Cases where it is undeniable that speakers of the mother language came in contact with speakers of other languages which disappeared but left sub- strate influence on the superseding language have been treated as rather 4.3 How language contact has been downplayed 109
exceptional. Such is the case of the Romance languages, which developed from Vulgar Latin. Even in such cases, more often than not, only internally motivated linguistic processes have been invoked to account for the evolu- tion of the mother language into its offspring. Thus little is usually said about the contributions of Celtic languages to the structures of Romance languages.
Treated more exceptionally in this tradition are the Balkan languages, in which evidence of intense and multilateral population contacts over centu- ries cannot be denied and have become the classic explanation for the con- vergence of their structural features.6Regardless of the increasing number of such cases (see, e.g., Gumperz and Wilson 1971 for India), contact and convergence have become the plausible exceptional, rather than normal, explanation (e.g., Hock and Joseph 1996). One may thus understand why contact, rather than possible extensions of principles occurring in the lex- ifier (under specific ecological conditions), has also been the explanation for the definitely untypicaland would-be unnatural development of pidgins and creoles, and maybe also of indigenized Englishes.
Thus, as far as English as spoken by descendants of Europeans is con- cerned, it has been normal not to discuss whether or not it has been influ- enced by its Celtic substratum in England. Likewise, experts have seldom addressed the question of why Celtic influence in British varieties of English is confined to those which developed after the Old-English period and why it is perhaps most striking today in those which developed since the seven- teenth century (in particular Irish and Scots-Irish Englishes). Other varie- ties that bear such conspicuous influence are those outside Europe whose developers included speakers of Irish and Scots-Irish Englishes.7According to Montgomery (1989), Appalachian English is one of these non-British varieties with Celtic influence. Newfoundland vernacular English (NVE) is another where such substrate influence is to be expected, despite Clarke’s (1997a) capitalization on the Southwestern English sources of some of its grammatical features such as theverbal {S} suffix. She provides no explanation for the usage ofbe(beesin the third person singular) before nonverbal predicates for the same grammatical function. I conjecture that perhaps congruence with a similar, though not necessarily identical, pattern in Gaelic influenced this development in NVE. Although Clarke observes that or periphrastic do was already attested in Irish English (presumably that spoken by the elite) in the seventeenth century, ecology- based markedness considerations (chapter 2) should explain why this alter- native was not selected in NVE. In the case of Irish and Scots-Irish Englishes, the evidence from research since the 1980s shows that contact with the substratum cannot be denied. Similarities between some (Scots) Irishisms and Gaelic in just those areas that distinguish them from more 110 The legitimate and illegitimate offspring of English
Germanic varieties of British English make contact a plausible, if not the only, explanation for these divergent evolutionary paths of English. But then one may raise the question of why these new varieties are characterized as “native,” despite the influence of Gaelic.
The main reason is that the communities of those speaking these new varieties as vernaculars consist (almost) entirely of native speakers. To be sure, they must have been indigenizing during some phases of their devel- opments. Given the acknowledged role of contact, one may ask why they are not called creoles, especially their nonstandard varieties. After all, creoles are considered native varieties, at least according to the most tradi- tional and most widely accepted definition of the term creolein linguistics.
They are also native according to a characterization little noticed in Hall (1966), viz., they are indigenous to the places where they developed. In this respect, they are like Scots and Irish Englishes, as well as like indigenized Englishes. To be equally subversive, why are creoles called separate lan- guages for that matter? Since “creolization” is not a structural process (Mufwene 1986a, 2000a) and most of the features identified as Irish and Scottish are primarily nonstandard and are due to language contact, it requires some innocence not to consider the race and/or geographical loca- tion of the speakers an important tacit factor in the naming tradition.
South Africa is an interesting case, where the English spoken by descen- dants of Europeans (including Afrikaners) is said to be “native,” whereas the varieties spoken by other South Africans are said to be indigenized, reflecting the many-tiered colonial sociopolitical ecology of the country.
Perhaps an interesting exception here is South African Indian vernacular English (SAIE, Mesthrie 1992a). The reason for not including it among indigenized Englishes is that it is nonstandard and did not develop through the scholastic medium (chapter 1). It is not typically identified as a creole either, though it developed under conditions which may lead some scholars to characterize it as such. It certainly is not considered “native.” One reason why, unlike Irish and Scots vernacular Englishes, it does not count as
“native” seems to be the following: it counts no people of European descent among its native speakers, contrary to acrolectal Englishes of the Caribbean, where English creoles are also spoken. Technically, SAIE has
“fallen between the cracks,” as it fits into none of the ill-conceived catego- ries assumed in accounts of speciation of the English language.
In the same vein, one may want to speculate whether there will ever be a time when, for instance, Indian, Singaporean, and Nigerian Englishes may become native. Shouldn’t we rather accept the reality that English is less likely to replace the indigenous lingua francas of these territories than it did in Wales, Ireland, and Scotland, because the socioeconomic and political ecologies are not the same? The case of SAIE is a special one, chiefly 4.3 How language contact has been downplayed 111
because it is an exogenous variety and the appropriation of English among Indians in South Africa enabled both wider communication among them- selves and communication with non-Indians, especially the British colo- nists who brought them there. It is also interesting that the varieties identified as “indigenized” are spoken in former exploitation colonies.
South Africa was partly a settlement colony, like the territories where creoles have typically developed, and partly an exploitation colony, espe- cially where the British rule is concerned.
Outside the UK, native Englishes are also spoken in former settlement colonies, in which globalizing economic policies have at least endangered the indigenous languages, starting with the Celtic languages in the British Isles. The development of SAIE is associated to some extent with such eco- logical factors, although these did not obtain in quite the same ways as in the New World. One may argue that SAIE fits among native Englishes but, to my knowledge, no expert has classified it as such. Note also that English creoles are native vernaculars, but not necessarily native Englishes, based on the literature on both creoles and indigenized Englishes. If one had to slavishly follow this misguided tradition, another category would have to be invented for SAIE!
Some may speculate that native Englishes have well-established norms and are associated with some standard. Ironically, indigenized Englishes are in several structural respects no more distant from standard English varieties than native nonstandard vernaculars are. In a way, the educated varieties of indigenized Englishes represent local standards. The question to address is actually whether indigenized Englishes lack norms. I argue in Mufwene (1997b) that, like expanded pidgins, indigenized Englishes do have stable norms, although these have been established and perpetuated by populations of primarily non-native speakers. Such realities show that norms are not necessarily developed by native speakers but by a stable pop- ulation of speakers who use a variety regularly (Chaudenson 1992). Norms emerge out of communicative habits of individual speakers. What the habits share, including patterns of variation, form the community’s norms, i.e., manners in which a speaker can expect other members of their com- munity to express things. Thus, the “native”/“non-native” distinction as applied to language varieties, rather than to speakers, seems to serve some social ideology more than it sheds any light on language evolution, espe- cially on the speciation that often ensues from it.
4.4 The development of English in England: when does substrate