Modern Spanish once-removed in Philippine Creole Spanish: The case of Zamboangueño

Abstract

Philippine Creole Spanish, formed in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, underwent partial decreolization toward the end of the Spanish presence in the Philippines, particularly in the city of Zamboanga. Following the American occupation of the Philippines, virtually all Spanish linguistic influence has disappeared, but contemporary Zamboangueno continues to exhibit continuing incorporation of elements of standard Spanish, in the nearly total absence of a pool of Spanish speakers. The present study explores the status of the Zamboangueno dialect, discusses the various stages of decreolization in the direction of Spanish, and suggests possible avenues for the continued introduction of elements from an acrolect which, for all intents and purposes, is no longer generally available to residents of Zamboanga. (Creole studies, contact vernaculars)

Remixing a mixed language: The emergence of a new pronominal system in Chabacano (Philippine Creole Spanish)

“…Although Forman (1972, p. 11) is critical of Whinnom's attitude as well as his reliance on a handful of verses for his analysis of an entire language, Whinnom's description is consistent with the succession of developmental stages proposed here. During this stage of ZC development, there was no further influence of the Spanish language (except for erudite borrowings by some radio announcers and Bible translators; Lipski, 1986); Visayan provided the principal source of new accretions, a status that was eventually overtaken (but not completely effaced) by English. As ZC increasingly behaved lexically, morphosyntactically, and semantically like a Philippine language, the ZC pronominal system for the first time in its history was functionally equivalent to those found in patrimonial Philippine languages.…”

“…Unlike with English and Tagalog, both of which are taught in schools and for which teachers, grammar books, and dictionaries can be readily consulted, there are no acknowledged authorities on Chabacano usage. Chabacano speakers freely incorporate English, Visayan, and more recently Tagalog lexical items in tacit recognition of the fact that there are no other Chabacano-speaking communities from which new words can be drawn (the earlier practice, common among some influential radio personalities, of introducing Spanish words as effective Chabacano neologisms, described in Lipski, 1986, is no longer viable). From its outset, Zamboanga Chabacano was the product of contacts between many languages and subcultures, none of which-not even Spanish-were completely dominant.…”

Interspeaker variation in the negated perfective aspect of Zamboanga Chavacano

“…The Cavite and Ternate varieties of Chavacano had been in existence in the 17 th century at least, as compared to the variety in Zamboanga City forming not earlier than the late 18 th century. As opposed to the Caviteño and Ternateño Chavacano, the Zamboanga Chavacano has a smaller share of Spanish elements even though their mutual intelligibility is largely evident (Lipski & Santoro, 2007).…”

“…Furthermore, Riego de Rios (1989); Steinkruger (2013), syntactically describe how the neg+perf is phrased in Chavacano. The variant spoken in Cotabato which is highly related to the variety spoken in Zamboanga is described, though implicitly alluded by the authors, as expressing the neg+perf without the need for an aspectual marker to appear (Riego de Rios (1989), and other authors describe Zamboanga Chavacano's neg+perf similarly (Lipski & Santoro, 2007;Forman, 1972). However, Steinkruger (2013), describes the neg+perf with the negative particle and the perfective aspect marker co-existing, further stating that the negative particle and the perfective aspect marker can co-occur and that this is another manner how neg+perf is expressed.…”

Decreolization as emergent grammar(s)

“…Thus for example Philippine Creole Spanish (Chabacano) as spoken in Zamboanga has pairs like bonito/a 'pretty'; guapo/a 'good looking' , maestro/a 'teacher' , viudo/a 'widower/widow' , cocinero/a 'cook' , difunto/a 'dead person' , etc. (Lipski 1986(Lipski , 1987. These lexical items are not part of an active process of gender marking, but rather have survived (or have been reintroduced) due to their high frequency in everyday discourse.…”