Convergent Bootstrapping in Syntactic Reanalysis: A Malayo-Khoesan Conspiracy in Afrikaans Syntax?

This paper is a contribution to the literature on the role and nature of language contact in the history of Afrikaans, emphasizing the influence of syntactic reanalysis by Malay-Dutch bilinguals at the eighteenth-century Cape of Good Hope. Typologically the major substrate languages for Afrikaans, including Khoekhoegowab (Khoesan, SOV) and Malay (Austronesian, SVO), differ from each other radically. The primary influence of Khoekhoegowab in the divergence of varieties of African Dutch from European Dutch dialect models has been discussed by Hans den Besten based on historical evidence and analysis of attested sentences. Den Besten and others have also observed significant parallels with Malay in Afrikaans generally. In this paper, new linguistic arguments are presented for the importance of Malay influence in the creation of varieties of Afrikaans. The goal pursued in hypothesizing L2 reanalysis strategies is not only to explain properties of Afrikaans grammars that differ strikingly from properties associated with European (Germanic) models, but also to offer potential substrate explanations for grammatical proximity to European target models (as in SOV string orders and verb-second phenomena). I argue that grammatical mechanisms for marking contrasts in information structure on Malay verbs bootstrapped the acquisition of superficially similar phenomena in Cape Dutch, leading to lasting changes in contact Dutch grammars.