Split prosody and creole simplicity - The case of Saramaccan

Abstract

Saramaccan, an Atlantic creole whose lexifier languages are Portuguese and English, has a “split” prosodic system wherein the majority of its words are marked for pitch accent but an important minority are marked for tone. Split prosody is typologically unusual and runs counter to McWhorter’s (2001a) idea that creole languages should have “simpler” grammars than non-creole languages. However, this complication of Saramaccan grammar does appear to be broadly consistent with the more general claim of McWhorter (1998) that creoles form an identifiable class of languages on typological, in addition to sociohistorical, grounds.

How to Cite

Good, J., (2004) “Split prosody and creole simplicity - The case of Saramaccan”, Journal of Portuguese Linguistics 3(2), 11-30. doi: https://doi.org/10.5334/jpl.9

Download

Download PDF

451

Views

186

Downloads

7

Citations

Share

Authors

Jeff Good (Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Department of Linguistics, Leipzig, Germany)

Download

Issue

Publication details

Dates

Licence

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0

Identifiers

Peer Review

This article has been peer reviewed.

File Checksums (MD5)

  • PDF: d4867a467399a07664a6a34ec21b04ee