29.4003, Review: Discourse Analysis; Phonetics; Phonology; Sociolinguistics; Syntax; Typology: Ayafor, Green (2017)

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Subject: 29.4003, Review: Discourse Analysis; Phonetics; Phonology; Sociolinguistics; Syntax; Typology: Ayafor, Green (2017)

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Date: Mon, 15 Oct 2018 15:14:02
From: David Robertson [ddr11 at columbia.edu]
Subject: Cameroon Pidgin English

 
Discuss this message:
http://linguistlist.org/pubs/reviews/get-review.cfm?subid=36393137


Book announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/28/28-5193.html

AUTHOR: Miriam  Ayafor
AUTHOR: Melanie  Green
TITLE: Cameroon Pidgin English
SUBTITLE: A comprehensive grammar
SERIES TITLE: London Oriental and African Language Library 20
PUBLISHER: John Benjamins
YEAR: 2017

REVIEWER: David Douglas Robertson, University of Victoria

SUMMARY

In “Cameroon Pidgin English: A Comprehensive Grammar” (xxi + 314 pp.) Miriam
Ayafor and Melanie Green (A&G) collaborate in presenting the first rigorously
data-driven full description of the creole known as Cameroon Pidgin English
(CPE). They answer a large number of hitherto open questions suggested or
implied by previous authors (e.g. Nkengasong 2016, Ngefac 2016). They place
CPE traits in a quantitative crosslinguistic perspective that empowers both
student and professional linguists – whether creolist, Africanist, or
typologist in orientation – to advance comparative research.  

Chapter 1 “Introduction” (1-11) establishes A&G's goals of demonstrating both
similarities and distinctive traits of CPE vis-à-vis other West African
English creoles and contact languages generally, as well as typologically.
Their evaluation of previous CPE research is a paragon of concision that shows
the need for the present study, the 370,000-word corpus for which is described
in some detail  (§1.5). The chapter ends with a short, broad typological
sketch that foreshadows the structure of the rest of the book. 

Chapter 2 “History and Sociolinguistics of CPE” (12-29) positions the language
with respect to latter-day Cameroonian demographics, then situates it in a
chain of historical developments from 15th-century Portuguese contacts through
German, French and British colonization and to the present. CPE's source
languages, lectal range, geographical distribution, and domains of use are
surveyed as well.

Chapter 3 “Phonetics, Phonology and Orthography” (31-46) introduces CPE
segmental phonology and phonotactics, but advises that prosodic research has
not yet returned definite findings. A&G conclude by proposing a simple
practical orthography.

Chapter 4 “The Lexicon” (47-77) is fairly evenly divided between examining
lexicon-formation processes (such as coinages, clipping, and reduplication)
and enumerating CPE's prominent “word classes”, this concept elastically
including root shapes that have become more or less bound, such as the
inflectional (the creolistic “TMA” for “tense, mood, and aspect”) proclitics
don, bi, go, etc., and nominal plural enclitic dem.

Chapter 5 “The Syntax of the Noun Phrase” (79-101) notes differing
derivational and inflectional tendencies for common vs. proper nouns and count
vs. mass nouns.; properties of the unmarked noun are duly noted. A rich
inventory of determiners having varied functions is shown, as are the
possibilities for pre- and post-modification of nouns, including two
possessive structures. 

Chapter 6 “Pronouns” (103-131) presents CPE's three-person, two-number,
nominative/accusative personal pronoun system; its proximal/distal
demonstrative pronouns; the possessive pronouns (meaning 'mine', 'yours',
etc.); interrogative pro-forms; reflexives/reciprocals; and indefinites.

Chapter 7 “Tense, Mood, Modality, Aspect and Negation” (133-157) shows that
unmarked verbs' tense interpretation is context-dependent, while overtly
inflected predicates have stricter interpretations. The present/past
distinction (oriented from the moment of speaking) is basic, with anterior
tense (again context-dependent) specifiable. An imperfective/perfective aspect
contrast is fundamental. Irrealis mood has a single marker, while shades of
modality are more numerous. Clausal negation is noted, and the chapter closes
by tallying the co-occurrence possibilities of the aforementioned sets of
morphemes.

Chapter 8 “The Simple Sentence” (160-194) examines the related issues of
constituent order (strongly SVO) and case-marking; predicates and their
arguments/adjuncts, with special attention to copular expressions; and, under
the rubric of clause types, mood. 

Chapter 9's title “Complex Predicates” (195-214) refers to single-clause
expressions having complex heads of two kinds: multiple heads (serial verb
construction) or a high-frequency head plus a complement that “contributes the
event semantics” (light-verb construction). 

Chapter 10 “The Complex Sentence” (215-240) describes coordination and
embedding, including relative clauses. 

Chapter 11 “Information Structure” (241-261) investigates mechanisms for
highlighting and backgrounding information, thus topic (given information) and
focus (new information) as well as the pseudo-passive construction. 

Chapter 12 “Selected Texts” (263-283) exemplifies the described structures in
their natural environment – sustained discourse. Four monologues, a dialogue,
and a written text are presented with interlinearization and translation.

The “Appendix: Participant Data” (283-292) describes each data sample in A&G's
corpus in great detail. “References” (293-307) and a “Subject Index” (309-314)
complete the volume.

EVALUATION

With this excellent book, we now have the key reference work on CPE. It
achieves greater depth and precision in describing nearly every facet of this
language's structure than previously

 published work has. Its findings are conveyed in terminology that is more
readily usable by nonspecialist linguists (at times drawing on the jargons of
generative grammar and of the teaching of English). And the facts on CPE are
put into a valuable comparative framework by regular reference to the
respected comprehensive APiCS (Michaelis et al. 2013) and WALS (Dryer and
Haspelmath 2013) databases, as well as to the substantial literature on CPE
and its close relatives in West Africa. I unhesitatingly recommend this
resource for anyone seriously inquiring into the nature of this language.

This book is informationally dense, to the benefit of the thoughtful user; the
enormous amount of reference information it contains would only be made more
readily accessible if the 17 Tables in it were joined by comparable graphic
arrangements for every closed class. In many cases, this would lead to an even
clearer depiction of each category. For example, an organized visual layout of
the TMA morphemes might include an inchoative-aspect use of wan 'want', which
goes unmentioned in Chapter 7 but seems relevant there given several examples
such as page 49's a wan jos si... 'All of a sudden I saw...' 

Phrased as they are in broadly accepted linguistic terminology, most findings
of this book will be readily intelligible to the intended audience of students
and researchers. Therefore it seems to me that it is mainly when A&G deviate
into other traditions of description that any confusion tends to arise. On one
hand, they rely on some labels characteristic of the Generativist school, such
as “in situ” versus “movement”. When applied to the positions of adverbs,
which crosslinguistically enjoy considerable freedom and certainly occur at
the beginnings, middles, and ends of CPE clauses, the authors' appeal to
“in-situ” adverbial expressions (e.g. pp. 122-3) without having defined that
class's putative default position (at pp. 66-7) is opaque. On the other hand,
A&G also employ certain terms traditional in the teaching of English, such as
“predicative complement”, which seems equivalent to a copular complement and
might advantageously be relabeled in that way (pp. 172-3 inter alia).

Another analytical consequence of accepting a previous tradition's categories
is seen in the perpetuation of creolistics' etymologically-oriented assumption
that all meaningful units are “words” or, as with the preverbal TMA morphemes,
“particles” (pp. 73ff). This implicit assumption that no form is bound leads
to even morphs of obviously restricted position, such as the immediately
postnominal pluralizer < dem >, being described as “free” (p. 81) and as a
“word class” (§4.5.8)! A&G's sensible enough justification is that, for
instance, “We avoid the use of the terms 'bound' and 'free' in our description
of dependent subject/object personal pronouns, since more research on CPE
phonology is required before a full analysis can be offered concerning the
clitic status or otherwise of personal pronouns” (p. 105). Yet countless
examples of incontestably bound productive morphology fill the book, such as
the frequent alternative noun pluralizer < -(i)s > (e.g. in < pleis-is >
'places', p. 273) and the deverbal suffixes of actor < -a > (e.g. in < ple-a >
'player', p. 37) and activity < -in > (e.g. in < hont-in > 'hunting', p. 211),
the latter frequent in the 'Do' light-verb construction (§9.3.5). Evidence of
the kinds of prosody associated with grammaticalization into bound forms is
seen in such forms as the content interrogatives < weiti > ('what',
etymologically 'what thing') and < wusai > ('where', etymologically 'what
side') and the anterior-tense marker < bi > (from 'been', according to the
authors). Many example data are strongly suggestive of prosodic distinctions
between functional and lexical morphemes, as do A&G's assignment of distinct
spellings to homophones, e.g. of /no/ in < i sei no bot i noe fit tel mi
nonotin...a nou... > 'He said no, but he couldn't tell me anything...I
knew...' (p. 75). It seems highly probable, then, that numerous CPE morphs are
in fact bound, and that an optimally accurate account of the language—in a
future edition?—will incorporate observations to this effect. 

The authors' analysis is coherent and strong, however. An example of one
feature of it that will be illuminating for many readers is A&G's explicit
description of the functions of unmarked/unmodified noun (§§5.2.2 and 5.3) and
verb (§7.2.2) heads. The choice to point these features out commendably
counters another tendency that is traditional in both creolistics and grammar
description generally, that of focusing on overt grammatical operators at the
expense of the “nulls” with which these so often stand in paradigmatic
contrast. Similarly, A&G are to be commended for choosing, instead of silence
on the subject of verbal passive voice – since there is no morphology
dedicated to such a thing in CPE or indeed in most contact languages – an
explicit discussion of the language's functionally equivalent strategy, the
third-person plural subject “pseudopassive construction” (§11.3.5). The
section on (positive-polarity) determiners (§5.4) is equally exemplary, for
its concise thoroughness of categorization. And Chapter 10's examination of
coordination and subordination, creatively invoking parameters such as
finiteness/nonfiniteness and “pro-forms” for the various adverbial clause
types (such as < den > for temporals and < soe > for manner), demonstrates a
great deal of careful thought. It is a chapter that could easily be turned
into a valuable book-length monograph contribution on its own. 

The thoughtful reader will find this grammar of Cameroon Pidgin English
satisfying, reliable, and most laudably, thought-provoking. While it appears
in an “Oriental and African Language” series, it sets a benchmark of
excellence for creolistic language description. Equally solid contact-language
grammars are very much to be hoped for. 

REFERENCES

Dryer, Matthew S. & Martin Haspelmath (eds.). 2013. The world atlas of
language structures online. Munich: Max Planck Digital Library. Available
online at http://wals.info. 

Michaelis, Susanne Maria, Philippe Maurer, Martin Haspelmath, & Magnus Huber
(eds.). 2013. Atlas of pidgin and creole language structures Online. Leipzig:
Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. Available online at
http://apics-online.info. 

Ngefac, Aloysius. 2016. Sociolinguistic and structural aspects of Cameroon
Creole English. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars.

Nkengasong, J. Nkemngong. 2016. A grammar of Cameroonian Pidgin. Newcastle
upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars.


ABOUT THE REVIEWER

David Douglas Robertson, PhD, is a consultant linguist who researches
indigenous and contact languages of the Pacific Northwest. His current work
includes documenting the grammar of Lower Chehalis Salish, and examining the
use of the pidgin-creole Chinook Jargon (Chinuk Wawa) in Indian treaty-making.





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