An Assessment of the African Heritage in the Guadeloupean Creole’s Verbal System: Focus on Tense, Aspect, Negation, and Serial Verb Constructions

Abstract

Guadeloupean Creole (GC) is a French-based creole which emerged in a context where the linguistic contribution of the enslaved Africans cannot be ignored nor denied, as attempted by some scholars. This research project investigated the traces of the African heritage in GC. It focused on the verbal system of the language and more precisely on tense, aspect, negation, and serial verb constructions (SVCs), hence challenging French supposed hegemony in the formation of GC in this domain. For that purpose, Dixon’s Basic Linguistic Theory was used to analyse and compare GC, French, and four West African languages, namely Bambara, Ewe, Tuwuli, and Yoruba. The result of the analysis of sentences in these different languages demonstrated that, though most of the lexicon in GC came from French, the superstrate language, elements in the verbal system of GC contained traces from the African languages under study, namely the preverbal markers found in tense and aspect in GC and Bambara and Ewe to which it was compared, the distribution of the negator and strict negative concord found in negation in GC and Ewe and Tuwuli to which it was compared, and SVCs existing in GC and Tuwuli and Yoruba to which it was compared. The foregoing were all evidence that pointed to traces of Africanisms in GC, as such could not be found in French. Furthermore, the analysis of the origins of these elements in the verbal system of GC suggested plausible African origins which overshadowed all the other suggestions put forward. Therefore, this study could contribute to tilting the balance in favour of the substrate origin of tense, aspect, negation, and SVCs in the verbal system of GC. Hopefully, the study may trigger the interest of Guadeloupean scholars to do further research in this domain and beyond to ensure that the African heritage is not forgotten but is restored to its rightful place in GC.