The Iberian Challenge: creole languages beyond the plantation setting 9783954878949

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Armin Schwegler, John McWhorter, Liane Ströbel (eds.) The Iberian Challenge: Creole Languages Beyond the Plantation Setting

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Lengua y Sociedad en el Mundo Hispánico Language and Society in the Hispanic World Consejo editorial / Editorial Board: Julio Calvo Pérez (Universitat de València) Anna María Escobar (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign) Luis Fernando Lara (El Colegio de México) Francisco Moreno Fernández (Universidad de Alcalá de Henares / Instituto Cervantes at Harvard University) Juan Sánchez Méndez (Université de Neuchâtel) Armin Schwegler (University of California, Irvine) José del Valle (The Graduate Center, CUNY) Klaus Zimmermann (Universität Bremen) Vol. 36

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Armin Schwegler, John McWhorter, Liane Ströbel (eds.)

The Iberian Challenge: Creole Languages Beyond the Plantation Setting

Iberoamericana - Vervuert - 2016

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Cualquier forma de reproducción, distribución, comunicación pública o transformación de esta obra solo puede ser realizada con la autorización de sus titulares, salvo excepción prevista por la ley. Diríjase a CEDRO (Centro Español de Derechos Reprográficos) si necesita fotocopiar o escanear algún fragmento de esta obra (www.conlicencia.com; 91 702 19 70 / 93 272 04 47). © Iberoamericana, 2016 Amor de Dios, 1 – E-28014 Madrid Tel.: +34 91 429 35 22 Fax: +34 91 429 53 97 [email protected] www.iberoamericana-vervuert.es © Vervuert, 2016 Elisabethenstr. 3-9 – D-60594 Frankfurt am Main Tel.: +49 69 597 46 17 Fax: +49 69 597 87 43 [email protected] www.iberoamericana-vervuert.es ISBN 978-84-8489-962-4 (Iberoamericana) ISBN 978-3-95487-497-2 (Vervuert) ISBN 978-3-95487-894-9 (e-book) Cover design: Carlos Zamora Picture: “Moná ri Palenge” (‘Palenquero youngster’), Palenque (Colombia) 2008. Photo by Armin Schwegler

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C ontents

Acknowledgments

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Introduction (Armin Schwegler, John McWhorter & Liane Ströbel) 9 1. Alain Kihm & Jean-Louis Rougé Once more on the genesis of West African Portuguese creoles

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2. John McWhorter The missing Spanish creoles are still missing: Revisiting Afrogenesis 39 and its implications for a coherent theory of creole genesis 3. Bart Jacobs & Nicolas Quint On the relevance of Classical Portuguese features in four Atlantic creoles 67 4. Ana R. Luís & Paulo Estudante Documenting 17th-century Língua de Preto: Evidence from the Coimbra 85 archives 5. Michelle Li Macau Pidgin Portuguese and Creole Portuguese: A continuum?

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6. Marilola Pérez Philippine Creole Spanish (“Chabacano”): Accusative marking in Caviteño. Grammatical and discursive functions 135 7. John M. Lipski Palenquero and Spanish: What’s in the mix?

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8. Paola E. Dussias, Jason W. Gullifer & Timothy J. Poepsel How psycholinguistics can inform contact linguistics: converging evidence against a decreolization view of Palenquero 181

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9. Miguel Gutiérrez Maté Reconstructing the linguistic history of palenques. On the nature and relevance of colonial documents 205 10. Armin Schwegler Truth reset: Pragmatics in Palenquero negation Contributors

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231 269

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A cknowledgments

The editors would like to thank the organizers of the XIX Hispanistentag (Münster, Germany, March 20-24, 2013) for their assistance in organizing the special session on “Spanish and Portuguese in Contact with Other Languages”, which served as inspiration for this volume. We would also like to express our gratitude to the anonymous referees who provided very detailed comments to earlier versions of the selected manuscripts. We found their comments very useful, as they gave us editors and the authors the opportunity to address issues that we might otherwise have overlooked. Thanks are also due to the authors for their patience with the multiple rounds of revisions to which we editors subjected them. We trust that the readers of The Iberian Challenge: Creole Languages Beyond the Plantation Setting will agree that, in the end, the extraordinary endurance of the contributors has produced a volume that is refreshingly rich in data and theory. Armin Schwegler John McWhorter Liane Ströbel

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INTRODUCTION

Creole languages lexified by Spanish and Portuguese have played a relatively small role in theories of creole genesis. Especially in the 1980s and 1990s when genesis issues were most hotly debated in the creolist community, the focus was on the English-lexified and French-lexified creoles of the New World (and, in the case of Mauritian and Reunionnais French Creole, the Mascarenes in the Indian Ocean). As a result, the geneses of English or French-based Saramaccan, Haitian, and Mauritian, for instance, were comprehensively addressed. However, those of Spanish or Portuguese-based creoles such as Palenquero, Papiamentu, and Cape Verdean Creole were only occasionally considered, and virtually always as distinct evolutionary events rather than as part of more general “genesis models”. This lack of attention to the early evolution of Spanish and Portuguese creoles cannot be attributed to absence of data. Indeed, the past ten years or so have seen invaluable new research on the formation of several Portuguese-based creoles of Asia and Philippine Creole Spanish. Palenquero, often considered a “new” discovery because of its first description by linguists as late as 1970, has by now yielded multiple diachronic studies and a substantial bibliography. Today, the relevant literature for both Papiamentu and Cape Verdean is vast, and therefore potentially overwhelming to the new scholar. While it is true that the Portuguese creoles of the Gulf of Guinea are not as well studied as Cape Verdean, Guinea-Bissau Creole Portuguese, or some other Atlantic creoles, it also bears mentioning that by now all four Gulf of Guinea creoles are described in book-length grammars,1 a situation that stands in sharp contrast to that of the more widely recognized Haitian Creole, for which there still is no full grammar as of this writing. 1

Compare: Ferraz, Luis Ivens. 1979. The creole of São Tomé. Johannesburg: Witwatersrand University Press. Maurer, Philippe. 1995. L’angolar: un créole afro-portugais parlé à São Tomé. Hamburg: Helmut Buske. Maurer, Philippe. 2009. Principense. London: Battlebridge. Zamora Segorbe, Armando. 2010. Gramática descriptiva del fá d’ambô. Barcelona: Centro de Estudios Internacionales de Biología y Antropología.

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The Iberian Challenge: Creole Languages Beyond the Plantation Setting

The marginal place of Iberian-lexified creoles in the literature on creole genesis is in large measure due to the special focus on plantation creoles. The pioneering and remarkably theory-oriented publications by Mervyn Alleyne (who concentrated on the non-Hispanic Caribbean) in the 1970s and Derek Bickerton in the 1980s (when plantation-era Hawaii became a major focus) profoundly influenced creolists’ thinking that plantation creoles constitute the “classic” scenario for creole genesis. In the seventies and beyond, the emphasis placed by the Social Sciences on the history and current circumstances of the subject of colonization further encouraged this focus on former plantation colonies. As welcome as these scholarly trends have been, they have mostly (and quite naturally) had the effect of sidelining Iberian-based creoles, as these did not form on plantations. Throughout the history of modern creole studies, creole genesis was viewed as the result of several key factors, including (1) access to a target language among massive slave populations, (2) the size (large or small?) of early plantations, and (3) the speed with which a given slave population transitioned to a large plantation work force. In contrast to widely studied creoles such as Gullah, Louisiana Creole French, or Negerhollands Creole Dutch, the contact vernaculars that evolved into Philippines Creole Spanish, Macao Creole Portuguese, or Palenquero —all studied in this volume— thus “naturally” attracted less scholarly attention, having arisen as what may best be described as “cases sui generis” (Palenquero, for instance, evolved in a maroon setting, while Macao Creole Portuguese emerged as a trade post language). There is, however, no a priori reason to classify plantation creoles as the “default” or prototypical kind. From a global perspective, creole languages have formed in a wide range of circumstances: among soldiers, in an orphanage, amidst religious commitments, within interracial marriages, among schoolchildren, and so forth. The plantation scenario is thus only one of many — a realization that poses special challenges to theories of creole genesis that seek to be maximally comprehensive. Overall, the Iberian-based creoles demonstrate this diversity of complex circumstances. In these contact vernaculars, traditional creolist concerns such as “weak parameters within Universal Grammar resorted to by children” and “transition from a ‘homestead’ to a ‘plantation’ phase” have little application. At least one author in this volume takes the argument about the supposed genesis of creoles even a step further by reasserting (pace McWhorter 1996) that plantations were not at all the place where creole languages emerged. Rather, as John McWhorter suggests in “The Missing Spanish Creoles: Still Missing” (this volume), plantation creoles too were all born in situations sui generis, namely as pidgins in West African coast slave castles.

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Introduction 11

The articles assembled in this volume on Iberian creoles teach a lesson about creole genesis which, in light of genesis theories of the past forty years, can seem almost regressive: namely, that creole languages begin with a pidgin-level (or Basic Variety-level) command of a language, which is then adopted by future generations and expanded into a full creole. Of course, further developments can be eccentric: Michelle Li’s article, for instance, shows that the Macanese Portuguese Pidgin recorded in Chinese-language documents was based on the creole Portuguese that already existed, rather than the creole having grown from the pidgin. This book —a selection of papers from the workshop on Iberian creoles at the 19. Deutscher Hispanistentag in Münster in 2013— presents research on Iberian creoles challenging not only traditional conceptions on creole genesis but also various grammar-related issues. On genesis specifically, Alain Kihm and Jean-Louis Rougé’s article argues that the story of the Portuguese-based creoles of Africa began with the speech of African slaves in Portugal itself. Drawing on novel evidence from music manuscripts, Ana R. Luís and Paulo Estudante argue independently that an African community speaking an Afro-Portuguese L2 variety existed in Portugal in the 17th century. Bart Jacobs and Nicolas Quint trace certain lexical items in Portuguese creoles (and Saramaccan) to Classical Portuguese sources. In terms of sociohistorical timing, this constitutes evidence for a conclusion unexpected amidst a tendency among creolists to reconstruct the birth of each creole within the context in which it is spoken today: that Cape Verdean creole was the parent language to Guinea-Bissau Creole Portuguese and Papiamentu, rather than new creoles having emerged in either Guinea-Bissau or Curaçao. Miguel Gutiérrez Maté illuminates the social history of Colombian and Dominican palenques that nurtured the birth of creoles such as Palenquero. The historical situations he uncovers are quite unlike those usually associated with the birth of creole languages. Meanwhile, on linguistic issues, this volume is similarly innovative. Armin Schwegler’s field-based exploration into the complex pragmatics of pre- and post-verbal negation brings creole studies in line with the increasing realization among linguists in general that pragmatics is by no means an ancillary component in language, but possibly at its very heart. John Lipski assesses Palenquero speakers’ counterintuitively fluid conception of the difference between Palenquero and Spanish, while Paola E. Dussias and her colleagues (Jason W. Gullifer and Timothy J. Poepsel) assess whether Palenquero is currently decreolizing according to the “classic” Anglophone continuum model. Finally Marilola Pérez reveals that the animate object marking in Cavite Phillipines Creole Spanish, whose details and multiple causation can appear almost unanalyzably chaotic, is in fact determined by the nature of the information structure (in parallel to what has been observed for Tagalog).

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The Iberian Challenge: Creole Languages Beyond the Plantation Setting

A principal goal of this volume is to demonstrate that the Iberian creoles can no longer be considered the “other ones”, and that plantations are but one of many settings that can harbor a creole. In the variety of their pasts and presents, the Iberian creoles can thus be seen as one of several norms in terms of how creoles have emerged and what they are like. The Editors Armin Schwegler John McWhorter Liane Ströbel

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(University of California, Irvine) (Columbia University, New York) (Heinrich-Heine-University, Düsseldorf/RWTH, Aachen)

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ONCE MORE ON THE GENESIS OF WEST AFRICAN PORTUGUESE CREOLES Alain Kihm & Jean-Louis Rougé CNRS / Université d’Orléans In this paper we argue for an “Out-of-Portugal” model of the emergence of West African Portuguese Creoles (WAPCs). According to this model, WAPCs stem from a Basic Variety of Portuguese that formed spontaneously when African slaves were transported en masse to Portugal from the end of the 15th century to the beginning of the 17th century and had to learn Portuguese without access to any formal instruction. Known as língua de preto (lit. ‘language of the Black’), this Basic Variety is mainly documented through the theatre of the time. We show that such literary sources can be trusted to a large extent. We also present arguments to the effect that there existed pathways through which this língua de preto could make its way back to Africa, where it eventually became widely used as a pidginized lingua franca. This lingua subsequently creolized independently in the two areas of Upper Guinea and the Gulf of Guinea. Keywords: Basic Variety, creolization, grumetes, interpreters, lançados, Língua de Preto, slave trade, tangomãos, West African Portuguese creoles

1. A geographical survey of Portuguese Creoles Portuguese Creoles (PCs) are subdivided into two geographical areas, (1) western and (2) eastern. The eastern area comprises Portuguese India (including Sri Lanka) on the one hand, Malacca and Macau (and perhaps the Philippines, modulo later Spanish relexification) on the other hand. The western area includes West Africa and South America. Discounting “popular” varieties of Brazilian Portuguese, semi-creoles at most, the South American subarea is residual: Saramaccan is only half Portuguese in its lexicon, and Papiamentu is Spanish-relexified. The West African subarea is further subdivided into Upper Guinea (UG) and Gulf of Guinea (GG). UGPCs consist of Cape Verdean (with two main dialect groups in the Sotavento and Barlavento islands respectively) and Kriyol, spoken in Casamance and Guinea-Bissau (also

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diversified through dialectal variation). GGPCs are all insular, and comprised of Angolar and Santomense (both in São Tomé), Principense (Principe), and Fa d’Ambô (Annobon). There is a linguistic basis for this areal classification: West African PCs as a whole share features not present in Eastern PCs as a whole, and vice versa. Within the eastern area Indo-Portuguese contrasts with Malacca-Macau. UGPCs are closer to each other than to GGPCs, each group sharing features not present in the other group. In light of the aforementioned geolinguistic facts, the following question naturally presents itself: might all PCs proceed from a common origin despite their obvious disparities?1 We will seek to answer this question for West Africa, the main focus in this study. It cannot be excluded, however, that the answer could ultimately be generalized to all the areas concerned. 2. Models for the emergence of Portuguese Creoles As regards the origin of West African PCs, the model generally accepted by authors specializing in these languages may be called “multiregional”, an analogy borrowed from a long-dominant model in paleoanthropology: presumably, PCs arose independently from each other through local contact between 16th-century Portuguese (Middle Portuguese) and (1) the various native African languages in the areas of Casamance and Guinea-Bissau, or (2) these same African languages transported to Cape Verde and Gulf of Guinea islands. In this scenario, all linguistic contacts were local, and took place between (a) Cape Verdean dialects of Sotavento and Barlavento (the latter is an offshoot of the former), (b) Cape Verdean and Kriyol (allegedly a continental descendant of the former; see Quint 2000, Jacobs 2010, and the discussion in Section 8 below), and (c) Santomense and Principense among GGPCs. Here we want to argue for an alternative model, which we shall call “Out-of-Portugal”. As its name suggests, the emergence of PCs in West Africa (and possibly beyond) crucially involves the previous formation of a Basic Variety (BV) of Middle Portuguese among the numerous African slaves transported to Portugal from the end of the 15th century. Their presence is amply recorded until the second half of the 19th century. Care should be taken to differentiate our model from Naro’s (1978) “Reconnaissance Language’ Hypothesis”, which might indeed be seen as a version of the Out-of-Portugal model. Section 5 below explains the crucial difference between our proposal and Naro’s hypothesis in considerable detail.

1

For an early attempt at an answer to this question, see Ferraz (1987).

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3. What is a Basic Variety? A BV is a stage in a process of second language acquisition (SLA) by adults who have not had access to formal language instruction. In recent decades, BV’s have been studied in connection with the arrival of thousands of immigrant workers into the industrialized European countries, in particular France, Germany and Great Britain, in the second half of the 20th century (Bierwisch 1997, Jordens 1997, Klein & Perdue 1997; for an overview of the contribution of SLA studies to pidgin/creole studies, see Siegel 2008). According to the authors mentioned, a BV is the consistent and “relatively stable” system arrived at by some or most of these spontaneous second language (L2) learners, neither at the very beginning nor close to the successful end of their acquisition but rather at an intermediate stage (Klein & Perdue 1997: 303). A BV is therefore an “interlanguage” (Selinker 1972), one in a series of progressive approximations to the target language. Some L2 learners may cease to “progress” at this intermediate stage, as it gives them sufficient expressive resources to satisfy their communicative needs. As Klein & Perdue remark, “for about one-third of the learners investigated, acquisition ended on this structural level [the BV]; some minor variation aside, they only increased their lexical repertoire and learnt to make more fluent use of the BV” (1997: 303). Such an intermediate BV is said to be “fossilized”. If the “more fluent use” entails richer expressive resources without any real approximation to the target language, the fossilized BV may then be called a “post-BV”. Three types of constraints determine the structure of BV utterances: phrasal constraints (narrow syntax) on the form and inner ordering of constituents; semantic constraints on the assignment of semantic roles to arguments and on their scope relations; and pragmatic constraints on “information packaging” (topic-focus structure, etc.) (Klein & Perdue 1997: 313). BV lexical items are generally invariable and pertain to the major categories of noun (N), verb (V), adjective (A), and adposition (P), to the near exclusion of functional items such as tense or number markers, free or bound. BVs are therefore nearly or entirely devoid of morphological phenomena. Most lexemes are taken from the target language, very few from the source language (the L2 learners’ L1) (Bierwisch 1997: 350), which makes sense since the primary use of the BV is to allow communication with the native speakers of the L2 one is attempting to master – and also with other L2 learners having different L1’s since, in the actual situations alluded to above, there is always more than one L1 spoken in the community of L2 learners (for instance Arabic, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, and Turkish among the so-called Gastarbeiter of Germany in the 1960’s and 1970’s). According to Klein & Perdue (1997: 332ss.), who endorsed the version of Chomskyan Minimalism in vogue at the time the paper was written (Chomsky 1995),

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BVs are natural languages, but “simpler” because all features are set at their weak values. As a result, no displacement and/or inflection need occur. In the same journal issue, Comrie (1997) makes the intriguing point that BVs may well fulfill all social functions of language (i.e. exchange of information), while also being severely deficient with respect to the cognitive functions, namely interpreting and making sense of the environment. Such a separation of the social and the cognitive is perplexing: how can one deliver even the most trivial information —say “It’s raining outside”— without triggering all kinds of cognitive processes and responses ranging from the indignant “So you found an excuse for not going out” to the sarcastic “Thank you for the effort at conversation”? If BVs are indeed fully effective as communicative means —and everything suggests they are— then they are surely efficient in terms of their cognitive function, whence they fully belong to the class of natural language. From a creolist perspective, this is an important conclusion because it implies that the BV as a transitional medium possibly leading to a creole is susceptible of being (a) expressively enriched by the adult users who are committed to it without abandoning its essential formal characters (see the notion of “post-BV” above); and (b) transmitted to children without the abrupt sweeping mutations assumed by the Language Bioprogram Hypothesis (LBH). Both points are in accord with the gradualist model of creolization (see Arends 1993) as well as with the well established existence of expanded pidgins (Bruyn 2008: 390-393, Versteegh 2008: 164ss; also see the notion of “pidgincreole” in Bakker 2008). The BV hypothesis thus offers a significant alternative to other current hypotheses of creole emergence, such as substrate theories or the LBH (see e.g. Becker & Veenstra 2004 and Muysken 2001). In a recent series of articles, Plag (2008a, 2008b, 2009a, 2009b) defends the Interlanguage Hypothesis according to which “[c]reoles are conventionalized interlanguages of an early stage’ (2008a: 115). Clearly, Plag’s definition of creoles (equally applicable to expanded pidgins or pidgincreoles) is another term for Klein & Perdue’s fossilized BV. The main (and possibly crucial) difference is that Plag buttresses his arguments with a theory of interlanguage formation, namely Pienemann’s (1998) Processability Theory, which includes a specific component for online (incremental) speech production. As such, this theory may prove to be more relevant to the phenomenon at hand than Minimalism. We should add that unguided SLA by adults has also become a crucial tenet in “superstratist” theories (Mufwene 2001, Chaudenson 2003). 4. Socioeconomic conditions for the emergence of a Basic Variety in Renaissance Portugal The situation of 20th-century France, Germany and Great Britain with respect to immigrant work force is not without precedent. In 15th- and 16th-century Portugal (and

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the Iberian Peninsula in general) the economic role of today’s immigrant workers was fulfilled by Black slaves who increasingly came from sub-Saharan Africa. The slave trade from Western Africa to Portugal began in the mid-15th century, reached its peak in the 16th century and lasted into the late 18th century. According to well-founded estimates, about 150,000 slaves from Guiné (i.e. the entire West African coast from Senegal to Angola) entered Portugal between 1441 and 1505 (Tinhorão 1988, Chap. 6). In 1551, they numbered 9,950 in Lisbon, thus representing 10% of the city’s total population of approximately 100,000 (Tinhorão 1988: 112). Almeida Mendes (quoted in Saupin 2013: 317) estimates the total number of Africans brought to the Iberian Peninsula from 1440 to 1640 to be between 350,000 and 400,000. During almost the entire 16th century (1501-1575), Upper Guinea (Senegambia, present-day Guinea-Bissau and present-day Guinea-Conakry) was the main provider (Saupin 2013: 318). Slavery never disappeared from Europe between antiquity and modern times (Blackburn 1997, Chap. 1; Saupin (dir.) 2013 for the Iberian Peninsula). Yet no European country imported more slaves than did Portugal and Spain at the beginning of the Renaissance. As early as the 14th century, in Portugal (and, to a lesser extent, in Spain) this slave trade was prompted by colonial conquests and far-reaching trade (Tinhorão 1988, Chap. 6; Blackburn 1997: 97ss). The ensuing global reach had profound effects on Portugal’s and Spain’s small populations: it first caused a dramatic rural exodus to the cities and then, especially after commercial enterprises with India and Brazil had become established, substantial emigration to the overseas territories (Saraiva 1991: 193ss). Slavery thus became the means by which the dwindling local labor force became replaced within the Peninsula. In the early phases of Portugal’s colonial expansion, the purchase of slaves was not the primary motive that led the Portuguese explorers ever farther southward from 1440 onwards. Gold and the prospect of sailing around Muslim-held territories to assault them from the rear were originally much stronger incentives. However, slaves soon proved the most profitable merchandise to acquire at a time when slavery and bartering for people shocked neither Europeans nor Africans. Very much like immigrant workers in modern industrialized countries, African slaves in Portugal performed the hardest and dirtiest jobs. Many were employed to clear the lands that, in part due to the aforementioned rural exodus, had gone to waste. Others, particularly women (negras de canastra or negras do pote), were in charge of cleaning the sewerless streets from garbage and excrements (Couto 2000: 133-137). As the number of such slaves increased, some were assigned lighter jobs: servants at the Court, house-servants in private households, craftsmen (especially blacksmiths), peddlers and street vendors in the employment of individual masters

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(negros de ganho ‘salaried Negroes’), clowns in bullfights, etc. Most relevant for this study is that many served as sailors and/or interpreters aboard southbound ships. African slaves were of both sexes, with women perhaps forming a majority of two thirds (Saupin 2013: 331). They soon had offspring, who inherited the servile condition, thus contributing to Iberia’s expanding slave population.2 Sexual encounters were commonplace between slaves, female slaves and their masters, or male slaves and their mistresses (Portuguese males’ frequent sailings overseas on lucrative ventures naturally increased the rate of such extra-marital “adventures”; see Couto 2000: 133-137). Because of their high numbers, not only in Lisbon but throughout Portugal (the countryside included), African slaves soon became an intrinsic part of Portuguese everyday life, a state of affairs that was to last until at least the middle of the 19th century. By that time, many had been manumitted (forros) living as free persons. However, it was not before January 1773 that the all-powerful prime-minister Marquis de Pombal (himself possibly of partly African descent – see Tinhorão 1988: 414-415) passed a decree granting freedom to slave children and their future children, although not to their living parents and grandparents. Due to an active pro-slavery lobby, Pombal’s decree was not seriously enforced, so much so it took more than a half century (until 1858) until slavery began to be abolished in earnest (1876 marked the end of slavery in Portugal). Africans and their descendants living in Iberia subsequently became biologically absorbed into the white population.3 As late as the 1920s, the Portuguese linguist Leite de Vasconcelos reported about mixed (mestiças) communities in Portugal (see Tinhorão 1988, Chap. 12). 5. A Basic Variety in sixteenth-century Portugal? Until at least the end of the 18th century, African slaves in Portugal spoke a distinctive variety of Portuguese, variously named língua de preto (‘language of the Black’), língua de negro (‘id.’), or falar Guiné (‘Guinea [= African] Talk’). In this article, we shall retain the first of these labels, and assume that this Língua de Preto (LDP) was a fossilized BV or post-BV.

2



3

The birth of black (or mixed) slaves in Portugal at an early date is confirmed by the play Auto das Regateiras (‘Act of the Saleswomen’), written about 1570, where one reads: Cadela, tu és engodo / que naceste em Portugal / pera me pores de lodo ‘Bitch, you are a cheat who was born in Portugal to cover me in mud’ (Chiado 1994: 153[576-8]). Details elsewhere in the play suggest that the “cheat” was born in about 1500 or 1520 at the latest. The Catholic clergy, whose members commonly had African maid servants, seems to have played a major role in promoting miscegenation.

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LDP was a real language rather than simply a jargon: it had a syntax and did not show the alleged macaronic character of early Hawaiian Pidgin English (see Bickerton 1999, Roberts 2000 for a contrary view; for LDP grammar, see Kihm & Rougé 2013). Surprisingly, perhaps, its vocabulary was 100% Portuguese. Influence from the African slaves’ native languages, insofar as we are able to locate them, appears to have been minimal and mainly phonological, as is usual in a BV (see Plag 2009a). As Rougé (1992, 2008), Baxter (2002, 2004) and Lopes (2009) have shown, interesting similarities exist between LDP and the Tonga Portuguese variety of São Tomé, the language spoken by descendants of indentured laborers brought to the island from Benin and Angola at the end of the 19th century. Since we assume LDP to be a BV constructed by its own users, we disagree with Naro according to whom ‘[i]ts basic structural peculiarities resulted primarily from conscious modifications of their speech by Portuguese’ (1978: 341, our emphasis). There exists no evidence that the Portuguese used foreigner talk to address the African slaves with whom they had daily exchanges. We therefore side with earlier authors (Giese 1932, Chasca 1946, Teyssier 1959) who, when calling LDP argot (Giese), or baragouin “gibberish” (Teyssier), or simply “Negro speech” (Chasca), tacitly acknowledged its endogenic character. On the other hand, the BV hypothesis renders unnecessary de Granda’s (1978: 335ss) improbable assumption that LDP and its Spanish counterpart habla de negro constitute stylizations (and relexifications) of a Portuguese pidgin already formed on the West African coast following the pattern of an earlier Mediterranean lingua franca. We certainly do not wish to dismiss the possibility that the Portuguese may have attempted to use lingua franca in their first contacts with West Africans on the African coast (see Huber 2009). But as Naro (1978) has argued convincingly, these initial interactions involved either gestures (sign language) or interpreters who knew the local language. We can thus agree with Naro that the birthplace of the Portuguese pidgin was first and foremost Portugal itself. There the interlanguage must have arisen in the mouths of African slaves themselves. 6. Lingua de Preto (LDP) and related questions 6.1. LDP sources How do we know about LDP, an extinct language that nobody cared to describe while it was still alive? Literature, it turns out, is our only source: African slaves were stock characters in Renaissance Portuguese theatre, where they were staged for comic effects, in particular owing to their “broken” speech. The earliest attestation of such “black speech” is from either 1455 (according to Teyssier 1959: 228) or 1471 (according to Tinhorão 1988: 223). The text in question consists of sixteen

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lines of versified compliment supposedly by an African king from Sierra Leone who addresses himself to the infante D. Joana or the princess D. Leonor for their respective betrothals to Henry IV of Castille or the future king of Portugal D. João II (see Teyssier 1959: 228 and Tinhorão 1988: 224 for the full text). During the next century, Portuguese theatre being then in full bloom, LDP was frequently heard on stage. The first play (auto ‘act’) depicting an LDP-speaking African character (a woman) is called O Pranto do Clérigo ‘The Priest’s Complaint’ and was written in 1514 by Anrique da Mota (1475–1545 [?]). The greatest playwright of the time, Gil Vicente (1465?–1536?), about whose language Teyssier (1959) remains the most complete study, then introduced African characters speaking LDP in four of his plays (Teyssier 1959: 227-250): A Fragoa d’Amor ‘the Forge of Love’ (1524, 86 lines); A Nao d’Amores ‘The Ship of Loves’ (1527, 52 lines); O Clérigo da Beira ‘The Priest of the Beira’ (1529 or 1530, 160 lines); A Floresta d’Enganos ‘The Forest of Deceptions’ (1536, 7 lines). Thereafter, African characters speaking their distinctive variety continued to appear in autos (“acts”) of the so-called “Vicentine school”, namely in two autos by Antonio Ribeiro known as “Chiado’ (1520?–1591): Prática de oito figuras ‘Conversation between eight characters” (?, 46 lines) and Auto das Regateiras “Act of the Saleswomen” (ca. 1570, 59 lines); one by Sebastião Pires, Auto da Bela Menina “Act of the Beautiful Young Woman” (ca. 1550, 7 lines – Tinhorão: 285-286,); and two anonymous ones, Auto de Vicente Anes Joeira (?, 18 lines – Tinhorão: 278, 281) and Auto de D. Fernando (1541, 21 lines – Tinhorão: 283). In total, the corpus amounts to 488 lines. LDP continued to be staged throughout the 17th and 18th centuries, in literary as well as folk plays that included the so-called entremezes ‘intermezzos’, played during interludes. LDP also figures in almanacs and other pieces of folk literature (literatura de cordel ‘string literature’, so called because the booklets hung from strings) that circulated widely during the same period. Last but not least, we have one letter in LDP written in 1730 by the king of Angola to the king of Minas. In actuality, neither of these “kings” was reigning any longer in Angola or Benin; rather, they were the leaders of two African religious congregations in Lisbon.4 In toto, these various sources offer a corpus of about 300 lines of LDP. In the plays, African slaves use LDP to address white characters who sometimes reciprocate, although such practice was clearly frowned upon by society at large as being improper for white persons. White characters usually speak in plain Por-

4



A major role of these congregations was to preserve African heritage among the slaves (see Tinhorão 1988: 209-210).

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tuguese or Castilian, naturally expecting the African to understand them, which they apparently did. The aforementioned corpus contains only one scene with two Africans, a man and a woman, conversing with each other in LDP, the expected medium of communication. African slaves, at least during the 16th century, thus seem to have had a passive competence in their masters’ languages. However, their active competence was in LDP. In the already quoted Auto das Regateiras, a white male attempts to speak LDP to the black maid Luzia, to the latter’s amazement and even fright. The maid’s mistress convinces him not to do so, saying Não é ela tão salvagem; / Falai-lhe vossa linguagem, / inda qu’ela fale mal. ‘She isn’t such a savage; speak (in) your own language to her, even though she speaks [it] poorly’ (Chiado 1994: 166-167 [810-812].) This type of discourse is typical of situations involving BV and native speakers. Recall that Luzia was born in Portugal and at the time was said to be about fifty years of age. Yet, she still does not have native command of Portuguese, although she has been exposed to it since she was a child and she understands it perfectly, not being a “savage” or newly imported slave from Africa. Apparently, it was only after the time of Gil Vicente and his school that an increasing number of African slaves began to speak “proper” Portuguese as well as LDP. 6.2. Authenticity of LPD sources Today, scholars naturally wonder whether the aforementioned staged representations offer authentic samples of the language of black persons in Portugal at the time. One must thus ask: is this type of LDP a complete invention, or perhaps a mere caricature of L2 talk, and thus essentially devoid of documentary value? The first possibility (complete invention) we can dismiss at once, as it is indeed possible to point out LDP features that no native Portuguese speaker could have fabricated. This is so because a significant number of the prototypical features are found in PCs that developed later along the coasts of West Africa. The alternative is therefore caricature versus faithful representation. A caricature it of course was and had to be. Good caricaturists, however, are able to produce fundamentally true, if exaggerated, pictures of their models. Gil Vicente in particular proves himself to be a very accurate observer of the diverse Portuguese dialects of his time (Teyssier 1959). We therefore conclude that our sources can indeed be trusted — not blindly of course, but to a satisfying degree. One should not lose sight of the fact that the authors’ aim was to create a LDP that would amuse the audience. One consequence of this concern for humor is that the record is never systematic, especially in matters of phonology. For instance, for the word “your” we sometimes find as vosso, apparently identical to Portuguese vosso, and other times as bosso with the LDP shibboleth /b/ instead of

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/v/. Shall we take this alternation as an indication of LDP’s inner variability, or as the author’s sloppiness? There might, however, also be another reason for such a lack of systematicity. Labov (1972: 247-251) demonstrates that in such situations of reporting about stigmatized forms of speech, writers and/or the audience are not consciously sensitive to differences in phonetic features (e.g. /b/ for /v/), but instead zero in on lexical stereotypes. This is precisely what we find in the Portuguese LDP record: certain words containing the stigmatized feature(s) are stereotyped and almost never vary in their transcription in a given text, e.g. boso ‘you’ for Portuguese vós, or bai ‘to go’ for Portuguese vai ‘s/he/it goes’. The fact that inflected verb forms occur amidst a majority of infinitive (all-purpose) forms may hint at a measure of grammatical inner variability in LDP, easier to notice than mere phonological variation. In partial summary: we regard it as a historical fact that the enslaved African community that was a distinct part of Portugal’s population from the 16th to the second half of the 19th century had its own inner language, and we assume this to have been a lexically Portuguese-based BV that fossilized and conventionalized (Plag 2008a) into a post-BV without significant structural changes. Once slave imports to Portugal came to a virtual halt by the end of the 16th century due to the rapidly growing demand for slaves in Brazil, Portugal’s immigrant black community became fluent in Portuguese. However, contrary perhaps to expectations, LDP did not disappear and endured perhaps for as long as two centuries. Be it as it may, LDP’s exact fate after 1700 is of no consequence for the purpose of this paper: as we will argue in the next section, pre- rather than post-18th-century LDP is at the source of West African pidgins and creoles. 7. From Portugal to West Africa 7.1. Senegambia and Cape Verde As mentioned above, one of the tasks performed by African slaves was to serve as interpreters aboard ships outward bound to West Africa. This fact, we propose, provides the crucial link needed to connect LDP to the WAPCs. Consider the following extract from Ca’ da Mosto’s memoirs (Academia Portuguesa da História 1988: 52; also see Carreira 1972: 268): […] metessemo fero / e de uoler mandar in terra vno deli nostri trucimanj / perche cadauno deli nostri navilij haueano trucimanj negri / portadi de portagallo / i quail trucimanj sono schiauj negri vendudi per quel signor de senega / ai primj christianj portagalesi che veneno a descoprir / el paexe de negri / i qual schiauj se fesseno christianj In portagallo / e impreseno ben la lingua spagnola I aueuemo habuti da suo misere per stipendio / e soldo de darli vna testa per vno a cernir in tuto el nostro monte

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/ per sua fadiga dela trucimania e dando chadaun de questi truciman a suo misere 4 / schiauj lor li lassano franchi / e cossi per questo mezo molti schiauj son fati franchi dapoi / per questo mezo dela trucimania. ‘we cast anchor and decided to send a targoman [interpreter] ashore, for all our ships had black targomans brought from Portugal, which targomans are black slaves sold by this lord of Senegal to the first Portuguese Christians who came to discover the land of the Black. These slaves became Christians in Portugal and learned the Spanish language well, and we had obtained them from their masters in exchange of the wages and salary of giving them one head [slave] each to choose from all our cargo for their task of interpreting. And after each of these targomans had given their masters 4 slaves, they set them free. And by this means many slaves are made free afterwards, by this means of serving as targomans’. (our translation)5

These events occurred during Ca’ da Mosto’s first voyage of 1455. His ships were then anchored at the opening of the Sine River, about midway between the Cape Verde peninsula and the Gambia. The above quote contains three important pieces of information. First, from it we learn that ten years or more after the first direct contacts the Portuguese had with Sub-Saharan Africa (which officially took place in 1444 with Dinis Dias’s voyage to the coast of Senegal, but may have been somewhat earlier), no variety of Portuguese was yet current along the Senegambian coast, since Ca’ da Mosto was cautious to provide himself with interpreters who proved their usefulness. We must therefore infer that these first trade contacts —when the returning interpreters were first sold “by this lord of Senegal”— proceeded without a common language, a rather usual practice, and one to which Ca’ da Mosto would have to revert further south (see Naro 1978: 318-319, Tinhorão 1988: 66-67, Fayer 2003). Second, the text establishes that these interpreters could be enfranchised as long as they helped provide more slaves to their Portuguese masters. The text is, however, ambiguous on several counts. First, it does not explicitly say whether the practice was peculiar to this expedition, or whether it was common practice. The general tone of the section in question, especially the use of present tense verbs with habitual value (“they set them free”, “many slaves are made free”) suggests repetition. Moreover, bargaining through a returnee native to obtain slaves

5

Part of this text is quoted by Naro (1978: 317) who uses Crone’s (1937) English edition. The version of Ca’ da Mosto’s account we are citing was edited by Damião Peres. It includes the Venetian text and a Portuguese translation by João Franco Machado. It is based on the oldest known manuscript copy (15th century) kept in the Marciana Library in Venice (Ms. VI, 454). There exists no copy in Ca’ da Mosto’s own hand. The first printed edition is from 1507.

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on profitable terms must have been convenient, so that the services of such an individual were likely to be employed more than once. Secondly, it is unclear whether the freed interpreters were released from bondage on the spot, or after their return to Portugal. Although the second possibility cannot be dismissed, the first one seems at least as likely: after all, why bring back interpreters to Portugal where they were no longer useful? What would become of the interpreters after their release? In general we can only guess, although in the case at hand we do know from Ca’ da Mosto’s narrative: the interpreter was stabbed to death by ambushed local people almost as soon as he set foot on shore. As a result, Ca’ da Mosto abandoned further attempts to explore this portion of the coast and set sail southwards. He adds that everybody on board remained “stupefied and amazed” (stupefati e atonitj), suggesting it was the first time something of the sort happened during the expedition. A few hundred miles to the north, Ca’ da Mosto had spent three peaceful and profitable months as the honored guest of the king of Senegal. We may therefore presume that, in general, released interpreters were peacefully accepted into the African societies. Their status must then have been a very special one. They had returned from an unknown and unimaginable world; they had seen many strange things, and learned words never heard before. They thus were natural intermediaries between the local kings and foreigners who repeatedly returned to their African lands, bringing many desirable goods (on the early African-Portuguese trade in Senegambia, see Barreto 1938, Carreira 1972, Boulègue 1987, Godinho 1989, Brooks 2003). And since these interpreters were there to stay, they took wives and had children to whom we may suppose they taught the alien and so very useful language they learned to master while away, thereby guaranteeing the continuation of their profitable trade. But what exactly was the nature of the L2 language spoken by the interpreter? Was it an approximation of native (vernacular) Portuguese, or perhaps a variety of LDP? Ca’ da Mosto’s qualifies it as “well-spoken Spanish”. This should not deter us, as we know that “Spanish” could mean “Portuguese” as well as “Castilian” or “Galician” (in contrast to Catalan and Basque, two languages of the Iberian Peninsula that are truly distinct from Castilian, Galician, and Portuguese). It is thus possible that the L2 in question was simply LDP, whose mastery would have been sufficient and satisfactory for the task the interpreters were given to perform. There seems to be a case, then, for regarding these enfranchised interpreters as one channel through which LDP made it to the African continent, planting there the seeds of future creole languages, at least in the Senegambian area. Another channel for LDP to arrive in West Africa is through the so-called grumetes ‘ship boys’. The word refers to two distinct groups of people: (1) the interpreters we

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just discussed, and (2) young seamen (some may have held overlapping functions, working as interpreters as well as seamen; see Tinhorão 1988: 109-110, Couto 1992). A number of them may have jumped ship at some port of call along the way, taking LDP with them. Creolized or pre-creolized Portuguese appears to have become a regional lingua franca as early as the 17th century. A body of interpreters helped to diffuse it (Brooks 2003). For instance, the bishop of Santiago, Dom Vitoriano Portuense, who journeyed to Bissau in 1694 to partake in the conversion and baptism of a Pepel king, made the following remarks about the king’s linguistic achievements: Entende muito bem a língua portuguesa e podera falar o crioulo se quisera; porem, entre todos aqueles reis gentios está introduzido por gravidade o falarem por intérpretes ou chalonas. ‘He understands the Portuguese tongue quite well, and he could have spoken the creole had he wished to do so; however, owing to their majesty, all those heathen kings are accustomed to speak it through interpreters or chalonas.’ (Teixeira da Mota 1974, our translation)

In the same vein, reporting about the state of things at the mouth of the river Gambia at the beginning of the 17th century, Donelha (1625/1977: 138) wrote: Os que vão a Cantor tomam aqui dous negros por lingoa e interprete que la chamam chalona, por prémio aos quais chamamos pilotos. ‘Those who go to Cantor take with them two Negroes to serve as interpreters. There they are called chalona, but to flatter them we call them “pilots”’.

Donelha’s term “pilot” suggests that these Africans did not only interpret when on board, but also worked as sailors, guiding the boats up the river. In this way they may be considered to have been the first grumetes ‘ship boys’, the other group besides the interpreters who proved most active in diffusing the developing creole. As their name suggests these grumetes were African sailors who worked for Portuguese traders aboard boats and ships plying the Rios da Guiné (‘Rivers of Guinea’) and the sea route between Guinea and Cape Verde. Since they knew the local languages in addition to the creole, they served as go-betweens in trade relations as well. By the 18th century, they had become a social group in its own right, living on the outskirts of the Portuguese settlements (praças). They were nominally Christian, submitted to a special legislation, and notoriously disorderly and riotous (Rougé 1986). Given their intermediate position between the Portuguese and the local populations, they would have been the source of the pidginized Portuguese that ultimately creolized. The establishment of the group

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probably dates back to the end of the 15th century.6 Their pidgin Portuguese may have originated in two sources, discussed hereafter. Possibles sources are the famous lançados or tangomãos. Soon after the first expeditions to Sub-Saharan Africa, all colonial trade was put into the hands of companies authorized by the Royal Court and endowed with a theoretical monopoly. The Portuguese government, however, never had the administrative means to enforce its own regulations. Official trade then had to compete with Portuguese smugglers, the so-called lançados. Without asking for permission, they settled in villages along the Senegalese Petite Côte and all the way down around Casamance and Rio Geba, trading in slaves and other goods with crews of any European nationality. They did so without paying taxes to the Portuguese Crown (see Silva 1970). The names to designate these people are interesting in themselves and deserve a brief excursus. Lançado is transparent: lançados are castaways, from Port. lançar ‘to cast away’. Tangomão is more mysterious, as it has no transparent Portuguese etymology. (One often finds it written as two words, as if the last syllable was the word mão ‘hand’, clearly an attempt at folk etymology.) According to Carreira (1972: 61), tangomão is derived from Temne, an important language of Sierra Leone, in which it refers to an animist priest. This etymology first appears in Fernandes (1506-1510/1951: 103). Yet, as pointed out by Teixeira da Mota in a footnote, the link between the illegal traders (tangomãos) and animist priests is unclear, to say the least. Moreover, it is well known that Fernandes’ account is based on a second-hand story since he himself never set foot in Africa. In our view, tangomão (and its feminine form tangoma) is derived from trucimani meaning “interpreters” which we saw earlier in the citation about those in the service of Cá da Mosto. There, the word appears in the form of turgiman (Crónica da Guiné). This latter form is closer to the Arabic etymon turjumaan ‘interpreter’. Under this scenario, the word could have been spread by the very first clandestine traders who originally may have been interpreters set free on the spot. Later tangomão (or tangoman as it was commonly written) would have become attached to the European lançados.7



6

7



The coast of present-day Guinea-Bissau and Casamance was first touched by Portuguese ships in 1446 (see Mota 1946; Boxer 1969). Although the first praça, Cacheu, was only founded in 1588, trade on the rivers and across the sea towards and from Cape Verde began well before. Interestingly, the feminine form tangoma designates free, acculturated African women (also called ladinas), often the concubines of lançados, who mediated between the latter and the dun di txon ‘masters of the land’ (i.e. the autochthonous people).

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The lançados usually reached Guinea by way of Santiago. Many among them were converted Jews (cristãos novos ‘new Christians’). The traditional explanation is that they thus put cautious distance between themselves and an Inquisition growingly suspicious about the sincerity of their conversion. This is certainly true. Yet, we wish to draw attention to recent historical studies (Mark & Horta 2004, Green 2005, 2007), which highlight the presence of Sephardic Jewish communities in the Senegambian area in the early 17th century. The members of these communities participated in trading networks that included not only Portugal and Spain, but Italy and the Netherlands as well. They often returned to Europe after spending several years in Africa. There seems therefore to have existed two types of lançado: temporary lançados, so to speak, and, from an earlier period, the “come-to-stay” lançados. The latter, Jewish or not, “went native”, often marrying local wives who begot their children. The former, in contrast, kept to their own culture. (There are even mentions of rabbis on the Petite Côte; see Green 2007.) Different as they were, both groups were faced with the same problem: how to communicate with locals for the purpose of trading. They might have learned several local languages, or at least one with a wider currency such as Mandinka (Boulègue 1987). Obviously they did not, or not sufficiently well, because if they had there would not have arisen the need for the creoles formed in West Africa. The existence of these creole contact vernaculars implies that the lançados actually used some sort of Portuguese, either a basic vernacular Portuguese variety or the LDP. For this scenario to obtain, two conditions needed be met: (1) the lançados of both groups could speak LDP, and (2) the lançados speaking LDP expected to be understood on West African soil. The first condition poses no serious difficulty. The earliest lançados (around 1500) had all resided in Portugal where LDP was widely used and readily available for acquisition (see Naro 1978: 334). Moreover, as mentioned above, the first leg of a lançado’s voyage generally took him to Cape Verde, where pidgin Portuguese was also present (see below). The latecomers (after 1550) to West Africa would have found it in situ. As a result, the second condition (i.e. the lançados speaking LDP and expecting to be understood) only applies to early lançados. We must thus ask: why would they have addressed local West Africans in pidgin Portugese hoping to be understood? According to Naro, “even before they arrived in Africa, the future lançados already had conventionalized ideas about how to talk to Africans; so, upon arrival there, they talked to Africans in Africa just as they had learned to do in Europe” (1978: 334). We find this hard to believe. A more plausible answer, we think, is that they actually knew beforehand that at least one or two individuals among their African interlocutors would understand an approximation of Portuguese. These linguistically exceptional inter-

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locutors could be the formerly mentioned released interpreters and possibly newly trained tangomãos (as well as African ship-jumpers). Once thus seeded, pidgin Portuguese (or LDP) had every reason to take root. The lançados were traders, practical people interested primarily in overcoming the language barrier as quickly and efficiently as possible. Their continued presence then had several consequences. It increased the number and intensity of trade contacts; it attracted local people who came to be employed and paid, thus giving rise to the new group of grumetes; it engendered a new interethnic faction, namely the mixed households of lançados, resulting in so-called filhos da terra ‘children of the land’ (native children), who ultimately became undistinguishable from the grumetes when they came to form the culturally intermediate “creole” (social) class mentioned above. The foregoing discussion does not aim to prove the presence of pidgin Portuguese on the Senegambian and Guinean coasts from the late 15th century onwards. Our principal aim was to find out through which primary channel this foreign medium could have entered Africa. Identifying this channel (i.e., released African interpreters) is important because it helps us understand how and why the Portuguese BV called LDP set the stage so that, in Africa, the lançados had a natural and logical reason for assuming that their pidgin Portuguese would actually be understood by some. To sum up, we propose the following course of events. Around 1440, there was a first wave of African slave trade, executed by Berber merchants and also Senegalese authorities. This initial phase of the trade involved Arabic or no language at all (with gestures playing a central role). This phase lasted some fifteen years, by which time African interpreters from among these first slave cargoes were available in Portugal. We are not hereby implying (pace Naro) that these interpreters had been specifically formed for the purpose of translating. We simply claim that they had resided in Portugal long enough to acquire BV Portuguese (aka LDP) through ordinary processes of second language acquisition. These makeshift interpreters, selected we do not know how, but probably very much at random, were then shipped back to Africa to exercise their skills. There, a significant number of them earned their freedom and stayed. The LDP, now termed pidgin Portuguese, thus took root on African soil. Portuguese and other European sailors with (some) knowledge of Spanish or Portuguese could then be confident they would be understood by at least some individuals residing in West African ports (or nearby). Pidgin Portuguese then diffused to the grumetes, the new social group that arose thanks to maritime commerce between West Africa and Europe. This same group of grumetes ultimately became responsible for the creolization of (pidgin) Portuguese.

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7.2. Gulf of Guinea and beyond The previous section examined the implantation of a Portuguese pidgin in Senegambia and Cape Verde, i.e. Rougé’s (2004) Upper Guinea. This section will examine the other WAPC area, namely the Gulf of Guinea. We shall do it only briefly since the early arrival of the Portuguese language to that area is beyond dispute, as the following quote from Ferraz (1979): 13) makes clear: From the Congo, many inhabitants were sent to Portugal to acquire various types of education and skills, and Portuguese missionaries went to the Congo to teach Portuguese. In this process, Portuguese acquired a measure of currency in the Congo […] some of the people who went to São Tomé as slaves from the Congo may have had a knowledge of Portuguese, so that the Portuguese base need not have been derived entirely from the Portuguese-speaking settlers on the island.

A number of the slaves present in São Tomé (and Principe) during the first settlement period (1485-1500) thus may have come to the island via a detour through Portugal, where they had acquired “knowledge of Portuguese” — or rather, we surmise, of LDP through contacts with the African slaves who were already present there in large numbers. Moreover, although not explicitly mentioned in available sources, some of the first European settlers may also have come from Portugal, and may have been accompanied by slaves conversant in LDP. 8. Cape Verde Islands vs. continent: the debate Having outlined our “Out-of-Portugal” hypothesis, we now wish to take sides in a debate that has been raging (mildly so) for several years about the ultimate birthplace of the Upper Guinea Portuguese Creoles (Cape Verdean8 and Casamance-Guinea-Bissau Kriyol). Our reconstruction of the events that led to their emergence indeed points to the African continent as the most likely cradle. This runs squarely counter the now traditional notion that a creole language first formed on the Cape Verde island of Santiago before being exported to the Senegambian-Guinean area. Lopes da Silva put it succinctly as follows (also see Carreira 1983): I assume that the Creole spoken in Guinea did not directly result from the contact of the natives with the Portuguese language, but it was the Cape Verdean Creole of Sotavento that was brought by colonists from the archipelago; they then diversified it over time, so that it acquired its own characteristics under the influence of indigenous languages. (1957, our translation)

8



By Cape Verdean we mean the Sotavento Santiago variety, as the Barlavento varieties clearly constitute a later development (see Swolkien 2013).

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This hypothesis was considered uncontroversial in part because the islands in question were (and still are by many) regarded as the crucible of creolization par excellence. Recently, scholars have revisited the issue, attempting to demonstrate with sociohistorical and linguistic arguments that Casamance-Guinea-Bissau Kriyol is indeed an offshoot of Santiago Cape Verdean (Quint 2000, Jacobs 2010). For instance, Jacobs, in complete agreement with Lopes, claims that “Proto-UGPC emerged and nativized in the late 15th to early 16th century on Santiago, from where it was taken to the mainland by native Cape-Verdeans who settled in and around Cacheu in the late 16th century” (2010: 290). 9 We do not intend to discuss the historical aspects of Lopes’s and Jacobs’s hypothesis beyond pointing out its uncritical assumption that there was no community on the continent before the end of the 16th century in which some “proto-creole” could have developed. Rather, we will here focus on key linguistic aspects. In support of his claim that Cape Verdean and Casamance-Guinea-Bissau Kriyol could not have emerged separately, Jacobs quotes Quint (2000), who maintains that “[o]ral traditions and morphologies so similar to each other cannot be produced simultaneously in two different places” (our translation). It should be noted, however, that the scholars (i.e., Teixeira da Mota 1954, Rougé 1988, Couto 1992) who argued that creolization may have occurred in different places in response to different language requirements never mentioned “separate” developments. In other words, they accepted without reservations the eventuality of cross-fertilization between the two language areas in the course of parallel developments. That these developments ultimately proceeded from distinct sources is quite another issue, and there is no contradiction in considering both possibilities. On the other hand, it is a fact that the oral literatures of Cape Verde and CasamanceGuinea look very much alike, in particular proverbs and folktales staging humanized animals. For instance, the Cape Verdean stories in which the Goat (xibinho) fights the Wolf strongly resemble the continental stories of the hare (lebri) and the hyena (lobu) that were still regularly told a few years ago in Casamance and Guinea-Bissau. The crucial fact, however, is that Kriyol is by far not the only language in which these stories are told on the African continent. Thus the hare-and-hyena stories are found in the whole expanse of former “Cape Verde Guinea”, where the main characters are called lëg ‘hare’ and bukki ‘hyena’ in Wolof, ja-gero and ja-munguno in Diola, and so forth. More generally these tales recur in many languages in West Af

9

But note his other claim that “for linguistic reasons, we may assume the existence of a protocreole (rather than a pidgin) underlying both GB and SCV” (Jacobs 2010: 295).

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rica, in Ivory Coast, in Burkina Faso, etc. Shall one thus conclude that Cape Verde gave its oral tradition to the whole West Africa? We think not. As for similar morphological systems emerging independently, we will simply mention non-standard Brazilian Portuguese and Tonga Portuguese of São Tomé which, although separated by thousands of kilometers and a sizable amount of time, nevertheless developed striking grammatical similarities (Rougé 2008:201, Lucchesi 2009). Convergent evolution exists in languages as much as in biological species. To this we wish to add that, if the Santiago and continental creoles proceeded from a single source, namely some form of pidginized Portuguese (among speakers sharing the same linguistic background), it would be surprising indeed if these languages did not exhibit strong similarities. Jacobs (2010) purports to provide linguistic evidence for the language transfer from Cape Verde to the Casamance-Guinea area. His primary arguments are lexical and partially based upon Parkvall’s (2000) studies. One issue concerns the role of Mandinka in the formation of the creole lexicon. Jacobs takes up an observation already made by Lopes (1999) and Rougé (2005), namely that Mandingos in CasamanceGuinea speak little Kriyol. On the other hand, according to Parkvall (2000) and the Ethnologue website, only one tenth of the Guinea-Bissau population speaks Mandinka (hence the implicit conclusion that words of Mandinka origin in CasamanceGuinea-Bissau Kriyol come from Cape Verde). How do we explain then that Kriyol includes at least 74 words originating from Mandinka, and that these same words are entirely unattested in Cape Verdean creole? Likewise, if Mandinka influence upon Kriyol was entirely through Cape Verde, why does Cape Verdean creole not share with Kriyol the verbal use of complementizer kuma (ma in Cape Verdean) with the meaning “say that”, or synthetic causatives with the suffix -nt/-nd, two features for which Mandinka influence was demonstrated conclusively (Kihm 1994)? Moreover, accounting for the formation of Casamance-Guinea-Bissau Kriyol between the middle of the 15th century and the end of the 17th century on the basis of the contemporary language situation strikes us as a dubious way to proceed. In the 15th and 16th centuries, the Mandingos were hegemonic south of the river Gambia, which led them and their vassals to trade with the Portuguese. Such a political and economical hegemony had sociolinguistic consequences. It is well known that multilingualism has always thriven in this territory. Owing to its sociolinguistic position, therefore, Mandinka always was and still is part of the linguistic repertoire of many people in the region, with the upshot that lexical borrowings from Mandinka are widespread in various local languages.10 We also 10

Statistical studies such as those to which Parkvall and Jacobs refer seldom take plurilingualism into account.

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know, perhaps as another consequence of Mandinka diffusion, that the Portuguese recruited interpreters in Mandingo territory, i.e. people who must have been L1 or L2 speakers of Mandinka. Given the significant role it seems we ought to assign to these interpreters in the formation of Kriyol (Rougé 2006), there is no need to detour through Cape Verde to account for the presence of Mandinka lexemes in Casamance-Guinea-Bissau Kriyol. Words of Wolof origin in Casamance-Guinea-Bissau Kriyol rouse the same suspicion on the ground that Wolof is not, and probably never was, spoken in the area. Yet Jacobs’ conclusion is the same: these words necessarily come from Cape Verde. The point Jacobs and Quint (and Carreira as well) seem to miss is that the historical process that led to the emergence of the various Creoles in the region was never geographically limited to the areas where a creole language is now spoken. The expanse within which this process took place actually extends from the Senegal river to Sierra Leone, including the Cape Verde archipelago. Ships routinely sailed back and forth across the whole area. Given what is known about the history of this region, there can be no doubt that the Portuguese pidgin first took root and expanded into a proto-creole in the North, that is in Wolof-speaking territory. Moreover, we know that the first interpreters, recruited in Portugal before outbound voyages, had been previously captured in the Wolof speaking area. Therefore, even though no Wolof was spoken at the time in the territory of present-day Casamance and Guinea-Bissau, it remains a fact that the continental expanded pidgin or proto-creole was subjected quite early to Wolof influence ― which of course does not exclude that Cape Verdean Creole may also have undergone strong Wolof influence at a later date for reasons that pertain to its own development. The size of the area within which the various actors of the creolization process moved about thus seems to us to be a sufficient explanation for the presence in Casamance-Guinea-Bissau Kriyol of words coming not only from Wolof, but also from languages of Sierra Leone. No Cape Verdean relay is necessary. It is remarkable in this respect that Alvares d’Almada, who was born and raised in Cape Verde, but traveled extensively on the continent, which travels he consigned in his Tratado breve dos Rios de Guiné (1594), can be seen using Temne words (still present in Kriyol) to describe Wolof realities and the other way around, generally giving the impression that he first learned about these terms in Guinea, which is why he prefixes them with such mentions as que eles chamam ‘which they call’ or chamado lá ‘there called/named’. This is the case even for a word like polon ‘kapok tree’ (Ceiba pentandra), also commonly found in Cape Verdean Creole.

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9. Conclusion According to our Out-of-Portugal scenario, Portuguese creoles in West Africa and possibly beyond proceed from a Basic Variety of Portuguese (LDP) that emerged naturally among the African slaves transported to Portugal. From there it was brought back to Africa by interpreters on board Portuguese ships. A significant number of these interpreters were manumitted on the spot, having secured a quota of slaves for bringing back to Portugal. This laid the foundation for a Portuguese pidgin which flourished in the Casamance – Guinea-Bissau area from the beginning of the 16th century thanks to the socially and (at least in part) genetically mixed group of the grumetes that were the product of the contact between local populations, returnee slaves, and Portuguese traders and/ or adventurers (the lançados or tangomãos, a term we read as originally referring to interpreters). The intermediary status of the grumete group, neither fully African nor European, was the primary reason why the pidgin (structurally little different from LDP, we assume) finally creolized on the mainland. Since grumetes were sailors, we also have an account of how the pidgin may have traveled to the islands (Cape Verde, São Tomé, etc.) where it creolized. Distinct substrate influences then became responsible (perhaps with other factors) for the major divide between Upper Guinea and Gulf of Guinea Creoles. As for the special relations within Upper Guinea between the Cape Verde archipelago, especially Santiago, and the mainland opposite, we find the arguments in favor of a Cape Verdean origin of all regional creoles unconvincing. What was necessarily common to the insular and continental parts of the area at the beginning of the Portuguese era was the LDP-based pidgin first grown on the mainland, but soon transplanted to Santiago. From then on the creolization proceeded in parallel fashion. That the Santiago and Casamance-Guinea-Bissau creoles are close to each other ―although mutual intelligibility, especially of the basilectal varieties, should not be overestimated, it is actually quite low (Rougé 1995)― is sufficiently explained by two observations: first, Upper Guinea creoles remained closer to the original pidgin in matters of phonology and morphology than did Gulf of Guinea creoles, which accounts for the external similarity of Santiago and Casamance-Guinea-Bissau creoles. Secondly, as already emphasized, “parallel” does not mean “separate”. Given socio-historical conditions, mutual influences (we underline the qualifier) were of necessity constant during the entire colonial history of the two territories. They never were so strong, however, that they could align the two verbal systems, for instance, which remain distinct as far as TMA marking and voice inflection are concerned.

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Klein, Wolfgang & Perdue, Clive. 1997. The Basic Variety, or couldn’t natural languages be much simpler? Second Language Acquisition Research 13. 301-347. Labov, William. 1972. Sociolinguistic patterns. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Lopes, Carlos. 1999. Kaabunké, Espaço, território e poder na Guinea-Bissau, Gâmbia e Casamança pré-coloniais. Lisboa: CNCDP. Lopes, Norma da Silva. 2009. Um estudo do gênero nos Tongas e em Helvécia: uma comparação. Papia 19. 141-151. Lopes da Silva, Baltasar. 1957. O dialecto crioulo de Cabo Verde. Lisboa: Imprensa Nacional, Junta das Missões geográficas e de Investigações do Ultramar. Lucchesi, Dante. 2009. O português afro-brasileiro . Salvador da Bahia: EDUFBA. Mark, Peter & José da Silva Horta. 2004. Two early seventeenth-century Sephardic communities on Senegal’s Petite Côte. History in Africa 31. 231-256. Mota, Avelino Teixeira da. 1946. A descoberta da Guiné. Boletim Cultural da Guiné Portuguesa I, 1-3. 11-68, 273-326, 457-509. Mota, Avelino Teixeira da. 1954. Guiné Portuguesa. Lisboa: Agencia Geral do Ultramar. Mota, Avelino Teixeira da. 1974. As viagens do Bispo D. Frei Vitoriano Portuense à Guiné e a cristianização dos Reis de Bissau. Lisboa: Junta de Investigações Científcas do Ultramar. Mufwene, Salikoko. 2001. The ecology of language evolution. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Muysken, Pieter. 2001. The origin of creole languages: The perspective of second language learning. In Norval Smith & Tonjes Veenstra (eds.), Creolization and contact, 156-173. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Naro, Anthony. 1978. A study on the origins of pidginization. Language 54. 314-349. Parkvall, Mikael. 2000. Out of Africa. African influences in Atlantic creoles. London: Battlebridge. Pienemann, Manfred. 1998. Language processing and second language development: Processability theory. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Plag, Ingo. 2008a. Creoles as interlanguages: Inflectional morphology. Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages 23. 114-135. Plag, Ingo. 2008b. Creoles as interlanguages: Syntactic structures. Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages 23. 307-328. Plag, Ingo. 2009a. Creoles as interlanguages: Phonology. Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages 24. 119-138. Plag, Ingo. 2009b. Creoles as interlanguages: Word-formation. Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages 24. 339-362. Quint, Nicolas. 2000. Le Cap Verdien: origines et devenir d’une langue métisse. Paris: L’Harmattan. Roberts, Sarah J. 2000. Nativization and the genesis of Hawaiian Creole. In John H. McWhorter (ed.), Language change and language contact in pidgins and creoles, 257-300. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Rougé, Jean-Louis. 1986. Uma hipótese sobre a formação do crioulo da Guiné-Bissau e de Casamansa. Soronda 2. 28-49.

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Rougé, Jean-Louis. 1988. Petit dictionnaire étymologique du kriol de Guinée-Bissau et Casamance. Bissau: INEP. Rougé, Jean-Louis. 1992. Les langues des Tongas. In Ernesto d’Andrade & Alain Kihm (eds.), Actas do Colóquio sobre “Crioulos de Base Lexical Portuguesa”, 171-176. Lisboa: Colibri. Rougé, Jean-Louis. 1995. A propósito da formação dos crioulos de Cabo Verde e da Guiné. Soronda: Revista de Estudos Guineenses 20. 81-98. Rougé, Jean-Louis. 2004. Dictionnaire étymologique des créoles portugais d’Afrique. Paris: Karthala. Rougé, Jean-Louis. 2008. A inexistência de crioulo no Brasil. In J. L. Fiorin & M. Petter (eds.), África no Brasil, a formação da lingua portuguesa, 63-73. São Paulo: Editora Contexto. Saraiva, José H. 1991. História concisa de Portugal. Lisboa: Publicações Europa-América. Saupin, Guy. 2013. Les ibériques et l’Afrique noire. In Guy Saupin (dir.), La péninsule ibérique et le monde: 1470-1640, 311-337. Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes. Selinker, Larry. 1972. Interlanguage. International Review of Applied Linguistics 10. 209-231. Siegel, Jeff. 2008. Pidgins/creoles, and second language acquisition. In Silvia Kouwenberg & John V. Singler (eds.), The Handbook of Pidgin and Creole Studies, 189-218. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell. Silva, Maria da Graça Garcia Nolasco da. 1970. Subsídio para o estudo dos “lançados” na Guiné. Boletim Cultural da Guiné Portuguesa 25. 13-63, 97-100, 25-40, 217-232, 397-420. Swolkien, Dominika. 2013. Cape Verdean creole of São Vicente. In Susanne M. Michaelis, Philippe Maurer, Martin Haspelmath & Magnus Huber (eds.), The survey of pidgin and creole languages, Vol. 2. 20-30. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Teyssier, Paul. 1959. La langue de Gil Vicente. Paris: Klincksieck. Tinhorão, José Ramos. 1988. Os negros em Portugal: uma presença silenciosa. Lisboa: Caminho. Versteegh, Kees. 2008. Non-Indo-European pidgins and creoles. In Silvia Kouwenberg & John V. Singler (eds.), The Handbook of Pidgin and Creole Studies, 158-186. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.

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THE MISSING SPANISH CREOLES ARE STILL MISSING: REVISITING AFROGENESIS AND ITS IMPLICATIONS FOR A COHERENT THEORY OF CREOLE GENESIS John McWhorter Columbia University Theories that plantation creoles were all born as pidgins at West African coast slave castles (e.g., McWhorter 2000) have not fared well among creolists. Instead, scholars have preferred to suppose that the birth of creole languages is fundamentally determined by factors local to a given context. This paper reviews some of the responses to McWhorter (2000) and spells out why, especially in light of research in this millennium, the “Afrogenesis” paradigm still deserves serious consideration. A key fact is the following: creolists generally argue that a creole did not form in situations where (1) there was extensive black-white contact and (2) many slaves were locally-born, a scenario most often associated with the Spanish Caribbean and Reunion, and proposed for South American colonies by Díaz-Campos & Clements (2008), and, most recently, Sessarego (2014). However, conditions were of just this kind in early St. Kitts and Barbados, where most scholars now locate the birth of English-based and French-based Caribbean plantation creoles. The disparity in outcomes between these locations remains unexplained. Consequently, in spite of half a century of research, there is no coherent theory of how or why creoles come to be. This paper argues that Afrogenesis alone provides a way out of this conundrum. Keywords: Afrogenesis, diachrony, sociétés d’habitation, plantation, Spanish creoles, Negerhollands, pidginization, creole genesis

1. Introduction 1.1. Back in the 1990s McWhorter (2000) argues, as the culmination of research dating from the early nineties, that the reason there are so few Spanish-based creoles in the world is not that, as was traditionally supposed, slave societies under the Spanish accumulated slaves more slowly than under other European powers, such that there was time for founding populations of Africans to acquire a relatively complete Spanish and pass it on to later arrivals and/or their offsprings.

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The hypothesis, quite influential since the 1960s, has been that blacks first lived in relatively equal numbers with whites, in close contact with them, serving on small plantations or as domestic servants. When Africans were later imported in larger numbers to work on labor-intensive sugar plantations, they were exposed to the linguistic competence of these earlier arrivals, and therefore learned a variety of Spanish rather than creating a creole version of it. That hypothesis was above all based on conditions in Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Dominican Republic. This same scenario was later reconstructed as well for the island of Réunion, with Baker and Corne (1982) hypothesizing that this initial small-scale société d’habitation stage determined the difference between Réunionnais French, often considered a “dialect” of French by the layman, and Mauritian Creole French, which has more features associated with creole languages. Mauritian developed without an initial stage of white-black parity, such that slaves had little exposure to French itself. However, barely addressed outside of Hispanophone publications had been the mainland Spanish plantation societies in Mexico and South America. McWhorter (2002) argues that in these contexts there was no société d’habitation phase. Yet, there are no Spanish creoles spoken in them, and no evidence that there ever have been. Sharp (1976) noted that, for example, the Chocó in Colombia, Africans were imported in large numbers for mining and never co-habited in close proximity to whites. The first such groups had 40 to 60 slaves; then their numbers exploded over the course of the 19th century, such that by 1778 there were 5,828 blacks and only 175 whites in the Chocó. The idea –often suggested in the Spanish literature on slavery and language– that social relations between whites and blacks in Latin American (and the Chocó in particular) were somehow more “fluid” and less hostile was belied by a starkly hostile environment in which clerics were rare or non-existent, floggings were regular, revolt and escape were common (Sharp 1976), and slaves were, for the most part, left to fend for themselves while far removed from any urban environment. Yet the Spanish spoken by descendants of these Africans in the Chocó today is a regionalized but fully acquired Spanish, characterized only by the variable and light erosion of grammatical gender marking and mild tendency towards periphrasis common in the vernacular Spanish of African-descended peoples in Latin America (Schwegler 1991). McWhorter (2000) argued that the facts were similar in the Chota Valley (Ecuador), in Veracruz (Mexico), and in Peru and Venezuela in plantation contexts. This suggests that the absence of Spanish creoles in these places was due to something other than social conditions. This conclusion should not surprise since the same absence of a société d’habitation phase is thought to have yielded creole languages in Surinam, Jamaica, Haiti, and elsewhere. In my past writings on the topic, my hypothesis has always been that one factor decisively distinguished Spain from the

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other slave trading powers, and explains why Latin America has very few Spanishbased creoles: Spain did not possess slave castles on the West African coast, since Portugal held the exclusive right to engage in slavery in that region (Treaty of Tordesillas, 14941). 1.2. The Pidgin target As counterintuitive as it may seem, the facts show that where creoles like Sranan and Haitian actually began was not in the New World but in the slave castles of West Africa, where whites and blacks co-existed under conditions of temporary and limited interaction, of just the kind that yields pidgins in many other places in the world. Under this scenario, the New World creoles were seeded by slaves who had worked in these castles and were transported overseas, likely as initial founding populations. This would explain why there are so few Spanish creoles: with no early access to (pidgin) Spanish in Africa or on Portuguese-owned ships, castle slaves brought to New World Spanish plantations simply acquired Spanish itself. That, too, can seem counterintuitive given the reigning thought that plantations acted as language input filters to slaves. However, contexts like the Chocó would seem to admit no other interpretation. The same applies Brazil, where it has long stood as a puzzle that no true creole Portuguese seems ever to have existed (pace the lightly restructured Portugueses spoken by Afro-Brazilian people that Baxter 1997 describes). Under my Afrogenesis Hypothesis (henceforth AH), Brazil is ordinary: it represents the “normal” situation, under which a castle slave pidgin did not serve as an acquisition model. In my view, the same scenario would have played out on English and French plantations; but there, a pre-existing slave castle pidgin served as a model for slaves’ speech across the ocean, thereby fundamentally altering the early formation of language in these parts of the Americas. The factor that determined whether a creole became the lingua franca of a plantation colony was this: if there already existed a pidgin target amidst the speech varieties to which slaves were exposed, then a creole could arise.To have exerted a significant effect, that target would have had to be present at the founding of the colony. In plantation cases, this target was provided by Africans who had served under European in the West African castles. To wit, a pidgin can form due to assorted kinds of interactions. In some cases, the pidgin is a component in the linguistic mix to which a socially subordinate people are exposed while they form a lingua franca. The presence of that component,

1



The treaty was historically important in that it divided Latin America geo-linguistically, and established Spain in the western Pacific until 1898.

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the pidgin target, can determine that the emergent lingua franca will be a creole, rather than a lightly vehicularized version of the dominant language along the lines of Réunionnais French or Afrikaans. The latter, then, are “normal” results of widespread second-language acquisition, of the kind that have usually resulted worldwide in untutored circumstances (as opposed to the spread of languages like Russian largely via education). On English and French plantations, slaves did, however, have access to a pidgin that originally formed in West African slave castles, and was brought overseas where it took on a new life as an in-group target for plantation slaves. 1.3. A tough sell My AH was not received well. More precisely, it was barely received at all in full form. The contemporary responses (mainly Bickerton 1998 and Huber 1999) merely assessed a portion of it, essentially limiting themselves to my tracing the Atlantic English-based creoles (AECs) back to the Cormantin trade fort in Ghana (McWhorter 1996). Because my AH relied so much on “detective story”-style argumentation from sociohistorical evidence as well as linguistic analysis, it would –quite understandably– never engage the serious interest of linguists (as opposed to historians and anthropologists). A later engagement, Lipski (2005), suggested just this. Although concentrating on the Spanish rather than the English New World territories, Lipski’s critcisms were valid in themselves, but do not address the larger cross-creole and literally global question that my hypothesis was seeking to explain. Around 2010 two conference invitations made me revisit the AH. Then, as now, I continued to view my arguments as compelling, and fresh findings by other scholars since then have only reinforced my conviction. The purpose of this paper is to detail my current thinking on the matter, and to explain the implications of the AH for creole genesis theory. In this task, Iberian-based creoles will be shown to be central, as they help us resolve a theoretical impasse. 2. The missing Spanish creoles: not missing? Two responses to my characterization of the mainland Spanish contexts motivate my revisiting the AH in this paper. Díaz-Campos & Clements (2008) have argued that fresh evidence shows that Venezuela’s sugar plantations were never especially large, and that many of their Black overseers were locallyborn. As such, these overseers presumably had ample exposure to whites and their language. This would explain why there was never a creole Spanish in Venezuela: most slaves would have had ample exposure to Spanish itself.

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More recently, Sessarego (2014) has revisited the Chota Valley (Ecuador) context. He argues that there, too, slaves recruited to work on plantations were often locallyborn, and spoke Spanish rather than a creole. Through more detailed engagement with the data than in the source I consulted (Coronel Feijoó 1991), Sessarego shows that Chota’s plantations only gradually became large. According to him, Chota’s plantations only gradually became large. This gradual growth presumably would have allowed the development of a Spanish more analogous to Réunionnais French than Mauritian Creole, which is just the kind of Spanish Chota Valley black Ecuadoreans today speak (Lipski 1986).2 Sessarego’s and Díaz-Campos & Clements’ arguments imply that the Chota and Venezuela contexts do not contradict the classic creole genesis theory. In their view, Venezuela and Ecuador are simply “Réunions” rather than “Mauritiuses”. Viewed as such, creolization was fundamentally conditioned by the timing and proportion of slave importations, a synthesis of linguistics with sociology that creolists have understandably found powerfully attractive since Baker & Corne (1982), with Bickerton (1984) even venturing that such interactions could be tabulated mathematically. I fully accept the findings of Díaz-Campos & Clements and Sessarego that plantations in the settings they address only gradually became large, and that a significant number of the slaves were born in the New World rather than Africa. It would not even be surprising if similar data could be found for other mainland Spanish societies (cp. the suggestions in Sessarego 2014 on the Chocó, for instance). However, if creolists accept findings of this kind as confirming the traditional limited access model of creole origins, it will leave creole genesis theory not more but less coherent. As will become apparent below, what Díaz-Campos & Clements and Sessarego ultimately show is that the AH remains the only creole genesis formulation that explains the facts worldwide, rather than describing facts on a local basis. 3. All plantation creoles ultimately originated in société d’habitation contexts The statement that the AH remains the only explanatory, as opposed to descriptive, account of why creoles are spoken where they are today may well seem hubristic. However, one justification for the statement is that creoles under the English and French trace back to the same kind of intimacy between whites

2



For a recent assessment of Chota Valley speech and its possible early Afro-Portuguese connection, see Schwegler (2014).

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and blacks as Díaz-Campos & Clements and Sessarego reconstruct for South America (Venezuela, Chota, etc.). Two interrelated observations make this clear: (1) All of the AECs, including the “pidgin” Englishes of West Africa (Krio, Ghanaian Pidgin English, Nigerian Pidgin English, Cameroonian Pidgin English) have been identified as descendants of a single original language (Hancock 1987, McWhorter 1995, Baker 1999). The same monogenetic genesis has been argued to hold true for all French plantation creoles (henceforth FPCs) of the Caribbean and the Indian Ocean (Goodman 1964, Parkvall 1995, McWhorter 2000: 146-91). (2) The sociohistorical deduction advanced above requires that both the English and the French proto-creoles must have arisen on small islands and on small farms amidst parity between black and white – i.e. just the kinds of demographic conditions that we so confidentally explain as preventing the birth of creoles in Ecuador or Venezuela.

The following is a summary of the reasoning behind these observations (for a more comprehensive arguments, see McWhorter [2000]). 3.1. The AECs and the FPCs as dialect clusters The first statement is clear from comparative reasoning. The AECs share an array of idiosyncratic features not traceable to English, or to any substrate language structure shared by all of the languages, or to universal tendencies of second-language acquisition. Moreover, some of them are grammatical items, which suggests that the ancestral source was not a mere collection of words, but a grammatical system. 3.1.1. Summary of the argumentation (pace McWhorter 2000) An example substantiating this unified and narrowly monogenetic account is the well-known creole unu pronoun “you (pl.)” a borrowing from Igbo (southeastern Nigeria). In Belizean, Sranan, Saramaccan and Jamaican its form is unu, while elsewhere it has been borrowed in slightly different forms, i.e., Gullah hunnuh, Bajan wona, Krio una, etc. There is no linguistic or socio-historical evidence that the Igbo were so dominant throughout the Caribbean (much less along the West African coast itself) as to spread this one pronoun so consistently and uniformly. As such, unu qualifies as a clue to these creoles’ common ancestry from a single contact language which, for reasons we may never know, borrowed unu during the early phases of colonial expansion (presumably during the 17th century and beyond). Unu in this sense is analogous to an early mutation in mitochondrial DNA that serves to identify genetic relationships between fauna and flora. Similarly diagnostic is the locative copula de, found in a wide range of Atlantic creoles:

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The missing Spanish creoles: still missing Where is he? (from Hancock 1987) Sranan: Na usai a de? Saramaccan: Naásɛ a dɛ́? Krio: Na usai i de? Guyanese: Wisaid am de?

Antiguan: Jamaican: Belizean: Gullah:

45

We i de? We im de? We i de? Wisai i de?

The question is why numerous creoles would so consistently have recruited the word there as a copula. This is inconceivable as a one-time happenstance, and utterly inconceivable as a regularity. No dialectal English contains such constructions, and none of the substrate languages uses there as a copula. Alleyne’s (1980: 163-164) early attempt to link de to Twi de (copula) is problematic in that the proposed etymon is equative rather than locative, as de is in the AECs. But even if Alleyne’s account proved true, this would still be indicative of a single ancestor, as we would still need to explain why a single Twi item could have spread so uniformly into over a dozen independently emerging (and geographically very distant) creoles. Limitations of space prevent me from discussing the remainder of the evidence (but see McWhorter 2000: 41-98). However, taken in toto the case consists of copious idiosyncratic correspondences among the AECs, thus render “diffusionist” accounts altogether implausible. The facts revealed by French creole are similar, as detailed in full in McWhorter (2000: 146-79). All of them have a copula that occurs only sentence-finally, as in (2), here contrasted with (1): (1) Mwɛ͂ te ø nã bulõžeri. I ANT -- LOC bakery ‘I was in the bakery.’ (Phillips 1982: 250) (2) Kote li place he ‘Where is

ye? COP he?’ (ibid. 274)

(3) Amerikɛ͂ yo te dwe ye. American they ANT must COP ‘Americans they must have been.’ (ibid. 270) (4) Pyer ø labutik. Peter shop ‘Peter is at the shop.’ (Baker & Syea 1991: 159) (5) Kot Pyer ete? side Peter COP ‘Where is Peter?’ (ibid.)

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(6) Ki Pyer ete? what Peter COP ‘What is Peter?’ (ibid.)

As ordinary as this copula type seems to French creolists, it is quite unusual typologically. There is, to the author’s knowledge, no large-scale typological study of copulas across a broad sample of the world’s language families. However, in my twenty-five years of rather frequent address of copular morphemes (which includes McWhorter 2005: 167-198, 2012a), I have never encountered a copula with the FPC distribution. It is, therefore, reasonable to conclude that the French creole feature is highly unlikely to have arisen independently in a dozen creoles. Similarly indicative is the fact that the French particles used to indicate tense, aspect, and mood are so uniform across the French creoles. Chance would dictate that languages born of separate encounters with French could hardly settle on such a similar array of choices, as seen in genetically separate developments in Tayo Creole French and the Tay Boi pidgin French of Vietnam:3 Past Future Progressive Completive Recent past Obligation

haitian mauritian te ti va va ap pe fin (f)in fek fek pu pu

tayo

tay boi

dzha ai, être forms, (te) va va atra de maintenant fini fini vya de ø ø ø

3.1.2. Contrary voices? Over the years, some creolists have questioned this reconstruction of two single creole ancestors for the AECs and the FPCs. However, they have done so in too cursory a fashion to qualify as engagement. Kouwenberg (2010: 182) dismisses a diachronic relationship between the AECs as mere “possible historical connections” only between “some” of the creoles, largely restricted to a dimly perceptible “handful of words of disparate origin”. However, this assessment is couched in complete neglect of Hancock (1987), McWhorter (1995) and Baker (1999), which offer extended treatments applying systematic argumentation to substantial amounts of data, both lexical and grammatical. Kouwenberg’s dismissal thus cannot qualify as significant judgment, nor



3

Several other idiosyncratic correspondences exist between the FPCs that strongly argue for Haitian and Mauritian to have begun as a single contact language on the West African coast. Again, for details see McWhorter (2000: 146-163).

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can Migge’s claim that “the alleged lexical and grammatical similarities (…) are not sufficiently close to rule out separate developments in each or several of the varieties” (2003: 3). She offers no argumentation to support this claim, nor does she address Hancock’s or Baker’s work. I am unaware of any addresses beyond these of the evidence that Hancock, Baker and McWhorter (2000) have adduced for the sisterhood of the AECs. There are sporadic passing remarks (e.g., Bickerton’s 1998: 874) but these are not deep engagements. However, it is indicative that even Bickerton, despite being opposed to tracing the AECs to a single ancestor or the African coast, conceded that the evidence that copulas da and de must trace to a single ancestor is “a puzzle” that “perhaps the linguistics of the 21st century will be able to explain (…)” (1998: 88). This qualifies as an unusually open surrender from a thinker so notoriously combative, and at this point in the 21st century we seem no closer to explaining da and de – or the other features that AECs have in common – than we were twenty years ago. No further responses seem forthcoming, and as such, the matter qualifies, in the formal sense, as uncontested in any substantial way. We may predict that the 21st century will offer an explanation of the commonalities between the AECs. It is one that nineteenth-century linguists, focused on diachronic relationships and their demonstration via the collection of idiosyncratic traits, would have readily perceived: namely, that the AECs trace to a single ancestor. Certainly local conditions deeply affected the language in the various colonies in which it took root. However, the idiosyncratic correspondences remain, and allow no other interpretation than direct diachronic relationship. To wit, the uncontested sister relationship between Tok Pisin, Bislama and Solomon Islands Pijin is precisely analogous to the one between Gullah, Nigerian “Pidgin” English and Sranan. These creoles are sister languages descended from a single ancestor. They all have experienced distinct contact and social histories which nevertheless leave their common origin in a single encounter with English readily apparent. Meanwhile, with regards to the FPCs, DeGraff (2001: 296-299) misunderstands what types of idiosyncrasies are to be considered in comparative analysis. He supposes that small differences in the syntactic behavior of Haitian’s copula ye and Mauritian’s ete disconfirm diachronic relationship, when identical behavior is what we would not expect in what are, after all, separate languages. Then, he

4



Bickerton’s erroneously supposes that my argument for fu ‘for’ as an idiosyncratic correspondence refers to the irrealis usage rather than the deontic one.

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appears to fail to appreciate the import of idiosyncrasy in the typological sense, making no address of my observation that copulas appearing only sentence-finally are highly peculiar in the cross-linguistic sense. His claim that copulas in Hebrew, Arabic, Irish and Russian are similar to the French creole ones is curious at best, and whatever likenesses he gleans —presumably theory-particular propositions rooted in Minimalist analysis— are irrelevant to charting diachronic relationships between languages. Similarly, DeGraff asserts that the parallel etymologies of TMA markers between the French plantation creoles could be due to chance, neglecting my careful demonstration that this is, in fact, not possible. Overall, DeGraff considers the parallels drawn in McWhorter (2000) between the FPCs “scant” and “superficial” in numbering “twelve or so”. But under this standard, the relatedness of the Atlantic, West Benue-Congo, and Bantu subfamilies of Niger-Congo would qualify as invalid, given that they are based on a similar number of correspondences, routinely considered convincing by career scholars of language taxonomy and change. 3.2. Tracing the AECs and the FPCs to small farms My second statement —i.e., the observation that sociohistorical deduction requires that both the English and the French proto-creoles must have arisen on small islands and on small farms amidst parity between black and white— involves these two proto-creoles of AECs and FPCs, respectively. Here is why: the first Caribbean islands settled by the English were St. Kitts (1624) and Barbados (1626). Whether AEC began on Barbados or St. Kitts is difficult to decide, but there can be no doubt that one of these two islands was the birthplace. The French began their New World enterprise on St. Kitts in 1628. Thereafter, English colonies were seeded from Barbados and St. Kitts, while subsequent French ones were seeded from St. Kitts, traditionally regarded as the “mother” of the French Caribbean colonies. Yet, on Barbados until the 1660s, blacks worked alongside white indentured servants (Handler & Lange 1978: 290, Watts 1987), and conditions on St. Kitts were similar (Jennings 1995). That is, whites and blacks worked in relatively equal number: this sociological factor is what Sessarego, Díaz-Campos & Clements (and most creolists) assume to have allowed rich acquisition of French and English, such that we would expect that slaves there would have spoken them in their indigenous (non-creolized) varieties. Yet this is where AEC and FPC emerged. We know this because, for example, Jamaican and Sranan are clearly derived directly from Bajan. They are, therefore, not fortuitously similar to Bajan for vague reasons of lexical “diffusion”. This means that the “classic” plantation conditions of Jamaica and Surinam cannot account for the grammar, because the grammar

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had already arisen elsewhere. Large plantation economies may well have helped preserve a creole, in that more white-black contact may have led to its decreolization. However, the basic grammar of Sranan was born in St. Kitts or Barbados; and that of Haitian originated on St. Kitts. The comparative data simply allow for no other conclusion. 4. The problem 4.1. More than just a “question to be addressed in future research” The data also leave a burning question: if we simply ignore the oddity that creoles formed in St. Kitts and Barbados, but not in Venezuela and Ecuador, then creolistics, even after nearly fifty years of inquiry, has failed to explain what ultimately causes the formation of these contact vernaculars. The facts as currently known are as follows: First, massive disproportion between whites and blacks did not yield creole languages in the Chocó and in Brazil. Second, creole languages did form in instances (e.g., Barbados and St. Kitts) where slaves had ready and ample contact with the lexifier. In Hawaii, immigrant children created Hawaiian Creole English while being schooled daily in the English (Roberts 2000). In the Gulf of Guinea, Portuguese creoles were seeded by the emergence of São Tomense amidst black-white marriages (Ferraz 1979: 15-16). Creolist orthodoxy holds that creoles formed because of inaccessibility to a target language (whether this be via a pidgin stage or the top-down “approximations of approximations” model favored by Francophone creolists). But the facts just outlined above gravely contradict such orthodoxy, whence the “origins” mystery remains. 4.2. There is indeed a conundrum – creolization is not simply language mixture At first sight, it may seem unproblematic that we have no overarching explanation as to “how creoles formed”. Mufwene (e.g., 2001) stipulates that creoles are not typologically different from other languages. He also argues that creoles were not born amidst anything describable as pidginization. DeGraff (e.g., 2001) is of similar opinion, proposing that the difference between creoles and their lexifier languages was a mere matter of relatively non-disruptive second-language acquisition, the same kind that has yielded a great many languages worldwide. Under this conception of what creoles are —or are not— the very inclusion of plantation creoles in the same class as languages like Tok Pisin has been a mistake. As such, the pidgin-creole life cycle is treated as having been overgeneralized to languages it ought never have been applied to (note that creolists today often refer to the pidgin-creole life cycle with a certain wariness).

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Mufwene and DeGraff, then, are claiming that creoles resulted from language contact, in a fashion qualitatively indistinguishable from that which created English or Yiddish. This entails that a search for a mechanism of creole genesis, in itself, be regarded as antiquated. As a result, claims that creoles represent a bioprogram in the sense of Bickerton’s hypothesis, or that there is a creole “prototype” along the lines of my own work, are by force viewed as misguided. Admittedly, Mufwene’s and DeGraff’s positions have a certain sociological appeal. Mufwene in particular has had much to do with a generally unstated, but now widespread, transformation in how creolists conceive of their task in charting the genesis of a creole. One is to primarily demonstrate languages mixing together, with a focus on idiosyncratic aspects of the creolization context, and hold at an arm’s length any overarching “theories” about creole genesis as a whole, instead referring to second-language acquisition processes. As reasonable as this tendency seems on its face, it errs in that it has not stood up to actual testing against primary data (on this point, see McWhorter 2012, 2013). For example, Mufwene’s hypothesis that creoles are simply mixtures of source language features (the “feature pool” model) fails to explain why Palenquero creole lacks gender and/or number marking, concord, definiteness, as well as Differential Object marking, all amply found in its source two languages, Spanish and Kikongo (characterization of Palenquero based on Schwegler 1998). Examples (7) and (8) display the first four of these features: Kikongo:

(Bentley 1887: 526) (C8P = noun class 8 plural)

(7) O ma-tadi ma-ma ma-mpembe ma-mpwena AUG C8P-stone C8P-DEM C8P-white C8P -big i ma-u ma-ma tw-a-mw-ene. COP C8P-that C8P-DEM we-them-see-PERF. ‘These great white stones are those which we have seen.’ Spanish: (8) Est-a-s DEM-FEM-PL

piedr-a-s stone-FEM-PL

grand-e-s y blanc-a-s big-FEM-PL and white-FEM-PL

son las que hemos visto. COP.3P DEF.FEM.PL REL have.1PL see.PP ‘These great white stones are those which we have seen.’

Most creolists immediately associate Mufwene’s “feature pool” hypothesis with an assertion that the language learned will exhibit features from both the learners’ native languages (substrate) and the target language learned. Amidst the

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historical context of creolist debate, this is most readily processed as a statement against Bickerton’s notorious dismissal of substrate contributions to creoles. However, the “feature pool” hypothesis has larger intentions than this, classifying creoles as simply “mixed”. Few creolists seem to have fully registered the import, for example, of Mufwene’s frequent claim (cp. 2001: 81-105) that there was no qualitative difference between the emergences of Standard English, Black English, and Gullah, all presumably having resulted from the mixtures of different “features”. Crucially, Mufwene’s approach has the shortcoming of predicting that Palenquero creole would be a language similar in its morphosyntactic configuration to Kikongo and Spanish, which (as shown by the two sample sentences in [7] and [8] above) is not the case. The facts of Palenquero are also incompatible with a DeGraff-style conception of creole genesis as basically successful second-language acquisition. Palenquero is but one example of a great many other creoles that are similarly problematic for the type of purely “ecological” account of creole genesis that Mufwene has repeatedly advanced. In general, Mufwene and DeGraff both call attention to the facts that both English and French are rather lightly inflected languages (French especially in its spoken rendition), and that Niger-Congo languages of the Lower Guinea coast such as Twi, Ewe, Yoruba and Igbo are analytic as well. For that reason, they claim, creoles’ analyticity is simply a historical carryover rather than the result of pidginization or “irregular” language transmission. However, they omit that many creoles were born from much more synthetic languages. The Indian Ocean French creoles’ substrate was mainly Bantu. The Upper Guinea Creole Portuguese substrate was Atlantic, including highly inflected languages such as Wolof. Spanish and Portuguese themselves are much more highly inflected than English and French even in colloquial registers: no Iberian dialect is as sparse on inflectional allomorphy as English or colloquial French. Despite the frequent airing of these observations over the past fifteen years (McWhorter 1998, 2011: 107-108, 2013), neither Mufwene nor DeGraff has ever addressed this crucial point. I trust that, in light of the above issues, most creolists will agree that there is a stark enough difference between creoles and their source languages to motivate our conceiving of their genesis as a discrete process. As such, these vernaculars deserve to be given a (new) name, and investigated separately from that of the genesis of Romanian, Media Lengua, or English. This returns us to our central problem: if creoles formed when learners did have ample contact with speakers, then why did they nevertheless emerge in St. Kitts and Barbados, but not in Venezuela or Ecuador? What motivates my Afrogenesis Hypothesis is an attempt to resolve this overarching question.

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5. Afrogenesis revisited 5.1. Why Africa? If we suppose that conditions of cohabitation between whites and their slaves are unlikely to yield creoles (as per Sessarego, Díaz-Campos & Clements, among others), then the only logical way to explain the emergence of a creole on tiny, modestly populated islands like 17th-century Barbados and St. Kitts is if the creole had been imported from elsewhere. However, prior to the settlement of these islands, the only place where the English and the French had been in contact with Africans was the West African coast. Crucially, the context of their interaction in Africa, whenever long-term, was of the type that one would expect to yield a pidgin. This was particularly true of slave castles like those of Cormantin castle in Ghana and St. Louis in Senegal. Based on socio-historical deduction, McWhorter (2000) proposes that AEC emerged in such settings. 5.2. The nature of evidence These pidgin varieties would have disappeared with the demise of the slave castles themselves, and unfortunately, concrete evidence of these pidgins, or their transportation across the seas, is all but nonexistent. Hancock’s (1986) proposal that today’s West African “pidgin” English varieties are descendants of an original Guinea Coast Creole English that was a precursor to the New World AECs would be highly convenient to a thesis such as mine, but the historical evidence actually makes clear that these varieties owe their presence in Africa to a return voyage from the New World, specifically from Jamaica to Sierra Leone after the Revolutionary War in the United States (McWhorter 2000: 140-145). Despite extensive archival research in the 1990s, as well thorough combing of the secondary literature, I have found no citations of a castle-slave pidgin precursor to the AECs and FPCs used by Africans on the West African coast in the early 17th century. This is unsurprising in itself, given that the castles were contexts where little writing of any kind was done. As a result, only shards of documentation survive of their operations at all. Meanwhile, on the possible transplantation of castle slaves to help found colonies overseas, there exist some records of Cormantin castle slaves being sold overseas, and even missives to the fort from London directing the transportation of castle slaves to new colonies to assist in their founding. These missives are from the 1650s and 1660s, too late for the occupation of St. Kitts and Barbados.

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However, they make it clear that the shipments of castle slaves to these small overseas islands did take place of (McWhorter 2000: 112). 5.3. Linguistic evidence There is also linguistic evidence in the AECs that points to not only the West African coast, but also the Lower Guinea coast where the Cormantin castle was located. An anomaly rarely noted by creolists is that grammatical influence on the AECs from African languages comes from a mere few of the many African languages that were brought to the New World. For centuries, slaves were transported to the Americas from the coast ranging from Senegal down to present-day Angola. Serial verb constructions, predicate cleft constructions and others wellknown as Africanisms in AECs all trace to the languages spoken from Ghana through Nigeria (hitherto classified as Kwa but today distributed between what is called Kwa and West Benue-Congo): Akan, Gbe, Yoruba, and Igbo. Yet there is no evidence that slaves from this area predominated throughout the New World, which leaves us to wonder why no grammatical transfer has ever been identified in these creoles from Wolof, Fula, Mende, Mandinka, Kikongo or other languages spoken by a great many slaves brought to work plantations under the English (see Figure 1). Especially indicative is that the AECs are in general more structurally similar to Akan and Gbe –spoken in Ghana– than to Yoruba and Igbo. An explanation for this geo-specific selection of substrate features is that AEC began as a language indeed born on the Lower Guinea coast, and then arrived in the New World with this grammatical imprint already “built in”. English Creoles

Akan, Gbe

Yoruba, Wolof Igbo

Man-

Kru

Kikongo

dinka

Serial verbs Predicate fronting “Creole” articles de+good = be fine Figure 1. Sources of substrate transfer in Atlantic English-based creoles

Lexical evidence points in the same direction: Smith (1987) tabulated African borrowings which are shared almost uniformly among the AECs, almost all drawn from the Lower Guinea coast. These coincidences would once again be odd if they had all arisen independently amidst New World slaves speaking languages from a vast stretch of the West African coast:

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John McWhorter akara anansi bakra djumbi fufu kokobe kongkosa mumu njam

“pancake” (spider in folktale) “white person” “host” (food type) “leprosy” “gossip” “dumb” “eat”

okra pinda potopoto soso

“okra” “peanut” “mud” “only”

(Ewe, Yoruba, Igbo) (Twi, Ewe) (Igbo, Efik) (Kikongo) (Twi, Ewe, Yoruba) (Twi) (Twi) (Twi, Ewe, Mende) (Wolof, and other West African coastal languages [Smith, p.c.]) (Igbo) (Kikongo) (Igbo, Twi) (Igbo, Yoruba)

These data constitute further evidence that the AECs are traceable to a single development on a particular part of the West African coast. (See McWhorter 2000: 123-127 for discussion of Smith’s later [1997] recantation of his own argument.) Also, the plausibility of a grammar being transplanted by a few slaves across the ocean to a distant colony has been proven by Jacobs (2012). Schwegler’s (1993, 2014) demonstration of Portuguese items in Palenquero and similar evidence for Papiamentu (e.g. Grant 2008, which circulated in a manuscript version long previously) had been highly suggestive indications that such transatlantic transfer was possible. Now, however, Jacobs (2012) has conclusively shown that an entire language, Papiamentu, is a transplanted version of Cape-Verdean-like Upper Guinea Coast creole Portuguese. 5.4. Huber’s response Some would seem to have supposed that Huber (1999) refuted any possibility that an AEC precursor was born on the West African coast. However, his findings in no way eliminate the specific argument made by AH: that castle slaves —rather than other blacks on the coast in contact with whites in other settings— developed a pidgin for use with their superiors. That some castle slaves (e.g., new arrivals) were addressed through interpreters is to be expected. However, Huber’s supposition that Africans would have worked for long periods under and with whites without developing a way to communicate with them is sociologically implausible. Throughout written history, the strong human impulse to develop makeshift contact varieties is evident, and the burden falls on Huber to explain why it would have been otherwise in the African castles. Also, Huber supposes that massive numbers of Africans would have been necessary to create a pidgin as well as to spread it in the New World. Huber disqual-

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ifies the Cormantin fort as a plausible setting because it was never especially large. Yet it is unclear just how many people are “enough” to create a pidgin, especially when Pitcairnese was forged by a mere 28 people and Unserdeutsch was born in an orphanage. Theoretically, a pidgin could be developed by just two people (Salisbury [1967] documented it happening amidst a mere twenty). As for how many are necessary to spread or create one, we only need consider that Hiri Motu and pidgin Motu began with a mere twelve Oceanic language speaking constables. These gradually taught the language to about a hundred Papuan recruits over eight years (Dutton 1997: 21). By 1971, 150,000 people spoke Hiri Motu (Dutton 1985: 72). Along these lines, it is also unclear to me why, as Huber appears to suppose, people housed on a ship at bay, as Cormantin ones were for a time, could somehow not create a pidgin. The question is whether there is evidence that conditions would have made the emergence and transportation of an AEC or FPC precursor impossible. There is not. 6. Implications 6.1. What is proof? In the 1990s it became clear to me that only a direct and explicit testimony from an early 17th-century slave castle documenting an AEC-like or FPC-like variety would fully satisfy scholars critical of my Afrogenesis Hypothesis. Bickerton’s hypothetical example of a similar kind of document never to be found is one of the funniest remarks ever written in creole studies and deserves quotation (Bickerton’s misspellings are deliberate and made to seem mock-archaic): I was much amazed at the discoverie that in the Dutch Guianas, the tongue spoke by the blacks there grately resembled that which I had hearde among those Negrish habitants who worked for the Companie in Coromantyn. (Bickerton 1998: 75)

Yet Bickerton, like others, misses my larger point, which justifies a degree of informed speculation in the absence of historical records: The Afrogenesis Hypothesis has a constructive purpose: as a solution to problems of theory for which there is little evidence of solution otherwise. It is designed neither as a curiously self-defeating attempt to reanimate an Afrogenesis paradigm largely dismissed by the 1990s, nor to work against the Language Bioprogram Hypothesis via displacement of the question of creole origins to a setting where children would have been of little acquisitional import. The Afrogenesis Hypothesis is a possible key to a door for which all other available keys do not work.

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It is understandable that to some, especially those specializing in languages for which copious historical documentation exists, my proposition of small numbers of slaves transplantating a lexicon and grammatical system across the ocean seems overly speculative. However, it must be clear that the founding slaves in question and their linguistic repertoire have left no historical (written) traces, as very, very few slaves ever did, anywhere. Rather, the evidence taken together points to a reconstruction of these founding slaves’ existence. My assertion implies the following three assumptions: (1) Africans speaking the West African Portuguese pidgins, well-documented to have existed, were the conduit to the birth of Portuguese creoles spoken today on islands on the West African coast; (2) Slaves transported Upper Guinea Creole Portuguese to Curacao, to become Papiamentu; (3) There are hints in colonial English documents that castle slaves were occasionally sent to the Caribbean in the 17th century.

6.2. Pidgins, creoles, and what it means to “learn” a language The impact that a pidgin target can have in a linguistic context regardless of demographic proportions or the availability of the local standard language itself is usefully illustrated by Hawaiian Creole English. Obviously, immigrant schoolchildren do not, and never have, regularly creolized the language in which they have been schooled. What was different in Hawaii was that there was a pidgin target “in the air,” the pidgin English spoken by their parents. As educated Westerners in societies with widespread literacy and omnipresent media, we are naturally inclined to wonder why the children would have “stopped” at a creole “level,” a perspective leading to, for instance, early ideas such those espoused by Bickerton (1984), who argued that the creole developed because children had no substantial access to any language but the pidgin. But the Hawaiian case is one of many that show us that in colonial settings, subordinated peoples repeatedly adopted pidgin/creole varieties as markers of identity. It is a mistake to project our modernity-based preconceptions onto people of distant centuries where schooling was virtually non-existent for slaves and their descendants. It is impossible today to reconstruct just what it meant for slaves to “master” European languages on plantations and in other contexts of forced labor. We need not see slaves embracing AEC rather than English as a matter of “stopping” at a “level” that seems odd if on Spanish plantations slaves learned Spanish itself. The actors in these situations did not process language sociologically the way we do centuries later in educated, print-saturated societies. AEC

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—or FPC— was processed not as a “level” but as a target.5 My claim is related to Baker’s (1990) on creole genesis as aimed not at acquiring the lexifier itself but the creation of what he terms a Medium for Interethnic Communication, differing only in referring to contexts where that medium had already been imported and was readily available to slaves. The impression today that large-scale plantation circumstances created creoles is engendered by the fact that such an environment was more likely to preserve the pidgin target and its creole outcome. Social distance, and therefore a strong in-group identity among the learners, was more propitious to rendering the pidgin target a long-term influence. In Réunion-type contexts where social distance is smaller, the pidgin —even if imported— was likely to be overtaken by acquisition of a variety closer to the dominant language. For example, the linguistic data make it clear that AEC, in the form of early Bajan, was transported with founding slaves from Barbados to Surinam. At first, this AEC would have been spoken in Surinam despite whites and blacks working side-by-side in roughly equal numbers. However, because Surinam soon became a sugar plantation colony where blacks vastly outnumbered whites, AEC was preserved as an in-group language. Hence the trompe l’oeil today that what created Sranan were the sugar plantation conditions, when those conditions actually only preserved something that had emerged elsewhere under quite different circumstances. 6.3. The pidgin target approach should be intuitive to Iberian creole specialists The idea of pidgin “in the air” as a decisive factor should be intuitive to creolists, especially those specializing in Iberian-based creoles. For instance, scholars of Guinea-Bissau Creole Portuguese who trace its birth to the coastal mainland readily reconstruct that the creole took root in Cape Verde islands even though these never harbored large plantations. Ferraz’s tracing the birth of Gulf of Guinea Portuguese creole to marriages (in société d’habitation settings) has never been contested. This is so because the language that can be reconstructed as having existed before plantation agriculture was established in the islands in question (e.g. McWhorter 2005: 153). What seeded the creole that emerged in those marriages was the pidgin Portuguese “in the air” in that coastal colonial location.

5



Lipski (2005: 285-286) supposes that the suggestion that slaves “stopped” at such targets is based on a self-standing interest in depicting slaves as nurturing a separate cultural/African identity of some sort. Nothing could be further from the truth. The proposed mechanism is based solely on a quest to make sense, with an almost Spartan intention, quite unconnected with sociological concerns, of discrepancies such as that between the Chocó and Surinam.

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No specialist in the Portuguese creoles of India proposes that each one of these creoles emerged independently. Rather, despite close contact between Portuguese and Indo-Aryan speakers in each context, a maritime pidgin Portuguese model sparked the emergence of a local creole vernacular. That same Portuguese pidgin is typically thought to have been the model for the development of Philippines Creole Spanish. We can assume that if the local population had simply been exposed to Spanish without a pidgin target in the mix, then today its speakers would not use a creole but an indigenized Spanish (as Holm 1989: 318 intuits), just as so many people in the region today speak Dutch rather than creolized Dutch. Similarly, given the extensive if not full command of Spanish that Palenquero speakers seem to have always had (Schwegler 1998: 228-229), the former maroons of Palenque did not adopt a Spanish creole due to limited access to a target. Rather, the existence in the original acquisition context of what Father Sandoval famously called “the [pidgin] language of San Tomé” (un género de lenguaje muy corrupto y revesado de la Portuguesa que llaman lengua de S. Thome [cp. Schwegler 1998: 229]) had a decisive impact. Slaves and their descendants in Palenque (and perhaps also in the surrounding area) processed their creole variety as a norm rather than as something to be “stuck at,” even though they did also speak Spanish. In partial conclusion: Iberian creolists are thus in a unique position to understand that creole emergence depended on whether a pidgin (or creole) target already existed, having developed for any of various reasons. 7. Plantations have never been the birthplace of creole languages Lipski (2005: 285-286) poses a question whose answer is key to understanding the motivation of the AH: if a pidgin formed under the social conditions in the African slave castles, then why would such a pidgin not form on plantations, where social relations between whites and blacks were hardly rosy either? There are two answers, explained in 7.1. and 7.2 hereafter. 7.1. Castle versus plantation My first answer is macro-sociolinguistic: Slave castles were settings where Africans either were in their home territory or, if not, were still able to use their native language(s) and tended to identify with other Africans in the vicinity (see McWhorter 2000: 109-111 for details on these settings). These were settings where the development of a pidgin would be expected, given the recorded emergence of countless pidgins in similar contexts worldwide. Conditions on plantations were

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different: there, slaves faced a European language destined to be sociologically dominant. Generally, their native language (or languages) was one among many African tongues, and would never again have the situational currency it had in their Old World. Note that one might even ask why we would expect pidgins to form in such a setting, as opposed to a slave castle. It is reasonable to wonder how slaves could have acquired relatively full Spanish in, for example, conditions like those of the Chocó (Colombia). Most likely, children born in such contexts are the key (on this point, Sessarego 2014 and I are in agreement). Children have more acquisitional capacity than adults, and likely had richer exposure to Spanish itself than adult slaves (it is well known that on English and French plantations, slave children were often raised in the company of white children until they were old enough to work). 7.2. The missing plantation creole: still missing Creolist generally assume that plantations were language input filters. However, there is no actual evidence that life on New World plantations ever led to the formation of a new pidgin. Let us recall my arguments: AEC and FPC were seeded by pidgin/creole precursors imported from elsewhere. Large plantations in Brazil created no actual Portuguese creole. No Spanish plantation setting ever created a Spanish creole, and despite the value of work like Sessarego’s on individual Spanish colonies, the question remains as to why no creole emerged in any of these locations. Finally, the idea that Spanish creoles did exist, but somehow uniformly decreolized (except in Palenque) in countless colonies solely under the Spanish, is untenable (cp. McWhorter 2000: 20-31, Clements 2009). The idea that plantations were not language filters will encounter skepticism, in no small measure because the schema is so central to how creole studies have evolved ever since creolistics became established in the early 1980s. However, that schema faces massive counterevidence. For example, among the AECs and FPCs, the Indian Ocean French creoles are the only ones whose histories are not connected with St. Kitts, and and Mauritian is the one thought to represent creolization as the result of limited access. However, as shown in detail (McWhorter 2000: 147-164), that creole is too idiosyncratically correspondent to the Caribbean French creoles to have emerged independently. The evidence suggests that Mauritian was an outgrowth of the French pidgin that arose in Senegal, from where it was transported both westward to the Caribbean and eastward to the Mascarenes in the Indian Ocean. Upper Guinea Portuguese creoles (Cape Verdean and Guinea-Bissau Krioulu) are traced by all specialists to trade fort-style conditions, be this by those who

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reconstruct the birth on the West African coast, or (more plausibly, in my view) to the Cape Verdes (Jacobs 2010; also Jacobs & Quint in this volume). The Gulf of Guinea Portuguese creoles began, as noted, amidst mixed marriages, not on plantations. 7.3. Negerhollands Among the plantation creoles, this leaves only a single one that could be an exception: Negerhollands Creole Dutch. Even here, the evidence works against the classic limited access formulation. Sabino (2012: 59-64) locates its emergence in the late 1600s, amidst intimate société d’habitation conditions.6 The formative period described by her and others for the Danish West Indies resembles that postulated by Díaz-Campos & Clements and Sessarego for Venezuela and Ecuador. If these authors are correct, then Negerhollands’ existence as early as the 1670s is problematic. There would seem to be two ways to bring Negerhollands in line with traditional opinion on how creoles form. These are discussed in 7.3.1 and 7.3.2 hereafter. 7.3.1 A West African pidgin? One possible explanation for the case of Negerhollands is a slave castle account, although linguistic evidence for it is all but non-existent. There are no other Dutch creoles that would allow one to reconstruct that Negerhollands was derived from a proto-Dutch creole born elsewhere. Only two Dutch creoles have been substantially documented: (1) Berbice Creole, and (2) Negerhollands Berbice Creole Dutch, which was a highly unusual case amidst Caribbean plantation varieties, with so strong a lexical and grammatical imprint from Ijo that it tempts classification as an “intertwined language”. A comparison between Negerhollands and Berbice Creole is thus tenuous at best. However, Skepi Creole Dutch of Guyana was a “typical” plantation colony variety like Negerhollands. Sketchily documented before its death, very little is known about its social history other than that it likely was in existence by the early 19th century. However, Robertson described the similarity between Negerhollands and Skepi to that between the French-based creoles of the Caribbean and those of the Indian Ocean, noting that “Skepi Dutch shows such remarkable similarity to Negerhollands that whatever origin is assigned to the one may be assigned to the other ” (1983: 16). Languages so similar to each other are unlikely to have emerged in separate locations. Yet there is no evidence that slaves from either place where the two 6



Sabino’s conclusion is reinforced by other specialists, e.g., Hesseling (1905).

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creoles were spoken were a founding population in the other one. Thus there is no historical evidence to posit a West African Dutch pidgin on the basis of, as there is for the AECs and FPCs. 7.3.2. The “Pidgin Target” approach A second way to make sense of Negerhollands’ origins is the Pidgin Target approach. From the 1700s on, Negerhollands co-existed in situ with AEC, to the point of eventually being rendered extinct by it. Sabino (2012: 72-73) notes that by the 1700s, AEC was the dominant language of blacks living in towns on St. Thomas and St. Croix, and that on the latter island, by the middle of the 17th century, English planters and English-owned slaves outnumbered Dutch slaves, illustrated by a 1791 citation of St. Croix blacks saying “I hope you well, Mam”. If the société d’habitation conditions in 17th-century St. Thomas cannot explain what motivated the genesis of Negerhollands genesis, then an alternative explanation must be found. Presumably, Danish West Indies slaves co-existed exclusively with Dutch speakers, whence they should have acquired a variety no more removed from native Dutch than Réunionnais is from French, like the Hoch-Kreol variety of Negerhollands that indeed existed. However, there was also the more basilectal pole of Negerhollands, and what could explain this is the presence of a similarly “creole” model – English-based creoles (AEC). AEC would have been the “pidgin target” here, providing a model for the emergence of a similarly creolized language based on Dutch. Notably, AEC made similar inroads into the Essequibo region of Guyana where Skepi Creole Dutch formed. Therefore the same process could have occurred there. Importantly, this proposed process of a creole leading speakers to model a new creole upon its structures (in spite of relexification) is not mere speculation. Garrett (2003) describes this real life scenario for St. Lucia, where a creole English register has developed from the local standard English, modelled on the local French creole. 7.3.3. We can’t have it both ways Some scholars might respond to the enigma of Negerhollands —and so many other creoles— that “unexpectedly” arose in société d’habitation conditions by proposing that even a société d’habitation could create creoles after all. Sabino (2012: 59) prefers such an approach to Negerhollands, noting that in the Danish West Indies social relations between blacks and whites were often quite negative in spite of close co-habitation, thereby making possible the divergent creole/standard bilingualism that ensued. However, in the cross-creole sense, such an approach fails to create theoretical coherence. Venezuela and Ecuador (as

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well as other mainland Spanish contexts) would remain as puzzles. Especially in Highland Ecuador (Chota Valley), religious instruction was, at times, deliberately withheld from slaves; whites were notoriously cruel to them, and interactions between slaves and whites were strictly discouraged (Jaramillo Perez 1962: 52-53). Yet, as far as we know, no creole developed in the Chota. In parallel fashion, in Venezuela, blacks were actively maintained as the lowest caste, and their movements were restricted (Acosta Saignes 1967: 297-303). There too Spanish never creolized. Hence the overarching question: Why did these socially parallel realities witness the creation of a creole in one instance (Negerhollands) and the adoption of “simply” Spanish (rather than “creole Spanish”) in so very many places, including Venezuela, Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic? Once again we are faced with mysteriously Missing Spanish Creoles – and the AH as a potential solution. 8. A loose end: Lipski’s other question We can now respond to Lipski’s second question: If Portuguese pidgin/creole seeded Spanish creoles, via relexification, in the cases of Papiamentu and Palenquero, then why did the same thing not happen elsewhere in Spanish America? The validity of the AH does not hinge on the answer to such a question. The AH stipulates that a pidgin target can lead to a creole taking hold, not that it must. Any number of factors could have prevented the pidgin target from becoming a dominant model in a given location. In Curacao (based on Jacobs 2012) and Cartagena (based on, e.g., Schwegler 2014), we know that the target did play a role. However, in Mexico and Peru, apparently there was no such target (and there is no evidence of one). These facts are not unremarkable, regardless of whether we will ever know what caused them. What the AH proposes is that on a plantation, if such a pidgin target happened not to have taken root, then relatively full language acquisition was possible, tout court. We may now advance an explanation as to why the Portuguese pidgin did not seed Spanish creoles more widely. The language that seeded AEC, and the one that seeded FPC, likely was imported just one time (as spelled out in McWhorter 2000), with an initial shipment of castle slaves. After that, the English and French colonies were settled in sequence, with new colonies seeded from others. The torch only needed to be lit once, so to speak, and was then relayed throughout the Caribbean and elsewhere. This was less the case in Spanish America, where the history of slave trading was longer, the territories were vaster and more separated, and the transatlantic colonies’ settlement histories were often

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less interconnected. Given these facts, we might not expect that the Portuguese pidgin would be separately transported from Africa to, and then survive in, so many different colonies over so much time, in contrast to the AEC and FPC scenarios, within which colonies were mostly settled in sequence within relatively small windows of time. 9. Conclusions The AH seeks to answer stubborn questions of a cross-creole nature that have resisted solution for decades. Included among these is the enigmatic question of Barbados and St. Kitts: if West African slave castle pidgins were unrelated to the emergence of creoles in the New World, then why did AEC and FPC emerge on tiny islands where blacks and whites had ample interracial contact? The AH suggests that creoles did not actually come into existence on any plantation. This eliminates the paucity of Spanish creoles as a conundrum, and leaves the existence of AECs and FPCs on plantations as what needs to be explained. The West African pidgin hypothesis is an attempt at that explanation. The burgeoning study of Iberian creoles makes the Afrogenesis account more attractive not only in that Iberian creoles help to support aspects of the case directly. The Iberian creoles, viewed in their entirety, were born under such diverse circumstances that the plantation-based “limited access” account seems rather local and arbitrary. Marriages (in the Gulf of Guinea), Christianizing missionary activity (the Indo-Portugueses, Papia Kristang), supplying passing ships (Cape Verde), maroon settlements (Palenquero) all formed part of the Iberian creole mosaic at a time when (large-scale) plantations had not been invented yet. Viewed from this perspective, the traditional explanatory model of plantations as the birth place of creoles becomes outdated. The pidgin target scenario has in fact been the norm worldwide in creole genesis, not just under the Iberian powers. Hawaiian Creole English traces to a pidgin target. The Melanesian English creoles Tok Pisin, Bislama, Solomon Islands Pijin, plus their relatives the Australian Aboriginal Kriol dialects, trace to a pidgin that emerged in Australia. There is a pattern here. Only in a particular context, English and French plantations, have we assumed that lack of access to the dominant European language(s) was causally related to the birth of creoles, mostly as a “repair strategy” to fill a linguistic vacuum. As to why the slaves in Brazil succeeded in acquiring Portuguese is a question to be addressed by future research. Perhaps this is a first step in that research, one that will hopefully seek to address central origins questions not on a case-by-case basis, but in the overarching and unified manner attempted here.

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REFERENCES Acosta Saignes, Miguel. 1967. Vida de los esclavos negros en Venezuela. Caracas: Hespérides. Alleyne, Mervyn C. 1980. Comparative Afro-American. Ann Arbor: Karoma. Baker, Philip. 1990. Off target? Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages 5. 107-119. Baker, Philip. 1999. Investigating the origin and diffusion of shared features among the Atlantic English Creoles. In Philip Baker & Adrienne Bruyn (eds.), St. Kitts and the Atlantic creoles: the texts of Samuel Augustus Matthews in perspective, 315-364. London: University of Westminster Press. Baker, Philip (ed.). 1995. From contact to creole and beyond. London: University of Westminster Press. Baker, Philip & Corne, Chris. 1982. Isle de France creole: affinities and origins. Ann Arbor: Karoma. Baker, Philip & Syea, Anand. 1991. On the copula in Mauritian Creole, past and present. In Francis Byrne & Thom Huebner (eds.), Development and structures of creole languages: essays in honor of Derek Bickerton, 159-175. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Baxter, Alan. 1997. Creole-like features in the verb system of an Afro-Brazilian variety of Portuguese. In Arthur K. Spears & Donald Winford (eds.), The structure and status of pidgins and creoles, 265-288. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Bentley, W. Holman. 1887. Dictionary and grammar of the Kikongo language. London: Trübner. Bickerton, Derek. 1984. The Language Bioprogram Hypothesis. The Behavioral and Brain Sciences 7. 173-188. Bickerton, Derek. 1998. A sociohistoric examination of Afrogenesis. Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages 13. 63-92. Clements, J. Clancy. 2009. The linguistic legacy of Spanish and Portuguese: colonial expansion and language change. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Coronel Feijóo, Rosario. 1991. El valle sangriento: de los indígenas de la coca y el algodón a la hacienda cañera jesuita: 1580-1700. Quito: FLACSO / Abya-Yala. DeGraff, Michel. 2001. On the origin of creoles: a Cartesian critique of Neo-Darwinian linguistics. Linguistic Typology 5. 213-310. Díaz-Campos, Manuel & Clements, J. Clancy. 2008. A creole origin for Barlovento Spanish? A linguistic and sociohistorical inquiry. Language in Society 37. 351-383. Dutton, Tom. 1985. Police Motu: Iena sivarai. Port Moresby: University of Papua New Guinea Press. Dutton, Tom. 1997. Hiri Motu. In Sarah G. Thomason (ed.), Contact languages: a wider perspective, 9-41. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Ferraz, Luis Ivens. 1979. The creole of Sao Tomé. Johannesburg: Witwatersrand University Press. Garrett, Paul. 2003. An “English Creole” that isn’t: on the sociohistorical origins and linguistic classification of the vernacular English of St. Lucia. In Michael Aceto & Jeffrey Williams (eds.), Contact Englishes of the Eastern Caribbean, 155-210. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

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Goodman, Morris F. 1964. A comparative study of creole French dialects. The Hague: Mouton. Grant, Anthony. 2008. The Portuguese elements in Papiamentu. In Nicholas Faraclas, Ronnie Severing & Christa Weijer (eds.), Linguistic studies on Papiamentu, 47-72. Curaçao: Fundashon pa Planifikashon di Idioma. Hancock, Ian F. 1986. The domestic hypothesis, diffusion and componentiality: an account of Atlantic Anglophone creole origins. In Pieter Muysken & Norval Smith (eds.), Substrate versus universals in creole genesis, 71-102. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Hancock, Ian F. 1987. A preliminary classification of the Anglophone Atlantic creoles with syntactic data from thrity-three representative dialects. In Glenn G. Gilbert (ed.), Pidgin and Creole Languages, 264-333. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. Handler, Jerome S. & Lange, Frederick W. 1978. Plantation slavery in Barbados. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Hesseling, D.C. 1905. Het Negerhollands der Deense Antillen. Leiden: A.W. Sijthoff. Holm, John. 1989. Pidgins and creoles (Vol. II). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Huber, Magnus. 1999. Atlantic English creoles and the Lower Guinea Coast: A case against Afrogenesis. In Magnus Huber & Mickael Parkvall (eds.), Spreading the word: the issue of diffusion among the Atlantic creoles, 81-110. London: University of Westminster Press. Jacobs, Bart. 2010. Upper Guinea Creole: evidence in favor of a Santiago birth. Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages 25. 289-343. Jacobs, Bart. 2012. Origins of a creole: the history of Papiamentu and its African ties. Boston/Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. Jaramillo Perez, Cesar. 1962. Historia del Ecuador. Quito: Editorial LaSalle. Jennings, William. 1995. Saint-Christophe: site of the first French creole. In Baker (ed.) 1995: 63-80. Kouwenberg, Silvia. 2010. Creole studies and linguistic typology, Part I. Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages 25. 173-186. Lipski, John. 1986. Sobre lingüística afroecuatoriana: el valle de Chota. Annuario de Lingüística Hispánica (Valladolid) 2. 153-176. Lipski, John. 2005. A history of Afro-Hispanic language: Five centuries and five continents. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. McWhorter, John H. 1995. Sisters under the skin: a case for genetic relationship between the Atlantic English-based creoles. Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages 10. 289-333. McWhorter, John H. 1996. It happened at Cormantin: Locating the origin of the Atlantic English-based creoles. Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages 12. 59-102. McWhorter, John H. 1998. Identifying the creole prototype: vindicating a typological class. Language 74. 788-818. McWhorter, John H. 2000. The missing Spanish creoles. Berkeley: University of California Press. McWhorter, John H. 2012a. Complexity hotspot: the copula in Saramaccan and its implications. In Bernd Kortmann & Benedikt Szmrecsanyi (eds.), Linguistic complexity, 243-264. Mouton: De Gruyter.

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McWhorter, John H. 2012b. Case closed? Testing the Feature Pool Hypothesis. Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages 27. 171-182. McWhorter, John H. 2013. It isn’t over: why it matters whether there is a such thing as a creole. Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages 28. 409-423. Migge, Bettina. 2003. Creole formation as language contact. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Mufwene, Salikoko S. 2001. The ecology of language evolution. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Parkvall, Mikael. 1995. The role of St. Kitts in a new scenario of French Creole genesis. In Baker (ed.) 1995: 41-62. Phillips, Judith Wingerd. 1982. A partial grammar of the Haitian Creole verb system. SUNY Buffalo dissertation. Roberts, Sarah J. 2000. Nativization and the genesis of Hawaiian Creole. In John H. McWhorter (ed.), Language change and language contact in pidgins and creoles, 257-300. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Robertson, Ian E. 1983. The Dutch linguistic legacy in Guyana: Berbice and Skepi Dutch. Carib 3. 11-23. Sabino, Robin. 2012. Language contact in the Danish West Indies: giving Jack his jacket. Leiden: Brill. Salisbury, R.F. 1967. Pidgin’s respectable past. New Guinea 2. 44-48. Schwegler, Armin. 1991. El habla cotidiana del Chocó (Colombia). América Negra 2. 85-119. Schwegler, Armin. 1993. Rasgos (afro-) portugueses en el criollo del Palenque de San Basilio (Colombia). In Carmen Díaz D. Alayón (ed.), Homenaje a José Perez Vidal, 667-696. La Laguna, Tenerife: Litografía A. Romero S.A. Schwegler, Armin. 1998. El palenquero. In Matthias Perl & Armin Schwegler (eds.), América negra: panorámica actual de los estudios lingüísticos sobre variedades criollas y afrohispanas, 219-291. Madrid/Frankfurt: Iberoamericana/Vervuert. Schwegler, Armin. 2014. Portuguese remnants in the Afro-Hispanic diaspora. In Ana M. Carvalho & Patrícia Amaral (eds.), Portuguese-Spanish interfaces: Diachrony, synchrony, and contact, 403-441. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Sessarego, Sandro. 2014. On the origins of Chota Valley Spanish: linguistic and sociohistorical evidence. Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages 29. 86-133. Sharp, William Frederick. 1976. Slavery on the Spanish frontier. Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press. Smith, Norval J. 1987. The genesis of the creole languages of Surinam. University of Amsterdam dissertation. Smith, Norval J. 1997. Ingredient X: The common core of African words in the Atlantic creoles. Paper presented to the Society for Pidgin and Creole Linguistics, London. Watts, David. 1987. The West Indies: patterns of development, culture and environmental change since 1492. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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ON THE RELEVANCE OF CLASSICAL PORTUGUESE FEATURES IN FOUR ATLANTIC CREOLES1 Bart Jacobs & Nicolas Quint Leiden University / LLACAN UMR8135 - CNRS/INALCO This paper identifies several 15th/16th-century Portuguese (henceforth Classical Portuguese) features in four Portuguese-lexified creoles, i.e. (1) Cape Verdean Creole, (2) Guinea-Bissau Creole, (3) Papiamentu, and (4) Saramaccan. The last three share with each other the fact that they emerged in areas where social conditions for creolization were not met prior to the 17th century. Therefore, the presence of Classical Portuguese features in their core vocabulary and phonology requires an explanation. This paper argues that the shared features may have been inherited from Cape Verdean Creole. Keywords: Classical Portuguese, Atlantic creoles, Cape Verdean, Guinea-Bissau, Papiamentu, Saramaccan, Upper Guinea, origins, diachrony

1. Introduction The formative history and place of birth of the four creoles (Cape Verdean Creole, Guinea-Bissau Creole, Papiamentu and Saramaccan; see Map 1) addressed in this paper are highly controversial.2 This paper seeks to explain a linguistic fact —the presence of Classical3 (15th/16th-century) lexical and phonetic Por-

1



2





3



We are most indebted to Armin Schwegler for valuable comments on, and corrections to, a previous version of the manuscript, and to John McWhorter and Joseph Jean François Nunez for sharing with us their linguistic expertise on Saramaccan and Casamance Creole, respectively. The following abbreviations will be used throughout this article: CVC = Cape Verdean Creole GBC = Guinea-Bissau/Casamance Creole Port. = Portuguese PP = Papiamentu SAR = Saramaccan The compilation of the Cancioneiro Geral by Garcia de Resende (1516) and the grammar of Fernão de Oliveira (1536) are often taken as points of transition between Old Portuguese (or Galaico-Portuguese) and Modern Portuguese (cp. Cardoso 2010: 111 footnote). In this paper, following Quint (2005: 19), Cardoso (2010) and others, we call Classical Portuguese the

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tuguese features in their core grammar— that has hitherto received only scant attention, but which in our estimate sheds considerable light on the origins and interrelatedness of the four creoles mentioned. A significant portion of this paper is dedicated to identifying and exemplifying these shared features, and to discussing their implications for hypotheses about the formative history of, and genetic relations between, the creoles in question. We first jointly discuss the Cape Verdean and Guinea-Bissau Creoles (Section 2), and subsequently address Papiamentu (Section 3) before closing with Saramaccan (Section 4) and final remarks and conclusions (Section 5).

Map 1. Cape Verdean Creole (CV), Guinea-Bissau/Casamance Creole (GBC), Papiamentu (PP) and Saramaccan (SAR)

2. Cape Verdean Creole and Guinea-Bissau/Casamance Creole Cape Verdean Creole (CVC) is the native tongue of most of the approximately 500,000 inhabitants of the Cape Verde Islands, as well as of pockets of heritage speakers living in several countries such as the United States, Portugal, France and the Netherlands (Quint 2005). The CVC examples adduced throughout this article are taken from the variety spoken on the Cape Verdean island of Santiago. The Santiaguense vernacular is often singled out among other varieties for its rather conservative characteristics with regards to both its Portuguese and African components (Quint 2012: 4). variety that was spoken in the 15th and 16th centuries, i.e. the period in which the Portuguese colonial empire was established. This period also marked the transition from Old to Modern Portuguese.

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Guinea-Bissau/Casamance Creole (GBC) is spoken natively by over 300,000 Guineenses. The total number of speakers (L2 included) exceeds 1,000,000. In the Senegalese province of Casamance, the number of GBC speakers totals ca. 20,000, half of whom are native speakers (Biagui & Quint 2013). Although there are some dialectal differences between the Casamance and Guinea-Bissau varieties, these are not relevant to the main arguments presented in this paper. Unless otherwise specified, our GBC examples are all taken from the GuineaBissau variety. Of the four creoles discussed, CVC and GBC are the most clearly and uncontroversially Portuguese-based: 90% to 95% of their core vocabulary is derived from Portuguese etyma (Quint 2008: 70, 2000b: 35). Scholars (e.g., Quint 2000b: 99-117; Baptista, Mello & Suzuki 2007) as well as native speakers agree that the two creoles are genetically closely related to each other. The label Upper Guinea Portuguese Creole (Upper Guinea PC) is often used as a cover term for both CVC and GBC. While their genetic interrelatedness is uncontroversial, what is controversial is where their shared proto-variety came into existence: on the islands or on continental Guinea-Bissau? We argue below that the presence in both creoles of Classical Portuguese features may well play a decisive role in this debate. 2.1. Classical Portuguese vocabulary in Upper Guinea PC Table 1 offers a selection of basic vocabulary items found in CVC and/or GBC. The etyma presented circulated commonly throughout Classical Portuguese but not afterwards, when they were substituted by other forms.

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Classical Port.

CVC

alimária

lumária

‘animal, mammal4’

‘id.’

GBC

Modern Port.

limária ‘id.’

animal

‘animal’

dia domingo ‘Sunday’

diâ dimingu ‘id.’

dia dumingu ‘id.’

domingo‘id.’

chẽo ‘full’ [ˈtʃẽo]

txeu ‘many, [ˈtʃew ~ ’cew] a lot’

ciu ‘many, [ˈciw] a lot’

cheio [ˈʃɐju]

‘full’

frẽo [ˈfrẽo]

‘bit (n., for horse)’

freu [ˈfrew]

‘id.’

friu [ˈfriw]

freio [ˈfrɐju]

‘id.’

cozĩar [kozĩˈar]

‘to cook’

kusia [ˈkusjɐ]

‘id.’

NRFCP5

lũa [ˈlũ(ŋ)ɐ]

‘moon’

NRFCP

luŋa [ˈluŋa]

‘id.’

lua [ˈluɐ]

coma

‘as, like (prep.)’

ma ~ kuma ‘that, saycomplementizer’

kumá

‘that, saycomplementizer’

como ‘as, like’

mesti~meste ‘to need’

mistí

‘to want’

precisar ‘to need’, ser preciso ‘to be necessary’

‘greeting’

cumprimento ‘greeting’

ser mister ‘to be necessary’

[Deus te / ‘may [God] mantenha keep [you] vos] mantenha in good health’ (greeting formula)

‘greeting’ manteña

‘id.’

cozinhar ‘id.’ [kuziˈɲar] ‘id.’

Table 1. Selection of Classical Portuguese basic vocabulary items in Upper Guinea PC

4





5

In Classical Portuguese, as in most European languages spoken before the advent of modern science (which can be considered to have occurred in the 19th century), the general concept of “animal” referred mostly to Mammals (as opposed to Birds, Fish, etc.), i.e. to animate beings bearing a reasonable biological resemblance to humans. Therefore, it would be an anachronism to give 21st century English ‘animal’ as the only translation of Classical Portuguese alimária. NRFCP = No Reflex From Classical Portuguese. In the two cases at stake: - the GBC term meaning ‘to cook’ is kusñá [kus’ɲa] or kusiñá [kusi’ɲa], where [ɲ] is clearly derived from Modern Portuguese cozinhar (see Table 1). - the CVC term for ‘moon’ is luâ [ˈlwɐ], where the absence of any nasalized element (no nasalized vowel and no [ŋ]) is a strong argument in favor of a Modern Portuguese etymon, namely lua (see right-most column of Table 1).

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2.2. Classical Portuguese phonological features in CVC/GBC Various authors (e.g. Rougé 1994: 140, Kihm 1994: 5) have noted the fact that CVC and GBC have retained the Classical Portuguese distinction between the voiceless fricative /ʃ/ written 〈x〉 and /tʃ/ written 〈ch〉 (see Table 2). In modern mainstream Portuguese, these two phonemes have merged into the voiceless fricative /ʃ/. Teyssier (1980: 66-68) claims that this phonemic distinction was common in mainstream Portuguese up to the early 17th century. Today, the distinction continues to exist in Galician and some northern dialects of Portuguese. Classical Port.

CVC

GBC

Gloss



/ʃ/

peixe

[ˈpejʃi]

pexi

[ˈpeʃi]

pis

[ˈpis]

‘fish’

caixão

[kajˈʃɐ̃w] /tʃ/

kaxon

[kɐˈʃõ]

kasoŋ

[kaˈsoŋ]

‘coffin’



chumbo [ˈtʃũbu]

txunbu [ˈtʃũbu ~ ’cũbu]

cumbu [ˈcũbu]

‘led’ (n.)

fechado [feˈtʃadu]

fitxádu [fiˈtʃadu ~ fiˈcadu]

ficadu

‘closed’

[fiˈcadu]

Table 2. Retention of the Classical Port. phonemic contrast between fricative /ʃ/ and affricate /tʃ/ in Upper Guinea PC

Arguably more interesting – and also more archaic – is the preservation in the two creoles of an occlusive element in the reflexes of the Classical Portuguese voiced affricate /dʒ/ written 〈j〉 or 〈g〉 (see Table 3), which in modern mainstream Portuguese is realized as the fricative /ʒ/. Classical Port.

CVC

GBC

Gloss

jogo

[ˈdʒogu]

djogu

[ˈdʒogu ~ ˈɟogu]

jugu

[ˈɟugu]

‘game’

junto

[ˈdʒũtu]

djuntu [ˈdʒogu ~ ˈɟogu]

juntu

[ˈɟũtu]

‘together’

gemer

[dʒeˈmer]

djemi

jimí

[ɟiˈmi]

‘to groan’

[ˈdʒemi ~ ˈɟemi]

Table 3. Retention of an occlusive realization of Classical Port. /dʒ/ written 〈j〉 or 〈g〉 in Upper Guinea PC

The exact period in which Portuguese /dʒ/ lost its occlusive element in favor of /ʒ/ is not clear: “It is quite difficult to say whether this evolution occurred during or after the period that we are studying [1200-1350]”6 (Teyssier 1980: 35). In any case, Teyssier makes no mention of an allophone [dʒ] having survived in the period that 6



Original quote: “Il est très difficile de savoir si cette évolution s’est produite pendant ou après la période [1200–1350] qui nous occupe. ”

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extends from the 14th century to the present. Therefore, it seems safe to assume that by the early 16th century (if not earlier) the two allophones had merged into a single voiced palatal fricative /ʒ/. The retention of an occlusive realization ([dʒ] or [ɟ]) in the creoles at stake is thus an important piece of evidence suggesting that their shared ancestor variety (which we may call Proto Upper Guinea PC) was already in existence by the beginning of the 16th century, and perhaps even earlier. It should be noted, however, that Classical Port. /dʒ/ was retained in CVC and GBC in word-initial position only (Table 3). In word-internal position, Portuguese 〈j〉 and 〈g〉 usually correspond to the voiceless fricative [ʃ] in CVC and to [s] in GBC, as Table 4 shows: Classical Port.

CVC

igreja

grexa

[ˈgreʃɐ]

grisia

GBC [ˈgris(i)ja]

‘church’

Gloss

fugir

fuxi

[ˈfuʃi]

fusí

[fuˈsi]

‘to flee’

Table 4. Integration of Portuguese 〈j〉 and 〈g〉 in word internal position in Upper Guinea PC

This distinctive treatment seems to reflect the Classical Portuguese double realization of the phoneme /(d)ʒ/, which Teyssier (1980: 32-35) describes for the period between 1200-1350. In this period, the phoneme /(d)ʒ/ was realized either as a fricative [ʒ] or as an affricate [dʒ] and Teyssier therefore phonetically represents the phoneme as /(d)ʒ/. In fact, as Quint (2000a: 114) notes, we can retrospectively use these creole data to reconstruct the phonological development of /dʒ/ to /ʒ/ in Classical Portuguese. The two different results for 〈j〉 and 〈g〉 word-initially (Table 3) and word-internally (Table 4) suggest that “[t]he loss of the occlusive element of the ancient Galaico-Portuguese affricate /dʒ/ must therefore have occurred in two stages: first word-internally, then word-initially”7 (Quint 2000a: 114). 2.3. Implications for the debate on the origins of CVC and GBC As outlined above, scholars broadly agree that CVC and GBC share a common ancestor, but controversy remains over whether this ancestor variety emerged on the Cape Verde Islands and subsequently diffused to the mainland Guinea-Bissau area, or the other way around. Here, the shared Classical Portuguese features provide an interesting argument in favor of the first option, as explained hereafter. It is important to note that the Classical Portuguese features presented above are not at all marginal to these creoles but are in fact central to their grammar. The two

7

Original quote: “La chute de l’élément occlusif de l’ancienne affriquée /dʒ/ du galaico-portugais se serait donc produite en deux temps: d’abord à l’intérieur des mots, puis à l’initiale.”

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items at the bottom of Table 1, for instance, are functional items (a complementizer and a modal verb); content words such as alimária ‘animal’, cozĩar ‘to cook’ or lũa ‘moon’ also belong to the basic vocabulary and so do many of the words that have preserved Classical Portuguese phonological features (Tables 2 and 3). This strongly suggests that the features at issue did not coincidentally “end up” in the creoles through indirect modes of transmission. Rather, the preservation of these features can be taken to suggest that the ancestor variety of CVC and GBC was lexified by 15th/16th-century, i.e. Classical, Portuguese (cp. Quint 2000a, 2001). With this in mind, we may briefly recapitulate the respective colonial histories of the Cape Verde Islands and Guinea-Bissau. To start with the former: the Portuguese took possession of the island of Santiago in 1458 and established a (slave trade) factory there in 1466, quickly turning the island into the primary center for their Atlantic slave trade (Mendes 2008: 66). With high numbers of slaves being imported early on, Santiago likely witnessed ‘un métissage rapide et massif de la population’ [‘a rapid and thorough cross-breeding of the population’] (thus Lang 2001: 183). It is for these sociohistorical reasons that scholars such as Carreira (1983), Quint (2000b), Veiga (2000) and Lang (2006) all assume that CVC emerged on Santiago in the late 15th to early 16thcentury. Consequently, the presence of Classical Portuguese features in the grammar of CVC concurs with what we could reasonably expect in terms of language diffusion. The sociohistorical conditions in the area that is now Guinea-Bissau were quite different. If conditions for creolization were ever met in this area, this certainly was not prior to the foundation of the fort of Cacheu in 1589 —with Geba, Farim, Ziguinchor, and Bissau following in the 17th century— and the start there of large-scale slave trading in the course of the 17th century. (The Company of Cacheu was founded only in 1675; see Rawley & Behrendt 2005: 213.) Several scholars have indeed situated the formation of Guinea-Bissau Creole in 17th-century Cacheu. However, if that were the case, how can one account for the presence of Classical 15th/16th-century Portuguese features in the core of GBC grammar, separated in time from the presumed source by over a century? In our view, the most plausible explanation for these features, is to posit that the protovariety of CVC and GBC emerged not in 17th-century Cacheu, but in late 15th/early 16th-century Santiago, from where it was subsequently transplanted to the mainland. This scenario is supported by an important language-external fact, i.e., the foundation of mainlaind Cacheu by Cape Verdeans (see Jacobs 2010 and references therein). 3. Papiamentu Papiamentu (PP) is spoken by some 250,000 inhabitants of the former Dutch colonies of Aruba, Bonaire and Curaçao (short form: ABC Islands). Papiamentu is rather unique in that its vocabulary, including the core vocabulary, is of mixed Spanish-Portuguese origins: PP blanku ‘white’ < Sp. blanco [ˈblanko] vs. PP pretu

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‘black’ < Port. pretu [ˈpretu]. This linguistic oddity has sparked a century-long debate over the origins of Papiamentu. The resulting two main (and overlapping) questions are: (a) where do the Portuguese elements come from?; and (b) is Papiamentu an originally Spanish-based creole formed in situ, or was it imported from elsewhere as an originally Portuguese-based pidgin or creole? As explained in some detail below, one of the interesting features of Papiamentu that can help solve the debate is the presence in its core vocabulary of Classical Portuguese features. 3.1. Classical Portuguese vocabulary in Papiamentu A selection of Classical Portuguese vocabulary items in Papiamentu is listed in Table 5. All of these words are also found in Upper Guinea PC (cp. Table 1). Papiamentu

Classical Port.

Modern Port.

djadumingu ‘Sunday’

dia domingo

domingo

manteña

‘greeting’

mantenha

cumprimento

meste(r)

‘to need, to be ser mister ‘to be precisar ‘to need’ necessary, must’ necessary’ ser preciso ‘to be necessary’ Table 5. Classical Portuguese vocabulary items in Papiamentu

In addition, we find in Papiamentu a set of words that we could label “suspicious” in the sense that in modern mainstream European Portuguese their presumed Portuguese etyma are rather uncommon (viz. considered archaic and/or vulgar). Here too, we find direct equivalents of those “suspicious” words in CVC and GBC. Gloss

Modern Port.

Papiamentu CVC/GBC

Archaic/vulgar Port.

‘to talk/ speak’

falar

papia

papia/pap(i)yá

papear ‘to chat/ chirp’

‘dog’

cão

kachó

katxor/kacur

cachorro ‘puppy’

‘slave’

escravo

katibu

katibu

cativo

‘to vomit’

vomitar

gumbitá

gumita/gumitá

gomitar

‘(be)side’

(ao) lado (de)

banda (di)

bánda/banda (di) banda (de)8

Table 6. Reflexes of archaic and/or vulgar Portuguese found in both Papiamentu and Upper Guinea PC 8



Armin Schwegler (p.c.) pointed out that the use of banda meaning ‘side’ is attested in some colonial varieties of Spanish (in particular in the area of Cartagena de Indias, Colombia). Colonial Spanish banda could, therefore, also be the source of the Papiamentu cognate.

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3.2. Classical Portuguese phonological features in Papiamentu Like Upper Guinea PC, Papiamentu too has retained the Classical Portuguese voiceless affricate /tʃ/, written 〈ch〉, which stands in phonemic contrast with /ʃ/ (written 〈x〉) (see Table 7). Classical Port.

Papiamentu



/ʃ/

deixar [dej’ʃar]

‘to leave/let’

desha [’deʃa]

‘to discourage/be lazy with food’

mexer [me’ʃer]

‘to stir/touch’

mishi [’miʃi]

‘id.’



/tʃ/

chumbo [’tʃũbu]

‘led’ (n.)

chumbu [’tʃunbu]

‘id.’

cachorro [ka’tʃorru]

‘puppy’

kachó [ka’tʃo]

‘dog’

Table 7. Retention of the Classical Portuguese phonemic contrast between fricative /ʃ/ and affricate /tʃ/ in Papiamentu

3.3. Implications for the debate on the origin of Papiamentu Quint (2000b) and Jacobs (2012a and elsewhere) argue that Papiamentu is genetically related to CVC and GBC, and thus constitutes a genuine case of transfer of a West African creole across the Atlantic. This hypothesis is based primarily on the argument that a large number of Papiamentu function words, morphological and syntactic features can be traced back to CVC. A possible counterargument to this hypothesis is that the correspondences are due to chance: if both Papiamentu and CVC are lexically based on Portuguese, a certain number of correspondences in the (basic) vocabulary are to be expected. However, while chance correspondences may occur, chance alone cannot account for the above-listed Classical Portuguese features. The following paragraph explains our rationale for this claim. Curaçao, the island on which Papiamentu emerged, was conquered by the Dutch in 1634. All Spaniards and all except a handful of Amerindians present on Curaçao at the time left the island, and Curaçao’s linguistic history started from scratch in that year (cp. Kramer 2004: 108). Active colonization of the island, including the settlement of Sephardic Jews and the development of slave trade, began only in the 1650s. Clearly, for these reasons, the presence in Papiamentu grammar of Classical Portuguese core features requires a historically and linguis-

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tically sound explanation. Our hypothesis that Papiamentu descends from CVC neatly provides such an explanation.9 One might be tempted to argue that these Classical Portuguese features could have been introduced into Papiamentu by Curaçao’s Portuguese-speaking Sephardic Jews. The problem with that suggestion is that it is doubtful whether the Jews used Portuguese as their primary in-group language in the first place (on this point, see Joubert & Perl 2007, Jacobs forthcoming). But even if they did so, in the absence of a description of what their particular variety of Portuguese looked like, it will be difficult to show that this variety actually exhibited the Classical Portuguese features at issue. Finally we should also note that the scenario of a linguistic transfer from Cape Verde to Curaçao is further supported by a series of striking phonological, morphological, and syntactic correspondences between Papiamentu and the Upper Guinea Portuguese Creoles (see Quint 2000a; Jacobs 2012a) as well as the historical fact that the Dutch controlled large parts of the Petite Côte10 (slave) trade during the period between ca. 1630 and 1675 (see Jacobs 2012b), the crucial years of the settlement of Curaçao by the Dutch. 4. Saramaccan11 Several historically-related English-based creole languages are spoken in Surinam, the three best-known and most widespread ones being Sranan Tongo, Ndyuka and Saramaccan (SAR). Saramaccan’s territory is located along the Surinam River. The number of its speakers is estimated at around 26,000 by the Ethnologue (20,000 according to Smith 1987: 3), of which ca. 2,000 live in French Guyana; another 1,000 (2,000 in Smith 1987: 3) constitute the so-called Matawari (or Matawai) tribe. Saramaccan is correctly described by Bakker as “somewhat odd among the creoles because its basic vocabulary is not from one language, but from two, viz. Portuguese and English” (2009: 156). To be precise, some 35% of Saramaccan core lexicon is of Portuguese origin including such common items as the words (w)omi ‘man’ (< Port. homem), and mujee ‘woman’ (< Port. mulher). The Saramaccan tribe was formed in the 1690s by slaves who fled the Jewish-owned plantations along the Surinam River

Lest readers suspect that Spanish may be at the source of some or all of the above-mentioned Classical Portuguese features, we should mention that, with the exception of banda, discussed in footnote 6, none of them has been reported for any archaic variety of Spanish. 10 The Petite Côte (‘Small Coast’) is the portion of the Senegalese shore situated just south of the Peninsula of Dakar. 11 This section is a shortened and adapted version of Jacobs & Quint (MS). 9

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where Sranan Tongo was spoken. Currently, there is a broad consensus (to which we adhere) among creolists that Saramaccan is a descendent from English-based Sranan Tongo (e.g. Smith 1987, McWhorter 1997, Parkvall 2000), partially relexified by or towards (some form of) Portuguese (Creole). In addition, on the Jewish-owned plantations a scarcely documented, now extinct contact language known as Dju Tongo was in use. This was probably a mixture of Sranan Tongo and (some form of) Portuguese. According to Smith (1987) and others, this ‘Jew(ish) Tongue’ is likely to have been the direct precursor of the Saramaccan language. The details about the origins of Saramaccan are steeped in considerable uncertainty, and the main controversy surrounds the question to which group or groups of speakers Saramaccan owes its Portuguese vocabulary. Two obvious candidates are (a) Portuguese-speaking Sephardic Jews, or (b) speakers of a Portuguesebased pidgin or creole. If (b), then we must ask where the afore-mentioned pidgin/creole originated. In spite of a decades-long debate, at present scholars are still not close to a consensus (see e.g. Smith 1999, Ladhams 1999, Arends 1999). However, in this instance too we propose that the identification of Classical Portuguese features in Saramaccan can shed new light on the discussion, as the following section hopes to make clear. 4.1. Classical and archaic/vulgar Portuguese vocabulary in Saramaccan In the Saramaccan vocabulary, we identified just one indisputable Classical Portuguese item, i.e. SAR kúma ‘like (prep.)’ (cp. Table 1 for CVC/GBC). However, there are several other “suspicious” Saramaccan items that seem to reflect archaic and/or vulgar Portuguese forms (Table 8). Note that all the forms in Table 8 are also shared by CVC and Papiamentu. In addition, we also find Classical Portuguese features in the phonology of Saramaccan, discussed in 4.2 below. Gloss

Modern Port.

Saramaccan

Archaic/vulgar Port. papear ‘to chat/chirp’

‘to talk/chat’

falar

papia

‘slave’

escravo

katibo

‘to vomit’

vomitar

gumbitá

gomitar

‘side’ (n.)

lado

bandja

banda

‘slavery’ cativo

Table 8. Reflexes of archaic and/or vulgar Portuguese in Saramaccan

4.2. Classical Portuguese phonological features in Saramaccan In parallel fashion to CVC, GBC and Papiamentu, Saramaccan retains the phonetic distinction observed for Classical Portuguese between the voiceless affricate

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/tʃ/ written 〈ch〉 and the voiceless fricative /ʃ/ written 〈x〉. Table 9 offers the Upper Guinea PC forms for comparison. Classical Port. deixar

Saramaccan

[dejˈʃar] disá

[dìˈsa]

CVC dexa

[ˈdeʃɐ]

GBC

Gloss

disá [diˈsa]

‘to leave/let’

chumbo [ˈtʃũbu] tjumbu [ˈtʃúmbù] txumbu [ˈtʃũbu] ~ cumbu [ˈcũbu] ‘led’ (n.) [ˈcũbu] Table 9. Retention of the Classical Portuguese contrast between affricate /tʃ/ and fricative /ʃ/ in Saramaccan and Upper Guinea PC.

More interesting still is the retention in Saramaccan, in line with CVC and GBC, of the Classical Portuguese voiced affricate /dʒ/ written 〈j〉 or 〈g〉 in items that clearly belong to basic vocabulary (Table 10). Upper Guinea PC forms are once again provided for comparison. Classical Port.

Saramaccan

CVC

GBC

GLOSS

jurar [dʒuˈrar]

djulá [dʒùlá]

NRFCP12

jurmentá13 [ɟurmẽˈta] (GBC)

‘to swear’

gemer [dʒeˈmer]

djimí [dʒìmí]

djemi [ˈdʒemi ~ ˈɟemi]

jimí [ɟiˈmi] (GBC)

‘to groan’

Table 10. Retention of the Classical Portuguese voiced affricate /dʒ/ in Saramaccan and Upper Guinea PC

4.3. Implications for the debate on the origins of Saramaccan Lusitanisms Smith (1987 and 1999), an acknowledged authority on the origins of Lusitanisms in Saramaccan, has provided convincing linguistic evidence14 showing that portions of the Saramaccan Lusitanisms are likely to stem from an already pidginized or creolized variety of Portuguese. Smith assumes, firstly, that Saramaccan emerged in Surinam “on the basis of Early Sranan —Proto-Sranan as NRFCP NRFCP = No Reflex From Classical Portuguese. In this case, the CVC term meaning ‘to swear’ is jura [ˈʒurɐ], where [ʒ] is undoubtedly derived from Modern Portuguese jurar, realized as [ʒuˈrar] (cp. Table 3). 13 GBC jurmentá probably comes from Classical Portuguese juramento, ‘oath’, itself a deverbal noun derived from jurar, ‘to swear’. 14 This evidence consists of both phonological and lexical Saramaccan features that cannot be explained through mainstream (viz. non-creolized) Portuguese and equivalents of which are found in the Portuguese Creoles of West Africa. The evidence is concisely summarized in Smith (1999: 283-292). 12

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it were— and a Portuguese-based Creole” (Smith 1987: 10) and, secondly, that this Portuguese-based creole was “spoken by the original slaves of the Portuguese Jewish planters who arrived in Surinam 14 years after the foundation of the colony [in 1652]” (idem). While we have no reason to question these two assumptions, we do challenge Smith’s third assumption, namely that this Portuguese-based creole was in reality Gulf of Guinea Portuguese Creole: “parallels in phonological development between the Portuguese elements in the Surinam Creoles and the Portuguese Creoles spoken in the Atlantic region (...) seem to occur most frequently in respect of the Gulf of Guinea Creoles, Sao Tomense, Principense, Annobonese, and Angolar” (Smith 1987: 66). Rather, we would argue on the basis of the shared Classical Portuguese features outlined above for Saramaccan that the creoles of Upper Guinea, i.e. CVC and GBC, have played a more significant role in the Lusitanization of Saramaccan than has hitherto been assumed. Admittedly, a reflex of the Classical Portuguese function word coma ‘like’ is found both in Upper Guinea and in the Gulf of Guinea. However, neither of the two Classical Portuguese phonological features shared between Upper Guinea PC and Saramaccan are found in Gulf of Guinea PC (see Ferraz 1979 for Saotomense, Maurer 1995 for Angolar, Maurer 2009 for Principense, and Zamora Segorbe 2010 for Annobonese). Alternatively, one might ask: could the retention of Classical Portuguese /dʒ/ in Saramaccan be due to transfer from Sephardic Jewish Portuguese? In principle this is possible, but we deem it rather unlikely. The reason we think so is that Sephardic Jewish Portuguese spoken in Surinam most likely resembled Sephardic Jewish Portuguese spoken by the Jews on Curaçao. The limited data that we have from Papiamentu suggest that Curaçaoan Sephardic Jewish Portuguese did not retain the /dʒ/. This is suggested by known loanwords from Sephardic Portuguese into Papiamentu, such as the ones in Table 11. Portuguese

Papiamentu

CVC

jeitu

‘way, zjeitu skill’ [’ʒejtu]

jantar

‘to dine’

zjanta ‘id.’ [’ʒanta]

jejum

‘fast’ (n.)

zjuzjum [ʒu’ʒum]

jitu [’ɟitu]

‘id.’

‘id.’ djánta [’dʒãtɐ~’ɟãtɐ]

jantá [ɟan’ta]

‘to have lunch’

djudjun ‘id.’ [dʒu’dʒũ~ ɟu’ɟũ]

jujuŋ [ɟu’ɟuŋ]

‘id.’

‘id.’ djetu ‘id.’ [’dʒetu~’ɟetu]

‘id.’

GBC

Table 11. Selection of lexical items borrowed from Sephardic Portuguese into Papiamentu, and their etymological counterparts in Upper Guinea PC

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In addition to the data in Tables 8-10, Table 12 draws attention to a set of Saramaccan function words that have full equivalents in Upper Guinea and Papiamentu but not in the Gulf of Guinea. Saramaccan

CVC/GBC

Papiamentu

Port. etymology

Gloss

ma

ma(s)

mas (archaic)

mas

‘but’

te

ti/te

te

até

‘until’

ku

ku

ku

com

‘with/and’

ta

ta

ta

estar ‘to be’

tense-aspect marker

Table 12. Portuguese-derived function words shared between Saramaccan, Upper Guinea PC and Papiamentu

Although SAR te and ta are typically thought to derive from English time and stand, and SAR ma from Dutch maar, respectively, we think that the possibility that Upper Guinea PC contributed to the form, function, and meaning of these Saramaccan function words ought to be considered seriously in future research. The following additional two facts are of interest in the present context: • Saramaccan, CVC and GBC share the lexeme kambósa/kumbosa (SAR) ~ kunbósa (CVC) ~ kumbosa (Casamance-GBC) ~ kombosa (Bissau-GBC) (< Portuguese comborça), used in all three languages to designate a ‘co-wife’ or a ‘rival’ (i.e., ‘other woman competing for the same man in relation to her competitor’, which is the original meaning of comborça in Portuguese). To our knowledge, this item is not found in any other Portuguese-based creole. • One plantation along the Surinam River carries the name Cabo Verde ‘Cape Verde’. Another is called Klein Kuraçao (‘Little Curaçao’) (Smith 1999: 282). Such names appear to bear witness to historical links between Surinam and places where Upper Guinea PC was and is spoken. We would like to stress that the data presented here on Saramaccan should not be viewed in isolation. Rather, they should be considered in light of the evidence previously provided by Smith (1987 and 1999) in favor of the assumption that Saramaccan Lusitanisms stem from an already pidginized or creolized form of Portuguese. If we take that assumption as a starting point, the Classical Portuguese features in Saramaccan gain relevance as, in some cases, they point specifically towards Upper Guinea PC, rather than Gulf of Guinea PC.

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5. Final remarks and conclusions The foregoing highlights the presence of Classical Portuguese features in the grammars of four (partly) Portuguese-lexified creoles. We have shown that these features shed light on the origins of these creoles. We have argued that the Cape Verde Islands constitute the point of origin from where these features diffused to the nearby mainland as well as to some of the Dutch Caribbean colonial territories (Curaçao and Surinam). In the context of our claim (postulated in earlier publications) that GBC and Papiamentu descend from Cape Verdean Creole, we argued that the Classical Portuguese linguistic features shared by these creole languages constitute an important piece of evidence. Saramaccan historically descends from Sranan, but the source of its Lusitanisms has been subject to debate, a debate in which the Upper Guinea Portuguese Creoles (CVC and GBC) have hardly been considered. It is our contention that the Classical Portuguese features retained in Saramaccan compel scholars to take Upper Guinea into account in future research on the origins of this lexically mixed Surinamese creole. The supposed path of diffusion of Classical Portuguese features discussed above is shown in Map 2. We concur that in order to draw firmer conclusions from the data presented here, further research is necessary. We trust that such future work will help pinpoint the exact period during which certain features disappeared in standard European Portuguese. Whether or not one or several African substrate or adstrate languages conditioned the rise of some of the above-mentioned features (such as the retention of /dʒ/ in Saramaccan) also remains to be investigated.

Map 2. Diffusion of Classical Portuguese features in four Portuguese-lexified Creoles

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REFERENCES Arends, Jacques. 1999. The origin of the Portuguese element in the Surinam creoles. In Magnus Huber & Mikael Parkvall (eds.), Spreading the word. The issue of diffusion among the Atlantic creoles, 195-208. London: University of Westminster Press. Bakker, Peter. 2009. The Saramaccan lexicon: Verbs. In Rachel Selbach, Hugo Cardoso & Margot van den Berg (eds.), Gradual creolization. Studies celebrating Jacques Arends, 155-173. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Baptista, Marlyse; Mello, Heliana & Suzuki, Miki. 2007. Cape Verdean, or Kabuverdianu, and Guinea-Bissau, or Kriyol (Creole Portuguese). In John A. Holm & Peter L. Patrick (eds.), Comparative creole syntax, 53-82. London: Battlebridge. Biagui, Noël Bernard & Quint, Nicolas. 2013. Casamancese Creole. In Susanne Maria Michaelis, Philippe Maurer, Martin Haspelmath & Magnus Huber (eds.), The survey of pidgin & creole languages. Volume II: Portuguese-based, Spanish-based and French-based languages, 40-49. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Cardoso, Hugo. 2010. Retenções quinhentistas no crioulo indo-português de Diu. In A China, Macau e os países de língua portuguesa — XX Encontro da Associação das Universidades de Língua Portuguesa, 107-117. Macau: Centro de Estudos Luso-Asiáticos. Carreira, António. 1983. O crioulo de Cabo Verde: Surto e expansão. Lisboa: Europam. Ferraz, Luis Ivens. 1979. The creole of São Tomé. Johannesburg: Witwatersrand University Press. Jacobs, Bart. 2010. Upper Guinea Creole: Evidence in favor of a Santiago birth. Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages 25. 289-343. Jacobs, Bart. 2012a. Origins of a creole. The history of Papiamentu and its African ties. Language Contact and Bilingualism. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. Jacobs, Bart. 2012b. Linguistic evidence and historiography: On the selection of slaves on Curaçao, 1650-1700. Revista de Crioulos de Base Lexical Portuguesa e Espanhola 3. 1-19. Jacobs, Bart. Forthcoming. New perspectives on the linguistic profile of the Sephardic Jews of Curaçao, 1650-1750. To appear in Journal of Jewish Languages. Jacobs, Bart & Quint, Nicolas. MS. A new account of the Portuguese element of Saramaccan: exploring Afro-Portuguese connections. Joubert, Sidney & Perl, Matthias. 2007. The Portuguese language on Curaçao and its role in the formation of Papiamentu. Journal of Caribbean Literatures 5. 43-60. Kihm, Alain. 1994. Kriyol syntax. The Portuguese-based creole language of Guinea-Bissau. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Kramer, Johannes. 2004. Die iberoromanische Kreolsprache Papiamento. Hamburg: Helmut Buske. Ladhams, John. 1999. The Pernambuco connection? An examination of the nature and origin of the Portuguese elements in the Surinam creoles. In Magnus Huber & Mikael Parkvall (eds.), Spreading the word. The issue of diffusion among the Atlantic creoles, 209-240. London: University of Westminster Press. Lang, Jürgen. 2001. La problématique de l’origine du créole de Santiago (Cap-Vert). In Françoise Massa (ed.), Les îles atlantiques: réalités et imaginaire, 181-187. Rennes: Université de Haute-Bretagne Rennes 2 — Équipe ERILAR.

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Lang, Jürgen. 2006. L’influence des Wolofs et du wolof sur la formation du créole santiagais. In John A. Holm, Jürgen Lang, Jean-Louis Rougé & Maria João Soares (eds.), Cabo Verde: origens da sua sociedade e do seu crioulo, 53-62. Tübingen: Gunter Narr. Maurer, Philippe. 1995. L’angolar. Un créole afroportugais parlé à São Tomé. Hamburg: Helmut Buske. Maurer, Philippe. 2009. Principense. Grammar, texts, and vocabulary of the Afro-Portuguese creole of the island of Príncipe, Gulf of Guinea. London: Battlebridge. McWhorter, John 1997. Towards a new model of creole genesis. New York: Peter Lang. Mendes, Antonio de Almeida. 2008. The foundations of the system: A reassessment of the slave trade to the Spanish Americas in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In David Eltis & David Richardson (eds.), Extending the frontiers. Essays on the new transatlantic slave trade database, 63-94. New Haven: Yale University Press. Oliveira, Fernão de. 1536. Grammatica da lingoagem portuguesa. Lisboa : e[m] casa d’Germão Galharde. Parkvall, Mikael. 2000. Out of Africa. London: Battlebridge. Quint, Nicolas. 2000a. Grammaire de la langue cap-verdienne. Paris: L’Harmattan. Quint, Nicolas. 2000b. Le cap-verdien: origines et devenir d’une langue métisse. Paris: L’Harmattan. Quint, Nicolas. 2001. Langues créoles, diachronie et procédés de reconstruction. Bulletin de la Société de Linguistique de Paris 1. 265-284. Quint, Nicolas. 2005. Línguas crioulas num contexto de globalização: o caboverdiano: uma Língua Mundial. Papia 15. 18-31. Quint, Nicolas. 2008. L’élément africain dans la langue capverdienne/ Africanismos na língua caboverdiana. Paris: L’Harmattan. Quint, Nicolas. 2012. African words and calques in Capeverdean Creole Santiago variety. In Philip Baker & Angela Bartens (eds.), Black through White. African words and calques which survived slavery in Creoles and transplanted European languages, 3-29. London: Battlebridge. Rawley, James A. & Behrendt, Stephen D. 2005. The transatlantic slave trade: A history. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. Resende, Garcia de. 1516. Cancioneiro Geral. No place of publication and no publisher. Rougé, Jean-Louis. 1994. À propos de la formation des créoles du Cap-Vert et de Guinée. Papia 3. 137-149. Smith, Norval. 1987. The genesis of the creole languages of Surinam. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Amsterdam. Smith, Norval. 1999. Pernambuco to Surinam 1654-1665? The Jewish slave controversy. In Magnus Huber & Mikael Parkvall (eds.), Spreading the word. The issue of diffusion among the Atlantic creoles, 251-298. London: University of Westminster Press. Teyssier, Paul. 1980. Histoire de la langue portugaise. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France. Veiga, Manuel. 2000. Le créole du Cap-Vert. Étude grammaticale descriptive et contrastive. Paris: Karthala. Zamora Segorbe, Armando. 2010. Gramática descriptiva del Fá d’Ambô. Vic: CEIBA/ Centros Culturales Españoles de Guinea Ecuatorial.

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DOCUMENTING 17 TH-CENTURY LÍNGUA DE PRETO: EVIDENCE FROM THE COIMBRA ARCHIVES Ana R. Luís & Paulo Estudante University of Coimbra While evidence on Língua de Preto has been drawn mostly from 16th- century literary sources, very little is known about the fate of this Afro-Portuguese vernacular in the 17th century. The goal of this study is to shed new light on the development of Língua de Preto throughout the 17th century. To that end, this article draws on a collection of music manuscripts stored in the historical archives of the University of Coimbra. These show that Língua de Preto enjoyed much vitality as the language of the Vilancicos de Negro, a popular music genre sung exclusively in Língua de Preto (Remédios 1923, Ribeiro 1952). In this study, we offer a preliminary survey of the linguistic properties of lyrics in Língua de Preto and compare them to those previously observed by Teyssier (1959) and Kihm & Rougé (2013), in 16th-century Vicentine texts. Our evidence reveals that while there are similarities between 16th and 17th Língua de Preto, there are also important differences: Vilancicos de Negro show the use of determiners and overt plural marking within the Noun Phrase. These are properties that are absent from 16th-century Língua de Preto and which strongly support the development of a more elaborate Afro-Portuguese grammar. Keywords: Old Afro-Portuguese, Língua de Preto, Vilancicos de Negro, Portuguese-based creoles, plural marking, number agreement, gender agreement, Baroque church music, music manuscripts

1. Introduction1 Língua de Preto is the literary representation of the Afro-Portuguese vernacular made popular by 16th century Portuguese playwrights (in particular Gil Vicente, 1465-1536). Several of the linguistic features of 16th-century Língua de Preto are consistent with the grammar of West-African Portuguese-based creoles and partially restructured va

1

We would like to thank Armin Schwegler, John McWhorter and Miguel Gutiérrez Mate for insightful comments on our manuscript. We are grateful to Armin and Liane Ströbel for organizing the workshop at the University of Münster and to the workshop participants for their helpful suggestions. Many thanks also to the audience of the Annual Meeting of the Associação de Crioulos de Base Lexical Portuguesa e Espanhola, in Lisbon, June 2013, where parts of this paper were presented, and to Alain Kihm for sharing his enthusiasm on Língua de Preto with us.

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rieties of Portuguese, which explains why Vicentine texts have received much attention from contact linguistics, as credible sources of evidence on Old Afro-Portuguese and creole formation (Lipski 2009, Holm 2013, Kihm & Rougé 2013). Intriguingly, however, while Gil Vicente and his followers left us abundant 16thcentury sources, very little documentary evidence has surfaced for 17th-century Língua de Preto. Scholars’ general assessment is that Língua de Preto originated as a 16th-century phenomenon that vanished during the 17th century from Portuguese textual sources. This is, for instance, the view expressed by Teyssier (2005) in his revised (i.e., updated and extended) edition of A Língua de Gil Vicente: A Língua de Preto, depois de eclipsada durante o período em que o teatro espanhol dominou a cena portuguesa, reaparece em 1695 num entremez (…).2

Indeed, scholars working on Língua de Preto appear to have accepted that the main source of evidence is to be found in 16th-century Vicentine texts (Lipski 1996, 2009)3. Based on a collection of music manuscripts (stored in the historical archives of the University of Coimbra), this paper will demonstrate that there never existed an abrupt break in the use of Língua de Preto. Instead, it enjoyed much vitality throughout the 17th-century as the ‘official’ language of the Vilancicos de Negro (a popular music genre of Baroque church music). Another important dimension of these manuscripts is the literary language in which the lyrics were written. Given that very little is known about the linguistic properties of 17th-century Língua de Preto, this paper will attempt to shed new light on the missing data by offering a survey of some of its phonology and grammar. We hope to provide convincing evidence against the view that 17th-century Língua de Preto is less reliable than Gil Vicente’s, by showing that it reveals linguistically consistent information on the development of the Afro-Portuguese speech spoken by the African community in Portugal. So, while it may seem that a literary language would remain invariant over time, our evidence will show that Língua de Preto may not have been just a literary language, but rather an accurate and up-to-date representation of contemporary Afro-Portuguese. As such, it has as much documentary value for the 17th-century as Gil Vicente’s texts have for the 16th century. Our translation: “Língua de Preto, after disappearing during the period in which the Spanish theatre dominated the Portuguese scene, reappears in 1695 in an entremés.” (An entremés is a short and entertaining play performed before and between the acts of a larger stage production.) 3 More recently, scattered evidence from the 18th-century has also been attested (Tinhorão 1988). But given the 17th-century gap, most scholars have questioned its documentary value and suggested that it might be simply the artificial revival of a literary language for literary and satirical purposes (Kihm & Rougé 2013). 2

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In Section 2, our paper begins with a short survey of the role of Língua de Preto in Portuguese Baroque church music. Section 3 then offer a preliminary linguistic overview of some of the properties of 17th-century Língua de Preto and compare them to the properties that have been previously identified, by previous scholars, for 16th-century Língua de Preto. Examining mainly phonological and morphosyntactic properties, we show that 17th Língua de Preto shares significant linguistic properties with Gil Vicente’s Língua de Preto. The comparative evidence thus offered shows that 17th-century Afro-Portuguese speech had developed more elaborate grammatical properties. This study also identifies traces of innovation that are consistent with the development of a more elaborate Afro-Portuguese speech. Evidence supporting our claim is provided by a new Noun Phrase with inflectional plural marking on its prenominal elements (or, perhaps, more accurately, on the first determiner). This pluralization strategy has become one of the hallmarks of partially restructured Afro-Portuguese varieties (Holm 2004), but is strikingly absent from Gil Vicente’s 16th-century texts. Based on this evidence, we tentatively claim that this feature may have arisen around the turn of the 17th century. Section 4 rounds out our paper by discussing possible causes for the linguistic differences between 16th- and 17th-century Língua de Preto and the role it played in perpetuating linguistic stereotypes about Portugal’s African community (Section 5). Section 6 offers a short conclusion. 2. Vilancicos de Negro Given the highly specific musical and religious context within which 17th-century Língua de Preto was used, we start with a short introduction to the overall musical and religious background within which Vilancicos de Negro were composed and performed. Section 2.1 concentrates on the religious settings of the lyrics, while sections 2.2 and 2.3 focus on the manuscripts. 2.1. The religious setting of Língua de Preto Vilancicos de Negro are musical pieces composed for special church celebrations. Their most striking property is that they are entirely sung in Língua de Preto. The lyrics were most probably written by locally commissioned lyricists. They feature lively dialogues between African characters who perform and celebrate biblical scenes. The topics are a far cry from the Vicentine domestic scenes in which Black servants interacted with friars, thieves, lovers, and masters. Instead, in Vilancicos de Negro the lyrics are thematically restricted to specific celebrations, reflecting the religious nature of the occasion for which they were composed.

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The Vilancicos de Negro examined in this study have all been composed for the Nativity. The main topics of the dialogues are essentially about the journey of the Three Holy Kings to Bethlehem and the adoration of Jesus in the manger, as illustrated in (1) and (2), respectively4,5. (1) a. Vamos toro a go.1pl.prs all to ‘Let’s go to Bethlehem’

Beren (PB) Bethlehem

b. e vamos toro aos Berem (AA) and go.1pl.prs all to.masc-pl Bethlehem ‘and let’s go to Bethlehem’ c. quando chegamo a Beren when get.1pl.prs to Bethlehem ‘when we get to Bethlehem’

(OZ)

(2) a. pela menino que for-fem baby-boy that ‘for the baby that was born’

(PB)

b. aos minina to.masc.pl baby-girl ‘to the newly born baby’ c. q minino what baby.boy

tam so

nacé born

naciro born bonityo cute/

(AA)

(ZP)

te os boy e os mula have def.masc-pl ox and def.masc-pl donkeys ‘what a pretty baby/(he) the ox and the mule have’

To reinforce the Nativity spirit, the African characters are often named after the Three Holy Kings: (3) a. Belchiolo < Melchior ‘Melchior’

(AA)

b. Gaspale < Gaspar ‘Gaspar’

(AA)

c. rey Neglo < rei negro ‘black king’

(SA)



4



5

Throughout this paper, the symbol “ /b/ a. bai < vai ‘go’

(NA)

b. boso< vós (CB) ‘you.pl’ c. bida < vida (NA) ‘life’

This replacement is also found in 17th-century Vilancicos de Negro, as the selection of words in (16) shows. (16) /v/ > /b/ a. biba < viva ‘long live!’

(SQ)

b. bida < vida ‘life’

(OZ)

c. biola < viola ‘guitar’

(OZ)

According to Kihm & Rougé (2013: 19), this phonological property can be attributed to the fact that /v/ is absent from most of the native African languages spoken by first generation slaves, which may also explain why none of the West-African Portuguese Creoles has retained the /v/.

Our own selection of 16th-century sources include: - Tragicomédia da Frágua d’Amor (FA), Gil Vicente, 1524; - Farsa do Clérigo da Beira (CB), Gil Vicente, 1526; - Prática de Oito feguras (PO), Ribeiro Chiado, 1543; - Auto da Bela Menina (AM), Sebastião Pires, 1560?. 13

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3.1.2. Rhotacism Rhotacism (i.e., the replacement of /d/ by /r/ or /l/) is fairly pervasive in 16thcentury Língua de Preto. 16th-century examples are shown in (17). (17) /d/ > /r/ a. rinheiro < dinheiro ‘money’

(CB)

b. ro < dou ‘give’ c. turo < tudo ‘everything’

This phonological change has also been amply documented in 17th-century Vilancicos de Negro, as shown in (18). (18) /d/ > /r/ a. turo < tudo ‘all/everyone/everything’

(OZ, SQ, PB)

b. toro/s < todos ‘all/everyone’

(PB, AA, SA)

c. tora < toda ‘all.fem/everyone.fem’

(SA)

d. vira < vida ‘life’

(SA)

Other patterns of rhotacism have been attested in the Vilancicos de Negro, such as the replacement of /l/ by /r/ and /r/ by /l/, as in (19) and (20), respectively, which are less frequent in 16th-century texts. (19) /l/ > /r/ a. sarvá < salvar ‘save’

(AA)

b. Beren < Belém ‘Bethlehem’

(AA, ZP)

c. concruzão < conclusão ‘conclusion’

(BB)

d. fidarguia < fidalguia ‘nobility’

(OZ)

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96 (20) /r/ > /l/ a. plimo < primo ‘cousin’

Ana R. Luís & Paulo Estudante

(PB, SA)

b. Flancico < Francisco ‘Francisco’

(PB, BB)

c. neglo < negro ‘black’

(SA)

d. colação < coração ‘heart’

(PB, BB)

The different patterns of rhotacism can be traced back to African languages: the pattern in (17) and (18), may have been influenced by Manjaku (Guiné-Bissau and Senegal), which treat [d] and [r] as allophones; the patterns in (19) and (20) are commonly found in Kikongo and Kimbundu (Angola), where [r] and [l] are allophones (Kihm & Rougé 2013: 20). The same phonetic variation is also observed today in Palenquero, as in do ~ ro ~ lo < Span. dos (Armin Schwegler pc.). As suggested by Kihm & Rougé (2013: 21), The fact that the alternations in (19) and (20) are productive in the 17th century (but are quite rare in 16th-century texts14) may have been caused by the new arrival of Bantu-speaking slaves, rather than of slaves from the Upper Guinea Coast, where such phonetic variation does not occur. 3.1.3. Consonant cluster reduction The reduction of consonant clusters is a salient property of Gil Vicente’s texts. The reduction involves the deletion of /t/ when preceded by a sibilant, as illustrated in (21). This deletion may be motivated by the fixed CV syllable structure of some of African languages (numerous African languages also have a CVC structure; cp. Kihm & Rougé 2013: 23-24). (21) a. trisse < triste ‘sad’

(FA)

b. cusá < custa ‘costs’

(PO)

Examples of cluster reduction where the /t/ is deleted have also been found in Vilancicos de Negro (22).

We only found one instance of [l] > [r] in a late-Vicentine text: caracanhar < calcanhar ‘ankle’ (AM).

14

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Documenting 17th-century Língua de Preto 97 (22) a. fessa < festa ‘celebration’

(OZ, PB, AA)

b. afassa < afasta ‘move away’

(AA)

c. cassaeta < castanhetas ‘castanets’

(SQ, AA, OZ)

Another type of consonant cluster reduction attested in 16th-century texts involves the insertion of a paragogic vowel (23). (23) a. puruguntá < perguntar ‘ask’

(FA)

b. Furunando < Fernando ‘Fernando’

(FA, CB, AM)

c. foromosa < formosa ‘beautiful ‘

(FA)

Paragogic vowels appear to be less frequent in 17th-century Língua de Preto than in the 16th-century texts. So, for example, the name Furunando in (23b), recurs in Vicentine texts, but are absent in 17th-century Vilancicos. Instead, one finds cases of Flunando (SQ, PB, ZP), as in (6a). Rhotacism involving /r/ and /l/ (which is most predominant in the 17th century ) may have been preferred over the insertion of paragogic vowels15. 3.1.4. The replacement of /λ/ by /j/ and /ñ/ by /j/ Due to the absence of the palatal consonants /λ/ or /ñ/ in African L1 languages, palatals are systematically replaced by a palatal glide in 16th-century Língua de Preto (Kihm & Rougé 2013: 21-22), as shown in (24) and (25). (24) a. o/j/o < olho ‘eye’

(NA)

b. mu/j/ere < mulher ‘woman’

(NA)

(25) a. si/j/ora < senhora ‘lady’

(AM) 

b. mi/i/a < minha ‘my’

(NA)

One of the reviewers also suggests that rhotacism could have been a later development which applied to words already containing paragogic vowels, as in Furunando > Frunando > Flunando.

15

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The same alternation can be observed in 17th-century Língua de Preto, as in (26), for /λ/, and in (27), for /ñ/. (26) /λ/ > /j/ a. ga/j/ofa < galhofa ‘prank’

(AA)

b. pahy/j/a < palhinhas (OZ) ‘hay’ (in the manger)’ c. o/j/o < olho ‘eye’

(SA, BB, ZP)

d. marabi/j/a < maravilha ‘wonder/s’

(ZP)

(27) /ñ/ > /j/ a. si/j/olo < senhor ‘Saint/Jesus/Lord’ b. mi/j/a < minha ‘my’

(ZP, OZ, AA, SA, BB)

(ZP, SQ)

3.1.5. Intermediate summary Summing up, the phonological properties we have surveyed show that there is continuity between 16th- and 17th-century Língua de Preto. We have also found patterns that seem to be more specific to 17th-century Língua de Preto, such as rhotacism between /l/ and /r/, which may have been caused by the late arrival, in the 17th century, of slaves speaking Bantu languages in which the [l] and [d] have strictly allophonic properties. 3.2. Grammar 3.2.1. Verb forms In Língua de Preto, verb forms typically end in a vowel, as illustrated by the examples from Vicentine plays (28) and 17th-century Vilancicos (29-30): (28) a. conhecê < conhecer (CB) know.inf ‘know’ b. pagá < pagar pay.inf ‘pay’

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(CB)

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Documenting 17th-century Língua de Preto 99 (29) a. quebrá < quebrar break.inf ‘break’

(OZ)

b. sartá < saltar jump.inf ‘jump’

(PB, OZ)

c. bayá < bailar dance.inf ‘dance’

(PB)

d. tocá < tocar play .inf ‘play’

(AA)

(30) a. faze-mo < fazemos do.prs-1pl ‘we do/make’

(AA, OZ, PB)

b. chama-mo < chamamos call.prs-1pl ‘we call’

(SA)

c. canta-mo < cantamos sing.prs-1pl ‘we sing’

(PB)

d. toca-mo < tocamos play.prs-1pl ‘we play (instruments)’

(SQ)

The infinitive forms in (28) and (29) as well as the 1st plural forms in (30) have survived until today as properties of the verbal paradigms of partially restructured Afro-Portuguese varieties (e.g., in Brazilian Vernacular Portuguese; Holm 2004). In Portuguese-based creoles, vowel-final infinitives survive as the bare form of verbs (Holm 1989, 2004, Kihm 1994). Different causes may have shaped these Afro-Portuguese verb forms. Under an L2 view of creolization, such loss might be viewed as resulting from untutored adult L2 acquisition which typically does not retain verbal inflectional endings (Klein & Perdue 1997, Plag 2008, Luís 2008). Other causes may also influence this loss, such as substratal CV syllable-structure or the predominance of vowel-final verb forms in the substrate. 3.2.2. The copula sar ~ sa ~ sã ~ samo The copula sa ‘ser’/’estar’ is a distinctive feature of 16th-century Língua de Preto. There is a widely shared consensus that sa (and its various morphological forms)

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is of Portuguese origin. How it developed is nonetheless a hotly debated topic (see Lipski 1996, Holm 2013, Baptista 2014). In 17th-century Vilancicos, the copula surfaces in various forms: (31) sar a. sar contenta be.inf happy ‘(I) am happy’

< estar contente

(AA)

b. como sar linda < como está linda how be.inf beautiful ‘how pretty she/he is’ c. sar nuzio < está nuzinho be.inf naked ‘(he) is naked’ (32) sa a. aqui sa Zuzé here be.prs.3sg Zuzé ‘here is Zuzé’

< aqui está José

b. Aqui sa Luzia < aqui está Luzia here be.prs.3sg Luzia ‘here is Luzia’ c. sa um Donzelhina belo be.prs.3sg def.masc.sg young-woman pretty ‘(he) is a handsome baby’

(PB)

(PB)

< é um bebé belo (BB)

(33) sã a. oiro sã suas cabelo < de oiro são os seus cabelos (BB) golden be.prs.3pl poss-3sg.fem.pl hair ‘her air is golden’ b. sã qui turo zente pleta be.prs.3pl here everyone people black ‘all Black folk are here’

< está aqui tudo gente preta (SQ)

(34) samo a. aqui samo < aqui estamos here be.prs.1pl ‘we are here’ b. toros samo zunto < todos estamos juntos all be.prs.1pl together ‘we are all together’

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(OZ, SA)

(PB)

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These different forms of sa are linguistically consistent with what we know about the Portuguese-based creoles of the Gulf of Guinea, including São Tomé, Príncipe, and Annobón (Kihm & Rougé 2013). 3.2.3. Absence of gender agreement Gender agreement does not seem to exist in Língua de Preto, regardless of which sources we examine. Instead, gender endings such as -a and -o on nouns and determiners appear to behave simply like word-final phonemes that are integrated into the root. If this claim is correct then it means that Afro-Portuguese speech did not encode ‘feminine’ and ‘masculine’ as morphosyntactic properties. Examples from 16th-century texts given in (35) show that feminine determiners (e.g., essa in (35a) and minha in (35b)) precede masculine nouns (i.e., vilão and dedo, respectively). (35) a. essa  vilão < esse vilão that.fem villain.masc ‘that villain’

(CB)

b. minha  dedo < meu dedo poss-1sg.fem finger.masc ‘my finger’

(FA)

The same absence of gender agreement can be observed in the 17th-century manuscripts, where gender mismatches are quite abundant: feminine determiners precede masculine nouns (36), or masculine determiners precede feminine nouns (37). We recognize that further research will be needed to determine whether there is any systematic pattern or whether the choice of feminine and masculine determiners is simply random. (36) a. sua pé poss-3sg.fem foot.masc ‘her/his foot’

< seu pé

(ZQT)

b. da Ceo < do Céu of.fem heaven.masc ‘from heaven’

(OZ)

c. minha colação < meu coração poss-1sg.fem heart.masc ‘my heart’

(BB)

(37) a. nosso terra poss-1pl.masc land.fem ‘our land’

(OZ)

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< nossa terra

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b. de otro banda < de outra banda (AA) from another.masc side. fem ‘from another side’ c. nesso bida in-that.masc life.fem ‘our life’

< nossa vida

(ZP)

This absence of gender marking and gender agreement may have had a purely substratal origin, given that a number of African languages do not encode gender distinctions (Kihm & Rougé 2013: 56). 3.2.4. Partial summary Our preliminary survey has surveyed phonological and grammatical properties that are, by and large, a continuation of 16th-century linguistic properties (see sections 3.1 and 3.2). In what follows we will address properties that appear to be exclusive of our 17th-century sources and which to the best of our knowledge have not been found in Gil Vicente’s texts. 3.3. The 17th-century Noun Phrase This section will focus on 17th-century innovations within the Noun Phrase. Section 3.3.1 surveys the development of definite and indefinite determiners, and Section 3.3.2 illustrates inflectional plural marking on the first determiner. We will argue that these Vilancicos de Negro constitute perhaps the oldest documented source of plural marking in Afro-Portuguese. 3.3.1. Determiners As Kihm & Rougé (2013: 33) observe, “(n)o definite or indefinite determiners (articles) are attested in Gil Vicente’s plays”. On the contrary, determiners do appear quite abundantly in Vilancicos de Negro. For example, we find as many as 13 occurrences of the indefinite determiner huns < uns ‘indef.masc.pl’ in Olá zente q’aqui samo alone. Some examples of indefinite determiners are illustrated below: (38) a. humas dança < algumas danças indef.fem.pl dance.fem.sg ‘some dance/s’

(AA)

b. huns Neglo < alguns negros indef.masc.pl Black.masc.sg ‘some Black/s’

(AA)

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Documenting 17th-century Língua de Preto 103 c. huns briga < algumas brigas indef.masc.pl fight.fem.pl ‘some fight/s’

(OZ)

d. (h)uns fessa < uma festa indef.masc.pl party.fem.sg ‘a celebration/celebrations’

(PB, OZ, ZQ)

We may assume that this linguistic innovation reflects realistic data given the fact that indefinite determines have survived until today in West-African Portuguese-based creoles. We now turn to definite determiners, such o/a ‘def.masc/fem.sg’ or os/as ‘def. masc/fem.pl, which are also rare in the Vicentine corpus16, but quite abundant in Vilancicos de Negro. In our 17th-century corpus, numerous cases of singular forms (39) and of plural forms (40) have been identified. (39) a. o nosso bida def.masc.sg poss-1pl.masc.sg life.fem.sg ‘let’s leave our life’

< a nossa vida

(ZP)

b. o nosso companhia < a nossa companhia def.masc.sg poss-1pl.masc.sg company.fem.sg ‘our company’

(BB)

c. o tambolo < o tambor def.masc.sg drum.masc.sg ‘the drum’

(AA)

d. a Diabo < o diabo def.fem.sg devil.masc.sg ‘the devil’

(OZ)

e. o menino < o menino def.masc.sg boy.masc.sg ‘the child’

(SQ, PB)

We found definite determiners in only one late-Vicentine text: a. o  coeio < o coelho (PO) def.masc.sg rabbit ‘the rabbit’ b. a  regatera < a regateira def.fem.sg trader/fishwife ‘the trader/fishwife’ c. o  pese < o peixe def.masc.sg fish ‘the fish’ 16

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(40) a. os colação < o coracão def.masc.pl heart.masc.sg ‘the heart’

(PB)

b. os fessa def.masc.pl party.fem.sg ‘the celebration/s’

(AA)

< a/s festa/s

c. as braga < as bragas/calças (AA) def.fem.pl trousers.fem.pl ‘the trousers’ d. as pé < os pés def.fem.pl foot.masc.sg ‘(the) feet/foot’

(PB, OZ)

e. as mão def.fem.pl hand.fem.sg ‘(the) hand(s)’

(PB)

< as mãos

Unlike the indefiniteness determiner, these definite determiners did not survive in the grammar of West African Portuguese-based creoles, with the exception of a recently developed definite determiner in the Portuguese-based Creole of Santiago (Baptista 2003). 3.3.2. Plural marking within the Noun Phrase Plural inflections on nouns or determiners are rarely attested in 16th Língua de Preto, as previously observed by Kihm & Rougé (2013: 27-28). On the contrary, plural marking is quite prolific in 17th-century Língua de Preto. 3.3.2.1. Distribution of plural markers Our evidence shows that a number of different determiners can bear the plural suffix in 17th-century Língua de Preto. The marked element can be a definite determiner (either in the ‘masculine’ or ‘feminine’), as in (40), or an indefinite determiner (38). Plural marking, then, does not appear on the head of the Noun Phrase. The plural suffix also attaches to possessive pronouns, as in (41), and to so-called portmanteau prepositions (i.e., prepositions which are fused with definite determiners), as shown in (42). Portmanteau prepositions have an ambiguous syntactic status given that they are partly prepositions and partly determiners. (41) a. Mias Menina / < meu menino poss-1sg.fem girl Que that

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em in

tuas oyo / poss-2g.fem.pl eye

(SA) < que nos teus olhos

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Documenting 17th-century Língua de Preto 105 Tem os meus vira has def.masc.pl poss-1sg.masc.pl life ‘Dear baby Jesus, in your eyes is my life’

< tenho a minha vida

b. suas cabelo poss-3sg.fem.pl hair ‘his hair’

(BB)

< seus cabelos

(42) a. aos Berem < a Belém to.masc.pl Bethlehem ‘to Bethlehem’

(AA)

b. nos terra in.masc.pl land ‘in the land’

(OZ)

< na terra

c. das pé < do(s) pé(s) of.fem.pl ‘of the feet/foot’ d. pelos oyo through.masc.pl eye ‘through the eyes’

(OZ)

< pelos olhos

e. dos profosia < da(s) profecia(s) of.masc.pl prophecy ‘of the prophecy/ of the prophecies’

(BB)

(OZ)

What is striking about plural markers in Língua de Preto is that they do not necessarily convey plural meaning. For example, in Mias Menina (cp. (41a)) and in aos Berem (cp. (42a)), only a singular reading is possible in these Noun Phrases (this is so because there is only one Baby Jesus and only one city named Bethlehem). In (42c and e), on the contrary, we provide both readings because there is insufficient context to choose one over the other. As to the inflectional status of the plural marker, there is no doubt that it behaves formally like a suffix. While it may not express plural meaning, the fact that determiners may also occur without the plural marker (see (35), (36), (37) and (39)) clearly indicates that the suffix is a genuine bound form. Plural marking within the Noun Phrase continues to surface in 18th-century sources, as the examples in (43), drawn from the Entremez da Floreira (1774), illustrate (cp. Kihm & Rougé 2013: 28). Yet again, in light of the context, none of the Noun Phrases seems to express plural meaning.

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106 (43) a. os def.masc.pl ‘the basket’

Ana R. Luís & Paulo Estudante cêa basket

< a cesta

b. huns pouco de conversa indef.masc.pl piece of conversation ‘a little chat’

< um pouco de conversa

3.3.2.2. Plural markers on determiners Noun Phrases with more than one determiner also exhibit the plural suffix on the prenominal elements of the Noun Phrase: either only on the first element, as in (44a), or on all, as in (44b). (44) a. os zente def.masc.pl people.fem.sg ‘the Black folk’

pleto < a gente preta black.masc.sg

b. os meus vira of.masc.pl poss-1sg.masc.pl life ‘of my life’

< da minha vida

(BB)

(SA)

Absence of plural marking on the head of Noun Phrase is a property that survived in Brazilian Vernacular Portuguese and West-African Portuguese creoles, as shown in (45) for Brazilian Vernacular Portuguese, and in (46) for Cape Verde creole. (45) prova uns pãozinho try.imp indef.masc.pl bread rolls ‘try some bread rolls’ (Azevedo 1989: 867) (46) a. uns padja indef.masc.pl hay ‘some hay’ b. nhas fidju poss-1sg.fem.pl children ‘my children’ c. kes fidju dem.masc.pl children ‘these children’ (Baptista 2007: 82-83)

These examples indicate that the development of plural marking observed in our 17th-century manuscripts cannot be perceived as a random invention of the composers, but rather must be a realistic representation of 17th-century Afro-Por-

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tuguese. As such, we may tentatively claim that the presence of plural markers within the Noun Phrase constitutes one of the earliest documented occurrences of a pattern that was to become one of the hallmarks of partially restructured varieties of Portuguese and Portuguese-lexified creoles.17 3.4. Summary of linguistic features Our linguistic survey has shown that some of the phonological and morphosyntactic properties of 17th-century Língua de Preto are shared with 16th-century Língua de Preto (cp. sections 3.1 and 3.2). Given that such linguistic properties are linguistically consistent with properties of Afro-Portuguese contact varieties, we may assume that the Afro-Portuguese vernacular spoken in the 17th century by Portugal’s African community (and depicted by Língua de Preto) had already developed a more elaborate grammar (or Post-basic Variety, following Klein & Perdue [1997]). Our preliminary survey has revealed further findings. For instance, 17th-century Língua de Preto exhibits linguistic properties that are absent from Gil Vicente’s text. In particular, within the Noun Phrase, we have shown that Vilancicos make use of definite determiners and of plural marking on pre-nominal elements. Both properties of the NP are abundant in 17th-century Língua de Preto but absent from the 16th Vicentine texts. Crucially, these innovations are not ‘inventions’, but consistent with properties of Brazilian Vernacular Portuguese and Portuguese-based creoles. The fact that plural inflection only shows up in 17th-century Língua de Preto is consistent with evidence from untutored adult second language acquisition which shows that, unlike in first language acquisition, plural suffixes are acquired at a later stage (Klein & Perdue 1997, Parodi et al. 2004). Despite the rudimentary nature of these morphosyntactic innovations, they emerged, as would be expected, at a later stage in the development of the adult Afro-Portuguese L2 variety. 4. The documentary value of 17th-century Língua de Preto The fact that the linguistic innovations found in 17th-century Língua de Preto survived until today in Afro-Portuguese contact varieties has a decisive impact on the documentary value of Vilancicos de Negro. It constitutes robust evidence that helps contradict the claim, formulated by Mendes dos Remédios (1923: 44-45), 17

We will reserve for another time and place discussion as to why plural marking falls on prenominal elements of the noun phrase. Until then, however, we refer readers to discussions about an identical pluralization pattern in Vernacular Brazilian Portuguese by Holm (2004) and Baxter (2009).

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that Língua de Preto is a mere imitation of Gil Vicente’s canon (see Section 2). While there are indeed traces of linguistic continuity between 16th- and 17th-century Língua de Preto, there are also new properties in our corpus which suggest that the poets who were commissioned to write the lyrics for Vilancicos de Negro updated the 16th Vicentine canon with new (linguistically real) features. The fact that plural inflections are absent from 16th-century texts does not really tell us whether this feature had already emerged during the 16th century. We only know for certain that it was not —or not yet— integrated into the Vicentine canon. We may therefore ask the question as to why these linguistic innovations are not found in 16th-century Língua de Preto. Two possible answers suggest themselves. We could simply assume that such features had not yet developed in Vicente’s time. This view would entail the idea that Afro-Portuguese remained largely invariant during that period. While we do not have evidence to show that this view is untenable, we can make educated guesses, based on our knowledge of untutored L2 acquisition. We know, for example, that adult L2 varieties undergo changes within decades or, at most, over the course of one generation (Klein & Perdue 1997). Instead, we could entertain the idea that the inflectional plural marker had already developed in the 16th century, but had not been integrated into Gil Vicente’s Língua de Preto. Under this view, what remained invariant was the Vicentine canon rather the Afro-Portuguese of the Africans living in Portugal. There may also have been a strong reason not to update the Vicentine canon, which had been the trademark of its creator and which enjoyed much success during his lifetime. It could have been an attempt at preserving the “canon”, instead of updating it. Future research will tell if this is the reason why plural marking are absent from 16th-century texts (even though it is so abundant in 17th-century Vilancicos de Negro). 5. The linguistic bias in Língua de Preto In this final section, we would like to highlight the fact that texts in Língua de Preto (from both the 16th and the 17th centuries) would have played a decisive role in perpetuating the belief that the Black community in Portugal could only speak a rudimentary variety of Afro-Portuguese (even after having lived in Portugal during various generations). Despite some of the linguistic innovations, none of the Black characters in Vilancicos de Negro speaks fluent Portuguese. The problem with this representation is that there is sociolinguistic and literary evidence indicating that Africans living in Portugal spoke fluent Portuguese (perhaps with different degrees of fluency). The sociolinguistic context within which African slaves and servants lived would have promoted acquisition of Portuguese,

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simply because slaves did not necessarily live in segregated communities (or ghettos). Many lived in domestic households owned by the Portuguese, where they were outnumbered by Portuguese-speaking family members. Others were engaged in manual labor. All this suggests that they had direct contact with the target language, even in the course of one century. Within these domestic households, slaves had all been converted to Christianity. In colonial contexts, the conversion of domestic slaves to Christianity made slaves more receptive to learning the colonizers’ language, especially if such slaves were not in contact with their native community. This happened in Korlai (India), where Hindu slaves were cut off by the Hindu community as a result of their conversion to Christianity (Luís 2008). The fact that they had lost contact with their native Hindu community, combined with their direct contact with Portuguese, may explain why they had learned a more elaborate adult variety of Portuguese when the Portuguese eventually left. Had the Portuguese stayed in Korlai, a Portuguese-speaking community of Indians would probably have emerged in Korlai. Sociohistorical facts also show that many of the Africans in Portugal did not arrive directly from Africa but were descendants of previous generations of slaves already living in Portugal (Couto 2000, Kihm & Rougé 2013). It therefore seems plausible that the children and grandchildren of first-generation slaves would have had access to Portuguese and would have gradually learned Portuguese as their native language. Further evidence supporting our claim that Língua de Preto does not offer a real portray of the overall linguistic competence of Africans in Portugal is provided by literary sources of the period. These texts include Africans who are native speakers of Portuguese. In some cases, it is clear that among Portugal’s white population, Portuguese-speaking slaves or servants caused certain uneasiness presumably because they would have seriously challenged the linguistic stereotype about African slaves. For example, in Auto das Regateiras (by Chiado, ca. 1550), a white male character speaks to a Black female servant in “broken” Portuguese because he assumed that slaves could not understand “proper” Portuguese. The slave understands Portuguese, but replies in Língua de Preto pretending not to speak Portuguese even though she does have full active and passive knowledge of the language. In Auto da Bela Menina (by Pires, ca. 1580), a young woman scorns a black slave for delivering her lover’s love message in fluent Portuguese, because slaves should not speak like their masters. Another example which shows that African were competent Portuguese speakers is found in Auto da Natural Invenção (by Chiado, ca. 1550). In this play, a black

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professional musician, who speaks fluent Portuguese, is mistakenly treated as a slave. The white character does not readily accept the fact that the Black musician can speak fluent Portuguese. Summing up, then, it seems plausible to assume that the Black community living in Portugal exhibited different degrees of proficiency in Portuguese as the result of varying degrees of social, cultural and religious integration into Portuguese society. Afro-Portuguese speech must have existed side by side with more fluent versions of Portuguese, and it seems plausible to assume that many Africans (and especially their descendants) were competent speakers of both Afro-Portuguese and Portuguese. 6. Conclusion As alluded to before, Língua de Preto is a literary representation of an Afro-Portuguese contact variety that emerged in Portugal with the arrival of African slaves. Despite being a literary representation, Língua de Preto exhibits linguistic features that are consistent with those of documented creole languages and partially restructured varieties of Portuguese. In the case of 17th-century Língua de Preto, the properties of the Noun Phrase, in particular, have attracted our attention, because they lend strong support to our claim that 17th-century Língua de Preto is not an imitation of 16th-century Língua de Preto, but rather a modernized version reflecting linguistic changes that could only have taken place after the 16th century. In studying 17th-century Língua de Preto, it is also crucial to bear in mind that while texts in Língua de Preto seem to be a serious attempt at capturing a linguistic reality, it should not be assumed that the African community only spoke AfroPortuguese (or an Africanized L2 Portuguese). Given the lack of robust evidence, any question about the languages spoken by Africans and their descendants will remain inconclusive. However, the sociolinguistic factors alluded to in Section 5 lend support to our claim that Africans and their descendants would have already learned more fluent versions of Portuguese, and that they may have been competent speakers of both Afro-Portuguese and Portuguese, until Afro-Portuguese eventually died out.

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REFERENCES Azevedo, Milton M. 1989. Vernacular features in educated speech in Brazilian Portuguese. Hispania 72. 862-872. Baptista, Marlyse. 2003. The syntax of Cape Verdean Creole: The Sotavento varieties. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Baptista, Marlyse. 2007. On the syntax and semantics of DP in Cape Verdean Creole. In Baptista, Marlyse & Guéron, Jacqueline (eds.). Noun phrases in creole languages: A multi-faceted approach, 61-105. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Baptista, Marlyse. 2014. Echoes from the past: Traces of Old Portuguese in Santiaguense TMA System. PAPIA 24. 2. Baxter, Alan. 2009. A concordância de número. In Dante Lucchesi, Alan Baxter & Ilza Ribeiro (eds.). O português afro-brasileiro, 269-294. Salvador: EDUFBA. Brito, Manuel Carlos. 1983. Vilancicos do século XVII do Mosteiro de Santa Cruz de Coimbra. Lisboa: Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian. Couto, Dejanirah. 2000. Histoire de Lisbonne. Paris: Fayard. Gómez, Maricarmen. 2012. Del villancico sacro a la ensalada. In Maricarmen Gómez (ed.). Historia de la música en España e Hispanoamérica, 163-213. Madrid: Fondo de Cultura Económica. Granados, Octavio Páez. 2013. “Zente pleto, zente pleto”. O vilancico de negro em Portugal — Século XVII. Dois casos de estudo do Mosteiro de Santa Cruz de Coimbra. MA thesis, Universidade de Coimbra. Hatherly, Ana. 1990. Poemas em língua de preto dos sécs. XVII e XVIII. Lisboa: Quimera. Holm, John. 1989. Pidgins and creoles: Volume 2: Reference survey. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Holm, John. 2004. Languages in contact: The partial restructuring of vernaculars. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Holm, John. 2013. Sixteenth-century evidence regarding the origins of the Capeverdean verbal marker -ba. PAPIA 23. 39-49. Kihm, Alain. 1994. Kriyol syntax: The Portuguese-based creole language of Guiné-Bissau. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Kihm, Alain & Rougé, Jean-Louis. 2013. Língua de preto, the basic variety at the root of West African Portuguese creoles: A contribution to the theory of pidgin/creole formation as second language acquisition. Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages 28. 203-298. Klein, Wolfgang & Perdue, Clive. 1997. The asic Variety, or couldn’t natural languages be much simpler? Second Language Acquisition Research 13. 301-347. Lipski, John. 1996. The evolution of the Afro-Portuguese copula sã. Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the AATSP, Orlando, August. Lipski, John. 2009. Os primeiros contactos afro-portugueses: implicações para a expansão da língua. In Ana Maria Carvalho (ed.), 11-30. Português em contacto. Madrid/ Frankfurt: Iberoamericana/Vervuert. Luís, Ana R. 2008. Tense marking and inflectional morphology in Indo-Portuguese creoles. In S. Michaelis (ed.), Roots of creole structures: Weighing the contribution of substrates and superstrates, 83-121. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

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Matta, Jorge. 2008. Manuscrito 50 da Biblioteca Geral da Universidade de Coimbra. Parte I. Lisboa: Edições Colibri. Parodi, Teresa; Schwartz, Bonnie & Clahsen, Harald. 2004. On the L2 acquisition of the morphosyntax of German nominals. Linguistics 42. 669-705. Plag, Ingo. 2008. Creoles as interlanguages: Inflectional morphology. Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages 23. 114-135. Remédios, Joaquim Mendes. 1923. Os vilhancicos. Coimbra: Lumen. Ribeiro, Mário de Sampayo. 1952. El-Rei D. João. O Quinto, e a música no seu tempo. Lisboa: Publicações Culturais da Câmara Municipal de Lisboa. Stevenson, Robert. 1976. Vilancicos portugueses. Lisboa: Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian. Teyssier, Paul. 2005. A língua de Gil Vicente (Edição revista, actualizada e ampliada). Lisboa: Imprensa Nacional Casa da Moeda. Teyssier, Paul. 1959. La langue de Gil Vicente. Paris: Librairie C. Klincksieck. Tinhorão, José Ramos. 1988. Os negros em Portugal: uma presença silenciosa. Lisboa: Caminho.

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MACAU PIDGIN PORTUGUESE AND CREOLE PORTUGUESE: A CONTINUUM? Michelle Li University of Hong Kong This study examines the historical and grammatical relationships between Macau Pidgin Portuguese (MPP) and Macau Creole Portuguese (MCP). MPP emerged at the latest in the 18th century as a result of increased commercial involvement of the Chinese in/around Macau. The extensive lexical and grammatical similarities between MPP and MCP suggest that MPP was based on MCP. Notwithstanding such shared features, MPP has features typically found in pidgins. The varieties of Portuguese spoken in Macau present a complicated linguistic scenario, with Portuguese as the administrative language, MCP as the local language for the Macanese and Christian Chinese; and MPP as the variety used by the Chinese. This paper develops the hypothesis that these varieties can be represented as a continuum, with varying degrees of (dis) continuity. Keywords: Macau, pidgin, creole, Portuguese, pronouns, tense, aspect, possessives, language continuum

1. Introduction1 In the 16th century, Macau was the first port in China to trade with the West. Opportunities created by this trade attracted people of diverse origins. As in other Portuguese settlements, this diverse ethnic composition was coupled with a complex linguistic situation. Baxter (1996) notes how in these situations, the nature and extent of contact between the Portuguese administrators and persons of other ethnicities often resulted in the creation of Portuguese varieties through pidginization, creolization and L2 acquisition of Portuguese. While the use and formation of Macau Creole Portuguese (MCP) is reasonably well known, Macau Pidgin Portuguese (MPP) still awaits detailed investigation 1



I thank the audience at the Hispanistentag, held in Münster in 2013, who offered helpful comments and suggestions. I am grateful to the two anonymous reviewers for their critical comments.

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due to lack of written sources. A recently transcribed MPP text has come to light and forms the basis of this discussion. Sections 1.1 and 1.2 examine the emergence of these two Portuguese contact varieties, and discuss the extent to which they show mutual (dis)continuity . 1.1. The creole After the Portuguese had occupied Sri Lanka in 1505, Goa in 1510, and Malacca in 1511, the establishment of Macau as a seaport was essentially an extension of the Portuguese economic monopoly in Maritime Asia. Portuguese ships first arrived in Canton in 1513 and subsequent voyages and trading activities in the South China Sea resulted in permanent settlement in Macau in 1557. Macau was then transformed from a fishing village into a key port connecting trade with Southeast Asian, Japan, Manila and other Portuguese settlements in Asia (Souza 1986). Being the first Europeans to establish regulated trade relations with the Chinese authorities, the most significant legacy of the 400-year Portuguese presence in Macau (1557–1999) was the distinct ethnic group called the Macanese, locally-born Portuguese Eurasians, and their mother tongue, the creole, locally known as Patua. Early on in the settlement, Portuguese men mainly married Malay and Indian women brought from Malacca and India as well as Japanese women, instead of Chinese (Batalha 1974: 21, 29; Holm 1989: 296). These women are described in detail in Mundy’s Travels (Temple 1919: 269-270). This complex demography also had linguistic consequences. Numerous studies have demonstrated the influence of Malacca Creole upon Macau Creole (Thompson 1961, Hancock 1975, Ferraz 1987). For example, Batalha (1974: 6) asserts that the Portuguese settling in Macau spoke a kind of Portuguese that was already circulating in Malacca and Africa. She further shows the significant amount of Malay lexicon in MCP (Batalha 1977). Similarly, Baxter (1996) highlights how Malacca CP influenced Macau Creole during its formative period. Evidence comes from shared grammatical features such as pluralizing nominal reduplication influenced by Malay (Ansaldo & Matthews 2004) and the TMA system (Pinharanda Nunes 2011, Pinharanda Nunes & Baxter 2004). It was not until the 19th century that the Chinese population in Macau began to increase and intermarriage between Portuguese/Macanese and Chinese women became more frequent. The number of Portuguese in Macau always remained small compared to other ethnic groups, totaling only about 900 in 1563, 1000 in 1622 and 4476 in 1878 (Tomás 1988: 34). Macau’s administration during the early period was characterized by stringent segregation between the Portuguese and Chinese communities. Interethnic communication was mainly maintained in bimonthly contact at

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the market place where foreigners bought foods and daily necessities (Tomás 1988, Ansaldo & Matthews 2004). This limited contact explains the minor role that Cantonese played during the formative period of Macau Creole. Intense Portuguese-Chinese social and linguistic contact was eventually made possible with the increase in the Chinese population in the 19th century (PinharandaNunes 2012: 170). 1.2. The pidgin A pidginized form of Portuguese has been repeatedly referred to as having been used in communication between Europeans and Chinese (Holm 1989, Tryon et al. 1996, Zhang 2008). While it is not clear when the pidgin began to circulate, the use of “broken Portuguese” was mentioned in many 18th-century records (e.g., Anson 1748, Noble 1762). Benyowsky (1790) records a rare attestation of pidgin Portuguese. (1) Mandarin hopchin malas, Mandarin tanajou bon bon malto bon Mandarin Hopchin bad Mandarin Tanasoa good good very good ‘The officials at Hopchin are bad; the official at Tanasoa is very good.’ (1771; Benyowsky 1790: 72)

These historical records, together with a Portuguese pidgin phrasebook mentioned in Williams (1837), strongly suggest that the pidgin was in use at least by the mid-18th century. While Western sources provide very little information on the grammar of pidgin Portuguese as documentation of it was scant, Chinese sources are richer in data, thus allowing grammatical analysis. The first widely studied Chinese source documenting a Portuguese variety used in Macau comes from the book Aomen Jilue (Monograph of Macao) (1751), a work compiled by two Chinese officials, Yin Guangren 印光任 and Zhang Rulin 張汝霖. In the second volume of the Monograph there is a 395-entry Chinese-Portuguese glossary, divided into 5 sections, namely (i) Heaven & Earth, (ii) Men & Things, (iii) Clothing & Food, (iv) Implements & Numbers, and (v) Commonly Used Words (Bawden 1996). While Bawden (1996: 111) argues that the text represents Indo-Portuguese as spoken in Macau, Thompson (1959: 29) refers to it as “Macao dialect of Portuguese”. It is not certain whether the text contains a pidgin or a creole, as it is mainly a glossary and hence offers very little grammar that would allow one to reach solid conclusions. As Baxter (2009) notes, it is, however, clear that the use of ja ‘perfective’ (lit. ‘already’) and logo ‘future’ (lit. soon’) as aspect markers distinguish it from European Portuguese.

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Almost a century later, the American missionary Samuel Wells Williams (1837) mentions a phrasebook written entirely in Chinese characters with approximately 1200 entries, called Gaoumun fan yu tsa tsze tsuen taou (translated by him as A complete Collection of the Miscellaneous Words Used in the Foreign Language of Macao), which was in circulation in or around Canton. Unfortunately, this phrasebook has not yet been located. The present study discusses examples of MPP as attested in an anonymously written 19th century phrasebook bearing a similar title, Ou3 mun2 faan 1jyu5 zaap6 zi6 cyun4 bun2 澳門番語雜字全本 (Compendium of Assorted Phrases in Macau Pidgin, hereafter the Compendium) (Zhou 2011, Li & Matthews 2016). Details of the Compendium are given in the next section. MPP arose in a typical trade context where a common language was essential for interethnic communication. In this respect, the emergence and use of pidgin Portuguese is comparable to that of Chinese Pidgin English (CPE), beginning as a trade language between Chinese and European traders, followed by a spread to local shopkeepers and finally to the domestic workers in European families (Bolton 2003: 157). Chinese individuals who may have had varying degrees of knowledge of MPP would have included (i) traders, (ii) interpreters, (iii) compradors (native managers of European business houses), (iv) sailors and pilots, (v) domestic servants, and (vi) Chinese Christians (Zhang 2008). Morse (1921: 199) states that the supercargo (officer) on an English ship was required to have knowledge of Portuguese, the 17th-century maritime lingua franca. Apparently, Chinese merchants too would need to acquire some form of Portuguese in order to trade with foreigners. The Chinese who had contact with Portuguese traders in the early period were mainly Min speakers from Fukien (Fujian) (Coates 2009). The MPP term julubasa (derived from Malayo-Javanese jurubahasa ‘language master’) (Yule & Burnell 1886: 362) denotes “interpreters who mediated between foreign traders and Chinese officials” (Van Dyke 2005). In Peter Mundy’s Travels (Temple 1919: 192), describing events of 1637, he mentions a Chincheo (Fukienese) and an African interpreter on board the English ship: The aforesaid interpreter was a Chincheo, runaway From the Portugalls att our beeing att Macao, who spake a little bad language. There is another Named Antonio, A Capher Eathiopian Abissin, or Curled head, thatt came to and Froe aboutt Messages as interpreter, little better then the other, runawaie allsoe From the Portugualls to the Chinois, it being an ordinary Matter For slaves on some Discontent or other to run away From their Masters; and beeing among the Chinois they are safee, who make use of their service.

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Morse (1921: 200) mentions another type of interpreter (apparently, the “halfbreeds” referred to here were the Macanese): This was sometimes an untrustworthy Chinese who could speak Portuguese, sometimes a low-class Portuguese who could speak Chinese, more commonly a half-breed, who had acquired the one tongue from his father, and the other from his mother.

Chinese pilots who directed ships to unload goods in Whampoo also demonstrated knowledge of MPP. The example attested in Benyowsky (1790) confirms Anson’s (1748: 467) remark that Chinese pilots used “broken Portuguese”. Besides trading goods, Chinese and Europeans engaged in various activities also used MPP as a lingua franca, as shown in Noble’s (1762: 240) record of a Chinese pimp communicating with English sailors in pidgin. (2) Carei grandi hola, pickenini hola?2 ‘do you want an old prostitute or a young one?’

Williams (1836: 431) describes “a medley of Portuguese and Chinese” being used amongst Chinese “servants and shop-men”. From the above discussion it can be seen that a substantial number of Chinese were involved in the transactions with the Europeans. However, similar to Chinese Pidgin English, such contact remained restricted. In the case of Chinese Pidgin English, published forms first appeared around the period when CPE began to stabilize (ca. 1830s). Not coincidentally, pidgin Portuguese phrasebooks were also printed around the same period. Therefore, it can be assumed that the MPP in print already represents a well-developed and well-established variety distinct from the creole. In the phrasebooks mentioned in Williams (1837) and the Compendium, both phrasebooks use the term 番語 faan1jyu5 in their titles which is consistent with the usage in other Chinese Pidgin English phrasebooks; in particular, the manual The Chinese and English Instructor (英語集全 Jing1jyu5 zaap6cyun4) (Tong 1862) made a clear distinction between standard English and pidgin English. When referring to standard English, the term 英語 jing1jyu5 ‘English’ was used, whereas the pidgin variety shown in the marginalia was termed 廣東番話 gwong2dung1 faan1waa2 ‘Canton English’ (Li 2011). This distinction provides strong evidence 2



Though often considered an example of early Canton jargon (Bolton 2003: 149), the sentence contains more Portuguese words than English and therefore could arguably be pidgin Portuguese (Baxter 2009). The example illustrates the kind of “broken and mixed dialect of English and Portuguese” noted by Noble (1762) (Matthews & Li 2012: 271).

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that the terms faan1jyu5 or faan1waa2 literally ‘foreign language/speech’ as used in the Canton trade context refer to pidginized varieties. As will be discussed in Section 2, linguistically MPP shows features that are distinct from MCP but typologically common in pidgins such as the pronominal and TMA systems. The sociolinguistic background of MPP, its speakers, and grammatical features indicate that MPP is a pidginized version of Macau Creole. 2. Pidgin Portuguese and Creole Portuguese: a comparison As mentioned above, there is no suggestion in historical sources that MPP represents the pidgin predecessor of MCP, which is largely based on Malacca Creole. Rather, it appears that the two varieties arose from quite different contact situations and coexisted for different purposes. This section examines the extent of (dis)continuity between MPP and MCP with respect to their grammatical structure in order to argue that MPP is based on MCP with some Chinese influence. Similar to the glossary in the Monograph of Macao, the volume Compendium of Assorted Phrases in Macau Pidgin is written entirely in Chinese. Printed in Canton, the intended pronunciation of the characters is mainly Cantonese. Its Table of Contents shows that the complete phrasebook should have 16 sections. However, the extant copy only contains the first seven sections with a total of 531 entries. Topics of these seven sections include: (i) Heaven and Earth, (ii) People, (iii) Body parts, (iv) Commonly used expressions, (v) Dialogue on buying and selling, (vi) Clothing, and (vii) Food. In the original copy, the Chinese meaning is given first, followed by a pidgin rendering. In this paper, besides the two original Chinese rows, each MPP example is illustrated with additional rows as shown hereafter (for details, see Li & Matthews 2016): (i) 唔 愛 (ii) 噥 迦哩 都孖 4 3 4 (iii) m (ng)oi (iv) nung gaa1 li1 dou1 maa1 (v) neg want (vi) neg want take (vii) ‘I don’t want to take it’ (viii) nung cali toma Each tier illustrates: (i) The Chinese text as it is represented in the original phrasebook (ii) The Chinese characters as used in the phrasebook to represent the pidgin equivalent of (i) (iii) A transcription of (i) as read in Cantonese, using the Jyutping romanization (iv) A transcription of (ii) as read in Cantonese, using the Jyutping romanization (in which the number following each syllable represents tone) (v) English gloss of (iii)

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(vi) English gloss of (iv) (vii) A free translation of (i) (not provided in the original) (viii) Reconstructed MPP, based on MCP orthography as given in Fernandes & Baxter (2004)

2.1. Similarities between Macau pidgin Portuguese and creole Portuguese Since historically MPP and MCP were used alongside each other and linguistically the pidgin is based on the creole, they exhibit multiple shared properties. While nominal and verbal inflections are generally lacking in both varieties, MCP shows productive nominal and verbal reduplication due to Malay and Chinese influence (Ansaldo & Matthews 2004). TMA is expressed by preverbal markers in both varieties, but their inventory varies (see discussion in 2.2.3). As in Malacca Creole and Macau Creole, the locative copula teng in MPP originates from the Portuguese possessive and existential verb tem ‘has’. Use of forms meaning “with” and “for” are commonly found in Portuguese contact varieties. MCP co, pronounced [ko], serves as a comitative/instrumental preposition, as in Iou vai juntado co êle ‘I’m going with him’ (Fernandes & Baxter 2004: 48) as well as a conjunction in noun phrase coordination such as Pedro co Ana já vêm ‘Peter and Ana came’ (Ferreira 1996: 271). Similar to Malacca Creole, MCP co can also mark objects. In the Compendium, MPP cung ‘with’ only has a prepositional function.3 In (3), if the intended verb is pergunta ‘ask’, an object marking function of cung seems to be present in MPP too. (3) 我 問 你 愛  㖿 啤 兀 貢 窩些 ngo5 man6 ni5 (ng)oi3 mi5 je4 be1 ngat6 gung3 wo1 se1 1sg ask 2sg want 1sg ask prep 2sg ‘I ask you for it’ mije pega? cung voce

As in Portuguese, para functions as both a preposition and a complementizer in Malacca and Macau Creoles (Baxter 1988). MPP uses the form polo, phonetically close to Portuguese por. Note, however, that polo also resembles para in having a complementizer function. In the Compendium, all instances of polo are followed by the pronominal object mi ‘me’ when used as a preposition (Li & Matthews 2016).

3

Noun phrase conjunction deriving from a word meaning ‘with’ is a common development in pidgins and creoles. Maurer et al. (2013b: 281) note that the use of an identical form for marking comitative and noun phrase conjunction is probably due to substrate influence, as the European lexifiers all exhibit differential marking. The use of the comitative preposition long (< along) as conjunction in Chinese Pidgin English illustrates Cantonese influence (Li 2011). It would not be surprising to see such development in MPP cung due to similar substrate influence.

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Use of bimorphemic interrogative words such as qui cosa ‘what’, qui/que hora ‘when’ is another characteristic common to MPP and MCP. In MPP, there is one instance of wh in situ as in (4). (4) 定 乜 貨 亞西脚 机 法度 deng1 mat1 fo3 aa3 si1 goek3 gi1 faat3 dou6 order what goods secure what goods ‘what do you want to order?’ assegu(ra) qui fado

Such a construction is also shown in the Macau Creole (5-6).4 (5) Minha Siara eu sā quim? (Pereira 1899: 58) 1poss madam 1sg cop who ‘My madam, who am I?’ (6) Rita, azinha, olá sā quim? (Pereira 1899: 60) Rita, quick, look cop who ‘Rita, quick, look to see who it is?’

In situ questions are also present in Malacca Creole: (7) Bos ja parí úndi? (Baxter 1988: 189) 2s pf bear where ‘Where were you born?’

The construction could be the result of transfer from Malacca Creole to MPP via MCP, but Cantonese influence may also be a factor. Serial verb constructions are also a salient feature in MPP and MCP, which is probably due to productive SVCs in Cantonese, as shown in the MPP example in (8). The SVC in (9) illustrates an example which could be due to Portuguese and/ or Cantonese influence. (8) 解 開 看 亞啤厘 阿孤 gaai2 hoi1 hon3 aa3 be1 li4 o1 gu1 untie open look open look ‘open it and look’ able ola5



4 5

I thank an anonymous reviewer for providing these examples. The phrasebook shows some inconsistencies in transcribing the word olhar ‘look’. Several MPP forms are attested in the Compendium: 可剌 ho2laat6 (1), 呵 口束束 ho1laat3 (2), 阿孤 o1gu1(1), 阿 口束束 o1laat3 (1), 阿孻 o1laai1 (3). The numbers in parentheses indicate the number of occurrences in the Compendium. The form可剌 ho2laat6 is identical to the one in Aomen Jilue; the others are attested in the Compendium only.

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(9) 愛 惹 加 哩 公 布 孻 (ng)oi3 je5 gaa1 li1 gung1 bou3 laai1 want thing want buy ‘want something’ cali compla

2.2. Differences between Macau pidgin Portuguese and creole Portuguese MPP differs from the creole in three respects: the pronoun system, possessive construction and TMA marking. 2.2.1. Personal pronouns The most significant difference between the two Portuguese varieties is found in the forms and functions of their respective pronoun systems. Table 1 summarizes the forms of personal pronouns in MPP (Li & Matthews 2016) and MCP (Ferreira 1996, Fernandes & Baxter 2004). MPP

MCP

MPP

MCP

1sg

mije, mina, mi, eu, I

io/iou

1pl

-

nós

2sg

voce, vosemece, vosem

vôs

2pl

-

vosôtro

3sg

sua, su

êle

3pl

-

ilôtro

Table 1. Personal pronouns in MPP and MCP

While neither system differentiates pronominal case, number is differentiated in MCP but not in MPP. The absence of plural pronouns in the pidgin could be due to lack of data. Alternatively, their absence could also result from a mode of communication in which the majority of exchanges between Chinese and foreigners are one-to-one, a situation which also existed for Chinese Pidgin English (Baker & Mühlhäusler 1990: 104). Since the findings on CPE are based on large corpora, it is reasonable to assume that the lack of plural pronouns in both pidgins could be due to similar reasons, including lack of solidarity between the two ethnic groups. As Table 1 shows, there is more variation in the pronominal forms in MPP than in MCP. The stability of the pronominal forms in the creole is probably due to the forms being directly lifted from Malacca Creole. Variation in the pidgin forms is particularly evident in the first person reference. Focusing on the pidgin forms, Table 2 lists the source and function of each pronoun in MPP.

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Person

Reconstructed Character/reading MPP form

Lexical source

Functions attested (number of cases)

1

mije

㖿/㖿 mi5 je4

minha ‘my’

subj

(6), obj (1)

mina

那 mi5 naa5

minha ‘my’

subj

(1)

mi

/ mi5

me, mim ‘me’

subj

(1), obj (3)

eu

抅 au

eu ‘I’

subj

(1)

I

挨 aai1

I

subj

(1)

2

3

1

voce

窩些 wo se

você ‘you’

subj

(4), obj (4)

vosmece

窩心些 wo1 sam1 se1

vossemecê/ vosmecê ‘you’

subj

(2), obj (2)

vosem

窩心 wo1 sam1

vossem(ecê)/ vosm(ecê) ‘you’

subj

(1)

su

梭 so1

su ‘her’

obj

(1)

sua

蘇亞 sou aa

sua ‘her’

obj

(2)

1

1

1

3

Table 2. Sources and functions of personal pronouns in MPP

Besides variation in forms, there is also more diversity in the sources of these MPP pronouns, ranging from Portuguese subject, object to possessive forms. Diversity in forms and sources is in fact common in pidgins. Winford (2006: 286) notes that pronominal subjects in pidgins can be derived from the lexifiers’ nominative, accusative and other oblique forms. For example Russenorsk has the forms moja and tvoja, derived from Russian possessives. Chinese Pidgin English is another example where the first person pronoun can be expressed as my, me and I (Smith 2008). It is worth noting that in all these pidgins (i.e., MPP, Russenork, and CPE), possessive forms seem to be a common source of pidgin pronouns. Whether possessive forms in the lexifiers are important contributors to pidgin pronouns in general awaits more typological comparison. Examples (10)-(11) show some uses of the personal pronouns in the Compendium. (10) 我 曉 得  㖿 撒 㗑 ngo5 hiu2 dak1 mi5 je4 saat3 baai3 1sg know 1sg know ‘I know’ mije sabe (11) 我 先 去  晏 反 利連地 ngo5 sin1 heoi3 mi5 aan3 daan2 li6 lin4 di6 1sg earlier go 1sg walk ? ‘I go first’ mi anda ? (12) 呌 人 來 那 湛孖 蘇亞 榮 giu3 jan4 loi4 mi5 naa5 zaam3 maa1 so1 aa3 wing4 call people come 1sg call 3sg come ‘call someone to come’ mina chama sua weng

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(13) 我 知 價 抅 撒備 㗑哩梭 ngo5 zi1 gaa3 au1 saat3 bi6 baai3 li1 so1 1sg know price 1sg know price ‘I know the price’ eu sabe pailiso (< Ptg. preço) (14) 交 過 你 燕打辣加 窩些 gaau1 gwo3 ni5 jin3 daa2 laat6 gaa1 wo1 se1 hand cross 2sg deliver 2sg ‘hand it to you’ intalaga (< Ptg. entregar) voce (15) 你 稱 過 窩 心 些 拜 咱 ni5 cing3 gwo3 wo1 sam1 se1 baai3 zaa1 2sg weigh asp 2sg weigh ‘You weigh it’ vosmece pesa (16) 駕 上 看 看 窩 心 呵 口束束 gaa3 soeng6 hon3 hon3 wo1 sam1 ho1 laat3 Sir look look 2sg look ‘Sir, please have a look’ vosem ola

2.2.2. Possessive constructions A feature that distinguishes Asian Portuguese creoles from Afro-Portuguese creoles is the presence of a genitive marker derived from Portuguese sua ‘her’ on the possessor in Asian Portuguese creoles (Ferraz 1987). Examples of such use in Malacca Creole (17) and Macau Creole (18-19) are shown below. (17) yo sa kaza I gen house ‘my house’

(Baxter 1988: 91)

(18) iou-sua rópa ‘my clothes’

(Ferreira 1996: 237)

(19) gente-sa ropa ‘people’s clothes’

(Arana-Ward 1977: 49)

Baxter & Bastos (2012) argue that this type of possessive construction was first found in Indo-Portuguese, where it is based on a similar structure in southern Indian languages such as Malayalam and Marathi. The feature was then transplanted to MalayoPortuguese. The possessive construction in MCP can be attributed to transfer from Malacca Creole together with influence of substrate languages such as Malay, Hokkien and Cantonese which also possess similar constructions. In addition, parallel structures such as (20) in Portuguese may also play a role (Baxter 1988). (20) a senhora sua filha det madame poss.her daughter ‘Madame’s daughter’

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Based on a corpus of 16th century Portuguese, Baxter & Bastos (2012: 50) show that the third person possessive forms seu(s) / sua(s) / su(s) / sa(s) have the highest frequency of occurrences amongst all possessive forms. Phonological similarity with the second syllable of nosso/a ‘our’ and vosso/a ‘your’ could also reinforce the selection of third person possessive determiners functioning as genitive marker. In some instances, the possessor can be absent, as shown in the following Macau Creole example (21). (21) Tudu poço agora tem sua cobertor bem feto All well now have gen cover well made ‘All wells now have a decent cover.’

(Baxter & Bastos 2012: 74)

This headless possessor structure is only possible when the possessor is a third-person nominal or pronominal (Baxter & Bastos 2012: 74), thus supporting the claim that the genitive marker is derived from the Portuguese third-person possessive determiners. While MCP apparently shares the feature of the post-nominal genitive sa with other Asian Portuguese creoles, it differs from the Malacca variety in that it also displays pre-nominal possessive determiners as in (22-23), presumably due to the prolonged presence of Portuguese in Macau and/or influence of the obsolete form minya in Malacca Creole (Baxter & Bastos 2012: 59). (22) minha rópa ‘my clothes’

(Ferreira 1996: 237)

(23) nôsso filho-filho ‘our children’

(Ferreira 1996: 237)

There is no evidence that the third person form su(a) — exclusively used as a personal pronoun in the Compendium— functions as a genitive marker in MPP. In the pidgin phrasebook, there are two examples of possessive construction, shown in (24-25); both involve the first person mije as possessor. (24) 係 我 屋 僧 美耶 家 宅 hai6 ngo5 uk1 zang1 mi5 je4 gaa1 zaak6 cop 1sg house cop 1poss house ‘this is my house’ sang mije casa (25) 係 我 舖 僧 美耶 吥 的 架 hai6 ngo5 pou3 zang1 mi5 je4 bui1 dik1 gaa3 cop 1sg shop cop 1poss shop ‘this is my shop’ sang mije botica

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This structure resembles the Portuguese structure as well as a structure present in Cantonese (26). (26) ni1 gaan1 hai6 ngo5 pou3tau2. dem cl cop 1sg shop ‘this is my shop.’

Juxtaposition is often used when the possessor and the possessed NPs express an inalienable or close relationship (Matthews & Yip 2011: 127). Note that in Cantonese, personal pronouns and possessive determiners use an identical form 我 ngo5. This may be a factor for using the same form as both personal pronoun and possessive determiner in MPP. Given that examples of full NPs possessor are lacking, it is not clear whether they would receive any marking. 2.2.3. Tense and aspect marking In both MPP and MCP, the primary means for expressing tense and aspect are preverbal markers. MCP exhibits a paradigm similar to other Asian Portuguese varieties: aspect is indicated by preverbal ja and tâ, while future is expressed by preverbal logo/lo. However, these markers do not combine to express complex tenses as in other Asian Portuguese varieties (Holm 1989: 298). Though it is generally accepted that the TMA marking in MCP is heavily influenced by Malacca Creole, some usages in the Macau variety are different from the Malacca system. Pinharanda-Nunes (2012), for example, finds that the functions of ja in MCP display features shared by Malacca Creole, Portuguese and Cantonese. The adverbial function of Portuguese já is also present in MCP ja in (27). (27) Agora você ja visti preto. Now you adv wear black ‘Now you already wear black.’

(Pinharanda-Nunes 2012: 174)

The resultative reading of ja in (28) and experiential reading in (29) could be related to Cantonese perfective zo2 and experiential marker gwo3, respectively (Pinharanda-Nunes 2012). (28) Oh, mesa ja vai. Ja vai cu vento. table perf go perf go with wind ‘Oh, the table fell over. It fell over with the wind.’

(Pinharanda-Nunes 2012: 175)

(29) Esses doci… Ja xêgá come? (Pinharanda-Nunes 2012: 176) Those sweets adv arrive eat ‘Those sweets … Have you already gotten to eat them?’

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Ja in MPP can express perfective aspect (30-31): (30) 看6 hon3 look ‘looked’

也 可 剌 jaa5 ho2 laat6 perf look ja ola

(31) 看 過 夜 呵 口束束 hon3 gwo3 je6 o1 laat3 look exp perf look ‘have already looked’ ja ola

In both instances, the same pidgin rendering, i.e. ja ola, is used to express different aspectual meanings in Chinese. In (31), a past event is intended in Chinese as seen in the use of the experiential marker gwo3. The range of use of ja in MPP seems to be consistent with Pinharanda-Nunes’ (2012) claim that MCP ja can be related to Cantonese perfective zo2 and experiential gwo3. Tâ in MCP may have different aspectual interpretations according to the class of verb with which it combines. With action verbs such as churâ in (32), tâ indicates an on-going action. (32) Acung’a quianca tâ churâ. that child imp cry ‘That child is crying.’

(Fernandes & Baxter 2004: 157)

With a stative verb, tâ indicates a current state. (33) Iou tâ querê gritâ. I imp want shout ‘I want to shout.’

(Fernandes & Baxter 2004: 157)

This imperfective tâ is not attested in MPP. Typologically, most pidgins seem to lack progressive/imperfective marking, while all creoles have it (Maurer et al. 2013: 184). Chinese Pidgin English is one such example, even though there is a sufficient corpus for the progressive to appear if it was present. The CPE example in (34) shows a situation where the progressive is rendered in the English translation but not in the pidgin.

6

The verb hon3 simply means ‘see, look’. No tense or aspect reading is overtly expressed. The perfective reading in the pidgin here could be based on a similar entry in Aomen Jilue where the Chinese expression hon3 gin3 is used instead of hon3. The second morpheme gin3 indicates achievement; therefore the pidgin is ja ola. It has been argued (Li & Matthews 2016) that most of the entries in the Compendium are lifted directly from Aomen Jilue, with substantial expansion added at a later stage. This example may contain a mistake that occurred during the copying process.

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Macau Pidgin Portuguese and Creole Portuguese (34) He long one gentleman talkee. 3sg com art gentleman talk ‘He is talking with a gentleman.’

127 (Tong 1862: VI.39)

Possible explanations for the absence of progressive marking in MPP could be: (a) it is a common feature in pidgins and MPP would be another pidgin displaying this feature; (b) it is not preferred in trade context as seen in the CPE example; or (c) it is not recorded in the Compendium. At present, there is insufficient evidence to argue for or against any of these explanations. As in other Asian Portuguese creoles, in MCP the Portuguese adverb logo ‘later, soon’ is used as marker for future events (35) and MPP (36). (35) Iou lôgo vai. 1sg fut go ‘I will go.’

(Fernandes & Baxter 2004: 101)

(36) 你 回 來 窓 心 些 邏故 榮7 ni5 wui4 loi4 wo1 sam1 se1 lo4 gu3 wing4 2sg back come 2sg right away come ‘You come back’ vosmece logu weng

TMA marking in MPP is largely in accordance with MCP, but the lack of progressive marking in the pidgin sets it apart from the creole. To summarize, the grammar of MPP demonstrates features that can be attributed to different sources: Macau Creole, Portuguese, and Cantonese. The ecology of its formation caused the development of pidgin features such as variable forms and sources in the pronominal system and absence of a progressive marker. 3. A pidgin-creole continuum? Historians and linguists generally agree that, prior to the 19th century, Chinese speakers did not play a significant role in the formation of MCP; instead, Macanese culture and language are closely connected with the Malays and Malacca Creole during the formative period of MCP (Baxter 2009). Historical records strongly suggest that a pidginized variety of Portuguese was in use between Chinese- and Portuguese-speaking individuals. This pidgin was mainly restricted to the domains of trade. The construction of the Barrier Gate in 1574 as stated in Aomen Jilue (Zhao 1992: 23) served to separate Portuguese-administered Macau

7

The character 窓 is a variant of 窗coeng1. It is probably a misprint for 窩 wo1 which is the form used to represent the first syllable of vo(sme)ce.

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from the Mainland, and to control the activities of the Portuguese, resulting in sparse contact between these ethnic groups. The use of pidgin or broken Portuguese began to be recorded as early as the second half of the 18th century. This period coincides with a change in Macau’s population demography; numerically, the Chinese community eventually began to dominate from the beginning of the 19th century. While interethnic communication would have been sparse in the 16th century due to political control of the Chinese authority, relaxation of imposed racial separation and the influx of Chinese in the course of the 18th century encouraged interethnic contact; this created an environment favorable for the development of a pidgin. As for the input of this pidgin, though European Portuguese was present, the Portuguese community was always small. By the 18th century, Macau Creole became a vernacular that was commonly used in Macau; hence, it is reasonable to assume that MPP is based on MCP. The extent of their grammatical similarity (as discussed in section 2.1 above) is a testament to this proposed genetic filiation. In the late 19th century, the existence of different Portuguese varieties in Macau was noted in Pereira (1899: 55); who describes them as follows (the italics in the Portuguese text are Pereira’s). (a) o macaista cerrado ou macaista puro (se assim se póde charmar) e que é o mais interessante. E’ fallado principalmente pelas classes baixas. “Closed” Macaista or pure Macaista (as one may call it) which is the most interesting. It is principally spoken by the lower classes.’ (b) o macaista modificado pela tendencia a approximar-se do portuguez corrente. E’ usado pela gente mais polida e que está mais em contacto com o element reinol. ‘Modified Macaista with a tendency to approximate current Portuguese. It is used by more genteel people who are in contact with the metropolitan classes. (c) o macaista fallado pelos chins. ‘Macaista as spoken by the Chinese’.

This classification is generally based on the degree of closeness between the Portuguese varieties and European Portuguese and the social classes of the speakers. Using this classification, Cabreros (2003: 140-141) represents these varieties in the form of a continuum that ranges from “Macanese spoken natively” to “pidgin Portuguese spoken by Chinese traders”.8 As shown in Figure 1, Portuguese (the

8

Since Cabreros’s continuum is based on Pereira’s (1899) late 19th century observation, it should be noted that the picture only represents a rather recent situation in Macau. It misses Portuguese varieties used by traders from Japan, Makassar, etc. I thank an anonymous reviewer for pointing this out. Since this paper is mainly concerned with the pidgin variety

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administrative language) and contact varieties (such as MCP and MPP) occupy either extreme of Macau’s language continuum. The MPP examined in this paper probably represents one example of the pidgin Macanese end of the continuum. Portuguese

Macanese Patua (creole)

as spoken by Portuguese-born or Portuguese-educated residents

as spoken by the Macau as spoken by the Chinese population of mixed ancestry

(Pidgin) Macanese

Figure 1. Portuguese varieties spoken in Macau

The grammar of these varieties is not always as clear-cut as their names suggest: variable contact or access may result in combination of features from different sources. To illustrate this, let us reexamine the pronoun system of MPP(see also 2.2.1 above). In addition to the set of MPP pronouns discussed there, the Compendium in fact provides another set of pronouns, shown in Table 3. Chinese gloss

Reconstructed MPP form

Character / reading

你 nei ‘you’

sua

蘇亞 sou1 aa3

我 ngo ‘I’

mije

㖿 mi5 je4

佢 keoi5‘he, she’

ale

利 aa1 li6

專駕 zyun1gaa3 ‘sir’

vosmece

窩心些 wo1 sam1 se1

5

5

Table 3. Citation forms of MPP pronouns in the Compendium

Unlike the pronouns presented in 2.2.1, this set of personal pronouns appears out of context; therefore it can be assumed that they are citation forms. These forms both resemble and differ from the ones in MCP and/or Portuguese. Whereas the forms and functions of mije and vosmece are consistent with those in MPP given in Section 2.2.1 above, the second-person sua and third-person ale forms require explanation. The reference to second person (Table 3) could be related to a historical development in Portuguese where the use of sua is extended to include a polite form of second person reference. As for ale, it could be derived from Portuguese ele ‘he’ or creole êle ‘he, she’. The form ale in MPP may have been directly copied from Portuguese/creole êle ‘he, she, it’. The pronominal forms presented in 2.2.1 and the citation forms above suggest that MPP drew on used by the Chinese, this continuum suffices to provide a representation of the major varieties of Portuguese spoken in Macau.

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features from Portuguese and/or the creole, depending on intensity of contact and levels of access to the lexifiers. Compared to the relatively rich studies on (L2) Portuguese and the creole, the pidgin variety remains poorly documented. The suggestion that several Portuguese varieties existed in Macau, and that they form a continuum, are not new. This study has examined the grammar of Macau Portuguese Pidgin, and supports the hypothesis that the Portuguese varieties in use in Macau represent a continuum. 4. Conclusion and implications This paper has presented the socio-historical background of MPP and MCP, and provided a grammatical analysis of the two varieties. While MCP demonstrates strong historical and grammatical affinities with Malacca Creole, MPP developed in a classical trade context and was based primarily on MCP. Yet, various features (including variable pronominal forms, possessive construction, and absence of progressive marking) distinguish MPP from MCP. The 18th-century language situation in Macau demonstrates continuity as well as discontinuity between different Portuguese varieties. Such (dis)continuity can be represented in the form of a continuum where different varieties of Portuguese coexisted for a certain time and exerted varying degrees of influence on each other. This influence depended on factors such as intensity of contact, and/or access to Portuguese and/or the creole. MPP is thus a case where a new variety was formed on the basis of an already restructured variety, i.e. MCP. Though this direction of change is theoretically plausible, documentation of actual cases are rare in the literature, MPP/MCP thus constituting a notable exception to the rule. Being the first trade pidgin of the China coast, pidgin Portuguese was not restricted to Macau. Williams’s (1837) discussion of a pidgin Portuguese phrasebook and the Compendium examined here both indicate that the pidgin was also used in and around Canton. As the British began to monopolize China’s trade during the 18th century, Chinese Pidgin English gradually replaced pidgin Portuguese as the lingua franca (Van Dyke 2005: 77). Zhang (2007) argues that the birthplaces of CPE were both Macau and Canton, and the shift from pidgin Portuguese to pidgin English is more likely to have been a gradual one, suggesting a possibility of language mixing during the transition. Evidence of such language mixing in historical records is readily found: “they gave me many answers in broken and mixed dialect of English and Portuguese” (Noble 1762: 244). In discussing the pronouns in MPP, we saw an instance of the English pronoun I among other Portuguese/creole-derived forms. It is impossible

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to evaluate the role of English in MPP based on a single example, but if we couple this attestation with other instances of mixing, the implication could be significant. Example (37) taken from a CPE phrasebook shows the translation of the Chinese word 大 ‘big’ in both Portuguese and English pidgins (Uchida & Shin 2009: 367). What is important in this example is the presence of pidgin equivalents in both English and Portuguese for the same entry, as these prove the coexistence of both within the pidgin. (37) Chinese gloss Pidgin 大 喇治 忌烈 架攔地 daai6 laa1zi6 gi6lit6 gaa3laan4di6 big large great grande

While CPE in its heyday was richly documented, its formation in the early period is not well understood. The grammar of MPP may shed some light on the earlier formation of Chinese Pidgin English since, as suggested above, there was some contact between MPP and CPE. Such contact may have occurred in bilingual speakers (merchants, interpreters, etc.) of MPP and CPE (Bolton 2003, Matthews & Li 2012). It should also be noted that the Macanese were active players in the China trade, many of whom were multilingual in Portuguese, creole, English and Chinese (Zhang 2007). REFERENCES Anonymous. (n.d.) 澳門畨語雜字全本 Ou3mun2 faan1jyu5 zaap6zi6 cyun4bun2, translated as Compendium of Assorted Phrases in Macau Pidgin. Canton. Anson, George. 1748. A voyage round the world, in the years MDCCXL, I, II, III, IV by George Anson…Compiled from papers and other materials of the Right Honourable George Lord Anson, and published under his Direction. By Richard Walter. London: printed for John and Paul Knapton (3rd edition). Ansaldo, Umberto & Matthews, Stephen. 2004. The origins of Macanese reduplication. In Geneviève Escure & Armin Schwegler (eds.), Creoles, contact and language change: Linguistic and social implications, 1-19. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Arana-Ward, Marie. 1977. A synchronic and diachronic investigation of Macanese: The Portuguese based creole of Macao. Hong Kong: University of Hong Kong MA thesis. Baker, Philip & Mühlhäusler, Peter. 1990. From business to pidgin. Journal of Asian Pacific Communication 1. 87-115. Batalha, Graciete. 1974. Língua de Macau. Macau: Macau Government Press. Batalha, Graciete. 1977. Glossário de dialecto Macaense: Notas linguísticas, etnográficas, folclóricas. Coimbra: Instituto de Estudos Românicos. Bawden, Charles Roskelly. 1996. An eighteenth century Chinese source for the Portuguese dialect of Macao. Review of Culture 29. 111-135.

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Baxter, Alan N. 1988. A grammar of Kristang (Malacca Creole Portuguese). Canberra: Pacific Linguistics, Research School of Pacific Studies, Australian National University. Baxter, Alan N. 1996. Portuguese and Creole Portuguese in the Pacific and Western Pacific rim. In Stephen A. Wurm, Peter Mühlhäusler & Darrell T. Tryon (eds.), Atlas of languages of intercultural communication in the Pacific, Asia and the Americas, vol. II.1, 299-338. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Baxter, Alan N. 2009. O português em Macau: Contacto e assimilação. In Ana M. Carvalho (ed.), Português em contato, 277-312. Madrid/Frankfurt: Iberoamericana/Vervuert. Baxter, Alan N. & Bastos, Augusta. 2012. A closer look at the post-nominal genitive in Asian Creole Portuguese. In Hugo C. Cardoso, Alan N. Baxter & Mário Pinharanda Nunes (eds.), Ibero-Asian Creoles, 47-79. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Benyowsky, Mauritius Augustus Count de. 1790. Memoirs and travels of Mauritius Augustus Count de Benyowsky. London: G.G.J. Robinson, Pater-Bister-Row. Bolton, Kingsley. 2003. Chinese Englishes. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Cabreros, Peter. 2003. Macao Patois words in English. Review of Culture 5. 126-151. Coates, Austin. 2009. A Macao narrative. Hong Kong: University of Hong Kong Press. Fernandes, Miguel Senna & Baxter, Alan Norman. 2004. Maquista chapado: Vocabulary and expressions in Macao’s Portuguese Creole. Macau: Instituto Cultural do Governo da Região Especial Administrativa de Macau. Ferraz, Luiz Ivens. 1987. Portuguese creoles of West Africa and Asia. In Glenn G. Gilbert (ed.), Pidgin and creole languages: Essays in memory of John E. Reinecke, 337360. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. Ferreira, José dos Santos. 1996. Papiaçám di Macao. Macau: Fundação Macau. Hancock, Ian. 1975. Malacca Creole Portuguese: Asia, African or European? Anthropological Linguistics 17. 211-236. Holm, John. 1989. Pidgins and creoles. Vol. II. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Li, Michelle. 2011. Origins of a preposition: Chinese Pidgin English and its implications for pidgin grammar. Journal of Language Contact 4. 269-294. Li, Michelle & Matthews, Stephen. 2016. An outline of Macau Pidgin Portuguese. Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages. 31. 141-183. Matthews, Stephen & Li, Michelle. 2012. Portuguese pidgin and Chinese Pidgin English in the Canton trade. In Hugo C. Cardoso, Alan N. Baxter & Mário Pinharanda Nunes (eds.), Ibero-Asian creoles, 263-287. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Matthews, Stephen & Yip, Virginia. 2011. Cantonese: A comprehensive grammar. London: Routledge. Maurer, Philippe & the APiCS Consortium. 2013a. Uses of the progressive marker. In Susanne M. Michaelis, Philippe Maurer, Martin Haspelmath & Magnus Huber, The Atlas of pidgin & creole language structures, 184-187. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Maurer, Philippe & the APiCS Consortium. 2013b. Noun phrase conjunction and comitative. In Susanne M. Michaelis, Philippe Maurer, Martin Haspelmath & Magnus Huber, The Atlas of pidgin & creole language structures, 280-281. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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Morse, Hosea B. 1921. The supercargo in the China Trade about the year 1700. The English Historical Review 36. 199-209. Noble, Charles F. 1762. A voyage to the East Indies in 1747 and 1748. London: T. Becket and P.A. Dehondt. Pereira, Marques J.F. 1899. Subsidios para o estudo dos dialectos crioulos de Extremo Oriente: textos e notas sobre o dialecto de Macau. Ta-ssi-yang-kuo 1. 53-66. Pinharanda-Nunes, Mário. 2011. Estudos da expressão morfo-sintáctica das categorias de tempo, modo e aspecto em Maquista. Macau: University of Macau PhD dissertation. Pinharanda-Nunes, Mário. 2012. Verb markings in Makista: continuity/discontinuity and accommodation. In Laura Jarnagin (ed.), Portuguese and Luso-Asian legacies in Southeast Asia, 1511-2011. Vol. 2: Culture and identity in the Luso-Asian world, tenacities & plasticities, 167-178. Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies. Pinharanda-Nunes, Mário, & Baxter, Alan N. 2004. Os marcadores pré-verbais no crioulo de base lexical portuguesa de Macau. PAPIA – Revista Brasileira de Estudos Criculos e Similares 13. 31-46. Smith, Geoff P. 2008. Chinese Pidgin English pronouns revisited. Hong Kong Journal of Applied Linguistics 11. 65-78. Souza, George B. 1986. The survival of empire: Portuguese trade and society in China and the South China Sea, 1630-1754. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Temple, Sir Richard Carnac. 1919. The travels of Peter Mundy, in Europe and Asia, 16081667. Vol. III: Travels in England, India, China, etc. 1634-1638. Part I. Travels in England, Western India, Achin, Macao and the Canton River, 1634-1637. London: Hakluyt Society. Thompson, Robert Wallace. 1959. Two synchronic cross-sections in the Portuguese dialect of Macao. Orbis 8. 29-53. Thompson, Robert Wallace. 1961. A note on some possible affinities between the creole dialects of the old world and those of the new. In R.B. Le Page (ed.), Creole language studies II, 107-113. London: Macmillan & Co. Ltd. Tomás, Isabel. 1988. Makista Creole. Review of Culture. 15. 33-46. Tong, Ting-kü (唐廷樞). 1862. The Chinese and English Instructor (英語集全). Canton. Tryon, Darrell T.; Mühlhäusler, Peter & Baker, Philip. 1986. English-derived contact languages in the Pacific in the 19th century (excluding Australia). In Stephen A. Wurm, Peter Mühlhäusler & Darrell T. Tryon (eds.), Atlas of languages of intercultural communication in the Pacific, Asia, and the Americas, Vol. II.1, pp. 471-495. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Uchida, Keiichi & Shin, Kokui. (內田慶市 & 沈國威). 2009. 言語接触とピジン : 19世 紀の東アジア (Language contact and pidgin: East Asia in the 19th century). Tōkyō: Hakuteisha. Van Dyke, Paul A. 2005. The Canton trade: Life and enterprise on the Chinese coast, 1700-1845. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press. Williams, Samuel Wells. 1836. Jargon spoken at Canton: how it originated and has grown into use; mode in which the Chinese learn English; examples of the language in common use between foreigners and Chinese. Chinese Repository 4. 428-435.

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Williams, Samuel Wells. 1837. Gaoumun fan yu tsa tsze tsuen taou, or A complete collection of the miscellaneous words used in the foreign language of Macao. 2. Hungmaou mae mae tung yung kwei hwa, or those words of the devilish language of the red-bristled people commonly used in buying and selling. Chinese Repository 6. 276-279. Winford, Donald. 2006. Reduced syntax in (prototypical) pidgins. In Ljiljana Progovac, Kate Paesani, Eugenia Casielles & Ellen Barton (eds.), The syntax of nonsententials, 283-307. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Yule, Henry & Burnell, Arthur C. 1886. Hobson-Jobson. A glossary of colloquial Anglo-Indian words and phrases, and of kindred terms, etymological, historical, geographical and discursive. London: John Murray. Zhang, Zhejiang (張振江). 2007. Linguistic communication changing in early Sino-British language contacts: from Portuguese-based languages to English-based languages (早期中英接觸溝通語言的變遷). Studies in Language and Linguistics 27. 115-122. (In Chinese) Zhang, Weqin (章文欽). 2008. A preliminary investigation of Canton Portuguese (廣東 葡語初探) Review of Culture 68 (Chinese edition). 1-17. (In Chinese) Zhao, Chunchen (趙春晨). 1992. Aomen ji lüe jiao zhu (澳門記略校注). Macau: Instituto Cultural de Macau. Zhou, Zhenhe (周振鶴). 2011. A preliminary analysis of Wu Gui Tang’s Compendium of assorted phrases in Macao – with a comparison with Aomen Jilue (對五桂堂印本< 澳門番語雜字全本>的初步分析 – 兼及與 的比較). In Propaganda Bureau of Municipal Party Committee of Zhuhai (珠海市委宣傳部), Fundação Macau, Central China Normal University (eds.), Wei Zhuomin and cultural exchanges between China and the West, 193-209. Beijing: Social Sciences Academic Press. (In Chinese)

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PHILIPPINE CREOLE SPANISH (“CHABACANO”): ACCUSATIVE MARKING IN CAVITEÑO GRAMMATICAL AND DISCURSIVE FUNCTIONS Marilola Pérez University of California, Berkeley Tagalog’s argument marking was not transferred into Philippine Creole Spanish (PCS). Instead, PCS employs word order and contextual information as the main argument marking strategies. In PCS, an optional dative marker is the only “core argument” marker. However, while animate indirect objects are consistently marked, inanimate direct objects are merely optionally marked. The present paper presents an overview of optional dative case marking in Cavite Philippine Creole Spanish (PCS), and offers a unifying explanation of its distribution with regard to functional domains. I argue that the seemingly arbitrary distribution of the marker before animate direct objects is due to its topic-marking functions. Discourse-related uses in idiomatic constructions provide support for the analysis of the marker’s distribution as determined by discourse factors. A comparison with similar constructions in Tagalog suggests a possible path of transfer: PCS appears to employ the marker as a Tagalog-based calque signaling “direction focus”. Keywords: Accusative case marking, Austronesian languages, Chabacano, competing motivations, differential case marking, language contact processes, Philippine Creole Spanish, Spanish-lexified contact languages

1. Introduction This paper addresses a general issue in contact language research: the transfer of grammatical features from input languages into new contact languages. Within that general question, this paper intends to contribute to a better understanding of the combination of linguistic strategies used in the genesis of a contact language to compensate for the loss of argument marking morphology in input languages. These questions are examined through an analysis of the distribution of the accusative marker in the Cavite variety of Philippine Creole Spanish (PCS), also known as Chabacano. Like neighboring Austronesian languages, Chabacano is verb-initial. However, argument marking in Chabacano does not preserve the complex Austronesian voice system, characterized by a rich array of argument markers and verb affixes.

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Instead, Chabacano word order has emerged as the dominant argument marking strategy, only preserving a substrate-derived morphological accusative marker, kon (< Span. con ‘with’), mostly used before animate objects of transitive (1) and ditransitive (2) verbs. (1) Ya mirá el muchachu kon mi iho. PFV look the boy ACC 1SG.POSS son ‘The boy saw my son.’ (2) Ya dali eli el pescau PFV give 3SG the fish ‘He gave the fish to the boy.’

kon el muchachu. ACC the boy.

Though kon may contribute to argument disambiguation between two potential agents, its use for argument disambiguation in Chabacano would often be redundant since argument roles are mainly realized through word order and contextual information. As a result, argument disambiguation functions do not provide a unified explanation for all the uses of kon before core arguments. Instead of exhibiting the regularity of split-system case markers, the case marking morphology is used optionally, and will here be explained by its functions in the discourse domain. Example (3) from Fernández (2007: 464) effectively illustrates the distribution puzzle surrounding kon, as it shows inconsistencies in its expected placement (note that the marker is not consistently used to accompany su sapatos1): (3) El nurse on DEF2 nurse on

duty ya man-examine kon duty PFV ACTFOC-examine ACC



el su pies and told Mr. Curly to take DEF 3SG.POSS foot and told Mr. Curly to take



off his off. his



shoes. Purpia-han shoes quarrel-DIRFOC



buyung wonder



1 2

shoes. No quiere shoes NEG want

kame 1PL

gayot such

ele 3SG

kita su take.off 3POSS

sila del nurse 3PL POSS.DEF nurse

porke no quiere because NEG want

ele 3SG

kita take.off

Spelling in the original. Abbreviations used: 1 = first person; 2 = second person; 3 = third person; ACC = accusative; ACTFOC = actor focus; COMP = complementizer; COP = copula; DAT = dative; DIRFOC = directional focus; DEF = definite; INT = intensifier; IPFV = imperfective; LOC = locative; NEG = negation; PATFOC = patient focus; PFV = perfective; PL = plural; POSS = possessive; REL = relativizer; SG = singular; TOP = topic.

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Accusative marking in Caviteño (Philippines)

kon el su sapatos. ACC 3SG 3SG.POSS shoes

quita ele su sapatos. take.off 3SG 3SG.POSS shoes



Cuando when

137 ya PFV

‘The nurse on duty examined his feet and told Mr. Curly to take off his shoes. He didn’t want to take his shoes off. They were quarreling, the nurse and he. We were wondering why he wouldn’t take his shows off […]. When he took his shoes off […].’

Chabacano’s optional dative marking is conditioned by topic marking. One goal of this paper is to describe the topic marking functions of kon. A second purpose is to explain how the saliency of recipient arguments in Chabacano and Tagalog contributes to the marker’s distribution, and how this improved understanding can support a unified account of the grammatical and optional uses of kon. After an overview of argument realization in Tagalog (Section 2), in section 3 I examine some of the pertinent sociohistorical context, including adstrate languages. Section 4 then proceeds to describe Chabacano’s word order strategies for marking arguments. Section 5 explains a set of data showing kon as a topic marker. I argue in Section 6 that similarities between the Tagalog and Chabacano “recipient construction” can explain the grammatical and discursive uses of kon. By way of conclusion, Section 7 sums up the analysis and contemplates how our findings can advance further research into the historical development of Chabacano.3 Some key terminology needs clarification. Here, I employ an atheoretical use of “direct” and “indirect” object to group related semantic roles of non-agentive core-argument. “Direct objects” (DO) include: Patients (P) and Themes (T); “Indirect object” (IO) refers to: Recipients (R), Benefactives (B) and Goals (G). My conception of “topic” is closely linked to the notion of discursive referentiality; the contrast between this understanding of “topic” and traditional notions of “focus”, as well as its differences from the so-called Tagalog “topic”, will also be addressed in this paper. 2. Tagalog Though Chabacano has been the recipient of direct and indirect influence from many languages, speakers of the northern varieties of Chabacano have had more limited language contact, as their speakers have essentially only been exposed to Tagalog. This contact with Tagalog’s argument marking system is of particular

3

A longstanding debate in research on Austronesian languages, and especially Tagalog, concerns the grammatical status of verbal arguments. This paper does not address that debate.

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interest given the highly complex morphological repertoire employed by that language to mark argument roles. The function of Tagalog nouns is indicated by argument marking preceding the noun that can assign one of three functions, presented here based on Schachter’s (1972) terminology: ang is the “topic” or given predicate argument. Ang also marks definiteness; sa marks IO as well as non-core arguments such as instrument and comitative; and an “object” marker ng can be assigned to more than one argument. The semantic role of each argument is assigned by verbal affixes that express the semantic relationship between the predicate and the “topic marker” ang. Notions of topic and focus seem to be interchangeable to describe topic arguments. “Transitive verbs in basic sentences, then, have one of three focuses: actor-focus, object-focus, directional focus [...] a basic sentence at least, can have only one topic, the focus of attention of the sentence” (Schachter 1972: 71). The selection of argument-marking affixes in the verb results from the interaction of multiple factors, including word order and semantic and/or pragmatic features. Examples (4a) to (4d) from Schachter (1972: 69, 79) illustrate the basic co-referentiality between the verb affixation and topic marking. In the intransitive construction (4a), the topic marker precedes the argument. In (4b), a transitive “Agent focus” verb assigns the marker to the agent; in (4c) the verbal affix forms an “Object focus” construction where the topic marker is placed before the P argument. Finally, to convey “Direction focus”, (4d) ang marks the IO. (4) a. hi~hilik IPFV~snore ‘Grandfather is snoring.’

ang lolo. TOP grandfather

b. Bili ng libro sa tindahan ang buy NG book DAT store TOP ‘The teacher bought a book from the store.’ c. Bili ng maestro sa PFV.buy NG teacher DAT ‘The teacher bought the book from the store.’

maestro. teacher

tindahan ang store TOP

libro. book

d. B--ili-han ng maestro ng libro ang tinda-han. PFV.buy ng teacher NG book TOP store-LOC ‘The teacher bought a book from the store.’

In unmarked constructions, the topic is the last core argument, and the post-verbal slot is preferably left for the most agentive argument.4

4

Since many Tagalog transitive constructions mark objects as topics, most transitive constructions are VAO. Some scholars (e.g., Aldridge 2012, Himmelmann 2008, or Kroeger 1993)

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While in Tagalog ang and ng can be found before almost any argument role, the Tagalog dative marker sa has a more restricted environment: it is only used with non-core arguments. However, sa can also mark specific P arguments of a limited verb class (Latrouite 2012). 3. External language history Though the Philippines were a Spanish colony from 1521 to 1898, Spanish was never spoken by a majority of the Filipinos. On these islands, Spanish mostly survives in a considerable number of Spanish lexical borrowings, and its greatest linguistic influence is attested in Chabacano. Formerly, Chabacano varieties were also found in the islands of Cotabato, Davao, and Ermita, but today remaining varieties of Chabacano are limited to Ternate and Cavite City, both located in the province of Cavite on the Luzon island and in Zamboanga city on the southern island of Mindanao. The Luzon varieties are critically endangered. The Zamboanga variety continues to adopt many Filipino and English features, so much so that its contact language status may be shifting from a creole to a Mixed Language (Grant 2009, 2012, Steinkrüger 2006, 2009). Chabacano’s grammatical structure was formed via the convergence of Tagalog (as well as other indigenous languages) with Malay and Southern Chinese languages associated with the Portuguese maritime network that extended all the way to South Asia (Whinnom 1956, Frake 1971, Lipski 1988, Romanillos 2006). Chabacano remained in continuous contact with local Filipino languages, thus differentiating itself from prototypical situations of creole formation where separation from the original input language(s) occurred relatively rapidly. As a result, multilingualism has been a common feature of Chabacano speakers. 3.1. Kon Object-marking functions of kon (and its variants ku, kung) have been attested in several Asian Portuguese-based contact languages (Baxter 1996, Maurer 2004). Linguistic similarities in the region point to a common Portuguese Pidgin that may have influenced the incipient contact languages in the region to varying degrees (Clements 2009). Descriptions of the marker did not appear until the end of the 19th century. Schuchardt (1883) was the first to explicitly describe the function of kon as a copy of prepositional and object marking functions held by Tagalog sa. More recent interpretations have specified that kon has disambiguation functions have argued that this distribution shows that Tagalog is an ergative/absolutive language with S/O in unmarked constructions sharing the same marking.

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of the DOM phenomenon. Fernández (2009), for instance, suggests that in transitive and ditransitive sentences, the marker demotes agent-like P and R arguments to oblique arguments. Characterizations of kon based on its disambiguation function predict that marking P arguments is more likely when A and O share similar semantic features. Personal Pronouns

Proper Names

Common Nouns Human

Animate

Inanimate

S

-

-

-

-

-

A

-

-

-

-

-

P

kon

kon

(kon)

(kon)

[na]

T

kon

kon

(kon)

(kon)

-

R

kon

kon

kon

kon

[para] na

Figure 1. Distribution of kon according to Sippola (2011: 251)

The generalization based on the disambiguation functions of kon correctly describes major patterns of distribution, but as illustrated by the parentheses in Figure 1, the use of kon with common nouns cannot always be predicted on the basis of the semantic properties of the argument. More importantly, established grammatical categories employed to describe Chabacano’s input languages obscure language-general comparison parameters that could be key to understanding the weight of historically and typologically related languages on the development of the grammatical structure of Chabacano. 3.2. Data sources This paper focuses on the Cavite variety of Chabacano originally spoken in Cavite City, located about 20 miles southwest of Manila. I recorded the Cavite data among Chabacano emigrants in southern California in 2012 and 2013 in Milpitas and the Greater San Diego area. Two males and four females ranging from 54 to 83 years of age participated in this project. Most of the data was obtained through peer elicitation. In total, about 10 hours of recordings were obtained. This corpus is complemented by published texts compiled by the Cavite City Library (Lesho 2012). My citations of these texts retain Lesho’s orthographic conventions. The six informants concur that the three varieties of Chabacano are mutually intelligible, and that Ternateño exhibits the greatest divergence. As regards the behavior of kon, the two Manila Bay Chabacano varieties overlap in that distribution

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of its prepositional and argument marking functions is the same. In Ternateño, kon is in complementary distribution with na, a particle used to mark animate as well as inanimate objects (Sippola 2011: 248). Caviteño na is used exclusively as a locative marker. In the Cavite variety, there is considerable variation among speakers as regards the animacy threshold for the use of kon. In Ternateño kon similarly exhibits considerable variability, so much so that some speakers never use it (Sippola 2011: 245). 4. Word order and Argument Marking in Cavite Chabacano Chabacano has very little grammatical morphology, and does not have any of the argument marking morphemes attested in Tagalog. Instead, Chabacano signals most of its arguments through word order. Definiteness is marked with Spanish-derived definite articles. The basic intransitive and transitive constructions are verb-initial, and in most transitive constructions A or O are found post-verbally. The correlation of word order and the arguments’ specificity reflects a typologically common strategy for highlighting an argument as the most prominent: usually A is closer to the verb than O. Prototypical transitive constructions, with a highly salient volitional agent and an affected patient, are generally VSO; however, VOS order is more common in constructions where the A slot is occupied by participants with relatively low control of the action expressed by the verb (e.g. sentences with experiencers). Left dislocation is fairly common when there is a highly volitional, usually human agent in a transitive sentence, although some examples with dislocated S are found, especially with first person pronoun S (ex. 5): (5) Yo ya cae 1SG PFV fall ‘I fell on (my) butt.’

de culo. on butt

These variables are, however, mere tendencies, based exclusively on prototypical argument role preferences in Chabacano. Ass such they are by no means predictive. In natural speech, almost any basic word order is acceptable, given the right discursive context. World knowledge and contextual clues about the verb’s participants often provide enough information to disambiguate agents (6b and 6c). When there is ambiguity, the marker kon may be used (6d). (6) a. Ya mordé el perro kon el b. Ya mordé el perro el c. Ya mordé el muchacha el PFV bite DEF dog/girl ACC DEF ‘The dog bit the girl.’

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muchacha. muchacha. perro. girl/dog

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d. Ya mirá el muchacho kon el e. ? Ya mirá el muchacho el f. *Ya mira el muchacha el PFV look DEF boy /girl ACC DEF ‘The boy looked at the girl.’ (INTENDED)

muchacha. muchacha muchacho girl/boy

Many prototypically kon-marked arguments in basic transitive sentences are P of an animate A in a VAO construction. However, R is consistently marked in ditransitive constructions with animate R. Also, many instances of kon are found in AVO constructions, where the use of the marker in these constructions is unexpected as word order alone disambiguates A and P. Assuming that highly volitional A and highly affected O are features of highly transitive verbs (Hopper & Thompson 1980), preference for the use of kon in VAO and AVO may suggest a relationship between verb transitivity and kon. Related motivations for this distribution are discussed in Section 5 below. 4.1. Kon as a topic marker “Topic” vs. ”focus” refers to the treatment that languages give to the different pragmatic status of nominal elements in discourse. Specific characterizations of these information structure categories are, however, very inconsistent in the literature. Here, I will refer to topic markers in Chabacano to indicate markers expressing a referential argument. Referentiality, in contrast to definiteness, concerns the potential identification of an element if it exists as a bounded, individuated entity in the “message world” (Payne 1997: 264). In the next series of examples (taken from Payne 1997: 264-265), the first set of sentences (7a, b) shows referential participants in italics, and the second set (7c, d) shows examples of non-referential usage. Example (7e) is ambiguous where the italicized NP is non-referential if it stands for anyone who happened to be Norwegian, but it could also be referential if the speaker has a specific Norwegian in mind, even if the addressee cannot identify the individual in question. (7)

a. Those men are ridiculous. b. Someday I’d like to buy your cabin by the seashore. c. All men are ridiculous. d. Someday I’d like to buy a cabin by the seashore. e. Arlyne would like to marry a Norwegian.

Chabacano topics must be referential. In other words, they must refer to an individuated entity in the world even if such entity cannot be identified by the addressee. Indefinite nouns may be marked as long as they are referential; in a sentence like (7e), “Norwegian” would be marked as a topic in Chabacano only if the speaker had a particular Norwegian in mind.

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In reference to focus, I will instead use the term “prominence” to avoid confusion with the use of the term “focus” in the Tagalog linguistics literature, describing the argument orientation of the verb (see Example 4). In Chabacano, participants are “prominent” if they are emphasized by the speaker through the use of marked word order. The marking for prominence and referentiality in Chabacano contrasts with the marking of similar features in Tagalog, where prominence and referentiality are often conflated in the ang-marked argument (9) (example from Schachter 1972: 486). In Chabacano, a left-dislocation construction (AVO constructions) may have a prominent A, and a kon-marked referential argument may be placed post-verbally (8). In Chabacano, marking an argument as both prominent and referential is highly marked. This contrasts with topic marking functions in Tagalog, where left-dislocation and other prominence related operations are restricted to the referential argument with the topic marker. (8) Mucha ta tieni miedo kon el perro. Many IPFV have fear ACC DEF dog ‘Many (people) are scared of the dog.’ (9) Ang sulat ay tanggap ko kahapon. TOP letter AY PFV.receive 1SG.NG yesterday ‘I received the letter yesterday.’ (10) Kun todo tieni miedo ACC all have fear ‘I am scared of everything!’

ya PFV

yo! 1SG

The two possible meanings of ambiguous constructions like (4e, above) in English are grammatically disambiguated in languages with Differential Object Marking (DOM) such as Spanish, where referentiality distinction is grammaticalized by the use of the preposition a before referential participants. Chabacano kon exhibits the same referentiality effects where its use marks the difference between a specific bound group (11) and class (12). In (13) the main function of the clause with ta mira ‘is looking’ is precisely to convey that the object of ta mira is a non-existing group of people (those who can quickly learn “the skill”): (11) Mucha henti ya mira kon el (manga) snake. many people PFV look ACC DEF PL snake ‘Many people saw the snake.’ (At the zoo) mira manga culebra. (12) Mucha henti ya many people PFV look PL snake ‘Many people saw snakes.’ (In their whole life)

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(13) No pa yo tá mirá otro quién qui NEG still 1SG IPFV see another who REL

prindí prontong~pronto el learn soon~INT the



‘I’ve never seen anyone who has learned the skill so quickly.’

ya PFV

opicio. skill

Kon marking may also affect the semantic role of the verb’s arguments. In the examples below, marking el muchacho ‘the boy’ with kon changes its role from a location (14) to a patient (15). In (16), the presence of kon before the patient allows the interpretation of el llave ‘the key’ as an instrument (16a). On the other hand, in order to make sense of the same sentence without kon (16b), ‘the key’ must be anthropomorphized and interpreted as an agent. (14) Ya puní yo la manta PFV put 1SG. DEF.F blanket ‘I put the blanket on the boy.’

na LOC

(15) Ya puní yo la manta PFV put 1SG. DEF.F blanket ‘I covered the boy with the blanket.’

kon el ACC the

(16) a. Ya abrí el llave PFV open the key ‘The key opened the door.’

kon el ACC the

b. Ya abrí el llave PFV open the key ‘The key opened the door.’

el the

el muchacho. DEF.M boy muchacho. boy

pwerta. door

pwerta. door

Marking referentiality can also be used to denote differences in the agent’s intentionality; the use of kon before the inanimate argument el reloh ‘the watch’ in (17) was only accepted within a context where the speaker is actually looking for a specific watch. (17) Ya buska yo el reloj i PFV look_for 1SG the watch and

enkontra yo kon el reloh. find 1SG ACC the watch



‘I looked for the watch and I found the watch.’

ya PFV

Kon can also be used to exclusively mark discourse referentiality, which refers to bounded elements in discourse and their continued importance over a portion of text (Du Bois 1980). Different from “objective referential” arguments, a referential participant in discourse does not even have to be already exist, i.e. be “previously given in the message world” (Payne 1997: 266). In (16), mga tren

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‘trains’ has not been mentioned before; the use of kon signals to the addressee that from now on, the argument will be topical in discourse5; in other words, kon here specifies the argument within the discourse stream. “Mga tren/Trains” in (18) remains semantically a class noun, but it is specified in discourse. On the other hand, when the argument is somehow marginal to the discourse topic, it is left unmarked for referentiality. In (19a), kon akel ‘those’ is a relativized topic, while in (19b), the speaker is interrupting the narration of events to clarify information about eli ‘she’, which is the topic of the sentence.6 In (19b), akel is not marked. (18) Ta kordá yo kon mga tren de antes. PFV remember 1SG ACC PL train POSS before ‘I remember those trains from the past.’ (19) a. Oo yes

ya así PFV like_that

interviu kon akel ya interview ACC that PFV

mira ya na eli alya na anoche. look PFV LOC 3SG over_there LOC last_night ‘(She) interviewed those that she found over there last night.’ b. Ta andá eli hací interviu el manga akel mga Chabacano. IPFV go 3SG make interview DEF PL that PL Chabacano ‘She is interviewing those Chabacanos.’

5. Idiomatic uses of kon A few highly idiosyncratic constructions in the data exhibit kon in discourse prominent positions, illustrated in Section 5.1-5.3 hereafter. 5.1. Left dislocation Besides its use for core arguments, kon is sometimes found before animate, definite source arguments that would otherwise be marked with the genitive preposition de. In (20), the “savage soldiers” is the semantic source of palmada aki i palmada alya ‘the beatings’ in a cleft construction (20). However, while sources preceded by the preposition di ‘of’ cannot be topicalized, animate semantic sources marked with kon can be in a discourse prominent position, as shown in (21).

5



6



Those is used in English much in the same way: I remember those trains. Interestingly, many speakers who dislike the use of deictic pronouns with the use of kon may indicate that both are redundant when they are used to convey discourse referentiality. A similar tendency is attested in Kristang (Baxter 1988: 159). Example (19) is taken from a phone conversation where the speaker interrupts the narration of events in (19a) to clarify contextual information in (19b).

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(20) Palmada Beat

aqui y palmada alla here and beat there

qui COMP

ya PFV



recibi niso cun el mga suldao salbahe. receive 1PL ACC the PL soldier savage



‘Beatings everywhere is what we received from the savage soldiers.’

(21) En casa el numero uno critico In house the number one critic

de mi musica POSS 1SG.POSS music

y and

leccion na piano lesson LOC piano



es COP



Lola Turing ta tuca ella el alfa. Kon grandmother Turing IPFV play 3SG the harp ACC



ella nisos ya 3SG 1PL PFV



adquicision excelente, amor kon el acquisition excellent love ACC the



natural, kon hombre y derechos de todos human. natural ACC man and right POSS all human

mi abuela tu grand-grand 1SG.POSS grandmother 2SG.POSS grand-grand

inheredar las musica y la inherit DEF.PL.F music and DEF.F human human

‘At home, the number one music critic and piano teacher was my grandmother, your grand-grand mother Lola Turing. She played the harp. From her we inherited music and (moral) values, love for the human (race), for the people and human rights.’

5.2. Storytelling Temporal adverbial phrases are usually marked by locative na, but in the next set of constructions (i.e., examples 22-23), kon marks an adverbial phrase that is used idiomatically in storytelling. First documented by Whinnom (1956), this construction is very common in storytelling, and is similar to the Tagalog kung sa bagay, which roughly translates as ‘once upon a time…’, or ‘and so (the story) goes’ ([21] above). With the use of kon, these storytelling or narration constructions promise to deliver a story as they create discourse expectations for the addressees, whose attention will thus be drawn to the ensuing narration. As shown by (22) and (23), the use of kon in these constructions precedes a deictic pronoun, which adds to the discursive referentiality. (22) Un milagro el que ya aparece INDEF.SG miracle the REL PFV show up

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del accidente. POSS.DEF accident

‘A miracle is what I experienced at that time of the accident.’

(23) Con aquel mismo noche el bieja ya ACC that same night the old woman PFV carria qui-ya carria el oro na su cubu. Carry PFV carry the gold LOC 1SG.POSS bucket

‘On that very night the old woman carried the gold in her bucket.’

5.3. Comparative constructions The next and final set of examples illustrates a comparative construction that is only attested in the Cavite variety of Chabacano. Across the Chabacano varieties, comparative constructions resemble Spanish comparative constructions where que is placed before the referential argument, which has known properties that function in the construction as the “standard of comparison” (24). (24) Mas alto mi ermano ki yo More tall 1SG.GEN brother REL 1SG ‘My brother is taller than me.’

In the Cavite variety, kon may precede the “standard of comparison” only when the comparee greatly supersedes the standard of comparison according to some attribute, such as: quality (25), or quantity (26). (25) Su dulce olor y forma — es verdadero 1SG.POSS sweet smell and form COP true diferente different

con el mga ACC the PL



clasico, classic



ordinario flores. ordinary flower



‘Its sweet smell and shape — it’s a real classic, different from ordinary flowers.’

(26) Y si mucho and COND many

ustedes problema, tiene pa 2PL problem have still

rin mga genti qui also PL people REL



pa problema cun ustedes. still problem ACC 2PL



‘And if you have a lot of problems, there are still people that have many more problems than you.’

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tieni have

mas mucho more many



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The use of kon exclusively in constructions where intensifiers emphasize the comparer’s superiority over the standard is typical of expressive discourse. Once the main function of the comparison is in the discourse domain, then it is reasonable to analyze the standard of comparison not just as objectively referential (a requirement of any “standard of comparison”), but also as discursively referential. 6. Discourse saliency, calquing, and the grammatical use of kon This section elaborates on the role of saliency in the preservation of kon as a topic marker in Cavite Chabacano. Given the optionality of kon with object arguments, it is worth considering possible causes for its obligatory (i.e., grammatical) use with the IO in ditransitive constructions. The preponderance of A in subject slots is only one of many tendencies in how discourse conditions the occurrence of nominals. The grammaticality of R in Chabacano may be a function of the frequency with which R arguments are more salient than P. In ditransitive constructions, saliency of R is evidenced in the frequent elision of P arguments, and the generalization of kon forms personal pronouns for both DO and IO (give examples of these). The saliency of R is closely related to the semantic features of the prototypical ditransitive construction where a volitional agent intentionally transfers an object to a recipient, which tends to be human and highly identified. The prototypical Chabacano transfer construction is formed with the verb dale ‘to give’ (< Span. dale ‘give [to] him/her/it’) (27). Examples (28)-(30) show that the same noun el perro ‘the dog’ is obligatorily marked in the dale ditransitive construction (28), while it is left unmarked when it is an object of a regular transitive verb (29-30). The use of kon is especially useful in marking argument roles in ditransitives with elided agents (see 27). (27) Josie Josie

ya PFV

hablá konmigo, dihu: “Karol ta na talk 1SG.ACC say.PST Carol COP LOC



ritrato kuando ta picture when PFV



‘Josie spoke with me, (she) said: “Carol it’s in the picture when Roselyn is given the ring.”’

(28) Dale ya bo give PFV 2SG ‘You bathe the dog.’

dali give

bañá kon el bathe ACC the

(29) Ya bendí el muher PFV sell the woman ‘The woman sold the dog’

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el the

anilyo kon Roselin.” ring ACC Roselyn perro. dog

el perro. the dog

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(30) Kieri yo el perro. like 1SG the dog ‘I like the dog.’

The use of Chabacano dale can also convey metaphoric transfer as in dale grasia ‘to thank’, dale beso ‘to kiss’, and dale opinion ‘to give an opinion’. Beneficiaries are animate by definition (sometimes anthropomorphized arguments), as in (31). (31) Un melodioso sonido instrumental o de naturaleza … puede a melodious sound instrumental or the nature can

dale inspiracion con joven o give inspiration ACC young or

viejo. old



‘A sweet instrumental sound or from nature can inspire the old and the young.’

Also, transfer verbs that tend to have animate and especially human R in Chabacano overlap with “direction verbs” in Tagalog. Direction verbs are often found with “direction focus” affixes (Schachter 1972: 284). These verbs may denote movement in relation to a goal (e.g. abutan ‘to pass’; dalhan ‘take/bring to’; puntahan ‘to go to’), and actions typically involving a human goal (e.g. halikan ‘to kiss’, ngitian ‘to smile at’, tulungan ‘to help’) (Schachter 1972: 285). The striking overlap between dale constructions and direction focus verbs in Tagalog suggests a calque of the Tagalog constructions in Chabacano. The overlap of verbs that use kon to mark R arguments in transfer constructions and Tagalog “direction focus” verbs may have further supported the discursive functions of kon by motivating Chabacano’s modelling of kon on the Tagalog “recipient construction” paradigm. Figure 2 illustrates the paradigmatic analogy that could have led to the reinterpretation of kon as a topic marker, as kon can fill a morphological gap via an analogy within the type of ditransitive constructions that usually have animate recipients. Recipients in ditransitives

sa “direction” verb focus:

has properties of ditransitives (topic) [focus usually +animate / +specific]

Tagalog

sa: can specify like DOM

ang (sa verb class): there is a cline of probability of topicality

Chabacano

kon: can specify like DOM

?? → kon (human animates in the sa verb class)

Figure 2. Proposed re-interpretation of kon as a topic marker

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This figure is not intended as a diachronic description of the marker, but simply indicates how calquing provides a plausible context to explain the grammaticality of kon marking in ditransitives with animate IO. Saliency of animate arguments in these constructions, along with the added similarity between sa and the functions of kon, facilitated the use of this construction. Furthermore, the frequency of “direction focus” verbs in these constructions may have supported an analysis of kon as a topic marker. 7. Conclusion This paper has argued that the apparent arbitrariness of the distribution of kon before animate P can be explained as differences in the verb arguments’ pragmatic status. A group of constructions where the use of kon is not predicted under a disambiguation account has here been shown as evidence for the discourse referentiality marking functions of kon. Similarities between transfer constructions in Chabacano and Tagalog were suggested as providing a unified account of kon. Specifically, it was argued that functions of kon are modeled on Tagalog’s marking of animate recipients, and this marking’s function as topic marking in “direction focus” constructions. Ultimately, this paper has sought to identify a more refined set of linguistic and discursive variables to explain the conditioning of kon than has been ventured previously, and to explore how these have contributed to replace language-specific grammatical categories. Further comparative work on the inventory of argument marking affixes in Tagalog promises to shed additional light on the diachrony of Chabacano and the nature of its contact with its substrate languages. Such future work, it is hoped, will lend further insight into the extent to which Chabacano argument marking was modeled on Tagalog affixation patterns. REFERENCES Aldridge, Edith. 2012. Antipassive and ergativity in Tagalog. Lingua 122. 192-203. Baxter, Alan N. 1988. A grammar of Kristang (Malacca Creole Portuguese). (Series B; No. 95). Canberra: Pacific Linguistics. Baxter, Alan N. 1996. Portuguese and Creole Portuguese in the Pacific and Western Pacific rim. In Stephen A. Wurm, Peter Mühlhäusler & Darrell T. Tryon (eds.), Atlas of languages of intercultural communication in the Pacific, Asia and the Americas. Vol. 2. 299-338. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. Clements, J. Clancy. 2009. The linguistic legacy of Spanish and Portuguese: Colonial expansion and language change. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Du Bois, John W. 1980. Beyond definiteness: The trace of identity in discourse. The Pear Stories: Cognitive, cultural, and linguistic aspects of narrative production. Vol. 3. 203-274.

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Fernández, Mauro. 2007. Sobre el origen de con en chabacano. In Martina ShraderKniffki & Laura Morgenthaler García (eds.), La Romania en interacción: entre historia, contacto y política. Ensayos en homenaje a Klaus Zimmermann, 457-478. Madrid/Frankfurt: Iberoamericana/Vervuert. Fernández, Mauro. 2009. La partícula con en el chabacano y la organización de la transitividad en chabacano. In Monserrat Veyrat Rigat & Enrique Alegre Serra (eds.), La lingüística como reto epistemológico y como acción social. Estudios dedicados al profesor Ángel López García con ocasión de su sexagésimo aniversario. Vol. 1. 423436. Madrid: Arco Libros SL. Frake, Charles. 1971. Lexical origins and semantic structure in Philippine Creole Spanish. In Dell Hymes (ed.), Pidginization and creolization of languages, 223-242. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Grant, Anthony P. 2009. Contact, complexification and change in Mindanao Chabacano structure. In Enoch Oladé Aboh & Norval Smith (eds.), Complex processes in new languages, 223-241. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Grant, Anthony P. 2012. Mindanao Chabacano and other “mixed creoles”. In Hugo C. Cardoso, Alan N. Baxter, Mário Pinharanda Nunez (eds.) Ibero-Asian creoles: Comparative perspectives, 327-362. Amsterdam/Philadephia: John Benjamins. Himmelmann, Nikolaus P. 2008. Lexical cateogories and voice in Tagalog. In Peter Austin & Simon Musgrave (eds.), Voice and grammatical relations in Austronesian languages, Stanford: Center for the Study of Language and Information. Hopper, Paul J. & Thompson, Sandra A. 1980. Transitivity in grammar and discourse. Language 56. 251-299. Kroeger, Paul. 1993. Phrase structure and grammatical relations in Tagalog. Stanford: Center for the Study of Language (CSLI). Latrouite, Anja. 2012. Differential object marking in Tagalog. In Lauren Eby Clemens, Gregory Scontras & Maria Polinsky (eds.), Proceedings of the 18th Annual Meeting of the Austronesian Formal Linguistics Society (AFLA 18), 94-109. Online Publication hosted by the University of Western Ontario. Lesho, Marivic. 2012. Written Corpus of Cavite Chabacano. Columbus, OH: The Ohio State University. Lipski, John M. 1988. Philippine creole Spanish: Assessing the Portuguese element. Zeitschrift für Romanische Philologie 104. 25-45. Maurer, Philippe. 2004. La marca de los objetos en los criollos de Batabia y Tugu. In Mauro Fernández, Manuel Fernández-Ferreiro & Nancy Veiga Vázquez (eds.), Los criollos de base ibérica, 61-72. Madrid/Frankfurt: Iberoamericana/Vervuert. Payne, Thomas E. 1997. Describing morphosyntax: A guide for field linguists. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Romanillos, Emmanuel Luis A. 2006. Chabacano studies: Essays on Cavite’s Chabacano language and literature. Cavite City, Philippines: Cavite Historical Society. Schachter, Paul & Otanes, Fe T. 1972. Tagalog reference grammar. Berkeley: University of California Press. Schuchardt, Hugo E. 1883. Kreolische Studien IV. Über das Malaiospanische der Philippinen. Sitzungsberichte der kaiserlichen Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Wien 105. 111-150.  

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Sippola, Eeva. 2011. Una gramática descriptiva del Chabacano de Ternate. Helsinski: University of Helsinski. Steinkrüger, Patrick O. 2006. The puzzling case of Chabacano: Creolization, substrate, mixing and secondary contact. Paper presented at the Tenth International Conference on Austronesian Linguistics, January 17-20, 2006, Palawan, Philippines. Steinkrüger, Patrick O. 2009. Inflectional morphology in a Creole: A report on Chabacano (Philippine Creole Spanish). In Patrick O. Steinkrüger & Manfred Krifka, On inflection. 219-236. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Whinnom, Keith. 1956. Spanish contact vernaculars in the Philippine islands. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press.

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PALENQUERO AND SPANISH: WHAT’S IN THE MIX? John M. Lipski The Pennsylvania State University This study presents data from San Basilio de Palenque, Colombia, where bilingual residents at times appear to mix in Spanish morphosyntax when speaking the Spanish-lexified creole Palenquero. The results of two experiments (carried out in situ) are analyzed. In the first, participants were asked to classify stimuli derived from naturalistic speech as all-Spanish, all-Palenquero, or mixed. The experiment was repeated with synthesized stimuli. The findings indicate that in-group solidarity does not significantly influence participants’ responses. In the second experiment participants were asked to give rapid acceptability judgments for all-Palenquero and mixed stimuli. The results of multivariate regression analyses suggest that Palenqueros do not rely on specific lexical or morphosyntactic elements when identifying Palenquero utterances. Lexical items and verb forms play a more central role in predicting correct identification of mixed Palenquero-Spanish utterances. The study also found significant differences in responses to nominally mixed stimuli among traditional speakers, heritage speakers, young L2 speakers, and Palenquero language teachers. The results are at times overshadowed by intra-group variation. Keywords: Palenquero, creole, codeswitching, bilingualism, language revitalization, heritage language, variationist analysis

1. Introduction1 The Afro-Colombian creole language Palenquero, spoken in the village of San Basilio de Palenque, has been in contact with its historical lexifier, Spanish, for at least I gratefully acknowledge the support and friendship of the following Palenqueros: Francisco “Siquito” Cañate†, Ana Joaquina Cásseres, Trinidad Cásseres†, Magdalena Navarro, Basilia Pérez, Bernardino Pérez Miranda, Manuel Pérez, Neis Pérez, Venancia Pérez, José de los Santos Reyes, María Luisa Reyes†, Raúl Salas, Florentina “Yayita” Salas, Sebastián Salgado, Víctor Simarra Reyes, and Juana Torres. More than one hundred fifty other Palenqueros have shared their languages and their lives with me and I owe them all a debt of gratitude. Armin Schwegler offered his usual helpful comments and suggestions for improvement of this essay, as did Yves Moñino; many thanks to both. The research reported in this study has been supported by a grant from the Africana Research Center at Penn State and by the National Science Foundation under Grant BCS-1357155. 1



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three centuries. Despite this prolonged interface, there is no sign of decreolization (Schwegler 2001, 2011c: 463; Lipski forthcoming b), although during much of the second half of the 20th century many Palenqueros turned away from the traditional language, known to its speakers as Lengua ri Palenge ‘the language of Palenque’ (henceforth LP). Although there is no evidence that traditional LP structures are being systematically substituted by more Spanish-like features en route to an eventual merger of LP (the basilect) with Spanish (the acrolect), many Palenqueros produce utterances that combine “canonical” LP elements and morphosyntactic combinations exclusive to Spanish. This apparent hybridity has been noted by nearly all (non-Palenquero) linguists who have conducted research in Palenque, but there is little reliable data on Palenqueros’ own perception of such combinations. As a complement to ethnographic and sociolinguistic studies designed to elucidate LP grammatical structures, historical origins, African substrate contributions, and the evolving sociolinguistic panorama of Palenque, the present author has initiated a series of interactive probes —carried out in situ— designed to explore Palenqueros’ partitioning of LP and Spanish from a psycholinguistic perspective. This essay offers preliminary data on one facet of LP-Spanish bilingualism: the search for key lexical and morphosyntactic elements that trigger identification of all-LP or mixed utterances. 2. Palenquero-Spanish bilingualism San Basilio de Palenque, originally known as San Miguel Arcángel, was founded in the 17th century (probably between 1655 and 1674: Navarrete 2008, 2012; Schwegler 2011a, 2012) when enslaved Africans fled from the port of Cartagena and established fortified communities in rural regions to the south. According to most accounts, LP-Spanish bilingualism may have characterized Palenque for many generations, although the available evidence is both scant and difficult to interpret. A document dated 1772 states that residents of the village speak with one another “un particular idioma en que á sus solas instruyen á los muchachos sinembargo de que cortan con mucha expedición el castellano de que generalmente usan” [a particular language that by themselves they teach to their children, as well as Spanish which they speak fluently] (Urueta 1890: 329), which has been taken to indicate that Spanish was spoken in Palenque at least by the middle of the 18th century (Escalante 1954: 229-230, Bickerton & Escalante 1970: 255, Friedemann & Patiño Rosselli 1983: 45, Schwegler 1996: v. 1, 26). Morton (2005: 36) also regards this document as demonstrating Spanish-LP bilingualism in the 18th century, although he cautions that the particular idioma could have been anything from a restructured Afro-Hispanic vernacular to a fully formed creole language. Given the demonstrable Kikongo imprint on LP (e.g. Schwegler 2012) one can-

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not exclude the possibility that the “particular language” was actually African and the “castellano” was in reality an Afro-Hispanic contact variety sufficiently intelligible to Spaniards already accustomed to Africans’ approximations to Spanish. The next mention of the language(s) spoken in Palenque does not appear until Arcos (1913: v. IV, 19), who stated that Palenqueros in the early 20th century were bilingual, using Spanish and a “guttural dialect” that could have been some sort of African language (clearly referring to Lengua ri Palenge, which is largely unintelligible and exotic-sounding to Spanish speakers unfamiliar with the creole). Reasonably accurate fragments of LP (not explicitly identified as a creole) were transcribed in obscure publications by Ochoa Franco (1945) and Escalante (1954), by which time Spanish was apparently spoken by everyone in Palenque. When the field workers for the linguistic atlas of Colombia visited Palenque in 1959, they recorded and eventually transcribed only regional vernacular varieties of Spanish. These researchers were, however, aware of the existence of a second local speech form —which is not described or analyzed—, calling it simply as “su dialecto local” [their local dialect] which is “notablemente diversa de la variedad general” [notably different from the general variety] (Montes Giraldo 1962: 447). Despite the assumption that Palenquero bilingualism dates back at least to the 18th century, Schwegler (1996: v. 1, 37) notes that some of his oldest informants indicated that at the turn of the 20th century not everyone in the community spoke Spanish with native-like fluency (although they probably understood it), an assertion supported by interviews conducted by the present author, including individuals still alive at the time of this writing. On the other hand Schwegler (2011c: 463) cites an interview with a woman born in 1901 who affirmed that when she was born [i.e. in her early childhood], “everyone” in Palenque spoke both LP and Spanish. In a community which today can be traversed in less than fifteen minutes and which was much smaller a century ago, it is not likely that two entirely different sociolinguistic profiles obtained. It is more likely that since metalinguistic knowledge was scarce and the local Spanish vernacular shared more similarities with LP than more canonical varieties, Palenqueros’ awareness of specific differences between Spanish and LP varied considerably. In fact, as will be demonstrated below, such variation is still present, which complicates the reconstruction of the linguistic profile of Palenque in the 18th and 19th centuries. 3. Descriptive studies and Spanish-Lengua ri Palenge mixing Lengua ri Palenge was first explicitly identified as a creole language by Granda (1968), who had not yet visited the community, and subsequently in personallyreported field work by Bickerton & Escalante (1970), as yet with few grammatical

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details. Lewis (1970) prepared a quite detailed and woefully under-cited grammatical account of LP, followed by Patiño’s grammatical analysis in Friedemann & Patiño Rosselli (1973). More detailed descriptions of LP appear in Schwegler (1996, 1998, 2011a, 2013a, 2013b) and Schwegler & Green (2007), while individual aspects of LP grammar are analyzed in Davis (1997, 2000) and Dieck (2000), among others. Maglia & Moñino (2014) present a collection of analyzed Palenquero oral narratives together with interpretative material. Following the upsurge in interest by scholars from outside the community, the launching of ethnoeducation programs in LP, and recognition of the village by UNESCO and the Colombian government, Palenqueros themselves have written descriptive grammars and glossaries. Included among these are Cásseres Estrada (2005), Pérez Tejedor (2004), Simarra Obeso et al. (2008), and Simarra Reyes & Triviño-Doval (2008). Pérez Miranda (2011) is the first pedagogical text authored by a Palenquero. Other pedagogical materials of Palenquero authorship are found in Vergara Serpa (2012) and Ministerio de Cultura (2011). At present, these materials are not used in Palenque schools; Fundación para el Desarrollo Social Transformemos (2011) is a Palenquero-authored handbook used in adult-education classes. Fundamental to the study of Palenquero-Spanish bilingualism is an accurate map of the linguistic perimeter of Lengua ri Palenge, i.e. a complete description that accounts for “all and only” LP utterances (in the sense of Chomsky 1957: 21). While anthropologists and ethnographers have frequently produced extensive grammatical accounts of languages throughout the world, matters are not as simple in Palenque. A major confounding factor is the high degree of lexical overlap, including a very large proportion of cognate items whose phonological realization varies little or not at all between the two languages. Perhaps most crucially for determining the boundaries between Spanish and LP is the fact that there are no monolingual LP speakers whose grammar can be compared with monolingual Spanish speakers. During the course of several years of interviews and conversations with fluent LP speakers, the present author has collected several hundred instances of what appear to be Spanish morphosyntactic incursions into utterances nominally couched in LP, as well as a smaller number of monotonic language switches, i.e. utterances beginning in one language and ending in the other. In all instances, the utterances in question were proffered as “authentic” LP and produced during conversations (always involving other LP speakers) presumed to be held entirely in LP. Previous studies of LP written by scholars from outside of the community have commented on the use of both Spanish and LP structures within the same expanse of discourse; these include Bickerton & Escalante (1970: 264-265), Lewis (1970: 180-181), Patiño Rosselli (1983: 185), Schwegler (1996: vol. 1, 45s.; 1998), Schwegler & Morton (2003: 121), and Morton (2005: 162). These scholars have variously at-

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tributed the mixtures to code-switching, interference from Spanish, and deliberate exclusion of outsiders. It is also possible that Spanish-like morphosyntactic combinations form an integral component of LP grammar (e.g. Morton 2005: 96, 155), coexisting with quintessentially creoloid alternatives much like English double negation (I ain’t got nothing ~ I haven’t got anything), strong perfects (dove ~ dived), perfect for past participle (I should have went ~ gone), and accusative subject pronouns (him and me ~ he and I went). It is noteworthy that none of the publications by Palenquero authors mentions the introduction of Spanish elements, presenting instead what appears to be a distillate of the most creole-like features to the complete exclusion of Spanish lexical and morphosyntactic configurations. Much of the emphasis on the “new” Palenquero as described in the aforementioned Palenquero-authored texts and taught in the LP language classes is on lexical items of extra-Hispanic origin, preferably African (e.g. Lipski 2012a, Maglia 2012, Moñino 2012, Schwegler 2012). These include the archaic second-person plural pronoun enú (of Kikongo origin) for utere (< Sp. ustedes), and the items in Table 1 (several of which are not of African origin but may be perceived to be so by Palenquero speakers). “New” lengua ri Palenge

Traditional Palenquero

Gloss

posá (< Sp. posada ‘inn’)

kasa

house

mae

mamá

mother

chitiá

kombesá, ablá

to speak, talk, converse

kanatulé

hambre

hunger

burú/birú

plata

money

chelín (< Eng. shilling)

plata

money

kombilesa

amigo

friend

chepa

ropa/trapo

clothing

piangulí

seddo/puekko

pig

makaneá

trabahá

to work

apú

awa

water

begá

año/bé/biahe

year, time (instance)

bumbilo

basura

garbage

changaína

muhé

woman

ngubá

maní

peanut

piachá

profesó

teacher

lungá

morí

to die

Table 1. New and traditional vocabulary (Palenquero creole)

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The enhanced metalinguistic awareness among younger generations and the search for traditional non-Hispanic roots may reflect conversations held in the 1980’s and 1990’s by young community activists (some of whom are now LP language teachers) and scholars such as Patiño and Schwegler (as described in Schwegler 2011b). This dichotomy reflects the “performance” aspect of contemporary Palenquero identity (Ferrari 2012). The vehemence with which Palenquero activists assert the “correctness” of particular grammatical configurations (Moñino 2012: 248-250 describes one instance) and the convincing fashion in which many middle-aged and younger Palenqueros converse in LP can lure the unwary investigator into believing that the contemporary sociolinguistic profile of Palenque is simply the continuation of earlier times, rather than the result of vigorous linguistic trends of recent years (mostly post-2000). The LP grammatical structures as described by Palenquero authors often appear to be idealizations of actually occurring utterances, both in terms of (1) specific elements such as preverbal particles and (2) the introduction of Spanish-like elements. The currently available LP grammar texts, all authored by Palenqueros (not all of whom have resided in Palenque during the past decades), are primarily didactic in nature, and are typically aimed at ongoing language planning. As such, they may conceivably present a version of the language that has never existed in reality, and is thus a sanitized Lengua ri Palenge free from authentic Spanish morphosyntax. Palenqueros pupils may thus acquire a variety of LP in school that has fewer non-creole elements than the “traditional” speakers would use. The principal grammatical descriptions of LP written by scholars from outside the community (by Lewis, Patiño, Megenney, Schwegler) are based on the authors’ observations of spontaneous speech by Palenqueros as well as explicit requests for translation and explanation. Judging by these studies, traditional LP speakers do possess implicit linguistic boundaries between Spanish and LP and can produce “all and only” LP utterances when circumstances so require.2 There is less information about Palenqueros’ own views toward nominally mixed utterances. In the only known published commentary, Morton (2005: 162) recounts that when queried about Spanish-LP code-switching “a speaker dismissed it as simply throwing it [the other language] in”3.



2



3

Morton (2005: 108-109) mentions an older Palenquero expressing admiration for an overheard conversation held entirely in LP with no Spanish words mixed in; such comments suggest that traditional LP speakers can indeed separate Spanish and LP in received speech. Similar observations are found in Maglia & Moñino (2014: 112, 195 fn. 89, 257). Schwegler & Morton (2003: 121) state that Palenqueros claim to code-switch in order to make their speech unintelligible to outsiders, an assertion they find to be at odds with the fact that putative code-switching among Palenqueros occurs more frequently in the absence of outsiders.

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4. Palenqueros own views: language-identification tasks A possible approach to studying language admixture in Palenque is to simply probe Palenqueros’ opinions on putatively mixed LP-Spanish utterances. Although subject to many pitfalls, this approach —adopted in this study— can serve a dual purpose. First, it documents the extent to which Palenqueros acknowledge and identify two separate languages in the community; second, Palenqueros’ metalinguistic awareness is put to the test. As a first approximation, the author conducted an experiment (reported in Lipski forthcoming a, b) to obtain insights into Palenqueros’ awareness of language mixing. A broad section of Palenquero participants were asked to listen to samples of naturalistic speech (slightly modified to impede identification of individual speakers) extracted from previously recorded conversations with fluent traditional LP speakers. Some of the utterances were indisputably in LP as described in available studies, some were entirely in (local vernacular) Spanish, and the majority contained at least some mixture of LP and Spanish, again according to accepted grammatical descriptions of LP. Spanish-like elements included verbs inflected for subject-verb agreement, preverbal object clitics instead of LP postverbal disjunctive pronouns, preverbal negation with (low-tone) no instead of LP clause-final (high pitch-accented) nu, definite articles (nonexistent in LP), feminine gender concord, and prenominal possessive determiners, especially mi ‘my’ instead of LP postnominal nominal and pronominal possessives (e.g. Spanish mi hermano ‘my brother’ – LP numano mi). There were also a few utterances beginning in one language and ending in the other. In the first test, 70 stimuli, each consisting of a single utterance of varying length, were presented to 24 Palenqueros (9 young adult L2 LP speakers and 15 fluent native LP speakers ages 40+, including 3 LP language teachers and a respected community member who is frequently consulted as an authority on matters of “pure” LP. In the second experiment (conducted several months later), 47 additional stimuli were presented to 21 respondents (12 traditional speakers including four LP teachers and the aforementioned consultant and 9 younger speakers). A total of 9 respondents participated in both experiments. Respondents correctly identified presumably all-Spanish and all-LP utterances with high rates of consistency: a mean of 74% for all-Spanish and 90% for all-LP. The figures for all-Spanish stimuli were lowered by the responses of four traditional speakers, who classified all utterances as “LP,” even those entirely in Spanish. Younger speakers as a group were a bit more reluctant to accept all of the putatively Spanish utterances as Spanish-only, but could give no specific reasons, and older speakers only hesitated when faced with lexical items associated with

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traditional Palenquero culture. No LP stimulus was identified as Spanish by any respondent, and in those instances where a nominally all-LP utterance was declared to be mixed LP-Spanish, a single lexical item not felt to be “traditional” LP was at stake. For both sets of stimuli there were no statistically significant between-group differences in the proportion of correct language identifications, which gives a preliminary indication that Palenqueros can and do distinguish Spanish and LP in their nominally unmixed forms. In the case of stimuli that objectively could be construed as containing constructions unique to Spanish as well as elements unique to LP, respondents demonstrated highly variable and complex reactions. Among the test items were 53 stimuli that appeared to contain Spanish morphosyntactic incursions. The overall mean rate of “mixed” identification was 44%. LP language teachers identified mixed utterances at more than twice the rate (68%) exhibited by older community members (31%), although still identifying nearly one third of nominally mixed utterances as LP-only, while young participants who had taken LP language classes fall in between (47%). For the mixed stimuli, differences in the rate of “mixed” identification across groups were highly significant (p < .001) between LP teachers and older speakers and between young speakers and LP teachers, but not between young L2 speakers and older traditional speakers. This finding reflects the LP teachers’ greater metalinguistic awareness as well as the fact that the teachers do not dwell on LP grammar. Instead it seems that they limit themselves to concentrating on specific lexical items and cultural referents. Specific details of participants’ responses to nominally mixed stimuli are discussed in Lipski (forthcoming a, b) and will not be repeated here. It is sufficient to note that the responses demonstrated considerable inconsistency both among participants and with respect to apparently similar utterances. 5. Testing the human element: Palenqueros and synthesized voices Palenqueros sometimes critique and even criticize each other’s use of LP in the presence of researchers (e.g. Maglia & Moñino 2014: 112, Moñino 2012: 248250, Morton 2005: 164). There remains, however, a very strong sense of community solidarity which ensures that the linguistic integrity of solid Palenquero citizens is not easily impugned. It is therefore possible that since participants knew that the (slightly modified) utterances had been produced by Palenqueros, in the language-identification experiments these same participants may have increased the rates of acceptance as LP of utterances with Spanish incursions. In order to probe for response bias induced by in-group solidarity an experiment was conducted with synthesized voices. There are no programs designed to syn-

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thesize LP voices, but there are a number of Spanish-language text-to-speech programs whose output can be modified with PRAAT software (Boersma & Weenink 1999-2005) to create reasonable approximations to LP phonotactics. After testing several available programs, a single female voice from Cepstral Swift Talker® (www.cepstral.com) was chosen. A preliminary experiment was conducted using 70 artificially synthesized stimuli, most of which had been used in the previous two language-identifying experiments. Of the stimuli 21 (30%) were entirely in LP as described in the previously cited monographs, 6 (9%) were entirely in Spanish, and the remaining 43 (61%) contained some LP-Spanish grammatical mixing. A total of fifty-six Palenqueros participated in this task (twenty-one heritage speakers,4 eighteen traditional speakers, eight LP teachers/consultants, and nine young (18+ years) L2 speakers of LP). All eight of the teachers/experts had participated in previous experiments, as had six of the traditional LP speakers and three of the younger speakers. Seven of the remaining traditional LP speakers had produced utterances that had been included in previous experiments. Participants were told that they would be hearing an artificial voice created by a computer. The results are described in detail in Lipski (forthcoming b), and are strikingly similar to those based on naturalistic stimuli. Rates of correct “mixed” identification for synthesized stimuli were: traditional speakers LP teachers heritage speakers young L2 speakers

35% 71% 52% 49%

No significant difference in rates of correct identification were found in comparison with the previous experiments using naturalistic voices, which suggests that knowledge that a stimulus was produced by a fellow Palenquero does not have a major impact on participants’ responses, at least as regards recorded specimens. 6. Shortcomings of non-interactive language-identification tasks While previous researchers had recorded considerable naturalistic speech in Palenque, prior to the initiation of the experiments described here, Palenqueros’ explicit interactions with visiting scholars regarding linguistic matters generally fell within 4



Given the latitude with which the definition of heritage speakers has been applied (e.g., Montrul 2011: 592; Polinsky 2011: 306; Pascual y Cabo & Rothman 2012: 450) as well as the varying personal histories, this group is naturally more diverse. For the purposes of the present study, all individuals classified as heritage Palenquero speakers range in age from the early 40’s to around 60.

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the parameters of ethnographic research. More recently as a result of numerous visits by casual tourists as well as scholars of Palenquero language and culture, some Palenqueros now regard LP as an economic asset to be cashed in for material rewards. First-time visitors to Palenque are often intercepted by self-acclaimed expert LP speakers who demand a cash payment up front in exchange for speaking LP; younger community members may be content with a meal or a drink (cp. Schwegler 2011b). Although some of the proffered LP may be legitimate, language data obtained through pre-arranged “purchase” are inherently suspect, as opposed to freely offered speech (for which appropriate acknowledgment should be offered voluntarily after the fact). In the case of language-identification questionnaires that require only a passive response (e.g. responding “Spanish” or Lengua ri Palenge,” “yes” or “no,” etc.) some participants may respond without reflection —perhaps even giving the same response for all stimuli— with the knowledge that remuneration will follow irrespective of the quality of the responses. Other confounding factors include the implicit view that visiting scholars surely “know best” about language matters, as well as a simple desire to please the researcher, all of which may yield unreliable response data. Given the results of the first language-identification queries it is likely that some or all of these factors intervened at various points. Several older participants classified all stimulus utterances as LP, including those pronounced entirely in Spanish and lacking any culturally-bound lexical items that might trigger a LP response. Even when these participants’ classifications were challenged by the author, they insisted that everything they had heard was entirely in LP. Since these same individuals have been observed to speak LP with little or no Spanish incursion as well as fully fluent (local vernacular) Spanish, it is evident that their responses do not reflect an inability to distinguish the two languages. The attentiveness and accuracy of participants is reflected in their D-prime scores, a calculation derived from the rate of correct responses (“hits”) minus the rate of false positive responses (“false alarms”). D-prime scores reported in Lipski (forthcoming b) reveal very large differences among participants, including several “infinite” values due to several participants’ classification of all stimuli as all-LP or acceptable LP. This behavior is the equivalent of taking a true-false test by always answering “true” without even looking at the questions, and provides no insight into the participants’ linguistic competence. In a preliminary test with individuals who had not participated in previous language identification tasks, the author himself produced the stimulus utterances in a personal face-to-face setting; in these cases respondents identified nominally mixed utterances at relatively higher rates. This procedure suffers from the inherent variability of the orally produced stimuli from one session to another, but gains the advantage of ensuring greater participant attentiveness, especially given Palen-

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queros’ gracious encouragement of outsiders’ efforts to learn Lengua ri Palenge. In the case of potential participants with no uncorrected visual impediments, a video recording (of the author and presented with the author present) might provide the desired combination of personal engagement and replicability. 7. Palenqueros and interactive tasks: acceptability and repetition Most of the morphosyntactic differences that separate Spanish and LP are both binary and categorical: verbs either agree with subjects or they do not, adjectives either agree in gender with head nouns or they do not, direct objects are either expressed by preverbal clitics (Spanish) or postverbal free-standing pronouns (creole), etc. At the same time examples of nominally mixed naturalistic speech produced by Palenqueros often contain more than one Spanish-like item, making it difficult to assess the relative contribution of individual elements to language identification. There is no reason to assume that opportunistically collected language samples contain the full range of actually occurring mixed configurations. In order to more accurately probe for the factor(s) most responsible for Palenqueros’ identification of utterances as all-LP or mixed, a set of 105 synthesized utterances was prepared, of which 30 were in “canonical” LP and each of the remaining 25 contained a single Spanish-like element grafted onto an LP utterance. The Spanish-like elements include: spanish subject pronouns:

nosotro(s) ‘we,’ ello(s) ‘they,’ yo ‘I’5



spanish preverbal object clitics:

me (1s), te (2s), lo (3s)6

spanish feminine gender concord:

on postnominal and predicate adjectives



1st-person singular present (e.g. hago ‘I do,’ tengo ‘I have’); 1st-person plural in -mo (e.g. queremo ‘we want’); 3rd-person singular present (e.g. tiene ‘have,’ puede ‘can’); 2nd-person singular preterite (e.g. llega(s)te ‘you arrived’); 3rd-person singular imperfect (e.g. tenía ‘had’); 3rd-person singular preterite (e.g. llegó ‘arrived’).

spanish preverbal negation

in no.7 e.g. si ané no tené trabaho ‘if they don’t have work’

spanish conjugated verbs:

Yo does occur in LP (e.g. Schwegler 2002: 279) although most grammatical descriptions only list i for subject position. In Palenquero yo is a free-standing tonic pronoun, found, e.g. after prepositions or in combination with the subject clitic i, while i is an unstressed clitic. Moñino (2012: fn. 25) also cites examples of subject yo without the accompanying clitic i: yó tá akí ‘I am here.’ 6 In LP lo exists as a postverbal object clitic in alternation with ele, but does not normally occur preverbally as in Spanish. 7 Preverbal no does occasionally occur in LP (in addition to its use in double negative impera5



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John M. Lipski muhé kasa niño niña

vs. vs. vs. vs.

changaína posá monasito monasita

‘woman’ ‘house’ ‘boy, child (m.)’ ‘girl, child (f.)’

The same 56 Palenqueros who participated in the language-identification task with synthesized stimuli also contributed to this experiment, which combined speeded grammaticality judgments (Bader & Meng 1999, Felser et al. 2009) and concurrent memory-loaded repetition. For each stimulus, respondents were asked to state whether the utterance was “good” Palenquero (no definition of acceptability was offered) by quickly responding “yes” or “no,” then repeat the sentence exactly as they had heard it, whether or not they had found it to be acceptable. Results of the “corrections” induced during repetition are analyzed in Lipski (2014, forthcoming b) and reveal traditional Palenqueros’ consistent production of “canonical” LP structures even when listening to LP-Spanish hybrid combinations.8 Despite requests to repeat the stimulus utterances after giving the acceptability judgment, some participants did not perform full repetitions. However the 5880 “yes”-“no” responses (56 subjects x 105 stimuli) can be analyzed to determine statistically significant tendencies. As with the language identification tasks, the 30 LP stimuli with no Spanish-like morphosyntactic incursions were accepted at very high rates: traditional speakers 88%, heritage speakers 81%, L2 speakers 81%, and LP teachers 91%. The 75 putatively mixed examples were identified as such (with “no” responses) at lower rates, also comparable to earlier language-identification tasks: 38% (traditional), 47% (heritage), 36% (young L2), and 69% LP teachers. Although young L2 speakers and traditional speakers exhibited similarly low rates of identification of mixed LP-Spanish stimuli, the reasons appear to be different. Traditional speakers as a group do not typically mix languages in the fashion found in the stimuli. However, many have confessed to the author that they are resigned to hearing language mixture among younger Palenqueros. The figures are also inflated by five traditional speakers who responded to all stimuli as acceptable LP-only. Young speakers on the other hand, while visibly attentive during the experiments, do not have as firm a grasp on LP grammatical structures, concentrating instead on the aforementioned lexical shibboleths.



8

tive constructions in no ... nu), e.g. Dieck (2000), but not in combination with conjugated verbs or other Spanish-like elements. In an earlier experiment (reported in Lipski forthcoming a, b), Palenqueros close-shadowed a variety of all-Spanish, all-LP, and mixed utterances, and spontaneous “corrections” provided clues as to the participants’ underlying grammars.

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8. Factors influencing identification of acceptable Lengua ri Palenge 8.1. Logistic regression: VARBRUL In order to determine which linguistic factors —individually and in various combinations— might be influencing participants’ judgments, a series of multivariate analyses was performed on the responses to the 30 stimuli couched entirely in “canonical” LP. The results revealed no strong linguistic cues for language identification among the stimuli. A logistic regression was conducted in VARBRUL (GOLDVARB-X version) in order to simultaneously determine the relative contributions of independent variables on the dependent variable (in this case identification of an utterance as all-LP or mixed). VARBRUL yields relative factor weights for each independent variable that range from 0 to 1.0; weights less than 0.5 disfavor the chosen value of the dependent variable (identification as all-LP) while factor weights greater than 0.5 favor this identification; a value of 0.5 indicates no effect on the dependent variable. For each group of factors the range between the highest and lowest factor-weight values provides a relative measure of the importance of that independent variable: the greater the range the greater the overall impact of that variable on the outcome. The VARBRUL analyses were conducted with predictor variables that typify LP grammatical structures that differ from Spanish: the presence of one or more LP pronouns, LP constituent-final negation in nu, absence of feminine gender agreement on noun + adjective combinations cognate with grammatically feminine Spanish items, the presence of invariant verbs in single and double combinations, preverbal tense-mood-aspect particles, and a variety of lexical items peculiar to LP or to Spanish. Since several of the stimuli contained more than one uniquely LP lexical item, all key lexical items were coded together for each stimulus, in the order in which they appeared. Speaker group (traditional, heritage, young L2, LP teacher) was also a predictor variable. A number of runs were performed with varying combinations of predictors; ultimately the only model that yielded a reasonable p-value (level of confidence in the significance of the results) was the one that selected only speaker group and principal lexical items as significant. No LP grammatical element emerged as a significant predictor of correct all-LP identification. The results are summarized in Table 2. Traditional speakers appear to slightly favor a correct identification of LP stimuli while the three other groups fall slightly below the break-even value of .5. Regardless, the small range indicates that group membership is not a compelling predictor. The range of factor weight values for the lexical items is quite large, but the results are at times counterintuitive. The low values for kasa ‘house,’ muhé ‘woman,’ and changaina ‘woman, girl’ probably reflect the ongoing debate among

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young lexical purist teachers and activists who reject kasa in favor of posá (itself derived from Spanish posada ‘inn’) and changaína (literally ‘aunt hen’) instead of muhé.9 Traditional speakers vehemently reject changaína (for some speakers it refers to a woman of loose morals), so the inclusion of both muhé and changaína in the stimulus set produced highly polarized results that are reflected in the factor weights. It can also be seen that the presence of muhé or changaína is sufficient to tip the balance away from LP identification even when combined with exclusively LP lexical items such as sendá ‘to be’ and ngolo ‘overweight/fat’ (Span. < gordo); the addition of these items has almost no effect on factor weights. There are also several counterintuitive results, which taken together suggest that only a few of the lexical items that have aroused controversy stand out as triggers for LP identification, while in other cases Palenqueros make a more holistic evaluation. Gwarumá ‘foreigner’ seems to be strongly correlated with correct LP identification but the combination ku gwarumá ‘with foreigners’ slightly disfavors identification as LP. Tiela ... semblá ‘land to plant’ exhibits two cases of the uniquely Palenquero /ɾ/ > [l] shift and strongly favors LP identification, but the triple combination of polé semblá losa ‘be able to plant a field’ (Sp. poder sembrar... roza) appears to disfavor LP identification. Other unexpected results include the disfavoring effects of prime LP lexical items such as miní ‘to come,’ kusa ‘thing,’ and koká ‘coconut candy’ (< Sp. cocada ‘idem’).Ultimately the small number of tokens of each lexical item also undermines the reliability of the data in Table 2. 8.2. General linear mixed-effects models Mixed-effects models acknowledge the fact that participants and stimuli in effect represent random variables (i.e., with a mean of zero and unknown variance) and therefore cannot be directly compared with fixed or repeatable effects (e.g., gender, age, social class). The application of mixed-effects models to linguistic data is outlined in Baayen, Davidson & Bates (2008), Cunnings (2012), and Jaeger (2008). Given the considerable inter-participant differences that characterize Palenqueros’ responses in the language-identification task, a generalized linear mixed-effects model was constructed in the software package R (www.R-project. org), with participant and stimulus as random intercepts. The large variance associated with individual participants (2.17) reflects the considerable variation among respondents, but despite the wide variety of stimuli, the variance associated with stimulus as random effect was only 0.12. 9



In a conversation held on July 31, 2014 with the present author, Sebastián Salgado, one of the Palenquero language teachers and current president of Palenque’s Consejo Comunitario, affirmed that changaína had been deliberately “invented” as a substitute for muhé by a group of young activists (himself included), around 1990.

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Group

VARBRUL factor weight for correct LP identification

Traditional

.59

Heritage

.46

LP teacher

.44

Young L2 (ages 18-21)

.45

Range

.15

Lexical item kelé chitiá ku ‘want to talk with’ kusa ‘thing’ polé semblá losa ‘be able to plant (a) garden’ tiela semblá ‘land to plant’ andi ‘where, in’ miní ‘to come’ koká ‘coconut candy’ kasa ‘house’ muhé ‘woman’ muhé sendá ngolo ‘(the) woman is overweight/fat’ muhé ñamá ‘(the) woman is called’ muhé ngolo kelé ‘(the) overweight/fat woman wants’ muhé kolorao ‘white woman’ changaína sendá ngolo ‘(the) woman is overweight/fat’ ma hende kelaba ‘people wanted’ kumé masamola awé ‘eat corn stew today’ mazamola hweba ‘corn stew was’ miná kasa ‘see (the) house’ nda mi-ndo ‘give (it to) me’ gwarumá ‘foreigner’ ku gwarumá ‘with foreigner(s)’ mahaná ri ‘kids from’ chikito pelé ma bieho ‘kids lose ... old folks’ kwagro ‘youth social group’ moná ‘child’ no key lexical item

.90 .39 .42 .81 .53 .37 .34 .22 .32 .34 .37 .37 .34 .30 .67 .81 .28 .19 .32 .81 .45 .62 .26 .67 .67 .63

Range

.71

Input: .866

Log likelihood: -665.059

N = 1624

Significance = .007

Table 2. Lexical and demographic factors influencing correct identification of all-LP utterances

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To gain further insights, a revised model was constructed using the Rbrul routine (Johnson 2009) with only participant as a random effect. The factor weights for lexical items mirror those resulting from the VARBRUL analysis. With participant as a random intercept, however, participant group is no longer significant (an independently constructed model using the glmm function in R yields p < .06 for participant group, above the .05 threshold of statistical significance). This tradeoff stems from the variation among the five teachers, two of whom appeared to err on the side of caution by classifying a large number of nominally all-LP utterances as unacceptable. Since “unacceptable” cannot be directly equated with a mixture of LP and Spanish, other factors may have intervened in some of the teachers’ responses. Overall, all of the models performed poorly and yield incongruent conclusions, which suggests that Palenqueros do not principally base their identification of LP on the “leading indicators” used in this experiment. Other combinations of lexical and morphosyntactic elements may exhibit greater predictive value; the matter awaits further exploration. 9. Factors influencing judgments of unacceptability (= mixing?) 9.1. Logistic regression: VARBRUL Palenqueros’ reactions to nominally-mixed stimuli (in most cases containing LP as the matrix language with individual Spanish morphosyntactic incursions), although exhibiting the same variability as found in early language-identification tasks, provide a clearer set of triggering factors. The stimulus set contained 75 utterances with a variety of Spanish-like morphosyntactic elements in addition to an array of canonical LP configurations and shibboleth lexical items. Multivariate logistic regression analyses were conducted in VARBRUL with “no” responses (i.e., correct identification of the utterance as “mixed”) as the dependent variable and, in addition to speaker group, the following predictors: lexical items identified with LP or Spanish, Spanish subject pronouns, LP subject pronouns, presence or absence of feminine gender marking on LP items cognate with Spanish, verbs with a variety of Spanish-like inflections as well as LP invariant verbs (single and two-verb combinations), the presence of LP preverbal tense-mood-aspect particles, LP postnominal possessives, Spanish-like preverbal object clitics, and Spanish-like preverbal vs. LP constituent-final negation. The best-fitting logistic regression model combined (a) all language-specific and controversial lexical items into a single factor group, and (b) did the same with all Spanish-like and LP verbs + TMA particles. The results are shown in Table 3, where the important role of lexical items as both distracters and identifiers emerges clearly. The singly-occurring and exclusively LP verb bae ‘to go’ strongly disfavored identification of mixed stimuli, while combining bae with

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Spanish-only niña ‘girl’ (monasita in LP) was strongly correlated with a correct mixed identification. The presence of kasa ‘house’ in various combinations was correlated with correct mixed identification (although kasa itself was not regarded as a Spanish intrusion), and trabaho ‘work’ was equally strongly associated with correct mixed judgments (once more trabaho was not regarded a priori as a Spanish element). Strings of all-LP elements apparently distracted attention away from Spanish-like intrusions, resulting in misidentification of mixed utterances as all-LP (e.g. ma hende kelaba ku ‘people remained with’; masamola hweba ‘(the) corn stew was’). The Spanish subject pronouns nosotro(s) ‘we’ and ello(s) ‘they’ have not been observed in the naturalistic LP discourse of fluent bilingual speakers, and the inclusion of these pronouns in the stimuli is strongly correlated with correct judgment of mixed status. On the other hand, uté (Spanish usted ‘you [formal]’), while rarely occurring in the author’s corpus of LP, appeared to disfavor mixed identification of other elements in the utterance. However when considering factor groups chosen as significant in the VARBRUL runs, no combination of LP pronouns emerged as a significant predictor of mixed identification. The presence of Spanish-like preverbal clitics is a relatively weak predictor of mixed-language judgments while verb type —including both Spanish-like conjugated verbs and LP tma article + invariant verb— emerges as a significant factor in the prediction of mixed language responses. In general, verbs that patently agree with the subject in person and number (e.g. present and preterite tenses) favor acknowledgment of the respective stimuli as mixed. On the other hand, uniquely LP verb phrases combining a TMA particle and an invariant verb stem strongly disfavor acknowledgment of Spanish intrusions elsewhere in the utterance. This pattern partially explains why utterances with unequivocally Spanish intrusions are so frequently accepted as all-LP or acceptable LP; given the dominant role played by the verb phrase and the striking differences between LP and Spanish verbal constructions, the presence of a LP verbal structure captures the attention of listeners and blunts the awareness of other deviations from canonical LP morphosyntax.

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Factor

VARBRUL factor weight for correct mixed LP-Spanish identification

Group Traditional

.41

Heritage

.51

LP teachers

.75

Young L2s

.40

Range

.35

Lexical items bai

‘to go’

.26

bai niña

‘to go + girl’

.89

moná

‘child’

.44

koká

‘coconut candy’

.41

changaína sendá ngola ‘woman is overweight/fat’

.58

muhé

‘woman’

.57

muhé sendá ngolo

‘woman is overweight/fat’

.67

muhé ñamá

‘woman is called’

.52

miná muhé kolendo

‘to look at the woman running’

.32

koká + muhé

‘coconut candy + woman’

.29

muhé ngola kelé

‘(the) overweight/fat woman wants’

.18

muhé kolorao

‘Caucasian woman’

.62

miná

‘to look’

.59

miná kasa

‘to look at the house’

.68

miní kasa hwe

‘to come + house is’

.40

komblá

‘to buy’

.48

kelé komblá

‘to want to buy’

.42

komblá kasa kelá

‘to buy a house to stay’

.68

plata awé

‘money today/money nowadays’

.53

kuchá hende

‘to listen to people’

.43

kusa

‘thing’

.72

awé kusa

‘today + something’

.56

masamola hwebba

‘corn stew was’

.33

mazamola awé

‘corn stew today’

.44

ma hende kelaba ku

‘people stayed with’

.29

nda

‘to give’

.40

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nda mi-ndo

‘to give me’

.52

trabaho

‘work’

.70

none

.47

Range

.71

Spanish pronouns yo

‘I’

ello

‘they’

(< Sp. ellos)

.70

uté

‘you’

(< Sp. usted)

.33

(< Sp. nosotros)

.85

nosotro ‘we’

.63

none

.44

Range

.52

Verb type / TMA particle LP invariant

.63

a + V (perfective/present; ‘achieved’)

.25

(a) sé + V (habitual)

.35

ta + V (progressive)

.37

tan + V (future)

.25

1s present

.65

1pl present

.63

3s present

.78

2s preterite

.69

3s preterite

.61

imperfect singular

.53

Range

.45

Preverbal Spanish object clitic me

.38

me lo

.44

te

.66

te lo

.55

none

.50

Range

.28

Input: .444

Log likelihood: -2617.031

N = 4256

Significance = .000

Table 3. Factors influencing correct identification of mixed LP-Spanish utterances

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9.2. General linear mixed-effects models A generalized linear mixed-effects model was fitted in R for the nominally-mixed utterances, with participant and stimulus as random intercepts. The variance in all-LP vs. mixed responses associated with individual participants (5.37) is much higher than for the all-LP stimuli (2.17), where greater inter-speaker consistency was observed. As with the all-LP utterances the variance associated with stimulus as random effect was only 0.12, so a generalized linear mixed-effects model with participant as random intercept was conducted with Rbrul. Once again participant group does not emerge as significant due to considerable inter-participant variance in the identification of nominally-mixed utterances. The remaining factors identified by VARBRUL remain significant with essentially the same factor weights. 10. General discussion 10.1.Overall findings The multivariate analyses shed light on Palenqueros’ responses to combinations of LP and Spanish. The data presented in the preceding sections underscore the dichotomy between Palenqueros’ active production of LP and Spanish (codeswitched or not) and their passive classification of language samples. The concurrent memory-loaded repetition tasks (Lipski forthcoming a, b) converge on the conclusion that fluent bilinguals maintain distinct grammars for LP and Spanish; the LP grammatical structures that emerge during spontaneous “corrections” of mixed input stimuli closely resemble the descriptive studies that form the basis for “canonical” LP designations. At the same time it appears that while bilingual Palenqueros effectively process any and all occurring mixtures of LP and Spanish (as well as unattested contrived examples), this does not always result in immediate classification with respect to source language(s). This finding is not surprising considering the long-standing symbiotic relationship between Spanish and LP as well as the highly cognate lexicons involved. Another factor contributing to Palenqueros’ seeming failure to acknowledge language mixing is that prior to the arrival of outside researchers, community members apparently did not offer “corrections” to either LP or local Spanish. When reacting to negative attitudes by their countrymen from outside the community, Palenqueros simply chose to eschew the use of Lengua and to encourage their children not to speak the language publicly. It is indeed rather striking that given the potential for cross-linguistic transfer at every level, fluent bilinguals compartmentalize the grammars of the two languages with such consistency in production, reflecting the observation by Schwegler & Morton (2003) that Palenqueros evidently strive —consciously or subconsciously so— to maintain separate identities, one local, one regional.

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10.2. The role of lexical items Although the experimental data collected to date are insufficient to determine with confidence the full range of linguistic cues that favor identification of utterances as all-LP or mixed, or to rank these factors in terms of cue strength, several recurring themes emerge from what appears at first blush to be an amorphous array of responses. Foremost among the cues is lexical selection, which reflects the fact that naive native speakers often regard as primary distinguishing features elements that a trained linguist might regard as rather minor. In this case despite the high degree of lexical overlap between Spanish and LP and some quite significant grammatical differences, the salience of a select group of lexical items has been demonstrated through participants’ metalinguistic commentaries, spontaneous substitutions during concurrent memory-loaded tasks, and responses to language-identification and acceptability judgment tasks. It is tempting to attribute the prominent role of lexical selection to the drive by young activist teachers to purge LP of lexical items felt to be recent Spanish incursions, and to replace them with “original” African or at least non-Spanish words. This viewpoint is reinforced by the observation that older traditional speakers —including many who have served as consultants to previous researchers— generally do not use these “neo-Palenquero” words. In any case, the variationist analyses represent the application of mathematical algorithms to the sometimes idiosyncratic and usually inscrutable responses of human participants, in the search for statistically significant trends. While the ensuing results are suggestive of prevailing reactions of Palenqueros to the languages of their community, they do not directly establish the membership of given words and grammatical elements to one language or the other. The variationist analyses have reaffirmed the shibboleth status of kasa-posá ‘house,’ muhé-changaína ‘woman,’ trabahá-makaniá ‘to work,’ morí-lungá ‘to die,’ and a few other pairs, recurrent in didactic presentations. The relatively recent genesis of this phenomenon is suggested by the asymmetry of responses between young and traditional speakers as well as LP language teachers. Whereas young school-trained L2 speakers ardently reject kasa, muhé, trabahá, etc., traditional speakers are much more tolerant of the “replacement” items, many of which did at one time enjoy a wider use in the community. The one exception is changaína, which for the reasons stated earlier is routinely rejected by traditional speakers and is viewed with ambivalence by the LP language teachers. While the teachers are/were still aware of this taboo (one admitted to giving up this word in front of students in the face of objections from older speakers), younger speakers no longer sense the taboo (semantic bleaching). Also implicated in language identification are lexical items that bear unique LP phonotactic traits, in particular the shift of Spanish prevocalic /ɾ/ and /r/ to [l] (e.g.

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komblá < Sp. comprar ‘to buy,’ aló < Sp. arroz ‘rice,’ pelo < Sp. perro ‘dog’) and prenasalized voice obstruents (e.g. nda < Sp. dar ‘to give,’ ndo < Sp. dos ‘two,’ ngande < Sp. grande ‘big,’ ngaína < Sp. gallina ‘chicken, hen,’ mbulo < Sp. burro ‘donkey’). These words do not usually figure in the metalinguistic debates involving “traditional” vs. “modern Spanish” words in LP, and as a consequence their status as a cue in language identification is probably not a direct result of recent language revitalization and metalinguistic activism. 10.3. Verbs and language islands In Palenque, the role of verbs in language identification is difficult to tease apart from more general lexical choices. For stimuli meeting the criteria for all-LP, the presence of quintessential LP particle + verb combinations is not a significant predictor of correct identification. In mixed utterances with Spanish-like conjugated verbs, the presence of a LP particle + verb combination frequently overshadows the Spanish verb to such an extent that the entire utterance is judged as all-LP. This includes not only Spanish verbs in parenthetical islands such as te digo ‘I’m telling you’ but also main verbs. “Hybrid” verbs such as kelemo ‘we want’ that combine the LP /ɾ/ > [l] change (the LP verb is kelé) and Spanish-like subject-verb agreement produce variable results in the multivariate analysis (and were explicitly accepted as “good” LP by some traditional speakers reported in Lipski forthcoming b), but in general these items do not emerge as strong predictors in language identification. An examination of the Spanish-LP combinations found in the author’s corpus reveals that in almost all cases Spanish-only elements co-occur in constituents that respect Spanish morphosyntax, irrespective of surrounding LP structures. Thus (Spanish-only) preverbal object clitics are always combined with (Spanish-only) conjugated verbs as is (nearly Spanish-only) preverbal negation. Conjugated verbs, even when combined with LP subject pronouns, occupy the same position as LP verbs. Moreover the author has observed no instances where LP-only nouns combine with Spanish definite articles or prenominal possessives or with (feminine) gender-inflected adjectives.10 This includes not only lexical items with completely different roots (e.g., LP ngombe ~ Sp. vaca ‘cow,’ LP piangulí ~ Sp. puerco ‘pig’) but also virtual pairs that differ only phonologically: (LP ngaína ~ Sp. gallina

An inebriated man said el nombre mi jue ... ‘my name is,’ combining the LP postposed possessive mi with the Spanish definite article el (the noun nombre ‘name’ is shared by Spanish and LP, although a few Palenqueros occasionally say nomble). A distracted woman once said en la noche vine aquí pa mi posá ‘at night I came to my house,’ a sentence entirely in Spanish except for the traditional and neo-LP word posá ‘house’ instead of the expected kasa.

10

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‘chicken, hen,’ LP pelo ~ Sp. perro ‘dog’).11 LP-only verbs with no phonological counterpart in Spanish (e.g., LP lungá ~ Sp. morir ‘to die’) also do not take Spanish suffixes; occasionally LP verbs phonologically similar to their Spanish counterparts take the 1st person plural suffix –mo, already shown to have relatively high levels of acceptance within LP discourse. Recorded examples include kelemo (LP kelé ~ Sp. queremos) ‘we want,’ komblamo (LP komblá ~ Sp. compramos) ‘we buy,’ se kela (LP kelá ~ Sp. se queda) ‘[it] remains.’ The absence of constituent-internal grammatical incongruities presumably contributes to the fact that Spanish-only combinations surrounded by LP often pass unnoticed by Palenquero listeners.12 10.4. The case of suto ‘we’ Further insights into Palenqueros’ awareness of and response to differences between Spanish and LP will emerge as research into Palenquero bilingualism continues. Larger corpora and more nuanced stimuli may further tease apart the relative contributions of lexical and morphosyntactic elements as triggers for language identification. For example, although LP pronouns as a group were not chosen as a significant predictor, the pronoun suto ‘we’ emerges as a potential distractor. In cross-tabulations, combinations (N = 616) of suto + verb conjugated in the first-person plural (corresponding to Spanish nosotro(s)) were correlated with identification of the matrix utterances as mixed 48% of the time, and in 52% utterances containing suto combined with a Spanish-like conjugated verb were classified as “all-LP”. Nominally mixed tokens containing suto combined with an invariant LP verb (N = 393) received only 21% correct (mixed) and 79% incorrect (all-LP) designations, i.e. overlooking the presence of other Spanish-like incursions. This is in contrast to approximately equal proportions of correct and incorrect attributions in the presence of the LP pronouns bo ‘you’ (52% incorrect), ané ‘they’ (57% incorrect), i ‘I’ (55% incorrect), and e(le) ‘(s)he’ (52% incorrect). Enú ‘you’ (pl.) was not included in the analysis since previous observations had suggested that not all Palenqueros recognize or accept this pronoun. 11. Conclusions The mathematical study of fractals (e.g. Mandelbrot 1977) has demonstrated that naturally occurring objects such as coastlines appear from a distance to have a

The author has one recorded example of the putatively LP phrase maílo mío ‘my husband’ (LP maílo mi, Sp. mi marido or marido mío) combining a LP noun and a postposed Spanish possessive adjective. 12 Schwegler (2011c: 464) mentions LP-Spanish lexical dichotomies that almost never result in bilingual crossover, e.g., LP loyo vs. Sp. arroyo ‘creek’. 11

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clearly delimited and finitely bounded perimeter, but —when examined with increasingly greater magnification— reveal chaotically fragmented and ultimately un-measurable boundaries. In a similar fashion the grammatical boundaries between Spanish and Lengua ri Palenge seem equally well-defined when viewed from the standpoint of canonical descriptions, but when put to the test in psycholinguistic experiments, assignment of categorical status becomes increasingly indeterminate. Despite apparently clear-cut grammatical distinctions that separate the languages, the combined effects of incipient language attrition over the past two to three generations, enhanced metalinguistic awareness due to ethno-education programs, and a newly revitalized pride in the language and culture of San Basilio de Palenque have resulted in asymmetry between grammatical performance and perception. Strict grammatically-defined boundaries have been partially supplanted by a more amorphous duality based on a combination of key lexical items, phonotactic profiles, and acknowledgment of known speakers as “true” Palenqueros. At the moment, the linguistic situation of San Basilio de Palenque reveals the lack of homology between “grammars” and “languages,” thereby challenging scholars and teachers to define and delimit the true nature of Palenquero bilingualism. REFERENCES Arcos, Dr. (Camilo Delgado). 1913. Historias, leyendas y tradiciones de Cartagena, vol. 4. Cartagena: Tipografía de J. V. Mogollón. Baayen, R. H.; Davidson, D. J. & Bates, D. M.. 2008. Mixed-effects modeling with crossed random effects for subjects and items. Journal of Memory and Language 59. 390-412. Bader, Markus & Meng, Michael. 1999. Subject-object ambiguities in German embedded clauses: an across-the-board comparison. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research 28. 121-143. Bickerton, Derek & Escalante, Aquiles. 1970. Palenquero: a Spanishbased creole of northern Colombia. Lingua 32. 254-267. Boersma, Paul & Weenink, David. 1999-2005. PRAAT: Doing phonetics by computer. http: //www.fon.hum.uva.nl/praat/ Cásseres Estrada, Solmery. 2005. Diccionario lengua afro palenquero-español. Cartagena de Indias: Ediciones Pluma de Mompox. Chomsky, Noam. 1957. Syntactic structures. Den Haag: Mouton. Cunnings, Ian. 2012. An overview of mixed-effects statistical models for second language researchers. Second Language Research 28. 369-382. Davis, Martha Swearingen. 1997. A syntactic, semantic, and diachronic analysis of Palenquero ba. Ph. D. dissertation, Stanford University. Davis, Martha Swearingen. 2000. The past imperfect in Palenquero. Studies in Language 24. 565-581.

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Dieck, Marianne. 2000. La negación en palenquero. Madrid/Frankfurt: Iberoamericana/ Vervuert. Escalante, Aquiles. 1954. Notas sobre el Palenque de San Basilio, una comunidad negra en Colombia. Divulgaciones Etnológicas (Barranquilla) 3. 207-359. Felser, Claudia; Sato, Mikako & Bertenshaw, Nicholas. 2009. The on-line application of Binding Principle A in English as a second language. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition 12. 485-502. Ferrari, Ludmila. 2012. San Basilio de Palenque (Colombia): un performance de la libertad. In Maglia & Schwegler (eds.), 57-84. Friedemann, Nina S. de & Patiño Rosselli, Carlos. 1983. Lengua y sociedad en el Palenque de San Basilio. Bogotá: Instituto Caro y Cuervo. Fundación para el Desarrollo Social Transformemos. 2011. Son ri tambó / son de tambores. La Calera, Colombia: Fundación para el Desarrollo Social Transformemos. Granda, Germán de. 1968. La tipología ‘criolla’ de dos hablas del área lingüística hispánica. Thesaurus 23. 193-205. Jaeger, T. Florian. 2008. Categorical data analysis: away from ANOVAs (transformation or not) and towards Logit Mixed Models. Journal of Memory and Language 59. 434-446. Johnson, Daniel Ezra. 2009. Getting off the GoldVarb standard: introducing Rbrul for mixed-effects variable rule analysis. Language and Linguistics Compass 3. 359-383. Lewis, Anthony. 1970. A descriptive analysis of the Palenquero dialect (a Spanish-based creole of northern Colombia, South America). M. A. thesis, University of the West Indies, Mona, Jamaica. Lipski, John. 2011. El “nuevo” palenquero y el español afroboliviano: ¿Es reversible la descriollización? In Luis Ortiz-López (ed.), Selected Proceedings of the 13th Hispanic Linguistics Symposium, 1-16. Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Press. Lipski, John. 2012a. The “new” Palenquero: Revitalization and re-creolization. In Richard File-Muriel & Rafael Orozco (eds.), Colombian varieties of Spanish, 21-41. Madrid/Frankfurt: Iberoamericana/Vervuert. Lipski, John. 2012b. Free at last: From bound morpheme to discourse marker in Lengua ri Palenge (Palenquero Creole Spanish). Anthropological Linguistics 54. 101-132. Lipski, John. 2014. From “more” to “less”: Spanish, Palenquero (Afro-Colombian creole), and gender agreement. Language, Cognition and Neuroscience. On-line publication: DOI: 10.1080/23273798.2014.975727 (no volume number; no page numbers) Lipski, John. Forthcoming a. How many “grammars” per “language”?: Mapping the psycholinguistic boundaries between Spanish and Palenquero. Jason Smith & Tabea Ihsane (eds.), Proceedings of LSRL 42. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Lipski, John. Forthcoming b. Palenquero and Spanish: A first psycholinguistic exploration. Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages. Maglia, Graciela & Yves Moñino. 2014. Kondalo pa bibí mejó. Contarlo para vivir mejor. Oratura y oralitura de San Basilio de Palenque (Colombia). Bogotá: Editorial Pontificia Universidad Javeriana. Maglia, Graciela & Schwegler, Armin (eds.). 2012. Palenque Colombia: oralidad, identidad y resistencia. Bogotá: Pontificia Universidad Javeriana.

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Mandelbrot, Benoit. 1977. Fractals: form, chance, and dimension. San Francisco: W. H. Freeman and Company. Ministerio de Cultura, Programa de Concertación. 2011. Seína i pabí: katiya ri lengua ri Palenge. Cartagena de Indias: Impresores Master. Moñino, Yves. 2012. Pasado, presente y futuro de la lengua de Palenque. In Maglia & Schwegler (eds.), 221-255. Montrul, Silvina. 2011. Multiple interfaces and incomplete acquisition. Lingua 212. 591-604. Morton, Thomas. 2005. Sociolinguistic variation and language change in El Palenque de San Basilio (Colombia). Ph. D. dissertation, University of Pennsylvania. Navarrete, María Cristina. 2008. San Basilio de Palenque: memoria y tradición. Cali: Programa Editorial, Universidad del Valle. Navarrete, María Cristina. 2012. Palenques: cimarrones y castas en el Caribe colombiano — sus relaciones sociales [siglo XVII]. In Maglia & Schwegler (eds.), 257-284. Pascual y Cabo, Diego & Rothman, Jason J. 2012. The (il)logical problem of heritage speaker bilingualism and incomplete acquisition. Applied Linguistics 33. 450-455. Pérez Miranda, Bernardino. 2011. Chitieno lengua ku ma kuendo (hablemos palenquero a través del cuento). Cartagena de Indias: Pluma de Mompox. Pérez Tejedor, Juana Pabla. 2004. El criollo de Palenque de San Basilio: una visión estructural de su lengua. Bogotá: Universidad de los Andes, Centro Colombiano de Estudios de Lenguas Aborígenes. Polinsky, Maria. 2011. Reanalysis in adult heritage language: a case for attrition. Studies in Second Language Acquisition 45. 1-45. Schwegler, Armin. 1996. “Chi ma nkongo”: lengua y rito ancestrales en El Palenque de San Basilio (Colombia). Madrid/Frankfurt: Iberoamericana/Vervuert. 2 vols. Schwegler, Armin. 1998. El palenquero. In Mathias Perl & Armin Schwegler (eds.), América negra: panorámica actual de los estudios lingüísticos sobre variedades hispanas, portuguesas y criollas, 219-291. Madrid/Frankfurt: Iberoamericana/Vervuert. Schwegler, Armin. 2001. The myth of decreolization: the anomalous case of Palenquero. In Ingrid Holzschuh & Edgar Schneider (eds.), Degrees of restructuring in creole languages, 409-436. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Schwegler, Armin. 2002. On the (African) origins of Palenquero subject pronouns. Diachronica 19. 273-332. Schwegler, Armin. 2011a. Palenque(ro): the search for its African substrate. In Claire Lefebvre (ed.), Creoles, their substrates, and language typology, 225-249. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Schwegler, Armin. 2011b. On the extraordinary revival of a creole: Palenquero (Colombia). In Marleen Haboud & Nicholas Ostler (eds.), Endangered Languages — Voices and Images, 153-165. Bath: Foundation for Endangered Languages. Schwegler, Armin. 2011c. Palenque: Colombia: Multilingualism in an extraordinary social and historical context. In Manuel Díaz-Campos (ed.), The handbook of Hispanic sociolinguistics, 446-472. Malden, MA: Blackwell/Wiley. Schwegler, Armin. 2012. Sobre el origen africano de la lengua criolla de Palenque (Colombia). In Maglia & Schwegler (eds.), 107-179.

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Schwegler, Armin. 2013a. Palenquero. In Susanne Michaelis, Philippe Maurer, Martin Haspelmath & Magnus Huber (eds.), The atlas and survey of pidgin and creole language structures. Vol. II: Portuguese-based, Spanish-based and French-based languages, 182-192. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Schwegler, Armin. 2013b. Palenquero structure data set. In Susanne Michaelis, Philippe Maurer, Martin Haspelmath & Magnus Huber (eds.), The atlas of pidgin and creole language structures online. Munich: Max Planck Digital Library, Chapter 28. Available at http: //apics-online.info/contributions/48 {accessed 1 February 2015} Schwegler, Armin & Green, Kate. 2007. Palenquero (creole Spanish). In John Holm & Peter Patrick (eds.), Comparative creole syntax: parallel outlines of 18 creole grammars, 273-306. London: Battlebridge. Schwegler, Armin & Morton, Thomas. 2003. Vernacular Spanish in a microcosm: Kateyano in El Palenque de San Basilio (Colombia). Revista Internacional de Lingüística Iberoamericana 1. 97-159. Simarra Obeso, Rutsely; Miranda Reyes, Regina & Pérez Tejedor, Juana Pabla. 2008. Lengua ri Palenge jende suto ta chitiá. Cartagena de Indias: Casa Editorial C. I. Organización Digital. Simarra Reyes, Luís & Triviño Doval, Álvaro Enrique. 2008. Gramática de la lengua palenquera: introducción para principiantes. Cartagena de Indias: Grafipapel. Urueta, José P. 1890. Documentos para la historia de Cartagena, vol. 3. Cartagena: Tipografía de Aranjo. Vergara Serpa, Berena, coordinator. 2012. Alepuela e Ña Bisenta: katía pa insiñá mu kombetsá ri Palenge/cartilla para la enseñanza de la lengua palenquera. Cartagena: Universidad de Cartagena, Observatorio del Caribe, and Gobernación de Bolívar.

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HOW PSYCHOLINGUISTICS CAN INFORM CONTACT LINGUISTICS: CONVERGING EVIDENCE AGAINST A DECREOLIZATION VIEW OF PALENQUERO 1 Paola E. Dussias, Jason W. Gullifer & Timothy J. Poepsel Pennsylvania State University, University Park This study employs a psycholinguistic task, known as the cued-language switching task, to examine whether the Afro-Iberian creole Palenquero is undergoing partial decreolization. To that end, we recruited (in situ) ten early acquirers and eight late acquirers of Palenquero (all native speakers of Spanish). Pictures of concrete objects were presented to participants in three sets (a Spanish set, a Palenquero set, and a mixed set) using PowerPoint. They viewed each picture and were asked to name the object in question immediately after hearing a beep. Response latencies revealed switch costs for both groups of participants when naming objects in Spanish and in Palenquero, indicating that, for these speakers, cognitively Spanish and Palenquero are separate language systems. Since the presence of switch costs is not to be expected if Palenquero were heavily encroached by Spanish, the results add to the existing body of evidence that argues against Palenquero as a (partially) decreolized speech variety. Keywords: bilingualism, decreolization, field work, language production, language switching, Palenquero, Palenquero Spanish, psycholinguistics

1. Introduction The main goal of the work presented here is to employ a psycholinguistic paradigm known as the Cued-Language Switching Task as a tool to test whether Palenquero (an Afro-Iberian creole spoken in the village of San Basilio de Palenque,

1

The writing of this article was supported in part by NSF Grant OISE-0968369 and NIH Grant 1R21HD071758-01A1 to P. E. Dussias and NSF Grant BCS-1331709 to Jason Gullifer. We thank John M. Lipski for many helpful suggestions while we adapted lab work to the field, and John M. Lipski, Bernardino Pérez Miranda and Victor Simarra for introducing us to San Basilio de Palenque and its speakers. We are very grateful to an anonymous reviewer and to Jorge Valdés Kroff for providing insightful comments, and to Armin Schwegler for his close reading of an earlier version of this manuscript. All errors are, of course, our own.

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Colombia) is undergoing partial decreolization. Creolists generally agree that extensive exposure of a creole to a superordinate language —Spanish, in the case of Palenquero— can result in the gradual approximation of the creole to its historical lexifier language (e.g., Holm 2000: 10, Winford 1993: 7-13, 1997: 17-23) or to a lexically different target language (e.g., Mühlhäusler 1997: 211-212). This process is known as decreolization. There is debate, however, as to what constitutes evidence for decreolization. Minimally, it would require differentiating decreolization from ordinary processes of language change, a task that entails demonstration that a creole feature is being lost (Siegel 2010). The clearest proof might come from reliable data documenting the stages of the history of a creole or from texts containing historical and contemporary data, which can be used to carry out detailed analyses that allow for empirical verification in favor of decreolization (Winford 1993: 378). In many instances, however, this type of evidence is not available. A case in point is found in San Basilio de Palenque, where a creole known by its speakers as Lengua ri Palengue (lit. ‘the language of Palenque’) has been in contact with the socially dominant Spanish for an estimated 300 years (Lipski 2013: 8). Lexically, Spanish and Palenquero are cognate languages (Cásseres Estrada 2005; Lipski 2013; Schwegler 2011), with the vast majority of Palenquero’s everyday words derived from Spanish rather than from African languages (e.g., kasa PALENQUERO /casa SPANISH ‘house’; ombe PALENQUERO /hombre SPANISH ‘man’; kala PALENQUERO /cara SPANISH ‘face’; kusa PALENQUERO /cosa SPANISH ‘thing’). Schwegler (2000) estimates that over 99% of Palenquero lexical items come from Spanish, with only a handful of everyday-words surviving from the African lexical repertoire (for an updated analysis of Palenque’s African lexicon, see Schwegler 2012). Despite this, Palenquero and Spanish are generally not mutually intelligible (Schwegler 2000, Lipski 2013) largely due to morphosyntactic differences and phonetic divergences between the two languages (Schwegler 2011). Syntactically, they share some major features: Both languages are SVO, have head-first subordinate clauses, prepositional phrases and post-nominal adjective placement (Lipski 2014). However, morphosyntactic differences place Palenquero and Spanish under different language categories (Cásseres Estrada 2005, Simarra Reyes & Triviño-Doval 2008, Friedemann & Patiño Roselli 1983, Megenney 1986, Schwegler 1996). To illustrate, unlike Spanish, noun phrases in Palenquero lack gender and number marking (e.g., muhé bieho PALENQUERO / mujer vieja SPANISH/old woman); the prefix ma (derived from the Kikongo class prefix ma) serves to express plural number and definiteness (e.g., ma ese kusa PALENQUERO / PL this thing); and tense, mood and aspect are signaled by pre-verbal particles: ta (imperfective/ progressive; suto ta kumé/ ‘we are eating’), tan (future; suto tan kumé/ ‘we will eat’), a (past/ imper-

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fective; suto a kumé/ ‘we ate’) and asé (habitual; suto asé kumé/ ‘we usually eat’). In addition, Palenquero verbs are not inflected for person or number (yo ta kumé ‘I am eating’; suto ta kumé ‘we are eating’) (Lipski 2013, Schwegler 2011). Scholars who have studied Palenquero have noted the appearance of Spanish elements in otherwise Palenquero discourse (e.g., Friedemann & Patiño Roselli 1983, Schwegler 1996, Schwegler & Morton 2003), including conjugated verbs and preverbal clitics (Lipski 2013). Reasons for this have been attributed to language attrition, code-switching, interference from Spanish, and critical for purposes of the present paper, decreolization. The strongest supporter for a decreolization view of Palenquero is Megenney (1986), who affirms that Palenquero has undergone decreolization in the direction of Spanish: En realidad, esta “lengua” de Palenque se podría describir como una lengua postcriolla de un microcosmos que rápidamente está cambiando a causa de las influencias lingüísticas y culturales del resto del país. (Megenney 1986: 86) [In fact, this “language” of Palenque could be described as a post-creole language in a microcosm that is rapidly changing due to the linguistic and cultural influences from the rest of the country.] (Translated by P. Dussias)

Given the paucity of historical texts that can be used to characterize the Palenquero language prior to the 20th century, testing for a decreolization view of Palenquero necessarily requires triangulation from various data sources. Schwegler (1996) approaches this challenge by using linguistic information available from the past 100 years (going back to c. the 1890s) to examine areas of grammar (e.g., subject pronouns; the article system; word order of object pronouns) in which interference from Spanish could be expected to result in restructuring. After a meticulous and careful analysis, he concludes that “Palenquero is one of those rare creole languages which during the last 100 years appear[s] to have escaped decreolization or restructuring” (2001: 410). More recently, Lipski takes a psycholinguistic approach to investigating whether Palenqueros effectively “keep their two languages apart” (2013:10). Psycholinguistic tasks are useful to answer this question because the speed and accuracy with which bilingual speakers perform linguistic operations can provide a window into how a bilingual’s two languages interact, and offer a sensitive measure of relative language strength (cp. Gollan & Ferreira 2009, Ju & Luce 2004, Kroll & Stewart 1994, Sánchez-Casas & García-Albea 2005; Schwartz, Kroll & Diaz 2007, Shook & Marian 2012). Using data from a language identification task administered with naturalistic and artificially created speech samples, as well as data from a speech-shadowing task, Lipski converges on the conclusion that Spanish-like incursions in Palenquero speech do not meet the criteria of decreolization.

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As mentioned above, in the work presented here, we employ a psycholinguistic task known as the Cued-Language Switching Task (Meuter & Allport 1999) to further test whether Palenquero is undergoing partial decreolization. Cues (e.g., colored backgrounds) prompt bilingual speakers to name targets (typically pictures or digits presented on a computer screen) in one language or the other. Participants see two types of trials: switch trials —where the language of response differs from the language spoken on the previous trial— and stay trials —where the language of response matches the language spoken on the preceding trial. Across many studies (e.g., Costa & Santesteban 2004, Costa et al. 2006, Gollan & Ferreira 2009, Beauvillain & Grainger 1987), comparisons of response times (RTs) and error rates across trial types have demonstrated a reliable switch cost: switch trials produce longer RTs and higher error rates than stay trials. These switch costs have been interpreted as a reflex of the difficulty that participants have in inhibiting a previously used language when a switch is required (Green 1998). For our purpose, the task is potentially useful because evidence for inhibition would suggest separate language systems, a finding that would be congenial with the view that, contrary to earlier expectations, Palenquero is not moving in the direction of its original lexifier language. Before delving into the experiment, we will expand on the notion of inhibitory control in bilingual speakers, briefly explaining the role of inhibition in bilingual speech production (Section 1.1). We will then explain why the presence of switch costs provides evidence for separate language systems (Section 1.2). This discussion will serve as a segue to the experiment reported here. 1.1. Bilingual Inhibitory Control One finding that remains uncontroversial after almost two decades of psycholinguistic research with bilinguals is that the two languages of a bilingual speaker are active, even when the intention is to speak only one language. When bilinguals read, when they listen, or when they prepare to speak in one of their two languages, the language not in use is also active (Kroll, Bobb & Wodniecka 2006; for an extensive review, see Dijkstra 2005). The parallel activation of the bilingual’s two languages is not restricted to languages that share structural and functional features, and has been observed irrespective of whether the language in use is the bilingual’s stronger or weaker tongue. More surprisingly, the second language (L2) also becomes activated during first language (L1) processing, particularly for bilinguals who have reached very high proficiency in both of their languages. Cross-language activity has been reported in bilinguals who speak typologically different languages such as Japanese and English (Hoshino & Kroll 2008) as well as in bi-modal bilinguals, who use one sign language and one

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oral language (Emmorey et al. 2008, Morford et al. 2011). The parallel activity of a bilingual’s two languages creates cross-language interactions that influence performance at every level of language, including phonology (e.g., Blumenfeld & Marian 2007, Jared & Kroll 2001, Ju & Luce 2004, Marian & Spivey 2003, Spivey & Marian 1999), orthography (e.g., Dijkstra & Van Heuven 1998, van Heuven, Dijkstra & Grainger 1998), syntax (e.g., Hartsuiker, Pickering & Veltkamp 2004), and meaning (e.g., Sunderman & Kroll 2006). A remarkable feature about bilinguals is that, despite parallel activation of their two linguistic systems, they do not generally experience difficulty controlling their choice of language at any given moment. In fact, errors of language selection during production are quite rare. At the same time, bilinguals can purposefully utilize the parallel activation of their two languages to seamlessly switch back and forth between languages (e.g., Myers-Scotton, 2002). These two observations —that bilinguals can avoid errors of language selection during unilingual production and that they exploit parallel activation to code-switch— suggest that bilinguals possess an exquisite mechanism of linguistic control. The primary mechanism of linguistic control is hypothesized (Meuter & Allport 1999) to be inhibition, or suppression, of the unintended language. That is, to successfully speak in the intended language, parallel activation of the other language must be kept in check. 1.2. “Switch costs” as evidence for separate linguistic systems One mechanism that has been proposed to allow linguistic control in bilinguals is inhibition. As irrelevant items (e.g., translation equivalents or form-related words such as homographs) in the unintended language become activated, they must be suppressed or inhibited to avoid interference (Green 1998). The method most often used to study inhibition during bilingual language production is the Cued Language-Switching Paradigm. In this task, participants are told that they will name pictures in their first or their second language. Pictures appear on a computer screen one by one against a color background that cues the language of the response (e.g., a brown background to name pictures in English, and a blue background to name pictures in Spanish). Two types of trials are presented: (1) non-switch (or stay) trials —in which participants name the picture in the same language as the preceding trial— and (2) switch trials, in which they name the picture in the language opposite to that of the previous trial. Switch costs are measured by subtracting naming latencies (RTs) on nonswitch trials from switch trials. From an inhibitory standpoint, when a bilingual names a word in Language A, Language B becomes activated in parallel, and so words in Language B must be

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suppressed or inhibited to successfully speak Language A. If naming continues in Language A (a non-switch trial), Language B would again become activated to some extent and would need to be suppressed. When bilinguals are asked to switch from Language A to Language B (a switch trial), they must overcome the inhibition that was just applied to Language B on the previous trial. Overcoming this inhibition requires cognitive effort, resulting in a switch cost. A prediction derived from the inhibitory account is that naming should be more costly when going from the weaker language (typically the L2) into the stronger language (typically the L1) than the other way around. In other words, switch costs should be asymmetric. Why would this be the case? To successfully name pictures in the weaker language, bilinguals must inhibit the stronger language to avoid interference. When a shift is then required to enable naming in the stronger language, the suppression from the previous trial must be overcome. Doing so requires effort, and this effort translates into a behavioral switch cost. That it should be harder to name a picture in the stronger language when the trial is immediately preceded by naming in the weaker language is initially counterintuitive. Typically, one would expect naming in the stronger language to be faster and less effortful compared to the weaker language. However, if one assumes that greater co-activation requires greater suppression and that less co-activation requires less suppression, the reason for the asymmetry becomes clear. While executing naming in the weaker language, the more dominant language is strongly co-activated. This strong co-activation requires great suppression. On subsequently switching into the stronger language, the active suppression of the stronger language needs to be overcome, causing a large response delay (i.e., a large switch cost). Conversely, when executing naming in the stronger language, the weaker language is only weakly co-activated. Because the amount of parallel co-activation is small, less active suppression is required. On subsequently switching into the weaker language, then, there is less suppression to overcome, resulting in smaller switch costs. The first piece of evidence for an inhibitory control mechanism during language switching came from Meuter & Allport (1999). They asked bilingual speakers to name numerals that switched unpredictably between their stronger and weaker language. Two findings were reported. First, switch trials were harder compared to non-switched trials. This was expected on the assumption that switching elicits response conflict between naming in the current language and naming in the new language, and response conflicts typically manifest themselves as longer latencies. Second, and consistent with the notion that the more dominant language must be more strongly inhibited for naming than the weaker language, switch costs were asymmetric (an effect known as the reserve dominance effect), with greater

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switching costs into the stronger language from the weaker language than into the weaker language from the stronger language. Asymmetric switch costs have been reported in a large number of subsequent studies (Costa & Santesteban 2004, Costa et al. 2006, Gollan & Ferreira 2009, Beauvillain & Grainger 1987, Gullifer et al. 2013, Jackson et al. 2004, Macnamara et al. 1968, Thomas & Allport 2000, Verhoef et al. 2009, Von Studnitz & Green 2002). These costs are present during language production (Costa & Santesteban 2004, Costa et al. 2006, Gollan & Ferreira 2009, Gullifer et al. 2013, Macnamara et al. 1968, Meuter & Allport 1999) as well as in language comprehension (Gullifer et al. 2013 Jackson et al. 2004, Thomas & Allport 2000, Van der Meij et al. 2011, Von Studnitz & Green 2002). While most studies on language switching are behavioral (Costa & Santesteban 2004, Costa et al. 2006, Gollan & Ferreira 2009, Beauvillain & Grainger 1987, Gullifer et al. 2013, MacNamara et al. 1968, Meuter & Allport 1999, Thomas & Allport 2000, Verhoef et al. 2009, Von Studnitz & Green 2002), switching effects are also present in electrophysiological records of event-related potentials (Chauncey et al. 2008, Chauncey 2011, Jackson et al. 2004, Moreno et al. 2002, Van der Meij et al. 2011) and neurophysiological records of functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (Guo et al. 2011). Although asymmetric switch costs are quite robust in the literature, they have typically been observed with unbalanced bilinguals (e.g., Costa & Santesteban 2004, Meuter & Allport 1999). Balanced bilinguals, on the other hand, show symmetric switch costs; that is, the same cost is observed when switching from the weaker to the stronger language as from the stronger to the weaker language (Costa & Santesteban 2004; Costa, Santesteban & Ivanova 2006). This finding is expected when there is a small relative difference in proficiency between the two languages of a bilingual speaker because the amount of inhibition that needs to be overcome on a switch trial should be the same for both languages (Verhoef, Roelofs & Chwilla 2009). Additionally, a reverse dominance effect (i.e., overall longer naming latencies in the stronger language) has also been reported with symmetric switch costs (Costa & Santesteban 2004, Costa, Santesteban & Ivanova 2006, Gollan & Ferreira 2009 for balanced bilinguals only; Christoffels, Firk & Schiller 2007). In sum, the available findings on switch costs lead to the observation that where there is a large difference in proficiency, as in the case of unbalanced bilingualism, the switch cost asymmetry emerges in the direction predicted by inhibitory control accounts: switch costs are larger for a switch into the more dominant language (e.g., Costa et al. 2006, Meuter & Allport 1999). Even when switch costs are symmetric between L1 and L2, there are still switch costs present, and these simple costs have been taken as evidence for an inhibitory mechanism.

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1.3. Switch costs and decreolization Bilinguals have the option to flexibly choose whichever language they wish to express their intended thoughts. This means that they can speak in one of their two languages and even codeswitch between them (e.g., begin a sentence in one language and end it in the other language). This right is exercised freely by the speech community in San Basilio de Palenque, where speakers use only Spanish, only Palenquero, and also codeswitch between the two (Schwegler 2011). Over the past decade, efforts to revitalize the creole have been strong. In 2005 Palenque was declared Masterpiece of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity by UNESCO; the result has been a renewed sense of pride attached to knowledge of and proficiency in the creole (Lipski 2013); traditional speakers of Palenquero are now highly respected because of their verbal eloquence in the creole and language classes in Palenquero are now available from pre-school through high school so that the younger generations learn to speak the language. The Colombian government has invested in Palenque’s infrastructure, which has dramatically increased the attention that Palenque receives from local and non-local tourism. Findings from the cognitive psychology literature suggest when bilinguals exercise the option of using either of their two languages for communication, they incur a switch cost: participants take longer to respond when switching from one language to the other than when using the same language from trial to trial. The presence of switch costs implies that speakers need time to reconfigure the goals from naming in one language to naming in the other language (Gollan & Ferreira 2009). For cognitive psychologists, switch costs reveal a role for inhibitory control in bilingual language production; critical for the goal of the work presented here, the presence of switch costs implies a mandatory separation by language in the bilingual mind. Contextualized from this angle, results showing that Palenquero speakers exhibit switch costs when naming objects in Spanish and in Palenquero would provide empirical support for a non-decreolization view of the creole; otherwise switch costs may not be expected. We test this hypothesis in the experiment described below. 2. Method 2.1. Participants Twenty Spanish-Palenquero bilinguals participated in this experiment for payment. One participant failed to follow instructions, and, as a consequence, his data were excluded. Problems with the recording equipment led us to also exclude the data of a second participant. Of the eighteen bilinguals retained for the final analy-

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sis, ten were “early balanced bilinguals” (ages between 40 and 60), having learned Spanish and Palenquero in a home setting. We will refer to these participants as Spanish-Palenquero bilinguals. The remaining eight participants were Spanishdominant speakers (ages 18-21) who had been studying Palenquero formally in school and who were judged by their teachers to be fluent in Palenquero. Among the Spanish-Palenquero bilinguals were language teachers of Palenquero, regarded by the community as having expert command of the creole. 2.2. Materials Data were collected either at the participants’ homes or at an office at the public school. Pictures were displayed on a laptop computer in three sets using a slideshow in Microsoft PowerPoint (version 14.3.9). The language of the response was cued by the background color of the slide on which each picture was presented. A red background cued a Spanish response, while blue was for Palenquero. Participants first named pictures in a language-specific fashion in two single language set: a Spanish-only set and a Palenquero-only set. The order of each set was counterbalanced across participants. Within each of these first two sets, participants named 30 objects in the appropriate language. The order in which objects appeared was fixed. The third set was a mixed-language set in which participants named pictures in both Spanish and Palenquero. In this set, the language of response alternated, such that participants first named two pictures in one language (e.g., Spanish) and then two pictures in the other (e.g., Palenquero), and so on. Participants named 64 pictures in total in the third set. As in the first two sets, these pictures were presented in a fixed order. No picture was ever repeated among the three sets. A picture database was compiled to create the experimental stimuli. For each picture to be named, a color photograph was selected from Google Images. To ensure that the pictures were familiar to the participants, the items to be named in Spanish were chosen from a list of high-frequency pictured objects taken from the International Picture Naming Project norms (http://crl.ucsd.edu/experiments/ipnp/). However, because there are no norms available for Palenquero, one of the experimenters took photographs of common objects and scenes in Palenque that were considered characteristic, common, and thus highly familiar to all members of the community.2 All photographs used as stimuli appeared in isolation, and with solid backgrounds. Sample photographs from the mixedlanguage set are shown in Figure 1. 2



We thank John M. Lipski for providing this suggestion.

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2.3. Procedure Participants were asked to name pictures of concrete objects as quickly and accurately as possible. The presentation of each picture was synchronized to the presentation of a brief auditory stimulus (i.e., a tone) inserted at the beginning of each slide. After hearing the tone, participants were given as much time as necessary to respond. In instances where the participant could not name an object, they were instructed to respond with “I don’t know”. All responses were recorded using a microphone connected to a Marantz portable digital recorder for use in field work.

Figure 1. Sample presentation of the picture-naming task in the mixed-language block

3. Results Prior to analyzing the data, a speaker of Spanish with working knowledge of Palenquero transcribed the responses for accuracy. A highly proficient speaker of Palenquero independently verified the accuracy of the transcriptions. We regarded as errors (and thus excluded from the analysis) all trials in which (a) ambient environmental noise obscured the onset or offset of a response, (b) participants hesitated in their response, (c) participants revised their initial response, or (d) participants produced an incorrect response. We analyzed the recordings in Praat (v. 5.3.30) by segmenting and labeling correct productions into trials from a continuous recording using TextGrids. The onset of

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each auditory stimulus within a trial was automatically marked by a Praat script that detected associated spectrographic power and pitch excursions. We manually checked the accuracy of this automatic measurement; no adjustments were necessary. We then manually marked the onset and offset of a participant’s response within each trial, as close as possible to the onset and offset of spectrographic energy associated with the response. In rare cases of an unclear spectrographic reading (due to environmental noise), the waveform was used to mark response onset and offset. A second Praat script was used to automatically pull all data from the marked TextGrids and organize it for statistical analysis. We calculated response latencies, the dependent measure in the statistical analyses, by measuring the time between the onset of the auditory stimulus at the beginning of each naming trial (i.e., the tone) to the onset of a participant’s response for that trial. The onset of each auditory stimulus was automatically marked by a Praat script that detected associated spectrographic power and pitch excursions. The accuracy of this automatic marking was checked manually; no adjustments were necessary. The onset and offset of a participant’s response for each trial were also marked manually, as close as possible to the onset and offset of spectrographic energy associated with the response. In rare cases of an unclear spectrographic reading (due to environmental noise), the waveform was used to mark response onset and offset. Trials in which participants hesitated in their response (or revised their initial response) were marked as errors and excluded from the analysis, as were trials in which ambient environmental noise obscured either the onset or offset of a response. Across all participants, a total of 8.5% of responses were marked as errors and were excluded. A second Praat script was used to automatically pull all data from the marked TextGrids and organize it for statistical analysis. Two types of cost-related measures were calculated: (1) a switch cost and (2) a mixing cost. We did so because the literature on language control processes has linked each cost to a different type of cognitive process. Switch costs reflect transient control processes such as the recovery from trial-level language suppression, while mixing costs reflect most sustained aspects of language control such as the maintenance of multiple target languages (e.g., Braver, Reynolds & Donaldson 2003). Calculation of the switch cost involved examination of response latencies in the mixed-language sets. Switch costs were assessed by subtracting the response latencies of non-switch trials from the response latencies of switch trials in the mixed set. To illustrate both a switch and a non-switch trial, Figure 1 shows lápiz (‘pencil’ in Spanish) which corresponds to a non-switch trial because the previous word (araña ‘spider’) was also named in Spanish. Posá (Palenquero for ‘house’, derived from Am. Span. posada ‘lodging’) represents a switch trial because the word preceding it (araña) was named in Spanish. Calculation of the

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mixing cost involved examination of response latencies in the blocked and the mixed language sets. The mixing costs were calculated by comparing naming latencies of trials in the blocked language condition to non-switch trials in the mixed language set (for example, comparing naming latencies when participants named objects in the Palenquero-only set, and when they named objects in Palenquero in the mixed-language set). 3.1. General Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) — Switching costs: Comparison of switch vs. non-switch trials in the mixed-language block We ran a 2 language (Spanish, Palenquero) x 2 switching (switch trials, non-switch trials) x 2 dominance (Spanish-Palenquero bilinguals, Spanish dominant speakers) repeated measures ANOVA to investigate the factors that influenced naming latency for bilingual speakers of Spanish and Palenquero. Language and switching were within-subjects factors while dominance was a between-subjects factor. There were marginally significant main effects of language and switching such that naming latencies were shorter in Spanish than in Palenquero (Spanish: M = 1,375.53, SE = 67.72; Palenquero: M = 1,473.44, SE = 76.52; F(1,16) = 3.393, p = .08) and showed a switch cost in which naming latencies were shorter in nonswitch compared to switch trials (non-switch: 1,397.71, SE = 74.01; switch: M = 1,451.26, SE = 63.41; F(1,16) = 3.066, p = .09). However, there was no main effect of dominance (Spanish-dominant: M = 1,438.38, SE = 100.16, Spanish-Palenquero bilinguals: M = 1,410.59, SE = 89.59; F(1,16) = .043, p = .84), indicating that the Spanish-Palenquero participants and the Spanish-dominant bilinguals all behaved similarly. The interactions between language and dominance, switching and dominance, and language and switching did not reach significance (all ps > .61), nor did the three-way interaction (p = .88). 3.2. Mixing Costs: Comparison between blocked and mixed language conditions We ran a 2 language (Spanish, Palenquero) x 2 mixing (blocked trials; non-switch trials) x 2 dominance (Spanish-Palenquero bilinguals, Spanish dominant speakers) repeated measures ANOVA to investigate the factors that influenced naming latency for bilingual speakers of Spanish and Palenquero. Language and mixing were within-subject factors, and dominance was a between-subjects factor. There were main effects of language and mixing such that naming latencies were shorter in Spanish than in Palenquero (Spanish: M = 1,167.20, SE = 58.84; Palenquero: M = 1,384.29, SE = 67.68; F(1,16) = 20.187, p < .01) and were shorter in blocked trials than in non-switch trials (non-switch: 1,397.71, SE = 74.01; blocked:

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M = 1,153.78, SE = 50.05; F(1,16) = 26.890, p < .01). There was no main effect of dominance (Spanish-dominant: M = 1,257.58, SE = 87.40, Spanish-Palenquero bilinguals: M = 1,293. 92, SE = 78.17; F(1,16) = .096, p = .76), again suggesting that the Spanish-Palenquero bilinguals and the Spanish-dominant speakers behaved similarly. The main effects of language and mixing were qualified by a significant interaction (F(1,16) = 11.850, p < .01). Follow-up analyses show a significant mixing cost for pictures named in Spanish (F(1, 17) = 35.284, p < .01), but only a marginal effect for pictures named in Palenquero (F(1, 17) = 3.609, p = .07). In contrast, the interactions between language and dominance, and mixing and dominance did not reach significance (all ps > .31), nor did the three-way interaction (F(1,16) = .605, p = .45). 3.3. Bootstrapping The sample of participants in the present experiment is drawn from a special population of bilingual speakers living in a somewhat remote village of Colombia. Our sample sizes are relatively small in comparison to experiments where the samples of participants are drawn from populations living in well-populated college towns. Small sample sizes result in a lack of statistical power and as such, effect sizes must be quite large to show that an effect is statistically significant. At the same time, errors in effect magnitude can arise with small sample sizes, resulting in the overestimation in the size of an effect. For example, participants who are outliers with respect to the populations may be sampled into a dataset, and these outliers can skew the results of data analysis, thereby causing a significant effect to appear when in reality there may be no true difference between the population means. Typically in psycholinguistic research this pitfall is avoided by removing participants who are outliers with respect to the sample. However, with a small sample size it becomes difficult to identify potential outliers and it is impractical to exclude them from data analysis. To overcome these issues inherent in analyzing data with small sample sizes, statistical bootstrapping is performed on the dataset. Bootstrapping is the process of re-sampling data from the original dataset with the aim of more accurately approximating sample estimates (e.g., the mean) and statistics (e.g., F statistic). This method is particularly useful to compute statistics when dealing with a small sample size because it tends to smooth out the potential influence of outliers that are not representative of the majority of the underlying population. New samples (of the same size as the sample in the original dataset) are drawn from the dataset (allowing for replacement) similar to the way in which an experimentalist samples from the population of interest. Statistical tests are then run on this new sample. This process of sampling from the original dataset is repeated thousands of times. Estimates of the statistic of interest (e.g., the mean F

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value) are then aggregated over all of these samples, and confidence intervals are placed around these estimates. The dataset of 17 bilingual participants was bootstrapped 10,000 times; subsequently, a series of repeated Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) measures were to examine the effects of (1) language, switching and dominance as well as (2) language, mixing and dominance. If any effect was above the critical F value of 4.49 for 1 and 16 degrees of freedom, the effect was considered significant. 3.4. Switching Costs: Comparison of switch vs. non-switch trials in the mixed-language set In the 2 language (Spanish, Palenquero) x 2 switching (switch trials, non-switch trials) x 2 dominance (Spanish-Palenquero bilinguals, Spanish dominant speakers) repeated measures ANOVA investigating switching costs, there were main effects of language (F(1,16) = 4.91, p < 0.05) and switching (F(1,16) = 8.10, p < 0.05). No other effects or interactions were significant (all ps > 0.05). These results largely parallel the results of the repeated measures analysis without bootstrapping. However with bootstrapping, the previously marginal effects of language and switching become significant at the alpha = 0.05 level. These results suggest that naming in Palenquero was slower than naming in Spanish, and that naming latencies on switch trials were slower than naming latencies on non-switch trials. There was no evidence in the bootstrapping analysis that language interacted with switching, indicating that the switch costs were symmetrical in nature. Figure 2 and Figure 3 show the switching costs for the Spanish-dominant speakers and the Spanish-Palenquero bilinguals, respectively.

Figure 2. Switch costs. Spanish-dominant speakers

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Figure 3. Switch costs. Spanish-Palenquero bilinguals

3.5. Mixing Costs: Comparison between blocked and mixed language conditions In the 2 language (Spanish, Palenquero) x 2 mixing (blocked trials, non-switch trials,) x 2 dominance (Spanish-Palenquero bilinguals, Spanish dominant speakers) repeated measures ANOVA investigating mixing costs, there was a main effect of language (F(1,16) = 25.59, p < 0.05), a main effect of mixing (F(1,16) = 32.18, p < 0.05), and an interaction between language and mixing (F(1,16) = 18.73, p < 0.05). No other effects or interactions were significant (ps > 0.05). Follow-up analyses were performed for steps in the bootstrapping during which the interaction between language and mixing became significant. The follow-up analyses indicated that the mixing effect was significant only for Spanish (F(1,16) = 40, p < 0.05) but not for Palenquero (F(1,16) = 4.34, p > 0.05), suggesting that the mixing cost was driven by Spanish naming. These results parallel the findings in the repeated measures analysis without bootstrapping. Naming latencies were longer in Palenquero than in Spanish, and trials in the mixed-language block were named slower than trials in the blocked-language block but only for naming in Spanish. There was no evidence for a mixing cost for naming in Palenquero. Figure 4 and Figure 5 show the mixing costs for the Spanish-dominant speakers and the Spanish-Palenquero bilinguals, respectively.

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Figure 4. Mixing costs. Spanish-dominant speakers

Figure 5. Mixing costs. Spanish-Palenquero bilinguals

4. Discussion We have reported an experiment in which the performance of two groups of Spanish-Palenquero bilingual speakers was tested in a language-switching paradigm. The main goal was to determine whether these two populations of speakers would exhibit switch costs, a finding that would argue for language separation in the mind of these speakers. The same findings would also speak against the notion that Palenquero is approximating Spanish through a process of partial decreolization.

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Bilingual participants were split into two groups, one characterized as Spanish-Palenquero bilinguals by virtue of acquiring the languages early in life, and a second group of Spanish-dominant Spanish-Palenquero speakers classified by virtue of learning Palenquero in a classroom setting. We compared patterns of performance in the two groups to ascertain whether differences in the form of acquisition and in the age of acquisition of the two languages affected switching performance to the same degree. Participants were asked to name pictures presented in three sets: one set each of Spanish-only and Palenquero-only naming, and one set of mixed naming. In our slides, participants were cued via a color background as to which language to name. Switch costs (switch trials minus non-switch trials in the mixed block) and mixing costs (non-switch trials from the mixed block minus pure block naming trials) were analyzed. As discussed in the following section, the findings showed consistent symmetric switch costs and mixing costs for both bilingual groups. 4.1. Switch effects when naming Spanish and Palenquero As explained in the Introduction, experiments in which the cued-language switching paradigm has been used to examine bilingual language production have resulted in two major findings: (1) longer naming latencies on switch trials as compared to non-switch trials; and (2) asymmetric switch costs that display a reverse dominance effect. In other words, switching into a dominant language results in longer naming latencies than switching into a weaker language. The fact that virtually identical switch costs were obtained for the older and younger bilinguals adds to the extant body of research (Lipski 2013, Schwegler 2000) that argues for a non-decreolization view of Palenquero. If significant decreolization had occurred as a result of the prolonged bilingualism and societal superstrate pressures from Spanish, one might expect the psycholinguistic status of the creole to approximate that of Spanish, effectively blurring the boundaries between the two languages; under this scenario, switch costs would not be expected. However, the results indicate the existence of significant switch costs when bilinguals are naming items in their two languages. In psycholinguistic terms, the two languages have clearly delineated boundaries that require switching from one system into the other when bilinguals are naming words in Spanish and in Palenquero. This finding adds weight to the assertion made in Schwegler that “[i]n Palenque, old and young bilinguals employ a virtually identical creole grammar, that is, there is no continuum, no “in-between” in terms of lects” (2011: 463).

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4.2. Explaining the presence of symmetrical switch costs One unexpected result is that symmetrical switch costs with no reverse dominance effect were also observed with the Spanish-dominant Palenquero speakers. As mentioned in the Introduction, many past studies have found asymmetric switch costs for speakers who are less proficient in one of their two languages. Contrary to this, our findings show that even though the Spanish-dominant participants were only moderately proficient in Palenquero, switch costs were not larger for the L1 than for the L2. This surprising result raises the question of what may account for the symmetrical switch costs in these speakers. One potential hypothesis for why no reverse dominance effects are observed maybe that there is less of a need to globally inhibit the dominant language (Spanish). Lipski (2013) reports on a series of interesting experiments that show that the apparent use of Spanish-like features in Palenquero are still primarily perceived by the community at large as Palenquero speech. Because of rapid changes associated with linguistic revitalization (i.e. a “lost” generation of non-speakers of Palenquero or with minimal Palenquero fluency, coupled with intense revitalization in classroom settings for younger speakers), there may be a greater incentive within the community to accept a Spanish-dominant speaker’s use of Palenquero, even if in the “traditional” sense their speech is not fully Palenquero-like. Thus, the symmetrical switch cost effects without a reverse dominance may overall reflect a cognitive system that is highly adaptive to the degree of contact between languages and the apparent use of both languages in that given contact setting. Such an interpretation is also highly compatible with recent hypotheses in the psycholinguistic literature on bilingual language control (e.g., Green & Abutalebi 2013). 4.3. Concluding remark: How psycholinguistics can inform contact linguistics In concluding, we return to a question that underlies the work presented here: what might the possible links between linguistics and cognitive science be? Our goal in conducting the work reported here has been to suggest that historically documented processes of a certain type, i.e. those relating to language change, grammaticalization, creolization and the like, form a unified theoretical bundle that provides insight into the cognitive processes at work in language organization and evolution. The findings presented here argue against the notion that historical phenomena are excluded from cognitive speculation. Instead, they argue for an extension of Labov’s uniformitarian doctrine, which states “that the same mechanisms which operated to produce the large-scale changes of the past may be observed operating in the current changes taking place around us” (Labov 1972: 161). This principle is transferable to the current context in the following way:

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first, language as a system is no different today than it was millennia ago, easily as far back as diachronic speculation is likely to take us; and second, the human brain is structurally no different today from the brain of humans of up to ten thousand years ago. The cognitive-linguistic parallelism between the past and the present makes speculation possible, in this case about decreolization. It further allows us to make forward and backward inferences about both language change and its cognitive underpinnings. One important finding presented here is that the rudimentary method employed to collect data in this study resulted in the replication of past findings on language switching in which sophisticated and precise measurements of mental chronometry have been employed: like much past work with bilinguals, the Spanish-Palenquero speakers in this study exhibited switch costs. Most research that has examined the mechanisms that allow bilinguals to select one of their two languages has been conducted in laboratory settings with literate populations or with college-educated participants. Only a small number of language pairs, out of more than 5000 languages spoken in the world, have been studied and most belong to the Indo-European family of languages. Psycholinguistic research seeks to understand the mental processes involved from the moment a pre-linguistic message is formulated and encoded into a linguistic form to its articulation in all bilingual speakers. A consequence is that the empirical base against which claims about bilingualism are formulated needs to be expanded to include other language pairings as well as bilingual populations with different characteristics (e.g., speakers of typologically different languages; bilinguals who are literate in only one of their two languages; bilinguals who sign a language and speak another language). This is important because psycholinguistic work is beginning to show that broadening the scope of data coverage has improved our understanding beyond what studies conducted on a small number of languages have offered (Jaeger & Norcliffe 2009). This paper is a first step in that proposed direction, and the findings presented here validate the use of our method to conduct psycholinguist studies outside the laboratory, thereby widening the field of inquiry to examine questions that have largely been understudied in psycholinguistic research. REFERENCES Beauvillain, Cécile & Grainger, Jonathan. 1987. Accessing interlexical homographs: Some limitations of a language-selective access. Journal of Memory and Language 26. 658-672. Blumenfeld, Henrike K. & Marian, Viorica. 2007. Constraints on parallel activation in bilingual spoken language processing: Examining proficiency and lexical status using eye-tracking. Language and Cognitive Processes 22. 633-660.

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Marian, Viorica & Spivey, Michael. 2003. Competing activation in bilingual language processing: Within- and between-language competition. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition 6. 97-115. Megenney, William. 1986. El palenquero: un lenguaje post-criollo colombiano. Bogotá: Instituto Caro y Cuervo. Meuter, Renata F. & Allport, Alan. 1999. Bilingual language switching in naming: Asymmetrical costs of language selection. Journal of Memory and Language 40. 25-40. Moreno, Eva M; Federmeier, Kara D. & Kutas, Marta. 2002. Switching languages, switching palabras (words): An electrophysiological study of code switching. Brain and Language 80. 188-207. Morford, Jill P.; Wilkinson, Erin; Villwock, Agnes; Piñar, Pilar & Kroll, Judith F. 2011. When deaf signers read English: Do written words activate their sign translations? Cognition 118. 286-292. Mühlhäusler, Peter. 1997. Pidgin and creole linguistics (2nd edition). London: University of Westminster Press. Myers-Scotton, Carol. 2002. Contact linguistics: Bilingual encounters and grammatical outcomes. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Sánchez-Casas, Rosa M. & García-Albea, José E. 2005. The representation of cognate and noncognate words in bilingual memory: Can cognate status be characterized as a special kind of morphological relation? In J. F. Kroll & A. M. B. de Groot (eds.), Handbook of bilingualism: Psycholinguistic approaches, 226-250. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Schwartz, Ana I.; Kroll, Judith F. & Diaz, Michele. 2007. Reading words in Spanish and English: Mapping orthography to phonology in two languages. Language and Cognitive Processes 22. 106-129. Schwegler, Armin. 1996. “Chi ma nkongo”: lengua y rito ancestrales en El Palenque de San Basilio (Colombia). Madrid/Frankfurt: Iberoamericana/Vervuert. 2 vols. Schwegler, Armin. 2000. The myth of decreolization: the anomalous case of Palenquero. In Ingrid Neumann-Holzschuh & Edgar W. Schneider (ed.), Degrees of restructuring in creole languages, 409-436. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Schwegler, Armin. 2011. Palenque: Colombia: Multilingualism in an extraordinary social and historical context. In Manuel Díaz- Campos (ed.), The handbook of Hispanic sociolinguistics, 446-472. Malden, MA: Blackwell/Wiley. Schwegler, Armin. 2012. Sobre el origen africano de la lengua criolla de Palenque (Colombia). In Graciela Maglia & Armin Schwegler (eds.), Palenque (Colombia): oralidad, identidad y resistencia. Un enfoque interdisciplinario, 107-179. Bogotá: Instituto Caro y Cuervo & Universidad Javeriana. Schwegler, Armin & Morton, Thomas. 2003. Vernacular Spanish in a microcosm: Kateyano in El Palenque de San Basilio (Colombia). Revista Internacional de Lingüística Iberoamericana 1. 97-159. Shook, Anthony & Marian, Viorica. 2012. Bimodal bilinguals co-activate both languages during spoken comprehension. Cognition 124. 314-324. Siegel, Jason F. 2010. Decreolization: A critical review. IULC Working Papers 9: Languages in Contact. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Linguistics Club. 83-98.

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Simarra Reyes, Luis & Triviño Doval, Álvaro Enrique. 2008. Gramática de la lengua palenquera: introducción para principiantes. Cartagena de Indias: Grafipapel. Spivey, Michael J. & Marian, Viorica. 1999. Cross talk between native and second languages: Partial activation of an irrelevant lexicon. Psychological Science 10. 281-284. Sunderman, Gretchen & Kroll, Judith F. 2006. First language activation during second language lexical processing: An investigation of lexical form, meaning, and grammatical class. Studies in Second Language Acquisition 28. 387-422. Thomas, Michael S. & Allport, Alan. 2000. Language switching costs in bilingual visual word recognition. Journal of Memory and Language 43. 44-66. Van der Meij, Maartje; Cuetos, Fernando; Carreiras, Manuel & Barber, Horacio A. 2011. Electrophysiological correlates of language switching in second language learners. Psychophysiology 48. 44-54. Van Heuven, Walter J. B.; Dijkstra, Ton & Grainger, Jonathan. 1998. Orthographic neighborhood effects in bilingual word recognition. Journal of Memory and Language 39. 458-483. Verhoef, Kim; Roelofs, Ardi & Chwilla, Dorothee J. 2009. Role of inhibition in language switching: Evidence from event-related brain potentials in overt picture naming. Cognition 110. 84-99. Von Studnitz, Roswitha E. & Green, David W. 2002. Interlingual homograph interference in German–English bilinguals: Its modulation and locus of control. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition 5. 1-23. Winford, Donald. 1993. Predication in Caribbean English creoles. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Winford, Donald. 1997. Re-examining Caribbean English creole continua. World Englishes 16. 233-279.

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RECONSTRUCTING THE LINGUISTIC HISTORY OF PALENQUES ON THE NATURE AND RELEVANCE OF COLONIAL DOCUMENTS Miguel Gutiérrez Maté University of Erlangen-Nürnberg This article aims to examine the origin and history of two maroon communities —(1) Palenque (Colombia) and (2) the Maniel de Neyba (Dominican Republic)— through the study of historical texts. Section 1 presents methodological and philological problems concerning the study of colonial documents, while Section 2 focuses on the so-called palenques: after briefly explaining the history of this term, I then point to similarities and differences in the histories of the two aforementioned communities, describing their ethnolinguistic composition, social structure, contacts with the outside world, and language used within them. In toto, the data and arguments presented in Section 2 aim to contribute to the ongoing debate about creolization as a cultural and linguistic process. Key words: Creolization, Haitian Creole, historical documents, maroonage, Maniel de Neiba, Neiva, Palenque, Palenquero

1. Colonial documents: their relevance, and methodological problems with their study1 Official documents written during the Spanish colonial era by Spaniards or Hispanic creoles (descendants of Spaniards born in the Americas) may turn out to be pertinent for resolving key questions surrounding Afro-Hispanic language contacts. Among these questions are: did L2 varieties of black slaves (pidginized or not) vary substantially from one person to another, or did their L2 quickly stabilize and eventually pass on as a more or less fixed speech form to the next generations? And to what (if any) extent did bozal Spanish and/or Afro-Hispanic Creoles influence vernacular varieties of Spanish, especially those located in areas (e.g., the Caribbean) where slaves were unusually abundant?

1



I would like to thank Armin Schwegler and two anonymous reviewers for their suggestions and careful reading of a former version of this paper. I am grateful to Mary Krupka for patiently correcting my non-native English.

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We must agree with the Colombian anthropologist Friedemann (1984) that the “invisibility” of blacks was the result of an official strategy adopted through time and space to legitimize (at least, tacitly so) the slave trade. This strategy is known to have had its roots in colonial times, a period when official documentation about the lives of blacks is supposed to have been scarce. As Vila Vilar (1987: 176; my translation)2 correctly points out, “the maintenance of slavery with its juridical status during three centuries silenced blacks’ voice to the point that it is difficult to encounter them mentioned in official documents that do not [directly] refer to the slave trade or to public disturbances and rebellions”. Because of this testimonial “silence”, one might suspect —falsely so, as I hope to show in this paper— that there may simply be too few historical documents that could answer some or all of the foregoing questions. As is well known, in Hispanic documents, whites and Amerindians were far more present than blacks. Nevertheless, colonial documents about the actual slave trade and related public disturbances and rebellions (including maroonage) by Blacks are quite abundant. Black uprisings became a matter of serious concern to the Spanish authorities, which in turn produced a large corpus of legal documents containing city ordinances, royal edicts, and legal pronouncements such as those included in the so-called Leyes de Indias (1681). These same uprisings also produced hundreds of proceedings and court orders against blacks and mulattoes (including many trials led by the Spanish Inquisition). To linguists, these documents are potentially useful for at least four reasons: (1) They allow us to understand the sociohistorical events that conditioned external language history, including contacts and/or conflicts between black and whites. (2) Occasional direct oral court testimony and private letters written by white creoles provide insights into the internal history of Spanish, including vernacular New World varieties that black slaves presumably sought to approximate.3 (3) If read carefully, these documents may hint at the linguistic awareness of white scribes of bozal and creole varieties. (4) They may contain genuine (or close to genuine) fragments of colonial Black Spanish.

2



3

“El mantenimiento del estatuto jurídico esclavista en la raza negra durante tres siglos ha silenciado sus voces, hasta el punto que es difícil encontrarlos mencionados en documentos oficiales que no se refieren a la trata o desórdenes públicos y levantamientos” (my italics). See Koch & Oesterreicher (2012 [1985], 2011[1990]) and Oesterreicher (1994, 2005) about the presence of the so-called language of immediacy in written texts (German: “mündlich geprägte Schreibkompetenz” / Spanish: “competencia escrita de impronta oral”). See also Gutiérrez Maté (2013: 9-22) about the particular case of Spanish Colonial documents.

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Scholars have long acknowledged the important role that historical documents can play in the reconstruction of the formative period of multilingual societies. Consequently, linguists have usually paid special attention to research by historians working on the basis of official documents. For instance, Navarrete’s (2008) in-depth investigations into the history of San Basilio de Palenque (Colombia) has brought to light important new facts about the early sociolinguistic history of 16th and 17th century palenques located in the hinterland of Cartagena de Indias, Latin America’s principal slaving port of that period (Schwegler 2014). In bringing together a series of relevant historical documents from the colonial period, she aptly shows that the origins of Palenque are more complex than scholars had originally assumed, in that the village arose from a more or less gradual coming together of multiple palenques, all located in the nearby Sierra de María and/or the neighboring region opposite to the shores of the Magdalena river. Somewhat surprisingly, perhaps, some of these maroons were born free, and as such were creoles who may have had native command of regional (dialectal) Spanish, a lexically Spanishbased creole, as well as one or several sub-Saharan African languages. While these documents are useful, they are also potentially problematic in that they are often ambiguous (or downright silent) about specific linguistic phenomena that are of primary interest to historical linguists. Patiño Rosselli, when trying to reconstruct the history of Palenquero, highlights the “usual silence of the colonial documents” [‘mutismo usual de los documentos coloniales’ (2002: 24)]. Zimmermann (1993: 89-111), who investigates the language of the Afro-Hispanic population in colonial Mexico, attends to a wide spectrum of text types and appears to be more optimistic regarding the use of documents. However, he does point to their apparent scarcity: for instance, he could only find testimonies of blacks in indirect —but not in direct— speech. This situation encourages him to appreciate the usefulness of literary texts4. It is the scarcity of direct speech testimonies that has usually justified the primacy of literary texts over documentary records as an empirical source for the analysis of linguistic contact phenomena: “Before the nineteenth-century, purportedly objective observations of Afro-Hispanic speech can be counted on the fingers of one hand, and the total amount of texts amounts to a paragraph at best”

4



‘Although we cannot exclude the possibility that scattered original testimonies will come to light, we must not adopt an overly critical stance –right from the beginning– towards other texts that seem less reliable or less significant from a linguistic point of view’ [Zwar ist es nicht ausgeschlossen, dass vereinzelte Originalzeugnisse ans Tageslicht gefördert werden, aber man darf deshalb von Anfang an auch sprachwissenschaftlich weniger zuverlässige und aussagekräftige Zeugnisse nicht verschmähen] (Zimmermann 1993: 92, my translation).

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(Lipski 2005: 8)5. Nevertheless, it seems plausible that several such testimonies may still await discovery in archives. I am not only referring to the documents in well-known Archivo General de Indias in Seville, but also, for example, to the numerous records about blacks and slaves that are housed in the Archivo General de la Nación in Bogotá and in similar Latin American archives6. Historians and linguists alike would do well to probe them for clues about the early history of Afro-Hispanic societies. A major problem for linguists intent on studying historical records of Afro-Hispanic language concerns the question whether reported Black speech samples are in any way realistic representations of earlier Afro-Hispanic speech varieties. Direct (black) speech recreated by white scribes usually attempts to recreate the content rather than the form of a given enunciation. The following excerpt of a text I located in the Colombian Archivo General de la Nación may serve as example: here a late judicial testimony (given on May 19, 1796) of a bozal female (María Gervasia Guillén, born in Guinea [= Black Africa7] and free at the time of this declaration) is rendered in a speech form that in all likelihood has undergone considerable filtering by the scribe: (1) dijo ser falso el que les huviera ofrecido cosa alguna y lo que sí sucedio fue que, haviéndole cogido el catabre a un muchacho que lo trahía […] se fue para ellos y [...] les dijo ‘demen Vds8 el catabre, que es mío’ y diciéndole que no, les contextó la misma declarante ‘pues tomen Vds también quanto llevo en la faldriguera y quanto llevo ensima de mi cuerpo’ [Cartagena 1796, f 3v9]

‘she said that she had not offered them anything and what did happen was that, after they took the gourd from a boy who was bringing it […] she went to them and said to them: ‘give me the gourd, because it is mine’ and, after having answered that they were not going to do that, she said ‘thus, take also what I have in the pouch and all I have on my body!’



It is not a coincidence that the anthologies of Afro-Iberian texts (Granda et al. 1996; Appendix to Lipski 2005; Santos Morillo 2010, vol. 2) tend to consist almost entirely of literary texts. Regarding the volume of documents written during the colonial era, the archive located in Seville (the administrative center of the Hispanic colonies) is much larger than the national archives in Latin America. As is well known, the term “Guinea” served as general designation for “Black Africa”. My philological interpretation of this abbreviation, when it occurs in direct speech testimonies, corresponds to the pronoun ustedes (or a phonetically similar form) and no longer to the Noun Phrase vuestras mercedes. See Gutiérrez Maté (2013: 237-253) for an explanation of the coexistence of the form vuestra merced and usted as a case of divergence (Hopper 1991); consult García Godoy (2012: 111-152) for a description and interpretation of the abbreviations vm./vmd./vd. in Spanish during the 18th century. When offering an example from an unedited text, I will provide the original source and exact page numbers. My transcriptions will always respect the original graphic symbols; accentuation and punctuation (mainly colons) will be added to facilitate the reading of the texts; most abbreviated words will be spelled out in full.

5



6



7 8



9

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In the above text, M. G. Guillén’s speech hardly differs from that which could have been uttered by a contemporary native speaker of Spanish. As such it contains no linguistic “errors” (concerning the use of articles, verb forms, agreement markers, and so forth) or other tell-tale signs of the L2 speech of a bozal speaker. What we find instead is simply a more or less faithful representation of an orally rendered testimony whose hallmarks are occasional discourse markers such as pues10 and some vernacular or diastratically marked features (e.g., use of verbal ending /n/ after the enclitic pronoun, as in demen instead of denme; Boyd-Bowman 1960: 166-167; Kany 1951: 112-114).11 Expressed differently, this text essentially corresponds to vernacular “white” speech, amply documented in the evolution of rural and/or illiterate Spanish. Evidence to that effect is, for instance, found in the form faldriguera — with its two sonorizations absent in the standard form faltriquera12. This articulation was surely socially marked, and was intentionally used by the scribe, who otherwise rendered a document virtually free of phonetic and other linguistic errors. Even as regards the correspondences between graphemes and sounds, the text seems very well written. For instance, the scribe correctly distinguishes between c/z and s, even though he must have pronounced /s/ in all cases13; under these circumstances, writing ensima with its s, as in the example above, should be interpreted as a case of “eye dialect” (Lipski 2005: 61). Even when linguists find more reliable imitations of Black speech within the analyzed samples of documents, a further challenge may concern reliability of editions itself. Not all historians offer palaeographic transcriptions, so it is often impossible to judge the accuracy of printed texts. The transcription of the often-cited text in Arrázola (1970: 152) and a comparison with the original docu This was a common technique to imitate and/or signal direct speech in many Spanish colonial documents, as well as in proceedings from the Spanish Inquisition (Gutiérrez Maté & Fernández Bernaldo de Quirós 2010). 11 The traditional explanation for the enclitic -/n/ points to the opacity of imperative forms like denme, morphologically compsed of the verb stem (de), the 3rd-person plural morpheme (-n) and the dative pronoun (me). Since grammatical person tends to be verb final, speakers repeated the corresponding morpheme /-n/ after the clitic pronoun (a further evolution denmen > demen is implicit). Kany (1994 [1945]: 145) states that in Latin America the phenomenon has a wider acceptance than in Spain, having become quite usual in realistic literature at the turn of the 20th century. My interpretation of this phenomenon is, however, that it has not yet (and never had) become a standard form anywhere in Latin America or in Spain. 12 The word faltriquera is originally of Mozarabic origin. It had the variant (faldriquera), which may have been the result of an analogy with falda ‘dress’. Faldriquera is well attested during the 16th and 17th centuries, but it was always less common than faltriquera. The variant attested in example 1 has no occurrence in the Real Academia Española’s CORDE (http:// corpus.rae.es/cordenet.html), nor in my corpus of documents. 13 See Cock Hincapié’s philological study about the chronology of seseo in colonial Colombian Spanish. 10

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ment (see Facsimile 2 in this article) serves as illustrative example: the historian mistakenly skips the transcription of the second line, apparently because it begins with the same word as the one on the third line. In doing so, he substantially alters the meaning of the sentence, thus distorting the testimony of the black slave whose court order (written in Cartagena in 1694) it was intended to represent: (2) Facsimile14, Palaeographic Transcription, Critical Edition (and transcription by Arrázola)

My palaeographic transcription of the above text: y llegado a la esquina dixo dho negro Seño ya disque Va a busca negro para Coxe dejalo Vay15 y llegado a la esquina dixo dicho negro: ‘señó, ya disque va a buscá negro para coxé ¿dejalo vay?’ (Critical Edition) Arrázola’s (1970: 152) erroneous rendering: y llegando a la esquina dixo dicho negro: ‘para coxé esa lo voy’

The (actual) fragment in direct speech consists of three parts: a phatic signal, i.e. the nominal address (of a black slave to a free mulatto, whom he is following in the street), the assertive part, where he expresses his fear because of the rumors of an imminent persecution of all blacks living in the city of Cartagena (self-understood is the unmentioned connection between Cartagenero Blacks and maroons; cp. Sánchez López 2006), and finally a rhetorical question hinting reproach: how can this free mulatto (someone who is supposed to have the opportunity to act as an intermediate with the whites) ignore the problems of the black slaves? Everything stated here by the black individual may sound quite Spanish-like, with the striking exception of the last word, i.e, “vay”. In my view, the segment in question could also be rendered as follows, where the interpretation of the statement differs substantially from that offered by Arrázola: The facsimile shows that the ink of the other side of the paper bled into the page transcribed here. Such bleeding is a frequent problem in this and many other documents. I have corrected the text here to offer the best possible transcription. 15 The text reads as follows: “a que le respondio este confesante calla la boca […]” (Gutiérrez Maté 2013: 464). 14

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Colonial documents and reconstructing the history of palenques 211 Señó ya disque va – a – buscá negro para coxé Sir ASP Adv EVID16 go – to – search17 blacks18 for (final) take deja – lo vay let– 3PL.CL.ACC go

A non-literal translation into English may thus be: “Sir, the Whites are purportedly going to look for blacks in order to capture them. Are you letting them go?”19. My main reason for presenting Arrázola’s fragment is not to suggest a definitive linguistic analysis, but rather to demonstrate the need for consulting reliable editions that, whenever possible, allow readers to verify the transcription against the original manuscript. The same methodological problem I have highlighted here is also germane to the reconstruction of vernacular varieties of Spanish that constituted the target input for bozal slaves and their descendents. A fascinating document written in the Hispanic part of Hispaniola (today’s Dominican Republic) in 1756 —“discovered” by me in Seville in 2006 and transcribed in Gutiérrez Maté (2013: 490-495)— shall serve as an example. The document in question is a long letter of complaint adressed to the Spanish king by “neighbors” (therefore, probably, Hispanic creoles20) of the town of Azua. Judging from the script, Dizque (originally, dice/diz + que ‘says that’ > ‘it is said that’/‘apparently’) is commonly used in many Spanish dialects, mainly but not exclusively in Latin America (Kany 1944). In modern Colombian Spanish, it is commonly categorized as a an evidential marker. For details, see Travis (2006), Méndez Vallejo (2012: 122-126), Oesterreicher (1994: 175; 2005: 736, fn.36) and Gutiérrez Maté (2013: 75). Since the expression is found in Palenquero (dike ~ ike), it must have been present in the speech of black slaves and maroons. 17 The loss of final /ɾ/ is quite common, mostly in verbs, in the literary texts analyzed by Lipski (2005: 140, 178, 187, 189, 191), and is present in other testimonies of blacks in Cartagena (Gutiérrez Maté 2013: 61-65). 18 Despite its appearance, the meaning of this nominal use is clearly a plural one. We cannot know if the form negro shows merely a phonetic alteration (loss of final /s/) or a grammatical change (overgeneralization of a singular form for a plural meaning). 19 In Gutiérrez Maté (2012) I offer a slightly different interpretation. The complete text can be found in Gutiérrez Maté (2013: 464). According to my earlier interpretation, lo is the singular pronoun (instead of plural los with loss of /s/), and vai is a full verb meaning ‘to go/leave’ (and, in being like this, it constitutes a word different, in form and meaning, from the auxiliary verb va, which is derived from the Spanish periphrastic future and often appears in other Afro-Hispanic texts, as well as in the Black statement analyzed here). Thus, the last part of the fragment might be interpreted as “Are you leaving now, allowing it?”. 20 Citizenship, i.e. the status of “neighbor” was not conceded to all inhabitants of a colonial village. On the contrary, to become a neighbor, one had to, for instance, possess property in the village, while also having been a local resident for a certain number of years. Black slaves were never allowed to obtain citizenship, and even mulattoes were excluded (it should be noted, however, that mulattos reached higher social status in Santo Domingo than in other colonies: cp. section 2.3 of this article). Since many regions of the Dominican 16

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the syntactic structures, and other features in this text, these neighbors (besinos) and/or the scribe who writes on behalf of all the others were seemingly anything but “well versed in letters”. For example, forms like caracole (caracoles), irla (isla), rasos (razón [s.]), Carme (Carmen), mudadad (mudadas [pl.]) or siuda (ciudad) —all indicative of a weak articulation or total loss of implosive /s/, /n/, /ɾ/ and /d/ (in some cases, there are no corresponding letters; in other cases, they are graphically replaced by the wrong letter)— suggest that the individuals in question spoke a type of “popular” Spanish typically associated with rural and uneducated classes, the same classes that in the Dominican Republic included most Blacks and mulattoes. Crucial to the argument presented here are forms like tiera ‘tierra’, paroco ‘párroco’, araisen ‘arraicen’21, etc., which are recurrent and, therefore, seemingly regular forms in the text. From these one could logically conclude that the document offers unequivocal evidence for the neutralization of /ɾ/ and /r/ in southwestern Hispaniola (18th century). This conclusion may seem surprising insofar as such dephonologization of /ɾ/ and /r/ has been attested for some enclaves where language contact has been intense historically. Included among these are Equatorial Guinea, the Philippines, the Guaranitic area around Corrientes, Argentina (NGLE §6.10t) and Palenque, Colombia (Schwegler 2011: 464)22. According to Granda (1978: 11-79), neutralization of /ɾ/ and /r/ —unlike uvularization of /r/— is better explained as a contact-induced change, even though it is possible because of a natural (internal) tendency to reduce non- (or barely-) productive phonologic oppositions (like /ɾ/ vs. /r/ in Spanish)23. Thus, one could even be inclined to accept any linguistic contact —bozal Spanish, AfRepublic needed to be repopulated with families from the Canary Islands during the 18th century, some of these neighbors may themselves have been Canarians (called isleños at that time) or descendents of Canarians (Deive 1991). One of them even had the surname (or, more accurately, nickname) of Juan Canario. 21 This verb, arraizar, stems —as well as the standard form enraizar— from the noun raiz (‘root’), although it can also be seen as a combination of two standard Spanish verbs: enraizar and arraigar (both meaning ‘to take root’). 22 The result of the neutralization of /ɾ/ and /r/ tends to be /ɾ/, but /r/ is also possible: “failure to maintain the /r/-/rr/ distinction is characteristic of Africanized Spanish of all times and places. Although the single flap [r] is the most usual manifestation, observation of Spanish spoken non-natively in Equatorial Guinea shows that hypercorrect use of the trill [rr] is also a frequent event” (Lipski 2005: 241). Other possible phonetic results of this neutralization are /l/, as attested in some Afro-Hispanic texts (Lipski 2005: 148) and Palenquero (Schwegler 2011: 448), or even /d/ (Lipski 2005: 192). 23 However, natural phonology does not explain on its own why linguistic changes take place. For instance, in Honduran Spanish simplification of /r/ into /ɾ/ is well documented but remains uncommon: this variant is found in only around 2% of cases (Hernández Torres 2010: 133).

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rican languages, or even Haitian Creole— as the main cause for having triggered the feature in question (cp. Gutiérrez Maté, 2015). As it turns out, a close examination of the script in the document under inspection reveals, contrary to expectations, that the text offers no evidence at all for the neutralization of /r/ and /ɾ/. In other words, even the most vernacular Caribbean Spanish, with which the Afro-Hispanic population was in contact (and/or was trying to acquire), distinguished between both phonemes, so neutralization cannot be considered, at least not in this area, a vernacular outcome of Spanish. The following paragraphs clarify this point, and offer a palaeographic explanation for my reasoning. As shown in (3), the scribe employed two different graphs for r, corresponding respectively to /ɾ/ and /r/: (3) Two types of in [Azua 1756]:

The r in tiera in Type B (also found in paroco, araisen, etc.) is a free variant of the traditional grapheme “r recta” (‘straight r’), here graphically more open than expected, and consisting of a single stroke (without lifting of hand) that was performed with two movements of the hand (the second stroke is longer than normal). The r of faboresca (and also esperamos, fueron, etc.) in Type A is an unskilled variant of the r that is characteristic of 18th-century court orders. Much like the grapheme for the letter “x”, the “r” in Type A adds a downward stroke after the last movement. In 18th-century Dominican official documents these two graphemes are virtually interchangeable, and partially conditioned by the antecedent and following letter, as well as by the preferences of the scribe. In any case, they must be con-

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sidered allographs of a single grapheme, i.e. . Evidence for this allography can be found, for instance, in a document written in 1720 in the city of Santo Domingo (example 4). (4) Variants of in [Santo Domingo 1720b]

para Type A

para Type B

In this 1720 Dominican document, following a technique amply consolidated since the Middle Ages, the phoneme /r/ is represented by the duplication of the grapheme , becoming now a digraph , which indeed was the only possible representation of /r/ at that time, with the occasional exception of a capital , which had a completely different scribal morphology.24 In the case of the aforementioned Azua document, what we see is the ‘graphematization’ of two allographs, made possible thanks to visibly different morphology of both graphs in this text (illiterates, as well as children, give preference to non-continuous scripts, i.e. they write letters separated from each other, as seen in the Azua document). These palaeographic minutiae highlight the importance of linguists’ access to original documents or their facsimile. In today’s online world (where a facsimile can easily be posted), this has become a realistic goal and we trust that scholars will increasingly turn their attention to original texts in order to reach sound philological conclusions. 2. The relevance of documents to the study of maroon communities This section concentrates on the formation of maroon communities (the so-called palenques), and how colonial documents are pertinent to reconstructing their histories. To illustrate the validity of my claims, I will focus on two palenques (or groups of palenques), separated both geographically and chronologically: (1) the 17th-century palenques of Sierra de María (Northern Colombia), and (2) the 18th The use of the capital letter R to represent /r/ was common at the end of the Middle Ages but can also be found elsewhere in the Hispanic Paleography (Millares Carlo & Mantecón 1955).

24

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century maroon settlements of Sierra de Bahoruco (southwestern Hispaniola). In doing so I will highlight similarities and differences between these two palenques regarding (a) their histories, as well as their place or treatment in the colonial documents, (b) the origins of their inhabitants, (c) their social structure, (d) their contacts with the surrounding regions, and, finally, (e) their local languages. This discussion will be preceded by a brief history of the term palenque. The bulk of the information to be presented was obtained during my visits to the colonial archive in Seville in 2006 to 2016. In some instances, my findings needed to be complemented by the texts presented in Arrázola (1970) and Deive (1985: 103-199). 2.1. Brief history of the term palenque Before pointing to several medieval texts containing the word palenque, the Diccionario de Autoridades (1726) defines it as follows: (5) valla o estacada que se hace para cerrar algún terreno en que ha de haber lid, torneo u otra fiesta pública ‘fence or stockade made to enclose some piece of land where a battle, tournament or public feast will take place’

The term is originally a loanword from Occitan that was introduced to Spanish (maybe via Catalan) during the Late Middle Ages (Corominas / Pascual 1985: s.v. palo). The stem pal-, like Spanish palo ‘stick’, was common to several Romance languages —including Spanish—, but the suffix (-enc) was not Castilian, as will become clear below. According to Corominas & Pascual (1985: s.v. palo), in the New World the term must have been adapted, without losing its basic meaning, to new realities which included fortified villages of Indians (well attested during the 16th century) and fortified (Black) maroon communities.25 In the 17th century, the term had circulated sufficiently so as to no longer warrant special explanation or paraphrasing. The following 1655 document written by (or in the name of) the king of Spain is the last known official source in which palenque ‘fortified village’ is explained: (6) junta de ellos [negros] a modo de fortaleza que llaman palenque (Arrázola 1970: 71) ‘gathering of them [blacks] in the style of a fortress, which is called palenque’ 25

From palenque derived the verb apalencar(se), whose related forms (e.g., apalencamiento or apalencado) are well attested in colonial documents. Blacks living in the palenques were normally called negros apalencados and not negros palenqueros.

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Nonetheless, palenque was not the only term used to refer to maroon communities. Other words with a similar meaning included maniel, an Amerindian term derived (via phonetic adaptation) from Taíno maniey (cp. Gutiérrez Maté, forthcoming). “Maniel” was mainly used in documents within La Española; however, when addressing readers in the mother country, Dominican creoles used to explain this term, either defining it explicitly (see 7) or paraphrasing it, for example, by adding the most “standard” term in Colonial Spanish, i.e., palenque (see example 8): (7) maniel, palabra que nos significa una congregación nefanda compuesta de individuos agrestes e irreligiosos (apud Lienhard 2008: 83) ‘maniel, word meaning an abominable gathering of savage and non-believers’ (8) Señor: La reducción de los negros bárbaros atrincherados en el Maniel o Palenque de las montañas de Neiba en esta isla [...]26 ‘Sir, the annihilation of these wild blacks entrenched in the maniel or palenque on the mountains of Neiba in this island […]’

2.2. Brief history of the two palenques (or groups of palenques) studied The formation of Colombian palenques and the subsequent attempts of annihilation by the Hispanic authorities were a constant throughout the 17th century, and especially during its last twenty years: after having destroyed the palenques closest to Cartagena (including the palenque called Tabacal), Hispanic militias during the last decade of the 17th century turned their attention to runaway slaves’ fortifications located in the Sierra de María (e.g., Arrázola 1970, Borrego Plá 1973, and Navarrete 2008), i.e., the area where modern San Basilio de Palenque27 is located. The palenques in the Sierra de Bahoruco of southwestern Hispaniola (today’s Dominican Republic) are simultaneously less well-known and less studied (but see Deive 1985 and Lienhard 2008). The most important of these palenques was the so-called Maniel de Neiba (located relatively near to the town of Neiba, situated close to the eastern shores of Lake Enriquillo). Early in the 18th century, palenque near Neiba served as a refuge for slaves fleeing French slaveholders of

Example 7 stems from a text written in 1790 by the governor of Santo Domingo to the king. The fragment under 8 comes from a text written in 1785 by the archbishop of Santo Domingo to the king. 27 Also known as El Palenque de San Basilio, or simply (El) Palenque. 26

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Haiti, whose border was some 50 kilometers from Neiva28. Nevertheless, it was not until the last third of the 18th century that the Spanish authorities, under pressure from the French Crown, decided to address the mounting problem caused by existence of Neiva’s maroon community. From an archivist point of view, locating the relevant documents in the colonial archive of Seville is relatively easy: most of them can be found in the bundles (legajos) Santa Fe 212, Santa Fe 213 and Santo Domingo 1.102. As regards the diplomatic (and textual) typology of these documents, one predominantly finds “official” and “particular” letters (Heredia Herrera 1985; Carrera de la Red 2006), exchanged between the different public offices and priests or military personnel who were somehow involved in these matters. Many of these letters were copied within court orders, and these often also contained other kinds of documents, including witnesses statements. On occasion, I also encountered other interesting texts in these files, including a diary written in 1785 by the Lieutenant of Infantry Lorenzo Núñez, who recounts a journey he undertook from Neiba to the nearby palenque29. As is well known, maroonage was a common phenomenon all over Latin America, but its intensity varied significantly depending on the different regions and centuries. In or around Santo Domingo, for instance, there are very few documented cases of maroonage, while the opposite was true for Cartagena (Colombia). The reasons for this striking difference are several: Santo Domingo did not receive (at least, not through legal trade) new slaves coming from Africa after the mid-17th century (the decrease in the slave trade occurred in all Hispanic colonies, but in Santo Domingo it was particularly pronounced; cp. Lipski 2004: 537). Also, the terrain in and around Santo Domingo was less rugged and/or dense than that of Cartagena, where the Montes de María with their at the time thickly forested hillsides afforded relative protection from Spanish militias. Furthermore, while it is true that people of African descent appear to have been numerically predominant over the white population in both Cartagena and Santo Domingo (vid. 9), in the latter there was some room for mulattos’ socioeconomic ascent (vid. 10). A primary consequence of this situation was that in Span The western part of the Island of Hispaniola belonged to the French Crown since the Treaty of Ryswick (1697) until the independence of Haiti (1804). 29 The complete title of this document is: Relación y Diario del reconocimiento que pudo ser practicable en las Montañas de Bauruco al S. de la Villa de neiva que sirven de guarida a los Negros esclavos fugitivos de ambas Coronas. For the paleographic transcription of this text, readers may contact the author of this article. See also Deive (1985: 161-170). 28

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ish-speaking Hispaniola —contrary to its French-controled counterpart— “autocthonous maroonage” was a rather limited phenomenon. (9) como esclavos y libres de este jaez [‘mulatos’] y los negros, que son la mayor parte de los moradores de esta ysla, están tan avilantados que no tienen respecto a la Real Justicia [Santo Domingo 1720a, f 1r] ‘they, as slaves and freemen of that sort [mulattos], and blacks, which [together] constitute the bulk of the inhabitants of this island, are so vile that they have no respect for Royal Justice’ (10) Esta ciudad está habitada por negros libres, mulatos, caribes y por una mezcla de todas estas especies; hay allí muy pocas familias enteramente blancas. Varias hasta de las que ocupan el primero rango [...] (Daniel Lescallier 1764 -apud Rodríguez Demorizi 1970: 127) ‘This city is inhabitated by free blacks, mulattos, Caribs and by a mix of all these races; there are very few entirely white families. Some of them [of the non-white families] even occupy the highest social rank’

In Colombia and Santo Domingo, the historic circumstances that led the authorities to fight the palenques differed substantially from each other, but they also exhibited some similarities: For instance, in both countries, territories close to palenques were deemed “unsafe”, due to more or less occasional raids by maroons on nearby villages30. Secondly, the mere existence of palenques was perceived by white authorities as a potentially dangerous precedent as it could incite others to fight for their freedom. Third, given the rivalry among European nations in the Caribbean, negros apalencados were perceived as potentially dangerous because of their natural propensity to switch sides in any conflict between the French and the Spanish Crowns. Blacks opposed to the dominant regime were also suspected as serving as guides for European seafaring powers intent on attacking fortified cities such as Cartagena (it was still widely remembered that maroons from the region of Panama had assisted the pirate Drake, who plundered Cartagena in 1572 [Borrego Plá 1973: 25; Tardieu 2009: 19-20]). In the case of the Colombian palenques, the viability of a peaceful resolution was discussed among the different Spanish authorities: the proposal had to include the concession of freedom to all black creoles (but not to bozales) in exchange for their resettlement (Borrego Plá 1973: 32-34). The negotiations failed when One of the most naturalistic descriptions of these pillagings, including blacks killing white and Indian women and children, are found in a letter written by the Captain Juan de Polo (April 26, 1693) [Cartagena 1693a].

30

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the maroons killed one of the white emissaries, Sergeant Luis del Castillo y Artajona31. In response, military campaigns against the palenques began during the last decade of the 17th century. While some of these succeeded, others did not, which in 1713 led the signing of a peace treaty with representatives of the population of San Basilio de Palenque (Navarrete 2008). In the case of the Dominican palenques, military pressure was applied first (most forcefully so in 1768), which, if unsuccessful, was then followed by negotiations. Under the auspices of governor Azlor, the palenque Maniel Viejo de Neiba (‘old/former palenque of Neiba’) was destroyed by force. Its inhabitants regrouped soon thereafter, forming the aptly named Maniel Nuevo de Neiba (‘new palenque of Neiba’). Slaves from the neighboring Saint-Domingue joined the village, and thereafter peaceful negotiation convinced these marroons to resettle in some fertile fields close to the city of Neiba (the exact location was a matter of negotiaton). Numerous documents provide details about these negotiations, while also offering some insights into the linguistic problems they had to communicate with others. Finally, it is worth noting that historical documents related to military campaigns against palenques are prone to considerable exaggeration (from today’s perspective) about the stealth and physical capabilities of maroons. This is especially true of Colombian texts (vid. 11). At times, maroons’ exceptional ability to hide is exaggerated, even to the point of mocking the Hispanic militias (vid. 12): (11) y murió uno que aseguro a Vuestra Señoría el aber peleado con tanto estremo que, de no haver lebantado la bos a que le matassen, ubiera echo estrago en los nuestros, pues haviéndome encontrado con él y partídole la lanza por el medio de un alfanxazo, se retiró por detrás de un bujío y sacó otra enbistiendo con denuedo osado a una esquadra de ocho honbres [...] a quienes se les dijo le mataran, y con tres heridas mortales, no fue posible reducirle asta que espiró [Cartagena 1694a, f 4r-v] ‘and a black one died who, I assure Your Honor, fought with so much excess that, if I would not have raised the voice ordering to kill him, would have devastated our troops, because, after having faced him and broken his lance in the middle with my saber, he went behind a hut and got out another lance. He daringly charged at a squad with eight men [...] who were told to kill him and, after having been mortally wounded three times, it was not possible to overwhelm him, until he finally expired’ (12) como la experiencia lo ha hecho demostrable con las repetidas e infructuosas expediciones contra dichos levantados [...] con la particularidad de hacer burla de nues This event is often mentioned in the documents as the “desgracia de Artajona” [the misfortune of Artajona] [Cartagena 1694b, f 18r]: the maroons killed Artajona and sent his testicles wrapped in a cloth to the city of Cartagena.

31

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2.3. Social composition and structure of the palenques Both the palenques of the Sierra de María (Colombia) and the Sierra del Bahoruco (Dominican Republic) were composed of African (or bozal) and locally born creole blacks. Creoles came from cities or haciendas, and they typically fled to the mountains at an adolescent or adult age. Creoles born in palenques were invariably descendants of former slaves33. The exact proportion of bozales and creoles cannot be known, but it can be partially deduced from contemporary reports. For example, a priest called Zapata, and another named Miguel de Toro (who had frequently visited the Colombian palenques) noted that there were “62 fugitive blacks whose captain was Pedro Mina” (Borrego Plá 1972: 77, my translation), amounting to a third of the total population of 186 blacks. Since Mina34 was one of the most common groups or castas of African-born slaves, it is possible that these fugitives commanded by a Mina black were Minas and probably bozales as well. In the case of Maniel de Neiba, the documents are in disagreement as to the social history of its residents (Lienhard 2008: 92-93). Nevertheless, it seems likely that over 50% of the population in 1785 had come to this palenque after having fled from Saint-Domingue. According to a bilingual document signed by the Spanish and French comissioners, 16 or 17 females and 30 males had come from Saint We can find similar descriptions in some French sources; in them, there seems to be less room for exaggeration. In 1761, French militias tried to capture on their own black slaves hidden in palenques in the Spanish part of the island. According to a French source (i.e. Moreau de Saint-Méry’s Description de la partie française de l’isle Saint-Domingue, 1797), blacks used cunning and irreverence to trick enemies into hidden lethal traps: “positioned behind a ledge, the blacks challenged their enemies by dancing in front of them. These, furious, fell into a hole full of sharp branches of pine covered up with lianas and other herbaceous plants’ [“Apostados detrás de un rellano, los negros desafiaban bailando a sus adversarios. Éstos, furiosos, se arrojaron a unos hoyos cuyo fondo estaba lleno de puntas de madera de pino, recubiertas de lianas y yerbas rastreras”] (Lienhard 2008: 85). 33 In a few cases, documents refer to the negros criollos nacidos en el monte (‘creole blacks born in the woods’) (Arrázola 1970: 83). 34 Mina makes reference to the slave castle of Elmina, located in today’s Ghana, which was controlled first by Portuguese (1482-1637) and later by Dutch slave traders (1637-1872). Note, however, that a maroon with a name like Mina was not necessarily bozal: For instance, if a slave was creole and remembered that his parents had come from Elmina, he/she could then also simply adopt that name once freedom was obtained. 32

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Domingue, as opposed to 20-21 females and only 9 males who were born in situ. Although it is not explicitly stated in the documents, the so-called vozales or estampados (‘bozales or branded slaves’) mentioned [Santo Domingo 1790, f 15v] seem to correspond to the slaves who had fled from Saint-Domingue.35 Children represented an important portion of the population of both palenques: 26,8% (50/186) in the palenque of the Sierra de María (Borrego Plá 1973: 77), and 40,9% (54/132) in Maniel de Neiba (Lienhard 2008: 91). A cliché found consistently in the Hispanic documents is the attribution of failed negotiations to the refusal by bozales (rather than creoles) to abandon their palenques. Poignant examples thereof are, for instance, found in letters written by the Dominican commissioner Lorenzo Núñez: (13) últimamente dixo Felipe que por él condescendía a nuestra propuesta, pero que los vosales dificultava lo hiciesen, porque estaban poseídos de una grande desconfianza [Santo Domingo 1790, f 2r] ‘finally, Felipe [leader of the Creoles] said that he would accept our proposal, but he judged it would be difficult that the Bozales would do the same, because they possessed great distrust’ (14) en una palabra, Señor, yo conosco en los negros bella dispocición, quando están separados los partidos de criollos y vozales y lexos del maniel, pero la junta en éste de todos nunca ha producido otra cosa que errores [Santo Domingo 1790, f 25r] ‘in one word, Sir, I recognize a good disposition of the blacks if the group of Creoles and Bozales are separated from one another and are far away from the palenque, but the gathering of all blacks in the latter has produced nothing but problems’

In reality, documents such these in all likelihood distort the sociopolitical reality in which palenques composed of creoles and bozales operated. Following the opinion of Lienhard (2008: 110), it is logical to conclude that blacks, represented “officially” by their creole (rather than bozal) leaders, simply sought to “excuse” their refusal to abandon their strongholds by claiming that their African-born (bozal) brethren could not be brought to trust Spanish officials. Operating under this pretext, creole and bozal maroons could thus safeguard both their freedom and their brotherhood. As Borrego Plá astutely notes, “los criollos no querían aceptar ninguna promesa de libertad que excluyese a algunos hermanos de raza” (1973: 105) (‘creoles did not want to accept any proposal of freedom that excluded their brothers of race’; my translation).

35

We do not know if these escaped slaves were really bozales (Africans) or just ‘blacks born outside the Hispanic colonies’; however, we can be quite sure that (real) bozales came exclusively from the French part of the island.

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Although the palenques were mostly composed of bozales and creoles, occasionally an individual of a different racial background joined the community. In the case of the Colombian palenques, we know that Indians, mulattoes and mestizos made these palenques their home (Navarrete 2001: 96), even though this may have constituted the exception rather than the rule (Noguera, Schwegler & Gusmão et al. 2014).36 In the Dominican Maniel de Neiba there was a “man of indianized color” (‘hombre de color aindiado’) (= mestizo?) living in the community. On rarer occasions, whites too became community members. In Colombia, this included kidnapped women (Borrego Plá 1973: 81). In Maniel de Neiba, a white man, supposedly an “isleño” from the Canary Islands resided in the palenque [Santo Domingo 1790, f 32r]. Documents fail to clarify the duration of his residency in Maniel, though they do make clear that ethnicity alone was not the deciding factor leading to community membership. 2.4. Contacts with the outside world and language used within the palenques The presence of all the aforementioned “exceptional” inhabitants of the palenques suggest their inhabitants were well aware of the surrounding reality. Expressed differently, they were not as isolated as has been commonly assumed. Their connection to the outside world was an early feature of their societies, though these contacts may well have been negotiated by only relatively few members of their community. In the case of San Basilio de Palenque, this situation lasted well into the second half of the 20th century, when linguists and anthropologists first arrived on the scene starting in the early 1950s with Escalante, and then by the 1970 and 1980s with de Granda, Bickerton, Friedemann, Patiño, Schwegler (others followed in the 1990s and beyond). As reported by Schwegler & Morton “although it is true that until 1970 the Palenqueros lived in almost total isolation (Montes Giraldo 1962: 446), tradition holds that Palenquero males (usually adults between 20-50 years of age) traveled to Cartagena (at the time a 3-4 day mule trip) or nearby local markets (Sincerín, Arjona) with a certain regularity (nearby markets were normally visited by adolescent and adult women rather than men)” (2003: 104). These contacts, it seems, have existed for centuries, and may explain in part why Caucasian outsiders like Schwegler were so readily invited into the Palenquero community at a time when no other white settler had ever lived there for any prolonged period of time (Schwegler, personal communication). The Dominican palenques, for their part, were in close contact with the so-called Pititrud (from the French Petit-Trou), a settlement that extended along a series of The Amerindian genetic component for Colombia’s San Basilio de Palenque has been shown to be less than 3% (Noguera, Schwegler & Gusmão et al. 2014).

36

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beaches on the southwestern Dominican coast. It often escaped the control of the Dominican authorities, thereby serving as gathering ground for adventurers, foreign smugglers and others from all over the Spanish colonies who were involved in wood cutting and its trade (Deive 1985: 89-97; Lienhard 2008: 96-100). During their negotiations with white officials, the residents of these palenques at times made explicit reference to these outside visitors: (15) Dicen los negros del maniel que no necessitan la población que se les ofrece, porque los extrangeros les proveen de lo necesario por la costa [Santo Domingo 1790, f 36v] ‘The blacks of the palenque say that they do not need [to accept] the settlement terms offered to them, because the foreigners provide them with all they need’

The Colombian and the Dominican documents differ in one respect: while no information or references about the language used in the Colombian palenques can be found during peace negotiations37, in the Dominican palenque we do find metalinguistic judgments that seek to characterize the indigenous Black vernacular of the Dominican palenque: (16) según lo que he podido ratrear [sic] del negro Santiago, que habla español, y de Felipe, que habla un jargón francés bastante inteligible; los demás que han venido le hablan poco inteligible [Santo Domingo 1785, f 4r] ‘as far as I was able to determine from the black Santiago, who speaks Spanish, and from Felipe, who speaks a quite understandable French jargon; all the others who have come speak in a way that is hardly comprehensible’ (17) el jargón de francés y guineo en el que se comunican (letter from the Archbishop to the King, 1794 -apud. Deive 1985: 71-) ‘the jargon of French and African in which they communicate

There are at least two main reasons for this (prosaic) metalinguistic description: first, as noted earlier, there exists voluminous documentation about officials’ attempts to negotiate (verbally) with the maroons so that they would abandon their mountainous abode. The second reason relates to the fact that the residents of this

37

The first metalinguistic assessment about the creole language spoken in San Basilio de Palenque refers to “un particular idioma en que a sus solas instruyen a sus muchachos” (‘a special language that they themselves teach to their children’) (Gutiérrez Azopardo 1980: 34). Published in 1772, this assessment was made long after the campaigns by the Hispanic militias, and even after the peace treaty (see above in this article, and Schwegler 2001).

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palenque needed interpreters since their French creole vernacular was impenetrable to Spanish speakers.38 Among the primary documents I have studied in Seville, I have found only a few fragments of realistic direct speech attributed to Cartagenero blacks that were presumed to have had direct contact with maroons. To the best of my knowledge, speech fragments of this nature have never been located for the Dominican palenque, nor have I been able to unearth any during my archival research. Relevant fragments are all in indirect speech (vid. 18) or, when they use direct speech, they deliberately avoid real-life rendition (vid. 19, where the utterance represented in ‘perfect Spanish’ was actually from a bozal coming from Saint-Domingue who, according to other documents, did not speak Spanish at all): (18) a lo que respondieron [los negros] que venían en nombre de todos los negros que hay en el maniel, a decirle que ninguno passaba a la parte francessa, en cuio estado le dijo a el declarante el dicho señor cura “hágame Vm favor de passar en cassa del escribano y decirle que me haga el honor de llegarmesse aquí a mi casa” [Santo Domingo 1786a, f 5v] ‘these blacks answered that they came on behalf of all blacks living in the palenque to inform [the Hispanic commissioners] that none of them would go back to the French part. Then, the above-mentioned priest said to the deponent: “be so kind as to go to scribe’s house and tell him to make me the honor of coming to my home”] (19) Uno de los negros franceses llamado La Fortuna les dijo a los comisionados “Ya vinimos para ver lo que Vms. determinan para, si no somos admitidos en España, tomar nuestras providencias” (letter from Bobadilla to the Archbishop, 1785 –apud Deive 1985: 132-) ‘One of the French blacks called “La Fortuna” said to the commissioners: ‘We have come here to find out what decision you will make, in order to make our own decisions, in case we were not accepted in Spain’”

6. Conclusion This paper has highlighted the importance of documents for reconstructing the history of language contacts in colonial Black America (and the Spanish Caribbean in particular). To that end, I have employed a philological approach that attends to palaeographic and discursive aspects of texts. I trust that the preceding See Gutiérrez Maté (forthcoming), for a more thorough analysis of some of the Dominican documents and their metalinguistic descriptions, as well as for the evident connection between the expression jargón francés and its French counterpart jargon français, used for approximative varieties of French —and probably for French-based Creoles— since the late 17th century. See also Bollée & Neumann-Holzschuh (2002).

38

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pages serve to raise our awareness of how white colonial scribes mediated testimonials about palenques, and how and why the available editions need to be double-checked against the original document(s). This study also paid special attention to the formation and structure of palenques during the colonial era. I have pointed out important historic correspondences among them. By highlighting these similarities I did not intend to question findings by Lienhard (2008: 109), Navarrete (2012) and other scholars who have stressed the idiosyncratic character of individual maroon communities. My study does, however, bring to the fore the following conclusions: first, creoles and bozales jointly contributed to the formation of palenques; second, creoles were neither the majority nor necessarily the leaders of the new communities; quite the contrary, solidarity among all blacks is widely attested, and one can never know who will turn out to have been the main actors in a given maroon society; third, there existed continuous contacts between palenques and the outside world, a situation which probably obtained from the very beginning of their existence. The linguistic interpretation of all these facts —both within the debate of creolization as a cultural and linguistic process (Müller & Ueckmann 2013) and within the context of the long-term bilingualism identified in some creole societies (cp. Schwegler 1996; Schwegler & Morton 2003)— remains open for subsequent inquiry. CITED ORIGINAL DOCUMENTS [Azua 1756] = Carta al rey de los vecinos de la villa de Azua. Archivo General de Indias (Sevilla), Santo Domingo 297. [Cartagena 1693a] = Carta informe al gobernador sobre la entrada violenta de los negros en el pueblo cercano de Piojón (April 26, 1693). Archivo General de Indias (Sevilla), Santa Fe 213, fs. 297v-299v. [Cartagena 1693b] = Carta del gobernador de Cartagena desde Timiriguaco al gobernador de de Santa Marta (April 29, 1693). Archivo General de Indias (Sevilla), Santa Fe 213, fs. 295-296. [Cartagena 1694a] = Información del capitán general de Toribio de la Torre y Caso sobre la acción contra los palenques. Archivo General de Indias (Sevilla), Santa Fe 212. [Cartagena 1694b] = Autos criminales contra el mulato Francisco de Vera. Archivo General de Indias (Sevilla), Santa Fe 212. [Cartagena 1796] = María Gervasia Guillén, negra bozal de Cartagena, causa que se le siguió por poseer géneros de contrabando. Archivo General de la Nación (Bogotá), Colonia (Negros y Esclavos), Bolívar 163. [Santo Domingo 1700] = Carta-relación al rey del presidente de la audiencia Don Severino de Manzaneda sobre diversos aspectos de la isla. Archivo General de Indias (Sevilla), Santo Domingo, 68, ramo 1, núm. 9/ 1.

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[Santo Domingo 1720a] = Carta del alcalde de Santiago de los Caballeros sobre el prendimiento de un mulato. Archivo General de Indias (Sevilla), Santo Domingo 295. [Santo Domingo 1720b] = Autos del alcalde de Santiago de los Caballeros sobre haber prendido a un mulato con machete (copy of the Audiencia de Santo Domingo). Archivo General de Indias (Sevilla), Santo Domingo 295. [Santo Domingo 1785] = Lista de los negros que se contienen en el maniel de Neiba en la montaña del Baoruco, parte española al este. Archivo General de Indias (Sevilla), Santo Domingo 1.102. [Santo Domingo 1786a] = Autos del teniente Justicia Mayor José María Redondo y Castro al Señor Presidente y Gobernador. Archivo General de Indias (Sevilla), Santo Domingo 1.102. [Santo Domingo 1786b] = Carta del gobernador interino Joaquín García al Excmo. Señor Marqués de Sonora (20 February, 1786). Archivo General de Indias (Sevilla), Santo Domingo 1.102. [Santo Domingo 1788] = Borrador de consulta del Consejo de Indias al rey (29 May, 1788). Archivo General de Indias (Sevilla), Santo Domingo 1.102. [Santo Domingo 1790] = Testimonio del expediente formado sobre la reducción de los negros del Maniel de Neiba a vida civil. Archivo General de Indias (Sevilla), Santo Domingo 1.102.

REFERENCES Arrázola, Roberto. 1970. Palenque, primer pueblo libre de América. Cartagena: Ediciones Hernández. Bollée, Annegret & Neumann-Holzschuh, Ingrid. 2002. La créolisation linguistique: un processus complexe. Études Créoles 25. 87-103. Borrego Plá, María del Carmen. 1970. Palenques de negros en Cartagena de Indias a fines del siglo xvii. Sevilla: Escuela de Estudios Hispanoamericanos. Boyd Bowman, Peter. 1960. El habla de Guanajuato. México: Imprenta Universitaria. Carrera de la Red, Micaela. 2006. Análisis de situaciones comunicativas en el documento indiano por excelencia: la carta. In Mercedes Sedano, Adriana Bolívar & Martha Shiro (eds.), Haciendo Lingüística. Homenaje a Paola Bentivoglio, 627-643. Caracas: Universidad Central de Caracas. Cock Hincapié, Olga. 1969. El seseo en el Nuevo Reino de Granada (1550-1650). Bogotá: Instituto Caro y Cuervo. Corominas, Joan & Pascual, José Antonio. 1985. Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico. Madrid: Gredos. Deive, Carlos Esteban. 1985. Los cimarrones del maniel de Neiba. Historia y Etnografía. Santo Domingo: Banco Central de la República Dominicana. Friedemann, Nina S. de. 1984. Estudios de negros en la antropología colombiana: presencia e invisibilidad. In Jaime Arocha & Nina S. de Friedemann (eds.), Un siglo de investigación social: antropología en Colombia, 507-572. Bogotá: Etno.

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Colonial documents and reconstructing the history of palenques 227 García Godoy, María Teresa. 2012. El tratamiento de merced en el español del siglo xviii. In María Teresa García Godoy (ed.): El español del siglo xviii. Cambios diacrónicos en el primer español moderno, 111-152. Bern: Peter Lang. Granda, Germán de. 1978. Estudios lingüísticos hispánicos, afro-hispánicos y criollos. Madrid: Gredos. Granda, Germán de. 1994. Un mozarabismo léxico en el español de América: perchel. In Germán de Granda, Español de América, español de África y hablas criollas hispánicas, 93-103. Madrid: Gredos. Granda, Germán de, et al. (eds.). 1996. Antología de textos afro-hispánicos. Germersheim: Centro de Estudios Latinoamericanos. Gutiérrez Azopardo, Ildefonso. 1980. Historia del negro en el Caribe: ¿sumisión o rebeldía? Bogotá: Editorial Nueva América. Gutiérrez Maté, Miguel. 2012. Lengua afrohispánica, palenquero y español colombiano atlántico en el siglo XVII. Conciencia lingüística y testimonio directo en documentos de archivo. Revista Internacional de Lingüística Iberoamericana 10. 85-106. Gutiérrez Maté, Miguel. 2013. Pronombres personales sujeto en español del Caribe. Variación e historia. Valladolid: University of Valladolid dissertation. http://uvadoc.uva.es/handle/10324/2517 (15 February, 2015). Gutiérrez Maté, Miguel. 2015. Un jargón francés poco inteligible. Criollo de base francesa en la parte española a fines del período colonial. In Silke Jansen, Jessica Barzen & Hanna L. Geiger (eds.), La Española - Isla de encuentros, 39-64. Tübingen: Narr. Gutiérrez Maté, Miguel & Fernández Bernaldo de Quirós, María. 2010. La discursivización de mira y pues en la documentación judicial hispánica (siglos XVI y XVII). Revista de Historia de la Lengua Española 5. 67-90. Heredia Herrera, Antonia. 1985. Recopilación de estudios de diplomática indiana. Sevilla: Escuela de Estudios Hispanoamericanos. Hernández Torres, Ramón Augusto. 2010. Fonética del español de Honduras. In Miguel Ángel Quesada Pachero (ed.), El español hablado en América Central. Nivel fonético, 115-136. Madrid/Frankfurt: Iberoamericana/Vervuert. Kany, Charles E. 1944. Impersonal dizque and its variants in American Spanish. Hispanic Review 12. 168-177. Kany, Charles E. 1951. American-Spanish syntax. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Koch, Peter & Oesterreicher, Wulf. 2011 [1990]. Gesprochene Sprache in der Romania. Französisch, Italienisch, Spanisch. Berlin: De Gruyter. [Tübingen: Niemeyer] Koch, Peter & Oesterreicher, Wulf. 2012 [1985]. Language of immediacy – Language of distance: Orality and literacy from the perspective of language theory and linguistic history. In Claudia Lange, Beatrix Weber & Göran Wolf (eds.), Communicative spaces. Variation, contact and change. Papers in honour of Ursula Schaefer, 441473. Frankfurt: Peter Lang. [Sprache der Nähe – Sprache der Distanz. Mündlichkeit und Schriftlichkeit im Spannungsfeld von Sprachtheorie und Sprachgeschichte. Romanistisches Jahrbuch 36. 15-43]

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Lang, Jürgen. 2010. La gradualidad en la criollización. Anuario de Lingüística Hispánica 26. 43-64. Lienhard, Martin. 2008. Agrestes e irreligiosos. Los cimarrones negros del maniel de Neiva (Santo Domingo 1785-1794). In Martin Lienhard, Disidentes, rebeldes, insurgentes. Resistencia indígena y negra en América Latina. Ensayos de historia testimonial, 83-111. Madrid/Frankfurt: Iberoamericana/Vervuert. Lipski, John M. 1994. Latin American Spanish. New York: Longman. Lipski, John M. 2004. Nuevas perspectivas sobre el español afrodominicano. In Sergio Valdés Bernal (ed.), Pensamiento lingüístico sobre el Caribe insular hispánico, 505552. Santo Domingo: Publicaciones de la Academia de Ciencias de la República Dominicana. Lipski, John M. 2005. A History of Afro-Hispanic language: Five centuries and five continents. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lipski, John M. 2012. The “new” Palenquero: Revitalization and re-creolization. In Richard J. File-Muriel & Rafael Orozco (eds.), Colombian varieties of Spanish, 21-41. Madrid/Frankfurt: Iberoamericana/Vervuert. Millares Carlo, Agustín & Mantecón, José Ignacio. 1955. Álbum de paleografía hispanoamericana de los siglos XVI y XVII. México, D.F.: Instituto Panamericano de Geografía e Historia. Montes Giraldo, José Joaquín. 1962. Sobre el habla de San Basilio de Palenque (Bolívar, Colombia). Thesaurus 17. 446-450. Müller, Gesine & Ueckmann, Natascha (eds). 2013. Kreolisierung revisited. Debatten um ein weltweites Kulturkonzept. Bielefeld: Transcript Verlag. Navarrete, María Cristina. 2001. El cimarronaje: una alternativa de libertad para los esclavos negros. Historia Caribe 2, 89-98. Navarrete, María Cristina. 2008. San Basilio de Palenque: memoria y tradición. Surgimiento y avatares de las gestas cimarronas en el Caribe colombiano. Cali: Universidad del Valle. Navarrete, María Cristina. 2012. Los cimarrones de la provincia de Cartagena de Indias en el siglo XVII: Relaciones, diferencias y políticas de las autoridades. Revue Interdisciplinaire de Travaux sur les Amériques 5. http://www.revue-rita.com/images/PDFn5/Navarrete_n5.pdf (2/15/2014) [NGLE] Real Academia Española & Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española. 2009. Nueva Gramática de la Lengua Española. Madrid: Espasa Calpe. Noguera, María Claudia; Schwegler, Armin & Gusmão, Leonor et al. 2014. Colombia’s population crucible: Y chromosome evidence from six admixed communities in the Department of Bolivar. Annals of Human Biology 41. 453-459. http://informahealthcare.com/eprint/tGM9Tr3eb239bP5R7Vzu/full (11/11/2013) Oesterreicher, Wulf. 1994. El español en textos escritos por semicultos. Competencia escrita de impronta oral en la historiografía indiana. In Jens Lüdtke (ed.), El español de América en el siglo xvi, 155-190. Madrid/Frankfurt: Iberoamericana/Vervuert. Oesterreicher, Wulf. 2005. Textos entre inmediatez y distancia comunicativas. El problema de lo hablado escrito en el Siglo de Oro. In Rafael Cano (ed.), Historia de la lengua española, 729-769. Barcelona: Ariel.

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Colonial documents and reconstructing the history of palenques 229 Patiño Rosselli, Carlos. 2002. Sobre el origen y composición del criollo palenquero. In Yves Moñino & Armin Schwegler (eds.), Palenque, Cartagena y Afro-Caribe: sociedad y lengua, 21-33. Tübingen: Niemeyer. Real Academia Española: see the entry for NGLE above. Rodríguez Demorizi, Emilio (ed.). 1970. Relaciones geográficas de Santo Domingo. Vol. 1. Santo Domingo: Editora del Caribe. Sánchez López, Beatriz. 2006. Miedo, rumor y rebelión: la conspiración esclava de 1693 en Cartagena de Indias. Historia Crítica (Universidad de Los Andes, Bogotá) 31. 77-99. Santos Morillo, Antonio. 2010. “¿Quién te lo vezó a dezir?” El habla de negro en la literatura del xvi, imitación de una realidad lingüística. Sevilla: Universidad de Sevilla - dissertation. Schwegler, Armin. 1996. Chi ma nkongo. Lengua y rito ancestrales en el Palenque de San Basilio. Madrid/Frankfurt: Iberoamericana/Vervuert. Schwegler, Armin. 2011. Palenque (Colombia): Multilingualism in an extraordinary social and historical context. In Manuel Díaz-Campos (ed.), The handbook of Hispanic sociolinguistics, 446-472. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell. Schwegler, Armin. 2011. Palenque(ro): the search for its African substrate. In Claire Lefebvre (ed.), Creoles, their substrates, and language typology, 225-249. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Schwegler, Armin. 2014. Portuguese remnants in the Afro-Hispanic diaspora. In Ana M. Carvalho & Patrícia Amaral (eds.), Portuguese-Spanish interfaces: Diachrony, synchrony, and contact, 403-441. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Schwegler, Armin & Morton, Thomas. 2003. Vernacular Spanish in a microcosm: Kateyano in El Palenque de San Basilio (Colombia). Revista Internacional de Lingüística Iberoamericana 1, 97-159. Tardieu, Jean-Pierre. 2009. Los cimarrones de Panamá. La forja de una identidad afroamericana en el siglo xvi. Madrid/Frankfurt: Iberoamericana/Vervuert. Travis, Catherine A. 2006. Dizque: a Colombian evidentiality strategy. Linguistics 44. 1269-1297. Zimmermann, Klaus. 1993. Zur Sprache der afrohispanischen Bevölkerung im Mexiko der Kolonialzeit. Iberoramericana 50. 89-111.

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TRUTH RESET: PRAGMATICS IN PALENQUERO NEGATION Armin Schwegler University of California, Irvine This paper studies variable tripartite negation patterns in the creole language of El Palenque de San Basilio (Colombia). In so doing, it uncovers specific parameters that determine the placement of the predicate negator nu in configurations such as nu+VERB, nu+VERB+nu, and VERB+nu (all three configurations are grammatical, and denote the same propositional content). I argue that the use of these three patterns is not random, but instead is dictated by discourse-pragmatic and information-structural principles. The postverbal pattern, for instance, is shown to occur only with inferable or explicitly activated propositions. A fundamental claim will be made about the differential scalar TRUTH that each of these constructions conveys, and how this has interesting and predictable consequences for Palenquero grammar. For instance, the TRUTH focus element sí (lit. ‘yes’) will be shown to be incompatible with NEG2 (nu+VERB+nu). I will offer logical reasons for the observed incompatibility, and offer examples from the field to buttress my claims. Finally, at multiple points in the article I will draw attention to related languages (noncanonical Brazilian Portuguese in particular) whose intriguing negation strategies exhibit virtually identical morphosyntactic and pragmatic features as those of Palenquero. Keywords: Creole language, embracing negation, negation, double negation, predicate negation, Palenquero, presupposition, San Basilio, scalar implicatures, sentencefinal negation, TRUTH focus, VERUM focus

1. Introduction1 Inspired in part by two recent studies on Brazilian Portuguese negation (Johnson & Schwenter forthcoming and Schwenter forthcoming), this article explores a fascinat

I thank Miguel Gutiérrez Maté for comments to an earlier version of this paper. Throughout my thirty years of inquiry into the languages and culture of Palenque, my Palenquero friend Víctor Simarra has been a constant source of inspiration and an invaluable informant. He kindly helped me appraise the grammaticality and presuppositional implicatures of some of the negation structures discussed in this paper. I am also grateful to my many other Palenquero friends who over the years have shared my fascination for Lengua. Research for this paper was supported by a travel grant from the University of California, Irvine, Humanities Commons. 1

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ing aspect of Palenquero grammar that has baffled scholars for almost half a century: pre- vs. post-verbal negation. The predicate negation patterns of Palenquero show an intriguing variety of pre- and post-verbal constructions (see 1a-c), all of which express the same propositional content. At first sight, the use and distribution of variable negation structures such as those in (1)-(3) therefore seem unsystematic and ungoverned by any grammatical principles.2 (1) a. Ele nu ten monasito. b. Ele nu ten monasito nu. c. Ele -- ten monasito nu. s/he NEG have child NEG ‘He/she doesn’t have a child.’ (2) a. Suto nu kelé-ba kumé b. Suto nu kelé-ba kumé c. Suto -- kelé-ba kumé we NEG want-TMA eat ‘We didn’t want to eat the meal.’

kumina. kumina kumina food

(3) a. Bo nu a ablá-mi ke b. Bo nu a ablá-mi ke c. Bo -- a ablá-mi ke you NEG TMA tell-me that ‘You didn’t tell me that you had left.’

nu. nu. NEG

bo bo bo you

a bae. a bae nu. a bae nu. TMA go NEG

For the purpose of this paper, we shall call “postverbal negation” any pattern that involves the placement of predicate negator nu after the verb (clause-final). According to this convention, in (1)-(3) the (b) examples with the double negative “nu … nu” and the (c) examples with the strictly postverbal nu all fall under the “postverbal” definition. As suggested by the above examples, the postverbal negator nu is normally placed in clause- or sentence-final position. Constructions such as those shown hereafter (adapted from [1] above) are thus invariably ungrammatical. (1’) a. *Ele -- ten b. *Ele nu ten c. *Ele -- ten s/he NEG have

2

nu nu nu NEG

monasito. monasito. monasito child

nu. NEG

ungrammatical (unattested)

Unless otherwise noted, all examples in this study are from my extensive field notes and/ or recordings gathered between 1985 and 2015. For additional examples and further pertinent references, visit the “Palenquero structure dataset” of the Atlas of Pidgin and Creole Language Structures Online (APICS-ONLINE), Schwegler (2013b). Dieck (2000) is also a valuable source of primary data (see, however, Schwegler forthcoming, where reservations are voiced about some of the transcriptions and the analyses based upon them). For a brief general introduction to Palenquero, see Schwegler (2013a) and/or Schwegler (2011b).

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Within the observed variable placement, occasionally triple negations of the type shown in (4) are also found. When considering examples like (4) and (5), readers should note that the sentence-final nu negates the main clause (i.e., ‘you didn’t tell me’) and not the subordinate clause to which it is immediately adjacent. To render this point more clear and to facilitate the parsing of the examples in (4) and (5), forward slashes have been added to identify clause boundaries; graphic lines with connectors and arrows indicate the scope of the respective negators. As the contrasting examples (4) to (6) illustrate, in clauses containing two or more verbal complexes, nu may or may not be placed within the clause of the negated verb (for additional examples and further discussion, see Schwegler 1991a: 192-195, 2013b, and especially Dieck 2000: 26, 40, 45-46). In cases such as (4)-(6), context typically determines or clarifies the scope of the sentence-final negation. Examples (7)-(9) show complex sentences where both clauses are negated (additional combinations are possible, but not of relevance here). (4) Bo nu a ablá-mi nu / ke bo a nu / ke bo a (5) Bo -- a ablá-mi (6) Bo nu a ablá-mi nu / ke bo a

bae / nu. bae / nu. bae.

you NEG TMA tell-me NEG that you TMA go NEG ‘You didn’t tell me that you had left.’ (7) Bo nu a ablá-mi nu / ke bo nu a bae nu. (8) Bo -- a ablá-mi nu / ke bo -- a bae nu. nu / ke bo nu a bae. (9) Bo nu a ablá-mi

you NEG TMA tell-me NEG that you NEG TMA go NEG ‘You didn’t tell me that you hadn’t gone.’

negates the main clause only

both clauses are negated

In the specialized literature on negation (e.g., Schwegler 1991a, 1996; Schwenter 2005; Johnson & Schwenter forthcoming), the labels “NEG1”, “NEG2”, and “NEG3” are commonly used to refer to the observed tripartite negation strategies. NEG2 is, at times, also called “embracing” or “discontinuous” negation. This article retains these convenient labels, and applies them as shown in Figure 1. Description

Morphosyntax

Label

Type

1. Strictly preverbal negation

nu +V+ (….)

NEG1

Preverbal

2. Double (discontinuous) negation 3. Postverbal (clause- or sentencefinal negation):

nu + V+ (….) nu V+ (….) nu

NEG2 NEG3

Postverbal

Figure 1. Basic configuration of the tripartite negation strategies, and their subdivision into pre- and post-verbal negation. Note that the embracing (discontinuous) structure will here be subsumed under the “postverbal” type.

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Since Palenquero creole has been spoken in a situation of prolonged bilingualism (all speakers also have native command of Spanish), these negation structures must be briefly placed in the broader cross-linguistic context. Palenquero NEG2 and NEG3 depart markedly from the canonical (always preverbal) NEG1 pattern of Spanish negation. As discussed in Schwegler (forthcoming), in spite of Palenque’s century-long bilingualism and historically intense code switching, NEG3 is never found in the Spanish of Palenque. Embracing negations of the NEG2 type (e.g., Span. no hablo inglés no ‘I don’t speak English’) are occasionally heard in the Spanish of some Palenqueros (mostly among bilinguals; Schwegler & Morton 2003), but such constructions are best considered morphosyntactic calques (or intrusions) from the creole into Spanish rather than stable features of Kateyano (i.e., the their local Spanish).3 In sum, the Spanish and Palenquero predicate negation patterns overlap in some respects but, for the most part, differ fundamentally from each other in that postverbal negation (and NEG3 in particular) is native only to the grammar of the creole. A recent companion study (Schwegler forthcoming) to this article reviews a quarter century of empirical research that has sought to explain the enigmatic synchronic behavior of Palenquero predicate negation. The purpose of this introductory section is to provide a schematic overview of this former research and highlight some of its latest findings. This in turn will lay the groundwork for the main part of this study (Section 3) which attempts to shed light on a fundamental and hitherto altogether overlooked aspects of postverbal negation. We will learn, for instance, that the selection of all three negation strategies is ultimately driven by discourse pragmatic considerations. These are fine-grained (and admittedly difficult to prove) information-structural projections that, in iconic fashion, set and reset common ground information (or assumptions) through morphosyntactic means — i.e. the selection of NEG1, NEG2, or NEG3. The conclusions drawn in this study will apply to predicate negation structures in general, including those involving negative polarity items such as Pal. naa ‘nothing’ (< Span. nada ‘idem’) or Pal. nunka ‘never’ (< Span. nunca ‘idem’). As shown in greater detail in Schwegler (forthcoming), these polarity items can be accompanied by the licensing negation particle Pal. nu in pre- as well as post-verbal position (cp. also [10a] and [10b] below). This situation differs substantially from that of Spanish (10’), where patterns (b) and (c) are invariably ungrammatical.



3

Informal observations suggest that embracing negation in Kateyano obey the same pragmatic principles (rejection of presuppositions, etc.) as in Palenquero. A fuller understanding of NEG2 in Kateyano awaits further research.

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(10) a. I nu a miná naa. b. I nu a miná naa nu. c. I -- a miná naa. I NEG TMA see nothing/ NEG NEGPOL Engl. ‘I haven’t seen anything.’ (10’) a. (Yo) no he visto nada. b. *(Yo) no he visto nada c. *(Yo) -- he visto nada.

no.

Palenquero

Spanish

This article is organized as follows: Section 2 describes the sentence types in which the three Palenquero predicate negation strategies can occur. It also offers comments about the relative frequency of NEG1, NEG2, and NEG3, and the fundamental pragmatic and functional differences that differentiate them. Section 3, the core of this study, focuses on NEG2 vs. NEG3 in an attempt to answer why the selection of one over the other at times causes grammatical and/or presuppositional infelicity. As we shall see, principles related to presuppositions, proposition activation, and scalar truth value settings determine the selection of NEG1, NEG2, or NEG3. Section 5 draws attention to important sociolinguistic changes that are impacting the ways in which Palenquero youths (mostly heritage speakers) currently apply predicate negation rules. Finally, Section 5 presents a summary feature matrix and conclusions. 2. Pre- vs. post-verbal negation: sentence type, relative frequency, and functional differences in traditional Palenquero 2.1. Sentence modalities Pre-, double-, and post-verbal negation structures can occur in all sentence modalities (pace Schwegler 1991a: 176), and, as shown in (10) above, in simplex clauses (not followed by subordinate clauses) as well as complex clauses (4-9 above). NEG1, NEG2, and NEG3 thus occur in declarative (4-9) as well as interrogative sentences (11). One minor exception occurs in imperatives: negative commands show an overwhelming preference for embracing NEG2 (cp. 12a) and occasional acceptance of NEG3, but the strictly preverbal NEG1 is consistently shunned (explanations for this exceptional behavior of imperatives will be given below). Contrary to what has been stated or implied repeatedly in other studies (e.g., Dieck 2000: 78), it is not the case, however, that sentence modality determines the morphosyntax of Palenquero predicate negation. As shown in Schwegler (forthcoming) and as indirectly supported by Schwenter & Johnson’s (forthcom-

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ing) and Schwenter’s (forthcoming) studies of virtually identical patterns in Brazilian Portuguese, discourse pragmatic conditions rather than sentence modality are the prime determiners for the selection of a specific negation pattern. (11) a. ¿Ané nu a b. ¿Ané nu a c. ¿Ané -- a they NEG TMA ‘Didn’t they complain?’

reklamá? reklamá nu? reklamá nu? complain NEG

(12) a. ¡Nu yolá nu! — ¡Nu kum-eno4 nu! b. ¡Yolá nu! — ¡Kum-eno nu! NEG cry NEG NEG eat-1pl+2pl NEG ‘Don’t cry (s.)!’ — ‘Let’s not eat!’ ~ ‘Don’t eat (pl.)!’

2.2. Relative frequency In terms of relative frequency, postverbal negation in Palenquero is substantially more common than its preverbal counterpart. While it is true that —for reasons that will be clarified in Section 4 “The ‘new’ Palenquero”— there can be considerable quantitative variation in overall usage from individual to individual, my thirty years of familiarity with Lengua (local name of Palenquero) and intuition as a fluent speaker of the creole permit me to state with confidence that the quantitative results reported in Dieck (2000: 44) for one of her informants (a speaker of traditional Palenquero) accurately reflect the general trend with which Palenqueros have employed predicate negation strategies. As shown in Figure 2, the distribution of pre- vs. post-verbal negation patterns in a 70-minute recording of this speaker was such that about one fourth of the total of 82 predicate negations were preverbal constructions, while the rest were postverbal. Another recording (20 minutes) by Dieck similarly exhibits a much higher frequency for postverbal negation (86.5%), which includes 16% for NEG2 and 10.5% for NEG3.

4

Earlier sources either misidentify or altogether overlook command forms ending in -eno (also pronounced -enu). Derived from the pronominal Kikongo suffix éenu (also éeno), where it is similarly applied to imperatives (cp. Laman 1964: 145) in the first and second person plural, enclitic Pal. -eno is employed to form commands not only in the first but also the second person plural. Friedemann & Patiño Rosselli (1983: 37) were under the mistaken impression that -eno was limited to second-person plural imperatives.

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Speaker #1:* NEG1 NEG2 NEG3 TOTAL*

= = = =

18 occurrences 2 occurrences 62 occurrences 82 occurrences

/ / / /

22.00% 2.50% 75.50% 100.00%

Speaker information: Bernardino Pérez (23 years of age at the time of the recording [early 1990s]).

= = = =

5 occurrences 6 occurrences 26 occurrences 37 occurrences

/ / / /

13.50% 16.00% 70.50% 100.00%

Speaker information: Raúl Salas (in his mid-30s at the time of the recording [early 1990s]).

Speaker #2:* NEG1 NEG2 NEG3 TOTAL*

*All figures rounded to the nearest half percent Figure 2. Relative distribution of negation patterns in recording of two speakers of traditional Palenquero Data and age information from Dieck (2000: 44 and 53); in the same source, see also page 69, where the figure for B. Pérez (B.P.) needs to be corrected from 13 to 18 for NEG1 (misprint).

When assessing quantitative results of this nature, care must be taken to appreciate the extent to which discourse type and context influence the relative frequency of Palenquero negation patterns. Monologues, for instance, typically contain far fewer commands than dialogues in which speakers may seek to reform the behavior or attitudes of interlocutors through the use of negated utterances. Corpora (my own included) obtained in Palenque have, for instance, been based on more or less staged speech situations that routinely disfavored the use of negative command forms. Since negative imperatives in Palenquero overwhelmingly occur with an embracing double negation (cp. ¡Nu ablá nu! ‘Don’t talk!’), it follows that quantitative results reported in the literature on Palenquero substantially underestimate their overall frequency. This may explain, in part, why speaker #1 in Table 2 used the embracing NEG2 pattern in only two instances (both were imperatives), thereby potentially giving the impression that, at the turn of the millennium (when Dieck recorded her data), the construction was intermittent at best. However, then, as now, double negation in the creole has always been abundant. Especially in contexts where creole-speaking Palenquero parents admonish their majaná ‘children’ with sentences of the “Don’t do this!” type, NEG2 constructions have been a predictable and regular component of verbal interactions in virtually any Palenquero backyard, the place where most family activities used to occur.

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Outside of the domain of imperatives, NEG2 is far less frequent, and often felt (by speakers) to carry emphasis, as observed by Friedemann & Patiño’s trailblazing monograph on Palenquero: “This double negation also appears, sporadically, in non-imperative utterances, apparently by contamination from Spanish or to add emphasis” (1983: 172; my translation). As noted in my earlier publications on negation, there is, however, no reason to assume that NEG2 is a contamination from Spanish resulting from the combination of “Span. NEG1 + Pal. NEG3”. To reiterate, all three negation patterns are synchronically native to Palenquero creole, and their varied relative frequency in traditional Palenquero is not the result of adstratal pressures.5 2.3. Functional differences between pre- vs. post-verbal negation In Schwegler (1991a) I suggested that the selection of a given negation strategy (i.e., NEG1, NEG2, NEG3) is triggered by complex discourse-pragmatic factors, and that the postverbal pattern (i.e., NEG2 and NEG3) is employed whenever Palenqueros wish to pragmatically contradict statements or assumptions explicit or implicit in the preceding discourse, as in (13) and (14). [Scenario: R. and A. are finishing up a couple of beers at a local bar. R. gives A. a critical look, implying that A. should now pay for the drinks. A. then responds with (13) while simultaneously showing his empty wallet to R.] (13) uh, ¡miná! ¡I nu polé pagá nu pogke uh look I NEG can pay NEG because —¡miná!— i tené plata nu! look I have money NEG

‘Uh, look! I can’t pay (= I can’t treat you to a beer) because —look!— I don’t have any money (in my wallet) [contrary to what you and I might have thought at first]!’

In (13), the interlocutor A. chose a postverbal (NEG2 and NEG3) rather than preverbal pattern because the circumstances implicit in the moment of speech dictated that he was presumed to (a) pay the bill, and (b) have money in his wallet (A. had explicitly invited his friends to join him for a beer; and he uttered the sentence —with a smirk on his face— upon realizing that his wallet was empty). Postverbal negation rejects the set of propositions (knowledge, old information) that the speaker assumes the hearer believes true at the time of utterance. By selecting postverbal over strictly preverbal nu, speakers assign the focus of their 5



For an explanation of the term “traditional Palenquero”, see section §4 in this article, or Lipski (2012), where the focus is on “the new Palenquero”.

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utterance not to the “negative” assertion of their statement but rather to the rejection of the pragmatic presupposition. This is the case in (13) above when the speaker announces that, contrary to expectations, he won’t be able to pay the bill. In English, such pragmatic differences (implicit rejection) are often coded lexically with qualifiers such as “really” or “actually”, or through special intonational patterns (emphasis), as in “I don’t have any money!’. Presuppositions (or assumptions) to the contrary can be explicit or implicit, though the latter tend to be far more frequent. Understanding crucial (presupposed) background information implicit in a given discourse context often requires intimate familiarity with local culture and traditions. In the case of example (14) below, for instance, it is essential to know that (1) ané ‘they’ references Palenqueros who in the 1980s had emigrated to Caracas in search of job opportunities, and that (2) following the dictum “once a Palenquero always a Palenquero”, these emigrants had traditionally been expected to return to their native village from time to time (especially during Christmas, and other major holidays or festivities). Contrary to expectations, in (14) the Palenqueros in question did not actually revisit their village, which in turn prompted the use of the pragmatically “loaded” NEG3 rather than presuppositional “empty” or neutral NEG1. The morphosyntactic rather than lexical encoding (pre- vs. post-verbal negation) of such presuppositional nuances is consequential for linguistic analyses, as it makes it difficult to render them fully in translations into other languages. For this reason, the non-literal English translation in (14) does far greater justice to the pragmatic intent and overall meaning of the original utterance than the more literal rendition that precedes it. (14) E, ané asé-ba miní mucho nu. eh they TMA come much NEG Literally: ‘Eh, they didn’t return [to Palenque] often.’ Non-literally: ‘In actuality, they didn’t return [to Palenque] often enough, even though they should have.’ [reproach]

As clarified in Schwegler (forthcoming), the selection of pre- vs. post-verbal negation in Palenquero overtly signals whether an assumption “to the contrary” was in fact held prior to the actual enunciation, but in real (and recorded) speech there is often no telling why a speaker held a given backgrounded attitude towards an upcoming proposition. It is, therefore, correct to say that speakers — consciously or subconsciously— always know what their underlying assumptions are, but their interlocutors may be unaware of them. In my estimation, it is also equally correct to state that postverbal nu by definition is what Reese would call “an epistemic modal operator that embeds a ‘meta-conversational’

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modal statement, i.e., a modal statement that refers to the conversation goals of the discourse participants rather than to the state of the world” (2006: 334). The use of postverbal nu (be that NEG2 or NEG3) is only motivated as a metaconversational move if, in the speaker’s mind, an epistemic conflict needs to be resolved or, in the least, put in proper focus. In (14) above, the speaker’s intent is not simply to argue that “locally-born emigrants didn’t return to Palenque much” but rather that “they should have done so more often”. This modal implicature corrects and redresses the potentially perceived epistemic conflict that “they in fact didn’t return often enough”, thus making plain the speaker’s background attitude. Of course, the same speaker could have produced (14) above with a simple preverbal nu as in (15a). Had he done so, the semantic function of preverbal negation NEG1 would, however, merely have taken the corresponding affirmative proposition (i.e., “they returned [to Palenque] often”) and converted it into a negated proposition (“they did not return [to Palenque] often”). As such, it would have lacked the intended modal overtone —all important in this context— and therefore could not have served as social commentary to an utterance that was ultimately motivated by the speaker’s concern for “old-style proper behavior” (i.e., the need for Palenquero emigrants’ periodic return to their native village). Pattern: (15) a. E, nu ané asé-ba miní mucho. NEG1 eh NEG they TMA come much ‘Eh, they didn’t return [to Palenque] often.’ [Factual, matter- of-fact assertive statement; no attitudinal overtone is implied] Pattern: (15) b. E, ané asé-ba miní mucho nu. [Reiterated NEG3 eh they TMA come much NEG from (14) above] Literally: ‘Eh, they didn’t return [to Palenque] often.’ Non-literally: ‘In actuality, they didn’t return [to Palenque] often enough, even though they should have.’ [reproach]

Dieck’s La negación en palenquero: Análisis sincrónico, estudio comparativo y consecuencias teóricas (published in 2000) —a revised version of her University of Hamburg dissertation— critically reviewed existing theories about the grammar of Palenquero negation, and offered alternative analyses, summed up conveniently in Dieck (2002). Significantly, Dieck departs from my 1991 analysis in that she opposes the claim that the selection of a given negation strategy (i.e., NEG1, NEG2, NEG3) is triggered by discourse-pragmatic factors such as “contradiction to earlier statements or assumptions” (see above). She also rejects my assertion that NEG1 is employed for pragmatically unmarked factual statements. Instead she argues that the distribution of the three basic negation patterns (NEG1,2,3) is principally related

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to “the necessity to delimit the reach of negators in certain contexts so as to avoid ambiguities of interpretation” (2000: 163, my translation6). Dieck’s alternative proposal is an extensive and thought-provoking contribution, and as such merits serious consideration. Encouraged by two recent and unusually perceptive studies of Brazilian Portuguese negation (Johnson & Schwenter forthcoming, Schwenter forthcoming), I have recently returned to the topic of Palenquero negation (Schwegler forthcoming). As shown by (16), Brazilian predicate negation is a virtual mirror image of Palenquero morphosyntactic patterns in that it also features a tripartite system, with a similarly striking clause- or sentence-final placement of postverbal NEG: (16) a. Não vai muito para a universidade. (NEG1) b. Não vai muito para a universidade não. (NEG2) c. -- Vai muito para a universidade não. (NEG3) ‘She doesn’t go much to the university.’

Johnson & Schwenter’s forthcoming study (buttressed significantly by findings presented in Schwenter 2002 and 2005) vindicates the pragmatics-based approach I championed in 1991. Importantly, their analysis not only corroborates the usefulness of informational-structural notions for explaining the selection of pre- vs. post-verbal negation, but also goes beyond mine in that it shows that for postverbal negation to become licensed in Brazilian Portuguese, “the contextually-derived proposition does not have to be believed, but only activated” (2002: 255, emphasis in original). In my latest study (Schwegler forthcoming), I embrace this same view applying it profitably to Palenquero. I am therefore now of the opinion that postverbal NEG2 and NEG3 in Lengua are not restricted to denying propositions derivable from pragmatic presuppositions alone. Although Schwenter & Johnson’s views and my own on what ultimately licenses postverbal negation do not overlap completely (see my comments to Table 2 in “5. Conclusions” below), I am in full agreement with them that in Brazilian Portuguese (as well as in Palenquero), NEG1 is used primarily “in ‘out of the blue contexts’ (to the extent that such contexts are possible) or in contexts where the negative sentence or utterance is being presented specifically as new information in the discourse” (Johnson & Schwenter MS: 4). This explains why, in the hypothetical “out of the blue” context of the Brazilian Portuguese and Palenquero examples in (17) and (18), respectively, a postverbal NEG is infelicitous, i.e., an impossible discourse option.7 6



7



“Propusimos, en cambio, que la distribución de los patronos negativos está principalmente ligada a la necesidad de marcar el alcance negativo en ciertos contextos para evitar ambigüedades en la interpretación” (Dieck 2000: 63). The BP example is from Johnson & Schwenter (forthcoming: 4), slightly adapted here for ease of interpretation.

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BP. (17) Tenho uma novidade para vocé: Amanhã não vai chover. *Amanhã não vai chover não. *Amanhã vai chover não. Pal. (18) I tené un noberá pa uté: ‘I have news for you:

Maana nu tan yobé. *Maana tan yobé *Maana nu tan yobé Tomorrow it won’t rain.’

nu. nu.

Note, however —and herein lies the crux of the matter— that a different discourse context could fully license the same utterance with a postverbal negator. Whereas (17) and (18) above introduce presuppositionally uncontested information, the express addition of a bitter, sarcastic tone (signaled, for instance by a special intonational contour on the first part of the sentence, and accompanying facial expressions, e.g., a smirk) can fundamentally alter the licensing conditions of “tomorrow it won’t rain!”, and thus open the way for postverbal negation (examples [19] and [20] below). This is so because, for the sarcasm to be applicable, the topic “it will/ may rain tomorrow” needs to already have been “activated” or present by the time of the speech act. [Context: Thinking that rain is imminent, Maria canceled a planned outing with Carlos for the next day so that she could plant vegetables in her garden instead. Still irritated about the cancelation, Carlos (who has just watched the weather report on TV) walks into the kitchen and addresses Maria by making the following derisive and cutting remark:] BP. (19) Tenho uma novidade para vocé: [sarcastic] Pal. (20) I tené un noberá pa uté: [sarcastic]

Amanhã (não) vai chover não! ¡Maana (nu) tan yobé nu!

‘I have news for you: [sarcastic]

Tomorrow it isn’t going to rain! [contrary to what you wish or think is going to happen]’

The felicity of preverbal Pal. nu tan yobé vs. postverbal tan (nu) yobé nu ‘it won’t rain’ thus depends on the confrontation of opposing viewpoints: in preverbal (18), the speaker presents the information with an uncontested TRUTH value; that truth value is presumed to be shared (common ground) by the speaker and the cooperative addressee(s). Note that in (21) below, preverbal nu similarly puts the TRUTH value of “there is firewood there” in focus, which explains why the speaker then decides to send her son to go fetch it (had she framed the same question in a postverbal nu, the TRUTH value would have been contested, so much so that it would have made far less sense —or, in her mind, perhaps none at all— to send her son to go fetch the piece of firewood).

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[Context: A Palenquera is building a fire in her patio and thinks she has just seen a nice piece of firewood in the bushes of her backyard. She then directs the following query (negated with NEG2) and subsequent command to her nearby son (readers will note that the utterance includes a code-switch to Spanish after the initial query; that switch is, however, not consequential for the analysis at hand):] (21) ¿Aí nu ten un troso leña?

there NEG have a piece firewood go to fetch-it ‘Isn’t there a piece of firewood [in the bushes]? Go fetch it!

Figures of speech implying irony or sarcasm typically require Pal. nu to be placed in post- rather than pre-verbal position. This is the case, for instance with tongue-in-cheek comments, used to imply that a proposition is humorous or not seriously intended. Such figures of speech therefore typically contest a presupposed assumption — hence the postverbal NEG. Here too, facial expressions often accompany the utterance indicating that one is joking or making a mental effort. This is exactly the intended underlying message that an adolescent Palenquero male (proud to be a successful womanizer) sought to convey when exclaiming that “he currently didn’t have any girl friends” (22): (22) , like you already know

¡Yo i nu tené changaína I I (clitic) NEG have girl(friend)

nu! NEG

‘Me? [expressed with sarcasm], and … as you already know, I don’t have any girlfriends!’ (implied: I have not one but several!)’

Example (22) highlights an important further aspect of postverbal negation in Palenquero and Brazilian Portuguese: NEG2 and NEG3 are only licensed when the conversational topic negated is already salient (activated). In postverbal (19), (20) and (22) above, this is the case: in (22), for instance, the prior conversation had already centered on Palenqueros’ male behavior, including their supposed propensity in younger years to “pursue the ladies”. It follows from the foregoing that in Palenquero (and, in my view also in Brazilian Portuguese), propositions negated with postverbal nu (NEG2 or NEG3) are inherently referential. In other words, these propositions must refer to an individuated, identifiable entity or event in the world, even if such entity has not been explicitly identified by prior discourse. This referentiality is normally assumed to be shared by some or all of the intended addressees in a given conversation. A further important conclusion flows from the foregoing observation: by selecting post- over pre-verbal negation, Palenquero speakers can signal overtly (via unambiguous morphosyntactic means) that they expect their audience to already have activated the topic at

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hand. Languages that do not have at their disposal this or similar iconic constructions for conveying focus expectations may, of course, rely on other means to express the same. This includes special intonational contours, gestures, body language, and so forth. 3. In search of functional differences between NEG2 and NEG3 So far I have treated postverbal NEG2 and NEG3 as functional equivalents in that both have been said to convey pragmatic information that seeks to counteract implicit or explicit presuppositions. We may even say (basing ourselves on Horn 1985 and 1989 Chap. 6) that clauses containing (nu)+VERB+nu are often not intended as truth-functional statements about the proposition expressed but as a way of objecting to the manner in which a previous (implicit or explicit) proposition has been put in terms of scalar truth value. As such, postverbal (nu) … nu seeks to achieve the following: • respond to contextually-derived propositions that have been activated (verbally or non-verbally) in the discourse, • relate to the TRUTH value of propositions, and • reference (or co-reference) background information often rooted in cultural (local) knowledge shared by members of the speech community. Typically, this information is “conventional knowledge”, and is part and parcel of a data base from which speakers can draw (or “activate”) inferences.8 What has never been explored in any depth in the literature on Palenquero negation is whether NEG2 and NEG3 are in free variation, or whether there are principled reasons why speakers choose NEG2 over NEG3 (or vice versa) at certain points in discourse. The purpose of this section is to examine this intriguing question in some detail, using as a point of departure Johnson and Schwenter’s research into Brazilian Portuguese (BP). Like Schwenter, who has delved into non-canonical postverbal constructions of BP for well over a decade (cp. Schwenter 2002, 2005, forthcoming), I have arrived at my conclusions via prolonged engagement with a topic that originally attracted my attention while studying non-canonical negation in BP (Schwegler 1991b). My current interpretation of “facts” surrounding the use of NEG2 vs. NEG3 are, however, still tentative and will require confirmation by scholars thoroughly familiar with the metalinguistics of negation in Palenquero and other closely related Romance

8

The extent to which linguistic comprehension relies on extra-linguistic knowledge and processes has recently been examined in Goodman & Stuhlmüller (2013).

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vernaculars (Brazilian Portuguese, Dominican Spanish, etc.; see Schwegler 1996). Ideally, such future inquiries should include psycholinguists (e.g., Dussias et al. [in press] and her team at the University of Pennsylvania), as they may be best equipped to design task-based field experiments that could yield deeper insights into Palenquero negation strategies (on the promise of psycholinguistic approaches, see also Schwegler forthcoming). Limitations of space will prevent me here from taking a broad comparative approach. Scholars intent on contributing to this growing body of research should, however, make sure to familiarize themselves with the complexities of negation by consulting Horn’s (1985) classic study on metalinguistic negation and pragmatic ambiguity (see also Horn 1989) as well as recent works by Martins (2014), Peres (2013), and Schwenter (forthcoming) on European and Brazilian Portuguese. 3.1. NEG2 vs. NEG3 in Brazilian Portuguese and Palenquero Because of the aforementioned striking parallelisms between Palenquero NEG2/3 and Brazilian Portuguese NEG2/3, and on account of scholars’ recent advances in the study of BP negation patterns, it may be best to first examine the synchronic conditions that license the selection of NEG2 vs. NEG3 in Brazilian Portuguese. We will then seek to extend these findings to Palenquero to see whether the same (or similar) rules govern postverbal negation in Palenque’s creole. As already noted, according to Johnson & Schwenter (forthcoming) and Schwenter (forthcoming), postverbal negation in BP is said to be licensed only in cases where the proposition being negated can be inferred from in prior discourse. Crucial for the purpose of this section on postverbal negation is their discovery that in BP “the most important difference between NEG2 and NEG3 relates to how the proposition that each form negates has been activated in the discourse” (forthcoming). For Schwenter, “NEG3 is found in a proper subset of contexts where NEG2 can be found” (Schwenter forthcoming; see also Schwenter 2005: 1452), which closely corresponds to what I had observed in my earlier investigations on Palenquero. Schwenter furthermore claims that “the main discourse-pragmatic licensing difference resides in the accessibility of the negated proposition: NEG2 is felicitous with inferable propositions, while NEG3 requires that the proposition it targets be explicitly activated in the preceding discourse” (Schwenter forthcoming; my emphasis). To illustrate this functional difference, the author offers the following examples and explanatory remarks (for a similar account, see also Johnson & Schwenter; to achieve maximum clarity, I slightly alter the presentation of the original examples; this does not, however, affect the gist of the argument):

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[Context: João asks Maria about a film that he assumed that she went to see the night before.] (23) J: Você gostou do filme? you like-past of movie ‘Did you like the movie?’ Answer 1: M: Não gostei Gostei NEG like ‘I didn’t like it.’

não. não. NEG

←neg2 = possible ←neg3 = possible

In the context of a reply to a yes/no-question such as (23), both NEG2 and NEG3 can occur felicitously. In (23), João’s question activates the proposition “Maria liked the film”. This discursive activation licenses either a NEG2 or NEG3 so that Não gostei não and Gostei ñao in Answer 1 are both possible replies. However, if the reply is modified —as in Answer 2 below— then only NEG2 is possible. This is so because, as we recall, “NEG2 is felicitous with inferable propositions, while NEG3 requires that the proposition it targets be explicitly activated in preceding discourse”. Note that in this case, the negated proposition (“I didn’t go”) was not explicitly activated by the preceding question “Did you like the movie”, thus making *Ah, fui ñao with NEG3 an impossible reply. (23’) Answer 2: M: Ah, não fui não. ←neg2 = *Ah, fui não. ←neg3 = ah NEG go NEG ‘Ah, I didn’t go.’

possible impossible because not explicitly activated

To guide readers in their explanation of what licenses non-canonical BP negation strategies, Johnson & Schwenter offer a useful table of parameters, reproduced here as Table 1. As shown, only NEG1 is acceptable in monologic contexts where there are no opposing viewpoints at issue. NEG2 is possible in inferable contexts, and NEG3 requires overt activation of the proposition in the discourse. NEG2 and NEG3 must both occur on dialogic contexts, “which typically amount to speaker denials of an interlocutor assertion” (Johnson & Schwenter forthcoming). As the following sections hope to make clear, these same parameters apply —with some variations— to Palenquero, especially if one accepts that with NEG3 explicit activation can, and often does, occur through non-verbal means.

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NEG1 NEG2 NEG3

Monologic OK # #

247

Inferable OK OK #

Dialogic OK OK OK

Explicit Activation OK OK REQUIRED

Table 1. Parameters of acceptability for canonicals and non-canonicals in Brazilian Portuguese (Johnson & Schwenter forthcoming)

3.1.1. NEG2 vs. NEG3 in Palenquero: Condition barring NEG3 In my view, the observed parameters of acceptability for BP NEG2 and NEG3 also apply to Palenquero, albeit perhaps in a somewhat less systematic or obligatory fashion (the main reason for the lesser systematicity will become clear in Section 4 below, where ongoing sociolinguistic changes are adduced as the primary reason for resetting the principles that now govern negation strategies among young Palenquero heritage speakers). The acceptability parameters spelt out earlier for the BP example (23) above thus seem to equally apply to its approximate Palenquero counterpart in (24) below, so much so that non-explicitly activated but discourse-pragmatically inferred propositions in traditional Palenquero bar NEG3 but tolerate NEG2: [Context: Juan asks Maria about a party that he thinks she attended the night before, implying that she probably liked the party.] (24) J: ¿Bo a ngutá ri you TMA enjoy of ‘Did you enjoy the party?’

fieta? party

[implicature: “you probably did like the party”]

Answer 1: M: I nu a ngutá ri ele nu. I a ngutá ri ele nu. I NEG TMA enjoy of it NEG ‘I didn’t enjoy it.’

←neg2 = possibility ←neg3 = possibility

Answer 2: M: ¡Miná, i nu a bae nu! *¡Miná, i a bae nu! look I NEG TMA go NEG ‘Look, I didn’t go!’

←neg2 = possibility ←neg3 = impossibility

NEG3 in Answer 2 “¡Miná, i a bae nu!” (‘Look, I didn’t go!’) cannot be licensed on account of the fact that its corresponding affirmative “bo a bae” (‘I went to the fiesta’) has not been explicitly activated in preceding discourse. Crucially, the observation that clause- or sentence-final NEG3 nu is (generally) barred from non-explicitly asserted content helps us understand why in the recorded Palenquero dialogue in (25a) below the speaker in Part 1 of his reply first opts to negate with NEG2 rather

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than NEG3, but then follows up with a NEG3 construction in Part 2 of his reply, where “to go to Cartagena” has been activated in explicit fashion by A. My accompanying comments after each reply clarify the underlying rationale for the selection of the respective patterns. (25) a. Question by A.: ¿Bo kelé bae ayá Katahena ku yo? you want go there Cartagena with I ‘Did you want to go to Cartagena with me?’

Reply by R. (Part 1): ¡I nu ten plata nu! [brief pause] I NEG have money NEG ‘I don’t have any money!’9



→ Rationale for NEG2: speaker must choose NEG2 over NEG3 because the latter is infelicitous in this context where the corresponding affirmative “you have money” has not been activated explicitly. Follow-up reply by R. (Part 2): ¿Kumo hué k’ o pensá k’ i kelé bae nu? how is that you think that I want go NEG ‘How is it that you think (= How can you think) that I don’t want to go?’



→ Rationale for NEG3: The speaker can choose this pattern because R.’s conversation partner has already fully activated the idea of going to Cartagena.

Crucial for Palenquero (and perhaps also for Brazilian Portuguese [?]) is the fact that “explicit activation in prior discourse” commonly occurs through non-verbal means. Our earlier example (13), repeated as (25b) below, and example (25c) below both serve to illustrate this point. In the discourse context of (25b), we recall, speaker A. had invited speaker R. for a beer, but then ended up being unable to pay the bill because his wallet —to the surprise of both interlocutors— was empty. By actually showing his friend the empty wallet, A. visibly elevated “to have money” to a fully activated proposition, thereby licensing NEG3 in the concluding commentary “i tené plata nu”. (25) b. uh, uh

¡miná! ¡I nu polé look I NEG2 can

nu! NEG3

—¡miná!— look



‘Uh, look! I can’t pay (= I can’t treat you to a beer) because —look!— I don’t have any money (in my wallet) [contrary to what you and I might have thought at first]!’

plata money

nu pogke NEG2 because



9

i tené I have

pagá pay

Implied: ‘I cannot go; I don’t have any money for the bus, but I would want to go to Cartagena if you gave me some.’

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Example (25c) below is particularly interesting because it features consecutive postverbal negations (NEG3) that are then followed by a preverbal matter-of-fact (factual) afterthought comment, whose main purpose is to express in a matter of fact way that the truth value of the proposition is now set to an uncontested “I don’t know”. Note that in the case of (25c), the overall preceding discourse context was crucial: the speakers (two older Palenqueras) had repeatedly boasted about their supposed familiarity with local culinary traditions, so much so that the proposition “we know about local food” had already been fully and explicitly activated (thus making postverbal negation, and NEG3 in particular, a distinct possibility). In that conversation, the attention then turned to an age-old rice dish called “mambalasá” that, by the time of the recording (1985), only the eldest Palenqueros remembered. In light of this conversational setting, R. was “naturally” expected to still have knowledge of the mambalasá dish. As shown in (25c), she repeatedly sought to reset that assumption with a NEG3. In her mind she must have succeeded, thereby prompting her presuppositionally neutral (or “uncontested”) follow-up comment “(yah), I (simply) don’t recall”. (25) c. A: ¿I ese kumina kumo fueba? and this food how be-TMA ‘And this meal (i.e. “mambalasá”), what did it consist of?’ R: i sabé nu, i sabé nu, i sabé r’ eso nu; I know NEG I know NEG I know of that NEG i a ndá kuenta ri eso nu. Nu a ndá kuenta. I TMA be aware of that NEG NEG TMA be aware

‘I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know about it, I don’t recall. [Yah, that’s right], I [simply] don’t recall.’

3.2. Negative commands: prevalence of NEG2 and questions of “emphasis” The foregoing insistence on the importance of discourse-structural constraints to the order of predicate negation particles may help explain an otherwise baffling feature of Palenquero negation: prohibitive commands such as those in (26)-(28) are overwhelmingly couched in NEG2 rather than NEG1 or NEG3. The relative frequency with which these commands are accompanied by NEG2 is so great that other scholars (including Dieck 2000: 79 and Bickerton & Escalante 1970: 259) have concluded —falsely so, in my view (see the counter examples [29] and [30] and their discussion below)— that negative command forms are obligatorily framed with NEG2.10 10



Examples (26) and (27) are from Dieck (2000: 79); the English translations are mine.

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Pattern: (26) ¡Aora nu ba arí nu! now NEG go laugh NEG ‘Don’t you laugh now!’

NEG2

(27) ¡Nu krelo nu! NEG believe-it NEG ‘Don’t believe it!’

NEG2

(28) ¡Nu abl-enu asina nu! NEG talk-you (1pl./2pl.) this way NEG ‘Don’t (you guys) talk like that!’ ‘Let’s not talk like that!’

NEG2

(29) Bueno pué … po el momento, ¡chiti-eno en lengua nu! good then for the moment speak-IMP in Palenquero NEG ‘Ok then, let us not speak in Lengua for the time being!’

NEG3

From a discourse pragmatic perspective, command forms are special in that the proposition that they target is patently inferable from an action or situation that is about to unfold (cp. Don’t bite me!, Don’t leave!, Let’s not kid ourselves!, etc.). At the same time, negative commands are rarely if ever matter-of-fact statements that introduce fresh or “out-of-the blue” propositions into the discourse. This observation, combined with the fact that negative imperatives tend to react to a topic that has just been put in focus (or is being put in focus), explains why commands are barred from occurring with NEG1 in Palenquero (typically used for negating new, non-backgrounded information that is given in a matter-of-fact manner). But why then are negative commands almost always formed with NEG2 rather than NEG3? The answer lies in the fundamental distinction we have sought to draw earlier between explicitly activated propositions and merely inferable propositions. The former, we recall, allows both NEG2 and NEG3, while the latter is more constrained in that it only allows NEG2. In dialogic real life situations, negative commands overwhelmingly react to inferred (directly observable) propositions that generally have not yet been articulated in the discourse, but that are nonetheless plainly inferable (cp. Don’t bite me!, Don’t leave! etc.). As mentioned earlier, Palenquero NEG3 (much like BP NEG3) requires that the proposition it targets be explicitly activated. Since that has not occurred in most negated commands, Palenqueros “naturally” resort to NEG2 rather than NEG3 so as to contravene an inferable action or situation that is about to unfold. We are now in a better position to understand exceptional cases like (30) and (31, repeated from 29 above). These are “exceptional” in that the command forms are accompanied by NEG3 rather than NEG2, the usual pattern in Palenquero for this

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type of construction. In (30), NEG3 is possible because miní —the verb negated with NEG3— has been explicitly activated in the prior sentence (¿bo tan miní …?). Example (31) is more complex in that it requires an explanation about the external circumstances in which the utterance occurred. A Palenquero Lengua teacher whose school I visited in 2009 had announced to his students that I was about to enter their classroom, and that they should all make an effort to show off their knowledge of the creole without resorting to Spanish. His exhortation to the students (made in Lengua) included “¡chitieno en lengua!” ‘let’s speak in Palenquero [only]!’. However, for reasons not relevant here, upon my entering the classroom I asked the Lengua teacher to reconsider, and to first interact with his pupils in Spanish rather than creole. The teacher complied, and instructed his students to do so with the utterance in (31). Here too, the negated verbal phrase (“to speak in Lengua”) had already been explicitly “activated”, thereby licensing NEG3 in example (31).11 (30) ¿Raú, bo tan miní akí kasa mi? ¡No, ¡eperá! ¡Toabía miní nu! Raul you FUT come here house my no wait yet come NEG ‘Raul, are you going to come [here] to my house? No!, wait! Don’t come yet!’ (31) Bueno pué … po el momento, ¡chiti-eno en lengua nu, pué! good then for the moment speak-IMP in Palenquero NEG then ‘Ok then, let us not speak in Lengua for the time being, then!’

Commenting on the observed high frequency of NEG2 in negative commands, Dieck (2000: 79), Friedemann & Patiño Rosselli (1983: 171) and others have remarked that the Palenquero command forms accompanied by double negation are inherently felt to be emphatic. Dieck (2000: 79) goes as far as to argue that this presumably intrinsic relationship between emphasis and NEG2 in commands has served as springboard for an analogical extension of NEG2 to other contexts where emphasis is desired. Similar arguments for the supposed “emphatic” function of double negation (NEG2) have been advanced for Brazilian Portuguese não+VERB+não. But as Johnson & Schwenter astutely note, “emphasis, as has been argued on a number of occasions (Schwenter 2003, 2005, 2006), is little more than an intuition if it is not defined in explicit fashion (cf. Israel 2011), and cannot offer predictions as to what form will be employed under specific discourse contexts” (forthcoming). Without going into further detail, let me just mention that, limiting ourselves for the moment to Palenquero, the position taken by Dieck and others presents a fur In (31), there may also be pragmatic (presuppositional) reasons for the selection of NEG3 over NEG2. For details, see Section 3.3.4 below.

11

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ther theoretical conundrum in that some negative imperatives carry no special emphasis, and others that clearly do are not reduplicated, as in uto biahe, ¡ablá asina nú! ‘once more, [= I repeat!], don’t talk like that!’, articulated with high tone and emphatic stress on nú.12 We may thus confidently conclude that, in Palenquero as in Brazilian Portuguese, speakers’ desire for extra emphasis is not what ultimately triggers double negation of the NEG2 type, though it may at times be an iconic contributing factor in that the repetition of nu … nu is interpreted as adding extra argumentative weight. 3.3. (Re)setting the truth: TRUTH focus and NEG2 vs. NEG3 So far Schwenter, Johnson, and I have narrowed down the information structural context in which NEG3 cannot occur (i.e., in non-explicitly activated propositions), but we have left altogether unanswered the question of what ultimately triggers the selection of NEG2 vs. NEG3 in instances where both are licensed. As shown in Johnson & Schwenter’s Table 1 (reproduced above), and as suggested by my observations in this article, NEG2 and NEG3 are jointly licensed in dialogic, explicitly activated propositions, thereby seemingly making the selection between the two random (free variation). The purpose of this section is to show that here too the selection is ultimately neither random nor free, but rather regimented by functional and pragmatic considerations. I am thus claiming that (32a) and (32b) below are not exactly synonymous: they can —and often do— convey different scalar implicatures (cp. Doran et al. 2009; Israel 1996, 1998, 2006; Hirschberg 1985; Potts 201113). As our discussion will show, these implicatures modulate negation in a principled way. [Setting: The speaker responds to his friend’s question as to whether he would like to go to Cartagena with him.] (32) a. I nu b. I

kelé bae nu. kelé bae nu.

NEG2 NEG3

I NEG want go NEG ‘I don’t want to go.’

The varied intonational contours of Pal. nu are addressed in Lipski (2009: 125), whose relevant passage is cited in my Conclusion to this article. On Palenquero intonation in general, see also Hualde & Schwegler (2008). Prohibitive commands with NEG3 (rather than NEG2 ) are sporadic at best. While I have heard them on several occasions in Palenque, I have never managed to record an actual example in natural, unprompted speech. 13 For further and most recent stimulating work on the relationship between scalar implicatures and language processing, see Schwarz & Romoli (forthcoming) and the contributions in Perspectives on Presuppositions (2015) edited by Schwarz. 12

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In my view, the selection between NEG2 and NEG3 is ultimately triggered by a differential focus on the TRUTH value of the proposition. Double negation attenuates or modulates the negation, signaling less(er) TRUTH CONVICTION. As such NEG2 tends to invite the possibility of further discussion or (re)consideration of TRUTH. Conversely, strictly postverbal negation (NEG3) seeks to RESET the VERUM (or truth) of a proposition for which there is an opposing viewpoint or assumption at issue (e.g., the assumption [by an interlocutor A] that B is probably going to Cartagena). By selecting NEG3, the speaker acknowledges that there was an opposing viewpoint or expectation, but that henceforth (in his or her mind), the case is factually “settled” or “uncontested”. Put differently, NEG3 is NEG1 “reborn”: NEG3 attempts to recast the VERUM background information (or assumptions) in a more factual (and often also more “matter-of-fact”) manner than NEG2, while also acknowledging that TRUTH had formerly been contested, implicitly or explicitly so. Presuppositionally speaking, NEG3 thus presents a clean(er) slate of inferable propositions. Figuratively speaking, NEG1 and NEG3 are “sisters under the skin” in that, in the absence of any other truth qualifier (verbal or nonverbal), they aim to set the truth value at the extreme of the TRUTH scale. NEG2 has a different effect than NEG3: not only does it acknowledge that there was an opposing viewpoint, but it also signals that both viewpoints seem to remain in play (and, therefore, also “activated”). Not surprisingly then, a NEG3 reply to a question (like 32 above) is often perceived as more “abrupt”, “definitive”, “firm”, or “less open to discussion and negotiation” than their NEG2 counterpart. As such, NEG2 is better suited than NEG3 to keep a debate going. In terms of discourse information flow, NEG2 constructions are essentially backward looking, as they merely react to prior information. NEG3 constructions, on the other hand, are both backward- and forward-looking: they are backward looking by acknowledging earlier opposing viewpoints or assumptions, but also forward looking by attempting to reset (to 100%) or refocus the truth value of the negated assertion for the remainder of the conversation. NEG2 and NEG3 are both inference-sensitive, but typically only the latter seeks to fully suspend or cancel a contrary presupposition. Of course, in Palenquero —as in any language— the addition of lexically encoded “truth adjusters” or “truth qualifiers” may still slide the VERUM assertion of negated utterances in either direction of the scale, away from or towards either polar extreme (complete reaffirmation vs. complete denial). This is, for instance, the intended effect of ¡ke ba! ‘yah right!, c’mon!’ in (33) where the opening exclamatory expression reinforces the truth value of the proposition that follows (“he has not understood anything”):14 14



The same utterance could also have been couched in a double negative, i.e., ¡Ke ba! ¡Ele nu a kuchá na’a nu!, but then the interpretation would have differed slightly in that the common ground truth value would not have been reset.

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[Setting: Adults sitting in a circle discuss the bad behavior of a male adolescent and the fact that he continues to drink and party far too much, in spite of repeated admonitions by members of the Palenquero community.] (33) ¡Ke ba! — ¡Ele a kuchá na’a nu! yah right s/he TMA understand nothing NEG ‘Yah right! — He (truly) has not understood anything.’ (= ‘He is not getting it at all; he understands nothing about how to behave properly.’)

The availability of a differential (scalar) VERUM application with the use of NEG2 vs. NEG3 has interesting and predictable consequences in Palenquero. Four of these consequences are examined in the sections 3.3.1-3.3.4 below. 3.3.1. Incredulity and negative questions In natural, free-flowing dialogues, negative questions asked with incredulity are often framed with NEG2 rather than NEG3 (examples 34a and 34b). As is typical with incredulous interrogatives of this type, the TRUTH value of the proposition in question is immediately contradicted, but the speaker still leaves some room for the opposing viewpoint (negotiation of common ground). The assertion in question thus remains contested or “not yet settled”, which is exactly the context where NEG2 constructions are favored. [Setting: Four Palenqueros have been engaged in a lengthy conversation about traditional local foods, including “masamorra”, a type of corn-meal frequently consumed in Palenque.] (34) a. ¿¿¡¡Kumu!!?? Ayá ma hende nu asé kumé masamola nu? what there PL people NEG HAB eat corn-meal NEG ‘What!!?? Over there (in California) people don’t eat masamorra?’ [Setting: A tiny needle has just been stuck deep into an infected wound of a Palenquero adolescent; the individual with the needle then asks this question with incredulity:] (34) b. ¿Bo ri belá belá nu a sindí naa nu? you truly truly NEG TMA feel nothing NEG ‘Have you really not felt anything at all?’

3.3.2. The TRUTH focus element sí (lit. ‘yes’) and its incompatibility with NEG2 A further fascinating —and, as we will see, logical and predictable— consequence of the application of postverbal negation along a scalar TRUTH axis is found in utterances where the Palenquero particle sí, literally ‘yes’ is employed to reinforce the truth value of negative clauses. In parallel fashion to Brazilian Portuguese, in which the use of the functionally identical sim ‘yes’ has been characterized

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as “extremely common” (Schwenter forthcoming; see also Martins 2014), Palenquero can place sí in pre- or post-verbal position (compare postverbal sí in [35] to preverbal sí in [36]). (35) Yo é prieto sí.15 I be black REINFORCE ‘I am (definitely) Black.’

(Friedemann & Patiño Rosselli 1983: 130; my translation)

(36) Yo sí ten maílo nu pogke e ri mí a morí. I REINFORCE have husband NEG3 because (?) of mine TMA die ‘I (definitely) don’t have a husband because mine died [along time ago].’

In (35) and (36), sí is used as a strategy of reinforcement to overcome what Schwenter (forthcoming) calls “the metaphorical obstacle posed by the opposing interlocutor’s viewpoint”. In light of the fact that sí explicitly and, as some might say, “emphatically” shifts the focus of the utterance to the TRUTH value of the speaker’s assertion, it stands to reason that this negative (reinforced) assertion can only be framed with NEG316 —which, as we have seen, likewise positions itself at the upper extreme of the VERUM scale. In other words, constructions like (36’) with reinforcing sí can never be negated with NEG2, the reason being that the combination of sí and NEG2 would create an “obvious” paradox on the VERUM scale. (36’) *Yo sí nu ten maílo nu / pogke e ri mí a morí. (36’) *Yo sí nu ten maílo / pogke e ri mí a morí / nu.

NEG2 NEG2

3.3.3. Lexical TRUTH FOCUS elements and their limited use in Palenquero An additional albeit indirect clue to the existence of the scalar interpretation (TRUTH value) of presuppositionally charged NEG2 and NEG3 comes from an entirely different source. In stark contrast to Spanish and English, Palenquero makes only limited use of lexical TRUTH reinforcing or attenuating (VERUM FOCUS) elements like those highlighted in caps in (37) – (38) for colloquial English.

Similarly to NEG3, there is no intonational pause between sí and the rest of the sentence. The same holds for BP sim. 16 I wish to clarify here that in presuppositionally neutral utterances, sí can of course accompany NEG1, as for instance in Yo sí nu ten maílo ‘I (in fact) don’t have a husband’. Colombian and other vernacular Spanish varieties also make common use of the truth focus element sí: “A mí sí no me hablan duro eyoj” (Chocó, Colombia; example from Gutiérrez & Cancino Cabello 2015: 131). Note that in this instance too sí reinforces “not”. 15

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(37) a. She really didn’t have a chance. → b. She didn’t really have a chance. →

She had close to no chance. # She had somewhat of chance. [“really” reinforces “not”] She had somewhat of chance. # She had close to no chance. [“really” attenuates “not”]

(38) a. She really didn’t cry at all. b. She for sure won’t go. c. He certainly does not qualify. d. No way did they not have a chance! e. This isn’t anything but revolutionary.

One must wonder, of course, why Palenqueros make relatively little use of lexical VERUM FOCUS elements such as rea(l)mente ‘really’, sin duda ‘without a doubt’, sietamente ‘certainly’ etc. — all of which do exist in their creole. One reasonable explanation may be that the availability of morphosyntactic negation strategies (i.e., NEG1,2,3) to encode SCALAR TRUTH IMPLICATURES and/or PRESUPPOSITIONAL IMPLICATURES simply obviates the need for frequent lexical expression. Palenquero grammar thus deftly achieves what other languages must supplement with scalar words and/or marked prosodic means. The English translations in (39) are an attempt to capture this fact. Alternative translations would, of course, also be possible, as discourse context, overall discourse structure, intonational shifts, gestures, body language, etc. can substantially alter the interpretation of a given utterance. (39) a. Suto nu a yolá.

‘We didn’t cry.’

Suto nu a yolá nu. ‘We didn’t really cry’ ‘We actually didn’t cry.’ ‘We didn’t actually cry.’ Suto -- a yolá nu.

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‘We really didn’t cry.’ ‘We actually didn’t cry.’ ‘We didn’t actually cry.’ ‘We actually really didn’t cry.’

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3.3.4. Prohibitive vs. hortative negative commands In Section 2 we observed that negative commands show an overwhelming preference for double (or embracing) negation. Section 3.2. then sought to explain why, from a discourse pragmatic perspective, negative commands “naturally” tend to be framed with NEG2 (as we recall, they are often “adversary” or “contrary”, and presuppose that an undesired action or state is likely —but not guaranteed— to ensue). Negative commands “oppose” (cp. Don’t go!) and often downright “prohibit” (cp. Don’t you ever do that again!) in terms of their underlying intent, but they never imply certainty of outcome (addressees may decide to ignore the command). Speakers can therefore never assume that, on the presuppositional VERUM scale, their command will automatically result in favorable behavioral response. In prohibitive Palenquero commands, this presupposed uncertainty is signaled by embracing nu … nu (NEG2). This leads to a perplexing question: Why then are some negative commands couched in NEG2 rather than NEG3? The answer, I believe, may partially lie in the nature of some commands, and the presupposition they entail in terms of “likelihood of outcome” and presupposed “attitude to the contrary” (or absence thereof). Let us reconsider (40) below, repeated from (29) above. We are here confronted not with a prohibitive but rather a hortative command. Negated hortative commands differ from their prohibitive counterparts in that presuppositionally they assume automatic acceptance of the discouraged behavior, that is, hortatives presuppose a common ground (in church settings, hortative commands abound: cp. “Let us all pray! Let us not sin! Let us not question our Lord!”). In light of these presuppositions, hortative commands do not need “to oppose” or “reject” prior assumptions or dispositions to the contrary. Speakers can thus present such utterances in more factual and more of a matter-of-fact manner than would otherwise be possible. However, NEG3 rather than NEG1 is still necessary since the discouraged behavior is an inferred or recovered topic. Should an opposing viewpoint be expected, the usual double negation pattern could still be applied, resulting in the attenuated hortative ¡nu chiti-eno en lengua nu! ‘let us not speak in Lengua!’ [and those who may feel tempted to do so anyways, please don’t!]). [Setting: A Lengua teacher instructs his students to ignore his earlier request to speak in Palenquero only. Students understand the rationale for the negative hortative that follows. By couching it with a NEG3, the teacher assumes that his students will comply. A NEG2 would also have been felicitous, but would have felt more like an admonition rather than an exhortation.] (40) Bueno pué … po el momento, ¡chiti-eno en lengua nu! good then for the moment speak-IMP in Palenquero NEG ‘Ok then, let us not speak in Lengua for the time being!’

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4. Predicate negation strategies in “the new Palenquero” In the previous sections I have insisted from time to time that my observations and claims pertain exclusively to traditional Lengua, spoken in Palenque throughout the 20th century. Today, some of the older generations continue to speak this variety, but, as explained in Lipski (2012) and Schwegler (2011a), especially among the young, rapid sociolinguistic changes have introduced what Lipski (2012) aptly calls “The ‘new’ Palenquero”. Once heavily stigmatized, 21-century Lengua has undergone an unexpected and forceful revitalization, which has evolved into a communitywide effort, emanating most strongly from locally born teachers and middle-aged community leaders. Some of these have been instrumental in creating didactic Lengua materials that are currently used in Palenque’s schools. Most of today’s Palenquero pupils have grown up in homes where parents no longer converse in creole (Spanish is favored instead). As a result, the acquisition of Lengua occurs primarily in school settings where “correct ways of speaking” the creole are enforced with a fair amount of dogma. Schwegler (forthcoming) studies the nature and origin of this prescriptivism in some detail, emphasizing that local grammar books (written in Palenquero and/or Spanish) insist on purist or (overly) simplified rules that are out of tune with the realities of everyday (traditional) colloquial Palenquero. One domain in which such didactic oversimplifications betray the true nature of Lengua concerns predicate negation patterns. The rules given in grammar books are as straightforward as they are oversimplified: NEG3 is to be applied in all cases, except in negative commands, which are to be formed with the embracing NEG2 construction. At the same time students are instructed to shun NEG1, characterized as an intrusion from Spanish (for examples and a fuller discussion of contemporary Palenquero didactic materials, see Schwegler forthcoming). Teachers’ fairly rigid prescriptionist attitudes towards Lengua is already having an impact among Palenquero youths, some more fluent in the creole than others. Palenque’s more enthusiastic heritage speakers in particular have begun to embrace their teachers’ lessons, so much so that some pupils purposefully exclude preverbal negation from their creole. As noted in Schwegler (forthcoming), “[t]here is no question that, in the linguistic consciousness of young and middleaged Palenqueros, postverbal nu now inherently has a more authentic flavor than its strictly preverbal counterpart, and to them this pattern seems best suited to symbolically convey local ethnolinguistic pride and Afro-Colombian identity”. As might be expected, the reduction of the original tripartite negation to a strictly postverbal system in which the embracing negation (nu+VERB+nu) is relegated

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to command forms has a dramatic effect on the traditional pragmatic nuances described in this paper. In essence, the “new Palenquero” negation strategies strip heritage speakers of the possibility of expressing presuppositions by morphosyntactic means, formerly the cornerstone of pre- vs. post-verbal negation. At the same time, VERUM focus in negation is no longer a morphosyntactic option, since NEG2 and NEG3 are relegated to specific construction types: NEG2 for imperatives, and NEG3 for all other environments. In addition, as Lipski (2009) has shown, “new Palenquero” speakers always set a pitch accent on postverbal nu, regardless of whether it has a contrastive reading or not. It remains to be seen what (if any) mechanisms the “new Palenquero” will develop to express the presuppositional implicatures that Lengua has traditionally been able to encode via NEG1,2,3. Naturally, scholars interested in the further investigation of traditional Palenquero negation and its varied information-structural projections will want to obtain data from informants whose creole was acquired outside of the school context. 5. Conclusions This article has argued that in traditional Palenquero there is a complex interface between pragmatics and the selection of three basic predicate negation structures. As a follow-up to Schwegler (forthcoming), this study has concentrated on the different application of two postverbal negation strategies in particular: NEG2 vs. NEG3. Partially relying on fresh findings by specialists on Brazilian Portuguese (cp. Johnson’s and Schwenter’s recent work), I have highlighted a series of licensing factors that condition the selection between NEG2 and NEG3 (for a summary, see Table 2, p. 260). Most relevant among these are inferred implicatures and the overt activation of negated propositions. Through a series of examples from the field, we have seen that in Palenquero, postverbal negation (NEG2 and NEG3) is possible in any sentence modality, while preverbal negation is more limited in that it is altogether excluded from command forms. In terms of relative frequency, NEG3 has been shown to be far more common than NEG2, except in prohibitive command forms (negated hortatives, on the other hand, show a preference for NEG3).

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NEG NEG NEG

Armin Schwegler

New Topic (new vs. old information)

Inferable

Explicit activation (verbal or non-verbal)

Factual/ Matterof-fact

OK

OK

OK

OK

#

OK

#

#

OK

OK

NO

#

#

OK

#

#

REQUIRED

OK

OK

OK

OK (hortatives)

1

2 3

Common RESET (truth background assumed scale)

Command forms

Table 2. Feature matrix for Palenquero’s three predicate negation strategies This table is an adaptation of Johnson & Schwenter’s Table 1 (reproduced on page 247 of this article). Note that (a) Explicit Activation can be verbal or non-verbal, and (b) my Table 2 does not include Johnson & Schwenter’s parameters “monologic” and “dialogic”. While I recognize that discourse type (e.g., monologue vs. dialogue) can profoundly affect the relative frequency of certain negation patterns, I believe (contra Johnson & Schwenter) that monologic discourse does not altogether bar postverbal negation. In my view, monologues too can, for instance, reference opposing presupposed viewpoints, which are then open to negation by NEG2 (in such instances, as in all cases of postverbal negation, the speaker assumes that the background information is fully inferable or recoverable for the listener). Witness, for instance, example (41) below — a hypothetical opening to a monologue by an elderly lady who has been asked to recount “life in the good old days”. Native speakers I queried consistently characterized the use of NEG2 in this and similar contexts as felicitous (cp. BP não tinha fome não ‘I wasn’t hungry’ / Pal. nu teneba ambe nu ‘idem.’). (41) [Assumed common-ground background knowledge: today, some people go hungry] BP. Naqueles tempos a gente não tinha fome não. Pal. En aké tiembo, ma hende nu tené-ba ambe nu. in those time(s) ART people NEG had hunger NEG Não era como hoje não. Nu era kumu agüé nu. NEG was like today NEG

‘[Contrary to what you might think] In those times, we (people) didn’t used to go hungry. It wasn’t like today’ (= ‘In those times, unlike today, we [people] had enough to eat.’)

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In Section 3.3 we paid special attention to utterances where the information structure (prior discourse, inferable information, presuppositions, etc.) in principle permits NEG2 as well as NEG3. In analyzing such cases, a crucial finding was that NEG2 and NEG3 each conveys slightly different scalar TRUTHS and/or assumptions about the negated proposition. NEG2 acknowledges an inferred or overt opposite viewpoint but, on the truth scale, does not altogether deny, thereby leaving the affirmative proposition to the contrary “in play”. In discussing truth focus in Palenquero, we have repeatedly sought to draw attention to lexical truth focus qualifiers in English, as these tend to convey similar meanings as double (and, sometimes also postverbal) negation in Palenquero: cp. Engl. I am not really sick to Pal. I nu ta enfemmo nu ‘idem’). Regardless of the language at hand, such truth focus qualifiers (NEG2 included) attenuate and modulate negation in a systematic way. NEG2 and NEG3 resemble each other on account of the fact that both reference an opposite viewpoint (which may be inferred or overt). However, NEG3 differs from NEG2 in that it simultaneously tends to negate propositions in a more “matter-of-fact” manner. Propositions containing NEG3 rather NEG2 are thus generally presented to the listener as “less debatable, more factual, more straight-forwardly negated, less opinionated”. By the same token, in dialogic contexts, NEG3 not only rejects a former (express or implied) assertion to the contrary, but from the speaker’s viewpoint also resets the presumed common ground. With these observations in mind, NEG2 and NEG3 can thus be considered marked negative forms. As regards TRUTH suppositions, NEG2 is less assertive, as it leaves more room for further discussion of the scalar truth setting of a given proposition. Somewhat ironically, these “less assertive” propositions are usually felt to be more emphatic. The resolution of this apparent paradox is straightforward: nu … nu is reiterated and felt to be emphatic precisely because the agreed-upon truth value of a given proposition remains (more or less) unsettled and “in play”. Double negation is added to overcome this disagreement and to reset the stage in an iconic manner (inasmuch as it negates not once but twice) so that uncooperative listeners will eventually also accept the speaker’s TRUTH viewpoint. Palenquero predicate negation strategies and the varied pragmatic inferences they can convey thus offer very subtle but effective means to influence, manipulate, and ultimately control the views and opinions of others. In brief, there is considerable power in Lengua’s predicate negation. In Palenquero, the application of one negation over another (e.g., NEG2 vs. NEG3) therefore responds to speakers’ attempt at optimizing the outcome of verbal interactions (persuasion strategy). Listeners interpret these negated TRUTHS (or, as may be the case at times, half-truths) and, if they so choose, can then react to them with their own selection of optimal negation structures (NEG1,2,3). In the final analysis, propositions couched in embracing negation patterns thus denote not a

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“factual truth” but a “common ground negotiated truth”, which may explain why, as mentioned earlier, Palenqueros occasionally resort to triple rather than simply double negation ([42], repeated from [4] above). Whether or not such triple negations signal greater ambiguity than NEG2 (thereby slightly shifting the assumed common ground as suggested in Figure 3) remains to be discovered.17 (42) a. Bo nu1 a ablá-mi nu2 / ke bo a bae. b. Bo nu1 a ablá-mi nu2 / ke bo a bae / you NEG TMA tell-me NEG that you TMA go ‘You didn’t tell me that you had left.’

nu3. NEG

Figure 3. Double vs. triple negation and their possibly different TRUTH interpretation

Viewed in this manner, traditional Palenquero predicate negation not only inherently references ongoing interactions between the speaker’s knowledge state and the listener’s interpretation, but also carries a built-in utility that the predicate negation of other languages (e.g. Spanish, with its strictly preverbal negation) may lack. By selecting pre- over post-verbal (or vice versa) negation, Palenqueros exhibit a special case of purposive and exquisitely rational behavior, designed to optimize the nature of their discourse. As we have seen, in traditional Palenquero, a negative utterance is made with respect to one or several other alternative utterances (NEG1,2,3). In Palenquero this selection is regulated by multiple mechanisms, grammatical (NEG1 is excluded from command forms), presuppositional (NEG1 ignores presuppositions whereas NEG2 and NEG3 feed on them), and assumptions about TRUTH. In terms of TRUTH, NEG2 signals greater ambiguity than NEG1 or NEG3. Because of this greater ambiguity, speakers may also perceive utterances with embracing negation (NEG2) as more “subjective” (personal point of view) than their “objective” negative counterparts (NEG1 or NEG3), conveyed as less influenced by personal feelings and/or opinions in considering and representing facts. 17

At present, there are insufficient instances of documented triple negations to make any firm claims.

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There are still several areas of the negation account presented in this article that need work. For instance, from a broad perspective —i.e., one that goes back to the basics, and looks at fundamental notions used to define pidgin and creole languages (cp. Siegel 2004)— how do we explain, for instance, that a creole that by most if not all accounts was formerly connected to an Afro-Portuguese pidgin (cp. Schwegler 2014) developed such extraordinary complexity in the domain of negation when its lexifier altogether lacks even remotely comparable structures? While analyzing the data, I have also wondered at times whether traditional Palenquero speakers consistently share the same grammar of predicate negation, or whether language-internal changes (Jespersen cycle?) have created a somewhat unstable system in which some individuals have begun to overgeneralize NEG3, so much so it sometimes no longer conveys certain implicatures (resetting of presuppositions to the contrary, assumption of common ground, etc.).18 An understanding of idiolectal variation thus awaits further research. So does our understanding of a broader historical and theoretical question, one that has considerable relevance also for assessing the origins of Brazilian postverbal negation: what is the origin of Palenquero’s complex postverbal negation? Is it the result of contact-induced grammaticalization that has its roots in colonial times when Palenquero (or Brazilian Portuguese) was still spoken alongside African languages, and Kikongo in particular? (Kikongo shares strikingly similar negation strategies, as has been known for some time, but as is now much better documented thanks to the recent investigation by De Kind, De Schryver & Bostoen 2013).19 Or are Palenquero negation strategies somehow derived from Iberian sources? Or both (multiple causation)? Or, have these negation strategies developed in the creole independently, according to cross-linguistic tendencies only fitfully identified in the historical pragmatics

18

Lipski makes the following pertinent observation about Palenquero’s shifting intonational patterns with predicate nu:

19

Many of the examples of downstepped post-oxytonic phrase-final clitics [like clause-final negator nu] were produced by the oldest speakers, speaking non-emphatically. For the same older speakers, upstepped negative -nú was most often found in emphatic speech, with either implicit or explicit contradiction, i.e. when the opposite response is presumed. Upstepped -nú would have an obvious pragmatic advantage, with the raised pitch highlighting the unexpected negative element at the end of a phrase which in absence of the negator could be construed with the opposite meaning. Younger speakers may be in the process of generalizing upstepped -nú to non-emphatic utterances, in effect creating a stable tonal distinction that is essentially independent of pragmatic criteria. (2009: 125, my emphasis)

Kikongo is Palenquero’s sole demonstrable African substrate (see Schwegler 2012, and relevant sources cited therein). Kikongo was widely spoken in Brazil during the heyday of the slave trade with the Old Kongo/Angola region, where Kikongo continues to be spoken today. For negation patterns in West African languages and beyond, see the collective volume edited by Cyffer, Ebermann & Ziegelmeyer (2009).

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literature to date? True to the title of this volume, questions such as these are indeed part and parcel of the Iberian Challenge posed by Palenquero and other creoles beyond the plantation setting. They provide ample food for thought, and deserve detailed analysis. ABBREVIATIONS AND SYMBOLS BP = Brazilian Portuguese (colloquial, non-canonical) Engl. = English HAB = habitual NEG = Negator Pal. = Palenquero Span. = Spanish TMA = Tense/Mood/Aspect = code-switched Spanish segment REFERENCES Bickerton, Derek & Escalante, Aquiles. 1970. Palenquero: A Spanish-based creole of northern Colombia. Lingua 32. 254-267. Cyffer, Norbert; Ebermann, Erwin & Ziegelmeyer, Georg (2009). Negation patterns in West African languages and beyond. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. De Kind, Jasper; De Schryver, Gilles-Maurice & Bostoen, Koen. 2013. Negation markers, focus markers and Jespersen cycle in Kikongo (Bantu, H16): A comparative and diachronic corpus-based approach. Workshop on information structure in Bantu. Berlin, December 10-11, 2013. Available on-line: http://www2.hu-berlin.de/predicate_focus_africa/data/2013-12-10_deKind_Negation.in.Kikongo.pdf Dieck, Marianne. 2000. La negación en palenquero. Análisis sincrónico, estudio comparativo y consecuencias teóricas. Madrid/Frankfurt: Iberoamericana/Vervuert. Dieck, Marianne. 2002. Distribución y escopo de la negación en palenquero. In Yves Moñino & Armin Schwegler (eds.), Palenque, Cartagena y Afro-Caribe: historia y lengua, 149-167. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag. Doran, Ryan; Baker, Rachel E.; McNabb, Yaron; Larson, Meredith & Ward, Gregory. 2009. On the non-unified nature of scalar implicature: An empirical investigation. International Review of Pragmatics 1. 211-248. Friedemann, Nina S. de & Patiño Rosselli, Carlos 1983. Lengua y sociedad en el Palenque de San Basilio. Bogotá: Instituto Caro y Cuervo. Goodman, Noah D. & Stuhlmüller, Andreas. 2013. Knowledge and implicature: Modeling language understanding as social cognition. Topics in Cognitive Science 5. 173184. DOI: 10.1111/tops.12007

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Gutiérrez Maté, Miguel & Cancino Cabelloa, Nataly. 2015. Lo oral, lo rústico y lo afro en la configuración del etnolecto negro del Chocó (Colombia): el valor lingüístico de Las estrellas son negras de Arnoldo Palarios. Romance Philology 69. 113-147. Hirschberg, Julia. 1985. A theory of scalar implicature. Ph.D. thesis. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania. Horn, Larry R. 1985. Metalinguistic negation and pragmatic ambiguity. Language 61. 121-174. Horn, Larry R. 1989. A natural history of negation. Chicago: Chicago University Press. Hualde, José Ignacio & Schwegler, Armin. 2008. Intonation in Palenquero. Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages 23. 1-31. Israel, Michael. 1996. Polarity sensitivity as lexical semantics. Linguistics and Philosophy 19. 619-666. Israel, Michael. 1998. The rhetoric of grammar: Scalar reasoning and polarity sensitivity. Ph.D. dissertation, University of California, San Diego. Israel, Michael. 2006. The pragmatics of polarity. In Larry R. Horn & Gregory Ward (eds.), The Handbook of pragmatics, 701-723. Hoboken, NY: Wiley-Blackwell. Israel, Michael. 2011. The grammar of polarity: pragmatics, sensitivity, and the logic of scales. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Jespersen, Otto 1917. Negation in English and other languages. Copenhagen: Høst. Johnson, Mary & Schwenter, Scott. Forthcoming. NEG-NADA in Brazilian Portuguese and Argentinian Spanish: Micropragmatic differences in licensing of non-canonical negation. Available on-line: /www.academia.edu/11672690/ [Retrieved June 1, 2015] Laman, Karl Edvard. 1964 (1936). Dictionnaire kikongo-français (2 vols). Ridgewood, NJ: The Gregg Press. Lipski, John M. 2009. Pitch polarity in Palenquero. A possible locus of H tone. In Sonia Colina, Antxon Olarrea & Ana Maria Carvalho (eds.), Romance Linguistics 2009: Selected Papers from the 39th Linguistic Symposium on Romance Languages, 111-128. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Lipski, John M. 2012. The “new” Palenquero: Revitalization and re-creolization. In Richard File-Muriel (ed.), Varieties of Colombian Spanish, 21-41. Madrid/Frankfurt: Iberoamericana/Vervuert. Martins, Ana Maria. 2014. How much syntax is there in metalinguistic negation? Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 32. 635-672. Peres, João Andrade. 2013. Negação. Gramática do portugués (vol. 1). In Eduardo Buzaglo, Paiva Raposo et al., 459-498. Lisboa: Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian. Potts, Christopher. 2011. On the negativity of negation. Proceedings of SALT 20. 636-659. Reese, Brian. 2006. The Meaning and use of Negative Polar Interrogatives. In O. Bonami & P. Cabredo Hofherr (eds.), Empirical Issues in Syntax and Semantics 6, 331-354. Schwarz, Florian; Romoli, Jacopo & Bill, Cory. Forthcoming. Processing scalar implicatures: slowly accepting the truth (literally). To appear in Proceedings of Sinn und Bedeutung, 19. Schwarz, Florian (ed.). 2015. Perspectives on presuppositions. No place of publication: Springer.

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Schwegler, Armin 1991a. Negation in Palenquero: Synchrony. Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages 6. 165-214. Schwegler, Armin. 1991b. Predicate negation in contemporary Brazilian Portuguese — A linguistic change in progress. Orbis 34. 187-214. Schwegler, Armin. 1996. La doble negación dominicana y la génesis del español caribeño. Hispanic Linguistics 8. 246-315. [Also in Lingüística 3 (1991). 31-87]. Schwegler, Armin. 2011a. On the extraordinary revival of a creole: Palenquero (Colombia). In Marleen Haboud & Nicholas Ostler (eds.), Endangered languages — Voices and images, 153-165. Proceedings of FEL XV, Quito Ecuador, 7-9 September 2011. Bath, England: Foundation for Endangered Languages. Schwegler, Armin. 2011b. Palenque: Colombia: Multilingualism in an extraordinary social and historical context. In Manuel Díaz-Campos (ed.), The handbook of Hispanic sociolinguistics, 446-472. Malden, MA: Blackwell/Wiley. Schwegler, Armin. 2012. Palenque(ro): the search for its African substrate. In Graciela Maglia & Armin Schwegler (eds.), Palenque (Colombia): oralidad, identidad y resistencia. Un enfoque interdisciplinario, 107-179. Bogotá: Instituto Caro y Cuervo & Universidad Javeriana. Schwegler, Armin. 2013a. Palenquero. In Susanne M. Michaelis, Philippe Maurer, Martin Haspelmath & Magnus Huber (eds.), The Atlas and survey of pidgin and creole language structures (ApiCS), vol. 2 (Survey): Portuguese-based, Spanish-based and French-based languages, 182-192. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Schwegler, Armin. 2013b. Palenquero structure dataset. In Susanne M. Michaelis, Philippe Maurer, Martin Haspelmath & Magnus Huber (eds.), The Atlas and survey of pidgin and creole language structures online (ApiCS). München: Max Planck Digital Library, chapter 28. (Available online at http://apics-online.info/contributions/48 Schwegler, Armin. 2014. Portuguese remnants in the Afro-Hispanic diaspora. In Ana M. Carvalho & Patricia Amaral (eds.) Portuguese-Spanish interfaces: Diachrony, synchrony, and contact, 403-441. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Schwegler, Armin. Forthcoming. Negation in Palenquero: Syntax, pragmatics, and change in progress. To appear in Viviane Deprez & Fabiola Henri (eds.), Negation and negative concord in creole languages. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Schwegler, Armin & Morton, Thomas. 2003. Vernacular Spanish in a microcosm: Kateyano in El Palenque de San Basilio (Colombia). Revista Internacional de Lingüística Iberoamericana (RILI) 1. 97-159. Schwenter, Scott A. 2002. Pragmatic variation between negatives: Evidence from Romance. In D. E. Johnson & T. Sánchez (eds.), Selected Papers from NWAV 30. University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics 8.3, 249-263. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania. Schwenter, Scott A. 2003. No and tampoco: A pragmatic distinction in Spanish negation. Journal of Pragmatics 35. 999-1030. Schwenter, Scott A. 2005. The pragmatics of negation in Brazilian Portuguese. Lingua 115. 1427-1456.

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Schwenter, Scott A. 2006. Fine-tuning Jespersen’s Cycle. In Betty J. Birner & Gregory Ward (eds.), Drawing the boundaries of meaning: Neo-Gricean studies in honor of Laurence R. Horn, 327-344. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Schwenter, Scott A. Forthcoming. Some issues in negation in Portuguese. Available on-line: https://www.academia.edu/10062480/ [Retrieved June 1, 2015]. To appear in Leo Wetzels et al. (eds.), Handbook of Portuguese linguistics. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Siegel, Jeff. 2004. Morphological simplicity in pidgins and creoles. Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages 19. 139-162.

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C ontributors

Paola (Giuli) E. Dussias Paola (Giuli) E. Dussias is Professor of Spanish, Linguistics and Psychology, and Head of the Department of Spanish, Italian and Portuguese at Pennsylvania State University. The goal of her work is to employ bilingualism as a tool to uncover important aspects of language function that may be otherwise obscured or difficult to study when examining the behavior of monolinguals. Her work takes a cross-disciplinary approach to bilingual sentence processing, and uses converging methodological tools from linguistics, experimental psycholinguistics, and cognitive neuroscience to examine the way in which bilinguals negotiate two languages in a single mind. Two primary areas of her research are crosslinguistic effects in bilingual sentence comprehension, and the processing of code-switched sentences. Paulo Estudante Paulo Estudante holds a joint Ph.D. in Music and Musicology from the Université de la Sorbonne (Paris IV) and the University of Évora (Portugal). He is a lecturer at the University of Coimbra (Portugal) and a researcher at the Centro de Estudos Clássicos e Humanísticos (University of Coimbra), where he is one of the coordinators (with José Abreu) in the project Mundos e Fundos: Methodological and Interpretative World of Music Collections. His field of research covers various aspects of the Portuguese and Iberian musical heritage prior to the 19th century. Jason E. Gullifer Jason E. Gullifer is a postdoctoral fellow in Psychology at McGill University in Montreal, Quebec. He received his B.A. in Linguistics and Psychology from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst and his Ph.D. in Psychology and Language Science from The Pennsylvania State University. He is interested in the cognitive mechanisms and the neural architecture that underlie bilingualism. To this end, his research projects investigate bilingual word recognition, language switching, and the neural correlates of language learning in natural immersion environments.

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Miguel Gutiérrez Maté Miguel Gutiérrez Maté teaches Spanish and French Linguistics at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg. He studied Hispanic Linguistics at the University of Valladolid (Spain) and earned his Ph.D. at the same university (2013) with a doctoral thesis about Pronombres personales sujeto en el español del Caribe. Variación e historia. He has published around 20 papers about pronouns of address, word order, and focussing strategies in Latin American Spanish. He has carried out extensive research in archives (especially in Sevilla) in order to reconstruct the history of Caribbean Spanish. He also worked with the Department of Romance Linguistics at the University of Munich as a predoctoral researcher (2009-2010) and with the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at the University of California, Irvine, as a post-doctoral scholar (2014-2015). Bart Jacobs Bart Jacobs studied Spanish and Portuguese at the University of Amsterdam. In his doctoral dissertation – written at the Ludwig Maximillian University of Munich – he examined the historical and linguistic ties between different Spanishand Portuguese-based creoles. He then worked as a post-doc at the Universities of Nijmegen and Konstanz before being awarded a Dutch NWO Veni Grant for a project on Haitian Creole in the Diaspora, which he is currently carrying out at the Leiden University Centre for Linguistics. Alain Kihm Alain Kihm is Directeur de Recherche emeritus at the Centre national de la recherche scientifique (CNRS) and a member of the Laboratoire de Linguistique formelle (CNRS and Université Paris-Diderot). His research focuses on the morphology of pidgin and creole languages of all lexical bases, with a special interest for Romance and Arabic-based pidgins and creoles. He is the author of Kriyol Syntax: The Portuguese-based Creole Language of Guinea-Bissau (John Benjamins, 1994). He is presently working on a book on the inflectional morphology of pidgin and creole languages. Michelle Li Michelle Li studied Linguistics at the University of Hong Kong. Her doctoral thesis titled Chinese Pidgin English and the Origins of Pidgin Grammar was completed in 2011. She is interested in language contact and varieties of English in Asian contexts, and is currently working on a project on the relationships between pidgins and creoles with a Chinese substrate, including Chinese Pidgin English, Macau Creole and the newly documented Macau Pidgin. Her areas of interest also include Cantonese, bilingualism and language variation.

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John M. Lipski John M. Lipski is professor of Spanish and Linguistics at the Pennsylvania State University. His research encompasses language contact, bilingualism, and the contributions of the African diaspora to the diversification of Spanish. His recent work combines ethnographic and psycholinguistic approaches to the study of bilingual speech communities in San Basilio de Palenque, Colombia (Palenquero-Spanish), northern Ecuador (Quichua-Media Lengua), and northeastern Argentina (Portuguese-Spanish), with particular emphasis on code-switching constraints and morphosyntactic processing costs. Ana R. Luís Ana R. Luis is Assistant Professor at the University of Coimbra. The central focus of her recent research has been the development of creole morphology, with a special interest in the inflectional forms of Portuguese contact varieties. She has published both as author and co-author on the morphology-syntax interaction, on Portuguese inflectional morphology, and on the morphology of creole languages in general. John McWhorter John McWhorter teaches linguistics, philosophy and music history at Columbia University. He has written extensively on creole languages (The Missing Spanish Creoles [2000], Defining Creole [2005], Linguistic Simplicity and Complexity [2011] and on grammatical restructuring amidst language contact worldwide (Language Interrupted [2007]). He earned his doctorate from Stanford University and has also written books for the general public on language such as The Power of Babel [2001], Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue [2008], What Language Is, and Words on the Move [2011]. Marilola Pérez Marilola Pérez has a Ph.D. in Linguistics from the University of California, Berkeley. She recently completed her doctoral thesis (Cavite Chabacano Philippine Creole Spanish: Description and Typology, 2015), which examines the place of the Cavite City variety of Chabacano in the typology of contact languages. The thesis also includes a grammatical sketch of the language. Her academic interests lie in the intersection between colonial studies and language. Along with Chabacano, she is also interested in the Spanish-speaking Caribbean, and has done work on the contact effects of English in Puerto Rican Spanish. Tim J. Poepsel Tim J. Poepsel is a Ph.D. candidate in the Cognitive Psychology program at Pennsylvania State University. His research focuses on how bilingual experience influ-

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ences the process and mechanisms of language acquisition in adults. Other interests include developing computational models of language acquisition in bilingual environments, and examining how learners take advantage of the rich phonetic structure of language to make sociolinguistic inferences about other speakers. Nicolas Quint Nicolas Quint is Directeur de Recherche (Senior Researcher) in linguistics at the French National Center for Scientific Research in Paris/Villejuif (LLACANUMR8135 (CNRS/INALCO/PRES Sorbonne Paris Cité)). His main areas of expertise include descriptive linguistics and language contact. His research has concentrated on the following languages: Afro-Portuguese Creoles (especially Capeverdean, Casamance Creole, and Papiamentu), Niger-Congo (Kordofanian and Nyun (Atlantic)) and Romance (Occitan, Spanish and Portuguese). Jean-Louis Rougé Jean-Louis Rougé is Professor of Linguistics and Sociolinguistics at Université d’Orléans (France). He is a member of the Laboratoire Ligérien de Linguistique (Centre national de la recherche scientifique and Université d’Orléans). He has worked extensively on the history and sociolinguistic variation of the Portuguese Creoles of Western Africa (Guinea-Bissau Kriol, Santiago Cape Verdean, Santomense, Tonga Portuguese). He is the author of Dictionnaire étymologique des créoles portugais d’Afrique (Paris, Karthala, 2004). Armin Schwegler Originally from Switzerland, Armin Schwegler is Professor of Spanish Linguistics at the University of California, Irvine. His early research (initiated at the University of California, Berkeley) focused on Romance languages in general, with an emphasis on language typology and diachronic changes between Latin and modern Spanish, French, (Brazilian) Portuguese and so forth. The past three decades he has concentrated on the Afro-Hispanic diaspora in the New World, with special focus on Palenquero (Colombia). Recently he has collaborated with population geneticists in an attempt to ascertain the precise sub-Saharan origins of Black slaves and their descendants in Spanish America. He is author of multiple books and almost 70 scholarly articles. Liane Ströbel Liane Ströbel is a (longterm) Visiting Professor at the University of Aachen. Years prior, she was a member of the Scientific Research in Dusseldorf for the “DFG Collaborative Research Centre 991: The Structure of Representations in Language, Cognition, and Science”. Her research seeks to explain diachronic lan-

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guage phenomena from a cognitive perspective. For that purpose she has studied creole language structures in order to gain a better understanding of universal mechanisms that govern language change in contact situations.

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