Krio as the Western Maroon Creole language of Jamaica, and the /na/ isogloss

Authors
Publication date 2017
Host editors
  • C. Cutler
  • Z. Vrzić
  • P. Angermeyer
Book title Language Contact in Africa and the African Diaspora in the Americas
Book subtitle In honor of John V. Singler
ISBN
  • 9789027252777
ISBN (electronic)
  • 9789027265449
Series Creole Language Library
Pages (from-to) 251-274
Publisher Philadelphia: John Benjamins
Organisations
  • Faculty of Humanities (FGw) - Amsterdam Institute for Humanities Research (AIHR) - Amsterdam Center for Language and Communication (ACLC)
Abstract
The nominal copula na appears uniquely in two sets of Atlantic English-lexifier creole languages:
a. in what is called the Maroon Spirit Language used among the Eastern Maroons of Jamaica. Now confined to ritual use, it was formerly the daily language of the Eatern Maroons.
b. in Krio, spoken in in Sierra Leone and Fernando Po,, and other places.
I will show that the contexts in which it is used are parallel in the two groups, both syntactically and semantico-pragmatically. I hypothesize that there can only be one explanation for this fact. Krio hails ultimately from the language of the Western Maroons of Jamaica who were exiled to Sierra Leone.
Document type Chapter
Language English
Published at https://doi.org/10.1075/cll.53.11smi
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