Atlas of Pidgin and Creole Language Structures Online

1. Introduction ⇫ ¶

Papiá Kristang (‘Christian language’), also called Malacca (Creole) Portuguese, is spoken in Malacca, West Malaysia, by approximately 800 people (estimation 2010). It is also spoken by small numbers of people in Kuala Lumpur and Singapore. Although still being acquired by some children in Malacca, Papiá Kristang is an endangered language because of a strong generational shift towards English as the dominant language. Speakers of Papiá Kristang are also fluent in Malay, the official language of Malaysia.

2. Sociohistorical background ⇫ ¶

Malacca was conquered by the Portuguese in 1511. During the 16th and 17th centuries until its conquest by the Dutch in 1642, it was a key port in a trade and administration network of Portuguese establishments extending from Goa to the Moluccas and beyond to Macau. This network saw a constant traffic of Portuguese and their various camp followers, and traders of other origins. The setting for the development of Papiá Kristang involved the importation of both Portuguese foreigner talk and pidgin Portuguese models from India and beyond, a local genesis, and the presence of models of Creole Portuguese from India. Subsequently, further external influence on Papiá Kristang would have occurred through connections with Asian ports where Portuguese and Creole Portuguese communities existed. The lexicon of Papiá Kristang is principally Portuguese-derived, with a good number of Malay-based items and items from other sources, including Cantonese, Dutch, Hindi, Hokkien, Konkani and Malayalam. Its grammar reflects Portuguese and Malay influences mainly, yet also evidence of influence from Hokkien and languages of India.

The first known document of the language approximating to its contemporary form is an anonymous text written in the last quarter of the 19th century, located in the Schuchardt collection at Graz University (Baxter 2010a). The first general (yet, non-specialist) description of the language is that of Rêgo (1942). Knowlton (1964) and Hancock (1969, 1970, 1973, 1975) published sketches of the grammar and aspects of the lexicon. Subsequently, Baxter (1988) published a descriptive grammar and Baxter & de Silva (2004) produced a dictionary employing a Malay-based orthography. Some didactic materials were published by Marbeck (2004a, 2004b).

3. Sociolinguistic situation ⇫ ¶

Kristang, endangered for several decades, has now reached a significant crossroads (Baxter 2005). The core speech community of Papiá Kristang is the Portuguese Settlement in the Hilir suburb of Malacca. A self-report survey conducted by Lee (2004) on best/fluent speakers in 85 households in this community revealed that 96.4% of fluent speakers fell in the 31+ years age group, with 77.6% in the 40+ years age group. If we extrapolate conservatively from Lee’s population figures (» 750 in 2002) and best/fluent speaker report, the number of fluent speakers currently would number between half and one third of the overall population of the Portuguese Settlement, and they are mainly over 40 years of age. Elderly Papiá-Kristang-dominant mother-tongue speakers are few and the transmission to younger generations is very weak. The Papiá Kristang speech community is shifting very strongly towards English, in most age-groups, and in the family and friendship domains. Domain loss and contact-induced change is apparent in lexical shrinkage, lexical replacement and grammatical convergence, under the influence of English and Malay.

The Kristang community seems to be relatively oblivious of the danger faced by its language. Although Papiá Kristang speakers view their language positively, this is negated by an over-relaxed attitude towards protecting the language. The viability of language maintenance hinges on the community’s ability to recognize the impending danger and to establish a language revitalization program. Indeed, there are several factors on which a revitalization program could capitalize, if one were to be implemented. A further potential danger to the language now comes from attempts by European Portuguese influence-groups to “re-establish” the community’s Portuguese roots. Few attempts have been made to teach Papiá Kristang, even though the establishment of minority language schools is enshrined in the Malaysian Government education Act of 1961.

4. Phonology ⇫ ¶

Papiá Kristang has a system of eight oral vowels (see Table 1). However, phonemic contrasts involving close and open mid vowels, and the central close-mid vowel, are relatively peripheral to the system, occurring in a small set of words (Baxter 1988, 2010b). For the most part, the close/open distinction in the front and back mid vowels is neutralized, and a vowel falling between the close and open positions stands in phonemic contrast to /i/, /a/ and /u/. The difference between phonemic close and open mid vowels is not represented in spelling.

There are 18 consonants in Papiá Kristang, of which [v] occurs only in one word: novi ‘nine’ (see Table 2).

Papiá Kristang is a syllable-timed language. The two largest stress groups are words with tonic stress on the penultimate syllable, as in kaza ‘house’, and on the final syllable, as in kumí ‘eat’. Smaller stress groups are those words with a stressed antepenultimate syllable, such as kólera ‘cholera’, and some monosyllables such as kí ‘what?’. The nucleus of a syllable in Papiá Kristang may consist of a vowel or a word-initial nasal consonant. There are eight syllable types in Papiá Kristang: C_nasal m-bes ‘once’, V e-li, CV ja ‘perfective aspect’, CCV sti-ru ‘style’, CCCV stra-du ‘dais whereupon the bride and groom sit in state’, VC om-bru ‘shoulder’, CVC mal ‘bad’, and CCVC krol ‘hair-bun’. There are ten word-internal vowel sequences (/au/, /ai/, /eu/, /oi/, /io/, /ui/, /iu/, /ua/, /ia/, /ue/), all of which may constitute diphthongs, and three of which may also constitute hiatus: /ai/ as in rainya ‘queen’, /ua/ as in chua ‘rain’ and /ia/ as in dia ‘day’. In the foregoing examples in this chapter, the orthography proposed by Baxter (1988), and derived from Hancock (1969), is used, employing the following five vowel and 18 consonant characters: <a, e, i, o, u, p, b, t, d, k, g, m, n, ny, ng, r, f, v, s, z, ch, j, l>. Tonic stress is indicated on vowels and syllabic nasals by a written accent when the tonic does not fall on a penultimate syllable or to differentiate stressed and unstressed monosyllabic words. Different from Baxter (1988), unstressed centralized /ə/ is represented as <ě>; otherwise, unstressed /a/ is represented as <a>.

5. Noun phrase ⇫ ¶

The noun is invariable. Natural gender is usually distinguished by different words, as in mai ‘mother’ vs. pai ‘father’, or by femi ‘female’ and machu ‘male’ following the noun, as in baka machu ‘he-goat’ vs. baka femi ‘she-goat’. A restricted number of human referent nouns retain etymological gender (Baxter 2010b).

Number is expressed by numerals, as in dos kaza ‘two houses’, quantifiers as in tantu kaza ‘many houses’, or by reduplication kaza kaza ‘houses’.

There is no definite article. Bare nouns may occur with definite reference and prenominal demonstratives may function as definite determiners. The numeral ńgua ‘one’ functions as a prenominal indefinite article ńgua dia ‘upon a day’.

Generic noun phrases are expressed by zero-marked nouns, as in (1).

The demonstratives isi and ake(li) ‘that’ precede the noun and indicate a distance contrast. The respective pronominal demonstratives are isi and akeli.

Adnominal possessives precede the noun and consist of possessor (noun or pronoun) + genitive marker sa (or sě) e.g. barku sa lemi ‘the boat’s rudder’, yo sa kaza ‘my house’.

Adjectives follow the noun, e.g. kaza belu ‘old house’, and do not agree in natural gender except in a very small number of cases with human reference, e.g. fila kěriada ‘adopted child (female)’, filu kěriadu ‘adopted child (male)’ (Baxter 2010b: 138). Papiá Kristang has a special focusing construction whereby adjectives of quality may be placed before the indefinite article:

In comparative constructions of equality, the adjective is marked by iguál ‘equal’ and standard is marked by ku ‘with’:

In the comparative construction of inequality, the adjective is marked by más ‘more’ and the standard by di ‘of’:

The superlative comparison consists of the comparative of inequality plus a universal standard:

There is only one set of personal pronouns which occurs in all pronominal functions. The 3sg and 3pl pronouns only refer to animates, principally to humans.

6. Verb phrase ⇫ ¶

Papiá Kristang has two overt markers of aspect (ja ‘perfective’ and ta ‘imperfective’), an overt marker of future tense (lo(gu)), and a zero marker. All the TAM markers are preverbal. For the functional analysis of the markers, it is essential to distinguish three broad lexical aspect classes of verbs: Dynamic verbs (e.g. nadá ‘to swim’), type-1 statives (i.e. which do not occur with ta ‘imperfective’, e.g. gostá ‘to like’) and type-2 statives (i.e. which can occur with ta ‘imperfective’, e.g. lembrá ‘to think’). The functions of these markers are summarized in Table 4.

Example (7) shows the zero marker (Ø) with a dynamic verb of past or present habitual representation:

In examples (8) and (9), the Ø marker occurs with a dynamic verb with perfective and imperative representation, respectively:

The occurrence of the zero marker Ø with a stative verb, with past or present representation, is shown in example (10):

Example (11) shows the marker ja with a dynamic verb, with perfective aspect representation:

The marker ta occurs with dynamic verbs in past or present contexts, with either a progressive reading, as in (12), or an iterative reading, as in (13):

However, with type-2 stative verbs, ta expresses a state in progress:

With dynamic and type-1 or type-2 stative verbs, the marker lo(go) conveys a future or conditional reading, as in examples (15) and (16), respectively where it occurs with a dynamic verb:

However, lo(gu) may also express habitual aspect with dynamic verbs, as in (17):

The TAM markers do not normally co-occur. Combinations of markers are very rare and when they do occur they appear to involve an adverbial reading of the initial marker. Thus, when ja is seen to combine with the imperfective marker ta, ja has the adverbial reading ‘already’ of its Portuguese source:

In negated sentences, the system in Table 4 is completely replaced by negative markers: The negator ńgka occurs with verbs carrying perfective or imperfective aspect, the negator nadi occurs with verbs representing future tense, and the negator nang occurs with imperatives. In addition to these, the negator nenang ‘not yet’, may occur in the negation of an anticipated event or state either past of present.

There are five verbs or verbal expressions that refer to ontic, deontic, and epistemic modality, as shown in Table 5:

The verb toka ‘be obliged to’ expresses external, unavoidable obligation:

The verb miste/misti may express deontic as well as epistemic necessity, depending on context:

The verb podi ‘can’ expresses deontic possibility (cf. 21) in addition to occurring in the expression of epistemic possibility. However, ontic modality is most commonly expressed by sabé rather than by podi (as in 22). The use of podi appears to be inspired by English.

The expressions of epistemic possibility require the future marker lo(gu) in the dependent clause, as in example (23).

Volition is expressed by the verb keré ‘want’:

Copula: Papiá Kristang generally does not use a copula for adjectival, nominal, and prepositional phrase predicates:

Some predicate adjectives may even combine directly with TAM particles (Baxter 1988). Although, there is a rare, archaic use of the verb teng as a copula, as in (28), nominal and adjectival predicates normally do not have a copula. The verb teng generally functions as a locative-existential, as in (29):

Papiá Kristang is a serializing language (Baxter 1990, 2009). Its most frequent serial verbs are bai ‘go’ and beng ‘come’ in verb complexes expressing directional motion (see 30), and dá ‘give’ in verb complexes expressing facilitative causation (see 31):

7. Simple sentences ⇫ ¶

Papiá Kristang has SVO word order. While subjects and non-human direct objects are not morphologically marked for case, direct human objects are case-marked by the preposition ku (occasionally higher order definite animates may also be thus marked). The same preposition marks indirect objects. In transitive clauses, the case-marked indirect object may precede the direct object, especially when the former is pronominal. Noncore arguments are generally located either at the beginning or at the end of the sentence:

There are no expletive subject pronouns. Papiá Kristang has structures that correspond in function to passives in assigning prominence to a patient argument. In one structure, the patient of an active transitive verb is assigned to the subject while the actor is unstated:

However, another structure, which is comparable to a full passive, is only available to transitive verbs capable of expressing adversity. In other words, the patient is adversely affected by the action. In this structure, the verb is modified by the auxiliary toká ‘touch’ and the patient is assigned to the subject position while the agent (which may be omitted) is assigned to a peripheral argument expressing source:

A further variant of this adversity passive omits both the auxiliary verb and the preposition marking the demoted agent phrase. Interpretation in this case depends on real-world knowledge of what can be adversely affected by what:

Reflexive voice may be expressed in two ways. With body care verbs, the body part occurs as a bare noun:

However, ‘body’ marks the reflexive in ‘suicide, kill oneself’:

A second structure employs the term onsong ‘alone’ as the possessor in a genitive construction:

Reciprocal voice is expressed by a structure wherein the reduplicated numeral referring to the referents of the subject is interpreted as the object and patient of the transitive verb:

Causative voice is formed with the verb fazé ‘make’. The causee may either occur between the causative verb and the main verb, or may occur to the right of the main verb. In both instances, the cause is accusative case-marked; however, in the latter instance the sequence fazé + main verb functions essentially as a transitive unit:

8. Interrogative and focus constructions ⇫ ¶

In content questions, the interrogative phrase is moved to the beginning of the clause or to a position between the subject NP and the VP complex:

On the other hand, the interrogative phrase may remain where it would occur in unmarked declarative word order. In this case, the intonation contour focuses the questioned item:

Polar questions are marked either by tagging the phrase with seng ‘yes’ or ńgka ‘no’, with the optional addition in either instance of the question particle (q) ka or the confirmation particle (conf) ná, or by simply using interrogative intonation alone without tag or particle:

Some speakers accept the use of the question or confirmation particle alone, without the ‘yes’ or ‘no’ tag.

Focus constructions are of three main types. The particle la may be used to mark unmoved focused adjectives, nouns (as in 47) or verbs. The particle is placed after the focussed item.

In the case of nouns, contrastive focus may also be performed by a cleft sentence, which has the structure teng ‘BE’ + focused NP + relative clause, as in example (48). The relative clause may occur with or without the relative marker.

All arguments of the verb may be focused.

Predicative adjectives may be focused by left-dislocation, as in (49):

Contrastive focus of verbs requires juxtaposition of affirmative and negated sentences, as in (50), placing the negator at the beginning of the excluded proposition. The emphatic particle lá may be used optionally at the end of the first sentence.

Neither focused adjectives nor focused verbs leave a copy in the background clause.

9. Complex sentences ⇫ ¶

The coordinating conjunctions for phrases and clauses are ku ‘with, and’, kě ‘or’, and mas ‘but’.

Object clauses may occasionally be headed by ki; however, this is rare and is only found in traditional formal registers, as in a wedding speech. Parataxis is the most frequent means of expressing nominal subordination:

Adverbial clauses are headed by antis di ‘before’, kiora ‘when’, chuma ‘as’, kantu ‘if’, padi ‘in order to’, kauzu ki ‘because’, kifoi ‘because’, etc., yet may also be indicated by parataxis without a conjunction (Baxter 1988: 203–206).

Relative clauses are headed by ki ‘what, who’ (and very rarely by keng ‘who’), yet also commonly occur with a pronoun head or may occur headless:

10. Other features ⇫ ¶

Reduplication may occur with nouns, interrogative pronouns, adverbs, adjectives, numerals, and verbs. Broadly speaking, the effect is one of intensification. With nouns, reduplication can signal plurality, often involving partial reduplication: krenkrensa (= krensa + krensa) ‘children’, femfemi (= femi + femi) ‘women’. However, the reduplication of nouns with non-specific reference in object position may yield the meaning ‘all kinds of’ or ‘lots of’:

Without reduplication, the above sentence would simply express plural: ‘birds’.

Reduplicated dynamic or type-2 stative verbs convey prolonged repetition:

Adjectives and adverbs reduplicate to signify intensity: kěni~kěninu [ints~small] ‘quite small, very small’, belu belu ‘quite old’, sedu sedu ‘quite/very early’. On the other hand, interrogative pronouns reduplicate to signify indefiniteness: keng keng [who who] ‘whoever’, ki ki [what what] ‘whatever’. Finally, the reduplication of the numerals dos ‘two’ and tres ‘three’ yields the respective readings ‘in pairs’ and ‘in threes’.

Derivation is productive with verbs, freely producing deverbal adjectives via the etymological past participle morpheme -du: kemá ‘to burn’ > kemado ‘burnt’. Nouns formed via the agentive morphemes -dor, -(d)era, -eru are also frequent: dibinyador ‘soothsayer’‚ jugador/jugadera ‘gambler (m/f)’. Less common, however, are derivations by means of the action morpheme -mentu: pagamintu ‘payment’, kazamintu ‘wedding’.