Article published in:
Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages
Vol. 34:2 (2019) ► pp. 195–242

The perfect in English-lexifier pidgins and creoles

A comparative study

| Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität Munich, Germany
This study investigates the expression of perfect meanings in thirty English-lexifier pidgins and creoles or related varieties, such as African American Vernacular English or Singlish. The data were elicited with the help of sixteen sentences and a short text from Dahl’s (1985: 198–206) typological tense-aspect questionnaire. The perfective, as the perfect’s ‘anti-prototype’ (Dahl 2014: 273), is also considered. The possession of a grammaticalized perfect category is particularly frequent in West Africa, where it is likely to constitute a case of substrate influence; moreover, the gram is considerably less frequent in English-lexifier pidgins and creoles than in non-creole languages, which may be related to recent grammaticalization processes.
Keywords: English-lexifier pidgins and creoles, typology, perfect of result, experiential, persistent situation, recent past, perfective, substrate influence, creole exceptionalism, grammaticalization
Published online: 25 November 2019
https://doi.org/10.1075/jpcl.00039.hac
References

[ p. 237 ]References

Aboh, Enoch O., Norval S. H. Smith & Tonjes Veenstra
2013 Saramaccan. In Susanne Maria Michaelis, Philippe Maurer, Martin Haspelmath & Magnus Huber (eds.). The survey of pidgin and creole Languages. Vol. I: English based and Dutch based languages, 27–38. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Bao, Zhiming
2005 The aspectual system of Singapore English and the systemic substratist explanation. Journal of Linguistics 41. 237–267. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Bickerton, Derek
1975 Dynamics of a creole system. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
1981 Roots of language. Ann Arbor: Karoma.Google Scholar
Berg, Margot C. van den & Enoch O. Aboh
2013 Done already? A comparison of completive markers in the Gbe languages and Sranan Tongo. Lingua 12. 150–172. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Bybee, Joan & Östen Dahl
1989 The creation of tense and aspect systems in the languages of the world. Studies in Language 13. 51–103. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Bybee, Joan, Revere Perkins & William Pagliuca
1994 The evolution of grammar. Tense, aspect, and modality in the languages of the world. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Comrie, Bernard
1976 Aspect. An introduction to the study of verbal aspect and related problems. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Dahl, Östen
1985 Tense and aspect systems. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
2014 The perfect map: Investigating the crosslinguistic distribution of TAME categories in a parallel corpus. In Benedikt Szmrecsanyi & Bernhard Wälchli (eds.). Aggregating dialectology, typology, and register analysis. Linguistic variation in text and speech, 268–289. Berlin: de Gruyter. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Dahl, Östen & Eva Hedin
2000 Current relevance and event reference. In Östen Dahl (ed.). Tense and aspect in the languages of Europe, 385–401. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Dahl, Östen & Viveka Velupillai
2013 The perfect. In Matthew Dryer & Martin Haspelmath (eds.). The world atlas of language structures online. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. http://​wals​.info​/chapter​/68 (November 11 2017).
Dayton, Elizabeth
1996 Grammatical categories of the verb in African American Vernacular English. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Pennsylvania.Google Scholar
Devonish, Hubert & Dahlia Thompson
2013 Creolese. In Susanne Maria Michaelis, Philippe Maurer, Martin Haspelmath & Magnus Huber (eds.). The survey of pidgin and creole languages. Vol. I: English based and Dutch based languages, 49–60. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
de Wit, Astrid
2017 The present perfective paradox across languages. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Durrleman, Stephanie
2007 Completive aspect in Jamaican Creole: The complete story? GG at G (Generative Grammar in Geneva) 5. 143–157.Google Scholar
Durrleman Tame, Stephanie
2008 The syntax of Jamaican Creole. A cartographic perspective. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Eberle, Nicole & Daniel Schreier
2013 African Bermudian English and the Caribbean connection. English World Wide 34. 279–304. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Edwards, Walter F.
1991 A comparative description of Guyanese Creole and Black English preverbal aspect marker don . In Walter F. Edwards & Donald Winford (eds.). Verb phrase patterns in English and creole, 240–255. Detroit: Wayne State University Press.Google Scholar
[ p. 238 ]
2001 Aspectual dən in African American Vernacular English in Detroit. Journal of Sociolinguistics 5. 413–427. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Escure, Geneviève
2013 Belizean Creole. In Susanne Maria Michaelis, Philippe Maurer, Martin Haspelmath & Magnus Huber (eds.). The survey of pidgin and creole languages. Vol. I: English based and Dutch based languages, 92–100. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Faraclas, Nicholas
2013 Nigerian Pidgin. In Susanne Maria Michaelis, Philippe Maurer, Martin Haspelmath & Magnus Huber (eds.). The survey of pidgin and creole languages. Vol. I: English based and Dutch based languages, 176–184. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Green, Lisa J.
1993 Topics in African American English: The verb system analysis. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Massachusetts Amherst.Google Scholar
2002 African American English. A linguistic introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Hackert, Stephanie
2004 Urban Bahamian Creole: System and variation. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Haspelmath, Martin, Matthew S. Dryer, David Gil & Bernard Comrie
(eds.) 2005 The world atlas of language structures. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Heine, Bernd & Tania Kuteva
2003 On contact-induced grammaticalization. Studies in Language 27. 529–572. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Holm, John & Peter L. Patrick
2007 Comparative creole syntax. Parallel outlines of 18 creole grammars. London: Battlebridge.Google Scholar
Huber, Magnus
1999 Ghanaian Pidgin English in its West African context. A sociohistorical and structural analysis. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Kiparsky, Paul
2002 Event structure and the perfect. In David I. Beaver, Luis D. Casillas Martínez, Brady Z. Clark & Stefan Kaufmann (eds.). The construction of meaning, 113–136. Stanford: CSLI Publications.Google Scholar
Kirk, John M.
2017 The present perfect in Irish English. World Englishes 36. 239–253. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Kortmann, Bernd
2004  Do as a tense and aspect marker in varieties of English. In Bernd Kortmann (ed.). Dialectology meets typology: Dialect grammar from a cross-linguistic perspective, 245–275. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Kortmann, Bernd & Kerstin Lunkenheimer
(eds.) 2012 The Mouton world atlas of variation in English. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
(eds.) 2013 The electronic world atlas of varieties of English. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. http://​ewaveatlas​.org (August 23 2015).
Labov, William
1998 Coexistent systems in African-American Vernacular English. In Salikoko S. Mufwene, John R. Rickford, Guy Bailey & John Baugh (eds.). African-American English: Structure, history and use, 110–153. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Labov, William & Joshua Waletzky
1967 ‘Narrative analysis: Oral versions of personal experience’. In June Helm (ed.). Essays on the verbal and visual arts: Proceedings of the 1966 annual spring meeting of the American Ethnological Society, 12–44. Seattle: University of Washington Press.Google Scholar
Leimgruber, Jakob R. E.
2009 Modelling variation in Singapore English. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Oxford.Google Scholar
[ p. 239 ]
Lim, Lisa & Umberto Ansaldo
2013 Singlish structure dataset. In Susanne Maria Michaelis, Philippe Maurer, Martin Haspelmath & Magnus Huber (eds.). The atlas of pidgin and creole language structures online. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. http://​apics​-online​.info​/contributions​/21 (January 11 2016).
Lindstedt, Jouko
2000 The perfect – aspectual, temporal and evidential. In Östen Dahl (ed.). Tense and aspect in the languages of Europe, 365–383. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
LIRICS (Linguistic InfRastructure for Interoperable ResourCes and Systems) Consortium
. N.d. Semantic roles: Definitions, explanations, examples. https://​semantic​-annotation​.uvt​.nl​/LIRICS​_semroles​.htm#guidelines (August 27 2017).
Maddieson, Ian
2013 Tone. In Matthew Dryer & Martin Haspelmath (eds.). The world atlas of language structures online. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. http://​wals​.info​/chapter​/13 (November 12 2017).
Maurer, Philippe
2013 Present reference of stative verbs and past perfective reference of dynamic verbs. In Susanne Maria Michaelis, Philippe Maurer, Martin Haspelmath & Magnus Huber (eds.). The atlas of pidgin and creole language structures, 200–203. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
McWhorter, John H.
2002 What happened to English? Diachronica 19. 217–272. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Meyerhoff, Miriam
2013 Bislama. In Susanne Maria Michaelis, Philippe Maurer, Martin Haspelmath & Magnus Huber (eds.). The survey of pidgin and creole languages. Vol. I: English based and Dutch based languages, 223–231. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Michaelis, Susanne Maria
2014 Sampling in contact linguistics: What is a typical creole feature? Paper presented at ‘Time and space in linguistics: Interdisciplinary computational approaches and cross creole comparisons’, Aarhus.
Michaelis, Susanne Maria, Philippe Maurer, Martin Haspelmath & Magnus Huber
(eds.) 2013a The atlas of pidgin and creole language structures. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
(eds.) 2013b The survey of pidgin and creole languages. Vol. I: English based and Dutch based languages. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
(eds.) 2013c The atlas of pidgin and creole language structures online. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. http://​apics​-online​.info (August 15 2015).
Migge, Bettina
2003 Creole formation as language contact. The case of the Suriname creoles. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
2013 Nengee. In Susanne Maria Michaelis, Philippe Maurer, Martin Haspelmath & Magnus Huber (eds.). The survey of pidgin and creole languages. Vol. I: English based and Dutch based languages, 39–48. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Migge, Bettina & Isabelle Léglise
2013 Exploring language in a multilingual context: Variation, interaction and ideology in language documentation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Mosel, Ulrike
1980 Tolai and Tok Pisin: The influence of the substratum on the development of New Guinea Pidgin. Pacific Linguistics B-73. Canberra: Australian National University.Google Scholar
Mühlhäusler, Peter
2013 Norf’k. In Susanne Maria Michaelis, Philippe Maurer, Martin Haspelmath & Magnus Huber (eds.). The survey of pidgin and creole languages. Vol. I: English based and Dutch based languages, 232–240. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
[ p. 240 ]
Rappaport Hovav, Malka
2008 Lexicalized meaning and the internal temporal structure of events. In Rothstein, Susan (ed.). Theoretical and crosslinguistic approaches to the semantics of aspect, 13–42. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Schneider, Agnes
2012 Typological profile: Pidgins and creoles. In Bernd Kortmann & Kerstin Lunkenheimer (eds.) 2012 The Mouton world atlas of variation in English, 874–904. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Schneider, Edgar W.
2007 Postcolonial English. Varieties around the world. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Schreier, Daniel
2002 Dynamic mixing or archaic retention? The ambiguous case of ‘completive done’ in Tristan da Cunha English. Diachronica 19. 135–176. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
2010 The consequences of migration and colonialism II: Overseas varieties. In Peter Auer & Jürgen Erich Schmidt (eds.). Language and space: Theories and methods. An international handbook of linguistic variation (Handbooks of Linguistics and Communication Science 30.1), 451–467. Berlin: de Gruyter Mouton.Google Scholar
Schröder, Anne
2013 Cameroon Pidgin English. In Susanne Maria Michaelis, Philippe Maurer, Martin Haspelmath & Magnus Huber (eds.). The survey of pidgin and creole languages. Vol. I: English based and Dutch based languages, 185–193. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Schultze Berndt, Eva, Felicity Meakins & Denise Angelo
2013 Kriol. In Susanne Maria Michaelis, Philippe Maurer, Martin Haspelmath & Magnus Huber (eds.). The survey of pidgin and creole languages. Vol. I: English based and Dutch based languages, 241–250. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Schütz, Albert J.
1969 Nguna grammar. Oceanic Linguistics Special Publications 5. University of Hawai’i Press.Google Scholar
Schwenter, Scott A.
1994 Hot news and the grammaticalization of the perfect. Linguistics 32. 995–1028. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Siegel, Jeff
2000 Substrate influence in Hawai‘i Creole English. Language in Society 29. 197–236. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
2008a Pidgins/creoles and second language acquisition. In Silvia Kouwenberg & John Victor Singler (eds.). The handbook of pidgin and creole studies, 189–218. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell.Google Scholar
2008b The emergence of pidgin and creole languages. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
2010 Contact languages of the Pacific. In Raymond Hickey (ed.). The handbook of language contact, 814–836. Chichester: Wiley Blackwell. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Singler, John Victor
1984 Variation in tense aspect modality in Liberian English. Ph.D. dissertation, University of California, Los Angeles.Google Scholar
Smith, Carlota S.
1997 The parameter of aspect. 2nd ed. Dordrecht: Kluwer. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Smith, Geoff P. & Jeff Siegel
2013 Tok Pisin. In Susanne Maria Michaelis, Philippe Maurer, Martin Haspelmath & Magnus Huber (eds.). The survey of pidgin and creole languages. Vol. I: English based and Dutch based languages, 214–222. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
[ p. 241 ]
Smith, Ian
2008 Pidgins, creoles, and Bazaar Hindi. In Braj B. Kachru, Yamuna Kachru & S. N. Sridhar (eds.). Language in South Asia, 253–268. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Trudgill, Peter & Jean Hannah
2008 International English. A guide to the varieties of standard English. 5th ed. Hodder Education.Google Scholar
Vander Klok, Jozina & Lisa Matthewson
2015 Distinguishing already from perfect aspect: A case study of Javanese wis . Oceanic Linguistics 54. 172–205. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Vate, Marleen Susanne van der
2011 Tense, aspect and modality in a radical creole. The case of Saamáka. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Tromsø.Google Scholar
Vendler, Zeno
1957 Verbs and times. The Philosophical Review 66. 143–160. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Velupillai, Viveka
2003 Hawai’i Creole English: A typological analysis of the tense-mood-aspect system. Houndmills, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
2011 The ‘had VERB’ construction in Hawai’i Creole English. GAGL 53. 119–138.Google Scholar
2012 An introduction to linguistic typology. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
2015 Pidgins, creoles, and mixed languages. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Werner, Valentin
2014 The present perfect in World Englishes: Charting unity and diversity. Bamberg: University of Bamberg Press.Google Scholar
Winford, Donald
1993 Predication in Caribbean English creoles. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
2012 Creole languages. In Robert I. Binnick (ed.). The Oxford handbook of tense and aspect, 428–457. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Winford, Donald & Bettina Migge
2007 Substrate influence on the emergence of the TMA systems of the Surinamese creoles. Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages 22. 73–99. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Winford, Donald & Ingo Plag
2013 Sranan. In Susanne Maria Michaelis, Philippe Maurer, Martin Haspelmath & Magnus Huber (eds.). The survey of pidgin and creole languages. Vol. I: English based and Dutch based languages, 15–26. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Yakpo, Kofi
2009 A grammar of Pichi. Berlin/Accra: Isimu Media.Google Scholar
2013 Pichi. In Susanne Maria Michaelis, Philippe Maurer, Martin Haspelmath & Magnus Huber (eds.). The survey of pidgin and creole languages. Vol. I: English based and Dutch based languages, 194–205. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
2017 Towards a model of language contact and change in the English-lexifier creoles of Africa and the Caribbean. English World-Wide 38. 50–76. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
[ p. 242 ]