Creole in transition: Contact with Dutch and typological change in Sranan

Abstract

Most Surinamese today acquire a heterogeneous variety of Sranan characterised by extensive admixture with Dutch. The analysis of a corpus of contemporary Sranan reveals variation in the expression of spatial relations and the realization of arguments in ditransitive constructions. Both domains feature syntactic rearrangements and semantic changes that replicate Dutch structures. Pattern replication has led to alterations in the frequency and distribution of Sranan elements and structures, as well as innovations with Sranan and Dutch borrowed elements fulfilling new, previously unattested functions. Sranan is undergoing a substantial typological shift from more substrate-oriented Kwa-like structures to ones similar to those found in the West-Germanic superstrate Dutch. Society-wide multilingualism involving Dutch, Sranan and often additional languages provides the socio-linguistic backdrop to contact-induced variation and change in Sranan.