David wrote:
<<Perhaps this is becaause both 'ta' and 'a' are derived from verbs and
'lo' is derived from 'logo'/'luego'?>>
>Now you've piqued my curiosity. None of my books list a possible
>etymology for "lo",
My source is my Papiamentu teacher. We debated a lot about the origins
of Papiamentu (and the presumpted link with Cabo Verde Creole), and we
sort of agreed that it is more likely that Portuguese was the source for many
words, and sterssed [o] never changed to [we] in Portuguese.
>and as a native Spanish speaker, I can't think of where it came from.
>Your theory is a possibility, though how long ago did the o [+streess]
> /wo/ > [we] change happen? Could it be from Dutch?
Certainly no Dutch influence here.
It looks likely to me that stressless syllables got lost:
está / Stá > ta
logo ? lo
>I know nothing about Dutch. Anyway, it also says that you can only switch
>the order of the tense and the pronoun with the 1st, 2nd and 3rd singular pronouns.
>So, you could say /lo mi papia/, but (presumably) not *lo papa papia.
I'll have to check this!
>They say the same thing happens with /bai/ in Tok Pisin.
Very interesting ... Do we have a kind of universal here?!
Rob