Snow on the Danish Antilles?
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Cefas G. Th. van Rossem
Abstract
One of the things one does not want to hear when working on a large corpus, is that the content is very artificial, and should be ignored in your research because of the unnatural elements it contains. This is what happened with the Clarin-NEHOL-Corpus of Virgin Islands Dutch Creole. The contents, mainly eighteenth-century missionary texts were considered by some people as ‘just’ a missionary variety which seemed very unlikely to have been used in daily life. Clearly, a theoretical basis was needed to analyse this variety in order to establish the authenticity of these texts. Unexpectedly, Bell’s 1984 Audience Design Model, originally based on spoken language situations, turned out to be ideal for the treatment of older written material. One element of this model, referee design, seemed at first to stand somewhat separate from the other aspects of the theory. However, it enabled us to understand the communication situation which missionaries and their pupils participated in. This article focuses then on referee design as a tool to study eighteenth century Virgin Islands Dutch Creole in particular, and historical Creole texts in general.
Abstract
One of the things one does not want to hear when working on a large corpus, is that the content is very artificial, and should be ignored in your research because of the unnatural elements it contains. This is what happened with the Clarin-NEHOL-Corpus of Virgin Islands Dutch Creole. The contents, mainly eighteenth-century missionary texts were considered by some people as ‘just’ a missionary variety which seemed very unlikely to have been used in daily life. Clearly, a theoretical basis was needed to analyse this variety in order to establish the authenticity of these texts. Unexpectedly, Bell’s 1984 Audience Design Model, originally based on spoken language situations, turned out to be ideal for the treatment of older written material. One element of this model, referee design, seemed at first to stand somewhat separate from the other aspects of the theory. However, it enabled us to understand the communication situation which missionaries and their pupils participated in. This article focuses then on referee design as a tool to study eighteenth century Virgin Islands Dutch Creole in particular, and historical Creole texts in general.
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Foreword vii
- Acknowledgements ix
- Introduction. Pieter C. Muysken 1
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Part 1. Creole languages and creole studies
- Moving into and out of Sranan 37
- Sociolinguistic characteristics of the English-lexifier contact languages of West Africa 61
- The quest for non-European creoles 85
- Are creoles a special type of language? 107
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Part 2. Linguistic areas
- Separating layers of information 161
- Areal diffusion of applicatives in the Amazon 179
- Transfer of Swahili ‘until’ in contact with East African languages 217
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Part 3. Mixed languages and language mixing
- Turkish-German code-switching patterns revisited 237
- Mixing and semantic transparency in the genesis of Yilan Japanese 261
- Pottefers Cant, Groenstraat Bargoens, and the development of “have” and “be” in the wider context of contact 283
-
Part 4. Sociolinguististic aspects of language contact
- Sociolinguistic enregisterment through languagecultural practices 341
- Snow on the Danish Antilles? 365
- Subject index 389
- Author index 391
- Language index 397
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Foreword vii
- Acknowledgements ix
- Introduction. Pieter C. Muysken 1
-
Part 1. Creole languages and creole studies
- Moving into and out of Sranan 37
- Sociolinguistic characteristics of the English-lexifier contact languages of West Africa 61
- The quest for non-European creoles 85
- Are creoles a special type of language? 107
-
Part 2. Linguistic areas
- Separating layers of information 161
- Areal diffusion of applicatives in the Amazon 179
- Transfer of Swahili ‘until’ in contact with East African languages 217
-
Part 3. Mixed languages and language mixing
- Turkish-German code-switching patterns revisited 237
- Mixing and semantic transparency in the genesis of Yilan Japanese 261
- Pottefers Cant, Groenstraat Bargoens, and the development of “have” and “be” in the wider context of contact 283
-
Part 4. Sociolinguististic aspects of language contact
- Sociolinguistic enregisterment through languagecultural practices 341
- Snow on the Danish Antilles? 365
- Subject index 389
- Author index 391
- Language index 397
