On Haitian Creole borrowing /plat/ , on reanalysis, etc

[Michel DeGraff]

RE:

> Haitian Creole also has a word /plat/ "plate, dish" from French <plat>.
> Again, we would expect H.C. to have /pla/ instead of a form with a
> pronounced final consonant.

Unless the relevant 17th-18th century French dialects also had /plat/
instead of /pla/ --- which is quite likely (check Robert Chaudenson's work
for bibliographical pointers). Recall that the European input to CJ and HC
genesis was quite different from `Standard' French as we know it today.
(Also check Quebec French for similar variants.)

> Consider CJ /lisash/ "angel(s)" < ("from") French <les anges>;
> 	    /lipwa/ "peas" < Fr. <les pois>;
> 	    /lida/ "tooth; teeth" < Fr. <le(s) dent(s)>;
> 	    /lilu/ "wolf" < Fr. <le loup>

We find parallel cases in HC.  More generally, these agglutination cases
are quite common in language contact/change scenarios.  Witness French
"aujourd'hui" (from "au jour d'hui"), "toujours" (from "tous jours"),
etc...  Also consider English "(an) apron" from French "napperon" then
earlier English "a napron".  Closer to us: English "a (whole) nother" from
"another" (via "a nother").  Saussure's _Course in General Linguistics_,
for one, has an interesting chapter on such processes of "reanalysis".

Side note plus advert: Interestingly, the above examples of reanalysis in
CJ (and in HC) alongside their non-creole analogues argue against
"creolization as radical break in transmission" scenarios favored by many
creolists in the past two centuries.  In these radical-break scenarios,
creolization is a *qualitatively* radical (often viewed as "abnormal")
departure from the (so called) "normal" cases of language transmission.
The HC reanalysis examples show systematic reanalysis of (some of) the
relevant French input, probably via the sort of `L2A' that obtains in
situations of (heavy) language contact, with subsequent UG-guided L1A and
its concomitant innovations.  Other domains of HC grammar seem amenable to
similar analyses.

(Alleyne 1971 in the Hymes volume _Pidginization and Creolization of
Languages_ makes similar observations, questioning received notions about
creole genesis.  In later work, Alleyne connects these received notions to
the still stigmatized status of Creole languages.  I also have a manuscript
in a related vein which I'll be happy to send around to those interested.)

                                 -michel.
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