GULLAH DIALECT

[Salikoko Mufwene]

At 11:49 AM 12/26/2000 -0800, Jordan Rich wrote:

>A direct link to the continent of Africa exist in the Sea Islands of the
>United States. (...) [Gullah] is directly related to the African
>traditional cultures of the people of Windward or Rice Coast of West
>Africa. Due to isolation on islands off the coast, the African people there
>did not have too much contact with people of other races except Native
>Americans. Thus, they were able to maintain their culture, language, and
>traditions unlike African people that were living on the "mainland."

None of the sources you have recommended (consistently) advocates the
extremely
strong position you are propagating here. Lorenzo Turner (1949:254) is very
cautious in his conclusion: "Gullah is indebted to African sources." He leaves
room for miscegenation, and certainly for non-African linguistic influences
where language is concerned. Certainly the origins of Gullah's structural
features (which is a different story from 'influences on the development of
the
language variety') are not primarily nor predominantly African (whatever you
want to make of linguistic heteroregeneity in Africa). Yes, African languages
played a role in the development of Gullah, but apparently not in the way your
statements suggest.

Sali.


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Salikoko S. Mufwene                        s-mufwene at uchicago.edu
University of Chicago                      773-702-8531; FAX 773-834-0924
Department of Linguistics
1010 East 59th Street
Chicago, IL 60637
http://humanities.uchicago.edu/humanities/linguistics/faculty/mufwene.html
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