Towards a model of language contact and change in the English-lexifier creoles of Africa and the Caribbean

Yakpo, Kofi

doi:10.1075/eww.38.1.04yak

Cited by 11 publications

(23 citation statements)

References 41 publications

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“…This study therefore aims to contribute to a broader perspective on prosodic contact beyond the narrow confines of creole linguistics. The results of this study also complement and support the stratal-areal contact model proposed in earlier work ( Yakpo, 2017a ), which explains long-term contact outcomes in creoles spoken in the multilingual linguistic ecologies of Africa and the Americas.…”

Section: Introductionsupporting

confidence: 89%

“…In this, they reflect the prosodic proclivities of their adstrates (African languages presently spoken by the multilingual speakers of the creoles) and substrates (African languages once spoken alongside the creoles). The prosodic systems of most creoles and colonial varieties spoken in the Americas have, in turn, converged toward the stress-only systems of their European lexifiers (lexicon-providing languages) and superstrates (socially dominant languages, whether lexifier or not) but still maintain marginal tonal features (for detailed creolist definitions of adstrate, substrate, lexifier, and superstrate, see Yakpo, 2017a , b , 53, 227–229).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Creole Prosodic Systems Are Areal, Not Simple

Yakpo

2021

Front. Psychol.

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This study refutes the common idea that tone gets simplified or eliminated in creoles and contact languages. Speakers of African tone languages imposed tone systems on all Afro-European creoles spoken in the tone-dominant linguistic ecologies of Africa and the colonial Americas. African speakers of tone languages also imposed tone systems on the colonial varieties of English, French, Spanish, and Portuguese spoken in tonal Africa. A crucial mechanism involved in the emergence of the tone systems of creoles and colonial varieties is stress-to-tone mapping. A typological comparison with African non-creole languages shows that creole tone systems are no simpler than African non-creole tone systems. Demographic, linguistic, and social changes in an ecology can lead to switches from tone to stress systems and vice versa. As a result, there is an areal continuum of tone systems roughly coterminous with the presence of tone in the east (Africa) and stress in the west (Americas). Transitional systems combining features of tone and stress converge on the areal buffer zone of the Caribbean. The prosodic systems of creoles and European colonial varieties undergo regular processes of contact, typological change and areal convergence. None of these are specific to creoles. So far, creoles and colonial varieties have not featured in work on the world-wide areal clustering of prosodic systems. This study therefore aims to contribute to a broader perspective on prosodic contact beyond the narrow confines of the creole simplicity debate.

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Section: Introductionsupporting

confidence: 89%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Creole Prosodic Systems Are Areal, Not Simple

Yakpo

2021

Front. Psychol.

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“…I argue that Pichi patterns of negation show a significant convergence with areal patterns of negation in West African languages. The findings of this chapter confirm the areal-typological affinities of Pichi and the other English-lexifier Creoles of West Africa that I have described with respect to other functional domains (see Yakpo 2012aYakpo , 2012bYakpo , 2017. I conclude that Pichi negation does not reflect phylogenetic traits of an assumed Creole prototype and is instead firmly rooted in the areal typology of West Africa.…”

Section: Introductionsupporting

confidence: 79%

“…Kanuri, Cyffer 1974: 99;Pular, Diallo 2000;Ewe, Ameka 2008: 152-153;Hausa, Ziegelmeyer 2009: 10-12). I have shown elsewhere that such uses of subjunctive mood in Pichi and other Afro-Caribbean English-lexifier Creoles, as well as in a cross-section of genetically diverse West African languages, are part of a larger functional domain, in which non-indicative mood, instantiated in modal complementizers, is a concomitant of deonticity (Yakpo 2012b(Yakpo , 2017.…”

Section: Verb Negation: Regular and Suppletive Forms And Patternsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Negation in Pichi (Equatorial Guinea)

Yakpo

2018

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This chapter provides a detailed overview of negation in Pichi, the English-lexifier Creole spoken by the people of the island of Bioko (Equatorial Guinea). Pichi negation patterns align closely with areal negation patterns found across a broad swath of West Africa. Like the vast majority of genealogically diverse languages of the region, Pichi employs asymmetric negation strategies. These involve the use of subjunctive mood for the negation of imperatives, the use of suppletive portmanteau forms that combine negative polarity and aspect, and the use of an identity-equation copula that incorporates negative polarity, temporal-aspectual values, person deixis and pragmatic functions, and whose distribution is determined by complex syntactic rules. Negative concord is pragmatically determined, hence non-strict with common nouns, where it renders emphatic meanings. Negative concord is grammatically determined and strict with negative indefinite pronouns and with negative phrases fulfilling the functions of negative indefinite pronouns. I conclude that Pichi negation patterns are typically areal in character and cannot be seen to reflect a "Creole" linguistic type.

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“…This is a consequence of the unique trajectory of Pichi: It has been isolated from its lexicon-providing language English for two centuries and therefore escaped lexical and structural convergence with English (cf. Yakpo 2017). It has also developed phonological idiosyncrasies due to adstratal influence from the Bantu language Bubi (Yakpo 2013b: 287-90), and has been influenced extensively by Equatorial Guinea's colonial and official language Spanish (Yakpo 2009b(Yakpo , 2018.…”

Section: The English-lexifier Contact Languages Of West Africamentioning

confidence: 99%

Sociolinguistic characteristics of the English-lexifier contact languages of West Africa

Yakpo¹

2020

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This chapter provides a comparison of key sociolinguistic characteristics of Nigerian Pidgin, Cameroon Pidgin, Ghanaian Pidgin English, Pichi (Equatorial Guinea) and Krio (Sierra Leone). In the past few decades, these African English-lexifier contact languages (AECs) have seen an exponential growth in speaker numbers and an expansion into domains once reserved for English and non-creole African languages. All AECs nevertheless still struggle with a low sociolinguistic prestige and the absence of corpus and status planning initiatives by state actors. Overall, the potential of these languages remains relatively untapped across the region for education, political participation, economic, and cultural activity. At the same time, the impact of the AECs on smaller languages through contact and shift to the AECs is also likely to make itself felt in coming decades.

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Towards a model of language contact and change in the English-lexifier creoles of Africa and the Caribbean

Cited by 11 publications

References 41 publications

Creole Prosodic Systems Are Areal, Not Simple

Creole Prosodic Systems Are Areal, Not Simple

Negation in Pichi (Equatorial Guinea)

Sociolinguistic characteristics of the English-lexifier contact languages of West Africa

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