Relativization and Thematization in Tayo and the Implications for Creole Genesis

Abstract

Relative clauses in Tayo, the French-lexicon Creole of St-Louis (New Caledonia) which emerged in the late 19th century, reflect in their construction and their distribution typically Melanesian patterns, including a subordinator derived from a personal pronoun, sa. Thematization similarly reflects Melanesian strategies, but may also be handled by clefting using a subordinator ki (< French qui). While this construction shows how the lexifier may be modifying Tayo, the emergence of a complex system of relativization and thematization, over three generations after the settlement of St-Louis in 1860, shows that French was not the "motor" of creolization, and suggests that creolization is, in effect, a special case of language shift and creation over some 50 or so years.

Transfer Constraints and Substrate Influence in Melanesian Pidgin

“…However, since Polynesian languages are also in the GEO group, data from them would not significantly alter the present analysis. 8 These are also referred to as verbal pronoun markers (Schütz, 1969), predicate markers (Camden, 1979), or subject indexes (Corne, 1994).…”

Nana K Nana, Nana K Napa

“…REU came into being over a period of around 50 years. This 50 years/three generations period is very much the same span of time as it took other creole languages to emerge and jell: Cayennais (Jennings, 1993, ms), Morisyen (Baker, 1984;Baker & Corne, 1986), Tayo (Corne, 1989(Corne, , 1990a(Corne, , 1990b(Corne, , 1994Ehrhart, 1993;Ehrhart & Corne, in press). By "emerge and jell" is meant the stabilization (relative) of 15) Generation 1 (Gl) consists of the immigrants.…”

“…All Creole French languages except Tayo handle clefting by means of relativiza tion. Tayo does have a clefting pattern using se NP ki Clause (SU only) which follows a French model, but this competes with Melanesian-inspired patterns of thematization (Corne, 1994) and may be a later development (Ehrhart, 1993, p. 152). These facts suggest that relativization strategies, the need to provide essential information while in flight, as it were, 18 are more central to discourse than tense marking, which can be handled, as in Tayo, by the use of adverbials of various kinds.…”

“…Relativization always requires the presence of the relative subordinator sa (or ki in clefting). The significance of these findings, from the perspective of creole genesis and evolution, is that by the third generation from first settlement in 1860, stable patterns reflecting mainly Melanesian patterns have evolved, that a lexifier-inspired pattern of clefting is competing with Melanesian-inspired thematizations, and that these facts can be related to the demographic and social history of the St-Louis people (Corne, 1994).…”

Book Reviews

“…However, this reviewer would have liked to see a more detailed discussion of the gradualist model of creolization. Surprisingly, two other more recent models of creole genesis, the creativist model (Baker 1990(Baker , 1994(Baker , 1995(Baker , 1997 and the so-called`®fty year/three generation language shift' model (Corne 1994) are not mentioned.…”