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Timothy Ajani, "Syntax and People: How Amos Tutuola's English Was Shaped by His People"
Timothy Ajani, "Syntax and People: How Amos Tutuola's English Was Shaped by His People"
Timothy Ajani
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
Methodology
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
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
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language of his native country. Thus, like many other children of his time, he had to go to school
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
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
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and later joined the British Royal Air Force at age 22, working as a coppersmith (Ajani 2001,
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
The English used in West Africa reveals in varying degrees vernacular influences at the
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
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examples of the influences of the aspectual system of the Yoruba language. The rest of this paper
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
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
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
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
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
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.
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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.
As mentioned earlier, Tutuola appears to transfer the incompletive aspect far more than
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.
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
(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
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
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.
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(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
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
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
past continuous tenses, as context dictates. In the Yoruba mind, all that matters is that the state of
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
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
13
3rd person singular subject pronoun
14
Plural
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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
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
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
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
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
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.
(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
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.”
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(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
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
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,
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
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
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
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Smells” and the highest prizes were given to one who had the worst smells and would be
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
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
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.
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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
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
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
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