Re: Creole vs. Pidgin

Nik Taylor <fortytwo@...> wrote:
> Barry Garcia wrote:
> > Interesting. My friend Liz is fluent in Chavacano. She says that the verbs
> > are all in the usted form (from what i see it seems to be that way with
> > your examples)
>
> I wonder, is that really from the usted form, or is it from the
> infinitive form with final -r lost?  Is the _habla_ in Kristian's
> examples pronounced ['abla] or [ab'la]?  From what I've read about
> Romance-based creoles (admittedly, not much), it seems that most use the
> infinitive (which is most apparent in irregular verbs and -ir verbs),
> for example, the Media Lengua I mentioned in my last post has _i_, not
> _ba_ for "go" (inf = ir, usted form = va)
I think you're right (it sounds like the infinitive, and given the Spanish
tendency to turn everything into paraphrases, it's very likely so). But
maybe _ba_ is an exception, since _ir_ is *so* irregular. Or maybe the
Media Lengua is the exception. :-)

FWIW, Jopara, the Guarani/Spanish pidgin spoken in Paraguay, also takes the
infinitives minus -r as verb stems, and like Media Lengua, it tacks
Guarani affixes onto them. Guarani generally stress on the last syllable
of words (or roots?), so the Spanish infinitive is more likely to be
adopted and preserved.


--Pablo Flores