Why is Saramaccan different? SPCL Meeting, Albuquerque, January 7, 2006 Why is Saramaccan Different? Jeff Good good@eva.mpg.de Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology and The Rosetta Project 0 Introduction [1] Saramaccan is an Atlantic creole spoken mostly in Suriname by about 26,000 people (according to the Ethnologue). [2] The Ethnologue’s language map of Suriname [3] Good (2004a) and Good (2004b) discuss evidence for a split lexicon in Saramac- can where the majority of the words are marked for pitch accent but an important minority are marked for tone. [4] Aspects of this analysis are anticipated by Devonish (1989:48–55) and Devonish (2002:120–134). [5] Saramaccan would appear to be “unique” in exhibiting such a split. However, as we will see this does not mean there are not similar phenomena found elsewhere in Atlantic creoles. [6] Tone, accent, pitch accent and stress as understood here [a] Tone: The linguistic use of pitch to mark paradigmatic contrasts—that is, one toneme must contrast with other tonemes that can appear within the same domain. [b] Accent: An abstract marking of linguistic prominence on a syllable distinguish- ing that syllable from other syllables within a word—hence, a marking of syn- tagmatic contrast within the word. [c] Pitch accent: The realization of accent as a specific pitch contour which is placed with reference to an accented unit. (Comparable to Beckman’s (1986) non-stress accent.) 1 The “split” lexicon of Saramaccan 1.1 On the origins of the split [7] The origins of the split lexicon in Saramaccan seem fairly clear: Saramaccan is an example of a logically possible (but otherwise unattested) contact phenomenon between European accent languages and African tone languages. [8] Below, I give some Saramaccan words of likely European origin (perhaps with Sranan as an intermediary in some cases). 1 SARAMACCAN GLOSS ORIGIN n´ aki ‘hit’ < English knock kul´ e ‘run’ < Portuguese correr sip´ ei  \ ‘mirror’ < Portuguese espelho sit´ onu ‘stone’ < English stone s´ ık´ ısi ‘six’ < English six w´ ol´ uku ‘cloud’ < Dutch wolk min´ ıs´ ıti ‘minister’ < Dutch minister am k´ an ‘American’ < Dutch Amerikaan ` ak´ ı ‘here’ < Portuguese aqui [9] A generalization which accounts for the “tone” pattern on most words of European origin is that the stressed syllable in the European word was transferred into Sara- maccan with a surface high tone (with an additional, predictable complication that antepenultimate high tones spread to the penultimate syllable). 1 The symbol “  \ ” means I have not verified the tones with a consultant but have relied on published sources, which can be problematic in identifying low tones since few sources clearly distinguish between tone bearing units specified for low tone and tone bearing units unspecified for tone. 1 2