A Grammar of Saramaccan Creole (Moutan Grammar Library Mgl 56) (Moutan Grammar Library, 56)

Saramaccan has been central to various debates regarding the origin and nature of creole languages. Being the most removed of all English-based creoles from European language structure in terms of phonology, morphology and syntax, it has been seen as one of the most extreme instantiations of the creolization process. This is the first full-length description of Saramaccan. The grammar documents, in particular, a valence-sensitive system of indicating movement and direction via serial verb constructions, hitherto overlooked amidst the generalized phenomenon of serialization itself. John H. McWhorter, Columbia University, New York, USA; Jeff Good, University at Buffalo, New York, USA Abbreviations 11 Introduction 13 1 Segmental phonology 19 1.1. Segment inventory 19 1.1.1. Introduction 19 1.1.2. Consonants 20 1.1.2.1. Oral stops 20 1.1.2.2. Plain nasals and prenasalized stops 25 1.1.2.3. Fricatives 28 1.1.2.4. Approximants 30 1.1.3. Vowels 33 1.1.3.1. Basic vowel qualities 33 1.1.3.2. Nasal vowels 35 1.1.3.3. Long vowels and vowel combinations 36 1.2. Phonotactics 42 1.2.1. Syllable structure and epenthetic vowels 42 1.2.2. Co-occurrence restrictions and related kinds of patterns 43 1.2.3. Ideophones 45 1.3. Lexical strata 46 1.4. Sporadic alternations 47 2 Prosodic phonology 48 2.1. Introduction 48 2.2. Word-level prosody 48 2.2.1. Introduction 48 2.2.2. Accentual words 50 2.2.2.1. Words with high tones and TBU’s unspecified for tone 50 2.2.2.2. Accented words with short syllables 51 2.2.2.3. Accented words with “heavy” syllables 53 2.2.2.4. Manifestations of stress and possible foot structures 54 2.2.2.5. Minimal pairs 57 2.2.3. Tonal words 57 2.2.3.1. High tones and low tones 57 2.2.3.2. Indeterminacy in determining if a word is marked for tone or accent 59 2.2.3.3. Minimal pairs and tonal features of morphological processes 60 2.2.3.4. Lack of evidence for stress 61 2.2.3.5. Ideophones 62 2.2.4. Word-level prosody: Exceptions 62 2.3. Phrasal prosody 63 2.3.1. Tonal plateauing 64 2.3.1.1. Compounds and regular reduplication 64 2.3.1.2. Noun phrases 65 2.3.1.3. Adpositional phrases 67 2.3.1.4. Tones in the verbal complex 68 2.3.1.5. Simple clauses 68 2.3.1.6. Adverbial expressions 69 2.3.1.7. Interaction between intonational processes and plateauing 70 2.3.2. Tones in serial verb constructions 71 2.4. Intonational processes 75 2.4.1. Overview 75 2.4.2. Utterance-final lowering 75 2.4.3. Negative lowering 76 2.4.4. Emphasis within a clause 78 2.4.5. Yes/no questions 79 2.5. Notes on tonal and intonational phonetics and problems of analysis 80 3 Morphology and morphophonemics 81 3.1. Derivational morphology 81 3.1.1. Reduplication 81 3.1.1.1. Deverbal resultatives 81 3.1.1.2. Intensification 82 3.1.1.3. X-like 82 3.1.1.4. Aggregate plural 82 3.1.1.5. Nominalization 83 3.1.1.6. Tone plateauing in reduplicated words 83 3.1.2. The nominalizers -ma and -wã́ 84 3.1.3. An incipient derivational affix? 84 3.2. Inflectional morphology 85 3.2.1. Imperfective tá with gó ‘to go’ 85 3.2.2. Tonal marking of verb serialization 85 3.2.3. Nominal marker a-? 86 3.3. Morphophonemics 86 3.3.1. Possessive (f)u 86 3.3.2. Other morphophonemic processes with fu 87 3.3.3. Negation and pronouns 87 3.3.4. Third-person singular ε̃ 87 3.3.4.1. After a verb 87 3.3.4.2. With locative marker a 88 3.3.4.3. With negator ηá 89 3.3.4.4. With copula da 89 3.3.4.5. With njã́ ‘eat’ andfṍ ‘beat’ 89 3.3.5. Locative (n)a 89 3.3.6. Hortative verb bé 90 3.4. Compounding 90 3.5. Rapid speech phenomena 92 4 The noun phrase 94 4.1. Determiners 94 4.2. Demonstratives 97 4.3. Possession 98 4.4. Relative clauses 103 4.4.1. The accessibility hierarchy 103 4.5. Quantifiers 106 4.6. Coordination 110 4.7. Gerunds 110 4.8. Adjective + wã́ ‘one’ 111 5 Personal pronouns 112 5.1. Pronominal inventory 112 5.2. Clitic status 113 5.2.1. Third-person singular oblique ε̃ 113 5.2.2. First-person singular m 114 5.3. Second-person singular ju 115 5.4. Pleonastic pronoun 115 5.5. Reflexives 115 5.6. Reciprocals 117 6 Adjectives 118 6.1. Definition of adjectival class 118 6.2. Adjectives and reduplication 120 6.3. Irregularities in reduplication of property items 121 6.4. Resultative adjectives 124 6.5. Comparative constructions 126 6.5.1. Positive comparison 126 6.5.2. Degree of comparison 128 6.5.3. Equal comparison 128 6.5.4. Negative comparison 128 6.5.5. Superlatives 129 6.5.6. Excessives 129 6.6. Color terms 130 7 Core predicate phrase modifiers: Negators, tense, aspect, and modals 131 7.1. Negation 131 7.1.1. Predicate negation 131 7.1.2. Irregularity in surface manifestation of negative marking 133 7.1.3. Negative quantifiers 134 7.2. Tense markers 135 7.2.1. Past marker bi 135 7.2.2. Future marker ό 139 7.3. Aspect markers 139 7.3.1. Imperfective marker tá 139 7.3.2. Grammatical status of bi, ό, and tá 141 7.3.3. Habitual marker lό 141 7.3.4. Past habitual marker náa 142 7.3.5. Durativity 143 7.3.6. Completive marker kaa 143 7.3.7. Κό as completive marker 146 7.3.8. Continuative marker gó dóu 146 7.4. Modal markers 147 7.4.1. Deontic 147 7.4.2. Epistemic 149 7.4.2.1. Probability 149 7.4.2.2. Ability 150 7.4.2.3. Possibility 151 7.5. Order of occurrence 153 8 Verb serialization 155 8.1. Diagnostic issues 155 8.1.1. Taxonomy 155 8.1.2. Constraints on argument sharing 156 8.2. Directional serials 157 8.3. Serials encoding core grammatical distinctions 159 8.3.1. Dá ‘give’ 159 8.3.2. Degree 160 8.3.3. Repetition 161 8.3.4. Complementation 161 8.3.5. Hortative marker 162 8.4. Serials with moderately grammaticalized meaning 163 8.5. Verbs used serially without change in meaning 165 8.5.1. Kabá ‘finish’ 165 8.5.2. Other verbs 165 8.5.3. Téi ‘take’ as “instrumental”? 166 8.6. Verb serialization as Sprächgefühl 167 9 Coordination and subordination 168 9.1. Coordination 168 9.1.1. Conjunction 168 9.1.2. Disjunction 169 9.1.3. Exclusion 169 9.2. Subordination 170 9.2.1. Finite complements 170 9.2.1.1. Factive complements 170 9.2.1.2. Hortative complements 170 9.2.1.3. Complements of perception and causation verbs 170 9.2.2. Nonfinite complements 172 9.2.2.1. Control verbs 172 9.2.2.2. Small clauses 173 9.2.2.3. Gerund complements 174 9.2.3. Subordination: Adverbial complement clauses 175 9.2.3.1. Temporal complements 175 9.2.3.2. Purpose complements 176 9.2.3.3. Locational complements 178 9.2.3.4. Manner complements 178 9.2.3.5. Causal complements 178 9.2.3.6. Conditional complements 179 9.2.3.7. Concessive complements 180 9.2.3.8. Substitutive complements 181 10 Passive and imperative 182 10.1. Valence-decreasing operations 182 10.1.1. Passive voice 182 10.1.2. Middle voice 185 10.1.3. Object omission 186 10.2. Valence-increasing operations 186 10.2.1. Ditransitives 186 10.2.2. Causatives 188 10.3. The imperative mood 189 11 Questions 191 11.1. Yes/no questions 191 11.2. Information questions 193 11.3. Indirect questions 194 12 Nonverbal predication and fte-verbs 196 12.1. Identificational equative predicates: Da 196 12.1.1. Basic traits 196 12.1.2. Irregularities 196 12.1.3. Omission 198 12.1.4. Allomorphy 199 12.1.5. Da as sentential presentative 200 12.2. Class equative predicates: Dέ or da 200 12.3. Locative and other predicates: Dέ 201 12.4. Existential predicates 202 13 Position, direction, and time 204 13.1. Spatial indicators 204 13.2. Deictic adverbials 206 13.3. Direction 208 13.3.1. Some directional verbs 208 13.3.2. Allative and ablative movement 208 13.3.2.1. Ablative 208 13.3.2.2. Allative 210 13.4. Time expressions 211 13.4.1. Units of time 211 13.4.2. Timeline placement of events 212 14 Adverbial modification 214 14.1. Intensifiers 214 14.2. Time adverbials 215 14.3. Adverbs of quantity 217 14.4. Adverbs of manner 218 14.5. Adverbs of frequency 219 14.6. The evidential adverbial construction 220 14.7. Ideophones 220 14.8. Placement of adverbs 222 15 Information structure 223 15.1. C ontrastive focus 223 15.1.1. Impressionistic prominence 223 15.1.2. Contrastive focus on verbs 223 15.1.3. Contrastive focus on arguments and adjuncts 224 15.1.3.1. Fronting 224 15.1.3.2. Contrastive focus marker wε 224 15.1.3.3. Contrastive focus marking with hε̃́ 226 15.1.3.4. Focus marker hε̃́ da 227 15.1.3.5. Reduplicated pronouns? 227 15.2. Pragmatic markers 227 15.2.1. Given-information marking 227 15.2.2. New-information marking: Nɔ́ɔ and hε̃́ 228 15.2.2.1. Position of nɔ́ɔ 229 15.2.2.2. Nɔ́ɔ and adverbial complements 230 15.2.2.3. New information versus focus-marking 231 15.2.2.4. He as new-information marker in the bounded past 232 15.3. Combinations of focus and pragmatic markers 232 15.4. Pragmatic-marking adverbs 234 15.4.1. Nɔ́ɔ ‘just, only’ 234 15.4.2. Nɔ́ɔmɔ ‘indeed’ 234 15.4.3. Seéi 235 15.4.4. Awáa ‘at last’ 236 15.4.5. Interjection é 238 15.4.6. Interjection o 238 16 Numerals and other time expressions 239 16.1. Cardinal numbers 239 16.2. Ordinal numbers 239 16.3. Distribution 240 16.4. Fraction 240 16.5. Time by the clock 240 16.6. Days of the week 241 16.7. Months 241 17 Lexical variation 242 17.1. Dialects 242 17.2. Free variation 242 Word list 244 Folktale transcription 246 Conversational passage 250 References 253 Index 257

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