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4. Morphosyntax and Lexicon
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4 Morphosyntax and Lexicon In their conversation, they confound all the moods, tenses, cases, and conjugations, without mercy. Edward Long lamenting the Jamaican vernacular, 1774 Extensive syntactic analysis lies well beyond the scope of this volume, partly because the data yields little that contrasts with twentieth-century jC. The texts collected in this volume have, with a single exception (Text 24), produced few surprises in the realm of syntax. Brevity of discourse, irregularity of citation, and (undoubtedly) the influence of the educated usage of each writer-as well as the probable influence of socially conditioned variation on each speaker-have all combined to deny us adequate evidence for exploring the formation ofjC syntax. In any case, our earliest text in jC dates from 1740, nearly a century after English colonists occupied the island and well after the initial contact with West African speakers had laid the foundations of jC grammar. Analysis in creole linguistics has so far focused largely on the African substratum, but within the morphosyntactic patterns of jC there may also be found distinct traces of EModE word building and morphosyntax; marked parallels exist between these and Barbadian usage (Niles 1980: 96-135). The present chapter offers some insight into this rather neglected branch of creole studies. Our description of early jC does not undertake pure syntactic analysis but looks at the conservatism of the morphology (no mo so, "no more than that"), and the lexicon (infresnment, "refreshment, a snack"). Naturally, many features failed to be recorded; others appear in the twentieth century as archaisms. Among the archaisms, many reflect the archaic English usage from which early jC drew much of its material. For example, the terms 'non (literally "anon," or "what?") and loblolly ("a kind of gruel or porridge") 68 Morphosyntax and Lexicon 69 appear in EModE texts, the latter in common usage in seventeenth-century Barbados where Richard Ligon (1657: 43) mentions it as part of the colonists' staple diet ("potatoes, loblolly, and Bonavist"). The term also occurs in nautical usage of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries (OED "1. A thick gruel or spoon meat freq referred to as a rustic or nautical dish"). OED goes on to note that lolly derives from an obsolete Devonshire dialect term: the influence of the Southwest English dialects on Barbados English has been well established (Niles 1980). The case of EModE dialects in JC invites further elaboration. Surprisingly few African-based archaisms have come to light in the data: the song in "Mudfish and Watchman" uses the now obsolete term pempeny ("many" or "plentiful"), which possibly derives from Twi apem ("a thousand "). Most of the terms unfamiliar to speakers of modern JC, however, turn out to be drawn from EModE regional usage. Such a low level of African archaisms may very well reflect the nature of the recorders, who would be more inclined to admit English dialectal features into their texts than unfamiliar African terms. Many African terms may also have escaped the attention of even such keen observers as the physicians Hans Sloane and John Atkins or may have been part of a slave-to-slave idiom never committed to writing or spoken to massa (Long 1774: 2.426). Certainly one may find evidence of African lexicon surviving as obsolescences in nineteenth- and twentieth-century JC. An example of the latter appears in Text 24, a cumina chant recorded by Joseph G. Moore (1953) and etymologically analyzed by Mrs. Abena Enyonam Agbley-Odamtten. The chant constitutes the only text that suggests the structural and lexical signs of pidginization, but the pidginization is African, not African-English, and the structure of the chant suggests the accretions of ritual syncretism rather than workplace jargon. Setting aside matters of origin and transmission, one must note that the chant uses African words in a syntactic format unlike either English or JC, and closely akin to Ewe, the main source of African lexicon in the chant. Because of many problems of translation and etymology in the cumina chant, a thorough and firm analysis ofits structure is not possible here, but sufficient contrast with JC and English makes it clear that the syntax of the song belongs to neither of these and relies more on Kwa features and on a combination of phrases drawn from several languages. Mrs. Abena Enyonam Agbley-Odamtten recognizes in it not only the Ewe of inland Ghana but the classical Ewe of Dahomey, together with some items from Twi, Ga, and Yoruba. The problem raised by the chant strikes...