Atlas of Pidgin and Creole Language Structures Online

1. Introduction¹ ⇫ ¶

Cape Verdean Creole, a Portuguese-lexified creole, is spoken in Cape Verde on nine inhabited islands that have traditionally been clustered into two main groups, the Leeward Islands, or Sotavento (Brava, Fogo, Santiago and Maio) to the South and the Windward Islands, or Barlavento, to the North (Santo Antão, São Vicente, São Nicolau, Boa Vista, and Sal). This apparently seamless geographic division conceals much variation within these two clusters and within each island. See also Lang (2012, in this volume) on Cape Verdean Creole of Santiago and Swolkien (2012, in this volume) on Cape Verdean Creole of São Vicente.

     Different islands were settled in different periods of history by distinct populations of European settlers (see Green 2006) and African slaves. This mixing of linguistic features combined with distinct settlement histories and a diglossic situation where Cape Verdean Creole continues to co-exist with Portuguese make for a complex variation continuum, as will be discussed below.

The island of Brava is the smallest, most densely populated, greenest island of the archipelago of Cape Verde and is situated on the westernmost side of the Leeward Islands. Located at 14° 15′ north latitude and 24° 42′ west longitude, its total surface is of 67 square kilometres. Its largest city is Nova Sintra and its only harbor Furna (Requedaz 1999). The highest point on the island is Monte Fontainhas, which rises to 976 metres. The economy of the island is based on agriculture and fishing, as well as trading supported by immigrants in the North American diaspora who send back to Brava money and household goods for private consumption or resale (Requedaz 1999). The island economy has not been so far supported by tourism in spite of attempts at bringing tourists by plane (the strong winds on some days make it unsafe), and the ferry boats are still not taking trips to Brava on a frequent and reliable basis.

2. Sociohistorical background² ⇫ ¶

When the Portuguese first discovered the island of Brava in 1462, shortly after the island of Santiago (see Lang 2009), they called it São João Baptista as a tribute to the Saint who was being celebrated on the day of the discovery (June 24). The island was later renamed Brava (meaning ‘wild’) due to the wild vegetation, but the celebration of the patron saint remains.  Every year, June 24th becomes a day of celebration where other islanders as well as immigrants in the diaspora join the Bravense in celebration. Although the island was discovered in 1462, the first settlers arrived only in 1573 under the leadership of commander Martinho Pereira, but a more important wave of settlement occurred in the course of the 17th century and culminated in 1680 when a volcanic eruption on the nearby island of Fogo caused many of the Fogo inhabitants to take refuge in Brava. In 1730, the English captain Georges Roberts brought to the island the culture of urzella, a plant that provided a prized blue tint that looks like indigo. In 1798, the French attacked Brava, in an attempt to undermine the Portuguese domination in the region and along the Senegambian coast. Throughout the nineteenth century, New England whaling ships came to recruit labor on the island of Brava. The ships’ captains were often in need of replacement crew for sick or disabled sailors, and they soon realized that Bravense men were courageous and hard-working, hence they quickly became a source of cheap labour. Due to the small size of the island, its limited possibilities for agriculture and economic growth, the Bravense left the island in great numbers for New England in particular. Table 1 reflects the steady decrease in population on the island of Brava from the 1940s (when one of the worst famines occurred on the archipelago) to 2010.

3. Sociolinguistic situation ⇫ ¶

The original population of Brava was European and came mostly from Madeira, Minho and Algarve (Andrade 1996: 53). The slave population started small in the early 16th century and only gradually increased until the mid 1800s, but the European population seems to have remained dominant (Andrade 1996).

Eugénio Tavares is a celebrated poet from Brava who wrote his mornas (traditional melancholic songs) almost exclusively in Creole of Brava. Born in Nova Sintra in 1867, Tavares’ writings provide a good source of autochthonous literature representative of the language at the turn of the last century.

As stated in the introduction, there is much variation in the Creole spoken in Cape Verde Islands. So far, the great majority of grammatical studies on Cape Verdean Creole have been on the Sotavento varieties and have focused primarily on the Santiago variety (Alexandre 2009; Lang 2009, 2012; Pratas 2007; Quint 2000; Veiga 2000). Notable exceptions include the following studies: Cardoso (1989) wrote on the variety spoken in São Nicolau, Delgado (2008) wrote on the varieties spoken in the Barlavento region, Holm & Swolkien (2006) and Veiga (2000) compared the variety spoken in Santiago with the one spoken in São Vicente (see also Swolkien, this volume). The first comprehensive study of the Creole of Brava can be found in Meintel (1975), who provided a linguistic and sociolinguistic study of this variety. She was also the first one to note a heavy American influence on the Brava variety due to the connections between the American whaling industry and Brava. She noted the use of lexemes such as adiyáp ‘hurry up’, beki ‘baking powder’, bikwáyt ‘be quiet’, droma ‘oildrum’ among many others. Silva (1985) examined its tense, Mood and aspect markers, Macedo’s (1979) doctoral dissertation focused on the phonology of the Creole of Brava. Finally, Baptista (2002) analyzed data from Creole of Brava together with those of other Sotavento varieties.

4. Phonology ⇫ ¶

The Creole spoken in Brava has nine oral vowel phonemes, which have a nasal counterpart (Table 2; see Meintel 1975; Macedo 1979). There are only three degrees of aperture; the numerous diphthongs of the Creole of Brava can all be interpreted as sequences of two simple vowels.

In addition, there are two semi-vowels, the front semi-vowel /y/ and the back semi-vowel /w/ and three fairly uncommon vowel phonemes that may have emerged from contact with English (Meintel 1975: 208): /ă/, as in English cat, /ĭ/, as in English pig, and /ŭ/, as in English put.

Following the ALUPEC orthography, declared the official orthography of Cape Verdean Creole in 2009, the vowel phonemes in Table 2 are written as in the chart in Table 3.

The accents on <é> and <ó> mark that these vowels may be stressed.

The consonants are shown in Table 4.

In the ALUPEC orthography, the consonants are written by the symbols used in Table 4 with the exception of the following palatals: the nasal palatal is written with <nh>, the voiceless palatal fricative with <x>, the voiced palatal fricative with <j>, and the voiceless palatal affricate with <tx>.   

5. Noun phrase ⇫ ¶

Most nouns are invariable but feminine and masculine inflectional markers or nominal expressions meaning ‘male’ and ‘female’ tend to appear on animals, kinship terms, names of professions, or properties characterizing humans. Hence, gender marking is sensitive to an animacy hierarchy. Examples of animals are galinha ‘hen’ vs. galu ‘rooster’. Examples of kinship relations are madrinha ‘godmother’ vs. padrinhu ‘godfather’, tia ‘aunt’ vs. tiu ‘uncle’, donu ‘grandfather’ vs. dona ‘grandmother’; examples of occupations are npregada di kaza ‘house cleaner (fem.)’, pedreru ‘mason’; characteristic properties of individuals: el e komedor ‘he is a big eater’, el e komedora ‘she is a big eater’, el e brajeru ‘he is a jokester’ or ‘he likes to joke’, el e brajera ‘she is a jokester’ or ‘she likes to joke’. For animals and humans, an expression meaning ‘male’ or ‘female’ can appear next to the noun they modify, as in irmon matxu ‘brother’/ irmon femia ‘sister’.

Plural marking appears on noun stems if the noun is animate, as in omis ‘(the) men’ or mudjeris ‘(the) women’ or affects otherwise the determiner when present, as in kes omi ‘the/those men’. Generic noun phrases are expressed via bare nouns, as in (1).

The indefinite determiner un/uns, as in un omi ‘a man’, corresponds to the numeral un ‘one’. The adnominal demonstratives are es and kel/kes ‘this, that/these, those’. Kel/kes can also function as a definite determiner meaning ‘the’. In addition, kel/kes serve as demonstratives expressing proximity or distance, as shown in (2) and (3). In contrast, es only expresses proximity.

(2)           kel/es kaza    li

            the       house  here

            ‘this house’

(3)           kes      kaza    la

            the       house  there

            ‘those houses’

The corresponding pronominal demonstratives are es li ‘this one’ and keli/kela ‘this one/that one’ vs. es li and kes li/kes la ‘these ones/those’.

Adnominal possessives precede the noun, as in nha fidju ‘my son’. The list of adnominal possessives appears next to personal pronouns in Table 5, as the two paradigms overlap in many cases. Pronominal possessives are formed with the use of the preposition di ‘of’:

(4)           es      fidju di  meu

            this   son   of   mine

            ‘this son of mine’

Adjectives ending in -u (masc.) and -a (fem.) preferably agree in gender (and rarely in number) with animate nouns (un mudjer alta ‘a tall woman’), but can also be found in agreement with inanimate objects (un montanha alta ‘a tall mountain’).

In comparative constructions, the markers expressing equality, inferiority and superiority are the same as in Creole of Santiago. The marker of equality is sima:

(5)       Es     e       sabidu       sima     nos.

            they  are    intelligent as           us    

            ‘They are as intelligent as us.’ (Veiga 1995: 162)

Comparative constructions expressing superiority involve the use of más ‘more’ (cf. 6) while comparatives of inferiority make use of the adverb menus (cf. 7). Just as in Creole of Santiago, comparative constructions of superiority make use of ki or di ki:

(6)       E         mutu   mas    bedju   (di)      ki         mi.      

            is         much  more   old       of         than    me

            ‘He is much older than I am.’ (Baptista 2002: 71)

The independent personal pronouns starting with a- may occur in isolation as the subject of a verb or be used in conjunction with a dependent pronoun, as in ami’N bai feria ‘I went on holiday’. Hence, ami can be used as a stressed, topicalized subject pronoun or just as a regular, unstressed subject pronoun.

The preposition ku ‘with’ or ‘and’ is used as a nominal conjunction linking two nouns, as in irmon ku irman ‘the brother and the sister’; otherwise the conjunction of coordination y is used, as when linking two clauses: N kume y N bai kama ‘I ate and went to bed’.   

The numerals from 1 to 10 are un, dos, tres, kuat(r)u, sinku, seis, seti, oitu, novi, des.

6. Verb phrase ⇫ ¶

There is no person, number, or gender agreement between the verb and the subject in Creole of Brava. There is a basic distinction between stative and dynamic verbs in terms of temporal interpretation of their bare forms. Although it is not always the case (see Pratas 2007), bare stative verbs are normally interpreted as present whereas bare dynamic verbs are interpreted as past:

(8)       N         bai     merkadu.        vs.     N      ten     dos   fidju    matxu.

            1sg      go        market                     1sg   have    two   child    male

            ‘I went to the market.’                  ‘I have two sons.’       

 Creole of Brava has seven verbal markers for aspect, mood, tense, and voice. Mood ta and aspect sta, sa ta, ta markers appear in a pre­verbal position. The marker dja that indicates that an event has been completed can be found in a preverbal or postverbal position. In contrast, the anterior marker (-ba) and the passive voice marker (-du) are postverbal.

The progressive aspect marker sa can appear on its own (as shown in 9) or be followed by ta:

(9)       Ken     ki         ten       ka        sa        da        ningen            yel.      

            who     rel      have    neg      prog   give     nobody           it

            ‘Those who have things are not giving anything to anyone.’ (AR-BR)³

The marker ta is multifunctional and may help form sentences yielding habitual/iterative present tense, habitual past (in combination with -ba), progressive (as in 10), conditional, and future interpretations (see Baptista (2002) for an exhaustive list). Examples (10) and (11) illustrate the use of ta to express imperfectivity and future, respectively.

(10)     El        fika      la,        ta         skuta-m.         

            he        stay     there   ipfv     listen-me

            ‘He stayed there, listening to me.’ (Progressive)

(11)     N         ta         konta   nha     tudu    storia. 

            I          FUT    tell       you      all        story

            ‘I will tell you the whole story.’ (Future)

The anterior marker -ba conveys a past tense reading when suffixed to a stative verb and past-before-past when on a dynamic verb:

(12)     N      ka        konxe-ba        fomi        di         1947.  

            I       NEG   know-ANT    hunger   of         1947

            ‘I did not experience the hunger of 1947.’

(13)     Bu       kuzinha-ba   kel       pratu   interu.

            you      eat-ANT         the       dish     whole

            ‘You had cooked the whole dish.’

The marker -ba also participates in the formation of the conditional to express hypothetical conditions:  

(14)     Si      bu     ka        sta-ba       na  kaza,      N         ka        ta            para-ba.      

         if       you   neg      be-ant       at   home      I          neg      mood      stop-ant

            ‘If you had not been at home, I would not have stopped by.’

Dja indicates that an event has been completed and, as such, can be viewed as a perfective marker. It can be found in a preverbal or postverbal position. (15) instantiates a preverbal position:

(15)     Nha  dos      vizinhu         dja            more.  

            my    two      neighbour   COMPL   die

            ‘My two neighbours have died.’

The suffix -du is appended to verbs to form both personal (16) and impersonal passives (17):

(16)     Nu       po-du           tudu    na        kadia.

            we       put-PASS    all        in         jail

            ‘We were all put in jail.’

(17)     Ta        txoma-du      tudu    dia,      tudu    ora.

            hab      call-pass          all        day      all        hour

            ‘One could be called any day any time.’

The functions of the markers just introduced are summarized in Table 6 (I abstract here from the combinatory patterns of the various markers; see Baptista (2002: 160) for an exhaustive treatment).

Following its lexifier, Cape Verdean Creole of Brava displays two copulas: e to generally mark a permanent property (as a rule but with a few exceptions) and sta for temporary states (18). The past tense of e is era whereas the past tense of sta is staba (19).

(18)     Maria     e       bon      vizinhu.                    João    sta      duenti.

            Maria     is      good    neighbour               João    is         ill

            ‘Maria is a good neighbour.’                    ‘João is ill.’ (MB)

(19)     Bo       bu        era    di         Dja   Braba.                Tenpu    staba     sabi.         

            you      you      was     from    Dja   Braba                weather was        nice

            ‘You were from Brava.’                                           ‘The weather was nice.’ (MB)

Just as in Creole of Santiago, Creole of Brava displays two forms for the verb ‘to have’: ten and tene. For some speakers, ten expresses permanent ownership and tene suggests temporary ownership whereas for other speakers ten and tene are used as free variants (Meintel 1975: 217).

There are five verbs that refer to ontic, deontic, and epistemic modality. For instance, ten ki/debe expresses obligation, meste expresses necessity, whereas the modal verb pode expresses possibility.  In (20), the verb debe can express both obligation and epistemic necessity.

(20)     João    debe   bai       kaza.

            João    must   go        home

            ‘João must go home.’ (obligation)

            ‘João must have gone home.’ (epistemic necessity)

Negation is expressed with the morpheme ka, which precedes lexical verbs such as (21) but follows the copular verb in the present tense (22), not in the past tense (23) and precedes clitic pronominals in the imperative (24):

(21)     Piskador         ka       ta         more.  

            fisherman       neg      hab      die

            ‘Fishermen don’t die.’

(22)     Trabadju   di   piskador    e   ka       brinkadera.    

            work         of   fisherman is   neg      entertainment

            ‘The job of fisherman brings no respite.’ (Present)

(23)     Trabadju   di   piskador       ka      era   brinkadera.          

            work         of   fisherman    neg      was  entertainment

            ‘The job of fisherman brought no respite.’ (Past)

(24)     Ka     bu       faze     keli.    

            neg      you      do        this

            ‘Don’t do this!’ (Imperative)

7. Simple sentences ⇫ ¶

The order of syntactic elements in Creole of Brava is SVO. Ditransitive constructions always follow the word order ‘indirect object + direct object’.

(25)     N         da        mininu   un   libru.

            1sg      give     child          a       book

            ‘I gave the child a book.’ (MB)

There are also stylistic constructions where subject–verb inversion takes place:

There are no overt expletives in Creole of Brava.

(27)     Txobe  onti.

            rain     yesterday

            ‘It rained yesterday.’ (MB)

Reflexivity is expressed by the noun kabesa ‘head’ (cf. 28), and re­ci­pro­city by kunpanheru ‘companion/partner’ (cf. 29):

(29)     João    ku        Maria  gosta   di         kunpanheru.

            João    and     Maria  like      of         companion    

            ‘João and Mary like each other.’  (MB) 

Just as in Creole of Santiago, verbs in the imperative do not make use of the 2SG subject pronoun (cf. 30). Subject pronouns are however used with 2PL imperatives (cf. 31) and in the negative imperative (cf. 32):

(30)     Faze    bu        trabadju!       

            do        your    work  

            ‘Do your work!’ (MB)         

(31)     Nhos   faze     nhos    trabadju!       

            2pl      do        your    work

            ‘Do your work!’ (MB)

(32)     Ka       bu        kuda-l!

            neg      2SG     listen-him

            ‘Don’t listen to him!’ (MB)

8. Interrogative and focus constructions ⇫ ¶

Yes-no questions in Cape Verdean Creole of Brava are formed by keeping the prototypical SVO word order and raising the intonation (cf. 33). In contrast, content questions are formed by fronting a wh-word typically followed by the relativizer ki (cf. 34). Examples of question words are kuze ‘what’, ken/kenhi ‘who’, undi ‘where’, ki tenpu ‘when’, modi ‘how’, kantu ‘how much/how many’, and pamodi ‘why’.

(33)     Bu       bai    merkadu   onti?

            you      go     market      yesterday

            ‘Did you go to the market yesterday?’ (MB)

Different types of constituents may be focused with the marker ki and appear sentence-initially including nouns (35a) and adjectives (35b).

9. Complex sentences ⇫ ¶

Conjunctions of coordination in Creole of Brava are y and ku ‘and’, ma/mas ‘but’, o ‘or’, o…o… ‘either… or…’, (nen…) nen… ‘(neither…) nor…’.

There are four complementizers: ki ‘that’ (cf. 36) introducing tensed clauses, kuma/ma ‘that’, typically found after illocutionary verbs (cf. 37), si ‘if’ introducing conditional clauses (cf. 38), and pa ‘that/for’ (cf. 39) before infinitival clauses.

(36)     E         gosi     ki        minizu       sa        tudu    ben      bistidu.     

            cop      now     rel      children    are       all        well     dressed

             ‘It is only now that children are all well dressed.’

(37)     Nha  dona                go        fra    kuma    es         kastiga-s.

            my    grandmother then    say   comp      they     ill.treat-them

            ‘My grandmother said that they are ill-treating them.’

(38)     N         ta         faze     si       ’N        ka        ten       un       kafe.

            1sg      hab      do        if          1sg      neg      have    a          coffee

            ‘I will do so if I don’t have a cup of coffee.’

(39)     To        ki’     N         ten       un       sen            skudu,       e       pa      ’N     negosia-l.

            when   rel   I          have    one      hundred   escudo      cop   purp    I       bargain-it

            ‘When I have one hundred escudos, it is so that I bargain with it.’

Adverbial clauses are headed by subordinating conjunctions such as to ki ‘when’, kantu ‘when’, pamodi ‘because’, kuma ‘how’ among others.  

Relative clauses featuring relativized subjects or objects are introduced by the relativizer ki:

(40)     Minizu         ki        sta       li          sa     tudu    linpu.       

            children       rel      are       here     are    all        clean

            ‘Children who are here are all clean.’

10. Other features ⇫ ¶

Reduplication is a productive process in Cape Verdean Creole of Brava. On the one hand, there is the iconic type of reduplication where the reduplicated verb, for instance, may express iteration whereas the reduplicated adjective conveys emphasis. On the other hand, there is non-iconic reduplication and in this domain, there are three types of semantic changes that occur through reduplication: There are cases where semantic shift and change of lexical category occur. There are also instances where a given single form may be a verb or a noun and results in a semantically distinct noun via reduplication. Finally, there are the cases in which semantic shift occurs through reduplication but involves no changes in lexical category.

Sentences (41) and (42) below instantiate the first type of non-iconic reduplication. In (41a), the single word peli means ‘skin’ but the reduplicated form in (41b) yields the adjective ‘stark naked’. In this particular case, the categorial conversion operates from noun to adjective.

Similarly, in (42), the noun bóka, meaning ‘mouth’, once reduplicated to bóka-bóka, yields the adjectival form ‘secret’, also translatable as the noun ‘a secret’.

(42)      a.        Kala    boka!

             quiet  mouth

             ‘Be quiet!’ (MB)

       b.   Kel      kuza    e    boka-boka.

             that    thing   is   secret

             ‘That thing is secret/a secret.’ (MB)