Die Creol taal

250 years of Negerhollands texts

[p. XI]

Abbreviations

Du.	Dutch
Eng.	English
Ge.	German
NH.	Negerhollands
Port.	Portuguese
Sp.	Spanish

English glosses¹

ACC	Accusative suffix	(non-Negerhollands forms)
ASP	Aspect particle	(le, lo)
BE	Copular verb ‘to be’	(bin, wees)
BAAS	Usual form to address a minister of the Moravian Brethren.
DAT	Dative suffix	(non-Negerhollands forms)
DEM	Demonstrative	(deese)
DET	Determiner	(die)
DIM	Diminutive (is not necessarily productive)
DUR	Durative marker	(lo)
EMP	Emphatic element	(da)
FOR	Complementizer, Purposive conjunction
FUT	Future tense	(sal, sa, lo)
GEN	Genitive marker/affix	(non-Negerhollands forms)
HAB	Habitual aspect	(le)
MOD	Modality particle	(lo, lolo, sa(l))
NA	Multifunctional preposition
NEG	Negation	(no)
PL	Plural	(usually non-Negerhollands forms)
PRF	Perfective aspect	(ka, kabba)
PRG	Progressive aspect	(lo)
PST	Past tense	(a)
RED	Reduplication
TMA	Tense, mood or aspect marker
1SG	First person singular pronoun
2PL	Second person plural pronoun

1 Between brackets examples of Negerhollands words which were represented in the interlinear translation by the abbreviations.

[p. XII]

3POS	Third person singular possessive pronoun (si, sie, shi)
3REF	Third person singular reflexive pronoun (si, sie, shi). (See Comments)
-	This represents the continuation of a word on the previous line. The proper gloss is generally under the first part of the word.
***	Meaning of the form is unknown to us.

Diplomatic symbols

The Negerhollands material, whether printed or manuscript, is presented unaltered. We have stayed as close to the original as possible and have not corrected spelling mistakes, etc. In fact, we have attempted to make a diplomatic edition of the Negerhollands material. This implies that we did not omit any information which can be rendered in a printed form, e.g. corrections by the author, original footnotes, etc. We kept various types of information by way of a consistently applied system of diplomatic symbols. Below, we list the symbols used²:

2 These symbols are based on the ones proposed by Verkruijsse (1973-1974).

1. Additions

<a>	a added on the line
<ol•a>	a added over the line
<ul•a>	a added under the line
<lm•a>	a added in left margin
<rm•a>	a added in right margin
<tm•a>	a added in top margin
<bm•a>	a added in bottom margin as a footnote
<*.*>	something is added, but illegible
*<a>*	a possibly added on line
[a]	a added by editors
<§a>	a added at end of paragraph or section
<np•a>	a added on next page, normal type page

2. Omissions

[-a]	a deleted
[-*.*]	deleted and illegible
[-a]<b>	a deleted, b added on line
[-a]<ol•b>	a deleted, b added over line
[-a]<ul•b>	a deleted, b added under line

[p. XIII]

3. Replacement

[a+]<b>

a is overwritten by b

4. Uncertain readings

*a*	a is uncertain
a*b*	b behind a is uncertain
*...(?)*	uncertain whether something is written
*word*	whole word is uncertain
A/a	uncertain whether upper case A or lower case a is intended
a/b	uncertain whether a or b is intended
ab\cd	uncertain whether ab and cd are written as one

Because of the automatic glossing, if it was uncertain whether two words were written as one they were split apart. The diplomatic symbol is in those cases mostly added to the second part.

5. Other metagraphic notations and remarks

In case of uncertain readings, we used one dot per illegible character, and in case of doubt about the number of characters, a question mark is added.

Two horizontal bars with one space between symbolizes blank space on the line: ||.

If synonyms or alternative expressions are given in the manuscript by placing them over or under one another, we represented this as follows: na|in ‘NA|in’ (where na is the upper form and the alternative form in is the lower).

Remarks about torn paper, note reference symbols lacking a note, etc. are placed between dollar signs: $..$.

The symbol for ‘addition on a following page’ only occurs with footnotes which continue on the next page, so this symbol only occurs as embedded in another note sign: <bm•b <np•a>>. Usually, such a note is continued in the bottom margin of the next page: <bm•b <np•bm•a>>, thus outside the normal type page.

Moravian missionary Böhner, who produced several large manuscript translations, sometimes makes use of asterisks and brackets. Also, he uses slashes in some cases. Our diplomatic use of slashes occurs only in between asterisks, and it can therefore be distinguished from Böhner's use.

[p. XIV]

Abbreviations in the manuscript: double characters are sometimes represented in the manuscript by a single character with a horizontal bar over it. Here, we wrote all abbreviated forms out in full, but we have kept the paleographic information by underlining the omitted parts, e.g. mamma ‘mother’.

We made use of underlinings in three different cases in the manuscripts:

1)	In case of abbreviations like Johs: we write Johannes;
2)	In case of double characters, often indicating lengthening, which is symbolized by Böhner as a horizontal bar above the character to be doubled, as in hop̄o ‘up’: we write the doubled character underlined: hoppo;
3)	In case of umlaut which is often symbolized by Böhner with a small e over the concerned character, as in ko^enig ‘king’: we represent the umlaut by placing the small ^e underlined behind die concerned character: koenig. When the German umlaut sign is used, we did so as well: könig. There is no overlap between umlaut and lengthening (doubling): gemākt ‘made’ > gemaakt; Juda^ea > Judaea; but overlap between umlaut and abbreviation occurs sometimes: ko^enig > koenig; sendr^e > sender, but we did not regard this as problematic.

General conventions

We have chosen to leave intact the original size of the lines in the manuscripts. Also, we chose not to repair ‘broken off’ words, but we left hyphens or spaces in their original place as they may be useful in e.g. research of Negerhollands prosody. These decisions necessitated the use of the minus sign (-) in the glosses by which we want to indicate that the pertinent form belongs to the last ‘word’ of the previous one, under which the gloss can be found. In some cases, the gloss is put under the second part when it contains the stem of a form.

The translation of morphology

Especially in the early texts written by Europeans, bound morphemes (affixes) can be encountered that seem to be used productively. Here, we often find derivational affixes such as diminutive -je/-ki ‘little -’, superlative -st ‘most -’, nominalizing -heid/-skap ‘-ness, -hood’ etc. instead of the analytic creole forms. They are often identical to their Dutch equivalents, both in form and use. It is usually unclear whether they were productive in the variety of Negerhollands known to the authors, or that they came directly from the Dutch superstate model.

In the same texts we often also encounter zero-derived (or, conveying the same sense: multifunctional) forms such as dood for ‘dead’ (adjective, Du. dood, dode, dooie), ‘death’ (noun, Du. dood) or ‘die’ (verb, Du. doodgaan, sterven). If Dutch affixes were really productive in Negerhollands, we would also have expected them in such cases.

[p. XV]

In this anthology, Dutch morphology is in principle regarded as fossilized, usually translated unanalyzed, and as such not treated as Negerhollands morphology; e.g. hoogste ‘highest’ and not: ‘high.SUP’. With this we did not necessarily mean to imply that Negerhollands should be a language without morphology, or that nothing of the grammar of Dutch could have been transferred to Negerhollands. We did analyze some morphology originating from Dutch, as if it were part of Negerhollands grammar. Especially in the plural formation of the nouns there is much variability. The Dutch inflectional plural markers -s/-en are as often present as they are lacking, and they are even used regularly in combination with the equally frequent Negerhollands analytical plural morpheme sender/sen ‘they’, e.g. die jüngers sender ‘DET apostle.PL 3PL’ (meaning ‘the apostles’). We have left it an open question whether plural inflection is productive in Negerhollands or not. Where English plural glosses are encountered, the Negerhollands word is not marked for plural itself, e.g. gebeente ‘bones’, or an equivalent expression, e.g. danki ‘thanks’.

Of Negerhollands compositions which do not exist in English, the morphemes or words are bound by a point, e.g. voetbank is glossed as foot.stool. Negerhollands compositions of which the morphemes or words are bound by a hyphen, are glossed alike, e.g. quaat-doenders is glossed as evil-doer.PL.

The translation of prepositions

In particular, prepositions are often not easily glossed. Generally, Negerhollands prepositions have the same semantic properties as their formal equivalents in Dutch, e.g. op means both ‘up’ and ‘on’ in Negerhollands and Dutch. And both prepositions op and aan are represented in English by ‘on’, both for Negerhollands and Dutch. The situation is symbolized by the following figure:

Consequently, we provided these and other prepositions with only one translation, leaving the correct interpretations for future researchers to establish. The inventory of (ambiguous) prepositions encountered and the glosses we used is listed below:

[p. XVI]

Preposition	Meaning	Gloss
aan	on, to	on
by	with, at, by, through	at
bovo	above, up, on, over	above
bovenst	upper, top	upper
door	by, through	through
om	for, to	to
onder	below, under, among	under
op	on, up	up
over	over, about, in (time)	over
ut	out, out of	out
van	of, from	of

The preposition na is dealt with below.

The translation of homonyms

Negerhollands words of a bicategorical status, which is the usual case with lexical words, e.g. leev ‘live (verb), life (noun)’, are glossed only in one way, here ‘live’ (viz. our remark on dood under morphology). Another example is fraj ‘good, nice (ADJ), well (ADV)’, which we chose to gloss as ‘good’.

True homonyms, such as lief ‘body, dear, love’, are translated in the sense corresponding with the context of their use. (As it was sometimes difficult to be strictly consistent in giving a single translation, we did the same with words like enigste ‘only, any’, leer ‘learn, teach, doctrine’, raad ‘advice, council’.) One exception is kom which means both ‘come’ and ‘become’: because word is also used for ‘become’, although often also as a passive auxiliary, we translated kom only as ‘come’. Since the productivity of word as a grammatical marker of the passive remains questionable, it is just translated as ‘become’ and not with an abstract grammatical symbol like ‘PASS’.

Expressions

The texts also contain many calques on Dutch expressions, e.g. woon onder, which apparently in both languages means ‘live among’. We opted for a literal translation, here ‘live under’, and made a comment on the expression in a footnote.

[p. XVII]

Comments on specific glosses

a	represents the indefinite article een, disregarding English morphophonology. Another meaning of een is ‘one’, either in the sense of a numeral or as an indefinite person pronoun. If the context did not help to solve the ambiguity, we translated een as ‘a’.
as	The word as was found in Negerhollands with three meanings: ‘as’ (Dutch als, as), ‘when’ (Dutch wanneer) and ‘than’ (Dutch als, as, dan). In combination with so it has the meaning ‘like’. We refrained from interpreting and translated it in all cases as ‘as’. (In Dutch, the word for ‘if’ is also als, as).
BE	represents the verb ‘to be’ in its suppletive forms bin and wees and its spelling variants.
DEM	is a demonstrative pronoun, usually deese, which in Negerhollands as well as in Dutch can have a singular or plural interpretation: ‘this, these’.
DET	can be seen as determiner, representing Negerhollands di or die, which originates from the Dutch demonstrative and relative pronoun die ‘that (one), (relative) who, which’. DET abstracts over its possible use as a determinate article or relative pronoun, and it enables us to avoid the problem of its possible demonstrative sense, which is the only sense determiner die has in Dutch. In some cases, diegeen, diejeen ‘the one [+human]’ may have preserved a demonstrative sense, ‘that one, he’. Also, it may have a plural meaning in both cases: ‘those’. To stay away from speculations about the author's intentions, we translated NH diegeen, diejeen as ‘DET.one’.
FOR	possibly comes from Dutch voor ‘for’, which can be used in substandard or dialectal Dutch as a purposive complementizer, normally in combination with the infinitival marker te: voor te ‘for to’ (rare in NH, only the early variants, as in the Poppo fragment (see section II, 1.1): vor tú). In Negerhollands, forms corresponding to for do not require such an extra complementizer to introduce a purposive clause. Other possible interpretations of NH for/vor/voor are as a modal auxiliary (ju no for du die ‘you are not to do that/it’) or prepositional, like locative ‘in front of’ or beneficial ‘for (someone)’. Unlike Du., but like Eng., NH for can also have the sense of ‘because’.
NA	is from Dutch naar ‘to’ (historically also spelled na) or na ‘after’, perhaps Portuguese na, a contraction of em a ‘in the’, or it has an African origin. The Dutch preposition has several directional interpretations in Dutch, and in Negerhollands (as in West- and French-Flemish) its functional range is even wider, including directional as well as locative and non-prepositional uses, e.g. introducing a benefactive argument. To sum up, Negerhollands na has according to the context the following different equivalents; ‘to, on, in, at, after,

[p. XVIII]

	by’. This highly multifunctional preposition na also occurs in combination with localizers as inessive binne ‘(being) inside’, which sometimes gives it an illative sense: nabinne ‘(being or going) inside’. Because these parts also occur independently of each other, but with possibly the same meanings, we translated both either just for themselves (‘NA’ and ‘inside’), or when written together we analyzed it as ‘NA.inside’. In the same way all occurrences of na, either in a compound or not, are translated as ‘NA’.
NEG	represents a negation either in the form of ‘no’ or ‘not’. The concept ‘nothing’ may be expressed in NH as no ... (een) ... goed ‘not (a) thing’, or as geen ‘not one, none’. We chose to translate geen as ‘NEG.one’, in analogy with diegeen ‘DET.one’.
so	The word so is found in Negerhollands with three meanings: ‘so’ (DU zo), ‘as’ (DU zo, as in zo gauw als ‘as soon as’) and ‘such’ (DU zo, as in zo als ‘such as, like’, zo een ‘such a’). Also this form is translated in an identical manner in all cases: ‘so’. Here, the Dutch form is also identical in all senses.
3PL	not only represents the personal pronoun of third person plural, but also the analytical plural marker, which is etymologically derived from the former.
3POS
3REF	is a form with different possible interpretations: the third person singular (reflexive) pronoun and the third person singular reflexive possessive pronoun (si, sie, shi). They were likely homonyms, and we have interpreted, i.e. translated, it depending on the context. Note that the form of the personal pronoun, for insta/nce, third person (NH. em), can also be used as a reflexive (Muysken & Van der Voort 1991, to appear). We glossed it always as 3SG however.

Orthography of the texts of de Josselin de Jong

Since the more or less phonetic orthography of de Josselin de Jong was hard to reproduce in this work, especially the combinations of different accents above one vowel, we have used some simplifications in the spelling as used in Ponelis (1988).

De Josselin de Jong	Ponelis
ā	aa
ē	ee
ī	ii
ō	oo
n dot above	ng
š	sh
ž	zh

[p. XIX]

List of illustrations

AU	=	Archiv der Brüder-Unität
RAU	=	Public Record Office of Utrecht
UBA	=	University Library of Amsterdam
1.	p.1	An example of the first page of ms. 322 (± 1780). Xerox copy. Original: AU NB VII R3, 6f.
2.	p.6	Map of the Caribbean.
3.	p.24	Portrait of Count von Zinzendorf. RAU R46, 622b.
4.	p.36	Friedensthal on St. Croix. From Oldendorp (1770). RAU.
5.	p.49	An example of the first page of the manuscript of Zinzendorf's letter (1739). Xerox copy. Original: AU R15 Ba - 1.II.6.
6.	p.70	Pages 486-487 of Zinzendorf (1742).
7.	p.79	A School of the Moravian Brethren on St. Croix. RAU R46, 550.
8.	p.90	Archiv der Brüder-Unität, Herrnhut. 1993. C. van Rossem
9.	p.108	St. Thomas. RAU R46, 559.
10.	p.119	Sugar. From Rochefort (1665). UBA 438 B 20.
11.	p.144	Bethaniën on St. John. RAU R46, 560.
12.	p.182	Fragment from ABC-boekje voor die Neger-Kinders. Barby: 1800.
13.	p.201	Neu Herrnhut on St. Thomas. From Oldendorp (1770). RAU.
14.	p.210	Cassave. From Du Tertre (1667). UBA 447 E 25.
15.	p.224	Pages 233-234 of Samleren. Kjøbenhavn: 1788.
16.	p.231	Emmaus on St. John. RAU R46, 555.
17.	p.253	Sugar. From Du Tertre (1667). UBA 447 E 25.
18.	p.266	Neu Herrnhut on St. Thomas. RAU R46, 554.