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FRENCH LOANWORDS IN CHILDREN'S SANGO
W. J. Samarin & J. A. Walker
FRENCH.DOC 5,965 words
Abstract: ABSTRACT\FRENCHABS
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FRENCH LOANWORDS IN CHILDREN'S SANGO William J. Samarin and
James A. Walker
Department of Anthropology, University of Toronto
The use of French loanwords in children's Sango holds important
clues for the understanding of multilingual communities and
language contact processes. Using a corpus of 169 spontaneous texts
provided by urban children between the ages of 2 and 16, from
non-scholarized to first-year Lycee, we provide an analysis of the
phonological, morphological and semantic uses of French loanwords
in Sango. This analysis suggests that the children of Bangui
comprise a "speech sub-community" which mediates between individual
children's innovations and the input from the adult speech
community, and which reflects the evolution of Sango's relationship
with French in the Central African Republic. The analysis also
holds clues for understanding the way in which children create, or
rather craft, new languages from the linguistic resources available
to them.
C:\DOCS\ABSTRACT\FRENCH.ABS
December 19, 1991
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FRENCH LOANWORDS IN CHILDREN'S SANGO The Linguistic Consequences
of the Creolization of Sango. Paper 3
William J. Samarin and James A. Walker Department of
Anthropology, University of Toronto
1. Introduction All languages have borrowed at one time or
another, to various degrees.
Through the study of borrowed words, we can learn facts about
contact between people, the nature of the contact, and the
relationship between these groups. We can also learn about language
itself: specifically, how languages assimilate foreign words, and
how languages change.
This paper studies a special situation in borrowing: a language
in the process of change. While previous studies of borrowing have
taken an "after-the-fact" approach,
2. Methodology The source of the data used in this paper is a
corpus of 475 texts
collected by Samarin in Bangui in 1987-88. The texts are tape
recordings of spontaneous discourse by children 2 years old and up,
recorded and transcribed by Central African assistants. The
discourses include narratives, recipes, how-tos, tales and
discussions^.
The analysis of French loanwords was first begun on a 130-text
corpus used for the phonological analysis of children's Sango. The
corpus was later expanded to 169 texts, focussing primarily on
French loanwords. The texts were selected to provide a range of
ages (2-16) and levels of education (from non-scholarized to
first-year Lycée), as well as an even representation of males and
females [For distribution by age and education, see Table 1.].
Although some effort was made to include a variety of ethnicities,
the sheer number of different ethnic groups in Bangui
(Wenezoui-Dechamps [?] gives thirty-one as a figure) makes equal
representation in such a small corpus difficult. An effort was also
made to include as many genres of discourse as possible.
It should be noted that, although the texts have been
transcribed, they have not been fully entered on computer.
Therefore we do not have a count of the number of words in each
text, or a total number of words.
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3. Overview The 169-text corpus provides a total French loanword
stock of 393 words.
This figure can be broken down by word-class (as used in Sango),
with the following results:
Verbs 74 Nouns 285 Other 34
The category "Other" includes adverbials, adjectives,
conjunctions, complements and ideophonic elements. It comes as no
surprise that nouns are the most numerous type of loanword.
However, despite the low number of the category "Other", adverbials
such as et puis, mais and allez tend to be more frequently used
[cf.Taber:49].
The difference in the lengths of the various discourses makes it
difficult to generalize about the frequency of words. However,
since a variety of genres is included in the corpus, it is possible
to estimate the average number of French loanwords per text. The
figures by genre, and the resulting total, are given below:
Genre Texts French words Averaae/Text Narrative 107 696 6.5
Recipe 31 131 4.2 How-to 18 120 6.7 Tale 12 73 6.1 Discussion 1 4
4.0 ALL 169 1024 6.1
Thus, the average number of French loanwords appearing in a text
varies according to the genre and topic. One surprising result here
is the high number of loanwords in tales, which one would expect to
be more traditional, and hence less likely to contain loans. This
result is probably explained by the fact that most tales were
learned from other children (including siblings), rather than
picked up from adults in traditional tale-telling situations.
4. Phonology 4.1 Forms and Phonological Integration of
Individual Words
To examine the phonological integration of loanwords, eight of
the more frequently-used words were analyzed. The first step was to
set up a hierarchy of
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phonological forms, resulting in a spectrum with "most
French-like" at one end, and "least French-like" at the other.
Thus, encore with a nasalized initial vowel and a terminal uvular R
[akoR] would be considered most French-like, whereas ako. with
neither of the former features, would be least French-like.
The following is a list of the words chosen, their most common
form or forms and the number of texts in which each form occurred,
with comments about the sociolinguistic patterning of the forms.
Note that, for the purpose of this part of the analysis, neither
tonal pattern nor vowel length has been included, since it would
complicate the picture beyond the requirements of the analysis.
(Pronunciations for older words, taken from Samarin (1958), are
given where available.)
1. encore [ako (7), §ko (6), akor (5)] {older anooro} More
French-like forms occur and increase after CE1 and age 12.
2. et puis [epi (31)] No correlations (although there is more
variation below CE1).
3. l'heure [ter (8), \s (6)] {older Isrs) More French-like forms
and more variation occur in CM1 and up, and in age 11 and
older.
4. H faufdraiYt (que) [jfo (6)] {older Ifo) More French-like
forms and more variation occur in CM1 and up, and in age 12 and
older.
5. commencer [komase (7)] {older kùmâsi) More French-like forms
and more variation occur in CE1 and up, no apparent correlation
with age.
6. pousser [pusu (4)] {older pusu) No correlation with age or
education.
7. oignon [onyo/ovo (6), zenvo/zivo (4)] No correlation with age
or education.
8. jusqu'à [ZUska (6)] {older zusùkà} French-like forms occur
only in CE2and up and in age 10 and older.
Thus, frequently-used loans fall into one of two categories:
those which become more French-like the older or more educated the
child is [5 of the 8 words], and those which do not correlate to
social factors [3 words]. 4.2 Schwa in French Words
Although schwa occurs in French, the source of schwa in Sango is
problematic, and the data are not conclusive on this issue. Schwa
may have been
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introduced through French, but another possible source is Banda,
in which schwa also occurs (Cloarec-Heiss 1985?). Ideally, we would
expect one of two results: either schwa should be a feature of
"Banda Sango" (in which case Banda is the source of schwa) or schwa
increases with education (in which case, since French is the
language of education, French would be the source of schwa).
However, the situation is not so clear-cut.
In an earlier study we demonstrated (Samarin and Walker 1992)
that use of schwa in Sango words was not tied to ethnicity. Looking
at the same data that was used for that study, the same can be said
for schwa in French loanwords. It should be noted that Banda could
still be the source of schwa in Sango, in that the feature may have
been introduced at an earlier date, and spread to the rest of the
speech community.
The distribution of schwa in French loanwords by age and
education does not comform to expectations. By age, incidence of
schwa fluctuates. Among those younger than age 6, there is no
occurrence of schwà. Between the ages of 6 and 15, the percentage
of members of each age group who use schwa varies between 13% and
56%, with no trend of increase according to age. By education, the
results are more interesting. No non-scholarized informants use
schwa. Between grades C1 and CM1, the percentages remain relatively
constant between 20% and 30%. Then, in the higher grades, CM2 and
6e, there is a dramatic increase to 48% and 56%, respectively.
Thus, although there does seem to be a correlation between use of
schwa and education, it is not clear-cut.
The occurrence of schwa where French would not use schwa yields
more informative results. The texts in which schwa occurs were
examined for the incidence of "paragogic" (Holm 1988:111) schwa,
where the schwa serves to prevent the word from ending in a
consonant. We assume that a child with better abilities in French
would not require the schwa. As before, there is no correlation
with age, and variation between ethnic groups and sexes is not
significant. In terms of education, although there is an increase
in the general use of schwa as education progresses, the most
dramatic increase occurs in the percentage of texts (in each
grade-group) where schwa could have been inserted, but was not.
From grade C1 to grade CE2, the figure varies from 5% to 4%. AtCM1,
there is an increase to 15%, which then tapers to 11% at grade 6e.
Thus, the use of schwa increases with education, but the use of
schwa in places where French would not use it decreases. This
finding suggests that most children in the community have
incorporated schwa into their phonology, but do not use it
"properly" in French words until they have been further exposed to
the language.
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4.3 Tonal Patterns Since tone is phonemic in Sango but prosodie
in French, the tonal patterns
assigned to loanwords can be useful in determining the source of
the words. Using the 130-text corpus, the tonal pattern of every
loanword was tabulated. Some common patterns recurred: regardless
of the number of syllables in the word, the pattern was either
steady (e.g. M, MM, L, LLL, etc.), rising (e.g. MH, LMH, MLH) or
falling (e.g. LLHL, MHL, LHM). Divided into nouns and verbs, the
number of tonal patterns is as follows:
Pattern Example Number Percentaqe Verbs [62 words] Steady men§se
[ménacer] 16 26%
Rising mèl§2é [mélanger] 25 40% Falling ...ML m§keè [manquer] 7
11%
. ..HL pàrtà2éè [partager] 41 66% Nouns [237 words] Steady
polisyè [policier] 45 19%
Rising mèzu [mésure] 64 27% Falling ...ML ëàpoô [chapeau] 113
48%
. ..HL ôpitâàl [hôpital] 87 37%
. ..M vHI [ville] 1 0.4%
It should be noted that the reason the number of tonal patterns
exceeds the number of words is that one word may have a different
tonal pattern depending on the speaker, and may even vary within
the same text.
The figures given above demonstrate that French nouns and verbs
have distinctive (though not entirely predictable) tonal patterns
when borrowed into Sango. For verbs, the predominant pattern is
...HL, and for nouns, ...ML [where (...) can signify any
combination of tones depending on the number of syllables, although
it is usually L]. The preference for a high- or medium-falling
contour would appear to be derived from either the isolation or
phrase-final prosodie pattern in French. Where this pattern was
derived from is a question to which we will return below.
5. Morphology and Semantics 5.1. Words 5.1.1 Morphological
Integration
Determination of morphological integration is difficult, since
there is little, if any, morphological complexity in Sango. The
language has two inflectional prefixes: the third-person singular
subject marker for verbs (àr) and the plural
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marker for nouns (ar); and one derivational suffix: the
nominalizing -ngo. If affixation is a criterion for integration,
nouns and verbs would appear to be morphologically integrated: 36
verbs occur with ài and 4 with -ngo. and 58 nouns occur with Br.
Thus the interaction of French words with native morphemes is
consistent. However, the problem with using these affixes to
determine morphological integration is that there are no instances
where affixation is optional or variable. Affixation never failed
to occur where it was required.
A more telling indicator of morphological integration is the
occurrence of French words with the forms of the preposition t[.
This preposition is variable in children's speech, occurring in one
of three forms:
(a) its full form [e.g. Noun t[ Noun] (b) as a high-toned
element of the preceding word (this form involves a
lengthening of the preceding vowel, with or without a tonal
glide) (c) deleted [e.g. Noun Noun]
For example, the phrase "his mouth" can occur as yanaa t[ ]o
("mouth of him"), vanaaâ ]o (tonalized with glide), vanaââ ]o
(tonalized without glide) or yanqa ]o (deleted). The form of t [
used varies from speaker to speaker, and even within each speaker's
discourse.
The variation of t[ provides the basis for a comparison between
the forms of the preposition with Sango words and with French
loanwords. The fact that t[-tonalization is a prevalent feature of
children's Sango in Bangui can be seen in the occurrence of t i
following Sango words [numbers are of word-types, regardless of how
often each occurred in a text]:
t[ ti-tonalization deleted Nouns 83 44 16 Verbs 16 5 3
Compare these figures with those for the occurrence of t{
following French loanwords:
t[ ti-tonalization deleted Nouns 40 14 1 Verbs 2 2 3
p Tonalization can even apply if there is an intervening
consonant: one text
contained the phrase Rôôb mbi 'my dress'.
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The proportion of forms for nouns is roughly the same in French
and Sango words. The difference in proportion of forms for verbs
can be explained by the fact that there are many verbs and
verb-noun constructions in Sango which can be followed by another
verb (such as ngba "continue" and ga "come"), but very few in
French (in fact, the two found here are peut and commencer).
The figures suggest that, in French loanwords as in Sango words,
ti-tonalization is a common process. This fact, more than the
interaction of loanwords with inflectional and derivational
morphology, points to the conclusion that loanwords are
morphologically integrated into Sango. However, these results
cannot be tied to social correlates, since occurrence of tf-forms
in Sango words does not vary with sociolinguistic features, at
least for the age-groups studied here. 5.1.2. Word-Class
Changes
Another type of morphological integration is the assignment of a
loanword to a word-class other than that in which it occurred in
the donor language. Whether due to a misinterpretation of its
original function or because the receptor language has no such
class, the word is reanalyzed both morphologically and
syntactically.
In the 169-text corpus, there are not many loanwords which have
changed word-class, although a few have a high frequency of
occurrence. The following is a list of those found, with their
word-class in Sango given f irst and followed by the number of
texts in which each change was found:
Verb Example From Texts cérré plas à-sèré Adjective 1
'the place was crowded' fâché lo faëe àwè Adjective 1
'he/she was angry' rang/rond mbi RÔsémbe Noun 5
'I wash the dishes' soulé i suléè Adjective 1
'we were drunk' Noun Example From Texts malade â-màlâàd sô
Adjective 2
'these diseases' Adverbial Example From Texts il faut (que)
ifômô sâà gi letRe Clause 16
'you must write a letter'
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jusqu'à mbi lango 2UUskà Preposition 'I slept for a long
time'
propre â leke a màtènité prôôp Adjective 'they perform maternity
cleanly '
8
As can be seen, those changes which involve the creation of
nouns and verbs are most numerous, but least widespread. The more
common change is toward the category which we have here called
"adverbial", those of which can indeed function as modifiers of the
verb, but are more likely to be used as elements of discourse or as
ideophones (e.g. jusqu'à). The most interesting change, and hardest
to classify, is ii faut (que). It is questionable whether this
"clause" is interpreted as a clause or as a preclausal particle^.
5.2. Nouns 5.2.1. Pluralization of French Singulars
Yet another type of integration can be seen in the pluralization
of those nouns which can occur only as singulars in French. This
integration involves not only a morphological but also a semantic
re-analysis of the word. Below are those plurals which were found
in our corpus, along with their new meaning, the number of texts in
which the plural occurred, and the total number of texts in which
the word (singular or plural) occurred:
Word New Meaning Texts Out of
(â-)café cup(s) of coffee (a-)famille relative(s) (a-)malade
disease(s) (a-)musique piece(s) of music (a-)police
policeman(/-men)
3
2 3
4 4 2
o Taber's (1964:48) admittedly arbitrary assignment of il faut
to the verb class
can be dismissed on syntactic and morphological grounds: quite
simply, il faut does not occur in verbal positions nor with verbal
morphemes.
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With the exception of famille and police, the pluralization of
French singulars would seem to be an individual innovation. It
should be noted that the
4 pluralization of café and musique occurred in the same text
.
It is interesting to note that the speakers of the texts with
the single occurrences of plural forms are in grades CM1 and 6e,
which suggests that pluralization is also a feature of more
educated children's speech. This result contradicts our previous
conclusion that children's use of loanwords becomes more
French-like with education. 5.3. Verbs 5.3.1. Borrowed Conjugated
Forms
A clue to the source of loanwords is the form of the verb. In
Sango, there is no verbal morphology which distinguishes the
"conjugated" from the "infinitival" form of the verb (except
perhaps for third person singular subject marker à^). Such a
distinction is determined syntactically. Since French does make
such a distinction morphologically, and in fact contains a plethora
of conjugated forms, any differences in the form of the French verb
occurring in Sango should be of interest.
In fact, there is an either/or status to conjugated forms of
French verbs: either conjugated forms are widespread, or they are
idiosyncratic. This fact is evident in the data below (* indicates
that the verb occurs only in a conjugated form):
Verb Form Sub iect Texts Out of
balayer bals Ips.sg. 4 15 chauffer Sof r 3ps.sg. 1 11 commencer
kem§s/komas Ips.sg. 2 25 descendre* desa 1/2/3ps.sg./1 ps.pl . 21
21 devoir* dwa 3ps.sg. 1 3
du/dli 3ps.sg. 2 3
4 A more detailed analysis will have to be made of the current
use of the
plural marker. Samarin has noted differences from the speech of
40 years ago. For example, when asked if he had been to any other
cities, a Bangui youth said, mbi si nà à-Berberati. a-Bossanaoa
'I've been to Berberati, Bossangoa ...'
5 For commencer, there were several forms (e.g. kma. koa. kume).
occurring
in 9 texts, where it was not clear what the borrowed form
was.
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essuyer esui/eslii Ips.sg. 1 7 habituer abitli 3ps.sg. 1 1 jouer
lu 1ps.sg./1 ps.pl. 4 7 pousser pus 3ps.sg. 2 6 pouvoir* pœ/pe
1/2/3ps.sg./1 ps.pl. 6 6 rouler rul(lur) 3ps.sg. 1 1
Determining exactly what conjugated form the verb is in is
difficult, given the nature of French morphophonemics. Although the
phonetic shape of the words suggests the third person singular as a
possible source, the fact that the verbs can occur with the first,
second or third person singular, all of which are pronounced
identically in many verbs in French, means that the precise source
of the verb form is impossible to determine. However, a hypothesis
about the distribution of verb-forms can be made: since no
non-scholarized speaker's text contains a conjugated form, it would
seem that the more educated children's familiarity with French
allows them to import French morphology into Sango along with the
word. 5.3.2. Transitivized Intransitives
Another re-analysis of loanwords which can occur is the use of
intransitive verbs in constructions with a direct object. Only two
such verbs were found in our corpus.
The first, bouillir, is probably idiosyncratic. It was found in
only one text, and was probably a reanalysis of the native
construction mbi to ngu â-kpôrô 'I prepare water, (it) boils'. In
this instance, a single verb, bouillir, has been semantically
reworked to encompass the meaning of an idiom, to + à-kpôrô. in
which the object of the first verb is also the subject of the
second.
The second verb, descendre, is more widespread in use, but it
presents some problems to the analysis. The verb occurs in 21 of
the 169 texts, and it usually appears in the form desa or desa with
a tonal pattern of LH or LHL (the HL tones both on the last vowel).
However, in children's speech, the preposition nà, which is used
after the intransitive form of the verb (as in mbi dèsâà nà ni 'I
take it down (i.e. off the fire)'), often appears in a contracted
form à, making it difficult to determine whether a form such as
dèsâà nf is an actual transitive construction or if it is a
contraction of dèsâ(à) (n)à ni.
In order to determine exactly how many transitive forms
occurred, the verb forms were divided into four categories. Those
forms with the problematic tonal pattern were classified under
"Questionable". The results are given below:
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No object 5 + nà-phrase 5 Questionable 9 Direct Object 2
The most frequent type of construction is that which encompasses
forms with no object and those with a nà-phrase (i.e. both
intransitive). Those with a direct object (i.e. transitive) would
appear to be in the minority. Yet this conclusion does not take
into account the size of the "questionable" category, which could
be interpreted as either intransitive with a preposition or
transitive. Thus it would appear that, although most children still
use descendre as an intransitive verb, some have re-analyzed it as
transitive. In fact, it may be the contraction of na, and the
resultant ambiguity, which has caused this re-analysis. 5.4.
Idiolexemes
"Idiolexemes" is a term which we will use to designate those
words which occur in only one text per corpus. It should be noted
that, although we have derived the term by analogy with "idiolect",
it is not intended to imply that the text's speaker is the only
member of the community who uses the word. Although the apparent
uniqueness of an idiolexeme is probably a result of the uniqueness
of the topic of its text, the fact that the word occurs only once
in a corpus of such size is also significant.
The idiolexemes are too numerous to be listed individually, but
the distribution of the numbers is interesting. The number of
idiolexemes in each word-class, and the percentage of the class
composed of idolexemes, is given below:
Although there is little difference between the percentage of
nouns and verbs which are idiolexemes, the lower percentage in
other word-classes is significant. It would appear that adverbials,
adjectives and conjunctions are less amenable to individual
innovation than nouns and verbs.
The sociolinguistic correlations with idiolexemes are revealing.
Under age 5, there are no idiolexemes. From ages 5 to 13, the
average number of idiolexemes per text (by age-group) fluctuates,
ranging from 0.48 to 1.89 but never rising above 2.0. At age 14,
there is a jump to 3.13 per text, reaching the
Verbs Nouns Other
42 [57%] 175 [62%] 13 [37%]
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highest average at age 15: 4.33. In terms of education,
non-scholarized to grade CE1 remains relatively stable, varying
between 0.7 and 0.75 per text, the jump occurring at CE2, rising to
1.2. Thereafter, the average per text rises, culminating in 4.33 at
6E. There does not appear to be a correlation to sex. Thus, the use
of idiolexemes increases with both age and education.
Another sociolinguistic factor, that of school, may also be
significant. The average number of idiolexemes per text for Ecole
Koudoukou [1.08] is somewhat higher than that for Ecole Bangui
[0.76], which contains more children from affluent families. While
this result suggests that there may be an inverse correlation
between idiolexemes and social class, it should be noted that the
school attended by the child was obtained for only a small
percentage of texts in the corpus [43/169]. Therefore this result
is tentative.
An analysis of the phonological integration of idiolexemes also
yields some important results. As in 4.1, a hierarchy of forms was
set up, from most French-like to least French-like. However, in
this analysis, because of the similarities between French and Sango
in phonology, a category "Questionable" was established. For
example, it is difficult to say whether a form like gaz? is a
French pronunciation of gazon or a re-analysis into Sango
phonology. Similarly, another category, "Intermediate", had to be
set up to accommodate those forms in which some attempt was made to
conform to French phonology, but some re-analysis into Sango
phonology was made (such as buyiRe for bouillir, to conform to CV
syllable structure). The results are as follows (the numbers are
over-all totals):
Since the non-French forms are in the minority, it would seem
that most speakers make at least some effort to retain the French
pronunciation in idiolexemes. Even more revealing is the fact that
the incidence of French and Intermediate forms increase with age
and education [See Tables 2 and 3]. These findings suggest that the
more educated the speaker is, the more French-like forms are
used.
Intermediate French
93 83 34 19
Questionable Non-French
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5.5. French and Sango Words in Competition One feature of the
situation of Sango and French is the competition
between native and foreign words in Sango. Taber (19XX)®
suggested that there was some effort to avoid French words in
favour of their Sango equivalents. Despite this practice, many
French words still exist in variation with Sango words.
The following are pairs of words found to be in "competition" in
the 169-text corpus. Some pairs are not only synonymous with each
other but also co-occur in the same text.
i. sinon / tongàsôapè 'otherwise' sinon apè 4 texts tongàsôapè 2
texts
[It should also be noted that both forms occurred in one text,
that of an 8-year-old male in grade CP2.]
ii. jusqu'à (as ideophone)/ ngbîi 'for a long time'
[cf.Taber:47] jusqu'à 4 texts jusqu'à ngbn 3 texts
iii. façon / màra 'type, kind' façon tf màrâ 1 text
iv. ville / kotoro 'city' ville 6 texts ville + kotoro 1
text
v. tirer photo / lèkè photo 'to take a photograph1
tirer photo 2 texts lèkè photo 1 text
Other pairs in competition, also noted during the analysis but
for which there were insufficient data for conclusive results,
are:
vi. place / ndô 'place' vii. travailler / sârà kwà 'to work'
viii. joie / ngfà ' j o / ix. jouet / yé tf ngfâ 'toy1
x. jour / la 'day'
6Taber's work (1964, 1965, 1966, 1979) was based on a
37,000-word corpus collected by Samarin in 1962.
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xi. papa / bàbâ 'father' xii. maman / màmâ 'mother'
The results above indicate that, although interference from
French is often an idiosyncratic phenomenon, some French loanwords
co-exist with their Sango synonyms in many speakers. It should also
be noted that some of the above words are part of the core
vocabulary of Sango. 5.6. Miscellaneous Morphological and Semantic
Changes
Many of the changes of French words used in Sango are not
definable under a single process. Thus, we have not been able to
classify some loanwords found in the corpus under one of the above
headings. Therefore, these words will be dealt with
individually.
i. dimanche 'week' [4 texts] This meaning was noted in Samarin
(1967).
ii. douche 'bathroom' (Fr. 'shower') [1 text] iii. essuyer 'to
clean ' (Fr. 'to wipe') [7 texts] iv. lame 'razor blade ' (Fr.
'blade (of metal) ', in lame de rasoir 'razor blade ')
[2 texts] v. nyo ('to drink') petit dé ieuner instead of tè 'to
eat' [1 text] vi. rang /rond 'to clean, tidy up' or, with sârà.
'cleaning, tidying up'
(Fr. 'row, line'; 'circle', or < arranger 'to arrange'?) [9
texts] Presumably, the meaning has been generalized from 'to put in
order'.
vii. rouler 'to gather (people) together' (Fr. 'to roll up, wind
up') [1 text] viii. servir: i servir alà n i kâsà 'we serve them
sauce ' (lit., 'we serve them
with sauce') [1 text of 2 in which servir occurred] Compare with
Fr. nous servons de ]a nourriture à M / nous lui servons de ]a
nourriture. Note that this change has syntactic consequences as
well.
For the most part, such changes appear to be individual
innovations, as they appear in only one or two texts. However, some
(such as essuyer and rang/rond) are more widespread, and have
therefore become accepted by at least part of the speech
community.
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Page 15
6. Discussion and Conclusion There are three common themes
recurring in the above analysis. These
themes will be discussed in turn, before proceeding to an
explanation for their recurrence.
1. French loanwords tend to fall into one of two classes: those
which are numerous, yet occur individually in a small number of
texts; and those which are few in number, but occur in a large
number of texts. The former become more numerous as age and
education increase, whereas the latter are not tied to factors of
age, education, sex or ethnicity. The same division can be seen in
processes of morphological and semantic change, such as the
pluralization of singular nouns, the borrowing of conjugated forms
of the verb, the change in the transitivity of descendre, the
occurrence of idiolexemes, and the competition between French and
Sango words. In all these processes, there is a great deal of
individual innovation, and widespread occurrence of processes
involving a small number of words.
2. The phonology of loanwords is in a state of variation, but
variation with a pattern. Different forms of frequently-used
loanwords and idiolexemes and different distributions of schwa are
widespread, sometimes occurring in the same text. However, in all
these cases there is also a tendency for the more French-like forms
and distributions to increase along with age and education. Since
the loanwords were seen to be morphologically integrated into
Sango, phonology provides the structural aspect of their
infiltration.
3. A difference can be seen in the morphological, phonological
and semantic integration of different word-classes. There are
different tonal patterns assigned to nouns and verbs. Changes in
word-class result in more numerous nouns and verbs which occur in
few texts, and a few adverbials which occur in many texts. Also,
idiolexemes are more likely to be nouns and verbs than any other
category. These facts suggest that nouns and verbs are what
speakers are most conscious of: they are likely to be borrowed from
French on an individual basis by a large number of speakers, but do
not necessarily fall into common usage. On the other hand, words
belonging to other categories, though few in number, are
widespread, probably due to their higher frequency of use as
discourse elements (for example, et puis and mais).
The dichotomy of words and processes suggests "waves" of
borrowing. The fact that a large percentage of loanwords are
individual innovations, coupled with the fact that a small
percentage are in widespread use, indicates that borrowing is
initially a function of the individual bilingual's speech. Whether
for reasons of style or necessity, children who are bilingual in
Sango and French use
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Page 16
French words in their Sango. Their contemporaries hear these
loanwords and may incorporate them into their own speech, and
younger or unscholarized children will also hear and perhaps accept
them. The level of integration, phonologically and semanticaiiy,
will depend on the level of education of the child (i.e. their
familiarity with French). The one exception to this rule, the
pluralization of French forms, would appear to be a result of the
complete morphological assimilation to Sango, in which there are no
nouns which cannot be pluralized. The use of French loanwords by
children is therefore an innovation, not just an accommodation to
French.
In order to determine how children are innovating in Sango, we
must f irst determine whether these loanwords are code-switches or
borrowings. Previous attempts at differentiating the two processes
relied primarily on the degree of morphophonemic integration.
However, as Poplack (1988:220) has pointed out, such a criterion
may not be valid if all members of the community speak both
languages with the same "accent".
What is required in order to differentiate code-switching from
borrowing is a sociolinguistic, rather than a purely linguistic,
approach. This approach is schematized in Figure 1.
Figure 1 - A tentative schema of types of language
interference
L Code-switching
a. Individual function of individual biiinguaiism
-integrated
b. Community | function of | community | Ig. usage | [cf.
Poplack |
1988] | +integrated |
Z Borrowing
Community one aspect of a largely monolingual community
requires widespread biiinguaiism
-integrated
widespread biiinguaiism not necessary [incipient biiinguaiism7]
+integrated[rephonologized]
7Doesn'tDiebold ls term "incipient biiinguaiism" (1962) imply
that biiinguaiism is about to occur? What if biiinguaiism never
occurs community-wide? Maybe "marginal biiinguaiism" would be a
better term.
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Page 17
Since code-switching (in the above sense) can only occur among
bilinguals, then we must separate predominantly monolingual and
predominantly bilingual communities. Since monolingual communities
which borrow words (that is, fully integrate them) require no more
than a small percentage of bilinguals in the community, borrowing
should be considered the feature of a predominantly monolingual
community. Thus, code-switching is the feature of a predominantly
bilingual community.
However, degrees of integration within a bilingual speech
community means that two situations are subsumed under the one term
"code-switching". The first, individual code-switching, requires
bilinguals who are proficient in the second language. Thus, any
loanwords which they use are less likely to be integrated into the
first language's phonology. The second, community code-switching,
requires that enough speakers be familiar with the second language
for code-switching to become what Poplack (1988:?) describes as a
function of "community bilingualism". Thus, although community
code-switches are less integrated than borrowing, they are more
integrated than individual code-switches.
This tentative schema is relevant to the construction of the
Sango speech community. As was shown above, loanwords fall into two
classes: those which are numerous but idiolexemic, and those which
are few in number but widespread in use. This classification
parallels the results which would be expected for the difference
between individual code-switches and community code-switches.
Borrowing seems to have been a feature of Sango in its pidgin
state, when few adults were proficient in French (ref.?).
The f irst conclusion to be drawn from this analysis is that
French loanwords have two primary sources: the earlier,
pidgin-state borrowings, and the innovations of proficient
bilinguals. Although, in coining neologisms, there is always a
choice between improvising from native morphemes and borrowing from
another language, the likelihood is that a proficiently bilingual
speaker will borrow rather than improvise, especially if the second
language already contains a word for the concept (Romaine 1989?).
The children in Bangui, ranging from proficient bilinguals to
"incipient" bilinguals, comprise a speech community (or speech
"sub-community") which could be described as predominantly but not
proficiently bilingual, which makes use of community
code-switching.
The second conclusion to be drawn is that the children of
Bangui, rather than creating language ex nihilo. are in fact
forging language out of whatever linguistic resources are available
to them. In this sense, creolization
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Page 18
can be seen as a process of "crafting" language. Although
adults, in pidginization, provide the impetus for language change,
it is children who, in creolization, do the dirty work of
re-forming language.
With these two conclusions in mind, it remains to be seen
whether any generalizations can be made about the role of children
in language change. In Bangui, the process of creolization is as
much a function of the history and makeup of the speech community
as a reflection of the way in which children interact with each
other and with adults in the Central African Republic. Bickerton
(1981, 1984 and elsewhere) has drawn parallels between the
development of "true" Creoles in Hawai 'i and Guyana, and concluded
that universal processes were at work, processes which were blocked
in the development of other ("false"?) Creoles such as Tok Pisin.
It would be interesting to know if the similarities and differences
between Creoles were in fact due to the similarities and
differences in the socialization of children in different "creole"
societies.
February 3, 1992
-
REFERENCES
Page
Bickerton, Derek 1981 Roots of Language. Karoma.
1984 The language bioprogram hypothesis. Behavioral and Brain
Sciences ....
Cloarec-Heiss, France 1986 Dynamique et équilibre d'une syntaxe:
le banda-linda de
Centrafrique. SELAF.
Diebold, A. Richard Jr. 1962 Incipient bilingualism.
Holm, John 1988 Pidgins and Creoles, vol. 1: Theory and
Structure. Cambridge
University Press.
Heller, Monica (ed.) 1988 Codeswitching: Anthropological and
Sociolinguistic
Perspectives. Mouton de Gruyter.
Romaine, Suzanne 1989 Bilingualism. Basil Blackwell.
Poplack, Shana 1988 Contrasting patterns of codeswitching in
two
communities. In Heller 1988, pp.215-244.
Samarin, William J. 1958 The phonology of pidgin Sango. Word
14(1):62-70.
1967 Basic Course in Sango. U.S. Office of Education.
1986 The source of Sango's 'be'. Journal of Pidgin and Creole
Languages 1:205-23.
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Page 20
Samarin, William J. and James A. Walker 1992 The phonology of
urban children's Sango. Paper presented at
the 2nd annual meeting of the Society for Pidgin and Creole
Linguistics, Philadelphia, 10 January.
Taber, Charles Russell 1979 French loan-words in Sango: the
motivation of lexical borrowing.
In Hancock 1979, pp.??-??.
Wenezoui-Dechamps, Marie
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Page 21
TABLES
Table 1- Age and scholarization of speakers
AG\S NON C1 CP2 CE1 CE2 CM1 CM2 6E
2 1*
3 2
5 3 3
6 1* 6 2 1*
7 5 6 1*
8 4 5 6 6 3
9 2* 2 5 3 2
10 3 6 6 6 2*
11 1* 3 4 5 4
12 1* 1* 3 8 5
13 2 1* 2 7 4 2
14 3 2 3 4 3
15 1* 1* 1* 2 4
16 2 * = no more texts available
-
Table 2 - Phonological integration of idiolexemes by education
(numbers refer to phonological forms)
GRADE French ? Interm. Non-Fr. TOTALS
NON 3 2 5 1 11
C1 6 3 6 1 16
CP2 3 7 1 4 15
CE1 4 2 11 2 19
CE2 13 3 14 4 34
CM1 20 5 20 3 48
CM2 17 6 19 3 45
6E 17 6 17 1 40
TOTALS 83 34 93 19 229
-
Table 3 - Phonological integration of idiolexemes by age
(numbers refer to phonological forms)
AGE French ? Interm. Non-Fr. TOTALS
2 - - - — — — —
3 — — — — —
5 - - - ___ — 1 1
6 3 1 4 1 9
7 4 4 2 — 10
8 6 1 5 1 13
9 3 2 9 4 18
10 5 1 6 2 14
11 7 3 8 3 21
12 14 6 14 2 36
13 10 2 9 1 22
14 12 6 19 2 38
15 18 7 14 2 41
16 1 1 3 — 5
TOTALS 83 34 93 19 229
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