Gullah: phonology

Also known as Geechee or Sea Island Creole, Gullah is spoken primarily along the coasts of South Carolina and Georgia. Early descriptions of Gullah were linguistically unfounded accounts that attributed the distinctive features of the variety to laziness or physical limitations on the part of its speakers. However, dialectologists later debunked these myths by showing the systematic nature of the variety and arguing that Gullah was an English dialect whose distinctive features were retentions from earlier varieties of British English. Johnson (1930: 17), for example, noted that “[a]s the analysis proceeds it will become more and more apparent that practically every detail of the Gullah grammar and phonology is directly descended from the midland and southern English dialects”. This theory was later challenged by Lorenzo Dow Turner’s (1949) description of Africanisms in Gullah, which inspired some scholars to argue that the Gullah system, rather than descending from English dialects, was primarily an African variety.

A more widely accepted view, however, is that Gullah emerged through a process of language contact between African and English varieties spoken during the Atlantic slave-trading era. During this time, African slaves, speaking a variety of mutually non-intelligible languages, would have found an urgent need to communicate with one another and those that enslaved them. In response to this need, they are believed to have formed contact varieties which drew upon the English vocabulary of the British slave traders and plantation owners, while retaining phonological and grammatical features from their own West African languages.

There has been some debate over whether the process of creolization that eventually led to Gullah took place on the American plantations themselves, or whether the slaves arrived on these plantations already speaking a creole. Some have argued that Gullah, like other Atlantic creoles, may be traced back to a West African Pidgin English (WAfPE), which was transported by slaves to the North American plantations, where it was passed on to succeeding generations of slaves, eventually creolizing into Gullah. Another theory is that a putative Barbadian Creole spoken during the 17^th century was the source of Gullah as well as Jamaican Creole and Sranan (e.g., Cassidy 1980). This theory was based on the observation that South Carolina, like Jamaica and Surinam, was initially colonized by Barbadian settlers. Yet another theory traces the period of creolization back to 16^th-century Africa, where a Guinea Coast Creole English (GCCE), presumed to have been spoken along the Upper Guinea Coast of West Africa, is believed to have been the source of Gullah, as well as all of the Caribbean English Creoles.

An examination of the sociodemographic information available led Mufwene (1993) to argue that Gullah emerged in the Carolina colony between 1720 and 1750, i.e. 50 to 80 years after its initial settlement in 1670. This period in the Carolina region was marked by the growth of the rice plantation industry, institutionalized segregation, and an African majority – conditions that would have been conducive to the formation of a creole. Given this time frame, it is believed that three linguistic components – creole, English, and African – would have been most prominent in Gullah’s development. The extent to which already existing creoles influenced Gullah’s development remains controversial. However, it may be assumed that some creole influence was present in its formation, introduced either by slaves brought over from the Caribbean or directly from Africa. The English that influenced Gullah’s development was most likely spoken by Europeans as well as Africans who were present in the Charles Town colony during the early years of settlement (i.e., between 1670 and 1720). And given the fact that the Charles Town colony was settled by Barbadian planters, who came primarily from the southwestern region of England, the most influential English dialects appear to have been those deriving from Southwest England.

Theories regarding the African element in Gullah are somewhat more controversial. Several theories have derived from analyses of the data presented in Turner (1949). Some scholars have pointed to a significant amount of influence from the Kwa language family, spoken along parts of Southern Nigeria and the African Gold Coast (e.g., Cassidy 1980; Alleyne 1980). Others have pointed to the linguistic prominence of Kru and Mande languages, spoken along the coast of Senegambia, Sierra Leone, and Liberia (e.g., Hair 1965; Hancock 1980). According to Creel (1988: 29-30), most of the Africans brought into the South Carolina region came from trading stations in four areas of the Guinea Coast – Congo-Angola, Gambia, the Windward Coast (Sierra Leone and Liberia), and the Gold Coast (Republic of Ghana). It is likely, therefore, that at least four primary African language families contributed to Gullah’s development, namely Bantu from the Congo-Angola region, Kru and Mande from Gambia and the Windward Coast, and Kwa from the Gold Coast.

Perhaps the most extensive research done to date on the phonology of Gullah is that presented in Turner ([1945] 1971), ([1949] 2002). The discussion below will, therefore, depend heavily on Turner’s analyses, supplemented by the data that were elicited for the current project.