Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-lj6df Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-15T10:30:36.211Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

They just fade away: Language death and the loss of phonological variation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 February 2009

Robin Sabino
Robin Sabino
Affiliation:
Department of EnglishAuburn University, Auburn, AL 36849-5203
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Using data from four sets of alternating forms in a moribund Dutch-lexicon creole, this article addresses the characteristics of variation in moribund languages, and “the usefulness of variationist approaches in the description and analysis” of them (Drechsel 1990:552–53). The analysis shows how variable phonological rules continue to exist in a dying language, even after large numbers of words have been bled from the rules' inputs, thereby providing support for Dressler's hypothesis of lexical fading (1972). A three-stage scenario of rule loss is proposed to account for the fact that, in the Negerhollands case, there is substantially greater phonological variation at the level of the community than at the level of the individual. (Obsolescence, phonological variation, phonological change, creole languages, Virgin Islands, Negerhollands)

Type
Articles
Information
Language in Society , Volume 23 , Issue 4 , September 1994 , pp. 495 - 526
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1994

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Alleyne, Mervyn C. (1971). The cultural matrix of creolization. In Hymes, (ed.), 169–86.;86.Google Scholar
Alleyne, Mervyn C. (1980). Comparative Afro-American. Ann Arbor: Karoma.Google Scholar
Anderson, Janet I. (1987). The markedness differential hypothesis and syllable structure difficulty. In Ioup, & Weinberger, (eds.), 279–91.Google Scholar
Bickerton, Derek (1973). On the nature of a Creole continuum. Language 49:640–69.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bickerton, Derek (1981). Roots of language. Ann Arbor: Karoma.Google Scholar
Bickerton, Derek (1984). The language bioprogram hypothesis. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 7:173–221.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bickerton, Derek (1988). Creole languages and the bioprogram. In Newmeyer, Frederick J. (ed.), Linguistics: The Cambridge Survey, vol. 2, Linguistic theory: Extensions and implications, 268–84. Cambridge & New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Bickerton, Derek (1991). On two recent “counterexamples” to bioprogram theory. Journal of Pidgin and Creole Linguistics 6:25–58.Google Scholar
Bickerton, Derek (1992). The sociohistorical matrix of creolization. Journal of Pidgin and Creole Linguistics 7:307–18.Google Scholar
Carrington, Lawrence (1992). Images of Creole space. Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages 7:93–99.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Christie, Pauline (1983). In search of the boundaries of Caribbean Creoles. In Carrington, Lawrence D. et al. (eds.), Studies in Caribbean language, 13–22. St. Augustine, Trinidad: Society for Caribbean Linguistics.Google Scholar
De Camp, David (1971). Toward a generative analysis of a post-Creole speech continuum. In Hymes, (ed.), 349–70.Google Scholar
de Jong, Jan Petrus Benjamin de Josselin (1924). Het Negerhollandsch van St. Thomas en St. Jan. (Mededeelingen der Koninklijke Academie van Wetenschappen, Afdeeling Letterkunde, Deel 57, Serie A, 3:55–71.) Amsterdam: North-Holland.Google Scholar
de Jong, Jan Petrus Benjamin de Josselin (1926). Het huidge Negerhollandsch: Texten en woordenlijst. (Verhandelingen der Koninklijke Akademie van Wetenschappen te Amsterdam, Afdeeling Letterkunde, Nieuwe reeks, Deel 26, no. 1). Amsterdam: North-Holland.Google Scholar
Dorian, Nancy C. (1981). Language death. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dorian, Nancy C. (1989), ed. Investigating obsolescence: Studies in language contraction and death. Cambridge & New York: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dorian, Nancy C. (1994). Stylistic variation in a language restricted to private-sphere use. In Biber, Douglas & Finegan, Edward (eds.), Perspectives on register, 217–32. Oxford & New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Drechsel, Emanuel J. (1990). Review of Dorian 1989. Language in Society 19:550–54.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dressier, Wolfgang U. (1972). On the phonology of language death. Papers from the Chicago Linguistic Society 8:448–57.Google Scholar
Graves, Anne v. (1977). The present state of the Dutch Creole of the Virgin Islands. Dissertation, University of Michigan.Google Scholar
Guttman, Louis (1944). A basis for scaling quantitative data. American Sociological Review 9:139–50.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Guy, Gregory R. (1980). Variation in the group and the individual: The case of final stop deletion. In Labov, (ed.), 1–36.Google Scholar
Hamp, Eric P. (1989). On the signs of health and death. In Dorian, (ed.), 197–210.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hesseling, Dirk Christiaan (1905). Het Negerhollands der Deense Antillen. Leiden: Sijthoff. Translated in Thomas L. Markey & Paul T. Roberge (eds.), On the origin and formation of Creoles, by D. C. Hesseling, 487–58. Ann Arbor: Karoma, 1979.Google Scholar
Holm, John (1988). Pidgins and Creoles. Cambridge & New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Hymes, Dell (1971), ed. Pidginization and creolization of languages. Cambridge & New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Ioup, Georgette & Weinberger, Stephen H. (1987), eds. Interlanguagephonology. Rowley, MA: Newbury House.Google Scholar
Labov, William (1972). Sociolinguistic patterns. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.Google Scholar
Labov, William (1980), ed. Locating language in time and space. New York: Aademic Press.Google Scholar
Lipski, John M. (1990). The language of the Isleños: Vestigial Spanish in Louisiana. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press.Google Scholar
Magens, Jochum Melchor (1770). Grammatica over del Creolske Sprog, som bruges paa de trende danske Eilande St. Croix, St. Thomas, og St. Jans i Amerika. Copenhagen: Gerhard Guse Salikath. [Translation by Mark Hale, MS.]Google Scholar
Moodie, Sylvia (n.d.) Morphophonemic illformedness in an obsolescent dialect: A case study in Trinidad Spanish, MS.Google Scholar
Mufwene, Salikoko (1986). Les langues Créoles peuvent-elles être définies sans allusion à leur histoire? Études Créoles 9:135–50.Google Scholar
Nue, Helen (1980). Ranking of constraints on /t, d/ deletion in American English: A statistical analysis. In Labov, (ed.), 37–54.Google Scholar
Oldendorp, Christian Georg Andreas (1777). Geschichte der Mission der Evangelischen Brüder auf den Caraibischen Inseln S. Thomas, S. Croix und S. Jan. Leipzig: Weidmann. Translated as History of the mission ⃛, ed. by Arnold R. Highfield & Vladimir Barac. Ann Arbor: Karoma, 1987.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pintzuk, Susan & Kroch, Anthony (1986). VARBRUL June 1986. Philadelphia: [Dept. of Linguistics, University of Pennsylvania.]Google Scholar
Pontoppidan, Eric (1881). Einige Notizen ber die Kreolensprache der Dänischwestindischen Inseln. Zeitschrift für Ethnologie 13:130–38.Google Scholar
Rankin, Robert L. (1978). The unmarking of Quapaw phonology: A study of language death. Kansas Working Papers in Linguistics 3:45–52.Google Scholar
Reisman, Carl (1970). Cultural and linguistic ambiguity in a West Indian village. In Whitten, Norman E. & Szwed, John F. (eds.), Afro-American Anthropology, 129–44. New York: Free Press.Google Scholar
Rickford, John (1979). Variation in a Creole continuum: Quantitative and implicational approaches. Dissertation, University of Pennsylvania.Google Scholar
Rickford, John (1987). Dimensions of a Creole continuum. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Robins, Robert Henry (1979). A short history of linguistics. 2nd edn. London: Longman.Google Scholar
Sabino, Robin (1986). Another step towards a characterization of the Negerhollands tense and aspect particles. Amsterdam Creole Studies 9:47–71.Google Scholar
Sabino, Robin (1988). An examination of the copula in vernacular Negerhollands. Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages 3:199–213.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sabino, Robin (1990). Towards a phonology of Negerhollands: An analysis of phonological variation. Dissertation, University of Pennsylvania.Google Scholar
Sabino, Robin (1993). On onsets: Explaining Negerhollands initial clusters. In Holm, John & Byrne, Francis (eds.), The Atlantic meets the Pacific: Selected papers from the Society for Pidgin and Creole Linguistics, 37–44. Philadelphia: Benjamins.Google Scholar
Sabino, Robin & Graff, David (1984). /h/ insertion in Negerhollands: The pronoun alternates HAM and AM. Paper presented at the 5th Biennial Conference, Society for Caribbean Linguistics, Mona, Jamaica.Google Scholar
Sankoff, David (1988). Variable rules. Appendix to Rand, David & Sankoff, David (eds.), Gold-Varb, Version 2. Montréal: Centre de Recherches Mathématiques, Université de Montréal.Google Scholar
Sato, Charlene (1987). Phonological processes in second language acquisition: Another look at interlanguage syllable structure. In Ioup, & Weinberger, (eds.), 279–91.Google Scholar
Schmidt, Annette (1985). Young people's Dyirbal: An example of language death from Australia. Cambridge & New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Schneider, Victor (1993). Earlier Black English revisited. Paper presented at LAVIS II, Auburn University, Alabama.Google Scholar
Schuchardt, Hugo (1882–1891). Kreolische Studien. Vienna: Geroid.Google Scholar
Schuchardt, Hugo (1914). Zum Negerholländischen von St. Thomas. Tijdschrift voor Nederlandse Taalen Letterkunde 33:123–35. Translated as On Virgin Islands Dutch Creole, in Thomas L. Markey (ed.), The ethnography of variation, 45‘58. Ann Arbor: Karoma, 1979.Google Scholar
Shetter, William Z. (1982). Introduction to Dutch: A practical grammar. 4th edn. The Hague: Nijhoff.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Singler, John Victor (1988). The homogeneity of the substrate as a factor in pidgin/creole genesis. Language 64:27–51.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Singler, John Victor (1990). On the use of sociohistorical criteria in the comparison of Creoles. Linguistics 20:645–69.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Singler, John Victor (1992). Rejoinder. Journal of Pidgin and Creole Studies 7:319–33.Google Scholar
Stein, Peter (1994). ⃛ and they only remembered and used it when they succeeded to give it a sense. In Arends, Jacques (ed.), The early stages of creolization, 1–16. Amsterdam: Benjamins.Google Scholar
Stolz, Thomas (1983). The prosodic properties of Negro-Dutch: On the interrelationship between stress, pitch, vowel quality, and vowel quantity. Amsterdam Creole Studies 5:53–91.Google Scholar
Stolz, Thomas (1986). Gibt es das Kreolische Sprachwandelmodell? Vergleichende Grammatik des Negerholländischen. Frankfurt: Lang.Google Scholar
Tarone, Elaine (1980). Some influences on the syllable structure of interlanguage phonology. International Review of Applied Linguistics 18:139–52. Reprinted in loup, & Weinberger, (eds.), 279–91.Google Scholar
Valdman, Albert (1983). Creolization and second language acquisition. In Andersen, Roger (ed.), Pidginization and creolization as language acquisition, 212–34. Rowley, MA: Newbury House.Google Scholar
Van Name, Addison (1869–1970). Contributions of Creole grammar. Transactions of the American Philological Association (Philadelphia) 1:123–67.Google Scholar
Vennemann, Theo (1972). Rule inversion. Lingua 29:209–42.Google Scholar
Vennemann, Theo (1988). Preference laws for syllable structure and the explanation of sound change. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Wang, William S- Y. (1969). Competing changes as a cause of residues. Language 45:9–25.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Westergȧrd, Waldimar (1917). The Danish West Indies under company rule. New York: MacMillan.Google Scholar
Young, Richard (1991). Variation in interlanguage morphology. New York: Lang.Google Scholar