LINGUIST List 10.779

Thu May 20 1999

Books: Romance

Editor for this issue: Anthony Rodrigues Aristar <aristarlinguistlist.org>

Directory

1. LINCOM EUROPA, The Angolar Creole; Portuguese of Sao Tome
2. LINCOM EUROPA, Slavic Features in the History of Rumanian

The Angolar Creole; Portuguese of Sao Tome:
Its Grammar and Sociolinguistic History
Gerardo A. Lorenzino, Yale University

The primary goal of this study is to explore the question of the genesis
and development of the Angolar Creole Portuguese of Sao Tome and
Pr\237ncipe (Gulf of Guinea), off the coast of West Africa. Angolar is the
language spoken by descendants of maroon slaves who escaped from
Portuguese plantations on Sao Tome beginning in the mid-sixteenth
century (1535-1550).

Due to the isolation of these maroon communities, their language kept
the general structure of Santomense Creole Portuguese, the majority
creole spoken on the plantations. Communication between the Portuguese
and slaves, and among the slaves themselves, must have been constrained
by factors such as first languages (Portuguese as well as Kwa and Bantu
languages), exposure to some form of contact Portuguese prior to their
arrival of Sao Tome (e.g. West African Pidgin Portuguese), their length
of stay on the island and their social status (free Afro-Portuguese,
houseslaves). Modern divergences between Angolar and Santomense are the
outcome of the lexical expansion and further restructuring which
Santomense underwent as the result of its closer contact with Portuguese
spoken on the plantations as opposed to differences in grammar and
pronunciation which Angolar retained from early Santomense.

On the other hand, Angolar is the result of the partial relexification
that Santomense underwent due to the later influence of
Kimbundu-speaking Maroons. In this respect, the Angolares' existence
away from the plantations was more likely to have favored the
maintenance of African languages than remaining on the plantations,
where exposure to Portuguese and the increasing role of Santomense as
the medium of communication among slaves forced Africans to give up
their native languages faster. Furthermore, the rise of the mulatto
society fostered the establishment of Santomense as the common
vernacular for both slaves and non-slaves. Against this setting, one may
understand Angolar as the linguistic result of the Maroons' need to
develo a communicative behavior which would act as an in-group boundary
maintenance mechanism, providing a symbolic value for the Angular
community and, at the same time, making their language incomprehensible
to outsiders, i.e. a secret language.

The second chapter of the book gives an overview on the phonology,
morphology and syntax of the Angolar Creole Portuguese (ca. 80 pp).

Contents

Introduction
Sociolinguistic history of the Angolares
Phonology
	Phonemic inventory
	Phonemes and their allophones
	Phonotactics
	Suprasegmentals
Lexicosemantics
	Lexical sources
Morphosyntax
	The Noun Phrase
	The Verb Phrase
	Complex Sentences
The origin and development of Angolar

Appendix I: Swadesh List
Appendix II: Angolar transcriptions


ISBN 3 89586 545 1. 
LINCOM Studies in Pidgin & Creole Linguistics 01. 
292 pp. USD 69 / DM 107 / pound sterling 43. 

Info: LINCOM EUROPA, Paul-Preuss-Str. 25, D-80995 Muenchen, Germany; 
FAX +49 89 3148909; http://home.t-online.de/home/LINCOM.EUROPA;
LINCOM.EUROPAt-online.de.

SLAVIC FEATURES IN THE HISTORY OF RUMANIAN 

Peter R. Petrucci, Northeastern State University, Tahlequah

This dissertation examines the role of Slavic phonological and
morphological features in the history of Rumanian. Data are limited to
those phonological and morphological features purportedly attributable
to early Slavic language contact and which are present in all or most of
the Rumanian dialects--Rumanian, Arumanian, Megleno-Rumanian, and
Istro-Rumanian. 
Two basic questions are asked: First, which structural features should
or should not be attributed to Slavic language contact? This question
is significant because Slavic language contact features in the history
of Rumanian have been disputed among Romance and Slavic linguists for a
long time. Some linguists have proposed a wide range of Slavic features
in Rumanian whereas others have proposed a much more limited set of
features. Second, of those features which are indeed Slavic in origin,
what is the exact nature of the language contact process by which the
features were incorporated into Rumanian? Regarding this issue, the
Slavic contact features are analyzed by means of Thomason and Kaufman's
(1988) theory of language contact, which identifies two distinct
processes by which a foreign feature can spread to another language:
borrowing, initiated by native speakers of the language incorporating
the non-native feature; or language shift, introduced by native speakers
of the language wherein the feature originated. The dissertation
demonstrates that this model of language contact can efficiently account
for the Slavic structural features that appear in Rumanian. Also, four
general criteria are proposed which give an indication of which
process(es) can account for how a given language contact feature was
incorporated into a language. 

ISBN 3 89586 599 0. 
LINCOM Studies in Romance Linguistics 08. 
Ca. 200pp. USD 70 / DM 112 / \163 42.


Info: LINCOM EUROPA, Paul-Preuss-Str. 25, D-80995 Muenchen, Germany; 
FAX : +49 89 3148909; 
LINCOM.EUROPAt-online.de; 
http://home.t-online.de/home/LINCOM.EUROPA

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