Berbice%20Creole%20Dutch

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Berbice Creole Dutch

• Doug Whitehead

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Berbice Creole Dutch

• Introduction
• History
• Syntax
• Phonology
• Lexicon
• Creole-Continuum
• Sound Files

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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.

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Why is Berbice Dutch Interesting?

• Nearly Extinct
• Recently Discovered (1970s)
• Relatively Isolated
• Unusually Strong Substrate Influence
• Linguistic Structure Syntax, Phonology

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Language Structure Syntax

• Primarily SVO Word Order
• Interesting Features
• Reduplication (nouns, verbs and adjectives)
• Negation
• Tense/Mood/Aspect

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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

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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

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Tense/Aspect

• BD employs a combination of pre- and post-verbal
  tense and aspect markers.Pre-verbal Post-verb
  alWa, 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
  COMPThey spoke with you here We
  havent finished planting

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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

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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

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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

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Substrate Influence Negation

• Negation usually occurs sentence finally, as in
  Ijo
• Yu nimi dida kane
• You know that NEG
• You dont know that

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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

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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

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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 101
•  Smith, Norval S. H. and Robertson, Ian E. and
  Williamson, Kay. 1987. The Ijo Element in
  Berbice Dutch. Language in Society, 161