SHENG: THE MIXED LANGUAGE OF NAIROBI

By Philip W. Rudd

A DISSERTATION

Submitted to the Graduate School of Ball State University in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

Chairperson: Dr. Carolyn J. MacKay BALL STATE UNIVERSITY MUNCIE, INDIANA DECEMBER 2008

COPYRIGHT PHILIP W. RUDD 2008

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Kwa Mueni Loko

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Without doubt or hesitation, the first set of acknowledgements and thanks goes to the wananchi citizens of the Republic of Kenya, who invited me, a red stranger as Huxley (1939) aptly put it, into their world when I was a young Peace Corps volunteer and who turned me on to linguistics. Nearly two decades later, they welcomed me again and encouraged my investigation into their contact language phenomenon known as luga ya mtaa street language or simply Sheng. To you all, I offer my biggest asanteni sana. This work was supported by a Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad (DDRA) Fellowship grant (PR/Award Number P022A050009) from the United States Department of Education. The fieldwork in Nairobi would not have been possible without this financial support, and I gratefully acknowledge it here. I would like to thank my chair, Dr. Carolyn J. MacKay, and the other members of my committee, Dr. Herbert Stahlke, Dr. Frank Trechsel and Dr. Thomas Holtgraves. Their willingness to take on the duties of a dissertation committee and their remaining encouraging and inspiring, during a mad summer of writing is especially appreciated. This dissertation owes reverence and reference to many predecessors in Sheng research: Ken Osinde, Mary Spyropoulos, David Samper, Aurelia Ferrari and Peter Githinji, among others. I have read their works many times, and now, having written a major work myself, am even more impressed with theirs than before. I would also like to thank my contemporary dissertator Mokaya Bosire for continued inspiration. In Nairobi, thanks go to Dr. Kithaka wa Mberia and Professor Mohamed H. Abdulaziz of the University of Nairobi, Dr. Tom Onditi of the United States International University, and Dr. Emily A. Ogutu of Kenyatta University. Thanks too are offered to

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Alfred Anangwe for help in negotiating the stacks of treasures at the Kenya National Archives on Moi Avenue. My many thanks as well go to the students and teachers in and around Eagle House on Kimathi Street for their enthusiastic sharing of their knowledge of Sheng and other Kenyan languages. I would also like to thank Mike Marlo for the maristo and Tuskers, and continued encouragement. May you and Jacinta enjoy a good and fruitful life in America. A final but not minor note of appreciation must go to Ndanu Mungala, whose vyakula, knowledge of Eastlands, companionship, loyal friendship and love continue to sustain me. Back stateside, I wish to thank my sister Debra and her family for their love and support over the years. I thank Kai Beckert for his friendship and help with Heines Grammatische Skizze des Kenya-Pidgin-Swahili. A steak and beers of your choice are in your future. For his encouragement and support, I thank Deo Ngonyani. I wish also to thank everyone at the university and especially at the library for facilitating my research while I was in Kenya. For assistance with a PowerPoint presentation that got this linguistic ball of inquiry going, I thank Glenda Leung. Good luck to you with your dissertating. A word of thanks also goes to Cory Long for help with the maps. I apologize to anyone I have neglected to mention. Any and all errors should be and can only be attributed to the author. Basi, tosha.

SHENG: THE MIXED LANGUAGE OF NAIROBI Philip W. Rudd

ABSTRACT The purpose of this dissertation is to determine whether Sheng, a language spoken in the Eastlands area of Nairobi, Kenya, is a mixed language (incorporating Swahili, English and local vernaculars). The study focuses on the lexicon and morphosyntax, but social factors are examined as well. Three broad research questions are addressed: (1) Does Sheng have a core vocabulary separate from that of Swahili? (2) How do the system morphemes of Sheng compare with those of Swahili? And (3) in what manner does Sheng provide its speakers a new identity? With respect to question one, the core lexicon, like Russenorsks, Trio-Ndjukas and Michifs, manifests a nearly fifty-fifty split in Sheng (52% Swahili; 48% other), making it a mixed language lexically. As for question two, the analysis reveals that Sheng has a composite morphosyntax. No object or relative affixes are marked on the verb. Predicate-argument structure from English has provided a null relativizer. The aerial feature imperfective suffix -a(n)g- is preferred 68% of the time. Noun classes show convergence leveling. The marker ma- serves as the generic plural. The diminutive markers, (ka-, tu-), constitute a complete non-Swahili subsystem. Consequently, Sheng is also a mixed language morphosyntactically. In reference to question three, a negative correlation exists between competence in Sheng and income and housing. Though the affluent display a negative attitude toward

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Sheng, they agree with the lower socio-economic groups that Sheng has a communicative utility in metropolitan Kenya. A comparison of the usage in the different residential areas establishes that community-wide grammatical norms (i.e., stability) exist in Sheng. Over two decades without institutional support for Swahili provided a niche in which Sheng, a non-standard language variety, flourished and a new urban identity emerged. Eastlanders walk a linguistic tightrope, balancing between the labels mshamba (rube) and Mswahili (slick talker). However, Sheng provides a sociolinguistic embodiment symbolizing what nuances their existence. Over time, speakers formed a new identity group, whose language was initially off target (1899-1963) but subsequently became deliberate postcolonially. Finally, the name of the language itself (Sheng < LiSheng < lish-eng < English) results from and is symbolic of this social transformation.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS Title Page .. Copyright Notice .. Dedication .. Acknowledgements .. Abstract .. Table of Contents .. List of Abbreviations and Symbols .. List of Maps .. List of Figures .. Chapter 1: Introduction .. 1.0 The Linguistic Context .. 1.1 The Goal .. 1.2 The Theory .. 1.2.1 Mixed Languages .. 1.2.2 The 4-M Model .. 1.3 Method .. 1.4 Analysis .. 1.5 Organization of the .. Dissertation Goals and Hypotheses .. 2.0 Goals .. 2.1 Hypotheses .. 2.1.1 Lexicon .. 2.1.2 Morphosyntax .. 2.1.3 Social Factors .. 2.2 Language Use in Nairobi .. 2.2.1 Kenyas Languages .. Historically 2.2.2 Upcountry Swahili Comes to .. Town History and Background .. 3.0 History .. 3.1 The Spread of Bantu Languages into East Africa i ii iii iv vi viii x xi xii 1 1 5 8 9 10 13 13 15

Chapter 2:

18 18 21 23 24 26 28 30 34

Chapter 3:

36 36 41

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The Spread of Swahili into Tanzania .. The Spread of Swahili into the Congo .. The Spread of Swahili into Kenya .. Background .. Mixed Languages .. The Matrix Language Frame .. Model 3.5.2.1 Lexical-Conceptual Convergence .. 3.5.2.2 Convergent Patterns of Morphological Realizations .. 3.5.2.3 Convergent Predicate-Argument Structures ...... 3.5.3 The Matrix Language Turnover .. 3.5.4 Social Factors ..

3.2 3.3 3.4 3.5 3.5.1 3.5.2

44 45 50 63 63 65 66 68 69 70 91

Chapter 4:

Methodology 4.0 Purpose 4.1 Design 4.2 Data Analysis

..

95 95 95 105 109 109 109 125 126 131 159 171 175 175 176 179 182 191

Chapter 5:

Lexicon, Morphosyntax and Social Factors .. 5.0 Results .. 5.1 Lexicon .. 5.2 Morphosyntactic Frame .. 5.2.1 Early System Morphemes .. 5.2.2 Late System Morphemes .. 5.3 Social Factors .. 5.4 Implications and Interpretations . Conclusion .. 6.0 Conclusions and Extensions . 6.1 Summary of Findings .. 6.2 Theoretical Implications .. 6.3 Pedagogical Implications ..

Chapter 6:

References .

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ABBREVIATIONS AND SYMBOLS ADJ ADV + AL APPL * BCE CE CF CL COMP CONJ COP CP CS CS1 CS2 adjective adverb affirmative Abstract Level model applied ungrammatical Before Common Era Common Era confer (compare) noun class complementizer conjunction copula Complementizer Phrase codeswitching highly-frequent intersentential CS highly-frequent mix of intersentential & intrasentential CS demonstrative derivational suffix determiner verb ending 8 years of primary, 4 of secondary and 4 of university education Embedded Language feminine fully crystallized mixed language future final vowel four types of morphemes Mahos Updated Guthrie Code for Sheng habitual incipient mixed language impersonal imperfective aspect indefinite infinitive INT INTR KPS LOC MM ML MLF ML1 ML2 NEG NOM NONPST PASS PER POSS PREP PRES PRO O OBJ OT 1, 2, 3 R REF REL RC RO S-bar S STAT STROVE SUB T TA TI TRNS TOP V VP interjection intransitive Kenya Pidgin Swahili locative Markedness Model Matrix Language Matrix Language Frame mixed lect 1 mixed lect 2 negative, (-) nominal, nominative case non-past null passive perfect possessive preposition present pronoun, pronominal object affix object Optimality Theory 1st, 2nd, 3rd person relative affix referenced relative Rational Choice model Rights and Obligations section sentence-bar singular, subject, sentence stative Swahili agglutinative string (see individual letters) subject tense tense-agreement marker transitive inanimate verb transitive topic, topicalizer verb verb phrase

DEM DER DET E 8-4-4

EL F FCML FUT FV 4-M G40E HAB IML IMPER IMPERF INDEF INF

LIST OF MAPS Map 1.1: 1.2: 1.3: 3.1: 3.2: 3.3: 3.4: 3.5: 3.6: 3.7: 4.1: Caption Page

Convergence of 3 Major African Language Families in Kenya 2 Languages of Kenya

3
6 37 38 38 39 46 52 57

Nairobi with City Divisions Surveyed Guthries Test Languages Geo-political Map Bantu Zonal Classification

.. .. ..

Sheng (G40E) of the New Languages of the New Updated Guthrie-List Major Trade Routes of East Africa Colonial Partition of East Africa

Nairobi 1903 CE on the Kenya-Uganda Railway

Eastlands Estates Studied Fall within Boundaries of Pumwani, Makadara and Central Division

103

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LIST OF FIGURES Figure 3.1: 3.2: 3.3: 3.4: 3.5: 4.1: 4.2: 4.3: 4.4: 5.1: 5.2: 5.3: 5.4: 5.5: 5.6: 5.7: 5.8: 5.9: 5.10: 5.11: 5.12: 5.13: 5.14: 5.15: 5.16: 5.17: 5.18: 5.19: 5.20: 5.21: 5.22: 5.23: Caption Sabaki Languages Dendrogram Convergence Hierarchies Mixed Language Metamorphosis Mixed Language Metamorphosis A New Mixed Language Continuum Page

... ... ... ... ...

42 72 73 87 90 96 98 98 101 115 115 117 118 119 122 123 127 129 130 132 134 137 138 141 141 142 142 146 146 147 147 148

Swahili Noun Classes and Concordial Affixes ... Six Primary Swahili Tense Morphemes in Swahili ... Derived Verbal Suffixes in Swahili ... ... Approximate Ethnic Composition of Residences Truncated Words . Truncated Words with an Additional Final Vowel ... Argot Reversal of English Words . Argot Reversal of Swahili Words ... Possible Argot Reversal in the Name Sheng ..... .. Core Vocabulary Check Swadesh List Source-Language Proportions on Sheng ... Swahili Noun Class Prefixes . Swahili Genitive Construction with PREP and a Swahili Genitive with A (-a) and POSS Pronoun (PRO) Late System Morphemes in Swahili ... CL6 NOM (ma-) with CL10 (zi-) ... .............. CL7 NOM (ki-) with CL9 CL8 NOM (vi-) with CL10 .............. Frequency of Occurrence of ka- Prefix by Estate ... Occurrence of ka- by Morpheme Type & Residence ... Six Primary Swahili Tense Morphemes in Swahili ... Habitual Aspect Derivational Marker in Sheng (HAB-DER) ... The Imperfective in Six Kenyan Languages . Frequency of Occurrence of a(n)g- Suffix by Estate ........ Frequency of Occurrence of hu- Prefix by Estate ......... Frequency of Occurrence of Double Morphology by Estate ... Ratio of Occurrence of Marker by Gender and Residence ......

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List of Figures (continued) Figure 5.24: 5.25: 5.26: 5.27: 5.3.1: 5.3.2: 5.3.3: 5.3.4: 5.3.5: 5.3.6: 5.3.7: 5.3.8: 6.0: Caption Percentage of Occurrence of Markers by Gender and Residence ... Total Percentage of Occurrence of Markers by Gender Total Percentage of Occurrence of Markers by Ethnic Group ... Concordial System Morphemes in Sheng . Which languages do you know? ... Do you speak Sheng? ... People Who Claim To Know Sheng by Age ... What do you think about Sheng? by Residence . Where and with Whom Do You Speak Sheng? . Can Sheng Be Used in Schools & Offices? by Residence ... Can Sheng Be Used in Schools & Offices? by Age ... The Genesis of Sheng .. Sheng Compared to the Creole-Interlanguage Continua . Page 148 149 149 156 160 161 161 162 164 167 168 173 183

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CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION

1.0

The Linguistic Context

Kenya, located in East Africa, has the distinction of being one of only a few countries in which three major African language families converge: Niger-Congo, Nilo-Saharan, and Afro-Asiatic (see Map 1.1). Kenya has a population of over 32 million, speaking

approximately 61 languages (Gordon 2005). Though Nairobi, the countrys capital, started out as a railway depot or camp half-way between Mombasa on the coast and Kampala on the lake, it now has a population exceeding 3 million and a linguistic diversity rivaling any urban center. Before Nairobi came into existence, the language of prestige would have been Swahili, which was spoken as a trade language along the Arab trade routes of East Africa. After the British came, they maintained the use of Swahili but increasingly promoted the use of English. When local Africans first came to Nairobi to work, they would have been speaking the form of the lingua franca they knew; that is, Up-country Swahili or Kenya Pidgin Swahili (KPS)1.

Heine (1979: 89; 1973) labeled Kenyan Up-country Swahili a pidgin because it fit the characteristics of Africanbased pidgins. He also noted that it appeared to be dying out at the time of his writing about it. However, Myers-Scotton (1979: 111-112) argues that pidgin is an erroneous label for Up-country Swahili because it is mutually intelligible with other dialects of Swahili but concedes that Up-country Swahili spoken in Nairobi sometimes causes a definite breakdown in mutual intelligibility (Myers-Scotton 1979:122). This linguistic tussle is irrelevant to my topic, and I will henceforth use Up-country Swahili merely as a cover term.

Map 1.1: Convergence of 3 Major African Language Families in Kenya (Payne 2008)

Map 1.2: Languages of Kenya

(Ethnologue, SIL 2004)

It would not have taken migrant workers long to realize that the key to social mobility was English, not Swahili. Urbanization has led to the emergence of new

language varieties throughout Africa often spoken only or primarily by the young who have been socialized in cities (Childs 1997: 342). Of the more than 60 different languages spoken in Kenya, nearly 65% are Bantu languages of the Niger-Congo family, about 30% Nilotic of the Nilo-Saharan family, some 3% are Cushitic of the Afro-Asiatic family (see Map 1.2) and the remaining 2% represent non-African languages, such as English and Hindi, among others (Heine & Mohlig 1980). Sheng, a Swahili-English hybrid, is an urban variety mostly spoken in Nairobi, Kenya, but which is spreading rapidly to Kenyas other urban centers. Sheng began to be noticed shortly after Kenya became independent in 1963 when increasing numbers of migrant Africans began moving to and settling in the eastern part of the capital city. As with other urban vernaculars of Africa, it is not easy to define Sheng. The name is said to be an acronym made up of Swahili-English2, and Mazrui (1995: 171) argues that it is codeswitching between Swahili and English and flavored with copious amounts of slang. Abullaziz and Osinde (1997: 45) concede that codeswitching may have been the catalyst for Shengs emergence. Githiora (2002: 176) calls Sheng a dialect of

This explanation has always struck me as weak. I am not alone. One informant argued that the name is the result of transposition of the two syllables in Eng-lish and reanalysis of the li- in Lisheng as a definite article as in French le swahili. An even more plausible argument, made by Michael Marlo (personal communication), is that the li- may have been reanalyzed as a Bantu prefix (CL5) and dropped, since it no longer exists in Swahili. An example from another language is Lingala, sometimes called simply Ngala (Samarin 1986). Though Swahili does not, some Kenyan Bantu languages have distinct prefixes for CL5 and CL11 (Hinnebusch 1973: 108ff), but the CL5 concords pattern with CL11 nouns (see Figure 4.1). CL5 *li- and CL11 *lu- are phonologically similar, causing confusion in child language (Kunene 1979). Their convergence in Bantu languages is not unusual (Herbert 1985; Guthrie 1956; Guthrie 1948).

Swahili and a pidgin-like mixed code, whose use is age-graded and urban. Whether Sheng is a simplified language used by speakers of different language backgrounds and who share no common language, whether Sheng has native speakers and whether Sheng is a symbol of group identity are all questions to be addressed in this dissertation. It will focus particularly on how Sheng is classified linguistically. This dissertation examines the Sheng used in seventy-six conversations that were recorded while the author was in the Eastlands area of Nairobi (cf, Map 1.3) for the year 2006. The interlocutors were adults, fluent in Sheng, and selected via friendship

networks.

1.1

The Goal The goal of this dissertation is to determine what kind of language Sheng is.

Therefore, the dissertation focuses on the linguistic features of Sheng. Inasmuch as there is generally a consensus that the grammar of Sheng comes from the grammar of Swahili, some researchers contend that Sheng is merely a dialect of Swahili (Githiora 2002: 176; Abulazziz and Osinde 1997: 52). Some consider Sheng to be a case of codeswitching between English and Swahili. Other researchers argue that Sheng constructs identity for its speakers (Githinji 2006) and that Sheng is a first language for some speakers (Ferrari 2004). If the language is an identity marker and a native language, it is certainly more than mere codeswitching. Language mixing consists of everything from codeswitching to an actual composite of morphosyntax. When speakers of a language mix not only the lexicon but

HURUM A M ABATINI M ATHA RE

HURUMA

K IAM AIK O

Sheng Data from Central,Pumwani and Makadara Divisions

MATHARE
M LANGO KUBW A

P ANGANI

PUMWANI
E ASTLE IGH NORTH A IR BASE UHURU

NGARA W EST

NGARA
NGARA E AST

KARIOKOR

EASTLEIGH NORTH
ZIWANI KA RIOKOR E ASTLE IGH SOUTH

CENTRA L
EASTLEIGH SOUTH

BAHATI Legend
D ivision boundary L ocation b oundary S ub-location boundary S heng data estates

CITYCE NTRE

STAREHE
CITY SQUARE M UTHURWA

M AJENG O PUMWANI CALIFORNIA OROFANI/BONDEN I G G IKOM BA K AMUKUNJI

HARAMBEE K IMATHI

KAMUKUNJI
S HAURI M OYO

MAKADARA
L UM UM BA

O FAFA K ALOLENI M AKONGENI

MARINGO
M BOTELA

H AM ZA

MAKONGENI
LAND M AWE

MA KADARA
V IWAN DA

VIWANDA
NAIROBI S OUTH

MUKURU NYAYO
HAZINA N

Map 1.3: Nairobi with City Divisions Surveyed

also the grammar from another language into their speech and this mixture extends beyond mere codeswitching, the speakers are intertwining the languages (Bakker 1997) or creating a bilingual mixed language (Thomason 2001) or a split language (MyersScotton 2002). In the case of Sheng, since the two of the languages being mixed are each in its own right a lingua franca (i.e., Swahili and English) and typologically distinct, the source of the languages morphosyntax and lexicon should be easily identified and categorized. Moreover, there may be evidence for a Matrix Language Turnover (Myers-Scotton 1993b) of the morphosyntactic frame. Further, the pidgin that developed as a trade language based on Swahili along the old slave-trade routes may have shifted its target from Swahili to English when the British took over colonial rule. That is to say, Sheng may be descended from the varieties of Up-country Swahili that are spoken in Nairobi. As a consequence, Sheng may have not only a lexicon elaborate in borrowings from English but also a morphosyntactic frame that includes grammatical features from vernacular languages other than Swahili. One result of this project will be a description of a previously under-documented contact language, a tremendous addition to the under-studied area of contact linguistics. Though monolingualism is the exception the world over and the study of mixed languages is only beginning, language contact is the norm and in much need of additional research. An analysis of Sheng, a language of the urbanites of Nairobi, will be a major step towards expanding our knowledge of the structure of Sheng, and a considerable contribution to the study of mixed languages.

A second result is a more definitive answer to the question of whether Sheng is in fact a pidgin, a creole, a mixed language, a form of slang or only code-switching. By using a language that is neither standard Swahili nor standard English, Kenyans use a language that identifies them not simply as members of the British Commonwealth or the East African Community but as members of the Nairobi urban area. During its brief history, Sheng has been blamed by parents, educators and politicians for the failure of students to perform well on the national exams in English and Swahili, the official and national languages (Mbaabu 1996). Sheng is viewed as neither a systematic nor legitimate language. Identifying Sheng as a mixed language could empower educators in Kenya and the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology of Kenya to begin lobbying to change the language policy of Kenya so that Sheng could then be treated as another vernacular, and it could rise in status. As a consequence, this research could provide information for policy formulation and thereby be integrated into and influential in the education and language policy activities overseen by the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology of Kenya. Results from this project will not only have implications for linguists in describing an undocumented language in the field of contact linguistics, but also for educators, teacher trainers and pedagogical policymakers in Kenya.

1.2

The Theory This dissertation addresses whether there is evidence for Sheng being a composite

Matrix Language (i.e., one that includes grammatical elements from Swahili and other

languages). A composite matrix language is a language in which speakers create a morphosyntax whose structures derive from more than one language. Creolization and second-language learning are good examples of circumstances when language learners have insufficient contact with and exposure to the morphosyntax of the targeted Matrix Language (Myers-Scotton 2002: 100). African migrants coming to Nairobi for work would initially have had little access to the morphosyntax of either Swahili or English. Evidence for whether Sheng speakers produce a morphosyntax in which the structures can be traced to more than one language source can be found in the conversations recorded in Eastlands for this project. Contact linguists frequently make no distinction between pidgins and creoles. Myers-Scotton (2002), in fact, argues that creolization, lexical borrowing, codeswitching, and mixed languages all share the commonality of being the consequence of competition between grammars and lexica, the result of which is linguistic convergence. Under

pressure from convergence, the morphosyntactic frame begins to be influenced from another source. This influence may halt or become arrested or it may continue until there is language shift, the abandonment of one language for another, that is, a complete Matrix Language turnover. The implication is that a spectrum of language mixing exists.

Indeed, Auer (1999: 328), Myers-Scotton (2002: 245), and Deumert (2005: 127) all envision a language mixing continuum.

1.2.1

Mixed Languages Contact linguistics is the study of what happens to languages when they come into

contact with each other. Sometimes this contact results in the formation of a pidgin, a

simplified code used between people who speak different languages and are not bilingual. If a pidgin is eventually acquired as a first language, it becomes more complex and is referred to as a creole. The process of evolving from a pidgin to creole is referred to as creolization. At other times bilinguals mix the two languages in their speech for different effects. This mixing is called code-switching or code-mixing. Sometimes, this mixing of codes by bilinguals develops rules of its own and becomes a new language, a mixed language. As no one precise definition exists, I cobble together the meanings of the split language (Myers-Scotton 2002: 246), the bilingual mixed language (Thomason 2001) the intertwined language (Bakker 1997: 195), and the fused lect (Auer 1999; Matras 1996) to form the definition of a mixed language in this dissertation. Mostly the description of the mixed language is that of a language in which the progenitor of the free content morphemes differs from the progenitor of some of the bound inflectional morphemes (Matras 2003: 151).

1.2.2

The 4-M Model This dissertation assesses the data from the Eastlands conversations in order to

plot Shengs location on the language mixing continuum. Myers-Scottons (2002) theoretical framework is adopted for it provides an empirical set of criteria for determining whether a morphosyntactic frame is a composite. A composite

morphosyntactic frame consists of morphemes originating from more than one language. To explain how a Matrix Language can be a composite, let us first define what a Matrix Language is. According to Myers-Scottons Matrix Language Frame (MLF)

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model (1993), a split in codeswitching exists between the Matrix Language (ML) or the language providing the grammatical frame and the Embedded Language (EL) or the borrowed language. Morphemes are also divided by the ML/EL dichotomy. System morphemes (e.g., morphemes marking number, gender and case and verbal inflections) are usually from the ML, whereas content morphemes (e.g., verbs and nouns) are usually from the EL. The 4M model (Myers-Scotton and Jake 2000) is an elaboration on and clarification of the morpheme distinctions in the MLF model. Content morphemes

remain as they were, but the system morphemes are further divided into early system morphemes and late system morphemes. Early system morphemes not only appear in the same surface-level maximal projection as their heads, they also depend on their heads for information about their forms (Myers-Scotton 2002: 75). Derivational affixes, plural markers and determiners are examples of early system morphemes. Late system morphemes constitute the second type, and they can be further divided into two types, bridge system morphemes and outsider system morphemes. Bridge system morphemes are called bridges because they connect lexical morphemes together inside a constituent. Examples of bridge system morphemes are the analytical possessive (e.g., meow of the cat) and the inflectional possessive (e.g., the cats meow). Outsider morphemes receive information for their form from beyond the head of their maximal projections. Examples of outsider morphemes are subject affixes, tense affixes, and noun class affixes.

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The morphemes necessary for a language to be mixed are late system morphemes. Late system morphemes depend on information for their form from beyond their immediate constituent head. If alien outsider morphemes are present, then MyersScotton (2002) considers it implicational evidence that the morphosyntactic frame structuring the language has changed (248). A split between the grammatical system and the lexicon typifies languages in contact. In classical codeswitching, the morphosyntactic frame is tantamount to the grammar of one of the source languages. However, in a mixed language some

convergence has occurred causing the matrix language to be a composite of two or more languages (Myers-Scotton 2002: 247). In this convergence, a portion of the abstract

grammatical structure of an embedded language breaches the abstract frame of the original matrix language, effecting a restructuring that combines the grammatical features from more than one language. Interference or transference in second language acquisition and creolization are other names for this phenomenon when it is the consequence of imperfect learning or of language shift (Myers-Scotton 2002: 22). To be considered a mixed language, a variety must manifest more than simple heavy borrowing (MyersScotton 2002: 250). A language qualifying as a strong version of a mixed language

should contain surface level late system morphemes from a language other than the main language of its lexicon or the morphosyntactic frame of its VP (Myers-Scotton 2002: 258). In addition, there should be evidence of a language turnover process that has fossilized (271). Therefore, in the case of Sheng, not only surface morphemes from Swahili but also abstract grammatical features from one or more of its embedded languages should be manifest if Sheng is to be classified as a composite matrix language.

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1.3

Method The methodology employed included collecting brief demographic questionnaires

and recording informal conversations.

Twelve fluent Sheng speakers conducted

interviews in Sheng with over 75 young men (ages 18-37) and women (ages 22-33) from the mitaa or estates of the Eastlands area of Nairobi. The conversations were not structured and so did not focus on any predetermined topics, allowing interviewees the opportunity to produce spontaneous speech. This study, based on seventy-six interviews with youths in the eastern parts of Nairobi, is an exploratory work covering a wide crosssection of the urban area. Because ages 14 to 28 are considered the years of the most active use of Sheng (Abdulaziz and Osinde 1997: 56), I endeavored to engage adult "key informants" (Bernard 2002: 188) to be interviewers and interviewees who were competent in Sheng and whose ages ranged from 18 to 43 years. Because 1963 was Kenyas year of gaining independence, older informants represent the first generation of Kenyans who were born and reared after Independence, meaning they are the first to represent the new identity of the postcolonial epoch. Informants, both interviewers and interviewees, were selected through friendship networks.

1.4

Analysis In the main, I sought examples of composite codeswitching and convergence in

the data. When languages in contact are become more similar to each other, convergence is said to be occurring. Though frequently considered a process, it can also be a Myers-Scotton (2002: 102-105) lexical convergence and (2)

consequence, resulting in a composite language. discusses two types of convergence: (1)

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morphological/structural convergence. This lexicon-morphosyntax split is commonly understood to be representative of mixed languages and fits well with the division of morphemes described above. This dichotomy provides support for positing social factors as instigating language change. Namely lexicon manipulation results from conscious selection, whereas grammatical convergence is an involuntary outcome (Golovko 2003:197). Paradoxically, speakers must choose to mix languages, but once they start, choice drops out and conventionalization sets in. A stable mixed language may be distinguished from an unstable mixed language by having less variability. Neither Thomason nor Myers-Scotton offers a specific method for measuring this variability. However, Auer (1999: 310) asserts that in order for language mixing to stabilize it must develop structural sedimentation through which variation is lost. It is through reanalysis and grammaticalization that structures stabilize and engender not only simplification but also specialization in the new language, creating structures dissimilar to those found in the original languages. Lexical choice in a mixed language is actually a far more predictable pattern than intrasentential codeswitching because the mixed language lexicon offers less choice than the lexicons of two or more languages in unstable mixtures. Borrowed items, including clauses, idioms and phrases of varying sizes and complexity, become grammaticalized. Put differently, each use of these lexical items becomes less of a conscious effort for speakers until finally it becomes automatic or no longer consciously selected. Bakkus (2003: 263) and others agree that a baseline amount of variability for separating the stable from the unstable mixed language has not yet been established.

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In order for Sheng to be considered a mixed language, or a variety in the process of becoming mixed, it must manifest convergence in its morphosyntax. That is, Sheng must have a composite matrix language. A composite matrix language is an example of a Matrix Language Turnover in progress or recently arrested. Evidence of late system morphemes from the Embedded Languages in the mixed variety indicates that the morphosyntax has restructured (Myers-Scotton 2002: 248). On these grounds, I have searched the Sheng data for late system morphemes other than those found in Swahili. If a turnover is still in process or already arrested, late system morphemes alien to Swahili should be evident in the data.

1.5

Organization of the Dissertation An overview of the organization of the dissertation follows. The first chapter has

provided a general description of the language situation in Nairobi and the issue of Sheng, as well as a brief introduction to contact linguistics, the mixed language debate and the theory behind this study. Chapter 2 details the three-fold goal of (a) analyzing

Sheng, (b) identifying the features of its lexicon, the characteristics of its morphosyntax and the social factors that affect or influence its emergence, and (c) proposing hypotheses that reveal Shengs status as a mixed language. Chapter 3 details the background and history of language in East Africa and Kenya, the literature on mixed languages, and introduces major issues in the debate on what is and what is not an actual mixed language. I elaborate on how what is discussed in the current literature of contact linguistics applies to Sheng. Through a process of elimination each label and location on the language mixing continuum will be dismissed

15

or confirmed to establish the features in Sheng and its proper status as pidgin, creole, codeswitching, mixed lect, incipient mixed language or fully fossilized mixed language. Chapter 4 describes the methodology and theoretical framework employed in the dissertation. It reveals how the informants were chosen, how the data were collected and how the hypotheses illuminate the data on Sheng. Chapter 5 presents the results from an analysis of the Eastlands data on Sheng. First I discuss how Shengs lexicon compares to the lexica of prototypical mixed languages and how it contrasts with other languages on a mixing continuum. Second, the late system morphemes of Sheng are contrasted with those found in Swahili. Third, the social factors pressuring Sheng are identified through a review of a sociolinguistic survey from Ferrari (2004). The results suggest the following. The core lexicon of Sheng falls within the 45% cut-off for foreign content morphemes (i.e. 32% from English) typical of heavily borrowing languages. However, if we count English loans and non-English loans

together as one group of non-Swahili borrowings in Sheng, then the count is nearly on par with the half-and-half core vocabulary split of lexically mixed languages (48% nonSwahili; 52% Swahili). Moreover, if we count the English loans and non-English loans together as one group of non-Swahili borrowings in a dictionary count, then the overall vocabulary count for Sheng still falls short of the 90% requirement for mixed languages that Bakker and Mous (1994) propose. Nevertheless, 80% of the words in Sheng are not Swahili, supporting the argument that there is no threshold; rather a continuum of foreign loans exists between heavily borrowing and mixed languages. Furthermore, an

16

examination of morphophonemic manipulation (e.g., argot reversal and truncation) indicates that many of the loans borrowed from Swahili are disguised. The system morphemes in Sheng disclosed by this study reveal that Sheng is what can be considered a composite matrix language. Three noticeable differences stand out between the morphosyntax of Sheng and that of Swahili. First, Sheng marks the habitual aspect with a suffix, the -a(n)g-, whereas Swahili marks the habitual with the prefix hu-. Second, the Bantu CL12-13 diminutive affixes (i.e., ka- and tu-), lost in Swahili, are productive in Sheng. Third, relativization in Sheng allows a null relativizer, which is ungrammatical in Swahili. It is suggested that the first and second of these

morphosyntactic abstract slots (i.e., -a(n)g- and the CL12-13 diminutives) result from substratal influence, while the third, the null relativizer, is a consequence of shift toward the superstrate (English). In addition, a leveling of noun classes has occurred. Chapter 6 concludes that Sheng exemplifies the dichotomy between lexicon and morphosyntax in mixed languages. It has vocabulary, even within the core lexicon, significantly different from that of the source of its morphosyntax. Sheng manifests a composite matrix language with system morphemes (both early and late) alien to the Swahili morphosyntax. The speakers of Sheng neither associate themselves with any of the tribes of Kenya nor equate their language to a dialect of Swahili. In fact, they wear their Sheng as a badge to declare that they are neither elite and privileged nor rustic and rural. They are Kenyan.

17

CHAPTER TWO: GOALS AND HYPOTHESES

2.0

Goals Following the end of World War II and the deterioration of British colonialism,

Kenya, among other African countries, gradually developed a sense of independence and pride in being African. The emergence of an African urban vernacular subsequent to the movement for gaining Independence would appear to be more than coincidence. The Republic of Kenya had a new identity, and its citizens or wananchi began to speak their own language. The wananchi or citizens were finally taking control of their lives and their language. Contact linguistics is the study of what happens to languages when they come into contact with each other. Sometimes this contact results in the formation of a pidgin, a simple language used between people who have different languages and are not bilingual. If a pidgin is eventually acquired as a first language, it becomes more complex and is referred to as a creole. At other times bilinguals alternate between the two languages in their speech for different effects. This mixing is called code-switching or code-mixing. Sometimes, this mixing of codes by bilinguals develops rules of its own and becomes language of its own, a mixed language. Another possibility, though remote, is that of passive familiarity (Thomason 2003: 30) whereby speakers unfamiliar with a language they come into contact with incorporate features of that language into their speech. As

speakers of this unfamiliar language negotiate with the unfamiliar speakers, a crosslanguage compromise may be produced, which eventually may engender a mixed language (Thomason 2003: 31). Mixed languages are languages showing a split in their basic organization (Myers-Scotton, 2002; 246) whereby the grammatical system comes from one language and the lexicon is from another. That mixed languages exist has only recently been recognized, and the literature about mixed languages is less than extensive. Few linguists agree on precise definitions for these terms, and the study of contact languages is, therefore, a fast-developing and controversial field. Detailed information about one contact language adds tremendously to the study of language contact. It is astonishing that though language contact is the norm and monolingualism the exception across the world, the study of mixed languages is still just beginning. Any attempt to make strong predictions is hindered by the fact that our comprehension of these languages is decidedly limited. This analysis of Sheng will be a major step towards expanding our current knowledge and will contribute to the study of mixed languages in general. The question that still needs to be answered, writes David A. Samper, author of a folklore dissertation on Sheng (2002: 105), is what, linguistically speaking, is Sheng? The principal goal of this study, then, is a linguistic description of Sheng. The aim of this dissertation is three-fold. The first goal is to provide a

preliminary analysis of certain aspects of Sheng, a new African urban vernacular and contact language. This description is not intended to be comprehensive. On the contrary,

19

the sketch is contrastive in nature. That is, the structure of Sheng is analyzed in order to demonstrate how it compares and contrasts with the structure of Swahili. The second goal of this dissertation is to consider what it means for a language to be labeled a mixed language. Mixed languages can be studied on at least three different levels: lexical, grammatical, and social. The third goal of this dissertation is to explore what lexical entries count as core vocabulary. For instance, if a word was initially borrowed from English or Swahili or another African vernacular, and has undergone manipulation, as in truncation or transposition, then that word is simply an established loanword in Sheng. A mixed language has a composite morphosyntax and a varied lexicon full of loans; however, once borrowed and manipulated, they are no longer identified with the words in the source language. The words that are most pertinent to the study of mixed languages are those that constitute a basic or core vocabulary of a language. These core words (e.g., function words, names of body parts, lower-order numerals, and pronouns) are very frequent but rarely borrowed, making them important to diachronic linguistics and the establishment of genetic links between languages. Often, linguistic research analyzes a standardized list of core words, such as the Swadesh list (Trask 1996; Gudschinsky 1956), which was employed as part of the data collection for this dissertation. Having undergone

manipulation, some core words in Sheng are disguised, and therefore foreign to the putative Swahili core lexicon.

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2.1

Hypotheses To achieve the goal of determining whether Sheng is a mixed language, this

dissertation addresses the following three sets of hypotheses which overlap and guide the discussion. The hypotheses are categorized into lexical elements, morpho-syntax, and social factors, each of which can be used to motivate a contact languages classification as mixed.

(1) lexicon.

The first set of hypotheses addresses the composition of the Sheng

(a)

Content morphemes in Sheng come primarily from English, Swahili and other African languages, such as Kikuyu, Luo, Luyia and Kamba. Content morphemes in Sheng are often disguised, meaning they are loans that have been morphemically manipulated.

(b)

(2)

The second set of hypotheses addresses the morphosyntax of Sheng. (a) (b) Swahili supplies most of the morphosyntactic frame for Sheng. Inflection and agreement morphemes largely come from Swahili, but a few are alien to Swahili.

(3)

The final set of hypotheses falls under the umbrella of social factors. (a) Sheng is a native language and, therefore, systematic, rulegoverned and relatively stable. Sheng is the in-group language associated with a new group identity. Sheng is the result of a deliberate decision to negotiate and compromise.

(b)

(c)

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Using Myer-Scottons (2002) 4-M Model and the Matrix Language Frame (MLF) model ( 1.2.2), the variables in these hypotheses can be identified and operationalized. The MLF model distinguishes the languages involved in codeswitching by identifying the types of morphemes they contribute. Generally, the Matrix Language (ML) contributes system morphemes while the Embedded Language (EL) lends content morphemes. Semantic and pragmatic information comes principally from the content morphemes whereas the system morphemes chiefly convey grammatical relations. The morphemes of the Sheng lexicon are generally content morphemes with their pragmatic and semantic associations. The morphemes of the Sheng morphosyntax are generally system

morphemes and are categorized as either early or late system morphemes, depending on whether they receive instructions for their formation from inside or outside their constituent. Early system morphemes include determiners, derivational affixes and plural markers. Late system morphemes are further divided into bridge and outsider Bridge morphemes connect content morphemes inside a constituent

morphemes.

together (e.g., the wa of mkia wa paka or tail of the cat). Outsider morphemes, on the other hand, include agreement markers, case markers and tense markers. As for the social factors associated with Sheng, systematicity, stability and identity, and even language itself, are social constructs. Interlocutors often have a vested interest in each other. They negotiate the language that they use, employ politeness strategies to

accommodate the addressee, and end up converging their speech styles (Thomason 2001; Giles & Smith 1979). Accommodation and convergence are the consequence of

deliberate decision, i.e., they result from conscious choice. Speakers of a mixed language

22

have an identity that is not expressed by any of the local languages and deliberately select a new mixed language to symbolize their new identity.

2.1.1

Lexicon If we accept that Swahili provides the morphosyntax of Sheng, then any

morpheme found in Sheng from other languages would be a case of borrowing or convergence. In that sense, the language borrowed from would constitute an embedded language. An Embedded Language may contribute a complete constituent consisting entirely of Embedded Language morphemes within the Complementizer Phrase (CP) of the Matrix Language. permissible contributions. Single content words, phrases and complete clauses are Languages contributing to Sheng are English, Swahili, and Complete

several local African languages (e.g., Kamba, Kikuyu, Luo, and Luyia).

foreign constituents within a Matrix Language constituent are referred to as Embedded Language Islands (Myers-Scotton 1993b). Content morphemes generally fall into the open class categories of adjectives, nouns and verbs. Content morphemes are readily identified by their syntactic profile in that they are the heads of their maximal projections. For instance, the heads of adjective phrases, noun phrases and verb phrases are respectively adjectives, nouns and verbs. Moreover, the amount of content morpheme borrowing helps determine whether a language is being mixed. Bakker and Mous (1994: 5-6) differentiate languages that are mixed from those that have simply borrowed heavily by the proportion of lexical items that are foreign.

23

Proportions of foreign content morphemes hover around 45% for languages that borrow heavily but are claimed to be nearer to 90% for mixed languages. Furthermore, in cases of extreme borrowing, foreign vocabulary seldom replaces core vocabulary; however, in mixed languages the core vocabulary can be foreign. These criteria are quantifiable. If the content morphemes of Sheng are primarily foreign to Swahili in that they are from English and other African languages, such as Luo, Luyia, Kamba and Kikuyu, then they can be grouped and counted. The aim then is to verify statistically what the content morphemes of Shengs core vocabulary are and what languages they derive from.

2.1.2. Morphosyntax The matrix language is the language that supplies the morphosyntactic frame. Other terms for the matrix language are the receiving language, the language in which code-switches and interference features appear (Thomason 2001:133), and the INFLlanguage, which is the language that supplies the finite verb inflection, the rules for the word-order of verb phrases and the combining and anchoring of predications (Matras 2003: 155, 164). Myers-Scotton contends that the matrix language is not an actual language; rather it is simply a label for the abstract morphosyntactic frame for an utterance (2002: 58). Myers-Scotton theorizes that the Projection of the

Complementizer (CP) or S-bar is the unit of analysis. Therefore, a complete CP is the constituent for analysis because that should be the location of a complete predicate/proposition. In Sheng, that CP should be analogous to the Swahili constituent. Henceforth, I will use the term Matrix Language (ML) as it subsumes the definitions of

24

Matras, Myers-Scotton, and Thomason, but particularly in the sense of Myer-Scotton and the 4-M Model. The Matrix Language Frame (MLF) model (Myers-Scotton 1993b [1997]) describes the structure of classical codeswitching. According to the System Morpheme Principal of the MLF model, no late outsider system morpheme (a morpheme which receives information for its form from beyond the head of its maximal projection [Myers-Scotton 2002]) from the Embedded Language may be part of the Matrix Language. In other words, ELs can only contribute content morphemes. Since speakers have complete access to the grammar of the Matrix Language, they have no need to supplement it or to project another grammar on to it. However, in a composite ML, speakers experiencing language shift or attrition who either do not have complete access to the morphosyntax of the ML or deliberately wish to manipulate it, use morphosyntactic features from the EL. Politico-social maelstroms, second language learning, and some cases of creole genesis are conditions conducive to composite ML formation. However, assertion of a new identity is another situation in which speakers may compose a mixed ML. Whatever the catalyst, the indicators are the same: late system morphemes from the EL are used in the composite ML (Myers-Scotton 2002; 244). The target of the morphosyntactic analysis in this dissertation is to identify the late system morphemes in Sheng. If any late system morphemes are found to be foreign to Swahili, then those morphemes will be considered evidence that Sheng has a composite morphosyntactic frame.

25

2.1.3

Social Factors Wherever and whenever speakers of different languages come into contact and

have a need to communicate, a contact language arises (albeit often only short-lived). A contact language then is basically a function of cross-linguistic contact. The extent and direction of linguistic interference and language shift are conditioned by social factors (Thomason & Kaufman 1988: 35). Concurrent use of more than one language in the same environment does not necessarily lead to multilingualism or bilingualism but to attempts at communication. These attempts may lead to simplification and a reduction of grammar as in pidginization and perhaps subsequently to nativization of the mix and creolization. Pidgins and creoles are uncommon consequences but the processes of

pidginization and creolization are commonplace (Winford 1997: 13). Unlike creoles, mixed languages tend to have only two main source languages. Speakers seek to develop a common medium of communication between different groups (Baker 1990: 111) and perhaps to create a new umbrella group, which shares this new language. Social function helps distinguish mixed languages from pidgin and creole languages. Whereas pidgins and creoles emerge from the need for a common language through which to communicate, mixed languages are viewed as a symbola common language by which to be identified. A mixed language then provides its speakers with a symbol of a new ethnic identity, one that separates the speakers from both source groups (Thomason 2001: 206). Bakker (1997) maintains that for a language to be considered mixed, it must be an in-group language used by groups of bilinguals. The language is distinct and has a specific name. The speakers of a mixed language are usually from one of three

26

sociolinguistic subdivisions: (a) ethnically mixed groups; (b) peripatetic or semi nomadic groups; or (c) in-between groups (203). Furthermore, the languages become mixed only if bilinguals wish to assert a new identity, separate from that of the members of the groups of the two base languages spoken. Otherwise, the mixing of the two languages amounts only to codeswitching (Bakker 1997: 208). Sheng is the result of deliberate decision by multilinguals who have varying levels of fluency in different dialects of Swahili. Speakers also vary in their fluency in English, the language of commerce in a country with a burgeoning capitalist economy. Nairobi urbanites have consciously chosen to use Sheng to provide a symbol of a new social entity. Thomason (2003: 36) asserts that probabilistic predictions can be made about what combination of features would be manifest in a bilingual mixed language. The total or partial relexification of the lexicon evident in many mixed languages could have resulted from intentional codeswitching. While pidgins and creoles emerge in a process similar to interference via language shift, the emergence of mixed languages results from borrowing (Thomason 2001: 158). The crystallization of codeswitching or borrowing into a set pattern of linguistic and social norms is the consequence of conscious social choice, though the reason may not be salient to the speaker. Bakker (1997: 211) also

argues that choice and the social circumstances are factors. If the lexicon is from one of the two parent languages and the grammar is from the other, then according to Bakker that is a consequence of deliberate decision by the speakers. I hypothesize that the mixing found in Sheng is both lexical and grammatical and a result of deliberate decision. For evidence, I will analyze the results of attitudinal

27

questionnaires of speakers by Ferrari (2004) in order to demonstrate that Sheng is deliberate and relatively stable.

2.2

Language Use in Nairobi Bakker (1997) describes Michif, the mixed language of the descendants of the

ethnically mixed group the Mtis, whose ancestral mothers were Native American speakers of the Algonquian language Cree and whose progenitor fathers were Europeans who spoke French. In the eighteenth century, the parents may have been multilingual, but the children became native speakers of a crystallized mixture of the two languages. The mix in Michif tends to compartmentalize noun phrases from French and verb phrases from Cree, although there is some leakage between the two. Interethnic mixing appears to have led to the mixing of the languages, and the new language is an identifying badge of the people. Unlike the Michif speakers of North Dakota, Montana, Manitoba and Saskatchewan (Bakker 1994; 1997), speakers of Sheng in Nairobi are not exactly ethnically-mixed groups. Speakers represent all the tribes in Kenya, but they are not necessarily tribally mixed. However, it should be borne in mind that Nairobi was a nonAfrican city constructed to cater to the needs of the European, not the African3 (Werlin 1974: 47).

The colonial philosophy was to keep the African agricultural because urbanization was unfamiliar to East Africans and would lead to their becoming degenerate (Werlin 1974: 48).

28

In fact, in the years before World War II, the colonial government had made little provision for single African housing and no provision for African family housing (White 1986: 256). The policy was to keep Africans out of the city, and Pass Laws were legislated to allow only migrant workers access; all others were forbidden on pain of prosecution (Muwonge 1980: 598). Though many of the original African residents were temporary migrant workers, most residents of Eastlands (i.e., the eastern subdivisions and lower-economic side of Nairobi, considered the birthplace of Sheng) today are permanent, non-nomadic, non-migrant inhabitants. Despite their parents being from the same ethnic group, many children in Nairobi frequently cannot speak their ethnic language (Kisembe 2003: 67; Buckley 1997). Youths in Westlands, the wealthier section of Nairobi, tend to speak more English while youths in Eastlands, the less affluent side of the city, tend to speak more Swahili. When the youths mix their languages, the Westlanders create Engsh whereas the Eastlanders speak Sheng. Engsh is based primarily on English, and Sheng is based primarily on Swahili (Abdulaziz & Osinde 1997: 45). Eastlanders, the residents of these nearly 25 housing estates composing the birthplace of Sheng, are mostly not native speakers of Swahili. The majority of the native speakers of Swahili in Kenya (about 10% of the total population of the country) are speakers of Kimvita, a nonstandard dialect of Swahili that is native to the Kenyan coastal town Mombasa (standard Swahili is based on the Kiunguja dialect of Zanzibar). Eastlanders do not identify with the English-speaking descendants of the white colonists, a minority that most Kenyans seldom come into contact with. A very small, very affluent group of Kenyans of African descent is fluent in English, attend British schools and

29

speak the Received Pronunciation.

However, these people are not typical Sheng

speakers, although they may have some familiarity with Sheng. Eastlanders identify with neither the group of native speakers of the national language Swahili nor with the group of native speakers of the official language English, nor with the tribes of the various ethnic vernaculars. Sheng, rather, identifies a category of speakers who can be classified as an in-between groupurban and multi-cultural.

2.2.1

Kenyas Languages Historically Foreign culture and religion are not the major factors inhibiting the majority of

Eastlanders from identifying with the language of the indigenous Swahili people. Ironically, it was European Christian missionaries who fomented the standardization of Swahili and the bleaching out of its Islamic origins (Mazrui 1978: 227). The

transmogrification of the language from a tool of the ivory/slave trade and Islamic socialization to an implement of Christian socialization and European colonialism mutated the languages phonology and religious associations. In fact, it is this systematic bleaching that leads most Kenyans to believe that the Swahili language does not belong to anybody (Harries 1976: 156). However, this notion made Swahili a politically neutral language and therefore the ideal candidate as a national language. On the Fourth of July, 1974, President Jomo Kenyatta, the first president of the Republic of Kenya, decreed Swahili to be Kenyas national language. This decree ran counter to reality in Nairobi, a city that had been English speaking since its foundation as a midpoint stop on the East African Railway, built by the British. Unlike Dar es Salaam, the original capital of Tanzania from 1964 to 1996, Nairobi was not a town on the

30

Swahili coast, not inside the Swahili dialect continuum found along the East African coast stretching from southern Somalia to the islands of the Comoros. Though most native speakers of Swahili were confined to the coast, there was a network of Swahili trading posts throughout East Africa. These trade routes tended to circumnavigate Kenya with caravans from Mombasa running south through Tanzania, thereby avoiding the uncooperative Kikuyu, Masaai and Nandi peoples (Whiteley 1969: 400). Colonial European powers annexed these networks and capitalized on the lingua franca to solidify their administration and to exploit the colonial resources. However, soon after World War II it became clear that the indigenous lingua franca might unite the various tribal communities in their struggle against colonialism, resulting in the British beginning to emphasize English (Mbaabu 1996: 82; Mazrui & Zirimu 1998:178), an emphasis that an independent Kenya would continue. By 1970, a majority of the primary or elementary schools in Kenya were using English as a medium of instruction (Harries 1976: 154). When Swahili was made the national language of Tanzania, a majority of the residents of Dar es Salaam were native speakers of a dialect of Swahili. When Swahili was made the national language of Kenya, few residents of Nairobi knew any native speakers of Swahili, even though nonstandard varieties (i.e., Kimvita and Kiamu) would have been common as first languages in the villages and towns on Kenyas coast along the Indian Ocean. Therefore, the nationalization of Swahili was an about-face from the educational policy that had been pursued since Independence in 1963. The idea behind the new policy was to make Kenya more African and less colonial. No other Kenyan language could be selected without opposition from other ethnic groups that spoke other languages. Though Nairobi is a name derived from the

31

Maasai language, the city itself rests in the land of the Kikuyu, the largest ethnic group in the country. However, no ethnic group other than the Kikuyu would accept the Kikuyu language. Therefore, Swahilis appeal kept inter-ethnic conflict at bay. Paradoxically, it was a hindrance both to the poor and the elite in the country. Most Kenyans, especially rural wananchi or citizens, and even many of the elite, whom the colonists educated and bequeathed their power to, had only an elementary mastery of the Swahili language. The nouveau riche would have had a mastery of English, while the peasants would have spoken mostly one or more of the more than 40 different vernaculars. Even though there had long been an unavoidable, definite and widespread use of Swahili as an interethnic mode of communication, these exchanges had been on a rather basic level with much interference from the speakers first languages as emphasis was on communicating rather than worrying about strict Swahili grammaticality (Harries 1976: 160). Migrant workers brought their Up-country Swahili with them to the Eastlands of Nairobi, where it blended with the rural forms of the language that others had brought with them. All Kenyans

agreed that they needed Swahili to communicate with members of different tribes, but they all also knew that English was the key to upward mobility (Harries 1976: 159). Government policy reflected this attitude. The official language of the Kenyan parliament was English from Independence in 1963 to the presidential decree in 1974, when Swahili became the bodys official language. An amendment in 1975 made parliamentary proceedings bilingual, permitting the use of either English or Swahili (Mbaabu 1996: 137). More of the higher-level civil service positions required literacy in English and were occupied by educated Kikuyu speakers, giving them motive to promote English (Laitin & Eastman 1989:52). That Kenyans were unsure about Swahili is

32

reinforced by the fact the language remained neither a testable nor a compulsory subject on the national examinations for primary and secondary schools until 1985, when the educational system of the new country was revamped, moving from a British to an American format (i.e., an 8-4-4 system in which education levels consist of 8 years of primary, 4 of secondary and 4 of university). In that year, Swahili had finally reached some true status across the nation and began to be required for social advancement. But

the 22-year interim from 1963 to 1985 was also the genesis of Kenyas first truly independent, postcolonial generation, and they had had little or no schooling in Standard Swahili. This educational lapse prevented the standardization of Swahili in Nairobi and in Kenya in general; furthermore, it was an incubatory time aiding the emergence of a new identity, the urban sophisticate. Economic reality forbids Eastlanders from identifying completely with the language of the privileged. Though English had been encouraged by the colonialists and most schools had been using English as the medium of instruction, access to education was only available to a few privileged elite. Even in the present day, the average mwananchi or citizen earns a dollar or less a day (BBC News 2007). Githinji (2000) calculates that more than 68% of the nations total household income is controlled by a mere 10% of the population, making Kenya a nation of millions of beggars and few millionaires. It has only been since 2004 that primary school education has been free

and available to the general public (ActionAid 2005). It would be safe to argue that if most could not afford a primary education, most would not attend a higher institution of education either. Most residents of Eastlands were mixing their first languages, their

33

non-standard Swahili (i.e., Up-country Swahili) and what little English trickled down to them in their everyday speech. They were an in-between group.

2.2.2

Up-Country Swahili Comes to Town That Sheng did not emerge in Mvita the Swahili coastal town of Mombasa,

instead of in the capital Nairobi, is significant. The city is an innovation and not a part of traditional non-Swahili society, an urban/rural polarity common in African nations (Singler 1987: 121). The estates of the subdivisions in Eastlands are where migrant workers were housed. If Swahili was known to newcomers, it would have had the obvious markings of their rural area, not the innovative phonology and lexicon of the city. Their language would have stood out, causing them to be labeled and giving them motivation to try to adapt to city speech. Mshamba or farm person is a pejorative term for a country bumpkin or a person from the rural areas. Neither recent immigrants nor their new peers were likely to have been educated, nor would they have likely wanted to speak like the privileged (Childs 1997; Kroch 1978). On the contrary, the new city dwellers would have sought to create a language and identity of their own, as many migr have done (LePage & Tabouret-Keller 1985), separate from that of the rustic and the elite. Sheng then is a language that provides its speakers with an identity distinguishable from that of the speakers of the countrys national language and that of the speakers of its official language. It is an egalitarian, non-religious symbol.

Furthermore, it provides the speaker an identity distinct from that of the traditional tribal group.

34

Sheng draws from the lexicons of several different sources, and therefore has a set of parallel lexicons which creates one new lexicon that expresses a new identify. The

mixtures in Sheng are analogous to those found in Maa and other mixed languages (Mous 2003: 91). The use of Sheng, therefore, has a social meaning. That is, Sheng allows its speakers to declare a new group identity, a membership in which they are not Swahili, not English and not tribal. Besides showing that Sheng has a composite

morphosyntax, this dissertation will demonstrate that Sheng is a badge of a new Kenyan identity.

35

CHAPTER THREE: HISTORY AND BACKGROUND

3.0

History Updating Guthries classification of the Bantu languages in the Niger-Congo

family (Guthrie 1971: 28-64), Maho (2003) aims to maintain the original list but include languages overlooked previously. Of the approximately 200 new dialects/languages

added, a few have been included in a category labeled Pidgin, Creole and/or Mixed Languages (Maho 2003: 650), one of which is Sheng (i.e., G40E). The initial letter and number are original to Guthries list and are intended to suggest possible genetic/typological affiliation. The final upper-case letter indicates that the new language is a mixed language, pidgin or creole. A different sequential terminal letter distinguishes one contact language from another in a group. Map 3.1 displays the original test

languages that Guthrie used for his classification system (Dalby 1975). Of the languages discussed in relation to Sheng, G40 consists of the Swahili group, E51 is Kikuyu, and E55 is Kamba. Not listed are the languages of the Masaba-Luyha Group (E30) and, of course, the Nilotic language Luo. The code and Maps 3.2, 3.3 and 3.4 show the location of Group G into which Sheng purportedly fits geographically, genetically and typologically. The source of Sheng remains uncertain, though a few scholars assert that it is closely related to Swahili (Githiora 2002: 176; Abulazziz and Osinde 1997: 52). The

Map 3.1 Guthries Test Languages

(Dalby 1975: 501)

obvious suspect as the progenitor of Sheng is Kimvita4, the dialect spoken in Kenyas largest coastal city Mombasa. However, Kimvita never spread inland (Gorman 1974) and was not standardized. Standard Swahili is the official variety taught in Kenya, but it is based on Kiunguja, the variety spoken on the island of Zanzibar. However, Kiunguja was not standardized until the 1929 (Myers-Scotton 1979: 111). The only way to get to the bottom of what the source of Sheng might be is to review the history and the spread of Swahili in East Africa.

There are varieties of Kimvita. Kijomvu, a subdialect (Sacleux 1909; Nurse & Hinnebusch 1993) spoken by the Mombasa Old Town elite, is most prestigious locally (Parkin 1994). However, Kimvita is the more general name for the dialect spoken in Mombasa or Mvita, the citys Swahili name, after Shehe Mvita, the founder of the Shirazi dynasty (Nurse and Spear 1985:73).

37

Map 3.2:

Geo-political Map

Map 3.3: Bantu Zonal Classification (Lowe & Shadeberg 1996)

38

Map 3.4: Sheng (G40E) of the New Languages of the New Updated Guthrie-List (Maho 2008: 103-104).

39

In the next few sections, I will discuss the advent of Bantu languages in East Africa, a concise history of Swahili on the coast of East Africa, and the inland spread of the predecessor of Standard Swahili that developed into the offshoots that became linguae francae in the interior. In particular, Congo Swahili and Up-country Swahili will be focused on. Congo Swahili has many names. Kingwana, Congolese Copperbelt Kiswahili, Shaba Swahili, Katanga Swahili, Lubumbashi Swahili, Zairian Swahili and Congo Swahili are all used to indicate the region(s) in which the language is spoken, namely the southeastern part of the Orientale Province, and the Nord-Kivu, Maniema, Sud-Kivu provinces, and most important historically, the Katanga province of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. This last region is the southernmost province of the Congo and the gate through which Swahili entered the Congo at a pre-colonial time when trade was developing between foreigners, the Arabs, the Swahilis and the Nyamwezi, and the local indigenous people. It was with Belgian colonization, however, that Swahili became firmly established in the Congo. Up-country Swahili is an umbrella term for the varieties of Swahili that developed in Kenya with trade in the 1800s (Vitale 1980; Berry 1971; Polom 1967). These inland, Swahili-based languages in Kenya include Kisetla (English settler), Kihindi (Indian), Kivita5 (military) and Kishamba6 (farmhand). Since nearly a generation has passed since
5

Kivita should not be confused with Kimvita, the dialect of Mombasa. However, both may derive from the same Swahili root (vita = war). Kivita then is the war language, a pidgin of Swahili that developed in the military during World War II (Vitale 1980: 48). Its precursor, KiKAR, was a pidginized Swahili used by African recruits in the KAR or Kings African Rifles prior to WW2 (Parsons 1999: 112; Mutonya & Parsons 2004). 6 Note that Kishamba is a farmland (shamba = farm) pidgin. It is not the same as Kishambaa or Kishambala (G20) of the Usambara Mountains of Tanzania.

40

the government of Kenya gave institutional support to Standard Swahili (Mbaabu 1996), these pidgins may now have been abandoned. First the coming of Bantu to the coast of East Africa and the rise of Swahili are discussed ( 3.1). Next is outlined the spread of Swahili from the coast to the hinterland of mainland East Africa: Tanzania ( 3.2); the Congo ( 3.3); and Kenya ( 3.4). Then, a comparison of a few contact languages and what makes a language a mixed language are examined ( 3.5). Finally, the significance of the study of Sheng is weighed.

3.1

The Spread of Bantu Languages into East Africa A territorys settlement history can be significant to the linguistic geography of an

area. If a language manifests certain features that can be shown to be associated with the language of earlier immigrants to various parts of the geographic area, then contact and/or genetic affiliation may be assumed. The original Swahili city-states arose along the coast of East Africa. Never did any Swahili settlement emerge in the hinterland of the continent. As this dissertation is concerned with a language of inland Kenya, the discussion will be mainly focused on the language community of central, interior East Africa, an area settled predominantly by Bantu migrants. However, an explanation of how a coastal language may have entered the hinterland and became established is also required. With an outline of the migrations of the area, we are better qualified to make a supposition about what the origin of Sheng is. From the rainforests of Cameroun and eastern Nigeria in western Africa approximately 3,000 years ago, Bantu peoples migrated southward and eastward. The

41

spread came in three waves, and the last of these, which occurred at about 500 BCE, branched southwards and eastwards (Ehret 1998; Davidson 1984; Maxon 1986). From this third wave, argues Ehret (2001), emerges Savannah Bantu, the progenitor of the eastern, southern, and south-western Bantu languages. Savannah Bantu is the chosen name because it most accurately reflects the perceived vegetation of the area. Oliver et al (2001: 4) point out that this area closely matches the region that Guthrie, analyzing common vocabulary, identified as the cradle of his proto-Bantu, the language of the ancestors of the speakers of the Bemba and Luba languages (see Map 3.1).

Figure 3.1: Sabaki Languages Dendrogram Language Tree: Mitotic Points: North East Coast Bantu Bantu spoken on the coast of East Africa around first century CE. Proto-Sabaki emerges about the Sabaki Seuta Ruvu Pare sixth century CE. Proto-Swahili splits off around 800 CE. Swahili Mijikenda Pokomo Mwani Swahili spreads with trade along the Swahili coast. Varieties develop Southern Swahili Northern Swahili over a millennium. Dialects from just south of Mombasa up to Somalia are Kiunguja Kivumba Kipemba Kimvita Northern; those below are southern. Kiunguja spreads inland during the 1800s and the 1900s. Varieties Standard Congo Up-country emerge. Swahili Swahili Swahili (adapted from Kusters 2003: 305)

Savannah Bantu is the parent of Eastern Bantu (Mashariki Bantu), which reached Kenya and the eastern African coast around 100 CE. As Ehret (1998) explains,

languages experience analogical mitosis over time, and eventually Eastern Bantu

42

underwent division into two or more daughter languages.

One of those daughter

languages was Proto-Northeast Coast (see Figure 3.1), which divided further into ProtoSabaki, which was the mother of Proto-Swahili, which diverged sometime around 800 CE (Nurse & Hinnebusch 1993: 2). Proto-Swahili would have been the mother language that spread along the East African coast and begat the daughter dialects of Kimvita (Mombasa) and Kiunguja (Zanzibar), among others. Kiunguja in turn was the progenitor of Congo Swahili, UpCountry Swahili and Standard Swahili. Indian Ocean commerce brought Persian, Arab and Sabaki peoples together, and their fusion brought about the genesis of the Swahili (Maxon 1986: 40). From southern Somalia to northern Mozambique, a 1000-mile chain of Swahili city-states was established along the coast, where contact and trade were maintained by boat. Though trade along the East Coast had been fruitful for well over a millennium, that trade had barely penetrated the hinterland. This is not to say that no commerce existed between the interior and the coast, rather it is to state that East African trade was mostly a part of the world of Indian Ocean commerce. Even the coming (1498 CE) and going (1698 CE) of the Portuguese7 had little lasting effect on the established Swahili. With the Portuguese out, the Omani Arabs endeavored to move back in. However, the Swahili were not interested in an Omani yoke either. They even allied themselves with their erstwhile oppressor Portugal8 to fight the Omanis, successfully keeping foreign domination at bay

Vasco da Gama stumbled onto the Swahili coastal city-states in search of an Indian Ocean trade route. The Portuguese pitted one city-state against another, built Fort Jesus at Mombasa in 1593 CE, but could not maintain influence. 8 The Portuguese actually regained control of the fort for a short time from 1728-1729 but could not persevere.

43

again (Maxon 1986). This resoluteness may explain why the Swahili language has remained undeniably Bantu in grammar and vocabulary. However, the Arabs still had claim to sovereignty over the East African coast, and unbeknownst to the Omanis, they and their East African interests had come under the influence of the British Empire (Miller 1971: 24). British and European interest in the mainland East African hinterland only peaked in the 1880s (Maxon 1986: 111). In 1828, the Imam of Oman moved and became known as the Sultan of Zanzibar (Miller 1971: 31). The Sultan Seyyid Said turned the island into a producer of cloves and then turned his attention to exploiting the resources of the interior of the mainland, namely slaves and ivory, on a scale previously unknown.

3.2

The Spread of Swahili into Tanzania In the early days of the expansion of trade inland from the coast, the intention of

the Arabs was simply to carry on commerce, not to explore or to proselytize (Polom 1967). Consequently, little contact occurred between the Swahili of the Arab caravans and the ethnic groups of the interior. As the routes developed regularity and the caravans were by nature lethargic in pace, regional hubs sprang up, and became enduring settlements. This situation was ideal for the genesis of a pidgin language, which is what evolved, and what became the lingua franca of the network of trade routes from the coast to the great lakes area. With the arrival of Sultan Seyyid Said, the demand for slaves and ivory increased, and the caravans increased. The Yao of Malawi and the Nyamwezi (Lodhi 2003; Atmore 1985; Wright 1965), inland Tanzanias second largest ethnic group, helped blaze and maintain the trails of the Zanzibari caravans. Through their native

44

language, Kinyamwezi (F20), the Nyamwezi made a hefty imprint on the spreading Swahili culture and influenced Kiunguja more than any other East African tribe (Lodhi 2003: 5). Approximately 40,000 slaves were sold at Zanzibar each year by the 1840s (Maxon 1986: 107). Many of these slaves were captured through raids and war. The communal economies of the local peoples were soon converted to market economies (Kusters 2003) or completely destroyed. As the hunt for ivory and slaves grew more

competitive and the herds of elephants and new sources of slaves became fewer, the caravans advanced ever deeper into the heart of East Africa, leaving economic, social and political instability in their wake (Atmore 1985). To fill the void, warlords began to emerge. Misri, warlord of the Nyamwezi, maintained the caravan route from Zanzibar via Bagamoyo to Ujiji via Tabora (see Map 3.5), exploited Bembaland (see Map 3.1) as an ivory and slave reservoir, and also controlled the lucrative Copperbelt trade up into the Katanga area of the Congo (Atmore 1985).

3.3

The Spread of Swahili into the Congo Into the Congo came the Swahili language on the back of war and turbulence.

Like Misri in Tanzania, Hamed bin Muhammed el Murjebi (aka Tippu Tip), a SwahiliZanzibari slave trader, was a warlord in eastern Congo, west and south of Lake Tanganyika (see Map 3.5), especially in the Manyema9 region. Tippu Tip amassed much wealth and milked the land of its resources with caravans having up to a thousand armed guards and two thousand porters (Miller 1971: 49).

The term that Livingstone (1874: 15, 33) used identified the area northwest of Lake Tanganyika (McCurdy 2006: 441; Bennett 1968: 145). A province called Maniema exists today in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Its capital, Kindu, was a Zanzibari entrept.

45

Map 3.5: Major Trade Routes of East Africa

(Maxon 1986)

46

He also helped the journalist/explorer Henry Morton Stanley find the missionary/explorer David Livingstone (Brode 1969; Pakenham1991). Subsequently, Stanley explored the Congo River for the King of Belgium and later helped Tippu Tip be named governor of the Stanley Falls District of the Congo Free State10. Whether the new competiveness in trade produced Tippu Tip or Tippu Tip produced the new competitiveness, he broke the traditional rules of deferring to local rulers and employed gun-boat diplomacy to break local monopolies (Wright & Lary 1971: 554). A new system was developed not only for acquiring resources but for recruiting porters:

The Arabs attack and capture a village, kill the grown up men, and make prisoners of all the boys, girls and women they can; these they carry on with them on their marches, selling the women where they can for ivory and bringing up the boys for raiders and the girls for their haremsThis system is a good one, though one which destroys the country they pass through. (Captain W. G. Stairs11 as quoted in Page 1971: 72-73)

These groups of boys were the recruits who became the Manyema hordes, who marked their identity by using a dialect of Kiunguja called Kiungwana (Page 1971). Kiungwana (also Kingwana) translates as the educated language of the strangers, deriving from the phrase foreign natives or walungu with ana being a common South

Katanga was incorporated into the Congo Free State after Misris death. Stairs was a British mercenary hired by King Leopold to acquire Katanga. During the Stairs Expedition, Misri was shot and killed. Stairs installed Misris son as chief, a treaty was signed, and Katanga went to Leopold.
11

10

47

African diminutive suffix12 (Roehl 1930: 198). Wright and Lary (1971: 547) employ the cover term Swahili to cover the Manyema marauders. However, the Manyema or Waungwana13 formed one of the tiers in a new three-level social class system (Page 1971). The relationship between the Zanzibari slavers and the other Africans was characterized by contempt by the former and suspicion by the latter14. The Waungwana formed an intermediary group between the Arabs/Swahilis at the top and the native indigenous peoples at the bottom. Though slaves, the Waungwana had more privilege and power than the local Africans. Nevertheless, the Zanzibaris considered the Manyema heathens and allowed them neither social legitimacy nor complete access to the culture of the coast15. The Manyema too represented the remains of the decimated communities that existed before the expansion of the Zanzibari frontiers. Their identity was forged from the common experiences of ethnicities that had survived the Swahili onslaught (McCurdy 2006: 454) and by the fact that Manyema was the Tanganyikan designation applied to any African from the Congo (McCurdy 1996: 25). The Manyema traveled the slave routes and networks, establishing or re-establishing connections with local peoples who had not been enslaved. Customs that were shared were reinforced or new ones

12 Roehl (1930: 198) notes, rather ironically, that this educated language sounded pidgin-like to the ears of those used to Kiunguja. 13 Waungwana is plural for mwungwana, defined as a free man and contrasted with mtumwa or slave; it now means someone of good breeding (Johnson 1939: 323). Incidentally, a long running Kenyan television comedy program of skits has the refrain and title Je, huu ni Ungwana? (Is this civilized behavior?). 14 This relationship is not uncommon among the Swahili and the non-Swahili. The Mombasa Swahili see non-Muslim languages/culture as ushirikina or polytheism and the speakers as washenzi or savages and wanyika or bush people, while the Giriama see the Muslim convert as a mwangiriri or infiltrator (Parkin 1994; 1985). 15 The social intermediaries on the Kenyan coast are not embraced either (Parkin 1985: 255).

48

developed. It was even rumored that the Manyema were flesh-eaters or cannibals16, but this was more a European fantasy than an African reality (McCurdy 2006: 457). Nevertheless, with a certain amount of status and mystery comes privilege and influence. McCurdy (2006) describes the ritual practices (e.g. spirit possession and dances) of the Manyema women and how their contacts through various trade routes allowed them to become trend-setters with the kanga 17symbolizing their prestige. Nonetheless, once the

Waungwana began to realize that they would never truly be allowed to advance up the Zanzibari social ladder18, they began to seek other possibilities of bettering themselves. For instance, Ngongo Leteta (aka Gongo Luteta), an enslaved child under Tippu Tip, rose to the level of lieutenant and was given an area at the farthest western border of Tippu Tips territory to exploit. Ngongo began to expand further westward on his own, gaining power and autonomy. At one point, angered by unpaid services for ivory or slaves, Ngongo switched allegiances from Tippu Tip and the Swahili Arabs to the Congo Free State (Edgerton 2002: 98). Allied with the Force Publique (the Congo Free State army), he helped to drive the Swahili Arabs out of the Congo. However, despite serving King Leopold loyally, the Belgians accused him of planning treason and executed him (Edgerton 2002). As a result, the ivory and slaves ceased flowing east, and profits began flowing into Leopolds coffers. All out war between the Belgians and the Swahili Arabs ensued, but the Islamic merchants were eventually defeated, and not a few of the

Cannibalism is claimed to have been rampant during the 1892-1893 war between the Congo Free State and Arabs (Edgerton 2002: 100; Pakenham 1991: 447). 17 Literally kanga is the Swahili word for guinea fowl. However, it is a generic word for a colorful cut of cloth that often comes in pairs and has been ubiquitous among East African women since the slave trade. 18 Lofchie (1967) argues that it was this very social inequity that brought about the massacre of citizens of Arab descent during the Zanzibari Revolution of 1964 and the subsequent uniting of Zanzibar with Tanganyika to form Tanzania.

16

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Waungwana joined in the administration of the new Province Orientale of the Congo Free State. Page (1971: 82) contends that this transformation of the Waungwana from agents of the slave trade to operatives of European colonial power was a familiar pattern occurring elsewhere in East Africa. The slave and ivory commerce was replaced by missionary education and mining. Africans were depicted as ignorant, uncivilized,

debauched and inferior, even by African American missionaries (Edgerton 2002; Jacobs 1982). The Belgians established the city of Elisabethville (later renamed Lubumbashi) in southern Katanga and opened copper (shaba in Swahili) mines. As the copper mines grew, so did the number of miners and the population of Lubumbashi. Swahili eventually became the most prominent lingua franca as it was perceived to be ethnically neutral (Kusters 2003: 314). Moreover, as a result of the urbanization, the Swahili in Lubumbashi began to take on a significant role as a symbol of a new urban identity in the Congo. New migrants to the city speak a pidgin-like variety of Kiungwana, analogous to the pidgin (i.e., Up-country Swahili) spoken in Kenya (Kusters 2003: 315). This variety of Kiungwana is brought with immigrants to Lubumbashi from their rural homes that are peppered along the old Arab-Swahili trade routes (Polom 1967; Deans 1950). Presently the language has become the common means of expression for a shared experience of an urban life-style (Fabian 1986: 110).

3.4

The Spread of Swahili into Kenya The route by which PS [Pidgin Swahili or Up-country Swahili] arrived in

Interior Kenya in the early 20th century is not certain, but it is most likely that it came

50

through Tanzania rather than directly from the Kenyan coast (Wald 1981: 12). Roughly one decade after the Sultan of Oman established himself as the Sultan of Zanzibar, Swahili interpreters were available in the East African hinterland, more so in Tanzania than Kenya (Gorman 1974). The trade routes in Kenya were not Swahili and not nearly as defined (Whitely 1969). The Swahili peoples of Mombasa, smarting from the

Portuguese experience, were adverse to the sovereignty of the Omanis, and the inland Maasai, Kikuyu and Nandi did not welcome caravans. Consequently, with no slave trade, no Zanzibari entrepts and no displaced peoples, no Waungwana warlords emerged or forged any new ethnicity. Besides interior Kenyan trade was controlled by the Kamba in association with the Mijikenda19, neither of whom, in contrast to the Nyamwezi and Yao, sought to acculturate to coastal Swahili life (Gorman 1974). Kenyan insulation was not to be long lived. European colonial powers convened at the Berlin Conference in 1885 to confirm not only King Leopolds sovereignty over the Congo Free State but to establish spheres of influence in order that all knew who had a right to scramble for pieces of this magnificent African cake (Davidson 1986: 173; Hill 1949). Germany and Britain sliced up East Africa by drawing a line through the mainland with a zigzag leaving Mt. Kilimanjaro in the German sphere and by acknowledging the sovereignty of the Sultan of Zanzibar over a coastal strip ten miles deep into the British sphere (See Map 3.6).

Mijikenda (aka Nyika) means the nine cities or the nine tribes, including Digo, Chonyi, Duruma, Jibana, Kambe, Kauma, Giriama, Rabai and Ribe. Their lands are parallel to but a little inland from those of the Swahili (Nurse & Hinnebusch 1993: 17).

19

51

Map 3.6 Colonial Partition of East Africa

(Maxon 1986)

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In 1895, the British government ordained and established the East Africa Protectorate, which would become the colony of Kenya in 1920 and the Republic of Kenya in 1963. The colonization of Kenya was gradual and thorough but not by an invading army; on the contrary, the conquest of the British East Africa Protectorate was conducted by invading railway. The official and main rationale given for constructing a railway was to protect British interests20 on the Suez Canal and in Egypt by controlling the source of the upper Nile (Miller 1971). The railroad would connect the British navy at Mombasa on the Indian Ocean to Kisumu and later to Kampala on Lake Victoria and the source of the White Nile. None of this is to say that there was no resistance from local Africans to the construction of the railway and colonization. Indeed resistance was there; however, the British had superior military weaponry, employed divide-and-conquer tactics and had assistance from natural disasters21, such as drought, the spread of sleeping sickness and the epidemic of rinderpest (Maxon 1986: 140-141). In 1896 the laying of tracks began in Mombasa and on May 30th 1899 the construction crew arrived at mile 327, a place the Maasai called Nakusontelon or the beginning of all beauty, which had a small stream called Usao Nairobi22 or cold water (Miller 1971: 364). In July of that same year, the decision was made to build a depot before continuing the railroad construction to Port Florence (i.e., Kisumu), and the Protectorate Headquarters were moved from Mombasa to
Echoes of such rampant and brazen jingoism are not uncommon in the history of imperialism. Examples range from Bonapartes 1798 Egyptian campaign (Moorehead 1962: 59-60) to Bushs 2003 invasion of Iraq (Rudd 2004: 506-507). 21 Perhaps as a result of the drought, sleeping sickness and rinderpest weakening the formerly fierce Maasai thus removing the deterrent or the increase in competition, trade routes did begin to infiltrate Kenya in the late 1800s (See Map 3.5). Still no Swahili entrepts like those in Tanganyika were established (Gorman 1974: 401). 22 Hake (1977: 253) says the Maasai name is Enkare Nairobi or The place of cold waters.
20

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Nairobi in 1901. Nairobi, as unlikely as it seemed and perhaps with some reluctance, became in 1907 the capital of British East Africa. Nairobi at first was nothing more than a campsite next to a makeshift train depot. It consisted mostly of Indian coolies, who were the railway workers. It must have resembled one of Tippu Tips caravans for there were well over two thousand Indian coolies or workers and hundreds of Indian craftsmen, carpenters, surveyors and clerks (Miller 1971: 290). In addition, though there were no slaves, camp-followers consisting of merchants from the coast, local African entrepreneurs and prostitutes, were abundant. Few Europeans were present at the birth of the city that was to become Nairobi. The civil service, commerce, currency and even the military and laws were products of or connected to India (Hake 1977: 25). The capital of the East Africa Protectorate was a little British India. It was young and growing but still only a single street of Indian dukas [shops], made of corrugated iron, and Government offices on wooden piles of the same harsh material, which used to creak and crack, like a man pulling his finger-joints in the hot sun (Huxley 1959 as cited in Werlin 1974: 38). After the Kenya-Uganda Railway was completed, the government of the Protectorate began to look for ways to make it pay for itself. This decision meant less Indian influence and more White settlement. The Elgin Pledge in 1907 by the secretary of the state of the colonies (Sir Charles Eliot) reserved the lands around Nairobi (aka the White Highlands) for Europeans, excluding not only the Africans but the Asians as well (Maxon 1986: 161). Moreover, the European settlers began to petition the colonial government to force Africans to provide cheap labor (Maxon 1986: 161). At the end of the First World War when the economy was booming, Africans began to migrate to

54

Nairobi in search of economic betterment, but the government looked more to control the flow than provide for it (Hake 1977):

The development of Pumwani23, the native location, was seen as the answerIn 1922 the Municipal Council debated motions proposing stricter control of natives, particularly at night, and advocated a curfew, pass-laws, the repatriation of vagrants, the prevention and demolition of unauthorized huts, and the provision of food for convicts when discharged. (Hake 1977: 41)

Africans were considered temporary residents and their needs were not considered serious. Not only was housing inadequate, public services, medical facilities and

education were ignored (Furedi 1973). All of these conveniences were available to the European, but the African and the Asian24 remained hardly provided for. In 1951 there were still no lights, roads or drainage in Eastleigh25, part of Eastlands, despite the area having a population larger than any other in Nairobi (Werlin 1974: 54). It is a wonder that the White settlers were shocked by the Mau Mau26 uprising of the poor during the years 1952 through 1960. Despite the injustice and the unrest, the city continued to

grow. The population of the city grew from 1906s 11,512 to 1948s 118,976, to 1963s

The site and particulars of Pumwani, the first official area for Africans in Nairobi, were determined in 1919, and it was constructed from 1921-1923 (Bujra 1974). Soon temporary shelters sprang up and acquired the name Majengo or buildings (Hake 1977: 130-131). The African side of town in general became known as Eastlands (Hake 1977:27). 24 The Asians who remained in Kenya after the railway was completed were not coolie laborers; on the contrary, they were members of Indian and Pakistani families who had long had commercial ties with the coast (Maxon 1986: 162). They could economically fend for themselves and were, though disadvantaged, not living in poverty. 25 An area first called Egerton estate and Nairobi East Township was renamed Eastleigh after the Eastleigh railway works town in Hampshire, England (Hake 1977: 255). Because of the influx of Somali refugees in the 1990s, today it is sometimes called Little Mogadishu.

23

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342,764 (Olima 2001) and to 1999s 2.3 million, and it is predicted that 2025s total will be five million (Oronje 2005). Of the citys population, one characteristic has remained the same from pre-Independence through post-Independence: The majority of the residents live in slum settlements27. Colonial urban settlements tended to be adaptations of preexisting settlements (Coquery-Vidrovitch 1991). Nairobi was different in that although there was a nearby river and evidence of local trade in the area (a caravan route ran nearby), there was no local urban settlement. The British created an urban settlement to serve mostly as an administrative hub to cater to the demands of the Kenya-Uganda railroad and the needs of the colonial government (cf, Map 3.7). Land west of the tracks was reserved for

Europeans; east was for the Asians. In the beginning, little need existed for an industrial working class, other than for those working for the railway and they happened to be nonnatives.

Dedan Kimathi, a Kenyan freedom fighter, once explained that no Mau Mau organization existed for the Mau Mau were actually just the poor, and military might is not what one uses to stop poverty (Odinga 1967: 120). 27 In the world, 32% of urban populations live in slums, but in Nairobi approximately 60% of the population lives in slums (United Nations Settlement Programme 2003). Kibera and Mathare are the two most well-known slums in Nairobi. Uncontrolled urban settlements, such as are these, are conducive to social and linguistic interaction. People of differing ethnic and language backgrounds exist shoulder to shoulder, and their children are denied access to education in the standard languages (Githinji 2006: 27). Sheng is an increasingly popular option.

26

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Map 3.7 Nairobi 1903 CE on the Kenya-Uganda Railway (Maxon 1986; Hake 1977)

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The Africans who migrated to Nairobi in search of employment found only shortterm, casual labor. On shambas or plantations, they were farmhands. In the city, they were manual laborers for government agencies and domestic servants for private individuals. A third small need eventually emerged. As an administrative hub, the colonial bureaucracy in Nairobi increasingly developed lower-level positions requiring literate Africans, who at first were only being educated by the missions. From this group of bureaucrats would emerge the future political elites28 of Nairobi. But of course Nairobi was a racially segregated city. Municipal ordinances outlined the separate

societies. Africans were not allowed access to restaurants, hotels and schools. They were also not on the same pay scale. Moreover, the residential areas were defined for Europeans and Asians. Africans were on their own, until Pumwani. They had to build their own housing in native locations or African villages (see Map 3.7), which caused the creation of two cities, the European/Asian urban center and the African slum. All of the Africans regardless of education had to live in the native locations, which is where most of the urban growth occurred. Africans were migrating from the rural areas as a result of economic hardship and/or the lure of perceived urban opportunities. These migrants had a vested interest in maintaining urban employment and perhaps also, since they were temporary employees, their status in rural areas to which they still had ties. Though they brought with them their rural values and language, the city presented a new hierarchy to which they had to adapt. City dwellers had to integrate

Harry Thuku, a Kikuyu educated by a Christian mission in Kiambu district who later became a telephone switchboard operator in Nairobi, emerged as Kenyas first nationalist leader (Hake 1977: 33). He protested the enforcement of a set of pass controls, including the kipande or identity-and-employment document all Kenyan males were forced to carry by the colonial administration (Anderson 2000: 464).

28

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their rural expectations with those of other migrants and adopt the new urban hierarchical system. They sought informal settlements next to Nairobi that closely resembled their

rural homes. In other words, they formed African villages or ethnic enclaves or ghettoes next to Nairobi. The conditions were unsanitary, and the plague broke out in 1911, 1912 and 1913, causing officials to begin considering the provision of some housing. Though Pumwani was developed in 1921, a Pumwani extension, Shauri Moyo, was developed in 1938, followed by Makongeni in 1944, Kaloleni in 1945, and Bahati and Mbotela in 1951 (see Map 1.3). No housing was developed for families until the 1957 Ofafa29 developments, later called Maringo, Jerusalem and Jericho (Hake 1977). The first half century of African housing in Nairobi had been for bachelors. Racism, corruption and poor planning were the causes for the substandard housing; the consequences were larger and larger informal settlements on the outskirts of the city. The population of Nairobi grew tenfold (from 1906 to 1948) prior to Independence and nearly doubled during the first decade immediately after Independence. Besides the physical hardships the immigrants had to face, they had also to traverse linguistic barriers. One might be tempted to ask how the linguistic obstacles to the spread of Swahili were different in Kenya from the barriers in Tanzania. First, the Swahili trade routes were much later in arriving in hinterland Kenya. Second, traditional African societies in Kenya seemed to be more resistant to the draw of the Swahili. No Arab-Swahili entrepts were established, and no Waungwana emerged as leaders. Moreover, Kenya had no

Ambrose Ofafa was Treasurer of the East African Luo Union (EALU), the oldest tribal association in Kenya. He was murdered in Nairobi in 1954, and these new housing areas were named in his honor (Hake 1977).

29

59

inland communities, such as those in Ujiji and Tabora, whose first language was Swahili (Polom 1967), so the three-tier Manyema social structure did not develop. Third,

though Tanzania has many more indigenous African languages (Ethnologue lists 128), Kenya has a few individual tribes that make up a larger percentage of the total population (e.g. Kikuyu and Luo) than any of those in Tanzania. Moreover, these ethnic groups have a long history of having a nationalistic mind-set and of being antagonistic towards each other (Polom 1967). Furthermore, the promoters of Swahili were not nativespeakers. The Swahili of interior Kenya was viewed as a trade language, a useful tool but not an object of study. Although undoubtedly native-speakers of Swahili lived along the trade routes and although missionaries and colonial administrators may have been enthusiastic and fluent second-language learners of Swahili, by far the majority of British and Asian settlers looked upon Swahili as less than prestigious (Mutonya & Parsons 2004; Whitely 1969). Their disdain for Swahili promoted the evolution of the British and Asian varieties of Up-country Swahili. The European settlers, many of whom were migrants from South Africa (Mason 1986; 163), used Kisetla30 (aka Kitchen Swahili), which carries a master-slave connotation (Vitale 1980: 53) and is described by Hymes (1971: 519) as perhaps the most aberrant variety. The reason for the aberrance is that average settlers had little to no knowledge of Swahili themselves. Consequently, Kisetla is marked by interference from English. See Vitale (1980) for particular characteristics of this variety of Up-country Swahili.

30

Some varieties of Kiselta have been portrayed in literature to be more of an attitude and jargon than a language. Examples of its use are sprinkled throughout the novels Green Hills of Africa (Hemingway 1935) and Something of Value (Ruark 1955).

60

Kenyan Asians are a diverse group of North Indians, consisting mostly of Gujaratis, Punjabis and Goans (Neale 1974a: 69), having different first languages but sharing the lingua franca of India, Hindustani. Therefore, their Swahili is lumped under the term Kiswahili cha Hindi or Kihindi. As mentioned above, most of the Indian migrants to Kenya were not railway workers, rather they were traders, artisans and clerks. They settled in towns along the main trade routes but especially in Mombasa and Nairobi. They filled the middle slot in the new three-tiered social structure of colonial Kenya: Europeans as government officials and plantation owners at the top; Asians as traders, manufacturers and clerks in the middle; Africans as small farmers and unskilled workers at the bottom (Neale 1974a: 70). For the first seventy years of their being in Kenya, the Kenyan Asians had a negative approach to Swahili (Neale 1974b: 270). In other words, like the Europeans, they were not bothered to learn standard Swahili. Kihindi then is marked by interference from Hindustani and/or other first language influence31. Neale (1974a: 77-83) provides a sketch of Asian Up-country Swahili32. African migrants to Nairobi had their first languages and a variety of Swahili that they had brought with them from their rural homes or had developed once they had lived in the city. The umbrella term for these varieties of Kenyan Pidgin Swahili is Up-country Swahili33 or Kibara (bara is hinterland in Swahili) or Kishamba34. McDonnell (1974 as

Drolc (2004) argues that the locative form iko found in Kenyan Up-country Swahili may have been functionally expanded by Asians because of first language interference. That is, their substratal influence affected how other speakers used the language. 32 It should be remembered that Asians fall into the middle and upper classes in Kenya, who easily afford school fees. Therefore, since Swahili became a compulsory and testable subject on national exams in 1985, they have acquired more fluency in Standard Swahili. 33 As Vitale (1980) points out the one grammar on Up-country Swahili (LeBreton 1936) is not descriptive of Kishamba. However, it does open another window into the master-slave attitude of the settler in Kenya. 34 Kishamba means farm language (shamba < French champs or field), and it comes with negative connotations of being rural and unsophisticated. Africans on the coast may interchange the term with

31

61

cited in Vitale 1980) contends that the label Kishamba is a misnomer because since all the farmhands on settler plantations were Kikuyu, a farm Swahili pidgin could not have arisen. However, that perspective seems to overlook the European farms in other parts of the country. For instance, Whiteley (1974b) explains that some of his Luhya respondents associated Swahili with plowing and that both Swahili and the plow were introduced by Europeans. Further support comes from rural west-central Kenya. Duran (1979: 131) elaborates on how the Arab-Swahili trade network actually created a secondary network which fed into the main network. This secondary network consisted of local traders who had a moderate-to-good mastery of Kiungwana. From these linguistic hubs, a form of the language spread out across the rural areas, maintaining consistency of form. As the

Europeans began to take over these networks at the end of the nineteenth century, they recognized rural versions of Swahili were already in place and endeavored to exploit this local lingua franca language as a resource. Myers-Scotton (1969) shows the mother tongue influence on the Swahili of a group of Luhya speakers and a group of Luganda speakers and subsequently notes similar interferences in varieties of Swahili spoken in Kampala and Nairobi (Myers-Scotton 1979). Kishamba or Up-country Swahili is then a rather apropos label, despite its having some variation resulting from the interference features of the individual speakers mother tongue. In fact, this rural form of Swahili in Kenya may have been similar to the rural forms of Swahili found among non-native speakers in rural Tanzania and Congo. Wald (1981: 11) contends that the uniformity of

Kishenzi, language of the savage or uncivilized (Vitale 1980: 49). Speakers would be washenzi or savages.

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the features35 found in the various varieties of Up-country Swahili cannot be attributed to independent pidiginization; conversely, these features confirm the existence of a target language that is not Standard Swahili, not Kimvita and not Kiunguja. Up-country

Swahili is what migrants to Nairobi brought with them or what they acquired informally once they had settled in the city. In the following sections, I will discuss contact languages in general, briefly review what differentiates pidgins, creoles and mixed languages, and then examine the debate about the criteria for determining what makes a language a mixed language. All of this discussion will be done with an eye to how Sheng fits into this debate.

3.5

Background For the background, what mixed languages are will be discussed ( 3.5.1). Next

the Matrix Language Frame Model is examined, along with types of convergence ( 3.5.2). Then, the Matrix Language Turnover ( 3.5.3) is given consideration. Lastly, the social determinants leading to language mixing are analyzed.

3.5.1

Mixed Languages No language is pure in that it has not been influenced by or has not borrowed

from another language. Purism is unrealistic in the world of language. However, when contact linguists speak of mixed languages, what they mean is something more than a loanword here and a turn of phrase there. In the realm of contact linguistics, a mixed

Salient features include a) informal acquisition, b) nearly-absent subject/object prefixes, c) the demonstrative ile as a relative pronoun or a null relativizer, and d) leveling of noun class markers (Wald 1981; Heine 1973).

35

63

language implies a language that has mixed parentage. It is a language that has emerged from a community that is bilingual or multilingual so that its origin is divided between at least two genetic parents. Split parentage is the definition of the mixed language

frequently proposed by researchers of contact languages (Matras & Bakker 2003; Thomason 1997, 1995; Bakker & Mous 1994). Key to the identification of a mixed language is the extent to which it displays no preponderance of genetic affiliation with any single parent language. It needs to show divergence from any sister language and the development of structures borrowed from a language with which it has been in contact. Often this evolution results from the processes of lexical and grammatical borrowing. Thomason & Kaufman (1988) proposed Anglo-Romani, Copper Island Aleut and Maa as instances of such languages. These languages and mixed languages in general

typically display a split between the lexicon and the grammar (Matras 2003). Because bilingual situations produce mixed languages, these grammatical consequences may be viewed as resulting from bilingual interactions; that is, from codeswitching. The

extraordinary consequence resembles remarkably the ordinary pattern found in the mixing of languages typical of codeswitching. Myers-Scotton (1998) labeled the split

between content morphemes of the embedded language and the grammatical morphemes of the matrix language and the shift from one language to another as the matrix language turnover. Positing a continuum, Auer (1999) argues that the shift begins as pragmatic choice then develops into grammaticality. Deumert (2005) endeavors to identify stages of the grammaticalization of the codeswitching (CS) on its march towards crystallized composite. Whether the divergence is gradual or abrupt, whether codeswitching plays a role in the genesis and whether the creation is conscious are all sources of contention in

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the mixed language debate.

Abruptly or gradually, with or without codeswitching,

deliberately or unconsciously, mixed languages exist. This dissertation elects to employ the Matrix Language Frame Model (Myers-Scotton 1993b), not necessarily because all languages result from codeswitching, rather because the Matrix Language Frame Model (MLF) led to the development of the classification of morphemes in the 4-Morpheme (4M) model and the Abstract Level (AL) model (Myers-Scotton & Jake 2000). Morpheme types can now be categorized by the 4-M model and readily operationalized. In the next sections of this study, the categorization of mixed languages is examined. First in 3.5.1, I review the Matrix Language Frame (MLF) model, the 4-M model and the AL model, illustrating each with examples from languages in contact. Next in 3.5.2, the Matrix Language Turnover is reviewed, and a language mixing continuum is discussed with a survey of languages and how they fall along the cline. After that, in 3.5.3, the social factors of speaker motivation and deliberateness are discussed. Lastly, I discuss the significance of the study of Sheng.

3.5.2

The Matrix Language Frame Model The Matrix Language Frame Model (Myers-Scotton 1993) provides an

explanation for a division of codeswitching into those contributions from the grammatical frame or Matrix Language (ML) and other contributions from the borrowing language or Embedded Language (EL). This ML/EL dichotomy also categorizes morphemes into system morphemes and content morphemes. The 4-M model (Myers-Scotton and Jake 2000) further splits the system morphemes into early and late system morphemes.

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In order to analyze the lexicon in Sheng, an additional model, the Abstract Level (AL) model (Myers-Scotton and Jake 2000), must be invoked to clarify that any entry in the mental lexicon, be it a content morpheme or a system morpheme, has three levels of abstract grammatical structure: (a) lexical-conceptual structure, (b) morphological realization patterns and (c) predicate-argument structure. According to Myers-Scotton

(2002:19), the intention of the speaker is most closely represented on the lexicalconceptual level. The remaining two levels, thematic-role assignment and surface-level realizations, represent constraints on well-formedness. The focus is on the dichotomy between lexicon and grammar.

3.5.2.1 Lexical-Conceptual Convergence The Matrix Language Frame (MLF) model would predict that lexical-conceptual information could come from the EL while well-formedness conditions come from the frame of the Matrix Language. However, since every morpheme is represented at all three levels, room for overlap and double-marking exists, resulting in the potential for a composite Matrix Language. This composite is manifested in the mixing of morphology. In Dueling Languages (1997), Myers-Scotton calls this mixing simple mistiming in that the double morphology is a result of the speakers intention being closely followed by the well-formedness condition for marking in the EL. In the second marking in example (1) the English plural marker suffix (-s) slips in with the noun, which is already marked by the Shona plural prefix (ma-/PL).

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(1)

ma-day-s

a-no

a-ya

ha-ndi-si

ku-mu-on-a

But CL6-day-PL CL6-DEM CL6-DEM

NEG-1S-COP INF-3S/OBJ-see-FV

But these days I dont see him much anymore. (Shona/English, Crawhall 1990 corpus; Myers-Scotton 1997 & 2002: 93) What manifests itself here is the pluralization of the noun which is already pluralized. This phenomenon reflects a composite in that the speaker has produced morphology for which the source is two separate languages. Though Myers-Scotton (2002: 92) contends that double morphology only occurs with Early System morphemes, it would be hard to argue that the morphological foot of convergence is not in the door. Nonetheless, the ultimate pluralization (i.e., ma-) comes from the Matrix Language. Evidence can be found of cases in which mistiming is not a plausible explanation. Hill & Hill (1986) provide instances from Malinche Mexicano that demonstrate that the speakers are not making grammatical mistakes in Spanish or mistimings in Mexicano. On the contrary, the speakers are purposefully avoiding gender concord in (2) and (3) because they believe such a constraint is not part of speaking Mexicano (Hill & Hill 1986: 267): (2) In nonantzin, poderoso. As for my mother, she is powerful. (Malinche Mexicano, Hill & Hill 1986: 266; Myers-Scotton 2002: 102) Noxochih, mal. My flowers, ruined. (Malinche Mexicano, Hill & Hill 1986: 266; Myers-Scotton 2002: 102)

(3)

Rather than being restricted to the well-formedness constraints of Spanish, these Spanish content morphemes are conforming to the masculine gender that is the wellformedness constraint of the Mexicano composite frame. The AL model explains this as the speakers accessing the lexical-conceptual structure not only from Spanish but also

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from Mexicano.

That is, Spanish requires gender specification (albeit the feminine The

forms: poderosa and malas) but gender can only be masculine in Mexicano.

speakers seemingly know the requirements of Spanish, but flout them to show that they are speaking their own language, not Spanish. Convergence here has created a new abstract grammatical slot, a composite of those of the two contributing languages.

3.5.2.2 Convergent Patterns of Morphological Realizations Superficially, examples (4) and (5) appear to be monolingual sentences, but a closer look at the morphological realizations of the structures reveals a not-so-obvious bilingual convergence. The Dutch words zit and hab are cognate with sit and have in English, but English has had a more dramatic loss of inflection. As a result of influence from English, Dutch-English bilingual speakers have begun to drop the inflections from verbs in their speech. Examples (4) through (5) show how the Dutch of bilinguals has reduced verbal inflections. (4) Dutch-English bilingual Dutch: Standard Dutch: Standard English: Al de mensen zit op straat.
all the people sit- on the bench

Al de mensen zitten op straat. All the people sit on the bench. (Dutch: MD 175m, Clyne 2003: 131) En dan heb hij geen geld in zijn bank.
and then have- he no money in his bank

(5)

Dutch-English bilingual Dutch: Standard Dutch: Standard English:

En dan heft hij geen geld in zijn bank. And then he hasnt any money left in the bank. (Dutch: MD 1m, Clyne 2003: 131)

The bilingual speaker in (4) is speaking Dutch but employing the zero morphological realization pattern of English. In other words, without the influence of English, the verb zit or sit would be conjugated to the form zitten as it is in standard

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Dutch. The same patterning is true for the Dutch verb heb or have in (5), which should properly be heft as required in the standard. Dutch-English bilinguals in English-

dominant communities tend to avoid the inflection on verbs (cf. Marle & Smits 1997: 181), in what appears to be patterns based on the structures of the morphology of the English. These kinds of changes are undeniably altered morphological realization

patterns that appear convergent and are the type that will be explored further in the next chapter.

3.5.2.3 Convergent Predicate-Argument Structures Convergence at the level of predicate-argument structure is evident in example (6). The English verb wake up can be transitive (e.g., wake me up) or intransitive (e.g. I wake up). Contrastingly, the Hungarian verb has different forms for transitivity and intransitivity. The intransitive form of the Hungarian verb kel is affixed with a zero marker (i.e., -), but the transitive form of the verb requires the affixation of a causative derivational suffix (i.e., -t). Yet the speaker of the utterance, a Hungarian child living in the southeastern United States, in (6) does not employ the transitive form, despite having a direct object (i.e., en-gem or me). She employs a form of the verb that takes only one argument but uses it in manner of a verb taking a patient. (6) Hungarian-English bilingual Hungarian: mert te nem kel-sz
because you not wake/INTR.PRES/2S

en-gem
I-ACC

fel
up

Standard Hungarian: mert te nem

because you not

kel-t-esz

en-gem

fel
up

wake-TRNS.PRES/2S I-ACC

Because you do not wake me up. (Hungarian, Bolonyai: 1999: 101; Myers-Scotton 2002: 204)

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Not only is the childs selection of the intransitive verb form mis-subcatergorized for Hungarian predicate-argument structure, it also does not follow the Hungarian pattern for morphological realization because a distinction has been eliminated. Specifically, convergence with English has engendered a neutralization of causativity in the Hungarian of this Hungarian-English bilingual. The leveling of the zero transitive/causative markers is a merging of Hungarian morphological patterns with the English ones because the speakers Matrix Language is a composite.

3.5.3

The Matrix Language Turnover

By definition, a mixed language has a morphosyntactic frame whose source is more than one language. The Matrix Language Turnover Hypothesis (Myers-Scotton 2003) explains that mixed languages (aka split languages) form when speakers of one language are in the process of switching to a different language. Notwithstanding the existence of a mixed language continuum, what determines the threshold for a true mixed language is the question to answer. The nature of the composite is what separates codeswitching from mixed languages proper. In codeswitching, all of the late system

morphemes at the surface level derive from the Matrix Frame of only one of the languages in the mix. In a mixed language, as defined by Myers-Scotton (2002), surfacelevel, late-system morphemes come from more than one language. The main dividing line then is between lexical borrowing and grammatical borrowing. Codeswitchers often convey their intentions through juxtaposition, whereas speakers of mixed languages have lost conscious selection of grammatical structure to fossilization/crystallization. The

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threshold is quantified by non-matrix language late system morphemes, especially outsider system morphemes whose very presence implies the Matrix Language has restructured. In other words, non-matrix language late system morphemes signal a

Matrix Language Turnover. With only early system morphemes from the EL evident, the mixing is most likely only codeswitching. In contrast, the presence of outsider system morphemes from the EL signals that the codeswitching is evolving into an incipient mixed language, if not a fully-crystallized mixed language. The convergence hierarchies of Myers-Scotton (2002) elucidate the levels of convergence and movement along the language mixing continuum. It needs to be noted here that attrition and bilingualism are characteristic of individual speakers. When

sufficient numbers of individual speakers have experienced attrition, convergence of language can be said to have occurred in the community. It is this movement toward

convergence that is represented on the language mixing continuum. Figure 3.2 gives the juxtaposition of the hierarchies of (a) morphemes (MyersScotton 2002: 206) and (b) abstract level structures (Myers-Scotton 2002:196) in comparison to the continua of (c) language mixing (Deumert 2005: 127) and (d) grammaticalization (Auer 1999: 328). As can be seen, content morphemes, lexical-

conceptual structure, codeswitching, and pragmatics are farthest to the left of the figure to represent that they involve higher levels of user intention and pragmatic use. As a consequence, content morphemes are more susceptible to borrowing, and switching in order to meet the speakers intention. As some loans become conventionalized,

pragmatics begins to give way to grammatilization. The social and stylistic roles of

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language are influenced when borrowings become fixed and perhaps even replace native words. Figure 3.2: Convergence Hierarchies (a) Content morphemes > Early System morphemes > Late System morphemes (Myers-Scotton 2002: 229) (b) Lexical-Conceptual > Morphological Realization > Predicate-Argument Structure Patterns Structure (Myers-Scotton 2002: 196) (c) CS ML1 ML2 IML FCML (Deumert 2005: 127) (d) pragmatics grammaticalization36 (Auer 1999: 328) CS = codeswitching IML = incipient mixed language ML1 = mixed lect 1 FCML = fully crystallized mixed language ML2 = mixed lect 2

The road to mixed language status via heavy borrowing is often long and linear; the trail via codeswitching (CS) may be less linear and more abrupt (Deumert 2005: 126). Figure 3.3 lays out the stages in the process of how codeswitching may metamorphosize into a mixed language. Mixed lects are Deumerts (2005) terms for types of codeswitching that are fusing or crystallizing. Codeswitching (CS) is the mixing of codes in conversation for a social meaning, such as in the Puerto Rican CS in El Barrio (Zentella 1997; Poplack 1987: 67) and English-Swahili CS in Campus Swahili (Blommaert 1992). For Deumert (2005: 126), ML1 is highly frequent intersentential CS that is regularizing, such as in Italoschwyz or the Turkish-Dutch CS of the Netherlands. ML2, in the view of Deumert (2005: 126), is highly frequent intersentential and intrasentential CS that is regularizing, for which no examples have yet been found, except perhaps for Kombuistaal (Deumert (2005: 126). An Incipient Mixed Language (IML)
36

Grammaticalization (cf, Givon 1979) is the conventionalization of the relationship between form and function, increasing obligation and specialization (Auer 1999).

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has the beginnings of conventionalized CS, and Deumert (2005: 126) suggests Sinti Romani, Chamorro and Maltese as examples. A Fully-Crystallized Mixed Language (FCML) has an arrested or completed Matrix Language Turnover, and Deumert (2005: 126) proffers Petjo, Anglo-Romani, Michif, and Media Lengua as illustrations.

Figure 3.3:

Mixed Language Metamorphosis Examples Pragmatics El Barrio (Zentella 1997) Campus Swahili (Blommaert 1992) Turkish-Danish (Backus 2003) Italoschwyz (Francheschini 1998) ? Kombuistaal (McCormick 2003) Chamorro & Malti (Stolz 2003) Sinti Romani (Auer 1999) Petjo (Van Rheeden 1994) Anglo-Romani (Thomason 2001) Michif (Bakker 1997) Media Lengua (Muysken 1994) Grammaticality Adapted from Deumert (2005: 127)

Stage 1 Classic Codeswitching both intersentential & intrasentential CS serves stylistic/rhetorical role 2 Codeswitching (Mixed Lect 1) CS = unmarked choice CS loses social/stylistic role 3 Codeswitching (Mixed Lect 2) More intrasentential CS Less intersentential CS Some core vocabulary loans 4 Incipient Mixed Language Fossilization of structures Lexicon not yet quite 90% 5 Fully Crystallized Mixed Language Lexicon/Grammar bifurcation Core Vocabulary near 90% Matrix-Language Turnover

Morphological realizations are also shown in Figure 3.2, but grammaticalization, predicate-argument structures and late system morphemes are shown to be the key characteristics of mixed languages proper. One caveat is that it may not be possible to generalize that all mixed languages have all of the features at the right end of these

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hierarchies. For instance, Michif, well-documented to be mixed, appears to have no alien outsider morphemes (Myers-Scotton 2002). Nevertheless, an implicational hierarchy can be set up. If a mixed language has late system morphemes foreign to its original

morphosyntactic frame, it will also have alien early system morphemes and foreign content morphemes. As language mixing moves along the continuum, it becomes increasingly more of a composite. At first, there is only simple intrasentential and intersentential CS, and social significance is attached to it as in Campus Kiswahili at the University of Dar es Salaam (Bloommaert 1992) and in El Barrio in el bloque in Spanish Harlem (Zentella 1997). Next, if the mixing progresses, conventionalization begins to occur, and the CS may actually be the unmarked choice, as per Myers-Scottons (1993a) definition. The first step, called ML1 by Deumert (2003), beyond mere CS is language use in which the CS is the unmarked choice and characterized by both intrasentential and intersentential codeswitching (see Figure 3.3). The unmarked choice comes in contrast to the marked choice as developed in the Markedness Model (MM) of Myers-Scotton (1993a). In a given conversation, interlocutors index sets of Rights and Obligations (RO), which are established by the topic, situational factors, the type of interaction and the status of the speakers. These RO sets determine what is expected or unmarked and what is unexpected or marked. Conventionalization leads the expected to become more frequent than the unexpected. Codeswitching is the unmarked choice in a multilingual community because it would avoid favoring or disfavoring any particular ethnic language. Assuming the Rational Choice (RC) model, the interlocutors would want to select the speech that would provide the bigger bang or return for their input (Bolonyai

74

2005; Myers-Scotton & Bolonyai 2001), thus avoiding monolingual first language use would be normal and expected in informal speech among bilinguals. As an unmarked form, CS might very well empower a speaker to circumvent alliance with or slight to a specific ethnic or cultural identity. When this unmarked choice becomes increasingly grammaticalized, redundancy drops out, and choice is reduced. If the mixture begins to be an identity marker and acquires a separate name, it enters the arena of what Deumert (2005) calls mixed lects (see Figure 3.3), including languages such as the Italian-Swiss-German mixing of Switzerland called Italoschwyz (Francescini 1998), and the English-Spanish mixing of Gilbratarians labeled Yanito (Moyer 1988). Mixing at this level is mostly regularized intersentential CS but with some occurrences of intrasentential CS. One special case of CS is Kombuistaal (McCormick 2002), the Afrikaans-English mixing employed by residents of Cape Towns District Six. What sets it apart from other cases of CS is that its morphological realization patterns place it at the far right end of the CS range (i.e. ML2; cf, Figure 3.2).

(7)

mense het gesien your death certificate people have seen your death certificate. (Kombuistaal, McCormick 2002: 190[Deumert 2005: 130])

Example (7) illustrates that Kombuistaal is not just receiving content morphemes or a set phrase (i.e. your death certificate) but that the Afrikaans matrix frame is actually following English word order. In Standard Afrikaans, gesien, the past participle, should

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be placed after the object and sentence finally. As is clear, the constituent order follows the English pattern. (8) ek wil all my life story imagine I want to all my life story imagine. I want to imagine my entire life story. (Kombuistaal; McCormick 2002: 190[Deumert 2005: 130])

While example (7) conforms to the mapping of English structure, example (8) follows the morphological realization pattern of Afrikaans which is the Matrix Language. If English were the Matrix Language, the main verb imagine would precede the object. McCormick points out that both of these statements were uttered by the same speaker, thus demonstrating the fluidity of this mixed lect and why this variety is still to be considered a case of CS. Each example shows a different matrix language, not a mixed language proper. Until the morphological realization patterns of Kombuistaal conventionalize further, this CS may not proceed to become an incipient mixed language. Of course, stability versus instability of mixed languages is the consequence of social factors (Thomason 2003). Put another way, speakers must deliberately choose one

pattern over the other to emphasize a new social identity. That deliberation is apparently not the case yet in the Sixth District of Cape Town, but even if it were, the reason would not be linguistic in nature. The search for what separates the Mixed Language linguistically from CS continues. The next stage (see Figure 3.3) is the incipient mixed languages (IML), which have composites on the abstract level of predicate-argument structures and perhaps a few late system morphemes from the non-matrix language. Chamorro, an Austronesian

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language spoken in Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands, can be considered an incipient mixed language because of its functional but seldom deployed

tense/aspect/mood (TAM) marker (a late outsider morpheme) esta and non-compulsory gender markers from Spanish (Stolz 2003). Although the appearance is that the Hispanization in this language is only partial, one early system morpheme from Spanish, the indefinite article un, is seemingly completely grammaticalized (Stolz 2003: 282). Example (9) shows two occurrences of the indefinite article:

(9)

Ma-baba i na
LINKER bench

kettina gi un
in INDEF

anakko
long

PASS-open DET curtain

bangko gi
in

i
DET

sanhiyong
outside

un

tenda.

INDEF shop

The curtain opens on a long bench outside a shop. (Chamorro, Stolz 2003: 281)

In the first instance, the indefinite article in un anakko na bangko modifies a complex NP, while in the second it modifies a single noun derived from Spanish (tenda < tienda). Though this early system morpheme /un/ is a borrowing from Spanish, it has lost the constraints on plural and gender agreement (Stolz 2003). However, this structural change is the only consequence in Chamorro despite heavy contact with Spanish. Similarly, in Malinche Mexicano, which mixes Spanish and Nahuatl, in the Malinche Volcano region in central Mexico, has three early system morphemes from Spanish (i.e., the agentive, diminutive and plural affixes). However, plural marking in Malinche Mexicano varies between that of Aztec and that of Spanish (Hill 1996: 315). Malti, a Semitic language spoken on the islands of Malta and Gozo south of Sicily, has been under great pressure from the superstrate Italian, resulting in mostly superficial and

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stylistic changes, except for word order. That the word order of the Malti sentence in example (10) maps nearly directly on to the word order of Italian is clear. The abstract level of morphological realization patterns and predicate-argument structures then are a composite in Malti. Note that Myers-Scotton (2003: 175, 203) contends that, on an abstract level, word-order convergence can be considered an early system morpheme.

(10)

() niftakarni naqra dwar meta Chamberlain (literally I remember myself I read) mar Munich jiltaqa ma Hitler (literally he meets) (Gwerra, p.159) I remember reading about when Chamberlain went to Munich to meet with Hitler. (Malti, Mizzi 1990 [Drewes 1994: 96])

Convergence of word order in Malti is similar to the word-order convergence that Gumperz and Wilson (1971) found in the village of Kupwar, India. Example (11) plots the word order of three languages: (a) the Dravidian language Kannada; (b) the IndoAryan language Marathi; and (c) the Indo-Aryan language Urdu:

(11)

(a) tapla jra khod i tgond i b yn (b) pala jra kap un ghe un a lo (c) pala jra kat ke le ke a ya ABS take ABS come TA greens some cut I cut some greens and brought them. (Gumperz & Wilson 1971 [Myers-Scotton 2002: 177])

Since Kupwar is a village that has long sat on the border shared by the language families of Dravidian and Indo-Aryan, structural convergence has occurred among the

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three languages. As can be seen in (11), Kannada, Marathi and Urdu all share the same constituent order and grammatical categories, thus translating word for word from one language to another is extraordinarily easy. Of course, these languages have not converged in other parts of India and so they differ more in those areas. However, in Kupwar the three are as similar as can be without the individual ethnic groups losing their identities. The Jain landowners speak Kannada, the Muslim landowners speak Urdu and the landless laborers (the Hindu caste of Untouchables) speak Marathi. The Kupwar example demonstrates how the need for a common language is balanced with the desire to maintain separate identities. The Malti example displays how speakers of a Semitic language have incorporated word order from European languages (i.e., from Italian and perhaps even English) without the fear of losing a separate identity to the Italians or the English. Malti word order has changed from VSO to SVO due to pressure from superstrates, and it has become part of the Maltese identity. However, according to Deumert (2005), Malti falls short of being a fully crystallized language for, like Chamorro, it has too much variability of use (see Figure 3.3). That is, many of the alien system morphemes are stylistic choices and are therefore optional. This circumstance is true of most bilingual situations. Knowing Italian in Malta and Gozo and knowing Spanish in Guam, the Northern Marianas or even in Malinche Volcano (i.e. when speaking Mexicano) reflects social status (Stolz 2003: 304). Optionality rules out complete crystallization, which is requisite for a mixed language proper. Sinti Romani, an Indo-Aryan language spoken in Europe, has experienced heavy convergence with German. Auer (1999) calls this language a fused lect while Deumert

79

(2005) identifies it as an incipient mixed language (see Figure 3.3). Example (12) clarifies how Sinti Romani qualifies as an incipient mixed language. As with Malti and Chamorro, Sinti Romani has much fluidity in its usage of loan words; however, the discourse marker ach or oh, the conjunction und or and and the converb particle fest or up are all German morphemes that have become obligatory and therefore grammaticalized as part of the composite Matrix Language. Because ach is a discourse particle, it can be classified as a content morpheme (Myers-Scotton 2003: 70). Of the other two morphemes, fest is like a satellite verb and is therefore an early system morpheme (Myers-Scotton 2003: 89; 2008: 28), and und joins constituents, making it a bridge system morpheme (Myers-Scotton 2008: 29).

(12)

Sinti Romani: Ach tave, pandel miro dad kote fest und me kate fest. German: Ach Jungs, mein Vater bindet es dort fest und ich hier fest. English: Oh boys, my father ties it up there and I tie it up here. (Sinti Romani, Holzinger 1993: 324f [Auer 1999: 323])

Deumert (2005: 127) plots Anglo-Romani, another Indo-Aryan language, as straddling the fence between being incipient and fully-crystallized (see Figure 3.3). As Sinti Romani arguably sits on the border as well, the question of what makes AngloRomani a more fully mixed language must be addressed. Thomason and Kauffman (1988: 6-7) provide a hypothetical example that illuminates the level of composite required of a proper mixed language. They ask what if a community of English speakers replaced all of their content morphemes with those of Russian, but these same speakers maintained the morphosyntax and phonology of English. Their thought experiment

elucidates the fact that those speakers would be speaking a new language unintelligible to

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native English and native Russian speakers alike.

The reason is that they have

synthesized parts of two different languages and created a mixed language. AngloRomani has this type of linguistic synthesis. It has the vocabulary of Romani and the phonology and morphosyntax of English. Example (13) exemplifies what occurs not just in this isolated excerpt but what is a common occurrence in the utterances of the Roms.

(13)

Anglo-Romani: Will we puch the mush, if hell ach and sv to ra:ti? Romani: English: puas i mureste te ael te sovel akarat? Shall we ask that fellow if hell stay and sleep tonight? (Anglo-Romani, Hancock 1977: 19)

The Roms are fluent in English, but they no longer have knowledge of the morphosyntax of Romani, their Indic ancestral language. The language of the Gypsies (Romani) is given in (13) for contrast. Both Romani and Anglo-Romani were recorded contemporaries in nineteenth-century England (Thomason 2001: 200) and must have existed side by side before then and until convergence and social pressure caused the abandonment of Romani phonology and morphosyntax. From (13), we can see that all of Anglo-Romanis system morphemes derive from English; early system morphemes and late outsiders alike. This mixed language has experienced an almost complete Matrix Language turnover; speakers use their lexicon to identify with their Romani culture. The use of this variety is as a secret language, and these descendants of the original Indic language must learn Anglo-Romani as a second language. A nearly-complete turnover of the morphosyntax but not of the lexicon is what has also occurred in Maa or the Mbugu language of the Usambara mountains of Tanzania. In both Anglo-Romani and Maa the shift from the original language to the superstrate has been arrested at the lexicon. Croft

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(2003: 53) describes these two mixed languages as examples of death by borrowing in that the speakers were originally bilingual but eventually borrowed themselves into a corner and are now left with only a few of the original basic lexical items that can be used only as an in-group code or secret register. Matras (2000: 89 & 91) calls this turnover a functional shift, followed subsequently by attempts to replicate or recapture the old language, resulting in the creation of a reverse creoloid (Trudgill 1996: 13). One group grasps at Romani vocabulary, the other at Cushitic. Nonetheless, their late system morphemes are foreign to their original Matrix Languages and come from English and Bantu respectively. Languages. Petjo, a Dutch-based creole of Indonesia, is a reverse reflection of languages like Anglo-Romani and Maa in that its vocabulary is mostly non-native, while its morphosyntax is mostly original (Croft 2003: 55). Petjo is a mixing of Malay and Dutch; affixes from the former have mixed with content morphemes from the latter. Both Anglo-Romani and Maa are fully-crystallized Mixed

(14)

kleren njiang di-wassen

clolthes REL PASS-wash

door
by

die
that

frouw
woman

the clothes that are washed by that woman. (Petjo, Robinson 1984 [Rheeden 1994: 226])

In example (14) the Malay morphemes are in bold. Morphosyntax and phonology are from Malay but the lexicon derives mainly from Dutch. It should be noted that the Malay grammar that contributes the abstract morphosyntactic frame is Low Malay, not standard Malay (van Rheeden 1994: 229). Low Malay is not as intricate in its

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morphology. Indos, the speakers of Petjo, were the offspring of Dutch fathers and Malay mothers. The Dutch heritage of the Indos was seldom acknowledged, resulting in their not having access to European education. Under Dutch colonial rule, Indonesian society became stratified according to skin color, and not surprisingly the Indos became an inbetween group, sandwiched in by the Dutch at the top and the native Indonesians at the bottom. Petjo developed as an identity marker for the Indos. Low Malay would have been the first language of the Indo children, but Dutch would have been a second language target. Their acquisition of Dutch would have been mostly untutored; in fact, an arrested Interlanguage is how Croft (2003: 57) and Rheeden (1994: 235) describe the development of Petjo. The Indos were not functional shifters as the Roms of England and the Cushites of Usambara were, rather they were semi-shifters (Croft 2003: 56). Specifically, halfway through their shift to Dutch, Petjo speakers deliberately arrested the turnover of the matrix language. A good example of this arrested development is the reanalysis of the Dutch preterit. This late outsider morpheme, an inflectional morpheme among other borrowed bound morphemes, is used variably in Petjo which indicates an arrest at some stage in the not quite complete acquisition of the Dutch morphosyntax (Rheeden 1994). The Petjo-speaking Indos acquired much of the Dutch lexicon but deliberately chose to incorporate only some of the grammatical morphemes in order to maintain some of the Low Malay morphology, thus symbolizing their mixed identity with a composite language (see Figure 3.3). Media Lengua, the mixed language of Ecuador, is the exemplar par excellence of semi-shift (Croft 2003: 56), which simply means an arrested shift. Unlike Petjo, Media Lengua is not believed to be the result of a fossilized stage of second language

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acquisition (Croft 2003: 56; Muysken 1997: 407). On the one hand, an Interlanguage would show little to no first language late outsider morphemes (i.e. inflections) and Media Lengua (see Figure 3.3) has the traditionally-accepted crystallized dual split of mixed languages (i.e. a lexicon from Spanish and morphology from Quechua). On the other hand, though most late outsider morphology derives from Quechua, at least one morpheme found its way in from Spanish morphology, indicating more of a composite matrix language than previously recognized. This alien system morpheme is evidence of a composite morphosyntax. Example (15) demonstrates that -ndu (< -ndo the Spanish gerundive subordinating suffix) occurs in Media Lengua. The sentences are (15a) Media Lengua, (15b) Spanish and (15c) English.

(15)

(a): alla-bi-ga
there-LOC-TOP

entonces-ga artu terreno propio

then-TOP much land own

tini-ndu-ga
have-SUB-TOP

riku-ya-na,

no?

rich-become-NOM no

(b): Alguien podria llegar a ser rico, teniendo su propio terreno, no? (c): There one could become rich then, having ones own land, no? (Media Lengua; Muysken 1997: 385)

Muysken (1997) admits that a language of Indian-Spanish contact was commonly spoken in Ecuador and might have been an influence on Media Lengua. In fact, his own data (Muysken 1997: 409) reveal that in informal situations Media Lengua speakers prefer ndu about two-thirds of the time to the two comparable subordinators in Quechua (i.e., -sha and kpi). This late system morpheme is an indication of an abstract composite morphological realization pattern, evidence of a composite Matrix Language.

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Media Lengua has native speakers (Muysken 1997: 374) and is an in-group language (Thomason 2001: 180). Since culture is the key to group identity, I argue that Media Lengua symbolizes a separate cultural group. Also diverging culturally from their heritage languages, Michif and Copper Island Aleut (Mednyj Aleut) qualify as dual-source languages because they emerged from child bilingualism that eventually led to two communities converging into a single new culture (Trudgill 1996: 12). Michif, the final language discussed on the language mixing continuum presented here (see Figure 3.3), suffices to provide an example of a fullycrystallized mixed language. Inasmuch as the determinants on the continuum are

grammatical rather than social, example (16) provides a sample structural analysis of a Michif sentence. (16) nu
NEG

ki:-kiske:ht-am

la -rab-i-hk.

bak
bank

PAST-know/TI-TI.3>4 DET/F/S

e:-ki:-liCOMP-PST-DET/M/S-

-rob-INF-IMPERS

He didnt know about the bank being robbed. (Michif, Bakker and Papen 1997: 318 [Myers-Scotton 2002: 257])

The split in Michif (and in Mednyj Aleut) is that in general the verbal system and the nominal system come from different sources. Cree is considered dominant in Michif for it supplies the grammatical morphemes. French is considered embedded since its content morphemes are predominant in the Michif lexicon. However, a morphological anomaly occurs when non-Cree verbs are incorporated into the Michif sentence. Example (16) demonstrates how an English verb (rab < rob) must be affixed with not only the French infinitive suffix (i.e., -er [i]) but also what appears to be le, the definite French masculine article, or li the French object clitic, a dummy element (Bakker and

85

Papen 1997: 317).

Even though most present-day Michif speakers do not know

French, writes Myers-Scotton (2003: 99), this does not mean that the originators of Michif could not have reanalyzed le and introduced it as some sort of clitic and therefore a late outsider system morpheme. The conclusion in this dissertation is that Michif has a composite Matrix Language, which is determined by its having a productive late outsider morpheme alien to Cree. What can be concluded from this survey of languages is that the morphosyntactic frame of a Mixed Language is a composite matrix language. This conclusion does not exclude Anglo-Romani and Maa for these languages include foreign late system morphemes. All late system morphemes in Anglo-Romani and in Maa are non-Romani and non-Cushitic respectively. The hypothesis remains testable for emerging mixed languages, such a Sheng. Convergence creates a new morphosyntactic frame, and this reconfiguration is the method through which foreign system morphemes can enter a language. Myers-Scotton contends that the presence of late system morphemes is an indication of the start of a Matrix Language Turnover. Moreover, arrests or fossilizations of turnovers can be plotted along a continuum from just a few morphemes to a whole morphosyntactic frame in its entirety (Myers-Scotton 2003: 244-245). Sheng and any mixed language can be located on a continuum of bilingual speech. Progression along this cline (see Figures 3.2 and 3.3) results from declining pragmatic use of codeswitching due to ever increasing grammaticalization. Classic codeswitching (CS), intrasentential and intersentential, is primarily a pragmatic choice while composite codeswitching has the beginnings of grammaticalization. Composite codeswitching (Myers-Scotton 2003:

86

105), which results from language convergence and/or language shift, manifests a bilingual CP whose morphosyntax is a composite, meaning it has dual parentage.

Figure 3.4:

Mixed Language Metamorphosis Pragmatics Examples El Barrio (Zentella 1997) Campus Swahili (Blommaert 1992) Turkish-Danish (Backus 2003) Italoschwyz (Francheschini 1998) ? Kombuistaal (McCormick 2003) Chamorro & Malti (Stolz 2003) Sinti Romani (Auer 1999) Petjo (Van Rheeden 1994) Anglo-Romani (Thomason 2001) Michif (Bakker 1997) Media Lengua (Musyken 1994) Grammaticality Adapted from Deumert (2005: 127)

Stage 1 Classic Codeswitching both intersentential & intrasentential CS serves stylistic/rhetorical role 2 Codeswitching 1 CS = unmarked choice CS loses social/stylistic role 3 Codeswitching 2 More intrasentential CS Less intersentential CS Some core vocabulary loans 4 Incipient Mixed Language Fossilization of structures Lexicon not yet quite 90% 5 Fully Crystallized Mixed Language Lexicon/Grammar bifurcation Core Vocabulary near 90% Matrix-Language Turnover

From the perspective of synchronic linguistics, codeswitching and borrowing emerge through similar processes (Myers-Scotton 2002: 153). Reduced amounts of intersentential codeswitching and increased core word replacement constitute the third rung of the ladder toward mixed language status. An Incipient Mixed Language (IML) has non-matrix language vocabulary not yet reaching the 90% level (Baker & Mous

87

1994). The prototype with a completed matrix language turnover and a 90% core nongenetic vocabulary is the Fully Crystallized Mixed Language (FCML). Development into a Fully Crystallized Mixed Language (Deumert 2005), though by no means certain, appears to proceed through five stages (Figure 3.3 is repeated for convenience in Figure 3.4). Both Auers (1999) fused-lect vision and Myers-Scottons (2002) split-language perspective assert that crystallization of codeswitching, allows the emergence of a new mixed language. Myers-Scotton stresses that this In this paper, mixed

grammaticalization be of late outsider system morphemes.

language subsumes the terms of both Auer and Myers-Scotton (i.e., fused-lect and splitlanguage respectively). System morphemes are grammatical morphemes; that is, they are morphemes that have a grammatical function in a language. New morphemes are hardly ever added to a languages set of system morphemes. As a result, this group of morphemes is considered a closed class, including such categories as determiners, pronouns and adpositions. Myers-Scotton divides the category of system morphemes into 2 types. The first type is the early system morpheme. Early system morphemes not only appear in the same surface-level maximal projection as their heads, they also depend on their heads for information about their forms (Myer-Scotton 2003: 75). Examples of early system morphemes are determiners, derivational affixes, and plural markers. The second type of system morpheme is the late system morpheme, which can be further broken down into the two categories of bridge system morphemes and late outsider system morphemes. Because they connect lexical morphemes together inside a constituent, the first subgroup of system morphemes is called bridges. The analytical possessive (e.g., tail of the cat or

88

mkia wa paka in Swahili) and the inflectional possessive (e.g., the cats tail, which is not present in Swahili) are examples of bridging system morphemes. Late outsider morphemes receive information for their form beyond the head of their maximal projections. Subject affixes, tense affixes, and noun class affixes are examples of late outsider morphemes. In classic codeswitching, the matrix language provides the system morphemes. However, a mix of late system morphemes is evident in a composite matrix language. Because particle subsystem replacement (i.e., the substitution of a whole subset of system morphemes by an alien set) is evidence of crystallization or structural sedimentation, replacement of system morphemes is indicative of a language being mixed (Auer 1999: 325). To recap, what separates a true mixed language from other language mixing is whether signs of a Matrix Language Turnover exist. A turnover is occurring or has occurred when there are traces of a composite in the morphosyntax. Codeswitching often leads to convergence, but the convergence has to be beyond the level of speaker choice or abstract lexical-conceptual structure. El Barrio and Campus Kiswahili are examples of codeswitching for style and social purpose only. Their CS manifests no alien system morphemes, and so their codeswitching does not qualify. Even when the codeswitching begins to lose its stylistic and social role and edges toward grammaticalization as it does in Italoschwyz and Yanito or in Kombuistaal, it still has to be considered CS. Only when evidence is present of an obligatory alien early system morpheme or a sometimes required foreign late system morpheme can the language be categorized as an incipient mixed language (as in Chamorro and Mexicano or a changed word order, an abstract

89

early system morpheme in itself, as in Malti or a few obligatory early morphemes and one required late outsider as in Sinti Romani but style is still a factor). Put differently, the presence of a required early system morpheme marks the new category of Incipient Mixed Language (IML). However, if foreign late system morphemes are required as in Anglo-Romani and Maa or at least one alien late outsider is present as in Petjo, Media Lengua and Michif, then the label fully-crystallized mixed language (FCML) obtains.

Figure 3.5: A New Mixed Language Continuum (a) CS CS1 CS2 IML FCML (adapted from Deumert 2005: 127) (b) Content morphemes > Early System morphemes > Late System morphemes (Myers-Scotton 2002: 229) (c) Lexical-Conceptual > Morphological Realization > Predicate-Argument Structure Patterns Structure (Myers-Scotton 2002: 196) (d) pragmatics grammaticality (Auer 1999: 328) CS = codeswitching CS1 = highly-frequent intersentential CS CS2 = highly-frequent mix of intersentential & intrasentential CS IML = incipient mixed language (obligatory early system morphemes) FCML =fully-crystallized mixed language (obligatory late system morphemes)

This new set of criteria (see Figure 3.5) is based heavily on Myers-Scottons framework of the Matrix Language Frame and the Abstract Level models; however, a complete acceptance of the tenets is not embraced. What is embraced follows. That all contact phenomena are subject to similar structuring processes and principles (MyersScotton 2002: 6) is assumed. A basic division exists in all language from monolingualism to multilingualism, indicating the division between speaker intention and grammatical obligation. Surface manifestations are better explained by convergence on the abstract

90

level. The mixing of language then occurs in the mental lexicon of the speakers, and the surface manifestations of that mixing are the result of composites formed on the abstract level. Further, language mixing is the consequence of one language waning as another waxes. A morphosyntactic turnover is the final result of linguistic shift, but such shift/turnover is neither always imminent nor complete. A Matrix Language turnover may fossilize at some point along the move toward language shift. Shift is the logical result of language turnover, and mixed languages exemplify languages having crystallized turnovers. This dissertation also accepts that the presence of late system morphemes alien to an initial morphosyntactic frame is an indicator that some stage of a turnover has occurred. Furthermore, this study asserts that the presence of obligatory early system morphemes marks the start of a language becoming a mixed language. The mechanism that produces mixed languages, and all contact phenomena for that matter, is convergence. Finally, the Matrix Language Frame model, in conjunction with the 4-M model and the AL model, explains how mixed languages differ from other languages in contact.

3.5.4

Social Factors Examples of language consciously chosen as a marker of social identity are

abundant in contact linguistics. Maa and Anglo-Romani exemplify the phenomenon. In the Usambara Mountains of northeastern Tanzania, speakers of Maa or Mbugu employ a Bantu morphosyntax but a lexicon from several sources. Half their vocabulary is non-Bantu, including a basic lexicon that is heavily Cushiticized (Thomason 2001).

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Moreover, these Maa speakers sometimes introduce a Cushitic voiceless lateral fricative, not a phoneme found in Bantu languages, into words of Bantu origin to emphasize their being a different group (Thomason 2001: 150). In England, the Roms speak AngloRomani, a language in which the morphosyntax is English but its lexicon, especially the core vocabulary, contains hundreds of entries that are Romani, the groups ancestral Indic language (Thomason 2001). Though Anglo-Romani speakers are native speakers of English, they exploit a Romani vocabulary to assert their identity as Gypsies. The lexicon is the salient subsystem that the speakers of Maa and of AngloRomani maintain as a final marker of their cultures, and it is the lexicon of Sheng that assists its speakers to assert their new social identity. In this case, the lexical

manipulation in Sheng allows speakers to manifest their urban identity. This use may include a disdain for fluency in the unattainable official and national languages. Sheng is most different from its contributing languages in its lexicon. Sheng is a result of

deliberate decision which is dramatically demonstrated by its lexical manipulation. However, convergence in a mixed language is seldom simply lexical. Choosing consciously to mix languages available in ones repertoire, rather than selecting a monolingual code, can be indicative of ones asserting social identity (Auer 1999: 318) as apparently it is in Mexicano (Hill & Hill 1986) and Campus Kiswahili (Blommaert 1992). Brandishing heavily hispanized Nahuatl on the slopes of the Malinche Volcano (Hill & Hill 1980) and displaying heavily anglicized Swahili in the halls of the University of Dar es Salaam illustrate the double-edged sword of bilingualism. It cuts those without linguistic access to the code of overt prestige out of the communication and binds those with access into a tight connection. This bond or elite closure (Myers-Scotton 1990)

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explains why the elite of a community would choose the language of an erstwhile colonial power and why their code mixing would be well-formed (Blommaert 1992). Nevertheless, the reverse can be true too. The excluded speakers can develop techniques to exclude speakers of the overtly prestigious code. One instance is Nahuatl speakers imposing vocabulary tests to determine a speakers knowledge of legitimo mexicano or real Nahuatl (Hill & Hill 1980: 121). Another example may be Sheng speakers manipulating the lexicon via truncation and/or argot reversal to provide a shibboleth. Put differently, elite closure is not limited to speakers of those codes that have overt prestige. Language is just one of many forms resistance and covert prestige can take. In fact, the very concept of the anti-language (Halliday 1978) is to reject the languages of the privileged and exclude their speakers. Sheng, like many other urban vernaculars, has gained native speakers and perhaps is developing anti-language connotations. It has popularized and expanded based on its covert prestige. A composite matrix language is a consequence of conscious choice. Deliberate choice and stability versus instability are

social factors, not the consequence of linguistic processes (Thomason 2003). Speaker motivation is key. Until recently, Sheng, an urban vernacular of Nairobi, Kenya and topic of this dissertation, has only been cursorily analyzed or described, but it has been characterized in many quite different ways. The name Sheng has a couple of possible origins. Mazrui (1995:171) asserts that it originated as an acronym, consisting of Swahili-English. However, I propose it is an argot reversal, a transposition of the two syllables in English, from Eng-lish to lish-Eng with a reanalysis of the li- as a CL5 prefix on Li-Sheng (See footnote 5 in 1.0). It has not yet been determined what kind of language Sheng is.

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Mazrui (1995) claims, Sheng is a slang based primarily on Swahili-English code switching (171). Code-switching or code-mixing in Kenya may well be the source of the evolution of Sheng (Abdulaziz and Osinde 1997: 45). Though pidgins and creoles develop out of a need for a common language among speakers of diverse languages, mixed languages evolve from the desire of a single social group for an in-group medium of communication (Thomason, 2001: 198). Samper (2002) contends that though its typological characterization remains disputed (105), Sheng is an urban, youth argotic register of Kiswahili (94), best defined as a linguistic hybrid (127). This study provides a more definitive answer to the question of whether Sheng is a form of slang, a pidgin, a creole, a mixed language or simply a case of elaborate multi-lingual code-switching.

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CHAPTER FOUR: METHODOLOGY

4.0

Purpose The purpose of this dissertation is to determine whether Sheng, a language spoken

in the Eastlands area of Nairobi, Kenya is a mixed language. The study focuses on the lexicon and morphosyntax employed by speakers of Sheng in naturally occurring conversations. The study addresses three broad research questions: (1) does Sheng have a core vocabulary separate from that of the core vocabulary of Swahili? (2) how do the system morphemes of Sheng compare with those of Swahili? and (3) in what manner does Sheng provide its speakers a new identity?

4.1

Design Following the framework of Myers-Scotton (2002), the focus is on the Matrix

Language frame and lexicon of Sheng and the system morphemes found in 76 conversations recorded in Eastlands. According to the 4-M model, system morphemes

are categorized into early system morphemes, which are structurally assigned from within the constituent, and late system morphemes, which are assigned from outside the constituent. The search in this study is for both types because as observed in the

discussion of 3.5.2 and in Figures 3.3 and 3.4, the early system morphemes from the EL

Figure 4.1: Swahili Noun Classes and Concordial Affixes Noun Classes M-WA (1) (2) M-MI (3) (4) JI-MA (5) (6) KI-VI (7) (8) N-N (9) (10) U-YA (11) (14) Example mtoto watoto mti miti jicho macho kitabu vitabu (I-ZI) nyumba nyumba uovu maovu Gloss child children tree trees eye eyes book books house houses evil evils
Nom/Adj

Prefix mwammi/jimakivi/n/nmma-

Subject Prefix awauiliyakiviiziuya-

Object Prefix m/mwwam/mwiliyakiviiziuya-

Poss Prefix wwwylychvyyzwy-

Prep Prefix w-a w-a w-a y-a l-a y-a ch-a vy-a y-a z-a w-a y-a

Rel Prefix y-ew-ow-oy-ol-oy-och-ovy-oy-oz-ow-oy-o-

Demonstratives Proximal Distal Ref huyu yule huyo hawa wale hao huu hii hili haya hiki hivi hii hizi huu haya ule ile lile yale kile vile ile zile ule yale huo hiyo hilo hayo hicho hivyo hiyo hizo huo hayo

NB: Odd numbers are singular, evens plural. Poss = Possessive; Prep = preposition; Rel = relative; Ref = referenced. Contini-Morava (1994) discusses semantic reasons for Proto Northeast Coast Bantu classes *lu and *Wu (Nurse & Hinnebusch 1993: 338) merging to form the prefix u- for Swahili Class 11. Bantu classes 12 and 13 (diminutives) were annexed by 7/8; augmentatives by 5/6. Classes 16-18 (locatives) are not in this table as no Swahili nouns are in these classes. Class 15 (gerunds) are also not included.

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(cf. Chamorro, Malti and Sinti Romani) indicate an Incipient Mixed Languages (IMLs) and late outsider morphemes (cf. Anglo-Romani, Petjo, Maa, Michif and Media Lengua) indicate a Fully-Crystallized Mixed Language (FCML). The difference is that the

presence of early system morphemes from the EL demonstrates that the morphosyntactic frame is beginning to change, but the occurrence of late system morphemes is evidence that that morphosyntactic change has already happened, hence incipient versus fullycrystallized. Myers-Scotton (2002) identifies derivational morphemes as early system morphemes (245) and agreement morphemes as late outsider morphemes (131). First, a look at the Swahili noun-class system outlined in Figure 4.1 identifies which affix is which type of morpheme. The fourth column lists the nominal and adjectival (Nom/Adj) prefixes. These prefixes are essentially singular and plural markers, making them early system morphemes (Myers-Scotton 2002: 92). Number morphemes should not, however, be confused with the Subject, Object, Possessive (Poss) and Relatives (Rel) affixes in columns 5, 6, 7 and 9. These morphemes are agreement markers, clearly designated as late outsider system morphemes (Myers-Scotton 2002: 302). The Prepositional (Prep) prefixes in the tenth column are late bridge system morphemes for they are conjoiners. Finally, the Demonstratives (Proximal, Distal and Referenced) in the last columns of Figure 4.1 are determiners, placing them into the category of early system morphemes (Myers-Scotton 2008: 28). With the nominal system morphemes identified, the verbal tense/aspect system requires clarification. Figure 4.2 lists the primary tense morphemes of standard Swahili (Ashton 1944: 36). Other tenses exist but they tend to be compound tenses and will not

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Figure 4.2: Six Primary Swahili Tense Morphemes in Swahili Grammatical Category (+) Example (-) (1) Past (2) Future (3) Present (definite time) (4) Present (indefinite time) (5) Present Perfect (6) Habitual -li-ta-na-a-mehuNilisoma. I read. Nitasoma. I will read. Ninasoma I am reading Nasoma I read Nimesoma. I have read. Mimi husoma kila siku. I read every day. -kusisi-, -i

Example Sikusoma. I did not read. Sitasoma. I will not read. Sisomi. I'm not reading.

-ja-

Sijasoma. I haven't read.

(Ashton 1944: 36)

Figure 4.3: Derived Verbal Suffixes in Swahili Category Suffix Example Prepositional -ia/-ea, -lia/-lea Fungia Passive -wa, -liwa, -lewa Fungwa Stative -ika, -eka Fungika Causative -isha/-esha, -iza/-eza, -ya Fungisha Reciprocal -ana Fungana Conversive -ua, -oa Fungua Static -ma Fungama Contactive -ta Kamata Reflexive -jiJificha Reduplicative double verb base Pita Pitapita

Gloss Fasten with Be closed Be closed Cause to fasten Fasten together Unfasten Be in a bound/fixed condition Sieze To hide oneself Pass Cross
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be considered for they are a combination of those affixes or morphemes already presented. The affirmative forms are listed in bold face, the negative forms in regular type. All tense affixes are late outsider system morphemes. However, hu- the habitual marker in (6) is an aspect morpheme, which is more fittingly classified as an early system morpheme (Myers-Scotton 2008: 34). Derivational suffixes are given in Figure 4.3. Each of these morphemes is fair game for consideration, but only those derivations that are manifested in a manner different from that of standard Swahili shall be explored. Interviews/focus group discussions were conducted with Sheng entertainers and youths on the street to provide insight into the perspectives of speakers of this urban vernacular. Above all, the informants speak for themselves in Sheng and about what

Sheng represents for them in their daily lives. Data collection (including interviews, visits to youth halls, and various localities in estates inside the Eastlands area) occurred in Nairobi from January through December 2006. 76 unstructured, face-to-face

conversations, lasting approximately one hour each were conducted with residents of the Eastlands estates, and four focus group interviews were recorded. The conversations were digitally recorded by Sheng-speaking interviewers and took place in the eastern part of the city of Nairobi. The methodology employed included brief demographic questionnaires and recorded informal conversations. Twelve fluent Sheng speakers conducted interviews in Sheng with over 75 young men (ages 18-37) and women (ages 22-33) from the mitaa or estates of the Eastlands area of Nairobi. The conversations were not structured and so did not focus on any predetermined topics, allowing interviewees the opportunity to

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discuss anything they wanted. This study, based on seventy-six interviews with youths born and reared in the eastern parts of Nairobi, is an exploratory work covering a wide cross-section of the urban area. Interviewers and interviewees, all of whom were

engaged through friendship networks, were competent in Sheng and ranging in ages from 18 to 43 years. It has been proposed that the ages 14 to 28 are considered the years of the most active use of Sheng (Abdulaziz and Osinde, 1997: 56). Furthermore, because 1963 was the year of Kenyas Independence, the older participants represent the first generation of Kenyans born and reared post Independence, thus symbolizing the new postcolonial identity. In the collection, analysis and discussion of these data, the consultants identities remain confidential as their conversations were coded and labeled by the location in which the conversation occurred. Each estate was assigned two interviewers, coded A and B. The first letter of a code stands for the estate in which the data were collected. The second letter is the interviewer code, and the number following the estate/interviewer code is the number of the interview in that estate. For instance, KA37 indicates Kaloleni estate (K), the first interviewer (A), and the thirty-seventh recorded conversation (37). A few interviews have more than one interviewee since sometimes a friend of the target interviewee happened to be present during the recording, hence the mismatch of 76 recordings but 83 interviewees. Eastlands contains some 25 estates. The ones in this study fall inside the boundaries of the city divisions of Central, Makadara and Pumwani (see Map 4.1). From the estates of Kaloleni, Bahati, and Mbotela, which are part of Eastlands proper, 76 speakers were surveyed. Each of these estates is primarily inhabited by a single language

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group (See Figure 4.4). The first 27 interviews were in Kaloleni, a predominantly Luo/Luyia speaking area (40% Luo, 26% Luyia), reputed to be the locus of Shengs origin. 12 speakers were interviewed in Bahati, a predominantly Kikuyu speaking area

(73%), and another 20 were selected in Jericho, an estate with a majority of Kikuyu speakers (56%). 8 interviewees were from the estate of Maringo (42% Kikuyu).

Figure 4.4: Approximate Ethnic Composition of Residences Percentage of Ethnic Groups per Estate Estate Kikuyu Luo Luhya Kamba Kaloleni 11.7 40.2 26.6 17.0 Bahati 73.6 4.8 5.5 12.7 Mbotela 20.1 19.8 23.5 30.9 Jericho (Makadara) 56.9 13.7 11.2 14.8 Maringo 42.7 12.1 19.3 19.7

Others --.014 ---

Percentages intended only to provide a rough indication of ethnic compositions, based on Macharia (1992).

Estates other than the original three were added. Jericho and Maringo estates were subsequently included in the study in order to ascertain whether different mixes of minority language groups influenced the Sheng of the area. Jericho is 56% Kikuyu, 14 % Kamba, 13% Luo and 11% Luhya, while Maringo is 42% Kikuyu, 19% Kamba, 19% Luhya and 12% Luo. All data were collected between January 2006 and December 2006. A final nine interviews were conducted in the predominantly Kamba speaking area of Mbotela (30% Kamba). An effort was made to have the total number of informants evenly divided by gender, but in the end there were 80 interviews with males and three with females. Interviewers consisted of 6 females (ages 23-33) and 6 males (ages 23-30). The female interviewers were Bahati B (BB), Kaloleni A (KA), Kaloleni B (KB), Maringo B (MB), 1 international-university student (grouped with BB) and Focus

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Group/Interviewer (FGI). The male interviewers were Bahati A (BA), Jericho A (JA), Jericho B (JB), Maringo A (MA), Mbotela A (MbA), and Mbotela B (MbB). A final nine interviews were conducted in the predominantly Kamba speaking area of Mbotela (30% Kamba). An effort was made to have the total number of informants evenly divided by gender, but in the end there were 80 interviews with males and three with females. Interviewers consisted of 6 females (ages 23-33) and 6 males (ages 23-30). The female interviewers were Bahati B (BB), Kaloleni A (KA), Kaloleni B (KB), Maringo B (MB), 1 international-university student (grouped with BB) and Focus Group/Interviewer (FGI). The male interviewers were Bahati A (BA), Jericho A (JA), Jericho B (JB), Maringo A (MA), Mbotela A (MbA), and Mbotela B (MbB). Interviewer BA recorded 8 conversations with 10 interviewees (9 males, 1 female) in Bahati. Interviewer BB interviewed 3 male informants in Bahati; the

international-university student interviewer (female; 1 male) is grouped here because her area is proximal to Bahati. JA recorded only 3 conversations with 3 males while JB conversed with 21 individuals, only one of whom is female, for 17 recordings. KA recorded 21 conversations with 22 male interlocutors, and KB had 6 interviews with 6 males. Four recordings were made by MA with 4 male informants. MB also made four recordings with four male interviewees. Whereas MbA only recorded four conversations with four male interviewees, MbB recorded 5 conversations with 5 male speakers. FGI (female) recorded two focus group discussions: one in Ofafa Jericho, the other in Maringo estate. FGI and KA both interviewed the YFM radio DJ (male). The follow-up interview with Mdomo Baggy (male) was conducted solely by FGI, as was the Big Boys Gym interview (1 male).

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N AIROBI

KASARANI
DANDORA 'B'

DANDORA 'A'

NJIRU

WESTLANDS EMBAKASI
UHU RU

CENTRAL DAGORETTI

PUMW ANI EAST LEIGH SOUTH

KI MAT HI OF AFA KALOLENI HARAMBEE LUMUMBA HAMZA UMOJA

MBOTELA

MA KIN A KIBERA

MAKADARA

KIBERA

Division boundary Sheng data ar eas Sub-locations

6 Kilomet ers

4 Mi les

Map 4.1: Eastlands Estates Studied Fall within Boundaries of Pumwani, Makadara and Central Division

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The additional data were collected in the 4 focus-group interviews37 which were semi structured in their format. Two groups of young men were interviewed about their attitudes about Sheng; one group on a street in Ofafa Jericho estate, the other group in the social hall of Maringo estate. One Sheng speaker was interviewed outside the Big Boys Gym in Kaloleni estate. The Big Boys Gym was originally intended to be the site of a focus group, but only one consultant was available at the time. Finally, a Sheng radio announcer/DJ was also interviewed at the offices of the now defunct YFM radio station. The comedian and radio personality Mdomo Baggy was interviewed approximately a year later as a follow up to the YFM interview. Of the 83 interviewees, only three were female. However, since half of the interviewers were female, approximately half of the interviews have examples of female usage of Sheng (39 recordings). Each conversation lasted approximately one hour. With the subjects permission, the conversations were digitally recorded for later analysis. Transcriptions of 10-minute segments, chosen from close to the middle of each interview to avoid routine openings and closings, translations into Swahili, and subsequent analyses of these Sheng conversations reveal common patterns and grammatical norms in Sheng. The overall analysis focuses on identifying the morphosyntactic frame of Sheng. This examination illuminates the late system morphemes manifest in Sheng. In addition to recording spoken data, archival research at the Kenya Archives was conducted and written examples of Sheng from the local print media were gathered. Further data were

Though originally intended to be additional sources for structural analysis, the focus groups data were excluded because the consultants often seemed to be monitoring their speech. The interviews with the celebrities were especially problematic for much of each discussion was conducted in English.

37

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collected through elicitations of Hancocks fifty sentences38 and the Swadesh 200-word list.

4.2

Data Analysis The original hypotheses were conflated into three main divisions: lexicon,

morphosyntax and social factors. The first set of hypotheses addresses facets of the lexicon: (1a) Content morphemes in Sheng come primarily from English, Swahili and other African languages, such as Kikuyu, Luo, Luyia and Kamba. Content morphemes in Sheng are often innovations, meaning they are loans that have been truncated or metathesized.

(1b)

The second set of hypotheses collapse into a set representing morphosyntax: (2a) (2b) Swahili supplies most of the morphosyntactic frame for Sheng. Inflection and agreement morphemes largely come from Swahili, but a few are alien to Swahili.

The final set of hypotheses is subsumed under the umbrella of social factors: (3a) (3b) (3c) Sheng is systematic, rule-governed and relatively stable. Sheng is the in-group language associated with a new group identity. Sheng is the result of deliberate decision.

Examples of a composite ML and of convergence in the data were sought. When languages in contact are becoming more similar to each other, convergence is said to be occurring. When the process leads to a crystallized composite ML, that consequence can also be considered convergence. Myers-Scotton (2002: 102-105) discusses two types of
As the data from the written samples and the 50 sentences (Hancock 1987) also had the air of selfmonitoring and conformity to the standard, they were not included in the structural analysis.
38

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convergence: (1) lexical convergence and (2) morphological/structural convergence. This lexicon-morphosyntax split is the common division understood to be representative of mixed languages and fits well with the first two divisions of my hypotheses above. To test hypotheses (1a) and (1b), the lexicon of Sheng would need to be compared to the lexica of English and Swahili (i.e., the lexifier languages) and the lexica of Kikuyu, Luo, Luhya and Kamba (i.e., the substrate or adstrate languages). A determination can then be made as to whether and to what extent any of the lexica of the superstrates (i.e., English and Swahili) has been transmitted to Sheng. An examination of the lexica of the substrates (i.e., Kikuyu, Luo, Luhya and Kamba) would provide an indication of how much of the original local vocabulary remains in Sheng. An analysis of the dictionaries of each of the languages contributing to Sheng is beyond the scope of this dissertation, but an examination of the Swadesh list for each language would facilitate the comparison. Though Bakker & Mous (1994) assert that there is a 90% threshold of foreign lexical items required for a language to be considered a mixed language, Bakker (2003: 121) concedes that a fifty-fifty parentage split in the core lexicon is sufficient to disqualify a languages being called a daughter of any one, single language. This basic vocabulary comparison is conducted in 5.1 by a count of the etymological origins of the 207 most frequent lexical items (see Figure 5.1.2). To assay the morphosyntax for hypotheses (2a) and (2b), the concordial affixes of NOM, ADJ, SUB, OBJ, POSS, PREP, DEM, and REL (See Figure 4.1) shall be counted for frequencies of occurrence of agreement as established by standard Swahili. NOM and DEM shall be counted as early system morphemes; ADJ, SUB, OBJ, POSS, PREP, DEM, and REL as late system morphemes. Any concords found in Sheng that are not

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also found in standard Swahili will be considered foreign system morphemes. Additionally, the data will be scoured for morphemes foreign to those TAM and derivational markers listed in Figures 4.2 and 4.3. Any TAM or derivational affix found to be foreign to these lists will be considered evidence of a composite morphosyntax in Sheng. For Sheng to be considered a mixed language, or a variety in the process of becoming mixed, its morphosyntax must manifest convergence. Specifically, a

composite matrix language must be found in Sheng. Evidence of a Matrix Language Turnover in progress or recently arrested must be indicated. Late system morphemes from the Embedded Languages in the mixed variety indicate that the morphosyntax has restructured (Myers-Scotton 2002: 248). From this perspective, the data on Sheng is searched for late system morphemes alien to Swahili ( 5.2). If a Turnover is still in process or already arrested, foreign system morphemes are expected to be evident in the data: obligatory early system morphemes for an IML and late system morphemes for an FCML. Weighing the evidence in the data for support of hypotheses (3a), (3b) and (3c) necessitates more than frequency counts of morphemes. Knowledge of the historical and social background of Sheng is required. To gauge the social circumstances and weigh them in comparison to developments in the recent history of Nairobi, the attitudes of the speakers of Sheng need to be measured. I take the data from a Nairobi sociolinguistic

survey conducted by Ferrari (2003) and reanalyze the findings to determine whether speakers consider Sheng to be a marker of identity. What is more is that the dichotomy between lexicon and morphosyntax provides support for these social factors. If

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grammatical convergence is an involuntary outcome and if lexical manipulation results from conscious selection (Golovko 2003:197), then social pressures need to be considered. Though mixed language speakers deliberately decide to begin mixing their languages, once they have, conventionalization ironically takes the choice away. How is conventionalization identified? Myers-Scotton (2002), Thomason (2001) and Auer (1999) all argue for crystallization or fossilization of structure. Less variation would appear to be the indicator distinguishing the stable variety from the unstable. Insertional codeswitching, or intrasentential CS, and alternational codeswitching, or intersentential CS, are always unpredictable and therefore unstable. A fixed pattern in a mixed language could be misconstrued as codeswitching when borrowed items of differing complexities and shapes, such as phrases, idioms, and even clauses, become grammaticalized. No linguist has put forth a theory of precisely how much variability sets the stable mixed language apart from CS (Bakkus 2003: 263). As a consequence, this dissertation does not attempt to resolve this issue in evaluating Sheng as a mixed language.

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CHAPTER FIVE: LEXICON, MORPHOSYNTAX AND SOCIAL FACTORS

5.0

Results In this chapter, I present the analysis of the etymology of the Sheng core

vocabulary ( 5.1), the early system and late system morphemes of the Sheng morphosyntax that distinguish it from the Swahili morphosyntax ( 5.2), and the social factors that contribute to the identity of Sheng speakers as a new social group ( 5.3).

5.1

Lexicon The lexicon is the first rung on the ladder to language mixture. Content

morphemes on the level of lexical-conceptual structure are the site of first attrition (cf. Figure 3.4). As discussed in 3.5.1.1, whereas well-formedness constraints derive only from the morphosyntax of the Matrix Language (ML), lexical-conceptual constraints can derive from the Embedded Language (EL). As the Abstract Level (AL) model explains, each morpheme has three levels of formation presenting a scenario in which overlap or double-marking may engender a composite ML. This double morphology or mistiming (Myers-Scotton 1997) manifests itself when the well-formedness conditions of the EL compete with the speakers intention. Such mistiming was observed in example (1) of 3.5.1.1 in which the noun madays already marked with the ma- plural prefix of the ML Shona is also marked by the EL English plural marker (-s).

In example (17), the Swahili plural marker (vi-) appears even though the Sheng prefix (ma-) has already marked plurality. (17) I-na-kaz-i-a
CL9-PRES-deny-APPL-FV

ma-vi-jana
CL6-CL8-youth

nini
INTEROGATIVE/what

It is denying the youth what? (Sheng: KA1, line 44; Rudd 2006 corpus) In the Sheng example, as in the illustration from Shona, the noun has been made plural twice, once by the ML (Sheng) and once from the EL (Swahili). This double-

marking is evidence of a composite matrix language in Sheng because the speaker has produced a morphology sourced from more than one language. That is, the Sheng plural marker ma-, which will be discussed in detail in 5.2, and vi-, the Swahili CL8 prefix, are both employed in the utterance in (17). Out of a sample of 410 CL6 words (i.e. words prefixed with ma-) analyzed in the Eastlands data, 343 (84%) were non-standard Swahili while only 67 (16%) were the same as in standard Swahili. The evidence suggests that mistiming may not be the most

plausible explanation of why the ma- is occurring with an already pluralized word. When a new lexical item is borrowed into Swahili, it is generally placed into class 9/10 (i.e., it has a zero marker; see Figure 4.1). Examples are the English motokaa or motorcar and the Arabic kalamu or pen. Besides the forms in this gender being the same for the singular and plural, the category itself is the largest of all the Swahili noun classes. However, when a loanword is incorporated into Sheng, it is generally absorbed into class 5/6. This noun class frequently has no prefix for the singular form (class 5), but the prefix (ma-) marks the plural (class 6). As is witnessed in example (17), despite the existence of an overt, distinct Swahili class marker, Sheng speakers opt to employ the

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class 6 prefix (i.e., ma-) to designate the plural gender on a loanword. Sheng speakers are just as aware of the Swahili noun class system as the Malinche speakers are of the gender usage in Spanish (see examples 2 and 3 in 3.5.1.1), and they too obey the wellformedness constraints of the ML not the EL. (18) Ma-oldskool,
CL6-old school

ma- reggae,
CL6-reggae

ma-soul.
CL6-soul

Old-school songs, reggae songs, soul songs. (Sheng: KA1, line 56; Rudd 2006 corpus) In Sheng then a composite abstract structure requires a slot for plurals of borrowed words. This slot must be specified, with the ma- in (18) because Sheng is the ML and not with a null marker as in words borrowed into Swahili, and not with a suffix (-s) as in English. The prefix ma- does exist in Swahili but it does not mark foreign words in that language, while it does in Sheng. Consequently, Sheng noun classes require speakers to access a new abstract structure, a mixture which is the modus operandi of a composite frame. The convergence in Sheng then does not stop at the lexical-conceptual level. On the contrary, it encompasses morphological realization patterns as well. On the surface, example (19) looks to be a monolingual utterance, but submerged in the abstract depths of meaning is hidden a bilingual convergence of morphological realizations. The word poa is a calque. It is a loan translated from the English word cool. As a result of pressure from the superstrate, Sheng has developed the capability of converting an entry from one lexical category into a new lexical category. Examples (19) through (22) show how -poa has shifted functionally from a verb to an adjective.

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(19)

I-nge-ku-w-a
CL9-CONTRAFACTUAL-to-be-FV

poa
UNINFLECTED39 ADJ-cool

It would be cool. (Sheng: KA1, line 45; Rudd 2006 corpus)

Of course, many words have been borrowed from English into Swahili since English has become the language of prestige in Kenya; however, this particular calque is of special interest for it affects not only the lexical-conceptual plane but also the patterns of morphological realizations in Sheng. Example (20) demonstrates the limitations of the original lexeme in Swahili. (20) Habari ya mgonjwa
news

yu-le?

A-na-po-a
1S-PRES-cool-FV

of CL1-patient CL1-DEM/distal

What news of that patient? S/he is convalescing/cooling. (Swahili) As can be seen in (20), -poa is a bound morpheme in Swahili40. Its occurrence is restricted to its being attached in an agglutinative string. As fever is a common symptom of sickness, cooling off or down is often considered convalescence (Johnson 1939). The English word cool has a similar origin. It has only been since the Age of Jazz that the slang form of cool spread from African-American Vernacular to more mainstream English (Barnhart & Metcalf 1997) and started being calqued into other languages, such as French and German. The loan translation must have found its way into Swahili and East Africa subsequent to World War 2, but it likely garnered little notice until American pop culture/music and television became more available. Moreover, until the calque appeared poa was seldom if ever used as a free morpheme. However, in its new calqued form poa can stand alone as it often does in ritual speech as in example (21). In the late

Swahili has a class of uninflected loanwords, mostly from Arabic (Ashton 1944: 49). It is interesting that poa is acting here like an uninflected loanword in Sheng.

39

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nineteen-eighties and early nineteen-nineties, poa even became routinized as a response to a greeting in Sheng. Even more intriguing is that the entry in its new function does not conform to the typical inflectional morphology of the new lexical category. That is, most adjectives are inflected in Swahili. (21) Mambo?
CL6/news/issues/ concerns

Poa!
UNINFLECTED ADJ-cool

Whats up?/How are you?

Cool! /Great! /Fine! (Sheng: BA5, line 53; Rudd 2006 corpus)

That a bound morpheme could become a free morpheme is quite a metamorphosis. The next example shows reanalysis of a morpheme and the creation of yet another free morpheme from a bound one. The morphological realization in example (22) takes the Swahili interrogative enclitic je and combines it with the Swahili final vowel (-a), the indicative mood marker. The coalescence is an innovation. (22) U-na-on-a-je? (Swahili) How do you see it/How do you feel/ What do you think? Ni aje? (Sheng)

2S-PRES-see FV-INTERROGATIVE COP

MANNER INTERROGATIVE

How is it?

Ashton (1944) posits three interrogative enclitics in Swahili (-ni, who/what; -pi, where; -je, how) that may be affixed to the end of the verb as exemplified in (23). Though Ashton points out that -je may also be suffixed to a co-ordinate choice conjunction (i.e., or) as in au-je and to an instrumental preposition (i.e., by) as in kwa-je, she is silent on the affixation of the particle to end of the single vowel as in (22). However, as (23) clarifies, the particles frequently follow the final vowel of a verb. It is this final vowel that seems to have been reanalyzed.
40

Though -poa is actually bimorphemic (i.e., -po-a), the final vowel (FV or -a) is regularly included with verbs in dictionaries. I follow the dictionary entry tradition here.

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(23)

(a) (b) (c)

A-me-kwend-a-pi?
3S-PRES PER-go-FV-enclitic

Where has he gone? Wa-ni-it-i-a-ni?

2S-1S/OBJ-call-APPL-FV-enclitic

What are you calling me for? A-li-fany-a-je?

3S-PAST-do-FV-enclitic

What did he do? (Swahili; Ashton 1944: 153) The combination of these two final morphemes has become reanalyzed and grammaticalized from being bound system morphemes in Swahili to being one new free system morpheme in Sheng, a new interrogative adverb, in the fashion of Swahili vipi, an adverb of manner (i.e., how?). When the interrogative particle -je is added to end of a verb, ending in -a, the indicative marker, the two syllables form a bisyllabic unit, which is the minimal word in Bantu languages. That poa and aje have gone from being bound morphemes to free morphemes is intriguing. These kinds of change are undeniably altered morphological realization patterns that appear convergent and are evidence that Sheng has a composite morphosyntactic frame. Truncation is a morphological realization pattern that shortens a base and sometimes results in irregular phonology. Nicknames or hypocoristics are a cross-

linguistically common example with name truncation in English being exceptionally phonologically irregular (Benua 1995). Though I know of no studies of truncation in Swahili, truncation in Sheng is rather prevalent and may be the consequence of an overarching drive to achieve cognitive efficiency. In fact, Kangethe-Iraki (2004: 62) goes as far as to argue that Sheng cognitively achieves with one morpheme what would be achieved by Kiswahili with five morphemes.

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(a) (b) (c) (d) (e)

Figure 5.1: Truncated Words English Loanword house town negotiate football maize

New Sheng Word hao tao nego futi mei (Rudd 2005)

A quick look at the words in Figure 5.1 reveals that all of the truncated forms are disyllabic or the minimal prosodic word in Swahili and apparently in Sheng as well. I argue, therefore, that truncation down to a binary foot in Sheng is the emergence of the unmarked (cf., Japanese truncation in Benua 1995: 43). Cognitive efficiency and the emergence of the unmarked seem to be developing together with Sheng truncation, achieving the perfect disyllabic foot and with minimal cognitive and articulatory exertion. Colina (1996:1205) contends that the optimal

truncated form in Spanish is the disyllabic trochee, and it seems the case is similar in Sheng41. Truncation is the mirror image of reduplication (Benua 1995). Whereas the

reduplicant often has to be minimally the prosodic word, the truncatum has to be maximally the prosodic word. They are opposite morphological processes in that the former lengthens while the latter shortens.

(a) (b) (c) (d) (e)

Figure 5.2: Truncated Words with an Additional Final Vowel English Loanword New Sheng Word Emphatic Form teacher tiche ti.che.e mother ma.the ma.the.e thousand tho.u tho.u.u government ga.va ga.va.a husband ha.si ha.si.i (Rudd 2005)

41

Rudd (2005) provides a list of OT constraints governing truncation in Sheng.

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Though some truncated words, such as those as shown in Figure 5.2, appear to display more than three syllables, this is most likely a grammatical marker of emphasis, and hence occurs subsequent to the truncation process, not during it or as a result of it. The lengthening of a final vowel for some kind of grammatical marking is not unusual in Africa. In West Africa, the Idomoid languages and other languages in that area west of Nigeria, due east of the Niger-Benue confluence, form yes/no questions by adding a low tone aa at the end of a declarative sentence (personal communication, Herbert F.W. Stahlke). Emphatic lengthening then is one possible explanation for the extra vowel at the end of Sheng truncata. (24) M-tu ile na-siki-a
NONPSThear-FV

nja

([ndza])

CL1- CL9/ person DEM

hunger (emphasis [sic])

(Mann jener Aor-hren Hunger-Emphase) That man is extremely hungry. (Upcountry Swahili; Heine 1973: 74) Heine (1973) describes a similar process in Upcountry Swahili, of which (24) is one example. The emphasis lengthens the syllable to two or four vowel lengths and adds a higher pitch. The function is to emphasize the meaning of the word in which it is used. Abrupt creation of a language is one path a group of people can follow to establish their own ethnic identity. Increasingly, the residents of Eastlands must have found themselves standing apart not only from the Europeans and the more culturallyassimilated residents of the upper-class in Westlands but from the residents of their rural homelands as well. They were neither rustic nor elite. They were on their own with an emerging separate group identity. The mixing of their languages and creating of Sheng function as a symbol of that new identity. This change is contact-induced, and the source

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is borrowing from languages of which they more or less have knowledge.

By

incorporating vocabulary from the available languages, they make use of the linguistic material available to them. Old vocabulary is made new by a systematic distortion that creates a jargon or argot, known and interpretable only by members of the new social group. Once a technique is established, the argot spreads throughout the community. The preferred method of argot creation in Sheng is syllable reversal or transposition. Syllable reversing in Sheng depends on the prosodic phonology of

Swahili. Rudd (2005) gives an OT interpretation showing how the process is similar to the framework established for zuuja-go, the Japanese jazz jargon (Ito et al. 1996). Like Zuujago, Pig Latin and other language games, argot reversal in Sheng is essentially the rearranging of the phonological base to create a new order and thus a new form. As can be seen in Figures 5.3 and 5.4, phonological reversal expedites the creation of new words and demonstrates that a new lexicon can be created from loanwords from English and Swahili (and presumably from the lexica of the other vernacular languages).

(a) (b) (c) (d)

Figure 5.3: Argot Reversal of English Words English Loanword New Sheng Word come muka plan nipla fag ngife cage jake (Rudd 2005)

Though little functional shift occurs (i.e., a verb tends to stay a verb; a noun tends to stay a noun), semantic shifts frequently extend the meaning of words borrowed into Sheng (see Ogechi 2005 for a discussion of lexicalization in Sheng). Not all borrowings undergo reversal, but those that do remain true to the minimal prosodic word. A

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loanword is nativized so that it adheres to the restrictions on the syllable (i.e., no closed syllables or the NoCoda constraint in OT) and on the minimal word (i.e., no monosyllabic words).

(a) (b) (c) (d)

Figure 5.4: Argot Reversal of Swahili Words Swahili Loanword New Sheng Word mlango (door) mngola muhindi (Indian) mundihi kikombe (cup) kimbeko kesho (tomorrow) shoke (Rudd 2005)

The input for the argot prosodic word is the output of the base prosodic word. We notice further that the base word, being a prosodic word in Swahili, is a minimum word, which by pain of constraints must be disyllabic (see Rudd 2005). Whereas come is a monosyllabic input from English, its output is disyllabic in Swahili and Sheng. By definition epenthetic vowels are not part of the underlying form; therefore, the final epenthetic vowel of kamu is not part of the input. On the contrary, epenthesis is part of the output. We can propose then that the correspondence between base and argot is an out-to-output correspondence (i.e., in OT terms, OO-correspondence). Metathesis may be a process that contributed to argot reversal in Sheng. Hume (2004: 203) argues that there is a general myth about metathesis, and her contention is that it is a phonological process that is caused by indeterminacy. Metathesis in Sheng has been explained as the attempt to hide the meaning of the message. I tend to think that the hiding of meaning is an important role, if not the raison dtre, of metathesized syllables in Sheng now. Monosyllabic nouns may engender indeterminacy which might cause a non-bilingual to metathesize a monosyllabic English loanword misperceived as a

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disyllabic Swahili word. In doing so, the original second CV syllable would be forced into the trochaic stress position, causing it to become more salient or more determinate (cf, Hume 2004: 214). Syllable reversal is quite a common occurrence in East Africa. Meinhoff (1932: 16) reports syllable transposition in Venda (e.g. -digima and -gidima or run) and Swahili kinyume or reversal game or ludling of Zanzibar. Johnson (1939:

348, 192) describes a puzzle game of syllable reversal in Swahili (i.e., maneno ya kinyume or kihunzi cha maneno back words). Steere (1884: 425-427) provides a list of transposed Swahili words in Appendix I of his famous Swahili handbook. The question is not so much whether transposition in Sheng is the same as in Swahili, but rather what does it empower speakers to do. Besides the words in Figure 5.4, there are abundant examples of Swahili words that have been transposed in Sheng. There seems to be covert prestige in argot reversal, and truly fluent bilinguals may have simply accommodated to the forms used by nonfluent speakers in Nairobi. One excellent example of syllable reversal that explains its appeal may better explain the origin of the name of Nairobis mixed language than the acronym or blending scenario.

Figure 5.5: Possible Argot Reversal in the Name Sheng English Loanword Transposition Reanalysis English (english) Lisheng (li-sheng) Sheng As put forward in footnote 2 of 1.0, the description of Sheng as an acronym or blend seems implausible. I find the suggestion by one of my consultants that the name results from the transposition of Englishs two syllables and the reanalysis of the first syllable onset (i.e. <l>) and vowel (i.e. <i>) as the intial syllable and the coda (i.e. <sh>)

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of the original first syllable as the onset of the second syllable (i.e. sheng) so that the product is the bimorphemic li.sheng much more plausible. That this explanation fits well with the CL5 Bantu language classifying prefix (p.c. Michael Marlo) that is dropped in some languages, such as in Ngala (<LiNgala), gives the proposition even more explanatory power. The name Sheng then comes from lisheng which is a transposed version of english. All the same, a language whose name ends with a closed syllable should tolerate closed syllables, but Sheng tends not to permit them. Such a variant could be the result of social indexing. Possibly those persons who close their syllables are indicating either their education level or sophistication. If the linguistic expression of Arabism in Kiswahili became an element of sophistication which came to be partly measured by ones ability to articulate any known Arabic borrowing as articulated in Arabic speech (Mazrui 1978: 229), a similar level of sophistication could be affected in Sheng by articulating an Anglicism as closely as possible to the articulation perceived to be in English. Considering that speakers create a mixed language as a symbol of their

emerging ethnic identity (Thomason 2001: 11), it should be contemplated why the name Sheng in its closed monosyllabicity, seemingly shouts, We are different! The name

may be marked to show how much the speakers feel that they are their own speech communitya group separate from the communities of the Swahili speakers, the English speakers, and the vernacular speakers. Lexical borrowings occur in the speech of the first language speaker as well as in the utterances of the multilingual; therefore, borrowing of content words in Sheng is not unique. The question is what sort of borrowing constitutes a mixed language lexicon as

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opposed to just a heavily borrowed vocabulary.

Bakker & Mous (1994) put the

percentage of 45% as the extent to which heavy borrowing occurs and the proportion for mixed vocabulary at around 90 percent. Generally, in the case of massive borrowing the basic vocabulary that is foreign is rather limited, while the core lexicon of a mixed language is mostly foreign. As Stolz (2003: 290-291) has shown with dictionary

etymology counts for Chamorro (54.9% non-Austronesian) and Malti (57.19% nonSemitic), the massive borrowing cutoff of 45% foreign does not hold. The lexical entry count carried out by Kangethe-Iraki (2004) and based on a dictionary of Sheng (Moga & Fee 2004) discloses the following proportions for Sheng: English 13%; Swahili 20%; other sources 67%. In this count Sheng has a foreign etymology of 80%, putting it with Malti and Chamorro in the proposed gap between massive borrowing and mixed language, marked by the notches of 45 percent and 90 percent respectively. Though Sheng has a larger proportion of foreign loans, it reconfirms that the contact language typology of lexical borrowing is a continuum. Languages do fall within the zone

previously considered unattested (see the range from 45% to 90% in Figure 5.6) The figure of 90% includes both core and non-core lexicon (Bakker 2003: 109), but no mention is made of what the cut-off in basic vocabulary only is. However, Bakker (2003: 121) does argue that the lexical mixtures of Trio-Ndjuka, the Carib and escapedslave English-lexifier creole of Suriname, and Russenorsk, the Russian and Norwegian fishermen pidgin of Norways 19th century Artic coast, both have an approximate fiftyfifty split, legitimizing their being labeled mixed languages. No matter how we divide up the proportions of the base vocabulary sources, both Michif and Sheng fall short of the requisite 90 percent baseline. A check of the items in

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the base vocabulary, employing either system, illustrates that few languages along the mixed language continuum can legitimately claim to be mixed lexically. Maa, Media Lengua, Anglo-Romani and Petjo easily meet the threshold with basic lexicons that are mostly Cushitic, mostly Spanish, mostly English and mostly Dutch respectively. However, as can be seen in Figure 5.6, in Chamorro and Malti, like in Michif and Sheng, less than half of the core lexicon comes from borrowing. For the category of Massive Borrowing on the 100-word Swadesh list, both Malti and Chamorro fall well below the 45 percent limit. With the 200-word Swadesh list Chamorro, Malti and Sheng still fail to approach the boundary. However, if synonyms and other sources are included, then Malti, Chamorro and Sheng cross the threshold and perch next to Michif, Trio-Ndjuka and Russenorsk, clearly in the Unattested zone.

Figure 5.6: Core Vocabulary Check Massive Borrowing ----------------------------------------Mixed Languages -----------------------

Unattested ------------------------------Russenorsk Trio-Ndjuka Michif Sheng Sheng Chamorro Malti Chamorro Chamorro Malti Malti -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------0% 6% 20% 27% 39% 45% 54-57% 90% 100% ------------------------- -------------------------------------100-Word List 200-Word Borrowed Items no synonyms List with in synonyms Core Vocabulary (adapted from Stolz 2003: 292)

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The task at hand then was to analyze a standardized list of basic vocabulary for Sheng. This I have done with a composite of the Swadesh 100-word list and the Swadesh 200-word list, containing a total of 207 words (Trask 1996: 408-409). As Figure 5.7

clearly shows, 52% of the basic vocabulary of Sheng derives from Swahili, 32% from English, and 16% from other languages. These counts seem to indicate that the Sheng lexicon does not have the approximate 50-50 core vocabulary distribution as do TrioNdjuka and Russenorsk. However, Bakker (2003: 122) concedes that by using the

Swadesh list calculations, Michif also has less than a half-and-half split.

Figure 5.7: Swadesh List Source-Language Proportions on Sheng Category English (32%) Swahili (52%) Other (16%) Nouns 36% (32/88) 49% (43/88) 15% (13/88) Verbs 27% (16/59) 59% (35/59) 14% (8/59) Question Words 20% (1/5) 40% (2/5) 40% (2/5) Personal Pronouns 0 100% (6/6) 0 Adverbial Particles 0 40% (2/5) 60% (3/5) Conjunctions 0 100% (3/3) 0 Prepositions 0 100% (2/2) 0 Demonstratives 0 100% (2/2) 0 Negation 0 100% (1/1) 0 Adjectives 46% (19/41) 37% (15/41) 17% (7/41) TOTALS 32% (68/212) 52% (111/212) 16% (33/212)

Malti appears the most remote from the lexically mixed paragon of a fifty-fifty split. Only six of the 100 basic Maltese words are Italian (Brincat 2000: 190-192, as cited in Stolz 2003), while only 20 items of the Chamorro hundred core are Spanish (Fischer 1961: 258-260, as cited in Stolz 2003). On the 200-word list, the Italian core in Malti reaches 27.58% and the Spanish core in Chamorro hits 39 percent. Now if unclear or mixed items (4.83% in Malti and 2.6% in Chamorro) are added to the counts of the EL

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core words, Malti ends up with a non-Semitic proportion of its core at 32.41% while Chamorro garners a non-Austronesian base of 41.6%. Neither of these proportions approaches the half-and-half division of lexically mixed languages. Surprisingly, the division in the Michif core lexicon is remarkably similar to that of Sheng. In the language of the Mtis, 52% of the core items are French, 30% are Cree, and 18% are both French and Cree (Bakker 2003: 122; Bakker 2000). Michif would be disqualified from mixed-language status by the basic core vocabulary 50-50 distribution requirement. Bakker (2003: 122) argues that because the Swadesh list contains so many nouns, it misrepresents the basic vocabulary distribution in Michif. If we count the other category and non-Swahili/non-English borrowings together in Sheng as simply non-Swahili, then the totals would be much more evenly divided with 52% Swahili and 48% non-Swahili (i.e., English plus other). That distribution more closely approximates the half-and-half division of lexically mixed languages, better than the recount for Michif (i.e., by splitting the 18% equally between the two contributing languages) with French at 61% and Cree at 39%. Sheng appears to be a better candidate for being considered genetically unclassifiable on the basis of a core vocabulary split. Croft (2003:66-67) contends that an exact correlation between the act of identity and the primary source of basic vocabulary exists but that as a new society is createdthe basic vocabulary comes from multiple sources. As can be seen, the core vocabulary of Sheng is from multiple sources, reflecting a new society. In 5.1, the lexicon of Sheng has been analyzed. Not only is there mixing on the lexical-conceptual level, as is typical of loanwords, but there is also mixing on the level of morphological realization patterns. Sheng speakers have reanalyzed morphemes in

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Swahili and given them new functions in Sheng. The CL6 plural nominal marker mahas become the generic plural marker in Sheng. The bound morpheme -poa has been reanalyzed as a free morpheme and may be used as a response in greeting rituals as well as in other structures. The interrogative particle je and the indicative -a marker of Swahili have combined and been reanalyzed in Sheng as a new free interrogative word aje. Some loans are disguised through truncations down to the minimal word; others are transposed or metathesized in a form of argot reversal or ludling. It was further argued that the name of the language itself is a result of transposition and reanalysis (Sheng < LiSheng < lish-eng < English). Dictionary counts of entry etymology show Sheng to have an 80% non-Swahili vocabulary, and the combined 100-word and 200-word Swadesh lists give Sheng a 48% non-Swahili core vocabulary, a split comparable to those of Russenorsk and Trio-Ndjuka, languages considered mixed because of the half-andhalf division in their base vocabularies. Sheng manifests an approximate fifty-fifty mix in its core because its vocabulary reflects a mixed and new social group.

5.2

Morphosyntactic Frame In addition to social factors and lexical borrowing, the morphosyntactic frame is

the gauge by which a mixed language may be measured. A Matrix Language frame that manifests the syntax or sentence structure of more than one language is a composite because it provides evidence that aspects of the contributing languages have syntactically converged. A Matrix Language containing a morpheme that is not part of the original morphology of the major source language displays morphological convergence. System

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morphemes from the EL have been identified as indicators of morphosyntactic restructuring. According to the 4-M model, these system morphemes can be classified as early and late system morphemes. Early system morphemes are generally morphemes

for case, gender and number and are elected (albeit indirectly) by speaker intention. They are often significant in the determination of the formation of an incipient mixed language (IML) and are of less consequence to the establishment of a fully crystallized mixed language (FCML). Late system morphemes, conversely, are pertinent for they are less determined by speaker choice (i.e., more system driven). These late system morphemes are categorized as bridge morphemes and outsider morphemes. Bridge system

morphemes integrate other morphemes into a constituent and have their formation directed from within their maximal projection. Outsider system morphemes are influenced from beyond their immediate heads. The presence of alien bridge system morphemes signals that a turnover of the Matrix Language has already begun (MyersScotton 2002: 244). The reason that late outsiders are significant is that their presence implies that that Matrix Language frame has already been altered (Myers-Scotton 2002: 248). In the next two sections, the system morphemes of Sheng are examined. The

early system morphemes that mark case, gender and number in Sheng and that differ from those of Swahili are discussed first ( 5.2.1). After that, the late system morphemes of Sheng are analyzed for contrast to those of Swahili ( 5.2.2).

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5.2.1

Early System Morphemes The different types of morpheme were described and defined in 5.2. Early

system morphemes were identified as those morphemes marking number, case and gender. Swahili is a morphologically rich language, and its morphology is "the most complex part" of its grammar (Polom 1969:59). Being a Bantu language, Swahili is agglutinative and has a complex systematic sequence of affix morphemes, prefixes and suffixes. Noun classes in Swahili are indicated by prefixes. A few of the nominal classes in Swahili have coalesced leaving the language a smaller set than other Bantu languages have (cf. the class 11 composite in Figure 4.1). The noun class prefixes for singular

and plural nouns from Figure 4.1 are repeated in Figure 5.8 for convenience. On nouns, they merely contribute conceptual information, but on ADJs, their form is determined outside the immediate ADJ phrase (Myers-Scotton 2002: 80). Contrast the nouns and ADJs in examples (25) through (27).

Figure 5.8: Swahili Noun Class Prefixes 1-2 3-4 5-6 7-8 M-WA M-MI JI-MA KI-VI mtoto mti jicho kitabu watoto miti macho vitabu child(ren) tree(s) eye(s) book(s)

9-10 /N nyumba nyumba house(s)

11-14 U-MA uovu maovu evil(s)

NB: These prefixes when marking number on nouns are early system morphemes, but when marking adjectives, they are late system morphemes.

This classification of nouns by prefixes determines not only the formation of words themselves but patterns of agreement and, thus, syntactic sentence structure as well. Consider the following Swahili sentences with nouns from classes 1-2 and 7-8.

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(a)

m-tu
CL1-human

m-kubwa hue a-me-angu-k-a

CL1-big CL1-DEM CL1SUB-PRES PER-fall-STAT-FV

This big person has fallen down. (b) wa-tu

CL2-human

wa-kubwa wale

wa-me-angu-k-a

CL2-big CL2-DEM CL2SUB-PRES PER-fall-STAT-FV

Those big persons have fallen down. (26) (a) ki-tu ki-dogo kile ki-me-angu-k-a

CL7-thing CL7-small

CL7-DEM CL7SUB-PRES PER-fall-STAT-FV

That small thing person has fallen down. (b) vi-tu vi-dogo hivi vi-me-angu-k-a

CL8-thing CL8-big CL8-DEM CL8SUB-PRES PER-fall-STAT-FV

Those big persons have fallen down. (27) (a) ki-pofu

CL7-thing

m-kubwa

yule

a-me-angu-k-a

CL1-small CL1-DEM CL1SUB-PRES PER-fall-STAT-FV

That big blind person has fallen down. (b) vi-pofu wa-kubwa wale wa-me-angu-k-a

CL8-thing CL2-big

CL2-DEM CL2SUB-PRES PER-fall-STAT-FV

Those big blind persons have fallen down.

The sentences in (27), an exception to this pattern of agreement, show that the semantics of animated being (not their names) govern the choice of prefix agreement rather than the class into which they fall. As a consequence, the name of an animate entity, such as kipofu or blind person, will take the CL1-2 concords, even though the noun itself begins with a ki-, the CL7 prefix. Swahili has fewer noun classes than other Bantu languages due to similar prefixes merging to form a single new class (e.g. *u+lu of PNEC combined to form Swahili class 11). Swahili has an agglutinating morphology. Its words are easily segmented into their various parts, such as prefixes and suffixes. It is affixes such as these that will be identified in Sheng and compared to those in standard Swahili.

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Like nearly all of the Niger-Congo languages, Swahili is mostly unmarked for case. Swahili has SVO word order, and its nouns are inflected for number. Inflection for case hardly exists, the exception being the locative ni as in shule-ni (in/at school) and perhaps the genitive. A number of more sophisticated writers, writes Welmers (1973: 275), have resorted to the term genitive, and indeed the usages of an associative construction are rather closely parallel to the uses of the genitive case in languages such as Latin. Many Bantu languages, like Swahili in the following examples, employ the morpheme /-a/ or similar morpheme in an associative manner. The A of Relationship (Ashton 1944: 7) participates in the construction of conjunctions and prepositions.

Figure 5.9: Swahili Genitive Construction with PREP and -a Association Examples Glosses material: nyumba za mawe houses of stone contents: chupa ya maji a bottle of water origin: mtu wa Utele a person from Utele place: saa ya mkono a wrist-watch (a clock for the arm) time: chakula cha asubuhi breakfast (food for the morning) function: miti ya kujengea sticks for building quantity: chakula cha kutosha enough food (an amount of food to suffice) possession: kisu cha Hamisi Hamisis knife (the knife of Hamisis) (Welmers 1973: 276)

The same morpheme is implemented to construct the pronominal association as well (cf, column 5 of Figure 5.5 below and 6 of Figure 4.1 of 4.1). There is a phonological change in which the associative morpheme /-a/ raises to /-e/ in the context of a high front vowel of the pronominal stem (Welmers 1973).

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Figure 5.10: Swahili Genitive with A (-a) and POSS Pronoun (PRO) Person Example Gloss my houses 1SG nyumba z-a-ngu CL10/-house CL10PREP-A-1SG/PRO our bottles 1PL vyupa vy-e-tu CL8-bottle CL8PREP-A-1PL/PRO your (SG) watch 2SG saa y-a-ko
CL9-clock CL9PREP-A-2SG/PRO

2PL 3SG 3PL

chakula
CL7-food

ch-e-nu
CL7PREP-A-2PL/PRO

your (PL) food her/his sticks their knives (Welmers 1973: 276)

miti
CL4/tree

y-a-ke
CL4PREP-A-3SG/PRO

visu
CL8-knife

vy-a-o
CL8PREP-A-3PL/PRO

The word order for associative and possessive constructions is the same in Efik, Igbo and Yoruba as it is in Bantu (Welmers 1973: 281). As Figure 5.10 shows, the Swahili genitive follows the noun, as it does in Sheng too. Prefixes indicate grammatical relations through their concordial indexing. Gender and number, for examples, are clearly marked by noun class prefix---as with m-tu/wa-tu or person(s) and ki-tu/vi-tu or thing(s) in examples (25) and (26) above. The m-/wa- of the M-WA class and the ki-/vi- of the KI-VI class are of semantic import in that they are used to identify who or what and to provide number information, making them early system morphemes. Contrastingly, the homophonous prefixes on the adjectives (i.e., the m-/wa- of m-kubwa and wa-kubwa and the ki-/vi- of ki-dogo and vi-dogo) in examples (25) and (26) are agreement prefixes; that is, they are late system morphemes. Subsequent to an analysis of the early system morphemes in Sheng as compared to those of Swahili (Figure 5.11, repeated from Figure 4.1 for convenience), an argument can be made about which noun classes exist in Sheng.

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5.2.2

Late System Morphemes

As is recalled from 4.1, the Subject, Object, Possessive and Relativizer affixes (columns 5, 6, 7 and 9 of Figure 4.1 are redisplayed in Figure 5.11 for referential ease) are late outsider system morphemes because they mark agreement with elements outside of their immediate constituent (Myers-Scotton 2008: 34). Each of these affixes is discussed in turn. STROVE (Wilson 1985: 236; Steere 1934: 47) is a common

mnemonic device and acronym used to identify the basic string of the morphemes on the verb in Swahili with the order of morphemes being generally S or subject, T or tense, (R or relative), (O or object), V or verb, and E or ending with a final vowel, which marks mood. Of this ST(R)(O)VE chain, let us scrutinize the first link. Sentences (25a) and (25b) above provide examples of subject (S or SUB) prefixes (a-/wa-) from the CL1-2 or M-WA nominal class. Because of the abundance of CL1-2 SUB prefixes in the data42, the M-WA noun classes in Sheng are comparable to those in Swahili, and no analysis of this concordial subsystem is required. As the concordial affixes for CL3-4 (M-MI) were undifferentiated in the data from those of CL9-10, it is assumed that they have been subsumed into the CL9-10 (N-N) nominal class. The same can be said of the concordial relationships of CL5-6 or JI-MA, except that the CL6 number marker (ma-) has been kept as a generic plural prefix43. Examples (28) through (31) show instances of how the CL6 noun is frequently indexed by CL10 agreement concords in Sheng.

42 43

Myers-Scotton (1979: footnote 8) predicted less conflation of the animate classes, CL1-2. Bosire (2006: 190) identifies the CL6 prefix ma- as default for plural marking in Sheng.

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Figure 5.11: Late System Morphemes in Swahili Class ADJ SUB OBJ POSS M-WA Prefix Prefix Prefix Prefix (1) mam/mww(2) wawawawM-MI (3) mum/mww(4) miiiyJI-MA (5) /jililil(6) mayayayKI-VI (7) kikikich(8) vivivivyN-N (9) /niiy(10) /nzizizU-YA (11) muuwyay(14) maya-

PREP Prefix w-a w-a w-a y-a l-a y-a ch-a vy-a y-a z-a w-a y-a

REL Affix y-e-o-oy-ol-oy-och-ovy-oy-oz-o-oy-o-

The CL6 noun in (28a) should be modified by a CL6 ADJ as in (28b), but in Sheng the CL10 ADJ prefix is used instead. The phrase mambo mbaya or bad news is highly frequent in the data and may represent a collocation that has become conventionalized. The examples in (29) through (31) show the concordial agreement affixes of CL10 indexing CL6 nominals. Whereas standard Swahili requires the ya- SUB prefix as in (18b), Sheng uses zi-, the CL10 SUB. (28) (a) CL6 NOM with CL10 ADJ Hee ma-mbo m-baya44 INT CL6-issues CL10-ADJ/bad Hey, bad news. (Sheng: MA20; Rudd 2006 corpus) (b) CL6 NOM with CL6 ADJ Hee ma-mbo ma-baya INT CL6-issues CL6-ADJ/bad Hey, bad news. (Swahili: MA20; Rudd 2006 corpus)

44

In CL9-10, ADJ roots beginning with voiced consonants receive a nasal prefix (m- in front of b but nelsewhere). Incidentally, ADJ roots in CL9-10 starting with voiceless consonants receive no prefix.

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(a)

CL6 NOM with CL10 SUB u-me-vut-a rosta mpaka ma-cho

2SG/SUBPRES PERpull-FV hemp PREP CL6-eye until

zi-me-kuwa
C10/SUBPRES PERBE

hivi
ADV of manner

You have smoked pot until your eyes have become this way. (Sheng: JA1; Rudd 2006 corpus) (b) CL6 NOM with CL6 SUB u-me-vut-a bangi mpaka ma-cho
2SG/SUBPRES PERpull-FV hemp PREP CL6-eye until

ya-me-kuwa hivi
C6/SUBPRES PERBE ADV of manner

(Swahili: JA1; Rudd 2006 corpus)

Similarly, the POSS prefix (y-) of CL6 is mandated in Swahili (30b), but in Sheng (30a) the CL10 POSS prefix (z-) is used with the NOM of CL6. Finally, in (31), the referenced demonstrative (hizo) and prepositional prefix (z-) of CL9-10 (31a) contrast with the JI-MA concords of Swahili (31b). (30) (a) CL6 NOM with CL10 POSS ma-benefits z-angu
CL6-benefit CL10-POSS PRO

(b)

CL6 NOM with CL6 POSS ma-nufaa y-angu

CL6-gain CL10-POSS PRO

my benefits. (Sheng: KA33; Rudd 2006 corpus) (31) (a)

my provisions. (Swahili)

CL6 NOM with CL10 DEM & CL10 PREP Ma-keja hizo z-a ma-neighbor wake (Sheng)
CL6-cage CL10/DEM CL10-PREP CL6-neighbor CL1/3SG/POSS PRO

nyumba hizo

z-a

ma-jirani

zake45 (Swahili)

CL6-house CL10/DEM CL10-PREP CL6-neighbor CL10/3SG/POSS PRO

those houses of his neighbors. (Sheng: Mbf; Rudd 2006 corpus) (b) CL6 NOM with CL6 DEM & CL6 PREP Ma-jani hayo ya chai si
CL6-leaf CL6/DEM CL6- CL9PREP tea

ya

ku-tosha. (Swahili)

NEG/ CL6- INF-suffice COP PREP

those tea leaves are not enough.

The CL9-10 animate NOMs are a law unto themselves (Ashton 1944: 89). They do not take CL1-2 POSS concords (e.g. ma-jirani *wake or his neighbors) but do take CL1-2 PREPs (e.g. jirani wa Mwikya or neighbor of Mwikya).
45

133

Figure 5.12 indicates how often nouns with the CL6 plural marker in Sheng are accorded the agreement structures of CL10 (ZI). A total of 49 nouns were analyzed from a sample of 410 CL6 words, of which only 16% (67/410) were standard. From the Eastlands data, 15 nouns were from Kaloleni, 12 from Bahati, 8 from Mbotela, 5 from Jericho, and 9 from Maringo. As 84% (343/410) were not the same as standard Swahili, this pattern is considered typical of Sheng. Figure 5.12: CL6 NOM (ma-) with CL10 (zi-) ADJ SUB OBJ POSS PREP Estate /nzizizza Kaloleni 7 2 0 1 2 Bahati 3 3 0 1 0 Mbotela 1 2 0 1 0 Jericho 0 2 0 1 0 Maringo 2 2 0 0 2 27% 22% 0 8% 8%

DEM -z3 5 4 2 3 35%

REL -z0 0 0 0 0 0

Total 15/49 12/49 8/49 5/49 9/49

CL10 demonstratives modify these ma- prefixed nouns more frequently than do the other CL10 agreement concords. They do not agree with these nouns in Swahili, but they are systematically employed with CL6 nouns in Sheng. That the zi- prefix

coindexes the ma- prefix, as in example (29a), can be explained in part by the absence of the CL6 SUB marker (ya-). Of the ma-prefixed nouns, those that are normally qualified with a marker other than that of the expected ADJ prefix of CL6 (some variation persists) were modified by an adjective with a null prefix (recall that ADJ roots beginning with voiceless consonants receive no prefix). A few nouns in CL5 take a null prefix on ADJ, for example, sanduku (box) -dogo (small), but the other and more prevalent zero marker in the nominal classes is that of the N class (CL9-10). Of the occurrences of the

possessive pronoun (cf, Figure 5.10) and the preposition (cf, Figure 5.9) with the CL6

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noun, only the z-, as in (30a), and the za, as in (31a), are found respectively. There were no occurrences of OBJ prefixes or REL affixes, which will be addressed later. This conspicuous absence of CL6 concords in Sheng suggests that they have been replaced by those of CL10. Examples (32) through (35) demonstrate the conflation occurring in Sheng as CL7-8 is being marked by the CL9-10 affixes. The modifier in (32a) is marked with a zero affix in Sheng, but in Swahili it would be prefixed with a CL7 concord (ki-). (32) (a) CL7 NOM with CL10 ADJ Alafu u-na-ju-a ki-tu
ADV/then 2SG/SUBNONPSTknow-FV CL7-thing

-moja46
CL9-one

(b)

Halafu unajua kitu kimoja. (Swahili) Then you know one thing. (Sheng: Mb5; Rudd 2006 corpus) CL8 NOM with CL10 ADJ U-na-va-a vi-tu -poa, original original
2SG-NONPSTwear-FV CL8-thing CL10/ADJ cool ADJ ADJ

Unavaa mapambo mazuri na ya kiasili. You wear beautiful things, originals. (Sheng: BA6; Rudd 2006 corpus) Although the adjective in (32b) does not exist in Swahili, it takes the null prefix in Sheng with a CL8 NOM as it does with a CL6 NOM (recall again that on voiceless consonant initial ADJ roots in CL9-10 receive a zero prefix). (33) (a) CL7 NOM with CL9 DEM & SUB Hii ki-dungi i-ta-ku-hit
CL9 DEM CL7/NOM(-dunga) pierce CL9/SUBFUT-2SG/OBJ-

rasa
butt

hit Hii bunduki itakupiga matakoni. This gun will hit you in the rear. (Sheng: KA5; Rudd 2006 corpus)
46

Numerals 1-5 and 8 in Swahili are prefixed as adjectives and must be in agreement with the noun.

135

(b)

CL8 NOM with CL10 DEM & SUB Mlami ni mlami. Si huko ndio hizo
CL1/ ADJtar

vi-tu

zi-li-tok-e-a.

COP CL1/ NEG/ DEM/ EMP/ CL10/ CL8/ CL10/SUBADJ- COP LOC DEM DEM NOM PST-come fromtar APPL-FV

Mzungu ni mzungu. Si huko ndiko hivyo vitu vilitokea. A whiteman is a whiteman. That place indeed is where those things came from. (Sheng: KA24; Rudd 2006 corpus)

In sentences (33a) and (33b), we see CL 9-10 demonstratives (hii and hizo) and the N-N SUB markers (i- and zi-) co-indexing nouns of the KI-VI class, signaling that the early system morpheme and late outsider system morpheme of CL7-8 have lost potency in Sheng and are being replaced. Further, the y-/z- late outsider POSS morphemes and the ya/za bridge (PREP) morphemes of CL9-10 appear to be favored over the CL7-8 forms, as seen in examples (34a/b) and (35a/b).

(34)

(a)

CL7 NOM with CL9 POSS ki-tu y-ake

CL7-thing CL9-POSS PRO/ 3SG

(b)

CL8 NOM with CL10 POSS vi-tu z-ao

CL8thing CL10-POSS PRO/3PL

kitu chake his thing. (Sheng: BB17; Rudd 2006 corpus)

vitu vyao their things. (Sheng: Mb6b; Rudd 2006 corpus)

(35)

(a)

CL7 NOM with CL9 PREP ki-tu ya ku-duu

CL7thing CL9/ INF-do

(b)

CL8 NOM with CL10 PREP vi-tu za u-jinga

CL8thing CL10/ CL11/NOMPREP ignorant

PREP kitu cha kufanya something to do. (Sheng: JB12; Rudd 2006 corpus)

vitu vya kijinga silly things. (Sheng: KA54; Rudd 2006 corpus)

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Sample frequencies of occurrence in which CL7 nouns in Sheng are co-indexed with CL9 markers are provided in Figure 5.13. Out of a total of 203 words, a sample of 44 CL7 nouns was analyzed. In a reversal of the percentages seen for CL6, 79% or 161/203 CL7 nouns were standard while 21% or 42/203 deviated from the standard, indicating perhaps the supremacy of the CL6 prefix and suggesting it serves as the default plural (affirming Bosires 2006 stance).

Figure 5.13: CL7 NOM (ki-) with CL9 ADJ SUB OBJ POSS Estate /niiyKaloleni 5 4 0 3 Bahati 0 3 0 1 Mbotela 1 1 0 1 Jericho 2 1 0 0 Maringo 1 0 0 0 20% 20% 0 11%

PREP ya 1 3 0 2 0 13%

DEM -y4 4 4 4 0 36%

REL -y0 0 0 0 0 0

Total 16/44 11/44 7/44 9/44 1/44

Despite this move toward nominal similitude with the standard, the use of the concords for CL7 is just as aberrant as the use of ones for CL6. From the Kaloleni examples come 16 nouns; from Bahati, 11; from Mbotela, 7; from Jericho, 9; and from Maringo, 1. Figure 5.14 gives the occurrences of CL8 (vi-) nouns with the CL10 (z-) markers in Sheng. Out of a sample of 311 CL8 words (i.e., words prefixed with vi-), of which only 4% (12/311) are not found in standard Swahili, a total of 38 nouns were analyzed. The Eastlands data excerpts provide 10 tokens from Kaloleni, 7 from Bahati, 6 from Mbotela, 11 from Jericho, and 4 from Maringo. Notwithstanding the fact that 299 (96%) of 311 words were the same as those in standard Swahili, these samples are considered typical of Sheng for their concordial co-indexing is remarkably as aberrant as that of the

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other two noun classes illustrated above. In other words, even though most of the words in this class receive the same NOM prefix as in Swahili, they do not receive the same system affixes as in the standard.

Figure 5.14: CL8 NOM (vi-) with CL10 ADJ SUB OBJ POSS Estate /nzizizKaloleni 1 4 0 0 Bahati 4 1 0 0 Mbotela 0 1 0 1 Jericho 3 2 0 1 Maringo 0 0 0 0 21% 21% 0 5%

PREP za 1 0 0 0 1 5%

DEM -z4 2 4 5 3 47%

REL -z0 0 0 0 0 0

Total 10/38 7/38 6/38 11/38 4/38

In CL7-8, CL10 demonstratives enjoy a larger margin of preference than in CL6, more than other concords (cf, Figures 5.12 and 5.14). The frequencies of replacement of SUB in the KI-VI classes (CL7-8) are comparable (20%-21%) to that of CL6 (22%), but there is a marked reduction in the use of the adjectival prefix (less by more than 5%) in these subsystems (CL6: 27%; CL7: 20%; CL8: 21%). Yet whereas there is a bit of an increase (3%-5%) in occurrence of the CL9 POSS (11% as opposed to 8% in CL6) and PREP (13% as opposed to 8% in CL6) markers for CL7 nouns, a slight decrease (3%) of these same concords is observed with CL8 (5% each as opposed to 8% each in CL6). Nevertheless, these differences in frequencies are small and likely due to expected variation. Perhaps too it should be noted that the phonological environment engenders more change with these prefixes. For instance, at times the ki- prefix palatalizes on ADJ as in kikapu cheupe or basket white (instead of kikapu *kieupe), perhaps resulting in a higher tolerance of variation in the speakers minds. Moreover, many of the CL7-8

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words are adverbs, suggesting that these adverbs were nouns at one time; besides some of these nouns function both as nouns and as adverbs, providing opportunity for overlap and ambiguity. Nevertheless, it appears that the KI-VI NOM (CL7-8) is merging into the concordial agreement paradigm of the N/N class (CL9-10) and is indicative of leveling.

(36)

(a)

Lakini
ADV

si-on-ag-i
1SG/NEG-see-DER-NEG

ubaya

w-a

gwil.

CL11-bad CL11-PREP bangi

But I dont see the badness of marijuana. (b) (H)ata mimi

ADV

si-on-ag-i

ubaya

y-a

gwil.

1SG/PRO 1SG/NEG-see-DER-NEG

CL11-bad CL9-PREP bangi

Even I dont see the badness of marijuana. (Sheng: KAa; Rudd 2006 corpus)

Noun CL1-2 and CL11-14 in Sheng remain the same as they are in Swahili, except for a few conflations as in the following example. In (36a) the CL11 PREP wa or of agrees with the abstract CL11 NOM u-baya badness, but in (36b) the CL9 PREP ya is not in agreement its CL11 noun. The few examples of this variation may be indicative of incipient conflation, but for the present it is assumed that CL11-14 have retained the Swahili system of concordial agreement markers. In point of fact, neither sentence of example (36) is grammatical in standard Swahili for though (36a) has standard agreement marking, it has a nonstandard derivational (DER) suffix (cf, Figure 5.16) and (36b) has two strikes against it for having neither the standard agreement concords nor the standard aspectual marker (cf, Figure 5.15). Standard Swahili mandates the use of the prefix hu- to indicate a habitual (HAB) meaning. More of this imperfective marking in Sheng will be discussed below.

139

What has not been explicated yet by this exploration of the Sheng noun class system and its juxtaposition to the Swahili noun class agreement marker system is the set of agreement concords found in examples (37). No ka- or tu- concordial prefix, as seen in (37a) and (37b), exists in the paradigm of Figure 5.11. These two concords form the nominal class CL12-13, which no longer exists in Swahili. Nurse and Hinnebusch (1993: 338-339) reconstruct only CL12 for Proto Northeast Coast (PNEC) Bantu as CL13 had already been replaced at that point by CL8 (Contini-Morava 1994).

(37)

(a)

Sasa
ADV

u-na-ka-on-a 2SG-NONPSTCL12/OBJ-see-FV

ka-ki-tu

ka-dogo

huku.
DEM/LOC this here

CL12/NOMCL12/ADJCL7/NOM-thing small

Now you see it, a small thing here. (b) Huu (Sheng: JB23; Rudd 2006 corpus) mzee ana tu-ndevu hu-peleka hii ndiga yake mdogo mdogo
HABconvey CL9/ car DEM CL9/ CL9/ POSS slow CL9/ slow

3SG/CL3 old has CL13DEM person beard

This man with the small beard drives this car of his slowly. (Sheng: KA39; Rudd 2006 corpus) The KA-TU class (CL12-13), the subsystem of diminutive markers, whose task has been taken over by CL8-9 in Swahili, is found in the Thagicu and Masaba-Luhya subgroups of Bantu, meaning it survives in most of the Bantu languages of Kenya today. Sheng has the KA-TU (CL12-13) subsystem in its agreement marker system. In (37a), the ka- is employed as OBJ in unakaona or you see it, NOM in kakitu or thing and ADJ in kadogo or small. In (37b), tu- is used only as a plural noun marker in tundevu or beards. As this subsystem is truly foreign to Swahili, it provides evidence that late system morphemes from the EL are found in the composite ML. NOM and DEM are early system morpheme markers. ADJ, PREP, SUB, OBJ, POSS and REL are late system morpheme affixes. The frequency of occurrence of the ka- concord in

140

the data is provided in Figure 5.1547. Non-Bantu estates manifest a higher percentage (32.75%) of incidence of the Bantu marker than the majority Bantu estates.

Figure 5.15: Frequency of Occurrence of ka- Prefix by Estate Percent of Occurrence Estate of kaN Kaloleni 32.75 19/58 Bahati 5.17 03/58 Mbotela 17.24 10/58 Jericho 22.41 13/58 Maringo 22.41 13/58

Figure 5.16 gives the frequencies of ka- as early or late system morpheme by the estates canvassed. In a sampling of 58 CL12 words of the Eastlands data, Kaloleni yielded 19 tokens; Bahati, 3; Mbotela, 10; Jericho,13; and Maringo, 13. In spite of the fact that Swahili employs CL7-8 prefixes for diminutives, these samples are taken to be typical of Sheng because their concordial co-indexing is more salient than the diminutive concords of the standard. This diminutive marker is used more often as a NOM or DEM than as a late system morpheme.

Figure 5.16: Occurrence of ka- by Morpheme Type & Residence Early System Late System Estate Morpheme Morpheme Total Kaloleni 13/19 6/19 19/58 Bahati 3/3 0/3 3/58 Mbotela 6/10 4/10 10/58 Jericho 10/13 3/13 13/58 Maringo 12/13 1/13 13/58 Percentage 76% (44/58) 24% (14/58)

47

A search of the data for tu- found few tokens in the sample.

141

The next link to examine in the ST(R)(O)VE chain is T for tense. The paradigm of six primary Swahili tense morphemes outlined in Ashton (1944) and displayed in Figure 4.2 is repeated for convenience in Figure 5.17. These morphemes all occur in Sheng. What is being looked for is how the paradigm of morphemes differs in Sheng. This paradigm is distinct in Sheng as it has an additional morpheme for category (6) of Figure 5.17, the habitual. Sheng has the hu- prefix of Swahili but it also one of its own, not a prefix but a suffix (cf, Figure 5.18). The habitual category in Sheng is most often marked by (7) the -a(n)g- derivational suffix, which is the only change to the derived verbal suffix paradigm in Figure 4.3.

Figure 5.17: Six Primary Swahili Tense Morphemes in Swahili Grammatical Category (+) Example (-) Example (1) Past (2) Future (3) Present (definite time) (4) Present (indefinite time) (5) Present Perfect (6) Habitual Nilisoma. I read. -ta- Nitasoma. I will read. -na- Ninasoma I am reading -a- Nasoma I read -me- Nimesoma. I have read. hu- Mimi husoma kila siku. I read every day. -li-kusisi-, -i Sikusoma. I did not read. Sitasoma. I will not read. Sisomi. I'm not reading.

-ja-

Sijasoma. I haven't read.

(Ashton 1944: 36) Figure 5.18: Habitual Aspect Derivational Marker in Sheng (HAB-DER) (+) Example (-) Example (7) Habitual -a(n)gNinasomanga kila siku. si-, -i Im reading every day. Sisomangi kila siku. Im not reading every day.

The form changes, depending on person and number.

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This -a(n)g- prefinal suffix, found in many Bantu languages (e.g. in Kingwana, Nyamwezi, Kamba, Kikuyu and Luhya) but not in standard Swahili has a range of aspectual meanings from the imperfective to the habitual (Nurse & Philippson 2006; Mous 2003b; Hyman 1993; Miehe 1989). Such a suffix carrying the meaning of habit has been noted in Kingwana by Polom (1968: 23) and Lodhi (2002: 20). Maganga & Schadeberg (1992) state that though this suffix is a verbal extension, it has been incorporated into the tense system of Kinyamwezi (105) and denotes habit (167). Kieling (1995) reports that -a(n)g- was another method of imparting habitual meaning in the up-country Swahili of Northern Tanzania. The affix accompanied the spread of the Nyamwezi during the slave trade. Considered an archaicism in standard Swahili48, it persists in Congo Swahili, especially in Ituri Kingwana and Lualaba Kingwana (Hunter 1959: 91). Myers-Scotton (1969:110), Heine (1973: 100) and Duran (1979:147) note its presence in Up-country Swahili, and Myers-Scotton (1979: 122) reports its presence in Nairobi Swahili. The suffix commonly occurs in local Kenyan vernaculars (cf, Figure 5.19), including some dialects of the non-Bantu language Luo49, which suggests that the derivational habitual aspect marker (DER-HAB) in Sheng is a direct result of contact. Illustrations of -a(n)g- usage in Sheng follow in examples (38) through (42). The Kaloleni sentence in (38) shows the derivational suffix being used with the third person singular (CL1 SUB a-) and the non-past tense.

A relic of -ang- is found in the Swahili verb kufinyanga (i.e., to knead) which likely derived from kufinya (to pinch). Its alternate -ag- form is in kumwaga (to spill) and kukanyaga (to tread on). Polom (1967: 7778) contends this is the actual ultimate source of the Swahili nominal derivational suffix -aji as in mwindaji or hunter from kuwinda (to hunt). 49 Stafford (1967: 2) illustrates the Luo -ang- use with Aparonga Maseno or I always remember Maseno.

48

143

(38)

Ha-kuna m-gondi
NEGCL1/NOMIMPER/ claw of a there crab (thief)

a-na-tak-ang-a -stori
3SG-NONPST- CL10-story want- DER-FV

za

m-junior

CL10/ CL1/NOMPREP junior (child)

Hakuna mwizi ambaye hutaka mambo ya watoto. (Swahili) There is no thief who wants the trouble of kids. (Sheng: KA6; Rudd 2006 corpus) The idea is habitual. The life of a thief must always be free of entanglements, such as children. The suffix in (39) adds to the progressive sense of the Bahati subjects (CL2, 3PL) desire currently. (39) Na siku hizi vile wa-na-pend-ag-a hiyo
CL9/ DEM

-game
CL9/NOM/ game

CONJ/ CL10/NOMand CL1/NOMday-CL10/ DEM/these/ ADV/TIME

CL8/ 3PL-NONPSTDEM/ like-DER-FV ADV MANNER

Na siku hizi vile hupenda huo mchezo. (Swahili) And nowadays the way they love that game. (Sheng: BB3; Rudd 2006 corpus) The -a(n)g- in (40) too seems to add to the sense of the continuous stinginess of the employer when it comes to accommodating employees. One can sense the Mbotela workers indignation that one cannot even heat water for a cup of tea, and this situation is in a country in which tea time is as important a cultural phenomenon as in Britain.

(40)

Hee man, ati -hoti ha-kun-ang-a (na -mundee INT man INT CL9/ NEG-IMPER/ CONJ CL9-money hey I say NOM/ there-DER-FV and

si-o

y-ake)

NEG/ CL9-POSS COP/ PRO/3SG REF

Hee ndugu, ati maji ya moto hakuna (na pesa sio yake). (Swahili) Hey man, I swear even hot water [for tea] isnt there (and the money isnt his). (Sheng: Mb10; Rudd 2006 corpus)

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In (41), a friend explains to another friend in Jericho about a particular design found in some mobile phones. (41) Ata
ADV

kuna

z-ingine

zi-na-uz-w-ang-a

hivo

hivo

IMPER CL10-ADJ/ other

CL10/SUB-NONPST- CL8/DEM/ PASS-DER-FV ADV of MANNER

Hata kuna zingine zinauzwa vivyo hivyo. (Swahili) There are even others sold that way. (Sheng: JB12; Rudd 2006 corpus) Finally, a couple of companions in Maringo (42) reminisce about a younger friend whom they have watched growing up. The memory of his being small is persistent even though the boy himself is now an adult. These occurrences of the -a(n)g- imperfective aspectual marker leave little doubt that their meaning is that of habit.

(42)

Na-kumbuk-ang-a a-ki-w-a m-dogo 1SG/NONPST (INDEF)3SG-IMPERF-BE-FV CL1/ADJ-small remember-DER-FV Nakumbuka akiwa mdogo. (Swahili) I remember his being small. (Sheng: MBe; Rudd 2006 corpus) As can be seen in Figure 5.20, G40E (Sheng) shares the causative derivational

suffix with G42d (Swahili), and both share the reciprocal and stative suffixes with the other Bantu languages sampled. However, in the final column, it is evident that Sheng shares the -a(n)g- imperfective suffix with all the Bantu languages represented, except Swahili. This imperfective suffix is common among several potential substrate

languages. Nurse & Philippson (2006: 190) document it for roughly 69% of the Bantu languages they inventoried. It is foreign to the morphosyntax of Swahili and is native to Sheng.

145

Figure 5.19: The Imperfective in Six Kenyan Languages Infinitive ku+verb to read Lang G42d E51 Luo E32a E55 G40E kusoma guthuma somo okhusoma kusoma kusoma Causative -i/ethy/-sh to make read kusomesha guthumithia puonjo okhusomia kusomethya kusomesha Reciprocal -anV each other kusomana guthumana wapuonjre okhusomania kusomana kusomana Stative -i/ekto be read kusomeka guthumeka puonjruok okhusomekha kusomeka kusomeka Imperfective -ang-/-agto read often kusomasoma guthumumanga wapuonjroga okhusomanga kusomanga kusomanga

Lang(uage) Key: G42d = Standard Swahili E32a = Luwanga (Masaba-Luhya Group) E51 = Kikuyu (Thagicu Group) E55 = Kamba (Thagicu Group) Luo = Dholuo (Nilo-Saharan) G40E = Sheng (Pidgin/Creole/Mixed) All languages are transcribed without tone marking here.

Just how common this imperfective suffix is in the five housing estates of Eastlands surveyed is revealed in Figure 5.20. Out of the excerpts from the Eastlands

data, 140 imperfective markers, of which only 13.5% (19/140) were standard, were identified. The distributions of habitual markers were 57 tokens from Kaloleni, 27 from Bahati, 26 from Mbotela, 24 from Jericho, and 6 from Maringo. In each of the estates the -a(n)g- suffix is the most salient marker of the habitual aspect by an approximate twothirds percentage, except in Mbotela which shows a preference of over 85%. Figure 5.20: Frequency of Occurrence of a(n)g- Suffix by Estate Percent of Occurrence Estate of -a(n)gN Kaloleni 63.15 36/57 Bahati 66.66 18/27 Mbotela 88.46 23/26 Jericho 66.66 16/24 Maringo 66.66 4/6
Number of -a(n)g- tokens divided by total number of habitual tokens, counting hu-, -a(n)g- and double marking together.

146

Figure 5.21: Frequency of Occurrence of hu- Prefix by Estate Percent of Occurrence Estate of huN Kaloleni 22.80 13/57 Bahati 3.70 1/27 Mbotela 3.84 1/26 Jericho 12.50 3/24 Maringo 16.66 1/6
Total of hu- tokens divided by total number of all habitual tokens, including hu-, -a(n)g- and double marking together.

Figure 5.21 discloses the frequencies of hu-, the aspectual prefix of standard Swahili, in the Sheng data from Eastlands. The highest occurrence is found in Kaloleni, while the lowest frequencies occur in the estates of Bahati and Mbotela. It would appear that the -a(n)g- affix is the more preferred method of marking the imperfective aspect in Sheng.

Figure 5.22: Frequency of Occurrence of Double Morphology by Estate Percent of Occurrence Estate of both hu- & -a(n)gN Kaloleni 14.03 8/57 Bahati 29.62 8/27 Mbotela 7.69 2/26 Jericho 20.83 5/24 Maringo 16.66 1/6
Total of double marked occurrences divided by number of all habitual tokens, counting hu-, -a(n)g- and double marking together.

The double marking of the imperfective occurring in the Sheng data is shown in Figure 5.22. The highest occurrence for both the hu- and the -a(n)g- goes to Bahati, the lowest to Mbotela, but each occurrence remains less the a third of the totals.

147

Figure 5.23: Ratio of Occurrence of Marker by Gender and Residence hu-a(n)gdouble Estate M F M F M F Kaloleni 8/39 5/18 24/39 12/18 7/39 1/18 Bahati 1/20 0/7 13/20 5/7 6/20 2/7 Mbotela 1/26 0/0 23/26 0/0 2/26 0/0 Jericho 3/24 0/0 16/24 0/0 5/24 0/0 Maringo 1/6 0/0 4/6 0/0 1/6 0/0 Ratios are out of total for each gender, not the total for both.

The distributions according to gender, residence and ethnic group are provided in Figures 5.23, 5.24, 5.25 and 5.26. Though a clear overall preference is shown for the -a(n)g- suffix (Figure 5.25), no significant difference in choice by gender, estate or ethnicity is shown. However, for an estate that is predominantly populated by a nonBantu ethnic group, Kaloleni displays an uncommon preference for an unexpected, nonstandard imperfective Bantu form in their speech. For a suffix that does not occur in Luo, the native language of the largest proportion of the population of Kaloleni (cf, Figure 4.4), the expectation is that it should occur less frequently (say, less than 1% of the time); however, it was observed in Figure 5.24 to occur between 61.53% and 66.66% of the time.

Figure 5.24: Percentage of Occurrence of Markers by Gender and Residence hu-a(n)gdouble Estate M F M F M F Kaloleni 20.51 27.77 61.53 66.66 17.94 5.55 Bahati 5 0 65 71.42 30 28.57 Mbotela 3.84 0 88.46 0 7.69 0 Jericho 12.5 0 66.66 0 20.83 0 Maringo 16.66 0 66.66 0 16.66 0
Percents are out of total for each gender, not the total for both.

148

As shown in Figure 5.23, for Kaloleni female usage of the habitual, the preference (12/18) is for -a(n)g- (p = .006), but this percentage must be qualified by the statement that though one womans language use was recorded in each conversation in Kaloleni, that womans voice was that of the interviewer and therefore of the same speaker in each case, meaning that this result could be more indicative of an idiolect than of a gender preference. Figure 5.25: Total Percentage of Occurrence of Markers by Gender Gender hu-a(n)gdouble Male 12.17 68.06 20.16 Female 20 68.96 13.79
Percents are out of total for each gender, not the total for both.

For males, the -a(n)g- preference is 24/39 (p = .001). The hu- affix in Figure 5.24 has an interesting higher incidence, between 1/5 (20.51%) to over 1/4 (27.77%), in Kaloleni than in any other estate, and it may be in free variation with double marking in Maringo. Double marking appears to be as likely to occur as not. The occurrence of both affixes at once is further evidence of convergence in Sheng; moreover, their presence together is less than a third of the overall incidence of the imperfective token. Figure 5.26: Total Percentage of Occurrence of Markers by Ethnic Group Ethnicity hu-a(n)gdouble Kikuyu 8.69 71.01 18.84 Luo 21.73 56.52 21.73 Luhya 4.76 80.95 14.28 Kamba 15.38 38.46 46.15 Others 25 75 0
Percents are out of total for each ethnic group, not the total for all.

One intriguing discovery is that though Mbotela is considered a predominantly Kamba estate (cf. Figure 4.4) and though Mbotela has the highest percentage of occurrence of -a(n)g- (cf, Figure 5.24), the Kamba ethnic group, which happened to be

149

the ethnicity identified by 9/76 consultants, shows the lowest preference for the employment of the suffix (cf, Figure 5.26). The trend appears to be that male residents predominate in the use of -a(n)g- (averages: male 69.6%, female 27.6%), and that the estate of Kaloleni leads overall in the use of all three forms of the imperfective marker (i.e., 22.8% hu-, 63.15% -a(n)g-, and 14.03% double), excepting male patterned -a(n)guse (88.46%) in Mbotela and double-marking in Bahati (29.62%), Jericho (20.83%) and Maringo (16.66%). Now the move to a discussion of OBJ and REL should be made. A glance at column 3 of Figures 5.12, 5.13, and 5.14 discloses the fact that Sheng makes no use of object prefixes in these data. This finding is in contrast to the 15 counts of OBJ prefixes that Myers-Scotton (1993b: 88) found in English-Swahili CS data from Nairobi. Example (13a) in my Sheng corpus shows that there is the occasional CL13 OBJ, but even it occurred only once in the data analyzed, and it is not a Swahili morpheme. Standard Swahili encourages the OBJ prefix with animates (i.e. CL1-2 NOM), but most times, OBJ is merely optional for emphasis or saliency (Maw 1976; Shadeberg 1984). Ashton (1944: 45) recommends that it is better that the beginning student of Swahili err by omission of the object prefix than by overzealous use, and untutored acquirers of Swahili in Kenya appear to have followed this stratagem for the OBJ affix had variable or no occurrence in Up-country Swahili (Wald 1981; Heine 1973). Sheng, like Up-country Swahili, has little or no option of OBJ prefixation.

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Another look at Figures 5.12, 5.13, and 5.14 reveals column 7 to be empty as well, indicating that Sheng may have lost the subsystem of the nominal relative prefix50. As will be shown below, Sheng simply juxtaposes two clauses to form a relative clause. Good Swahili got on for years without the amba- complementizer (Perrott 1951: 64), and Sheng continues that tradition, but takes it a step further. The Sheng structure requires neither a relative pronoun (i.e., complementizer or COMP) nor a prefix. These features make Sheng rather different from standard Swahili. Niger-Congo languages lack embedded head-internal relatives (Creissels 2000: 256). Modifiers, as seen in the discussion above on adjectives and genitives, tend to follow the nouns that they describe. This tendency is consistent with the placement of embedded relatives after the nouns modified, as in relative clauses. Relativization varies from one language to another, but the examples in (43) illustrate that modifiers follow the head in Swahili. (43) (a) Swahili Relativization with amba- Pronoun m-toto amba-ye a-na-lal-a
CL1-child COMP-CL1/REL 3SG-NONPST-sleep-FV

the child who is sleeping. (Vitale 1981: 99) (b) Swahili Relativization with Tensed Particle m-toto a-na-ye-lal-a
CL1-child 3SG-NONPST- CL1/REL-sleep-FV

the child who is sleeping. (c) (Vitale 1981: 99) Swahili Relativization with Tenseless Particle m-toto a-lal-a-ye
CL1-child 3SG--sleep-FV-CL1/REL

the sleeping child. (Vitale 1981: 99)

It is not asserted here that the adverbial relatives (i.e., time, manner and place relatives) of CL16-18 (cf, Figure 4.1) do not exist in Sheng, only that the nominal classes (CL1-14) do not generally affix REL particles onto verbs.
50

151

As can be seen in examples (43a), (43b) and (43c), standard Swahili allows three relativization choices. However, these three choices require the proper agreement of REL particles with the noun classes (see last column of Figure 5.11). Despite there

being three choices of relativizer in Swahili, there is only one free relative COMP or pronoun, and that is the amba-, seen in (43a). The other relative markers are affixes. The amba- relative pronoun (COMP) may be used with each of the affixes in the final column of Figure 5.11. Each of the REL affixes may be employed just as the CL1 REL has been in examples (43a), (43b) and (43c) above. Though amba- is a pronoun, it still has to have a relativizer particle, as seen in (43a), suffixed to it. The relativizer particle -ye of examples (a), (b) and (c) illustrate again the importance of concordial agreement in standard Swahili. The gender and number of the relativized NP must be marked by the suffixed particle. In this instance -ye- indicates that the head noun is animate and

singular. Any given head noun will fall into any one of the classes of nouns (cf, Figure 5.11) and must necessarily be marked accordingly for grammaticality. In contrast with English which has a null pronoun that permits relativization without an overt pronoun, the relative marker may never be null in Swahili (Mohammed 2001: 184). In spite of the fact that Swahili suffers no zero relativizers, the relative pronoun may be dropped. In fact, the case is more often that only the relativizer affixes are used as in (43b) and (43c). The tensed particles, like the one in (43b), are the same as the tenseless particles, as represented in (43c), in that they have the same morphology (cf, last column of Figure 5.11).

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However, the former are prefixes while the latter are suffixes. Other differences exist, of course. On the one hand, the prefix relativizers are tensed. That is, tensed particles can be prefixed to verbs marked by the tenses (See list in Figure 5.17); however, it is not grammatical to juxtapose them with -me- (present perfect) or -ta- (the more common form of marker for the future; the other form being -taka-). In fact, any sentence that can be written using the -amba complementizer as in (43a) may also be written using only tensed particles, as in (43b). The tenseless particles, on the other hand, are just that, without any overt indication of tense. These relativizers denote habitual action, and they are adjectival51. Where English would employ the present participle in example (43c), the tenseless relative clause structure (43c) would be applied in Swahili. example (43c) is tenseless and the clause or phrase is nonfinite. The verb in

The construction

parallels the N + ADJ structure (Watters 2000: 227), which is why REL is a late outsider system morpheme. The amba- COMP, like the English that-complementizer, is a

constituent linker and, thereby, a bridge system morpheme (Myers-Scotton & Jake 2008; Myers-Scotton 2008). However, amba- requires a REL suffix, such as -ye in (43a), which is an outsider morpheme. This multi-morphemic form may result in pull-down or drag-down (Myers-Scotton 2002: 305) to the extreme with an outsider pulling a bridge down to its level. Whatever its distributional patterns, the replacement of these bridge and outsider morphemes with a zero relativizer is evidence of a composite ML in Sheng, whose REL is a null.

Though none occur in the data sampling, tenseless relatives do occur in Sheng in the form of frozen collocations, such wiki i-ja-yo (CL9-week CL9/SUB-come-CL9/REL) or the coming week which is based on Swahilis juma li-ja-lo (CL5-week CL5/SUB-come-CL5REL).

51

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The predicate-argument of the AL model may explain this splitting and recombining that manifests this composite grammar. Example (44) shows that a The CP is bilingual

bilingual CP has coalesced in structuring relativization in Sheng.

because it uses the predicate-argument structure from English to form a relative clause in Sheng, whose primary source for morphosyntax is Swahili.

(44)

Ni
COP

wa-tu
CL2-person

tu-na-ju-a
1PL-NONPST-know-FV

Its people we know. (Sheng: KA1, line 27; Rudd 2006 corpus) As can be seen, no relativizer is present, and the structure is redolent of the coordinatorless conjoined relative clauses found in earlier versions of Up-country Swahili. Example (45) typifies how early Up-country Swahili juxtaposed clauses to create relativization.

(45)

we-we
You/2S

na-pat-a

kila

ki-tu

we-we na-tak-a

NONPST-get-FV ADV/every CL7-thing you/2S NONPST-want-FV

You will get everything you want. (Up-country Swahili, Heine et al. 1991: 184)

Heine et al. (1991: 184) explain that Up-country Swahili relativization evolved from a zero marker to an actual relative pronoun via an intermediate stage of grammaticalization in which a demonstrative (i.e., ile or CL9 distal in Figure 4.1) eventually began introducing relative clauses as its primary function. A chain of

grammaticalization formed a continuum of evolving patterns from ile the demonstrative to ile the subordinator (46) (Heine et al. 1991: 185).

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(46)

kila
Each

m-tu

ile

na-ambi-w-a mambo
NONPST-tellPASS-FV CL6-matter

hii
this

na-shanga-a
NONPST-be/ surprised-FV

CL1/ REL person

Everybody who was told this story was surprised. (Up-country Swahili, Heine et al. 1991: 184) Example (47a) indicates how the relativized NOM in (43) would be rendered in Sheng. Example (44b) is authentic Sheng.

(47)

(a)

Predicted Sheng Relativization by Juxtaposition m-toto a-na-lal-a

CL1-child 3SG-NONPST-sleep-FV

the child who is sleeping. (b) Authentic Sheng Relativization by Juxtaposition Ha-kuna m-gondi a-na-tak-ang-a -stori za
NEGCL1/NOMIMPER/ claw of a there crab (thief)

m-junior

3SG-NONPST- CL10- CL10/ CL1/NOMwant- DER-FV story PREP junior (child)

Hakuna mwizi amba-ye hutaka mambo ya watoto. (Swahili) There is no thief who wants the trouble of kids. (Sheng: KA6; Rudd 2006 corpus) It is possible that the zero relativizer in Sheng results from influence from an earlier version of the substrate language (i.e., Up-country Swahili), or it is a consequence of influence from the superstrate (i.e., English). Note that each of the translations for (44) and (45) show a null relativizer like that employed in English. In standard Swahili a relativizer is required; in Sheng the relativizer is optional. Despite the fact that every morpheme in example (44) is from Swahili, there appears to be an abstract slot providing a null marker, not unlike that of English, for the predicate-argument in Sheng. This dissertation argues that the zero relativizer in Sheng is a merging of Swahili morphological patterns with English ones because the speakers have a composite Matrix Language.

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Figure 5.27: Concordial System Morphemes in Sheng Class NOM ADJ SUB OBJ POSS M-WA Prefix Prefix Prefix Prefix Prefix (1) mmam/mww(2) wawawawawM-MI (3) mmi y(4) mi-/mamizi zJI-MA (5) /ji/ni y(6) mamazi zKI-VI (7) kikii y(8) vi-/ mavizi zN-N (9) /n/ni y(10) /n-/ /nzi zmaU-YA (11) mmi y(14) mamazi zKA-TU (12) kakakakay(13) tutututuz-

PREP Prefix w-a w-a y-a z-a y-a z-a y-a z-a y-a z-a

REL Affix y-e-oy-oz-oy-oz-oy-oz-oy-oz-o-

y-a z-a y-a z-a

y-oz-oy-oz-o-

Finally, what can be concluded about the morphosyntax of Sheng is that it differs from that of Swahili. This difference is most evident in the system of concordial affixes (see Figure 5.27). These concordial affixes are NOM, ADJ, SUB, OBJ, POSS, PREP,

DEM, and REL. Among these, NOM and DEM count as early system morphemes, which have remained the same as in Swahili (see Figure 4.1), with the exceptions that NOM in Sheng is using CL6 or ma- increasingly as a generic plural marker and that the demonstratives for CL9 (i.e. hii, ile, hiyo) and CL10 (i.e., hizi, zile, hizo) are beginning to modify all inanimate nouns while the demonstratives of CL1-2 are used with animate

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nouns. The derivational imperfective suffix (-a(n)g-), another early system morpheme, is increasing in use in Sheng as the Swahili habitual prefix (hu-) is decreasing. The late system morphemes of Sheng are ADJ, SUB, OBJ, POSS, PREP, DEM, and REL. For the CL1-2 subsystem, concordial agreements are unchanged, exempting OBJ and REL. OBJ and REL in Sheng are absent or optional for all classes as they are in as in Up-country Swahili. The outsider morphemes ADJ, SUB, POSS and PREP for the inanimate classes (CL3 through 14) appear to be leveling to one set of agreement markers---the prefixes for CL9-10. One subsystem of system morphemes in Sheng are completely foreign to Swahili. The concords for CL12-13 (i.e., the diminutives) are productive in Sheng (albeit with some leveling to CL9-10 as well) and the result of contact with other Bantu languages in the area. In the Thagicu and Masaba-Luhya subgroups of Bantu (umbrella terms for most of Kenyas present-day Bantu languages), the KA-TU (CL12-13) remains productive, making them the likely substrate sources from which Sheng acquired this subsystem of diminutives. These modifications in the

morphonsyntax make it evident that Sheng has a composite matrix language. To sum up, the evidence that Sheng has a composite matrix language is early system morpheme convergence and late system morpheme convergence. The early

system morpheme convergence is evident from the morphemes for NOM, DEM and HAB in Sheng. The NOM and DEM affixes qualify as early system morphemes for they do not go outside there immediate constituents to acquire information for their forms. NOMs contribute basic information about a nouns number (i.e. its being plural or singular), and DEMs qualify as early system morphemes because they are determiners. The

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convergence in Sheng is that the CL6 NOM or ma- is increasingly being employed as a generic plural marker and that the CL9 (i.e. hii, ile, hiyo) and CL10 (i.e., hizi, zile, hizo) DEMs modify all inanimate nouns (CL1-2 DEMs are used as determiners for animate nouns). The HAB or DER-HAB (i.e. -a(n)g-) in Sheng adds specific information to its constituent head and is therefore an early system morpheme as well. The -a(n)g- affix is manifest in Sheng as a consequence of substrate pressure. The conflation of the plural markers, the conflation of determiners, and the borrowing of the substrate HAB derivational marker have created new well-formedness constraints that reflect a new mixed abstract level structure, a hybrid that is not found in any of the original contributing languages. This new set of three early system morphemes alone marks Sheng as a language that has a Matrix Language that is in the process of changing. That is, they are evidence of a Matrix Language Turnover in progress, but there is more. Late system morpheme convergence is evident in the use of the ADJ, SUB, OBJ, POSS, PREP, and REL agreement markers. Each receives information for its form from a source outside its immediate constituent head. First, a conflation in Sheng is occurring

with CL9-10 PREP (a late bridge system morpheme) conjoining noun phrases of any gender class and CL9-10 ADJ and SUB (late outsider system morphemes) coindexing nominals from every noun class. Next, a new and complete nominal subsystem, the KATU (CL12-13), is productive and utterly alien to standard Swahili. Lastly OBJ and REL are not being employed on the agglutinative verb string at all. All of these system morpheme surface changes are completely alien to standard Swahili and demonstrate a new set of well-formedness conditions on the abstract level. Constraints foreign to the

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set of late outsider morpheme requirements of standard Swahili indicate that some stage of a Matrix Language Turnover has already occurred in Sheng.

5.3

Social Factors Thomason (2003: 36) argues that two social factors are pertinent to the

crystallization and emergence of a stable mixed language. If the variety represents a society under threat, or if the mixture symbolizes a new social identity, then the mixed language may become established. Both cases are attitudinal in nature. Speakers of

Sheng are not a threatened social group. That leaves only the scenario of a new social group and the question of why Sheng speakers are not Swahili speakers. Today the one characteristic that separates Eastlanders from both their rural kin and Westlanders is their language. This section of this chapter is based on a survey that Ferrari (2004) conducted, between July and August of 2003, in Mukuru (an informal settlement on land zoned for industrial development), Wilson Kijiji (a slum village near Wilson Airport), Dandora (a poor but permanent housing estate), and South B (a middle class area near Mukuru). The main purpose of the research was to identify attitudes about Sheng in informal settlements in Nairobi. Residents in South B were included to make comparisons. This section will focus on the attitudes the speakers of Sheng in these settlements and residential areas have toward Sheng and its use and how their attitudes reflect group identity. Over a two-month period, Ferrari was a participant observer, but she engaged the aid of a local resident to carry out interviews in Sheng with 31 Sheng speakers, selected as a purposive or judgment sample from the locations canvassed. Because location is an

159

indicator of social class in Nairobi, it was important that the residence be known and that interviewees recognized the interviewer as a member of the local community. Recall too from 3.4 that the estates in Nairobi grew out of a policy of segregation. From Figure 5.3.1, it can be seen that in general residents of the poorer areas claim to know Sheng more than those living in the nearby more affluent neighborhood of South B. The first question on the questionnaire (i.e. Which languages do you know?) shows a very clear difference in attitude toward Sheng. It is true that just because the residents of South B did not name Sheng does not mean they do not know Sheng. It could mean that they may know Sheng but do not consider it a language.

Figure 5.3.1: Which languages do you know? Residence Sheng Named Sheng Not Named Dandora 87.5% 12.5% Mukuru 83% 17% Wilson 80% 20% South B 0% 100% (Ferrari 2003)

As Figure 5.3.2 illustrates, a language can apparently be not known but still be spoken. Half of the interviewees in South B who claimed not to know Sheng, now indicate that they speak it. It may be that the people in South B attach little or no value to the speaking of Sheng. In other words, it is a language they can speak but it is not something they take pride in. This reflection is quite similar to the negative approach to Swahili (Neale 1974b: 270) that Asians and Europeans harbored during Kenyas preIndependence days (cf, 3.4).

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Figure 5.3.2: Do you speak Sheng? Residence Responses Yes A little Dandora 100% 0% Mukuru 84% 8% Wilson 100% 0% South B 50% 50%

No 0% 8% 0% 0% (Ferrari 2003)

That Sheng is spoken mostly but not exclusively by young people is made clear by Figure 5.3.3. Though 100% of the under 16 age group claims to know Sheng and 95% of the 16-26 age group claim to know it, so do 50% of the older interviewees in Ferraris study. This finding is very typical of the natural progression of an innovation in a language. Gender is not a variable that was included in the results. As Ferrari (2003: footnote 4) states women speak Sheng as well as and as often as men, but do not associate so much identity value to it as men. Perhaps this statement explains why there were so few female interviewees who made themselves available for the interviews recorded for this dissertation.

Figure 5.3.3: People Who Claim To Know Sheng by Age Age Responses Yes A little No Under 16 100% 0% 0% 1626 90% 5% 5% Over 26 50% 50% 0% (Ferrari 2003)

Responses given to the question What do you think about Sheng? (Figure 5.3.4) included (a) style or cool quality; (b) communicativeness; (c) flexibility; (d) dynamicity; (e) limitedness; (f) street/ghetto identity; (g) study hindrance (i.e., a barrier to

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education); (h) obstacle to rural migrants; and (i) interference with learning of the standard. Arguments in favor of Sheng (i.e., responses to a-d) consisted mostly of comments made by respondents in slum areas. response to the communicativeness of Sheng. The one exception is the South B Apparently, even some of the more

affluent residents of Nairobi acknowledge that Sheng is a good interethnic form of communication, perhaps because it makes it easier to index sets of Rights and Obligations (see 3.5.2), thus avoiding favoring or disfavoring the language of a particular ethnic group.

(a) (b) (c) (d) (e) (f) (g) (h) (i)

Figure 5.3.4: What do you think about Sheng? by Residence Dandora Mukuru Wilson South B Total Responses: style or cool quality 25% 42% 60% 32.3% communicativeness 25% 25% 20% 17% 22.6% flexibility 25% 6.4% dynamicity 12.5% 3.2% limitedness 20% 17% 6.4% street/ghetto identity 12.5% 33% 9.7% study hindrance 25% 9.7% rural migrant obstacle 8% 3.2% interference 33% 6.4% (Ferrari 2003)

The Sheng sentence in example (48) illustrates the very common notion of the communicative utility of Sheng in metropolitan Kenya. In this manner, Sheng serves not only to be a lingua franca of the metropolis but also to facilitate egalitarianism. The language makes communication less tribal and less discriminatory and more inclusive

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and welcoming than English the language of colonialism, than Swahili the language of coastal Islam and the slave trade, and than of a vernacular language, which has connotations of rusticity. This optimistic perspective augurs well for the future of Sheng. In fact, the related question Do you think that Sheng will still be spoken in twenty years? confirms the attitude with respondents of every age, class and gender answering in the affirmative. Ferrari reports this question to be the only one with which everyone agrees one hundred percent.

(48)

(a)

Sheng ni
Sheng COP

kuna
IMPER

luga poa juu langu- CL9/ADJ ADV/ age cool/great wa-tu wa kabila mingi,
CL2- CL2/ CL5person PREP tribe CL4many

mahali tu-na-ishi
place 1PL-NONPST-live

PREP u-na-on-a?
2S-NONPST-see-FV

Sheng ni lugha njema kwa sababu mahali tunapoishi pana watu wa makabila mengi, unaona je? Sheng is great because where we live there are people of many different tribes, you see? (Sheng; Ferrari 2003) (b) So na kwa hivyo hawa ku-tumia Sheng yaani, u-na-wez-a
INF-use CONJ 2SG/SUBSheng that is able-FV

komyuniket
communicate

CONJ CONJ so therefore CONJ CL2/DEM

wa-tu
CL2-people

w-ote
CL2-ADJ/all

Kwa hivyo tutumia Sheng yaani ili tuweza kuwasiliana na hawa watu wote. So we use Sheng, that is, in order that we may communicate with everybody. (Sheng; Ferrari 2003)

Such a consensus on the future of Sheng leads to other questions about the use of the language. For instance, answers to the paired question Where and with whom do you speak Sheng? disclose an age difference.

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Figure 5.3.5: Where and with Whom Do You Speak Sheng? Responses Ages Under 13 16-26 Over 26 (a) everywhere, with everyone 24% 22% 5% (b) in the street, ghetto, mitaa 0 22% 28% (c) at school 25% 6% 0 (d) with siblings, peers, youth 40% 35% 24% (e) with children 0 0 43% (f) at home with parents 11% 15% 0 (Ferrari 2003)

Ferrari explains that this pair of questions prompted many and various answers. However, responses of with siblings, peers and youth (d), given in Figure 5.3.5, are rather similar among the younger speakers and trailing not so far are the over 26 interviewees, but, on the part of the older speakers, usage is more confined to conversations with children (e). What is striking about this revelation is that though the over 26 group claim to speak Sheng the most with children and the children self-report to speak it more with age mates (d), a number of children (11%) and 16-26 year-olds (15%) also claim to speak it with parents at home (f). Though a minority, this percentage (26%) is considerable and indicative of a variety that has become a first language. Note too that the under 13 children apparently do not see Sheng as merely a street language (b); rather they see it as a language to speak with anyone anywhere, including both at home (f) and at school (c). One aspect of this social phenomenon is that children appear successfully to exert pressure on parents to speak Sheng. Otherwise, why would parents speak it so much with children? This attitude of the youth of Eastlands parallels the attitudes demonstrated by the children of immigrants in the United States (Weinreich 1974; Wolfrom 1974) and in

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New Zealand (Jamieson 1980). Parents appear to concede the idea that Sheng is a better linguistic choice. Recall that the study was carried out in poorer sections of Nairobi. Parents are likely ceding the priority of the mother tongue to Sheng. It is likely that they have limited knowledge of either standard Swahili or English. What motivates the

parents perhaps is the yearning of the immigrant parents for their children to assimilate in the urban setting and their recognition that the urban vernacular not the ethnic language will empower the children to clear this linguistic hurdle. A further factor to explain this phenomenon of the affluent Nairobi urbanites is that many post-Independence Kenyans perceive themselves to be both members of a tribe and citizens of the Republic of Kenya, not just members of a particular tribe. Though the various ethnic languages are spoken in Nairobi and the settlements were first generally populated around shared language, the residents of Eastlands are geographically separated from their mother-tongue speaking rural homes and therefore are cut-off to some extent from those cultural bonds. Certainly, this is not so different from Americans of Irish (or whatever) descent not regarding themselves as anything other than citizens of the United States. The poor in Eastlands (i.e., those who have been there for decades), however, differ rather dramatically from the Irish American or any other typical group of descendants of heritage groups in that many have little or no education into or knowledge of their heritage and therefore whatever the heritage language may be it holds little to no symbolic power for them. What gives the urban poor a sense of belonging is the urban languagethat is, Sheng.

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The Eastlanders attitude to social group identity as relates to language is historically paradoxical. The early African migrant to Nairobi would have been called the pejorative mshamba or rube. However, neither the new immigrant nor the long-time resident would want to be considered Mswahili or a slick talker or a speaker of Swahili for, as discussed in 3.5.3, elite closure is a double-edged sword. Recall from 3.3 (see especially footnote 13) that the Mwaugwana or free man had contempt for the indigenous African while the peasant was suspicious of the speaker of Swahili. In fact, this rivalry persists today. I have been mildly amazed to hear time and again, when I ask a Kenyan what does mswahili mean, the answer a liar or someone who is not straight. Kenyan linguist Mokaya Bosire (personal communication) offers the following anecdotal reply to the question:

The denotative meaning is: one who speaks Swahili well (presumably as a native) or one who is ethnically Swahili. But historically, and I cant tell you how or why, "mswahili" is a pejorative term that means some smooth/fast talking conman! For many older folk my generation and above- that is what it means. You will hear the phrase: wacha Kiswahili chako which means stop fooling us. So how do we call Swahili natives? I think that the negative connotations are largely attached to nonnatives. But that tells you that upcountry/rural folk associate Swahili natives with smooth talking that may not always help you out, more like fool you. It is certainly true that a verbal argument with a Swahili native in Swahili is a disaster because for most people, they struggle to find the Swahili words while the native just glides and reels off epithets, some of them so cleverly camouflaged that when you realize what is being said, the rest of the people around are on the floor rolling with laughter. Here is a small story: an upcountry man goes to a Mombasa caf Mwenye hoteli: Wataka nini mzee? Mzee: Nataka mchele na kuku MH: hatuuzi mchele hapa babu, mchele bado shambani. Labda wataka wali. (an aside to the waiter) ana zake mguuni, hebu mletee wali na kuku.

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The man asks for rice and chicken stew but in Swahili the term for cooked rice is wali, a small detail rustics forget or dont know. As soon as he says that, the caf guy corrects him but not just politely or quietly but says it aloud to the benefit of the others enjoyment around him. Even when he turns to give the order, he still rubs it in with the truncated Swahili proverb kuku mgeni ana kamba mguuni (a new chicken has a string tied to its foot) something that is bundled up with the rest of the order so that only a keen, initiated ear will catch it. He has already indexed what he says next by the correction of the old man about rice nuances) (Mokaya Bosire 14 May 2008)

Nairobi urbanites of Eastlands then wish neither to be considered conmen or rubes nor to speak Swahili or Kishamba. Neither title nor language symbolizes what nuances their identity. Nevertheless, if asked Do you think that we can write books in Sheng, use it in school, or in offices? the answers expose a socioeconomic rift, as revealed in Figures 5.3.6 and 5.3.7.

Figure 5.3.6: Can Sheng Be Used in Schools & Offices? by Residence Residence (+) Responses (-) Yes No Dandora 87.5% 12.5% Mukuru 67% 33% Wilson 80% 20% South B 17% 83% (Ferrari 2003)

Clearly the poor in Dandora, Mukuru and Wilson think that Sheng is a perfectly viable option as a medium of wider communication and literature. Whereas over two-

thirds of the poor respondents (78%) feel Sheng could be standardized, nearly the same percentage (83%) in affluent South B thinks it cannot be. Of course, the residents of South B have access to education in standard Swahili and English.

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Age too seems to be an indicator of attitude towards Sheng. While the majority of the under 26 groups (86%) believe Sheng to be standardizable, a majority of the over 26 group (83%) do not believe so. The younger one is, the more faith one appears to have in the potential of Sheng.

Figure 5.3.7: Can Sheng Be Used in Schools & Offices? by Age Age (+) Responses (-) Yes No Under 16 100% 0 1626 71% 29% Over 26 17% 83% Total 64.5% 35.5% (Ferrari 2003)

The poor youth in Eastlands with aspirations for a better urban existence also have an affinity for Sheng. Of course, those young persons who succeed in acquiring an education and entering the middle class may turn their backs on the language of their identity, as many successful Black Americans turn their noses up at African-American Vernacular. However, in the meantime Sheng is firmly in their hearts and minds as a marker of identity. By way of illustration, one last question asked by Ferrari (Do you think that Sheng could be one of the national languages?) receives an unsurprising negative from the affluent respondents in South B, but from the replies from the poor and youth in general, the answer is a resounding preference to keep it real and not let the rich appropriate their language. In other words, the poor do not wish for the rich to annex their language. A full circle has been made in this discussion, and we have come back to the question of why Sheng speakers are not Swahili speakers. No easy task is there in

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determining what social agents factor into the establishment of new group identity. Nonetheless, the analysis of Ferraris survey data reveals an attitudinal divergence between social classes. Moreover, the continuing social division in the mitaa or housing estates in the Eastlands of Nairobi reflect a bilingual or multilingual situation in which residents have undergone an identity change. As has been shown, the majority of the residential estates in the city were informally settled by non-Swahili speaking peoples. The Sheng speakers who currently inhabit these estates are descendants of migrants who settled informally on the outskirts of the train depot that in July of 1899 was established at mile 327 on the Kenya-Uganda railway. Though at that time the majority of the residents were Indians, a large number of camp followers of African descent had congregated around the campsite. After the rail line was completed, more and more Europeans began to arrive and grab the choicest plots (i.e., the White Highlands) and to indenture the local Africans as farm workers and servants. Still Africans were considered temporary residents and their part of the city or native location was a slum. In 1901 Nairobi became the headquarters of the

Protectorate and in 1907 the capital of British East Africa, but it was not until 1919 that the government determined to provide bachelor housing to Africans and establish pass laws to control indigenous immigration. The estates were inadequate to the needs of the growing workforce and, despite African family housing being started in 1957, the slums continued to grow. Independence in 1963 brought repeal of the pass laws but did little for the plight of the poor Kenyans. Squeezed together in informal settlements and inadequate housing estates, the major of Nairobis residents, diverse in ethnic and language background, had and continue to have no access to the amenities of the

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metropolis and no education in either standard Swahili or English. The African elites took over the reigns of power from the British and split the booty among themselves, prompting the disillusioned first Vice-President Oginga Odinga (a Luo) to resign and pen an autobiography called Not Yet Uhuru (freedom). It is ironic that though a majority of these elites are of the Kikuyu ethnicity, a majority of the poor and disenfranchised in Nairobi are Kikuyu as well. For a time, these urbanites endeavored to retain (and some still do) diverse ethnic identities. Gradually, however, because of interethnic crowding especially following Independence and because of extreme poverty, many of the residents speak no particular language of an individual ethnic group but a mixture of several languages merged into one. In the slums of Kibera and Mathare, people of differing ethnic backgrounds have lived there for decades. Ethnic conflicts are not unusual and sometimes make

international headlines as did those between gangs of Luos and Kikuyus after the last presidential election; however, for those seeking peace and for many who have never seen their ancestral lands, Nairobi is home and Sheng is the language symbolizing their identity. As rural Kenya is another world, so is aristocratic Kenya. Harries (1976: 159) tells the story of a Kenyan elite in Nairobi who told him that Swahili is for the wananchi [citizens], but not for me. As Harries explains that by wananchi the privileged mean peasants, I hope that this dissertation has demonstrated that the Swahili of the peasant in rural Kenya is Upcountry Swahili and that after being brought to Nairobi it became Sheng.

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5.4

Implications and Interpretations A mixed language should be viewed as the consequence of a Matrix Language

turnover having crystallized at some stage of the turnover process. That turnover will not be absolutely complete. In fact, none of the other mixed languages discussed in this dissertation have complete turnovers. A complete turnover is the replacement of one language with another. The lack of completion is what provides us with evidence of the shift. In Anglo-Romani and Maa, for instance, late system morphemes are English and Bantu, respectively, which are foreign to their original morphosyntactic frames, but their lexica are largely Romani and Cushite. These two languages then exemplify mixed languages for they show a prototypical division between their system morphemes and their lexicons. The question now is how Sheng fits into the continuum of language mixing. We know that Sheng is not a pidgin for it has native speakers (see 5.3 and Ferrari 2004). None of the structures identified in this dissertation, however, appear to be creolized innovations, of which Sheng appears to have none, rather their sources are to be found in the embedded languages (e.g., the substrate -a(n)g- suffix and the superstrate zero relativizer). However, a pidgin or creole argument will not do in this dissertation for

they are both examples of language contact, and I agree with Myers-Scotton (2003: 272) that whether a variety has native speakers or not does not provide evidence for drawing a dividing line separating the two on the basis of structure. Nevertheless, Sheng may be considered a non-canonical contact language since it is a contact variety that researchers have difficulty labeling (Mhlhusler 1999). Moreover, as Deumert (2003) points out:

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their study can also be relevant to our understanding of second language acquisition/use as non-canonical contact varieties are often situated on a continuum between pidginization (a group-based process of collective L2 norm emergence under conditions of minimal input) and the more general process of (untutored) second language acquisition. (Deumert 2003)

The sociopolitical background of the varieties of Upcountry Swahili that have contributed to the genesis of Sheng can be examined via the continuum model of language contact developed for use in creolinguistics. A socio-economic linguistic

continuum ranges between the two extreme poles of mutual unintelligibility with several mutually intelligible varieties lying in the middle (DeCamp 1971: 28). At the top rests the acrolect, the variety closest to the standard; at the bottom lies the basilect, the variety considered a pidgin or creole: in the middle lies the mesolect, a group of in-between varieties connecting the two extremes. This model, as indicated by Sankoff (1980) is sufficient to describe any linguistic circumstance whereby speakers of a language endeavor to acquire the language of another group (i.e. second language acquisition). As Myers-Scotton (2002: 249) points out, no direct evidence exists for the Matrix Language Turnover because the earlier versions of a language whose speakers are experiencing a shift have left no footprints. However, we can examine languages at their present synchronic weights and deduce the manner in which their magnitude has been achieved. This dissertation has weighed the early and late system morphemes of Sheng, the analysis permits hypothesis about its origin and development. I propose that Sheng developed from Up-country Swahili that found a route to the city, where it took on a new role. With the post-creole continuum in mind, I propose that because of the psychological and sociolinguistic environment of Nairobi, the genesis of Sheng followed the course of

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development (based on the process of Caribbean creole development formulated by Singler 1988) below.

Figure 5.3.8: The Genesis of Sheng (A) Kenyans of various ethnic backgrounds and vernaculars migrate to and
come together in Nairobi.

(B) These immigrants continue to speak their first languages but a language with a Swahili base develops (perhaps as a result of a preponderance of Upcountry Swahili varieties merging into a compromise variety) easing inter-ethnic communication (mostly African to African, but also European to Asian, and a mix of the two). At this point is where a composite frame
exists and the ML is no longer just that of any of the original ethnic languages.

(C) Children are being born into a linguistic situation in which their native language has a Swahili lexical base. Education leads to some children metropolitanizing52 their variety toward what has become a standardized Swahili. Furthermore, education and media lead exposure to another superstrate, English. (D) As the various African vernaculars begin to be spoken in fewer and fewer domains, a non-standard variety increasingly heavy with English borrowings comes to be the native language of many children, even those without access to formal education in Nairobi. Speakers search for a name for their variety. A common ludling provides it. Sheng is born.

Further supposition may be made about the various varieties of Sheng spoken in Nairobi. At the top would be the acrolect speakers of the lexifier languages of English and Swahili for they are people who can afford education in the standard languages. In the middle are the mesolect speakers who have limited access to education in the official and national languages. Finally, at the bottom are the basilect speakers of Sheng. They have little or no access to education. Their first language is Sheng. From this delineation of the access to education, it can be argued that Sheng as a mother-tongue is spoken in the slums of Mukuru, Kibera and Mathare; Sheng as mesolect is spoken in Kaloleni,

Hancock (1987: 268) defines metropolitanization as decreolization toward the lexifier language. At this point, the lexifier is still Swahili.

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Bahati, Mbotela, Jericho and Maringo (i.e., Eastlands in general); lastly Sheng is spoken less fluently in the more affluent areas of Nairobi, such as in Westlands, Muthaiga, Lavington and Lower Kabete. Not only is there a continuum of varieties of Sheng (cf, Samper 2002: 108), there is a negative correlation between income and housing and ones competence in Sheng. This dissertation has looked mostly at the mesolectal varieties of Sheng found in Eastlands. In conclusion, early L2 learners of Swahili in Kenya became more than just a ragtag, motley group of untutored individuals in Nairobi; rather they had to communicate and so seized the opportunity to become a distinct social group with a distinct language. The 20-year interim between the year of Independence and the year of Swahilis becoming a compulsory subject on national exams not only hindered decreolization, it incubated the development of a new Kenyan social identity. Speakers of Sheng were, contra Kusters (2003: 367), like speakers of Katanga Swahili. They exemplified untutored second language learners, being separated from the source language and indirectly encouraged to form a new group, whose language was off target first by happenstance and later by choice.

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CHAPTER SIX: CONCLUSION

6.0

Conclusions and Extensions This final chapter starts with a brief synopsis of the main findings of the previous

chapters ( 6.1). Following that, some theoretical implications ( 6.2) and pedagogical implications ( 6.3) of these findings will be discussed. Chapter 2 presents the hypotheses I put forward whose support, if found in the data, would demonstrate that Sheng is a mixed language. First, Shengs lexicon is mixed. Though the content morphemes primarily derive from English and Swahili, many loans come from other local African languages, such as Kikuyu, Luo, Luyia and Kamba (some borrowings are disguised). Second, Shengs morphosyntactic frame mostly comes from Swahili, albeit with dollops of agreement and inflection morphemes foreign to Swahili. Third, social factors indicate that Sheng is the consequence of conscious choice in multilingual negotiations and compromises that have resulted in not only a new group identity but also a stable, systematic and rule-governed variety that has become a native language for some speakers. Chapter 3 outlines the history of how the languages came into contact in Kenya and in Nairobi in particular and the manner in which compromises must have been necessitated. The factors that affect the formation of a composite Matrix Language are also discussed. On the basis of the types of morphemes (i.e., early system or late system

morphemes) that are borrowed, contact languages are categorized into Incipient Mixed Languages (ICMLs) or Fully-Crystallized Mixed Languages (FCMLs). Chapter 4 repeats the hypotheses from Chapter 2 and examines in particular which morphemes in standard Swahili fit into the classifications of early system morphemes and late system morphemes. Following that, an explication is made of how to test the hypotheses using the Sheng data. It was determined that if a Turnover in Sheng is in progress or arrested at some stage, then alien system morphemes would be manifest in the data: obligatory early system morphemes for an IML and late system morphemes for an FCML. Chapter 5 discusses the analysis of the convergence found in the data from Eastlands. The conclusion of the analysis is that Sheng shows both types of convergence as discussed by Myer-Scotton (2002: 102-103); that is, the convergence in Sheng is on both the level of lexicon and on the level of morphology and structure.

6.1

Summary of Findings This study considers whether Sheng is a mixed language. It provides answers to

three general research questions: (1) does Sheng have a basic vocabulary distinct from that of the core vocabulary of Swahili; (2) do the system morphemes of Sheng differ from those of Swahili; and (3) how does Sheng provide its speakers a new identity? For Sheng to be considered a mixed language, or a variety in the process of becoming mixed, its lexicon must include a substantial number of morphemes that are not from the Matrix Language; its morphosyntax must manifest convergence; and it must be used to index a new social identity. Specifically, evidence of a composite matrix

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language had to be found in Sheng. Evidence of a Matrix Language Turnover in progress or recently arrested had to be evident. Late system morphemes from the non-Matrix Language in the mixed variety would indicate that the morphosyntax has restructured (Myers-Scotton 2002: 248). From this perspective, the data on Sheng was searched for late system morphemes alien to Swahili ( 5.2). Since foreign system morphemes were evident in the data, a Turnover was argued to be still in process or already arrested. Both early and late system morphemes foreign to the Matrix Language were evident in the Sheng data. An analysis of the vocabulary, using either dictionary entries or core words, shows few languages along the mixed language continuum can unassailably claim to be lexically mixed. Mixed languages that show lexical mixing generally have over 50% of their lexica from the non-Matrix Language. Anglo-Romani, Maa, Media Lengua, and Petjo do meet the baseline with core vocabularies consisting mostly of English, Cushitic, Spanish, and Dutch respectively. However, Sheng has a basic vocabulary consisting of 52% Swahili and 48% non-Swahili words, making it similar to the dual source languages of Trio-Ndjuka, the Carib and escaped-slave English-lexifier creole of Suriname, and Russenorsk, the Russian and Norwegian fishermen pidgin of Norways 19th century Artic coast, each of which has a nearly half-and-half split, entitling them to the legitimate title of mixed languages. To review the morphosyntactic requirement, what separates a true mixed language from other types of language contact is whether signs of a Matrix Language Turnover exist. A turnover is occurring or has occurred when there are traces of a composite in the morphosyntax. Only when evidence is present of an alien early system

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morpheme, as in Shengs imperfective -a(n)g- suffix, or a foreign late system morpheme, as in Shengs affixes from the CL12-13 or KA-TU nominal class of diminutives, can the language be categorized as a mixed language. Sheng has both foreign early system morphemes and foreign late system morphemes. Because it contains late outsider system morphemes alien to Swahili, Sheng can legitimately be called a mixed language from the perspective of morphosyntax as well a lexicon. Two social factors are relevant to the fossilization and establishment of a stable mixed language (Thomason 2003: 36). First, the language must represent a group under threat. If that is not the case, then, second, the new language must be an identity symbol for a new social group. Either of these paths could lead to a language mixture becoming crystallized53. Attitude determines the consequence. Though Sheng speakers are not an endangered social group, they are an emerging new social identity. Knowledge of the historical and social background of Sheng is required. To gauge the social circumstances and weigh them in comparison to developments in the recent history of Nairobi, the attitudes of the speakers of Sheng toward Sheng needs to be measured. I take the data from a Nairobi sociolinguistic survey conducted by Ferrari

(2003) and reanalyze the findings to determine whether speakers consider Sheng to be a marker of identity. What is more is that the dichotomy between lexicon and

morphonsyntax provides support for these social factors. If grammatical convergence is an involuntary outcome and if lexicon manipulation results from conscious selection (Golovko 2003:197), then social pressures need to be considered. It is paradoxical that

This either/or choice is not a tactic (or logical fallacy) designed to limit artificially the range of choices. No doubt is there that speakers of languages in contact have many motivations. However, the two scenarios presented here have been identified as significant factors in the current study of mixed languages.

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speakers first choose to mix languages but lose that choice once the mixing of languages commences and conventionalization sets in. Speakers employ Sheng not only as a lingua franca of the metropolis but also as an egalitarian tool that is more inclusive and welcoming than English the language of colonialism, than Swahili the language of coastal Islam and the slave trade, and than of vernacular languages, which have country bumpkin connotations. Moreover, denied access to the official and national languages and the cultures of the elite, Sheng speakers have developed a new cultural identity and a new language that symbolizes this newlyformed in-between group. Though stigmatized, Sheng has developed a covert prestige that the youth in the middle and upper classes endeavor to co-opt.

6.2

Theoretical Implications Sheng is not a standardized language and does not seem to have developed from

any particular dialect, as many linguae francae, such English, French and even Swahili, have. Instead, Sheng represents a compromise variety, the result of negotiation between lexical, morphological and structural forms from different dialects of Upcountry Swahili, which in themselves may have been different Interlanguages with differing forms of Interference plaguing the speakers (i.e., first-language Nilotic speakers, such as Luos and Maasais, versus first-language Bantu speakers, such Kikuyus and Kambas) as they negotiated communication in Nairobi, a new setting that was both alien and urban. Even the language of the colonizers (i.e., the Brits,) who brought the lingua franca Swahili to Nairobi was marked by Interference from their mother tongue (first-language Germanic speakers). Over time, new migrants to Nairobi would have been exposed to a more

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standardized variety of Swahili used by some urbanites as they acquired the predecessor of Sheng, a compromise variety. Second language acquisition would cause overgeneralization or hypercorrection and would result in syntactic change in the most salient environs (Naro & Lemle: 237; McWhorter 1992: 39). Though acquisition and use of this compromise variety by the Nairobi immigrant would have been undoubtedly necessary, it would not have been the only reason. As Myers-Scotton (Scotton 1976) points out, it would have been a strategy for positioning oneself as ethnically neutral. Though she may have been describing the situation of the more affluent African, it would apply to the poorer and working class as well. When Africans from varying ethnic backgrounds work together in tropical Africas largest cities, they communicate in nobodys language. In this uncertain situation, an ethnically neutral lingua francaa language with the attribute-value neutral ethnicitydominates among peers (Scotton 1976: 919-920) Moreover, the variety would likely have developed a connotation for speakers as a badge of being urban and sophisticated as opposed to being rural and rustic. The language could easily have subsequently developed symbolic value for ones being urban but not upper-class, as those who had access to education and fluently spoke English, and even standard Swahili now, may see the official and national languages. To label Sheng a mixed language, I have relied on various models of contact linguistics to operationalize the variables that were to be measured. This dissertation has demonstrated, following the lead of others (e.g. Stolz 2003 and contra Bakker 2003), that there is arguably no cut-off point for amounts of loan words separating heavilyborrowing languages from mixed languages proper. In other words, a standard procedure

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needs to be formulated for frequency counts of both dictionary entries and core vocabularies. Myers-Scotton (2002) provides definitions of morpheme types that can be subjected to verification via statistical analysis; however, no procedure yet exists for determining which morphemes are considered allowable in the determination of being labeled foreign to a Matrix Language. Should there be a period of prescription or a statute of limitation on how long ago a borrowing has occurred in order for it still to be considered foreign? When does a morpheme become native? Does productivity make it native? For instance, the substrate nominal subsystem of CL12-13 (KA-TU) of Sheng could be argued to have always been in the upcountry varieties of Swahili that peppered the old Arab-Swahili trade routes in East Africa. If it happens that it has always been in the rural varieties of Swahili and there is a window period or a period of prescription or a statute of limitations of when a morpheme may be counted, it may be contended that a set of morphemes (in this case, the KA-TU SUB prefixes) cannot be employed as evidence for qualification of a language as mixed language (i.e. a split language in the parlance of Myers-Scotton 2002). Another area for further theoretical clarification and investigation is what constitutes one entire component of a morphosyntactic frame or what qualifies as only incidental examples of composite structure (Myers-Scotton 2003: 91). Does a complete subset of a subset count as a major inroad? Do the CL12-13 SUB affixes KATU qualify as a systematic incursion into the noun class system of Swahili? I argue that they do. However, no base-line and no standard procedures have been established in mixed language research to date.

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As for social factors, it appears unlikely that just because a group of people say they have their own language that a group of academics will concede that the language is a language in its own right. However, it is not what others think that matters. Recall from Chapter 2 ( 2.1.3 to be precise) that Bakker (1997) contends that for a language to be considered mixed, it must be an in-group language. This dissertation has shown that the variety has a specific name (Figure 5.5); it is distinct ( 5.28); and its speakers believe that their language should be kept separate from the language(s) of other inhabitants of Nairobi (Figure 5.35). Do these three factors satisfy the criteria for establishing an ingroup language? Perhaps but the numbers used in the original study (Ferrari 2004) are rather small. Further research needs to be conducted with larger numbers of participants. The slums of Mukuru, Kibera and Mathare should be canvassed for inhabitants who employ Sheng as a first language. A determination needs to be made as to whether an actual basilectal variety of Sheng exists. Next, whether Sheng is spoken as a set of mesolectal varieties in Eastlands (i.e., in Bahati, Jericho, Kaloleni, Mbotela, and Maringo) should be established. Finally, confirmation should be made in Westlands, Muthaiga, Lavington and Lower Kabete (Nairobis more affluent estates), that the superstratal varieties of English and standard Swahili prevent Sheng from being spoken as fluently. All of these questions left unanswered will leave the argument that Sheng is a language of its own open to denial and repudiation.

6.3

Pedagogical Implications A continuum of linguistic repertoires exists in Nairobi. What I mean by linguistic

repertoires is in direct reference to the manner that Enninger & Raith (1988:262) use the

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term to describe the Pennsylvania German (PG) of the Old Order Amish speech community in Kent County, DE, USA. Specifically, it includes all the linguistic forms that a community exploits during pertinent social engagements. Perhaps too we should compare decreolization to second language acquisition (SLA) for a moment for both processes are occurring in Nairobi and Kenya in general. Whereas studies of decreolization tend to be cross-sectional, second language acquisition (SLA) studies are most often longitudinal. This dissertation has attempted to do neither; however, I do wish now to discuss movement along these two continua in comparison to the spectrum of geographic language use in Nairobi (see Figure 6.0). Movement differs on each continuum in that progress for decreolization indicates extensions to ones language while development of the Interlanguage (IL) implies replacements (Rickford 1983: 304). More important is the fact that the basilect is not just an initial attempt at a target language. To the contrary, the basilect is a native language. A speaker will retain his/her competence in a basilect but a second language learner, whether tutored or not, neither desires nor tries to maintain an early state of his/her Interlanguage. Figure 6.0: Sheng Compared to the Creole-Interlanguage Continua The Creole Continuum Basilect ----------------------------- Mesolect ------------------------------- Acrolect (Bickerton 1975) The Interlanguage Continuum Basilang ---------------------------- Mesolang ----------------------------- Acrolang (Stauble 1978) The Nairobi Language Continuum Slums ------------------------------ Eastlands ---------------------------- Westlands

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Clearly, shifting back into a basilect is likely a very significant method of reasserting affinity or solidarity, regardless of how valuable or necessary it may be to the speaker to increase his or her repertoire by adding higher lects in order to access better employment. Rickford (1983: 306) further argues that though it may be possible for a person to progress in a ten-month period from a very limited beginning of an IL continuum to a point rather near the end via ordinary tutored SLA, it would take at least two generations (children and parents) to demonstrate such a dramatic competence transformation in decreolization. As far as untutored SLA, the competence may be more fleeting, until a compromise variety emerges and fossilizes among the unlearned. Nevertheless, the non-canonical contact language speakers in Nairobi (e.g. most speakers of Sheng) are no longer fossilizing at particular points on the IL continuum. On the contrary, they, like decreolizing speakers, control ranges (what might be described in OT terms as floating constraints), resulting in their having more stylistic maneuverability. The speakers at the lower end speak a language that would be considered off-target but actually is not for they have a target other than the standard in mind. Education in the standard versions of the official and national languages was and remains for many unattainable. A compromise variety had to arise, and it should be no surprise that this contact language has become a first language for many in the uncontrolled urban settlements. Recall that 60% of Nairobis population lives in slums. As Samper (2002) suggests, a continuum for Sheng exists. Binyavanga Wainaina and Kalamashaka, describing lyrics in Kwani magazine, implicitly support the idea of this Sheng continuum:

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Its poetry really. Not your television Swahili, full of ancient wise-sayings that no one cares about; this Sheng is all grown-upSwahili that borrowed from English and all our mother tongues... (Wainaina 2003: 54) Robert, Johnny and myself started to rap in Sheng, that deep Sheng and many times people did not understand what we were doing. (Kama: Wainaina 2003: 56) The multilingualism of many of Shengs speakers enables all Sheng users to make use of a loanword already integrated and, moreover, most any other item that could have been a nonce borrowing that has simply become faddish. Baileys (1973: 159) model of the wave-like spread of linguistic change explains well how an innovation in a language could begin in one small ghetto of Eastlands, say Kaloleni, and could spread to West Lands, maybe even to Lavington. Like the lexical variability in Pennsylvania Dutch (PG) discussed by Enninger & Raith (1988:285), the lexical flexibility of Sheng enables it users to exploit vocabulary not only of its substrate languages (Kikuyu, Luo, Luyia, and Kamba) but it also manipulates the lexica of the national and official languages in order to develop and expand referential range, especially in Eastlands. The problem is that most people in the slums are not fluent in the superstrate languages, whereas most people in posh estates are not fluent in Sheng. Moreover, the residents of Eastlands hold varying degrees of fluency in them all. In fact, had the lexicon of Sheng not assimilated so many English and other vernacular items permitting extensive switching, I think it would have experienced language death. A direct result of escaping subordination to its original, perceived

standard format (namely standard Swahili), Sheng has dodged a bullet and therefore will

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likely not face the fate of Negerhollands; that is it will not die at the hands of decreolization or metropolitization. Sheng has established itself as an identity symbol. As we have witnessed above, Nairobi urbanites have a vast array of repertoires to choose from and have had so increasingly for the duration of Kenyan self-governance. Are Nairobians simply switching codes or can we say that they are manipulating one code in a flexible manner? That is to say, Nairobi city-dwellers are employing a variable code. With a growing middle class in Kenya, there are likely to be urbanites who are actively bilingualspeakers who display unpatterned bilingualism (Myers-Scotton 2003: 240), and they now influence the direction that Sheng takes. Mougeon & Beniak (1991: 211) conclude that the gratuitous nature of core lexical borrowing (e.g. so) is reminiscent of the phenomenon of code-switching, which is also especially characteristic of speakers who exhibit unpatterned bilingualismIn fact, that sentence connectors and other kinds of discourse organizers like so are so often reported in lists of core lexical borrowings may not be a coincidence, since these items all occur at prime switch points. Despite the fact that I contend that Sheng is a fully-crystallized mixed language (FCML) and as such has a rather stable grammar, some structural instability in the language is neither avoidable nor contradictory. Sheng in Eastlands is under constant competing pressures to be economical and to be explicit. This situation is not unusual in the world of languages. For instance, examples of invented forms to tangibly mark semantic distinctions, writes Slobin (1983: 249), can be found throughout the child language literature and analogies can be found in historical linguistics. Simply look to English or French for examples.

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English underwent some Richter scale-like seismic structural instability starting some 940 years ago (1066) and lasting for about 300 years (about 1400), and today that little Germanic language seems to be doing okay. On the other hand, Classical Latin has a rather rigor mortis-like rigidity about its structure. unchanging language is a dead language. As is well-known, the only

Moreover, Sheng is not standardized.

Nonstandard languages change more rapidly than standard ones (Hock 1986: 466-7). Normatively-imposed standard languages suppress innovations (Hayes 1999: 278). Even so, some randomness persists in adult grammars, even the grammars of university professors who teach standard languages. Furthermore, for Sheng there is nothing to suppress the innovations being made by children who are mother tonguers. What should come out of the shadows now is that Sheng is not slang. It is a given that slang exists in Sheng, but slang does not define Sheng anymore than it defines African American Vernacular English (AAVE) or any other language. No one thinks that the average AAVE speaker employs creativeness to the extent of that of Calvin Broadus, the famous American rapper known to millions as Snoop Dogg. It is more likely to find the young son of an American middle-class, white couple doing the emulation. The argot reversal involved may yet seem somewhat unexplained. However, in the whitest of white America, in the most bourgeois of the bourgeoisie, it is not uncommon to find Pig Latin running rampant. As an example, Barlow (2001: 673) describes two dialects of Pig Latin. For instance, the word blue in Dialect A becomes [lubei] while in Dialect B it is [ublei]. An educator might ask why should such variation as Pig Latin be admired or at least considered harmless while Sheng argot reversal should be thought to be carrying Kenyas youth to Hell in a hand basket. Comments such as the following op-ed piece

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from one of Kenyas newspapers evince the smugness and disdain (not to mention a less than profound reading of Shakespeare) that the bourgeoisie display in reaction to Sheng: Shakespeare's language metamorphosed for ease of communication but that of Sheng is different. It is changed to sound more complicated and conceal things from non speakers. People focusing on the development of Sheng should not waste time and energy on something that has no future. Sheng can only serve the purpose of fun and nothing else. A dividing language can never become a unifying force. (Ayelabola 2006) Even so the main difficulty is not with the middle and upper classes not being able to understand the language of the lower classes. On the contrary, it is the lower classes that are forbidden access to the language that elitists complain that the lower classes are destroying. If the middle class of Kenya truly wants to eliminate Sheng, they should provide the poor access to education. An illustration from America should suffice to clarify the matter. Simpkins & Simpkins (1981) report that 540 children, 530 of whom were African American, participated in a study, in several cities across the US (27 classes). 417 of the students used Bridge readers and 123 stayed in the ordinary local remedial reading program. After four months of instruction, the results showed that Bridge children in grades 7-12 made 6.2 months of reading proficiency gain as measured by the standardized Iowa Test of Basic Skills in Reading, Level 12 Form 5. The children in the ordinary remedial program (the control group) made an average gain of 1.6 months of reading proficiency over the same four months of instruction. As Simpkins & Simpkins (1981:231) write, "the Bridge program attempts to start where the students are and take them to where their teachers would like them to be". It

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apparently was successful417 students developed skills in reading standard English through this program. The disparity between the reading levels of mainstream versus minority children in the US, which has persisted for decades, is addressed by calling for a focus on language diversity in reading research. Findings from the work of Labov and colleagues in remedial reading among inner-city children are recapitulated to show that a knowledge of new minority readers' native language and culture can be applied to improve reading levels: the minority differential in U.S. literacy is parallel to the literacy problems of many countries where the home language of children differs markedly from the first language of reading instruction. This is the situation that prevails in many developing countries, in Asia, Africa and Latin America. This difference is frequently associated with the linguistic opposition between a nonstandard colloquial dialect and the accepted standard (Labov 2003: 129) The situation is even more dramatic in Kenya, where primary education has only been free since 2004. The adjective is in scare quotes for the costs of books and other fees remain. Those costs and the fact that a child may be required of necessity to earn an income to help support the family result in education remaining beyond the reach of the poor in Kenya. Most of the children of those who cannot read never get the opportunity to learn to read. Those who do manage to clear the expense hurdle are faced with the stigma of speaking a variety of language that the arrogant openly condemn. As the middle class preaches, it is education that is the path to upward mobility. That there are few to no programs to aid those without a means to acquire an education not only engenders continued poverty and ignorance among the lower classes but also enforces the

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rationalization that the inequality in society is justified.

Let us hope that Social

Darwinism is not another gift the elite of Kenya have inherited from their colonial benefactors. If we as linguists, educators, and policy makers are invested and are truly

concerned about empowering children to learn and helping preserve the national heritage of Kenya, if indigenous languages are paramount to the local culture, then how do we decide to eliminate Sheng? Granted, it is a late arrival, but youthfulness does not make it any less Kenyan. Sheng is exactly the same age as the very entity of the country itself, protectorate-cum-colony and independent nation alike.

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