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12 Pidgin & Creole
Grammatical Features
illustrated in Jamaican Creole
by Peter L Patrick
In Derek Bickerton's
influential book Roots of Language (1981), Ch. 2, he argues that the
following twelve features are characteristic of creole grammars. Suzanne
Romaine, in her 1988 textbook Pidgin and Creole Languages (Ch. 2:
47-52), usefully reviews and summarizes his discussion with examples (she also
discusses additions to the list by Markey 1982 and others). Below I give
another version of the same list with illustrations drawn from Jamaican Creole.
Most come from a single text, "Shootout in the Barbershop", which I
recorded with a mother and daughter in November 1989 in their Kingston home.
(Examples cued
to line numbers of the whole transcribed/translated text, which is here.)
|
(1) |
Sentence-initial focusing particles: |
|
|
Line 35 |
/is so im get shat op/ |
Or, /a so.../ |
|
|
Often uses the same form as the equative copula, eg: |
|
|
Line 41 |
/dem a bad man/ |
i.e., NPX-copula-NPY |
|
(2) |
Articles: |
|
|
Line 14 |
/lef dem chiljren opa di hoos/ |
presupposed, specific --> definite article |
|
Line 25 |
/y'av a glas chərch op die/ |
asserted, specific --> indefinite article |
|
Line 2 |
/Ø bad man dem taim-de/ |
non-specific --> zero-marked, no article |
|
(3) |
Tense/mood/aspect systems: 3 free pre-Verbal morphemes, ordered T>M>A |
||
|
a) |
Tense= Anterior: past-before-past in action verbs, simple past in stative |
||
|
Line 51 |
/dis
iylekshan wa did gaan, don' aks if we neva prie/ |
action, past-before-past |
|
|
Line 5 |
/yes, staat bifuor palitiks man/ |
Action/past-before-past |
|
|
Line 27-8 |
/wi Ø kaal ar mada wait
. . . shi Ø ded nou/ |
action/past, stative/present |
|
|
b) |
Mood= Irrealis: Conditionals, unrealized events, or hypotheticals |
||
|
Line 46 |
/dem mus bi a lai dong pan dem beli/ |
past hypothetical mus bi + progressive a |
|
|
c) |
Aspect= Non-Punctual: progressive, habitual, iterative or durative |
||
|
Line 11 |
/dem a tek kuok tuu ya no/ |
past progressive a |
|
|
(4) |
Realized vs. Unrealized (=Irrealis) complement clauses take different complementizers |
||
|
Line 10 |
/dem pie mi fi go kil im aaf/ |
Unrealized: takes fi, fi + go |
|
|
Line 22 |
/a neva sii a big man Ø baal so in aal mi laif/ |
Neg, Realized: Ø |
|
|
Line 23-24 |
/di man . . . staat Ø baal fi mərda/ |
Realized: Ø, Unrealized: fi |
|
|
(5) |
Subject relative clauses do have relative pronouns, unlike pidgins: |
||
|
Line 27 |
/di liedi ova dier we yuus tu priich/ |
"lady" = subject of relative clause |
|
|
(6) |
Negative Concord: (Besides V, non-definite subjects + complements are negated) |
|
|
Line 48 |
/a wudn laik ekspiyryens notn laik dat agen/ |
Neg in complement |
|
Line 51 |
/don aks if wi neva prie fi piis/ |
Neg in matrix & embedded clause |
|
(7) |
Same word expresses Existence and Possession: |
|
|
Line 34 |
/yu hav a gai op dier so/ |
"You have" for English "There is" |
|
(8) |
Copula can be absent; different forms for different meanings (transparency) |
|
|
Line 12 |
/dem man-de Ø jos vishos/ |
No copula before Adjectives... |
|
Line 20 |
/aal huu Ø insaid a di man likl plees/ |
...optional before Locatives |
|
Line 41 |
/bot dem a bad man/ |
Separate Equative copula ... |
|
(not shown) |
/wen mi de huom/ |
...from (optional) Locative one |
|
(9) |
Adjectives function as verbs: |
|
|
Line 28 |
/shi Ø ded nou/ |
...that's why there's no
copula here! (see (8), line 12, /vishos/ also) |
|
(10) |
Surface syntactic structure of questions identical to statements: |
|
|
Line 3 |
/sə dem woz bad man bifuor dee get ina di palitiks (na?)/ |
(not woz dem: no inversion of Subject and Copula) |
|
(11) |
Question words tend to be bi-morphemic (compounded): |
|
|
(not shown) |
Guyanese Creole: /wisaid/ |
lit. "which + side", meaning "where" |
|
but Line 15: |
/likl bit batamsaid di hoos/ |
lit. "bottom + side", meaning "below" |
|
(12) |
Passive is not marked on the verb: |
|
|
Line 29 |
/di huol chərch lak op/ |
No "Be + -ed" passive morphology |
|
(not shown) |
/di chrii plaan/ |
"the tree (was) planted" |
|
(not shown) |
/di gon faiya/ |
"the gun (was) fired" |
References
Bickerton, Derek. 1981. Roots
of Language. Ann Arbor MI: Karoma Pub.
Markey, Thomas L. 1982.
"Afrikaans: Creole or non-creole?" Zeitschrift fur Dialektologie
und Linguistik IL: 169-207.
Romaine, Suzanne. 1988. Pidgin
and Creole Languages. London: Longman Group.
Back to Pidgins & Creoles (LG449) coursepage
Last updated 09 October 2002