The Acquisition of Mauritian Creole

179 Pages·1994·10.79 MB·English

by  Dany Adone

THE ACQUISITION OF MAURITIAN CREOLE
LANGUAGE ACQUISITION & LANGUAGE DISORDERS
EDITORS
Harald Clahsen William Rutherford
University of Essex University of Southern California
EDITORIAL BOARD
Melissa Bowerman (Max Planck Institut für Psycholinguistik, Nijmegen)
Patricia Clancy (University of California at Santa Barbara)
Werner Deutsch (Universität Braunschweig)
Kenji Hakuta (Stanford University)
Kenneth Hyltenstam (University of Stockholm)
Peter Jordens (Free University, Amsterdam)
Barry McLaughlin (University of California at Santa Cruz)
Jürgen Meisel (Universität Hamburg)
Anne Mills (University of Amsterdam)
Csaba Pleh (University of Budapest)
Michael Sharwood Smith (University of Utrecht)
Catherine Snow (Harvard University)
Jürgen Weissenborn (Max Planck Institut für Psycholinguistik, Nijmegen)
Lydia White (McGill University)
Helmut Zobl (Carleton University, Ottawa)
Volume 9
Dany Adone
The Acquisition of Mauritian Creole
THE
ACQUISITION OF
MAURITIAN
CREOLE
DANY ADONE
The University of Düsseldorf
JOHN BENJAMINS PUBLISHING COMPANY
AMSTERDAM/PHILADELPHIA
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American
National Standard for Information Sciences — Permanence of Paper for Printed
Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1984.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Adone, Dany.
The acquisition of Mauritian Creole / Dany Adone.
p. cm.- (Language acquisition & language disorders : ISSN 0925-0123; v. 9)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Creole dialects, French—Mauritius. 2. Children-Language acquisition. I. Title. II.
Series.
PM7854.M3A3 1994
447'.96982-dc20 94-547
ISBN 90 272 2474 9 (Eur.) /1-55619-246-0 (US) (alk. paper) CIP
© Copyright 1994 - John Benjamins B.V.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, by print, photoprint, microfilm, or
any other means, without written permission from the publisher.
John Benjamins Publishing Co. • P.O. Box 75577 • 1070 AN Amsterdam • The Netherlands
John Benjamins North America • 821 Bethlehem Pike • Philadelphia, PA 19118 • USA

Table of Contents
Acknowledgements xi
1. Introduction 1
2. Creole languages 3
2.1 General remarks 3
2.1.1 Origins of Creole languages 4
2.1.2 Creolization models and Mauritian Creole 5
2.2 Bickerton and Creole languages 8
2.2.1 On the emergence of Creole languages 8
2.2.2 The Bickertonian hypothesis on the acquisition 12
of Creole Languages
3. A Creole in a multilingual society 15
3.1 Geography and history 15
3.2 Population 16
3.3 Language situation 16
4. Methodology 19
4.1 Cross-sectional study 19
4.2 Recording and transcriptions 20
4.3 Subjects 21
5. An outline of Mauritian Creole 25
5.1 Preliminary remarks 25
5.2 Word order 25
5.3 CP and complementizers 27
5.3.1 Relative clauses 27
5.3.2 Cleft and topicalized constructions 27
5.3.3 WH-questions 28
5.4 The irrealis complementizer pu 29
Contents
viii
5.5 Determiners 30
5.5.1 Articles 30
5.5.2 The pluralizer ban 33
5.6 IP and INFL elements 33
5.6.1 TMA markers 33
5.6.2 Negation 34
5.7 The Copula and adjectives as verbs 34
5.8 Passive-like constructions 35
5.9 Prepositions 36
5.10 Pronouns and reflexives 36
6. Tense, Mood and Aspect 39
6.1 Introduction 39
6.2 Some remarks on the Creole TMA system 39
6.3 The TMA system of adult Mauritian Creole 40
6.4 Previous studies of the acquisition of Tense, Modality 45
and Aspect
6.5 The development of the TMA system 49
6.5.1 Stage I 49
6.5.2 Stage II 50
6.5.3 Stage III 55
6.6 Concluding remarks 60
7. Modals 61
7.1 Introduction 61
7.2 Modals in adult Mauritian Creole 61
7.3 The acquisition of modals 64
8. The long and short forms of verbs 69
8.1 Introduction 69
8.2 The long and short forms of verbs in adult Mauritian 69
Creole
8.3 The transitive and intransitive distinction in language 73
acquisition
Contents ix
8.4 The development of the long and short forms of verbs 75
8.4.1 Stage I 75
8.4.2 Stage II 79
8.4.3 Stage III 81
8.5 Concluding remarks 82
9. Complex constructions 85
9.1 Introduction 85
9.2 Verbs with complements in adult Mauritian Creole 85
9.3 Previous works 88
9.4 The acquisition of complex constructions 89
9.5 A note on al + V constructions 94
9.6 Concluding remarks 98
10. Negation 99
10.1 Introduction 99
10.2 Negation in adult Mauritian Creole 99
10.3 Previous proposals 104
10.4 The acquisition of negation 105
10.5 Concluding remarks 110
11. Empty categories 113
11.1 Introduction
11.2 The null subject phenomenon 113
11.2.1 Null subjects in adult Mauritian Creole 114
11.2.2 Expletives in adult Mauritian Creole 116
11.3 Null subjects in language acquisition Research 118
11.4 The development of null subjects 119
11.4.1 Stage I 121
11.4.2 Stage II 122
11.4.3 Stage III 124
11.5 Some implications and consequences 126
11.6 Some comments on the null object phenomenon 127
11.6.1 Null objects in adult Mauritian Creole 128
11.7 Null objects in language acquisition research 130
Contents
X
11.8 The development of null objects 131
11.8.1 Stage I 132
11.8.2 Stage II 132
11.8.3 Stage III 133
11.9 Concluding Remarks 133
12. The development of IP 135
12.1 Introduction 135
12.2 The data 136
12.2.1 Stage I (The lexical stage) 136
12.2.2 Stage II (The functional stage) 138
12.2.3 Stage III (The advanced stage) 140
12.3 Conclusions 141
13. General conclusion 143
13.1 A language acquisition model in a Creole setting 143
Notes 145
References 151
Appendix 1: List of tables 159
Appendix 2: Abbreviations used in the text 161
Index 163