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Language Contact in Africa and the African Diaspora in the Americas: In honor of John V. Singler
Edited by Cecelia Cutler, Zvjezdana Vrzić and Philipp Angermeyer
[Creole Language Library 53] 2017
► pp. 79–100

The sociohistorical matrix of creolization and the role children played in this process

This paper will take as its starting point Singler’s views on the role of children in creole genesis, which include the idea that children are regularizers rather than innovators, that they may have contributed lexifier properties, and that their potential as contributors to creole genesis is greatest at the time of a colony’s transition to sugar monoculture. I will consider the relevance of these ideas for an account of the development of Berbice Dutch, a creole lexified by Dutch and Eastern Ịjọ, now extinct. I will argue that children were mainly responsible for its development, that the early introduction of sugar assisted their role, and that children may have innovated mixed structures partially modelled on both the lexifier and the substrate.

Keywords: creolization, substrate transfer, nativization, Berbice Dutch
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Early colonial Berbice
  • 3.African continuities in Berbice Dutch: Lexical evidence
  • 4.The sociohistorical matrix of creolization
  • 5.The roles of adults and children in abrupt creolization
  • 6.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 12 July 2017
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/cll.53.04kou
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