Coordination in the Suriname Creoles

Although there is a fair amount of research on the morphosyntax of the Suriname Creoles, coordination has received surprisingly little attention. Coordination can be seen as a fundamental aspect of grammar that intersects with a number of seemingly different constructions. Using quantitative and qualitative methods, this chapter provides a comparative overview of coordinate structures in the Eastern Maroon Creole or Nengee, and in one of its Western Maroon sister languages, Matawai. It then focuses on coordinate constructions involving the juxtaposition of sentential constituents. The comparison of the distributional, semantic, and pragmatic properties of coordinate constructions within and across the two sets of Suriname Maroon Creoles reveals striking differences reported here for the first time.