NOTHING IN CONTEXT: VARIATION, GRAMMATICIZATION AND PAST TIME MARKING IN NIGERIAN PIDGIN ENGLISH

Abstract

Assessment of form/function relationships is notoriously contentious in creole grammars since overt grammatical markers typically alternate with Zero in a number of subsystems of the grammar, Categorical perception coupled with the structuralist tendency to ascribe a single function to each form together conspire in promoting the widespread notion that both overt and Zero forms are grammatical markers of specific meanings. Exemplifying with the past temporal reference sector of Nigerian Pidgin English (NPE), an extended pidgin said to exhibit prototypical creole features, this paper shows that only a small minority of NPE contexts with a particular semantic reference co-occur with an overt form claimed to encode this reference . Indeed, the overt forms typically appear in a number of diverse contexts. Thus despite considerable grammaticization over the past couple of centuries, none of the overt NPE past temporal reference forms have as vet attained the status of grammatical market. It follows that the selection of Zero cannot be inferred to unambiguosly signal the absence of a specific associated meaning, pace yhe Bickertonian scenario whereby each and null has a unique semantic interpretation