Social entrenchment’ and the evolution of copula systems in West African Pidgin Englishes

Abstract

Social factors in language contact are not well understood. In this talk, I seek to establish and explain the role of ‘social entrenchment’ in the evolution of contact languages. Copula systems (the expression of being) in the African English-lexifier contact languages Pichi (Equatorial Guinea), Cameroon Pidgin, and Ghanaian Pidgin carry a genealogical signal of their Krio ancestor and its Yoruba substrate, as well as an areal signal from the African and European languages spoken in their respective ecologies. The amount of areal borrowing increases in the order Pichi < Cameroon Pidgin < Ghanaian Pidgin. This order is reflective of the depth of ‘social entrenchment’, a bundle of demographic and socio-linguistic characteristics. The results suggest that the copula systems of Pichi, Cameroon Pidgin and Ghanaian Pidgin did not emerge in situ through pidginization, nor are there other features that suggest ‘abnormal transmission’. Instead, uniformitarian principles of language transmission and change, including genealogical inheritance, areal borrowing and adaptation have colluded in shaping the features of the copula systems of these contact languages in ways determined by social factors proper to each ecology.