Friday, October 30, 2009, 3 p.m.

Speaker: Miriam Meyerhoff, Department of Linguistics and English Language, University of Edinburgh

Title: Focusing on different targets: Existential constructions in Bequia creole

Place: Woodsworth College, Room 119
(Woodsworth is located at 119 St. George Street) (map)

A reception will follow in the department lounge.

Abstract:

Cross-linguistically, it is common to find existential (or presentational) constructions realised by verbs of possession as well as equative verbs. In the English-based creole spoken on Bequia (St Vincent and the Grenadines), both options exist. In this talk, I examine the linguistic and sociolinguistic factors that condition the distribution of there BE type existentials and it HAVE type existentials. Drawing on a corpus recorded over a period of three years, I discuss two salient points of variation.

• First, the expletive subject (it vs. there),
• second, lack of agreement on the verb with a postposed plural subject (1) vs. plural agreement (2):

1. There is/are N Yeah, there is so jokes when you're in school you know. (BQ.005:621)
2. It has/have NP I like it being alone and it have all kind of book I coulda read (BQ.020:542)

Having established the descriptive facts, I will discuss how variation in the existentials may be the target of some sociolinguistic awareness. Evidence for this comes from the speakers we have called 'urban sojourners’ (Meyerhoff & Walker 2007, i.e. people who have spent substantial time away from Bequia). These speakers focus either on there is/are or on it have. In the latter case, this focusing corresponds with the loss of agreement characteristic of the urban sojourner's stay-at-home peers. The lexical nature of existentials is well-documented in some varieties of English – the Bequia data provides a window on the individual processes that may underlie such lexicalisation.