Ebook: A Diachronic and Synchronic Account of the Multifunctionality of Saramaccan táa

Date: 2001
Pages: 108This paper bears on the properties and on the historical derivation of the multifunctional lexical item táa (and related lexical items) in Saramaccan, henceforth SA. SA is a creole spoken in Surinam. Its lexifier or superstrate languages are English (50% of basic vocabulary) and Portuguese (35% of basic vocabulary according to Smith 1987, 37% according to Voorhoeve 1973 : 139, and 57% according to Holm 1989 : 438). Its substrate languages are mainly the Gbe languages (Arends 1995; Migge 1998; Smith 1987), and less importantly Twi (Plag 1993 : 34) and Kikongo (Arends 1995; Migge 1998). Gbe and Twi are Kwa languages, Kikongo is Bantu. All belong to the Niger-Congo language family. The SA dictionary (Rountree et al. 2000 : 101) provides several meanings for táa : ‘to say’, ‘that’, ‘as if’. This suggests that the form táa is associated with more than one grammatical function. For example, in (1) [footnote 1 HERE], it seems to have the function of a verb, and in (2), that of a complementiser. Note from example (2) that táki is a verb that means ‘to say’ in SA.