“Mi No Sal Tron Tongo” Early Sranan in Court Records 1667 - 1767
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“Mi no sal tron tongo” Early Sranan in court records 1667 - 1767 Margot van den Berg “Mi no sal tron tongo” Early Sranan in court records 1667-1767 “Mi no sal tron tongo” Early Sranan in court records 1667-1767 Master’s thesis - Linguistics University of Nijmegen Supervisors: Dr. J. Arends University of Amsterdam Dr. L. Stassen University of Nijmegen October 2000 Margot C. van den Berg Schoolstraat 155 6512 JG Nijmegen The Netherlands [email protected] - Qu’est-ce que vous allez chercher là-bas? - J’attends d’être là-bas pour le savoir. André Gide Voyage au Congo (1927) Table of contents Acknowledgements.......................................................................................... 3 Abbrevations..................................................................................................... 3 Chapter 1 - Introduction ................................................................................. 5 1.1 Contemporary Sranan .......................................................................................................5 1.2 The formation of Sranan....................................................................................................5 1.3 Superstrate (or lexifier) language.....................................................................................7 1.4 Substrate influence............................................................................................................8 1.5 Grammaticalization ............................................................................................................9 1.6 Other factors influencing creole formation and development ....................................10 1.7 Conclusion........................................................................................................................11 Chapter 2 - Aim, method and motivation..................................................... 13 2.1 Introduction ......................................................................................................................13 2.1.1 The documents............................................................................................................14 2.1.2 Slaves and legislation..................................................................................................15 2.1.3 The Society of Surinam and the archives ...................................................................17 2.2 Method...............................................................................................................................18 2.2.1 Problems encountered ................................................................................................20 2.3 Diagram of the archives consulted ................................................................................22 2.4 Conclusion........................................................................................................................23 Chapter 3 - Words........................................................................................... 25 3.1 Introduction ......................................................................................................................25 3.2 From a semantic point of view .......................................................................................25 3.3 From a syntactic point of view .......................................................................................27 3.3.2. Morphology.................................................................................................................28 3.3.2.1 Derivational morphology...........................................................................................28 3.3.2.2 Reduplication............................................................................................................30 3.3.2.3 Compounding ...........................................................................................................35 3.3.2.4 Mixed compounds ....................................................................................................41 3.3 Summary...........................................................................................................................42 Chapter 4 - Sentences.................................................................................... 43 4.1 Introduction ......................................................................................................................43 4.2 Sentences - 1707 ..............................................................................................................43 4.2.1 Man: Verb or noun? ....................................................................................................45 4.2.2 Yoù gho tham/yoù go dan ........................................................................................47 4.2.3 nù wanti dat – nù wanti dat jou no meester voor mi..............................................47 4.2.4 On the significance of these early sentences..............................................................49 4.3 Sentences 1707 - 1767.....................................................................................................49 4.3.1 The verbal system .......................................................................................................49 4.3.2 Combinations of markers of tense and mood .............................................................51 4.3.3 Questions ....................................................................................................................57 4.3.4 Voor, voe and voeroe: from preposition to complementizer......................................59 2 Early Sranan in court records Chapter 5 - “The world is much better documented than you think” ........ 63 5.1 Concise summary and discussion of the findings.......................................................63 5.2 Bakkratongo or nengretongo? .......................................................................................66 5.3 Other archives ..................................................................................................................68 5.4 The significance of metalinguistic evidence.................................................................69 References ...................................................................................................... 71 Appendix ......................................................................................................... 73 Categorization of ESR content words per type ................................................................75 Presentation of ESR words based on their syntactic features (per type) ......................77 Presentation of ESR sentences ..........................................................................................79 Presentation of words..........................................................................................................85 References to ethnic groups .............................................................................................107 Acknowlegdements 3 Acknowledgements While this thesis was supposed to be the last ‘test’ I had to pass in order to graduate from the university, it turned out to be a new beginning. Currently I am working on the PhD dissertation project ‘The reconstruction of 18th century Sranan’ at the University of Amsterdam. I wish to thank Jacques Arends for being a great supervisor. He - literally - opened the doors of the Rijksarchief located in The Hague, The Netherlands and showed me the importance of the study of historical sources for the understanding of the genesis and evolution of creole languages. Ad Foolen, Leon Stassen, Michael Cysouw, Pieter Seuren, Henk van Jaarsveld and Theo Walraven I would like to thank for being my teachers. Since I spent more time at the University of Nijmegen than an average Dutch student, this is the least I can do. It is not their fault that it took me some time to figure out that it is more fun being a linguist than a politician. Ansje van Aelst - Wolterink has done a wonderful job correcting the grammar and the spelling. I wish to thank her for taking the time and making the effort. Of course, none of the people mentioned above are responsible for any faults in this thesis. Those are mine. Abbrevations COP - Copula COMP - Complementizer DEF - Definite article EQ - Equative FUT - Future tense LOC - Locative NEG - Negation particle PAST - Past tense PL - Plural PREP - Preposition Q - Question particle QSU - Questioned semantic unit SL - Singular 4 Early Sranan in court records Chapter 1 - Introduction 1.1 Contemporary Sranan This thesis concerns Sranantongo – or Sranan, the national lingua franca of Surinam (South America). As a lingua franca it is used by approximately 80% of the population (350,000 inhabitants), including Hindustanis, Javanese, Chinese, American Indians, and Bush Negroes. Besides its function as a lingua franca, it is associated with the creole part of the population i.e. the descendants of African slaves imported into Surinam under Dutch rule, or people with a partly African background. It is spoken by approximately 500,000 first and second language speakers. Around 225,000 speakers of Sranan live in the Netherlands. 1.2 The formation of Sranan Sranan is a creole language that emerged on the plantations of Surinam in the 17th century. Creole languages are those languages that emerge at a certain point in time as the result of ‘linguistic violence’ (Muysken & Smith 1995). For example, Sranan did not