Preverbala-marking in Palenquero Creole

Abstract

Formally similar grammatical features in a creole and its genetic or areal relatives may indicate substrate transfer, lexifier influence, or grammaticalization. Against this backdrop, the present study investigates the origin(s) of the preverbal past marker a in Palenquero Creole (Colombia). Results from distributional analysis and tests for significance indicate that several diachronically-related meanings are a-marked at rates approaching obligatory, suggesting advanced grammaticalization. Comparative results for Peninsular haber + PP suggest that past marking has grammaticalized much further in half the time in Palenquero Creole than in its lexifier, Spanish. Why? I argue, against traditional accounts about the origins of a, that, given the contact history of Palenquero speakers, most likely a pre-existing Kikongo prefixal form merged with an already grammaticalizing haber, thus propelling grammaticalization in the creole. The synchronic patterning shows adherence to typological patterns observed for perfectives in line with well-known constraints on competition and selection in contact languages, such as their grammatical congruence or particular social ecologies.

Language-Specific Prosody in Statements of Palenquero/Spanish Bilinguals

“…Adult Palenquero speakers belong to a different generation, and indeed not all of them speak Palenquero. Some have acquired the creole as a heritage language and, at some point in the past, have attended Palenquero classes in the local school (Smith 2014). As mentioned earlier, Palenquero is unintelligible to Spanish monolingual speakers, whereas Palenquero/Spanish bilinguals switch languages depending on specific social contexts.…”

“…However, the adults who participated in the present study were born around 1979, a decade before the Palenquero revival process starting in the early 1990s (see Morton 2005). Thus, they have participated and are playing a pivotal role in the revitalization program of Palenquero (Morton 2005;Smith 2014).…”