Linguistic and Archeological Time Depth in the West Indies Douglastaylor Dominica,B.W.I
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LINGUISTIC AND ARCHEOLOGICAL TIME DEPTH IN THE WEST INDIES DOUGLASTAYLOR DOMINICA,B.W.I. AND IRVING ROUSE YALE UNIVERSITY 0. Introduction teenth century tell us that the same language 1. Time depth of Island Carib was spoken in all the islands then inhabited 2. Archeological correspondences by this people; from which we may at least conclude that dialectal differences were not 0. In a recent on "Time symposium so great as to preclude mutual intelligibility. of American Depth Linguistic Groupings," At the end of the eighteenth century this Swadeshl a date for the published separation language was taken to Central America by of the Dominican and Lokono of languages some five thousand 'Black Carib' deportees; the Arawakan stock based on a word count and is spoken there today by about six times by Taylor. The following is a revision of this that number of individuals.4 In the Lesser date and a consideration of its by Taylor (1) Antilles it lingered on only in St. Vincent Rouse to- archeological significance by (2), and Dominica, where it became extinct with some discussion of the gether question about 1920. Apart from the modern Central of into the which de- migrations Antilles, American dialect, only two records of this as a of the veloped by-product dating language are known to be extant: one, fairly problem. full, dating from the middle of the seven- teenth the 1. It is here assumed-but can, I am con- century;5 other, very sketchy, from the end of the nineteenth vinced, be proved-that the language of the century; both made in Dominica.6 historical, so-called Island Carib is Ara- the Dominican dialect - wakan, and almost as closely related to Phonetically, even in its most recent much Lokono or True Arawak of the present time stage-was as is Roumanian to French.2 It is further closer to modern Lokono than is that spoken the Black and for assumed that this language is a continuation by present-day Caribs; that reason I at first it when seek- of the one spoken by the 'Igneri' or pre- employed to estimate means of lexical statistics Carib-conquest inhabitants of the Lesser ing by the of time that must have Antilles, whose womenfolk were spared, ac- length elapsed since Lokono and Island Carib were one and cording to seventeenth-century tradition the same there are and in all likelihood, to become wives of the language. However, conquerors and mothers of subsequent 4Douglas Taylor, The Black Carib of British generations of 'Island Caribs.'3 French mis- Honduras, VFPA 17 (1951). 6 sionaries writing in the middle of the seven- Raymond Breton, Dictionaire Caraibe- Frangois..., 6dition facsimile Jules Platzmann 1 Morris Swadesh, Time Depth of American (Leipzig, 1892); Dictionaire Frangois-Caraibe ..., LinguisticGroupings, AA 56.361-4(1954). edition facsimile Jules Platzmann (Leipzig, 1900); 2 C. H. de Goeje, Nouvel examen des langues and Grammaire Caraibe suivie du cat6chisme des Antilles .. ., JSAP31.1-20 (1939); reviewed by Caraibe, nouvelle edition, L. Adam et Ch. Leclerc Taylorin IJAL 17.257-9(1951). (Paris, 1878). 3Douglas Taylor, Diachronic Note on the 6 Joseph Numa Rat, The Carib Language as Carib Contributionto Island Carib, IJAL 20.28- now spoken in Dominica, West Indies, JRAI 33 (1954). 27.293-315 (1898). 105 This content downloaded from 129.252.86.83 on Sun, 25 Oct 2015 18:24:40 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 106 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF AMERICAN LINGUISTICS VOL. XXI several disadvantages in using an extinct ably Lokono) has a number of different language for such a purpose; one cannot terms whose employment depends on possibly obtain a word missing from the whether the cutting is done with a knife, record, or decide which of two apparent scissors, an ax, etc. synonyms was the commoner. So, for ex- As Swadesh8 has been careful to point ample, confronted with the item fall of out, the results that have already been ob- Swadesh's basic word-list, I could find tained from lexico-statistical dating, al- nothing in the record of recent Dominican though distinctly encouraging, must still to match with Lokono atikida; while be regarded as provisional in greater or Breton's seventeenth-century dictionaries lesser degree. So far as languages with little offered an embarrassing wealth of different or no written history are concerned, there equivalents employed in different contexts, appears to be a real danger of over-estimat- among which two seemed to be equally ing time-depths through failure to recognize 'basic': aikua and atikera. So that, although actual cognates as such. For it cannot be the latter is obviously cognate with the supposed that the Indo-European family Lokono word, this item had to be dropped of languages is unique in containing such from the list because there was no indication divergent products of phonetic change as that it was the commoner of the two, or (Russian: English) jazik: tongue, or (Eng- differed from the former in meaning, as for lish : French) sew : coudre, blow : souffler, example tumble differs from drop. Since the or (English : Spanish) eat : comer. Yet the living dialect offers only one word, 6igua, student of an American Indian linguistic this item has been included in the list, and family rarely has any knowledge of such scores a MINUS. 'links' as Latin consuere, connecting sew Nevertheless, instead of a cognate ratio with coudre; Latin com-edere, connecting of 62/146, as reported by Swadesh,7 I now eat with comer. Lokono : Dominican Island get a ratio of 72/154, or 46.75%, which Carib my father dati : nukusili look even indicates a time depth of 18 (instead of 21) less like cognates than when nuguci of the modern American is substi- centuries. The English words whose Lokono Central dialect tuted for the latter t : s for the and Island Carib equivalents are matched word; yet former and t: c for the latter dialect are all appear in one or another of Swadesh's attested in some other cases, such as dig test-lists; but as these call for 200 items, atika : asika : while the former corre- and as Lokono data are still not aciga; abundant, from related I have included some items that do not spondence suggests borrowing Goajiro, in which s regularly corresponds appear in all of them. Even so, I can match to Lokono t. According to Hickerson, Lo- only 186 pairs; and for greater precaution kono has a morpheme -ku- consanguineal 32 of these have been queried and omitted elder; and the Island Carib forms meaning from the count. Such precaution seems ad- father, mother, and grandfather almost cer- visable wherever the evidence for cognation tainly contain this morpheme in a fossilized remains inconclusive one way or another, state. Similarly, the pair fly amoroda : aha- and wherever there is uncertainty as to mara are seen to be cognate only when usage. So, for example, apart from the pair to am4hara of the Dominican vomit ereda : I can find no compared fly eu6ra, support both the latter as for the existence of an r : u dialect, having hamq- correspondence, stem alternant. though there is plenty of proof that d: r To judge by the records of Daniel Brin- is regular; while in such a case as that of 8 Morris and the words for cut, Island Carib (and prob- Swadesh, Archeological Linguistic Chronology of Indo-European Groups, AA 55.349- 7 Swadesh, op. cit., p. 362. 52 (1953). This content downloaded from 129.252.86.83 on Sun, 25 Oct 2015 18:24:40 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions TIME DEPTH IN THE WEST INDIES 107 ton,9 de Goeje,10 and Hickerson," Lokono gests that the final -ho and -ru of (Lokono: (True Arawak) exhibits a rather high degree Island Carib) taho: fitaru rope were once of phonetic instability, so far as this com- suffixes, and that these words are cognate. paratively short and recent period is The resemblance of the Island Carib forms concerned. So, for two, the first and second meaning father (-guci) and mother (-gucu) of these authors give biama, but the third to one another makes it likely that Lokono has bian ~ biani-; for three the first gives -io mother resulted from the weakening of kabuhin, the second kabuin, and the third older *-tio, more closely paralleling Lokono kabun N kabuni-; for four the first has -ti father; and that if so, also Lokono : Island both bibuti and bibiti, the second bibiti Carib ioio: d6do- wet are cognate, and come alone, and the third bibiti - biti - bis-. from older *tiotio. If I had to reduce the The personal pronouns are given by Brinton number of queried pairs omitted from the - as dakia dai I, bokia - bui thou, likia count, I should score a PLUS against those he, turreha she, uakia - uai we, hukia meaning hold, left, man, mother, old, rain, hui ye, nakia - nai they; and by Hickerson root, rope, sky, snake, suck, vomit, wet, worm; as dai, bui, lira, tora, uaiko, hui, naira. a MINUS against those meaning cut, fruit, Brinton's -piru corresponds to -firo, mean- fur, guts, knee, near, short, thin, walk, when; ing big or strong, of both de Goeje and and leave the query against those meaning Hickerson; the word for blood is given by earth, hot, hunt, I, if, in, not, what. This de Goeje as ite, but by Hickerson as utu. would raise the cognate ratio to 86/178, or Brinton tells us that 'from kasan to be 48.3 %, which indicates a reduction of some pregnant' (cf.