morphology of creole languages - indo-portuguese

Morphology of creole languagesIndo-Portuguese

Fabiola Henri

University of [email protected]

LSA Summer InstituteJuly 25st , 2017

Partly in collaboration Olivier Bonami, Ana Luis

Henri (Lexington) Morphology of creole languages July 2017 1 / 24

[email protected]

Review

Outline

Review

Indo-PortugueseSociohistorical contextStructure of Portuguese


Review

From French to French-based creoles

1. The kind of morphology found in the French-based creoles correlateswith highly perceptible properties of the inflectional morphology of thelexifier

Ï Innovation of a LF vs SF verb alternation based on a similar formdistinction found in French

Ï But the function seen in the lexifier was not retained

2. The alternation may have started out as a phonological one (cf.Haitian): Phonological alternations morphologize

3. The varying functions of the alternation is explained by differentfactors

Ï substratic input/influence, population size, sociohistorical context,sustained contact with lexifier, regular cognitive processes, languagechange, . . .


Review

Extending the methodology to other creoles: IP

Ï The inflectional paradigm in IP is reminiscent of the structure ofPortuguese

Ï The sociohistorical context plays a role in the extension seen in IP

Ï Languages in contact influence the shape of the paradigm


Indo-Portuguese Sociohistorical context

Outline

Review




Portuguese colonization

Common practice for Portuguese men to cohabit and intermarry withindigenous women (Clements 1996)

MAP 1

Portuguese-based Creoles in Africa and Asia (* = moribund, + = extinct)

1. Cape Verdian 2. Senegal 3. Guinea-Bissau 4. Principense 5. Angolar 6. Sāo Tomense 7. Pagalu

(Annobonese)

8. Diu* 9. Daman 10. Bombay+ 11. Korlai 12. Goan 13. Mangalore+ 14. Cannanore+ 15. Mahé+

16. Cochin* 17. Nagappattinam + 18. Sri Lanka Portuguese 19. Papia Kristang 20. Singapore+ 21. East Timor 22. Java Creole Portuguese 23. HongKong Portuguese+ 24. Macanense



Indo-Portuguese colonization

Ï Rigid and Isolating Indian caste system

Ï Made official in 1510 in India –Portuguese men were only able to marrylower-caste Hindus

Ï Mixed caste system to accomodatePortuguese and their offsprings

Ï Very narrow interraction betweenChristians & Indian Christians and,Indian Christians and Indians.

Ï Minimal contact with Portuguesespeakers

Ï Korlai & Daman emerged around1515-1520

Ï Spoken and maintained by IndianChristians, mostly farmers

MAP2



Indo-Portuguese: languages in contact

Ï Korlai: Two language contact situationÏ Middle Portuguese

These men knew their dialect of Portuguese, someversion of Portuguese foreigner talk, and per-haps some of the lingua franca spoken around theMediterranean during the medieval times as well.

CLEMENTS 1996: 11

Because of caste barriers, the Indian’s access tothe language was arguably partial

CLEMENTS 1996: 11

Ï Indigenous language: Marathi (Korlai) and Gujarati (Daman & Diu)Henri (Lexington) Morphology of creole languages July 2017 8 / 24



Thus thrown into a new living situation and pre-sented with imperfect input of a new language,which they were obliged to somehow learn, the In-dians naturally made guesses about how to makethemselves understood, i.e., about what their Por-tuguese interlocutors would understand, as theytried to talk to them. Guesses that promoted in-telligibility were ‘right’ guesses.

CLEMENTS 1996: 11




Within the verbal paradigm, a striking case of thetendency toward uniformity in paradigmatic struc-ture is seen in the development of KP in the ha-bitual in both present and past where there wasno clear model for it in either of the contact lan-guages. In contrast, retention of verbal suffixesin KP is a clear example of a marked feature be-ing incorporated into KP due to mutual linguisticaccomodation. Given that the contact situationinvolves two languages, it is possible that the ho-mogeneity of the situation may have fostered theirretention.

CLEMENTS 1996: 11




+ The structure and lexicon of Korlai has changed considerably and,more so, since the introduction of Marathi in church.

18 SOCIOHISTORICAL BACKGROUND

sendces (e.g. sewing, haircuts, shaves), and buy fish and spices from the inhabitants in the surrounding villages. Other necessities and amenities are bought in Chaul, Murud, Alibag, or Bombay (cf. map 3). This situation is, however, already changing. For example, some of the villagers have already sold to entrepreneurs or corporations some or all of their farm land, acquired in the 1940s through the Farm Tenant Act. Basic items are becoming increasingly expensive due to the buying power of the educated work force brought in to manage the factories.

Thus, the inhabitants of Korlai are feeling an ever-increasing pressure from the surrounding Maharastrian culture. Of the many consequences of this pressure, one is linguistic: the structure and the lexicon of KP have changed considerably throughout the last 75 years, and much more so recently because of the expanded educational opportunities and the introduction of Marathi as the language of the church in Korlai. The comment of a 34-year-old Korlai inhabitant reflects the degree of change in KP as well as the awareness of its speakers regarding it:

oj no ling su det Marathi su mayz kombres tavin. pok di su det mayz Marathi palab datn∂ ling luvi ani 20-25 an su det no ling 1 kaba. Today more Marathi speech is coming into our language. Within little time, more Marathi words will enter into our language and in 20-25 years our language will be no more.'

By comparing speech from different age groups and backgrounds of KP speakers, it is possible to measure quite accurately the extent to which the above quote reflects the current state of affairs in KP. In subsequent chapters of this study, I will attempt to shed light on the connection between the more intense cultural pressure on KP in the last 75 years and linguistic changes it has undergone and is currently undergoing. Before turning to those issues, however, Ï would like to present briefly some of the attitudes KP speakers exhibit towards Marathi and their own language. Attitudes constitute an integral part of the puzzle of contact-induced language change, given that they have the power to allow or block such change (Thomason and Kaufman 1988:35).

1.4. Korlai villagers5 attitudes regarding Marathi and their own language

The above KP quote was collected in a survey taken of 32 Korlai villagers classified according to sex, age, and level of education (see Appendix A). Although the results of the survey are not based on a large

Clements 1996: 20


Indo-Portuguese Structure of Portuguese

Outline

Review




Sources

Ï Linguistic descriptions

Daman & Korlai (Clements 1996, Clements 2002)Ï Corpora

Written EP CETEMPúblico (Santos and Rocha, 2001): tagged corpus ofPortuguese (180M words), taken from issues of the newspaperPúblico from 1991 to 1998.

Spoken EP C-ORAL-ROM (Cresti et al., 2004), collection of balanced corporaof spoken French, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese (∼ 300000words for each language), transcribed, tagged and lemmatized



The Portuguese conjugation system

Ï Portuguese stress system: The theme vowel is stressed vs suffixesunless they involve mesoclisis (Spencer & Luís 2004)

(1) mostrAremosshow.FUT.1PL

>>

mostrAre-lho-Emosshow.FUT.3SG/PL-DAT.1PL

‘We will show’ > ‘We will show it to him.’




Ï Portuguese verbal paradigm: 66 cellsÏ 3 conjugation classes, each with its own perceptible theme vowel

Ï lavar ‘wash’ (class1)

TAM 1SG 2SG 3SG 1PL 2PL 3PL

IND.PRS lav-o lava-s lava lava-mos lava-is lava-mIND.PST.IPFV lava-va lava-vas lava-va lava-vamos lava-veis lava-vamIND.PST.PFV lav-ei lava-ste lavou lava-mos lava-stes lava-ramIND.PST.PRF lava-ra lava-ras lava-ra lava-ramos lava-reis lava-ramIND.FUT lava-rei lava-ras lava-ra lava-remos lava-reis lava-raoSBJV.PRS lav-e lave-s lave lave-mos lave-is lave-mSBJV.PST lava-sse lava-sses lava-sse lava-ssemos lava-sseis lava-ssemSBJV.FUT lava-r lava-res lava-r lava-rmos lava-rdes lava-remCOND lava-ria lava-rias lava-ria lava-rıamos lava-rıeis lava-riamIMP --- lava lave lave-mos lava-i lave-mINF.PERS lava-r lava-res lava-r lava-rmos lava-rdes lava-rem

INF.IMPERS PTCP GERlava-r lava-do/a lava-ndo




Ï lavar ‘wash’ (class1)


IND.PRS lav-o lava-s lava lava-mos lava-is lava-mIND.FUT lava-ra lava-ras lava-ra lava-remos lava-reis lava-rao

Ï beber ‘drink’ (class2)


IND.PRS beb-o bebe-s bebe bebe-mos bebe-is bebe-mIND.FUT bebe-ra bebe-ras bebe-ra bebe-remos bebe-reis bebe-rao

Ï subir ‘go up’ (class3)


IND.PRS sub-o sobe-s sobe subi-mos subi-s sobe-mIND.FUT subi-ra subi-ras subi-ra subi-remos subi-reis subi-rao



The Daman / Korlai conjugation system

Ï Verbal paradigms in Daman & Korlai creoles: 4 cells

+ Inflection classes marked by theme vowels+ Extension of a 4th class for loans of substratic origin.

kanta kume subi beblu‘sing’ ‘eat’ ‘go up’ ‘mutter’

BASE kanta kume subi bebluPAST kant-o kume-u subi-u bebluPROGRESSIVE kanta-n kume-n subi-n beblu-nCOMPLETIVE kanta-d kumi-d subi-d beblu-d

Daman Creole Portuguese(adapted from Clements (2002))



The origin of D/K paradigms

Ï Each paradigm cell has a clearly identifiable precedent in Portuguese,both in terms of form and in terms of function.

Daman PortugueseBASE FORM

⇐=INFINITIVE

lava lava-rkume come-rsubi subi-r

PAST FORM

⇐=PST.PFV

lav-o lav-oukume-u come-usubi-u subi-u

Daman PortugueseCOMPLETIVE

⇐=PST.PTCP

lava-d lava-do/akumi-d comi-do/asubi-d subi-do/a

PROGRESSIVE

⇐=GERUND

lava-n lava-ndokume-n come-ndosubi-n subi-ndo



Interim conclusion

Ï Conclusion: Indo-Portuguese is more similar to Portuguese thanFrench-based creoles are to French

K/D FbC

survival of inflection class system yes nosurvival of function of paradigm cells yes noorigin of forms clear unclear



Comparing paradigm opacity

Ï In EP, almost all cells in the paradigm contain a theme vowelprecluding paradigm opacity

+ This is true for all but 1 (PRS.IND.1SG) of the 66 paradigm cellsÏ Recall that by contrast, French showed only a few cases where thetheme vowel would provide unambiguous information on inflectionclass– the infinitive, the past participle, the simple past and the (barelyused) past subjunctive.

Type frequency Token frequency Token frequency(written corpora) (spoken corpora)

Portuguese 98% 99.96% 92.57%French 27% 33.77% 28.53%Proportion of paradigm cells with a diagnostic vowel alternation

(data from CETEMPúblico, Le Monde and C-ORAL-ROM)



Paradigm opacity

Ï Paradigm opacity comes in different flavors and degrees

Ï The Portuguese present is partially opaque

lexeme 1SG 2SG 3SG 1PL 2PL 3PL INF

lavar l"avu l"av5S l"av5 l5v"5muS l5v"aiS l"av5u l5v"aRbeber b"ebu b"Eb@S b"Eb@ b@b"emuS b@b"5iS b"Eb5ı b@b"eRsubir s"ubu s"Ob@S s"Ob@ sub"imuS sub"iS s"Ob5ı sub"iR

Ï Paradigm entropy for Portuguese (Bonami & Luis 2013) show that maintainingthe Portuguese system is less costly than maintaining the French system

+ Measuring internal simplicity (I-simplicity) – average of conditionalentropies among all pairs of words

Language p. entropy

French 0.2117 bitsE. Portuguese 0.1197 bits



Other Portuguese-based creoles

Ï While Indo-Portuguese based creoles have retained inflectional classesdistinguished by theme vowels, other Portuguese-based creoles seemedto have lost the distinction

+ Loss of inflectional boundaries between Stem and theme vowel inPortuguese-based creoles spoken in Africa

Ï Lexicalized theme vowels (part of the verb root) – verbs in (2) aremonomorphemic (Kihm 1994)

(2) seta, kume, bibi (kriyol)‘accept’, ‘eat’, ‘drink’.

Ï Kihm (2003) accounts for the distinction by evoking the differencebetween contextual vs inherent inflection: Contextual inlfection ismore likely to survive.

Ï But Luis (2010) argues that even though theme vowels constitute anexample of inherent inflection, it is also be targeted during creolization

Ï This is dependent on the sociohistorical context of emergenceHenri (Lexington) Morphology of creole languages July 2017 22 / 24


Other Portuguese-based creoles

Ï Conservation of some inflectional suffixes like PST -ba in Upper GuineaCreoles (Holm & Swolkien 2009, Henri & Kihm 2015)

Ï -ba in Kriyol originally analyzed as an independent marker due to theappearance to pronominal objects between the stem and the markerand its appearance in copular constructions without the verb.

Ï Is argued to be inflectional in Cape Verdian (Baptista 2002)Ï In Santagio CP, -ba can appear in different positions on a verbal stem

(3) a. Ès kába di kantába.‘They had stopped singing.’

b. Ès kábaba di kantá.c. Ès kábaba di kantába.

Ï Participial forms: present part. -ndo; past part. -do

Ï Widespeard use of these inflections since colonization. (Holm &Swolkien, 2009: 20)



Conclusion

Ï The structure emerging creole system can only be explained via1. an examination of the (nonstandard spoken varieties of the) lexifier’s

paradigm2. Sociohistorical contexts: populations, interractions, . . .3. Languages in contact and their status4. Cognitive processes – analogy and regularization5. Processes of language change



Cresti, E., do Nascimento, F. B., Sandoval, A. M., Veronis, J., Martin, P., and Choukri, K.(2004). ‘The C-ORAL-ROM CORPUS. a multilingual resource of spontaneous speech forRomance languages.’ In Proceedings of LREC 2004.

Santos, D. and Rocha, P. (2001). ‘Evaluating cetempúblico, a free resource for Portuguese’. InProceedings of the 39th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics.442–449.


morphology of creole languages - indo-portuguese

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