on the relationship of gullah and bahamian

The American Dialect Society

On the Relationship of Gullah and BahamianAuthor(s): John HolmSource: American Speech, Vol. 58, No. 4 (Winter, 1983), pp. 303-318Published by: Duke University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/455145 .

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ON THE RELATIONSHIP OF GULLAH AND BAHAMIAN

JOHN HOLM

Hunter College, City University of New York

B OTH GULLAH AND BAHAMIAN appear to have an immediate ancestor in the eighteenth-century creole English spoken on plantations in

the American South.' The intertwining history of the Carolinas and the Bahamas, coupled with linguistic similarities most evident in their lexi- cons, suggest that Gullah and Bahamian are in fact sister dialects of Atlantic Creole English.2

The Dictionary ofBahamian English (Holm with Shilling 1982) casts new

light on Cassidy and Hancock's 1980 debate in American Speech on the

place of Gullah. As Hancock points out, "Of all the western hemisphere anglo-creoles, Gullah is the least satisfactorily accounted for in its rela-

tionship both to other such languages and to the varities of black vernacular English spoken in the United States, with which it is often linked" (1980, p. 17). Cassidy found that the lexical evidence from Hancock's 1969 comparative study "virtually requires a common English pidgin source for the language of slaves taken from Barbados to Surinam, Jamaica, and South Carolina from 1651 to 1670. It suggests, though it does not require, creolization in Barbados, perhaps already begun in Africa" (1980, p. 13). Hancock, doubting the existence of an

early, stabilized Barbadian creole, traced Gullah's ancestry to an early Guinea Coast Creole English that later evolved into Sierra Leone Krio, as well as other varieties of creolized English. He has now (1982; forthcoming) elaborated this position in a preliminary classification of the varieties of Atlantic Creole English. In this family tree, Guinea Coast Creole English has a Lower Guinea branch, which has a Caribbean

branch, which has an Eastern or Lesser Antillean branch, which has a Leewards branch, which has a Gullah branch, which has Sea Islands Creole and Afro-Seminole on one branch, with Bahamian and Caicos on the other. Although this might seem to imply a mother (Gullah)/daughter (Bahamian) relationship between the two varieties discussed here, Hancock uses "Gullah" to refer to the earlier American plantation creole and "Sea Islands Creole" to refer to the variety of Gullah currently spoken on the Sea Islands of South Carolina.3 Hancock, then, agrees with the position presented here that Gullah and Bahamian are sisters.

The use of the term sister here is to be understood as a metaphor for a close relationship in both heredity and development, but not in the strict



304 AMERICAN SPEECH 58.4 (1983)

sense of the relationship on traditional Stammbaume for Indo-Euro-

pean and other presumably less mixed language families. Such usage would be inappropriate for varieties that are not distinct languages that evolved during relative isolation from one another, but rather mutually comprehensible varieties (with the notable exception of the Surinamese creoles, with their distinct history) which have remained in relatively close contact with both their European mother and one another as

spoken in maritime colonies which in the main had strong political and economic links. As Edward Bendix points out (personal communica-

tion), the dynamic importance of diffusion on all linguistic levels suggests that the best model for understanding the interrelationship of the Atlantic Creoles is that of the dialect continuum, susceptible to waves of innovation. Given the structural and other similarities which can be traced to the origins they share in Europe and Africa (as well as the

frequently continuing influence of areal contact phenomena), there are

grounds for extending the continuum model to include creoles of other lexical bases (Holm 1976).

To return to the more specific relationship between Gullah and

Bahamian, Stewart is also of the opinion that "structurally, Bahamian

(Creole) English occupies an intermediate position between the other

English-based creoles in the Caribbean proper and American Black

English-a position quite similar to that of Gullah. Indeed, Bahamian and Gullah resemble each other so much that they must have a close historical affinity" (personal communication). Moreover, Gullah speakers have remarked to him that Bahamians "speak Gullah." Similarly, a Bahamian visiting a Gullah-speaking area some years ago commented:

When I first went to Liberty County [Georgia] ... I was more amazed to find that they didn't only look like the people of Bain Town [Nassau], but they talked like them. Their accent of the spoken English was almost identical with that of the people among whom I grew up. [Eneas 1976, p. 54]

Gullah and Bahamian use of the term Geechee is particularly intriguing regarding the relationship of these two speech communities. In Brad-

ley's "Word-list from South Carolina," Geechee is defined as "a low

country term for a Negro" (1950, p. 31). Gullah use of the term seems to be fairly old; it was recorded by Parsons in 1923 (p. 91):

"De cow-doctor come aroun', hollerin' 'Tea-cat!' " "No, Baby, you talk jes' like a Guichy. You mean de conductor come 'roun',

hollerin' 'Ticket!' " "Yeah, das what I mean.



THE RELATIONSHIP OF GULLAH AND BAHAMIAN 305

In Florida, however, the same term means "a negro from the Islands, as from the Bahamas" (ADD). In the Bahamas, Geechee means "a rustic Black American from the South, or the speech of such a person" (DBE). It is uncertain to what extent the term connotes unintelligibility as

opposed to intelligibility of speech, but this may well vary. In a current California variety of black English, Geechie means "a Gullah, or any Black person whose speech is peculiar or unintelligible" (Folb 1980). The term seems to derive from the Ogeechee river plantations of Georgia (Bradley 1950, p. 31; W3), although Turner (1949, p. 194) suggests an African source, "Mende gid3i 'a country called Kissy (Liberia).'" It seems

likely that the word was brought from the American mainland to the Bahamas along with a substantial number of other words. The remain- der of this article will deal with these words after examining the historical circumstances that seem to link the development of Gullah and Bahamian.

As early as 1917 Elsie Clews Parsons, an anthropologist and folklorist

very alert to language, noted:

Between the Bahama Islands and the Carolinas there is an historical connection which may account in part for the number of tales they have, I find, in common. During the period of the Revolutionary War, a number of Tories known as United Empire Loyalists migrated from the Carolinas to the Bahamas; and they took with them, of course, their household slaves. [p. 169]

Later (1923) Parsons refers specifically to linguistic similarities:

It is interesting to recognize in Sea Islands lore many riddles and tales that have been recorded in the Bahamas and told not only like them as to pattern, but like them as to phrases or little turns of expression which suggest historical connection with the Carolinas. [p. xvii]

Although many of the features which Parsons pointed out can be found in other dialects of Atlantic Creole English (see below), her observation was essentially correct and considerably ahead of its time.

Historically the links between the Bahamas and the Carolinas go back

not only to the American revolution but to the seventeenth century. In 1648 some English religious dissenters from Bermuda founded a colony on the Bahamian island of Eleuthera; in 1656 they were joined by "some troublesome slaves and native Bermudians and all the free Negroes" who had been exiled (Albury 1975, p. 45).4 In 1670 the Bahama Islands were included in a patent granted by Charles II to the Lords Proprietors of Carolina. As a Bahamian historian comments:




All the Lords Proprietors of the Bahamas were also Proprietors of Carolina, and that colony became something of a second motherland to our own. We looked there for advice, assistance and trade... Bahamians travelled to Carolina, Virginia and Massachusetts as freely as if those colonies were an extension of their own territory and many of them settled there when conditions were bad at home. There were few Bahamians who had not some relative on the mainland. [Albury 1975, p. 90]

Although the Lords Proprietors were later replaced by separate gover- nors for the Bahamas and North and South Carolina, these areas remained closely linked politically as well as economically throughout the first century of their colonial history. Their trading in slaves is

implicit in the 1793 Georgia legislation reacting to the slave revolt in

Haiti, "forbidding the importation of slaves from the Bahamas, the West

Indies, and Florida" (Turner 1949, p. 4). It seems likely that the Bahamians' modern perception of themselves

as more a part of North America than the West Indies dates back to this

period of their history. Although there is no linguistic data from the

eighteenth century by which to compare the speech of the Bahamas to that of the southern mainland colonies, it seems likely that there were indeed important similarities, especially in light of the observation that "individuals create the patterns for their linguistic behaviour so as to resemble those of the group or groups with which from time to time they wish to be identified" (Le Page and Tabouret-Keller 1979). It is likely that the speech of these communities was already similar during the American colonial period, and evidence suggests that it became even more similar after the American revolution.

During the course of the eighteenth century, blacks came to outnum- ber whites in both South Carolina and the Bahamas. In 1786 it was noted that "the number of inhabitants in the whole province of South Carolina amounts to about sixty thousand whites, and above double that number of blacks" (Fenning and Collyer, p. 47). On the eve of the American revolution the Bahamas (with a population one-fiftieth the size of South

Carolina's) had 1,722 whites and 2,333 blacks (Saunders 1978, p. 49). The ensuing influx of American loyalists and their slaves had profound demographic effects on the small population of the Bahamas. In the

colony as a whole, the proportion of blacks increased from 58% in 1783 to 66% in 1788, but in Nassau the black population more than doubled from 1,739 to 4,019 during the same period (Craton 1962, p. 166). If the

speech of mainland and island blacks had indeed been similar but distinct up to this point, it is uncertain what sociolinguistic forces

prevailed in Nassau to shape their eventual blending, but it is likely that




elements of both survive in the black Nassauvian English of today (Holm 1980, p. 50).

On many of the outer islands, however, it seems clear that it was the mainland creole that predominated for the simple reason that it had little real competition. Most loyalists from the American South went

directly to the largely unsettled islands to the southeast to set up cotton

plantations. This crop soon exhausted the thin soil of the coral islands and by the early 1800s the rest of the Bahamian cotton industry had been destroyed by insects. Most of the white owners were ruined

financially and gradually abandoned their plantations, leaving their slaves to fend for themselves in virtual freedom even before their

emancipation in 1834. There were other circumstances that strengthened the Bahamas'

linguistic ties with the mainland even after political ties had been severed. Towards the end of the eighteenth century there arose in some of the more isolated areas of the Bahamas small settlements of blacks who were "either free or pretending to be so. They are mostly, however, runaways from American States" (Whylly 1789, p. 8). In the 1820s there came another group of refugees, a branch of the Afro-Seminoles from Florida who spoke a variety of Gullah (Hancock forthcoming); they settled in the northern part of the Bahamian island of Andros (Porter 1945). Later economic activities also brought increased contact with the mainland, including gun-running (1860s), migrant labor in Florida

(early 1900s), rum-running (1920s and '30s), and migrant agricultural labor (1940s). Today there is a large Bahamian community in the Miami area of Florida, as well as massive traffic in tourists going from one

country to the other. In assessing the linguistic similarities between Gullah and Bahamian,

there is a serious problem in sorting out those arising from their shared

history and contact, as opposed to those arising from their common

ancestry. This problem is already evident from the list of common features noted by Parsons (1923, p. xvii):

A number of the dialectal forms of the Bahamas and the Sea Islands appear in the English spoken in Sierra Leone: um (them), too (very), fo' (to), aintee (enty, South Carolina) (isn't), kare (carried), yeye (eye), tief (thieve), tote (carry), gie (give), titty (sister), meet (find), out (put out), ooman (woman), sing (song), dat make (that is the cause), oonah (you), blow (breathe), reach (arrive), meet up wid (meet), fo' true (for a certainty), fambly (family).5

Although Parsons' observation is important (it is among the earliest

regarding the similarity of English creoles on both sides of the Atlantic), the evidence she presents does not support postulating a unique rela-




tionship among these three English creoles.6 Their relatedness is pri- marily through the earlier ancestor(s) they share with the other Atlantic creoles. With only one or two exceptions, the terms cited by Parsons above are all found elsewhere (e.g. in Central American English). At least three are related to words in creoles of lexical bases other than

English, namely too 'very', oonah 'you', and dat make 'that is the cause'. Too in the sense of 'very' could be related to the standard usage

described in the OED: "too as a mere intensive: very (now chiefly an emotional feminine colloquialism)." However, it seems more closely related to the Atlantic Creole usage of too much or tummuch in the sense of

'very' or 'a lot' (not necessarily to excess). This in turn is strikingly close in both form and meaning to dimdas 'very much' in the Creole Portu-

guese of Cape Verde as opposed to demais 'too much' in standard

Portuguese (Meintel 1975, p. 239). Oonah 'you (plural)' was found on the Bahamian island of San Salva-

dor in the form ona /6na/, and Parsons recorded yonner (probably /y6no/) on Andros (1918, p. 60), but the most frequent form in the Bahamas

today is yinna. Closely related forms are found not only in the English- based creoles--Gullah yinnuh and yunnah (ADD), Krio ina and yuna (KED), and western Caribbean unu (DJE)-but also in Virgin Islands Creole Dutch yina (Hancock 1980, p. 32), all meaning 'you (plural)'. Their source would seem to be the convergence of a variety of African forms for this pronoun, e.g. Kongo yeno, Mbundu yenu, Limba yina (Hancock 1971, p. 645); Wolof yena (Dalby 1972, p. 186); Yoruba nyin (DYL); or Common Bantu *-yinui (Guthrie 1970, p. 184). The most

probable point of convergence would be the African pidgin or Proto- Creole Ursprache posited by Hancock and others, although it is by no means clear what the time-frame and lexical base of this hypothetical language may have been. There is the intriguing possibility of even more related forms in Sdo Tome Portuguese Creole indse (Ivens Ferraz 1979,

p. 62), also 'you (plural)', as well as Haitian nou meaning not only 'we' but also 'you (plural)' (Valdman et al. 1981).

Finally dat make 'that is the cause' is also found in Jamaican Creole

English along with the interrogative form wa mek 'why?' (DJE). There is a

parallel in Haitian ki ft (literally 'what makes') with both meanings (Valdman et al. 1981). This seems to be a calque on an African construction such as IBO ge ne mere (DJE) or Yoruba kil'6 se (Rowlands 1969, p. 26), both 'why?' (literally 'what makes?').

The point of the above discussion is to illustrate the difficulty of identifying the precise nature of the relationship that may exist between




two similar features (whether lexical, semantic, syntactic or even phonological) in creole languages.

It might seem safe to surmise that features common to creoles of different lexical bases have resulted from an early common ancestor (or at least an early period of development shared by both), but even this is

by no means certain. Areal contact phenomena and other factors such as

linguistic universals may have worked to produce many such similarities across lexical lines. Possible examples in Haitian French and Bahamian

English include twa pye and three-stones, both meaning 'an outdoor fire for cooking with three large stones to support the pot';' boutey and bottle, both meaning 'pieces of broken glass'; neg and nigger, both meaning 'any human' or 'adult male friend'. Although plausible common sources are

admittedly hard to find, lexicographers working in creole languages would be well advised to stop short of calling such pairs "related" unless

they can offer specific etyma that make sense both linguistically and

historically. Such a case might be the semantic parallels between Baha- mian seed 'a tight curl of a black person's hair in the form of a dark ball

against the skin' (usually considered unattractive and in need of brush-

ing), and Haitian grenn idem (cf. French graine 'seed') (Valdman et al.

1981). In this case the same metaphor is found in an African language: Ibo umpolu ose (literally 'pepper seed') has the same extended meaning (F. Okolo, personal communication). This source is supported by the

synonym pwav in Haitian (H. Gaujean, personal communication) as well as Reunion Creole French seiv6 grj pwav 'cheveux tres crepus (en grains de poivre)' (Chaudenson 1974, p. 21). Moreover, in the English-based Creole of Jamaica "when a boy has very short hair which grows close to the scalp in little balls of fluff (very negroid) it or he is called 'black-pepper-brain' " (DJE). In American English peppercorn can be used of hair to mean 'woolly and closely spiraled into twisted clumps or knots' (W3), but this seems likely to be a loan translation. The OED guessed that peppercorn meant "? of peppercorn colour: dusky black" from a single quotation (1893, Travel and Adventure in Southeast Africa). A further argument against the native status of this meaning in English is that its referent is

unlikely to have been known in Britain before 1500. Because the relationship between Gullah and Bahamian seems to be

closer than the relationship of either with any other creoles (excepting Afro-Seminole and, in all likelihood, the as yet unstudied English of Turks and Caicos), an attempt will be made to exclude from the present discussion those features shared by the two which are found in other creoles. However, in view of both the limits of the knowledge of the




present writer and the considerable amount of terra remaining lexically incognita, correction is invited when related forms do, in fact, exist elsewhere.

While the focus of this discussion is on lexicon, the linguistic level which most readily reveals the impact of social history, it might be noted here that the similarities between Gullah and Bahamian extend to other levels, as could be expected. The syntax of Bahamian is very similar to that of contemporary Gullah (cf. Turner 1949, pp. 209-31). In phonol- ogy, the Bahamian diphthong /AI/ corresponds to American standard /I/ or /at before a consonant, a feature found not only in Gullah (Stewart, personal communication) but also in the regional speech of coastal North America from Brooklyn to eastern Texas. In most Bahamian

speech the normal reflex of standard /aI/ is also /aI/, but on those islands settled principally from the American South (e.g. Exuma) its reflex is the

monophthongized /a:/ before voiced consonants which is typical of Southern and black speech in the United States (Burling 1973, p. 33) but not of Caribbean varieties of English.

Regarding lexicon, it should be borne in mind that data on Gullah is still largely fragmentary." A definitive lexical comparison will not be

possible until the publication of Stewart's monumental work (in preparation), which is likely to include many of the southern regionalisms also found in Bahamian, e.g., hoe-cake 'cornbread', hopping John 'a rice dish', jute-box 'juke box', light bread 'risen bread', okry 'okra', cracker 'poor white', etc. With a few notable exceptions such as pone 'bread or baked pudding' from Algonquinian dipan 'baked', or possum 'animal species' from Algon- quinian pdiisi2m 'white animal' (both W3), words clearly originating on the North American mainland are not generally found in the English creoles of the Caribbean.'

For the sake of convenience, the terms common to Gullah and Bahamian (but not to other English creoles, as far as known) will be discussed by origin. First, many of these terms can be traced to archaic or

regional British usages, as dialect geographers have been pointing out for quite some time. Their long quarrel with creolists on the origin of Gullah and black English (e.g. Turner 1949, pp. 5-11) hinged on forcing an unnecessary choice between influence from without and from within the normal development of European English. This phase of the dis-

agreement now seems to be resolved; although the role of wholesale

pidginization and creolization in the particular history of American

black English is still a matter of lively debate, there seems to be growing recognition of the external as well as internal forces that have worked to

produce Gullah and black English. Current informed debate is generally




on the extent rather than the existence of the influence of those external forces.

Regarding archaisms, it should be noted that many usages which are now archaic in standard English have survived in regional British usage, and it is often artificial to distinguish between the two. Still, it is worthwhile to note the date of the latest quotation with parallel usage in the OED since this might later serve as a clue in piecing together social

history:

1549 gallus 'gallows' 1782 anthem 'a religious song' 1610 bass 'to sing bass' 1800 bog (absolute) 'to sink, become 1738 till '(so... ) that' stuck' 1762 nation 'a great number' 1856 raise 'to sing (a hymn)'

Several usages common to Gullah and Bahamian are indicated simply as "archaic": maul 'heavy wooden club', prove 'to test', pooty 'pretty', ever

'always'. Regarding regionalisms, Johnson (1930, p. 17, quoted by Turner

1949, p. 10) claimed that Gullah is "directly descended from the midland and southern English dialects." Although the present sampling is much too small to draw any firm conclusions, it offers little support for this claim. Only two words found in Gullah and Bahamian are identified with midland or southern English dialect usage by the EDD, namely holt 'hold' and been an' marking past action. Moreover, Gullah and Bahamian use of the latter seems to have been influenced semantically by African

preverbal markers of anterior tense, such as Yoruba ti or Efik ma. More words seem to be of Scots origin: outen 'out of; creeter or critter 'creature'

(cf. Scots crettur idem); biggity 'self-important, overbearing' (cf. Scots

biggit 'wealthy').' Furthermore, Bahamian bret 'to speak one's mind' and Gullah crack bre't' 'to open one's mouth (to speak)' both seem related to Scots breath 'opinion'. The DBE reveals that Gullah and Bahamian include hundreds of British regionalisms common to other English creoles as well; these now need to be tabulated (as in Holm 1981) to see if more general trends emerge.

Next, part of the lexicon common to Gullah and Bahamian can be traced to African words or their influence: booboo 'noxious flying insect' (cf. Fula mbubu 'a fly', Kongo mbu 'mosquito', Fon bi~bu 'insect'); Baha- mian malafee and Gullah malawu, both 'whisky' (cf. Kongo and Luba malavu 'palm wine', also the source of Puerto Rican Spanish malafo 'aguardiente', Alvarez Nazario 1974, p. 217); Bahamian mojo and Gullah molo 'witchcraft' (cf. Fula moto'o 'medicine man'); ninny 'breast' (cf. Mende pini idem); Bahamian Sabye and Gullah Saba, female personal




names (cf. Wolof Saba, personal name); Sukie, female personal name (cf. Mende Suki male personal name)." Except where otherwise attributed, the preceding etymologies are from Turner (1949); he also claims an African origin (accepted by W3) for Gullah and Bahamian tabby 'mortar or cement mixed with oyster shells'. This last seems doubtful: Arabic

(tabix 'cement, mortar') would seem to be the lender rather than the borrower of the more southerly African words (Wolof tabax 'the wall of a house made of sand, lime, mud, etc.'; Hausa tabo 'mud'; Kongo ntaba 'a

muddy place'). Corominas (1967) notes Spanish tapia 'adobe wall' as

"vieja palabra comiin a las tres lenguas romances peninsulares y a la

lengua de Oc, y propagada desde Espafia al airabe y hasta el turco." Although his putative Latin source is conjectural, the /b, p/ contrast

existing in Spanish but lacking in Arabic supports an Iberian origin. Beyond the above, Gullah and Bahamian share some constructions

which seem to be translations of African equivalents. First, personal names can be followed by and those to indicate the person's relatives or usual associates. This appears to be a hypercorrection of the creole

pluralizer -dem (same position and meaning) by analogy with the demonstrative dem (as in dem people) becoming those. In creoles of many lexical bases the pronoun for 'they' can follow an animate noun to indicate

plurality and definiteness, or follow a personal noun to indicate the

person's associates. An exactly parallel construction is found in many West African languages, such as Yoruba (Rowlands 1969, p. 196).12

The second case of likely African influence on a Gullah and B3ahamian construction is the use of be to mean not only 'to be (habitually)'-as in

many Caribbean creoles and American black English-but also before

simple verbs and verbs ending in -in' to indicate habitual action. The latter construction seems to be derived from the former, which in turn

apparently stems from the the use of be after the habitual marker does

(Rickford 1974). Does has the allomorphs /iz/ and /z/, which may have become associated with be because of their similarity to is. The form and

meaning of the habitual marker does are clearly related to the English auxiliary does, which conveys (like the simple present tense in general) the ideal of habitual action, e.g. "He does drink." Moreover, in the seventeenth century affirmative does did not require emphasis; Le Page (1977, p. 115) points out similar usages in British dialects, e.g. East Devon sheep da browse and Irish your cow does by threspassin on my fields (EDD). The creole construction probably resulted from the convergence of European and African influence: the use of does to mark habitual

action was clearly reinforced semantically and syntactically by African habitual markers such as Yoruba mda (Rowlands 1969, p. 102). Like mda,




Bahamian does has a semantic range exceeding that of English does in that it can indicate habitual action in the past, e.g. In my teenage I ever does

gofishnin' in de dinghy boat (i.e. 'When I was a teenager I always used to go fishing in the dinghy').'3

Other words common to Gullah and Bahamian which can be derived from miscellaneous sources (including phonological and semantic pro- cesses) are listed below in tabular form for the sake of brevity. Starred forms are also found in the regional speech of American whites (F.G. Cassidy, personal communication):'4

ball 'bullet'* red grits 'cornmeal' beastes 'beasts'* red meal 'cornmeal' boar 'male' ride 'give a ride' break 'without money' rig 'devise'* bubba 'brother'* sand spur 'sandbur'* bust out 'leave suddenly' selfish 'introverted' Chaney 'China' settlement 'village' con 'cousin' short of patient 'quick-tempered' dress down 'dress up' silent 'silence' fowl-crow 'crowing of rooster' sperit 'ghost'* gutlin' 'greedy' sree 'three' hant 'ghost'* thunder snake 'snake species' make a maze 'be amazed' toothache tree 'tree species' murra 'mother' trust no mistake 'take no chances' more 'n all 'in particular' turn-out 'lodge celebration' muckle 'myrtle' work out 'work as a servant in someone no-manners 'impolite' else's home'

In this paper I have offered both historical and linguistic evidence to

support the conclusion, shared by Hancock and Stewart, that Gullah and Bahamian are closely related creoles sharing an immediate ancestor in the eighteenth-century creole spoken in the American South. To con-

clude, I would like to take up the question raised by Hancock in the

opening quotation regarding the relationship of Gullah (and therefore

Bahamian) to the varieties of vernacular English spoken by blacks in the United States. Hancock concludes (1980, p. 29) that "Gullah is a linguistic isolate whose speakers differ greatly in social and linguistic history from speakers of Afro-American English dialects elsewhere in the

country." He has also stated that "to consider BVE simply as a more

rapidly decreolized form of Gullah-itself seen by some as a kind of once more wide-spread plantation creole-still admits of divergence, and the

development of two systems as a result" (1979, p. 19). However, Han-

cock does see Gullah and Black English as related through a common ancestor (personal communication). Ultimately, any distinction between




"systems" is not helpful in attempting to determine the relatedness of creole and post-creole varieties. At least two systems are always at work when a creole is a part of a synchronic continuum, but this complication must not confuse the perception of the relative position of two different creole or post-creole varieties on a diachronic continuum. It is clearly useful to think of Bahamian or Gullah as an entity, but each represents the collision of two distinct linguistic systems. William Stewart (personal communication) reports the following regarding the interaction of Gul- lah and black English, which I found to parallel the interaction of creole and post-creole English in the Bahamas: such a great variety of overlap- ping linguistic features is involved that even within a given community one simply cannot say-except with total arbitrariness-where Gullah leaves off and black English begins, although no one would argue the fact that each represents a different "system." It seems likely that the

synchronic relationship of Gullah and black English has a parallel in their historical relationship. While I would not go so far as to use the

metaphor of mother and daughter to describe the relationship between Gullah and black vernacular English, syntactic evidence (e.g. the similar

patterns of copula use as described in Holm 1978, pp. 272-73) would

point to Gullah and Bahamian having a deceased sister-the mother of their niece.

NOTES

1. This paper was first presented at the Fourth Biennial Conference of the Society for Caribbean Linguistics in Paramaribo, Suriname in September, 1982. For their helpful comments on an earlier draft of this paper, I would like to thank Professors Frank Anshen, Edward Bendix, Hazel Carter, Frederic Cas- sidy, Glenn Gilbert, Charles Gilman, Ian Hancock, Robert Le Page, Salikoko Mufwene, Patricia Nichols, Alison Shilling, and William Stewart. Responsibility for any errors, however, remains solely my own.

2. This term was first used by Hancock (1969) to refer to the varieties of creolized English spoken in West Africa and the Americas; it is useful in

distinguishing these varieties from others (e.g. in Australia and Papua New Guinea) in which African influence is less certain.

3. To avoid confusion, I will continue to use Gullah to refer to the current

variety, in accordance with the prevailing usage of the term. 4. Although links between the English spoken in Bermuda and the Bahamas

remain unexplored due to the almost total lack of published data on Bermudian

English, there is some indication that such links do in fact exist. The Bahamian

expression otherwise from this, still found on Eleuthera, appears to be related to the Bermudian phrase otherwise than that (Ayres 1933, p. 5), not reported elsewhere to my knowledge. The importance of Bermuda (today predominantly




black) has yet to be examined in tracing the spread of English to the New World. Its settlement dates from the 1609 shipwreck of an English vessel bound for

Virginia. It was from Bermuda that the English explored much of the Carib- bean, discovering Providence Island off Central America in 1629 and settling it the following year (Floyd 1967. p. 17), which led to the planting of English in

Nicaragua, where it has survived until the present. 5. Lest this list be given undue weight as support for Hancock's position, it

should be noted that Parsons made these remarks before her visits to the Lesser Antilles (1924-27), after which she could have ascribed many of the items on this list to the latter area as well.

6. Probably by coincidence, however, a case could by made for such a

relationship: "In 1776 the English authorities had stipulated that any American- owned slave who escaped to fight for the Crown would automatically be freed. Therefore, thousands of slaves did this" (Hancock 1971, p. 12). These freedmen were taken to Nova Scotia by the defeated British, who eventually settled many of them in Sierra Leone. Although the origin of tote 'carry' is unclear--cf. Kongo tota 'to pick up', Mbundu tuta 'to carry' (Turner 1949, p. 203), but also Anglo- Saxon totian 'to lift' (Hancock 1969, p. 68)-its first use in the New World was

probably on the North American mainland. This would explain why tote is found in Sierra Leone Krio (and its offshoot in Cameroon) but not in any New World creoles except Gullah and Bahamian (Hancock 1969, p. 36).

7. Abraham Oyedeji (personal communication) notes the parallel Yoruba term drb met?i (literally 'three hearth-stones') referring to three stones placed together to support a pot over a fire.

8. Sources for all of the following can be found in the DBE. 9. An exception is likely in the still-undocumented lexicon of the black

English of the Dominican Republic's Samanai peninsula, a variety being studied

by Shana Poplack and David Sankoff, as well as Jose Vigo. Blacks migrated to this region from Philadelphia in the 1830s. For similar reasons, regional usages from the American South are to be expected in the speech of the descendants of other emigrant groups in Sierra Leone and Liberia.

10. However, the last two are found in English dialects, according to Peter

Trudgill (personal communication). 11. However, Hazel Carter points out the British use of Sukie as a diminutive

of Susan. 12. Salikoko Mufwene takes issue with some points of this interpretation.

"Dem denotes both definiteness and plurality. In prenominal position 'definiteness' seems to be foregrounded (though plurality is still denoted); this is what makes for the demonstrative interpretation 'those'. In postnominal position, the construction seems to involve some sort of pronominalization in which the delimited noun itself is actually pronominalized. This pronoun has eventually cliticized and been identified as a plural marker. Note that this plural marker is, to my knowledge, used only when the noun is preceded by a definite article. ... The construction with an' dem seems to carry the same form of pronominalization, too. But note the need for an' here. And I believe that the stress on this dem is heavier than on the other postnominal dem. If my perception is correct, dem in an' dem is less of a clitic if at all anaphoric. It seems to be a full pronoun which refers to the associates of the named individual .... In the African languages




that I am more fluent in (viz. Yansi, Kikongo-Kituba and Lingala) the counter-

part of Jaaj an' dem is ba-George (literally 'plural' + 'George', without 'and'). I think this leaves some room for a small dose of universalist hypothesis" (personal communication).

13. Gullah does can also indicate habitual action in the past (Stewart, personal communication).

14. Pauline Christie has informed me since the writing of this paper that break and work out are both current in Jamaica with the meanings given here.

REFERENCES

ADD. American Dialect Dictionary, ed. Harold Wentworth. New York: Crowell, 1944.

Albury, Paul. 1975. The Story of the Bahamas. London: MacMillan Caribbean. Alvarez Nazario, Manuel. 1974. El elemento afro-negroide en el espafiol de Puerto

Rico. San Juan: Instituto de Cultura Puertorriquefia. Ayres, Henry M. 1933. "Bermudian English." American Speech 7: 3-10.

Bradley, F. W. 1950. "A Word-list from South Carolina." Publication of the American Dialect Society 14: 11-73.

Burling, Robbins. 1973. English in Black and White. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.

Cassidy, Frederic G. 1980. "The Place of Gullah." American Speech 55: 3-15. Chaudenson, Robert. 1974. Le lexique du parler creole de la Reunion. Paris:

Chapion. Corominas, Joan. 1967 Breve diccionario etimol6gico de la lengua castellana. Madrid:

Editorial Gredos. Craton, Michael. 1962. History of the Bahamas. London: Collins.

Dalby, David. 1972. "The African Element in American English." In Thomas Kochman, ed. Rappin' and Stylin' Out: Communication in Urban Black America. Urbana: Univ. of Illinois Press.

DARE. Dictionary of American Regional English, ed. Frederic G. Cassidy. Cam-

bridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University. Forthcoming. DBE. Dictionary of Bahamian English, by John Holm with Alison Shilling. Cold

Spring, N.Y.: Lexik House Publishers, 1982.

DJE. Dictionary of Jamaican English, ed. Frederic G. Cassidy and Robert B. Le

Page. 2d edition. New York: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1980. DYL. Dictionary of the Yoruba Language, by E. Sowande. Ibadan, Nigeria: Oxford

Univ. Press, 1913. EDD. English Dialect Dictionary, by Joseph Wright. 6 vols. Oxford: Oxford Univ.

Press, 1898-1905. Eneas, Cleveland. 1976. Bain Town. Nassau: Timpaul Publishing Co.

Fenning, D., and G. Collyer. 1786. An Encyclopaedia of North and South America.

Reprint. Surrey: Unwin Bros., 1976.

Floyd, Troy S. 1967. The Anglo-Spanish Struggle for Mosquitita. Albuquerque: Univ. of New Mexico Press.

Folb, Edith A. 1980. Runnin' Down Some Lines: The Language and Culture of Black

Teenagers. Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press.




Guthrie, M. 1970. Comparative Bantu. Farnborough: Gregg International Pub- lisher.

Hancock, Ian F. 1969. "A Provisional Comparison of the English-Based Atlantic Creoles." African Language Review 8: 7-72.

. 1971. "A Study of the Sources and Development of the Lexicon of Sierra Leone Creole." Ph.D. thesis, Univ. of London.

. 1979. "The Relationship of Black Vernacular English to the Atlantic Creoles." Working paper of the African and Afro-American Studies and Research Center, Univ. of Texas at Austin.

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Holm, John. 1976. "Copula Variability on the Afro-American Continuum." Paper presented at the Conference of the Society for Caribbean Linguistics in

Georgetown, Guyana. . 1978. "The Creole English of Nicaragua's Miskito Coast: its Sociolinguis-

tic History and a Comparative Study of its Lexicon and Syntax." Ph.D. thesis, Univ. of London. Ann Arbor: University Microfilms International.

. 1980. "African Features in White Bahamian English." English World-Wide 1: 45-65.

. 1981. "Sociolinguistic History and the Creolist." In Arnold Highfield and Albert Valdman, eds. Historicity and Variation in Creole Studies. Ann Arbor: Karoma Press.

Ivens Ferraz, Luiz. 1979. The Creole of Sdo Tome. Johannesburg: Witwatersrand Univ. Press.

KED. Krio-English Dictionary, by C. Fyle and E. Jones. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press and Sierra Leone Univ. Press, 1980.

Le Page, Robert B. 1977. "Decreolization and Recreolization." York Papers in

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Meintel, Deidre. 1975. "The Creole Dialect of the Island of Brava." In M. Valkhoff et al., eds. Misceldnea Luso-Africana. Lisbon: Junta de Investigac6es Cientificas do Ultramar.

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Parsons, E. C. 1917. "Tales from Guilford County, North Carolina." Journal of American Folk-Lore 30: 168-200.

. 1918. Folk-Tales of Andros Island, Bahamas. Memoirs of the American Folklore Society 13.

. 1923. Folklore of the Sea Islands, South Carolina. Memoirs of the American Folklore Society 16.




Porter, Kenneth W. 1945. "Notes on Seminole Negroes in the Bahamas." Florida Historical Quarterly 14: 56-60.

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Paper presented at the Caribbean Studies Conference, Port-au-Prince. Stewart, William A. In preparation. A Dictionary of Gullah English Usage. TDKF. Ti Diksyonne Kreyol-Franse: Dictionnaire i~Mmentaire creole haftien-frangais,

compiled by A. Bentolila. Port-au-Prince: Editions Caravbes, 1976. Turner, Lorenzo D. 1949. Africanisms in the Gullah Dialect. Chicago: Univ. of

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Creole-English-French Dictionary. Bloomington: Indiana Univ. Creole Institute.

Whylly, W. 1789. A Short Account of the Bahama Islands. London. W3. Webster's Third New International Dictionary of the English Language, Un-

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QUERY: THE PRONUNCIATION OF ST. CROIX

The traditional English pronunciation of the Caribbean island name St. Croix is [sIntkrmi]. The second vowel represents a now obsolete French

pronunciation of oi, which we find in English joy, Roy, Beloit, Detroit, coy, and adroit (compare contemporary French joie, roi, Beloit, ditroit, coi, adroit, all containing [wa]). For the past five years or so, however, I have been hearing [sekRwa], the contemporary French pronunciation (or an imitation of it), more and more from New York jetsetters and travel

agents. It would be unfortunate were they to carry the day. What is the traditional pronunciation of the English river name St. Croix (one in Wisconsin and Minnesota and another in Maine and New Brunswick)?

DAVID L. GOLD

University of Haifa

EDITOR'S NOTE: Fodor's Caribbean and the Bahamas 1982 (New York: David

McKay Company, Inc., p. 466) warns hypercorrecting Yankees that "the island is pronounced 'Saint Croy' by the local people and everyone else 'in the know' (no one uses the French form)." (C. A.)



on the relationship of gullah and bahamian

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