Papiamentu

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Papiamentu

• By Rochelle Brooks
• April 27, 2006

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Introduction

• Papiamentu (also called Papiamento) is spoken in
  the Netherland Antilles Islands (Aruba, Bonaire
  Curaçao)
• Portuguese and Spanish based and is also
  lexically influenced by English, Dutch and Native
  American languages
• Around 200,000 speakers

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Origin of Papiamentu(one theory)

• Derived from earlier Pidgin Portuguese
• Contact between Portuguese and West African
  Languages in the mid-1400s
• Portuguese colonialized coast of West Africa
• A new language evolved containing African
  language structure Portuguese vocabulary
• Slave trade between Portugese colonies and the
  Americas brought the language to the Caribbean
• After the Dutch conquered the islands in 1623,
  there was influence of Dutch vocabulary

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Origin of Papiamentu(another theory)

• Emerged in the second half of the 17th century
• Sephardic Jews were expelled from formerly Dutch
  Northern Brazil and arrived on Curaçao from 1659
• Papiamentu stabalized around 1700 and spread to
  Bonaire and then to Aruba by the end of the
  century

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Sociolinguistic Background

• At the end of the 18th century there were 16,000
  blacks on Curaçao (slaves and freedmen)
• 5500 whites (including 1500 Sephardic Jews)
• Of the 2400 slaves in 1683 only 25 worked in the
  plantations
• In the 1700s most plantations had 5 slaves or
  less

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Sociolinguistics

• Dutch is the official language, but Papiamentu is
  not related to it structurally
• There is no continuum with Dutch on one end and
  Papiamentu on the other
• About 90 of the population of the islands speak
  papiamentu natively
• In 1936 a law banned it from all schools on the
  islands

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Sociolinguistics

• Although Dutch is the official language, the most
  common languages in business and industry are
  English and Spanish
• Papiamentu is spoken by all social classes and
  has unusually high prestige for a creole
• Highly developed writing system and is widely
  used in the media (newspapers, tv, radio)

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Linguistic Features

• SVO language
• Tense mode and aspect markers
• -ta present progressive
• -tabata imperfect past
• -a perfective, past
• -lo future, potential
• -sa habitual

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Syntax

• Papiamentu permits the order IO-DO, which is not
  allowed in Spanish or Portuguese
• To indicate time and aspect, P uses tense markers
  which stand on their own
• Maria a duna Wanchu un
  buki
• Eng Mary TNS give John
  a book
• Mary gave a book to John

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Morphology

• Most times the morpheme that indicates plurality
  has the same form as the third personal pronoun
   nan - (they) muchanan - (children)
• The nouns do not denote plurality when prefaced
  with a word with plural meaning
•  un homber - one man
• dos homber - two men
• un hende - one person
• hopi hende - many people

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Phonology

• There are ten vowels in Papiamentu (the spelling
  is in parentheses)
• i y(ü)
  u
• e Ø(ù)
  o
• E(è)
  (O)ò
• a

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Phonology

• Although none of Papiamentus parent language use
  tones, they are present in P to distinguish
  between minimal pairs
• papa with high low pattern porridge the Pope
• papa with low high pattern dad
• Also, there are many bisyllabic words which can
  only be distinguished by their tones. Usually a
  low high pattern is a verb and a high low pattern
  is a noun

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Phonology

• Examples
• biaha (low high) to travel
• (high low) voyage
• warda (low high) to wait, to keep, to
  guard
• (high low) guard service,
  guard post

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Other interesting features

• Passive construction similar to European
  lexifiers
• (agent is optionally realized in a PP)
• E pòtrèt aki a wordu saká dor di
  e mucha hòmber
• the picture here PAST be taken
  through of the child male
• The picture was taken by the boy
• The PP is introduced by dor di or pa, a passive
  auxiliary appears (wordu or ser) and the verb
  appears in the passive participle form

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Bibliography

• Arends, J et al (Ed.) (1995). Pidgins and
  Creoles an introduction. Amsterdam/Philadelphia
  John Benjamins Publishing Company.
• Holm, John (1989). Pidgins and Creoles. (vol. 2).
  Cambridge Cambridge University Press.
• Hymes, Dell (Ed.) (1971). Pidginization and
  Creolization of Languages. Cambridge Cambridge
  University Press.