The Evolution of Complexity in a Creole Language

Romaine, Suzanne

doi:10.1075/sl.16.1.06rom

Cited by 24 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 9 publications

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“…If relativization is indeed a more important discourse strategy for newly-emerging L1s (the case of elaborated pidgins appears to differ, cf. Romaine, 1992) than TA marking, then the "stable variation" of REU's relativization with ke / 0 should have been in place by the 1720s, as required by the proposed origin of i. This opens up the possibility of Malagasy influence.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 90%

Nana K Nana, Nana K Napa

Corne

1995

JPCL

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A recent study of Tayo shows an obligatory subordinator sa in all relative clauses. The Isle de France dialects, like most other varieties of Creole French, have an obligatory subordinator ki for subject relatives, while ki is optional elsewhere. Reunion Creole has a subordinator ke which is almost always optional, and thus stands out as different from all others in this respect.To explain this oddity, the paper contains the following topical se quence: 1) Reunion Creole relative clauses and the "mysterious" verb marker i with which they interact are described, using data covering nearly three centuries; 2) a highly specific past tense formation is described and discussed; and 3) inferential arguments are advanced, with the addition of data that pertain to both Tayo and Isle de France Creole, to suggest that the anomalous optionality of the relative subordinator in Reunion Creole be came established in the 17th century as a result of Malagasy influence on what is essentially a continuation of 17th century (varieties of) French. Tayo and Isle de France Creole are seen as new creations, new solutions to problems of interethnic communication.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 90%

Nana K Nana, Nana K Napa

Corne

1995

JPCL

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“…A number of works have documented the fact that overall, written language tends to show greater syntactic complexity than spoken language, such as Chafe 1985, Biber 1988, Romaine 1992, Newmeyer 2002, Karlsson 2010, and Laury and Ono 2010. (Syntactic complexity is understood here in a specific sense: the combination of multiple clauses within a single sentence.)…”

Section: Spoken and Written Languagementioning

confidence: 99%

Exuberant Complexity: The Interplay of Morphology, Syntax, and Prosody in Central Alaskan Yup'ik

Mithun¹

2012

Linguistic Discovery

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Written varieties of many languages show greater syntactic complexity than their spoken counterparts. The difference is not surprising: writers have more time to create elaborate structures than speakers, who must produce speech in a steady stream. As documentation grows of the effects of language contact in the Americas, it is becoming ever clearer that exposure to languages with strong literary traditions has often had a significant impact on syntactic structure. Complexity is, however, not always due to literacy or contact with literacy. Here it is shown that though contact can indeed result in copied markers or replicated categories, it is not a precondition for the development of complexity.

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“…3 As will be seen, the distribution of relative clauses in different environments goes some way towards supporting this assumption. There is also the matter of how easily a given language embeds relative clauses within the main clause (that is, the syntactic incorporation of one clause within another, or center-embedding), as opposed to strategies whereby the relative clause is merely tacked onto the main clause (that is, right-branching, in Tayo's case), which Romaine (1992) has shown to be relevant to the evaluation of the evolution over time of relativization in Tok Pisin. Again, the same assumption has to be made here, with the same caveat.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 96%

Relativization and Thematization in Tayo and the Implications for Creole Genesis

Corne

1994

JPCL

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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.

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The Evolution of Complexity in a Creole Language

Cited by 24 publications

References 9 publications

Nana K Nana, Nana K Napa

Nana K Nana, Nana K Napa

Exuberant Complexity: The Interplay of Morphology, Syntax, and Prosody in Central Alaskan Yup'ik

Relativization and Thematization in Tayo and the Implications for Creole Genesis

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