Structure et Dynamique des Langues

This book collects a selection of fifteen papers presented at three meetings of the Society for Pidgin and Creole Linguistics in 1996 and 1997. The focus is on papers which approach issues in creole studies with novel perspectives, address understudied pidgin and creole varieties, or compellingly argue for controversial positions. The papers demonstrate how pidgins and creoles shed light on issues such as verb movement, contact-induced language change and its gradations, discourse management via tense-aspect particles, language genesis, substratal transfer, and Universal Grammar, and cover a wide range of contact languages, ranging from English- and French-based creoles through Portuguese creoles of Africa and Asia, Sango, Popular Brazilian Portuguese, West African Pidgin Englishes, and Hawaiian Creole English.

Although the Surinamese Creoles have figured prominently in discussions about Creole genesis, little is still known about the origin of their TMA system, a central area of grammar that has received much attention in this debate. In this paper we assess the relative contribution of the primary substrate input, varieties of Gbe, to the TMA system. Drawing on both contemporary data from several Surinamese Creoles and varieties of Gbe, and historical data from Sranan Tongo, we show that the substrate was clearly responsible for the emergence of some aspect and tense categories. However, in itself, substrate influence cannot explain the emergence of the entire Creole tense and aspect system. Other processes such as internal change, superstrate influence etc. also played an important role.

Politeness and Face in Caribbean Creoles is the first collection to focus on socio-pragmatic issues in the Caribbean context, including the socio-cultural rules and principles underlying strategic language use. While the Caribbean has long been recognized as a rich and interesting site where cultural continuities meet with new "creolized" or innovative practices, questions of politeness practices, constructions of personhood, or the notion of face have so far been neglected in linguistic research on Caribbean Creoles. Drawing on linguistic politeness theory and Goffman's concept of face, eleven mostly fieldwork-based innovative contributions critically examine a range of topics, such as ritual insults, strategic use of "bad language", kiss-teeth , the performance of homophobic threats, greetings, address forms, advice-giving, socialization and discourse, parent-child discourse, register choice and communicative repertoire in the Caribbean context.

Katukina-Kanamari, possibly the only extant language of the Katukina family, features ergative alignment both in morphology and syntax. The paper is devoted to the description of the various domains of grammar where ergativity is present, as well as of a functionally conditioned accusative pattern. The main aim is to show, on the basis of empirical data, that on the formal side a syntactically ergative language can be quite isomorphic with an accusative language, the main differences being the always present split of transitivity in ergative languages and the interface between semantics and morphosyntax: the mapping of semantic roles onto grammatical relations is inverted between ergative and accusative systems, not only in the structure of the basic clause but also in valence changing processes.

Abstract In voice and alignment typology, a categorical distinction is generally made between inverse systems on the one hand and symmetrical voice systems on the other. A major reason for distinguishing between these two types is the assumption that inverse systems are governed by a hierarchy involving grammatical, semantic, and ontological criteria, while symmetrical voice systems are based on discourse-pragmatic factors. However, the two types also have several important properties in common, in particular the fact that they have more than one nonderived transitive construction. Based on data from three native languages of South America, we show that the line between the two types is not always easy to draw, and that features of the inverse type can coexist with those of the symmetrical-voice type in the same language.

This paper introduces two linguistic fields dealing with language change: contact linguistics and sociolinguistic research on variation. It argues that although there is no language change without variation, linguistic variation is still an opaque area, a blind spot, for most contact-induced language change studies. The role of variation in changes occurring in multilingual settings has not been much discussed in the literature and the exact role and interplay of the notions of ‘variation’, ‘change’ and ‘contact’ have not yet been fully explored. This paper proposes to examine more precisely the relationship between variation and change in language contact settings.

La littérature concernant la variation linguistique étudiée pour elle-même (Labov, 1966, 1972 et 1992 ; Milroy et Milroy, 1978 ; Gadet, 1992 et 2003) ou la variation menant au changement (Labov, 1994 et 2001) a souvent quasi-exclusivement adopté une perspective monolingue. Hormis les études dans le domaine de l’acquisition-apprentissage des langues ou sur les parlers jeunes par exemple, les travaux proposant l’intégration du contact de langues dans l’étude de la variation linguistique sont pe...

In Movima (unclassified, lowland Bolivia), the arguments of a transitive clause are encoded according to the position of their referents in an indexability hierarchy. The argument whose referent is lower in this hierarchy is encoded in the same way as the sole argument of an intransitive clause. This argument, furthermore, is syntactically privileged: it can be relativized and topicalized, while for the argument with the higher‐ranking referent to undergo one of these processes, a detransitivizing voice operation is used. Semantic role assignment is carried out by direct and inverse marking on the predicate. Movima represents a hitherto undescribed case of hierarchical alignment, in which an indexability hierarchy has direct impact on syntax and the less salient noun phrase has the privileged syntactic status.

When we talk of the modern Celtic languages today we refer to the Insular Celtic varieties that have maintained (or indeed regained) a degree of their linguistic vitality and that are practised, to varying extents and in various forms, by users of the Breton, Cornish, Irish, Manx, Scottish Gaelic and Welsh languages. Further to their common linguistic derivation, the Celtic languages share a number of additional characteristics that lend themselves well to a common analytical framework (features that they indeed share with many other ‘small’ languages). Each of the languages has, for a long time, been functioning in a bilingual, if not multilingual, environment. Consequently, in global terms, each of the languages is reliant on a relatively small pool of speakers for their survival. Perhaps unsurprisingly for those familiar with the dynamics of minority languages, then, language maintenance, revitalisation and revival projects have been among of the hallmarks of the Celtic-language experience for some time. This speaks to a familiar appetite among at least some users, as well as non-users, to go against the grain of language loss and to try to ensure that the Celtic languages are used into the future despite an extremely challenging climate.

Coding of transitive clauses in Movima (lowland Bolivia) including a speech act participant reflects a person hierarchy, 1 > 2 > 3; when a lower-ranking person acts on a higher-ranking one, the verb is marked as inverse. This article investigates the conditions under which inverse marking occurs when a transitive clause contains only third-person arguments. A quantitative analysis of spontaneous speech data shows that, while the discourse factors involved still require further research, animacy plays an important role. For instance, inverse marking never occurs when an entity higher in the animacy hierarchy acts on a lower ranking one.

It is well known that in certain Romance languages the direct object may be introduced or not by a marker which is homonymous with a corresponding preposition: pe in Romanian, a in Spanish and Sardinian. This phenomenon is known as Differential Object Marking (DOM). The aim of this paper is twofold. On the one hand, we present a detailed description of the distribution of DOM in Romance. On the other hand, we sketch a generalization correlating DOM with the denotation of the noun that functions as a direct object. We begin by briefly examining the parameters that generally determine DOM. Then we compare Romance marked constructions and describe the similarities and the differences between the three languages presenting this phenomenon. After reviewing a number of previous analyses, we finally adopt a proposal based on the semantic type of the direct object (cf. Cornilescu & Dobrovie-Sorin (2007)). This proposal may be expressed as a twofold generalization: (i) DOM is obligatory only for those objects that are necessarily -type (within the appropriate class of nouns, i.e. nouns with the feature [+ human]); (ii) DOM is excluded with those objects that have a property denotation, i.e. nouns that are -type.

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A referential hierarchy is a scalar representation of types of referents or referring expressions that are ranked according to their deictic, semantic, and/or dis- course-pragmatic properties. 1 The first representation of this kind was Silverstein ’ s (1976: 113) “ hierarchy of inherent lexical content ” , 2 which predicts tendencies of the distribution of accusative vs. ergative alignment patterns in languages with ergative traits. Silverstein ’ s suggestion was that entities high in the hierarchy are more prototypical agents and entities low in the hierarchy are more prototypical patients. The concept of referential hierarchies soon became very popular, both as a tool for explaining morphosyntactic patterns and as an object of research itself (see Comrie 1981 and DeLancey 1981 for early examples; see Bornkessel-Schlesewsky et al. 2015 for a selection of recent studies). 3 One version of Silverstein ’ s referential hierarchy is given in (1) (from Dixon 1979: 85).

The first comprehensive grammatical description of Movima, a seriously endangered, unclassified indigenous language of Amazonian Bolivia. It comprises phonology, morphology, and syntax.

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This paper proposes an intelligible picture of the constitutional, legal and regulatory framework in which the " Langues de France " are considered ("Langues de France" is the formal designation for the languages spoken on the territory, other than French, that are taken as part of the national heritage). The objective is to present the state of affairs in a way which should make it more easily understood by linguists, students and interested persons. We don't present the situation in legal terms, but rather try to identify the general principles that govern the texts, as well as the provisions applying to a few specific areas.

This volume offers a synthesis of current expertise on contact-induced change in Arabic and its neighbours, with thirty chapters written by many of the leading experts on this topic. Its purpose is to showcase the current state of knowledge regarding the diverse outcomes of contacts between Arabic and other languages, in a format that is both accessible and useful to Arabists, historical linguists, and students of language contact.

Cet article traite de la comparaison de supériorité dans le créole afro-portugais de Casamance, langue parlée traditionnellement au sud-ouest du Sénégal particulièrement dans la ville de Ziguinchor. La comparaison, de manière générale, a fait l’objet de plusieurs études ayant abouti à des modèles typologiques excluant souvent des données provenant des créoles. Les structures comparatives demeurent méconnues en créole de Casamance. Cette étude fournit une description détaillée de la comparaison de supériorité en créole de Casamance tant du point de vue morphosyntaxique que sémantique au regard des modèles typologiques proposés dans la littérature. La comparaison de supériorité se forme en créole de Casamance à l'aide du marqueur de degré má/mas (plus). Ce marqueur est polyfonctionnel car il peut avoir des emplois verbal et adverbial. Il n'y a pas de distinction de formes pour les êtres animés et les êtres inanimés. Différents procédés sont utilisés pour exprimer la comparaison de supériorité (constructions adjectivale, adverbiale et verbale et superlative). Les cas de comparaisons régulières peuvent s'exprimer avec ou sans le marqueur du standard di ki (que) entrainant une juxtaposition du paramètre et du standard. Les cas où le marqueur de degré est exprimé sans le marqueur du standard ne sont pas décrits dans la plupart des typologies consacrées à la comparaison. Quant au cas de comparaisons irrégulières, ils sont exprimés à l’aide des adjectifs boŋ (bon) et maw (méchant) qui forment respectivement leurs comparaisons en má miñjor et má piyor, renforçant ainsi un adjectif comparatif supplétif avec un marqueur de degré.

Ce mémoire de synthèse présente un premier chapitre de positionnements épistémologiques (pratiques langagières, construction des objets, des données et des corpus, linguistique de terrain impliquée, linguistique de corpus outillée à la recherche de méthode pour rendre compte de la complexité). Le chapitre 2 concerne l'étude du multilinguisme en Guyane, le chapitre 3 l'étude des variations du français en contact en Guyane, le chapitre 4 offre un parcours depuis les contacts entre variétés de créoles à base anglaise à la documentation en situation multilingue. Le chapitre 5, prospectif, propose des outils pour analyser l'hétérogénéité linguistique en corpus.