The restructuring of tense/aspect systems in creole formation
-
Donald Winford
Abstract
This paper attempts to reconcile the so-called ‘superstratist’ and ‘substratist’ views on creole formation, with special attention to the emergence of tense/aspect systems in Haitian French Creole and Sranan Tongo. Creole formation involves a process of restructuring by which interlanguage grammars are created and elaborated in the course of second language acquisition. This process involves three major components: input (intake) from the TL, L1 influence, and internal developments. Differences in the degree of TL and L1 influence result in differences between Haitian Creole and Sranan Tongo in their inventory of tense/aspect categories, and the forms that express them. At the same time, both creoles display similarities due to shared substrate input as well as similar processes by which superstrate lexical forms are reanalyzed as tense/aspect markers.
Abstract
This paper attempts to reconcile the so-called ‘superstratist’ and ‘substratist’ views on creole formation, with special attention to the emergence of tense/aspect systems in Haitian French Creole and Sranan Tongo. Creole formation involves a process of restructuring by which interlanguage grammars are created and elaborated in the course of second language acquisition. This process involves three major components: input (intake) from the TL, L1 influence, and internal developments. Differences in the degree of TL and L1 influence result in differences between Haitian Creole and Sranan Tongo in their inventory of tense/aspect categories, and the forms that express them. At the same time, both creoles display similarities due to shared substrate input as well as similar processes by which superstrate lexical forms are reanalyzed as tense/aspect markers.
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents vii
- Introduction 1
-
Part I: Structure
- The phonetics of tone in Saramaccan 9
- Tracing the origin of modality in the creoles of Suriname 29
- Modelling Creole Genesis 61
- The restructuring of tense/aspect systems in creole formation 85
- Syntactic properties of negation in Chinook Jargon, with a comparison of two source languages 111
- Sri Lankan Malay morphosyntax 135
- Sri Lanka Malay 159
- The advantages of a blockage-based etymological dictionary for proven or putative relexified languages 183
-
Part II: Variation
- A fresh look at habitual be in AAVE 203
- Oral narrative and tense in urban Bahamian Creole English 225
- Aspects of variation in educated Nigerian Pidgin 243
- A linguistic time-capsule 263
- The progressive in the spoken Papiamentu of Aruba 291
- Was Haitian ever more like French? 315
- The late transfer of serial verb constructions as stylistic variants in Saramaccan creole 337
- Index 373
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents vii
- Introduction 1
-
Part I: Structure
- The phonetics of tone in Saramaccan 9
- Tracing the origin of modality in the creoles of Suriname 29
- Modelling Creole Genesis 61
- The restructuring of tense/aspect systems in creole formation 85
- Syntactic properties of negation in Chinook Jargon, with a comparison of two source languages 111
- Sri Lankan Malay morphosyntax 135
- Sri Lanka Malay 159
- The advantages of a blockage-based etymological dictionary for proven or putative relexified languages 183
-
Part II: Variation
- A fresh look at habitual be in AAVE 203
- Oral narrative and tense in urban Bahamian Creole English 225
- Aspects of variation in educated Nigerian Pidgin 243
- A linguistic time-capsule 263
- The progressive in the spoken Papiamentu of Aruba 291
- Was Haitian ever more like French? 315
- The late transfer of serial verb constructions as stylistic variants in Saramaccan creole 337
- Index 373
