Substrate features in the properties of verbs in three Atlantic creoles

The aim of this paper is to investigate a subset of the properties of verbs in three Atlantic creoles, Haitian Creole, Saramaccan and Papiamentu – all three created around the same time and sharing the same core substrate languages, but having different lexifier/superstrate languages – and to compare these properties with those of verbs in their contributing languages, that is, their substrate languages, on one hand, and their superstrate languages, on the other. The three-way comparison undertaken in this paper shows in a clear way that first, the properties of verbs in the three creoles often contrast with those of the corresponding verbs in their respective superstrate languages; second, these properties parallel those of the corresponding verbs in their substrate languages; and third, in spite of the fact that the three creoles under investigation have different lexifier languages, the properties of the substrate verbs manifest themselves in the three creoles.