The Life of Language
dynamics of language contact in Suriname
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Tense, Mood, and Aspect in Suriname
Robert Borges
Radboud University Nijmegen
Pieter Muysken
Radboud University Nijmegen
Sophie Villerius
University of Amsterdam
Kofi Yakpo
University of Hong Kong
Various proposals have been made with regards to stability, or conversely
borrowability, of particular aspects of languages’ lexicons and structures. In this
paper, we investigate the stability and borrowability of forms and patterns of tense,
mood, and aspect systems of the Surinamese creoles, Surinamese Dutch, Sarnami,
and Surinamese Javanese. Our investigation reveals that Sranan and Dutch tend to
be the source language in the cross-linguistic transfer of forms and patterns in the
Surinamese context, and that typological distance and socio-cultural factors play a
role in determining contact induced developments in the languages studied. This
suggests that, although our results loosely match various stability scales, language
system external considerations so far largely preclude the construction of universally
applicable stability and borrowability scales.
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1. Introduction
The general aim of this chapter is to investigate the stability of forms, meanings, and structural
patterns surrounding the expression of tense, mood, and aspect (TMA) in the languages of
Suriname. Despite its prominent position in the creolization debate and occasional mentions in the
literature on linguistic areas, studies on TMA in (non creolization) contact settings are relatively
few. TMA is well studied in the world’s language, in descriptive terms (Bakker et al. 1994, Barbiers
et al. 2002; van den Berg and Aboh 2013, Essegbey et al. 2013), in typology (Dahl 1985, 2000;
Dahl and Velupillai 2011a-d; Dryer 2011), and historical development & grammaticalization (Bybee
et al. 1994). In a relatively short period of time, Suriname has seen numerous, often radical,
linguistic developments due to its many languages, pervasive multilingualism, and well distributed
array of contact scenarios. We will investigate the vulnerability of features to contact induced
changes in the TMA systems of the Surinamese creoles, Surinamese Dutch, Sarnami, and
Surinamese Javanese
Although some linguists believe that any type of borrowing or structural influence is
possible in a contact setting (e.g. Thomason and Kaufman 1988), much work has been done in
attempting to determine which forms are most borrowable (e.g. Muysken 1981, via van Hout and
Muysken 1994) and which structures are most stable (e.g. Cysouw et al. 2008). Despite this, there
are some areas within borrowability and stability hierarchies where there is still little agreement.
These points will be discussed in more detail below.
1.1 Borrowing hierarchies
Several general borrowing hierarchies have been proposed for concrete lexical or morphological
forms (e.g. Haugen 1950, Weinreich 1953, Muysken 1981, Thomason and Kaufman 1988, Matras
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2007). Muysken (1) and Matras (2), for example, propose hierarchies based on case study data.
Muysken’s study investigates Spanish borrowings in Quechua, while Matras’ findings are based on
a wide range of geographic areas and genetically affiliated areas specifically targeting structural
effects in language contact scenarios. Though they arrive at somewhat different outcomes, there are
some important similarities, e.g. nouns are most borrowable while bound functional elements tend
to be more difficult to borrow. Other methods also provide inconsistent results for general
borrowability scales.
(1)
van Hout & Muysken (1994:41)
nouns > adjectives > verbs > prepositions > coordinating conjunctions > quantifiers >
determiners > free pronouns > clitic pronouns > subordinating conjunctions
(2)
Matras (2007:61-62)
nouns > conjunctions > verbs > discourse markers > adjectives > interjections>
adverbs > other particles, adpositions > numerals > pronouns > derivational affixes >
inflectional affixes
Other work, e.g. Tadmor et al. (2010), shows similar trends, where nouns are more borrowable than
verbs and content words more borrowable than function words. They also demonstrate that
grammatical categories are not the only factor determining borrowability; certain semantic fields
are more frequently borrowed than others. Others (Pagel and Atkinson 2007, Pagel 2009:411)
suggest that the frequency with which words are used predict their resistance to change.
Perhaps because TMA is expressed through a variety of means in different languages – e.g.
supersegmentals, adverbs, clitics, inflectional morphology – and within individual languages, it
plays, at most, a marginal role in the proposed borrowing hierarchies and discussions on vocabulary
stability.
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1.2 Further distinctions: MAT and PAT
Borrowability (the likelihood that a language will take a form from another language) and stability
(resistance to change) are fundamentally different since one necessarily involves language contact
and the other does not. Borrowing and stability are different in that studies on the former tend to
deal with external processes involving some component of language contact while the latter tend to
target internal developments. Matras and Sakel (2007) have helped refine our perception of
borrowability by systematically distinguishing borrowing of forms and copying of patterns in
contact settings. Based on their 27 language sample, Matras (2007) proposes a number of microhierarchies for matter and pattern replication. Of particular relevance here are those relating to
TMA. Modality is more susceptible to contact induced change than aspect, which is more
susceptible than future tense, etc. A further hierarchy was also posited for modal categories.
(3)
Matras 2007:45-46
a. TMA: modality > aspect > future tense > other tenses
b. modality (esp.MAT): obligation > necessity > possibility >ability > desire
With this, Matras provides yet another possible hierarchy for the borrowability (and by implication,
stability) of both forms and structures in the realm of TMA.
1.3 Stability of structures
Recently, linguists have taken an interest in stability of linguistic structure with the idea that certain
features are more resistant to change. Structural features would thereby provide insights into
language evolution at a greater time depth than possible through the comparative method (cf. Dunn
et al 2005). While others (e.g. Greenhill et al. 2010) contend that structure is more susceptible to
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change than vocabulary, a number of efforts have been made to determine whether there are
universally stable linguistic structures (and if so, what are they), and/or whether stability of
particular features depends on language families. Since the methodologies and results of these
studies do not always lend themselves to user friendly comparison, Dediu and Cysouw (2013) have
reviewed a number of such studies and made their outcomes comparable through statistical
conversion. Each of the works they included applied measures to data from the World Atlas of
Linguistic Structures and despite that all used the same source of data, none concluded with the
same stability hierarchy. Those WALS features pertaining to TMA have been extracted from the
studies in Dediu and Cysouw (2013) and are presented in (4)–(8), from most to least stable.
(4)
Cysouw, Albu, and Dress (2008)
Congruence test: position of tense-aspect affixes > past tense > morphological
imperative > future tense > perfect > epistemic possibility > perfective / imperfective >
overlap b/w situational and epistemic modal marking > imperative-hortative system >
prohibitive > optative > situational possibility
Coherence method: optative > imperative-hortative system > morphological imperative
> situational possibility > position of tense-aspect affixes > future tense > perfective /
imperfective > epistemic possibility > perfect > prohibitive > overlap b/w situational and
epistemic modal marking > past tense
Rank method: optative > future tense > perfective / imperfective > perfect > imperativehortative system > position of tense-aspect affixes > situational possibility
> morphological imperative > past tense > overlap b/w situational and epistemic modal
marking > epistemic possibility > prohibitive
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(5)
Dediu (2011)
optative > perfective / imperfective > future tense > past tense > overlap b/w situational
and epistemic modal marking > morphological imperative > perfect
(6)
Parkvall (2008)
P1 (all families contained in WALS): position of tense-aspect affixes > past tense >
optative > morphological imperative > prohibitive > imperative-hortative system > future
tense > situational possibility > overlap b/w situational and epistemic modal marking >
perfective / imperfective > epistemic possibility > perfect
P2 (subset of “most widely accepted families” in WALS): position of tense-aspect affixes
> past tense > morphological imperative > perfective / imperfective > prohibitive >
situational possibility > future tense > imperative-hortative system > epistemic
possibility > optative > perfect > overlap b/w situational and epistemic modal marking
(7)
Wichman and Holman 2009
optative > past tense > position of Tense-aspect affixes > perfective / imperfective >
situational possibility > epistemic possibility > future tense > morphological imperative
> prohibitive > perfect> imperative-hortative system > overlap b/w situational and
epistemic modal marking
(8)
Maslova (2002, 2004)
optative > perfective / imperfective > position of Tense-aspect affixes > future tense >
past tense > situational possibility > imperative-hortative system > morphological
imperative > epistemic possibility > perfect > prohibitive > overlap b/w situational and
epistemic modal marking
With just a glance at these hierarchies, one will notice that there are important trends and
contradictions among them. Dediu and Cysouw used a principal component analysis to rank shared
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features according to their stability and relative consistency in each of the methods they
investigated combined. The TMA features they mention can be ranked as follows:
(9)
Dediu and Cysouw (2013)
optative > past tense > perfective / imperfective > future tense > perfect > overlap b/w
situational and epistemic modal marking
Each of the eight methods applied to the same (sub)set of data has produced a unique result and
Dediu and Cysouw’s (2013) analysis of the eight combined outcomes provides yet a ninth ranking
of the features. This suggests that a universal scale of feature stability either (a) does not exist, or
(b) has not been satisfactorily demonstrated by quantitative methods. None of the methods
mentioned in this section have accounted for social factors, such as frequency of use of particular
linguistic features or the broad socio-cultural setting in which speakers of a particular language find
themselves. Thus another possibility is that (c) universals of feature stability are (partially)
determined by the social setting of the languages speakers.
1.4 The present study
The present study specifically targets stability / borrowability of TMA systems in situations of
intense language contact by investigating both the transfer of forms and the patterns surrounding
realization of TMA in a sample of Surinamese languages: the creole languages of Suriname (Anglocreole), Surinamese Dutch (Germanic), Sarnami (Indic), and Surinamese Javanese (Austronesian).
While the sample is much too small to propose yet another hierarchy for borrowing / stability
tendencies in TMA systems in general, we will be able to provide detailed inter- and intra- language
family developments within a single multilingual society.
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Our investigation is mainly diachronic, in that we intend to trace the development of the
various TMA systems, though we also use a large set of synchronic data to supplement our findings,
and in some cases, propose possible changes in progress. For some languages, diachronic data is
available e.g, Sranan and Saramaccan, while for the other Surinamese creoles, we have to rely on
reconstructions based on synchronic linguistic data, socio-historical data, and what we know about
early Sranan (from which all Surinamese creoles appear to descend). In the other cases, Dutch,
Sarnami, and Surinamese Javanese, a diachronic component can be inferred from comparison with
closely related / ancestral varieties of the Surinamese variety, i.e. European Dutch for Surinamese
Dutch; Avadhi, Bhojpuri, and other overseas Hindi varieties for Sarnami; Javanese as spoken on
Java for Surinamese Javanese.
Suriname affords us a great opportunity to investigate a number of typologically different
languages as well as several genetically related languages (creoles). Our sample covers reflects the
spectrum of contact scenarios: maintenance, shift, stable bilingualism, and creole formation within a
single multilingual society. Conveniently, the TMA systems have been somewhat of an obsession of
creolists. Similarities in creole TMA systems had been initially noted as evidence supporting the
monogenisis hypothesis. But TMA (sub)systems were later also provided as evidence for other
theories of creole genesis (e.g. superstratist, substratist, bioprogram). We see creole formation as an
ongoing complex layering of contact processes, involving elements from both substrate and
superstrate as input, as well as language internal developments. The creoles continue to develop
under pressure from contact with other creole and non-creole languages. Therefore, it is worth
systematically tracing the TMA developments in the creole languages for comparison with other
languages with which they interact.
The other three languages in our sample will help us to determine the extent to which the
structure independent factors determine borrowability / stability of TMA forms and patterns. While
the specifics of social, attitudinal, and practical aspects surrounding the Surinamese creoles, Dutch,
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Sarnami, and Surinamese Javanese differ, each languages is an integral part of Surinamese society.
And since universals are hardly agreed upon (see above), parallels we see across the languages of
Suriname are more likely indicative of a strong influence of the languages’ setting rather than
universal tendencies or purely internally driven developments.
In section 2 we will provide general definitions of tense, mood, and aspect. Section 3 will
describe the development of TMA in theSurinamese creoles. Surinamese Dutch TMA will be
contrasted with European Dutch in section 4, followed by developments of Sarnami and
Surinamese Javanese in sections 5 and 6. We will then summarize and compare the developments in
order to see (a) where changes have occurred in TMA systems and (b) if those developments can be
attributed to contact or internal development.
2. Definitions and methodology
2.1 Definitions
Despite relatively agreed upon theoretical definitions, TMA categories are not always neatly
separable in practice. Markers of TMA often overlap. For example, multiple categories can be
conveyed with a single form, or meanings of one category can be conveyed by a marker of another
depending on context. Tense and aspect are particularly linked in this respect; they both express
types of temporal relationships. Temporal meaning can also be inferred from modal categories.
TMA markers (or lack thereof) are often combined to derive additional meanings. Further, lexical
semantics, aktionsart, stativity/dynamicity, discourse context, and others all play a role in the
conventionalized expression of temporal relations and speakers’ perception and intention.
Nonetheless, we are able to differentiate the concepts of tense, mood, and aspect and in some cases
exemplify them in a less blurry fashion than is evident in everyday spoken language. The following
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subsections provide basic definitions of TMA, though for convenience, Tense and Aspect will be
discussed in sequence and modality saved for the end.
2.1.1 Tense
Tense refers to one way in which languages conventionalize the expression of an event in time. As
Mueller (2013:29) puts it, tense ‘is a representation of the relationship between three points in
time’. These three points, first coined by Reichenbach (via Mueller 2013, Boland 2006), are the
points of speech (S), event (E), and reference (R). In some cases, the point of reference coincides
with one of the other points, or according to Comrie (1985), is absent, called absolute tense.
Consider (10)–(12), from Good and McWhorter (2013:118-121), where there is a simple
relationship between S and E, past, present, and future, respectively.
(10)
Mi
á
bi
1SG
NEG PST
kë́
Saamaka
want
‘I didn’t want it (to be so).’
(11)
Mi
lobi ë̃
1SG love 3SGO
tuútuu
Saamaka
true
‘I love him so much’.
(12)
Mi
seéi ó
1SG self
FUT
bói
ë̃
Saamaka
cool 3SGO
‘I will cook it myself.’
Comrie distinguishes absolute tense from relative tense, where all three points are distinguished. In
(13, Good and Mcwhorter 2013:118), the use of the marker bi with a non-stative verb indicates past
before past. In other words, R precedes S but is later than E.
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(13)
u
bi
si
písípísi
fë̃ë̃
aki
kaa
1PL
PST
see
piece
POSS.3SGO
here
COMP
Saamaka
‘we had seen pieces scattered around here’
Another collocation, in (14, Winford and Migge 2004:504), demonstrates another order whereby R
and E are also both pre S but the E takes place after the R.
(14)
Efu mi
ben abi
if
PST
1SG
moni
mi
have money 1SG
bo
bai
wan oto
PST.FUT
buy
DET
Sranan
car
‘If I had money, I would have bought a car.’
Languages differ in the means by which they mark tense. English for example has a tendency to use
inflectional suffixes to mark past and unmarked verbs are interpreted in the present. In the
Surinamese creoles however, unmarked dynamic verbs are interpreted as past events and past is
marked on stative verbs by a preverbal auxiliary. Similarly, languages differ in the number of
grammaticalized strategies for marking different time references. Mueller (2013:46-57), for
example, discusses a number of South American indigenous languages that morphologically mark
several levels of temporal remoteness (e.g. in the past, just now, weeks/months ago, years ago).
2.1.2 Modality
Of the three TMA categories, modality is by far the most difficult and disagreed upon category of
TMA. Most basically, modality is a “grammaticalization of speakers’ (subjective) attitudes and
opinions.” (Palmer 1986:16). Modality “presents a statement about the truth or realization of a state
or event. It refers to the attitude of the speaker or one of the persons involved in the situation
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described” (Bakker and van der Voort 1994:247). Beyond these most basic types of definitions, the
specifics of modality become muddled with a multitude of strategies and sets of terminologies from
different disciplines which tend to only partially overlap and outright conflict with each other.
Boland (2006) presents modality, quite clearly, as an interplay between three parameters:
sense, source, and scope. Sense consists of a linear continuum, and though she acknowledges that
the number of distinctions made in the continuum depend on the language, Boland (2006:69) lists
those four distinguished by English: possibility, disposition, weak necessity, and necessity. The
source describes the origin of modality. Boland (2006:72) describes 3 sources: Epistemic (having to
do with knowledge), speaker-internal (where modality is ascribed to some internal characteristic of
the participant), and speaker external (where modality is ascribed to external characteristics of the
participant). The latter can also be divided into two sub types: deontic, i.e. necessity or possibility
of acts preformed by morally responsible agents, and non-deontic. The interaction of sense and
source are detailed in Table 1.
According to Boland (2006:74) the various combinations of sense and source account for the
majority of modal distinctions, but in some cases, a third parameter –scope– is useful for
understanding more fine grained semantic distinctions. Scope refers to which part of the utterance a
modal governs. There are three possibilities of scope: the predicate (where “the description of the
relation or property predicated of the argument(s) is modified” thereby defining the relationship
between the participant and the state of affairs in which it is involved, also called participant
oriented or inherent modality), the predication (“the event is situated in the real or imaginary world”
also called event oriented or objective modality), or the proposition (“the truth of the propositional
content is evaluated” also called proposition-oriented or subjective modality). Scope also combines
with sense and source, though there is some disagreement on the possibilities. One point of
contention is whether there is a one to one correspondence between scope and source – i.e.
epistemic modality would be proposition oriented. Further not all logical combinations of scope and
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source are possible, e.g. participant internal modality can only be participant oriented. See Boland
(2006) for an extensive discussion of the different types of modality.
Table 1. Interaction of modal parameters sense and source (Boland 2006:73)
source
sense
potential
disposition
weak necessity
necessity
Internal
ability
volition
weak internal need
internal need
External deontic
permission
disirability
weak obligation
obligation
External nondeontic
root possibility
root-disposition
weak root
necessity
root-necessity
Epistemic
epistemic
possibility
epistemic
disposition
epistemic
probablility
epistemic neccesity
2.1.3 Aspect
While tense locates an event in time, aspect specifies the temporal structure of an event itself
(Comrie 1976:3). Like tense, languages differ in the number of aspectual categories they distinguish
and the means by which aspect is conveyed. Commonly, two macro categories are often utilized by
tyologists: perfective and imperfective. The former conveys an event as a whole, while the latter
“pays essential attention to the internal structure” of an event (Comrie 1976:16). Examples (15)–
(16) (Sranan from Winford 2006:91) exemplify this difference.
(15)
A
djuku wan man boro
3SG stab
ART.
en
here
bere
Perfective
man cut.open 3SG.POSS whole belly
‘He stabbed the man and cut open his whole belly.’
(16)
Wan tu fu den
pikin fu owma e
one two of the-PL child of granny
IPFV
wroko gron
now ooktu
work ground now too
‘Are some of granny’s children also cultivating the land now too?’
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Imperfective
In the Surinamese creoles, unmarked verbs are read with perfective aspect (15). . Preverbal e marks
imperfective aspect in Sranan and Eastern Maroon creole (16). The Surinamese creoles will be
discussed in more detail in the following section. A more fine grained reading of perfective aspect
can be attained by use of a post verbal completive / perfect marker kaba (17)
(17)
A alen disi kan stop now. Yongu, a kon
the rain this can stop now man
tumisi furu kaba, yere
it come too
Perfect
full already hear
‘This rain can stop now. Man, it has already rained more than enough.’
In some languages, the imperfective can be further split into subcategories, such as habitual,
continuous, or iterative (Comrie 1976:25), though these distinctions will not play a role in our
investigation.
2.2 Methodology
This article relies on linguistic data gathered in Suriname in 2011-12 by Robert Borges, Kofi Yakpo,
and Stanley Hanenberg as part of the ERC project “Traces of Contact” at Radboud University
Nijmegen. Additional control data was collected by Kofi Yakpo in New Delhi, India in 2010 with
speakers of Hindi, Awadhi, Bhojpuri, Maithili, and Magahi. Indonesian Javanese control data was
collected in 2012 for comparison with Surinamese Javanese by Riski Lestiono, a collaborator of the
ERC project and himself a native speaker of Indonesian Javanese, and Sophie Villerius during a
Fieldwork Methods course in Leiden University. All language examples in this paper that come
without a bibliographical reference stem from our own field data.
The data consists of elicited material gathered through the use of visual stimuli such as
pictures, picture books (e.g. Mayer’s 1969 Frog where are you?), and a variety of video clips 16
assembled as a standard elicitation kit for the Traces of Contact research group. We also collected
more naturalistic data through semi-structured interviews and (un)guided conversations. Data was
16
Video clips were selected from the following ....
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collected from various parts of the coastal area and the interior, from members of the different
linguistic communities, speakers from ages fifteen to ninety years, and is somewhat genderbalanced.
3. The creole languages
There are seven creole languages that developed in Suriname and are still spoken there today.
Sranan, which presumably was formed in the latter half of the 17th century, is traditionally the
language of the Creole population (i.e. Afro-Surinamese non-Maroon), though the language is also
currently used by a large number of other people in Suriname as one of the main languages of
interethnic communication. The other six languages are spoken by Maroons, Afro-Surinamese
groups whose ancestors fled plantation slavery and formed independent communities outside the
plantation area. As these communities became somewhat isolated from each other, they became
differentiated due to unique linguistic developments. These Maroon languages can be further
divided into two groups (a) the Eastern Maroon languages: Ndyuka, Aluku, Kwinti, and Pamaka,
and (b) the Central Maroon languages: Saamaka and Matawai. There is a high degree of mutual
intelligibility within groups (a) and (b), but (b) has a significantly higher proportion of Portuguese
functional and lexical elements, as well as an arguably closer affinity to its substrate languages,
mostly Gbe and Kikongo. Group (b) is therefore the most distinct from the other Maroon languages
and Sranan. Unlike Sranan, the Maroon languages have been largely used as ingroup languages,
though it seems that recently a leveled Eastern Maroon variety is gaining ground as a lingua franca
in the urban environment.
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3.1 TMA in the Suriname creoles.
The core concepts expressed by Surinamese creole TMA systems are mostly marked with preverbal
markers (or their absense). The main focus of this section will be on the grammaticalized
morphemes that mark concepts of TMA, though a number of auxiliary verbs, adverbs and adverbial
clauses are also employed for encoding additional TMA concepts. Discourse position and context
also play a large role in determining TMA interpretation in the Surinamese languages (Huttar and
Huttar 1994:489-493, Winford and Migge 2007:76).
Examples of categories expressed in Surinamese creoles are past and future tense, perfective
and imperfective aspect, and epistemic, deontic, and dynamic modality. The Surinamese creoles
largely distinguish the same TMA categories and to some extent draw from the same set of forms to
convey these categories, though the distribution of the forms in each language differs to some
extent. Since by definition, creole languages are comprised of forms and structures from multiple
source languages as well as some degree of restructuring and innovation, the various components of
Surinamese creole TMA systems will be presented alongside current views on their development.
3.2 Development of tense in the Surinamese creoles.
Surinamese creoles employ a relative tense system, with reference to the speech act or other
reference point. In the modern creoles, there are two tense markers, be(n) / bi (< English been)
which locates an event prior to a particular reference point, and o for future tense (< English go). A
difference in meaning is apparent between stative and non-stative verbs with past marking. Stative
verbs marked with be(n) / bi give a simple past reading, while non statives are interpreted with a
past reference in their unmarked form. Non statives marked with be(n) / bi convey a past-beforepast (pluperfect) meaning. The stative / non-stative distinction does not play a role in the
interpretation of verbs marked with o; these are always interpreted with future meaning. The
expression of tense is not limited to the use of pre-verbal markers, but can also be achieved through
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the use of temporal adverbs or time adverb clauses, as well as particular aspect (e) and modal (sa)
markers (Huttar and Huttar 1994:489; van den Berg 2007:185, 188, 191, 196; Winford and Migge
2007:77-79).
Table 2. Tense in Surinamese creoles
tense
Early
category
Sranan
past
ben
Saamaka
Ndyuka
Pamaka
Sranan
bi
be
be
ben
o
o
o
o
sa, go,
future
de go
Both the modern tense markers are derived from English forms and are attested in other Anglo
creoles. The distribution of these forms does not, however, coincide with either English or West
African substrate languages. Past marking appears earlier in the sources of Sranan (early 18th
century), while o is not attested as a future marker until the late 18th century (Winford 2006:105,
van den Berg 2007:191, Winford and Migge 2007:95, Migge and Goury 2008:322).
Possibly resulting from the relatively late grammaticalization of o, there were several forms
used in Early Sranan to express future time reference, as shown in Table 2. There are two
hypotheses for the variation and development of future forms in Early Sranan. The first is that sa
(<Du zal ‘shall’ or English shall) existed first as a future marker, but began to develop modal
meanings in the late 18th century, after which the go / de go construction became the preferred
construction for indicating future tense (van den Berg 2007:199, Migge and Goury 2008:326).
Though neither ‘movement toward a goal’ grammaticalizing into a future morpheme, nor future
markers developing into modal markers are cross linguistically rare developments (c.f. Bybee et al.
1994), this hypothesis does not completely account for the order in which these morphemes
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developed or the current distribution of sa across modal categories in the various Surinamese
creoles (Migge and Goury 2008:326).
According to the other hypothesis, by the late 18th century, sa and (de) go may have already
developed into sociological salient variables associated with different varieties of Sranan,
the
Bakratongo (more European) and the Ningretongo variety, (more African), respectively (van den
Berg 2007:199, Migge and Goury 2008:326). Migge and Goury (2008:327) cite the high proportion
of African slaves to Europeans (24:1 in 1783) as the probable reason that the Nengretongo variant
expanded to the Bakratongo variety and later reduced phonologically to o. The further development
of sa as a modal marker will be discussed below.
3.3 The development of modality in the Surinamese creoles
A number of modal categories are distinguished in the Surinamese creoles, however the marking of
each category differs according to language (Migge 2006:34; Migge and Goury 2008:309; Migge
and Winford 2009, Essegbey et al. 2013). Table 2 details a number of modal categories and the
grammaticalized morphemes used to mark each category in several Surinamese creoles. The most
variation can be found in the realm of potential. Other categories are marked with relative
consistency.
The most variation among the Surinamese creoles is found in within the potential category.
These sub categories are marked with the forms sa, man, kan,and poi, though the distributions
across the different languages are not consistent, reflecting unique developments of each language.
Migge and Winford (2009:129) argue that the potential categories of Maroon creoles are largely
modeled on Gbe patterns, while Sranan exhibits additional internal developments and effects of
contact with Dutch.
!
A number of complex developments have led to the makeup of the modern modal system in
the Surinamese creoles. In the early sources, modality seems to have been largely modeled on
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Dutch (and possibly English). The meanings of early forms correspond to their etyma, though
increased contact with Dutch and substrate languages forced developments of Sranan and the
Maroon creoles in different directions. As sa was losing ground to (g)o as a tense marker in
Suriname and acquiring modal meaning, Dutch had a stronger influence on Sranan which led to
Sranan’s modal system being modeled on the Dutch one. Modern Sranan sa and Dutch zullen share
a similar range of modal meanings (Migge and Winford 2009:146-148).
Table 3. Creole modal categories and markers
modal category
Potential
Physical ability +
Physical ability Deontic (root)
possibility +
Early Sranan Saamaka
Ndyuka
Pamaka
Sranan
kan, man va
kan
kan
sa
sa
sa
sa
poi
sa
sa
man
sa
man/kan
man/kan
kan
Deontic (root)
possibility -
kan
sa
poi
man
kan
Permission +
kan, mag
sa
sa
sa
man/kan/mag
Permission -
kan
sa
poi
man
man/kan/mag
Epistemic
possibility + / -
(kan)
sa, kande
sa, kande
sa, kande
kande
mu, musu
musu, sa
Necessity
deontic necessity or mus(u),
obligation
musu, musu u mu, musu fu
epistemic necessity musu
musu
musu
musu
sa
NOTE: this table is adapted from Migge (2006:34), Migge & Goury (2008:309), and Migge & Winford 2009.
There are several reasons to suggest substrate influence on the Maroon creoles’ use of sa. Firstly,
Western Gbe languages have a potential future marker lá / á which also invokes a range of modal
meanings that correspond to potential categories in the Maroon creoles (Migge and Winford
2009:149). Secondly, the Gbe system of potential modality indexes the same categories as the
Maroon creoles and several Gbe varieties (Aja, Xwela, Xwla) formally distinguish positive and
negative potential categories, which would explain the use of man (Pamaka) and poi (Ndyuka,
<Portuguese pode ‘3sg can’) in negative contexts (Migge and Winford 2009:150). Essegbey et al.
180
(2013) also point out the formal distinction between inherent and acquired ability, marked with
imperfective e and modal sa respectively in the Maroon creoles, which reflects patterns found in
several Gbe languages.
The marker kan, on the other hand, appears to have been modeled on the usage patterns of
Dutch kunnen, indicating root possibility, ability, and permission in both 18th century and modern
Sranan (Migge and Winford 2009:141-142). Kunnen is also used to indicate epistemic possibility in
Dutch, and Migge and Winford (2009:142) suggest that the marginal use of Sranan kan in such
contexts is a recent development. Dutch is also clearly the source of mag, indicating permission,
though its use is quite marginal in 18th century Sranan, suggesting that this is a somewhat later
developments (van den Berg 2007:217, Migge and Winford 2009:142). Grammaticalization also
played a role in the modal system of Sranan and Pamaka, as evidenced by the status of man as an
auxiliary which developed from its use as a noun (van den Berg 2001:249-252 , van den Berg and
Arends 2004:26-28).
Our data from 2010-11 show suggest that developments in the modal system of Nduyka
(and possibly other Maroon creoles) continue to develop. We have noticed differential marking of
modal categories between urban and rural dwelling Ndyuka speakers, with the former tending to
align themselves with Sranan patterns. Likely due to an increasing number of Maroons in the city in
the past decades, their increased exposure to Sranantongo, frequent interaction with Maroons from
other ethnic groups and non-Maroons, and perhaps the inclination to establish an identity
independent of their traditional ethnicity (see Migge 2007; Migge and Léglise 2013; Léglise and
Migge to appear), Maroon languages have come under influence of each other and Sranantongo.
Ndyuka speakers themselves are also aware of Sranantongo’s influence on their language. One
informant explained that the closer you get to the coast, the more ‘developed’ the language is.
Others describe the influence more defensively; coastal Ndyuka is moksi ‘mixed’ or basaa
‘bastardized’. An urban dwelling informant describes the difference in terms of “modern” Ndyuka
181
along the coast versus a more traditional variety in the interior. Language attitudes aside, speakers
are well aware that there is a difference between urban and rural varieties, though it is often difficult
for informants to pinpoint particular features, and several informants claimed to switch between
varieties depending on their environment. Table (4) illustrates how the modal categories of Urban
Ndyuka appear to have been influenced by Sranantongo:
Table 4. Modal particles in rural and urban Ndyuka
Modal category
Sranantongo
Urban Ndyuka
Rural Ndyuka
positive potential
Sa
Sa
Sa
negative
ve potential
kan/sa
positive possibility
kan
Kan
Sa
negative
ve possibility
man/kan
man
Poi
positive permission
kan/mag
Kan
Sa
negative
ve permission
kan
Man
Poi
Positive physical ability
abi
kan
Kan
Sa
negative
ve physical abi
ability
man
Poi
Poi
NOTE: Sranan and Rural Ndyuka columns come from the same sources as Table 4. The Urban Ndyuka
column is based on our data.
The following two examples contrast the rural Ndyuka form poi (18) with the urban form man (19).
Both forms may express negative permission (the former only in combination with verbal
negation), and in this context, they thus share the same function. However, man is not the
conventional form used in upriver Ndyuka. Compare the Sranantongo example in (20):
(18)
mi
be
taigi den
pikin kaba,
yu
á
1SG
PST
tell
child
2SG
NEG MOD
DEF.PL
COMPL
poi
waka go a
busi
walk go
forest
LOC
‘I told those kids they may not go into the forest [alone]’ (rural Ndyuka)
(19)
182
i no
man
oli
en
moro.
2s NEG
MOD
hold 3SG more
‘You may not keep it anymore.’ (urban Ndyuka)
(20)
un
no
1/2PL NEG
man taki soso Sranantongo.
MOD
talk only Sranantongo
'You [PL] may not talk only Sranantongo.
The following examples illustrate the phenomenon with respect to the expression of physical
ability. The conventional form for expressing this modal category in rural Ndyuka is the preverbal
particle sa, as shown in (21). Urban Ndyuka speakers however freely employ the Sranantongo
derived auxiliary verb kan instead, as in (22). Compare the Sranantongo use of kan in (23):
(21)
a
taanga,
3SG be.strong
a
sa
diki wan ondoo
kilo.
3SG
MOD
lift
kilo
one hundred
‘He is (very) strong, he can lift 100 kilos.’ (Winford and Migge 2004:30)
(22)
i
kan go
meke
wan film.
2SG
MOD
go
make
INDF
film
'You can go make a film. (urban Ndyuka)
(23)
a
kan
doro fu
broko
a apra.
3SG
MOD
reach PREP
break
DEF.SG apple
'He can manage to pick the apple.'
It is important to note here that the phenomenon presented cannot be described as a complete
change; variation is the norm. Many of our urban informants were recorded using both rural
Ndyuka forms next to urban forms, though this was not the case with upriver speakers. With two
geographic points of reference in our Ndyuka sample, Paramaribo and the upriver Tapanahoni, the
data suggest that Sranan is the main source of urban features in Ndyuka; however contact with
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highly intelligible eastern Maroon varieties should not be ignored. In fact, it is often difficult to
determine the origin of a particular feature, such as the case of man in examples (18)–(20). Pamaka
is not represented in our sample, though Migge and Goury (2008:309) tell us that man is also
employed for several modal categories in that language. Kan on the other hand appears to be an
addition to the repertoire of urban Ndyuka originating from Sranan. While etymologically
indeterminate features such as man might weaken our argument for an urban influence on Ndyuka,
it should be noted that the important changes in traditional Maroon societies associated with coastal
life in Paramaribo and urban centers along the Marowijne that have set the stage for the blurring of
traditionally salient differences among Maroon varieties, as well as influence from Sranan.
3.4 Development of Aspect in the Surinamese creoles
Verbs that are not marked with an aspect marker are interpreted as perfective. Imperfective aspect is
marked with preverbal e in Sranan and Eastern Maroon creole, and ta in Saamaka. Completive
aspect is marked in all creoles with a verb phrase final kaba (<Port. acabar ‘to finish’) which is
homophonous to a main verb ‘to finish’. Aspectual categories and their markers are detailed in
Table 5.
Table 5. Aspectual marking in the Surinamese Creoles
aspect
category
Early Sranan Saamaka
Ndyuka
Pamaka
Sranan
PFV
Ø
Ø
Ø
Ø
Ø
IPFV
de
ta
e
e
e
COMPL
kaba
kaba
kaba
kaba
k(a)ba
Winford and Migge (2007:83) argue that the perfective interpretation of unmarked verbs is modeled
primarily on the Gbe languages. The two language groups share a “more or less identical range of
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meanings and uses” with respect to unmarked verbs, including: property items and other stative
verbs, non stative verbs with past reference, and non stative verbs with current relevance (Winford
and Migge 2007:81). Substrate influence also plays the primary role in the development of the
completive marker. Like the Surinamese creoles, Gbe languages also have a completive category,
conveyed with a verb phrase final marker derived from the verb ‘to finish’ (Winford 2006:102,
Winford and Migge 2007:84-85). However, kaba is compatible with stative and non-stative
situations, while the Gbe marker is only compatible with non-stative situations, suggesting some
additional processes of grammaticalization in the Surinamese creoles (Winford and Migge 2007:85,
van den Berg and Aboh 2013).
Imperfective markers e and ta are derived from the locational copula de and the verb tan ‘to
stay, to wait’. In the early texts these forms are used to mark progressive aspect, but only rarely
habitual aspect, according to Winford and Migge (2006:85), evidence which they use to suggest that
imperfective aspect was a late categorical development dependent on the further grammaticalization
of the progressive marker to an imperfective marker. However, van den Berg (2007:200, to appear)
states that de in Early Sranan covers several imperfective sub-categories: continuous, habitual,
progressive, and ingressive. This suggests that, contrary to Winford and Migge’s (2007) claim,
imperfective was already a grammaticalized category early on, and was not modeled on the Gbe
aspectual system which lacks a macro imperfective category as in the Surinamese creoles.
3.5 Discussion
A number of different structures in various substrate and superstrate languages, along with
innovation and grammaticalization are responsible for the composition of the Surinamese creoles’
TMA systems as they are today. Table 6 summarizes the processes involved in the development of
each TMA marker.
185
Table 6. Developments of TMA in Surinamese creoles
category
marker
process
tense
be
Grammaticalization of English been
o
Grammaticalization of English go
sa
Grammaticalization of Dutch zal ‘shall’ (or English shall) to future
marker and later to modal marker
Sranan dynamic sa modeled on Dutch patterns
Maroon languages potential sa modeled on substrate (Gbe) patterns
poi
Modeled on substrate patterns
man
Grammaticalized from noun – later spread to urban Maroon varieties
kan
modeled Dutch patterns in Sranan – relatively recent spread to urban
Maroon varieties
mag
Modeled on Dutch, increased use due to recent contact
Ø
substrate influence
kaba
substrate influence + later grammaticalization
e
substrate influence - marker grammaticalized from locational copula
grammaticalization - substrate languages distinguish several subtypes of ipfv categories
mood
aspect
Various aspects of all the Surinamese creole languages’ TMA systems can be attributed to substrate
influences, though this is more apparent in the Maroon creoles. English superstrate influence,
contact with Dutch, and grammaticalization have also played a prominent role in the development
of Surinamese creoles.. Finally, we suggest that the creole languages are now influencing each
other’s development, as indexed by urban Ndyuka modal marking that patterns with Sranan in our
data.
186
4. Surinamese Dutch
Surinamese Dutch (SD) is spoken both in Suriname and in the Netherlands, the colonizing country
to which many Surinamese have migrated. It is a widely recognized ethnolect in the Netherlands
(cf. Muysken 2013), and some of its features have led to ethnic stereotypes. It has also been
described on a number of occasions, in part under the rubric of ‘mistakes’ of Surinamese children in
the Dutch classroom. Charry (1983) is still the most sophisticated study focusing on phonological
variation in this variety in the Dutch context, which requires much more investigation. De Kleine
(2007) is an extensive morphosyntactic study of SD as spoken in Surinam. In Suriname,
paradoxically, SD is not an ethnolect but an ethnically neutral national variety.
It should be noted that many of our elicitations in Suriname did not produce very informal
speech. Some of the speakers recorded felt that they had to put on their best Dutch, i.e. as close to
ED as possible. In spite of this, the data reveal a surprising number of innovative features. Another
issue is whether the SD recorded represents a stable variety in its own right or simply a gathering of
second language speech samples. To some extent it is the latter, as some of the consultants recorded
are clearly second language speakers. However, the fact that there are 15 analyzed samples (leaving
aside the word list recordings) makes it possible to see how wide spread a feature is across samples
and how frequent within a sample. Some of innovative properties are quite general, as can be seen
from Table 8, suggesting that they are entrenched within the SD speech community.
In 4.1 we present the basic outlines of the European Dutch (ED) system, 4.2 contains the
actual sketch of TMA in SD, and in 4.3, a more general perspective is introduced.
187
4.1. The TMA system of European Dutch
The TMA system of ED is not very rich in fully grammaticalized categories, but there are numerous
auxiliaries and semi-auxiliaries, and some specialized constructions. The basic distinction in verbal
morphology is that between past and non-past. In (24) an example is given with a regular (weak)
verb, and in (25) with an irregular (strong) verb:
(24) a.
Zij hoop-t
op een beter-e
she hope-3SG on a
toekomst.
better-AI future
‘She hopes for a better future.’
b.
Zij hoop-te
op een beter-e
she hope-3SG.PA on a
toekomst.
better-AI future
‘She hoped for a better future.’
(25) a.
Zij loop-t
op straat.
she walk-3SG on street
‘She walks in the street.’
b.
Zij liep
op
she walk.PA.3SG on
straat.
street
‘She walked in the street.’
The shape of the basic roots involved in these examples is the same; the status of a verb as ‘weak’
or ‘strong’ is not phonologically conditioned.
The basic temporal distinction, as noted, is past/non-past. Future tense reference is
ordinarily marked with a simple non-past:
188
(26)
Morgen
koop
ik
een fiets.
tomorrow buy.1SG 1sg a
bike
‘Tomorrow I will buy a bike.’
There is a specialized construction to mark progressive aspect, aan het X-INF zijn ‘be at X-ing’:
(27)
Zij
is schoen-en aan het
kop-en.
she
is shoe-PL
buy-INF
at
DET
‘She is buying shoes.’
Table 7. Some ED auxiliaries and semi-auxiliaries with their main uses
Form
Gloss
zijn
be
Uses
Category
Comments
With past participle, past/
perfect with telic verbs
b.
With past participle,
completive passive with
transitive verbs
c.
As mentioned, progressive in
the aan het X construction
worden ‘become’
a.
In passive sentences
b.
To mark change of state with
non-verbal predicates
zullen shall
Future with modal connotations
(assured prediction, obligation)
moeten must
a.
Deontic modal of obligation
b.
Epistemic modal of inference
c.
Evidential inference of
hearsay
mogen may
a.
Deontic modal of permission
b.
Epistemic modal of
possibility
gaan go
Intention, immediate future
TNS
ASP
TNS
ASP
Frequent in child language
and L2 varieties
doen
ASP
Frequent in southern ED
do
a.
habitual
ASP
MOD
Less frequent than in English
MOD
EVI
MOD
There is also a ‘have’ + past participle perfect, which is often used in ordinary past tense contexts,
unlike its use in English:
189
(28)
Zij
heeft gisteren
she
has
schoen-en gekocht.
yesterday shoe-PL
buy.PP
‘She bought shoes yesterday.’
Furthermore, there is a whole range of auxiliaries and semi-auxiliaries. In Table 7, we present some
of them with their main uses.
4.2. A sketch of TMA in Surinamese Dutch
The SD data show a number of innovative features concerning the expression of TMA categories
when compared to ED.
4.2.1 Tense
In the general area of Tense, there are some cases (in two samples) where past marking on verb is
innovative in comparison with ED. These include double marking (strong + weak past, as in (29)),
and weak instead of strong marking, as in (30):
(29)
En
dacht-te
en
pak-t
dus, dacht-te,
and
thought-PA and grab-3SG thus, thought-PST, grab-3SG thus a
houders
vast
aan een paar
tak-ken
hold-PL
tight
on
branch-PL
a
few
pakt
dus een paar
few
‘and thought and grabs thus, thought, grabs a few holds tight on a few branches’
(30)
En hij ging
daar uit het huis
en
pak- te
hem en
and he go.3SG.PA there out DET house and grab-3SG.PA him and
houd-de
hem strak vast
hold-3SG.PA him tight straight
190
en
z'n, z'n,
om
hem
heen
and
his his
around
him
all
‘and he went there out of the house and grabbed him and held him tight and his, his,
around him’
The irregular past tense marking may be linked to a more general issue concerning tense
organization in SD. In the following Frog Story recounting the speaker jumps form [perfect] to
[present] to [present] to [past] to [present] to [past] to [present] to [past] to [present] to [perfect] to
[past] to [past].
(31)
story book description (Frog story)
a.
John, Johnny heeft
een kikker gehad
John, Johnny have.3SG a
frog
en
heeft
ook een
have.PP and have.3SG also a
hond-je
dog-DIM.
‘John, Johnny has had a frog and also has a little dog.’
b.
Johnny houd-t
van de kikker, maar toen hij sliep
Johnny love-3SG of the frog,
but
met
die
when he sleep.PA with that
ging
die
kikker
stiekem weg
go.3SG.PA
that
frog
secretly away
hond
dog
‘Johnny loves the frog, but when he slept with the dog the frog secretly ran away.’
c.
Toen het morgen, toen het ochtend
when it
tomorrow when it
die kikker niet
vinden
that frog
find.INF
not
wordt
kon, kan
Johnny
morning becomes could,can
Johnny
‘when the morning comes Johnny could, can not find the frog any more.’
d.
Johnny keek
naar buiten en
Johnny look.PA to
de, enne, roep-t naar eh, naam van de kikker
outside and the, one, call-3SG to
eh, name of the frog.’
‘Johnny looked outside and the, and, calls to, eh, the name of the frog.’
191
e.
Johnny heeft
een gat
Johnny have.3SG a
dat
in de
grond
gevo... eh
hole in the ground fi.PP.... eh
het
kikkertje
daar binnen was en
that the
frog.DIM
there inside
riep
gezien en
dacht
see.PP
think.PA
die
and
kikker
was and call.PA that frog
‘Johnny has found, seen a hole in the ground .and thought that the little frog was in
there and called the frog.’
De Kleine (2007) contains a detailed analysis of the TMA categories in SD as compared to ED. We
will only mention a few of the points she makes. Regarding past tense marking, a very complex
picture is given. De Kleine comments (2007:69): ‘The pattern that emerges from the data shows
that the rules for past tense marking in SD, unlike ED, are governed by discourse rather than
grammar.’ And further on (2007:75): ‘It should be emphasized that there is a significant amount of
variation regarding past tense marking in the data.’
In fragments where both gaan ‘go’ and zullen ‘shall.INF’ occur, gaan refers to more definite
and immediate events, and zullen to more uncertain events (2007:63):
(32)
… ze
gaat
boos op je
worden, misschien maanden
… she go.3SG angry on you become, perhaps
ze
zal
eens inzien
she
shall once see
dat
je
gelijk
that you right
lang. Maar
month.PL long. But
had, toch?
had, right
‘… she is going to get mad at you, maybe for months. But one day she will see that you
were right, right?’
This difference may reflect the distinction between sa and o in Sranantongo (see section 3 above).
However, the past form zullen, zou ‘should’ does have definite reference (2007: 64):
192
(33)
… half tien zou
… half ten
dat
feestje beginnen.
should that party
begin
‘at half past nine that party was going to start.’
The ED system of marking unreal conditionals with past perfect forms is replaced by simple past
(2007: 81):
(34)
En
als
And if
je
niet zoveel
you not
bij
so.much
je
had?
with you had
‘And if you had not had so much money on you?’ (cf. ED: En als je niet zoveel bij je
had gehad?)
The absence of final placement of the infinitive verb after gaan and worden is illustrated in the next
examples from the our corpus:
(35)
Hij
gaat
zitten
he
go.3SG sit-INF
op
een
stoel.
on
a
chair
‘He goes and sits on a chair.’ (cf. ED Hij gaat op een stoel zitten.)
(36)
Ligg-en wortel-en op de tafel en ze
worden gebroken in twee stukk-en
lie-3pl carrot-PL on the table and they become break.PP in two
piece-PL
‘Carrots lie on the table and they are broken into two pieces.’ (cf. ED ze worden in twee
stukken gebroken)
This suggests that, contrary to ED, there is a tendency to view the auxiliary and the verb as a single
cluster.
193
The overgeneralization of the aan het progressive construction is illustrated in (37), where
the stative verb slapen ‘sleep’ is marked with aan het:
(37)
Een muis
a
is aan het
mouse is at
the
slap-en.
sleep-INF
‘A mouse is sleeping.’
With other speakers we find overgeneralization of bezig zijn te X ‘be busy to X’ with the same
meaning.
(38)
Een vrouw
a
zit
op de
woman sit.3SG on the
grond
en
ze
floor
and she
is bezig te et-en.
is busy to eat-INF
‘A woman sits on the floor and is eating.’
(39)
Een muis was bezig te lez-en
a
en
hij word-t
gestoord
en
mouse was busy to read-INF and he become-3SG disturbed and
word-t
hij
boos.
become-3SG he
angry
daarom
therefore
‘A mouse was reading and he is disturbed and therefore he gets angry.’17
In both cases the precise semantics of the predicate and the nature of the semi-grammaticalized
auxiliary are treated differently is SD from ED.
A feature shared with some varieties of ED is the use of generic doen ‘do’:
17
Notice the jump from past to present tense marking in this example.
194
(40)
Ja,
ik
doe voetball-en.
yes
I
do
football-INF
‘Yes I play football.’
(41)
En
aan de bovenkant van de saxofoon,
and on the top.side
en
rechterhand
and right.hand
of the saxophone, finger.setting is left.hand
doe je
do
vingerzetting is linkerhand boven
lager
te
doen
you lower
to
do.INF
top
‘And on top of the saxophone, the finger setting is left hand on top and right hand you
do lower.´
4.3 Conclusions and discussion
Table 8 gives an overview of our main findings. First the number of samples is mentioned, then
whether the feature is also indicated in the earlier studies of Essed-Fruin (1983), De Kleine (2007),
and De Bies (2008). Finally we indicate whether the feature is similar to a Sranan feature (+),
different from the relevant property of Sranan (-), or not linkable to Sranan either in positive or a
negative sense (0). If the feature does not correspond directly to Sranan, but have emerged through
indirect Sranan influence, it is (+).
Table 8.
Variable in our corpus
Absence of verb final after gaan and
worden
Overgeneralization of aan het V
Overgeneralization of bezig zijn
Tense organization
Generic doen
# samples EssedFruin
5
1
1
4
1
De Kleine De Bies Sranan
(+)
66-79
133
41
(+)
(+)
+
-
195
We can assume indirect Sranan influence in the case of the absence of verb final because Sranan has
S Aux (=gaan/worden) V O constituent order. The overgeneralization of aan het V and bezig zijn
could be linked to the general presence of progressive e in Sranan with activity verbs.
Essed-Fruin (1983: 122-137), in a very interesting early exploratory study, distinguishes
three types of ‘deviations’ from ED within SD:
• Idiomatic deviations
• Deviations from the conventional system
• Deviations from the essential system
The changes in word order and the irregular marking of past tense morphology reflect deviations
from the conventional system, while changes in progressive aspect marking and the relation
between past and present tense probably reflect more deep-seated deviations from the essential
system
De Kleine (2007), in a much more recent thesis defended at CUNY in New York, follows
the classic distinction between External change (2007: 134) and Internal change (2007: 132), which
in turn can divided into Simplification through loss of forms (2007: 132) and Simplification through
change of forms (2007: 133). It is clear that formal simplification and restructuring can be attributed
to these types of change. External change in turn can involve either Transfer of grammatical
functions (2007: 136) or Transfer of grammatical structures (2007: 139). The first case, transfer of
grammatical functions, is the most frequent. A particular element already existing in ED, such as the
use of aan het, is given a wider semantic range. This type of transfer leads to Syntactic camouflage
(2007: 136), the term De Kleine cites from Spears (1982): an SD form which looks like an ED form
has a different meaning. This parallels Spears’ Word camouflage, where an existing word is used
with innovative meanings. These types of camouflage can lead to what Stewart (1990) has labeled
pseudocomprehension within Caribbean societies. People from different ethnic or social
backgrounds roughly, but perhaps not quite, understand each other’s meanings.
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5. Sarnami
Grammatical features and the lexicon of the language indicate that Sarnami is the result of the
mixing of a number of northern Indian languages. Some languages that contributed to Sarnami are
Bhojpuri, Magahi and Maithili, spoken in the present-day Indian federal states of Uttar Pradesh,
Bihar, Jharkhand and West Bengal. These three languages are generally classified as the Bihari
subgroup of Indic, hence separate from Hindi (cf. Masica 1993: 12ff.). The grammar and lexicon of
Sarnami also reflect in varying degrees the influence of Braj and Kannauji, which are seen as
eastern varieties of Hindi, (ibid.) as well as Awadhi, generally seen as a variety more distinct from
Hindi albeit closely related. Sarnami shows the characteristic effects of koineization that have been
widely documented in the literature (e.g. Kerswill 2002), namely mixing, leveling, simplification
and reallocation. For example, Yakpo and Muysken (in press, 2013) show that the Sarnami
perfective/past suffixes have multiple sources in the contributing languages listed above (cf.
Damsteegt 1988 for an overview of other koineization effects in Sarnami). At the same time,
leveling has been responsible for specific past/perfective forms being picked out while others have
not survived the koineization process (e.g. kar-is ‘s/he did’ [do-3SG/PL.PFV] < Awadhi; kar-le ‘you
did’ [do-2SG/PL.PFV] < Maithili).
Our data and sociolinguistic interviews show that Sarnami is extremely vital, used by all
generations in the Indo-Surinamese community of Suriname in a pattern of trilingualism involving
Sarnami, Sranan and Dutch. Entrenched multilingualism in the Indo-Surinamese community has
however led to contact induced change in Sarnami, some of which is quite far-reaching. The most
obvious changes are lexical in nature: Sarnami has acquired numerous lexical items from Sranan
and Dutch, and also features calques from these two languages (cf. Yakpo & Muysken, in press).
However, there are also contact induced changes in the grammar of the language. One change that
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has been identified is an ongoing shift from SOV basic word order to a mixed pattern in which SVO
is nearly as common as SOV (Yakpo & Muysken, in press). In the following, we document further
contact induced changes in the TMA system of Sarnami.
The core TMA system is constituted by markers which instantiate central tense, aspect and
mood categories. We will see that the most profound changes can be witnessed in the non-core
system. This is to be expected since the non-core system is by definition paradigmatically and
syntagmatically less tightly organized and expresses more specialized (hence more peripheral)
semantic notions. Given the medium to short time depth of contact between many of the languages
of Suriname – this concerns first and foremost the immigrant languages of the Asian-descended
communities – we would expect the impact of language contact to make itself felt first in the noncore system.
5.1 The TMA system of Sarnami and its contributing languages
Sarnami has a TMA system that is characteristic for the Indo-Aryan languages of north-eastern
India. Sarnami The core TMA system makes use of verbal suffixes, hence bound morphology with
support from the auxiliary verb ‘to be’ for the expression of composite tense/aspect notions.
Table 9. Perfective/past suffixes in Sarnami and north Indian languages
Sarnami
Southern
Bhojpuri
Sadani
Bhojpuri
Maithili
Magahi
Lakhimpuri
Awadhi
1SG
-li, -lin
-lī̃
-lō̃
-li
-li
-eũ
1PL
-li, -lin
-lī̃
-lī
-li
-li
-en
2SG
-le
-lā, (-liu)
-lis
-le, -lẽ
-la
-ē, -isi
2PL
-le
-lā, (-liu)
-lā
-le, -lẽ
-la
-eu
3SG
-l, -is
-l, (-li)
-lak
-l, -l(k
-l, -lak
-isi
3PL
-l, -is, -lẽ
-lẽ, (-lini)
-aī
-l, -l(k
-l, -lak
-ini
(Sources: Saksena 1971 for Awadhi; Tiwari 1960 and Shukla 1981 for Bhojpuri; Jordan-Horstmann 1969 for
Sadani Bhojpuri; Yadav 1996 for Maithili; Verma 1985 for Magahi)
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Table 9 compares the past/perfective suffixes of Sarnami with those found in five of its contributing
languages of India. In all five varieties listed in the table above the template for the formation of
composite tense/aspect categories is virtually identical. For example, past progressive is instantiated
in a construction in which the lexical verb occurs in an imperfective participial form in order to
express an ongoing situation (42), and a form of the verb ‘to be’ is inflected for past tense and
person-number in order to express the termination of a situation (43). The past tense suffix on the
‘to be’ auxiliary is, in turn, itself a perfective participial morpheme. Hence only the form in its
entirety, i.e. the auxiliary + the perfective affix, indicates past tense. Compare the following
examples of the formation of past progressive in Sarnami, Maithili and Magahi respectively:
(42)
ham soc-at
1
rah-il-i
joga
Sarnami
think-IPFP be-PFVP-1 yoga
‘I was thinking (that this was) yoga.’
(43)
Ram kha-it
ch-!l-ah
Maithili; Yadav 1996: 155; gloss adapted
Ram eat-IPFP be-PFVP.3HON
‘Ram was eating.’
(44)
tu
sut-ait
ha-l-a
Magahi; Verma 1985: 55; gloss adapted
2SG sleep-IPFP be-PFVP-2SG
‘You were sleeping.’
In the non-core system, auxiliaries combine with lexical verbs in order to express less central
aspectual and modal notions in auxiliary constructions. In all the languages including Sarnami, the
group of auxiliaries encompasses items ranging from little grammaticalized lexical verbs to highly
grammaticalized ‘vector verbs’ (cf. Masica 1993: 266). Although an etymological relation between
vector verbs and lexical verbs can in many cases be established, the former may express specialized
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aspectual and spatial notions with only remote semantic connections with their lexical counterparts.
One such example is the verb lag-, whose source meaning is ‘(to) attach’, as shown in the following
example from Sadani Bhojpuri:
(45)
kona mẽ rʌtʌn kʌr gheir lagʌl ahe
‘In the corner a mass of jewels is heaped up (lit. ‘is attached’).’
(Sadani Bhojpuri; Jordan-Horstmann 1969: 86, no gloss provided)
In all the Bihari languages as well as in Sarnami, lag also occurs as an auxiliary verb in a dative
experiencer construction. This function of lag-, although more grammaticalized, is still somehow
transparently connected to the etymology of ‘(to) attach’. Compare the following examples from
Maithili and Sarnami respectively:
(46)
Mohan ke
%hã
nik
l!g-%l-i%eik Maithili; Yadav 1996:183; gloss adapted
Mohan ACC/DAT 2SG.HON good attach-PFVP-(2SG.HON+3SG)
‘Mohan liked you.’ (lit. ‘you were well attached to Mohan.’)
(47)
u
film, la rka-n ke
d ar e lag-e
DIST
film child-PL
fear
ACC/DAT
hai.
Sarnami
‘attach’-INF be.PRS
‘As for this film, the children are afraid.’ (lit. ‘fear is attached to the children.’)
In its most abstract and grammaticalized function, lag- is employed as an aspectual auxiliary verb
with the meaning ‘(to) begin’. In its auxiliary function lag- is inflected like any other full lexical
verb. Compare the following two examples from Sadani Bhojpuri and Sarnami respectively:
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(48)
u kandek laglʌk
Sadani Bhojpuri; Jordan-Horstmann 1969: 101, no gloss provided
‘s/he started crying’
(49)
ekwá-ekwá
ke
mur i-yá men khoj-e
lag-al.
other~RED
ACC/DAT
head-DEF in
attach-PFVP
look.for-INF
Sarnami
'One has begun searching (lice) in the head [hair] of the other.'
In the following section, we concentrate our analysis on contact-induced developments to the noncore TMA system of Sarnami.
5.2 Contact-induced changes in the TMA system of Sarnami
In Sarnami, the core TMA system makes use of monosyllabic verbal suffixes, hence bound
morphology with support from the auxiliary verb rahe ‘to be’ for the expression of composite
tenses. In the non-core system, auxiliary verbs combine with lexical verbs in order to express less
central aspectual and modal notions in auxiliary constructions. These auxiliary constructions are of
course also essential for the constitution of well-formed discourse in Sarnami. However, they are
not essential for the constitution of well-formed clauses, because they do not express any of the
highly grammaticalized, obligatory categorial oppositions that the core system expresses.
Table 10 summarizes contact-induced developments in the non-core system of Sarnami:
Table 10. Developments in the non-core TMA system of Sarnami
Aspect/modal
reading
Continuative
Non-native
structure
doro já
Gloss
Native equivalent
Gloss
‘through go’
áge bar he/cale
‘forward move/go”
Ingressive
Completive
Conative
bigin kare
‘begin do’
af‘off-’
pruberi/probeer kare ‘try do’
lage
cukkosis kare
‘come in contact’
‘completive’
‘effort do’
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5.2.1 Continuative
In our Sarnami corpus, continuative aspect is exclusively expressed via a construction involving
non-native material. The adverb/particle doro ‘through’, of Sranan origin, may appear in
combination with the Sarnami verb já ‘go’ to express the notion ‘go on, continue’, as shown in 50
below. The construction therefore features a mixture of matter and pattern borrowing:
(50)
en
doro ga-il
bajá-we.
and
CONT go-PFVP
play.music-INF
'And he continued playing music,'
The element doro is also found to express a continuative reading on its own without addition of the
verb já. An example for the use of this adverbial strategy can be found in 51:
(51)
doro bajá-we
hai.
CONT play.music-INF
be.PRS
'(He) continues playing music.'
The continuative construction in Sarnami exemplifies very well the complex multidirectional
transfer processes that characterize the Surinamese linguistic area. For one part, the continuative
construction is a direct calque from a corresponding construction in Sranan. In Sranan too, an
adverbial element doro as well as a lexical verb go collocate to express a continuative reading, as
can be seen in example 52. The syntactic differences between Sarnami and Sranan can be attributed
to the corresponding differences in clause-linking strategies available to the two languages. In
Sarnami (cf. (50) above) the lexical verb is an infinitival complement to the auxiliary construction.
But in Sranan (cf. (52) below) we instead find a serial verb construction in which the aspectual
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‘auxiliary’ follows the lexical verb without any overt sign of subordination:
(52)
a
bigi wan plèy go doro nanga
a
bal.
DEF.SG
big
DEF.SG
ball
one play go CONT with
‘The big one continues playing with the ball.’
In Sranan, as well, the adverbial doro alone can express a continuative notion, as shown in 53:
(53)
a
moysmoysi e
leysi
en
buku
doro.
DEF.SG
mouse
read
3SG.INDP
book
CONT
IPFV
‘The mouse continues reading its book.’
The continuative construction is however not native to Sranan either. It is in fact in itself a fully
nativized borrowing, and originally a calque from the Dutch particle-verb collocation door-gaan,
lit. ‘through-go’, best translated as ‘continue’. Syntactically, the Dutch construction differs from the
corresponding Sarnami and Sranan ones. In Dutch, the lexical verb specified by the continuative
auxiliary is expressed as a prepositional phrase, a clausal adjunct:
(54)
en
hij
and he
gaat door
met spelen.
goes through with play
‘And he continues playing.’
Unsurprisingly, Dutch also features the use of door alone in constructions such as 55, in which the
adverbial alone express a continuative notion:
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(55)
hij gooit dan
die drum weg om
dan rustig weer door
te lezen.
he throws then that drum away in.order.to then calm again through to read
‘He then throws that drum away in order to then calmly continue reading.
In Dutch, as in other Germanic languages including English (cf. e.g. Müller 2002), there are scores
of such complex predicates in which an adverb or particle collocates with a verb to render a large
range of spatial, Aktionsart and idiomatic meanings. In contrast to Dutch, Sranan has but a handful
of complex predicates of this kind, all of which are more or less nativized calques from Dutch.
Sarnami does not have native layer of verb-particle complex predicates either. We therefore
interpret the presence of the continuative construction in Sranan and Sarnami as a transfer from
Dutch. Interestingly, the Sarnami equivalent of this construction may well have entered the
language via Sranan. The evidence is the phonological shape of doro, which features a paragogic
final vowel. Nevertheless, the consolidation of the construction in Sarnami certainly owes just as
much to its presence in Surinamese Dutch.
5.2.2 Ingressive
We now turn to a second contact-induced change found in our data: The Sranan verb bigin ‘begin
(to)’ is preferred in as an auxiliary in a construction serving to express ingressive aspect over an
equivalent native construction. This frequency is fairly evenly distributed among speakers, however
with a clear preference for the non-native structure by speakers under 25 years, where the nonnative construction figures in over 80% of all cases.
Example (56) shows how Sarnami speakers make use of bigin for the expression of
ingressive aspect, which we define here as the entry into the situation described by the main verb.
Taking a closer look at the auxiliary construction, we remark the presence of the verb kare ‘do’.
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(56)
aur bigin
kar-il
o-ke
kát -e ke.
and begin
do-PFVP
DIST-ACC/DAt cut-INF ACC/DAT
'And (she) has begun to cut it.'
With the help of the generic verb kare, any non-native verb and, in fact members of other word
classes as well, may be accommodated within Sarnami clause structure. The use of generic verbs in
such constructions has been well documented for most, if not all, Indo-Aryan language (cf. e.g.
McGregor 1995:63). The extensive presence of compound verbs formed in this manner in the
language family constitutes an analytic alternative to verb derivation, in order to make up for the
absence of verb-deriving morphology beyond that involved in valency operations. The non-native
ingressive construction parallels a native one, shown in (57). This construction also involves the
generic verb kare, preceded by the (native) noun suru ‘beginning’:
(57)
tab
suru
kar-is
then beginning do-PFVP
eerste
aurat-iyá
doorstuur kar-e
ke.
first
woman-DEF
pass.on
ACC/DAT
do-INF
'Then the first woman began to pass (it) on, (and) the thing that was in the person's
hand.'
The comparison between the non-native ingressive construction in (56) and the native one in (57)
however also shows that the former construction features a verb where the latter has a noun. In fact,
we do not usually find native verbs in the (object) position before the generic verb kare. This is
therefore a specific adaptation mechanism for loanwords.
The existence of the construction in (57) above notwithstanding, the far more common
native structure for expressing an ingressive notion is very different from the two above. It involves
a highly grammaticalized, largely desemanticized auxiliary lage, for which the etymology ‘touch,
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come in contact with’ can be established. The auxiliary is postposed to the verb it specifies and is
found in a position, in which other so-called “vector verbs” in Sarnami and other Indic languages
are found. Such vector verbs express various types of aspectual and spatial notions in very much
same way as verbal particles in Germanic (cf. (55).
(58)
aur daarna
khá-e
lag-al
and afterwards eat-INF attach-PFVP
‘And afterwards (he) starts to eat (it).'
5.2.3 Completive
The regular way of expressing a completive aspectual reading is via a native auxiliary construction.
Nonetheless speakers may opt for other, non-native means as well. The native construction involves
the use of the aspectual auxiliary cuk-, which is highly grammaticalized and probably has a
common etymology with the verb cuke ‘(to) lack’. Although the auxiliary has no lexical meaning of
its own, it is inflected like any other Sarnami lexical verb. At the same time, the preceding lexical
verb appears in the non-finite form conjunctive participial form, which is only overtly expressed via
the suffix -i in vowel-final verb stems. Compare examples (59) and (60):
(59)
kát
cuk-al
dui
pisi men
aur dhar de-il
cut
COMPL-PST.P
two piece LOC:in and put
give-PST.P
'(She) has finished cutting it into two pieces and has put it (down).'
(60)
206
ondertussen
sab aurat-iya-n
sab
hán th
milá-i
cuk-al
meanwhile
all
all
hand
join-CONP
COMPL-PFVP
woman-DEF-Pl
apne
men , oh,
apne men
REFL
in
REFL
oh
in
elkaar, ja
RECP
yes
'Meanwhile all the women have finished shaking all hands, (with) each other, oh, (with)
each other, each other, yes.'
There is however another non-native rendering of completive aspect in the data. This possibility is,
however, not fully productive, since it is lexically restricted to calques of Dutch complex verbs that
incorporate the terminative Aktionsart affix af, lit. ‘off’. The following example shows how the
affix may be ingeniously pressed into its (lexical) aspectual function. The example features the
Sarnami verb banáwe ‘(to) make’ preceded by the Dutch terminative affix. The entire predicate is a
lexically mixed calque of the Dutch predicate af-maken ‘(to) finish (off)’:
(61)
en voor de rest ham apan
and for the rest 1
ghar
af-bana-it-i
house
TERM-
ot o kin-t-i
REFL.POSS car
ekád-go apan
buy-IPFP-1 some-CLF REFL.POSS
make-IPFP-1
'And as for the rest, I'd buy my car, (with) some, I'd finish my house.'
5.2.4 Conative
Conative modality, hence the rendering of the equivalent of ‘try (to)’ in English is normally
expressed via the use of a non-native verb in Sarnami. In all but one case recorded in the data,
speakers opt for the Sranan verb pruberi or the Dutch equivalent probeer. As in other cases
involving Dutch verbs, speakers use a ‘frozen’ verb form, namely the 3sg present tense form, when
integrating the Dutch verb (rather than another form, e.g. the infinitive proberen). Here too,
speakers make use of the light verb construction featuring the auxiliary kare. Compare the
following example with Dutch probeer:
207
(62)
olifant-wá
probeer kar-e stop
elefant-DEF try
do-INF stop
ma
mus-wá
ke
ná
but
mouse-DEF
ACC/DAT NEG
kar-e geluid bana-i
kar-ke,
do-INF noise make-CONP
do-ACC/DAT
hinder ho-we
hai.
prevent be(come)-INF be.PRS
'The elefant tries to stop (the mouse) by making noise, but the mouse is not prevented
[from reading].'
The Sranan verb pruberi appears in the same kind of construction, as shown in (63) below.
(63)
pruberi kar-e hai
try
uppar
big-e
do-INF be.PRS upperside throw-INF
ke
maar punah se
gir
ga-il
ACC/DAT
but
fall
go-PFVP
again
ABL
'It tries to throw it up, but it has fallen again.'
An equivalent native way of expressing conative modality involves the usual kare light verb
construction. However, it involves a nominal complement (here kosis ‘effort’ rather than a verbal
one as is the case in the two preceding examples involving non-native elements. In altogether 30
instances of conative modality, only 2 involve the use of the native structure in (64):
(64)
aurat-iya-n
kosis kar-e
hai
woman-DEF-PL
effort do-INF be.PRS man-DEF-PL
chu-we
ke,
pakar -e ke
touch-INF
ACC/DAT
hold-INF
mardan-wa-n ke
who
‘The women are trying to touch, to grab the men.’
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ACC/DAT
5.3 Conclusion
We have shown that Sarnami shows some significant contact-induced developments in its non-core
TMA system: Some important aspectual and modal notions are primarily expressed via
constructions that contain elements borrowed from Sranan and Dutch. The status of Sarnami as an
independent variety of the Bihari languages is therefore not only confirmed through the innovations
it has acquired in the process of koineization. Sarnami also stands out in the degree to which the
language appears to make use of Sranan and Dutch items in its lexicon and grammar. Further
research will have to show how much paradigmatically more tightly organized parts of the
grammar, including the core TMA system also show signs of transfer from Sranan and Dutch.
6. Surinamese Javanese
Immigration of contract laborers from the Indonesian island of Java into Suriname has started
around 1890, and continued until around 1939 (Carlin and Arends 2002). Today, this community
has around 60,000 members in Suriname, which is around 16% of the total Surinamese population.
Until quite recently, this community had been quite closed and self-contained, which is one of the
reasons it had been able to preserved much of its cultural traditions, including the Javanese
language. Nowadays, however, young Surinamese Javanese are increasingly proficient in Dutch and
Sranan which they also use among themselves, while Javanese is regarded more as a language
spoken with (grand)parents, in restricted contexts.
Since Javanese in Suriname is spoken in a highly multilingual environment, changes due to
language contact are expected to occur in this heritage language. This section will provide an
explorative overview of TMA marking in the Javanese language as it is spoken in Suriname. By
comparing Surinamese Javanese material (the heritage language) with Javanese material from Java
209
(the ‘baseline’ language), changes which are possibly due to language contact will be identified, and
when possible, an explanation will be given for how these changes could have come about.
Since most speakers of Javanese nowadays are multilingual, changes in this system might be
expected to be introduced by these speakers, e.g. in the direction of a simplification. A certain
amount simplification compared to Javanese as spoken on Java has already been observed in other
aspects of the language, most notably the speech levels, which are less differentiated in Surinamese
Javanese than in the Javanese of Java (Wolfowitz 1991). It is important to note that the Javanese as
spoken on Java is not a homogeneous language and that in has traditionally been divided into three
dialects in the literature: western, central and eastern Javanese. The dialect as spoken in Surakarta
and Yogyakarta (central Java) has been generally accepted as Standard Javanese (Dudas 1976:iv).
Available information suggests, however, that dialects differ mostly in phonology, rather than in
morphosyntax or semantics of TMA.
Another important remark to make about Javanese is regarding the speech styles, which are
strictly observed among baseline Javanese speakers (Ras 1985). The most informal speech level is
Ngoko, used with friends and relatives. On the other side of the spectrum is the formal speech level
Krama, used in dialogues with highly placed individuals and strangers. In between these two speech
levels there are even more fine-grained differentiations, depending on the position of the
interlocutors. However, these speech styles only differ in lexicon (and some affixes might be
different), but not in syntax or morphology, and since Ngoko is the most widely used style (virtually
the only style used in Suriname), examples presented here will be taken from Ngoko speech.
6.1 TMA in Java
Javanese verbs are not marked for person or number and the Javanese language is not rich in
morpho-syntactic marking for TMA-categories. According to Robson (1992:64), most TMAcategories in Javanese are marked by auxiliary words, which occur in pre-verbal position. One of
210
the arguments he gives for considering these as auxiliary words, and not as clitics for example, is
the fact that they can be separated from the verb, for example by a negative adverb as in the
following example which involves the auxiliary bakal and the verb lungo ‘go’:
(65)
aku
bakal ora
lungo
1SG
IRR
go
NEG
‘I will not be going.’ (Robson, 1992: 66)
Table 11 provides an overview of TMA-marking words and suffixes on the basis of different
sources (Robson 1992, Adelaar 2011, Vander Klok 2008, Vander Klok 2010). This table is followed
by an explanation of the use of the different markers in Javanese. It should be mentioned that the
status of some of the markers is not agreed upon. For example wis, is considered a tense-marker
instead of an aspect-marker by Vander Klok (2008). A similar example is bakal, which might be a
tense marker comparable to arep according to Vander Klok (2010: 2). These points will be
elaborated below
Table 11. Overview of TMA-markers (auxiliary words and suffixes) in Javanese
Category
Tense
Aspect
Modality
TMA-marker
arep
lagi
wis
bakal
entuk/olèh
isâ
kudu
mesti
mungkin
Meaning
Gloss
FUT
‘want/will’
PROG
‘just’
PFV
‘already’
IRR
‘be going to’
‘may/be permitted’
DEONT.may
‘capable/to be able’ can
‘must/have to’
DEONT.must
‘certainly/inevitable’ EPIST.must
‘perhaps/possibly’
EPIST.may
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6.1.1 Tense
Javanese does not have a rich set of forms for tense marking. It is also important to note therefore
that in Javanese, tense is often inferred from the context in zero-marked phrases, e.g. with the use of
an adverb of time as in (67). Without further morphemes or adverbs that give information on the
time of the event, this will always be interpreted as present, as in (66).
(66)
aku m-angan
I
ACT-eat
‘I eat.’
(67)
wingi
aku m-angan
yesterday I
ACT-eat
‘I ate yesterday.’
Future tense is marked with arep (68) which is also regularly used in the meaning of ‘to want’
conveying participant-oriented modality (volitional modality) rather than tense. Modal use of arep
will be discussed in the following subsection
(68) aku
arep
ng-oreng
sego
1SG
FUT
ACT-fry
rice
‘I will fry the rice.’
(Vander Klok 2010: 1)
As Hengeveld (2011: 592) argues, volitional modal markers are indeed a potential source for
(absolute future) tense markers, and it is therefore highly likely that the modal meaning of arep was
the original meaning, and that this tense marker developed only later.
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6.1.2 Modality
As for the Javanese modals, according to Vander Klok (2008a), these are organized along two axes:
quantificational force (either universal - ‘must’ or existential - ‘may’) and type of modal base (either
epistemic or deontic). The combination of these two axes results in four modal categories, which
are each marked by a different auxiliary. The following classification follows:
Table 12: The classification of Javanese modal markers according to Vander Klok (2008a: 8)
deontic
kudu
entuk/olèh
universal (‘must’)
existential (‘may’)
epistemic
mesti
mungkin
Apart from these four modal markers described by Vander Klok, I distinguish two more markers for
modality in this paper, namely bakal (irrealis) and isâ (‘can’).
The marker isâ can be translated as ‘can/be able to’ and refers to the acquired (physical)
ability of the participant to engage in an event:
(69)
di-gâwâni kayu
sing
luwih gedé, nah
saiki
isâ,
dèké
njukuk
PASS-bring
wood
REL
more big
now
can
3SG
take
kain
abang iku
cloth
red
INTJ
DEF
‘A bigger piece of wood is brought, now he can, he takes the red piece of clothing.’
In fact, this marker is often used to described the participant’s inability, combined with the negative
adverb gak:
213
(70)
ânâk
arèk
loro
tekâ
nyobak
njupuk
kelambi iku
exist
child
two
from
ACT-try
ACT-take
clothe
mencolo~mencolot
lugur
gak
isâ kâyâkané
jump-RED
fall
NEG
can seem
DEF
‘There are two children who try to take the piece of clothing, they jump, they fall, it
seems they can’t.’
The marker bakal is not easy to classify immediately. According to Vander Klok (2010: 2), bakal
might be a tense marker comparable to arep, with the difference in the expression of agency: ‘the
future marker arep appears to convey intention; with intention comes an implication of agency, as
the intender is committed to do what can be done to make the proposition true at a future time
(Tonhauser, to appear). In contrast to arep, bakal appears to convey prediction; although the speaker
is committed to the truth of the proposition at a future time, there is no implication of agency. We
propose that bakal marks irrialis modality rather than tense. Consider the following examples from
my own fieldwork for an example of the use of bakal next to ate (the East-Javanese variant of
arep):
(71)
deke ng-angep
nèk
wong
iku
ate
lungo
3SG
COMP
person that
FUT
go
ACT-assume
‘He assumes that she will leave.’
(72)
deke
ora
yakìn
nèk wong
iku
bakal
lungo
3SG
NEG
sure
COMP person
that
IRR
go
‘He doubts whether she will leave.’
214
In these examples, the difference between ate/arep and bakal seems to be the degree of certainty the
speaker has about the truth of the subordinate clause. When the speaker was asked to explain the
difference between ate and bakal, it was confirmed that this was indeed the difference: when
contrasting different sentences with ate and bakal, the speaker declared that in the latter case she
felt as if it was less ‘certain’ that the event in the subordinate clause were truly to take place. Since
this marker expresses the speaker’s commitment to the truth value of the proposition, bakal should
be classified as proposition-oriented modality, taking scope over the Episode.
The marker entuk or olèh (which behave exactly the same) is used to express permission (the
deontic existential/’may’). This auxiliary literally means ‘to receive/get’ and can also be used as a
lexical verb with this meaning
(73)
terus
olèh
apel
iku,
terus
di-pangan
then
get
apple
DET
then
PASS-eat
‘Then he gets the apple, then he eats it.’
As a TMA-marker, it is used as a participant-oriented modal marker, taking scope over the
Situational concept:
(74)
Jozi
oleh
ng-anggo
Jozi
DEONT.may ACT-wear
celono neng
ng-aji
pants at
ACT-read.Qur’an
‘Jozi is allowed to wear pants to the reading of Holy Qur’an.’ (Vander Klok 2012: 32)
It can also be used in a more general sense, expressing event-oriented modality, taking scope over
the State-of-affairs:
215
(75)
kulit-e
iwak
skin-DEF fish
urang
oleh
di-pangan
shrimp
DEONT.may PASS-eat
‘Shrimp skin may be eaten.’ (Vander Klok 2012: 32)
The marker kudu expresses necessity (universal quantificational force), and is deontic in its
modality type (Vander Klok 2008).
(76)
aku kudu
nang
warong
kuwi
I
to
store
DEF
DEONT.must
‘I must go to the store.’ (Vander Klok 2008: 4)
Since this modal describes the relationship between the participant and the potential realization of
the event (obligation), I would describe this as participant-oriented modality, taking scope over the
Situational Concept. In addition to this deontic modal, kudu can also express a ‘circumstantial’
modal meaning, based on facts about the world (Vander Klok 2012: 27):
(77)
aku
kudu
pipis
1SG
DEONT.must
pee
‘I must pee.’
(Vander Klok 2012: 27)
The marker mungkin has the same epistemic modal base as mesti. The difference lies in the
quantificational force: whereas mesti expresses universal force (‘must’), mungkin expresses
existential force (‘may’). It is therefore that the use of mungkin is appropriate in the following
context, contrasted with (78), while mesti would be infelicitous here:
216
(78)
Context: Ahmed is calling for his dog. The dog is not coming. Ahmed looks for the dog
all over the house, but he cannot find him. Then he looks outside in the yard. Ahmed still
cannot find the dog, but maybe the dog is locked in the shed. The dog may have escaped.
asu kuwi
mungkin
wis ucul
dog the
EPIST.may
PRF
get.loose
‘The dog may have escaped.’ (Vander Klok 2010: 10)
As with mesti, the marker mungkin characterizes the possible occurrence of the event in view of
what is known about the world. The marker mesti or mesthi (allophonic variation) appears to
‘express necessity according to the evidence available to the speaker’ (Vander Klok 2012: 26).
Since it relies on evidence available to the speaker, the modal base is epistemic. Vander Klok (2008)
defines this modal marker as ‘epistemic universal’, since the quantificational force is universal,
‘must’. As an epistemic modal, the possibility of occurrence of the event is characterized in view of
what is known of the world.
(79)
Context: Ahmed is calling for his dog. The dog is not coming. Ahmed looks for the dog
all over the house, but he cannot find him. Then he looks outside in the yard. Ahmed still
cannot find the dog. The dog must have escaped
asu kuwi
mesthi
wis
dog the
EPIST.must PRF
‘The dog must have escaped.’
ucul
get.loose
(Vander Klok 2010: 9)
6.1.3 Aspect
Progressive aspect is marked by the auxiliary lagi, as in the following examples:
217
(80)
anak-é
wadon
child-DEF woman
lagi
nyuguhaké nyamikan
PROG
ACT-serve
refreshment
‘His daughter is serving refreshments.’ (Robson 1992: 114)
(81)
arèk
wèdok
iku
lagi
dolan piano
child
woman
that
PROG
play
piano
‘The small girl is playing the piano.’
Perfective aspect is marked by wis (Vander Klok 2012).
(82)
aku wis
m-angan
I
ACT-eat
PRF
‘I have (already) eaten.’
6.2 TMA in Surinamese Javanese
In this section, we will explore the TMA-system of Surinamese Javanese, and investigate possible
changes it has undergone in comparison to the TMA-system of Standard Javanese.
6.2.1 Tense
The future tense is marked by arep as in baseline variety. The following meta-linguistic comment
from one of the heritage language speakers illustrates the way the speaker understands the usage of
this marker:
(83)
als
we
zeggen, ik
ga
naar de
bank:
arep nèng
bank
if
we
say
FUT
LOC
the
bank
FUT
bank
1SG
‘If we say, I go to the bank, “arep nèng bank”.’
218
LOC
It appears that arep also conveys aspectual meanings in the heritage variety. Consider the following
examples, which are descriptions of video clips. In the video described in example (84), a man
washes his hands, but the event begins after the beginning of the video. The same goes for the video
as described in example (85), which starts with the image of a woman standing, after which the
woman starts moving out through the window.
(84)
wong
lanang arep
wisuh tangan-é
karo
banyu, di-lapi
person
male
wash hand-DEF
with
water
tangan-é
karo anduk
hand-DEF with
FUT
PASS-wipe
towel
‘A man is going to wash his hand with water, the hand is wiped with a towel.’
(85)
wong
wèdok arep
metu tekâ
jendélâ
person
womanFUT
go.out from
window
‘A woman is going to go out through the window.’
In the context of the videos, we propose that the most natural translation for this marker here would
be ‘is going to’, since it refers to a more immediate future, which actually starts happening during
the time of the utterance. Therefore, I would propose that this is not truly a future tense marker, but
more of an aspectual marker, specifically prospective aspect.
Speakers of the heritage variety express mark future/prospective with arep more frequently
and in contexts where the baseline speakers employ other strategies. Although the use of arep as a
prospective is most probably not novel in Surinamese Javanese, it is not encountered with this
meaning in the baseline corpus, and the preference for it therefore seems to be a feature of the
heritage variety. The apparent overgeneralization of arep is arguably due to influence of
219
(Surinamese) Dutch and/or Sranantongo, which both categorically and formally differentiate
immediate versus more uncertain future: gaan ‘go’ vs. zullen ‘shall’ in Dutch, and sa and o in
Sranan.
As in the baseline language, tense marking with auxiliaries is not done, but rather it is
inferred from context or by the use of temporal adverbs:
(86)
aku mené
masak kènggo anak-ku
1SG tomorrow cook
for
child-1SG.POSS
‘Tomorrow I will cook for my child.’
(87)
setu
aku tangi,
aku mangan
terus
adus
Saturday
1SG wake.up
1SG eat
then
take.bath
‘On Saturday, I woke up, then I ate and then took a bath.’
(88)
Context: the interviewer asks what the speaker has done last weekend.
aku
setu
Saturday 1SG
tangi,
aku mangan terus
wake.up 1SG eat
then
adus
take.bath
‘On Saturday, I woke up, then I ate and then took a bath.’
In one interesting example, a heritage speaker uses the Dutch auxiliary hebben ‘to have’ in order to
express past tense:
(89)
ze
hebben ng-ewang-i
they have
ACT-help-APPL
aku
nèng
omah
1SG
LOC
house
‘They have helped me in the house.’
220
However, since this type of construction occurs only once in the heritage corpus, it appears that this
is simply a case of code-switching
6.2.2 Modality
The heritage variety uses a different form, inter, than the baseline variety to mark acquired
(physical) ability. The form inter is not a loan from Dutch or Sranantongo, but apparently originates
from the Javanese word pinter, which literally means ‘clever, skilled’.
(90)
njukuk
planga eindelijk inter n-jukuk
kaos-é
take
plank finally
shirt-DEF
can
ACT-take
‘He takes a plank, and can finally take the shirt.’
It is often used in combination with the negative adverb ora:
(91)
terus
arep
di-jukuk
maar
ora
inter
then
FUT
PASS-take
but
NEG
can
‘Then it is going to be taken but he cannot.’
Although the form inter seems to have completely replaced the form isâ from baseline Javanese,
there are no differences in its syntactic realization. While curious, inter does not appear to be a
contact related development.
Irrealis is expressed infrequently in both the heritage and baseline corpora by bakal.
(92)
naar het schijnt sing
bakal pâdâ~pâdâ sing
to
IRR
it
seems
REL
same~RED
REL
kâyâ
volgende
weekend
similar.to
next
weekend
221
‘As it seems, it will be the same, which is similar to next weekend.’
In this context, bakal is used to express a more uncertain future, since it is a complement of the verb
schijnt ‘seems’. In the following example, bakal is used with the determiner suffix –e, as a sort of
nominalizing procedure, but still expressing the irrealis category:
(93)
terus
wong-é
bereken piyé
bakal-é
intuk apel-é,
then
person-DEF calculate how
IRR-DEF
take
terus
cah-é
m-brobos
schutting-é kayu
then
child-DEF
ACT-trespasss
fence-DEF wood then
apple-DEF
terus
m-ènèk,
terus
eindelijk
inter
ng-epèk
fruktu-né,
ACT-climb
then
finally
can
ACT-take
fruit-DEF
apel-é,
terus
dipangan
appel-DEF
then
PASS-eat
wong-é
person-DEF
‘Then the person calculates how to take the apple, then the child trespasses the wooden
fence, then the persons climbs, then finally he can take the fruit, the apple, then it is
eaten.’
No explicit morphological expression of deontic ‘may’ occurs in the heritage corpus. The verb
entuk (Surinamese form intuk), which is used to express this category in Javanese, is exclusively
used by the heritage speakers as a lexical verb with the meaning of ‘receive/get/take’ with a nominal
complement:
(94)
tapiné kâncâ-né
but
222
kodok iku
friend-DEF frog
DET
saiki-né wis
éntuk
bojo
now-DEF
get
wife
PRF
‘But now his friend the frog has gotten a wife.’
Kudu expresses deontic universal modality, ‘must’ in heritage Javanese, as in the baseline variety:
(95)
kowé kudu
leri
2SG
teach child-2SG.POSS if
DEONT.must
anak-mu
nak cilék kudu
small
ng-omong jâwâ
DEONT.must ACT-talk
Javanese
‘You have to teach your child that s/he has to speak Javanese when s/he is still small.’
This modal can also be used to express event-oriented modality:
(96)
nduwé
kudu
DEONT.must have
lespeki
karo
wong
tuwâ
respect
with
person old
‘One must have respect for older people.’
No explicit expressions of epistemic modality are attested in the heritage corpus. Volitional
modality is marked by the auxiliary arep:
(97)
sing liyané
REL
other
ng-golèk
iets
ACT-search
something else
arep
n-jukuk
kaos-é
want
ACT-take
shirt-DEF
anders.
n-jukuk
dingklik,
ACT-take
chair
‘The other searches something else. He takes a chair, he wants to take the shirt.’
Of the epistemic modals, mungkin and mesti, the first does not occur in either corpora. The other
epistemic, mesti, occurs just three times, of which only one example appears in the heritage
223
language. In the example, mesti combined with the determiner suffix –e, where it can be translated
as ‘perhaps’ (Vruggink 2001), and thus seems not to express epistemic modality:
(99)
aku durung
ng-erti
mesti-né
1SG not.yet
ACT-know
certainly-DEF play~RED
kanca-ku
dolan~dolan
dolan~dolan
karo
with
[inaudible]
friend-1SG.POSS play~RED
***
‘I do not yet know if I perhaps play with my friend or play ***.’
One certain contact induced development observable within the category of modality is the
borrowing of modal verbs from Sranan. In this case, the Sranan verb proberi ‘to try’ (< Dutch
probeer occurs in position of the native Javanese verb jajal ‘to try’. The word order of the
construction remains the same (auxiliary + verb/complement) in the baseline language (100) and the
heritage variety(101)
(100)
n-jajal
di-uncal
manèh tetep
aé
sik
gak
isâ
ACT-try
PASS-throw
again still
only
still
NEG
can
‘He tries to throw it again but still doesn’t succeed.’
(101) a.
‘
cahcah-né
proberi dyompo
children-DEF
try
jump
The children try to jump.’
b.
arep proberi menèh,
FUT
try
again
terus
tibâ
menèh
then
fall
again
‘[He] is going to try again, then it falls again.’
224
6.2.3 Aspect
Progressive does not seem to be expressed morphologically by the heritage speakers. In utterances
interpreted as progressive, Suriname Javanese speakers seem to use a construction with the
existential verb ènèk/ènèng (Standard Javanese counterpart ânâ/ânâk). Compare the following
examples of progressive sentences:
(102) Javanese (eastern dialect)
(a) wong
person
iku
lagi
ng-gambar
wit
that
PROG
ACT-draw
tree
‘The person is drawing a tree.’
(b) ibu iku
lagi
motong
woman
that
PROG
temon
ACT-cut
cucumber
‘The woman is cutting the cucumber.’
(103) Surinamese Javanese
(a) ènèk
exist
wong n-ulis
layang
person
letter
ACT-write
‘There is a person writing a letter.’
(b) ènèk
exist
wong ng-iris
jeruk
person
orange
ACT-cut
‘There is a person cutting an orange.’
It is difficult to establish whether these phrases should truly be interpreted as progressive
constructions, or that they should rather be considered presentational constructions with a relative
clause, where the relative pronoun is not expressed. In the last interpretation, examples in (103)
could be translated as follows: ‘There is a person who writes a letter’ and ‘There is a person who
225
cuts an orange’. This last possibility might be supported by the fact that when the existential does
co-occur with the relative pronoun sing, this is only used to in some sense delimit the subject of the
clause, as in the following example:
(104)
ènèk
wong lanang
loro,
sing
siji ng-ekèki tas karo
liyané
exist
person male
two
REL
one
other
ACT-give
bag with
‘There are two men, of which one gives a bag to the other.’
However, as argued by Hengeveld (1992: 265), the existential construction can indeed very well
have a progressive interpretation. Hengeveld argues that this type of clause should be viewed as a
circumstantial adverbial clause, with the translation of ‘There is a person in the circumstance of
[verb]ing’, which does indeed entail a progressive interpretation of the verb. The comparative are
unconvincing in arguing for contact induced developments. Although the progressive marker lagi is
not attested in the heritage corpus, it only occurs four times in the baseline corpus. And while the
existential construction is used in heritage contexts where baseline speakers use lagi, the overall
relative frequency of existential constructions is higher in the baseline corpus. However, it does
seem uncoincidental that imperfective e (which also indicates progressive, among other aspectual
meanings) in the Surinamese creoles has grammaticalized from a copula which is also used in
existential constructions (Winford and Migge 2007:89).
As in the baseline language, perfective aspect is expressed with the auxiliary wis. To
emphasize this focus on the relevance of the event in the present, this marker is often combined
with saiki ‘now’ in the same sentence:
(105)
226
saikiné
bocahé wis
temu, temu kâncâné
now-DEF
child-DEF
PFV
find
find
wis
friend-DEF
bungah menèh
RSL
happy again
‘Now the child had found his friend, he was happy again.’
The meaning of wis remains unchanged in the heritage corpus, though it is used more frequently in
the baseline language than in the heritage language, in fact even more than twice as often. This may
be caused by still lower frequencies of Sranan’s perfective marker kaba.18
6.3 Conclusions
To sketch the picture of the TMA-system in Surinamese Javanese in a unified way, we see that there
are different things going on in the different categories. The use of arep is more frequent among the
heritage speakers, mirroring patterns in Sranan and Dutch. The category of modality seems to have
undergone the most changes, although they are still not radical: the forms for the modal verbs ‘try’
and ‘be able to’ have been replaced by new forms in Surinamese Javanese, while the syntactic
construction had remained the same. The verb ‘try’, is most clearly the result of language contact,
since proberi is a Sranan verb. Within the category of aspect, the original Javanese marker lagi for
progressive aspect seems to be less used, in favor of the construction with the existential verb, also
perhaps modeled on similar developments ins Sranan. The perfect marker wis also seems to be less
used in the heritage corpus which is more consistent with perfective marking in Sranan.
7. Discussion: stability and borrowability in Surinamese TMA systems
In this chapter, we have detailed a number of developments in the TMA systems of the Surinamese
creole languages, Surinamese Dutch, Sarnami, and Surinamese Javanese. These are summarized in
18 In a random sample from our Sranan corpus of 12,084 words, kaba = 0.2%. Cf. the heritage Javanese corpus wis =
0.27%; baseline Javanese, wis = 0.65%.
227
Table 12 along with processes relevant to their transformation. Our exploration of TMA systems in
these languages clearly demonstrates the central position of Sranan and Dutch in contact induced
language changes in Suriname. These languages not only exchange linguistic forms and patterns,
but also provide them in unidirectional transfer to the other languages in our sample. This speaks to
the role of factors that are external to the linguistic system in language contact. Had such factors not
played a role, we would expect a more symmetrical flow of linguistic features across languages.
However, the central position of Sranan and Dutch in Surinamese society, and that they are the two
languages that have traditionally functioned as out group languages, means that they both tend to be
contributors of linguistic material rather than recipients.19
Table 12: Summary of TMA developments in the sample of languages.
Tense
Mood
Aspect
Language
Change
Process
Change
Process
Surinamese
creoles general
be(n)/bi < Eng.
been
reanalysis
sa takes on
modal qualities
grammat.
reanalysis/
superstrate
man* modal
from noun
o < Eng. go
sa < Eng. shall
or Du. zal
Sranan
19
reanalysis
grammat./
poss. sub& superstrate
sa Du. modal
qualities
adstrate
kan < Eng. can
or Du. kan
super /
adstrate
mag < Du. mag
borrowing
Change
Process
Ø
substrate
e < LOC de
substrate
kaba < Port
acabar ‘to
finish’
substrate
This is not to say that in the individual Dutch or Sranan idiolects of speakers of other in group languages in Suriname,
no trace of their L1 is detectable, or even that ethnolectal varieties of Dutch and Sranan do not exist in Suriname (but
see Lie 1983, Hanenberg in prep, Diagle ms). It is the overwhelming tendency in this and other work that languages
other than Sranan and Dutch do not effect Sranan and Dutch in Suriname.
228
Tense
Language
Change
Mood
Process
Ndyuka
Dutch
organization
gaan as AUX &
loss of verb
final after gaan
Change
Aspect
Process
sa Gbe modal
qualities
substrate
poi <Port. pode
reanalysis
shift towards
Sranan patterns
of modal
marking
(covert &
PAT)
borrowing
, contact
induced
grammat.
PAT
borrowing
grammat.
& PAT
borrowing
Sarnami
pruberi /
prubeer kare <
Sranan / Du.
MAT
borrowing
Change
Process
overgeneralizat
ion of aan het
and bezig zijn
constructions
PAT
borrowing
doro já <
Sranan via Du.
PAT &
partial
MAT
borrowing
bigin kare
<Sranan
afconstructions <
Du.
Javanese
increase in
arep
constructions,
cf. Sranan o
and SD gaan
covert
MAT
borrowing
MAT &
PAT
borrowing
poberi <
Sranan
MAT
borrowing
decrease in
perfective wis
covert
inter in place
of baseline lagi
language
internal
change
progressive
replaced by
existential
construction
PAT
borrowing
Clearly linguistic structures also play a role, albeit not a very clear one, in the types of
changes attested in our corpus. Consider that the adoption of Sranan forms in the expression of
conative modality in Sarnami and Javanese parallel native forms and are therefore relatively easily
incorporated into native structures. Similarly, recent developments in formal marking of urban
Ndyuka potential modality do not constitute structural alterations since Ndyuka and Sranan index
the semantic distinctions within this realm of modality. On the other hand, the core TMA system of
229
Sarnami remains relatively unaffected, which we suspect is the result of its integration in to the
languages rich morphological system and/or typological distance from Sranan and Dutch. Still, this
line of thinking does not account for everything we have described. Consider the af- constructions
in Sarnami in which neither a foreign form is introduced to an existing parallel native structure, nor
is the construction introduced to fill a gap in the native system.
Returning to the questions of borrowability and stability in TMA systems – Matras
(2007:45-46, see example 3a above) suggests that modality is most borrowable, followed by aspect,
future tense, then other tenses. Taking borrowability as converse of stability, Matras’ general
hierarchy holds for most of our data. Most developments can be seen in the modal systems of our
language sample. The exception to this is Dutch, but since a large portion of Sranan’s modal system
is modeled on Dutch, there’s no suitable source by which Dutch could be influenced. Alternatively,
our methods of data collection may have simply not elicited the right kind of language use to make
Surinamese Dutch modality visible. The aspectual systems in the Surinamese creoles appear to have
stabilized rather early on in their development, but the other languages in our sample all show
developments in their aspectual systems. Future tense displays the most developments effecting
Dutch and Javanese. There appear to be no direct developments in the realm of past tense, though
the reorganization of SD certainly effects when past tense is marked. In fact past tense seems to be
so prevalent that it gets marked twice in the case of some strong verbs in SD.
Even while adhering to the general trend for TMA borrowability proposed by Matras (2007),
the anomaly of lack of change in Dutch modality preceding changes in aspect and tense, along with
inconsistencies in the hierarchies in those studies detailed by Dediu & Cysouw 2013, (examples 4-9
above) suggest that language change, at least within TMA, is (a) conditioned by factors external to
the language system, and / or that (b) there are no universally stable TMA structures (despite
statistical tendencies.
230
Our investigation has been largely exploratory, and although we have been able to pinpoint a
fair number of changes in the TMA systems of Suriname, there is ample room for continued
research on the topic. Firstly, developments among urban dwelling Maroons need to be more
thoroughly and systematically investigated in terms of leveling of Maroon varieties in the city. Are
we witnessing a ‘real’ change toward Sranan (remember that the forms are Sranan but there is no
categorical shift and the formal distinction between positive and negative modality appears to be
maintained), or something else? Another issue that merits further research is the historical
development of SD. Overall, the influence of ED has become stronger when the migrations to the
Netherlands took on a massive form in the 1970’s. We can expect earlier forms of SD to show more
semantic features that distinguish it from ED. An analysis of the core TMA system of Sarnami
would be welcome. And finally, the Javanese section in this paper is perhaps the most exploratory
in nature and thus provides a number of avenues to be investigated in more detail: forms used,
frequencies, and the particulars of their semantics.
231
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Adelaar, Alexander. 2011. Tense, aspect and mood in some West Indonesian languages. Proceedings
of the International Workshop on TAM and Evidentiality in Indonesian Languages. Research
Institute for Languages and Cultures of Asia and Africa, Tokyo University of Foreign Studies,
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