What contact did to Yoruba syntax

Dr. Taofeeq Adebayo, California State University, San Bernardino

Although there is a long contact between English and Yoruba, studies that examine how Yoruba has changed due to the influence of English are scarce compared to synchronic studies of the language. Even more scarce are studies that examine English-induced syntactic diachronic changes in the language. Fagborun (1994) remains one of the most comprehensive studies of English-induced syntactic patterns in Yoruba, but most of the patterns he identifies come down to loan translation. In this paper, I show that, due to the influence of English, major changes have occurred in Yoruba syntax. The changes I identify include (i) the emergence of an accusative-marking Mid Tone Syllable (MTS) on loan verbs; (ii) the emergence of a pattern in which native verbs c-select accusative weak pronouns while loan verbs c-select genitive weak pronouns; (iii) changes in word order; (iv) syntactic doubling; and (v) category changes that apply only to loanwords. These changes have led to different forms of synchronic variations in the language. I show that the resulting variations fall into two major descriptive categories: free variation and lexicon-driven variation.