Suriname as a multiple convergence area

Abstract

Suriname is known among creolists principally for the Plantation Creole Sranan and the numerous Maroon Creoles, notably Saramaka and Ndyuka. However, it presents a much more complicated linguistic picture, the focus of the present paper, which aims to provide a comparative typology of multiple convergence processes in this small country: (a) the partly convergent development within the Arawakan and Cariban languages, including the creation of 16th century Carib Coastal Pidgin and later the Tiriyo-Ndyuka pidgin; (b) the emergence of the various Creoles, the retention of African ritual languages, and finally the emergence of Sranan as a multi-ethnic vernacular diasystem; (c) the transformation of Asian contract labour diaspora languages in the coastal Suriname (Sarnami Hindustani, Javanese, and Chinese), partly under the influence of Sranan, and partly through autonomous changes; (d) the transformation of Suriname Dutch from a metropolitan standard language to a local interethnic urban variety. The comparative typology we want to aim at involves several dimensions: (i) different linguistic typologies of the language pairs and triples in contact; (ii) different typologies of contact settings; (iii) different time ranges, from 700 years (pre-conquest Amerindian languages) to 10 years (Brazilian golddigger Sranan). In this presentation we focus on (a) and (c).