Multilingual language use and creole formation: The case of property items in early Sranan
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.4314/gjl.v1i2.40Keywords:
Multilingual language use, creole formation, property items, SrananAbstract
This paper sets up a comparison between the use of property concept items in a creole language and in the languages that contributed to the creole’s emergence. The comparison is extended with equivalent constructions in a different outcome of language mixture, namely codeswitching mode, in order to advance our understanding of the role of language transfer in creole formation. While the type of language transfer that is observed in codewitching mode differs from the type of transfer typically found in creole formation, that is recipient language agentivity and source language agentivity respectively, it is shown in this paper that the Surinamese creole Sranan Tongo displayed both types of transfer in the early stages of its development, which underlines the slow nativization of this particular creole.
References
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Winford, Donald, 1997. Property items and predication in Sranan. Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages 12.2: 237-301.
Winford, Donald, 2000. Tense and aspect in Sranan and the creole prototype. In J. McWhorter, ed., Language Change and Language Contact in Pidgins and Creoles. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. 383-442.
Winford, Donald, 2005. Contact-induced changes: classification and processes. Diachronica 22.2: 373-427.
Winford, Donald, 2007. Some issues in the study of language contact. Journal of Language Contact Thema 1, 22-39.
Winford, Donald, 2008. Process of creole formation and related contact-induced language change. Journal of Language Contact Thema 2: 124-145.
Winford, Donald, 2009. On the unity of contact phenomena: the case of borrowing. In Kees de Bot, Ludmila Isurin and Donald Winford, eds., Multidisciplinary Perspectives on Code-switching. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. 279-305.
Amuzu, Evershed K., 2004. Ewe-English Codeswitching: A case of Composite rather than Classic Codeswitching. PhD dissertation. Australian National University, Canberra.
Amuzu, Evershed K., 2005. Revisiting the classic codeswitching-composite codeswitching distinction: a case study of nonverbal predication in Ewe-English codeswitching. Australian Journal of Linguistics 25.1: 127-151.
Ameka, Felix, 1991. Ewe: Its Grammatical Constructions and Illocutionary Devices. Doctoral dissertation, Australian National University.
Arends, Jacques, 1989. Syntactic developments in Sranan: Creolization as a gradual process. Unpublished PhD dissertation, University of Nijmegen.
Arends, Jacques, 1995a. Introduction to Part I. In Jacques Arends and Matthias Perl eds., Early Suriname Creole texts: A collection of 18th-century Sranan and Saramaccan documents, 11-71. Frankfurt/Madrid: Vervuert.
Arends, Jacques, 1995b. Demographic factors in the formation of Sranan. In Jacques Arends, ed., The Early Stages of Creolization. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. 233-285.
van den Berg, Margot, 2007. A Grammar of Early Sranan. Manta: Zetten [PhD Dissertation, University of Amsterdam]
van den Berg, Margot & Jacques Arends, 2004. Court records as a source of authentic early Sranan. In Genevieve Escure and Armin Schwegler (eds.) Creoles, Contact, and Language Change. Amsterdam: Benjamins. 21–34.
Bruyn, Adriënne, 1995. Grammaticalization in Creoles: The Development of Determiners and Relative Clauses in Sranan. Studies in Language and Language Use, vol. 21. Amsterdam: IFOTT [PhD. Dissertation, University of Amsterdam].
van Coetsem, Frans 1988. Loan Phonology and the Two Transfer Types in Language Contact. Dordrecht: Foris.
van Coetsem, Frans, 2000. A General and Unified Theory of the Transmission Process in Language ontact. Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag, C. Winter.
Dixon, R. M. W., 1977. Where have all the adjectives gone? Studies in Language 1: 19–80.
Essegbey, James, 1999. Inherent Complement Verbs in Ewe: towards an understanding of argument structure in Ewe. PhD dissertation, University of Leiden. (MPI Dissertation Series)
Essizewa, Komlan E., 2006. A sociolinguistic survey of language contact in Togo: A case study of Kabiye and Ewe. The Journal of West African Languages 33.1: 35-51.
Essizewa, E. Komlan, 2007a. Language contact phenomena in Togo: case study of Kabiye-Ewe code-switching. In Doris Payne and Jaime Pe–a (eds.), Selected Proceedings of the 37th Annual Conference on African Linguistics. Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Proceedings Project. 30-42.
Essizewa, E. Komlan, 2007b. Sociolinguistic Aspects of Kabiye-Ewe Bilingualism in Togo. PhD Dissertation, New York University.
Huttar, George L. and Mary L. Huttar, 1994. Ndyuka. London: Routledge
Huttar, George L. and Mary. L. Huttar, 1999. Reduplication in Ndyuka. In Arthur Spears and Don Winford (1999) The Structure and Status of Pidgins and Creoles. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. 395-414.
Lupyan G. and R. Dale, 2010. Language structure is partly determined by social structure. In PLoS ONE 5.1: e8559. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0008559
Meechan, Marjory and Shana Poplack, 1995. Orphan categories in bilingual discourse: A comparative study of adjectivization strategies in Wolof/French and Fongbe/French. Language Variation and Change 7.2: 169-194.
Migge, Bettina, 2000. The origin of property items in the Surinamese Plantation Creole. In John McWhorter, ed., Language Change and Language Contact in Pidgins and Creoles. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. 201-234.
Migge, Bettina, 2003. Creole Formation as Language Contact: The Case of the Suriname Creoles. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Migge, Bettina and Margot van den Berg, 2009. Creole learner varieties in the past and in the present: implications for creole development. Language, Interaction and Acquisition 1.1: 253-282.
Roberts, Sarah, 2000. Nativization and the genesis of Hawaiian Creole. In J. H. McWhorter, ed., Language Change and Language Contact in Pidgins and Creoles. Amsterdam: Benjamins. 257-300
Sebba, Mark, 1986. Adjectives and copulas in Sranan Tongo. Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages 1.1: 109-121.
Siegel, Jeff, 2008. The Emergence of Pidgin and Creole Languages. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Seuren, Pieter, 1981. Tense and Aspect in Sranan. Linguistics 19: 1043-76.
Smith, Norval, 1987. The genesis of the Creole Languages of Suriname. PhD Dissertation, University of Amsterdam.
Thompson, Sandra, 1988. A discourse approach to the cross-linguistic category “adjective”. In John A. Hawkins, ed., Explaining Language Universals. Oxford: Blackwell. 167-85.
Thompson, Sandra, 2004. Property concepts. In Geert Booij, Christian Lehmann, Joachim Mugdan, Stavros Skopeteas and Wolfgang Kesselheim, eds., Morphology. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. 1111-1117.
Winford, Donald, 1997. Property items and predication in Sranan. Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages 12.2: 237-301.
Winford, Donald, 2000. Tense and aspect in Sranan and the creole prototype. In J. McWhorter, ed., Language Change and Language Contact in Pidgins and Creoles. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. 383-442.
Winford, Donald, 2005. Contact-induced changes: classification and processes. Diachronica 22.2: 373-427.
Winford, Donald, 2007. Some issues in the study of language contact. Journal of Language Contact Thema 1, 22-39.
Winford, Donald, 2008. Process of creole formation and related contact-induced language change. Journal of Language Contact Thema 2: 124-145.
Winford, Donald, 2009. On the unity of contact phenomena: the case of borrowing. In Kees de Bot, Ludmila Isurin and Donald Winford, eds., Multidisciplinary Perspectives on Code-switching. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. 279-305.
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Published
12/01/2012
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Berg, M. van den. (2012). Multilingual language use and creole formation: The case of property items in early Sranan. Ghana Journal of Linguistics, 1(2), 23–42. https://doi.org/10.4314/gjl.v1i2.40
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