The language in eighteenth century Virgin Islands Dutch Creole manuscripts at first sight differs from the spoken variety of this language which was recorded in the twentieth century. A closer look, using Bell's (1984) Audience Design Model, shows that the influence of the Referee blurs the situation. Several words and constructions appear to be word for word translations from European religious source texts or were included to educate the audience. The texts also look more or less 'broken Dutch'-like because of etymological orthography, ignoring Creole pronunciation. I consider this to be the influence of the referee/the tradition, and not as influence of an author connecting best to his audience of Creole speakers. Do you agree with me?
Sounds plausible to me.
I would try to differentiate between "the tradition" and "the referee" in the way that the first criterion is impersonal, implicit, most likely unconscious, whereas the referee's influence can be very much intentional and reflected (e.g. if they state why they opt for a specific spelling or grammatical construction rather than another one; reflections like these can be found in quite a number of texts in historical creolistics with both decisions in favour of more European/standard-like structures and in favour of more basilectal ones.)
Then again, I wouldn't dismiss the idea of connecting to the audience altogether in those specific contexts where we know that slaves had been alphabetised in Dutch before and a more Dutch-like structure might build upon this previous knowledge.
Definitely a very fascinating question and an interesting approach!
Could you please provide examples of texts that are "word-for-word translations from European languages" and those which you suspect contain the most conservative form of the Creole?
Could you provide an example of what you consider to be an etymology-based orthographic representation of a word, vs one that is not?
I will search for some good examples in the Clarin-NEHOL-corpus. The word-for-word translations seem to be quite easy to find. The conservative Creole forms are the results of changes towards the auditors (to use Bell's terminology) for example made by using numbers to indicate word order. In the early 19th c. German grammar of VIDC we find a complex description of syntax according to which sentences should be translated. Before that we find for instance lots questions which are VSO (Dutch/German) and not SVO (VIDC).
Examples of etymology-based orthographic representations are for example Grootsondag 'lit. Great sunday, Christmas' (18th c.) vs. Grosonda (20th c.), meester 'master' (18th c.) vs. meestu (20th c.). Perhaps even sender '3PL' (18th c. from Flem./Zeeland. zender, zulder, se'der ) vs. senne, sennu or sen (20th c.). I'll try to find some other examples soon. My question is if this use of orthography was done to connect to the referee. To connect best with the auditors a more phonological spelling could have been more useful (f.i. Creole oogo, 'eye' instead of Dutchlike oog, which was the etymon.).
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