Abstract
This paper deals with the question of Gbe influence on Guianese, the largest creole language of French Guiana. Recent research (Jennings and Pfänder, 2015, 2018) claims that Guianese was formed in a bilingual French-Gbe situation and that most of the grammatical structure of the creole was calqued on Gbe. We argue, firstly, that the Gbe influence is (vastly) overstated. We show, amongst other things, that Guianese is not more Gbe-like than the French creoles of the Lesser Antilles, and that it is in fact noticeably less so than its direct neighbour Saramaccan. Secondly, we scrutinize certain aspects of the historical framework put forth by Jennings and Pfänder (2018). Finally, we address some theoretical issues such as the in our view dubious claim that Guianese formed in a strictly bilingual context.
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