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Article published In:
Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages
Vol. 32:2 (2017) ► pp.233–262

Putting Matawai on the Surinamese linguistic map

| University College Dublin, Ireland |

The creoles associated with Suriname have figured prominently in research on creole languages. However, one variety, Matawai, has, to date, remained completely unresearched. This paper attempts to address this lacuna. It discusses its history and selected areas of grammar in order to assess the place of Matawai among its sister languages and its development. The linguistic analysis draws on recordings from 2013 and the 1970s. The paper provides evidence to support the view that Matawai is most closely related to Saamaka. However, there are also features that are unique to Matawai and those that appear to be due to either patterns of language contact with the other creoles of Suriname or common inheritance. The paper argues that systematic corpus-based analysis of lesser-used varieties provides new insights into existing debates.

Keywords: Creoles of Suriname, Matawai, language contact, diachronic change, copula, future marking
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.The historical, social, and linguistic context of the Matawai community
  • 3.A preliminary description of the linguistic characteristics of Matawai
    • 3.1Notes on the lexicon of Matawai
    • 3.2Patterns of lexical variation
    • 3.3Nominal copula environments
    • 3.4Expression of the future
  • 4.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgment
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 4 December 2017
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/jpcl.32.2.02mig
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