for their own selves (PC027) second person pronoun forms other than you as (modifying) possessive pronoun use of us + NP in subject function use of us in object function (with singular referent) non-coordinated subject pronoun forms as long as I’m not courtin’ he (MUNFLA C1308) in object function non-coordinated object pronoun forms in People weren’t really into riding, wasn’t them? (PC010) subject function distinction between emphatic vs. B non-emphatic forms of pronouns forms or phrases for the 2nd person plural witches, any witches in (gap ‘place name’) that you guys know or pronoun other than you anybody that ye calls witches or? (PC018) “when yous comes back” he said (Tales 048) forms or phrases for the 2nd person “Father” he said “what ye tryin to do?” (Tales 023) singular pronoun other than you plural forms of interrogative pronouns: using additional (free or bound) elements subject pronoun drop: referential Don’t have that here now. (PC001) pronouns insertion of it where StE favours zero II. Noun phrase regularization of plural formation: Got their wifes an’ got in a row with ’em (Tales 101) phonological regularization associative plural marked by postposed that’s the one (gap ‘first name, last name’) and them played for. and them/them all/dem (Note: by (PC030) associative plural we mean a plural form when Bert and them started fishin’. (PC018) indicating that reference is made to the your father and them must have bonfires. (PC029) named referent plus several other people closely associated with him/her (e.g. family, friends or colleagues).

rating A

B C A A C

B C B C C A B B C

B

C B B B B B

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Newfoundland English

54

56 60 64 68 70 72 78 79 80

88 89

91

group plurals (i.e. plural marker attached to the end of an entire phrase rather than just its head) absence of plural marking only after quantifiers use of definite article where StE has indefinite article use of definite article where StE favours zero them instead of demonstrative those proximal and distal demonstratives with ‘here’ and ‘there’ group genitives double comparatives and superlatives regularized comparison strategies: extension of synthetic marking regularized comparison strategies: extension of analytic marking III. Verb phrase: tense and aspect wider range of uses of progressive be + V-ing than in StE: extension to stative verbs wider range of uses of progressive be + V-ing than in StE: extension to habitual contexts do as habitual marker

92

other non-standard habitual markers: synthetic

93

other non-standard habitual markers: analytic

95 96 97

be sat/stood with progressive meaning there with past participle in resultative contexts medial object perfect

98

after perfect

99

102

levelling of present perfect and simple past: simple past for StE present perfect levelling of the difference between present perfect and simple past: present perfect for StE simple past simple present for continuative or experiential perfect be as perfect auxiliary

109 111 113 118 120

perfect marker already past tense/anterior marker been loosening of sequence of tenses rule is for am/will with 1st person singular would in if-clauses

100

101

B

I went up there six year (PC004) 2 or 3 seals on a rope a couple o’ mile (PC004)

B B

were you into the sports or? (PC033) I remember havin’ the house parties (PC030) they don’t know that them black rocks mean slippery (PC002) did you eat them things after? (PC033)

C B C C B B B

I’m loving it. (PC002)

B

they wouldn’t know what to be doin’ (MUNFLA C1310)

C

your family you were tellin’ me did (no emphasis) come from Jersey (PC012) same place where the youngsters burns the wood today. (PC014) I suppose if they builds up there it’ll be good for the council too. (PC005) don’t be moving the rock there’s babies behind them! (PC002) don’t be doin’ stuff (PC007) Don’t be gettin’ on with that foolishness (PC023) what do you be talkin’ about? (PC032) Well and we’d all be sat around down on the rocks (PC002) There used to be a lot of jannying done (PC012)

C

I have a hip dislocated when I was hit by a car (PC025) I remember one Christmas, we had a ham boiled (PC012) we have a community stage built over there now (MUNFLA C4549) mother told me stories but I’m after forgettin’ (PC003) I’m after quittin’ a thousand times (PC029)

A

A

C

B B

A A C

You don’t smoke, do you? – No, I’m off of ’em a year now (PC029) We’re up here eighteen year, ain’t we? (MUNFLA C1123) and his older brother was passed away last Christmas (MUNFLA C14667) I think you were gone away (PC033)

I have a hip dislocated when I was hit by a car (PC025) “You’re a smarter man!” he said “than I is.” (Tales 046) the man would say if you would take the thirty-two dollars (MUNFLA C2196)

B A

B C A C A

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122 125

126

128 129 130 131 133 134 135 139

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IV. Verb phrase: modal verbs epistemic mustn’t new quasi-modals: core modal meanings (counterfactual (e.g. liketa, supposeta);obligation (e.g. belong to), volition, possibility, etc.) new quasi-modals: aspectual meanings (e.g. past habitual (useta); immediate future (fixin to/finna), etc.) V. Verb phrase: verb morphology levelling of past tense/past participle verb forms: regularization levelling of past tense/past participle verb forms: unmarked forms levelling of past tense/past participle verb forms: past tense for past participle levelling of past tense/past participle verb forms: past participle for past tense double marking of past tense a-prefixing on ing-forms a-prefixing on elements other than ing-forms distinctive forms for auxiliary vs. full verb meanings of primary verbs

144

use of gotten and got with distinct meanings (dynamic vs. static)

147

was for conditional were VII. Negation multiple negation / negative concord

154 155 156 158

ain’t as the negated form of be ain’t as the negated form of have invariant don’t for all persons in the present tense

159

never as preverbal past tense negator

165

invariant non-concord tags (including eh?)

171 172 173 180

184 185 186

VIII. Agreement invariant present tense due to generalization of 3rd person -s existential / presentational there’s/there is/there was with plural subjects variant forms of dummy subject there in existential clauses, e.g. they, it or zero was/were generalization

invariant be with non-habitual function IX. Relativization relativizer that or what in non-restrictive contexts which for ‘who’

C B

A

A when he come back O’Flaherty give an estimate of the Indians (MUNFLA C2873–4) because the youngsters are froze to death (PC033)

A

well I been aboard on the Newfie Bullet (PC004)

A

I’m not a-braggin’, alright. (PC029) You’ve a-killed your mother. (Tales 101) “I’m a ol’ man” he said “a-past mi labour” (Tales 101) And you know what, I does that today. (PC009) the big old trains that they haves now when they’re married (PC010) Oh my, what have been done wit’ our land? (PC011) sometimes it don’t come back the same (PC020) do you ever hear of anyone who has gotten lost in the woods? (PC008) I remembers one Christmas I got a doll (PC009)

A

C C C A

B

A But, mi father never made no spruce beer. (PC010) you don’t remember nothin’ about it (PC028) Mackerel ain’t bad either when they’re fresh. (PC027) only because of F139 main verb has -s, aux uses base form: she have been down the house (PC029) I haves heat on in the bedroom (PC029) she called out to ’im and accused him of tryin’ to frighten her he said he never did it (MUNFLA C1176) I never knew she taught! (PC002) I know it’s amazing innit (PC002) Spooky, innit? (PC033) And he’s your mother’s cousin, is it? (PC003) now you lives over on the fairy side of the cove (PC002) Come on now we finishes this up (PC011) there was no phones down there then (PC004) there’s some people come here to look at water (PC006)

A B B A

A

B

A A B

we was joined together as one (MUNFLA C1375) You wasn’t supposed to (MUNFLA C1125) they was drinking rum (PC006)

A

C B With (gap ‘last name’), which is my relatives also (PC020)

C

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Newfoundland English

190 192 193

198

201 202 203

204

relativizer what or a form derived from what use of analytic or cliticized that his/that’s, what his/what’s, etc. instead of whose gapping/zero-relativization in subject position deletion of stranded prepositions in relative clauses (“preposition chopping”) X. Complementation for-based complementizers unsplit for to in infinitival purpose clauses for (to) as infinitive marker

A

no subordination; chaining construction linking two main verbs (motion and activity)

227 228 229 234

235

C

She was born [at] home. (PC011) I was born [in] St. John’s (PC029) taking them [on] tours down [to] the cape on the trail (PC016) degree modifier adverbs have the same but the fish was awful scarce (MUNFLA C1312) form as adjectives that was a real nice man (PC007) other adverbs have the same form as come on now, come quick, I got to go quick then (MUNFLA adjectives C14663) XIII. Discourse organization and word order other options for clefting than StE We’re after being away where ’t is neither one of us gone home (MUNFLA C1121) “negative inversion” (sentence-initial neg. auxiliary verbs) inverted word order in indirect questions I wonder could they have done it today (PC011) no inversion/no auxiliaries in And how long you’ve been working there? (PC009) wh-questions no inversion/no auxiliaries in main clause But you know anyone who could fix bones? (PC001) yes/no questions They go moose hunting this year? (PC034) like as a focussing device Eh, but I can remember like, as kids growin’ up, you’d hear like in, in the night time you’d hear like the kettle boiling or the cup hittin’ off the saucer and stuff like that. (PC023) she’s like 17 (PC030) like as a quotative particle

213

226

A

A

clause-final but = ‘really’

223

everybody came nearly brought something with ’em (PC010) I think it was (gap ‘first name’ ‘last name’) in there died (PC004) that’s the only thing I got still stays with me (PC029)

I don’t know what it is, but. (PC017) They get the water and sewer up there, but. (PC005) we don’t know where we’re going, but. (PC007) I don’t know what else she can do, but. (PC021) You [’re] a Newfoundlander, you’re runnin’ your own self down (MUNFLA C2200) we were growin’ up, boys and girls, had to, had to work (MUNFLA C14663) They went to town, they went with potatoes in a, in a sleigh or something (PC010)

as what / than what in comparative clauses

212

221

C

C B C

XI. Adverbial subordination clause-final but = ‘though’

220

C

(only as reduced version of F202) you couldn’t get in for to get a drink of beer (MUNFLA C1122) it was so much then for to have your supper (PC010) it was an unheard of thing for to start anything Friday (MUNFLA C1125) he had the privilege for turn on the lights (MUNFLA C14663) it was as bad as what it was in Fermeuse (MUNFLA C4549) I have just as much to say in dat paper as what you have (MUNFLA C1374) The houses are a lot bigger than what I’m used to. (PC001) The houses are a lot bigger than what I’m used to. (PC018)

211

216

bring in the wood what he cut off (MUNFLA C2170)

XII. Adverbs and prepositions omission of StE prepositions

A

A C

A A

C C A B A A

A

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Susanne Wagner

References Clarke, Sandra. 1997. English verbal -s revisited: the evidence from Newfoundland. American Speech 72: 227–259. Clarke, Sandra. 2004. Newfoundland English: morphology and syntax. In: Bernd Kortmann, and Edgar W. Schneider (eds.), A Handbook of Varieties of English, Vol. II: Morphology and Syntax, 303–318. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Clarke, Sandra. 2010. Newfoundland and Labrador English. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Comeau, Philip. 2011. Verbal -s in vernacular Newfoundland English: A combined variationist and formal account of grammatical change. University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics 17: 31–40. Elworthy, Frederic Thomas. 1877 [1965b]. An Outline of the Grammar of the Dialect of West Somerset. (Publications of the English Dialect Society 19.) London: Tru·bner [Vaduz: Kraus Reprint Ltd.]. Godfrey, Elizabeth, and Sali Tagliamonte. 1999. Another piece of the verbal -s story: Evidence from Devon in southwest England. Language Variation and Change 11: 87–121. Halpert, Herbert, and John D.A. Widdowson. 1996. Folktales of Newfoundland – The Resilience of the Oral Tradition. St. John’s: Breakwater. Hickey, Raymond. 2007. Irish English. History and Present-day Forms. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hofmann, Matthias. in progress. Mainland Canadian English phonology in Newfoundland? Evidence from the urban middle class of St. John’s. PhD Thesis, Chemnitz University of Technology, Germany. Kortmann, Bernd, and Edgar W. Schneider (eds.). 2004. A Handbook of Varieties of English. A Multimedia Reference Tool. Vol. I: Phonology, Vol. II: Morphology and Syntax. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Kortmann, Bernd, and Benedikt Szmrecsanyi. 2004. Global synopsis. In: Bernd Kortmann, and Edgar W. Schneider (eds.), A Handbook of Varieties of English, Vol. II: Morphology and Syntax, 1142–1202. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter. McCafferty, Kevin. 2006. Be after V-ing on the past grammaticalisation path: How far is it after coming? In: Hildegard L.C. Tristram (ed.), The Celtic Englishes IV. Proceedings from the 4th International Colloquium on the “Celtic Englishes”, University of Potsdam, Golm, 22–26 September 2004, 130–151. Potsdam: Universitätsverlag. Montgomery, Michael, Janet M. Fuller, and Sharon DeMarse. 1993. ‘The Black Men Has Wives and Sweet Harts [and Third Person Plural -s] Jest like the White Men’: Evidence for verbal -s from written documents on nineteenth-century African American Speech. Language Variation and Change 5: 335–354. Pawley, Andrew. 2004. Australian Vernacular English: some grammatical characteristics. In: Bernd Kortmann, and Edgar W. Schneider (eds.), A Handbook of Varieties of English, Vol. II: Morphology and Syntax, 611–642. Berlin/ New York: Mouton de Gruyter.

Palmer, Craig T. 2010. License plates, flags and social support networks: The symbolic cultural landscape of the Newfoundland diaspora in Ft. McMurray, Alberta. Material Culture 42: 1–24. Schneider, Edgar W. 2004. Synopsis: morphological and syntactic variation in the Americas and the Caribbean. In: Bernd Kortmann, and Edgar W. Schneider (eds.), A Handbook of Varieties of English, Vol. II: Morphology and Syntax, 1104–1115. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Siemund, Peter. 2008. Pronominal Gender in English: A Study of English Varieties from a Cross-Linguistic Perspective. London: Routledge. Tagliamonte, Sali. 2002. Comparative Sociolinguistics. In: J. K. Chambers, Peter Trudgill, and Natalie Schilling-Estes (eds.), The Handbook of Language Variation and Change, 729–763. Oxford: Blackwell. Thorburn, Jennifer. 2011. “There’s no place like Petty Harbour”: Negation in a post-insular community. Regional Language Studies … Newfoundland 22: 8–17. Van Herk, Gerard, and Becky Childs. 2011. Superstars and bit players: Salience and the fate of local dialect markers. Paper presented at Methods in Dialectology XIV, London/ON, Aug. 2–6, 2011. Van Herk, Gerard, Becky Childs and Jennifer Thorburn. 2007/2009. Identity marking and affiliation in an urbanizing Newfoundland Community. PAMAPLA 31: 85–94. Van Herk, Gerard, and James A. Walker. 2005. S marks the spot? Regional variation and early African American correspondence. Language Variation and Change 17: 113–131. Wagner, Susanne. 2003. Gender in English pronouns. Myth and reality. PhD thesis, Freiburg: Albert-Ludwigs-Universität. http://www.freidok.uni-freiburg.de /volltexte/1412. Wagner, Susanne. 2004a. English dialects in the Southwest: morphology and syntax. In: Bernd Kortmann, and Edgar W. Schneider (eds.), A Handbook of Varieties of English, Vol. II: Morphology and Syntax, 154–174. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Wagner, Susanne. 2004b. ‘Gendered’ pronouns in English dialects. In: Bernd Kortmann (ed.), Dialectology Meets Typology, 479–496. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Wagner, Susanne. 2007. Unstressed periphrastic do – from Southwest England to Newfoundland? English WorldWide 28: 249–278. Wagner, Susanne. 2009. You calls it jannying, we calls it mummering – but what do they call it? New and old constraints on verbal -s. Paper presented at NWAV 38, Oct. 22–25, 2009, Ottawa/ON. Wagner, Susanne, and Matthias Hofmann. in progress. We’re from Newfoundland and proud of it! Issues of language and identity: contrasting urban and rural settings. Research project, Chemnitz University of Technology, Germany. Wagner, Susanne, and Gerard Van Herk. 2011. From dialect feature to local identity marker: Converging patterns of verbal -s in two Newfoundland communities. Paper presented at Methods in Dialectology XIV, London/ON, Aug. 2–6 2011.

Newfoundland English

Data sources: PC = Pouch Cove Corpus (DFG grants Wa2432/1–1,2) MUNFLA = material from Memorial University’s Folklore and Language Archive

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Alexander Kautzsch

Earlier African American Vernacular English 1 Socio-historical background Earlier African American English (AAE) covers the type of English that slaves of African origin and their descendants acquired after having been deported to the southern part of the US. The 15 states that allowed slave-holding were Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, Arkansas, Tennessee, Kentucky, and Missouri. The time span relevant for the development of AAE lasts from the early days of colonization in the 17th century until the Great Migration (1910–1930). From after the Great Migration the varieties spoken by African Americans are commonly labelled AA(V)E or present-day African-American English. Empirical linguistic knowledge of the first two centuries (17th and 18th) of African-American English is very limited due to the lack of sources. Here research has to rely on hypotheses about likely linguistic outcomes and consequences of the respective social and historical contexts in the American South. Of the 19th century it is at least the last three quarters that can be reconstructed, interpreting late 19th and early 20th century data along the lines of an apparent time approach. This methodology assumes that informants’ different ages mirror different stages in the development of a variety through time. Since the term Earlier AAE is in itself diachronic and covers approximately 100 years of linguistic performance that can be traced and measured on the basis of reliable sources, the majority of studies of Earlier AAE aims at a diachronic perspective. Besides variation through time, the term Earlier AAE also obscures regional variability. This is very important with respect to the debate about the origins of AAE. Along the lines of the creolists’ view, AAE started out as a creole that is decreolizing, while the dialectologists’ view holds that AAE originated only through mixing of white dialects. The truth may somehow lie between these two extremes, with the type of English slaves spoke being a result of regionally diverse contact scenarios. African slaves on plantations with a low number of slaves are likely to have learned close approximations to white dialects, whereas creolized outcomes can be expected in those southern states that had huge plantations, like South Carolina and Georgia, and later Alabama or Mississippi (for closer details see Schneider 1989, Winford 1997, Mufwene 1999, Kautzsch and Schneider 2000, Kautzsch 2002). Resulting from these two observations concerning variability across time and space, it is crucial to keep in mind that the features in the WAVE-questionnaire and the labels for the evaluation of their frequency cannot refer to Earlier AAE as a homogeneous whole. There may be speakers in different regions or times for whom a certain feature may be A and others for whom the same feature may be B. Naturally, this is a shortcoming that such a large-scale cross-linguistic survey has to face, and we need to remember that the list of features and the accompanying examples only give us an idea of the morpho-syntactic possibilities as mirrored in the data sources available. The examples used in the account below come from the corpus of Earlier AAE that was collected by Kautzsch (2002). This corpus contains 117 informants from mostly uneducated, rural backgrounds, from 14 southern US-states (AK, AL, FL, GA, LA, MD, MS, NC, SC, TN, TX, VA, DC, and WV), whose birth years range from the 1830s to 1920. It adds up to roughly 469,500 words, pulled together from four printed sources of exslave narratives and interviews with hoodoo priests (Bailey et al. 1991, Perdue et al. 1976, Rawick 1977/79, and Hyatt 1970). Selections from these sources in combination have been shown to give a reliable picture of Earlier AAE in terms of regional and temporal variation (cf. Kautzsch 2002).

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2 The WAVE questionnaire The WAVE-questionnaire collects non-standard morpho-syntactic features in 13 sub-groups, with each attested feature being rated as “pervasive or obligatory” (A), “neither pervasive nor extremely rare” (B), or “exists, but rare” (C). Those features that do not occur are labelled “attested absence” (D), “not applicable” (X), “don’t know” (?). Table 1 shows the frequencies of the questionnaire features. Of the total of 235 features, 107 are attested for this historical variety of English, i.e. 45.5 %. A slim group of 11 features (4.7 %) are rated A, 38 (16.2 %) are rated B, and 58 (24.7 %) are rated C. A Group (features) I (1–47) II (48–87) III (88–120) IV (121–127) V (128–152) VI (153) VII (154–169) VIII (170–184) IX (185–199) X (200–210) XI (211–215) XII (216–222) XIII (223–234)

N 13 11 12 10 10 10 14 11 10 10 10 10 10 11

B % 16.4 12.5 16.1 10.0 10.0 10.0 25.0 16.7 10.0 10.0 10.0 10.0 10.0 14.7

N 16 13 14 10 17 10 12 19 12 11 10 12 12 38

C % 12.8 17.5 12.1 10.0 28.0 10.0 12.5 60.0 13.3 19.1 10.0 28.6 15.4 16.2

N 14 18 10 11 15 10 12 13 14 14 12 12 13 58

Total attested % 29.8 20.0 30.3 14.3 20.0 10.0 12.5 20.0 26.7 36.4 40.0 28.6 23.1 24.7

N 123 112 116 111 112 110 118 113 116 115 v12 114 115 107

D/?/X % 48.9 30.0 48,5 14.3 48.0 1.10 50.0 86.7 40.0 45.5 40.0 57.1 38.5 45.5

N 124 128 117 116 113 111 118 112 119 116 113 113 118 128

Total % 151.1 170.0 151.5 185.7 152.0 100.0 150.0 113.3 160.0 154.5 160.0 142.9 161.5 154.5

N 147 140 133 117 125 111 116 115 115 111 115 117 113 235

Table 1. Quantitative survey of feature occurrence in Earlier AAE

The fact that almost half of the non-standard features from the list are attested gives a rough idea of the variety’s “distance” from Standard English (StE), even if the list must not be taken as comprehensive. In order to gain more detailed insight, it would be instructive to compare these figures to the ones for other varieties, but this goes beyond the scope of the present survey. What is striking about Earlier AAE is that the attested features come from a high proportion of 12 out of 13 groups. In every group the proportion of attested features out of the total number of features available ranges from a minimum of 14.3 % (group IV) to a maximum of 86.7 % (group VIII). This means that the non-standard nature of Earlier AAE cannot be pinned down to one certain area of morpho-syntax, but mirrors what has been commented upon above: On the one hand, Earlier AAE is not one variety but, rather, a bundle of varieties that were spoken in a relatively large area, by relatively heterogeneous groups of speakers, who were influenced by a multitude of English dialects in the American South. On the other hand, this multitude of features might hint at the fact that features from different periods are attested, as the reconstruction of Earlier AAE is based on data that cover more than 100 years. This broad coverage of features is also backed up by the distribution of the frequency categories. Table 1 shows that the 11 A-features come from 5 groups, the 38 B-features are found in 10 groups, and the 58 C-features in 12 groups. The following sections will present the features grouped by frequency rating. Features ranked A and B will be discussed in greater detail (2.1 and 2.2), while section 2.3 picks out some C-features of interest. Finally, section 3 adds three features that complement the questionnaire.

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2.1 A-features The 11 A-features are from groups I (F7, 9, 13), II (F68), III (F104, 114), VII (F154, 155, 156, 158), and VIII (F172). Group VII “Negation” provides four pervasive features, followed by group I “pronouns, etc.” with three features, group III “Verb phrase: tense aspect” with two features, and groups II “Noun phrase” and VIII “Agreement” with one feature each. The three features in the pronoun group are “me instead of I in coordinate subjects” (F7), benefactive “personal dative” constructions (F9), and subject pronoun forms as base for reflexives (F13). F7

Me and muma was talking one time and she ain’t never tole me dat marster’s title. (Sarah Wooden Johnson, Perdue et al. 1976: 163)

The StE alternative for F7 – I – is very rare. F9

He got him a gallon can full o’ tha’ pure glass. (AL_fA, Hyatt 1970–78: 4561)

F9 has not received any attention to date, but occurs pervasively in the corpus at hand, especially with the verb get. Quantitative analyses might give further insights. F13

Well, dere’s a root doctor and den dere’s some call deyself hoodoos (AL_f1, Hyatt 1970–78: 802)

With F13, usage is practically restricted to the 3rd person plural form deyself, which occurs almost exclusively. The second form that occurs very rarely is heself. The only pervasive noun phrase feature is the use of them/dem instead of the extremely rare demonstrative those (F68). F68

You see, money in dem days was made a little different. (Sally Ashton, Perdue et al. 1976: 14)

Two tense/aspect features are rated as A. The first is completive/perfect done (F104), which is used 254 times by 66 speakers in the corpus, covering practically all regions. F104

She pull out her pocketbook an’ she’ll hand a little piece, an’ he’ll put it in his mouth an’ den she done got ’im. She’s got ’im direct. (VA_m2, Hyatt 1970–78: 1621)

The second feature here are go-based future markers, in the case of Earlier AAE gonna/goin’ to and gwine (F114). F114

God’s gwine ’rod dem wicket masters. Hit ’taint ’em what gits hit, hits gonna fall on dere chillun. (Minnie Folkes, Perdue et al. 1976: 93)

The example neatly shows that both forms can occur in one idiolect. In the corpus at hand, gonna/goin’ to is the more frequent variant with more than 200 instances, but gwine also occurs 70 times. Gwine seems to be fairly widespread especially in Virginia (47 tokens from 18 speakers), but also occurs in South Carolina (6 speakers), Florida (2 speakers), West Virginia, and Mississippi (1 speaker each). Of those speakers who use gwine, all but three were born before 1865, indicating that gwine might be on the decline from after the Civil War onwards. Four patterns of non-standard negation are also pervasively used in earlier AAE: multiple negation / negative concord (F154), ain’t as the negated form of be (F155) and have (F156), and invariant don’t for all persons in the present tense (F158) are the predominant variants by far as opposed to their standard counterparts. F154 F155 F156 F158

I don’t fin’ no fault. (Alice Gaston, Bailey et al. 1991: 59) but I aint ’bleevin in nothin but de good Lawd. (Charlie Davenport, Rawick 1977/79: 570) Look here, they aint got no wagons like we got. (Charlie Bell, Rawick 1977/79: 125) Huh ole dad had sayed dat he don’t want none uh his niggers ever sole, … (Fannie Berry, Perdue et al. 1976: 44)

The last A-feature is existential / presentational there’s/there is/there was with plural subjects (F172).

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[T]here’s some things that we all didn’t tell you. (Matilda Henrietta Perry, Perdue et al. 1976: 224)

The standard alternative there/dere are occurs only 12 times in the whole corpus, used by only 4 speakers, one each from Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, and Virginia. The birth years of these speakers (1855, 1880, 1909, and 1915) indicate that the standard variant starts being used only towards the end of the 19th century.

2.2 B-Features This section contains 38 features of Earlier AAE from all groups except three (IV, VI, and XI). Many of these features are well-researched, notably the verb phrase (morphology, tense, aspect), the copula, negation, relativization, noun morphology (plurals and possessives), and the pronominal system; cf. for example, Schneider (1989), Rickford (1999), Poplack (2000), Poplack and Tagliamonte (2001), Kautzsch (2002), Wolfram and Thomas (2002), each of whom treats a slightly different set of features, and Kautzsch (2004) for a state-of-the-art survey. It will be particularly interesting to compare the B-features of Earlier AAE to other varieties of English included in WAVE because they allow – in contrast to A and C – for some amount of variability that could be quantified in a most meaningful way. Six features in the pronoun group occur throughout the variety, but the StE variants are also used frequently. F11

regularized reflexives paradigm: Den he’ll go dere an’ find it hisself. (SC_m3, Hyatt 1970–78: 1036)

F14

no number distinction in reflexives: we kep’ it ourself in our boots. (Charlie Smith, Bailey et al. 1991: 118)

F20

subject pronoun forms as possessive pronouns: 3rd person singular: When he’s nice an’ brown, you puts a pertater in he mouf an’ one on each side, an’ yo possum is ready ter eat.“ (Della Buckley, Rawick 1977/79: 301)

F21

subject pronoun forms as possessive pronouns: 3rd person plural: an’ de boys crackin’ dey coat-tails in de wind.(Sally Ashton, Perdue et al. 1976: 15)

F28

use of us + NP in subject function: Us colored women had to go through a plenty, I tell you. (Fannie Berry, Perdue et al. 1976: 35)

F34

forms or phrases for the 2nd person plural pronoun other than you: You all try to live like young people ought to live. (Fountain Hughes, Bailey et al. 1991: 27)

In the noun phrase group, two features related to plural marking are rated B. On the one hand, -s can be extended to StE irregular plurals (F 48), but the standard forms are also used widely (cf. Schneider 1989: 165–609). F48

Well de fishes all escape an’ go in de othah side. (SC_m6, Hyatt 1970–78: 1102)

On the other hand, plural marking can be optional (F58: plural marking generally optional: for nouns with non-human referents): F58

An’ jes’ take a little ’simmon [persimmon] switch, lak dat, an’ yo’ split it an’ put it in each one of dem sock. (NC_m1, Hyatt 1970–78: 1055)

The third B-feature in this group is the use of here and there after proximal and distal demonstratives, respectively: F70

Well this here nurse would bring it to her. (Laura Smalley, Bailey et al. 1991: 64) Den, dat dere dirty wumman, she will take it den, aftah she done do dat, an’ she’ll clip off a little bit, if she kin git it, of de shirttail – a little piece of dat. (SC_m5, Hyatt 1970–78: 1834)

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Unmarked plural tends to occur with non-human referents and also seems to be favoured when numerals and other types of quantifiers, such as plural demonstratives (these) or items like all or many, are present. It also seems that certain lexical items favour unmarked plural. Results vary across studies, however (cf. Schneider 1989: 150–157). Four tense/aspect features are rated B. More research is needed to provide the contexts in which Earlier AAE expands the traditional StE usages. In the cases of the extension of progressive be + V-ing to stative verbs (F88) and the usage of simple past for StE present perfect (F99), which are also possible in present-day standard varieties of English, it would be interesting to see if Earlier AAE followed similar paths. Interestingly, Earlier AAE also allows for present perfect instead of StE simple past (F100). A systematic comparison of F99 and F100 is thus a desideratum for future research. F88 F99 F100

an’ she’ll make out dat she’s wantin’ it real bad, yo’ know, to use. (SC_m5, 1832) The biggest whipping that ever I knowed. (Laura Smalley, Bailey et al. 1991: 71) Well, let me see. I’m about 60. That’s been 45 or 50 year ago. (MD_m3, Hyatt 1970–78: 3103)

The fourth feature in this group is completive/perfect have/be + done + past participle, which is considerably less frequent than completive done + past participle (cf. F104 in 2.1. above), but still used 11 times by 10 speakers. F105

An’ when ah gwine out, regardless of where ah goes, ah fin’ dat somebody has done talk about me or no. (SC_m1 Hyatt 1970–78: 3193)

In terms of verb morphology, Earlier AAE displays some degree of levelling of past tense and past participle (F128 regularization, F129 unmarked forms, F131 past participle for past tense) and zero past tense forms of regular verbs (F132). Ing-forms are sometimes used with an a-prefix (F134). F128 F129 F131 F132 F134

You know, all those mens was runned away from there. (VA_f7, Hyatt 1970–78: 475) an’ let him go no further than God have give power tuh go an’ that is justice. (TN_f4, Hyatt 1970–78: 1118) So when I went with ’er, she taken this money – she tied it up. (MD_m2, Hyatt 1970–78: 55) My grandfather belong to Thomas Jefferson. (Fountain Hughes, Bailey et al. 1991: 27) He was goin’ through de papers an’ a-burnin’ some when he found de one ’bout me. (Ben Lewis, Rawick 1977/79: 1311)

The verb be occasionally has a an inflected form be’s that can be used both with singular and plural subjects: F136

Some of em have a pad [insole], some of ’em be’s leather. (SC_m4, Hyatt 1970–78: 1531) AH BE’S IN ANOTHAH WORLD (FL_fE, Hyatt 1970–78: 4568)

In conditional contexts was is sometimes used (F147), but further inquiry is needed to investigate the exact contexts. F147

But, uh, otherwise if you was a good, good person they wouldn’ sell you. (Fountain Hughes, Bailey et al. 1991: 32)

In addition to the pervasive occurrence of ain’t as a negator for be and have, it can also occur instead of don’t/doesn’t to negate main verbs (F157): F157

I hop’ ya ain’t wanna kno’ much mo’ ‘cause I ‘bout through. (Ishrael Massie; Perdue et al. 1976: 210)

Moreover, Earlier AAE makes use of preverbal never as past tense negator (F159): F159

I never went to school a day in my life, not a hour. (Bob Ledbetter, Bailey et al. 1991: 48) He never had no children. (MD_f5, Hyatt 1970–1978: 912)

The second example illustrates the tendency that the negative element is repeated in an indeterminate noun phrase, leading to quasi-multiple negation. Nine features in the agreement group were rated B. Among them are the five contexts in which the verb be can be deleted, either as auxiliary before V-ing (F174) or as copula before gonna (F175), NPs (F176), AdjPs (F177), and locatives (F178). This is one of the most intensively researched areas of Earlier AAE grammar and is

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often used to discuss the variety’s origins, i.e. whether it started as a creole or whether it originated from traditional English dialects. Special attention here is paid to frequency hierarchies of zero contexts. A final conclusion is difficult to come up with because various methodologies and different types of data lead to different results. (For details cf., e.g., Kautzsch 2002, Rickford and Blake 1991, Walker 1999, among others.) The bottom line may be that creole structures are present, but at the same time an even higher number of contracted and full forms of be are used. This once more backs up the basic assumption that Earlier AAE is not monolithic. Due to the fact that deleted be is not the predominant variant in the corpus as a whole, it is rated B. F174 F175 F176 F177 F178

I reckon somebody Ø livin on my land now. (James Lucas, Rawickk 1977/79: 1347) He Ø goin’ have some trouble serious wit dat ole lady … (TN_f3, Hyatt 1970–1978: 1458) Dis devil’s-shoestring Ø de main root dat’s roun’. (DC_f1, Hyatt 1970–1978: 3228) Well, they are red an’ their head Ø red [laughs] now. (Laura Smalley, Bailey et al. 1991: 69) Something else Ø in there, I want that. (Fountain Hughes, Bailey et al. 1991: 31)

The past tense forms of be, was and were may be generalized (F180). Here, all non-standard combinations are found side by side with the standard ones, with different studies reporting different types of levelling: F180

but wha’ ah’ve seed dat evenin’ when he were dyin’, ah don’ like it. (FL_f_b, Hyatt 1970–78: 4510) An’ so he was tellin’ his wife tha’. (AL_fA, Hyatt 1970–78: 4568) Dey were called de root of mystery. (SC_mA, Hyatt 1970–78: 4525) An’ so they was gonna hang Uncle Wille, least they did hang him. (AL_fA, Hyatt 1970–78: 4544)

Earlier AAE sometimes also uses invariant present tense forms, which result either from zero marking for the 3rd person singular (F170) or from generalization of 3rd person -s (F171). But the standard patterns are very frequent, too. Thus the rating as B. Constraints on non-standard usage again largely vary across studies and so do constraints on subject-verb concord as shown in 2.3 below (F181, F182) F170 F171

He come runnin’ down the big road. (MD_m4, Hyatt 1970–78: 366) I show you what I means, madam. (Charlie Bell, Rawick 1977/79: 125)

The last feature rated B in the agreement group is dey and it as variant forms of dummy subject there in existential clauses (F173). F173

Dey’s some writin’ on his grave-stone dey say tell how come he got killed. (Sam Broach, Rawick 1977/79: 226) “Lissen it’s no time fo’ doin’ evil fo’ evil or eye fo’ a eye.” (SC_mA, Hyatt 1970–78: 4518)

Apart from predominant standard relativization, Earlier AAE makes fairly frequent use of what as a relativizer (F 190) and also allows for a subject gap in relative clauses (F 193). F190 F193

Them what didn’ nurse, they didn’ come (Laura Smalley; Bailey et al. 1991: 62) T’other part of dis is de room Ø wuz 10 feet square. (Ishrael Massie, Perdue et al 1976: 210)

Unsplit for to in infinitival purpose clauses has not received wide attention in the study of Earlier AAE. In the corpus at hand it is used 13 times by 6 speakers. Four of the speakers were born in Virginia, one each in Maryland and Louisiana and their birth years range from 1835 to 1886, which suggests that this feature might be regionally restricted and starts declining towards the end of the 19th century. F202

An’ my father was dead, an’ my mother was living, but she had three, four other little children, an’ she had to put them all to work for to help take care of the other. (Fountain Hughes, Bailey et al. 1991: 33)

Another under-researched area of Earlier AAE grammar is the formation of adverbs. The only adjective used as a degree modifier (F220) in the corpus is real. There are 51 tokens used by 24 speakers born between 1837 and 1920 throughout the American south, and this feature can thus be seen as very stable. Really, on the contrary, is only used five times by four speakers. This predominance of real might call for a categorization as A, but since most examples come from one sub-corpus out of five, a rating as B for the whole of the variety is justified.

132

F220

Alexander Kautzsch

It had real beautiful rings on it a she knew it was madam’s hand that had the rings. (NY_f1, Hyatt 1970–78: 145)

In addition, quick and slow were analyzed as examples for adverbs that have the same form as adjectives (F221). Quick and slow occur 9 and 22 times, respectively, throughout the American South and in all age groups. Quickly (2 tokens) and slowly (5 tokens), by contrast, are less frequent. F221

So dat he would die slow. (SC_mA, Hyatt 1970–78: 4526) I reckon that acid was there so that [snake] blood would go in quick, you know. (VA_m4, Hyatt 1970–78: 1410)

Finally, two word order features – negative inversion (F226) and inverted word order in indirect questions (F227) – were rated B. Neither has received much attention in the study of Earlier AAE to date, and it might be interesting to uncover the constraints on their usage. F226 F227

An’ the white folks, didn’ no white people stay in Africa, south part of Africa. (Charlie Smith, Bailey et al. 1991: 108) Now, yo’ goin’ ask him whut’s his wife’s name an’ he’ll tell yo’. (TN_m1, Hyatt 1970–78: 1571)

2.3 C-features The 58 features rated C (“exist, but rare”) span the whole spectrum of morpho-syntax. Since space does not permit a full-fledged discussion of all features and since evidence is fairly scarce, I will on the one hand focus on some selected features that might hint at creole influence in certain regions of the American South. On the other hand, I will very briefly discuss subject-verb concord since it figures prominently in previous research. The first potential creole feature in the pronoun group is F2 (he/him used for inanimate referents). It occurs once in a speaker from South Carolina. Even if the referent here is not inanimate but an animal, this example is seen to fall into this category, since the reference to the animal here is obviously non-specific, with biological gender being completely irrelevant; in this case StE would clearly require it. F2

Now, if yo’ wants tuh put a fellah mind away, yo’ kill a toadfrog an’ tie a long string to ’im an’ go tuh a swingin’ limb in de woods, an’ swing him tuh de sunrise side, […] (SC_m3 A doctor at ease, Hyatt 1970–78: 1028)

It is quite likely that Earlier AAE also has F1 (she/her used for inanimate referents), but the only example to be found in the corpus at hand comes from a speaker from Virginia who refers to a horse using she. (After I put her in the stable, I was so delighted with my new horse that I hardly could sleep; VA_m1, Hyatt 1970–78: 463). In this example gender seems to be relevant and reference is specific, which suggests the categorization of F1 as D, at least based on the data available. In group II (noun phrase), the two features worth mentioning are plural marking by postposed elements (F51) and possession expressed by juxtaposition (F77). Both examples come from South Carolina and are found in creoles. F51 F77

[…] – an’ mah sister an’ dem dey1 kept worryin’. (SC_m6, Hyatt 1970–78: 4012) (The example also includes pronominal apposition. Cf. section 3.) Yo’ kin natch’ly take de fruit of poultru – a black hen, a black hen aig will put a hard stricture on yo’. (SC_m5, Hyatt 1970–78: 1832)

Three features in the tense and aspect group involve rare usages of the auxiliary be. The first is the extension of be + V-ing to habitual contexts (F89) and was found in a speaker from Louisiana. The second feature is invariant be as habitual marker (F90), used by one informant born in Florida. Finally, been occurs as past tense marker (F111) in one informant born in South Carolina.

Earlier African American Vernacular English

F89 F90 F111

133

Yo’ burn it an’ yo’ make yore wish agin, but yo’ goin’ always be wishin’ fo’ whut’s comin’ [after] it an’ dat’s money, an’ dat’s gon’a bring success to de place. (LA_f5, Hyatt 1970–78: 1062) Ev’ry time ah hit [reach] de do’ dey be off in de living room. (FL_fB,Hyatt 1970–78: 4505) This been happen now, how long? (SC_mA, Hyatt 1970–78: 4724)

The fourth feature in this group might give evidence for a come-based future marker in Earlier AAE (F116), but the fact that come occurs in the present participle and is followed by a to-infinitive rather suggests StE usage. F116

Well, they would say such-and-such a one coming to be a member of this organization – such-and-such a degree. (LA_f2, Hyatt 1970–78: 1668)

The non-standard relativizer where (F189), which is found in many creoles, is used 8 times by 6 informants from Virginia. This is somewhat surprising since Virginia is one of the southern states where creole influences are fairly unlikely due to a low ratio of (former) slaves. (cf. Kautzsch 2002: 172) F189

My father was one o de founders o’ de Underground Railroad where help de slaves to run way to de North … (Patience Avery; Perdue et al. 1976: 17)

Taken together, all of these potential creole features in Earlier AAE – except for the relativizer where – are attested in regions with a relatively high proportion of (former) slaves, but nevertheless surface only to a very limited extent. Subject-verb concord shows no connection to creoles (cf. Poplack and Tagliamonte 2001) but is also of some importance in this section since many studies have been conducted about it. It has often been tested whether the variable presence of verbal -s is sensitive to subject type (noun vs. pronoun; F181) and to the position of subject (adjacent and non-adjacent, F182). Results vary largely across studies, however, and it seems that these constraints are, as the counterexamples show, fairly weak, which is why F181 and F182 are rated C. (It might be more realistic to refer to this feature as variable verbal -s unrelated to the subject until further research gains more insight; cf. F170 and F171 in 2.2. above for invariant present tense forms). F181

lots of the trees rots down to a dust, see. (VA_m3, Hyatt 1970–78: 1390) Don’t chew go to ’em, don’t chew give ’em a thing when they come to you fer something. (NC_f1, Hyatt 1970–78: 1314)

But compare the following examples, in which verbal -s occurs after a pronoun subject but not after a noun subject: De doctors tell yo’ – de medical doctors tell yo’ it’s one thing an’ it’s anothah (SC_m4, Hyatt 1970–78: 1526) Well, dey calls it Powells now, but they called it Powell’s Crossroads then. (VA_f8, Hyatt 1970–78) F182

You take and goes to her house. (LA_f2, Hyatt 1970–78: 1666)

But compare the following example, in which verbal -s does not occur on the second verb: The following morning at three o’clock you take it out and bury it with the mouth towards the sunrise. (VA_m3, Hyatt 1970–78: 1391)

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Alexander Kautzsch

3 Features not treated in WAVE Finally, three features of Earlier AAE need to be mentioned that are not part of the WAVE-questionnaire. 1. pronominal apposition, also called left dislocation, which seems to be favoured by definite human noun phrases in subject position and is almost exclusively restricted to 3rd person contexts (Schneider 1989: 186–191). Bailey, he had a heap of ’em; how many in numbers I jes’ can’t recollect. (Jenny Patterson, Perdue et al. 1976: 219) 2. ain’t + past participle in non-perfective past tense contexts, i.e. replacing didn’t Marse Fleming ain’t cared how much we dance, but ole overseer would raise de debbil. (Matilda Henrietta Perry, Perdue et al. 1976: 224; Schneider 1989: 201–202; Kautzsch 2002: 44) 3. never + did + infinitive as alternative for simple past We never did pay him, ‘cause we ain’t never had nothin’. (Sally Ashton, Perdue et al. 1976: 14; Kautzsch 2002: 81).

4 Conclusion The WAVE-questionnaire for Earlier AAE has helped to show that this variety of English makes use of a wide variety of non-standard features across all areas of morpho-syntax. Notable among the A-features are the gobased future markers gonna and gwine, existential there’s with plural subjects, non-standard negation patterns involving ain’t and don’t, and perfective done. In group B, there are a number of features that belong to the research core of Earlier AAE, like, for example, plural marking, verb morphology and agreement in general and copula usage in particular, as well as relativization and negation. Some new results were obtained with regard to the widespread usage of morphologically unmarked adverbs like real, slow, and quick, or the restricted usage of for to. Moreover, it has been shown that it is especially features from group B that seem very promising for future research (e.g. a detailed analysis of present perfect/simple past levelling, the expansion of the progressive, was in conditional clauses, or word order in indirect questions and negative inversion) because they also have stable StE variants, which facilitates reasonable quantification. In addition, a small portion of potential creole features was discussed among the C-features. They are almost exclusively asserted in regions with a high ratio of (former) slaves, but even there their overall usage is very rare. A brief discussion of subject-verb concord led to the conclusion that verbal -s had rather be treated as independent of the subject. In sum, this very comprehensive survey of morpho-syntactic features initiated by the WAVE-questionnaire – only three additions had to be made to the list – is a very welcome contribution to the study of Earlier AAE, not the least because it takes our knowledge of this historical variety beyond the trodden paths of a restricted set of features traditionally analysed. What cannot be grasped by this survey alone, however, is the enormously high degree of variability within Earlier AAE. But a combination of the feature list with a diachronic corpus that also takes into account geographical variability has yielded a considerable amount of new results and suggests a variety of future research areas.

135

Earlier African American Vernacular English

Appendix: Overview of WAVE features attested in Earlier African American Vernacular English # 12

13 17

18 19 10

11 13 14 16 20

21 22

24 26 27

28 31 33

feature EAAVE example I. Pronouns, pronoun exchange, nominal gender he/him used for inanimate referents Now, if yo’ wants tuh put a fellah mind away, yo’ kill a toadfrog an’ tie a long string to ’im an’ go tuh a swingin’ limb in de woods, an’ swing him tuh de sunrise side, an’ every time de wind shake dat tree an’ keep him a-swingin’ (SC_m3 A doctor at ease, Hyatt 1970–78: 1028) alternative forms/phrases for referential An’ so one day ah saw this man an’ ah know the man bury the (non-dummy) it thing by the tree. (FL_mA, Hyatt 1970–78: 4732) me instead of I in coordinate subjects Me and muma was talking one time and she ain’t never tole me dat marster’s title. (Sarah Wooden Johnson, Perdue et al. 1976: 163) myself/meself instead of I in coordinate brother George an’ sister Ida an’ myself were slaves. (Harriet subjects Smith, Bailey et al. 1991: 80) benefactive “personal dative” He got him a gallon can [zero-relative] full o’ tha’ pure glass. construction (AL_fA, Hyatt 1970–78: 4561) no gender distinction in 3rd person FW: She must of had a time handling him. singular INF: Yes sir. She, he was, he was good, they was good people. (Bailey et al. 1991: 77, Laura Smalley) regularized reflexives paradigm Den he’ll go dere an’ find it hisself. (SC_m3, A doctor at ease, Hyatt 1970–78: 1036) subject pronoun forms serving as base for Well, dere’s a root doctor and den dere’s some call deyself reflexives hoodoos (AL_f1, Hyatt 1970–78: 802) no number distinction in reflexives (i.e. we kep’ it ourself in our boots. (Charlie Smith, Bailey et al. 1991: plural forms ending in -self) 118) emphatic reflexives with own I took an’ seed de whelps an’ scars fer my own self wid dese heah two eyes.(Louis Fitzgerald, Perdue et al. 1976: 94) subject pronoun forms as possessive When he’s nice an’ brown, you puts a pertater in he mouf an’ one pronouns: 3rd person singular on each side, an’ yo possum is ready ter eat.“ (Della Buckley, Rawick 1977/79: 301) subject pronoun forms as possessive an’ de boys crackin’ dey coat-tails in de wind.(Sally Ashton, pronouns: 3rd person plural Perdue et al. 1976: 15) you as possessive pronoun Then, your ’gredients is already in there – if you ’gredients ain’t in there, you put your ’gredients in afterwards. (LA_f2, Hyatt 1970–78: 1660) object pronoun forms as possessive When he got to his mistress’ house he commence to grab him pronouns: 3rd person singular missus’ baby. (Allen Crawford, Perdue et al. 1976: 75) object pronoun forms as possessive pronouns: 1st person singular object pronoun forms as possessive Hit wuz only one ob us Marster’s places cause he wuz one ob de pronouns: 1st person plural richest en highest quality gentlemen in de whole country. (Charlie Davenport, Rawick 1977/79: 559) use of us + NP in subject function Us colored women had to go through a plenty, I tell you. (Fannie Berry, Perdue et al. 1976: 35) non-coordinated object pronoun forms in Us used to play together all de time. (Fannie Berry, Perdue et al. subject function 1976: 46) independent possessive pronoun forms Yo’ take de man’s socks an’ a woman’s sock, but chew gotta git with added nasal dirty one whut he wear – git one of hern an’ one of his’n, if dey done lives together. (SC_m3, A Doctor at ease, Hyatt 1970–78: 1031)

1 There are no examples in the Earlier AAE corpus at hand, but Schneider (1989: 172) mentions “the occasional use of me” in two speakers from his sample of Earlier AAE.

rating C

C A

C A C

B A B C B

B C

C C1 C

B C C

136

34 35 38 43

48 51

Alexander Kautzsch

forms or phrases for the 2nd person plural pronoun other than you forms or phrases for the 2nd person singular pronoun other than you specialized plural markers for pronouns subject pronoun drop: referential pronouns II. Noun phrase regularization of plural formation: extension of -s to StE irregular plurals plural marking via postposed elements (e.g. (an(d) them/dem; -mob)

58

plural marking generally optional: for nouns with non-human referents

59

double determiners

66

indefinite article one/wan

67

demonstratives for definite articles

68

them instead of demonstrative those

70

proximal and distal demonstratives with ‘here’ and ‘there’

71

no number distinction in demonstratives

77

omission of genitive suffix; possession expressed through bare juxtaposition

78

double comparatives and superlatives

79

190

regularized comparison strategies: extension of synthetic marking III. Verb phrase: tense and aspect wider range of uses of progressive be + V-ing: extension to stative verbs wider range of uses of progressive be + V-ing than in StE: extension to habitual contexts invariant be as habitual marker

197

medial object perfect

199

levelling of present perfect and simple past: simple past for StE present perfect levelling of present perfect and simple past: present perfect for StE simple past simple present for continuative or experiential perfect

88 89

100 101

You all try to live like young people ought to live. (Fountain Hughes, Bailey et al. 1991: 27) I tell ye hit aint right what I seen. (James Lucas, Rawick 1977/79: 1341) an’ they had a man there [zero-relative] to make shoes for all us. (Isom Moseley, Bailey et al. 1991: 56) I got in this [unknown part of the] country somepin come to me, says, “Slackin’ your line.” (MD_m4, Hyatt 1970–78: 366)

B

Well de fishes all escape an’ go in de othah side. (SC_m6, Hyatt 1970–78: 1102) An’ so dis day when ah left – ah wuz goin’ tuh niah house – an’ mah sister an’ dem dey kept worryin’. (SC_m6, Hyatt 1970–78: 4012) An’ jes’ take a little ’simmon [persimmon] switch, lak dat, an’ yo’ split it an’ put it in each one of dem sock. (NC_m1, Hyatt 1970–78: 1055) You gave us our liberty, spent your treasures in giving or procuring us passages to this our now delightful country (Mary Jackson, Wiley 1980, 129) Raised right up in the house, you know, I, I, I remember telling one story. (Joe McDonald, Bailey et al. 1991: 51) Child, I took an’ heard dat white ’oman when she hit dat floor bouncing out dat bed. (Fannie Berry, Perdue et al. 1976: 37) You see, money in dem days was made a little different. (Sally Ashton, Perdue et al. 1976: 14) Hit him you know, knock that, knock that there spoon back, you know, on his side, on his side. (Laura Smalley, Bailey et al. 1991: 61) And he would use this here devil’s-shoestring, and he would use this here Sampson snakeroot.(VA_m3, Hyatt 1970–78: 1389) An’ jes’ lak dis periods be on ’er, take some of dat, about two teaspoons fulla dat, an’ put it in de tomatoes. (SC_m2, Hyatt 1970–78: 3947) Yo’ kin natch’ly take de fruit of poultru – a black hen, a black hen aig will put a hard stricture on yo’.(SC_m5, Hyatt 1970–78: 1832) Then they go to work and get a pint, or we say, a quart of whiskey – no, a pint would be more better – say that’s more normal, and place one, three, two tablespoons and a half full of aloes into whiskey. (VA_m3, Hyatt 1970–78: 1398) An’ thuh mos’ strong vibration came from up heah in this paht of thuh haid. (SC_mB, Hyatt 1970–78: 4670)

B

an’ she’ll make out dat she’s wantin’ it real bad, yo’ know, to use (SC_m5, 1832) Yo’ burn it an’ yo’ make yore wish agin, but yo’ goin’ always be wishin’ fo’ whut’s comin’ [after] it an’ dat’s money, an’ dat’s gon’a bring success to de place. (LA_f5, Hyatt 1970–78: 1062) Ev’ry time ah hit [reach] de do’ dey be off in de living room. (FL_f_b, 4505) An’ when she go, she have her han’chief made of dat ’fume. (FL_fB, Hyatt 1970–78: 1622) The biggest whipping that ever I knowed. (Laura Smalley, Bailey et al. 1991: 71) Well, let me see. I’m about 60. That’s been 45 or 50 year ago (MD_m3, Hyatt 1970–78: 3103) I don’ know whether you ever see a pipe smoking. (Laura Smalley, Bailey et al. 1991: 66)

B

C C C

C

B

C

C C A B

C

C

C

C

C

C C B B C

137

Earlier African American Vernacular English

102

be as perfect auxiliary

103

do as unstressed tense marker (without habitual or other aspectual meanings)

104

completive/perfect done

105

completive/perfect have/be + done + past participle

111 114

past tense/anterior marker been go-based future markers

116

come-based future/ingressive markers

118

is for am/will with 1st person singular

120

would in if-clauses

126

IV. Verb phrase: modal verbs new quasi-modals: aspectual meanings

132

V. Verb phrase: verb morphology levelling of past tense/past participle verb forms: regularization levelling of past tense/past participle verb forms: unmarked forms levelling of past tense/past participle verb forms: past tense for past participle levelling of past tense/past participle verb forms: past participle for past tense zero past tense forms of regular verbs

133

double marking of past tense

134

a-prefixing on ing-forms

135

a-prefixing on elements other than ing-forms

136

special inflected forms of be

139

distinctive forms for auxiliary vs. full verb meanings of primary verbs use of gotten and got with distinct meanings (dynamic vs. static)

128 129 130 131

144

De witnesses is gone in de grand jury room to testify to make out a bill. (NC_m1, Hyatt 1970–78: 1051) We had fled but I do know ’bout the shelling of Petersburg. (Fannie Berry, Perdue et al. 1976: 38) We never did pay him, ‘cause we ain’t never had nothin’. (Sally, Ashton, Perdue et al. 1976: 14) She pull out her pocketbook an’ she’ll hand a little piece, an’ he’ll put it in his mouth an’ den she done got ’im. She’s got ’im direct. (VA_m2, Hyatt 1970–78: 1621) An’ when ah gwine out, regardless of where ah goes, ah fin’ dat somebody has done talk about me or no. (SC_m1 Hyatt 1970–78: 3193) This been happen now, how long? (FL_mA, Hyatt 1970–78: 4724) God’s gwine ’rod dem wicket masters. Hit ’taint ’em what gits hit, hits gonna fall on dere chillun. (Minnie Folkes, Perdue et al. 1976: 93) Well, they would say such-and-such a one coming to be a member of this organization – such-and-such a degree. (LA_f2, Hyatt 1970–78: 1668) I’s going on more now than it did in my raising up days. (Harriet Smith, Bailey et al. 1991: 93) A lot of people was gambling and this Jacob Brown made a terrible excitement by saying that if he would lost his last dollar, he would curse God and die. (DC_f1, Hyatt 1970–78: 3229)

C

But aint nobody believe dat, an’ dey fixin’ to bus’ on in anyhow, an den somebody git hurt sho. (Nettie Henry, Rawick 1977/79: 981)

C

You know, all those mens was runned away from there. (VA_f7, Hyatt 1970–78: 475) an’ let him go no further than God have give power tuh go an’ that is justice (TN_f4, Hyatt 1970–78: 1118) Dis woman has went tuh me an’ walk in mah do’ jis’ lak if a robbah may come in. (SC_f8, Hyatt 1970–78: 2242) So when I went with ’er, she taken this money – she tied it up. (MD_m2, Hyatt 1970–78: 55) My grandfather belong to Thomas Jefferson. (Fountain Hughes, Bailey et al. 1991: 27) I had a good friend and they even run him away from me, and we didn’t falled out or nuthin – he just left. (VA_f7, Hyatt 1970–78: 475) He was goin’ through de papers an’ a-burnin’ some when he found de one ’bout me. (Ben Lewis, Rawisck 1977, 1311) He was choppin’ wood ‘Under de Hill’ when Natchez was shelled an’ he seen de big gun boat an’ de houses ketch a-fire. (Ben Lewis, Rawick 1977/79: 1310) Some of em have a pad [insole], some of ’em be’s leather. (SC_m4, Hyatt 1970–78: 1531) So he told them what he done. (MD_m3, Hyatt 1970–78: 926)

B

Aftah yo’ have sealed yore papahs, aftah yo’ have gotten everything, then there is a power, a supernatural power that is beyond all power. (TN_f4, Hyatt 1970–78: 1119) An’ when she got in the house she said, “Mama, I can’t walk.” That wus grandmother an’ my grandma lived to be 85. She said, “Mama, I can’t walk ’ my she said, ”my knee – I got a pain in my toe an’ it’s went up in my knee. I can’ t walk.“ (MD_f5, Hyatt 1970–78: 913)

C

C

A

B

C A

C

C C

B C B B C

B C

B C

138

Alexander Kautzsch

147

was for conditional were

154 155

VII. Negation multiple negation / negative concord ain’t as the negated form of be

156

ain’t as the negated form of have

157

159

ain’t as generic negator before a main verb invariant don’t for all persons in the present tense never as preverbal past tense negator

163

was – weren’t split

165

invariant non-concord tags (including eh?) VIII. Agreement invariant present tense due to zero marking for the 3rd person singular invariant present tense due to generalization of 3rd person -s existential / presentational there’s/there is/there was with plural subjects

158

170 171 172

173

variant forms of dummy subject there in existential clauses, e.g. they, it or zero

174 175

deletion of auxiliary be: before progressive deletion of auxiliary be: before gonna

176

deletion of copula be: before NPs

177

deletion of copula be: before AdjPs

178

deletion of copula be: before locatives

180

was/were generalization

181

agreement sensitive to subject type (nominal vs. pronominal)

182 183

agreement sensitive to position of subject Northern Subject Rule (combination of both of the above) IX. Relativization which for ‘who’

186

But, uh, otherwise if you was a good, good person they wouldn’ sell you. (Fountain Hughes, Bailey et al. 1991: 32)

B

I don’t fin’ no fault. (Alice Gaston, Bailey et al. 1991: 59) but I aint ’bleevin in nothin but de good Lawd. (Charlie Davenport, Rawick 1977/79: 570) Look here, they aint got no wagons like we got. (Charlie Bell, Rawick 1977/79: 125) I hop’ ya ain’t wanna kno’ much mo’ ‘cause I ‘bout through. (Ishrael Massie; Perdue et al. 1976: 210) Huh ole dad had sayed dat he don’t want none uh his niggers ever sole, … (Fannie Berry, Perdue et al. 1976: 44) I never went to school a day in my life, not a hour. (Bob Ledbetter, Bailey et al. 1991: 48) Them soldiers was traveling going south to San Antonio. (Harriet Smith, Bailey et al. 1991: 84) No sir, I weren’t birthed down here. (Isom Moseley, Bailey et al. 1991: 56) Well, dem divorce cases shows confusion, don’t it? (GA_m4, Hyatt 1970–78: 1332)

A A

He come runnin’ down the big road, (MD_m4, Hyatt 1970–78: 366) I show you what I means, madam. (Charlie Bell, Rawick 1977/79: 125) Well, I thought I, I, I, I–I tell you, there’s some things that we all didn’t tell you. (Matilda Henrietta Perry, Perdue et al. 1976: 224) Dey’s some writin’ on his grave-stone dey say tell how come he got killed. (Sam Broach, Rawick 1977/79: 226) “Lissen it’s no time fo’ doin’ evil fo’ evil or eye fo’ a eye.” (SC_mA, Hyatt 1970–78: 4518) I reckon somebody Ø livin on my land now. (James Lucas, Rawickk 1977/79: 1347) He Ø goin’ have some trouble serious wit dat ole lady … (TN_f3, Hyatt 1970–1978: 1458) Dis devil’s-shoestring Ø de main root dat’s roun’. (DC_f1, Hyatt 1970–1978: 3228) Well, they are red an’ their head Ø red [laughs] now. (Laura Smalley, Bailey et al. 1991: 69) Something else Ø in there, I want that. (Fountain Hughes, Bailey et al. 1991: 31) but wha’ ah’ve seed dat evenin’ when he were dyin’, ah don’ like it. (FL_f_b, Hyatt 1970–78: 4510) An’ so he was tellin’ his wife tha’. (AL_fA, Hyatt 1970–78: 4568) Dey were called de root of mystery. (SC_mA, Hyatt 1970–78: 4525) An’ so they was gonna hang Uncle Wille, least they did hang him. (AL_fA, Hyatt 1970–78: 4544) lots of the trees rots down to a dust, see. (VA_m3, Hyatt 1970–78: 1390) Don’t chew go to ’em, don’t chew give ’em a thing when they come to you fer something. (NC_f1, Hyatt 1970–78: 1314) You take and goes to her house. (LA_f2, Hyatt 1970–78: 1666) See F182 /F 183

B

In 1935 ah had a brothah, which was mah oldes’ brothah. (AL_fA, Hyatt 1970–78: 4547)

C

A B A B C

C

B A

B

B B B B B B

C

C C

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Earlier African American Vernacular English

189

relativizer where or a form derived from where

190

relativizer what or a form derived from what relativizer doubling

191 193 197

gapping/zero-relativization in subject position “linking relative clauses” (without direct antecedent)

202

X. Complementation unsplit for to in infinitival purpose clauses

203

for (to) as infinitive marker

204

as what / than what in comparative clauses addition of to where StE has bare infinitive non-finite clause complements with bare root form rather than -ing form

209 210

My father was one o de founders o’ de Underground Railroad where help de slaves to run way to de North … (Patience Avery; Perdue et al. 1976: 17) Them what didn’ nurse, they didn’ come (Laura Smalley; Bailey et al. 1991: 62) An’ he tole him tuh bring the cloak that which he lef’ at Troas … (SC_mA; Hyatt 1970–1978: 4711) T’other part of dis is de room Ø wuz 10 feet square. (Ishrael Massie, Perdue et al 1976: 210) De laigs pained and then it affected me in my back, which I never had backache since or before, and I couldn’t get up and down de steps … (VA_f6, Hyatt 1970–78: 175)

C

An’ my father was dead, an’ my mother was living, but she had three, four other little children, an’ she had to put them all to work for to help take care of the other. (Fountain Hughes, Bailey et al. 1991: 33) and I told Him I came Here to do millitarie duties, and not for to Hunt Oysters. (Prince Albert, Berlin et al. 1985: 429) Smaller than what it are. (LA_f2, Hyatt 1970–78: 1664)

B

An’ ah heard someone jus’ to talk about it (AL_fA, Hyatt 1970–78: 4577) She wasn’t hurting no ol’ mistress, she was jus’, when mistress started whoop her, she sat her down. (Laura Smalley, Bailey et al. 1991: 65)

C

they didn’ have any money jis’ like the othah people didn’t have none, but yet still they didn’ wan’a suffah. (FL_mA, Hyatt 1970–78: 4720) An’ uh, so after they whipped her so long, so, whipped her then so long that way, they quit. (Laura Smalley, Bailey et al. 1991: 66)

C

She went outdoors – I wus liwin’ in Pocomoke [City, Maryland] then – an’ she went out de door. (MD_f5, Hyatt 1970–78: 913) And he aimed de gun right middle-way of this pixschure [picture]. (MD_m3, Hyatt 1970–78: 926) It had real beautiful rings on it a she knew it was madam’s hand that had the rings. (NY_f1, Hyatt 1970–78: 145) So dat he would die slow. (SC_mA, Hyatt 1970–78: 4526)

C

214

XI. Adverbial subordination conjunction doubling: clause + conj. + conj. + clause

215

conjunction doubling: correlative conj.s

216

XII. Adverbs and prepositions omission of StE prepositions

219

adverb-forming suffixes -way and -time

220

degree modifier adverbs have the same form as adjectives other adverbs have the same form as adjectives XIII. Discourse organization and word order “negative inversion” (sentence-initial An’ the white folks, didn’ no white people stay in Africa, south negated auxiliary verbs) part of Africa. (Charlie Smith, Bailey et al. 1991: 108) inverted word order in indirect questions Now, yo’ goin’ ask him whut’s his wife’s name an’ he’ll tell yo’. (TN_m1, Hyatt 1970–78: 1571) no inversion/no auxiliaries in I said, “Now, what you want?” … “What [zero-copula] you goin’ wh-questions do?” (VA_m4, Hyatt 1970–78: 4171) no inversion/no auxiliaries in main clause You hear’d talk of de high blood preston [pressure]? (VA_m2, yes/no questions Hyatt 1970–78: 1622) like as a focussing device They’d have prayer meeting, you know from one house to the other you know how the house, like there’s a house sitting here in a section, in line, you know, an’ people would come to prayer meeting. (Harriet Smith, Bailey et al. 1991: 82)

221

226 227 228 229 234

B C B C

C C

C

C

C B B

B B C C C

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References Bailey, Guy, Natalie Maynor, and Patricia Cukor-Avila (eds.). 1991. The Emergence of Black English. Text and Commentary. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: Benjamins. Berlin, Ira, Barbara J. Fields, Thavolia Glymph, Joseph R. Reidy, and Leslie S. Rowland (eds.). 1985. Freedom. A Documentary History of Emancipation, 1861–1867. Series I, Vol. I. The Destruction of Slavery. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hyatt, Harry Middleton (ed.). 1970–1978. Hoodoo – Witchcraft – Conjuration – Rootwork. Vol. 1–5. Washington: The Alma Egan Hyatt Foundation. Kautzsch, Alexander and Edgar W. Schneider. 2000. Differential creolization: Some evidence from Earlier African American Vernacular English in South Carolina. In: Ingrid Neumann-Holzschuh, and Edgar W. Schneider (eds.), Degrees of Restructuring in Creole Languages, 247–274. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: Benjamins. Kautzsch, Alexander. 2002. The Historical Evolution of Earlier African American English. An Empirical Comparison of Early Sources. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Kautzsch, Alexander. 2004. Earlier African American English: morphology and syntax. In: Bernd Kortmann, Kate Burridge, Rajend Mesthrie, and Edgar Schneider (eds.), A Handbook of Varieties of English. Vol. 2: Morphology and Syntax, 341–355. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Miller, Randall M. (ed.). 1978. “Dear Master.” Letters of a Slave Family. Ithaca/London: Cornell University Press. Mufwene, Salikoko. 1999. Some sociohistorical inferences about the development of African American English. In: Shana Poplack (ed.), The English History of African American English, 233–263. Oxford: Blackwell.

Perdue, Charles L., Thomas E. Barden, and Robert K. Phillips (eds.). 1992. Reprint. Weevils in the Wheat: Interviews with Virginia Ex-slaves. Original edition 1976. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia. Poplack, Shana, and Sali Tagliamont. 2001. African American English in the Diaspora. London/Malden, MA: Blackwell. Rawick, George P. (ed.). 1977/1979. The American Slave: A Composite Autobiography. Supplement. Series 1 and 2. 12 and 10 vols. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood. Rickford, John R. (ed.). 1999. African American Vernacular English. Oxford: Blackwell. Rickford, John R., and Renee Blake. 1990. Copula contraction and absence in Barbadian English, Samaná English and Vernacular Black English. In: Kira Hall, Jean-Pierre Koenig, Michael Meacham, Sondra Reinman, and Laurel A. Sutton (eds.), Proceedings of the Sixteenth Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society, 257–268. Berkeley, CA: Berkeley Linguistics Society. [Reprinted in Rickford (ed.) 1999: 61–89] Schneider, Edgar W.. 1989. American Earlier Black English. Tuscaloosa/London: University of Alabama Press. Walker, James A.. 1999. Rephrasing the copula: Contraction and zero in Early African American English. In: Shana Poplack (ed.), The English History of African American English, 35–72. Oxford: Blackwell. Wiley, Bell I. (ed.). 1980. Slaves No More. Letters from Liberia 1833–1869. Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky. Winford, Donald. 1997. On the origins of African American Vernacular English – A creolist perspective. Part I: The sociohistorical background. Diachronica 14: 305–344. Wolfram, Walt, and Eric R. Thomas. 2002. The Development of African American English. London/Malden, MA: Blackwell.

Gullah

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Gullah* 1 Introduction Also known as Geechee, Gullah is an offspring of English spoken primarily by descendants of Africans in coastal South Carolina and Georgia, USA, on a strip of land that spreads 30–50 miles inland, corresponding to where southern planters cultivated primarily rice up to the time of the American Revolution. Although now accepted locally, the names applied to both the language variety and the relevant African American population are exonyms reflecting the stigmatization of both by other Americans. The speakers have been derided as backwards and the coastal islands and marshes where they are situated identified as “low country.” To its speakers, Gullah is as much English as other nonstandard American English dialects, indeed a by-product of the English settlement colonization of the region since 1670. It is in fact comparable to, for instance, Amish English and African American Vernacular English (AAVE), both also stigmatized and the results of the appropriation of nonstandard English by non-English minorities who have lived in isolation from the surrounding white majority populations. An important difference is that Gullah emerged in a contact setting where, until the mid-20th century, the African slaves and their descendants have been the overwhelming majority and race segregation was institutionalized in the early 18th century, during the English colonization, and thus much earlier than in the rest of the United States, where the Jim Crow laws were passed only in the late 19th century. A reason commonly invoked to set Gullah apart from other North American English varieties is that it is not intelligible to speakers of the dominant white middle class English spoken by the typical American linguist. However, mutual intelligibility is not a reliable criterion for determining whether a particular language variety is a dialect of a language or a separate language. Besides, there are numerous English dialects that are not intelligible to other speakers, including the classic case of Cockney, which nobody has ever claimed to be a separate language. Another reason is that Gullah is contact-based, as is putatively made evident by the several structural features it shares with Caribbean English creoles (CEC, see section 2 below). However, the history of European immigrations to English North America suggests that all English varieties that developed there are contactbased (Mufwene 2001a, 2008, 2009a). It is also highly debatable whether creoles can be characterized as a special type of languages based on their typological features alone (Mufwene 2000a) and whether, in the first place, the features that these vernaculars share are due primarily to substrate influence. Gullah and these others can very well be considered as disfranchised varieties of Germanic and other colonial European languages. Unlike AAVE, whose origins can be associated with the tobacco and cotton plantations of the American southeast, Gullah developed on the large coastal rice fields of South Carolina and Georgia. Whereas AAVE is the outcome of late 19th-century race segregation in a region where the African slaves and their descendants have rarely been the majority, Gullah is a by-product of early segregation in an area where the Africans outnumbered the Europeans at the rate of 9 to 1 since the early 18th century (Turner 1947). The earliest written attestations of it date from the early 19th century, in William Gilmore Simms’ The wigwam and the cabin

* Field research on which this chapter is directly or indirectly based was sponsored in the 1980s by the National Endowment for the Humanities (Independent Study and Research Fellowship 1982, and Summer Stipend 1988) and by the National Science Foundation, grant BNS 8519315, for which I am very

grateful. This chapter is adapted, sometimes with substantial modifications, from that published in the Handbook of Varieties of English (2004). The conclusions have been completely rewritten. The initials next to the data represent the informants whose spontaneous speech was recorded in the 1980s.

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(1845),1 although there are reports in 18th-century colonial newspapers of some runaway slaves speaking “broken” English, especially those who had been on the plantations for a few months only. Given all the negative attitudes in North America toward Blacks since their enslavement by the English colonists, the fact that Gullah remained undocumented for so long reflects a number of factors, including the following three: (i) American English has always been spoken variably among (descendants of) Africans, as among (descendants of) Europeans. Reduced to a basilectal variety, Gullah has never been spoken by all the coastal African Americans identified by the same name (Mufwene 1994a), not any more than basilectal AAVE can be associated with all hinterland African Americans. It’s another story if one identifies Gullah as the whole continuum of varieties spoken by traditional coastal African Americans which is more distinctive by its phonological, especially prosodic, features, in a way comparable to American Southern English, which is not a uniform variety. (ii) During the earlier colonial times, especially before the institutionalization of race segregation in coastal South Carolina in 1720 (Wood 1974), most of the locally-born African Americans must have spoken like the locally-born White Americans with whom they grew up and interacted regularly in the same homestead. Dialectologists such as Krapp (1924) were not totally mistaken in suggesting the origins of “Black English” to be sought in that variety of English spoken by the low-class Europeans (especially farmers and indentured servants) with whom they interacted.2 (iii) As an ethnolect spoken by a significant proportion (but not necessarily all) of Gullah people, Gullah was probably not identifiable as a distinct vernacular before the second quarter of the 18th century, i.e., after the rice fields increased in size, the slave population significantly outnumbered the English-mother-tongue population, and race segregation was institutionalized (Mufwene 2001a).3 Then, the slave labor increased more by importation than by birth (Wood 1974), the population turnover was rapid, and language was being transmitted to learners increasingly more by non-native than by native speakers. This situation made it possible for substrate elements to influence Gullah’s divergence away from other American southern varieties, although in many, if not most, cases the influence meant favoring particular variants of colonial English that would be disfavored in the other varieties (Mufwene 2001a, 2008). For instance, this appears to have been the case in the selection of preverbal duhz/does [d@z] as a marker of habitual activities (F91), as in how you duhz cook hog maw?, of preverbal duh [d@] as the durative marker, and of the pronunciations of bear and carry as [bIE] and [kya:] respectively.4 Specifics about how the restructuring proceeded remain as controversial as regarding the development of creoles in general. The traditional invocation of the role of language contact raises more interesting questions than it provides conclusive answers to them. The attribution of the divergence of Gullah’s structures exclusively or predominantly to African substrate influence (Turner 1949) would be less controversial if the African languages were typologically homogeneous and if one did not have to account for the competition and selection mechanisms that favor some particular substrate influences over other competitors. While substrate influence as interpreted above is undeniable, determining how it prevailed in specific cases remains an open question (Mufwene 2001a, 2008, 2010), especially since Gullah also differs from its CEC kin in a number of respects that make it closer to other North American English vernaculars.

1 In earlier work I incorrectly gave the reference as The book of my lady (1833). There’s no Gullah to be found there. There are several editions of The wigwam and the cabin; not all of them include the relevant parts: “The lazy crow. A story of the cornfield” and “Caloya: or, the loves of the driver.” 2 What we don’t have to also accept from Krapp’s position is the claim that Whites have evolved from it and African Americans have kept that colonial variety intact. Both varieties are new colonial systems that have simply evolved in divergent directions.

3 Coastal South Carolina and Georgia were then the only places in North America where the slave population not only constituted the overwhelming colonial demographic majority but was also segregated in ways comparable to the Caribbean colonies. 4 That is, as Black African languages do not have (English-like) diphthongs but have CyV combinations and the feature pool very likely had both alternative pronunciations of bear, the Africans adopted the one that was congruent with their previous speech habits. The palatalized pronunciation is still attested in Irish English.

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2 Gullah and Caribbean English Creoles Gullah has been identified as a creole for a number of reasons, chiefly because it evolved under socio-economic conditions similar to other new nonstandard vernaculars of the Atlantic and Indian Oceans called creoles. As noted above, it also shares several structural features with CECs, though we must remember that none of the features are exclusively found in creoles only. The other tacit reason is that its primary speakers are of African descent, just like those of the CECs. However, the term creole itself is unknown to its speakers and has not been used locally in the histories of South Carolina and of Georgia to designate either the locally born populations of non-indigenous stock or this new language variety. It was assigned to Gullah by linguists. Among the features that Gullah shares with CECs are the following: 1) use of preverbal free morphemes, rather than verbal inflections, for tense and aspect (e.g. bin for past or past of past (F111), go/ga [g@] for future (F114), duh [d@] for progressive, and done [dÑn] ‘finish’ for perfect (F104)); 2) partial gender and case distinctions in the pronominal systems (thus him is used for all three genders of third person singular and for both as object and subject functions (F5, F6); see Section 3.2 for the complete paradigm); 3) use of say [sE] not only as in English but also as a complementizer (F200; e.g. we hear say you gone to da city ‘we heard that you [were] gone to the city’); 4) use of fuh [f@] (< for) as a non-factive complementizer (F 201, as in we tell um fuh come ‘we told him to come’); 5) modal use of fuh (as in Fonzo bin fuh come ‘Fonzo had/was expected to come’); 6) extensive use of serial verb/predicate constructions (as in come kyah me to d’hospital ‘come and take me to the hospital; F150); 7) use of an invariant relativizer weh [we] (derived from what and perhaps also from relativizer uses of where in nonstandard English; F189, 190); 8) nonindividuated nouns for generic or mass reference (as in kyat don eat raw tato ‘a cat does not eat raw potato’ or ‘cats don’t eat raw potato’); 9) common usage of the associative plural (F52, as in Sara dem very nice people ‘Sara and her family/ friends/associates are very nice people’); 10) predicate cleft (F223, as in duh talk he bin duh talk! ‘he was really talking!’); and 11) similar pronunciations of words such as oil [ayl], cat [kyat], fair [fyE:], variable stopping of interdental fricatives, and variable [b] or [ß] pronunciations of /v/ and /w/ (as in [ßErW ßEl] ‘very well’). Nonetheless, I must emphasize that some of these similarities are only partial, which may mislead some to claim that Gullah has decreolized compared to its Caribbean kin.5 For instance, 1) Gullah has an indefinite article a (pronounced only as [@], without a [@n] variant) where other English creoles use the singular quantifier one (F66); 2) its definite article is pronounced as [d@] (without a [di] variant) where CECs have [di]; 3) it actually has a schwa (which is not attested in CECs); 4) it uses prenominal dem (as in dem boy) both with the meaning ‘those boys’ (F68) and the meaning ‘the boys’ (F67), whereas Jamaican Creole uses prenominal dem for the plural demonstrative meaning only and has di + Noun + dem for definite plural;6 5) it has a wider set of negators (aint, don, and narrow-scope no within a noun phrase) where Jamaican Creole, for instance, uses only no; 6) it marks the tag question invariably with the negator inni (< aint it; F165); 7) it has a special habitual marker duhz (F91), which only Guyanese Creole has been reported to have (in the form of doz, because it has no schwa); and 8) it also has the option of using tuh/to [t@] (often voiced to [d@]) to introduce non-factive verb phrases (e.g., Uh start duh run ‘I started to run’), as well as 9) the option of omitting the complementizer fuh or tuh after the verbs want, start, and try (F208, as in Uh try tell um ‘I tried to tell him’). Since no comprehensive and elaborate comparison of Atlantic creoles has been undertaken yet, more features may emerge that highlight differences between Gullah and its Caribbean kin in particular. The reader may even discover a few other less conspicuous differences in the survey of features completed for WAVE. (See also the synopsis chapters by Hackert on the Caribbean and Agnes Schneider on the Pidgins and Creoles in WAVE; both in this volume.)

5 Schuchardt (1914) was the first to make this claim, to account for structural differences between African American English varieties and Saramaccan. Alleyne (1980) captured history more accurately in hypothesizing an evolutionary continuum that would correspond to a geographical continuum from Surinam, with the most divergent creoles, to North America, with the least divergent “Afro-American” varieties. The reasons are

probably not just demographic. For instance, AAVE is just a recent branch of what used to be simply American Southern English until the late 19th century (Bailey & Thomas 1998). Other reasons still have to be figured out. 6 In Gullah, the latter alternative is more likely to be interpreted as an associative plural, viz., ‘the boy and his associates’.

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Gullah shares some of the above peculiarities with AAVE and neighboring White English vernaculars, for instance uses of: 1) prenominal dem for plural demonstrative (F68); 2) aint as a negator in contexts where standard English would use did not (F157) or have/has not (F156) in full or contracted form; 3) an indefinite article a which need not become an when the noun starts with a vowel; 4) the definite article with an invariant [d@] pronunciation even before vowels; 5) yall as a more common second person plural pronoun (F34) than unu/una; 6) use of invariant be for repeated states of affairs (F90, as he be so sick/ staring at me); and indeed 7) alternative use of the -ing verbal inflection [pronounced [Wn] for the progressive, also expressed with duh (counterpart of CECs’ [dE]), as noted above. One can actually also argue that Gullah is a coastal variety of African American English (Mufwene 2001b), spoken where there used to be rice fields, although its prosodic features make it more akin to Bahamian English and closer to CECs.7 Alternatively, it may continue to be treated as a separate ethnolect, albeit one to be situated structurally between AAVE and CECs. There is no clearcut structural boundary between Gullah and AAVE. The history of South Carolina and Georgia appears to suggest the former alternative, i.e., Gullah being another variant of African American English (Mufwene 2001b), there being no diachronic evidence in support of the decreolization hypothesis (Mufwene 1994a). As a matter of fact, Kautzsch and Schneider (2000) argue for a geographical continuum in which “creole features” (i.e., features shared with CECs) decrease as one proceeds inland. The evolution of English in North America has certainly not been uniform, largely reflecting variation in the patterns of earliest settlements (Founder Effect) and in later population growth. Nonetheless, Gullah appears to be as much related to North American English vernaculars, by a number of its structural features, such as the schwa and the consuetudinal construction with be + Adjective/V-ing (negated with don’), as to CECs, by the contact conditions under which it emerged, characterized by an overwhelming slave majority and early social segregation, as well as by some structural features, as shown above. It is also telling that Gullah has maintained the bilabial fricative [ß], which appears to be a legacy of Irish English, where other Atlantic creoles have [b], as in [ßEks] ~ [bEks] ‘angry’ (< vexed). It may be alone in alternating between [v/w] and [ß] in the pronunciation of well and very, as AAVE does not exhibit this feature. The fact that it shares with CECs the pronunciation of bear as [biE], the palatalized production of car [kya:] and garden [gya:dn], and the pronunciation of oil as [ayl] is no more significant than the fact that most North American English varieties pronounce hot as [hat], a colonial legacy. Evolution proceeds locally, despite homologies and influences from other places.

3 More on Gullah’s structures This part focuses on various morphosyntactic features that have been discussed by various scholars, primarily myself, since Turner’s (1949) pioneering and seminal study. Unfortunately none of the other sources will be cited here. More interested readers can consult dissertations and publications since the 1970s by Irma Cunningham, Patricia Jones-Jackson, Patricia Nichols, Katherine Mille, Tometro Hopkins, Tracey Weldon, and myself. Space limitations naturally constrain both the number of grammatical peculiarities discussed below and the depth of the discussions themselves.

3.1 Basic major constituent order: How English are the patterns? There are many ways in which Gullah has preserved structures that are English, for instance, the basic major constituent order in a sentence is Noun Phrase (NP) + Verb Phrase (VP), although the rule that inverts the order of the subject NP and an auxiliary verb in interrogative main clauses does not apply. Questions are

7 History actually suggests that Bahamian English is an offshoot of American English, albeit with its own local evolution. After the American Civil War, in the mid-19th century, loyalists

from South Carolina and other parts of the USA escaped to the Bahamas with their slaves and set up a plantation economy.

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typically marked by intonation, especially those starting with a wh-phrase or aint ([eyn(t)], [Ù], [WnW] < aint it), as in Ain/Inni you see Al yes’day? ‘Didn’t you see Al yesterday?’ (literally, ‘Isn’t it [true/the case that] you saw Al yesterday?’). In such a sentence, which is unlike in both North American English varieties and in CECs, aint/inni has scope over the whole proposition, in more or less the same way as the French n’est ce pas que does, as in N’est-ce pas que tu as vu Al hier? The other kind of negative question, which happens to have the same non-inverted surface structure as in other English vernaculars would be You ain see Al yes’day? The wider scope aint/inni can cooccur with another ain or any other negator inside the sentence, as in Ain you ain see Al yes’day? ‘Isn’t it true/the case that you didn’t see Al yesterday?’ or Aint you don buy grits? ‘Isn’t it the case that you don’t buy grits [habitually]?’ (Mufwene 1993). The particular negators used in these sentences oppose Gullah to CECs. Gullah strands prepositions and does not Pied-pipe them, just like nonstandard English vernaculars, in which constructions such as the boy to whom I spoke are not typical. And indeed it has prepositions and no postpositions. Substrate influence can be identified in some details of the grammar, such as the complete obliteration of Subject + Verb Concord,8 uses of the same pronominal forms in subject and possessive functions, and uses of done pre- or post-verbally to mark nuances of perfect (see section 3.4 below). The influence must be more from Kwa-like isolating languages than from the agglutinating Bantu system (in which the possessive pronoun is clearly marked as such and follows the head noun, there is Subject-Verb agreement, and the object pronoun is not only prefixed to the verb but also varies according to the noun class of the antecedent). Overall substrate influence in Gullah is the strongest where there was at least partial congruence between the feature of some colonial English dialect(s) and its counterpart in some African languages. There is little in Gullah’s structural system that does not have a (partial) model in some nonstandard English dialect.

3.2 Word order within the noun phrase (NP) Within the NP, the order is still Det(erminer) + Adj(ective) + N(oun) + Modifying clause, as in non-creole English varieties. As noted above, Gullah differs from CECs in forming the plural with a prenominal dem, which takes the position of the definite article (F67), whereas CECs form it by postposing dem to the nominal and having it concurrently with the definite article (F51). Thus Gullah has dem boy (almost like dem/them boys in nonstandard English varieties), whereas CECs have di bway dem for ‘the boys’. One of the things that first caught my attention about Gullah’s structures (Mufwene 1986a) is the use of nouns in non-individuated form (i.e., without a determiner and a number marker) not only for mass reference, as in he don eat hog maw ‘he/she does not eat hog maw’, but also for generic or non-specific reference (F63), as in the following examples: (1)

a. b. c.

you gwine cut it with knife? ‘Are you going to cut it with a knife?’ (with nonspecific reference) all he do is chase ooman ‘All he does is chase women/all he did was chase women’ You ever see cat eat raw tato skin? ‘Have you ever seen a cat eat raw potato skin?’

Worth noting in this connection is also the fact that Gullah marks nominal plural sometimes as in other English varieties, by attaching the plural suffix {S} to the noun. This practice, which has nothing to do with decreolization, is common in the mesolect, which is the variety spoken by the vast majority of its speakers, a phenomenon that is true of CECs, as observed by Rickford (1990). However, in the basilect, nominal plural is marked by preposing dem to the noun (F67), as explained above, exhibiting ambiguity between definite plural and distal demonstrative plural (‘those’). Co-occurrence with the plural suffix {S} is also common, making

8 This may be considered an overgeneralization of the impoverishment of verbal inflections in the English present tense.

The feature is also attested, though not to the same extent, in other nonstandard vernaculars.

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Gullah similar to other American nonstandard English varieties. The plural marker is typically missing when the noun is modified by a numeral quantifier (F56), as in four boy(s), though constructions such as four chillun ‘four children’ and four people (with suppletive plural forms) are common.9 Regarding personal pronouns, Gullah diverges from CECs, especially Jamaican and Guyanese Creoles. For the first person singular, it has the subjective form Uh [Ñ] (< I), the objective form me (attested in subjective function (F31) only in literary representations), which also alternates in the possessive function (F26) with the more common variant muh [mÑ] (< my). The second person pronoun is you, which remains the same in all syntactic functions. It commonly assumes the form ye [yi] (typically unstressed) in the possessive function (F22), as in ye buba ‘your brother’. The unmarked pronominal form for the third person singular is (h)e, regardless of gender (F10). It becomes (h)im or um [Ñm] in the objective function but remains he in the possessive (F20). When used as the object of the verb see, um fuses with the latter in the stereotypical form sh’um [âÑ:m]. There is, however, also the gender-specific pronoun she, which remains the same in all syntactic functions. In addition, the pronoun it behaves more or less like she, except that it seems to merge with (h)e in the possessive function. It is thus partly inaccurate to claim that Gullah’s pronominal system is gender-less in the third person singular. Only (h)e and (h)im/um are gender-neutral. She and i(t) are gender-specific. In the first person plural, we occurs in the subject function but alternates in the object function with us (F30). In the possessive function the allomorph our, typically pronounced [aw] is used. Although the variant you is also used for second person plural (with the same distribution as the singular), the more common one is yall [yO:l] (F34), as in other American Southern nonstandard English varieties, with yall’s as the possessive (F23). There is also the celebrated variant (h)una [(h)@n@] ~ [un@], which I have encountered only in stereotypical discourse produced in performances. The third person plural pronoun is deh [de:], attested in the subject and possessive functions (F21), and dem [dem] which occurs in the subject (F31) and object functions. Its weaker variant em [em] is attested only in the object function. With the exception of yall’s, all the above pronouns combine with own to express possession elliptically, viz., muh/me own ‘mine’, you own ‘yours’, he/she own ‘his/hers/its’, we/ou’ own ‘ours’, and deh own ‘theirs’. To form the reflexive, the morpheme se(l)f is added to whatever form also occurs in the possessive function, except yall’s, viz., meself/muhself, youself/yeself, heself/sheself, weself/ou’self, and dehself/demself (F12–14). The pattern is an extension from that of the possessive construction, according to which the possessor, be it nominal or pronominal, is preposed to the possessed. The NP in Gullah is thus a mixed bag where some patterns are like in CECs but others are like in nonstandard English dialects.

3.3 Relative clauses It is useful to distinguish between factive and non-factive, purposive relative clauses. The latter are introduced by the complementizer fuh [f@], as in a book fuh da chillun (fuh/tuh) read ‘a book for the children to read’ (F201). Factive relative clauses are introduced by a null complementizer or by weh [we], from English what, pronounced [wæt] in some dialects and also used as a relativizer in some nonstandard English varieties, as in everything what Alison said ‘everything that Alison said’. This example corresponds to everythin’ (weh) Alison say in Gullah. Moreover, weh also occurs in more or less the same form as an interrogative, as in Weh/Way he tell you? ‘What did he tell you?’. The relativizer weh (F189, 190) seems to function as a complementizer (Mufwene 1986b). When the relativized noun is the object of a preposition, this must be stranded, never Pied-piped, as illustrated below: (2)

a. a’. b. b’.

a knife fuh cut da meat wi’ ‘a knife to cut the meet with’ *a knife wi’ weh fuh cut da meat ‘a knife with which to cut the meat’. da gyal (weh) Clinton duh look at ‘the girl (that) Clinton is looking at’ *da gyal at weh Clinton duh look ‘the girl at whom Clinton is looking’

9 As explained in Mufwene (1986), chillum is also attested with singular reference, just like teet ‘tooth/teeth’.

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147

When the relativized noun has a possessive function, a resumptive pronoun is needed in the construction (F194), a pattern that is not unattested in nonstandard English, though one cannot deny the contributing influence of substrate African languages, which do not have a relative pronoun corresponding to standard English whose: (3)

a. b.

da man (weh) he wife die laas week ‘the man whose wife died last week’ da ooman (weh) Uh meet he son ‘the woman whose son I met’

On the other hand, the relativized noun is gapped, along with the preposition than (F198), as in other syntactic contexts, when it is the object of a comparative. The preposition than can be retained only when there is a resumptive pronoun. (4) a. b.

T’s only ting weh covetin happier (AS, 1986) ‘It’s [the] only thing that coveting is happier than.’ Teddy da man (weh) everybody taller than *(him) (AS, 1986)

The relative pronoun can also be omitted when the relativized NP is a subject (F193), thus producing a contact relative clause, as in Dis da young man come ‘eyah las’ week (MI, 1986) ‘This is the young man [who/that] came here last week’. Such facts underscore the fact that Gullah has evolved from nonstandard English, rather than from a standard variety. Gullah differs from CECs in having the complementizer to, pronounced [t@] as in colloquial English but often also as the weaker form [d@] ~ [d] (Mufwene 1991). It is debatable whether this means it has an infinitive. Mufwene and Dijkhoff (1989) argue that creoles have obliterated the finite/nonfinite distinction and therefore have no infinitive, as in languages with isolating morphosyntax. Gullah has also preserved the category Adj, though adjectives are used without a copula in the predicative function (F177), as in Robert very tall or Robert taller ‘n Faye ‘Robert [is] taller than Faye’, or April more puhty ‘April [is] prettier’. It resembles CECs only partly, because it follows the same pattern as in other English varieties. The dominant comparative pattern is the same as in English, combining the adjective with the -er suffix or more and introducing the complement with than. I have found no evidence of the comparative with the serial pass ‘surpass’.

3.4 Tense, mood, and aspect Like other English varieties, Gullah expresses mood through modal verbs or the absence thereof (Mufwene 1994b). The verbs are the same, except that some of them are pronounced differently and have their own morphosyntactic peculiarities. The modal can is often pronounced as [kWn] and its negative as [kÙ:] (unlike [kyã:] in Jamaican Creole). In past contexts, it becomes could, couldn’, or coulda (< could’ve < could have). Its syntax is the same as in other English varieties. The modal must works in basically the same way as in other English varieties too (with the negator following it, in a contracted form). When it is used epistemically, it is often followed by be as in (5), where must be either precedes the main verb or occurs sentence-initially: (5) a. Deh must be put um deh ‘They must have put it there.’ b. Must be deh put um deh. The combination may well be interpreted as an adverb, like maybe, and perhaps spelled as one word, but it has not been subjected to any syntactic tests yet. There are some cases in which the subject is repeated after must as in the following sentence: (6) When Uh first start buyin chicken, e mus’ e bin about two cents a pound (MI, 1986) ‘When I first started buying chicken, it must have been about two cents a pound.’

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Salikoko S. Mufwene

There are also attestations of combinations must be and could(a) in my data, as in: (7)

Dem gata must be coulda go fast (EL, 1988) ‘Those alligators must have been able to go/move fast.’

Such a combination suggests that Gullah may not have an infinitive or a clearcut finite/nonfinite distinction (Mufwene 1991, Mufwene and Dijkhoff 1989), as noted above. The modal can certainly does not have an infinitival alternative. The negation in the above example would be must be coudn’ go fast ‘must not have been able to go/move fast’. If must be is treated as a phrasal or compound modal, then this example also illustrates a double modal use (F121; so far hardly investigated in Gullah), which is also attested in other nonstandard English vernaculars. The modal will is seldom heard, because the future marker is ga [g@] (see below). On the other hand, would and woulda ‘would have’ are used, as in other English dialects to express future of past. It is also negated as wouldn’, as Uh wouldn tell a damn lie (JR, 1988), which is the conditional in this case. The auxiliaries may and might(a) are also attested, with no particular idiosyncrasies to report here. Noteworthy are also attestations of the modal have, often in the form [hæ] ‘have, had’ followed by the complementizer fuh or tuh. Perhaps what distinguishes this vernacular the most from other American English vernaculars but shows it more akin to CECs is the modal use of fuh as below: (8) Jean bin fuh come yes’day ‘Jean was to/had to/was expected to come yesterday.’ Gullah is also similar to CECs regarding the preverbal morphemes used to mark tense and aspect. When the verb combines with no tense marker, reference is to the past or to a habit if it is non-stative but most likely to the present if it is stative, especially when the contextual domain does not suggest otherwise. The preverbal bin denotes anteriority, either PAST or PAST OF PAST, depending on the contextual domain of its use (F111). Bin is seldom used to express PAST, as the stativity parameter and the contextual domain provided by the ongoing discourse makes this redundant. Only at the beginning of some discourses would it be required. FUTURE is expressed with the preverbal marker ga or gwine (F114). This is negated by preposing ain to the verbal construction. It is also a relative-tense marker, because it can be used in some contexts to express FUTURE OF PAST, translated by would in English (an option also available in Gullah). Gullah diverges most from other American English vernaculars by the way it marks aspect. As with tense, the marker is a free preverbal morpheme. The progressive, also known as durative in creolistics, is expressed with duh [d@] followed by a verb stem or by a present participle, unlike in CECs. The participle can also be used alone for the same purpose, as in AAVE. Thus one can ask ‘How are you doing’ in three different ways: How you duh do? How you duh doin? or How you doin? (However, I have heard the phrase Uh duh tell you! ‘I am telling you the truth!’/‘I am not lying!’ only in this idiomatic form.) The progressive verb phrase is negated with ain, as in he ain duh talk at all ‘he is not talking at all’. The origin of the marker duh seems to lie in Southwestern British English, in which periphrastic do (also pronounced [d@]), deeply rooted since Middle English, appears to have been used similarly for both progressive and habitual states of affairs (Pargman 2002). However, as noted above, Gullah is unlike most American English varieties and even some CECs in having a specific habitual marker duhz [d@z], as in How you duhz cook hog maw (EL, 1988) ‘How do you /did you use to cook hog maw?’ (F91).The construction is also negated with ain, as in You ain duhz make no hog cheese? (EL, 1988) ‘Didn’t you make any hog cheese?’ Its tense may be UNIVERSAL or PAST, depending on the discourse context of its use. This feature, also attested in Newfoundland English, has the same origins as duh, though its selection may clearly have been influenced by the semantics of many black African languages which have a specialized marker for habit. Like other creoles, Gullah can thus be a useful window into colonial English, from which it developed. This habitual construction should not be confused with the consuetudinal be + V-in’/Adj/PrepP construction, also attested in AAVE, as in Faye be eatin’/sick every time I visit, which denotes repeated states or processes (F90). Gullah shares with CECs and some nonstandard American English varieties (such as Appalachian English, Christian et al. 1988) the use of perfect done [dÑn], as in Uh done eat dat one (already) ‘I ate/have eaten that one (already)’ (F104). As in other nonstandard English varieties, it conveys some emphasis on the completion of the activity or its relevance to the reference time. Unlike in other nonstandard English dialects, it is not

Gullah

149

necessarily followed by a verb in the past tense or past participle. It typically combines with the verb stem for exactly the same meaning. It also combines with stative verb phrases as in he brother done dead ‘his brother is already dead’ and Uh kin tell you wha I done been tru (JR, 1988) ‘I can tell you what I have been through’. It can also modify a verb phrase already delimited with the tense marker bin as in Uh done bin finish ‘I finished a long time ago’. Unlike in White nonstandard English varieties, there is no particular evidence in Gullah that would suggest “deletion” of an underlying have or be in contexts where done is used. The interpretation of its tense is also relative, depending on the discourse context. Another interesting peculiarity is that done can be used postverbally, as in Uh eat/talk done ‘I have eaten/spoken [and I don’t intend to so again]’. It implicates completion with no intention on the part of the subject to re-engage him/herself in the activity. The grammatical behavior of done, which is a cognate of English participial adjective done ‘finished’ (not the auxiliary do), is made possible by the fact that Gullah does not require that all predicate phrases be headed by a verb in the surface structure. It is also in the same way that the purposive preposition for/fuh could develop a modal use (Mufwene 1989), as illustrated above in (8). In overtly anterior contexts, they can also be modified by bin (F111), as in Peter bin done dead when I come back ‘Peter had already died when I came back’.

3.5 Negation and focus Gullah differs from CECs in having more than one basic negator: ain, don, didn, and no. The latter has only two functions (F160): 1) wide-scope negation in elliptical, or at the beginning of, answers to yes/no questions; and 2) NP-internal narrow-scope negation, as in no hog cheese. Didn is used in past contexts, where Jamaican Creole favors neba with the non-emphatic meaning ‘did not’. Don is used in two contexts (F158): 1) in imperative sentences, as in Don le’ da’ bread get cold on you (ER, 1988) and we tell um fuh don come ‘we told him/her not to come’; 2) in habitual sentences, as in da’ duh som’um Uh don buy (JR, 1988) ‘that’s something I don’t buy’. In all other cases, the sentence, wide-scope negator is ain (F155–157), as in the following examples: (9) a. b. c. d. e.

She ain tell um ‘She did not tell him/She has not told him’. Uh ain ga go nowhere (JR 1988) ‘I won’t go anywhere’ Uh ain bin a take no chance on da’ road (JR, 1988) ‘I didn’t take any chances on that road’ People ain duh plant no tato now (JR, 1988) ‘People weren’t planting/didn’t plant any potatoes now/then.’ Yall ain duhz make no hog cheese? (EL, 1988) ‘Didn’t you make any hog cheese?’

Like other nonstandard English varieties, Gullah has negative concord (F154), as in Uh ain go nowhere, and nobody ain go nowhere. As noted above, aini also functions as an invariant tag question marker, similar to London Jamaican init (F165). Examples include the following: (10) a. b. c.

Yall didn buy no clothes from town, inni? (EL, 1988) ‘You didn’t buy (any) clothes from the city, did you?’ You ain know Harry, inni? (JR, 1988) ‘You didn’t/don’t know Harry, did/do you?’ You be cookin up all kine o’ ting, inni? (EL, 1988) ‘You would be cooking all kinds of things, wouldn’t you?’ ‘You’ve been cooking all kinds of things, haven’t you?’

Finally, ain also functions as a negative focus marker in the following examples: (11) a.

Ain Sara we duh talk ‘bout; duh Faye we duh talk ‘bout. ‘It’s not Sara we are talking about; it’s Faye we are talking about.’ b. Ain nobody ga worry wid you (JR, 1988) ‘There’s nobody/There isn’t anybody that will worry with you.’

150

Salikoko S. Mufwene

A sentence such as (12) is ambiguous between a negative concord interpretation and double-negation interpretation. Only the discourse context can clarify such ambiguities. (12)

Ain nobody ain go deh a. ‘There isn’t anybody/There’s nobody who went there.’ b. ‘There isn’t anybody/There’s nobody who has not gone there.’

Positive focus constructions are marked with sentence-initial duh (F225), as in duh Sara we duh talk ‘bout ‘it’s Sara we are talking about’. This is similar to its translated English cleft construction, except that it has a null subject. Another important difference is that it allows bare verb stems in the cleft-focus position, as in duh talk he (bin) duh talk ‘he/she was really talking (in an unusual kind of way)’ (F223). VPs are not acceptable in the cleft-focus position: *duh talk to me he duh talk. This constraint is similar to the restriction of preposition phrases from such constructions: *duh ‘bout Sara we duh talk is also ill-formed. The above topics are amply discussed in Mufwene (1987, 1993).

3.6 Serial verb/predicate constructions (SVCs) Gullah has SVCs such as in (13): (13) a. Uh run go home (JM, 1987) ‘I ran home’ (F149) b. He up deh duh hammer on da’ leg (PR, 1987) ‘He [was] up there, hammering on that leg.’ c. Uh tell um stop (LW, 1987) ‘I told him [to] stop’ d. Uh ga see d’ doctor fix medicine fuh me (JM, 1987) ‘I will see the doctor to fix [some] medicine for me.’ In (13a-b), the two predicate phrases share the subject; the only differences are that the head predicate in (13b) is a preposition, which Gullah grammar allows to head a predicate phrase, and the second predicate phrase is modified by a progressive marker. In (13c-d) the object of the head verb functions as the subject of the serial verb. This construction also illustrates the fact that tense is indicated only once in a SVC. This functions as a syntactic unit which can be modified only by one negator, as in Uh ain know fix da bread with water (JM, 1987) ‘I don’t know how to bake bread with water’. This is an aspect of creoles’ grammars where substrate influence has been considered incontrovertible since Turner (1949). Although English has constructions such as go get the paper, come play with me, and go fishing, thus providing a pattern that could have been generalized once inflections were lost in Gullah, one cannot ignore the pervasive use of SVCs in Kwa and some other African languages. It is also noteworthy that English varieties which evolved in settings without a significant presence of African languages do not have the wide range of SVCs attested in Gullah and CECs, including the complementizer use of say (F200), as in she answer say she mama ain come or we hear say Bill ain ga come discussed in Mufwene (1989, 1996).

4 Conclusions As explained in Mufwene (1994a), the socio-economic histories of the emergence of Gullah and AAVE do not support traditional invocations of debasilectalization (aka decreolization). The available diachronic evidence suggests a contrary history in the direction of basilectalization away from closer approximations of English in the earlier stages of the colonies. As also indicated in Mufwene (2001a, 2001b), Gullah is a by-product of rice field cultivation on coastal South Carolina and Georgia, where residential race segregation started in the early 18th century, whereas AAVE is the by-product of tobacco and cotton cultivation in the hinterland, where race segregation actually started only with Jim Crow in the late 19th century, after the abolition of slavery. Given the above scenario, the contribution of the Caribbean to Gullah’s structures is negligible, since only 10–15 %

151

Gullah

of slaves came from the region in the 18th century, the period when the most significant volume of slaves was imported to English North America (Rawley 1991). It is debatable whether Caribbean English creoles, especially Jamaican and Bajan, were already formed then (Mufwene 2000b). Despite cross-colony migrations, the most plausible account for similarities and differences among the colonial offspring of English is that all these evolutions are local. Although the emergent feature pools were similar, the dynamics of feature competition were not identical from one contact setting to another. The evidence suggests that in North America substrate influence was not as extensive as in the Caribbean. This is consistent with the geographic continuum posited by Alleyne (1980), which is independent of the putative decreolization claimed since Schuchardt (1914). It’s quite a different story whether Gullah should be considered a creole, as there is no particular battery of structural features to answer this question conclusively. The data presented here show that it has not diverged from the North American English vernaculars to the same extent as CECs, though apparently more than AAVE. Besides, assuming that language contact has played a role in the emergence of various languages, including English and the Romance languages (Mufwene 2005, 2008), there is no reason why creoles should not be considered as nonstandard varieties of their lexifiers (Mufwene 2009b).

Appendix: Overview of WAVE features attested in Gullah # 1 3 5 6 7 9 10 11

12 13 14 15 19 20 21 22 23 24

feature Gullah example I. Pronouns, pronoun exchange, nominal gender she/her used for inanimate referents alternative forms/phrases for referential um [Ñm] is used in all contexts where referential it can be used: (non-dummy) it Uh like um ‘I like it’ generalized third person singular he for subject and possessive, um for object: he tell um don’ pronoun: subject pronouns come ‘he/she told him/her not to come’ generalized third person singular See F5. pronoun: object pronouns me instead of I in coordinate subjects me an’ dem/Al (bin deh) ‘me and them/Al (were there) benefactive “personal dative” Uh buy me a book ‘I bought me a book’ construction no gender distinction in third person The neutral, gender-general pronoun is he, as he buba ‘his/her singular brother’ vs. she buba ‘her/*his brother’ regularized reflexives paradigm The regularized base in Gullah is the subjective form, except for the first person singular: meself, youself, heself/sheself/ weself/thehself object pronoun forms serving as base for As explained in the article, the base is whatever pronoun is first and/or second person reflexives acceptable for the possessive function. subject pronoun forms serving as base for See comment about F12 reflexives no number distinction in reflexives (i.e We see weself; .plural forms ending in -self) Dem stand by demself absolute use of reflexives (e.g. as topic Duh [d@] imself come to da [d@] meetin’ ‘It’s himself that came to marker) the meeting.’ subject pronoun forms as (modifying) ou’ [aw] is more common possessive pronouns: first person plural subject pronoun forms as (modifying) He buba ‘his/her brother’ possessive pronouns: third person singular subject pronoun forms as (modifying) Deh buba (rather ambiguous, as deh corresponds to either they possessive pronouns: third person plural or their in English) you as (modifying) possessive pronoun Ye buba is more common/natural than you buba. second person pronoun forms other than Reported more in stereotypical narratives than in actual speech you as (modifying) possessive pronoun nowadays. Yall’s buba object pronoun forms as (modifying) he dog is more common possessive pronouns: third person singular

rating C C B A B B B B

A A B B B A A A B B

152

25 26

34 35 42 43 44 46

51

52 53 56 60 62 63 64 67 68 69 70

71 74

77

78 80

Salikoko S. Mufwene

object pronoun forms as (modifying) possessive pronouns: third person plural object pronoun forms as (modifying) possessive pronouns: first person singular forms or phrases for the second person plural pronoun other than you forms or phrases for the second person singular pronoun other than you object pronoun drop subject pronoun drop: referential pronouns subject pronoun drop: dummy pronouns deletion of it in referential it is-constructions II. Noun phrase plural marking via postposed elements

associative plural marked by postposed and them/them all/dem associative plural marked by other elements absence of plural marking only after quantifiers use of definite article where StE has indefinite article use of zero article where StE has definite article use of zero article where StE has indefinite article use of definite article where StE favours zero demonstratives for definite articles them instead of demonstrative those yon/yonder indicating remoteness proximal and distal demonstratives with ‘here’ and ‘there’: this here, that there; dis-ya, dis-de; dem-ya, dem-de; dis ya/dis de, dem ya/dem de, etc. no number distinction in demonstratives phrases with for + noun to express possession: for-phrase following possessed NP omission of genitive suffix; possession expressed through bare juxtaposition of nouns double comparatives and superlatives regularized comparison strategies: extension of analytic marking

85

comparative marking with more … and

86

zero marking of degree III. Verb phrase: tense and aspect wider range of uses of progressive be + V-ing than in StE: extension to habitual contexts invariant be as habitual marker do as habitual marker

89

90 91

C C

Only yall is attested, but see article for attestations of una

A

A variant of you in any number: ye

A

More likely in a serial verb construction Bin here yes’day ‘[he/she/I] was here yesterday’.

C A

Duh you we talkin to ‘[It] is you we are talking to] The form of the copula is duh (pronounced with a schwa) in this case.

A B

Da boy dem has an ‘associative plural’ meaning (as explained in the article), just like Bill an dem bin here ‘Bill and company were here’ See F51

A

We buy book and thing ‘we bought books and things’ (the interpretation is ‘associative plural’) We buy five book (the suffix -s is sometimes attested)

A

A

A B

Gullah simply has a noun delimitation system that is not well explained or illustrated through this translation scheme! kyat don eat raw tato ‘A cat does not eat raw potato’

C

See F62

C

Dem boy(s) ‘the/those boys’ Dem boy(s) He bin duh yonder ‘he was there’ Just like in nonstandard English.

C A A A

A

C C

Ye buba wife ‘your brother’s wife’

A

More bigger; no evidence of this in the superlative. More is the unmarked marker of comparison, just like in nonstandard English, despite dominant use of -er suffix with monosyllabic adjectives. In Gullah, it sounds more like a weakened/ reduced than

B A

A B C

Deh be playin’ when I come How you duhz cook hog maw?

A A

153

Gullah

101 104 111 113 114 115

121 122 123 125 135 140 141 148 149 150 151 152

154 155 156 157 158 159 161 162 165

170 174 175 176 177 178 189 190 193

simple present for continuative or experiential perfect completive/perfect done past tense/anterior marker been loosening of sequence of tenses rule go-based future markers volition-based future markers other than will IV. Verb phrase: modal verbs double modals epistemic mustn’t present tense forms of modals used where StE has past tense forms new quasi-modals: core modal meanings V. Verb phrase: verb morphology a-prefixing on elements other than ing-forms other forms/phrases for copula ‘be’: before NPs other forms/phrases for copula ‘be’: before locatives serial verbs: give = ‘to,for’ serial verbs: go = ‘movement away from’ serial verbs: come = ‘movement towards’ serial verbs: constructions with 3 verbs serial verbs: constructions with 4 or more verbs VII. Negation multiple negation / negative concord ain’t as the negated form of be ain’t as the negated form of have ain’t as generic negator before a main verb invariant don’t for all persons in the present tense never as preverbal past tense negator not as a preverbal negator no more/nomo as negative existential marker invariant non-concord tags (including eh?)

B Uh done eat dat one (already) Uh bin deh; He bin done gone We ga [g@] come

Dem gata [gEyt@] must be coulda go fast ‘Those alligators must have been able to go/move fast.’

A A B A B

B A B B B

He duh ye buba ‘he is your brother’

A

He duh home ‘he/she is home’

A

he run go home He run come home He run come kyah me home ‘he ran to carry/drive me home’ or ‘he ran and carried/drove me home’

B A A A B

Uh ain ga [g@] go nowhere ‘I won’t go anywhere’ He ain tall Uh ain sh’um [âÑ:m] ‘I haven’t seen him/her/it’; You ain fuh go ‘you don’t have to go’ You ain like um? ‘don’t you like him/her/it?’

A C A

She don’ like um ‘She doesn’t like him/her/it’

A

You never come ‘You didn’t come’, ‘you never came’. He not here [less typical than he aint here]

A B C

You sh’um, inni? ‘You saw it, didn’t you’ You bin deh, inni? ‘You were there, weren’t you?’ You ain go, inni? ‘You didn’t go, did you?’

A

VIII. Agreement invariant present tense forms due to zero marking for the third person singular omission of auxiliary be: before He cookin ‘he is cooking’ progressive deletion of auxiliary be: before gonna deletion of copula be: before NPs omision of copula be: before AdjPs He very tall deletion of copula be: before locatives He at home/in school IX. Relativization relativizer where or a form derived from where relativizer what or a form derived from da man (weh) he wife die laas week ‘the man whose wife died what last week’ gapping/zero-relativization in subject Dat da young man come ’ere laas week ‘That’s the young man position ‘that’ came here last week.’

A

A A C C A A A A A

154

Salikoko S. Mufwene

194

resumptive/shadow pronouns

198

deletion of stranded prepositions in relative clauses (“preposition chopping”) X. Complementation say-based complementizers

200 201 202 203 204 208

209 210

213

215 216

217

218 220 221 222

223 224 225 226 227 228 229 231 233

for-based complementizers unsplit for to in infinitival purpose clauses for (to) as infinitive marker as what / than what in comparative clauses deletion of to before infinitives

da man (weh) he wife die laas week ‘the man whose wife died last week’ T’s only ting weh covetin happier ‘It’s [the] only thing that coveting is happier than.’

B C

He tell me say he buba take sick ‘he told me that his brother fell/took sick’ We tell um fuh (don) come ‘We told him (not) to come’

A

We tell um come; We try come It may also be the omission of fuh here rather than of to. There is a part of Gullah grammar that may be said not to have an infinitive in the first place.

A

addition of to where StE has bare infinitive non-finite clause complements with bare We sh’um walk ‘We saw him walk(ing)’ root form rather than -ing form XI. Adverbial subordination no subordination; chaining construction linking two main verbs (motion and activity) conjunction doubling: correlative conj.s XII. Adverbs and prepositions omission of StE prepositions (not necessarily with prepositional verbs, but e.g. locative prepositions and prepositions before temporal expressions) use of postpositions (either StE prepositions or postposed preposition-like elements) affirmative anymore ‘nowadays’ degree modifier adverbs have the same Real good form as adjectives other adverbs have the same form as he come ’ere real quick/fast adjectives too; too much; very much ‘very’ as qualifier XIII. Discourse organization and word order other options for clefting than StE duh talk he bin duh talk! ‘He was really talking.’ other possibilities for fronting than StE sentence-initial focus marker Duh Sara we duh talk about ‘It’s Sarah we are talking about’ “negative inversion” (sentence-initial Ain nobody ga worry wid you ‘Nobody will worry with you’ neg. auxiliary verbs) inverted word order in indirect questions no inversion/no auxiliaries in wh-questions no inversion/no auxiliaries in main clause yes/no questions superlative marker most occurring before head noun presence of subject in imperatives

A C C C

C A

C

C B

B

C A A A

B C A A C A A C B

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References Alleyne, Mervyn C. 1980. Comparative Afro-American. Ann Arbor: Karoma. Bailey, Guy, and Erik Thomas. 1998. Some aspects of AfricanAmerican vernacular English phonology. In: Salikoko S. Mufwene, John R. Rickford, Guy Bailey, and John Baugh (eds.), African-American English: Structure, History and Use, 85–109. London: Routledge. Christian, Donna, Walt Wolfram, and Nanjo Bube. 1988. Variation and Change in Geographically Isolated Communities: Appalachian English and Ozark English. Publication of the American Dialect Society 74. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press. Kautzsch, Alexander and Edgar W. Schneider. 2000. Differential creolization: Some evidence from earlier African American vernacular English in South Carolina. In: Ingrid Neumann-Holzschuh, and Edgar W. Schneider (eds.), Degrees of Restructuring in Creole Languages, 247–274. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Krapp, George Philip. 1924. The English of the Negro. The American Mercury 2: 190–195. Mufwene, Salikoko S. 1986a. Number delimitation in Gullah. American Speech 61: 33–60. Mufwene, Salikoko S. 1986b. Restrictive relativization in Gullah. Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages 1: 1–31. Mufwene, Salikoko S. 1987. An issue on Predicate Clefting: Evidence from Atlantic creoles and African languages. In: Philippe Maurer, and Thomas Stolz (eds.), Varia Creolica, 71–89. Bochum: Brockmeyer. Mufwene, Salikoko S. 1989. Equivocal structures in some Gullah complex sentences. American Speech 64: 304–326. Mufwene, Salikoko S. 1991. On the infinitive in Gullah. In: Walter Edwards, and Donald Winford (eds.), Verb Phrase Patterns in Black English and Creole, 203–216. Detroit: Wayne State U. Press. Mufwene, Salikoko S. 1993. Scope of negation and focus in Gullah. In: Francis Byrne, and Donald Winford (eds.), Focus and Grammatical Relations in Creole Languages, 95–116. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Mufwene, Salikoko S. 1994a. On decreolization: The case of Gullah. In: Marcyliena Morgan (ed.), Language and the Social Construction of Identity in Creole Situations, 63–99. Los Angeles: UCLA Center for African-American Studies. Mufwene, Salikoko S. 1994b. On the status of auxiliary verbs in Gullah. American Speech 69: 58–70. Mufwene, Salikoko S. 2000a. Creolization is a social, not a structural, process. In: Ingrid Neumann-Holzschuh, and Edgar Schneider (eds.), Degrees of Restructuring in Creole Languages, 65–84. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Mufwene, Salikoko S. 2000b. Some sociohistorical inferences about the development of African-American English. In: Shana Poplack (ed.), The English History of African American English, 233–263. Oxford: Blackwell. Mufwene, Salikoko S. 2001a. The Ecology of Language Evolution. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Mufwene, Salikoko S. 2001b. African-American English. In: John Algeo (ed.), The Cambridge History of the English Language. vol. 6: History of American English, 291–324. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Mufwene, Salikoko S. 2008. Language Evolution: Contact, Competition, and Change. London: Continuum Press. Mufwene, Salikoko S. 2009a. The indigenization of English in North America. In: Thomas Hoffmann, and Lucia Siebers (eds.), World Englishes: Problems, Properties, Prospects. Selected Papers from the 13th IAWE Conference, 353–368. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Mufwene, Salikoko S. 2009b. Some offspring of colonial English are creole. In: Juhani Klemola, Markku Filppula, and Heli Paulasto (eds.), Vernacular Universals vs. Contact-Induced Language Change, 280–303. London: Routledge. Mufwene, Salikoko S. 2010. Second language acquisition and the emergence of creoles. Studies in Second Language Acquisition 32: 1–42. Mufwene, Salikoko S., and Marta Dijkhoff. 1989. On the so-called ‘infinitive’ in Atlantic creoles. Lingua 77: 297–330. Pargman, Sheri. 2002. Internal and external factors in language change. PhD dissertation, University of Chicago. Rawley, James. 1991. Slave trade. In: Eric Foner, and John A. Garraty (eds.), The Reader’s Companion to American History, 994–995. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. Rickford, John R. 1990. Number delimitation in Gullah: A response to Mufwene. American Speech 65: 148–63. Schuchardt, Hugo. 1914. Die Sprache der Saramakkaneger in Surinam. Amsterdam: Johannes Müller. Translated in Hugo Schuchardt, 1979, The Ethnography of Variation: Selected Writings on Pidgins and Creoles, 73–108. Ann Arbor: Karoma. Simms, William Gilmore. 1845. The Wigwam and the Cabin. New York: Wiley and Putnam. Turner, Lorenzo Dow. 1949. Africanisms in the Gullah Dialect. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Wood, Peter. 1974. Black Majority: Negroes in Colonial South Carolina from 1670 through the Stono Rebellion. New York: Knopf.

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Robert Bayley

Chicano English 1 Socio-historical background In 2010, U.S. residents of Mexican origin numbered nearly 32,000,000 (U.S. Census Bureau, 2011). Of course, given the substantial immigration in recent years, many residents of Mexican origin are native speakers of Spanish with relatively limited command of English, while many third and fourth generation Mexican Americans have fully adopted the English varieties of the communities in which they live. Nevertheless, many Mexican-background residents of the U.S. do speak Chicano English (ChcE), “an ethnic dialect that children acquire as they acquire English in the barrio or other ethnic social setting during their language acquisition period” (Santa Ana, 1993:15, emphasis in the original). That is, ChcE tends to be spoken by people who live in ethnic enclaves, often in California, Chicago, or the US southwest, and who have relatively little contact with speakers of mainstream US English varieties. Santa Ana goes on to distinguish ChcE from the learner varieties spoken by Mexican immigrants who arrived in the United States as adolescents or adults: “The later [late arrivals] learn English after the so-called critical age of language acquisition … Chicano English is spoken only by native English speakers” (15). Santa Ana (1993) and Bayley (2008), however, do not limit ChcE speakers to monolingual or English-dominant speakers. Rather, in addition to people who acquired English as their first language, ChcE speakers include people who acquired Spanish and English simultaneously as well as speakers who began to acquire English when they enrolled in elementary school, usually around the age of five. Although it is possible to restrict ChcE to a dialect spoken by people who are fully proficient in English, the dispersion of the Mexican-origin population in recent decades has led to even greater diversity in patterns of language use than existed previously, when Chicanos resided mostly in California and the southwestern United States. For example, southern states such as Georgia and North Carolina have experienced large increases in the number of Mexican and other Latino immigrants (Bayley 2007). In some cases, the children of these immigrants have adopted features of southern American speech such as fixin’ to (F126) and y’all (F34; Moriello 2003; Wolfram, Carter, and Moriello 2004). Similarly, East Harlem in New York City, which was once a predominantly Puerto Rican neighborhood, is increasingly home to large numbers of Mexican immigrants living in close proximity to African Americans in West Harlem. There has been little research on the English of the younger speakers in this relatively recent group of Mexican immigrants. However, given the possibilities for contact that their location presents, research is clearly needed. The majority of the published studies of ChcE concern phonology, including a number of studies of phonological variation (see, e.g. Bayley 1994; Bayley and Messing, 2008; Doviak and Hudson-Edwards 1980; Fought 1999; Mendoza-Denton 2008; Ocumpaugh 2010; Roeder 2010a, 2010b; Santa Ana 1992, 1996; Santa Ana and Bayley 2004). Nevertheless, a number of morphological and syntactic features have been systematically studied, including modals (Wald 1996), negation (Fought, 2003), innovative quotatives (Bayley and Santa Ana 2004; Hansen-Thomas 2008), and relative pronoun choice (Bayley 1999). This chapter briefly examines these features, with specific attention to WAVE features, describes other features that have been mentioned but await full investigation, and offers suggestions for future research.

2 Grammatical features Many of the features of ChcE are what Chambers (2004) has referred to as “vernacular universals,” that is, features such as negative concord that are characteristic of many vernacular varieties in a number of languages and obligatory in others, or what Szmrecsanyi and Kortmann (2009) describe as “Angloversals,” or features

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that are common to many English vernaculars. Among these are negative concord (F154), tense unmarking (F132), occasional copula deletion, and patterns of relative pronoun use. In addition, the phonological process of consonant cluster reduction, a phenomenon that has been widely studied in many English dialects (see Schrier 2006 for a review), has an impact on tense unmarking because the deletion of final -t or -d may result in what appears to be a past reference verb that is unmarked for tense. The ChcE modal system, however, is relatively unusual. In addition, ChcE has adopted a number of innovations stemming from Anglo varieties, including innovative quotatives. Further, in materials prepared for teachers of ChcE speakers in Los Angeles, several grammatical features that appear to result from Spanish contact have been noted (Barrón and San Román no date). These features are examined in the following sections.

2.1 Pronouns As shown in the Overview (see appendix), ChcE exhibits occasional use of emphatic reflexives with own (F16) as well as zero subject pronouns (F43), e.g. F16

I like to be by my own self. (N CA, f, adolescent, Mendoza-Denton, 2008)

F43

I tried that door. Over and over and over. I moved the lock. Ø locks from the inside. (LA, m, 34)1

The simplest explanation of zero pronouns is to attribute them to the influence of the Spanish substrate. However, as Bayley and Santa Ana (2004) note, in Mexican Spanish, in contrast to ChcE, zero subject pronouns are much more common than overt pronouns. Moreover, an extensive body of research has shown that Spanish subject pronoun expression is subject to a complex array of constraints (see Flores-Ferrán 2007 for a review). We need detailed work on subject pronoun absence in ChcE before we can attribute it to substrate influence. In the South, as well as in Texas, Chicano speakers sometimes use y’all (F34) as a second person pronoun: F34

forms or phrases for the second person plural pronoun other than you I say, “Hey y’all two, leave me alone.” (Wolfram, Carter, and Moriello 2004: 345)

In addition to zero subject pronouns, ChcE exhibits other pronominal uses that diverge from mainstream English varieties, including the use of it in place of there as an existential (F173): F173

variant forms of dummy subject there in existential clauses They were saying that they had a lot of problems at Garner because it was a lot of fights and stuff. (SA, m, 35)

Finally, both Fought (2003) and Barrón and San Romón (n.d.) observe that in Los Angeles, speakers often use theirselves where mainstream English speakers would use themselves: (1)

[They] have to start supporting theirselves at an early age. (LA, m, 18) (Fought 2003: 95)

1 Where available, the location of the speaker and speaker gender and age are indicated after each example. If that information is not available, a reference to the study that contains the example is provided. Many of the examples from Los Angeles come from my joint publication with Otto Santa Ana (Bayley and Santa Ana 2004). Other California examples are from Barrón and San Román (n.d.), Fought (2003), Mendoza-

Denton (2008), and Wald (1996). The examples from San Antonio come from corpora collected for a variety of earlier studies including Bayley (1994, 1999), Bayley and Messing (2008), Langman and Bayley (2007), and Schecter and Bayley (2002). LA = Los Angeles, N CA = northern California, SA = San Antonio. Examples of WAVE features are indicated as F + the feature number. Other features of interest are numbered.

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2.2 Verb phrase ChcE shares many features of the verb phrase with other vernacular dialects. These include occasional use of invariant be to indicate habituality (F90), regularization of irregular verbs (F128), leveling of past tense/past participles (F130), and tense unmarking (F132). These features are illustrated below. F90

invariant be as a habitual marker Her bane was Sister Dorothy. I used to hate her because it’s the same reason. You be doing a class work in class, and she used to tell me: “Do this.” (LA, f, 18)

F128

regularization of irregular verb paradigms When I was little and that teacher hit my hand on my- my upper side of the hand- that when she striked me with that, that just blew my mind (SA, f, 30).

F130

leveling of past tense/past participles The apple that the witch had gave Snow White that wasn’t poisonous. (SA, f, 11)

F132

zero past tense forms of regular verbs (tense unmarking) I saw some girl, she, she look pretty. (SA, f, 12) By like the first grade I was already, you know, catching on like de volada (very quickly) then after that I talk English. (SA, m, 15)

Note that the absence of tense making illustrated for F132 may well be the result of consonant cluster reduction – a phonological process that is very common in ChcE (Bayley 1994; Santa Ana 1992, 1996). However, ChcE also exhibits tense unmarking in irregular verbs as in (2), a phenomenon that cannot be explained as a result of a phonological process: (2)

… she went up to the principal go- she tell him that I had an illegal weapon. (SA, f, 15)

In addition, ChcE exhibits occasional copula deletion: (3)

a. b.

… they Ø like, “you speak a little bit weird.” (SA, f 12) … I Ø just like tired of it … (SA, f, 12)

Several uses of modals are also of interest. Wald (1996), for example, in a study of modals in Los Angeles ChcE reports that would is used in if-clauses (F120) and with both stative and non-stative verbs: F120

would in if-clauses If he’d be here right now, he’d make me laugh. (Wald, 1996: 520)

In addition, Wald suggested that the use of would in ChcE might be more common than in other varieties as a result of substrate influence. In a later discussion of modals in Los Angeles ChcE, Fought (2003) notes that could was frequently used in place of can in her data, as in the following example: (4) Nobody believes that you could fix anything. (Fought 2003: 100)

2.3 Negation Negative concord, or multiple negation, is among the most widely studied features of English dialects and it is one of the few syntactic features mentioned in Penfield and Ornstein-Galicia’s (1985) early monograph on ChcE. Negative concord is also among the few ChcE grammatical features that have been examined using standard sociolinguistic methods. As Bayley and Santa Ana (2004) observe, negative concord is very common in ChcE, as shown in the following examples collected from working class speakers in Los Angeles, California and San Antonio, Texas:

Chicano English

F154

159

You guys don’t like me no more. (LA, f, 18) I can’t take it no more, you know. (SA, m, 42) I wouldn’t go much nowhere. (SA, f, 36)

While most studies of ChcE have commented on the presence of negative concord, Fought (2003) investigated this variable in detail, using data from adolescents and young adults in the Los Angeles area. Fought extracted all of the examples of negation from 28 sociolinguistic interviews, for a total of 328 tokens. She used multivariate analysis with Varbrul, a specialized application of logistic regression (see Tagliamonte 2006), to test the effect of syntactic category, social class, gang status (gang member, gang-affiliated, non-gang member, tagger), bilingualism, and sex. Overall results showed that the young speakers in Fought’s study used negative concord at a rate of 49 percent, with the highest use by gang members and taggers and low-income speakers. Bilingualism also favored use of negative concord, although it was the least important among the significant factors. In contrast to most studies of vernacular forms that show that men tend to favor the nonstandard variant, sex was not significant in Fought’s study. Fought’s (2003) study of ChcE negative concord showed considerable variability according to syntactic category, ranging from 74 percent use of the nonstandard variant with negative auxiliaries plus adverbs (e.g., I won’t do it no more) to only 15 percent use with a negative in an outside clause (e.g., She’s not dead or nothing) (2003: 385). Moreover, in contrast to a number of other groups, the speakers Fought studied use negative concord at only a moderate rate. Labov (1972), for example, reported that the African American young men he studied in Harlem used negative concord almost categorically. In a study of Puerto Rican English in New York City’s East Harlem, Wolfram (1974) found that the speakers he studied used negative concord at a rate of 87 percent. While Fought’s results are valuable, they also illustrate the need for further studies. For example, in several studies conducted in North Carolina, Wolfram and his students have examined contact between Mexican immigrants (and their children) and speakers of southern vernacular English (Carter 2004; Moriello 2003; Wolfram et al. 2004). Those studies, however, have focused on phonological variation and lexical items rather than grammatical variation. Clearly, then, there are many more opportunities for research, even in the case of variables that are very well documented in other varieties such as negative concord. In fact, Santa Ana (1993) argues that a full description of Chicano English requires that we investigate not only variables that might be attributed to a possible Spanish substrate, but that we examine features, both grammatical and phonological, that are known to vary in other vernacular dialects. In addition to multiple negation, like many other English vernaculars, ChcE exhibits frequent use of ain’t as the negated form of be (F155) and don’t for all persons in the present tense (F158): F155

You fight back ’cause you know they touched you and they ain’t supposed to do that. (SA, f, 12)

F158

She don’t like it here in the courts and my dad well I’m not sure ’cause he don’t live with us. (SA, f, 15)

2.4 Agreement As in many dialects, third person singular -s is often absent from present tense verbs (F170), as in the following: F170

If somebody come up and push me then I’ll just probably have to push ’em back or something. (SA, f, 12)

In addition, there’s is often used with plural subjects (F172): F172

There’s some guys that I can’t stand. (SA, f, 15)

Singular is is sometimes used with plural subjects, as in the following example, where is refers to the plural antecedent people: (5)

And the people that live here is … (SA, f, 33)

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Further, auxiliary have is sometimes absent (F179): F179

I Ø been doing dancing for a long time, for eight years already. (SA, f, 12)

In addition, was is sometimes used with singular subjects (F180), as in the following example where it is used with focuser like: F180

was/were generalization. They was like you know, little girls, “what are you doing?” (SA, f, 29)

2.5 Relativization Like negative concord, the choice of pronouns in ChcE has received systematic study. In ChcE, as in other English varieties, a relative pronoun may be realized as a wh-form, that, or zero in most syntactic positions: This is the person who/that/Ø he warned you about. Speakers’ choices among the three options have received less attention in working class and regional American English vernaculars than in standard varieties. Nevertheless, a number of scholars have focused on relative pronoun use in vernacular dialects and included working class speakers in their samples (see e.g. Wolfram and Christian 1976 on Appalachian English and Rickford 2011 on African American, Appalachian, and creole varieties). Research has documented a number of ways in which vernacular dialects differ from one another with respect to relative pronoun use. However, several general tendencies have emerged that differentiate relative pronoun choice in vernacular dialects from the more standard varieties. For example, vernaculars typically exhibit a high percentage of use of that, particularly with human subject head nouns. In addition, vernacular dialects usually exhibit a higher percentage of zero in all grammatical categories in the embedded clause, including subject position (e.g. I have a friend Ø did that). Bayley (1999) investigated 895 relative clauses, extracted from 37 interviews with children, adolescents, and adults in San Antonio and northern California. The data were coded for a range of linguistic factors that previous studies had indicated might influence speakers’ choices among a wh- form, that, or zero. These included the humanness of the antecedent, whether the relative pronoun and the antecedent were adjacent or separated by another relative clause or another element, the syntactic function of the relative pronoun in the relative clause, the grammatical category of the subject of the relative clause, and a number of other features of the antecedent. In addition, the study investigated the effects of age, geographical region, immigrant generation, and social class. The overall results showed a number of differences between ChcE and other dialects. ChcE speakers tended to use that as a relative pronoun at the very high rate of 71 percent, compared to 44 percent reported by Guy and Bayley (1995) for upper-class Anglo males. The overall rate of use of wh- forms, 11 percent, was correspondingly low, as was the rate of use of the zero option, 18 percent. Multivariate analysis showed that relative pronoun choice in ChcE was constrained by a complex array of linguistic and social factors. Among the social factors, only social class and age reached statistical significance. As might be expected, middle class speakers were more likely to use a wh- form than were working class speakers, particularly with a human antecedent, although both middle and working class speakers used that more frequently than any other option. The results for age present a more complex picture and suggest that younger speakers are converging with both standard and vernacular norms. On the one hand, speakers younger than 25 were more likely to use wh- forms. On the other hand, they were also more likely to use zero. These results suggest that the younger speakers have been influenced both by the prescriptive norms taught at school and by features of Anglo or African American vernaculars. Among the linguistic factors, perhaps the most interesting results concern the use of that with human antecedents: (6) Some guys I find that I can’t trust them. There’s like one like about one that I find that I could. (SA, f, 15) The data for Bayley’s study also provide examples of zero relatives in subject position (F193) and resumptive pronouns (F194):

Chicano English

F193

zero relative pronoun in subject position Because there’s a lot of people Ø do need help. (SA, f, 42)

F194

resumptive/shadow pronouns I know this lady that she used to live here (SA, f, 35)

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2.6 Discourse organization and word order 2.6.1 Focuser like Focuser like (F234) is used by speakers of all generations, as shown in the following examples taken from interviews with a young woman in Texas and a middle-aged man in California: F234

like as a focusing device I talk to people a lot and a lot of times they’re like trying to get a word in edgewise. (SA, f, 18) So Nora like she was kind of like free, independent. (N CA, m, 54)

2.6.2 Innovative quotatives Young Chicano/as, like young people elsewhere in the English-speaking world, use a variety of innovative quotatives borrowed from the matrix dialect (Fought 2003). Bayley and Santa Ana (2004) and Hansen-Thomas (2008), for example, provide a number of examples from a corpus of data collected in 2001–2002 in a 7th grade classroom in South Texas. Based on the analysis of interviews and several days of recorded conversations among young Chicanas, Hansen-Thomas reports that only 25 percent of direct quotations were introduced by the traditional forms say or tell. In contrast, go was the most common quotative (35 %), followed by like, e.g. I’m like … (25 %), followed by all, e.g. I’m all … (18 %) (2008:21). Hansen-Thomas also mentions several examples of be all like and say like, which account for the remaining 5 percent of the data. These results suggest that innovative forms generally thought to originate in Anglo varieties impact the English spoken in Latino neighborhoods in the Southwest, even in communities where younger speakers have very little contact with Anglos aside from school teachers. Mendoza-Denton (2008), in a study of Latina gangs in northern California, provides a number of examples of quotative be all: (7)

a. b.

And then she’s all hu::hhh. And then she’s all “Oh I gotta go to class.” She’s all “Oh you know you believed me, huh?” (Mendoza-Denton 2008: 184)

Further, Bayley and Santa Ana (2004) offer a vivid example of the variety of quotatives found in the speech of one young Chicana in Texas, including quotative like (F235): F235

Then some girl goes “eh they jumped you right?” And I was like, “Oh, my god, you had to say that!” And I was like “No they didn’t” And she [the speaker’s mother] was all “what, what happened?” I was like, “uh nothing”. She’s all, “J. you better tell me.” And I had to tell her. And I go “well don’t, don’t go to my school. If I have to fight, then I’ll take care of it, I’ll fight them myself.” And she goes “Well they gave you a ticket J.” And I, she goes. “Does Miss A. [the school principal] know?” So I was like, “Yes”. (SA, f, 12)

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2.7 Reported speech Wald (1987) examined reported speech in East Los Angeles ChcE. He observed frequent examples of the use of tell to introduce questions (see also Bayley 1994): (8)

I told Elinore: “Is that your brother?” (LA, f, 52)

In addition, Wald noted that speakers sometimes extended complementizer that to direct speech following tell. In addition, speakers in East Los Angeles used subject auxiliary inversion (F227) only with wh-questions, but not with yes/no questions. F227

He asked me where did I live. He asked did I live there. (Wald 1987: 60)

2.8 Prepositions Preposition use in ChcE provides what is perhaps the clearest example of substrate influence. Barrón and San Romón (n.d.: 30–31) offer a wide variety of examples, including the following where mainstream varieties would prefer at: (9) a. b. c.

He’s pointing on a cat on a treetop. He’s smiling to the cat. He’s pointing from the cat.

Examples where mainstream English would prefer on include: (10) a. b.

He’s putting a towel in his head. On day that teacher took her to a trip.

Barrón and San Román provide the following examples where mainstream English varieties require in: (11) a. b. c.

He’s up to heaven. They took part of the mummification process. We get out of here on June.

Finally the following examples illustrate divergent use of out of and so, respectively: (12) a. b. c.

They got off the car and went inside. For my mom can understand. For she won’t feel guilty.

Although examples such as those above certainly occur in ethnic enclaves such as East Los Angeles, it is not entirely clear whether they are part of an ethnic dialect or whether the divergent use of prepositions represents incomplete English acquisition. As in many areas of ChcE grammar, further systematic research is needed.

3 Conclusion As the listing for the WAVE feature matrix suggests, we still have a great deal of learn about the features of ChcE. Thanks to recent studies, we now have a much better understanding of the systematic natures of ChcE phonology, although naturally there is much more to learn, particularly in areas where people of Mexican origin have only recently begun to settle. In 1993, Santa Ana called for linguists examining ChcE to examine variables that have been widely studied in other dialects and that are generally well understood. To a certain extent that goal has been accomplished in the case of ChcE phonology. The elaborate feature matrix used in the WAVE project provides a basis for accomplishing the goal in the case of ChcE grammar.

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Appendix: Overview of WAVE features attested in Chicano English* # 7 9 16 34 43 56 70

90 99

113 120 121 126 128

130 132 147 154 155 158

170

172 173 175 185 186

feature Chicano English example I. Pronouns, pronoun exchange, nominal gender me instead of I in coordinate subjects Me and my friends went to the movie benefactive ‘personal dative’ construction They found them an apartment. (using the object form of the pronoun) emphatic reflexives with own I like to be my own self. forms or phrases for the second person Y’all (in Texas and elsewhere in the South), e.g. Hey y’all two, plural other than you leave me alone subject pronoun drop Ø is washing the hair. II. Noun phrase absence of plural marking only after five cent quantifiers proximal and distal demonstratives with this here car ‘here’ and ‘there’ III. Verb phrase invariant be as a habitual marker You be doing a classwork in class … (in Los Angeles) leveling of the difference between simple Were you ever in Mexico? (meaning ‘Have you ever been to present and simple past: simple past for Mexico?’) StE present perfect loosening of sequence of tense rule would in if-clauses If he’d be here right now double modals We might could do that (in Texas and other areas where DMs are common). new quasi-modals fixin’ to do it (in Texas and other areas where fixin’ to is common) Leveling of past tense/past participle verb … she striked me with that, that just blew my mind. forms; regularization of irregular verb paradigms leveling of past tense/past participle verb The apple that the witch had gave Snow White forms zero past tense forms of regular verbs I drop my colors (left a gang). Note this could be a result of -t,d deletion, which is pervasive. was for conditional were If he was here now … VI. Negation multiple negation I don’t know nobody over there. ain’t as the negated form of be I ain’t really thinking about getting with J. or any other guy invariant don’t for all persons in the The little kid don’t have no shoes of his own. present tense VII. Agreement invariant present tense forms due If somebody come up and push me … to zero marking for the third person singular existential/presentation there’s/there There’s some guys … is/there was variant forms of dummy subject there in They were saying that they had a lot of problems at Garner existential clauses because it was a lot of fights and stuff. deletion of auxiliary be: before gonna VIII. Relativization relativizer that in non-restrictive contexts My friend, that’s in Dallas. which for ‘who’

* Owing to the rather small number of studies of ChcE grammatical features, the list of features is necessarily selective. Examples of WAVE features in the Overview are taken from data collected for several studies in San Antonio, Texas and from

Rating B B C B C C B

C B

B C B B B

B C B A B B

B

B B C B C

studies and teaching guides by Barrón and San Román (n.d.), Fought (2003), Mendoza-Denton (2008), Moriello (2003), Santa Ana (1992, 1996), Wald (1996), and Wolfram, Carter, and Moriello (2004).

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gapping/zero-relativization in subject Since my grandmother is the only one Ø has a Nintendo … position resumptive/shadow pronouns I know this lady that she used to live here (rare) XI. Adverbs and prepositions degree adverbs have the same form as She was like a real thin lady. adjectives other adverbs have the same form as real quick adjectives Inverted word order in indirect questions He asked me where did I live. XII. Discourse organization and word order like as a focusing device She was like a real thin lady like as a quotative particle When people wanna fight me I’m like “well okay, well then I’ll fight you.”

C C B B B B B

References Barrón, Carlos C., and Javier San Román. no date. Teachers Guide to Supporting Mexican American Standard English Learners: Understanding the Characteristic Linguistic Features of Mexican American Language as Contrasted with Standard English Structure. Los Angeles: Los Angeles Unified School District Instructional Support Services, Academic English Mastery/Closing the Achievement Gap Branch. Bayley, Robert. 1994. Consonant cluster reduction in Tejano English. Language Variation and Change 6: 303–326. Bayley, Robert. 1999. Relativization strategies in MexicanAmerican English. American Speech 74: 115–139. Bayley, Robert. 2007. Spanish. In: Michael Montgomery, and Ellen Johnson (eds.), The New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture, vol. 5: Language, 109–115. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. Bayley, Robert. 2008. Latino varieties of English. In: Hiroko Momma, and Michael Matto (eds.), A Companion to the History of the English Language, 521–530. Oxford: Blackwell. Bayley, Robert, and Cory L. Messing. 2009. Final (z)-devoicing in Chicano English. In: Michael Grosvald, and Dionne Soares (eds.), Proceedings of the Thirty-Eighth Western Conference on Linguistics (WECOL 2008), 1–11. Davis: Department of Linguistics, University of California, Davis. Bayley, Robert, and Otto Santa Ana. 2004. Chicano English: Morphology and syntax. In: Bernd Kortmann, and Edgar Schneider (eds.), A Handbook of Varieties of English, vol. 2, 374–390. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Carter, Phillip M. 2004. The emergence of Hispanic English in the Raleigh community: A sociophonetic analysis. M.A. thesis, North Carolina State University, Raleigh. Chambers, Jack. 2004. Dynamic typology and vernacular universals. In: Bernd Kortmann (ed.), Dialectology Meets Typology, 127–145. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Doviak, Martin J., and Allison Hudson-Edwards. 1980. Phonological variation in Chicano English: Word-final /z/-devoicing. In: Edward L. Blansitt, and Richard V. Teschner (eds.), Festscrift for Jacob Ornstein, 82–95. Rowley, MA: Newbury House. Flores-Ferrán, Nydia. 2007. A bend in the road: Subject personal pronoun expression in Spanish after thirty years

of sociolinguistic research. Language and Linguistics Compass 1: 624–652. Fought, Carmen. 1999. A majority sound change in a minority community: /u/-fronting in Chicano English. Journal of Sociolinguistics 3: 5–23. Fought, Carmen. 2003. Chicano English in Context. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan. Guy, Gregory R., and Robert Bayley. 1995. On the choice of relative pronouns in English. American Speech 70:148–161. Hansen-Thomas, Holly. 2008. An investigation of innovative quotatives in adolescent Chicana English in Texas. Intercultural Pragmatics 5: 19–39. Labov, William. 1972. Language in the Inner City: Studies in the Black English Vernacular. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Langman, Juliet, and Robert Bayley. 2007. Untutored acquisition in content classrooms. In: Zhu Hua, Paul Seedhouse, Li Wei, and Vivian Cook (eds.), Language Learning and Teaching as Social Interaction, 218–234. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan. Mendoza-Denton, Norma. 2008. Homegirls: Language and Cultural Practice among Latina Youth Gangs. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell. Moriello, Beckie. 2003. “I’m feeksin’ to move”: Chicano English in Siler City, North Carolina. M.A. thesis, North Carolina State University, Raleigh. Ocumpaugh, Jaclyn. 2010. Regional variation in Chicano English: Incipient dialect formation among L1 and L2 speakers in Benton Harbor, Michigan. Ph.D. dissertation, Michigan State University. Penfield, Joyce, and Jacob L. Ornstein-Galicia. 1985. Chicano English: An Ethnic Contact Dialect. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Rickford, John R. 2011. Relativizer omission in Anglophone Caribbean Creoles, Appalachian, and African American Vernacular English. In: Emily M. Bender, and Jennifer E. Arnold (eds.), Language from a Cognitive Perspective: Grammar, Usage and Processing (Studies in Honor of Thomas Wasow), 139–160. Stanford, CA: CSLI Publications. Roeder, Rebecca V. 2010a. Effects of consonantal context on the pronunciation of /æ/ in the English of speakers of

Chicano English

Mexican heritage from south central Michigan. In: Dennis R. Preston, and Nancy A. Niedzielski (eds.), A Reader in Sociophonetics, 71–90. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Roeder, Rebecca V. 2010b. Northern cities Mexican American English: Vowel production and perception. American Speech 85: 163–184. Santa Ana, Otto. 1992. Chicano English evidence for the exponential hypothesis: A variable rule pervades lexical phonology. Language Variation and Change 4: 275–288. Santa Ana, Otto. 1993. Chicano English and the nature of the Chicano language setting. Hispanic Journal of Behavioral Sciences 15: 3–35. Santa Ana, Otto. 1996. Sonority and syllable structure in Chicano English. Language Variation and Change 8: 63–89. Santa Ana, Otto, and Robert Bayley. 2004. Chicano English: Phonology. In: Bernd Kortmann, and Edgar Schneider (eds.), A Handbook of Varieties of English, vol. 1, 417–434. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Schecter, Sandra R., and Robert Bayley. 2002. Language as Cultural Practice: Mexicanos en el norte. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Schreier, Daniel. 2006. Consonant Change in English Worldwide: Synchrony Meets Diachrony. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan. Szmrecsanyi, Benedikt, and Bernd Kortmann. 2009. Vernacular universals and angloversals in a typological perspec-

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tive. In: Markku Filippula, Juhani Klemola, and Heli Paulasto (eds.), Vernacular Universals and Language Contacts: Evidence from Varieties of English and Beyond, 33–53. New York: Routledge. Tagliamonte, Sali A. 2006. Analysing Sociolinguistic Variation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. U.S. Census Bureau. 2011. The Hispanic Population. 2010 Census Brief C2010BR-04. Washington, DC: Author. Wald, Benji. 1987. Spanish-English grammatical contact in Los Angeles: The grammar of reported speech in the East Los Angeles contact vernacular. Linguistics 25: 53–80. Wald, Benji. 1996. Substratal effects on the evolution of modals in East LA English. In: Jennifer Arnold, Renee Blake, Brad Davidson, Scott Schwenter, and Julie Solomon (eds.), Sociolinguistic Variation: Data, Theory and Analysis, 515–530. Stanford, CA: CSLI. Wolfram, Walt. 1974. Sociolinguistic Aspects of Assimilation: Puerto Rican English in New York City. Washington, DC: Center for Applied Linguistics. Wolfram, Walt, Phillip Carter, and Beckie Moriello. 2004. Emerging Hispanic English: New dialect formation in the American South. Journal of Sociolinguistics 8: 339–358. Wolfram, Walt, and Donna Christian. 1976. Appalachian Speech. Arlington, VA: Center for Applied Linguistics.

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Part III: The Caribbean and South America

English in the Bahamas

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Jeffrey Reaser and Benjamin Torbert

English in the Bahamas 1 Introduction Situated in the southern Atlantic Ocean, the Commonwealth of The Bahamas (henceforth “The Bahamas”) is an archipelago of more than seven hundred islands – of which twenty-nine are inhabited – extending over 750 miles from near southeastern Florida to northern Hispaniola. The landmass of approximately 5,400 square miles supports around 313,000 people (CIA, 2006). The islands are relatively flat, exposed coral formations, few rising more than fifty or sixty feet above sea-level, with relatively thin soils poorly suited to most agriculture, which has left Bahamians to ship building and farming the abundant marine life in the shallow seas. Despite technically not being a part of the Caribbean, The Bahamas joined the Caribbean Community in 1983 (without joining the Common Market). Recently, commercial fishing has given way to tourism, which now makes up over sixty percent of the Bahamian economy. Banking has become the second largest sector of the Bahamian economy. The speech of Bahamians has not garnered the linguistic attention of some Caribbean creoles, despite being relevant to a number of interesting questions. For example, has the geographical and cultural closeness to the Caribbean resulted in any linguistic accommodation to Caribbean creoles? Has the islands’ relative isolation resulted in linguistic basilectalization? Has the nearby Spanish speaking population from Cuba or the French Creole population from Haiti influenced the linguistic variety of the islands? Given the distances between the islands’ population centers, is there a relatively homogeneous Bahamian English? The relative dearth of linguistic study of The Bahamas leaves these and other questions ripe for exploration. This chapter does not attempt to answer these questions in any definitive way; however, it does provide information on the history and status of this Bahamian English that may provide a starting point for scholars investigating these or other questions in the future.

2 Sociohistorical status of the variety Prior to Columbus’ arrival in San Salvador in 1492, what is now The Bahamas was inhabited by seafaring Lucayan or Arawak Indians. The Spanish enslaved the indigenous population for labour in the gold mines of Hispaniola. Despite this early exploration and exploitation, the Spanish made little attempt to settle The Bahamas since the islands lacked riches, and the soils were unsuitable for farming (Craton and Saunders 1992). Over 150 years later, in 1648, a group of British settlers seeking religious freedom left Bermuda and founded the first permanent colony on Eleuthera, in the northern Bahamas (see Figure 1). Another group of British colonists from Bermuda settled Nassau – the present-day capital – in 1666, which became the entry point of slaves and other “social undesirable[s]” from Bermuda (Craton and Saunders 1992: 78). It is unknown whether slaves arriving in The Bahamas were born in Bermuda or Africa; nevertheless, some speculate that the initial Afro-Bahamian dialect was likely to be a pidgin or creole variety (see, e.g., Holm 1980). A second important group of British settlers came to The Bahamas from the Carolinas and Bermuda throughout the seventeenth century. During this early period, whites substantially outnumbered blacks; however, as colonists realized the poor soils would not support traditional plantation agriculture, many abandoned their slaves and deserted the islands. Former slaves often found employment in maritime activities, including the importation of other slaves to America or the Caribbean and pirating. The Afro-Bahamian population grew steadily in the eighteenth century resulting from importation and birth-rate, overtaking the white population by about 1760 (Craton and Saunders 1992: 119–120). Even then,

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Figure 1: Map of the islands of The Bahamas

however, the population was not homogeneous as the urban areas, such as Nassau, had higher percentages of Afro-Bahamians than did more remote locations, often termed “out islands.” An additional linguistic input was the nearly eight thousand British loyalists leaving the newly formed United States for The Bahamas following the American Revolutionary War. This group nearly tripled the total population of the colony. Many of these loyalists settled previously uninhabited out islands, such as Abaco, further separating the social and linguistic histories of these locals from those of places like Nassau (Dodge, 1995). Today, Abaco is home to the third largest Bahamian city, Marsh Harbour. Abaco differs from the rest of The Bahamas demographically (50 % of Abaco is white compared to 15 % of The Bahamas as a whole; CIA 2006), and culturally: in 1971, 75 % of the island’s population signed a petition to remain a part of the English commonwealth if The Bahamas sought “premature independence” (independence was granted on July 10, 1973). As Abaco historian Steve Dodge notes, places like Abaco have scarcely influenced modern Bahamian culture and existence (1995: vi–vii); however, it is this independent settlement and subsequent isolation of places like Abaco that make any singular description of Bahamian English difficult.

3 Sociolinguistic status of the variety Much of the early linguistic examination of Bahamian English occurred in the context of cataloging the pidgin and creole varieties of the world, despite the lack of consensus on Bahamian’s status as a creole (cf., e.g., Hancock 1971 and 1977). Subsequent works attempting to profile the world’s English language varieties, whether creole or non-creole, included overviews of the lexical, phonological, and morpho-syntactic systems of Bahamian, with little attention paid to inter- or intra-variety variation (Wells 1982; Holm 1988, 1989). The first substantial examination of variation in Bahamian English was Shilling’s 1978 dissertation Some nonstandard features of Bahamian Dialect syntax, which primarily focuses on the verb phrase. Shilling situates Afro-Bahamian English as a transitional variety, existing between African American English and creoles such

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as Gullah, Jamaican, and Guyanese Creoles. Shilling posits a similar creole genesis for such varieties but dissimilar subsequent decreolization. While Shilling’s informants are from a number of settlements throughout the archipelago, she condenses variation in a way that assumes two Bahamian Englishes split along ethnic lines. The assumption that Afro-Bahamian English is monolithic is inaccurate but has persisted in recent literature (see, e.g., McPhee 2003) despite the fact that Albury (1981), in a Master’s thesis, found variation of simple past marking within Afro-Bahamian, differentiating four distinct groups of speakers: basilectal, midmesolectal, upper-mesolectal, and acrolectal. Further complicating Afro-Bahamian English is the fact that there are few clear ethnic boundaries in The Bahamas, as residents claim ties to diverse groups including British, American, African, American Indian, Haitian, and mixed heritages of all combinations. Bahamian English may have received its most prolonged examination in a series of articles by John Holm (1980, 1983, 1984, etc.). These works, as well as a few others (e.g., Shilling 1980), sought not to document variation in the islands but rather to establish connections to Gullah or African languages. One early study of Bahamian that is notable for its attention to the variation within the speech of islanders is Holm and Shilling’s Dictionary of Bahamian English (1982), which catalogs regional and ethnic differences in the lexicon. Recent studies of Bahamian English have continued to probe regional and ethnic variation by examining specific segments of the population, such as urban speech (Hackert 2004), southern Bahamian speech (Holm and Hackert 1997), or the speech of insular communities on out islands (e.g., Sellers 1999; Childs, Reaser, and Wolfram 2003; Reaser 2004). Even recent overviews of Bahamian have been more inclusive of variation in Bahamian both in terms of phonology (Childs and Wolfram 2005) and morpho-syntax (Reaser and Torbert 2008). However, even these treatments lament the need to condense linguistic variation in The Bahamas into three oversimplified groupings: white, basilectal Afro-Bahamian, and mesolectal AfroBahamian. This overview, likewise, condenses language variation in The Bahamas into imperfect groupings for two reasons: first, space constraints would not permit a complete description, and second, the scholarship on Bahamian English is still relatively sparse. One further complication for such a description is that many Bahamians shift between registers skillfully and codeswitch between creole and non-creole varieties. Thus, even defining speech norms for a single speaker is a complicated task: as Reaser and Torbert (2008: 593) note, “what is true Bahamian English [is] a difficult or impossible question to answer.” Despite these difficulties impeding concise description, some broadly accurate generalizations can be made about Bahamian English. For one, no study of Anglo-Bahamians has found evidence of past creolization (e.g., Shilling 1978; Reaser 2004). No consensus exists, however, on the creole status (past or current) of Afro-Bahamians. Shilling (1978) concludes a creole history and subsequent decreolization, but in at least one community on Abaco Island, Reaser (2004) finds no compelling evidence for a creole past. Hackert (2004) convincingly demonstrates that the language variety spoken in the urban center of Nassau is best thought of as a creole, though it is not conclusive whether creolization is an older or current process. Generally speaking, islands settled earlier and ones with higher percentages of Afro-Bahamians are more likely to have residents who exhibit creole-like features. Islands that were settled later seem to follow one of two paths: islands in the northern Bahamas that were settled primarily by loyalists leaving from New York (though the settlers themselves may have been from as far south as the Carolinas) tend to exhibit little or no evidence of a past creole history. Islands in the southeast Bahams, settled by loyalists departing from Florida who attempted to establish Southern-style plantations, seem to have some echoes of either an earlier form of Gullah or a variety influenced by Gullah (Holm and Hackert 1997). The sundry settlement histories combined with the style-shifting abilities of residents make it difficult to estimate the numbers of speakers who speak any Bahamian dialect. However, drawing solely from demographic data, about five in six Bahamian residents (or, roughly a quarter-million people) live on either New Providence Island, where Nassau is located, or on Grand Bahama, where Freeport is (CIA 2006). Much of the creole Bahamian basilect can be heard in these urban areas (Hackert 2004). The remaining approximately sixty thousand residents are spread throughout the rest of the islands and they vary considerably in their speech patterns. The Bahamas is also home to emigrants from French Creole-speaking Haiti and Spanish-speaking Cuba, though these populations make up only an estimated two percent of the total population.

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4 Features of the variety 4.1 Lexicon The lexicon may be the best documented part of Bahamian English. Holm and Shilling’s Dictionary of Bahamian English, documents over 5500 “words and expressions used in the Bahamas which are not generally found in the current standard English of Britain or North America” in hopes of establishing “a link between the Caribbean creoles, such as Jamaican English, and the English spoken today by many black people in the United States” (1982: iii). For support, the dictionary documents connections between lexical items in The Bahamas and varieties such as Gullah (e.g., gutlin ‘greedy’ and Hoppin’ John ‘beans and rice’) and African languages (obeah ‘witchcraft’ and gumbay ‘social gathering’). Unfortunately, however, the authors also extend African genealogy to the grammatical system of Bahamian, asserting controversial notions as fact: “[Bahamian word order] follows African patterns” (1982: x). The pronunciation information in the volume is also occasionally problematic in that it has a tendency to underestimate variation. For example, it inaccurately claims that all Bahamians participate in the pin/pen merger (cf., Childs, Reaser, and Wolfram 2003). Despite these shortcomings, it remains an outstanding resource for regional and social lexical variation. One important set of words are the many terms used to identify and taxonomize Bahamians themselves. Many of these terms are used to denote people from particular towns or islands; for example, Crabs live in Hope Town and Cigillians are from Spanish Wells. Other terms index skin colour. The term white is used broadly to describe Bahamians with Anglo ancestry as well as those light-skinned Afro-Bahamians of mixed ancestry (Holm 1984: 54). The Afro-Bahamian community sometimes uses the term Conchy Joe or Conky Joe to describe people of Anglo descent. Generally, however, Bahamians self-identify simply as white or black along lines similar to the binary distinction made in the US.

4.2 Morphology and syntax Among the most studied morphosyntactic structures of English is the copula. Shilling (1980) finds no alternate copular forms such as Jamaican Creole’s da in the Bahamian basilect. Instead, the copula is either omitted (F176–178) or leveled to is (F140, 141). In the more acrolectal varieties, including Anglo-Bahamian, the standard copula forms am, is, are, was and were do occur though not without occasional leveling to is in the present tense and was in the past tense. Past tense leveling to was seems to be undergoing intensification in the Anglo-Bahamian communities on Abaco. Zero-copula (F176–178) occurs in all varieties of Bahamian but substantially more often in the basilectal than the acrolectal Afro-Bahamian varieties and the least in the Anglo- varieties. Both Afro- and Anglo-Bahamian varieties have are absent more often than is, mirroring the hierarchy found in American varieties; however, Afro-Bahamian also features rates of am absence that are even higher than is absence, a pattern not found in any US variety. All varieties exhibit elevated rates of absence when the copula is an auxiliary (i.e., preceding verb+ing or gonna constructions; F174–175) though the Anglo-Bahamian speakers also have substantial absence before predicate adjectives (she_ nice; F177): a pattern also found in Gullah and Jamaican Creole. Mesolectal Afro-Bahamian has some occurrence of zero-copula with past tense forms (Reaser 2004). As with pronunciation features, there are qualitative and quantitative differences between the ethnic Bahamian varieties. Further, though these varieties use more copula absence than is found in the speech of ethnic cohorts in the US, they possess none of the alternate particles found in creole varieties. The elevated rates of absence in the Anglo- variety may have been preserved from settlement or may demonstrate some historical accommodation to the majority Afro-Bahamian population but also some current divergence with respect to leveling, a potentially diagnostic ethnolinguistic marker. Finite be (F136) demonstrates similar ethnolinguistic patterning. Anglo-Bahamians occasionally use finite bes with third person singular subjects and be with other subjects in habitual, durative, or occasionally punctual contexts, such as, Where the boats’s be now? (from an elderly Anglo-Bahamian speaker). Afro-Bahamians do not use bes at all; however, they use uninflected be more commonly than Anglo speakers and

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more consistently in habitual contexts (F90). In the basilect, be occurs most commonly in does+be+Verb-ing constructions (F93), as in We does be reading play every time (Shilling 1980: 138). Such constructions may be similar to earlier forms of the habitual be found in African American English (see Rickford 1974). As with the copular forms discussed above, this construction does not align Bahamian with other creoles. Perfective aspectual patterns also differ ethnolinguistically in The Bahamas. Anglo-Bahamians often use a conjugated form of be in place of the standard English have (F102), especially with first person singular subjects, as in, I’m been there before or, less commonly with other subjects, you’re been there before. This construction, occasionally called “perfective I’m,” was widespread in the seventeenth century and can still be found in some communities in the American Southeast such as Lumbee English (Wolfram 1996). This form seems to be absent from the speech of Afro-Bahamians, with acrolectal speakers alternating between full and contracted forms of have much like in standard English. Basilectal speakers often delete have altogether (F179), especially when followed by verbs such as been and got. Another verbal auxiliary in Bahamian English is done, which denotes completed actions (F104) and is found in both Southern White English and African American English. In acrolectal speech, like US varieties, the verb following done is most often in the past participle as in, I done sent the pictures. Hackert (2004) found that urban basilectal Bahamians have extensive done + bare root, as in I done send the pictures, a pattern common to other creole varieties. Similar subtle differences among populations exist in other facets of the tense and aspect systems of varieties in The Bahamas, demonstrating that linguistic patterning continues to reflect the sundry settlement histories of islands. In general, areas of The Bahamas that are urban tend to have more structures that reveal a potential creole past than do areas settled more recently, especially those settled by Ex-Pats following the American Revolutionary War. Table 1 summarizes some of the variation in the verb system across different dialects of Bahamian, as well as Gullah, Jamaican Creole, and African American Vernacular English. In this table, a check indicates the feature is common in the variety while a check in parentheses indicates it is present but uncommon. Bahamian English also employs irregular past tense forms(F128–132). English vernaculars display six distinctive alternate forms of irregular past tense (Wolfram and Schilling-Estes 2005): (1) ambiguous verbs such as come, which may be either a past participle substituted for preterit (F131), a perfect whose auxiliary has been deleted (F179), or a bare root (F129); (2) substitution of the preterit for the past participle (F130), as in had went for ‘had gone;’ (3) past participle substituted for the preterit (F131) as in I seen for ‘I saw;’ (4) unambiguous bare root forms (F129, F132), as in I give for ‘I gave;’ (5) regularization, attaching the past tense morpheme to a strong verb, as in growed for ‘grew’ (F128); and lastly, (6) different strong forms, such as brung for ‘brought.’ Not surprisingly, Hackert (2001) reports past tense zero inflection rates of over fifty percent in urban areas of the Bahamas, slightly less than rates found in other Caribbean creoles such as basilectal Jamaican Creole (Patrick 1999). Mesolectal AfroBahamians in Abaco exhibit lower, but still robust rates of zero inflections; Anglo informants seldom stray from standard forms of past tense. Have and do, whether main verb or auxiliary, are seldom unmarked. By comparison, rates of past tense unmarking are not as robust in the Ex-slave Recordings (Bailey, Maynor, and Cukor-Avila 1991) or in Samaná, Dominica, and North Preston and Guysborough, Nova Scotia (Poplack and Tagliamonte 2001). Similarly, Afro-Bahamian speakers unmark past tense on a wide array of verbs, rather than just a few such as come, run, give, know, as Anglo dialects typically do, and Afro-Bahamians use a variety of periphrastic marking with did and used to (Hackert 2001). Other irregular forms of preterit and past participle, widespread in other areas, e.g., Appalachian English, are weakly attested in all these studies. Unmarked past tense (F132) is one of the clearer indicators of a creole residue in Afro-Bahamian English. Though standard preterits and past participles are plentiful among many speakers, and past tense variation fluctuates from individual to individual, Bahamian unmarking does not approach speakers of Trinidadian Creole or Jamaican Creole whose speakers exhibit near-categorical past tense zero (Winford 1993; Patrick 1999). A similar process may be responsible for the appearance of past tense zero; Hackert (2001) discusses the ramifications of Afro-Bahamian past tense variation for aspectual systems, but a detailed discussion of this topic is beyond the scope of this chapter. The popular conception of past tense marking, according to More Talkin’ Bahamian is “Very simple! Just get rid of all those superfluous ‘-ed’s’ from your verb endings and

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use the present tense form” (Glinton-Meicholas 1995: 10). This simplified version, which may be an epiphenomenon of consonant cluster reduction, leading to elevated levels of surface unmarking of weak verbs, seems to be most descriptive of basilectal speakers. Grammatical Structure

Ambiguous forms e.g., he come home Preterit for past participle e.g., she had went Past participle for preterit e.g., I seen her Bare root, e.g., he run yesterday Regularization, e.g., he growed up tall Different strong form, e.g., It riz up out of the water

AngloBahamian

Mesolectal Afro-Bahamian

Basilectal Afro-Bahamian

á

á

á

á

á

á

Jamaican Creole á

Gullah

AAVE

á

á

(á)

(á)

á

á

(á)

(á)

á

á

á

á

á

á

á

á

(á)

(á)

á

á

á

á

á

á

á

(á)

Table 1: Summary of verbs in Bahamian dialects and comparison varieties

Table 1 makes it apparent that Anglo-Bahamian and mesolectal Afro-Bahamian on rural islands differ more quantitatively than qualitatively. The structures in these varieties overlap substantially with US varieties, reflecting a possible historical tie between locales. Basilectal Bahamian, on the other hand, aligns more with Gullah than with the more heavily creolized Jamaican Creole. It is worth noting that the basilect has near categorical bimorphemic consonant cluster reduction and zero-past tense marking: tense, when crucial to understanding, tends to be marked through adverbs (yesterday, last year, etc.) (Albury 1981). In the mesolect, marking is more variable, especially among strong verbs. Other non-standard subject-verb concord patterns are also found in Bahamian. As is common in African American English, Afro-Bahamian has absence of the inflectional -s on verbs following third-person singular subjects (F170, as in he walk_). While many dialects attach -s to third personal plural subjects (they walks there), mesolectal Afro-Bahamian also attaches -s frequently to verbs following the pronoun I (F171; e.g., I works hard). Both absence and attachment co-occur in the speech of individuals and whether the subject is a pronoun or noun phrase seems not to correlate with any usage; indeed, in mesolectal Afro-Bahamian, -s marking on verbs appears to be an optional process. Not surprisingly, the verbal -s is categorically absent in basilectal varieties. Inflectional morphology on nouns is likewise variable in Afro-Bahamian varieties. Plural -s is commonly absent especially when the noun follows a quantifier (F56; I have two pig_) and the creole plural marker dem occurs in many Bahamian varieties (F51, as in the boy-dem fishing ‘the boys are fishing’). However, double marking also occurs with the noun taking both a standard -s and dem suffixes (the boys-dem fishing). Unlike other creoles, however, no Afro-Bahamian variety has categorically unmarked plurals. Anglo-Bahamian has essentially standard plural marking. All lects of Afro-Bahamian have near categorical absence of the possessive -s, marking possession through adjacency instead (F77, e.g. my son_ truck). Anglo-Bahamians tend to use the possessive marker in such cases, but seem not to distinguish between possessive and objective pronouns such as my and me (them me grandchildren; F26). Similar usage of they and theys for their and theirs exists in the Afro-Bahamian varieties as well (F21). Other hallmark vernacular features are present in Bahamian varieties including alternate second person plural pronouns (F34; oonah on San Salvador, yonner on Andros, y’all on Abaco, and yinna(h) in other locations), negative concord patterns (F154), lack of subject-verb inversion in questions (F228–229), doubly marked comparative and superlative forms (F78), alternate or archaic intensifiers, and variation in preposi-

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tional use. The preposition to, for example has generalized in usage allowing for constructions such as, she’s to the store; put [the shoes] to your feet; he works to Marsh Harbour; he’s been here to [since/during] Christmas; and they hunt more to [from] Marsh Harbor.

5 Conclusion Despite not having been studied as extensively as other Caribbean and US varieties, Bahamian English seems to be continuing much as it always has: somewhere between, yet fundamentally different from, American and Caribbean norms. This is not to suggest that Bahamian English is a static variety. There is some evidence of possible basilectalization in urban areas, continued decreolization and accommodation in others, and, of course, linguistic innovation throughout the islands. In emerging tourist areas, there may be superficial alignment with Caribbean norms among those involved directly in the industry; however, it is unknown whether this will eventually result in linguistic realignment or continue as a performance register. The Bahamas also continues to receive Haitian and Cuban immigrants, which further clouds predictions of the future of the variety. While a good bit of work has been done in positioning Bahamian in relation to American and Caribbean varieties, it is important to note that the English of all classes, ethnicities, and regions of The Bahamas are uniquely Bahamian. Much remains to be learned about these varieties by scholars who approach them as interesting and important independent of questions of creolization, decreolization, and alignment with other varieties. Perhaps as The Bahamas continues to increase its profile in the world through tourism and banking, even more attention will be paid to the language varieties of the islands’ inhabitants.

Appendix: Overview of WAVE features attested in Bahamian English # 1 3 4 5 7 8 9 11 12 13 14 16 21 22 24

feature I. Pronouns, pronoun exchange, nominal gender she/her used for inanimate referents alternative forms/phrases for referential (non-dummy) it alternative forms/phrases for dummy it generalized 3rd person singular pronoun: subject pronouns me instead of I in coordinate subjects myself/meself instead of I in coordinate subjects benefactive “personal dative” construction regularized reflexives paradigm object pronoun forms serving as base for 1st and/or 2nd person reflexives subject pronoun forms serving as base for reflexives no number distinction in reflexives (i.e. plural forms ending in -self) emphatic reflexives with own subject pronoun forms as possessive pronouns: 3rd person plural you as possessive pronoun object pronoun forms as possessive pronouns: 3rd person singular

rating B B B C A B B B B B B B C C C

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25 26 28 29 31 33 34 38 39 41 42 43 44 46

48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 60 62 63 64 68 70 72 77 78 79

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object pronoun forms as possessive pronouns: 3rd person plural object pronoun forms as possessive pronouns: 1st person singular use of us + NP in subject function use of us in object function (with singular referent) non-coordinated object pronoun forms in subject function independent possessive pronoun forms with added nasal forms or phrases for the 2nd person plural pronoun other than you specialized plural markers for pronouns plural forms of interrogative pronouns: using additional elements singular it for plural they in anaphoric use (with non-human referents) object pronoun drop subject pronoun drop: referential pronouns subject pronoun drop: dummy pronouns deletion of it in referential it is-constructions II. Noun phrase regularization of plural formation: extension of -s to StE irregular plurals regularization of plural formation: phonological regularization plural marking via preposed elements (e.g. ol, olgeta; etc.) plural marking via postposed elements (e.g. (an(d) them/dem; -mob) associative plural marked by postposed and them/them all/dem associative plural marked by other elements group plurals different count/mass noun distinctions resulting in use of plural for StE singular absence of plural marking only after quantifiers use of definite article where StE has indefinite article use of zero article where StE has definite article use of zero article where StE has indefinite article use of definite article where StE favours zero them instead of demonstrative those proximal and distal demonstratives with ‘here’ and ‘there’ group genitives omission of genitive suffix; possession expressed through bare juxtaposition double comparatives and superlatives regularized comparison strategies: extension of synthetic marking

C C A C C C B C B C C B C C

B C B C B C B B A C C C B B B C B B B

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80 83 85 88 89 90 91 96 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 111 112 113 114 118 119 120 121 126 128

129 130 131 132 134 135 136 140 141 142 145 147

regularized comparison strategies: extension of analytic marking comparatives and superlatives of participles comparative marking with more … and III. Verb phrase: tense and aspect wider range of uses of progressive be + V-ing: extension to stative verbs wider range of uses of progressive be + V-ing: extension to habitual contexts invariant be as habitual marker do as habitual marker there with past participle in resultative contexts levelling of present perfect and simple past: simple past for StE present perfect levelling of present perfect and simple past: present perfect for StE simple past simple present for continuative or experiential perfect be as perfect auxiliary do as unstressed tense marker (without habitual or other aspectual meanings) completive/perfect done completive/perfect have/be + done + past participle past tense/anterior marker been anterior had + bare root loosening of sequence of tenses rule go-based future markers is for am/will with 1st person singular would for (remote distant) future in contrast to will (immediate future) would in if-clauses IV. Verb phrase: modal verbs double modals new quasi-modals: aspectual meanings V. Verb phrase: verb morphology levelling of past tense/past participle verb forms: regularization of irregular verb paradigms levelling of past tense/past participle verb forms: unmarked forms levelling of past tense/past participle verb forms: past tense for past participle levelling of past tense/past participle verb forms: past participle for past tense zero past tense forms of regular verbs a-prefixing on ing-forms a-prefixing on elements other than ing-forms special inflected forms of be other forms/phrases for copula ‘be’: before NPs other forms/phrases for copula ‘be’: before locatives other forms/phrases for copula ‘be’: before AdjPs use of gotten instead of got was for conditional were

B C C A A B C C A A B C C A A C C C B B C C B B A

A A A A B C C C C C B A

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154 155 156 157 158 159 160 161 163 170 171 172 173 174 175 176 177 178 179 180 181 182 183 184 185 186 189 190 192 197

202 203 204 208 216 220 221 222

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VII. Negation multiple negation / negative concord ain’t as the negated form of be ain’t as the negated form of have ain’t as generic negator before a main verb invariant don’t for all persons in the present tense never as preverbal past tense negator no as preverbal negator not as a preverbal negator was – weren’t split VIII. Agreement invariant present tense forms due to zero marking for the 3rd person singular invariant present tense forms due to generalization of 3rd person -s existential / presentational there’s/there is/there was with plural subjects variant forms of dummy subject there in existential clauses, e.g. they, it or zero deletion of auxiliary be: before progressive deletion of auxiliary be: before gonna deletion of copula be: before NPs deletion of copula be: before AdjPs deletion of copula be: before locatives deletion of auxiliary have was/were generalization agreement sensitive to subject type (nominal vs. pronominal) agreement sensitive to position of subject Northern Subject Rule (combination of both of the above) invariant be with non-habitual function IX. Relativization relativizer that or what in non-restrictive contexts which for ‘who’ relativizer where or a form derived from where relativizer what or a form derived from what use of analytic or cliticized that his/that’s, what his/what’s, etc. instead of whose »linking relative clauses« (without direct antecedent) X. Complementation unsplit for to in infinitival purpose clauses for (to) as infinitive marker as what / than what in comparative clauses deletion of to before infinitives XII. Adverbs and prepositions omission of StE prepositions degree modifier adverbs have the same form as adjectives other adverbs have the same form as adjectives too; too much; very much ‘very’ as qualifier

A A A B B B B C C B B B A A A B B B C A B B B C B C C B B C

C C C B B A A A

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226 228 229 234 235

XIII. Discourse organization and word order “negative inversion” (sentence-initial negated auxiliary verbs) no inversion/no auxiliaries in wh-questions no inversion/no auxiliaries in main clause yes/no questions like as a focussing device like as a quotative particle

B B B C B

References Aceto, Michael, and Jeffrey P. Williams (eds.). 2003. Contact Englishes of the Eastern Caribbean. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: Benjamins. Albury, Anne. 1981. The status of the -ed suffix in Black Bahamian English. M.A. thesis, University College London. Bailey, Guy, Natalie Maynor, and Patricia Cukor-Avila (eds.). 1991. The Emergence of Black English: Text and Commentary. Amsterdam: Benjamins. Childs, Becky, Jeffrey Reaser, and Walt Wolfram. 2003. Defining ethnic varieties in The Bahamas: Phonological accommodation in black and white enclaves. In: Michael Aceto, and Jeffrey P. Williams (eds.), Contact Englishes of the Eastern Caribbean, 1–28. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: Benjamins. CIA. 2006. The World Fact Book. Craton, Michael, and Gail Saunders. 1992. Islanders in the Stream: A History of the Bahamian People (2 volumes). Athens: University of Georgia Press. Day, Richard R. (ed.). 1980. Issues in English Creoles: Papers from the 1975 Hawaii Conference. Heidelberg: Groos. De Camp, David, and Ian F. Hancock (eds.). 1974. Pidgins and Creoles: Current Trends and Prospects. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press. Dodge, Steve. 1995. Abaco: The History of an Out Island and its Cays. Decatur, Il: White Sound Press. Glinton-Meicholas, Patricia. 1995. More Talkin’ Bahamian. Nassau: Guanima Press Hackert, Stephanie. 2004. Urban Bahamian Creole: System and Variation. Amsterdam, Philadelphia: Benjamins. Hancock, Ian F. 1971. A survey of the pidgin and creole languages. In: Dell Hymes (ed.), Pidginization and Creolization of Languages, 509–525. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hancock, Ian F. 1977. Appendix: Repertory of pidgin and creole languages. In: Albert Valdman (ed.), Pidgin and Creole Linguistics, 277–294. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Holm, John. 1980. African features in white Bahamian Speech. English World-Wide 1: 45–65. Holm, John. 1983. On the relationship of Gullah and Bahamian. American Speech 58: 303–318. Holm, John. 1984. Variability of the copula in Black English and its creole kin. American Speech 59: 291–309. Holm, John. 1988. Pidgins and Creoles, Volume I: Theory and Structure Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Holm, John. 1989. Pidgins and Creoles, Volume II: References Survey. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Holm, John, and Stephanie Hackert. 1997. Southern Bahamian: Transported AAVE or transported Gullah? Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Society for Pidgin and Creole Linguistics, London: University of Westminster. Holm, John, and Alison Shilling. 1982. Dictionary of Bahamian English. Cold Spring, NY: Lexik House. Hymes, Dell. 1971. Pidginization and Creolization of Languages. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. McPhee, Helean. 2003. The grammatical features of TMA auxiliaries in Bahamian Creole. In: Michael Aceto, and Jeffrey P. Williams (eds.), Contact Englishes of the Eastern Caribbean, 29–50. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: Benjamins. Patrick, Peter. 1999. Urban Jamaican Creole: Variation in the Mesolect. Amsterdam: Benjamins. Poplack, Shana, and Sali Tagliamonte. 2001. African American English in the Diaspora. Oxford: Blackwell. Reaser, Jeffrey. 2004. A quantitative analysis of Bahamian copula absence: Morphosyntactic evidence from Abaco Island, The Bahamas. Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages 19: 1–40. Reaser, Jeffrey, and Benjamin Torbert. 2008. Bahamian English: Morphology and syntax. In: Edgar Schneider (ed.), Varieties of English: The Americas and the Caribbean, 591–608. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Rickford, John R. 1974. The insights of the mesolect. In: Richard De Camp, and Ian F. Hancock (eds.), Pidgins and Creoles: Current Trends and Prospects, 92–117. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press. Sellers, Jason. 1999. A sociolinguistic profile of Cherokee Sound, Bahamas: Analysis of an out island community. M.A. thesis, North Carolina State University. Thomas, Erik R. 2001. An Acoustic Analysis of Vowel Variation in New World English. Durham: Duke University Press. Shilling, Alison. 1978. Some non-standard features of Bahamian Dialect syntax. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Hawaii. Shilling, Alison. 1980. Bahamian English – a non-continuum? In: Richard R. Day (ed.), Issues in English Creoles: Papers from the 1975 Hawaii Conference, 133–145. Heidelberg: Groos. Valdman, Albert. 1977. Pidgin and Creole Linguistics. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Wells, John C. 1982. Accents of English 3: Beyond the British Isles. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Wolfram, Walt. 1996. Delineation and description in dialectology: the case of perfective I’m in Lumbee English. American Speech 71.1: 5–26.

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Bahamian Creole 1 Sociohistorical and sociolinguistic background Bahamian Creole (locally termed “Bahamian Dialect”) is spoken by about 250,000 speakers in The Commonwealth of The Bahamas – an archipelago of 700 islands and 2,400 cays covering 5,358 sq. miles and extending between southeastern Florida in the northwest and Hispaniola in the southeast – and a small diaspora community in the United States (Florida). Only thirty Bahamian islands are inhabited; the population totals ca. 315,000. The country is heavily urbanized, with roughly two thirds of all Bahamians living in the capital, Nassau, and another 45,000 in Freeport on Grand Bahama. The three most populated “Out” or “Family Islands,” Abaco, Andros, and Eleuthera, are home to about 10,000 people each; as one moves south, the islands tend to become less and less populated, with some of them having fewer than a hundred inhabitants now. Some 85 % of the Bahamian population are black, with whites amounting to 12 % and Asians and people of Spanish and Portuguese origin to 3 %. The 2000 census registered 21,000 Haitians, but some estimates including illegal immigrants put the current number close to 80,000, or more than 20 % of the population (Léger and Armbrister 2009: 27). The Bahamas is one of the wealthiest Caribbean countries, its economy being largely dependent on tourism and offshore banking. Although Columbus first set foot in the New World on the Bahamian island of San Salvador, the Spanish never settled the archipelago but contented themselves with carrying off the indigenous Arawak Indians to the gold mines of Hispaniola, where they died out in the early 1500s. The first permanent British colony in the Bahamas was established on the northern island of Eleuthera by a few dozen religious dissenters from Bermuda in 1648. It was Bermudians, too, who – in 1666 – first settled on New Providence, on the site of what is now Nassau. From the beginning, servants and slaves were a part of the shipments that arrived, but in the seventeenth century these blacks clearly constituted a minority (Craton 1968: 70); thus they must have thus had ample access to the white settlers’ dialects whatever they may have spoken upon their arrival. The black proportion of the population gradually increased in the course of the eighteenth century; by 1773, it had grown to 54 %. Its increase was greatest on New Providence, where 64 % were now black (Craton and Saunders 1992: 162). At the same time, the number of slaves per holding was rising, and ever more restrictive slave acts were introduced. Also, slaves imported from Africa came to be preferred to slaves from other colonies, because even though slaves from other parts of the New World were better “seasoned,” i.e. familiar with plantation society and work, they were seen as more difficult to control. What this implies linguistically is that access to white varieties of English must have become progressively restricted, particularly on New Providence, where the growth of the black population segment was most noticeable. The likelihood that a full-fledged creole was in general use among Africans in the Bahamas at the time, however, still seems small, as most blacks must still have lived in conditions that favored the acquisition of more or less close approximations to the white settlers’ dialects. The creole spoken in the Bahamas today was imported at the end of the eighteenth century; it was brought by free blacks and the slaves of loyalist North Americans, who had supported the British Crown during the American Revolutionary War and – after the Treaty of Versailles in 1783 – left the newly independent United States. Of the approximately 100,000 who left, only about 7,300 (of whom 5,700 were black) actually went to the Bahamas, but this tripled the colony’s population, increased the proportion of blacks from onehalf to three-quarters, and raised the number of permanently settled islands from three to a dozen (Craton and Saunders 1992: 179). Historical and linguistic evidence (Hackert and Huber 2007; Hackert and Holm 2009) suggests that the Gullah-speaking areas, and South Carolina in particular, played a prominent role as a point

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of origin for both white and black loyalists, which makes it highly probable that what was taken to the Bahamas was an early form of Gullah rather than of African American Vernacular English, as had been assumed earlier (Holm 1983; Shilling 1984). Contemporary Bahamian Creole may therefore be regarded as a diaspora variety of Gullah. The majority of black Bahamians today speak a mesolectal form of Bahamian Creole. Basilectal speakers tend to be elderly Bahamians and/or those who live on the more remote islands, especially in the southeastern Bahamas. As in most other post-colonial speech communities, negative attitudes towards the vernacular prevail. It is often viewed as “bad” or “broken” English (cf. Léger and Armbrister 2009: 31), associated with backwardness and a lack of education, and seen as an obstacle to the country’s modernization and integration into the global economy. Since independence in 1973, however, Bahamian Creole has also come to function as a symbol of the Bahamas’ national identity and cultural heritage. There are now a number of literary works which employ it (e.g., Strachan 1997), and traditional folk tales and songs are now being researched by Bahamians themselves instead of by foreign anthropologists (e.g., Glinton 1994). In spite of the popularity the variety has received through these works, the role of standard English as the sole official language of the country is uncontested. A consensus seems to have emerged that although the “dialect” should not be eradicated, it should remain restricted to certain domains and functions. According to most Bahamians, Bahamian Creole is appropriate in informal, private situations as well as to convey humor and social authenticity; if “serious” topics are at hand, standard English is the form of speech called for. Nevertheless, standard English in the Bahamas has been subject to encroachments from the creole in a number of domains. In politics, for example, it has remained the language of parliamentary debate and of the administration, but political speeches evidence a substantial amount of “mixing” (Collinwood 1989: 18), the vernacular being used largely as an emotional rhetorical device when politicians want to convince the grassroots and present themselves as ordinary people (Glinton-Meicholas 1995: 8). Education and the mass media constitute other domains in which standard English is officially endorsed as the appropriate medium of communication but into which Bahamian Creole has made inroads (cf. Hackert 2004: 56–64). The long-standing contact between Bahamian Creole and standard English has not only affected the functional distribution of the two varieties but has also influenced both of them structurally. As noted above, most Bahamians today speak a mesolectal form of the creole; basilectal constructions, such as the preverbal progressive marker de or the universal negator no, are restricted to older speakers and/or isolated Out Island communities, or have died out altogether. At the same time, Bahamian standard English shows a number of creole-influenced constructions such as could or would in non-past, non-hypothetical contexts (cf. Bruckmaier and Hackert 2011; Deuber et al. 2012; Hackert et al. fc.).

2 The WAVE profile of Bahamian Creole As is the case for most pidgins and creoles, research concerned specifically with Bahamian Creole began in the 1970s. Nevertheless, the Bahamas had attracted the interest of linguistically-minded scholars much earlier, among them a number of well-known American anthropologists such as Elsie Clews Parsons (e.g., 1918, 1923) and Zora Neale Hurston (1930). Together with other folklorists, such as Charles Edwards (1895) and Daniel Crowley (1966), these scholars did not only very early on recognize the close relationship between Bahamian and North American folklore and patterns of speech (e.g., Edwards 1895: 7; Parsons 1923: XVII) but also provided an invaluable database for diachronic studies of language in the Bahamas. Modern linguistic research on Bahamian Creole has been concerned with the following topics: • • •

the features of the variety (e.g., Shilling 1978; Albury 1981; Seymour 1995; Childs et al. 2003; McPhee 2003; Hackert 2004); its African heritage (Holm 1980; Shilling 1981); its relationship with African American Vernacular English and Gullah (e.g., Holm 1983; Shilling 1984; Hackert and Huber 2007; Hackert and Holm 2009);

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its lexicon (e.g., Holm and Shilling 1982); black-white speech relationships in the Bahamas (e.g., Shilling 1980; Reaser 2004); and the role of Bahamian Creole in education (e.g., Major 1993; Bain 2005).

The data on which the following description is based come from sociolinguistic interviews (Labov 1984: 32–42) conducted by myself in Nassau in the late 1990s. They thus represent urban rather than conservative and/or rural Bahamian Creole. As noted above, however, about two thirds of all Bahamians now live in the capital; the variety spoken there must thus be considered most representative of the creole at large. Apart from narratives of personal experience, my interviews covered topics such as work, traditional crafts, family life, life on the “Out Islands” of earlier times, individual episodes in Bahamian history, or folklore. I conducted sociolinguistic interviews with over thirty speakers; twenty of these interviews – balanced for the parameters of age and gender – were chosen for detailed analysis. My interviewees were between 25 and 81 years old at the time; all of them ultimately had a working-class background, even though some had gone to great lengths to become a part of the new urban middle-class culture with its residential and educational achievements (cf. Hackert 2004: 17–24, 48–54). My interview data are supplemented by examples from Shilling (1978) and Holm and Shilling (1982). These two works include both black and white Bahamian speech as well as urban and rural varieties. In selecting data from these sources, only such examples were included which were marked “black” or assigned to specific Bahamian islands known for their predominantly or exclusively black population. Finally, there are a few examples drawn from the above-mentioned sources of folklore. As there is no established orthography for Bahamian Creole (yet) and the focus of the following section is on grammar rather than phonology, standard English orthography will be employed unless examples are quoted from the literature. I rated most features ‘B’ or ‘C’. This is because extensive variation is a defining characteristic of Bahamian Creole; in other words, even if a feature is attested and frequent in the variety, it will hardly ever be “pervasive or obligatory” and thus warrant the rating ‘A’.

2.1 Pronouns, pronoun exchange, nominal gender Personal pronouns are often unmarked for case; thus, the subject form can function in object position (F30) and as possessive pronoun (F19, F20, F21, F22). Object forms also occur as possessive pronouns (F18, F24, F25, F26) and, occasionally, in subject function (F31), as in Me lock me gate (Holm and Shilling 1982: 133); the latter is rare and restricted to conservative Bahamian Creole, however. Me instead of I in coordinate subjects (F7), by contrast, is frequent. The object form of pronouns also functions in benefactive dative constructions (F9). Gender is often not distinguished; thus, he or ’e may be used for ‘he,’ ‘she,’ or ‘it’ (F5, F10) and um for ‘him,’ ‘her,’ or ‘it’ (F6), as in You fader leave dis fer me ter do. If I don’t do um, he gwine kill me (Parsons 1918: 58, quoted in Holm and Shilling 1982: 213). Because of this absence of gender distinction, he or ’e as well as um may also be used for inanimate referents (F2), as in “If you know what we considering about you, you consider too,” Booky say. “What he is?” (Crowley 1966: 64, quoted in Holm and Shilling 1982: 101). Subject pronouns are used to form reflexive pronouns throughout, as in heself, yinnaself (‘yourself’ pl.), theyself (F11, F13). There is an apparent object base (F12) in meself, but, as noted above, me also occurs as a subject pronoun in Bahamian Creole, even if this is now considered rustic or archaic (Holm and Shilling 1982: 133). The -self suffix is invariant (F14). In constructions such as She said it was her sister own, own expresses possession; it may also be employed to form emphatic reflexives (F16) as well as simple possessive pronouns, as in he-own or they-own. There are also independent possessive pronouns formed with an additional nasal (F33): She took his uns (Edwards 1895, quoted in Holm and Shilling 1982: 103). There is an optional number distinction in the second person (F34). Possible plural forms are you, yinna, and you-all, with you-all being regarded as the “educated equivalent” of yinna, which is now restricted to conservative speech (Holm and Shilling 1982: 227). This second-person plural form may also be used possessively (F23), as in So what time you-all church is out where you been? Pronoun copying of subject noun phrases, as in My father he run the store (Shilling 1978: 157–167), is common.

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Just like the second-person plural pronoun, the plural form of the personal interrogative pronoun takes -all (F39): Who-all live there? Who-all comin’ to the party? (Holm and Shilling 1982: 220). Both referential (F43) and dummy (F44) pronouns may be dropped in subject position, as the following examples show: Sometime when bad weather can’t get to the boat to buy fish ‘ … I can’t get …’ (Shilling 1978: 156); Had to rain for get water most ‘as a rule’ (1978: 150). The insertion of it where standard English favors zero (F45) is described as “totally Bahamian” by one of my informants, who, however, may have been thinking of Bahamian standard English here. In any case, it may be deleted in both referential (F46) and non-referential (F47) it is-constructions: (That bin in the house all the while?) Yea, see, is wattle and plaster house (1978: 155); When you pass, is moonshine night and you pass clear over (1978: 150).

2.2 Noun phrase There are various ways of marking number in Bahamian Creole. The plural may not be expressed on the noun at all, regardless of whether that noun has human (F57) or non-human (F58) reference. Variable plural marking also (but not exclusively) occurs after quantifiers (F56). Plurality may also be indicated via pre- (F50) or post-nominal them (F51). In both positions, them may be combined with the -s suffix, as in Them days, when I was small, we want work. Them also functions as the associative plural marker (F52), sometimes introduced by and, as in my aunt and them. Occasionally, the -s suffix may be extended to irregular plurals, as in sheeps (F48). Phonological regularization (F49) appears possible, too. Occasionally, mass or uncountable nouns are -s marked (F55); they may nevertheless have singular meaning, as in advices ‘a piece of advice’. Group plurals (F54) appear likely but are not attested in my data. In sum, plural marking in Bahamian Creole may be described as a case of inherent variation, as no speaker has categorically unmarked or marked plurals and all speakers, even basilectal ones, exhibit at least some -s marking. There are three articles in Bahamian Creole: the definite article the, which is used with presupposed-specific noun phrases, and the indefinite articles one (F66) and a, which are employed with asserted-specific noun phrases. Of the latter, one is considered the more basilectal variant, but there is variation in the use of these forms even within the speech of individual speakers. The following excerpt illustrates the use of all three articles in the contexts just mentioned: Child, I gone – we gone – we gone out one little thing – with a little small dinghy […]. One man pass on a motor boat, child, he speed […]. And this man – this man – uh – this man, he coulda run the boat good, you know, he try hold the boat. A also occurs before nouns beginning with a vowel. No article is used with generics and non-specific noun phrases: Fish’man never call his own fish stink (Glinton-Meicholas 1995: 115). As already illustrated above, them is used where other varieties employ demonstrative those (F68). Yonder indicates remoteness (F69) in Bahamian Creole but apparently occurs only in adverbial use, as in look yonder, rather than as a determiner. With regard to demonstratives, proximity and distance are expressed by means of here and there (F70): Now this here something different (Holm and Shilling 1982: 205). There are also phrases with for + noun (F74); apart from the interrogative pronoun for who ‘whose,’ however, for-constructions appear to be restricted to contexts of marriage or descent: He born for a Haitian father (Holm and Shilling 1982: 80–81). Just like plural -s, the possessive suffix is used variably in Bahamian Creole (F77) but tends to become more frequent as one moves toward the acrolect. In more basilectal varieties, simple juxtaposition of possessor and possessed, as in the boy uncle, is the norm. As for adjectives, double comparatives and superlatives (F78) occur: People say the more bigger you get, the more you grow that out, but comparison strategies may also be regularized by means of the extension of synthetic marking (F79), as in Shark is the dangerousest creature in the sea. The extension of analytic marking (F80) appears to be favored by double forms, as illustrated above.

2.3 Tense and aspect As in non-creole varieties of English, the progressive is generally instantiated in Bahamian Creole via the -ing form of the verb. The construction may be extended to both statives (F88), as in Rosanna was liking him, and

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habitual verb situations (F89), as in And they will bring this message, and I would hide until I think the way it’s clear, then I getting on my bicycle and I go. Bahamian Creole possesses an explicit present habitual marker, does (F91), which may also be reduced to is or ‘s: They does steal away when they get in the job, they steal away, especially – if they – have – a big position and they handling the money. For at least some speakers, verbal -s (cf. below) seems to have assumed the function of marking habituality (F92): He’s a Methodist, and we goes there. Another possibility in habitual contexts is what Shilling labels “lone be,” i.e. non-finite be in copula or auxiliary use (F90), as in When they come in, people be row right up (Shilling 1978: 66). As the following example shows, this invariant habitual be may also be preceded by does (F93) or don’t: That one don’t be seizure what’s in church, that one does be – that one does be like – like they’s have – uh – the Holy Ghost, like they is be shaking like that. The preverbal marker did (F103) is a highly salient marker of past temporal reference. As the mesolectal equivalent of the “typical” creole past marker been (Bickerton 1975: 35–36), which also occurs in Bahamian Creole (cf. McPhee 2003: 30–36) but is much more frequent among rural and/or older speakers (F111), did often conveys past meaning with stative verb situations and past-before-past with non-statives. Unfortunately, however, this pattern accounts for less than two thirds of all did-marked verb situations in Bahamian Creole. Moreover, the latter make up only a small minority (ca. 2 %) of all past-reference situations. Finally, did occurs not only in anterior contexts, as predicted for the “typical” creole past marker, but also in coincident and even posterior ones. What is clear is that did has various pragmatic functions, all of which may be summarized under the heading of “backgrounding.” Bahamian Creole did is thus more profitably analyzed as a discourse strategy rather than merely as a marker of tense or temporal relations (cf. Hackert 2004: 86–103). Like many other Caribbean English creoles, Bahamian Creole has a preverbal marker of completive aspect, namely done (F104) as in Anyhow, they done christen – I glad that over. Done occurs with a wide range of predicates, both verbal and non-verbal. Verbal predicates can be either stative or non-stative and active or passive in meaning. Non-verbal predicates comprise noun phrases, adjectives, and locative complements, as in She take out the food, and he was done there. Already (F109) co-occurs with done in perfect constructions such as He done already gone. The Bahamian Creole future marker is go(n) (F114): One of these time they children gon’ need to swim. Because past marking is so infrequent overall, sequence-of-tense rules as found in standard English do not apply (F113). Because the paradigm of copula and auxiliary be is leveled (cf. below), is is used for first-person singular am or will (F118) How old you think I is? I’s the damn boss (Shilling 1978: 35). Finally, would/woulda usually occurs in main clauses, as in If I did know you was coming, I woulda saved piece – that taste so good, but it may be used in if-clauses as well (F120): If everybody woulda be like me this would be a beautiful world (Donnelly 1997: 30).

2.4 Modal verbs Bahamian Creole has an elaborate system of modal verbs, whose English etyma are, for the most part, clearly recognizable. In terms of meaning, however, Bahamian modals often differ significantly from Standard English. Thus, coulda, woulda and shoulda are usually best translated by English could, would, and should, while Bahamian could and would are generally equivalent in meaning to English can and will, the latter being rare in all but acrolectal Bahamian Creole. The negative corresponding to could is can’t [kja:n]. As a consequence of this distribution, present-tense forms of modals may occasionally occur in past contexts in hypercorrect usage (F123). Double modals also occur (F121). There are a number of new quasi-modals. Whereas supposed to (cf. Holm and Shilling 1982: 199) expresses a core modal meaning (F125), i.e., obligation, used to expresses aspectual meaning (F126) in that it is used to mark past habitual situations. A frequently employed item is mus’e (< must be). This form expresses strong probability and thus a core modal meaning, but has a distribution which is more like that of an adverb (cf. McPhee 2003: 40–44).

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2.5 Verb morphology Just as in other creoles, unmarked forms of all classes of verbs (F129, F132) are pervasive in Bahamian Creole. Most frequently, the unmarked verb is used as an instantiation of the aspectual category of perfective, where it typically refers to non-stative verb situations in the past, as in When he get the money he buy he girlfriend one present. Unmarked stative situations most frequently receive a non-past interpretation, as in Jesus love me. Depending on contextual information, a base form may also denote a past stative, as in the case of want in And then afterwards the policeman had to put handcuff on his hand and on his two feet, ’cause he want try fight them, as well as various imperfective situations, such as habituals and generics, both past, as in Once upon a time was a merry good time, the monkey chew tobacco, and he spit white lime, and non-past, as in Fish’man never call his own fish stink (Glinton-Meicholas 1995: 115). If past-reference verbs are inflected, regular forms (F128) occasionally occur with irregular verbs (e.g., telled), but past inflection is infrequent overall (32 % in my sociolinguistic interviews; Hackert 2004: 118) and occurs mostly in standard form. With the exception of gone, which often functions in contexts in which standard English employs went, the leveling of past-tense and past-participle forms (F130, F131) is rare or nonexistent in Bahamian Creole, as is the double marking of past temporal reference (F133). There are isolated instances of keep a-V-ing (F134) in my data, as in They keep a-going every day till they gone for one week, and Holm and Shilling (1982: 118) list keep a-(do) as a lexicalized phrase. Inflected be (F136) appears very rarely among black Bahamians. If it does, it has habitual meaning and appears to be influenced by white Bahamian usage, where it is more widespread (cf. Reaser and Torbert 2004: 394–395). A special copula form exists only in the environment preceding locative expressions (F141), but locative de is infrequent and restricted to isolated, rural communities and/or older people (cf. Holm and Shilling 1982: 58). As copula forms are generally levelled to is in the present and was in the past (cf. below), was also occurs in conditional contexts throughout (F147): If I was you I woulda take that and more cause i’s all yourns (Holm and Shilling 1982: 228). Serial verbs are used but, with the exception of say in complementizer function (cf. Hackert 2004: 144–145), do not appear to play as prominent a role in Bahamian Creole as in other creoles. There are occasional occurrences of give in the sense of ‘to, for’ (F148), as in They fry fowl egg, many cake give him (Holm and Shilling 1982: 87), of go to express ‘movement away from’ (F149), and of come to express ‘movement toward’ (F150). Constructions with three verbs (F151) also occur, as in: Every vessel what go out come bring in all dead sponge (Holm and Shilling 1982: 46).

2.6 Voice There is no give-passive in Bahamian Creole (F153), but a number of other constructions expressing passive meaning exist. There is, first, what Winford (1993: 118) labels the “basic passive.” This type involves no agent phrase, no morphological marking to indicate that the verb is passive, and no copula, as in I christen in that church. Second, there is the get-passive, which consists of the auxiliary get and an unmarked transitive verb as its complement, as in He get jook. Third, there is the standard English be-passive, which, however, occurs only among very acrolectal speakers.

2.7 Negation The negator ain’t constitutes an important element of the Bahamian Creole system of negation. It is used in all copula or auxiliary environments in which standard English employs negated forms of be (F155), as in They say the salt water ain’t good these days, or have (F156), as in I ain’t never been there; in such environments, it “persists well up in the continuum” (Shilling 1978: 96). More basilectal speakers also use ain’t as a generic negator before a main verb (F157), as in He ain’t live too far. Another negator, don’t, is employed categorically (F158) to negate non-stative non-past verbs, as in That don’t happen here, as well as habitual be. It also occurs after modals or quasi-modals, as in If you come down

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then you might don’t get it (Holm and Shilling 1982: 63). In stative non-past contexts, don’t varies with ain’t even among basilectal speakers, as in I ain’t know vs. I don’t know. In past contexts, there is variation between didn’t and ain’t, with stative verbs taking didn’t much more frequently than non-stative ones. In such contexts, never (F159) constitutes another alternative: I wasn’t grow up like that, my parents never grow us up like that, ain’t none of us in gang violent ‘violence’. No as a preverbal negator (F160) is archaic and/or restricted to rural varieties of Bahamian Creole: She na feel good if she na send something for me (Holm and Shilling 1982: 143). Invariant non-concord tags (F165) occur but seem to be restricted to individual speakers: Stephanie, you ain’t going Andros no more, eh? A final important element of negation in Bahamian Creole is negative concord (F154), which is most common in post-verbal position, as in We couldn’ta see nothing, but also affects indefinites before the verb, as in Nobody don’t have none here (Reaser and Torbert 2004: 400), and occurs cross-clausally as well: Ain’t nobody who’ll call theyself is fisherman can’t swim.

2.8 Agreement As in other creole varieties, verbs generally occur in their base form. In non-past contexts, this means that third-person singular agreement marking does not exist (F170). Verbal -s nevertheless occurs and does so throughout the paradigm (F171). At least for some speakers, it seems to have assumed the function of marking habituality, both past and non-past. Existential there is always followed by a singular form of be, no matter whether the subject of the sentence is singular or plural (F172). As will be shown below, the dummy subject in existential clauses (F173) may be either they, it or there, or it may be lacking entirely. Copula (and auxiliary) be structures show two distinguishing characteristics: first, there is often leveling to is in the present and was in the past (F180), and, second, the copula may be variably absent. Factors favouring this absence in present contexts are: (1) copula type, with am and are more frequently absent than is; (2) the preceding grammatical environment, with personal pronouns conducive to copula absence compared to full noun phrases; (3) the following grammatical environment (cf. Reaser 2004: 25–28), with high rates of copula absence before adjectives (F177) and locatives (F178) as well as before V-ing (F174), and gonna constructions (F175) and low rates of absence before noun phrases (F176). This pattern has been observed not only for Bahamian Creole, but also for numerous other mesolectal Caribbean English creoles as well as for African American Vernacular English. In past contexts, copula (and auxiliary) be is usually present. Whereas English distinguishes between its past forms according to whether the situation described has absolute past reference (was) or perfect meaning (been), for non-acrolectal speakers of Bahamian Creole was appears to function as a universal past copula or auxiliary, with been favoured by locative environments as well as by bounded verb situations (Hackert 2004: 107–114): Yeah, he spend – uh – he was a sickly child anyway. And he been in the hospital, in and out.

2.9 Relativization The two most frequent relativizers in Bahamian Creole are who and what. The latter (F190) may occur with both human and non-human referents and also appears to function in non-restrictive contexts, as in You know Gary what used to ride horse in – in Miami now – Gary? (F185). There is no case marking on the relativizer, and it may also be missing entirely (F193), as in It’s a woman come here (Reaser and Torbert 2004: 404). Where, which sometimes occurs as whey or way in the literature, exists as a relativizer, too (F189), as in That’s the place way he tell me say he find it (Holm and Shilling 1982: 218). Even though all of the examples given for relativizer where by Holm and Shilling contain locative contexts, what is often transcribed in ways which

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187

make it at least possible that there is a link between where and a more general relativizer in Bahamian Creole, and, in fact, Holm and Shilling (1982: 218) explicitly draw such a link.

2.10 Complementation Bahamian Creole say (F200) exists not only as a main verb of quotation but also occurs in constructions such as His mother warn him say, Don’t go back, because that’s the giant what kill your father, in which it functions as a serial verb with “complementizer-like function” (Winford 1993: 292). For-based complementizers (F201) also exist, as the following example shows: Dey want me fa vote fa de PLP [= Progressive Liberal Party] (Donnelly 1997: 30). Unsplit for to in infinitival purpose clauses (F202) is attested as well but appears to be archaic and/or used exclusively by older people in rural, isolated communities: You could give me a shilling for to buy a little flour or grits (Holm and Shilling 1982: 80). Finally, there is for as an infinitive marker (F203): He don’t want fer carry you (Holm and Shilling 1982: 80). Just like purposive for to, however, this form appears to be restricted to conservative Bahamian Creole. There are three types of existential clauses in Bahamian Creole (cf. Shilling 1978: 145–149), two of which involve get (F205) or have (F206): (1) get/got or have with a zero subject, as in (Turtle, is there much turtle now?) No, don’t have turtle round (Holm and Shilling 1982: 145); (2) they get/got or have “where the anaphoric reference for they is vague” (Shilling 1978: 148), as in They get – Colombians get plane coming here, they have a Colombian fellow here now; and (3) a form of be, often also with a zero subject, as in Is only one big boss, you know (Shilling 1978: 35), or with it, as in It’s – it’s all kind of stories about the Shine. There + be also occurs but is infrequent except in acrolectal speech: Now, there’s a bend that go down Chippingham. The infinitive marker to may be absent in Bahamian Creole (F208), as in He useta like gamble (Donnelly 1997: 30). Non-finite clause complements may occur in bare root form rather than as V-ing (F210): When they see that come serious, they start cry.

2.11 Adverbial subordination In Bahamian Creole, both constructions without overt subordination (F213) and with conjunction doubling (F214) are possible. The former are illustrated by I leave that come down here after he died; the latter are not attested in my data, but Holm and Shilling (1982: 195) provide the following example: My brother, he in the Church of God and still yet he ain’ come to we church.

2.12 Adverbs and prepositions As for prepositions, the only WAVE feature present in Bahamian Creole is the variable absence of locative prepositions (F216), as in He been Miami, but he never been Alabama. As for adverbs, -time may have to be considered an adverb-forming suffix (F219) in the expression whenever time ‘whenever’ (Holm and Shilling 1982: 218). Both degree-modifier adverbs (F220) and other adverbs (F221) may have the same form as adjectives, as the following examples show: He was real sick, Carry me to the doctor quick. Both too and too much (F222) can be used in the sense of ‘very:’ [He] tummuch like t’ tell story (Dupuch 1940: 28, quoted in Holm and Shilling 1982: 209).

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2.13 Discourse organization and word order As the following two examples show, Bahamian Creole employs other options for both clefting (F223) and fronting (F224) than standard English: What go off in the bush you had to go and hunt (Shilling 1978: 154); All kind of shit government doing; Haiti had to do the same thing round Haiti ‘I had to do …’. The following example illustrates the use of a sentence-initial focus marker (F225): Is now where you does find we corn coming (Holm and Shilling 1982: 110–111). Sentence-initial negative auxiliary verbs (F226) occur as well: Ain’t nothing don’t smell worse than that (Shilling 1978: 123). Whereas inversion occurs neither in wh-questions (F228) nor in yes/no-questions (F229), the phenomenon is common in indirect questions (F227): He gone over there with him, show him, ax him what is t- this and that and that.

3 Conclusion The classification of the vernacular spoken by black Bahamians as a creole is by no means uncontroversial. Schneider (1990: 86) notes that the “dialects” spoken in the Bahamas, in Barbados, and the Cayman Islands have been “reported to be closer to standard English structure than others” (Reinecke et al. 1975: 373) or said to have “decreolized” (Alleyne 1980: 26) to the point of no longer being creoles. Although there seems to be widespread agreement now that any classification of varieties as creole or non-creole must consider sociohistorical, linguistic, and sociolinguistic factors (but cf. Bickerton 1981; McWhorter 1998, 2001), a pragmatic approach to the problem is that of Rickford (1977: 195), who lists the similarity with other, established creoles as a basic requirement. Differences to non-creole varieties obviously constitute another yardstick. The WAVE questionnaire provides a useful means of assessing such similarities and differences. It shows that even though Bahamian Creole shares a large number of features with other non-standard varieties of English, it also possesses all of the distinctively creole features that are part of the questionnaire. Of particular interest in this respect are, for example, the use of the unmarked verb to denote perfective aspect, of done as a completive marker, and of the past marker did. These forms are part of the “common core” that Winford (1996: 78, 83) identifies in the tense-mood-aspect systems of all English-based creoles of the Caribbean. Cross-variety comparisons based on the WAVE data will certainly lead to even more interesting insights, not only into the relationships holding between this group of varieties but also between Bahamian Creole and the nonstandard dialect spoken by white Bahamians.

Appendix: Overview of WAVE features attested in Bahamian Creole #

feature

BahC example

rating

I. Pronouns, pronoun exchange, nominal gender 2

he/him used for inanimate referents

“If you know what we considering about you, you consider too,” Booky say. “What he is?” (Crowley 1966: 64, quoted in Holm and Shilling 1982: 101) ‘“If you knew what we’re thinking about you, you’d think, too,” Booky said. “What is it?”’

B

5

generalized 3rd person singular pronoun: subject pronouns

And all of the smaller set gone live with we granddaddy. And after he dead, then they come back over here, you see? ‘And all of the smaller [children] went to live with our grandfather. And after he died, they came back over here …’ He name Margret ‘Her name is Margret’ [lit.: ‘She’s named Margret’]

B

189

Bahamian Creole

6

generalized 3rd person singular pronoun: object pronouns

7

me instead of I in coordinate subjects

9

benefactive “personal dative” construction no gender distinction in 3rd person singular

10

11

regularized reflexives paradigm

12

object pronoun forms serving as base for 1st and/or 2nd person reflexives

13

subject pronoun forms serving as base for reflexives

14

no number distinction in reflexives (i.e. plural forms ending in -self)

16

emphatic reflexives with own

18

subject pronoun forms as possessive pronouns: 1st person singular

19

subject pronoun forms as possessive pronouns: 1st person plural

20

subject pronoun forms as possessive pronouns: 3rd person singular subject pronoun forms as possessive pronouns: 3rd person plural

21

22

you as possessive pronoun

23

2nd person pronoun forms other than you as possessive pronoun

“If you know what we considering about you, you consider too,” Booky say. “What he is?” (Holm and Shilling 1982: 101) ‘“If you knew what we’re thinking about you, you’d think, too,” Booky said. “What is it?”’ You fader leave dis fer me ter do. If I don’t do um, he gwine kill me (Parsons 1918: 58, quoted in Holm and Shilling 1982: 213) ‘Your father left this for me to do. If I don’t do it, he’ll kill me’ Sometime me and Moxey is play knucks ‘Sometimes Moxey and I play knucks’ I got me a new car [= elicited example] ‘I bought a new car’ He name Margret ‘Her name is Margret’ [lit.: ‘She’s named Margret’] De pretty girl make Jack lay he head in him lap (Parsons 1918: 58, quoted in Holm and Shilling 1982: 103) ‘The pretty girl made Jack lay his head in her lap’ I gon’ tell you the truth, that ain’t no true, ’cause a fisherman – if you see a person call theyself a fisherman, and he can’t swim, ain’t go in no boat! ‘I’m going to tell you the truth – that’s not true, because a fisherman – if someone calls himself a fisherman and he can’t swim, he won’t go into a boat!’ Only one baby I had, and – if I couldn’t take it, I may as well dead meself ‘I only had one baby, and if I couldn’t have taken that, I might as well have died myself’ I gon’ tell you the truth, that ain’t no true, ’cause a fisherman – if you see a person call theyself a fisherman, and he can’t swim, ain’t go in no boat! ‘I’m going to tell you the truth – that’s not true, because a fisherman – if someone calls himself a fisherman and he can’t swim, he won’t go into a boat!’ I gon’ tell you the truth, that ain’t no true, ’cause a fisherman – if you see a person call theyself a fisherman, and he can’t swim, ain’t go in no boat! ‘I’m going to tell you the truth – that’s not true, because a fisherman – if someone calls himself a fisherman and he can’t swim, he won’t go into a boat!’ He buy that piece of land for his own personal self (Holm and Shilling 1982: 150) ‘He bought that piece of land for himself’ I does not occur as possessive pronoun, but me functions not only as object but also as both subject and possessive pronoun: Me like lock me gate (Holm and Shilling 1982: 133) ‘I like to lock my gate’ And all of the smaller set gone live with we granddaddy. And after he dead, then they come back over here, you see? ‘And all of the smaller [children] went to live with our grandfather. And after he died, they came back over here …’ He almost did drown, he daddy have to go for him ‘He almost drowned, his father had to go after him’ When you been to Andros long, they talk like dragging they voice and things like that ‘When you’ve been to Andros for a long time – when they talk they drag their voice and things like that’ Lisn’ chile, ain’ none a you business, hear (Psilinakis 1996: 80) ‘Listen, child, this is none of your business, [you] hear?’ So what time you-all church is out where you been? ‘So when does [the service at] your church finish – [the church] you’ve been to?’

B

B C B

B

B

B

A

B

C

B

B B

C C

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24

object pronoun forms as possessive pronouns: 3rd person singular

25

object pronoun forms as possessive pronouns: 3rd person plural object pronoun forms as possessive pronouns: 1st person singular non-coordinated subject pronoun forms in object function

26 30

31

non-coordinated object pronoun forms in subject function

33

independent possessive pronoun forms with added nasal

34

forms or phrases for the 2nd person plural pronoun other than you

39

plural forms of interrogative pronouns: using additional elements

43

subject pronoun drop: referential pronouns

44

subject pronoun drop: dummy pronouns

46

deletion of it in referential it is-constructions

47

deletion of it in non-referential it is-constructions

48

II. Noun phrase regularization of plural formation: extension of -s to StE irregular plurals

49

regularization of plural formation: phonological regularization

50

plural marking via preposed elements (e.g. ol, olgeta; etc.) plural marking via postposed elements (e.g. (an(d) them/dem; -mob)

51

He was sleeping with him eyes turn up (Crowley 1966: 115, quoted in Holm and Shilling 1982: 103) ‘He was sleeping with his eyes turned up’ Not attested in my data. The feature is listed in Holm and Shilling (1982: 204), but no example is given. Me like lock me gate (Holm and Shilling 1982: 133) ‘I like to lock my gate’ He kicked he (Crowley 1966: 66, quoted in Holm and Shilling 1982: 101) ‘He kicked him’ I went – he was – him and he wife was right on the car – drinking ‘I went – he was – he and his wife were [standing] right by the car – drinking’ If I was you I woulda take that and more cause i’s all yourns (Holm and Shilling 1982: 228) ‘If I were you, I would take that and [even] more, because it’s all yours’ Yinna two bitches come here! (King 1974: 12, quoted in Holm and Shilling 1982: 227) ‘Come here, you two bitches!’ I like to talk to please you-all, but not to please myself (Crowley 1966: 139, quoted in Holm and Shilling 1982: 101) ‘I like to talk to please you [the audience], but not to please myself’ Who-all live there? Who-all comin’ to the party? (Holm and Shilling 1982: 220) ‘Who lives there? Who’s coming to the party?’ Sometime when bad weather can’t get to the boat to buy fish (Shilling 1978: 156) ‘Sometimes when the weather is bad I can’t get to the boat to buy fish’ Had to rain for get water most ‘It had to rain in order to get water as a rule’ (Shilling 1978: 150) (That bin in the house all the while?) Yea, see, is wattle and plaster house (Shilling 1978: 155) ‘(Has that been in the house all the time?) Yeah, you see, it’s a wattle and plaster house’ When you pass, is moonshine night and you pass clear over (Shilling 1978: 150) ‘When you pass, it’ll be a moonlit night, and you’ll pass right over [it]’ The feature might be a result of phonological contraction rather than of the deletion of it: As the following example shows, however, the entire construction may be deleted, too: The crawfish is light. Now, when time to take it – up in the boat, i’s heavy ‘The crawfish is light. But when it’s time to take it up into the boat, it’s heavy’

C

All de hudder sheeps (Edwards 1895: 67, quoted in Holm and Shilling 1982: 182) ‘All the other sheep’ I’m fairly confident that the feature exists but don’t have an example in my data and also haven’t been able to find one elsewhere, either. Them mosquito, they’ll kill you – and them sandfly ‘Those mosquitoes will kill you – and those sandflies’ De boy-dem playin’ hockey (Glinton-Meicholas 1995: 10) ‘The boys were playing hockey’

C

C C C

C

C

B

B

C

C C

C

C

A A

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Bahamian Creole

52

associative plural marked by postposed and them/them all/dem

54 55

group plurals different count/mass noun distinctions resulting in use of plural for StE singular

57

plural marking generally optional: for nouns with human referents

58 66

plural marking generally optional: for nouns with non-human referents indefinite article one/wan

68

them instead of demonstrative those

70

proximal and distal demonstratives with ‘here’ and ‘there’ phrases with for + noun to express possession: for-phrase following possessed NP; the for-phrase may precede or follow the possessed NP omission of genitive suffix; possession expressed through bare juxtaposition double comparatives and superlatives

74

77 78 79 80

88 89

regularized comparison strategies: extension of synthetic marking regularized comparison strategies: extension of analytic marking III. Verb phrase: tense and aspect wider range of uses of progressive be + V-ing: extension to stative verbs wider range of uses of progressive be + V-ing: extension to habitual contexts

90

invariant be as habitual marker

91

do as habitual marker

92

other non-standard habitual markers: synthetic

B’Booky them having hard times (Crowley 1966: 61, quoted in Holm and Shilling 1982: 204) ‘B’Bouky and his family/friends/associates were having a hard time’ Christine and those left already? ‘Have Christine and her friends left already?’ She done take all her baggages with her (Holm and Shilling 1982: 9) ‘She’s taken all her baggage’ That when the Duke first come here, and he gone over to talk with R- President Roosevelt to see that he get to ’cruit some of the boys from here to go over there to work the Work Food Administration ‘That’s when [Edward] the Duke [of Windsor] first came here, and he went over to talk to President Roosevelt to see if he could recruit some of the boys from here to go over there to work for the War Food Administration’ And they was paying money, and the Bahamas government say don’t pay he boy – he people that kind of money ‘And they were paying money, and the Bahamas government told them not to pay their boys – their people that kind of money’ They’s the story he used to tell us ‘These are the stories he used to tell us’ One yacht come in – come in there – bring some people, and they come ’shore ‘A yacht came in – came in there – brought some people, and they came ashore’ Them days, when I was small, we want work ‘Back then, when I was small, we wanted to work’ Now this here something different (Holm and Shilling 1982: 205) ‘Now this [one] is something different’ Donald for Jane ‘Donald is Jane’s [husband/son]’ (Holm and Shilling 1982: 80) For who they are? (Holm and Shilling 1982: 81) ‘Whose are they?’ The boy uncle give him this to drink ‘The boy’s uncle gave him this to drink’ People say the more bigger you get, the more you grow that out ‘People say the bigger you get, the more you grow that out’ Shark is the dangerousest creature in the sea ‘The shark is the most dangerous creature in the sea’ Maybe my system is more strong ‘Maybe my system is stronger’ Rosanna was liking him ‘Rosanna liked him’ And they will bring this message, and I would hide until I think the way it’s clear, then I getting on my bicycle and I go ‘And they would bring me this message, and I would hide until I thought the way was clear, then I would get on my bicycle and I would go’ When they come in, people be row right up (Shilling 1978: 66) ‘When they come in, people [usually] row right up [to them]’ We does pray for when Jesus come – all will be well ‘We pray for when Jesus comes …’ He’s a Methodist, and we goes there ‘He’s a Methodist, and we go there [i.e., to his church]’

A

C B

B

B A

A B C

B B C C

C C

B B B

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other non-standard habitual markers: analytic

103

do as unstressed tense marker (without habitual or other aspectual meanings)

104

completive/perfect done

109

perfect marker already

111

past tense/anterior marker been

113

loosening of sequence of tenses rule

114

go-based future markers

118

is for am/will with 1st person singular

120

would in if-clauses

121

IV. Verb phrase: modal verbs double modals

123

present tense forms of modals used where StE has past tense forms

125

new quasi-modals: core modal meanings

126

new quasi-modals: aspectual meanings

128 129

131

V. Verb phrase: verb morphology levelling of past tense/past participle verb forms: regularization levelling of past tense/past participle verb forms: unmarked forms

132

levelling of past tense/past participle verb forms: past participle for past tense zero past tense forms of regular verbs

134

a-prefixing on ing-forms

141

other forms/phrases for copula ‘be’: before locatives

That one don’t be seizure what’s in church, that one does be – that one does be like – like they’s have – uh – the Holy Ghost, like they is be shaking like that ‘What you see in church is not [epileptic] seizures, that is – that is – they’re possessed by the Holy Ghost, [so] they shake like that’ The first time I did gone off – let me tell you ’bout that ‘The first time I went off [to the United States] – let me tell you about that’ After she done cook it she say, David, I ain’t want no food ‘After she had cooked it, she said, David, I don’t want any food’ He done already gone ‘He’s gone’ I been seen people – fellows get – people getting kill by a gambling ‘I’ve seen people – fellows … getting killed in gambling’ One – one day I carry – I carry my landlord – he say he is a fisherman ‘One day I took my landlord [fishing] – he [had] said he was a fisherman’ One of these time they children gon’ need to swim ‘Eventually their children are going to have to [be able to] swim’ How old you think I is? (Shilling 1978: 35) ‘How old do you think I am?’ If everybody woulda be like me this would be a beautiful world (Donnelly 1997: 30) ‘If everybody were like me, this would be a beautiful world’

C

See that drug store? You might coulda find it there (Holm and Shilling 1982: 134) ‘ … You might be able to find it there’ I see a crowd of people, ’cause they had like this – plastic, so no one can – uh – go there to see them, so I went to the officer, I say, Excuse me … can I go and see him? ‘I saw a crowd of people, because they had this [piece of] plastic [covering up a dead body], so no one would be able to go there to see them [it?], so I went to the officer and said, Excuse me … can I go and see him?’ I did ’pose to ’pear in court ‘I was supposed to appear in court’ She used to don’t drink. Now she drinking ‘She didn’t use to drink. Now she drinks’

C

I never telled it to no one ‘I never told anyone’ And he come – that night, when I come to, I meet him running up and down, he scared-scared. He didn’t know what to do ‘ … that night, when I came to, I saw him running up and down, he was very scared. He didn’t know what to do’ They taken off, but they didn’t land ‘They took off, but they didn’t land’ I never like company. No, the only – the only company I used to keep – like woman company ‘I never enjoyed company … the only company I used to keep [was] female company’ They keep a-going every day till they gone for one week ‘They kept going [there] every day until they’d gone for a week’ I de here every night (Shilling 1978: 60) ‘I’m here every night’

C

B

B B C

B

A B C

C

B B

A

C A

C C

193

Bahamian Creole

147

was for conditional were

148

serial verbs: give = ‘to,for’

149

serial verbs: go = ‘movement away from’

150

serial verbs: come = ‘movement towards’

151

serial verbs: constructions with 3 verbs

154

VII. Negation multiple negation / negative concord

155

ain’t as the negated form of be

156

ain’t as the negated form of have

157

159

ain’t as generic negator before a main verb invariant don’t for all persons in the present tense never as preverbal past tense negator

160

no as preverbal negator

165

invariant non-concord tags (including eh?) VIII. Agreement invariant present tense due to zero marking for the 3rd person singular invariant present tense due to generalization of 3rd person -s existential / presentational there’s/there is/there was with plural subjects

158

170 171 172

173

variant forms of dummy subject there in existential clauses, e.g. they, it or zero

174 175

deletion of auxiliary be: before progressive deletion of auxiliary be: before gonna

176

deletion of copula be: before NPs

If I was you I woulda take that and more cause i’s all yourns (Holm and Shilling 1982: 228) ‘If I were you, I would take that and [even] more, because it’s all yours’ They fry fowl egg, many cake give him (Parsons 1918: 53, quoted in Holm and Shilling 1982: 87) ‘They fried fowl eggs … for him’ Come here go see if Olga home ‘Come here and see if Olga’s home’ Every vessel what go out come bring in all dead sponge ‘Every vessel that went out came back with dead sponge only’ Come here go see if Olga home ‘Come here and see if Olga’s home’

C

When my granddaddy dead, I ain’t had no children ‘When my grandfather died, I didn’t have any children yet’ They say the salt water ain’t good these days ‘They say the salt water isn’t good these days’ I used to – I been – the only place I ain’t – I been in they had no transportation was – uh – Cat Cay ‘ … the only place I’ve been to where there was no [public] transportation is Cat Cay’ He ain’t live too far ‘He doesn’t live too far [away]’ She don’t – she don’t like cook ‘She doesn’t like to cook’ I wasn’t grow up like that, my parents never grow us up like that, ain’t none of us in gang violent ‘I wasn’t brought up like that, my parents didn’t bring us up like that, none of us are [involved] in gang violence’ She na feel good if she na send something for me (Holm and Shilling 1982: 143) ‘She doesn’t feel good if she doesn’t send anything for me’ Stephanie, you ain’t going Andros no more, eh? ‘Stephanie, you’re not going to Andros any more, are you?’

A

Sometime she come on the radio, too ‘Sometimes she also appears on the radio’ He’s a Methodist, and we goes there ‘He’s a Methodist, and we go there [i.e., to his church]’ There’s plenty black guy – plenty black girl sick, all right? ‘There are a lot of black guys – a lot of black girls who are sick [with AIDS], right?’ (Turtle, is there much turtle now?) No, don’t have turtle round (Shilling 1978: 145) ‘(Are there a lot of turtles now?) No, there aren’t any turtles around’ See, it’s a mermaid pool where I live, it’s a mermaid pool where I live, and you see – you can’t – you can’t see bottom in it – it got three shelf ‘ … there’s a mermaid pool where I live … you can’t see the bottom in it, [because] it has three shelves’ That’s what I saying now ‘That’s what I’m saying now’ One of these time they children gon’ need to swim ‘Eventually their children are going to have to [be able to] swim’ I a old woman ‘I’m an old woman’

A

C

C C C

B C

B B B

C

B

B A

A

A A

C

194

Stephanie Hackert

177

deletion of copula be: before AdjPs

178

deletion of copula be: before locatives

180

was/were generalization

190

IX. Relativization relativizer what or a form derived from what

193

200

gapping/zero-relativization in subject position X. Complementation say-based complementizers

201

for-based complementizers

202

unsplit for to in infinitival purpose clauses

203

for (to) as infinitive marker

205

existentials with forms of get

206

existentials with forms of have

208

deletion of to before infinitives

210

non-finite clause complements with bare root form rather than -ing form

213 214

XI. Adverbial subordination no subordination; chaining construction linking two main verbs conjunction doubling: clause + conj. + conj. + clause

You ain’t eat too much, you seasick, and you ain’t know you seasick ‘You haven’t eaten too much, [but] you’re seasick, and you don’t know you’re seasick’ All his family over there ‘His entire family is over here’ We was close here, hey, and we couldn’ta see the land ‘We were close to here, and we [still] couldn’t see the land’

A

See, see – when – when you – when you go – uh – back in Andros – if – the people-them who you – go to live with, you know, if you – you did tell them to carry you to see … these bird what call chickcharney ‘ … when you go to Andros, if the people you stay with … if you told them to take you to see … the birds that are called chickcharneys [i.e., mythical birds]’ It’s a woman come here ‘A woman came here’

B

The chickcharney come to him and tell him say if he did shoot the bird – shoot his child ‘The chickcharney came to him and asked him whether he had shot the bird – shot his child’ Dey want me fa vote fa de PLP (Donnelly 1997: 30) ‘They want me to vote for the PLP [i.e., the Progressive Liberal Party]’ I don’t have an example in my data, but the feature is mentioned by Holm and Shilling (1982: 80), who give the following quote: You could give me a shilling for to buy a little flour or grits (Cottmann 1963: 138, quoted in Holm and Shilling 1982: 80) ‘You can give me a shilling to buy some flour or grits’ He don’t want fer carry you (Holm and Shilling 1982: 80) ‘He doesn’t want to take you [along]’ Colombians get plane coming here, they have a Colombian fellow here now ‘There are Colombian planes coming here, there’s a Colombian fellow here now’ (Turtle, is there much turtle now?) No, don’t have turtle round (Shilling 1978: 145) ‘(Are there a lot of turtles now?) No, there aren’t any turtles around’ This day, Shine went out, right. Shine went out, but Shine did like gamble, you see. Shine gone out gambling. Shine did like – Shine did like throw crooked dice, you see ‘That day, Shine went out …, but Shine liked to gamble … Shine went out gambling. Shine liked – Shine liked to throw crooked dice …’ When they see that come serious, they start cry ‘When they noticed that that [situation] was becoming dangerous, they started to cry’

A

I leave that come down here after he died ‘I left that and came down here after he died’ My brother, he in the Church of God and still yet he ain’ come to we church (Holm and Shilling 1982: 195) ‘My brother’s a member of the Church of God [of Prophesy], but he still hasn’t come to our church’

C

A A

C

B

C

C B

B

B

C

C

195

Bahamian Creole

216 219

220 221 222

223 224 225

226 227

228 229

XII. Adverbs and prepositions omission of StE prepositions

He been Miami, but he never been Alabama ‘He’s been to Miami, but he’s never been to Alabama’ adverb-forming suffixes -way and -time I’m fairly confident that the feature exists but don’t have an example in my data and also haven’t been able to find one elsewhere. degree modifier adverbs have the same He was real sick form as adjectives ‘He was very sick’ other adverbs have the same form as I say, Carry me to the doctor quick adjectives ‘I said, Take me to the doctor’s immediately’ too; too much; very much ‘very’ as [He] tummuch like t’ tell story (Dupuch 1940: 28, quoted in qualifier Holm and Shilling 1982: 209) ‘He’s very fond of telling stories’ XIII. Discourse organization and word order other options for clefting than StE All kind of shit government doing (Shilling 1978: 168) ‘It’s all kinds of shit that the government is doing’ other possibilities for fronting than StE Haiti had to do the same thing round Haiti (Shilling 1978: 167) ‘I had to do the same thing in Haiti’ sentence-initial focus marker Is now where you does find we corn coming (Holm and Shilling 1982: 111) ‘It’s now that you can see our corn coming’ “negative inversion” (sentence-initial Ain’t nothing don’t smell worse than that (Shilling 1978: 123) negated auxiliary verbs) ‘There’s nothing that smells worse than that’ inverted word order in indirect questions He gone over there with him, show him, ax him what is t- this and that and that ‘He went over there with him, showed him [everything], asked him what this was and that and that’ no inversion/no auxiliaries in Where he is? wh-questions ‘Where is he?’ no inversion/no auxiliaries in main clause You ever heard about B’Bouky and B’Rabby and the black tar? yes/no questions ‘Have you ever heard about B’Bouky and B’Rabby and the black tar?’

B C

B B C

C B C

C B

A A

References Albury, Anne. 1981. The status of the -ed suffix in Black Bahamian English. MA thesis, University College London. Alleyne, Mervyn C. 1980. Comparative Afro-American. Ann Arbor: Karoma. Bain, Michelle V. 2005. Language education and Bahamian students’ compositions. The College of the Bahamas Research Journal 13: 4–23. Retrieved from http://researchjournal.cob.edu.bs (August 18, 2010). Bickerton, Derek. 1975. Dynamics of a Creole System. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bickerton, Derek. 1981. Roots of Language. Ann Arbor, MI: Karoma. Bruckmaier, Elisabeth, and Stephanie Hackert. 2011. Bahamian Standard English: A first approach. English WorldWide 32: 174–205. Childs, Becky, Jeffrey Reaser, and Walt Wolfram. 2003. Defining ethnic varieties in the Bahamas: Phonological accommodation in black and white enclave communities. In: Michael Aceto, and Jeffrey P. Williams (eds.), Contact Englishes of the Eastern Caribbean, 1–28. Amsterdam: Benjamins.

Collinwood, Dean W. 1989. The Bahamas in social transition. In: Dean W. Collinwood, and Steve Dodge (eds.), Modern Bahamian Society, 3–26. Parkersburg, IA: Caribbean Books. Cottmann, Evans W. with Wyatt Blassingame. 1963. Out-Island Doctor. London: Hodder and Stoughton. Craton, Michael. 1968. A History of the Bahamas. 2nd ed. London: Collins. Craton, Michael, and Gail Saunders. 1992. Islanders in the Stream: A History of the Bahamian People. Vol. 1: From Aboriginal Times to the End of Slavery. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press. Crowley, Daniel. 1966. I Could Talk Old-Story Good: Creativity in Bahamian Folklore. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Deuber, Dagmar, Carolin Biewer, Stephanie Hackert, and Michaela Hilbert. 2012. Will and would in selected New Englishes: General and variety-specific tendencies. In: Marianne Hundt, and Ulrike Gut (eds.), Mapping Unity and Diversity World-Wide. Corpus-Based Studies of New Englishes, 77–102. Amsterdam: Benjamins.

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Donnelly, Janet L. 1997. Basilectal features of Bahamian Creole English. College Forum, 17–34. Vol. 9. Nassau: College of the Bahamas. Dupuch, Eugene. 1940. Smokey Joe Says. Collection of 125 articles written 1934–1944. Nassau: Daily Tribune. Edwards, Charles L. 1895. Bahama Songs and Stories: A Contribution to Folk-Lore. (Memoirs of the American Folk-Lore Society 3) Reprint 1942. New York: Stechert. Glinton, Patricia. 1994. An Evening in Guanima. A Treasury of Folktales from the Bahamas. 2nd ed. Nassau: Guanima Press. Glinton-Meicholas, Patricia. 1995. More Talkin’ Bahamian. Nassau: Guanima Press. Hackert, Stephanie. 2004. Urban Bahamian Creole: System and Variation. Amsterdam: Benjamins. Hackert, Stephanie, and Magnus Huber. 2007. Gullah in the diaspora. Historical and linguistic evidence from the Bahamas. Diachronica 24: 279–325. Hackert, Stephanie, and John Holm. 2009. Southern Bahamian: Transported AAVE or transported Gullah? The College of the Bahamas Research Journal 15: 12–21. Retrieved from http://researchjournal.cob.edu.bs (August 18, 2010). Hackert, Stephanie, Dagmar Deuber, Carolin Biewer, and Michaela Hilbert. Fc. Modals of possibility, ability and permission in selected New Englishes. In: Magnus Huber, and Joybrato Mukherjee (eds.), VARIENG: Proceedings from ICAME 2010. Holm, John. 1980. African features in white Bahamian English. English World-Wide 1: 45–65. Holm, John. 1983. On the relationship of Gullah and Bahamian. American Speech 58: 303–18. Holm, John, and Alison Watt Shilling. 1982. Dictionary of Bahamian English. New York: Lexik House. Hurston, Zora Neale. 1930. Dance songs and tales fromthe Bahamas. Journal of American Folk-Lore 43: 294–312. King, Garth H. 1974. Family Patterns and its Effect on the Youth of St. Agnes Constituency. Nassau: Bahamas Teachers' College. Labov, William. 1984. Field methods of the Project on Linguistic Change and Variation. In: John Baugh, and Joel Sherzer (eds.), Language in Use: Readings in Sociolinguistics, 28–53. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. Léger, Frenand, and A. Philip Armbrister. 2009. Factors affecting the teaching and learning of Haitian Creole in the Bahamas. The College of the Bahamas Research Journal 15: 22–35. Retrieved from http://researchjournal.cob.edu.bs (August 18, 2010). Major, Michelle V. 1993. Some non-standard features of college writing: Evidence for a second dialect approach to English Language teaching in the Bahamas. MA thesis, Southern Illinois University at Carbondale. McPhee, Helean. 2003. The grammatical features of TMA auxiliaries in Bahamian Creole. In: Michael Aceto, and Jeffrey P. Williams (eds.), Contact Englishes of the Eastern Caribbean, 29–49. Amsterdam: Benjamins.

McWhorter, John. 1998. Identifying the creole prototype: Vindicating a typological class. Language 74: 788–818. McWhorter, John. 2001. The simplest grammars are creole grammars. Linguistic Typology 5: 125–166. Parsons, Elsie Clews. 1918. Folk-Tales of Andros Island, Bahamas. (Memoirs of the American Folk-Lore Society 13). Reprint 1972. New York: Kraus. Parsons, Elsie Clews. 1923. Folklore of the Sea Islands, South Carolina. (Memoirs of the American Folklore Society 16). Reprint 1969. New York: Kraus. Psilinakis, Agni. 1996. The Bahamian Creole: Its history and present state. MA thesis, University of Graz. Reaser, Jeffrey. 2004. A quantitative sociolinguistic analysis of Bahamian copula absence: Morphosyntactic evidence from Abaco Island, the Bahamas. Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages 19: 1–40. Reaser, Jeffrey, and Benjamin Torbert. 2004. Bahamian English: Morphology and syntax. In: Bernd Kortmann, Kate Burridge, Rajend Mesthrie, Edgar W. Schneider, and Clive Upton (eds.), A Handbook of Varieties of English. Vol. 2: Morphology and syntax, 391–406. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Reinecke, John E., Stanley M. Tsuzaki, David DeCamp, Ian F. Hancock, and Richard E. Woods. 1975. A Bibliography of Pidgin and Creole Languages. Honolulu, HI: University Press of Hawaii. Rickford, John R. 1977. The question of prior creolization in Black English. In: Albert Valdman (ed.), Pidgin and Creole Linguistics, 190–221. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Schneider, Edgar W. 1990. The cline of creoleness in Englishoriented creoles and semi-creoles of the Caribbean. English World-Wide 11: 79–113. Seymour, Chanti. 1995. The decreolisation of Bahamian English: A sociolinguistic study. MA thesis, Georgetown University. Shilling, Alison. 1978. Some non-standard features of Bahamian Dialect syntax. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Hawaii. Shilling, Alison. 1980. Bahamian English – a non-continuum? In: Richard R. Day (ed.), Issues in English Creoles: Papers from the 1975 Hawaii Conference, 133–145. Heidelberg: Groos. Shilling, Alison. 1981. Hidden roots: The African element in Bahamian speech. College Forum, 45–51. Vol. 2. Nassau: College of the Bahamas. Shilling, Alison. 1984. Black English as a creole: Some Bahamian evidence. Society for Caribbean Linguistics Occasional Paper 18. University of the West Indies, School of Education. Strachan, Ian G. 1997. God’s Angry Babies. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers. Winford, Donald. 1993. Predication in Caribbean English Creoles. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: Benjamins. Winford, Donald. 1996. Common ground and creole TMA. Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages 11: 71–84.

Barbadian Creole English (Bajan)

197

Stacy Denny and Korah Belgrave

Barbadian Creole English Barbadian Creole English (Bajan) is spoken throughout Barbados and at all levels of Barbadian society. It is spoken by middle class as well as working class people and is largely regarded as a badge of identity by Barbadians at home and throughout the Bajan diaspora. In Barbados, Bajan is spoken alongside Barbadian Standard English, which is the official language.

1 Background 1.1 Historical background Barbados, which was once a colony of Britain, had an uninterrupted history of English administration. For over three hundred years Barbados had a language contact situation which involved only two language families – English and African. For this continuous period, English served as the superstrate language and West African languages as the substrate. Early writings on language in Barbados purport two opposing views. Ian Hancock (1980: 17) contends that there was a local metropolitan variety of English being spoken in Barbados from as early as 1700, maintaining that this situation developed because the whites outnumbered the blacks in this early period and so played the major role in the development of the language. He argues for an early and rapid crystallisation of the language, proposing that it crystallised within the first seventy years. To substantiate his views, Hancock uses the writings from a number of authors writing on Barbados (cf. Cruickshank 1916: 13; Reinecke 1937: 277; Burns 1954: 69; Greenfield 1966: 33, 38, 40, 164; Wood 1974: 7, 36). John Roy (1984) presents the opposite view. He cites a letter from Barbados to John Winthrop in the first year of colonisation, 1627, which gives a figure of 60 whites to 40 Negroes and Indians. He also notes that around the year 1650, the Negroes were double the number of whites. This is contrary to Hancock’s (1980) figures and seems to suggest that it is unlikely that whites played a major role in the development of the varieties spoken in early Barbados. However, as suggested by Peter Roberts (1997), as well as John Rickford and Jerome Handler (1994), it is highly unlikely that everyone in early Barbados spoke the same variety, and so a much more realistic picture appears to be the one suggested by Mervyn Alleyne (1971, 1980). Alleyne, in these works, proposes that the language situation was one in which several varieties – basilectal, mesolectal, and acrolectal – coexisted. To add to this, Roberts (1997: 79) points out that there was no single dialect of British English in Barbados at any time while the English controlled Barbados. There were in fact a number of dialects, both social and geographical, in evidence from the beginning of the settlement by the English and this variety did not diminish in the pre-emancipation period.

1.2 Sociolinguistic background The sociolinguistic situation in Barbados today is one in which a variety of English is spoken at the lower end of the social scale which, though it is seen by its speakers as English, can best be described as a creole version of English. This variety is known as Bajan and is often referred to by the lay person as “dialect”. At the other end of the scale, what may be described as an educated variety of English is spoken. This variety has distinctive Barbadian characteristics, especially at the level of the lexicon, which distinguish it from the standard variety spoken in Britain and is referred to as Barbadian Standard English.

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Stacy Denny and Korah Belgrave

From early, Barbadian planters depended on natural increase, rather than on the importation of enslaved Africans, for their labour supply. Hilary Beckles notes that the Barbadian slave population was overwhelmingly Creole from the mid-eighteenth century (1990: 64). Handler (1974: 27) tells us that the planters in Barbados had a preference for “Caramantines and Gold Coast slaves”[sic], which according to Burrowes (1983: 39), included “persons from present day Ghana, Togo, Dahomey, Western Nigeria and neighbouring areas”. This meant that a wide variety of African languages were involved in the colonial context along with a variety of British dialects. The influence from British culture, including language, was constant and unadulterated. The enslaved people’s attempts to acquire English were influenced by their social position in the plantation slave society. Beckles (1990) points out that by the late 17th century critical social positions were beginning to appear within the black population. Slave society was being stratified along the lines of occupation – slave artisans, mulattoes and freed blacks began to constitute an elite and Creole slaves were given preferential treatment. Alleyne (1971: 179–182) had suggested in his earlier writings that this stratification would have influenced the amount of access the slaves had to the culture of the European masters and consequently would have produced a significant number of language differences. It is also possible that given the restricted access to an English model, field slaves relied on the pidgin acquired on the coast of Africa as their “lingua franca” and this pidgin developed into a Creole among them especially. After emancipation, Barbados’s healthy climate coupled with its high birth rate negated the need to import indentured labour, and so the language contact situation remained uninfluenced by other languages. Decreolisation – a movement away from creole forms and towards the norms of the lexically related standard forms (cf. Alleyne 1980: 189) – is largely responsible for the varieties which exist in Barbados today. This process was very rapid in Barbados for three main reasons. First, the island was small in size – only one hundred and sixty-six square miles. Second, it had no mountain ranges or rivers to act as natural barriers and, third, the early infrastructural development of the island helped to ensure that no groups remained isolated from the decreolising influence of the Church, commerce, government and education. Such was the interaction among villages that it led to the island being described as a single community. Perhaps the most powerful agent of decreolisation in Barbados has been education, although it is difficult to separate the role of the Church from that of education, especially in the earlier years, since schools were administered by the Church. Through education persons had greater access to the standard variety and much emphasis was placed on the ability to acquire proficiency in the standard. On the other hand, speakers of the creole and other non-standard varieties were considered uneducated and were seen as belonging to the lower social classes. Consequently, there was pressure exerted on Barbadians not only to acquire the standard variety but also to lose the stigmatised creole varieties. The ability to speak the acrolectal variety was seen as an attribute of the socially mobile. Barbadian English, though evolving from British varieties, developed its own peculiar characteristics so that it must now be classified as a distinct variety of English. There is some regional as well as social variation within the Barbadian speech communities. The regional variation is mainly in the area of accent and lexicon. It is possible to distinguish a number of regional accents. These accents may be divided into urban and rural, where the varieties spoken in and around the suburbs of the capital, Bridgetown, may be contrasted with those spoken in the rural parishes of St. Lucy, St. Philip, St. Peter and St. Andrew. However, further distinctions in expression and in the use of lexical items can be made between the variety spoken in St. Lucy and that spoken in St. Philip; or between that spoken in two parishes as close as St. Lucy and St. Peter, although these may not be easily perceived except by native speakers. Although social stratification is not as marked today as it was in the early post-emancipation period, it is still present to some extent and it is possible to distinguish varieties which are linked to social class. It is still possible to identify a person as being from a particular social class based on the language variety which s/he uses. The differences in social varieties tend to be largely in the areas of pronunciation and vocabulary. It is also possible to recognise some white Barbadians on the basis of their accent, referred to by some locals as the “plantation accent”.

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2 Features shared with other non-standard varieties 2.1 Morphosyntactic features of Bajan Barbadian Creole English (Bajan) has much in common with the other creolized versions of English in the Caribbean and across the world. We will discuss those features of the WAVE questionnaire that are common or distinctive in Bajan. Pronouns F1 and F2: Speakers often use he/she and her/him to refer to inanimate objects. These are often personal possessions such as automobiles, golf clubs, computers, etc. Males tend to refer to their possessions as she and females to their possessions as he. F5 and F6: Both Roberts (1988), and Burrowes in collaboration with Allsopp (1983) attest to the pervasiveness of the multifunctional invariant pronoun form mii in Bajan. This form was used for subject, object and possessive pronouns. In recent times, the mii in subject position has been replaced by ai or a. In central parishes such as St George and Christ Church the form ii replaces mii, as in How iz liisa tudee? Ii ohrait (Burrowes 1983: 41). For the rest of the island, there seems to be a distinction for plural, with dem being used as the plural form in subject, object and possessive positions, e.g. iz dem book; gi dem di book; dem bai di book ‘it’s their book’, ‘give them the book’; ‘they bought the book’. The use of om/um for neuter gender is quite common in Barbados, though not so common in the other islands (Burrowes 1983: 41): Then you have stolen them said I? No misses, me no tief um, me take um, was the reply ‘No mistress, I did not steal them, I took them’ (Bayley in Fields 1995: 96). F7 and F8: The two forms me and myself/meself both occur in Bajan instead of I in coordinate subjects, e.g. Me and she had a big noise ‘She and I had a quarrel’ or Susan and myself were at the gala opening ‘Susan and I attended the gala opening’. F13: Bajan does not make a distinction for number in reflexives. The invariant form -self is usually affixed to a personal pronoun to form the reflexive, as in He gun do it iiself; wii gun do it wiiself; dem gun do it demself ‘He will do it himself’; ‘we will do it ourselves’; ‘they will do it themselves’. We also find the use of emphatic reflexives with own, as in wii did it wii own self ‘we did it ourselves’ or learn to help yuh own self ‘learn to help yourself’. F18–F22: The subject pronoun forms, first person singular mii, first person plural wii, third person singular hii/shii and the possessive pronoun yuu/yuh are all used as modifying possessive pronouns, as in Wen wii dun plan wii wedding, wii did dog tired ‘When we had finished planning our wedding, we were exhausted’; iz hii/ shii dog ‘it is his/her dog’; yuh got tuh gi di kasheer yuh monii firs ‘you have to give the cashier your money first’. The third person plural object pronoun is also used as a possessive pronoun; e.g. Iz dem book. F34: Like other creolized English varieties, Bajan also has the second person plural form wunna(h) which can function as a subject, object or possessive pronoun. It seems however that a specialized use of wunnah has evolved where it is used to scold, threaten or reprimand, as in wunnah in sii di tiicher waitin fuh wunnah tuh stop taakin ‘Can’t you see the teacher is waiting for you to stop talking?’; wunnah caan com in hyah ‘You are not allowed in here’. F46: It is often deleted in referential it is constructions; e. g. iz yu ai taakin tuh ‘It is you to whom I am speaking/I am indeed speaking to you’.

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Noun Phrases F48: There is some instance of regularized plural in Barbadian Creole English where the Standard English plural marker is extended to irregular plurals. Some examples of this include sheeps and mices. There is also an associative plural marked by postposed an dem, as in mai mudda an dem gro up in sent james ‘My mother and her siblings grew up in Saint James’. It can also be marked by the form posse, probably borrowed from American English as in mi posse. F60: In certain noun phrases Bajan uses a definite article where Standard English has the indefinite article; e.g. hii got dii col ‘He has a cold’. F68: In Bajan, dem is often used in place of demonstrative those; e.g. dem did dii good ole days ‘Those were the good old days’. F74: Possession can also be marked by the use of fo followed by the noun possessed. Consider Margaret child fo John ‘Margaret’s child is John’s’ or ‘John is the father of Margaret’s child’. Possession can also be expressed through juxtaposition of the possessor and the thing possessed, as in di man haus ‘the man’s house’; my sista husband ‘my sister’s husband’. F78–F80, F83: Double comparatives and superlatives as well as the extension of synthetic and analytic marking of comparison are a common part of Bajan. Expressions like more better, most kindest, most happy, and beautifulest are fairly common. Comparative and superlative forms of participles, for example, lovingest and confusingest, are also a part of the language. Tense and Aspect F91–F93: Habitual aspect is marked by doz/does or a combination of do + be, as in She doz work real hard ‘She works really hard’; he doz be sick a lot ‘He is often ill’. F101: Completive or perfective aspect is marked by the use of don (done) + verb, as in hii don gon home ‘He has gone home’. Areddi (Already) may also be used to indicate completive aspect; e.g. You meet she areddi? ‘Have you met her?’; ai do dis cours areddi ‘I’ve done this course’. F111 and F112: Fields (1995) supports the evolution of the anterior marker. She points out that the anterior marker been is a basilectal feature which has been largely lost and replaced by mesolectal did and had in contemporary Bajan. F114: The future marker is gain/gun/gine, depending on the regional pronunciation, based on English go. E.g. hii gun bill dii haus fo mii ‘He will build the house for me’. F125 and F126: Quasi modals are created by joining some form of the preposition ‘to’ to the verb functioning as a modal, as in He supposeta fix de ting evasince ‘He was supposed to have fixed that thing a long time ago’. The same is true of creating aspectual meaning, as for example in It useta/usesta be me and he together all de time ‘We used to spend time together regularly’.

2.2 Features peculiar to Bajan There is indeed some overlap with the many non-standard dialects in the Anglophone Caribbean region, but its striking phonological differences set Bajan apart from them. Like most of the regional varieties, Bajan replaces [ù] with [t] and [.] with [d] as in ting (thing), teet (teeth), and dat (that). However, unlike the Anglophone non-standard varieties, but comparable to St. Lucian Creole English (SLCE), Bajan equally replaces the former sound with [f], and the latter with [v] as in teef (teeth) and bave (bathe) (Roberts 1988: 126). Fur-

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thermore, the [dz] sound commonly heard in words like usual and treasure are rendered [}] in Bajan (Allsopp 1996: xlvi). Additionally, in most Caribbean English based creoles, especially at the basilectal level, there is a tendency to delete the [r] sound before a consonant; however, only in Bajan and Guyanese Creole, at all socioeconomic levels, is this the exception. The reason for this could be, as Brook (1963), cited by Roberts (1988: 127), explains that Irish and Scottish English, which are deemed to have (greatly) influenced Bajan, have [r] in all positions; whereas, in the other dialects of the United Kingdom it is silent before consonants. Another significant feature of Bajan is the replacement of the diphthong [oy] with [@y], so that words like boil and coin are rendered [b@yl] and [k@yn]. The most interestingly unique feature of Bajan is its frequency of glottalisation. The sounds /t/ and /k/ tend to become glottalised between vowels. This degree of regularity is unlike any other Caribbean territory. Roberts (1988: 92) gives an excellent example in (1): (1) I am not going to tell you what I am going to do. This sounds like: a e˜ gã te{ yu wa{ a gã{ du. Bajan is also noticeably different at the level of prosody. Bajan for example uses lexical pitch to distinguish between words with the same spelling, for example, Farmer (surname) and farmer (one who works on a farmer), brother (sibling) and brother (of religious order), sister (sibling) and sister (head nurse at hospital). This distinctive characteristic is shared perhaps only with Guyanese Creole, and is widespread among West African languages, which use pitch to distinguish between words (Roberts 1988: 128). While these features distinguish Bajan from the other non-standard varieties in the region, it is still important to note that this code actually shares several features, and understandably so, with the creoles of the Anglophone Caribbean.

3 Substrate vs. superstrate influences 3.1 Overview In this section, it is important to revisit the socio-historical links of the island Barbados to West Africa and the United Kingdom in order to make any claims about substrate and superstrate influences on the language. The claim is that Barbadian English became creolised after 1640 with the change to a different economy, that is, from tobacco to sugar, which brought about a change in labour force, from white United Kingdom indentured servants to Black African slaves (Roy 1986; Cassidy 1986). The slaves came from the West African coast between 1647–1650, from areas like Guinea, Angola and River Gambia (Ligon 1657). In the 1670s and 80s most of the slaves came from the area of the Gold Coast and therefore spoke languages like Yoruba, Ewe, Ibo, Fanti and Asanti, to name a few. These slaves were now numerically in a position to influence the dominant language, English, having learned, it is believed, an English pidgin which was already spreading along the Gold Coast before they arrived in the West Indies (Hancock 1980; Cassidy 1980). Cassidy (1980: 13) comments that the similarity of the new world creoles “virtually requires a common English pidgin source for the languages of slaves taken from Barbados to Suriname, Jamaica, and South Carolina from 1651–1670. It suggests, though it does not require, creolization in Barbados, perhaps already begun in Africa”. If this is in fact true, we can claim some substrate influence in the Barbadian dialect (Bajan).

3.2 Pronouns Hall (1968: 365) summarises the state of creole linguistics well. He surmises that: “At present, the existence of a considerable African element in the various Caribbean creoles, on all levels of linguistic structure, is recognised by all scholars”. This view has a bearing on Holm’s (1988: 201) observation that pronouns in the superstrate language indicate number. For the most part they also indicate case, sometimes gender, and even degree of intimacy. However, except for number, most of these distinctions are made neither in basilectal

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creoles, nor in their substrate languages. Take, for example, the use of a generalized 3rd person singular pronoun in the subject position in Bajan, as in example F5 of the features chart, included as (2) below: (2) How iz Liisa tudee? ii ohrait. (Burrowes 1983: 41) This feature is very typical of West African languages, and very unlike standard English which, as previously stated, generally does indicate case, gender and number. For example, substrate languages like Susu (Guinea people) have a single set of personal pronouns which function in the subjective, objective and possessive position (Boretzky 1983 in Holm 1988: 201). However, one should be cautioned that “such a lack of morphological complexity is by no means rare among the world’s languages, so this common characteristic of these creole and African languages is in itself no real proof of substrate influence” (Holm 1988: 201–202). In this case however, we could perhaps argue for substrate influence since the only superstrate influence on Bajan has always been English, which does not treat pronoun usage in the same way as it operates in Bajan. The pronoun chart for Barbados therefore looks like this: subject

object

possessive

mii yu ii om wii wunna dem

mii yu ii om wii wunna dem

Mii Yu Ii (male/female) Om (neutral) Wii Wunna Dem

Table 1: Pronoun chart for Bajan (adapted from Burrowes 1983: 42)

It is the 2nd person plural in Bajan which has the greatest resemblance to the African language Ibo (Turner 2002: 227). Holm (1988: 203) explains that the second person plural pronoun in Atlantic creoles is likely of African origin, so it appears that the use of wunnah in Bajan is perhaps from Ibo ‘unu’ as Burrowes (1983: 41) speculates. Another possible substrate influence might be seen at the level of the plural demonstrative pronoun. The use of them (dem) + noun, that is, the 3rd person plural pronoun + noun in Bajan, appears akin to the Yoruba structure, ‘they+that’ which is equivalent to‘those’ in English, as in the following Bajan expression, dem tings ain rait, ‘Those kinds of things are not fair’. Similarly in Yoruba, it is common for one to say, kini awon ni (things + they + that) to mean those things (Roberts 1988: 129). Equally noteworthy, is that while not common, Roberts (1988) points out that there are a few British dialects which use a similar structure. For example, speakers of these dialects might say, ‘them books (there)’ to mean those books. This however does not preclude substrate influence, but certainly adds another dimension to possible sources of influence. The construction of possession in Bajan appears to mimic that in the substrate languages. Pronouns in Bajan are not required to indicate possession. The example given for F77 di man house illustrates this. Here possession is expressed through juxtaposition of bare nouns. This is quite common in the West African languages like Ewe, Ibo, Gã, Twi and Yoruba (Turner 2002: 229). In fact, like Gã, the possession of the noun in Bajan is indicated by its position in the sentence, the possessor preceding the possessed. Interestingly, there was a situation where the English of the early 1600s omitted the suffix in a case where the word ended in an [s] sound (horse tail), and before a word beginning with an [s] sound (the quen sister) (Roberts 1988: 128). However, due to the pervasiveness of this feature in creole throughout the territories, it is more likely that its influence is substrate, as opposed to being specially related to the unique influence of English in Barbados before 1640.

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3.3 Verb phrases Verb usage in Caribbean English, and Bajan, perhaps shows the most affinity to its African ancestry. Features such as zero tense marker, use of tense markers outside the verb, use of the completive don (done) and use of the modal mussii (must be) are very common in Bajan; all of which appear to have links to West African languages. Nevertheless, as one examines the linguistic pattern more closely, there appears to be some superstrate influence as well. Although aspect might be related to the superstrate language, it is the way in which tense is expressed in Bajan that is most akin to its counterpart in many West African languages. To illustrate, Rowlands (1969: 18) cites Yoruba as a typical example of a language for which there is no ‘built-in distinction between past and present’, for the context determines the tense. A parallel situation exists in Bajan, as in the example of if a person is responding in Bajan to the question, you eat? He/she might reply: Yes, I eat, meaning I have eaten or I ate. The same is true of Yoruba where mo jêun could mean either I eat or I ate depending on the context. It is the progressive marker in Bajan which seems to be linked to the progressive aspect in English. To give an example, the use of the progressive marker da as in I did-da tawkin wid he, is thought to come from the English there, which would make sense as a locative copular (Holm 1988: 156), as in I was in [that place] [there] talking to him. This connection should not appear odd, as Holm (1988: 154) clarifies the point that the progressive in superstrate languages did not develop into their present form until around the time of contact, so that ‘ … it is conceivable that their development was reinforced through contact with similar constructions in the New World creoles’. There also seems to be clear influences from both the substrate and superstrate languages at the level of the completive and the habitual in Bajan. Burrowes (1983) suggests that the completive don as in F104 appears to be influenced by a parallel structure in Krio; nevertheless; it is clear that the lexical term is derived from the English word ‘done’ meaning finished; hence, ‘there is considerable semantic overlap between the creole completive and the perfect tenses in English’ (Holm 1988: 161–162). However, it is the structural form in Bajan which is parallel to that of its West African linguistic influences, so that Holm proffers that Creole English don ‘was clearly … influenced by the substrate syntactically, [but] its lexical form was probably influenced … by the meaning of standard English done … ’ (Holm 1988: 163). Furthermore, the use of a preverbal habitual marker, like, doz in Bajan is said to be normal in West African languages, but its lexico-semantic form is most like the English auxiliary does. With regard to this marker, Rickford (1986) theorizes that it is possible that in the case of Bajan, the southern Irish English habitual ‘do be’ influenced the development of ‘does be’, (which was then reduced to doz), as the southern Irish were part of the social landscape in the 17th century. The modal mussii in Bajan is perhaps more clearly linked to the substrate languages. Roberts (1988) says that the creole English mussii has no phonetic equivalent in standard, functioning as an auxiliary verb. He specifically states three ways in which Caribbean English modals differ from Standard English modals and is quick to point out that despite the obvious similarity in form with English, the modal in Creole English ‘and its standard English phonetic equivalent are not always immediately related in function and meaning’ (Roberts 1988: 72). Bajan mussii exemplifies this truth. The modal mussii which is phonetically related to English must be, actually means probably, so that there is a degree of uncertainty; whereas, must be in English is clearly definitive. Consider the examples in (3): (3) a.

I mussii put it pon de table ‘I probably put it on the table’ or b. He mussii could wash the car today ‘He probably could wash the car today but probably won’t’.

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3.4 Negation Negation is one of the areas in which non-standard varieties of English generally differ from Standard English, and Bajan is no exception. The difference is seen in that non-standard varieties usually allow double and triple negation (Roberts 1988: 75). Double negation in Bajan can perhaps be traced to varieties like Kongo. Consider the following examples in Bajan and Kongo: (4) I just clean in hey and I ain want nuhbody dirtying up in hey (Bajan) ‘I just cleaned this room (specific place) and I do not wish for anyone to dirty it’. (5) I caan not say nuttin ‘I cannot remain silent’ (6) Omuuntuke-wámmbi-ko ‘The man is not wicked’.

(Bajan) (Kongo)

Each emphasized particle in the latter is a negator. Additionally, in Ewe, the verb is surrounded by the disjunctive negators ‘me’and ‘o’ to form negation. It is interesting that Boretzky (1983) claims that these creole negators could be as much innovations as they are the result of substrate influence but they could hardly have resulted from a universal creole tendency toward simplification as they represent more complex structures than the single negators in their superstrates (in Holm 1988: 174).

3.5 Complementation Holm (1988: 169) advances the argument that the complementizer fu (fo/fi= variants) in Caribbean English shows evidence of convergence. This is to say that the English construction ‘for’ converged with a creole construction influenced by the substrate. The infinitival marker fo in Bajan as in It hard fo/fi get ova wha he do or I come fi see who outside is said to bear close resemblance to Twi /fo/ (Burrowes 1983: 43). Perhaps, this is a case of convergence which can be explained, as was done by Holm (1988: 168–169), who contends that like British dialects, particularly from West country (strong influence in Barbados’ history), ‘for’ is used as a complementizer implying purpose. The choice of complementizers might have then been reinforced by similar constructions in substrate languages like Mandinka, where fo also expresses purpose; hence, the convergence.

3.6 Adverbs and prepositions The absence of prepositions after verbs of movement in Bajan is comparable to structures in substrate languages. In the example for F216 the Standard English preposition is absent, hence producing I went St. Lucia. Holm (1988: 208) in offering an explanation for constructions of this sort, purports that “there are parallel constructions in West African languages in which the meaning of a general locative preposition is specified as ‘from’ or ‘out of’ by a verb meaning ‘exit from’”, as illustrated below for Yoruba (7) and Fante (8). (7) ó jade nínúilé: he came-out LOC house (8) o-fir ha mu: he came-out bush LOC

(Yoruba) (Fante)

It is also noteworthy that in Mandika names of countries usually follow verbs indicating movement towards or away from that place. This is also common in Niger-Congo languages (Holm 1988: 208). Holm nonetheless expresses the view that such substrate influence by no means excludes converging influence from the superstrate prepositions, though it is difficult to imagine European prepositions with this level of semantic range.

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4 Conclusion It would therefore appear that while there is some conceivable substrate influence in the Bajan language; perhaps, there might be more evidence to indicate that as English converged with the creole it perhaps resulted in the intermediate variety which has existed for much of the time the language has been spoken. Many of these features can be as much explained by way of superstrate influence as they can be by substrate influence. This is not surprising when one looks at the socio-linguistic history of Barbados, which was first dominated by the British, that is, prior to 1640, with very few Blacks/Africans. It is therefore expected that English would have been the dominant language. However, with a change in economy came a change in peoples. After 1640 there was an increase in the African population, due to sugar plantation slavery; they would eventually outnumber the British. These African peoples obviously brought their language which must have influenced the dominant language in some ways. Whether these peoples created a pidgin, which expanded into a creole, or, as some speculate, they arrived in Barbados already able to communicate through an English pidgin which was found around the coasts in their homelands, is not clear. Either way, as the contact languages converged there must have been bi-directional influence. There is no doubt that linguistically Barbados is in a unique situation, having had a population who primarily spoke a dominant European language, English, before the introduction of African languages. That dominance must have held sway for some time, but the sheer amount of African languages introduced into the island must have also made in-roads into the language, thus producing Bajan, a language quite unlike the surrounding regional varieties, whose socio-linguistic history was similar enough to its regional counterparts to produce relatable vernaculars, but still divergent enough, to result in marked differences from those within such geographical proximity.

Appendix: Overview of WAVE features attested in Barbadian Creole (Bajan) # 1 2 5 6 7 10 13 14

16 18 19 20 21 22

feature Bajan example I. Pronouns, pronoun exchange, nominal gender she/her used for inanimate referents She/he working good (referring to a car) he/him used for inanimate referents generalized 3rd person singular pronoun: How iz Liisa tudee? ii ohrait ‘How is Lisa today? She (is) all right’ subject pronouns Dahz um ‘That is it’ generalized 3rd person singular pronoun: object pronouns me instead of I in coordinate subjects Me an she had a big noise ‘She and I had a quarrel’ no gender distinction in 3rd person singular subject pronoun forms serving as base for He gun do it heself ‘He will do it himself’ reflexives no number distinction in reflexives (i. e. We gun do it weself plural forms ending in -self) dem gun do it demself ‘we will do it ourselves/ they will do it themselves’ emphatic reflexives with own We do it we owm self ‘we did it ourselves’ subject pronoun forms as possessive pronouns: 1st person singular subject pronoun forms as possessive When we dun plan we wedding, we did dog tired ‘When we had pronouns: 1st person plural finished planning our wedding, we were very tired’ subject pronoun forms as possessive Iz he book pronouns: 3rd person singular subject pronoun forms as possessive Iz dem book ‘It is their book’ pronouns: 3rd person plural you as possessive pronoun Yu got to gi di kasheer yu money first. ‘You must first give the cashier your money’

rating A C B A A C A A

A A A A A A

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23

66

2nd person pronoun forms other than you as possessive pronoun forms or phrases for the 2nd person plural pronoun other than you deletion of it in referential it is-constructions II. Noun phrase regularization of plural formation: extension of -s to StE irregular plurals associative plural marked by postposed and them/them all/dem associative plural marked by other elements group plurals use of definite article where StE has indefinite article use of zero article where StE has definite article use of definite article where StE favours zero indefinite article one/wan

68

them instead of demonstrative those

69 70

104 109

yon/yonder indicating remoteness proximal and distal demonstratives with ’here’ and ’there’ phrases with for + noun to express possession: for-phrase following possessed NP; the for-phrase may precede or follow the possessed NP omission of genitive suffix; possession expressed through bare juxtaposition double comparatives and superlatives regularized comparison strategies: extension of synthetic marking regularized comparison strategies: extension of analytic marking comparatives and superlatives of participles III. Verb phrase: tense and aspect wider range of uses of progressive be + V-ing: extension to stative verbs do as habitual marker other non-standard habitual markers: analytic simple present for continuative or experiential perfect completive/perfect done perfect marker already

112 114

anterior had + bare root go-based future markers

118 119

is for am/will with 1st person singular would for future in contrast to will

34 46

48 52 53 54 60 62 64

74

77 78 79 80 83

88 91 93 101

Why wunna doan hush? ‘why don’t you (pl) be quiet?’

A

Wunna in see de tiicher waitin fo wunna to stop taakin ‘Can’t you see the teacher is waiting for you to stop talking?’ Iz you I taaking to ‘it is you to whom I am speaking’

A

sheeps, mices

A

Mai mudda and dem grow up in St James ‘My mother and her siblings grew up in St James’ mi and mai posse ‘my friends and I’

A

mother-in laws; attorney-generals He got di cold ‘He has a cold’

A C

Did you get mileage-claim for dat trip?

C

He told my muh dear-aunt not to worry, the Affie Cumberbatch was as good as dead (Allsopp, DCEU, 1996) He got one boy dey dat gun drive he mad ‘He has a son causes him a great deal of distress’ Dem days did de good ole days ‘Those were the good old days’ The house over yonder is hers Don’t touch this here (promixal), use that there (distal)

C

Margaret child fo’ John ‘Margaret’s child is John’s child’; ‘Margaret’s child belongs to John’

B

di man house, di farmer cow; he is my fada brudda

A

He is the most ugliest man I eva see She is the beautifulest of them all

A A

This is the most happy I have seen her

A

lovingest, confusingest

C

I likin dis

B

She does work real hard He does be sick a lot. I does be vex when he come home late

A A

I know she since she was a child. I here twenty years now

A

He done gone I meet you brudda aready ‘I met your brother before’ I do dis course aready He did eat de bread before he went skool He gun build de house ‘He will build the house’ I gine town tomorrow / I gun go town tomorrow. ‘I am going to town tomorrow’ He int gun go long and lef u ‘He will not leave you alone’ I’s a guvment worker ‘I am a government worker’ I would be in America by then

A A

A

C

B A A A

B A

A B

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IV. Verb phrase: modal verbs new quasi-modals: core modal meanings

126

new quasi-modals: aspectual meanings

132 139 146 147 154 155 156 157 158 159 165

170 172 174 175 177 178 180 185 189 190 196 197

201 202 203 204 205 206 213 214

V. Verb phrase: verb morphology zero past tense forms of regular verbs distinctive forms for auxiliary vs. full verb meanings of primary verbs use of verbal suffix -ing with forms other than present participle/gerund was for conditional were VII. Negation multiple negation / negative concord ain’t as the negated form of be ain’t as the negated form of have ain’t as generic negator before a main verb invariant don’t for all persons in the present tense never as preverbal past tense negator invariant non-concord tags (including eh?) VIII. Agreement invariant present tense due to zero marking for the 3rd person singular existential / presentational there’s/there is/there was with plural subjects deletion of auxiliary be: before progressive deletion of auxiliary be: before gonna deletion of copula be: before AdjPs deletion of copula be: before locatives was/were generalization IX. Relativization relativizer that or what in non-restrictive contexts relativizer where or a form derived from where relativizer what or a form derived from what correlative constructions »linking relative clauses« (without direct antecedent) X. Complementation for-based complementizers unsplit for to in infinitival purpose clauses for (to) as infinitive marker as what / than what in comparative clauses existentials with forms of get existentials with forms of have XI. Adverbial subordination no subordination; chaining construction linking two main verbs conjunction doubling: clause + conj. + conj. + clause

He supposeta fix de ting evasince ‘He was supposed to have fixed the thing a long time ago’ It useta be me and he together all the time ‘We used to spend time together regularly’

He do it, not me. He did pon de phone. [full verbs] He did talking to she when I get dey [auxiliary] You want ya tail cutting ’You need to be spanked’

B A

A A A

If I was you, I would try out for the team

A

He en (won’t) gun do you nutten ‘He will not harm you’ It ready, ent it? I ent look at dem yet. ‘I haven’t looked at them yet’ Dem accuse me of something I ent know nutten bout

A B A A

She/he/ they don’t live down here ‘He /She doesn’t (They don’t) live down here’ He never turn up ‘He did not turn up’ It’s true, innit? Is he put it there, innit?

A

He turn and look at she with a smile ‘He turns and looks at her with a smile’ There’s too many people in this minibus

A

You eating dinner at home tonight

A

I gonna call you when I done eat She happy ’She is happy’ She home ‘She is at home’ You was absent that day but he was at work

A A A B

My dawhter dat live in the States …

A

The woman whe own de shop is my neighbour

B

Di boy wha had on de red shirt pelt de shoe

B

which one iit de mango, that one will get de licks You can get some plaintain, whichin some people don’t like …

C B

It hard fo /fi get ova wha he do Dey have skool buses for to take de trildren to skool. I taking de child for to register he at de clinic There is more in it than what you expect

B B B B

Barbados got too much cars pun de road There have some men whe doan like to work

A A

Hardears yuh wun hear, own way yuh will feel (proverb)

B

He fallin sleep at de weel ’yet still he wun stop to res’

B

A A

A

208

216 217 219 220 221 222

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XII. Adverbs and prepositions omission of StE prepositions use of postpositions

We leavin Monday. She went St Lucia yesterday I don’t walk about night time. I collect my things evening time. She works there during the crop-time. She finished her work quick-time He real fast

adverb-forming suffixes -way and -time degree modifier adverbs have the same form as adjectives other adverbs have the same form as It happen sudden so adjectives too; too much; very much ‘very’ as He had to wait too long qualifier XIII. Discourse organization and word order other options for clefting than StE Dem looking trouble is what I realise other possibilities for fronting than StE Drinking, he like; eating, not so much “negative inversion” (sentence-initial Don’t nobody answer she negated auxiliary verbs) inverted word order in indirect questions I waanta know who are you no inversion/no auxiliaries in Whe’ you live? wh-questions no inversion/no auxiliaries in main clause You in gone work today? You finish aready? yes/no questions superlative marker most occurring before The most ting he want is money ‘The thing he wants most is head noun money’

A C B A A A

B B B A A A C

References Alleyne, Mervyn. 1971. Acculturation and the cultural matrix of creolization. In: Dell Hymes (ed.), Pidginization and Creolization of Languages, 168–186. London: Cambridge University Press. Alleyne, Mervyn. 1980. Comparative Afro-American. Ann Arbor: Karoma. Allsopp, Richard. 1996. Dictionary of Caribbean English Usage. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Beckles, Hilary. 1990. A History of Barbados: from Amerindian Settlement to Nation State. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Boretzky, Norbert. 1983. Kreolsprachen, Substrate und Sprachwandel. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz. Brook, George. 1963. English Dialects. London: Andre Deutsch. Burns, Alan. 1954. A History of the British West Indies. London: Allen and Unwin. Burrowes, Audrey (in collaboration with Richard Allsopp). 1983. Barbadian Creole: a note on its social history and structure. In: Lawrence Carrington, Dennis Craig, and Ramon Todd Dandaré (eds.), Studies in Caribbean Language, 38–45. St. Augustine, Trinidad: Society for Caribbean Linguistics. Cassidy, Frederic. 1980. The place of Gullah. American Speech 55: 195–205. Cassidy, Frederic. 1986. Barbadian Creole – possibility and probability. American Speech 61: 195–205. Cruickshank. J. Graham. 1916. Black Talk: Being Notes on Negro dialect in British Guiana with (Inevitably) a Chapter on the Vernacular of Barbados. Demerara: The Argosy. Fields, Linda. 1995. Early Bajan: Creole or non-Creole. In: Jacques Arends (ed.), The Early Stages of Creolization, 89–112. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Greenfield, Sidney. 1966. English Rustics in Black Skin. New Haven: College and University Press. Hall, Robert Jr. 1968. Creole Linguistics. In: Thomas Sebeok (ed.), Current Trends in Linguistics Vol.4. Ibero-American and Caribbean Linguistics, 361–371. The Hague: Mouton. Hancock, Ian. 1980. Gullah and Barbadian: origins and relationships. American Speech 55: 17–35. Handler, Jerome. 1974. The Unappropriated People: Freedmen in the Slave Society of Barbados. Maryland: John Hopkins University Press. Holm, John. 1988. Pidgins and Creoles Vol.1: Theory and Structure. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Ligon, Richard. 1657. A True and Exact History of the Island of Barbados. Reprinted 2011. Indiana: Hackett Publishing Company. Reinecke, John. 1937. Marginal languages: a sociological survey of the creole languages and trade jargons. Ph.D. Dissertation, Yale University. Rickford, John. 1986. Social contact and linguistic diffusion: Hiberno English and New World Black English. Language 62: 245–289. Rickford, John, and Jerome Handler. 1994. Textual evidence on the nature of Early Barbadian English, 1676–1835. Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages 9: 221–255. Roberts, Peter. 1988. West Indians and their Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Roberts, Peter. 1997. From Oral to Literate Culture: Colonial Experience in the English West Indies. Kingston, Jamaica: The Press UWI. Roberts, Peter. 2007. West Indians and their Language. 2nd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Barbadian Creole English (Bajan)

Rowlands, Evan. 1969. Teach yourself Yoruba. London: English Universities Press. Roy, John. 1984. An investigation into the processes of language variation and change in a speech community in Barbados. Ph.D. Dissertation, Columbia University. Roy, John. 1986. The structure of tense and aspect in Barbadian English creole. In Manfred Görlach and John A. Holm

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(eds.), Focus on the Caribbean: Varieties of English around the World, 141–156. Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Turner, Lorenzo. 2002. Africanisms in the Gullah Dialect. South Carolina: University of South Carolina Press. Wood, Peter. 1974. Black Majority: Negroes in Colonial South Carolina from 1670 through the Stono Rebellion. New York: Knopf.

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Jamaican English 1 Sociohistorical Background 1.1 Introduction Jamaican English (JamE), or Standard Jamaican English, is the standard variety of English spoken by almost 3 million speakers on the island of Jamaica.1 It is the official language of the country, recognized by the constitution. Because of the co-existence of JamE and Jamaican Creole (JamC) over many centuries, a continuum of lects has developed (cf. Devonish and Harry 2008, Patrick 2008). Until well after independence in 1962, the most acrolectal variety of this continuum was considered to be Standard British English. More recently, however, this exogenous standard has been replaced with an emerging regional standard variety, as can be seen in studies such as Sand (1999) on morpho-syntactic and lexical features or Irvine (2008) on the pronunciation of JamE.

1.2 History and present status The history of JamE begins with the establishment of a British plantation colony in the year 1655, after taking over the island from the Spanish. Most Spaniards were evacuated, but some of their slaves fled into the mountains and became Maroons.2 Maroons are run-away slaves who established their own settlements, isolated from white society. Their customs and language were more influenced by African traditions than those of plantation slaves. They maintain their distinct characteristics to this day, speaking a more conservative Creole with many African elements. Most English settlers came from Nevis, Barbados and Suriname, bringing their slaves – and their creolised English – with them. In Jamaica, sugar cane soon became the main crop, and large numbers of additional slaves were brought in from Africa. By 1703, the slave population outnumbered the settler population by about 5:1. Thus the foundations for the formation of JamC were laid (Blouet 1997, Holm 2000: 93–94). After the abolition of slavery in the 19th century, many became smallholders in the more remote mountain areas, thus preserving a more conservative variety of JamC. In comparison to other Caribbean territories, the number of East Indian indentured labourers remained quite low in the case of Jamaica, resulting in very little cultural and linguistic impact (Holm 2000: 94). Jamaica remained a British colony until 1962, when it gained political independence after the Federation of the West Indies, which had been founded in 1958, had failed. Today, Jamaica is a parliamentary democracy with a two-party system and the Queen of England as official head of state, represented on the island by the Governor General. Today, the population consists of about 75 % Blacks, 13 % Afro-Europeans, 3 % East Indians and Afro-East Indians and 5 % Whites.3 The majority of the population are Creole-dominant bilinguals4, but it is difficult to determine which proportion actually understands and speaks JamE (cf. Akers 1981: 8, Devonish 1986: 33, or

1 See Statistical Institute of Jamaica for data on 2009 and prognosis for 2010. 2 See LePage and DeCamp (1960: 97–103) on the history of the Jamaican Maroons. 3 See Statistical Institute of Jamaica for further demographic information. In some accounts (e.g. Patrick 2008: 610) the per-

centage of the population of African descent is given at over 90 %, which is not in line with recent census data. 4 Or bidialectals, depending on whether JamC is considered a variety of English or a separate language.

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Görlach 1991: 75–76). It is probably safe to claim today that the majority at least comprehends JamE, however imperfectly at times. For the individual speaker, there is a clear division between these two codes although one speaker’s variety of JamE may be more or less identical to another speaker’s JamC (cf. DeCamp 1971: 350). The situation of the speech community as a whole is thus best modelled as a continuum of lects (cf. DeCamp 1971, Patrick 1999, Sand 1999: 50–61). In recent decades, the strict Fergusionian distinction into an H (JamE) and an L (JamC) variety mentioned by Devonish and Harry (2008: 256) has been given up in favour of a more fluid linguistic situation in which JamC, at least in its mesolectal variety, may also be used in domains formerly reserved to standard English: JamC can be heard in the media, for example in interviews, by DJs announcing music, and even in the evening TV news when snippets of originally recorded material are shown. In the school system, JamC is also used in the classroom by students and teachers alike, especially during discussions, although written work still requires the use of JamE. JamC is also making forays into the written mode, not only in the form of direct quotations, comic strips or literary genres such as dub poetry, as recent research on e-mail communication, internet chats and bulletin boards has shown (Blake and Devonish 1994, Hinrichs 2006, Mair 2003). The present situation entails that even primarily standard English texts will show a lot of variation and shifting between various codes along the continuum, as speakers and writers exploit the linguistic resources available to them. Language attitude studies (e.g. Beckford Wassink 1999) also provide evidence for an increased acceptance of JamC als the variety of solidarity and identity and JamE as the standard variety, which is preferred over exonormative standards such as BrE or AmE. However, JamE as a standard variety is still emerging and there have been very few attempts at codification so far, apart from Allsopp’s (1996) Dictionary of Caribbean English Usage. Some features encountered in the speech and writing of educated Jamaicans may not be considered acceptable in a standard variety of JamE by all speakers, as Sand (2011) has shown for a small number of items.

2 WAVE questionnaire The features listed in the questionnaire and discussed in the following (for the complete JamE list see appendix) are based on my own research in Jamaica (e.g. Sand 1999, 2011) and on data from the Jamaican subcorpus of the International Corpus of English (cf. ICE Homepage). The features discussed in this chapter are all rated ‘B’ (neither pervasive nor extremely rare) or ‘C’ (exists, but rare). The reason for this is that JamE is the standard variety and especially in writing the features rated ‘B’ may occur but are by no means obligatory. Some are largely restricted to spoken language or the representation of spoken language in writing, others may occur more frequently in writing but tend not to be the dominant form. Because most Jamaicans are speakers of JamE as well as JamC, codeswitching is very common and some primarily JamC features may also be recorded in JamE contexts5. These are indicated in the table in the appendix and are discussed separately in section 2.2. below.

2.1 JamE features in informal and formal speech and writing Pronouns The use of me instead of I in coordinate subjects (F7) which is of course very widespread in informal Englishes throughout the world. Well when me and Rekeisha go down there (ICE-JAM S1A-034) Me and him don’t have nothing (ICE-JAM S1B-065)

5 Cf. Hinrichs (2006) on codeswitching in e-mail communication.

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The deletion of it in referential it is-constructions (F46) is linked to the use of JamC a as a focus marker in clefting constructions, as is can be used in mesolectal JamC instead of a (see 2.2. below). It is especially common in temporal constructions, as in Is long time I’ve been there (ICE-JAM S1B-024) Is di first time in twelve years mi see mi madda. (ICE-JAM W2F-019) Noun phrase Regularizations of noun plurals in the form of added plural -s on irregular plurals (F48) are very rare in my data and would not be acceptable to educated speakers of JamE. The fishermens use the beach too. The use of an associative plural and them (F52) is interesting, as it deviates from the JamC pattern without the conjunction (Cf. Patrick 2008: 641). Yeah Rock Hall and them (ICE-JAM S1A-050) The only war we going have is Tivoli and them place (ICE-JAM S1A-037)6 Plural marking in JamE may differ from other varieties of English because of different count/mass noun distinctions (F55) or optional plural marking for human and non-human referents, especially in spoken discourse (F57–58). F55 An attempt to turn the Caribbean into a destination for toxic wastes Apart from the irregular collection of offals (ICE-JAM W2C-001) F57 Soon we will no longer have any overburdened taxpayer (ICE-JAM W2E-009) F58 they tried not to use the bathroom because of the state they were in (ICE-JAM W2C-002) You were speaking of some of the contribution that Oliver Jones has made Articles are also not always used in the same way as in other varieties of English. There are cases of article substitutions (F60 – 61), of zero articles (F62–63) and of unexpected articles (F61, F64). While article substitutions are relatively rare, zero articles and unexpected articles occur more frequently, especially in certain lexical context. The definite article for example is used very frequently with proper names, names of institutions or groups of people. On the other hand, in light of is preferred over in the light of which may of course also be due to an influence of American English. F60 The manual work which entails driving all the way up to the rural area (ICE-JAM S1A-055) Because there is the limited time period for registration (ICE-JAM W1A-003) F62 So when USA money ran out (ICE-JAM S1A-001) in light of (e.g. ICE-JAM S2B-001, S2B-004) F63 Computer is a thing that every day you learn (ICE-JAM S1A-005) where she was admitted in serious condition. (ICE-JAM S2B-003) F64 Hill had initially been indicted with the Canute and the Michelle Saddler and their three companies. the Jamaican society at large (ICE-JAM W2B-003) In 1987 the Victoria Park was transformed (ICE-JAM W2C-017) F65 she can take an action on the married woman’s property act (ICE-JAM S1A-099)

6 This example is ambiguous: them could also be used as a demonstrative before place (cf. F68).

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Demonstratives are also occasionally used instead of definite articles (F67) may also occur. Snipe is writing this book on the history of San Andres (ICE-JAM W1B-008) Them may replace demonstrative those (F68). Dem high heel shoes that you get from England (ICE-JAM W2F-011) Till him shave off dem locks (ICE-JAM W2F-020) Similarly to JamC (cf. Patrick 2008: 635), here and there can be used for proximal and distal demonstratives (F70). This here is the building. (ICE-JAM S2A-059) All this here goes into classrooms and computer labs (ICE-JAM S2A-059) Genitive ’s is occasionally replaced by juxtaposition (F77). If the person name was John Brown (ICE-JAM S1B-050) And his father name (ICE-JAM S1B-036) Verb phrase: tense and aspect There is evidence for a wider range of progressive forms in JamE. They occur with stative verbs (F88) and in habitual contexts (F89), although the latter context is less frequent than the former. F88 You’re you knowing that (ICE-JAM S1B-001) If you’re depending on the group you want to maintain harmony (S1B-006) At least we’re agreeing with the D E H (ICE-JAM S1A-004) Not only were these languages existing apart from each other, but there were instances when they merged. (ICE-JAM W1A-012) F89 We are said to be managing to recruit many more trainee nurses. (ICE-JAM W2E-007) At nights when you are in bed you have to be sleeping, listening and watching. (ICE-JAM W2C-012) There is a certain degree of leveling between present perfect and simple past (F 99–100). F99 Whatever information he has was passed on to the government since last year. KSAC approved well over 600 building applications since April 1. (ICE-JAM W2C-016) F100 The culture of the region has been unique in combining […] influences. (ICE-JAM S2A-023) I’ve had in my time to deal with applications regarding people who have been on the opposite side of the political fence (ICE-JAM S1B-050) In some cases, simple present is used instead of continuative or experiential present perfect (F101). I am back in Jamaica and I am at work since last week Monday (ICE-JAM W1B-003) Since the last 20 years the music play an important part in the politics (ICE-JAM S2A-043)7 In complex sentences, a general loosening of the sequence of tense rules can be observed (F113), often at the expense of a clear chronological ordering of the events reported. The police has detained a security guard in connection with the murder, but because of lack of evidence, the man was released. (ICE-JAM W2C-002) The autopsy performed on Mae’s torso shortly after it was found, revealed that her body was cut into pieces by a power machine saw. (ICE-JAM W2C-002) In conditional if-clauses, the form would may also occur (F120). 7 This is of course a difficult example as one could argue that it is past tense inflection rather than 3rd sg -s that is missing.

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If this would be the case, some advantages could be derived for both the country and the students involved. (ICE-JAM W1A-009) Woulnd’t mind if he would be having stumps (ICE-JAM S2A-005) We should be most grateful if you would provide radio and tv coverage (ICE-JAM W1B-020) Verb phrase: modal verbs For habitual meaning, useta (F126) can occur, which is still spelled used to in most written JamE texts. And he useta live in Sterling (ICE-JAM S1B-061) Mr. Jack useta talked to her about his marriage. (ICE-JAM S2A-066) The second example is slightly unusual as the main verb is used in the past participle form. There are also a small number of instances of non-standard uses of modals for politeness reasons (F127). For example, What must I do? can be used instead of a construction with should. Verb phrase: morphology There are rare instances of leveling between past tense and past participle forms (F128, F130, F131), but in my data only examples like He gone to town could be recovered. Of course, these examples are ambiguous as they could also be interpreted as cases of present perfect without the auxiliary have (cf. F179). Unmarked forms of past tense and past participle (F129, F132) do occur occasionally in JamE. So I have often heard the question ask (ICE-JAM S2A-022) When I first started they terrify the hell out of me (ICE-JAM S1B-024) In conditional clauses, I was occurs about as often as I were (F147) in ICE-JAM, as in I’d assimilate well if I was there you know (ICE-JAM S1A-024) I can’t imagine what I would have done if I was in your place (ICE-JAM S1A-083) Negation As in many other varieties of English, multiple negation or negative concord (F154) occurs mainly in informal spoken interaction or private letters. Me and him don’t have nothing (ICE-JAM S1B-065) I didn’t really do nothing and I don’t have no plan (ICE-JAM W1B-003) Agreement Marking of 3rd person singular -s is optional (F170) in informal JamE, as in The court make a ruling I’m a person who love music (ICE-JAM S1A-092) It really don’t sound healthy to me (ICE-JAM S1A-099) Existential constructions with there + ‘s/is/was followed by a plural noun phrase (F172) can also be found. There’s about twenty parents (ICE-JAM S1A-098) I mean there’s a lot of things (ICE-JAM S1A-063) There’s 180 odd countries participating (ICE-JAM S2B-026) Auxiliary be can be deleted in progressives and before gonna (F174–175), especially in informal spoken language.

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When we talking to each other (ICE-JAM S1A-002) We talking about serving a wide area So then what you gonna do now? (ICE-JAM S1A-024) He gonna speak with the class (ICE-JAM S2A-057) The copula can be deleted in informal speech before noun phrases, adjective phrases and locatives (F175–177). It the Yallahs River. We all very fond of what I call the verandah dialogue By the time people come out the water gone Mary in the garden. Even more commonly found is the deletion of auxiliary have (F179) in perfect constructions. What you been up to? (ICE-JAM W1B-015) I never been to Half Way Tree court house (ICE-JAM S1B-062) Relativization The relativizer what can be used in non-restrictive contexts (F185). A model agreement what they referred to as a draft Shiprider agreement (ICE-JAM S1B-008) It was a childhood what really uhm foster the development of the child (ICE-JAM S1A-089) Zero-relatives can also be found in subject position (F193). This morning there were two hundred workers at Jamintel took strike action you actually find that from old rusty guns are brought in that really there is no response Complementation There are also cases of non-finite clause complements with bare root forms rather than -ing constructions (F210). While the first example with go look for sth is relatively widespread in other Englishes as well, the use of other verbs such as start is less common. When last you go look for your mummy (ICE-JAM S1A-036) Things just had start pick up from here (ICE-JAM S1A-045) Lauri when I start mince the chicken (ICE-JAM S1A-035) Adverbs and prepositions In JamE, there are a number of cases where the use of prepositions differs from other varieties of English, either because a preposition is omitted (F216) or even more often, because they are replaced by another preposition. F216 It depend what hat you wearing. It all depend what you want to do with the egg (ICE-JAM S1A-071) I go a lot of parties (ICE-JAM S1A-067) Reminiscing on the struggles and development of the party, Mr. Seaga said […] Everybody thought they were rich and went to a binge Degree adverbs and other adverbs may have the same form as the corresponding adjectives (F220–221). This feature is relatively common in informal discourse. You’re absolute correct That was a real sad story (ICE-JAM S1A-083) It was discussed open on another programme this morning The proponents of recent proposed legislation to curb journalistic comment on Financial Securities

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Discourse organization and word order Because of the prolonged contact with JamC, JamE also has other options for clefting (F223) and fronting (F224) than other varieties of English (cf. Patrick 2008: 624–625). Examples are For the Copyright Bill to have contributions from only five people is not good enough. Is long time I been here Is a lie you are telling on him (ICE-JAM S1B-066) Is a big responsibility to tek care of so many people. (ICE-JAM W2F-019) There are also a number of features related to interrogative constructions. For example, inverted word order can be found in indirect questions (F227). The gunmen asked him where was the money made from the sale of Irish potatoes. (W2C-012) If not ask Keisha when is she and the family coming up. (ICE-JAM W1B-003) On the other hand, inversion may not be used in direct questions, both in wh-questions (F228) and main clause yes/no questions (F229). So where they got this information? What you’re talking about? (ICE-JAM S1A-092) What kind of books you like to read? (ICE-JAM S1A-067) You parents have farm? You follow me? In addition to these types of interragotives, JamE also uses question with the wh-pronoun in situ, as in Change it to what? (ICE-JAM S1B-013) We are going to do what? (ICE-JAM S1B-007) Finally, quotative like (F235) is a feature that has been spreading in non-standard Englishes around the globe. It can also be found in JamE, especially in spoken discourse among younger females. All occurrences of quotative like in ICE Jamaica occur in the face-to-face conversations (S1A). Some people tell me some name and I’m like where’s that (ICE-JAM S1A-050) I’m like hello we are black people from the Caribbean (ICE-JAM S1A-022) He’s like oh my God (ICE-JAM S1A-063) It is important to remember that none of these features are obligatory or pervasive. JamE is still developing as a standard variety and much research is still needed to see which of these features will eventually be codified and accepted by the speech community as a whole.

2.2 JamC features introduced by codeswitching The Overview in the appendix lists a number of JamC features which may appear in the speech but also – under certain circumstances – in the writing of JamE speakers when they codeswitch between JamE and JamC. As pointed out by Devonish and Harry (2008: 256–257), the vast majority of Jamaicans acquires JamC as their first language and is introduced to JamE through formal education. Even as competent speakers of JamE, they rely on JamC for various pragmatic and stylistic purposes, as already discussed by Roberts (1988: 182): In the speech of educated West Indians talking among themselves, standard and non-standard occur together integrally as discourse contrast in style. […] Deliberate interjection of non-standard English is also part of the repertoire of skilful and learned West Indian speakers when they want to make a point more graphically. The features that may occur in such codeswitching sequences are presented in more detail in the description of JamC (cf. Patrick 2008 and this volume) and will thus only be mentioned briefly in this section.

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Pronouns JamC does not distinguish between subject and object pronouns and between genders in 3rd person singular pronouns (F5, F6). Possessive pronouns can be formed by adding fi to a personal pronoun or using the bare personal pronoun (F17–19, F23–25). In JamC, unu is used as a 2nd person plural pronoun (F34). Noun Phrase Plural marking with a postnominal dem (F51) and the use of the indefinite article wan (F66) are the only features in this category that may occur due to codeswitching into JamC. Verb phrase: tense and aspect The occurrence of the JamC anterior marker ben (F111), which is also expressed by did in more mesolectal speech, and the completive don (F104) to mark events in the past and the use of go and waan for future time reference (F114–115) fall into this category. Verb phrase: verb morphology In this category, the serial verb constructions (F149–151) deserve mention. Come and go are used relatively frequently to express direction. When a JamC construction includes a third verb (F151), one of them is a verb of motion and one has a different subject, as Patrick (2008: 629) points out. His example is taken from Alleyne (1980: 91): Im waan mi fi go kya im kom he wants me to bring it (literally: go carry it come) Negation In JamC, negation can be expressed by using the preverbal marker no (also spelled na(h)) or an invariant duont (often spelled like JamE don’t) (F158, F160). Complementation JamC makes use of complementizers which are based on for and say (F200–201). Fi is used for complementation in a number of constructions, such as instead of to with infinitival complements, after verbs of volition or in purpose clauses. The declarative complementizer se(h) or sey is restricted to verbs of speech and cognition. Discourse organization and word order In JamC, a sentence-initial focus marker a (F225) is used in clefting constructions for emphasis with predicative and non-predicative elements. When these features occur in JamE, speakers are well aware of the fact that they are JamC and not English features. They occur in passages which are also marked by their pronunciation, their lexical choices and other co-occurring grammatical features as JamC rather than JamE. However, as codeswitching is an integral part of JamE discourse, I strongly believe that these features should be included in the JamE profile.

3 Conclusions As has been pointed out elsewhere (e.g. Sand 2004), JamE shares many features with other varieties of English, especially with L2 varieties spoken in Africa and Asia. It is unique in forming a continuum of lects with JamC, the English-based Creole spoken in Jamaica. This leads to extreme variability in usage and difficulties in the codification of the variety. It will take a lot more research in the future to follow the developments sketched in this chapter and to determine which features must be reclassified as individual performance errors and which are actually acceptable features of formal and informal JamE.

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Appendix: Overview of WAVE features attested in Jamaican English # 15 16 17 17 18 19 22 23 24 25 34 46

48 51 52 55 57 58 60 61 62 63 64

65 66 67 68

feature JamE example I. Pronouns, pronoun exchange, nominal gender generalized 3rd person singular pronoun: After him take out the money (to refer to females, codeswitching subject pronouns necessary) generalized 3rd person singular pronoun: Aks im (to refer to females, codeswitching necessary) object pronouns me instead of I in coordinate subjects Me and him don’t have nothing. creation of possessive pronouns with Di mango fi me. (codeswitching) prefix fi- +personal pronoun subject pronoun forms as possessive Me car red. (codeswitching). pronouns: 1st person singular subject pronoun forms as possessive We break start at two. (codeswitching) pronouns: 1st person plural you as possessive pronoun 2nd person pronoun forms other than you Unu cyar red. (codeswitching) as possessive pronoun object pronoun forms as possessive Him car red. (codeswitching) pronouns: 3rd person singular object pronoun forms as possessive Dem car red. (codeswitching) pronouns: 3rd person plural forms or phrases for the 2nd person plural Unu come. (codeswitching) pronoun other than you deletion of it in referential it Is long time I’ve been there. is-constructions II. Noun phrase regularization of plural formation: The fishermens use the beach too. extension of -s to StE irregular plurals plural marking via postposed elements Dem rape di poor woman dem. (codeswitching) (e.g. (an(d) them/dem; -mob) associative plural marked by postposed Yeah Rock Hall and them and them/them all/dem different count/mass noun distinctions An attempt to turn the Caribbean into a destination for toxic resulting in use of plural for StE singular wastes. plural marking generally optional: for Soon we will no longer have any overburdened taxpayer nouns with human referents plural marking generally optional: for You were speaking of some of the contribution that Oliver Jones nouns with non-human referents has made use of definite article where StE has The manual work which entails driving all the way up to the rural indefinite article area … use of indefinite article where StE has (could not find an example in my data) definite article use of zero article where StE has definite In light of the economic strain some operators find it difficult to article pay. use of zero article where StE has indefinite Another victim was admitted to hospital in serious condition. article use of definite article where StE favours Hill had initially been indicted with the Canute and the Michelle zero Saddler and their three companies. The Jamaican society is very different today. (with nouns like society or university, this feature could be rated A) use of indefinite article where StE favours You have to take an action. zero indefinite article one/wan Wan dog bite me. (codeswitching) demonstratives for definite articles Snipe is writing this book on the history of San Andres them instead of demonstrative those Dem high heel shoes that you get from England

rating C C B C C C C C C C C C

C C C B C C C C B B B

C C C C

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170 177

188 189 199 100 101 104 111 113

114 115 120

126 127

128 129 130 131 132 147 149 150 151 154 158 160 170 172 174 175 176 177

proximal and distal demonstratives with ‘here’ and ‘there’ omission of genitive suffix; possession expressed through bare juxtaposition III. Verb phrase: tense and aspect wider range of uses of progressive be + V-ing: extension to stative verbs wider range of uses of progressive be + V-ing: extension to habitual contexts levelling of present perfect and simple past: simple past for StE present perfect levelling of present perfect and simple past: present perfect for StE simple past simple present for continuative or experiential perfect completive/perfect done past tense/anterior marker been loosening of sequence of tenses rule

go-based future markers volition-based future markers other than will (e.g. derived from want or like) would in if-clauses IV. Verb phrase: modal verbs new quasi-modals: aspectual meanings non-standard use of modals for politeness reasons V. Verb phrase: verb morphology levelling of past tense/past participle verb forms: regularization levelling of past tense/past participle verb forms: unmarked forms levelling of past tense/past participle verb forms: past tense for past participle levelling of past tense/past participle verb forms: past participle for past tense zero past tense forms of regular verbs was for conditional were serial verbs: go = ‘movement away from’ serial verbs: come = ‘movement towards’ serial verbs: constructions with 3 verbs VII. Negation multiple negation / negative concord invariant don’t for all persons in the present tense no as preverbal negator VIII. Agreement invariant present tense due to zero marking for the 3rd person singular existential / presentational there’s/there is/there was with plural subjects deletion of auxiliary be: before progressive deletion of auxiliary be: before gonna deletion of copula be: before NPs deletion of copula be: before AdjPs

This here is the building.

C

If the person name was John Brown

C

Not only were these languages existing apart from each other, but there were instances where they merged. We are said to be managing to recruit many more trainee nurses.

B

Whatever information he has was passed on to the government since September last year. The culture of the region has been unique in combining British and Western influences with African and Asian lifestyles. I am back in Jamaica and I am at work since last week Monday

C

Him done eat. (codeswitching) Him ben walk. (codeswitching) The autopsy performed on Mae’s torso shortly after it was found, revealed that her body was cut into pieces by a power machine saw. Wah yuh a go do wi dat? (codeswitching) You waan go. (codeswitching)

C C B

If this would be the case, some advantages could be derived for both the country and the students involved.

C

And he useta live in Sterling What must I do? (in the sense of ‘should’)

C C

(No examples in my data)

C

Yesterday, we work all day.

C

(No example in my data)

C

He gone to town.

C

When I first started this they terrify the hell out of me. I’d assimilate well if I was there you know. Mummy did haffi carry her go hairdresser (codeswitching) Him say him was guwane come look for mi dis morning. (codeswitching) (No examples in my data)

B C C C

Me and him don’t have nothing. Him don’t have to be cute. (codeswitching)

B C

Me nah tell nuh lie. (codeswitching)

C

The court make a ruling.

B

There’s about twenty parents.

B

We talking about serving a wide area.

B

What you gonna do? It the Yallahs River. We all very fond of what I call the verandah dialogue.

B B B

C

C C

C C

C

220

178 179

185 193

200 201 210

216 220 221

223 224 225 227 228 229 235

Andrea Sand

deletion of copula be: before locatives deletion of auxiliary have IX. Relativization relativizer that or what in non-restrictive contexts gapping/zero-relativization in subject position X. Complementation say-based complementizers for-based complementizers

Mary in the garden. What you been up to? Is long time I been here.

C C

… a model agreement what they referred to as a draft Shiprider agreement This morning there were two hundred workers at Jamintel took strike action.

C

She figure seh dat one day tings will work out. (codeswitching) You mean yuh madda allow you fi bring over bwoyfrenz? (codeswitching) I want to go study.

C C

non-finite clause complements with bare root form rather than -ing form XII. Adverbs and prepositions omission of StE prepositions It depend what you are wearing. degree modifier adverbs have the same You’re absolute correct. form as adjectives other adverbs have the same form as It was discussed open on another programme this morning. adjectives XIII. Discourse organization and word order other options for clefting than StE For the Copyright Bill to have contributions from only five people is not good enough. other possibilities for fronting than StE Is long time I been here sentence-initial focus marker A-wen Boti lef ya? (codeswitching) inverted word order in indirect questions The gunmen asked him where was the money made from the sale of Irish potatoes. no inversion/no auxiliaries in So where they got this information? wh-questions no inversion/no auxiliaries in main clause Your parents have farm? yes/no questions like as a quotative particle Some people tell me some name and I’m like where’s that

C

C

C B B

C C C C B B B

References Akers, Glenn A.. 1981. Phonological Variation in the Jamaican Continuum. Ann Arbor: Karoma. Alleyne, Mervyn C.. 1980. Comparative Afro-American: A Historical-Comparative Study of English-Based Afro-American Dialects of the New World. Ann Arbor: Karoma. Allsopp, Richard (ed.). 1996. Dictionary of Caribbean English Usage. Oxford: OUP. Beckford-Wassink, Alicia. 1999. Historic low prestige and seeds of change: Attitudes toward Jamaican Creole. Language in Society 28: 57–92. Blouet, Olwyn M.. 1997. The West Indies. In: Brian W. Blouet (ed.), Latin America and the Caribbean, 273–320. New York: Wiley. DeCamp, David. 1971. Towards a generative analysis of a postcreole speech continuum. In: Dell Hymes (ed.), Pidginization and Creolization of Languages, 349–370. Cambridge: CUP. Devonish, Hubert. 1986. The decay of neo-colonial official language policies: The case of English-lexicon creoles in the Caribbean. In: Manfred Görlach and John Holm (eds.), Focus on the Caribbean, 23–52. Amsterdam/New York: Benjamins.

Devonish, Hubert and Otelemate G. Harry. 2008. Jamaican Creole and Jamaican English: phonology. In: Edgar W. Schneider (ed.), Varieties of English: The Americas and the Caribbean, 256–289. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Görlach, Manfred. 1991. English as a world language: the state of the art. In: Manfred Görlach (ed.), Englishes: Studies in Varieties of English 1984–1988, 10–35. Amsterdam/New York: Benjamins. Hinrichs, Lars. 2006. Codeswitching on the Web: English and Jamaican Creole in E-Mail communication. Amsterdam/ New York: Benjamins. Holm, John. 2000. An Introduction to Pidgins and Creoles. Cambridge: CUP. ICE Homepage. http://ice-corpora.net/ice/ Irvine, Alison. 2008. Contrast and convergence in Standard Jamaican English: the phonological architecture of the standard in an ideologically bidialectal community. World Englishes 27: 9–25. LePage, Robert B. and David DeCamp. 1960. Jamaican Creole: A Historical Introduction to Jamaican Creole and four Jamaican Creole Texts with Introduction, Phonetic Transcription and Glosses. London: Macmillan.

Jamaican English

Mair, Christian. 2003. Language, code, and symbol: The changing roles of Jamaican Creole in diaspora communities. Arbeiten aus Anglistik und Amerikanistik 28: 231–248. Patrick, Peter L.. 1999. Urban Jamaican Creole: Variation in the Mesolect. Amsterdam/New York: Benjamins. Patrick, Peter L.. 2008. Jamaican Creole: morphology and syntax. In: Edgar W. Schneider (ed.), Varieties of English: The Americas and the Caribbean, 609–644. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Roberts, Peter. 1988. West Indians and Their Language. Cambridge: CUP. Sand, Andrea. 1999. Linguistic Variation in Jamaica – A Corpus-Based Study of Radio and Newspaper Usage. Tübingen: Narr.

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Sand, Andrea. 2002. English in the Caribbean. In: David Allerton, Paul Skandera and Cornelia Tschichold (eds.), Studies in English as a World Language, 79–91. Basel: Schwabe. Sand, Andrea. 2004. Shared morpho-syntactic features of contact varieties: article use. World Englishes 23(2): 281–298. Sand, Andrea. 2011. Language Attitudes and Linguistic Awareness in Jamaican English. In: Lars Hinrichs and Joseph T. Farquharson (eds.), Variation in the Caribbean: From Creole Continua to Individual Agency, 163–187. Amsterdam/New York: Benjamins. Statistical Institute of Jamaica. http://statinja.gov.jm/

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Peter L. Patrick

Jamaican Creole 1 Sociohistorical background 1.1 Introduction Jamaican Creole (JamC), which most of its speakers call Patwa, is the native language of most of the 2.7 million Jamaicans in the island, and many of the 1 million or more abroad (Statistical Institute of Jamaica 2011, International Organization for Migration 2007). Though not recognised as an official language, JamC is recognised by the 2011 Charter on Language Rights and Language Policy in the Creole-speaking Caribbean as a majority language, and it is estimated that up to a third of Jamaicans are monolingual in JamC (Brown-Blake 2008: 36).

1.2 History and present status JamC came into existence after 1675 – at least a generation after England seized Jamaica from Spain in 1655 (argued on demographic grounds by Patrick 2008, Kouwenberg 2009, and phonological grounds, Patrick 1999). Creolization was the result of contact between African slaves and English speakers from the south and Midlands of England and from Ireland under the post-1675 conditions of a developing plantation economy. Principal African substrate languages/families for Jamaican included Akan, Gbe, Igbo, and to some extent Bantu and Ijoid languages. This early phase of Creole formation may be distinguished from later stages of nativization and extension, the latter perhaps continuing into the 19th century: though of course the early documentary record for JamC, like other Caribbean Creoles, is sparse, quite a few relatively ‘deep’ Creole features (i.e. distant from English and/or plausibly substrate-derived) appear only in the first half of the 1800s (Lalla and D’Costa 1990). Other population groups than Africans and English-speakers – Indians, southern Chinese, Syrians – arrived too late to influence the Creole. Despite modern population diversity, JamC is seen as a distinctive marker of Jamaican ethnic and national identity which marks Jamaicans off from all other Caribbean Creole and English speakers. The ideological division of Jamaican language into English (JamE) and Patwa (JamC), common among both speakers and linguists, is powerful but seriously overstates the reality: a linguistic continuum connecting two idealized varieties, which arose in the same milieu yet cannot be genetically related. JamC is accessible and known to nearly all Jamaicans but JamE is not, though its constituency as a native variety is expanding as its features emerge and become conventionalized (Sand 1999 and this volume). The (post-) creole continuum invented by DeCamp (1971, because diglossic and bilingual models failed to fit the facts of JamC), adumbrated to account for extensive sociolinguistic variation, remains the most adequate descriptive approach. DeCamp was however wrong about decreolization: there has been little evidence since the 1960s of the decline or disappearance of vernacular JamC basilect or mesolect. The latter, an intermediate variety between the poles of JamE and the most rural/African-influenced basilect, includes the speech of most Jamaicans, most of the time. Mesolectal JamC is a rule-governed variety exhibiting inherent variation, social patterning, and variable incorporation of elements of English grammar according to both qualitative and quantitative constraints (Patrick 1999). Indeed, most features that set JamE off from other standard Englishes derive directly from the influence of mesolectal JamC, which is more systematic than JamE, and is the primary subject of this description. Unless otherwise attributed, the data in this chapter come from recordings of spontaneous and interview speech of JamC that I recorded from 1989–2000, or in a few cases from my own competence as a near-native speaker.

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2 Aspects of the WAVE profile of JamC 2.1 Pronouns Person, number and animacy are systematically distinguished, with mi as default first singular pronoun, and im as default third singular pronoun (F5, F6). The latter can be used for non-human referents, but inanimate i ‘it’ cannot be used for humans (F2), and dummy ‘it’ is rare, with nouns preferred (1). Gender and case often go unmarked, though the mesolect features such distinguishing English-derived forms as i, shi, ar ‘he, she, her’ as in (2) – but only in third singular. (1) rien a faal Rain PROG fall ‘Rain is falling / It’s raining’ (2) wen im kom insted a shi faas wid im, him fors faas wid ar when 3sg come instead of 3sg-fem meddle with 3sg 3sg first meddle with 3sg-fem ‘When she came, instead of her meddling with him, he first meddled with her’ (Patrick transcription of DeCamp 1958 folktale recording) Possessives have fi ‘for’ prefixed to the pronoun (F17, F75), including interrogative fi-huu ‘whose’, though their equivalents without fi occur also; this dates to 1780 (Baker and Huber 2001), but is found on the Guinea Coast from 1736 (Lalla and D’Costa 1990). Emphatic reflexives (F16) are formed with epenthetic vowel uona ‘own’ and occur between possessive pronouns and the nouns they modify (3). Number-neutral -sef ‘-self, -selves’ applies regularly to all basic pronouns (including unu) to form reflexives (F11, F14). (3) im jos a ponish im uona sef 3sg just Prog punish 3sg own self ‘He’s only punishing himself’ The best-known pronominal feature attributable to substrate influence is 2nd plural unu (F23, F34), traced to Igbo (Cassidy and Le Page 1980, hereafter DJE) or convergent sources from Wolof to Kimbundu (Holm 2000), but attested only from the later 19th century. Vowel-final pronouns have short lax vowels, permissible in many West African languages but not in most varieties of English except other Atlantic English-lexicon Creoles.

2.2 Noun phrase features Number-marking Fixed and number-neutral forms such as flowaz ‘flower/s’ occur (4), but regularization of plurals with -s (F48) is rare: cases of irregular nouns with added plural -s (e.g. fishermens) do not occur in JamC and are evidence of JamE interference (Sand, this volume). Nouns may fall into different count/mass distribution than standard Englishes, but this generally results in count status for what are standardly mass nouns (F55), realized through occurrence of singular articles rather than through suffixation of plural -s, as in (5). (4) [Mama] spank me wid one slippaz spank 1sg with IND slipper ‘[Mama] spanked me with a slipper’ (Sistren 1987: 154) (5) bai a bred … waant a moni buy IND bread want IND money ‘buy a loaf of bread … want money’ Pluralization is by suffixation of -s on regular nouns, as in English but variable, or by postposing of -dem to the noun phrase (F51, F54), a common Atlantic Creole feature linked with West African substrates (Holm 2000, Migge 2003). Marking with -dem is infrequent in JamC and comparable Atlantic Creoles; non-marking

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is far more common, as in (6, 10). Both forms of number marking may co-occur, though this is rare (7); such cases make clear their different structural positions. Associative plurals also use NP-dem, in the pattern Bartens (this volume) traces to Akan. (6) dis khaki doll wid its two hand and two foot DEM khaki doll Prep Poss two hand and two foot ‘this khaki doll with its two hands and two feet’ (Sistren 1987: 83) (7) Some a di helper-s-dem in our area Some of DEF helper PL PL in 1pl area ‘Some of the helpers (=domestic servants) in our area’ (Sistren 1987: 97) Articles The JamC indefinite article wan is derived from the numeral ‘one’ (F66); article use in JamC is motivated by specificity rather than definiteness, and generic NPs receive no article (F62–F63), though bare nouns may also receive an indefinite specific interpretation. Demonstratives are the singular proximal dis ‘this’ (6) and distal dat ‘that’, and the plural dem ‘these, those’ (F68), all appearing prenominally, and potentially combining with ya ‘here’ and de ‘there’ (F70, see 8–9). Demonstrative plural dem + NP does not co-occur with pluralized NP-dem. (8) A dis yah kind a life yuh want? COP DEM here kind of life 2sg want Do you want this kind of life? (Sistren 1987: 123) (9) Dem deh egg never come in like fowl egg DEM there egg Neg come in like chicken egg ‘Those eggs didn’t seem like chicken eggs’ (Sistren 1987: 224) Comparatives Comparative marking in JamC does not follow the ‘more X … and Y’ pattern (F85) but uses a single morpheme instead: X muoran Y ‘X more than Y’. As in 2.1 for possessive pronouns, possession may be expressed by fi + N, but equally by juxtaposition of Possessor + Possessed (F75, F77): (10) fi-Jan buk …piipl yaad an piipl hoos Poss-J book people yard and people house ‘John’s book … people’s yards and people’s houses’

2.3 Verb phrase Tense and aspect JamC does not show inflected forms of be with Verb-ing in the progressive, though fixed forms (is, was) do occur without person, number or case distinctions. The pervasive progressive construction is a + bare verb, which has a wider range than standard Englishes (F88–F89), including stative and habitual contexts, though a as a habitual marker is recessive. Habitual aspect is normally unmarked; JamC does not allow invariant be or do/does + Verb. Basilectal JamC marks the past with ben, from English been (F111), but though widely known it has never been obligatory or even very frequent, and is disappearing in urban and young people’s speech. Unstressed did occurs before bare verbs to mark past (F103; Patrick 1999), but seems to be receding among young people. Completive don ‘done’ occurs both before bare verbs and after verb phrases (11), but not with copulas, auxiliary verbs or participles (F104, F105). (11) Sharon don riid di buk Sharon no riid di buk don S. COMP read DEF book S. Neg read DEF book COMP ‘Sharon has read the whole book’ ‘Sharon has not finished reading the book’

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Perfect and participle forms are not overtly marked in JamC; levelling of such forms with e.g. simple past (which is also often unmarked) is therefore not visible (F96–F102). The simple present is never marked with verbal -s in JamC. Proximal future is often signalled with serial go + Verb, progressive a go + Verb (F114), or gwain ‘going to’ + Verb, in a range of constructions (Patrick 2007), alongside general future marker wi ‘will’ (12). The verb waan ‘want’ (F115) and adverb suun ‘soon’ also have proximal force. (12) Mi wi go de Sonde bot mi a go go a tong nou 1sg FUT go there Sunday but 1sg PROX go to town now ‘I will go there on Sunday, but I’m going to town now’ Modal verbs JamC exhibits a wide range of modals, which occur in complex combinations (Patrick 2008a). Modals from either the first group (mos, kuda, wuda, shuda, mait, wi – ‘must, could, would, should, might, will’) or the second group (kyan, fi, hafi, and mos again), according to Bailey (1966), may occur alone before a main verb, showing no agreement. Double modals (F121) occur as (Mod-1) (Mod-2) Verb, with a prohibition against combining modals from the same group (though not kuda and kyan, contra Tame-Durrleman 2006: 51): (13) dem kuda kyan bai a bred … *mos kuda 3pl Mod1 Mod2 buy IND bread Mod1 Mod1 ‘They would be able to buy a loaf of bread’

… mos kyan Mod1 Mod2

The negated form mosn does not have epistemic force (F122), as this role in JamC is filled by kyaan ‘cannot (be)’. (14) dat kyaan chruu DEM cannot true ‘That cannot be true’ Modals are tense-neutral in JamC, as past is indicated by invariant free preverbal markers such as ben/en and did. The tense marker follows the modal(s), and is followed by aspect marking. (15) Im shuda en a ron 3sg Mod1 Past Prog run ‘S/he should have been running’

(Bailey 1966)

Quasi-modal forms include waan ‘want’ for ‘need’ with bare verb complement; optional yuustu, reduced form yuusi ‘used to’ for past habitual, and counterfactual sapuosi ‘supposed to’ (F125, F126). Verb morphology Unmarked past verb forms are the norm in JamC which, as noted, does not show participial forms (F129). Regular verbs with past reference frequently go unmarked (F132), both for phonological reasons (reduction processes) and morphological ones (Patrick 1991). However, English-like past inflection of regular verbs with -ed is nevertheless common in mesolectal JamC, as in other Caribbean English Creoles (CEC), while regularization and hyper-correction are very rare (F128). Some common verbs take the English participle as base form: e.g. gaan is common for the past of ‘go (away)’ (F131), but went does not occur. In general, however, strong verbs are the least-often inflected class, like other CECs but unlike African American English or many SLA varieties; only upper-mesolectal Jamaicans with a strong command of English inflect irregular verbs with any frequency (Patrick 1999). A-prefixing of verbs taking -ing (F134) is not possible in JamC, despite the fact that the progressive is formed by placing a before the bare verb; hence, the former construction seems unlikely to have given rise to the latter. One form, abak ‘ago’ as in chrii diez abak ‘three days ago’, does accept an a-prefix (F135), but it is not verbal. There are no special inflected forms of be, do or have (F136–F139), which largely only occur as main verbs, not as copula or auxiliary.

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On the other hand, there are several copula forms distinguished by function (F140–F142): equative a (older form da) is required between NPs, (17); locative de (sometimes de-de or di-de) before prepositional locative phrases (18; the only one that can occur question-finally), though it can also be omitted; and zero copula before adjectives (19). The possibility of using the verb stie ‘stay’ is restricted to question-final form, i.e. it does not occur before adjectives. In all these cases, invariant is and was may occur variably across the mesolect, though the distinctive copulas are the norm. (17) Tell dem she a fi-me pickney. Tell 3pl 3sg COP Poss-1sg child ‘Tell them she is my daughter.’ (Sistren 1987: 56) (18) Me deh a me yard a wait pon him 1sg COP at Poss yard Prog wait on 3sg ‘I’m at home waiting for him’ (Sistren 1987: 56) (19) Hou shi stie? Man, shi sik. how 3sg stay man 3sg sick ‘How is she? Man, she’s sick’

* shi stie sik 3sg stay sick

Serial verbs Serial verb constructions (SVCs) are much debated in and beyond the Creole literature. Here, verbs occurring in strings, with no overt subordination or coordination markers, under the scope of a single instance of tense/ mood/aspect and/or negation, are considered serial verbs (argument-sharing is not obligatory). They arguably appear in Atlantic Creoles due to West African (especially Kwa) substrate influence. JamC has a fairly full complement of SVCs (F148–152), including directional SVCs with go (20) and kom, and dative (21). SVCs with three verbs are fairly common (21); one is always directional. SVCs with four verbs are rare. (20)She tell him seh him fi go a St. Mary go look pon di children dem 3sg tell 3sg say 3sg Mod2 go to S.M. go look at Def children Pl ‘She told him he should go to St. Mary to look at the children’ (Sistren 1987: 102) (21) kya di buk kom gi mi carry Def book come give 1sg ‘Bring the book for me’ (Alleyne 1980: 94) Negation Unlike many non-standard Englishes and some CECs, JamC does not have ain’t (F155–F157), but it has the commonest type of negation in Creoles: a single invariant negator before the verb or predicate adjective. In the basilect this is tense-neutral no (F160, see 22); the mesolect also has tense-neutral duon(t) (F158), which is generally imperfective as in (23), and past neva (F159). All participate in negative concord, which is common but not obligatory (F154). (22) A no fi-me boot one a mek noise … Me no want no England boot Foc Neg Poss boot one Prog make noise … 1sg Neg want Neg E. boot ‘It’s not just my boots that make noise … I don’t want any English boots’ (Sistren 1987: 45) (23) Dem used to talk how dem beat di slaves when dem don’t work 3pl used to talk how 3pl beat Def slaves when 3pl Neg work ‘They used to say how people would beat the slaves when they didn’t work’ (Sistren 1987: 88) Both no and duon(t) occur as invariant sentence-final tags, though more commonly no combines with another form such as, no chruu ‘Isn’t it true?’ (F165).

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Agreement A general lack of person and number agreement in the verbal system, due to zero-marking (F170), means that not only is present tense invariant in the 3sg, but so are existential and presentational forms with plural subjects. The norm for these in JamC is y’av ‘you have’ (F206), both elements of which are invariant for number (26). Auxiliary be is not inflected in JamC, though invariant is and was occur as noted above (were is a rare incursion from JamE). Zero forms are possible in the progressive before Verb-ing (F174), though a + Verb is pervasive; before gwain ‘gonna’, and before adjectives, zero is the norm (F175, F177). Before NPs, the equative copula a is obligatory (unless is or was occur); before locatives, de is the norm, but is, was and zero do occur (F178). JamC does not use have as an auxiliary, only as a main verb (F179). Relativization JamC has an array of relativizers including we, wa (both arguably < wha(t)), a, da(t), huu and huufa. The latter two are [+human] only. Wich ‘which’ occurs in JamC but not as a relativizer; we/wa and a/da are the norm (F185). Analytic forms are common (24); whose does not occur. Resumptive pronouns (F194) occur often in direct object position and with possessives; preposition-chopping occurs, but as pied-piping is impossible and particles generally stay next to their verbs, prepositions often remain stranded (25). Null relativizers occur often with subjects (F193), mostly indefinite (26), but not for non-restrictives. (24) di man we im waif dai Def man Rel Poss wife die ‘the man whose wife died’ (25) Mi rispek ar tu di dot we shi waak pan 1sg respect 3sg to Def dirt Rel 3sg walk upon ‘I respect her to the earth that she walks upon’

*… paan we shi waak upon Rel 3sg walk

(26) yu hav wan uman liv de niem Mieri 2p have Ind woman live there name Mary ‘There’s a woman _ lives there named Mary’ Complementation JamC relies on complementizers that resemble English forms in se ‘say’ and fi ‘for’. The se construction is limited to verbs of speech, thought, perception and emotion in finite clauses (27), and is common but optional. It probably derives from a SVC, as it serves both functions in Akan, where it also cannot occur with main verb se ‘say’ (Bartens, this volume). The fi construction is more general before infinitives, especially purposive clauses. While fi + infinitive is unmarked semantically, the presence of go (28) conveys intention, urgency or emphasis, similar to the proximal future. Infinitive marker tu ‘to’ also occurs in complementation with se, fi, gwain, waan, modals and other forms. (27) Me did know seh tings never right 1sg Past know Comp things Neg right ‘I knew that things weren’t right’ (28) Spen mai faiv dala fi go bai wan mango! spend Poss five dollar Inf go buy one mango ‘(That I should) spend my five dollars to buy a single mango!’ Miscellaneous Prepositions can be omitted in many cases before locatives (29) and time expressions (30) (F216). Locative elements can be affixed to nouns (F217; see ex. 31). (29) One meeting a keep over Lebanon and everybody fi go Ind meeting Prog keep over Lebanon and everybody Mod go ‘A meeting is going to take place over at Lebanon and everybody should go’ (Sistren 1987: 187)

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(30) She never able fi carry me, but she will come weekend 3sg Neg able to bring 1sg but 3sg Fut come weekend ‘She wasn’t able to bring me, but she will come at the weekend’ (Sistren 1987: 117) (31a) likl bit batamsaid di hoos little bit bottom-side Def house ‘a little below the house’ (31b) rakstuon a riva batam rockstone in river-bottom ‘rock(s) at the bottom of the river’ The adverb tumoch ‘plenty, a great deal’ derives from English too much but has no necessary meaning of excess (F222): (32) Bre’er Annancy, me sorry fe you too much brother Anansi 1sg sorry for 2sg too much ‘brother Anansi, I’m really sorry for you’ (Cassidy and LePage 1980: 507) JamC has a rich set of options for fronting, clefting and focusing constituents (F223–F225). They are generally introduced by the form a, but sometimes by invariant is, and receive stress plus contrastive or emphatic meaning. Predicative elements (verbs, adjectives, and the modal mos) are copied from their original sentence position (33); while non-predicative elements – nouns, pronouns, question-words (34), locative and temporal phrases, and manner adverbials (35) – are not copied (see Patrick 2008 for details). (33) a swel it swel, luk da Foc swell 3sg swell look there ‘It certainly swelled up, look there’ (34) A weh yuh did really deh di night? Foc where 2sg Past really Loc Def night ‘Where were you really that night?’ (Sistren 1987: 123) (35) A so it swel op fram i dakta kot it op so? Foc so 3sg swell up from Def doctor cut 3sg up so ‘Did it swell up like that because the doctor cut it?’ The general lack of auxiliaries leads to a lack of inversion in JamC in indirect questions (F226), wh-questions (F227), and main clause yes/no questions (F228; this is not restricted to positive ones), and a lack of negative inversion (F225).

3 Features falling outside the WAVE profile 3.1 Inherent variation in the verb phrase What sorts of grammars do Creoles have, and how well can they be captured in WAVE’s format? Classic descriptions of creole tense and aspect (Bailey 1966, Bickerton 1975), though they sought to differentiate Creole grammars from superstrate ones, employed the same categorical analyses based on privative marking oppositions that are typically used for standard languages and in generative accounts (e.g. Tame-Durrleman 2006). But analyses which assume strict form-meaning isomorphy and attempt to account for it with obligatory rules run up against intractable challenges in many Creoles. Thus JamC initially lacked homogeneity, regularity, and structural complexity; developed constraints to govern selection among competing forms; and eventually conventionalized patterns of variation leading to the emergence of shared norms – the kind of systematic and structured inherent variation it shows today.

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The result is that in many areas of grammar, including tense/mood/aspect, choice of forms is governed significantly by aspects of discourse rather than syntactic or semantic rules. Thus unmarked verbs in JamC have no unique interpretation as past or present; the tendency for stativity to favor past-marking is not a general syntactic constraint as Bickerton proposed, but the effect of a handful of very common verbs (Patrick 1999) plus the tendency for statives to appear in background clauses. Tense-marking is governed by a general principle: ‘Mark past tense more often when temporal organization of the discourse is disrupted, and less often when it is predictable’ (Patrick 2008a). Such pragmatic constraints have much more scope to apply in JamC than in e.g. American English (where the historical present is governed in the same way) because so many more areas of the grammar are variable. This is why TMA markers in JamC (such as ben, did, neva and -ed) are multiple and overlapping, sharing some but not all the same constraints, as is also true of number marking, below. In addition to such horizontal variation (distinct forms for similar functions), JamC and other Creoles famously exhibit much vertical variation (multiple/overlapping functions for the same form, e.g. dem). WAVE cannot attend to such arguments in its inventory of important features, but their implications go to the systematicity, adequacy and unity of Creole grammars (Patrick 2008b), hence are well worth raising in brief.

3.2 Pronouns and agency A pronominal feature originating in the 20th century with the rise of Rastafarianism, an indigenous religious sect which has had widespread influence outside Jamaica since the 1970s (Pollard 1994), is the use of the ideologically-motivated form ai ‘I’ in JamC for first singular pronoun with productive compounding (36, 37) and substitution (38). Pollard’s account makes clear the power of speaker meaning to change and create linguistic form. (36) ai-an-ai taakin tu di ai ier I and I talking to DEF I here ‘I am talking to this person here’ (Pollard 1994: 7) (37) ai-man ‘we, I and people in sympathy with me’ (38) aidren ‘brethren, people like me’

3.3 Variable number-marking Inherent variation plays a significant role in JamC: within categorical licensing constraints, e.g. that plural -dem only occurs in definite NPs (39), quantitative patterns express regular and systematic aspects of the grammar. Plural marking with -dem, while typical of Atlantic Creoles, rarely occurs in more than 10 % of semantically plural nouns (see Patrick 2008b for this section); though it may be used with either regular or irregular count nouns of any sort, it cannot occur with nouns modified by 1st or 2nd-person elements (40). The -dem plural is favored for [+human] nouns, rather than animacy in general (F57, F58). These constraints on -dem are due to incomplete grammaticalization from 3pl pronoun dem. Pluralization with -s, on the other hand, occurs in about half of semantically plural regular nouns in mesolectal corpora; while its form resembles English, its optionality allows the expression of a common feature cross-linguistically, namely that it too is favored on [+human] nouns. A non-redundancy constraint also applies to both markers, with determiners that inherently indicate number (numerals, quantifiers, demonstratives) disfavoring the occurrence of both -s and -dem. Finally, weight/measure/currency contexts, which favor non-marking in some traditional British dialects and have been assumed to do so for Creoles, also favor non-marking with -s. Thus, curiously, none of the four constraints reported to characterize superstrate input dialects (Poplack et al. 2000) is attested for JamC.

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(39) Di people-dem dead out and lef two lickle people inna di yard DEF people-PL dead PRT and left 2 little people in DEF yard ‘The people died and left two little ones in the yard (=home)’ (Sistren 1987: 67) (40)Unu bwai (-z) (*-dem) 2pl boy PL PL ‘You boys’

Wi sista (-z) (*-dem) 1pl sister PL PL ‘We sisters’

3.4 Verbal complexities: modals and serial verbs Tame-Durrleman (2006) reorganizes Bailey’s two groups of modals into three, omitting wi (and presumably treating fi as a form of hafi), in a detailed analysis of functional projections in the JamC clause. For her, mos alone is Mod-2 of the 3 groups. This accounts better for triple modals, possible with mos in the middle position, as in (41); but *mos mos. (41) wi wuda mos hafi rich suun 1pl Mod1 Mod2 Mod3 reach soon ‘We really ought to arrive soon!’ In addition to the SVCs covered in WAVE – directional and dative – which are the simplest and most commonly found in Atlantic Creoles, JamC has several other types which are less common, and serve to group it with ‘deep’ Creoles such as Krio, Haitian and the Surinamese varieties. Instrumental with tek ‘take’ (42) is one of these typologically important functions. (42) tek yu han lif op di baks de take Poss hand lift up Def box there ‘Lift up the box with your hand(s) / Use your hand(s) to lift up the box’ The comparative form paas (43), usually involving an existential or locative, is now rare in JamC. (43) Manggo de a yaad paas plenti mango Loc at yard pass plenty ‘There are more than enough mangoes at home’

(FG Cassidy, p.c.)

Some aspects of negation in JamC go beyond the confines of WAVE. Neva synthetically expresses the same as basilectal no ben (Neg + Past), i.e. it is a simple past negator (44) rather than necessarily meaning “not at any time” (Patrick 1999). In (45) it refers to temporary knowledge of a single past instance of running away. (44)Mi no ben baan dat taim = Mi neva baan dat taim 1sg Neg Past born Dem time 1sg Neg born Dem time ‘I wasn’t born at that time’ (45) Di bwoy dem pon di corner never know seh me a run way Def boy Pl on Def corner Neg know Comp 1sg Prog run away ‘The boys on the corner didn’t know I was running away’ (Sistren 1987: 116)

4 Conclusions Jamaican Creole is one of the earliest- and best-studied Creole languages, yet detailed feature surveys such as WAVE and Holm and Patrick (2007) raise many questions about its details and fundamental nature that have yet to be answered. Drawing parallels between JamC and other varieties of English – many of them also nonstandard and rarely written, i.e. with their inherent variation not artificially restricted – may lead to a greater understanding of the way rule-governed aspects of language structure interact with pragmatic and discourse

231

Jamaican Creole

constraints and speaker agency, leading to a richer knowledge of systematicity and creativity in language. It is gratifying to be able to observe this effort from the point of view of a JamC speaker, and on the exuberant evidence of such a vital tongue.

Appendix: Overview of WAVE features attested in Jamaican Creole #

feature JamC example I. Pronouns, pronoun exchange, nominal gender

rating

1

she/her used for inanimate referents

C

2

he/him used for inanimate referents

3

alternative forms/phrases for referential (non-dummy) it generalized third person singular pronoun: subject pronouns generalized third person singular pronoun: object pronouns me instead of I in coordinate subjects

5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 14 16 17 18

19 20

22 23 24

25 26

31

myself/meself instead of I in coordinate subjects benefactive “personal dative” construction no gender distinction in third person singular regularized reflexives paradigm object pronoun forms serving as base for first and/or second person reflexives no number distinction in reflexives emphatic reflexives with own creation of possessive pronouns with prefix fi- +personal pronoun subject pronoun forms as (modifying) possessive pronouns: first person singular subject pronoun forms as (modifying) possessive pronouns: first person plural subject pronoun forms as (modifying) possessive pronouns: third person singular you as (modifying) possessive pronoun second person pronoun forms other than you as (modifying) possessive pronoun object pronoun forms as (modifying) possessive pronouns: third person singular object pronoun forms as (modifying) possessive pronouns: third person plural object pronoun forms as (modifying) possessive pronouns: first person singular non-coordinated object pronoun forms in subject function

The one shirt I have ratta cut ahm ‘The one shirt I have, rats ate [a hole in] it’ Wai yu a go liiv dI tInG tu chaans? ‘Why are you leaving it to chance?’ wen im kom insted a shi faas wid im ‘When she came, instead of her meddling with him’ Mama mek me sleep with him ‘Mama let me sleep with her’ Mi an dis guy in di same class ‘Me and this guy are in the same class’ meself an mi pickney ‘my child and I’ turn im back fi tek im long run ‘turned his back to take a long run’ rub ole wuman back, im mek you … ‘rub an old woman’s back, she’ll let you …’ di leaders demself enjoy di status ‘the leaders themselves enjoyed the status’ meself an mi pickney ‘my child and I’ di leaders demself enjoy di status’ ‘the leaders themselves enjoyed the status’ im jos a ponish im uona sef a fi-mi uona ting dat

B

Den no fi-me work me put yuh inna? ‘Then wasn’t it my job I got for you?

A

dem did lock off fi-we own again ‘they had shut off ours again’ she open she eye an look ‘she opened her eye and looked’

A

Mek me see yuh paper ‘Let me see your paper’ bikaaz a fi-unu kanviinyens ‘Because it’s for your [pl] convenience’ Black bud lef’ fe ‘im ticks ’Blackbird leaves his own ticks‘

B

plenty a fi-dem bananas get reject ‘Lots of their bananas got rejected’ gimme mi ting-dem ‘Give me my things’

A

If people know what dem a face ‘If people know what they are facing’

A

A A A A C B B A A A A A

C

A A

A

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32 34 43 45 46

Peter L. Patrick

distinction between emphatic vs. non-emphatic forms of pronouns forms or phrases for the second person plural pronoun other than you subject pronoun drop: referential pronouns insertion of it where StE favours zero

47

deletion of it in referential it is-constructions deletion of it in non-referential it is-constructions II. Noun phrase

51

plural marking via postposed elements

52

associative plural marked by postposed and them/them all/dem associative plural marked by other elements group plurals

53 54 55

66

different count/mass noun distinctions resulting in use of plural for StE singular plural marking generally optional: for nouns with human referents plural marking generally optional: for nouns with non-human referents use of definite article where StE has indefinite article use of zero article where StE has definite article use of zero article where StE has indefinite article use of definite article where StE favours zero indefinite article one/wan

68

them instead of demonstrative those

70

proximal and distal demonstratives with ‘here’ and ‘there’ phrases with for + noun to express possession: for-phrase preceding possessed NP omission of genitive suffix; possession expressed through bare juxtaposition of nouns double comparatives and superlatives

57 58 60 62 63 64

75

77

78 79 80 83

88

regularized comparison strategies: extension of synthetic marking regularized comparison strategies: extension of analytic marking comparatives and superlatives of participles III. Verb phrase: tense and aspect wider range of uses of progressive be + V-ing than in StE: extension to stative verbs

Is not she alone leave her man ‘She’s not the only one who left her man’ aal mi want unu gi mi ‘All I want you [pl] to give me’ Yes! Can’t stay man, you mad? ‘Yes! You can’t hang around man, are you mad?’ dem yuusi taak it in tongs ‘they used to talk in tongues’ We tek di ting an put inna box ‘We took the thing and put it in a box’ A no notten ‘It’s nothing’

C

None a di member dem no do notten bout it ‘none of the members did anything about it’ Miss Waaka dem laaf afta im ‘Miss Walker and the others laughed at him’ Maaga Lion posse a come down di hill ‘ML and his pals were coming down the hill’ A shi haffi carry di baks a likka-dem? ‘Must she carry the boxes of liquor?’

B

B B C B A

A B B C

yu refa to dem as gyangz – diiz kruu, yu si ‘one calls them gangs – these crews, y’see’ piipl yaad an piipl hoos ‘people’s yards and people’s houses’ wen dee work in di far distrik ‘when they work in a distant area’ we would a mek police beat yuh ‘We’d let the police beat you’ if strap not good enough, she use stick ‘if a strap’s not good enough she uses a stick’ di honggri ena wip mi ‘A real hunger was burning in me’ one tracing di day up deh ‘a shouting match happened that day up there’ dem deh egg never come in like fowl egg ‘those eggs didn’t seem like chicken eggs’ a dis yah kind a life yuh want? ‘do you want this kind of life?’ fi-Jan book ‘John’s book’

B

piipl yaad an piipl hoos ‘people’s yards and people’s houses’

A

more cheaper to dem ‘cheaper to them’ di wosis ‘the worst(est)’ dem give di man dem di most harder work ‘they give the men the hardest work’

B

A C C B B A A A A

B B C

oda uman jos trosin in dem man ‘other women used to just trust in their men’

B

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Jamaican Creole

89

103

wider range of uses of progressive be + V-ing than in StE: extension to habitual contexts other non-standard habitual markers: analytic do as unstressed tense marker

104

completive/perfect done

109

perfect marker already

110

finish-derived completive markers

111

past tense/anterior marker been

112

anterior had + bare root

114

go-based future markers

115

volition-based future markers other than will present tense forms for neutral future reference would in if-clauses

93

117 120

dat time dem was wearin white blouse ‘at that time they used to wear white blouses’

C

mi aalwiez ben a ron ‘I was always running’ me did know seh tings never right ‘I knew things weren’t right’ Sharon don riid di buk (don) ‘Sharon has read the whole book’ Mama dat bwail op aredi ‘Mama that has already boiled’ jos tek yu biitin and finish ‘just take your beating and be done with it’ mi no ben baan dat time ‘I wasn’t born at that time’ man had tek aaf im buut ‘the man took/had taken off his boot(s)’ mi a go go a tong nou ‘I’m going to town now’ a waan sii if a kyan jraa wan yier nou ‘I’ll see if I can tell one (story) here now’ mi suun tel yu ‘I’m about to tell you’ ef im wuda gi it tu yu ‘if he’d give it to you’

C

wi wuda mos hafi rich soon ‘we really ought to arrive soon’ mi no sapuosi du dem tings de ‘I’m not supposed to do those things’ som a di wuman yuusi tek dem pickney ‘some women used to take their children’

A

dee stold a lat a thingz ‘they stole-d a lot of things’

C

a cork mi ears an run down di street ‘I plugged my ears and ran down the street’ di ting bruk aal tu hel ‘the thing was broken all to hell’

A

mi put i dong an gaan ‘I put it down and went away’

A

im kyari aan fi a wail siem wie ‘he carried on for a while the same way’ chrii diez abak ‘three days ago’ tell dem she a fi-me pickney ‘tell them she is my child’ me deh a mi yard a wait pon him ‘I’m at home waiting for him’ if yu was aredi wat, twenti ar so? ‘If you were already what, twenty or so?’ kya di buk kom gi mi ‘bring the book for me’ go a St Mary go look pon di children dem ‘go to St Mary to look at the children’ im waan mi fi go kya im kom ‘he wants me to bring him’

A

B A B A B C A B B B

IV. Verb phrase: modal verbs 121

double modals

125

new quasi-modals: core modal meanings

126

new quasi-modals: aspectual meanings

B B

V. Verb phrase: verb morphology 128

129 130

131

132 135

levelling of past tense/past participle verb forms: regularization of irregular verb paradigms levelling of past tense/past participle verb forms: unmarked forms levelling of past tense/past participle verb forms: past tense replacing the past participle levelling of past tense/past participle verb forms: past participle replacing the past tense form zero past tense forms of regular verbs

147

a-prefixing on elements other than ing-forms other forms/phrases for copula ‘be’: before NPs other forms/phrases for copula ‘be’: before locatives was for conditional were

148

serial verbs: give = ‘to,for’

149

serial verbs: go = ‘movement away from’

150

serial verbs: come = ‘movement towards’

140 141

A

B A A C A A A

234

Peter L. Patrick

151

serial verbs: constructions with 3 verbs

152

serial verbs: constructions with 4 or more verbs VII. Negation

154

multiple negation / negative concord

158 159

invariant don’t for all persons in the present tense never as preverbal past tense negator

160

no as preverbal negator

161

not as a preverbal negator

165

invariant non-concord tags (including eh?) fronted invariant tag

167

im waan mi fi go kya im kom ‘he wants me to bring him’ shi kaal ar hosban kom kom kil di siniek ‘she called her husband to come kill the snake’

B

me no want no England boot ‘I don’t want any English boots’ she don’t fight woman, a pure man she fight ‘she doesn’t fight women, she only fights men’ mi neva baan dat time ‘I wasn’t born at that time’ me no want no England boot ‘I don’t want any English boots’ mi jos nat penichriet som a dem ‘I just didn’t understand some of them’ mek we go tief off piece a Papa yam, no? ‘Shall we go steal a piece of Papa’s yam?’ Duont a di bridj im a taak? ‘Isn’t it the bridge he’s talking about?’

A

she come now an hold pon di paper ‘She comes now and grabs the paper’ dee hav a gruup a man … yu hav dis poliis gai There was a gang … there was a policeman dat time a doing three job ‘I was working three jobs then’ tings going hard fi people ‘Things are gonna get hard for people’ wen tings slow di man lazy ‘When things are slow the man is lazy’ me a me yard a wait pan im ‘I’m at home waiting for him’ Pure big girls was there ‘There were only big girls there’

A

di man, we im waif jos dai ‘the man, whose wife jos died’ him a wena mek naiz ‘the one that was making noise’ we have a place weh we call Atom Hole ‘there is a place that we call Atom Hole’ di man we im waif dai ‘the man whose wife died’ di man we im waif dai ‘the man whose wife died’

A

yu hav wan uman liv de niem Mieri ‘There’s a woman lives there named Mary’ di uman we dem tief ar biebi ‘the woman whose baby they stole’ she start to gwan like Poco woman, which wherein she was not a Poco woman ‘she started to act like a Poco woman, which she was not a Poco woman’ Mi neva see which way di gyal a come ‘I didn’t see which way the girl came from’

B

she tell him seh him fi go a St Mary … ‘She told him he should go to St Mary …’

A

C

B A A C B B

VIII. Agreement 170

175

invariant present tense forms due to zero marking for the third person singular variant forms of dummy subject there in existential clauses, e.g. they, it or zero deletion of auxiliary be: before progressive deletion of auxiliary be: before gonna

177

deletion of copula be: before AdjPs

178

deletion of copula be: before locatives

180

was/were generalization

173 174

B B A A B A

IX. Relativization 185 187 189

relativizer that or what in non-restrictive contexts relativizer as

194

relativizer where or a form derived from where relativizer what or a form derived from what use of analytic or cliticized that his/that’s, what his/what’s, at’s, who his instead of whose gapping/zero-relativization in subject position resumptive/shadow pronouns

197

“linking relative clauses”

198

deletion of stranded prepositions in relative clauses X. Complementation

200

say-based complementizers

190 192

193

B A A B

B B

B

235

Jamaican Creole

201

for-based complementizers

204 205

as what / than what in comparative clauses existentials with forms of get

206

existentials with forms of have

208

deletion of to before infinitives

210

non-finite clause complements with bare root form rather than -ing form XI. Adverbial subordination

213

no subordination; chaining construction linking two main verbs (motion and activity) conjunction doubling: clause + conj. + conj. + clause conjunction doubling: correlative conj.s

214 215

i haad fi kraas di riba ‘it’s hard to cross the river’ i haada dan we yu tingk ‘it’s harder than you think’ iivn St Thomas yu get nais manggo ‘even in St Thomas there are nice mangoes’ yuus tu bi pure kien we nou dem have kou ‘it used to be just cane where now there are cows’ Mi waan bai wan a yu kou ‘I want to buy one of your cows’ people inna di town start mek fun of Sam ‘people in the town started making fun of Sam’

A

dis man tel dem gwain du dat ‘this man told them (he was) going to do that’

B

C B A B A

C although him raise goat yet him hardly kill dem ‘though he raised goats, he hardly killed any’

B

XII. Adverbs and prepositions 216

me da like go England ‘I would like to go to England’ use of postpositions likl bit batamsaid di hoos ‘a little below the house’ adverb-forming suffixes -way and -time one a dem first-time old grip ‘one of those old-fashioned suitcases’ degree modifier adverbs have the same the real die-hearty person never change form as adjectives ‘the really firm believer never changes’ other adverbs have the same form as di man du mi bad, man adjectives ‘the man treated me badly, man’ too, too much, very much ‘very’ as Bre’er Annancy, me sorry fe you too much qualifier ‘Brother Anansi, I’m really sorry for you.’ XIII. Discourse organization and word order

B

223

other options for clefting than StE

A

224

other possibilities for fronting than StE

225

sentence-initial focus marker

228

234

no inversion/no auxiliaries in wh-questions no inversion/no auxiliaries in main clause yes/no questions superlative marker most occurring before head noun like as a focussing device

235

like as a quotative particle

217 219 220 221 222

229 231

omission of StE prepositions

a chrii die schriet hit bon mi ‘It burned me for three days straight’ a wichpaat im de ya? ‘Where is he?’ a swell it swell, luk da ‘It certainly swelled up, look there’ We yu a gwaan wit? ‘What (are) you doing?’ den yu a go kom tinait? ‘Then are you going to come tonight?’

B B A A B

A A A A C

a go in di wata an go laik up to mi ches ‘I went in the water like up to my chest’ unu man da gwaan laik se dem blod-baat rispek di man ‘You guys are going on like (say) they really respect the man’

C C

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References Bailey, Beryl Loftman. 1966. Jamaican Creole Syntax. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Baker, Philip, and Magnus Huber. 2001. Atlantic, Pacific, and world-wide features in English-lexicon contact languages. English World-Wide 22(2): 157–208. Bickerton, Derek. 1975. Dynamics of a Creole System. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Brown-Blake, Celia. 2008. The right to linguistic non-discrimination and Creole language situations: The case of Jamaica. Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages 23(1): 32–74. Cassidy, Frederic G., and Robert B. Le Page, eds. 1980 (2nd ed.). Dictionary of Jamaican English. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Charter on Language Rights and Language Policy in the Creolespeaking Caribbean. 2011. Full text at http://research2.wayne.edu/hum/Hum/Programs/brownbag/flyers/11–1 2/CARIBBEANLANGUAGECharter.pdf. Accessed 10 July 2012. DeCamp, David. 1971. Towards a generative analysis of a postcreole speech continuum. In: Dell Hymes (ed.), Pidginization and Creolization of Languages, 349–370. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Holm, John A. 2000. An Introduction to Pidgins and Creoles. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Holm, John A., and Peter L. Patrick (eds.) 2007. Comparative Creole Syntax: Parallel Outlines of 18 Creole Grammars. London: Battlebridge Press. International Organization for Migration. 2007. Jamaica Mapping Exercise. London. www.iomlondon.org/doc/mapping/IOM_JAMAICA.pdf. Accessed 10 July 2012. Kouwenberg, Silvia. 2009. The demographic context of creolization in early English Jamaica, 1655–1700. In: Rachel Selbach, Hugo C. Cardoso, and Margot van den Berg (eds.), Gradualist Creolization: Studies Celebrating Jacques Arends, 327–348. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Lalla, Barbara, and Jean D’Costa. 1990. Language in Exile: Three Years of Jamaican Creole. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press. Migge, Bettina. 2003. Creole Formation as Language Contact: The Case of the Suriname Creoles. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Patrick, Peter L. 2008a. Jamaican Creole: morphology and syntax. In: Edgar W. Schneider (ed.), Varieties of English: The Americas and the Caribbean, 609–644. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Patrick, Peter L. 2008b. Pidgins, Creoles and linguistic variation. In: Silvia Kouwenberg, and John V. Singler, eds., The Handbook of Pidgins and Creoles, 461–487. Oxford: Blackwell. Patrick, Peter L. 2007. Jamaican Patwa (Creole English). In: John A. Holm, and Peter L. Patrick (eds.), Comparative Creole Syntax: Parallel Outlines of 18 Creole Grammars, 127–152. London: Battlebridge Press. Patrick, Peter L. 1999. Urban Jamaican Creole: Variation in the Mesolect. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Pollard, Velma. 1994. Dread Talk: The Language of Rastafari. Kingston: Canoe Press. Poplack, Shana, Sali Tagliamonte, and Ejike Eze. 2000. Reconstructing the source of Early African American English plural marking: A comparative study of English and Creole. In: Shana Poplack (ed.), The English History of African American English, 73–105. Oxford: Blackwell. Sand, Andrea. 1999. Linguistic Variation in Jamaica – A Corpus-Based Study of Radio and Newspaper Usage. Tübingen: Narr. Sistren, with Honor Ford-Smith. 1987. Lionheart Gal: Life stories of Jamaican Women. Toronto: Sister Vision. Statistical Institute of Jamaica. 2012. Demographic Statistics. http://statinja.gov.jm/. Accessed 10 July 2012. Tame-Durrleman, Stephanie. 2006. The syntax of Jamaican Creole: A cartographic perspective. PhD thesis, University of Geneva.

San Andres-Providence Creole English

237

Angela Bartens

San Andres-Providence Creole English 1 Introduction San Andres-Providence Creole English is spoken by 20,000–30,000 ethnic Creoles in the archipelago of San Andres, Old Providence, and Santa Catalina, Colombia, located 180 kms off the Nicaraguan Coast, as well as by emigrants on the Colombian mainland, the Caribbean Coast of Central America, and in the United States. The variety described in the survey is basilectal San Andres Creole (see 2. below). Previous research on different aspects of San Andres-Providence Creole and its use includes work by Chaves (1990), Dittman (1992), Edwards (e.g. 1968a, 1968b, 1970, 1974; also Edwards and Rosberg 1975), Forbes (1986, 1987, 1989, 1999), and Washabaugh (1975, 1983). The first attempt at a more or less comprehensive description of the language system of (basilectal) San Andres-Providence Creole (with a clear emphasis on the former variety) is constituted by Bartens (2003), presented in a more concise fashion in Bartens (forthcoming). Bartens (2001, 2005) discuss San Andres-Providence Creole as an endangered language, Bartens (2009a, 2009b) deal with variation between San Andres, Providence and Nicaraguan Creole English, and Bartens (2011a, 2011b) examine potential substrate influences in these varieties. Bartens and Farquharson (2012) take up the issue of African-derived lexical items discussed in the appendix of Bartens (2003) in the wider Western Caribbean Creole English context excluding Jamaican Creole.

2 Socio-cultural background1 English Puritans founded a colony in the archipelago between 1627 and 1631 but abandoned San Andres already in 1632 for the lack of sweet water reservoirs and were forced to abandon Providence in 1641 when the Spanish captured the island. During the short-lived colony, trade with the Mosquito Coast of present-day Nicaragua was fairly intense and it is assumed that some of the settlers and especially (former) slaves may have returned to the islands after the initial expulsion by the Spanish. Linguistic, cultural and family ties between the archipelago and the Mosquito Coast (including the Corn Islands) persist until today in spite of measures to sever them since the Esguerra–Barcenas Treaty of 1928. During the period 1641–1677, Old Providence continued to be disputed by the Spanish and the English because of its strategic importance in the Western Caribbean geo-political context of the time. Virtually nothing is known about the period 1677–1780, called “the forgotten century” in Colombian history writing (e.g. Vollmer 1997). It is generally assumed that the foundations of the actual population of the archipelago were laid around 1730 with the arrival of colonists from other parts of the British Caribbean, especially Jamaica, and directly from the British Isles (above all from Scotland and Ireland) as well as from West Africa. As a result, especially San Andres Creole is first and foremost an off-shoot of Jamaican Creole. The creole must have crystallized during the second half of the 18th century. Both San Andres and Providence Creole have contributed to the development of Central American English Creoles from the early 19th century onwards. In 1822, San Andres and Old Providence presumably chose to adhere to Colombia. Although Colombia interfered little in local affairs during the remainder of the 19th century, trade with the British colonies, most importantly Jamaica, was immediately prohibited. As a result, smuggling became the other main industry of

1 This section essentially draws upon Bartens (forthcoming) and (in preparation).

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the islands besides cotton-growing. After the emancipation of the slaves in 1853, large-scale cultivation of cotton was abandoned for the less labor-intensive cultivation of coconuts. Significant changes in the economy of San Andres started with the plague which befell the cocoa plantations in 1931. The occurrence of a rat plague only one year later, in 1932, further devastated the cocoa-based economy of San Andres. The combined effect of the plagues and the international economic depression of the early 1930s forced approximately 20 % of the archipelago’s population to emigrate above all to Colón (Panama) and to Cartagena during the years 1938–1951. Forced Hispanization was gradually introduced between 1902 and 1926. In 1946 English was prohibited as the medium of instruction in public schools and in 1956 in private schools. From 1953 onwards, San Andres (but not Old Providence) went through a devastating Free Port experiment which turned Native Islanders (Sanandreasan ethnic Creoles) into a dispossessed minority on their own island as subsequent waves of immigrants from continental – and Spanish-speaking – Colombia came to constitute the majority of the population on San Andres. The new Colombian constitution ratified in the early 1990s theoretically empowered Native Islanders to try to reverse the negative socio-political and environmental processes. In spite of certain changes – some real, others cosmetic in nature – Native Islanders continue to be an oppressed minority. The sociolinguistic situation on San Andres can no longer be considered a case of classical diglossia. StE is spoken by older people and those who have lived abroad. The former tend to speak Caribbean StE, the latter mostly American StE. StE is also the only language of sermon in some churches. Although Spanish continues to be frequently used in formal settings even after the ratification of the new Colombian constitution in the early 1990s which sanctioned official bilingualism in Spanish and “English spoken in the manner of the islands” in 1993 (Colombian national law 47 of 1993), it is likewise used in informal settings such as the nuclear family or peer groups, formerly domains of exclusive use of San Andres Creole. As a result, the creole is no longer automatically passed on inter-generationally. It seems that the community is vacillating somewhere between stages 5 and 7 of Fishman’s Graded Intergenerational Disruption Scale (Fishman 1991). The absence of StE from the language repertoire of most San Andres Islanders seems to have favourably contributed to the valuing of the creole which may even have re-creolized to some extent as a result (Chaves 1990: 23–24). However, recent efforts by the national Ministry of Education to (re)introduce StE into the linguistic repertoires of all the inhabitants of the archipelago irrespective of their ethno-linguistic background will most likely intensify the endangerment of San Andres Creole. Providence Creole is more acrolectal and speakers insist on their English legacy even more than San Andres Native Islanders. On the other hand, as a result of multiple factors, the presence of the Spanish language is much more reduced on Providence and its small sister island Santa Catalina as compared to San Andres. It is unclear to what extent the differences between the insular varieties (and even within the more densely populated island of San Andres) are diatopic and not due to variation in terms of the creole continuum model. I am inclined to believe that the relatively basilectal character of certain San Andres varieties vis-à-vis the acrolectal character of Providence Creole is the key factor, meaning that the variation is above all diastratic. The same applies to closely related Nicaraguan Creole English which is mesolectal with regard to the cited creoles (cf. Bartens 2009a; 2009b).

3 Notable aspects of the WAVE profile of San Andres Creole: Features with possible substrate influence In this section, I shall discuss some of the linguistic features of the WAVE profile which may manifest substrate influence. As discussed above (section 2), SanAC is a second generation creole (pace Chaudenson 1992) vis-à-vis Jamaican Creole and therefore shares the main substrate input identified for the latter and constituted first and foremost by the Akan languages (cf. Alleyne 1986: 313; Parkvall 2000: 123, 150; Patrick 2007: 127). As a result, my discussion of possible substrate influence is mainly limited to Akan languages in this brief presentation.

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3.1 Pronouns F7 is obligatory in basilectal SanAC as A constitutes a mesolectal and Ai actually an imported variant (from StE) (cf. Bartens 2003: 47). However, what is noteworthy with 1st person singular pronouns coordinated with a full NP as subjects is the following distinction, which is not captured by the WAVE questionnaire: while StE prefers the order NP – pronouns, the typical creole order is the reverse, as in (1).2 (1)

Mi an da man iz nat fren. 1sg and dem man cop.prs neg friend ‘I and that man are not friends.’

This is precisely what occurs in Ewe (Agbedor 2002: 195): (2)

3

Nye kple Kofi mié-de suku. 1sg and Kofi 1pl-go school ‘Kofi and I went to school.’ (Agbedor 2002: 199–200)3

By consequence, the existence of this parallel structure in Ewe reveals how important it is to go beyond the assumed main substrate language(s) in the search for cases of substratal influence.4 SanAC does not distinguish between male and female 3rd singular personal subject pronouns, which have the variants ihn, (h)im whereas the neuter pronoun is ih (F10; for variation, see section 5.2). In Twi, one of the main substrate languages identified for both Jamaican and San Andres-Old Providence Creole English, subject pronouns may be used both as independent pronouns and as verbal prefixes. In Akuapem Twi as described by Christaller (1875), there is some morphonological and tonological variation according to following context and case. More importantly, a distinction is made between animate and inanimate referents in the 3rd persons: Ono and Eno, respectively (Christaller 1875: 39–41). On the other hand, not distinguishing male and female gender is by no means cross-linguistically exceptional. The Finnish language has gone even further: the opposition between hän ‘he, she’ and se ‘it’ is abandoned in colloquial language use in favor of se. The 2nd person plural pronoun of SanAC is unu, derived by most scholars from Igbo unu with the same meaning (cf. Farquharson 2008: 74 on JamC). This appears to be a clear case of substrate borrowing.

3.2 Noun phrase features Many Atlantic creoles, including SanAC, form nominal plurals by (usually) post-posing the 3rd person plural pronoun to a noun (cf. Holm 1988: 193).5 Associative plurals are formed in the same way, as in the SanAC example in (3): (3)

Alma dem Alma pl ‘Alma and her friends/folks’

Upon closer scrutiny, the Akan substrate can be held responsible only for the associative plural construction, not generally for nominal plural formation in San Andres Creole: In the Akan substrate, nominal plurals are usually marked by means of a change in the prefixation and at times also suffixation (Christaller 1875: 33–35; Danso 1983: 97–98; Dolphyne 1996: 23). In some cases, reduplication is additionally involved.

2 When no source is mentioned for SanAC examples, they are from my unpublished fieldrecordings and notes. 3 When unbound, Ewe subject and object pronouns are identical in form (Westermann 1907: 55–59).

4 Subsequent fieldwork has revealed that the same obtains for the Akan languages. 5 An exception is constituted, e.g., by Principense Creole Portuguese (Maurer 2009: 30–31).

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Christaller (1875: 42–43) reports for Akuapem Twi that the morpheme -nom, which derives from the third person plural pronoun for inanimates, is “also used in apposition or as a suffix with nouns and pronouns to provide for, or strengthen their plural form”. Consider (4): (4) obi ‘someone, another’, ebínom ‘some/other people’ (Christaller 1875: 42–43)

Akuapem Twi

For present-day Asante Twi Dolphyne (1996: 56) specifies that -nom is only used in the pluralization of kinship terms: (5)

nua ‘sibling’, (a)nuanom ‘siblings’ (Dolphyne 1996: 104)

Asante Twi

This appears to be the rationale behind Christaller’s examples as well. By consequence, it can be stated that the general creole pluralization strategy is not documented for Akan varieties – as distinct from Gbe languages (cf. Migge 2003: 44) – and therefore does not appear to constitute its source. The associative plural, on the other hand, can be clearly traced to Akan. Consider examples (6) and (7): (6) Paulo nom Paul 3pl ‘Paul and his company’ (Christaller 1875: 44)

Akuapem Twi

(7)

Asante Twi

Kwasi nom. Kwasi 3pl ‘Kwasi and his company’ (Danso 1983: 87)

SanAC possesses what I previously considered in terms of proximal and distal demonstrative pronouns based on StE here and there. Subsequent fieldwork has led me to reconsider the variation of adnominal demonstratives in terms of presence/absence of emphasis (contrast (8a, b) with (9a, b) respectively). This feature, for which there exist parallels in the Akan languages, is not captured by WAVE. (8) a.

dis hous dem house ‘this house’

b.

dat hous dem house ‘that house’

(9) a.

dis-ya hous dem-emph house ‘this very house’

b.

dat-de hous dem-emph house ‘that very house’

In Akan adnominal demonstratives may take the suffix -(n)ára for emphasis: (10) a.

b.

Abofrá yi yàré dáa. child dem sick always ‘this child is always sick’ (Christaller 1875: 49)

Twi

Abofrá no-ara ni! child dem-enf cop! ‘This is just that boy!’ (Christaller 1875: 49)

Twi

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3.3 Serial verb constructions The occurrence of serial verbs in the Atlantic creoles is generally attributed to substrate influence, especially from Kwa languages (including Akan languages), although their degree of lexicalisation is lower than in the substrate languages (Holm 1988: 183–184; McWhorter 2004: 88–91). In SanAC, the use of serial verbs is quite limited. It is virtually restricted to verb pairs in which one of the elements, usually the first one, is ‘come’ or ‘go’ (F150 and F149; in other words serial ‘give’, F148, is not attested in SanAC): (11) An wan die ihn kom sie ihn nou gat notn fi kuk. and one day 3sg.sbj come say 3sg.sbj neg get nothing comp cook ‘And one day she came and said she didn’t have anything to cook.’ As a matter of fact, Washabaugh (1981) argues that closely related Providence Creole go, gaan, and kom have been grammaticalized into infinitive markers. SanAC has a recurrent structure where gaan, the anterior/past of go, is repeated as in the following example: (12) Beda Naansi an Beda Taiga, dem gaan gaan fishin Brother Anansi and Brother Tiger 3pl.sbj go.pst go.pst fish ‘[Once upon a time,] Brother Anansi and Brother Tiger went fishing.’ Since it is the first sentence of an oral narrative, the function of the repetition appears to go beyond emphasis, conveying a directional meaning as the above-mentioned serial verb structures do. Albeit less frequent, serial verb constructions where the directional verb comes in second position also occur: (13) Di uman tek ihn piknini dem an ron gaan. art.def woman take 3sg.poss child pl and run go.ant ‘The woman took her children and ran away.’ Akuapem Twi, chosen here as representative of Akan languages, makes quite ample use of serial verbs, among them ba and fi ‘to come’ and kO ‘to go’ (Christaller 1875: 69–73): (14) o-fiì Osú gua¥ kOO` AdÒ 3sg-come.forth.pst Osú flee go.pst AdÒ ‘He fled from Osú to AdÒ.’ (Christaller 1875: 132)

Akuapem Twi

As a result, the modest occurrence of serial verbs in SanAC quite obviously constitutes a carry-over from substrate languages such as Akuapem Twi. Serial verb constructions with four or more verbs (F152) are certainly lacking from SanAC, but it is possible to find constructions with three verbs (F151) although they are clearly marginal: (15) Wan muma sen ihn son Charles gaan luk fi som chikin fi art.indf mother send 3sg.poss son Charles go.ant look for some chicken comp kuk. (ABC Stuoriz 2001:6) cook ‘A woman [lit. mother] sent her son, Charles, to look for some chicken to cook.’ (ABC Stuoriz 2001: 50)

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3.4 Complement clauses The actual definition of F200 reads »say-based complementizers«. I prefer not to emphasize the connection between creole se and StE say too much although Franzjyngier (1984: 208), for example, argues for the origin of se in say. The reason for this reluctance is that se, which occurs in many English-based Atlantic creoles, has been frequently traced to the substrate, specifically to Twi sE ‘to say; that’ (e.g. Holm 1988: 185–188). In SanAC, se introduces subordinate clauses which follow verbs of saying, knowing, and thinking, as in (16). However, waan ‘to want’ takes a different complementizer (fi; F201), whereas Akan employs sE even in such purpose clauses (18):6 (16) Yu nuo se Taiga freed a waata. 2sg.sbj know comp Tiger afraid of water ‘You know that Tiger is afraid of water.’ (Bartens 2003: 122) (17) Mi waahn John fi go kech guana. 1sg.sbj want John comp go catch iguana ‘I want John to go to catch iguanas.’ (Bartens 2003: 131) (18) Ma-bO obí paa sE ónnyigyè me bá. 1sg.prf-hire somebody contract comp imp.nurse 1sg.poss child ‘I have hired a person to nurse my child.’ (Christaller 1933: 433)

Akuapem Twi

As a result, the match with substratal structures is not perfect. However, one detail points again in the direction of Akan as the original source of the structures: SanAC omits se when the verb governing the complement clause is se(i) ‘to say’. This is precisely what happens in Akan: after sE as the governing verb, sE in the function of complementizer is omitted (Christaller 1875: 156). Indeed, Akan sE can be argued to be both a serial verb and a complementizer, and the ungrammaticality of the sequence *se se in SanAC suggests the same obtains in that language. Note, however, that the grammaticalization of ‘to say’ to comp is a West African areal feature (Güldemann 2005) and that other substratal sources may have exercised at least a converging influence. SanAC fi is a multifunctional element which reveals substrate influence in that, in addition to the preposition function (cf. also F17 in section 5.2 below) inherited from English for, it also functions as a complementizer (F201) and as a modal (cf. Winford 1985). Example (19) illustrates F200 and F201 plus a prepositional use of fi: (19) So ihn kuk di rais an wen ihn don kuk di rais, so 3sg.sbj cook art.def rice and when 3sg.sbj compl cook art.def rice di uol liedi tel im se ihn fi kuom ihn hia fi him. art.def old lady tell 3sg.obj comp 3sg.sbj comp comb 3sg.poss hair for 3sg.obj ‘So she cooked the rice and when she had finished cooking the rice, the old lady told her to comb her hair.’ Modal fi (F125) is found in (20): (20) A fi kuk. 1sg.sbj for cook ‘I have to cook’ (Bartens 2003: 92)

6 In some rather exceptional cases, purpose clauses in Akan are introduced by the conjunction na ’and (then)’ (Christaller 1875: 173–174).

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4 Differences vis-à-vis Belizean Creole As an off-shoot of JamC, as outlined in section 2, SanAC shares many features with it. In the lexical domain, JamC has retained far more Africanisms than SanAC, suggesting less pressure from StE, while BelC figures are very similar to the SanAC ones: JamC features 306, SanAC 48, and BelC 46 secured lexical Africanisms in the figures presented by Bartens and Farquharson (2012: 186). As a result, it seems interesting to compare certain WAVE values of SanAC with BelC, the relationship to which has been less extensively explored. Basically the few examples of divergent values presented below suggest SanAC has undergone less pressure from StE than BelC. SanAC has value A for F52, associative plural (see section 3.2), which is not attested in BelC. Another feature absent from BelC but rare (C) in SanAC is F79, regularized comparison strategies with extension of synthetic marking, as exemplified in (21): (21) Da di besties wei fi mek papaya juus. foc art.def best way comp make papaya juice ‘That’s the best way to make papaya juice.’ SanAC features at least fishin – and marid, draundid, not part of the WAVE questionnaire – as basic verb forms whereas they are absent from BelC (F146, use of verbal suffix -ing with forms other than the present participle or gerund). SanAC is also much more conservative in its use of copulas: before NPs, the focalizer da is obligatorily used (F140 as in (22); F176 as in (23)); before locatives, both the locative copula de (F141 as in (24)) and no copula occur (F178 as in (25)); likewise, no copula occurs before AdjPs (F177 as in (26)): (22) Di likl gyal no waahn iit ih bikaa da ihn beda. art.def little girl neg want eat 3sg.n.obj because foc 3sg.poss brother ‘The little girl didn’t want to eat it because it was her brother.’ (Bartens 2003: 79) (23) Ihn da wan gud tiicha. 3sg.sbj foc art.idf good teacher ‘S/he is a good teacher.’ (24) Aafta dehn de out de … after 3pl.sbj cop.loc out there … ‘When they were out there … ’ (25) A liv Elsi Bar. 1sg.sbj live Elsy Bar. ‘I live in Elsy Bar.’ (26) Gawlin elegant. Gawlin elegant. ‘Gawlin was elegant.’ BelC appears to make more use of English-derived copulas which also occur in acrolectal registers of SanAC. Finally, a striking difference is that the BelC relativizer is derived from what (F190), whereas SanAC we is derived from where (F189): (27) Yu sii dis man we kom iin rait nou? 2sg.sbj see dem man rel come in right now ‘Do you see this man who came in right now?’ (Bartens 2003: 127)

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5 What the WAVE profile does not show 5.1 Other cases of potential substrate influence 5.1.1 Compound interrogatives The WAVE profile discusses two types of interrogative formation divergent from StE interrogative pronouns: making use of additional (free or bound) elements (F39) and reduplication (F40). Reduplication is indeed a strategy employed in some Asian Portuguese lexifier creoles, e.g., the now extinct Malayo-Portuguese described by Schuchardt (1890), for forming indeterminate interrogatives: ki ki ‘whatever, something’ (Schuchardt 1890: 247). Reduplication is used in SanAC for intensification of, e.g., adjectives. The interrogative who-all, which is given as an example for F39 in the WAVE questionnaire, does not capture the specific pattern of bimorphemic interrogatives consisting of a general interrogative particle and a noun which are frequently interpreted as a case of substrate influence in Atlantic creoles. However, since they also occur in creoles spoken outside the Atlantic area as well as in other languages, the overall case for substrate influence is not very strong. It seems preferable to speak of a convergence of semantic transparency and substratal – and possibly even superstratal – influence (cf. Muysken and Smith 1990; Parkvall 2000: 101). SanAC features some compound interrogatives: (28) wepaat/ wapaat (< where/what + part) ‘where’, wentaim (< when + time) ‘when’, we … fa (< where/what … for), wa meik (< what + make) ‘why’ (Bartens 2003: 70) Akan varieties feature some compound interrogatives, too: (29) Akuapem Twi Ehe˜´na ‘which person; who’, d”´` n ‘what thing; what’, Ehe˜ ‘which place; where’, dábE`n ‘what day; when’ (Christaller 1875: 42–43) (30) Fanti íbèn adí ‘what’, íbèn abír ‘what time; when’, íbèn adí ’ntí ‘what reason; why’ (Welmers 1946: 52) (31) Akyem onipa bEn ‘which person; who’, as Em bEn ‘what matter’, dodoO ahe ‘how much/many’ (Boadi 2006: 25). Compare also: Akyem hãe ‘who’, EdeEn ‘what’, EhE ‘where’, ahe ‘how many’ – all of which are clearly reflexes of the interrogatives Christaller lists for Akuapem Twi but can no longer be considered bimorphemic according to Boadi (2006: 52). In the case of San Andres Creole, there is therefore a fairly strong case for at least converging substrate language influence, at least as far as the Akan substrate is concerned. Note, however, that compound interrogatives may be eroded in the future as a result of pressure from English, as has already happened in closely related Nicaraguan Creole and possibly also Providence Creole (cf. Bartens 2011b).

5.1.2 Distributive numerals The expression of distributive meaning by means of reduplication in numerals is generally acknowledged as being a substrate feature in the Atlantic creoles. In San Andres Creole, the most common occurrence is wan-wan ‘one by one, one at a time’: (30) Dehn kom iin wan wan. 3pl.sbj come in one one ‘They came in one by one.’ (Bartens 2003: 65)

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However, sporadically, also other numerals occur in this apparently archaic construction: (31) Mary an Peter keeri trii trii grip. Mary and Peter take three three suitcase ‘Mary and Peter took three suitcases each.’ Considering examples such as (32) from Akuapem Twi as described by Christaller, there is a clear case for substratal influence: `ná mmán dú dú (32) OmÒã` mmofrá dú no nhı˜ Akuapem Twi 3sg-pret.give pl.boy ten dem all string ten ten ‘He gave those ten boys each of them ten strings.’ (Christaller 1875: 53)

5.2 Variation Variation is an inherent property of creole languages and is to a large extent due to the fact that they have not been standardized. Freeland (2004: 124–126) actually questions the standardization of Nicaraguan Creole in order for this richness not to be lost. Whether this is an appropriate solution, considering, e.g., the benefits of standardization for the raising of awareness and the chances of frequently seriously endangered languages to survive, shall not be discussed here. What has been observed is that standardization of creoles (or any language, for that matter) entails the regularization of certain patterns (cf. Michaelis 1993 on Seychellois Creole French). Some of the variation found in SanAC reflects the hypothetical creole continuum. With regard to 1st person singular subject pronouns, for example, mi is basilectal, A is acrolectal. Ai also occurs but many do not consider it as forming part of the creole system. Speakers employ mi and A to adapt their speech to a given situation in terms of an act of identity (LePage and Tabouret-Keller 1985). As “yanking” is ridiculed in informal situations (Edwards 1968b:4), speakers may also resort to auto-repairs, as in the following example: (33) No, man, Ai nou waan di Italian man. Mi nou waan di uol man, neg man 1sg.sbj neg want art.def Italian man 1sg.sbj neg want art.def old man mi nou waan im, man. 1sg.sbj neg want 3sg.obj man ‘No, man, I don’t want the Italian man. I don’t want the old man, I don’t want him, man.’ Some of the cases of variation are conditioned by the phonetic environment. This is the case of the 3rd person singular subject pronouns ihn and him and the corresponding object pronouns im and him: the former variants are somewhat more likely to follow a word ending in a consonant, the latter ones a word ending in a vowel or a pause: (34) So Beda Naansi nou, him de paas … so Brother Nancy now 1sg.sbj prog pass ‘So now Brother Nancy was passing by … ’ (35) Beda Taiga len im a nek tai. Brother Tiger lend 3sg.obj art.indf neck tie ‘Brother Tiger lent him a neck tie.’ (Bartens 2003:36) Then there are cases of what to the best of my understanding can be termed only “random variation”: here no plausible explanation can be found for the occurrence of a determined variant, e.g. the surfacing of 1st singular Ai in a traditional animal story:

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(36) So ihn beg im: “Mi fren, ef yu no help mi, so 3sg.sbj beg 3sg.obj 1sg.poss friend if 2sg.sbj neg help 1sg.obj Ai 1sg.sbj

gwain fut

luus lose

di art.def

paati. party

A 1sg.sbj

no neg

gwain fut

get get

Ai 1sg.sbj

kyaan kraas far Ai maita draundid. Beg mek A get can.neg cross for 1sg.sbj might drown beg make 1sg.obj get

bikaaz because

pan yo shoolda nau an kraas oova!” upon 2sg.poss shoulder now and cross over ‘So he begged him: »My friend, if you won’t help me, I’m going to miss the party. I won’t get there because I can’t cross [the river] because I might drown. Please let me get on your shoulders now and cross over!’ A particularly interesting case of rule-governed alternation is what I have called “the subject pronoun alternation rule”. Some but by no means all speakers of SanAC observe a rule according to which use of one variant of the 3rd person singular pronoun in the first clause of a complex sentence (e.g. ihn) requires use of the other (him) in the second. However, even the same speaker may not make this distinction consistently. (37) a. cor: b.

Wen ihn don iit, him kyan go out an plie. Wen him don iit, ihn kyan go out an plie. when 3sg.sbj compl eat 3sg.sbj can go out and play ‘When he will have eaten, he may go out and play.’

(38) Ihn no sii dem, an wen him gaan out, ihn sii dem op iina trii haat. 3sg.sbj neg see 3pl.obj and when 3sg.sbj go.pst out 3sg.sbj see 3pl.obj up in tree heart ‘He did not see them and when he went out, he saw them up on the top branch of the tree.’ In the domain of possessive pronouns, some speakers use the adpositional fi + pronoun construction only as independent possessive pronouns and in co-occurrence with the topicalizer da. In adnominal contexts, they use bare personal pronouns. Others, perhaps the majority, use the fi + pronoun-construction in adnominal contexts as well (F17). When asked about a difference in meaning, they say the adpositional construction is more emphatic than a bare adnominal possessive pronoun. In some cases, it also appears to be a matter of sentence rhythm and euphony. In the 3rd person plural, some speakers perceive dehn to express collectivity as opposed to dem individuality, as can be gleaned from the examples illustrating F25 and F21 below. This kind of fine-grained differentiation is not captured by WAVE. (39) Tek out unu buk! take out 2pl.poss book ‘Take out your books!’ (Bartens 2003:51)

(F23)

(40) a.

Fi mi buk de pan di tiebl. for 1sg.poss book cop.loc upon art.def table ‘My book is on the table.’

(F17)

Dis da fi wi langwij. dem foc for 1pl.poss language ‘This is our language.’ (Bartens 2003:51)

(F17)

(41) Di pikniny dem tek out dem buk. art.def child pl take out 3pl.poss book ‘Every child takes out their own book.’ (Bartens 2003:52)

(F25)

(42) Di pikniny dem tek out dehn buk. art.def child pl take out 3pl.poss book ‘The children take out the book which belongs/the books which belong to all of them.’ (Bartens 2003:52)

(F21)

b.

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5.3 A miscellaneous case in which WAVE doesn’t capture it all: omission of locative prepositions and prepositions before temporal expressions F216 lumps together the omission of locative prepositions and prepositions before temporal expressions. What happens in a creole language like SanAC is that going to, coming from, and being in places are differently encoded (zero, preposition, zero): (43) A gwain Pravidens tumara. 1sg.sbj fut Providence tomorrow ‘I am going to Providence tomorrow.’ (Bartens 2003: 105) (44) Ihn kom bak faan Bogotá. 3sg.sbj come back from Bogotá ‘She came back from Bogotá.’ (45) A wehn baan Pravidens bot mi famaly liv ya. 1sg.sbj ant born Providence but 1.sg.poss family live dem.loc ‘I was born in Providence but my family lives here.’ (Bartens 2003: 105) From the point of view of StE, temporal expression are frequently not preceded by a preposition either: (46) Aarait, Satidei nait yu kom, wi gwain go drink rom, all right Saturday night 2sg.sbj come 1pl.sbj fut go drink rum an yu not gwain houm til tuu a klak. and 2sg.sbj neg fut home till two o’clock ‘All right, on Saturday night you’ll come, we’ll go drink rum, and you won’t go home before two o’clock.’

6 Conclusions In this chapter, I have aimed at commenting on some of the features of SanAC – both those captured by the WAVE questionnaire and those which may have received less attention due to its goal to encompass the tremendous variety of English-derived varieties all over the world. Both previous work on SanAC and the sociocultural background of this endangered creole language are fairly unknown to the larger scientific audience: Aceto (2002: 101) considers that SanAC and the variety of the sister island Providence are incompletely understood. So is the history of the islands (see section 2 above). Section 3 above draws on both my previous and on-going research on substrate, first and foremost Akan, influence on SanAC. In section 4, SanAC was compared with BelC, a comparison I find more fruitful than the comparisons made with JamC as a result of SanAC generally (and rightfully) being considered an off-shoot of the former. The few features compared seem to corroborate the assumption that, as a result of the fact that BelC has coexisted with StE at least since the forced exodus of 2,000 British settlers and their slaves from the Miskito Coast to present-day Belize in 1786, BelC has undergone much more pressure from StE, whereas SanAC was cut off from StE for at least half a century. In section 5 I discuss structures not captured by the WAVE questionnaire: two more potential cases of substrate influence, variation in SanAC, and the case of one specific feature (F216). In general, the scrutiny of creoles such as SanAC, related varieties, and their potential substrates may shed light on convergence and language universals in creole formation – and beyond.

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Appendix: Overview of WAVE features attested in San Andres Creole # 3

7

10

11 12 13 14

17

18

20

21

22

23

25

26

34 43

feature SanAC example I. Pronouns, pronoun exchange, nominal gender Alternative forms or phrases for Beda Naansi gaan an get di ting an put ih op pan Beda Taiga. referential (non-dummy) it Brother Naansi go.pst and get art.def thing and put 3sg.obj.n up on Brother Tiger. ‘Brother Naansi went and got it and put it onto Tiger.’ Dat da da. dem foc dem ‘That’s it!’ me instead of I in coordinate subjects Mi an da man iz nat fren. 1sg and dem man cop.prs neg friend ‘I and that man are not friends.’ no gender distinction in 3rd person Ihn luk nais, nais, nais. singular 3g.sbj look nice nice nice ‘S/he looked very nice.’ (Bartens 2003: 40) regularized reflexives paradigm object pronoun forms serving as base for 1st and/or 2nd person reflexives subject pronoun forms serving as base for reflexives no number distinction in reflexives Wi hafi difend wiself. (i.e. plural forms ending in -self) 1pl.sbj have.to defend 1pl.refl ‘We have to defend ourselves.’ (Bartens 2003: 49) creation of possessive pronouns with Fi mi buk de pan di tiebl. prefix fi- +personal pronoun for 1sg.poss book cop.loc upon art.def table ‘My book is on the table.’ subject pronoun forms as possessive A waahn mi shuuz! pronouns: 1st person singular 1sg.sbj want 1sg.poss shoe ‘I want my shoes!’ subject pronoun forms as possessive Turkl tek ihn taim an waak. pronouns: 3rd person singular Turtle take 3sg.poss time and walk ‘Brother Turtle took his time and [merely] walked.’ subject pronoun forms as possessive Di pikniny dem tek out dehn buk. pronouns: 3rd person plural art.def child pl take out 3pl.poss book ‘The children take out the book which belongs/the books which belong to all of them.’ (Bartens 2003:52) you as possessive pronoun Put di big rak iina yu lap, bied. put art.def big rock in 2sg.poss lap please ‘Put the big rock onto your lap, please!’ 2nd person pronoun forms other than you Tek out unu buk! as possessive pronoun take out 2pl.poss book ‘Take out your books!’ (Bartens 2003:51) object pronoun forms as possessive Di pikniny dem tek pronouns: 3rd person plural out dem buk. art.def child pl take out 3pl.poss book ‘Every child takes out their own book.’ (Bartens 2003:52) object pronoun forms as possessive Gi mi mi buk! pronouns: 1st person singular Give 1sg.obj 2sg.poss book ‘Give me my book!’ (Bartens 2003: 52) forms or phrases for the 2nd person plural unu pronoun other than you 2pl.sbj/obj subject pronoun drop: referential Gat four big siel. pronouns to.get four big sail ‘It had four big sails.’ (Bartens 2003: 45)

rating B

A

A

A A B A

A

B

B

B

B

A

B

B

A C

249

San Andres-Providence Creole English

46

51

deletion of it in referential it is-constructions II. Noun phrase plural marking via postposed elements (e.g. (an(d) them/dem; -mob)

52

associative plural marked by postposed and them/them all/dem

55

different count/mass noun distinctions resulting in use of plural for StE singular absence of plural marking only after quantifiers

56

57

66

plural marking generally optional: for nouns with human referents plural marking generally optional: for nouns with non-human referents indefinite article one/wan

68

them instead of demonstrative those

70

proximal and distal demonstratives with ‘here’ and ‘there’

58

77

omission of genitive suffix; possession expressed through bare juxtaposition

78

double comparatives and superlatives

79

regularized comparison strategies: extension of synthetic marking

93

III. Verb phrase: tense and aspect other non-standard habitual markers: analytic

101

simple present for continuative or experiential perfect

104

completive/perfect done

111

past tense/anterior marker been

Ih haad fi poo pikniny go skuul. 3sg.sbj.n hard comp poor child go school ‘It is hard for poor children to go to school.’ (Bartens 2003: 45)

A

di bwai dem art.def boy pl ‘the boys’ (Bartens 2003: 30) Alma dem Alma pl ‘Alma and her friends/folks’ shuuz ‘shoe’ Nou dis yong man had tu pikniny wid ihn waif. now dem young man have.pst two child com 3sg.poss wife ‘Now this young man had two children with his wife.’

A

A

C A

C C A hav wan buk. 1sg.sbj have art.indf book ‘I have a book.’ (Bartens 2003: 36) dem bwai 3sg.pl boy ‘those boys’ dis hous dem house ‘this house’ dat hous dem house ‘that house’ Beda Taiga da mi faada bes raidin haas. Brother Tiger foc 1sg.poss father best riding horse ‘Brother Tiger is my father’s best riding horse.’ muo beta more better ‘better’ Da di besties wei fi mek papaya juus. foc art.def best way comp make papaya juice ‘That’s the best way to make papaya juice.’ Wi stodi mek da ero. 1pl.sbj hab make dem error ‘We used to make that error.’ (Bartens 2003: 87) Ihn no kom bak faan Saturday. 3sg.sbj neg come back from Saturday ‘He has not returned since Saturday.’ (Bartens 2003: 104) Afta ihn don marid tu di neks uman, di uman staat triit di children dem bad. after 3sg.sbj compl marry to art.def second woman art.def woman start treat art.def child.pl dem bad ‘After he had gotten married to another woman, the woman started to treat the children badly.’ (Bartens 2003: 88) A wehn gwain kom bai yu hous lieta 1sg.sbj ant fut come by 2sg.poss house later ‘I was going to come to your place later.’ (Bartens 2003: 84)

A

A

A

A

C

C

A

A

A

A

250

Angela Bartens

113

loosening of sequence of tenses rule

114 115

go-based future markers volition-based future markers other than will (e.g. derived from want or like)

117

present tense forms for neutral future reference

124

IV. Verb phrase: modal verbs want/need + past participle

132

V. Verb phrase: verb morphology zero past tense forms of regular verbs

140

other forms/phrases for copula ‘be’: before NPs

141

other forms/phrases for copula ‘be’: before locatives

146 149

use of verbal suffix -ing with forms other than present participle/gerund serial verbs: go = ‘movement away from’

150

serial verbs: come = ‘movement towards’

151

serial verbs: constructions with three verbs

154

VII. Negation multiple negation / negative concord

159

never as preverbal past tense negator

Ihn tel Beda Naansi fi go dong bot Beda Naansi se ihn tuu smaal fi go dong de. 3sg.sbj tell Brother Naansi comp go down but Brother Naansi say 3sg.sbj too small comp go down dem ‘He told Brother Naansi to go down but Brother Naansi said he was too small to go down there.’ (Bartens 2003: 132) See F111 Mi no waahn do ih. 1sg.sbj neg fut do 3sg.obj ‘I’m not going to do it.’ Satidei nait yu kom an wi mek di tarea. Saturday night 2sg.sbj come and 1pl.sbj make art.def homework ‘Saturday night you come and we will do the homework.’ (Bartens 2003: 80)

A

Di bed waahn fiks. art.def bed want fix ‘The bed needs to be fixed.’ (Bartens 2003: 93)

A

Ihn no sii dem. 3sg.sbj neg see 3pl.obj ‘He didn’t see them.’ (Bartens 2003: 46) Di likl gyal no waahn iit ih bikaa da ihn beda. art.def little girl neg want eat 3sg.n.obj because foc 3sg.poss brother ‘The little girl didn’t want to eat it because it was her brother.’ (Bartens 2003: 79) Aafta dehn de out de … after 3pl.sbj cop.loc out there … ‘When they were out there … ’ fishin ‘to fish’

A

A laik go op plie futbol. 1sg.sbj go up play football ‘I like to go up [there] and play football.’ An wan die ihn kom sie ihn nou gat notn fi kuk. and one day 3sg.sbj come say 3sg.sbj neg get nothing comp cook ‘And one day she came and said she didn’t have anything to cook.’ Wan muma sen ihn son Charles gaan luk fi som chikin fi kuk. (ABC Stuoriz 2001:6) art.indf mother send 3sg.poss son Charles go.ant look for some chicken comp cook ‘A woman [lit. mother] sent her son, Charles, to look for some chicken to cook.’ (ABC Stuoriz 2001: 50)

A

If A no waahn go nowe bikaa somtaim A no fiil fi go nowe, A no go. If 1sg.sbj neg want.to go nowhere because sometime 1sg.sbj neg feel comp go nowhere 1sg.sbj neg go ‘If I don’t want to go anywhere because sometimes I don’t feel like going anywhere I don’t go.’ (Bartens 2003: 101) Ihn neva ker notn fi kot ih dong de. 3sg.sbj neg.pst carry nothing comp cut 3sg.obj.n down dem ‘He didn’t bring anything to cut it down [from] there.’ (Bartens 2003: 101)

A A

C

A

A

C

B

C

A

A

251

San Andres-Providence Creole English

160

no as preverbal negator

169

non-standard system underlying responses to negative yes/no questions

170

VIII. Agreement invariant present tense due to zero marking for the 3rd person singular

173

variant forms of dummy subject there in existential clauses, e.g. they, it or zero

176

deletion of copula be: before NPs

177

deletion of copula be: before AdjPs

178

deletion of copula be: before locatives

179

deletion of auxiliary have

189

IX. Relativization relativizer where or a form derived from where

200

X. Complementation say-based complementizers

201

for-based complementizers

203

for (to) as infinitive marker

205

existentials with forms of get

208

deletion of to before infinitives

210

non-finite clause complements with bare root form rather than -ing form

213

XI. Adverbial subordination no subordination; chaining construction linking two main verbs

Yu no bring ih ataal? 2sg.sbj neg bring 3sg.obj.n at.all ‘Didn’t you bring it at all?’ (Bartens 2003: 101) Yu no gat famali Pravidens? – Yes, ma’am. 2sg.sbj neg have family Providence? – Yes, ma’am. ‘You don’t have family in Providence? – No, ma’am.’ (Bartens 2003: 102)

A

A

Ihn liv Bogotá. 3sg.sbj live Bogotá ‘S/he lives in Bogotá.’ Tuu moch hous iina Nort End. Too much house in North End ‘There are too many houses in North End.’ (Bartens 2003: 46) Ihn da wan gud tiicha. 3sg.sbj foc art.idf good teacher ‘S/he is a good teacher.’ Gawlin elegant. Gawlin elegant. ‘Gawlin was elegant.’ A liv Elsi Bar. 1sg.sbj live Elsy Bar. ‘I live in Elsy Bar.’ Dehn gaan big junivorsiti. 3pl.sbj go.pst big university ‘They have studied at an important university.’

A

Yu sii dis man we kom iin rait nou? 2sg.sbj see dem man rel come in right now ‘Do you see this man who came in right now?’ (Bartens 2003: 127)

A

Yu nuo se Taiga freed a waata. 2sg.sbj know comp Tiger afraid of water ‘You know that Tiger is afraid of water.’ (Bartens 2003: 122) So ihn kuk di rais an wen ihn don kuk di rais, so 3sg.sbj cook art.def rice and when 3sg.sbj compl cook art.def rice di uol liedi tel im se ihn fi kuom ihn hia fi him. art.def old lady tell 3sg.obj comp 3sg.sbj comp comb 3sg.poss hair for 3sg.obj ‘So she cooked the rice and when she had finished cooking the rice, the old lady told her to comb her hair.’ Mi waahn John fi go kech guana. 1sg.sbj want John comp go catch iguana ‘I want John to go to catch iguanas.’ (Bartens 2003: 131) San Andres gat plenti biich. San Andres get plenty beach. ‘There are many beaches on San Andres.’ Mek A tel yu somtin nou. Make 1sg.sbj tell 2sg.obj something now ‘Let me tell you something now.’ (Bartens 2003: 117) hou demya tingz staat fonkshian how dem.emph thing.pl start function ‘how these (very) things start functioning’

A

Mai man gaan Satidei nait, drink til tuu a klak. 1sg.poss man go.pst Saturday night drink till two o’clock ‘My man [the protagonist of the story] went out on Saturday night and drank till two o’clock.’

A

A

A

A

A

A

A

B

A

A

C

252

216

221

222

223

225

228

229

233

Angela Bartens

XII. Adverbs and prepositions omission of StE prepositions

A gwain Pravidens tumara. 1sg.sbj fut Providence tomorrow ‘I am going to Providence tomorrow.’ (Bartens 2003: 105) other adverbs have the same form as Di man lisn gud. adjectives art.def man listen good ‘The man listened carefully.’ (Bartens 2003: 74) too; too much; very much ‘very’ as Di son tuu hat. qualifier art.def sun too hot ‘The sun is too/very hot.’ (Bartens 2003: 41) XIII. Discourse organization and word order other options for clefting than StE Da faam ihn wehn de faam. foc pretend 3sg.sbj ant prog pretend ‘Pretending, she was just pretending.’ (Bartens 2003: 133) sentence-initial focus marker Da uman him de luk. foc woman 3sg.sbj prog look ‘What he is looking for is a wife.’ (Bartens 2003: 133) no inversion/no auxiliaries in We yu gwain? wh-questions where 2sg.sbj fut ‘Where are you going?’ (Bartens 2003: 119) no inversion/no auxiliaries in main clause Unu laik di stuori? yes/no questions 2pl.sbj like art.def story ‘Did you like the story?’ (Bartens 2003: 118) presence of subject in imperatives Unu kom ya! 2pl.sbj come here ‘(You) come here!’ (Bartens 2003: 115)

B

A

B

A

A

A

A

B

References ABC Stuoriz. 2001. An Islander English Reader. San Andrés Island: The Christian University Corporation of San Andrés, Providence and Kathleen. Aceto, Michael. 2002. Going back to the beginning: describing the (nearly) undocumented Anglophone Creoles of the Caribbean. In: Glenn Gilbert (ed.), Pidgin and Creole Linguistics in the Twenty-First Century, 93–120. New York: Peter Lang. Agbedor, Paul. 2002. Ewe personal pronouns in coordination. In: Felix K. Ameka, and E. Kweku Osam (eds.), New Directions in Ghanaian Linguistics, 195–211. Legon: Department of Linguistics, University of Ghana. Alleyne, Mervyn C. 1986. Substrate influences – Guilty until proven innocent. In: Pieter Muysken, and Norval Smith (eds.), Substrata versus Universals in Creole Genesis. Papers from the Amsterdam Creole Workshop, April 1985, 301–315. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Amfo, Nana Aba Appiah. 2010. Noun phrase conjunction in Akan: the grammaticalization path. Pragmatics 20(1): 27–41. Bartens, Angela. 2001. Creoles as endangered languages: the case of the two creole languages of Colombia. Lingua Americana 9: 5–18. Bartens, Angela. 2003. A Contrastive Grammar Islander – Caribbean Standard English – Spanish. Helsinki: The Finnish Academy of Science and Letters. Bartens, Angela. 2005. The loss of linguistic pluralism: creoles as endangered languages. UniverSOS 2: 55–68.

Bartens, Angela. 2009A. Variación en el criollo inglés del Caribe occidental – ¿una cuestión de geografía o una dimensión del continuo criollo? Lingüística y Literatura 54: 103–131. Bartens, Angela. 2009B. A comparison of the English-based Creoles of Nicaragua and San Andrés and Old Providence. Neuphilologische Mitteilungen 3 CX: 299–318. Bartens, Angela. 2011A. Substrate features in Nicaraguan, Providence and San Andrés Creole Englishes: A comparison with Twi. In: Claire Lefebvre (ed.), Creoles, their Substrates, and Language Typology, 201–224. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Bartens, Angela. 2011B. Akan substrate influence on three Western Caribbean Creoles revisited. Paper presented at the SPCL meeting in Accra, Ghana, 6. 8. 2012. Bartens, Angela. Forthcoming. San Andres-Providence Creole English. In: Susanne Michaelis, Philippe Maurer, Magnus Huber, and Martin Haspelmath (eds.), Atlas of Pidgin and Creole Language Structures.Oxford: Oxford University Press. Bartens, Angela. in preparation. Life-lines. Spanish and (Creole) English in San Andrés Isla, Colombia. Helsinki: The Finnish Academy of Science and Letters. Bartens, Angela and Joseph Farquharson. 2012. Lexical Africanisms in Western Caribbean Creole English. In: Angela Bartens, and Philip Baker (eds.), Black through White. African Words and Calques which Survived Slavery in Creoles and Transplanted European Languages, 169–196. London: Battlebridge.

San Andres-Providence Creole English

Boadi, Lawrence Kwadwo. 2005. Three Major Syntactic Structures in Akan: Interrogatives, Complementation, and Relativisation. Accra: Black Mask Ltd. Chaudenson, Robert. 1992. Des îles, des hommes, des langues. Paris: L’Harmattan. Chaves, Carol O’Flynn de. 1990. Tiempo, aspecto y modalidad en el criollo Sanandresano. (Lenguas Aborigenes de Colombia, Descripciones 5.) Bogotá: Universidad de los Andes & Colciencias. Christaller, Rev. Johann Gottlieb. 1875. A Grammar of the Asante and Fante Language called Tshi [Chwee, Twi] based on the Akuapem dialect with references to the other (Akan and Fante)dialects. Basel: Basel Evangelical Missionary Society. Christaller, Rev. Johann Gottlieb. 1933 [1888]. Dictionary of the Asante and Fante Language called Tshi (Twi). Second edition, revised and enlarged. Basel: Basel Evangelical Missionary Society. Danso, Mary. 1983. The Formation of the Plural Of Twi Nouns. Kiel: Christian-Albrechts-Universität Kiel. Dittman, Marcia.1992. El criollo sanandresano. Lengua y cultura. Cali: Universidad del Valle. Dolphyne, Florence Abena. 1996. A Comprehensive Course in Twi (Asante) for the Non-Twi Learner. Accra: Ghana Universities Press. Edwards, Jay. 1968a. Social stratification and social change in the western Caribbean: San Andrés Island. Human Mosaic 4: 23–41. Edwards, Jay. 1968b. Social linguistics on San Andres and Providence Islands. Paper presented to the American Anthropological Society Convention, November 1968, Seattle, Washington. Edwards, Jay. 1970. Social linguistics on San Andres and Providence Islands. Tulane University, PhD. dissertation. (University Microfilms International 1979). Edwards, Jay. 1974. African Influences on the English of San Andrés Island, Colombia. In: David Decamp, and Ian F. Hancock (eds.), Pidgins and Creoles: Current Trends and Prospects, 1–26. Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press. Edwards, Jay, and Michael Rosberg. 1975. Conversation in a West Indian taxi: an ethnolinguistic analysis. Language in Society 4: 295–321. Farquharson, Joseph Tito. 2008. The African lexis in Jamaican: its linguistic and sociohistorical significance. The University of the West Indies (Mona), Ph.D. thesis. Fishman, Joshua A. 1991. Reversing Language Shift: Theory and Practice of Assistance to Threatened Languages. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Forbes, Oakley. 1986. La situación sociolingüística del Archipiélago de San Andrés y Providencia. In: Alexander Cifuentes (ed.), La participación del negro en la formación de las sociedades latinoamericanas, 143–158. Bogotá: Instituto Colombiano de Cultura. Forbes, Oakley. 1987. Recreolización y Decreolización en el Habla de San Andrés y Providencia. Glotta II/2: 13–17. Forbes, Oakley. 1989. Aproximaciones Sociolingüísticas en Torno a la Realidad de las Lenguas en Contacto en las Islas de San Andrés y Providencia: Bilingüismo y Diglosia.

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In: Isabel Clemente (ed.), San Andrés y Providencia: tradiciones culturales y conyunctura política, 161–180. Bogotá: Ediciones Uniandes. Forbes, Oakley. 1999. Creole culture and language in the Colombian Caribbean. Paper presented at the Seminar on Language, Education and Culture in the Context of the Western Caribbean, May 21–22, San Andrés Isla, Colombia. Franjzyngier, Zygmunt. 1984. On the origin of say and se as complementizers in Black English and English-based Creoles. American Speech 59: 207–210. Freeland, Jane. 2004. Linguistic rights and language survival in a creole space: Dilemmas of Nicaragua’s Caribbean Coast Creoles. In: Jane Freeland, and Donna Patrick (eds.), Language Rights and Language Survival: A Sociolinguistic and Sociocultural Approach, 103–138. Manchester, U.K.: St. Jerome Publishing. Heine, Bernd, and Tania Kuteva. 2002. World Lexicon of Grammaticalization. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Holm, John A. 1978. The Creole English of Nicaragua’s Miskito Coast: its sociolinguistic history and a comparative study of its lexicon and syntax. University of London. Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation. Holm, John A. 1988. Pidgin and Creole Languages. Volume I: Theory and Structure. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. LePage, Robert, and Andrée Tabouret-Keller. 1985. Acts of Identity. Creole-based Approaches to Language and Ethnicity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Maurer, Philippe. 2009. Principense. Grammar, Texts, and Vocabulary of the Afro-Portuguese Creole of the Island of Principe, Gulf of Guinea. London: Battlebridge. McWhorter, John. 2004. Saraccan and Haitian as young grammars: the pitfalls of syntactocentrism in Creole genesis research. Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages 19(1): 77–137. Michaelis, Susanne. 2003. Temps et aspect an créole seychellois: valeurs et interférences [Kreolische Bibliothek 11]. Hamburg: Buske. Migge, Bettina. 2003. Creole Formation as Language Contact: The Case of the Suriname Creoles. (Creole Language Library 25). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Muysken, Pieter, and Norval Smith. 1990. Question words in Pidgin and creole languages. Linguistics 28: 883–903. Parkvall, Mikael. 2000. Out of Africa. African Influences in Atlantic Creoles. London: Battlebridge. Patrick, Peter L. 2007. Jamaican Patwa (Creole English). In: John Holm, and Peter L. Patrick (eds.), Comparative Creole Syntax. Parallel Outlines of 18 Grammars, 127–152. London: Battlebridge. Schuchardt, Hugo. 1890. Kreolische Studien. IX. Ueber das Malaioportugiesische von Batavia und Tugu. Sitzungsberichte der kaiserlichen Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Wien, 122(9): 1–256. Vollmer, Lorraine. 1997. La Historia del Poblamiento del Archipiélago de San Andrés, Vieja Providencia y Santa Catalina. The History of the settling process of the Archipelago of San Andrés, Old Providence and St. Catherine. San Andrés Isla: Ediciones Archipiélago.

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Washabaugh, William. 1975. On the development of complementizers in creolization. Working Papers in Language Universals 17: 109–140. Washabaugh, William. 1983. The Off-Shore Island Creoles: Providencia, San Andres and the Caymans. In: John Holm (ed.), Central American English, 157–179. Heidelberg: Julius Groos.

Welmers, William E. 1946. A Descriptive Grammar of Fanti. Supplement of Language 22.3. Westermann, Diedrich. 1907. Grammatik de Ewe-Sprache. Berlin: Dietrich Reimer.

Belizean Creole

255

Geneviève Escure

Belizean Creole 1 Introduction Belizean Creole (BelC) is an English-based variety spoken by some 70,000 speakers in Belize, on the Caribbean coast of the Yucatan peninsula of Central America, and it is the lingua franca of several ethnic groups that co-exist in Belize. (For specific information on ethnic and sociolinguistic aspects of Belize, see Escure 1983, 2004, 2005, forthcoming.) Diaspora speakers in other Central American countries (especially Honduras), Caribbean areas, and mostly in the United States may amount to as much as 80,000. BelC is a highly variable lect, closely linked to a wide language continuum that ranges from basilect to acrolect. Because of this extreme variability, I will address specifically the distribution of linguistic features in different contexts (with reference to relevant features as they appear on the WAVE questionnaire). As is the case in most creole continua, there is constant shifting between basilectal, mesolectal, and acrolectal variants, and it is impossible to claim that each lect is consistent and homogenous. I have selected several conversation samples – all recorded in spontaneous contexts during fieldwork in Belize (primarily conducted in the Stann Creek District) – to illustrate the Belizean linguistic scene. I will attempt to explain how linguistic choices are triggered by the social context.

2 Lectal Variation In Belize, English is the sole official language and required educational medium, although the native vernacular is most commonly used in daily interactions. The conflict between the covert prestige of the native creole and the overt prestige of the literate local standard creates an extensive continuum – a phenomenon shared by most creoles regardless of their linguistic composition. The most differentiated varieties are the basilect(s) (or creole vernacular), and the acrolect(s) (official English norm), while intermediate varieties constitute the mesolect(s). Mesolectal varieties are particularly undefined, since they tend to combine basilectal and acrolectal features, that is to say, there are no exclusive mesolectal features. There is no clear boundary separating lects, and any given variety freely borrows from other lects either at the phonological, morphosyntactical or lexical levels. The following samples illustrate the overlap of lects in spontaneous speech. Each of the short texts presented below can be identified as primarily basilectal, mesolectal or acrolectal, depending on the patterning of linguistic features, yet there is constant interference of features borrowed from other lects. In order to illustrate this complex situation, each text is followed by a compilation of the most striking WAVE features occurring in the relevant sample (with line reference), and their lectal affiliation is specified (as much as is possible, since some features are shared by two or more lects). Following the list of prominent WAVE features, a general commentary on the extralinguistic factors discusses what may have triggered the feature combination and lectal level illustrated in each sample. The basilect transcription attempts to capture its approximate phonetic distinctiveness from the standard, whereas a more standard orthography is used for the mesolect and the acrolect (although some uniquely phonological aspects of Belizean English are also represented in those lects).

256

Geneviève Escure

TEXT A. Basilect: 1. R. 2. C. 3. R. 4. C. 5. 6. R. 7. 8.

dat da we a layk wid a, en i gat gud tu mi rayt. i yuztu fayn. a no wan big pleys layk kastam foni fu yu, bika di staf tu big. yu wok togeda, yu mos also fon togeda. yu soâelayz yu fayn it meks fo beta wokin rileâenâip. dats rayt. A neva fayn no fot wid di man, man. if yu me ga wan man-de, da SG-de, yeah i da sutin els. i da ded skatabren, maan.

TRANSLATION: R. That’s what I like about him, and he was good to me, right. C. He was fine. R. I know that a big place like the customs office is strange to you, because the staff is so large. C. You work together, you must have fun together. If you socialize, you find that you have better working relationships. R. That’s right. I didn’t find any fault with the man, man. If you had to name a man, that would be SG. Yeah, he is something else, he is truly scatterbrained, man. DISTRIBUTION OF MAJOR FEATURES FOR TEXT A. [F# refers to the feature number specified in the WAVE questionnaire. An arrow indicates that the relevant feature may occur in the adjacent lectal group] Basilectal (25) Line 1 Line 1 Line 1 Line 1 Line 1 Line 1 Line 1 Line 2 Line 3 Line 3 Line 3 Line 3 Line 4 Line 4 Line 4 Line 5

no interdentals (dat, wid)=> focus particle da relative particle we gen. 3s object (wid a) => gen. 3s subject (i gat) => use of got (gat) as existential relexification. gat=> no gender distinction 3Sg i => zero copula (i yuztu Ø fayn) => wan as specific article zero article, nonspecific (kastam) zero cop (ples Ø foni; staf Ø big) => no rhoticism (wok; togeda) => no cluster (mos ’must’)=> lexical innovation: ‘fun’ as verb no if in conditional clause

Line 5 Line 5 Line 6 Line 6 Line 7 Line 7 Line 7 Line 7 Line 8

F#

Mesolectal (1)

224 190 6 5 205 10 177 66 62 177

F#

Acrolectal (4)

use of preposition (tu) yuztu as past habitual=>

213

lexical items (socialize …)

cluster simpl.(fayn) => zero-plural (rileâenâip) =>

58

double negation (neva … no) zero past (fayn) => me anterior past (me ga) use of got (ga) as existential postposed demonstrative de Focus particle i da suting els Focus particle i da skatabren

159, 154 132 111 205 70 140, 224 142, 224

verb agreement (makes) English copula (dats)

FREQUENCY SUMMARY Total features Basilectal 30 25 (83.3 %)

Mesolectal 1 (0.3 %)

Acrolectal 4 (13.3 %)

Belizean Creole

257

COMMENTARY ON TEXT A: This conversation between two friends is relaxed, and thus naturally triggers the dominant use of a basilect. Phonological avoidance of the interdentals, of post-vocalic /r/ and of consonant clusters are indicative of either basilects or mesolects. Other recurring features include: • •

• •

•

•

•

Generalized genderless pronominal forms, either subject (i) or object (a) (F5, F6, F10). Different article system (specific vs. nonspecific). Wan ( Ma Yiu Jeng arrives tomorrow for a brief stay before traveling to Beijing Similarly, in HKE the adverb already is often used to refer to events which happened at an indefinite time in the past with continuation or effects up to the present, like the English perfect. Examples of already as a perfect marker can be found in ICE-HK. F109 (perfect marker already) (35) We already had our first meeting with representatives of ten professional bodies to make out our action plan (36) Further to our fax message to you yesterday, we already received confirmation of survey agent agreeing to handle this case and report to us. (37) Pls find attached the invoice for the said shipment for you to arrange the T/T payment, as I already obtained the MATE RECEIPT, and since the ship already left Hong Kong today, therefore, I can take the mate receipt to PIFF tomorrow for changing the Bills of Lading, then maybe I can even fax the said document to you by tomorrow late afternoon, and send you the original copy by Thursday morning.

3.3 Features relating to redundant grammatical elements So far we have seen cases where features of the standard varieties of English are either not realised (section 3.1) or mixed up (section 3.2) in HKE. In this section, we will consider examples in which some grammatical elements are used by HKE speakers that are considered redundant in Standard English. Firstly, to link two clauses, HKE speakers use two conjunctions (see examples (38)–(40)) whereas in standard varieties of English, if the first clause begins with although or since, the second clause cannot begin with but or so. This is a perfect illustration of morphosyntactic transfer from Cantonese in which clauses are joined by correlative (or paired) conjunctions. F215 (conjunction doubling: correlative conjunctions) (38) Although they are not uh very much but at least there are some differences (39) Although I have gone to the spectacle shop to buy contact lenses but I have not got the contact lenses yet. (40) Since you’re both the eldest so you can complain about your younger sister and your younger brother all laughed right (41) Since this section runs worldwide anyway, so there is only one cost to your insertions. Secondly, in the ICE-HK data, some causative verbs such as make and let select for to-infinitive clausal complements whereas Standard English has bare infinitives. F209 (addition of to where StE has bare infinitive) (42) Uh I think we’ll be they make you to uhm to take lot of test like English test and those kind of numerical test (43) So how can you uh even if you if you’re girl how can you uh make them to go away

Hong Kong English

555

(44) I understand that it will take time to let Chinese official to see why and how did Chinese style upset Hong Kong peoples time and again (45) Some of them they even don’t let other people to read it within three years within two years or never want anybody to read his the he his or her thesis okay (46) Just let the Chinese oh no just let the Hong Kong elite to rule Hong Kong This finding is surprising as the bare infinitive seems a much more reasonable choice due to substrate transfer. Cantonese has been well-known for its serial verb (V1-V2) constructions (Matthews 2006: 69). A parallel structure to English causative verbs is therefore a causative serial construction (see the following Cantonese examples taken from Matthews 2006: 75). (47) ngo5 zing2 I make ‘I made him fall’

keoi5 3SG

(48)lei5 jiu3 tam3 you need pacify ‘You need to make her happy’

dit3 fall keoi5 3SG

hoi1sam1 happy

As Matthews (2006: 75) points out, these causative verbs V1 and V2 (underlined)4 “all exist as main verbs in their own right”, contrary to the fact that in English V2 has to be non-finite. Hence, the redundant use of to in the HKE examples appears to be an overgeneralisation of a typologically marked (or salient) feature in English in that verbs require a finite clausal complement in English whereas the substrate language Cantonese does not have this feature. This overgeneralisation has also been extended to other verbs such as suggest in HKE. In a search of ICE-HK, there were several tokens of suggest with non-finite complement clauses, i.e. failing to make the mood or modality contrast which is required in normal uses of suggest. (49) They think that English is too hard for them so I suggest them to change to uh an Chinese uh ngh haih an s secondary school taught by Chinese but their mother uh dislike dislike uh secondary school talk by Chinese [Note: The element encloses an indigenous expression (Nelson 2006: 6).] (50) You select the fund by yourself or the Hong Kong Bank suggest you to select this (51) I may suggest you to stay with our main hotel for the first two nights so as to enjoy this special offer and then change back to Towers for the rest of your stay if you don’t mind of moving. Indeed, recognising that the feature system of English is typologically marked relative to Cantonese allows us to bring the use of to following make, let and suggest phenomenon under the same generalisation. From a typological and evolutionary perspective, English and Cantonese are contact languages, generating a pool of linguistically diverse features (Ansaldo 2009). In this feature pool, approach features that are salient in the pool will surface in the contact grammar which has been argued here as HKE. The sociolinguistics of Hong Kong (see section 2) indicate that the most frequently found morphosyntactic features in the pool are those of Cantonese, so it is unsurprising that Cantonese morphosyntax transfers into HKE (see sections 3.1 and 3.2). However, we do not only allow for the possibility of substrate transfer, we also expect that when superstrate features are very salient they can make their way into HKE, as with the case of the overgeneralisation of toinfinitives (a salient feature in English) with make, let and suggest as outlined above.

4 In Cantonese the categorical distinction between adjectives and verbs is hard to establish and thus V2 in example (48) can

be a stative verb or an adjective, both of which can function as predicate.

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4 Problematic issues: what the WAVE profile does not show Anecdotally, two discourse particles – okay and actually – are used very frequently by HKE speakers, although they are not included in the WAVE survey. Let us begin by looking at okay. In everyday conversation, speakers use okay with a rising intonation to request confirmation and hearers use the same particle to respond, signalling comprehension (Aijmer 2002: 52). In the ICE-HK data, it is clear that some tokens of okay are not used for soliciting and giving confirmation in a two/multi-party interaction. Rather, it occurs very commonly in extended turns by a single speaker, functioning as a meaningless pause filler.5 There is an element of register variation here: this discourse marker is more likely to be used in demonstrations (S2A) and class lessons (S1B) where one speaker normally dominates the talk and is allowed to take an extended turn for delivering information and instructions, as illustrated in the following examples from these two registers. (52) While he was committing a crime he was arrested okay then we will say that the policeman caught the criminal red handed okay (53) Okay so all these are are very clearly reveal to us okay uh in the first act and that’s why when you look at the first act the most important thing is this establishment of Zhou Pu Yuan’s position as the authority in the family and everyone in the family has to submit to his or to his rule okay (54) And uhm when you graduate by the time you graduate okay you might be interested to know that in fact for selected resources they are also open to Hong Kong U Alumni okay (55) Whatever product Nuskin is marketing okay there is one mortal guideline or principle behind it The use of okay as a gap filler has been documented in the Nigerian variety of English in that “[i]t functions to provide the speakers the opportunity to better organise their thoughts” (Adegbija and Bello 2001: 92), along with other senses of okay which are peculiar to Nigerian English.6 Now we turn to actually. The most common use of actually is as a discourse modifier, functioning as a pragmatic softener with face-saving effect and as a marker of topic shift (Aijmer 1986; Oh 2000; Cheng and Warren 2000; Taglicht 2001). However, there is an emerging use of actually as ‘a signal of contemplation’ as in Xhosa English (de Klerk 2005: 282). De Klerk (2005: 282) offers a good description of this usage of actually. While not mentioned in current writing on the topic, another function of actually emerged from the data which is closely linked to one of the primary functions of the discourse marker well, namely to serve as a ‘quasi-linguistic “mental state” interjection’, bringing with it the suggestion of continuation, prospecting something to follow. In this sense, some uses of actually are ‘evincive’ (Schourup 1985), indicating that the speaker is mentally cogitating or consulting with him- or herself before proceeding.

Several uses of actually in the ICE-HK corpus illustrate this contemplative function: in both examples (56) and (57), uh and uhm emphasise the act of cogitation taking place while talking. (56) Uh actually uhm, it is uhm, an English Project, maybe I would like you know first (57) She said I make it lighter and and I said no no no It’s [The speaker’s hair is] light enough already Yeah Uh hah Uhm uhm

5 Okay has also acquired a new sense in code-mixing contexts, meaning ‘quite’, e.g. go3 neoi5zai2 okay leng3 that girl quite good-looking ‘That girl looks pretty good’.

6 For example, an interesting sense of okay in Nigerian English is to convey a rebuke, calling for something unpleasant to stop (Adegbija and Bello 2001: 93). This is not the case in HKE.

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557

Actually you like him to cut your hair He did it so good Further evidence of the existence of this usage comes from the collocation of actually with you know, I was like, sort of, well, maybe, I mean, and I think, all of which suggest a lack of certainty. The last two examples even show the use of actually with a series of these collocates in just a single turn by the same speaker. (58) Well let me tell you I think the government need to work out their own better cooperation and planning Because here’s the Marine Department who say hey this is from land refuge You know actually you beach goers you know you hikers you barbecue (59) No I’m I’m not I’m that time is like that last time I was like actually asking for your advice not not giving advice to you (60) Red badges were people like Elizabeth and Norman you know people actually sort of getting their you know sort of getting their hands dirty doing things (61) And okay my hair is kind of in a way but it’s always been like that and I wash my hair everyday anyway I don’t know why actually I I caught that uhm, well it’s not something you catch maybe I don’t know but uhm I had that one I was in Guangzhou (62) Uhm right let let’s let’s delete the uh actually I mean it’s supposed uh I think let’s throw that actually

5 Concluding remarks In this paper, we have looked at some data which show that some speakers’ HKE has a grammar system which is typologically similar to Cantonese. It has been argued that the kinds of levelling of morphosyntactic distinctions that are common in HKE can be accounted for by the relevant substrate structures. But there is a complication: the self-correction of third person singular pronouns and the overgeneralised selection by some causative verbs (i.e. make and let) of a finite complement tend to be robust evidence for the (imperfect) transfer of the grammar of Standard English to speakers of HKE. It appears then that the system transfers from the substrate do not serve as absolute proof that what has happened here is that Hong Kong people have developed their own English. As Jenkins (2009: 151) puts it, “the status of Hong Kong English is still ambivalent”. What we see is an emerging system with a considerable degree of variability, with HKE at stage 3 (i.e. as a nativising variety) in Schneider’s (2007) dynamic model. But the most important conclusion is the importance of studying ‘angloversal’ features of a range of diverse kinds, as, for example, Kortmann and Szmrecsanyi (2004) argue; see also Kortmann and Wolk, this volume. The typological approach, with its focus on what there is in the WAVE survey, allows us to establish at a fine grain of grammatical description the relevant features of an emerging variety of English such as HKE.

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Appendix: Overview of WAVE features attested in Hong Kong English #

feature

HKE example

rating

I. Pronouns, pronoun exchange, nominal gender 17

me instead of I in coordinate subjects

Me and Michelle will come too.

A

18

myself/meself instead of I in coordinate subjects

He and myself are there.

B

19

benefactive “personal dative” construction (using the object form of the pronoun)

They got them some biscuits and sat down.

A

10

no gender distinction in third person singular

Nancy has worked there before. He changed afterwards.

A

14

no number distinction in reflexives (i.e. plural forms ending in -self)

We can do it ourself.

A

41

singular it for plural they in anaphoric use (with non-human referents)

These knowledges are important. It can help us get a job in the field.

A

42

object pronoun drop

Do you say to Paul? Yes, I told already.

A

43

subject pronoun drop: referential pronouns

Where is Sam? Gone to Australia lar.

A

45

insertion of it where StE favours zero

As I said it before, inflation rate is going to increase.

A

47

deletion of it in non-referential it is-constructions

Here is no smoking.

A

II. Noun phrase 48

regularization of plural formation: extension of -s to StE irregular plurals

There are a lot of peoples here.

A

49

regularization of plural formation: phonological regularization

He has two wifes. One in Hong Kong. One in mainland.

A

52

associative plural marked by postposed and them/them all/dem

My boss and them are OT [i.e. on overtime] tonight.

B

55

different count/mass noun distinctions resulting in use of plural for StE singular

I have done a lot of researches in this area.

A

57

plural marking generally optional for nouns with human referents

The three girl there don’t want to talk to us.

A

58

plural marking generally optional for nouns with non-human referents

Some apartment are bigger.

A

59

double determiners

This our first home is very comfortable.

B

60

use of definite article where StE has indefinite article

Recently I have the golden opportunity to visit university.

A

62

use of zero article where StE has definite article

I like helping elderly and do other social work.

A

63

use of zero article where StE has indefinite article

Can I get better grade?

A

64

use of definite article where StE favours zero

I apply Hong Kong University but not the other universities because it has a good reputation.

A

66

indefinite article one/wan

He has one big house and two cars.

B

67

demonstratives for definite articles

That fat boy is my friend.

A

71

no number distinction in demonstratives

This books are useful for my study.

A

172

group genitives

The girl I met’s ex-boyfriend is my friend.

B

177

omission of genitive suffix; possession expressed through bare juxtaposition of nouns

My friend blog says they broke up recently.

A

559

Hong Kong English

178

double comparatives and superlatives

I choose this job because the job is more easier than my previous one.

A

180

regularized comparison strategies: extension of analytic marking

This is the most clever thing I had done.

A

181

much as comparative marker

I think working experience is much important than academic results.

A

182

as/to as comparative markers

The shop there is cheaper to the one I usually go.

B

184

comparative marking only with than

He likes money than other things.

A

186

zero marking of degree

Chemistry is one of the interesting subjects when I was in secondary school.

A

187

attributive adjectival modifiers follow head noun

A fish big and fresh is my favourite.

A

III. Verb phrase: tense and aspect 188

wider range of uses of progressive be + V-ing: extension to stative verbs

I am expecting you to come and join us.

C

189

wider range of uses of progressive be + V-ing: extension to habitual contexts

I am often playing computer games on Saturday and Sunday.

C

196

there with past participle in resultative contexts

There is a car broken down on the road.

A

100

levelling of present perfect and simple past: present perfect for StE simple past

I have learned to play piano a few years ago but now I forget.

A

101

simple present for continuative or experiential perfect

I study English for many years.

A

109

perfect marker already

I ate my lunch already.

A

113

loosening of sequence of tenses rule

I saw the man I went there.

A

117

present tense forms for neutral future reference

If you need something from Japan, let me know because I go there next week.

A

IV. Verb phrase: modal verbs 123

present tense forms of modals used where StE has past tense forms

I wish I can get the job.

A

124

want/need + past participle

The kitchen needs repaired.

B

127

non-standard use of modals for politeness reasons

Must I give you some water?

A

V. Verb phrase: verb morphology 128

levelling of past tense/past participle verb forms: regularization

He drived to work a few years ago but now he take a bus.

A

130

levelling of past tense/past participle verb forms: past tense for past participle

My brother had ate a lot of things.

C

132

zero past tense forms of regular verbs

Yesterday I drive my car to Causeway Bay.

A

133

double marking of past tense

She didn’t said she was happy.

B

145

use of gotten instead of got

John has gotten a new house in Yuen Long.

C

VII. Negation 154

multiple negation/negative concord

Doesn’t he like me no more?

B

158

invariant don’t for all persons in the present tense

She don’t talk about her family much.

A

159

never as preverbal past tense negator

They never showed up last night.

A

161

not as a preverbal negator

The baby not ate food and cried a lot.

A

162

no more/nomo as negative existential marker

No more food in the refrigerator.

C

163

was – weren’t split

My brother and I was staying at home when my aunt came. My mother, she were out.

A

165

invariant non-concord tags (including eh?)

They took the keys, isn’t?

A

169

non-standard system underlying responses to negative yes/no questions

Isn’t she going to Australia this summer? Yes. [‘No, she isn’t.’]

A

560

170 172 173 174 175 176 177 178 180 193 194 204 208 209

213 215 222

223 224 227 228 229 231 234

May L-Y Wong

VIII. Agreement invariant present tense due to zero He come and sit down quietly. marking for the 3rd person singular existential / presentational there’s/there There’s four people on each car. is/there was with plural subjects variant forms of dummy subject there in It’s a new shop there. existential clauses, e.g. they, it or zero No person here yet. deletion of auxiliary be: before He always saying that he want to live in Canada. progressive deletion of auxiliary be: before gonna He gonna go home and watch TV. deletion of copula be: before NPs She a good girl but doesn’t like me. deletion of copula be: before AdjPs My baby very healthy now. deletion of copula be: before locatives My mother at home cooking dinner. was/were generalization They was very angry and shouted some bad words. IX. Relativization gapping/zero-relativization in subject The woman killed herself is my neighbour. position resumptive/shadow pronouns The boy is my cousin who I used to play with him. X. Complementation as what / than what in comparative The course is more harsh than what you say. clauses deletion of to before infinitives I don’t expect go to Korea in winter. addition of to where StE has bare He let me to go. infinitive XI. Adverbial subordination no subordination; chaining construction You don’t leave, they will call the police. linking two main verbs conjunction doubling: correlative conj.s Although they are not my friends, but they help me a lot. XII. Adverbs and prepositions too; too much; very much ‘very’ as They are too nice. We had a good time there. qualifier XIII. Discourse organization and word order other options for clefting than StE They study harder is what I want them to do. other possibilities for fronting than StE The restaurant, it is good and the food is delicious. inverted word order in indirect questions I don’t know what are you asking me. no inversion/no auxiliaries in What you think? You are coming, or not? wh-questions no inversion/no auxiliaries in main clause You love him? yes/no questions superlative marker most occurring before The most people I hate are lawyers. head noun like as a focussing device I got a friend. She is like someone you know is not easy to deal.

A A A A A B B B A A A C A A

C A A

A A A A A C A

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Verena Schröter

Colloquial Singaporean English 1 Introduction Colloquial Singaporean English (CollSgE; affectionately called ‘Singlish’ by speakers and linguists alike) is a postcolonial Southeast Asian variety of English spoken in the densely populated city-state of Singapore, located on a small island south of the Malaysian peninsula. Its speakers, the ethnically mixed resident population, count close to 4 million and mainly consist of Chinese, Malays and Indians. English is the ethnically neutral of the four official languages (besides Mandarin Chinese, Malay and Tamil) and used as the national lingua franca. It is taught as a first language by teachers commonly using the indigenized form in the classroom. Literacy in English and its use as a domestic language have risen significantly in the last decades; Singaporeans increasingly consider themselves native speakers of the local variety and command a range of stylistic variants. Although Singlish is challenged by the government’s language policy, it is valued by its speakers as an expression of a distinct Singaporean identity (Gupta 1994: 48). Among the so-called “New Englishes”, CollSgE is a comparably well-researched variety. Academic interest first arose in the 1970s with publications by Tongue (1979) and Crewe (1977), followed by detailed empirical studies by Platt and Weber (1980), and Ho and Platt (1993). A handy overview is presented by Deterding (2007), while numerous articles, monographs and edited collections offer insights on different aspects of grammar (e.g. Deterding, Low, and Brown 2003, Lim 2004), phonetics and phonology (e.g. Deterding, Brown, and Low 2005), history, sociolinguistics, and language policy (e.g. Gupta 1994, Gopinathan et al. 1998).

2 Socio-cultural background Founded in the early 19th century on a scarcely populated island, Singapore constituted one of the most important commercial and military centres of the British Empire, securing Britain’s position in Southeast Asia. The colony soon attracted thousands of labour migrants and merchants, especially from the Straits Settlements (Penang and Malacca), India and Ceylon, and South China. The Chinese had quickly become the majority ethnic group, and since the beginning of the 20th century, have constituted around 75 % of the population (Chew 1991: 360). 1959 marked the inception of an autonomous Singaporean state, which, apart from a short interlude in the Malaysian Federation 1963–1965 and in spite of sceptical voices at its official establishment 1965, endured the next decades with great social and economic progress. Singapore has continuously been ruled by the same party, the People’s Action Party, a driving force behind the successful independence movement, and the undisputed architects of Singapore as it is today – a multiracial, multicultural, and multilingual state. At all times, Europeans in Singapore were only a small minority, while forming the elite of the colonial society, which made acquisition of English essential for social advancement (Chan 1991: 176). The generalisation of education to females in the 20th century made the transition of English from school- to home-language possible (Gupta 1998: 114). Since the 1980s, it has been the sole medium of education on all levels, with compulsory, ethnically assigned ‘mother tongue’ classes for all pupils, following the government’s educational goal of ‘English-based bilingualism’. Knowledge of English as the language of the Global Marketplace is appointed huge importance in the economy of Singapore, which is dominated by service oriented business like trade, investment and banking, and the maintenance of ‘international intelligibility’ is proclaimed a question of national survival. There is an ongoing commitment in official policy to British

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English as an external norm, which is presented as the target model in public campaigns like the Speak Good English Movement1 (Tickoo 1996). The last extensive government census in 2010 includes detailed investigation on literate and home languages. While in 1921, only 8 % of all Singaporeans indicated knowledge in English, currently approx. 80 % of the population are literate in English, and English has clearly expanded its status as a home language in all ethnic groups (more than 30 % indicate it as the “language most frequently spoken at home”). Competence in English is equally widespread among all ethnic groups. Studies by Deterding and Poedjosoedarmo (1996) and Lim (1996) show that, while the ethnic background of a speaker can be identified by pronunciation features (most likely intonational patterns), grammatical features are not distinctive for ethnicity. Accounts of CollSgE should be based on fully competent speakers of all ethnic backgrounds, that is, language users with little or imperfect competence should not be included. The data discussed here and in the WAVE questionnaire is based on work by Umberto Ansaldo and Lisa Lim (feature ratings), with illustrative examples taken from the corpora discussed in Section 4 and the relevant literature. As can be seen from the Overview in the appendix, features from all feature areas covered in the WAVE questionnaire are attested in CollSgE, and it comprises a number of features that are otherwise very rare in the WAVE varieties.

3 Notable aspects of WAVE profile of CollSgE CollSgE is the only Asian L1 variety. While it has commonly been included in the realm of postcolonial “New Englishes”, a term typically referring to indigenized L2 varieties, on functional and sociolinguistic grounds it is now classified as one of the high-contact L1 varieties. Structurally, however, in terms of its morphosyntactic WAVE profile it patterns with African and Asian L2 rather than “typical” L1 varieties. Following a long joint history and due to their common substrate, up to today CollSgE and Malaysian English (MalE) share numerous features (cf. Pillai, this volume), even though their functions have developed rather differently.

3.1 Substrate influence CollSgE is a prime example of a high-contact variety with a diverse linguistic ecology, characterized by intense language contact situations, both historical and current. Early linguistic influences include various dialects of southern Chinese, like Hokkien and Cantonese, and pidginised varieties of Malay (Bazaar Malay and Baba Malay, the Malay of the Straits Chinese), itself influenced by Sinitic languages (Ansaldo 2004: 132). Gupta (1998: 125) describes the beginnings of CollSgE as the English relexification of Bazaar Malay. In addition, the regional and social backgrounds of the first English speakers in Singapore were far from homogeneous, representing a wide linguistic diversity including Scots, Irish, and American Methodists, but also local varieties of English, by English speakers from Malaysia, Straits Chinese and Eurasians (Schneider 2007: 154). A high proportion of teachers from India in the 19th century granted South Asian English a much bigger influence linguistically than justified by the population proportionally (Mesthrie and Bhatt 2008: 198). The late 20th century saw the widespread successful introduction of Mandarin Chinese by means of deliberate language planning. Although from unrelated language families, the Southeast Asian substrate languages are typologically so similar that it is often impossible to unambiguously determine the source of a linguistic phenomenon, e.g. the famous Singlish discourse particles (cf. Lim 2007). This is also true for simplification phenomena like the regularisation or neutralisation of morphological markings (e.g. F48, F57/58, F80, F128/129, F132, F170),

1 http://www.goodenglish.org.sg

2 Details available at http://www.singstat.gov.sg/pubn/ popn/c2010sr1/indicators.pdf

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which can alternatively be explained by mechanisms of second language acquisition, processes in extensive language contact, or by the according typological makeup of the different substrates (Ansaldo 2009: 139). Some constructions, like Chinese serial verbs, are calqued directly onto the CollSgE system (F148–150; cf. Bao 1998: 48–49)3: F149 Chinese

I walk go market. Wô zôu qù shìchàng. I walk go market ‘I walk(ed) to the market.’

F109 is another feature which can be explained by the replication of a Chinese grammatical structure, completive marker le (cf. Bao 2005: 242–243). The English adverb already has undergone the process of grammaticalization, resulting in the perfective marker: F109 Chinese

Rain already. Xià le yù. down LE rain ‘It (has) rained.’

An interesting extension to this grammatical borrowing is found in the CollSgE negation markers don’t and never (F158, F159; Bao 2005: 247): F158 F159

Why you don’t believe me? ‘Why don’t you believe me?’ Why you never believe me? ‘Why didn’t you believe me?’

Don’t is used as a neutral negation marker, while never negates a perfective form. This constitutes a parallel to the division of labour of the general negative particle bù and the perfective negator méi in Chinese. Méi cannot co-occur with completive le, and this is mirrored in CollSgE, where never and already are incompatible (cf. Bao 2005: 245–248): *Why you never believe me already? Characteristic substrate features also include subject pronoun drop (F43/44) and be deletion (F174–178), which will be discussed in more detail in Section 4.

3.2 Phonology Several of the attested morphosyntactic features of the WAVE questionnaire might possibly be explained by phonological features of CollSgE, especially consonant cluster simplification: F132 ‘zero past tense form of regular verbs’: especially word final plosives are commonly deleted, affecting the regular past tense marker. F46/47 ‘deletion of it in referential/non-referential it is-constructions’: the cluster in the contracted form it’s is likely to be reduced to the fricative. F14 ‘no number distinction in reflexives’: the word final cluster is simplified by omission of the fricative (z > 0), combined with final devoicing (v > f), another common phonological process of CollSgE.

3 In the following, the cover term ‘Chinese’ is used to refer to the different Sinitic dialects in Singapore’s linguistic ecology. Their mutual unintelligibility is largely due to lexical or phono-

logical factors, differences in grammar are negligible, at least for the features discussed here. According to common practice, Chinese examples are given in Mandarin (Bao 2005: 238).

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3.3 Rara and rarissima F108 is a singular feature of CollSgE, the only feature that is attested only once in all 74 WAVE varieties. Ever is used to mark experiental perfect, with variable past tense marking of the verb (Bao 2005: 243): F 108

I ever met some customer like that. ‘I have met some customer like that.’ We ever come across a case, half year the new battery conk off already. ‘We have come across a case where the new battery went dead in half a year.’

It is derived from the Chinese experiential aspect marker guo, including the implication that the ‘experience’ no longer obtains at the time of reference (cf. Bao 2005: 243–245): This share ever hit forty dollars. ‘This share was once forty dollars.’ * ‘This share has hit forty dollars.’ F153, present only in one other variety (Tristan da Cunha English), is a variant of the passive construction. The ‘give passive’ is based on the Chinese passive construction and carries the same adversity reading, i.e. it cannot express neutral or positive events (Bao and Wee 1999: 5): F153

NP1 (patient) + give + NP2 (agent) + V The dog give the boy kick. ‘The dog was kicked by the boy.’ *The dog give the boy stroke.

Since it carries the implication that the patient is – at least partly – responsible for the misfortune that befalls them, by choosing the give passive, the speaker can indicate a lack of sympathy; furthermore, the surface subject must thus be animate. The agent (NP2) is obligatory; thus the ungrammaticality of: *The dog give kick. Apart from very common non-concord tags like is it (F165), CollSgE possesses the rare invariant tag can or not (F166, Wee 2004: 1063), which is otherwise only found pervasively in its ‘sister variety’, MalE, and Hawaii Creole: F166

I want to go home, can or not? ‘Can I go home?’

Postposed one as sole relativizer (F195)4 is equally rare and, again, also common in MalE, as well as in Roper River Creole. Invariant one follows the postmodifying clause (Wee 2004: 1061): F195

That boy pinch my sister one very naughty. ‘That boy who pinched my sister is very naughty.’

4 What the WAVE profile does not show: stylistic variation While the substantial number of features in the WAVE questionnaire allows for large scale comparison and profiling of varieties, one aspect of language in use that eludes values in a feature catalogue is the question of language- or variety-internal variation.

4 Cf. Wee and Ansaldo (2004) on alternative interpretations of one.

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Internal diversification is one of the criteria Schneider (2007) applies to determine the status of a variety in his dynamic model. This internal variation should not be confused with different levels or lack of competence. Quite on the contrary, stylistic variation in indigenized varieties increases parallel to the range and depth of the functions they occupy, governed by the same sociolinguistic variables as in ‘Older Englishes’, including class, educational level, and ethnolinguistic differentiation (Gupta 1998). Proficient users possess communicative competence over a repertoire of styles, which includes knowledge about situations where different styles can be used appropriately, and stylistically marked variants are employed to express identity and stance (as e.g. in an indexical model of variation in Singapore English, cf. Leimgruber 2009). While Singapore lacks the spatial extent to develop regional dialects, the amount of stylistic variation substantiates the assessment that CollSgE is well on its way into phase 5 (Schneider 2007: 160–161). In an in-depth study based on authentic spoken Singapore English (Schröter 2010), two high-frequency deletion phenomena of CollSgE, i.e. subject pronoun drop and be deletion (comprising seven WAVE features in total, i.e. F43, F44; F174–178), were compared in two speech styles of differing degree of formality. Both corpora contain the speech of educated Singaporean speakers: The National Institute of Education Corpus of Spoken Singpore English (NIECSSE), where future teachers were interviewed by their British professor, provided the ‘formal’ part, the Grammar of Spoken Singapore English Corpus (GSSEC), consisting of recordings of students’ private conversations, was used to represent ‘informal’ educated Singaporean English.5 In the vein of Sharma (2009) it is argued that empirical investigation of the degree, distribution and grammatical conditioning of features is essential to qualify accounts and generalisations based on broader tools like feature ratings. Some of the results of Schröter (2010) are presented below to show how this kind of detailed quantitative analysis can augment the information gained from the ratings in the WAVE questionnaire in several respects: – – –

Expert/native speaker intuition as the basis for feature ratings can be corroborated by quantitative evidence. What does ‘A’ as a feature rating mean in quantitative terms – how frequent are ‘pervasive’ features really? To which degree do such ‘pervasive’ features vary within the speech community?

4.1 Subject pronoun drop Subject pronoun drop is a widespread feature of Asian languages and commonly found in the Asian varieties of English as well – F43 is rated ‘A’/‘B’ in all Asian varieties, F44 is rated ‘A’/‘B’ in five out of seven. In the case of Sinitic languages and varieties of Malay, subject pronoun drop is but part of a larger conglomerate of typological differences to Standard English (‘topic- vs. subject-prominence’), including zero subjects, lack of inflectional morphology, and discourse- rather than sentence-orientation (cf. Li and Thompson 1976). Rather than as the result of simplification processes, the existence of these phenomena in the grammar of CollSgE can be interpreted as grammatical replication of typological features from its congruent substrates (Ansaldo 2004: 143–144), and accordingly, CollSgE has been claimed to be typologically closer to Chinese than English (e.g. Ansaldo 2009). For the corpus analysis, subject slots were identified manually, the rate of empty subject slots was compared in the two different speech styles, but also analysed according to linguistic factors such as subject- or sentence-type (e.g. referential vs. non-referential subjects; main clause vs. subordinate clause, etc.). Both corpora combined show an overall deletion rate of 13.7 %. This rate is relatively low compared with typical pro-drop languages like Spanish (50–80 %) or Chinese (up to 40 %). However, it clearly exceeds estimations for “Standard English” (4–5 %, cf. Wagner forthc.).

5 Cf. Schröter (2010), Deterding and Low (2001), Lim and Foley (2004), Lim (2006). For discussion of the status and relation of

the subvarieties of Singaporean English, see e.g. Deterding (2007: 85–92), Leimgruber (2009).

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Formal and informal style indeed vary in overall drop rates. In both speech styles, the deletion rates for dummy pronouns are much higher than for referential pronouns, a difference predicted by substrate accounts (e.g. Li and Thompson 1976). Main clauses contain considerably more null subjects than subordinate clauses. An overview of the results for different subject- and sentence-types is presented in Tables 1 and 2, respectively:

Subject omission tokens total 1st person 2nd person 3rd person other dummy

Formal

Informal

299 8.55 % 9.46 % 2.67 % 3.94 % 18.75 % 14.57 %

1,406 15.68 % 9.11 % 6.35 % 12.63 % 53.17 % 34.89 %

Table 1. Subject omission rates according to subject types

main embedded question discourse marker

Formal

Informal

11.46 % 1.33 % NA 1.29 %

14.3 % 5.73 % 17.09 % 7.12 %

Table 2. Subject omission rates according to syntactic environment

4.2 Be deletion Be deletion is frequently described for high-contact varieties, be it pidgins and creoles, indigenized L2 or L1. As in the WAVE questionnaire, studies commonly distinguish between different uses of be (auxiliary vs. copula, different predicate types). Zero copula is found in the substrates of CollSgE, which additionally contain no construction comparable to auxiliary be.6 F174–178 are all rated ‘A’/‘B’ in CollSgE as well as in the varieties sharing these substrates, i.e. Hong Kong English (HKE) and MalE. Unlike subject pronoun drop, be deletion has been the object of numerous empirical investigations, including Labov’s (1969) seminal study on African American Vernacular English (AAVE), Ho and Platt’s (1993) detailed research on CollSgE, or Sharma and Rickford’s (2009) comparative approach, including the WAVE varieties AAVE, Indian English, Indian South African English and CollSgE. The data exhibits enormous differences between (formal and informal) speech styles in the amount of deleted be. According to Ho and Platt (1993: 31), CollSgE tends to delete copula rather than auxiliary be, which was corroborated in Schröter (2010): Formal be all auxiliary copula

9.16 % 7.53 % 9.55 %

Informal 24.9 % 15.08 % 28.05 %

Table 3. Be deletion rates auxiliary vs. copula

The deletion patterns found for copula be also differ. Those found in the informal data (see Table 4, right column) largely confirm the results of earlier studies (predicate types adopted from Ho and Platt 1993: 31–33):

6 For details on the distribution of be in the substrate languages, cf. Ansaldo (2009: 140–142).

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Copula deletion tokens nominal negated adjective modified negated locative other

Formal

Informal

120 9.68 % 20.83 % 8.39 % 6.98 % 12.73 % 12.7 % 8.55 %

697 24.78 % 58.82 % 37.64 % 40.33 % 37.5 % 18.34 % 12.46 %

Table 4. Copula deletion rates according to predicate type

5 Conclusions Schröter (2010) showed that both deletion phenomena rated ‘pervasive’ for CollSgE display variation on different levels: – – –

they vary speaker-internally – neither subject pronouns nor be are omitted categorically; they vary variety-internally, i.e. in different speech styles, although to different degrees; ‘pervasive’ can refer to rather different amounts – be deletion is a lot more common than subject pronoun drop.

Both phenomena, which are found in the very first descriptions of Singaporean English from the 1970s, and are typically described as indicative for extremely colloquial speech (e.g. Gupta 1994), are attested to a considerable degree even in formal educated speech. While no detailed investigation of ethnic differences was conducted, a look at the corpus extracts that exhibit rates deviating from the average revealed no traces of ethnic differences, either for very high nor for low deletion rates. These facts can be interpreted as evidence for the stabilisation of the Singaporean English grammatical system (endonormative stabilisation, Schneider’s phase 4), while the stylistic variation among educated speakers points towards internal differentiation (Schneider’s phase 5). This lends support to the classification of CollSgE as an L1 variety.

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Appendix: Overview of WAVE features attested in Colloquial Singaporean English (Singlish) # 3 7 14 16 34 42 43 44 45 46 47

48 49 54 55 57 58 62 63 66 67 78 80

88 89 99 100 101 108

feature CollSgE example I. Pronouns, pronoun exchange, nominal gender alternative forms/phrases for referential (non-dummy) it me instead of I in coordinate subjects no number distinction in reflexives (i.e. plural forms ending in -self) emphatic reflexives with own forms or phrases for the 2nd person plural So you guys know or not? pronoun other than you object pronoun drop I got Ø from the career fax. subject pronoun drop: referential I go in about hour earlier, Ø come back hour later or something. pronouns subject pronoun drop: dummy pronouns Sometime Ø difficult to say eh. insertion of it where StE favours zero deletion of it in referential it is-constructions deletion of it in non-referential it is-constructions II. Noun phrase regularization of plural formation: extension of -s to StE irregular plurals regularization of plural formation: phonological regularization group plurals different count/mass noun distinctions So I bought a lot of furnitures from IKEA. resulting in use of plural for StE singular plural marking generally optional: for nouns with human referents plural marking generally optional: for A lot of churches design webpage. nouns with non-human referents use of zero article where StE has definite That was Ø first time I did promise them. article use of zero article where StE has indefinite And got to know this kind-hearted scholar who shelter her with Ø article umbrella when it was raining. indefinite article one/wan demonstratives for definite articles double comparatives and superlatives regularized comparison strategies: extension of analytic marking III. Verb phrase: tense and aspect wider range of uses of progressive be + V-ing: extension to stative verbs wider range of uses of progressive be + V-ing: extension to habitual contexts levelling of present perfect and simple They sold already ah? past: simple past for StE present perfect ‘They have already sold [the house]?’ levelling of present perfect and simple past: present perfect for StE simple past simple present for continuative or experiential perfect ever as marker of experiential perfect I ever met some customer like that. ‘I have met some customer like that.’

rating B B A B B A A A C B B

B A B B A A A A B C B B

C C B B B A

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109

perfect marker already

110 113 114 117

132 147 148

finish-derived completive markers loosening of sequence of tenses rule go-based future markers present tense forms for neutral future reference would for (remote distant) future in contrast to will (immediate future) IV. Verb phrase: modal verbs present tense forms of modals used where StE has past tense forms non-standard use of modals for politeness reasons V. Verb phrase: verb morphology levelling of past tense/past participle verb forms: regularization levelling of past tense/past participle verb forms: unmarked forms zero past tense forms of regular verbs was for conditional were serial verbs: give = ‘to,for’

149

serial verbs: go = ‘movement away from’

150

serial verbs: come = ‘movement towards’

119

123 127

128 129

153

158 159 165 166 169

170 173 174 175 176 177 178 179 195 197 198

VI. Verb phrase: voice give passive: NP1 (patient) + give + NP2 (agent) + V VII. Negation invariant don’t for all persons in the present tense never as preverbal past tense negator invariant non-concord tags (including eh?) invariant tag can or not? non-standard system underlying responses to negative yes/no questions VIII. Agreement invariant present tense due to zero marking for the 3rd person singular variant forms of dummy subject there in existential clauses, e.g. they, it or zero deletion of auxiliary be: before progressive deletion of auxiliary be: before gonna deletion of copula be: before NPs deletion of copula be: before AdjPs deletion of copula be: before locatives deletion of auxiliary have IX. Relativization postposed one as sole relativizer “linking relative clauses” (without direct antecedent) deletion of stranded prepositions in relative clauses (“preposition chopping”)

I have eaten/ eat/ got eat already. ‘I have eaten.’

A A A A B B

B B

B B

I buy chok give you. ‘I buy/bought rice congee for you.’ Kong Kong send us go school. ‘Grandfather sends/sent us to school.’ Take the book bring come. ‘Bring the book here/to me.’

A B B B B

John give his boss scold. ‘John was scolded by his boss.’

A

John don’t eat durian. ‘John does not eat durians.’ John never eat durian. ‘John didn’t eat the durian.’ You need to buy books, is it?

B

Answer the question, can or not? ‘Do you know the answer to the question?’

A

B A

B

But after a while it become quite senseless to me.

B

Got something wrong with her. Tree got oysters growing. They Ø trying to kill the benefactor.

A A

But this one Ø not your car. I Ø also scared. Khatib Ø very near my place. She Ø beaten the eggs.

B A A A A

The cake John buy one always very nice to eat.

A C C

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205 208 210

213 215 216 220 221

227 228 229 233 234 235

X. Complementation existentials with forms of get

Here got very many people ‘There are many people here.’

deletion of to before infinitives non-finite clause complements with bare root form rather than -ing form XI. Adverbial subordination no subordination; chaining construction linking two main verbs conjunction doubling: correlative conj.s XII. Adverbs and prepositions omission of StE prepositions Then I applied Ø teaching. degree modifier adverbs have the same form as adjectives other adverbs have the same form as adjectives XIII. Discourse organization and word order inverted word order in indirect questions Tell me this project is what no inversion/no auxiliaries in When they send me off? wh-questions no inversion/no auxiliaries in main clause yes/no questions presence of subject in imperatives like as a focussing device like as a quotative particle

A B C

A B A C C

A A A A B B

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Schneider, Edgar W. 2007. Postcolonial English: Varieties around the World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Schröter, Verena. 2010. Stylistic variation in Singapore English: A corpus-based analysis of be deletion and subject omission. MA Thesis, Department of English, Albert-Ludwigs-Universität, Freiburg. Sharma, Devyani. 2009. Typological diversity in New Englishes. English World-Wide 30 (2): 170–195. Sharma, Devyani, and John R. Rickford. 2009. AAVE/creole copula absence: A critique of the imperfect learning hypothesis. Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages 24 (1): 53–90. Tickoo, Makhan L. 1996. Fifty years of English in Singapore: All gains, (a) few losses? In: Joshua A. Fishman, Andrew W. Conrad, and Alma Rubal-Lopez (eds.), Post-imperial English: Status Change in Former British and American Colonies, 1940–1990, 431–456. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Tongue, Ray K. 1979. The English of Singapore and Malaysia. 2nd ed. Singapore: Eastern Universities Press Wagner, Susanne. forthcoming. Null subjects in English. Postdoc thesis, English Language and Linguistics, Technische Universität Chemnitz. Wee, Lionel. 2004. Singapore English: morphology and syntax. In: Bernd Kortmann, Edgar Schneider, Kate Burridge, Rajend Mesthrie, and Clive Upton (eds.), A Handbook of Varieties of English, Vol. 2, 1058–1072. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Wee, Lionel, and Umberto Ansaldo. 2004. Nouns and noun phrases. In: Lisa Lim (ed.), Singapore English: A Grammatical Description, 57–74. Amsterdam: Benjamins.

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Colloquial Malaysian English 1 Background The use of English in Malaysia can be traced back to the British settlement of Penang in the 18th century. The influence of English increased along with English-medium education, missionary work and the need for English in the administrative and commercial sectors in the Straits Settlements of Penang, Singapore and Melaka, and subsequently Malaya (Haji Omar 1992, Lee et al 2010, Talbot 1989). However, upon independence, Malay was accorded national language status, and gradually replaced English as the language of public administration as provided for in Article 152 of the Federal Constitution and the National Language Act 1963/1967. By the early 1970s, Malay began replacing English as the medium of instruction in national schools and public universities; at the primary level, Tamil and Chinese (Mandarin) medium schools continue to exist even to this day. English is still a compulsory subject up to the fifth form in secondary schools. In an attempt to address the declining standards of English and to enable Malaysians to access the world of Science and Technology, subjects like engineering, science and medicine were allowed to be taught in English at the tertiary level. Subsequently, the teaching of Science and Mathematics in English was introduced in stages at the primary and secondary levels in 2002. However, this policy has since been scrapped, and English is being replaced by Malay from 2012. The debate over the use of English as a medium of instruction and the focus given to it in the education system continues to be discussed. To a certain extent, the debates highlight the existence of a group of Malaysians, albeit a minority one, who use English as their first or as one of their dominant languages. This group cuts across ethnic groups and is likely to comprise those from higher educational and socio-economic backgrounds. The call for an increased use of English in education also echoes employers’ laments over the lack of English proficiency among Malaysian graduates. The need for graduates who are proficient in English is not surprising given that the private sector in Malaya largely functions in English. At the same time, there is a dearth of Malaysians who are proficient users of English. This is despite the fact that English is taught in schools for a minimum of eleven years. Many blame the decline in English language proficiency on the education system. However, the declining domains in which English is used amidst the dominance of Malay in public education and the public sector set against the multilingual canvas of Malaysia has contributed to the contracting numbers of English speakers, concentrating them mainly in urban areas and among higher socio-economic groups. Further, the use of a more standard form of English competes alongside a more user-friendly colloquial variety, and unlike Singapore where there is more delineation between the colloquial and standard variety, the use of CMalE permeates many contexts of use in Malaysia (Pillai 2008a). The use of CMalE is generaly seen as an indication of ‘bad’ English or poor proficiency in English. Yet it is also used by fluent speakers who seamlessly switch from CMalE to a more standard variety for a number of reasons, including the signalling of intimacy and shared identity, and accommodating other Malaysian speakers (Pillai 2006). Thus, whilst there is a need to enhance the level of English proficiency among Malaysians, Colloquial Malaysian English (CMalE) cannot be dismissed as a deficient variety as it is inextricably linked to one’s identity as a Malaysian. Moreover, it is clearly a variety with a system of its own, having adopted and adapted linguistic features from Malay, Chinese and Tamil, among others. Early descriptions tended to categorise Malaysian English (MalE) into two or three sub-varieties. Platt and Weber (1980), for example, divided MalE into two categories based on whether speakers had been to English medium schools (Malaysian English Type 1) or to Malay medium schools (Malaysian English Type 2). The former sub-variety was considered similar to SgE and indeed many early studies tended to treat MalE and Singapore English (SgE) as one entity. Given the different routes both countries have taken in terms of education

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and language policies, it is inevitable that the current role and status of English is quite different in Malaysia and Singapore, although the geographical proximity and shared cultural aspects also mean that there will be similar features in both varieties of English, and that these will be particularly salient in the colloquial subvarieties in Malaysian and Singapore English. In terms of statistics, approximately 80 % of Singaporeans speak English, 16 % of them as a first language (Singapore Census 2010), whilst only about a quarter of Malaysia’s population is said to speak English, 5 % of them being first language users (Crystal 2005). The English used in Malaysia comprises many sub-varieties and is spoken with a multitude of accents and at different levels of fluency depending on social (e.g. age, educational background, ethnicity), economic (e.g. level of income) and geographical factors (e.g. urban or rural, location in Malaysia) (cf. Morais 2001, Pillai 2008b, Rajadurai 2006). The multilingual environment of Malaysia means that most Malaysians are at least bilingual if not multilingual, and within this context English could be a first, second or other language to Malaysians.

2 Common features between CMalE and Colloquial SgE The features described in the overview of all attested WAVE features (see appendix) are those that are pervasively found (i.e. A-rated features in the overview) in CMalE1 and hence are likely to be similar to colloquial SgE. However, like the latter, CMalE is also a fluid entity and proficient speakers of MalE may not display all of the features mentioned. For example, speakers that are more proficient are less likely to use non-StE verb forms. The features described should not be considered as deviations from StE but rather as features which are commonly used in informal contexts. These include spoken, mobile and online contexts (e.g. in text messages, Facebook and chat platforms). As mentioned in the previous sections, despite having taken different social, economic and political paths, the geographical proximity and shared cultural heritage means that there are bound to be similar linguistic features between CMalE and Colloquial SgE (CollSgE). The following sections examine some of the common features between the two varieties with examples from CollSgE to supplement those from CMalE provided in the overview. It is worth remembering that many of the features presented below are likely to be more pervasive among speakers with a lower proficiency in English, and being a collloquial variety is more likely to be used in informal contexts.

2.1 Pronouns F43–F44: The dropping of subject pronoun for referential pronouns and for dummy pronouns occurs in both CMalE and CollSgE. The following are examples from CollSgE: Always late! ‘You are always late!’ Must buy for him, otherwise he not happy. ‘We must buy a present for him, otherwise he won’t be happy.’ (Wee 2008: 598) Yeah, can cycle, not very well but can cycle … ‘Yeah, I can cycle; not very well by I can cycle.’ (Low and Brown 2005: 106)

1 Examples were derived from my own usage and from Baskaran (2005), Pillai (2006), Sim (1993) and Wu (2003).

Colloquial Malaysian English

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2.2 Noun Phrase F48 and F55: A common feature in both CMalE and CollSgE is the use of -s to Standard English (StE) irregular plurals (e.g. deers and phenomenons), while there is a tendency to use the plural form for uncountable nouns like, equipments, informations, luggages and staffs (Low and Brown 2005, Wee 2008). Such usage sometimes finds its way into the written form, such as in public notices, which suggests that the users do not know the correct forms of these nouns or that there is no delineation between colloquial and standard use of these forms (see Pillai 2008a). Based on a study of English newspapers in Malaysia and Singapore over a two year period in the early nineties, Lim (2001: 127–129) suggests that there are more “grammatical and stylistic infelicities” in Malaysian newspapers compared to the ones in Singapore due to the effect of different levels of use and functions of English in these two countries. It would have been interesting to trace the frequency if such ‘infelicities’ over the last four to five decades2 to determine if the contracted use of English in Malaysia accounts for an increase in non-standard use of grammatical forms. Among the forms found in the Malaysian English newspaper is F62, that is, the tendency not to use articles where StE has a definite article (Lim 2001: 128): The business community can supplement and complement Governments’ efforts to combat social problems among youths. This form, however, is to be expected in CMalE, and also in CollSgE such as in the following examples: (A) new girl, is it? This one really becoming like (a) Cantonese picture. (Low and Brown 2005: 185) May I apply for (a) car licence? You got to have (a) proper system here. (Tay 1993: 32)

2.3 Verb Phrase F99, F109: The levelling of tense and aspect is prevalent in both colloquial varieties. This includes using the simple past form for StE present perfect with a preference for lexical marking of time and aspect with words like already. She ate lunch already (Alsagoff 2001: 84) F100: The use of present perfect for StE simple past can also be found in both CMalE and CollSgE, especially among less proficient speakers: We seen Tarzan last night. (Tay 1993: 33) F132: Less proficient MalE speakers tend not to mark the past tense form of regular verbs, and this can also be found in colloquial SgE: She shop here yesterday. (Alsagoff 2001: 80) He eat here yesterday. (Wee 2008: 594) This feature is often attributed to first language influence such as from Malay and Chinese (Alsagoff, 2001: Baskaran, 2005). For example, in Malay, the verb is not marked for tense. Temporal information is obtained from context or from the use of temporal markers like today, everyday, yesterday (Baskaran, 2005). This is similar to Cantonese and Mandarin as illustrated below:

2 Singapore was expelled from Malaysia, which it had joined in 1963, in 1969, subsequently becoming an independent nation.

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Malay: Cantonese: Mandarin:

Malay: Cantonese: Mandarin:

Saya datang sini I come here Ngoh mooi yat dou Wo mei tian dou I everyday also ‘I come here every day.’

setiap every lei lai come

hari. day. ni do. zhe li. here.

Saya datang sini I come here Ngoh kam yât lei Wa zuo tian lai I yesterday come ‘I came here yesterday.’

semalam. yesterday. ni do. zhe li here.

However, the influence of a substrate language does not always account for patterns of use in nativised varieties of English like MalE and SgE. For instance, Ho (2003: 46) suggests that there is a particular pattern of use related to the lack of past tense marking in Colloquial SgE such as the use of adverbs of frequency and “non-punctual verbs” which refer “to an action that takes place over a period of time or to a habitual activity” (Ho 2003: 40).

2.4 Negation F165–F166: MalE and SgE both use invariant tags such as isn’t it and can or not. Examples from SgE are as follows: You can speak Malay, isn’t it? ‘You can speak Malay, can’t you?’ (Low and Brown 2005: 108) I want to go home, can or not? ‘Can I go home?’ Answer the question, can or not? ‘Do you know the answer to the question?’(Wee 2008: 599) The main effect of the isn’t it tag is to seek agreement from the interlocutor and therefore, the tag does not need agree with the verb in the main clause for type, tense and number (e.g. They are driving, isn’t it?; The concert started late, isn’t it?). The can or not tag has a different effect as it connotes permission and possibility (Wee 2008: 599).

2.5 Agreement F170: Similar to CMalE, zero marking for 3rd person singular resulting in the use of the invariant present tense form can also be found in CollSingE, and again, such features are likely to be more prevalent among speakers with lower proficiency in English: He eat here yesterday. He not yet eat lunch. (Wee 2008: 594) The lack of number agreement also applies to singular subjects in both varieties of English such as in the following examples from CollSingE: The teacher shout a lot. ‘The teacher shouts a lot.’ (Wee 20084: 594) So now settle lah but still those minor minor things my mother do herself. ‘ It’s settled now, but my mother still does minor things by herself.’ (Bradshaw and Hew 1998: 107) Both varieties display the deletion of copula be before the following contexts:

Colloquial Malaysian English

F174:

progressives e.g. We waiting for the flight to come in. ‘We are waiting for the flight to arrive.’ (Ho 1993: 96)

F176:

noun e.g. The one the wife lah. ‘That is the wife.’ (Low and Brown 2005: 91)

F177:

adjectives e.g. I very scared. ‘I am very scared.’ (Ho 1995: 91) I damn naughty. ‘I am very naughty. (Low and Brown 2005: 91)

577

2.6 Complementation F205: Existential got is a common feature of both Colloquial MalE and SgE: Where got enough time. ‘There isn’t enough time.’ Here got so many American teachers. ‘There are many American teachers here.’ (Tay 1993: 34) Got instructions. ‘There are instructions’ (Pakir 1995: 7) This verb is also used as a perfective and possessive marker essentially in place of have (Wee 2008: 595–596). He got go to Japan. ‘He has been to Japan.’ You got nice shirt. ‘You have a nice shirt.’

2.7 Discourse organization and word order F228–F229: There is generally no inversion or auxiliaries in wh-questions and in main clause yes/no questions in both colloquial varieties as shown in the following examples from SgE: You want pao or not? ‘Do you want a pao (a type of bread with a sweet or savoury filling)?/‘Would you like a pao?’ (Harrison and Lim 1988: 149) What you doing tonight? ‘What are you doing tonight?’ What you want? ‘What do you want?’ Why she want to be like that? ‘Why does she want to be like that?’/‘Why is she like that?’ What is it you want ha? ‘What is it that you want?’/‘What do you want?’ (Tay 1993: 33–34) As previously mentioned, the use of the invariant tag is it/isn’t it is also common in both varieties. In addition, other tags like can or not and or not as well as well as particles, such as ah and hah, are also employed: You’ve got married is it? ‘Did you get married?’ (Low and Brown 2005: 108) The Director is busy now, is it? ‘Is the Director busy now/at the moment?’ (Tay 1993: 33). The food good or not? ‘Is the food delicious?’ You busy or not? ‘Are you busy?’ (Wee 2008: 599)

3 Conclusion The features described in this chapter are frequently found in colloquial MalE and SgE. Since the late sixties, the two varieties, whilst still very similar and mutually intelligible, have established particular linguistic features of their own. This is especially noticeable for lexical items and has been noted in pronunciation features as well. The extent to which the morpho-syntactic features described in this chapter are used in both MalE

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and SgE largely depends on factors like level of proficiency and ethnic background of the speakers. Thus, the colloquial variety is a fluid entity, and more proficient speakers of English will be able to weave in and out of the colloquial variety and the standard one (Govindan and Pillai 2009). The colloquial forms of MalE and SgE tend to be reduced and simplified forms of StE, and thus, coupled with orthographic representation of localised pronunciation (e.g. wif for with, de for the), lend themselves more naturally to short and quick forms of text, such as text messages or Facebook updates (compare a Facebook update like Check in also so long to It took a long time to check in or a text message like Can I borrow your car? to can borrow car?). The use of such forms in more public online platforms, such as Facebook, can lead to the dilemma about the use of colloquial forms of English. For example, is it appropriate for English language educators to use CMalE in their Facebook status updates and comments when their students are on their friends’ list? In both Malaysia and Singapore, those who can only function in the colloquial variety can find themselves handicapped by their inability to use the more standard form as it may, and face reduced job and scholarship opportunities. This issue is more pressing in Malaysia as it is more geographically spread out, more linguistically diverse and has a more complex educational context. There is, therefore, a great need to ensure that there is adequate access and that there are resources and opportunities for Malaysians to learn the standard form so that they are not socio-economically disadvantaged because of their lack of English proficiency. Such a need is not unique to Malaysia. Any context that has a non-standard form operating alongside a standard one will be faced with the challenge of empowering people with the latter, and at the same time reconciling this process with the fact that non-standard varieties like CMalE and CollSgE act as identity markers.

Appendix: Overview of WAVE features attested in Colloquial Malaysian English # 13 17 18 10 14 16 34 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 47

Feature MalE example I. Pronouns, pronoun exchange, nominal gender alternative forms/phrases for referential Give me five minute to pack the thing for you. (Referring to items (non-dummy) it to be packed in a shop.) me instead of I in coordinate subjects My girlfriend and me went for dinner last night. myself/meself instead of I in coordinate There was myself and my friend at the party. ‘My friend and I subjects were at the party’ no gender distinction in 3rd person Siti Nurhalizah ah, when he sing Malay song so nice. ‘Siti singular Nurhalizah, she sings Malay songs really well’ no number distinction in reflexives (i.e. We did it ourself. ‘We did it by ourselves.’ plural forms ending in -self) emphatic reflexives with own I hit my own self on the door. ‘I hit myself on the door.’ (especially among less proficient speakers of MalE) forms or phrases for the 2nd person plural I’ll meet you all at the Cheras toll. ‘I’ll meet all of you at the pronoun other than you Cheras toll booth.’ plural forms of interrogative pronouns: Who all came for the wedding? ‘Who came for the wedding?’ using additional elements plural forms of interrogative pronouns: Who who made noise about the food? ‘Who complained about reduplication the food?’ singular it for plural they in anaphoric use You want all the things in your list, right? I take it for you now. (with non-human referents) object pronoun drop Okay lah just give me one bottle. If Ø no good, I return Ø ah. ‘Okay, just give me one bottle. If it is not good, I will return it.’ subject pronoun drop: referential Buy this brand lah. Ø Very cheap! pronouns subject pronoun drop: dummy pronouns Raining already. ‘It is raining’. insertion of it where StE favours zero As I explained it to her, this is not the right way. deletion of it in non-referential it Compulsory to attend the workshop, okay. ‘It is compulsory to is-constructions attend the workshop.’’

rating A A A B A A A B B A A A A A B

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148 153 154 155 156 157 158 162 163 164 171 178 179

II. Noun phrase regularization of plural formation: extension of -s to StE irregular plurals associative plural marked by postposed other elements group plurals different count/mass noun distinctions resulting in use of plural for StE singular absence of plural marking only after quantifiers plural marking generally optional: for nouns with human referents plural marking generally optional: for nouns with non-human referents use of zero article where StE has definite article use of zero article where StE has indefinite article use of definite article where StE favours zero no number distinction in demonstratives double comparatives and superlatives

109

regularized comparison strategies: extension of synthetic marking regularized comparison strategies: extension of analytic marking comparative marking only with than III. Verb phrase: tense and aspect other non-standard habitual markers: synthetic levelling of present perfect and simple past: simple past for StE present perfect levelling of present perfect and simple past: present perfect for StE simple past simple present for continuative or experiential perfect perfect marker already

113

loosening of sequence of tenses rule

116 117

come-based future/ingressive markers present tense forms for neutral future reference V. Verb phrase: verb morphology levelling of past tense/past participle verb forms: regularization levelling of past tense/past participle verb forms: unmarked forms levelling of past tense/past participle verb forms: past tense for past participle zero past tense forms of regular verbs double marking of past tense use of gotten instead of got was for conditional were VII. Negation invariant don’t for all persons in the present tense never as preverbal past tense negator

180 184 192 199 100 101

128 129 130 132 133 145 147 158 159

All assets including aircrafts would be shifted to the new base.

A

Aunty Betty and gang are here. ‘Aunty Betty and her family are here.’ Neither of my two sister-in-laws speak to me much. A lot of the staffs are unable to attend the dinner.

B

Give me five minute to pack the thing for you.

A

When I see those tow truck operator, I get cheesed off.

B

Want to buy biscuit or not? ‘Would you like to buy biscuits?’

B

Vocabulary is very important at Ø elementary level.

A

We got Ø new promotion for this one. ‘We have a promotion on this item.’ The most thing that I hate is the detox tea. ‘The thing that I hate the most is detox tea.’ Let me finish this letters first … Women are more smarter than men. (especially among less proficient speakers) Yan is the handsomest guy on or team.

B

Hana is the most clever girl in the class.

B

I prefer durian than jackfruit.

B

They goes to the Pasar Tani every Saturday. ‘They go to the Farmers’ Market every Saturday.’ You went there before? Have you been there before?

B

Ben has return back the product yesterday. ‘Ben returned the product yesterday.’ I work for them since I was fifteen.

A

He got five summonses already you know. ‘He has been issued five tickets (by the police).’ (alternatively before) A Customs spokesman said an enforcement team chased the lorry after the department received information that the vehicle was carrying boxes of firecrackers. I’m coming to see you. ‘I’m on my way to see you.’ We visit her this Raya lah. ‘We will visit her during Raya (Id).’

A

The game was broadcasted over ASTRO.

A

I gave her the key already. ‘I have already given her the keys.’

B

I have ran this workshop before. ‘I have run/organised this workshop before.’ Here are things you order yesterday. They didn’t made it this time. If you haven’t gotten the new iPhone4 yet, you better hurry. If I was single, I would have worked overseas long time ago.

A

She don wanna come home now. ‘She does not want to come home now.’ I never broke it.

A

A A

B A A B

A

B

A

A A

A B B A

A

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186 194 195

invariant non-concord tags (including eh?) invariant tag can or not? non-standard system underlying responses to negative yes/no questions VIII. Agreement invariant present tense due to zero marking for the 3rd person singular existential / presentational there’s/there is/there was with plural subjects deletion of auxiliary be: before progressive deletion of auxiliary be: before gonna deletion of copula be: before NPs deletion of copula be: before AdjPs IX. Relativization relativizer that or what in non-restrictive contexts which for ‘who’ resumptive/shadow pronouns postposed one as sole relativizer

196

correlative constructions

197

“linking relative clauses” (without direct antecedent) deletion of stranded prepositions in relative clauses (“preposition chopping”) X. Complementation as what / than what in comparative clauses existentials with forms of get addition of to where StE has bare infinitive XI. Adverbial subordination conjunction doubling: correlative conjs.

166 169

170 172 174 175 176 177 185

198

204 205 209

215

220 221 222

224 227 228 229 231 235

XII. Adverbs and prepositions degree modifier adverbs have the same form as adjectives other adverbs have the same form as adjectives too; too much; very much ‘very’ as qualifier

He scolded you, isn’t it?

A

Wait for me, can or not. ‘Please wait for me’ You don’t mind helping me? Yes [=No I don’t mind]/ No [=Yes I mind]

A A

Every month, he/my father spend all his pay gambling.

A

There’s four of us in the family.

A

They Ø coming tomorrow night.

B

I Ø gonna leave now. She Ø good girl one. ‘She’s a good girl.’ You Ø happy like anything. ‘You are so happy.’

B B B

Jingkli Nona, that I like to sing, is very popular in the Portuguese Settlement. The guy which is new is hopeless. That is the lady I introduce her to you before. The lady make cake one very action. ‘The lady who makes cakes is very stuck up.’ The one I made, that one is good. ‘The ones I made are the good ones.’ They were going on a bus which I know they never take the bus at home You remember the swing that we all used to sit together (on)?

B

It‘s never as easy as what we want. ‘It’s never as easy as we want it to be.’ Got no water in the toilet. ‘There is no water in the toilet.’ He make me to sign the cheque. ‘He forced me to sign the cheque.’ (especially among Malaysians of South Indian origin)

A

Although the wardens at the hostel were very nice but it wasn’t the same as being at home.

A

She lives in a real huge house. (especially among younger Malaysians) She speaks so soft. I can’t hear her at all.

A

My husband is too stingy one. Five sen also ask so many question. ‘My husband is very stingy. Even if it costs five sen/is five sen extra, he asks so many questions.’ XIII. Discourse organization and word order other possibilities for fronting than StE That boy is from which school? ‘Which school is that boy from?’ inverted word order in indirect questions He asked why is Wong‘s working so different. ‘He asked why the way Wong arrived at the (Math) solution was different.’ no inversion/no auxiliaries in What you doing tonight? Why he called? wh-questions no inversion/no auxiliaries in main clause You wanna eat something? yes/no questions superlative marker most occurring before The most thing that I hate is the detox tea. ‘The thing that I hate head noun the most is the detox tea.’ like as a quotative particle We were like, “What’s up with her!”

B B B A C A

A A

A C

B A A A C B

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References Alsagoff, Lubna. 2001. Tense and aspect in Singapore English. In: Vincent B. Y. Ooi (ed.), Evolving Identities: The English Language in Singapore and Malaysia, 79–88. Singapore: Times Academic Press. Baskaran, Loga Mahesan. 2005. A Malaysian English Primer. Kuala Lumpur: University of Malaya Press. Bradshaw, Julie, and Hew Yee Lan. 1998. Talking to children in a multilingual household. In: Joseph Foley (ed.), New Englishes: The Case of Singapore, 100–114. Singapore: Singapore University Press. Crystal, David. 2005. The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language. 2nd Edition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Govindan, Indira, and Stefanie S. Pillai. 2009. English question forms used by young Malaysian Indians. The English Teacher 38: 74–94. Haji Omar, Asmah. 1992. The Linguistic Scenery in Malaysia. Kuala Lumpur: Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka. Harrison, Godfrey, and Lim Soo Lin. 1988. The acquisition of English questions by young Singaporeans. In: Joseph Foley (ed.), New Englishes: The Case of Singapore, 148–168. Singapore: Singapore University Press. Ho, Mian Lian. 2003. Past tense marking in Singapore English. In: David Deterding, Low Ee Ling, and Adam Brown (eds.), English in Singapore: Research on Grammar, 39–47. Singapore: McGraw-Hill. Lee, Su Kim, King Siong Lee, Fook Fei Wong, and Azizah Ya’acob. 2010. The English language and its impact on identities of multilingual Malaysian undergraduates. GEMA Online Journal of Language Studies 10(1): 87–101. Lim, Gerard. 2001. Till death do us part: the case of Singaporean and Malaysian English. In: Vincent B. Y. Ooi (ed.), Evolving Identities: The English Language in Singapore and Malaysia, 125–139. Singapore: Times Academic Press. Low, Ee Ling, and Adam Brown. 2005. English in Singapore: An Introduction. Singapore: McGraw-Hill. Morais, Elaine. 2001. Lectal varieties of Malaysian English. In: Vincent B. Y. Ooi (ed.), Evolving Identities: The English Language in Singapore and Malaysia, 33–52. Singapore: Times Academic Press.

Pakir, Anne. 1995. Expanding triangles of English expression in Singapore: implications for teaching. In: Teng Su Ching, and Ho Mian Lian (eds.), The English Language in Singapore: Implications for Teaching, 1–13. Singapore: Singapore Association for Applied Linguistics. Pillai, Stefanie. 2006. Malaysian English as a first language. In: Maya. K. David (ed.), Language Choices and Discourse of Malaysian Families: Case Studies of Families in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, 61–75. Petaling Jaya: SIRD. Pillai, Stefanie. 2008a. A study of the use of English among undergraduates in Malaysia and Singapore. Southeast Asian Review of English 48: 19–38. Pillai, Stefanie. 2008b. Speaking English the Malaysian way – Correct or not? English Today 24(4): 42–45. Platt, John, and Heidi Weber. 1980. English in Singapore and Malaysia: Status, Features, Functions. Kuala Lumpur: Oxford University Press. Rajadurai, Joaane. 2006. Pronunciation issues in non-native contexts: A Malaysian case study. Malaysian Journal ELT Research Vol. 2: 42–59. Sim, Mui Kheng. 1993. A comparative study of English used by Mandarin-speaking and non-Mandarin-speaking Malaysian-Chinese university students. Unpublished Master’s Dissertation. University of Malaya. Singapore Census of Population. 2010. Advance Data Release No.1, Demographic Characteristics, Education, Language and Religion. Singapore: Singapore Dept. of Statistics. http://www.singstat.gov.sg/news/news/ press12012011.pdf Talbot, Dennis C. 1989. Comparison of the status and functions of English in Hong Kong, Malaysia and Singapore. Perspectives (1): 30–42. Tay, Mary Wan Joo. 1993. The English Language in Singapore: Issues and Development. Singapore: UniPress. Wee, Lionel. 2008. Singapore English: morphology and syntax. In: Rajend Mesthrie (ed.), Varieties of English: Africa, South and Southeast Asia, 593–609. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Wu, Feun Fang. 2003. English in a direct-selling company. Unpublished Masters Research Report. University of Malaya.

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Part VI: Australasia and the Pacific

Colloquial Australian English

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Colloquial Australian English 1 Introduction 1.1 Immigration and linguistic evolution Australian English is essentially a settler English (Schneider 2007), the language of British colonialists implanted on the east coast of the continent in 1780. The colony was established in Port Jackson (now Sydney Harbour) to accommodate the overflow of prison convicts from Britain, along with their military guardians. But free settlers also arrived from the British Isles in waves all through the 19th century, from England, Scotland and Ireland, bringing a variety of dialects and accents. These were leveled into a relatively homogenous Australian English speech through the 19th century (Moore 2008), along with distinctive lexical elements, affirmed in bush literature and ballads of the late 19th century, and in the Bulletin, a topical magazine with national circulation. The new Australian lexicon, especially terms for local flora and fauna, were codified in Morris’s (1898) Dictionary of Austral English. All these phenomena might seem to prefigure the early evolution of Australian English into a distinct variety, yet the evolutionary process seems to have been slowed by continuing affirmation of British English as the exonormative reference during the first half of the 20th century, while the so-called “white Australia policy” prevailed. World War II was a watershed, paving the way for the influx of refugees from many parts of Europe. The government’s immigration policy changed to include large numbers of immigrants from southern Europe (Italy, Greece), from the Middle East (Egypt, Lebanon), and increasingly from Asia (from China, Vietnam, Korea, Hong Kong). In the late 20th century immigrants began to arrive from South America (Chile, Columbia), as well as from the Pacific Islands (especially Fiji), and now (21st century) from Africa (Sudan etc.) Despite the linguistic diversity brought by immigrants to Australia, English was and is the dominant language in its continental habitat. It is the only official language, unlike Canada, New Zealand or South Africa in this respect. It is the language of education at all levels from primary to tertiary, the language of the professions and all the major media, and for the majority, the language of socialization. The English language in Australia has not undergone any reconstruction under influence of other languages, and so the distinctive features of Australian English in phonology and grammar (Peters and Burridge 2012) are often shared with other British settler varieties, although in somewhat different configurations. For all that, Australian English is now regarded as a fully fledged endonormative variety in terms of Schneider’s (2007) key linguistic and sociohistorical criteria for the evolution of new Englishes. The question is whether it now manifests the internal differentiation into distinct sociolects and registers which are associated with stage 5, the final stage in Schneider’s model.

1.2 Sociolinguistic diversity Within Australia, regional variation can be found, but not according to the dialectology models of the 19th century and earlier 20th century. Instead, divergent trends between city and country were observed in Australia-wide research on adolescent speech (Mitchell and Delbridge 1966), with the proportion of “broad” speakers (as opposed to “general”) being much higher in rural schools. Ethnolectal differences were found among immigrant groups (Italian, Greek) in Sydney by Horvath (1985), though the broad vowels of the first generation were less pronounced in the second. So regional variation intersects with social variation, as is clear with the two most distinctive sociolects to be found:

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rural spoken dialect, e.g. Tasmanian “rural workers/working class men” Aboriginal English (cf. Malcolm, this volume).

Both these are identifiable with a particular social group: the first as a sociolect, the second as an ethnolect. But the features of colloquial AusE identified in the Overview (see appendix) are not confined to a particular social or ethnic group, and have more to do with the context of communication, wherever it can be casual and relaxed. It is an informal register characterized by colloquial usage, and it does not reflect the speaker’s socioeconomic status. It is used by Australians of European background, and well-assimilated immigrants of Asian and other backgrounds. This colloquial AusE seems to reflect the fact that Australian culture is informal in its orientation and value system. AusE linguistic selections are often informal where there are standard and formal alternatives (Peters 2001, 2007). So this prevailingly informal style, associated with casual conversation among Australians at large, is the variety to which we are applying the term “colloquial AusE” for the purposes of this chapter.

2 Sources of evidence on colloquial AusE 2.1 Researching informal contexts of speaking Authentic spoken interaction is notoriously difficult to capture because the researcher cannot avoid the observer’s paradox. Even when the data is gathered by an insider belonging to the social group, the recording device is an intrusion, though its presence can be masked or overlooked as the conversation develops. The informality which prompts informal language is generated in situ, depending on the relative status of the speakers (more or less equal), their being acquainted to some extent, and their moods of the moment. The conversation needs to sustain itself, so that a consistently informal tenor is maintained, so colloquial and nonstandard expressions cannot be regarded as mere “performance error”. Fully recorded conversations are more satisfactory sources of evidence than notebook records of informal features observed, let alone impressionistic data stored in memory. For this volume, we decided to refer to corpus evidence as far as possible, and to build the profile of colloquial AusE that way.

2.2 Corpora of AusE informal speech Two corpora of transcribed speech provided samples of AusE conversation by younger and older adult speakers. –

–

ICE-AUS, category S1A “private conversation”: this segment of the corpus contains 200,000 words of transcribed conversation from 1992 to 1995, extracted from 100 conversations between “educated” adults, i.e. those who had completed secondary schooling. Many of these were collected by undergraduate students among their peers, but others involved older adults and relatives. The corpus thus provides substantial data within a generational spectrum, while avoiding what might be thought of as developmental phenomena (i.e. nonstandard features used by children or early adolescents still acquiring the lower frequency elements of the lexicogrammar). ART (Australian Radio Talkback): this contains about 250,000 words transcribed from talkback radio (2004 to 2006), broadcast over national (public) and commercial radio, in discussions between high profile anchorpersons and largely middle-aged to older adults. In generational terms this data complements that of ICE-AUS, and though the conversationalists are not exactly equal in status, the tenor of the conversation is pervasively informal, so as to provide easy listening for the unseen audience.

These two corpora were searched for quantitative data on the various colloquial features discussed, and to provide a basis for the ratings (A, B and C), shown in the overview (see appendix). Frequencies of greater than 10 are ranked A (= “pervasive” or “obligatory”), which provides strong evidence for them being established

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features of colloquial AusE. Items ranked B (= “neither pervasive nor rare”) are based on frequencies of 2 to 9 instances; and those ranked C (“feature exists, but is rare”) are represented by only a single instance. Small corpora are necessarily gappy when it comes to low frequency features, and on a handful of those listed above as C or B, we invoke data from other sections of ICE-AUS corpus than SIA (“private conversation”), including S1B “dialogue, public“, S2A “unscripted monologue“, W1 “nonprinted writing”, and W7 “creative writing” i.e. fiction (where the example comes from scripted dialogue). Very occasionally we have used data published by other researchers, when it is primary source material. Impressionistic “evidence” has thus been avoided, except to widen the basis of attestation.

3 Notable aspects of WAVE profile in Colloquial AusE 3.1 Feature counts from spoken corpora, and their rankings Almost 75 % of the WAVE features do not apply to colloquial AusE, no doubt because many relate to newer pidgins and creoles, or to British dialects whose speakers did not come in large-enough numbers to Australia. There was a very large number of Xs “not applicable” 89/235; and the number of Ds “attested absence” (59/235) was almost equal to the combined total of As, Bs, and Cs shown below. Of the 60 features found in the Australian spoken sources, only 5 could be ranked A by the criteria discussed above (see section 2.2): the great majority were Bs and Cs. Table 1 below shows both the raw numbers of the ranked features in each category, and their relative concentrations. Category of features Pronouns NP VP #1,#2,#3,#4 Negation Agreement Relativisation Complementation Adverbial subord. Adverbs/preps Discourse/Word order Total

Total number of features in WAVE profile 47 40 66 16 15 15 11 15 17 13 235

Rank A features in coll. AusE

2 1

1 1 5

Rank B features in coll. AusE 18 13 19 13 11 13 11 11 12 12 33

Rank C features in coll. AusE

Total number % of WAVE of WAVE features features found in in coll. AusE coll. AusE

13 15 13 13 15 11 11 11 22

11 18 14 16 17 14 11 12 13 14 60

23.4 20.0 21.2 37.5 46.6 26.6 19.0 40.0 42.8 30.7 25.5

Table 1: Colloquial features of AusE from the WAVE profile with their corpus-based rankings

The finding that there are relatively few A-ranked features in our spoken data suggests that the borderline between colloquial and standard AusE is not sharply drawn in contemporary urban Australia. The data do not suggest any particular concentration of colloquial features that occur in informal spoken interactions. In fact many of the features found in the conversational corpora could have been further exemplified from more formal types of speaking (the “unscripted monologue” category of ICE-AUS (= S2A), from fictional narrative (W2F) and everyday prose (e.g. newspapers (=W2C). These features are not associated more with uneducated than educated speakers, or with speakers of lower rather than higher SES. They are simply colloquial – characteristic of informal contexts of communication, or ones which are not deemed to require formal usage and the niceties of syntax, as found in previous corpus-based studies of written AusE (Peters 2001). Table 1 also shows the syntactic areas in which the WAVE features found in colloquial AusE tend to concentrate. The largest number (including A- and B-ranking features) are found in the VP category, although those found in AusE are a relatively small proportion of the total, it being the largest category within the

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WAVE profile. The same goes for the pronoun features, which are quite numerous within the AusE set, but constitute a low percentage of the overall WAVE set, and do not include any A-ranking feature. The highest percentages of any WAVE category to be found in AusE are the features relating to agreement (46.6 %), followed by the adverbs/prepositions (42.8 %), both of which include an A-ranking feature.

3.2 Research on the A-ranked features of colloquial AusE 3.2.1 Leveling of past tense/past participle forms in irregular verb paradigms (F131) This phenomenon is common in colloquial AusE, especially with verbs of the sing/sang/sung paradigm, many of whose members have already leveled the earlier distinction between past tense and past participle in standard English (e.g. fling>flung). The trend was well established with the use of shrunk, sung in 19th century British English, according to Fowler (1926), although standard British English seems to have restored the distinct past tense and past participle. Leveled past forms are still strongly represented in contemporary British dialects and in British material on the internet (Anderwald 2007). The 19th century trend would explain the use of the leveled forms in AusE, evidenced with multiple examples of begun, rung, shrunk, sprung, swum as past tense in ICE-AUS and ART, and also in North American English, as affirmed in large reference dictionaries for Canada and the US in the entry for shrink and spring (Peters 2004: 299, 513). In survey data on AusE returned in 2002, the leveled past tense forms were used by a large majority (over 65 %) of Australians aged 10–24 and more than 50 % of those aged up to 45 (Collins and Peters 2008: 344).

3.2.2 Indicative past was rather than past subjunctive were in conditional clauses (F147) Corpus-based research on AusE (Peters 1998), found that Australian writers preferred was rather than were after if in conditional clauses by more than 2 to 1. The trend reflects the contracting use of the subjunctive in English generally (Johansson and Norheim 1988). Australian survey data on the use of the past subjunctive after if collected in 1993 and again in 2007 showed a substantial decline in its endorsement, from a small majority (62 %) to only 21 % of those responding. Those who commented said there was no need for the past subjunctive were, because if carried the conditional sense. There were examples in plenty, to be found in the private conversations of ICE-AUS and the radio discussions of ART, confirming its use by younger and older Australians.

3.2.3 Existential there’s with a plural subject (F172) Singular agreement” in existential there constructions (those where the post-verbal subject is plural, but the verb is singular) is on the rise in contemporary English (Collins 2012). This corpus-based research finds it to be more frequent in AusE than in seven other Englishes. In all three “Inner Circle” varieties studied (American, British and Australian English), contraction of is to ’s was close to 100 % in there-existentials with singular agreement (AusE 98.7 %, AmE 97.1 %, and BrE 96.2 %). By contrast the ‘Outer Circle’ Englishes (SingE, PhilE, HKE, IndE, KenE) average only 62 %, a finding which is attributable to the background settings of these newer varieties, specifically “the elitism of English and the role education has played in their institutionalization of English” (p.65). It is unsurprising that singular agreement in there-existentials should be popular in AusE (even more so than in AmE), given the well-attested penchant of Australian speakers for informality and colloquialism (see above, section 2.2).

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3.2.4 Adverbs with the same form as adjectives (F221) The “zero-marked” adverb is well attested in indigenous Australian dictionaries, and the evidence from our Australian corpora (ICE-AUS S1A) is very strong. Data can be found for at least six adverbs occurring three or more times with and without -ly, with the number of zero-marked tokens shown after the slash: close (7/3), direct (3/2), high (7/3), quick (4/3), slow (3/6), wrong (12/1). These findings can be interestingly compared with those found in Opdahl’s (1991) findings for British English, based on four corpora including the London-Lund Corpus of Spoken British English (LLC). Although LLC with its 500,000 words is more than twice as large as the ICE-AUS conversational data, all but the last of the adverbs listed above is more frequently found in zero form in the Australian data than the British, with slow as the stand-out case. Opdahl also suggests (1993: 23) that the number of non-ly adverbs in LLC is low by comparison with her data from written (especially narrative) corpora, confirming that this feature is by no means confined to spoken English.

3.2.5 Like as a focusing device (F234) In his research on the use of like as a discourse marker in AusE and NZE, Miller (2009) observes its rise in colloquial AusE and NZE, alongside older established rivals such as well, you know and so. His research, using ICE-AUS and ART, differentiates the functions of like according to whether it occurs in clause-initial position (as exemplification), clause-medially (to highlight something), or clause-finally (countering or anticipating incorrect inferences), distinctions not noted in previous research. Miller finds slightly higher frequencies for focusing like in AusE, and a stronger preference for medial position than in NZE. He notes that these uses of like are not confined to younger people, as is sometimes said, but uses evidence from ART to show it being used by middle-aged adults in radio talkback.

4 AusE and world English None of the features from WAVE profile is exclusively Australian in the sense that it occurs nowhere else than in AusE. However there are additional specifications to add to the WAVE variable, as a result of research carried out on their contexts of occurrence in AusE. Two such cases are discussed below.

4.1 Present perfect for StE simple past (F100) The atypical ‘quasi-preterite’ use of the perfect aspect has been discussed in relation to several varieties of English, especially in relation to radio broadcasting, in radio headlines and news bulletins (Quinn 1999, Engel and Ritz 2000). Using data from the Australian corpora, Elsness (2009) was able to demonstrate its wider use in everyday AusE speech, where is typically used to express temporal progression in vivid narratives. What makes it distinctive is its co-occurrence with a temporal adjunct referring to a specific time or time interval disconnected from the present, and as in (1): (1) Cos I’ve printed them on Wednesday to make sure because yeah like

[ICE-AUS S1A-021:59].

This example excerpted from personal narrative shows how the speaker’s engagement with past and present merge: conveying the relevance of the current situation as no less important than specifying the time of the completed action. The example illustrates the combination of present perfect and a specific past time reference, expressed by means of an adverbial phrase (or clause), which is not spelled out in the WAVE feature list, and marks its departure from standard BrE. Its frequency with those specifications in the AusE spoken corpora put it firmly in the B category.

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4.2 Clause-final but (F211/F212) The two types of clause-final but included in the WAVE inventory are distinguished by means of carrying the senses ‘though’ and ‘really’ respectively, which serve to identify the first as having a concessive/contrastive sense and the second a more affirmative sense. Yet research by Mulder et al. (2009) suggests that there are two subtypes of the concessive final but, both of which are intonation-unit final and turn-yielding, but prosodically distinguishable. The first, “final hanging but”, leaves the contrastive content hanging as merely an implication, which is signaled by the absence of final falling intonation, as in (2): (2) (A) They give you some sort of certificate. I’m sure it’s not PADI but, (B) Mmm OK

[ICE-AUS S1A-003:169–74]

The second, “final particle but”, makes the contrastive element more explicit with falling intonation, as in: (3) (A) I’m going to the Jugs on Friday I want the address. (B) Probably Forename4’ll wanna hit the town but. (A) Yeah well

[ICE-AUS S1A-039(A):179–84]

With its stronger contrast, the latter has evolved into the “final particle” discourse marker, in Mulder et al.’s view. Because the distinction is signaled prosodically, it goes beyond the specifications of the WAVE variable, and both types may be evident in other varieties of English if included in further research. In Mulder et al’s research, the first but not the second type could be found in AmE. The presence of both in AusE gives F211 a B ranking.

5 Features of colloquial AusE not included in WAVE profile Two examples are provided below of common features of colloquial AusE not listed in the WAVE profile. One is a recent discourse marker, the other a very well-established type of colloquial usage: the use of hypocoristic forms of words for conversational solidarity.

5.1 Yeah-no A discourse marker not on the WAVE list which may be unique to AusE is yeah-no. There are 40 instances of it in ICE-AUS S1A and the ART corpus, so it would easily qualify by our criteria as a Category A feature of Colloquial AusE. Its frequency in ART supports the claim (Burridge and Florey 2002) that yeah-no is on the rise in Australia. It serves to maintain discourse cohesion and speaker rapport, by linking together different speakers’ contributions to the discussion. It is used, they suggest, where there is agreement yet the speaker wishes to include a negative response to remove any possibility of contradiction, as in the following corpus example: (4) (A) Oh it’s just all “fun and games” you know. It’s just um just to to sort of lighten the load really (B) Yeah no, I understand, it’s Australian language slang [ICE-AUS S1A-011:136–8]. Here yeah-no displays its typical propositional function of expressing both assent and dissent, reflecting the conversational preference for agreement and compromise that has been noted to be strong in Anglo-Australian culture (Allan and Burridge 1991). As the dialogue in (5) shows, yeah-no also serves an interpersonal hedging and face-saving role by softening and reducing the force of an utterance: (5) (A) What did you do on the holidays? (B) Mate I had such a good time (…) (A) Bewdy cobber (B) Yeah No I had a great time I uhm I went to uh went home for two wee fo for a week [ICE-AUS S1A-038:68–78]

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Here student (B)’s Yeah No mitigates the otherwise possibly bathetic effect among his peers of saying that going home for the holidays was actually enjoyable – thereby reinforcing conversational solidarity.

5.2 Colloquial patterns in lexis: derivational morphology of informal discourse The AusE penchant for creating ad hoc informal words, usually by abbreviating and then extending them with hypocoristic suffixes such as -ie and -o is a pervasive feature of casual conversation (cf. Simpson: 2008). Words formed in this way seem designed to play down any inherent pretentiousness, to be “depreciative” (Wierzbicka 1992: 384–386), and to seek solidarity through casual reference to a familiar entity. These informal words can be created out of both common and proper nouns, for which Aussie (“Australian”) is the prototype. There are numerous examples in ICE-AUS and ART, such as: (6) mozzie “mosquito” rego “car registration”

pressie “present” metho “methylated spirits”

footy “football” specio “special staffer”

Hypocoristics like these may be either so widely used as to be listed in AusE dictionaries (like the first five), or ad hoc coinings in a given context (like the sixth). Both -ie and -o types of hypocoristics are used in New Zealand as well as Australia (Bardsley and Simpson, 2009), though both would seem to have originated in AusE (Peters 2009b: 115–119; Peters and Burridge 2012). They illustrate the fact that lexicogrammar is a likely site for linguistic innovation among new varieties of English (Schneider 2007), especially in the colloquial register.

6 Conclusions The WAVE profile embraces most of the well-attested colloquial features of AusE morphosyntax, and it suggests a way to roughly calibrate their frequency. It highlights the fact that the most frequently evidenced features of AusE are morphologically marked one way or the other, in their inflectional and derivational morphology. Four of them are the A-ranked features: levelling of contrasts in verb paradigms (F131), use of was rather than were (F147), singular there’s with plural subject (F172), and zero rather than -ly forms of adverbs (F221). A fifth example is the use of hypocoristic forms with -ie and -o. The other high-frequency features on which we have put the spotlight are notable as discourse markers: the A-ranked use of like as a focusing device (F234), and the recently identified modulator yeah–no, both geared to the dynamics of conversational interaction. All of the features are stylistically marked as informal, and recurrent elements of colloquial AusE. Further evidence-based research on the realization of the WAVE features is the key to whether or not they are strictly comparable across all varieties of English. The WAVE profile invites finer grained intercomparisons among settler and indigenized varieties of world Englishes, and old and new dialects of the language. It provides the matrix for a better understanding of the vernacular universals of English.

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Appendix: Overview of WAVE features attested in colloquial Australian English # 1 3 7 8 9 12 14

26 28 29 34

55 56 68 70

78

79 80 81 88

89

96 99

feature AusE example I. Pronouns, pronoun exchange, nominal gender she/her used for inanimate referents She’s a twenty point five metre sloop again designed by Kel Steinman an Australian [ICE-AUS S2A-020:176] alternative forms/phrases for referential I think it’s better to wait ’til after she’s had the thing (non-dummy) it [=Christmas dinner] [ICE-AUS S1A-016(B):92] me instead of I in coordinate subjects Me and Firstname got right in the front [ICE-AUS S1A-005:234] myself/meself instead of I in coordinate And uhm uh my uncle my aunt and myself went to the t restaurant subjects [ICE-AUS S1A-038:284] benefactive “personal dative” construction Yeah you’ll like got you a stack of them actually. (using the object form of the pronoun) [ART ABCne1:[E1]] object pronoun forms serving as base for I’d I’ll pay for meself [ICE-AUS S1A-017:280] first and/or second person reflexives no number distinction in reflexives how to behave and conduct ourself on Crete. [ART ABCnat1:C10]; (i.e .plural forms ending in -self) It’s Like everybody Like you know how they’d introduce themself [ICE-AUS S1A-031(D):287] object pronoun forms as (modifying) … ’n me wife said “Ah you’re gunna kill it” possessive pronouns: first person singular [ARTCOMne4:[Caller 6:Ron,M]] use of us + NP in subject function us girls just stand back against the fence where it’s safe [ICE-AUS S1A-031:14] use of us in object function (with singular give us a taste [ICE-AUS S1A-060:64] referent) forms or phrases for the second person I could see youse talkin’ to him [ICE-AUS S1A-050:172]; so how plural pronoun other than you long have you guys been married? [ICE-AUS S1A-054:219] II. Noun phrase different count/mass noun distinctions it’s so variable between schools and between staffs like where I resulting in use of plural for StE singular am [ICE-AUS S1A-040:184] absence of plural marking only after She was about ten tonne [ICE-AUS S1A-018:251]; Mm No about quantifiers two three foot on the south side [ICE-AUS S1A-024:135] them instead of demonstrative those There’s money for them people [COMe5:[P2]] proximal and distal demonstratives with Folks this here this is what we call Talaringa Lookout here and there: this here, that there; dis-ya, [ICE-AUS S2A-059:71] dis-de; dem-ya, dem-de; dis ya/dis de, dem ya/dem de, etc. double comparatives and superlatives Another area where you have to pay much more higher fees [ICE-AUS S1B-078:169] I was the most dullest thing that ever happened to that woman [ICE-AUS S1A-039:367] regularized comparison strategies: She’s a much confidenter shooter these days; he’s the winningest extension of synthetic marking coach in the league (Newbrook 2001: 130) regularized comparison strategies: that’s just the easiest most simple idea [ART COMe1:C6] extension of analytic marking much as comparative marker It is much easy to say it in writing [ICE-AUS W1B-013 22] III. Verb phrase: tense and aspect wider range of uses of progressive be + Were you wanting to make a booking? [ICE-AUS S1A-071:398]; V-ing than in StE: extension to stative Viv um you want to talk about the pill if you’re already having uh verbs ye osteoporosis. [ART ABCnat4:[P1]] wider range of uses of progressive be + I’ve always been waiting for another message from you but it V-ing than in StE: extension to habitual hasn’t come [ICE-AUS S1A-028:52] contexts there with past participle in resultative there’s actually two studies done by the same group contexts [ART ABCnat4:[E1]] levelling of the difference between it was the first book that I ever owned myself present perfect and simple past: simple [ICE-AUS S1A-055:298] past for StE present perfect

rating C B B C C B B

B B B B

C C B B

C

C B C B

B

B B

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100

102

levelling of the difference between present perfect and simple past: present perfect for StE simple past be as perfect auxiliary

113

loosening of sequence of tenses rule

122

VI. Verb phrase: modal verbs epistemic mustn’t

129 130

131

139

V. Verb phrase: verb morphology levelling of past tense/past participle verb forms: unmarked forms levelling of past tense/past participle verb forms: past tense replacing the past participle levelling of past tense/past participle verb forms: past participle replacing past tense

145

distinctive forms for auxiliary vs. full verb meanings of primary verbs (i.e. of do, be, have) use of gotten instead of got

147

was for conditional were

159

VII. Negation multiple negation / negative concord ain’t as the negated form of be ain’t as the negated form of have invariant don’t for all persons in the present tense never as preverbal past tense negator

163

was – weren’t split

154 155 156 158

170 171

172 174 175 180 181

185

VIII. Agreement invariant present tense forms due to zero marking for the third person singular invariant present tense forms due to generalization of 3rd person -s to all persons existential / presentational there’s/there is/there was with plural subjects deletion of auxiliary be: before progressive deletion of auxiliary be: before gonna was/were generalization agreement sensitive to subject type (nominal vs. pronominal) IX. Relativization relativizer that or what in non-restrictive contexts

Tim, I’ve just coincidentally finished reading Cloudstreet three weeks ago [ART ABCnat2]

B

You’re too soggy altogether. You’re completely had it. [ICE-AUS S1B-060:190] on the bus yesterday I thought we agreed [‘had agreed’] that if I hadn’t rung by eleven then you know you’d just do your own thing [ICE-AUS S1A-007(B):237]

C

He mustn’t have wanted the tokens because he came up and give them to me (Collins 2009:88)

C

Apparently they’ve give you up [ICE-AUS S1A-060:186]

B

If you would’ve went to [Town name] [ICE-AUS S1A-053:125]

B

Oh, I had the impression she begun the whole thing [S1A-084 (3150]; that’s hard to do when somebody like Roy sung it. [ART COMe4:[P1]] I didn’t know what I did – what I done. [Eisikovits 1989: 45]

A

there’s a lot of people who would have gotten that joke [ICE-AUS S1A-038(A):101] Would you still like me if I was ugly and fat? [ICE-AUS S1A-082:153]

B

I don’t know of no studies done [ART ABCe4:E1] Well hopefully ain’t nobody. [ART COMe4:C8] I ain’t got no money [ICE-AUS S1A-007:123] I says she don’t look too good. [ICE-AUS S1A-073:306]

B C C B

when we did that settlement back in uh in two-thousand-and-five you never told me about your superannuation [ART COMne5:[E1]] S1A-066(A):459 And there was only less at David Jones’ city store Oh there weren’t on the news there were a lot more [ICE-AUS S1A-066(A):459]

B

And a and a copper come up and said um “And how is she?” [ICE-AUS S1A-073:304] “How is she?” I says “She don’t look too good” [ICE-AUS S1A-073:306]

C

there’s some questions on the board [ICE-AUS S1B-015:37]

A

Okay so you seeing anything on the tops? [ART BCe1:E1]

C

You gonna be away all weekend? [ICE-AUS S1A-039:187] Yeah ‘cos we were watching that and they was, I dunno, I dunno, they were just throwing things [ICE-AUS S1A-045:111] but these laws seems to be cutting across the whole board [ART ABC nat5:c48]

B C

In doing this I shall show that Australia has acted in a way forced upon her self by her geo-political position, that has attempted to ensure regional and therefore Australia’s own security. [ICE-AUS W1A-006:41]

B

B

C

A

C

C

C

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193 197 198

204

211 212 216

220 221

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gapping/zero-relativization in subject position “linking relative clauses” (without direct antecedent) deletion of stranded prepositions in relative clauses (“preposition chopping”) X. Complementation as what / than what in comparative clauses XI. Adverbial subordination clause-final but = ’though’ clause-final but = ’really’ XII. Adverbs and prepositions omission of StE prepositions (not necessarily with prepositional verbs, but e.g. locative prepositions and prepositions before temporal expressions) degree modifier adverbs have the same form as adjectives other adverbs have the same form as adjectives

It was you charged ’im with assault in the first place. [ICE-AUS W2F-004:148] it’s been attacked by a by a caterpillar as well which I’ve managed to pick off most of those [ART ABCe1:[C2]] if you don’t know the place you were born you’re very stuck then [ICE-AUS S1A-064:286]

B

it just tended to kick the hail off a bit more than what we’d expected [ART COMe4:P1]

B

Yeah it would fit in but [ICE-AUS S1A-049:261] it was really interesting but [ICE-AUS S1A-072:287]

B C

You can go Thursday night [ICE-AUS S1A-058:170]

B

blue-tongues aren’t real good on walking on the side of houses [ARTABCe4:M1] I might go a bit slow today though I think [ICE-AUS S1A-081:213] that’s how I’m gonna do economics, go direct into second year [S1A-088(A):333] XIII. Discourse organization and word order other options for clefting than StE what he did he painted the rusty fridge with blackboard paint [ART ABCe2:[P1]] no inversion/no auxiliaries in main clause You want to sell me a house or not? [ICE-AUS S1A-008(B):194]; yes/no questions You been to one of our meetings before? [ICE-AUS S1B-068:46] like as a focusing device Yeah it was like a hundred and fifteen dollars [ICE-AUS S1A-003:34] like as a quotative particle I saw him like ‘hi’! [ICE-AUS S1A-012:77]

C B

B A

B B A C

References Anderwald, Lieselotte. 2007. “He rung the bell” and “she drunk ale”. In: Marianne Hundt, Nadja Nesselhauf, and Carolin Biewer (eds.), Corpus Linguistics and the Web, 271–285. Amsterdam: Rodopi. Bardsley, Dianne, and Jane Simpson. 2009. Hypocoristics in New Zealand and Australian English. In: Pam Peters, Peter Collins, and Adam Smith (eds.), Comparative Studies in Australian and New Zealand English: Grammar and Beyond, 49–69. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Blair, David, and Peter Collins (eds.). 2001. English in Australia. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Burridge, Kate, and Margaret Florey. 2002. ‘Yeah-no he’s a good kid’: A discourse analysis of yeah-no in Australian English. Australian Journal of Linguistics 22: 149–171. Collins, Peter. 2009. Modals and Quasi-modals in English. Amsterdam: Rodopi. Collins, Peter. 2012. Singular agreement in there-existentials. English World-Wide 33: 51–63. Collins, Peter, and Pam Peters. 2008. Australian English: morphology and syntax. In: Kate Burridge, and Bernd Kortmann (eds.), The Pacific and Australasia: 341–361. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Eisikovits, Edina. 1989. Girl-talk/boy-talk: sex differences in adolescent speech. In: Pam Peters, Peter Collins, and

Adam Smith (eds.), Comparative Studies in Australian and New Zealand English: Grammar and Beyond, 35–54. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Elsness, Johan. 2009. The perfect and the preterite in Australian and New Zealand English. In: Pam Peters, Peter Collins, and Adam Smith (eds.), Comparative Studies in Australian and New Zealand English: Grammar and Beyond, 89–114. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Engel, Dulcie, and Marie-Eve Ritz. 2000. The use of the present perfect in Australian English. Australian Journal of Linguistics 20: 119–140. Horvath, Barbara. 1985. Variation in Australian English: The Sociolects of Sydney. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Johannson, Stig, and Else Norheim. 1988. The subjunctive in British and American English. ICAME Journal 12: 27–36. Miller, Jim. 2009. Like and other discourse markers. In: Pam Peters, Peter Collins, and Adam Smith (eds.), Comparative Studies in Australian and New Zealand English: Grammar and Beyond, 315–336. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Mitchell, Alec, and Arthur Delbridge. 1966. The Speech of Australia Adolescents. Sydney: Angus and Robertson.

Colloquial Australian English

Moore, Bruce. 2008. Speaking our Language: The Story of Australian English. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Morris, Edward. 1898 [1972]. A Dictionary of Austral English. Sydney: Sydney University Press. Mulder, Jean, Sandra Thompson, and Cara Penry-Williams. 2009. Final but in Australian English conversation. In: Pam Peters, Peter Collins, and Adam Smith (eds.), Comparative Studies in Australian and New Zealand English: Grammar and Beyond, 337–358. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Newbrook, Mark. 2001. Syntactic features and norms in Australian English. In: David Blair, and Peter Collins (eds.), English in Australia, 113–132. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Opdahl, Lise. 1991. -LY as adverbial suffix: corpus and elicitation material compared. ICAME Journal 15: 19–36. Peters, Pam. 1998. The survival of the subjunctive. English World-Wide 19: 87–103. Peters, Pam. 2001. Corpus evidence on some points of usage. In: David Blair, and Peter Collins (eds.), English in Australia, 163–178. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Peters, Pam. 2004. The Cambridge Guide to English Usage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Peters, Pam. 2007. Similes and other evaluative idioms in Australian English. In: Paul Skandera (ed.), Phraseology and Culture in English, 235–255. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Peters, Pam. 2009a. Irregular verbs, regularization and ongoing variability. In: Pam Peters, Peter Collins, and Adam Smith (eds.), Comparative Studies in Australian and

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New Zealand English: Grammar and Beyond, 13–29. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Peters, Pam. 2009b. Australian English as a regional epicentre. In: Thomas Hoffmann, and Lucia Siebers (eds.), World Englishes – Problems, Properties and Prospects, 107–124. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Peters, Pam, and Kate Burridge. 2012. English in Australia and New Zealand. In: Raymond Hickey (ed.), Areal Features of the Anglophone World. Berlin/New York: de Gruyter Mouton. Peters, Pam, Peter Collins, and Adam Smith (eds.). 2009. Comparative Studies in Australian and New Zealand English: Grammar and Beyond. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Quinn, Heidi. 1999. Variation in New Zealand English syntax and morphology. In: Allan Bell, and Koenraad Kuiper (eds.), New Zealand English, 173–197. London: Routledge. Quinn, Heidi. 2009. Pronoun forms. In: Pam Peters, Peter Collins, and Adam Smith (eds.), Comparative Studies in Australian and New Zealand English: Grammar and Beyond, 31–47. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Schneider, Edgar. 2002. Post-Colonial English: Varieties around the World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Simpson, Jane. 2008. Hypocoristics in Australian English. In: Kate Burridge, and Bernd Kortmann (eds.), The Pacific and Australasia: 398–414. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Wierzbicka, Anna. 1992. Semantics, Culture and Cognition. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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Ian G. Malcolm

Aboriginal English and associated varieties* 1 Introduction Aboriginal English coexists in Australia with the transported, or “settler”, varieties (Collins and Peters 2008) of English: Australian English and Australian Vernacular English, as well as with the major creole varieties: Torres Strait Creole and Roper River Creole (generally considered, with closely related varieties, under the title Kriol). Like the varieties of Australian English, it drew, in the past, on the English varieties brought by settlers to Australia from the 18th century, probably predominantly varieties from Southeast England and Ireland (Taylor 2000; Collins and Blair 2000). However, unlike the varieties of Australian English, it has been influenced by – or been a part of – the contact processes which have led to the existence of pidgins and creoles. This chapter attempts to take advantage of the data provided by the WAVE matrix to enable Aboriginal English to be better understood in relation to the main varieties with which it has had contact, both in Australia’s colonial past and in the present. By examining the features of Aboriginal English shared by varieties of Australian English and creole, as well as by the English of Southeast England and of Ireland, it is hoped that this Aboriginal dialect of English will be able to be more accurately characterised.

2 Socio-cultural background 2.3 % of the Australian population consists of people of Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander descent and of these 88 % speak English at home (Australian Bureau of Statistics 2011). Studies in Aboriginal communities in diverse parts of Australia (for overview, see e.g., Malcolm 2000a) have shown that the English spoken by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians is distinct from the other main varieties of English spoken in Australia, Australian English (incorporating standard and colloquial varieties (Pawley 2008)) and Australian Vernacular English. Although there is regional variation in the forms of Aboriginal English spoken (see, e.g., Kaldor and Malcolm 1979), there is enough in common for them to be regarded as a distinctive dialect, or ethnolect (see Eagleson, Kaldor and Malcolm 1982: 103–105; Harkins 2000: 61; Malcolm 2005). The differences between the English of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander speakers and that of other Australians reflect the historical differences in their development, the former being the result, at least in part, of language contact and the latter the outcome, at least in part, of levelling of transported varieties. While many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians can switch between their own variety and Standard Australian English, many others have difficulty in doing so, and there are constraints on the use of Standard Australian English in Aboriginal contexts. The status of Aboriginal English in relation to Australian English has popularly been viewed in deficit terms, the assumption being made by the majority population (and even accepted by some of its speakers) that the former is a variant of the latter, characterised by inadequate attention to its norms. Where this assumption influences provisions made for education it can lead to unrealistic demands being made for Aboriginal English speakers to achieve the same Australian English language and literacy standards as other Australians without appropriate support. Clarification of the relationship between Aboriginal English and its associated varieties could contribute to changing this situation.

* I am grateful to Diana Eades and Patricia Königsberg for helpful comments on an earlier version of this chapter.

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597

3 The WAVE profile of Aboriginal English, in relation to Southeast English, Irish English, Australian English, Australian Vernacular English, Roper River Creole (Kriol) and Torres Strait Creole The World Atlas of Varieties of English (WAVE) profile has enabled some 74 varieties of English (including English-based creoles) from 8 world regions to be compared, initially with respect to 235 potentially variant grammatical features. The variant features are organized into 13 groups, facilitating the comparison and contrast of varieties with respect to different processes of the English grammatical system. A survey of the 235 potentially variant features was carried out to determine which were in evidence in Aboriginal English. The rating system used allowed for features known to exist in the dialect to be recorded as ‘A’ pervasive or obligatory; ‘B’ neither pervasive nor extremely rare; or ‘C’ extremely rare. The analysis provided here focuses primarily on features rated in categories ‘A’ or ‘B’ in Aboriginal English, and compares them with their ratings in the related varieties. A total of 86 features rated ‘A’ or ‘B’ were found to be relevant. A further 22 features were rated ‘C’ (for the complete list of WAVE features attested in Aboriginal English see Appendix 1).

3.1 Aboriginal English features across varieties Table 1, WAVE features shared with Aboriginal English (see Appendix 2), which makes use of the feature numbers from the WAVE list, shows the features which were found in Aboriginal English and the extent to which they were also found in: (a) the varieties of English spoken in the Southeast of England (hereafter, Southeast English) and Irish English, as varieties considered closest to the most influential initial English influence in Australia; (b) Australian English and Australian Vernacular English, as the most pervasive varieties in the contemporary Australian speech community as a whole, and (c) Roper River Creole (Kriol) and Torres Strait Creole, as the most pervasive English-based creoles in Aboriginal Australia. Table 2 (below) provides a broad-brush picture of the grammatical relatedness of Aboriginal English to each of these varieties, showing that (on the basis of A and B ratings) from 27 % (in Southeast English) to 59 % (in Torres Strait Creole) of the isolated features are shared. It shows that, while bearing a strong grammatical relationship to other Englishes, Aboriginal English, with respect to these features, bears an even stronger – though not all-pervasive – relationship with creoles. It shows that the level of grammatical sharing of Aboriginal English with Australian English is comparable to that with Irish English, and is much lower than that with the creoles. It is also worthy of note that 39 % of the variant features shared between Aboriginal English and Australian English are extremely rare in either one or both dialects.

A,B (total 86) % A,B,C (total 108) %

SEE

IrE

AusE

AusVE

RRC

TSC

23

30

30

29

47

51

27 32

35 45

35 49

34 38

55 57

59 58

30

42

45

35

53

54

Table 2: Aboriginal English features shared with other varieties: Summary

598

Ian G. Malcolm

3.2 Areas of shared overlap For finer-grained analysis of the distribution of features, it is necessary to look at the level and nature of the overlap between varieties with which Aboriginal English shares features, and also at the details of the features and the categories to which they belong. When we examine to what extent the overlap of Southeast English with Aboriginal English is shared with Australian English, we find that over one third of the commonalities Aboriginal English has with Southeast English are not, according to the profile, shared by Australian English. These features include: (a) features rated A or B in Aboriginal English and Southeast English: 68 165

them in place of demonstrative those invariant non-coordinating tags (including eh?)

175

deletion of aux be before gonna

them blokes (K&M 1991: 74) You’ll get shame, eh?(K&M 1979: 427) Liddle woman head she is, unna, my Nan ‘She’s quite grown up, isn’t she, my granddaughter’ (Malcolm et al 2002: 40) You got a better car than that one, inna? ‘You have a better car than that one, haven’t you?’ (M&S 2007: 392) E Ø gonna come with us to station, eh? ‘Will he come with us to the station?’ (EKM 1982: 92)

Feature 165, perhaps surprisingly, is rated D in Australian English. In fact, the eh tag is commonly used by Australian English speakers, but the other tags are distinctively Aboriginal. The tag inna (and various allomorphs, including unna) in Aboriginal English reflects innit, which is considered to have originated in London (Anderwald 2008: 459). (b) features rated A or B in Aboriginal English and C in Southeast English 133

double marking of past tense

He caught a big flathead like that, and he ated it by hisself. (Sydney, EKM 1982: 119)

(c) features rated C in Aboriginal English and A or B in Southeast English 78 180

double comparatives and superlatives was/were generalization

204

as what/than what in comparative clauses

234

like as a focussing device

more longer (EKM 1982: 88) Dey was drivin’ … My cousin e’s name G …, he was drivin’ (Malcolm et al 1999: 52) it took us about- longer than what the canteen mob … (CALLR database, tape 213, metro) … she came in like a long skirt sort of thing … (Sharifian and Malcolm 2003: 334).

Feature 180 has been noted as “extremely frequently used” in the Southeast of England (Anderwald 2008: 448). It is often a marker of non-standard varieties of English (Hughes and Trudgill 1979: 56). In addition, some features rated as A or B in Aboriginal English and Southeast English have a minimal presence in Australian English, being rated C: 11 14 190

regularized reflexives (e.g. hisself) no plural distinction in reflexives relativizer what

hisself (K&M 1991: 73) theirself ‘themselves’ (Malcolm 1995: 143) That blue car what you got that’s a four cylinder (Malcolm et al 1999: 85)

The grammaticalization of -self as a simple reflexive marker not indicating number is common in Southeast England and the form hisself is regularly encountered (Anderwald 2008: 443). The question as to why some features common in the English of Southeast England are more evident in Aboriginal English than in Australian English requires an explanation, and it would seem reasonable to

Aboriginal English and associated varieties

599

assume that, in the period of their formation, Australian English and Aboriginal English, developing in distinctive circumstances and speech communities, were subject to different patterns of influence. A similar process is in evidence when we compare what Aboriginal English features Irish English shares with Australian English. Features not shared with Australian English include: (a) Features rated A or B in Aboriginal English and Irish English 43

subject pronoun drop: referential pronouns

68 174

them instead of demonstrative those Deletion of aux be before progressive

175

Deletion of aux be before gonna

208

deletion of to before infinitives

[Why else is water so important? Yes Ken] Ø don’t want to die. (EKM 1982: 187) them blokes (K&M 1991: 74) The nurse Ø comin soon, mum ‘The nurse will be coming soon, mum’ I Ø goin shame for her ‘I’m getting embarrassed for her’ (Malcolm et al 2002: 41, 64) E Ø gonna come with us to station, eh? ‘Will he come with us to the station?’ (EKM 1982: 92) We ‘ad Ø go back ‘We had to go back’ (WAACE database, Leonora L4B)

(b) Features rated A or B in Aboriginal English and C in Irish English 66

indefinite article one/wan

Longa Kildurk gotta one stumpy-tail horse ‘At Kildurk there is a stumpy-tailed horse’ (Kimberley, EKM 1982: 88)

(c) Features rated C in Aboriginal English and A or B in Irish English 78 90

double comparatives and superlatives invariant be as habitual marker

91

do as habitual marker

93

other non-standard habitual markers: analytic

194

resumptive/shadow pronouns

234

like as a focussing device

more longer (EKM 1982: 88) … they don’t be there … ‘ … they stay away from there …’ (Königsberg and Collard 2002: 86) If they tease us we do call’em dat (Kimberley, EKM 2002: 92) I forgettin all time ‘I always forget’ (Malcolm & Sharifian 2007: 387) This is the house which I painted it yesterday (WAVE example) [not attested in sources consulted] … she came in like a long skirt sort of thing … (Sharifian and Malcolm 2003: 334).

The evidence is, then, that, of the features Aboriginal English shares with Irish English, about one quarter are not also shared with Australian English, and that, of the features which are common to Australian English, there are a number which are rated in that dialect as extremely rare (C): 11 222

regularized reflexives (e.g. hisself) too, too much, very much, ‘very’ as qualifier

227

inverted word order in indirect questions

228

no inversion/no auxiliaries in wh- questions

hisself (K&M 1991: 73) Mum, she put too much rugs on us ‘Mum put too many rugs on us’ (CALLR database, Kellerberrin) But, note also: ‘E got too much petrol sniffers round ‘ere ‘There are lots of petrol sniffers …’ (Butcher 2008: 632) Dey got too many shops ‘They have a lot of shops’ (Malcolm et al 1999: 84) What I’m gonna do now, Aunt? (Malcolm et al 2002: 41) Where Ø you brudda livin na? ‘Where is your brother living now?’ (Butcher 2008: 633)

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Ian G. Malcolm

When we compare the features which Aboriginal English shares with Irish English with those it shares with Southeast English we find that, while 26 (51 %) are shared with both these dialects, 18 or (35 %) are shared only with Irish English while 7 (14 %) are shared only with Southeast English. The similarities of Aboriginal English with Southeast English are stronger in the area of verb morphology, and those with Irish English in most other areas, especially pronouns, verb tense and aspect, and discourse organization and word order. Of the 49 variant features Australian English shares with Aboriginal English 10 % are also shared only with Southeast English, 24 % only with Irish English, 43 % with both and 22 % with neither. Australian English, like Aboriginal English, has more commonalities with Southeast English in the area of verb morphology and with Irish English in the areas of pronouns, verb tense and aspect, and discourse organization and word order, though the particular features affected are often different. Aboriginal English is, then, distinct from Australian English both in the extent to which it retains commonalities with Southeast English and, especially, Irish English, and particular features affected. There is, then, accumulating evidence for the view that Irish English and Southeast English were strongly in evidence in the colonial setting in which Australian English and Aboriginal English had their birth, but that, being founded in different speech communities, the two Australian dialects selected differently from these linguistic resources. An examination of the features shared by Australian English and Australian vernacular English shows that Aboriginal English shows more overlap with the former than the latter. Australian English does not, according to the feature list, share with Aboriginal English and Australian Vernacular English such features as: 2

he/him used for inanimate referents

68

them instead of demonstrative those

one song ‘e name is ‘O Carol’ ‘a song, its name is ‘O Carol’ (Kimberley EKM 1982: 87) them blokes (K&M 1991: 74)

Australian Vernacular English does not, according to the feature list, share with Aboriginal English and Australian English such features as: 38

specialized plural markers for pronouns

55

different count/mass noun distinctions resulting in use of plural for StE singular

216

omission of StE prepositions

Yupala shut up first.’You shut up first’ Youfella bin bring dem cake ‘You brought the cakes’ (K&M 1979: 423) you mob, you lot, you fellows (Central Australia, Koch 2000: 37) two woods ‘two bits of wood’ (Sharpe 1977: 48) we were goin’ through all these big grasses ‘We were going through the big grass’ (WAACE database, Tardun TM7) I’m gonna go Ø Melbourne (K&M 1979: 423)

Of the 37 features listed as shared by Aboriginal English and Australian Vernacular English, the following are rated at C (extremely rare) in Australian Vernacular English: 11 70

227

regularized reflexives (e.g. hisself) proximal and distal demonstratives with ‘here’ and ‘there’ inverted word order in indirect questions

hisself (K&M 1991: 73) more demons pullin up other side there ‘ … more detectives are pulling up on the other side’ (CALLR database, A day in the park) What I’m gonna do now, Aunt? (Malcolm et al 2002: 41)

And the following are rated C in Aboriginal English: 78 194

double comparatives and superlatives resumptive/shadow pronouns

more longer (EKM 1982: 88) This is the house which I painted it yesterday (WAVE example) [not attested in sources consulted]

Aboriginal English and associated varieties

204

as what/than what in comparative clauses

211

clause-final but = though

234

like as a focussing device

601

it took us about- longer than what the canteen mob … (CALLR database, tape 213, metro) Yeah … a few smashes but ‘Yes [we had] a few fights’ (CALLR database, Geraldton, 158–159) … she came in like a long skirt sort of thing … (Sharifian and Malcolm 2003: 334).

Although these disparities are not numerous, they strengthen the view that Aboriginal English is not to be understood as an informal stylistic variant of Australian English. Aboriginal English and Australian English contrast markedly in their degree of variant grammatical feature overlap with Australian creoles. Where Roper River Creole and Torres Strait Creole share, respectively, 57 and 58 of the listed features with Aboriginal English, the number of these features they also share with Australian English is, respectively, 16 (including six features rated C) and 14 (including five features rated C). The case for seeing Aboriginal English as a post-pidgin/creole variety rather than a variety directly related to Australian English is, then, strongly supported. The influence of pidgin/creole in the Aboriginal English grammatical system is most strongly evident in the areas of agreement, pronouns, the noun phrase, verb tense and aspect, and adverbs and prepositions. It is markedly absent in the area of verb morphology, since most of the items in this section of the WAVE list relate to morphological features not relevant to creoles. The creole influence, strong though it is, should not be overstated. It is worthy of note that, though there are 35 of the features that Aboriginal English shares only with the creoles, there are 33 features which it shares only with the other English varieties. In section 3.3 observations will be made with respect to Aboriginal English and the individual WAVE feature groups.

3.3 Pronouns, pronoun exchange, nominal gender 1

she/her used for inanimate referents

2

he/him used for inanimate referents

3

alternative forms/phrases for referential (nondummy) it

4

alternative forms/phrases for dummy it

5

generalized 3 pers sing subject pronoun

She was burning good [about a house] (WAVE example) [This feature has not been attested in the sources consulted] one song ‘e name is ‘O Carol’ ‘a song, it’s name is ‘O Carol’ (Kimberley EKM 1982: 87) e break [referring to an egg] (Malcolm 1995: 142) We went right around and we saw a thing and all the all the things old things in the thing rubbish. (Leonora, WAACE database LB4) … an dat ting can nearly suffocate you (Kimberley, CALLR database, tape 117) That rain e bin fall down ‘It rained’ (K&M 1979: 422) ‘E looked round ‘He looked around’ (WAACE database, Leonora L6) This old woman, he started packing up. ‘The old woman started packing up’ [What’s she doing?] ‘E rocking the little baby. (WAACE database, Leonora, L21) ‘E come Monday and Thursday ‘It [the train] comes on Monday and Thursday’ (WAACE database, Leonora L5) ‘E on? ‘Is [the tape recorder] on?’ (K&M1979: 422)

602

Ian G. Malcolm

6

generalized 3 pers sing object pronoun

7

me instead of I in coordinate subjects

10

no gender distinction in 3 pers sing

11 12

regularized reflexives paradigm object pronoun forms serving as base for 1st and 2nd person reflexives subject pronoun forms serving as base for reflexives no number distinction in reflexives (i.e. plural forms ending in -self) object pronoun forms as (modifying) possessive pronouns: third person singular object pronoun forms as (modifying) possessive pronouns: first person singular use of us + NP in subject function

13 14 24 26 28

29

use of us in object function (with singular referent)

34

alternative forms for 2nd pers plural

36

distinct forms for inclusive/exclusive 1st person non-singular

37

more number distinctions in personal pronouns than simply singular vs. plural

38

specialized plural markers for pronouns

He can’t let ‘im inside ‘He can’t let him [male person] inside’ (WAACE database, Leonora L15 1) And we chased a emu up the flat. Then, then when we caught ‘im we killed ‘im ‘And we chased an emu in the open field. Then, when we caught it, we killed it’ (R&M 2003: 17) We just turned ‘im round ‘We just turned it [the car] around’ (WAACE database, Leonora L4B) Me, M. and C. went up Tank Hill (EKM 1982: 233) My mother when ‘e gonna talk language … ‘When my mother is going to use Aboriginal language …’ (K&M 1979: 422) hisself ‘himself’ (K&M 1991: 73) miself ‘myself’ (Sydney, EKM 1982: 129) theyself [deyself] ‘themselves’ (Malcolm 1995: 143) theirself ‘themselves’ (Malcolm 1995: 143) im dog ‘his dog’ (Malcolm 1995: 147) I stayed with ‘em … prac’ally all me life (Königsberg and Collard 2002: 83) Us mob when we go flying fox Samson … ‘When we go on the flying fox at Samson’ (Kimberley, CALLR database, tape 117) What’s the biggest fish you caught, S.? Show us. ‘What’s the biggest fish you caught, S.? Show me’ (CALLR database, Geraldton 158–159) Hey yas all home, are yas? ‘Hey, are you home?’ (Malcolm et al 2002: 39) Do youse … want to come to the pools? ‘Do you [people] want to come to the pools?’ (Malcolm et al 1999: 49) Yupala shut up first.’You shut up first’ Youfella bin bring dem cake ‘You brought the cakes’ (K&M 1979: 423) mela new teacher gotta come ‘our [exclusive] new teacher will come’; mintupela fall down dere la back ‘we two fell down back there (Kimberley, EKM 1982: 87) Longa picture you know wila’ bin go ‘at the film to which you know we – including you- went’ (Kimberley, EKM 1982: 87) mintupela fall down dere la back ‘we two fell down back there’ (Kimberley EKM 1982: 87) Yupala shut up first ‘You shut up first’ Youfella bring dem cake ‘You brought the cakes’ (K&M 1979: 423)

Aboriginal English and associated varieties

42

object pronoun drop

43

subject pronoun drop: referential pronouns

44

subject pronoun drop: dummy pronouns

603

Every time ‘e sees Ø written ‘e say ‘Nup’, e says … ‘Whenever he sees it written he says, No …’ (CALLR database 96. 4. 11 bbq trans) [Why else is water so important? Yes Ken] Ø don’t want to die. (EKM 1982: 187) [Was it a big one or a little one?] Ø Big one. (Malcolm et al 1999: 58) Ø All along the book ‘It is all in the book’ (Koch 1991: 95) Ø Three pies there, eh? ‘Are there three pies?’ (Butcher 2008: 632)

Of the 20 pronoun-related features Aboriginal English shares with the varieties we are considering, eight are shared only with creoles, four are shared only with Englishes and eight are shared with both. The creole influence is strongly in evidence with respect to the generalizing of gender distinctions (F5, 6), the introduction of more number distinctions than singular and plural (F36, 37) and the non-employment of dummy it (F1); the influence of other Englishes is seen in the use of object pronouns in subject positions (F26, 28) and the use of us with a singular referent (F29). The cases where features are shared both by creoles and by other Englishes involve, for example, the regularizing of reflexive paradigms (F11, 14), the dropping of pronoun subjects and objects (F43, 44) and the introduction of alternative ways of marking second person plural (F34, 38). In the case of the latter features, it is clear that there are alternative precedents in English (e.g. youse) and creole (e.g. youfella). The form youse is prevalent in Irish English and, according to Filppula (2008: 349) was brought to Scotland and the north of England by Irish immigrants, though it does not appear to be present in Southeast English. The regularizing of the reflexive paradigm, resulting in forms like hisself and ourself cannot simply be associated with simplification associated with pidgin/creole formation, as it is also characteristic of Southeast England (Anderwald 2008: 43).

3.4 Noun phrase 48 49 50

51 52

regularization of plural formation: extension of -s to StE irregular plurals regularization of plural formation: phonological regularization plural marking via preposed elements

plural marking via postposed elements (e.g. an(d) them/-mob associated plural marked by postposed and them/them all/dem

55

different count/non count distinctions

57

optional plural marking (human referent)

lots of mans (Leonora, EKM 1982: 236) wifes, knifes (WAVE example) [feature not substantiated in sources consulted] Alla cat when dey get wild dey back go up. ‘When cats get angry they arch their backs’ (K&M 1979: 421) shooting alla bird ‘shooting birds’ (EKM 1982: 85) Rachel mob for dog bin die ‘Rachel’s people’s dog died’ (Kimberley, EKM 1982: 85) there was me an that ‘there was me and the others’ (CALLR database 96. 11. 14 Nov bbq trans) two woods ‘two bits of wood’ (Sharpe 1977: 48) we were goin’ through all these big grasses ‘We were going through the big grass’ (WAACE database, Tardun TM7) they don’ like kid ‘they [dingos] don’t like kids’ (Pilbara, EKM 1982: 224) Twobala Ø sitting longa that tree ‘Two people are sitting under the tree’ (Butcher 2008: 633)

604

Ian G. Malcolm

58

optional plural marking (other referent)

62 63

zero definite article zero indefinite article

64 65 66

use of definite article where StE favours zero use of indefinite article where StE favours zero indefinite article one/wan

67

demonstratives for definite articles

68 70

them instead of demonstrative those proximal and distal demonstratives with ‘here’ and ‘there’

71

no number distinction in demonstratives

74

phrases with for+noun to express possession: forphrase may follow possessed NP

75

phrases with for+noun to express possession: for phrase may precede possessed NP

76

postnominal phrases with bilong/blong/ long/blo to express possession omission of genitive suffix: possession expressed through bare juxtaposition of nouns double comparatives and superlatives attributive adjectival modifiers follow head noun

77 78 87

I sawn two turkey Ø ‘I saw two turkeys’ (K&M 1979: 421) We all went to Ø funeral (K&M 1979: 422) We was playing Ø game ‘We were playing a game’ (EKM 1982: 86) There was Ø big mob of crows on tree with the cockies (R&M 2003: 19) bloke with the long hair (Leonora, EKM 1982: 86) They saw a one man (Leonora, EKM 1982: 86) Longa Kildurk gotta one stumpy-tail horse ‘At Kildurk there is a stumpy-tailed horse’ (Kimberley, EKM 1982: 88) that man bin come inside la bar ‘the man came into the bar’ (Kimberley, EKM 1982: 89) them blokes (K&M 1991: 74) more demons pullin up other side there ‘ … more detectives are pulling up on the other side’ (CALLR database, A day in the park) I bin cutting them cake ‘I was cutting the cakes’ (Broome, EKM 1982: 86) the bed for that girl the quilt bin curl up ‘that girl’s bed’s quilt curled up’ (Kimberley, EKM 1982: 85) ‘e said you are new teacher for us (Kimberley, EKM 1982: 85) Michael for father there, look! ‘Look, there’s Michael’s father’ (K&M 1979: 422) Rachel mob-for dog bin die ‘Rachel’s people’s dog died’ (Kimberley, EKM 1982: 85) woman belong friend ‘the woman’s friend’ (Kimberley, EKM 1982: 85) my cousin bike ‘my cousin’s bike’ (Leonora, EKM 1982;85) more longer (EKM 1982: 88) man make that fire smoky one ‘a man made a smoky fire’ (Kimberley, EKM 1982: 88) we get five sheeps fat one ‘we got five fat sheep’ (Pilbara, EKM 1982: 88)

In terms of the variable features isolated, the noun phrase in Aboriginal English has much more in common with that in creoles than in related (non-standard) English varieties. Of the 20 shared variant features 10 were shared only with creoles, four only with English varieties and six with both. The distinctive expression of noun plurality is a highly relevant marker of Aboriginal English and the dialect draws on creole sources for some expressions (or non-expressions) of plurality (F50, 51, 57, 58) and on English sources for others (F48, 49, 52). The non-marking of plurality and the use of pre- or post-posed elements are creole-related, whereas the regularization of irregular plurals and the use of associative plural expressions are English-related. Further creole influence is seen in the use of zero or a substitute in place of the indefinite article (F63, 67), or a compensatory over-use of the indefinite article (F65) and in the use of alternative periphrastic expressions to mark possession (F74, 75, 76). The substitution of one for the indefinite article (F66), while common in both Roper River Creole (Lee 2004) and Torres Strait Creole (Shnukal 1988: 25) also has a precedent in Irish English. Aboriginal English follows the pattern in (non-standard) English rather than the one in creoles, in blurring the count/non-count distinction (F55).

Aboriginal English and associated varieties

605

3.5 Tense and aspect 90

invariant be as habitual marker

91

do as habitual marker

93

other non-standard habitual markers: analytic

111

past tense/anterior marker been

114

go-based future markers

117

present tense for neutral future reference

118

is for am/will with 1st person singular

… they don’t be there … ‘ … they stay away from there …’ (Königsberg and Collard 2002: 86) If they tease us we do call’em dat (Kimberley, EKM 2002: 92) I forgettin all time ‘I always forget’ (Malcolm & Sharifian 2007: 387) … Kitty bin blow dat candle out … ‘ … Kitty blew the candle out …’ (K&M 1979: 422) E gonna come with us to station, eh? ‘Will he come with us to the station?’ (EKM 1982: 92) But also: What for she gotta go hospital? ‘Why is she going to go to hospital?’ (Butcher 2008: 632) When that tide go out, e got plenty mussels ‘When the tide goes out there are lots of mussels’ (Butcher 2008: 632) I’s going to town ‘I am/will be going to town’ (WAVE example) [not attested in sources consulted]

The predominant influences on tense and aspect in Aboriginal English (reflected by the ‘A’ and ‘B’ ratings) are shared with the creoles. The bin/been past anterior marker is widely used in many areas though reportedly on decline in Alice Springs (Harkins 1994: 74). Much less common (C) are some features shared by Aboriginal English with Irish English, in particular habitual markers such as be and do and the alternation of is and am/ will in the first person.

3.6 Verb morphology 128

past tense/participle regularization

129

past tense/participle unmarked forms

130

past tense for past participle

131 132

past participle for past tense zero past tense for regular verbs

I runned ‘I ran’ (K&M 1991: 78) e digged it ‘he dug [the hole]’ (Malcolm et al 1999: 53) Johnny seed a galgula plant ‘Johnny saw a galgula plant’ (WAACE database. Leonora L16A) He buy muticar, that blue-one Toyota ‘He bought a blue Toyota’ (Butcher 2008: 632) … when he come back on the airplane e was in the ospital (Malcolm 1999: 58) It got breaked ‘It got broken’ (WAACE database Leonora L15) It had two points and it took off twenty ‘It had two points and twenty were taken off ‘ (WAACE database, Leonora L12) they must ‘ave knew you aksed about … ‘they must have known you asked about …’ (CALLR database, 96. 11. 14 Nov bbq trans) … we seen a cat … (EKM 1982: 91) We make a cubby ‘ouse at Gwalia, there. ‘We made a cubby house at Gwalia’ (Malcolm 1994: 297)

606

Ian G. Malcolm

139

distinctive forms for aux vs full verb

143

transitive marking of verb tense -em/-im/-um

147

was for conditional were

149

serial verbs with go

I got that big tree, knock it down with my hand … ‘I got that big tree and knocked it down with my hand’ (EKM 1982: 95) [Has anybody ever eaten a goanna?] We bin. (WAACE database, Leonora L14 1) [Do you want a game?] Yeah I wanta (WAACE database, middle primary school lesson, South Hedland HM13) you can seeim fish (Kimberley EKM 1982:105) I kill ‘im that old kangaroo (Butcher 2008:632 – interprets this as a pronoun followed by topicalization) If I was in the bush an’ had no food … (EKM 1982: 227). They was goin singing on the way ‘They were singing as they went’ (M&S 2007: 390). We went ‘ad dinner ‘We had dinner’ (R&M 2003: 16) They went walkin’ along ‘They were walking along’ (WAACE database, Leonora L14 1)

In terms of the variable features isolated, Aboriginal English verb morphology is closer to non-standard Australian Englishes and Southeast English than to creoles or Irish English. The replacement of the past tense with the past participle form (F131) is, of course, a widespread marker of non-standard Englishes (Wolfram and Christian 1989: 38) and the reverse process (replacement of the past participle with the past tense form) (F130) has also been widely reported. The use of was for conditional were (F147) was rated A in all four other English varieties used in this study. Exclusive to Aboriginal English and creoles were the use of transitive suffixes (F143), the use of zero past tense on regular verbs (F132) and the distinctive use of serial verbs to express what Koch (2000: 48) has called “associated motion” (F149).

3.7 Negation 154 158

multiple negation/negative concord invariant don’t for all persons

159

never as preverbal past tense negator

160

no as preverbal negator

161 162

not as preverbal negator no more/nomo as negative existential marker

165

invariant non-concord tags, incl eh?

They didn’t have no shirt (K&M 1979: 426) My father don’t shear no more ‘My father doesn’t shear any more’ (EKM 1982: 92) I never went to sleep in the Prospector ‘I didn’t go to sleep in the Prospector train’ (K&M 1979: 426) mi no iit brekfus (WAVE example) [feature not attested in sources consulted] Nobody not staying there (EKM 1982: 92) Nomo nating insai dea ‘There isn’t anything in there’ (WAVE example) [feature not attested in sources consulted] You’ll get shame, eh? ‘Won’t you be embarrassed?’ (K&M 1979: 427) Liddle woman head she is, unna, my Nan ‘She’s quite grown up, isn’t she, my granddaughter’ (Malcolm et al 2002: 40)

Aboriginal English and associated varieties

607

You got a better car than that one, inna? ‘You have a better car than that one, haven’t you?’ (M&S 2007: 392) Most of the non-standard features of negation found in Aboriginal English are shared with other related English varieties, both Australian and overseas, e.g. multiple negation (F154), don’t (F158), never (F159). Invariant non-concord tags, innit, etc. (F165), though strongly present in the creoles, and absent from Australian nonstandard Englishes, are, as already noted, also found in Southeast English. The status of features 160 and 162 in Aboriginal English (B, C) is unsubstantiated on the basis of the data sources consulted in this study.

3.8 Agreement 170

zero marking of 3 pers sing

172

existential there’s with plural subjects

173

variant forms of dummy subject there

174

deletion of aux be before progressive

175

deletion of aux be before gonna

176

deletion of copula be before np

177

deletion of copula be before adj phr

178

deletion of copula be before locatives

179

deletion of auxiliary have

180

was/were generalization

‘E come Ø from Tokyo? ‘Does he come from Tokyo?’ (EKM 1982: 94). There’s hospital dere and hostel and a few of the house (WAACE database, Leonora L 19 2) …’e got some sand … ‘ … there is some sand …’ (K&M 1979: 422) ‘E got too much petrol sniffers round ‘ere ‘There are lots of petrol sniffers …’ (Butcher 2008: 632) They got a new railway station in Laverton ‘There is a new railway station in Laverton’ (WAACE database, Leonora L 14 1) The nurse Ø comin soon, mum ‘The nurse will be coming soon, mum’ I Ø goin shame for her ‘I’m getting embarrassed for her’ (Malcolm et al 2002: 41, 64) E Ø gonna come with us to station, eh? ‘Will he come with us to the station?’ (EKM 1982: 92) E Ø nomo my fadda ‘He’s not my father’ (Butcher 2008: 634) ‘ou mudder Ø crook, eh? ‘Your mother’s ill, isn’t she?’ (Butcher 2008: 632) It Ø near demountables ‘It’s near the demountable classrooms’ (EKM 1982: 92) She Ø home. ‘She is home’ (WAACE database, Leonora L15) I’m sure those students Ø seen us (CALLR database, 96. 11. 14 Nov bbq trans) Dey was drivin’ … My cousin e’s name G …, he was drivin’ (Malcolm et al 1999: 52)

Of the 10 variant features which characterize “agreement” in Aboriginal English, eight are strongly present (A) in one or both Australian creoles, whereas two are strongly present in one or more of the Englishes studied. Aboriginal English shares with one or both creoles (at least “light” varieties (Lee 2004)) the non-employment of the copula (F176, 177, 178) and the have auxiliary and the zero marking of 3rd person singular in the present tense (F170). In common with Irish English (as well as creoles), it commonly deletes the verb to be before gonna (F175) and before progressive verbs (F176).

608

Ian G. Malcolm

3.9 Relativization 185

relativizer that/what in non restrictive contexts

190

relativizer what

193

zero relativisation in subject position

194

gapping/zero-relativization in subject position

Face – like the face says lot what you say ya know ‘Face- your face carries a lot of your meaning’ (CALLR database 014Kelt, Kellerberrin) That blue car what you got that’s a four cylinder (Malcolm et al 1999: 85) I forgot dat word what you said ‘I forget the word you said’(WAACE database M9) That fella ‘im got one eye, that my brudda ‘The man who’s got one eye is my brother’ (Butcher 2008: 632) There’s another little tree Ø grows here (CALLR database: Bennell grammar – Data sessions) This is the house which I painted it yesterday (WAVE example) [feature not substantiated in sources consulted].

Aboriginal English may relativize non-restrictive clauses with that or what rather than who or which (F185), and may use what rather than who in restrictive clauses, following patterns also exhibited in some Australian and overseas non-standard English varieties (F190). It shares with the English and creole varieties studied the zero relativization of subjects (F193). Feature 194, rated ‘C’, cannot be confirmed on the basis of the sources consulted.

3.10 Complementation 204

as what/than what in comparative clauses

205

existentials with forms of get

208

deletion of to before infinitives

it took us about- longer than what the canteen mob … (CALLR database, tape 213, metro) He got white cliff there … ‘There are white cliffs there’ (Koch 1991: 98) E got some sand there ‘There is some sand there’ (EKM 1982: 104) We ‘ad Ø go back ‘We had to go back’ (WAACE database, Leonora L4B)

In inserting what in comparative clauses (F204), Aboriginal English is comparable to other Englishes (local and overseas) rather than creoles. Overlap with creole is shown in the use of the E got (vs. ‘there is/are’) existentials (F205) and in the deletion of to before infinitives (F208), though this feature is also present in Irish English.

Aboriginal English and associated varieties

609

3.11 Adverbial subordination 211

clause-final but = though

213

no subordination: chaining construction linking two main verbs

Yeah … a few smashes but ‘Yes [we had] a few fights though’ (CALLR database, Geraldton, 158–159) Ø No rain they don’t camp in the cave ‘If there’s no rain they don’t camp in the cave’ (K&M 1991: 74) And I jumped over the back fence, got the cans, brung them around in the window (Sydney, EKM 1982: 118)

Like the creoles, Aboriginal English does not assume a copula in either clause and may link two main verbs without adverbial subordination.

3.12 Adverbs and prepositions 216

omission of StE prepositions

217

use of postpositions

219

adverb-forming suffixes -way, -time

220

degree modifier adverbs have same form as adjectives other adverbs have same form as adj too, too much, very, very much as qualifier

221 222

gonna go Ø sandhill ‘will go to the sandhill’ (EKM 1982: 104) I was out Ø bush ‘I was out in the bush’ (R&M 2003: 23) Cold weather time ‘In the cold weather’ (Koch 1991: 101) crying cause I bumped in ‘crying because I had a collision [with a pole]’ (M&S 2007: 389) e just got up quick way ‘he quickly got up’ she jumped north way dere ‘she jumped towards the north’ We bin go long way ‘We went a long way’ (Malcolm et al 2002: 49, 50) Only dark time they come around ‘They only come around in the dark’ (M&S 2007: 384) My good dog can easy catch a kangaroo (WAACE database, Leonora L 14 1) talk proper (K&M 1991: 74) Mum, she put too much rugs on us ‘Mum put too many rugs on us’ (CALLR database, Kellerberrin) But, note also: ‘E got too much petrol sniffers round ‘ere ‘There are lots of petrol sniffers …’ (Butcher 2008: 632) But, note also: Dey got too many shops ‘They have a lot of shops’ (Malcolm et al 1999: 84)

Two of the variant features observed in Aboriginal English with respect to adverbs and prepositions are shared only with creoles, one only with Englishes and three with both. The omission of standard English prepositions (F216) is a feature of creoles and Australian English, though not of other English varieties studied. The use of the adjective form for adverbial function (F220, 221) is widespread in Englishes and creoles. The use of post-positions and suffixes to perform adverbial function is shared by Aboriginal English only with creoles and the use of too much/many as a qualifier (though perhaps not with the same meaning, i.e., quantity rather than excess) is shared with other Englishes except Southeast English.

610

Ian G. Malcolm

3.13 Discourse organization and word order 227

inverted word order in indirect questions

228

no inversion/no auxiliaries in wh- questions

229 234

no inversion/no auxiliaries in main clause yes/no questions like as a focussing device

235

like as a quotative particle

What I’m gonna do now, Aunt? (Malcolm et al 2002: 41) Where Ø you brudda livin na? ‘Where is your brother living now?’ (Butcher 2008: 633) Ø She comin drekly or what? ‘Will she be coming soon?’ (Malcolm et al 2002: 41) … she came in like a long skirt sort of thing … (Sharifian and Malcolm 2003: 334). And we’re like, ‘Oh yeah, right, whatever’ ‘And we said, “Oh, yeah, all right”’ (S&M 2003: 338)

Most of the features of discourse organization and word order which are included in the survey and relevant to Aboriginal English have similar realizations in non-standard English varieties and creoles. This applies particularly where there are processes of simplification involved (F227, 228, 229). Innovations in the use of like (F234, 235), which may have originated in the United States (Anderwald 2008: 459–460), are shared only with Englishes.

4 Possible implications of these findings This study is based on 86 of 235 grammatical features isolated because of their likely variability across English and English-based creole varieties. Thus, it does not enable Aboriginal English to be characterized in its own right and in the light the innovations it has made which are not common to other varieties. However, the WAVE survey does inform us on the linguistic interrelationships between Aboriginal English and its related varieties, i.e., those varieties which are geographically related to it in present-day Australia, or those varieties which are historically related to it because of the nature of the language contact from which it has resulted. Hitherto, the features of Aboriginal English have been accounted for on the basis of inductive studies of historical records and synchronic analyses of varieties of Aboriginal English currently in use in diverse parts of Australia and of Australian indigenous languages. On the basis of its continuity with indigenous languages, Aboriginal English has been described as an Aboriginal language (Eades 1983). It has further been proposed (Malcolm and Koscielecki 1997; Malcolm 2000b) that the variety is essentially a post-pidgin/postcreole English which has resulted from the experience of language contact involving the coming together of varieties of English and Aboriginal languages, initially in the Sydney area, and subsequent social developments. The present data enables us to determine (or at least to approximate to a determination of) the respective influence of the Englishes transported to Australia (on the basis of the genetically related varieties currently spoken) and of creoles and Australian Englishes to be compared. While the original immigrants to Australia came from “all over England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland” (Horvath 2008: 89), and the mix of languages in the colony would have included specialized varieties brought by convicts and sailors, it has increasingly been argued that the predominant early formative influences on English in Australia were from the South East of England and from Ireland (Taylor 2000; Leitner 2004; Collins and Blair 2000). The WAVE profile has enabled the credibility of Southeast English and Irish English influence on Aboriginal English (independently of Australian English) to be investigated. While we have not been able to study these varieties in the form in which they were transported to Australia, there would appear to be evidence of a significant influence which prevails today, and which explains that some of the simplification features which might previously have been attributed to pidgin/creole influence (e.g. regularised reflexives, deletion of the auxiliary before gonna, regularization of irregular verbs, use of invariant non-concord tags such as innit, etc.) were probably in existence, or in process, in the varieties brought to Australia.

611

Aboriginal English and associated varieties

The assumption often made that Aboriginal English is an informal sub-variety of Australian English has not been upheld by the data. Neither is Australian English more influential than other varieties on the grammatical variation within Aboriginal English, nor is Australian Vernacular English particularly close to Aboriginal English. Aboriginal English is clearly English, in that 40 % of its distinctive variant features are shared only by English varieties, but its Australianness is different from that of Australian English. Where Aboriginal English departs from Standard English grammar, it does so most often in the same directions as those taken by Australian creoles. Though (as shown above) it is possible to overstate the creole influence on Aboriginal English, in that some of its simplification features could be attributable to other Englishes, the creole influence is pervasive and dominates in nine of the 11 feature groups from the WAVE profile included in the study. The percentage of WAVE variant grammatical features (A, B and C) shared by Aboriginal English is 53 % with Roper River Creole and 54 % with Torres Strait Creole, by comparison with 45 % with Australian English and 35 % with Australian Vernacular English. It is important to recognize that, while much of the grammatical distinctiveness of Aboriginal English relates it to creole, it still has substantial variation from creole. Accordingly it cannot reasonably be characterised, without qualification, as a creole or a creolerelated variety. Aboriginal English, then, can reasonably be argued to be an independent Australian variety (or group of closely-related varieties) of English, historically related to both Australian English and Australian creoles but sufficiently distinct grammatically from both to warrant independent recognition. This includes recognition as a medium of learning and therefore requires distinctive educational provisions in the context of the teaching of standard English.

Appendix 1: Overview of WAVE features attested in Aboriginal English # 1

2

3

4 5

feature AborE example I. Pronouns, pronoun exchange, nominal gender she/her used for inanimate referents1 She was burning good [about a house] (WAVE example) [This feature has not been attested in the sources consulted] he/him used for inanimate referents one song ‘e name is ‘O Carol’ ‘a song, it’s name is ‘O Carol’ (Kimberley EKM 1982: 87) e break [referring to an egg] (Malcolm 1995: 142) alternative forms/phrases for referential We went right around and we saw a thing and all the all the (non-dummy) it things old things in the thing rubbish. (Leonora, WAACE database LB4) … an dat ting can nearly suffocate you (Kimberley, CALLR database, tape 117) alternative forms/phrases for dummy it That rain e bin fall down ‘It rained’ (K&M 1979: 422) generalized 3 pers sing subject pronoun ‘E looked round ‘He looked around’ (WAACE database, Leonora L6) This old woman, he started packing up. ‘The old woman started packing up’ [What’s she doing?] ‘E rocking the little baby. (WAACE database, Leonora, L21) ‘E come Monday and Thursday ‘It [the train] comes on Monday and Thursday’ (WAACE database, Leonora L5) ‘E on? ‘Is [the tape recorder] on?’ (K&M1979: 422)

1 After consultation with the sources shown, attestation was not found for features 1, 49, 118, 160, 162 and 194. They are included in the discussion, since they may be found in other

rating B

B

A

A A

Aboriginal English data sources. At this stage, however, they are not substantiated.

612

6

Ian G. Malcolm

generalized 3 pers sing object pronoun

7 10

me instead of I in coordinate subjects no gender distinction in 3 pers sing

11 12

regularized reflexives paradigm object pronoun forms serving as base for 1st and 2nd person reflexives subject pronoun forms serving as base for reflexives no number distinction in reflexives (i.e. plural forms ending in -self) subject pronoun forms as (modifying) possessive pronouns: 3rd person singular subject pronoun forms as (modifying) possessive pronouns: 3rd person plural

13 14 20 21

24 25 26 28

object pronoun forms as (modifying) possessive pronouns: third person singular object pronoun forms as possessive pronouns: 3rd person plural object pronoun forms as (modifying) possessive pronouns: first person singular use of us + NP in subject function

29

use of us in object function (with singular referent)

34

alternative forms for 2nd pers plural

36

distinct forms for inclusive/exclusive 1st person non-singular

37 38

more number distinctions in personal pronouns than simply singular vs. plural specialized plural markers for pronouns

42

object pronoun drop

43

subject pronoun drop: referential pronouns subject pronoun drop: dummy pronouns

44

He can’t let ‘im inside ‘He can’t let him [male person] inside’ (WAACE database, Leonora L15 1) And we chased e emu up the flat. Then, then when we caught ‘im we killed ‘im ‘And we chased the emu in the open field. Then, when we caught it, we killed it’ (R&M 2003: 17)2 We just turned ‘im round ‘We just turned it [the car] around’ (WAACE database, Leonora L4B) Me, M. and C. went up Tank Hill (EKM 1982: 233) My mother when ‘e gonna talk language … ‘When my mother is going to use Aboriginal language …’ (K&M 1979: 422) hisself ‘himself’ (K&M 1991: 73) miself ‘myself’ (Sydney, EKM 1982: 129)

A

A B

theyself[deyself] ‘themselves’ (Malcolm 1995: 143)

A

theirself ‘themselves’ (Malcolm 1995: 143)

A

(not yet attested)

C

Oh, dey, dey poke you wid dey beak, an’ they’ll kill you ‘Oh, they, they [emus] poke you with their beak and they’ll kill you’ (Carnarvon, EKM 1982:221) im dog ‘his dog’ (Malcolm 1995: 147)

B

(not yet attested)

C

A A

B

I stayed with ‘em … prac’ally all me life (Königsberg and Collard A 2002: 83) Us mob when we go flying fox Samson … ‘When we go on the A flying fox at Samson’ (Kimberley, CALLR database, tape 117) What’s the biggest fish you caught, S.? Show us. ‘What’s the A biggest fish you caught, S.? Show me’ (CALLR database, Geraldton 158–159) Hey yas all home, are yas? ‘Hey, are you home?’ A (Malcolm et al 2002: 39) Do youse … want to come to the pools? ‘Do you [people] want to come to the pools?’ (Malcolm et al 1999: 49) Yupala shut up first.’You shut up first’ Youfella bin bring dem cake ‘You brought the cakes’ (K&M 1979: 423) mela new teacher gotta come ‘our [exclusive] new teacher will C come’; mintupela fall down dere la back ‘we two fell down back there (Kimberley, EKM 1982: 87) Longa picture you know wila’ bin go ‘at the film to which you know we – including you- went’ (Kimberley, EKM 1982: 87) mintupela fall down dere la back ‘we two fell down back there’ B (Kimberley EKM 1982: 87) Yupala shut up first ‘You shut up first’ A Youfella bring dem cake ‘You brought the cakes’ (K&M 1979: 423) Every time ‘e sees Ø written ‘e say ‘Nup’, e says … ‘Whenever he B sees it written he says, No …’ (CALLR database 96. 4. 11 bbq trans) [Why else is water so important? Yes Ken] Ø don’t want to die. B (EKM 1982: 187) [Was it a big one or a little one?] Ø Big one. (Malcolm et al 1999: B 58) Ø All along the book ‘It is all in the book’ (Koch 1991: 95) Ø Three pies there, eh? ‘Are there three pies?’ (Butcher 2008: 632)

2 The example quoted from R&M 2003:17 in illustration of F6 incorporates a correction of an error in transcription in that

source, i.e., “a emu”, not “e emu” is the form in the original transcript.

613

Aboriginal English and associated varieties

48 49 50

51 52 53

II. Noun phrase regularization of plural formation: extension of -s to StE irregular plurals regularization of plural formation: phonological regularization plural marking via preposed elements

plural marking via postposed elements (e.g. an(d) them/-mob associated plural marked by postposed and them/them all/dem associative plural marked by other elements

55

different count/non count distinctions

57

optional plural marking (human referent)

58 62 63

optional plural marking (other referent) zero definite article zero indefinite article

64

66

use of definite article where StE favours zero use of indefinite article where StE favours zero indefinite article one/wan

67

demonstratives for definite articles

68 70

them instead of demonstrative those proximal and distal demonstratives with ‘here’ and ‘there’

71

no number distinction in demonstratives

74

phrases with for+noun to express possession: for- phrase may follow possessed NP phrases with for+noun to express possession: for- phrase may precede possessed NP

65

75

76 77

78 87

postnominal phrases with bilong/blong/ long/blo to express possession omission of genitive suffix: possession expressed through bare juxtaposition of nouns double comparatives and superlatives attributive adjectival modifiers follow head noun

lots of mans (Leonora, EKM 1982: 236)

A

wifes, knifes (WAVE example) [feature not substantiated in sources consulted] Alla cat when dey get wild dey back go up. ‘When cats get angry they arch their backs’ (K&M 1979: 421) shooting alla bird ‘shooting birds’ (EKM 1982: 85) Rachel mob for dog bin die ‘Rachel’s people’s dog died’ (Kimberley, EKM 1982: 85) there was me an that ‘there was me and the others’ (CALLR database 96. 11. 14 Nov bbq trans) Dey shoulda aksed ‘em security mob ‘They should have asked the security people’ (CALLR database 96. 4. 11 Nov bbq trans) two woods ‘two bits of wood’ (Sharpe 1977: 48) we were goin’ through all these big grasses ‘We were going through the big grass’ (WAACE database, Tardun TM7) they don’ like kid ‘they [dingos] don’t like kids’ (Pilbara, EKM 1982: 224) Twobala Ø sitting longa that tree ‘Two people are sitting under the tree’ (Butcher 2008: 633) I sawn two turkey Ø ‘I saw two turkeys’ (K&M 1979: 421) We all went to Ø funeral (K&M 1979: 422) We was playing Ø game ‘We were playing a game’ (EKM 1982: 86) There Ø was big mob of crows on tree with the cockies (R&M 2003: 19) bloke with the long hair (Leonora, EKM 1982: 86)

A A

C A A

A

B

B A A

C

They saw a one man (Leonora, EKM 1982: 86)

C

Longa Kildurk gotta one stumpy-tail horse ‘At Kildurk there is a stumpy-tailed horse’ (Kimberley, EKM 1982: 88) that man bin come inside la bar ‘the man came into the bar’ (Kimberley, EKM 1982: 89) them blokes (K&M 1991: 74) more demons pullin up other side there ‘ … more detectives are pulling up on the other side’ (CALLR database, A day in the park) I bin cutting them cake ‘I was cutting the cakes’ (Broome, EKM 1982: 86) the bed for that girl the quilt bin curl up ‘that girl’s bed’s quilt curled up’ (Kimberley, EKM 1982: 85) ‘e said you are new teacher for us (Kimberley, EKM 1982: 85) Michael for father there, look! ‘Look, there’s Michael’s father’ (K&M 1979: 422) Rachel mob-for dog bin die ‘Rachel’s people’s dog died’ (Kimberley, EKM 1982: 85) woman belong friend ‘the woman’s friend’ (Kimberley, EKM 1982: 85) my cousin bike ‘my cousin’s bike’ (Leonora, EKM 1982;85)

B

more longer (EKM 1982: 88) man make that fire smoky one ‘a man made a smoky fire’ (Kimberley, EKM 1982: 88) we get five sheeps fat one ‘we got five fat sheep’ (Pilbara, EKM 1982: 88)

A A A

C C

C

B A

C B

614

Ian G. Malcolm

90

III. Verb phrase: tense and aspect invariant be as habitual marker

91

do as habitual marker

93 111

other non-standard habitual markers: analytic Past tense/anterior marker been

114

go-based future markers

117

present tense for neutral future reference

118

is for am/will with 1st person singular

128

V. Verb phrase: verb morphology past tense/participle regularization

129

past tense/participle unmarked forms

130

past tense for past participle

131 132

past participle for past tense zero past tense for regular verbs

139

distinctive forms for aux vs full verb

143

transitive marking of verb tense -em/-im/-um

147 149

was for conditional were serial verbs with go

151

serial verbs: constructions with 3 verbs

154 158

VII. Negation multiple negation/negative concord invariant don’t for all persons

… they don’t be there … ‘ … they stay away from there …’ (Königsberg and Collard 2002: 86) If they tease us we do call’em dat (Kimberley, EKM 2002: 92) I forgettin all time ‘I always forget’ (Malcolm & Sharifian 2007: 387) … Kitty bin blow dat candle out … ‘ … Kitty blew the candle out …’ (K&M 1979: 422) E gonna come with us to station, eh? ‘Will he come with us to the station?’ (EKM 1982: 92) But also: What for she gotta go hospital? ‘Why is she going to go to hospital?’ (Butcher 2008: 632) When that tide go out, e got plenty mussels ‘When the tide goes out there are lots of mussels’ (Butcher 2008: 632) I’s going to town ‘I am/will be going to town’ (WAVE example)

C

I runned ‘I ran’ (K&M 1991: 78) e digged it ‘he dug [the hole]’ (Malcolm et al 1999: 53) Johnny seed a galgula plant ‘Johnny saw a galgula plant’ (WAACE database. Leonora L16A) He buy muticar, that blue-one Toyota ‘He bought a blue Toyota’ (Butcher 2008: 632) … when he come back on the airplane e was in the ospital (Malcolm 1999: 58) It got breaked ‘It got broken’ (WAACE database Leonora L15) It had two points and it took off twenty ‘It had two points and twenty were taken off ‘ (WAACE database, Leonora L12) they must ‘ave knew you aksed about … ‘they must have known you asked about …’ (CALLR database, 96. 11. 14 Nov bbq trans) … we seen a cat … (EKM 1982: 91) We make a cubby ‘ouse at Gwalia, there. ‘We made a cubby house at Gwalia’ (Malcolm 1994: 297) I got that big tree, knock it down with my hand … ‘I got that big tree and knocked it down with my hand’ (EKM 1982: 95) [Has anybody ever eaten a goanna?] We bin. (WAACE database, Leonora L14 1) [Do you want a game?] Yeah I wanta (WAACE database, middle primary school lesson, South Hedland HM13) you can seeim fish (Kimberley EKM 1982: 105) I kill ‘im that old kangaroo (Butcher 2008: 632 – interprets this as a pronoun followed by topicalization) If I was in the bush an’ had no food … (EKM 1982: 227). They was goin singing on the way ‘They were singing as they went’ (M&S 2007: 390). We went ‘ad dinner ‘We had dinner’ (R&M 2003: 16) They went walkin’ along ‘They were walking along’ (WAACE database, Leonora L14 1) All the man. I wanna go see’em. ‘I intend to go and see the men’ (Koch 2000:50)

A

They didn’t have no shirt (K&M 1979: 426) My father don’t shear no more ‘My father doesn’t shear any more’ (EKM 1982: 92)

C C B A

B C

A

B

A A

A

C

B B

B

A A

615

Aboriginal English and associated varieties

159

never as preverbal past tense negator

160

no as preverbal negator

161 162

not as preverbal negator no more/nomo as negative existential marker

165

invariant non-concord tags, incl eh?

170

VIII. Agreement non-standard system underlying responses to negative yes/no questions zero marking of 3 pers sing

172

existential there’s with plural subjects

173

variant forms of dummy subject there

174

deletion of aux be before progressive

175

deletion of aux be before gonna

176

deletion of copula be before NP

177

deletion of copula be before Adj phr

178

deletion of copula be before locatives

179

deletion of auxiliary have

180

was/were generalization

185

IX. Relativization relativizer that/what in non restrictive contexts

190

relativizer what

193

zero relativisation in subject position

194

gapping/zero-relativization in subject position

169

I never went to sleep in the Prospector ‘I didn’t go to sleep in the Prospector train’ (K&M 1979: 426) mi no iit brekfus (WAVE example) [feature not attested in sources consulted] Nobody not staying there (EKM 1982: 92) Nomo nating insai dea ‘There isn’t anything in there’ (WAVE example) [feature not attested in sources consulted] You’ll get shame, eh? ‘Won’t you be embarrassed?’ (K&M 1979: 427) Liddle woman head she is, unna, my Nan ‘She’s quite grown up, isn’t she, my granddaughter’ (Malcolm et al 2002: 40) You got a better car than that one, inna? ‘You have a better car than that one, haven’t you?’ (M&S 2007: 392)

A B B C

A

(not yet attested)

C

‘E come Ø from Tokyo? ‘Does he come from Tokyo?’ (EKM 1982: 94). There’s hospital dere and hostel and a few of the house (WAACE database, Leonora L 19 2) …’e got some sand … ‘ … there is some sand …’ (K&M 1979: 422) ‘E got too much petrol sniffers round ‘ere ‘There are lots of petrol sniffers …’ (Butcher 2008: 632) They got a new railway station in Laverton ‘There is a new railway station in Laverton’ (WAACE database, Leonora L 14 1) The nurse Ø comin soon, mum ‘The nurse will be coming soon, mum’ I Ø goin shame for her ‘I’m getting embarrassed for her’ (Malcolm et al 2002: 41, 64) E Ø gonna come with us to station, eh? ‘Will he come with us to the station?’ (EKM 1982: 92) E Ø nomo my fadda ‘He’s not my father’ (Butcher 2008: 634) ‘ou mudder Ø crook, eh? ‘Your mother’s ill, isn’t she?’ (Butcher 2008: 632) It Ø near demountables ‘It’s near the demountable classrooms’ (EKM 1982: 92) She Ø home. ‘She is home’ (WAACE database, Leonora L15) I’m sure those students Ø seen us (CALLR database, 96. 11. 14 Nov bbq trans) Dey was drivin’ … My cousin e’s name G …, he was drivin’ (Malcolm et al 1999: 52)

A

Face – like the face says lot what you say ya know ‘Face- your face carries a lot of your meaning’ (CALLR database 014Kelt, Kellerberrin) That blue car what you got that’s a four cylinder (Malcolm et al 1999: 85) I forgot dat word what you said ‘I forget the word you said’(WAACE database M9) That fella ‘im got one eye, that my brudda ‘The man who’s got one eye is my brother’ (Butcher 2008: 632) There’s another little tree Ø grows here (CALLR database: Bennell grammar – Data sessions) This is the house which I painted it yesterday (WAVE example) [feature not substantiated in sources consulted].

B A

A

A A A A

C C

B

B

B

C

616

Ian G. Malcolm

204

X. Complementation as what/than what in comparative clauses

205

existentials with forms of get

208

deletion of to before infinitives

211

XI. Adverbial subordination clause-final but = though

213

216 217

219

220 221 222

225

227 228 229 234 235

no subordination: chaining construction linking two main verbs

XII: Adverbs and prepositions omission of StE prepositions

it took us about- longer than what the canteen mob … (CALLR database, tape 213, metro) He got white cliff there … ‘There are white cliffs there’ (Koch 1991: 98) E got some sand there ‘There is some sand there’ (EKM 1982: 104) We ‘ad Ø go back ‘We had to go back’ (WAACE database, Leonora L4B) Yeah … a few smashes but ‘Yes [we had] a few fights though’ (CALLR database, Geraldton, 158–159) Ø No rain they don’t camp in the cave ‘If there’s no rain they don’t camp in the cave’ (K&M 1991: 74) And I jumped over the back fence, got the cans, brung them around in the window (Sydney, EKM 1982: 118)

gonna go Ø sandhill ‘will go to the sandhill’ (EKM 1982: 104) I was out Ø bush ‘I was out in the bush’ (R&M 2003: 23) use of postpositions Cold weather time ‘In the cold weather’ (Koch 1991: 101) crying cause I bumped in ‘crying because I had a collision [with a pole]’ (M&S 2007: 389) adverb-forming suffixes -way, -time e just got up quick way ‘he quickly got up’, she jumped north way dere ‘she jumped towards the north’, We bin go long way ‘We went a long way’ (Malcolm et al 2002: 49, 50) Only dark time they come around ‘They only come around in the dark’ (M&S 2007: 384) degree modifier adverbs have same form My good dog can easy catch a kangaroo as adjectives (WAACE database, Leonora L 14 1) other adverbs have same form as adj talk proper (K&M 1991: 74) too, too much, very, very much as qualifier Mum, she put too much rugs on us ‘Mum put too many rugs on us’ (CALLR database, Kellerberrin) But, note also: ‘E got too much petrol sniffers round ‘ere ‘There are lots of petrol sniffers …’ (Butcher 2008: 632) But, note also: Dey got too many shops ‘They have a lot of shops’ (Malcolm et al 1999: 84) XIII. Discourse organization and word order sentence-initial focus-marker Aaay ol boy reckon, Who that wadjela woman wants, girl? The old man asks the girl who that white woman wants. (CALLR database, A Day in the Park, p. 21). inverted word order in indirect questions What I’m gonna do now, Aunt? (Malcolm et al 2002: 41) no inversion/no auxiliaries in whWhere Ø you brudda livin na? ‘Where is your brother living questions now?’ (Butcher 2008: 633) no inversion/no auxiliaries in main clause Ø She comin drekly or what? ‘Will she be coming soon?’ yes/no questions (Malcolm et al 2002: 41) like as a focussing device … she came in like a long skirt sort of thing … (Sharifian and Malcolm 2003: 334) like as a quotative particle And we’re like, ‘Oh yeah, right, whatever’ ‘And we said, “Oh, yeah, all right”’ (S&M 2003: 338)

C A

B

C B

B A

A

A A A

B

B A A C B

617

Aboriginal English and associated varieties

Appendix 2 Southeast English A, B Pronouns, Pronoun Exchange, Nominal Gender

7, 11, 12, 14, 26, 28, 29

Noun Phrase

68

C

52, 70, 78

Irish English

Australian English

A, B

C

A, B

C

3, 7, 11, 12, 26, 28, 29, 34, 38, 43

1, 14, 44

1, 3, 7, 12, 26, 28, 29, 34, 38, 44

68, 70

64, 66, 78

52, 55, 70

Verb Tense and Aspect

Verb Morphology

129, 131, 139, 147

128, 130, 133

129, 147

Negation

154, 158, 159, 165

Agreement

172, 175

Relativization Complementation Adverbial Subordination Adverbs & Prepositions

190, 193

Discourse orgn. and word order

235

234

227, 228, 229, 235

Total

23

9

30

90, 91, 93 130

154, 158, 159 180

204

220, 221

Australian Vernacular English A, B C

Roper River Creole A, B

C

A, B

C

11, 14

1, 2, 3, 7, 12, 26, 28, 29, 34, 44

11

11, 13, 25, 36

4, 5, 6, 10, 11, 14, 24, 34, 37, 38, 43

36

48, 49, 56,3 62, 64, 71, 75 118

52, 68

70, 78

5, 6, 7, 10, 12, 14, 24, 34, 37, 38, 42, 43, 44 50, 57, 62, 63, 66, 67, 68, 76, 77, 87

51, 74, 75

50, 57, 58, 62, 63, 66, 67, 68, 70, 76, 77

64, 65, 74, 75

128, 129, 130, 131, 139, 147 154, 158, 159

111, 114, 117 128, 129, 130, 131, 139, 147 154, 158, 159

172, 174, 175

173, 180

172

173, 180

172

180

185, 193 208

194 204

185, 193

190 204 211

185, 193

194 204 211

216,220, 221

222

220, 221, 222

234

229, 235

227, 228, 234

229, 235

227, 234

15

30

19

29

9

220, 221, 222

111, 114, 117

132

143

132, 149

143

165

162

162

170, 172, 173, 174, 175, 176, 177, 178 193 205, 208 213

179

154, 158, 159, 160, 165 170, 173, 174, 175, 176, 177, 178 193 205, 208 213

216, 217, 219,220, 221 228, 229

47

Table 1: WAVE features shared with Aboriginal English (identified by numbers in the WAVE list)

3 Feature 56, though it appears in Appendix 2, has not been included in the discussion since feature 57 is also included on the list of WAVE ratings and these should be mutually exclusive.

Torres Strait Creole

216, 217, 219,220, 221 227, 228, 229 10

51

7

618

Ian G. Malcolm

References Anderwald, Lieselotte. 2008. The varieties of English spoken in the Southeast of England: Morphology and syntax. In: Bernd Kortmann, and Clive Upton (eds.), Varieties of English 1: The British Isles, 440–462. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Australian Bureau of Statistics Census Fact Sheet 2011, http://www.abs.gov.au/websitedbs/d3310114.nsf/ home/2001 %20census%20fact%20sheet:+atsi, consulted on 16. 8. 11 Collins, Peter, and David Blair. 2000. Language and identity in Australia. In: David Blair, and Peter Collins (eds.), English in Australia, 1–13. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Collins, Peter, and Pam Peters. 2008. Australian English: Morphology and syntax. In: Kate Burridge, and Bernd Kortmann (eds.), Varieties of English 3: The Pacific and Australasia, 341–361. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Eades, Diana. 1983. English as an Aboriginal language in Southeast Queensland. Ph.D. thesis. Armidale: University of New England. Eagleson, Robert, Susan Kaldor, and Ian Malcolm. 1982. English and the Aboriginal Child. Canberra: Curriculum Development Centre. Filppula, Markku. 2008. Irish English: Morphology and syntax. In: Bernd Kortmann, and Clive Upton (eds.), Varieties of English 1: The British Isles, 328–359. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Harkins, Jean. 1994. Bridging Two Worlds: Aboriginal English and Cross-Cultural Understanding. St Lucia: University of Queensland Press. Harkins, Jean. 2000. Structure and meaning in Australian Aboriginal English. Asian Englishes 3(2): 60–81. Horvath, Barbara. 2008. Australian English: Phonology. In: Kate Burridge, and Bernd Kortmann (eds.), Varieties of English 3: The Pacific and Australasia, 89–110. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Hughes, Arthur, and Peter Trudgill. 1979. English Accents and Dialects: An Introduction to Social and Regional Varieties of British English. London: Edward Arnold. Kaldor, Susan, and Ian Malcolm. 1979. The language of the school and the language of the Western Australian Aboriginal schoolchild – implications for education. In: Ronald M. Berndt, and Catherine H. Berndt (eds.), Aborigines of the West: Their Past and Their Present, 406–437. Perth: University of Western Australia Press. Lee, Jason (ed.). 2004. Kriol-Ingglish Dikshenri. Darwin: Summer Institute of Linguistics. Accessed on line February 2012 http://www1/aiatsis.gov.au/aseda/docs/ 0739-Kriol/index.1.html Leitner, Gerhard. 2004. Australia’s Many Voices: Australian English – The National Language. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Malcolm, Ian G. 2000a. Aboriginal English research – an overview. Asian Englishes 3 (2): 9–31. Malcolm, Ian G. 2000b. Aboriginal English from contact variety to social dialect. In: Jeff Siegel (ed.), Process of Language Contact: Studies from Australia and the South Pacific, 123–144. Montreal: Fides.

Malcolm, Ian G. 2005. Mainstream education and the maintenance of ethnolect. In: Gulbrand Alhaug, Endre Mørck, and Aud-Kirsti Pedersen (eds.), Mot rikare mål å trå. Festskrift til Tove Bull [Festschrift for Tove Bull], 156–169. Oslo: Novus Forlag. Malcolm, Ian G., and Marek M. Koscielecki. 1997. Aboriginality and English: Report to the Australian Research Council. Mount Lawley, Western Australia: Centre for applied Language Research, Edith Cowan University. Pawley, Andrew. 2008. Australian Vernacular English: some grammatical characteristics. In: Kate Burridge, and Bernd Kortmann (eds.), Varieties of English 3: The Pacific and Australasia, 363–397. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Shnukal, Anna. 1988. Broken: An Introduction to the Creole Language of Torres Strait. Canberra: Australian National University. Taylor, Brian. 2000. Australian English in interaction with other Englishes. In: David Blair, and Peter Collins (eds.), English in Australia, 317–340. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Wolfram, Walt, and Donna Christian. 1989. Dialects and Education: Issues and Answers. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall Regents.

Aboriginal English data sources Butcher, Andrew. 2008. Linguistic aspects of Aboriginal English. Clinical Linguistics and Phonetics 22: 625–642. CALLR (Centre for Applied Language and Literacy Research) database, Edith Cowan University. Collard, Glenys. 2011. A Day in the Park. Perth: Department of Training and Workplace Development, Western Australia. Eagleson, Robert, Susan Kaldor, and Ian Malcolm. 1982. English and the Aboriginal Child. Canberra: Curriculum Development Centre. (EKM 1982) Kaldor, Susan, and Ian Malcolm. 1979. The language of the school and the language of the Western Australian Aboriginal schoolchild – implications for education. In: Ronald M. Berndt, and Catherine H. Berndt (eds.), Aborigines of the West: Their Past and Their Present, 406–437. Perth: University of Western Australia Press. (K&M 1979) Kaldor, Susan, and Ian Malcolm. 1991. Aboriginal English – an overview. In: Suzanne Romaine (ed.), Language in Australia, 67–83. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. (K&M 1991) Koch, Harold. 1991. Language and communication in Aboriginal land claim hearings. In: Suzanne Romaine (ed.), Language in Australia, 94–103. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Königsberg, Patricia, and Glenys Collard (eds.). 2002. Ways of Being, Ways of Talk. Perth: Department of Education, Western Australia. Malcolm, Ian G. 1994. Discourse and discourse strategies in Australian Aboriginal English. World Englishes 13(3): 289–306.

Aboriginal English and associated varieties

Malcolm, Ian G. 1995. Language and Communication Enhancement for Two-Way Education. Mount Lawley: Edith Cowan University in association with Education Department of Western Australia. Malcolm, Ian G. 2002. Aboriginal English Genres in Perth. Mount Lawley: Centre for Applied Language and Literacy Research and Institute for the Service Professions, Edith Cowan University. Malcolm, Ian G., Yvonne Haig, Patricia Königsberg, Judith Rochecouste, Glenys Collard, Alison Hill, and Rosemary Cahill. 1999. Towards More User-Friendly Education for Speakers of Aboriginal English. Mount Lawley: Centre for Applied Language and Literacy Research and Education Department of Western Australia. Malcolm, Ian G., Patricia Königsberg, Glenys Collard, Alison Hill, Ellen Grote, Farzad Sharifian, Angela Kickett, and Eva Sahanna. 2002. Umob Deadly: Recognized and Unrecognized Literacy Skills of Aboriginal Youth. Mount Lawley: Centre for Applied Language and Literacy Research and Institute for the Service Professions, Edith Cowan University and Department of Education, Western Australia. Malcolm, Ian G., and Farzad Sharifian. 2007. Multiword units in Aboriginal English: Australian cultural expression in an adopted language. In: Paul Skandera, (ed.), Phraseology and Culture in English, 375–398.Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. (M&S 2007) Rochecouste, Judith, and Ian G. Malcolm,. 2003. Aboriginal English Genres in the Yamatji Lands of Western Australia. Mount Lawley: Centre for Applied Language and Literacy Research. (R&M 2003) Sharifian, Farzad, and Ian G. Malcolm. 2003. The pragmatic marker like in English teen talk: Australian Aboriginal usage. Pragmatics and Cognition 11 (2): 327–344. (S&M 2003) Sharpe, Margaret. 1977. Alice Springs Aboriginal English. In: Ed Brumby, and Eric Vaszolyi (eds.), Language Problems and Aboriginal Education, 45–50. Mount Lawley: Aboriginal Teacher Education Program, Mount Lawley College of Advanced Education. WAACE (Western Australian Aboriginal Children’s English) database, Anthropological Museum, University of Western Australia.

Kriol data sources Harris, John. 2007. Linguistic responses to contact: Pidgins and creoles. In: Gerhard Leitner, and Ian G. Malcolm (eds.), The Habitat of Australia’s Aboriginal Languages: Past, Present and Future, 131–151. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

619

Hudson, Joyce. 1981. Grammatical and semantic aspects of Fitzroy Valley Kriol. M.A. thesis, University of Western Australia. Kimberley Language Resource Centre. 1996. Moola Bulla: In the Shadow of the Mountain. Broome: Magabala Books. Kortmann, Bernd, and Schneider, Edgar W. (eds.). 2004. Varieties of English: A Multimedia Reference Tool. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Lee, Jason (ed.). 2004. Kriol-Ingglish Dikshenri. Darwin: Summer Institute of Linguistics. Accessed on line February 2012 http://www1/aiatsis.gov.au/aseda/docs/ 0739-Kriol/index.1.html Sandefur, John. 1979. An Australian Creole in the Northern Territory: A description of Ngukurr-Bamyili Dialects. Work Papers of SIL-AAB. B.3. Darwin: Summer Institute of Linguistics Sandefur, John. 1991a. The problem of the transparency of Kriol. In: Ian G. Malcolm (ed.), Linguistics in the Service of Society: Essays to Honour Susan Kaldor, 117–129. Perth: Institute of Applied Language Studies, Edith Cowan University. Sandefur, John. 1991b. A sketch of the structure of Kriol. In: Suzanne Romaine (ed.), Language in Australia, 204–212. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Sandefur, John, and Joy Sandefur. 1981. An Introduction to Conversational Kriol. Work Papers of SIL-AAB. B.5. Darwin: Summer Institute of Linguistics. Sharpe, Margaret, and John Sandefur. 1977. A brief description of Roper Creole. In: Ed Brumby, and Eric Vaszolyi (eds.), Language Problems and Aboriginal Education, 51–60. Mount Lawley: Aboriginal Teacher Education Program, Mount Lawley College of Advanced Education.

Torres Strait Creole data sources Dutton, Thomas. 1980. Informal English in the Torres Straits. In: William S. Ramson (ed.), English Transported: Essays on Australasian English, 137–160. Canberra: Australian National University Press. Shnukal, Anna. 1988. Broken: An Introduction to the Creole Language of Torres Strait. Canberra: Research School of Pacifica and Asian Studies, Australian National University. Shnukal, Anna. 1991. Torres Strait Creole. In: Suzanne Romaine (ed.), Language in Australia, 180–194. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Shnukal, Anna. 2001. Torres Strait English. In: David Blair, and Peter Collins (eds.), English in Australia, 181–200. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

620

Peter Mühlhäusler

Peter Mühlhäusler

Norfolk Island/Pitcairn English 1 Introduction General background information on the Norf’k language can be found in Ingram and Mühlhäusler 2004: 780–786). Both the name of the language (it has been referred to by a number of glossonyms, including Norfolkese, Norfolk English) and its linguistic status (Creole, Pidgin, Cant, Dialect – see Mühlhäusler 2011) remain matters of debate. Schneider’s ‘colonization types’ (2011: 45–48) are difficult to apply, as Pitcairn Island was more an accidental hiding place than a planned colony and as the colonial links between Pitcairn and Norfolk Island on the one hand and Britain, Australia and New Zealand on the other have been reinterpreted by both colonial powers and the Pitcairners on numerous occasions. Whereas some linguists have regarded the language spoken by the descendants of the Bounty mutineers (the Pitcairners) as a laboratory case of creolization, the actual nature of the language is highly complex and a matter of continuing debate. Its complexity is due, in part, to its changing functions, including: – –

– –

–

–

– –

A mixed English-Tahitian language was used as a language of defiance by the sailors of the Bounty even before the mutiny. A mixed Tahitian-English-West Indian Pidgin language was the medium of communication between the Polynesian and British inhabitants of Pitcairn, with the Tahitian element steadily declining. It is not clear whether the children ever creolized this contact variety on Pitcairn. The languages in which the first-born children on Pitcairn Island were socialised included the St. Kitts Creole spoken by Ned Young, the principal story teller on the island. Up to the 1830s the Pitcairners regarded themselves as English. Ever since, they have developed, and at times cultivated, an identity separate from the English ‘conceited, interfering outsiders’. Deliberate use of Pitkern and Norf’k is one of the principal markers of separate identity. Melanesian Pidgin English was spoken at the Melanesian Mission on Norfolk Island and appears to have made a small impact on Norf’k. In addition, a significant number of Norfolk Islanders have lived in Vanuatu and other parts of Melanesia. Right from the first generation all Pitcairners on both Pitcairn and Norfolk Island could speak and write acrolectal English. In some families English was the dominant family language, in others it was reserved for communication with outsiders and in the religious and public domains. It seems likely that the mixed language of the Pitcairners became the sole language of some households in remote parts of Norfolk Island after 1900 and thus creolized. Pitkern and Norf’k became separate varieties after the 1860s when some of the Pitcairners who had been resettled on Norfolk island decided to return to Pitcairn. There are relatively few grammatical differences between the varieties, but a significant number of lexical ones. The views of the Pitcairners on this matter range from ’we speak the same language’ to ’our languages are as different as chalk and cheese’.

It is thus not surprising that linguists have characterized Norf’k variably as ‘a pidgin’, ‘a creole’ or ‘a dialect of English’. Arguments in favour of the characterization of the language as a dialect include that it shares more than 90 % of its core lexicon with English. However, as Wurm (1964) has argued, lexicostatistical evidence is an unreliable indicator when pidginization or creolization are involved. Intelligibility again is an ambivalent parameter. Estimates for intelligibility between speakers of Norf’k and English range between 30 % and 80 %, depending on topic and contextual information. It is noted that there is a very considerable amount of code-mixing and code-switching, even among the most conservative speakers of the language. It is near impossible to determine the boundary between Norf’k and English.

Norfolk Island/Pitcairn English

621

As regards dependency on shared deeper structures as an indicator, sound correspondences between English and older varieties of Pitkern and Norf’k were often irregular and unpredictable; in more recent time there has been a tendency towards creating ‘Instant Norf’k’ by a small set of sound modifications. This has created a situation where the majority of pronunciations can be generated from a single base, thus making Norf’k more like a dialect of English.

2 Notable aspects of the language In spite of the very small number of speakers (about 800) the Norf’k language is highly variable, with family dialects particularly pronounced. Unlike other Pidgins and Creoles that have become official languages, Norf’k has remained an unfocussed language. Features common among some speakers (e.g. the N fer N possessive or the distributive plural marker or) may be absent among others. There are a number of grammatical complexities in the language that make its classification as a straightforward Creole difficult. These include its phonology, which freely admits consonant clusters, the presence of a number of markers of negative embedded sentences, a complex pronoun system as well as a considerable amount of lexical synonymy. It is not possible to isolate a common core of the Norf’k language. The only approach that works is an overall pattern one, a term introduced by Hockett (1958: 334–337) to account for instances of mutual intelligibility with no common core. One can even talk of Norf’k having a ‘cumulative grammar’ in the sense that newer constructions rarely replace older ones but are simply added. Thus, when looking at place names one can observe four different possessive constructions: 1. 2. 3. 4.

Big George Cocoanut (N+N juxtaposition – Pidgin construction) Adam’s Rock (N’s N – as in English) Hole fer Eddie (N fer N – as in St. Kitt’s Creole) Hole fer Matts (mixed or cumulative English – St. Kitt’s)

Again, multiple solutions are also encountered with benefactives and plurals, and the three currently used non-singular first person pronouns we, ucklun and ouwa reflect English, Scottish ‘our clan’ and St. Kitt’s Creole respectively. Another notable aspect of Norf’k is its embeddedness in the natural and cultural ecology of Norfolk Island. It is difficult to conceive of the language to be spoken somewhere else or by non-Pitcairners. Norf’k appears to be unique among Creoles in possessing an absolute spatial orientation system in addition to a relative one. Position and movement in space are expressed with reference to two principal axes, both emanating in Down ar Town ‘Kingston-the administrative centre of the island’. Remoteness from Kingston is signalled by means of the compulsory space markers out (as in Out ar Mission – ‘at or to the former Melanesian Mission’) being located significantly higher up is signalled by means of up as in up ar school ‘at or to the school’ or up in ar stick ‘in the wooded mountainous part of the island’. Pitkern also possesses an absolute spatial orientation system centred on its principal settlement Adamstown (in Adamstown). As Adamstown, unlike Kingston, is not situated on the coast, the Pitkern system is quite different from the Norf’k one (Mühlhäusler and Nash forthcoming).

3 Substratum influence Pitkern and Norf’k are the result of linguistic contacts between a number of English and Scottish dialects, St. Kitt’s Creole and Polynesian languages (mainly Tahitian). Ross and Moverley (1964) as well as others have ascribed a number of grammatical features to Polynesian substratum influence, including the salience of reduplication, categorial multifunctionality and the pronoun system. I have examined their claims in a number

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of studies (Mühlhäusler: 2003, 2008, 2010) and found that whatever substratum influence may have been operative in the early contact language of the 18th century, very little is in evidence in the texts for Pitkern and Norf’k after 1856. In the case of the alleged freedom with which words can belong to a range of grammatical categories it was found that there is very little typological similarity between Tahitian and Norf’k. In the former language words are inherently multicategorial; in Norf’k, as in English, one can determine the direction of conversion. A comparison with English derivational morphology suggests that Norf’k is essentially a subset of English. Influence from St. Kitt’s Creole, on the other hand, appears to have been significant both in the area of reduplication and in pronominal grammar. No lexical items of Tahitian origin feature in a 200 word Swadesh list. Because St. Kitt’s Creole contains numerous words of English origin, a comparison is not straightforward, but about 10 distinct St. Kitt’s words appear on the 200 word list.

4 Comments on features and their nature 4.1 Deliberate language creation Pitkern and Norf’k are esoteric languages. Outsiders (including marriage partners) are not encouraged to speak the language. The language exhibits a number of examples of deliberate language creations, introduced to make it less intelligible to outsiders (the English) and to strengthen social identity and the potential for social control through language. For instance, two of the above-mentioned three first person plural (or paucal) pronouns, ucklun and ouwa, can only be used with reference to persons of Pitcairn descent, with ouwa typically reserved for persons of the right bloodline who have not left the island for work in Australia or New Zealand. There are numerous anthroponyms derived from the names or nicknames of islanders who once engaged in accountable behaviour, including Toebi (from Toby) ‘to help oneself to other people’s garden produce’ Loket (from the nickname Locket) ‘to be interfering, nosey’ Snel (from the family name Snell) ‘to cater insufficiently’ Siar (from Josiah) ‘to invite oneself to a meal’ Luusi (from Lucy) ‘to cry in public, to whimper’ and numerous others. Since everybody knows the genealogy of all islanders, such words are used as a form of provocation and social control. Laycock (1989) regarded the presence of numerous such words and constructions as a reason for classifying Norf’k as a ‘cant’.

4.2 Pragmatics of questions Whereas the interrogative structures of Norf’k do not differ markedly from those of other contact varieties of English, there appear to be significant differences with British varieties when the rules for questioning are examined. The data collected on Norfolk Island suggest similarities with South East Queensland Aboriginal English (Eades 1982) with regard to the following properties: – – –

There is no obligation to answer either oral or written questions in Norf’k. Questions may be answered with considerable delay. Asking direct questions can count as a threat.

The pragmatics of using questions is also in evidence when Norfolk Islanders employ acrolectal English and can be a source of intercultural misunderstandings.

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Norfolk Island/Pitcairn English

4.3 Features not considered As the WAVE list is restricted to morphosyntactic properties, a number of important indicators of the relationship between Norf’k and other varieties of English are not visible. Attention to phonetological properties of the language, for instance, reveal that St. Kitt’s Creole rather than Tahitian was of importance. The replacement of [v] by [w] in words like wekls < victuals or werekl < vehicle would seem to reflect the ongoing impact of the mutineer Edward Young of St. Kitt’s as does the [l]-[r] alternation in words such as stole adjective phrase > locative > noun phrase (cf. Rickford 1998: 190). An interesting finding emerges from the use of invariant present tense forms due to zero marking for the third person singular (F170), which is pervasive throughout the Caribbean “proper” but absent in the Surinamese creoles. This finding may be owed to a theoretical question, namely whether it makes sense to think about the absence of person/number or tense distinctions if verbs occur only in bare form anyway (cf. section 2.5. above). The opposite phenomenon, in any case, also occurs, i.e., the generalization of thirdperson singular -s to all persons in the present tense (F171), but is restricted to the two Bahamian varieties and VinC. In existentials, there is and there was freely co-occur with a plural subject (F172) in six Caribbean Englishes. In those varieties in which this is not the case, variant forms of the dummy subject, such as they, it, or zero (F173), may be found. In three varieties (BahE, BahC, TrinC), both possibilities exist. Less widespread features are the deletion of auxiliary have (F179) and the was/were generalization (F180), which occur in five and seven varieties respectively, and invariant be with non-habitual function (F184), which is attested in BahE and GuyC only. A noteworthy pattern emerges from the three features (F181–183) constituting the so-called “Northern Subject Rule,” which has been one of the most distinctive characteristics of northern British English dialects, including Scots, since the Middle English period. In those dialects, the distribution of verbal -s is governed not by a subject’s person and number features but by its morphological type (full noun phrase vs. personal pronoun) and syntactic position (immediately adjacent to the subject or not). Reflexes of the Northern Subject Rule have been attested for various North American vernaculars, both black and white but primarily southern (cf. Poplack and Tagliamonte 2001: 191). It is interesting to note that the only Caribbean variety for which

Regional profile: The Caribbean

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Map Car_13: Distribution of F174, F175 (deletion of auxilary be) and F176 (deletion of copula be: before NPs) across varieties in the Caribbean

this rule is attested is BahE, which confirms Wolfram and Sellers (1998), who hypothesized historical links between the dialects spoken by the descendants of Scots Irish settlers in eastern and coastal North Carolina and the dialect spoken by white Bahamians in the northern Bahamas.

2.9 Relativization The most conspicuous feature in this domain is the use of what as a relativizer (F190), which is attested for eight varieties. Next in line are the use of that or what in non-restrictive contexts (F185) and gapping or zero relativization in subject position (F193), both of which are found in seven Caribbean Englishes. A relativizer derived from where (F189), occurs in six varieties, and linking relative clauses (F197)are attested for five varieties. In general, the grammatical domain of relativization shows comparatively few A or B but numerous ? ratings. Once more, the Surinamese creoles possess hardly any of the features described.

2.10 Complementation This is different in the grammatical domain of complementation, which comprises numerous characteristically creole features, most of them attested not only in the Caribbean “proper” but also in the Surinamese creoles. They include the use of say to introduce a subordinate clause following verbs of saying or thinking (F200), a for-based complementizer (F201), get-based existentials (F205), existentials with forms of have (F206), and non-finite clause complements employing a bare verb instead of the -ing form (F210), all of which occur in at least eight Caribbean Englishes but not in BahE. Say- and for-based complementizers and bare non-finite clause complements are marginally attested in JamE, which, after all, co-exists with JamC in a con-

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Map Car_14: Distribution of F223 (other options for clefting than in StE) and F225 (sentence-initial focus-marker)

tinuum situation. Other well-attested features include for (to) as an infinitive marker (F203), as what or than what in comparative clauses (F204), and the deletion of to before infinitives (F208), which occur in BahE as well but, with the exception of the latter, do so only marginally. Unsplit for to in infinitival purpose clauses (F202) occurs in both Bahamian varieties as well as in Bajan and Trinidadian Creole.

2.11 Adverbial subordination There are two patterns worthy of discussion in this domain. First, there is a chaining construction linking two main verbs without explicit subordination (F213). With the exception of EMarC and Sranan, this construction appears in all creole varieties but not in BahE and JamE. Second, conjunction doubling of the kind clause + conj. + conj. + clause (F214) is restricted to creoles of the Caribbean “proper,” i.e., to BahC, Bajan, JamC, GuyC, TrinC, and VinC. Once more, thus, we are looking at a set of features which separates creoles from non-creole varieties (and the Surinamese creoles from other English-lexifier creoles of the Caribbean).

2.12 Adverbs and prepositions Things are different for this grammatical domain, as numerous features are not just widespread in the Caribbean, where they cut across groups of varieties, but quasi-universal or at least exceedingly frequent worldwide, too. This concerns degree modifiers (F220) and other adverbs (F221), which may have the same form as adjectives, as well as locative prepositions and prepositions before temporal expressions (F216), which may be omitted. The use of too (much) or very much in the sense of ‘very’ (F222) is also fairly frequent both in the Caribbean and on a global scale. The use of postpositions (F217) and of the adverb-forming elements -way and -time (F219) is restricted to the creole varieties of the sample. Affirmative anymore ‘nowadays’ (F218) does not occur at all, despite its widespread use in the American South and the close historical links between the two Bahamian varieties and this region (cf. Wolfram and Sellers 1998; Hackert and Huber 2007).

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2.13 Discourse organization and word order There are two features in this domain which clearly set apart creole from non-creole varieties: the existence of alternative cleft constructions (F223) and the presence of a sentence-initial focus marker (F225), which is typically equivalent to the copula form used in pre-nominal environments (cf. Holm et al. 1999: 98). Both of these features are widely used throughout the sample, including at least one of the Surinamese creoles, but not attested in BahE and only marginally present in JamE. Two other features are ubiquitous in the Caribbean: the lack of inversion and of auxiliaries in wh-questions (F228) and in main-clause yes/no questions (F229), but at least the latter must be considered quasi-universal on a global scale as well. The use of inverted word order in indirect questions (F227), by contrast, is rare in the Caribbean, despite its frequent occurrence in varieties of English worldwide. The use of “negative inversion,” i.e, of sentence-initial negated auxiliary verbs (F226), is found in the two Bahamian varieties, where it could be explained by their links with North America, where negative inversion appears to be in general use, and in Bajan and JamC. The use of like as a focussing device (F234) or as a quotative particle (F235) is generally claimed to be a fairly recent development in the history of English (cf. Tagliamonte 2012: 247); by this standard, BahC, Bajan, SanAC, and the Surinamese creoles appear more conservative than the other Caribbean varieties in that neither of the two uses is attested for them. Other features which may be found in the Caribbean but which are neither very frequent nor distinctive of particular groups of varieties are the existence of other possibilities for fronting than in standard English (F224), the use of most before a head noun (F231), and the presence of a subject in imperative constructions (F233).

3 Diagnostic features of English in the Caribbean As pointed out by Schneider (this volume), the frequency of an individual feature in a particular world region still does not tell us anything about this feature’s diagnostic value, as it may well be that it is widespread not just in the region under investigation but in varieties of English worldwide. Different count/mass noun distinctions than in standard English, for example (F55), occur in seven out of 13 Caribbean Englishes and in 40 out of 74 varieties worldwide. The feature’s “density,” or relative frequency, is identical, amounting to 54 % worldwide and 54 % in the Caribbean. Thus, even though it may be considered frequent in the Caribbean, this feature is by no means typical of the region, as it is just as frequent in other varieties. The occurrence of an object form as a (modifying) possessive pronoun (F24), by contrast, must be considered characteristically Caribbean: its density in the region is 69 %, while on a global scale, it is found in only 28 % of all varieties. In order to establish the set of diagnostic features of English in the Caribbean, I followed Schneider and assumed a 20 % feature density difference as indicative. Table 2 lists the features for which this is the case. Feature no. Feature 19 141 22 18 206 23 114 150 201 149

Subject pronoun forms as (modifying) possessive pronouns: first person plural Other forms/phrases for copula ‘be’: before locatives You as (modifying) possessive pronoun Subject pronoun forms as (modifying) possessive pronouns: first person singular Existentials with forms of have Second person pronoun forms other than you as (modifying) possessive pronoun Go-based future markers Serial verbs: come = ‘movement towards’ For-based complementizers Serial verbs: go = ‘movement away from’

Feature group

Feature density difference

Pronouns

57.59 %

Verb Morphology Pronouns Pronouns

57.59 % 57.17 % 53.01 %

Complementation Pronouns

52.60 % 50.83 %

Tense and Aspect Verb Morphology Complementation Verb Morphology

50.00 % 49.90 % 49.48 % 48.54 %

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Stephanie Hackert

151 17 5 225

Serial verbs: constructions with 3 verbs Creation of possessive pronouns with prefix fi- +personal pronoun Generalized third person singular pronoun: subject pronouns Sentence-initial focus marker

104 6 148 177 24 140 160 46 25 51 200 21 70 77 93 111 208 178 74 10 223 228 210 50 118 66 20 152 213 32 216 157 126 75 31 13 110

Verb Morphology Pronouns Pronouns Discourse and Word Order Completive/perfect done Tense and Aspect Generalized third person singular pronoun: object pronouns Pronouns Serial verbs: give = ‘to, for’ Verb Morphology Deletion of copula be: before AdjPs Agreement Object pronoun forms as (modifying) possessive pronouns: third person Pronouns singular Other forms/phrases for copula ‘be’: before NPs Verb Morphology No as preverbal negator Negation Deletion of it in referential it is-constructions Pronouns Object pronoun forms as (modifying) possessive pronouns: third person Pronouns plural Plural marking via postposed elements Noun Phrase Say-based complementizers Complementation Subject pronoun forms as (modifying) possessive pronouns: third person Pronouns plural Proximal and distal demonstratives with ‘here’ and ‘there’ Noun Phrase Omission of genitive suffix; possession expressed through bare Noun Phrase juxtaposition of nouns Other non-standard habitual markers: analytic Tense and Aspect Past tense/anterior marker been Tense and Aspect Deletion of to before infinitives Complementation Deletion of copula be: before locatives Agreement Phrases with for + noun to express possession: for-phrase following Noun Phrase possessed NP No gender distinction in third person singular Pronouns Other options for clefting than StE Discourse and Word Order No inversion/no auxiliaries in wh-questions Discourse and Word Order Non-finite clause complements with bare root form rather than -ing form Complementation Plural marking via preposed elements Noun Phrase Is for am/will with 1st person singular Tense and Aspect Indefinite article one/wan Noun Phrase Subject pronoun forms as (modifying) possessive pronouns: third person Pronouns singular Serial verbs: constructions with 4 or more verbs Verb Morphology No subordination; chaining construction linking two main verbs (motion Adverbial and activity) Subordination Distinction between emphatic vs. non-emphatic forms of pronouns Pronouns Omission of StE prepositions Adverbs and Prepositions Ain’t as generic negator before a main verb Negation New quasi-modals: aspectual meanings Modal Verbs Phrases with for + noun to express possession: for-phrase preceding Noun Phrase possessed NP Non-coordinated object pronoun forms in subject function Pronouns Subject pronoun forms serving as base for reflexives Pronouns Finish-derived completive markers Tense and Aspect

48.54 % 48.02 % 46.78 % 44.49 % 43.14 % 41.79 % 41.27 % 40.96 % 40.85 % 40.85 % 39.09 % 37.73 % 37.21 % 36.80 % 36.80 % 36.38 % 35.55 % 35.55 % 35.03 % 35.03 % 34.10 % 32.33 % 31.81 % 30.98 % 30.04 % 29.73 % 29.11 % 28.59 % 28.59 % 27.44 % 26.82 % 26.30 % 25.99 % 25.47 % 24.74 % 24.53 % 24.12 % 22.25 % 21.83 % 21.41 % 20.48 %

Table 2: Diagnostic features of English in the Caribbean

As would be expected, many of the features that distinguish Caribbean Englishes from other varieties are creole features. They include serial verb constructions (F148–151), copula predication, and more specifically variant forms for ‘be’ before locatives (F141) and zero forms before adjectives (F177) and locatives (F178), existentials

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with forms of have (F206), go-based future markers (F114), say (F200) and for (F201) as complementizers, no as a preverbal negator (F160), plural marking via preposed (F50) or postposed (F51) elements, and tense and aspect marking by means of preverbal elements, such as completive/perfective done (F104), past tense/anterior been (F111), or analytic habitual markers (F93). Finally, there is the large grammatical domain of pronominal reference, whose most prominent feature in the Caribbean is the absence of case and gender distinctions made elsewhere. Pronouns are overrepresented in Table 2 generally, accounting for about a third (16 out of 51) of all diagnostic features of Caribbean English, as opposed to 20 % (47 out of 235) in the entire WAVE database. Of course, varieties or groups of varieties may be distinguished not just by the features they have but also by the ones they lack. Table 3 lists the features which are conspicuously absent from Caribbean Englishes in that they either do not occur at all (F27 to F230) or are restricted to a single variety or variety group, such as the pairs BahE – BahC and JamE – JamC, or the Surinamese creoles. Feature no. Feature 27

Feature group

40

Object pronoun forms as (modifying) possessive pronouns: first person Pronouns plural More number distinctions in personal pronouns than simply singular vs. Pronouns plural Plural forms of interrogative pronouns: reduplication Pronouns

37

73

Existential construction to express possessive

76

Postnominal phrases with bilong/blong/long/blo to express possession Noun Phrase

Attested in …

Noun Phrase

81

Much as comparative marker

Noun Phrase

82

As/to as comparative markers

Noun Phrase

84

Comparative marking only with than

Noun Phrase

87

Attributive adjectival modifiers follow head noun

Noun Phrase

94

Progressive marker stap or stay

Tense and Aspect

95

Be sat/stood with progressive meaning

Tense and Aspect

97

Medial object perfect

Tense and Aspect

98

After-perfect

Tense and Aspect

106

“Sequential” or ”irrealis” be done

Tense and Aspect

107

Completive/perfect marker slam

Tense and Aspect

108

Ever as marker of experiential perfect

Tense and Aspect

116

Come-based future/ingressive markers

Tense and Aspect

122

Epistemic mustn’t

Modal Verbs

137

Special inflected forms of do

Verb Morphology

138

Special inflected forms of have

Verb Morphology

153

Give passive: NP1 (patient) + give + NP2 (agent) + V

Voice

162

No more/nomo as negative existential marker

Negation

164

Amn’t in tag questions

Negation

166

Invariant tag can or not?

Negation

188

Relativizer at

Relativization

195

Postposed one as sole relativizer

Relativization

199

Reduced relative phrases preceding head-noun

Relativization

209

Addition of to where StE has bare infinitive

Complementation

211

Clause-final but = ‘though’

218

Affirmative anymore ‘nowadays’

230

Doubly filled COMP-position with wh-words

29 38 85 102

Use of us in object function with singular referent Specialized plural markers for pronouns Comparative marking with more … and Be as perfect auxiliary

Adverbial Subordination Adverbs and Prepositions Discourse and Word Order Pronouns Pronouns Noun Phrase Tense and Aspect

BahE BahE BahE BahE

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136 163 181 182 183 33 44 90 134 139 196 35 15

Special inflected forms of be Was – weren’t split Agreement sensitive to subject type Agreement sensitive to position of subject Northern Subject Rule Independent possessive pronoun forms with added nasal Subject pronoun drop: dummy pronouns Invariant be as habitual marker A-prefixing on ing-forms Distinctive forms for auxiliary vs. full verb meanings of primary verbs Correlative constructions Forms or phrases for the second person singular pronoun other than you Absolute use of reflexives

Verb Morphology Negation Agreement Agreement Agreement Pronouns Pronouns Tense and Aspect Verb Morphology Verb Morphology Relativization Pronouns Pronouns

71 59 207 36 143 187 65 124 169 133 144 191 212

No number distinction in demonstratives Double determiners Substitution of that-clause for infinitival subclause Distinct forms for inclusive/exclusive first person non-singular Transitive verb suffix -em/-im/-um Relativizer as Use of indefinite article where StE favours zero Want/need + past participle Non-standard system underlying responses to negative yes/no questions Double marking of past tense Use of gotten and got with distinct meanings (dynamic vs. static) Relativizer doubling Clause-final but = ‘really’

86 168

Zero marking of degree Special negative verbs in imperatives

Noun Phrase Noun Phrase Complementation Pronouns Verb Morphology Relativization Noun Phrase Modal Verbs Negation Verb Morphology Verb Morphology Relativization Adverbial Subordination Noun Phrase Negation

BahE BahE BahE BahE BahE BahE, BahC BahE, BahC BahE, BahC BahE, BahC Bajan Bajan EMarC EMarC, Saramaccan EMarC, Sranan Saramaccan Saramaccan Sranan GuyC JamC JamE SanAC SanAC TrinC TrinC TrinC TrinC VinC VinC

Table 3: Features absent from the Caribbean or restricted to a single variety or variety group

As Table 3 shows, only 31, or about 13 %, of the 235 WAVE features are not attested at all in the Caribbean. These features are, for the most part, associated with conservative L1 varieties; they include, for example, be sat/stood with progressive meaning (F95), epistemic mustn’t (F122), or the relativizer at (F188). Another group comprises features such as postnominal phrases employing a form derived from belong to express possession (F76), the preverbal progressive marker stap or stay (F94), and can or not? as an invariant tag (F166), all of which are typical of Pacific and/or Asian varieties. Another 32 features are found in only one variety or variety pair/group. In most cases, this variety is BahE; the features marking it out are invariably those characterizing conservative L1 varieties, both in Britain and in the southern United States. Table 3 thus clearly confirms the special status of BahE as the only non-standard, non-creole variety of the sample and its close historical ties with the American South. With a feature count of six singularly attested features, the Surinamese creoles are next in line; their special status as radical creoles and “ultra-peripheral varieties of the English language complex” (Migge, this volume) has long been noted. Once more, to simply state the absence of particular features does not really tell us anything about those features’ diagnostic value, as they might be just as rare in other varieties. Table 4 thus once more displays feature density differences between Caribbean Englishes and varieties of English around the world. Again, the 20 % benchmark quoted earlier in this section was taken as indicative; a negative feature density difference then marks those features which occur much less frequently in the Caribbean than on a global scale.

Regional profile: The Caribbean

Feature no. Feature 8 227 28 209 45 169 71 128 122 172 67 59 116 211 96 29 84 102 133 139 130 82 56 100

Myself/meself instead of I in coordinate subjects Inverted word order in indirect questions

Feature group

Pronouns Discourse and Word Order Use of us + NP in subject function Pronouns Addition of to where StE has bare infinitive Complementation Insertion of it where StE favours zero Pronouns Non-standard system underlying responses to negative yes/no questions Negation No number distinction in demonstratives Noun Phrase Levelling of past tense/past participle verb forms: regularization of Verb Morphology irregular verb paradigms Epistemic mustn’t Modal Verbs Existential / presentational there’s/there is/there was with plural Agreement subjects Demonstratives for definite articles Noun Phrase Double determiners Noun Phrase Come-based future/ingressive markers Tense and Aspect Clause-final but = ‘though’ Adverbial Subordination There with past participle in resultative contexts Tense and Aspect Use of us in object function with singular referent Pronouns Comparative marking only with than Noun Phrase Be as perfect auxiliary Tense and Aspect Double marking of past tense Verb Morphology Distinctive forms for auxiliary vs. full verb meanings of primary verbs Verb Morphology Levelling of past tense/past participle verb forms: past tense replacing Verb Morphology the past participle As/to as comparative markers Noun Phrase Absence of plural marking only after quantifiers Noun Phrase Levelling of the difference between present perfect and simple past: Tense and Aspect present perfect for StE simple past

725

Feature density difference –38.15 % –36.38 % –34.62 % –31.08 % –27.86 % –27.44 % –26.51 % –25.05 % –24.32 % –24.12 % –23.80 % –23.39 % –22.97 % –22.97 % –22.45 % –22.04 % –21.62 % –20.69 % –20.69 % –20.69 % –20.58 % –20.27 % –20.17 % –20.17 %

Table 4: Features which are comparatively infrequent in Caribbean Englishes

The features listed in Table 4 constitute a fairly mixed bag. A number of them have been described as typical of the so-called “New Englishes.” Among these are the use of inverted word order in indirect questions (F227; cf. Mesthrie and Bhatt 2008: 105) and the lack of number distinctions in demonstratives (F71; 2008: 54–55). Resultative there + past participle (F96) and perfect be (F102), by contrast, are frequent in traditional British English dialects and conservative New World varieties. It is interesting to note that, at 24 entries, the list of “absentees” is only about half as long as the list of diagnostic features of English in the Caribbean, which has 51 entries. This difference actually increases if larger percentages are assumed as indicative of diagnosticity. The most likely explanation for this finding appears to be historical: the varieties of English which provided the superstrate input to Caribbean Englishes were those of British indentured servants and settlers from the lower walks of life. It is these non-standard varieties which the African slave population was exposed to via face-to-face communication and which it then restructured through untutored second-language acquisition. Given this kind of contact scenario, it is not surprising that Caribbean Englishes should share in a comparatively large number of non-standard features of English worldwide as represented in the WAVE database. It is to be expected that the list of diagnostic features would be shorter for African, Asian, or Pacific varieties in that English was transmitted there mostly by way of the educational system, in which standard English obviously played a central role. Different patterns in the historical diffusion of the language, thus, are still well reflected in the contemporary distribution of features of English worldwide.

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4 Comparing varieties of English in the Caribbean In large-scale typological surveys such as the present one, comparisons may be of different kinds. Whereas the preceding sections focused on the distribution and density of individual features in the region, this section is concerned with the establishment of similarities or differences between varieties or groups of them. This comparison is once more based exclusively on the WAVE database and thus on synchronic data. Given the settlement history of the Caribbean (cf., e.g., Higman 2011), an obvious expectation from such data is nevertheless the illumination of the historical relationships holding between the different territories and speech communities of the region. In order to calculate affinities between varieties, I followed the procedure outlined in Baker and Huber (2001) and Hackert and Huber (2007). Table 5 presents individual varieties’ feature scores obtained by means of this procedure, which transformed the alphabetical WAVE ratings into numerical values, with A and B ratings receiving a score of 1.0 and marginally attested features, i.e., C ratings, scoring 0.5. Variety

Feature score

JamC TrinC BahE GuyC VinC BahC Bajan SanAC BelC Sranan Saramaccan JamE EMarC

120.5 105 104 103 99.5 92 85 70 63.5 58 55 49 48

Table 5: Caribbean Englishes according to feature score

Table 5 at least partially confirms the intra-Caribbean groupings described in section 1 above. With feature scores of less than 60, the Surinamese creoles clearly stand apart. This is owed to the fact that the WAVE questionnaire, designed to capture the range of non-standard morphosyntactic features in varieties of English around the world, was obviously not compiled to elicit specifically creole features, let alone those of radical creoles. Accordingly, in the WAVE database, numerous features are marked as “not attested” in or “not applicable” to the Surinamese creoles, which is indicative of the substantial typological distance between the former and the other varieties constituting the “English Language Complex” (Mesthrie and Bhatt 2008: 1). The feature score of JamE is also not surprising: as a standard variety, it obviously shares in the non-standard features elicited for WAVE only to a limited extent. Nevertheless, whereas the low feature scores of the Surinamese creoles are owed to a high number of D or X ratings, the similar feature score of JamE is a result of frequent C ratings, which means that features are attested but rare. This is clearly a result of the Jamaican continuum situation, in which “even primarily standard English texts will show a lot of variation and shifting between various codes […], as speakers and writers exploit the linguistic resources available to them” (Sand, this volume). Two other varieties with low feature scores are SanAC and BelC. Both have been classified as conservative creoles (Winford 1993: 4; cf. section 1 above). In the WAVE questionnaire, they emerge as cases parallel to the Surinamese creoles, with numerous features not attested at all. The mid feature score range of between 85 and 100 is occupied by one conservative creole, VinC, and two intermediate ones, BahC and Bajan. Of course, with variation being rampant in the continuum situations which dominate in the English-speaking Caribbean, it is entirely possible that the large mesolectal range rather than the sheer basilect is represented in the

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VinC WAVE data and that the features constituting this mesolectal range are very similar to those which occur in intermediate creoles anyway. At the top of the feature score list, we also find two conservative creoles, JamC and GuyC, and an intermediate one, TrinC, as well as the only L1 dialect of the sample, BahE. Once more, we might be dealing with the wide spectrum of mesolectal variation in the case of JamC, GuyC, and TrinC; if the JamC ratings came about in any way similar to that described in Patrick (2004: 410), the variety’s extremely high WAVE feature score is accounted for by the fact that, even though the focus was on the mesolect, basilectal and acrolectal features were also taken into account. The most interesting variety in terms of the composition of its database might easily be BahE, as it consists of two fairly distinct subvarieties, labeled “Afro-Bahamian” and “Anglo-Bahamian” (Reaser and Torbert, this volume). Given the fact that black-white speech relationships in the Bahamas have long been described as constituting a “non-continuum” (Shilling 1980), particularly in the area of morphosyntax but also in phonology, where, despite substantial mutual accommodation, there “continues to be […] a constant ethnic divide” between black and white Bahamian speech (Childs et al. 2003: 26), this choice came as a surprise at least to the present author. Apparently, Reaser and Torbert’s aim was to generalize about the non-creole vernaculars of the Bahamas; this generalization is based on data from two communities on the northern Bahamian island of Abaco, one black and one white. As Reaser and Torbert remark, linguistically these communities are distinct in many ways; what unites them is that they are also distinct from the urban speech community of Nassau, in which the BahC data were sampled (cf. Hackert, this volume). Whether northern black Bahamian speech should really be classified as “non-creole,” however, and actually resembles white vernacular speech so closely that the assumption of a single variety is warranted may have to be discussed more extensively elsewhere (cf. Hackert and Huber 2007). In any case, the relative heterogeneity of the BahE database, which includes not just a large number of features characteristic of conservative L1 dialects in both Britain and the southern United States but also numerous features attested for Caribbean English-lexifier creoles, appears to explain the variety’s high WAVE feature score. Table 6 shows pairwise affinities between various Caribbean varieties. These affinities were calculated in the following way (cf. Baker and Huber 2001: 181; Hackert and Huber 2007: 301): the number of features a variety pair would share if features were randomly distributed (which they are obviously not, as there are clear historical and linguistic ties between varieties) was subtracted from the actual number of features shared. BahE, for example, possesses 104 of the 235 WAVE features; BahC possesses 92 of them. Under the assumption of a random distribution of features, BahE and BahC would be expected to share (104 / 235) × 92 = 40.7 features, whereas, in fact, they share 58.5 features and thus 17.8 more than expected. Of course, this is a fairly crude and rather mechanical way of determining affinities, and at least two caveats have to be borne in mind. First, it is clear that numerous features are not independent of one another. The presence of the Northern Subject Rule as a whole (F183), for example, implies the presence of both the subject type constraint (F181) and the syntactic position constraint (F182). Generally, as noted in Hackert and Huber (2007: 301), morphosyntactic features are more interdependent than lexical features. Second, while the formal identity between features in different varieties is easy to spot, in order to be truly identical and thus indicative of historical links, these features must also have identical functions, which, however, are much more difficult to establish. Nevertheless, as a first approximation, Table 6 provides some useful insights into the affinities existing between varieties of English in the Caribbean. Of the 78 possible pairs of Caribbean Englishes, 17 are displayed in Table 6. These 17 pairs do not constitute a random sample but were selected with a view to testing the distinctions into western and eastern and radical, conservative, and intermediate creoles reported at the beginning of this chapter. All pairs consisting of creoles spoken in the Caribbean “proper” evidence high shared feature scores. Among the highest scores are those of pairs whose members are either both conservative or both intermediate creoles, no matter whether the varieties paired both belong to a single branch of Caribbean English-lexifier creoles (western, conservative: JamC – SanAC, JamC – BelC, and SanAC – BelC; eastern, intermediate: Bajan – TrinC) or not (conservative: JamC – GuyC; intermediate: BahC – Bajan, BahC – TrinC). Shared feature scores are also high if the varieties paired are conservative and intermediate but belong to the same branch (eastern: GuyC – TrinC).

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Variety pair

Shared feature score (actual – expected)

JamC – GuyC EMarC – Sranan Saramaccan – Sranan BahC – Bajan BahC – TrinC Bajan – TrinC GuyC – TrinC SanAC – BelC JamC – BelC EMarC – Saramaccan GuyC – Sranan JamC – SanAC BahE – BahC JamC – Sranan JamE – JamC BahC – Sranan Bajan – Sranan

27.2 27.2 26.9 26.2 23.9 22.8 22.7 21.6 21.4 20.8 20.6 20.6 17.8 16.3 14.4 13.8 9.8

Table 6: Shared feature scores for selected pairs of Caribbean Englishes

The Surinamese creoles also display high shared feature scores if paired among each other (Saramaccan – Sranan, EMarC – Sranan, and, less clearly, EMarC – Saramaccan) but considerably lower scores if paired with a creole from the Caribbean “proper.” Shared feature scores remain higher if a Surinamese creole is paired with a conservative Caribbean creole (JamC – Sranan) than if it is paired with an intermediate one (BahC – Sranan, Bajan – Sranan). The shared feature scores evidenced by the coexisting pairs BahE – BahC and JamE – JamC are found at the lower end of the spectrum displayed in Table 6. This, too, is not surprising given the historical and sociolinguistic relations holding between the members of each variety pair as briefly sketched in section 1 above. In sum, Table 6 offers some useful first insights into the linguistic relations holding between various Caribbean Englishes. Tables 7 to 9 build on and expand these insights. They display the shared feature scores of a number of variety pairs each of which involves one Caribbean English and one English from another world region. Again, these pairs were selected with certain research questions in mind. Table 7 gauges the shared feature scores displayed in Table 6 against the scores obtained for one radical (Sranan), one conservative (JamC), and one intermediate (Bajan) Caribbean English-lexifier creole each paired off with Indian English (IndE), one of the so-called “New Englishes.” The shared feature scores for these variety pairs are obviously much lower than those evidenced within the Caribbean, which testifies to the fact that, despite their status as postcolonial varieties of English, there is not much that unites Indian English with the Caribbean creoles. The pair Sranan – IndE even evidences a negative shared feature score. This indicates that the actual number of shared features is lower than the number expected under the assumption of a random distribution and points to the particularly stark contrast between the origins of Sranan and IndE. Sranan originated in a plantation colony where English was introduced by way of face-to-face communication but was withdrawn quickly after the formation of the new contact variety, which therefore became particularly susceptible to substrate influence (cf. Winford 2003: 317), IndE, by contrast, has its origins in an exploitation colony where English was transmitted through the educational system and long remained a jealously guarded badge of identity for a small indigenous elite which was closely associated with the colonizers by way of its involvement in the administration of the colony (cf. Schneider 2007: 164). Variety pair

Shared feature score (actual – expected)

Bajan – IndE JamC – IndE Sranan – IndE

5.7 4.2 –4.2

Table 7: Shared feature scores Caribbean Englishes – IndE

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Table 8 displays the shared feature scores of the same three creoles and possible superstrate input varieties. The influence of Irish English (IrE) and of southwestern English dialects (SW) in the formation of varieties of Caribbean Englishes has long been noted. According to Hickey (2004: 328), for example, a “certain tradition has been established of referring to the likelihood of Irish influence in the formative period of Caribbean forms of English,” and Winford (2003: 315) notes that “Bajan grammar reflects heavy influence from southern English dialects, especially those of the South West of England.” As Table 8 shows, the shared feature scores of Bajan and JamC are, in fact, highest with IrE, followed by those with southwestern dialects and with the North, which were added for comparative purposes; Sranan once more displays negative shared feature scores. Variety pair

Shared feature score (actual – expected)

JamC – IrE Bajan – IrE Bajan – SW Bajan – North JamC – SW JamC – North Sranan – SW Sranan – IrE Sranan – North

7.7 7.1 6.1 4.7 4.5 3.1 –0.4 –2.7 –4.6

Table 8: Shared feature scores Caribbean Englishes – possible superstrate input varieties

Table 9, finally, examines the relationships holding between the two Bahamian varieties and four North American dialects. The North American connection of BahC is well established. Initially (Holm 1983), the variety had been described as an offshoot of Earlier African American Vernacular English (EAAVE); more recent historical and linguistic research (Hackert and Huber 2007; Hackert and Holm 2009), however, showed that it must be regarded as a diaspora variety of Gullah. As noted earlier in this section, there also appear to be historical connections between northern white Bahamians and the coastal areas of North Carolina (Wolfram and Sellers 1998); two rural vernaculars spoken by whites in the southeastern United States, Southeast American enclave English (SEAmE) and Ozark English (OzE), were therefore paired off with BahE. Variety pair

Shared feature score (Factual – expected)

BahE – OzE BahE – SEAmE BahC – Gullah BahC – EAAVE

20.6 20.2 19.8 18.5

Table 9: Shared feature scores Bahamian Englishes – North America

First, the shared feature scores displayed in Table 9 resemble those shown in Table 6 for variety pairs consisting of Caribbean Englishes only, which substantiates the assumption of exceedingly close historical and linguistic links between the Bahamas and North America. Second, with regard to BahC, the shared feature score of this variety is, in fact, higher with Gullah than with EAAVE, which, with all due caution, may must be interpreted as another piece of evidence in favor of the hypothesis that the origins of BahC lie exclusively in the coastal areas of South Carolina and Georgia. More sophisticated statistical methods in the form of cluster analysis underlie the graphs represented in the following.2 They are based on the so-called “NeighborNet” algorithm, which originated in bioinformatics

2 Thank you to the WAVE editors for making these graphs available.

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Network Car_1: NeighborNet clustering of the 13 Caribbean Englishes in WAVE

and produces calculations of similarities and differences between individual categories, i.e., varieties, based on shared properties, i.e., features. In the following “splits graphs” each set of lines represents a division of varieties into exactly two groups, with the length of the lines representing the average distance between them (cf. Kortmann and Wolk, this volume). It is important to note that the distance matrix which underlies these splits graphs is based on the simple “present” (feature ratings A, B, C) vs. “absent” (D, X, ?) distinction employed in section 2 above rather than on the differentiation into strongly attested (A and B ratings), marginally attested (C), and unattested (D, X, ?) features used in this section so far. Minor differences in the position of individual varieties or groups of them should thus not come as a surprise. Still, Network Car_1 nicely confirms the grouping of varieties displayed in Table 5 above, where the Surinamese creoles clearly stood apart and JamE, BelC, and SanAC showed feature scores which placed them closer to this group of varieties than to the other Caribbean Englishes. BelC and SanAC, in turn, were closer to one another in Table 5 than either of them was to JamE; the same result may be observed in Network Car_1.We further see a large cluster of conservative and intermediate creoles; their similarities in feature scores have already been discussed as well. What emerges more clearly in the graph than in Table 5 is the relative isolation of BahE. Network WAVE_all (see foldout at the end of this volume) situates the set of Caribbean Englishes sampled for WAVE in a global perspective. Again, the clusters and splits displayed confirm the groupings and divisions discussed earlier in this section and substantiate the historical and linguistic connections between varieties described in the literature. Clearly, there is a large cluster which comprises not just the conservative and intermediate Caribbean creoles as well as Gullah but also the two Liberian varieties, i.e., Liberian Settler English and Vernacular Liberian English, as well as varieties of African American Vernacular English, BahE, SEAmE, and the two South Atlantic Englishes, i.e., St. Helena English and Tristan da Cunha English. All may be described as high-contact varieties of English whose formation involved strong influences from African languages and/or creoles. Not surprisingly, Gullah is closer to the Caribbean Englishes in Network WAVE_all

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(see foldout at the end of this volume) than to the various varieties of African American Vernacular English, either contemporary or modern. A second cluster links the Surinamese creoles (which, once more, clearly stand apart as a group) as well as BelC and SanAC with other English-lexifier creoles such as Hawai’i Creole, Bislama, Nigerian Pidgin, or British Creole. JamE also clusters with this group; possible reasons for this finding have been discussed above.

5 Conclusion This chapter has provided an account of English in the Caribbean as represented in the WAVE database. It first listed and described the morphosyntactic features found most frequently in the region, then commented on features which are conspicuously absent, and finally established the set of diagnostic features of Caribbean Englishes, which are, as would be expected, primarily creole features. Another focus was on the comparison of varieties, both within the Caribbean and with varieties from other world regions. It was shown that the synchronic data represented in WAVE actually provide useful information even for the investigation of historical links between territories and/or speech communities. Certainly, the results presented here must be taken with a grain of salt in that, in large-scale typological surveys such as the present, much information, be it textual, sociolinguistic, or merely pertaining to the functions of particular forms, is simply unavailable. Moreover, much of the variation which is a defining characteristic particularly of mesolectal creoles is glossed over, even by ratings which include frequency statements, as in the present case. Nevertheless, what this chapter has hopefully shown is that the database underlying WAVE provides an extremely valuable research tool which will certainly prove crucial to the further empirical investigation of the morphosyntactic properties of English in the Caribbean and elsewhere.

References Baker, Philip, and Magnus Huber. 2001. Atlantic, Pacific, and world-wide features in English-lexicon contact languages. English World-Wide 22: 157–208. Bickerton, Derek. 1975. Dynamics of a Creole System. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Childs, Becky, Jeffrey Reaser, and Walt Wolfram. 2003. Defining ethnic varieties in the Bahamas: Phonological accommodation in black and white enclave communities. In: Michael Aceto, and Jeffrey P. Williams (eds.), Contact Englishes of the Eastern Caribbean, 1–28. Amsterdam: Benjamins. Hackert, Stephanie, and Magnus Huber. 2007. Gullah in the diaspora. Historical and linguistic evidence from the Bahamas. Diachronica 24: 279–325. Hackert, Stephanie, and John Holm. 2009. Southern Bahamian: Transported AAVE or transported Gullah? The College of the Bahamas Research Journal 15: 12–21. Hickey, Raymond. 2004. English dialect input to the Caribbean. In: Raymond Hickey (ed.), Legacies of Colonial English: Studies in Transported Dialects, 326–360. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Higman, Barry W. 2011. A Concise History of the Caribbean. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Holm, John. 1983. On the relationship of Gullah and Bahamian. American Speech 58: 303–318. Holm, John. 1988. Pidgins and Creoles. Vol. 1: Theory and Structure. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Holm, John. 1989. Pidgins and Creoles. Vol. 2: Reference Survey. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Holm, John et al. 1999. Copula patterns in Atlantic and nonAtlantic creoles. In: John R. Rickford, and Suzanne Romaine (eds.), Creole Genesis, Attitudes and Discourse: Studies Celebrating Charlene J. Sato, 97–119. Amsterdam: Benjamins. Mesthrie, Rajend, and Rakesh M. Bhatt. 2008. World Englishes: The Study of New Linguistic Varieties. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Patrick, Peter L. 2004. Jamaican Creole: Morphology and syntax. In: Bernd Kortmann, Kate Burridge, Rajend Mesthrie, Edgar W. Schneider, and Clive Upton (eds.), A Handbook of Varieties of English. Vol. 2: Morphology and Syntax, 407–438. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Poplack, Shana, and Sali Tagliamonte. 2001. African American English in the Diaspora. Oxford: Blackwell. Rickford, John R. 1998. The creole origins of African-American vernacular English: Evidence from copula absence. In: Salikoko S. Mufwene, John R. Rickford, Guy Bailey, and John Baugh (eds.), 1998. African-American English: Structure, History, and Use, 154–200. London: Routledge. Schneider, Edgar W. 2007. Postcolonial English. Varieties Around the World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Shilling, Alison. 1980. Bahamian English – a non-continuum? In: Richard R. Day (ed.), Issues in English Creoles: Papers

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from the 1975 Hawaii Conference, 133–145. Heidelberg: Groos. Tagliamonte, Sali A. 2012. Variationist Sociolinguistics: Change, Observation, Interpretation. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell. Winford, Donald. 1993. Predication in Caribbean English Creoles. Amsterdam: Benjamins. Winford, Donald. 2003. An Introduction to Contact Linguistics. Oxford: Blackwell. Winford, Donald. 2008. Atlantic creole syntax. In: Silvia Kouwenberg, and John Victor Singler (eds.), The Handbook of Pidgin and Creole Studies, 19–47. Chichester: WileyBlackwell.

Winford, Donald, and Bettina Migge. 2004. Surinamese creoles: Morphology and syntax. In: Bernd Kortmann, Kate Burridge, Rajend Mesthrie, Edgar W. Schneider, and Clive Upton (eds.), A Handbook of Varieties of English. Vol. 2: Morphology and Syntax, 482–516. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Wolfram, Walt, and Jason Sellers. 1998. The North Carolina connection in Cherokee sound. North Carolina Literary Review 7: 86–87.

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Map NAm_1: The WAVE varieties in North America

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Edgar W. Schneider

Regional profile: North America* 1 Introduction In some respects, this paper constitutes a follow-up to Schneider (2004b, repr. 2008), my regional synopsis of morphological and syntactic variation of North American (and in that case also Caribbean) varieties of English in the Handbook of Varieties of English (Kortmann, Schneider et al. 2004). This is in line with the character of WAVE as largely inspired and informed by the earlier Handbook, and especially its multimedia interactive mapping component on the CD (Kortmann and Schneider 2004). In this introduction I will therefore broadly compare the two sets of data and outline some background considerations. Schneider (2004a) describes the settlement patterns which have generated the most important regional differences between varieties of North American English, and also the research traditions and approaches which have characterized the study of these varieties. More broadly, Chapter 6 of Schneider (2007) provides an extensive survey of the historical evolution of American English (in the light of the “Dynamic Model” of the evolution of postcolonial Englishes), paying particular attention to the emergence of distinct regional and social dialects. The historically most deeply rooted varieties are those of New England and the South, the locations of the earliest permanent English settlements on the continent, characterized by rather strong parallels with dialects from southern England. In contrast, the Midlands and the mountain regions of the Upper South drew the majority of settlers ultimately from northern English, Scottish and later also Irish stock. Recent large-scale studies (Carver 1987; Labov, Ash and Boberg 2006) also postulate the West as a distinct dialect region, even if in many respects the inland-northern-western region is perceived as remarkably homogeneous and the home of the quasi-standard form which is sometimes called “General American” or “network English”. For the present context in particular, however, it is worth noting that grammatical variation in American English tends to be socially rather than regionally diagnostic: with the exception of a small number of morphological forms (like the pronoun y’all in the South) and syntactic patterns (like the passive The baby needs cuddled in the Midwest), morphosyntactic features typically mark a speaker as less educated or a situation as informal rather than betraying the speaker’s regional origin. In the 2004 survey, eight varieties from North America were covered; now, this number has gone up to ten (see Map NAm_1). Of these, four can be classified as traditional, regional dialects; in three cases, the topics and also the correspondents are the same as in the earlier version (Appalachian English [henceforth AppE], covered by Michael Montgomery; rural southeastern enclave dialects [SEenc], by Walt Wolfram; and Newfoundland English [NfldE], by Sandra Clarke), and a fourth, distinctive one, Ozark English [OzE] (commonly considered an offspring of the Appalachian mountain dialect; described by Michael Ellis) has been added. Further varieties which have been retained, and are described by the same authors (or one of two former authors) as before, include Colloquial American English [CollAmE], a general but informal reference variety (by Beth Lee Simon); Gullah, North America’s only English-based creole (by Salikoko Mufwene); Chicano English [ChcE], the Mexican-Spanish derived contact variety which is an L2 for many of its speakers but an L1 for some (by Robert Bayley); urban African American Vernacular English (UAAVE, by Walt Wolfram); and Earlier African American English [EAAVE], by Alexander Kautzsch. Finally, the line-up of separate forms of AAVE has been supplemented by its rural variant [RAAVE], described also by Walt Wolfram.

* For an overview of all features for which maps are included in the regional and typological profiles, see the List of Maps and the Feature Index. For the overall NeighborNet diagram,

based on all 235 features in all 74 WAVE varieties, see the foldout at the end of the volume.

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Depending upon the granularity of one’s categorizations, Americans and researchers on American English have distinguished and discussed additional varieties of North American English, of course (see Wolfram and Ward 2006, for instance) – most notably Southern English (which, however, may be taken to be represented to some extent by Wolfram’s southern enclave dialects and is probably too broad and internally varied a category to be described as a single unit anyhow). It is true, however, that for all we know other regional or ethnic “dialects”, like Western, Canadian, Hoosier, Cajun or Native American English, cannot really be associated with a distinct and sufficiently broad set of characteristic morphosyntactic properties, as was pointed out in the previous paragraph. The morphosyntactic data compiled on the 2004 CD and underlying the CD’s mapping tool consisted of 76 features. In the present context, the list of features provided has been expanded substantially, to encompass 235 different phenomena now, grouped into 13 grammatical domains (which will provide the basic structure of the main part of the present paper, the feature synopsis in section 2). On the whole, the types of grammatical categories and their sequence of arrangement have remained largely the same (except for two details: a single “voice” feature has been added, and the “adverbs” category has been split into “adverbial subordination” and “adverbs and prepositions” and moved to a later position). The main difference between the two surveys lies in a much more detailed sub-categorization of individual phenomena, and in the addition of some supplementary features and structural options. The methodology of data collection is essentially the same as in the predecessor project, building upon experts’ assessments of the presence, strength or absence of a predetermined set of structural phenomena (features) in select varieties. Clearly, this approach has pros and cons, and some of the prospective limitations are also addressed by the editors of eWAVE on their website (Kortmann and Lunkenheimer, eds. 2011). The methodology allows for a uniquely efficient collection process over a remarkably wide range of varieties and a well-structured data arrangement which permits the kind of typologically-inspired comparisons and analyses that the project founders obviously had in mind. This is not a small achievement – after all, such a documentation and such comparisons are hugely desirable and offer many fundamental insights into the nature of language variation and linguistic diffusion. But the downside is, of course, that the data are largely stripped of their indexical value for specific social or stylistic contexts, that some degree of internal variability is disregarded, and, most basically, that there is a limit to the reliability of such evidence. After all, even experts may err or succumb to stereotyping of expectation-driven effects – it is well known that one’s own subconscious linguistic usage is extremely difficult to access consciously. For the Handbook data collection, experts were asked to assess the presence of the features described in any given variety as (roughly) “occurs normally/widespread”, “occurs sometimes/occasionally/in some environments”, and “does not normally occur”. In the WAVE feature rating process the middle value was broken down into two options (which could broadly be paraphrased as “moderately frequent” and “rare”, respectively), and the negative value is now defined as “attested absence of feature” (which I find a bit problematic, because the absence of anything is next to impossible to attest as a matter of principle, and there is no option for assumed but not really “attested” absence – but in practice the category seems workable). In addition, contributors could assess a feature as “not applicable” or “no information available”.

2 Feature synopsis The following descriptions are exclusively based upon the WAVE database. The sequence and categorization of the WAVE feature list are adopted, and the numbers of individual features from that list (if they turn out to be relevant or interesting) will be provided in square brackets. For the purpose of the following summary of feature distributions, I define “presence” of a feature in any given (group of) variety/-ies as an “either A or B or C” rating, and “strong presence” as “A” only. Furthermore, to assess the overall presence of a given feature in any given region quantitatively, I define a rough and rather simple (but effective) measure for the “saturation” or “density” of the presence of a feature in a predetermined set of varieties. I call this “Feature Density” (henceforth FD), the proportion of varieties in a given area

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in which a given feature is present.1 So, for instance, an FD of 100 % means ubiquity, i.e. all varieties have the feature in question; an FD of 33 % implies that it can be found in a third of the varieties in an area, etc. Obviously, this statistic can be calculated for any feature in any region. In the present context, two such proportions will be of interest: the density of a feature within North America (reported in the following Table 1 and in sections 2.1–2.13), and the overall relative FD of a given feature related to the entire database and set of 74 varieties (see section 3.1 for a comparison along these lines). Of course, all of this can also be calculated for any group of features (such as each of the 14 grammatical domains into which the database is organized), and then it will be possible to compare such measures. For a start and as an initial survey, I single out the most frequent features in the North American context only. Table 1 lists all 28 features with a North American Feature Density of 90 % or above (i.e. those which occur in nine or 10 out of the 10 North American varieties). It identifies the FD of the respective feature in North America and compares it, in the last column, to the corresponding global value (this comparison will be the topic of section 3.1). Feature No.

definition

category

FD NAm

FD world

7 8 9 11 16 34 52 56 68 70 78 126 128 130 147 154 155 156 158 159 172 193 203 204 220 221 226 227

Me for I in coordinated subjects My-/meself for I in coord. subjects benefactive dative regularized reflexives emphatic reflexives with own special 2nd ps pl pronouns associative plural and them no plural -s after quantifiers demonstr. them for those demonstr. this here/them there double comparatives /superlatives new aspectual quasi-modals leveling: regularized verb pt/pp leveling: past tense form for pp was for conditional were multiple negation ain’t for negated be ain’t for negated have invariant don’t in present tense never as past tense negator existential there’s + plural subject zero subject relativizer for to + infinitive as/than what in compar. clauses unmarked degree adverbs unmarked adverbs negative inversion inverted word order in indir.quest.

Pronouns Pronouns Pronouns Pronouns Pronouns Pronouns Noun phrase Noun phrase Noun phrase Noun phrase Noun phrase Modal verbs Verb morphology Verb morphology Verb morphology Negation Negation Negation Negation Negation Agreement Relativization Complementation Complementation Adverbs Adverbs Word order Word order

100 % 90 % 100 % 90 % 90 % 100 % 90 % 90 % 90 % 100 % 90 % 90 % 90 % 90 % 90 % 100 % 100 % 90 % 100 % 90 % 90 % 90 % 90 % 90 % 100 % 100 % 90 % 90 %

89 % 69 % 43 % 59 % 53 % 91 % 61 % 43 % 64 % 57 % 73 % 30 % 64 % 51 % 76 % 81 % 45 % 43 % 68 % 82 % 70 % 61 % 45 % 65 % 78 % 91 % 24.0 % 59 %

Table 1: Most frequent features in North America

1 This is the same as what Lunkenheimer (this volume) and Kortmann and Wolk (this volume) call “attestation rate”.

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Map NAm_2: Distribution of F5 (generalized third person singular pronoun: subject pronouns) and F6 (generalized third person singular pronoun: object pronouns) across varieties in North America

2.1 Pronouns Of the 47 pronominal features in the database, only seven are strongly characteristic of North American varieties, being present in eight or more of them. Three features, in fact, can be observed in all of them, including me for I in coordinate subjects (F7), a benefactive personal dative construction such as I got me a new car (F9), and the presence of some distinctive second-person plural pronoun forms (such as y’all or you guys) (F34). For the first of these features, a reflexive myself is a less common alternative in coordinates in almost all varieties (F8). Furthermore, almost all of them show a tendency to generalize the base form of reflexive pronouns, i.e. to use either a possessive (such as hisself) or an object form (e.g. meself) all across the paradigm (F11). Emphatic reflexives with own (e.g. my own self) are equally widespread (even if in most varieties they occur only rarely) (F16), and so is the use of us before a subject noun (e.g. Us kids used to …) (F28). Other fairly common pronominal features, present in the majority of varieties, include using she/her for inanimate referents (such as a house) (F1), reflexives derived from subject pronoun forms, as in theyselves (F13), the lack of a number distinction in reflexives, as in ourself (F14) (these two characterize UAAVE, EAAVE and Gullah, above all), and additional elements added to interrogative pronouns (F39). The typological distinctness of creoles in the domain of pronoun usage is suggested by the fact that Gullah shows strong presence of a number of features which are rare or unattested in most other varieties: generalized third person singular pronoun forms, both object (F6) and (less generally) subject (F5) forms (see Map NAm_2); the lack of a gender distinction in the third person singular (F10); the object form as the base for reflexives, as in meself (F12); the absolute use of reflexives (F15) (shared with NfldE); the strong use of reflexives with own (F16) (mostly rare elsewhere); subject forms as possessives (F19, F20, F21, F22, F23, F24; on F24 see Map NAm_3); a distinct second person singular form ye (F35); and subject pronoun dropping both in referential (F43, F46) and in non-referential, dummy functions (F44).

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Map NAm_3: Distribution of F21 (subject pronoun forms as (modifying) possessive pronouns: third person plural) across varieties in North America

ChcE participates in only very few of the pronoun characteristics of North American dialects. The three AAVE sub-varieties share most of their typical forms with the conservative L1 dialects, with the exception of features (F13) (subject form as base for reflexives), perhaps (F14), the lack of a number distinction in reflexives, and (F21) (possessive they) – some of which they have in common with Gullah. Features which characterize above all (though not absolutely) the four traditional L1 dialects include the strong rather than occasional presence of the benefactive dative (F9) (except for NfldE, where this is rare) and the us kids construction (F28), and the use of personal pronouns for inanimate referents (F1, F2) (more so in NfldE, but not in AppE).

2.2 Noun phrase In the noun phrase (based on the WAVE classification – some details in fact concern adjective phrases) all North American varieties are marked by the reinforced demonstratives this here/them there (F70; see Map NAm_4). Other highly common phenomena include regularized double plural forms (e.g. childrens, oxens) (F48), associative plurals with and them (F52), the absence of a plural suffix after a quantifier (five year–) (F56), the demonstrative them for those as in them days (F68), double synthetic marking of adjective comparatives and superlatives (e.g. more easier) (F78), and regularized synthetic comparison strategies (e.g. regularest) (F79). Related patterns which are also found in the majority of the American varieties are regularized analytic comparison strategies (such as most pretty) (F80) and the synthetic comparison and superlative formation of participles (e.g. fightingest) (F83). More than half of the varieties in the region also show group plurals (two Secretary of States) (F54), one used as an indefinite article (F66) (though this is rare in most varieties), and group genitives (the man I met’s girlfriend) (F72).

Map NAm_4: Worldwide distribution of F70 (demonstrative this here/them there)

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Map NAm_5: Distribution of F51 (plural marking via postposed elements) and F53 (associative plural marked by other elements) across varieties in North America

Typically creole features in this domain, thus setting off Gullah from the other varieties, are postponed dem after a noun to express the plural (F51; see Map NAm_5), associative plurals, also other than and them, e.g. with gang (F53; see also Map NAm_5), in terms of degree the absence of plural marking after a quantifier (F56), which is the norm here but not so elsewhere (except for SEenc), zero articles (F63) (common here, but not found anywhere else in North America), yon/yonder for remoteness (F69) (found also but only occasionally in some of the conservative dialects), a postponed for+noun-phrase to express possession (F74), the omission of a genitive suffix (my daddy brother) (F77), comparative marking with more and (F85), and, sometimes, zero marking of degree (one of the radical students that you ever find) (F86). Other than these I cannot discern any noun phrase patterns which set off one variety or variety group from the others in this region. Quite a number of the phenomena found in noun phrases elsewhere, e.g. with respect to article usage, are rare at best in North America.

2.3 Tense and aspect North American dialects do not participate that strongly in the many peculiarities of expressing tense and aspect relations which characterize many World Englishes or pidgins and creoles – the majority of the features listed in this category are relatively rare. Only one of the features can be found in eight of the ten varieties, namely completive done as in He done go fishing (F104; see Map NAm_6). In six more cases, seven varieties share a distinctive feature. Of these, I find the combination of perfective done with a preceding finite have or be auxiliary, as in He is done gone (F105; see Map NAm_8), particularly interesting, because it establishes a fairly clear case of historical diffusion from northern and Scottish British dialects (Schneider 1983) though it is not frequently mentioned in descriptions of American dialects. The semantic leveling of the difference between present perfect and past tense (e.g. Were you ever in London? F99) is conventionally perceived as char-

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Map NAm_6: Distribution of F104 (completive/perfect done) across varieties in North America

acteristic of American English in general, and this is probably related to the loosening of the sequence of tenses rule in English, i.e. using the past tense for time reference before another past event (F113). The extension of progressives to stative verbs, as in I’m liking this (F88), is not a property conventionally listed in discussions of North American varieties. Two more features, the use of the progressive in habitual contexts (e.g. I am usually going …, F89) and a resultative construction with there and the past participle (There’s something fallen …, F96) are reported as being in use fairly widely but mostly rarely. Gullah shares in some of the preverbal markers which characterize creoles, notably habitual do, e.g. He does catch fish (F91) (also found in NfldE, if only rarely), invariant be, as in He be sick (F90) (also found in AAVE, especially its urban form; see Map NAm_8), and past/anterior been (F111) (also sometimes found in AAVE). Preverbal markers to be found in other varieties as well include future reference with go (notably in AAVE) and preverbal completive done, as mentioned earlier.

2.4 Modal verbs Most varieties of American English have developed new quasi-modals – very widely and commonly some with aspectual meanings, such as fixin’ to/finna or useta (F126), and less commonly (except for the two conservative mountain dialects AppE and OzE, which have this generally) in core modal meanings, such as counterfactual liketa (F125); see Map NAm_9. Double modals (e.g. might could) are reported as being in use in many varieties but mostly not frequently (F121). The use of want or need as quasi-modals, followed directly by a past participle (e.g. The cat wants petted, The car needs washed, F124) is strongly characteristic (as reported) of CollAmE but uncommon in most of the distinctive dialects. Gullah has epistemic mustn’t (This mustn’t ‘can’t’ be true, F122), which is relatively rare elsewhere.

Map NAm_7: Worldwide distribution of F105 (completive/perfect have/be + done + past participle)

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Map NAm_8: Distribution of F90 (invariant be) across varieties in North America

2.5 Verb morphology Two types of phenomena are almost ubiquitous in AmE dialects. One of these is the leveling of was for conditional were, as in If I was you (F147). The other involves various patterns of leveling of the past tense and past participle forms of verbs, including – very frequently – the use of past tense forms in past participle positions, as in He had went (F130), and unmarked past and past participle forms especially of give and run (F129), as well as – mostly marked as moderately frequent – the regularization of irregular forms (e.g. catched, F128) and the past participle form replacing the past tense form (He gone, F131); the latter two are in general use in NfldE only. All of these forms are not documented in Gullah, however. A traditional feature which characterizes conservative dialects (and, based on writings on the subject, seems to be waning there as well) is the prefixing of an a- onset to verb forms (and rarely other words). Based on the data of the present survey, this is still moderately frequent in conservative and rural dialects (as well as in EAAVE) before present participle forms of verbs (a-doin’, F134) but mostly rare elsewhere and before other verb forms (acome) and word classes (a-back, F135).

2.6 Voice This is not worth writing home about: this category has only a single feature, which is not attested in AmE.

Map NAm_9: Worldwide distribution of F125 (new quasi-modals: core modal meanings) and F126 (new quasi-modals: aspectual meanings)

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Map NAm_10: Distribution of F159 (preverbal never for single past events) across varieties in North America

2.7 Negation In this domain, there are four features which are practically generic in AmE varieties. One is essentially morphological in nature: in the present tense the negated form of do is almost always invariant (He don’t, F158). Multiple negation (I don’t have no money, F154) is equally ubiquitous. And finally, two uses of ain’t, to negate forms of to be, as in I ain’t there (F155), and forms of to have, as in He ain’t got (F156), are regularly used in all conservative dialects and types of AAVE and moderately common (or more) elsewhere. In contrast, ain’t as a generic negator before main verbs (F157), as in I ain’t know, is considered a more recent, creole-inspired innovation; it is reported as generally used in UAAVE, Gullah and also SEenc and less regularly in the other forms of AAVE. A pattern which is widely found in many World Englishes, preverbal never to negate single past-time events (e.g. He never came yesterday, F159), occurs in almost all AmE dialects as well but is strong only in Gullah and Nfld; elsewhere it occurs with moderate frequency or rarely (see Map NAm_10). Finally, certain invariant tags (F165) are also found in half of these varieties.

2.8 Agreement Noteworthy agreement features are not pervasive in North American dialects – if anything, they are scattered across some varieties. The only notable exception to this rule, a generic feature on the continent, is the use of existential or presentational There’s with plural subjects (There’s two men there, F172), which is missing from Gullah only. Some features in this domain characterize UAAVE above all, and they tend to be shared with Gullah and also represented, though with reduced frequency, in RAAVE and EAAVE. This set includes on the one hand in-

Map NAm_11: Worldwide distribution of F181 (agreement sensitive to subject type)

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variant third person singular forms (she show, F170) and on the other hand the omission of copula or auxiliary be in various contexts: before progressives (you always thinking, F174); before noun phrases (he a good teacher, F176); before adjective phrases (she smart, F177); and before locatives (she at home, F178). Before gonna, as in I gonna go (F175), the entry for UAAVE marks this feature as not found in that variety, which seems a great surprise and hard to believe; otherwise the distribution of this pattern is similar to the other beomission types. The dummy subject there in existential clauses is fairly widely replaced by alternative forms such as they, it or zero (esp. in UAAVE and AppE; F173). The generalization of either was or were in the past tense (F180) fully characterizes NfldE and AppE and occurs less regularly in the forms of AAVE. Two patterns subsumed under the label of “Northern Subject Rule” are worth discussing because they are rather unusual in their structural properties and considered strongly diagnostic of historical diffusion from earlier, northern dialects of English to select New World dialects (see Pietsch 2005; for applications to American dialects see Montgomery et al. 1993 and Schneider and Montgomery 2001). The “subject type rule” (F181), i.e. the use of a verbal -s ending after full noun phrase subjects in the third person plural but not after the pronoun they, is reported to be the rule in OzE, moderately common in AppE and SEenc, and documented but rare in the more conservative variants of AAVE (RAAVE and EAAVE) – hence it may be judged to correlate with a “conservative dialect” status (see Map NAm_11). The “nonproximity to subject” constraint (F182), i.e. using a suffix on the second of two coordinated present tense predicate verbs (but not on the first one adjacent to the subject, i.e. I sing and dances) and (almost) correspondingly the NSR as a whole (F183), is attested as occurring rarely in the forms of AAVE and SEenc only.

2.9 Relativization In the domain of relativization, the most conspicuous feature of North American dialects is the omission of a subject relative pronoun, as in The man – lives there is nice (F193). This is normal in Gullah and NfldE and is found with moderate frequency almost in all other varieties (the exception being ChcE). Further phenomena which are reasonably widespread involve the choice of certain nonstandard relativizers: what, as in The man what painted … (F190); which for ‘who’ (which occurs mostly rarely; (F186); and non-restrictive that/what (F185). The relativizer at (F188) is reported as being used rarely in half of all varieties (though I cannot remember ever having seen this documented or discussed in North America, and I suspect these positive entries may relate to reduced forms of what, stripped of its initial approximant). Another feature which is noted as occurring rarely in a rather wide range of varieties but which has not usually been mentioned in listings of North American dialect peculiarities is the deletion of stranded prepositions in relative clauses (F198), as in a yard that you do gardening (without in). Three of these features are marked as characterizing creole Gullah, namely the relativizers zero (F193), what (F190), and where (F189). On the whole, however, A entries and even cells with B values are rather infrequent in this domain.

2.10 Complementation American dialects show a few interesting complementation patterns as well. Feature (F202), the use of for to to connect infinitive clauses which express a purpose (e.g. He came for to talk to me), is clearly an archaism, one which can be traced back to Middle English (cf., for instance, Chaucer’s Canterbury pilgrims, who go “the hooly blisful martir for to seke”). This is still moderately common in the conservative L1 dialects (NfldE, AppE, SEenc) and also in EAAVE; in modern AAVE (both rural and urban) and in Gullah, as well as in OzE, it is attested but rare – a distribution which clearly confirms the recessive character of this feature. For (to) as a plain infinitive marker (F203), without a purpose reading, is possible but rare in most varieties. Comparative clauses connected by as what or than what (F204), e.g. It’s harder than what you think, are widespread and moderately frequent in many varieties. And finally, adding the infinitive marker to in contexts where a bare

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infinitive might be expected (e.g. He made me to do it, (F209) is also found, if only rarely or with moderate frequency, in the majority of the varieties under consideration. Creoles, on the other hand, are marked by a number of distinctive features with respect to complementation, and many of them can be found regularly in Gullah but are absent (or at least very rare) in all the other varieties. One of the most distinctive ones of these features is the use of a complementizer form derived from say (often spelled se) after matrix verbs of saying, thinking, or the like, to introduce a dependent clause (F200), e.g. He tell me se she gone (see Map NAm_12). Other phenomena in this category, with similar distributions, include the use of for as a complementizer (e.g. hard for do this, F201); the omission of to before infinitives (e.g. allow him go, F208); and the use of bare infinitive complements (e.g. he start tell dem, F210).

2.11 Adverbial subordination In this domain, a single pattern is found generally in a single variety, namely the use of clause-final but, meaning either ‘though’ (e.g. It wasn’t so cold but., F211) or ‘really’ (F212), in NfldE. Other phenomena are attested but rare and restricted to just a few varieties; these include chaining constructions without explicit subordination (e.g. You break this, you pay, F213) and conjunction doubling, e.g. still yet (F214) or, correlative, Although … but … (F215).

2.12 Adverbs and prepositions With respect to adverb morphology, a characteristic property of American English outside explicitly formal contexts is the lack of an -ly adverbial suffix, at least with certain types of adverbs. This concerns both degree premodifier adverbs (real good, F220) and other adverbs functioning as adverbials (e.g. Come quick, F221) – both types occur in all varieties, either generally or at least with moderate frequency. Another remarkable feature which has been conventionally listed in descriptions of American dialect syntax is “positive anymore”, meaning ‘nowadays’, e.g. We’re having lots of floods anymore (F218). In the present survey this is stated to be in general use in CollAmE and OzE and also moderately frequent in AppE and SEenc, and rare in AAVE and Gullah. Hence this can be identified as a feature which is typical of traditional L1 dialects and has infiltrated high-contact L1s as well. Prepositions in locative or temporal adverbials are regularly omitted in NfldE (e.g. went – town; came – Tuesday; (F216), and sometimes in Gullah and ChcE (and also rarely in some types of AAVE) – a distribution which suggests that contact may have reinforced this pattern. Furthermore, in this domain there is another group of features which are clearly stronger in and hence more characteristic of Gullah, the creole, than other varieties. Preposition omission is one of them (F216); others include using postpositions (F217), marked as moderately frequent in Gullah and absent elsewhere – though I wonder whether that may be a misunderstanding based on examples like night time, where the suggested reading of time as a postposition may be misleading) and too meaning ‘very’ (F222); reportedly general in Gullah and fairly common also in UAAVE and SEenc).

2.13 Discourse organization and word order The most widespread and also most conspicuous feature in this domain is “negative inversion” (F226), the movement of a negated auxiliary to sentence-initial position, most likely to express emphasis, as in Didn’t nobody come; Wasn’t nobody there. Based on this dataset, this structure is in general use in Gullah and SEenc and fairly common in almost all other varieties. The use of an inverted word order in indirect questions (as in She asked what am I doing, F227) is equally common. Another pattern which is very widespread (in use in eight out of ten varieties) in this domain is the lack of an auxiliary (and hence of course also of inversion) in yes/no main clause interrogatives, e.g. You get the point? (F229). A closely related and very similar feature

Map NAm_12: Worldwide distribution of F200 (say-based complementizers)

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which is almost equally widely distributed is the lack of an auxiliary (and thus of inversion) in wh-questions, e.g. What you doing? (F228). The word like has expanded its range of functions and uses quite remarkably in recent decades (see D’Arcy 2005). Two of these have found their way into this survey: like as a focusing device (F234) and so-called “quotative like” (as in she’s like “blabla …”, F235), a usage habit which is assumed to have started out in the western US in the 1980s and has since then spread all around the globe among the younger generation, especially with females. Both are said to be in general use in CollAmE and in NfldE, and somewhat frequently or at least occasionally used in several other varieties – notably ChcE and modern forms of AAVE, but not at all the conservative varieties like Gullah, AppE, OzE and (for the quotative, and hence, given its time of birth, not surprisingly) EAAVE. Again, two features set off Gullah from the other varieties. One is a typically creole feature, the presence of a sentence-initial focus marker (F225); typically, this is a local form of the copula, and I presume (though we are not told) that in Gullah this will be Is. This is marked as being in general use in Gullah but not at all anywhere else in North America. The other one of these features, moderately common in Gullah but again not attested in any of the other varieties, is the presence of a subject in imperatives (F233), e.g. Go you there!.

3 Feature profiles: some noteworthy issues 3.1 Feature density: a quantitative assessment The above interpretations paid particular attention to those features which are especially widespread in the North American region, i.e. in all categories I filtered out the features which, firstly, are present in at least 8 out of the 10 North American varieties in the database, and, secondarily, occur in more than 5 of them (recall that “presence” is defined as at least category ‘C’ in the respective cell, including, of course, also ‘B’ or ‘A’). In this section I am focusing on features and feature groups which are particularly typical of North American dialects in comparison with all World Englishes in the database. In other words, I am not (or not primarily) reporting the features which are particularly frequent in North American varieties, as I did in section 2, because these might also be very widespread in all varieties and hence be typical of world varieties of English in general terms. Instead, I only select those features and feature groups whose North American FD significantly exceeds that of the global FD of the database. And conversely, in a second step, I will briefly identify and comment on those features which are notably absent from North American dialects, i.e. which have a distinctly lower FD than the entire set. Assessing the statistical significance of such frequency differences is hugely problematic and mostly not possible, given the relatively small number of varieties (74 in all, and only 10 for North America), and the facts that (a) we are clearly not dealing with any kind of random sample and (b) several cell entries are not independent of each other (compare F181–F183, for instance, reporting the constituent components of the Northern Subject Rule and their conflation). I attempted such an assessment with respect to the comparison of mean FDs by domain by calculating the standard deviation of the individual mean FDs per domain and checking whether the respective American mean FD lies outside of two standard deviations of the global mean FD per category (given that about 5 per cent of all values in a normal distribution lie outside of two standard deviations around the mean). This is in fact the case for one domain, the modal verbs: the global mean FD is 26 %, the North American one 54 %, and the standard deviation of the global values in this category is 8 % – so in its modal system the North American varieties behave so exceptionally that, based on this measurement, this falls outside the range of any random distribution to be expected. This is exceptional, however, and not the case for all other feature categories. Table 2 reports these per-category values, i.e. the North American mean FD as compared to the global mean FD for each category, relative to its standard deviation.

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Feature group No. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13

North America Name Pronouns Noun phrase Tense & aspect Modal verbs Verb morphology Voice Negation Agreement Relativization Complementation Adverbial subordination Adverbs and prepositions Discourse and word order

mean FD 41 % 41 % 38 % 54 % 40 % 0% 44 % 53 % 41 % 48 % 30 % 53 % 48 %

Worldwide mean FD 36 % 37 % 28 % 26 % 30 % 3% 35 % 40 % 27 % 36 % 28 % 54 % 44 %

StdDev 13.4 19 17 8 20 n.a. 27 20 18 12 13 28 23

Table 2: Comparison of feature densities per feature group (proportions of feature occurrences per region): North America vs. Worldwide

What the table tells us, first, is that for almost all groups the features elicited occur more regularly in North American dialects than on a global scale. I can think of two possible explanations which may explain this observation. One is that American dialects are richer in grammatical variability indeed, compared to other World Englishes – possibly because of a greater historical depth or a wider range of informal usage conducted in English. By contrast, some Postcolonial Englishes are more homogeneous and closer to standard usage because of scholastic transmission and the availability of other languages for informal contacts. The other, and I think less likely, explanation is that this is an artefact resulting from the data collection procedure, because due to long-standing research traditions characteristically American (and British) features have had a better chance to be asked for in the database. Of course, these two options do not exclude each other. As was mentioned earlier, the statistical consideration and procedure outlined above singles out the modal verb category as one where the features elicited are distinctively North American in character on the whole, with a mean FD which is almost twice as high as the global one. This is caused mostly by the double modals, the counterfactual new quasi-modals, and the aspectual new quasi-modals, all of which are extremely common in North America and relatively rare elsewhere; furthermore, epistemic mustn’t and want/ need + past participle also occur about twice as frequently in America. Overall, the average FDs for North America and Worldwide are 43 % and 34 %, respectively. The difference between them, 9 %, can be accepted as a reasonable, empirically derived benchmark for identifying other grammatical domains marked by a degree difference worth reporting. This procedure yields the following grammatical domains as the ones where North American varieties show a significantly higher Feature Density than all global varieties together: tense & aspect, verb morphology, negation, agreement, relativization, and complementation. These domains are highlighted in Table 2.

3.2 The most typically North American features Let me now break this perspective down from feature groups to individual features: Which of the 235 different features in the database are particularly typical and diagnostic of North American varieties? The features which are found most consistently across all North American varieties were already listed and discussed above, of course, in Table 1 and sections 2.1 to 2.13. This does not mean that they are also the most diagnostic ones, however – it may well be that a feature which is widespread in North America is equally common anywhere else, so it cannot be regarded as typically American. Let us look at the last two features in Table 1 to illustrate the point. All American varieties have feature (F221), unmarked adverbs (as in Come quick!). But the global FD value of 91 % tells us that this phenomenon is practically ubiquitous in all global varieties and not

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at all typically American. In contrast, feature (F226), negative inversion (e.g. Didn’t nobody tell me …) occurs in 90 % of all American varieties but has a global FD of only 24 %, indicating that this is rare anywhere else – and so we can safely categorize this syntactic structure as one which is strongly typical of American English varieties (and almost only of these!). These differences are gradual, and so, again, a benchmark needs to be determined, based on practical considerations. I decided on a minimum FD difference (FDdiff) of 20 per cent for a feature to be selected here. To save space and avoid too much repetitiveness, in the following discussion I will proceed by categories and simply list only feature numbers (note that most of these features were singled out and mentioned in Table 1 or sections 2.1.–2.13). So, on this basis the following features can be regarded as particularly diagnostic of North American as opposed to worldwide varieties (in each case, I provide the FDdiff value; and to mark the most outstanding features, the ones with an FDdiff >40 % are highlighted and also briefly verbally identified):2 F1 23 %, F8 21 %, F9 benefactive dative, 57 % (see Map NAm_13), F11 31 %, F13 28 %, F16 37 %, F27 21 %, F28 30 %, F33 24 %, F35 30 %, F38 23 %, F39 36 %. Noun phrase: F48 23 %, F56 plural absence after quantifiers 47 %, F68 26 %, F70 this here/them there demonstratives, 43 %, F72 26 %, F79 22 %, F82 20 %, F83 comparatives and superlatives of participles, 44 %, F85 21 %, F86 20 % F90 37 %, F92 26 %, F96 32 %, F102 22 %, F103 21 %, F104 completive done, 46 %, Tense & aspect: F105 completive have/be done +pp, 54 %, F120 26 %. Modal verbs: F121 double modals, 49 %, F122 26 %, F125 new quasi-modals, 56 %, F126 new aspectual quasi-modals, 60 % Verb morphology: F128 26 %, F130 39 %, F131 25 %, F134 a-prefixing of verbs, 47 %, F135 a-prefixing of other words, 50 %, F139 32 %, F144 gotten distinct from got, 41 % Negation: F155 ain’t for be, 55 % (see Map NAm_14), F156 ain’t for have, 57 % (see Map NAm_14), F157 38 %, F158 32 % Agreement: F171 28 %, F172 20 %, F173 31 %, F181 34 %, F182 29 %, F184 21 % Relativization: F186 which for who, 46 %, F188 36 %, F190 25 %, F193 29 %, F198 24 % Complementation: F202 for to + infinitive for purpose, 48 %, F203 for (to) as infinitive marker, 45 %, F204 25 %, F207 20 %, F209 39 %. Adverbs: F218 affirmative anymore, 58 % (see Map NAm_15), F220 22 % Discourse organization and word order: F226 negative inversion, 66.0 % (see Map NAm_16), F227 31 %, F231 27 %.

1. Pronouns: 2.

3. 4. 5. 7. 8. 9. 10. 12. 13.

Thus, based on this analysis, the most distinctively American of all features, with the highest FD difference, are, in descending order, negative inversion, positive anymore, the new quasi-modals, the pattern be/have done + pp, and the benefactive dative.

3.3 Un-American features: the most conspicuous absentees Of course, the approach outlined and applied above allows the inverse perspective as well, i.e. singling out those features which, given a World Englishes perspective and distribution, are conspicuously absent from the American varieties. A negative FD difference suggests features which are relatively more frequent in global varieties and have a frequency of less than average in North America. Sticking to the above benchmark of a 20 percent difference (minus, in this case), here are the features which in North American dialects we find

2 Identifying at least these most conspicuous and typical forms is meant to make this listing directly digestible for a reader to a minimum extent, something which, admittedly, it is not in itself. Still, for anybody interested in this issue, and

possibly for follow-up studies of which phenomena are characteristically American indeed, I believe the section is of value for its documentary character, so I have decided to include this list despite its non-transparent nature

Map NAm_13: Worldwide distribution of F9 (benefactive “personal dative” construction)

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Map NAm_14: Worldwide distribution of F155 (ain’t as the negated form of be) and F156 (ain’t as the negated form of have)

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Map NAm_15: Worldwide distribution of F218 (affirmative anymore ‘nowadays’)

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Map NAm_16: Worldwide distribution of F226 (“negative inversion”)

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much less regularly than the global framework would make us expect in the default case (again, I quote the FDdiff, and in this case, I briefly identify them all, as most of them have not been introduced so far): Noun phrase:

F57 optional plural marking for human nouns, –21 %, F62 zero articles for definite article, –27 %, F63 zero article for indefinite article, –41 % Tense & aspect: F109 perfect marker already, –20 %, F110 completive markers derived from finish, –26 % Negation: F160 no as preverbal negator, –28 % Complementation: F205 existentials with get, –22 %, F206 existentials with have, –24 % Adverbs & prepositions: F216 omission of prepositions, –286 %, F217 use of postpositions, –25 %, F219 adverb-forming suffixes -way and -time, –24 % Discourse organization and word order: F225 sentence-initial focus marker, –22 %, F233 32 %, F233 presence of subjects in imperatives, –32 %. In fact, it turns out that many of these features are widely considered typical of creoles – so if they do not surface in Gullah it is not a surprise that they are essentially missing from American varieties of English.

3.4 Variety types and quasi-diagnostic features The ten North American varieties can be classified into three major types, and the largest of these allows a subdivision into two minor ones. Eight of the varieties are first languages (L1s), including four of them which represent “traditional” dialects (NfldE in Canada, AppE, OzE and SEenc in the US). Three more represent different sub-types of AAVE (the rural, urban, and earlier ones, respectively); these, just like CollAmE, are regarded as “high-contact” L1s. Gullah is a creole, and ChcE is regarded as an “indigenized L2” – a classification which may be open to discussion given that there is a significant number of L1 speakers of this dialect as well (though to my knowledge we lack accurate statistics). This section asks whether specific features can be identified which set these variety types apart from each other. A meaningful starting point is the question how similar, quantitatively speaking, varieties are to each other which should be closely related, given their historical and sociolinguistic relationships. I calculate five comparisons along these lines. First, Ozark English is conventionally regarded as a historical offspring of AppE: some mountaineers from the rural southeastern Appalachians decided to move on to a similarly remote and mountainous region further west, the Ozarks (see Christian et al. 1988). Secondly, UAAVE and RAAVE obviously represent two branches of what is often viewed as a single, homogeneous dialect. Thirdly, we may safely expect the rural form of this dialect to be relatively more similar to its historical antecedent, EAAVE. Fourth and fifth, Gullah has been often claimed to be a descendant of earlier forms of AAVE (by proponents of the creole origins hypothesis), so it makes sense to check for similarities with EAAVE and, synchronically, RAAVE. Table 3 provides the results. The first column identifies the number of cell entries which are identical between the two varieties, respectively; the second columns restricts this to identical positive attestations (i.e., A, B or C values, excluding D’s because obviously similarity can meaningfully only be postulated on the basis of shared properties and not really based on something being equally absent), and the last column calculates the percentage of identical positives out of the total number of features under consideration (i.e., 235), i.e. the percentage of cell entries where, as attested by the correspondents, both varieties have the same features to the same degree of intensity. Variety pair

identical entries

identical positives

% ident. pos. of all

AppE – OzE UAAVE – RAAVE RAAVE – EAAVE Gullah – EAAVE Gullah – RAAVE

96 143 110 71 60

23 84 52 17 24

9.8 % 35.7 % 22.1 % 7.2 % 10.2 %

Table 3: Pairwise similarity measurements of putatively related varieties

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In the absence of a reasonable benchmark, these figures are difficult to interpret. Obviously, the similarity between present-day rural and urban AAVE is fairly high (more than a third of all cell entries are fully identical), and the same, to a lesser extent, applies to the relationship between earlier and present-day rural AAVE, with 22.1 % shared entries. On the other hand, neither the proportions of shared positive entries between AppE and OzE nor those of Gullah compared to either earlier or rural AAVE are strong, around 10 %, so on this basis it would be difficult to build an argument in favor of historical diffusion or close relatedness. Beyond the issue of quantitative similarities, an obvious core question is the one for qualitative distinctiveness: are there any features which separate any of these variety types from the others? The following discussion is based on a survey of the database with an eye on such distinguishing features. Traditional L1s include NfldE, AppE, OzE and SEenc. Of these, NfldE is clearly special in some respects. There are many features which only this variety has regularly (or, sometimes, more strongly than all or almost all others): personal pronouns for inanimate referents (F1, F2), a generalized third person singular object pronoun (F5), absolute reflexives (F15), a distinction between emphatic and non-emphatic pronoun forms (F32), subject pro drop (F43), unusual it insertion (F45), occasional habitual do (F91), progressive be sat/stood (F95), a medial object perfect (have something made, (F97), the Irish-derived after-perfect (F98), the simple present for the continuative or experiential perfect (F101), be as the perfect auxiliary (F102), the perfect marker already (F109), the loosening of the sequence of tense rule (F113), would in if-clauses (F120), regularized past and past participle forms (F128), past participles for the past (F131), distinct full vs. auxiliary forms of primary verbs (F139), the preverbal negator never (F159), a generalized verbal -s suffix (F171), zero subject relativization (F193), the comparative clause conjunction as/than what (F204), clause-final but in various meanings (F211, F212), and preposition omission (F216) – a remarkably long list. A few features, in contrast, characterize only the traditional dialects of the US, largely or wholly excluding NfldE: the benefactive personal dative (F9 – rare in NfldE), double modals (F121), the subject type constraint on verbal -s (F181), and affirmative anymore (F218). In addition, there is a small group of features which can be identified in all the four traditional L1s more strongly than elsewhere and which thus contribute to establishing them as a loose group: subject us +NP (F28), leveling of the past vs. perfect distinction (F99), new core quasi-modals (F125), unmarked past and past participles forms (F129), for to with purpose infinitives (F202), and finally unmarked adverbs (F220, F221). It has become obvious in the above survey of features and feature categories (sections 2.1 – 2.13) that in a number of respects Gullah is distinct indeed, and this distinctness results predominantly from the “typically creole” properties which it has, unlike the other varieties considered. The features or feature groups which can be found regularly (A) or with moderate frequency (B) in Gullah but not in the other (or at least most of the other) varieties include the following: a reduced set of distinctions in the pronoun system, involving syntactic functions (F5, F6), gender (F10), possessives (F19–F24), reflexives (F12, F15, F16), the second person plural form (F35), and syntactic pro-dropping (F43, F44, F46); postposed and associative plural markers (F51, F53) and possessives (F74); the lack of plural marking after quantifiers (F56) and of a genitive marker (F77); the omission of an article (F63); an archaic remoteness demonstrative (F69); unusual analytic comparatives (F85, F86); invariant preverbal TAM (tense-aspect-modality) markers (F90, F91, F111, F114); epistemic mustn’t (F122 – not a feature widely attested in other creoles); the generic negator ain’t (F157, shared with a few others); and also, if only rarely, the preverbal negator no, also not or no more (F160, F161, F162); copula omission (F175–F178, shared, to varying degrees in different contexts, with forms of AAVE); zero or invariant relativizers (F189, F190, F193); the complementizers say/se and for (F200, F201) and various infinitive complement uses (F208–F210); and finally, variant preposition uses (F216, F217, F222). Are there any features which single out the three types of AAVE as against the other varieties (possibly shared with Gullah, thus indirectly corroborating the creole origins hypothesis)? Cases in point, including Gullah, are F13 (subject pronoun base forms of reflexives, i.e. theyselves), F14 (-self, i.e. unmarked for number, in plural reflexives), F21 (possessive they), F46 (a moderate tendency to delete it in referential it is constructions), and F170 (invariant third person singular verb forms), and possibly also F176 (zero copula before NPs) and F179 (auxiliary have deletion) – but both are much weaker in Gullah. On the other hand, there is a fairly large number of features which are characteristic only of AAVE but not of Gullah, to varying extents: this pat-

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tern is fairly straightforward with F197 (relative clauses without antecedents), but it occurs only moderately with some (F119, distant future would; F132, zero regular past form), even more weakly with others (F133, double past marking; F182, the proximity to subject constraint on verbal -s usage; and F103, the unstressed tense marker do, which is rare throughout), and finally not in all sub-varieties of the group in even more features (F106, irrealis be done – primarily in UAAVE; F136, inflected bees – mainly in EAAVE; F59, double determiners like this our – not in UAAVE; and F118, is for am in I’s – not in UAAVE). Finally, F11 (a regularized reflexive paradigm) appears to be a bit stronger in the forms of AAVE than in other varieties, though the difference is really only one of degree. ChcE, classified as the only L2 variety in the sample, contributes little that is of interest, it seems. It has only a single A rating, namely F154, multiple negation, which has A almost everywhere; and out of the 235 features only 45 (19.1 %) are attested at all (i.e., have A, B or C). No concentration of these features in any grammatical domain becomes apparent and, on the other hand, the features attested are found in all domains except for two (Complementation and Adverbial subordination, where there are a large number of question marks indicating lack of information). Hence, ChcE participates in some of the nonstandard grammatical variability of North American dialects in a rather loose and scattered fashion but is obviously not characterized by its distinctive morphosyntax (but rather by specific pronunciation properties, which, however, are not the focus of this investigation).

3.5 NeighborNet diagrams In the form of sophisticated techniques globally known as cluster analysis, modern statistical machinery has yielded novel ways of interpreting complex and large data sets, identifying degrees of similarity between categories (in this case, varieties) based on the number of properties (features) which they share, and these graded relationships are then graphically represented. The WAVE project directors have provided “splitstree” graphs showing such degrees of similarity and clustering as produced by the NeighborNet algorithm; details of this procedure are described elsewhere in this volume (see the chapter by Kortmann and Wolk).3 I reproduce and interpret two graphs: a local one, with clusters based on the feature matrix of the North American varieties only, and the global matrix which builds on all 74 varieties and 235 features – where the issue of whether the North American varieties cluster jointly in the global context or how they position themselves overall will have to be raised. Note that these clusters are based on a straightforward distinction between the presence of a feature in a variety, irrespective of how strong it is (i.e. “either A or B or C”) as opposed to its absence (D or other), and that the algorithm is meant to model phylogenetic evolutionary trajectories in the form of non-rooted but hierarchically arranged trees. The distance between any two measurement points (varieties) in the splits tree, via the path which connects them, indirectly represents the linguistic distance between them. Network NAm_1 is a graph which models the similarities and relationships between the North American varieties, based on their matrix entries exclusively. There are two variety groupings in there which come naturally, as it were, considering the extralinguistic evidence: RAAVE and UAAVE cluster together very closely, and so do OzE and AppE, respectively, with CollAmE and NfldE nearby. Both EAAVE, closer to the L1 dialects, and Gullah, closer to the two synchronic forms of AAVE, stand in between these two main clusters, each of them in isolation to a remarkable extent. And two variety alignments come as a surprise, given the above qualitative considerations. ChcE, the only L2 variety in the sample and one with but few similarities with others in the above listings, stands on its own but is remarkably close to CollAmE and the L1 dialects.4

3 I am grateful to Christoph Wolk, who produced these diagrams. 4 I suspect this is due to the fact that ChcE, based on linguistic descriptions, has hardly any distinctive morphosyntactic properties of its own and only few structural peculiarities shared with other varieties (its peculiar features are predominantly

phonetic and lexical instead, and in the WAVE matrix it has predominantly D, X or ? entries, very few B’s and hardly any A’s), and so, perhaps not so surprisingly, it appears to be similar mainly to a rather neutral, non-localized variety such as CollAmE.

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Network NAm_1: NeighborNet clustering of the 10 North American varieties in WAVE

And SEenc joins the two synchronic forms of AAVE most directly but is quite far apart from the other L1 dialects.5 The NeighborNet of all varieties world-wide in the sample (see foldout Network WAVE_all at the end of this volume) yields even clearer groupings and socio-geographically meaningful alignments. Let me start by clearing off the “outliers”, namely the same two varieties as in the previous paragraph which cluster in surprising ways: ChcE turns out to be close to all the L1 varieties in the top right-hand corner rather than joining the other L2 varieties to the bottom right-hand side; and SEenc again comes out close to the sub-dialects of AAVE and a few more strongly contact-influenced dialects (such as StHE or TdCE). All the other placements by the algorithm seem to make perfect sense from the perspective of extralinguistic considerations, however. Again, the three (remaining) US-American L1 dialects (AppE, OzE and CollAmE) constitute a very tightly-knit cluster which, in turn, is appropriately situated between and close to British L1 dialects and southern hemisphere L1 varieties; not surprisingly, NfldE is placed nearby, in the middle of the group of “Celtic” Englishes and very close to its historical source varieties, IrE and SW English dialect. EAAVE this time comes out fairly close to RAAVE and UAAVE, in a cluster of dialects all of which (disregarding ButlE – not within this cluster but close) can historically be characterized as basically L1 dialects with strong contact influences, notably with possible African substrates (like BahE or StHE). And finally, the placement of Gullah appears to be perfectly in line with what one would expect intuitively: it stands a bit on its own (yes, of course – it is the only North American English-based creole), but rather close to the group of “lighter” Caribbean Creoles (from which it is claimed to have been influenced) and also connected with but somewhat more distant from the “deeper” creoles, Caribbean and other (cf. Schneider 1990 for a linguistic documentation and discussion of a similar patterning).

5 Of course one reason which may explain this clustering and similarity relationship is the fact that precisely these three

varieties were described by the same expert author, Walt Wolfram.

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5 Conclusion This paper has identified a number of features or feature configurations which characterize individual varieties or extralinguistically established groups of varieties from North America in the WAVE database. It has been shown that some features or feature configurations are indeed diagnostic of certain varieties or variety types to a greater or lesser extent. Certainly it has to be conceded that some of these results and claims are a bit tentative, and the nature of the database is such that in all cases external, sociolinguistically motivated and text-based evidence will be welcomed to corroborate the claims made. Still, the results confirm that WAVE can be used successfully as a research tool which allows valuable comparative insights, and they clearly suggest further possible directions for empirical investigations of varieties of North American English and their morphosyntactic properties.

References Carver, Craig. 1987. American Regional Dialects. A Word Geography. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Christian, Donna, Walt Wolfram, and Najo Dube. 1988. Variation and Change in Geographically Isolated Communities: Appalachian English and Ozark English. Tuscaloosa, AL: University of Alabama Press. D’Arcy, Alexandra. 2005. Like: Syntax and development. PhD dissertation, University of Toronto. (available for download from http://web.uvic.ca/~adarcy/publications.htm). Kortmann, Bernd, Edgar W. Schneider, Kate Burridge, Rajend Mesthrie, and Clive Upton (eds.). 2004. A Handbook of Varieties of English. A Multimedia Reference Tool. Vol. 1: Phonology. Vol. 2: Morphology and Syntax. Berlin, New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Kortmann, Bernd, and Edgar W. Schneider. 2004. A Handbook of Varieties of English. A Multimedia Reference Tool. Multimedia CD-ROM & Online Version. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Kortmann, Bernd, and Kerstin Lunkenheimer (eds.). 2011. The Electronic World Atlas of Varieties of English. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. Available online at http://www.ewave-atlas.org, accessed 2012–04–05. Labov, William, Sharon Ash, and Charles Boberg. 2006. The Atlas of North American English. Phonetics, Phonology and Sound Change. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Montgomery, Michael, Janet M. Fuller, and Sharon DeMarse. 1993. “The black men has wives and Sweet harts [and third person plural -s] Jest like the white men”: Evidence for verbal -s from written documents on 19th-century African American speech. Language Variation and Change 5: 335–357. Pietsch, Lukas. 2005. Variable Grammars: Verbal Agreement in Northern Dialects of English. Tübingen: Niemeyer.

Schneider, Edgar W. 1983. The diachronic development of the Black English perfective auxiliary phrase. Journal of English Linguistics 16: 55–64. Schneider, Edgar W. 1990. The cline of creoleness in Englishoriented creoles and semi-creoles of the Caribbean. English World-Wide 11: 79–113. Schneider, Edgar W. 2004a. Introduction: Varieties of English in the Americas and the Caribbean. In: Bernd Kortmann, Edgar Schneider, Kate Burridge, Rajend Mesthrie, and Clive Upton (eds.), A Handbook of Varieties of English, Vol. 1, 247–256, and Vol. 2, 211–220. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Schneider, Edgar W. 2004b. Synopsis: Morphological and syntactic variation in the Americas and the Caribbean. In: Bernd Kortmann, Edgar Schneider, Kate Burridge, Rajend Mesthrie, and Clive Upton (eds.), A Handbook of Varieties of English, Vol. 2, 1104–1115. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Schneider, Edgar W. 2007. Postcolonial English. Varieties around the World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Schneider, Edgar W. 2008. Synopsis: Morphological and syntactic variation in the Americas and the Caribbean. In: Edgar W. Schneider (ed.), Varieties of English. Vol. 2: The Americas and the Caribbean, 763–776. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Schneider, Edgar W., and Michael Montgomery. 2001. On the trail of early nonstandard grammar: An electronic corpus of Southern U.S. antebellum overseers letters. American Speech 76: 388–410. Wolfram, Walt, and Ben Ward (eds.). 2006. American Voices. How Dialects Differ from Coast to Coast. Malden, MA: Blackwell.

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Map AP_1: The WAVE varieties in the Australia Pacific region

Regional profile: Australia Pacific Region

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Regional profile: Australia Pacific Region* 1 Introduction This overview looks at the 13 varieties of English and English-lexified pidgins and creoles spoken in Australia and the Pacific. These are shown in Table 1. Region

Name

Abbr.

Given type label

Australia

Australian English Australian Vernacular English Aboriginal English Roper River Creole (Kriol) Torres Strait Creole

AusE AusVE AborE RRC TSC

high-contact L1 high-contact L1 high-contact L1 creole creole

Pacific

New Zealand English Acrolectal Fiji English Colloquial (“Pure”) Fiji English Norfolk Island/Pitcairn English Tok Pisin Palmerston English Bislama Hawai‘i Creole

NZE FijiE CollFijiE Norf’k TP PalmE Bislama HawC

high-contact L1 indigenized L2 indigenized L2 pidgin pidgin creole creole creole

Table 1: Varieties in the Australia and Pacific regions

The overview presents information about the relationships between the Australia and Pacific varieties, the distinctiveness of the combined Australia Pacific region, and the relationships among the varieties within the region and with corresponding variety types of other regions. It concludes with an account of the influence of the region’s indigenous substrate languages on various features. In order to compare Australia and the Pacific with other regions and with each other, we look primarily at the presence or absence of the various features in the varieties of each region. The presence of a feature in a variety is clearly indicated by an ‘A’, ‘B’ or ‘C’ rating. For the purpose of this analysis, a ‘D’, ‘X’ or ‘?’ rating is interpreted as absence. Of course, this methodology is not ideal because a question mark may indicate insufficient data rather than absence. It may also indicate uncertainty about the precise meaning of the feature. For example, both Bislama and Tok Pisin use go and kam (‘come’) as directional markers. F148 (serial verbs: go = ‘movement away from’) and F149 (serial verbs: come = ‘movement towards’) are given an A rating in Bislama but a question mark in Tok Pisin. This is presumably because the status of go and kam as serial verbs in Tok Pisin, as opposed to directional particles, is still being debated. Furthermore, it seems that different scholars interpreted the presence or absence of some features in different ways. For example, F208 (deletion of to before infinitives) is given an X rating (“not applicable”) in both Bislama and Tok Pisin, presumably because of the absence of to in the varieties – i.e. there is no to in these varieties to be deleted. The absence of to is also a characteristic of both Roper River Creole and Torres Strait Creole, but they are given an A rating (pervasive or obligatory). This is most probably because the absence

* For an overview of all features for which maps are included in the regional and typological profiles, see the List of Maps and the Feature Index. For the overall NeighborNet diagram,

based on all 235 features in all 74 WAVE varieties, see the foldout at the end of the volume.

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can be considered the result of deletion in the development of these creoles and also in comparison to current non-creole varieties of English. Nevertheless, since features from as few as three to as many as 16 varieties were rated in each region by different scholars, the distinction of A, B, or C vs. D, X or ? provides some indication of the extent of each feature. (The most potentially problematic region is the South Atlantic, with only three varieties, two of them rated by the same linguist. Also, the Australia ratings could possibly be a bit skewed because three out of the five varieties were rated by the same linguist.)

2 Are there major differences between 2 the Australia and Pacific regions? For 164 out of the 235 features there is agreement between the Australia and Pacific in the overall presence or absence of the feature in its representative varieties. Of the 38 most common features in the two regions combined (occurring in eight or more of the total 13 varieties), 30 are majority features in both Australia and the Pacific (at least three out of five in Australia and five out of eight in the Pacific) (see Table 2). A total of 134 features are found in less than half of the varieties in each region. Feature no.

Feature

3 28 34 36 37 38 43 44 57 66 68 111 132 147 154 159 165 170 172 174 176 177 178 193 205 216 221 227 228 229

alternative forms/phrases for dummy it use of us + NP in subject function forms or phrases for the 2nd person plural pronoun other than you distinct forms for inclusive/exclusive 1st person non-singular more number distinctions in pronouns than simply singular vs plural specialized plural markers for pronouns subject pronoun drop: referential pronouns subject pronoun drop: dummy pronouns plural marking generally optional for nouns with non-human referents indefinite article one/wan them instead of demonstrative those past/anterior marker been zero past tense forms of regular verbs was for conditional were multiple negation/negative concord never as preverbal past tense negator invariant non-concord tags invariant present tense forms due to zero marking for the 3rd person singular existential/presentational there’s/there is/there was with plural subjects deletion of auxiliary be before progressive deletion of copula be before NPs deletion of copula be before AdjPs deletion of copula be before locatives gapping/zero-relativization in subject position existentials with forms of get omission of StE prepositions other adverbs have the same form as adjectives inverted word order in indirect questions no inversion/no auxiliaries in wh-questions no inversion/no auxiliaries in main clause yes/no questions

Table 2: Most common shared features in Australia and Pacific varieties

Australia (/5)

Pacific (/8)

Total (/13)

3 3 5 3 3 3 3 4 3 3 5 3 3 3 4 4 3 4 4 4 3 3 3 5 3 4 5 3 3 5

6 5 7 5 5 5 5 5 5 6 5 6 6 5 5 6 5 5 5 4 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 6 7

9 8 12 8 8 8 8 9 8 9 10 9 9 8 9 10 8 9 9 8 8 8 8 10 8 9 10 8 9 12

Regional profile: Australia Pacific Region

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Map AP_2: Distribution of F11 (regularized reflexives paradigm) and F12 (object pronoun forms as base for first and/or second person reflexives) across varieties in the Australia Pacific region

Of the features where there is disagreement, 30 are in the majority of the Australia varieties but in less than half of the Pacific varieties. However, only nine of these are found in more than three Australia varieties. The greatest difference occurs in two features: F11 (regularized reflexive paradigm) and F12 (object pronoun forms serving as base for first and/or second person reflexives). These features occur in four out of five of the Australia varieties, but in only one (Norf’k for F11) or two (Norf’k and HawC for F12) of the Pacific varieties (see Map AP_2). Only eight features are in the majority in the Pacific but not in Australia. Of these, the most notable is F233 (presence of subject in imperatives) which occurs in six out of eight Pacific varieties but only in one Australia variety (Torres Strait Creole, see Map AP_3). In addition, 33 features occur in half (four out of eight) of the Pacific varieties. Of these, 16 are majority features in Australia while 17 are minority features. To sum up, the Australia and Pacific varieties have some differences but overall these are not significant. The NeighborNet graph for the Australia and Pacific varieties (see Network AP_1 in section 4) confirms that the varieties in the two regions do not form separate groupings. Therefore, they can be considered together here as one region.

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Map AP_3: Distribution of F233 (presence of subject in imperatives) across varieties in the Australia Pacific region

3 Is Australia Pacific distinct from other regions? The comparison between Australia Pacific and other regions involves first examining profiles of variety types and then inventories of features.

3.1 Profiles of variety types

1

The numbers of variety types in each anglophone world region covered in WAVE are given in Table 3. Region British Isles N America Caribbean Africa S/SE Asia South Atlantic Australia Pacific TOTAL

Traditional L1

High-contact L1

Indigenized L2

Pidgin/Creole

TOTAL

6 4 – – – – – 10

4 4 1 3 1 3 4 21

[1]1 1 1 8 5 – 2 17

1 1 11 5 1 – 7 26

12 10 13 16 7 3 13 74

Table 3: Variety types in each region

1 This is Maltese English, which has been included with the British Isles because it does not fit in any other region.

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Regional profile: Australia Pacific Region

In terms of types of varieties, the Australia Pacific region clearly differs from the British Isles and North America in not having any traditional L1 varieties. In this way it can be grouped with the four other regions. It is similar to the Caribbean in having a high percentage of pidgin/creole varieties but differs in also having a substantial number of high-contact L1 varieties. Africa also has significant numbers of pidgin/creole and high-contact L1 varieties, but it has a far greater number of indigenized L2 varieties. South and Southeast Asia also has a large proportion of indigenized L2 varieties, and only one high-contact L1 variety and one pidgin. The South Atlantic region is unique in having only high-contact L1 varieties. Thus, the Australia Pacific region can best be grouped with the Caribbean, Africa and South and Southeast Asia, although its distribution of variety types differs in various ways from those of these regions.

3.2 Feature inventories Of the total of 235 features, 55 occur in the majority of varieties in the Australia Pacific region (seven or more out of 13). Of these, 10 also occur in the majority of varieties in all of the six other regions. The three most common features in the Australia Pacific region, occurring in 10 or more of the 13 varieties, are also the most common worldwide, occurring in 68 of the 74 varieties. These are shown in Table 4. Feature no.

Feature

34 221 229

forms or phrases for the 2nd person plural pronoun other than you other adverbs have the same form as adjectives no inversion/no auxiliaries in main clause yes/no questions

No. in A/P/13

Total no./74

12 10 12

67 67 68

Table 4: Three most common features in the Australia Pacific region and worldwide

Of the 55 majority features in the Australia Pacific region, seven are also majority features in five other regions, 11 in four other regions, 10 in three other regions and 10 in two other regions. Five majority features are in the majority in just one other region. Three of these are in the Caribbean: Feature 5 (generalized 3rd person singular subject pronouns) found in 11 of the 13 Caribbean varieties, and Features 6 and 160 (generalized 3rd person singular object pronouns and no as preverbal negator), found in 10 varieties. Another Australia Pacific majority feature that is in the majority in only one other region is F42 (object pronoun drop), found in all seven of the varieties in South and Southeast Asia. Still another is F38 (specialized plural markers for pronouns), found in two of the three varieties in the South Atlantic. The region that shares the most majority features with Australia Pacific is the Caribbean (40 of 55) and the one that shares the least is the British Isles (23 of 55). This would be expected according to the profile of variety types discussed above. Thus on the basis of overall features, the Australia Pacific region is not distinct from other regions. This is confirmed by the NeighborNet graph of all varieties (see foldout Network WAVE_all at the end of this volume), which shows the varieties generally clustering according to variety type rather than region. Nevertheless, some features are distinctive to the Australia Pacific region. F37 (more number distinctions in personal pronouns than simply singular vs plural) occurs in eight Australia Pacific varieties but not in any other variety outside the region. F36 (distinct forms for inclusive/exclusive first person non-singular) also occurs in eight varieties in the Australia Pacific region but in only one variety in the other regions. Other features are not found in the majority of Australia Pacific varieties but are represented in the region more significantly than in other regions. F76 (postnominal phrases with bilong/blong/long/blo to express possession) occurs in five Australia Pacific varieties, four rated A and one rated B. While it occurs in three other varieties (in two different regions), they are all rated as C. F143 (transitive verb suffix -em/im/-um) also occurs in five Australia Pacific varieties, four rated A and one rated C. It occurs in two other varieties (in two regions), both rated C. F162 (no more/nomo as negative existential marker) is found in four Australia Pacific varieties, three rated A and one rated C. It is also found in three other varieties (in two regions), all rated C.

Map AP_4: Worldwide distribution of F36 (distinct forms for inclusive/exclusive first person non-singular) and F37 (more number distinctions in personal pronouns than simply singular vs. plural)

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Map AP_5: Worldwide distribution of F76 (postnominal phrases with bilong/blong/long/blo to express possession)

Regional profile: Australia Pacific Region

771

Map AP_6: Worldwide distribution of F143 (transitive verb suffix -em/-im/-um)

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Map AP_7: Worldwide distribution of F162 (no more/nomo as negative existential marker)

Regional profile: Australia Pacific Region

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These five features (listed in Table 5) distinguish Australia Pacific from other regions, one because it is exclusive to the region, one because it occurs only once outside the region and three because they are by far most frequent in the region and all have some A and B ratings as opposed to only C ratings in the other regions (see also Maps AP_5 to AP_7).) Feature no.

Feature

37 36 76 143 162

more number distinctions in pronouns than simply singular vs plural distinct forms for inclusive/exclusive 1st person non-singular postnominal phrases with bilong/blong/long/blo to express possession transitive verb suffix -em/-im/-um no more/nomo as negative existential marker

No. in A/P

No. in other varieties

Total

8 8 5 5 4

0 1 3 in 2 regions 2 in 2 regions 3 in 2 regions

8 9 8 7 7

Table 5: Distinguishing features of the Australia Pacific region

4 Relationships of varieties within the region As shown in Tables 1 and 3, the varieties in the region are of three broad types: high-contact L1 varieties, indigenized L2 varieties and pidgins/creoles. But there are some significant differences within each type based on current use and historical origins. Of the four high-contact L1 varieties, New Zealand English and the two varieties of Australian English are national varieties, spoken throughout their respective countries with some minor regional and social variation. Aboriginal English is a cover term for a wide range of varieties spoken exclusively by Australian Aboriginal people, and is therefore an ethnic variety. With regard to origins, the two varieties of Australian English and New Zealand English can be referred to as “colonial dialects” (Trudgill 2004). These are varieties that developed in British colonies where large numbers of speakers of English settled and swamped the indigenous populations. The settlers mostly remained monolingual in English, and therefore second language acquisition was not a relevant factor. In this way, the colonial dialects are more like traditional L1 varieties than high-contact L1 varieties. The most important contact process in the development of the colonial varieties was koineization (Siegel 1985; Trudgill 1986) – the mixing and levelling of various dialects brought from the home country by the settlers. Thus colonial dialects are mostly the product of dialect contact rather than language contact. Australian Aboriginal English, on the other hand, is the result of language contact. Speakers of indigenous Aboriginal languages came into contact with speakers of English – originally the various dialects of English brought to Australia by settlers and later Australian English (see Malcolm, this volume). Although Aboriginal English is currently spoken primarily as an L1, it results from an earlier stage when it was spoken as an L2, and therefore shows influences of second language acquisition, including the transfer of features from the L1 (indigenous Aboriginal languages) into the L2, Australian English. In this way, Aboriginal English is similar linguistically to indigenized L2 varieties (see Siegel forthcoming). It seems most likely to fit into the category that Mesthrie (1992) calls “language shift varieties”. However, there is an additional complication for Aboriginal English in that it may have been influenced by earlier Aboriginal pidgin varieties, which later developed into creoles. Thus, some varieties of Aboriginal English have many features typical of creoles (see Malcolm, this volume). In fact, there is no clear dividing line between some varieties of Aboriginal English and modern Aboriginal creoles, such as Roper River Creole (Kriol). These factors account for the location of Aboriginal English on the NeighborNet graph (Network AP_1) most closely connected to the indigenized L2 varieties, but also close to the creoles. There are also differences among the seven varieties labelled as English-lexified pidgins or creoles – i.e. varieties that developed when English vocabulary was used as the basis for a new language of interethnic communication. Tok Pisin and Bislama are both dialects of Melanesian Pidgin, which developed in the

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late 19th century in conjunction with the Pacific labour trade and sugar plantations in Samoa and Queensland (see Siegel 2008). Both varieties are considered by some to be expanded pidgins in that their grammars have expanded to be as complex as in other languages but they are still acquired mainly as a second language. They are considered by others to be creoles because of this grammatical expansion and the fact that they are acquired as a first language by a considerable number of speakers. Here, for ease of discussion, both are referred to as creoles. Both Tok Pisin and Bislama have been influenced mainly by the local indigenous Oceanic languages of the Austronesian family and by earlier Australian Aboriginal pidgin varieties (Baker and Mühlhäusler 1996). These pidgin varieties also diffused from the east coast to the Northern Territory and became the basis for varieties of current Aboriginal creoles, such as Roper River Creole, which developed in the early 20th century and was influenced by local Aboriginal languages (Munro 2000). Since Roper River Creole is spoken primarily as a first language, it is unambiguously a creole. The other Australian creole, Torres Strait Creole, has a very different history. It developed in the late 19th century, mainly on the basis of pidgins brought from the Pacific and other parts of the world by sailors and Pacific Islanders working in the pearling industry (Shnukal 1991). It has been influenced by two substrate languages, one Australian and one Papuan, and is spoken by Torres Strait Islanders who are ethnically distinct from Aboriginal people. Norfolk Island/Pitcairn English (or Norf’k/Pitkern) is considered a Pacific variety although Norfolk Island is part of Australia. This variety developed on Pitcairn Island in the early 19th century among descendants of the Bounty mutineers, who then moved to Norfolk Island in 1856. It began to diverge into two closely related varieties when some of the speakers moved back to Pitcairn Island a few years later (see Mühlhäusler, this volume). Unlike the Australian creoles and Melanesian Pidgin, Norfolk Island/Pitcairn English has some influence from Tahitian and Atlantic creoles, and it is also a lot closer to English. Since the language had some native speakers after 1900, it has been labelled a creole. But since most of its speakers, at least on Norfolk Island, now speak it as a second language, after Australian English, it is labelled a pidgin. For ease of discussion, it is grouped here along with the other creoles and referred to as such. Hawai‘i Creole (known in Hawai‘i as “Pidgin”) has a very different history again (see Sakoda and Siegel, this volume). It developed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries relatively independently from the other pidgins and creoles. It was influenced by speakers of Hawaiian and by indentured plantation labourers from China, other Pacific Islands and Portugal, and later Japan, Korea, Puerto Rico and the Philippines. Like Norfolk Island/Pitcairn English, it is much closer to English than other creoles of the region. Palmerston English stands out from the other varieties labelled as pidgins or creoles in both its history and linguistic features (see Hendery and Ehrhart, this volume). It developed on an island settled by an Englishman and several Cook Islands women. The children born there grew up speaking English, learned from their father and their mothers. Although it has some creole features, the current variety appears to be more a dialect of English that has been influenced by processes of second language acquisition and by Cook Islands Mãori, presumably from the way the women spoke English. In this way, Palmerston English is very similar to indigenized L2 varieties, although it is spoken as an L1. For this reason, it is not included here with the other Australia Pacific creoles, but rather considered to be a language shift variety, like Aboriginal English. The two varieties of Fiji English are both labelled indigenized L2 varieties. Fiji English has a developmental history very similar to that of prototypical indigenized varieties such as Malaysian English, and was included with them as the original “New Engishes” by Platt, Weber and Ho (1984). Acrolectal Fiji English, the language of the media and highly educated Fiji citizens, would be expected to be closer to the L1 varieties of the region than Colloquial (“pure” or basilectal) Fiji English would. Comparing the features of the six Australia Pacific varieties referred to here as creoles with those of the three colonial dialects (New Zealand English and the two varieties of Australian English) demonstrates striking differences. Of the 43 features present in the majority of the creoles (at least four out of six) and the 59 features shared by the majority of colonial dialects (at least two out of three), only nine are shared as majority features by both sets of varieties. These differences can be seen in the NeighborNet graph in Network AP_1, in which the colonial dialects form a cluster distinct from all the other varieties including the six creoles, which also are separate from the remaining varieties although more closely related to them.

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Network AP_1: NeighborNet clustering of the 13 Australian Pacific varieties in WAVE

Thus in the Australia Pacific region, the 10 varieties whose origins involved second language acquisition are distinct from the three varieties (the colonial dialects) that did not. It is also noteworthy that of the five distinguishing Australia Pacific features listed in Table 4, none are found in any of the three colonial dialects (see Maps AP_4 to AP_7). Rather they appear to be mainly features of the creoles of the region (see Table 6). Out of the 30 instances in which these features occur, 21 are in the creoles. Feature no.

Feature

36 37 76 143 162

distinct forms for inclusive/exclusive 1st person non-singular more number distinctions in pronouns than simply singular vs plural postnominal phrases with bilong/ blong/long/blo to express possession transitive verb suffix -em/-im/-um no more/nomo as negative existential marker

No. in A/P

No. in the six creoles

8 8 5 5 4

5 5 4 4 3

Table 6: Occurrence of distinguishing Australia Pacific features in the creoles

The graph in Network AP_1 shows mostly the expected relationships among the creoles. Hawai‘i Creole and Norfolk Island/Pitcairn English form one node presumably as the result of their relative closeness to more standard varieties. This can be seen in the presence in the two creoles of features involving more standardlike forms that are absent in the other creoles, such as F16 (emphatic reflexives with own) and F206 (existentials with forms of have). It can also be seen in the absence of more creole-like features such as F5 (generalized 3rd person singular subject pronouns) and F110 (finish-derived completive markers) (see Map AP_8).

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Map AP_8: Distribution of F5 (generalized 3rd person singular object pronouns) and F110 (finish-derived completive markers) across varieties in the Australia Pacific region

Bislama and Tok Pisin form another node as historically related dialects of Melanesian Pidgin. They group together as opposed to the other creoles in many features, such as F14 (no number distinctions in reflexives) and F77 (possession expressed through bare juxtaposition of nouns). (However, this often appears to be the result of features rated ‘X’ rather than ‘A’, as discussed above.) Roper River Creole and Torres Strait Creole form another node as the two Australian creoles. However, this is somewhat surprising considering their distinct origins and research showing that the Torres Strait Creole may be more closely related to the varieties of Melanesian Pidgin (e.g. Lee 1998). The graph in Network AP_1 also shows the relationships among the remaining varieties. Aboriginal English lies between the creoles and the varieties of Australian English (colonial dialects), as shown by Malcolm (this volume), but it is closer to the creoles than Palmerston English, which was also labelled as a creole. Of the two Fiji indigenized L2 varieties, Acrolectal Fiji English is distinct from the colonial varieties as predicted, but closer to them than Colloquial Fiji English, which forms a cluster with Aboriginal English and Palmerston English. The position of Aboriginal English, Palmerston English and Colloquial Fiji English with respect to 20 typical Australia Pacific creole features is shown in Table 7.

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Feature no.

Feature present in majority of A/P creoles

5 6 10 36 37 38 50 76 93 110 111 140 143 160 174 177 205 210 213

generalized 3rd person singular pronoun: subject generalized 3rd person singular pronoun: object no gender distinction in 3rd person singular distinct forms for inclusive/exclusive 1st person non-singular more number distinctions in pronouns than simply singular vs plural specialized plural markers for pronouns plural marking via preposed elements postnominal phrases with bilong/ blong/long/blo to express possession other nonstandard habitual markers: analytic finish-derived completive markers past tense/anterior marker been other forms/phrases for copula ‘be’ before NPs transitive verb suffix -em/-im/-um no as preverbal negator deletion of auxiliary be before progressives deletion of copula before AdjPs existentials with forms of get non-finite clause complements with bare root form rather than -ing form no subordination; chaining construction linking two main verbs (motion and activity) adverb-forming suffixes -way and -time

219

AborE

PalmE

CollFijE

+ + + + + + + + + – + – + + + + + – +

+ + – + + + – – – + + – – – + + – + +

+ + + + + + – – + – + – – + + + – + –

+

–

–

Table 7: Occurrence of typical creole features in Aboriginal English, Palmerston English and Colloquial Fiji English

5 Relationships with variety types outside the region The NeighborNet graph for all varieties generally confirms the relationships of the Australia Pacific variety types with those in the other regions that would be expected following the discussion in the preceding section. As can be seen in Network AP_2, the three colonial dialects, although labelled as high-contact L1 varieties, are grouped with the traditional L1 varieties (such as East Anglian English and Ozark English), and with other varieties labelled high-contact L1 varieties that are either also colonial dialects (such as Falkland Islands English) or well-established varieties in the British Isles (such as Welsh English). Australian Aboriginal English, although also labelled as a high-contact L1 variety, is way over on the other side of the graph (Network AP_3), showing a closer relationship to the creoles. It is noteworthy that it is closely related to another important ethnic dialect, African American Vernacular English, which, like Aboriginal English, has many creole-like features, but whose varieties are also labelled high-contact L1 varieties. The different groupings of the colonial dialects and ethnic varieties suggest that the category of high-contact L1 varieties needs to be refined. As expected, Acrolectal Fiji English sits among other indigenized L2 varieties (such as Tanzanian English and Sri Lankan English). On the other hand, Colloquial Fiji English is out of the indigenized L2 varieties cluster and more closely associated with the creoles. However, this is not surprising because of the large number of creole-like features found in the variety, some of which are shown in Table 7. The position of Palmerston English being separate from the creoles but close to Aboriginal English and Colloquial Fiji English confirms the view stated earlier that it is not really a creole. The six Australia Pacific varieties referred to here as creoles, however, sit comfortably among the pidgins/creoles from other regions. More specifically, they lie between the majority of the Caribbean creoles and those of Africa and Suriname. It is noteworthy that the three different pairs of Australia Pacific creoles mentioned above cluster together separately from the others. This is a reflection not only of the characteristic Australia Pacific creole features that are not found in other varieties (see Table 6), but also of the absence of some of the typical Atlantic creole features in five or more of the six Australia Pacific creoles. These include features F18 toF26 (subject and object

Regional profile: Australia Pacific Region

Network AP_2: Detail of the NeighborNet diagram for all 74 WAVE varieties (right-hand branch)

Network AP_3: Detail of the NeighborNet diagram for all 74 WAVE varieties (left-hand branch)

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pronouns used as modifying possessive pronouns), F51 (plural marking via postposed elements), F104 (completive/perfect done), F148 (serial verbs: give = ‘to, for’) and F200 (say-based complementizers).

6 Substrate influence As we have seen, the distinguishing features of the Australia Pacific region listed in Table 5 are found only in the 10 varieties that have had second language acquisition as an integral part of their development. These are the six varieties referred to here as creoles (Roper River Creole, Torres Strait Creole, Tok Pisin, Bislama, Hawai‘i Creole and Norfolk Island/Pitcairn English), the two varieties that could be called language shift varieties (Aboriginal English and Palmerston English) and the two indigenized L2 varieties from Fiji. The importance of second language acquisition in these varieties presents the possibility that the characteristic features of the region may be a result of language transfer or substrate reinforcement of these features from the indigenous languages of the region (Siegel 1999, 2008, 2011). The two most distinctive features of the region, mentioned above, are each found in eight out these 10 varieties. The features are F36 (distinctive forms for inclusive/exclusive first person non-singular), found in only one other variety outside the region, and F37 (more number distinctions in personal pronouns than simply singular vs plural), found nowhere else. It is no coincidence that the inclusive/exclusive distinction in first person non-singular pronouns, as well as dual and sometimes trial or paucal pronouns, are areal features of both the Aboriginal languages of Australia and the Oceanic (Austronesian) languages of the Pacific (see Map AP_4). Furthermore, the prevalence of two other features listed in Table 5 is also most probably related to substrate influence. With regard to F76 (postnominal phrases with bilong/blong/long/blo to express possession), the Oceanic languages indicate indirect possession for a nominal possessor with a possessive marker either as a separate word following the possessum, or as a suffix on it (Siegel 2011: 547). This parallel between creole and substrate features is clear for Tok Pisin and Bislama. With regard to F143 (transitive verb suffix -em/im/-um), the Oceanic substrate languages similarly have transitive verbal suffixes, thus influencing Tok Pisin and Bislama (Siegel 2011: 551). The Australian Aboriginal substrate languages are mainly ergative-absolutive, with transitive and intransitive verbs always distinguished by verbal prefixes – one set marking the subject of intransitive verbs and another marking the agent and object of transitive verbs. This may have influenced the development of this feature in the Australian creoles (see Koch 2000). The distribution of other less common Australia Pacific features may have also been influenced by different patterns of substrate reinforcement. F94 (progressive marker stop or stay) occurs in Tok Pisin, Bislama and Hawai‘i Creole (see Map AP_9). In the first two, there are parallels with the particular local Oceanic substrate languages (Siegel 2008: 189–190) and in Hawai‘i Creole, there are parallels with Portuguese, one of the most influential substrate languages (Siegel 2008: 97–100). In contrast, F114 (go-based future markers) occurs in Hawai‘i Creole but not Tok Pisin or Bislama. This can be accounted for by the absence of any parallel structure in the Oceanic substrate languages but the presence of one in Portuguese (Siegel 2011: 543).

7 Conclusion The Australia Pacific region is characterized by a clear split between two types of varieties. On the one hand, there are the three L1 varieties that developed among settlers in the region from the various English dialects that they brought with them. These are the colonial dialects (New Zealand English and two varieties of Australian English), and they appear to be similar in features to colonial dialects in other parts of the world, such as the Falkland Islands and South Africa. On the other hand, there are the 10 varieties that developed when indigenous populations either learned English as a second language or learned enough English vocabulary to use as a basis for a new language of wider communication. First there are the ethnic or language shift var-

Map AP_9: Worldwide distribution of F94 (progressive marker stap or stay)

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ieties, Palmerston English and Aboriginal English, which have many creole features and similarities with African American Vernacular English. Second are the two indigenized L2 varieties: Acrolectal Fiji English, which is similar to varieties of this type in other regions, and Colloquial Fiji English, which has more creolelike features. Finally, there are the six creole varieties, forming three pairs based on origins and features: Roper River Creole (Kriol) and Torres Strait Creole, Tok Pisin and Bislama, and Hawai‘i Creole and Norfolk Island/Pitcairn English. These varieties are very similar to creoles in other regions, but also have differences in absence of some typical creole features and the presence of some not-so-typical ones. These 10 varieties influenced by second language acquisition are the ones that have the characteristic features that distinguish the Australia Pacific region from other regions, and most of these distinguishing features are the result of influence from the indigenous substrate languages.

References Baker, Philip, and Peter Mühlhäusler. 1996. The origins and diffusion of Pidgin English in the Pacific. In: Stephen A. Wurm, Peter Mühlhäusler, and Darrell T. Tryon (eds.), Atlas of Languages of Intercultural Communication in the Pacific, Asia and the Americas, 551–594. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Koch, Harold. 2000. The role of Australian Aboriginal languages in the formation of Australian Pidgin grammar: Transitive verbs and adjectives. In: Jeff Siegel (ed.), Processes of Language Contact: Studies from Australia and the South Pacific, 13–46. Montreal: Fides. Lee, Ernest W. 1998. Unexpected shared features in Melanesian pidgins/creoles: Is Broken a Melanesian pidgin/ creole? In: Jan Tent, and France Mugler (eds.), SICOL: Proceedings of the Second International Conference on Oceanic Linguistics: Volume 1, Language Contact, 69–83. Canberra: Australian National University (Pacific Linguistics C-141). Mesthrie, Rajend. 1992. English in Language Shift: The History, Structure and Sociolinguistics of South African Indian English. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Munro, Jennifer M. 2000. Kriol on the move: A case of language spread and shift in Northern Australia. In: Jeff Siegel (ed.), Processes of Language Contact: Studies from Australia and the South Pacific, 245–270. Montreal: Fides.

Platt, John, Heidi Weber, and Ho Mian Lian. 1984. The New Englishes. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Shnukal, Anna. 1991. Torres Strait Creole. In: Suzanne Romaine (ed.), Language in Australia, 180–194. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Siegel, Jeff. 1985. Koines and koineization. Language in Society 14: 357–378. Siegel, Jeff. 1999. Transfer constraints and substrate influence in Melanesian Pidgin. Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages 14: 1–44. Siegel, Jeff. 2008. The Emergence of Pidgin and Creole Languages. Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press. Siegel, Jeff. 2011. Substrate reinforcement and the retention of Pan-Pacific Pidgin features in modern contact varieties. In: Claire Lefebvre (ed.), Creoles, Their Substrates, and Language Typology, 531–556. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: Benjamins. Siegel, Jeff. forthc. Multilingualism, indigenization and creolization. In: Tej K. Bhatia, and William C. Ritchie (eds.), The Handbook of Bilingualism and Multilingualism (2nd edition), Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell. Trudgill, Peter. 1986. Dialects in Contact. Oxford: Blackwell. Trudgill, Peter. 2004. New-Dialect Formation: The Inevitability of Colonial Englishes. Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press.

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Map As_1: The WAVE varieties in Asia

Regional Profile: Asia

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Regional Profile: Asia* 1 Introduction This chapter reports on the seven varieties of English from six countries in Asia studied within the WAVE project: those of India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Singapore, Hong Kong and Malaysia (see Map As_1). Six of these varieties share a common history insofar as they arose out of British trade and then colonisation from the 17th century to the mid-to-late 20th century. Since these followed the pattern of settlement colonies (Mufwene 2001) they fall into the category of L2 Englishes. The seventh variety is Butler English, previously described as a “minimal pidgin” (Hosali and Aitchison 1986) of South India, arising in contexts of domestic labour, rather than in educational settings. Butler English, from a cursory first glance, is so out of kilter with the ratings for the other varieties that it raises some methodological difficulties. Also striking are the relatively fewer occurrences of A-B-C ratings for Pakistan and Sri Lanka, and the rather large numbers of A-B ratings for Butler English. Are these a reflection of raters’ temperaments (conservative vs. liberal in letting in minor variants) or do they reflect the actual features of these varieties? My own intuition would have been to cut out all C’s (‘very rare’ by definition), but for consistency within the project I have kept them in. In fact if we discard the C’s from our counts, the results for Asia would not have been strongly affected. A third factor relating to the sociology of knowledge would recognise that some varieties are more studied than others: in Asia bibliographies of Indian English and Singapore English would fill more pages than the others, hence giving analysts the benefit of a possibly richer harvest of features. Although my initial expectation was that there would be considerable diversity within the group, the global network diagram WAVE_all (see foldout at the end of this volume and Network As_1, section 3) shows overwhelming similarities, with Asia largely forming a sub-branch of its own. However, the Asia network diagram (Network As_2, section 3) does suggest internal differences within the group, but clearly overall these do not upset the notion that the regional set of Asian Englishes is also a typological set. Figure 1 shows that this set shares affinities with L2 varieties of Africa. Before examining the network diagrams it is necessary to work through the data leading to them, using the headings of the WAVE analysis.

2 Distributional analysis of the WAVE features 2.1 Pronoun effects I use Edgar Schneider’s criterion of 80 % as a cut-off point to indicate feature density, i.e. that a particular feature occurs in 80 % of the Asian varieties categorized in WAVE. Occurrence is indicated by an A, B or C rating per feature. Seven of the 47 pronominal features in the WAVE questionnaire can be said to have high density. These are: F7 F14 F34 F42 F43

Me instead of I in co-ordinate subjects (in all varieties) No number distinction in reflexives (in all varieties but Sri Lanka) 2nd person plural forms other than you (in all varieties, except Hong Kong which records ‘?’ for ‘uncertain’) Pro-drop with object referents (in all varieties) Pro-drop with subjects (in all varieties)

* For an overview of all features for which maps are included in the regional and typological profiles, see the List of Maps and the Feature Index. For the overall NeighborNet diagram, based

on all 235 features in all 74 WAVE varieties, see the foldout at the end of the volume.

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F44 Pro-drop involving dummy subjects (in all varieties but Hong Kong) F45 Insertion of it where StE has zero, like in As it can be seen … (in all varieties). In evaluating whether these trends are especially strong in Asia or shared globally, I use Schneider’s proposal of a 20 % difference between the feature densities and will use grey highlighting in all tables for these differences above 20 %. As Table 1 shows three of the features have a density difference less than 20 % from the global norm. The remaining four features can be considered to be strong in Asia: three of them relating to prodrop (F42, F43, F44, see Map As_2) and the fourth relating to insertion of it where StE has zero (F45): Feature No. 7 42 43 45 14 34 44

definition Me for I in coordinated subjects Pro-drop with object referents Pro-drop with subjects Insertion of it where StE has zero No number distinction in reflexives Special 2nd person pl. pronouns Pro-drop involving dummy subjects

FD Asia 100 % 100 % 100 % 100 % 85.7 % 85.7 % 85.7 %

FD world

Difference

89.2 % 35.1 % 50.0 % 43.2 % 67.6 % 90.5 % 35.1 %

10.8 % 64.9 % 50.0 % 56.8 % 18.1 % –4.8 % 50.6 %

Table 1: High density pronoun effects in Asia vs. global means

Equally striking is the absence of features across the board in Asia. The following eight WAVE features are reported not to occur at all in any of the seven varieties: F5 F6 F17 F19 F27 F33 F36 F37

Generalized 3rd person sg. subject pronouns Generalized 3rd person sg. object pronouns Creation of possessive pronouns with prefix fi- +personal pronoun Subject pronoun forms as (modifying) possessive pronouns: first person plural Subject pronoun forms as (modifying) possessive pronouns: third person plural Object pronoun forms as (modifying) possessive pronouns: first person plural Distinct forms for inclusive/exclusive first person non-singular More number distinctions in personal pronouns than simply singular vs. plural

There are another 16 pronominal features that do not occur in any Asian variety, except Butler English. These are features associated with creole languages and show a strong divide between Creole and L2 varieties. The Butler English ratings (all B or C) are given in brackets. F1 F2 F11 F12 F13 F18 F20 F21 F22 F24 F25 F26 F29 F30 F31 F32 F35

She/her used for inanimate referents (B) He/him used for inanimate referents (B) Regularized reflexives paradigm (B) Object pronoun forms serving as base for first and/or second person reflexives (B) Subject pronoun forms serving as base for reflexives (B) Subject pronoun forms as (modifying) possessive pronouns: first person singular (A) Subject pronoun forms as (modifying) possessive pronouns: third person singular (B) Subject pronoun forms as (modifying) possessive pronouns: third person plural (C) You as (modifying) possessive pronoun (C) Object pronoun forms as (modifying) possessive pronouns: third person singular (C) Object pronoun forms as (modifying) possessive pronouns: third person plural (C) Object pronoun forms as (modifying) possessive pronouns: first person singular (C) Use of us in object function with singular referent (C) Non-coordinated subject pronoun forms in object function (C) Non-coordinated object pronoun forms in subject function (B) Distinction between emphatic vs. non-emphatic forms of pronouns (C) Forms or phrases for the second person singular pronoun other than you (C)

Map As_2: Worldwide distribution of pro-drop features (F42–F44)

Regional Profile: Asia

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The remaining 15 features occur in one or more varieties in Asia, but uncommonly. All of them score 57 % or less, except for F8 (myself/meself instead of I in coordinate subjects), F41 (singular it for plural they in anaphoric use) and F47 (deletion of it in non-referential it is-constructions), which score at 71 %. This is insufficient by the criterion of 80 %, but these are the only features to get a score above 60 %. For consistency we check how these 15 moderately occurring features rate with global trends, since a moderate score of, say, 57 % for Asia for a particular feature might still be very relevant if the global score were say 5.7 %. In this hypothetical case, the 57 % could represent four Asian varieties with a score of A, while the global score represents none of the other 67 varieties having any occurrence of this feature. Again, we take a difference of 20 % as a diagnostic. By this criterion scores of less than 20 % for Asia should be non-starters as ‘features’ and could well have been discarded from the outset. However, we have kept them in so that this chapter gives a complete list of all 235 WAVE features. Feature No. 3 4 8 9 10 15 16 23 28 38 39 40 41 46 47

definition Alternative forms for referential (non-dummy) it Alternative forms/phrases for dummy it Myself/meself instead of I in coordinate subjects Benefactive “personal dative” construction No gender distinction in third person singular Absolute use of reflexives Emphatic reflexives with own 2nd pro. forms other than you as possessive Use of us + NP in subject function Specialized plural markers for pronouns Plural forms of interrogative pronouns, with additional elements Plural forms of interrogative pronouns: reduplication Singular it for plural they in anaphoric use Deletion of it in referential it is-constructions Deletion of it in non-referential it is-constructions

FD Asia 57.1 % 28.6 % 71.4 % 14.3 % 57.1 % 14.3 % 57.1 % 14.3 % 28.6 % 14.3 % 57.1 % 57.1 % 71.4 % 42.9 % 71.4 %

FD world 54.1 % 23.0 % 68.9 % 43.2 % 45.9 % 18.9 % 52.7 % 33.8 % 50.0 % 27.0 % 33.8 % 9.5 % 29.7 % 39.2 % 28.4 %

Difference 3.0 % 5.6 % 2.5 % –28.9 % 11.2 % –4.6 % 4.4 % –19.5 % –21.4 % –12.7 % 23.3 % 47.6 % 41.7 % 3.7 % 43.0 %

Table 2: Pronoun effects with non-high feature density in Asia vs. global means

Table 2 contains four features which occur at a higher level than the global norm: plural forms like who-all and who-who for interrogative pronouns (F39 and F40, see Map As_3), and especially distinctive of the Asian varieties of English syncretic it for they in anaphora (F41, see Map As_4) and absence of it in non-referential constructions like Rained yesterday only (F47).1 In this group negative differences greater than 20 % serve to show that particular features, while occurring in Asia, are significantly underrepresented there in global terms. Notable here are the use of us with NP subjects (F28; Us cricketers like travelling), the personal or benefactive dative (F9; I bought me a car) and possessive use of 2nd person pronoun forms other than you (F23; you-all’s): these are indeed rare in Asia, with only one variety containing each of them. Since I will follow the same pattern of analysis for the rest of the clusters of features as for pronouns, there is no need to repeat the methodological detail.

1 The total number of features in this type of table throughout this chapter includes those rounded off from 19.5 % to 19.9 %.

Map As_3: Worldwide distribution of F39 (plural forms of interrogative pronouns: using additional elements) and F40 (plural forms of interrogative pronouns: reduplication)

Regional Profile: Asia

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Map As_4: Worldwide distribution of F41 (singular it for plural they in anaphoric use)

790 Rajend Mesthrie

Map As_5: Worldwide distribution of article omission (F62, F63)

Regional Profile: Asia

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Rajend Mesthrie

2.2 The Noun Phrase Table 3 shows the five high density items in Asian English noun phrases. Feature No. 55 62 63 78 80

definition Plural for StE singular in count/mass nouns Zero where StE has definite article Zero where StE has indefinite article Double comparatives and superlatives Regularized comparison strategies: extension of analytic marking

FD Asia 100 % 100 % 100 % 85.7 % 85.7 %

FD world

Difference

54.1 % 56.8 % 51.4 % 73.0 % 68.9 %

45.9 % 43.2 % 48.6 % 12.7 % 16.8 %

Table 3: High feature density noun phrase effects in Asia vs. global means

The highlighted differences in the last column are all well above 20 % for F55, F62 and F63, showing that these high density items are not as high in all parts of the English speaking world (see Map As_5 for F62 and F63). Absent in all Asian varieties are the seven features given below: F50 F51 F69 F70 F76 F83 F85

Plural marking via preposed elements Plural marking via postposed elements Yon/yonder indicating remoteness Proximal and distal demonstratives with ‘here’ and ‘there’ Postnominal phrases with bilong/blong/long/blo to express possession Comparatives and superlatives of participles Comparative marking with more … and

In addition the following features are absent in all Asian varieties surveyed, except in Butler English: F68 Them instead of demonstrative those F74 Phrases with for + noun to express possession: for-phrase following possessed NP F75 Phrases with for + noun to express possession: for-phrase preceding possessed NP We now turn to the remaining noun phrase features, searching for those that might not be high density items but which occur more frequently than the global mean. In Table 4 there are nine such items highlighted in grey in the last column. While not being categorical or near-categorical, these features can be considered characteristic of the Asian region. Feature No. 48 49 52 53 54 56 57 58 59 60 61 64 65 66 67 71

Definition Extension of -s to StE irregular plurals Phonological regularization of plural formation Associative plural with postposed and them/them Associative plural marked by other elements Group plurals Absence of plural marking only after quantifiers Pl. marking generally optional: human nouns Pl. marking generally optional: non-human nouns Double determiners Definite article for StE indefinite article Indefinite article for StE definite article Definite article for StE zero Indefinite article for StE zero Indefinite article one/wan Demonstratives for definite articles No number distinction in demonstratives

FD Asia 71.4 % 57.1 % 28.6 % 14.3 % 57.1 % 28.6 % 71.4 % 71.4 % 42.9 % 57.1 % 42.9 % 71.4 % 28.6 % 71.4 % 57.1 % 57.1 %

FD world 47.3 % 47.3 % 60.8 % 21.6 % 43.2 % 43.2 % 40.5 % 41.9 % 31.1 % 47.3 % 21.6 % 45.9 % 14.9 % 64.9 % 39.2 % 41.9 %

Difference 24.1 % 9.8 % –32.2 % –7.3 % 13.9 % –14.7 % 30.9 % 29.5 % 11.8 % 9.8 % 21.3 % 25.5 % 13.7 % 6.6 % 18.0 % 15.2 %

Regional Profile: Asia

72 73 77 79 81 82 84 86 87

Group genitives Existential construction to express possessive Omission of genitive suffix Regularized comparison strategy: synthetic marking Much as comparative marker As/to as comparative markers Comparative marking only with than Zero marking of degree Attributive adjectival modifiers follow head noun

28.6 % 14.3 % 42.9 % 57.1 % 57.1 % 57.1 % 71.4 % 42.9 % 14.3 %

33.8 % 8.1 % 56.8 % 58.1 % 18.9 % 20.3 % 21.6 % 20.3 % 9.5 %

793

–5.2 % 14.3 % –13.9 % –1.0 % 38.2 % 36.8 % 49.8 % 22.6 % 4.8 %

Table 4: NP effects with non-high density in Asia vs. global means

2.3 Verb phrase: tense and aspect Table 5 shows the three high density items in Asian Englishes for the tense and aspect domain. The highlighted differences in the last column are all well above 20 %, showing that these high density items in Asia are not as high in all parts of the English speaking world. Feature No.

definition

89 100 113

Be + V-ing extended to habitual use Simple present for continuative or experiential perfect Loosening of sequence of tenses rule

FD Asia 85.7 % 100 % 100 %

FD world

Difference

48.6 % 43.2 % 64.9 %

37.1 % 56.8 % 35.1 %

Table 5: High density tense and aspect effects in Asia vs. global means

Absent in all Asian varieties are the 10 features given below: F94 Progressive marker stap or stay F95 Be sat/stood with progressive meaning F97 Medial object perfect F103 Do as unstressed tense marker F104 Completive/perfect done F106 “Sequential” or “irrealis” be done F107 Completive/perfect marker slam F111 Past tense/anterior marker been F112 Anterior had + bare root F115 Volition-based future markers other than will In addition, the following five features are absent in all Asian varieties surveyed, except in Butler English: F90 Invariant be as habitual marker F93 Other non-standard habitual markers: analytic F102 Be as perfect auxiliary F105 Completive/perfect have/be + done + past participle F118 Is for am/will with 1st person singular We now turn to the remaining tense and aspect features, again searching for those that might not be high density items by our strict definition, but which occur at a much higher density than the global mean. In Table 6 there are four such items highlighted in grey in the last column:

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Rajend Mesthrie

Feature No.

Definition

88 91 92 96 98 99 101 108 109 110 114 116 117 119 120

Be + V-ing extended to stative verbs Do as habitual marker Synthetic non-standard habitual markers There with resultative past participle After-perfect Simple past for StE present perfect Simple present for continuative/experiential perfect Ever as marker of experiential perfect Perfect marker already Finish-derived completive markers Go-based future markers Come-based future/ingressive markers Present tense forms for neutral future Would for (distant) vs. will (immediate) future Would in if-clauses

FD Asia 71.4 % 14.3 % 28.6 % 28.6 % 14.3 % 71.4 % 71.4 % 14.3 % 71.4 % 14.3 % 14.3 % 28.6 % 71.4 % 57.1 % 28.6 %

FD world 62.2 % 28.4 % 24.3 % 37.8 % 5.4 % 58.1 % 45.9 % 1.4 % 29.7 % 25.7 % 50.0 % 23.0 % 33.8 % 25.7 % 33.8 %

Difference 9.3 % –14.1 % 4.2 % –9.3 % 8.9 % 13.3 % 25.5 % 12.9 % 41.7 % –11.4 % –35.7 % 5.6 % 37.6 % 31.5 % –5.2 %

Table 6: Tense and Aspect effects with non-high density in Asia vs. global means

Thus another four features can be considered characteristic of the Asian region, while not being categorical or near-categorical. Only one feature in Table 6 occurs at a noticeably lower level in Asia than the global norm: F114, the use of go-based future markers, which is found only in Singapore.

2.4 Modal verbs Table 7 shows the two high density items in Asian English modal verbs, both of which are much higher than the average in all parts of the English speaking world (see Map As_6 for F127). Feature No.

definition

123 127

Present tense forms where StE has past Non-standard modals for politeness

FD Asia 85.7 % 85.7 %

FD world

Difference

37.8 % 23.0 %

47.9 % 62.7 %

Table 7: High density modal verb effects in Asia vs. global means

Absent in all Asian varieties are double modals (F121), epistemic mustn’t (F122) and new quasi-modals with either core modal (F125) or aspectual meanings (F126). For modals Butler English follows the trends of the other Asian varieties. This time there is also no need to search for items that might not be high density items by our strict definition, but which occur at a much higher density than the global mean. The reason for this is that in this small subset, the only remaining feature scores 14.3 %, making it impossible to have a score higher than the global mean by 20 %. This feature, want/need + past participle (F124), occurs at a rare level (C) in Hong Kong, and is noteworthy for its very presence in Asia.

2.5 Verb morphology There is only one high density item in this category for Asian Englishes, namely F147 (the use of was for conditional were). At 85.7 %, this score is indeed higher than the global FD score of 75.7 %. Absent in all Asian varieties are F134 to F143 as well as F151 and F152. We now turn to the remaining verb morphology features, identifying items which occur at a higher density than the global mean. In Table 8 there is one such item highlighted in grey in the last column, namely F133 (double marking of past tense):

Regional Profile: Asia

Feature No.

Definition

128 129 130 131 132 133 144 145 146 148 149 150

Regularization of irregular past tense verb paradigms Unmarked forms of past tense/past participle forms Associative plural with postposed and them/them Past participle replacing the past tense form Zero past tense forms of regular verbs Double marking of past tense Use of gotten and got with dynamic vs. static meanings Use of gotten instead of got -ing with forms other than present participle/gerund Serial verbs: give = ‘to, for’ Serial verbs: go = ‘movement away from’ Serial verbs: come = ‘movement towards’

FD Asia 71.4 % 42.9 % 57.1 % 28.6 % 71.4 % 71.4 % 14.3 % 42.9 % 28.6 % 14.3 % 14.3 % 14.3 %

FD world 63.5 % 66.2 % 51.4 % 55.4 % 59.5 % 28.4 % 18.9 % 25.7 % 14.9 % 20.3 % 28.4 % 27.0 %

795

Difference 7.9 % –23.3 % 5.7 % –26.8 % 11.9 % 43.0 % –4.6 % 17.2 % 13.7 % –6.0 % –14.1 % –12.7 %

Table 8: Other verb morphology effects with non-high density in Asia vs. global means

2.6 Voice The lone deviation regarding voice from Standard English in the whole world appears to be the give passive (F153): NP1 (patient) + give + NP2 (agent) + V, as in John gave his boss shout (‘John was shouted at by his boss’). This is reported as an ‘A’ feature in Singapore, but does not occur in Hong Kong, Malaysia or any other Asian territory surveyed. In global terms it is recorded in Tristan da Cunha English, as a rare feature there, but nowhere else. It would indeed be interesting to monitor whether the feature has a prolonged life in Singapore and if it spreads elsewhere (e.g. to Malaysia).

2.7 Negation Table 9 shows the two high density items in Asian English negation, of which F165 (invariant non-concord tags) scores well above 20 % more than the global average. Feature No.

definition

158 165

Invariant present don’t for all persons Invariant non-concord tags

FD Asia 85.7 % 100 %

FD world

Difference

67.6 % 66.2 %

18.1 % 33.8 %

Table 9: High density negation effects within Asia vs. global means

Absent in all Asian varieties are the five features given below: F155 Ain’t as the negated form of be F156 Ain’t as the negated form of have F157 Ain’t as generic negator before a main verb F167 Fronted invariant tag F168 Special negative verbs in imperatives One feature, F164 (amn’t in tag questions), is again found only in Butler English, but otherwise this variety does not show any atypical forms for Asia in the domain of negation. Turning to the remaining negation features, we compare other items in Asia with their global mean. In Table 10 there are two such items highlighted in grey in the last column. The first of these is the tag question can or not (F166), which though only occurring in Singapore and Malaysia is above the global mean (the only other places having it are Hawaii and South East American Enclave English). This seems a vindication of the method of drawing up a Table like 10. The sec-

Map As_6: Worldwide distribution of F127 (non-standard use of modals for politeness reasons)

796 Rajend Mesthrie

Regional Profile: Asia

797

ond item is the different logical and pragmatic system underlying yes/no questions couched in the negative (F169). This time the construction is strongly shared regionally with Africa, some creole varieties with African input and a few miscellaneous varieties. Feature No.

Definition

154 159 160 161 162 163 166 169

Multiple negation / negative concord Never as preverbal past tense negator No as preverbal negator Not as preverbal negator No more/nomo as negative existential marker Was – weren’t split Invariant tag can or not? Non-standard responses to negative yes/no questions

FD Asia 42.9 % 71.4 % 28.6 % 28.6 % 14.3 % 14.3 % 28.6 % 71.4 %

FD world 81.1 % 82.4 % 37.8 % 21.6 % 9.5 % 18.9 % 6.8 % 35.1 %

Difference –38.2 % –11.0 % –9.3 % 6.9 % 4.8 % –4.6 % 21.8 % 36.3 %

Table 10: Negation effects with non-high feature density in Asia vs. global means

2.8 Agreement There is only one feature in this category with a high FD score, viz. F174 (the deletion of auxiliary be before progressives). This has an FD of 85.7 % as against a global score of 56.8 %, making it a high ranking characteristic in Asia. Three agreement features (F181-F183) are absent in all Asian varieties, and two occur only in Butler English: F171 Invariant present tense forms due to generalization of 3rd person -s to all persons (occurs infrequently) F184 Invariant be with non-habitual function Turning to the remaining agreement features, we compare their spread in Asia with the relevant global means. In Table 11 there are two such items, relating to the deletion of copula and auxiliary be (F175 and F176). Feature No.

Definition

170

Invariant present tense forms due to zero marking for the third person singular Existential / presentational there’s with plural subjects Variant forms of dummy subject there in existential clauses Deletion of auxiliary be before gonna Deletion of copula be before NPs Deletion of copula be before AdjPs Deletion of copula be: before locatives Deletion of auxiliary have Was/were generalization

172 173 175 176 177 178 179 180

FD Asia

FD world

Difference

71.4 %

67.6 %

3.8 %

57.1 % 42.9 % 71.4 % 71.4 % 57.1 % 57.1 % 42.9 % 28.6 %

70.3 % 48.6 % 51.4 % 39.2 % 51.4 % 44.6 % 32.4 % 52.7 %

–13.2 % –5.7 % 20.1 % 32.2 % 5.8 % 12.5 % 10.5 % –24.1 %

Table 11: Agreement effects with non-high feature density in Asia vs. global means

2.9 Relativization No items in this set qualify as of high FD. Furthermore, three items score a zero in Asia: relativizer as (F187), relativizer at (F188), and relativizer where or a form derived from where (F189). Two other items occur in no variety except Butler English: relativizer what (F190) or a form derived from what, and use of analytic or cliticized what’s, at’s, who his instead of whose (F192). Table 12 gives a comparison of (non-high density) features of Asian Englishes with the global means. Five features occur appreciably more in Asia than in the rest of the varieties surveyed (see grey shading, and Map As_7 for F199).

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Rajend Mesthrie

Feature No.

Definition

185 186 191 193 194 195 196 197 198 199

Non-restrictive relativizer that or what Which for ‘who’ Relativizer doubling Gapping/zero-relativization in subject position Resumptive/shadow pronouns Postposed one as sole relativizer Correlative constructions “Linking relative clauses” Deletion of stranded prepositions in relative clauses Reduced relative phrases preceding head-noun

FD Asia 14.3 % 28.6 % 28.6 % 42.9 % 42.9 % 28.6 % 28.6 % 57.1 % 57.1 % 42.9 %

FD world 44.6 % 33.8 % 12.2 % 60.8 % 45.9 % 5.4 % 8.1 % 36.5 % 33.8 % 6.8 %

Difference –30.3 % –5.2 % 16.4 % –18.0 % –3.1 % 23.2 % 20.5 % 20.6 % 23.3 % 36.1 %

Table 12: Relativization effects with non-high feature density in Asia vs. global means

2.10 Complementation Only one feature counts as high FD here: F209 (the addition of to where StE has bare infinitive) with a FD of 85.7 %. Two features are totally absent in the varieties surveyed: F200 (complementizers based on say) and F201 (for-based complementizers). Table 13 gives the usual comparison of (non-high density) features of Asia with global norms: Feature No.

Definition

202 203 204 205 206 207 208 210

Unsplit for to in infinitival purpose clauses For (to) as infinitive marker As what / than what in comparative clauses Existentials with forms of get Existentials with forms of have Substitution of that-clause for infinitival subclause Deletion of to before infinitives Non-finite clause complements with bare root rather than -ing

FD Asia 14.3 % 28.6 % 71.4 % 42.9 % 14.3 % 42.9 % 42.9 % 28.6 %

FD world 32.4 % 44.6 % 64.9 % 41.9 % 24.3 % 20.3 % 35.1 % 32.4 %

Difference –18.1 % –16.0 % 6.5 % 1.0 % –10.0 % 22.6 % 7.8 % –3.8 %

Table 13: Relativization effects with non-high feature density in Asia vs. global means

Only one feature qualifies here, one that is well known as an Asian (or at least Indian) phenomenon: the variable use of that-clauses instead of infinitives (F207).

2.11 Adverbial subordination In this small section of five diagnostic features, no high-FD items occur in Asia. One feature is reported nowhere in Asia: F212 (clause-final but meaning ‘really’). Of the remaining four features surveyed, one has a much higher FD than the global norm, as Table 14 shows: Feature No.

Definition

211 213

Clause-final but = ‘though’ No subordination; chaining construction linking two main verbs (motion and activity) Conjunction doubling: clause + conj. + conj. + clause Conjunction doubling: correlative conjs.

214 215

FD Asia

FD world

Difference

28.6 % 57.1 %

23.0 % 43.2 %

5.6 % 13.9 %

14.3 % 71.4 %

33.8 % 31.1 %

–19.5 % 40.3 %

Table 14: Adverbial subordination effects with non-high feature density in Asia vs. global means

Map As_7: Worldwide distribution of F199 (reduced relative phrases preceding head noun)

Regional Profile: Asia

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Rajend Mesthrie

2.12 Adverbs and prepositions In this small section, there is one high-FD feature in Asia out of a possible seven: F222 (too; too much; very much ‘very’ as a qualifier) at 85.7 %. One feature does not occur in any variety: F218 (affirmative anymore ‘nowadays’). As Table 15 shows, although the remaining features occur fairly widely in the Asian varieties, they also have a wide global distribution and so cannot be considered a special characteristic of Asia. Feature No.

Definition

216 217 219 220 221

Omission of StE prepositions Use of postpositions Adverb-forming suffixes -way and -time Degree modifier adverbs with same form as adj. Other adverbs have the same form as adjectives

FD Asia 42.9 % 42.9 % 28.6 % 71.4 % 57.1 %

FD world 67.6 % 35.1 % 33.8 % 78.4 % 90.5 %

Difference –24.7 % 7.7 % –5.2 % –7.0 % –33.4 %

Table 15: Adverb and prepositional effects with non-high feature density in Asia vs. global means

2.13 Discourse organization and word order In this final section of feature analysis, Table 16 shows the three high density items in Asian English questions pertaining to word order inversions. These are all higher than the global average, and by a considerable margin in the case of F227 (see also Map As_9). Feature No.

Definition

227 229 228

Inverted word order in indirect questions No inversion/no auxiliaries in main clause yes/no questions No inversion/no auxiliaries in wh-questions

FD Asia 100 % 100 % 85.7 %

FD world

Difference

59.5 % 91.9 % 70.3 %

40.5 % 8.1 % 15.4 %

Table 16: High density discourse organization and word order effects in Asia vs. global means

The sole feature that is absent in all Asian varieties is F225 (sentence-initial focus markers). One more feature is not found in Asia, apart from being reported in Butler English: F226 (negative inversion). Table 17 shows how the remaining features stack up against global trends. Feature No.

Definition

223 224 230 231 232 233 234 235

Other options for clefting than StE Other possibilities for fronting than StE Doubly filled COMP-position with wh-words Superlative marker most occurring before head noun Either order of objects with double pro. objects Presence of subject in imperatives Like as a focussing device Like as a quotative particle

FD Asia 14.3 % 57.1 % 28.6 % 28.6 % 28.6 % 28.6 % 71.4 % 71.4 %

FD world 39.2 % 43.2 % 5.4 % 23.0 % 23.0 % 41.9 % 55.4 % 59.5 %

Difference –24.9 % 13.9 % 23.2 % 5.6 % 5.6 % –13.3 % 16.0 % 12.0 %

Table 17: Discourse organization and word order with non-high feature density in Asia vs. global means

The only feature that scores higher than the global mean is F230, the use of a doubly-filled COMP with a whword (e.g. IndE: It becomes very clear that what kind of revenues would be there). The results for like as a focussing device (F234) and quotative particle (F235) are interesting. While not having high FDs themselves by our cut-off points, the distribution in Asia is nevertheless higher than the global mean. Of course, we cannot read too much into this: there is little doubt that these two functions are of highest use amongst teenagers in the West. What the results do tell us is that young urban counterparts in Asia are very much attuned to such usage.

Map As_8: Worldwide distribution of ‘A’ ratings for F227 (inverted word order in indirect questions)

Regional Profile: Asia

801

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Rajend Mesthrie

3 Internal comparison within Asia via NeighborNet The bulk of this analysis was of the overall fit of the Asian varieties within the typological framework of differences from Standard English, taken as a relatively neutral yardstick (and certainly without any prescriptive intentions). This should not mask potential differences within the Asian group. Network As_1 is a good starting point to appreciate these differences. I use the NeighborNet diagram compiled by the editors of this volume, who recommend the method in coming to terms with clusters of data in the WAVE project (see foldout Network WAVE_all at the end of this volume). The method arises out of Bioinformatics and Genetic modelling (Bryant and Moulton (2004) and has found favour in linguistic typological characterisations (Cysouw 2007). The Asian varieties in fact largely form part of a continuous subset within the “wing” or “branch” of the fallen tree diagram in Network As_1. This branch comprises the set of African and Asian Englishes (plus Maltese English and Fiji English). From the diagram it can also be seen that the branch of Asian Englishes is largely distinct from its African siblings, with a few exceptions. The first, Black South African English, which is on the Asian side, may be argued to have come under the influence of other varieties of English in an Inner Circle context. Indian South African English also forms part of this “Asian” subset, not surprisingly given its 150 year history. Two other exceptions are Sri Lankan English and Pakistani English, which fall at the far edge of the African L2 varieties, rather than in Asia. Network As_1 also shows that the core continuum for Asia is as follows: CollSgE – MalE – HKE – IndE, with PakE and SLkE assuming the leftmost positions on a distinct left branch with the West and East African L2 Englishes and that of Fiji. (Butler English falls completely out of the Asia-Africa branch and sits with a set of creole or creoloid languages.) To understand the statistics behind the branching structure I follow Hackert (see her synopsis on Caribbean varieties of English, this volume) in making two calculations for the Asian varieties. The first is a list of the feature scores of each variety, allocating 1 point for A (= ‘pervasive or obligatory’); 0.6 for B (= ‘not pervasive’) and 0.3 for C (= ‘extremely rare’). Within this scheme the index scores are as per Table 18: Butler E HKE MalE IndE SgpE PakE SLkE

80.1 70.6 63.1 61.4 55.1 26.7 18.0

Table 18: Feature scores of each Asian variety on a scale differentiating by frequency (A = 1; B = 0.6; C =0.3)

Table 18 suggests that Pakistan English and Sri Lankan English are very different from the rest (for their very low scores), and that Butler English is also different from the rest (for its very high score). A second calculation suggested by Hackert correlates the number of shared features in a pairwise fashion. This time ‘shared’ makes no distinction between A, B or C and the figures represent actual numbers of features common to pairs of varieties. A first pass at this correlation is given in Table 19 below:

Ind E Pak E SLk E Hk E Sg E

PakE

SLkE

HKE

SgE

MalE

45

27 23

63 35

53 33

59 38

24

24

23

46

50 50

Table 19: Number of shared features by selected pairs of Asian Englishes

Regional Profile: Asia

803

Network As_1: Detail of the NeighborNet diagram for the complete set of WAVE varieties: L2-branch

Using the technique proposed by Hackert (in her Caribbean synopsis, this volume, based on Baker and Huber 2001; Hackert and Huber 2007) we can convert these into the following correlations of Table 20, showing difference between the actual number of similarities between two varieties and the expected number (rounded off in units). The expected number is calculated as follows, assuming that variety A has x features and variety B has y: xy/235.

Ind E Pak E SLk E HKE Sg E

PakE

SLkE

HKE

SgE

MalE

23

14 15

32 16

33 15

28 20

12

13

12

21

24 26

Table 20: Difference between number of shared features by selected pairs of Asian Englishes and expected number of similarities

Table 20 shows the number of similarities, but is in some sense incomplete as it does not measure strength of features (A’s and C’s counting alike). The network diagram of Network As_2, finally, gives us the most finegrained picture. It shows three clear subsets within the Asian varieties: (a) Singapore and Malaysia, (b) India and Hong Kong, and (c) Pakistan and Sri Lanka. Butler English is a singleton within this set, an outlier whose long branching line shows considerable linguistic distance from the rest of this geographical set. I comment further on these relations in the concluding section below.

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Rajend Mesthrie

Network As_2: NeighborNet clustering of the 7 Asian varieties in WAVE

4 Conclusion This chapter presents the first attempt at a close clustering of the major Asian varieties (the earlier effort by Mesthrie (2004) included Asia and Africa together without statistical analysis). The NeighborNet technique seems very apt, and the final diagram is a plausible representation of the scores within the feature checklist. Looking at Network As_2 again, the pattern goes slightly against received wisdom in the literature about the relationships between varieties. Had I been pressed for an opinion prior to this survey, I would have expected the South Asian varieties to cluster together (India and Pakistan together, with Sri Lanka not far off, and Butler English showing overlaps with this set, but some distinctiveness as a minimal pidgin) and Singapore and Malaysia close together as a subset that is perhaps linked more closely with Hong Kong than South Asia. Network As_2, however, links India and Hong Kong more closely to each other than to the other varieties. It also links two varieties that have not been very closely linked in the previous World English literature, Sri Lanka and Pakistan, which form a pair on a separate branch of their own, somewhat more distant from the hub than the other varieties (except for Butler English). Butler English itself is out on a limb of its own, so far distant from the hub that it sits more comfortably on a different collection of Englishes. As shown in the global Network WAVE_all (see foldout at the end of the volume), its closest relatives appear to be Aboriginal English, Colloquial Fiji English and Palmerston English. Singapore English and Malaysian English do go together according to historical and linguistic expectations. These territories have strong historical ties and similar major substrates (Chinese and Malay varieties), to the extent that their English was once characterised as the same (Platt and Weber 1980). Clearly Asia is deserving of follow-up research. In particular Pakistan and Sri Lanka require further enquiries from a syntactic point of view, since I believe that corpus-based studies could uncover more features there than reported in the present survey. Butler English’s puzzling translocation is deserving of even closer scrutiny. Finally, three aspects of Network As_1 are of personal interest to me: (a) the position of Indian South African English vis-à-vis Asia, (b) Black South African English being closer to the Asian set than Africa, and (c)

Regional Profile: Asia

805

Black South African English being closer to Indian English than to other varieties in South Africa (though it is fairly close to Indian South African English). Two important sociolinguistic factors appear to come into play here. The first is the power of the L2 vs. language shift distinction. Indian English and Black South African English are prototypical L2 varieties historically introduced largely in colonial and missionary schools. Indian South African English was established as an L2 in plantation settings, often outside the classroom. It stabilised as an L1 relatively early before its speakers had full access to the target language. The second sociolinguistic dimension is that Black South African English nevertheless, unlike its counterparts in Africa, exists in a milieu where L1 varieties are present in abundance (though not in the majority). These include White South African English (which sits on another branch of the NeighborNet tree, while apparently showing some accommodations of its own to its multilingual settings), and acrolectal or post-acrolectal varieties of other varieties that started off as L2s (Coloured and Indian South African Englishes). The broad typological sweep of WAVE may well have been fine grained enough to meet the historical sociolinguist’s approval.

References Bryant, David, and Vincent Moulton. 2004. Neighbor-Net: An agglomerative method for the construction of phylogenetic networks. Molecular Biology and Evolution 21(2): 255–265. Cysouw, Michael. 2007. New approaches to cluster analysis of typological indices. In: Reinhard Köhler, and Peter Grzbek (eds.), Exact Methods in the Study of Language and Text, 61–76. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Hosali, Priya, and Jean Aitchison. 1986. Butler English – a minimal pidgin? Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages 1(1): 51–80.

Mesthrie, Rajend. 2004. Synopsis: morphological and syntactic variation in Africa and South and Southeast Asia. In: Bernd Kortmann, Kate Burridge, Rajend Mesthrie, Edgar Schneider, and Clive Upton (eds.), A Handbook of Varieties of English, vol. 2: Morphology and Syntax, 1132–1141. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Mufwene, Salikoko. 2001. The Ecology of Language Evolution. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Platt, John T., and Heidi Weber. 1980. English in Singapore and Malaysia. Kuala Lumpur: Oxford University Press.

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Map Af_1: The WAVE varieties in Africa

Regional profile: Africa

807

Magnus Huber

Regional profile: Africa* 1 Introduction In this overview, “African Englishes” (AfEs) is used as a cover term to refer to the 16 WAVE varieties spoken on the African continent. They comprise three different types of Englishes: • •

•

High-contact L1 varieties: Liberian Settler English (LibSE), White South African English (WhSAfE), White Zimbabwean English (WhZimE) Indigenized L2 varieties: Black South African English (BlSAfE), Cameroon English (CamE), Ghanaian English (GhE), Indian South African English (InSAfE), Nigerian English (NigE), Kenyan English (KenE), Tanzanian English (TznE), Ugandan English (UgE) Pidgins and creoles: Cameroon Pidgin (CamP), Ghanaian Pidgin (GhP), Nigerian Pidgin (NigP), Vernacular Liberian English (VLibE), Krio (Sierra Leone Creole)

The purpose of this article is to identify and discuss features and feature bundles that are diagnostic of AfEs as opposed to other Englishes, and features that are especially characteristic of the internal differentiation of AfEs. With regard to the latter, this article builds on and complements Brato and Huber (forthcoming), who investigate the distribution of phonetic/phonological and morphosyntactic areal features in African varieties of English on the basis of phylogenetic networks very similar to the NeighborNet diagrams (or: phenetic networks, phenograms) used in the WAVE overview articles. Brato and Huber (forthcoming) observe that “African Englishes exhibit what we would like to call “differential areality”: the phylogenetic networks produced from the phonetic-phonological and morphosyntactic feature lists are only partially congruent.” One of the aims of this survey is to verify Brato and Huber’s conclusion that we can expect nativization to progress more quickly in the area of phonetics and phonology than in the area of morphosyntax, resulting in differential areality. […] We take this as an indication that, rather than developing their own norms and cross-influencing each other, the grammars of [African Standard Englishes] are still relatively closely oriented towards (written) Standard British English.

A word of caution regarding phenetic networks is in order before we discuss the African and world networks produced from the WAVE data. In constructing a network, a phenogram algorithm will always include all the species (or varieties) that are input. That is if we were to add a completely unrelated language to the 74 WAVE varieties (e.g. an Eskimo-Aleut language), the algorithm would be forced to situate this language somewhere in the network, in some relation to all the other Englishes. The Eskimo-Aleut language would thus be closer to some varieties of English than to others. However, it cannot be stressed enough that this does not mean that our Eskimo-Aleut language is related (in the genetic/historical sense) to any particular variety or varieties of English. It simply means that it shares more WAVE features with some varieties of English than with others. That is, structural similarity between two varieties or languages is visualized by clustering in the phylogram, but clustering does not necessarily mean that languages are actually related in the sense that they share a common ancestry or have been in contact at one point in their history. Rather, what phenograms show is the typological distance or proximity between any two languages, which may or may not coincide with their historical or ancestral proximity.

* For an overview of all features for which maps are included in the regional and typological profiles, see the List of Maps and the Feature Index. For the overall NeighborNet diagram,

based on all 235 features in all 74 WAVE varieties, see the foldout at the end of the volume.

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This does not mean that phenograms are completely worthless for studying language relationships. On the contrary, they can provide important insights if one includes only languages or varieties that are known to be related. In the case of WAVE, the 74 varieties are all varieties of English of some kind, but they are related to the abstract concept “English” (and to each other) in very different ways. For example, the pidgins and creoles in the WAVE sample result from the contact of English with unrelated languages and from a break in natural language transmission from one generation to the next. Apart from maybe their lexicon, this group of Englishes is therefore genetically and typologically much more distant from Standard English than e.g. dialects of English. The above has to be kept in mind when interpreting the WAVE networks, whose informativeness very much depends on the level of granularity or abstraction. For instance, in the phenetic network of AfEs, the four Southern African varieties BlSAfE, InSAfE, WhSAfE and WhZimE cluster together, which intuitively makes sense, just as the two subgroups they form: as L1 and white varieties, WhSAfE and WhZimE cluster more closely together than the non-white L2 varieties BlSAfE and InSAfE (see Network Af_1). However, if we zoom out of Africa and look at the world phenogram, we notice that the Southern African L1 varieties are located at very different points (see Network WAVE_all, foldout at the end of this volume, and the detail in Network Af_2). WhZimE (see arrow in Network Af_2) is now much closer to L2 Englishes than it is to WhSAfE, which in turn ends up between the L2 and L1 varieties. Similarly, in the world penogram, BlSAfE and InSAfE are much closer to WhZimE and other African Standard Englishes (AfStEs) than they are to WhSAfE. That is, the relative proximity/distance of particular varieties in a phenogram depends on all the other varieties that we force the algorithm to include in the network: we know from historical evidence that BlSAfE, InSAfE and WhSAfE are related. Furthermore, they are used for interaction in the same speech community. We also know that BlSAfE and InSAfE must be more closely related to WhSAfE than to e.g. KenE. While both facts are reflected in the Africa phenogram clusters, the presence of other (less related) varieties in the world phenogram with which the Southern African varieties happen to share some features, results in a re-grouping that obscures genetic relationships and foregrounds typological proximity. In the world phenogram, BlSAfE and InSAfE are thus closer to other non-white AfEs than they are to WhSAfE (see again detail in Network Af_2).

2 The clustering of African Englishes With the above caveats in mind, let us first analyze the clusters suggested by the networks before we turn to an analysis of individual features that are characteristic of Englishes in Africa. The phenograms result from a purely data-driven classification of Englishes, which only takes linguistic features into account and is not based on historical or other evidence. The African network (Network Af_1) shows four main clusters: •

•

•

Cluster 1: Krio/West African Pidgin Englishes. This cluster is furthest removed from all other AfEs. Its four varieties comprise the creole Krio and the three West African Pidgin Englishes (WAPEs). They all belong to the West African pidgin/creole continuum, with GhP, NigP and CamP being 19th/early 20th century descendants of Krio (Huber 1999: 119–129). This cluster excludes the pidgin VLibE, which has a separate history. Cluster 2: Liberian varieties. These are the two AfEs that are strongly influenced by American rather than British English. The L1 variety LibSE is spoken by the descendants of ex-slaves repatriated to Liberia in the 19th century. The pidgin VLibE is the result of pidginization of LibSE in the 20th century in the Liberian Frontier Force and the Firestone Rubber Plantations (Singler 1997: 207–208). Given their separate history, it is unsurprising that in the world phenogram the Liberian varieties have a closer affinity with the New World creoles and African American Vernacular English than with Krio/WAPEs. Cluster 3: Southern African varieties. The four varieties in this cluster form two distinct subgroups, the non-white L2 varieties BlSAfE and InSAfE in Cluster 3a and the L1 varieties spoken by the descendants of anglophone settlers in South Africa and Zimbabwe, WhSAfE and WhZimE, in Cluster 3b. The four

Regional profile: Africa

Network Af_1: NeighborNet clustering of the 16 African varieties in WAVE

Network Af_2: Detail of the NeighborNet diagram for the complete set of WAVE varieties: The Southern African perspective

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varieties cluster together since the L1 varieties are the immediate targets of the L2 varieties and since there is cross-influence between them due to BlSAfE, InSAfE and WhSAfE being used in the same extended speech community. Cluster 4: West and East African L2 Standard Englishes. These varieties are de facto or de jure official languages and belong to the Outer Circle in Kachru’s (1985) classification. The traditional target norm, at least in the area of morphosyntax, is British Standard English (BrStE). This orientation towards an exogenous norm explains the somewhat surprising fact that the three discernible subgroups contain one West and one East African variety each, e.g. NigE and KenE in Cluster 4b, without there being any particularly strong historical link between them.

The clustering reflects the fact that the 16 AfEs belong to very different types: pidgins/creoles, high-contact L1s and L2s. The network clusters first and foremost reflect these types rather than geographical location, which proves to be only a secondary factor. This explains why in the World network (see foldout Network WAVE_all at the end of this volume) individual varieties from the four African clusters are grouped more closely together with non-African varieties of the same type rather than with other African varieties. For example, the four West African pidgins and creoles (PCs, Cluster 1 in Network Af_1) are grouped with other PCs from the Atlantic and the Pacific and are far removed from the African L2s (Cluster 4), which in turn are closer to other Outer Circle varieties. In addition, only Clusters 1 and 2, containing varieties that are most radically different from Standard English, remain intact in the world phenogram while the other AfEs are scattered among other non-African varieties. Note also that WhSAfE and WhZimE, which form Subcluster 3b in the African phenogram, are actually quite far apart in the world-wide phenogram. Two points follow from these observations: •

•

“African Englishes” is an a priori classification, based on the linguistically rather uninformative fact that the varieties happen to be spoken on the same continent. To a certain degree this is also true within Africa since in the Africa phenogram varieties cluster more according to type than to subregion. That is, the traditional classification of AfEs into West, East and South(ern) (e.g. McArthur 2002: 271–295) is based on non-linguistic (historical, geographic) criteria and shows only indirect correlation with morphosyntactic structure. Morphosyntactically, the concept of AfEs can only be captured as a particular constellation of features which, taken individually, are not typically African but are to a greater or lesser degree shared with other non-African varieties.

3 Diagnostic features of African Englishes Since this overview article has to generalize by necessity, the following analysis will only consider features that are pervasive or at least reasonably frequent in Englishes (i.e. features rated A or B in the WAVE matrix). Features that have a marginal status in a variety (= C ratings) will be treated as if they were absent from that variety.1 Going by these principles, AfEs will be defined in four ways: • • • •

Through features attested in Africa which are considerably less common elsewhere in the world (Section 3.1), negatively through features that are absent from AfEs (Section 3.2), by looking at the 4 African subclusters and how they distinguish themselves from other non-African varieties of the same type (Section 3.3), and through features that are diagnostic of the four clusters within Africa (Section 3.4).

1 Note, however, that all network diagrams used in this chapter and the other regional and typological profiles in this

volume are based on presence (i.e. A, B, or C-ratings) vs. absence of the 235 WAVE features.

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3.1 Features attested in Africa which are considerably less common elsewhere in the world Each of the 162 features found in AfEs is also attested in at least two non-African varieties and many features are not particularly more frequent in Africa than they are world-wide. This is less surprising than it may seem at first glance, since, as discussed above, the geography-guided cover term “African Englishes” unites very different types of Englishes. A particular AfE is in many cases closer to non-AfEs of the same type than to AfEs of different types. For example, as an L2 standard variety GhE is much closer to FijiE, on the opposite side of the globe and with which it has had no shared history whatsoever, than it is to GhP, spoken in the same speech community (compare the position of GhE, GhP and FijiE in the World network). Nevertheless, there are four features that stand out as particularly “African” in that they are considerably more widespread among AfEs than they are in the rest of the anglophone world. These are F59 “Double determiners” (found in 9/16 = 56 % of the AfEs but only in 5/58 = 9 % of the other Englishes), F55 “Different count/mass noun distinctions resulting in use of plural for StE singular” (AfEs 88 %, Other 36 %), F116 “Comebased future/ingressive markers” (AfEs 50 %, Other 3 %), and F222 “Too; too much; very much ‘very’ as qualifier” (AfEs 81 %, Other 36 %). Map Af_2 shows the distribution of F116:

3.2 Features that are absent from African Englishes AfEs can also be defined negatively in terms of features that are absent from these varieties. There are 73 WAVE features that are not attested in any AfE. Generally, these features are also infrequent in non-AfEs. However, there are three features that are not attested in Africa but that are present in all the other world regions, i.e. Britain, America, the Caribbean, Asia and Australia & the Pacific: F1 “She/her used for inanimate referents” (found in 16/58 = 28 % of non-AfEs), F53 “Associative plural marked by other elements” (14 %) and F180 “Was/were generalization” (43 %; see Map Af_3).

3.3 The relationship of the African clusters to other non-African varieties of the same type While the African network (Network Af_1) suggests four distinct clusters of AfEs (see Section 2), the World network (see foldout at the end of the volume) groups two of these (Clusters 1 and 2) with non-African varieties and breaks up the other two (Clusters 3 and 4) completely. As already mentioned, most AfEs are more closely related to non-African varieties of the same type than to varieties from other African clusters. This section will take a world-wide perspective and look at those features that distinguish the two largest African clusters, Cluster 1 (Krio/WAPEs) and Cluster 4 (L2 Standard Englishes), from non-African varieties of the same type. This is done in two ways, by focussing (a) on features that are more common in the African clusters than in non-AfEs of the same type and (b) on features that are absent or less common in the two African clusters. The method employed is to compare the number of varieties in the African clusters that have a particular feature with the number of non-African varieties of the same type that have the same feature. For example, F67 “Demonstratives for definite articles” is found in three of the four PCs in Cluster 1 (75 %) and in seven of the 21 non-African PCs (33 %). F67 is thus 42 percentage points more common in African PCs than it is in their nonAfrican counterparts.

3.3.1 Cluster 1 (Krio/WAPEs) vs. other pidgins and creoles Features considerably more common in Krio/WAPEs than in other pidgins and creoles. All except one of the 95 features found in the four African pidgins and creoles (AfPCs, i.e. Krio and the three WAPEs) are also attested in the other 21 WAVE PCs, but the majority, 76 features, are more common in the AfPCs. While a full 47 of

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these are not more than 30 percentage points more common, there are five features that show a 60+ percentage points higher attestation rate in Krio/WAPEs than in the other PCs (F31, F129, F148, F151, F194) and four features whose attestation rate is even more than 70 percentage points higher: F59 “Double determiners” (90 percentage points higher in AfPCs than in the rest of the PCs), F73 “Existential construction to express possessive” (70 percentage points), F116 “Come-based future/ingressive markers” (100 percentage points) and F192 “Use of analytic or cliticized that his/that’s, what his/what’s, at’s, who his instead of whose” (90 percentage points). See Map Af_2 above for an illustration of the distribution of F116, which is the one feature that is attested in AfPCs (actually in all four varieties of Cluster 1) but in none of the non-African ones and is thus the only absolute diagnostic of AfPCs. WAVE features F116 and F148–152 are among the features attested in Cluster 1 and concern verb serialization. Every one of the four AfPCs allows chains containing three or more verbs (F151, F152). This is a strong pidgin/creole feature, which in other varieties only occurs in AborE. Serial verbs involving three or more verbs have A/B attestations in the following seven of the 13 non-AfPCs in the Atlantic area: Gullah, JamC, BelC, GuyC, EMarC, Saramaccan and Sranan. On the other hand, such verb serialization is not at all attested in Pacific Creoles. Verbal chains with three or more verbs are thus a clear Atlantic pidgin/creole phenomenon with a focal area in West Africa. A number of serialized verbs have grammaticalized into more abstract meanings, including come (ingressive/future, F116), give (benefactive, F148), come and go (directional, F150 and F149). The more lexical, directional uses of come and go are relatively widespread among the world’s PC Englishes. They are well established in the four AfPCs in Cluster 1, in 9/13 of the other PCs in the Atlantic (not in BelC, and not in Bajan, BahC and BrC, which are rather acrolectal varieties) and they have some currency in Pacific PCs, where they are found in 3/7 varieties: TorSC, Bislama and HawC. However, apart from sporadic occurrences in non-PCs outside Africa (SEAmE, MalE, CollSgE), the more grammaticalized and abstract meanings of come (ingressive/future, F116) and give (benefactive, F148) are more restricted in their distribution. Among the world’s anglophone PCs, F116 is only found in the African varieties, while F148 is restricted to Atlantic PCs: apart from the four African varieties in Cluster 1, it is found in 7/13 of the non-African Atlantic Creoles: Gullah, JamC, GuyC, EMarC, Saramaccan, Sranan and VinC. The almost exclusive occurrence in Atlantic PCs of verbal chains with three or more members as well as of the ingressive/future and benefactive meanings of come and give make a strong case for transfers from African substrate or adstrate languages. Features absent from Krio/WAPEs or considerably less frequent in Krio/WAPEs than in other pidgins and creoles. As many as 110 features are not found in the AfPCs but have some currency in the rest of the pidgin and creole Englishes. Eighty of them are also relatively sparsely attested in the non-AfPCs (80 %), sorted by feature number

Quite a number of the features on this list are frequently mentioned in descriptions of L2 varieties, and have been discussed by researchers in the field as (potentially) shared features of New Englishes or Outer-Circle Englishes more generally. Examples are the use of plural -s on nouns that are mass nouns in StE (F55), article omission (F62), the use of the progressive with stative verbs (F88), levelling of the difference between present perfect and simple past (F99 and F100), the loosening of the sequence of tenses rule (F113), invariant nonconcord tags (F165), and the use of inverted word order in indirect questions (F227) (cf. e.g. Mesthrie 2008c, Kortmann and Szmrecsanyi 2004: 1188–1189, Sand 2005). Other well-discussed features are found among the runners-up, i.e. the features shared by 75–80 % of the L2 varieties (Table 4 below). That list includes, for instance, two more features relating to differential use of articles (F63 and F64), as well as the extension of the regular plural marker -s to StE irregular plurals (F48). Feature

Domain

Attestation rate L2 exceptions L2 (N=18) all (N=74)

Myself/meself instead of I in coordinate subjects

Pronouns

78 %

69 %

78 %

91 %

78 %

47 %

63

Forms or phrases for the second person plural pronoun other Pronouns than you Regularization of plural formation: extension of -s to StE Noun Phrase irregular plurals Use of zero article where StE has indefinite article Noun Phrase

78 %

51 %

64

Use of definite article where StE favours zero

Noun Phrase

78 %

46 %

78

Double comparatives and superlatives

Noun Phrase

78 %

73 %

Existential/presentational there’s/there is/there was with plural subjects Other adverbs have the same form as adjectives

Agreement

78 %

70 %

Adverbs & Prepositions

78 %

91 %

8 34 48

172 221

ChcE, JamE, SLkE, FijiE TznE, UgE, HKE, FijiE ChcE, GhE, PakE, SLkE ChcE, NigE, TznE, UgE ChcE, NigE, InSAfE, SLkE ChcE, JamE, GhE, PakE NigE, TznE, PakE, SLkE PakE, SLkE, HKE, FijiE

Table 4: Features with an attestation rate between 75 % and 80 % in the L2 varieties, sorted by feature number

However, widespread attestation in the L2 group does not necessarily make a feature characteristic specifically of that group. The use of me instead of I in coordinate subjects (F7), the use of special forms for the 2nd person plural pronoun (F34), the lack of -ly on adverbs (F221), and the lack of inversion or auxiliary in main clause polar questions (F229), for instance, actually have similar or higher attestation rates across all 74 varieties as in the L2 group. They are therefore widespread enough among anglophone vernaculars in general to count as ‘angloversals’ in the sense of Szmrecsanyi and Kortmann (2009), and obviously are not character-

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istic of the L2 type in particular. But even where the attestation rates for the L2 group are higher than for the WAVE varieties generally, this can be deceptive. For instance, the use of myself for I in coordinate subjects (F8), doubly marked comparatives and superlatives (F78), the regularization of irregular verb paradigms (F128), the use of was for conditional were (F147), non-agreement in presentational and existential constructions with there (F172), and the use of quotative (be) like (F235) are relatively rare among pidgins and creoles, but very widespread among L1 varieties (high-contact L1s in particular). Invariant non-concord tags (F165) and non-use of 3rd person singular present tense -s (F170), on the other hand, are widely shared among P/Cs as well as L2 varieties. For these features, too, the high attestation rates in the L2 group thus do not mean that they are specific for L2 varieties. For the identification of features that are really diagnostic of the L2 type, it is helpful to look at features with an exceptionally large difference between the attestation rate for the L2 varieties and the attestation rate across all 74 varieties. For the purpose of this discussion, ‘exceptionally large difference’ is defined as ‘at least twice the mean absolute difference’, i.e. the sum of the absolute differences across all features, divided by 235. For the L2 varieties, this mean absolute difference is 15 %, which puts the threshold at +/- 30 % difference. By this measure, 11 features can be considered diagnostic for the type ‘L2 variety’ in WAVE. They are presented in Table 5 below. Maps of the distribution across all varieties in WAVE are provided for F45, F55 and F209, which are most clearly associated with the L2 type (see Maps L2_2 to L2_4). Feature

Domain

% L2 (N=18)

% L2 – % all

L2 exceptions

41 Singular it for plural they in anaphoric use

Pronouns

61 %

31 %

45 Insertion of it where StE favours zero 48 Regularization of plural formation: extension of -s to StE irregular plurals 55 Different count/mass noun distinctions resulting in use of plural for StE singular 64 Use of definite article where StE favours zero

Pronouns Noun Phrase

89 % 78 %

46 % 30 %

Noun Phrase

94 %

40 %

MaltE, ChcE, JamE, GhE, TznE, SLkE, CollFijiE ChcE, JamE ChcE, GhE, PakE, SLkE ChcE

Noun Phrase

78 %

32 %

81 Much as comparative marker

Noun Phrase

50 %

31 %

84 Comparative marking only with than

Noun Phrase

61 %

39 %

100 Levelling of the difference between present perfect and simple past: present perfect for StE simple past 169 Non-standard system underlying responses to negative yes/no questions 209 Addition of to where StE has bare infinitive

Tense & Aspect

83 %

40 %

Negation

67 %

32 %

Complementation

72 %

41 %

215 Conjunction doubling: correlative conjunctions

Adverbial Subordination

67 %

36 %

ChcE, NigE, InSAfE, SLkE ChcE, JamE, GhE, TznE, InSAfE, MalE, FijiE, CollFijiE MaltE, ChcE, JamE, GhE, InSAfE, PakE, FijiE ChcE, NigE, KenE MaltE, ChcE, JamE, IndE, SLkE MaltE, ChcE, JamE, FijiE, CollFijiE ChcE, JamE, KenE, SLkE, FijiE, CollFijiE

Table 5: The 11 most diagnostic L2 features (% L2 – % all = 30 %), sorted by feature number

Note that only five of the widespread features from Table 3 and Table 4 are also among the 11 diagnostic features in Table 5, namely the insertion of it in contexts where StE favours zero (F45), the use of plural -s with nouns that have irregular plurals in StE (F48), the use of plural -s with nouns that are mass nouns in StE (F55), the use of definite article for StE zero (F64), and the use of present perfect for simple past (F100). The other

Map L2_2: Distribution of F45 (insertion of it) across varieties in WAVE

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Map L2_3: Distribution of F55 (different count/mass noun distinctions) across varieties in WAVE

Typological profile: L2 varieties

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Map L2_4: Distribution of F209 (insertion of to) across varieties in WAVE

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Typological profile: L2 varieties

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features in Table 5 are less widely shared among the L2 group, but still fairly well-represented, none of them occurring in less than nine of the 18 L2 varieties. One feature that is surprisingly absent from Tables 3 to 5 is the use of resumptive pronouns in relative clauses (F194), which was found to be among the most widely shared L2 features by Kortmann and Szmrecsanyi (2004: 1188–1189). Resumptive pronouns are a well-known feature in the second-language acquisition of relative clauses (Ellis 2008: 573–575), where their occurrence has been linked to typological universals (e.g. Hyltenstam 1984) as well as processing difficulty (e.g. Izumi 2003). We might therefore expect this feature to be widely found among the L2 varieties. And to be sure, it is far from uncommon, being attested for twelve out of the 18 varieties. However, resumptive pronouns are also fairly robustly attested for the WAVE varieties in general, with an attestation rate of 46 %, which is the main reason why this feature does not appear among those most characteristic for the L2 varieties.4 Having identified the most widely shared and the most characteristic features of the L2 varieties, what generalizations can we draw? With regard to the grammatical domains which the features belong to, we see that features assigned to the domains of pronouns, noun phrase structure and tense and aspect make up the largest shares of the L2-characteristic features in Tables 3 to 5. This partly reflects the structure of the WAVE catalogue (together, these three categories account for 51 % of the 235 WAVE features), but noun phrase features are actually better represented than is warranted by their predominance in the WAVE catalogue alone. A brief look at the mean attestation rates per grammatical domain, and the mean number of features from each domain attested per variety (Table 6) confirms that ‘Noun Phrase’ is one of only two domains where the figures for the L2 varieties are slightly higher than those for the entire WAVE set (the other being ‘Adverbial Subordination’). That is, on average L2 varieties have both a slightly higher number of non-standard noun phrase and subordination features than the WAVE varieties generally, and features from these domains tend to be more robustly present in the group of L2 varieties than in the entire WAVE set. Grammatical domain

Pronouns (47) Noun Phrase (40) Tense & Aspect (33) Modal Verbs (7) Verb Morphology (25) Voice (1) Negation (16) Agreement (15) Relativization (15) Complementation (11) Adverbial Subordination (5) Adverbs & Prepositions (7) Discourse & Word Order (13)

Mean attestation rate for features in domain all varieties L2 varieties (N=74) (N=18)

Mean no. of features from domain attested in all in L2 varieties varieties

Standard deviation all varieties

L2 varieties

36 % 37 % 28 % 26 % 30 % 3% 35 % 40 % 27 % 36 % 28 % 54 % 44 %

16.7 14.8 9.3 1.8 7.5 0.0 5.6 6.0 4.1 3.9 1.4 3.2 5.1

6.9 6.3 4.8 1.5 3.3 0.2 2.5 3.6 2.7 2.2 1.3 1.4 2.0

5.9 6.4 2.7 0.8 2.2 0.0 2.0 3.0 2.7 1.7 1.4 1.6 1.9

26 % 40 % 27 % 24 % 22 % 0% 28 % 30 % 21 % 29 % 37 % 49 % 41 %

12.2 16.0 9.0 1.7 5.4 0.0 4.5 4.5 3.2 3.2 1.8 2.6 4.5

Table 6: Mean attestation rates and mean number of features from each domain attested per variety: breakdown by grammatical domain

4 This raises an interesting question (which WAVE, however, can shed no light on): could there be differences between the variety types with regard to the syntactic positions in which resumptive pronouns occur? Cross-linguistically, resumptive pronouns tend to be more common with positions low in the Noun Phrase Accessibility Hierarchy (Keenan and Comrie 1977), e.g. when the relativized NP functions as a possessor in

the relative clause (the womani that I’m not supposed to know heri name ‘the woman whose name I’m not supposed to know’). We might therefore expect that L1 varieties permit resumptive pronouns primarily in these positions, while L2 varieties (and P/Cs) may allow them also with relativized subject and direct object NPs (e.g. The girli who shei is waving at us is my sister; The girli who you hit heri is my sister).

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A common denominator of many of the features in Tables 3 to 5, and others that are widespread among L2 varieties, is that they reflect characteristics particular to the language use of second-language learners, supporting the hypothesis often advanced in relation to L2 varieties, that some of their characteristics derive from the conventionalization of usage patterns found in learner language. Features reflecting patterns characteristic in particular of early learner language include for instance the non-use of articles (F62 and F63), the use of invariant verb forms (F170) (cf. e.g. Klein and Perdue 1997) and the lack of subject-auxiliary inversion in questions (F228 and F229; cf. Cazden et al. 1975). In the framework of Processability Theory (Pienemann 1998, 2005) the latter is explained in terms of restrictions on the kinds of processing that learners are able to perform in a language they have not yet fully acquired. Such processing restrictions may also be relevant for mismatch of tenses (F113) and number of noun and anaphoric pronoun (F41) across clauses, and for the use of inverted word order in indirect questions (F227). All of these involve processing across clause boundaries, a procedure that is acquired late, as it requires the prior acquisition of a set of procedures for lower-level processing (Pienemann 2005: 24). Overgeneralization as characteristic of learner language (cf. e.g. Selinker’s classic 1972 article on interlanguage) is reflected for instance in the extension of regular plural and tense markers to contexts that require irregular marking in StE (F48 and F128) and possibly also in the use of double comparatives and superlatives (F78) and the use of non-concord tags (F165). Note however, that this kind of regularization is also quite common in L1 varieties and can be seen as a general trend in vernaculars that are characterized by language or dialect contact (cf. Trudgill 2009). Regularization and loss of grammatical distinctions can also be said to play a role with regard to other features in Tables 3 to 5, particularly the extension of the progressive (F88) and the levelling of the distinction between present perfect and simple past (F99 and F100). All three involve the blurring of category boundaries that are fluid even in StE and with regard to which there is a lot of variation across L1 varieties. The result of this indeterminacy appears to be a greater degree of flexibility in the use of the respective forms in L2 varieties. With regard to the extension of progressive be V-ing, for instance, it has been suggested that L2 varieties simply show a greater tolerance for innovative uses, which puts them in the van of an ongoing change rather than making them radically different from L1 varieties (cf. Gachelin 1997, Sand 2005 and Hundt and Vogel 2011) Another group of the features in Tables 3 to 5, and in particular those in Table 5, which are most diagnostic of the L2 type, are intuitively describable as ‘common errors’, thus characteristic of learner language, but are not easily captured by any general principle or strategy of second language learning. Examples include the use of much as a comparative marker (F81), comparative marking just with than (F84), the use of too, too much or very much as qualifiers meaning ‘very’ (F222), the use of it (F45) and infinitive marker to (F209) where they are absent in StE, the use of correlative conjunctions (F215, e.g. Though I visit Durban very often, but I don’t like it; InSAfE, cf. Mesthrie, this volume), differences in the categorization of nouns as countable or uncountable (F55) and the use of a completely different system of responses to negative polar questions (F169). The differential use of definite articles (F64) might also be mentioned here. All of these features are more characteristic of the usage of intermediate rather than early second language learners. What might be said to unite them in structural terms is the fact that, in the widest sense, all of them involve “the co-occurrence potential of certain words with other words or specific structures” (Schneider 2007: 86). As pointed out in section 2.1, this is the area in which L2 varieties tend to differ most from other varieties. Another factor that may be relevant for these features is mentioned by Schmied (this volume) in his discussion of TznE: features such as it- or to-insertion (F45, F209), correlative conjunctions (F215) and resumptive pronouns (F194) may be seen as manifestations of a tendency in second-language learners towards a high degree of explicitness, resulting in a certain amount of redundancy. However, it appears that this type of redundancy, motivated by a desire for explicitness, is different from the kind of ‘ornamental’ redundancy that we find in L1 and standard varieties in the form of e.g. subject-verb agreement. According to Trudgill (2009), the latter is among the kinds of structural complexity that tend to be lost in language contact. To sum up, the feature profiles of the L2 varieties as a group show a considerable number of widely shared features, but there is also quite some overlap with the non-L2 varieties, particularly with high-contact L1 varieties, and especially with regard to the most widespread features. Processes of regularization, rule simplification and reduction of (ornamental) redundancy that are operative in situations of language and dialect contact are likely to be responsible for this overlap. However, it was also possible to identify a number of fea-

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tures that are distinctive for the L2 type. Both of this is reflected in the fact that most of the L2 varieties cluster together in the NeighborNet diagram for the entire WAVE set, distinct from most of the varieties classified as L1, but united with most of them in the split that separates them from pidgins and creoles (see section 3.1 below). We also saw that the feature profiles of the L2 varieties reflect characteristics of learner language, but in contrast to what we find with pidgins and creoles, it is not characteristics of early learner language that are predominant. The features that are most distinctive of the L2 type rather are typical of intermediate learners’ language and tend to lie at the interface of grammar and lexicon, involving e.g. complementation patterns (F209) or semantic or pragmatic differences that affect the morphosyntax (F55, F64, F169). Concluding this discussion of the feature profiles of the L2 varieties in WAVE, let us briefly consider the features that are significantly underrepresented within the group. Using the same measure as for the diagnostic features, the ten WAVE features listed in Table 7 emerge as highly uncharacteristic of L2 varieties. Most of these are stereotypical L1 dialect features, e.g. the use of ain’t as the negated form of have (F156) and be (F155), the use of me as a possessive pronoun (F26), meself as a first person singular reflexive (F12), regularized reflexives like hisself and theirselves (F11), and demonstrative them (F68). This is exactly the kind of feature that can be expected to be transmitted in a contact situation where the English input largely comes from non-standard speakers, and informal acquisition predominates, yet is unlikely to be relevant in the typical L2 situation, where a standard variety is acquired via the educational system. It is therefore not surprising that many of the features in Table 7 are also fairly common in English-based pidgins and creoles, while the only L2 varieties for which several of these features are attested are those that resemble P/Cs (JamE and CollFijiE, see introduction and section 3.1 below), are in contact with L1 varieties (BlSAfE, ChcE), or are an L1 for at least some of their speakers (ChcE, MaltE; possibly also BlSAfE). Feature

Domain

% L2 (N=18)

% L2 – % all

L2 attestations

Pronouns

22 %

–37 %

12 Object pronoun forms serving as base for first and/or second person reflexives 22 You as (modifying) possessive pronoun 26 Object pronoun forms as (modifying) possessive pronouns: first person singular 68 Them instead of demonstrative those

Pronouns

0%

–45 %

GhE (C), NigE (C), CamE (B), BlSAfE (C) –

Pronouns Pronouns

6% 0%

–30 % –41 %

JamE (C) –

Noun Phrase

17 %

–47 %

70 Proximal and distal demonstratives with ‘here’ and ‘there’

Noun Phrase

22 %

–35 %

Negation Negation Complementation Complementation

11 % 6% 6% 11 %

–33 % –38 % –30 % –33 %

JamE (C), BlSAfE (B), CollFijiE (A) ChcE (B), JamE (C), TznE (C), CollFijiE (B) MaltE (C), ChcE (B) MaltE (C) JamE (C) MaltE (C), PakE (C)

11 Regularized reflexives paradigm

155 156 201 203

Ain’t as the negated form of be Ain’t as the negated form of have For-based complementizers For (to) as infinitive marker

Table 7: Features that are significantly underrepresented in the L2 varieties in WAVE (%L2 – %all = –30 %), sorted by feature number

Having established which features are particularly common, particularly characteristic and particularly uncharacteristic for the group of L2 varieties in WAVE, we will now turn to the discussion of the internal structure of the group, based on similarities and dissimilarities in their feature profiles.

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3 Patterns and groups within the set of L2 varieties The first question to ask is whether there is any internal structure to the L2 group at all, or whether all 18 varieties are more or less equally (dis)similar to each other. More specifically, we can ask the following questions: –

–

Are there any structural differences between those varieties that do not (clearly) fall under Platt et al.’s (1984) definition of New Englishes (i.e. CollFijiE, JamE, BlSAfE, InSAfE, MaltE and ChcE) and the rest of the L2 group? Can we distinguish subgroups according to other criteria, e.g. world region, dominant substrate language types, stage of development in terms of Schneider’s (2003, 2007) Dynamic Model of the evolution of Postcolonial Englishes, or a distinction between ‘deleter’ and ‘preserver’ varieties, as suggested in Mesthrie and Bhatt (2008: 90–92)?

Section 3.1 approaches these questions on the basis of a graphic visualization of the aggregate (dis)similarities between the L2 varieties in a NeighbourNet diagram. Section 3.2 offers a quick summary of what can be said about areal patterns and potential substrate influence on the basis of the network and a closer look at the distribution of individual features, and then delves more deeply into the ‘deleters’ vs. ‘preservers’ issue on the basis of a comparison of the occurrence of ‘deletion’ and ‘insertion’ features in the different varieties.

3.1 Aggregate (dis)similarities: groups of L2 varieties Network L2_1 shows the NeighborNet diagram for the L2 varieties (kindly provided by Christoph Wolk). NeighborNet clustering has its origins in bioinformatics (Bryant and Moulton 2004, Huson and Bryant 2006), but has increasingly been applied to linguistic data in recent years. The methodology can only be explained in very basic terms here, but refer to Kortmann and Wolk (this volume) for more detail on how the networks used in the synopses were generated. What is important to note here is that the linguistic distance between any two varieties was measured in terms of mismatches in the presence/absence of features in their WAVE profiles. That is, the distance between two varieties amounts to the number of WAVE features that are present in one variety but absent in the other. In the NeighborNet diagram, the length of the shortest path between two varieties is roughly proportional to the linguistic distance between them. A long path therefore indicates a large number of mismatches with regard to the presence or absence of features in the feature profiles of the two varieties, while a short path indicates that the profiles are fairly similar. Sets of parallel lines in the network indicate splits in the data: any group of varieties that can be separated from the rest of the network by deleting a set of parallel lines can be considered as a cluster that shares characteristics with each other that it does not share with the rest. The length of the lines indicates the dissimilarity between the clusters, while the representation of a split by parallel lines and boxy shapes rather than a single branch indicates that it actually consists of several incompatible splits. Longer paths and fewer boxes therefore indicate stronger splits (clearer separation between the two groups and tighter clusters). The first thing to notice in Network L2_1 is that there are few clear splits and lots of boxy shapes, indicating that there are hardly any clear divisions and much that is in fact shared between the L2 varieties. However, given what was said in section 2.1 about the overall low number of WAVE features attested in the average L2 variety, many of the similarities probably lie in the shared absence of features rather than in shared presence. As for splits that we can observe, there is one major division between KenE, NigE, UgE, TznE, FijiE, GhE, PakE, SLkE and ChcE on the one hand (cluster A), and CamE, MalE, HKE, IndE, BlSAfE, InSAfE, MaltE, CollFijiE and JamE on the other (cluster B). Cluster A can be further subdivided into a predominantly East African sub-cluster consisting of KenE, NigE, UgE and TznE (cluster 1) and a second sub-cluster consisting of FijiE, GhE, PakE, SLkE and ChcE (cluster 2). Cluster B is even more heterogeneous, consisting of three two-variety subclusters and three varieties that form separate nodes in between. The first sub-cluster in cluster B is formed by JamE and CollFijiE, which are separated from the rest of the L2 group by a clear split (cluster 3).

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Network L2_1: NeighborNet clustering of the 14 L2 varieties in WAVE

The other two consist of BlSAfE and InSAfE and HKE and IndE and are less clearly separated from the main cluster. As for the separate nodes, MaltE falls in between CollFijiE and the pair of South African varieties, and MalE and CamE are somewhat further apart from the rest, showing affinities with the varieties in both main clusters (CamE clearly more so than MalE). How can these various splits be interpreted? Let us first consider the major split between cluster A and cluster B in Network L2_1, and the division of cluster A into cluster 1 and cluster 2. Geography and typological similarities of the substrate languages clearly can only be part of the explanation, as both main clusters in Network L2_1 include varieties spoken in Africa, Asia and other world regions, and the only sub-clusters consisting of varieties from broadly the same region are cluster 2 (East African varieties plus NigE) and the cluster consisting of BlSAfE and InSAfE. Moreover, if geography or substrate languages were indeed relevant factors, why would varieties that are geographically close and have related substrate languages not be in the same clusters (e.g. IndE and PakE, or NigE, CamE and GhE)? Clearly, a different explanation is needed. One thing that can be easily done in order to find one is a comparison of the number of attested features for the varieties in each cluster. This approach reveals that generally very few of the WAVE features are attested for the varieties in cluster A (ChcE 32, SLkE 35, TznE and FijiE 44, KenE and NigE 54, PakE 55, GhE 56 and UgE 75; mean value: 49.9), while the numbers for the varieties in cluster B are higher overall (MalE 76, JamE 78, HKE 81, MaltE 84, CamE 87, InSAfE 90, IndE 100, BlSAfE 108, CollFijiE 111; mean value: 90.6). The varieties in cluster A thus appear to be closer to StE than those in cluster B, at least with regard to the features considered in WAVE. The low number of attested features leads to a large number of shared absences of fea-

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tures, which explains why cluster A is tighter than cluster B, and varieties that are spoken in regions as far apart as Africa, South Asia and the Pacific appear together in cluster 2. In contrast, the varieties in cluster B can be described as more restructured and, with the exception of JamE and CollFijiE (see below), as more ‘L2-like’. This is reflected in the fact that varieties falling into cluster A are listed in the exceptions columns in Tables 3–5 much more often than varieties falling into cluster B. It is also telling that only one feature (F91, habitual marker do) is relatively widely shared by varieties in cluster A (attested for KenE, TznE, UgE and PakE) but rare or absent among the varieties in cluster B (attested only for CamE). The reverse is true for a much larger number of features (listed in Table 8). Like the most characteristic L2 features discussed in section 2.2 above, most of these features can be explained in terms of processes characteristic for learner language, such as omission of grammatical morphemes (F56, F57, F58, F132, F174, F176, F193, F198, F213, F216), regularization (F10, F131, F180, F185, F228), overgeneralization (F67, F133) and explicitness (F3). This suggests that we can in fact think of the varieties in cluster B as further away from StE, more restructured, and more ‘L2-like’.

3 9 10 54 56 57 58 67 131 132 133 174 176 180 185 193 197 198 213 216 224 228 234

Feature

Attestations cluster A (N=9) Exceptions cluster B (N=9)

Alternative forms/phrases for referential (non-dummy) it Benefactive “personal dative” construction No gender distinction in third person singular Group plurals Absence of plural marking only after quantifiers Plural marking generally optional: for nouns with human referents Plural marking generally optional: for nouns with non-human referents Demonstratives for definite articles Levelling of past tense/past participle verb forms: past participle replacing the past tense form Zero past tense forms of regular verbs Double marking of past tense Deletion of auxiliary be: before progressive Deletion of copula be: before NPs Was/were generalization Relativizer that or what in non-restrictive contexts Gapping/zero-relativization in subject position “Linking relative clauses” Deletion of stranded prepositions in relative clauses (“preposition chopping”) No subordination; chaining construction linking two main verbs (motion and activity) Omission of StE prepositions Other possibilities for fronting than StE No inversion/no auxiliaries in wh-questions Like as a focussing device

NigE (A), PakE (C) ChcE (B) GhE (C) – ChcE (C) GhE (C), FijiE (C)

JamE, HKE, IndE JamE, MalE, IndE, InSAfE JamE, InSAfE, MaltE JamE, CamE, HKE, MaltE JamE, CamE, HKE BlSAfE, InSAfE, MaltE

GhE (C), FijiE (C)

BlSAfE, InSAfE, MaltE

– UgE (C)

CamE, MalE MalE, HKE, MaltE

GhE (C), ChcE (C), FijiE (C) GhE (C), PakE (C), FijiE (C) NigE (A), GhE (C), PakE (C) – UgE (C) NigE (B), ChcE (B) ChcE (C) UgE (B) –

InSAfE JamE, InSAfE CamE CamE, BlSAfE, InSAfE, MaltE JamE, MalE, IndE, MaltE CamE, HKE, IndE CamE, MalE, BlSAfE, MaltE JamE, CollFijiE, HKE, MaltE JamE, CollFijiE, HKE, MaltE

–

JamE, CollFijiE, CamE, MalE

NigE (B), KenE (C) TznE (C), UgE (B), GhE (B) UgE (C), PakE (B), FijiE (C) SLkE (C), ChcE (B)

MalE, HKE CollFijiE, CamE CamE JamE, CamE, MalE

Table 8: Features characteristic of varieties in cluster B. Ordered by feature number

This interpretation of the split between cluster A and cluster B also makes sense from the perspective of where these varieties are on the evolutionary path postulated by Schneider’s (2003, 2007) Dynamic Model of the development of Postcolonial Englishes. By definition, all of the varieties considered here show some degree of structural nativization and have thus reached phase 3 of Schneider’s model (nativization), but some can be said to be oriented more towards an exogenous norm and therefore closer still to phase 2 (exonormative stabilization), while others show higher degrees of acceptance of local usage, begin to function as identity-carriers for their speakers, and can therefore be said to have moved or be moving into phase 4 (endonormative stabilization). Not all of the 18 varieties have been described in terms of Schneider’s model, and of course we are primarily concerned with morphosyntactic differences here, while the Dynamic Model model also takes

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861

sociolinguistic and historical aspects into account in the evaluation of the developmental phase a variety has reached. It would thus be unreasonable to expect perfect correspondences between the clusters in Network L2_1 and specific phases in the Dynamic Model. Nevertheless, it is possible to perceive a general trend, for those varieties on which information is available. Varieties in cluster A tend to be closer to phase 2, while those in cluster B tend to be well on the way into phase 4. FijiE, for instance, is placed in phase 2, at best at the beginning of phase 3, by Schneider (2007: 114–118), as is TznE (Schneider 2007: 197–199). KenE, NigE and UgE are said to be in phase 3, with possibly some indications of movement into phase 4 for NigE (Schneider 2007: 210–212). All of these varieties are found in cluster A in Network L2_1. In contrast, IndE as a variety considered to be well on its way towards endonormative stabilization is found in cluster B, alongside the South African varieties, which also have achieved high degrees of autonomy already (cf. Schneider 2007: 161–173 for IndE and 2007: 173–188 for South Africa). This would seem to lend support to the notion that degree of difference – or, to put it positively, autonomy – from StE is the major factor responsible for the split between clusters A and B, and very likely also between clusters 1 and 2 (with the varieties in cluster 2 being even more conservative and oriented towards StE than those in cluster 1). The third split in Network L2_1 that needs to be addressed, separating JamE and CollFijiE from the rest of cluster B, relates to the first of the guiding questions mentioned at the beginning of this section: whether the varieties that are not prototypical New Englishes according to Platt et al.’s (1984) definition (JamE, CollFijiE, InSAfE, BlSAfE, ChcE and MaltE) prove to be different from the other varieties with respect to their morphosyntactic profiles. Judging from Network L2_1, this can be answered in the affirmative for JamE and CollFijiE. These two are clearly distinct from the other varieties, and a closer look at their feature profiles reveals that they do not share a number of features that are characteristic for the L2 group. Table 5 already showed that overuse of to (F209), correlative conjunctions (F215), comparative much (F81) and the use of non-agreeing anaphoric it (F41) are absent from both CollFijiE and JamE. Other features in this category include double determiners (F59), the use of present tense modals in contexts where StE would prefer past tense (F123) and the use of too, too much or very much as qualifiers meaning ‘very’ (F222). On the other hand, JamE and CollFijiE share several features (listed in Table 9) that are virtually absent from the rest of the L2 varieties, but which are all highly characteristic of P/Cs (cf. A. Schneider, this volume, and Map L2_5). Feature 5

111 114

Generalized person singular pronoun: subject pronouns Generalized 3rd person singular pronoun: object pronouns Subject pronoun forms for (modifying) possessive pronouns: 1st person plural Past tense/anterior marker been Go-based future markers

178

Deletion of copula be: before locatives

6 19

3rd

Attestations L2

Attestation rate P/C

JamE (C), CollFijiE (A), GhE (C)

81 %

JamE (C), CollFijiE (A), GhE (C)

77 %

JamE (C), CollFijiE (A)

58 %

JamE (C), CollFijiE (A), BlSAfE (C) JamE (C), CollFijiE (A), BlSAfE (C), MaltE (B) JamE (C), CollFijiE (A), HKE (B), IndE (C)

77 % 85 % 77 %

Table 9: Features shared by JamE and CollFijiE but rare among the other L2 varieties

What this suggests, then, is that JamE and CollFijiE are in fact more similar to P/C varieties than L2 varieties with respect to their WAVE profiles, as we would expect given what we know about the history and structure of these varieties. The network diagram for the entire WAVE set (see foldout Network WAVE_all at the end of this volume) lends further support to this conclusion. As briefly mentioned at the end of section 2.2 above, we find most of the L2 varieties clustering neatly together in this diagram (see the details from the overall network presented in Networks L2_2 and L2_3).

Map L2_5: Occurrence of selected P/C-characteristic features across varieties in WAVE

862 Kerstin Lunkenheimer

Typological profile: L2 varieties

863

Network L2_2: Detail of the NeighborNet diagram for the complete set of WAVE varieties

The fact that Colloquial Singapore English (CollSgE) is also found in this L2 cluster is hardly surprising, given the fact that this variety at least started out as a prototypical L2, even if it is quickly becoming an L1 for an ever-increasing number of its speakers and therefore was categorized as a high-contact L1 in WAVE (cf. Schröter, this volume). In terms of its morphosyntactic profile, CollSgE clearly is an L2, sharing most of the features discussed in section 2.2, and a large number of those listed in Table 8 (cf. Szmrecsanyi, this volume, for the exceptional position of CollSgE among the group of L1 varieties). To a lesser extent, this is also true for MaltE, which is also clearly part of the L2 cluster (see Network L2_2). White Zimbabwean English and White South African English, both categorized as high-contact L1 varieties in WAVE, occupy interesting intermediate positions between L2 and L1, showing affinities with both (again, see Szmrecsanyi, this volume, for their position in the L1 group). Within the L2 group, the larger network confirms the split between clusters A and B observable in Network L2_1 and discussed above, with the one difference that CamE clearly sides with cluster A varieties and MalE with cluster B varieties. The separation of JamE and CollFijiE from the other varieties is confirmed by the fact that neither of the two clusters with the rest of the L2 varieties in the overall network. Rather, both cluster with the P/Cs, and their positions reflect their particular socio-historical backgrounds with a neatness that may even be a little surprising (see Network L2_3). Thus, JamE falls squarely among the more prototypical P/C varieties, in a small sub-cluster that includes British Creole and San Andres Creole, both of which are offshoots of Jamaican Creole.5 CollFijiE also falls on the ‘pidgins and creoles’ side of the diagram, but groups together with two high-contact L1 varieties from the same world region, Palmerston English

5 Interestingly, however, Jamaican Creole itself is not part of that cluster but rather groups with P/Cs that share a larger number of features with L1 varieties, which might reflect the

degree to which contributors chose to represent mesolectal vs. basilectal varieties in their ratings for WAVE (cf. A. Schneider, this volume, for a discussion).

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Network L2_3: Detail of the NeighborNet diagram for the complete set of WAVE varieties

and Aboriginal English, both of which show characteristics of P/Cs and L1 varieties. This nicely dovetails with Siegel’s (1987) classification of CollFijiE as a ‘creoloid’, i.e. a variety that has some, but not all, characteristics typically associated with creoles. What may be slightly surprising in the overall network is the position of ChcE, which falls among the traditional dialects and more standard-like L1 varieties (see the bottom right hand corner of Network L2_2). Given that ChcE is part of cluster 2 in Network L2_1, together with GhE, PakE, SLkE and FijiE, this was not necessarily to be expected, but it ties in with the fact, mentioned in the introduction, that ChcE is actually an L1 variety for a considerable proportion of its speakers (cf. Bayley, this volume, and Bayley and Santa Ana 2008). Also note that hardly any of the widespread features (Tables 3 and 4) and none at all of the diagnostic features (Table 5) of the L2 varieties are attested for ChcE, making it similar to the prototypical L1 varieties, with which it shares many of these absences. As an interim conclusion we can thus state that a) there is a major division among the L2 varieties between those that are more oriented towards StE (cluster A) and generally have few of the non-standard features in WAVE, and those that are more restructured and more L2-like (cluster B), and b) that of the ‘nonprototypical New Englishes’ JamE, CollFijiE and ChcE do in fact have morphosyntactic profiles that are quite different from those of the rest of the L2 set, while MaltE, InSAfE and BlSAfE appear to be fairly prototypical L2 varieties in terms of their morphosyntax.

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865

3.2 Areal and substrate-related patterns, and the notion of ‘deleters’ and ‘preservers’ We saw in the discussion of the NeighborNet diagrams (section 3.1) that areal patterns and substrate language typology appear to play little or no role with regard to the large-scale patterns to be observed. However, it is possible to identify some individual features that are conspicuously shared by varieties that are geographically associated and/or have related substrate languages. In the domain of pronoun use, for instance, subject pronoun drop (F43–F44) is predominantly found in the Asian varieties (cf. Map L2_6). In contrast, all of the features in Table 10 below are much better represented among the L2 varieties in Africa than elsewhere. Map L2_7 shows the distribution of F214, for which the concentration in Africa is particularly striking, across L2 varieties worldwide.

16 59 169 208 214

Feature

Attestations Africa (N=8)

Attestations other L2 (N=10)

Emphatic reflexives with own Double determiners Non-standard system underlying responses to negative yes/no questions Deletion of to before infinitives Conjunction doubling: clause + conj. + conj. + clause

7 6 8 5 7

3 3 4 2 2

Table 10: WAVE features found more in African L2 varieties than in L2 varieties in other Anglophone world regions

What is noteworthy here is that the features predominantly found in Asian varieties involve deletion of elements, while most of the features better represented in Africa involve the use of additional elements compared to the corresponding StE constructions. On the basis of such observations, Mesthrie and Bhatt (2008: 90–92) suggested that African and Asian varieties generally differ with regard to whether or not they “favour the deletion of elements” (Mesthrie and Bhatt 2008: 90), and proposed a general dichotomy between ‘preservers’ and ‘deleters’. ‘Preservers’ in this conceptualization, are varieties – primarily found in Africa – that tend to use (‘preserve’) grammatical elements like resumptive pronouns (F194) or infinitival to where StE has the bare infinitive (F209), as in And even the teachers at school made us to hate the course (BlSAfE, Mesthrie 2006: 122). Asian varieties, on the other hand, and Southeast Asian varieties in particular, are said to have a tendency to omit grammatical morphology, displaying features like pronoun deletion (F42–F44), article omission (F62–F63), or unmarked past tense (F129, F132), much like their dominant substrate languages, and are therefore classified as ‘deleters’. This section will briefly explore the question to what extent ‘deleters’ and ‘preservers’ can be identified among the L2 varieties in the WAVE data set, and to what extent varieties in different world regions tend toward either side of this dichotomy. Given what was said in section 3.1 above about the lack of consistent geographical patterns in the network diagrams, and given the generally low explanatory value of geography when it comes to large-scale morphosyntactic similarities between varieties (see Kortmann, in press), the expectation is for the regional alignment to be somewhat less neat than Mesthrie and Bhatt (2008: 91) suggest, but this need not invalidate the dichotomy itself. As a first step in the analysis, all 235 features in the WAVE catalogue were classified according to whether they involve ‘deletion’, ‘insertion’, or are neutral in that respect. These distinctions, explained in (2) below, are inspired by Mesthrie’s (2006) distinction between ‘deletion’ and ‘anti-deletion’ features in BlSAfE, although I prefer the term ‘insertion’ over Mesthrie’s ‘anti-deletion’.6

6 Mesthrie (2006) actually subdivides the ‘anti-deletion’ features further into ‘un-deletions’, ‘non-deletions’ and ‘insertions’, making ‘insertion’ a subcategory of ‘anti-deletion’. However, his distinctions and terminology are informed by a generative analysis of the relevant StE structures, which

may not be uncontroversial. In order to keep the current analysis as theory-independent as possible, these finer distinctions were disregarded and the term ‘insertion’ was used as a general label.

Map L2_6: Distribution of subject pronoun drop (F43+F44) across L2 varieties in WAVE

866 Kerstin Lunkenheimer

Map L2_7: Distribution of F214 (double conjunctions) across L2 varieties in WAVE

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Figure L2_1: Percentages of deletion and insertion features per total attested features. Ordered by increasing value of (deletion per attested) minus (insertion per attested)

(2) a.

Deletion: features that involve the absence of one or more grammatical morphemes (free or bound) that are present in the corresponding StE construction. Examples include e.g. deletion of it in referential it is constructions (F46) as well as optional plural marking (F57 and F58) and the use of constructions like the cat wants petted for ‘the cat wants to be petted’ (F124). A total of 50 features were classified as ‘deletion’ features. b. Insertion: features that involve the presence of one or more grammatical morphemes (free or bound) that are absent in the corresponding StE construction. Examples include all kinds of double marking, such as double determiners (F69), double modals (F121) and double marking of past tense (F133), as well as non-standard affixes, e.g. a-prefixing (F134 and F135). All in all, 48 features were classified as ‘insertion’ features. c. Neutral: features that either involve both deletion and insertion, or just the use of a different form than in StE, or cannot be classified as either ‘deletion’ or ‘insertion’ because they may result in either. The vast majority of the WAVE features (137) fell into this category, including e.g. the medial object perfect (F97), which involves just a re-ordering of StE elements, and the use of much as a comparative marker (F181), which involves the use of a different form rather than addition or deletion.

Once all the features had been categorized in this way, the number of deletion features and the number of insertion features attested in each L2 variety was established. Given the considerable differences in the overall number of features attested in the different varieties, and given the fact that varieties with more features attested overall also have higher numbers of both deletion and insertion features, the absolute numbers are, however, only of limited value in judging whether a variety is more of a ‘deleter’ or more of an ‘inserter’. Therefore, the percentage of deletion/insertion features per total number of attested features was calculated as a relative measure that would permit comparison between varieties. For instance, a total of 44 features are attested for FijiE, of which 13 (29.5 %) are deletion features and 11 (25.0 %) are insertion features. The percentages for all 18 L2 varieties are presented in the form of a barplot in Figure L2_1, with the varieties ordered from

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left to right according to increasing difference between the proportions of deletion and insertion features (for FijiE this amounts to 29.5 % – 25.0 % = 4.5 %). Thus, varieties with higher proportions of insertion features are placed on the left hand side of the diagram in Figure L2_1, while varieties with higher proportions of deletion features appear on the right hand side. Although a log-likelihood test reveals that the difference between the number of deletion and insertion features is statistically significant only for JamE (p < 0.05), the graph shows a slight trend among the L2 varieties for insertion features to make up smaller shares of the total number of attested features than deletion features. This is in accordance with the trend, observed in Kortmann and Szmrecsanyi (2009), towards a lower incidence of ‘ornamentally complex’ features and of grammatical morphology generally in L2 varieties than in other variety types (cf. section 2.1). With regard to the distinction between ‘deleters’ and ‘preservers’ (or rather, ‘inserters’ in the terminology used here), hardly any of the varieties can be said to be clearly one or the other, given the lack of statistical significance of the observed differences in all cases but one. What we can say is that two varieties (TznE and KenE) show a noticeable preference for insertion features, while nine varieties (InSAfE, CollFijiE, ChcE, IndE, MalE, HKE, JamE) seem to prefer deletion features. As expected, the regional distribution proposed by Mesthrie and Bhatt (2008) – African varieties as ‘preservers/inserters’ and Asian varieties as ‘deleters’ – is only partially borne out. While the two varieties that favour insertion features are in fact both African varieties, most of the other African varieties show no clear preference either way, and InSAfE even falls among the ‘deleters’ group. Thus, the African varieties in general can hardly be seen as a group of ‘inserters’. With regard to the Asian varieties, MalE and HKE show the expected stronger preference for deletion features (in line with Kortmann and Szmrecsanyi 2009), which lends some support to that aspect of Mesthrie and Bhatt’s suggestion. However, recall that this tendency is not statistically significant. The South Asian varieties, on the other hand, are as far apart from each other in Figure L2_1 as they are in the network in Figure L2_1, with IndE showing a clear preference for deletion features, PakE less so, and SLkE being completely neutral with exactly equal shares of deletion and insertion features. Finally, the one variety that can clearly be categorized as a ‘deleter’ according to the measures used here is not one of the Asian varieties, but JamE. This is likely to be due to the affinity of this variety with the P/C varieties, and thus with a type that is known for comparatively simple grammars with a smaller number of rules and explicitly encoded grammatical distinctions than can be found in other languages (cf. McWhorter 2001, Parkvall 2008). It is also clear that the ‘deleters’ vs. ‘inserters’ distinction, such as it is, does not coincide with the split between cluster A and cluster B in Figure L2_1. It is true that most of the cluster A varieties appear towards the ‘inserters’ end of the graph in Figure L2_1, while cluster B varieties are primarily found at the ‘deleters’ end, but at the same time we find that MaltE (cluster B) is perfectly neutral in this respect, with as many deletion as insertion features attested, while ChcE (cluster A) is among the ‘deleters’ in Figure L2_1. However, if we rank the varieties in terms of the total number of deletion and insertion features attested, they appear neatly ordered according to cluster membership, with cluster A varieties occupying the lower end of the scale, and cluster B varieties at the top (numbers in parentheses indicate the total number of deletion and insertion features attested for each variety): ChcE (18) < SLkE (20) < PakE (23) < FijiE (24) < TznE (27) < KenE (30) < NigE (31) < GhE (32) < UgE, JamE (39) < MaltE, InSAfE (46) < MalE (47) < HKE (48) < CamE (51) < BlSAfE (52) < CollFijiE (60) < IndE (63). All of this suggests that both ‘deletion’ and ‘insertion’ are characteristic of L2 varieties, reflecting their origin in learner language, which is characterised, among other things, by both a tendency towards omission of grammatical morphemes, and occasional overuse of function words that may be motivated by a desire to increase explicitness.

4 Conclusion This survey chapter set out to explore the question of what, if anything, unites the varieties classified as ‘indigenous L2 varieties’ in WAVE and to what extent this group is internally structured. This basically amounted to a typologically-oriented investigation of similarities and differences between different New Eng-

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lishes, on the basis of the feature profiles of the 18 L2 varieties. We saw that of the features most widely shared among these varieties, only a few are actually diagnostic of the L2 type, while a large number are shared with (high-contact) L1 varieties, or are common to varieties of English generally. The features that were found to be most characteristic of the L2 varieties could be shown to reflect the origin of these varieties in second language acquisition. However, the most characteristic L2 features were not predominantly features typically found in early interlanguages, but rather included many that are found in intermediate learners and can be characterized as involving differences in the “co-occurrence potential” (Schneider 2007: 86) of words and structures. This opens up avenues of research on co-occurrence patterns, which have been underexplored so far in comparative studies of New Englishes, but are increasingly getting attention from researchers (e.g. Nesselhauf 2009, Mukherjee and Gries 2009). With regard to internal differences and groups within the set of L2 varieties, large-scale areal and substrate-related patterns were not identifiable and such associations emerged only for a few features, e.g. all forms of pronoun drop (F42–F44). An analysis of the aggregate (dis)similarities revealed that the major splits reflect the structural autonomy of the relevant varieties from StE, and their degree of restructuring and ‘L2-likeness’, rather than any areal or substrate-related groupings. A clear distinction among the L2 varieties between ‘deleters’ that favour the omission of grammatical elements present in StE, and ‘preservers’ that use grammatical elements not present in StE, as suggested by Mesthrie and Bhatt (2008: 91) could also not be found on the basis of the WAVE feature profiles. The observed differences were significant only for JamE, one of the non-prototypical L2 varieties. It was possible to detect a trace of the expected areal pattern (which Mesthrie and Bhatt suggest reflect differences in the typology of the substrates), but it is not very clear and basically amounts to a somewhat stronger preference for deletion features in the Southeast Asian varieties. What did emerge was a tendency for L2 varieties that are more autonomous from StE to have both more ‘deletion’ and more ‘insertion’ features, and a slight tendency for L2 varieties overall to prefer ‘deletion’ over ‘insertion’. Finally, I would like to highlight one result of the present investigation that has not been emphasized enough in the body of the chapter: the need to question the adequacy of a priori classifications of varieties based on socio-historical and sociolinguistic factors. With regard to JamE, ChcE and CollFijiE, the classification as L2 variety actually turned out to be inadequate (they cluster with vastly different varieties in the network diagram for the entire WAVE set). Conversely, a number of varieties classified as (high-contact) L1 varieties in fact show great affinities with the L2 cluster in the overall network. Variety type clearly is the major explanatory factor when it comes to large-scale similarities between varieties, but a priori classifications may need to be rethought on the basis of the evidence at hand. The results and analyses presented in this chapter also confirm the point made by A. Schneider (this volume) in her synopsis for the P/C varieties: for the L2 varieties as much as for the P/Cs (and the L1 varieties), variety type appears to be a matter of degree, with some varieties being more ‘L2-like’ than others.

References Bayley, Robert, and Otto Santa Ana. 2008. Chicano English: Morphology and syntax. In: Edgar W. Schneider (ed.), Varieties of English, Vol. 2: The Americas and the Caribbean, 572–590. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Bryant, David, and Vincent Moulton. 2004. Neighbor-Net: an agglomerative method for the construction of phylogenetic networks. Molecular Biology and Evolution 21 (2): 255–265. Cazden, Courtney B., Herlinda Cancino, Ellen Rosansky, and John H. Schumann. 1975. Second Language Acquisition Sequences in Children, Adolescents and Adults. Final Report. Washington, D.C.: National Institute of Education. Ellis, Rod. 2008. The Study of Second Language Acquisition. 2nd edition. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Gachelin, Jean-Marc. 1997. The progressive and habitual aspects in non-standard Englishes. In: Edgar W. Schneider (ed.), Englishes Around the World. Vol. 1: General Studies, British Isles, North America, 33–46. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Hundt, Marianne, and Katrin Vogel. 2011. Overuse of progressive in ESL and learner Englishes – fact or fiction? In: Joybrato Mukherjee, and Marianne Hundt (eds.), Exploring Second-Language Varieties of English and Learner Englishes. Bridging a Paradigm Gap, 145–165. Amsterdam/ Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Huson, Daniel H., and David Bryant. 2006. Application of phylogenetic networks in evolutionary studies. Molecular Biology and Evolution 23 (2): 254–267.

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Hyltenstam, Kenneth. 1984. The use of typological markedness conditions as predictors in second language acquisition: the case of pronominal copies in relative clauses. In: Roger Andersen (ed.), Second Language: A Crosslinguistic Perspective, 39–58. Rowley, MA: Newbury House. Izumi, Shinichi. 2003. Processing difficulty in comprehension and production of relative clauses by learners of English as a second language. Language Learning 53 (2): 285–323. Kachru, Braj B. 1985. Standards, codification and sociolinuistic realism. The English languages in the outer circle. In: Randolph Quirk, and Henry G. Widdowson (eds.), English in the World. Teaching and Learning the Language and Literatures, 11–30. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press and The British Council. Keenan, Edward L., and Bernard Comrie. 1977. Noun Phrase Accessibility and Universal Grammar. Linguistic Inquiry 8 (1): 63–99. Klein, Wolfgang and Clive Perdue. 1997. The Basic Variety, or: couldn’t natural languages be much simpler? Second Language Research 13 (4): 301–347 Kortmann, Bernd. in press. How powerful is geography as an explanatory factor of variation? Areal features in the Anglophone world. In: Peter Auer, Martin Hilpert, Anja Stukenbrock, and Benedikt Szmrecsanyi (eds.), Space in Language and Linguistics: Geographical, Interactional, and Cognitive Perspectives. Berlin/New York: Walter de Gruyter. Kortmann, Bernd, Edgar Schneider, Clive Upton, Rajend Mesthrie, and Kate Burridge (eds.). 2004. A Handbook of Varieties of English. A Multimedia Reference Tool. 2 volumes and CD-ROM. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Kortmann, Bernd, and Benedikt Szmrecsanyi. 2004. Global synopsis: Morphological and syntactic variation in English. In: Bernd Kortmann, Edgar Schneider, Kate Burridge, Rajend Mesthrie, and Clive Upton (eds.), A Handbook of Varieties of English. Vol. 2: Morphology and Syntax, 1142–1202. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Kortmann, Bernd, and Benedikt Szmrecsanyi. 2009. World Englishes between simplification and complexification. In: Thomas Hoffmann, and Lucia Siebers (eds.), World Englishes – Problems, Properties and Prospects, 265–285. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Kortmann, Bernd, and Kerstin Lunkenheimer (eds.). 2011. The Electronic World Atlas of Varieties of English. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. http://www.ewave-atlas.org, accessed 2012–03–05. McWhorter, John. 2001. The world’s simplest grammars are creole grammars. Linguistic Typology 5 (2–3) : 125–166. Melchers, Gunnel, and Philip Shaw. 2003. World Englishes. London: Arnold. Mesthrie, Rajend. 1992. English in Language Shift. The History, Structure and Sociolinguistics of South African Indian English. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Mesthrie, Rajend. 2006. Anti-deletions in an L2 grammar: A study of Black South African English mesolect. English World-Wide 27 (2): 111–145. Mesthrie, Rajend. 2008a. Indian South African English: phonology. In: Rajend Mesthrie (ed.), Varieties of English. Vol. 4: Africa, South and Southeast Asia, 188–199. Berlin/ New York: Mouton de Gruyter.

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Mesthrie, Rajend. 2008b. Indian South African English: Morphology and syntax. In: Rajend Mesthrie (ed.), Varieties of English. Vol. 4: Africa, South and Southeast Asia, 501–520. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Mesthrie, Rajend. 2008c. Synopsis: Morphological and syntactic variation in Africa and South and Southeast Asia. In: Rajend Mesthrie (ed.), Varieties of English. Vol. 4: Africa, South and Southeast Asia, 624–635. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Mesthrie, Rajend, and Rakesh M. Bhatt. 2008. World Englishes. The Study of New Sociolinguistic Varieties. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Mukherjee, Joybrato, and Stefan Th. Gries. 2009. Collostructional nativisation in New Englishes. Verb-construction associations in the International Corpus of English. English World-Wide 30 (1): 27–51. Mukherjee, Joybrato, and Marianne Hundt (eds.). 2011. Exploring Second-Language Varieties of English and Learner Englishes. Bridging a Paradigm Gap. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Nesselhauf, Nadja. 2009. Co-selection phenomena across New Englishes. Parallels (and differences) to foreign learner varieties. English World-Wide 30 (1): 1–26. Parkvall, Mikael. 2008. The simplicity of creoles in a cross-linguistic perspective. In: Matti Miestamo, Kaius Sinnemäki, and Fred Karlsson (eds.), Language Complexity. Typology, Contact, Change, 265–285. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Pienemann, Manfred. 1998. Language Processing and Second Language Development. Processability Theory. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Pienemann, Manfred. 2005. An introduction to Processability Theory. In: Manfred Pienemann (ed.), Cross-linguistic Aspects of Processability Theory, 1–60. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Platt, John, Heidi Weber, and Mian Lian Ho. 1984. New Englishes. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Sand, Andrea. 2004. Shared morphosyntactic features in contact varieties of English: article use. World Englishes 23 (2): 281–298. Sand, Andrea. 2005. Angloversals? Shared morphosyntactic features in contact varieties of English. Unpublished habilitation, University of Freiburg. Sand, Andrea. 2008. Angloversals? Concord and interrogatives in contact varieties of English. In: Terttu Nevalainen, Irma Tavitsainen, Päivi Pahta and Minna Korhonen (eds.), The Dynamics of Linguistic Variation: Corpus Evidence on English Past and Present, 183–202. Amsterdam/ Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Schneider, Edgar W. 2003. Dynamics of New Englishes: From identity construction to new dialect birth. Language 79 (2): 233–281. Schneider, Edgar W. 2007. Postcolonial English. Varieties Around the World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Selinker, Larry. 1972. Interlanguage. International Review of Applied Linguistics 10 (2): 209–230. Siegel, Jeff. 1987. Language Contact in a Plantation Environment. A Sociolinguistic History of Fiji. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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Simo Bobda, Augustin. 1998. On the indigenization of English in Cameroon and New Englishisms. Working paper in preparation for the LAUD Symposium. Essen: LAUD. Szmrecsanyi, Benedikt, and Bernd Kortmann. 2009. Vernacular universals and angloversals in a typological perspective. In: Markku Filppula, Juhani Klemola, and Heli Paulasto (eds.), Vernacular Universals and Language Contacts, 33–56. New York: Routledge.

Tent, Jan, and France Mugler. 2008. Fiji English: phonology. In: Kate Burridge, and Bernd Kortmann (eds.), Varieties of English, Vol. 3: The Pacific and Australasia, 234–266. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter Trudgill, Peter. 2009. Sociolinguistic typology and complexification. In: Geoffrey Sampson, David Gil, and Peter Trudgill (eds.), Language Complexity as an Evolving Variable, 98–109. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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Map P/C_1: Worldwide distribution of pidgins and creoles in WAVE

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Typological Profile: Pidgins and Creoles* 1 Introduction This chapter deals with the typological profile of the pidgin and creole varieties included in the WAVE database. Admittedly, there has been great disagreement in the history of contact linguistics and pidgin and creole studies on the definition of these contact varieties (cf. Siegel 2008, Winford 2003). For the purpose of WAVE, five broad classes of variety types had been defined on the basis of socio-historical criteria (rather than structural motivations), and the experts for the respective varieties were asked to classify ‘their’ variety as belonging to one of these variety types. According to the descriptions given in the electronic version of WAVE (Kortmann and Lunkenheimer 2011; henceforth eWAVE), pidgins are defined as those types of contact varieties that have typically emerged in trade colonies for the purpose of communication between two or more (socio-economically equal) groups that did not share a common language. Given these circumstances, at least initially, the full acquisition of the target language (here: some variety of English) has not been the goal. At least at the beginning, pidgins are usually restricted to certain domains of use (typically as a lingua franca), but may over time acquire native speakers and enter further domains of use (cf. the definition of pidgins given in eWAVE: http://www.ewave-atlas.org/languages/categories/cat1/P). Creoles, on the other hand, are described as those contact varieties that typically developed in settings where a group of (socioeconomically inferior) speakers acquired some variety of English. In most of these settings there was heavy pressure upon the non-English-speaking group to acquire the language of the socio-economically superior group, while exposure to its native speakers was usually very limited, and the number of the native (and L2) speakers of English was proportionally low. Today, many creoles have become the native language of the majority of the population (cf. the definition given for creoles in eWAVE: http://www.ewave-atlas.org/languages/categories/cat1/Cr). Out of the 74 varieties included in WAVE, 7 qualify as pidgin and 19 as creole varieties of English. Thus they constitute approximately a third (35.13 %) of the varieties in WAVE. Table 1 gives an overview of the pidgins and creoles (henceforth: P/Cs) in the sample, sorted by world region. Map P/C_1 visualizes the geographical spread of the 26 P/Cs in WAVE. World region

Pidgins (7)

Creoles (19)

British Isles Africa

British Creole (BrC) Ghanaian Pidgin (GhP), Nigerian Pidgin (NigP), Cameroon Pidgin (CamP), Vernacular Liberian English (VLibE)

Krio

America

Gullah

Caribbean

Jamaican Creole (JamC), Bahamian Creole (BahC), Barbadian Creole (Bajan), Belizean Creole (BelC), Trinidadian Creole (TrinC), Eastern Maroon Creoles (EMarC), Sranan, Saramaccan, Guyanese Creole (GuyC), San Andrés Creole (SanAC), Vincentian Creole (VinC)

South and Southeast Asia

Butler English (ButlE)

* For an overview of all features for which maps are included in the regional and typological profiles, see the List of Maps and the Feature Index. For the overall NeighborNet diagram, based

on all 235 features in all 74 WAVE varieties, see the foldout at the end of the volume.

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Australia Pacific

Torres Strait Creole (TorSC), Roper River Creole (Kriol) (RRC) Norf’k, Tok Pisin (TP)

Hawaiian Creole (HawC), Bislama, Palmerston English (PalmE)

Table 1: Pidgins and creoles sampled in WAVE: Distribution across world regions

With the exception of ButlE, all the pidgins in WAVE can be considered expanded pidgins, i.e. pidgins that have acquired a wider range of functions and are employed in further domains of use (cf. Romaine 1988: 138 on expanded pidgins). As Winford (2003: 288) notes, there is only a thin line between expanded pidgins and creoles. In fact, what distinguishes most of the expanded pidgins from the creoles in WAVE is that the former do not have a substantial number of native speakers.1 However, even some of the varieties categorized as pidgins here are actually increasing in their numbers of native speakers. This is especially the case for pidgins such as, for example, TP in Papua New Guinea (Smith 2008: 192) or NigP in West Africa (Faraclas 2008: 340). While the categorizations of the varieties into either pidgins or creoles are relatively established at least among linguists (and often also among their speakers), the boundaries between them are less clear-cut. For this reason, the two variety types will be treated as a single group in the present chapter. With reference to most of the varieties covered in this chapter, the terms pidgin or creole as described above apply well. For some varieties, however, the labels are questionable. The use of ButlE, for example, is restricted to a certain class and is only used by generally uneducated bilinguals knowing some English. It has its roots in the hierarchical relation of the dominant and the dominated. Thus, for ButlE the label pidgin has been called into question. As Hosali (2008: 564) notes, it is a complex issue whether ButlE is actually a pidgin or an early fossilized interlanguage. The overwhelming pressure of Standard English (henceforth: StE) is reflected in the occasional use of more or less standard forms by speakers of this variety. As will be seen in the following sections, ButlE indeed shows many pidgin-associated features, especially in terms of structural simplifications. However, the overall picture shows that, besides some of the features it shares with other P/Cs, many of the features it exhibits relate to properties of the StE system. PalmE is another case in point. Its status as a creole is questionable as it is rather similar to language-shift varieties from a socio-historical perspective (cf. Hendrey and Ehrhart, this volume, and the regional synopsis on Australia and the Pacific by Siegel, this volume). Because of a number of structural features it shares with creoles, it has been classified as such. As we will see in the following sections, these similarities are reflected in many ways. However, it is not surprising that, despite the similarities with P/Cs, the overall picture shows that PalmE is indeed closer to a number of language-shift varieties. In fact, one of the major problematic issues in the study of P/Cs is their separation from other varieties, especially other contact varieties, and specifically those that emerged in settings similar to those described for creoles, as, for example, the African American Vernacular Englishes. One reason for separating P/Cs from other varieties has been the large share of common features among them, and, at the same time, a large number of features divergent from other varieties or languages. However, as Mufwene (this volume) states, it is highly debatable “whether creoles can be characterized as a special type of languages based on their typological features alone”. This position has been taken up by a number of scholars, including Mufwene (1999 and elsewhere), Winford (2005) or Aboh and Ansaldo (2008), who claim that P/Cs structurally do not differ from non-P/C languages.2 The opposite view is taken up by scholars like McWhorter (2001, 2005), Parkvall (2008), and more recently Bakker et al. (2011). However, the only accounts involving systematic comparisons of P/Cs and non-P/Cs based on empirical data are the study by Aboh and Ansaldo (2008), the study on different degrees of complexity in P/Cs and non-P/C languages by Parkvall (2008), and the large-scale studies by Bakker et al. (2011) on the status of P/Cs as a typological class on the basis of large samples of P/C and non-P/C

1 This does not imply that pidgins and creoles developed in similar ways and settings. Compare, for example, Mufwene’s (2001) account on differences in the development of pidgins and 2 Caribbean and North American creoles.

2 For further accounts against ‘creole exceptionalism’ cf. the contributions in Ansaldo et al. (2008) and Faraclas and Klein (2009)

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languages. In all of these mentioned studies, the P/Cs are compared to other languages, and a systematic comparison with other vernaculars of English, which in many cases also show a high degree of language contact in their histories, is still missing. The present chapter will thus present an approach to contribute to the question of the distinctiveness of P/Cs from a fairly different perspective. WAVE serves as a good starting point for addressing many of the issues raised in the history of creolist studies. As an extension of the feature catalogue provided in Kortmann and Szmrecsanyi’s (2004) global synopsis of the morphosyntactic features covered in the Handbook of Varieties of English (Kortmann et al. 2004), the WAVE database now also contains a large number of features characteristic for or predominantly found in P/Cs. This allows for a better comparison of the varieties of this type as such, on the one hand, as well as for a comparison of P/Cs with other variety types, on the other hand. The inclusion of both features characteristic of contact languages as well as features characteristic of rather traditional dialects has the advantage that correlations between varieties of different types can be better understood (such as the importance of some of the traditional dialects in the foundation of new contact varieties), and that the origin of some of the features in contact languages may eventually be traced back to structures in the superstrate. The comparison of the feature profiles of the individual varieties may serve as an approach to a) examine the distinctiveness of P/Cs within a large set of varieties of English, including other high-contact varieties, b) highlight individual features and learn about important mechanisms in the development of these varieties, c) judge the findings against well-established classifications of P/Cs into a number of groups based on shared substrates (e.g. Atlantic vs Pacific P/Cs), geographical proximities (e.g. Eastern vs Western Caribbean, Caribbean vs Surinamese vs West African P/Cs) and migration patterns known from the histories of the varieties (e.g. the influence of Gullah on Krio, the influence of Krio on other West African P/Cs, the influence of Australian creoles on Melanesian P/Cs). Of course, the drawback of such a feature-based approach is that some generalizations have to be made with respect to the variation found within individual varieties (inter- and intraspeaker variation). Especially with respect to P/Cs, the continuum situation and the resulting variation from the basilectal to the acrolectal level is difficult to account for in such an approach. While many authors have chosen the mesolect as their reference point in giving the ratings for the individual features in WAVE, the way they rated the occurrence of basilectal forms differs from one author to the other. These problems have, of course, to be kept in mind when interpreting the results of a survey like this. The chapter is structured as follows: Section 1 will focus on individual features in the WAVE database which are remarkable for the group of pidgins and creoles. These include the most widespread, the most diagnostic as well as the comparatively rare features in P/Cs. The section will close with a comparison of average attestation rates and attestation numbers in individual domains of grammar and with a comparison of the average attestation rates across the different variety types. Section 3 will focus on aggregate similarieties and differences between the P/Cs as well as between the P/Cs and the other varieties included in WAVE on the basis of two NeighborNet diagrams, a kind of phylogenetic network diagram increasingly used in historical linguistics and language typology. Section 4 will provide a summary of the findings made in this chapter and some concluding remarks. Like the other typological synopsis chapters in this volume, this chapter by no means intends to give a complete and systematic description of the morphosyntax of English-based P/Cs. The perspective from which this synopsis has been made is from that of (non-standard) variation in English and so the focus will always be on structural properties of P/Cs in contrast to other non-standard varieties of English. For more complete descriptions of the structures of individual P/Cs (as well as their socio-histories) the reader is referred to the corresponding chapters on the respective varieties.

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2 Feature synopsis This section will highlight the most important observations regarding the occurrence and distribution of the 235 WAVE features across the P/Cs in the sample. It is important to note that, for the whole chapter, the analyses will be based on a binary distinction between the varieties that display a particular feature and those which don’t. This means that the expert ratings ‘A’ (“feature is pervasive or obligatory”), ‘B’ (“feature is neither pervasive nor extremely rare”), and ‘C’ (“feature exists, but is extremely rare”) are put into a single category ‘attested’, whereas the ratings ‘D’ (“attested absence”), ‘X’ (“not applicable”), and ‘?’ (“don’t know”) are subsumed under the heading ‘not attested’. One of the advantages of lumping together the ‘A’, ‘B’, and ‘C’ values into a category ‘attested’ is that differences in the interpretations by the different experts on the pervasiveness of a given feature are ruled out. For example, some scholars might have interpreted the ‘A’ value as ‘obligatory’, and gave a ‘B’ rating if the feature is pervasive but optional. Others might have employed the ‘A’ rating more liberally by assigning it to a feature that is simply widespread but not necessarily obligatory. However, one of the major disadvantages of the methodology of having one category ‘attested’ and one category ‘not attested’ is that the value ‘X’ (‘not applicable’) is subsumed under ‘not attested’. For the majority of features in WAVE this certainly makes sense. However, for other features, especially those that describe a negatively defined structural characteristic this might result in a rather unfortunate outcome for the distribution of attested and unattested features in the present chapter. For example, an ‘X’ rating for F176 (deletion of copula be: before NPs) could mean that there is no copula be in a given variety, so there is no copula be to be deleted. However, the ‘X’ value is eventually read as ‘not attested’ and so a variety without a copula be is put into the same category as varieties that would be given a ‘D’ rating – varieties in which the copula be is just not deleted. To some extent, it is the nature of the WAVE feature catalogue itself which poses some of the difficulties with regard to the description of some of the structural characteristics of P/Cs. WAVE does not aim for a full and systematic record of the grammatical systems of the varieties included but rather lists a large number of non-standard features that have been reported for different varieties of English, using StE as a benchmark. As some of the P/Cs heavily diverge from StE with respect to their structural make-up, many features included in WAVE are not applicable to them, and their feature profiles only contain small numbers of attested features. This has to be kept in mind when looking at the feature inventories of P/Cs in WAVE. However, as will be seen in the following sections, these are only minor problems with a minor effect on the overall picture of varieties of English. The major questions addressed in this section include: To what extent do the P/Cs in the sample display the non-standard features covered in WAVE? For which grammatical domains can we observe a high number of features well represented in P/Cs? Which are the most and least frequently found features in P/Cs? Which are the features that are most distinctive for this variety type? Which are the most important types of grammatical change that can be identified with regard to the features attested by the P/Cs in WAVE?

2.1 The most widespread features in pidgins and creoles Table 2 provides an overview of the features most frequently found in P/Cs. 17 WAVE features are attested in more than 80 % of the P/Cs in the sample, 5 of them in even more than 90 %. For comparison, the attestation rate (AR) of these features is also given for all varieties included in WAVE.

Feature

Domain

AR P/Cs

AR all P/C exceptions varieties

F5: Generalized third person singular pronoun: subject pronouns F10: No gender distinction in third person singular

Pronouns

80.76 %

37.83 %

Pronouns

88.46 %

45.94 %

SanAC (D), TrinC (D), HawC (D), ButlE (D), Norf’k (D) TrinC (D), PalmE (?), HawC (D)

Typological Profile: Pidgins and Creoles

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F14: No number distinction in reflexives

Pronouns

84.61 %

67.56 %

F34: Forms or phrases for the second person plural pronoun other than you F66: Indefinite article one/wan F77: Omission of genitive suffix; possession expressed through bare juxtaposition of nouns F114: Go-based future markers

Pronouns

96.15 %

90.54 %

BelC (?), Saramaccan (D), Bislama (X), TP (X) Saramaccan (D)

Noun phrase Noun phrase

96.15 % 88.46 %

64.86 % 56.75 %

Norf’k (?) Saramaccan (D), Bislama (X), TP (X)

Tense and aspect

84.61 %

50.00 %

F132: Zero past tense forms of regular verbs F154: Multiple negation / negative concord F160: No as preverbal negator

Verb morphology

80.76 %

59.45 %

Negation

80.76 %

81.08 %

Negation

80.76 %

37.83 %

F170: Invariant present tense forms due to zero marking for the third person singular F177: Deletion of copula be: before AdjPs F205: Existentials with forms of get

Agreement

80.76 %

67.56 %

Agreement Complementation

92.30 % 80.76 %

51.35 % 41.89 %

88.46 %

67.56 %

PalmE (D), Bislama (D), ButlE (X), TP (X) Gullah (X), EMarC (X), Saramaccan (D), Sranan (D), TP (X) RRC (D), Bislama (D), GhP (D), NigP (D), TP (X) Bajan (X), EMarC (X), Saramaccan (D), RRC (?), PalmE (?) EMarC (X), Saramaccan (D), Sranan (X), PalmE (D), TP (X) TP (X), Saramaccan (X) BrC (D), Gullah (D), EMarC (X), Saramaccan (D), Sranan (D) EMarC (X), Bisl (D), TP (X)

88.46 %

90.54 %

BelC (?), Bislama (X), TP (X)

96.15 %

70.27 %

TP (X)

96.15 %

90.54 %

TP (?)

F216: Omission of StE prepositions

Adverbs and prepositions F221: Other adverbs have the same form as Adverbs and adjectives prepositions F228: No inversion/no auxiliaries in Discourse organization wh-questions and word order F229: No inversion/no auxiliaries in main Discourse organization clause yes/no questions and word order

Table 2: Most widespread features among pidgins and creoles (>80 %), sorted by feature number and compared with their attestation rate (AR) of all 74 varieties

The list of the most widespread features among P/Cs in Table 2 contains the majority of the top features for P/Cs in Kortmann and Szmrecsanyi’s (2004: 1191) global synopsis for grammatical variation in the Handbook of Varieties of English. The list includes a number of features that have been discussed at length in descriptions of pidgin and creole grammars in the creolist literature (cf. e.g. the monographs by Winford 2003, Holm 1988 and 2000, Sebba 1997, Siegel 2008). In the domain of pronouns, F5 (generalized third person singular pronoun: subject pronouns) and F10 (no gender distinction in third person singular) both relate to the reduced set of forms in the paradigm of personal pronouns in contrast to StE. The lack of categories such as gender and case in the pronominal system is a well-known characteristic of P/Cs in general (cf. Winford 2003: 323). One of the most frequently discussed issues is the general lack of inflectional morphology in P/Cs. In the noun phrase it is F77 (omission of genetive suffix: possession expressed through bare juxtaposition of nouns), i.e. the omission of the only case suffix in StE. The bare juxtaposition of nouns is, next to a variety of analytic possessive markers, one of the various strategies in P/Cs to signal possession. The lack of verbal inflections and the use of the bare verb form in P/Cs is reflected by the lack of subject-verb-agreement in F170 (invariant present tense forms due to zero marking for the third person singular) as well as by the lack of synthetic tense and aspect marking as in F132 (zero past tense forms of regular verbs). F114 (go-based future markers) represents a case of the use of preverbal markers to express tense-mood-aspect, which is one of the best researched areas in creolist studies. Copula absences as represented in F177 (deletion of copula be: before AdjPs) are an example of typical strategies of predication in P/Cs. Other features from Table 2 which are often associated with P/Cs are the use of the indefinite article one/wan (F66), the use of no as a preverbal negator (F160), and no inversion and no use of auxiliaries in questions (F228 and F229). What can be read off the above table is that, while all of the 17 features listed are among the most widespread in P/Cs, not all of them are diagnostic of the variety type. For example, F34 (forms or phrases for the

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second person plural other than you) has an attestation rate of 96.15 % in the P/Cs, i.e. all P/Cs but one exhibit that feature. However, as can be detected from the attestation rate for all varieties is that it is a widespread feature across all world regions and variety types. Thus, F34 can be characterized as an angloversal in the sense of Szmrecsanyi and Kortmann (2009b). Similarly, F154 (multiple negation/negative concord) is pervasive across all variety types (especially the L1s), and therefore the feature cannot be described as a typical P/C feature. On the one hand, this is true for a small number of features listed in Table 2 (F34, F154, F221 and F229). On the other hand, the list does not contain those features which might be truely diagnostic for the group of P/Cs because they are not pervasive enough to exceed the threshold of 80 %, as Table 2 only includes those features that occur in at least 21 out of the 26 P/Cs. For example, F6 (generalized third person singular pronoun: object pronouns) is attested in 20 out of 26 P/Cs in WAVE, and thus has an attestation rate of 76.92 % in the P/Cs – thus it is not included in the list of the most widespread features in Table 2. However, it has an attestation rate of only 35.13 % for all varieties (only six other non-P/C varieties in the sample exhibit the feature), so it would seem straightforward to claim that F6 is rather characteristic of P/Cs. In order to extract the diagnostic features of the P/C group I will follow the method of some of the other contributors of this volume (see the synopsis chapters by E. Schneider, S. Hackert, and K. Lunkenheimer) in creating a list of features which contains exactly those WAVE features whose relative frequency of occurrence in the P/Cs is considerably higher than that in the other variety types. I will adopt E. Schneider’s method in calculating the difference between the attestation rate for the P/Cs and the attestation rate for all varieties for a given feature. I will set the threshold at 30 % as the minimum difference between the attestation rate for P/Cs and the attestation rate for all varieties for a feature to be treated as diagnostic for the P/C group. If the difference between the two attestation rates exceeds 30 %, the feature can be classified as a ‘typical P/C feature’. Table 3 lists the 26 most diagnostic features for the P/Cs in WAVE. Maps P/C_2 to P/C_7 show the distribution of all features where the difference between the two attestation rates exceeds 40 %.

2.2 The most diagnostic features in pidgins and creoles Feature

Domain

AR P/Cs

AR all varieties

AR P/Cs – P/C exceptions AR all varieties

F5: Generalized third person singular pronoun: subject pronouns (see Map P/C_2) F6: Generalized third person singular pronoun: object pronouns (see Map P/C_2) F10: No gender distinction in third person singular (see Map P/C_3) F19: Subject pronoun forms as (modifying) possessive pronouns: first person plural F20: Subject pronoun forms as (modifying) possessive pronouns: third person singular

Pronouns

80.76 %

37.83 %

42.93 %

SanAC (D), TrinC (D), HawC (D), ButlE (D), Norf’k (D)

Pronouns

76.92 %

35.13 %

41.79 %

SanAC (D), TrinC (D), Bislama (X), VLibE (D), ButlE (D), TP (X)

Pronouns

88.46 %

45.94 %

42.48 %

TrinC (D), PalmE (?), HawC (D)

Pronouns

57.69 %

27.02 %

30.67 %

Pronouns

57.69 %

27.02 %

30.67 %

F22: You as (modifying) possessive pronoun F23: Second person pronoun forms other than you as (modifying) possessive pronoun F66: Indefinite article one/wan F74: Phrases with for + noun to express possession: for-phrase following possessed NP

Pronouns

73.07 %

35.15 %

37.92 %

Pronouns

69.23 %

33.78 %

35.45 %

Noun phrase Noun phrase

96.15 % 65.38 %

64.86 % 29.72 %

31.29 % 35.66 %

BelC (D), NigP (D), ButlE (X), RRC (D), TorSC (D), Norf’k (D), PalmE (D), Bislama (D), TP (X), HawC (D) BelC (D), EMarC (X), Saramaccan (D), Sranan (D), RRC (?), TorSC (D), PalmE (D), Bislama (D), HawC (D), Norf’k (D), TP (X) BelC (?), GhP (D), NigP (D), RRC (D), Norf’k (D), Bislama (D), TP (X), TrinC (D), GhP (D), ButlE (X), TorSC (D), Norf’k (D), Bislama (D), TP (X), HawC (D) Norf’k (?) JamC (?), SanAC (D), TrinC (D), Krio (D), GhP (D), PalmE (?), Bislama (X), TP (X), HawC (D)

Typological Profile: Pidgins and Creoles

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F77: Omission of genitive suffix; possession expressed through bare juxtaposition of nouns F93: Other non-standard habitual markers: analytic F110: Finish-derived completive markers

Noun phrase

88.46 %

56.75 %

31.71 %

Saramaccan (D), Bislama (X), TP (X)

Tense and aspect Tense and aspect

76.92 %

41.89 %

35.03 %

57.69 %

25.67 %

32.02 %

F111: Past tense/anterior marker been F114: Go-based future markers

Tense and aspect Tense and aspect Verb morphology

76.92 %

41.89 %

35.03 %

84.61 %

50.00 %

34.61 %

69.23 %

28.37 %

40.96 %

BrC (D), Gullah (?), EmarC (X), RRC (D), TorSC (D), PalmE (?) BrC (D), Gullah (D), JamC (D), Bajan (D), SanAC (D), BelC (D), VinC (D), Krio (D), ButlE (D), Norf’k (D), HawC (D) Bajan (D), Saramaccan (D), TrinC (D), VLibE (D), GhP (D), ButlE (X) PalmE (D), Bislama (D), ButlE (X), TP (X) BrC (D), BahC (D), Bajan (X), TrinC (D), PalmE (?), GhP (D), ButlE (X), TP (X)

Verb morphology

73.07 %

27.02 %

46.05 %

Bajan (X), RRC (D), TorSC (?), PalmE (?), Bislama (?), ButlE (X), TP (X)

Verb morphology Verb morphology

69.23 %

28.37 %

40.96 %

65.38 %

28.37 %

37.01 %

F151: Serial verbs: constructions with 3 verbs

Verb morphology

61.53 %

28.37 %

33.16 %

F160: No as preverbal negator

Negation

80.76 %

37.83 %

42.97 %

F177: Deletion of copula be: before AdjPs (see Map P/C_6) F178: Deletion of copula be: before locatives F201: For-based complementizers (see Map P/C_7) F205: Existentials with forms of get F213: No subordination; chaining construction linking two main verbs (motion and activity) F219: Adverb-forming suffixes -way and -time

Agreement

92.30 %

51.35 %

40.95 %

Bajan (D), BelC (D), RRC (D), PalmE (?), VLibE (D), ButlE (X), Norf’k (D), TP (?) Bajan (D), BelC (D), VLibE (D), ButlE (X), RRC (D), TorSC (?), Norf’k (D), PalmE (?), TP (?) Bajan (D), SanAC (D), TrinC (D), VLibE (D), RRC (?), TorSC (?), PalmE (?), Bislama (?), TP (?), HawC (D) Bajan (X), EMarC (X), Saramaccan (D), RRC (?), PalmE (?) TP (X), Saramaccan (X)

Agreement

76.92 %

44.59 %

32.33 %

Complementation Complementation Adverbial subordination

73.07 %

35.13 %

37.94 %

80.76 %

41.89 %

38.87 %

76.92 %

43.24 %

36.17 %

65.38 %

33.78 %

31.60 %

F140: Other forms/phrases for copula ‘be’: before NPs (see Map P/C_4) F141: Other forms/phrases for copula ‘be’: before locatives (see Map P/C_4) F149: Serial verbs: go = ‘movement away from’ (see Map P/C_5) F150: Serial verbs: come = ‘movement towards’

Adverbs and prepositions

EMarC (X), Saramaccan (X), Sranan (D), GhP (X), NigP (D), TP (X) TrinC (D), VLibE (D), GhP (D), ButlE (X), TorSC (D), Bislama (D), TP (X) BrC (D), Gullah (D), EMarC (X), Saramaccan (D), Sranan (D) BrC (D), EMarC (X), Sranan (D), Krio (D), VLibE (D), TP (X) BrC (D), Gullah (D), BelC (?), SanAC (D), EMarC (X), TrinC (D), VinC (D), PalmE (?), TP (X),

Table 3: The 26 most diagnostic features in pidgins and creoles (% P/Cs – % all varieties > 30 %), sorted by feature number and grammatical domain

As can be seen in Table 3, only 10 of the 17 most widespread features in P/Cs from Table 2 are among the most diagnostic ones. These are F5, F10, F66, F77, F114, F160, F177, F178, F205 and F213. These features can be classified as varioversals of P/Cs in the sense of Szmrecsanyi and Kortmann (2009b). While the rest of the features is not as pervasive, all of them occur in at least 15 out of the 26 P/Cs (57.69 %). The largest share of diagnostic features can be found in the domain of pronouns (7 features), followed by the domains of verb morphology (5 features), tense and aspect (4 features), the noun phrase (3 features), agreement (2 features) and complementation (2 features). Negation, adverbial subordination and adverbs and prepositions are represented with one feature each. To a certain extent, this can be attributed to the differences in the numbers of features per grammatical domain. For example, the pronouns constitute the largest domain with 47 features, thus it is to be expected that the above list contains quite a large number of features from this domain. However, this does not explain why, for example, features from the domain of

Map P/C_2: Worldwide distribution of F5 (generalized third person singular pronouns: subject pronouns) and F6 (generalized third person singular pronouns: object pronouns)

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Map P/C_3: Worldwide distribution of F10 (no gender distinction in third person singular)

Typological Profile: Pidgins and Creoles

883

Map P/C_4: Worldwide distribution of F140 (other forms/phrases for copula ‘be’: before NPs) and F141 (other forms/phrases for copula ‘be’: before locatives)

884 Agnes Schneider

Map P/C_5: Worldwide distribution of F149 (serial verbs go = ‘movement away from’)

Typological Profile: Pidgins and Creoles

885

Map P/C_6: Worldwide distribution of F177 (deletion of copula be: before AdjPs)

886 Agnes Schneider

Typological Profile: Pidgins and Creoles

887

relativization or modal verbs are not represented at all. Another important factor for this is the prevalence of creole-associated features in the domains of pronouns, verb morphology, tense and aspect and the noun phrase. However, as becomes clear from looking at the column with the overall attestation rates for the individual features in Table 3, no feature is exclusive to P/Cs, and all features that are shared by the majority of P/Cs are also shared by other varieties. A look at the distribution of these features across all 74 varieties included in WAVE reveals that the majority of the features diagnostic for P/Cs are also well attested in a small number of so-called ‘basilectal’ L1c and L2 varieties such as AborE, the AAVEs, LibSE and CollFijiE, i.e. varieties whose histories are – similar to those of P/Cs – shaped by extreme language contact (see Maps P/C_2 to P/C_7).3 A general observation concerning many structural features found in P/Cs is that they represent simplifications (especially morphological) of the corresponding structures in the lexifier languages. The similarity to structures found for speakers of early interlanguage (in the studies carried out by e.g. Klein and Perdue 1997) has been discussed at length in the creolist literature. To what extent L2 acquisition is important for pidginization and, specifically, creolization remains a matter of debate (cf. the discussion in Siegel 2008: 27–39 on second language acquisition vs foreigner talk theory, and cf. Baker and Huber 2001 for an explanation of the diffusion of features belonging to an inventory of lexical items and pragmatic strategies used by Europeans in their contacts with non-Europeans). What is important, though, is the fact that these features in P/Cs do in fact have a lot in common with structures of early interlanguage when compared with the structures and rules found in the lexifier or target language (cf. Wekker 1996). In the domain of pronouns all diagnostic features for P/Cs relate to reductions of the inventory of forms in the pronominal paradigm. The pronouns are the only nominal category in English that is marked for person, number, gender, and case. Generalizations of the third person singular pronouns as reflected in F5, F6 and F10, in which the gender distinctions are neutralized, are a well-known characteristic of P/Cs, as noted above. The use of personal pronouns as modifying possessive pronouns represented by F19, F20, F22 and F23, points to the loss of the English possessive pronouns as evidence of the radical morphological simplifications in the pidginization/creolization process. Parallels have been noted with respect to features of early interlanguage, for which, according to Klein and Perdue (1997), a minimal inventory of pronouns is characteristic. In the noun phrase we find the omission of the genetive suffix and the bare juxtaposition of nouns to signal possession (F77), which is one of the various possession-marking strategies in P/Cs, with several alternatives often occurring within the same variety. Similar strategies have again been noted in studies of early interlanguage (cf. Siegel 2008: 28), in which unmarked possessives seemed to be one of the most striking features of simplifications also observed in processes of pidginization. The lack of verbal inflections in P/Cs and the accordingly radically different way of dealing with tense and aspect in these varieties has received enormous attention in the creolist literature. The similarities found for early interlanguage again represent a connection to P/Cs. For example, the use of so-called ‘boundary markers’ to express the beginning or end of some situation such as work finish ‘after work is/was/will be over’ and the use of temporal adverbs to indicate temporality is reported for early interlanguage speakers (Klein and Perdue 1997). Constructions like these have also given rise to the development of TMA markers in P/Cs; just think of the development of finish-derived completive markers (F110, discussed below) or of the perfect marker already (F109). Another parallel is the use of a single preverbal particle no for negation in both early interlanguage (cf. Klein and Perdue 1997, Littlewood 2006) and in P/Cs (F160). Widespread copula-absence is another feature shared by speakers of early interlanguage (Klein and Perdue 1997: 320) and P/Cs. In P/Cs copula deletion occurs most typically before locatives (F178) and, above all, before adjectival predicates (F177). Finally, the preference for chaining constructions linking two main verbs (motion and activity) over subordination as reflected in F213 corresponds to Klein and Perdue’s (1997: 332) observation that overt syntactic subordination is dispreferred in early interlanguage. The large share of features which resemble structures of early interlanguage among the most diagnostic P/C features corresponds to the picture provided by Szmrecsanyi and Kortmann (2009a) and Kortmann and

3 Szmrecsanyi (this volume) calls these ‘basilectal’ L1 varieties ‘higher-contact’ L1 varieties.

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Szmrecsanyi (2009). They show that, compared with other, non-creole, varieties of English, P/Cs exhibit the largest share of L2-easy features; indeed, they attest about twice as many L2-easy features than the average of other varieties. With respect to a number of the features mentioned reference has also been made to the possible impact of substrate languages. Take, for example, small inventories of forms in the pronominal paradigm in Bambara and Susu (Holm 1988: 201), the use of bare verb forms together with preverbal markers expressing TMA (Holm 1988) and the use of an invariant preverbal marker for negation in a number of West African languages (Holm 1988: 172) or no copula before adjectival predicates as these are rather analyzed as verbs with meanings similar to those in the lexifier languages in many of the Niger Congo languages (cf. Holm 1988: 176–177, Sharma and Rickford 2009).4 However, whether the global spread of these features rules out substrate influence remains a matter of debate. With respect to the use of the invariant preverbal negation marker no the influence of Portuguese or Spanish has also been taken into account (cf. Holm 1988: 172, Baker and Huber 2001). What is often suggested, however, is that among the variants available to the speakers in an emergent variety, which – in the case of contact languages – consist of features that reflect the structures of various languages or dialects, in many cases the ones that are preferred over others seem to be those that appear ‘simpler’ than others (in the sense of transparency, regularity or perceptual salience, cf. Holm 2004). Another group of features from Table 3 relate to expansions in P/Cs and are the results of developments which fall under the heading of grammaticalization.5 In most of the cases we are dealing with features which are innovations only found in contact varieties of English. These include the development of the indefinite article one (F66) and phrases with for + noun to express possession (F74) in the noun phrase. In the verb phrase we find the development of finish-derived completive markers (F110), and serial verb constructions involving the verb go (‘movement away from’, F149) and the verb come (‘movement towards’, F150). Finally, we have the development of existentials with forms of get (F205) and the adverb-forming suffixes -way and -time (F219). With respect to the emergence of new grammatical markers in P/Cs reference is often made to similar structures in substrate languages, as, for example, to serial verb constructions in Kwa languages, or existential markers based on forms meaning ‘have’/’get’ in Bantu languages (Holm 1988). However, given the fact that these features are so widespread among the P/Cs across the Anglophone world, explanations purely based on substrate influence might obscure the fact that frequent uses of lexical items in the superstrate (such as for example finish to express completion in English) could have ultimately triggered the grammaticalization processes. Cross-linguistically, all features represent common paths of grammaticalization (e.g. numeral f determiner, benefactive f possessive, lexical verbs meaning ‘finish’ f completive/perfect markers, verbs meaning ‘get’/’have’ f existential markers) (cf. Heine and Kuteva 2002). Moreover, while the development of the indefinite article one represents an innovation not found in older, more traditional dialects of English, its developmental path is already known from the history of the Germanic languages (numeral ‘one’ f indefinite article). Thus this feature can be seen as a ‘re-enactment’ of a grammaticalization process that has already taken place in earlier stages of the English language and repeated in (nearly) all of the P/Cs.

4 Especially with regard to copula absences as illustrated in F176–178 Sharma and Rickford (2009) have argued more recently for a substrate-based explanation rather than one based on imperfect acquisition. According to them, the pattern of copula absences in AAVE and many of the Caribbean creoles (whereby the highest absence rate is found with verbal predicates and the lowest with following NPs, with AdjPs and locatives in between) can be traced back to a shared West African substrate. 5 The term ‘grammaticalization’ has led to debates about whether it can be properly applied to those cases in P/Cs in

which the development of a given grammatical marker lacks characteristics such as gradualness and communicative need as a motivation or, more importantly, in which the development followed existing models in substrate languages (cf. e.g. Bruyn 1996, Plag 2002, cf. Siegel 2008 on grammaticalization vs. functional transfer). However, as this chapter’s focus is primarily on the results of grammaticalization (e.g. lexical verb go f future marker go as in F114) rather than on the individual processes that are involved, the term still seems applicable here.

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Continuations of grammaticalization processes known from other, traditional, low-contact varieties of English are for-based complementizers (F201). In fact, this feature is also present, albeit not pervasive, in the Dialects of the SW of England and in NfldE (see Map P/C_7). Moreover, the use of for (to) as a complementizer implying purpose (F202) is well attested in the traditional L1 varieties in the British Isles and North America. While its development in P/Cs might have been further reinforced by (phonologically) similar markers in substrate languages (e.g. Mandinka fò, Holm 1988: 168), the global spread of the feature rather points to the continuation of an already grammaticalized marker in the superstrate. Especially its attestation in the SW of England, which is recognized as one of the most influential ‘founder’ dialects in the New World, supports this assumption. Go-based future markers (F114) with variants ranging from go (e.g. BahC, TrinC and the West African pidgins) and o (e.g. Sranan) to gwain (e.g. Gullah and JamC) clearly have a parallel to StE, even if copula and preposition are not present in the P/Cs. Other grammaticalization features from Table 3 are the development of analytic habitual markers other than do (F93) and other forms/phrases for the copula before NPs (F140) and before locatives (F141). While all three features are diagnostic for the P/C group, the way in which they are expressed differs across the varieties with geographical and/or historical factors playing a major role. Thus, the grammaticalization of such markers is fairly common for P/Cs, but their individual variants are not pervasive on a global scale. The large amount of grammaticalization phenomena among the most diagnostic features of P/Cs is in accordance with the overall picture of grammaticalization in the WAVE dataset: From the 56 features that qualify as instances of grammaticalization, 52 are attested for P/Cs, with a mean attestation rate of 40.66 %. Compared with the total set of varieties in WAVE, for which the mean attestation rate is 29.15 %, the P/Cs constitute the variety type exhibiting the largest share of grammaticalization phenomena reported for (non-standard) varieties of English. Given the circumstances under which P/Cs have developped, the picture which emerges from the WAVE data is largely in line with Heine and Kuteva’s (2006) observation that grammaticalization is the major type of grammatical replication.

2.3 Comparatively rare features in pidgins and creoles Having discussed the most widespread and most diagnostic features for P/Cs, let us now turn to those features that are rare in this variety type. Instead of presenting the list of all bottom features (i.e. absent and rare features) for P/Cs, I will follow Hackert (regional synopsis on the Caribbean, this volume) in providing a list of those features which are comparatively rare for the P/Cs. Again, the difference between the average attestation rate for the P/Cs and the average overall attestation rate will be taken as a reference point. If the negative attestation rate difference for a given feature is < -30 %, the feature will be marked as comparatively rare. Table 4 provides an overview of the 12 comparatively rare features among the P/Cs.

Feature

Domain

AR P/Cs

AR all AR P/Cs – AR P/C attestations varieties all varieties

F8: Myself/meself instead of I in coordinate subjects

Pronouns

34.61 %

68.91 %

–33.70 %

F28: Use of us + NP in subject Pronouns 19.23 % function F88: Wider range of uses of Tense and aspect 30.76 % progressive be + V-ing than in StE: extension to stative verbs F96: There with past participle in Tense and aspect 7.69 % resultative contexts F99: Levelling of the difference Tense and aspect 23.07 % between present perfect and simple past: simple past for StE present perfect

50.00 %

–30.77 %

62.16 %

–31.49 %

37.83 %

–30.14 %

58.10 %

–35.03 %

Gullah (B), JamC (C), TrinC (A), VinC (C), RRC (C), VLibE (B), CamP (B), ButlE (B) JamC (C), PalmE (A), HawC (B), ButlE (C), Norf’k (C) BahC (C), Bajan (B), JamC (B), TrinC (A), RRC (A), VLibE (B), ButlE (A), Norf’k (B) TrinC (C), PalmE (C) GuyC (C), TrinC (A), VinC (A), HawC (A), VLibE (B), ButlE (C)

Map P/C_7: Worldwide distribution of F201 (for-based complementizers)

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F100: Levelling of the difference between present perfect and simple past: present perfect for StE simple past F128: Levelling of past tense/past participle verb forms: regularization of irregular verb paradigms F130: Levelling of past tense/past participle verb forms: past tense replacing the past participle F147: Was for conditional were

Tense and aspect

891

7.69 %

43.24 %

–35.55 %

TrinC (C), ButlE (C)

Verb morphology

23.07 %

63.51 %

–40.44 %

BahC (C), JamC (C), TrinC (B), PalmE (A), ButlE (B)

Verb morphology

15.38 %

51.35 %

–35.97 %

JamC (B), TrinC (B), VLibE (C), ButlE (B)

Verb morphology

38.56 %

75.67 %

–37.11 %

F172: Existential / presentational there’s/there is/there was with plural subjects F204: As what / than what in comparative clauses

Agreement

34.61 %

70.27 %

–35.66 %

Complementation

30.76 %

64.86 %

–34.10 %

F235: Like as a quotative particle

Discourse organization and word order

23.07 %

57.89 %

–34.82 %

BahC (C), Bajan (A), JamC (C), GuyC (A), TrinC (B), VinC (B), PalmE (A), HawC (A), VLibE (B), ButlE (C) BahC (A), Bajan (A), GuyC (B), TrinC (B), RRC (B), PalmE (B), VLibE (C) ButlE (B), Norf’k (B) Gullah (C), Bajan (B), JamC (C), GuyC (A), TrinC (C), VinC (B), VLibE (C), ButlE (C) BelC (C), TrinC (B), VinC (B), Bislama (B), VLibE (C)

Table 4: The 12 comparatively rare features in P/Cs (AR P/Cs – AR all varieties = –30 %)

As can be seen in Table 4, the domains of tense and aspect and verb morphology are overrepresented in the list of comparatively infrequent features for P/Cs. Most of the features in this list are widespread among the L1c and the L2 varieties in WAVE, especially in the national (standard) varieties (see the most widespread and most characteristic features for L1 and for L2 varieties in the typological synopsis chapters by Szmrecsanyi, this volume, and Lunkenheimer, this volume). Note the high number of attestations of these comparatively rare P/C features in some of the Caribbean creoles, such as TrinC, JamC, and VinC, as well as in ButlE, VLibE and PalmE. The ‘L1/L2’ character of these features might lead to the conclusion that their attestation in these varieties reflects a kind of ‘un-creoleness’, which appears strange in cases such as JamC or VinC, which are typically perceived as ‘basilectal’ or ‘conservative’ creoles (cf. Winford 1993). It might well be that the attestation of the features in these varieties is due to the experts’ choices of focussing on mesolectal or even including acrolectal features in their ratings for the feature profiles of the respective varieties. I will refer to this issue again in Section 3.

2.4 Average attestation rates and average numbers of attestations To sum up, let us now have a look at the mean share of WAVE features of P/Cs for the individual grammatical domains. Table 5 gives an overview of the average attestation rates and average number of attested features for P/Cs for each grammatical domain. Domain (N of features)

Average AR P/Cs

Average N of attestations P/Cs

Standard deviation

Average AR all Average N of Standard varieties attestations all deviation varieties

Pronouns (47) Noun phrase (40) Tense and aspect (33) Modals (7) Verb morphology (25)

42.14 % 37.12 % 25.29 % 21.98 % 31.08 %

19.8 14.84 8.34 1.53 7.76

6.36 5.45 3.89 1.44 2.95

35.62 % 37.03 % 28.26 % 25.87 % 29.95 %

16.81 14.81 9.32 1.81 7.48

6.78 6.25 4.75 1.52 3.31

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Voice (1) 0.00 % Negation (16) 35.58 % Agreement (15) 41.28 % Relativization (15) 23.33 % Complementation (11) 45.80 % Adverbial subordination (5) 29.23 % Adverbs and prepositions (7) 61.54 % Discourse organization and 44.08 % word order (13) TOTAL 35.84 %

0 5.69 6.19 3.5 5.03 1.46 4.3 5.73

0 2.93 3.2 2.56 1.96 1.13 1.66 2.14

n.a. 34.80 % 40.18 % 27.03 % 35.87 % 27.84 % 53.67 % 43.76 %

0.02 5.56 6.02 4.05 3.94 1.39 3.75 5.54

0 2.51 3.56 2.74 2.18 1.26 1.52 2.23

84.23

28.79

34.31 %

80.55

29.26

Table 5: Average attestation rates and average numbers of attested features for individual grammatical domains

The mean number of feature attestations of all WAVE features for P/Cs is only slightly higher than the mean number of feature attestations for all varieties. A higher number of feature attestations for P/Cs is especially reflected in the domains of pronouns, complementation and adverbs and prepositions. For the domains of tense and aspect, modal verbs and relativization, in contrast, the P/Cs exhibit slightly fewer features. Most of the contrasts can, of course, be explained by the fact that the former domains include many creole-associated features whereas the latter domains include many features rather represented in L1 (and, to a lesser extent, L2) varieties. In fact, as Tables 2 and 3 have shown, it is in the domain of pronouns where we can find the highest numbers of most widespread and also most diagnostic features for P/Cs. Another four features in this domain are (almost) exclusive to P/Cs (F17, F18, F36, F37), even if they are not pervasive enough to be considered as diagnostic. From the total 47 features in this domain, only three can be found in the bottom list (features that are either absent or found in only one or two varieties) for P/Cs. Similarly, only one feature from the domain of adverbs and prepositions and none from the domain of complementation are rare or absent from the P/Cs. In contrast, one third of the features from the domain of relativization can be found in the bottom list for P/Cs. None of the features from this domain is either widespread or diagnostic for the P/C group. Similarly, ten out of the 33 features related to tense and aspect appear among the rare and absent features in P/Cs. And four out of the 12 comparatively infrequent features are also found in this domain. While there is quite a number of tense and aspect features among the most widespread and most diagnostic features for P/Cs, many features from this domain relate to properties of the tense and aspect system of StE. As P/Cs have a radically different way of dealing with tense and aspect, this explains the absence (or non-applicability) of many of these features in this variety type. Table 6 provides a comparative overview of the average attestation rates and average numbers of attestations for the individual variety types. Variety type

Overall mean attestation rate

Overall mean N of attestations

Standard deviation

P/Cs L2 L1t L1c

35,84 % 29,68 % 31,48 % 37,38 %

84,23 69,76 74 87,85

28,79 23,37 28,55 33,04

Table 6: Average attestation rates and average numbers of attestations for individual variety types

The P/Cs are the group with the second highest average overall attestation rate. A large number of features for this variety type was, of course, to be expected as P/Cs constitute the type which is most divergent from StE. Only the L1c varieties exhibit a slightly higher average attestation rate. It is of course important to keep in mind that the numbers of attested features vary considerably for individual varieties. Among the P/Cs the numbers of attested features range from the smallest number of 24 in TP to the highest number of 139 in ButlE. Considering all varieties, we even have a variation of attestation numbers from 24 in TP to 164 in RAAVE. The low number of feature attestations in some of the P/Cs such as TP or the Surinamese creoles (EMarC, Sranan and Saramaccan) can, of course, to some extent be explained by a high number of ‘X’ ratings. In these cases a

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low attestation number cannot be interpreted as ‘more standard-like’, but actually as quite the opposite. Varieties with an extreme contact history are thus found both at the lowest end and at the highest end of the WAVE feature attestation scale. In the next section we will have a closer look at the feature attestation numbers for individual groups of P/Cs.

3 Geographical, historical and sociolinguistic splits in pidgins and creoles This section will discuss some of the major similarities and differences between the P/Cs in WAVE, based on a graphic visualization of aggregate morphosyntactic distances and similarities in a NeighborNet diagram. While NeighborNet diagrams were originally developed in bioinformatics (Bryant and Moulton 2004) for constructing phylogenetic networks and for visualizing evolutionary relationships between chromosomes, species, genes, etc., they are increasingly used in linguistics (for studies on P/Cs employing the NeighborNet method cf. Bakker et al. 2011 and Daval-Markussen and Bakker 2011). For the visualization of similarities and differences between the varieties in WAVE pairwise distances between the varieties in the sample have been established. These distances are calculated by using the Squared Euclidean Distance Measure, which counts the number of different feature ratings, which – in the present case – lie in the binary distinction between ‘attested’ (‘A’, ‘B’ and ‘C’ values) and ‘not attested’ (‘D’, ‘X’ and ‘?’ values), and translates them into a number of mismatches.6 For the interpretation of the NeighborNet diagrams the importance lies in the length of the shortest path between two varieties. A long path indicates a large number of mismatches between the feature profiles of two varieties whereas a short path indicates a low number of mismatches and thus rather similar feature profiles. In the diagram we either find individual lines or sets of parallel lines. Each line represents a way of splitting the whole set of varieties into exactly two groups. When two of such splits are not compatible with each other, the resulting lines form boxy shapes. Groups of varieties that are separated from the rest of the varieties by the occurrence of parallel lines leading to them share a set of characteristics (presences or absences of features) that is not shared by the rest of the varieties. These groups are referred to as clusters. The questions addressed in this section include the following: Where can we identify major splits in the data? Can these splits be motivated by geographical, sociohistorical or sociolinguistic factors? Do the classifications of P/Cs into various groups established in previous accounts hold (e.g. Atlantic vs. Pacific P/Cs, Caribbean ‘proper’ vs. Surinamese vs. West African P/Cs)? With respect to the total set of the 74 varieties in WAVE, do the P/Cs represent a distinct group? We will start with the discussion of the major splits between P/Cs. Network P/C_1 shows the NeighborNet diagram for the 26 P/Cs in WAVE.7 As can be seen in Network P/C_1, a set of long parallel lines divides the P/Cs in WAVE into two larger clusters: one on the left, which will be referred to as Cluster A, and one on the right, which will be referred to as Cluster B. Cluster A can be further divided into two smaller clusters: Cluster 1, which comprises a large number of the Caribbean creoles (Bajan, GuyC, VinC, JamC, BahC, and TrinC), and Cluster 2, which consists of VLibE and ButlE. Cluster B also divides into two smaller clusters: Cluster 3, which contains the Surinamese creoles (EMarC, Sranan, and Saramaccan) and the West African varieties (GhP, NigP, CamP, and Krio), and Cluster 4, which includes the Australian creoles (TorSC and RRC), the Pacific varieties (Bislama, TP, PalmE, and Norf’k), as well as two Caribbean creoles (SanAC and BelC), and BrC. The only variety from Cluster B which does not really fall into one of the smaller clusters 3 or 4 is HawC. Similarly, Gullah does not neatly pat-

6 For a more detailed description on how the NeighborNet diagrams for WAVE were created, the reader is referred to the 7 global synopsis by Kortmann and Wolk (this volume).

7 I am grateful to Christoph Wolk for providing the NeighborNet diagrams in Network P/C_1 and foldout Network WAVE_all at the end of this volume.

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Network P/C_1: NeighborNet clustering of the 26 pidgins and creoles in WAVE

tern with any of the mentioned groups of varieties. However, as Network P/C_1 shows, it is closer to the varieties in Cluster A than to those in Cluster B. Map P/C_8 gives an overview of the P/Cs with different symbols for those in Cluster A and Cluster B, respectively. Some of the geographical and/or historical relationships of the P/Cs in the Anglophone world are reflected in the smaller clusters. Most of the creoles of the Caribbean ‘proper’ are found in Cluster 1. Except for TrinC, which forms a separate node within the cluster, the varieties neatly fall into a branch of Western Caribbean creoles (JamC, BahC) and Eastern Caribbean creoles (Bajan, GuyC, VinC), with the two ‘conservative’ or ‘basilectal’ Eastern Caribbean varieties GuyC and VinC appearing as the most similar. What seems strange, however, is the absence of the two ‘conservative’ Western Caribbean creoles, SanAC and BelC, from the cluster, which are located at the opposite side of the network, which makes them appear more similar to the Australian and Pacific varieties. Similarly, BrC, spoken by the descendants from immigrants from Jamaica in London, does not cluster with JamC. Gullah shares a number of structural features with the Caribbean creoles. As is known, the first slaves brought into the Gullah-speaking area came from the Caribbean. In many other respects it has features common with the AAVEs and neighboring White English vernaculars (cf. Mufwene, this volume). This might explain its location apart from Cluster 1. However, the role that Gullah is supposed to have played in the development of the West African varieties, as explained by Huber (1999: 107–129), is not as obvious in the diagram in Network P/C_1. The exceptional status of the Surinamese creoles within the broader group of Caribbean creoles (cf. Migge, this volume) is reflected in the relatively long distance from the other creoles of this world region. This is consistent with the picture that emerges from the data used by Daval-Markussen and Bakker (2011: 126–127). As a subgroup of Cluster 3, the Surinamese creoles represent a very homogeneous group among the P/Cs in WAVE, which can be attributed to geographical and historical factors in their emergence. Suriname was under English control from 1651 to 1667 only when the Dutch took over. Most of the English and their slaves then moved to Jamaica, which explains a great part of the differences between the Surinamese creoles and the other Caribbean varieties.

Map P/C_8: The pidgins and creoles from Cluster A and Cluster B

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Similarly homogeneous are the West African pidgins, which constitute another subgroup of Cluster 3. Their relatedness has been explained at length by Huber (1999), who attributes the similarities among the West African pidgins to the spread of a pidgin variety along the West African coast, which has been greatly influenced by Krio, the language of the freed African slaves that settled in Sierra Leone (cf. also the regional synopsis on Africa by Huber, this volume). VLibE is an exception to the West African Pidgin varieties. It had first been a local variety of the pidgin of the West African coast. As soon as the first settlers arrived in Liberia in the early 19th century, VLibE has been heavily influenced by LibSE, and thus strongly diverges from other varieties of West African pidgin (cf. Singler, this volume, on VLibE). Its location on the diagram far away from the other varieties of West Africa is thus not surprising. While the individual groups such as the creoles of the Caribbean ‘proper’, the Surinamese creoles and the West African pidgins correspond to the classifications of subgroups of the Atlantic P/Cs as given by Hancock (1969) and Cassidy (1980), they do not form a larger group separate from other, non-Atlantic, P/Cs in the diagram in Network P/C_1. Within Cluster 4 we can identify a number of subgroups which also reflect geographic and/or historical relationships between varieties. The Australian creoles and two of the Pacific P/Cs (TP and Bislama) are located at one branch in the cluster, while two individual lines again separate the two groups from each other. The general agreement between the varieties of the two regions Pacific and Australia is also confirmed in the regional synopsis by Siegel (this volume). The relatedness of TP and Bislama (both dialects of Melanesian Pidgin), which have both been influenced by the local indigenous Oceanic languages of the Austronesian family and by earlier Aboriginal pidgins (cf. Siegel, this volume) is reflected by their immediate neighborhood in the diagram. In contrast, Norf’k has been influenced by Tahitian and Atlantic creoles, and is also considered closer to English (cf. Siegel, this volume), which might explain its location further away from the other Pacific P/Cs in the diagram. PalmE, while having a completely different history than the other varieties and not being considered a creole in the actual sense (cf. Hendrey and Ehrhart, this volume), is still very close to the varieties in the Pacific, although forming a separate node in the cluster. HawC has a very different history from the other P/Cs in the Pacific region. It developed relatively independent from the other P/Cs in that region, and was also influenced by other languages (cf. Sakoda and Siegel, this volume). Like Norf’k it is a lot closer to English than other Pacific P/Cs. The position of HawC further away from the other Pacific P/Cs supports this. After having identified some of the major geographical and sociohistorical links represented in the diagram, the first question to ask is what is responsible for the major split in Network P/C_1 which divides the P/Cs in WAVE into Cluster A and Cluster B. What exactly may be the reason for the separation of the Surinamese creoles and the West African pidgins as well as BrC, SanAC and BelC from the other Atlantic creoles (the Caribbean creoles in Cluster A)? Why does ButlE cluster with VLibE? Let us disregard individual sets of features for a moment and have a look at the bare number of attested WAVE features for each of the P/Cs. When ordering the P/Cs according to the absolute number of attested features from highest to lowest number, the following scale emerges: ButlE (139) > JamC (132) > VLibE (124) > TrinC (120) > BahC (117) > Gullah (115) > VinC (110) > GuyC (106) > Bajan (90), PalmE (90) > HawC (87) > NigP (84) > Norf’k (82) > CamP (78) > SanAC (76) > RRC (70) > Krio (62) > Bislama (59), Sranan (59) > GhP (57) > Saramaccan (55) > EMarC (48) > TP (24) What becomes obvious when looking at the scale is that the varieties in Cluster A constitute the group at the higher end of the scale, whereas the varieties in Cluster B are those that represent the lower end of the scale. While the numbers of attested features for the individual P/Cs vary considerably even within the larger clusters, we can still generally state that one of the major differences between the two clusters lies in the number of attested features. Also recall the high number of attestations of the comparatively infrequent features for P/Cs especially in TrinC, JamC, VinC, VLibE and ButlE, mentioned in section 2. We find exactly these varieties at the higher end in the scale above. Let us now turn to the individual sets of characteristics (presence or absence of features) for the individual clusters. There is a number of features which are especially widespread in the P/Cs in Cluster A and rare,

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if not absent, in the P/Cs in Cluster B. Some are, however, restricted to the creoles in Cluster 1, while most of them are also shared with the varieties in Cluster 2 (VLibE and ButlE), and some also with Gullah. Table 7 gives an overview of these features. Feature

Domain

Cluster 1

Gullah VLibE

Cluster 2 ButlE

F16: Emphatic reflexives with own F158: Invariant don’t for all persons in the present tense F190: Relativizer what or a form derived from what F204: As what / than what in comparative clauses F69: Yon/yonder indicating remoteness

Pronouns Negation

✓ ✓

✓ ✓

✓ ✓

✓ ✓

Relativization Complementation Noun phrase

✓ ✓ ✓

✓ ✓ ✓

✓ ✓ ✓

✓ ✓

F78: Double comparatives and superlatives

Noun phrase

✓

✓

✓

F157: Ain’t as generic negator before a main verb

Negation

✓

✓

✓

F25: Object pronoun forms as (modifying) possessive pronouns: third person plural F91: Do as habitual marker

Pronouns

✓

✓

Tense and aspect

✓

✓

F214: Conjunction doubling: clause + conj. + conj. + clause F126: New quasi-modals: aspectual meanings

Adverbial subordination Modal verbs

✓

✓

✓

✓

F147: Was for conditional were

Verb morphology

✓

✓

F185: Relativizer that or what in non-restrictive contexts F118: Is for am/will with 1st person singular

Relativization

✓

✓

Tense and aspect

✓

F103: Do as unstressed tense marker

Tense and aspect

✓

F109: Perfect marker already

Tense and aspect

✓

F112: Anterior had + bare root

Tense and aspect

✓

✓

✓

✓

Table 7: Features characteristic of Cluster A

Table 7 presents a list of features of a mixed nature. Many of the features in the list, such as F78, F109, F147, F158, F185, F190 and F204, are attested in L1 and L2 varieties throughout the Anglophone world. Others are predominantly found in specific regions, such as F157 for North America or F16, F103, F118 for North America and the Caribbean or F69 for the British Isles, North America and the Caribbean, and F214 and F126 for the Caribbean, North America and Africa. Others are predominantly found in specific variety types, such as F25 in L1c varieties. The only feature almost exclusively found in the Caribbean is F112 (cf. the regional synopsis on the Caribbean by Hackert, this volume). Important is the fact that none of the features is exclusively found in the P/Cs but equally represented in other variety types. F69, F103, and F118 are especially interesting features as these represent the importance of traditional dialects in the British Isles in the emergence of many varieties in North America and the Caribbean (‘founder effect’). Maps P/C_9 and P/C_10 show the distribution of F69, F103 and F118 across all varieties. Interestingly, about half of the features in Table 7 are also attested in HawC. This might explain the fact that this variety does not fit into any of the smaller clusters in Cluster B. Pervasive Atlantic features (i.e. features that are attested in nearly all of the P/Cs in the Caribbean and West Africa) are few in WAVE. Most of them are either absent from the Surinamese creoles or from the Caribbean creoles in Cluster B. The two features that can be classified as pervasive Atlantic are serial verb constructions with three verbs (F151) and say-based complementizers (F200). The rarity of features like these in WAVE might explain the fact that the Atlantic creoles do not pattern as a group in the NeighborNet diagram in Network P/C_1. Map P/C_11 gives an overview of the distribution of these two features across the P/Cs. The P/Cs in Cluster 3, which consists of the Surinamese creoles and the West African pidgins, are rather marked by shared absences of features than by shared attestations. Shared by the majority of P/Cs in WAVE

Map P/C_9: Worldwide distribution of F69 (Yon/yonder indicating remoteness)

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Map P/C_10: Worldwide distribution of F103 (do as an unstressed tense marker) and F118 (is for am/will in 1st person singular)

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Map P/C_11: Distribution of F151 (serial verb constructions with three verbs) and F200 (say-based complementizers) in pidgins and creoles

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but absent from those in Cluster 3 are, for example, F43 (subject pronoun drop: referential pronouns) and F176 (deletion of auxiliary be: before gonna). Other features absent from the P/Cs in Cluster 3 are also either absent from the Australian creoles or from the Pacific varieties. Only two features seem characteristic for the West African varieties only. These are existential constructions to express possessive (F73) and come-based future/ingressive markers (F116). In contrast to the other smaller clusters, Cluster 4 is marked by a number of incompatible splits in the data, which is indicated by the boxy shapes formed by the individual lines or sets of parallel lines. To some extent, this is to be expected, as the P/Cs in this cluster form a somewhat arbitrary mixture of varieties. First of all, what unites the P/Cs in this cluster are shared absences, which include those identified as characteristic for the varieties in Cluster A. There are no features characteristic of this cluster which are absent from the varieties in the other clusters. We find, however, a small number of features characteristic for the Pacific and Australian P/Cs, which are distinct forms for inclusive/exclusive first person non-singular (F36) and more number distinctions in personal pronouns than simply singular vs. plural (F37). Also characteristic, but absent from Norf’k, are specialized plural markers for pronouns (F38), postnominal phrases with bilong/blong/ long/blo to express possession (F76), and the transitive verb suffix -em/-im/-um (F143). As these features are (almost) completely absent from other varieties in the Anglophone world regions, we can speak of true areoversals in the sense of Szmrescanyi and Kortmann (2009b), a term which can rarely be applied to features in WAVE. Only shared by the three of the Pacific P/Cs TP, Bislama and HawC is the progressive marker stap or stay (F94). In sum, it emerges that geographical patterns are only important on the lower levels, i.e. within the smaller clusters or subgroups of clusters, in the diagram in Network P/C_1. Much more important is the question of whether a number of features, which are shared especially with other non-creole varieties, are attested in a given P/C variety or not. This is responsible for the major split in the diagram in Network P/C_1, which divides the P/Cs into Cluster A and Cluster B. The separation of BelC and SanAC from the other Caribbean creoles is partly due to sociolinguistic differences (i.e. no continuum situation comparable to other Caribbean speech communities), on the one hand, and the focus on rather basilectal features in the feature profiles of these varieties, on the other hand. Thus, they rather cluster with other P/Cs than with the Caribbean creoles in Cluster 1. As Singler (on VLibE, this volume) states, in contrast to the other West African P/Cs, VLibE is syntactically much closer to StE. This also explains its position far away from the other West African P/Cs in WAVE. Similarly, ButlE exhibits a large number of features shared with non-P/C varieties, many of which are also represented in the other P/Cs in Cluster A. Let us finally take a look at the P/Cs within the greater picture of non-standard varieties of English. The foldout Network WAVE_all (at the end of this volume) provides the NeighborNet diagram for the total 74 varieties in WAVE. Despite many internal differences, the P/Cs in WAVE clearly set themselves apart from other, non-P/C varieties in the sample. Again, the major split between the P/Cs observed in the diagram in Network P/C_1 can be found in the diagram in foldout Network WAVE_all. What fits well with the general observations made above is that the P/Cs from Cluster A in Network P/C_1 cluster with a group of ‘basilectal’ L1c varieties in foldout Network WAVE_all, while still forming a separate subgroup. VLibE now neatly patterns with LibSE, which was to be expected due to the great influence the latter has had on the former in its history (cf. Singler, this volume). The P/Cs from Cluster B are quite separate from the other P/Cs and other varieties, indeed, forming a long separate branch. Strangely enough, JamE can be found within this cluster, which might to some part be due to its influence from JamC and accordingly to the high number of ‘C’ values given for many creole-associated features (cf. Sand, this volume, and Lunkenheimer, this volume for the exceptional position of JamE within the group of indigenized L2 varieties). PalmE now no longer patterns with the other Pacific P/Cs in the sample, but rather with the L1c varieties like AborE and CollFijiE from the same region. This is not surprising given the fact that it shares many features with L1 varieties (cf. Hendrey and Ehrhart, this volume). Similarly, ButlE no longer clusters with VLibE but forms a separate branch close to the L1c varieties CollFijiE and AborE, and PalmE. As had been presumed, its location in Cluster 2 in Network P/C_1 together with VLibE was largely due to a high number of L1 associated features. However, all P/Cs are found on the left-hand side of the diagram in foldout Network WAVE_all.

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Thus it can be concluded that while geographical patterns are important within smaller clusters of the diagram, in the diagram in foldout Network WAVE_all variety type is the crucial factor for the location of a variety within the greater network. These results agree with the picture provided by Bakker et al. (2011), who show that irrespective of the lexifier languages of the P/Cs included and the languages compared with, the P/Cs constitute a separate group within the diagram. However, we must also conclude that variety type is a matter of degree, and that we can actually find two separate groups of P/Cs – those which are completely isolated from other variety types (Cluster B) and those, which are closer to some of the L1c varieties in WAVE (Cluster A).

4 Conclusion This chapter has sought to describe the morphosyntax of P/Cs within the larger context of (non-standard) varieties of English. As a response to the question of what characterizes P/Cs in comparison to other varieties of English raised in the introduction, section 2 has provided a feature profile of P/Cs based on the 235 features in WAVE. The P/Cs in WAVE display a large number of shared features. While many of them are those commonly listed as typical creole features, most of the features are also shared with a number of L1c varieties, and some are common to varieties of English in general, such as multiple negation or forms or phrases for the second person plural other than you. We were able to identify two major types of grammatical change in P/Cs. We saw that a large number of the features most characteristic for P/Cs have an ‘L2-easy’ character and represent (morphological) simplifications of the structures found in StE. The creation of grammatical structures via grammaticalization has shown to be an important type of grammatical change in P/Cs. Most of the grammaticalization patterns diagnostic for P/Cs are confined to this variety type and other contact varieties, and thus represent innovations in the history of English. Only very few (for-based complementizers and go-based future markers) can be classified as continuations of already existent patterns in (traditional varieties of) English. None of the diagnostic features for P/Cs is, however, exclusive to this variety type but also well attested in other varieties, especially in those with an intense contact history. A look at the average attestation rates for individual variety types has revealed that P/Cs are the variety type with the second highest average attestation rates after L1c varieties. However, given the large variability of attestation numbers among individual varieties, even among the P/Cs themselves, the sheer numbers of attested features are not a significant predictor for degrees of non-standardness or degrees of language contact. The NeighborNet diagram presented in section 3 has identified a major split between most of the Caribbean creoles, Gullah, VLibE and ButlE, on the one hand, and the Surinamese creoles, the West African pidgins, the Pacific and Australian varieties, and BrC, SanAC and BelC, on the other hand. A closer look at the sets of features characteristic for each of the two large clusters has shown that the major split between the two clusters is largely due to the presence of a set of features predominantly found in L1/L2 varieties in the first cluster, and the absence thereof in the second cluster. The first cluster has thus been identified as the group of varieties with feature profiles closer to L1 varieties than those of the varieties in the second cluster. While geography has proved to be an important factor for the patterning of P/Cs within smaller clusters and subgroups of clusters, it is not a predictive power on a higher level. This is supported by the NeighborNet diagram for all varieties covered in WAVE. While individual varieties in geographical proximity may also be located closer to each other in the diagram, variety type is in the majority of cases the decisive factor for major splits. However, the proximity of a number of the P/Cs to some of the L1c varieties in WAVE leads to the conclusion that variety type is also a matter of degree and by no means a cover term for a unique group of varieties. While the reductionist character of this type of study clearly neglects a number of important facts about individual varieties (including quantitative aspects, and intra- and interspeaker variability), WAVE provides a fresh and unified starting point for more fine-grained investigations in this field. Especially the integration of P/Cs within the larger area of morphosyntactic studies of varieties of English offers a new perspective in approaching long standing questions in creolist studies.

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References Aboh, Enoch O., and Umberto Ansaldo. 2008. The role of typology in language creation: A descriptive take. In: Umberto Ansaldo, Stephen Matthews, and Lisa Lim, Deconstructing Creole, 39–66. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Ansaldo, Umberto, Stephen Matthews, and Lisa Lim. 2008. Deconstructing Creole. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Baker, Philip, and Magnus Huber. 2001. Atlantic, Pacific and world-wide features in English-lexicon contact languages. English World-Wide 22: 157–208. Bakker, Peter, Aymeric Daval-Markussen, Mikael Parkvall, and Ingo Plag. 2011. Creoles are typologically distinct from non-creoles. Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages 26 (1): 5–42. Bruyn, Adrienne. 1996. On identifying instances of grammaticalization in Creole languages. In: Philip Baker, and Anand Syea (eds.), Changing Meanings, Changing Functions: Papers Relating to Grammaticalization in Contact Languages, 29-46. London: University of Westminster Press. Bryant, David, and Vincent Moulton. 2004. Neighbor-Net: An agglomerative method for the construction of phylogenetic networks. Molecular Biology and Evolution 21 (2): 255–265. Cassidy, Frederic. 1980. The place of Gullah. American Speech 55: 3–16. Daval-Markussen, Aymeric, and Peter Bakker. 2011. A phylogenetic networks approach to the classification of English-based Atlantic creoles. English World-Wide 32 (2): 115–146. Faraclas, Nicholas. 2008. Nigerian Pidgin: Morphology and syntax. In: Rajend Mesthrie (ed.), Varieties of English 4: Africa, South and Southeast Asia, 340–367. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Faraclas, Nicholas, and Thomas B. Klein. 2009. Simplicity and Complexity in Creoles and Pidgins. London: Battlebridge. Hancock, Ian F. 1969. A provisional comparison of the Englishbased Atlantic Creoles. African Language Review 8: 7–72. Heine, Bernd, and Tania Kuteva. 2002. World Lexicon of Grammaticalization. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Heine, Bernd, and Tania Kuteva. 2006. The Changing Languages of Europe. New York/Oxford: Oxford University Press. Holm, John. 2004. Languages in Contact: The Partial Restructuring of Vernaculars. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Holm, John. 2000. Introduction to Pidgins and Creoles. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Holm, John. 1988. Pidgins and Creoles. Vol. I: Theory and Structure. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hosali, Priya. 2008. Butler English: Morphology and syntax. In: Rajend Mesthrie (ed.), Varieties of English 4: Africa, South and Southeast Asia, 563–577. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Huber, Magnus. 1999. Ghanaian Pidgin English in its West African Context. A Sociohistorical and Structural Analysis. Amsterdam: Benjamins.

Klein, Wolfgang, and Clive Perdue. 1997. The basic variety (or: Couldn’t natural languages be much simpler?). Second Language Research 13: 301–347. Kortmann, Bernd, and Benedikt Szmrecsanyi. 2009. World Englishes between simplification and complexification. In: Lucia Siebers and Thomas Hoffmann (eds.), World Englishes – Problems, Properties and Prospects: Selected papers from the 13th IAWE conference, 265–285. Amsterdam: Benjamins. Kortmann, Bernd, and Benedikt Szmrecsanyi. 2004. Global synopsis – morphological and syntactic variation in English. In: Bernd Kortmann, Kate Burridge, Rajend Mesthrie, and Edgar Schneider (eds.), A Handbook of Varieties of English, Vol. 2: Morphology and Syntax, 1142–1202. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Kortmann, Bernd, and Edgar Schneider in collab. with Kate Burridge, Raj Mesthrie, and Clive Upton (eds.) 2004. A Handbook of Varieties of English. 2 vols. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Kortmann, Bernd, and Kerstin Lunkenheimer. 2011. The electronic World Atlas of Varieties of English [eWAVE]. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. http://www.ewave-atlas.org/ Littlewood, William. 2006. Second language learning. In: Allan Davies, and Catherine Elder (eds.), The Handbook of Applied Linguistics, 501–524. Malden, MA: Blackwell. McWhorter, John. 2005. Defining Creole. New York: Oxford University Press. McWhorter, John. 2001. The world’s simplest grammars are creole grammars. Linguistic Typology 5 (2): 125–166. Mufwene, Salikoko S. 2001. The Ecology of Language Evolution. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Mufwene, Salikoko S. 1999. Accountability in descriptions of creoles. In: John Rickford, and Suzanne Romaine (eds.), Crole Genesis, Attitudes and Discourse, 157–185. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Parkvall, Mikael. 2008. The simplicity of creoles in a cross-linguistic perspective. In: Matti Miestamo, Kaius Sinnemäki, and Fred Karlsson (eds.), Language Complexity. Typology, Contact, Change, 265–285. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Plag, Ingo. 2002. On the role of grammaticalization in creolization. A reassessment. In: Glenn Gilbert (ed.), Pidgin and Creole Linguistics in the 21st century. Essays at Millennium’s End, 199–215. New York: Lang. Romaine, Suzanne. 1988. Pidgins and Creole Languages. London: Longman. Sebba, Mark. 1997. Contact Languages: Pidgins and Creoles. London: Macmillan. Sharma, Devyani, and John R. Rickford. 2009. AAVE/creole copula absence: A critique of the imperfect learning hypothesis. Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages 24: 53–90. Siegel, Jeff. 2008. The Emergence of Pidgin and Creole Languages. Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press. Smith, Geoff P. 2008. Tok Pisin in Papua New Guinea: Phonology. In: Kate Burridge, and Bernd Kortmann (eds.), Varieties of English 3: The Pacific and Australasia, 188–209. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter.

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Szmrecsanyi, Benedikt, and Bernd Kortmann. 2009b. Vernacular universals and angloversals in a typological perspective. In: Markku Filppula, Juhani Klemola, and Heli Paulasto (eds.), Vernacular Universals and Language Contacts: Evidence from Varieties of English and Beyond, 33–53. London/New York: Routledge. Szmrecsanyi, Benedikt, and Bernd Kortmann. 2009a. Between simplification and complexification: Non-standard varieties of English around the world. In: Geoffrey Sampson, David Gil, and Peter Trudgill (eds.), Language Complexity as an Evolving Variable, 64–79. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Wekker, Herman. 1996. Creolization and the acquisition of English as a second language. In: Herman Wekker (ed.), Creole Languages and Language Acquisition. 139–149. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Winford, Donald. 2005. Contact-induced changes. Diachronica 22 (2): 373–427. Winford, Donald. 2003. An Introduction to Contact Linguistics. Malden, MA/Oxford: Blackwell. Winford, Donald. 1993. Predication in Caribbean Creoles. Amsterdam: Benjamins.

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Map WM: A world map of the WAVE varieties

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Morphosyntactic variation in the anglophone world: A global perspective

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Morphosyntactic variation in the anglophone world: A global perspective* 1 Introduction In this concluding chapter we want to address, on the one hand, a few issues that transcend the range of topics that were discussed in the regional and typological profiles in Parts VIII and IX. On the other hand, we want to highlight and throw into relief some of the most important findings made in these profiles. The focus of this chapter will be on the overall typological profiles of the 74 WAVE varieties and the question how they cluster in the world phenogram Network WAVE_all (see the coloured foldout at the end of the volume). Two central issues will be addressed in interpreting the observable patterns and clusters in this phenetic network diagram: first, the degree to which our purely structure-based (more exactly, morphosyntax-based) typological profiling in this network does or does not match the (admittedly subjective) socio-historical classifications of the 74 varieties by our informants into different variety types; secondly, the strength of the geographical signal as opposed to the socio-historical one, i.e. variety type, when reviewing the morphosyntactic profiles of the 74 varieties of English and English-based pidgins and creoles in the WAVE dataset.

2 Angloversals, rara and rarissima Chambers’ idea of vernacular universals (e.g. 2004) has triggered a lively debate over the last years (cf. especially the volume by Filppula et al. 2009, but also Kortmann and Szmrecsanyi 2004 and Szmrecsanyi and Kortmann 2009 and 2011). Here we want to restrict ourselves to identifying the most widely found morphosyntactic features in the Anglophone world, i.e. those features which deserve the label (vernacular) angloversals. The relevant set of features is attested in at least 80 % of all 74 WAVE varieties. It consists of only six members and is given in Table 1. The five next most widely attested features (with a minimum attestation rate (AR) of 70 %) are listed in Table 2. Included in both tables is the relevant p(ervasiveness)-index for each of the features (i.e. all values for A ratings (1.0), B ratings (0.6) and C ratings (0.3) added up and divided by the total of languages attesting this feature).1 All p-indexes are very high, with the mild exception of F78 (double comparatives and superlatives) in Table 2, i.e. these features are not only the ones most widespread in the Anglophone world, but also features which overwhelmingly receive A or B ratings in the vast majority of varieties. For the angloversals in Table 1, this can also be seen from their global distribution (with predominantly red and orange data points) in Maps Global_1 to Global 6 below. Table 1 also lists those few varieties which do not attest the individual angloversals.

* For an overview of all features for which maps are included in the regional and typological profiles see the List of Maps and the Feature Index. For the overall NeighborNet diagram, based on all 235 features in all 74 WAVE varieties, see the foldout at the end of the volume. 1 Similarly, we calculate p-indexes for varieties by adding up the values for that variety, then dividing the sum by the total of attested features. Here are just some model calculations in order to make it easier to immediately interpret a given p-score or p-index in the tables below. Let us assume a given variety has 50 features. If all of these are rated ‘A’ the p-score will

be 50 × 1.0 = 50.0 and the p-index (50 × 1.0) : 50 = 1.0. Should all receive a ‘B’-rating, the p-score will be 50 × 0.6 = 30.0 and the corresponding p-index (50 × 0.6) : 50 = 0.6. Analogously for 50 ‘C’-rated features: the p-score of that variety will be 15.0 and the p-index 0.3. What if a variety has 25 ‘A’-rated and 25 ‘B’-rated features? In this case the p-score will be: (25 × 1.0) + (25 × 0.6) = 40.0 and the p-index 40.0 : 50 = 0.8. For a variety with 25 ‘B’-rated features and 25 ‘C’-rated features, the corresponding p-score will be (25 × 0.6) + (25 × 0.3) = 22.5 and the p-index 22.5 : 50 = 0.45.

Feature no.

Feature

absent in

AR worldwide

p-index worldwide

Bernd Kortmann and Christoph Wolk

total

908

F229

no inversion/no auxiliaries in main clause yes/no questions forms or phrases for the second person plural pronoun other than you adverbs other than degree modifiers have the same form as adjectives me instead of I in coordinate subjects never as preverbal past tense negator

North, SE, ChcE, NigE, TP

68

91.9 %

0.82

O&SE, SE, TnzE, UgE, HKE, FijiE, Saramaccan

67

90.5 %

0.79

PakE, SLkE, HKE, FijiE, BelC, Bislama, TP FijiE, EMarC, Saramaccan, TorSC, PalmE, Bislama, Norf’k, TP O&SE, ChcE, JamE, UgE, IndE, SLkE, EMarC, Saramaccan, Sranan, RRC, Bislama, TP O&SE, WhSAfE, CollSgE, GhE, TnzE, PakE, SLkE, MalE, FijiE, RRC, Bislama, GhP, NigP, TP

67

90.5 %

0.79

66

89.2 %

0.83

61

82.4 %

0.71

60

81.1 %

0.77

F34

F221 F7 F159

F154

multiple negation/negative concord

Table 1: TOP 6 (ç 80 %): Vernacular angloversals

F220 F147 F78 F172 F228

degree modifier adverbs have the same form as adjectives was for conditional were double comparatives and superlatives existential/presentational there’s/there is/there was with plural subjects no inversion/no auxiliaries in wh-questions

p-index worldwide

Feature

AR worldwide

Feature no.

total

Concerning varieties which do not exhibit these angloversals (see the column “absent in” in Table 1) the following may be worth noting: for each of the six features, L2 varieties and pidgin/creole languages outnumber L1 varieties, the more so the further down the list we go. In other words: all these angloversals are most strongly represented in L1 varieties (minimum attestation: 90 %; the most frequently listed exception here is O&SE, i.e. the L1 with the lowest feature total of all 30 L1 varieties). Individual non-L1 varieties that attest at most three of the six angloversals are SLkE – always joined by another South Asian variety of English, either IndE (F159) or PakE (F154 and F221) – and Saramaccan (e.g. F159 never as a preverbal past tense negator is attested in none of the three Suriname creoles). The largest group of varieties that makes a frequent appearance in this list of exceptions are the Pacific and Australian varieties (notably including the L2 variety FijiE, lacking four of the angloversals) and here especially the pidgins and creoles (TP lacks five of the six angloversals, Bislama four; but cf. also RRC, TorSC, Norf’k, and PalmE).

58 56 54 52 52

78.4 % 75.7 % 73.0 % 70.3 % 70.3 %

0.72 0.75 0.64 0.74 0.81

Table 2: Top runners-up (ç 70 %)

The majority of these Top 11 can be grouped in pairs according to grammar domain. Thus both F229 and F228 relate to declarative word order and the absence of auxiliaries in yes/no and wh-questions. F221 and F220 indicate how widespread it is in the Anglophone world to make no formal distinction between adjective (as base form) and the corresponding adverb. In the domain of negation it is interesting to note that multiple negation (F154) is even slightly outrun by the much less salient negation feature F159 (never as past tense negator). F34 and F7, finally, fall into the domain of personal pronouns, with F34 indicating that the vast majority of Englishes or English-based pidgins and creoles have maintained or (re)introduced the formal distinction between singular and plural second person pronoun.

Map Global_1: Worldwide distribution of angloversal F229 (no inversion/no auxiliaries in main clause yes/no questions)

Morphosyntactic variation in the anglophone world: A global perspective

909

Map Global_2: Worldwide distribution of angloversal F34 (forms or phrases for the second person plural pronoun other than you)

910 Bernd Kortmann and Christoph Wolk

Map Global_3: Worldwide distribution of angloversal F221 (adverbs other than degree modifiers have the same form as adjectives)

Morphosyntactic variation in the anglophone world: A global perspective

911

Map Global_4: Worldwide distribution of angloversal F7 (me instead of I in coordinate subjects)

912 Bernd Kortmann and Christoph Wolk

Map Global_5: Worldwide distribution of angloversal F159 (never as preverbal past tense negator)

Morphosyntactic variation in the anglophone world: A global perspective

913

Map Global_6: Worldwide distribution of angloversal F154 (multiple negation/negative concord)

914 Bernd Kortmann and Christoph Wolk

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Morphosyntactic variation in the anglophone world: A global perspective

F40 F85 F87 F94

present in

p-index worldwide

F27

Feature

AR worldwide

Feature no.

total

At the opposite end of angloversals (Table 1) and immediate runners-up (Table 2), we find all those of the 235 morphosyntactic features constituting the WAVE feature pool which are attested in less than 10 % of all 74 varieties in the WAVE dataset. These so-called rara and rarissima are listed in Table 3.

object pronoun forms as (modifying) possessive pronouns: first person plural plural forms of interrogative pronouns: reduplication comparative marking with more … and attributive adjectival modifiers follow head noun progressive marker stap or stay

North, WelE, UAAVE, RAAVE, EAAVE, CollFijiE, PalmE

7

9.5 %

0.54

InSAfE, IndE, SLkE, MalE, NigP, CamP, ButlE UAAVE, RAAVE, NigE, CamE, UgE, Gullah ManxE, AborE, HKE, RRC, PalmE, Bislama, TP UAAVE, RAAVE, MaltE, Bislama, HawC, VLibE, TP AborE, TdCE, GuyC, RRC, TorSC, Bislama, TP RAAVE, AborE, HKE, Gullah, RRC, TorSC, HawC LibSE, InSAfE, JamC, TrinC, VinC, VLibE, NigP O&SE, ScE, North, SEAmE, RAAVE, EAAVE, BahE ManxE, IndE, Krio, NigP, CamP, TP

7

9.5 %

0.73

7

9.5 %

0.50

7

9.5 %

0.64

7

9.5 %

0.64

7

9.5 %

0.70

7

9.5 %

0.60

7

9.5 %

0.67

7

9.5 %

0.47

6

8.1 %

0.87

North, WelE, SW, SE, JamC SEAmE, UgE, InSAfE, MalE, Bajan, ButlE NfldE, WhZimE, AusE, BlSAfE, IndSAfE, TrinC ScE, North, IrE, UgE, ButlE SEAmE, UAAVE, CollSgE, MalE, HawC InSAfE, IndE, PakE, NigP, ButlE

6 6

8.1 % 8.1 %

0.50 0.47

6

8.1 %

0.58

5 5 5

6.8 % 6.8 % 6.8 %

0.48 0.64 0.48

NfldE, IrE, SLkE, PalmE CollSgE, MalE, RRC IrE, TdCE, IndE, ButlE

4 4 4

5.4 % 5.4 % 5.4 %

0.73 0.63 0.45

RAAVE, UAAVE, LibSE North, WelE, Norf’k O&SE, North, WelE WelE, VinC, Norf’k SEAmE, RAAVE CollSgE, TdCE

3 3 3 3 2 2

4.1 % 4.1 % 4.1 % 4.1 % 2.7 % 2.7 %

0.50 0.60 0.50 0.63 0.45 0.65

CollSgE

1

1.4 %

1.00

F143

transitive verb suffix -em/-im/-um

F162 F167

no more/nomo as negative existential marker fronted invariant tag

F183

Northern Subject Rule

F73 F187 F196

existential construction to express possessive relativizer as correlative constructions

F212

clause-final but = ‘really’

F164 F166 F199

amn’t in tag questions invariant tag can or not? reduced relative phrases preceding head-noun after-perfect postposed one as sole relativizer doubly filled COMP-position with wh-words “sequential” or “irrealis” be done special inflected forms of do special inflected forms of have special negative verbs in imperatives completive/perfect marker slam give passive: NP1 (patient) + give + NP2 (agent) + V ever as marker of experiential perfect

F98 F195 F230 F106 F137 F138 F168 F107 F153 F108

Table 3: Bottom features – Rara and rarissima in the anglophone world

Of course, this list does not exhaust the rara and rarissima in the morphosyntax of varieties of English around the globe, but it exhausts those included in the WAVE feature and data set. Some of these have a strong geographical signal (and have thus partly also been identified as such in individual of the regional profiles in this volume). Here are some striking examples: the Pacific and Australia feature prominently for F87 (attributive

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Bernd Kortmann and Christoph Wolk

adjectival modifiers follow head noun), F94 (progressive marker stap or stay; see Map AP_9 and Map L1_2) and especially for F143 (transitive verb suffix -em/-im/-um; see also Map AP_6). The British Isles varieties predominate for F138 (special inflected forms of have), F187 (relativizer as), and varieties of the Northern parts form a distinct group for F164 (amn’t in tag questions) as well as, not surprisingly, F183 (Northern Subject Rule). The American South is also strongly represented for the Northern Subject Rule and has SEAmE and RAAVE as the sole varieties worldwide exhibiting F107 (completive/perfective marker slam). West African varieties form the majority of WAVE varieties where F73 (existential construction to express possessive) is attested, whereas Southern Africa is strongly represented for F212 (clause-final but = ‘really’). South Asian varieties (IndE, PakE, SLkE; also InSAfE as a variety closely related to IndE) make up a sizable group for F40 (plural forms of interrogative pronouns: reduplication; see Map As_3) and F199 (reduced relative phrases preceding head-noun; see Map As_7). Though expectable, one other point worth noting about the varieties exhibiting several of these rare features is the following: among the varieties with the highest numbers of rara and rarissima, namely five (ButlE, IndSAfE, UAAVE, WelE) or even six (RAAVE, North of England), those are overrepresented with the highest or close-to-highest feature totals overall (notably RAAVE, UAAVE, and ButlE) or at least in their respective Anglophone world region (take WelE and North for the British Isles). This can also be seen from Tables 4 and 6 in the next section.

3 Most and least non-standard WAVE varieties Three major questions inform this section: Which are the most non-standard varieties in the Anglophone world, which the least non-standard ones? How much in general of the morphosyntactic variation space consisting of the 235 WAVE features is used up by the 74 varieties in the WAVE dataset? And is it possible to identify special patterns for the different variety types or Anglophone world regions? On the whole we can see a wide spread among the feature totals in the WAVE dataset, ranging from TP with only 24 attested features to RAAVE with 164 features. Variety

total of features

% of 235

p-score

p-index

Variety

total of features

% of 235

p-score

p-index

RAAVE UAAVE ButlE SEAmE StHE JamC BahE VLibE TrinC BahC

164 141 139 134 133 132 128 124 120 117

69.79 % 60.00 % 59.15 % 57.02 % 56.60 % 56.17 % 54.47 % 52.77 % 51.06 % 49.79 %

80.10 75.70 80.10 74.50 68.90 95.90 72.40 65.50 79.40 63.60

0.49 0.54 0.58 0.56 0.52 0.73 0.57 0.53 0.66 0.54

Gullah CollFijiE TdCE VinC BlSAfE EAAVE AborE GuyC LibSE IndE

115 111 111 110 108 107 107 106 103 100

48.94 % 47.23 % 47.23 % 46.81 % 45.96 % 45.53 % 45.53 % 45.11 % 43.83 % 42.55 %

83.70 84.60 53.00 82.50 53.00 51.20 77.70 93.00 53.50 61.40

0.73 0.76 0.48 0.75 0.49 0.48 0.73 0.88 0.52 0.61

Table 4: Most non-standard WAVE varieties (ç 100 features)

There is quite a wide range of deviation among the top 20 varieties in Table 4 (between 100 and 164 attested features), with the highest feature totals for RAAVE and UAAVE. More than half of these Top 20 are spoken in the Caribbean or in the Southern states of North America (or have at least a strong Southern history). Expected, but nevertheless noteworthy in Table 4 is the absence of traditional L1 varieties and the near-complete absence of L2 varieties (exceptions: CollFijiE and IndE). Worth noting in the rightmost column (p-index) is that among these Top 20 there are only six varieties with relatively high p-indexes (0.7 or higher, i.e. predominantly A- or B-rated features, with GuyC clearly exhibiting the highest p-index: 0.88). Table 4 is well worth remembering since, except for IndE, the 19 most non-standard varieties in the Anglophone world will be seen to populate one of the four major clusters in the world Network WAVE_all, as will be discussed in

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Morphosyntactic variation in the anglophone world: A global perspective

more detail in section 4.3. Table 5 shows the 12 varieties with the lowest feature totals of all 74 varieties, i.e. with 50 or fewer attested features. Variety

total of features

% of 235

p-score

p-index

Variety

total of features

% of 235

p-score

p-index

ChIsE WhSAfE NZE SE FlkE EMarC

50 50 50 49 49 48

21.28 % 21.28 % 21.28 % 20.85 % 20.85 % 20.43 %

21.50 26.80 34.50 29.00 19.90 46.80

0.43 0.54 0.69 0.59 0.41 0.98

TznE FijiE O&SE SLkE ChcE TP

44 44 37 35 32 24

18.72 % 18.72 % 15.74 % 14.89 % 13.62 % 10.21 %

20.20 19.20 25.40 18.00 16.90 22.80

0.46 0.44 0.69 0.51 0.53 0.95

Table 5: Least non-standard WAVE varieties (å 50 features)

Concerning the different variety types represented in Table 5, we have quite the opposite situation as in Table 4: six are L1 varieties (four high-contact: ChIsE, WhSAfE, NZE, FlkE, two low-contact: SE and O&SE) whereas there are hardly any pidgins and creoles (only EMarC and TP). Note, however, for both TP and the (notoriously radical) EMarC, (i) that the absent features are largely due to ‘X’ (i.e. “non-applicable”) ratings (201 for TP and 181 for EMarC), and (ii) that they have extremely high p-indexes, which clearly indicate that those comparatively few morphosyntactic features from the WAVE feature set which they exhibit are highly pervasive throughout the relevant speech communities. This is quite different for e.g. ChIsE (0.43) and FlkE (0.41), in both of which many C-rated features are attested. The remaining four varieties of the Bottom 12 are all L2 varieties (TznE, FijiE, SLkE, ChcE). Also different from the Top 20, the Bottom 12 will not be found to cluster together in the world diagram Network WAVE_all, but rather to distribute across the different parts of this phenetic network. For those curious to learn how the remaining varieties in the WAVE dataset distribute between the Top 20 and the Bottom 12 (i.e. with feature totals of more than 50 but fewer than 100), Table 6 gives all the relevant information. Essentially, we can see the feature totals distributing rather nicely in the two columns of Table 6, with the varieties in the right column ranging between 54 and 70 features and those in the left column between 75 and 98. Variety

total of features

% of 235

p-score

p-index

Variety

total of features

NfldE WelE IrE North Bajan InSAfE PalmE CamE HawC MaltE NigP SW Norf’k HKE JamE CamP AppE SanAC MalE CollSgE UgE

98 94 92 90 90 90 90 87 87 84 84 82 82 81 78 78 76 76 76 75 75

41.70 % 40.00 % 39.15 % 38.30 % 38.30 % 38.30 % 38.30 % 37.02 % 37.02 % 35.74 % 35.74 % 34.89 % 34.89 % 34.47 % 33.19 % 33.19 % 32.34 % 32.34 % 32.34 % 31.91 % 31.91 %

63.80 51.70 61.20 48.50 74.20 59.80 56.40 51.50 64.30 41.70 70.60 39.90 56.00 70.60 29.40 66.70 44.80 62.00 63.10 55.10 31.20

0.65 0.55 0.67 0.54 0.82 0.66 0.63 0.59 0.74 0.50 0.84 0.49 0.68 0.87 0.38 0.86 0.59 0.82 0.83 0.73 0.42

RRC 70 WhZimE 69 TorSC 69 CollAmE 68 BelC 67 ManxE 66 OzE 65 Krio 62 AusE 60 Sranan 59 Bislama 59 GhP 57 GhE 56 AusVE 56 ScE 55 Saramaccan55 PakE 55 EA 54 NigE 54 KenE 54

Table 6: Distribution of WAVE varieties according to feature totals above 50 and below 100

% of 235

p-score

p-index

29.79 % 29.36 % 29.36 % 28.94 % 28.51 % 28.09 % 27.66 % 26.38 % 25.53 % 25.11 % 25.11 % 24.26 % 23.83 % 23.83 % 23.40 % 23.40 % 23.40 % 22.98 % 22.98 % 22.98 %

60.60 35.60 65.00 42.60 53.30 38.40 43.90 55.60 31.30 53.60 47.30 43.50 23.10 35.40 33.10 51.80 26.70 44.10 32.60 30.40

0.87 0.52 0.94 0.63 0.80 0.58 0.68 0.90 0.52 0.91 0.80 0.76 0.41 0.63 0.60 0.94 0.49 0.82 0.60 0.56

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In general, what we can see concerning the distribution of feature totals among the 74 WAVE varieties is the following: first, at most 70 % of the morphosyntactic variation space defined by the 235 WAVE features is actually used up by any single variety in the Anglophone world (by RAAVE with 169 features), with the Top 20 non-standard varieties covering approximately the 40–70 % range. Second, there are also varieties of English or English-based pidgins and creoles attesting no more than 10 % of the 235 features (TP with only 24 features), with the Bottom 12 non-standard varieties covering the 10–20 % range. Third, this leaves the middle ground (20–40 %) for the majority (42) of the varieties in the WAVE dataset, with the highest concentration of varieties exhibiting feature totals of 50 to 70. Concerning the way different variety types pattern we already pointed to the overrepresentation of high-contact L1s and pidgins and creoles, on the one hand, and the nearabsence of L2 varieties among the Top 20, with the quite opposite picture for the Bottom 12 (notably the nearabsence of pidgins and creoles), on the other hand. On average, L2 varieties have considerably fewer feature totals (70.2) than either L1 varieties (83.8) or pidgins and creoles (84.2), and also differ from the latter two variety types in exhibiting a far lower standard deviation from this average feature total. Moreover, the bulk of the L2 varieties (16 out of 18) have lower feature totals than 100 (witness IndE and CollFijiE as the lone L2 varieties among the Top 20 in Table 4). The histogram in Figure Global_1 visualizes many of these generalizations.

Figure Global_1: Histogram

Morphosyntactic variation in the anglophone world: A global perspective

919

4 NeighborNet diagrams: global morphosyntactic variation in the Anglophone world 4.1 The NeighborNet algorithm NeighborNet (Bryant and Moulton 2004, Huson and Bryant 2006) is a clustering method originating in bioinformatics, where the need to represent uncertainty in the inferred phylogenies as well as mixed evolutionary paths (resulting from reticulate effects such as genetic recombination) has led to the development of ‘splits graphs’ for representing non-hierarchical classification (Dress and Huson 2004). As this method can detect conflicting signals and thus represent effects of language contact, it has found a following in linguistics for historical (McMahon and McMahon 2005), dialectological (McMahon et al. 2007, Szmrecsanyi and Wolk 2011), and typological purposes (Cysouw 2007). NeighborNet is in many ways similar to classical agglomerative cluster analysis methods, which result in hierarchical trees not unlike language family trees. These trees are formed bottom-up, first evaluating the distances between the objects under study, then repeatedly determining the two closest ones and merging them. The sequence in which the objects are merged can then be represented as a binary tree, i.e. a tree in which each node has at most two descendants. Some algorithms result in trees that have no top node, and in which the notion of descendancy is replaced with that of a split, dividing the total set of objects into two parts. Consider, as an example, the unrooted tree displayed in Figure Global_2.

Figure Global_2: Schematic representation of the four main variety clusters in Network WAVE_all

Each line represents a way of splitting the data; four of them are trivial, i.e. separating a single node from all of the others, and one is nontrivial, separating the nodes on the left side from those on the right. While such unrooted trees can still be seen as hierarchical, they do not force an orientation on the hierarchy, and thus allow more freedom in their interpretation. NeighborNet is an extension of such approaches, and works in a similar way. As above, the total set of distances between points is searched for the shortest distance, but the two points are not immediately merged. Instead, the merging of points into clusters is delayed until one point would be grouped a second time, and the three involved points are fused into two, representing that point in relation to each of the others separately. This means that each point has a chance of appearing in two incompatible hierarchies. In general, the fusion sequences emerging from this can therefore no longer be represented as trees; although if the data can be represented in tree-form in whole or in part, it will be. If not, the resulting graph will represent incompatible splits as sets of parallel lines which end up as boxy shapes. For the networks presented in the typological and regional profiles as well as in Network WAVE_all (see foldout at the end of the volume), the distances were measured by determining presence (i.e. attestedness, informant judgements ‘A’, ‘B’, or ‘C’) and absence of features, then calculating the proportion of mismatches

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between varieties. Clustering methods are very sensitive to small changes in the data; and especially for data like WAVE, we found that pure NeighborNet often results in graphs that look like round spider webs and emphasize minor details in the data, obscure the large-scale patterns, and which are sensitive to small changes in the data. To make the result both more stable and easier to interpret, we first apply ‘clustering with noise’ (Nerbonne et al. 2008), a technique developed in dialectometry to improve the robustness of hierarchical clustering. First, small random numbers are added to each cell of the distance matrix, then the result is clustered hierarchically. This step is repeated very often, and the cophenetic distances from the resulting trees are averaged, leading to a new distance matrix.2 This is then used as the input for the NeighborNet process. Let us illustrate the interpretation of such a diagram by using [Network WAVE_all] as an example. Overall, four mostly compact regions (or clusters) emerge, which can schematically be represented as in Figure Global_2 and will be discussed in detail in Networks Global_1 to Global_3 in the following section. For the present purposes it shall suffice that the left-hand part of the Network WAVE_all contains mostly Pidgins and Creoles (in Clusters 3 and, especially, 4), while the right-hand side is split between L1 varieties at the bottom (Cluster 1) and L2 varieties at the top (Cluster 2). Between these two groups we find the two Southern African L1 varieties: WhSAfE and WhZimE. They are connected to the rest of the Network through parallel lines forming box-like shapes. This part of the diagram can be interpreted as follows: All varieties on the right-hand (Clusters 1 and 2) share some similarities with each other that they do not share with the left-hand varieties (Clusters 3 and 4). As the diagonal lines separating Cluster 1 from this horizontal split show, the members of Cluster 1 share some similarities with each other beyond those they share with Cluster 2; in the same way, the diagonal lines toward Cluster 2 indicate the shared similarities that are unique to Cluster 2. WhSAfE and WhZimE share some of these lines with Cluster 1 and others with Cluster 2, but fully belong to neither – they are more similar to the L2 group than the members of the L1 group are, and more similar to the L1 group than the members of the L2 group are. Of the two, WhZimE shares more lines with Cluster 2 varieties and WhSAfE more with Cluster 1 varieties, indicating that they are more similar to the respective group than the other is. Such structures cannot be accurately represented as a tree, but emerge naturally from network diagrams.

4.2 The big picture: morphosyntactic clustering according to variety type In this section we will take a close look at each of the four variety clusters identified above in connection with the schematic representation in Figure Global_2. The main message was already spelt out in the previous section: (a) there are four clusters of varieties emerging, the members of each of which share more morphosyntactic properties with each other (measured in terms of both co-presences and co-absences of features) than with members of the other clusters; (b) three of these clusters are fairly sharply delineated, while the fourth cluster (Cluster 3) is slightly more diffuse; (c) it is striking how well the clustering follows the classifications into the different variety types, with Cluster 1 as the (main) L1 branch of Network WAVE_all (including among others all traditional L1 varieties), Cluster 2 as the L2 branch, Cluster 4 as the pidgin and creole branch, and Cluster 3 as consisting of two distinct smaller branches (one for creoles, the other for high(er)-contact L1 varieties) and a more diffuse third branch populated by four varieties with morphosyntactic profiles oscillating between characteristic pidgin, high-contact and L2 properties. In the following, we will zoom in on each of these four clusters one by one, beginning with Cluster 1 as represented in Network Global_1, which includes 18 of the 30 L1 varieties in the WAVE dataset. There are three smaller clusters to be identified in the L1 cluster: the largest of these is Cluster 1a. Here we find, on the one hand, British Isles varieties of Southeast England (SE, EA) and the far north (ScE, O&SE) and, on the other hand, four high-contact varieties (more exactly, colonial dialects) from Australia/Pacific and the South Atlantic (AusVE, AusE, NZE, FlkE). All of the latter are historically closely related to the relevant 2 More specifically, we used Peter Kleiweg's dialectometric software package RuG/L04 (http://www.let.rug.nl/ kleiweg/ L04/) to perform this process, creating 10,000 trees with a noise level of 0.5 and Ward’s method as the clustering algo-

rithm. The network diagrams were then created from the average cophenetic distances using the phylogenetic software package SplitsTree (Huson and Bryant 2006) version 4.12.6.

Morphosyntactic variation in the anglophone world: A global perspective

921

2a Cluster2

2b

1a

1b Cluster 1 1c Network Global_1: Detail of the NeighborNet diagram for the complete set of WAVE varieties: the clusters on the right-hand branches

varieties of South(east) England (AusVE, AusE, NZE, FlkE) and the far north, notably ScE (cf. especially NZE and FlkE). On a slightly separate twig but still a member of this first L1 branch, we find ManxE. Cluster 1b is an all-American cluster consisting of the two traditional (and historically related) L1 varieties OzE and AppE as well as CollAmE. Cluster 1c includes the four regional British Isles varieties with the highest feature totals (IrE, WelE, SW, North) and as a fifth member NfldE, the oldest traditional L1 variety in North America. NfldE is rather neatly positioned almost exactly between its two founder dialects, namely IrE and the dialects of the SW of England, which has resulted in NfldE exhibiting one of the highest feature totals of all traditional L1 varieties in the Anglophone world. At the top margin of Cluster 1a we find ChIsE and the only outlier, as it were, in the whole of Cluster 1, namely ChcE. What makes ChcE an outlier is that it clusters exclusively with L1 varieties, i.e. its morphosyntax exhibits a typological profile of an L1 variety, but that it was classified (by our WAVE informant) as an L2 variety in the WAVE data set. Thus we should expect ChcE to be a member of Cluster 2. Why isn’t this the case, and why does ChcE occur rather at the margin of Cluster 1 closest to the L2 cluster (Cluster 2)? Table 7 may give us a clue. Listed here are the top diagnostic features shared by all 30 L1 varieties, i.e. those with the widest spread (an attestation rate “(AR)” of at least 60 %) and the greatest difference (minimum 40 %) to the worldwide attestation rate across all 74 WAVE varieties:3

3 Note that Table 7 and all following tables listing the top diagnostic typological and regional features are based on the relevant tables identifying the most diagnostic features in the typological and regional profile chapters. From these tables those were selected as “top diagnostic features” which exhibit both the widest spread, i.e. highest attestation rates (ARs),

and the largest difference to the relevant worldwide attestation rates (measured in terms of AR difference). This explains why different thresholds have been chosen for the percentages given in the relevant columns for AR and AR difference in the various “top diagnostic tables” in this and the following section.

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Feature no.

Bernd Kortmann and Christoph Wolk

Feature

AR L1 (N=30)

AR differenc e

L1 exceptions

she/her used for inanimatereferents

80.0 %

32.7 %

F28 F155

use of us + NP in subject function ain’t as the negated form of be

90.0 % 76.7 %

40.0 % 32.1 %

F234

like as a focussing device

86.7 %

31.3 %

SE, EAAVE, AppE, LibSE, WhZimE, CollSgE O&SE, LibSE, CollSgE O&SE, IrE, ManxE, WhSAfE, CollSgE, AborE, NZE O&SE, OzE, AppE, LibSE

F1

Table 7: The top diagnostic features for L1 varieties (AR ç 60 %; AR difference ç 40 %)4

The interesting point about ChcE is that in the phenetic diagram it clusters with the L1 varieties even though it does not have a single of the four top diagnostic features in Table 7. Perhaps even more interesting (and telling), however, is that ChcE also lacks the four top diagnostic features for L2 varieties, as we shall see below when discussing Table 8! So, purely structurally speaking, its typological profile makes ChcE a clear (if marginal) instance of an L1 (similar to ChIsE) rather than an L2 variety. But even from a sociolinguistic point of view ChcE is anything but a prototypical L2 variety: Bailey (this volume) describes it as an ethnic dialect acquired by children during their language acquisition period, spoken only by native speakers of English (and, typically, Spanish), and as representing for some of its speakers even their L1 (cf. also E. Schneider, this volume). As a last remark on Table 7, the reader may note the frequency with which O&SE shows up in the column “L1 exceptions”, rivalled only by the two high-contact varieties LibSE and CollSgE. Each of these L1 varieties lacks three of the four top diagnostic features that are both most widespread and most diagnostic of the 30 L1 varieties in the WAVE dataset. This will be worth remembering for LibSE and CollSgE since these two will also be discussed under the heading of “outliers” later in this chapter. On the way up from Cluster 1 to Cluster 2 in Network Global_1, we meet the two Southern African L1 varieties, namely WhSAfE and WhZimE (see also our discussion of their positions at the end of section 4.1). These two round off, as it were, the clustering of so-called Southern hemisphere L1 Englishes (together with AusE, AusVE, NZE, FlkE) of British heritage with dominantly British Isles varieties in (or close to) Cluster 1 in the phenetic Network Global_1. Structurally speaking, though, the two Southern African L1 varieties are torn between the morphosyntactic profile of an L1 and an L2 variety, with WhSAfE still leaning more towards an L1-profile while WhZimE strongly approximates the structural profile of an L2 variety. For example, WhZimE has three of the top diagnostic L2 features (see F45, F55 and F100 in Table 8 below) whereas WhSAfE has only two (F45 and F100). Moreover, WhZimE has a stronger “high-contact ring” to it since its morphosyntactic profile includes three of the four top diagnostic features for high-contact L1 varieties (namely F3, F66 and F174; see Table 10 below), whereas WhSAfE possesses only one of the top high-contact L1 features, namely F3 (alternative forms/phrases for referential (non-dummy) it). The strong L2 affinity of WhZimE may well reflect the fact that the present-day White Zimbabwean speech community has been described as complex and that WhZimE itself has been influenced by different English dialects and postcolonial varieties of English as well as local languages (cf. Fitzmaurice, this volume). In the phenogram Global_1, it may be noted, we find of all L2 varieties BlSAfE and InSAfE positioned very close to WhZimE (cf. also Huber’s discussion of Network Af_2 with regard to the four Southern African varieties of English in his regional profile, this volume). This leads us on to Cluster 2, which includes 15 (!) of the 18 L2 varieties in the WAVE sample. These varieties are characterized vis-à-vis other variety types by the four diagnostic features in Table 8. Of all L2 varieties in Cluster 2, only KenE and NigE do not have F100 (levelling of the difference between present perfect and simple past: present perfect for StE simple past) while for neither MaltE nor for FijiE F209 is attested (addition of to where StE has bare infinitive). The other three varieties listed as L2 exceptions in Table 8 are ChcE, CollFijiE and JamE. All three qualify as outliers, the first of which (ChcE, with its striking absence of four top diagnostic L2 features) we discussed already. CollFijiE and JamE will be discussed when zooming in on Clusters 3 and 4 respectively.

4 See Tables 5 and 6 in the typological profile of the L1 varieties by Szmrecsanyi, this volume.

Morphosyntactic variation in the anglophone world: A global perspective

Feature no. F45 F55 F100 F209

923

Feature

AR L2 (N=18)

AR difference

L2 exceptions

insertion of it where StE favours zero (see Map L2_2) different count/mass noun distinctions resulting in use of plural for StE singular (see Map L2_3) levelling of the difference between present perfect and simple past: present perfect for StE simple past addition of to where StE has bare infin itive (see Map L2_4)

89 % 94 %

46 % 40 %

ChcE, JamE ChcE

83 %

40 %

ChcE, NigE, KenE

72 %

41 %

MaltE, ChcE, JamE, FijiE, CollFijiE

Table 8: The top diagnostic features for L2 varieties (AR ç 70 %; AR difference ç 40 %)5

Network Global_2: Detail of the NeighborNet diagram for the complete set of WAVE varieties: the bottom left branch

Cluster 2a includes all West and East African L2 Englishes, with two South Asian L2 Englishes (PakE and, at a distance, SLkE) at the top left margin of the cluster. The core of the second sub-cluster 2b is formed by the South East Asian L2s MalE and HKE, on the one hand, and IndE as well as the two morphosyntactically very closely related Southern African L2 varieties BlSAfE and IndSAfE. At the margins of 2b we find MaltE and the only outlier in Cluster 2, namely CollSgE, which has been classified as a high-contact L1 variety (in fact, the only one in Asia). And, indeed, CollSgE does attest all four top diagnostic features of high-contact L1s (see Table 10). At the same time, however, none (!) of the top diagnostic general L1 features (Table 7) but three of the four top diagnostic L2 features (Table 8) form part of the morphosyntactic profile of CollSgE. Moreover, as can be seen from its position in Cluster 2b, CollSgE patterns very nicely with the other two Southeast Asian varieties (MalE and HKE). Similarly as for ChcE, we may indeed question the status of CollSgE as an outlier, i.e. as a case of an apparent mismatch between structural type and variety type on socio-historical grounds. CollSgE “has commonly been included in the realm of postcolonial ‘New Englishes’, a term typically referring

5 See Table 5 in the typological profile of the L2 varieties by Lunkenheimer, this volume.

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Bernd Kortmann and Christoph Wolk

to indigenized L2 varieties” (Schröter, this volume) but as a shift variety it came to be classified as a high-contact L1 variety by our WAVE informants. This variety is still under the impact of the local languages (notably Hokkien, Cantonese, and especially Malay), which is certainly a major reason for the three Southeast Asian varieties of English in the WAVE dataset clustering so tightly together. Cluster 4 is the main pidgin/creole cluster in the world phenogram Network WAVE_all. It is dominated by non-Caribbean creoles and pidgins (in fact, including six of the seven Pidgins in the WAVE data set; only ButlE is missing) and has one major split yielding Clusters 4a and 4b. Cluster 4b is neatly subdivided into the three Suriname creoles and the West African Pidgins (WAPEs; cf. Huber’s regional profile of Africa, this volume). Cluster 4a can be subdivided into a large Pacific group of pidgins and creoles and (at the top end of the Cluster 4a) a small Caribbean(-influenced) group of pidgins and creoles. The Pacific group includes six of the seven Pacific pidgins and creoles (only the creoloid PalmE is absent), with the two Australian creoles (TorSC and RRC) and the Pacific pidgins Bislama and TP sharing a branch while HawC and Norf’k are part of the Caribbean-dominated sub-branch of Cluster 4a. Interestingly, it is not the two Australian creoles and the Pacific pidgins which exhibit the greatest morphosyntactic similarities with each other. Rather, TorSC and Bislama, on the one hand, and RRC and TP, on the other hand, pattern most closely together. The small Caribbean group forms a more coherent cluster than the Pacific pidgins and creoles and consists of BrC, SanAC, BelC and – as the only outlier in Cluster 4 – JamE as an L2 variety. What is interesting about the pidgins and creoles in Cluster 4 is that they figure prominently in the column “exceptions” in Table 9, which lists the four top diagnostic features for pidgins and creoles: Feature no. F5

F6

F10 F160 F177

Feature

AR P/Cs

AR difference

P/C exceptions

generalized third person singular pronoun: subject pronouns (see Map P/C_2) generalized third person singular pronoun: object pronouns (see Map P/C_2) no gender distinction in third person singular (see Map P/C_3) no as preverbal negator

80.8 %

42.9 %

SanAC, TrinC, HawC, ButlE, Norf’k

76.9 %

41.8 %

SanAC, TrinC, Bislama, VLibE, ButlE, TP

88.5 %

42.5 %

TrinC, PalmE, HawC

80.8 %

43.0 %

deletion of copula be: before AdjPs (see Map P/C_6)

92.3 %

41.0 %

Bajan, EMarC, Saramaccan, RRC, PalmE TP, Saramaccan

Table 9: The top diagnostic features for pidgins and creoles (AR ç 75 %; AR difference ç 40 %)6

As we shall see when discussing Cluster 3 (more exactly the creole Cluster 3a, the one closest to Cluster 4a), the top diagnostic features in Table 9 are attested in the vast majority of Caribbean creoles, with the exception of TrinC. What is important about JamE, however, is the following: four of the top diagnostic pidgins and creoles features form part of its morphosyntactic profile (i.e. all except for F10), mostly rated as rather rare (i.e. ‘C’), but only two of the top diagnostic L2 features (F55 and F100). Thus, in its morphosyntax JamE rather qualifies as a creole. Compare also Patrick (this volume) on this point: “Indeed, most features which set JamE off from other standard Englishes derive directly from the influence of mesolectal JamC, which is more systematic than JamE …”. What needs to be noted, though, is that many of the creole features of JamE are rare (cf. also Hackert in her regional profile of the Caribbean, this volume). This will become relevant in section 4.3. For the time being, we may simply note that JamE (like ChcE in Cluster 1 and CollSgE in Cluster 2) is not a clear case of an outlier.

6 See Table 3 in the typological profile of the pidgins and creoles by A. Schneider, this volume.

Morphosyntactic variation in the anglophone world: A global perspective

925

Network Global_3: Detail of the NeighborNet diagram for the complete set of WAVE varieties: the top left branch

The most heterogeneous cluster in Network WAVE_all is Cluster 3, as illustrated in the network detail given in Network Global_3. Cluster 3a is an almost pure creole cluster, dominated by six Caribbean creoles, with the two Liberian varieties of English (VLibE and, as the only outlier in this cluster, the high-contact L1 variety LibSE) at the bottom end and Gullah at the top end, clearly separated from the Caribbean creoles forming the core of this cluster. Cluster 3b is the most coherent cluster of high-contact (or even: higher-contact) L1 varieties in the entire network and, on top of that, has a strong geographical signal in that it is dominated by North American varieties, notably SEAmE and the three AAVEs, which Gullah (in Cluster 3a) is positioned next to. Given their history and socio-cultural background, one could (or rather should) also count the two Liberian Englishes and BahE into this North American cluster (interestingly, BahE is structurally closest to EAAVE, which in turn is located at a clear distance from UAAVE and RAAVE). As pointed out by Singler (2008: 103), the two Liberian varieties have remained North American. At the top end of Cluster 3b we find, branching off from the same node, the two South Atlantic L1 varieties StHE and TdCE, both of which have not only been shaped by Southeastern British input dialects, but also by pidgins and creoles, so that both qualify, according to Wilson (2008: 224) using Holm’s classification (1988/89), as “creole-influenced non-creole Englishes”. In fact, at one point in its history there has also been direct settlement of Tristan da Cunha by people from St Helena. A general point to be noted with regard to Cluster 3 is that it is almost exclusively populated by the most non-standard WAVE varieties, i.e. those with the highest feature totals (cf. Table 4 above). As the major higher-contact L1 cluster, almost all (with the exception of LibSE) of the L1 varieties in Cluster 3 (especially 3b) attest all of the top diagnostic features of L1 varieties, in general (see Table 7 above), as well as all of the top diagnostic features for high-contact L1 varieties listed in Table 10 below:

926

Feature

F3 F66 F132 F174

alternative forms/phrases for referential (non-dummy) it (see Map L1_6) indefinite article one/wan zero past tense forms of regular verbs (see Map L1_4) deletion of auxiliary be: before progressive

AR in traditional varieties

Feature no.

AR in high-contact varieties

Bernd Kortmann and Christoph Wolk

70 % 55 % 55 % 60 %

20 % 10 % 10 % 20 %

Table 10: The top diagnostic features for high-contact L1 varieties (AR ç 60 %; AR difference ç 40 %)7

As is to be expected for varieties with very high feature totals, they possess also many morphosyntactic features which are found in other variety types. Thus the high-contact L1 varieties in Cluster 3b, in particular, also have most of the top diagnostic L2 features (cf. Table 8 above). The most heterogeneous sub-cluster is Cluster 3c, with three Pacific varieties (AborE and, clustering very closely together, PalmE and CollFijiE) and, at the far end of the entire Cluster 3, the near-isolate ButlE, which Hosali (2008: 563–564) characterizes as a variety oscillating between a minimal pidgin and an early fossilized interlanguage. But the whole sub-cluster 3c oscillates somewhat between (higher-contact) L1 varieties, pidgins and L2 varieties (as found to the far right of ButlE, in Cluster 2 of the world phenogram) – which makes it almost the structural dustbin of the world phenogram or, more positively, the meeting point of true outliers: AborE (a high-contact L1 variety), PalmE (a creole), CollFijiE (an L2 variety) and ButlE (a pidgin) are all found far or rather (AborE) far apart from those clusters in the Network WAVE_all where their respective variety type is located. But then their classifications in terms of variety types have not been easy in the first place, as already indicated for ButlE. Siegel (this volume) qualifies both AborE and PalmE as creoloids, and the same is done by Tent and Mugler (2008: 237) for CollFijiE. This oscillation between different variety types can be very nicely illustrated by checking for each of the members of Cluster 3c which of the altogether 13 top diagnostic features for high-contact L1 varieties (Table 10), L2 varieties (Table 8) and pidgins and creoles (Table 9) are attested. The result is summarized schematically in Table 11:

L1c P/C L2 ! all

AborE

PalmE

CollFijE

ButlE

! ! (1)

! + (1)

! ! +

! + !

+ majority

( ) minority

Table 11: Cluster 3c: Presence and absence of the top diagnostic features of high-contact L1 varieties, English-based Pidgins and Creoles, and L2 varieties

The story Table 11 tells us is the following: (i) all four varieties in Cluster 3c have all top diagnostic high-contact L1 features; (ii) all four varieties also have either all top diagnostic pidgins and creoles features or at least a majority of them (i.e. three or four); (iii) the most interesting difference among the four varieties we can observe for the top diagnostic L2 features: AborE and PalmE have only one each of these, CollFijE has three out of the four relevant features, and ButlE has all four top diagnostic L2 features. Thus the L2-signal is getting stronger the further to the right in Table 11 one moves, and this is reflected very well by the left-to-right arrangement of AborE, PalmE, CollFijiE and ButlE in Cluster 3, with ButlE closest to the L2 Cluster 2.

7 See Table 6 in the typological profile of the L1 varieties by Szmrecsanyi, this volume.

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What are the major lessons we have learnt from discussing the world phenogram Network WAVE_all and its details in Networks Global_1 to Global_3? For one, variety types rule the Anglophone world, as it were, in a similar way as they most likely rule many other world regions, i.e. they determine morphosyntax-based typological profiling. Secondly, there are hardly any convincing instances of outliers in the world phenogram. Thirdly, the variety type “high-contact L1” is very heterogeneous and thus, as e.g. suggested by Siegel (this volume), in need of refinement. Fourth, despite the dominance of variety types clustering together in the four big clusters in the world phenogram, we can clearly perceive geographical signals within each of these clusters. It is this line of thought that we want to pursue in the following section, which will culminate in the question whether the geographical signal in morphosyntax-based typological profiling can even be strengthened.

4.3 The strength of the geographical signal Having stressed the primacy of variety type as an explanatory factor of morphosyntactic variation throughout the previous sections, it is in the present section that we want to explore the role played by geography when considering (i) individual morphosyntactic features and (ii) distinctive morphosyntactic patterns, partly even entire morphosyntax-based typological profiles, from the point of view of the individual Anglophone world regions or larger parts thereof (e.g. West vs. East vs. South(ern) Africa). Concerning (i), we will simply list the top diagnostic features for the individual Anglophone world regions in Tables 12 to 17, following the same method as outlined for the top diagnostic features for the individual variety types in the previous section. As can easily be seen from the length of the relevant tables, there are only very few top diagnostic features for Africa (Table 12) and the Australia/Pacific regions (Table 13) whereas the relevant lists are much longer and show, on average, much higher attestation rates for Asia (Table 14), the Caribbean (Table 16) and North America (Table 17). The tables are given in the alphabetical order of the Anglophone world regions: Feature no.

Feature

AR Africa

AR difference

F116 F169

come-based future/ingressive markers (see Map Af_2) Non-standard system underlying responses to negative yes/no questions

63 % 75 %

40 % 40 %

AR in AP

AR difference

61.5 % 61.5 %

49.3 % 50.7 %

Table 12: The top diagnostic features for Africa (AR ç 50 %; AR difference ç 40 %)8 Feature no. F36 F37

Feature 1st

distinct forms for inclusive/exclusive person non-singular more number distinctions in pronouns than simply singular vs. plural

Table 13: The top diagnostic features for the Australia Pacific region (AR ç 50 %; AR difference ç 40 %)9 Feature no. F42 F43 F44 F45 F47 F55 F62

Feature

AR Asia

AR difference

pro-drop with object referents (see Map As_2) pro-drop with subjects pro-drop involving dummy subjects (see Map As_2) insertion of it where StE has zero deletion of it in non-referential it is-constructions plural for StE singular in count/mass nouns zero where StE has definite article (see Map As_5)

100 % 100 % 85.7 % 100 % 71.4 % 100 % 100 %

64.9 % 50.0 % 50.6 % 56.8 % 43.0 % 45.9 % 43.2 %

8 See also section 3 in the regional profile of the African varieties by Huber, this volume. Note, however, that Huber counts ‘C’ rated features as absent in his calculations, and therefore arrives at somewhat different figures.

9 See Table 5 in the regional profile of the Australasian and Pacific varieties by Siegel, this volume.

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F63 F84 F100 F109 F123 F127 F133 F215 F227

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zero where StE has indefinite article (see Map As_5) comparative marking only with than simple present for continuative or experiential perfect perfect marker already present tense forms where StE has past non-standard modals for politeness (see Map As_6) double marking of past tense conjunction doubling: correlative conjs. inverted word order in indirect questions (see Map As_8)

100 % 71.4 % 100 % 71.4 % 85.7 % 85.7 % 71.4 % 71.4 % 100 %

48.6 % 49.8 % 56.8 % 41.7 % 47.9 % 62.7 % 43.0 % 40.3 % 40.5 %

Table 14: The top diagnostic features for Asia (AR ç 70 %; AR difference ç 40 %)10 Feature no. F1 F26 F35 F95 F96 F163 F232

Feature

AR BrIsles excl. BrC

AR difference

she/her used for inanimate referents (see Map BrIs_2) object pronoun forms as (modifying) possessive pronouns: first person singular (see Map BrIs_4) forms or phrases for the second person singular pronoun other than you (see Map BrIs_6) be sat/stood with progressive meaning (see Map BrIs_7) there with past participle in resultative contexts (see Map BrIs_8) was – weren’t split (see Map BrIs_5) either order of pronominal objects in double object constructions (see Map BrIs_3)

90 % 90 %

43 % 49 %

60 %

40 %

70 % 80 % 60 % 80 %

55 % 42 % 41 % 57 %

Table 15: The top diagnostic features for the regional varieties of the British Isles (AR ç 60 %; AR difference ç 40 %)11 Feature no.

Feature

AR Car

AR difference

F19 F141 F22 F206 F23 F114 F150 F201 F149 F151 F5 F225 F104 F6 F177 F160

subject pronoun forms as (modifying) possessive pronouns: first person plural other forms/phrases for copula ‘be’: before locatives you as (modifying) possessive pronoun existentials with forms of have second person pronoun forms other than you as (modifying) poss. pronoun go-based future markers serial verbs: come = ‘movement towards’ for-based complementizers serial verbs: go = ‘movement away from’ serial verbs: constructions with 3 verbs generalized third person singular pronoun: subject pronouns sentence-initial focus marker completive/perfect done generalized third person singular pronoun: object pronouns deletion of copula be: before adjectives no as preverbal negator

84.6 % 84.6 % 92.3 % 76.9 % 84.6 % 100 % 76.9 % 84.6 % 76.9 % 76.9 % 84.6 % 76.9 % 76.9 % 76.9 % 92.3 % 76.9 %

57.6 % 57.6 % 57.2 % 52.6 % 50.8 % 50.0 % 49.9 % 49.5 % 48.5 % 48.5 % 46.8 % 44.5 % 43.1 % 41.8 % 41.0 % 39.1 %

Table 16: The top diagnostic features for the Caribbean (AR ç 75 %; AR difference ç 40 %)12

10 See Table 1 in the regional profile of the Asian varieties by Mesthrie, this volume. 11 See Table 4 in the regional profile of the British Isles varieties by Kortmann, this volume.

12 See Table 2 in the regional profile of the Caribbean varieties by Hackert, this volume.

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Feature no.

Feature

AR NAm

AR difference

F226 F126 F218 F9 F156 F125 F155 F105 F135 F121 F202 F56 F134 F104 F186 F203 F83 F70 F144 F209

negative inversion new aspectual quasi-modals affirmative anymore benefactive dative ain’t for have new quasi-modals ain’t for be completive have/be done +pp a-prefixing of other words double modals for to + infinitive for purpose plural absence after quantifiers a-prefixing of verbs completive done which for who for (to) as infinitive marker comparatives and superlatives of participles this here/them there demonstratives gotten distinct from got addition of to where StE has bare infinitive

90 % 90 % 70 % 100 % 90 % 80 % 100 % 70 % 70 % 80 % 80 % 90 % 70 % 80 % 80 % 90 % 70 % 100 % 60 % 70 %

66 % 60 % 58 % 57 % 57 % 56 % 55 % 54 % 50 % 49 % 48 % 47 % 47 % 46 % 46 % 45 % 44 % 43 % 41 % 39 %

Table 17: The top diagnostic features for North America (AR ç 60 %; AR difference ç 40 %)13

Having identified the most diagnostic morphosyntactic features for each of the Anglophone world regions represented in the WAVE data set, it should also be recalled where in Network WAVE_all and the three more detailed networks Global_1 to Global_3 the strongest geographical signals were observed. Cluster 1 is clearly dominated by British Isles varieties. All ten regional British Isles varieties are positioned in Clusters 1a and 1c. Cluster 1b is the compact North American sub-cluster in Cluster 1. Inside Cluster 1a there is also a minor Australian/Pacific signal, with AusE, AusVE and NZE exhibiting a high degree of similarity. In Cluster 2 the largest and most coherent geographical groups are those of Africa (CamE, KenE, NigE, UgE, TznE, GhE) in Cluster 2a and Southeast Asia (CollSgE, MalE, HKE) in Cluster 2b. Smaller, morphosyntactically most similar and at the same time geographically contiguous sets of varieties are formed by the two South Asian varieties PakE and SLkE in Cluster 2a and, with a bit of good will, the Southern African cluster formed by IndSAfE and BlSAfE in Cluster 2b together with WhZimE and WhSAfE. The Caribbean and North America are the Anglophone world regions dominating Cluster 3, the Caribbean in Cluster 3a and North America (more exactly the American South) in Cluster 3b. There is also a marked geographical signal from Liberia, with the two Liberian varieties forming a distinct branch of their own in Cluster 3a, and – again with a bit of good will, namely when acknowledging the South Atlantic as a viable geographical world region – StHE and TdCE as part of Cluster 3b. Even in the outlier Cluster 3c there is a geographical, more exactly Australia/Pacific, signal (AborE, PalmE and CollFijiE). Cluster 4, finally, revealed very distinct geographical patterns, too: a clear West African Pidgin sub-cluster as well as a Suriname creoles sub-cluster in Cluster 4b, and in Cluster 4a six Pacific P/Cs vis-à-vis three Caribbean varieties (plus BrC as a Caribbean offspring). Thirdly and finally, we want to address the question whether the already quite remarkable geographical signal which emerges from the world phenogram can even be strengthened. The answer is: it can. This answer emerged when, using exactly the same algorithm as outlined in section 4.1, we created a second world phenogram which is based exclusively on the ‘A’ and ‘B’ rated features in each of the 74 WAVE varieties, i.e. which left out of consideration all the rare (‘C’ rated) features. The relevant phenogram is given as a whole in Network Global_4 and will be discussed below on the basis of its two halves, given in Networks Global_5 (lefthand branches) and Global_6 (right-hand branches). 13 See section 3.2 in the regional profile of the American varieties by E. Schneider, this volume.

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Network Global_4: NeighborNet diagram for the complete set of WAVE varieties (ab noisy)

We can see that the clear division into four clusters (or regions) of the original world phenogram discussed in section 4.2 (and as schematically given in Figure Global_2 above) has gone, and that the purely ABbased world phenogram looks much more diffuse. Upon closer inspection, though, we will see that many of the groupings are similar to the main and sub-clusters identified in the previous section. But there is also one noticeable difference: we can observe a higher degree of clustering according to geography, i.e. a distinct strengthening of the geographical signal if we consider only those features which are used regularly or even pervasively in each of the 74 varieties. Let us quickly compare similarities and differences between the new AB-based world phenogram and the original ABC-based one. Consider first Network Global_5 on the next page. Observations concerning the new Cluster 1: Sub-clusters 1a and 1c of the original ABC-based phenogram, i.e. the vast majority of regional British Isles varieties and the colonial dialects (AusE, AusVE, NZE, NfldE), have moved together in Network Global_5 and now form Cluster 1a. The (originally quite isolated) North American cluster 1b has merged with the originally most distinct North American Cluster 3b to form Cluster 1b, which now consists of eight out of the ten North American WAVE varieties. The new AB-based Cluster 1c largely consists of high-contact L1 varieties that already clustered at the margins of Cluster 1a (ChIsE, ChcE, O&SE, FalkE) in Network Global_1, but have now been joined by JamE. So JamE has now become a real outlier, as it were: as an L2 variety with many creole features it originally patterned with Caribbean creoles in Cluster 4a, now – with many of its (largely C-rated) creole features taken away – it clusters with L1 varieties, but at least with high-contact L1s and a borderline L1/L2 case like ChcE. Observations concerning the new Cluster 2: Whereas the main L2 varieties in Cluster 2 of the original ABCbased phenogram formed two rather compact groups, there is now only one compact group including most of the L2 varieties in cluster 2a (dominated by eight African L2 varieties). IndSAfE and especially IndE have moved away from the core L2 varieties (but IndSAfE is now more similar to IndE than it was in the original network diagram), just as WhSAfE is now closer (i.e. morphosyntactically more similar) to the L2 core than is WhZimE. What is striking is that the Southeast Asian varieties completely left Cluster 2 and are now forming a new sub-cluster 3a, as can be seen in Network Global_6 (see p. 932).

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Network Global_5: Detail of the NeighborNet diagram for the complete set of WAVE varieties: left-hand branches (ab noisy)

Observations concerning the new Cluster 3: The Southeast Asian cluster (CollSgE, MalE, HKE) has left the original L2-cluster and moved right close with three of the four Pacific (PalmE, CollFijiE) and South Asian (ButlE) pidgins/creoloids that formerly populated the outlier cluster 3c. The fourth member of this former outlier cluster, AborE, has moved slightly away and is now part of an almost perfect Pacific sub-cluster in Cluster 4, namely Cluster 4a. Observations concerning the new Cluster 4: The new Cluster 4a consists of the same varieties that formerly were positioned closely together in the pidgins and creoles cluster 4a, now only joined by AborE and thus making it an even more perfect Australian/Pacific cluster. The only outlier here still is BelC, which has continued to keep company with the Australian/Pacific pidgins and creoles. The old Cluster 4b remains completely stable with its two branches (Suriname creoles and WAPEs) as Cluster 4b in the AB-based phenogram. Next to these pidgins and radical, strongly basilectal creoles, we find the new clusters 4c and 4d: they separate nicely two groups of Caribbean creoles which had not clustered together in the original phenogram, namely intermediate or mesolectal creoles in Cluster 4c (JamC, GuyC, VinC, SanAC, BrC as well as Gullah) and light creoles in Cluster 4d (TrinC, Bajan, BahC). Cluster 4e, finally, includes again the pairings of the two Liberian (VLibE, LibSE) and the two South Atlantic varieties (StHE and TdCE), joined at a distance (morphosyntactically and geographically) by HawC. Again we can conclude: the geographical signal has become stronger with the exclusion of the rarely attested morphosyntactic features.

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Network Global_6: Detail of the NeighborNet diagram for the complete set of WAVE varieties: right-hand branches (ab noisy)

5 Decision trees How good are the 235 WAVE features at discriminating between variety types or regions? The most frequent and most diagnostic features for particular variety types and regions were discussed above and in the respective surveys. In this section we approach a related, but different question: What combination of features allows a sufficiently accurate classification, using as little information as possible? We can use classification and regression tree (CART) algorithms to create decision trees. These can be thought of as series of questions, here typically of the form “Does the variety have feature X?”14 If the answer is yes, we follow the left-hand branch of the tree, if not, the right-hand branch. Further questions now pertain only to the subset of varieties that match the exactly same pattern of previous answers. At some point, the classification will be good enough, and we arrive at a terminal node that indicates the most likely variety type or region for a variety with that profile. Consider Figure Global_3 on the next page, which displays such a decision tree for variety type. At the top of the tree, we find the question whether F141 (other forms/phrases for copula ‘be’: before locatives) is unattested. If this is not the case, i.e. if this feature is attested, we immediately arrive at a terminal node: this variety is most likely to be a pidgin or creole. The numbers inside the node show how many varieties of each type have this profile; in this case, one L1, no L2, and 19 pidgins or creoles. The single L1 in this terminal node is BahE, which

14 For technical reasons, some questions ask whether a feature is present and others whether a feature is absent. Which branch to choose depends on the actual question.

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Figure Global_3: Decision tree for classifying varieties into variety types. Numbers in terminal nodes indicate totals of varieties per type in that node, in order: L1, L2, P/C. F141: other forms/phrases for copula ‘be’: before locatives F68: them instead of demonstrative those F6: generalized third person singular pronoun: object pronouns

generally (as was discussed above) is most similar to the Afro-American vernacular Englishes, but does have this mostly pidgin/creole feature. Also note that this feature is not included in the list of top diagnostic and widespread features for pidgins and creoles in Table 9: it is very diagnostic, but not widespread enough. While we end the tree here, note that one further question would be enough to perfectly separate the L1 from the pidgins/ creoles on this branch: F181 (agreement sensitive to subject type (nominal vs pronominal)), which is attested in BahE but not in the other 19 varieties. If F141 is unattested, the next node concerns F68 (them instead of demonstrative those). If F68 is unattested, we again arrive at a terminal node, this time one indicating high probability that we are dealing with an L2 variety. This contains more misclassifications than the previous terminal node: three L1s and two pidgins/creoles. The three L1s involved are O&SE, CollSgE and WhSAfE, all of which exist in a language contact situation or have historically done so; the two pidgins/creoles are TP and Bislama. We wish to highlight that the question regarding F68 pertains only to the set of remaining varieties, i.e. after removing those where F141 is attested. Looking at all varieties, F68 is also unattested in some pidgins and creoles from Africa (NigP, GhP, Krio and VLibE) and the Caribbean (EMarC, Saramaccan and Sranan), but these were already classified in the first step. If F68 is attested, there is a single remaining question, namely whether F6 (generalized third person singular pronoun: object pronouns) is unattested. If so, the variety is most likely a L1, although one L2 (InSAfE) and one pidgin/ creole (ButlE) also fit the same profile. If that feature is present, however, the variety is most likely to be a pidgin or creole, with four exceptions: two L1s (AborE and NfdlE) and two L2s (JamE and CollFijiE). In total, this solution consists of three questions spread three levels deep and correctly classifies 62 of the 74 varieties, or about 84 %. A perfect solution is possible with 11 questions spread across five levels. However, these do not necessarily involve the same questions as the tree in Figure Global_3. For example, the second question in the perfect network would pertain to F155 (ain’t as the negated form of be), which at first leads to a worse classification rate, but allows easier splitting later. Let us now turn to geographic region. Figure Global_4 shows the corresponding decision tree. There are more regions than variety types and the numbers in the terminal nodes represent, in order, Africa, America, Asia, Australia, the British Isles, the Caribbean, the EU (only MaltE), the Pacific and the South Atlantic. At the top of the tree in Figure Global_4, we find F18 (subject pronoun forms as (modifying) possessive pronouns:

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Figure Global_4: Decision tree for classifying varieties into regions. Numbers in terminal nodes indicate totals of varieties per region in that node, in order: Africa, America, Asia, Australia, British Isles, Caribbean, EU, Pacific, South Atlantic F18: subject pronoun forms as (modifying) possessive pronouns: first person singular F226: “negative inversion” (sentence-initial neg. auxiliary verbs) F95: be sat/stood with progressive meaning F116: come-based future/ingressive markers F209: addition of to where StE has bare infinitive F190: relativizer what or a form derived from what

first person singular). If this feature is attested, the variety is most likely Caribbean, with three exceptions: BrC in the British Isles, which has a Caribbean origin, ButlE in South Asia and RRC in Australia. If the feature is unattested, the next question pertains to F226 (negative inversion (sentence-initial negated auxiliary verbs)). Presence of this feature strongly indicates an American origin, with five exceptions: BahE in the Caribbean, which is linked to North America through settlement history, the South Atlantic varieties StHE and TdCE, CamE in Africa and CollFijiE in the Pacific. Next, a group of varieties from the British Isles are split off via F95 (be sat/stood with progressive meaning). This feature is attested in seven varieties in the British Isles and in FlkE in the Southeast Atlantic. Among the remaining varieties, an African group can be split off by considering F116 (come-based future/ingressive markers). This feature is attested in ten African varieties, with only two exceptions: MalE in Asia and Bislama in the Pacific. The next question pertaining to F209 (addition of to where StE has bare infinitive) splits off a group with exactly four varieties in two regions. The African varieties where this feature is attested are TznE, KenE, InSAfE, and BlSAfE; in Asia, IndE, PakE, SlkE, and HKE have this feature. The final question concerns F190 (relativizer what or a form derived from what). This feature is attested in a very mixed group containing the three remaining Caribbean varieties, SE and ChIsE in the British Isles, MaltE, WhSAfE in Africa and AborE in Australia. If this feature is unattested, the variety is most likely to be from the Pacific, although six other varieties fit the same profile: O&SE in the British Isles, ChcE in North America, CollSgE in Asia, as well as the remaining three Australian varieties AusE, AusVE, and TorSC. Overall, there are six questions in this tree, and a correct classification rate of only 65 percent. The most complete classification would require 24 questions across nine levels, and would still contain one misclassification, failing to split FlkE from a group containing varieties from the British Isles.

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6 Conclusion This then is where the curtain finally falls. What the present atlas has tried to achieve is to survey and truly map (not just in its figurative sense) the morphosyntactic variation in the Anglophone world on a unified basis (the WAVE feature set consisting of 235 members), identifying typological profiles of 74 spontaneous spoken varieties of English and sizable groups thereof (including their most diagnostic properties). This atlas should thus provide a solid, or at least a much more solid, basis for passing judgement on vernacular angloversals and features or feature constellations most diagnostic of individual Anglophone world regions (i.e. candidates for areoversals) and the three major variety types (L1, L2, pidgins and creoles) each and every variety in the WAVE data set had been assigned to (i.e. candidates for so-called varioversals). At this point we may also formulate what are arguably the most important conclusions deriving from our exercise in typological profiling in this and the preceding chapters (notably in the regional profiles on Africa and the British Isles): (i) geography matters as long as we compare with each other the morphosyntax of varieties belonging to the same variety type, (ii) rare morphosyntactic features weaken the geographical and strengthen the typological (variety type) signal, while (iii) moderately frequent and pervasively used features strengthen the geographical signal (recall especially the comparison of Network WAVE_all with Network Global_4 in section 4.3); (iv) Trudgill’s (2009, 2011) highly heterogeneous variety type ‘high-contact L1’ needs to be subdivided into at least two non-standard subsets. One of these subsets would be formed by high-contact British Isles (e.g. ChIsE, WelE) and colonial dialects (e.g. AusE, NZE, FlkE). The other subset would include L1 varieties with a history or present-day sociolinguistic reality of heavy language contact (e.g. UAAVE, BahE, LibSE), i.e. co-existence in the past or present with non-English L1 languages and/or English-based pidgins/creoles resulting in different degrees of pidginization, creolization and/or indigenization (as for shift varieties like IrE or AborE). Standard(ized) high-contact varieties may form a third subset of this variety type. Using a questionnaire-based survey method as in language typology, the WAVE undertaking is hoped to provide a promising basis for truly integrating our present knowledge of the structural variation in varieties of English into any of the following fields of research: (i) typological comparisons (along the lines and in the spirit of Kortmann 2004 and Siemund 2013), (ii) pidgin and creole studies, (iii) comparative studies of nonstandard (especially higher-contact and L2) varieties and English-based pidgins and creoles not only from a contact, but also from a second language acquisition perspective, including a comparison of their morphosyntactic profiles with those of learner varieties of English (cf. e.g. the volume by Mukherjee and Hundt 2011, and in that volume Szmrecsanyi and Kortmann 2011), and (iv) similar large surveys of morphosyntactic variation on a global scale in varieties of other world languages, notably French, German, Italian, Russian or, especially, Spanish. The time is more than ripe for large research projects of that kind. WAVE is a dynamic, still evolving project, with regular updates of eWAVE, The electronic World Atlas of Varieties of English (Kortmann and Lunkenheimer 2011), based upon critical feedback by as well new input from the research community making use of this tool in teaching and research (cf. e.g. Davydova et al. 2011 for some promising lines of research). Yet even as the electronic tool will be evolving, the present volume, this is our firm conviction, will be of lasting service as a comparative grammar of the Anglophone world, as an invaluable guide to understanding the larger typological picture, and as offering a powerful key to understanding the role that geography and variety types play in determining the structural variation to be observed. At the same time the present atlas, in tandem with eWAVE, should not be used just as a work of reference, but as a starting-point for new research – whether building on or in critical reaction to the WAVE enterprise. There are still many fascinating issues to be explored in varieties of English, quite apart from the fact that, as Edgar Schneider rightly points out in the conclusion of his regional profile chapter on North America (this volume), “the nature of the database is such that in all cases external, sociolinguistically motivated and text-based evidence will be welcomed to corroborate the claims made” here. May the present atlas help to give the new findings and insights their appropriate place in the grand picture, i.e. in what we know concerning the patterns and limits of the morphosyntactic variation space to be observed in the unusually rich range of non-standard varieties and pidgin and creole languages spoken in the Anglophone world!

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Bernd Kortmann and Christoph Wolk

References Bryant, David, and Vincent Moulton. 2004. Neighbor-Net: an agglomerative method for the construction of phylogenetic networks. Molecular Biology and Evolution 21: 255–265. Chambers, Jack. 2004. Dynamic typology and vernacular universals. In: Bernd Kortmann (ed.), Dialectology Meets Typology: Dialect Grammar from a Cross-Linguistic Perspective, 127–145. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Cysouw, Michael. 2007. New approaches to cluster analysis of typological indices. In: Peter Grzybek, and Reinhard Köhler (eds.), Exact Methods in the Study of Language and Text, 61–76. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Davydova, Julia, Michaela Hilbert, Lukas Pietsch, and Peter Siemund. 2011. Comparing varieties of English: problems and perspectives. In: Peter Siemund (ed.), Linguistic Universals and Language Variation, 291–323. Berlin/New York: De Gruyter Mouton. Dress, Andreas W. M., and Daniel H. Huson. 2004. Constructing splits graphs. Transactions on Computational Biology and Bioinformatics 1: 109–115. Filppula, Markku, Juhani Klemola, and Heli Paulasto (eds.) 2009. Vernacular Universals and Language Contacts: Evidence from Varieties of English and Beyond. London/New York: Routledge. Holm, John. 1988/1989. Pidgins and Creoles. 2 volumes. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hosali, Priya. 2008. Butler English: morphology and syntax. In: Rajend Mesthrie (ed.), Varieties of English: Africa, South and Southeast Asia, 563–577. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Huson, Daniel H., and David Bryant. 2006. Application of phylogenetic networks in evolutionary studies. Molecular Biology and Evolution 23: 254–267. Kortmann, Bernd (ed.) 2004. Dialectology meets Typology: Dialect Grammar from a Cross-Linguistic Perspective. Berlin/ New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Kortmann, Bernd, and Kerstin Lunkenheimer (eds.) 2011. The electronic World Atlas of Varieties of English. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. Electronic resource. http://www.ewave-atlas.org. Kortmann, Bernd, and Benedikt Szmrecsanyi. 2004. Global synopsis – morphological and syntactic variation in English. In: Bernd Kortmann, Kate Burridge, Rajend Mesthrie, and Edgar Schneider (eds.), A Handbook of Varieties of English, Vol. 2: Morphology and Syntax, 1142–1202. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Kortmann, Bernd, and Benedikt Szmrecsanyi. 2011. Parameters of morphosyntactic variation in World Englishes: prospects and limitations of searching for universals. In: Peter Siemund (ed.), Linguistic Universals and Language Variation, 264–290. Berlin/New York: De Gruyter Mouton. McMahon, April, Paul Heggarty, Robert McMahon, and Warren Maguire. 2007. The sound patterns of Englishes: repre-

senting phonetic similarity. English Language and Linguistics 11: 113–142. McMahon, April M.S., and Robert McMahon. 2005. Language Classification by Numbers. Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press. Mukherjee, Joybrato, and Marianne Hundt (eds.) 2011. Exploring Second-Language Varieties of English and Learner Englishes: Bridging a Paradigm Gap. Amsterdam: Benjamins. Nerbonne, John, Peter Kleiweg, Wilbert Heeringa, and Franz Manni. 2008. Projecting dialect distances to geography: bootstrapping clustering vs. clustering with noise. In: Christine Preisach, Lars Schmidt-Thieme, Hans Burkhardt, and Reinhold Decker (eds.), Data Analysis, Machine Learning, and Applications. Proceedings of the 31st Annual Meeting of the German Classification Society, 647–654. Berlin: Springer. Siemund, Peter. 2013. Varieties of English: A Typological Approach. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Singler, John. 2008. Liberian Settler English: phonology. In: Rajend Mesthrie (ed.), Varieties of English: Africa, South and Southeast Asia, 102–114. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Szmrecsanyi, Benedikt, and Bernd Kortmann. 2011. Typological profiling: learner Englishes versus indigenized L2 varieties of English. In: Joybrato Mukherjee, and Marianne Hundt (eds.), Exploring Second-Language Varieties of English and Learner Englishes: Bridging a Paradigm Gap, 167–187. Amsterdam: Benjamins. Szmrecsanyi, Benedikt, and Christoph Wolk. 2011. Holistic corpus-based dialectology. Brazilian Journal of Applied Linguistics/Revista Brasileira de Linguística Aplicada 11(2): 561–592. Szmrecsanyi, Benedikt, and Bernd Kortmann. 2009. Vernacular universals and angloversals in a typological perspective. In: Markku Filppula, Juhani Klemola, and Heli Paulasto (eds.), Vernacular Universals and Language Contacts: Evidence from Varieties of English and Beyond, 33–53. London/New York: Routledge. Tent, Jan, and France Mugler. 2008. Fiji English: phonology. In: Kate Burridge, and Bernd Kortmann (eds.), Varieties of English: The Pacific and Australasia, 234–266. Berlin/ New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Trudgill, Peter. 2009. Sociolinguistic typology and complexification. In: Geoffrey Sampson, David Gil, and Peter Trudgill (eds.), Language Complexity as an Evolving Variable, 98–109. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Trudgill, Peter. 2011. Sociolinguistic Typology: Social Determinants of Linguistic Complexity. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Wilson, Sheila. 2008. St. Helena English: phonology. In: Rajend Mesthrie (ed.), Varieties of English: Africa, South and Southeast Asia, 223–230. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter.

Index of varieties and languages

937

Index of varieties and languages Aboriginal creoles 774–775 Aboriginal English 586, 596–619, 622, 774–775, 777–778, 780–782, 829, 839, 864, 926, 929–931, 935 Acrolectal Fiji English 775–778, 782, 846, 859, 868–869 African American Vernacular English 80, 113, 141–144, 148–151, 159–160, 170, 173–174, 181, 186, 225, 322, 358–361, 364, 567, 644, 718, 739, 742, 746–751, 758–759, 778, 782, 839–841 Afrikaans 483, 486–489, 494, 501, 505–506, 511–517 Afrikaans English 511–514, 516–517 Akan 222–224, 227, 238–244, 247, 265, 280, 345, 352, 383–390, 394–401, 404 Akewaio 265 Akyem 244 American English 30–33, 72, 88, 200, 211–212, 229, 238, 323, 384, 461, 486, 488, 524, 532, 542, 588–590, 643, 655, 659, 662, 735–736, 742; see also Colloquial American English Amish English 141 Anglo-Manx 48–51, 54 Antiguan Creole 266 Appalachian English 80, 113, 148, 160, 173, 695, 739, 742, 748–751, 758–761, 841, 921 Arabic 410, 417, 540, 664 Arawak 265, 329 Arekuna 265 Asanti 201 Ateso 475 Australian creoles 777, 780 Australian Vernacular English 596–597, 600, 611, 617, 920, 930; see also Colloquial Australian English Baba Malay 563 Bahamian English 80, 113, 144, 169–179, 181–183, 710–714, 716–724, 727–729, 761, 839, 925, 935 Bahamian Creole 180–196, 710–713, 717–721, 726–729, 893–894, 897, 931 Barbadian Creole English (Bajan) 151, 197–209, 198, 201, 266, 402, 710–713, 716–717, 720–721, 726–729, 893–894, 897, 931 Barwe 483 Bassa 361, 376 Basuse 291, 293 Bazaar Malay 563 Bekwarra 419–426 Belfast English 39 Belizean Creole 243, 247, 255–264, 707, 710–717, 726–727, 730–731, 893–894, 901, 924, 931 Bengali 321, 505, 524–525 Berbice Dutch Creole 265–266 Bhojpuri 265, 321, 501–505 Bioko Pidgin 394

Bislama 765, 774–777, 780–782, 893, 896, 901, 908, 924, 933 Black South African English 435, 493–500, 513, 518, 802–805, 808, 821, 846, 857–861, 864–865, 922, 929 Bodo 524 British Creole 679, 682, 698–699, 702, 863, 893–894, 924, 929–931 British English 30–34, 61–62, 92–93, 99, 103, 210–211, 382–383, 386, 388–390, 476–479, 486–488, 524, 532, 540–542, 545, 585, 588–589, 654–655, 658–664 Butler English 523, 698, 785, 802–804, 876, 891–893, 897, 901, 916, 926, 931 Cameroon English 433–440, 441, 443, 810–812, 822, 859–860, 929 Cameroon Pidgin 394, 402–404, 417, 433–435, 441–453, 808, 893 Canadian English 109–110, 660 Cantonese 548–557, 563, 575–576, 643, 924 Carib 265, 330 Channel lsland English 98–105, 680, 696–697, 701, 921, 930, 935 Chicano English 80, 113, 156–166, 660, 701, 739, 748–751, 758–761, 846–848, 857–861, 864, 869–870, 921–924, 930 Chikunda 483 Chinese 564–566; see also Mandarin chiShona 483, 486–489 Cockney 141 Colloquial American English 80, 83, 113, 742, 749–751, 758–761, 839–841, 921 Colloquial Australian English 72, 483, 486, 585–595, 596–601, 609–611, 617, 655, 670–674, 774–777, 780, 841, 920, 935 Colloquial Fiji English 775–778, 782, 845–848, 857–864, 869–870, 926, 929–931 Colloquial Malaysian English 460, 541, 563–567, 573–582, 775, 802–804, 859, 869, 923, 929–931 Colloquial Singapore English 562–572, 574–578, 802, 829, 837–841, 863, 922–924, 929–933 Cook Island Maori 629–633, 636–639 Cornish English 78 Costa del Sol English 671 Dagaare 383, 394 Dagbani 383–385, 394 Dutch 266, 280–282, 302–303, 306–309, 313–315, 512, 540 Earlier African American Vernacular English 126–140, 370, 697, 701, 729, 738, 744–748, 751, 759–761, 848, 920, 925 Early Modern English 35 East Anglian English 468, 471, 696, 778, 831, 837–838

938

Index of varieties and languages

Eastern Maroon Creole 279–290, 698 Edo 410 Ekpeye 418–426 East Anglia 88–97 Eastern Maroon Creole 710–714, 717, 720, 728, 893 Engenni 418–426 English English 21–22, 59–62 Equatorial Guinean Pichi 417 Essequibo Dutch Creole 265–266 Ewe 201–204, 239, 383, 388, 394 Falkland Island English 669–676, 691, 701, 778, 831, 837–838, 920, 930, 935 Fanakalo 501 Fante 201, 204, 244, 398, 400 Faroese 18 Fiji English 664, 775–778, 782, 861, 908, 922; see also Colloquial Fiji English Finnish 239 French 98–102, 145, 280, 320, 329–330, 434–435, 441–443, 448–449, 670 French Creole 169–171, 320–323 Fula see Fulfulde Fulfulde 395, 410 Gã 202 Gaaìnse 293 Ga-Dangme 383, 394 Gaelic 21, 629 Gambian Creole 417 German 114, 434, 670 Ghanaian English 382–393, 435, 664, 810, 812, 822, 847, 859, 929 Ghanaian Pidgin 352, 383, 394–409, 417, 443–447, 808, 820, 893 Grebo 361, 376 Guernsey English 98–101 Guernsey French 101 Guinea Coast Creole English 345 Gujarati 466, 483, 501–502, 505, 524 Gullah 141–155, 171–174, 180–181, 360, 395, 402, 698, 729, 738–739, 741–751, 758–761, 893–894, 897, 925, 931 Guyanese Creole 143, 146, 171, 201, 265–278, 315, 712–713, 717–718, 727, 893–894, 897, 916, 931 Guyanese English 265, 268, 270, 273 Haitian 230 Hausa 394, 410, 418 Hawai’i Creole 565, 643–650, 767, 775–776, 780–782, 893, 896–897, 901, 924, 931 Hawaiian 643 Hebridean English 39, 40, 43 Hindi 321, 466, 501–505, 523–525, 533, 540 Hokkien 563, 924 Hong Kong English 541, 548–561, 567, 588, 671, 802–804, 859, 869, 923, 931 Ibibio 410, 419–426 Icelandic 15, 18 Ibo see Igbo

Idoma 410 Igala 410 Igbo 201–202, 222–223, 266, 345, 410, 418–426 Ijo 266, 410 Indian English 33, 467, 501, 504–507, 523–530, 533, 540–541, 545, 567, 588, 639, 654, 658, 802, 805, 859–861, 869, 923, 930 Indian South African English 495, 501–510, 567, 802–805, 808, 821, 846, 856–861, 864, 869, 916, 922, 929–930 Irish 31–43, 109–110, 113–114 Irish English 16, 30–47, 61, 72, 111–115, 144, 201–203, 597–600, 603–610, 617, 671, 680, 695–701, 729, 761, 841, 921, 935 isiNdebele 483, 486, 494 Italian 653–657, 663 Izi 418–426 Jamaican Creole 143, 146–151, 171–174, 210–213, 216–217, 222–236, 237–239, 243, 247, 266, 315, 395, 402, 419, 441, 710–713, 717, 727–729, 846, 863, 891, 893–894, 897, 931 Jamaican English 83, 210–221, 222–223, 227, 658, 710–713, 716–721, 726, 730–731, 846, 857–864, 869–870, 901, 924, 930, Japanese 643 Jersey English 98–100, 103 Jersey French 101 Kalabari 266, 419–426 Kannada 505 Kanuri 410 Karanga 483 KarinËa 265 Kenyan English 435, 455, 461, 466–474, 476, 479, 588, 810–812, 822, 860–861, 869, 922, 929 Kenzan English 859 Khoi-San 483 Kikongo 265, 280 Kimbundu 223 Kiswahili 454–456, 459–461, 466–467, 475–479 Kittitian Creole 266 Kiunguja 454 Klao 361, 376 Kolokuma 419–426 Kongo 204, 395 Konkani 501–502, 505 Korekore 483 Krio (Sierra Leone) 203, 230, 345–357, 376, 394–395, 402–404, 417, 443–448, 808, 811–812, 820, 893, 896 Kru Pidgin English 369, 403 Kwinti 279 Latin 48 Libase 291, 293 Liberian Settler English 358–368, 369, 376, 808, 821, 829, 839, 922, 925, 931, 935 Liverpool English 33 Lokono 329 Luganda 475–479 Lugbara 475

Index of varieties and languages

Lugisu 475 Luo 475 Lusoga 475 Makushi 265 Malay 540, 562–563, 566, 573–576, 924 Malayalam 505, 524 Malayo-Portuguese 244 Malaysian English see Colloquial Malaysian English Maltese English 653–668, 846, 857–864, 922–923 Mandarin 552, 562–563, 573–576; see also Chinese Manipuri 524 Manx English 48–57, 696–699, 921 Manx Gaelic 48–54 Manyika 483 Maori 629–631, 637–638 Maori English 637–638 Marathi 505 Matawai 279 Mbembe 419–426 Melanesian Pidgin English 620, 774, 777 Mende 395 Mexican Spanish 157 Middle English 62 Midland English 71 Nambya 483 Ndau 483 Ndyuka 291, 308 Nengee 315 New Zealand English 483, 486, 589, 630, 634, 639, 674, 774–775, 780, 920, 930, 935 Newfoundland English 39–41, 78–80, 84, 107–125, 148, 691, 701, 738–739, 742, 744–751, 758–761, 829, 841, 889, 921 Nicaraguan Creole 237–238, 244–245 Nigerian English 410–416, 435, 556, 664, 810–812, 822, 859–861, 922, 929 Nigerian Pidgin 394, 402,-404, 410, 417–432, 441–448, 808, 893 Norf’k 620–627, 698, 767, 775–776, 780–782, 893, 896, 901, 908 Norfolk Island/Pitcairn English see Norf’k Norman French 98–103 Norn 15, 21 North of England, dialects of 16, 59, 61, 70–77, 680, 696–697, 700, 729, 829, 841, 916, 921 North Sotho 494 Northumbrian 21 Nupe 410 Obolo 419–426 Old Norse 70 Orkney and Shetland English 15–20, 21–25, 680–682, 696–701, 837–838, 841, 908, 920, 930, 933 Oro 419–426 Ozark English 80, 113, 695, 729, 742, 748–751, 758–761, 778, 841, 921

939

Pakistani English 531–539, 541, 802, 859–860, 869, 908, 923, 929 Palmerston English 628–642, 775–782, 863, 876, 891–893, 896, 901, 926, 929, 931 Philippine English 460, 588 Pidgin Portuguese 394 Portuguese 280, 292, 297, 302, 305, 312, 434, 441, 540, 629, 643–644 Puerto Rican English 159 Punjabi 505, 524, 533 Pure Fiji English seıe Colloquial Fiji English Putonghua 549 Rarotongan 629–630 Roper River Creole 565, 596–619, 765, 774–775, 777, 780–782, 893, 896, 901, 908, 924 Runyakitara 475 Rural African American Vernacular English 691, 746, 748, 758–760, 829, 837–838, 916–918, 925 San Andres Creole 713–717, 721, 726–727, 730–731, 863, 893–894, 901, 924, 931 Saamaka see Saramaccan Sanskrit 540 Santali 524 Saramaccan 279 291–301, 302, 711–713, 728, 893, 908 Scots 15–18, 31–33, 42, 70–73 Scottish English 15, 17, 21–29, 30, 33, 37, 39–40, 43, 61, 78, 201, 461, 487, 673, 696–701, 920 Scottish Gaelic 37–42 Sena 483 Seychellois Creole French 245 Shangaan 483 Sicilian 654 Sindhi 533 Singapore English 460, 526, 541, 573–578, 588, 639, 644, 654, 658, 803–804; see also Colloquial Singapore English Sinhala 540–545 Sotho 483 South of England 61–62, 71, 302 Southeast of England, dialects of 597–600, 603, 606–610, 617, 696–697, 701, 841, 920 South Eastern American enclave dialects 80, 113, 173, 695, 729, 746–49, 758, 761, 829, 838, 841,925 South Sotho 494 Southwest of England, dialects of 38, 61–62, 78–87, 109–112, 148, 302, 461, 670–673, 680, 696–697, 700–701, 729, 761, 841, 889, 921 Spanish 156–159, 169–171, 238, 321, 329, 566, 670 Sranan 266, 279–281, 284, 302–319, 402, 713–714, 717, 720, 728–729, 893 Sri Lankan English 540–547, 664, 778, 802–804, 859, 869, 929 St. Helena English 761, 839, 925, 929, 931 St. Kitts Creole 620–623 St. Lucian Creole English 200 Surinamese creoles 230, 266, 279–284, 302–307, 310–313, 705, 710–731, 877, 892–897, 902, 908, 924, 929–931 Susu 202 Swati 494

940

Index of varieties and languages

Tahitian 620–623 Tamil 321, 501–505, 524, 540–545, 562, 573 Tanzanian English 454–465, 477–479, 778, 810–812, 822, 859–861, 869, 929 Tasmanian English 80, 112 Telugu 501–502, 505 Tiv 410 Tok Pisin 417, 765, 774–775, 777, 780–782, 848, 893, 896, 901, 908, 918, 924, 933 Tonga 483 Torres Strait Creole 596–619, 765–767, 775–777, 780–782, 893, 896, 901, 908, 924 Trinidadian Creole 173, 320–328, 710–713, 717–720, 727, 891–894, 897, 931 Trinidadian English 664 Tristan da Cunha English 565, 829, 839, 925, 929–931 Tswana 483, 493–494 Twi 202–204, 239–245, 383, 394 Tyneside English 33, 43 Ugandan English 435, 461, 475–482, 810–812, 822, 859–861, 929 Ulster English 30–31 Ulster Scots 21–25, 30–31, 37, 41–43 Urban African American Vernacular English 691, 738, 746–749, 758–760, 916, 925, 935 Urdu 321, 501–502, 505, 532–533 Vai 361, 375–376, 395 Venda 483

Vernacular Liberian English 358–364, 369–381, 443–447, 808, 821, 891–893, 896–897, 901, 925, 931 Vincentian Creole 329–341, 711–714, 717–718, 726–727, 891–894, 897, 931 Wai-Wai 265 Wapishana 265 Warao 265 Welsh 37, 58–62 Welsh English 30, 33, 37–40, 58–69, 680, 695–701, 778, 841, 916, 921, 935 Wesa 483 West African Pidgin English 376, 394–395, 441–443, 447–449, 808, 811–812, 819–823, 893, 896–897, 924, 931 White South African English 456, 461, 485, 488, 493–495, 511–519, 805, 808, 821, 863, 920–922, 929–930, 933 White Zimbabwean English 483–492, 808, 821, 863, 920–922, 929–930 Wolof 223 Xhosa 483, 494 Xhosa English 493–494, 556 Yoruba 201–204, 265, 345, 361, 395, 410, 418–426 Zezuru 483 Zulu 494, 501 Zulu English 494

Index of features

941

Index of features1 F1

F2

F3

F4 F5

F6

F7

F8

F9 F10

F11

F12

F13

F14

she/her used for inanimate referents 8, 16, 22, 73, 79, 84, 100–101, 111–112, 117, 132, 199, 470, 515, 601, 603, 681–684, 691, 738–739, 753, 759, 786, 811, 823, 922, 928 he/him used for inanimate referents 79, 100–101, 111–112, 117, 132, 182, 199, 223, 600–601, 673, 739, 759, 786, 830 alternative forms/phrases for referential (non-dummy) it 49, 281, 384, 419, 515, 601, 696, 700, 819, 831, 836, 841, 860, 922, 926 alternative forms/phrases for dummy it 17, 601, 645, 696 generalized third person singular pronoun: subject pronouns 143, 151, 182, 199, 202, 217, 223, 257, 270, 281, 303, 346, 373, 384, 395, 405, 419, 443, 601, 603, 707, 710, 738, 759, 776–777, 786, 878–882, 887, 924, 928 generalized third person singular pronoun: object pronouns 143, 182, 199, 217, 223, 257, 270, 281, 304, 346, 384, 395, 419, 445, 602–603, 611, 645, 707, 710, 738, 759, 786, 828, 880, 882, 887, 924, 928, 933 me instead of I in coordinate subjects 17, 49, 71, 82, 93, 100, 128, 182, 199, 211, 239, 303, 384, 419, 436, 443, 457, 459, 487, 515, 525, 542, 550, 602, 673, 681–682, 707, 738, 785, 828, 849–850, 908, 912 myself/meself instead of I in coordinate subjects 44, 199, 384, 411, 419, 457, 459, 467, 487, 514–515, 681–682, 738, 753, 788, 828, 851, 889 benefactive 128, 182, 281, 516, 692, 695–696, 738–739, 753–754, 759, 788, 929 no gender distinction in third person singular 146, 182, 239, 257, 281, 303, 346, 384, 395, 419, 436, 445, 460, 496, 525, 550, 602, 707, 710, 738, 759, 860, 878–881, 883, 887, 924 regularized reflexives paradigm 61, 72, 92, 129, 182, 223, 281, 293, 303–304, 331, 346, 384, 396, 419, 443, 598, 602–603, 683, 707, 738, 753, 760, 767, 786, 819, 857 object pronoun forms serving as base for first and/or second person reflexives 17, 49, 92, 146, 151, 182, 293, 304, 346, 602, 683, 692, 694–695, 738, 759, 767, 786, 857 subject pronoun forms serving as base for reflexives 128, 182, 199, 304, 436, 602, 695–696, 707, 738–739, 753, 759, 786, 812, 841 no number distinction in reflexives 81, 129, 182, 223, 281, 304, 331, 346, 396, 419, 443, 515, 551, 564, 598, 602–603, 738–739, 759, 777, 785, 819, 879

1 bold print indicates a map.

F15 F16 F17

F18

F19

F20

F21

F22

F23

F24

F25

F26

F27

F28

F29 F30

absolute use of reflexives 32, 40, 49, 281, 293, 332, 707, 738, 759 emphatic reflexives with own 157, 182, 223, 384, 516, 646, 692, 695–696, 738, 753, 759, 776, 897 creation of possessive pronouns with prefix fi- + personal pronoun 217, 223, 242, 246, 304, 707–708, 786, 829–830, 892 subject pronoun forms as (modifying) possessive pronouns: first person singular 5, 182, 199, 281, 707, 709–710, 778, 786, 812, 830, 892, 933 subject pronoun forms as (modifying) possessive pronouns: first person plural 182, 281, 304, 346, 362, 373, 696, 707, 709, 738, 759, 786, 880, 887, 928 subject pronoun forms as (modifying) possessive pronouns: third person singular 129, 146, 182, 270, 373, 396, 443, 696, 707, 709, 738, 786, 880, 887 subject pronoun forms as (modifying) possessive pronouns: third person plural 61, 129, 146, 174, 182, 246, 281, 304, 346, 445, 695, 707, 709, 738–739, 759, 786, 831, 841 you as (modifying) possessive pronoun 146, 182, 199, 281, 304, 346, 644, 707, 709, 738, 786, 880, 887, 928 second person pronoun forms other than you as (modifying) possessive pronoun 146, 182, 217, 223, 246, 281, 304, 402, 445, 505, 707, 709, 738, 788, 880, 887, 928 object pronoun forms as (modifying) possessive pronouns: third person singular 182, 281, 304, 602, 696, 707, 709, 721, 738, 759, 786 object pronoun forms as (modifying) possessive pronouns: third person plural 182, 246, 396, 709, 786, 897 object pronoun forms as (modifying) possessive pronouns: first person singular 49, 72, 93, 146, 174, 182, 346, 602–603, 681–682, 686, 691–692, 709, 786, 857, 928 object pronoun forms as (modifying) possessive pronouns: first person plural 5, 695–696, 709, 723, 753, 786, 915 use of us + NP in subject function 40, 49, 129, 469, 472, 487, 515, 542, 602–603, 681, 738–739, 753, 759, 788, 819, 889, 922 use of us in object function with singular referent 49, 93, 487, 515, 602–603, 698, 786, 819 non-coordinated subject pronoun forms in object function 61, 71, 79, 81, 84, 91, 111, 146, 182, 271, 293, 321, 362, 373, 696, 786

942

F31

F32

F33 F34

F35

F36

F37

F38 F39

F40

F41 F42

F43

F44

F45

F46 F47 F48

F49

F50 F51

Index of features

non-coordinated object pronoun forms in subject function 61, 71, 111, 146, 182, 321, 634, 636, 696, 710, 786, 812 distinction between emphatic vs. non-emphatic forms of pronouns 90, 269, 281, 331, 346, 373, 395, 419, 443, 504, 696, 710, 759, 786, 831 independent possessive pronoun forms with added nasal 61, 182, 753, 786 forms or phrases for the second person plural pronoun other than you 22, 33, 50, 71, 90, 100, 129, 144–146, 156–157, 174, 182, 199, 217, 223, 266, 281, 304, 321, 331, 346, 384, 402, 419, 443, 461, 469, 487, 514, 524–525, 542, 602–603, 671, 674, 681, 707, 738, 785, 828, 850, 879–880, 908, 910 forms or phrases for the second person singular pronoun other than you 16–17, 22, 33, 50, 61, 281, 688, 691, 698, 738, 753, 759, 786, 830, 928 distinct forms for inclusive/exclusive first person nonsingular 304, 602–603, 629, 769–770, 780, 786, 829, 892, 901, 927 more number distinctions in personal pronouns than simply singular vs. plural 602–603, 629, 769–770, 780, 786, 829, 892, 901, 927 specialized plural markers for pronouns 524–525, 600–603, 695, 753, 769, 819, 831, 901 plural forms of interrogative pronouns: using additional elements 22, 92, 183, 244, 331, 514, 692, 695–696, 738, 753, 788–789 plural forms of interrogative pronouns: reduplication 244, 419, 447, 503, 505, 524, 542, 788–789, 819, 830, 915, 916 singular it for plural they in anaphoric use 49, 385, 436, 696, 788, 790, 856, 861 object pronoun drop 258, 385, 467, 515, 524, 533, 542, 545, 603, 628, 633, 645, 769, 785–787, 818–819, 865, 870, 927 subject pronoun drop: referential pronouns 157, 183, 258, 515, 533, 564, 566, 574, 599, 603, 633, 638, 645, 738, 759, 785–787, 812, 819, 865–866, 901, 927 subject pronoun drop: dummy pronouns 40, 183, 542, 545, 566, 574, 603, 638, 696, 738, 759, 786, 819, 865, 870, 927 insertion of it where StE favours zero 183, 385, 457, 495, 515, 542, 695–696, 759, 786, 851–852, 856, 922–923, 927 deletion of it in referential it is-constructions 183, 199, 212, 564, 710, 738, 759, 812, 868 deletion of it in non-referential it is-constructions 183, 524, 788, 819, 927 regularization of plural formation: extension of -s to StE irregular plurals 61, 73, 129, 183, 200, 212, 223, 469, 504, 516, 525, 563, 575, 603–604, 630, 710, 739, 753, 850–851, 856 regularization of plural formation: phonological regularization 22, 61, 183, 385, 411, 458–459, 504, 516, 525, 603–604, 644, 710 plural marking via preposed elements 183, 281, 304, 603–604, 710, 723, 792, 812 plural marking via postposed elements 132, 145, 152,

F52

F53 F54 F55

F56

F57

F58

F59 F60 F61 F62

F63

F64

F65 F66

F67 F68

F69 F70

F71

174, 183, 217, 223, 269, 332, 347, 361–362, 373, 403, 420, 445, 515, 603–604, 710, 723, 741, 759, 780, 792 associative plural marked by postposed and them/them all/dem 23, 143, 183, 212, 243, 269–270, 281, 304, 362, 403, 420, 445, 487, 505, 542, 603–604, 710, 739 associative plural marked by other elements 741, 759, 811, 823 group plurals 49, 183, 223, 420, 516, 646, 700, 739 different count/mass noun distinctions resulting in use of plural for StE singular 183, 212, 223, 347, 385, 411, 436, 445, 458, 460, 467, 472, 505, 525, 542, 551–552, 575, 600, 603–604, 644, 710, 721, 792, 811, 823, 849, 850–853, 856–857, 922–924, 927 absence of plural marking only after quantifiers 61, 84, 93, 100, 146, 174, 183, 332, 673, 683, 739, 741, 753, 759, 860, 929 plural marking generally optional: for nouns with human referents 183, 212, 229, 304, 385, 401, 420, 525, 563, 603–604, 628, 630, 635, 644, 646, 711, 758, 819, 860, 868 plural marking generally optional: for nouns with nonhuman referents 129, 183, 212, 229, 304, 347–348, 385, 401, 525, 604, 628, 630, 635, 644, 646, 711, 819, 831, 860, 868 double determiners 348, 385, 396, 401, 420, 444, 457, 470, 524, 696, 760, 811–812, 823, 861 use of definite article where StE has indefinite article 17, 23, 72, 93, 118, 200, 212, 304, 458, 533, 697 use of indefinite article where StE has definite article 84, 212, 458, 470, 696, 819 use of zero article where StE has definite article 152, 212, 224, 372, 385, 411, 420, 468, 472, 505, 524, 542, 545, 575, 604, 644, 646, 657, 671, 696, 711, 758, 791–792, 850, 856, 865, 927 use of zero article where StE has indefinite article 145, 212, 224, 348, 385, 396, 420, 444, 542, 545, 604, 644, 646, 696, 711, 741, 758–759, 791–792, 819, 850, 856, 865, 928 use of definite article where StE favours zero 17, 33, 101, 118, 212, 386, 470, 604, 697, 819, 850–851, 856–857 use of indefinite article where StE favours zero 72, 212, 533–534, 604, 696 indefinite article one/wan 143, 183, 217, 224, 257, 268, 281, 304, 348, 386, 420, 444, 524, 599, 604, 644, 696, 711, 739, 831, 879, 880–881, 888, 922, 926 demonstratives for definite articles 143, 145, 213, 396, 420, 445, 447, 487, 524–525, 604, 811, 860 them instead of demonstrative those 23, 34, 40, 61, 81, 84, 92, 128, 143–144, 183, 200, 212–213, 224, 269, 362, 487, 598–600, 604, 673, 681–682, 711, 739, 753, 792, 857, 933 yon/yonder indicating remoteness 17, 23, 50, 74, 183, 281, 697–698, 741, 759, 792, 868, 897–898 proximal and distal demonstratives with ‘here’ and ‘there’ 92, 129, 183, 213, 224, 281, 304, 348, 373, 420, 445, 600, 604, 683, 711, 739–740, 753, 792, 929 no number distinction in demonstratives 17, 23, 281, 304, 385, 396, 411, 420, 445, 469, 515, 525, 604, 630, 696, 725

Index of features

F72 F73 F74

F75

F76

F77

F78

F79

F80

F81 F82 F83 F84 F85 F86 F87 F88

F89

F90

F91 F92 F93

F94 F95

group genitives 40, 93, 516, 700, 739, 753 existential construction to express possessive 52, 348, 420, 445–448, 524, 696, 812, 829, 901, 915–916 phrases with for + noun to express possession: forphrase following possessed NP 183, 200, 282, 304, 420, 604, 711, 741, 759, 792, 812, 815, 880, 888 phrases with for + noun to express possession: forphrase preceding possessed NP 223–224, 604, 711, 792, 812 postnominal phrases with bilong/blong/long/blo to express possession 604, 724, 769, 771, 774, 780, 792, 901 omission of genitive suffix 132, 174, 183, 202, 213, 224, 282, 304, 348, 360, 362, 397, 401, 411, 420, 444, 470, 604, 644, 646, 696, 711, 741, 759, 777, 819, 879, 881, 887 double comparatives and superlatives 49, 61, 92, 174, 183, 200, 362, 436, 457, 487, 495–496, 516, 525, 543, 598–600, 604, 681, 711, 739, 812, 820, 851, 856, 897, 907, 908 regularized comparison strategies: extension of synthetic marking 40, 49, 92, 183, 243, 457, 472, 516, 711, 739, 753, 819 regularized comparison strategies: extension of analytic marking 40, 49, 92, 183, 200, 283, 304, 457, 487, 516, 525, 563, 711, 739, 812 much as comparative marker 313, 856, 861 as/to as comparative markers 543, 696, 753 comparatives and superlatives of participles 200, 692, 695, 739, 753, 792, 929 comparative marking only with than 386, 436, 457, 496, 542–543, 856, 928 comparative marking with more…and 224, 741, 753, 759, 792, 819, 915 zero marking of degree 372, 741, 753, 759, 819 attributive adjectival modifiers follow head noun 604, 696, 828, 915 wider range of uses of progressive be + V-ing than in StE: extension to stative verbs 5, 23, 36, 51, 61–62, 72, 101, 130, 183, 213, 224, 386, 436, 458, 468, 488, 495, 543, 658, 697, 712, 742, 820, 847, 850, 856, 889 wider range of uses of progressive be + V-ing than in StE: extension to habitual contexts 5, 36, 51, 61–62, 133, 184, 213, 224, 322, 386, 488, 542, 658–659, 700, 712, 742 invariant be as habitual marker 37, 133, 144, 148, 158, 173, 184, 363, 373, 504, 599, 605, 673, 695–696, 711–712, 742, 744, 753, 759, 793 do as habitual marker 37, 61–62, 142–143, 148, 184, 200, 321, 459, 599, 605, 673, 712, 742, 759, 860, 897 other non-standard habitual markers: synthetic 61–62, 81, 184, 363, 712, 753 other non-standard habitual markers: analytic 173, 184, 200, 305, 349, 363, 373, 375, 397, 421, 444, 448–449, 599, 605, 644, 646, 695, 712, 723, 793, 881, 889 progressive marker stap or stay 374, 644, 658–659, 724, 780, 781, 793, 828, 901, 915, 916 be sat/stood with progressive meaning 49, 93, 689, 691, 724, 759, 793, 928, 933–934

F96 F97 F98 F99

F100

F101

F102 F103 F104

F105 F106 F107 F108 F109 F110

F111

F112 F113

F114

F115 F116

F117 F118 F119 F120 F121

943

there with past participle in resultative contexts 93, 225, 683, 690–691, 712, 725, 742, 753, 831, 889, 928 medial object perfect 35, 49, 113, 646, 712, 759, 793, 868 after-perfect 35, 40, 51, 113–117, 695, 712, 759, 828, 915 levelling of the difference between present perfect and simple past: simple past for StE present perfect 35, 74, 130, 213, 271, 386, 436, 517, 543, 575, 712, 741, 759, 850, 856, 889 levelling of the difference between present perfect and simple past: present perfect for StE simple past 74, 130, 213, 323, 506, 517, 543, 553, 575, 589, 646, 712, 817, 819, 850–851, 856, 891, 922–924, 928 simple present for continuative or experiential perfect 35, 51, 100–101, 113, 200, 213, 436, 458, 461, 712, 759 be as perfect auxiliary 17, 24, 35, 173, 225, 526, 636, 646, 697–698, 712, 725, 753, 759, 793 do as unstressed tense marker 84, 184, 224, 267, 696, 713–714, 753, 760, 793, 897, 899 completive/perfect done 128, 130, 143, 148, 173, 184, 203, 217, 224, 349, 362–363, 402, 420–421, 446–448, 712–713, 723, 741–742, 753, 780, 793, 928–929 completive/perfect have/be + done + past participle 130, 224, 692, 712, 741, 743, 753, 793, 929 360, 760, 793, 819, 915 completive/perfect marker slam 793, 828, 915–916 ever as marker of experiential perfect 565, 829, 915 perfect marker already 184, 349, 436, 554, 564, 575, 695, 712, 758–759, 887, 897, 928 finish-derived completive markers 282, 305, 374–375, 397, 403, 420, 446, 448, 504, 634, 712–713, 758, 776–777, 828, 881, 887–888 past tense/anterior marker been 133, 143, 148–149, 184, 200, 217, 224, 250, 257, 267, 282, 305, 349, 403, 421, 446–447, 449, 605, 644, 713–714, 723, 742, 759, 793, 881 anterior had + bare root 200, 644, 713, 715, 793, 897 loosening of sequence of tenses rule 184, 213, 386, 420–421, 436, 488, 517, 543–544, 636, 646, 742, 759, 819, 850, 856 go-based future markers 128, 143, 148, 184, 200, 217, 225, 282, 305, 331, 397, 421, 444, 448, 605, 634, 644, 696, 713, 723, 759, 780, 794, 879, 881, 888–889, 928 volition-based future markers other than will 225, 258, 421, 713, 793, 829 come-based future/ingressive markers 133, 349, 387, 397, 420, 421, 444, 448, 811–813, 822–823, 901, 927, 933–934 present tense forms for neutral future reference 99, 387, 605, 696, 713 is for am/will with 1st person singular 184, 605, 696, 713, 760, 793, 897, 899 would for (distant) future in contrast to will (immediate future) 387, 436, 713, 760, 819 would in if-clauses 158, 184, 213, 387, 636, 713, 753, 759, 819 double modals 24, 74, 148, 184, 225, 305, 673, 692–693, 695–696, 713, 742, 753, 759, 794, 868, 929

944

F122 F123 F124 F125

F126

F127 F128

F129

F130

F131

F132

F133 F134 F135 F136 F137 F138 F139 F140

F141

F142 F143

Index of features

epistemic mustn’t 225, 488, 697, 714, 724, 742, 753, 759, 794, 819 present tense forms of modals used where StE has past tense forms 184, 322, 331, 387, 543, 695, 714, 861, 928 want/need + past participle 24, 697, 714, 742, 794, 868 new quasi-modals: core modal meanings 184, 200, 225, 242, 403, 644, 692, 695, 713, 742, 745, 753, 759, 794, 812, 929 new quasi-modals: aspectual meanings 156, 184, 200, 214, 225, 363, 692, 695, 714, 742, 745, 753, 794, 897, 929 non-standard use of modals for politeness reasons 214, 282, 323, 517, 543, 714, 794, 796, 928 levelling of past tense/past participle verb forms: regularization of irregular verb paradigms 5, 17, 24, 49, 61, 92, 130, 158, 173, 185, 214, 225, 387, 411, 435–436, 525, 563, 605, 636, 671, 681, 714, 744, 753, 759, 851, 856, 891 levelling of past tense/past participle verb forms: unmarked forms 61, 92, 100, 130, 173, 185, 214, 225, 321, 349, 398, 420–421, 444, 459, 605, 646, 671, 673, 681, 714, 744, 759, 812, 865 levelling of past tense/past participle verb forms: past tense replacing the past participle 84, 92, 158, 173, 185, 214, 471, 605–606, 646, 671, 683, 714, 744, 753, 891 levelling of past tense/past participle verb forms: past participle replacing the past tense form 5, 61, 92, 100, 130, 173, 185, 214, 225, 588, 591, 605–606, 671, 683, 697, 714, 744, 753, 759, 860 zero past tense forms of regular verbs 61, 130, 157–158, 173, 185, 214, 225, 257–258, 261, 321, 349, 387, 398, 401, 436, 444, 563–564, 575, 606, 636–637, 644–645, 695, 714, 760, 830–831, 834, 860, 865, 879, 926 double marking of past tense 61, 185, 323, 375, 387, 525, 598, 635, 695–696, 714, 760, 794, 860, 868, 928 a-prefixing on ing-forms 61, 91, 130, 185, 225, 363, 412, 714, 744, 753, 794, 868, 929 a-prefixing on elements other than ing-forms 61, 225, 636, 744, 753, 868, 929 special inflected forms of be 130, 172, 185, 225, 714, 760 special inflected forms of do 73, 646, 695–696, 828, 915 special inflected forms of have 61, 915–916 distinctive forms for auxiliary vs. full verb meanings of primary verbs 49, 73, 118, 122, 225, 421, 606, 753, 759 other forms/phrases for copula ‘be’: before NPs 172, 226, 243, 273, 282, 306, 350, 403–404, 421, 446, 448, 644–646, 714, 881, 884, 889 other forms/phrases for copula ‘be’: before locatives 185, 243, 273, 282, 306, 322, 350, 398, 404, 421, 444, 448, 714, 722, 829, 881, 884, 889, 928, 932–933 other forms/phrases for copula ‘be’: before AdjPs 226, 306, 308, 404, 448, 644–645, 714 transitive verb suffix -em/-im/-um 606, 716, 769, 772, 774, 780, 794, 828, 901, 915–916

F144

F145 F146 F147

F148

F149

F150

F151

F152 F153 F154

F155

F156

F157

F158

F159

F160

F161 F162 F163 F164 F165

F166 F167

use of gotten and got with distinct meanings (dynamic vs. static) 24, 323, 384, 387, 695–696, 753, 819, 830–831, 929 use of gotten instead of got 323, 384, 387, 695–696, 819 use of verbal suffix -ing with forms other than present participle/gerund 243, 525, 695–696 was for conditional were 50, 61, 93, 130, 185, 214, 388, 436, 457, 459, 488, 525, 542, 588, 591, 606, 682, 716, 744, 794, 828, 851, 891, 897, 908 serial verbs: give = ‘to, for’ 185, 226, 241, 283, 306, 350, 398, 422, 446, 448, 564, 716–717, 722, 765, 780, 812, 829 serial verbs: go = ‘movement away from’ 150, 185, 217, 241, 283, 307, 350, 398, 422, 564, 606, 645, 716–717, 765, 812, 829, 881, 885, 888, 928 serial verbs: come = ‘movement towards’ 143, 185, 241, 307, 398, 422, 645, 716–717, 812, 829, 881, 888, 928 serial verbs: constructions with 3 verbs 185, 217, 241, 283, 307, 313, 398, 422, 716–717, 794, 812, 881, 897, 900, 928 serial verbs: constructions with 4 or more verbs 241, 307, 313, 398, 422, 716–717, 794, 812, 829, 830 give passive: NP1 (patient) + give + NP2 (agent) + V 5, 185, 565, 716, 795, 829, 915 multiple negation / negative concord 38, 50, 61, 73, 84, 92, 100, 128, 149, 157, 159, 174, 186, 214, 226, 284, 307, 332, 350, 446, 488, 524, 606–607, 637, 644, 682, 716, 746, 760, 879–880, 908, 914 ain’t as the negated form of be 24, 50, 91, 100, 128, 149, 159, 185, 226, 672, 683, 697–698, 716, 718, 746, 753, 755, 795, 857, 922, 929, 933 ain’t as the negated form of have 91, 100, 128, 144, 185, 637, 672, 698, 716, 718, 746, 753, 755, 795, 857, 929 ain’t as generic negator before a main verb 100, 130, 144, 185, 226, 360, 692, 696, 716, 718, 746, 753, 759, 795, 897 invariant don’t for all persons in the present tense 61, 73, 89, 128, 149, 159, 185, 217, 226, 524, 542, 564, 606–607, 636–637, 646, 683, 716, 746, 753, 812, 897 never as preverbal past tense negator 61, 92, 100, 130, 186, 226, 257, 351, 388, 423, 444, 448, 468, 488, 564, 606–607, 637, 673, 682, 716, 746, 759, 828, 908, 913 no as preverbal negator 149, 186, 217, 226, 258, 268, 307, 350, 398, 423, 444, 525, 606, 646, 716, 723, 758–759, 879, 881, 887, 924, 928 not as a preverbal negator 606, 646, 717, 759 no more/nomo as negative existential marker 606, 759, 769, 773–774, 829, 915 was – weren’t split 73, 90, 672, 674, 687, 691–692, 717, 928 amn’t in tag questions 696, 795, 819, 915–916 invariant non-concord tags 61–62, 102, 143, 149, 186, 226, 351, 388, 423, 436, 446, 458, 460, 468, 472, 488, 505, 524, 543, 565, 576, 598, 606–607, 634, 697–698, 717, 746, 795, 850–851, 856 invariant tag can or not? 565, 576, 724, 795, 915 fronted invariant tag 374, 423, 717, 795, 829, 915

Index of features

F168 F169

F170

F171

F172

F173

F174

F175

F176

F177

F178

F179 F180

F181

F182 F183 F184 F185 F186 F187 F188

special negative verbs in imperatives 61, 695, 795, 829, 915 non-standard system underlying responses to negative yes/no questions 388, 411, 423, 446, 458, 797, 856–857, 927 invariant present tense forms due to zero marking for the third person singular 61, 89, 101, 131, 133, 159, 174, 186, 214, 227, 261, 321, 351, 360, 388, 398, 423–424, 444, 471, 563, 576, 607, 634–637, 644, 718, 748, 759, 819, 851, 856, 879 invariant present tense forms due to generalization of 3rd person -s to all persons 18, 61, 113, 116–118, 131, 133, 174, 186, 388, 634, 637, 718, 753, 759, 797 existential/presentational there’s/there is/there was with plural subjects 18, 24, 61, 74, 94, 100, 128–129, 159, 186, 214, 374, 388, 471, 488, 515, 525, 588, 591, 607, 646, 672, 682, 718, 746, 753, 819, 821, 828, 851, 891, 908 variant forms of dummy subject there in existential clauses 18, 131, 157, 186, 322, 351, 423–424, 446, 448, 638, 692, 696, 718, 748, 753, 841 deletion of auxiliary be before progressive 130–131, 172, 186, 214, 227, 322, 360, 388, 423–424, 488, 525–526, 564–567, 577, 599, 607, 644–645, 692, 695, 717, 719, 748, 797, 831, 860, 922, 926 deletion of auxiliary be before gonna 130–131, 186, 215, 227, 273, 322, 388, 404, 598–599, 607, 644–645, 717, 719, 748, 759, 797, 812, 819 deletion of copula be before NPs 24, 130–131, 172, 186, 243, 257–258, 261, 273, 322, 360, 577, 607, 633, 636–637, 644, 717, 719, 748, 759, 797, 819, 831, 860, 878, 888, 901 deletion of copula be before AdjPs 130–131, 147, 172, 186, 227, 243, 257, 273, 282, 308, 322, 351, 424, 444, 577, 607, 716–717, 722, 748, 819, 831, 879–881, 886–887, 924, 928 deletion of copula be: before locatives 130–131, 186, 227, 243, 257–258, 261, 273, 322, 404, 446, 526, 564, 607, 633, 636–637, 644–645, 722, 748, 759, 831, 881, 887 deletion of auxiliary have 61, 81, 100, 160, 173, 214–215, 227, 525, 607, 646, 718, 759 was/were generalization 24, 50, 61, 90, 131, 160, 186, 322, 488, 598, 607, 644, 672, 674, 682, 718, 748, 811, 814, 823, 860 agreement sensitive to subject type 18, 25, 131, 133, 69–698, 718, 727, 747–748, 751, 753, 759, 797, 830, 835, 868, 932 agreement sensitive to position of subject 131, 133, 138, 696, 727, 748, 753, 760 Northern Subject Rule 25, 636, 697, 718, 727, 748, 751, 797, 915–916 invariant be with non-habitual function 61, 423–424, 447, 695–696, 718, 753, 797 relativizer that or what in non-restrictive contexts 92, 186, 215, 227, 608, 719, 748, 860, 897 which for ‘who’ 748, 753, 929 relativizer as 61, 73, 84, 797, 830, 915–916 relativizer at 16, 18, 25, 73, 724, 748, 753, 797, 830, 833, 841

F189

F190

F192

F193

F194

F195 F196 F197 F198 F199 F200

F201

F202 F203 F204

F205 F206 F207 F208

F209

F210 F211 F212 F213 F214

F215

945

relativizer where or a form derived from where 133, 143, 146, 186, 243, 351, 399, 424, 446, 448, 695, 719, 748, 759, 797 relativizer what or a form derived from what 61, 73, 92, 101, 131, 186, 243, 261, 308, 388, 598, 608, 672, 697, 719, 748, 753, 759, 797, 897, 933–934 use of analytic or cliticized that his/that’s, what his/ what’s, at’s, who his instead of whose 61, 352, 425, 446, 797, 812 gapping/zero-relativization in subject position 25, 52, 61, 83–84, 131, 147, 160–161, 186, 215, 227, 399, 608, 682, 719, 748, 753, 759, 812, 860 resumptive/shadow pronouns 94, 147, 160–161, 227, 308, 388, 399, 425, 446, 495, 524, 599–600, 608, 812, 855–856, 865 postposed one as sole relativizer 565, 646, 829, 915 correlative constructions 503, 829, 915 “linking relative clauses” 94, 425, 719, 760, 819 deletion of stranded prepositions in relative clauses 94, 147, 695–696, 748, 753, 860 reduced relative phrases preceding head-noun 424, 503, 534, 797–799, 830, 915–916 say-based complementizers 143, 150, 187, 217, 242, 296, 308, 314, 352, 399, 424, 444, 448, 719, 723, 749–750, 759, 780, 798, 897, 900 for-based complementizers 146, 187, 242, 284, 296, 309, 314, 353, 425, 446–447, 644, 696, 719, 723, 749, 759, 798, 881, 889–890, 928 unsplit for to in infinitival purpose clauses 25, 38, 53, 61, 73, 123, 131, 187, 720, 748, 753, 759, 831, 889, 929 for (to) as infinitive marker 187, 309, 425, 447, 644, 720, 748, 753, 929 as what / than what in comparative clauses 61, 457, 468, 489, 598, 601, 608, 683, 720, 748, 753, 759, 891, 897 existentials with forms of get 187, 389, 399, 425, 444, 577, 608, 644, 719, 758, 819, 879, 881, 888 existentials with forms of have 187, 227, 282, 309, 322, 389, 525, 719, 723, 758, 776, 812, 819, 829, 928 substitution of that-clause for infinitival subclause 297, 425, 695, 753, 798, 819 deletion of to before infinitives 143, 187, 309, 412, 436, 458, 471–472, 599, 608, 646, 695, 720, 749, 759, 765, 812 addition of to where StE has bare infinitive 389, 412, 436, 457, 495, 543, 554, 692, 749, 753, 798, 851, 854–857, 861, 865, 922–923, 929, 933–934 non-finite clause complements with bare root form rather than -ing form 187, 215, 309, 719, 749, 759, 812 clause-final but = ‘though’ 489, 503, 543, 590, 601, 609, 644, 674, 749, 759 clause-final but = ‘really’ 489, 590, 749, 759, 798, 819, 821, 915–916 no subordination 101, 187, 424, 447, 609, 696, 720, 749, 860, 881, 887 conjunction doubling: clause + conj. + conj. + clause 187, 389, 412, 425, 457, 495, 720, 749, 819, 865–867, 897 conjunction doubling: correlative conjunctions 389, 457, 489, 495, 504, 534, 554, 749, 856, 861, 928

946

F216

F217 F218 F219 F220

F221

F222

F223 F224 F225

F226

Index of features

omission of StE prepositions 101, 119, 187, 204, 215, 227, 247, 353, 389, 399, 401, 425, 436, 444, 471, 524, 600, 609, 635, 644, 720, 749, 758–759, 819, 860, 879 use of postpositions 227, 283, 310, 399, 401, 503, 542, 609, 696, 720, 749, 758–759, 816, 819 affirmative anymore ‘nowadays’ 692, 720, 749, 753, 756, 759, 800, 929 adverb-forming suffixes -way and -time 187, 310, 353, 425, 444, 609, 720, 758, 881, 888 degree modifier adverbs have the same form as adjectives 26, 53, 61, 84, 131–132, 187, 215, 310, 425, 446, 514, 609, 635, 644, 672–673, 682, 720, 749, 753, 759, 828, 908 adverbs other than degree modifiers have the same form as adjectives 61, 92, 100, 132, 187, 282, 310, 353, 400, 412, 425, 436, 444, 461, 589, 591, 609, 638, 644, 672–673, 682, 720, 749, 752, 759, 828, 850, 879–880, 908, 911 too; too much 187, 228, 311, 353, 389, 400, 425, 444, 459, 468, 542–543, 599, 609, 695, 720, 749, 759, 800, 811, 823, 856, 861 other options for clefting than StE 39, 53, 61–62, 119, 143, 150, 188, 216, 228, 284, 354, 402, 426, 720–721 other possibilities for fronting than StE 188, 216, 257, 311, 389, 426, 505, 524–525, 630, 695, 721 sentence-initial focus marker 61–62, 150, 188, 217, 228, 257, 260, 354, 375, 426, 447–448, 525, 695, 720–721, 751, 758, 800, 928 132, 188, 228, 692, 721, 749, 753, 757, 800, 929, 933–934

F227

F228

F229

F230 F231 F232

F233 F234

F235

inverted word order in indirect questions 41, 53, 61, 132, 162, 188, 216, 228, 311, 458, 489, 496, 505, 533, 542, 600, 610, 631, 636, 721, 725, 749, 753, 800–801, 850, 856, 928 no inversion/no auxiliaries in wh-questions 61, 174, 188, 216, 228, 311, 354, 374, 400, 426, 445, 469, 489, 505, 524, 534–535, 577, 599, 610, 631, 636, 721, 751, 819, 856, 860, 879, 908 no inversion/no auxiliaries in main clause yes/no questions 61, 94, 100, 174, 188, 216, 284, 354, 389, 400, 426, 445, 468–469, 489, 505, 524, 533, 543, 577, 610, 632, 682, 721, 749, 850, 856, 879–880, 908–909 doubly filled COMP-position with wh-words 695, 723, 800, 829, 915 superlative marker most occurring before head noun 696, 721, 753 either order of objects in double object constructions (if both objects are pronominal) 683, 685, 691–692, 830, 928 presence of subject in imperatives 18, 52, 90, 312, 400, 426, 447, 457, 692, 697, 721, 751, 758, 767–768 like as a focussing device 61, 161, 489, 514, 525, 542, 589, 591, 598–601, 610, 634, 681–682, 721, 751, 800, 819, 821, 922 like as a quotative particle 8, 61, 73, 111, 161, 216, 323, 372, 384, 390, 459, 461, 470, 489, 514, 525, 542, 610, 659, 721, 751, 800, 851, 891

The WAVE feature set F1 F2 F3 F4 F5 F6 F7 F8 F9 F10 F11 F12 F13 F14 F15 F16 F17 F18 F19 F20 F21 F22 F23 F24 F25 F26 F27 F28 F29 F30 F31 F32 F33 F34 F35 F36 F37 F38 F39 F40 F41 F42 F43 F44 F45 F46 F47 F48 F49 F50 F51

she/her used for inanimate referents he/him used for inanimate referents alternative forms/phrases for referential (non-dummy) it alternative forms/phrases for dummy it generalized third person singular pronoun: subject pronouns generalized third person singular pronoun: object pronouns me instead of I in coordinate subjects myself/meself instead of I in coordinate subjects benefactive “personal dative” construction no gender distinction in third person singular regularized reflexives paradigm object pronoun forms serving as base for first and/or second person reflexives subject pronoun forms serving as base for reflexives no number distinction in reflexives absolute use of reflexives emphatic reflexives with own creation of possessive pronouns with prefix fi- +personal pronoun subject pronoun forms as (modifying) possessive pronouns: first person singular subject pronoun forms as (modifying) possessive pronouns: first person plural subject pronoun forms as (modifying) possessive pronouns: third person singular subject pronoun forms as (modifying) possessive pronouns: third person plural you as (modifying) possessive pronoun second person pronoun forms other than you as (modifying) possessive pronoun object pronoun forms as (modifying) possessive pronouns: third person singular object pronoun forms as (modifying) possessive pronouns: third person plural object pronoun forms as (modifying) possessive pronouns: first person singular object pronoun forms as (modifying) possessive pronouns: first person plural use of us + NP in subject function use of us in object function with singular referent non-coordinated subject pronoun forms in object function non-coordinated object pronoun forms in subject function distinction between emphatic vs. non-emphatic forms of pronouns independent possessive pronoun forms with added nasal forms or phrases for the second person plural pronoun other than you forms or phrases for the second person singular pronoun other than you distinct forms for inclusive/exclusive first person nonsingular more number distinctions in personal pronouns than simply singular vs. plural specialized plural markers for pronouns plural forms of interrogative pronouns: using additional elements plural forms of interrogative pronouns: reduplication singular it for plural they in anaphoric use object pronoun drop subject pronoun drop: referential pronouns subject pronoun drop: dummy pronouns insertion of it where StE favours zero deletion of it in referential it is-constructions deletion of it in non-referential it is-constructions regularization of plural formation: extension of -s to StE irregular plurals regularization of plural formation: phonological regularization plural marking via preposed elements plural marking via postposed elements

F52

associative plural marked by postposed and them/them all/ dem F53 associative plural marked by other elements F54 group plurals F55 different count/mass noun distinctions resulting in use of plural for StE singular F56 absence of plural marking only after quantifiers F57 plural marking generally optional: for nouns with human referents F58 plural marking generally optional: for nouns with nonhuman referents F59 double determiners F60 use of definite article where StE has indefinite article F61 use of indefinite article where StE has definite article F62 use of zero article where StE has definite article F63 use of zero article where StE has indefinite article F64 use of definite article where StE favours zero F65 use of indefinite article where StE favours zero F66 indefinite article one/wan F67 demonstratives for definite articles F68 them instead of demonstrative those F69 yon/yonder indicating remoteness F70 proximal and distal demonstratives with ‘here’ and ‘there’ F71 no number distinction in demonstratives F72 group genitives F73 existential construction to express possessive F74 phrases with for + noun to express possession: for-phrase following possessed NP F75 phrases with for + noun to express possession: for-phrase preceding possessed NP F76 postnominal phrases with bilong/blong/long/blo to express possession F77 omission of genitive suffix; possession expressed through bare juxtaposition of nouns F78 double comparatives and superlatives F79 regularized comparison strategies: extension of synthetic marking F80 regularized comparison strategies: extension of analytic marking F81 much as comparative marker F82 as/to as comparative markers F83 comparatives and superlatives of participles F84 comparative marking only with than F85 comparative marking with more … and F86 zero marking of degree F87 attributive adjectival modifiers follow head noun F88 wider range of uses of progressive be + V-ing than in StE: extension to stative verbs F89 wider range of uses of progressive be + V-ing than in StE: extension to habitual contexts F90 invariant be as habitual marker F91 do as habitual marker F92 other non-standard habitual markers: synthetic F93 other non-standard habitual markers: analytic F94 progressive marker stap or stay F95 be sat/stood with progressive meaning F96 there with past participle in resultative contexts F97 medial object perfect F98 after-perfect F99 levelling of the difference between present perfect and simple past: simple past for StE present perfect F100 levelling of the difference between present perfect and simple past: present perfect for StE simple past F101 simple present for continuative or experiential perfect F102 be as perfect auxiliary F103 do as unstressed tense marker F104 completive/perfect done F105 completive/perfect have/be + done + past participle F106 “sequential” or “irrealis” be done F107 completive/perfect marker slam

F108 F109 F110 F111 F112 F113 F114 F115 F116 F117 F118 F119

ever as marker of experiential perfect perfect marker already finish-derived completive markers past tense/anterior marker been anterior had + bare root loosening of sequence of tenses rule go-based future markers volition-based future markers other than will come-based future/ingressive markers present tense forms for neutral future reference is for am/will with 1st person singular would for (distant) future in contrast to will (immediate future) F120 would in if-clauses F121 double modals F122 epistemic mustn’t F123 present tense forms of modals used where StE has past tense forms F124 want/need + past participle F125 new quasi-modals: core modal meanings F126 new quasi-modals: aspectual meanings F127 non-standard use of modals for politeness reasons F128 levelling of past tense/past participle verb forms: regularization of irregular verb paradigms F129 levelling of past tense/past participle verb forms: unmarked forms F130 levelling of past tense/past participle verb forms: past tense replacing the past participle F131 levelling of past tense/past participle verb forms: past participle replacing the past tense form F132 zero past tense forms of regular verbs F133 double marking of past tense F134 a-prefixing on ing-forms F135 a-prefixing on elements other than ing-forms F136 special inflected forms of be F137 special inflected forms of do F138 special inflected forms of have F139 distinctive forms for auxiliary vs. full verb meanings of primary verbs F140 other forms/phrases for copula ‘be’: before NPs F141 other forms/phrases for copula ‘be’: before locatives F142 other forms/phrases for copula ‘be’: before AdjPs F143 transitive verb suffix -em/-im/-um F144 use of gotten and got with distinct meanings (dynamic vs. static) F145 use of gotten instead of got F146 use of verbal suffix -ing with forms other than present participle/gerund F147 was for conditional were F148 serial verbs: give = ‘to, for’ F149 serial verbs: go = ‘movement away from’ F150 serial verbs: come = ‘movement towards’ F151 serial verbs: constructions with 3 verbs F152 serial verbs: constructions with 4 or more verbs F153 give passive: NP1 (patient) + give + NP2 (agent) + V F154 multiple negation / negative concord F155 ain’t as the negated form of be F156 ain’t as the negated form of have F157 ain’t as generic negator before a main verb F158 invariant don’t for all persons in the present tense F159 never as preverbal past tense negator F160 no as preverbal negator F161 not as a preverbal negator F162 no more/nomo as negative existential marker F163 was – weren’t split F164 amn’t in tag questions F165 invariant non-concord tags F166 invariant tag can or not? F167 fronted invariant tag F168 special negative verbs in imperatives F169 non-standard system underlying responses to negative yes/no questions F170 invariant present tense forms due to zero marking for the third person singular

F171 F172 F173 F174 F175 F176 F177 F178 F179 F180 F181 F182 F183 F184 F185 F186 F187 F188 F189 F190 F191 F192 F193 F194 F195 F196 F197 F198 F199 F200 F201 F202 F203 F204 F205 F206 F207 F208 F209 F210 F211 F212 F213 F214 F215 F216 F217 F218 F219 F220 F221 F222 F223 F224 F225 F226 F227 F228 F229 F230 F231 F232 F233 F234 F235

invariant present tense forms due to generalization of 3rd person -s to all persons existential / presentational there’s/there is/there was with plural subjects variant forms of dummy subject there in existential clauses deletion of auxiliary be: before progressive deletion of auxiliary be: before gonna deletion of copula be: before NPs deletion of copula be: before AdjPs deletion of copula be: before locatives deletion of auxiliary have was/were generalization agreement sensitive to subject type agreement sensitive to position of subject Northern Subject Rule invariant be with non-habitual function relativizer that or what in non-restrictive contexts which for ‘who’ relativizer as relativizer at relativizer where or a form derived from where relativizer what or a form derived from what relativizer doubling use of analytic or cliticized that his/that’s, what his/what’s, at’s, who his instead of whose gapping/zero-relativization in subject position resumptive/shadow pronouns postposed one as sole relativizer correlative constructions “linking relative clauses” deletion of stranded prepositions in relative clauses reduced relative phrases preceding head-noun say-based complementizers for-based complementizers unsplit for to in infinitival purpose clauses for (to) as infinitive marker as what / than what in comparative clauses existentials with forms of get existentials with forms of have substitution of that-clause for infinitival subclause deletion of to before infinitives addition of to where StE has bare infinitive non-finite clause complements with bare root form rather than -ing form clause-final but = ‘though’ clause-final but = ‘really’ no subordination; chaining construction linking two main verbs (motion and activity) conjunction doubling: clause + conj. + conj. + clause conjunction doubling: correlative conjunctions omission of StE prepositions use of postpositions affirmative anymore ‘nowadays’ adverb-forming suffixes -way and -time degree modifier adverbs have the same form as adjectives adverbs other than degree modifiers have the same form as adjectives too; too much; very much ‘very’ as qualifier other options for clefting than StE other possibilities for fronting than StE sentence-initial focus marker “negative inversion” inverted word order in indirect questions no inversion/no auxiliaries in wh-questions no inversion/no auxiliaries in main clause yes/ no questions doubly filled COMP-position with wh-words superlative marker most occurring before head noun either order of objects in double object constructions (if both objects are pronominal) presence of subject in imperatives like as a focussing device like as a quotative particle

A world map of the WAVE varieties

NeighborNet diagram for the complete set of WAVE varieties (abc noisy)