Repository logo
 

The syntax of African American English borrowings in the Louisiana Creole Tense-Mood-Aspect system

Accepted version
Peer-reviewed

Type

Article

Change log

Authors

Abstract

This paper presents the typologically unusual case of borrowed Tense-Mood-Aspect morphemes. Data are taken from Louisiana Creole, a critically endangered French-lexifier Creole. Over the course of its history, Louisiana Creole has been in contact both with local varieties of French and English, including African American English. It will be shown that points of structural congruity between Louisiana Creole and African American English have facilitated the borrowing of two aspect markers for speakers competent in both varieties. African American English stressed BIN has been borrowed and marks remote past habitual, stative and completive. The adverb still has been borrowed and subsequently has grammaticalized as a continuative marker via spec-to-head reanalysis. These borrowings are integrated into the inflectional domain as functional heads marking aspect. Their ordering constraints are evaluated relative to a previous hierarchy preposed by Rottet (1992). Discussion of contact-induced change in Creole languages has typically been confined to examination of interactions with the lexifier, the language which contributes the majority of a Creole’s vocabulary (in this case, French). Fewer studies have presented detailed accounts of how Creoles behave when in contact with other languages, meaning that this particular contact context remains undertheorized.

Description

Keywords

Journal Title

Linguistics Vanguard

Conference Name

Journal ISSN

2199-174X
2199-174X

Volume Title

Publisher

Walter de Gruyter GmbH
Sponsorship
AHRC (1687496)
AHRC (1687496)

Version History

Now showing 1 - 2 of 2
VersionDateSummary
2024-06-25 07:39:19
Published version added
1*
2024-02-27 00:31:09
* Selected version