Variation et changement linguistique

A number of frequent verbs in French-based creoles, e. g. rive 'to arrive', chape 'to escape' have so far received little attention and hardly any explanation in the literature. The only explanation given by some authors, namely loss of initial vowel by apheresis, does not account for examples such as mande ( Fr. demander, kontre ( Fr. rencontrer. An alternative hypothesis takes as a starting point the variation of simple and prefixed form with the same meaning observed for many verbs in colonial French, e.g. plumer, déplumer, éplumer 'to pluck feathers from'. It can be assumed that in the approximative forms of French which developed in the first phase of creolization, the simple form became dominant and that in the second phase adult L2-learners selected only the simple forms. This tendency may have been reinforced by a preference for the syllable structure CV as well as by substratum influence from, e. g. Fongbe in Haiti.