The Pennsylvania State University

The Pennsylvania State University The Graduate School Department of Spanish, Italian and Portuguese PATTERNS OF VARIABLE TENSE-ASPECT MARKING IN PALENQUERO CREOLE A Dissertation in Spanish by Hiram L. Smith 2014 Hiram L. Smith Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy August 2014 ii The dissertation of Hiram L. Smith was reviewed and approved* by the following: Rena Torres Cacoullos Professor of Spanish and Linguistics Dissertation Advisor Chair of Committee John Lipski Edwin Erle Sparks Professor of Spanish and Linguistics Karen Miller Assistant Professor of Spanish and Linguistics Richard Page Associate Professor of German and Linguistics Paola Giuli Dussias Professor of Psychology, Spanish and Linguistics Head of the Department of Spanish, Italian & Portuguese *Signatures are on file in the Graduate School iii ABSTRACT This dissertation focuses on the synchronic distribution of tense-aspect morphemes in Palenquero, a creole spoken in Colombia, in order to address two questions: First, are tense- aspect expressions in Palenquero grammatical ‘markers,’ that is, how closely associated are the grammatical forms with their purported functions? Second, as the correlate of that question, is zero the opposition of any one of those meanings expressed by overtly coded forms? To tackle these questions, I submitted all forms, including zero, to quantitative analysis. This analysis confirmed form-function asymmetry for all forms. The a morpheme was found to express a range of meanings along the perfective grammaticalization path, namely, in addition to perfective, perfect and past-before-past (the latter two meanings being overwhelmingly marked by a), ta was found to be approaching obligatory status in the progressive domain, (in that it expressed this meaning almost categorically and progressive meaning was overwhelmingly expressed by ta over other morphemes), and asé and sabé played different roles in the domain of habitual, the former being favored in habitual contexts and with non-stative verbs with past temporal reference, while the latter was slightly disfavored in habitual contexts, when assessed with respect to asé, but was favored with stative verbs. Zero was robust with states, but it also expressed open meaning in other domains, often being the only other variant besides the one other overt morpheme. It was also found here that –ba is an expression of imperfective, not a morpheme indicating past-before- past. I conclude that the overt morphemes are markers insofar as there is an overwhelming association between a form and the function it expresses, and conversely, between a function and a certain form relative to other forms that may express it. In the end, in order to make an assessment on whether a particular tense-aspect form qualifies as a grammatical marker, several factors must to be simultaneously taken into consideration: the principle of accountable reporting, the combined effect of frequency and probability of occurrence, as well as how tense-aspect morphemes are skewed across past and present temporal reference. The second dimension of the study was to address whether the formal expression of tense and aspect conformed to typological markedness patterns and to what is known about developing tense-aspect morphemes. To discern this, I compared the structural coding and the distributional patterns in present and past temporal reference in light of well-known asymmetries in these domains. Progressive was equally marked (by ta) in past and present, while habitual was more marked in the past than in the present (mostly with asé rather than sabé). It was also found that a was unmarked with respect to all of the other morphemes with past temporal reference (it was the iv most frequently occurring morpheme, had less structural coding compared to all other forms and was the morpheme that was most closely associated with the default meaning of past (which is perfective)), and that it played different roles in past versus present. Taken together, these results conform to predictions made by typological markedness and grammaticalization theory, and therefore demonstrate that the variationist method in combination with a diachronically-informed cross-linguistic approach may be a fruitful way to investigate questions of tense and aspect in creoles. In employing systematic quantitative analysis of linguistic data from members of a well- defined speech community, the major contributions of this dissertation are the creation of an exhaustively transcribed corpus of Palenquero speech, bringing variation theory to bear on issues in creole grammars, and implementing a diachronic approach to provide explanations for the distribution patterns found in the Palenquero tense-aspect system. v TABLE OF CONTENTS List of Figures .......................................................................................................................... vii List of Tables ........................................................................................................................... viii Acknowledgements .................................................................................................................. ix Chapter 1 Introduction ............................................................................................................. 1 1.0 General background ........................................................................................... 1 1.1 Brief discussion of traditional approaches to creole studies .............................. 2 1.2 Contributions of this dissertation ....................................................................... 4 1.3 Dissertation summary ......................................................................................... 6 Chapter 2 Field work, corpus constitution, and new observations about San Basilio de Palenque ........................................................................................................................... 9 2.0 Introduction ........................................................................................................ 9 2.1 The issues facing field researchers in Palenque ................................................. 10 2.2 Overview of the community ............................................................................... 12 2.3 Initiation of contact ............................................................................................ 15 2.4 Selection of consultants ...................................................................................... 17 2.5 Circumscribing the speech community .............................................................. 26 2.6 The sociolinguistic interview ............................................................................. 30 2.7 Palenquero corpus data ....................................................................................... 32 2.8 Brief sketch of field work in San Basilio de Palenque: Palenque today ............ 36 2.9 Reactions of the community to outsider presence .............................................. 38 2.10 Looking forward: what can be done? ............................................................... 43 2.11 Summary .......................................................................................................... 45 Chapter 3 Transcribing speech data: methods, protocol and problems.................................... 46 3.0 Introduction ........................................................................................................ 46 3.1 Details of transcription ....................................................................................... 47 3.2 Transcription protocol ........................................................................................ 53 3.3 Notes on the actual task of transcribing ............................................................. 57 3.4 Fortuitous events, unforeseen occurrences and just plain bad luck .................... 60 3.5 Summary ............................................................................................................ 62 Chapter 4 The diachronic approach (perspective) ................................................................... 63 4.0 Introduction ........................................................................................................ 63 4.1 The diachronic approach: what it is and what it is not ....................................... 65 4.2 The explanatory power of grammaticalization ................................................... 67 4.3 Grammaticalization and creoles: critical issues ................................................. 71 4.4 Tense-aspect asymmetries in past vs. present temporal reference ..................... 74 4.5 Summary ............................................................................................................ 78 vi Chapter 5 Variable tense-aspect marking in Palenquero: distributions of aspectual expressions for past temporal reference ........................................................................... 80 5.0 Introduction ........................................................................................................ 80 5.1 Rationale for the current study ........................................................................... 81 5.2 Variationist method ............................................................................................ 84 5.3 Coding of the data .............................................................................................

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