What's Past Is Past

Variation in the Expression of Past Time Reference in Negerhollands Narratives

Datos Bibliográficos

ID22993891
AutoresRobbert Van Sluijs (0000-0002-3919-6595, Radboud University Nijmegen, autor de correspondencia)
Año2014
Volumen26
Número3
Páginas272-321
Fecha de publicación2014-09-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaJournal of Germanic Linguistics (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 1470-5427 • E-ISSN: 1475-3014
EditorialCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/s1470542714000099
OpenAlexW2316278145
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas1
Referencias citadas38

Negerhollands (or Virgin Islands Dutch Creole) is the extinct Dutch-lexified creole of present-day US Virgin Islands. One of the typical features of Caribbean creoles is the occurrence of both, overtly marked and unmarked pasts. This has been attested in Negerhollands, where there is variation between preverbal (h)a and the bare verb. Studies in a number of creole languages have shown that such variation is not random. Following up on these results, I investigate the impact of factors such as narrative discourse function, aspect, and syntactic priming on the expression of past time reference in 20th-century Negerhollands through a quantitative variationist study. The results show that the factors conditioning past time reference marking in Negerhollands resemble those in other creole languages but with an entirely different outcome: Whereas other (English-lexified) creoles typically use unmarked pasts, Negerhollands typically uses overt pasts. This may reflect Akan substrate influence rather than being a sign of language death.

Art · Creole language · Expression (computer science) · Linguistics · Literature · Narrative · Sign (mathematics) · Variation (astronomy) · Verb · Computer Science · History · Linguistic Variation and Morphology · Mathematics · Philosophy · Spanish Linguistics and Language Studies · Syntax, Semantics, Linguistic Variation