A negação sentencial

Some 60% of the Atlantic slave traffic was directed to Luso-Hispanic America, principally Brazil, Cuba, Hispaniola, Colombia, etc., where people of African ancestry still form substantial majorities in some areas. This paper examines the linguistic consequences of this massive contact between Africans and Europeans. In colonial times, non-native and pidgin/creole varieties clearly existed in Latin America (cf. Palenquero, Papiamentu, Cuban habla bozal). In contemporary Latin America, people of African ancestry tend to be the defining speakers of nonstandard varieties whose linguistic characteristics are best explained in terms of a history of contact and/or creolization. Overall, popular Latin American Spanish and Portuguese appear to have been significantly influenced by Afro-European language contact.

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Negation in Palenquero

Schwegler

2018

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This study offers an up-to-date (synchronic) overview of Palenquero predicate negation, and seeks to explain how and why it has recently begun to undergo change, especially among the younger generations. Earlier descriptions (e.g., Dieck 2000, 2002, Schwegler 1991a, 1996a) revealed that Palenquero features a complex variable system in which the negative marker nu ‘not’ can be placed either before or after the verb, or both (embracing negation), as in: (1) nu + VERB, (2) nu + VERB + nu, and (3) VERB + nu. Scholars have been in general agreement that all three strategies express the same propositional content, but there has been dispute as to underlying causes for the variable selection between these strategies. Sections 1 and 2 of this article provide a fresh look at the issue, and defend the hypothesis (pace Schwegler 1991a but contra Dieck 2000, 2002) that subtle contextually-derived conditions rather than morphosyntactic considerations best explain the selection and felicity of a given negation strategy. This discussion in turn will help explain certain aspects of negative concord, including the behavior of Spanish-derived negative polarity items like Pal. nunka ‘never’, tampoko ‘(n)either’, and so forth.

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A negação sentencial

Cited by 5 publications

References 117 publications

Some Issues in Negation in Portuguese

Some Issues in Negation in Portuguese

The African diaspora in Latin America

Negation in Palenquero

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