Bettina Migge

Putting Matawai on the Surinamese Linguistic Map *

Keywords: Creoles of Suriname, Matawai, language contact, diachronic change, copula, future

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Introduction

Since the publication of [START_REF] Bickerton | The language bioprogram hypothesis[END_REF] bioprogram hypothesis, which argued that Saamaka represents the closest instantiation of the human blueprint for language, the creoles of Suriame spoken in Suriname and French Guiana have figured prominently in research on creole genesis. For instance, a corpus of historical documents has been analyzed to trace the development of Sranantongo (e.g. Arends 1986Arends , 1989;;[START_REF] Van Den Berg | A Grammar of Early Sranan[END_REF]. Research on the Maroon languages (e.g. Saamaka: [START_REF] Mcwhorter | A grammar of Saramaccan creole[END_REF]Ndyuka: Huttar & Huttar 1994;[START_REF] Goury | Le Ndyuka: une language créole du Surinam et de Guyane française[END_REF]; Aluku and Pamaka: Bilby 2002; [START_REF] Bilby | L'alimentation des nois marronns du Maroni: vocabulaire, pratiques, representations[END_REF][START_REF] Goury | Grammaire du nengee: introduction aux langues aluku, ndyuka et pamaka[END_REF]Kwinti: Huttar 1988[START_REF] Smith | The development of the liquids in Kwinti[END_REF] has focused on documenting their grammars and, through comparison with their African input languages and other contact vernacular, on exploring the processes of contact and change that led to their genesis (e.g. papers in Migge & Smith 2007, * The research for this paper was made possible through the financial support from various people and institutions: University College Dublin, Donald Winford (the Ohio State University, USA) and SeDyL (France). In Suriname, I would like to thank Henna Blanker, Etam Valenijn and his family, and Astra Deneus for logistical support and the various members of the Matawai community who agreed to be recorded and endured my intrusive questions. Thanks are also due to Miriam Sterman for generously making her recordings available to me and for working on the transcriptions with me, and to the three reviewers who commented on an earlier draft for valuable comments. Essegbey et al. 2013, Smith & Veenstra 2001, Muysken & Smith 2015). There is also some work on the sociolinguistics of the Maroon Creoles [START_REF] Migge | The role of discursive information in analyzing multilingual practices[END_REF][START_REF] Migge | Exploring Language in a Multilingual Context: Variation, Interaction and Ideology in language documentation[END_REF][START_REF] Migge | The role of discursive information in analyzing multilingual practices[END_REF][START_REF] Borges | Coppename Kwinti: the influence of adstrate languages on a Surinamese creole[END_REF]). However, one member of this family of languages, Matawai, has not figured at all in linguistic research despite having been the focus of anthroplogical research in the 1970s [START_REF] De Beet | People in between: The Matawai Maroons of Suriname[END_REF][START_REF] Green | The Matawai Maroons: An acculturating Afro-American society[END_REF]. Matawai is generally classified as a Western Maroon Creole and a dialect of Saamaka (McWhorter & Good 2012: xv;Aboh et al. 2013: 27-28). The only published linguistic data consists of a set of examples provided in [START_REF] Hancock | A preliminary classification of the Anglophone Atlantic Creoles. In Pidgin and Creole languages[END_REF] overview comparison of Atlantic Creoles.

The aim of this paper is to begin to address this lacuna by exploring recordings of Matawai from the 1970s and 2013. The analysis confirms that Matawai most closely resembles Saamaka. However, there are also features that are unique to Matawai and some that it shares with the other creoles of Suriname. Comparison of the 1970s and 2013 data also show that Matawai has been undergoing linguistic change over the last half century.

Part Two discusses the early development of the Matawai community and briefly examines the current sociolinguistic context of the community. Part Three explores several linguistic features. The final section summarized the findings and dicusses their implications.

The historical, social and linguistic context of the Matawai community

Not much is known about the origins of the Matawai Maroons. Price (1983: 89-90), notes that

[t]he plantation origin of Matawáis is peculiarly obscured in all accounts known to me. Plantations Hamburg and Uitkijk are consistently mentioned by Matawáis, but the indicated locations on the lower Saramacca River do not seem to have been used as plantations during the relevant period. In contrast, Matawái migration routes seem relatively clear: south along the west bank of the Saramacca River to Djibi Creek on the east, where they crossed over and established a village by the 1730s; on the Yawe Creek where they lived for a time; then, splitting from the Saramaka contingent […], southwest along the Saramacca River in the late 1730s, all the way to the great mountain of Tafelberg where they established the village of Hánsesipó; and finally, by about 1740, back down into the interior of Tukumútu Creek, where they lived in the very large village of Tuído […].

In the 1740s the Matawai lived together with the (Lángus) Saamaka, first briefly in Hánsesipó and then in the village of Tuído or Toido on the Tukumutu Creek, a tributary of the Saramaca River (de Beet & Sterman 1981: 11). 1 Following the discovery of the village of Toido, 2 an abortive attempt at a peace treaty in 1747 and a bloody battle at Bakáafétihíla on the upper Saramacca River (see Price 1983: 93-94), the future Matawai established their villages along the Tukumutu and Saramacca River and later along the Saramacca River itself. In 1761 the government signed a peace treaty with these Maroon groups whose leaders were named as Abini, Samsam, Beku and Musinga, respectively. However, the leader of the future Matawai -Musinga -broke the treaty soon afterwards and the group around Beku and Musinga 3 continued to attack plantations and to abduct slaves. The group around Abini eventually "joined the government to battle Musinga and his people" (de Beet & Sterman 1981: 10) which led to Abini's death and a tense relationship between the Matawai and Saamaka.

A new peace treaty was signed in 1767 and the Matawai subsequently established villages in the upper Saramacca region "beyond the two rapids" (Bilawata and Gaandan liba). 4 During the 1820s some Matawai families moved to the outskirts of the plantation area and established the village of Maipaston (Map 1) where they also came into contact with members of the Ndyuka and Saamaka communities who had settled in the area for lumbering. After 1860 the Kwinti or Kofimaka Maroons joined the Matawai on the Saramacca River and founded the village of Pakapaka. 1 According to the oral tradition of the Lángus, they "lived with the future Matawái in villages at Djibi and Yawe Creeks" rather than at Hánsesipó. (Price 1983: 92). 2 It owes its name to the Spanish city of Toledo (Prices pc 2015).

3 Archival documents treat Beku and Musinga as two separate people while Matawai tradition merges them into one person (Price 1983: 90). 4 Matawai usually define their territory with reference "to two markers, the Piki Saamaka and Lawaai dan, which were marked by rituals, when passing by" (Miriam Sterman, pc 2016). The Matawai traditionally follow a subsistence life-style engaging in slash and burn agriculture, fishing and hunting. During the 19 th century Matawai men increasingly took up seasonal cash labor opportunities. Initially, the lumber trade was the main source of cash income 5 and from the end of the 19 th century, other seasonal economic activities such as rubber tapping and small-scale gold mining came on stream. Most of these activities took place along the Saramacca River, but the multiethnic workforce brought Matawai men into greater contact with non-Matawai. Cash labor opportunities outside of the region such as gathering of makapalmnuts along the Coppename River and clearing of fields for the rice industry in the district of Nickerie became popular in the middle of the 20st century (de Beet & Sterman 1981: 424).

Expansion of governmental services throughout Suriname from the 1950s onwards also created new work opportunities for Maroons. They were generally not carried out in homogeneous ethnic crews and required people to be on constant standby in Paramaribo. This resulted in men spending increasingly longer periods of time on the coast. When jobs became permanent, most men moved their family to Paramaribo (de Beet & Sterman 1981: 453-454) and visits to the villages became rare leading, over time, to the emergence of two communities, an urban and a rural one.

The former has continued to grow at the expense of the latter.

On the coast, Matawais, like other Maroons, initially lived outside of the city such as in Lelydorp and along the road to Zanderij but eventually, when new housing became more affordable, settled on the western fringe of the city. In terms of social relations, anthropological work suggests that despite the greater frequency of interactions with non-Matawais and a high rate of out-marriage in the urban context, Matawai-based ethnic and family ties have remained strong in the urban context (de Beet & Sterman 1981: 457-465).

Despite significant mobility to the urban centers, in the 1970s Matawai was still spoken in some nineteen small villages along the shores of the Saramacca River, with populations ranging from about fifteen residents in the smallest village to two hundred residents in the largest, Boslanti (de Beet & Sterman 1981: 13; Green 1974: 5 Some of the men also worked as boatmen on the Lawa and Tapanahoni Rivers where they earned considerable incomes. 7). However, especially since the civil war in the 1980s the number of inhabited villages has shrunk to thirteen in 2013 -Pakapaka, Pikin Pakapaka, Makayapingo, Wanati, Fiimangoon were uninhabited and efforts were underway to repopulate Kwataede -and the number of people living in each village has dwindled significantly to a handful of people in the case of most of the villages. The number of inhabitants is slightly larger in Posugunu, the seat of the paramount chief, and in the four-village cluster (Bilawata, Balen, Njukonde and Misalibi, MAP 1) on the upper Saramacca River. Many of the houses have, however, been maintained since people regularly return to limba paandasi 'clean village'. Visits to the village are used to carry out important ceremonies and to introduce younger people to Matawai culture.

On the upper Saramacca River, mostly elderly people and women with their younger children remain as most of the men work in the nearby goldmining industry.

Women engage in farming activities due to the absence of paid labor. While people are mobile, spending some time of the year in Paramaribo, in late 2013 irregular and costly private river transport and chartered flights were the only means of travel.

However, educational services were being expanded and most of the villages had functioning generators that enabled people to watch DVDs and Brazilian TV, if they have a dish. 6 The downriver region, such as the four-village cluster of Misalibi, Balen, Njun(Jakob)konde, and Bilawata (about three hours upriver from Kwakugoon) and the villages of Asanwai and Makakiiki (a 10-20 minute boat ride from Kwakugoon) are less dramatically depopulated. Access to the coastal area is easier (shorter distance, higher frequency of boats) and the close proximity to the goldmining activities in the region provide cash labor opportunities for both women (resale) and men (mining) (see [START_REF] De Theije | Small-scale gold mining and trans-frontier Commerce on the Lawa River[END_REF]. Contacts between the upriver and downriver area appear to lack intensity, however. Unless there are important celebrations (deaths, end of mourning ceremonies), members of the downriver region rarely venture upriver and upriver people make overnight stopovers in the four-village cluster but they rarely come for sustained periods of time. The villagers of the two regions also maintain devisive stereotypes about each other. 6 Suriname has a booming DVD market. Nollywood and US films are dubbed into Ndyuka and sometimes Saamaka and amateurs produce local films.

With respect to language, locals make the following subdivisions: The upriver region is associated with 'pure' Matawai, the middle river region is linked to Kwinti and Matawai (and a mix thereof) and the lower river region is designated as 'impure' Matawai due to being influenced by Ndyuka and Saamaka. Apart from Matawai and Kwinti, Sranantongo, Dutch and a more generalized (Eastern) Maroon variety 7 are also used in the region. Traditionally, the latter three were used for communication with outsiders. However, increased contact with the urban areas and schooling has made them into an integral part of the speech community. While Matawai is the default means of communication and is transmitted in the village context, people code-switch and code-mix with Sranantongo and a generalized (Eastern) Maroon variety and to a lesser extent with Dutch to negotiate local identities in intracommunity interactions, similar to what happens in other communities [START_REF] Migge | The role of discursive information in analyzing multilingual practices[END_REF].

The situation is different in the urban (greater Paramaribo) and semi-urban context (Para district) where there is much more intense contact with non-Matawais and thus Sranantongo and Dutch play a much greater role (see also Léglise & Migge 2015). People do not always live close to other Matawais, work with people from a variety of backgrounds and marriages with non-Matawai partners are a regular occurrence (de Beet and Sterman 1981). In the home, many parents promote acquisition of Dutch at the expense of Matawai so that many of the younger people only learn to speak Matawai in their teens as a second language, if at all. Traditional ceremonies (burials, end of mourning cermonies etc) and sporadic visits to the village context have become important sites for language maintenance and language promotion. This brief discussion suggests that Matawai is in many ways endangered.

Price's "guesstimates" (his term) put the size of the Matawai community at between 5,000 (Price 2002: 82) and 7,000 people [START_REF] Price | Research Note. The Maroon Population Explosion: Suriname and Guyane[END_REF], arguing that about 1,300 live in the rural areas and about 5,500 in the urban (and semi-urban) context (Price 2013: 326). However, in 2013 at most 300 people were living in the villages throughout the year and given low language transmission rates in urban and semi-urban areas, actual speaker numbers must be well below the population figures cited by [START_REF] Price | Maroons in Suriname and Guyane: How many and where[END_REF][START_REF] Price | Research Note. The Maroon Population Explosion: Suriname and Guyane[END_REF]. Unlike Eastern Maroon and most Saamaka children, Matawai children often 7 People often refer to it as Kwinti but it clearly differs from traditional Kwinti. also did not feel comfortable to display their ability to speak Matawai during a language survey (Léglise & Migge 2015).

The above discussion suggests that while Matawai is historically closely related to Saamaka -members of these two communities fled from the same plantation areas and also cohabited for some time -a number of factors have led to a lessening of the intensity of contact over time and have given rise to partially separate developments. Such factors include difficult inter-ethnic relationships, geographical distance, the Matawai's greater and earlier involvement with 'town life' due to their intense involvement with Christianity and their close contact with members of other Maroon groups such as the Kwinti and the Ndyuka community. Since the civil war in the 1980s, intensity of contact with other languages has increased due to the fact that the clear majority of Matawai today reside in the greater urban area of Paramaribo and are actively partaking in mainstream coastal society.

A preliminary description of the linguistic characteristics of Matawai

In this section I explore some aspects of the Matawai 1.) and patterns of lexical variation (3. 2.). I then examine two areas of grammar, the nominal copula (3. 3.) and future-marking (3. 4.) in more detail.

1. Notes on the lexicon of Matawai

Matawai shares many content lexical items and function words with Saamaka that are not in general use among speakers of the other creoles of Suriname. Tables 12present a non-exhaustive list of commonly occurring content words in the data such as nouns [START_REF] Migge | The origin and development of possibility in the Creoles of Suriname[END_REF] and verbs (2). 8 2 Eastern Maroon Creole (Aluku, Ndyuka, Pamaka); the data come from my own data, Bilby's unpublished database for Aluku, [START_REF] Bilby | L'alimentation des nois marronns du Maroni: vocabulaire, pratiques, representations[END_REF] and [START_REF] Shanks | A buku fu Okanisi anga Ingiisi Wowtu (Aukan -English Dictionary and English -Aukan Index)[END_REF] 3 Sranantongo; the data come from [START_REF] Wilner | Wortubuku fu Sranan Tongo (Sranan Tongo -English Dictionary)[END_REF]. Sranantongo use a bisyllabic structure, bali and bari, respectively.9 In the case of other lexical items, there is variation between a long vowel and a diphthong. Thus in Matawai (and Saamaka) 'hear, understand' is pronounced with the front diphthong

[ey] yei while its Eastern Maroon counterpart involves a long mid vowel yee. Finally, there are also semantic differences. In Matawai (and Saamaka) the word pau appears to express three concepts: tree, log and stick. However, in the Eastern Maroon Creoles and Sranantongo, they are expressed by three separate lexical items: bon, udu and tiki, respectively. Note also that Matawai, like Saamaka, distinguishes higher [e, o] and lower [ɛ, ɔ] mid front and back vowels, respectively. Thus, for instance, the copula is generally realized as [dɛ] in Matawai and Saamaka but as [de] in the varieties.

Table 3 shows that Matawai also shares a number of functional elements with Saamaka. They range from the imperfective aspect (ta) and desire (kɛ) markers to locational and prepositional forms, determiners, phrasal connectors and question words. Like sombe, seepi and dolu each vary with another form in the 1970s (Table 7) and 2013 (Table 5) recordings. However, their frequency distributions are rather similar in both data sets suggesting that we are dealing with a case of stable variation. The form identified as Matawai by speakers of the language emerged as the dominant variant in both cases. 13 The data also reveal other patterns of variation that speakers did not, however, remark on. Some of them are possibly driven by language contact. Take for instance the expression of 'if, or'. While [START_REF] Hancock | A preliminary classification of the Anglophone Atlantic Creoles. In Pidgin and Creole languages[END_REF] argued that Matawai employs efu as a marker of subordination and conditionality, consultants rejected efu in favor of ee, identifying efu as Sranantongo. 14 Analysis of the recordings suggests that variation 13 The high rate of usage of seefi in M9 is probably an outlier. The high frequency of seefi is most likely due to this speaker's close associates with urban culture. 14 It seems that consultants' outright rejection of efu was an artefact of the elicitation context which by its very nature draws heightened attention to differences between language varieties. between ee, a form hitherto associated with Saamaka, and efu, used in the other creoles of Suriname and in the early Saamaka records [START_REF] Arends | Early Suriname Creole Texts: A collection of 18th-century Sranan and Saramaccan Documents[END_REF], is not a new phenomenon. Variation does not appear to be stable though because while ee is the dominant marker of conditionality in the 1970s data (ee: 98 vs efu: 37) both ee and efu have closely similar frequencies in the 2013 data (ee: 43 vs efu: 37). This might suggests that efu is encroaching on ee. Finally, there are functional differences between the two elements. While efu functioned mostly as a marker of conditionality (8a), it was also used as a subordinate clause marker (8b). By contrast, ee was only found to head conditional phrases (9). 15 Taken together, the available data suggest the following path of development: efu was the marker of conditionality in the early period, at a later stage ee became the dominant marker and since about the 1970s efu seems to have been gaining ground over ee. Another pattern of variation involves the potential mood markers sa and man which are used to express ability, permission and epistemic and deontic possibility. [START_REF] Winford | Substrate influence in the emergence of the tense and aspect system in the Creoles of Suriname[END_REF] showed that the Eastern Maroon Creoles employ sa mostly in positive contexts and man (Pamaka, Aluku, urban Ndyuka) or poy (Ndyuka) in 15 There were also a handful of contexts where both ée and efu expressed the meaning of 'maybe' u ta de ee na feifi 'We were maybe five'.

negative contexts while Saamaka uses sa in both positive and negative contexts. 16 In the Matawai data recorded in 2013, similar to the Eastern Maroon Creoles pattern, sa is predominantly found in positive contexts including questions (10a) while its use was much less frequent in negative contexts (10b-c) where man clearly predominated (sa: 9 vs man: 53). The 2013 pattern, however, appears to be the result of a change in progress because sa clearly predominated in negative potential contexts in the 1970s data (sa: 38 vs man: 5). This change in frequency distribution is most likely the result of influence from Sranantongo because the majoirty of the tokens involving man were preceded by the negative marker no which is closely associated with Sranantongo.

However, by the same token, the fact that consultants during the elicitations often also juxtaposed man with the Matawai negative markers ná and á(n) suggests that it is becoming an integral part of the Matawai modality system.

( Yet other patterns of variation appear to be language-internally motivated. Two such patterns concern deictic adverbs. Matawai, like all the creoles of Suriname, distinguishes three degrees of proximity (11a) -aki 'here', de 'there', ala 'over there'

-and these elements also function as demonstrative modifiers (11b).

16 Sa may also be negated in the Eastern Maroon Creoles, but this occurs rarely and mostly in epistemic contexts. Man is also used in positive questions of ability. They argue that naande derives from a combination of the locational marker (n)a and the adverb de that was originally "used when a more explicit deixis is desired" (188).

There is also variation in the Matawai data, however, it involves de and ade (12) and their distributions differ in the two data sets. In the 2013 recordings ade and de occur 70 and 71 times, respectively, and they both function as demonstrative modifers encoding the meaning of 'that' and as locative adverbs meaning 'there'.

(

Nominal copula environments

Nominal and possessive copular constructions in Matawai exhibit some unexpected difference to Saamaka. The literature on the copular domain in the creoles of Suriname showed that there are two copular morphemes with different distributions in these languages. De (<English 'there') is fully verbal and occurs in locational, existential and other predicative contexts except for ascriptive contexts since property items are generally verbs [START_REF] Migge | The origin of the syntax and semantics of property items in the Surinamese Plantation Creole[END_REF][START_REF] Winford | Property items and predication in Sranan[END_REF]). 17 The other copula derives from the demonstrative pronoun datti (< English 'that') and is thus pronominal in origin (Arends 1986: 107). Its copula function emerged from its use as a sentenceintroducing or presentative particle functioning as a resumptive pronoun in topiccomment-type constructions (Arends 1986: 107). Based on an analysis of early records written in Sranantongo, Arends (1986: 110) showed that da then changed to (n)a sometime in the 18 th century. It is indeed currently realized as (n)a in Sranantongo and the Eastern Maroon Creoles. However, in Saamaka it is still realized 17

The copula de is realized as [dɛ] in Saamaka and Matawai.

as da. Arends (1986: 111-114) furthermore shows that da was the main copula element in predicative equative contexts in Sranantongo until about 1800. After 1800 two changes occurred. First, de became more frequent and second, da narrowed its distribution. He argues that these changes are related to the emergence of two distinct categories from the (previously uniform) class of equatives.

[…] [T]he attributive category develops a predilection for de (which was already, although marginally, present), while the expression of identity is delegated to da, with de (which was originally absent in this function)

appearing as a secondary alternative. (Arends 1986: 112) The distribution described by Arends (1986) for Sranantongo resembles that of Saamaka. In Saamaka da typically occurs in so-called identificational contexts (16a)

while class equatives or so-called attributive constructions generally employ de (16b), with da appearing optionally (McWhorter & Good 2012: 182). Da is also found optionally in possessive contexts, where it varys with zero rather than with de (16c).

Finally, da is replaced by de in overtly tensed constructions (16d). Based on this distribution, [START_REF] Mcwhorter | Towards a new model of creole genesis[END_REF] argues, contra Arends (1986), that de initially functioned as an all-purpose copula and that da (later) encroached on de in identificational contexts. The few da tokens that occurred in the 2013 recordings (19) all involved some sort of emphasis. This could suggest that they are in fact instances of code-switching for purposes of emphasis [START_REF] Migge | The role of discursive information in analyzing multilingual practices[END_REF]. Further investigation is necessary. The recordings contained a very small number of postposed we and noo overall.

Such constructions generally involved question words (i) or adverbials (ii/iii). There were many constructions with preposed we and noo that seemed to have a (contrastive) focus function but these were not used in copula constructions (iii).

Further research on focusing devices in Matawai is needed.

(i) anfa 'fa we?', mi taa 'mi kon' (T1. A fourth difference to Saamaka involves negation of na/da. According to [START_REF] Mcwhorter | A grammar of Saramaccan creole[END_REF]: 1978-9), "da is negated via replacement with negator ná."

However, in Matawai this option (23a), which is probably best interpreted as a fusion between the copula and negative marker into one high toned and lengthened morpheme, is only one of three possibilities. A second common strategy consists of post-posing the negation marker to copula (n)a (23b) and a third but less commonly used option involves replacing copula na with copula de (23c). All three options are also employed in the Eastern Maroon Creoles (Huttar & Huttar 1994: 134, 136 The equative copula domain in Matawai, however, also displays difference to that of the Eastern Maroon Creoles and Sranantongo. While the past marker be in the former and ben in the latter may be combined with copula and focus na (Huttar & Huttar 1994: 134;Arends 1986: 109) The Matawai recordings include a small number of constructions in which de occurred in untensed positive class constructions (26). There were three such constructions in the 2013 data and twelve in the 1970 data. In the elicitations, the Matawai consultants did not judge them to be ungrammatical but expressed a preference for na. Note that spontaneous use of de in untensed equative constructions often cooccurs when locative de was used in previous connecting sentences.

(26) a. mi a wan muyee mii, ma a an de aki, a de jefrouw I have DET woman child but she NEG COP here she COP teacher a Brownsweg. (M 7)

LOC name 20

The consultants argued that mi wani toon wan sista 'I want to become a nurse.' is the most common way of rendering the notion of 'to become'.

'I have a daughter, but she is not here, she is a teacher in Brouwnsweg.' b. a de a wan muyee yedi, di muyee de aa, di muyee de it COP LOC one women head DET woman COP there DET woman COP basia, a de a Kwakugoon. (M2.2) assistant she COP LOC name.

'It [the ancestor spirit] is in a woman's head, the woman is there, the woman is an assistant to the kapiten [and] she lives in Kwakugoon.'

The findings summarized in Table 8 show that equative constructions in Matawai most closely resemble those in the Eastern Maroon Creoles. Matawai does not distinguish identity and class nominal contexts as both employ the same copula, na. As in the Eastern Maroon Creoles and Sranatongo, na in Matawai can also be used as a focus marker and in possessive contexts, and be involved in the same kinds of negation strategies. The main difference is the fact that, like da in Saamaka, it cannot co-occur with the past marker. Two of its properties -replacement with de in overtly tensed constructions and absence before post-posed disi -are shared by all the creoles of Suriname.

The findings from Matawai further support Arends' (1986) scenario of the development of the copula domain. Essentially, copula de and da appear to have emerged concurrently but in different contexts. Subsequently, da changed to na in most of the varieties and in some of the varieties, Sranantongo and Saamaka, it narrowed its distribution to identity contexts, while in other varieties (Eastern Maroon Creoles and Matawai) they retained their original distrbution. Yes because boss self FUT come 'Yes, because the boss (politician) will come (to the meeting).'

In several of the 2013 recordings to only accounted for less than 50% of future tokens (Table 5). This contrasts with their distribution in the 1970s recordings where to by far outnumbered o (Table 9) 22 in most recordings, suggesting that o is competing with to. Together, these data suggest that Matawai is unique among the creoles of Suriname in that it has a distinct future marker to, which, however, alternates with, o, the variant found in its sister languages. At this stage, the etymological origin of to is unclear.

Comparison of the 2013 with the 1970 data suggests that the variation between them is not stable. It appears to be affected by factors such as speech style, residency patterns and age. Further research is required.

Conclusion

This paper investigated the lesser-used and linguistically unexplored Surinamese Maroon Creole Matawai from both a sociohistorical and linguistic perspective in order to determine its relationship to its sister languages. The analysis confirms statements in the literature that place Matawai in the so-called 'Western branch of the Creoles of Suriname' [START_REF] Smith | The history of the Surinamese creoles II: Origin and differentiation[END_REF]. Although we know little about its origin, there is ample evidence that the founders of the Matawai community were in close contact and formed a single residential unit with parts of the Saamaka community in the early years. Moreover, Matawai shares many lexical items, both content and function words, with Saamaka.

However, Matawai is not identical to Saamaka. There are several features, including patterns of variation, such as the form of the nominal copula and the make up of the equative copula domain, palatalization of /s/ and the use of man that are not shared with Saamaka. Some of these features most likely emerged due to contact with speakers of other creoles, such as Kwinti, Ndyuka and Sranantongo (e.g. use of man).

Other features, such as the copula na and the structure of the equative copula domain, but possibly also palatalization and variation in the expression of the marker of conditionality probably date from earlier periods such as the 19 th century and in some cases even the early plantation varieties. Further research on the dating of changes is necessary. Other patterns of variation, such as those found among locational adverbs appear to be due to internally motivated change. Finally, it was shown that Matawai has its own future marker, to, which is not attested in any of the other varieties and its ethymological origin is unclear.

The analysis shows that Matawai speech is characterized by a fair amount of variation which appears to affect all levels of grammar. While some of this variation may turn out, at least in part, to be conditioned by social factors if a larger, socially stratified sample of recordings is used, the historical perspective presented here suggests that Matawai is in fact in the process of undergoing (a fair amount of) change. The fact that Matawai speakers appear to increasingly adopt features of more widely spoken creole varieties in Suriname might be indicative of the fact that Matawai is not only undergoing quantiative (loss of speakers) but also so-called qualitative attrition in that it is losing its original features and thus becoming more like its sister languages [START_REF] Borges | Coppename Kwinti: the influence of adstrate languages on a Surinamese creole[END_REF]. Further research on this issue is needed.

The analysis in this paper confirms that detailed attention to lesser-used varieties of creole languages is necessary in order to fully understand the development of and the relationships between related creoles languages. Lesser-used varieties such as Matawai reveal new elements, types of structural patterns and patterns of variation that, in turn, make it possible to reassess or confirm existing theories such as the development of the copula domain. The paper also suggests that comparative approaches that compare data from related languages on the one hand and comparable data sets from different time periods using both descriptive and quantiative methods of analysis are important for understanding directions and processes of language change. Such multiple data sets help to trace changes and to obtain further insights into types of changes.

Aboh, Enoch O., Smith, Norval S. H. and Veenstra, Tonjes. 2013

Following

  disputes some of the Kwinti left and established two villages on the Coppename River in 1883 (van der Elst 1974: 12). Map 1: Location of the Matawai villages (adapted from de Beet & Sterman 1981: 8). "After 1860, the Matawai history is dominated by the introduction of Christianity." (de Beet & Sterman 1981: 11). In the 1850s Johannes King of Maipaston had dreams in which god asked him to become a Christian and to spread Christianity. He subsequently established contacts with the Moravian church, converted people in Maipaston to Christianity and undertook missionary trips to the upper Saramacca region and to other Maroon communities. After his brother, the paramount chief (gaaman) Noah Adai, banned King from Maipaston over religious differences, he founded the village of Kwataede on the middle river as a Christian center in the 1880s (de Beet & Sterman 1981: 190). The Catholic Church became active in the downriver region (Bilawata) in the 1920s and its followers founded the upriver village of Padua in 1939.

  language and compare them to what is known about the other creoles of Suriname. The paper draws on three data sets. First, a small corpus of naturalistic recordings and semi-guided interviews collected in 2013 in the upper Saramacca River villages and Paramaribo. Seven hours of speech coming mostly from older Matawai speakers were analyzed. Second, a corpus of semi-guided anthropological interviews and naturalistic recordings collected in the 1970s on the upper Saramacca River by the anthropologists Miriam Sterman and Chris de Beet during their fieldwork among the Matawai. Eleven recordings involving older and middle-aged members of the community were analyzed. Third, data from formal elicitation sessions with two middle-aged women and one young man. The data on the other Creoles of Suriname come from the published literature and my own data collected since 1994. I will first consider lexical issues, assessing similarities between Matawai and the other creoles of Suriname (3.

(

  11) a. mi begi hii sembe di de aki, taki taa[…]. (M1) I beg all person REL COP here say say 'I ask all the people who are here, saything that [LOC last of DET month here 'The commissioner would be coming on the last (day) of this month.' These three Matawai forms closely resemble those found in Saamaka. There are two exceptions though. According toMcWhorter & Good (2012: 188-9), the form used to express the second degree of proximity, de 'there', varys with naande in Saamaka.

''

  de/(da) wan malenge-ma. (Aboh et al. 2013: 33) da) Adam. DET first human.being PAST COP PAST COP name 'The first human being was Adam.' (McWhorter & Good 2012: 179) In the Eastern Maroon Creoles, unlike Sranantongo and Saamaka, (n)a is used as the main predicator in equative constructions, including both attributive (17a) and identity-expressing (17b) constructions, and in possessive contexts (17c). It is only replaced with de in overtly tensed constructions (17d-e) (Migge 2002You are a person who adheres to modern style.' b. Disi na mi eygi baala. (ND 3) this COP my own brother 'This is my real brother [not a classificatory one].' COP POSS name 'It's Mr B who is from [i.e. belongs to] Mainsi.' d. Dati be de a moo pikin wan fu ala den. (ND2) that PAST COP DET more little one of all them 'That was the smallest one of them all.' e. A be mu de M. (ND 4) it PAST must COP name 'That should be M.' The Matawai copula domain appears to pattern more closely with that of the Eastern Maroon Creoles rather than with Saamaka. First, Matawai employs na rather than da in equative contexts (18a-b). In the 1970s recordings na was the only copula that was used in equative contexts (218 tokens) and in the 2013 recordings na (172 instances) clearly outnumbered da (5 tokens). During elicitation, consultants rejected the use of da (18c), identifying it as Saamaka. You are a gossiper.' c. mi na/*da wan/di sista. (EH)

  s what they call alcoholic cane water.'A second difference to Saamaka is the fact that na may also function as a focus or presentative marker in general (20a-b) and in topic comment constructions (20c). (20) a. mi an sabi, na dii yai. (M7) I neg know it's three year '[How old was he?] I don't know, it's three years.' b. na kapiten mi bi mu da en. (M4) foc kapiten I past must give it 'It's to the kapten that I should give it.' c. di muyee f'en, na D, di womi, hen na A. (M7) det woman poss.him cop/foc name det man it cop A 'His wife, it's D; the man, he is A.' This resembles the use of na in the Eastern Maroon Creoles (Migge 2002) and in Sranantongo (Arends 1986). In Saamaka, da does not function as a focus or presentative marker. This function is carried out by the postposed focus marker we and the marker of new information noo (McWhorter & Good 2012: 181). 18 18

Table 1 :

 1 Comparison of common nouns: Matawai and the other Surinamese Creoles

	Matawai	Saamaka 1	EMC 2	Sranantongo 3 Gloss
	amanya	amanya	tama(a)	tamara	'tomorrow'
	daka	daka	dey	dey	'day'
	(a)ho [ahɔ]	aho [ahɔ]	ho	ho	'hoe'
	kamia	kamia	peesi	presi	'place, location'
	mau	mau	ana	anu	'hand, arm'
	mii	mii	pikin	pikin	'child'
	pau	pau	bon, tiki, udu bon, tiki, udu	'tree, stick'
	soni, sondi	soni, sondi	sani	sani	'thing, matter'
	tela	tela	soo	syoro	'land bordering
					water'
	tyuba	tyuba	alen	alen	'rain'
	woto	woto	toli	tori	'story, matter'

1 Saamaka

(Haboo ms)

Table 2 :

 2 Comparison of common verbs: Matawai and other Surinamese Creoles

	Matawai	Saamaka	Ndyuka/	Sranantongo	Gloss
			Pamaka
	buta, bisi	buta, bisi	poti, we(l)i poti, weri	'put, put on'
	bai	bai	bali	bari	'call out, shout'

8

Matawai examples are presented following the orthographic conventions devised by

Haboo (ms)

for Saamaka which does not make certain kinds of distinctions. Where necessary, such distinctions will be indicated using phonetic transcriptions.

1

In Matawai the word final nasal is rarely if ever a full nasal but rather a nasalized vowel. There is variation between nasalization and full nasals in the other varieties.

Tables

[START_REF] Migge | The origin and development of possibility in the Creoles of Suriname[END_REF](2)

show that in the case of content lexical items that are not shared between all the creoles of Suriname, typically those of Portuguese origin, Matawai closely aligns with Saamaka. For instance, Matawai and Saamaka employ the word mau, derived from Portuguese mão 'hand' while the Eastern Maroon Creoles use ana derived from English hand to express the meaning of 'hand, arm'.

There are also lexical items that have the same origin in all or most varieties but differ phonologically. Yet again, Matawai is closer to Saamaka. Consider the words referring to 'thing, matter', for instance. Matawai (and Saamaka) employs a back mid vowel [sɔni/sɔndi] while the other creoles use a low vowel

[sani]

. Other words like 'call out, shout' or 'hold' differ in their syllable structure. The Matawai (and Saamaka) form is monosyllabic (bai) while the Eastern Maroon Creoles and

Table 3 .

 3 Comparison of selected functional elements in Matawai and other Creoles ofThere are some lexical elements that were identified as being distinctive of Matawai by Matawai consultants. 10 Table4lists these items and their counterparts in the other creoles of Suriname. Some of their uses are illustrated in examples[START_REF] Migge | The origin and development of possibility in the Creoles of Suriname[END_REF](2)(3)(4)(5)(6)(7).

	Suriname
	Matawai	Saamaka	Ndyuka/	Sranan	Gloss
			Pamaka
	Tense, Mood and Aspect Markers
	ta	ta	e	e	imperfective aspect
	bi	bi	be	ben	past time
	ke [kɛ]	ke [kɛ]	wani	wani	desire
	kaa	kaa	kaba	kba	completion
	Locational & prepositional Concepts
	ku	ku	anga	nanga	'with'
	dendu	dendu	ini	ini	'inside'
	basu	basu	ondo(o)	ondro	'under'
	liba	liba	tapu	tapu	'on (top)'
	Determiners
	di	di	a	a	Determiner (def, sg)
	de, den	dee	de(n)	de(n)	Determiner (pl, sg)
	hila/(h)ii	hia/hila	hii/ala	ala	'all (of), the whole'
	Phrasal connectors
	noo [nɔɔ]	noo [nɔɔ]	neen	dan	Temporal markers
	(h)en/da	hen, da	da	dan/ne	Consecutive marker
	Question words
	an(di)	andi	san	san	'what'

Table 4 :

 4 Distinctive lexical features in Matawai

	Matawai	Saamaka		Ndyuka/	Sranantongo	Gloss
					Pamaka
	me/me(i)ki	mbei		meki/e		meki	'make'
	[mɛ/mɛ(i)ki]
	dolu	dou			doo		doro	'arrive'
	seepi	seei			seefi		srefi	'self, even'
	yaika	haika		aliki		arki	'listen'
	sombe [sɔmbɛ] sembe [sɛmbɛ] sama		s(u)ma	'person'
	se	naase [naasɛ]	pe		pe	'where'
	to	o			o		o	'future'
	(1) me	a sa	wooko, te	di	man ko	a mu	si. (M4) 11
	make it POT work when DET man come he OBL see
	'Make it work, when the guy comes he must see [it functioning].'
	(2) dee	sikowtu dolu kaa. (M9)
	DET-PL police	arrive compl
	'The police had arrived already.'
	(3) a. di	womi seepi waka ko	piki	mi taa [...] (M1)
	DET man self	walk come respond me say

10

Note that two of these forms sombe and seepi are also attested in Saamaka.

However, they appear to be secondary strategies in

Saamaka. 11

This code indicates the recording from which this example originates. how we FUT arrange death thing POSS DET female.elder 'how will we arrange the death ceremonies for the elder?' While Matawai speakers consider these lexical forms as an integral part of Matawai, in actual speech, they are subject to variation with forms ideologically linked to other varieties. Table

5

gives the frequency count for each variant in the 2013 recodings.

Table 5 :

 5 Frequency distribution of 'distinctive' lexical items in the 2013 recordingsTable5shows that while some forms identified as Matawai (me-me(i)ki; se) indeed occur near-or categorically in the recordings, others such as to and sombe and, to a lesser degree dolu and seepi, are subject to variation. No variation was recorded for yaika. Comparison with the 1970s recordings suggests that the variation found in the 2013 data is not new but is increasing and appears to be leading to language change in the case of some lexical elements. Take for instance sombe. In the 1970s recordings (Table6) sombe emerges as the dominant variant 12 , while its use is much less prominent in the 2013 recordings where only elderly persons variably use it. Thus, although Matawais appear to show ideological attachment to the historical form (sombre) and appear to have preserved it as a dominant form for expressing 'person' at least until the 1970s, like Saamaka speakers, they are now increasinly replacing it with a different variant, sembe. It is unclear whether this change is driven by contact with speakers of Saamaka or by internal processes of change.

	Tape	me-me(i)ki	dolu	seepi	se	to	sombe
		meki (EMC-SR)	doo (EMC)	seefi (EMC)	naase (SM)	o	sembe (SM)
		mbei (SM)	dou (SM)	seei (SM)			suma (SR)
	M4	17-18/1/0	17/5/0	21/0/0	4/0	37/40	0/49/7
						(48%)
	M5	8-15/4/0	19/2/0	8/0/0	3/1	9/50 (15%) 0/20/3
	M3	7-12/0/0	6/0/0	4/0/0	2/0	9/23 (28%) 15/14/0
	M9	3-16/0/0	18/0/0	10/23/1	0/0	1/97 (1%)	0/43/1
	M7	3-8/0/0	24/4/1	19/2/0	3/0	30/40	6/19/0
						(43%)
	M2	4-9/0/0	6/2/0	0/1/0	1/0	5/19 (26%) 0/8/0

Table 6 :

 6 Frequency distribution of variants for 'person' in the 1970s recordings.

	Tape	sombe	sembe	suma
	M1.1	21 (91%)	2 (9%)	0
	M1.2	20 (80%)	5 (20%)	0
	M2.1	0	8 (100%)	0
	M2.2	25 (32%)	17 (22%)	36 (46%)
	M3.1	2 (100%)	0	0
	M4.1	49 (53%)	39 (42%)	4 (5%)
	M6.1	16 (55%)	9 (31%)	4 (14%)
	M6.2	26 (84%)	2 (6%)	3 (10%)
	M7.1	36 (78%)	10 (22%)	0
	M8.1	44 (85%)	8 (15%)	0

Table 7 :

 7 Frequency distribution of variants for 'self, even' and 'arrive' in the 1970s

	recordings
	Tape	seepi	seefi	dolu	doo
	M1.1	14	0	33	0
	M1.2	16	0	21	2
	M2.1	7	0	10	0
	M2.2	3	0	10	2/3
	M3.1	0	0	5	5
	M4.1	80	0	17	0
	M6.1	21	4	0	0
	M6.2	20	1	7	1
	M7.1	15	0	21	0
	M8.1	12	0	17	0
	M8.2	9	0	14	0

  It is possible that the latter development is being spurred by Matawai speakers' greater contact with the other creoles of

	Suriname.
	(8) a. efu i	ku wan sombe bi	de a	wan pisi	kamia,
	if	you with DET person PAST COP LOC DET part place
	un ta	libi moymoy. (M3)
	we IMPF live nice-nice
	'If you and someone were together in a place, we lived well with each other.'
	b. mi an sa	efu a ná	glati	fisi.	(M7)
	I NEG know if	it NEG-COP smooth fish
	'I'm not sure if it's not catfish.'
	(9) ee i	a		taku soni so i	an nango	a	tila	de.
	if you have mean thing so you NEG IMPF-go LOC shore there.

'If you have such bad things, you aren't going to shore there.

' (Bosilanti)

  Unlike ade, de functions as both a demonstrative modifer and as a distal locative adverb (13b-c). The differences between the two data sets suggest that ade has expanded its distribution and is now encroaching on that of de.

	leave	it IMPF take people carry come
	'Over there we all went, then in the morning, when it [the train] will be
	leaving (Kwakugoon), it was bring people (to Kabel).
	(13) a. nɔɔ Meliyedi, ade	de	kon miti a	wan. (M4.1)
	then name	there	they come meet LOC one
	'Then Meliyedi, there they came to get together.' Finally, contrary to Saamaka which has been found to "not have an alveopalatal
	b. di fricative [ʃ] (often written as sj or sy for Sranan) in its consonant inventory." de kumutu de baka, nɔɔ en de kon Apeefunda
	when they leave there again then then they come cut name (McWhorter & Good 2012: 11), Matawai, like the Eastern Maroon Creoles Aluku and
	'When they left from there again, then they came to make Apeefunda. Pamaka (Goury & Migge 2003: 31), does palatalize alveolar voiceless fricatives
	c. omeni before high vowels (15). This feature was very prominent in the 1970s recordings and u bai di teepi de? (M6.2)
	how-much you buy DET tape-recorder there is still a noticable feature in the 2013 recordings.
	(15) a. [paandaʃi] 'village'			e. [piʃi] 'piece
	b. [baʃia] 'assistant'			f. [buʃikonde] 'Maroon area'
	c. [ʃindɔ] 'sit down'			g. [kiʃi] 'get'
	12) a. de	froisi; Makajapingo seepi sombe an	dɛ	ade. (M7)
	they move name		self	person NEG COP over-there
	'They moved away; even at Makajapingo there aren't people over there.' the 2013 data.
	b. a	án	bi	de	a	di	se	ade. (M3)
	she NEG PAST COP LOC DET side there (14)a. dee de ala. (M4)
	'She wasn't in that part.' they COP over-there
	c. te 'They are over-there.' i dolu de i	lai dee	lai fi'i	gwu kekekee.
	when you arrive there you load DET-PL stuff for'you IDEO IDEO b. hii dee kamia ala mi waka pasa. (M4)
	'When you arrive there, you load your stuff altogether one after the other.' all DET-PL place over-there I walk pass
	d. fa 'I've passed through all of these places.' de kai di kamia de? (M7)
	how they call c. hila sembe go aa. DET	place there (M7)
	'What do they call that place?' many person go over-there
	'Many people when over-there.'
	d. alaa u too	go, noo mmanten, noo di	a	to
	there we together go then morning then when it	FUT
	kumutu, a ta	teki sembe tya	ko. (M3)

In the 1970s recordings, in contrast,

de (155)

is more prominent than ade (71) and ade functions only as a locative adverb and only occurs in clause initial position (13a), possibly preceded by the consecutive markers noo, hen or da.

'For how much did you buy that tape recorder there?'

The second difference to Saamaka relates to the third degree adverb ala which is variably realized as [alaa], [ala] and [aa]. [alaa] is an emphatic form and is found clause initially or in exposed position (14d). [ala] functions as both demonstrative modifier (14a) and as a locational adverb (14b) while [aa] is only used as a locational adverb (14c). In the 1970s recordings, [aa] (136 tokens) outnumbers [ala] (77 tokens) in the latter context while [ala] (176 tokens) is more frequent than [aa] (34 tokens) in d. [ʃi] 'see' h. [boʃlanti] '(village of) Bos[i]lanti'

  1)A third difference to Saamaka occurs in possessive constructions where, according toMcWhorter & Good (2012: 181-2), copula da is optional (16c). In the Matawai recordings, na was generally present in possessive constructions (20a), as in equivalent constructions in the Eastern Maroon Creoles (17c). Copula absence only occurred in the case of object fronting (21b-c) involving the distal demonstrative pronoun disi which performs emphatic indexing and is found in all the creoles of

	b. Mí		tatá, Ø	dísi.				Saamaka
	I-POSS	father COP this
	'This is my father.'	(McWhorter & Good 2012: 180)
	Suriname (22) 19 .
	(21) a. di	mii	ta	taki, hen	'mi	na	fu	Balin'. (M1)
	DET child IMPF talk	FOC	I	COP	POSS name
	'The child was saying, I'm from Balin.'
	b. dee	mama u	mi, Ø	disi,	yei. (M1)
	DET.PL mother POSS me COP this	assert
	'This is [one/a female elder of] my mother ['s generation].'
	c. en tata	konde, Ø disi. (T1.2)
	his father village COP this
	'This is his father's village.'
	(22) a. u	gaasama, Ø	disi.				Pamaka
	our ancestor COP this
	'This is our ancestor.'
	ok how FOC I say I	come
	'Ok, 'what?', I said 'I'm coming.''
	(ii) a so noo mi sabi		den. (M5)
	it so NI I know them
	'It's like that I know them.'
	(iii) [reply of the ritual responder] so we	kapiten 'That's right, kapiten.' (T4)
					so FOC kapiten
	(iv) a taa 'hem?, we se	mi de aki'? (M4)
	he said he	FOC side I	COP here
	'He said 'he? Well, where am I?'
	19 Copula absence is also typical in all the creoles of Suriname in constructions that
	predicate 'today' with a day of the week, e.g. tide, munde 'Today is Monday' (EMC).

  ).

	(23) a. didɛ na turis,	ma disi na	turis. (M4)
	that COP tourist but this NEG.COP tourist
	'That's a toursit, but this is not a tourist.'
	b. ma dia a	na di	waki wan. (M5)
	but that COP NEG DET wait one
	'But that one is not the waiting bench.'
	c. ná koleika,	mi an de basia. (M2)
	foc colleagues I NEG COP village.assistant
	'It's not colleagues (we are), I'm not a basia.'

Table 8 :

 8 Comparison of the properties of copula na/da in the Creoles of SurinameThe literature on the Creoles of Suriname identifies preverabl o as the marker of predictive future. According tovan den Berg (2007: 191-192) it derives from the English verb go in a construction where it is either combined with the imperfective marker, i.e. (d)e go/ta(n) go, or used on its own. 21 Matawai differs from its sister languages in that it makes use of the preverbal marker to. To, however, alternates with

	Features	Matawai Saamaka Sranantongo Eastern	Maroon
					Creoles
	morpheme	na	da	na	na
	Equative contexts
	-identity contexts	+	+	+	+
	-class contexts	+	-	-	+
	Possessive contexts
	-use of na/da	+	(+)	+	+
	-Ø preceding disi	+	+	+	+
	Focus function	+	-	+	+
	Negation
	-replaced by de	(+)	+	(+)	(+)

Table 9 :

 9 Variation between to and o in the 1970s Matawai dataTo and o in Matawai have mostly the same distribution which, in turn, also resembles that of o in the other creoles of Suriname. Both to and o can be combined with activtiy-denoting, dynamic verbs and with more stative verbs (28).

	1.1	1.2	2.1	2.2	3.1	4	6.1	6.2	7.1	8.1	8.2
	to 36	60	63	126	19	69	16	20	18	16	19
	92%	80%	83%	93%	24%	70%	59%	65%	42%	46%	59%
	21 Sa expressed uncertain future in the early documents and was associated with
	Europeans' linguistic practices (van den Berg 2007: 188ff, 196).
	22 The high number of o tokens in 3.1 is due to frequent repetition of a sentence
	containing o.

DET woman here FUT know fast EMPH 'This woman will know things fast!'

To, like o, may also be combined with the aspectual marker ta and its suppletive form nango (29). The recordings and elicitations also revealed two instances of o ta but none of o nango (30).

O, but seemingly not to, may be combined with the negative possibility-expressing auxiliary verb man (32). However, both to and o do not appear to cooccur with the obligation marker mu.

(33) a. kande u to komoto flukufluku kon aki baka. (M4) maybe we FUT come.out early.early come here back 'Maybe we'll leave early and then/to come back here.'

  . Saramaccan. In The survey of pidgin and creole languages: Volume I English-based languages, Susanne M. Michaelis, Philippe Maurer, Martin Haspelmath and Magnus Huber (eds.), 27-38. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Arends, Jacques. 1989. Syntactic developments in Sranan: Creolization as a gradual process. Unpublished PhD dissertation, University of Nijmegen. Arends, Jacques. 1986. Genesis and development of the equative copula in Sranan. In Substrata versus universals in creole genesis, Pieter Muysken and Norval Smith

(eds.), 103-128. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

This does not hold across the board as Matawai also uses bisyllabic forms, e.g. holi 'to hold', and there is variation between mono-and bisyllabic forms.

The variation in the 1970s recordings is mostly context-based. suma is typically found in interview-like elicitation sessions while sombe/sembe appear more frequently in formal and informal interactions.