Embedding Papiamentu in the mixed language debate

Abstract

This paper takes as a point of departure the hypothesis that Papiamentu descends from Upper Guinea Portuguese Creole (a term covering the sister varieties of the Cape Verde Islands and Guinea-Bissau and Casamance), speakers of which arrived on Curaçao in the second half of the 17th century, subsequently shifted their basic content vocabulary towards Spanish, but maintained the original morphosyntax. This scenario raises the question of whether, in addition to being a creole, Papiamentu can be analyzed as a so-called mixed (or intertwined) language. The present paper positively answers this question by drawing parallels between (the emergence of) Papiamentu and recognized mixed languages.

Romancing with tone: On the outcomes of prosodic contact

“…At the same time, syllables marked for H and for L differ consistently in pitch in a way similar to that established for CAF and EGS (see §3.5). Although much still remains obscure about the origins of Papiamentu (see Martinus 1996), its hybrid system seems to have taken shape in a small ecology with a more balanced demographic ratio of Africans to Europeans, a prevalence of domestic instead of plantation slavery, significant exposure to the European lexifier by Africans, and to the creole by Europeans, and widespread multilingualism (see Jacobs 2012). The ecology therefore appears to have had a good measure of simultaneous RL and SL agentivity in tone and intonation-only languages when Papiamentu emerged (see also §2.1).…”