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Norval Smith, Lilian Adamson

Tonal phenomena in Sranan

Keywords: tone, register, intensive form, ideophones

It has always been assumed that the coastal creole of Suriname, Sranan, was a completely non-tonal language. It will be suggested in this article that there is evidence that this is not a completely correct position. It appears that Sranan does have certain properties reminiscent of tone languages. Two types of phenomena exhibitng such properties are discussed here: emphatic focussing in situ, and high-pitched ideo-phones. At least ideophones require to be lexically specified as to whether they bear a High tone or not.

STUF – Sprachtypologie und Universalienforschung, Akademie Verlag

Print ISSN: 0942-2919
Volume: 59, 02/2006
Pages: 211 - 218

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