Project Details
Etymological Dictionary of the French Creoles in America
Subject Area
Individual Linguistics, Historical Linguistics
Term
from 2011 to 2019
Project identifier
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 201738816
The Dictionnaire étymologique des créoles français d'Amérique (DECA) is conceived as the continuation and completion of the Dictionnaire étymologique des creoles français de l'Océan Indien (DECOI, 4 vols., 1993, 2000-2007) and, like the DECOI, it will be divided in two parts: Première Partie: Mots d'origine française; Deuxième Partie: Mots d'origine non-française ou inconnue. From a synchronic perspective, the DECA aims at a complete inventory of the lexicon of French-based creoles spoken in Louisiana, Haiti, the Lesser Antilles and French Guiana. From a diachronic perspective, the first part can be considered as a contribution to the description of colonial French, the spoken French of the colonists who settled in the New World from the 17th century onward. In the second part we aim at recording creole words which were copied from contact languages (Amerindian and African languages, Spanish, Portuguese) in the context of colonization and plantation societies. Loanwords from later language contact in the 19th century and from English and French copied in the process of language planning in the 20th century will also be included.
DFG Programme
Research Grants
International Connection
France
Cooperation Partners
Jean-Paul Chauveau; Professorin Dr. Dominique Fattier; Hector Poullet