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The homogeneity of the substrate as a factor in pidgin/creole genesis

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 March 2026

John Victor Singler
John Victor Singler*
Affiliation:
New York University
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Abstract

The likelihood that substrate languages play a key role in pidgin/creole genesis is widely acknowledged; still, because so many instantiations of substratal influence involve phenomena that occur widely in the world's languages, the question arises, for a given pidgin or creole, whether the responsible factor is the substrate or linguistic universals. To separate the specifically substratal from the universal, the present study examines highly marked substratal input and its impact. Resumptive pronouns in relative clauses are considered in two varieties of pidginized Liberian English and in the relevant Niger-Congo languages. The evidence indicates that degree of homogeneity in substratal input bears crucially on the extent of substratal influence in a pidgin or creole.

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Type
Research Article
Information
Language , Volume 64 , Issue 1 , March 1988 , pp. 27 - 51
Copyright
Copyright © 1988 by Linguistic Society of America

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Footnotes

* The bulk of the data used in this study was gathered while I was employed by the African Studies Center, Michigan State University. I am grateful to the Center, and particularly to David Dwyer, for their support. I am also grateful to those who helped in the gathering of the data—Samson Tiklo, Boakai Zoludua, Dubel Nyankun, David Peewee, Sumoyea Guluma—and in its transcription and interpretation: all the above as well as Boima Barclay Jr., Gbehwalahyee Mason, and the Rev. Emmanuel Hodges.

This study had its inception as a project undertaken at UCLA under the supervision of Tony Naro. I am grateful to him for his guidance, and to the others who worked on the project then: Nikolaus Himmelmann of the University of Munich, Stephen Peck, and Tom Hogue. Nikolaus helped to carry the study beyond the initial stage (resulting in an LSA paper that we co-authored). I am deeply indebted to Nikolaus, both for the answers that he provided and for the questions that he raised.

In roughly the present form, I have presented this work at UCLA, the University of Michigan, NYU, Michigan State, and the University of Pennsylvania. I have benefited from comments made at these places, particularly by Tracy Thomas-Flinders, Roger Andersen, Sue Foster, Benji Wald, Carol Scotton, and Tony Kroch. In addition, Tucker Childs, Jane Hill, John Holm, Hilda Koopman, Jane Martin, and Gillian Sankoff made helpful comments on an earlier draft.

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