Out of India: contact-induced change in Sarnāmi (Suriname)

Abstract

Sarnami (also called Hindostaans by its speakers) is the result of the koineization in the South American nation of Suriname, of several closely related languages spoken in the present-day Indian federal states of Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Jharkhand (Awadhi, Bhojpuri, Maithili, Magahi). Its formation began about hundred and fifty years ago with the “importation” of Indian indentured labourers to Suriname by the Dutch colonial regime. Sarnami is the only Indic language in the Caribbean with roots in the colonial labour trade that still enjoys a vibrant and stable speaker community (cf. Yakpo and Muysken, in press). This paper focuses on the effects of language contact on Sarnami. The data presented was gathered as part of a large project on language contact at the Centre for Language Studies of Radboud University Nijmegen (Netherlands). Fieldwork on Sarnami was conducted in Suriname in 2010-2012, and comparative data was gathered on related languages in India (Uttar Pradesh and Bihar), Mauritius, Trinidad & Tobago and Guyana in the same period. The analyses presented are the first of their kind to systematically address the effects of language contact on Sarnami, an Overseas Indian language that has not received the same amount of scholarly attention as that manifested by the pioneering works on South African Bhojpuri (Mesthrie 1985,1991), Guyanese Bhojpuri (Gambhir 1981), Trinidad Bhojpur (Mohan 1978) or Mauritian Bhojpuri (Domingue 1971). Extensive contact with the English-based creole language Sranantongo (spoken as a community language by largely African-descended Surinamese) and Dutch (the former colonial and present-day official language) have both left a deep imprint on the lexicon and structure of Sarnami. Analysis of the primary data collected in Suriname has shown that contact with Dutch and Sranan Tongo, for example, is leading to variation in the way experiencers are expressed: In the speech of some speakers, experiencers are no more marked as dative “subjects” but rather like nominatives. Another contact effect that has been identified is an ongoing reconfiguration of head-dependent order, i.e. clausal and phrasal word order (SOV to SVO, Adv V to V Adv, V Aux to Aux V). Other contact phenomena are found in the TMA domain. Sarnami has borrowed modal-temporal auxiliaries from Sranan (and Dutch), and in some cases the native forms have all but disappeared. I conclude by trying to hypothesize how the developments identified fit into the larger picture of borrowability and stability of linguistic features during language contact.