Tayo Creole

Tayo, also known as "patois de Saint-Louis", is a French-based Creole spoken in New Caledonia. It is spoken by about 3000 people in the village of Saint-Louis, about from the New Caledonian capital Nouméa. The language developed out of the contact of speakers of many different Kanak languages in the mission, and the use of French for official purposes and as the language of prestige. The language contains structural elements primarily from Melanesian languages and lexical elements mainly from French.

History

Saint-Louis was founded as a Marist mission in 1860 in the early French colonial period of the island, in order to convert the native Kanak population to Christianity and a European way of life. The missionaries took converts from surrounding Kanak tribes, especially the Cèmuhi, Drubea and Xârâcuu to live in the mission. Saint-Louis therefore became a highly multilingual society with a diverse range of Kanak languages as well as French. In order for different ethnic groups to communicate and also because French was the language imposed by the missionaries, a simplified French became the language of communication and the native language of the next generation, which developed into Tayo Creole, mixing French vocabulary with mainly Melanesian language structures.

The Role of the Girls' Mission School

The girls school in Saint-Louis has been widely considered instrumental in creating the conditions for the formation of Tayo, especially by Speedy (2013). There, Kanak girls were schooled in standard French, and Kanak languages were forbidden, although in practice girls used many linguistic resources to communicate such as code-switching, translation and the use of interlanguages. These communicative practices resulted in a form of French with Melanesian structures. Men and boys meanwhile had less exposure to French working in the field. When the girls married husbands from the community their language had greater prestige than Kanak languages, thanks to the ideology of the missionaries. Therefore, despite the societal multilingualism that had been the norm in New Caledonia at the time, in which children would learn the different native languages of their mother and father, couples communicated with each other and their children primarily in simplified French and this became the first language of the next generation, as Tayo Creole.

The impact of Reunion Creole

There has been a debate among linguists as to the impact of Reunion Creole in the formation of Tayo. Chaudenson proposed that Tayo was actually a ‘second generation’ creole, directly descended from the creole language of Reunionese migrants. He based this claim on phonological, lexical and grammatical similarities between the languages and the fact that some Reunionese had settled near Saint-Louis. Ehrhart and Corne refuted this claim, arguing that Tayo contains mainly Kanak structures. Speedy agrees that Tayo is largely structurally Melanesian, although she also argues that Reunion Creole was a type of French that interacted in the formation of Tayo.

Phonology

Grammar

Nouns

Tayo nouns do not display much internal morphology, with some number and definiteness information encoded in modifiers and clitics outside of the noun.

Pluralisation

Tayo nouns can be pluralised with the modifier , which can be contracted to or . This is placed before the noun as shown in example (a):

(a)

PL nun-the/this SI work

“The/these nuns work”

Determiner/Demonstrative

Another nominal modifier is the clitic ''-la'' which can optionally follow nouns to introduce something new or to point to something within reach. This modifier, also present in New Caledonian French, occurs frequently, especially with English loanwords and monosyllabic words. This is demonstrated in example (b):

(b) ''ma uver kapoa-la''

I open tin-the/this

“I open the/this tin”

Possession

Possession is denoted with the preposition ''pu'', placed after the possessed and before the possessor. This is shown in example (c):

(c) ''fij pu ʃef''

daughter PREP chief

“The chief’s daughter”

Personal Pronouns

Personal pronouns are divided into two categories, characterised by Ehrhart and Revis (2013) as dependent pronouns and independent pronouns. The dependent pronouns denote the subject of a clause, and the independent pronouns denote a range of functions including the object, emphatic subject, reflexive subject or possessor. In the dual and 1st and 2nd person plural, both types of pronoun have the same form. Example (d) below shows the dependent pronoun sa in subject position and the independent pronoun ''mwa'' as a direct object. Meanwhile, example (e) shows the independent pronoun ''lja'' as an indirect object, as it is after the preposition ave.

(d) ''sa wa mwa''

they see me

“They see me”

(e) ''nu tro aːᵐbete ave lja depi taler''

we too annoyed with him/her since just.now

“We too are annoyed with him since just now”

Independent pronouns can also function as emphatic subjects. In these cases, the dependent pronoun functions like a clitic, characterised by Ehrart and Revis (2013) as a subject index. This is shown in example (f):

(f) ''mwa ma malad''

I I (SI) sick

“I (emphatic) am sick”

A final use for independent pronouns is in possessive constructions. These are identical to how possession is expressed with nouns, with the independent pronoun placed after the possessive preposition pu, as shown in example (g):

(g) ''kas pu mwa''

house PREP me

“My house” (Ehrhart & Revis 2013)

Verbs

Tense, Aspect and Modality

Tense and aspect, and modality are encoded in markers preceding the verb, as shown in the table below:

Negation

The particle pa is placed before the verb to express negation, in contrast to the French source word pas, which follows the verb. This is shown in example (h):

(h) ''ma pa ule''

I NEG want

“I do not like to”

Imperatives

Imperative verbs are formed with an unmodified verb base, as in example (i):

(i) ''ⁿdesa ⁿde lao, twa''

come.down from up you

“Come down from up there, you!”

Causatives

The marker ''fe'' is said before a verb to denote a causative action, as in example (j):

(j) ''la fe plan ver-la''

s/he make full glass-the/this

“He filled the glass”

Questions

Polar questions are formed the same way like a statement, but with rising intonation, like is often done in spoken French. This is shown in example (k):

(k) ''ta kone ke se mama pu lja?''

you know that PRESV mother POSS him/her

“Do you know that she is his/her mother?”

Content questions likewise are phrased like statements, except with an interrogative pronoun in place of a noun phrase, shown in example (l):

(l) ''ta war ki?''

you see who

“Who did you see?”

Structural Formation

Siegel's (2008) analysis of tense, mood and aspect marking in Kanak substrate languages and Tayo Creole supports the theory that structural features from substrate languages (i.e. in this case, the Kanak languages) are mostly likely to transfer into the creole when they are shared by most of the substrate languages, and the lexifier language (i.e. in this case, French). For example, future tense was marked in two out of three languages analysed as a pre-verbal tense marker. French also frequently express future tense using the verb ''aller'' (‘go’), as a pre-verbal marker. As this verb is most often realised in the 3rd person singular form ''va'', this form was transferred into Tayo Creole as the future tense marker. Likewise, progressive aspect marking occurs in all three languages, and French uses the phrase ''en train de'' with a similar function in pre-verbal position. As such, ''atra ⁿde'' was transferred into the creole language as a pre-verbal progressive marker.

Sociolinguistic situation

Tayo is in a diglossic relationship with French, with French having higher prestige and used in institutions such as education and in jobs, and Tayo mainly relegated to private homes. Tayo is often denigrated as ‘bad French’, with a Tayo speaking woman stating that as a child she was forbidden from speaking Tayo. A survey conducted by Bissonauth & Parish found that out of eight respondents who reported understanding Tayo, only three reported using it regularly.

References

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French-based pidgins and creoles
Romance languages in Oceania