Principles in the emergence and evolution of linguistic features in World Englishes [1 ed.] 9783954896912, 9783954891917

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Tobias Weber

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Principles in the emergence and evolution of linguistic features in World Englishes

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Weber, Tobias. Principles in the emergence and evolution of linguistic features in World Englishes, Diplomica Verlag, 2014. ProQuest Ebook Central,

Weber, Tobias: Principles in the emergence and evolution of linguistic features in World Englishes. Hamburg, Anchor Academic Publishing 2014 Buch-ISBN: 978-3-95489-191-7 PDF-eBook-ISBN: 978-3-95489-691-2 Druck/Herstellung: Anchor Academic Publishing, Hamburg, 2014 Bibliografische Information der Deutschen Nationalbibliothek: Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek verzeichnet diese Publikation in der Deutschen Nationalbibliografie; detaillierte bibliografische Daten sind im Internet über http://dnb.d-nb.de abrufbar. Bibliographical Information of the German National Library: The German National Library lists this publication in the German National Bibliography. Detailed bibliographic data can be found at: http://dnb.d-nb.de

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Weber, Tobias. Principles in the emergence and evolution of linguistic features in World Englishes, Diplomica Verlag, 2014. ProQuest Ebook Central,

Abstract This study deals with different explanatory models for the emergence or existence of linguistic features in varieties of the English language. After a brief overview of the current research, five non-standard varieties from all over the world, ranging from a traditional dialect to pidgins and creoles, are analyzed in two morphosyntactic and two phonological features. The theoretical approaches are discussed with reference to the features, providing recommendations for or advise against certain explanatory models. Finally, Bybee's usage-based functionalist approach and the usage-based synthesis of new-dialect formation according to Ansaldo are highlighted as plausible explanations for the features. Formalist, descriptive universals are rejected in favour of functionalist, cognitive universals in human language processing, acquisition and evolution, as they occur in language contact or speaker contact scenarios – the dri-

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ving force of language change.

I would like to express my deep gratitude to my friend Sven Leuckert for productive conversations and stylistic advice. Also, I would like to thank my family and Nora for their support throughout my years of study.

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Weber, Tobias. Principles in the emergence and evolution of linguistic features in World Englishes, Diplomica Verlag, 2014. ProQuest Ebook Central,

Table of Contents

Abstract .................................................................................................................................... 5 List of abbreviations ................................................................................................................ 8 1.

2.

Introduction ..................................................................................................................... 9 1.1

Aim of this study ...................................................................................................... 9

1.2

Methods ................................................................................................................... 9

1.3

Basic assumptions .................................................................................................. 10

Current research ............................................................................................................ 14 2.1

2.1.1

Schreier – linguistic endemicity ..................................................................... 14

2.1.2

Andersen – center and periphery .................................................................. 15

2.1.3

Trudgill – new-dialect formation .................................................................... 15

2.2

Mufwene – language as an organism ............................................................ 16

2.2.2

Croft – Theory of Utterance Selection ........................................................... 18

Chomsky – Universal Grammar ...................................................................... 18

2.3.2

Bickerton – Language Bioprogram Hypothesis .............................................. 20

2.3.3

Chambers – vernacular universals ................................................................. 20

Synthetic approaches ............................................................................................. 21

2.4.1

Tomasello – usage-based approach ............................................................... 21

2.4.2

Ansaldo – Adaption Theory ............................................................................ 22

2.4.3

Bybee – usage-based functionalism ............................................................... 23

2.5

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Linguistic formalism ............................................................................................... 18

2.3.1

2.4

4.

Language evolution ................................................................................................ 16

2.2.1

2.3

3.

Sociolinguistic approaches ..................................................................................... 14

Summary ................................................................................................................ 24

Selection of varieties of English .................................................................................... 25 3.1

Traditional L1 variety: Scottish English .................................................................. 26

3.2

High-contact L1 variety: New Zealand English ....................................................... 28

3.3

Indigenized L2: Chicano English ............................................................................. 31

3.4

Creole: Bonin Island English/Ogasawara Mixed Language .................................... 33

3.5

Pidgin: Norfolk Island/Pitcairn English ................................................................... 36

Selection of linguistic features ...................................................................................... 40 4.1

Morphosyntactic features ...................................................................................... 40

4.1.1 4.2

F34: alternative forms for 2nd person plural pronouns .................................. 40

Phonological features............................................................................................. 46

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Weber, Tobias. Principles in the emergence and evolution of linguistic features in World Englishes, Diplomica Verlag, 2014. ProQuest Ebook Central,

5.

4.2.1

Monophthongization ..................................................................................... 46

4.2.2

Th-movement ................................................................................................. 48

Discussion ...................................................................................................................... 52 5.1

5.1.1

Theoretic outline ............................................................................................ 52

5.1.2

Matching the data .......................................................................................... 56

5.2

Language evolution ................................................................................................ 65

5.2.1

Theoretical outline ......................................................................................... 65

5.2.2

Matching the data .......................................................................................... 68

5.3

Linguistic formalism ............................................................................................... 71

5.3.1

Theoretical outline ......................................................................................... 71

5.3.2

Matching the data .......................................................................................... 73

5.4

Synthetic approaches ............................................................................................. 74

5.4.1

Theoretical outline ......................................................................................... 74

5.4.2

Matching the data .......................................................................................... 76

5.5 6.

Sociolinguistic approaches ..................................................................................... 52

Conclusion – principles at work ............................................................................. 78

Considerations ............................................................................................................... 82 6.1

Does the input matter? Languages vs. dialects in contact..................................... 82

6.2

A different perspective on universals .................................................................... 83

6.3

Reflection upon material and methods ................................................................. 84

6.4

Outlook ................................................................................................................... 85

Bibliography ........................................................................................................................... 86

Appendix I .............................................................................................................................. 94 Appendix II ............................................................................................................................. 95 Appendix III ............................................................................................................................ 96

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Appendix IV............................................................................................................................ 97 Appendix V............................................................................................................................. 98 Appendix VI............................................................................................................................ 99

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List of abbreviations

2nd p.pl.pron. second person plural pronoun African American Vernacular English

BIE

Bonin Island English

ChcE

Chicano English

CLF

contact language formation

EFL

English as a foreign language

ESL

English as a second language

eWAVE

electronic World Atlas of Varieties of English

HoVE

Handbook of Varieties of English

L1

first language

L2

second language

LBH

Language Bioprogram Hypothesis

NZ

New Zealand

NZE

New Zealand English

PNE

Pitcairn-Norfolk English

OML

Ogasawara Mixed Language

RP

Received Pronunciation

ScE

Scottish English

UG

Universal Grammar

WALS

World Atlas of Language Structures online

WAVE

World Atlas of Varieties of English

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AAVE

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Weber, Tobias. Principles in the emergence and evolution of linguistic features in World Englishes, Diplomica Verlag, 2014. ProQuest Ebook Central,

1.

Introduction

1.1

Aim of this study

In this study, five varieties of English will be compared in two phonological and two morphosyntactic features. In advance, different theories or explanations for processes in language development will be discussed. Later, the theories will be taken into consideration for the explanation of the prevalence, varying in degree, of the features discussed in the different varieties. Hereby, certain principles, general processes and tendencies in language development are supposed to be uncovered, confirmed or refuted. Different models of explanations will be matched to certain features, and recommendations on each theory will be made, hopefully resulting in the contribution of an integrated model. 1.2

Methods

In order to achieve the aims, a set of five different varieties of the English language, ranging from traditional Scottish English dialect to an exotic pidgin spoken on 9remote Pacific Pitcairn Island, will be analyzed in four features. Two of them will focus on phonology, another two focus on morphosyntax. The selection of features was made partly in order to grant fair chances to each explanatory model, and partly because of their high pervasiveness in most varieties. The five varieties of English follow the five categories of non-standard varieties in the World Atlas of Varieties of English, WAVE (Kortmann/Lunkenheimer 2012: 3f.). As a next step, explanatory models and theories from a number of mainly sociolinguistic paradigms, such as language universals represented by Chambers, dialectology by Trudgill, evolutionary linguistics represented by Mufwene, a usage-based approach by psycholinguist Tomasello, or an attempt of an integrated model by Ansaldo, are discussed, interpreted

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and matched with data from the varieties and features. While doing so, we will encounter a large number of terms and concepts that originate from biology, especially genetics, in descriptions of linguistic phenomena. This is due to the fact that – as we will see – they share characteristics in many respects. Nevertheless, one aim of this study is a balanced discussion of each model, which hopefully leads to a juxtaposition of the advantages and disadvantages of each model in the explanation of the chosen features in the five varieties.

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1.3

Basic assumptions Caveats

WAVE and eWAVE samples and feature rankings are often dependent on only one informant, and often the body of source material is rather slim, or in some cases, outdated. As languages, contact languages in particular, are instable and may change in a short period of time, written evidence from half a century ago (e.g. Ross 1964 on Pitcairn/Norfolk English) cannot be left unquestioned. In addition, the selection both of the features and the varieties was not randomly done. This might skew the results, just as the selection of explanatory models or their adaption on contact languages. Generalizations The final recommendation for the best matching fields of explanatory models, features, and varieties will be a generalization, but it is supposed to give a hint where the strengths and weaknesses of each theory are, and what further models might take into account. Definitions Before starting with the analysis we need to define certain (socio-)linguistic concepts. When speaking about a linguistic situation of a geographical or political area, we speak about: die ethnische und/oder regionale Verteilung sowie die soziale Distribution und Hierarchie der Sprachen und/oder Sprachvarianten, die zu einem gegebenen Zeitpunkt auf einem bestimmten (meist politisch-administrativ abgegrenzten) Territorium entsprechend den dort herrschenden ethnischen, politischen, sozialökonomischen und kulturellen Bedingungen zur Kommunikation verwendet werden. (Hansen et al. 1996: 13)

Furthermore, this very situation is characterized by historical processes leading to its Copyright © 2014. Diplomica Verlag. All rights reserved.

coming into existence, and the intensity, aims and fashion of language policy (ibid.). For this reason we will deal with the history, the characteristics, functions, prestige, areal and social distribution and political circumstances of each variety in order to get to know them in great detail. The linguistic situation has various names and facets in the different approaches, for instance linguistic ecology. A language community can be defined as a "group of people who regard themselves as using the same language" (Hansen et al. 1996: 14), which implies a certain amount of linguis10

Weber, Tobias. Principles in the emergence and evolution of linguistic features in World Englishes, Diplomica Verlag, 2014. ProQuest Ebook Central,

tic awareness. This, next to a shared ethnic and cultural identity, can create a communal spirit and form a certain togetherness. This definition will be most productive for our purpose here. Nevertheless, we have to take into account two more perspectives on linguistic communities. A code community includes speakers who use one language as means of communication in intra-national exchange, regardless whether L1 or L2, but not as a foreign language (ibid.). A primarily social perspective is provided by the term communication community that is characterized by fairly stable social relations and hierarchies within a community which leads to a specific selection and distribution of linguistic means and features, regardless whether only one or more languages are used. One individual can be member of a number of communication communities, depending on the dialogue partner and situation (ibid.). This might be a helpful perspective in colonial contact situations with clear-cut social hierarchies. As a next step, we need to look at the linguistic potential of a language community, i.e. "die Zahl und Art der zur Kommunikation innerhalb der Gemeinschaft verwendeten Sprachen und/oder Sprachvarianten, deren Status und sozialkommunikative Funktion sowie auch deren regionale Verbreitung" (Hansen et al. 1996: 16). As we are mainly interested in contact situations here, always more than one language will be encountered. It is important to see whether there is a hierarchy, a substrate, adstrate or superstrate situation of the English language, which variety is more prestigious, to what extent and why the output is more or less influenced by what input. Hansen et al. (1996: 20) find two main influences for the attitude of speakers towards the languages or varieties used in their communication community. Firstly, it is the ethnic or regional origin and the social or socio-economic status; secondly, it is the language's or variety's prestige within this community. Those two factors do not necessarily have to be congruent. Overt prestige is important for the variety's approval within the community and is mainly influenced by the speakers' associated social

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role and status. Covert prestige, on the other hand, seems to contradict the public opinion. As a symbol for a minority's ethnic and social identity, it can become an expression of group solidarity and distance from the establishment, which in turn can also lead to depreciation or rejection by the majority. A variety's or language's prestige can influence the willingness to acquire or master it, or to adopt certain features. For a clear understanding of variety categories we need to define terms such as L1, L2, creole, and pidgin. An L1 is the speaker's mother tongue. It is the language that a 11

Weber, Tobias. Principles in the emergence and evolution of linguistic features in World Englishes, Diplomica Verlag, 2014. ProQuest Ebook Central,

person learns as a child and that he or she uses primarily. An L2 is a second language, "a language that sb learns to speak well and that they use for work or at school, but that is not the language they learned first" (Hornby 2010: 1380). A pidgin is "a simple form of a language, especially English, Portuguese or Dutch, with a limited number of words, that are used together with words from a local language" in contact situations of people who do not speak the same language or one speaker does not speak a language well (Hornby 2010: 1144). In this definition, the focus lies upon simplification, imperfection, language contact and the typical colonial languages. A more complex definition by Daniel Long (2007: 4) gives an extra perspective on the socioeconomic situation of pidgin communication: A pidgin is a language system that evolves when speakers of two, three, or more languages come into contact with each other and cannot easily understand one another's language. Typically, the language of the people with 'power' (through economics, technology, warfare, sheer numbers, etc.) is learned imperfectly by the other groups. These groups acquire lexical morphemes from the powerful lexifier (or superstrate) language, but their understanding of grammatical morphemes and syntax (the way words are joined together to make meaningful sentences) is influenced by their various native languages (the substrate languages). Their misinterpretations (reinterpretations) of the grammar of the target language result in the grammatical simplification and restructuring of the language.

In addition, there might be many "complex relationships that the speaker can conceive of (in her mind, in her native language) but cannot verbalize in the pidgin due to its grammatically [and lexically] limited nature" (Long 2007: 6). Only a restricted pool of expressions and structures is available making formulations outside this corridor impossible.

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Important here is that a pidgin, by definition, is not spoken as a first language in contrast to a creole language. "[P]idgins have no native speakers. A user of a pidgin is by definition a native speaker of some other language. A nativized pidgin is a creole" (ibid.). A creole is "a language formed when a mixture of a European language with a local language (especially an African language spoken by slaves in the West Indies) is spoken as a first language" (Hornby 2010: 359). This definition, though, is a bit narrow because it focuses on European languages, which is not necessary. Creolization is a process of "expansion through the nativization of a pidgin, 12

Weber, Tobias. Principles in the emergence and evolution of linguistic features in World Englishes, Diplomica Verlag, 2014. ProQuest Ebook Central,

and the creole language that the children create is a full-fledged language in which there are grammatical structures to express the cognitive relationships their minds come up with" (Long 2007: 6). In Long's words (ibid.), we will later refer to creoloids, a contact language with the typical admixture of two or more languages but with less dramatic processes of restructuring, simplification and expansion. A highly

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recommended introduction on pidgins and creoles can be found in Sebba 2009.

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2.

Current research

We can find a broad range of perspectives on linguistic phenomena such as isolated speech communities, language contact, internally and externally motivated change, and the resulting features in varieties of English all over the world. In this chapter, a number of these perspectives will be presented in brief. Here, different attitudes towards new dialect formation or contact language formation become apparent, including arguments for and against each approach. The perspectives are grouped according to the main statements they make, even though it is difficult to form groups. There are overlapping aspects in the different theories, but also mutually exclusive aspects. We start with Schreier in order to explain the phenomenon of linguistic contact and isolation, and continue by outlining the relevant principles that might be at work in contact situations. Here, universalistic, evolutionistic, psycholinguistic, and mainly sociolinguistic approaches will be presented, discussed, and used as a starting point for the discussion in chapter 5 in which data from chapters 3 and 4 will be included. 2.1

Sociolinguistic approaches

Almost all approaches in chapter 2 have a sociolinguistic dimension as contact situations are often central aspects of their statements. The approaches in 2.1 are mainly concerned with the speakers and their geographic and social movements, though, and put emphasis on the social facet. 2.1.1 Schreier – linguistic endemicity Daniel Schreier (2003) stepped into the tradition of usage of terminology from biology for linguistic purposes, see 2.3. Endemicity in biology or medicine means the existence or distribution of species, both animals and plants, only in a certain locally Copyright © 2014. Diplomica Verlag. All rights reserved.

restricted area (Duden 2009: 274). Insularity is geographical isolation including its special case of local restriction on a single island. Linguistic endemicity then is the occurrence of certain linguistic phenomena in geographically isolated speech communities. In his research, Schreier mainly focused on the South Atlantic island of Tristan da Cunha, probably the most remote inhabited island in the world. The closest settlements are St. Helena 1,400 miles north and Cape Town 1,800 miles east (Schreier 2003: 252). His findings can be adapted to most of the varieties we will

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Weber, Tobias. Principles in the emergence and evolution of linguistic features in World Englishes, Diplomica Verlag, 2014. ProQuest Ebook Central,

discuss here as they share characteristics such as a small population, and geographical and social isolation. 2.1.2 Andersen – center and periphery Henning Andersen (1988) describes new-dialect formation with an expanded model of the classic Adoption Theory. In this theory, the simplistic standard scenario for contact-induced language change is outlined. Speakers with different traditional norms get into contact, adopt each other's norms and adjust their usage accordingly. Features that were formerly marked differences in the two varieties are obliterated or merged; traditional features will not continue to be passed on. As a result, a linguistic boundary – an isogloss – disappears (Andersen 1988: 40). Here, the new and vital point is the model of center and periphery. Andersen describes a phenomenon that was already discovered by Ferdinand de Saussure, namely that "regardless of which language areas they work with, there are palpable differences between the kinds of developments that characteristically occur in central and in peripheral speech areas" (ibid.: 39). Depending on the characteristics of the dialect, speakers are conservative or open toward change. This creates reduction and regularization, or differentiation and complication, i.e. language change. 2.1.3 Trudgill – new-dialect formation Trudgill (2004) proposes three stages of new-dialect formation, each subdivided in several steps. As he states, the relative influence of "language contact versus dialect contact [...] may be rather hard to disentangle" (2004: 5). With small adaptations, his theory of new-dialect formation seems to work for both dialect and language contact. Trudgill describes a process of new-dialect formation in six steps. After coming together in a special location, speakers of different dialects or mutually intelligible

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languages mix in a multi-dialectal society. The variants will reduce over time in accordance with certain deterministic, social factors such as socio-economic status of the speakers and the associated prestige. Too heavily marked features will be reduced or abandoned because they are not locally shared. Unmarking as a subtype of levelling often happens in favour of forms "which offer greatest structural simplicity" (Trudgill 2004: 86). An interdialect develops. This is a dialect that has a set of features which was not actually present in any of the of the contributing dialects, and which arise out of interaction between them. The interdialect's structure and system 15

Weber, Tobias. Principles in the emergence and evolution of linguistic features in World Englishes, Diplomica Verlag, 2014. ProQuest Ebook Central,

may be simpler, as complex as, or – owing to hypercorrection – even more complex than a speaker's initial dialect. After reallocating leftovers of initial dialects to phonological, morphological, or register-related niches, the five necessary steps of koinéisation are completed. After that, in a final step, the new dialectal features are focussed; this is their norms and stability are consolidated within the communication community (Trudgill 2004: 84-89). According to him, the six steps occur in three different chronological stages, roughly corresponding with three successive generations of speakers (Trudgill 2004: 89). 2.2

Language evolution

2.2.1 Mufwene – language as an organism Salikoko S. Mufwene is mostly known for his concept of language ecology and evolution including the ideas of the founder principle and the feature pool which he has elaborated since the mid-1990s (Mufwene 2012a). He defines language as "a complex adaptive system and as a piece of technology that was built incrementally and has been modified several times over by its users and makers (speakers and signers alike) to meet their current communicative needs, under the influence of habits developed previously" (Mufwene 2012b: 3), or in another text, as a "Lamarckian species, whose genetic makeup can change several times in its lifetime. It is also a parasitic species, whose life and vitality depend on (the acts and dispositions of) its hosts, i.e. its speakers, on the society they form, and on the culture in which they live" (Mühlhäusler 2005: 266). In the course of time, speakers of a language introduce "variation and therefore competition and selection, as different innovators often introduce variants (forms or structures) for the same functions" (Mufwene 2012b: 3). First, change happens in idiolects on an individual level. Later, this change, if accepted by the speech comCopyright © 2014. Diplomica Verlag. All rights reserved.

munity, will be applied by a larger number of speakers. Over time, the language selforganizes communal norms, reduces variation, and certain standards rise to population level (ibid.). He "focused on how indirect external ecological factors (e.g. population movements, the particular dialect mix of the allopatric1 population, the kinds of languages spoken by the people they came in contact with in the colony, and

1

Allopatric speciation in biology is the separate existence and development of closely related species in different places due to sudden geographic isolation.

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Weber, Tobias. Principles in the emergence and evolution of linguistic features in World Englishes, Diplomica Verlag, 2014. ProQuest Ebook Central,

population structure, which determines patterns of social interaction) influenced language change" (ibid.). Exactly his inspiration from biology has led him to the re-introduction of the founder principle2 that is also called the doctrine of first effective settlement (Mühlhäusler 2005: 266). It explains how "structural features of creoles have been predetermined to a large extent (but not exclusively!) by characteristics of the vernaculars spoken by the populations that founded the colonies in which they developed" (Mufwene 1996: 84). The "ethnographic setting in which the lexifier [...] has come into contact with diverse languages (or populations) whose structural features [...] enter into competition with its own features" is called the ecology of a language (ibid.: 85). At this point, Mufwene puts great emphasis on the idiolectal level. He says that every individual's realization of his or her L1 is an incomplete abstraction of the L1 because of the speaker's limited input - depending on the ecology on the individual's level. This means two speakers of the same language must differ in their acquisition of their L1 due to input that is not identical. When dealing with Mufwene, analogies to biology, especially genetics, become obvious. He first started to compare language with population, as speakers are the agents of a language – just as living creatures are the carriers of genes. A language is only a useful but abstract extrapolation of the (mutually intelligible) idiolects of their speakers – just as a species is an abstraction of similarities of its (genetically compatible and similar) members. There is interindividual variation in genes and L1 realization, the latter identified by linguistic features. As genes are inherited, linguistic features can be passed on, though rather via transmission and restructuring than by inheritance, but both being dependent on the ecology or surrounding. Furthermore, there is change in both genetics and linguistic usage, which can be described as evolution (Mufwene 2002: 46). In the same way, the feature pool is an analogy to the

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gene pool (ibid.). Input from feature donors are more or less equally collected in a pool which causes competition among them. Finally, a selection is made and certain features make it to the output language with different probabilities, some of them 2

"Whenever an empty territory undergoes settlement, or an earlier population is dislodged by invaders, the specific characteristics of the first group able to effect a viable, self-perpetuating society are of crucial significance to the later social and cultural geography of the area, no matter how tiny the initial band of settlers may have been [...] in terms of lasting impact the activities of a few hundred, or even a few score, initial colonizers can mean much more for the cultural geography of a place than the contributions of tens of thousands of new immigrants generations later" (Zelinsky quoted in Mühlhäusler 2005: 267).

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Weber, Tobias. Principles in the emergence and evolution of linguistic features in World Englishes, Diplomica Verlag, 2014. ProQuest Ebook Central,

only appearing sporadically in individuals, others being salient in the majority of the population; comparable to recessive and dominant genes, one could say (ibid: 46f.). The founder principle, in biology a term for a reduced gene pool owing to geographic or genetic isolation of (small) populations, is used to describe the increased likelihood of an establishment of the founders' linguistic features existing in a population. Here, it is more likely that the lexifier's features will dominate and only few items (or genes) of the substrate will prevail. 2.2.2 Croft – Theory of Utterance Selection Croft, himself influenced by Hull, developed a similar concept, the Theory of Utterance Selection. Language can be seen as a "population of linguistic features and grammar as a combination of idiolects" (Ansaldo 2009: 14). Social forces such as prestige or status are understood as a "mechanism that selects an innovative variant for subsequent propagation across the speech community" (Croft et al. 2006: 2). An utterance is taken as the analogue to DNA as it passes (grammatical) information from one speaker to another, forming the lingueme-genome-analogy. Speakers are interactors, genes are replicators; speakers, by exchanging linguistic features, replicate the lingueme. Variation exists not only among speakers but also within individuals. And because neither two speakers nor two situations are alike, communication creates variation through imperfect replication of words, sounds and constructions speakers have heard before, an aspect also considered in usage-based models (chapter 2.4). Social circumstances such as the "social success" cause the "differential survival of the linguemes they produce" (Croft et al. 2006: 3). This accounts for change over time (ibid.: 2f.). Similarities to Mufwene's Feature Pool notion with its competition and selection become apparent.

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2.3

Linguistic formalism

2.3.1 Chomsky – Universal Grammar The notion of linguistic universals is highly debated and ambiguous. In general, universals can refer to "a superficial descriptive property true of the expression of all languages", a descriptive universal, or to a cognitive universal, "a property true of all human minds" (Winford 2013: 224). Descriptive universals are associated with Joseph Greenberg's functional, empiricist approach in which a representative sample of languages is typologically compared in certain features, and cross-linguistic generali18

Weber, Tobias. Principles in the emergence and evolution of linguistic features in World Englishes, Diplomica Verlag, 2014. ProQuest Ebook Central,

zations are made. Cognitive universals have their origin in Noam Chomsky's formalist approach of generative grammar, which proposes a set of universal principles that limit the possible forms of grammar, both in language acquisition and change. Here, central is the formulation of generalizations about the "essential nature of language, from which particular language-specific grammatical features can be derived", leading to a theoretical construct of Universal Grammar, an innate human language faculty (Winford 2013: 225). While functionalists usually make empirical studies and derive their deductions about similarities in languages and in mechanisms of language change world-wide from corpus-based data, their evidence and results seem to be more relevant and logical than those of formalists who have a starting point of innate grammar governed by universal principles, and try to support this view with data, as we will see below (ibid.). The Universal Grammar Hypothesis can be characterized by four interrelated claims (see Goldberg 2009: 202): 1) domain-specificity: Language acquisition is constrained by representations or principles that are specific to language; 2) universality: These representations or principles are universal; 3) innateness: These representations or principles are not learned; 4) autonomous syntax: These representations or principles depend on syntactic representations and not their functional correlates. This means that every newborn child has the capacity to acquire a language (L1) relatively easily, the faculty of speech and basic grammatical processes are innate, genetic information is the source for learning every possible language because the input during first language acquisition triggers certain parameters to attain a distinct value, all of them following deep universal principles. The language faculty as the basis for linguistic universals is a black box, but functionalist-inductive approaches Copyright © 2014. Diplomica Verlag. All rights reserved.

are interested in exactly those processes happening in this black box, "providing external explanations for observable universal properties of language and mainly address physical and cognitive constraints" (Siemund 2009: 334). The combination of all parameters is characteristic for each language. However, there is a lack of data on this theory and thus no empirical or developmental-psychological support (Nünning 2008: 95f.).

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2.3.2 Bickerton – Language Bioprogram Hypothesis Moreover, we can find Derek Bickerton's Language Bioprogram Hypothesis, LBH, a formalist approach that treats creole genesis as the outcome of L1 acquisition "in a context of restricted linguistic input from the surrounding community" (Thomason 2001: 178). Children growing up in a highly unstable linguistic environment, as in pre-pidgin-speaking plantation creole communities, construct a grammar that derives from their innate bioprogram, so to speak a genetically programmed grammar "hardwired in every newborn human infant's brain" (ibid.). In a stable, 'normal' surrounding, the grammar of the community overlays the bioprogram features, wiping out genetic traces. This approach seems "shaky on the empirical evidence" (ibid.: 179) and was refuted in various recent studies on Caribbean English-lexicon creoles, showing no evidence for grammatical predetermination in Bickerton's sense (Winford 2013: 228). The LBH can only account for a small number of incidences of plantation creole L1 acquisition, and is thus not an option for the five varieties discussed in this study. 2.3.3 Chambers – vernacular universals The term of vernacular universals or vernacular roots was introduced by sociolinguist Jack Chambers "to refer to linguistic features which are absent from Standard English, but which recur in many different non-standard varieties of English around the world" (Trudgill 2009: 307). Chambers (2004: 128) emphasises that because universals "arise naturally in pidgins, child language, vernaculars, and elsewhere, they are primitive features, not learned. As such, they belong to the language faculty, the innate set of rules and representations that are the natural inheritance of every human being." We can clearly recognize Chomsky in this approach. Chambers says that "[s]ociolinguists have amassed copious evidence in the past 35 years for a

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surprising conclusion: a small number of phonological and grammatical processes recur in vernaculars wherever they are spoken. This conclusion follows from the observation that, no matter where in the world the vernaculars are spoken [...] these features inevitably occur" (Chambers 2004: 128). Their prevalence can only come into existence by diffusion by the dialect's founders, or by developing "independently as natural structural linguistic developments" (Chambers 2004: 128). Because, according to Chambers, any approach basing on diffusion is inadequate here – distances are just too great and universals occur in all types of varieties (ibid.: 128) – 20

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the discussion will focus on vernacular universals. Examples are consonant cluster simplification, copula deletion, or multiple negation (ibid.: 129). Possible reasons for their occurrence may be underlying principles of cognitive overload, motor eco-nomy, or avoiding redundancy (ibid.: 140), tendencies that are pervasive in vernaculars but suppressed in the standard. These reasons, in fact, are of a rather cognitivefunctional nature. 2.4

Synthetic approaches

2.4.1 Tomasello – usage-based approach Michael Tomasello, co-director of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, is expert on developmental psychology and psycholinguistics. His theory on L1 acquisition in young children can hardly be adapted to contact scenarios, and young children's processes in language acquisition are different from those of adults, as "children operate with different psycholinguistic units than adults" (Tomasello 2000: 62). Nevertheless, it underlines the importance of linguistic role models, i.e. linguistic input in the early stages of language acquisition. Usage can be understood in two ways. On the one hand, a speaker can become used to a structure through permanent exposure; on the other hand, the speaker applies a structure in form of imitative and inductive learning. Imitative refers to the circumstance that children hear how their linguistic environment speaks. "In the early stages, children mostly use language the way they have heard adults using it. This leads to an inventory of item-based utterance schemas" (Tomasello 2000: 70). In other words, language use shapes the grammar and lexicon (Bybee 1999: 236). Inductive refers to the process of making generalizations from an exemplary usage on a grammatical structure, because "[c]hildren are focused on the adult's communicative intentions as they attempt to comprehend her immediate utterance, and communicative function is

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the main basis for their linguistic generalizations over time (otherwise they would be totally baffled by a language's many homonyms and proforms, among other things)" (Tomasello 2003: 324). Furthermore, high-frequency use of words and phrases leads to a certain automatization and phonological reduction, which in turn leads to a higher variability in the item's realization and perception or recognition, but high frequency can also lead to entrenchment or lexical strength, making the item resistant to change or conformity.

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Moreover, "linguistic capabilities are not presumed to be different in structure from other cognitive capabilities. Linguistic units are stored like other percepts that come from our experience [...] Thus there is no separation of lexicon and grammar, lexicon and phonology" (Bybee 1999: 236). 2.4.2 Ansaldo – Adaption Theory In his 2009 paper, Umberto Ansaldo tried to integrate several approaches to typology in contact linguistics. With his draft of a functional-typological theory of language, he shows how to account for as many linguistic phenomena in language change as possible without having to employ universals. He assumes that there is no significant difference in contact-induced language change taking place in traditional types of contact languages such as pidgins, creoles and mixed languages (Ansaldo 2009: 2). Differences are only there in labels given for socio-historic reasons. His framework is inspired by Croft's Theory of Utterance Selection, added by an interpretation of the feature pool notion in language contact (ibid.: 5). He suggests "an evolutionary framework based on principles of selection, innovation and propagation, with the help of functional-typological analysis of the matrix. In this way, sociohistorical dynamics and functional-typological features are integrated within the same framework" (ibid.: 27). Ansaldo names three principles in Contact Language Formation, CLF. Firstly, we can find differential replication in contact scenarios, secondly, we understand contact scenarios as a complex typological matrix, and thirdly, in contact language formation "selection, innovation and propagation occur iteratively and feed into one another. The most likely candidates for selection and propagation are determined based primarily on sociohistorical analysis and typological make-up, within which frequency patterns play a dominant role" (Ansaldo 2009: 27f.).

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Andersen's criticism on terminology and concept borrowings from biological evolution (see section 2.3) is denied by Ansaldo because of two aspects. Firstly, it demands a complete overlap between two explanatory models in order to be useful, and secondly, it is Croft's field of conceptual – not biological – evolution that provides the necessary foundations for a linguistic framework (Ansaldo 2009: 5). As long as such analogies are fruitful, they are welcome.

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As Goldberg (2009: 219) mentioned, the "(mostly minor) differences among various cognitive, functionalist or usage-based approaches pale in comparison to the stark contrasts between these approaches and traditional generative grammar." Accordingly, Ansaldo does not use Universal Grammar as an explanation here, because "[w]hat cannot be reconstructed does not necessarily indicate UG, universal cognitive patterns or other abstractions, but may simply indicate a gap in our knowledge" (2009: 3f.). Imperfections in the data of linguistic ecology and history or understanding of mechanisms may provide better explanation than "invisible hand changes [that] should be treated very carefully, as a last resort in trying to account for CLF" (Ansaldo 2009: 28). His criticism on Andersen's denial of evolutionary concepts was explained with their fruitfulness. We will see below whether or not a bias towards the explanation of formalist language change with universals might be a similar mistake. 2.4.3 Bybee – usage-based functionalism Bybee supports a synthesis of functionalism and usage-based approaches, both being of cognitive and functional nature, combining language structure with language use. The central statement is that "the general cognitive capabilities of the human brain, which allow it to categorize and sort for identity, similarity, and difference, go to work on the language events a person encounters, categorizing and entering in memory these experiences" (Bybee 2006: 711). This results in a cognitive representation of linguistic experience, both morphological and phonological, that can be called grammar. Important are three effects of usage. A high token frequency, the repeated occurrence of a word or phrase, leads to a faster rate of phonetic reduction through automatization and neuromotor routines. Furthermore, high-frequency tokens become lexically more entrenched than low-frequency ones, making them more resistant to morphological change.3 Analogical reformation is not necessary because highfrequent words are easily accessible in the memory. Thirdly, morphologically comCopyright © 2014. Diplomica Verlag. All rights reserved.

plex and high-frequent forms can lose their internal structure and become autonomous from their etymological source – they grammaticize4 and become productive (Bybee 2006: 715). The storage must be very complex, as Bybee states:

3

We can see this phenomenon in English irregular verbs. Highly frequent verbs, such as keep-keptkept, are less likely to regularize or to change morphologically than less frequent verbs such as weepweeped-weeped (instead of weep-wept-wept), as it can be found in various sources (Bybee 2006: 715). 4 This process can be found in the going-to future that employs a grammaticized form of the former local meaning of going to a place in order to do something (Bybee 2006: 719).

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Each token of use of an item affects its memory representation. Since tokens of use vary, the stored representation must include a range of variation. As words slowly and gradually reduce in production, the center of the range of variation gradually shifts. [...] Not only do lexical representations have to be fully specified and represented in concrete phonetic units, these units cannot be an idealized systemic phonetic set of units, but rather must represent in some realistic way the range of variation occurring in the individual pronunciations that are constantly being mapped onto the existing representations. (Bybee 1999: 221)

2.5

Summary

In this chapter, the basic ideas of different theoretical approaches to linguistic change (in contact situations) have been outlined. On the one hand, we can see profound differences between some approaches. On the other hand, other approaches seem to take similar or related paths. A combination of the approaches seems to be productive in accounting for linguistic processes and mechanisms of language change. As a next step, varieties of the English language will be presented with a focus on their linguistic ecology. After providing feature samples in chapter 4, our findings hitherto

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will be discussed and matched to the approaches in chapter 5.

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3.

Selection of varieties of English

In order to create a subset as interesting and representative as possible, five varieties of English were chosen for our purpose. We find one member of every variety type as classified in Kortmann/Lunkenheimer (2012: 3f.). The five types are: 1) L1t, a low-contact traditional L1 dialect or native-speaker variety, defined as "[t]raditional, regional non-standard mother-tongue varieties, e.g. East Anglian English and the dialects spoken in the Southwest, the Southeast and the North of England" (Kortmann/Lunkenheimer 2011), 2) L1c, a high-contact L1 variety, including "transplanted L1 Englishes and colonial standards (e.g. Bahamian English, New Zealand English), as well as language shift varieties (e.g. Irish English) and standard varieties (e.g. colloquial American English)" (ibid.), 3) L2, an indigenized non-native variety that compete with local native languages, and "that have a certain degree of prestige and normative status in their political communities, like Pakistani English, [...] but also non-native varieties that compete with local L1 varieties for prestige and normative status, e.g. Chicano English and Black South African English" (ibid.), 4) Creoles, English-based contact languages and native language to many people, and "that developed in settings where a non-English-speaking group was under strong pressure to acquire and use some form of English, while access to its L1 speakers was severely limited (e.g. in plantation settings). Many creoles have become the native language of the majority of the population", e.g. Jamaican Creole (ibid.), and 5) Pidgins, "English-based contact languages that developed for communication between two groups who did not share the same language, typically in restricted domains of use (especially trade)." Almost all pidgins in eWAVE can be considered Copyright © 2014. Diplomica Verlag. All rights reserved.

expanded pidgins in contrast to prototypical pidgins, i.e. they are less restricted in the domains of use, and many people speak them as native or primary languages (ibid.)5. 5

Additional definitions for creoles and pidgins can be found in various places. Most often they have in common that they are not definitely sure about what pidgins and creoles are, or blur their definitions. Some even say they form one group, the pidgin-creole-continuum, and a distinction between them is not fruitful. Of course, both are contact languages, but nevertheless, there are a number of differences, e.g. in function, historical origin, formal characteristics. Most often, definitions of pidgins include spontaneous generation, restricted vocabulary, absence of complex grammatical features, that they are not L1, and focus on essentials; definitions on creoles include nativeness (L1), and reduction of redundant features (see Romaine 1988, 23f.).

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Furthermore, the chosen varieties have historically quite well-recorded influences with respect to the origin of their settlers. In other words, we know the linguistic ecology of these varieties quite well, which provides fair chances of explanation to all theoretical approaches. Another aspect is the broad but distinct variety of substrate influences. We can find European, Asian, and Pacific languages in contact situations with non-standard varieties of English, creating quite a diverse impression, see appendix I Scottish English was chosen as L1t because of its distinct features distinguishing it from Standard British English, and its influence on other language types as a result of contact situations due to colonial seafaring in the past centuries, especially as of the seventeenth century colonial expansion which finally lead to an increase of Englishspeakers all over the world (Hansen et al. 1996: 25). All varieties discussed here have founders who were British, partly Scottish, navy sailors – "men of little education" and probably speakers of a non-standard variety of English (Zettersten 1969: 133). An attractive L1c is New Zealand English, spoken almost at the opposite end of the world and influenced by native Maori. The indigenized L2 in this work will be Chicano English which is mainly spoken by Mexican immigrants to the United States but which took an interesting development. The Bonin Island English, also called Ogasawara Mixed Language, is an English-Japanese hybrid spoken on an archipelago south of Japan and will serve as creole. Last but not least, we will deal with the pidgin spoken on Norfolk Island and Pitcairn with its Tahitian roots. In the following, the five varieties will be introduced in order to gain insight in their sociolinguistic, historical and geographic situation, outlining their main characteristics and providing aspects for later discussion. 3.1

Traditional L1 variety: Scottish English

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It seems to be rather difficult to define the term Scottish English. Aitken and others think of "Scottish English as a bipolar linguistic continuum, with broad Scots at one end and Scottish Standard English at the other" (Stuart-Smith 2004: 47). Maguire (2012: 55) expands this bipolar continuum to "a multi-dimensional sociolinguistic variation space" in which the speakers operate. This space is dependent on the speakers' socioeconomic class, level of education, identification as a Scot or a British, religion, urban or rural origin, age, and fashion of speaking, which still is an abstrac-

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tion from reality. By far the greatest differences between Standard English and ScE exist in pronunciation and intonation (Hansen et al. 1996: 71). Scots is generally, with exceptions, spoken by working class people, and in informal situations with friends and family, mainly in the rural area. Scottish Standard English, in contrast, is typically spoken by educated middle class people in the urban areas of Edinburgh and Glasgow, and is used in more formal occasions (Stuart-Smith 2004: 47). Many speakers are able to switch between degrees of broader or standardnear Scots, what Aitken describes as style/dialect shifting or style/dialect drifting (ibid.). Most examples cited in WAVE are from the broad Scots end of the continuum. For this reason, Scots features are mainly ranked B in the WAVE description, as they do not account for all speakers in all contexts. This means, features are not pervasive in all occasions of language production; rather they depend on the situation's and speakers' sociolinguistic and socioeconomic characteristics (Smith 2012: 21). How did this variety continuum evolve? Scots is often perceived of as Standard English spoken with a Scottish accent. The continuum itself results from dialect contact and language change over many centuries (Stuart-Smith 2004: 47), Smith (2012: 21) traces it back to the seventh century Old English dialect spoken in Northumbria influenced by further spread of English from the thirteenth century onward. Before the Anglian invasion, the area was predominantly Celtic-speaking, but a northern variety of Anglo-Saxon was introduced. About 150 years later, Vikings invaded Scotland from the south. At the time of the Norman Conquest, most people in the area of Scotland spoke a form of Celtic, while Norse was used in the far north and west, and Anglian was spoken in the south-east, with an increase of Anglian speakers from the twelfth century onwards (Stuart-Smith 2004: 47). Until 1500 A.D., a Lowlands variety of English known as Inglis – Gaelic was called Erse or Irish –

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developed under the main historical influence of Norse. Later, Norman French left its traces in Scots place names and literature (ibid.: 48). In 1398, Scots was declared the language of record, and flourished as a literary language, until influence of English increased after the 1603 Union of Crowns and 1707 Union of Parliaments (ibid.). In a process of language shift, Scots replaced Gaelic in the Lowlands and English replaced Gaelic in the Highlands (Maguire 2012: 53). From that time on, Standard Southern English became the written standard in Scotland while the spoken standard approximated as well, especially because of its prestige among the middle class. 27

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Today's spoken Scottish English in urban areas has a low overt prestige, and is considered as bad or degenerate. In contrast, rural varieties are considered good (Stuart-Smith 2004: 48). Despite the still prestigious role of Received Pronunciation in Scotland, most speakers do not assimilate, especially because a too obvious assimilation in speech habits is perceived of as affected or hypercorrect, such as the two RP-oriented varieties Morningside accent and Kelvinside accent spoken in Edinburgh or Glasgow respectively. These marked forms of RP are socially stigmatised for most speakers, and are mainly spoken by elderly middle-class women (Hansen et al. 1996: 71f.). Today, there are roughly 5 million potential speakers of Scottish Standard English, of which two thirds speak Urban Scots. Still, it is difficult for both speakers and linguists to distinguish Scots from Scottish Standard English, and to determine whether or not it is an independent, autonomous language, facing the ongoing process of dialect levelling towards Standard English (ibid.: 49). Next to varieties of English, Scottish Gaelic is spoken, albeit only by 1.2% of the population, and passively understood by less than 2%. Only little phonological influence by Gaelic speakers on English is attested (ibid.: 50). Other ethnic minorities of Asian or African descent are statistically insignificant, except for agglomerations of immigrants in urban areas, creating a bilingual, ethnically diverse culture in a number of public schools. Throughout its history, Scots has been under constant influence and was neither geographically nor linguistically isolated, and it shares many features with its neighbours northern English and (northern) Irish English (Maguire 2012: 54). 3.2

High-contact L1 variety: New Zealand English

More than 1,000 years ago, Polynesian people first set foot upon the islands of New

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Zealand as part of a long series of explorations in the Pacific. The islands were named Aotearoa, the land of the long white cloud. Even though the Maori people lost contact with other Polynesian people in the Pacific, the linguistic heritage is still strong (Hay et al. 2008: 3f.). "The ancestors of the present Maori people were Polynesian explorers who first arrived in New Zealand around AD 925. They came into increasing contact with English from the time of early European settlement, and were quick to adopt English as a language of trade and negotiation" (Bauer/Warren 2004a: 614). 28

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The first Europeans to discover NZ were the Dutch in 1642, naming the islands after the Dutch province of Zeeland. In 1769, Captain James Cook made landfall and claimed the island for the British crown, though British sovereignty was gained not until 1840. From that time, the European settlements grew rapidly, and eighteen years later, European immigrants outnumbered the indigenous population (ibid.: 4). When gold was found and ranching became popular in the second half of the nineteenth century, the number of immigrants grew even further, bringing settlers from Canada and Australia (Hansen et al. 1996: 168). Many Maori people died in tribal warfare, were killed or enslaved by the settlers, reducing their population by 50% to 46,000 (Hay et al 2008: 5). In 1991, NZ had 3.4 million inhabitants of which 326,000 were Maori (Hansen et al. 1996: 169). In 2003, the population reached 4 million of which 79% are of European descent, and 14.1% are Maori, a strongly growing group, and 6.6% Asian. 98% of the New Zealanders speak English, only 4.6% speak Maori, which means that only 26% of ethnic Maoris speak the Maori language, mainly the older ones.6 The Ministry of Maori Development has set up programmes in order to rescue and promote the Maori language by establishing Maori pre-, primary and secondary schools, radio and TV stations (Hay et al. 2008: 10f.). "With the continuing perception of New Zealand comprising two groups, Maori and Anglos, multilingualism is not considered a significant feature of the distinctiveness of New Zealand" (Clyne 1997: 295). Even though there is no single official language in New Zealand, Maori was proclaimed an official language next to English in 1987, which probably was more for symbolic rather than linguistic reasons (ibid.). Despite its young age of a mere 150 years, there are several attempts to explain the NZ variety of English. "Some twenty years ago [almost 40 years by now; author's note], New Zealand English was generally thought of as like Australian English, only more English" (Clyne 1997: 294). WAVE, too, shows that NZE is one of the least

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non-standard varieties worldwide, with only 21 percent of the possible non-standard features attested; but those features attested were quite pervasive, leaving a distinct image of differences (Kortmann/Wolk 2012: 917). But there is a variety of conceptions. Apart from rather ridiculous and party ideologically tainted explanations,7 we 6

Clyne (1997: 295) comes to similar results: "90% of the population are monolingual English speakers. [...] There is some revitalization of Maori through kotanga reo (language nests), but only 25% of the Maori population speak the language, including very few of the younger generation." 7 For instance, the nasal quality of Australian and New Zealand English was explained with hay fever caused by the large amount of pollen in the air. The monotony and dull quality in speech, perceived by an Australian politician, was traced back to a "loss of enjoyment of life occasioned by the 1930s De-

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can find a few informants shedding light on this variety of English. Not an "idle tongue, a rigid jaw, atrophied labial muscles [...] will account for most of the habits and mannerisms that colour New Zealand's speech", as stated in a printed speech in the 1948's New Zealand Voice (Gordon et al. 2004: 69), but it rather has to be a mix of language contact, immigrant's speech, Australian influence, and new-dialect formation (ibid.: 69-79). The mixture of dialects, which was the source of later NZE, was mainly influenced by varieties spoken on the British Isles. "For New Zealand, immigrants arrived from England, Scotland and Ireland in proportions of roughly 50:27:23" with only few immigrants from Wales and Australia, and less than one percent of immigrants came from North America (Trudgill 2004: 13). The crucial period of development of a unitary New Zealand variety of English is dated between 1840 and 1890 (ibid.: 24f.). The question of prestige has various answers changing with time. The identification of NZE with Cockney is an act of degradation. "Cockney has always been evaluated negatively by other British English speakers, even though the exact meaning of 'Cockney' is not clear. It can be taken as the speech of members of the lower socioeconomic classes of London, and features negatively evaluated in other varieties, particularly if they bear any similarity to the non-standard variety of London, were also labelled 'Cockney'" (Gordon et al. 2004: 222). It was a "convenient summary term of abuse" (ibid.: 223).8 The demographic situation shows that immigration from the larger London area was high, 36% of immigrants in 1840-52, and about 30% for 1853-80 (ibid.: 221), but obviously not all of them spoke Cockney or anything alike. There were theories on the transfer of Cockney to New Zealand via Australia, where many settlers were convicts and their keepers from London area lived and spoke an early version of Cockney, or they brought processes of linguistic change with them (Gordon et al. 2004: 222), but the abovementioned perspective on ideological bias

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seems more promising. NZE is, as well, influenced by its early speakers of dominantly Scottish descent (Bauer/Warren 2004b: 580f.). The first two ships that carried originally British immigrants to Otago have carried 350 passengers of which 270 were Scots. By 1861, pression. Finally, a radio commentator found reasons for the dialect in bad or false teeth plus laziness in mouth movement, which was a popular view and caused the demand for speech training for New Zealanders, especially children and youths (see Gordon et al. 2004: 68f.). 8 From the Education Gazette 1924: "Cockney, is intrinsically ugly, and offends the cultured ear [and] is associated with the uneducated, even the vulgar, and stamps with the brand of inferiority – more or less deservedly – even men of the highest training, ability and character" (Gordon et al. 2004: 222).

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thirteen years after its founding, the province of Otago was made up of 42% Scots, 36% English, 15% Irish, and 4% Australian people; the province of Southland had 47% Scots, 31% English, 7% Irish and 15% Australian people. The rest were mainly other pakehas, settlers of European descent (Bauer 1997: 257). This provides points of discussion for different explanations for features in NZE, such as substrate or superstrate influences, or theories on feature pool. As Bauer (1997: 259) states, "it is impossible to give a definite list of the Scottish influences on New Zealand English" for three reasons: firstly, expressions and features could have been used in other regions in Great Britain or Ireland, so the sources are blurry. Secondly, in many cases, Scottish or Irish expressions were applied in British or American English, covering the real source. Thirdly, the English spoken there has evolved and changed since, and as many changes are similar across a number of varieties of English, why should it not happen to look like Scottish English (ibid.)? Nevertheless, some likely candidates for Scottish descent are listed in Bauer (1997: 260-271), such as the fricative devoicing or the usage of a special 2nd p.pl.pron., yous(e). Within NZ, Southland is the only region that has a recognizably regional, different dialect, see appendix II. Many of the original immigrants and settlers to Otago and Southland came from Scotland, "and traces of their original speech can still be heard there" (Hay et al. 2008: 98). A number of phonological, semantic and grammatical features reinforce "the idea that Southland features can be traced back to the earliest Scottish settlers" (ibid.: 99). Bauer (1997: 270f.) has a rather disappointing resume, stating that even though "we are aware that New Zealand English probably arose as a dialect mixture, even at a distance of 150 years we can no longer unravel the threads which make up the new variety. [...] If this is true of Scottish influence in New Zealand, which is generally believed to have been strong, it must be all the more true of other, weaker, influ-

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ences." We will hypothesize further below. 3.3

Indigenized L2: Chicano English

The language spoken most next to English in the United States of America is Spanish with about 32 millions speakers only of Mexican descent (Bayley 2012: 156). The numbers have risen constantly in the past decades. In 1996, there were 17.3 million speakers of Spanish in the US aged 5 years or older (Hansen et al. 1996: 107). USAmericans with origins in Spanish-speaking countries live predominantly in the 31

Weber, Tobias. Principles in the emergence and evolution of linguistic features in World Englishes, Diplomica Verlag, 2014. ProQuest Ebook Central,

Southwest and Florida, and in the cities of New York City, Chicago and Detroit. The biggest sub-group of the Spanish speakers, new figures speak of two thirds, are "Chicanos, Mexican Americans" who mainly live in the Southwest, i.e. California, Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado and Texas. Depending on their social status and origin, they speak Mexican Standard Spanish or a regional non-standard variety of Spanish. Hansen et al. (1996: 108) ascribe the immigrants' strong retention of the Spanish language with deep identification with the Spanish-American culture even before the arrival of the Anglos. Chicano English, an ethnic dialect, tends to be spoken by people who live in ethnic enclaves [so called barrios; author's note] [...] and who have relatively little contact with speakers of mainstream US English varieties. [...] Chicano English is spoken only by native English speakers [...] who acquired Spanish and English simultaneously as well as speakers who began to acquire English when they enrolled to elementary school, usually around the age of five. (Bayley 2012: 156)

Spanish has an ever increasingly important status among Hispanics or Chicanos, not least because of the constant stream of legal and illegal immigrants from Mexico whose command of English is rather weak. Regional and local newspapers and weekly magazines are published in Spanish, just as hundreds of radio and dozens of TV channels are broadcast in Spanish. Spanish media are also used in bilingual education programmes in public schools (Hansen et al. 1996: 108). Despite its omnipresence, Spanish has a very low overt prestige, because its speakers form the lowest socioeconomic group next to African Americans and Native Americans. For a long time, it was simply regarded as "defective English" (ibid.: 117), or merely "Spanish-accented English", "mispronounced English of Spanish speakers who are learning English as a second language" (Bayley/Santa Ana 2004: 417). In fact, ChcE "appears to maintain certain phonological features that are characteristic of Spanish native-speaker, English-as-a-second-language learner interlanguage, or [...] English Copyright © 2014. Diplomica Verlag. All rights reserved.

language learner speech" (ibid.: 418). Bayley and Santa Ana (2004: 417) remark that ChcE is commonly stigmatised in the general public's awareness, and that this situation has not changed since the 1960s. Many public school teachers "falsely attribute to ChcE a general inadequacy for educational and wider social purposes" (ibid.). Not unlike other US ethnic dialects, such as AAVE, ChcE is encountered in a hostile manner, supposedly because these speech

32

Weber, Tobias. Principles in the emergence and evolution of linguistic features in World Englishes, Diplomica Verlag, 2014. ProQuest Ebook Central,

"communities seem to resist the national hegemony of English monolingualism and Standard English" (ibid.). Interestingly, ChcE is one of the varieties showing least deviation from the standard with as little as 13.62% of possible non-standard features attested (Kortmann/Wolk 2012: 917). Maybe this proximity to the standard causes the impression of a nonindependent variety, or an imperfect realization of the standard. On the other hand, ChcE carries covert prestige as symbol of ethnic identity and as means of expression of group solidarity (ibid.: 108). Moreover, ChcE seems to be a highly productive variety. "The ChcE modal system, however, is relatively unusual. In addition, ChcE has adopted a number of innovations stemming from Anglo varieties, including innovative quotatives. Further, in materials prepared for teachers of ChcE speakers in Los Angeles, several grammatical features that appear to result from Spanish contact have been noted" (Bayley 2012: 157). Linguistic isolation in ethnic enclaves, language contact in Spanish and English (as second and foreign language), and assimilation processes might be worthy of closer investigation for explaining influences for this variety. 3.4

Creole: Bonin Island English/Ogasawara Mixed Language

The Ogasawara Islands have a very turbulent history. They are an archipelago of roughly 30 islands, and they lie about 1,000 kilometres south of Tokyo, mainland Japan, and a bit more than 1,000 kilometres north-west of the Northern Marianas in the northern Pacific Ocean (Long/Trudgill 2004: 356f.). The islands were first mentioned by Spanish explorers in 1543, passed by the Dutch in 1639, and first set foot upon in the 1670s by Japanese survivors of a storm (Long 2007: 19). The islands were uninhabited until 1830, giving away the name Bonin Islands, from earlier Japanese bu-nin: no people (ibid.: 20). After that time, a highly mixed group of EuroCopyright © 2014. Diplomica Verlag. All rights reserved.

pean men with Polynesian men and women arrived (Long/Trudgill 2004: 356), "whose language was a modified but probably not creolized English [...] The linguistic history of Bonin in the 19th century was probably comparable to that of Pitcairn" (Mühlhäusler/Trew 1996: 380f. in Long 2007: 14). The difference here is that among the long-term residents were speakers of over a dozen languages. For an overview of European and Austronesian languages on the early Bonins, see appendix III. Nevertheless, it "is clear from the written records of 33

Weber, Tobias. Principles in the emergence and evolution of linguistic features in World Englishes, Diplomica Verlag, 2014. ProQuest Ebook Central,

visitors [...] that the islanders spoke an 'imperfect' English" (Long 2007: 21), which is not surprising because native English-speakers were a minority and there were neither formal instruction in English nor a significant level of literacy (ibid.). The second generation of settlers was born on the island and spoke a variety of English as their native language which Long (2007: 21), the main informant of this variety, refers to as Bonin Creoloid English. The people of European, American, or Pacific descent named themselves Westerners (Long/Trudgill 2004: 357). In the 1860s and 70s, Japan laid claim to the Bonin Islands, and changed their official name to Ogasawara. Interestingly enough, the name is based on a hoax told by an unashamed Samurai who claimed his ancestors had explored the island. Despite the fact that this hoax was exposed in 1735, and the Samurai was punished severely, the name and myth of Ogasawara was promoted by the Japanese government in order to emphasize the claim on the islands, even though there were no competing claims of other countries (Long 2007: 20f.). In the late eighteenth century, Japan enforced settlement on the islands, outnumbering the original 66 people living there in 1876 with a total of 2,366 in 1900, making the non-Japanese natives a minority on their own island (ibid.: 22). Japanese was acquired in organized instruction, but English was retained, creating a unique identity on the islands. Until World War II, the Westerners had become bilingual. Until the use of English was prohibited in 1938, life on the islands was diglossic. With the approaching frontline, the Bonins and other Japanese Pacific islands were evacuated in 1944, leaving the islands uninhabited for a few years. In the consequent Navy Era, no ethnic Japanese people were allowed on the island; only ancestors of Westerners might return to the islands, until eventually in 1965 the ban was loosened. The first time in their settlement, the islanders had to identify by what they actually are, and what they are not (e.g. American, Japanese). Until then, the islands were ethnically so diverse that they were

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just Bonin islanders (Long 2007: 230). During this time, Navy officers and their families plus selected American teachers and missionaries influenced the linguistic situation, as English was brought back to higher domains and school teaching was held in English exclusively (Long 2007: 23f.). In 1968, the United States surprisingly returned the islands to Japan, changing the administrative language back to Japanese once again. The exiled mono-ethnic Japanese settlers suffered from suspicion and discrimination on mainland Japan, and returned to the islands instantly. Today, the islands still belong to Japan and are home to more than 2,300 people, and the "num34

Weber, Tobias. Principles in the emergence and evolution of linguistic features in World Englishes, Diplomica Verlag, 2014. ProQuest Ebook Central,

ber of English speakers on the island throughout its history has usually been one to two hundred" (Long 2007: 15). "Bonin Islanders in general are not conscious that the language they speak is a unique variety at all" (Long 2007: 213), nevertheless, OML plays a big role in island identity. The Bonins are still home to an English-speaking community who identify largely by their language, but their number is decreasing. Moreover, we cannot find a single independent variety but a "contact continuum" (Long 2007: 214), or a "postcreole" or "postcreoloid continuum" influenced more or less by Japanese, U.S. American English, and the original Bonin Creoloid (Long 2007: 14f.). For this reason, OML or BIE, Bonin Island English, is to a certain degree recognizable to monolingual speakers of either Japanese or English, but interestingly, it is not intelligible to either group (Long 2007: 215), as a short sample sentence shall make obvious: (1)

Tsuku kara fish ga sukoshi yowaru yo. Sometimes sugu shinu, but spear suru

to sugu shinu no mo iru shi. (Long 2007: 215) Monolingual English speakers might understand the context of fishing with a spear, but one cannot derive any grammatical information, nor a complete statement. In addition, speakers of OML would retain their source language phonology, in contrast to English borrowings into Japanese where Japanese intonation is adopted. "This means OML maintains recognisability with its two source languages without possessing the level of intelligibility necessary for monolingual speakers of either language to interact (either through active usage or passive comprehension) with OML speakers" (Long 2007: 215). They have to code-switch to either English or Japanese to allow communication to outsiders. "[T]he Westerners of Ogasawara have, as their appellation suggests, contrasted them-

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selves with their ethnic-Japanese island-mates and have sought to downplay rather than accentuate, the differences between their variety of English and those used in the rest of the world" (Long 2007: 213). Today, the variety is endangered to a certain degree as the majority of young Westerners are monolingual in Japanese, which, in addition to the Navy Era, makes a reconstruction of original Bonin Creoloid English difficult. In addition, the Navy Era lead to a very low prestige of OML, as the variety was regarded as failure to properly separate English and Japanese, and Navy people had a negative attitude towards a monolingual use of Japanese. 35

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3.5

Pidgin: Norfolk Island/Pitcairn English

The history of Pitcairn Island is possibly known from literature or films. After the mutiny on the Bounty in April 1789, some of the mutineers took their Tahitian spouses and some Tahitian men over 2,400 kilometres east to Pitcairn Island, which is situated at 25° 04' S, 130° 06' E in an isolated part of the Central South Pacific Ocean (Ingram/Mühlhäusler 2004: 781). It is a group of small islands, where only the second smallest island with an area of only five square kilometres is inhabited. The nearest inhabited settlement is on Gambier Islands in 500 kilometres distance, the political administration in New Zealand is about 5,000 kilometres away. Pitcairn was chosen by the mutineers exactly for its isolated and only vaguely known location (Long 2007: 216). The settlers had to expect death penalty for the mutiny if ever traced by British authorities. When the Bounty anchored in Tahiti from 1788 to '89, some sort of pidgin must have arisen between the crew and especially female Tahitians (Mühlhäusler 2010: 349). The pidgin was also used "as an anti-language to antagonize Captain Bligh, who took a dim view of mixing English and Tahitian and adopting Tahitian customs such as tattoos […]. The use of the language to taunt has remained one of its functions to date" when it is used as an in-group dialect (ibid.). In fact, the "Pitcairn language has served throughout much of its history to define Pitcairners as a group and to contrast them with strienjas 'strangers' (i.e. nonislanders, whether white or Polynesian)" (Long 2007: 213). In 1996, "Pitkern was declared the official language of Pitcairn Island" (Avram 2003: 44). In spite of the geographical isolation, outside visitors and travelling were a common phenomenon (Ingram/Mühlhäusler 2004: 786). Today, the current population of around 50 to 60 people mainly consists of direct descendants of the former mutineers. Pitcairn is an overseas territory of the United Kingdom, although it is possible that the island will be abandoned (Ingram/Mühlhäusler 2004: 781). Pitcairn, just like Copyright © 2014. Diplomica Verlag. All rights reserved.

Tristan da Cunha, still has no airfield and can only be reached by infrequent freighters (Long 2007: 216f.). Owing to their comparable geographical isolation, Pitcairn and Norfolk Island have "often been labelled a laboratory test case for linguists" (Mühlhäusler: 799). Norfolk Island is located at 29° 05' S, 167° 59' E, roughly 1,500 kilometres east of Australia, and 1,100 kilometres northwest of Auckland, NZ. Unlike on the two other islands, there is an airfield with frequent commercial flights to New Zealand and 36

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Australia (Long 2007: 217). The population of 2,600 and the high number of tourists are very different, too. The area is 35 square kilometres (Ingram/Mühlhäusler 2004: 781). Nevertheless, Pitcairn and Norfolk share the same language which is described as Pitcairn-Norfolk Island English, Pitcairnese, Norf'k, or Norfuk, in short PNE as I will use it here. Because the island could not feed the growing population, in 1856, all inhabitants from Pitcairn were moved 6,000 kilometres west to Norfolk Island which has been used as a British convict settlement (Ross 1964: 25). Some of them returned to Pitcairn in 1856 and 1864, being the ancestors of almost all Pitcairners today. But most people stayed there, bringing in their language and representing a third of today's population on Norfolk. Two thirds are immigrated Australians, New Zealanders, and Polynesians. Because of the mainstream English influence and the low status of PNE, this language is only spoken by a small community, most often as an in-group dialect next to a mainstream variety. "Pitcairn Islanders have always possessed a more or less mainstream variety of English alongside their local language, and the situation has been similar on Norfolk" (Long 2007: 220). So people code-switch when talking to other islanders or to strienjas (ibid.: 213), which Hansen describes as a "funktional differenzierter Bilingualismus" (Hansen et al. 1996: 19). A visitor to the islands noted in 1903 that "all the inhabitants of Pitcairn speak perfect English, but when speaking among themselves they cannot easily be understood by a stranger" (Long 2007: 215). Furthermore, "the wish to distinguish Pitkern from Norfuk as two separate named languages is growing and we have conformed to this wish" (Ingram/Mühlhäusler 2004: 780). PNE is not a focused, standardized language, and "what is called Norfuk ranges from forms that are mutually unintelligible with English, to others that differ only by a few stereotypical expressions" (ibid.). There is no fixed spelling or pronunciation, examples given here will be near phonetic transcript. Mühlhäusler (2010:

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348) speaks about "Pitcairn Island English with its offshoot on Norfolk Island", and later (2012: 620) adds, that there are only few grammatical and phonological differences, only a number of lexical differences between the two islands' varieties. Furthermore, the variety is named Norfolk Island/Pitcairn English, registered as number 65 on eWAVE (Kortmann/Lunkenheimer 2011). Thus, we can easily include both forms to a PNE continuum and deal with them as one variety for our purpose here. Different names will be mentioned in this study but it should be clear what is meant by them. 37

Weber, Tobias. Principles in the emergence and evolution of linguistic features in World Englishes, Diplomica Verlag, 2014. ProQuest Ebook Central,

Nevertheless, "[t]he label 'Variety of English', when applied to the ways of speaking of the descendants of the Bounty mutineers and their Tahitian spouses, is somewhat problematic" (Ingram/Mühlhäusler 2004: 780). PNE has been described as dialect of English, dialect of Beach-la-Mar or Bislama as spoken in Vanuatu, as mixed language of Tahitian and English, as patois, cant, pidgin, creole, and as a separate language (ibid.). Obviously, English is the superstrate. Influence came mainly from substrate Tahitian, though it was reduced because "all Tahitian men on Pitcairn were murdered within a few years of their arrival, and only mixed marriages occurred" (Mühlhäusler 2010: 352). But influence also came from West Indian because of mutineer Edward Young, who was a mestizo born in St. Kitts, from American English due to contact to whalers, and Melanesian from neighbouring islands (Mühlhäusler 2010: 350). Among the creolists, a discussion is going on whether PNE belongs to the Atlantic or Pacific creoles. Despite its geographical isolation, it seems to have a number of typically Atlantic creole features (Avram 2003: 44f.). Not least because of its extremely small vocabulary of about 1,500 words, its usually bilingual (or bi-dialectal) speakers,9 and the broad variation within this variety, we will regard Pitcairn/Norfolk English as a pidgin here (see Ingram/Mühlhäusler 2004: 785). 34.9% of the possible non-standard features are attested in this variety, as well as a high pervasiveness of these features (Kortmann/Wolk 2012: 617), which shows the distinctiveness and big difference from the standard. "When questioned, they [the Pitcairners; author's note] replied they were talking their 'own language'" (Long 2007: 213). But even though "Pitcairners see the unique language they speak as 'lowstatus'" (Long 2007: 213), inferior to the standard, somewhat funny and ridiculous, it seems important to them as a part of their culture and heritage (ibid.).Visitors described the variety as "a kind of gibberish" in 1856, or in 1905, as "an extraordinary patois" (Long 2007: 229). Ingram/Mühlhäusler (2004: 780) note that "'murdering the

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King' was the local expression for speaking Norfuk." This means we can find both low overt and covert prestige, with the caveat that the function as a group identifier might create a special form of covert prestige, one which is not even expressed 9

"Right from the first generation all Pitcairners on both Pitcairn and Norfolk Island could speak and write acrolectal English. In some families English was the dominant family language, in others it was reserved for communication with outsiders and in the religious and public domains" (Mühlhäusler 2012: 620). "It seems likely that the mixed language of the Pitcairners became the sole language of some households in remote parts of Norfolk Island after 1900 and thus creolized" (ibid.). The emphasis here is on the fact that creolization, if happened at all, took place in only a minority of the speakers. The remark on remoteness within an island population is rather doubtful, as the island is only 35 square kilometres large.

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Weber, Tobias. Principles in the emergence and evolution of linguistic features in World Englishes, Diplomica Verlag, 2014. ProQuest Ebook Central,

within the group. In recent years, projects were started to reverse the decline of this

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language (Mühlhäusler 2010: 349).

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4.

Selection of linguistic features

In a similar fashion as certain varieties were chosen, a selection of linguistic features was made. The features will be examined here by showing examples from each variety. We can find two morphosyntactic and two phonological features. In order to provide a wide range of performance tests for the explanatory theories presented in chapter 2, we can not only find features attested in the World Atlas of Varieties of the English Language (WAVE), but also certain candidates for language universals. Furthermore, the wide range of linguistic input in the various contact scenarios will provide a number of possible explanations for the features' existence, as we will see in chapter 5. The features taken from WAVE will be named by the pattern FXX, F for feature and XX giving the number of the feature as given in WAVE, compare the list of features in Kortmann/Lunkenheimer (2012: 941-946). 4.1

Morphosyntactic features

4.1.1 F34: alternative forms for 2nd person plural pronouns "Pronominal systems are among those with the highest degree of variability in varieties of English. This may in part be due to the fact that many standard English varieties display some irregularity which is often 'remedied' in speech and/or informal written registers of both native (L1) and non-native (L2) varieties" (Wagner 2012: 379). In changes of the pronoun system we can find both exotic, unique variations and possibly universal features existing in many vernaculars. Interestingly, there is no more differentiation between a 2nd p. singular and plural pronoun in Standard English. "The loss of the formal distinction between second person [singular] and plural is one of the more puzzling events in the history of the English language", as

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Wagner puts it (2012: 381). In fact, the distinction is salient in semantics and pragmatics, especially concerning the relationship between two speakers. Without a distinction, ambiguity will occur in many situations. For that reason, "almost all vernacular varieties of English have maintained this essential contrast, using two basic strategies", i.e. synthetic, and analytic strategies (Wagner 2012: 381). A synthetic strategy is, for instance, the combination of the standard 2nd p.pl.pron. you with a plural morpheme in form of a suffix -s, as in yous or youse. Analytic change is given in a combination with a noun that employs both additional pragmatic 40

Weber, Tobias. Principles in the emergence and evolution of linguistic features in World Englishes, Diplomica Verlag, 2014. ProQuest Ebook Central,

and semantic information in order to reduce or avoid ambiguity, as in you guys, you ones or y'all (ibid.). The Handbook of Varieties of English, HoVE (Kortmann/Schneider 2004) lists 31 of 46 varieties in which special pronominal forms for the 2nd p.pl. are pervasive, and thus ranked A, and in three more varieties such forms are used occasionally, ranked B. The Electronic World Atlas of Varieties of English, short eWAVE, lists feature 34 as attested in 91% of all varieties analysed, and a pervasiveness of 78%, which means that in 36 varieties, F34 is ranked A, in 23 it is ranked B, in 8 varieties the features "exists but is extremely rare", one variety is not analysed sufficiently. Only 6 out of the total of 74 varieties do not have this feature (Kortmann/Lunkenheimer 2011). This means, F34 is statistically abundant in all nonstandard varieties of English. Trudgill (2009: 307) names the "reintroduction of plural forms of you" a possible candidate "for the label of vernacular universal", although more evidence is needed to be sure. F34 in New Zealand English It is "reported that the plural form of you among West Coast school children was often yous. While it was corrected in school, it was regularly used outside school and by those who had left school" (Hundt et al. 2004: 585). Today, this feature is ranked A in WAVE and seems to be a pervasive token among all English-speakers in New Zealand. Even in high school students, more than 50% of the speakers use yous and many others use you guys, which is sometimes even more frequent. It seems not to be socially stigmatized as even speakers with higher education, albeit they are young, use this feature. A likely source is Irish English, as we will discuss below in chapter 5. Examples of

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F34 in NZE are: (2)

I asked the children, are yous ready yet.

(3)

um that team that beat yous by what was it five nil

(4)

so yous had to rent or something?

(5)

so you guys gonna get another cat?

(6)

I mean how much do they pay you guys?

(Hundt et al. 2004: 585) F34 in Scottish English In Scotland, F34 is used extensively in the Central Belt, Edinburgh, Glasgow and surrounding areas in form of yous or youse. In rural areas, it is only marginally used 41

Weber, Tobias. Principles in the emergence and evolution of linguistic features in World Englishes, Diplomica Verlag, 2014. ProQuest Ebook Central,

by younger generations, and is absent in older speakers. Another form of F34, you ones or you ains, is highly prolific in rural areas in the north and northeast of Scotland. It can also be found in other varieties and is likely to be the source of the related, contracted form yins in American English varieties (Smith 2012: 22). Maguire (2012: 70), too, states that "yous for the 2nd person plural pronoun, [is] particularly associated with Glasgow and west central Scots." It is not existent in the south, east, northeast and Orkneys, see appendix IV. All of the attested forms, yous or yins, are avoided by educated speakers because they are stylistically and prestigiously stigmatised (Miller 2004: 49). As a result, WAVE ranks this feature as B. (7)

Yous are wrang!

(8)

I na think you ains were there when we came to the Sloch.

(Smith 2012: 26) F34 in Chicano English We can find special forms and phrases for the 2nd p.pl.pron. in ChcE. WAVE ranks this feature as B, neither pervasive nor rare. In Texas Chicano speakers, y'all can be found which is also a common feature in Southern American English. Other incidences include you guys. (9)

I say, "Hey y'all two, leave me alone."

(Bayley 2012: 157) (10)

You guys don't like me no more. You guys don't come visit me no more.

(Bayley/Santa Ana 2004: 383; Bayley 2012: 159) F34 in Norfolk Island/Pitcairn English In PNE, a pronominal system "more complex than that of English" has developed by

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synthetic means. It has singular, dual and plural. The possessive forms are expressed by an added -s or in a special form (Mühlhäusler 2004: 798). Special forms for the 2nd p.pl.pron. are pervasive and ranked A in WAVE and eWAVE. An extract of Mühlhäusler's table (ibid.) shows the following forms for plural you in different contexts: dual: subject:

yutuu (you two)

object:

yutuu ((to) you two)

possessive:

yutuus (you two's/yours/belonging to the two of you)

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plural: subject:

yorlyi (you all you)

object:

yorlyi ((to) you all you)

possessive:

yorlyis (you all yours/belonging to you guys)

See also Mühlhäusler (2004: 790). We can find these forms in various sentences: (11)

Yorlye come look ortn.

(Yorlye = you all you; Come all and see)

(Kortmann/Lunkenheimer 2011; Mühlhäusler 2012: 624) (12)

,wasing ,jole want

(What do you (pl.) want?/What's it you all want?)

(13)

fu ,jole want da (Why do you want to be here?/Why you all want there?)

(Ross 1964: 124) (14)

to all yorlye who have been so kind (To all of you who have been so kind)

(Mühlhäusler 2010: 796) Analytic and synthetic strategies co-exist and are sometimes used in the same sentence: (15)

`jl ,pal  ,pip 'ka wosi jle ,tokm ,bæ t

(Y'all pile of people don't

know what you'll are talking about) (Ross 1964: 123) F34 in Bonin Island English Finally, in OML we can find two variants. Either the English-derived you is used as in the standard, or the Japanese-derived form omai is used (Long 2007: 196). 4.1.2 F154: multiple negation Negative concord is the usage of two or more negative markers in one clause, most often it occurs in form of double negation (Hay et al 2008: 55). "Negative concord is one of the most persistent features in vernacular English dialects" (Bayley/Santa Ana 2004: 383). In eWAVE, multiple negation is one of the most pervasive features attesCopyright © 2014. Diplomica Verlag. All rights reserved.

ted in the varieties of English. 30 out of 46 varieties use F154 pervasively, another 10 are ranked B (Kortmann/Lunkenheimer 2011). The different terms for F154 are regarded as synonymous in this study. Chambers lists double negation as one of the most promising candidates for vernacular universals. He speaks of "multiple negation, with standards forms like He didn't want any apples distinct from vernacular forms like He didn't want no apples"

43

Weber, Tobias. Principles in the emergence and evolution of linguistic features in World Englishes, Diplomica Verlag, 2014. ProQuest Ebook Central,

(Chambers 2000: 12) or of "negative concord, as in He didn’t see nothing" (Chambers 2004: 129). F154 in Scottish English Double negation is ranked B in WAVE (Smith 2012: 27). However, for ScE this feature is hardy discussed in the literature and seems to be only a footnote. (16)

We never did nothing in here really.

(Smith 2012: 27) F154 in New Zealand English The sources on NZE are completely contradictory concerning F154. On the one hand, we can find statements, that "[n]egative concord, also known as multiple negation, is not particularly common overall, although Jacob (1991) reports a fairly high rate of negative concord among Maori speakers, whereas there were none in her corpus of Pakeha speakers" (Hundt et al. 2004: 585). On the other hand, this feature is ranked B in WAVE (Kortmann/Wolk 2012: 914). Either this is a mistake or the latter group had access to different sources. Nevertheless, the ambivalence of the two statements is noticeable. Pakeha speakers, i.e. white speakers of European descent, are quoted here. (17)

but most of the times they don't do nothing.

(Hundt et al. 2004: 586; Hay et al 2008: 55) In Maori speakers of English, negative concord occurs at a fairly high rate. (18)

you shouldn't never have attitudes like that

(Hay et al. 2008: 55) F154 in Chicano English In ChcE, double negation is one of the distinct grammatical characteristics (Hansen Copyright © 2014. Diplomica Verlag. All rights reserved.

et al. 1996: 117) and speakers frequently use negative concord (Bayley/Santa Ana 2004: 378). We can find examples such as sentence (9) in 4.1.1, and (19)

"I don' have no pain." (consonant cluster simplification included)

(Hansen et al. 1996: 117; Penfield/Ornstein-Galicia 1985: 37) (20)

My four years I spend there I did not learn nothing.

(21)

Now that she ain't no more my side, I still remember her with the love she

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showed me. .

(Penfield/Ornstein-Galicia 1985: 61) (22)

You really can't do nothing about it because you're on welfare.

(23)

I didn't see nothing no more. I didn't have that dream no more.

(Bayley/Santa Ana 2004: 378) (24)

I can't take it no more, you know.

(25)

I wouldn't go much nowhere.

(Bayley/Santa Ana 2004: 383; Bayley 2012: 159) F154 in Bonin Island English Some multiple negation is used in OML. (26)

She didn't have nothing aboard.

(Long/Trudgill 2004: 362) The following examples are from an edited story, so linguistic features might have been exaggerated or put closer to the standard. Nevertheless, they are worth mentioning. (27)

Jane see'd it wasn't no sort of good to hide.

(28)

Don't yer never try to hide anything.

(29)

But I shan't never forgut how Jane looked she were that round!

(Long 2007: 78) F154 in Norfolk Island/Pitcairn English Negation is very complex in PNE. There is double negation, but it seems to be only one of many options. Among them, there are endemic negators such as noe, nort, or naewa, probably deriving from no, not, and never. The negators appear directly before the verb phrase. Negative imperatives (Don't...!) are expressed by duu or dan. In

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addition, there are several "special negative words, including ent ('is/are/am not') and kaa or kar 'cannot'" (Ingram/Mühlhäusler 2004: 795). Because of this minority status, this feature is only ranked C in WAVE. The combination of kaa and enithing or nothing is an example of two negators in phrase, thus double negation. We can find the following examples: (30)

Oe hi kaa plieh enithing. Hi es d'black shiip o d'faemli, hi kaa plieh nothing.

(He cannot play anything. He is the black sheep of the family, he cannot play 45

Weber, Tobias. Principles in the emergence and evolution of linguistic features in World Englishes, Diplomica Verlag, 2014. ProQuest Ebook Central,

anything (instrument).) (Mühlhäusler 2012: 625) (31)

a 'no bn si 'no mo 'sem ,ez (I have never seen anything like this/*I no been

see no more some as) (Ross 1964: 127) 4.2

Phonological features

4.2.1 Monophthongization Monophthongization in Scottish English The vowels of Scottish English include the diphthongs /i, ae, oe, / (Stuart-Smith 2004: 52). Characteristically, the GOAT and FACE diphthongs / / and /e/ are usually realized as clear monophthongs /o/ and /e/ in all regions of Scotland, except for some speakers of Scottish Standard English, such as speakers of BBC Scotland, who sometimes use more standard-like diphthongs (Stuart-Smith 2004: 59). Moreover, the vowels are usually short, making a standard

GOAT

/g t/ a /got/, and

FACE

/fes/

becomes /fes/ (Maguire 2012: 56). Monophthongization in New Zealand English A study of speakers from Arrowtown, South Island, shows that the variability of vowel and diphthong realization most often includes the option of complete or almost complete monophthongization. Next to standard-near realizations as diphthongs, the FACE diphthong

can be realized as [e ] or as [e i]; the PRICE diphthong as [a i] or [a e];

the GOAT diphthong as [o ] or [o u]; and the MOUTH diphthong as [ u] (Trudgill 2004: 108). This means that monophthongization is not the rule but an option here. NZE shared many features with Australian English, for instance the falling diphthongs in the monophthongal [o] pronunciation for the CURE vowel as in poor, moor, Copyright © 2014. Diplomica Verlag. All rights reserved.

sure and tour), which is also a recent innovation in RP. In addition, the merger of the vowels of

NEAR

and

SQUARE

is pronounced with a close variant [i]. This merger is

shared with East Anglian, where the merger has settled on a single vowel [e:]" (Peters/Burridge 2012: 249f.). This is a possible development in NZE, too. Monophthongization in Chicano English Spanish-speaking learners of English show the reduced five-monophthong vowel system without distinction between tense and lax peripheral vowels and a complete 46

Weber, Tobias. Principles in the emergence and evolution of linguistic features in World Englishes, Diplomica Verlag, 2014. ProQuest Ebook Central,

lack of diphthongs. In contrast, most Chicano speakers show the complete catalogue of vowel phonemes and most of the phonological features of their local US English dialect (Bayley/Santa Ana 2004: 418). Penfield and Ornstein-Galicia (1985: 36) attest several features in Chicano English, which lead to the impression of general or at least outstanding monophthongization, such as the realization of /e / as / / as in ht instead of hate. In addition, [a ] is usually realized as [a], as in am for I'm. (32)

they m t a beautiful pinatat (made)

(Penfield/Ornstein-Galicia 1985: 16f.) Monophthongization in Bonin Island English A resident born in 1881 on the Bonins, Charles Washington, alias Uncle Charlie, was one of the main sources for recorded BIE. His speech "has no long mid diphthongs [...]. The vowels of FACE and GOAT are pure (though not tense) monophthongs around [e] and [o]." Furthermore, he "has no diphthong shift [...]. FLEECE and GOOSE are pure monophthongs, and GOOSE is a truly back [u]" (Long/Trudgill 2004: 363). (33)

no klos

(no clothes)

(34)

test

(taste)

(35)

de

(day)

(Long 2007: 195) (36)

nene goto

(nanny goat)

(Long 2007: 235) Monophthongization in Norfolk Island/Pitcairn English In PNE, the sound [e] is usually realized as a monophthong, either [e] or [e], as for instance in take, make, same, or anyway. Exceptions are still there, as in strend

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(stranger; Ross 194 124). The range of variation, also to realizations as diphthongs, is quite large (Ingram/Mühlhäusler 2004: 795) which can also be heard in the sound files in Kortmann/Upton 2008. Here, six speakers realize

GOAT

differently either as

[gt] or [gt], but they realize FACE uniformly as [fes]. English source words containing / / receive a Norfuk accentuation by phonemicising as // or // (ibid.: 796). (37)

teck dem's boat

(take their boat)

(Avram 2003: 46)

47

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(38)

'es a ,ms kod

(it's a Morse Code)

(39)

' t ;mek a ,sk... (it makes me think.../*it make I think)

(Ross 1964: 74) The picture is very ambivalent. In other instances, when monophthongization could be expected, standard diphthongs are realized, as in 'rod for road (Ross 1964: 122). 4.2.2 Th-movement I have summarized a change in the realization of the th as dental fricatives // or /ð/ as movement. So the processes of th-alveolarization to alveolar fricatives /s/ and /z/ would be such a movement, just as the th-stopping to /t/ or /d/, or the th-fronting to /f/ or /v/, but also the th-debuccalization in which // becomes /h/ word initially and intervocalically. A non-standard realization of the th can be found in many varieties of English all over the world, but also in learner or child language. As we will see, the realization in the varieties given here varies strongly, see also appendix V. Th-movement in Scottish English Stuart-Smith (2004: 60) states a common substitution of // with /‫׎‬/. For instance, with becomes /wi'/, and think becomes /ik/. Otherwise, in "Scottish Standard English /, ð/ are realized as voiceless dental fricatives" (ibid.: 61), or in Urban Scots, as optional /h/, which is called th-debuccalization. This substitute /h/ can be dropped completely, which would resemble the aforementioned substitution with /‫׎‬/. In addition, th-fronting to /f/ becomes more and more popular, so that a standard pronunciation of // in spontaneous speech is only given in one third of the occasions (ibid.: 62). Stopping of /, ð/ occurs occasionally in ScE in Glasgow where it may be due to Irish/Ulster influence (ibid.). For /ð/ in word-initial or -final position, com-

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plete elision is usual, or also substitution with /v/: (40)

an(d th)at

(including consonant cluster simplification)

(41)

/smuv/

(smooth)

(Stuart-Smith 2004: 62) Hansen et al. (1996: 73) find both a substitution of // with /t/ in examples such as fifth or sixth or a general devoicing of /ð/ to //, so th-fronting and devoicing seem to be common phenomena. Maguire (2012: 60f.) supports Stuart-Smith's impression of a rapidly spreading th-fronting and emphasises that "although TH-fronting is absent from the speech of middle-class speakers in Glasgow, it occurs in the speech of 48

Weber, Tobias. Principles in the emergence and evolution of linguistic features in World Englishes, Diplomica Verlag, 2014. ProQuest Ebook Central,

workingclass adolescents (at a rate of around 30%). TH-fronting is also found beyond the big urban centres in Scotland." Certain social circumstances seem to facilitate or hinder the pervasiveness of this feature. Th-movement in New Zealand English In NZE, various changes of the th-sounds are described. Hay et al. (2008: 38f.) describe th-fronting, the realization of // and /ð/ as /f/ and /v/ as a "sound change that occurs in English throughout the world and is one of the fastest growing sound changes in NZE at present", especially in casual conversation (ibid.: 38). It is so salient that "speech-language therapists now rarely correct its use in young school children" (ibid.: 39). Here with seems to be the key word, as speakers who front the th in with also use th-fronting in other occasions. The "most important feature of the fricatives is the devoicing of the so-called voiced fricatives" (Bauer/Warren 2004: 593). "// and /ð/ in New Zealand are usually interdental fricatives rather than post-dental fricatives" (ibid.: 594). As in ScE, we can find a devoicing of /ð/ in the Southland, "direct influence from Scottish English (or other British varieties) seems more likely" (Bauer 1997: 265). In Australian English, th-fronting is rather wide-spread and especially common in the high-frequent words with and them. In NZE the feature is only sporadically attested and ranked C in WAVE. In Maori English, though, it is ranked B. According to Peters and Burridge (2012: 251), there is salient evidence for th-fronting in lower class London speech in the late eighteenth century. As a result, this feature might have spread to Australia and New Zealand with emigrants from London area. On the other hand, "historical evidence indicates that it was not widespread in nineteenth-century Australia, suggesting its spread in this region generally is fairly recent" (Peters/Burridge 2012: 251).

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Gordon and Maclagan (2004: 608) recognize the extraordinary degree of social markedness of th-fronting in NZE, showing parallels between NZE and eighteenth century British English. This feature is "overtly stigmatised by those who speak Cultivated NZE, and speakers from the higher social classes avoid it" (ibid.). In fact, the feature's use is spreading rapidly, especially among younger speakers, both male and female, from the lower social classes. Albeit, it now reaches just over the 5% level in this group of speakers, the usage is more dominant in casual conversation. It was also observed that if a speaker does not start using th-fronting in the high-frequent word 49

Weber, Tobias. Principles in the emergence and evolution of linguistic features in World Englishes, Diplomica Verlag, 2014. ProQuest Ebook Central,

with, he or she will probably neither use it in other words. In NZE, with can be either pronounced /w/ or /wð/; both options are considered correct. Gordon and Maclagan (ibid.) assume that "the variability in the pronunciation of this word created the conditions for the development of the new pronunciation, /wf/ or /wv/." Moreover, young children who are just learning to read and spell tend to misspell words like the and them according to their non-standard realization as ve and vem, showing thfronting towards the voiced /v/. In Maori English, we can find a rather unusual process. The "dental fricatives are sometimes replaced, not by labio-dentals (as might be expected given both English variation and the structure of Maori) but by affricates, [t] and [dð]" (Bauer/Warren 2004a: 618), which makes the structure even more complex. Th-movement in Bonin Island English The situation on the Bonin Islands is a bit different. When Japanese or Japaneseinfluenced features are left out, "we are left with features inherited from the nineteenth-century pre-Japanese lingua franca of the island. These features include thstopping" (Long 2007: 75). Still today, // is usually pronounced /t/, as can be found in numbers three, [tri], or in thatch, [tæt] (Long 2007: 194). (42)

tenk yu

(thank you)

(Long 2007: 194) Because this feature already existed before the arrival of the Japanese, it means Japanese has had no influence on this feature, and Japanese speakers have adapted to it as well. Th-movement in Chicano English Speakers of ChcE usually apply th-alveolarization and realise the th as voiceless /s/. Now, one could argue that Spanish does have the dental fricatives // and /ð/. But /ð/ Copyright © 2014. Diplomica Verlag. All rights reserved.

is merged with /d/ in certain vocalic surroundings just as it happens with /b/ and /v/. Furthermore, // only exists in a number of varieties of Spanish, and Mexican Spanish is not one of them. Here, // is substituted by /s/. This is the same process we observe in ChcE. Not unlikely, this is substrate influence. Hansen et al. (1996: 117) make it a bit easier. They state that // and /ð/ are substituted by /t/ and /d/, and show partial influence from Spanish (ibid.). The same holds for Penfield/Ornstein-Galicia (1985: 36). They observed that defricativization of // and /ð/ occurs most frequently 50

Weber, Tobias. Principles in the emergence and evolution of linguistic features in World Englishes, Diplomica Verlag, 2014. ProQuest Ebook Central,

in word-initial positions, especially in high-frequency words, and in lower socioeconomic class speakers, both monolingual and bilingual (ibid.: 43), for instance in the following examples: (43)

t

(think; including consonant cluster reduction in word-final position)

(44)

de

(they)

(45)

d r

(there)

(46)

samti (something)

Penfield/Ornstein-Galicia (1985: 36-39) Th-movement in Norfolk Island/Pitcairn English On Pitcairn and Norfolk Island, the definite article, and demonstrative and personal pronouns starting with th are usually realised as dem, as in the following examples: (47)

All Norfolk h'yu dem two... (All Norfolk heard those two...)

(48)

One a dem pigs ...

(49)

All dem Real Estate maeken dem's pretty money

(50)

dem plahn is good

(One of the pigs...)

(the bananas are delicious/good)

(Ingram/Mühlhäusler 2004: 794) (51)

d saz f d aielen

(the size of the island)

(Avram 2003: 46) So th-stopping exists in these instances, or a substitution of pronouns with a general dem as in a number of different features in WAVE. In other examples, th is alveolarized to /s/ as in sentence (39) above, ' t ,mek a ,sk (it makes me think.../*it make I think) or in the number three: ,sri (Ross 1964: 128). The latter is also attested as tri, e.g. in ",tri 'rend" (three orange(s); Ross 1964: 122). A third option is the omission of th, or substition with /‫׎‬/, as in em for them (ibid.: 122). Hence, we can

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find many strategies of phonological realization in order to replace the th-sound.

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5.

Discussion

So far we have taken three steps: Firstly, the current research on contact linguistics and the emergence of linguistic phenomena in World Englishes was summarized; secondly, the selection of five non-standard varieties and their individual linguistic ecology was presented; and thirdly, examples of two phonological and morphosyntactic features each in all the varieties were provided. As a next step, we will have a closer look on the theoretic approaches and try to match the data collected above to the approaches. In its turn, the most plausible and thus favourable explanatory model will crystallize, and linguistic principles at work will become apparent. 5.1

Sociolinguistic approaches

5.1.1 Theoretic outline Schreier – linguistic endemicity As mentioned in chapter 2, endemic dialect structures, according to Schreier (2003: 249), emerge and develop in two stages. First, there is an origination phase that "depends on nonnative influence and admixture with interlanguage forms", and second, there is a consolidation phase that "depends on the nonlinguistic conditioning of the community", so demographics and others environmental factors have to be considered (ibid.). The main conclusion is that new dialects of English form in a contact scenario with English as the target language and different varieties or languages as substrate influence. Exemplified with a special tense marker construction,10 he shows that such constructions or variations can be the "product of imperfect learning" of English as L2 by non-natively English-speaking settlers or of the emerging dialect as L1 by native speakers (ibid.: 266). The usually dynamic character of such structures becomes slowed down and finally normative because in classic contact scenarios

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there is "extensive contact with non-Anglophone settlers and substantial input from nonnative varieties of English, restricted formal education and absence of a normenforcing language authority, limited out-migration, and interaction with other communities" (Schreier 2003: 267). Under such conditions, "interlanguage-derived structures have a chance to survive the nativization and stabilization process" (ibid.).

10

This is the useta went construction, a double tense marker which shows the formerly and habitual aspect of a past action and which is endemic in Tristan da Cunha English (Schreier 2003).

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Even though Schreier argues "in favor of interlanguage fossilization, [he] admit[s] that we will never know if features originate in L2 learning or L1 acquisition" (2003: 269). Probably, it is a mixture of both, leading to a reinforced process of normalization of this structure and enhancing its chances of survival. Schreier takes up Andersen's (1988) relic assumption that will be discussed further below. It says that the "demographics of small isolated communities are particularly favorable toward the retention of archaic features, no matter if they are socially distributed or idiosyncratic" (Schreier 2003: 263). Andersen – center and periphery "Ferdinand de Saussure has suggested the reason for this contrast by speaking of different 'forces' that shape the development of language in time and space, the centrifugal force – 'intercourse' he dubbed it – which favors the levelling of differences between different speech areas, and the centripetal 'esprit de clocher', which favors the elaboration of local peculiarities of speech" (Andersen 1988: 39).11 We can find two options, compare appendix VI. a) The dialect is used as an overregional koiné. Then, the regional periphery functions as a center of innovation, and diffusion with neighbouring dialects occurs. The region's core is rather conservative. The dialect is relatively 'open' towards outer influence. Change happens endocentric, pointing from outside towards the core. b) The dialect is mainly used for regional or local purposes. Its geographic center then serves as focal point where linguistic innovation happens. The geographic periphery tends to be conservative and keeps outer influence away from the core. The dialect is relatively 'closed'. Change is exocentric, pointing away from the core towards the periphery. It was observed that dialects that function as koiné (option a) in general have a simp-

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ler phonemic system than those of local restriction (option b) (Andersen 1988: 47). For contact scenarios on small islands, as we will see, this means that there is no option b. Such scenarios would have to lead to a koiné function (option a), which is relatively open, and the linguistic core develops over time. After that, the relic assumption says, that isolated communities are favourable to retain archaic features owing to their conservatism. Andersen goes on to explain this phenomenon with 11

The two terms can be best translated with exchange (intercourse) and contractedness (esprit de clocher).

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levelling caused by primary language acquisition and secondary norm elaboration in contact situations that accounts for the creation of compromise norms, or simplification through convergence (ibid.: 53f.). This means that new rules are not adopted but created in compromises of varying distribution. Motivation for change can be prestige, internal chain shifts, levelling of redundancy, regularization, and thus easier language acquisition. To sum up, adaptive innovations include "contact innovations, which are motivated by speakers' efforts to adapt their speech to what they perceive to be the norms of their fellows", leading to dialect convergence. Evolutive innovations include the "abductive innovations which occur in primary language acquisition based on heterogeneous usage and blurred norms", resulting in dialect convergence, too, over new generations of speakers (Andersen 1988: 78). Trudgill – new-dialect formation The three stages roughly resemble the three generations of new-dialect formation, starting with step 1 – rudimentary levelling and inter-dialect development. It is the first meeting of adult speakers of different varieties of English at an assembly point somewhere in the British Isles, such as a harbour city, on the long boat journey that could last four to six months to New Zealand, and after arrival at the destination. Some limited acts of linguistic accommodation happen already here in face-to-face communication, for instance extremely marked regional, traditional dialect features that make comprehensibility difficult, might be levelled. This leads to the development of a highly diverse interdialect (Trudgill 2004: 89-99). Step 2 is variability and apparent levelling in new-dialect formation. Here children play the vital role because they are forced to deal with the huge number of varieties in their linguistic environment. They show great inter- and intra-individual variability

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because of their numerous linguistic role models. Nevertheless, it is the youth that usually accommodates to the peer group talk, but at some early stage in contact situations, there does not yet exist any such peer group talk. This results in relative freedom of feature selection during language acquisition, so the individual's speech is rather unique and not (yet) society-wide. While communicating, the variability will be more and more reduced, some features will not be acquired at all, and thus levelled (Trudgill 2004: 100-112).

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Step 3 is determinism in new-dialect formation. In this phase, the development of a colonial English is accomplished in form of a final, stable, and relatively uniform new dialect. Trudgill calls this a crystallization process which results in only one remaining variant for each variable. The loss of demographical minority forms leads to the survival of majority forms, so linguistic features of socially or demographically dominant speakers or dialect groups are most likely to prevail. A third generation of young speakers grows up in a linguistically more homogenous environment and can be considered the first native speakers of a new dialect. Certainly, there are similarities between features of individual speakers' dialects, say Southern English traits, and the final dialect, such as New Zealand English. Of course, these similarities do not exist by random. The features were adapted in the original dialect mixture in the early contact period and passed on by language transmission (Trudgill 2004: 113-128). Trudgill gives two examples. Firstly, the loss of the 2nd person pronouns thou, thee, thy, and thine represents the loss a morphological category because the distinction between singular and plural does not operate any more in the 2nd person. Many dialects have restored these pronouns and their category. Secondly, negative concord has lost its form of agreement in the standard. "The loss of multiple negation is often ascribed to the successful efforts of eighteenth-century prescriptivists exercising normative pressures based on peculiar ideas about logic" (Trudgill 2009: 314). Such features can be transmitted in contact scenarios. Trudgill argues that both the standard and the dialects show effects of simplification by regularisation and loss of redundancy. However, change happens at a lower speed in the standard owing to its "natural convervatism" than in areas of dialect contact. The similar processes in standard and non-standard varieties, e.g. this commonality of simplification, might be a reason why we have not yet "succeeded in finding any genuinely vernacular universals" (Trudgill 2009: 315).

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In summary, sociolinguistic approaches take into consideration the contact of several generations of speakers of different languages or dialects. Linguistic change is caused by mechanisms such as initial dialect levelling at an early stage, for instance during the voyage and early settlement, as well as adaptation to the others' speech habits. Other mechanisms are imperfect L1 or L2 acquisition owing to age-related and psycholinguistic parameters, and influence of social factors such as prestige, or internal shifts. In general, contact languages are open towards change, which results

55

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in innovation in the geographic periphery; after a while, however, a linguistically innovative center can emerge. 5.1.2 Matching the data The selected varieties represent more or less isolated speech communities. This is geographical isolation for NZE, PNE and OML, and also parts of ScE, and it is social isolation for ChcE. The origination phase of each variety included a time of contact between speakers of (non-standard) English and of other languages. In ScE it was Scottish Gaelic, in ChcE it was Mexican Spanish, in NZE we can find influence from various British dialects but also Scots and other European languages and also Maori, in OML it is Japanese but also many Austronesian languages, and in PNE it is mainly Tahitian. We can find probable sources of substrate influence in all of the varieties. There was no formal education of languages for a long time, and owing to geographic isolation, no strong norm-giving authority. Imperfect, or natural, untutored language learning was the rule for both L1 acquisition and L2 learning in the linguistically diverse communities. Interlanguage structures can be found in presentday learners of the English language, too. Transfer from L1 to L2 and overgeneralizations are very common in interlanguage. For this reason, grammatical features from input varieties such as the abovementioned useta-went construction in Tristan da Cunha English can be applied in the target language. If multiple negation, for instance, exists in one input variety and is transferred to the target variety, other speakers may adapt this feature as well, in case social or linguistic factors such as prestige support their selection, communal spread and acceptance. The attitude towards substrate influence is very ambivalent. "Pronunciation has often been singled out as the area where substratum influence can be felt most stongly", says Romaine (1988: 64). In contrast, Trudgill (2004: 4) states that "[c]ontact with

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indigenous languages seems to manifest itself mostly in terms of acquisition of loanwords from these languages." Whether lexical or phonological influence outweighs the other will not be discussed here. Important is that there is, in many cases, considerable influence from substrate dialects or languages on the output.

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Chicano English As mentioned above, Trudgill understands unmarking as a subtype of levelling that happens in favour of forms "which offer greatest structural simplicity" such as the merging of // and /s/ in American Spanish, a substrate influence of ChcE (Trudgill 2004: 86). This feature was an allophone in the speakers' L1, and this simple merger form was transferred to the L2. Another possible explanation is the "historical-based interference from Mexican varieties of Spanish which do not make the /t and ð/d distinction" (Penfield/OrnsteinGalicia 1985: 43). Some Chicano students in US schools are denied to speak Spanish at school in order to master the English language, and to keep influence from Spanish as little as possible. The problem here is that we defined Chicano speakers as native speakers of this variety. They do not necessarily have to speak Spanish at all (Bayley/Santa Ana 2004: 417f.). "How a language that children cannot speak can interfere with a language that they do speak is left unexplained" (ibid.: 418). So how can features detected in Spanish influence a variety of English spoken by people who do not speak Spanish? Again, we need to consider the wide range of variation within ChcE, and the different linguistic backgrounds with speakers who have Spanish as L1, as L2, or who do not have any linguistic competence of Spanish at all. Moreover, in terms of logic, people can speak a language that has been influenced by another language before, and which has previously undergone systematic morphosyntactic and phonological change. Hence, features of Spanish might occur in speakers without any competence of Spanish. Moreover, Chicano students need to learn standard American English at school, and many of them have problems at spelling. If there is no sound distinction in spoken ChcE, it is hard to learn written distinctions, especially of homophones and words including problematic sounds such as th (Penfield/Ornstein-Galicia 1985: 54-66). Copyright © 2014. Diplomica Verlag. All rights reserved.

The written realization of *tanks for thanks, of *do for though, or of *tought for thought mirrors a lack of phonological distinction in spoken language (ibid.: 58). The defricativization of th often occurs among people of the lower socioeconomic classes in varieties of English in both the United States and Britain. Penfield/OrnsteinGalicia (1985: 43) hint to a possible social universal (maybe a socioversal?) explanation, see below in 5.3.

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A very clear hint to substrate influence is the lack of the two phonemes /ð/ and // in twentieth century Mexican Spanish. In Mexico, the series of sibilant realization has been reduced to a two-way contrast by way of a different change", so that four distinct voiced and voiceless sibilants /s, z, , /, which became /ð, , , x/ in modern Spanish, are all modern Mexican Spanish /s/ and /x/ today (Hill 1988: 275). In short, this is the distinction between seseo and çeçeo – the realization of graphemes s or c as phonemes /s/ or //. It became distinctive after this sound alternation became popular in fifteenth century Andalusia, home of most of the Spanish conquistadores and their ancestors who settled in Latin America.12 In many Spanish-speaking countries of Middle America, the feature is clearly realized as seseo, /s/ (Lüdtke : 29). This means that the lack of this phoneme in Mexican Spanish substrate, which is an inherited non-standard phenomenon as opposed to Standard Spanish, and the common substitution with /s/ make it difficult for speakers or learners of ChcE to distinguish between the numerous fricatives in Standard American English. Another point of discussion will be added in Bonin Island English, see below. F154, multiple negation, the use of more than one negator in a phrase, is common – but not obligatory – in Spanish. The phrase No me interesa nada can be easily transferred to I'm not interested in nothing. This is an oridinary L1 transfer in ChcE, compare sentences (19) to (25) in 4.1.2. The same is for F34, as Spanish employs different pronouns for the 2nd person singular and plural. A learner would encounter this ambiguity in the standard with L1 transfer and bring in their native pronouns, or in accordance with Schreier's suggestion of overgeneralization, the learner could use a common plural marker -s in the domain of pronouns, forming yous. Another option is the adaptation of another non-standard variety's solution – the Southern US American English y'all that is available in the same geographic area. The Spanish 2nd p.pl.pron. vosotros is literally you others, semantically not far away from you guys.

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The theory of transfer in learners seems plausible. The phonological transfer from L1 to L2 could be supported and reinforced by ChcE's covert prestige, so young speakers follow their peer group's habits and promote interlanguage fossilization. In the case of double negation, the circumstances are similar. In Spanish, negative concord is either an option or obligatory, as in

12

Trudgill (2004: 7f.) utters his negative attitude to such a simple reduction of Andalusian Spanish from the Iberian Peninsula to the American continent, but in this case relationships become very clear.

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(52)

No

sabe

nada. (literally: He doesn't know nothing.)

NEG

know-3 sg present

nothing.

(Bayley/Santa Ana 2004: 384). In this case, substrate influence from Spanish seems plausible. But remarkably, all of the ChcE examples provided in 4.1.2 are from speakers who "are fully proficient in English and began to acquire the language by the age of 5, if not from birth. There is no reason to assume a priori that the type negative concord seen in these and many other examples that we could have provided represent instances of interference from Spanish" (Bayley/Santa Ana 2004: 384). Bayley and Santa Ana (2004: 384f.) discuss the results of multivariate analysis of social factors which show "that gang status, social class, and bilingualism all significantly affected speakers' choices between standard and non-standard negation" (ibid.). In general, speakers used negative concord in half of the cases, and the highest incidence of double negation usage was by gang members and low-income speakers. Bilinguals, though statistically least significantly, also favored negative concord. In addition, the linguistic environment determines the probability of negative concord, ranging from 74% in constructions of negative auxiliaries + pronoun (I won't do it no more) to only 15% in constructions with a negative in an outside clause (She's not dead or nothing) (ibid.). Thus, this feature is pervasive and ranked A in WAVE (Bayley 2004: 163), but certainly, it does not show any structural or social uniformity. Norfolk Island/Pitcairn English In PNE, language contact to Tahitian took place prior to the settlement and on Norfolk Island after the variety had already been established. In terms of Trudgill, levelling took place at an early stage during the stay on Tahiti. However, "[t]he presence of a number of creole features […] in Pitkern/Norfuk has been a source of confusion as researchers have failed to distinguish between creolisation in situ and Copyright © 2014. Diplomica Verlag. All rights reserved.

the diffusion of creole features from St. Kitts" (Ingram/Mühlhäusler 2004: 786), as one of the sailors came from the West Indies. In his statistical analysis, Avram (2003) found out that PNE is "the least Pacific variety among the Pacific creoles" and only shows two out of forty-eight Pacific features analysed here, but thirteen Atlantic features (Avram 2003: 47f.). Of the thirteen features, nine are also attested in Kittinian, the Atlantic English creole of Caribbean St. Kitts, that "was instrumental in the genesis of Pitkern-Norfolk" (ibid.: 49). Evidence is unusually clear in this case,

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which means that we need to consider Scottish13 and West Indies English, as well as Tahitian influence on the early stages of PNE. In return, it is not that clear whether the Caribbean touch has to be regarded as substrate or even superstrate influence in respect to the large influence of young mutineer Edward Young from St. Kitts. The distinct [l]-[r]-alternation from Kittinian and the salience of phrasal verbs are still present in PNE (Mühlhäusler 2012: 623). Mühlhäusler (2012: 621) summarizes: "Pitkern and Norf'k are the result of linguistic contacts between a number of English and Scottish dialects, St. Kitt's Creole and Polynesian languages (mainly Tahitian)." Siegel (2012: 782) states that the ten Pacific and Australasian creole and pidgin varieties discussed in WAVE are "influenced by second language acquisition [and] are the ones that have the characteristic features that distinguish the Australia Pacific region from other regions, and most of these distinguishing features are the result of influence from the indigenous substrate languages." If the four features can be attested in Tahitian, a substrate influence could be made even clearer. Using WALS (Dryer/Haspelmath 2011) shows that we can find a complex pronoun system with distinction of singular, dual and plural, and of inclusive and exclusive, just as shown in 4.1.1 in PNE. The definite article in Tahitian is te which is astonishingly close to English the. Mutual intelligibility might have existed from the beginning in this feature, showing a possible substitution of /ð/ with alveolar stops. Double negation, ranked C in PNE, does also not occur in standard Tahitian. Furthermore, Polynesian languages such as Tahitian tend to have a small phonemic inventory, including the tendency to pronounce diphthongs as two monophthongs. Tahitian substrate influence is very probable, promoting the abovementioned theory on new-dialect formation. Concerning the tight-knit community on Pitcairn and Norfolk Island, Schreier (2003: 268) states that once a linguistic feature "was vital and ceased to be age related or

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competence dependent, it thrived under the specific conditions of the community. Consequently, extralinguistic and sociohistorical factors are perhaps secondary in the genesis of endemic structures; as for normalization and stabilization, however, they are paramount." This explains why we can still find those features after 200 years of language contact.

13

Scottish influence, for instance, is seen lexically in the expression ucklan, which is reserved for Pitcairners as a first-person plural pronoun (we), and is derived from our clan (Mühlhäusler 2012: 621).

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New Zealand English The phenomenon of th-fronting in New Zealand English becomes ever more salient in spoken language. The key word with has already two possible pronunciations here, /wð/ and /w/, "and this variation that is already present may have paved the way for more variation to be accepted" (Hay et al. 2008: 39). After having started to spread among lower-class speakers, this feature has already reached middle-class speakers, especially concerning the word with (ibid.). Even though Trudgill does not use Mufwene's terminology, his ideas can be discussed using it. He despises monogenetic theories as given in Bauer (1997), since contact scenarios are far too complex for simple recipes. He does "not agree that it is clear that New Zealand English derives from a variety of English spoken in the south-east of England" (Trudgill 2004: 8). Bauer (1997: 267) states that a distinction between singular and plural 2nd person pronoun has been widespread in Scotland until recent years, and was firstly attested in the early twentieth century. Furthermore, the form is spreading in non-standard British English (ibid.). This makes it complicated as a source for overseas territories such as Pitcairn/Norfolk or NZ. "A plural form for you, variously spelt, is well-established in non-standard varieties of New Zealand English, and in the past has been one of the few features of New Zealand English attested to the Irish" (Bauer 1997: 267). Because of the feature's arrival time in Scottish English, she suggests Irish English as a likely source for this feature. Bauer (1997: 270) suggests "that in many cases the Scottish influence cannot be assumed. Although there are some clear lexical influences, phonological and grammatical influences are a lot harder to pin down." Even in the formerly mainly Scottish settlements in the regions of Otago and Southland there is little linguistic influence, or at least not a stronger one than elsewhere in NZ (ibid.). For instance, the usage of a special 2nd p.pl.pron. in NZE can be the result of Copyright © 2014. Diplomica Verlag. All rights reserved.

influence from Irish speakers of the English language. The minority of Irish speakers might have contributed an innovative and useful alternative to the ambivalent you for the 2nd p.pl.pron. In contrast, Hickey (2002: 13f.) demonstrates that for demographic and social reasons Irish influence on nineteenth century NZE was only marginal and might not account for linguistic phenomena in present-day NZE. Even though this feature has probably not existed in all speakers during the time of first settlements in New Zealand – as mentioned above the feature was first attested 61

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in ScE in the early twentieth century – it could have developed in British harbour cities, on boats during the long journey, or among the tight-knit community in New Zealand. As mentioned above, a dialect levelling could have happened on the very long passage to NZ. This could explain the small degree of linguistic influence of Scottish English on NZE. Despite the fact that there is almost no work documenting regional variation in morphosyntax in NZ, "Bartlett (1992) suggests some features which may be potentially unique to Southland, a part of New Zealand which was subject to more Scottish influence than elsewhere" (Hundt et al. 2004: 587). 14 Thus, in areas of populations with a high Scottish-origin percentage, typically Scottish features are more likely to prevail. This is reminiscent of Thomason's theory of social and linguistic factors in language change, but it also demonstrates a substrate influence. In Scottish dominated areas contact to other groups was less intense, creating a different balance in the input, different chances of selection, and thus a slightly different outcome in favour of Scotticisms. This is supported by Gordon's and Maclagan's observation from the Mobile Unit archive, a 1940s archive of recordings of elderly New Zealanders, some of which are born in the 1850s. The archive shows the importance of social factors in the development of the New Zealand accent. Speakers from predominantly Scottish towns such as Milton or Kaitangata in Otago live in a linguistically rather homogenous environment. These settlers are more likely to preserve features of Scottish pronunciation and syntax in their speech. In contrast, speakers from Arrowtown, which has a very mixed and linguistically heterogeneous population, are more likely to develop early manifestations of NZE (Gordon/Maclagan 2004: 604). This implies that levelling or koinéization need to happen quicker in heterogeneous speech communities of balanced inputs; it has to be a more open dialect. Homoge-

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neous groups with a dominating speaker sub-community tend to form a closed, more conservative dialect that does not need to adapt quickly. Here, competition of features is dominated by Scottish features.

14

"These include: - The use of the past participle following needs and wants, as in the baby needs fed. - The use of will with first-person subjects in questions (will I close the door). - Lack of contraction of not (e.g. did you not?). - The deletion of prepositions in certain contexts (e.g. he came out hospital)" (Hundt et al. 2004: 587).

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Another finding suggests that alternatives for the 2nd p.pl.pron. are possibly an "agegraded feature – something younger speakers use, but then stop using as they get older" (Hay et al. 2008: 60). In various corpora, this feature was mainly attested among school and high school children. Any phonological or morphosyntactic influence from Maori language on New Zealand English is denied by data collected by Gordon et al. (2004: 219), because although "a number of speakers recorded [...] had considerable interaction with Maori and many acquired considerable fluency with the Maori language, none of the speakers recorded shows any evidence of influence from Maori grammar or pronunciation." In addition, most of the Maori place names show an Anglicised pronunciation, e.g. using an /æ/ instead of /a/ (Gordon et al. 2005: 219). We cannot find any substrate influence of a non-English language variety here that is not lexical. Of course special indigenous names for places, fauna and flora were adapted. For the rest, processes of dialect mixture must hold for an explanation of features in New Zealand English. Bonin Island English In the time before the arrival of big numbers of Japanese settlers around 1860, there were a number of non-English languages spoken on the island. The first permanent settlement was founded on June 26, 1830, by five white men sailing from Hawaii, formerly known as the Sandwich Islands, and brought ten Kanaka men and five Kanaka women with them. So non-speakers of English outnumbered speakers of English by three to one. Three of the five white men were native speakers of English, the other two were from Denmark and Genoa. The Kanaka people probably spoke Tahitian, Northern Marquesan and Hawaiian, three Polynesian languages that are 46 to 70% mutually intelligible, especially in vocabulary. For some time there must have been the possibility for the non-English-speaking majority to communicate Copyright © 2014. Diplomica Verlag. All rights reserved.

without English to a certain degree (Long 2007: 40). Later, more Polynesian or Austronesian speakers arrived along with further speakers of European languages in small groups over the next decades. But typologically, their languages are at least as different from each other as the languages of the European settlers. In total, we can find more than a dozen languages in the early contact period on the Bonin islands of which not a single one was numerically in majority. "Yet, in spite the small number of English native speakers, we find in multiple sources [...] that both first-generation

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settlers and sub-sequent island-born generations spoke 'English', or more specifically an English-based contact language" (Long 2007: 42). As a consequence, "we must consider the possibility that [the locals'] pronunciation is related to the large number of Hawaiian and other Polynesian language speakers among the original and longterm settlers of the island" (Long/Trudgill 2004: 362) also if the spoken "English is clearly American in origin" (ibid.: 363). The language spoken at home in the racially and linguistically mixed households must have been a pidginized variety of English with Polynesian/Austronesian influence. As a result, reports on the Bonin language by shipwrecked or stopping-over Japanese seamen include many Hawaiian words, especially for body parts, household equipment and place names. English and also Portuguese words were reported for nautical terminology and food. After the arrival of Japanese settlers, English and Japanese bilingual and formal education was introduced, changing the linguistic landscape completely. The monolingual Japanese community had to acquire English. A linguistic study found that "Japanese listeners performed quite poorly compared to listeners with more complex L1 vowel systems" (Kewley-Port et al. 2005: 2399). The vowel system of the target language is reduced as a consequence of imperfect L2 acquisition and L1 transfer. The same is for speakers of Spanish concerning the vowel system in ChcE, as mentioned above. The quality of sound perception seems to decrease with age. This is reminiscent of the critical age for native language acquisition that is about eight years, as mentioned above. In some speakers, L1 transfer or L1 predetermination of a reduced vowel system has influence on the output variety of English. Because of the very complex contact situation and its external, political influences, the matching to new-dialect formation is difficult for nowadays OML, but it is certainly true for the early stages of Ogasawara Island English. Scottish English

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The geographic situation of Scotland is quite special. Moreover, ScE is a low-contact variety, a traditional dialect. We can find the Central Belt from Glasgow to Edinburgh which is clearly influenced by Northern English. It seems to form a continuum of northern English and southern Scottish varieties. Recalling appendix VI, this situation is type a). Contact and innovation, or levelling, happen in the geographic periphery of the south while there is a conservative core in the Scottish Highlands. Levelling and koinéisation take place in the contact areas to English dialects, and of

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course this effect must be strong in places of high contact such as the big cities of Glasgow and Edinburgh. This explains the regionally distinct pattern of F34, special forms for 2nd p.pl.pron. in ScE. In addition, the existence of morphologically different pronouns for the 2nd p. singular and plural in Scots Gaelic may be a substrate influence, making the ambiguity of standard English more obvious and leading to innovation. Double negation does not occur in Scots Gaelic (Dryer/Haspelmath 2011), and the pervasiveness of F154 is only ranked B, but can be found hardly in speech samples, so might be ranked lower. The phonological feature of monophthongization does not show signs of a substrate influence. In ScE, the GOAT and FACE diphthongs / / and /e/ are usually realized as clear monophthongs /o/ and /e/, though they exist in Scots Gaelic. Only motor economy in diphthong pronunciation, cutting off the second part of the diphthong, can explain the monophthongization in these two points. The increasing pervasiveness of th-movement can be found in all areas of Scotland, and especially in the lower social classes. Influence from Scots Gaelic, Irish and Ulster Scots seem plausible, because there are no dental fricatives in these languages. For insular Scots, th-stopping is assumed to be a result of Norn language's lacking dental fricatives which would indicate an origin in historical language contact. Others "suggest that th-stopping may be a later, post-language shift and postfocusing, development" because "words such as blide < blithe have a long vowel" (Maguire 2012: 64). Thus, change in th must have happened after the Scottish Vowel Length Shift – Aikten's Law – because a different surrounding would lead to a short vowel in this case. 5.2

Language evolution

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5.2.1 Theoretical outline Mufwene – language as organism Speaking with Chomsky, Mufwene makes differences in the E-language, the externalized language, responsible for the fact that "no two speakers recreate the target language in exactly the same way, because they have not been exposed to the same E-languages in the first place, and also because, as much as we are all assumed to be endowed with a Universal Grammar (UG) qua biological endowment for language, there is as much variation in our abilities to process and internalize languages as 65

Weber, Tobias. Principles in the emergence and evolution of linguistic features in World Englishes, Diplomica Verlag, 2014. ProQuest Ebook Central,

there is in our capacities to use our legs to walk" (Mufwene 2002: 48).15 "Creoles have developed both from individual speakers' attempts to speak the lexifier and through their mutual accommodations in the contact settings" (Mufwene 1996: 87). As a simplification, we can think of languages as homogenous even though there is variation within languages in contact situations, which would cause quite a complex scenario (ibid.). Obviously, in a contact scenario there must be different ways to express the same thing. Either they are more or less influenced by the one or the other language, or they use innovative means. Mufwene gave the image of a feature pool in which certain features of the idiolect, the communal language or L1, and features of the contact language(s) or xeno-language(s) are collected. They are options among which the speakers choose for their purposes. The question is what makes speakers decide for or against certain features. As we will see, similarity between L1 and contact language features might be such a reason as well as frequency, or markedness (Mufwene 1996: 86). Croft – Utterance Selection Imperfect replication of already heard utterances, sounds and constructions, lead to linguistic interindividual variation and intraindividual variation, this is variation within an idiolect and a speech community. Social success of certain speakers, i.e. prestige through a high socioeconomic status, determine or influence the linguistic output of speakers, first on individual level, later on community level. Here again, features of different L1s are in competition. Selection and establishment of features lead to change over time (Croft et al. 2006: 2f.). Criticism Analogies between biology and language are astonishingly profound and there are

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surprisingly good parallels. The question here is whether one can make further deductions from an analogical construct in terms of logic. Only because an analogy has worked say ten steps or so, does it mean it will work one step further? Can we rely

15

Chomsky (1986, Knowledge Of Language. Its Nature, Origin and Use) proposes a distinction between I-language and E-language. I is for internalized, standing for an "abstract system that enables speakers to produce utterances in a particular language"; E is for externalized and the "body of utterances that have been produced by the population speaking what is identified as English, Kiswahili, or such an entity" (Mufwene 2002: 48).

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on similarities between two non-related fields of research such as linguistics and genetics, and make deductions from one complex to the other? Profound criticism was given by Andersen (2006: 59) who describes it as "fashionable in historical linguistics – and in some other human sciences – to look to the theory of evolution for a new explanatory framework." He calls the line of thought mentioned above simply "wrong" (ibid.). He traces the theoretic framework back to the 1950's when David Campbell developed a "theory of growth of science through Blind Mutations of ideas and Selective Retention of the productive ones", the BMSR theory (ibid.: 60). Here the similarities between the development of species and scientific ideas were paralleled, but both seen as "manifestations of more general laws of growth" (ibid.). In 1976, Richard Dawkins coined the term of memes, thoughts that propagate and proliferate in people's minds, like genes. David Hull's 1988 concept of Science as a Process demonstrates similarities between the developments of complex systems, such as biological species and scientific areas. Roger Lass then took this comparison to linguistics and tried to explain language change using a "theory of a 'historically evolved system', in which both biology and language fall" because they evolve slowly over time (Ansaldo 2009: 4f.) – in vain, as Anderson says (2006: 61). Finally, Andersen also criticises William Croft's 2002 Explaining Language Change and his definition of language "as 'a population of utterances', and change [which] is understood as a product of altered replication (the origin of variants) and differential replication (the generalization of some variants rather than others)" (Andersen 2006: 61). Andersen (2006: 85) says that some similarities are not there by accident as both complexes, language (change) and biological evolution, are categories of history, but others are superficial or even "deep disanalogies hiding behind the pervasively anthropocentric, metaphoric terminology of evolutionary science." Furthermore, such evolution-coloured terminology in linguistics

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might lead to ambiguity. In his review on Mufwene's 2001 publication The ecology of language evolution, Mühlhäusler (2005) adds further criticism. Mufwene regards language development as a "natural process in that it is subconscious and its outcomes are not deliberate" (Mühlhäusler 2005: 265). In fact, Mufwene ignores the large amount of deliberate language making, because both modern and naive language planning include phonological and lexical changes, for instance, because of taboo and deliberate construc-

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tions of anti-languages (ibid.).16 He continues by stating that languages are more than just biological species, as a crucial feature of languages is their reflexiveness – "the ability of speakers consciously to reflect on their speech and consciously to change their ways of speaking" (ibid.: 266), i.e. we can find internal factors of change as well; language contact is not the only reason for change. Furthermore, Mufwene does not touch upon important topics, such as the "properties of change generated by internal drift, the impact of contact with typologically distinct languages, and the reasons why certain features are not selected" (ibid.: 267). Finally, the "challenge is to determine what evidence could disconfirm these claims" (ibid.: 268). William Croft (2010), who reviewed one of Mufwene's books on language evolution, added further criticism: "While analogies can provide stimulating ideas, a generalized theory is required for importing theories developed in another phenomenal domain to help to understand language change", which Croft recognizes and Mufwene does not (Croft 2010: 306). But let us first see to what extent we can match the data in a fruitful fashion. 5.2.2 Matching the data Mufwene rejects a distinction between pidgins and creoles, between normal and abnormal, between internal and contact-induced language development (Mühlhäusler 2005: 265). He also does not take into account imperfection in L2 or even L1 acquisition as source of explanation (Sharma 2012: 220f.). For instance, Sharma classifies the absence of preterite/participle distinction a consequence of simplification or levelling during language acquisition (ibid.: 224). Not least because of the partly poor educational circumstances in our examples, this is also a valid explanation for other linguistic features. Because of the introduction of a whole corpus of terminology, the partly far-fetched analogies, and the existence of other options, the explanation with Mufwene's or Croft's approach is only recommended when it comes to the founder Copyright © 2014. Diplomica Verlag. All rights reserved.

effect, but even this has to be handled carefully, as deliberate language design would ruin this theory. As we will see, the sociolinguistic approaches above come to almost the same conclusions as the theorists of language evolution. In fact, competition and selection, and 16

"Many pidgins and creoles were significantly shaped by deliberate engineering of missionaries (Negerhollands, Tok Pisin), administrations (Swahili, Bazaar Malay), or employers of slave and indentured workers (Fanakalo), or were changed as the consequence of writing them (Chinese Pidgin English)" (Mühlhäusler 2005: 266). So it is advisable to take into account deliberate language making, or shaping, as possible influence.

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the feature pool are different expressions for processes already mentioned in 5.1. Superstrate and substrate influence both play a role, and their features' selection is determined or influenced by social, physical, or language internal parameters. The main contribution is the observation of the founder principle in linguistics. This can be applied in PNE and BNI, less so in the other varieties. "The founder principle is applicable to a large number of situations and it is a reminder that historical linguists need to ask what populations are involved when the language crystallizes" (Mühlhäusler 2005: 267). Norfolk Island/Pitcairn English Such an instance, in which the founder principle is applicable, is represented by the importance of St. Kitt's creole for PNE (ibid.). Here, the number of influencing speakers was not more than one. But this speaker, Edward Young, left distinct marks in modern PNE. In addition, Thomason puts emphasis on the typological openness of Austronesian or Southeast Asian languages when it comes to the pronoun system. Here we can find elaborate, "open pronoun systems, in which there may be dozens of ways to say 'I' and 'you', depending on (among other things) social relations between a speaker and a hearer – perhaps most notably age difference, degree of intimacy, and social status" (Thomason 2001: 84). An underlying elaborate pronoun system in Tahitian language might have led to typological voids, i.e. empty categories, in the resulting koiné. Tahitian grammatical categories were added in the feature pool but had no competition. Instead of selecting Tahitian words, innovative morphological combinations of the lexifier's items might have led to the present elaborate pronoun system in PNE. F34 in PNE is absolutely pervasive and ranked A in all sources owing to the complex system from substrate Tahitian. The relic assumption, discussed by Schreier (2003: 263) and Andersen (1988: 74f.), says that geographically isolated communities tend Copyright © 2014. Diplomica Verlag. All rights reserved.

to retain archaic features. "Therefore, this feature may have existed historically in British [...] and/or American English, without ever being overtly commented on", claims Schreier. This seems plausible if AmE y'all is compared to PNE yorlyi, but because of the embedding in a complex pronoun system, Schreier calls this option implausible at the same time (Schreier 2003: 263). A founder effect does not apply for this feature. On the other hand, Tahitian as a language in contact may have introduced the complex pronoun system with its singular-dual-plural distinction into the

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feature pool. As there was no competition for dual pronouns in English, the whole pronoun category might have been filled with Tahitian-structured but English-lexified forms. As there is no double negation in either ScE or Scottish Gaelic or Tahitian, and the pervasiveness of this feature is C, i.e. very low, this feature was simply not introduced into the feature pool, thus it cannot be selected. Its occurrence in a few instances can be explained by random, because the negation system in PNE is complex as well, showing a number of special negation particles. Phonologically, the influence must come from input varieties that have contributed to the PNE feature pool, this is ScE, Tahitian and West Indies Creole. In English Creoles of the Caribbean and ScE, th-stopping is pervasive (Kortmann/Upton 2008), and there are no dental fricatives in Tahitian. This means, phonemes /ð/ and // were not introduced into the feature pool and thus not selected. Interestingly, the monophthongization and th-movement show the same levels of pervasiveness (A) in both ScE and PNE (see appendix V). Tahitian language's and Caribbean English Creoles' tendency to use monophthongs also contributed to the outcome of the features' competition in favour of monophthongized GOAT and FACE diphthongs. Bonin Island English A variety of BIE, the Ogasawara Koiné Japanese, is heavily influenced by Japanese Hachijojima dialect because the early settlers on Ogasawara were from Hachijo. This is a result that can be well explained by Mufwene's founder principle (Long 2007: 33). Another instance is the sound change depicted in sentence (36) in 4.2.1; nanny goat becomes [nene goto]. Common sense would expect a substitution of the English ending /i/ with Japanese /i/. Long (2007: 236) reconstructs the original pronunciation of /i/ to a lower vowel, closer to // or //, usual for US American New England accent. The large number of early settlers from the New England region might

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have had a founder effect on the later output variety. OML "basically consists of an English lexicon on a Japanese grammar, retaining the phonology of both source languages" (Long 2007: 36). The competition seems to have been of a systematic nature. In the rivalry between English and Japanese grammar, Japanese won almost entirely. As far as the lexicon is concerned, it was vice versa. Phonological features are selected on the speaker's preferences and background. There is no social consensus yet in this contact situation. It seems that in this

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special case, the competition and selection has found a special solution, or we need to consider different explanation models. Chicano English/Scottish English/New Zealand English In order to avoid repetition, the three other varieties are discussed together. The founder principle does not apply here. In NZE, Maori influence was disproved. The other two instances are no tabula rasa situations, and as such it is difficult to say whether the founder principle applies at all, because Mufwene focussed on the pidgin creole continuum. In ScE, English developed to dominate Scottish Gaelic, and in ChcE, Spanish was demonstrated to be a substrate influence. This substrate influence can be translated into feature pool contribution, and consequent competition and selection of features or utterances. Furthermore, the varieties discussed can be categorized as linguistic populations or as organisms, utterances can be named linguemes, but it does not bring us closer to an answer of how and why features are passed on. The evolutionary biological (Mufwene) or conceptual (Croft) analogy derives from a sociolinguistic perspective. Even though Ansaldo does not demand a complete overlap of concepts, I do not see any advantages for our discussion. So in terms of fruitfulness, this point seems rather infertile. 5.3

Linguistic formalism

5.3.1 Theoretical outline As mentioned above, for Chambers (2004: 128), there are only two possible explanations for linguistic phenomena in language contact situations. He states that "[e]ither the features were diffused there by the founders of the dialect, or they developed there independently as natural structural linguistic developments." But Chambers calls the diffusionist approach "implausible because of geographic spread" of the fea-

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tures (ibid.). Other scholars have explained the geographic spread by migration, colonization and diffusion.17 This is a huge difference already in the basic assumptions. In the formalists' perspective, "[c]rucially, the putative ubiquity of such features is argued to be unlikely to be due to sociolinguistic diffusion, which is why they must be 'primitive features of vernacular dialects' (Chambers 2003: 243) – that is, unlearned and thus innate" (Szmrecsanyi/Kortmann 2009: 36). 17

Furthermore, similarities between geographically distant varieties can be due not to contact but "to the fact that they have resulted from mixtures of similar dialects in similar proportions at similar times" (Trudgill 2004: 83).

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As a reminder, we define vernacular universals, as "features that are common to spoken vernaculars (e.g. spoken vernaculars tend to have double negation)" (Szmrecsanyi/Kortmann 2009: 33). Here, double negation is mentioned again as a possible candidate. Criticism Kortmann and Szmrecsanyi (2004: 1555) weighed the pros and cons of vernacular universals as a source of explanation. "A quick comparison shows that only multiple negation [...] and the inversion or lack of auxiliaries in wh-questions [...] are among the Top features according to our survey, whereas morphosyntactic features with an equally wide or even wider global distribution among non-standard varieties of English are not mentioned by Chambers" (ibid.). They state that "[t]his test of Chambers' vernacular universals demonstrates that, for English alone already, not all of his candidates can claim universal status and that, at the same time, additional candidates can be identified" (ibid.: 1555f.). In other terms, what Chambers dubbed universals are not even angloversals. It is sure that "what is happening in non-standard varieties of English and, possibly, languages belonging to the same morphological type as English, almost certainly does not apply to vernaculars of inflectional or agglutinating languages (e.g. Italian, Spanish, Turkish)" (Kortmann/Szmrecsanyi 2004: 1556). In his contribution to Filppula et al. (2009: 304-322), Trudgill works out that Chambers' and other scholar’s attempt to find vernacular universals has not been successful (Trudgill 2009: 304). Conjugation regularization, as seen in 4.2 and 4.3, is "a phenomenon which has certainly occurred in all vernacular varieties of English. But the fact that is has also occurred in Standard English, although to a lesser extent […], and the fact that vernacular varieties have not undergone total regularisation, make it difficult to argue persuasively in favour of this feature as a vernacular universal"

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(Trudgill 2009: 306). The topic of language universals is highly controversial. Heterogeneous, and partly harsh criticism is uttered, especially concerning its scientific relevance and justification. Tomasello (2004: 643) asks about Universal Grammar, "are they all really talking about the same thing? [...] As far as I can tell as an outsider, the normal procedure in generative linguistics is either to assume the existence of UG or to provide confirmatory evidence for it." And he continues, stating "[i]f it is constructed in a way that makes it immune to falsification, then it may be a pretty picture of the world 72

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(as, for example, Freudian psychology or Marxist sociology), but it is not science" (Tomasello 2004: 643). Goldberg (2009: 203) criticises the universalist approach as an obsolete theory that made sense in the 1960s "when an understanding of the power of statistical learning and induction were a long way off." But after decades of research in this area "we are no closer to knowing what sort of representations (or constraints) are included in 'Universal Grammar'" (ibid.). Furthermore, representatives of Universal Grammar give no explanation, or see no relation, to the development of other cognitive abilities in humans, which is questionable at least.18 Innateness "does not seem to be a testable hypothesis, it has no interesting empirical consequences beyond those generated by positing biological bases in general, and so overall it does not help us in any way to get closer to the phylogenetic and ontogenetic origins of these interesting cognitive skills" (Tomasello 2004: 644). In short, criticism is that all phenomena can be or are already explained using other methods, or are not worth studying. In contrast, functionalist approaches promise a more solid, empirical foundation and a link to other cognitive abilities in humans is recognized. Because of their decreasing scientific relevance, or the increasing criticism on generative approaches, theories on linguistic formalism will be taken not, or only subsidiary into account for the discussion. The functionalist approach to language universals turns out to be more productive in this discussion. 5.3.2 Matching the data F154 multiple negation Of the candidates for vernacular universals, F154 is the only item of truly universal scale (Kortmann/Szmrecsanyi 2004: 1156). Certainly, this feature does only exist in vernaculars, but it is just as certainly not a vernacular universal for the reason that it is present only in the vernaculars simply because it has been lost in Standard English Copyright © 2014. Diplomica Verlag. All rights reserved.

owing to a linguistic change in earlier (standard) English. For this reason, its pervasiveness is not a surprise at all. "It is rather the absence of multiple negation which is a feature of nonvernaculars in English" (Trudgill 2009: 307). Nevertheless, Chambers states that socially, "vernacular universals appear to fall into well-defined patterns in the acrolect-basilect hierarchy, but functionally there appear 18

Tomasello (2004: 644) compares the ability to speak with uniquely human abilities of mathematics and music. "But no one has to date proposed anything like Universal Music or Universal Mathematics."

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to be several disparate principles at work (from motor economy to cognitive overload" (Chambers 2004: 130). We are interested in precisely these principles, but he leaves open what exactly they are. A hint is given with the social distribution. Lower social class seems to correlate with basilectal speech showing a large number of nonstandard features. F154 might be a socioversal as for ScE, ChcE, and NZE, for instance, lower social classes tend to use multiple negation more often. Further research is necessary at this point. Th-movement The same accounts for th-movement. "Many of the features [in NZE] illustrate welltrodden paths of phonological change and may well be the product of universal processes shaping sounds and sound systems (e.g. the fortification of interdental fricatives [] and [ð])" (Peters/Burridge 2012: 247). The distance from the standard might lead to a more natural handling of language, leading to simplification – through motor economy – of elaborate consonants and vowels. Motor economy and cognitive overload, mentioned by Chambers as functional principle, seem to be valid arguments, but they clearly point away from a formalist perspective towards a functionalist approach. 5.4

Synthetic approaches

5.4.1 Theoretical outline Tomasello The usage-based approach of L1 acquisition by Tomasello can be adapted to contact languages, in which speakers are exposed to different languages and have to use a new contact language. Imitation of utterances and structures and the generalizations from their exemplary usage shape the grammar and lexicon, because of the human's

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cognitive abilities of intention-reading and pattern-finding (Ansaldo 2009: 8). This can become important in racially and linguistically mixed families in contact situations such as given on the Bonin Islands, see below. Important is the communicative function of language as basis for generalizations, this is what part of language is used in which contexts. In contact scenarios, this approach can explain bottom-up feature acquisition in speakers of the second generation. The higher the frequency of items, i.e. the more often they are used, the higher is the probability of

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automatization and phonological reduction of these items. Likewise, the deeper is their entrenchment, making them resistant to change. Ansaldo In his integrative approach, Ansaldo makes use of almost all approaches mentioned above. He explains language change or contact language formation with altered or differential replication becoming innovative in contact scenarios. Ansaldo describes a complex typological matrix of contact languages. Similar, though not identical, to Croft's lingueme pool and Mufwene's notion of feature pool, the typological matrix includes the process of a recombination of input variables (ibid.: 20). Here, the crucial factor is frequency. Structures of a high token-frequency "may be those that are grammatically obligatory, semantically salient or pragmatically more relevant." Structures of a high type-frequency are "more common ('unmarked') in a specific grammar, for example, because of typological congruence, where the occurrence of the same type in two adstrates reinforces its presence in the TM", the typological matrix (Ansaldo 2009: 20). Innovation takes place in an individual speaker. Selection of features is socially determined and may be "related to issues of accommodation, imitation, differentiation etc." through prestige or typological (in-)congruence (ibid.: 21). Propagation is the establishment of a feature on population level, and is fast in smaller, tight-knit communities and slower in large, diffuse groups (ibid.: 18). This would hold for the traditional low-contact varieties' conservatism and the rapid contact language formation in small communities. Selection, innovation and propagation feed into one another. Bybee Bybee elaborated Tomasello's approach towards an inclusion of functional, cognitive principles. She shares the assumption of automatization and lexical entrenchment

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through high-frequency usage, but she adds one further step of grammaticalization – the loss of internal structure and the becoming autonomous from the etymological source. Grammar is understood as cognitive representation of linguistic experience in which a range of variation for each lexical token and its phonetic representation is mapped. In contact scenarios, cognitive principles of language processing take place. Especially for pidgins, the extremely reduced vocabulary and grammar form a stage of morphosyntactic innovation. She understands the notion of universals in a cognitive-functional manner: "The real universals are in the mechanisms that underlie the 75

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processes of change. The source of these universals is the architecture of the production and perception systems through which our cognitive structures are constantly funnelled" (Bybee 1999: 234). Criticism In Bybee, a mapping of patterns is not considered to a sufficient extent, unless she extends the definition of tokens from lexical units to rules and grammatical structures, or utterances. I suggest an additional mapping of patterns to the mapping of tokens because of the following phenomenon: A speaker who is newly introduced to a dialect he or she has never encountered before is able to learn its production rules quite easily. The initial lenition of southern German or Saxon dialects, for instance, can be understood passively and even be used productively by this new speaker who has never heard a certain word before, but follows a production rule deduced from earlier input. It seems plausible that production rules or patterns are mapped as well, creating an expansion or adaptation of the range of variation mentioned above via analogy, or as Winford (2013) calls it, imposition. 5.4.2 Matching the data Norfolk Island/Pitcairn English The typological matrix of PNE is rather complex because the main input varieties, ScE and St. Kitts Creole English, and Tahitian show only little typological congruence. The output is determined by social factors, resulting in English as the superstrate lexifier and basis of this pidgin. But the Tahitian pronoun system was adapted, and phonological influence can be reconstructed. Children of the second generation grew up in racially and linguistically mixed households, a special ecology in an extremely tight-knit community. For the pronoun system, a very high frequency can be assumed, which enforces its establishment and propagation. F34 in everyday speech Copyright © 2014. Diplomica Verlag. All rights reserved.

is "pragmatically more relevant" and thus more likely to prevail than the semantically ambigue option (Ansaldo 2009: 20). Multiple negation does not play a role in PNE. Chicano English Double negation is grammatically obligatory or at least optional in ChcE's substrate Spanish. Th-movement is analogous, as seen above. Both have a high token and type frequency. They are part of the typological matrix, and seem to be unmarked in the output variety. Social factors such as covert prestige of ChcE as in-group dialect de76

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termine the feature's pervasiveness in different social classes, with the highest degree of occurrence in the lowest class. Effects of imitation and induction can be recognized owing the fact that speakers of ChcE learn English simultaneously with Spanish or in school as of age five. This should guarantee no problems in acquiring standard American English. However, ChcE show patterns from their peers' speech. Bonin Island English As with PNE, the typological matrix of BIE is quite complex. Interestingly, imperfect L2 acquisition and L1 transfer play a dominant role, especially if the speakers' L1s in contact situations are typologically very distant. The greater the typological difference in a grammatical structure, the more L1 transfer takes place. This was shown for article selection in learners of English as a foreign language (EFL) who are native speakers of Spanish (typologically close), Turkish (intermediate), or Japanese (generally distant). "L1 transfer effects persist into advanced levels of English", though in general learners with Spanish and Turkish as L1 were closer to native speakers of English than the Japanese learners were (Snape et al. 2013: 20). Furthermore, Kewley-Port et al. (2005: 2399) report that in a test of the "influence of different native language systems on vowel discrimination and identification [...] Japanese listeners performed quite poorly compared to listeners with more complex L1 vowel systems." Japanese has only five vowels opposed to American English with 11 vowels (ibid.). Cognitive linguistic processes such as the ability to perceive and distinguish vowels in a contact variety, and additional L1 transfer, shape the output variety to a large extent. The recombination of input variables is constrained in the distinction of features of the typological matrix. Similar processes are likely to have taken place in contact situations on the Bonin Islands. Scottish English, New Zealand English

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The traditional dialects of ScE and NZE possibly show substrate influence from Irish English in F34. Social factors, such as the affiliation to a lower social class or a special age group, seem to foster the non-standard features mentioned above. A highfrequent use among the peer groups reinforce the features' pervasiveness in these special linguistic environments. This also holds for the lack of uniformity in the distribution of the non-standard features. The innate human cognitive ability "to create language systems through categorization, analogy, neuromotor automatization, semantic generalization, and pragmatic inferencing" accounts for the innovative filling 77

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of empty typological categories by analogy as well as for simplification through phonological reduction of unambiguous sounds (Bybee in Winford 2013: 240). 5.5

Conclusion – principles at work

In general, Trudgill (2004: 27) presents an additional, different perspective of the meaning of language universals. The convergence of dialects or languages to a single unitary variety is due to the fact that all humans follow certain rules in communication. He quotes Keller's maxim of "talk like the others talk" and Jakobson's phatic function in communication. They imply that people tend to adapt their counterpart's habits while communicating with others. This seems to be a socio-psychological universal, a therefore innate "human tendency to 'behavioural co-ordination' [...], an apparently biologically given drive to behave as one's peers do, which is manifested already in parent-infant communication (Trudgill 2004: 28). In addition, Trudgill promotes the psycholinguistic view that "children acquire new dialects and languages more or less perfectly up the age of about eight, and that the particularly complex phonological rules of a new dialect may not be totally mastered in complete detail even by children younger than eight" (ibid.). In a contact situation with an apparent diversity of speech, "we can suppose that most of the complicated work leading to the eventual establishment of a new, single norm will be carried out by children under the age of eight" (ibid.) In tabula rasa colonial situations, especially in environments of pidgins and creoles, children of this age will be relatively resistant to social factors such as prestige, albeit their family as close provider of linguistic input is not. However, this shows the deterministic nature of the process and explains the similarity of outcomes from similar mixtures. "The process of new-dialect formation is thus mechanical or, in the terminology of Croft (2000: 65), 'nonintentional'" (Trudgill 2004: 28).

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In other words, the occurrence of similar or identical features in World Englishes can be explained by similar input and comparable contact situations. It is very likely that dialects of English, especially in the southern hemisphere, owe their features to language contact of nineteenth century varieties of British English (Trudgill 2004: 83). In fact, the varieties share distinct traits of their linguistic ecology. People from the British Isles, most often from distinct dialect areas, founded small, geographically isolated communities with typologically not fully congruent substrate inputs. After a long phase of isolation, an individual dialect emerged. On a psychological level, peer 78

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group accommodation, the quality, nature and moment of L1 and L2 acquisition are crucial. A timeframe for these processes is also given. Trudgill's work on NZE suggests that "in a colonial situation, the development of a new unitary dialect out of a dialect mixture situation takes approximately fifty years (i.e. two generations)" (2004: 23). The vocabulary that is used to describe such dialect or language mixing is more or less a matter of taste or perspective rather than of ultimate truth. Sure, we can call the existing dialectal features that lead to code-levelling a feature pool and speak of competition and selection, or we take a clinical, objective perspective and call it mixing, levelling and unmarking of new dialectal features. By definition, "the founder effect implies that the linguistic funding population of an area has a built-in advantage when it comes to the continuing influence and survival of their speech forms, as opposed to those of later arrivals" (Trudgill 2004: 163). The early settlers of a new dialect region are crucial and important in the early period of new dialect formation, of course, and their linguistic features are probably dominant over later settlers' features. We can call this the founder principle or regard it as a necessary result of immigration and social hierarchies in colonial environments. In other instances, we can not apply this principle, which makes it less valuable for our discussion. Trudgill (2004: 164) makes this uncertainty obvious: "Of course, as Mufwene concedes (2001: 76), the founder principle works unless it doesn't." Often, concepts behind the multi-facetted and conflicting vocabulary of different linguists are similar, sometimes congruent. I think, each individual has to decide on their own to use or not to use which metaphors and similes; but under all circumstances, logical processes in speakers' migration and contact situations will be the first choice to explain seemingly similar principles at work in World Englishes. This means, if there are sources to trace back the origin and speech habits of people, Copyright © 2014. Diplomica Verlag. All rights reserved.

their motivation to go to new places all over the world, sufficient demographic information, the linguistic differences and similarities of dialects and languages in contact, and a proper body of evidence of contemporary speech, then such principles can be explained for without using farfetched metaphors and assumptions about unproved and unprovable theories on innate language universals that are not explained for by psycholinguistic, behaviouristic, or sociolinguistic processes that inevitably occur in human communication.

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Following Thomason 2009, we can detect the likelihood of contact-induced change in language change in five steps. Firstly, sociolinguistic or socio-historic research comparable to chapter 3 gives a linguistic lineage of the target language. Secondly, typological analysis, both in morphosyntax and phonology, but also in lexicon, are necessary to provide enough evidence for interference, of course, basing on logical relations from the first step. Thirdly, the non-existence of a feature in an earlier stage of an input variety has to be proved, which is difficult for varieties that have neither written nor recorded acoustic evidence from past. In clear-cut contact scenarios with lists of the earliest settlers, as given on Pitcairn Island, this is easier to achieve. Fourthly, change in the source language must be ruled out – a contact-induced feature cannot be emerging out of internal motivation before contact happens. This can be achieved by a comparison of the speakers' origins and a reconstruction of their speech. If the input from their homes and the output in the contact area is the same, there was no change. Fifthly and finally, parallel internal change in all varieties in contact must be ruled out. If language change happens, for instance, both on the islands of contact situations and at home in Britain, it might as well have been internally motivated, but also a parallel development by coincidence. "If we are successful in satisfying criteria 1-4, not just for a single innovation in the receiving language but for a nontrivial number of independent innovations (i.e. innovations in different grammatical subsystems), then it is reasonable to claim that contact played a role in motivating the changes. If not, then not" (Thomason 2009: 361). This analysis helps distinguishing whether different principles of language change work in contact-induced change and in language internal change, i.e. drift. Chambers (2004: 129) says about his candidates of vernacular universals that "[t]hey cannot be merely English. They must have counterparts in the other languages of the world that are demonstrably the outgrowths of the same rules and representations in

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the bioprogram." This can be transferred to cognitive and psycholinguistic mechanisms in L1 and L2 acquisition plus language or speaker contact scenarios. Universals need to be sought at a higher level of abstraction. Some universals come from phonetic factors, others arise because of the external context in which language is used, others from cognitive or perceptual factors that are independent of language. Only if language is viewed in the more general context of real usage by real language users will it become clear how to describe and explain cross-linguistic patterns. (Bybee 1999: 235) 80

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It became obvious that similar or even identical features in varieties of English all over the world can have different sources. Multiple negation is probably a substrate influence. Special forms for the 2nd p.pl.pron. creatively fill a semantic gap of the standard in non-standard varieties in order to avoid ambiguity. Monophthongization can be the result of a reduced vowel system, typical of contact or creole languages. And, finally, th-movement can be the result of substrate influence, motor economy, or imperfect learning. With exposure and usage over time, tokens and patterns are constantly re-mapped in the cognitive representation called grammar. If structural simplicity seems to be the target condition, processes such as th-movement and monophthongization, can be explained by language economy. There is no single answer, and integrated models are not consistent for all types of language contact and change. In general, we "need many researchers with different areas of expertise working together with a common aim of trying to understand Language without appeal to mysterious stipulations" (Goldberg 2009: 219). Until then, we need to go with plausibility. "In the end, then, a one-size-fits-all theory is unlikely to succeed in accounting for the rich, and richly varying, body of data from language contact situations around the world" (Thomason 2009: 363). Usage-based Functionalism seems to provide the most profound basis for an investigation of linguistic phenomena. This synthetic approach embraces insights from sociolinguistics and cognitive psychology, and recognizes a psycholinguistic source for

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universal, or at least ubiquitous phenomena in language change and contact.

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6.

Considerations

Conclusively, a few thoughts that have not yet been articulated in this study should be given room here. Can we apply the outlined theory on new-dialect formation on languages as well as on dialects in contact? Do we simply understand the notion of vernacular universals inaccurately? And what are the future perspectives in this field of research? 6.1

Does the input matter? Languages vs. dialects in contact

An "impressive number of findings suggest that an exposure to two languages leads to a heightened awareness of language rules, structures and functions" (Charkova 2003: 52) which is a vital point in language contact situations. Thomason and Kaufman (1988: 9) find three main stimuli for language change: drift, that is internal change; "dialect interference, both between stable and strongly differentiated dialects and between weakly differentiated dialects through the differential spread (in 'waves') of particular changes"; and foreign influence. And just as it is difficult to tell whether or not two forms of speech are dialects of one language or separate languages, so is it difficult to distinguish unambiguously between dialect and foreign interference (Thomason/Kaufman 1988: 9). The boundaries are blurred. In case the input does not matter, and this question is more or less a matter of defining terminology, we can easily adapt Trudgill's theory on new-dialect formation (see chapter 2.5) on the coming into existence of pidgins and creoles. The trigger for language change can be found either in influence of another language in contact situations, or it is internally-motivated because of a structural imbalance within the existing linguistic system, i.e. drift (Thomason 2001: 86). Of course, the latter can be caused by the former. In the discussion on Thomason (2001: 60/76) we

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saw social and linguistic factors that influence (the degree of) language change. In dialect contact situations, e.g. in contact of mutually intelligible and culturally close or even almost identical communities, the intensity of contact can be high. Imperfect learning might not exist at all, and the speaker's attitudes towards the other dialect can be positive, considering a potential prestige, or negative, considering political or economical inferiority. There will be only a small number of marked linguistic features, and if contact is close, for instance because of trade or political merging, the features might be integrated completely into the linguistic system and used in all 82

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domains. Typologically, the two dialects should be almost identical, so they are very close to each other. The consequent koiné or dialect levelling results in a mixed dialect that should be typologically more or less in the middle between the two (or more) input dialects. In this scenario, Trudgill's theory on new-dialect formation works. In a language contact situation of mutually unintelligible languages, as it happened on Pitcairn Island, we have a high intensity of the contact, owing to geographical limitations and the tight-knit community. Imperfect learning exists because there was no formal education or language tutoring. The speakers' attitude is clear: English is the lexifier and prestigious, so linguistic integration is high. Because of the typological distance between source (English) and recipient language (Tahitian), a compromise close to the source language is constructed. Speakers of English keep their standard and limit the resulting pidgin to certain domains, as for inner community communication. Moreover, Ansaldo (2009: 15) takes it one step further. Identical replication could be expected in highly monolingual environments, but even here, language change takes place, for instance owing to internal chain shifts or imperfect transmission between speakers, i.e. L1 acquisition. In contact situations, altered replication is just more intense or more likely to happen, but in fact, there does not need to be any contact in order to form new dialects over time. A total lack of contact, i.e. isolation, provides a basis for language change, as well. In general, we can state that the input does not matter. The outcome of contact situations can be explained with the new-dialect formation theory both for dialect contact and for language contact. The differences result from typological distance and cultural and/or social difference between the speaker groups.

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6.2

A different perspective on universals

Trudgill does not disagree so much in the choice of Chambers' universals – some of his suggestions are even identical – but he takes a different perspective. He states that "it was not the presence of parallels between the different non-standard varieties that was significant. Rather, it was the oddness of Standard English compared with all other varieties which was of importance" (Trudgill 2009: 309). He defines Standard English as "the odd one out" (ibid.), being a minority dialect among the dialects spo83

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ken by native speakers worldwide. The best explanation for vernacular universals – if they exist – must be the prevalence of idiosyncratic developments in Standard English owing to its status as a standard. Changes in the standard take place slower than in non-standard varieties because it has a "conservative, retarding effect on linguistic change" (ibid.: 313), reminiscent of Andersen's and Schreier's relic assumption. The existence of irregular forms in the standard and their levelling in vernaculars or other varieties are a failure of the standard to regularize (Trudgill 2009: 310). One could say that vernacular universals represent changes that have not yet taken place in the standard (ibid.: 313). 6.3

Reflection upon material and methods

This study is supposed to represent the contemporary research and state of the art. For this purpose, up-to-date handbooks and projects such as WAVE, WALS, HoVE, and eWAVE were used. Unfortunately, different indications of pervasiveness are used in these catalogues. Moreover, they give partly contradictory values, as can be seen in appendix V. Understandably, "[f]or individual features and varieties, some authors felt happier to give in-between judgments like 'A/B' or 'B/C'" as pervasiveness index (Kortmann/Szmrecsanyi 2004: 1143). Hopefully, new editions in press will create a more homogeneous picture with time, hopefully leading to a standardized index for a feature's pervasiveness. Another problem is the partly thin coverage on lesser-known varieties of English. Some varieties do not occur at all in any of the catalogues, or only one informant supplies WAVE, eWAVE or WALS with linguistic information, e.g. Daniel Long on OML. For a discussion, it is crucial to know the varieties' linguistic ecology. It becomes problematic if the linguistic ecology is not known, or not well-known. For this study, a well-documented sociolinguistic situation was prerequisite for the selection

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of the varieties. For other varieties, a reconstruction of the socio-historic situation might be difficult. However, in order to rule out bias or statistical effects, more sources for the varieties are always beneficial. Furthermore, the classification of OML as creole and of PNE as pidgin is based on shaky evidence. There are as many different opinions on this classification as there are definitions on pidgins and creoles. A different selection of varieties and/or features may lead to a different result, for instance through geographical grouping. (comp. Kortmann/Szmrecsanyi 2004). 84

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6.4

Outlook

I would like to conclude this study by giving advice for further research. Basing on the reflection, a final definition of pidgins, creoles, or a pidgin-creole-continuum is eagerly awaited. Moreover, linguists need to investigate pidgins and creoles thoroughly and rather soon, as they are endangered languages or varieties, and should be analyzed and recorded before it is too late. In PNE, BIE and other varieties, influence from standard English leads to a rapidly decreasing number of speakers. This includes lesser-known varieties world-wide, such as OML. Here, we need to regard the special cases of deliberate language making and mixed languages. As outlined above, research on linguistic features in World Englishes would benefit from fine-tuning the pervasiveness index and setting up a scientific standard for categorizing pervasiveness. Similarly, linguistics would benefit from intensified efforts of intertwining theoretical approaches, because the truth can often be found in a compromise. Similar projects as WAVE seem to be useful for varieties influenced or lexified by French, Portuguese, and Dutch, which were all important colonizer languages even before the English language during the British Empire. Field work in situ and psychological investigation of contact language formation, its setting and development are problematic and difficult to achieve, considering Bickerton's proposed island experiment.19 An online-based research program, maybe in form of a wiki, could link linguists world-wide and provide a platform for speech samples and typological categori-

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zation. eWAVE might have been the first step towards this goal.

19

In the late 1970s, "Bickerton proposed marooning six couples speaking six different languages along with children too young to have learned their parents’ language on a Pacific island for a year, to see what language the adults might figure out and how the kids might alter it." But understandably, the idea was rejected by the National Science Foundation for ethical reasons (Erard 2008).

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Bibliography I

Works cited

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Goldberg, Adele E. (2009). "Constructions work." Cognitive Linguistics 20/1, 201224. Gordon, Elizabeth, and Margaret Maclagan (2004). "Regional and social differences in New Zealand: phonology." In: Kortmann/Schneider 2004, Vol. 1, 603-613. Gordon, Elizabeth, Lyle Campbell, Jennifer Hay, Margaret Maclagan, Andrea Sudbury, and Peter Trudgill (eds.) (2004). New Zealand English. Its Origins and Evolution. = Studies in English Language. Cambridge etc.: CUP. 87

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Siegel, Jeff (2012). "Regional profile: Australia Pacific Region." In: Kortmann/Lunkenheimer 2012, 765-782. Siemund, Peter (2009). "Linguistic Universals and Vernacular Data." In: Filppula et al. 2009, 323-348 Smith, Jennifer (2012). "Scottish English and varieties of Scots." In: Kortmann/Lunkenheimer 2012, 21-29. Snape, Nael, María del Pilar García-Mayo, and Aye Gürel (2013). "L1 transfer in article selection for generic reference by Spanish, Turkish and Japanese L2 learners." International Journal of English Studies 13/1, 1-28. Stuart-Smith, Jane (2004). "Scottish English: phonology." In: Kortmann/Schneider 2004, Vol.1, 47-67. Szmrecsanyi, Benedikt, and Bernd Kortmann (2009). "Vernacular Universals and Angloversals in a Typological Perspective." In: Filppula et al. 2009, 33-53. Thomason, Sarah G., and Terrence Kaufman (1988). Language Contact, Creolization, and Genetic Linguistics. Berkeley etc.: University of California Press. Thomason, Sarah G. (2001). Language Contact. An introduction. Washington D.C.: Georgetown UP. Thomason, Sarah G. (2009). "Why Universals VERSUS Contact-Induced Change?" In: Filppula et al. 2009, 349-364. Tomasello, Michael (2000). "First steps toward a usage-based theory of language acquisition." Cognitive Linguistics, 11-1/2, 61-82. Tomasello, Michael (2003). Constructing a Language. A usage-based theory of language acquisition. Cambridge/Mass. etc.: Harvard UP.

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Tomasello, Michael (2004). "What kind of evidence could the UG hypothesis? Commentary on Wunderlich." Studies in Language 28/3, 642-645. Trudgill, Peter (1988). "On the role of dialect contact and interdialect in linguistic change." In: Fisiak 1988, 547-563. Trudgill, Peter (2004). New-Dialect Formation. The Inevitability of Colonial Englishes. Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP.

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Trudgill, Peter (2009). "Vernacular Universals and the Sociolinguistic Typology of English Dialects." In: Filppula et al. (2009), 304-322. Wagner, Susanne (2012). "Pronominal Systems." In: Hickey 2012, 379-408. Walicek, Don E. (2003). "Pidgin and Creole Languages: A Basic Introduction." Journal of English Linguistics. Sep. 2003, 31/3, 287-291. Winford, Donald (2013). "Substrate influence and universals in the emergence of contact Englishes: re-evaluating the evidence." In: Schreier/Hundt 2013, 222-241.

II

Online articles and electronic resources

Ansaldo, Umberto (2009). "Contact language formation in evolutionary terms" In: E.O. Aboh & N. Smith (eds.) Complex processes in new languages. Creole Language Library. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 265-289. URL: 1-36, last accessed 2013-07-18. Croft, William; G. J. Baxter, R. A. Blythe, and A. J. McKane (2006). "Utterance selection model of language change." Physical Review E, 73/4, 046118, 1-21. URL: last accessed 2013-07-23. Dryer, Matthew S., and Martin Haspelmath (eds.). 2011. The World Atlas of Language Structures Online. Munich: Max Planck Digital Library. URL: last accessed 2013-09-25. Erard, Michael (2008) "Walking the Talk. Sunday Book Review." New York Times, 3-30-2008.

URL:

last accessed 2013-10-04. Hickey, Raymond (2002). "How do dialects get the features they have? On the Copyright © 2014. Diplomica Verlag. All rights reserved.

process of new dialect formation." In: Raymond Hickey (ed.) Motives for language

change.

Cambridge:

CUP,

213-39.

URL:

1-23,

last

accessed 06-10-2013. Kortmann, Bernd, and Kerstin Lunkenheimer (eds.) (2011). The electronic World Atlas of Varieties of English [eWAVE]. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evo-

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lutionary Anthropology. URL: , last accessed: 2013-07-22. Kortmann, Bern, and Clive Upton (2008). Varieties of English. A multimedia reference tool. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. Mufwene, Salikoko S. (2012a). Salikoko Mufwene. URL: last accessed 2013-1607. Mufwene, Salikoko S. (2012b). Language Evolution. An ecological perspective. Newsletter RFIEA (4) March/April 2011. URL: last accessed 2013-

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16-07.

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    !

  

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Maap of New w Zealand (Hay et all. 2008: xii).

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Ap ppendix III

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Bonin English Evolution (Long 20007: 73).

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Ap ppendix IIII

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Areal distribbution of F34 in Scootland (Maaguire 201 12:

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Ap ppendix IV V 71).

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Appendix V feature

variety

Pervasiveness of selected features F34: alt. pronouns 2nd pers. plural

F154: double negation

BBB

B B B (C)

AA

Scottish English New Zealand English Chicano English Bonin Island English Pitcairn/ Norfolk Island English

monophthongization FACE GOAT /e/ /O/

th-movement /d/

/t/

/dð/ /t/

A

A

(X)

A

A

(Orkney)

(Orkney)

BA

C

C

C

C

(Maori Engl.)

BBA

AAB

B

A

B

B

(X)

(C)

(B)

(A)

(B)

(B)

(B)

(X)

AAA

CCC

A

A

A

A

(X)

B

The index follows the WAVE index (Kortmann/Lunkenheimer 2011; 2012). Values in brackets indicate an estimation by the author. Values in red give Kortmann/Lunkenheimer 2011. Values in green give Kortmann/Lunkenheimer 2012. Values in blue give Kortmann/Upton 2008. Here, the ranking is done in A, B, C. While A and B are similar to the others' values A and B, C includes both C and D of Kortmann/Schneider 2011; 2012.

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A = feature is pervasive or obligatory B = feature is neither pervasive nor obligatory C = feature exists but is extremely rare D = feature is attested absent X = not applicable ? = don't know

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Appendix VI

Focal and relic dialect areas

Idealized isogloss configuration for two patterns of diffusion, compare Andersen 1988: 59. Arrows represent linguistic change or influence with time. a) towards a relic area (open dialect, representing language contact and innovation in the outer circle or periphery)

relic area

b) from a focal area (closed dialect, representing linguistic innovation in the center)

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focal area

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If you are interessted in publishing your study please contact us: [email protected]

Anchor Academic Publishing

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