Syntactic Variation in Conversational Seychelles Creole

This paper investigates the syntactic peculiarities of Seychelles Creole in an informal conversation. It focuses on spontaneous speech production and explores to what extent the regular syntactic principles of Seychelles Creole clause construction (Subject-Verb-Object order, realization of verb valencies) are observed in an unprepared conversational situation. Looking at the inputs in recipe-sharing conversations, the paper presents systematized descriptions of variation in constituent order and completeness of a spontaneous SC clause, dwelling on the semantic implications of the above variations. Analysis of syntactic variation in spontaneous conversation reveals context-based, functional characteristics of Seychelles Creole and contributes to its stylistically differentiated description. The results of the above analysis open avenues for further research into the creole-substrate relationship and typology of syntactic strategies for emphasis.