Full Description
If I Could Turn My Tongue Like That, by Thomas Klingler, is an in-depth study of the Creole language spoken in Pointe Coupee Parish, Louisiana, a community situated on the west bank of the Mississippi River above Baton Rouge that dates back to the early eighteenth century. The first comprehensive grammatical description of this particular variety of Louisiana Creole, Klingler's work is timely indeed, since most Creole speakers in the Pointe Coupee area are over sixty-five and the language is not being passed on to younger generations. It preserves and explains an important yet little understood part of America's cultural heritage that is rapidly disappearing.
The heart of the book is a detailed morphosyntactic description based on some 150 hours of interviews with Pointe Coupee Creole speakers. Each grammatical feature is amply illustrated with contextual examples, and Klingler's descriptive framework will facilitate comparative research. The author also provides historical and sociolinguistic background information on the region, examining economic, demographic, and social conditions that contributed to the formation and spread of Creole in Louisiana. Pointe Coupee Creole is unusual, and in some cases unique, because of such factors as the parish's early exposure to English, its rapid development of a plantation economy, and its relative insulation from Cajun French.
The volume concludes with transcriptions and English translations of Creole folk tales and of Klingler's conversations with Pointe Coupee's residents, a treasure trove of cultural and linguistic raw data. This kind of rarely printed material will be essential in preserving Creole in the future. Encylopedic in its approach and featuring a comprehensive bibliography, If I Could Turn My Tongue Like That is a rich resource for those interested in the development of Louisiana Creole and in Francophony.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments xv
Abbreviations and Symbols xix
Maps xx
Introduction xxv
PART I Sociohistorical Background 1 (134)
Chapter 1 Colonial Louisiana 3 (22)
1.1 Exploration and Early Settlement of 3 (3)
Louisiana
1.2 Slaves 6 (1)
1.3 Economic Activity and Social Relations 7 (10)
1.4 Population Growth in the Spanish Period 17 (8)
1.4.1 Europeans 17 (3)
1.4.2 Re-Africanization Under Spanish Rule 20 (3)
1.4.3 Geographic Distribution of the 23 (2)
Slave Population
Chapter 2 The Development of Louisiana Creole 25 (68)
2.1 Evidence from Early Texts 25 (21)
2.2 The Creolization Process 46 (14)
2.3 The Question of African Influence on 60 (9)
Louisiana Creole
2.4 The Question of Multiple Geneses of 69 (24)
Louisiana Creole
Chapter 3 Pointe Coupee Parish 93 (42)
3.1 The Setting 93 (2)
3.2 Exploration and Early Settlement 95 (7)
3.3 Development of a Plantation Economy and 102 (3)
Growth of the Slave Population
3.4 Americanization 105 (5)
3.5 Creole Among Whites 110 (9)
3.6 The Dominance of English in the 119 (9)
Post-War Period
3.6.1 The Mechanization of Agriculture 119 (1)
3.6.2 Education 120 (8)
3.7 Louisiana Creole in a Broader 128 (2)
Francophone Context
3.8 Creole and English in Pointe Coupee 130 (1)
3.9 The Effects of Language Loss 131 (4)
PART II Grammatical Description 135 (238)
Chapter 4 Preliminaries 137 (22)
4.1 Methodology 137 (1)
4.2 Speakers Consulted for the Study 138 (4)
4.3 English Words 142 (1)
4.4 The Phonological System of Louisiana 143 (10)
Creole and the Notation of Creole Sounds
4.4.1 Consonants 144 (3)
4.4.2 Semiconsonants 147 (1)
4.4.3 Vowels 148 (5)
4.5 The Division of Lexical Units 153 (4)
4.6 Editing of Transcribed Speech 157 (1)
4.7 Descriptive Framework 157 (2)
Chapter 5 The Noun Phrase 159 (75)
5.1 Nouns 159 (12)
5.1.1 Nouns with an Agglutinated Element 159 (9)
5.1.1.1 Group 1: l-, n-, z- 160 (2)
5.1.1.2 Group 2: la-, le- 162 (4)
5.1.1.3 Group 3: di-, du- and de-, dez- 166 (2)
5.1.2 Unagglutinated Nouns 168 (1)
5.1.3 A Cross-Creole Comparison of 168 (2)
Agglutination
5.1.4 Gender 170 (1)
5.1.5 Number 170 (1)
5.2 Determiners 171 (27)
5.2.1 Indefinite Determiners 171 (1)
5.2.2 Definite Determiners 172 (9)
5.2.2.1 Functions of the Determiners 176 (1)
5.2.2.1.1 The Marking of Specificity 176 (1)
5.2.2.1.2 Deictic Properties of the 178 (1)
Definite Determiners
5.2.2.2 A Cross-Creole Comparison of 179 (2)
Definite/Deictic Determiners
5.2.3 Demonstrative Determiners 181 (5)
5.2.3.1 A Cross-Creole Comparison of 184 (2)
Demonstrative Determiners
5.2.4 Possessive Determiners 186 (6)
5.2.4.1 A Cross-Creole Comparison of 190 (2)
Possessive Determiners
5.2.5 Quantifying Determiners 192 (5)
5.2.6 Cardinal Numbers 197 (1)
5.3 Adjectives 198 (8)
5.3.1 Prenominal Adjectives 198 (7)
5.3.1.1 Descriptive Adjectives 198 (5)
5.3.1.2 Indefinite Adjectives 203 (2)
5.3.1.3 Ordinal Numbers 205 (1)
5.3.2 Postnominal Adjectives 205 (1)
5.4 Pronouns 206 (28)
5.4.1 Personal Pronouns 206 (6)
5.4.1.1 A Cross-Creole Comparison of 212 (1)
Personal Pronouns
5.4.2 Possessive Pronouns 212 (5)
5.4.2.1 A Cross-Creole Comparison of 215 (2)
Possessive Pronouns
5.4.3 Demonstrative Pronouns 217 (1)
5.4.4 Indefinite Pronouns 218 (7)
5.4.5 Relative Pronouns 225 (9)
5.4.5.1 Relative Clauses with Explicit 225 (3)
Antecedents
5.4.5.2 Relative Clauses with No 228 (1)
Explicit Antecedent
5.4.5.3 Relativized Prepositional 229 (1)
Objects
5.4.5.4 Relativization of Nouns of Place 230 (1)
5.4.5.5 Relativization of Nouns of Time 231 (1)
5.4.5.6 Genitive Relative Clauses 231 (3)
Chapter 6 The Verb Phrase 234 (139)
6.1 Verb Morphology 234 (17)
6.1.1 Diachronic and Regional Comparisons 234 (2)
6.1.2 Verbs in Pointe Coupee 236 (13)
6.1.2.1 The Distribution of Long and 237 (5)
Short Forms in Pointe Coupee
6.1.2.2 Verb Forms 242 (1)
6.1.2.2.1 Verbs with Multiple Forms 242 (1)
6.1.2.2.2 Verbs with a Single Form 247 (2)
6.1.3 A Cross-Creole Comparison of Long 249 (2)
and Short Verb Forms
6.2 Preverbal Markers of Tense, Mood, and 251 (22)
Aspect
6.2.1 A Note Concerning Grammatical Tense 251 (1)
6.2.2 Marked and Unmarked Verbs 252 (1)
6.2.3 The Anterior Marker te 253 (2)
6.2.4 The Progressive Markers e and ape, 255 (3)
ap
6.2.5 The Future Markers a and sa 258 (3)
6.2.6 The Conditional Marker se 261 (1)
6.2.7 The Marker bin 262 (1)
6.2.8 A Cross-Creole Comparison of 263 (10)
Preverbal Markers
6.3 Auxiliary Verbs 273 (14)
6.4 Causative Constructions 287 (1)
6.5 The Copula 288 (16)
6.5.1 Zero-Copula Structures 288 (2)
6.5.2 Se 290 (5)
6.5.2.1 Se as Copula 290 (3)
6.5.2.2 Presentative se 293 (2)
6.5.3 The Copula ye 295 (1)
6.5.4 The Copula 鑼, ete 296 (2)
6.5.5 Other Copulative Verbs 298 (1)
6.5.6 A Cross-Creole Comparison of the 299 (5)
Copula
6.6 Reflexive Verbs 304 (3)
6.6.1 A Cross-Creole Comparison of 305 (2)
Reflexive Verbs
6.7 Impersonal Expressions 307 (4)
6.7.1 Existential Expressions 307 (2)
6.7.2 Other Impersonal Expressions 309 (2)
6.8 Verbs in Serial-like Constructions 311 (2)
6.9 The Imperative 313 (2)
6.10 The Passive 315 (3)
6.11 Comparison 318 (2)
6.11.1 Expression of Inequality 318 (1)
6.11.2 Equality 319 (1)
6.12 Negation 320 (9)
6.13 Interrogative Structures 329 (6)
6.13.1 Yes-or-No Questions 329 (1)
6.13.2 Partial Questions 330 (5)
6.13.2.1 Interrogative Pronouns 330 (2)
6.13.2.2 The Interrogative Adjective ki 332 (1)
'what, which'
6.13.2.3 Interrogative Words as Objects 333 (1000)
of Prepositions
6.13.2.4 Interrogative Adverbs 1333
6.14 Adverbs 335 (20)
6.14.1 Adverbs of Time 335 (9)
6.14.2 Adverbs of Place 344 (4)
6.14.3 Adverbs of Manner 348 (2)
6.14.4 Adverbs of Degree, Quantity 350 (5)
6.14.5 Interrogative Adverbs 355 (1)
6.14.6 Negative Adverbs 355 (1)
6.14.7 Other Adverbs 355 (1)
6.15 Prepositions 355 (9)
6.15.1 Circumstantial Complements Not 355 (1)
Introduced by a Preposition
6.15.2 The Preposition d, d 356 (1)
6.15.3 Prepositions of Time 357 (1)
6.15.4 Place, Direction, Situation 358 (3)
6.15.5 Manner, Attribution, Motive 361 (2)
6.15.6 Cause, Origin 363 (1)
6.15.7 Opposition, Separation, Exception 363 (1)
6.15.8 Union, Conformity 363 (1)
6.16 Conjunctions 364 (11)
6.16.1 Coordinating Conjunctions 364 (3)
6.16.2 Subordinating Conjunctions 367 (6)
6.16.2.1 Subordination Without 367 (1)
Conjunctions
6.16.2.2 Subordination with ke (var.), 368 (1)
ki (rare) 'that'
6.16.2.3 Conjunctions of Time 368 (2)
6.16.2.4 Conjunctions of Cause 370 (1)
6.16.2.5 Conjunction of Goal or Purpose 370 (1)
6.16.2.6 Conjunctions of Concession 371 (1)
6.16.2.7 Conjunctions of Condition 372 (1)
6.16.2.8 Conjunction of Comparison 372 (1)
PART III Interview Excerpts 373 (146)
Chapter 7 Conversations in Creole 375 (144)
7.1 Interview with LD 376 (2)
7.2 Interview with RD 378 (3)
7.3 Interview with KS 381 (6)
7.4 Interview with AS 387 (8)
7.5 Interview with GL 395 (6)
7.6 Interview with NF 401 (24)
7.7 Interview with YC and JL 425 (37)
7.8 Interview with ME 462 (35)
7.9 Interview with MP 497 (22)
Works Cited 519 (16)
Glossary 535 (70)
Index 605
