SEcoKa

My NRF-funded project The syntactic ecology of Kaaps (SEcoKa) really set the course for my post-PhD research career.

Jump to...

SEcoKa corpus

SEcoKa outputs

About SEcoKa

The broad focus of this project is the grammar of Kaaps, a matrilect of Afrikaans spoken on the Cape Peninsula. Generally, Kaaps speakers are multilingual and multidialectal, and Kaaps is one linguistic resource among many, utilised in a range of communicative practices. In accordance with current work in sociolinguistics (e.g. Blommaert 2010; Hornberger & Link 2012; Stroud 2015; Antia 2018), multilingualism – and language more generally – is conceptualised as dynamic, hybrid, and innovative in nature, characterised by high degrees of inter- and intra-speaker variation. Such a conceptualisation of language is conducive to an investigation of Kaaps, which could in one sense be considered a ‘cluster’ of varieties where (sub-) culture and community of practice play important roles (De Vries 2006).

We know from research in syntax on hybridity and innovation in grammatical systems that grammars do not combine randomly, and that even grammatical innovations respect the ‘syntactic ecology’ of the systems in play. It has been understood for a while that grammatical properties of a system are integrated and form clusters that determine the pre-existing conditions of a (potentially mixed) grammatical system such that a change in one part of the system could trigger almost simultaneous changes and ‘cascading effects’ in seemingly unrelated parts of the grammar (Biberauer & Roberts 2008 et seq.). This is what Adger (2017) calls a 'syntactic ecology'.

This project sets out to (i) determine the range and nature of grammatical variation in Kaaps, and (ii) investigate grammatical hybridity and innovation in the grammar of Kaaps. This will lead to a better understanding of emergent properties of socioculturally- and grammatically-driven grammatical variability, from the perspective of syntactic ecology. The study is couched within the broad (post-/late-) modern generative paradigm (Chomsky 1995; 2000; 2005) and will be approached, more specifically, from a neo-emergentist generative perspective (Biberauer 2015; 2017).

Background

History & Development of Kaaps

Kaaps is a heavily contact-influenced matrilectal variety of Afrikaans which is spoken on the Cape Peninsula. It has also been referred to in the literature as 'Cape Vernacular Afrikaans' and 'Cape Afrikaans' (Hendricks 1978:13-26; Le Cordeur 2011:763-766), and more recently by the endonym 'Afrikaaps' (Valley 2010; Williams 2016).

The precise origins and development of Kaaps are difficult to trace (Kotzé 2016). Nevertheless, it is not a “new” variety, and though present-day Kaaps differs substantially from its predecessor(s), it emerged from one of the oldest varieties of Afrikaans, under socioculturally and sociolinguistically “superdiverse” conditions (Hendricks 2016:4). Ad hoc contact between the Khoekhoe and Dutch sailors who occasionally docked at Table Bay since around 1595 (Van Rensburg 2016:51) saw the development of a Dutch “foreigner talk” (Den Besten 1989) or a local koiné (Mufwene 2001; Chaudenson 2001). Fifty years later, with the presence of Dutch settlers, contact stabilized. Between 1665-1795, a yearly average of 2300 Malaysian-Dutch speaking members of the Dutch East India Company passed through the Cape. Slaves brought from Malaysia, Java, Indonesia, India, Madagascar, Angola, and Mozambique, spoke contact varieties from their own regions, e.g. Pasar-Malaysian and Creole Portuguese, and their respective home languages (Hendricks 2016: 4). In early 1800 Bo-Kaap & District Six (BK&DS) were designated slaves’ quarters (Le Cordeur 2016: 84). In the 1950s the Group Areas Act caused the forced removal of inhabitants from BK&DS to Mitchells Plain and other places on the Cape Flats. “That different groupings of the Afrikaans speaking community had lived apart… for so long, led to… divergences in linguistic practices” (Le Cordeur 2016:85; my translation).

Kaaps seems to have developed from what Den Besten (1989) calls Proto Afrikaans I, a “Creole Dutch” spoken by slaves and freemen, with its cradle in the superdiverse BK&DS. The variety of Afrikaans which eventually served as a major basis for standardisation developed from what Den Besten (1989) calls Proto Afrikaans II, a “Cape Dutch” spoken by settlers and slave traders. In BK&DS Afrikaans served communicative purposes at all levels of society, including the practice of religious rites, and medium of instruction in Cape Muslim schools. An orthography based on Arabic script was developed for these functions, and was the first written form of Afrikaans (Ponelis 1994:110-111; Botha 1989; Davids 1991; 2011). During Afrikaner nationalism, Kaaps was circumvented as a resource for standardising Afrikaans (Ponelis 1998; Odendaal 2012), a further example of how Kaaps was marginalised throughout South Africa’s history.

Present-day Kaaps

Speaking of ‘Kaaps’ could create the misimpression that the discussion centres on a single (relatively) homogeneous system. In fact, to the extent that we could consider an idiolect also to be a variety, and expect to find high degrees of both inter- and intra-speaker variation even within the same variety, Kaaps could be considered a ‘cluster’ of varieties where socioculture and community of practice are important factors (Van Rensburg 1989, Klopper 1983, De Vries 2006). Since individuals always belong to various communities of practice, even a hypothetical ‘monolingual’ speaker would hold within her linguistic repertoire various varieties of Kaaps. In this sense, Kaaps speakers (like speakers in general) are ‘multidialectal’ (i.e. in possession of linguistic resources that have high degrees of similarity / mutual intelligibility). Many Kaaps speakers are also proficient in standardised Afrikaans, through formal schooling. Additionally, most Kaaps speakers are also proficient in English and other languages. In this sense, Kaaps speakers in general are also multilingual (i.e. in possession of linguistic resources that have low degrees of similarity / mutual intelligibility outside of the contextualised multilingual practice).

Heavy influence of English is often remarked as a striking property of Kaaps (Ponelis 2009; Hendricks 2016). Some examples provided by Hendricks (2016:7) include lexical ‘borrowings’ (1), which typically inflect and derive on the basis of productive Afrikaans morphology (2). Other hybrid forms include English-Afrikaans compounds (3) and particle verbs (4). In (1-4) the Afrikaans is in ordinary text and English items are underlined.

(1) Loop, en moenie iets try nie, want dan finish ek self die job.

walk and must-not something try neg because then finish I self the job

‘Leave, and don’t try anything, cause then I’ll finish the job myself.’

(Son, “Oom Sonnie”, 17/4/15)

(2) (a) unsettledgeid (lit.: unsettled-ness)

(Snyders: 1983:55)

(b) geleave (lit.: PARTICIPLE-leave; “left”)

(Small: 1964:81)

(3) hawkerkinners (lit.: hawker-children)

(Small 1975:64)

(4) ytgewear (lit.: out-PARTICIPLE-wear; “worn out”)

(Snyders, Die Burger Landelik, 10/5/2001; from Hendricks 2016:22)

Many features, however, do not seem to result from English influence. Hendricks (2016:21-25) lists reduplication of plural, comparative, and possessive morphology (5), as well as adposition doubling; heightened tendency for non-emphatic, non-phonologically conditioned adjectival inflection (6); vir-marking of human objects, reminiscent of differential object marking (7); regularised inflection of auxiliaries (8); heightened tendency to extrapose adverbials and object arguments, and to use of resumption with subjects (9).

(5) onse way van doen (<ons)

our-POS way of do

‘our way of doing (things)’

(De Vries 2010:56)

(6) korte wit skirtjie (<kort)

short-E white skirt

‘short white skirt.’

(De Vries 2010:28)

(7) Hy’t vir Kietie liefgehad.

He-had for Kietie love-had

‘He loved Kietie.’

(Small 1964:51)

(8) Het gekan (<kon)

has GE-can

‘could’

(Small: 1964:81; 54)

(9) Kanna hy’t nou baie geld gemaak.

Kanna he-had now much money made

‘Now Kanna, he made a lot of money.’

(Small 1964:60)

A Sociolinguistic Perspective on Multilingualism

Turns in sociolinguistics have problematised categories like ‘dialect’, ‘language’, ‘standard’, ‘mother-tongue’, etc. as reinforcing harmful socio-politically motivated language ideologies (Weber & Horner 2011), and Dyers (2016) points out the particular relevance of this for Kaaps. Thus, in accordance with current work in sociolinguistics (e.g. Blommaert 2010; Hornberger & Link 2012; Stroud 2015; Dyers 2015a,b; Williams 2016b; Antia 2018), multilingualism – and language more generally – is conceptualised as dynamic, hybrid, and innovative in nature, characterised by high degrees of non-discreet inter- and intra-speaker variation. This work strongly emphasises that a simplistic characterisation of multilingualism as a plurality of isolated monolingualisms is not only inaccurate, but perpetuates harmful and outdated language ideologies. Instead, multilingualism is characterised by intense heteroglossia, which entails linguistic hybridity that intersects language varieties, social and cultural contexts (Bakhtin 1981; Bhatt 2008). The linguistic practices of multilingual, multidialectal individuals, societies, and cultures performing identity by drawing on sets of linguistic resources in linguistic repertoires is described as ‘translanguaging’ (Jørgensen & Lytra 2008) or ‘languaging’ (Pietikäinen et al. 2008; Creese & Blackledge 2010).

A socio-syntactic perspective on grammatical hybridisation and innovation

One vastly underdiscussed way in which speakers exercise their sociolinguistic agency is by exploiting grammatical patterns through combining properties of systems in their repertoires or through grammatical innovation (patterns created ‘from scratch’). E.g. Work on Germanic urban youth varieties – e.g. Kiezdeutsch, Danish Urban Vernacular, Norwegian Urban Vernacular, and Swedish Urban Vernacular – has shown that speakers who are proficient in both the urban and standard varieties of the dominant language have innovated a V3 (‘verb-third’) pattern in the urban variety (cf. discussion summarised in Walkden 2017). V3, which entails finite verbs in main clauses taking third position, is a reorganisation of the V2 pattern in the respective standard varieties, facilitating more transparent information-structuring for narratives (cf. discussion in Problem Statement on superficial V1 in Kaaps, and how this innovation relates to structuring discourse). Another kind of example of sociolinguistic agency exercised through syntax, as Cornips (2014) discusses, involves conscious deviation from a pattern in the codified variety: in relation to the Dutch gender system for common/neuter nouns, speakers of an urban variety in Rotterdam deviated consciously from the “correct” pattern in codified Dutch to mark group identity (cf. also Nortier and Dorleijn 2008: 132). It was also found that bi-dialectal children acquired relevant grammatical patterns in both varieties at a younger age than either monolingual or bilingual children did, suggesting not only that being bi-dialectal is qualitatively different from being bilingual, but also that being bi-dialectal carries an advantage for language acquisition.

Neo-emergentist generative grammar and syntactic ecology

We understand from the discussion above that multilingual communication is essentially hybrid and innovative, yet that grammatical patterns in these emerging systems are not a random ‘anything goes’. It is well understood in generative grammar (Chomsky 1995, 2000, 2005) that acquirers impose a special kind of order on linguistic input. They create complex, coherent systems whose inner working could not have been discerned from the input. This ‘logical problem of language acquisition’ is pertinent in multilingual contexts, where input is highly mixed and variable, as in the case of Kaaps. Neo-emergentist generative theory (Biberauer 2017a,b) offers the ideal lens through which to make sense of the complex facts, and therefore also stands to benefit through integrating the linguistic facts of Kaaps. Tenets are that acquirers (i) pay attention to very particular cues in the input (= systematic departures from arbitrary, Saussure-style form-meaning mappings), (ii) postulate new grammatical features only when the existing features will not suffice (= a general cognitive mechanism to maximise minimal means, which also leads speakers of hybrid systems to exploit all the linguistic means at their disposal), and (iii) follow a general cognitive learning strategy in regulating the function of grammatical features already present in the system, and in deciding when to postulate new ones. These factors, in tandem with an impoverished Universal Grammar, see acquirers creating integrated grammatical systems (from even highly variable input) which then evolve and diversify on individual and societal levels (Mufwene 2001; 2005; 2009, Aboh 2015).

When grammatical properties from different systems combine, or when patterns are innovated, changes respect the ‘syntactic ecology’ of the systems in play. It has been understood for a while that grammatical properties of a system are integrated and form clusters that determine the pre-existing conditions of a (potentially mixed) grammatical system such that a change in one part of the system could trigger almost simultaneous changes and ‘cascading effects’ in seemingly unrelated parts of the grammar (Biberauer & Roberts 2008 et seq.). This is what Adger (2017) calls a 'syntactic ecology'. The complexity and interconnectedness of these systems are typically unobservable until the nature and identity of co-varying grammatical properties are probed, one of the project’s objectives.

Problem statement

Though Kaaps is a topic of ongoing sociolinguistic research, it has never been the focus of extensive and systematic formal linguistic inquiry. To the extent that we could consider an idiolect also to be a variety, and expect to find high degrees of both inter- and intra-speaker variation even within the same variety, Kaaps could be considered a ‘cluster of varieties’ that feature in linguistically and socioculturally highly diverse events and practices. At present, we do not have a very good understanding of the nature and range of grammatical variation in Kaaps, nor do we have a clear picture of the sociocultural factors influencing such variation. In accordance with current work in sociolinguistics (e.g. Blommaert 2010; Hornberger & Link 2012; Stroud 2015; Dyers 2015; Antia 2018), multilingualism – and language more generally – is conceptualised as dynamic, hybrid, and innovative in nature (cf. §3.3). This work highlights the de facto practice of ‘translanguaging’ in multilingual communication, and strongly opposes a simplistic understanding of multilingualism as a plurality of isolated monolingualisms. Generally speaking, translanguaging refers to communicative events and practices in which speakers combine their various linguistic resources, and novel linguistic practices are innovated as emergent properties of combined linguistic resources. The particular focus of the present study is how the grammatical systems underpinning the linguistic resources of Kaaps speakers combine, and what grammatical patterns emerge as a result.

Research in syntax and ‘syntactic ecology’ has shown that grammatical systems do not combine randomly, but respect the syntactic ecologies of the systems in play, and innovations exploit patterns that are available/permissible in the systems. Also, due to the interconnectedness of properties in grammatical systems, a change in one part, whether innovated independently or via contact, may have ‘cascading effects’ in other parts of the system (Biberauer & Roberts 2008). Consider the innovative, superficial V1 (verb-first) pattern in Kaaps, illustrated in (10).

(10) Is sy stupid way van hint dat ek die film moet gan hal…

is his stupid way of hint that I the film must go fetch

‘It’s his stupid way of hinting that I should go fetch the film…’

(Trantraal 2018:49, line 2)

In initial, exploratory work conducted with Theresa Biberauer, it was found that Kaaps, like other varieties, is robustly V2 (verb-second – a grammatical requirement on which the finite verb in matrix clauses must take the second position). Expressions like (1) appear to deviate from this requirement in that is appears first. However, further investigation of the pronominal system of Kaaps reveals that such V1 patterns are in fact fully-fledged V2-structures featuring Kaaps’ characteristic reduced form of the codified Afrikaans dis, a contraction of dit is (‘it/this is’). Dis-reduction in Kaaps is itself an innovation that builds on an innovation: dis in codified Afrikaans is a novel extension of the enclitic copula/auxiliary reduction pattern also seen in hy’s/sy’s/ hulle’t (‘he’s, she’s, they’ve’). This pattern mirrors English, but contrasts sharply with Dutch, where the pronoun, not the copula/auxiliary, may reduce. This change results from verbal deflectionplus bleaching of strong pronominal forms in Afrikaans more generally, with concomitant loss of clitic pronouns. In Kaaps, dit (‘it’) is more generally reduced to it, pronounced [ət] with the Afrikaans i as opposed to the i in Kaaps borrowings of English, which is [i]. These reduced forms contrast with d-initial forms like dai (<daardie = there.the = ‘that’), which also occur in other colloquial Afrikaanses, but serve a distinctive extended information-structure role in Kaaps. More specifically, the contrast between d-initial and d-less forms in Kaaps is used to highlight distinctions between discourse-new and -old information. The availability of d-less forms in Kaaps in turn has consequences for the nature of V2, namely enabling the appearance of surface V1-structures like (1). A proper understanding of the pronominal system, which is seemingly unrelated to the verb movement system regulating V2, reveals how these systems are interconnected, and how the innovation of d-less pronouns in Kaaps has triggered the appearance of superficial V1 patterns.

The overarching goal of this project is to improve our understanding of the interrelatedness of grammatical properties in the system(s) of Kaaps. This will serve not only to gain a better understanding of Kaaps grammar, but will provide new/further insight into the system properties of hybrid grammars and grammatical innovation more generally. Finally, research on the differences between multidialectal and multilingual language acquisition suggests that multidialectalism is (somehow) different in kind from multilingualism. However, this is as yet not very well understood. Research on Kaaps could potentially shed new light on this relatively new area of research, because Kaaps speakers are generally both multidialectal and multilingual.

A driving force of generative inquiry has been the observation that acquirers of all language varieties succeed in constructing grammatical systems of immense complexity, based solely on input that obscures the inner workings of the system. This has been called ‘the logical problem of language acquisition’, and it intensifies in light of the linguistic ‘superdiversity’ exemplified in the case of Kaaps. (Post-/Late-) Modern generative theory not only offers the ideal lens through which to make sense of the complex yet systematic ways in which grammar under contact behaves, but also stands to benefit through integrating the linguistic facts of Kaaps.

Aims & objectives

Aim 1: Describe grammatical patterns in Kaaps

Exploratory research conducted thus far indicates that fruitful properties for investigation will likely include (i) the determiner and pronominal system, (ii) word order and morphological variation in verb clusters, (iii) negation, (iv) morphosyntactic variation in nominals and noun groups, including possessives and partitives, noun ellipsis, and adjectival inflection, (v) information structure, including scrambling, variation in V2, and the pronominal system, (vi) the adpositional system, and (vii) the complementiser system.

Objectives:

1.1 Describe (more and less) prominent grammatical features emerging from the data.

1.2 Establish which grammatical features figure prominently in the data as stable properties, and which grammatical features may be considered as points of variation.

1.3 Establish whether variation occurs along social and (sub-) cultural parameters, and what these may be.

1.4 Establish whether variation coincides with (degrees of) multilingualism and/or multidialectalism

1.5 Identify and describe hybrid patterns and grammatical innovations.

Aim 2: Explore and analyse Kaaps socio-syntax

Objectives:

2.1 Determine which grammatical patterns are deemed socioculturally meaningful by speakers, and what indexical values are attached to such patterns.

2.2 Determine the grammatical nature and function of patterns which speakers deem socioculturally meaningful.

2.3 Determine the range and degree of control which multilingual and multidialectal speakers exercise over variations in their repertoires.

2.4 Determine how what is found for Kaaps is similar/different to what’s been found in other socio-syntax studies (e.g. English).

Aim 3: Explore and analyse the syntactic ecology of Kaaps

Objectives:

3.1 Investigate co-varying grammatical patterns to determine the possible interconnectedness of governing grammatical properties

3.2 Determine how grammatical features behave upon recombination in cases of linguistic hybridity.

3.3 Determine how grammatical innovations function within the larger ecology of grammatical systems.

Aim 4: In partnership with SADiLaR (https://rma.nwu.ac.za/index.php/about-sadilar/), build and publish a digital corpus with data generated from the project.

Report abuse