Atlas of Pidgin and Creole Language Structures Online

1. Introduction ⇫ ¶

Nicaraguan Creole English is the oldest English-lexifier creole in the Americas. Subsequent migration patterns have nevertheless obscured exact genetic relationships with the other Western Caribbean creoles, e.g. the closely related creoles of San Andres and Old Providence (see Bartens) and Belize (see Escure). It is spoken in the R.A.A.S. (Región Autónoma Atlántico Sur ‘Southern Atlantic Autonomous Region’) and R.A.A.N. (Región Autónoma Atlántico Norte ‘Northern Atlantic Autonomous Region’), roughly comprising the area formerly known as the “Miskito Coast”, as well as in diaspora communities within Nicaragua (above all in the capital Managua) and abroad (above all in the United States). Estimates of speaker numbers vary between 35,000 and 50,000. The majority of speakers are ethnic Creoles but Nicaraguan Creole English is also the L1 of the Rama (whose variety is the most divergent of the varieties of Nicaraguan Creole English), the Nicaraguan Garifuna and some Miskito. It is spoken as an L2 by other Miskito and some Mestizos.¹

2. Sociohistorical background ⇫ ¶

The Miskito Coast of Nicaragua was settled by the British during the 1630s. As a result, Nicaraguan Creole English can be considered one of the oldest English-based varieties in the Americas (Holm 1978: 5; 1983b: 95). During its short existence (until 1641), the Puritan community of Old Providence traded with the Miskito Coast (see survey chapter on San Andres Creole English, Bartens). It seems likely that the first African group to be incorporated by the Miskito was constituted by slaves who fled from Old Providence in 1641 when it was captured by the Spanish (Holm 1978: 179–180; 1983b: 97; 1986: 7, 10).

            Nevertheless, Holm (e.g. 1983b: 97) estimates that Nicaraguan Creole English did not jell until the first half of the 18th century. Due to the forced exodus of 2,000 settlers and their slaves in 1786 to Belize, Belizean Creole constitutes a direct off-shoot of Nicaraguan Creole English (Holm 1986: 13). Since then, Nicaraguan Creole English has undergone influence from several other Western Caribbean creoles: Old Providence and San Andres served as springboards in the colonization of the Nicaraguan Corn Islands by 1810 and Pearl Lagoon, north of Bluefields, during the early 19th century. During the late 19th and early 20th century, significant numbers of Jamaicans, Cayman Islanders, San Andresans and Blacks from the Southern U.S. were recruited to work on the Miskito Coast. Due to frequent back and forth migrations, exact genetic relationships between the creole varieties in question have become obscured.

A treaty between Great Britain and the United States put the Miskito Coast under Nicaraguan protection in 1860. As a result of an 1894 revolution Nicaragua annexed the region (Holm 1983b: 98; 1986: 16). Further revolutions in 1909 and in 1926 kept the region politically unstable and the United States occupied the territory with only one nine months’ break from 1912 until 1933, a period remembered with mixed feelings by local Creoles (cf. Sujo Wilson 1991: 35–36). Although forced Hispanization started immediately after the 1894 revolution, the influx of Spanish-speaking Mestizos to the Miskito Coast drastically accelerated after the 1979 Sandinist revolution.

3. Sociolinguistic situation ⇫ ¶

Nicaraguan Creole English is spoken as an L1 by 35,000–50,000 ethnic Creoles, the Rama, Nicaraguan Garifuna, and some Miskito, and as an L2 by other Miskitos and some Mestizos (Ruiz Carrión 1998: 40; URACCAN 1998).²

Speakers themselves identify at least the variants of Bluefields, the Corn Islands, Pearl Lagoon, Rama Cay, Orinoco, and Bilwi (cf. Holm 1983b: 96; Pasanen 2004: 76). There are also Creole speakers in Bonanza, La Rosita, Siuna, and some other smaller settlements as well as in Managua and on the Pacific coast of the country in general (Decker & Keener 1998). It is commonly felt that the urban variety of Bluefields should constitute the basis for standardization and that Rama Cay Creole is the most divergent variety from the others as a result of the Rama substrate.³

            Spanish is much more present in Bluefields than in rural communities. Indeed, the private sphere of rural women crystallizes as the stronghold of Creole. In rural communities, the language tends to be called “Creole” or “Kriol” whereas speakers in Bluefields prefer the terms “English” or “Creole English”.

Pasanen (2004: 88) considers that the sociolinguistic situation of the Coast should be described in terms of stable diglossia. This is confirmed by McLean’s (2001: 124–125) evaluation of the ethnolinguistic hierarchy of the Coast according to which Nicaraguan Creole English would constitute the low variety vis-à-vis Spanish in the Southern Autonomous Region. At present, there are nevertheless signs that this diglossia is starting to leak in a way which is favourable to Creole: In addition to efforts made by various entities to promote Creole, among them the University of the Autonomous Regions of the Caribbean Coast of Nicaragua, the majority of Pasanen’s informants were in favour of its standardization (Pasanen 2004: 100–101).⁴ Nicaraguan Creole English is used to an increasing degree in the churches (Decker & Keener 1998) and in bilingual education programs. Bilingual education programs were initially run in Spanish and in Standard English during the 1980s and 1990s but are now being restructured to Nicaraguan Creole English-Spanish bilingual programmes, as educators have become aware of the devastating learning results of the Standard English-Spanish curricula. However, it has been postulated that there continue to exist separate Anglo, Costeño (coastal) and Black identities within the Creole population and those most closely identifying with the Anglo identity are unlikely to be in favour of bilingual Creole-Spanish programmes any more than they were in the 1980s (cf. Freeland 2004: 111, 117). Indeed, Standard English is valued not only as an international language but also as the foundation of this facet of Creole identity as a cross of a class and an ethnic position (Freeland 1993: 75; 1999: 220). But there appears to be “a tenuous, almost mythified presence” of Standard English as a high language (alongside Spanish) in spite of the erosion of a post-creole continuum as a result of the reincorporation of the region into the Nicaraguan State from 1894 onwards (Freeland 2004: 111–113). The fact that English language satellite channels can be received better than national Nicaraguan television channels on the entire coast or that there is some radio programming in English and/or Creole does not change much with this state of affairs. As a result of the long tradition of monolingual Spanish schooling, virtually all reading is done in Spanish. For instance, Spanish language newspapers are flown to Bluefields daily. Although Creole is a strong marker of in-group identity in certain contexts, even highly educated people are not comfortable speaking English and prefer Spanish.

4. Phonology ⇫ ¶

The vowel system of Nicaraguan Creole English consists of eight phonemes, which can be identified by means of testing minimal pairs, e.g. rich [riʧ] ‘rich’ vs. riich [riːʧ] ‘reach, arrive’, and whose major allophones are depicted in Table 1.

	front	central	back
close	i, iː		u, uː
close-mid	e		o
open-mid
open		a, aː

In addition, Nicaraguan Creole English has the minor vocalic allophones [ɪ, ʊ, ɛ, ɛː, ɔ, ɔː]. For instance, [ɛ] is an allophone of /e/ triggered by the phonetic environment, as in [sɛn] ‘to send’.

            The consonantal system of Nicaraguan Creole English consists of twenty-three phonemes whose major allophones are depicted in Table 2.

In addition, there are five minor allophones: [θ, ð, ɾ, ʒ, ʔ]. For example, the interdental fricatives surface as a result of decreolization in words like think and that. Finally, there are two consonantal phonemes which only occur in loanwords: /ɲ/ and /x/, e.g. nyam ‘to eat’ and José (a Spanish first name).

            The orthography used at present for writing Nicaraguan Creole English, negotiated in several workshops over the period 2001–2004, is a phonemic one in spite of the initial resistance in the community against an orthography which was felt to “look too Spanish”.

5. Noun phrase ⇫ ¶

Plural marking is variable in both human and inanimate nouns. It is achieved by either postposing the 3pl pronoun dem to the noun (2) or by suffixing the English-derived plural marker -s/-z (3):

(1)  Bot       mai          tiicha     dei            taak     Inglish  or      Spanish.⁵

but       1sg.poss  teacher  3pl.sbj    talk     English or      Spanish

‘But my teachers, they talk English or Spanish.’

(2)  di               likl    neebor        dem

art.def     little  neighbour pl

‘the little neighbours’

(3)  Som      ov        di                madaz      don          sen           di                piknini  tu        klaas.

some    of        art.def      mother-pl compl     send         art.def      child      to        class

‘Some of the mothers have sent their children to school.’

There is an associative plural formed with the postposed plural marker dem:

(4)  Mary         dem

Mary         pl

‘Mary and her folks/friends’ (elicited example)

Natural gender is usually not marked. Especially in the case of animal names, sex can be specified by preposing hi or shi:

(5)  Wen        di                monki        komin             bak        fram        di                shap,

when      art.def      monkey     come-prog     back      from        art.def      shop

ih            si       wan            shii   monki    an     ih           get      in         lov.     

3sg.sbj   see    art.indf     3sg.f               monkey          and    3sg.sbj            get       in         love

‘When the (male) monkey was coming back from the shop, he saw a female monkey and he fell in love with her.’ (FOREIBCA 2005a: 9)

The definite article is preposed di:

(6)  di                   tiicha          dem

art.def         teacher       pl

‘the teachers’

Generic nouns do not take the definite article:

(7)  Aligieta   gou     ap      tu        footiin       fiit.      

alligator go        up     to        fourteen   feet

‘Alligators measure up to fourteen feet.’

In present-day Nicaraguan Creole English the indefinite article tends to be invariable and preposed a, not wan as in San Andres Creole English (see Bartens) and older Nicaraguan Creole English (cf. Holm 1978, Appendix: 51):

(8)  Aktuali,     Tasba           hav      a                   kompliit      praimari         skuul.

actually,   Tasbapauni have    art.indf       complete    primary          school

‘At present, there is a complete primary school in Tasbapauni.’

The personal pronouns are listed in Table 3.

We can see that there is a great deal of functional overlap. In the cases where more than one form is listed, the first is the most basilectal, the last the most acrolectal one, e.g. mi – A – Ai for the 1st person singular subject pronoun or shi – (h)ar for the 3rd person singular feminine object pronoun. The formation of the reflexive pronouns is regular in that the suffix -self is added to the most common forms of the object pronoun.

            In pronoun conjunction constructions, the probably original construction in (9) predominates over the English-influenced construction in (10):⁶

As indicated in Table 3, Nicaraguan Creole English distinguishes between adnominal and nominal possessive pronouns essentially through preposed fa in the case of the latter. In the case of the 3rd person singular, the adnominal feminine form is (h)ar whereas the nominal form is fa shi.

            Nominal possession is usually expressed by juxtaposing the possessor and the possessum as in the following example:

As a result of influence from English, the English s-genitive also occurs:

Pronominal and adnominal demonstratives are formally identical and form a two-way contrast. According to Holm (1978: 279), the emphatic demonstratives dis-ya and dat-de may be used both prenominally and discontinuously.

(13)        dis       ring

dem      ring

‘this ring’

Indefinite pronouns are based on generic nouns:

Nicaraguan Creole English has ordinal numbers distinct from cardinal numbers up to ‘the fifth’. In addition, neks is frequently used in the meaning ‘the second’ (see example 18):

(17)        Di             fors        tiicha     iin     fourt      greid   hi                woz

art.def   first       teacher  in      fourth   grade  3sg.m.sbj   cop.pst       

a                 tiicha     we       wud     taak       Inglish       an     Spanish.

art.indf    teacher  rel      would talk       English      and   Spanish

‘The first teacher in fourth grade was a teacher who talked English and Spanish.’

Albeit increasingly eroded by English constructions, the reduplication of numerals for distributive use still prevails in Nicaraguan Creole English:

Adjectives are used as either attributive adjectives in which case they precede the modified noun or as predicative adjectives in which case they equal stative verbs. In both cases they are invariant, as in examples (20) and (21).

In comparative adjective marking, the adjective is marked:

Comparative standard marking is achieved by means of the particle (d)an:

6. Verb phrase ⇫ ¶

The TAM system of Nicaraguan Creole English is presented in Table 4.

It appears that Nicaraguan Creole English does not permit the co-occurrence of three preverbal TAM-markers.

            Holm (1978: 251) cautions that “the corresponding English tense for an unmarked MCC [Misikito Coast Creole, an alternative name for Nicaraguan Creole English] verb can only be determined from the context” although he admits that statistically, unmarked non-stative verbs tend to correspond to the English past, unmarked statives to the English present tense. It seems to me that Nicaraguan Creole English is moving in a direction where (i) “past” and not “anterior”⁷ is being marked, (ii) “past” is marked much more frequently than “anterior” in San Andres Creole English, and (iii) this marking occurs less and less by means of preverbal markers and more and more by means of English past tense forms.

            As far as the preverbal past/anterior markers are concerned, Holm (1978: 251–254) indicates that mi and di(d) are allomorphs, and he does not make any further comments on their distribution. On the basis of recent data, it seems clear that mi is more basilectal than di(d) and hardly any more occurs in naturalistic speech (see examples 24 and 26, respectively).

For marking progressive aspect, the postverbal marker -in (derived from the English present participle ending -ing; the only postverbal marker in the system) is much more frequent than preverbal de (see examples 27 and 28, respectively). In combination with the past/anterior marker mi, the progressive marker may become di, probably as a result of vowel harmony (see example 29).

Among the habitual markers, mesolectal doz/daz is only used in the present (30), yuuztu only in the past (31). The marker stodi which in closely related San Andres-Providence Creole English is only used for present habitual meanings (see survey chapter on San Andres-Providence Creole English, Bartens 2013) can be used for both present and past habituals in Nicaraguan (32).

In Nicaraguan Creole English, it is possible to form an anterior or past form (ex. 34) of the completive aspect (ex. 33):

The use of the completive marker in inchoative constructions is marginal:

Usually, inchoative meanings are expressed by means of get or staat 'to start':

(36)     Shi      get  kreezi.

            3sg.f   get  crazy

            ‘She got crazy.’

Three different kinds of future tense can be marked: an immediate, a general, and a volitive future (in the respective order of the following examples):

(38)        Bot    nou   evriting       wil  bi      beta     wid    di       nyu   govament      hier.

but   now  everything fut cop   better  com  dem   new  government dem.loc

‘But now everything will get better with this new government we have here.’

The use of the conditional (also future in the past) marker was illustrated in example (37) above.

            The modal auxiliaries of Nicaraguan Creole English are presented in Table 5.

Palatalized kyan ‘can’ is more basilectal than the form kan. As of yet, there is no evidence of a tonal opposition between kyan and kyaan as occurs in San Andres Creole English. Examples (40) to (42) illustrate the use of modal auxiliaries:

(40)        Wi          di              tiicha     haftu     go   bak      an     laan  Mískito.

1pl.sbj  art.def    teacher  have.to  go   back   and   learn Miskito

‘We, the teachers, will have to go back [to school] and learn Miskito.’

Modal fo/fa can possibly be considered an extension of the prepositional uses of the item (ex. 43 below; cf. McWhorter 2005: 215–216) but I have not been able to find any evidence of this modal usage in present-day Nicaraguan Creole English which, nevertheless, also features the use as a complementizer (ex. 44):⁸

Verbal negation does not affect the order of the TAM markers. There are two preverbal negation markers, one for the present (no[u]) and another one for the past (neva)⁹:

However, the (present) negator no(u) is used at the expense of neva more frequently than in San Andres-Providence Creole English. The English-derived negations don, doun are quite frequent in spoken Nicaraguan Creole English:

Negative concord occurs:

(48)        Nobadi     neva           yuuztu     hav      tivi.

no.body  neg.pst      hab.pst   have    TV

‘Nobody would have a TV.’

Predicative noun phrases must occur with a copula:

On the other hand, predicative adjectives may occur with or without a copula:

In predicative locative phrases, constructions with English-derived copulas (54) appear to be ousting both constructions without any copula (52) and with the locative copula de (53):

Predicative possession is expressed by means of two transitive possession constructions. The first is formed with the English-derived verb hav and the second with the verb gat (rather than get as in San Andres Creole English):

The transitive possession and existential verb constructions are both formed with the auxiliaries hav and gat:

There are no serial verb constructions with ‘give’ or ‘take’. As far as directional serial verb constructions are concerned, serial verbs with go/gaan are much more common than with kom. Serial verb constructions with the directional verb following another verb (60) are more common than those with the directional verb preceding another verb (59): Nevertheless, as the constructions with the directional verb following another verb represent structures clearly not part of the grammar of Standard English, they tend to be replaced by structures where the verbs are co-ordinated with and in present-day Nicaraguan Creole English.

(59)     Nou     Ai               go        woch      dem.

            now     1sg.sbj       go        watch    3pl.obj

            ‘Now I will go and watch them.’

There are also serial verb constructions with go […] go, gaan […] gaan, kom […] kom:

(61)     Les         go     go      drink   di              waata    an     get       di              gol!

            Let's      go     go      drink  art.def    water    and   get       art.def    gold

            ‘Let’s drink the water and get the gold!’

The following example is a variant of the original serial verb construction attested by Holm (1978:227) which also occurrs in San Andres-Providence Creole English is sen kaal ‘to summon’.

(62)        An  shi           get       wan            mesinja      sen      gaan        kaal

           and  3sg.f.sbj get       art.indf    messenger send    go.pst      call

           di            gyal     an        tel        di                gyal     […].

           art.def  girl      and     tell       art.def      girl      […]

           ‘So she got a messenger to summon the girl and to tell her: […].’

7. Simple sentences ⇫ ¶

The word order at clause level is always SVO:

(63)      An      horikien  mash   dat         dong.

           and    hurricane            mash     dem  down

           ‘And the hurricane destroyed that.’

In Nicaraguan Creole English, indirect object constructions (64) are possibly even more frequent than the presumably original double-object constructions (65):

(64)      Dem          giv       chyaanz     tu      piipl         fram    out.

           3pl.sbj     give     chance       to      people     from    out

           ‘They give opportunities to people who are not originally from the community.’

(65)      Shi              staat    afa         di                oubia       wuman    moo       moni.

           3sg.f.sbj     start    offer      art.def      obeah      woman    more      money

           ‘She started to offer the obeah woman more money.’

In experiencer constructions, the experiencer occurs in subject position, e.g.

(66)      Wan     taim     L.    neva         freed.

           one       time    L.    neg.pst   afraid

           ‘Previously, L. wasn’t afraid.’

The following construction is marginal in present-day Nicaraguan Creole English:

(67)      Mi             hed        de        hot         mi.

           1sg.poss   head      prog   hurt       1sg.obj

           ‘My head is aching.’

Usually, speakers say:

(68)      A             gat     hediek.

           1sg.sbj   have  headache

           ‘I have a headache.’

Although expletive subjects are not used in existential constructions in traditional Nicaraguan Creole English (69), it seems that some English-type constructions are entering the language (70).

(69)      Ai            tink        Bluufiilz    gat       mor       piipl       spiikin          Kriol.

           1sg.sbj   think     Bluefields  get       more     people   speak-prog Creole.

           ‘I think there are more people who speak Creole in Bluefields.’

(70)      Dier      wil  aalwiez  aalwiez  bii             dat    somting      mait     hapn      tu           yu.

           there    fut always   always  cop.inf    dem   something might  happen comp     2sg.obj

           ‘There will always, always be (the possibility) that something might happen to you.’

The non-pro-drop character of Nicaraguan Creole English leads to the maintenance of English constructions with the anticipatory “dummy” subject as in the following example:

(71)      Wen     ih             rein     an     ih             blou  iin   truu       di              windou  […].

           when    3sg.n.sbj rain     and   3sg.n.sbj blow in    through                 art.def window   […]

           ‘When it rains and it blows in through the windows […].’

In Nicaraguan Creole English, passives are formed either by means of the English-derived morphological passive construction or by means of the likewise English-derived get-passive:

(72)      If        dis     ting      woz          wel    regyuleeted        […].

           if        dem   thing   cop.pst   well   regulate-ptcp   […]

           ‘If this thing was well regulated […].’

(73)      Taiga    get       fraitn.

         Tiger    get       frighten

           ‘Tiger was frightened.’ (FOREIBCA 2005a: 8)

However, there is also the presumably original construction in which transitive verbs can be used intransitively with the patient as subject and no agent expressed.

(74)      Di              papaya   trii       troo          iin     di                basura.

           art.def     papaya  tree     throw      in      art.def      garbage

           ‘The papaya tree was thrown into the garbage.’

Finally, passive contents can be expressed by means of active constructions the subject of which is the 3rd person plural:

(75)      Dem            kil          im.

           3pl.sbj        kill         3sg.m.obj

           ‘They killed him.’

The reflexive voice is generally formed by means of suffixing -self to the personal object pronouns (see Table 3):

(76)      Di              big    piipl          dem     disgais        demself.

           art.def     big    people      PL       disguise     3pl-refl

           ‘[Even] the adults disguise themselves.’

Body part reflexives were documented by Holm (1978: 230), but their use in present-day Nicaraguan Creole English must be marginal at best:

(77)      wash  yu            skin

           wash  2sg.poss  skin

           ‘to wash oneself’ (Holm 1978: 230)

Whereas it might seem that the English pattern (intensifiers and reflexives are identical; ex. 78) is ousting the Nicaraguan Creole English intensifying structures formed with bare self and wan postposed to an object pronoun (79 and 80, respectively), at least the latter structure persists in present-day Nicaraguan Creole English. However, this combination tends to have the meaning ‘all by X-self’.

(78)      Di              dairektor      ihnself          uopn di                doa.

           art.def     director        3sg.intens   open art.def      door

           ‘The director himself opened the door.’

(79)      nat     di             riil       biébi      self

           neg    art.def   real      baby     intens

           ‘not the little baby (but rather the little boy)’ (Holm 1978: 78)

(80)      i              liiv       i                  braada     him          wan

           3sg.sbj   leave   3sg.poss    brother    3sg.obj   intens      

           ‘She left her brother by himself.’ (Holm 1978: 288)

Reciprocal constructions are formed by means of English-derived wananada and are therefore distinct from reflexive constructions:

(81)      Nobadi      respek    wananada.

           no.body    respect  recp

           ‘Nobody respects one another.’

The imperative is formed by means of using the bare verb, the prohibitive by pre-posing the negator to it:

(82)      Jak,      stie       bilou!

           Jack     stay     below

           ‘Jack, stay down there!’

(83)      No        kom     hiar!

           neg       come   dem.loc

           ‘Don’t come here!’

When addressed to the second person plural, both the imperative and the prohibitive take the subject pronoun unu:

(84)      Unu        ketchar!¹⁰

     2pl.sbj   catch-3sg.f.obj

           ‘(You) catch her!’ (FOREIBCA 2005a: 10)

Hortatives are formed with the verbs le(s) < English let’s, mek < English make, and main < English mind:

(85)      Lego     huom!

           let.go    home

           ‘Let’s go home!’

(86)      Mek      di              piknini     dem     taak.

           make    art.def    child        pl        talk

           ‘Let the children talk.’

(87)      Main    yu          kot         yu               finga!

           mind    2sg.sbj  cut         2sg.poss    finger

           ‘Be careful lest you cut your finger!’

Polar questions can be distinguished from affirmative sentences only as a result of their rising intonation:

(88)      So    di         wat      wi          taak     iz              Kriol?

           so     dem     rel      1pl.sbj  talk     cop.prs   Creole

           ‘So is this (language) which we talk Creole?’

Content questions are formed with interrogative pronouns and adverbs which are sentence-initial. Single-word interrogatives derived from their English counterparts appear to have virtually ousted compound expressions: Holm (1978) lists húuda(t) ‘who’, wich paat, wich/wat said ‘where’, wen taim ‘when’ whereas present-day Nicaraguan Creole English only has huu ‘who’, we/wier ‘where’, and wen ‘when’. Hou ‘how’ has been documented only in monomorphematic form.

(89)      Weh        yu          hie    di             neks    kriol?

           where     2sg.sbj  hear  art.def   next     creole

           ‘Where have you heard the other/another creole spoken?’

Nominal cleft constructions consist of the focused constituent highlighted by a copula and a relative clause as the background clause:

(90)      Dem        iz              huu     woz          marginated.

           3pl.sbj   cop.prs    rel      cop.pst    marginate-ptcp

           ‘It is/was them who were marginalized.’

There is no verb doubling for focus:

(91)      Shi            jos       mi     de          faam.

           3sg.f.sbj  just     pst    prog     pretend

           ‘She was just pretending.’

8. Complex sentences ⇫ ¶

The coordinating conjunctions are an ‘and’, or ‘or’, and bot ‘but’. Note that an is used both as a nominal and as a verbal conjunction:

(92)      flauwa  an        saalt

           flour     and     salt

           ‘flour and salt’

(93)      Yu           gwan   on     di             biich    an     yu          kech    fish.

           2sg.sbj   go.on  on     art.def   beach  and   2sg.sbj  catch   fish

           ‘You go onto the beach and you catch some fish.’

Comitatives and instrumentals are both marked with wid:

(94)      Yu           go   an     yu          stee   wid    dem          an     yu          plei  kaad.

           2sg.sbj   go   and   2sg.sbj  stay  com   3pl.obj   and   2sg.sbj  play         card

           ‘You go and you stay with them and you play cards.’

(95)      Yu           kan   aalso   mek   yor              rondon       wid    miit.

           2sg.sbj   can   also     make                   2sg.poss    rundown         ins       meat

           ‘You can also make your rundown with meat.’

Older generation speakers appear to use wid as a conjunction coordinating NPs as well:

(96)      Di              kaptin    wi      evibadi          waz          der.

           art.def     captain  with  every.body   cop.pst   dem.loc

           ‘The captain and everybody was there.’  (Holm 1978: 291)

According to Holm (1978: 247), the Nicaraguan Creole English subordinating complementizer with verbs of speaking, perception and judgement se can (i) follow the verb se ‘to say’ and (ii) co-occur with dat as a sequence: se dat (e.g. after the verb tel ‘to tell’). It appears that dat (< English that) or zero are increasingly replacing se, here nevertheless exemplified in (97). As far as verbs of knowing are concerned, se appears to be the original complementizer (98) which is likewise being ousted by dat (99) or zero:

(97)      Ai            haftu     taak  se        Ai           stiil    dis     ring.

           1sg.sbj   have.to  talk   comp   1sg.sbj  steal  dem   ring

           ‘I have to tell [you] that I stole this ring.’

(98)      Ai            doun   waa   dem       nou     se        Ai           tiif     di           ring.

           1sg.sbj   neg     want 3pl.obj know  comp   1sg.sbj  steal  art.def ring

           ‘I don’t want them to know I stole the ring.’

(99)      Yu           wud       nuo     dat       Kriol      iz           laik    dis.

           2sg.sbj   would    know  comp   Creole   cop.prs like    dem

           ‘You would know that Creole is like this.’

Object complement clauses of waa(hn) ‘to want’ generally do not require an overt complementizer but may occasionally take the complementizer fa/fu:

(100)   Ai              waa     help     mai           famali.

           1sg.sbj     want   help    1sg.poss  family

           ‘I want to help my family.’

Frequent subordinators introducing adverbial clauses are for instance aafta ‘after’, bikaaz ‘because’, fram ‘since’, if ‘if’, etc.

(101)   So    if     wi             get     Monday,    wi             no        get     Tuesday.

so     if     1pl.sbj    get    Monday,    1pl.sbj    neg      get    Tuesday

‘So if we get [the newspapers] on Monday, we won’t get [them] on Tuesday.’

Relative clauses are always postposed to the head noun. The relativized element can be a subject, object or an obligatory adverbial. The basilect features the relative particle we(h) (102), meso- and acrolectal registers English-derived pronouns such as wat (88) and huu (90).

(102)   iin      di             praimari       skuul     we     Ai             wook

           in       art.def   primary       school    rel   1sg.sbj    work

‘in the primary school where I work’

9. Lexicon ⇫ ¶

The lexicon of Nicaraguan Creole English is very similar to San Andres-Providence Creole English (and the other Western Caribbean Creole Englishes). There are English archaisms and regionalisms as well as loans and calques from Spanish. Some of the items which look like Spanish calques are, as a matter of fact, British English archaisms, e.g. bread (Standard English bread ‘loaf of bread’, last attested in 1643), and dayrekshon (Standard English direction ‘address’, last attested in 1886; Holm 1983a: 12). What distinguishes Nicaraguan Creole English from the other Western Caribbean Creole Englishes is the amount of Miskito loans in the language, e.g. briybriy ‘a shrub species’, duori ‘a dugout canoe’, ishili ‘a lizard species’, pyampyam ‘a bird species’, rahti ‘a crab species’, shangkwa ‘a turtle species’, wawa ‘foolish’, and wowla ‘boa constrictor’ (cf. Holm 1983a: 14; Bartens 2009: 306).