| Creole genesis is generally considered to be a complex process, involving stages that are sequential in time and identifiable as to the communicative functions of the developing language at any stage. This study examines features in Saramaccan Creole that could be associated with a particular stage of development in terms of their communicative function in the creole language, and their similarity to the corresponding constructions in the putative source languages, primarily English and the West African Kwa language Fongbe. The study tests the hypothesis that the influence of English, the superstrate language, affected only the early stage of creole development, while the substrate language Fongbe was influential throughout the development. Historical records tend to support this hypothesis, showing that English was involved for only the first fifteen years of the history of the creole. Subsequently the creole became primarily the language of speakers of Fongbe and other substrate languages. Substrate features are of particular interest, then, since their transfer would span the entire period of creole genesis. The intent of the examination of Saramaccan constructions is to determine the changes in the corresponding Fongbe constructions during transfer, and the motivations for these changes.;The constructions under consideration are attributive and predicate adjectives and passives, and variations of these involving reduplication, and shared object serial verb constructions. The constructions with transitive verbs are similar to the corresponding constructions in Fongbe regarding semantic constraints on the verbs and morphosyntax, but they do not resemble English. The verbs in these constructions have reduced transitivity, and have backgrounding or expressive functions characteristic of a later stage of creole development. The construction with intransitive verbs, the predicate adjective, also resembles the Fongbe construction, and also has a backgrounding function. But the attributive adjective resembles English, and functions to introduce new information, a characteristic of the early stage of creole development. Variations of these constructions involving reduplication, resembling Fongbe, depict subjectivity, which is a later stage characteristic.;Changes in the Fongbe constructions during transfer are due basically to simplification, analogy and iconicity. The study found that in constructions more associated with the early stage there was more superstrate effect in the change from Fongbe, while constructions more associated with the later stage had less superstrate effect. These findings correspond to the generally accepted view that for plantation creoles the early pidgin-like stage involves mutual linguistic accommodation of superstrate and substrate language speakers, while the later creole language becomes the native language of descendants of substrate language speakers. |
