Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-g7gxr Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-15T10:36:55.917Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The scarcity of Spanish-based creoles explained

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 February 2009

John H. McWhorter
John H. McWhorter
Affiliation:
Department of Modern Languages and Linguistics, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14853
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Most explanations for the scarcity of Spanish-based creoles have appealed to sociological factors. This article shows that, on the contrary, three historical factors determined the current distribution. First, the Spanish only began cultivating sugar after a century of concentrating on crops requiring smaller plantations; this allowed fuller acquisition of Spanish by the slaves, who then served as models for later arrivals. Second, the Spanish often took over areas formerly occupied by the Portuguese, thus encountering a previously existent pidgin. Third, the Spanish did not establish trade settlements in West Africa, where a Spanish pidgin could have emerged and been transported to the New World. These factors together manifested Spain's low commitment to establishing vigorously capitalistic enterprises in its possessions until the 19th century, which can be seen as the ultimate impediment to the pidginization of Spanish. (Pidgins and creoles, Spanish, Spain, diachronic linguistics, lexical diffusion, language transmission)

Type
Research Article
Information
Language in Society , Volume 24 , Issue 2 , April 1995 , pp. 213 - 244
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1995

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Aimes, Hubert (1907). A history of slavery in Cuba, 1511–1868. New York: Putnam.Google Scholar
Alleyne, Mervyn C. (1971). Acculturation and the cultural matrix of creolization. In Hymes, , 169–86.Google Scholar
Álvarez Nazario, Manuel (1961). El elemento afronegroide en el español de Puerto Rico. San Juan: Instituto de Cultura Puertorriqueña.Google Scholar
Baker, Phillip, & Corne, Chris (1982). Isle de France Creole: Affinities and origins. Ann Arbor: Karoma.Google Scholar
Barbot, John (1732). A description of the coasts of North and South-Guinea. London: Churchill.Google Scholar
Bell, Ian (1981). The Dominican Republic. Boulder: Westview.Google Scholar
Bickerton, Derek (1984). The Language Bioprogram Hypothesis. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 7:173–88.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bickerton, Derek & Escalante, Aquilas (1970). Palenquero: A Spanish-based creole of northern Colombia. Lingua 24:254–67.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bilby, Ken (1983). How the “older heads” talk: A Jamaican Maroon spirit possession language and its relationship to the creoles of Suriname and Sierra Leone. New West Indian Guide 57:37–88.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Boretsky, Norbert (1983). Kreolsprachen, Substrate und Sprachwandel. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz.Google Scholar
Boxer, Charles R. (1963). Race relations in the Portuguese colonial empire, 1415–1825. Oxford: Clarendon.Google Scholar
Byrne, Frank (1987). Grammatical relations in a radical creole. Amsterdam: Benjamins.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cabrera, Lydia (1954). El monte. Paris: Gallimard.Google Scholar
Cassidy, Frederic G. (1980). The place of Gullah. American Speech 55:3–16.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Castellanos, Jorge, & Castellanos, Isabel (1992a). Cultura afrocubana, vol. I. Miami: Ediciones Universal.Google Scholar
Castellanos, Jorge (1992b). Cultura afrocubana, vol. III. Miami: Ediciones Universal.Google Scholar
Cauna, Jacques (1987). An temps des isles á sucre. Paris: Éditions Karthala et A.C.C.T.Google Scholar
Cohen, William B. (1980). The French encounter with Africans: White response to blacks, 1530–1880. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Corne, Chris (1989). Un Créole á base lexicale française en Nouvelle-Calédonie: Le Tayo ou le patois de Saint-Louis. Études Créoles 12:29–42.Google Scholar
Debien, Gabriel (1974). Les esclaves aux Antilles Françaises: XVIIe–XVIIIe siècles. Basse-Terre: Société d'Histoire de la Guadeloupe.Google Scholar
Dillard, Joey L. (1979). Creole English and creole Portuguese: The early records. In Hancock, Ian F. et al. (eds.), Readings in creole studies, 261–68. Ghent: E. Story-Scientia.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ferraz, Luis Ivens (1976a). The origin and development of four creoles in the Gulf of Guinea. African Studies 35:33–38.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ferraz, Luis Ivens(1976b). The creole of Sāo Tomé. Johannesburg: Witwatersrand University Press.Google Scholar
Friedemann, N. S. de, & Patiño Rosselli, C. (1983). Lengua y sociedad en El Palenque de San Basilio. Bogotá: Instituto Caro y Cuervo.Google Scholar
Gilbert, Glenn (1987), ed. Pidgin and creole languages. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.Google Scholar
Goodman, Morris F. (1964). A comparative study of creole French dialects. The Hague: Mouton.Google Scholar
Goodman, Morris F. (1985). The origin of Virgin Islands creole Dutch. Amsterdam Creole Studies 8:67–106.Google Scholar
Goodman, Morris F. (1987). The Portuguese element in the American creoles. In Gilbert, , 361–405.Google Scholar
Granda, Germán de (1978). Estudios lingüisticos hispánicos, afrohispánicos, y criollos. Madrid: Gredos.Google Scholar
Guerra y Sánchez, Ramiro (1964). Sugar and society in the Caribbean. New Haven: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Günther, Wilfried (1973). Das Portugiesische Kreolisch der Ilha do Príncipe. (Marburger Studien zur Afrika- und Asienkunde, A-2.) Marburg: Greschat.Google Scholar
Hancock, Ian (1979). Review of The Bantu speaking heritage of the United States, by Vass, W. Keller. Research in African Literatures 12:412–19.Google Scholar
Hancock, Ian (1986). The domestic hypothesis, diffusion and componentiality: An account of Atlantic Anglophone creole origins. In Muysken, Peter & Smith, Norval (eds.), Substrata versus universals in creole genesis, 71–102. Amsterdam: Benjamins.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hancock, Ian (1987). A preliminary classification of the Anglophone Atlantic creoles, with syntactic data from thirty-three representative dialects. In Gilbert, , 264–333.Google Scholar
Hancock, Ian et al. (1979), eds. Readings in Creole studies. Ghent: Story-Scientia.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Herskovits, Melville, & Herskovits, Frances S. (1936). Suriname folklore. (Columbia University contributions to anthropology, 37.) New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Holm, John (1988). Pidgins and creoles, vol. 1. Cambridge & New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Holm, John (1989). Pidgins and creoles, vol. 2. Cambridge & New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Hornby, Ove (1980). Kolonerne i Vestindien. Copenhagen: Politiken.Google Scholar
Hull, Alexander (1979). On the origin and chronology of the French-based creoles. In Hancock, I., Polomé, E., Goodman, M., & Heine, B. (eds.), Readings in creole studies, 210–16. Ghent: E. Story-Scientia.Google Scholar
Hymes, Dell (1971), ed. Pidginization and creolization of languages. Cambridge & New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Keesing, Roger (1988). Melanesian pidgin and the Oceanic substrate. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Kihm, Alain (1980). Aspects d'une syntaxe historique: Études sur le créole portugais de Guiné-Bissau. Thèse de Doctorat de 3e Cycle, Université de Paris III, Sorbonne Nouvelle.Google Scholar
Klein, Herbert S. (1967). Slavery in the Americas. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Knight, Frank (1970). Slave society in Cuba during the nineteenth century. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.Google Scholar
Laurence, Kemlin M. (1974). Is Caribbean Spanish a case of decreolization? Orbis 23:484–99.Google Scholar
Lipski, John M. (1986a). Convergence and divergence in bozal Spanish: A comparative study. Journal of Pidgin and Creole Studies 1:171–203.Google Scholar
Lipski, John M. (1986b). The Portuguese element in Philippine Creole Spanish: A critical reassessment. Philippine Journal of Linguistics 17:1–17.Google Scholar
Lipski, John M. (1989). The speech of the negros congos of Panama. Amsterdam: Benjamins.Google Scholar
Lipski, John M., & Schwegler, Armin (1993). Creole Spanish and Afro-Hispanic. In Green, John N. & Posner, Rebecca (eds.), Bilingualism and linguistic conflict in Romance (Trends in Romance linguistics and philology, 5), 407–32. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
McWhorter, John H. (1992). Substratal influences on Saramaccan serial verb constructions. Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages 7:1–53.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McWhorter, John H. (1993). New World Spanish and West African pidgins: A new perspective on the creolization context. Paper presented at the Society for Pidgin and Creole Linguistics, Los Angeles.Google Scholar
McWhorter, John H. (1994). A new interpretation of the genesis of the Atlantic creoles, MS.Google Scholar
McWhorter, John H. (1995). Sisters under the skin: A case for genetic relationship between the Atlantic English-based creoles. To appear in Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Megenney, William W. (1984). Traces of Portuguese in three Caribbean creoles: Evidence in support of the monogenetic theory. Hispanic Linguistics 1:177–89.Google Scholar
Mintz, Sidney W. (1971). The socio-historical background to pidginization and creolization. In Hymes, , 481–98.Google Scholar
Otheguy, Ricardo (1973). The Spanish Caribbean: A creole perspective. In Bailey, Charles-James & Shuy, Roger (eds.), New ways of analyzing variation in English, 323–39. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press.Google Scholar
Paquette, Robert L. (1988). Sugar is made with blood. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press.Google Scholar
Parry, John H., & Sherlock, P. M. (1956). A short history of the West Indies. London: Macmillan.Google Scholar
Pattee, Ricardo (1967). La República Dominicana. Madrid: Cultura Hispanica.Google Scholar
Patterson, Orlando (1967). The sociology of slavery. London: McGibbon & Key.Google Scholar
Pichardo y Tapia, Esteban (1862). Diccionario provincial casi razonado de voces cubanas. 3rd ed.Havana: La Antilla.Google Scholar
Price, Richard (1983). First time: The historical vision of an Afro-American people. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.Google Scholar
Restrepo, Vicente (1886). A study of the gold and silver mines of Colombia. New York: Colombian Consulate.Google Scholar
Rickford, John R. (1988). Dimensions of a creole continuum. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Rickford, John R. (1992). The creole residue in Barbados. In Hall, Joan H. et al. . (eds.), Old English and new; Essays in language and linguistics in honor of Frederic G. Cassidy, 183–201. New York: Garland.Google Scholar
Rodney, Walter (1970). A history of the Upper Guinea Coast, 1545–1800. Oxford: Clarendon.Google Scholar
Roy, John D. (1986). The structure of tense and aspect in Barbadian English Creole. In Görlach, Manfred & Holm, John (eds.), Focus on the Caribbean (Varieties of English around the world, G-8), 141–56. Amsterdam: Benjamins.Google Scholar
Sandoval, Alonso de (1627). De instauranda aethiopum salute. (Reprinted: Bogotá, Empresa Nacional de Publicaciones, 1956.)Google Scholar
Sankoff, Gillian (1977). Creolization and syntactic change in New Guinea Tok Pisin. In Blount, Ben & Sanches, Mary (eds.), Sociocultural dimensions of language change, 131–59. New York: Academic.Google Scholar
Scarano, Francisco A. (1984). Sugar and slavery in Puerto Rico. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.Google Scholar
Scherer, André (1965). Histoire de la Réunion. paris: Presses Universitaires de France.Google Scholar
Schwegler, Armin (1991a). El habla cotidiana del ChocÓ (Colombia). América Negra 2:85–119.Google Scholar
Schwegler, Armin (1991b). Negation in Palenquero: Synchrony. Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages 6:165–214.Google Scholar
Schwegler, Armin (1991c). La doble negaciÓn dominicana y la génesis del español caribeño. To appear in Lingüística 3.Google Scholar
Schwegler, Armin (1993). Subject pronouns and person/number in Palenquero. In Byrne, Frank & Holm, John (eds.), The Atlantic meets the Pacific: A global view of pidginization and creolization, 145–61. Amsterdam: Benjamins.Google Scholar
Schwegler, Armin (1995a). “Chima Nkongo”: Lengua y rito ancestrales en El Palenque de San Basilio (Colombia). 2 vols. Frankfurt: Verruert.Google Scholar
Schwegler, Armin (1995b). La descodificación de las Canciones fúnebres afrohispanas “lumbalú” del Palenque de San Basilio (Colombia). To appear in Thesaurus (Bogotá).Google Scholar
Smith, Norval V. (1987). The genesis of the Creole languages of Suriname. University of Amsterdam dissertation.Google Scholar
Stewart, William A. (1971). Sociolinguistic factors in the history of American Negro dialects. In Wolfram, Walt & Clarke, Nona H. (eds.), Black-white speech relationships, 74–89. Washington, DC: Center for Applied Linguistics.Google Scholar
Sylvain, Suzanne C. (1936). Le Créole haïtien: Morphologie et syntaxe. Port-au-Prince: de Meester.Google Scholar
Thomason, Sally G., & Kaufman, Terence (1988). Language contact, creolization and genetic linguistics. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Tonkin, Elizabeth (1971). Some coastal pidgins of West Africa. In Ardener, Edwin (ed.), Social anthropology and language (Association of Social Anthropologists, monograph 10), 129–55. London: Tavistock.Google Scholar
Van Lier, Rudolf A. J. (1971). Frontier society: A social analysis of the history of Suriname. The Hague: Nijhoff.Google Scholar
Voorhoeve, Jan (1964). Creole languages and communication. Symposium on Multilingualism, 233–42. London: Committee for Technical Cooperation in Africa.Google Scholar
Weber, David J. (1992). The Spanish frontier in North America. New Haven: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
West, Robert C. (1957). The Pacific lowlands of Colombia. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press.Google Scholar
Westermann, Diedrich (1930). A study of the Ewe language. London: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Whinnom, Keith (1956). Spanish contact vernaculars in the Philippine Islands. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press.Google Scholar
Winford, Donald (1985). The syntax of fi complements in Caribbean English Creole. Language 61:588–624.Google Scholar
Wood, Peter (1974). Black majority. New York: Knopf.Google Scholar