Atlas of Pidgin and Creole Language Structures Online

1. Introduction ⇫ ¶

Korlai (also known as Korlai (Creole) Portuguese, autoglossonym nɔ liŋ ‘our language’) is spoken by the approximately 800 inhabitants of Korlai village, which is located around 150 km south of Mumbai, India. In addition, there are small communities of diasporic Korlai speakers in Mumbai and Bassein. Korlai is similar to the creoles of Daman and Diu, spoken north of Mumbai (for Diu Indo-Portuguese, see Cardoso 2012, in this volume).

2. Socio-historical background ⇫ ¶

The Portuguese arrived in the Chaul/Korlai area for the first time in 1505 (Fernandes 1926: 66) at a time when Chaul was still a centre of commerce, a fact that was of interest to the trade-minded Portuguese (Kulkarni 1989: 167). The first fortification built by the Portuguese in the area was completed in Chaul in 1524. Another construction, called the Morro de Chaul ‘Chaul Hill’ fortification was completed at the end of the 16th century. Sometime thereafter, a church, named Our Lady of the Sea, was built at the base of the Morro, in the valley named Corle (de Andrade 1945: 9). The small community that subsequently formed in the vicinity of the church over time took on the name of the valley.

The 1600s brought the gradual decline of Chaul as a port of trade, due in part to the siltation of the river. In 1740 the Marathas conquered the area, forcing the Portuguese out of Chaul. The Portuguese, along with the native Christians who could afford it, abandoned the area for Goa, leaving behind the lower caste Indian Christians, and some clergy. Records indicate that by 1751 the church at the foot of the Morro had been moved to a new place about a kilometre away from its original location (Humbert 1964: 31). The current village of upper Korlai established itself around the new church, christened Our Lady of Mount Carmel.

From 1740 up until 1814, Korlai’s population hovered around 300 (Meersman 1972: 449–454). Since then, it has risen to roughly 800 residents. Until recently, agriculture was the profession of the village. With an increase in education and the advent of factories in the area, Korlai’s inhabitants are becoming factory workers and small entrepreneurs. Korlai is spoken in the village still, but Marathi, the regional language of the area, is predominantly or exclusively used in education, the church, the administration, and health care matters.

There is indirect evidence suggesting that Korlai formed within one to three generations and that it was a full-fledged language by the time the original Korlai village took shape after 1593.

The first researchers of Korlai were the Rumanian linguists Laurenţiu and Maria Theban (L. Theban 1985, L. Theban & M. Theban 1980).

3. Sociolinguistic situation ⇫ ¶

In Korlai village, Korlai is still the primary means of communication among all the villagers, although as more and more children attend school, Marathi (the language of instruction) is influencing the structure and lexicon of Korlai.

Regarding language use in the village, a major change occurred in 1964 in the church, the year in which Marathi replaced Latin/Portuguese as the official language of the church in Korlai. Since that time, Marathi-speaking priests trained in the Mumbai seminary have directed the Korlai parish. For the Korlai Catholics, this changed the normal state of affairs considerably, because it was the first time that any outside language other than Portuguese or Latin had been made a part of the religious life of all villagers. The younger people now learn to pray in Marathi instead of Portuguese and have developed an ever closer relation to the Marathi, to the point that Korlai has become diglossic. At the same time, the change has alienated some of the older village people.

Gradually, Korlai is being exposed to the outer world. Much of its isolation was due to its geographical location on the south side of a wide river that had no nearby bridge. Thus, few people made the trip across to Korlai, and mass transportation of goods was impossible. In 1986, a bridge was finished which linked Korlai to Chaul by road and, more importantly, opened up Korlai to traffic from Mumbai. Land developers have already entered the area and are building country houses to sell to the more affluent visitors from Mumbai. Several big corporations have now built factories in the area, the result of which has been that the agricultural base of the area economy has begun to undergo significant changes.

Up until 1986, the Korlai community was able to preserve itself due in large part to its relative isolation and self‑sufficiency. The villagers used to grow most of what they eat, barter for services (e.g. sewing, haircuts, shaves), and buy fish and spices from the inhabitants in the surrounding villages. Now, some of the villagers have already sold to entrepreneurs or corporations some or all of their farm land, acquired in the 1940s through the Farm Tenant Act and the basic items are becoming increasingly expensive due to the buying power of the educated work force brought in to manage the factories.

It is safe to say that the inhabitants of Korlai are feeling an ever-increasing pressure from the surrounding Maharastrian culture. Of the many consequences of this pressure, one is linguistic: the structure and the lexicon of Korlai have changed considerably throughout the last 80 years, and much more so recently because of the expanded educational opportunities and the introduction of Marathi as the language of the church in Korlai.

By comparing speech from different age groups and backgrounds of Korlai speakers, it is possible to measure the extent to which the above quote reflects the current state of affairs in Korlai. This was undertaken in the study in Clements (1996), which the reader may consult for details.

4. Phonology ⇫ ¶

Korlai has eight oral vowels and four nasal vowels. There are vestiges, as well, of /ɔ̃/ found in words such as [ɔ̃m] ‘man’ and in the diphthong [ɔ̃j], as in lɔ̃j ‘far’ (Clements 1996: 64–66). Korlai has vowel harmony, a good example of which is the pair kombarsa ‘speak’ vs. komborso ‘spoke’ and isparga ‘wash (dishes)’ vs. isporgo ‘washed (dish­es)’. Only six verbs display this type of vowel harmony (Clements 1996: 65). Korlai has 28 consonants and this inventory shows evidence of sub-/adstrate influence, most notably in the presence of retroflex and aspirated consonants.

In the area of phonological processes, three develop­ments have affected Korlai that are not found in the sister creoles in Daman and Diu. The first is the reduction of consonant clusters consisting of a nasal plus voiceless stop, such that Portuguese cantar, cinco, and comprar become kata, sĩk, and kopra in Korlai. The second development unique to Korlai is aspiration floating. The Portuguese trilled rhotic does not exist in Marathi. In the formation of Korlai, I assume that Marathi speakers, in forming Korlai, produced the trilled rhotic /r/ as a pre-breathy-voiced rhotic [r̤]. Thus, the rhotic phoneme in word-initial position, as in Portuguese /rej/ ‘king’, came to be realized as [r̤ej] in Korlai, using [r̤], the nearest sound they had to /r/. In word-internal position, /r/ was not tolerated in Korlai. Thus, Portu­guese barriga ‘belly’ and arros ‘rice’ may have passed through an unattested stage of *barhig and *arhos, respectively, before reaching their present form bharig and haro, whereby the breathy-voiced sound attached itself in the first case to the word-initial consonant, and in the second /h/ became the word-initial consonant. Through this process, we have the aspirated stops /bh, kh, th/ in Korlai words such as bharig ‘belly, stomach’, kharm ‘meat’, and thɛr ‘tender, unripe’.

The third development found in Korlai but not in the creoles of Daman or Diu is the aspiration of /f/ in word-initial position. This phenomenon has affected the most frequently used words. Thus, Portuguese fazer ‘do’, ficar ‘stay, become’, falar ‘speak’ and foi ‘s/he went’ became in Korlai fedze, fika, fala ‘say’ and ya foj ‘went’, which in turn have become hedze, hika, hala, and yahoj. In a further development, in the speech of the children, hika and hala are often realized as [ika] and [ala] (Clements 1996: 71–72).

With some notable exceptions, stress in a Korlai word remains on the same syllable as in the corresponding Portuguese word, although from Portuguese to Korlai the posttonic syllable disappears, a trait also shared with the creoles from Daman and Diu. Thus, Portuguese fa-ca ‘knife’, a-gua ‘water’, and bo-ti-ca ‘shop’ became Korlai fak, ag, and butïk respectively. Consequently, Korlai words may end in /p, b, t, d, k, g, j/ and /ʣ/. In disyllabic words, Korlai generally follows a syllable-final stress rule. With trisyllabic words, the situation is more complex: those having a closed penult syllable (e.g. kom-bár-sa ‘speak’) have penult stress, but trisyllabic words with an open penult syllable show variable stress (e.g. us-ká-se or us-ka-sé ‘forget’ e-kó-tra or e-ko-trá ‘find’).

Korlai allows as complex a syllable as CCVCC (e.g. frujt ‘fruit’) and also many other combinations of this structure: V (e-lo ‘they’), CV (da ‘give’), CCV (ko-pra ‘buy’) VC (as-ta ‘so much/many’, CVC (dal ‘hit’), CVCC (pern-de ‘learn’), CCVC (frak ‘weak, thin’).

Finally, Korlai is not written generally, although at least one play has been written in the language. Korlai inhabitants who correspond with this author write in Korlai using Roman script or Devanagari script, the script used to write Marathi and Hindi.

5. Noun phrase ⇫ ¶

Korlai NPs are not marked for person, number, or gender. Word order within the NP is relatively free. Given that many of the modifying elements occurring prenominally can appear in post­nominal position as well (the quantifier tud ‘all', adjectives, deictics, and possessives), if there are several modifying elements in a NP, the position of some may be shifted from pre- to postnominal position due to weight considerations in the NP. More than two prenomi­nal determiners are not found sequentially in Korlai. The general order of prenominal elements is shown in (1), where tud ‘all’ = QUANT₁, kad ‘each’ = QUANT₂ (seldom used in Korlai), mɔt ‘much/many’ = QUANT₃ and ot ‘other[s]’ = QUANT₄. Basic postnominal word order in Korlai is shown in (2) and ADJP order in (3). Korlai has a structure in comparative and superlative constructions, unlike those found in Marathi, Portuguese, or its sister creoles. These are shown in (4) and (5):

(2) NP  è N (AdjP) (PP)

(3) AdjP è (Deg) Adj

Moreover, Korlai possesses another construction for equality comparison, also not shared with lexifier or substrate languages, which involves the repetition of the adjective, as in (6).

The numerals up to 10 are of Portuguese origin. Starting at 11, the Marathi numeral system is generally used. Numerals as modifiers precede the word or phrase they modify. The numeral ũ ‘one’ also functions as indefinite article. The numerals 1–10 are listed in (7).

(7)       1     ũ,        2   doj,        3   trej,     4   kʋat,        5     sĩk,

6     sej,      7   sɛt,         8   ojt,       9   nob,         10   dej

Korlai’s pronominal system distinguishes case. The prefix p- (< Portuguese para ‘for’) is the object pronoun marker. The possessive pronouns are based on the subject pronouns, with the exception of mi, su, and sus. Formal vs. informal register is distinguished pronominally but only in the singular. Gender is not distinguished in the third person, such that el and pel correspond to ‘s/he’ and ‘him/her’, respectively.

Independently of context, both subject and object pronouns are obligatory. However, there is a strong tendency to leave them unexpressed when they are recoverable from context in the discourse situation. For example, in (8) once the topic/subject is introduced (e.g. ‘that monkey’), it is not referenced again in the three remaining clauses of the utterance; and once the object is introduced (‘hat and all’) it is not referenced again, although it could be as the object of buto ‘put.pst’.

Korlai demonstratives reflect a two-degree system: proximal ye ‘this’, and distal akə(l) or əkə(l) ‘that’.

6. Verb phrase ⇫ ¶

From Portuguese Korlai maintains the three formal verb classes (-a, -e, -i, as in kat-a ‘sing’, beb-e ‘drink’, and irg-i ‘get up’), and has added one more (-u, as in tep-u ‘heat up’), which is used to accommodate verbs borrowed from Marathi. Korlai has eight overt, preposed tense-aspect markers (tə (tɛ), ti, lə, tɛd, tid, ay, ater, (ja)), as well as three tense-aspect suffixes (-n, -d, -o (-w)). The preposed markers never combine with each other, but rather combine with the suffixes to express tense and aspect distinctions in Korlai. Zero-marking also plays a part in the Korlai verb system. Table 5 shows the different tenses and aspectual distinctions expressed in Korlai.

In Korlai, there is no difference between a future and a conditional hypothetical proposition, as shown in (9a). The counterfactual, however, has a separate marking, shown in (9b).

Within the verbal paradigm, a striking case of the tendency toward uniformity in paradigmatic structure is seen in the development in Korlai of the habitual (in both the present and past) where there was and is no distinct model for it in either of the contact languages, Portuguese and Marathi. The retention of verbal suffixes in Korlai may be due to the facts that both Portuguese and Korlai have suffixes that mark tense and aspectual distinctions and that it was and is, relatively speaking, a rather homogeneous, two-language contact situation.

Negation is done with the particle nu, which in all cases attaches to the TMA marker it precedes (cf. 10), except in the simple past (11) and the imperative (12).

Korlai shows predicate negation obligatorily cooccurring with negative indefinites, as exemplified in (13) and (14).

To express volition as well as necessity, Korlai uses the same verb, kere (from Portuguese querer ‘want’), modelled on the semantics of the corresponding verb in Marathi. The interpretation of the utterance containing kere depends in part on contextual factors, but the necessity interpretation is forced by adding mɛ, as shown in (16), taken from Clements (2007).

The postpositional construction with su + copula has an intentional or deontic interpretation, depending on the context. Thus, (17) can be interpreted as ‘plan to’ or ‘have to’.

To express the deontic ‘should’, the modal elements mashi and ad are used, as shown in (18) and (19).

Of note here is that in (18) the negative particle follows mashi but precedes all other auxiliaries and modals.

7. Simple sentences ⇫ ¶

In the last 80–100 years, the word order in the simple sentence has gone from SVO to SOV order. The graph in Figure 1, taken from Clements (2001: 79), plots this change and compares it to a baseline of Marathi word order, shown in the upper right-hand corner. Two brief comments are in order. First, OV order has become the default order in a relatively short period of time. Figure 1 shows this development in four stages: stage 1 represents Korlai word order from around 1910; stage two is from around 1940, stage 3 is from around 1965, and stage 4 from around 1990.

Second, relative to the verb, object order behaves differently than adjunct order. This is also shown in four stages in Figure 1. While OV order is now clearly the most frequently encountered order, the development of adjunct order relative to the verb lags behind.

With regard to argument marking, Korlai displays primary-secondary object marking that is sensitive to animacy. Specifically, direct object marking of monotransitive-clause full NPs is realized with preposed ku or ki and is sensitive to animacy in that ku/ki marks animate objects but not inanimate ones, which are left unmarked (see 20–21). Full NP indirect objects of ditransitive clauses are marked obligatorily with ku/ki and the direct objects in these clauses are not marked (see 22). Full NP benefactives in Korlai are also marked with ki/ku. That is, Korlai possesses no benefactive marker per se, i.e. no exclusive equivalent to English for, Portuguese para, Marathi saʈhi.

Although Korlai is not a null-subject language, it permits what Masica (1991: 396) has called “optional (though frequent) deletion in a discourse context . . . of constituents which could be present.” Though the exact details have not yet been worked out, the general rule governing an unexpressed argument in Korlai is that once an argument is introduced into the discourse, one may delete it as long as it remains recoverable from the context. For example, if from the context, the agent, theme, and recipient are easily recoverable, they need not be mentioned (cf. (8) above)..

Turning to the marking of adjuncts, except for instruments, locatives, and goals, Korlai always marks these overtly. Illustrative examples are given in (23).

To sum up, grammatical relation marking in Korlai follows a primary-secondary object marking pattern whereby the monotransitive direct object and ditransitive indirect object are marked identically, with ki or ku. Korlai marks adjuncts with prepositions or postpositions, but location, goal, and instrument adjuncts can be left unmarked, especially if the information is recoverable in the discourse situation.

8. Question and focus constructions ⇫ ¶

In content questions in Korlai, the question word immediately precedes the verb, as shown in (24).

In polar questions, Korlai marks the sentence overtly with a sentence-final ki, as in (25).

Focus constructions in Korlai involve doubling the item focused. As an example, to focus on the fact that mangos were beginning to grow on the backyard mango tree, a Korlai villager uttered (26).

9. Complex sentences ⇫ ¶

In Korlai, embedded clause complementizers can be clause-initial, clause-final, or both (27). Relative pronouns and conjunctions appear immediately before the verb (28). The reader is encouraged to consult Clements (1996) for examples of the full range of complex sentences.

Korlai also possesses other suffixes that mark temporal clauses (-ni and -ki). These attach to the verb and have a number of interpretations, given in (29).

10. Other features ⇫ ¶

10.1 The lexicon ⇫ ¶

The makeup of the Korlai lexicon is testimony to the resistance of the core vocabulary to replacement by borrowing (Clements 1996, 2007). In the 208-word basic vocabulary list, 88% (184/208) of the words are of Portu­guese origin, 11% (22/208) from Marathi, and 1% (2/208) of other or unknown origin. Thus, Korlai basic vocabulary is almost entirely Portuguese-based. In the noncore vocabulary list of 642 items, only 60% are derived from Portuguese. The speech of a representative sampling of Korlai speakers contains 70–80% Portuguese-based vocabulary.

As for the creation of new lexical items, Korlai possesses a number of word-formation processes, some highly produc­tive. The extension of the verb inventory is an important example: Besides the Portuguese-derived verb conjugation classes illustrated by kata ‘sing’, bebe ‘drink’, and irgi ‘get up’, Korlai also has a verb class in -u (e.g. tangu ‘hang’) to incorporate verbs from Marathi (see also below).

Korlai exhibits a type of reduplication rule, according to which a word is repeated but its first syllable is replaced with the syllable bi, with the meaning ‘et cetera’: buni bini ‘good, etc.’ and hedze bidze ‘do/make and so forth’. Reduplication proper also exists in Korlai, with several functions. The reduplication of numbers has a distributive function, as in ũ ũ (lit. one one) ‘one each’.  Reduplicating nouns and adjectives has a plural function: boy boy ‘oxen’ and gran gran pɔrt ‘big doors’.  Reduplicat­ed adjectives appearing without a noun have an emphatic function, as in fin fin ‘really small’. For one adjective, partial reduplication is also possible: tan-tani ‘a little bit’ from tani ‘a little’. Finally, the reduplication of adverbs and verbs has an emphatic function, as in lɔy lɔy ‘very far’ from lɔy ‘far’ and rhin rhin ‘(be) laughing a lot’ from rhin ‘(be) laughing’.

We find in Korlai the nominalization suffix -wala, taken from Marathi. When attached to nouns, it expresses agency, where people hail from, where people work, profession, etc.: mantegwala ‘one who sells lard’ (from manteg ‘lard’), keralawala ‘a person from the state of Kerala’, birlawala ‘one who works at the Birla factory’. 

The suffix -su seems to be the most productive suffix in derivational morphology, acting as a type of all-purpose suffix with a variety of functions. Its primary function is that of marking the genitive, as in pay su kadz [father GEN house] ‘father’s house’. It is used to create post­positions from prepositions: bash alb è alb su bash ‘beneath the tree’, dɛt kadz è kadz su dɛt ‘in the house’. Other functions include marking origin, distribu­tion, purpose, ‘worth’ (as in ‘three rupees’ worth’), instru­ment, partitive, and cause. Moreover, it also serves as a comple­mentizer, as well as an adjectivization and nominalization particle (cf. Clements 1996: 139–144).

Finally, Korlai still exhibits vestiges of the Portuguese suffix -eiro, -eira in -er, which derives tree names from the terms referring to the respective fruits: kok ‘cononut’ – koker ‘coconut tree’, mang ‘mango’ – manger ‘mango tree’.

10.2 The quotative particle ⇫ ¶

The Korlai quotative particle, (dəsiki, dəski, and dəsi, from Portuguese disse que ‘s/he said that’) seems to be a calque of the Marathi quotative particle mhənʤe. One finds its use common throughout the population, but perhaps most frequently used among younger speakers, who also employ the shortest variant (dəsi). An example of the particle is given in (30), from Clements (2007: 171–172). Note that the quotative particle appears after the quoted speech in each case.