Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages - Volume 14, Issue 1, 1999

This study examines research on transfer in second language acquisition (SLA) in order to identify situational and linguistic factors which may constrain the influence of substrate languages on the developing grammar of a pidgin or creole. A distinction is made between the earlier transfer of L1 features by individuals attempting to use the superstrate language as an L2 for wider communication, and the later retention of a subset of these features by the community during a process of leveling which occurs during stabilization. The study outlines various transfer constraints and reinforcement principles proposed in both the second language acquisition and pidgin/creole studies literature. These are evaluated using Melanesian Pidgin and its Central-Eastern Oceanic (CEO) substrate languages as a test case. Of the potential constraints on transfer proposed in the SLA literature, the need for partial or specious congruence between superstrate and substrate structures appears to account best for the particular CEO features that were transferred. Perceptual salience accounts for the kinds of forms from English that were reanalyzed to fit CEO patterns. With regard to the retention of particular transferred features, the most significant reinforcement principle appears to be frequency in the contact environment.

This paper examines high tone sandhi in Saramaccan, an Atlantic creole spoken in the Surinamese interior, as described by Voorhoeve (1961) and Rountree (1972a). In particular, a comparison is drawn with a similar tonal phenomenon in the Anlo dialect of Ewe (Ghana: Western Gbe) as reported by Clements (1978). Tone sandhi domains in both languages are argued to be delineated by the left edges of maximal projection edges in the syntax. Cross-linguistic work on edge-based mapping relations between syntax and phonology (e.g., Clements, 1978; Selkirk, 1986; Chen, 1987; Odden, 1987) has shown that the shape as well as the use of syntactically-derived prosodic domains varies widely. Similarities as well as differences between Anlo Ewe and Saramaccan tone sandhi environments are examined in light of the sub-stratist and universalist hypotheses of creole genesis, leading to the conclusion that a less polemic view, such as that suggested by Mufwene (1986), provides the best account.

This paper discusses internally-motivated change as a largely ignored factor in understanding diachrony in creole languages: that is, externally-motivated models — and the most popular of these is certainly decreolization and the related concept of the creole continuum — have been nearly exclusively relied upon by creolists to explain phenomena associated with language variation and change in creole-speaking communities, particularly among the Atlantic English-derived creoles. This paper presents one alternative to viewing variation data derived from creole speakers as solely a function of decreolization. It raises issues associated with (and explores alternatives to) that singular view of diachrony.