The Portuguese began their colonial expansion early in the fifteenth century: by 1417 they had arrived in Africa. They settled islands and coastal areas in Upper Guinea in Africa by 1462, islands in the Gulf of Guinea by 1500, reached India by 1510, Malaysia by 1516, Indonesia by the 1520s, and Macau by 1555. As colonization progressed, the Portuguese introduced one or more varieties of their language in their settlements and trading posts, and over time these varieties of Portuguese have evolved lexically and structurally. Spoken varieties of Portuguese in Brazil, Angola, Mozambique, and East Timor have developed different patterns that are often consistent with patterns found in naturalistic second language acquisition. They also display unmistakable evidence of substrate influence. In addition, many highly restructured varieties, the Portuguese-based creoles, developed throughout Portugal’s colonial empire, some of which are still spoken today in Africa and Asia. Apart from the substrate influence apparent in the creoles, they have also developed many features unique to them as independent linguistic systems. In this contribution, the expansion of Portugal’s colonial empire and the evolution of all these Portuguese varieties will be presented and discussed.

As Spain expanded its colonial empire, Spanish language and culture were introduced throughout the colonies. In this contribution, Ithe author explores the socio-historical factors that led to Spanish becoming a global language. From an evolutionary perspective, it is proposed that the arrival of an Old World cultural and linguistic community to the New World was the introduction of an invasive cultural and linguistic community into a new environment not equipped to handle it. This collision of cultures and languages led to an unintended result, the large-scale decimation of the indigenous communities, described by Diamond (1999: 354) as the ‘largest population replacement in the last 13,000 years'. Another, related consequence was that the Spanish language dominated during the colonial period, and since has continued to be the de facto main or exclusive language as the colonies became nation states. It has also been instrumental in a wide variety of political movements, as well as in the development of cultural expression. While being the second most widely spoken world language, Spanish regional varieties have emerged that reflect the local linguistic ecologies of areas where they are spoken.

The Romanization of the Iberian peninsula

In contrast to Gaul, which Caesar conquered in just ten years, Iberia, defying the best Roman generals, succumbed to Rome only after a bitter struggle spanning more than two centuries. In fact, during most of the 202 years between 218 BCE and 16 BCE, it is not an overstatement to say that Iberia was a war zone (Curchin 1991:7).

Before the soldiers of Rome reached Iberia in 218 BCE, speaking colloquial varieties of Oscan, Umbrian, and Latin, the Iberian peninsula was inhabited by numerous tribes. In the west and north of the peninsula were the people the classical writers describe as Celtic, who had been in the region as early as the ninth century BCE, though they may have arrived in various waves (Tovar 1977:121–122). In the south-west lived the Lusitanians, and the Galicians inhabited the north-western corner of the peninsula. Whereas the language of the Lusitanians may have been pre-Celtic, or an early Celtic language, that of the Galicians (Callaeci) was definitely Celtic, possibly a more recent variety than that of the Lusitanians (ibid.:109–110). The differences between their languages notwithstanding, the Lusitanians and Galicians were quite similar to one another in the degree and form of their civilization (de Oliveira Marques 1972:17).

In the north-central part of the peninsula lived the Basques, who spoke a non-Indo-European language. The central region of Iberia was inhabited by various tribes collectively known as the Celtiberians, who spoke varieties of Celtic (Tovar 1977:105–106), and in the south-central area were the Tartesians. For their part, the Iberians inhabited the eastern coast, up to the current border with France.

Introduction

During the first half of the nineteenth century, the African slave trade in Cuba became illegal and the laws prohibiting it were increasingly enforced, a topic touched upon in chapter 4. Alarmed by the slave revolts of the 1790s in Haiti, movements began in Cuba with the purpose of settling whites on farms and in villages in Cuba not only to infuse the labour force with new manpower, but also in part to counterbalance the large black population and thereby diminish the possibility of revolt. As we saw in chapter 4, the black population in Cuba began to outnumber the whites around 1791 and according to Kiple (1976) this situation lasted up until 1846. Corbitt (1971:2) notes that in 1841 in Cuba there were 589,333 blacks (58 per cent) (436,495 slaves and 152,838 free coloureds) and 418,211 whites (42 per cent). This situation made Cuban plantation-owners uncomfortable and as a consequence incentives were offered to planters to hire workers from Spain, but with little success. The Spanish government then agreed to a plan drawn up by the Junta de Fomento (Promotion Committee) to introduce Chinese coolies (indentured labourers) into Cuba, following an idea the British had used in their colonies. From 3 June 1847 – the arrival date of the first Chinese coolies from China – onwards, nearly 500,000 of them came to the island (Corbitt 1971:6). In this chapter, I discuss some details of the ecology of the Chinese in Cuba between 1847 and the late twentieth century, focusing on the relations among the Chinese, the Africans, and the Afro-Cubans, and the development of the Chinese variety of Spanish.

Original

José de la Luz's Commentary on the Catequismo, sent to Francis Lieber Como un estrangero por mas instruido que esté en la lengua española puede necesitar alguna clave para inteligencia del cateqismo acomodado á la capacidad de los negros bozales (impreso en la Habana desde el año de 1796, como se vé al final de la pagina 13, y reimpreso en 1818), me ha parecido conveniente acompañar el exemplar que envio al Dr Franco Lieber (de Filadelfia) con las siguientes indicaciones que serviran tambien de parte de respuesta á la que yá di á las preguntas que se sirvió dirijirme el mes ántes pasado.

1a Este libro se encamina directamente no á los negros, sino á los capellanes ó maestros de los negros en la doctrina cristiana. Asi és que se ponen varias ampliaciones, ejemplos, y similes de una misma idea, para que el maestro las use todas, ó escoja entre ellas, segun las circunstancias. De donde se infiere que son mas bien ideas que no palabras al alcance de los africanos, como que no existe dialecto criollo general, ni particular propiamente tal. Asi és que el capellan ó confesor imitará mas en la pronunciacion aquel modo especial de corromper la lengua que tiene cada casta, segun sea la que tenga que catequizar.

2a Sin embargo, como ya dije en mi respuesta, hay algunos modos de corromper el idioma empleado generalmente por todos los bozales, pero estos se refieren mas bien á las construcciones que no á la pronunciación; y esos módismos son precisamente los que se usan en el presente libro: he aqui los mas principales.

Introduction

The debate about whether there was ever a Spanish-lexified creole language spoken in Cuba or elsewhere in the Caribbean is complex and there are arguments for and against its putative existence. Given the overwhelming evidence in the Caribbean of creoles lexified by French, English, Portuguese, and Dutch, there is no a priori reason to exclude the possibility of a Spanishlexified creole having existed in the Spanish-speaking area of the Caribbean. Specifically in the case of Cuba, Otheguy (1973) argues that references regarding the presence of a black bozal Spanish in Cuba go back more than one hundred years, suggesting that there was once a Spanish creole spoken by the African (and African descendant) population in Cuba. Granda (1978) and Schwegler (1993, 1996a) maintain that a widespread Spanish-based creole was possibly spoken throughout the Spanish Caribbean and Latin America, but that it underwent significant de-creolization, such that today there are only vestiges of it found in the Spanish spoken in Cuba. Perl (1987) discusses texts found in Cabrera (1954) which contain re-structuring like that found in creoles, and more recently Ortiz López (1998) finds evidence of re-structuring reminiscent of creole structure in the speech of older Afro-Cubans currently living in more isolated regions of the island.

Not all scholars, however, share this view. McWhorter (2000), for instance, argues forcefully that no Spanish-based creole ever existed in Cuba or anywhere else in Latin America. He develops an Afro-genesis hypothesis for New World creoles in which he proposes that creole languages developed in West African trade settlements where many of the African slaves were sent before their coerced migration to the New World.

Introduction

The Americas – North, Central, and South America – were initially populated, as far as we know, around or before 11,000 BCE by way of the Bering Strait and Alaska. Although between then and now some contact may have taken place between South America and Polynesia, and the Norse did reach North America prior to 1492, such contacts had no major impact on the societies that developed in the Americas. The ‘collision’ between the Old World and the New, as Diamond (1999:67) expresses it, began in 1492 with Columbus' ‘discovery’ of the densely populated Caribbean Islands. Diamond speaks of proximate and immediate causes for the relatively rapid colonization of the New World by Europeans. In essence, it can be said that disease, superior weaponry, and the literate culture of the Europeans played decisive roles in the rapid colonization of South America by the Spanish. Regarding disease, Diamond (ibid.:67–81) notes that the Spaniards had been exposed to many diseases from their centuries-long close proximity to domesticated animals. They had thus developed immunity to diseases which had become endemic among them; the indigenous populations, on the other hand, had had no exposure to these diseases and so were decimated in the first New World–European encounter. As for weaponry, the Incas' clubs, maces, and hand axes (made of stone, bronze, and wood), as well as their slingshots and quilted armour, were no match for the Spanish horses, guns, steel swords, and steel armour. Finally, although Francisco Pizarro, the conqueror of the Inca Empire and founder of Lima, Peru, was illiterate, he had a wealth of information at his disposal from written history, including written accounts of how Cortés defeated Montezuma in what is now Mexico.

Original

Con sumo gusto contesto a las preguntas del Dr. Francisco Lieber, asi por el asunto sobre que versan, como porque tuve a placer de tratarle en Boston ‘at Mrs. Kekam's’, en cuyo boarding-house vivimos junto en agosto y setiembre de 1828.

Casi todas las preguntas, y especialmente las 12 primeras, descansan en el supuesto de que existe un dialecto criollo en la isla de Cuba distinto de la lengua española, así como hay criollo francés y otros dialectos de las demás lenguas europeas en las colonias de otras naciones. Pero no es así, y diré sencillamente lo único que hay en el particular. Los africanos corrumpen la lengua cada uno a su modo, y esta corrupción consiste principalmente en el modo de pronunciar, lo que, como bien claro se ve, no constituye un dialecto especial, al que podamos darle el nombre de criollo. Esto es tan cierto, cuanto que a los blancos nos es más fácil entender a unos negros más que otros, y a los pertenecientes a una nación más que a los de otra: los congos v.g. se esplican y pronuncian con más claridad que los carabalíes; pero siempre es la misma lengua española la que todos hablan, aunque estropeándola casi individualmente diríamos. Sin embargo, hay algunos modos uniformes de corromperla, y esto es natural, entre todos ellos particularmente en el campo, no solo alterando uniformemente la pronunciación de ciertas voces, sino también dándoles una significación diferente a veces y otras análoga a la genuina. Por ejemplo, es muy comun que digan dos viages en lugar de dos veces.

Introduction

Any account of human language must address a host of facts and observations about the structure and use of language varieties of the world, including non-standard varieties such as immigrant speech, pidgins, creoles, and mixed languages. Most linguists, as well as scholars who study different languages from other perspectives (e.g., psychologists, sociologists, etc.), would likely agree with Givón (1998:41) that human language combines two major ‘mega functions’ of representation of knowledge and communication of represented knowledge. As the point of departure for a functional approach to human language, Givón (ibid.:42) proposes the evolutionary-adaptive approach in biology, in which structure (anatomy) and function (physiology) are studied not as separate from, but rather as complements to, one another. Rather than positing a single mutation in human kind that triggers the change from a protolanguage into a full human language (that is, a ‘catastrophic’ event which was the cause for the emergence of basic phrasal–clausal structure (Bickerton 2000:281)), functionalists such as Givón assume a gradual process whereby the link between proto- and full human language is gradual and incremental. Givón frames the distinction not in terms of language, but rather in terms of communication systems, differentiating between pre-grammatical and grammatical communication. He notes that ‘humans can – under a variety of developmental or neurological conditions – communicate readily without grammar, using a well-coded lexicon with some rudimentary combinatorial rules’ (1998:49). The differences between pre-grammatical and grammatical communication are expressed by Givón in terms of the structural, functional, and cognitive properties, shown in Table 1.1, which I have adapted slightly to express the differences as being a matter of degree rather than being dichotomous.

Introduction

Some attention has been paid to the contact situation on the Uruguay–Brazil border where a swathe of border land once belonging to Brazil became part of Uruguay in the nineteenth century. Although a 50- to 100-km strip in Uruguay on the Uruguay–Brazil border has been part of that country for more than 120 years, a variety of Portuguese is still maintained in the area which has been referred to as Portuñol or Fronterizo. (See Waltermire 2006 and references therein.)

The border area between Portugal and Spain, locally known as A Raia or La Raya ‘the border, boundary’, has received less attention although there are several Portuguese–Spanish contact situations in that area. For example, in the Spanish city of Valencia-de-Alcántara there is a sizable enclave of Portuguese-speaking citizens and to my knowledge this situation has yet to be studied systematically. In the case of Barranquenho, the variety of Spanishinfluenced Portuguese spoken in Barrancos, Portugal, the monograph by Leite de Vasconcelos (1955) and the more recent work by Navas Sánchez-Élez (1992, 1994, 1996, 1997, 2001) are seminal, though this contact situation is also largely unknown among the wider audience in contact linguistics. The Barrancos situation is interesting because, over the centuries, the area has been claimed by both Portugal and Spain. In order to illustrate this, I first give a brief historical overview of the area from the Middle Ages onwards. I then discuss the various features that define Barranquenho, using material found in Leite de Vasconcelos (1955) and a corpus comprising speech of twenty-two Barranquenho speakers.