Variable plural marking in Palenquero Creole

Abstract

One of the most salient putative African features of Palenquero, an Afro-Hispanic creole spoken in northern Colombia, is the prenominal plural marker ma. However, plural number is not categorically marked with ma, which alternates with bare forms in plural contexts and also occurs in singular contexts. In a principled sample of noun phrases (n = 1,186) from the spontaneous speech of twenty-seven Palenquero-Spanish bilinguals, the rate of ma (versus zero) is 51% in plural and 13% in singular contexts. Singular ma is favored with subjects and specific objects, consistent with an association with definiteness. In plural contexts, where it is robust, selection of ma is favored with specific and generic referents in subject role. This conditioning indicates that plural marking is favored for discourse referential nouns, in accordance with the cross-linguistic generalization that morphological marking tends to appear on instances that approach the prototypical function of a category (Hopper & Thompson, 1984).

Do Creoles conform to typological patterns? Habitual marking in Palenquero

“…A recent study of number marking found that the prenominal plural marker ma was favored with plural count nouns that were both specific and in subject position, while bare nouns were favored with nonspecific objects. These results are consistent with a discourse-typological framework, as there is a well-attested correlation between valency, discourse=information flow parameters, and morphological coding (Cassiani Obeso & Smith, 2020). These findings, when considered together with the results from the current study, suggest that assertions made about a creole's typological status, instead of encompassing the entire grammar, may be better stated in terms of one feature over another.…”