Population factors, multilingualism and the emergence of grammar

John Singler’s work on substrate influence in the emergence of Atlantic creoles has shown that population factors (i.e., the ethnic distribution of the African founder population) as well as typological (dis)similarities between the languages in contact are crucial for understanding how new language varieties develop. In light of this view, this chapter discusses population factors on the Slave Coast in the 17th and early 18th centuries in order to determine the ethnic distribution of the Africans deported to Suriname and Haiti. Building on newly established socio-historical facts, this chapter further investigates the development of adpositions in Sranan: a case study of the emergence of grammar in multi-ethnic context.