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Article published In:
English World-Wide
Vol. 40:2 (2019) ► pp.202–227

Inheritance, contact, convergence

Pronominal allomorphy in the African English-lexifier Creoles

| The University of Hong Kong

This article provides a comparative analysis of the suppletive allomorphy of two personal pronouns in the five African English-lexifier Creoles (AECs) Krio (Sierra Leone), Pichi (Equatorial Guinea), Ghanaian Pidgin English, Nigerian Pidgin, and Cameroon Pidgin. The alternation of the 3sg object forms =àm (a clitic) and ín (a non-clitic) is conditioned by a tonal obligatory contour principle (ocp), a vowel height ocp, animacy, and focus in different constellations across the five AECs. In addition, an epenthetic /r/ is recruited in four of the AECs to ensure that the ocp is not breached. The analyses suggest that pronominal suppletion in the AECs has been fashioned by processes of change and differentiation typical of geographically extensive language families, such as migration from linguistic homelands, acquisition by non-founder populations, interlectal cross-diffusion, as well as contact and convergence with adstrate, substrate, and superstrate languages.

Keywords: West Africa, Creole, Pidgin English, Spanish, Yoruba, obligatory contour principle, suppletion, epenthesis, object pronoun, tone-conditioned allomorphy
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.The linguistic ecologies of the African English-lexifier Creoles
  • 3.Tone-conditioned suppletive allomorphy in Pichi
  • 4.Tone-conditioned suppletive allomorphy and epenthesis in Pichi
  • 5.Pronominal suppletion in Krio, GhaP, NigP, and CamP
  • 6.Inheritance, contact and convergence in the differentiation of pronoun suppletion
  • 7.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgments
  • Notes
  • Glossing conventions and abbreviations
  • References
Published online: 13 June 2019
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/eww.00028.yak
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