If I Could Turn My Tongue Like That : The Creole Language of Pointe Coupee Parish, Louisiana.
Title:
If I Could Turn My Tongue Like That : The Creole Language of Pointe Coupee Parish, Louisiana.
Author:
Klingler, Thomas.
ISBN:
9780807155899
Personal Author:
Edition:
1st ed.
Physical Description:
1 online resource (715 pages)
Contents:
Cover -- Title Page -- Copyright Page -- Dedication -- Contents -- Table -- Acknowledgments -- Abbreviations and Symbols -- Maps -- Introduction -- PART I Sociohistorical Background -- Chapter 1 Colonial Louisiana -- 1.1 Exploration and Early Settlement of Louisiana -- 1.2 Slaves -- 1.3 Economic Activity and Social Relations -- 1.4 Population Growth in the Spanish Period -- 1.4.1 Europeans -- 1.4.2 Re-Africanization Under Spanish Rule -- 1.4.3 Geographic Distribution of the Slave Population -- Chapter 2 The Development of Louisiana Creole -- 2.1 Evidence from Early Texts -- 2.2 The Creolization Process -- 2.3 The Question of African Influence on Louisiana Creole -- 2.4 The Question of Multiple Geneses of Louisiana Creole -- Chapter 3 Pointe Coupee Parish -- 3.1 The Setting -- 3.2 Exploration and Early Settlement -- 3.3 Development of a Plantation Economy and Growth of the Slave Population -- 3.4 Americanization -- 3.5 Creole Among Whites -- 3.6 The Dominance of English in the Post-War Period -- 3.6.1 The Mechanization of Agriculture -- 3.6.2 Education -- 3.7 Louisiana Creole in a Broader Francophone Context -- 3.8 Creole and English in Pointe Coupee -- 3.9 The Effects of Language Loss -- PART II Grammatical Description -- Chapter 4 Preliminaries -- 4.1 Methodology -- 4.2 Speakers Consulted for the Study -- 4.3 English Words -- 4.4 The Phonological System of Louisiana Creole and the Notation of Creole Sounds -- 4.4.1 Consonants -- 4.4.2 Semiconsonants -- 4.4.3 Vowels -- 4.5 The Division of Lexical Units -- 4.6 Editing of Transcribed Speech -- 4.7 Descriptive Framework -- Chapter 5 The Noun Phrase -- 5.1 Nouns -- 5.1.1 Nouns with an Agglutinated Element -- 5.1.1.1 Group 1: n-,z- -- 5.1.1.2 Group 2: la-, le- -- 5.1.1.3 Group 3: di-, du- and de-, dez- -- 5.1.2 Unagglutinated Nouns -- 5.1.3 A Cross-Creole Comparison of Agglutination.
5.1.4 Gender -- 5.1.5 Number -- 5.2 Determiners -- 5.2.1 Indefinite Determiners -- 5.2.2 Definite Determiners -- 5.2.2.1 Functions of the Determiners -- 5.2.2.1.1 The Marking of Specificity -- 5.2.2.1.2 Deictic Properties of the Definite Determiners -- 5.2.2.2 A Cross-Creole Comparison of Definite/Deictic Determiners -- 5.2.3 Demonstrative Determiners -- 5.2.3.1 A Cross-Creole Comparison of Demonstrative Determiners -- 5.2.4 Possessive Determiners -- 5.2.4.1 A Cross-Creole Comparison of Possessive Determiners -- 5.2.5 Quantifying Determiners -- 5.2.6 Cardinal Numbers -- 5.3 Adjectives -- 5.3.1 Prenominal Adjectives -- 5.3.1.1 Descriptive Adjectives -- 5.3.1.2 Indefinite Adjectives -- 5.3.1.3 Ordinal Numbers -- 5.3.2 Postnominal Adjectives -- 5.4 Pronouns -- 5.4.1 Personal Pronouns -- 5.4.1.1 A Cross-Creole Comparison of Personal Pronouns/ 212 -- 5.4.2 Possessive Pronouns -- 5.4.2.1 A Cross-Creole Comparison of Possessive Pronouns -- 5.4.3 Demonstrative Pronouns -- 5.4.4 Indefinite Pronouns -- 5.4.5 Relative Pronouns -- 5.4.5.1 Relative Clauses with Explicit Antecedents -- 5.4.5.2 Relative Clauses with No Explicit Antecedent -- 5.4.5.3 Relativized Prepositional Objects -- 5.4.5.4 Relativization of Nouns of Place -- 5.4.5.5 Relativization of Nouns of Time -- 5.4.5.6 Genitive Relative Clauses -- Chapter 6 The Verb Phrase -- 6.1. Verb Morphology -- 6.1.1 Diachronic and Regional Comparisons -- 6.1.2 Verbs in Pointe Coupee -- 6.1.2.1 The Distribution of Long and Short Forms in Pointe Coupee -- 6.1.2.2 Verb Forms -- 6.1.2.2.1 Verbs with Multiple Forms -- 6.1.2.2.2 Verbs with a Single Form -- 6.1.3. A Cross-Creole Comparison of Long and Short Verb Forms -- 6.2 Preverbal Markers of Tense, Mood, and Aspect -- 6.2.1 A Note Concerning Grammatical Tense -- 6.2.2 Marked and Unmarked Verbs -- 6.2.3 The Anterior Marker te.
6.2.4 The Progressive Markers e and ape, ap -- 6.2.5 The Future Markers a and sa -- 6.2.6 The Conditional Marker se -- 6.2.7 The Marker bin -- 6.2.8 A Cross-Creole Comparison of Preverbal Markers -- 6.3 Auxiliary Verbs -- 6.4 Causative Constructions -- 6.5 The Copula -- 6.5.1 Zero-Copula Structures -- 6.5.2 Se -- 6.5.2.1 Se as Copula -- 6.5.2.2 Presentative se -- 6.5.3 The Copula ye -- 6.5.4 The Copula èt, ete -- 6.5.5 Other Copulative Verbs -- 6.5.6 A Cross-Creole Comparison of the Copula -- 6.6 Reflexive Verbs -- 6.6.1. A Cross-Creole Comparison of Reflexive Verbs -- 6.7 Impersonal Expressions -- 6.7.1 Existential Expressions -- 6.7.2 Other Impersonal Expressions -- 6.8 Verbs in Serial-like Constructions -- 6.9 The Imperative -- 6.10 The Passive -- 6.11 Comparison -- 6.11.1 Expression of Inequality -- 6.11.2 Equality -- 6.12 Negation -- 6.13 Interrogative Structures -- 6.13.1 Yes-or-No Questions -- 6.13.2 Partial Questions -- 6.13.2.1 Interrogative Pronouns -- 6.13.2.2 The Interrogative Adjective ki 'what, which' -- 6.13.2.3 Interrogative Words as Objects of Prepositions -- 6.13.2.4 Interrogative Adverbs -- 6.14 Adverbs -- 6.14.1 Adverbs of Time -- 6.14.2 Adverbs of Place -- 6.14.3 Adverbs of Manner -- 6.14.4 Adverbs of Degree, Quantity -- 6.14.5 Interrogative Adverbs -- 6.14.6 Negative Adverbs -- 6.14.7 Other Adverbs -- 6.15 Prepositions -- 6.15.1 Circumstantial Complements Not Introduced by a Preposition -- 6.15.2 The Preposition d, dè -- 6.15.3 Prepositions of Time -- 6.15.4 Place, Direction, Situation -- 6.15.5 Manner, Attribution, Motive -- 6.15.6 Cause, Origin -- 6.15.7 Opposition, Separation, Exception -- 6.15.8 Union, Conformity -- 6.16 Conjunctions -- 6.16.1 Coordinating Conjunctions -- 6.16.2 Subordinating Conjunctions -- 6.16.2.1 Subordination Without Conjunctions -- 6.16.2.2 Subordination with ke (var.), ki (rare) 'that'.
6.16.2.3 Conjunctions of Time -- 6.16.2.4 Conjunctions of Cause -- 6.16.2.5 Conjunction of Goal or Purpose -- 6.16.2.6 Conjunctions of Concession -- 6.16.2.7 Conjunctions of Condition -- 6.16.2.8 Conjunction of Comparison -- PART III Interview Excerpts -- Chapter 7 Conversations in Creole -- 7.1 Interview with LD -- 7.2 Interview with RD -- 7.3 Interview with KS -- 7.4 Interview with AS -- 7.5 Interview with GL -- 7.6 Interview with NF -- 7.7 Interview with YC and JL -- 7.8 Interview with ME -- 7.9 Interview with MP -- Works Cited -- Glossary -- Index.
Abstract:
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.
Local Note:
Electronic reproduction. Ann Arbor, Michigan : ProQuest Ebook Central, 2017. Available via World Wide Web. Access may be limited to ProQuest Ebook Central affiliated libraries.
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