Berbice Creole Dutch

1. Berbice Creole Dutch Doug Whitehead

2. Berbice Creole Dutch • Introduction • History • Syntax • Phonology • Lexicon • Creole-Continuum • Sound Files

3. 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.

4. Why is Berbice Dutch Interesting? • Nearly Extinct • Recently Discovered (1970s) • Relatively Isolated • Unusually Strong Substrate Influence • Linguistic Structure: Syntax, Phonology

5. Language Structure: Syntax • Primarily SVO Word Order • Interesting Features • Reduplication (nouns, verbs and adjectives) • Negation • Tense/Mood/Aspect

6. Verb Reduplication (Kouwenberg, 2003) Semantic Reading Kk k furgt-furgt-t beki Like 1s forget-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 3s beat 3s stead7\ “If the man had taken the cuffing, she would have beaten him all the time”

7. Noun and Adj. Reduplication Noun Ju haftu pi eni kiba-kiba 2s have to give 3pl 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 1s “The boy must be nearly older than me”

8. Tense/Aspect • BD employs a combination of pre- and post-verbal tense and aspect markers.Pre-verbalPost-verbalWa, ma/sa a, te en wa bifi mete ju dangSi enSi mo-te mu plandi e famaThey PAST speak with you here we go-PF go plant it COMP“They spoke with you here “We haven’t finished planting”

9. 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

10. 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”

11. 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

12. Substrate Influence: Negation • Negation usually occurs sentence finally, as in Ijo • Yu nimi dida kane You know that NEG “You don’t know that”

13. 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”

14. Substrate Influence: Morphology • Some Morphemes Link Directly to Ijo • Noun Phrase Morphology • Plural Marker BD: -apu, Ijo: -apu • Aspect • Continuative BD: -a; Ijo: -ari • Perfective BD: -te; Ijo: -tee

15. 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