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Syntactic Developments in Sranan (1989)

Syntactic Developments in Sranan

(1989)–Jacques Arends–rechtenstatus Auteursrechtelijk beschermd

Creolization as a Gradual Process


Vorige Volgende

Part I: Analysis

Chapter one: Introduction

1.1. Background

In a sense the ‘prehistory’ of this dissertation goes back as far as 1961, when Jan Voorhoeve, the godfather of Sranan studies, wrote that ‘in Surinam we have the unique opportunity to make a study of the process of creolization in its later development.’ (Voorhoeve 1961: 100). This, as far as syntax is concerned, is precisely what the present study is about. It is an investigation of syntactic developments during the 200 years after the first (largely undocumented) century in the history of Sranan (roughly 1750 to 1950). The ‘unique opportunity’ referred to above is given by the fact that many written documents are available, dating back to the latter part of the 18th century.

Among these documents is the famous Neger-Englisches Wörter-Buch by the Moravian missionary C.L. Schumann from 1783 - a treasure of early Creole lexicography - of which a scientific edition was prepared under Voorhoeve's supervision by André Kramp (Kramp 1983). In fact, the quality of the material collected by Schumann provided the impetus for these two authors to write their seminal paper on Syntactic Developments in Sranan (Voorhoeve & Kramp 1982), which produced the preliminary data necessary to design the project of which this dissertation is the result. These findings made it very clear that an in-depth study of syntactic change in Sranan would prove to be rewarding. It is within this context that the present work should be seen as a continuation of a tradition, whose first and foremost inspiration is the person of Jan Voorhoeve.

Of course, the Schumann dictionary is not the only source for historical data on Sranan, but it is one of the oldest and certainly one of the best. For a study of syntactic change, however, the comparison of only one 18th century source with the modern variety will not do, for several reasons. First, changes in a period intermediate between these two that were levelled out soon afterwards (such as is partly the case with the rise of the de-variant for the identifying copula between 1800 and 1850 (see Chapter 2 for details)) would go unnoticed. Second, it would seem wise not to depend on only one source in order to avoid possible idiosyncrasies, misunderstandings or plain errors on the part of the author. Third, the excellent quality of some other sources besides Schumann, such as Focke's 1855 and Wullschlägel's 1856 dictionaries and the Herskovitses' collection of folk-tales from 1936, would turn their exclusion into a missed opportunity. Finally, a number of sources were added in order to spread our data as much as possible over the entire period under study, and some others to include as many native speaker texts as were available.

The period to be investigated was determined as ranging roughly from the middle of the 18th to the middle of the 20th

centuries. Two remarks are in order here, one concerning the starting point and one concerning the point of termination. As to the former, this was determined solely by the lack of data from the preceding period, with the exception of Herlein's sample text from 1718. For obvious reasons this text was included in the corpus, although the next one of any substance (apart from Nepveu's 1765 corrections of Herlein) to emerge dates from half a century later (Van Dyk c. 17701). It seems more realistic, then, to indicate the period under investigation as is done at the beginning of this paragraph than to give the impression that this study covers the entire period from 1718 onwards, including that between this year and 1765. As to the endpoint, that was determined at roughly 1950 in order to keep some distance from recent developments that have taken place, and still are taking place right now, since World War II. These developments, arising among other things from the fact that increasing numbers of speakers from other ethnic groups besides creoles2 (i.e. African descendants) have started to use the language as a lingua franca, deserve a separate study.

1.2. Short sketch of Sranan

Sranan (also called Sranan Tongo (Voorhoeve 1953), Taki-Taki (Hall 1948), Negro-English (Rens 1953) or Nengre (Tongo)) is an Anglophone creole language with a considerable admixture of African, Portuguese and Dutch vocabulary (Voorhoeve 1973). It is spoken in the capital (Paramaribo) and along the coastal strip of the Republic of Suriname3, which is located on the north-eastern coast of South America, between Guyana (formerly British Guiana) and the French département d'outremer of Guyane. The number of speakers is estimated at less than half a million, of whom approximately one third is now resident in the Netherlands. Sranan is the vernacular for most creoles (the official language being Dutch), and is used as a lingua franca by speakers from other ethnic groups, such as people of (British) Indian, Javanese and Chinese descent. For excellent, although somewhat outdated, bibliographical introductions to the language the reader is referred to Voorhoeve & Donicie (1963) and to the relevant section in Reinecke et al. (1975).

Besides Sranan several other creoles are spoken in

Suriname, mainly in the interior, by the so-called ‘bush negroes’, the descendants of the 17th and 18th century maroons (run-away slaves). Some of these are also English-based and mutually intelligible with Sranan, especially Ndjuka (also called Djuka or Aucan); others in this group include Boni (Aluku), Paramaccan and Kwinti. A different branch is formed by the Portuguese-based creoles called Saramaccan and Matawai, which are historically related to the others (see Smith 1987 for an intriguing exposition of this and related issues).

Sranan is supposed to have come into existence somewhere between 1650, the year of arrival of the first English-speaking colonists and their slaves from Barbados, and 1680, the year when all slaves purchased before 1667 (when Suriname was ceded to the Dutch) had left the colony (Voorhoeve & Lichtveld 1975; Voorhoeve 1983). This assumption is made by those who adhere to this view, since they see no other way of explaining the fact that the ‘new’ black arrivals from West Africa (imported after 1667) managed to continue an English-based language after the English- (or English pidgin/creole-) speaking input had been removed. The resemblances between the Maroon Spirit Possession Language of Jamaica, documented by Bilby (1983), and brought to the island by the British-owned slaves who had left Suriname after 1667, on the one hand, and Sranan on the other seem to corroborate this view. In this thesis a different view is developed, both on the basis of linguistic as well as non-linguistic evidence.

Sranan is (like most other creoles) a clear-cut SVO-language, in which all the properties characteristic of pan-Atlantic-Creole are present. It has an elaborate system of verb serialization, including a serial comparative construction (see Chapter 3; for an extensive discussion of serialization in Sranan see Sebba 1987); it has clefting, including predicate clefting (see Chapter 4); it has a finegrained copula system, including a zero copula with adjectival predicates (see Chapter 2). The verbal system, containing the well-known TMA particles, is aspect oriented, but perhaps changing into tense orientation (Seuren 1981; for a competent discussion of the verbal system as such see Voorhoeve 1957). It has a rigid word order and (almost) no inflection.

There is no comprehensive reference grammar available, but Donicie (1954; second edition 1959) probably comes closest. Although outdated now, it is a competent description of the most important structures in the language by someone who was linguistically informed and knew the language well. Voorhoeve (1962) is a professional syntax, but loses much of its attraction by its idiosyncratic framework and terminology. Much of it is available in a more accessible form in his 1957 article referred to above. Tense, aspect and the copula are discussed within a modern framework in Seuren (1981). The phonological history of Sranan and other creoles of Suriname (notably Saramaccan) is treated in Smith (1987). Echteld (1966) is a study of the English-based part of the

lexicon. The social history of the language has been investigated by Rens (1953); Voorhoeve (1973) is an interesting, but much debated (see, e.g., Smith 1987) exposition of the relexification hypothesis regarding the Suriname creoles. Of course, the Vorbericht to Schuchardt's edition of Schumann's 1778 Saramaccan dictionary (Schuchardt 1914) still stands out as the first modern linguistic treatment of Sranan as well as Saramaccan4.

1.3. Goals and method

The primary goal of this study is to document syntactic developments in Sranan by collecting data from as wide a period and as many sources as possible. This data (in the case of the copula a representative sample of it) is listed in Appendix B (Part Two). The second aim is to analyze the data by searching for explanations for the developments they show. Also, these findings are related to current theories of creolization (e.g. Bickerton's Language Bioprogram Hypothesis (LBH), see Bickerton 1981; 1984) and to the connected ‘universals versus substrata controversy’ (for a recent collection of papers on this topic see Muysken & Smith eds. 1986). Prominent defendants of the substratum hypothesis are Alleyne (1980) and Boretzky (1983).

In the form in which it is presented here, this dissertation is much more modest, especially in its coverage of different syntactic categories, than its author originally intended it to be. After a first perusal of the sources three more categories, besides the three discussed here, were selected for investigation: verb serialization, complementation with fu, and the TMA system. All three of them, on the basis of a preliminary analysis, proved to yield interesting results after an in-depth examination, but their inclusion would have been far too ambitious, given the method that was decided upon (see below) and the obvious limitations of time, inherent to a project like this. Still, it is with pain in the heart that I have left them out, but otherwise the dissertation would probably never have been finished.

The method, then, that necessitated this ‘amputation’ of the corpus, was to include each and every instance of a given category within (a fixed portion of) each source. Although I am well aware that diachronic syntax is possible without adherence to this principle, and, in fact, is practiced in this way more often than not, it seemed advisable in this particular case not to do without it. First, a major goal of this study is to make available hardly accessible data anyhow, so why not include them all? Second, and more important, the language has not been described from a

diachronic syntactic viewpoint as yet, so we don't know what to expect as to the amount and direction of change it has undergone. It would seem best then to stay on the safe side and include all data in order to get a realistic picture.

Thus, the results reported in this study ar fully based on quantitative data, although in two of the three cases the number of items is necessarily rather small. Where the number of copula-sentences is just below 1200, the ones for clefting and comparison are only around 250 and 200 respectively. In the latter case the actual situation is even worse, since the category of true comparatives (comparison of two NP's along some parameter) numbers only some 70 odd sentences. This problem cannot be avoided since these categories appear rather infrequently in texts, at least compared to copular sentences which are present on every page. Obviously, in cases like these, where the number of occurrences of a given category may be reduced to even 1 (as is indeed the case for the Allative Comparative; see Chapter 3), it becomes rather vacuous to speak about quantitative results. On the other hand, the emphasis put here on coverage of data is not entirely without importance either. For a historically poorly documented language like Sranan it greatly increases the reliability of the data: without the pursuit of complete coverage the single, but very interesting occurrence of the Allative Comparative referred to above would probably have gone unnoticed.

Finally, a word or two will have to be said on theory. Although I am aware that diachronic syntax does not operate in a theoretical vacuum (cf. for instance Lightfoot 1979, where one particular theory of syntax, Chomsky's Extended Standard Theory, is taken as the framework within which syntactic change is studied), I prefer not to commit myself to any theoretical bias as far as this dissertation is concerned. First, its aim, as explained earlier, is largely descriptive, and, second, it is consciously and literally ‘pre-theoretical’ in the sense that it is intended as a Fundgrube precisely for theoreticians, on which to build (or destroy, for that matter) their theories.

1.4. Hypotheses about creolization

There is one predominant feature of creole languages, regardless of where they have arisen and from which superstrate language they have derived their lexicon, and that is their conspicuous structural similarity. This has intrigued observers from the very beginning and led them to propose all kinds of hypotheses to explain these similarities. (Excellent overviews can be found in DeCamp 1971, 1977; more recent surveys are contained in Mühlhäusler 1986, Holm 1988 and Romaine 1988). The most recent and most interesting among these theories are the monogenesis/relexification-hypothesis (Thompson 1961; for Sranan Voorhoeve 1973), the Language Bioprogram Hypothesis

(Bickerton 1974, 1977, 1981, 1984) and the substratum hypothesis (Alleyne 1980; Boretzky 1983). In the heat of the battle between the latter two the former, which claims a single historical origin for all pidgins and creoles, having later relexified to different superstrate languages, has disappeared from the picture somewhat, but it has found a new advocate (as far as relexification is concerned) in Smith (1987) for the case of Saramaccan. Apart from this work the hypothesis remains largely unsupported, however, especially as regards the problem to explain not only how these similarities came about, but also why they are the way they are. For that reason it will not be considered in any detail here.

The present debate between substratists and universalists was foreshadowed a century ago by the work of such creolists as Lucien Adam (1883) and Adolpho Coelho (1880-1886), who took positions similar to but not identical with those of Alleyne on the one, and Bickerton on the other hand. And then there were the ‘godfathers’ of modern ‘creolistics’, Schuchardt and Hesseling, who always had a more moderate stand in this issue, taking both the factor of transmission and that of creation into account, although tending more to the latter than to the former in the course of their scientific careers (Schuchardt 1909; Hesseling 1905; see Gilbert 1986 for a more elaborate discussion of this issue). It is my opinion that these authors were indeed correct in seeing the truth lying somewhere in the middle, the crucial question being to decide where exactly that somewhere is, in other words to specify as accurately as possible in which areas of language these factors have played their respective roles. This means that what we need is a complementary and differential theory of creolization, that is as true to the facts as possible, but at the same time abstract enough to generate new ideas and to allow interesting generalizations that have a bearing on the central questions of language and its acquisition. I will deal with this issue in more detail in Chapter 5. Here I will briefly discuss the basic tenets of both parties involved in the controversy as it has been going on over the past decade.

The three basic claims of the LBH are the following:

‘The LBH claims that the innovative aspects of creole grammar are inventions on the part of the first generation of children who have a pidgin as their linguistic input, rather than features transmitted from preexisting languages. The LBH claims, further, that such inventions show a degree of similarity, across wide variations in linguistic background, that is too great to be attributed to change. Finally, the LBH claims that the most cogent explanation of this similarity is that it derives from the structure of a species-specific program for language, genetically coded and expressed, in ways still largely mysterious, in the

structures and modes of operation of the human brain’. (Bickerton 1984:173)

The LBH thus states that of all languages those called ‘creoles’ most clearly exhibit the properties of the ‘language bioprogram’, the innate structure of Language, wired into the brains of every human individual. The basic idea is that only during the creolization stage the language-learning child, with both parents speaking pidgin5, is sufficiently free of the pressure normally exercised by the structures of non-pidgin languages, to have full access to the features of the bioprogram and to realize them in the language it is creating. For it is only pidgins that are not mixed up with all the deviations from and contradictions to the bioprogram like other, ‘normal’, languages are. Since this innate program is by definition universal, this would explain why all creoles, no matter where they arose or under which lexical flag, are so similar in their structure.

Now, it is clear that this hypothesis relies heavily on the assumption that creolization is an instantaneous, one-generation process: if not - if, in other words, a creole is acquired over several generations, with some (perhaps most) learning it as a second rather than a first language -, it is hard to see how these second language speakers would have access to the bioprogram since they already acquired a non-creole (in most cases West African) language before. As a matter of fact, it is a basic claim of this dissertation that in the case of Sranan instantaneous creolization is a fiction and that on that account the Bickertonian hypothesis must be refuted. (A detailed exposition of this claim will be found in Chapter 5.) It is precisely this exclusion of second language acquisition as a determining process in creolization which allows Bickerton to dismiss all claims of possible transmission of substrate features, since the only possible transmitters are just these second language speakers.

If, however, second language acquisition is included in a theory of creolization, the relevance of substrata becomes quite unavoidable. At the same time - and this is a remarkable difference with an LBH-approach - there is room left for other factors, such as universals of first and second language acquisition (since, of course, it is not only second language speakers who create a creole). Unfortunately, the role of the latter in the creolization process is still largely unexplored.

Quite a different way of explaining the unexpected similarities across creoles of diverse origins is by positing a common (in the case of the Atlantic creoles: West African) substratum. Monographs by Alleyne (1980) and Boretzky (1983) contain a wealth of material relating to structures common to both the Atlantic creoles and certain West African (especially Kwa) languages, that simply cannot be denied. On

the other hand, Bickerton's criticism of the substratist position, - that its method is defective -, is certainly valid to the extent that it will not do to simply pick out creole features ad libitum and then go on to search through as many West African grammars as are necessary to find a match (or vice versa). Such a method is obviously arbitrary and is correctly accused of applying what Bickerton (1981: 49) calls ‘the cafeteria principle’ (a term first coined by Dillard (1970)), i.e. an unaccounted way of finding matching pairs for arbitrarily selected features in arbitrarily selected members of two groups of languages.

As to the selection of these languages, this defect can be repaired. First, one can take linguistic evidence into account, relating to levels of grammar other than the one one is interested in (provided, of course, this is not subject to the deficiencies mentioned above). In the case of the present study, dealing with syntax, there are phonological and lexical studies available (Smith 1987; Daeleman 1972; Huttar 1985) that point to a relationship between the creoles of Suriname and certain West African languages. Further, there is a growing amount of historical, demographic and anthropological evidence regarding the ethnic and linguistic background of the slaves that were transported to Suriname during the 17th and 18th centuries (Postma 1970, 1975; Price 1976, 1983). (More on this issue regarding the particular case of Sranan can be found in section 1.7. below, which is entirely devoted to the question of how to select specific substrate languages for investigation.)

As to the former part of Bickerton's criticism of ‘substratomania’ (as he prefers to call it), - the arbitrariness in the selection of categories (features, structures) to be compared -, there is a less ready answer to that. In a sense, every selection in this respect is arbitrary to some extent (unless, of course, one is able to be fully comprehensive, i.e. to cover the entire grammar of a language). This is so because selection is pre-theoretical in the sense that it is only after comparing certain (arbitrarily selected) structures that one can begin theorizing about a possible explanation for their (dis)similarities. There is as yet no theory available on creolization that is specific enough to predict which categories are most probably transmitted from other languages and which are innovated from the resources of the human language faculty. Also, this matter need not worry us too much, since the criticism can be equally well applied to the Bickertonian approach, where there is no principle whatsoever to determine which categories to examine on their supposedly universal, innate status, and which to leave out. Thus it is entirely unclear why, for instance, the categories studied in this dissertation (copula, comparison, clefting), are not (or only marginally) treated in the two most prominent expositions of the LBH, Bickerton (1981) and Bickerton (1984).

A third point of criticism (although not made by

Bickerton as far as I know) concerns the question of how to decide when two structures in two different languages count as similar. To my knowledge, such a principle is not available right now, so we will simply have to do without it. Also, any principle of such a kind would be completely theory-dependent, for example as to abstractness of representation, which would make it unsuitable for a theory-neutral study as the present one, whose main goal it is to deliver the empirical foundations for theorists to build their theories on. Still the point remains valid that in substratum research individual cases do not have too much force: it is the accumulation of data, the wideness of coverage, the consistency of the evidence, which will have to dip the balance. Apart from all this, the much neglected, but very useful information made available by researchers in Universal-Typological Grammar (such as Stassen 1985 for the comparative construction) can be helpful in delimiting the boundaries within which a given category may manifest itself across the languages of the world. Decisions about (dis)similarities of structures may thus be given a firmer empirical foundation.

Summarizing, my view on the ‘universals versus substrata controversy’ (along with some others: see, e.g., Mufwene 1986) is that it is wrongly stated. It is not so much a matter of contrary as of complementary factors, which should both be invoked in the explanation of Creole structure. The important issue then becomes to determine the relative importance of both types of factors (and possibly others), and to find out what determines the emergence of universal features in some and substrate elements in other areas of syntax (or other components of grammar such as phonology and semantics). My finding that the semantic differentiation of the copula in Sranan into several distinct compartments is a Kwa-feature, whereas the formal marking of this differentiation (i.e. the generalization of locative BE over other copula functions except identification) is probably universally determined, should be appreciated within this context (see Chapter 2 for details). The same goes for my findings regarding the historical development of the comparative system: throughout its history Sranan has used three out of six universally possible types of comparative, all three of them in accordance (or at least not in contradiction) with its basic word order6. The three types not found (or only once in one of these cases) are all in disagreement with its basic word order. At the same time, of the types that do occur the one most favoured is the serial comparative which is also prominent in some West African languages. Finally, the fact that Sranan has both predicate

clefting and ‘predicate relativization’7, - two syntactic procedures which are relatively scarce across the world's languages, but which do occur rather frequently in Niger-Congo -, together with the fact that the two structures are possibly related, points to a West African origin, whereas the occurrence of clefting as such is probably universally determined.

Finally, it should not be forgotten that universals and substrata, at least in the format in which they are studied now, cannot claim exclusivity in the explanation of Creole genesis. Other factors which may be related to but not equated with what is presently understood as ‘universals’, such as universals of second language acquisition and semantic transparency (cf. Seuren & Wekker 1986), should also be taken into account.

1.5. Sources and sample

The historical sources that provided the data for this study are listed in Appendix A, together with full bibliographical information, the title in which the source was consulted (if relevant, such as in the case of manuscripts), and the portion of the text that was taken into account. Since there is no absolute measure available as to what constitutes a reliable database, every decision in this respect necessarily remains somewhat arbitrary. It is only after completing the research that one is able to decide with precision what the adequate size of the database would have been, since only then can one be certain which (sub-)categories have really changed and which have remained static. It is in this light that the size of the database for copula constructions (1176 sentences) should be viewed: now, after the investigation has been completed, we know that a sample half this size would have yielded the same results. This is especially true for some subcategories, such as location and existence, where change is much less dramatic than in others. This is the main reason that only about half of the overall copula-sample has been included in Appendix B: to give more examples would only have meant needless repetition.

The fact that some categories (such as the copula) occur much more frequently than others (such as comparison and clefting), implies that it is not feasible to take identical portions of text into account for different categories. If I had done that, the numbers of comparative and cleft sentences in the sample would have been a fraction of what they are now (209 and 259 sentences respectively). (Both subsamples have,

of course, been included integrally in Appendix B.) The relatively small numbers of data for both of these categories are all the more problematic since they do not constitute monolithic wholes, but are themselves differentiated into several subcategories, which necessarily yield even smaller numbers of data. Thus, whatever I have to say on the very interesting category of predicate clefting in Sranan between 1750 and 1950, is based on the 29 (!) sentences that I have been able to locate, even though some extensive sources, such as Schumann 1783 and Focke 1855, were searched completely. And, as said earlier, my remarks on the ‘true’ comparative construction derive from the 78 sentences that I have been able to identify for this category, using the same extensive sources as for clefting. All this gives an indication of the kinds of problems encountered by the historical creolist who wishes to study a particular construction on an empirical basis.

As to the question of representation, it is impossible (and unnecessary) to represent each source by the same number of data. If we divide (again rather arbitrarily) the 1750-1950 period into four 50-year segments, called Stage I, II, III and IV, then for some of these stages there are more sources available than for others. Also the linguistic quality is not always the same. The latter accounts for the overrepresentation of the Schumann and Focke dictionaries, two specimina of Creole lexicography of an extraordinarily high level. The availability of a number of well-edited native speaker texts from the second half of the 19th century (King 1973, 1981; Kraag 1980; Albitrouw 1978, 1979) necessitated their inclusion in the sample, even though precisely this period (1850-1900) abounds with high quality material even without these sources. This makes it clear that it would be misguided to try to strive for equal representation, although, of course, an effort has been made to keep deviations within reasonable limits.

At this point it would seem desirable to give a short characteristic of each of the sources8. After that a few more

elaborate remarks will be made concerning linguistic quality and reliability. Sources are dealt with in chronological order (see Appendix A):

 

Herlein (1718) This is a very short (two pages) sample of Sranan dialogue with Dutch translation, designed to

illustrate the creole for Dutchmen. Besides the readily accessible reprinting in Voorhoeve & Lichtveld (1975), containing the modern Sranan equivalent and a modern English translation, reprintings have appeared in Schuchardt (1914) with its original Dutch translation, and in Rens (1953) with a literal English gloss. Although the original carries the designation ‘second edition’, it is completely identical to the first (Voorhoeve & Donicie 1963: 30). However, the latter's year of publication is not given by these scholars, but it cannot have been prior to 1716, since in that year a preliminary draft of Herlein's work was published. As will be pointed out below in Chapter 5 the fragment displays some pidgin rather than creole features. Although of great value as the oldest Sranan text known to exist, errors in the use of honorifics indicate that this is not an original Sranan dialogue, but rather a Europeanized version of it (Voorhoeve & Lichtveld 1975).

 

Nepveu (1765) This text contains the corrections by Nepveu of the Herlein fragment. It is possibly the second oldest Sranan text known to exist, and it appears in Voorhoeve & Lichtveld (1975) alongside the Herlein dialogue.

 

Van Dyk (c. 1770) (but see note 7) This is an introductory language manual containing word lists, some idiom, twelve dialogues and a 65-page sketch of life on a coffee plantation. It is the oldest Sranan text of any substance (112 pages), predating Schumann by at least more than a decade. The work is undated, but I agree entirely with Kramp (1983: 6), who says it was probably written before 1778, the year given by Schuchardt (1914: XXII). The latter arrived at this date on the basis of information about the printer mentioned on the title page, but he does not exclude an earlier date. This opinion is shared by Lichtveld & Voorhoeve (1980) and Smith (1982: 100), who adds some phonological evidence to conclude that the work should be located somewhere between Nepveu's and Stedman's material, that is between 1765 and 1777 (the year of Stedman's departure from the colony). The fact that the latter's notes were only published in 1796 is irrelevant here: they can only have gone back to his personal experience with the language, which took place during his stay from 1772 to 1777. In its kind Van Dyk's manual has become a sort of Urtext for others (notably Weygandt and Helmig van der Vegt) to draw on heavily and even plagiarize unashamedly (see below).

 

Schumann (1783) The pièce de résistance of Sranan lexicography (Sranan-German). Not being a native speaker himself, Schumann made extensive use of one or more informants, which of course enhances the reliability of his data. Apart from this, Schumann, like most Moravians, is known for his accuracy and his linguistic sophistication. An edition of the manuscript appears in Kramp's dissertation (Kramp 1983), but unfortunately it has never been published

(defective as the edition in some respects may be; see Arends 1984 for a critical evaluation). It is of the same interest as the author's Saramaccanisch Deutsches Wörter-Buch from 1778, which was published by Schuchardt in 1914 and which is a major source for the present study.

 

Stedman (1796) Linguistic notes scattered throughout the extensive volume, containing little that is of syntactic interest (see Eersel 1984 for some brief remarks).

 

Weygandt (1798) A language manual in the ‘Van Dyk tradition’, containing vocabulary, idiom, some grammar, and twelve dialogues, of which numbers 1, 2, 3, 5 and 9 have been largely plagiarized from Van Dyk's dialogues numbers 2, 3, 5, 7 and 11, respectively (as was already observed by Schuchardt 1914:XXIII). According to the Vorbericht (Preface) it represents the city (i.e. Paramaribo) dialect, whereas Van Dyk, according to Schuchardt (ibid.), presents the language as it was spoken on the plantations. The reason for this hypothesis is that the latter would be more archaic, but Voorhoeve & Donicie (1963: 31) interpret this trait as Netherlandization and attribute it to the imperfect competence of a city dweller. In their view Weygandt is more representative of the language as it was actually spoken and thus more reliable.

 

Wennekers (1822) This is a Roman catholic catechism, written by someone who was not fully competent in the language, to say the least. The language is deviant in all categories investigated in this study: it overgeneralizes the de-copula (also in comparative constructions with pre-adjectival moro) and it shows no clefting whatsoever. From my present perspective this source had better been excluded from the corpus.

 

Luke (1829) This is the first printed Sranan translation of the gospel according to St. Luke, which in a sense represents a culmination point in a manuscript tradition of New Testament translations begun by C.L. Schumann in 1782/1783 (Voorhoeve & Donicie 1963). But although Schumann's Bible translations had great authority until well into the 19th century, it did not form the basis for the 1829 translation of Luke, nor for that of Acts (op. cit.: 49). Nevertheless, stemming from the Moravian tradition, the quality of the translation is generally high.

 

Acts (1829) The same applies as to the above item. This source was included only for the categories of comparison and clefting because of lack of data.

 

Cesaari (1836-1837) A poem containing a New Year's wish, according to Lichtveld & Voorhoeve (1980: 276) written by a European or a European influenced creole. Cesaari is not the author, but the Paramaribo deaf-mute who sold these songs on

the streets (Voorhoeve & Lichtveld 1975: 7). Before their publication in a Dutch literary periodical in 1843 they were published as loose leaflets in Paramaribo in 1836 and 1837.

 

Helmig van der Vegt (1844) Another (but considerably more concise) language manual in the Van Dyk tradition, consisting of 30 lessons with exercises and vocabulary. It has borrowed heavily from Weygandt: compare lessons numbers 11, 13, 15, 18, 19, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, and 28 in Helmig van der Vegt with dialogues numbers 1, 2, 9, 3, 7, 8 (first part), 8 (second part), 10 (first part), 10 (second part), 12 (first part), 12 (second part), and 12 (pages 131, 136, 141 and 143). Since a large part of the latter was taken from Van Dyk (c. 1770), there is an indirect link between this and the Helmig van der Vegt booklet. Plagiarism has a good side to it too, at least for the linguist, since in some cases it is not literal, so that interesting differences can be observed. Compare, e.g.:

(1)Joe habe retti da ply mi zi hem
(Van Dyk c.1770: 31)
You have right that place I see him
‘You're right; that's where I saw him’
(2)Joe abie retie da daplesie mie ben sie em
(Weygandt 1798: 97)
You have right is that-place I TNS see him
‘You're right; that's where I saw him’

Apart from spelling differences and the presence of a tense marker in (2) it is especially the emergence of a clefting copula da in (2) which is of interest here. Likewise in the area of the copula system there is a difference between the latter source and Helmig van der Vegt:

(3)Dafoe datie hédé diesie foe mie moe tan?
(Weygandt 1798: 110)
Is-for that reason this of me must wait?
‘That is why mine (i.e. my order) has to wait?’
(4)A de vo datti hedde dissi va mi moesoe tan?
(Helmig van der Vegt 1844: 39)
It is for that reason this of me must wait?
‘That is why mine has to wait?’

The difference between (3) and (4) may well be due to the fact that Helmig van der Vegt did not recognize sentence introducing da as a separate copula, but instead interpreted it as the pronoun from which it historically evolved, and hypercorrected it into the ‘true’ de-copula.

 

Grammatik (1854) This is a brief, but adequate anonymous grammatical introduction to the language, generally attributed to H.R. Wullschlägel9 (with whose 1856 dictionary it bears certain resemblances), but this is disputed by Voorhoeve & Donicie (1963: 20), who see parallels with

Wilhelm Treu's 1850 manuscript grammar, which is itself part of a Moravian grammar writing tradition starting around 1830.

 

Focke (1855) This is an excellent dictionary (Sranan-Dutch) by a creole, who was probably a native speaker. It contains a short introduction to the language, and odo's are scattered throughout the text. In a review in the journal West-Indië (Moes 1858) a list of errata and addenda, which had been added by the author in his own copy of the book, was published. Though published in 1855, the work was conceived several years before: a preliminary version is dated March 1846 (Voorhoeve & Donicie 1963: 27).

 

Wullschlägel (1856) This is by far the most extensive printed Sranan dictionary in existence. It is in the Moravian tradition and based on earlier work on the language, such as that by Schumann. As such it contains the typically Moravian neologisms needed for Bible translations, which are absent from Focke. The dictionary (German-Sranan) is concluded with a 40-page listing of some 700 odo's (proverbs) with their translation. Because of its inclusion of archaic and pulpit language it should be consulted with prudence according to Voorhoeve & Donicie (1963: 29), but only small portions from it have been used for this study.

 

King (1864) This is a ‘book of confessions’ (bikenti boekoe) by the Matawai ‘bushland prophet’ Johannes King, who spent part of his youth in the surroundings of Paramaribo, and may thus be expected to have learnt Sranan early youth (perhaps in addition to Matawai - his mother's -, or Ndjuka - his father's language). King, who taught himself how to read Sranan, was converted to Christianity around 1860 and spent most of the rest of his life preaching the Gospel and writing his diaries (for a short bibliographical note see King 1973: 2-8). In the present manuscript he tries to explain the religious life of his fellow ‘bush negroes’ to Moravian missionaries.

 

King (1892) This is one of the diaries by the same author, whose main subject is the quarrel with his half-brother Noah Adrai, who was among King's followers at first, but turned into one of his most bitter enemies later on. The quarrel was primarily one of political power (Noah Adrai was appointed granman (chief) of the Matawai tribe in 1870), but it took on religious and moral aspects as well. King should be considered the first true native Sranan author, and one of no little importance too; unfortunately, some of his most interesting work (such as the skreki buku, - ‘book of horrors’) still awaits to be edited and published.

 

Albitrouw (1894) This is an account of a messianistic movement among the Saramaccans, led by their tribesman Anake. It was written by the Ndjuka missionary Albitrouw, who was probably educated in Sranan by the Moravian Brethren in

Paramaribo. The manuscript is dated at around 1900 by Voorhoeve & Donicie (1963: 84), but Sterman (the editor of the manuscript) has found indications that it was written even later, since it contains references to later historical developments up to 1915 (Albitrouw 1978: 19). But then again she admits that it must have been based on diaries that were written earlier. These diaries cannot have been begun before 1892, the year when the Anake cult started.

 

Kraag (1894-1896) This diary is an account of the stay of the missionary-teacher Christiaan Kraag among the Kwinti tribe between 1893 and 1903. I have not been able to obtain any further information about the author, concerning his tribal or linguistic affiliation. He must have been either a native speaker of Sranan or was educated in that language by the Moravian Brethren.

 

Albitrouw (c.1896) This is an account of the author's missionary work among the Saramaccans in Aurora between 1891 and 1896. The manuscript must have been written during his stay there, since extracts from it have appeared in the Dutch journal Berichten van de Heidenwereld (‘Reports from the Pagan World’) between 1893 and 1897 (Albitrouw 1979: 12-13). This same source states that, according to references in the manuscript itself, sections of this diary must have appeared in the Moravian journal Makzien vo Kristensoema zieli (‘Magazine for Christian Souls’), but in which issues is not clear.

 

Makzien (1902) A monthly organ in Sranan, published by the Moravian Brethren between 1852 and 1932 (with an intermission from December 1879 till January 1889), containing edifying stories, songs, missionary news, and brief political information (Voorhoeve & Donicie 1963: 100). As in other Moravian writings the style is that of the so-called ‘Church creole’ (Voorhoeve 1971), but since syntactic differences with ‘ordinary creole’ are rare, this presents no difficulty for our purpose.

 

Helstone (1903) The aim of this Sranan grammar (written in Sranan, by a native speaker), - curiously enough -, is to try to replace the creole by the official Dutch language. In order to facilitate the learning of Dutch by creoles, the author thinks it necessary to regularize the creole and bring it into accordance with Dutch as much as possible. This accounts for the strong Netherlandizing flavour of the language, for which reason it should be consulted critically for linguistic purposes.

 

Makzien (1913) See above under Makzien (1902).

 

Herskovits & Herskovits (1936) This is a magnificent collection of folk-tales (Anansi tori), riddles, proverbs (some in Saramaccan) and dreams, told by native speakers in

1928 and 1929, and recorded on phonocylinders (which, according to Reinecke et al. (1975: 444), are still being preserved today). The stories are presented in broad phonetic transcription. Although I agree with Voorhoeve & Donicie (1963: 91) that these data should be examined critically, their value is still immeasurable. In their Linguistic Notes (pp.117-135) the authors compare Sranan with other varieties of creolized English and certain West African languages (such as Twi, Ewe, and Yoruba) and conclude that these pidgins/creoles contain a significant West African element.

 

Koenders (1946-1949) These articles are taken from a journal called Foetoe-boi (‘Servant’), which appeared partly in Sranan and partly in Dutch between 1946 and 1956, and of which Koenders was the responsible editor. A native speaker of the language, he was one of the first teachers to propagate its use in education, when it was still considered slightly improper to use it at all.

 

Bruma (c.1958) This is a play by the Surinamese lawyer and politician Eddy Bruma about a slave uprising in Coronie in 1836. It was performed in Paramaribo around 1958, but it never appeared in print before Voorhoeve & Lichtveld (1975) included it in their anthology of Sranan literature. This source was used only for the category of comparison because of lack of data in other sources.

 

The relative underrepresentation of native speaker texts in the corpus constitutes a problem that deserves some special attention. Of the 25 sources only Schumann, Cesaari, Focke, King (twice), Albitrouw (twice), Kraag, Helstone, Herskovits & Herskovits, Koenders, and Bruma (almost half of the total number of sources) were produced by or with the help of native speakers. If we look at the amount of data provided by these sources, instead of the sources themselves, the picture gets even worse. But this is a problem that simply cannot be avoided. The Sranan scholar is not in the fortunate position of those studying the development of Negerhollands, in which language a considerable number of ‘slave letters’, written (or rather dictated in most cases) by native speakers between 1737 and 1768 (Stein 1986) have been preserved.

A meticulous investigation of the Sranan material in the State Archives at Utrecht (the largest collection available) did not yield one native-written source pre-dating the middle of the 19th century, - when there is a sudden outburst of writing, starting with the work of King. This lack of data obviously has to do with the illiteracy that was forced upon the blacks in Suriname until that time. The fact that these data had to be ‘enriched’ with non-native sources is not as bad as it seems, though, since some of these, especially those of Moravian origin, are of high quality.

The Moravian Brethren in general have a reputation as knowledgeable and accurate observers of language, although a certain normative and Europeanizing influence cannot be

denied. This tendency, however, is largely confined to orthography, phonetics and lexis, and hardly affects syntax. In this context not only Schumann, but also Luke, Acts, Grammatik and Wullschlägel should be highly valued as reliable sources for earlier stages of the language.

Concerning the sample sentences contained in Appendix B, a few words may suffice. The reason for including this Appendix in the first place is to provide other creolists with material that is hardly accessible in any other form. It may be used not only for syntactic research, but for other purposes, such as lexical, phonological or semantic investigations as well. Every sentence is presented in its original spelling (which is often idiosyncratic and inconsistent), with a literal gloss and an English translation. In the code following each sentence in parentheses the first figure refers to the number of the source as it is given in Appendix A; the second figure (after the slash) refers to the number of the page in the source where the sentence can be found. (In the case of edited sources page numbers refer to the edited work: see the fourth column in Appendix A under Place.) Sometimes a third figure is added after a hyphen to indicate that the sentence in question is not the only one within the relevant category attested on that page. Within each category sentences are grouped according to the source from which they were taken. Categories II and III were not divided into subcategories since these samples are small enough to allow for a quick search. Category I (the copula), for which the sample is much larger, was differentiated according to the subcategories as they are treated in Chapter 2.

1.6. Selection of categories

The selection of categories studied in this thesis was based on several considerations. First of all, since this is the first extensive study of its kind, it was decided to take at least several categories into account in order to get a more representative picture. Second, a preliminary and cursory reading of the sources revealed which categories showed enough historical development to warrant a profitable detailed investigation. Third, given the aims of this study, the question of whether literature on a certain category within the typological-universal framework was available, also played a role. And, finally, the selection was constrained by the extent to which a historical investigation was manageable within the time limitations set to the research project.

Some of these factors were instrumental in the decision not to include serial verbs into this study, interesting though it is in itself, - the main reason being that one would have to collect data not only on this construction, but also on others (such as prepositions and adverbs) that play a role in its development. The important and widely discussed

TMA-system was excluded from the investigation also, because an adequate treatment of this category would require a full-length study.

In fact, in the actual course of the project the differentiation of the equative copula was hit upon fairly early, and everything else more or less evolved from that in a quite natural manner. Other functions of BE were looked at, such as in adjectival predicates, which led to the inclusion of the comparative. The identification of the sentence introducing copula as a separate category necessitated the examination of cleft sentences as a special subclass. An unplanned side-effect of this was that all the categories selected for investigation turned out to be related to the copula system one way or another - which should contribute to the internal coherence of this study.

1.7. Selection of candidate substrate languages

The following West African languages were selected as candidates for having potential influence on the syntactic structure of Sranan: Ewe, Twi, Igbo, Yoruba (Kwa-branch of Niger-Congo), Kikongo, Kimbundu and Tshiluba10 (Western Bantu). This selection is based on arguments of a linguistic as well as of a historical-demographic nature. Linguistic arguments derive from Lichtveld (1928-1929, a pioneering effort to trace the influence of the ‘Western Sudanic’ languages on Sranan), Daeleman (1972; but see Price 1975), Huttar (1981; 1984; 1985) and Smith (1987). Historical-demographic evidence regarding the slave trade to Suriname is contained primarily in Postma's seminal studies (1970; 1975; 1976). Further information is available in Emmer (1972), Price (1976) and Van Lier (1977), whereas Goslinga (1985) presents some new calculations, based largely on the material that was used by Postma.

Unfortunately, although essential information concerning the Dutch slave trade in general has been made available by Postma's work, as well as that of some others (Unger 1956; 1958-1960; Van Dantzig 1968), the complaint made by Price (1976: 14) that ‘a careful study, using written records of the slave trade to Suriname (...) still remains to be undertaken’ (italics mine, JA), is still as valid today as it was when it was written down. Nevertheless, it seems to me that enough information is available to allow a non-arbitrary selection of substrate languages, to say the least.

Historical evidence. The most important source of information on the Dutch participation in the Atlantic slave trade is Postma's 1970 dissertation. Its main findings as

regards the geographical origin of all slaves traded by the Dutch (i.e. to Suriname and elsewhere), are summarized in Postma (1975: 49, Table 8). These figures were extrapolated by Price (1976: 13) to 1640, i.e. beyond the period treated by Postma (1675-1795). Price's table is reproduced here as Table 1:

Table 1: Regional Origins of Dutch Slaves, 1640-1795 (from Price 1976: 13)
1640s-1700 1701-1725 1726-1735 1736-1795
Windward Coast - - - - 4% 49%
Gold Coast 2% 17% 29% 26%
Slave Coast 64% 50% 33% 1%
Loango/Angola 34% 33% 33% 24%

In terms of present topography these four areas are defined as follows (following Price): the ‘Windward Coast’ corresponds to modern Guinea-Bissau, Guinea, Sierra Leone, Liberia, and the Ivory Coast; the ‘Gold Coast’ roughly corresponds to modern Ghana; the ‘Slave Coast’ is roughly equivalent with the coastal regions of Togo and Benin, and ‘Loango/Angola’ refers to a region stretching from Cape Lopez to the Orange River. The Dutch slave trade focused on the north of the Zaire river, encompassing the modern states of Gabon, Congo (Brazzaville), and the Angolese enclave of Cabinda. See the map of West Africa below:

illustratie
Map of West Africa


Although the total number of slaves imported into the colony, - estimated at 175.000 on the basis of detailed archival research (Goslinga 1985: 430) -, is less than half of the total number of slaves traded by the Dutch in their entire ‘slave trading career’, - estimated at 400.000 by Postma (1975: 49) -, it is not unwarranted to take the figures in Table 1 as a reliable guide for the situation in Suriname. First, almost all slaves brought into the colony were imported solely by the Dutch (Price 1976: 13), certainly during the 18th century (Emmer 1972: 744), but also before. The Dutch also supplied the British with slaves during their colonization of Suriname (1650-1667) (Rens 1953: 79), and they are even known to have monopolized the trade to Barbados up to 1663 (Curtin 1969, quoted by Price 1976: 13), from where the first British colonizers brought their slaves in 1651. Second, there is no reason to believe that Suriname did not receive a representative sample of this overall ‘cargo’, although certain preferences with respect to specific ethnic origins were current among slave owners. But although there are more than half a dozen historical works discussing these preferences, they are of little value for the present purpose since they all post-date 1770; besides that, they allow no quantification whatsoever (Price 1976: 15-16).

A problem that remains, however, is that whatever is known about the origin of slaves always refers to the slave shipping port, which is by no means necessarily identical with the slaves' place of origin. It is known, for example, that many Yorubas, taken captive during wars with Ewespeaking tribes, were shipped through Gold Coast ports, where Ewe, not Yoruba, was spoken. This explains why Yorubas are often called ‘Nagos’ in the Surinamese historical literature, ‘Anago’ being the Ewe word for ‘Yoruba’ (Price 1983: 77).

All in all, it seems that we will have to be content with the picture in Table 1, until further research provides more data. This picture, then, reveals that during the first one hundred years of Suriname's existence as a colony (1650-1750) it was mainly Kwa and Western Bantu speaking areas that supplied its slaves. Taking into account the further differentiation of the areas in Table 1, as made by Postma (1970: 181 ff.), as well as the relative importance of the languages spoken in these areas (in terms of numbers of speakers and dominant positions of certain tribes), it seems that from a historical point of view the languages that were selected are good candidates for potential substrate influence.

Linguistic evidence. Linguistic evidence for particular substratal influence falls apart into the three categories of syntax, lexicon and phonology. As to the first, some Kwa-like features were shown to be present in Ndjuka, especially in the areas of predicate clefting and comparison (Huttar 1981). African lexical influence was studied by Daeleman (1972) for Saramaccan, and by Huttar (1984; 1985) for Ndjuka. In both cases a significant Bantu element (more specifically Kikongo, in the case of Saramaccan) could be demonstrated. Like most

other Atlantic creoles Ndjuka turned out to contain a significant proportion of Kwa-derived vocabulary as well. The same is implicitly supposed by Price (1975: 463), who estimates the African-derived portion of the total Saramaccan lexicon at 50% with Kikongo contributing not more than one third. Finally, Smith (1987: 146-147) in his penetrating study based on a huge amount of historical phonological evidence contends that there must have been ‘considerable Gbe (a dialect within the Ewe-Fon cluster, JA) involvement in early Surinam’. He even suggests that Gbe, which still survives in Suriname as a reduced ritual language, was a spoken language in the early days of the colony. I can only add that from a syntactic point of view of the seven West African languages involved in this study Ewe is the one to cause most déja vu experiences in connection with Sranan. To give just one example: both languages have the, universally rare, Allative Comparative (see Chapter 3 for details).

In conclusion, I think it is clear that the linguistic evidence which is available at present only confirms what historical-demographic studies have revealed about ethnic origins of Surinamese slaves, and that both types of evidence fully support the selection of candidate substrate languages that was made in this study. It is especially significant that they both point to the presence of a considerable Bantu element in the creoles of Suriname, a fact which was often neglected before. It is also clear that in the formation period of the language (say between the first 50 and 100 years) it was Slave Coast (i.e. Ewe speaking) rather than Gold Coast (i.e. Twi speaking) slaves that were imported into the colony, which historical fact is fully supported by the linguistic evidence provided by Smith.


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