Cape Verde Creole

The vernaculars of São Vicente (Cape Verde) and Brazil: demographics and degrees of
restructuring
Author(s): John Holm and Dominika Swolkien
Source: Revista Internacional de Lingüística Iberoamericana, Vol. 4, No. 1 (7), Lenguas
criollas de base lexical española y portuguesa (2006), pp. 71-86
Published by: Iberoamericana Editorial Vervuert
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/41678012
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John Holm/Dominika Swolkien*
Z> The vernaculars of São Vicente (Cape Verde)

and Brazil: demographics and degrees
of restructuring1
1. Brazilian Vernacular Portuguese (BVP):

the sociolinguistic setting of its development
Brazil was unlike the first places where Portuguese-based creóles became estab-
lished. Whereas the Cape Verde Islands and São Tomé had no inhabitants when the Por-
tuguese arrived, much of coastal Brazil was already inhabited by Amerindians speaking
closely related varieties of Tupl. The Portuguese learned a koineized version of Tupi
which came to be called the Língua Geral, and during the first two centuries of coloniza-
tion this appears to have been the principal language of three-fourths of Brazil's popula-
tion (Sampaio 1928: 3), albeit with growing bilingualism in Portuguese. Thus it is not
clear what language(s) African slaves encountered on arriving in Brazil during this early
period. They may well have had to learn Língua Geral more often than Portuguese, as
suggested by Reinecke (1937: 549), so that during the linguistically crucial first genera-
tions of the colony there was little opportunity for a fully restructured variety of Por-
tuguese to become established among African slaves unless they had brought such a lan-
guage with them from Africa.
Brazil also differed from most of the areas where creole languages developed in that
Africans or their descendants made up only a quarter of the population from 1 600 to
1650; it was not until the 1770s that they constituted over 50% of the population (Mar-
ques 1976: 359, 435), reaching 65% in 1818 (Reinecke 1937: 556). Yet whites, the group
* John Holm directs a graduate program in linguistics at the University of Coimbra, Portugal. He is the
author of Pidgins and Creoles (1988-89, two volumes), Introduction to Pidgins and Creoles (2000), and
Languages in Contact (2004), all published by Cambridge Univ. Press. He was a co-founder of the vo
SPCL and ACBLPE. 00
Dominika Swolkien received her M.A. from the University of Cracow, Poland. After further study
Portugal, she got a grant from the Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia in Lisbon to do her Ph.D.
sertation on the variety of Cape Verdean Creole spoken on the island of São Vicente with John Hol
the University of Coimbra.
1 We would like to thank Liliana Inverno, Pedro Perini, an anonymous reviewer and especially An
Bartens for their comments on this paper. All omissions and errors are, however, our own> responsib
Swolkien's research is supported by the Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia , Lisbon, grant num
SFRH/BD/8 129/2002. 1
72 John Holm/Dominika Swolkien
most likely to speak unrestructur

population before the second hal
and the linguistic dice had alread
Brazil during this crucial period,
native speakers associated with f
TABLE 1
Estimated population of Brazil, 1538 to 1890
1538-1600 1601-1700 1701-1800 1801-1850 1851-1890
African-born 20% 30% 20% 12% 2%

Creole Africans - 20 21 19 13
Integrated Amerindians 50 10 8 4 2
Mixed - 10 19 34 42
European-born 30 25 22 14 17
Creole Whites - 5 10 17 24
(Based on Mussa 1991 : 163, cited in
Yet national population figur

particular speech communities
sent in the sugar-growing are
tion required plantations wi
(1963: 79), in 1597 the 10,000
Moreover, these Africans cons
tion of Brazil at this linguistic
sands), making it more susc
brought to Brazil from Africa
Portuguese had been the langu
gua Geral can be deduced fr
planters and their slaves cam
where a creole language had
island in 1485. In fact, there a
Tomé Creole Portuguese and
Although Língua Geral clea
Indians and mestiços worked
Geral to Portuguese in the int
first half of the 18th century
mining region (Carvalho 1977:
Portugal, but also of African
growing areas where such sla
Portuguese" (Carvalho 1977: 2
was a general movement of po
a key role in spreading a new
throughout the settled parts
The vernaculars of São Vicente (Cape Verde) 73
gradually came to predominate, it is likely that succes

decreasing competence in Língua Geral and increasing
The most extreme case of non-standard rural usage th
restructured Portuguese spoken in the village of Helvéc
variously as a creole (Silveira Ferreira 1985: 22) or a
Although the sociolinguistic history of Helvécia Portug
varieties in a number of respects (Holm 2004: 59-60)
dence that fully creolized Portuguese was ever widely
strate that Portuguese in Helvécia did undergo restructu
2. São Vicente Creole (SVC): the sociolinguistic setti
There is an obvious difficulty in comparing the socioling

that emerged on the small Cape Verdean island of São Vi
a huge territory with complex demographics that were rela
While in Brazil the restructuring of Portuguese took p
guage influence, in São Vicente the situation seems to
1795, a stable 300-year-old creole from Sotavento was b
mostly came from Fogo) to an island that had remaine
in 1462. This creole then underwent some degree of re
due to contact with settlers from Portugal, the Azores
other specific sociolinguistic factors that affected this
some 200 people, which grew steadily (in spite of some v
Swolkien 2004).
The inhabitants were mostly small tenant farmers, sh
to struggle to survive. Though slavery was abolished
never been an important factor in the island's demogra
sus, by which time São Vicente's total population had g
only 32 slaves on the island with 14 different owne
slaves spoke African languages; the overwhelming m
Cape Verdean islands.
As in the case of Brazil, however, there was a loca
speaking newcomers to learn, in this case Creole, and th
was not learned by this minority who depended on th
local conditions. Racial mixing, the presence of met
exiles, and the phenomenon of the Portuguese abandon
by many 19th century observers, created conditions wh
tuguese into the local creole, on all linguistics levels, w
With the foundation of Mindelo as a vila ('small tow
ment of British coaling companies on the island, São V
into one of the busiest and most important Atlantic por
maritime steam transport caused rapid demographic exp
This meant more foreigners, especially British (English
in some specific vocabulary related to sports and port
Portuguese speakers must have decreased during this p
gration of Cape Verdeans from o

migration obscures the linguistic
switched to an urban variety of
gious, and in so doing influenced
to islands who come to São Vicen
cal of this island are rare indeed
On the other hand, the emergen
with a rich white and light-sk
mobility by the end of the 19th
guage in a classical diglossie situa
other islands, was available only
speakers (mostly civil servants of
tuguese. As in the case of Brazil,
tuguese colonial empire did not h
majority of population of São Vi
been an important factor in upw
1940, 66.9% of the top professio
Nowadays, the prestige of creo
Vicente is indeed parallel to the
used exclusively in writing, in
common) and in very formal situ
daily life.
Since independence in 1975, primary education has been available to every child,4
and though the dropout rate in schools is high due, at least in part, to education being
exclusively in Portuguese, there is a growing number of students in São Vicente who
complete secondary and higher education. Therefore, there is the possibility of decre-
olization affecting the speech of this group.
Still, this tendency does not satisfactorily explain the presence of acrolectal features
among elderly monolingual creole speakers from fishing villages. Evidence suggests
these features might have persisted in this variety since the late 18th century (for a more
detailed discussion of the social history of São Vicente, cfr. Swolkien 2004).
3. The BVP noun phrase
While Standard Brazilian Portuguese (SBP) requires that all determiners, nouns, and
adjectives in a noun phrase be marked for number, BVP often indicates plurality by
adding -s to only the first element (usually a determiner), leaving the plural -s inflection
optional on following nouns and adjectives:
(1) BVP: um dos mais velho _ orixás 'one of the most ancient deities' (Holm 1987: 417)
2 In 1 879, the Portuguese constituted only 3% of São Vicente's population.

3 Our translation.
4 The illiteracy rate in São Vicente (2002) for the population aged between 1 5 and 49 was 1 9%.
The vernaculars of São Vicente (Cape Verde) 7 5
It is clear that the variable rule for -s is both pho

phonological rule it operates on single morphemes, e.g.
somos), but as Guy (1989) points out, a variable morpho
ing is required to account for BVP phrases such as
because if they had resulted from simple phonological de
be as veze, os espanhol, as naçõe due to certain irregular
SBP plurals. Viewed historically, the variable markin
makes sense only if the variety evolved from an uninf
rowing inflections from SBP at a stage when the latter
within noun phrases and between subjects and verbs
BVP. The syntactic rules of the more frequent inflectio
vowels to indicate the third person plural of verbs) alte
turn led to BVP phonological rules for the same alterna
to single morphemes.
As for gender marking, it is not a part of the grammar o
of their Niger-Congo substrate languages (Holm 1988
both SBP and BVP. However, there is evidence that H
between nouns (or pronouns) and adjectives:
(2) HP: 'Eia e 'mu~itu sa ridu 'she is very meddlesome.'

SBP: ela è muito saida
Possession is normally indicated by the preposition de in BVP, as in standard Por-

tuguese but it can be omitted in some rural varieties of BVP:
(3) BVP: kaza
There is a parallel possessive construction in São To

the preposition di can also be omitted (I vens Ferraz
Regarding personal pronouns, one of the most strik
forms that can be used only for emphatic subjects in
objects in BVP, replacing the clitics of the standard:
(4) BVP: Ela chamou eu 'she called me' (Azevedo 198

SBP: Ela chamou-me
In many Atlantic Creoles there is no distinctive case marking for subject and ob
pronouns. Moreover, unlike Romance languages, these creóles always preserve
basic SVO word order with object pronouns, in which direct and indirect object p
nouns usually occur before the verb. BVP usually preserves SVO word order as we
Reflexive pronouns like se 'himself/herself' omitted in (5a) do not commonly o
in BVP; instead, the following constructions occur:
(5) BVP a. João cortou
b. João cortou ele com faca

c. João cortou ele mesmo com faca (Mello
(5a) structure is found throughou

languages, in which any transitive
passive one if its subject is a plaus
(6) São Tomé CP: E pie 'de 'he got

Cfr. EP: Ele perdeu-se
4. The SVC noun phrase
Number in SVC is expressed via several pluralization strategies. One is marking plu-
rality with a morpheme -s. As in BVP (Holm 2004: 101), this plural morpheme tends to
appear only on the first item in an NP. This first element can be any of those in (7) to (12):
(7) plural indefinite article uns uns bluzona_ 'some laige blouses' (FC/AMD)
(8) plural definite article kes kes mnin_ 'the children' (LL/AR)
(9) plural demonstrative kes kes koza prá lá 'these things up there' (EL)
(10) plural demonstrative es es mergulhador _ 'these scuba-divers' (OA)
(11) plural possessive determiner nhasfidj_ 'my children' (FP/2)
(12) quantifier otsfilha_ 'other daughters' (AR)
As noted by Baptista (2002: 38), in the Sotavento varieties, in rare

the determiner and the noun may carry the plural marker but only w
[+human] as in (13) in SVC. Example (14) shows, however, that in SVC
al marking is possible (albeit rare) with [-animate] nouns.
(13) Enton, uví, tinha kes psoas k tinha kes livr_ (AMD)
then listen had this-PL person-PL comp had these book
'Then, listen, there were these people who had these books. . . '
(14) Dpos ďuns tenps... (JAL)

after of+some-PL Time-PL
'After some time. . . '
As to morphological plural marking on noun stems only, in the basilectal speech

the Rabeladu community of Santiago, plural marking is only found on [+human] bar
nouns (Baptista 2002: 39). In SVC it is possible not only on bare nouns that are [+huma
but also those that are [- human] and [+animate], even among basilectal speakers (15)
(15) Galinha porks, e kes lá k no táva kriá. (AR)

hen pig-PL top these there comp we tma raise
'Hens, pigs, these were the animals we used to raise'
According to Baptista, Sotavento varieties other than Rabeladu speech m

inanimate nouns for plural when they are definite/specific or framed in the c
episodic tense, i.e. tense relevant for the speaker (2002: 40). This seems to be
SVC as well.
(16) Nàti, ka tinha mais konpanhia, nãu send konpanhias ďoliu. (JAL)
NEG NEG had more company neg be company-PL of+oil
'There were no other companies here, only the oil ones.'
Though gender agreement is not a part of the grammar of the Atlantic creóles (Holm
1988-89: 195), natural gender marking does occur on nouns in SVC and in other CVC
varieties ( cfr. Baptista 2002: 42-43, 65). This process is not categorical as it is in BVP,
but there are some clear tendencies. Gender is most often marked for categories such as:
(17) kinship terms: tiu /tia 'uncle/aunť

(18) titles: senhor! senhora 'Mr. /Mrs.'
(19) professions: kuznher/kuznheira 'cook M/cook F'
Another way of marking gender in SVC is not via morphemes inherited or borrowed
from Portuguese but with the free morphemes fema 'female' and motx 'male' (20).
(20) Fidj fema/ fidj motx

child female / child male
'daughter/ son'
This feature is, however, restricted and felt to be basile

marking, such as filha fema 'daughter female' is common.
It could be claimed that in (17-19) we are not dealing wit
cal process of gender marking but rather Portuguese lexica
cating the natural sex of an entity without being morpho
However, the agreement of adjectives with the noun they m
agreement in SVC is not a completely random process. As
tista 2002: 42), animacy and the [+human] feature are the
the presence/absence of morphologically marked gender an
is a strong tendency for the lack of any gender agreement
if the noun is [-human] (21).
(21) tud akel aventura prigoz... (MF/2)

All that adventure dangerous
'all that dangerous adventure. . . '
But as in Sotavento varieties (Baptista 2002: 66), adjectives in SVC show a tenden-
cy to agree in gender with [+human] nouns.
(22) ainda ten mnininhas nova k ten fidj tanbén. (LL/AR)

Still have young girls young comp have child also
'...but there are still young girls who have children.'
Examples of adjective gender agreement with [-animate] nouns (23) are rare but do
occur in SVC5. The question to be answered is whether these cases of grammatical and
5 Almada attests for SVC a case of adjective agreement with a [- animate] noun un kaza feia 'an ugly
house' (196 1:90).
78 John Holm/Dominika Swolkicn
not natural gender marking are lin

It should be noted, however, that
grammars and texts even of the S
(23) Eh, ker dzer, karpintajen de madera torta... (AMD)

want say carpentry of wood curved
'Eh, that is, curved wood carpentry. . . '
Possession in the SVC noun phrase is unlike other Portuguese-based creóles, t

variety of Santiago or even some rural varieties of BVP {cfr. Holm 2004: 104): the omi
sion of the preposition de in possessive constructions in SVC would produce ungram-
matical utterances as in (24b):
(24) a. Nton N tá trabaiá na káza d'un senhora... (MJD)

then I tma work in house of+one lady
'Then, I worked in a house of a lady. . . '
*(24) b. Nton N tá trabaiá na kaza
The obligatory presence of the prepositi

tures that clearly distinguish SVC from S
as na boka noti 'at dusk', possible in the
ungrammatical in SVC.
Personal pronouns in SVC differ in a
Sotavento varieties, though most of these
ical variation. Like most Atlantic creóle
preserves SVO order of its object pronouns
(25) N sabê -s tud! (PA)

I know them all
'I know them all!'
The reflexive pronouns found in EP are not a part of the grammar of SVC or Sotaven-
to varieties {cfr. Baptista 2002: 55-57). Almada (1961: 154) attests for São Vicente vari-
ety constructions such as de matá kabesa and de matq de mëz for 'he killed himself' and
ej matá kõnpanér for 'they killed each other'.
5. The BVP verb phrase
BVP has much fewer verbal inflections to indicate person than does European Por-
tuguese. In some cases, BVP auxiliary verbs can take on the semantic or even syntactic
uses of preverbal markers in fully creolized Portuguese, giving rise to constructions
quite unlike those in the standard. Further non-Portuguese constructions include exotica
like single post-verbal negation and non-verbal predicates without copulas.
Regarding BVP verbal morphology, there is a drastic reduction of inflection in BVP
to indicate person, which cannot be due solely to a phonological tendency towards the
loss of final -s. Without the intimate second person for

tions for person in the present tense in European Portu
dard Brazilian Portuguese (confining the discussion to
there are parallel contrasts in the other two). However,
person plural ending can reduce this to a three-way co
only in the first person singular and plural. But there
account for the loss of the first person plural ending
1934: 115-116), an unambiguous indication of restructu
(26) SBP BVP

eu parto parto 'I leave'
você/ele parte parte 'you leave, he leaves'
nós partimos parte 'we leave'
vocês/eles partem parte 'you/they leave'
Because of the reduced verbal paradigm, BVP makes greater use of subject pron
than EP, which is a Pro-drop language that uses them for emphasis only. In BVP,
pronouns are required for all persons except the first singular, since it maintains
distinctive verbal inflection (Mello 1997).
The two-way inflectional contrast in BVP's present tense can also be found in
preterit. In the imperfect tense, a single form (partia) can be used for all persons,
ing the three-way contrast in SBP. In BVP other inflected tense forms are rarely u
the subjunctive mood tends to be replaced by the indicative (Azevedo 1989: 866-8
The tense system of Helvécia Portuguese appears to have been quite divergent
that of even rural varieties of BVP. For example, one informant in Silveira F
(1985) used é (a SBP present-tense form for 'is') with what could only be past-tim
erence.
As to auxiliaries and preverbal markers, the Portuguese-based creóle

markers to signal categories of tense and aspect; there are some partially
in rural varieties of BVP such as foi 'past' (literally 'was') and vivia 'hab
erally 'lived'):
(27) BVP: Eli foi dis... 'He past said....' (McKinney 1982: 6)
(28) BVP: Eli vivia trabayava 'He habitual-past worked' (McKinney 1982: 7)
Negation of the BVP verb can be handled three ways (Schwegler 1996), as in the fol-
lowing sentences, each of which means 'He doesn't know':
(29) 1. Before the VP: BVP: Ele não sabe.

2. Before and after the VP: Ele não sabe não.
3. After the VP: Ele sabe não.
Older Portuguese had only pattern 1, while modern E

emphasis only. Schwegler concludes that in BVP there i
pattern 3. One possible external factor may have been c
tern 2 (e.g., São Tomense) or 3 (e.g., Principense). Discon
80 John Holm/Dominika Swolkicn
found in some African languages,

times be omitted (Boretzky 1983:
Non-verbal predicates consistin
phrases, all without copulas, exist
(30) BVP: Eu
Ela
I eli
These constructions are parallel to "zero

lish, the Atlantic creóles and their subst
6. The SVC verb phrase
As in Sotavento varieties (Baptista 200

from the Portuguese infinitive; they are
morphological variation for person or num
tive verbs that show inflection-like variat
guishes SVC from the Sotavento varieties
SVC differs from Sotavento varieties in
range of combining patterns, their phonet
tionality put an exhaustive analysis of SV
Table 2 provides an overview:
TABLE 2
TMA markers and their combinations in SVC
Unmarked Progressive Habitual Perfective Irrealis

Anterior Anterior Anterior Anterior Anterior
0 ti ta tá te ~ tá ta ta~te tá já? ta ~ te tá
ti te táva ta ~ táva te táva á? táva
Unlike the preverbal marker ta in Sotavento

future, conditional and habitual/iterative pre
77-80), ta [te] in SVC cannot refer to [+anterio
the verbal markers tá [ta] and táva.
Sotavento (Santiago) - habitual past
(31) Nu ta konbersa tudu dia, Brankinha ta k

we asp talk every day Brankinha asp tell-
'We talked every day, Brankinha would tell m
The vernaculars of São Vicente (Cape Verde) 8 1
São Vicente -habitual past
(32) Txeu jent ta dzê k es tá bská pex na Baia... (LL/EL)

many people hab.prs say comp they hab.pst look for fish in B
'Many people say they used to go to Baia to find fish. . . '
Furthermore, in the Sotavento varieties the perfective marker dja f

the TMA markers, and there is also an adverbial ja meaning now ; soo
(Baptista 2002: 84-86). Additional data is needed to reach any conclus
status of já in SVC (which also has two forms, i.e.y'á and á), especiall
issue as to whether it is a TMA marker at all.6
(33) Já oj ka ta dá txuva na Kap Verd. (JSM)

now today neg tma give rain in Cape Verde
'But today there is no rain in Cape Verde.'
(34) Bosê á tá kazód? (LL/OA)

you already cop married
'Were you already married?'
One of the most interesting aspects of this variety is the existence of inflected-like
verb forms and Portuguese-like tense structures. Pereira (2000) in her pioneering arti-
cle was the first to cast some light on the issue of inflected-like verb forms in SVC.
She notes two coexisting systems in SVC: new constructions and forms calqued from
Portuguese such as tinha kmide , tivese kmide, tiver kmide , pudia and pudese , which
are overlapping with the older system in which TMA markers ( tava kme , tava pode )
are used.
It is certainly correct to assume that forms such as tives kmide or tiver kmide are very
acrolectal and might be considered an indication of an ongoing decreolization. As our
corpus is based mostly on elderly, basilectal informants, it is natural that we have not
encountered any of these forms.
However, the structures such as ten + past participle (35) and tinha + past participle
(36 and 37) where ten and tinha behave like Portuguese auxiliary verbs forming perfect
tenses are present along the whole continuum.
(35) Txeu ten oiód d 'véra. (AMD)

many aux see+PTCP truly
'Many (people) have really seen (aliens).'
Cfr. Ptg.: 'têm visto'
According to Pereira (2000: 34) the structure tinha + past participle is one of the
new, calqued forms that constitute an alternative for the 'basic' SVC verbal system, so
that tinha jdód in (36) replaces táva jdá.
6 Lopes da Silva (1984 [1957]: 14) and Almada ( 1961 : 129) attest it as a time adverb only, while Veiga
(1995: 197) considers dja a perfective marker in the Santiago variety but not já in São Vicente.
(36) El divinhá log kma algén tinha jdód el fují. (MF2)

he deduce at once comp somebody aux helped her runaway
'He deduced at once that somebody had helped her to run away.'
Cfr. Ptg.: 'tinha ajudado'
(37) El bai, el ka otxá ningén, kes jent já tinha rrankód. (FP/2)

he went he neg find anybody these people already aux gone away
'He went (there), he didn't find anybody - these people had already gone away.'
What the above examples show is that it is not uncommon in SVC7 to use P
tuguese-like structures to fulfill a different function from that of the marker táva
past-perfect, especially when used together with the adverb já emphasizing the comp
ed nature of the action.
Another puzzling fact is that we have not found instances of what are, according
Pereira, old forms such as tava pode or tava sabe . Apparently, Portuguese past form
stative verbs such as sabia (38), kris (39) and tiv (40) for láva sabê , táva krê and táva
are used instead, even by elderly basilectal speakers in fishing villages.
(38) Ken k sabia rrazá tá rrazá-s. (EL)

who comp knew To spell tma spell-them
'Those who knew the spell would banish them (monsters).'
(39) Es tá dá jent o brink , o anel , o kurdãu k no kris (GL)

they tma give people or earring or ring or chain comp we want
'They would give us an earring, or a ring or a collar that we wanted'
(40) No tiv nov fidj , no ten oit. (SS)

we had nine child We have eight
'We had nine children, now we have eight.'
How should one interpret these facts? Does this mean that these older forms with
preverbal markers have now disappeared due to decreolization? Under the scenario, one
would have to assume that decreolization started in São Vicente before the 1930's when
the older informants were born. However, as we noted, the socio-linguistic conditions
likely to lead to decreolization hardly existed before the independence in 1975.
It should be stressed, though, that the behavior of the forms summarized in Table 3
vis-à-vis verb stems preceded by TMA markers and the distinction made between perfect
and imperfect is certainly not always clear or consistent. Informants agreed that in (41)
the form pudia would be acceptable.
(41) El ka dá-l dnher, k el ka pud... (FP/2)

he neg give-him money comp he neg could
'He didn't give him the money because he couldn't. . . '
7 These structures are in no way exclusive to younger (37) or more acrolectal (36) speakers; they are pre-
sent also in the speech of the elderly monolingual creole informants (35).
It is possible that these inflected-like forms are t

one hand, they could be fossilized forms, remnant
tuguese-speaking settlers of São Vicente. On the ot
indeed been a shift towards more superstratal grammar
these could also have resulted from decreolization.
various age, sex and social groups are needed befor
systems is older or more 'basic' to SVC and whet
change in the SVC verb phrase.
TABLE 3
Most common inflected-like verbs forms in SVC
GLOSS PRESENT PAST (IMPERFECT) PAST (PERFECT) CONDITIONAL

'to have' ten tinha tiv tives/tiver
4 to know' sabê sabia sub subes
4can' podé pudia/podia pud pudes/puder
4 to want' krê kria kis/kris kizes/kizer
'should' devê devia - -
'to exist' - avia - oves
'to be' e era foi/fui fas/for
'to be'(locative + temporary states) ta táva/tá tiv tives/tiver
As in the Sotavento varieties (Baptista 2002: 116-117), in SVC the negator

cedes not only the main verb but also the sequence of TMA markers (42).
(42) Es ka táva ta peská ma mi (NL)

they NEG tma tma fish with me
'They were not fishing with me.'
In addition to ka , the negative adverb nãu (43) is used in SVC8 forming NEG V NEG
patterns of negation. However, we have not found any constructions that would be paral
lel to V NEG pattern attested in BVP.
(43) N ka krê nãu ! (NL)

I NEG want NEG
'I don't want!'
There are two types of copula in SVC, i.e. e 'to be' introducing predicates referring
to permanent states as in (44) and ta introducing predicates expressing temporary states
or location (45). The "zero copula" structures which occur in some rural varieties of
BVP and are possible in the Santiago variety of CVC do not occur in SVC.
8 According to Veiga (2000: 286) A» is a predicative negator and nãu, nau, nin, ná, non function as nomi-
nal negators. Lopes da Silva (1984 [1957 ]: 173) considers discontinuous double negation to be 'a rule'
in Santiago.
(44) a. Se pai e prop badiu. (PM)

her father cop real badiu
'Her father is a real Badiu.'
(44) b. *Se pai
(45) N tiv na Gdynia, N tiv na Gdansk... (LMF)

I cop in Gdynia I cop in Gdansk
'I was in Gdynia, I was in Gdansk. . . '
Most interestingly, in SVC the verb 'to be' is also undeleted in passive construction
formed with the past participle (46), unlike the Sotavento varieties ( cfr. Baptista 20
112-113) where the mechanisms of passive voice formation seem much further from
Portuguese.
(46) Karvon fui btód dent d'kintal. (JAL)

coal aux throw-PTCE inside of+corral
'Coal was thrown inside the corral.'
7. Conclusions
As to BVP, although Portuguese (like other languages in western Europe) had been
undergoing drift towards the loss of inflectional morphology, this cannot account for th
extent of this loss in Brazil, particularly in light of new base forms drawn from old inflect-
ed forms like nós vai 'we go', typical of contact varieties. When different regional an
social varieties from Portugal came into closer contact in Brazil, they underwent the fir
stage of dialect leveling. However, the overridingly important linguistic process whic
these varieties underwent was language shift. This shift occurred when the dominated
non-European population began to favor Portuguese, leaving many substrate and inter
language features in the speech of their monolingual descendants. These varieties also
underwent subsequent borrowing, both of substrate features from the speech of thos
arriving from areas where a greater degree of restructuring had taken place (e.g. Africa
as well as further borrowing of features from European Portuguese from its native spea
ers in Brazil, parallel to the decreolization of fully creolized varieties. These processes
resulted in a new variety, Brazilian Vernacular Portuguese, with a substantial amount o
the structure of European Portuguese intact, but also with a significant number of sub
strate or interlanguage structural features, i.e. a partially restructured vernacular.
Like BVP, SVC evolved from a less inflected variety, i.e. the Sotavento Creole
which underwent restructuring towards Portuguese. The Portuguese speakers wh
arrived on São Vicente caused shift-induced interference in the creole brought there by
settlers from the Sotavento islands. According to Thomason (2001: 250-251) shift
induced interference, contrary to borrowing, does not begin with words but with phono
ogy and syntax. Having learned the target language (TL) - i.e. the Sotavento creole
imperfectly by informal adult second language acquisition taking advantage of the com
mon elements, the Portuguese speakers shifted to the Sotavento creole spoken by the
majority of the community. Their imperfect knowledge of the Sotavento creole resulte
both in the transfer to it of Portuguese features (such as past tense inflections of stativ
verbs or an obligatory copula) and in the non-occur

of the TL of certain features of the Sotavento creo
marker ba).
The new variety became fixed when the creole
whelming majority on SV after further immigrati
new features that had appeared in the Portuguese sp
ole through interference. Stabilization and leveling
was accelerated by its acquisition as a first language
born on the island. These scenarios account for the socio-historical facts as well as the
synchronic linguistic data outlined above.
Abbreviations: AUX auxiliary, BVP Brazilian Vernacular Portuguese, COMP comple-

mentizer, COP copula, CP Creole Portuguese, CVC Cape Verdean Creole, EP European
Portuguese, HAB habitual, HP Helvécia Portuguese, NEG negation, NP noun phrase,
PRS present, Ptg Portuguese, PST past, SBP Standard Brazilian Portuguese, SVC São
Vicente Creole, SVO subject verb object, TMA time, mode, aspect (marker), TOP topi-
calization, VP verb phrase
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The vernaculars of São Vicente (Cape Verde) and Brazil: demographics and degrees of

Iberoamericana Editorial Vervuert is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and

Z> The vernaculars of São Vicente (Cape Verde)

1. Brazilian Vernacular Portuguese (BVP):

most likely to speak unrestructur

1538-1600 1601-1700 1701-1800 1801-1850 1851-1890

African-born 20% 30% 20% 12% 2%

(Based on Mussa 1991 : 163, cited in

Yet national population figur

gradually came to predominate, it is likely that succes

2. São Vicente Creole (SVC): the sociolinguistic setti

There is an obvious difficulty in comparing the socioling

gration of Cape Verdeans from o

3. The BVP noun phrase

2 In 1 879, the Portuguese constituted only 3% of São Vicente's population.

It is clear that the variable rule for -s is both pho

(2) HP: 'Eia e 'mu~itu sa ridu 'she is very meddlesome.'

Possession is normally indicated by the preposition de in BVP, as in standard Por-

(3) BVP: kaza

There is a parallel possessive construction in São To

(4) BVP: Ela chamou eu 'she called me' (Azevedo 198

(5) BVP a. João cortou

b. João cortou ele com faca

(5a) structure is found throughou

(6) São Tomé CP: E pie 'de 'he got

4. The SVC noun phrase

As noted by Baptista (2002: 38), in the Sotavento varieties, in rare

(14) Dpos ďuns tenps... (JAL)

As to morphological plural marking on noun stems only, in the basilectal speech

(15) Galinha porks, e kes lá k no táva kriá. (AR)

According to Baptista, Sotavento varieties other than Rabeladu speech m

(17) kinship terms: tiu /tia 'uncle/aunť

(20) Fidj fema/ fidj motx

This feature is, however, restricted and felt to be basile

(21) tud akel aventura prigoz... (MF/2)

(22) ainda ten mnininhas nova k ten fidj tanbén. (LL/AR)

not natural gender marking are lin

(23) Eh, ker dzer, karpintajen de madera torta... (AMD)

Possession in the SVC noun phrase is unlike other Portuguese-based creóles, t

(24) a. Nton N tá trabaiá na káza d'un senhora... (MJD)

*(24) b. Nton N tá trabaiá na kaza

The obligatory presence of the prepositi

(25) N sabê -s tud! (PA)

5. The BVP verb phrase

loss of final -s. Without the intimate second person for

(26) SBP BVP

As to auxiliaries and preverbal markers, the Portuguese-based creóle

(29) 1. Before the VP: BVP: Ele não sabe.

Older Portuguese had only pattern 1, while modern E

found in some African languages,

These constructions are parallel to "zero

6. The SVC verb phrase

As in Sotavento varieties (Baptista 200

Unmarked Progressive Habitual Perfective Irrealis

Unlike the preverbal marker ta in Sotavento

Sotavento (Santiago) - habitual past

(31) Nu ta konbersa tudu dia, Brankinha ta k

São Vicente -habitual past

(32) Txeu jent ta dzê k es tá bská pex na Baia... (LL/EL)

Furthermore, in the Sotavento varieties the perfective marker dja f

(33) Já oj ka ta dá txuva na Kap Verd. (JSM)

(34) Bosê á tá kazód? (LL/OA)

(35) Txeu ten oiód d 'véra. (AMD)

(36) El divinhá log kma algén tinha jdód el fují. (MF2)