Concerning the present study Contents of chapters The hypothesis

1

Chapter 1 Introduction

1.1 Concerning the present study

This study tests the hypothesis that Hawai‛i Creole English HCE and presumably other creole languages as well has an expressive capacity equivalent to “real” languages such as Standard English SE. The prevailing assumption among linguists is that the expressive capacity of any two languages is the same, i.e., whatever can be said in language X can be said in language Y; there are no “superior” or “inferior” languages. The Natural Semantic Metalanguage NSM specification, formulated by Wierzbicka and her colleagues, offers the first empirical means to test this assumption. As far as I am aware, NSM offers the only explicit hypothesis as to what constitutes the expressive minimum that any human language must have. This study investigates, in particular, whether HCE contains all the primitives and primitive combinations specified in NSM. This study is ground-breaking in at least three other respects. First of all, it is a semantic study of a creole language. There are precious few studies of this kind or perhaps even none, depending on your definition of semantic. 1 Second, it is a lexical study of a creole language, also a relatively rare occurrence. Third, although there have been studies comparing semantic and combinatorial equivalents across languages, this is the first time such a comparison has been attempted for a creole language. We therefore have to address variation, code-switching, interference from the superstrate language, language attitudes, and other problems typical of creoles and develop a suitable methodology for this study.

1.2 Contents of chapters

The material in this study will be presented in the following order. In the remainder of this introduction, I explain in more detail exactly what the hypothesis is and how it is potentially falsifiable. Chapter 2 is devoted to familiarizing the reader with the relevant aspects of NSM theory. Chapter 3 relates the history of HCE to language attitudes. These attitudes manifest themselves in the current debates concerning language deficit theory. It is argued that the data provided by the present study has a direct bearing on this issue. Chapter 4 explains the language situation and attempts to deal with the associated methodological challenges. Chapter 5 introduces the primitives, describes the organization of the sections which follow, and presents and analyzes the evidence for the presence or absence of each of the NSM primitives in HCE. The final chapter summarizes the results of this study.

1.3 The hypothesis

Thus far, I have referred to the central hypothesis of this study informally as the proposition that “The expressive capacity of HCE is the same as any other language”. This statement does not mean that any word in a particular language has to have a simple one word equivalent in HCE. 2 It does not mean that you can say the same thing in HCE using the same number of words. And finally, it does not mean that HCE will be equally elegant or concise as another language in expressing a given meaning. So what does it mean to say that “The expressive capacity of HCE is the same as any other language”? A little more concretely, it means that for any meaning expressible in language X, there exists some means lexical or grammatical to express that same meaning in HCE. 1 The only study I am aware of is Frake 1971. 2 For that matter, we must avoid any arbitrary limit on the number of words our cross-linguistic equivalents may have. The point may seem obvious, but in practice, semanticists and lexicographers often abandon their search if an adequate two or, at most, three word equivalent is not immediately apparent. 2 However, the hypothesis must be reduced into a form amenable to empirical verification. Obviously, it is not possible to compare every expression in two languages. The few studies comparing the expressive capacity of two languages have been restricted to a single domain. For example, Forman et al. 1974 argues for the equality based on the existence of an elaborated grammar in HCE. Labov 1990 argues for the same thing based on the existence of an elaborated system of tense in HCE. Elsewhere, Labov argues for the equivalence of Black English and SE based on the equivalence of their logical systems Labov 1969b and their systems of negation Labov 1969a. These studies, however, make no pretense of being exhaustive in their coverage and although we must gratefully acknowledge their value and significance, such restricted studies cannot bring this issue to a closure. The only practical way to extend the coverage of this study to all domains of language is to demonstrate equivalence or nonequivalence from the bottom up. Although the set of possible expressions in any language is infinite, the set of terms and rules of combination is finite. If we are able to show that the terms and rules of combination are exactly the same at the primitive level for two languages, it would then follow that these two languages have exactly the same expressive capacity. What has been missing until recently however, is an explicit specification of these primitive terms and rules of combination for “real” languages. The NSM specification is exactly that.