You've heard of Kaaps, but what about Paarl-Kaaps?
A new study is spotlighting Paarl-Kaaps, revealing how this overlooked variety of Kaaps is used not just for communication, but for shaping identity.
Photo: Flickr/Vaughanoblapski!
John Maytham is joined by Dr. Erin Pretorius, Lecturer in the Department of Linguistics at the University of the Western Cape (UWC)
Listen below:
Paarl-Kaaps - a colloquial variety of Kaaps spoken in coloured communities of the Western Cape has long flown under the radar in linguistic circles.
But a groundbreaking new study is pulling it into the spotlight.
Research, conducted by Lawren Hayley Smith at the University of the Western Cape, explores how speakers of Paarl-Kaaps use something called extraposition — not just for grammatical clarity, but as a tool for identity-making.
Pretorius explains what it is:
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"It's about taking a group of words that, in the neutral word order that group of words would be inside the sentence - speakers [of Paarl-Kaaps] sometimes choose to move that all the way to the sentence."
- Dr. Erin Pretorius, Lecturer in the Department of Linguistics - University of the Western Cape (UWC)
Pretorious says the study was about trying to understand why a speaker would move a group of words from the middle of a sentence to the end of a sentence.
"There isn't a difference in meaning, whether you have the group in the middle or at the end of the sentence, this is why we talk about optionality in the structure of the language - so the speaker gets to decide."
- Dr. Erin Pretorius, Lecturer in the Department of Linguistics - University of the Western Cape (UWC)
"Because there isn't a notable difference in the meaning, the question is why does the speaker do it?"
- Dr. Erin Pretorius, Lecturer in the Department of Linguistics - University of the Western Cape (UWC)
While the reasons for extraposition are several fold, Pretorius says one of the key ones, revealed in the research is to allow the speaker to situate themselves in the conversation.
"To manage the conversation with the person they were speaking to and it kind of portrays their persona in the conversation relative to the other person, so there was a social interaction dynamic to it as well."
- Dr. Erin Pretorius, Lecturer in the Department of Linguistics - University of the Western Cape (UWC)
Want to learn more about Paarl-Kaaps? Scroll up to the audio player above to listen to the full conversation.