Betwixt and between: Causatives in the English-lexicon creoles of West Africa and the Caribbean

Causative formation in the family of Afro-Caribbean English-lexicon Creoles (AECs) can be ordered along a continuum with an “African” and a “European” pole. On one end we find biclausal structures: A causative main verb takes a clausal complement marked for subjunctive mood. These structures appear to conform to a West African areal pattern in which subjunctive mood, instantiated in a modal complementizer, appears in a range of deontic contexts, including causatives. At the other end, causative formation involves English-style “raising”, hence reduced clauses. The prevalence of either pattern strongly correlates with the contact trajectory of an individual AEC. Languages that have been in continuous contact with English generally feature a more fragmented modal system in which causative formation follows idiosyncratic strategies. AECs that have been insulated from English for a longer period, and the African AECs in general, feature more unitary modal systems in which causative constructions are formally part of a larger functional domain of deonticity.