This paper examines the influence of language contact and multilingualism on the encoding of transfer events in the heritage variety of Javanese spoken in Suriname. Alongside Javanese, this community also speaks Sranantongo and Dutch, of which Sranantongo had the longest contact history with Javanese. It is shown that this long period of contact had a structural influence on the expression of transfer events in Surinamese Javanese: Surinamese speakers use double object constructions and two-predicate constructions more frequently than homeland Javanese speakers, a change which we argue to be due to contact with Sranantongo. In addition, Surinamese Javanese speakers overgeneralize one of the two applicative suffixes found in transfer constructions, a phenomenon that results from simplification processes.
Sophie Villerius graduated from the Research Master Linguistics at the University of Amsterdam. She is currently working on her PhD dissertation on Surinamese Javanese, an Austronesian immigrant language spoken in South America. Her research aims at retracing the history of Surinamese Javanese and identifying the changes this language has undergone. One of her publications is "Developments in Surinamese Javanese" in: Kofi Yakpo and Pieter Muysken (eds), Boundaries and bridges; Multilingual ecologies in the Guianas, pp.
This paper examines the grammatical voice system of Indonesian and Surinamese Javanese speakers. Alongside Javanese, the Surinamese speakers also speak Sranantongo and Dutch. Studying the use of voice in both speaker groups shows that it depends both on givenness and animacy of arguments. This interacts with the speaker group. The Surinamese speakers were found to be less discourse-dependent, due to general language contact processes as well as convergence to Dutch and Sranantongo.
Sophie Villerius graduated from the University of Amsterdam, where she obtained a BA in Religious Studies and a BA in French Language and Culture in 2011, and a Research MA in Linguistics in 2013. She started her PhD-project on Surinamese Javanese at Radboud University Nijmegen in 2013. For her research, she did fieldwork in Suriname and Indonesia. During the project, she was one of the Faces of Science of the KNAW (Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences). This research resulted in the publication of the PhD-dissertation Development of Surinamese Javanese; Language contact and change in a multilingual context in 2018. Currently she is working as a software developer. Sophie Villerius can be reached at: sophievillerius@ gmail.com.
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