Object Clitics and the Anterior Marker in Palenquero

M.Swearingen, UC-Santa Barbara

Palenquero is a Spanish-based creole thought to have originated from an Afro-Portuguese pidgin. It is spoken by descendants of African slaves located in a rural village called El Palenque de San Basilio, in Colombia. There has been a long-standing diglossic situation and both Palenquero and Spanish have been used in the community for several centuries.

In this paper, my discussion will focus on the anterior marker -ba and its relationship with object clitics in Palenquero. There are differing opinions as to the origin of Palenquero -ba: 1) that it was borrowed from Portuguese/Spanish past imperfect suffix -va/-ba, respectively, or 2) that it derives from the Ptg/Sp word acabar (se) 'finish' (>akaba>ba). Some of the locations for anterior -ba within Palenquero discourse are as follows:

1) directly attached to the end of a verb:
  pero y-a   kucha-BA         ese chite
 (but I-T/A hear/listen-ant. that story)
 'but I heard that story'

2) following a pre-verbal marker:
  um impeto      ke  ase-BA   paga   ma fogo
 (an inspector that T/A-ant put out pl fire)
 'an inspector that used to put out the fires'

3) at the end of a clause or sentence:
era ma kabesao lo ke    se-ba   mini a    buka   hende  aki  kasa  hende-BA 
was pl group that which T/A-ant.come to look for people here house people ant.
'they were a (musical)group that would come and look for us here at our house'

4) following an object pronoun:
hende   ase-ba   enterra-lo-BA  ai   swelo?
(people T/A-ant. bury-OP-ant.  there ground)
'did they used to bury them over there in the ground?

Subsequent influence from Portuguese and African languages has been negligible due to the geographic removal and isolation of the community in Colombia, thus preempting the possibility of a recent acquisition of such combinations.

I argue that object encliticization, in connection with the anterior marker, was formed by a convergence of influence from Portuguese and relevant African languages. Although the structure of pre-verbal tense and aspect marking has generally been attributed to African and Iberian influences, a possibly overlooked convergence of such influences may also have existed for other phenomena such as the interaction between anterior marking and object pronouns in this language.

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