Hostname: page-component-84b7d79bbc-x5cpj Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-08-05T07:12:48.531Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Variability in the use of perfect have in Trinidadian English: A problem of categorial and semantic mismatch

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 November 2008

Donald Winford
Donald Winford
Affiliation:
The Ohio State University
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Sociolinguistic situations that involve interplay between standard and nonstandard varieties have posed certain difficulties for the analysis of variation at the morphosyntactic level (Harris, 1984; Milroy, 1987). In particular, there is the problem of defining the scope and relevant contexts of morphosyntactic variables—a problem closely linked to that of identifying the semantic equivalence in terms of which the variable is defined (Cheshire, 1982; Romaine, 1984). This article addresses such issues by examining variation in the use of perfect have and its alternatives in the Trinidadian creole continuum. The alternatives to have include other Standard English (SE) forms (e.g., the past), as well as forms like perfective Ø, completive done, and others which function in the Trinidadian Creole (TC) system. The analysis is based on data from a sample of speakers from different social backgrounds. The variation described here is part of a wider pattern involving different strategies for expressing the various meanings associated with the perfect in SE, namely, the “continuative,” “experiential,” and “resulative” interpretations of have. TC employs different strategies for expressing these meanings. Perfective Ø is used (along with apporopriate adverbial specifications) to convey the experiential meaning; progressive -in, Ø copula, or Ø-marked statives convey the continuative sense; and completive done competes with prefective Ø to convey the resultative sense. All of these may vary with have. I discuss at length the procedures that are used to define the variable and the equivalents of have that are identified. A quantitative analysis reveals clear patterns of variation according to class, subcategory of perfect, and predicate type. The differences in the use of have are explained in terms of varying degrees of influences from vernacular norms among the social groups, as well as the availability of alternative choices to have within the pragmatic and grammatical environments. Finally, I indicate the implications of this investigation for the study of morphosyntactic variation in other divergent dialect situations. Specifically, the findings are relevant to situations, such as AAVE, which involve variation between standard and nonstandard strategies for expressing the meanings associated with the perfect and other morophosyntactic categories.

Type
Research Article
Information
Language Variation and Change , Volume 5 , Issue 2 , July 1993 , pp. 141 - 187
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1993

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Anderson, Lloyd B. (1982). The “perfect” as a universal and as a language specific category. In Hopper, Paul J. (ed.), Tense-aspect: Between semantics and pragmatics. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. 227–264.Google Scholar
Bauer, Georg. (1970). The English ‘perfect’ reconsidered. Journal of Linguistics 6:189–198.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bickerton, Derek. (1973). On the nature of a creole continuum. Language 49:640–669.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bickerton, Derek. (1975). Dynamics of a creole system. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Brinton, Laurel J. (1988). The development of English aspectual systems. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Chambers, J. K., & Trudgill, P. (1980). Dialectology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Cheshire, Jenny. (1982). Variation in an English dialect: A sociolinguistic study. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Cheshire, Jenny. (1987). Syntactic variation, the linguistic variable and sociolinguistic theory. Linguistics 25:257–282.Google Scholar
Christie, Pauline. (1991). Modality in Jamaican creole. In Edwards, W. & Winford, D. (eds.), Verb phrase patterns in Black English and Caribbean creoles. Detroit: Wayne State University Press. 223–239.Google Scholar
Comrie, Bernard. (1976). Aspect: An introduction to the study of verbal aspect and related problems. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Crystal, D. (1966). Specification and English tenses. Journal of Linguistics 2:1–34.Google Scholar
Dahl, Osten. (1966). Tense and aspect systems. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.Google Scholar
Dušková, L. (1976). On some differences in the use of the perfect and preterite between British and American English. Prague Studies in Mathematical Linguistics 5:53–68.Google Scholar
Fasold, Ralph. (1972). Tense marking in Black English: A linguistic and social analysis. Washington, DC: Center for Applied Linguistics.Google Scholar
Fasold, Ralph. (1991). The quiet demise of variable rules. American Speech 66(1):3–21.Google Scholar
Fenn, Peter. (1987). A semantic and pragmatic examination of the English perfect. Tubingen: Gunter Narr.Google Scholar
Garcia, Erica C. (1985). Shifting variation. Lingua 67:189–224.Google Scholar
Harris, John. (1984). Syntactic variation and dialect divergence. Journal of Linguistics 20(2):303–327.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jaganauth, Dhanaiswary. (1987). Predicate structures in Guyanese creole. Master's thesis, University of the West Indies, Jamaica.Google Scholar
Jespersen, Otto. (1924). The Philosophy of grammar. London: George Allen and Unwin.Google Scholar
Kallen, J. (1986). The co-occurrences of do and be in Hiberno–English. In Harris, J., Little, D., & Singleton, D. (eds.), Perspectives on the English language in Ireland. Dublin: Trinity College. 133–148Google Scholar
Kruisinga, Etsko. (1931). A handbook of present-day English, Part II. English accidence and syntax. Vol. 1 (5th edition). Groningen: P. Noordhoff.Google Scholar
Labov, William. (1969). Contraction, deletion and inherent variability of the English copula. Language 45:715–762.Google Scholar
Labov, William. (1978). Where does the sociolinguistic variable stop? A response to Beatrice Lavandera. Working papers in sociolinguistics 44. Austin, TX: Southwest Educational Development Laboratory.Google Scholar
Labov, William. (1982). Building on empirical foundations. In Lehmann, W. P. & Malkiel, Y. (eds.), Perspectives on historical linguistics. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. 79–92.Google Scholar
Labov, W., Cohen, P., Robins, C., & Lewis, J. (1968). A study of the non-standard English of Negro and Puerto-Rican speakers in New York City. Report on Co-operative Research Project 3288. Washington DC: Office of Education.Google Scholar
Lavandera, Beatrice. (1978). Where does the sociolinguistic variable stop? Language in Society 7:171–182.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Leech, Geoffrey N. (1971). Meaning and the English verb. London: Longman.Google Scholar
Lyons, John. (1986). Semantics. (Vol. 1). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
McCawley, James D. (1971). Tense and time reference in English. In Fillmore, Charles J. & Terence Langendoen, D. (eds.), Studies in linguistic semantics. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston. 97–113.Google Scholar
McCoard, R. W., (1978). The English perfects: Tense-choice and pragmatic inferences. Amsterdam: North-Holland.Google Scholar
Milroy, Lesley. (1987). Observing and analysing natural language. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.Google Scholar
Rand, David, & Sankoff, David. (1988). Goldvarb, version 2: A variable rule application for the MacIntosh. Centre de recherches mathématiques Université de Montréal.Google Scholar
Reichenbach, H. (1947). Elements of symbolic logic New York: Macmillan.Google Scholar
Richardson, Carmen. (1991). Habitual structures among Blacks and Whites in the 1990's. American Speech 66(3):292–302.Google Scholar
Rickford, John. (1975). Carrying the new waves into syntax: The case of Black English BIN. In Fasold, Ralph & Shuy, Roger (eds.), Analyzing variation in language. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press. 162–183.Google Scholar
Rickford, John, & Blake, Renee. (1990). Coupula contraction and absence in Barbadian English, Samaná English and Vernacular Black English. In Hall, Kira et al. (eds.), Proceedings of the Sixteenth Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society [BLS 16]. Berkeley, CA: Berkely Linguistics Society. 257–268.Google Scholar
Romaine, Suzanne. (1980). On the problem of syntactic variation: A reply to Beatriz Lavandera and William Labov. Working Papers in Sociolinguistics 82. Austin, TX: Southwest Educational Development Laboratory.Google Scholar
Romaine, Suzanne. (1981). The status of variable rules in linguistic theory. Journal of Linguistics 17:93–121.Google Scholar
Romaine, Suzanne. (1984). On the problem of syntactic variation and pragmatic meaning in sociolinguistic theory. Folia Linguistica 18:409–437.Google Scholar
Sankoff, Gillian, & Thibault, P. (1977). L'alternance entre les auxiliaires avoir et être en français parlé en Montréal. Langue Française 34:81–108.Google Scholar
Schneider, Edgar W. (1983). The diachronic development of the Black English Perfective Auxiliary phrase. Journal of English Linguistics 16:55–64.Google Scholar
Tagliamonte, Sali, & Poplack, Shana. (1988). How Black English past got to the present: Evidence from Samaná. Language in Society 17:513–533.Google Scholar
Trudgill, Peter. (1974). The social differentiation of English in Norwich. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Weiner, E. J., & Labov, W. (1983). Constraints on the agentless passive. Journal of Linguistics 19:29–58.Google Scholar
Weinreich, Uriel. (1954). Is a structural dialectology possible? Word 10:388–400.Google Scholar
Winford, Donald. (1980). The creole continuum in the context of sociolinguistic studies. In Day, Richard (ed.), Issues in English Creole — Proceedings of the 1975 Hawaii conference. Heidelberg: Julius Groos Verlag. 51–76.Google Scholar
Winford, Donald. (1984). The linguistic variable and syntactic variation in creole continua. Lingua 62:267–288.Google Scholar
Winford, Donald. (1992a). Another look at the copula in Black English and Caribbean creoles. American Speech 67(1):21–60.Google Scholar
Winford, Donald. (1992b). Back to the past: The BEV/creole connection revisited. Language Variation and Change 4:311–357.Google Scholar
Winford, Donald (1993). Predication in Caribbean English creoles. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Wolfram, Walt. (1969). A sociolinguistic description of Detroit Negro speech. Washington DC: Center for Applied Linguistics.Google Scholar
Wolfram, Walt. (1991). The linguistic variable: Fact and fantasy. American Speech 66(1):22–32.Google Scholar
Wolfram, Walt, & Christian, Donna. (1976). Appalachian speech. Washington DC: Center for Applied Linguistics.Google Scholar
Youssef, Valerie. (1990). The early development of perfect aspect: Adverbial, verbal and con-textual specification. Journal of Child Language 17: 295–312.Google Scholar
Zaandvoort, R. W. (1932). On the perfect of experience. English Studies 14:11–20.Google Scholar