Pidgins et cr=?ISO-8859-1?Q?=E9oles_?=en contact - 12 juin

Wed May 28 07:16:35 UTC 2014

**

*Journée d'étude
  du programme Pidgins et Créoles en contact*
(Fédération Typologie et Universaux Linguistiques)

*Jeudi 12 juin 2014*

9h30 accueil (Isabelle Léglise, Bettina Migge, Nicolas Quint)

10h00Robert Borges (Radboud University, Pays-Bas) : /Kumanti in contact: 
creation of a ritual vernacular/**

12h00 déjeuner sur place

14h00 Dominika Swolkien (Universidade do Mindelo, Cap Vert) : /Cape 
Verdean Creole of São Vicente:Diverse linguistic past and present/

Campus CNRS Paris-Villejuif, Salle 511, Bâtiment D. Se munir d'une pièce 
d'identité pour obtenir un badge d'accès à l'entrée. Accès : 
http://celia.cnrs.fr/Fr/Plan.htm

**

*Kumanti in contact: creation of a ritual vernacular***

Robert Borges

Radboud University

The African roots of creole languages and cultures in Caribbean 
societies have intrigued scholars since the late 19th century. Both 
linguists and anthropologists have reported numerous West African 
retentions among descendants of enslaved Africans. In the case of 
Suriname, prevalence of African retentions is presumed to be 
particularly high among the Maroons in the rural interior in contrast to 
the coastal Creole population. Maroon cultures, in general, are viewed 
as having the highest prevalence of African retentions and in some cases 
are believed to be preserved 17th C West African culture systems 
(Herskovits & Herskovits 1934; Kahn 1939). Religious systems and 
accompanying ritual languages are often cited as evidence for this idea. 
Devonish (2005) even claims that Kromanti, a ritual language of Jamaican 
maroons, "is an Akan language". Konadu (2010) asserts similar claims 
about Akan (linguistic and cultural) retentions elsewhere in the 
Caribbean and Americas -- including Suriname. An opposing view is found 
in the work of anthropologists (Price 2001, van Velzen and van Wetering 
2004), who argue that the Maroons have undergone numerous cultural and 
political innovations despite their (relative) isolation in the forests 
of Suriname and French Guiana.

This work focuses on a ritual language of the Ndyuka -- Kumantitongo. 
Ritual languages are not used for everyday communication, rather, in 
particular religious/ ritual-- contexts and are, in principle, secret. 
In addition to the works mentioned above, pop-culture tends to maintain 
the idea that ritual languages are West African varieties (where Kumanti 
? Akan), and some Ndyuka consultants insist that they could communicate 
with (presumably Akan-speaking) Ghanians in Kumanti. Data collected in 
2010 and 2011 shows that Kumanti is not Akan (or Gbe for that matter) in 
structure. Rather, it appears to be structurally parallel to the 
ordinary spoken Anglo creole of the Ndyuka, albeit with a highly mixed 
lexicon. After providing some general background on the Ndyuka and 
Kumanti, I will show on the basis of phonological, syntactic, pragmatic 
and semantic grounds, that the view Kumanti is an African retention is 
not tenable; it is at least as dynamic and innovative as the everyday 
creole -- if not more so. I will then attempt to outline the linguistic 
and socio-cultural processes that enabled the intertwining that gave 
rise to the Kumanti language.

*Cape Verdean Creole of São Vicente:Diverse linguistic past and present*
Dominika Swolkien**
Universidade do Mindelo, Cape Verde

Over the last fifteen years Cape Verdean Creole (CVC) has received a 
considerable attention within the area of creolistics and the number of 
fine-grained descriptions and analysis on CVC has been growing steadily 
(cf. Alexandre 2009, Baptista 2002 and 2010, Lang2009 and 2013,Pratas 
2004 and 2007, Quint 2000 and 2008). Indeed, one of the most challenging 
difficulties in investigating CVC lies in the fact that due to several 
socio-historic factors the language shows significant geographical and 
social variation. To date, the overwhelming majority of the contemporary 
publications have focused on the Sotavento varieties of CVC (i.e. Maio, 
Santiago, Fogo and Brava), particularly that of Santiago, while the 
Barlavento dialects (São Vicente, Santo Antão, São Nicolau, Sal, 
Boavista) have remained largely undocumented and unknown [despite some 
exceptions such as Cardoso 1989 (São Nicolau), Pereira (2000) and 
Swolkien 2013 (São Vicente)].

This presentation focuses on the Barlavento variety of CVC spoken on the 
island of São Vicente (CVSV) and its goal is twofold. Firstly, the 
sociohistorical scenario of the genesis of CVSV in the 1790's and its 
later 19^th and 20^th century development are briefly discussed in order 
to explore how the history of settlement involving diverse Creole and 
European populations, the continuing social and linguistic interaction 
between urban and rural Creole varieties and the contact with the 
lexifier in a diglossic context have affected the current phonological 
and morpho-syntactic make-up of the São Vicente variety.

Secondly, based on an extensive corpus collected during field work 
(2003-2006) and participant observation (2006-present) and amply 
illustrated with examples, the main features of CVSV phonology and 
morpho-syntax are presented with a particular focus on variation within 
CVSV and the challenges it raises for its description.

The data presented suggest that the contemporary structure of CVSV is a 
result of several processes:

the profound language-contact induced partial-restructuring (Holm 2004) 
of the Sotavento grammar during the early formation of CVSV, the 
incorporation of features derived from other Barlavento varieties, 
especially that of Santo Antão due to dialect mixing, whereas some 
characteristics are indicative of a more recent movement towards the 
lexifier that has been traditionally labelled as decreolization (DeCamp 
1971, Bickerton 1981). Finally, this paper underlines the importance of 
examining synchronic data in the light of social and historical factors

(Mufwene2000, Chaudenson 2003, Faraclas et al. 2007, Siegel 2008) in 
order to understand complex language contact situations.

**

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