Publications
Publication details [#48122]
Kouwenberg, Silvia. 2008. The problem of multiple substrates: The case of Jamaican Creole. In Michaelis, Susanne, ed. Roots of Creole Structures. Weighing the contribution of substrates and superstrates. (Creole language library 33). John Benjamins. pp. 1–27. ![DOI logo](https://benjamins.com/logos/doi-logo.svg)
Publication type
Article in book
Publication language
English
Keywords
Place, Publisher
John Benjamins
Annotation
This paper argues that the late seventeenth-century context in which Jamaican Creole emerged was one of multilingualism within the slave population, with no evidence for a dominant substrate language. This finding goes against established scholarship, which has claimed Akan as the dominant substrate for Jamaican Creole. A creolization context involving multiple substrates calls for a different substratist research methodology than that applied to cases where dominant substrates can be shown to exist. A comparative typological research methodology is called for.