Contact-induced variation and change in Yoruba
Description
The English-Yoruba contact situation has been described from various perspectives ranging from code- mixing/switching (e.g., Bamiro 2006) to loanword adaptation (e.g., Ufomata 2004). Some researchers such as Bamgbose (2004) approach this contact situation from the viewpoint of language attrition and death. What has been largely ignored, however, is how the grammar and lexicon of Yoruba are being restructured due to the influence of English. What is rarer still is a variationist study of this contact situation. Against this background, this dissertation investigates English-induced phonological, syntactic, and lexical changes and variations in Yoruba from the viewpoint of a Minimalist-theoretic Optimality Theory (OT) model called “Computation Mode approach to OT” (CM OT, proposed in the dissertation), which models general linguistic knowledge. Apart from analyzing these changes and variations using CM OT, the dissertation shows how they are sociologically conditioned (using the methods of variationist sociolinguistics) and the social meanings attached to them (using ethnographic methods). Based on 120 sociolinguistic interviews, 18 months’ worth of participant observation, and grammaticality judgement, the dissertation shows that Yoruba has changed from a language that makes categorical choices against consonant clusters and codas to a language that permits them variably in seven different sub-grammars. The dissertation also records several ongoing syntactic changes. For example, a mid-tone syllable has emerged which marks transitivity on loan verbs. A variation is also now attested where native verbs select accusative weak pronouns while loan verbs select genitive weak pronouns. Also, English loanwords are found to have increased significantly between the 1960s and 2000s. The emergence and spread of contact-induced innovative forms in contemporary Yoruba are mainly constrained by the kind of location where people live (city, town, or village), how old they are, and how much education they have rather than by their gender or the Nigerian state in which they live. The variation between innovative and conservative forms is also constrained by social meanings: contact-induced forms thrive on Yoruba people’s yearning for upward socio-economic mobility and their desire to construct the identity of a cosmopolitan self while native forms rely on some Yoruba peoples’ desire for authenticity.