Locative constructions and the genealogical differentiation of the Afro-Caribbean English-lexifier Creoles

This talk aims to provide a typologically informed comparative analysis of locative constructions in the African and the Caribbean branches of the Afro-Caribbean Englishlexifier Creoles (henceforth AECs). The analysis is based on primary data collected in West Africa (Ghana, Nigeria, Cameroon, Equatorial Guinea), and the Caribbean (Jamaica, Barbados, Trinidad and Tobago, Suriname). A second objective is to account for the genealogical differentiation of this young linguistic family that arose in the 17th century (cf. e.g. Hancock 1987; Smith 2015) by focusing on a specific functional domain: There are marked typological differences in the way spatial relations are expressed between (a) the attested African substrates and adstrates of the AECs (chiefly languages of the Volta-Congo linguistic phylum of Africa), and (b) the AECs’ lexifier language English. The following points summarize the distinctive characteristics …postprin

Dutch in Suriname: an agent of language change

Dutch has been present in Suriname since the mid 17th century. Historical records show that the language was not only used by Dutch colonists and free Africans but also by enslaved Africans from the very beginning of its implantation in Suriname. In the course of its history in the country, Dutch has been an agent of change for the languages of Suriname. At the same time, it has itself been transformed. In my talk, I focus on the former role of Dutch. The most striking consequence of contact between Dutch and the creole language Sranan Tongo is the temporal layering of contact outcomes: Historically early adstratal transfers of Dutch linguistic material into Sranan Tongo are chiefly lexical in nature and are phonologically adapted (e.g. skrifi < ‘schrijven’ ). With the functional expansion of Dutch in Suriname in the 20th and 21st century came its transformation from an elitist medium of communication with roots in the colonial past to its large-scale appropriation as an autochthonous language by the Surinamese population. This is reflected in the increasing lexical and structural influence of Dutch on the languages of Suriname. Presently it appears that Dutch influence on the languages of Suriname is at least as important in dimension as that of Sranan Tongo. A number of socio-political and economic factors have accelerated the influence of Dutch since the independence of Suriname in 1975. The most important factor is increased mobility, both in people, and in cultural and economic goods: Circular migration between Suriname and the Netherlands and between the interior of Suriname and the coast has dramatically increased exposure to Dutch, so has exposure to popular media via internet, TV and music. Conversational interactions in Suriname are characterized by intensive code-mixing involving Dutch and Sranan Tongo, and often a third language, with constant shifts in the base language, back-and-forth calquing, extensive lexical and structural borrowing, and creative adaptations.postprin

Jacques Rongier - Dictionnaire éwé-français

Ewe has been the subject of some of the earliest work in African linguistics, it is one of the largest languages in the West African littoral zone between Senegal and Nigeria, is an important regional language in Ghana, and is the most widely spoken language of Togo. Jacques Rongier’s monumental and comprehensive Dictionnaire éwé-français complements his Dictionnaire français-éwé which appeared twenty years earlier (1995). The Dictionnaire éwé-français is even more ambitious in scope.published_or_final_versio

Archetypal areal features in the African English-lexifier Creoles

It seems natural that the languages belonging to the African branch of the family of Afro-Caribbean English-lexifier Creoles and extended Pidgins (AECs) should form part of the convergence movement that typifies the greater West African linguistic area. In this paper, I will focus on several features to show that adstrate transfer from African languages due to widespread multilingualism as well as substrate transfer through language shift to creoles and extended pidgins has indeed been leaving traces in the linguistic systems of the creoles and pidgins. I argue that the AECs, despite them being largely neglected in the discussion, are of great value in the quest to identify cross-cutting areal features in West Africa. The heterogenous origins of these languages from genetically disparate African source languages means that ...postprin

Exploring language in a multilingual context. Variation, interaction and ideology in language documentation. By Bettina Migge and Isabelle Léglise

Book review of Bettina Migge & Isabelle Léglise. Exploring language in a multilingual context : variation, interaction and ideology in language documentation. New York : Cambridge University Press, 2013Bettina Migge and Isabelle Léglise’s monograph Exploring Language in a Multilingual Context sheds light onto recent developments in the English-lexified creole languages of Surinamese origin spoken in western French Guiana, i.e. Eastern Maroon (a cover term for the mutually intelligible varieties Aluku, Ndyuka, and Pamaka), Saamaka (also referred to as Saramaka/Saramaca), and Sranan Tongo. This book makes fascinating reading for linguists and social anthropologists interested in linguistic and cultural hybridization in linguistically, culturally, and socially complex (post-)colonial societies. It is also an important contribution to the study of the languages of Suriname and French Guiana. So far, most of the available linguistic literature on the latter country is in French, and often published with smaller, specialized publishers (for an overview of the linguistic situation in Guiana, see e.g. Renault-Lescure & Goury 2009; Vernaudon & Fillol 2009). The book anticipates the publication of two other works (in which the two authors are involved as editors and/or contributors) that also look at the languages of Suriname from a more multidisciplinary perspective. One spans social geography, linguistics, social anthropology and politics (Carlin et al. 2014), the other examines developments in the non-creole languages of the region in addition to the creole languages, e.g. Sarnami, Javanese, Lokono, Hakka, Dutch (Yakpo & Muysken, in prep.).postprin

Wayward daughter: Language contact in the emergence of Pichi (Equatorial Guinea)

Pichi is an Afro-Caribbean English Lexifier Creole spoken by some 150’000 people on the island of Bioko, Equatorial Guinea. Pichi is an offshoot of Krio (Sierra Leone) and shares many characteristics with its West African sister languages. However, insulation from English and Krio, extensive contact and hybridization with Spanish, language shift involving the Bantu language Bubi, as well as koineization through the prolonged coexistence of Pichi with closely-related languages like Nigerian Pidgin and Cameroonian Pidgin have given the language a character distinct from that of the other English Lexifier creoles of the region. The study of Pichi and its comparison with other West African AECs therefore offers fresh insights into the role that language contact has played in the differentiation of the Afro-Caribbean English lexifier Creoles.published_or_final_versio

Romancing with tone: Prosodic systems in language contact

The 2017 summer meeting of the Society for Pidgin and Creole Linguistics, jointly sponsored and organised by the University of Tampere and the University of Turku.There is a widespread tendency to see tone as a crosslinguistically marked feature that either gets lost or is “reduced” in language contact (e.g. McWhorter 2001). This view is Eurocentric. It suggests that stress, which happens to prevail in Europe, is a norm towards which contact varieties (pidgins, creoles, transplanted languages, etc.) converge. It is unempirical because the evidence suggests otherwise. We propose an alternative view based on two hypotheses: (1) Contact varieties develop lexical tone or stress, in accordance with the dominant type in their respective ecologies. What needs to be explained are the exceptions, e.g. why do some contact languages feature stress in spite of predominantly tonal substrates/adstrates? (2) The tonal systems that emerge in contact varieties will reflect the possibilities and limitations of stress-to-tone mapping. Tonal contrasts might therefore appear to be more predictable than those of other languages in the ecology. The analysis of a corpus of primary field data in the African Romance varieties of Central African French (CAF) and Equatorial Guinean Spanish (EGS) suggests that they are lexical tone languages (e.g. Bordal Steien 2012). CAF and EGS differ from their “intonation-only” (i.e. “stress”; cf. Gussenhoven 2004) siblings European Standard Spanish (ESS) and French (ESF) in significant ways: Every syllable in CAF and EGS bears a low or high tone and we find tonal minimal pairs; a lexical tone may not be altered for pragmatic purposes; only utterance-final boundary tones fulfil the functions associated with intonational melodies in ESS and ESF. The opposition between stressed and unstressed is converted into a two-tone distinction and the largely phonotactic conditioning of stress assignment in individual words translates into equally “predictable” H tone placement in the contact variety. We propose a dynamic model for the development of prosodic systems during contact in accordance with the nature of the ecology: Tone systems emerge through similar mechanisms as in CAF and EGS in tonal ecologies. Intonation-only systems are, in contrast, found in ecologies where tonal languages played no, or a minor part (e.g. Cape Verdean Creole). In Afro-European and Euro-Asian creoles, the intensity and duration of contact with the non-tonal superstrate on the one hand, and with tonal substrates and adstrates on the other indicates whether a tonal prosodic system emerges or survives. Continuous contact with African adstrates has ensured the retention of such systems in African contact languages (e.g. the West African English-lexifier Creoles, CAF, EGS, Ghanaian and Nigerian Standard English, as well as all Niger-Congo- lexicon creoles, e.g. Criper-Friedman 1990; Yakpo 2009; Gussenhoven & Udofot 2010). Lack of contact with African tonal adstrates and simultaneous intense contact with a non-tonal superstrate has led to (the abandonment of tone systems and) emergence of intonation only systems (e.g. Jamaican, Haitian). Languages without contact with African tonal adstrates that have for a long time been isolated from non- tonal superstrates can however retain tonal systems under specific circumstances (e.g. Saramaccan and Ndyuka).postprin

Kindred spirits? An investigation into convergence between Sarnami and Sranan in Suriname

Conference Theme: Caribbean Languages and Popular CultureSession 7: Panel 7B - Syntax 1: no. 42Suriname is known among creolists for an unusually high number of Creole languages, amongst them Sranan and the numerous Maroon Creoles, notably Saramaka and Ndyuka. However, Suriname is characterised by an even more complex contact scenario which involves multiple convergence processes. This process appears to be driven by the emergence of Sranan as a multi-ethnic vernacular diasystem (cf. eg. Charry et al. 1983) and is fed into by various overlapping and mutually reinforcing contact processes. Sarnami, the community language of the Indian-descended population of Suriname is a cornerstone in this contact scenario (cf. Marhé 1985). While it has retained its status as a primarily ...published_or_final_versio

The Javanese language in Suriname: Explorations in language contact and change

Session: Outre-mer and Out Group JavaneseThe Javanese language established itself in Suriname during the Dutch colonial labor trade. Altogether, a total of about 30’000 labourers were brought to the South American nation between1890 and 1939 (Bersselaar, Ketelaars and Dalhuisen 1991). According to Surinamese census data (2004) Javanese is presently used by about 10% of the population. Javanese is spoken within a complex pattern of multilingualism and codeswitching typical for all linguistic communities of Suriname. This pattern includes the dominance of Dutch, the country’s official language in often more formal domains, the dominance of the English- based creole Sranan in mid-formal and informal domains, and languages like Javanese, Hakka and Sarnami (Hindustani) largely used as in-group languages by specific ethno- linguistic communities. This talk addresses the effects that a century of extensive multilingualism in typologically highly diverse languages have had on Javanese in Suriname. The analyses rely on field data collected with a unified methodology in Suriname in 2011-12 as part of the “Traces of Contact” at the Centre for Language Studies at Radboud University Nijmegen. The corpus contains recordings of eight Surinamese languages including Surinamese Javanese. Comparative data has been gathered for Java Javanese. Changes in Javanese Surinamese that have already been documented are the erosion of the formal, ‘high’ registers of speech and the corresponding abandonment of the complex system of honorificity (Wolfowitz 2002) as well as extensive lexical borrowing from Sranan and Dutch (e.g. Gobardhan-Rambocus and Sarmo 1993). The focus of our research are yet undescribed contact effects in the domains of argument realization and the expression of tense, mood and aspect. The analyses are still ongoing and this paper will present first findings. The linguistic effects of language shift will also be addressed in this paper. Our data has also revealed that Javanese is losing ground to Sranan Tongo (in working and lower middle class families) and Dutch (in lower and upper middle class families) as the home language of first choice amongst Javanese Surinamese. As a consequence, the speech of many younger speakers (roughly below 25 years) shows signs of attrition including lexical retrieval difficulties in narrative or elicitation tasks, frequent hesitation and the use of repair strategies and morphological simplification.published_or_final_versio

A computational simulation of the genesis and spread of lexical items in situations of abrupt language contact

The current study presents an agent-based model which simulates the innovation and competition among lexical items in cases of language contact. It is inspired by relatively recent historical cases in which the linguistic ecology and sociohistorical context are highly complex. Pidgin and creole genesis offers an opportunity to obtain linguistic facts, social dynamics, and historical demography in a highly segregated society. This provides a solid ground for researching the interaction of populations with different pre-existing language systems, and how different factors contribute to the genesis of the lexicon of a newly generated mixed language. We take into consideration the population dynamics and structures, as well as a distribution of word frequencies related to language use, in order to study how social factors may affect the developmental trajectory of languages. Focusing on the case of Sranan in Suriname, our study shows that it is possible to account for the composition of its core lexicon in relation to different social groups, contact patterns, and large population movements