15. A la recherche du "superstrat" : What North American French can and cannot tell us about the input to creolization
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Ingrid Neumann-Holzschuh
Abstract
Within the field of French creolistics it is above all Robert Chaudenson who, in various publications, has emphasized that a better knowledge of the “marginal Frenches” in North America may help to answer certain questions concerning the European input into creolization. On the basis of data collected for a research project on the varieties of Acadian French I will try to show that a closer investigation of Acadian French does indeed shed light on the language spoken by the settlers, one major component of the “feature pool” (Mufwene) accessible to the slaves, and thus provides the source of numerous specific creole forms and structures.
Apart from being a linguistic “window to the past”, the varieties of North American French enable us to discern areas within French grammar that are particularly prone to intrasystemic changes. The question, however, remains as to what extent the phenomena observed in Acadian French can be usefully applied in explaining the creolization process, especially since some of the developments that are particularly interesting from a creolist’s point of view are rather recent. On the basis of some examples, I will show that the heuristic value of a close examination of marginal Frenches lies above all in retracing the source of specific formal, functional and semantic peculiarities of creole languages; creolization itself, however, implies restructuring processes that go far beyond those that marginal Frenches have undergone in the course of time.
Abstract
Within the field of French creolistics it is above all Robert Chaudenson who, in various publications, has emphasized that a better knowledge of the “marginal Frenches” in North America may help to answer certain questions concerning the European input into creolization. On the basis of data collected for a research project on the varieties of Acadian French I will try to show that a closer investigation of Acadian French does indeed shed light on the language spoken by the settlers, one major component of the “feature pool” (Mufwene) accessible to the slaves, and thus provides the source of numerous specific creole forms and structures.
Apart from being a linguistic “window to the past”, the varieties of North American French enable us to discern areas within French grammar that are particularly prone to intrasystemic changes. The question, however, remains as to what extent the phenomena observed in Acadian French can be usefully applied in explaining the creolization process, especially since some of the developments that are particularly interesting from a creolist’s point of view are rather recent. On the basis of some examples, I will show that the heuristic value of a close examination of marginal Frenches lies above all in retracing the source of specific formal, functional and semantic peculiarities of creole languages; creolization itself, however, implies restructuring processes that go far beyond those that marginal Frenches have undergone in the course of time.
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- List of contributors vii
- List of standard abbreviations ix
- Preface xi
- 1. The problem of multiple substrates: The case of Jamaican Creole 1
- 2. The superstrate is not always the lexifier: Lingua Franca in the Barbary Coast 1530-1830 29
- 3. In praise of the cafeteria principle: Language mixing in Hawai'i Creole 59
- 4. Tense marking and inflectional morphology in Indo-Portuguese creoles 83
- 5. Vowel epenthesis and creole syllable structure 123
- 6. The origin of the Portuguese words in Saramaccan: Implications for sociohistory 153
- 7. Encoding path in Mauritian Creole and Bhojpuri: Problems of language contact 169
- 8. On the principled nature of the respective contributions of substrate and superstrate languages to a creole's lexicon 197
- 9. Valency patterns in Seychelles Creole: Where do they come from? 225
- 10. A first step towards the analysis of tone in Santomense 253
- 11. Balanta, Guiné-Bissau Creole Portuguese and Portuguese: A comparison of the noun phrase 263
- 12. Zamboangueño Chavacano and the potentive mode 279
- 13. Between contact and internal development: Towards a multi-layered explanation for the development of the TMA system in the creoles of Suriname 301
- 14. The formation of deverbal nouns in Vincentian Creole: Morpho-phonological and morpho-syntactic processes 333
- 15. A la recherche du "superstrat" : What North American French can and cannot tell us about the input to creolization 357
- Personal name index 385
- Language index 391
- Places and Peoples index 405
- Subject index 411
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- List of contributors vii
- List of standard abbreviations ix
- Preface xi
- 1. The problem of multiple substrates: The case of Jamaican Creole 1
- 2. The superstrate is not always the lexifier: Lingua Franca in the Barbary Coast 1530-1830 29
- 3. In praise of the cafeteria principle: Language mixing in Hawai'i Creole 59
- 4. Tense marking and inflectional morphology in Indo-Portuguese creoles 83
- 5. Vowel epenthesis and creole syllable structure 123
- 6. The origin of the Portuguese words in Saramaccan: Implications for sociohistory 153
- 7. Encoding path in Mauritian Creole and Bhojpuri: Problems of language contact 169
- 8. On the principled nature of the respective contributions of substrate and superstrate languages to a creole's lexicon 197
- 9. Valency patterns in Seychelles Creole: Where do they come from? 225
- 10. A first step towards the analysis of tone in Santomense 253
- 11. Balanta, Guiné-Bissau Creole Portuguese and Portuguese: A comparison of the noun phrase 263
- 12. Zamboangueño Chavacano and the potentive mode 279
- 13. Between contact and internal development: Towards a multi-layered explanation for the development of the TMA system in the creoles of Suriname 301
- 14. The formation of deverbal nouns in Vincentian Creole: Morpho-phonological and morpho-syntactic processes 333
- 15. A la recherche du "superstrat" : What North American French can and cannot tell us about the input to creolization 357
- Personal name index 385
- Language index 391
- Places and Peoples index 405
- Subject index 411
