6 - Syntax

Summary

Introduction

This chapter is a study of some syntactic features that are shared by a number of Creoles (both Atlantic and non-Atlantic) but not by the standard languages from which they draw their vocabularies. The number of such features is quite large, and they are so widespread that their existence can hardly be explained by mere coincidence. One of the most central issues in Creole studies has been the development of a theory of genesis that satisfactorily accounts for these syntactic similarities. The grammatical features discussed in this chapter are generally considered to be of primary importance in evaluating the relative merits of these theories, which are discussed in some detail in chapter 2. The orientation of the present study is that these common features reflect the influence of both superstrate and substrate languages, as well as universals of adult second-language acquisition, creole-internal innovations, or the convergence of all or some of these sources.

Sources of Creole syntax: universals

Language universals – in the Greenbergian or Chomskyan sense of general parameters on possible structures rather than the Bickertonian sense of specific, innate structures – seem likely to have played an important role as a filter in the selection of syntactic features in the pidgins and the Creoles that grew out of them. With few exceptions, basilectal Creoles rely on free rather than inflectional morphemes to convey grammatical information. This seems likely to have resulted from a universal tendency in adult second-language acquisition to isolate such information through lexicalization, i.e. using a word rather than an ending to convey such information as tense.