Borges, Robert, Pieter Muysken, Sophie Villerius & Kofi Yakpo. 2017. The tense-mood-aspect
systems of the languages of Suriname. In Kofi Yakpo & Pieter Muysken (eds.), Boundaries
and bridges: Language contact in multilingual ecologies, 311–361. Berlin: De Gruyter.
doi.org/10.1515/9781614514886-012. Author manuscript version.
Robert Borges, Pieter Muysken, Sophie Villerius and Kofi Yakpo
The tense-mood-aspect systems of the
languages of Suriname
1 Introduction
This chapter deals with tense, mood, and aspect (TMA) marking in the languages
of Suriname, focusing on the stability of forms, meanings, and structural patterns. Despite its prominent position in the creolization debate and occasional
mentions in the literature on linguistic areas, studies on TMA in (non creolization) contact settings in Suriname are relatively few. TMA has been studied in
detail in the world’s languages, however, in terms of:
– typology (Dahl 1985, 2000; Boland 2006; Dahl and Velupillai 2011a, 2011b,
2011c, 2011d; Dryer 2011; Velupillai 2012);
– creolization (Singler 1990; Bakker et al. 1994; Winford 2001; Velupillai 2015:
391–403); and
– historical development & grammaticalization (Bybee et al. 1994)
In a relatively short period of time, Suriname has seen numerous, often radical,
linguistic developments due to its many languages, pervasive multilingualism,
and array of contact scenarios. We will investigate the vulnerability of features
to contact induced changes in the TMA systems of the Surinamese creoles,
Surinamese Dutch, Sarnami, and Surinamese Javanese.
Although some linguists believe that any type of borrowing or structural influence is possible in principle in a bilingual setting (e.g. Thomason and Kaufman
1988), much work has been done in attempting to determine which forms are
most borrowable (e.g. van Hout and Muysken 1994) and which structures are
most stable (e.g. Cysouw et al. 2008). Despite this, there is still little agreement
about borrowability and stability hierarchies.
Borrowability (the likelihood that a language will take a form from another
language) and stability (resistance to change) are fundamentally different since
one necessarily involves language contact and the other does not. Borrowing and
stability are different in that studies on the former tend to deal with external processes involving some component of language contact while the latter tend to
target internal developments.
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Robert Borges, Pieter Muysken, Sophie Villerius and Kofi Yakpo
1.1 Borrowing and borrowability
Sakel (2007) has helped refine our perception of borrowability by systematically
distinguishing borrowing of forms and copying of patterns in contact settings:
the distinction between matter (MAT) and pattern (PAT) borrowing.
We will first consider MAT borrowing. Several general borrowing hierarchies
have been proposed for concrete lexical or morphological forms (e.g. Haugen
1950; Weinreich 1953; Muysken 1981; Thomason and Kaufman 1988; Matras
2007). Muysken (1) and Matras (2), for example, propose hierarchies based on
case study data. Muysken’s study investigates Spanish borrowings in Quechua,
while Matras’ findings are based on a sample of 27 focus languages in broad geographic and typological distribution. Though they arrive at somewhat different
outcomes, there are some important similarities, e.g. nouns are most borrowable while bound functional elements tend to be more difficult to borrow. Other
methods also provide inconsistent results for general borrowability scales.
(1)
Van Hout and Muysken (1994: 60)
noun, name < adverb, complementizer, conjunction, exclamative, negation,
preposition < adjective, auxiliary, copula, verb < numeral, quantifier,
wh-word < demonstrative, determiner, preposition+determiner, possessive
pronoun, personal pronoun, pronominal clitic
(2) Matras (2007: 61–62)
nouns < conjunctions < verbs < discourse markers < adjectives <
interjections < adverbs < other particles, adpositions < numerals <
pronouns < derivational affixes < inflectional affixes
Other work, e.g. Tadmor et al. (2010), shows similar trends, where nouns are more
borrowable than verbs and content words more borrowable than function words.
They also demonstrate that grammatical categories are not the only factor determining borrowability; certain semantic fields are more frequently borrowed than
others. Others (Pagel et al. 2007; Pagel 2009: 411) suggest that the frequency with
which words are used predict their resistance to change.
Perhaps because TMA is expressed through a variety of means in different
languages – e.g. super-segmental markers such as tone, adverbs, clitics, inflectional morphology – and within individual languages, it plays a marginal role in
the proposed borrowing hierarchies. On the whole, it would figure relatively low
on these hierarchies.
Based on Matras and Sakel’s (2007a) 27–language sample, Matras (2007)
proposes a number of micro-hierarchies for matter and pattern replication. Of
particular relevance here are those relating to TMA. Modality is more susceptible
The tense-mood-aspect systems of the languages of Suriname
313
to contact induced change than aspect, which is more susceptible than future
tense, etc. A further hierarchy was also posited for modal categories. The < arrows
indicate the direction of the implicational pattern in the data.
(3) Matras (2007: 45–46)
a. TMA: modality < aspect < future tense < other tenses
b. modality (esp. MAT): obligation < necessity < possibility < ability < desire
With this, Matras provides yet another possible hierarchy for the borrowability
(and by implication, stability) of both forms and structures in the realm of TMA.
1.2 Stability of structures
Recently, linguists have taken an interest in stability of linguistic structure with
the idea that certain features are more resistant to change. Structural features
would thereby provide insights into language evolution at a greater time depth
than possible through the comparative method (cf. Dunn et al. 2005; Dunn et
al. 2008). While others (e.g. Greenhill et al. 2010) contend that structure is more
susceptible to change than vocabulary, a number of efforts have been made to
determine whether there are universally stable linguistic structures (and if so,
what are they?), and/or whether stability of particular features depends on
language families. Since the methodologies and results of these studies do not
always lend themselves to user-friendly comparison, Dediu and Cysouw (2013)
have reviewed a number of such studies and made their outcomes comparable
through statistical conversion. Each of the works they included applied measures
to data from the World Atlas of Linguistic Structures and despite that all used the
same source of data, none concluded with the same stability hierarchy. Those
WALS features pertaining to TMA have been extracted from the studies in Dediu
and Cysouw (2013) and are presented in (4)–(8), from most to least stable.
(4) Cysouw et al. (2008)
Congruence test: position of tense-aspect affixes < past tense < morphological
imperative < future tense < perfect < epistemic possibility < perfective /
imperfective < overlap b/w situational and epistemic modal marking <
imperative-hortative system < prohibitive < optative < situational possibility
Coherence method: optative < imperative-hortative system < morphological
imperative < situational possibility < position of tense-aspect affixes <
future tense < perfective / imperfective < epistemic possibility < perfect <
prohibitive < overlap b/w situational and epistemic modal marking < past
tense
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Rank method: optative < future tense < perfective / imperfective < perfect
< imperative-hortative system < position of tense-aspect affixes < situational
possibility < morphological imperative < past tense < overlap b/w situational and epistemic modal marking < epistemic possibility < prohibitive
(5) Dediu (2011)
optative < perfective / imperfective < future tense < past tense < overlap
b/w situational and epistemic modal marking < morphological imperative < perfect
(6) Parkvall (2008)
P1 (all families contained in WALS):
position of tense-aspect affixes < past tense < optative < morphological
imperative < prohibitive < imperative-hortative system < future tense <
situational possibility < overlap b/w situational and epistemic modal
marking < perfective / imperfective < epistemic possibility < perfect
P2 (subset of “most widely accepted families” in WALS): position of
tense-aspect affixes < past tense < morphological imperative < perfective /
imperfective < prohibitive < situational possibility < future tense <
imperative-hortative system < epistemic possibility < optative < perfect <
overlap b/w situational and epistemic modal marking
(7) Wichmann and Holman (2009)
optative < past tense < position of Tense-aspect affixes < perfective /
imperfective < situational possibility < epistemic possibility < future tense <
morphological imperative < prohibitive < perfect < imperative-hortative
system < overlap b/w situational and epistemic modal marking
(8) Maslova (2002, 2004)
optative < perfective / imperfective < position of Tense-aspect affixes <
future tense < past tense < situational possibility < imperative-hortative
system < morphological imperative < epistemic possibility < perfect <
prohibitive < overlap b/w situational and epistemic modal marking
With just a glance at these hierarchies, one will notice that there are both important trends and contradictions among them. Dediu and Cysouw used a principal
component analysis to rank shared features according to their stability and relative consistency in each of the methods they investigated combined. The TMA
features they mention can be ranked as follows:
(9) Dediu and Cysouw (2013)
optative < past tense < perfective / imperfective < future tense < perfect <
overlap b/w situational and epistemic modal marking
The tense-mood-aspect systems of the languages of Suriname
315
Each of the eight methods applied to the same (sub)set of data has produced a
unique result and Dediu and Cysouw’s (2013) analysis of the eight combined outcomes provides yet a ninth ranking of the features. This suggests that a universal scale
of feature stability either does not exist, or has not been satisfactorily demonstrated by quantitative methods. None of the methods mentioned in this section have
accounted for social factors, such as frequency of use of particular linguistic features or the broad socio-cultural setting in which speakers of a particular language
find themselves. Thus another possibility is that universals of feature stability are
(partially) determined by the social setting of the languages’ speakers.
1.3 The present study
The present study specifically targets stability / borrowability of TMA systems in
situations of intense language contact by investigating the transfer of forms and
patterns surrounding realization of TMA in a sample of Surinamese languages:
the creole languages of Suriname (Anglo-creole), Surinamese Dutch (Germanic),
Sarnami (Indic), and Surinamese Javanese (Austronesian). Our investigation is
mainly diachronic, in that we intend to trace the development of the various TMA
systems, though we also use a large set of synchronic data to supplement our
findings, and in some cases, propose possible changes in progress.
For some languages, diachronic data are available, e.g. Sranantongo and
Saramaccan, while for the other Surinamese creoles, we have to rely on reconstructions based on synchronic linguistic data, socio-historical data, and what
we know about early Sranantongo (from which all Surinamese creoles appear
to descend). In the other cases, Dutch, Sarnami, and Surinamese Javanese, a
diachronic component can be inferred from comparison with closely related /
ancestral varieties of the Surinamese variety, i.e. European Dutch for Surinamese Dutch; Avadhi, Bhojpuri, and other overseas Hindi varieties for Sarnami;
Javanese as spoken on Java for Surinamese Javanese.
Suriname affords us a great opportunity to investigate a number of typologically different languages as well as several genetically related languages (creoles).
Our sample covers the spectrum of contact scenarios: maintenance, shift, stable
bilingualism, and creole formation within a single multilingual society. Conveniently, the TMA systems have been somewhat of an obsession of creolists. Similarities in creole TMA systems had been initially noted as evidence supporting the
monogenesis hypothesis. But TMA (sub)systems were later also provided as evidence for several other theories of creole genesis (e.g. superstratist, substratist,
bioprogram). We see creole formation as an ongoing complex layering of contact
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Robert Borges, Pieter Muysken, Sophie Villerius and Kofi Yakpo
processes, involving elements from both substrate and superstrate as input, as
well as language internal developments. The creoles continue to develop under
pressure from contact with other creole and non-creole languages. Therefore, it
is worth systematically tracing the TMA developments in the creole languages for
comparison with other languages with which they interact.
The other three languages in our sample will help us to determine the extent
to which the structure independent factors determine borrowability / stability of
TMA forms and patterns. While the specifics of social, attitudinal, and practical
aspects surrounding the Surinamese creoles, Dutch, Sarnami, and Surinamese
Javanese differ, each language is an integral part of Surinamese society. And since
universals are hardly agreed upon (see above), parallels we see across the languages of Suriname are more likely indicative of a strong influence of the languages’
setting rather than universal tendencies or purely internally driven developments.
In the following section 2, we will provide general definitions of tense, mood,
and aspect. Section 3 will describe the development of TMA in the Surinamese
creoles. Surinamese Dutch TMA will be contrasted with European Dutch in
section 4, followed by developments of Sarnami and Surinamese Javanese in sections 5 and 6. We will then summarize and compare the developments in order
to see (a) where changes have occurred in TMA systems and (b) if those developments can be attributed to contact or internal development.
2 Definitions and methodology
2.1 Definitions
Despite relatively agreed upon theoretical definitions, TMA categories are not
always neatly separable in practice. Markers of TMA often overlap. For example,
multiple categories can be conveyed with a single form, or meanings of one category can be conveyed by a marker of another depending on context. Tense and
aspect are particularly linked in this respect; they both express types of temporal relationships. Temporal meaning can also be inferred from modal categories.
TMA markers (or lack thereof) are often combined to derive additional meanings.
Further, lexical semantics, Aktionsart, stativity/dynamicity, discourse context,
and others all play a role in the conventionalized expression of temporal relations
and speakers’ perception and intention. Nonetheless, we are able to differentiate
the concepts of tense, mood, and aspect and in some cases exemplify them in a
less blurry fashion than is evident in everyday spoken language. The following
subsections provide basic definitions of TMA.
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The tense-mood-aspect systems of the languages of Suriname
2.1.1 Tense
Tense refers to one way in which languages conventionalize the expression of
an event in time. As Müller (2013: 29) puts it, tense ‘is a representation of the
relationship between three points in time’. These three points, first coined by
Reichenbach (Boland 2006), are the points of speech (S), event (E), and reference (R). In some cases, the point of reference coincides with one of the other
points, or according to Comrie (1985), is absent, which is called absolute tense.
Examples (10)–(12), taken from McWhorter and Good (2012: 118–121), illustrate
a simple relationship between S and E, past, present, and future, respectively.
(10) Mi
á
bi
kë́
1sg neg pst want
‘I didn’t want it (to be so).’ (Saramaccan)
(11) Mi
lobi ë̃
tuútuu
1sg love 3sg.o true
‘I love him so much’. (Saramaccan)
(12) Mi
seéi ó
bói
ë̃
1sg self fut cook 3sg.o
‘I will cook it myself.’ (Saramaccan)
Comrie (1985) distinguishes absolute tense from relative tense, where all three
points are distinguished. In (13) (McWhorter and Good 2012: 118), the use of the
marker bi with a non-stative verb indicates past before past. In other words,
R precedes S but is later than E.
(13) u
bi
si
písípísi fë̃ë̃
aki
kaa
1pl pst see piece
poss.3sg.o here compl
‘We had seen pieces scattered around here.’ (Saramaccan)
Another collocation, in (14) from Winford and Migge (2004: 504), demonstrates
another order in which R and E also both precede S but E takes place after R.
(14) Efu mi
ben abi
moni
mi
bo
bai
if
1sg pst have money 1sg pst.fut buy
‘If I had money, I would have bought a car.’ (Sranan)
wan
indf
oto
car
Languages differ in the means by which they mark tense. English for example has a
tendency to use inflectional suffixes to mark past, and unmarked verbs are interpreted in the present. In the Surinamese creoles however, unmarked dynamic verbs are
interpreted as past events and past is marked on stative verbs by a preverbal auxiliary.
Similarly, languages differ in the number of grammaticalized strategies for marking
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different time references. Müller (2013: 46–57), for example, discusses a number of
South American indigenous languages that morphologically mark several levels of
temporal remoteness (e.g. in the past, just now, weeks/months ago, years ago).
2.1.2 Modality
Of the three TMA categories, modality is by far the most difficult and disagreed upon
category of TMA. Most basically, modality is a “grammaticalization of speakers’ (subjective) attitudes and opinions.” (Palmer 1986: 16). Modality “presents a statement
about the truth or realization of a state or event. It refers to the attitude of the speaker
or of one of the persons involved in the situation described (Bakker et al. 1994: 247).
Beyond these most basic types of definitions, the specifics of modality become
muddled with a multitude of strategies and sets of terminologies from different disciplines which tend to only partially overlap and outright conflict with each other.
Boland (2006) presents modality, quite clearly, as an interplay between three
parameters: sense, source, and scope. Sense consists of a linear continuum, and
though she acknowledges that the number of distinctions made in the continuum depends on the language, Boland (2006: 69) lists those four distinguished
by English: possibility, disposition, weak necessity, and necessity. The source
describes the origin of modality. She describes three sources: epistemic (having
to do with knowledge), participant-internal (where modality is ascribed to some
internal characteristic of the participant), and participant-external (where modality is ascribed to external characteristics of the participant) (Boland (2006: 72).
The latter can also be divided into two sub types: deontic, i.e. necessity or possibility of acts performed by morally responsible agents, and non-deontic. The
interaction of sense and source are detailed in Tab. 1.
According to Boland (2006: 74) the various combinations of sense and
source account for the majority of modal distinctions, but in some cases, a third
Tab. 1: Interaction of modal parameters sense and source (Boland 2006: 73).
Sense
Source
Potential
Disposition
Weak necessity
Necessity
Internal
ability
volition
weak internal need
internal need
External deontic permission
desirability
weak obligation
obligation
External
non-deontic
root possibility
root-disposition
weak root necessity root-necessity
Epistemic
epistemic
possibility
epistemic
disposition
epistemic
probability
epistemic
necessity
The tense-mood-aspect systems of the languages of Suriname
319
parameter – scope – is useful for understanding more fine grained semantic
distinctions. Scope refers to which part of the utterance a modal governs. There
are three possibilities of scope: the predicate (where “the description of the
relation or property predicated of the argument(s) is modified” thereby defining the relationship between the participant and the state of affairs in which
it is involved, also called participant-oriented or inherent modality), the predication (“the event is situated in the real or imaginary world” also called
event-oriented or objective modality), or the proposition (“the truth of the propositional content is evaluated” also called proposition-oriented or subjective
modality). Scope also combines with sense and source, though there is some
disagreement on the possibilities. One point of contention is whether there is a
one to one correspondence between scope and source – i.e. epistemic modality
would be proposition-oriented. Further not all logical combinations of scope
and source are possible, e.g. participant-internal modality can only be participant-oriented.
2.1.3 Aspect
While tense locates an event in time, aspect specifies the temporal structure of an
event itself (Comrie 1976: 3). Like tense, languages differ in the number of aspectual categories they distinguish and the means by which aspect is conveyed.
Commonly, two macro categories are often utilized by typologists: perfective
and imperfective. The former conveys an event as a whole, while the latter “pays
essential attention to the internal structure” of an event (Comrie 1976: 16). Sranan
examples from Winford (2006: 91) exemplify this difference.
(15) A
djuku wan man boro
en
here
3sg stab
indf man cut.open 3sg.poss whole
‘He stabbed the man and cut open his whole belly.’
(Perfective)
bere
belly
(16) Wan tu
fu den
pikin fu owma
e
wroko
one two of det.pl child of granny ipfv work
gron
now ooktu
ground now too
‘Are some of granny’s children also cultivating the land now too?’
(Imperfective)
In the Surinamese creoles, unmarked verbs are read with perfective aspect (15).
Preverbal e marks imperfective aspect in Sranan and Eastern Maroon creole (16).
The Surinamese creoles will be discussed in more detail in the following section.
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A more fine grained reading of perfective aspect can be attained by use of a post
verbal completive / perfect marker kaba (17).
(17) A
alen disi kan stop now. Yongu, a
kon
det rain this can stop now man
3sg come
tumisi furu kaba,
yere
too
full already hear
‘This rain can stop now. Man, it has already rained more than enough.’
(Perfect)
In some languages, the imperfective can be further split into subcategories, such
as habitual, continuous, or iterative (Comrie 1976: 25), though these distinctions
will not play a role in our investigation.
2.2 Methodology
This article relies on linguistic data gathered in Suriname in 2010–2012 by Robert
Borges, Kofi Yakpo, and Stanley Hanenberg as part of the ERC project “Traces of
Contact” at Radboud University Nijmegen. Additional control data was collected by
Kofi Yakpo in New Delhi, India in 2010 with speakers of Hindi, Awadhi, Bhojpuri,
Maithili, and Magahi. Indonesian Javanese control data was collected in 2012 for
comparison with Surinamese Javanese by Riski Lestiono, a collaborator of the ERC
project and himself a native speaker of Indonesian Javanese, and Sophie Villerius
during a Fieldwork Methods course in Leiden University. All language examples in
this paper that come without a bibliographical reference are from our field data.
The data consists of elicited material gathered through the use of visual
stimuli such as pictures, picture books (e.g. Mayer 1969), and a variety of video
clips assembled as a standard elicitation kit for the Traces of Contact research
group. We also collected more naturalistic data through semi-structured interviews and (un)guided conversations. Data was collected from various parts of the
coastal area and the interior, from members of the different linguistic communities, speakers from ages fifteen to ninety years, and is somewhat gender-balanced.
3 The creole languages
There are seven creole languages that developed in Suriname that are still
spoken there today. Sranan, which presumably was formed in the latter half
The tense-mood-aspect systems of the languages of Suriname
321
of the seventeenth century, is traditionally the language of the Creole population (i.e. Afro-Surinamese non-Maroon) and is currently used by most Surinamese as one of the main languages (together with Dutch) of interethnic
communication. The other six languages are spoken by Maroons, AfroSurinamese people whose ancestors fled plantation slavery and formed independent communities outside the plantation area. As these communities
became somewhat isolated from each other, they became differentiated due
to unique linguistic developments. These Maroon languages can be further
divided into two groups (a) the Eastern Maroon languages: Ndyuka, Aluku,
Kwinti, and Pamaka, and (b) the Central Maroon languages: Saramaccan and
Matawai (Smith 2002: 141). There is a high degree of mutual intelligibility
within groups (a) and (b), but (b) has a significantly higher proportion of Portuguese functional and lexical elements, impeding intergroup intelligibility.
Group (b) is therefore the most distinct from the other Maroon languages and
Sranan. Unlike Sranantongo, the Maroon languages have been largely used as
in-group languages, though it seems that recently a leveled Eastern Maroon
variety is gaining ground as a lingua franca in the urban environment (Migge
and Léglise 2011).
3.1 TMA in the Suriname creoles
The core concepts expressed by Surinamese creole TMA systems are mostly
marked with preverbal markers (or their absence). The main focus of this section
will be on the inventory of grammaticalized morphemes that mark concepts of
TMA, though a number of auxiliary verbs, adverbs and adverbial clauses are
also employed for encoding additional TMA concepts. Discourse position and
context also play a large role in determining TMA interpretation in the Surinamese creole languages (Huttar and Huttar 1994: 489–493, Winford and Migge
2007: 76).
Examples of categories expressed in Surinamese creoles are past and future
tense, perfective and imperfective aspect, and epistemic, deontic, and dynamic
modality. The Surinamese creoles largely distinguish the same TMA categories
and to some extent draw from the same set of forms to convey these categories,
though the distribution of the forms in each language differs to some extent.
Since by definition, creole languages are composed of forms and structures from
multiple source languages as well as some degree of restructuring and innovation, the various components of Surinamese creole TMA systems will be presented alongside current views on their development.
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Tab. 2: Tense in Surinamese creoles.
Tense category
Early Sranan
Saramaccan
Ndyuka
Pamaka
Sranan
Past
Future
ben
sa, go,
de go
bi
o1
be
o
be
o
ben
o
3.2 Development of tense in the Surinamese creoles
Surinamese creoles employ a relative tense system, with reference to the speech act
or other reference point. In the modern creoles, there are two tense markers, be(n) /
bi (< English been) which locates an event prior to a particular reference point, and
o for future tense (< English go). A difference in meaning is apparent between stative
and non-stative verbs with past marking. Stative verbs marked with be(n) / bi give
a simple past reading, while non-stative are interpreted with a past reference in
their unmarked form. Non-statives marked with be(n) / bi convey a past-before-past
(pluperfect) meaning. The stative / non-stative distinction does not play a role in
the interpretation of verbs marked with o; these are always interpreted with future
meaning. The expression of tense is not limited to the use of pre-verbal markers, but
can also be achieved through the use of temporal adverbs or time adverb clauses, as
well as particular aspect (e) and modal (sa) markers (Huttar and Huttar 1994: 489;
van den Berg 2007: 185, 188, 191, 196; Winford and Migge 2007: 77–79).
Both modern tense markers are derived from English forms and are attested in
other Anglo creoles. The distribution of these forms does not, however, coincide
with either English or West African substrate languages. Past marking appears
earlier in the sources of Sranantongo (early eighteenth century), while o is not
attested as a future marker until the late eighteenth century (Winford 2006: 105,
van den Berg 2007: 191; Winford and Migge 2007: 95; Migge and Goury 2008: 322).
Possibly resulting from the relatively late grammaticalization of o, there were
several forms used in Early Sranan to express future time reference, as shown in
Tab. 2. There are two hypotheses for the variation and development of future forms
in Early Sranan. The first is that sa (<Du zal ‘shall’ or English ‘shall’) existed first
as a future marker, but began to develop modal meanings in the late eighteenth
century, after which the go / de go construction became the preferred construction
1 It should be noted that there is some disagreement with regards to the status of o in Saramaccan.
Perhaps more traditionally, o has been considered a tense marker, as in the other Maroon creoles
(e.g. Migge and Goury 2008; McWhorter and Good 2012). Van de Vate (2011: 197ff) argues, however, that the morpheme displays characteristics of a modal morpheme. This position has gained
some currency in recent works (e.g. Veenstra 2015).
The tense-mood-aspect systems of the languages of Suriname
323
for indicating future tense (van den Berg 2007: 188–199; Migge and Goury 2008:
326). Though neither ‘movement toward a goal’ grammaticalizing into a future
morpheme, nor future markers developing into modal markers are cross linguistically rare developments (c.f. Bybee et al. 1994), this hypothesis does not completely
account for the order in which these morphemes developed or the current distribution of sa across modal categories in the various Surinamese creoles (Migge and
Goury 2008: 326).
According to the other hypothesis, by the late eighteenth century, sa and (de)
go may have already developed into sociological salient variables associated with
different varieties of Sranan, the Bakratongo (more European) and the Nengretongo
variety, (more African), respectively (van den Berg 2007: 199; Migge and Goury
2008: 326). Migge and Goury (2008: 327) cite the high proportion of African slaves
to Europeans (24: 1 in 1783) as the probable reason that the Nengretongo variant
expanded to the Bakratongo variety and later reduced phonologically to o. The
further development of sa as a modal marker will be discussed below.
3.3 The development of modality in the Surinamese creoles
A number of modal categories are distinguished in the Surinamese creoles,
however the marking of each category differs according to language (Migge
2006: 34; Migge and Goury 2008: 309; Migge and Winford 2009; Essegbey et al.
2013). Tab. 3 details a number of modal categories and the grammaticalized
Tab. 3: Creole modal categories and markers; compiled from Migge (2006: 34), Migge and
Goury (2008: 309), and Migge and Winford (2009).
Modal category
Potential
+physical ability
-physical ability
+ deontic (root) possibility
- deontic (root) possibility
+permission
-permission
+/-epistemic possibility
Necessity
deontic necessity or
obligation
epistemic necessity
Early Sranan
Saramaccan
Ndyuka
Pamaka
Sranan
kan, man va
kan
kan
sa
sa
sa
sa
poi
sa
sa
man
sa
man/kan
man/kan
kan
kan
kan, mag
kan
(kan)
sa
sa
sa
sa, kande
poi
sa
poi
sa,
kande
man
sa
man
sa,
kande
kan
man/kan/mag
man/kan/mag
kande
mus(u),
musu,
musu u
musu
mu,
musu fu
musu
mu,
musu
musu
musu, sa
musu
sa
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Robert Borges, Pieter Muysken, Sophie Villerius and Kofi Yakpo
morphemes used to mark each category in several Surinamese creoles. The most
variation can be found in the realm of potential. Other categories are marked with
relative consistency.
The most variation among the Surinamese creoles is found within the potential category. These sub-categories are marked with the forms sa, man, kan, and
poi, though the distributions across the different languages are not consistent,
reflecting unique developments of each language. Migge and Winford (2009:
129) argue that the potential categories of Maroon creoles are largely modeled on
Gbe patterns, while Sranantongo exhibits additional internal developments and
effects of contact with Dutch.
A number of complex developments have led to the makeup of the modern
modal system in the Surinamese creoles. In the early sources, modality seems
to have been largely modeled on Dutch (and possibly English). The meanings
of early forms correspond to their etyma, though increased contact with Dutch
and substrate languages forced developments of Sranantongo and the Maroon
creoles in different directions. As sa was losing ground to (g)o as a tense marker
in Suriname and acquiring modal meaning, Dutch had a stronger influence on
Sranantongo which led to the Sranantongo modal system being modeled on the
Dutch one. Modern Sranan sa and Dutch zullen share a similar range of modal
meanings (Migge and Winford 2009: 146–148).
There are several reasons to suggest substrate influence on the Maroon
creoles’ use of sa. Firstly, western Gbe languages have a potential future marker
lá / á, which also invokes a range of modal meanings that correspond to potential categories in the Maroon creoles (Migge and Winford 2009: 149). Secondly,
the Gbe system of potential modality indexes the same categories as the Maroon
creoles and several Gbe varieties (Aja, Xwela, Xwla) formally distinguish positive
and negative potential categories, which would explain the use of man (Pamaka)
and poi (Ndyuka, < Portuguese pode ‘3sg can’) in negative contexts (Migge and
Winford 2009: 150). Essegbey et al. (2013) also point out the formal distinction
between inherent and acquired ability, marked with imperfective e and modal sa
respectively in the Maroon creoles, which reflects patterns found in several Gbe
languages.
The marker kan, on the other hand, appears to have been modeled on the
usage patterns of Dutch kunnen, indicating root possibility, ability, and permission in both eighteenth century and modern Sranan (Migge and Winford 2009:
141–142). Kunnen is also used to indicate epistemic possibility in Dutch, and
Migge and Winford (2009: 142) suggest that the marginal use of Sranan kan in
such contexts is a recent development. Dutch is also clearly the source of mag,
indicating permission, though its use is quite marginal in eighteenth century
The tense-mood-aspect systems of the languages of Suriname
325
Tab. 4: Modal particles in rural and urban Ndyuka (the Sranan and Rural Ndyuka columns are
from the same sources as Tab. 3, the Urban Ndyuka column is based on Borges (fieldwork)).
Modal category
Sranan
Urban Ndyuka
Rural Ndyuka
positive potential
negative potential
positive possibility
negative possibility
positive permission
negative permission
Positive physical ability
negative physical ability
sa
kan / sa
kan
man / kan
kan / mag
kan
kan
man
sa
poi
kan
man
kan
man
kan
poi
sa
poi
sa
poi
sa
poi
sa
poi
Sranan, suggesting that this is a somewhat later development (van den Berg
2007: 217; Migge and Winford 2009: 142).
Grammaticalization also played a role in the modal system of Sranan and
Pamaka, as evidenced by the status of man as an auxiliary, which developed from its
use as a noun (van den Berg 2001: 249–252; van den Berg and Arends 2004: 25–28).
Our data from 2010–11 suggest that the modal system of Ndyuka (and possibly other Maroon creoles) continues to develop. We have noticed differential
marking of modal categories between urban and rural dwelling Ndyuka speakers, with the former tending to align themselves with Sranantongo patterns.
Likely due to an increasing number of Maroons in the city in the past decades,
their increased exposure to Sranantongo, frequent interaction with Maroons
from other ethnic groups and non-Maroons, and perhaps the inclination to
establish an identity independent of their traditional ethnicity (see Migge 2007;
Migge and Léglise 2013; Léglise and Migge 2015), Maroon languages have come
under influence of each other and Sranantongo. Ndyuka speakers themselves
are also aware of Sranantongo influence on their language. One informant explained that the closer you get to the coast, the more ‘developed’ the language is.
Others describe the influence more defensively; coastal Ndyuka is moksi ‘mixed’
or basaa ‘bastardized’. An urban dwelling informant describes the difference in
terms of “modern” Ndyuka along the coast versus a more traditional variety in
the interior.
Language attitudes aside, speakers are well aware that there is a difference
between urban and rural varieties, though it is difficult for informants to pinpoint particular features, and some informants claimed to switch between varieties depending on context. Tab. 4 illustrates how the modal categories of Urban
Ndyuka appear to have been influenced by Sranan.
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Robert Borges, Pieter Muysken, Sophie Villerius and Kofi Yakpo
The following examples contrast rural Ndyuka poi (18) with urban man (19).2
Both may express negative permission (poi only in combination with verbal negation), and in this context, they mean the same.
(18) mi
be
taigi den
pikin kaba,
yu
á
1sg pst tell
det.pl child compl 2sg neg
waka go a
busi
walk go loc forest
‘I told those kids they may not go into the forest [alone]’
(rural Ndyuka)
poi
mod
(19) i
no
man oli
en
moro.
2s neg mod hold 3sg more
‘You may not keep it anymore.’ (urban Ndyuka)
However, man is not the conventional form used in upriver Ndyuka. Compare the
Sranan example in (20).
(20) un
no
man taki soso Sranan.
1/2pl neg mod talk only Sranan
‘You [pl] may not only Sranan.’ (Sranan)
The following examples illustrate the phenomenon with respect to the expression
of physical ability. The conventional form for expressing this modal category in
rural Ndyuka is the preverbal particle sa, as shown in (21), (Winford and Migge
2004: 30). Urban Ndyuka speakers however freely employ the Sranan-derived
auxiliary verb kan instead, as in (22). Compare the Sranan use of kan in (23).
(21) a
taanga,
a
sa
diki wan ondoo
kilo.
3sg be.strong 3sg mod lift
one hundred kilo
‘He is (very) strong, he can lift 100 kilos.’ (rural Ndyuka)
(22) i
kan go meke wan film.
2sg mod go make indf film
‘You can go make a film.’
(urban Ndyuka)
(23) a
kan doro
fu
broko
3sg mod reach prep break
‘He can manage to pick the apple.’
a
apra.
det apple
(Sranan)
2 As noted above, man is also used in other EMC varieties and by some down river and Cottica
Ndyuka. It is apparent that our data represent extreme points on a continuum; variation is the
norm with respect to these forms and more research is needed to more accurately determine the
patterns behind their usage.
327
The tense-mood-aspect systems of the languages of Suriname
It is important to note here that the phenomenon presented cannot be described as a complete change; variation is the norm. Many of our urban informants
were recorded using both rural Ndyuka forms next to urban forms, though this
was not the case with our upriver speakers. With two geographic points of
reference in our Ndyuka sample, Paramaribo and the upriver Tapanahoni, the
data suggest that Sranantongo is the main source of urban features in Ndyuka;
however contact with highly intelligible Eastern Maroon varieties should not
be ignored. In fact, it is often difficult to determine the origin of a particular
feature, such as the case of man in examples (18)–(20). Pamaka is not represented in our sample, though Migge and Goury (2008: 309) tell us that man is
also employed for several modal categories in that language. Kan on the other
hand appears to be an addition to the repertoire of urban Ndyuka originating
from Sranantongo. While etymologically indeterminate features such as man
might weaken our argument for an urban influence on Ndyuka, it should be
noted that the important changes in traditional Maroon societies associated
with coastal life in Paramaribo and urban centers along the Marowijne that
have set the stage for the blurring of traditionally salient differences among
Maroon varieties, as well as influence from Sranantongo (Migge and Léglise
2011, 2013).
3.4 Development of Aspect in the Surinamese creoles
Verbs that are not marked with an aspect marker are interpreted as perfective.
Imperfective aspect is marked with preverbal e in Sranan and Eastern Maroon
creole, and ta in Saramaccan. Completive aspect is marked in all creoles with
a verb phrase final kaba (<Port. acabar ‘to finish’) which is homophonous to
a main verb ‘to finish’. Aspectual categories and their markers are detailed in
Tab. 5.
Winford and Migge (2007: 83) argue that the perfective interpretation of
unmarked verbs is modeled primarily on the Gbe languages. The two language groups share a “more or less identical range of meanings and uses”
Tab. 5: Aspectual marking in the Surinamese Creoles.
Aspect category
Early Sranan
Saramaccan
Ndyuka
Pamaka
Sranan
pfv
ipfv
compl
Ø
de
kaba
Ø
ta
ka(b)a
Ø
e
kaba
Ø
e
kaba
Ø
e
k(a)ba
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Robert Borges, Pieter Muysken, Sophie Villerius and Kofi Yakpo
with respect to unmarked verbs, including: property items and other stative
verbs, non stative verbs with past reference, and non stative verbs with
current relevance (Winford and Migge 2007: 81). Substrate influence also
plays the primary role in the development of the completive marker. Like the
Surinamese creoles, Gbe languages also have a completive category, conveyed
with a verb phrase final marker derived from the verb ‘to finish’ (Winford
2006: 102; Winford and Migge 2007: 84–85). However, kaba is compatible with
stative and non-stative situations, while the Gbe marker is only compatible
with non-stative situations, suggesting some additional processes of grammaticalization in the Surinamese creoles (Winford and Migge 2007: 85; van den
Berg and Aboh 2013).
Imperfective markers e and ta are derived from the locational copula de
and the verb tan ‘to stay, to wait’, respectively. In the early texts these forms
are used to mark progressive aspect, but only rarely habitual aspect, according to Winford and Migge (2006: 85), evidence which they use to suggest
that imperfective aspect was a late categorical development dependent on the
further grammaticalization of the progressive marker to an imperfective marker.
However, van den Berg (2007: 200) states that de in Early Sranan covers several
imperfective sub-categories: continuous, habitual, progressive, and ingressive.
This suggests that, contrary to Winford and Migge’s (2007) claim, imperfective
was already a grammaticalized category early on, and was not modeled on
the Gbe aspectual system which lacks a macro imperfective category as in the
Surinamese creoles.
3.5 Discussion
A number of different structures in various substrate and superstrate languages,
along with innovation and grammaticalization are responsible for the composition of the Surinamese creole TMA systems as they are today. Tab. 6 above summarizes the processes involved in the develop-ment of each TMA marker. Various
aspects of all the Surinamese creole languages’ TMA systems can be attributed
to substrate influences, though this is more apparent in the Maroon creoles.
English superstrate influence, contact with Dutch, and grammaticalization have
also played a prominent role in the development of Surinamese creoles. Finally,
we suggest that the creole languages are increasingly influencing each other’s
development, as indexed by urban Ndyuka modal marking, which patterns with
Sranan in our data.
The tense-mood-aspect systems of the languages of Suriname
329
Tab. 6: Developments of TMA in Surinamese creoles.
Category Marker
Process
Tense
Grammaticalization of English been
Grammaticalization of English go
Grammaticalization of Dutch zal ‘shall’ (or English shall) to future marker
and later to modal marker
Sranan dynamic sa modeled on Dutch patterns
Maroon languages potential sa modeled on substrate (Gbe) patterns
Modeled on substrate patterns
Grammaticalized from noun – spread to urban Maroon varieties
Modeled Dutch patterns in Sranan – relatively recent spread to urban
Maroon varieties
Modeled on Dutch, increased use due to recent contact
Substrate influence
Substrate influence + later grammaticalization
Substrate influence – marker grammaticalized from locational copula
grammaticalization – substrate languages distinguish several sub-types
of ipfv categories
Mood
be
o
sa
poi
man
kan
Aspect
mag
Ø
kaba
e
4 Surinamese Dutch
Surinamese Dutch (SD) is spoken both in Suriname and in the Netherlands, the colonizing country to which many Surinamese have migrated. It is a widely recognized
ethnolect in the Netherlands (cf. Muysken 2013), and some of its features have led to
ethnic stereotypes. It has also been described on a number of occasions, in part under
the rubric of ‘mistakes’ of Surinamese children in the Dutch classroom. Charry (1983)
is still the most sophisticated study focusing on phonological variation in this variety
in the Dutch context, which requires much more investigation. De Kleine (2007) is an
extensive morphosyntactic study of SD as spoken in urban Suriname. In Suriname,
paradoxically, SD is not an ethnolect but an ethnically neutral national variety.
It should be noted that many of our elicitations in Suriname did not produce
very informal speech. Some of the speakers recorded felt that they had to put
on their best Dutch, i.e. as close to European Dutch (ED) as possible. In spite of
this, the data reveal a surprising number of innovative features. Another issue is
whether the SD recorded represents a stable variety in its own right or simply a
gathering of second language speech samples. To some extent it is the latter, as
some of the consultants recorded are clearly second language speakers. However,
the fact that there are 15 analyzed samples makes it possible to see how wide
330
Robert Borges, Pieter Muysken, Sophie Villerius and Kofi Yakpo
spread a feature is across samples and how frequent within a sample. Some innovative properties are quite general, as can be seen from Tab. 8 in section 4.3 below,
suggesting that they are entrenched within the SD speech community.
In 4.1 we present the basic outlines of the ED system, 4.2 contains the actual
sketch of TMA in SD, and in 4.3, a more general perspective is introduced.
4.1 The TMA system of European Dutch
The TMA system of ED is not very rich in fully grammaticalized categories, but there are
numerous auxiliaries and semi-auxiliaries, and some specialized constructions. The
basic distinction in verbal morphology is that between past and non-past. In (24) an
example is given with a regular (weak) verb and in (25) with an irregular (strong) verb.
(24) a. Zij
hoop-t
op een beter-e
toekomst.
she hope-3sg on a
better-ai future
‘She hopes for a better future.’
b. Zij
hoop-te
op een beter-e
toekomst.
she hope-3sg.pst on a
better-ai future
‘She hoped for a better future.’
(25) a. Zij
loop-t
op straat.
she walk-3sg on street
‘She walks in the street.’
b. Zij
liep
op straat.
she walk.3sg.pst on street
‘She walked in the street.’
The shape of the basic roots involved in these examples is the same; the status of
a verb as ‘weak’ or ‘strong’ is not phonologically conditioned.
The basic temporal distinction being past/non-past, future tense reference is
ordinarily marked with a simple non-past:
(26) Morgen
koop
ik een
tomorrow buy.1sg I
a
‘Tomorrow I will buy a bike.’
fiets.
bike
There is a specialized construction to mark progressive aspect, aan het X-inf zijn
‘be at X-ing’:
(27) Zij
is schoen-en aan
she is shoe-pl
at
‘She is buying shoes.’
het
det
kop-en.
buy-inf
The tense-mood-aspect systems of the languages of Suriname
331
Tab. 7: Some ED auxiliaries and semi-auxiliaries with their main uses.
Form
Gloss
Uses
Category
zijn
be
tns
asp
worden
become
zullen
shall
moeten
must
mogen
may
gaan
go
With past participle, past/
perfect with telic verbs
With past participle, completive
passive with transitive verbs
As mentioned, progressive in the
aan het X construction
In passive sentences
To mark change of state with
non-verbal predicates
Future with modal
connotations (assured
prediction, obligation)
Deontic modal of obligation
Epistemic modal of inference
Evidential inference of hearsay
Deontic modal of permission
Epistemic modal of possibility
Intention, immediate future
doen
do
Habitual
Comments
asp
mod
Less frequent than in
English
mod
evi
mod
tns
asp
asp
Frequent in child
language and L2 varieties
Frequent in southern ED
There is also a ‘have’ + past participle perfect, which is often used in ordinary
past tense contexts, unlike its use in English:
(28) Zij
heeft gisteren
schoen-en
she has
yesterday shoe-pl
‘She bought shoes yesterday.’
gekocht.
buy.pp
Furthermore, there is a whole range of auxiliaries and semi-auxiliaries. In Tab. 7,
we present some of them with their main uses.
4.2 A sketch of TMA in Surinamese Dutch recordings
The SD data show a number of innovative features concerning the expression of
TMA categories when compared to ED.
In the general area of Tense, there are some cases (in two samples) where past
marking on a verb is innovative in comparison with ED. These include double
marking (strong + weak past, as in (29)), and weak instead of strong marking, as
in (30).
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Robert Borges, Pieter Muysken, Sophie Villerius and Kofi Yakpo
(29) En
dacht-te
en
pak-t
dus, dacht-te,
pak-t
and thought-pst and grab-3sg thus, thought-pst grab-3sg
dus
een paar houder-s vast aan een paar tak-ken
thus a
few
hold-pl
tight on
a
few
branch-pl
‘and thought and grabs thus, thought, grabs a few holds tight on a few branches’
(30) En
hij ging
daar uit
het huis
en
and he go.3sg.pst there out det house and
pak- te
hem en
houd-de
hem strak vast
grab-3sg.pst him and hold-3sg.pst him tight straight
en
z’n, z’n, om
hem heen
and his his around him all
‘and he went there out of the house and grabbed him and held him tight
and his, his, around him’
The irregular past tense marking may be linked to a more general issue concerning
tense organization in SD. De Kleine (2007) contains a detailed analysis of the TMA
categories in SD as compared to ED. We will only mention a few of the points she
makes. Regarding past tense marking, a very complex picture is given. De Kleine
comments (2007: 69): ‘The pattern that emerges from the data shows that the rules
for past tense marking in SD, unlike ED, are governed by discourse rather than
grammar.’ And further on (2007: 75): ‘It should be emphasized that there is a significant amount of variation regarding past tense marking in the data.’
In the Frog Story recounting in (31) the speaker jumps from:
[perfect] to [present] to [present] to [past] to [present] to [past]
to [present] to [past] to [present] to [perfect] to [past] to [past].
(31) story book description (Frog story)
a. John, Johnny heeft
een kikker gehad
en
John, Johnny have.3sg a
frog
have.pp and
heeft
ook een hond-je
have.3sg also a
dog-dim
‘John, Johnny has had a frog and also has a little dog.’
b. Johnny houd-t
van de kikker, maar toen
hij
Johnny love-3sg of
the frog
but
when he
sliep
met die
hond ging
die
kikker
sleep.pst with that dog
go.3sg.pst that frog
stiekem weg
secretly away
‘Johnny loves the frog, but when he slept with the dog the frog secretly
ran away.’
The tense-mood-aspect systems of the languages of Suriname
333
c. Toen
het morgen,
toen
het ochtend wordt
kon,
when it
tomorrow when it
morning becomes could,
kan Johnny die
kikker niet vinden
can Johnny that frog
not find.inf
‘when the morning comes Johnny could, can not find the frog any more.’
d. Johnny keek
naar buiten
en
de, enne, roep-t
Johnny look.pst to
outside and the, and, call-3sg
naar eh, naam van de kikker
to
eh, name of
the frog.’
‘Johnny looked outside and the, and, calls to, eh, the name of the frog.’
e. Johnny heeft
een gat
in de grond
gevo...
Johnny have.3sg a
hole in the ground fi.pp....
eh gezien en
dacht
dat
het kikkertje daar
eh see.pp and think.pst that the frog.dim there
binnen was en
riep
die
kikker
inside was and call.pst that frog
‘Johnny has found, seen a hole in the ground .and thought that
the little frog was in there and called the frog.’
In fragments where both gaan ‘go’ and zullen ‘shall.inf’ occur, gaan refers
to more definite and immediate events, and zullen to more uncertain events
(2007: 63):
(32) … ze
gaat
boos
op je
worden, misschien.
… she go.3sg angry on you become, perhaps
maanden lang.
Maar ze
zal
eens inzien dat
je
month.pl long. But
she shall once see
that you
gelijk had, toch?
right had, no
‘… she is going to get mad at you, maybe for months. But one day she will
see that you were right, no?’
This difference may reflect the distinction between sa and o in Sranan-tongo (see
section 3 above). However, the past form of zullen, zou ‘should’ does have definite
reference (2007: 64):
(33) … half tien zou
dat feestje beginnen.
… half ten should that party
begin
‘at half past nine that party was going to start.’
The ED system of marking unreal conditionals with past perfect forms is replaced
by simple past (2007: 81):
334
Robert Borges, Pieter Muysken, Sophie Villerius and Kofi Yakpo
(34) En
als je
niet zoveel
bij
je
had?
and if
you not so.much with you had
‘And if you had not had so much money on you?’
(cf. ED: En als je niet zoveel bij je had gehad?)
The absence of final placement of the infinitive verb after gaan and worden is
illustrated in the next examples from the corpus:
(35) Hij gaat
zitten
op een stoel.
he go.3sg sit-inf on a
chair
‘He goes and sits on a chair.’
(cf. ED Hij gaat op een stoel zitten.)
(36) Ligg-en wortel-en op de tafel en
ze
worden
lie-3pl carrot-pl on the table and they become
gebroken in twee stukk-en
break.pp in two piece-pl
‘Carrots lie on the table and they are broken into two pieces.’
(cf. ED ze worden in twee stukken gebroken)
This suggests that, contrary to ED, there is a tendency to view the auxiliary and
the verb as a single cluster.
The overgeneralization of the aan het progressive construction is illustrated
in (37), where the stative verb slapen ‘sleep’ is marked with aan het.
(37) Een muis
is aan
a
mouse is at
‘A mouse is sleeping.’
het
det
slap-en.
sleep-inf
With other speakers we find overgeneralization of bezig zijn te X ‘be busy to X’
with the same meaning:
(38) Een vrouw
zit
op de grond
a
woman sit.3sg on the floor
bezig te et-en.
busy to eat-inf
‘A woman sits on the floor and is eating.’
en
and
ze
she
is
is
(39) Een muis
was bezig te lez-en
en
hij word-t
a
mouse was busy to read-inf and he become-3sg
gestoord
en
daarom
word-t
hij boos.
disturbed and therefore become-3sg he angry
‘A mouse was reading and he is disturbed and therefore he gets angry.’
The tense-mood-aspect systems of the languages of Suriname
335
In both cases the precise semantics of the predicate and the nature of the semigrammaticalized auxiliary are treated differently in SD from ED.
A feature shared with some varieties of ED is the use of generic doen ‘do’:
(40) Ja, ik doe voetball-en.
yes I
do
football-inf
‘Yes I play football.’
(41) En
aan de bovenkant van de saxofoon,
and at
the top.side
of
the saxophone
vingerzetting is linkerhand boven en
rechterhand
finger.setting is left.hand
top
and right.hand
doe je
lager te doen
do
you lower to do.inf
‘And on top of the saxophone, the finger setting is left hand on top
and right hand you do lower.’
4.3 Conclusions and discussion
Tab. 8 gives an overview of our main findings. First the number of samples is
mentioned, then whether the feature is also indicated in the earlier studies of
Essed-Fruin (1983), de Kleine (2007), and de Bies (2008). Finally we indicate
whether the feature is similar to a Sranan feature (+), or different from the relevant property of Sranan (−). If the feature does not correspond directly to Sranan,
but has emerged through indirect Sranan influence, it is (+).
We can assume indirect Sranantongo influence in the case of the absence of
verb final because Sranantongo has S Aux (=gaan/worden) V O constituent order.
The overgeneralization of aan het V and bezig zijn could be linked to the general
presence of progressive e in Sranan with activity verbs.
Tab. 8: Characteristics of Surinamese Dutch TMA marking.
Variable in our corpus
Absence of verb final after gaan
and worden
Overgeneralization of aan het V
Overgeneralization of bezig zijn
Tense organization
Generic doen
# Samples
Essed-Fruin
De Kleine
De Bies Sranan
5
(+)
1
1
4
1
(+)
(+)
+
−
66–79
133
41
336
Robert Borges, Pieter Muysken, Sophie Villerius and Kofi Yakpo
Essed-Fruin (1983: 122–137), in a very interesting early exploratory study, distinguishes three types of ‘deviations’ from ED within SD (see also Muysken, this
volume):
– Idiomatic deviations
– Deviations from the conventional system
– Deviations from the essential system
The changes in word order and the irregular marking of past tense morphology
reflect deviations from the conventional system, while changes in progressive
aspect marking and the relation between past and present tense probably reflect
more deep-seated deviations from the essential system.
De Kleine (2007) follows the classic distinction between External change
(2007: 134) and Internal change (2007: 132), which in turn can be divided into Simplification through loss of forms (2007: 132) and Simplification through change of
forms (2007: 133). It is clear that formal simplification and restructuring can be
attributed to these types of change. External change in turn can involve either
Transfer of grammatical functions (2007: 136) or Transfer of grammatical structures (2007: 139).
The first case, transfer of grammatical functions, is the most frequent. A particular element already existing in ED, such as the use of aan het, is given a wider
semantic range. This type of transfer leads to Syntactic camouflage (2007: 136),
the term De Kleine cites from Spears (1982): an SD form which looks like an ED
form has a different meaning.
5 Sarnami
Sarnami is a koiné resulting from the mixing of various northern Indian languages, among them (varieties of) Bhojpuri, Magahi, Maithili and Awadhi spoken in
the present-day Indian federal states of Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Jharkhand and West
Bengal. Our data and sociolinguistic interviews show that Sarnami is used by all
generations in the Indo-Surinamese community of Suriname in a pattern of trilingualism involving Sarnami, Sranantongo and Dutch. Entrenched multilingualism
in the Indo-Surinamese community has led to contact induced change in Sarnami.
The most obvious changes are lexical in nature: Sarnami has acquired numerous
lexical items from Sranantongo and Dutch, and also features calques from these two
languages (cf. Yakpo and Muysken, 2014). There are also contact induced changes in
the grammar of the language, e.g. in constituent order (Yakpo, this volume). In the
following, we document contact induced changes in the TMA system of Sarnami.
The tense-mood-aspect systems of the languages of Suriname
337
The core TMA system is constituted by markers which instantiate central
tense, aspect and mood categories. We will see that the most profound changes
can be witnessed in the non-core TMA system. This is to be expected since the
non-core system is by definition paradigmatically and syntagmatically less tightly
organized and expresses more specialized (hence more peripheral) semantic
notions. Given the medium to short time depth of contact between many of the
languages of Suriname – this concerns first and foremost the immigrant languages of the Asian-descended communities – we would expect the impact of language contact to make itself felt first in the non-core system.
5.1 The TMA system of Sarnami and its contributing languages
Sarnami has a TMA system that is characteristic for the Indo-Aryan languages of
northern India. The core TMA system makes use of bound morphology, i.e. verbal
suffixes, with support from the auxiliary verb ‘to be’ for the expression of composite tense/aspect notions.
The template for the formation of composite tense/aspect categories is virtually identical in all languages. For example in (42), past progressive is instantiated in a construction in which the lexical verb (soc- ‘think’) is marked for
imperfective aspect by suffixation (-at) in order to express an ongoing situation.
Simultaneously, a form of the verb ‘to be’ (rah-) is inflected for past tense and
person-number, cf. (42), (43). The ‘to be’ auxiliary is, in turn, marked for past
tense (-il). The result is a composite past progressive tense-aspect. Compare the
following examples of the formation of past progressive in Sarnami, Maithili and
Magahi respectively:
(42) ham soc-at
rah-il-i
joga
1
think-ipfv be-pst-1 yoga
‘I was thinking (that this was) yoga.’ (Sarnami)
(43) Ram kha-it
ch-əl-ah
Ram eat-ipfv be-pst.3hon
‘Ram was eating.’
(Maithili; Yadav 1996: 155; gloss adapted)
(44) tu
sut-ait
ha-l-a
2sg sleep-ipfv be-pst-2sg
‘You were sleeping.’
(Magahi; Verma 1985: 55; gloss adapted)
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Robert Borges, Pieter Muysken, Sophie Villerius and Kofi Yakpo
In the non-core system, auxiliaries combine with lexical verbs in order to express
less central aspectual and modal notions in auxiliary constructions. In all the languages including Sarnami, the group of auxiliaries encompasses items ranging
from little grammaticalized lexical verbs to highly grammaticalized ‘vector verbs’
(cf. Masica 1993: 266). Although an etymological relation between vector verbs
and lexical verbs can in many cases be established, the former may express specialized aspectual and spatial notions with only remote semantic connections
with their lexical counterparts. One such example is the verb lag-, whose source
meaning is ‘(to) attach’, as shown in the following example from Sadani Bhojpuri:
(45) kona mẽ rʌtʌn kʌr gheir lagʌl ahe.
‘In the corner a mass of jewels is heaped up (lit. ‘is attached’).’
(Sadani Bhojpuri; Jordan-Horstmann 1969: 86, no gloss provided)
In Sarnami and its contributing languages, lag- also occurs as an auxiliary verb in
a dative experiencer construction. This function of lag-, although more grammaticalized, is still somehow transparently connected to the etymology of ‘(to) attach’.
Compare the following examples from Maithili and Sarnami respectively:
(46) Mohan ke
əhã
nik
ləg-əl-iəeik
Mohan acc/dat 2sg.hon good attach-pst-(2sg.hon+3sg)
‘Mohan liked you.’ (lit. ‘you were well attached to Mohan.’
(Maithili; Yadav 1996: 183; gloss adapted)
(47) u
film, larka-n
ke
dare lag-e
hai.
dist film child-pl acc/dat fear attach-inf be.prs
‘As for this film, the children are afraid.’ (lit. ‘fear is attached to the
children.’ Sarnami)
In its most abstract and grammaticalized function, lag- is employed as an aspectual auxiliary verb with the meaning ‘(to) begin’. In its auxiliary function, lag- is
inflected like any other full lexical verb. Compare the following two examples
from Sadani Bhojpuri and Sarnami respectively:
(48) u kandek laglʌk
‘s/he started crying’
(Sadani Bhojpuri; Jordan-Horstmann 1969: 101, no gloss provided)
(49) ekwá-ekwá ke
muṟi-yá
meṉ khoj-e
lag-al.
other~red acc/dat head-def in
look.for-inf attach-pst
‘One has begun searching (lice) in the head [hair] of the other.’ (Sarnami)
In the following section, we concentrate our analysis on contact-induced developments in the non-core TMA system of Sarnami.
The tense-mood-aspect systems of the languages of Suriname
339
Tab. 9: Developments in the non-core TMA system of Sarnami.
Aspect/modal Non-native structure
reading
(Literal) translation Native equivalent (Literal)
translation
Continuative
doro já
‘through go’
áge baṟhe/cale
Ingressive
bigin kare
‘begin do’
suru kare
Completive
Conative
af‘off-’
pruberi/probeer kare ‘try do’
cukkosis kare
‘forward
move/go’
‘beginning
do’
‘completive’
‘effort do’
5.2 Contact-induced changes in the TMA system of Sarnami
In the non-core TMA system of Sarnami, auxiliary verbs combine with lexical
verbs in order to express less central aspectual and modal notions in auxiliary
constructions. Tab. 9 summarizes contact-induced developments in the non-core
system of Sarnami, which will be discussed in further detail below.
5.2.1 Continuative
In our Sarnami corpus, continuative aspect is exclusively expressed via a construction involving non-native material. The adverb/particle doro ‘through’, of
Sranan origin, may appear in combination with the Sarnami verb já/ga- ‘go’ to
express the notion ‘go on, continue’, as shown in (50) below. The construction
therefore features a mixture of matter and pattern borrowing.
(50) en
doro ga-il
bajá-we.
and cont go-pst play.music-inf
‘And he continued playing music.’
The element doro is also found to express a continuative reading on its own
without addition of the verb já. An example for the use of this adverbial strategy
can be found in (51).
(51) doro bajá-we
hai.
cont play.music-inf be.prs
‘(He) continues playing music.’
The continuative construction in Sarnami exemplifies the complex multidirectional transfer processes that characterize the Surinamese linguistic area. For
one part, the continuative construction is a direct calque from a corresponding
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Robert Borges, Pieter Muysken, Sophie Villerius and Kofi Yakpo
construction in Sranan. In Sranantongo too, an adverbial element doro as well
as a lexical verb go collocate to express a continuative reading, as can be seen
in example (52). The syntactic differences between Sarnami and Sranantongo
can be attributed to the corresponding differences in clause-linking strategies
available to the two languages. In Sarnami (cf. (50) above) the lexical verb is
an infinitival complement to the auxiliary construction. In Sranantongo (cf.
(52) below) we instead find a serial verb construction in which the aspectual
‘auxiliary’ follows the lexical verb without any overt sign of subordination:
(52) a
bigi wan plèy go doro nanga
det big one play go cont with
‘The big one continues playing with the ball.’
a
det
bal.
ball
In Sranan as well, the adverbial doro alone can express a continuative notion, as
shown in (53).
(53) a
moysmoysi e
leysi en
buku
det mouse
ipfv read 3sg book
‘The mouse continues reading its book.’
doro.
cont
The continuative construction is however not native to Sranantongo either. It is a
nativized borrowing, and originally a calque from the Dutch particle-verb collocation
door-gaan, lit. ‘through-go’, best translated as ‘continue’. Syntactically, the Dutch
construction differs from the corresponding Sarnami and Sranan ones. In Dutch, the
lexical verb specified by the continuative auxiliary is expressed as a clausal adjunct:
(54) en
hij gaat door
met
and he goes through with
‘And he continues playing.’
spel-en.
play-inf
Unsurprisingly, Dutch also features the use of door alone in constructions such as
(55), in which the adverbial alone expresses a continuative notion.
(55) hij gooit
dan
die
drum weg
om dan
rustig weer
he throws then that drum away to
then calm again
door
te lezen.
through to read
‘He then throws that drum away in order to then calmly continue reading.
In Dutch, as in other Germanic languages including English, there are scores of
such complex predicates in which an adverb or particle collocates with a verb to
render a large range of spatial, Aktionsart and idiomatic meanings (cf. e.g. Müller
2002). In contrast to Dutch, Sranantongo has but a handful of complex predicates of this kind, all of which are more or less nativized calques from Dutch.
The tense-mood-aspect systems of the languages of Suriname
341
Sarnami does not have a native layer of verb-particle complex predicates either.
We therefore interpret the presence of the continuative construction in Sranantongo and Sarnami as a transfer from Dutch. It is most likely that the Sarnami
equivalent of this construction entered the language via Sranantongo. The evidence is the phonological shape of doro, which features a paragogic final vowel.
Nevertheless, the function of the construction in Sarnami, and the distributional
aspects described above certainly owe just as much to transfer from Dutch as
from Sranan.
5.2.2 Ingressive
The Sranan verb bigin ‘begin (to)’ is more frequent as a marker of ingressive aspect
than an equivalent native construction. This frequency is fairly evenly distributed
among speakers, however with a clear preference for the non-native structure by speakers under 25 years, where the non-native construction figures in over 80% of all cases.
Example (56) shows how Sarnami speakers make use of bigin for the expression of ingressive aspect, which we define here as the entry into the situation
described by the main verb. Taking a closer look at the construction, we remark
the presence of the verb kare ‘do’.
(56) aur bigin kar-il
o-ke
and begin do-pst dist-acc/dat
‘And (she) has begun to cut it.’
kát-e
cut-inf
ke.
acc/dat
With the help of the generic verb kar-, non-native verbs and nouns may be integrated into a Sarnami clause. The use of generic verbs in such constructions has
been well documented for Indo-Aryan languages (cf. e.g. McGregor 1995: 63). The
extensive presence of (bilingual) compound verbs in the language family makes
up for the scarcity of verb-deriving morphology. The non-native ingressive construction parallels a native one, see (57). This construction also involves the generic
verb kar-, preceded by the (native) noun suru ‘beginning’:
(57) tab
suru
kar-is eerste aurat-iyá
doorstuur
then beginning do-pst first
woman-def pass.on
kar-e
ke.
do-inf acc/dat
‘Then the first woman began to pass (it) on, (and) the thing that was in the
person’s hand.’
The comparison between the non-native ingressive construction in (56) and the
native one in (57) however also shows that the former construction features a verb
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Robert Borges, Pieter Muysken, Sophie Villerius and Kofi Yakpo
where the latter has a noun. In fact, we do not usually find native verbs in the
(object) position before the generic verb kare. This is therefore a specific adaptation mechanism for loan verbs in Sarnami (cf. Appel and Muysken, 1987: 126–127;
Muysken, 2000: 197–202, 208–211).
Another common way of expressing an ingressive notion in Sarnami is very
different from the two above. It involves the use of the highly grammaticalized,
largely desemanticized “vector verb” lag-, lit. ‘touch, come in contact with’,
cf. (58). The auxiliary is postposed to the verb it specifies and is found in a position in which other vector verbs in Sarnami and other Indic languages are found
(see section 5.1 above).
(58) aur daar na
khá-e
lag-al.
and afterwards eat-inf attach-pst
‘And afterwards (he) starts to eat (it).’
5.2.3 Completive
The regular way of expressing a completive aspectual reading is via a native construction. Speakers may however opt for other, non-native means as well. The
native construction involves the use of the vector verb cuk-, probably derived
from the lexical verb cuke ‘(to) lack’. Although cuk- has no lexical meaning of its
own, it is inflected like any other full verb. At the same time, the preceding lexical
verb appears in the non-finite conjunctive participial form, which is only overtly
expressed via the suffix -i in vowel-final verb stems. Compare examples (59) and
(60).
(59) káṯ cuk-al
dui pisi
meṉ
aur dhar de-il.
cut compl-pst two piece loc:in and put
‘give’-pst
‘(She) has finished cutting it into two pieces and has put it (down).’
(60) ondertussen sab aurat-iya-n
sab hánth
meanwhile all
woman-def-pl all
hand
milá-i
cuk-al
(…)
join-conj.ptcp compl-pst
‘Meanwhile all the women have finished shaking all hands (…)’
There is however another non-native rendering of completive aspect in the data.
This possibility is, however, not fully productive, since it is lexically restricted
to calques of Dutch complex verbs that incorporate the terminative Aktionsart
affix af-, lit. ‘off’. The following example shows how the affix may be ingeniously pressed into its (lexical) aspectual function. The example features the
The tense-mood-aspect systems of the languages of Suriname
343
Sarnami verb banáwe ‘(to) make’ preceded by the Dutch terminative affix. The
entire predicate is a lexically mixed calque of the Dutch predicate af-maken ‘(to)
finish (off)’:
(61) en
voor de rest ham apan
oto kin-t-i
and for
the rest 1sg refl.poss car buy-ipfv-1sg
ekád-go
apan
ghar
af-bana-it-i
some-clf refl.poss house term-make-ipfv-1sg
‘And as for the rest, I’d buy my car, (with) some, I’d finish my house.’
5.2.4 Conative
Conative modality, hence the rendering of the equivalent of ‘try (to)’ in English is
normally expressed via the use of a non-native verb in Sarnami. In all but one case
recorded in the data, speakers opt for the (Dutch-derived) Sranan verb pruberi or
the Dutch equivalent probeer. As in other cases involving Dutch verbs, speakers
use an invariant verb form, namely the 3sg present tense form, when integrating
the Dutch verb (rather than another form, e.g. the infinitive proberen). Here too,
speakers make use of a bilingual compound verb featuring the generic verb kare.
Compare the following example with Dutch probeer:
(62) olifant-wá
probeer kar-e
stop kar-e
geluid
elephant-def try
do-inf stop do-inf noise
bana-i
kar-ke,
ma mus-wá
ke
make-conj.ptcp do-acc/dat but mouse-def acc/dat
ná
hinder
ho-we
hai.
neg prevent be(come)-inf be.prs
‘The elefant tries to stop (the mouse) by making noise, but the mouse is not
prevented [from reading].’
The Sranan verb pruberi appears in the same kind of construction, as shown in
(63) below.
(63) pruberi kar-e
hai
uppar
big-e
try
do-inf be.prs upperside throw-inf
maar punah se
gir ga-il
but
again abl fall go-pst
‘It tries to throw it up, but it has fallen again.’
ke
acc/dat
An equivalent native way of expressing conative modality involves the usual kare
light verb construction. However, it features a nominal complement (here kosis
‘effort’) rather than a verbal one as is the case in the two preceding examples
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Robert Borges, Pieter Muysken, Sophie Villerius and Kofi Yakpo
involving non-native elements. In altogether thirty instances of conative modality, only two involve the use of the native structure shown in (64).
(64) aurat-iya-n
kosis kar-e
hai
mardan-wa-n
woman-def-pl effort do-inf be.prs man-def-pl
ke
chu-we
ke,
pakaṟ-e
ke
acc/dat touch-inf acc/dat hold-inf who
‘The women are trying to touch, to grab the men.’
5.3 Conclusion
Sarnami shows significant contact-induced developments in its non-core TMA
system: Some important aspectual and modal notions are primarily expressed
via constructions that contain elements borrowed from Sranantongo and Dutch.
The status of Sarnami as an independent Indic variety is therefore not only confirmed through the innovations it has acquired in the process of koineization (see
Yakpo, this volume). Sarnami also stands out in the degree to which the language
makes use of Sranantongo and Dutch items in its lexicon and grammar. Further
research will have to show how much paradigmatically more tightly organized
parts of the grammar, including the core TMA system also show signs of transfer
from Sranantongo and Dutch.
6 Surinamese Javanese3
Immigration of contract laborers from the Indonesian island of Java into Suriname
started around 1890, and continued until around 1939 (Wolfowitz 2002). Today,
this community has around 60,000 members in Suriname, making out around
16% of the total Surinamese population. Until quite recently, the community was
still relatively isolated, which is one of the reasons it had been able to preserve
much of its cultural traditions for a long time, including the Javanese language.
Nowadays, however, young Surinamese Javanese are becoming increasingly
proficient in Dutch and Sranantongo which they also use among themselves,
3 Parts of this section have also been published in a collective volume edited by Kees Hengeveld,
Heiko Narrog, and Hella Olbertz (to appear).
The tense-mood-aspect systems of the languages of Suriname
345
while Javanese is regarded more as a language spoken with (grand)parents, in
restricted contexts.
This section will provide an explorative overview of TMA marking in the
Javanese language as it is spoken in Suriname. By comparing Surinamese
Javanese material (the heritage language) with Javanese material from Java (the
‘baseline’ language), changes which are possibly due to language contact will
be identified, and when possible, an explanation will be given for how these
changes could have come about.
Previous studies have already shown some divergence between Surinamese Javanese and Javanese as spoken on Java, e.g. in the use of speech styles
(see below), which are less differentiated in Suriname than on Java (Wolfowitz 1991). It is important to be aware of the fact that Javanese as spoken on
Java is not homogeneous and that it has traditionally been divided into three
dialects: western, central and eastern Javanese. The dialect as spoken in Surakarta and Yogyakarta (central Java) has been generally accepted as Standard
Javanese (Dudas 1976: iv). Available information suggests, however, that dialects differ mostly in phonology, rather than in morphosyntax or semantics
of TMA.
Another notable characteristic of Javanese are the so-called speech styles,
which are strictly observed among baseline Javanese speakers (Ras 1985). These
range from informal to formal, with the most informal speech level being ngoko,
used with friends and relatives. On the other side of the spectrum is the formal
speech level krama, used in dialogues with highly placed individuals and strangers. In between these two speech levels there are even more fine-grained differentiations, depending on the position of the interlocutors. However, these
speech styles only differ in lexicon (including some grammatical affixes), but not
in syntax or morphology, and since ngoko is the most widely used style (virtually
the only style used in Suriname), examples presented here will be taken from
ngoko speech.
6.1 TMA in Java
Javanese verbs are not marked for person or number and the Javanese language
is not rich in morphosyntactic marking for TMA-categories. According to Robson
(1992: 64), most TMA-categories in Javanese are marked by auxiliary words,
which occur in pre-verbal position. One of his arguments for considering these
as auxiliary words, and not as clitics for example, is the fact that they can be
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Robert Borges, Pieter Muysken, Sophie Villerius and Kofi Yakpo
separated from the verb, for example by a negative adverb as in the following
example which involves the auxiliary bakal and the verb lungo ‘go’:
(65) aku bakal ora lungo4
1sg irr
neg go
‘I will not be going.’
(Robson, 1992: 66)
Tab. 10: Overview of TMA-markers (auxiliary words and suffixes) in Javanese.
Category
TMA-marker
Meaning
Gloss
Tense
Aspect
arep
lagi
wis
bakal
entuk/olèh
isâ
kudu
mesti
mungkin
‘want/will’
‘just’
‘already’
‘be going to’
‘may/be permitted’
‘capable/to be able’
‘must/have to’
‘certainly/inevitable’
‘perhaps/possibly’
fut
prog
prf
irr
deont.may
can
deont.must
epist.must
epist.may
Modality
Tab. 10 provides an overview of TMA-marking words and suffixes on the basis
of different sources (Robson 1992, Adelaar 2011, Vander Klok 2008, Vander Klok
2010). It should be mentioned that the status of some of the markers is not agreed
upon. The marker wis for example, is considered a tense-marker instead of an
aspect-marker by Vander Klok (2008). A similar example is bakal, which might
be a tense marker comparable to arep according to Vander Klok (2010: 2). These
points will be elaborated below.
6.1.1 Tense
Javanese does not have a rich set of forms for tense marking. Tense is often inferred from the context in zero-marked phrases, e.g. with the use of an adverb of
time as in (67). Without further morphemes or adverbs that give information on
the time of the event, it is usually interpreted as present, as in (66).
4 In standard Javanese orthography used here for the most part, this should be written ‘lunga’,
but Robson writes lungo.
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The tense-mood-aspect systems of the languages of Suriname
(66) aku m-angan
I
av-eat
‘I eat.’
(67) wingi
aku m-angan
yesterday I
av-eat
‘I ate yesterday.’
Future tense is marked with arep (68) which is also regularly used in the meaning
of ‘to want’ conveying participant-oriented modality (volitional modality) rather
than tense. Modal use of arep will be discussed in the following subsection.
(68) aku arep ng-oreng sego5
1sg fut av-fry
rice
‘I will fry the rice.’ (Vander Klok 2010: 1)
As Hengeveld (2011: 592) argues, volitional modal markers are indeed a potential
source for (absolute future) tense markers, and it is therefore highly likely that
the modal meaning of arep was the original meaning, and that this tense marker
developed only later.
6.1.2 Modality
As for the Javanese modals, according to Vander Klok (2008), these are organized
along two axes: quantificational force (either universal – ‘must’ or existential
– ‘may’) and type of modal base (either epistemic or deontic). The combination
of these two axes results in four modal categories, which are each marked by a
different auxiliary. The classification that follows is shown in Tab. 11.
Apart from these four modal markers described by Vander Klok, we distinguish two more markers of modality in this paper, namely bakal (irrealis) and
isa (‘can’).
Tab. 11: The classification of Javanese modal markers according to Vander Klok (2008: 8).
universal (‘must’)
existential (‘may’)
Deontic
Epistemic
kudu
entuk/olèh
mesti
mungkin
5 In standard orthography this should be sega.
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Robert Borges, Pieter Muysken, Sophie Villerius and Kofi Yakpo
The marker isa can be translated as ‘can/be able to’ and refers to the acquired
(physical) ability of the participant to engage in an event:
(69) di-gawani kayu sing luwih gedé, nah saiki isa,
uv-bring
wood rel more big
intj now can
dèké njukuk kain
abang iku
3sg
take
cloth red
that
‘A bigger piece of wood is brought, now he can, he takes the red piece of clothing.’
In fact, this marker is often used to describe the participant’s inability, combined
with the negative adverb gak:
(70) ana
arèk loro teka n-yobak n-jupuk klambi iku
exist child two from av-try
av-take cloth
that
mencolot~mencolot lugur gak isa kayaka-né
jump~red
fall
neg can seem-def
‘There are two children who try to take the piece of clothing, they jump,
they fall, it seems they can’t.’
Classification of the marker bakal is not straightforward. Vander Klok (2010: 2)
considers bakal to be a tense marker, comparable to the future marker arep, with
a difference in the expression of agency.
Whereas arep expresses intention of the speaker and therefore implies
agency, she considers bakal to convey only a prediction by the speaker, without
any implication of agency. We propose that bakal is a marker of irrealis modality
rather than tense. Consider the following examples of the use of bakal in contrast
to ate (the East-Javanese variant of arep):
(71) deke ng-angep
nèk
wong
3sg
av-assume comp person
‘He assumes that she will leave.’
(72) deke ora
yakin nèk
wong
3sg
neg sure
comp person
‘He doubts whether she will leave.’
iku
that
ate
fut
lunga
go
iku bakal
that irr
lunga
go
In these examples, the difference between ate/arep and bakal seems to be the
degree of certainty the speaker has about the truth of the subordinate clause.
When the speaker was asked to explain the difference between ate and bakal,
it was confirmed that this was indeed the difference: when contrasting different
sentences with ate and bakal, the speaker declared that in the latter case she felt
as if it was less certain that the event in the subordinate clause were truly to take
place. Since this marker expresses the speaker’s commitment to the truth value
of the proposition, bakal should be classified as proposition-oriented modality.
The tense-mood-aspect systems of the languages of Suriname
349
The marker entuk or olèh (which behave exactly the same) is used to express
permission (the deontic existential/‘may’). This auxiliary literally means ‘to
receive/get’ and can also be used as a lexical verb with this meaning.
(73) terus olèh apel
iku, terus di-pangan
then get
apple that then uv-eat
‘Then he gets the apple, then he eats it.’
As a TMA-marker, it is used as a participant-oriented modal marker, as in the
following example:
(74) Jozi oleh
ng-anggo celono6 neng ng-aji
Jozi deont.may av-wear
pants
at
av-read.Qur’an
‘Jozi is allowed to wear pants to the reading of Holy Qur’an.’
(Vander Klok 2012: 32)
It can also be used in a more general sense, expressing event-oriented modality,
as in (75):
(75) kulit-e
iwak urang
oleh
skin-def fish
shrimp deont.may
‘Shrimp skin may be eaten.’
(Vander Klok 2012: 32; gloss adapted)
di-pangan
uv-eat
The marker kudu expresses necessity (universal quantificational force), and is
deontic in its modality type (Vander Klok 2008).
(76) aku kudu
nang warong
1sg deont.must to
store
‘I must go to the store.’
(Vander Klok 2008: 4; gloss adapted)
kuwi
that
Since this modal describes the relationship between the participant and the
potential realization of the event (obligation), this falls under the category
of participant-oriented modality. In addition to this deontic modal, kudu can
also express a ‘circumstantial’ modal meaning, based on facts about the world
(Vander Klok 2012: 27):
(77) aku kudu
pipis
1sg deont.must pee
‘I must pee.’
(Vander Klok 2012: 27)
6 Standard spelling is clana.
350
Robert Borges, Pieter Muysken, Sophie Villerius and Kofi Yakpo
The marker mungkin has the same epistemic modal base as mesti. The difference lies in the quantificational force: whereas mesti expresses universal force
(‘must’), mungkin expresses existential force (‘may’). It is therefore that the use of
mungkin is appropriate in the following context, contrasted with (78), while mesti
would be infelicitous here.
Context: Ahmed is calling for his dog. The dog is not coming. Ahmed looks for the dog all over
the house, but he cannot find him. Then he looks outside in the yard. Ahmed still cannot find
the dog, but maybe the dog is locked in the shed. The dog may have escaped.
(78) asu
kuwi mungkin
wis ucul
dog that epist.may prf get.loose
‘The dog may have escaped.’
(Vander Klok 2010: 10; gloss adapted)
As with mesti, the marker mungkin characterizes the possible occurrence of the
event in view of what is known about the world. The marker mesti or mesthi (allophonic variation) appears to ‘express necessity according to the evidence available to the speaker’ (Vander Klok 2012: 26). Since it relies on evidence available to
the speaker, the modal base is epistemic. Vander Klok (2008) defines this modal
marker as ‘epistemic universal’, since the quantificational force is universal,
‘must’. As an epistemic modal, the possibility of occurrence of the event is characterized in view of what is known of the world.
Context: Ahmed is calling for his dog. The dog is not coming. Ahmed looks for the dog all over
the house, but he cannot find him. Then he looks outside in the yard. Ahmed still cannot find
the dog. The dog must have escaped.
(79) asu kuwi mesthi
wis ucul
dog that epist.must prf get.loose
‘The dog must have escaped.’
(Vander Klok 2010: 9; gloss adapted)
6.1.3 Aspect
Progressive aspect is marked by the auxiliary lagi, as in the following examples:
(80) anak-é
wadon lagi
n-yuguhaké
child-def woman prog av-serve
‘His daughter is serving refreshments.’
(Robson 1992: 114)
(81) arèk wèdok
iku
lagi
dolan
child woman that prog play
‘The small girl is playing the piano.’
nyamikan
refreshment
piano
piano
The tense-mood-aspect systems of the languages of Suriname
351
As mentioned above, there is still some discussion about the status of the
marker wis: in Vander Klok (2008) it is considered a marker of tense rather
than aspect. Here we will analyze wis as a marker of perfect aspect, since
the defining element of this marker appears to be the emphasis on the result
of the verbal action, and the relevance thereof in the present. Comrie (1976:
12) considers this present relevance of the past situation one of the defining
characteristics of perfect aspect. Consider the following example, one of the
most prototypical uses of wis, which is used in response to the offering of food
(politely refusing)
(82) wis wareg
PRF full
‘I am already full.’ (so I don’t need to eat anymore)
6.2 TMA in Surinamese Javanese
In this section, we will explore the TMA-system of Surinamese Javanese, and
investigate possible changes it has undergone in comparison to the TMA-system
of Standard Javanese.
6.2.1 Tense
The future tense is marked by arep as in the baseline variety. The following metalinguistic comment from one of the heritage language speakers illustrates the way
the speaker understands the usage of this marker:
(83) als we zeggen, ik
ga
naar de
bank:
if
we say
1sg fut loc
the bank
‘If we say, I go to the bank, “arep nèng bank.”’
arep
fut
nèng
loc
bank
bank
It appears that arep also conveys aspectual meanings in the heritage variety.
Consider the following examples, which are descriptions of video clips. In the
video described in example (84), a man washes his hands, but the event begins
after the beginning of the video.
(84) wong
lanang arep wisuh tangan-é karo banyu,
person male
fut wash hand-def with water
di-lapi
tangan-é karo anduk
uv-wipe hand-def with towel
‘A man is going to wash his hand with water, the hand is wiped with a
towel.’
352
Robert Borges, Pieter Muysken, Sophie Villerius and Kofi Yakpo
The same goes for the video as described in example (85), which starts with the
image of a woman standing, after which the woman starts moving out through
the window.
(85) wong
wèdok
arep metu
tekâ jendélâ
person woman fut
go.out from window
‘A woman is going to go out through the window.’
In the context of the videos, we propose that the most natural translation for this
marker here would be ‘is going to’, since it refers to a more immediate future,
which actually starts happening during the time of the utterance. Therefore, this
is not truly a future tense marker, but more of an aspectual marker, specifically
prospective aspect.
Speakers of the heritage variety appear to mark future/prospective with arep
more frequently and in contexts where the baseline speakers employ other strategies. Although the use of arep as a prospective is not an innovation in Surinamese
Javanese (as confirmed by Indonesian speakers), it is not encountered with this
meaning in the baseline corpus. The preference to use arep in these contexts appears
to be a feature of the heritage variety. The apparent overgeneralization of arep could
be due to influence of (Surinamese) Dutch and/or Sranan, which both categorically
and formally differentiate immediate versus more uncertain future: gaan ‘go’ versus
zullen ‘shall’ in Dutch, and sa and o in Sranantongo. Some caution is needed here,
however, since the frequent use of arep may also be the result of the way the data
were gathered in Suriname. We leave this for further research. In Suriname, speakers described the videos more simultaneously as they were viewing them, while the
Indonesian speakers more often appeared to wait until after the video had finished.
Similar to the baseline speakers, Surinamese speakers do not mark verbs for
tense, which is rather inferred from the context or the use of temporal adverbs:
(86) aku mené
masak kanggo
1sg tomorrow cook
for
‘Tomorrow I will cook for my child.’
anak-ku
child-1sg.poss
Context: the interviewer asks what the speaker has done last weekend.
(87) setu
aku tangi,
aku mangan terus adus
Saturday 1sg wake.up 1sg eat
then take.bath
‘On Saturday, I woke up, then I ate and then took a bath.’
In one interesting example, a heritage speaker uses the Dutch auxiliary hebben
‘to have’ in order to express past tense:
(88) ze
hebben ng-ewang-i
aku
they have
av-help-appl 1sg
‘They have helped me in the house.’
nèng
loc
omah
house
The tense-mood-aspect systems of the languages of Suriname
353
However, since this type of construction occurs only once in the heritage corpus,
it appears that this is simply a case of code-switching (considering it is preceded
by the Dutch pronoun ze).
6.2.2 Modality
The heritage variety uses a different form, inter, than the baseline variety to mark
acquired (physical) ability. The form inter is not a loan from Dutch or Sranan,
but originates from the Javanese word pinter, which literally means ‘clever,
skilled’ and which expresses acquired ability, as in the utterance anakku pinter
maca ‘my child can / knows how to read’ (lit. ‘my child is clever in reading’). In
the Surinamese corpus, the form inter (where the loss of the initial has arguably
been caused by analogy with the alternation between bisa and isa in Indonesian
Javanese), subsequently seems to have undergone extension from a marker
of participant-oriented (acquired) ability towards a marker of event-oriented
(participant-external) ability, as in (89), a PAT change.
(89) njukuk planga eindelijk inter n-jukuk kaos-é
take
board
finally
can av-take shirt-def
‘He takes a board, and can finally take the shirt.’
It is often used in combination with the negative adverb ora:
(90) terus arep di-jukuk maar ora
inter
then fut
uv-take but
neg can
‘Then it is going to be taken but he cannot.’
Although the form inter seems to have completely replaced the form isa from
baseline Javanese, there are no differences in its syntactic realization. Further
research is needed to shed light as to how and when this semantic extension came
about, and to what extent language contact played a role in this development.
Irrealis is expressed infrequently in both the heritage and baseline corpora
by bakal.
(91) naar het schijnt sing bakal pâdâ~pâdâ sing kâyâ
to
it
seems rel irr
same~red
rel similar.to
volgende weekend
next
weekend
‘As it seems, it will be the same, which is similar to next weekend.’
In this context, bakal is used to express a more uncertain future, since it is a complement of the verb schijnt ‘seems’. In the following example, bakal is used with
the determiner suffix -e, as a sort of nominalizing procedure, but still expressing
the irrealis category:
354
Robert Borges, Pieter Muysken, Sophie Villerius and Kofi Yakpo
(92) terus wong-é
bereken
piyé bakal-é intuk apel-é,
then person-def calculate how irr-def take
apple-def
terus cah-é
m-brobos
schutting-é kayu
terus
then child-def av-trespasss fence-def
wood then
wong-é
m-ènèk, terus eindelijk inter ng-epèk fruktu-né,
person-def av-climb then finally
can
av-take fruit-def
apel-é,
terus dipangan
appel-def then uv-eat
‘Then the person calculates how to take the apple, then the child trespasses
the wooden fence, then the persons climbs, then finally he can take the fruit,
the apple, then it is eaten.’
No explicit morphological expression of deontic ‘may’ occurs in the heritage
corpus. The verb entuk (Surinamese form intuk), which is used to express this
category in Javanese, is exclusively used by the heritage speakers as a lexical verb
with the meaning of ‘receive/get/take’ with a nominal complement:
(93) tapiné kanca-né
kodok iku
saiki-né
but
friend-def frog
that now-def
‘But now his friend the frog has gotten a wife.’
wis
prf
éntuk
get
bojo
wife
Kudu expresses deontic universal modality, ‘must’ in heritage Javanese, as in the
baseline variety:
(94) kowé kudu
leri
anak-mu
nak cilék
2sg
deont.must teach child-2sg.poss if
small
kudu
ng-omong jawa
deont.must av-talk
Javanese
‘You have to teach your child that s/he has to speak Javanese when
s/he is still small.’
This modal can also be used to express event-oriented modality:
(95) kudu
nduwé lespeki karo wong
deont.must have
respect with person
‘One must have respect for older people.’
tuwâ
old
No explicit expressions of epistemic modality are attested in the heritage corpus.
Volitional modality is marked by the auxiliary arep:
(96) sing liya-né
ng-golèk
iets
anders. n-jukuk
rel other-def av-search something else
av-take
dingklik, arep n-jukuk kaos-é
chair
want av-take shirt-def
‘The other searches something else. He takes a chair, he wants to take the shirt.’
The tense-mood-aspect systems of the languages of Suriname
355
Of the epistemic modals, mungkin and mesti, the first does not occur in
either corpora. The other epistemic, mesti, occurs just three times, of
which only one example appears in the heritage language. In the example,
mesti combined with the determiner suffix e, where it can be translated
as ‘perhaps’ (Vruggink 2001), and thus seems not to express epistemic
modality:
(97)
aku durung ng-erti
mesti-né
dolan~dolan karo
1sg not.yet av-know certainly-def play~red
with
kanca-ku
dolan~dolan [inaudible]
friend-1sg.poss play~red
***
‘I do not yet know if I perhaps play with my friend or play ***.’
One certain contact-induced development in the category of modality is the borrowing of modal verbs from Sranantongo. In this case, the Sranan verb pruberi or
proberi ‘to try’ (< Dutch prober) occurs in position of the native Javanese verb jajal
‘to try’. The word order of the construction remains the same (auxiliary + verb/
complement) in the baseline language (98) and the heritage variety (99)–(100).
(98)
n-jajal di-uncal
manèh tetep aé
sik
gak isâ
av-try uv-throw again
still
only still neg can
‘He tries to throw it again but still doesn’t succeed.’
(99)
cahcah-né
proberi dyompo
children-def try
jump
‘The children try to jump.’
(100)
arep proberi
menèh, terus tibâ menèh
fut try
again
then fall
again
‘[He] is going to try again, then it falls again.’
6.2.3 Aspect
Progressive does not seem to be expressed morphologically by the heritage
speakers. In utterances which have a progressive meaning, Surinamese Javanese speakers can use a construction with the existential verb ènèk/ènèng (Standard Javanese counterpart ana). Compare the following examples of progressive
sentences:
(101)
Javanese (eastern dialect)
a. wong
iku
lagi
ng-gambar
person that prog av-draw
‘The person is drawing a tree.’
wit
tree
356
Robert Borges, Pieter Muysken, Sophie Villerius and Kofi Yakpo
b. ibu
iku
lagi
m-otong temon
woman that prog av-cut
cucumber
‘The woman is cutting the cucumber.’
(102)
Surinamese Javanese
a. ènèk wong
n-ulis
layang
exist person av-write letter
‘There is a person writing a letter.’
b. ènèk
wong
ng-iris jeruk
exist person av-cut orange
‘There is a person cutting an orange.’
It is difficult to establish whether these phrases should truly be interpreted as progressive constructions, or rather be considered presentational constructions with a
relative clause without a relative pronoun. In the latter interpretation, examples in
(102) could be translated as follows: ‘There is a person who writes a letter’ and ‘There
is a person who cuts an orange’. This last possibility might be supported by the fact
that when the existential does co-occur with the relative pronoun sing, this is only
used to in some sense delimit the subject of the clause, as in the following example:
(103)
ènèk wong
lanang loro, sing siji
ng-ekèk-i
exist person male
two rel one av-give-appl
karo liya-né
with other-def
‘There are two men, of which one gives a bag to the other.’
tas
bag
However, as argued by Hengeveld (1992: 265), the existential construction can
indeed very well have a progressive interpretation. Hengeveld argues that this type
of clause should be viewed as a circumstantial adverbial clause, with the translation of ‘There is a person in the circumstance of [verb]ing’, which does indeed
entail a progressive interpretation of the verb. The quantitative comparisons are
unconvincing in arguing for contact-induced developments. Although the progressive marker lagi is not attested in the heritage corpus, it only occurs four times in
the baseline corpus. And while the existential construction is used in heritage contexts where baseline speakers use lagi, the overall relative frequency of existential
constructions is not higher in the heritage corpus. However, it does not seem coincidental that imperfective e (which also indicates progressive, among other aspectual
meanings) in the Surinamese creoles has grammaticalized from a copula which is
also used in existential constructions (Winford and Migge 2007: 89).
As in the baseline language, perfect aspect is expressed with the auxiliary
wis. To emphasize this focus on the relevance of the event in the present, this
marker is often combined with saiki ‘now’ in the same sentence:
The tense-mood-aspect systems of the languages of Suriname
(104)
saiki-né
bocahé
wis temu, temu kanca-né
wis
now-def child-def prf find
find
friend-def prf
menèh
again
‘Now the child had found his friend, he was happy again.’
357
ungah
happy
The meaning of wis remains unchanged in the heritage corpus, though it is used
more frequently in the baseline language than in the heritage language, in fact
even more than twice as often. This may be caused by still lower frequencies of
Sranan’s completive marker kaba.
6.3 Conclusions
To sketch the picture of the TMA-system in Surinamese Javanese in a unified way,
we see that there are different things going on in the different categories. The use
of arep is more frequent among the heritage speakers, mirroring patterns in Sranan
and Dutch. The category of modality seems to have undergone the most changes,
although they are still not radical: the forms for the modal verbs ‘try’ and ‘be able
to’ have been replaced by new forms in Surinamese Javanese, while the syntactic
construction had remained the same. The verb ‘try’, is most clearly the result of
language contact, since proberi is a Sranan verb. Within the category of aspect, the
original Javanese marker lagi for progressive aspect seems to be less used, in favor
of the construction with the existential verb, also perhaps modeled on similar developments in Sranantongo. The perfect marker wis also seems to be less used in the
heritage corpus which is more consistent with perfective marking in Sranantongo.
7 Discussion: Stability and borrowability
in Surinamese TMA systems
In this chapter, we have detailed a number of developments in the TMA systems of
the Surinamese creole languages, Surinamese Dutch, Sarnami, and Surinamese
Javanese. These are summarized in Tab. 12 along with processes relevant to
their transformation. Our exploration of TMA systems in these languages clearly
demonstrates the central position of Sranantongo and Dutch in contact induced
language changes in Suriname. These languages not only exchange linguistic
forms and patterns, but also provide them in unidirectional transfer to the other
languages in our sample. This speaks to the role of factors that are external to
the linguistic system in language contact. Had such factors not played a role, we
Tense
Mood
Change
Process
Suriname
creoles general
be(n)/bi < Eng. been
RA
o < Eng. go
RA/SP
sa < Eng. shall or Du. zal RA
Sranan
Ndyuka
Dutch
Change
Process
Change
Process
sa takes on modal
qualities
man* modal from noun
GR
GR/ poss.
SB & SP
Ø
e < loc de
kaba < Port acabar ‘to
finish’
SB
SB
SB
sa Du. modal qualities
kan < Eng. can or Du. kan
mag < Du. mag
sa Gbe modal qualities
poi < Port. pode
shift towards Sranan
patterns of modal marking
AD
SP / AD
borrow
SB
RA
(covert & PAT), contact
induced GR
overgeneralization of
aan het and bezig zijn
construcions
doro já < Sranan via Du.
bigin kare < Sranan
af- construction
< Du.
decrease in perfect wis
progressive replaced by
existential construction
PAT
organization
PAT
gaan as auxiliary & loss GR & PAT
of verb final after gaan
Sarnami
Javanese
Aspect
increase in arep
covert
construction, cf. Sranan o
and SD gaan
pruberi / probeer kare <
Sranan / Du.
MAT
proberi < Sranan
inter instead of baseline
isa
MAT
INT
PAT & ~MAT
MAT
MAT & PAT
covert
PAT borrow
Robert Borges, Pieter Muysken, Sophie Villerius and Kofi Yakpo
Language
358
Tab. 12: Summary of TMA developments in the sample of languages (AD = adstrate, GR = grammaticalization, INT = language internal, MAT = MAT
borrowing, PAT = PAT borrowing, RA = reanalysis, SB = substrate, SP = superstrate, ~ = partial).
The tense-mood-aspect systems of the languages of Suriname
359
would expect a more symmetrical flow of linguistic features across languages.
However, the central position of Sranantongo and Dutch in Surinamese society,
and that they are the two languages that have traditionally functioned as out
group languages, means that they both tend to be contributors of linguistic material rather than recipients.7
Clearly linguistic structures also play a role, albeit not a very clear one, in the
types of changes attested in our corpus. Consider that the adoption of Sranantongo
forms in the expression of conative modality in Sarnami and Javanese parallel
native forms and are therefore relatively easily incorporated into native structures. Similarly, recent developments in formal marking of urban Ndyuka potential
modality do not constitute structural alterations since Ndyuka and Sranantongo
index the semantic distinctions within this realm of modality. On the other hand,
the core TMA system of Sarnami remains relatively unaffected, which we suspect
is the result of its integration into the language’s rich morphological system and/
or typological distance from Sranantongo and Dutch. Still, this line of thinking
does not account for everything we have described. Consider the af- constructions in Sarnami in which neither a foreign form is introduced to an existing parallel native structure, nor is the construction introduced to fill a gap in the native
system.
Returning to the questions of borrowability and stability in TMA systems –
Matras (2007: 45–46, see example (3a) above) suggests that modality is most
borrowable, followed by aspect, future tense, then other tenses. Taking borrowability as converse of stability, Matras’ general hierarchy holds for most
of our data. Most developments can be seen in the modal systems of our language sample. The exception to this is Dutch, but since a large portion of
Sranantongo’s modal system is modeled on Dutch, there’s no suitable source
by which Dutch could be influenced. Alternatively, our methods of data collection may have simply not elicited the right kind of language use to make
Surinamese Dutch modality visible. The aspectual systems in the Surinamese
creoles appear to have stabilized rather early on in their development, but
the other languages in our sample all show developments in their aspectual
systems. Future tense displays the most developments in Dutch and Javanese.
There appear to be no direct developments in the realm of past tense, though
the reorganization of SD certainly effects when past tense is marked. In fact
7 This is not to say that in the individual Dutch or Sranantongo ideolects of speakers of other in
group languages in Suriname, no trace of their L1 is detectable, or even that ethnolectal varieties
of Surinamese Dutch and Sranantongo do not exist in Suriname (see Lie 1983). It is the overwhelming tendency in this and other studies that Surinamese languages other than Sranantongo and
Dutch do not affect Sranantongo and Dutch in Suriname.
360
Robert Borges, Pieter Muysken, Sophie Villerius and Kofi Yakpo
past tense seems to be so prevalent that it gets marked twice in the case of
some strong verbs in SD.
Even while adhering to the general trend for TMA borrowability proposed by
Matras (2007), the relatively limited changes in Surinamese Dutch modality (we
only found the tendency for a distinction between two kinds of future, modeled
on the Sranan distinction between sa and o) preceding changes in aspect and
tense, along with inconsistencies in the hierarchies in those studies detailed
by Dediu and Cysouw (2013), (examples (4)–(9) above) suggest that language
change, at least within TMA, is (a) conditioned by factors external to the language
system, and / or that (b) there are no universally stable TMA structures (despite
statistical tendencies).
Our investigation has been largely exploratory, and although we have been
able to pinpoint a fair number of changes in the TMA systems of Suriname, there
is ample room for continued research on the topic. Firstly, developments among
urban dwelling Maroons need to be more thoroughly and systematically investigated in terms of leveling of Maroon varieties in the city. Are we witnessing a
‘real’ change toward Sranan – remember that the forms are Sranantongo but
there is no categorical shift and the formal distinction between positive and
negative modality appears to be maintained – or something else? Another issue
that merits further research is the historical development of SD. Overall, the
influence of ED has become stronger when the migrations to the Netherlands
took on a massive form in the 1970’s. We can expect earlier forms of SD to show
more semantic features that distinguish it from ED. An analysis of the core TMA
system of Sarnami would be welcome. And finally, the Javanese section in this
paper is perhaps the most exploratory in nature and thus provides a number
of avenues to be investigated in more detail: forms used, frequencies, and the
particulars of their semantics.
Abbreviations
1
2
3
abl
acc/dat
ai
appl
asp
first person
second person
third person
ablative
accusative/dative
adjective inflection
applicative
aspect
aux
av
clf
comp
compl
conj.ptcp
cont
def
auxiliary
actor voice
classifier
complementizer
completive
conjunctive participle
continuative
definite
The tense-mood-aspect systems of the languages of Suriname
deont
det
dim
dist
ed
epist
evi
exist
fut
hon
indf
inf
intj
ipfv
irr
loc
mod
neg
o
pass
deontic
determiner
diminutive
distal demonstrative
European Dutch
epistemic
evidentiality
existential
future
honorific
indefinite
infinitive
interjection
imperfective
irrealis
locative
modality
negation
object
passive
pfv
pl
poss
pp
prep
prf
prog
prs
pst
recp
red
refl
rel
s
sd
sg
tma
tns
uv
v
perfective
plural
possessive
past participle
preposition
perfect
progressive
present
past
reciprocal
reduplication
reflexive
relative
subject
Surinamese Dutch
singular
tense mood aspect
tense
undergoer voice
verb
361