This paper examines the structural consequences of the contact between Dutch overseers and Eastern Ij slaves during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries on the formation of Berbice Dutch, an unusual creole because of its remarkably homogeneous substrate. Based on the assumption that the structure-building operations in language contact situations are governed by the relative accessibility of morphemes in production, various surface configurations in Berbice Dutch are explained in terms of the 4-M model. Although the 4-M model classifies morphemes as falling into four types, content morphemes and three types of system morphemes, its focus is on how morphemes are differentially elected in production. A second model, the Abstract Level model, views the structure of the abstract lemmas that support morphemes as internally complex. Considering how morphemes are elected and how abstract lexical structure is complex opens the door to an explanation for the surface configurations found in Berbice Dutch. Data from Berbice Dutch demonstrate that abstract lexical structure can be “split” and “recombined” in such a way that surface structure is projected by an underlying grammatical frame that is a composite of the abstract lexical structure of the linguistic varieties in contact. Perceptual saliency of morphological structure and the degree of homogeneity in the substrate play a crucial role in predicting what is and what is not possible in creole formation.
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