Substrata versus Universals in Creole Genesis: Papers from the Amsterdam Creole Workshop, April 1985

323 Pages·1986·29.33 MB·English

by  Pieter Muysken

SUBSTRATA VERSUS UNIVERSALS IN CREOLE GENESIS
CREOLE LANGUAGE LIBRARY (CLL)
A companion series to the
"JOURNAL OF PIDGIN & CREOLE LANGUAGES"
Editor: Pieter Muysken (Amsterdam)
Editorial Advisory Board:
Mervyn Alleyne (Kingston, Jamaica) Germán de Granda (Vallodolid)
Roger Andersen (Los Angeles) Ian Hancock (Austin)
Lionel Bender (Carbondale, Illinois) John Holm (New York)
Hans den Besten (Amsterdam) George Huttar (Dallas)
Derek Bickerton (Honolulu) Hilda Koopman (Los Angeles)
Norbert Boretzky (Bochum) Claire Lefebvre (Montréal)
Lawrence Carrington (Trinidad) Salikoko Mufwene (Athens, Georgia)
Hazel Carter (Madison) Peter Mühlhäusler (Oxford)
Frederic Cassidy (Madison) Robert Le Page (York)
Robert Chaudenson (Aix-en-Provence) John Rickford (Stanford)
Chris Corne (Auckland) Suzanne Romaine (Oxford)
Marta Dijkhoff (Willemstad, Curaçao) Pieter Seuren (Nijmegen)
Christiaan Eersel (Paramaribo) Dan Slobin (Berkeley)
Luiz Ivens Ferraz (Johannesburg) Norval Smith (Amsterdam)
Glenn Gilbert (Carbondale, Illinois) Albert Valdman (Bloomington)
Morris Goodman (Evanston) Herman Wekker (Nijmegen)
Volumes in this series will present descriptive and theoretical studies
designed to add significantly to our insight in Pidgin and Creole languages.
Volume 1
Pieter Muysken & Norval Smith (eds.)
SUBSTRATA VERSUS UNIVERSALS IN CREOLE LANGUAGES
SUBSTRATA VERSUS UNIVERSALS
IN CREOLE GENESIS
Papers from the Amsterdam Creole Workshop, April 1985
edited by
PIETER MUYSKEN
University of Amsterdam
&
NORVAL SMITH
University of Amsterdam
JOHN BENJAMINS PUBLISHING COMPANY
Amsterdam/Philadelphia
1986
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Amsterdam Creole Workshop (1985)
Substrata versus universals in Creole genesis.
(Creole language library; v. 1)
Includes bibliographies.
1. Creole dialects - Congresses. 2. Substratum (Linguistics) -- Congresses. 3. Universals
(Linguistics) -- Congresses. I. Muysken, Pieter. II. Smith, Norval. III. Title. IV. Series.
PM7831.A84 1986 417'.2 86-18856
ISBN 0-915027-90-9 (US)/90 272 5221 1 (Eur.) (alk. paper)
© Copyright 1986 - John Benjamins B.V.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, by print, photoprint, microfilm, or
any other means, without written permission from the publisher.
Preface
This collection of papers is the result of a workshop held at the University of
Amsterdam in April 1985. The topic of the workshop was 'Universalis versus
Substrata in Creole Genesis', and the workshop took place with the support
of a grant from the Netherlands Foundation for the Advancement of Pure
Research ZWO to Pieter Seuren and Herman Wekker of the University of
Nijmegen. The organizing committee consisted of Mervyn C. Alleyne, Jac­
ques Arends, Hans den Besten, Glenn Gilbert, and Geert Koefoed, in addi­
tion to Seuren and Wekker and the editors of this volume.
Due to various reasons, a number of participants were prevented from
presenting a final version of their paper for publication: Marta Dijkhoff,
Hein Eersel, Guy Hazael-Massieux, Pieter Muysken, Gillian Sankoff, and
Norval Smith.
The editors.

CONTENTS
Introduction: Problems in the Identification of Substratum Features. 1
Pieter Muysken and Norval Smith
The Language Bioprogram Hypothesis: Déjà vu? 15
Glenn Gilbert
Creoles and West African Languages: a Case of Mistaken Identity? 25
Derek Bickerton
Bonnet Blanc and Blanc Bonnet: Adjective-Noun Order, Substratum
and Language Universals 41
Peter Mühlhäusler
Semantic Transparency as a Factor in Creole Genesis 57
Pieter Seuren and Herman Wekker
The Domestic Hypothesis, Diffusion and Componentiality. An
Account of Atlantic Anglophone Creole Origins 71
Ian Hancock
Genesis and Development of the Equative Copula in Sranan 103
Jacques Arends
The Universalist and Substrate Hypotheses Complement One
Another 129
Salikoko S. Mufwene
Universals, Substrata and the Indian Ocean Creoles 163
Philip Baker and Chris Corne
Double Negation and the Genesis of Afrikaans 185
Hans den Besten
The Genesis of Haitian: Implications of a Comparison of Some Fea­
tures of the Syntax of Haitian, French, and West African Languages 231
Hilda Koopman
Substrate Diffusion 259
John Holm
Relexification in Creole Genesis Revisited: the Case of Haitian Creole 279
Claire Lefebvre
Substratum Influences — Guilty until Proven Innocent 301
Mervyn C. Alleyne

Introduction
Problems in the Identification of Substratum Features in the Creole Languages
Pieter Muysken and Norval Smith
The dawning recognition that the Creole languages of the Atlantic and
the Pacific could not be seen as simple versions of European colonial lan­
guages forced researchers to look at specific alternative hypotheses to
account for the fact that the structures of the Creoles were different. Two of
the most prominent of these hypotheses are inspired by the Romantic and the
Historicist traditions, respectively: the universalist and the substrate hypoth­
eses. The universalist hypothesis claims, essentially, that the particular gram­
matical properties of creole languages directly reflect universal aspects of the
human language capacity (either a Chomskyan Universal Grammar (1981), a
Bickertonian 'bioprogram' (1981,1984), or a functional-pragmatic view (Givón,
1984) of this capacity). Creole genesis involves, then, the stripping away of
the accretions of language history. The substrate hypothesis claims, on the
other hand, that creole genesis results from the confrontation of two systems,
the native languages of the colonized groups, and the dominant colonial lan­
guage, and that the native language leaves strong traces in the resulting
creole. Schematically:
universalist hypothesis substrate hypothesis
universal principles native languages
+ +
European vocabulary European vocabulary
¯ ¯
creole creole
2 PIETER MUYSKEN AND NORVAL SMITH
One would think that this issue would be settled by now, given the clear
set of alternatives and the extensive research of the last ten years. Nothing is
farther from the truth. The same debate rages now as it did one hundred years
ago, when Schuchardt reviewed Adam's (1883) book. Gilbert's contribution
to this book surveys the early history of the issue.
Who, What, Where and Why?
Bickerton (1981,1984) has emphasized the need for substratists (we will
use this term, due to Holm, rather than the pejorative 'substratomaniac' or
the ambiguous 'substratophile') to demonstrate that speakers of a claimed
substrate language were "in the right place at the right time". General appeals
to parallels with Kwa or West African language patterns as characteristic of
creole languages, are not sufficient to demonstrate anything. Although it may
well be the case that such parallels are the result of substrate influence they
cannot prove the substratist case if the same phenomena are also claimed by
the universalists to represent the unmarked settings of various parameters.
What is clearly needed to demonstrate substrate influence is the con­
junction of historical and linguistic evidence relating to individual languages.
The historical evidence that is most significant and at the same time hardest
to obtain is that relating to the initial period of slave utilization in a particular
colony. Linguists themselves are dependent to a large extend on the work of
anthropologists and historians for such information, and it is obvious that a
large amount of interdisciplinary work remains to be done. In a number of
cases, however, enough is known to allow a reasoned guess at the cir­
cumstances and the African groups concerned to identify the languages spo­
ken by large groups of the earliest slaves. We will examine a case here where
the historical conditions allowing for significant influence by one or two
groups appear to be present.
This is the case of Berbice Dutch, where substrate influence is claimed by
Smith, Robertson & Williamson (1986). The basis of this claim — though it
is perhaps not a necessary condition it is a sufficient indication of significant
historical contact — is a large percentage of basic vocabulary (27%) deriving
from Eastern Ijo (in particular its Kalabari dialect), a language spoken in the
Niger Delta region of Nigeria.
Two vital historical facts are the following. First, the (private) colony of
Berbice was founded in 1627. Unfortunately virtually nothing is known of the
first fifty years of Berbice's history. However — and this is of some impor-