Abstract
This paper presents the socio-historical and linguistic context of Muslim Cape Dutch/Afrikaans literature, using the same texts as in Stell, Luffin, and Rakiep (2007). It then focuses on the areas of greatest diachronic variation in the phonology, lexicon, idiomaticity, morphology, and syntax of the Cape Malay texts. Finally, it attempts to place that variation within the perspective of the evolution of Cape Dutch/Afrikaans.
Highlights
The first significant appearance of Cape Dutch/Afrikaans as a literary medium has been situated in the satirical dialogues published in the journalist Meurant's Cradocksch Nieuwsblad from 1860 onwards (Pienaar 1943: 73; Scholtz 1964: 170)
With respect to SVO order, which is attested in Straatpraatjes (Pheiffer 1996: 153), and is nowadays observable in spoken Cape Malay Afrikaans, Klopper (1983: 289) notes that "(w)hereas Standard Afrikaans in subordinate clauses as well as in main clauses featuring an auxiliary/modal is characterized by an (S)OV order, we find evidence of (S)VO, again under influence of English, in the lects of mainly working class Malays and Coloureds who have grown up in the Cape Town area."
In terms of language acquisition, this could be explained by the relatively late stage at which the Vrijezwarten and descendants of Asian slaves nativized Dutch, as a result of which substratal influence from their original languages could make istelf felt in their Dutch varieties. This is best suggested in the present corpus by those non-standard features which cannot be found in Orange River Afrikaans (ORA), i.e. a variety which underwent minimal influence from Slave Dutch and a posteriori Asian languages (Ponelis 1998: 14-15)
Summary
The first significant appearance of Cape Dutch/Afrikaans as a literary medium has been situated in the satirical dialogues published in the journalist Meurant's Cradocksch Nieuwsblad from 1860 onwards (Pienaar 1943: 73; Scholtz 1964: 170). Davids (1987: 49) puts the figure of discovered Cape Dutch/Afrikaans texts using the Arabic alphabet at 74, and the number of texts discovered in Roman alphabet, which can be called "Cape Malay" in terms of linguistic features, around 20. The observed mismatch between Arabic and Roman texts may confirm Davids' view that the Arabic and the Roman varieties were not intended to reflect Cape Malay Dutch/Afrikaans speech in similar terms. Idiomaticity implies a degree of conventionalization that cannot be systematically deduced from the data, the source of Cape Malay Afrikaans idiomaticity is considered here, i.e. patterns of literal or non-literal lexicogrammatical sequencing which are not reverberated in Std. Dutch/Af. Among the lexicogrammatical sequences which occur in the texts, separable verbs, prepositional verbs, sequences of verb + [+human]/[+animate]. The Cape Malay positioning of the particle te within the infinitive clause, at a time when a large amount of cross-lectal variation was noted in this regard (Steyn 1931: 32; Deumert 2003: 205), cannot be documented
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