Berbice Creole Dutch Doug Whitehead
Berbice Creole Dutch • • Introduction History Syntax Phonology Lexicon Creole-Continuum Sound Files
Introduction • Location: Spoken Along the Berbice River, Canje River and Wiruni Creek in Guyana • # of Speakers: 4 or 5 (youngest born in 1923) • Lexifier: Dutch • Substrate: Eastern Ijo (Niger-Kongo, Nigeria). • Arawak and Guyanese Creole English borrowings.
Why is Berbice Dutch Interesting? • • • Nearly Extinct Recently Discovered (1970 s) Relatively Isolated Unusually Strong Substrate Influence Linguistic Structure: Syntax, Phonology
Language Structure: Syntax • Primarily SVO Word Order • Interesting Features – Reduplication (nouns, verbs and adjectives) – Negation – Tense/Mood/Aspect
Verb Reduplication (Kouwenberg, 2003) Semantic Reading Kk k furgt-t beki Like 1 s forget-PF little “[It is] as if I have forgotten [this language] bit by bit” Deverbalization Titi di man bin deki-t di lapu-lapu O mabaku o stadi Time the man PAST take-PF the cuff-cuff 3 s beat 3 s stead 7 “If the man had taken the cuffing, she would have beaten him all the time”
Noun and Adj. Reduplication Noun Ju haftu pi eni kiba-kiba 2 s have to give 3 pl piece-piece “You have to give them each a piece” Adjective Di man-toko masi nili pote-pote mere as eke The man-child must nearly old-old more than 1 s “The boy must be nearly older than me”
Tense/Aspect • BD employs a combination of pre- and post-verbal tense and aspect markers. Pre-verbal Wa, ma/sa Post-verbal a, te en wa bifi mete ju dang. Si en. Si mo-te mu plandi e fama They PAST speak with you herewe go-PF go plant it COMP “They spoke with you here “We haven’t finished planting”
Phonology • Some Phonological Processes – General Prohibition of Closed Syllables, except nasals • Strom “stream, ” furstan “understand” – But some consonant clusters in polysyllabic words. • BD: alma Dutch: allemaal • BD: hagli Dutch: hagel
Phonological Processes from Dutch to BD • Vowel Insertion – Dutch: dan, BD: dana “then” – Dutch: diep BD: dipu “deep” • Metathesis – Dutch: aardappel, BD: adaplu “potato” – Dutch: overal, BD: oflaru “everywhere”
Competing Theories of Origin – Trading jargon developed in Africa before slaves Guyana – Ethnic Homogeneity among slaves in Guyana – BD actually descended from Ijo, relexified – Ijo Replaced by BD with Dutch as catalyst
Substrate Influence: Negation • Negation usually occurs sentence finally, as in Ijo – Yu nimi dida kane You know that NEG “You don’t know that”
Substrate Influence: Postpositions • While Berbice is strictly SVO, like Ijo, its substrate, it has postpositions – di banka bofu Berbice the bench on “On the bench – I wari suku bio Ijo My house underneath inside “Under my house”
Substrate Influence: Morphology • Some Morphemes Link Directly to Ijo – Noun Phrase Morphology • Plural Marker BD: -apu, Ijo: -apu – Aspect • Continuative • Perfective BD: -a; Ijo: -ari BD: -te; Ijo: -tee
Bibliography • Kouwenberg, Sylvia. 1995. “Berbice Dutch. ” in Arends, Jacques (ed. ) Muysken, Pieter (ed. ) Smith, Norval (ed. ). . Pidgins and Creoles: An Introduction. . Creole Language Library. 15. Amsterdam: Benjamins. • Robertson, Ian E. 1990. “The Tense-Mood-Aspect System of Berbice Dutch”. Singler, John Victor (ed. ). . Pidgin and Creole Tense-Mood. Aspect Systems. Creole Language Library. 6. Amsterdam: Benjamins, 1990 • Singh, Rajendra and Pieter Muysken. 1995. “Wanted: A Debate in Pidgin/Creole Phonology. ” Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages 10: 1 • Smith, Norval S. H. and Robertson, Ian E. and Williamson, Kay. 1987. “The Ijo Element in Berbice Dutch”. Language in Society, 16: 1
Скачать презентацию Berbice Creole Dutch Doug Whitehead Berbice Creole
ac79b3ca7789d64e0386046cf031206f.ppt