Tara Sanchez

The concept of ‘speech community’ is central to sociolinguistics, yet its inner workings are not thoroughly understood.  ‘Shared norms’, for example, are a defining characteristic, yet it’s not clear how they “develop and change” (Patrick 2001).  Using data from a multilingual community, I show how norms emerge in the speech of individuals, and are selected and propagated to community-wide norms.  The influence of prestige of innovators, sociopolitical factors, and linguistic structure are considered. 
            Data are from a diachronic corpus of 171 Papiamentu (Iberian creole) texts, dating 1776-2003, and ethnographic observations collected by this author in 2003 on the Dutch Caribbean islands of Aruba, Bonaire, and Curaçao.  Examined is the passive construction, which has been influenced by contact with Dutch, Spanish, and English.  There are four variants of the passive.  The oldest is the native form (1), consisting of a tense-mood-aspect (TMA) marker and a past participle (pp) (no passivizer).  There are three contact-induced passivizers which surface between the TMA marker and the pp: wordu (2), transferred from the Dutch passive construction worde (‘become’) + pp; ser (2), calqued on the Spanish passive construction ser (copula) + pp; and keda (3), calqued on the Spanish construction quedar ‘stay’ + pp, which has the lexicalized meaning ‘become pp’.
            In the multilingual case examined here, norms are the direct result of transfer (wordu) and calquing (ser and keda); their origin and propagation are transparent.  A variety of factors influence which forms are selected as community norms.  Prestige of the innovator may be sufficient (as with wordu).   However, low prestige speakers might also introduce a form which eventually becomes a community norm; the use of ser (introduced by low prestige speakers) expanded after sociopoitical changes and linguistic constraints on keda. 

Examples

(1)        Sklabitud   lo      ta     pa   semper  kitaar          for     di Korsow.
            slavery      FUT   imp    for  always   remove-pp   from  Curaçao
            ‘Slavery will be removed forever from Curaçao.’ (Proklamasjon 1863)

(2)        E     pòtrèt   aki     a                  wordu saká  dor di    e      mucha hòmber
            the   picture here   perf  pass     take-pp         through  the  child     male
            ‘This picture          was taken                         by                the boy. ‘  (Kouwenberg & Muysken 1994:211)

(3)        E    kas      a       ser     trahá      pa  e     karpinté.
            the  house  perf pass    work-pp by   the  carpenter.
            ‘The house  was             made     by   the  carpenter.’ (Munteanu 1996:345)

(4)        …e     edifisio   por   a             keda  salvaguardá  pa   posteridat.
            …the building can   perf pass  save-pp                  for  posterity
            ‘…the building was able to be saved for posterity.’ (Howe 1994:35)
 

Work Cited
 

           Patrick, Peter. 2001.  The speech community.  In Chambers, Trudgill, and Schilling-Estes (eds.), Handbook of Language Variation and Change.  Malden, MA: Blackwell. 573-97.