Past marking in Gullah

Tracey Weldon

Fri. 2:00-4:05 B

This paper examines variation in the marking of past temporal reference in Gullah. To date, much of the literature on Gullah has consisted of descriptive analyses of its "basilectal" features. However, examination of the patterns of alternation in mesolectal Gullah should be of interest to the study of both English-based creole continua and modern-day African-American English (AAE) (believed by some creolists to have originally derived from a Gullah-like creole). This paper provides a quantitative analysis of 1,405 tokens of past marking extracted from data collected in McClellanville, Johns Island, and St. Helena's Island, SC. The speakers are all members of rural working class communities and range in age from 14 to 104. Table 1 shows the distribution of the tokens observed.

Table 1. Strategies for indicating past temporal reference in Gullah

N %

Preverbal Particles 139 10

Unmarked Verbs 616 44

Past Inflected Verbs 650 46

The quantitative analysis focuses primarily on the alternation between unmarked and past inflected verbs as influenced by three main constraints, shown in Table 2.

Table 2. Constraints on zero marking of past in Gullah.

Preceding Phonological Env. (for CD verbs only) N %

Stop 65 82

Nasal 9 82

Fricative 26 62

Liquid 16 64

Following Phonological Env. (for CD verbs only)

Consonant 57 75

Vowel 44 77

Pause 15 60

Verb Type

ED (stems ending in t/d) 27 71

VD (stems ending in vowel/glide) 29 66

CD (stems ending in other consonants) 116 73

DM (past marking by ablaut and affixation) 218 37

IRR (past marking by ablaut) 226 51

The results for preceding phonological environment resemble the typical sonority hierarchy, with less t/d marking after stops and nasals than after fricatives and liquids. By contrast, the figures for following phonological environment are the opposite of that typically found, with following vowels favoring the unmarked verb slightly more than following consonants. In the verb type category, Gullah resembles Trinidadian Creole (see Winford 1993), Jamaican Creole (see Patrick 1992), and AAE (see Fasold 1972) in showing the least marking with CD verbs. Unlike JC, however, Gullah marks irregular verbs (DM and IRR) more frequently than regular verbs, as observed for TC and AAE. The high percentages of zero marking in Table 2 suggest that past inflection is not the vernacular norm in the Gullah mesolect.

References

Fasold, R. 1972. Tense marking in Black English. Arlington, VA: Center for Applied Linguistics.

Patrick, P. 1991. Creoles at the intersection of variable processes: -t,d deletion and past marking in the Jamaican mesolect. Language variation and change 3 (2): 171-189.

Winford, D. 1992. Back to the past: the BEV/creole connection revisited. Language variation and change 4: 311-357.