The Early Stages of Creolization
1st Edition
Published on 1. January 1996
XVI, 297 pages
978-90-272-7619-3 (ISBN)
Description
This volume brings together a number of studies on the early stages of creolization which are entirely based on historical data. The recent (re)discovery of early documents written in creole languages such as Negerhollands, Bajan, and Sranan, allows for a detailed and empirically founded reconstruction of creolization as an historical-linguistic process. In addition, demographic and socio-historical evidence on some of the relevant former colonies, such as Surinam, Haiti, and Martinique, sheds new light on some crucial sociolinguistic aspects of creolization, such as the rate of nativization of the creole-speaking population. Both types of evidence relate to essential questions in the theory of creolization, such as: Is creolization a matter of first or second language acquisition? What are the respective roles of substrate, superstrate, and universal grammar in creole genesis? And, what, if any, are the differences between creole development and normal language change?
The subjects discussed in this volume include: a comparative study of the historical development of seven pidgins and creoles (Baker); reflexives in 18th-century Negerhollands (Van der Voort & Muysken); the emergence of taki as a complementizer in Sranan (Plag); the historical development of relativization in Sranan (Bruyn); the cultural and demographic background of creolization in Haiti and Martinique (Singler); the creole nature of early Bajan (Field); a linguistic analysis of the so-called 'slave letters' in Negerhollands (Stein); and demographic factors in the formation of Sranan (Arends).
The subjects discussed in this volume include: a comparative study of the historical development of seven pidgins and creoles (Baker); reflexives in 18th-century Negerhollands (Van der Voort & Muysken); the emergence of taki as a complementizer in Sranan (Plag); the historical development of relativization in Sranan (Bruyn); the cultural and demographic background of creolization in Haiti and Martinique (Singler); the creole nature of early Bajan (Field); a linguistic analysis of the so-called 'slave letters' in Negerhollands (Stein); and demographic factors in the formation of Sranan (Arends).
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Content
- THE EARLY STAGES OF CREOLIZATION
- Editorial page
- Title page
- Copyright page
- Table of contents
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- References
- Some Developmental Inferences from Historical Studies of Pidgins and Creoles
- 1. Introduction
- 2. Comparative dating of selected features
- 3. Comparison of development rates
- 4. Definitions of 'pidgin' and 'creole'
- Notes
- References
- Eighteenth-Century Negerhollands Reflexives Revisited
- 1. Introduction
- 2. Sources
- 3. Analysis
- 4. Findings
- 4.1 The distribution of sie as a third-person reflexive
- 4.2 The distribution and grammaticalization of selv
- 4.3 The syntactic distribution of reflexive forms in 18th-century Negerhollands
- 5. Concluding remarks
- Acknowledgements
- Note
- References
- Early Creole Writing and its Effects on the Discovery of Creole Language StructureThe Case of Eighteenth-Century Negerholland
- 1. Introduction
- 2. Some features of early written Negerhollands
- 3. The language of the Slave Letters
- 4. Some morphosyntactic phenomena in the Slave Letters
- 4.1 Preverbal particles
- 4.2 Plural marking
- 4.3 The adverb moeschi
- 5. Discussion
- 6. Conclusion
- Notes
- References
- The Negerhollands Word sender in Eighteenth-Century Manuscripts
- 1. Introduction
- 1.1 Origin
- 1.2 Structural aspects
- 1.2.1 Grammatical functions
- 1.2.2 Phonetic/phonological variants
- 1.3 Statistical aspects and methodological considerations
- 2. More on the grammatical functions
- 2.1 Grammatical functions of sender
- 2.2 Origin and grammatical nature of die sender
- 3. Method
- 3.1 Material
- 3.2 Quantitative analysis
- 3.3 Variation
- 4. Findings
- 5. Conclusion, discussion and some issues for further research
- Notes
- References
- Early Bajan: Creole or Non-Creole?
- 1. Introduction
- 2. Basilectal creole features found in the early texts
- 3. Conclusion
- Notes
- References
- The Emergence of taki as a Complementizer in Sranan: On Substrate Influence, Universals, and Gradual Creolization
- 1. Introduction
- 2. The grammaticalization continuum of taki
- 3. The data
- 3.1 Introduction
- 3.2 The quantity problem
- 3.3 The quality problem
- 3.4 The sources
- 3.4.1 Mid 18th century: Van Dyk (1765)
- 3.4.2 Late 18th century: Schumann (1781, 1783) and Weygandt (1798)
- 3.4.3 Mid 19th century: Grammatik (1854), Pocke (1855), and Wullschlägel (1856)
- 3.4.4 Late 19th century: King (1865, 1893) and Kraag (1894-96)
- 4. The analysis
- 4.1 Mid 18th century: Van Dyk
- 4.2 Late 18th century: Schumann
- 4.2.1 Schumann's Bible translation (1781:4-51)
- 4.2.2 Schumann's dictionary
- 4.2.3 Weygandt's language manual
- 4.3 Mid 19th century: Focke, Wullschlägel, and Grammatik
- 4.3.1 Grammatik (1854)
- 4.3.2 Focke (1855)
- 4.3.3 Wullschlägel (1856)
- 4.3.4 Summary and evaluation: the 1850s
- 4.4 King (1865, 1893)
- 4.5 Kraag (1894-96)
- 4.6 The emergence of complementizer taki: A scenario
- 5. Theoretical implications
- 5.1 Substratum or universals?
- 5.2 Taki: evidence for the gradual creolization of Sranan?
- Notes
- References
- Relative Clauses in Early Sranan
- 1. Introduction
- 2. The sources
- 3. Zero-marked relative clauses
- 4. Relative clauses marked with disi
- 4.1 The origins of relative disi
- 4.2 The embeddedness of relative clauses marked with disi
- 4.3 The syntactic role of the relativized NP and the status of the relativizer disi
- 5. Concluding remarks
- Notes
- References
- The Demographics of Creole Genesis in the Caribbean A: Comparison of Martinique and Haiti
- 1. Introduction
- 2. Pre-sugar and sugar
- 3. The demographics of the early years
- 3.1 The population of color
- 3.2 Sex ratio
- 3.3 The number of children
- 4. Conclusions
- Notes
- References
- Demographic Factors in the Formation of Sranan
- 1. Introduction
- 2. The English exodus
- 3. Demographics of the Surinam slave trade
- 3.1 Ethnolinguistic origins
- 3.2 Age and sex distribution
- 4. Demographic developments in Surinam
- 4.1 Africans and Europeans
- 4.2 Rate of nativization
- 5. Summary and conclusion
- Notes
- References
- Notes to the Appendices
- Author Index
- Subject Index
