Grounding via Tense-Aspect in Tobagonian Creole: Discourse

Strategies across a Creole Continuum

1. Introduction

In Anglophone Caribbean Creole tense-aspect systems, one finds

the following markers, among others: Ø, bin~en/did, and -ed.1

These markers have been assigned different functional labels in

those systems by researchers working largely with maximally

decontextualised sentences and, to a lesser extent, with longer

pieces of discourse. Labels which find most general acceptance

are, respectively, perfective for Ø, remote past for bin~en/did,

and SE simple past for –ed. As a perfective form, Ø has been

observed to have the different contextual meanings of ‘past

punctual’, ‘present stative’, and ‘present habitual’, (cf, e.g.,

Bickerton, 1975; Winford, 1994). Bin~en/did, too, the former

basilectal and the latter mesolectal, have been observed to have

different contextual meanings, namely, ‘remote past’, ‘past

before past’, and ‘simple past’. –Ed has almost universally been

treated automatically as an SE marker with the SE meaning of

‘simple past’, and, therefore, has not been focused on in its co-

1

occurrence with the others in oral Creole discourse (see Youssef,

1995 for an exception).

This set of markers appears in discourse, particularly

narrative discourse, in different relationships, which have not

been fully specified by researchers; such relationships include

specific oppositions and partnerships. To the extent that

functional consistency can be found it is analytically more

promising, and such consistency can be achieved through a fuller

specification of the oppositions and partnerships in which the

forms participate in narrative discourse. The purpose of this

paper is to arrive at this consistency for the markers Ø,

bin/did, and –ed through a specification of their roles in

Tobagonian oral and written narratives as markers of foreground

(Ø) and background (bin/did and –ed). Our argument entails the

substitution of -ed for bin~en (basilect) and did (mesolect) in

the transition area between Creole and Standard, which area is

still relatively unexplored in its own right (cf. Youssef, 1995;

James, 1997).

Not all speakers in the Tobagonian sociolinguistic complex

exploit the various oppositions discussed, particularly the one

2

between -ed and Ø. On the one hand, the latter may entail a

speaker’s being at a very particular stage in an ongoing process

of interlanguage development between the Creole and the Standard.

Specifically, the speaker has to have had sufficient exposure to

SE to be utilizing its dominant markers, but to be at a stage at

which:

(s)he continues to utilize some of them with Creole

functions, a use we label ‘calquing’, but which is

described in SLA literature by various terms, including

‘transfer’, ‘L1/substratum influence’, and ‘L1/substratum

retention’; and

(s)he still utilizes Creole markers for

purposes/functions which do not have full equivalents in

the Standard system.

This is non-problematic in the oral mode but becomes problematic

in the written because of the appropriacy of consistent SE usage

therein. From our data collection in Tobago, we have been able to

ascertain that SE have+-en is marginal to the competence of the

majority of speakers and SE had +-en is absent for the majority

(for details see Youssef, 1998). Deviations from regular SE

3

usage fossilize in this framework, including the generalization

of a broad range of Creole ‘past’ functions to the most dominant

marker, SE-ed. Such semantic deviations would not appear if the

systems in contact were semantically equivalent. They appear

precisely because of partial correspondence or congruence, but

overall non-equivalence of semantic content in the structures

entailed, such that speakers with insufficient exposure to the SE

features perceive synonymity (cf. most recently, Hodge, 1998).

They reflect a shift in the perceived Standard towards an

interlingual transitional system between Creole and Standard,

which now presents itself in both the formal oral mode as well as

the media, written and spoken, as the norm.

The –ed/Ø opposition can occur for a speaker with full

control of the SE system, however, in situational contexts which

(s)he perceives as allowing of mixing. In such circumstances, a

speaker might capitalize on the richness of immediacy present in

the semantics of Creole Ø to season his/her narrative, and

simultaneously alternate between Creole and Standard forms that

support the opposition of background and foreground. There is the

potential in an oral creole continuum space for mixing varieties

4

in contact effectively to produce a fuller semantic system than

either variety alone contains2.

The analysis which follows is presented in six sections,

beginning from Section 2 which provides a summary of the claims

we are making in the paper. Section 3 presents a discussion of

2 To evidence this Creole retention by fully competent SE

speakers, we present a statement of the semantic validity

and uniqueness of the Creole by a female lawyer and

government representative who is a master of both Creole and

Standard. While she would hardly mix codes in her writing,

since her competence and knowledge of appropriacy norms

dictate full use of SE in that mode, she mixes codes

frequently in speech. Her rationale is as follows:

‘I have been finding that those who have more or less

mastered the standardized range, , are craving a …

moving back to seeking to master Creole…. There is

something which has courted me all the time: I have

found to express certain ideas of mine, …there’s a fine

little area that, to me, I can’t find the words in the

5

the structure of narrative as a basis for the eventual discussion

of the Tobagonian narratives in the framework delineated therein.

Section 4 presents the oral texts of mature Tobagonian speakers

and the analysis of the relevant forms. Section 5 contrasts –ed

with Ø in the written texts of students at an interlingual stage

of proficiency in SE. Section 6 presents conclusions.

Standard language to express.’

In reference to the immediacy conveyed by TobC Ø, she

states:

‘…to me it’s superior, that little, little nuance of a

thing that you trying to say. It’s economical. ..I

have never been able to find a way to express it with

the kind of power, vividness that I want…. That is the

only one….’

As long as such speakers as the one above are functioning in

the oral mode, they will seek means of enhancing their

discourse via the full range of tense-aspect markers

available to them in the Creole-Standard communicative

6

2. Claims Being Made

Our informants use the oppositions bin VS Ø, did VS Ø, and -ed VS

Ø to contrast background and foreground in narrative in

space. For those who are at an interlanguage stage, however,

where they are pressed into the written mode (for example,

students), errors and inconsistencies occur because of the

demands of that mode.

1

NOTES

? The typical ACC system is composed of three subsystems or

lects: basilect, mesolect, and acrolect. The basilect is

the subsystem furthest removed from Standard English (SE);

the acrolect is the subsystem closest to SE; and the

mesolect is the collection of subsytems in between (cf.,

e.g., Winford, 1994). Ø is shared by all the subsystems,

7

Tobagonian Creole (TobC); bin, did, and –ed are the marked

members of the oppositions. Foreground is used here to refer to

psychological ground, containing events and states that are

construed to be non-remote in the narrator’s recall, whereas

background is used to refer to psychological ground where the

narrator deposits events and states that s/he construes as remote

(James, 1997)3. This opposition is elaborated further in Section

3 below. Bin fulfils the backgrounding function in the basilect,

did in the mesolect, and -ed in the transition area between the

mesolect and Standard English (SE). This transition area is a

fourth creole space, manipulated by speakers mixing the contact

codes in the mesolectal/SE range of the continuum. The

backgrounding function of bin, did, and –ed is semantically

motivated, and the semantic property which facilitates this is

remoteness, which subcategorises anteriority. The foregrounding

function of Ø is enabled by the unmarked semantic property of

bin and en are basilectal markers (the ~ indicates that they

belong to the same subsystem), and –ed belongs to the

acrolect as well as the mesolect where it functions to

calque a number of creole functions.

8

non-remoteness, which subcategorises notions like relevance and

in some cases recency; it allows for denotation of situations

that the narrator wants to highlight, and is often associated

with perfect aspect (cf. Youssef, 1990).

In both oral and written modes, Ø is essentially assigned a

foregrounding function, with a greater frequency in the oral

mode, while -ed is assigned a backgrounding role, with a greater

frequency in the written mode. For some speakers acquiring SE in

the written mode, however, -ed is used as the majority form for

past reference, including both simple past and past-before-past

contexts. At this stage, -ed covers the full range of past

reference, and, at least temporarily, semantic oppositions in

this time space are lost. The oppositions in question are

presented diagrammatically below:

Table 1: The discourse markers in alternation in Creole-Standard

transition space.

Background

Basilect Mesolect Transition area

Bin Did SE-ed

Semantic gap-Remote Past no grounding Past specificationPast before past

9

Foreground

Basilect Mesolect Transition Area

Ø Ø SE-ed generalized

Perfective Semantic Gap-Perfect of recency; no groundingResult specificationPast

Alongside the fundamental oppositions under discussion,

there is a partnership between perfective marker (Ø), and

imperfective markers (a/in)g), that supports the foregrounding

function, while simultaneously contrasting momentary or punctual

events with others that are construed as stative or time-

extensive. The pivotal element in the partnership is the

denotation of the internal temporal constitution of the

situation, rather than the time the situation occurred.

Basilectal and mesolectal perfective Ø marks events as momentary

and states as time-extensive, but both are regarded as a single

complete whole; basilectal imperfective a and mesolectal

imperfective -in(g) both mark events with regard to their

internal structure as ongoing, in process or incomplete. In this

regard they appear superficially as not different in meaning

intent from the present progressive in English (cf. Leech, 1971;

10

Kilby, 1984). It also embraces the Reference Time in the time

span which it covers as specified by Hatav (1993) for Present

Progressive in English. However, the creole –in(g) is somewhat

different in scope and range from the SE form. It) is regularly

used to specify the ongoingness of temporary states e.g. I feelin

tired. It also marks events that began in the past and continue

down to the present e.g. I livin here ten years, which would be

marked by present perfect in SE. In the basilect, preverbal a

e,g. He a go is a general imperfective marker which embraces

habituality and generic meanings as well as ongoingness, and the

distinction among imperfective subcategories is first realized in

the mesolect under influence from English. Further, there is

nothing in the grammar of the imperfective markers that indicates

time of occurrence4.

In the background, there is a similar partnership between –

ed and was+-in(g), but, this time, tense becomes a relevant

feature, in the SE exponents –ed and was at mesolectal level.

These forms mark past time of the situation, and the relevant

contrastive denotation is one of remoteness.

11

The opposition of past-denoting markers and tenseless

aspect-denoting markers allows of the notion of a continuum from

foreground to background supported by Longacre (1981) and

Fleischman (1985) and discussed further in Section 3 below. The

continuum is represented diagrammatically for the mesolectal

creole space we are dealing with as follows:

was+-in(g) -ed||a/in(g)Ø

+high -high -high +high

Background Foreground

In the background, -ed fronts was+-in(g) because of its

perfective nature, while in the foreground, Ø fronts a/in(g) for

the same reason.

The placement of elements of evaluation, including internal

explication, within the foregrounded component allows for support

of the notion of a continuum from background to foreground. It

allows us to make a distinction between two points on the

continuum labelled {+high} foreground and {-high) foreground: the

former can be taken to refer to perfective denoted activity in

the foreground and the {–high} foreground to imperfective denoted

12

activity. In other words, {+high} matches story-line movement

while {–high} matches story-line evaluation and explication.

An example of the alternation in question is given below from one

of our oral narratives:

1. ‘after shooting the deer we kudn find the way out at all.

We walk all over the forest. We kyaa find the way out. Gettin

dark. So we thought ‘Allright, we’ll have to sleep.’ That was

after night fall. But anyhow we passed the river….In the

morning we get up about four o clock, the old cock crowin.

That was in the estate.

Here we notice a foreground partnership between perfective Ø and

imperfective –in(g} (in the advancement of the story-line) in a

time-frame identified as ‘After shooting the deer’; that time-

frame includes part of morning and stretches throughout the day

into the next morning. The entire narrative advances quickly

through 10 events which are denoted by Ø , and by 2 negators with

nonpast forms (kyaa and eh) full. Explicatory elements, however,

are marked by -in e.g. Gettin dark, cock crowin and was: That was

13

in the estate. All of these serve to deictically ground the story

internally.

3. The Structure of Narrative

The literature on discourse shows that different types of

discourse have their own structure. Narrative has been found to

have a macro-form that is sub-divided into predictable components

which themselves are predictably structured in terms of both

thematic content and linguistic apparatus. Longacre (1983), for

example, developed a grammar of discourse in which there are

components like ‘aperture’, ‘peak’, and ‘finis’, all thematically

and linguistically differentiated. Labov (1972) established the

following components for oral narrative: Abstract, Orientation,

Complicating Action, Evaluation, Result or Resolution and Coda.

This schema is taken up, with some modification, by Fleischman

(1990).

Many researchers also recognise the two different grounds in

narrative that are the concern of this paper, namely, foreground

and background, which serve different purposes within the phases

of the narrative in question. The foreground is a place for the

14

main points of the narrative (Hopper and Thompson, 1980),

complicating action and peak (Labov, 1972, Fleischman, 1990),

narrative advancement (Hatav, 1989), main structures (Van

Kuppevelt, 1995), thematic focus (Pollard, 1989; Givon, 1984)),

while the background has been seen as a depository for material

that ‘assists, amplifies and evaluates’ the events of the

foreground (Hopper and Thompson, 1980:280)

Our analysis of Tobagonian oral and written texts draws

particularly on the work of Labov (1972) and Fleischman (1990)

for narrative phases since those delineated give a close fit with

phases of our own narratives, and on Fleischman (1985; 1990), for

the phenomenon of grounding.

Fleischman analyzed grounding in Old French texts delivered

in the oral mode and subsequently written down, isolating the

grounding strategies at a point where the society in question was

making the transition from purely oral to written and oral modes.

Our own discussion links the oral to the written mode and defines

writing strategies in terms of a gradual transition from orality

to writing.

15

Fleischman (1985) argues that, as speakers, we organize

reality via narrative, quoting Ong (1981:12) who notes:

‘Reality never occurs in narrative form…The totality of what

happened to, in and around me since I got up this morning is

not organized as narrative. To make narrative I have to

isolate certain elements out of the unbroken seamless web of

history with a view to fitting them into a particular

construct.’

Since the foreground-background contrast seems to reside in

psychological functions for ordering reality, it is likely that

it will be realized in all languages. It is generally argued

(cf. Herweg, 1991, Givon, 1984) that grounding contrasts are

worked out, in SE, via an opposition between past-marked

perfective (for foreground) and past-marked imperfective (for

background) since the story line is carried forward via event

verbs marked by the simple past, while supportive material is

denoted by stative verbs marked by the simple past, and event

verbs in the progressive form.

16

This particular opposition is not always necessarily

fundamental to the distinction in question, however. As noted

earlier, we have found that perfective and imperfective can be

used in partnership in either foreground or background to fulfil

different functions within foregrounded or backgrounded space.

Internal description or evaluation may be rendered in the

imperfective in foregrounded space, whereas the sequence of

events will be rendered by perfective forms.

Further to this point, we agree with Longacre (1981) and

Fleischman (1985) that a clustering of defining properties allows

for the realization of a continuum from foreground to background

according to the number of relevant features entailed in any

given presentation of reality. This gives substantiation to the

possible combination of non-tensed imperfective forms to

foregrounded contexts, and past-tensed ones to backgrounded

contexts, in our analysis.

Foreground contains:

events that advance the main story line in a discourse

stream;

17

what is perceived as important by the speaker who is

ordering reality according to his/her consciousness of

it; James (1997:263-4) argues that ‘past-time narrative

is conceived of… as consisting of two time lines which

are psychological grounds where past situations are

deposited by the speaker. [It is] the psychological

foreground where past situations in the primary or

immediate focus of the speaker are deposited’5;

what is contextually unexpected or unknown.

Background, in contrast, contains:

events that are not necessarily ordered on a real time-

line in direct relation to one another;

the backdrop to the main story line: relevant explanatory

material via commentary and evaluation, and including

reference to established states or conditions at the time

of the narrative.

There is a significant division between speech-time evaluation

(external) and discourse time evaluation (internal); the latter

18

is more foregrounded than the former and may be expressed by

imperfective marking within foreground space. Internal evaluation

is embedded in the action itself. Fleischman (1990:145-154)

locates it just before or after the pivotal point of the

narrative, which she labels the Peak, or before the Resolution.

Internal Evaluation is associated specifically with oral

narrative and External with more formal discourse. Various

devices may be used in the course of narrative ‘to demonstrate

its significance to the point the narrator is seeking to make’

(Fleischman, p 147). These include lexical evaluators as well as

direct quotation of the narrator’s own words. An example from one

of our student essays is given below:

This extract was produced by a fifth form student recounting a

ghost story. As a whole, it utilizes SE-ed for the Orientation of

the discourse and shifts to Ø for the Peak of the Complicating

Action:

2. It was one summer holiday my brother and I decided to go

by our aunt in the coast, to spend our vacation. Up there

my aunt has two children, a boy and a girl. So we had

19

intentions of enjoying ourselves in a big way. But during

morning and evening period we bathe and then sat down and

told joke on one another. On one night our aunt Sally came

in an join us. She said, “Every night I heard you all

making noise.” I the pushy one jump [up] and said, “We make

jokes on one another and laugh.” “Is that so?” Aunt Sally

said. “Do you remember long ago people use to believe in

ghosts and so forth? Yes? Well I am going to tell you one.

“It was a night your grandmother sent your father and I to

our school party, and told us not to let twelve o’clock meet

us outside.

The backdrop is set with the use of SE-ed such that the

paragraph above uses that form consistently except for bathe

(line 3), an apparent lapse, and jump up (line 5). The writer

describes how the children came to be staying at their aunt’s

home giving us a general time-frame with the characteristic

features of Orientation, namely time, place, participants and

activity. Then she comes down to the specifics: On one night our

Aunt Sally came in an join us, leading in to the orientation

conversation with their aunt before she told them the focal

story. This whole section is external, explicating how the aunt

20

came to tell the ghost story. Following from this, however, we

meet an internal orientation in which the aunt sets the specific

scene for the complicating action: It was a night your

grandmother sent your father and I to our school party, and told

us not to let twelve o’clock meet us outside

In summary then:

Narrative space allows of a grounding continuum from

background to foreground in the main phases of narrative

such that orientation, complicating action, peak,

evaluation, and coda, may be worked out differentially.

Orientation is generally represented in the background

part of the continuum.

The main story-line is advanced in the [+high]

foreground.

What is psychologically significant is found in the

[+high] foreground.

Narrative evaluation occurs in both the [-high]

foreground and the background.

The reconciliation can be tabulated as follows:

21

BACKGROUND FOREGROUND

[+high]

Foreground

[-high]

Foreground

Abstract

Orientation

Complicating

Action; Peak.

Internal

Evaluation;

Resolution

External Evaluation

Explication

Notwithstanding certain phonological and syntactic

constraints on the production of -ed among our informants, which

possibly account for the production of some Øs, we are able to

account for most verbal exponents of the opposition in question

via a discourse function analysis based on this grounding

opposition.

4. Grounding in ACC: A search for consistency

22

The markers Ø, bin~en, and did convey past time reference and are

distributed between Trinidadian Creole (TC) and Tobagonian Creole

(TobC) as follows. Ø and did are shared by both, while bin~en are

unique to TobC. The difference between them is that Ø marks non-

remote perfective situations, while bin~en (basilectal) and did

(mesolectal) both mark remote or relative past. Since the latter

most usually occurs first, providing a backdrop for the former,

it is ordered first in our discussion.

Winford (1994) describes the bin of Eastern Caribbean

Creoles as ‘a true past marker’ (66) ‘blind to the stative-non-

stative distinction’. He sees past marking as its primary

function. He allows also of a backgrounding discourse function,

however, and concurs with Pollard (1989), who, for Jamaica,

specifies parallel remote past marker en as carrying specifically

background information. He argues that the opposition of

background and foreground which she comments upon also accounts

effectively for the ‘ubiquity of the unmarked verb (Ø) and the

selective rarity of bin’ (Winford 1994:66).

An example from our own Tobago data of the opposition of bin and

Ø is given below:

23

3. ‘Well, thing bin cheap. The money small really but you kuda

make am through. So then after that me come an me get married.

And then thing bin little stiffy-stiffy. An me lef them an me

go back a road and start to work. Well, the little period of

time me start to work a road there, thing get brighter. Me

come an me buy a car. It bina waa cortina…. Them days five

dollars bina plenty money.’

In this extract the speaker’s evaluation of the past state of

affairs he is discussing, is marked primarily by bin and bina,

whereas the stream of narrative which advances the main story

line is supported by Ø in association with subsequence

adverbials. These latter serve to introduce a specific time-frame

e.g. So then after within a broader general time-frame already

established.

The major difference between Winford’s analysis and our own

is that he focuses on past marking as the primary feature of the

opposition while we focus on the discourse function. We

acknowledge, however that the discourse function is motivated by

the semantics of remote pastness in bin/did as distinct from the

24

immediacy of Ø. It is the discourse function, however, that gives

consistency to the analysis.

This relative consistency is explicated further in Jaganauth

(1988), who pinpoints the remote past function of Guyanese bin as

signalling that ‘relevance of the named event is to a state of

affairs prior to the present time (or the time of current

focus).’ (8). For Jaganauth, the distinction between bin and Ø is

that between currently relevant and non-currently relevant, and

she argues that ‘temporal forms (are) capable of serving both

referential and non-referential purposes.’ The distinction in

question is different from that in English between perfect and

past since bin and did can actually affirm the lack of relevance

of the verbal event e.g She did come to bring me the rent last

week but I was not there. (Implicit: She still owes me the rent).

In her analysis, she makes a case for bin (and, by implication,

did in the mesolect ) signalling a shift in reference time from

speech time to some other focus time for the speaker. In extract

3 above, there is a general focus time and a specific focus time.

The focus-time shift accounts well for the trivalent time reading

of the form relative to speech time, which may be remote past,

past before past or simply past, a range early noted also by

25

Bickerton (1975:36). The consistency in usage is in the very

shift of focus mentioned in Jaganauth’s analysis, which, may also

signal an aside, a digression or, as Jaganauth argues in a later

paper (1998), a shift in theme, where theme encompasses both the

selection of events to be used in narrative as well as the

grounding perspective taken towards them. Bin is differentiated

from Ø in its severely limited ability to denote situations that

advance the main narrative stream; it distinctly favours

situations that form a thematic background to the story-advancing

events.

As in the typical Creole, Ø in TobC is the most ubiquitous

of markers. It is used in different types of discourse with

different effects, but always with the meaning of non-remote. Its

varied use is briefly illustrated below:

Main-clause description and explanation using both stative and non-

stative verbs:

4. He hair well cut. It look good. (stative)

5. Me-own want a good shaping-up. (stative)

6. He score a goal! Dwight score! (punctual)

26

7. She carry she lunch today. (punctual)

Adverbials and subordinate clauses:

8. When he wake up he go have to wash the wares. (temporal)

9. If he meet bad company, he go follow them. (conditional)

Developed specific-frame narrative:

10. Girl, yesterday he take a 2-litre bottle and he carry it in

school. He take one with ice, because they having party so

they sharing up sharing up. Some friend now tell him for

come go down in Real Valu [supermarket] for go buy ice-cream

or something. He gone with he friend. Well, they leave the

thing a school…. (The specific frame is that denoted by

‘yesterday’; the narrative is developed in the sense that it

advances from Ø–denoted event to Ø–denoted event.)

Developed general-frame narrative:

11 Things was so nice at that time that you kuda achieve

anything if you did want to. Because, you know, well, thing

27

bin cheap. The money bin small really, but you kuda make am,

though. So then after I leave school, I went off to do some

carpentry trade. And then me come and me get married. And

then thing been little stiffy-stiffy. Then it take a little

period of time before the golf course come, and the golf

course people come and them open the golf course, and me

start to work with them there. (The general frame is the

broad stretch of time spanning the history of the speaker’s

experiences from his leaving school to his landing a job

with the golf course operators. The narrative develops in

the sense of moving from Ø–denoted event to Ø–denoted

event.)

Just as bin has a range of potential time orientations, so

there is an apparent ambivalence in the tense-aspect orientation

of Ø: once a remote past marker like bin or did occurs, it

appears that Ø, which marks perfective aspect explicitly

(Winford, 1994:33), can be used in reference to precisely the

same time orientation. It has been argued that it is only

necessary once in an oral stream to signal past marking

(Robertson, p.c), but all our experience indicates that markers

are generally used contrastively. Further polysemy has arisen in

28

the description of Ø, for it has been listed as primarily

punctual in aspectual orientation, and past in referential

orientation (Bickerton, 1975), but it often readily denotes the

notions of presentness, habituality, recency, current relevance,

and resultativity (c.f. Youssef, 1990; Jaganauth, 1988; Winford,

1993, 1994). Jaganauth argues that such descriptive

inconsistency will always occur if we persist in perceiving such

markers as primarily referential, and she makes a case for the

primacy of non-referential meaning. We concur with her in this

view.

Through the above analysis of the opposition between bin and

Ø, stability of treatment can be found in their discourse roles,

which pinpoint the relative saliency of separate phases of

narrative.

5. The Oral Texts

It is necessary now to examine our oral texts in order to

substantiate the claims made so far, both for the functions of

foregrounding and backgrounding as manifested in the opposition

between Ø and SE-ed and the effective utilization of this

29

opposition by our Tobagonian informants in oral narrative

discourse. From there, we will proceed to a discussion of the

utilization of the same markers in some student written discourse

to ascertain the extent of similarity and transition in usage of

forms.

5.1. Extract 1

The discourse is an oral narrative from 69 year-old FJ who

recalls the disastrous hurricane Flora, which struck Tobago in

1963.

It can be clearly divided into four major phases. First,

there are two phases of the same sort (Orientations) where the

narrator sets the background scene. In the first, he introduces

the overall theme (Hurricane Flora), tells us where he was in

relation to it and what he was doing (Englishman’s Bay junction,

where he was part of a team building a road), and sets the time-

frame (the morning of September 3, 1963). In the second, he

introduces a particular series of events in the narrative, these

events being separated from the previous set by his evaluation of

the scenario: And it was terrible. It was very terrible… It was

30

very terrible. There are two narrative streams of Complicating

Action, wherein events are piled on top of one another, giving a

striking effect of psychological focus/immediacy.

The componentiality of the discourse as described is

justified on the basis of the different narrator perspectives as

well as on the basis of the differential use of tense-aspect

markers within each.

12. You were here during Hurricane Flora? You had any bad

experiences in that?

Phase 1

FJ. Well, Hurricane Flora, this time, we call it the

projek, this road was cutting from the Grange Road into

Parlatuvier. And when one mornin, Monday morning, I kud

remember, the 3 rd September 1963, the projek took the

officers by Englishman’s Bay junction.

Phase 2

31

An the rain sta:t to fall, an everybody get in the shed, an

seein this high wind an tree fallin down. But anyway, we dere,

never experience it, so we didn make joke on the thing until

when we sta:t to get serious. And everybody sta:t to run to

look for home. An when we reach River’s Dale, Mr Lord’s

estate, we saw that house fall down. Well everybody sta:t to

get scared now. Everybody try an try. At that time, heavy

rain, heavy rain. You had to lie down on your belly until it

ease up. And when we come by the school up there we sta:t to

see houses over by Richmond Hill fallin down. So everybody

sta:t to get scared. And it was terrible. It was very

terrible.

Phase 3

Well, my house only lose a few sheets of galvanise, not much.

And I house fifteen people for two weeks. I house them

because their house break down. All their tools wet up an so

on. And it was very terrible. I kud remember my mother had

the two youngest children, a boy and a girl.

Phase 4

32

This time when my wife leave home and go to the neighbour,

when she hear they house fall down. So when I came home, the

rain not so heavy, I meet my mother-in-law stand up by the

corner with the last baby. She was just about six months

old. The next boy was just about a year and three months.

And he hold on to her an he sta:t to holler ..an I feel so

sorry for the little boy an I say ‘Nah.’ I say ‘Baby, doh be

afraid; nothin go ( ) yuh.’ And I put him down an I went

round to see the wife. And a little girl, a neighbour leave

the little child home and went to the same neighbour house

that fall down. An when the girl doh see the mother come back,

girl so afraid she leave home and when the wind come, the

wind lift her carryin her away, I ha: to run out and—

(Interviewer interruption cuts off narrative.)

Background elements are underlined.

5.1.1 Phase 1: Orientation 1

Here, the narrator sets the scene for the first vivid narrative.

He places Flora at a ‘time’ when a road was being cut, denoting

the cutting itself with was+in, and setting the time-frame with

33

the adverbial ‘And when one morning’ which he specifies as a

Monday morning, September 3, 1963. In this way the Orientation

sets the scene temporally. On that morning, the road-cutting

exercise had reached Englishman’s Bay junction, and he denotes

the past-before-past fact with SE-ed, again parallelling later

tokens in the written narratives of secondary school students.

This phase of the Orientation places the scene spatially.

It is worth noting that, within this background phase, TobC

Ø occurs once in an aside which labels the exercise in question:

We call it the projek. The statement is parenthetical to the main

discourse stream, but this does not prevent an immediacy of

perspective on the labelling event, not only for F, but also for

others who experienced Flora. The hurricane is one of Tobago’s

more memorable historical events, and it made so strong an

impression that events associated with it may easily be resident

in the foreground of the consciousness of those who experienced

it.

5.1.2. Phase 2: Complicating Action 1

34

We see here a now familiar pattern, namely the opposition between

–in and Ø in a stream of immediate narrative. Here we note again

that the contrastive use of forms marks a different way of

looking at the events in terms of their psychological saliency.

Of special interest here is the series of inceptive verbs sta:t

to. Aspectually, inceptivity is often placed within perfect

aspect, and, quite clearly here, it heightens the immediacy of

the entailed action or state. Three of the six tokens do specify

the inception of a state, bringing an action phase to an

otherwise stative condition.

Within the stream, we have a fast moving sequence of events

then, denoted by Ø (mostly), -ed, and in, which advance the

narrative, as well as being highly salient to the speaker’s

consciousness. We also find the use of past had, evaluating the

circumstances being depicted

5.1.3 Phase 3: Orientation 2

At two points in the discourse stream, FJ makes his evaluation:

It was very terrible. This cuts into the stream of immediate

discourse, which resumes:

35

‘Well, my house only lose a few sheets of galvanise, not

much. And I house fifteen people for two weeks. I house them

because their house break down. All their tools wet up an so

on.’

Here he provides us with the immediate resolution of the

crisis after the hurricane has immediately passed. Then he

repeats his evaluation and places the events again in his own

memory by the follow-up statement: I kud remember my mother had

the two youngest children, a boy and a girl. Hence, the SE-ed

forms pattern in a complex narrative phase which has three

functions: 1) resolution; 2) evaluation, and 3) deictic

specification of the narrative scenario. It takes us forward

temporally and prepares us for the next phase of Complicating

Action.

5.1.4. Phase 4: Complicating Action 2

36

Within the deictic focus specified in the previous background

phase, FJ here specifies a time point for his immediate focus:

‘This time’ when my wife leave home and go to the neighbour, when

she hear the house fall down. This serves to re-orient us to the

phase of action immediately within the resolution period when, at

its Peak, a small child is almost blown away. The storyline is

moved forward by TobC Ø. The heightening of immediacy via direct

speech is again evident.

Past copula was is used in reference to the ages of the two

youngest children at the time of the incident: She was just about

six months old. The next boy was just about a year and three

months, and there is a single token of Subject+ Adjective (rain

not so heavy) These are explicatory elements, those concerning

the children linking back to Phase 3 where the same children had

given a deictic focus to the narrative in question, which is here

complemented.

The four phases of the discourse fall naturally into neat

components of backgrounded (the Orientation phases) and

foregrounded material (the Complicating Action phases, where

37

narrative movement is married to narrative evaluation). –Ed in

partnership with was and was in(g) is preferred for the

Orientation and the Evaluation, while Ø in partnership with in(g)

is preferred for the advancement of the narrative in the

Complicating Action phase.

5.2. Extract 2

This extract is a narrative discourse from a much younger man,

LD, a 29-year-old karate/aerobics instructor. We include it to

show the strategies described above followed through consistently

for a much younger individual. The second phase of this discourse

is however, evaluative and temporally more complex than any

section we have dealt with before.

Briefly then, he here describes an incident in which he claims

to have seen a ‘jumbie’.

13. It have a partner there name Rickie. We use to go down in

the gully there an get karab, plenty manaku trap an ting we

use to set. An a day we go down there, man, an I settin a

manaku trap an a bee pass an say, like whisper ‘Livvy’. Under

38

the cover I see a man goin tall, tall, tall. It have a lot of

jumbie down there, you know; plenty jumbie; it have what the

people call jablaisse an mama bois an plenty thing. So this

day, wha happen - I set the trap an after I set the trap I

watch the thing ‘til it go out of sight. I never go back in

the gully down there. That mus be about 15 years ago.

As time go by, I see mih nephew an dem goin down the road

there now an nothing happenin. So I sayin ‘Whe: dem tings

gone?’ Mi eh know if the light, - jus before when we was

livin, before we live here - when we cut down this place here to

put down this place here- People say we goin an live a

gully, an if you check the place now is actually a street now,

people livin there. Civilization come to the place’. Further

in the back down dey - people pass down there - you kud pass

through twenty-one gully, go down, buss out Green’s Bay an

after Green’s Bay you go across where you meet Mt. Irvine. As

a young fella when we ran away from home them is the track I

use to pass - go down Green’s Bay, then mi go across to Mount

Irvine there:

39

This narrative has two main phases, an Orientation and

Complicating Action, culminating in a Result/Coda, depicted in

our paragraph 1. The second phase is a time-now Evaluation of

what has gone forth since the discourse time depicted in our

paragraph 2.

5.2.1. Orientation, Complicating Action and Coda

LD sets the background scene using habitual use to to

contextualize the background of regular activity of himself and

his friend which was cut off by the incident. The Orientation

provides us with the place, participants and activity once again.

Then he comes to the specific temporal frame when he saw the

‘jumbie’ highlighting it with Ø: An a day we go down there. He

recounts the sequence of events throughout this incident using

the in(g) and Ø partnership in the foreground. At the end, he

brings us back to speaker time via the first Coda we have

encountered using Ø: I never go back there. That mus be about 15

years ago. It gives us a direct result and bridges ‘the gap

between the end of the story and the present’ (Fleischman,

1990:138)

40

5.2.2. Evaluation

The remainder of the extract comes down to the present as LD

describes the changes that have come to pass, alternating time

reference rapidly between then and now and departing from

sequential narrative altogether. We see Ø in a perfect temporal

function here, spanning the gap from past to present:- ‘As time

go by, I see mih nephew an dem goin down the road there now an

nothing happenin. So I sayin ‘Whe: dem tings gone? ’ Mi eh know

if the light,… Also: Civilization come to the place, a

significant utterance providing us with a second Coda in this

extract. An interesting use of Ø is noticed in the introduction

of the contextually unexpected: People say: ‘we goin an live a

gully.’

LD uses was +-in for an aside, referring to a remote earlier

time, which he specifies, apparently for clarity, by temporal

adverbials: before jus before when we was livin, before we live

here, when we cut down this place. He orients us again,

curiously, at the end of the extract, once again using SE-ed in

partnership with use to to specify an earlier time period, the

time of his childhood, the backdrop to the focal story.

41

This third phase departs from the narrative pattern we have

come to expect in a temporally complex Evaluation, but, in the

midst, maintains the major grounding divisions that we have come

to expect.

All in all, herein we observe the partnership of +-in (g)

with Ø for [-high] and [+high] foreground, specifically within

the focal narrative advancement of the main story line. In

contrast, was+-in with SE-ed are used for [-high] and [+high]

background, support for which is provided twice by adverbial

specification. Use to is brought in to specify habitual marking

in the background Orientation (Our Tobago data indicate greater

current usage of use to by young people than old in present day

Tobago (cf. Youssef, 1998) which would explain this phenomenon.

The Coda is foregrounded.

Thus far, we have found relative consistency in the marking

of the grounding phenomenon in oral Tobagonian discourse. At

this stage, it is pertinent for us to shift to a consideration of

the shifting relationships among forms under a stronger

constraint towards SE production.

42

6. SE-ed v Ø in written narrative

The system shifts as we move from oral to written narrative and

there is a correspondingly greater demand for the production of

SE forms. What we now seek to explain therefore is:

1. The increasing usage of SE-ed in written narrative,

usurping TobC Ø in some forgrounding contexts;

2. The consistent use of SE-ed for backgrounding functions

in mono-varietal SE written discourse, most specifically,

the use of SE-ed in mono-varietal contexts demanding SE

had+-en.

Opposition between Ø and SE–ed persists at this level but is more

irregular due to the constraint towards production of SE-ed. The

point must be made that Ø still occurs most in foregrounding

contexts, reflecting the semantic reality that those functions

associated with Ø cannot be fully located in any SE form to which

the group in question have access. Thus, to make a contrast

which we have already described as ‘an essential component of

narrative’ (Fleischman, 1985:852), our informants very naturally

produce the Ø form. It is unsurprising, then, that James

43

(1997:149) found that, in the written narratives of his student

informants, ‘[t]he most frequent function of VØ was the

denotation…of past eventive situations that participated in the

actual development of a story’.

The very non-stigmatized nature of the Ø form in the stream

of oral discourse contributes to the felicity with which it is

transferred to the written mode. However, the constraint towards

SE in the new mode engenders much more inconsistency in the

production of Ø; students slip towards it in foregrounding

contexts and then retreat, rendered inconsistent by the

psychological conflict engendered by the demands of competing

systems.

SE-ed increases in production dramatically, but

unsurprisingly, the most frequent function of PAST in the

narratives of James’ students is ‘the backgrounding of recalled

information’ Such information consisted of ‘facts, thoughts,

feelings, reasons, explanations and anything else recallable, …

(mostly, not exclusively) where the situations were relatively

earlier than those in the related clauses.’ (James, 165). It

was found that ‘the second most frequent function’ of SE-ed was

44

the tripartite one of setting the background to the events that

would be focused on, introducing a prior (usually eventive)

situation into an episode, and introducing a flash-back episode

into the developing story. (168) The third most frequent function

of PAST was ‘to look back on or conclude an episode or the story

itself.’ (170). James concluded with a potential rule,

consistent with our oral discourse analysis:

‘Use PAST to denote events and states in the background of a

story.’ (174).

6.1. The Written Texts

Because of space constraints, we include only two extracts in

this section; each is typical of many more of its own type.

We begin with a text which supports the foreground-background

opposition played out in the oral discourse, although Ø is more

restricted, being reserved for the Peak of the Complicating

Action.

45

6.1. Extract 1

This extract has already been introduced in Section 3 (Structure

of Narrative) where it is numbered (1), and where it was used to

illustrate the structure of narrative, particularly the

differentiation between internal and external evaluation through

the use of different verbal markers. The text is repeated here

as (14).

14. It was one summer holiday my brother and I decided to go by

our aunt in the coast, to spend our vacation. Up there my

aunt has two children, a boy and a girl. So we had

intentions of enjoying ourselves in a big way. But during

morning and evening period we bathe and then sat down and

told joke on one another. On one night our aunt Sally came

in an join us. She said, “Every night I heard you all

making noise.” I the pushy one jump [up] and said, “We make

jokes on one another and laugh.” “Is that so?” Aunt Sally

said. “Do you remember long ago people use to believe in

ghosts and so forth? Yes? Well I am going to tell you one.

46

“It was a night your grandmother sent your father and I to

our school party, and told us not to let twelve o’clock meet

us outside. We said, ‘Okay.’ On our way your father say,

‘Let us go home after twelve and see what will happen.’ I

said, ‘Fine.’ On our way back home we started, and I don’t

believe in the long ago nonsense. I saw a woman in front so

I said, ‘We’ve got company. Let’s walk fast.’ As we reach

close to her we see she way, way ahead of us, and she start

to laugh and the voice echoing all around us. Well now we

frighten. Then we start seeing more and more; like she make

a circle and we in the middle. Well the more we run the

more we see. Well I start crying and say, ‘When children

have their own way and who don’t hear will feel.’ Then I

look up the road and I saw a man coming with a light and

everything just vanish like if it was a bad dream. I said,

‘I shall never again in my life venture out after midnight.’

As stated in Section 3, the student utilizes SE-ed for the

Orientation of the discourse and shifts to Ø for the Peak of the

Complicating Action. The aunt takes up the Complicating Action,

which begins with the use of SE-ed as she sets the background to

the ghost’s appearance. Her only Ø-marked form to this point is

47

the stative negative don’t believe: ‘On our way back home we

started and I don’t believe in the long ago nonsense’ , describing

a state which represents an all-time condition for the aunt,

which is also contextually unexpected in view of what she is to

describe immediately following.

She switches to Ø at the point at which they started to

encroach on ‘the ghost’ -- the Peak of the immediate narrative,

the writer’s focal point in writing, where the excitement level

is at its height and the story is advancing most rapidly. At

this Peak, there are 10 instances of Ø, identified in bolded

verbs.

The transition back to SE-ed is worked out as the incident

is broken by the arrival of a ‘man with a light’, which resolves

the situation and evaluatively dismisses it: everything just

vanish like it was a bad dream. The final sentence reverts to SE-

ed as the narrator closes with the lasting result of the

incident, also an internal evaluation: I said , ‘I shall never

again in my life venture out after midnight.

48

The greater restriction on the use of Ø is clearly evidenced

in this written extract, then,.with only the most vivid central

focal point retaining the oral foregrounding form under the

writing constraint to produce SE.

6..2 Extract 2

This is a fifth-form extract from an essay on ‘The Wedding’, in

which there is a generalized, little-differentiated usage of

simple past forms, whether BE-ed., HAVE-ed, or main Ved to denote

past.

15. Pricilla and Tom were the perfect couple and they came from

wealthy families. They were both very much in love and they

both decided to get married. They wanted their wedding to be

the biggest and best wedding in the state. Pricilla was a

very attractive, blue-eyed blonde, and nothing else matters

to her than marrying Tom. He was everything to her. Tom on

the other hand was not totally ready for a lifelong

commitment. He was still searching, but although he loved

Pricilla, he had his eyes on other beautiful women.

49

Pricilla had never dreamed that Tom would be unfaithful to

her. She always thought of him to be the contented type.

June 28th was the day Pricilla had always dreamed of . It was

her wedding day. The day Tom and her will be joined

together. She had everything she wanted badly – puff lace

wedding gown with matching accessories with real diamond.

To Tom this was just another ordinary day for him. He wore

the simplest three-piece suit and he walked just elegant.

Each guest had invitation and had to show it before

entering. All the guests were all seated in their numbered

seats and the matrimonial ceremony began. The organist

began to play the usual wedding song as Tom and Pricilla

strolled down the aisle hand in hand. The congregation stood

up and the priest began to conduct the ceremony.

While the priest was about to complete the ceremony by

saying the final words, a woman all dressed in black and

masked appeared in the church carrying revolver, and as the

priest said ‘man and wife’, she fired shots at everyone.

50

The bride was found lying in a pool of blood; her puffed

lace white dress was no longer white but red in colour.

Guests ran to her assistance. As they held her hand, she

whispered her last word ‘Tom’. But Tom was nowhere to be

found.

Days later, it was discovered that Tom ran away with the

masked woman. They both was having an affair while Tom was

engaged to Pricilla. He later confessed that he never really

loved Pricilla; he loved Sarah who rescued him. And the

wedding paid.

All phases of the narrative are rendered by –ed in its various

manifestations. The first paragraph serves as an Orientation and

includes an Internal Evaluation of the scenario by the bride. No

more do we find the main story line carried forward by Ø; the Peak

of the writer’s narrative, as well as other phases of the

Complicating Action, is rendered by SE-ed:

The bride was found lying in a pool of blood; her puffed

lace white dress was no longer white but red in colour.

Guests ran to her assistance. As they held her hand, she

51

whispered her last word ‘Tom’. But Tom was nowhere to be

found.

Superficially now, the bulk of the essay appears to be SE.

(In this particular extract, erroneous SE forms are bolded). A

novel token of Simple Present occurs in sentence 3: Pricilla was a

very attractive, blue-eyed blonde, and nothing else matters to

her than marrying Tom. It is noteworthy because the writer seems

to be seeking a way of making matter durative, perhaps not seeing

this possibility in the correct SE-ed form. There are two

correct tokens of had +-en in the early part of the essay

Creole forms are not present, save in the non-agreement of

past continuous was+-in(g). Closer inspection, however, reveals

the omission of SE had+-en in at least four obligatory cases,

namely ran away, was having, loved (1st token) and rescued.

These instances of –ed suggest that the writer is at an

interlingual stage, not entirely familiar with the past perfect

form and tending to generalize -ed across the board. Since the

form introduces a prior focus time, it would have been naturally

rendered in the Creole by bin or did. Since the student has

eschewed the use of those markers under the constraint of written

52

discourse, a remaining option is -ed, a form which has already

shown a fit with broad backgrounding functions.

It seems from these extracts that neither SE-ed nor SE had+-

en is fully established in these students’ grammars and that they

have made a shift across to generalized usage of SE-ed for past

reference. James (1997) has offered a number of suggestions for

this level of development of SE had+-en, the most pertinent of

which to our discussion is the following:

They may represent an interlingual category of PAST with new

narrative functions -- for especially V-ed, did, and had --

consequent upon: a) student ignorance of the complex

narrative rules of use of SE PASTPERF; and b) unavailability

in TOB of an element that is sufficiently isomorphic with SE

PASTPERF. (360-1)

What is also clear, however, is that the student abandons the Ø-

denoted foregrounding function that is an inextricable part of

the Creole system, as well as of the oral mode of discourse which

freely allows of mixing of the SE and TobC contact systems. This

student is representative, as James (1997) shows, of a

significant group of students, and until such time as they

53

acquire the full SE tense-aspect system, their narrative skills

are necessarily weakened in the written mode by the restriction

in options for expression of essential discourse functions

available to them. Superficial ‘correctness’ may be achieved as

teachers attend frequently only to form and not function, but

there is a tangible loss in vividness and immediacy as the

students become constrained.

7. Conclusions

This paper has come a long route through oral and written

Tobagonian discourse in order to explicate:

the crucial role of foregrounding and backgrounding to

the Creole discourse system;

the consistency which is found in the use of relative

past markers bin and did in opposition to Ø through their

discourse functions;

54

the extent to which backgrounding is maintained in the

transition area between the contact systems by the

substitution of SE-ed into backgrounding functions

formerly performed by bin (basilect) and did (mesolect);

The partnership which is established between perfective

and imperfective elements in foreground and background,

supports a continuum of movement between the two.

Further, we have shown that:

oral discourse allows of a mixing and enriching of the

contact systems which cannot be paralleled under the

strictures of the demand of the written mode;

in written discourse, some students with approximately

five years of secondary education, are apparently at an

interlingual stage in which the full range of SE markers

is not available to them. Were they in full command of

the SE mode of written discourse, they would be able to

55

enrich that system fully, but they are not yet at that

stage6.

this writing level reflects the society in what is

represented as ‘Standard’. Two transitions are in process

of negotiation at the sixth-form level: the first to

greater control of the SE oral mode, the second to the

written mode. The data identifies a fourth creole space

in which verb forms are being utilized differently from

their use in the mesolect and the acrolect.a decreasing

use of the same forms in the local media both spoken and

written, and a shift overall in

All in all, we have demonstrated that discourse functions of

grounding are critical to a consideration of tense-aspect

systems, most specifically in the oral mode, where those systems

stand for other grounding features more common to written

discourse such as subordination and thematic focussing via

clefting and other devices.

6

56

References

Bickerton, Derek (1975) Dynamics of a Creole System. Cambridge:

CUP.

Comrie, Bernard (1976) Aspect. Cambridge: CUP.

Fleischman, Susan (1985) Discourse functions of Tense-Aspect

Oppositions in Narrative: Towards a Theory of Grounding.

Linguistics 23, 851-882.

Friedrich, Paul (1974) On Aspect theory and Homeric aspect.

International Journal of American Linguistics Memoir 28, 1-44.

________________ (1990) Tense and Narrativity: From Mediaeval

Performance to Modern Fiction Austin: University of Texas Press.

Givón, Talmy.(1984) Syntax -- A Functional-Typological

Introduction Vol 1. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing

Company.

57

Hatav, Galia (1989) Aspects, Aktionarten and the Time Line.

Linguistics 27, 487-516.

___________ (1993) The aspect system in English: an attempt at a

unified analysis. Linguistics 31, 209-237.

Herweg, Michael. “Perfective and Imperfective Aspect and the

Theory of Events and States.” Linguistics 29 (1991): 969-1010.

Hodge, Merle (1998) The Knots in English. Trinidad: Calaloux

Publications

Hopper, Paul & Thompson, Sandra (1980) Transitivity in Grammar

and Discourse. Language 56:2, 251-299.

Jaganauth, Dhanis(1988). “Relative Time Reference in Guyanese

Creole: Some Problems for Sentence-Level Analyses.” Paper

Presented at the 7th Biennial Conference of the Society for

Caribbean Linguistics. College of the Bahamas.

58

_________ (1998) Time reference in Two Creoles: The Non-

referential Component. Unpublished Manuscript.

James, Winford.(1997) “Students’ TAM Errors in the Context of

the Speech of Tobago.” Ph. D. Dissertation: University of the

West Indies, St Augustine.

Kilby, David (1984) Descriptive Syntax and the English Verb.

Croom Helm: London.

Labov, William. 1972 “The Transformation of Experience in

Narrative Syntax.” Language in the Inner City. Ed. William

Labov. Philadelphia: University of Philadelphia Press, 355-

99.

Longacre, Robert (1981) A spectrum and profile approach to

discourse analysis. Text 4, 337-359.

_____________ (1983) The Grammar of Discourse New York: Plenum

Press.

59

Ong, Walter (1982) Oral Remembering and Narrative Structures. In

D. Tannen ed. Analyzing Discourse: Text and Talk Washington,

D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 12-24.

Pollard, Velma 1989 The Particle en in Jamaican Creole: A

Discourse-Related Account. English World-Wide 10:1, 55-63.

Reinhart, Tanya (1984) Principles of gestalt perception in the

temporal organization of narrative texts. Linguistics 22, 779-

809.

Van Kuppevelt, J. (1995) Main Structure and Side Structure in

Discourse. Linguistics 33, 809-833.

Vendler, Zeno (1967) Linguistics in Philosophy. Ithaca, New York:

Cornell University Press.

Verkyl, Henk J. (1993) A Theory of Aspectuality. Cambridge: CUP.

Winford, Donald (1993) Predication in Caribbean English

Creoles. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

60

Youssef, Valerie (1990) The early development of perfect aspect:

verbal, adverbial and contextual specification. Journal of

Child Language 17, 295-312.

_________________ (1995) Tense-Aspect in Tobagonian English: A

Dynamic Transitional System. English World-Wide 16:2, 195-213.3 Events in this paper are taken to include both

accomplishments and achievements in the Vendlerean (1967)

sense, as well as processes, all of which may take

progressive marking dependent on speaker perspective. These

are contrasted with states, which are inherently time-

extensive and do not lend themselves readily to progressive

marking as redundant.

4 In using the terms perfective and imperfective we

subscribe to Friedrich’s (1974:S35) definition of this

opposition as marking ‘the opposition between a point and a

line in the temporal dimension.’ We agree with Comrie

(1976), however, that duration of time is not always

relevant to the imperfective-perfective opposition, since

the difference in aspectual representation represents a

different way of viewing the situation rather than an

61

______ (1998) Decreolization Revisited: the case of Bethel,

Tobago. Paper presented at the SCL/SPCL Symposium: Pidgin &

Creole Linguistics in the Twenty-First Century, New York, Jan 9th-

10th, 1998.

inherent time difference. We agree with Comrie also that

perfect aspect is best regarded as a separate sub-category

of aspect from perfective, signifying specifically’ a

condition which has arisen from a preceding event (be it

action, process or state) and being ‘more important for its

present consequences than the original situation itself.’

(Youssef, 1990:1) In many languages, however, including

Tobagonian Creole, perfect is subsumed within perfective

aspect.

5 Reinhart (1984) makes the point with specific comparison

to spatial organization in paintings that foreground need

not necessarily be more important than background but we

agree with Shen (1981) that culturally important events will

tend to be foregrounded by the speaker in his/her narrative

62

arrangement of the text (citation from Reinhart, p802). The

critical factor seems to be the diminishing of real all-time

importance and the highlighting of of what is perspectually

salient.

6. One of the findings of the wider Tobagonian study

currently in progress (cf Youssef, 1998) is that young

speakers produce a more limited range of markers than old

people, zoning in on a narrow mesolectal range, with gaps in

both basilect and acrolect, but most specifically in the

acrolect, with virtual non-production in speech of SE

perfect markers.

63