Universals, Substrata and the Indian Ocean Creoles

Baker, Philip; Corne, Chris

doi:10.1075/cll.1.09bak

Cited by 21 publications

(17 citation statements)

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“…Neither reduplication nor verb fronting therefore provides strong evidence for Bantu influence. The extensive article agglutination (some 600 nouns in MC, according to Baker & Corne (1986)) on the other hand can reasonably be attributed to Bantu influence but even here it has to be noted that agglutination exists in other French creoles with less or no Bantu input.…”

Section: The Following Examples Are Illustrative Of the French Creolementioning

confidence: 93%

“…However, Baker & Corne (1986), Corne et al (1996), and Corne (1999) point to article agglutination, verb fronting and reduplication as evidence of Bantu influence, but these phenomena are not unknown in the Atlantic French creoles whose substrates were mostly West African languages. Article agglutination occurs even in Tayo, a language with no African connection.…”

Section: The Following Examples Are Illustrative Of the French Creolementioning

confidence: 93%

“…It must therefore be a process that occurs independently of African influence but it is not inconceivable that, as suggested in Baker and Corne (1986), the extensive article agglutination found in MC, in comparison with article agglutination in other French creoles, might have resulted from the substantial increase in the number of Bantu speakers in the last quarter of the 18th century and early 19th century by which time, we believe, on the basis of the linguistic evidence given above, that a syntactically stable MC was already in place (see also Baker & Corne 1986). Bantu languages, as observed in Baker & Corne (1986), have nominal prefixes expressing nominal classes. Speakers of these languages, it is suggested, may have perceived and misanalysed the French articles as the nominal classifiers of their languages.…”

Section: The Following Examples Are Illustrative Of the French Creolementioning

confidence: 95%

“…The following are from van der Wal (2009) (Mufwene 1996) and Babungo (Schaub 1985) are two such languages but as Corne (1999) points out Babungo was not present in Mauritius, nor was Kikongo. The four Bantu languages that are reported to have been spoken in Mauritius are Makhuwa, Yao, Bembe, and Mwera (see Baker and Corne 1986). …”

Section: The Following Examples Are Illustrative Of the French Creolementioning

confidence: 96%

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Serial Verb Constructions in Indian Ocean French Creoles (IOCs)

Syea

2013

JPCL

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This paper revisits the debate between Bickerton on the one hand and Seuren, Corne, Coleman and Curnow on the other on the question of whether serial verb constructions exist in the French creoles of the Indian Ocean (namely Seychelles Creole and Mauritian Creole). It examines data particularly from Mauritian Creole (which was rather marginally represented in that discussion) and argues in agreement with Bickerton (1989, 1996) that serial verbs do indeed exist in this creole just as they do in Seychelles Creole. However, it also argues that their presence in these languages must be attributed not to an innate linguistic mechanism (as claimed in Bickerton 1989, 1996) nor to a substrate source (contra Corne et al. 1996, Corne 1999) but to an independent internal development in which consecutive imperatives were reanalyzed as serial verb constructions. It is assumed that, given the socio-historical nature of creole contact situations, consecutive imperatives would have been a prominent part of early input as interchanges between those who spoke French and those who did not would have mostly been in the form of directives (commands, instructions, etc.) which are more often than not expressed through the imperative . However, it is recognized that this development could have benefited from substrate (particularly Malagasy) influence but it remains in the main the result of an internal diachronic process. The proposal outlined has interesting implications for the role of input and the role that adults may have played in the development of creole languages in general and serial verb constructions in particular. Some aspects of creole languages, it is suggested, can be adequately accounted for without having to implicate either an innate linguistic mechanism or wholesale transfer from substrate sources.

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Section: The Following Examples Are Illustrative Of the French Creolementioning

confidence: 93%

Section: The Following Examples Are Illustrative Of the French Creolementioning

confidence: 93%

Section: The Following Examples Are Illustrative Of the French Creolementioning

confidence: 95%

Section: The Following Examples Are Illustrative Of the French Creolementioning

confidence: 96%

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Serial Verb Constructions in Indian Ocean French Creoles (IOCs)

Syea

2013

JPCL

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“…It is known that Morisyeh (Mauritian Creole) emerged over a similar time span (Baker 1982(Baker , 1984Baker & Corne 1986, 1987, while current research on Cayennais also points in the same direction (Jennings 1993). 19 This is of considerable interest with respect to Baker's set of demographic "events" hypotheses.…”

Section: The Broader Viewmentioning

confidence: 92%

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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Genetic Creolistics as Part of Evolutionary Linguistics

Mufwene¹

2020

The Handbook of Historical Linguistics

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Universals, Substrata and the Indian Ocean Creoles

Cited by 21 publications

References 0 publications

Serial Verb Constructions in Indian Ocean French Creoles (IOCs)

Serial Verb Constructions in Indian Ocean French Creoles (IOCs)

Relativization and Thematization in Tayo and the Implications for Creole Genesis

Genetic Creolistics as Part of Evolutionary Linguistics

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