‘That-clauses’ in Cameroon English: A Study in Functional Extension

Abstract

This chapter sets out to study some of the functional extensions that have been attributed to Cameroon English (CamE) “that”. This involves two phenomena, namely, that-complements and echo-questions. As for that-complements, it is seen that some verbs in CamE select that-complements in contexts that are not attested in British English. This is the case of what I call “abuse-verbs”, which are re-categorised to rhyme with the verb “say”, thereby having an orienter and content. On their part, echo-questions are achieved following the process of super-ordinate clause deletion. When this happens, the that-complementiser introduces the subordinate constituent clause, which stands alone. This very process is also used for reporting. CamE echo-questions are categorised into yes/no echo-questions and constituent echo-questions. The peculiarity of the category yes/no echo-questions lies in the modal property they have, as they show the speaker’s attitude either of surprise or of disapproval.

The overall conclusion in the paper is that syntactic variation in the New Englishes is likely to be more significantly marked at the level of tasks given to function words than at differences in word order. This is a kind of covert variation, which is subtle. It is shown that this kind of variation is occasioned by local meaning, so that grammatical variation in the Englishes would be caused by local meaning or what purists would call “non-standard meaning” leading to non-standard structures. This is how English adapts to the ecologies of its various habitats.