Overstand the downpression of the kin-dread by outformers: On what to call "reverse eggcorns" in Dread Talk

The language of reggae music is filled with examples of linguistic creativity, including what we might call "puns". One example is Rastafari reanalysed as Rasta Far Eye. Tafari was Haile Selassie I's pre-king name, and since he was of Ethiopian nobility he had the title Ras, an Amharic word roughly translatable as "prince". One of the central tenets of the Rastafarian movement (which obviously takes its name from Ras Tafari) is that Haile Selassie I is an incarnation of God (Rastafarian Jah, cp. Yahweh). Rastafari is thus (intentionally/knowingly) reanalysed as "far-seeing Haile Selassie I/God/Jah".

Another interesting example of this sort is found in the lyrics and title of the song "Kin Dread" (Midnite[1]):

Here singer/lyricist Vaughn Benjamin intentionally reanalyses kindred as kin-dread, and, amusingly, he appears to overtly reference this linguistic remaking, as towards the end of the song (~5.00) he says:

Well, how come family mean "kin" and "dread"? Enough with them the vernacular etymological syntax.

Does vernacular etymological syntax = "folk etymology"?

Kindred historically derives from OE. cynn-rǣden: cynn "family, race, blood-relations" (OED[2]) and rǣden "condition, reckoning" (modern English read and riddle come from the same root); the -d- of kindred is epenthetic (cp. Modern English thunder from OE. þunor, ME. þoner).

Benjamin's reanalysis of kindred as kin-dread I assumed would mean something like "fellow Rastafarians" (dread can mean "Rastafarian"; from dreadlocks, "uncut, unwashed, uncombed hair worn 'in dread of the Lord' [cf. the Nazarite vow]"), but from the context of the song it seems to simply bear the standard sense of kindred, metaphorically extended as "fellow human beings", since it is obvious that usually the kin-dread he refers to are not necessarily fellow Rastafarians, as shown by:

Hear a small story, me a-tell you a sad story about a farmer. Planted the most italful garden, but [the youth them]_i only want soft drinks in Babylon-flavour. But yeah, you know, them_i are me kin-dread.... Full-fledgèd.

[Babylon is a standard Rastafarian term for "(corrupt) western society". Ital (cf. italful) is roughly "kosher (for Rastafarians)", excluding tobacco, alcohol, pork (and often meat altogether), and preservatives/artificial ingredients (and thus soft drinks....).]

Examples like Rasta-Far-Eye and kin-dread appear to be largely nonce-formations, akin to puns. However, Rastafarian English (or what Pollard[3] calls "Dread Talk", defined as an example of "lexical expansion within a creole system" [2:24]) is full of entrenched examples of remakings which are similar to (though not typically paronomastic in the same way as) kin-dread and rasta-far-eye.

Pollard[3:24,46] refers to such examples as "Category II: words which bear the weight of their phonological implications". I'm not sure that this is the clearest definition or the best analysis of the linguistic change involved in such remakings. Let's examine the some of the most common of these entrenched reanalyses:

Downpress(ion) = "oppress(ion)"

Overstand = "understand"

Outformer = "informer"

Livicate = "dedicate"

Blindgarette = "cigarette"

All of these involve remakings which seem add or remove a pejorative sense (as appropriate):

Oppress treated as if up-press (though really from Latin ob- "against" + premere "press"). Uppress would seem to mean "lift up"; thus reformed as down-press.

Understand is of somewhat obscure origins. Other Germanic languages use stand with other prefixes for the same sense (cp. German vorstehen, as if English forstand). The prefix perhaps reflects not PIE *ndher "under" (cp. Latin infrā), but rather PIE *nter "between, among" (cp. Latin inter), see further Liberman[4:210-5]. Whatever the etymology, other words in modern English with the prefix under- tend to indicate either "subordinate", e.g. underling, or "insufficient", e.g. underfunded; thus understand is reanalysed as "low comprehension, insufficient comprehension", and remade as overstand.

Informer: in often has positive connotations (e.g. in-group); out negative ones (e.g. outsider); thus remade as outformer (cp. perhaps to rat (s.o.) out).

Dedicate actually from Latin dē "out" + dicāre "say, proclaim", but analysed as if connected with English dead (with negative connotations); so remade as livicate (from live).

Cigarette: analysed as see-garette, where see has positive connotations (cp. above Rasta-Far-Eye), but tobacco is considered by Rastafarians as polluting/unclean; thus reformed as blind-garette.

These reanalyses are reminiscent of folk etymology or eggcorns (see also Liberman[5], Pullum[6], Zwicky[7]), but unlike eggcorns they appear to be intentional. That is, Rastafarians obviously recognise that in standard English people say oppress, understand, informer, dedicate, cigarette etc., and thus these aren't misunderstandings like elk for ilk. And they don't seem to be what Zwicky[8] calls "mock eggcorns". Rather the above remakings involve an intentional re-etymologising, as if the standard English forms were the eggcorns.

What do we call this sort of morphological/semantic change?

("Reverse eggcorn" is the best I have, but that doesn't seem quite right.)

[Update (30.12.09): Arnold Zwicky suggests these sorts of changes should be called overstandings. I like it.]

References:

[1]Midnite. 2006. Jah Grid. Christiansted, St.Croix (US Virgin Islands): I-Grade Records.

[2]The Oxford English Dictionary, September 2009 rev. ed.

[3]Pollard, Velma. 2000. Dread Talk: the language of Rastafari. Kingston, Jamaica & Montreal, Canada: Canoe Press & McGill-Queen's University Press, rev. ed.

[4]Liberman, Anatoly. 2008. An analytic dictionary of English etymology: an introduction. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

[5]Liberman, Mark. 2003. "Egg corns: folk etymology, malapropism, mondegreen, ???" Language Log. September 23, 2003.

[6]Pullum, Geoffrey K. 2003. "Phrases for lazy writers in kit form." Language Log. October 27, 2003.

[7]Zwicky, Arnold. 2003. "Lady Mondegreen says her peace about egg corns." Language Log. November 02, 2003.

[8]Zwicky, Arnold. 2009. "Mock eggcorns and their kin". Arnold Zwicky's blog. August 29, 2009.

No Woman No Cry ≠ No Pain No Gain: On negation in Jamaican Creole

In the course of searching for examples of linguistically interesting phenomena in reggae music (for my historical linguistics class), I have naturally had occasion to research some of the songs of the great Bob Marley, one of most well-known of which is "No Woman, No Cry". I have encountered various interpretations of the line "no woman, no cry"--one predominant one being "if you have no woman, you have no reason to cry" (on the model "no pain, no gain"), another being "there is no woman who does not cry" (see here for representative interpretations and discussion). The correction interpretation seems to be "no, woman, don't cry" as evidenced by the line "oh little darling, don't shed no tears".

Interestingly, Dawes[1]:119 remarks that the actual lyrics are "no woman, nuh cry", where nuh is equivalent to Standard English don't. But in the version of the song I was most familiar with, the live 1975 performance in London, the refrain is clearly "no woman, no cry":

(1) "no woman, no cry" [Live! (London 1975)]

[full song on Youtube here]

However, in fact, in the earlier Natty Dread recording of 1974 the line can be heard clearly as "no woman, nuh cry":

(2) "no woman, nuh cry" [Natty Dread (1974)]

[full song on Youtube here]

So, did Marley (intentionally or otherwise) eliminate the Jamaican Creole [JC] shibboleth nuh in his live London performance?

Possibly, since, at least to my ear, another JC shibboleth has disappeared in the Live! (1975) version: little as /likḷ/ (see the posting "A 'Likkle' sound change in Jamaican Creole English"):

(3) “oh lik-oh likkle (/likḷ/?) darlin’, don’t shed no tears; no woman, nuh cry” [Natty Dread 1974]


(4) “oh my little (/liɾḷ/?) darlin’, don’t shed no tears; no woman, no cry” [Live! 1975]

So did Marley 'decreolise' the song in the live 1975 London performance? Is this what accounts for theno/nuh and little/likkle variation? The data are complicated by the fact that later in the Natty Dread version of the song (at 2:29) the line sounds like "no woman, no cry"--just as in the 1975 Live! version:

(5) "no woman, no cry" [Natty Dread at 2.29]

Are we then simply dealing with some sort of free (or prosodically-conditioned) variation between no and nuh? Is nuh the unstressed version of no in JC?

Turning to descriptions of JC morphosyntax: Patrick[2] states that the simplest and most common sentential negation in JC is no, which is reducible to nuh /na/, adding that most JC speakers also have a tense-neutral form duon[t]. Adams[3]:34-5 provides examples of JC sentential negation occurring as don' (~duon[t]) and no:

(6) Dem don' cook herly. ("They don't cook early.")

(7) Him no say. ("He doesn't say.")

For the negative imperative, Patrick[2] notes that either no or duont may occur, but he says that no "requires an expletive verb bada (< bother) while duont, being verbal, requires none", as in (7) and (8), respectively.

(7) No bada gwaan bad. ("Don't misbehave.")

(8) Duont gwaan bad. ("Don't misbehave.")

So neither "no woman, nuh cry" nor "no woman, no cry" matches Patrick's description of JC negative imperatives: that is, in JC it seems that we should expect either "no woman, duont cry" or "no woman, no bada cry". [Doing a google search for "no bada cry", I do find one example: fast car alone mi drive dawg...............................joke, no bada cry (from Wheels Jamaica).]

Do both the Natty Dread and Live! versions of the line represent some sort of compromise between JC and "Standard" English (a mesolectal form)? Or is nuh also a possible negation in JC negative imperative, with the Live! version "no cry" representing a decreolised/hypercorrected negation? Or are both no and nuh possible JC negative imperative forms?

Another possibility: is "no woman, nuh cry" really an imperative? Could the "nuh" actually be naa?

Naa is a form Patrick[2] explains as a coalescence of no with the progressive particle a, adding that the latter occurs both "for [present] progressive and for periphrastic future". Representative examples:

(9) Nabadii na a kom ina mai aus. (Roberts[4]:36)

"Nobody is going to come into my house."

(10) Don’t me done tell yuh seh me na go do nutten again. (Sistren[5]:70)

"Haven’t I told you already that I’m not going to do anything further?"

Thus could "no woman, naa cry" then mean "no woman is going to cry"? [Note that JC has negative spread, as can be seen in examples like (9) and (10).] In which case, the Live! version "no cry" would again represent a decreolised/hypercorrect form.

My suspicion is that both no and nuh will turn out to be possible mesolectal negative imperative negators (this is suggested also by the sporadic occurrence of "no cry" in the Natty Dread version). Still, whatever the case, it is interesting that Marley's live London performance of "No Woman, No Cry" seems to suppress JC shibboleths found in the Natty Dread version.

Perhaps native JC speakers and creolists could weigh in here?

References:

[1]Dawes, Kwame. 2002. Bob Marley: Lyrical genius. London: Sanctuary.

[2]Patrick, Peter L. 2004. “Jamaican Creole: Morphology and syntax.” In A Handbook of Varieties of English. Vol 2: Morphology and Syntax, ed. Bernd Kortmann, Edgar W Schneider, Clive Upton, Rajend Mesthrie & Kate Burridge. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 407-438. [online prepublication draft]

[3]Adams, L. Emile. 1991. Understanding Jamaican Patois: An introduction to Afro-Jamaican grammar. Kingston (Jamaica): Kingston Publishers.

[4]Roberts, Peter. 1973. "Speech of 6-year-old Jamaican children". Society for Caribbean Linguistics Occasional Paper No. 1. Mona (Jamaica): University of the West Indies (Caribbean Language Research Programme).

[5]Sistren, with Honor Ford-Smith. 1987. Lionheart Gal: Life-stories of Jamaican Women. Toronto: Sister Vision.

[6]Durrleman-Tame, Stephanie. 2005. "Notes on the Left Periphery in Jamaican Creole". Generative Grammar in Geneva 4:113-157. [web-version]

A "Likkle" Sound Change in Jamaican Creole English

This semester I decided to include a "reggae segment" to my undergraduate historical linguistics course, where we look at interesting linguistic changes in both Jamaican Creole and in "Dread Talk" (Rastafarian English), as exemplified by audio clips from various reggae songs. So, in addition to going over the traditional examples of sound change like Grimm's Law and Verner's Law, we also looked at sound change in Jamaican Creole. After discussing Verner's Law as a conditioned sound change, I introduced the phonologically-conditioned "likkle law" of Jamaican Creole English: the sound change /t/ > /k/ which occurs in certain words, such as likkle (< little):

“...Well, me said ‘no, no, don’t be like dat’, me likkle heart a pitter-pat...”

[Jovi Rockwell & Mr. Vegas, “Can’t Stop Now”,

on Major Lazer’s Guns Don’t Kill People...Lazers Do (2009)]

My initial characterisation of the conditions on this change was that /t/ became /k/ intervocalically. My guess was that Jamaican Creole English had been based on a vernacular British dialect in which intervocalic /t/ was realised as a glottal stop (/ʔ/); and that glottal /ʔ/ had been approximated in Jamaican Creole by velar /k/. Thus vernacular British English /liʔḷ/ had been approximated in Jamaican Creole by /likḷ/.

However my students--though the class is smaller than usual, they're a bright batch of students--quickly pointed out that pitter didn't undergo the change, and that therefore the conditioning environment appeared to be more restricted.

I went back and checked Cassidy [1]:40 and found that in fact the conditioning environment does indeed seem to be restricted to instances in which /t/ immediately precedes /ḷ/ or /l/. Examples include /sekḷ/ (settle), /brikḷ/ (brittle), /wakḷ/ (wattle), and /wiklo/ (whitlow) [there is also an apparent example of /t/ > /k/ word-finally, in buck for butt (as in what goats do, not the body-part), but maybe this simply reflects semantic change of buck rather than sound change]. But this now looks like a rather unusual sound change. Why should dental/alveolar /t/ become velar /k/? And why particularly before /ḷ/ or /l/?

Even more perplexing is the fact that Cassidy [1]:40 also states that /d/ becomes /g/ in the same environment: /figḷ/ (fiddle), /rigḷ/ (riddle), /ni:gḷ/ (needle), /kyaŋgḷ/ (candle), /haŋgḷ/ (handle), /dwiŋgḷ/ (dwindle) etc. Now the parallelism of voiced dental stop /d/ becoming voiced velar stop /g/ just as voiceless dental stop /t/ becomes voiceless velar stop /k/ is clear, but the reason for these two changes still seemed rather mysterious.

I think I now might have the beginnings of an explanation. Hallé & Best[2] discuss the fact that French listeners tend to perceive illegal /tl/ and /dl/ clusters as /kl/ and /gl/, respectively, suggesting that /dl/, /tl/ undergo “phonotactic perceptual assimilation” to the phonetically most similar permissible clusters. Could this be what happened in Jamaican Creole?

[Update: My advisor Hans Henrich Hock informs me of some parallel changes in other languages involving /tl/ > /kl/, including:

PIE *pōtlom > Pre-Latin *pōklom > Latin pōculum "cup"

And notes other instances of change which serve to avoid /tl/ clusters, including re-syllabification in Spanish, e.g. atlas "atlas" is syllabified as /at.las/, though coplas "verses" is syllabified as /ko.plas/. See Hock [3]:137.

He also points out Sanskrit examples of avoidance of /dl/ clusters, e.g.:

kṣulla < *kṣudla (= l-variant of Skt. kṣudra "small")

bhalla < *bhadla (= l-variant of Skt. bhadra "auspicious, good") ]

References:

[1]Cassidy, Frederic G. 1971. Jamaica Talk: Three hundred years of the English language in Jamaica. London: Macmillan Caribbean, 2nd edn.

[2]Hallé, Pierre A. & Catherine T. Best. 2007. Dental-to-velar perceptual assimilation: A cross-linguistic study of the perception of dental stop+/l/ clusters. Journal of the Acoustic Society of America 121/5: 2889-2914. [draft version here]

[3]Hock, Hans Henrich. 1991. Principles of historical linguistics. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 2nd edn.