Atlas of Pidgin and Creole Language Structures Online

1. Introduction ⇫ ¶

Cavite Chabacano is spoken in the city of Cavite, 35 kilometres southwest of Manila in the Philippines. It is one of the Spanish contact varieties that are spoken in the Philippines and known collectively as Chabacano. Cavite Chabacano has less than 4,000 speakers in Cavite City, which has a total of 105,000 inhabitants. There are also some speakers in the United States and other migrant worker destinations. The official languages of the Philippines are English and Filipino. Filipino is based on Tagalog, which is the main language in the Manila region where Cavite City is located. All speakers of Cavite Chabacano are bilingual in Chabacano and one or both of the above-mentioned official languages. Chabacano is mainly used at home among older speakers, and language shift is under way in Cavite City. English and Filipino are the languages used in the educational system, the media, and in local communication.

2. Sociohistorical background ⇫ ¶

Cavite City is located on the Cavite peninsula on the shores of Manila Bay. It guards the entrance to Manila, which was the administrative and ecclesiastical centre of the Spanish in the Philippines. In 1641 the Spanish constructed a fort and a naval yard on the Cavite peninsula, and this later became Cavite City (Lipski et al. 1996: 277).

According to Whinnom (1956: 11–12), Cavite Chabacano is the modern descendant of a contact variety that was brought to the Philippines from the Moluccas in the latter half of the 17th century. A group of local Christians were evacuated from the Moluccas to the Philippines and later resettled on the shores of Manila Bay where Cavite City and Ternate are today. The port of Cavite attracted workers from the surroundings because it was an important centre for the military and trade. However, in Cavite there may have existed a continuum of different contact varieties at the time of the formation of Cavite Chabacano (Lipski et al. 1996: 278). In the first centuries after the Spanish conquest, the Philippines had no direct contact with Spain. A galleon from Mexico visited the islands yearly, and the galleons were repaired and constructed in the Cavite shipyard. The inhabitants of the city were in daily contact with the Spanish in the port of Cavite and in commercial activities in Manila during the early colonial period and later in the 19th century when non-creole Spanish became a viable language in the Philippines. Consequently, modern Spanish has influenced Cavite Chabacano more extensively than the Ternate variety (Lipski 1986: 43–44, Whinnom 1956: 12; Sippola (2012), Ternate Chabacano, this volume).

At the beginning of the 19th century, a Spanish observer mentioned that the language of the inhabitants of Cavite City differed from the rest of the Tagalog-speaking province in that it was a very broken Spanish that had constructions of the local language (Martínez de Zúñiga 1893: 321). The first published texts in Cavite Chabacano are a collection of folktales by Santos y Gómez from 1924 (partly reproduced in Whinnom 1956).

Cavite Chabacano shares many grammatical structures and a great part of its vocabulary with Ternate Chabacano, which suggests a common origin and differentiates these two varieties from the southern varieties of Chabacano. All Chabacano varieties are mutually intelligible.

3. Sociolinguistic situation ⇫ ¶

Cavite Chabacano has a few thousand speakers, mostly people older than 60 years. The linguistic situation is characterized by high bilingualism in Chabacano, Tagalog, and English, and language shift is under way in the community. The use of Chabacano has been declining since World War II mainly because it is in competition with English and Filipino, the official languages of the Philippines (Lipski et al. 1996: 276). English and Filipino both enjoy a high social status in the current climate and are instrumental for social advancement. Filipino is based on Tagalog, which is the main language in the Manila region. Cavite Chabacano is employed for everyday communication in the home between some speakers, while Tagalog is generally used for local communication and entertainment. The language of business and higher education is mainly English (see also Gonzalez 1998: 489, 503).

There have been some attempts at conserving Chabacano in Cavite by means of language instruction and to revive interest in it among the younger generations. However, the official media of instruction are English and Filipino, and the teaching of Chabacano is only being carried out as a non-formal, extra-curricular activity. Work on educational materials is also under way in the city, but as for now, there is no standardized orthography for the language. Chabacano is promoted in connection to the local history and Hispanic cultural heritage. It has a high profile in local culture days, and a mass is held monthly in Chabacano (Romanillos 2006, Sippola 2010).

Currently there are no records of significant sociolectal variation for Cavite Chabacano. The default lect described in the APiCS database and in this article is almost entirely written Cavite Chabacano produced by language activists engaged in the promotion of the language.¹

4. Phonology ⇫ ¶

Cavite Chabacano has a system of five vowel phonemes (Table 1).  In unstressed syllables and in word final position, the mid vowels can be realized as close.

Cavite Chabacano consonants are presented in Table 2. The consonants /f/, /v/, /ʃ/, and /dʒ/ occur in loanwords from English.

Word stress is contrastive, as in casa [kása] ‘house’ and casá [kasá] ‘to marry’. Cavite Chabacano allows moderately complex syllable structures, with up to two consonants in the onset and nasals, liquids and obstruents in the coda, e.g. claro ‘clear’, trabaja ‘work’, sol ‘sun’, dolor ‘pain’, masipag ‘hardworking’.

The usual orthography is based on Spanish and uses <c, qu> for /k/, <j> for /h/, <y> for /j/, <ch> for  /tʃ/, and so on.

5. Noun phrase ⇫ ¶

Nouns are invariable in Cavite Chabacano. Some nouns contain a fossilized element of the Spanish feminine article la, as in lamita ‘a half’ (Escalante 2005: 79). Natural gender is distinguished by different words, as in nana ‘mother’ and tata ‘father’; by the final vowel -o or -a in a small class of nouns, as in maestro ‘male teacher’ and maestra ‘female teacher’ (Escalante 2005: 94); or by adding hombre ‘male’ or mujer ‘woman’ to a noun, as in pavo hombre ‘male turkey’, pavo mujer ‘female turkey’.

Number is expressed by the preposed particle manga (mga, mana), as in manga libro ‘books’ (Llamado 1972: 70). Some nouns have maintained the Spanish plural marker -s, as in manzanas ‘apple(s)’, but it is no longer productive. There is an indefinite article un preposed to the noun, as in un carta ‘a letter’. El is used as a definite article, as in el hombre ‘the man’. Generic noun phrases are expressed by a definite article and generally also with the plural marker.

The adnominal and pronominal demonstratives are este ‘this (near the speaker)’, ese ‘that (near the hearer)’, and aquel ‘that’ (away from speaker and hearer) (Escalante 2010: 48). The adnominal demonstratives precede the noun, as in ese libro ‘that book’ (Llamado 1972: 77).

In possessive constructions, adnominal possessives precede the noun, as in mi hermana ‘my sister’, or they are expressed by adpositional marking following the possessum, as in el oficina di ele ‘his office’. In possessor noun phrases, the possessor is marked by adpositional marking, as in el nana di Gregoria ‘the mother of Gregoria’.

The set of singular subject pronouns is basically the same in all Chabacano varieties, but the plural forms niso(s) [1pl], buso(s) [2pl.intimate], and ilo(s) [3pl] differ. In Cavite Chabacano the second person singular has three forms contrasting in politeness, bo expressing intimate ‘you’, tu familiar ‘you’, and uste respectful ‘you’. In pronoun conjunction two different constructions can be used: Either with plural or singular pronoun, e.g niso di name, as in (1), or yo y name, which is considered more formal style.

Indefinite pronouns algo ‘something’, alguno ‘somebody’ occur occasionally, but it is more common to use existential constructions to express indefinite terms, as in (2).

Negative indefinites ninguno ‘no one’ and nada ‘nothing’ occur with predicate negation, as in (3). Negative existential constructions can be used as well to express indefinite terms, as in (4).

The numerals are of Spanish origin and they precede the noun, as in dos libro ‘two books’. The ordinal numerals can be formed using the Tagalog origin prefix ika, as in ika-dos ‘second’, or following the Spanish numerals as in primero ‘first’ and segundo ‘second’.

Adjectives are generally invariant and can occur preceding or following the noun as in (5) and (6). A limited number of adjectives have Spanish feminine forms, e.g. guapa mujer ‘beautiful woman’.

The comparison of the adjective is made with mas, as in (7). The Tagalog-origin prefix pinaka- and the Spanish-origin construction el mas alternate in the superlative construction, as in pinakaguapa ‘most beautiful’ and el mas guapa de todo ‘most beautiful of all’ (Escalante 2005: viii). The reduplication of adjectives has an intensifying function.

6. Verb phrase ⇫ ¶

Cavite Chabacano has three overt aspect markers (ta, di, and ya). No combinations of the markers are possible. Ya marks the perfective aspect, ta marks the imperfective aspect, and di marks the contemplated aspect used to express irrealis and future meanings. There are two main forms of the verb, one derived from the Spanish infinitive, such as come ‘eat’ from comer, which combines with the preverbal markers, and the other from an inflected Spanish form for a limited group of verbs, including the modal verbs: debe ‘must’, quiere ‘want’, puede ‘can’, sabe ‘know’, tiene ‘have’, which generally occur without the preverbal markers (Ogiwara 2002: 68). Reduplication of verbs has iterative and progressive functions.

The following examples illustrate the use of the imperfective aspect marker, which is used for progressive and habitual meanings with present and past reference.

The perfective aspect marker is ya:

The contemplated aspect marker di has future, intentional, and irrealis meanings.

The imperative is expressed by the unmarked verb. The use of the personal pronoun is not obligatory, but very common.

There is no copula for the expression of attribution and identity. These are expressed by juxtaposition in verbless clauses.

Predicative locative phrases are formed with the copula ta, which combines with the locative adverbs, e.g. taqui < ta aqui [COP here] ‘is here’, talli < ta alli [COP there] ‘is there’, talla < ta alla [COP over.there] ‘is over there’.

The existentials are expressed with the verb tiene, which also expresses possession.

The verbal negation particle no precedes all verbal markers and pulls subject pronouns into preverbal position, as in (21). For negative existentials the negative copula nuay (noay, no hay) is used, as in (22).

7. Simple sentences ⇫ ¶

Cavite Chabacano word order in declarative clauses is VSO:

The indefinite object can also occur before the subject with the order VOS. 

Animate objects are marked by con, as in (25), but occasionally some inanimate definite objects also receive object marking.

The objects in ditransitive clauses generally occur in the order O_dir O_indir:

An expletive subject does not exist:

There is no morphological passive voice, but the agent can be omitted:

Reflexive voice is expressed in several ways – with an ordinary pronoun or with an ordinary pronoun that can be used together with mismo ‘self’ or cuerpo ‘body’. Mismo ‘self’ is also used as an intensifier.

Reciprocals are formed with the affixes mang-verb-han or with the use of uno con otro ‘one with/obj other’.

Causative voice is formed with the verb ase ‘to make’, and it is used in various verbal chains, as in hace baja [make go.down] ‘to lower’ or hace bira [make turn] ‘to cause to turn’ (Escalante 2005: 61, Llamado 1972: 81). The verb dale ‘to give’ is often used in verbal chains to express recipient, as in dale presta [give borrow] ‘to lend’, dale cumi [give eat] ‘to feed’ (cf. Nolasco 2005: 426):

Cavite Chabacano makes use of several discourse particles, such as ya ‘already’, pa ‘yet’, raw/daw ‘quotative’, rin/din ‘too’, numa/lang ‘only’, ba ‘question marker’; these generally occur in second position.

8. Interrogative and focus constructions ⇫ ¶

In content questions the interrogative word is fronted, and the question particle ba can be used in second position:

Question words are como ‘why’, cosa ‘what’, cuando ‘when’, cuanto ‘how much’, cual ‘which’, donde ‘where’, quilaya ‘how’, and quien ‘who’.

Polar questions are also marked by the question particle ba or only by rising intonation:

In focus constructions the focused element is fronted, and it can be marked by the relativizer que.

9. Complex sentences ⇫ ¶

The coordination conjunctions are y ‘and’, pero ‘but’, o ‘or’, ni ‘neither’.

     Object clauses with verbs of speaking and knowing show marking by the complementizer que. Si introduces indirect interrogatives.

     Adverbial clauses are introduced by the subordinators antes ‘before’, bago ‘before’, cuando ‘when’, pag ‘when’, and others.  Mas que ‘although’ is a common concessive conjunction.

     Relative clauses follow the head noun and are headed by the relativizer (el) que or the relative pronoun quien, with human reference used with prepositions.