A Different, not an Incorrect Way, of Speaking, Pt 5
A grammar is the economical structural framework that enables speakers to express their meanings or messages rapidly and unconsciously in normal conversation. It consists essentially of a small group of (pieces of) words that do not refer to anything in the universe of experience, as well as multiple combinations of words into patterns called phrases, clauses, sentences, and discourse longer than the sentence. In acquiring the vernacular of their social groups and society, children must quickly master the patterns and non-referring words as a framework into which they can fit words that have referential meaning, that is, words that refer to things in our shared universe of experience. 'Does' is an example of a type of word that does not refer (or a grammatical word);'Colin Lucas', 'talk', and 'Creole' are examples of words that refer (or content words); and 'does talk (Creole)' is an example of the pattern we call a phrase. Trinbagonian children must acquire a word like 'does' and a pattern like 'does talk Creole' in order to send their meanings or messages rapidly and unconsciously in normal communication.
Creole 'does' vs. English 'does'
'Does' is one of those words in Creole that always comes before a member of a class of content words called verbs. For example, it can come before 'talk', which is a verb in the phrase 'does talk'. And it can come before other verbs like 'sleep', 'drive', 'eat', and 'run'. Trinbagonian children acquire it as a grammatical word that comes before a verb. Most probably, they acquire it as part of a rule which goes something like this: "'Does' is a word that comes before a verb and that marks habitual action in that verb's meaning."
The rule implies a number of things, including the following. One, Trinbagonian children read from the speech around them that 'does' signals the meaning 'habitual action', and they acquire it by mental computation. Two, they read that there is a class of words called 'verb' in the sentence, and they acquire the class by mental computation but the words themselves by memorisation. Three, they intuit that 'does' is an economical (grammatical) device that precedes and combines with 'verb', and they acquire the combination 'does + verb' by mental computation. In the end - that is, after categorising 'does' and words like 'talk' into different kinds of words, and after computing their patterning in sentences - they can produce thousands of phrases on the pattern 'does' + verb.
If they can say things like 'does talk', 'does sleep', and 'does eat' - translatable into Standard English respectively as 'talks', 'sleeps', and 'eats' - are they speaking corrupt English?
In Standard English, 'does talk' in the sentence 'Colin Lucas does talk Creole' means habitual talking plus an attitude of emphasis on the part of the speaker. The 'does' is produced with a comparatively high pitch to make it emphatic, a pitch that is higher than the pitch on the content verb 'talk'. And it can stand in place of the phrase 'does talk Creole', as, for example, in 'Colin Lucas does'. If the speaker does not want to be emphatic about the habitual talking, s/he must drop the 'does' and use the bare verb 'talk', as in 'Colin Lucas talk + s Creole'. (The ending or suffix 's' is not part of the meaning 'habitual action'. It merely marks agreement with the third person subject 'Colin Lucas'!)
In Creole, by contrast, 'does' is not emphatic; it is unemphatic. It is produced with a lower pitch than 'talk', and it cannot stand in place of 'does talk Creole'. Test it out, using your knowledge of Creole. Say 'Colin Lucas does talk Creole', and then try replacing 'does talk Creole' with 'does'. It just doesn't work! Indeed, the low pitch on 'does' is that factor that prevents it from being emphatic, and one of the factors that prevent it from standing in for the phrase. In order to emphasise the habitual talking in Creole, one has to add a phrase/word like 'for true/in truth' or 'really', as in 'Colin Lucas does talk Creole for true/in truth' or 'Colin Lucas does really talk Creole'.
Is the Creole way of expressing habitual action a corruption (rather than a restructuring) of the English way? If it is, then it is a corruption by virtue of 1) moving from the bare verb only to a structure involving the bare verb preceded by 'does' for unemphatic meaning; 2) stripping emphatic 'does' of its high pitch and installing a low pitch; 3) stripping emphatic 'does' of its ability to replace phrases in which it comes; and 4) doing away with the suffix 's' altogether.
If that is corruption, then corruption is a beautifully systematic and creative process that does not disable normal communication, don't you think?
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