Syntax and People:

How Amos Tutuola’s English Was Shaped by His People

Timothy Ajani

Fayetteville State University

Introduction

Using data from Amos Tutuola’s three earliest narratives, The Palm-Wine Drinkard

(1953), My Life in the Bush of Ghosts (1954), and The Brave African Huntress (1958), this paper

takes a close look at the author’s English and how the latter has been influenced and shaped by

his deep roots among the Yoruba of West Africa. Using creative syntactic expressions from the

pages of the text, the paper explores the interrelationship between language and author, and how

this delicate chemistry has left an indelible mark on the author’s target language, English (EL).

Although there are at least twelve identified aspects in the Yoruba language (Ajani 2001), the

paper uses mainly the Completive and Habitual aspects–the two most attested aspect transferred

by Tutuola—to demonstrate how the author has carried over aspects of the substrata of his

mother tongue (L1) into the English language (EL).

Methodology

The methodology consists in reading, identifying, culling, and analyzing syntactic

structures (mainly verbal phrases and sentences) demonstrating elements of aspectual transfer

from three of Amos Tutuola’s earliest works, mentioned above, into a database consisting of

about a couple hundred entries and spanning a little over four dozen pages of data. Such

structures would generally make sense to a Yoruba person reading them but would sound quite

odd to a native speaker of English. The structures would make sense to the Yoruba speaker

because the structure would strike a chord with a native Yoruba speaker. Structures such as “I
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thought within myself that old people were saying that” and “After a while he came out with two

of his attendants who were following him to wherever he wanted to go,” and many such similar

expressions, would sound quite quaint to a native speaker of EL, but the YL speaker would be

able to readily identify them as transfers. The literature on language contact is rife with such

demonstrations of transfer of L1 substrata into target dominant languages, particularly in places

where erstwhile colonial languages had come into contact with indigenous languages of the

colonized, resulting in linguistic creativity and experimentation (Ajani 2005, Bamiro 1991,

Adegbija 1989, Weinreich 1979). African authors such as Wole Soyinka (the 1986 Nobel

Literature laureate of Nigerian Yoruba extraction) and the late Chinua Achebe, author of the

world-famous Things Fall Apart (also of Nigerian, but Igbo extraction), have both been known

to often draw on elements of their L1 as tools for creative lexical, morpho-syntactic and

discursive experimentation in the English language (Sebba 1997, Kachru 1987, Bamgbose 1982).

Backgrounds

Amos Tutuola was a product of his time, a time when European powers, particularly

Britain, France and Portugal, ruled over much of the world, particularly Africa. Much of the

African continent was partitioned among European colonial powers at the Berlin Conference

from 1884-1885. From this time until the mid-twentieth century, much of West Africa became

colonies of either the British or the French and was controlled by colonial administrators. The

decolonization of Ghana (then the Gold Coast) in 1957 provided a strong impetus for other

African nations to also seek their own independence, with Nigeria regaining her freedom in

1960. Amos Tutuola, like his contemporaries, Chinua Achebe and Wole Soyinka, was born right

in the middle of this colonial period, when the English language had become the official
PAC Postscript Ajani: Syntax and People

language of his native country. Thus, like many other children of his time, he had to go to school

to be educated in the British tongue.

Amos Tutuola is the first West African to write a full-length narrative in English, but it is

a different kind of English, an English deeply rooted in the worldview, customs and traditions of

his people. It is a syncretic form of English forged at the crossroads of the contact between his

people, his native tongue, and the British colonial overlords and their imposed language. But it is

also an English impacted by the religious traditions of his people and the Christian faith brought

by proselytizing English missionaries during the nineteenth century. Tutuola’s father, though a

convert to Christianity, was born into a family of traditional Yoruba religious practitioners. This

dual religious heritage will later inform the content of his works. It is a classic case of cultures,

languages and religions in contact, interacting with each other while at the same time impacting

each other in a deep and profound way (Ajani 2012).

To gain an appreciation of Tutuola’s English, one must have some understanding of his

upbringing. He was born in 1920 into humble backgrounds in Abeokuta, one of the major

Yoruba cities, about sixty-four miles from Lagos, the largest city in West Africa and Nigeria’s

commercial and industrial nerve center. He had very limited formal education, due to his

family’s modest financial resources. This scanty education ended abruptly at the age of nineteen

when his father, a struggling cocoa farmer, passed away in 1939. A tough life awaited the young

Tutuola after this early loss. Even while his father was still alive, he had to work as a domestic

servant for a government employee from eastern Nigeria named Mr. Monu, who paid his tuition

in lieu of direct wages. He did not begin his formal education until he was between ages twelve

and fourteen. After the death of his father, he moved on to Lagos where he learned blacksmithing
PAC Postscript Ajani: Syntax and People

and later joined the British Royal Air Force at age 22, working as a coppersmith (Ajani 2001,

Owomoyela 1999, Lindfors 1975).

Literary Creativity

After a three-year stint in the Royal Airforce, and following the conclusion of World War

II, Tutuola was discharged from his military duties and had to find a new job. He was eventually

hired as a messenger for the Department of Labor in Lagos. It was during this time that he began

to write – his way of dealing with boredom, as there wasn’t much for him to do at work. Thus,

rather than bore himself to death, he began to write. He eventually ended up penning more than a

dozen books: nine novels, two collections of short stories, and a book of Yoruba folktales.

Tutuola is best known for his first two published narratives, The Palm-Wine Drinkard and His

Dead Palm-Wine Tapster in the Deads’ Town (1953), and My Life in the Bush of Ghosts (1954),

with the former gaining world-wide acclaim, having been translated into about twenty languages,

including French, German, Italian, Swedish, Romanian, Serbo-Croatian, Hungarian, Czech, and

many other European and African languages (Ajani 2007, Eko 1975).

Tutuola would eventually secure a better job at the Nigerian Broadcasting Corporation in

the large traditional Yoruba city of Ibadan, where he continued with his newfound love: writing.

His two most popular novels have been adapted for the stage, My Life in the Bush of Ghosts in

1958 and Palm-Wine Drinkard in 1968 by the Yoruba dramatist Kola Ogunmola. The former

had the distinction of being presented in London, as Nigeria’s national entry for the Africa95

International Festival in 1995. Many popular presentations of these two novels have also been

made by different local operas in Nigeria since then. Amos Tutuola passed on in 1997 at age

seventy-seven, but not without leaving behind numerous works that would outlive him, not only
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in Nigeria and Africa, but also around the globe. Today, Tutuola has an admiring followership in

cyberspace, as well as among Science Fiction and Fantasy enthusiasts (Ajani 2007; 2001).

Legacy

Perhaps, the most enduring legacy of Amos Tutuola is his contribution to linguistic

creativity in the English language, more specifically Nigerian English. This paper highlights

some of the ways in which the structure of Tutuola’s mother tongue deeply influenced the way

he wrote in English. Data from the author’s earliest works reveal that what Tutuola did with his

language is neither strange, unusual, nor unheard of. In fact, the systematicity we find in the

whole process is proof positive that it is not random, but rather rule-governed. It is a normal

occurrence in any language contact situation, as many researchers in contact linguistics and

especially second language acquisition amply attest (Cook 1993, Corder 1978, Selinker 1972,

Nemser 1971, Weinreich 1953). Kirk-Green in his article entitled “The influence of West

African Languages on English” observes that

The English used in West Africa reveals in varying degrees vernacular influences at the

morphological, syntactic and semantic levels; as well, of course, as at the phonological

level in spoken English…[C]haracteristic deviations from standard English usage may be

ascribed to the influence exercised by a dominant West African language…there may

result an English surface structure with a vernacular deep structure…The sub-stratum

syntax is there and now and again it comes to the surface (Spencer 1971: 123-44).

In the above quote, Kirk-Green correctly points out some identifying features of West African

English, features at different levels of the grammar: syntactic, morphological and semantic;

phonological and stylistic. As will be demonstrated shortly, Tutuola’s works are replete with
PAC Postscript Ajani: Syntax and People

examples of the influences of the aspectual system of the Yoruba language. The rest of this paper

explores some of the YL syntactic influences on Tutuola’s English.

A cursory look at Yoruba oral traditions reveals that the Yoruba culture is imbued with

storytelling and tales of the fantastic: the kind we find in Tutuola’s EL. Little children are

immersed in these tales from an early age. This writer still remembers some of these stories very

vividly, as parents and older siblings would gather the younger ones under the brightly lit

African moon at night to reenact these stories. But the stories were not just for the sake of

entertainment; there was also a didactic edge to them. Through these tales the younger

generation is taught about its family history, the accomplishments of their clans, the customs and

belief systems of their forebears, etc. They are also taught about the taboos and other behaviors

that their societies frown upon and those they approve. This way, the wisdom and lore of their

people is transmitted from one generation to another. During an interview by Michael Awoyinfa,

quoted by Bernth Lindfors, Tutuola was known to have made the following statement to those

who had questioned his use of the English language, despite his very limited formal education:

I don’t want the past to die. I don’t want our culture to vanish. It’s not good. We are

losing [our customs and traditions] now, but I’m still trying to bring them into memory.

So far as I don’t want our culture to fade away, I don’t mind about English grammar… I

should feel free to write my story (emphasis added). I have not given my manuscript to

any one who knows grammar to edit (Lindfors 1999b: 142-43).

What Tutuola is saying here is that he wouldn’t allow grammarians to dictate to him how to

write his story. He had a message to convey to the world and he would do it his own way, even if

it meant breaking the rules of standard (British) English grammar in the process. His mission was

to tell the whole world about the wisdom of his people, period. He was echoing another
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compatriot, a famous one for that matter, the master storyteller, Chinua Achebe of Things Fall

Apart fame, who is also known to have declared unabashedly that an African is not obliged to

use the English language like the British would. He argues forcefully that the English language

must be made to “bear the burden” of the African writer’s own experience. He further surmised

that the African using the English language has the right to use it within the context of his or her

own peculiar experiences, including bringing elements of his or her own language to enhance its

use, so far as, in doing so, the target language, English, still remains understandable to an

international audience (Achebe 1965).

It is apt to say that although Achebe’s English is more standard and polished than

Tutuola’s, he is also known to draw a lot from the stories and wise sayings of his people. In his

works, he often transfers to the English of his writing many proverbs and idiomatic expressions

from his people: the Igbo of Eastern Nigeria. This trend is not limited to Chinua Achebe, but it is

also attested in the works of the prolific Nobel literary laureate, Wole Soyinka – another

compatriot of Tutuola’s.

The Corpus

Current analysis is drawn from 200 entries of data spanning 50 pages of the Tutuola’s

three earliest narratives. The statistical breakdown of the corpus, per number of pages, number of

entries and percentage of total is provided in the table below.

Aspect Type # of pages # of entries % of total

Incompletive1 36 144 72

Habitual2 10 40 20

Anticipative3 2 8 4

1
The incompletive aspect, n will be described and discussed more fully later.
2
The habitual, maa n, a compound aspect, will also be discussed under a separate sub-heading later.
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Relational4 1 4 2

Relevant-Inceptive5 1 4 2

TOTAL 50 200 100

Table 1

An analysis of the above table shows that of a total 200 entries, spanning 50 pages of

data, the incompletive aspect makes up 72%, with 144 entries and covering 36 pages of data. The

habitual aspect comes next in order of significance, with 20% of the total data, 40 entries and

covering 10 pages of data. Next is the anticipative, with only 4% of the total, 8 entries and just 2

pages of data. Least represented, and almost insignificant, are the relational and relevant-

inceptive, both of which make up a meager 4% of the total corpus, with 4 entries each spread

over one page of data respectively. From a statistical point of view, only the incompletive and

the habitual aspects appear to be of any significance, with both spanning 184 of 200 entries of

data, a whopping 92% of the entire corpus, leaving the remaining aspects to share a mere 8% of

data space. Of the two most attested aspects, the incompletive far outweighs the habitual by an

almost 4-to-1 margin.

A breakdown of the corpus reveals that Tutuola tends to transfer mostly the incompletive

and habitual aspects from his mother tongue (L1) to the English language (EL). Standing at two

pages and one page of data each, transfer of the anticipative, the relational, and the relevant-

inceptive aspects are not very significant. This paper therefore focuses on the two aspects with

3
The anticipative máa is an irrealis aspect involving an activity or event that has not yet happened but is likely to
take place. It is non-completive, ongoing, and though it is likely to happen, we do not know for sure. It can therefore
be used in predicting, planning, or speculation.

4
The relational aspect ti describes an event or activity that is incomplete, with reference to an ongoing event, thus it
is incomplete relative to another activity or event.
5
The relevant inceptive ti n is a compound aspect, a combination of the relational ti and the incompletive n. It
describes an activity that has just begun but is still ongoing before another one takes place. Although begun in the
past, it carries on into the present.
PAC Postscript Ajani: Syntax and People

the most significant amount of transfer – the incompletive and the habitual. Due to the sheer size

of the corpus and space constraints only some of the data will be utilized in this analysis.

The Incompletive Aspect6

As mentioned earlier, Tutuola appears to transfer the incompletive aspect far more than

any other aspect in the Yoruba language (henceforth YL).7

Examples of the Incompletive Referring to a Past Event in Tutuola’s Works

The past tense has several manifestations in EL, the better-known ones being the past simple, the

past continuous, and the past perfect8. The data present many contexts that normally would

require the EL past-simple tense but otherwise translated into the past-continuous forms in

Tutuola’s EL. There are a few other contexts that call for the past-continuous but which Tutuola

renders in the present-continuous tense. In all instances, the YL incompletive aspect adequately

translates the ideas carried by these EL tenses. Now let’s take each of these past tense forms one

by one and explain them within the contexts in which they appear in the data.

Contexts Requiring the Past Simple Tense in EL

Tutuola’s English (TE)

6
The Yoruba incompletive aspect (represented in writing by an n with a high tone mark, or an acute accent placed
over it) focuses on the “ongoing-ness” of an activity, event or situation. Time (tense): present, past or future is not
relevant to this aspect, as it could refer to all of these, depending on the context of usage. In English, for instance, “I
am going” can only refer to the present, whereas in Yoruba the expression “Mo n lo” can have a present, past or
future time frame. It can mean “I am going”, “I was going” or “I will be going”, depending on the context. Take the
following statements for instance (i) Mo n lo s’Ibadan bayii (I am going to Ibadan right now); (ii) Mo n lo s’Ibadan
lola (I will be going to Ibadan tomorrow; (ii) Nigbati mo n lo s’Ibadan lanaa (When I was going to Ibadan
yesterday). In all three expressions, the aspect marker is the incompletive. It is therefore obvious from these
examples that n is not, and cannot be, a tense marker. It is therefore similar to the –ing of English in many respects.
The words bayii, lola and lanaa are all adverbial expressions of time used to anchor the expressions in time. The
incompletive marker n speaks only to the ongoing-ness, incomplete-ness of the activity in question, be it in the
present, past, or future.
7
See Ajani 2001 for a fuller elaboration of aspect in Yoruba.
8
It is important to note that, linguistically speaking, the English “past perfect tense” is actually an aspect, not a
tense, although this moniker has stuck, thanks to pedagogical grammar.
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(1) I thought within myself that old people were saying that the people who died in this

world, did not go to heaven directly, but they were living9 in one place somewhere in this

world (Tutuola 1953: 9).

Standard English10 (SE)

(1a) I thought that the elders said that the dead did not actually go to heaven immediately

after death, but that they lived in some place somewhere in this world.

TE

(2) He picked one cowrie out of the pit, after that he was running towards me, and the

whole crowd wanted to tie the cowrie on my neck too (Tutuola 1953: 27).

SE

(2a) He picked up one cowrie from the pit, then he ran towards me; the entire crowd also

wanted to tie the cowrie on my neck.

TE

(3) I was told that he was now at Deads’ town and they told me that he was living with

deads at the “Deads’ town”, they told me that the town was very far away and only deads

were living there (Tutuola 1953: 41).

SE

(3a) I was told that he was now in the town of the dead and that he lived with the dead

there. They informed me that the town was very far away and that only the dead lived

there.

TE

9
All italicized words in the cited data are writer’s emphases.
10
The reference here is, more specifically, Standard British English, the variety of English imported taught and
learned in the Nigerian educational system.
PAC Postscript Ajani: Syntax and People

(4) After a while he came out with two of his attendants who were following him to

wherever he wanted to go. Then the attendants loosened me from the stump, so he

mounted me and the two attendants were following him with whips in their hands and

flogging me along in the bush (Tutuola 1954:37).

SE

(4a) After a while he came out with two of his attendants who followed him wherever he

went. The attendants then untied me from the tree stump so he could climb on me. The

two attendants followed him with whips in their hands and kept flogging me along in the

bush.

In all four examples above, as the Standard (British) English translations indicate,

Tutuola uses the EL past continuous to render expressions that would normally require the past

simple tense forms. For instance, the appropriate EL translation for Tutuola’s ‘were living’ in (1)

above would be the simple past form ‘lived.’ The same is true of ‘was running’ in (2), which

should be translated simply ‘ran’ in EL. In (3) EL requires the past simple form of the verb

‘lived.’ Similarly, in (4) EL would have required the past simple form ‘followed’ rather than

Tutuola’s ‘were following.’ It is quite easy to explain what Tutuola is doing in all these

instances: he was translating his thoughts from YL where the incompletive aspect adequately

translates all the scenarios represented above. In examples (1b) and (2b) below, translations will

be provided of the YL clauses that contain these forms.

(1b) sùgbón wón n gbé ní ibìkan

But they INCOM.11 live PREP.12 somewhere

‘but they live/lived/are living/were living somewhere’

11
incompletive aspect
12
preposition
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(2b) léhìn náà ó n sáré bò sódò mi

after that 3pS13 INCOM. run come towards me

‘after that he runs/ran/is running/was running towards me’

Devoid of the specific context in which we find clause (1a), it could have any of the

above interpretations in EL. The YL clause from which Tutuola translates his idea could have a

present-simple or a past-simple interpretation. It could also be translated into the EL present or

past continuous tenses, as context dictates. In the Yoruba mind, all that matters is that the state of

the verb is tense-less. It is still in an inconclusive, or incompletive stage. It could be interpreted

as “but they live somewhere; but they lived somewhere; but they are living somewhere; but they

were living somewhere.” Since the context of usage dictates a past event, however, Tutuola

renders the auxiliary verb were in its past tense form, but puts the main verb living in the

continuous form, thus giving it an incompletive interpretation.

In (1b), as in (2b), the idea Tutuola is translating into EL is the YL incompletive ‘n sáré’

which could be conveniently translated into the EL ‘runs, is running, ran, was running.’ To the

YL speaker, the important thing here is that the activity of running is ongoing, and this could be

in the past or the present, if context so dictates. Again, since the context of usage presupposes a

past period, Tutuola uses the past form for the auxiliary verb “was,” but since the action is

inconclusive, he renders the main verb in the continuous form “running,”

(3b) àwon òkú nìkan ni ó sì n gbé ibè

PLUR.14 dead only be 3pS and INCOM. live there

“and only the dead live/lived/are living/were living/ there”

13
3rd person singular subject pronoun
14
Plural
PAC Postscript Ajani: Syntax and People

Example (3b) is similar to (1b) in that both use the same verbs. The explanation is

therefore the same in both instances. Here, as in (1b), Tutuola is translating the YL ‘n gbé’: live,

lived, are living, were living. Again, the context dictates an activity that took place before the

present; however, it still was continuous during that period, thus Tutuola’s justification for using

the past-continuous form in EL.

(4b) àwon omo-òdò rè méjì tí ó n tèlé e

PLUR. servants his two who 3pS INCOM. follow him

“two of his servants who follow/followed/are following/were following/kept following him”

Again, the YL ‘n tèlé’ could be rendered as any of the above. It could translate the EL

‘are following, were following; follow, followed; keep following and kept following’, context

being the deciding factor in all cases. Since Tutuola is narrating an event that has already taken

place, once more, he reverts to the past continuous form in EL. The past continuous gives a sense

of the past, but also captures the YL sense of ongoing-ness or incompletion.

The YL renditions in (1b-4b) above elucidate what was going on in Tutuola’s mind when

he wrote those sentences. He was making his constructions in YL and then translating them into

EL15 Since in YL the incompletive adequately translates all the above temporal situations,

Tutuola therefore renders all of them in the past-progressive form in EL. The issue in YL is not

that of the time of the performance of the various activities involved, but rather their ongoing, or

incompletive, nature. The activities involved were not conclusive; they were still in the process

of taking place. What Tutuola does, both here and elsewhere, is what Young captures so well in

the following passage:

Alongside experiment runs writing drawing upon the indigenous languages

unconsciously because of the amount of European education the writer happened to

15
See Selinker 1969, Odumuh 1987, and Ubahakwe 1979, and Young 1971, for further elucidation on this.
PAC Postscript Ajani: Syntax and People

receive. Amos Tutuola is the best-known representative of this group … Tutuola …

perhaps sheds light on the complexity of the influence of indigenous languages, in this

case Yoruba, on the language of writing in English. He writes first in his own language

and himself translates it into English. This naturally has its effect on the language of his

works (Young 1971: 180).

The Habitual Aspect16

Coming at the heels of the incompletive aspect is the habitual, in terms of the frequency

of usage by Tutuola. This aspect is transferred by Tutuola 20% of the time, according to the data

(see Table 1 on page 4). The author uses this aspect to render into the past continuous, and

occasionally the past-perfect continuous tense in EL, although EL would normally use the past

simple, or its modal counterpart, “used to.”

Contexts Requiring the Modal Verb “Used to” or the simple past in EL

Like the other form of transfer discussed earlier, the data is replete with examples of the

past continuous being used in situations where EL would require the modal verb “used to” or the

simple past tense, as the case may be. Examples 6-10 below are a few of such instances: the YL

habitual aspect “máa n” adequately conveys the ideas being transmitted in these EL situations.

Tutuola’s English (TE)

(6) My father got eight children and I was the eldest among them, all of the rest were

hard workers, but I myself was an expert palm-wine drunkard. I was drinking palm-wine

from night till morning (Tutuola 1952:7)

Standard English (SE)

16
The habitual aspect describes an activity that was performed on a regular basis prior to the present, or is
continually performed on a regular basis. It refers to a habitual event or activity, either in a timeless or past frame of
reference. Thus, in the absence of the use of an adverb of time, it could have either a timeless or a past reference. For
example, “Mo máa n sisé” could either mean “I used to work” or simply “I work always, or habitually.”
PAC Postscript Ajani: Syntax and People

(6a) I was the eldest of my father’s eight children. Unlike me, my younger siblings were

all hard workers, I was an expert palm-wine drinker: I drank/used to drink palm-wine

from dusk to dawn.

TE

(7) I was seven years old before I understood the meaning of “bad” and “good”, because

it was at that time I noticed carefully that my father married three wives as they were

doing in those days, if it is not common nowadays (Tutuola 1954:17).

SE

(7a) I was seven years old before I understood the meaning of the words “bad” and

“good,” because it was then that it became clear to me that my father had married three

wives as people did/used to do (or better still “as it was customary”) in those days,

although this is no longer common today.

TE

(8) Immediately I held the cudgel and I was expecting him to come down as he was doing

before. A few minutes after that he did not hear the sound of my “shakabullah” gun

again, he flew down (Tutuola 1957:39).

SE

(8a) Immediately, I held the whip and was expecting him to come down as he used to do

in the past. A few minutes after that he rushed down when he did not hear the sound of

my rusty old gun any more.

TE

(9) It was in this town I saw that they had an “Exhibition of Smells”. All the ghosts of

this town and environs were assembling yearly and having a special “Exhibition of
PAC Postscript Ajani: Syntax and People

Smells” and the highest prizes were given to one who had the worst smells and would be

recognized as a king since that day (Tutuola 1954: 35).

SE

(9a) It was in this town that I observed that they had an “Exhibition of Smells.” All the

ghosts of the town and its surrounding areas assembled yearly for a special “Exhibition of

Smells” and the highest prizes were given to the ghost with the worst smell. The winner

was recognized as king from that day on.

TE

(10) The market day was fixed for every 5th day and the whole people of that town and

also spirits and curious creatures from various bushes and forests were coming to this

market every 5th day to sell or buy articles (Tutuola 1953 17).

SE

(10a) The market day was fixed for every fifth day and all the people from this town,

including spirits and curious creatures from various bushes and forests came to this

market every fifth day to buy or sell their wares.

In sentence 6, Tutuola uses was drinking where standard EL would have called for the past

simple “drank” or “used to drink,” thus in standard EL the entire sentence (having made a few

other grammatical adjustments would look something like (6a) above. Likewise (7-10) will look

like (7a-10a). In all instances Tutuola is directly transferring the YL habitual aspect ‘máa n’ into

EL.

What we see here is that Tutuola is filtering his English through his mother tongue (L1),

the Yoruba language, to arrive at the unusual English he is now known for in all of his works17.

17
See Selinker 1972, and Agheyisi 1977 for further discussion on interlanguage, and language interlarding
respectively.
PAC Postscript Ajani: Syntax and People

Thus, his language is deeply affected by the deep structure of the language of his people. But it

isn’t just his language that is affected by his L1; even his thought system and the type of stories

he tells and the way he tells them have all been affected by his people.

Conclusion

Tutuola’s story shows how Yoruba has contributed to the way English is used in the

Nigerian context. There are, of course, many other ways in which Tutuola’s mother tongue has

influenced his English, such as the omission of certain obligatory elements, like determiners and

modifiers, in the noun phrase (NP). This paper focuses on just one element of his syntax—the

verb phrase, specifically the transfer of Yoruba aspectual system. The implication of this study is

that whenever two or more languages, peoples, or cultures intersect they are bound to exert

mutual influences on one another.

Amos Tutuola was just used to exemplify the phenomenon of language and culture

contact that is so much a reality of our time. We see this at the nexus of the contact between

populations of people all over the world. As a result, today we speak of new “Englishes,” patois,

pidgins and creoles; code switching and code mixing, all of which demonstrate varying degrees

of language and culture contact and impact. Through Tutuola’s works and language, we see

evidence of how one’s background—people, language, culture, customs, etc.—can deeply

influence the way we interact and work with other languages and cultures. Tutuola was able to

bring the knowledge of his own people to bear upon the English of his writing. In so doing, he

has successfully merged his experiences, grounded among the Yoruba of West Africa, with the

colonial language that was bequeathed to him by the British. Writers like Tutuola continue to

remind, and show us, how the face of the English language is in constant flux as it keeps on

adapting to different people and climes around the globe.

PAC Postscript Ajani: Syntax and People

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