Monthly Archives: January 2015

On June 11th 2015 the VIth meeting of the ACLC Research group “Revitalising older linguistic documentation” (ROLD) will be held at the University of Amsterdam. Participants are kindly asked to send the title of their presentation before April 1st 2015 to one of the organizers Otto Zwartjes ACLC, UvA: O.J.Zwartjes@uva.nl and Astrid Alexander, ACLC, UvA: A.Alexander-Bakkerus@uva.nl. (See: ROLD)

I hope to present my paper Numbers to indicate change of word order in Negerhollands manuscripts. In the eighteenth century Creole manuscripts of the Herrnhuter translators an interesting way of changing word order can be found about fifty times. See the example:

The original sentence was

1. 1. Dan     a          see       Jesus    weer aan         na        sender:
   2. Then   PST     say       Jesus    again               NA      3PL
   3. ‘Then said Jesus again to them:’

According to the number placed above the words, the word order should be changed into:

1. 1. Dan     Jesus    a          see       weer aan         na        sender:
   2. Then   Jesus    a          say       again               NA      sender
   3. ‘Then Jesus said again to them:’

It is obvious which version was meant by the translator. Undoubtedly the subject of the sentence, should have been placed before the verb to change the original verb second order of Dutch and German into the SVO-order which is obligatory in most Atlantic Creoles, including Negerhollands. The paper, in which all fifty cases will be analysed, will be included in my PhD-research The Negerhollands Textual Heritage: Philological Perspectives on Authenticity and Audience Design.

Cefas van Rossem Languages in Contact, Radboud University Nijmegen