0. Introduction
The Isleños of St. Bernard Parish,
Louisiana, consider themselves "orphans of history" (Segura,
1986). Settled along the bayous of
southeast Louisiana barely eight years before the arrival of the Acadians from
Nova Scotia, they have been overshadowed by their French-speaking neighbors
both politically and economically.
Louisiana Cajuns have been the focus of most Creole and historical study
in the state; for example, the newly
formed Council for the Development of Spanish in Louisiana remains largely
unfunded while the Council for the Development of French in Louisiana is well
funded. Even the recent ethnic revival
has been set up for Spanish-speaking people as a whole, a group with which the
Isleños do not identify. Says Alfredo
J. Perez, "Now they have signs saying 'Aquí
se habla español' again, and they have Spanish in the voting machines,
too. But that's for the Latinos, not
us" (Segura, 1986:48). The type of
Spanish spoken by the Isleños has been called variously "the Spanish of
Cervantes," "español
criollo", or simply "isleño". Preserved in isolation by one small
community within 50 miles of New Orleans, the Isleños admit no kinship to any
Central or South American variety of Spanish.
0.1. Statement of Purpose
The purpose of this paper will be to
evaluate the Isleño speech pattern phonologically, morphologically, and
syntactically to determine its status as a creole or a nonstandard North
American dialect of Spanish.
Such an evaluation will involve judging Isleño data against certain
creole criteria as well as comparing various linguistic and social evidence
with other Iberian-based creoles, notably Papiamentu and Palenquero. I will also discuss the social correlates
for the formation of creoles in relation to the Hispanic Caribbean
communities. In Section 1, I will
present the sociolinguistic matrix in which the Isleño community lives: the earliest origins of the dialect as well
as the modern cultural surroundings of the group. I will then compare these particular historical circumstances to
those described by Bickerton (1984) and Muysken and Smith (1986) as being
favorable for creole development.
Section 2 will deal with the criteria gathered to judge whether a speech
pattern of a community is a creole or simply an instance of dialect
variation. The criteria constitute both
practical observations from my own field data as well as from other
sources. In Section 3, I will apply the
criteria to Isleño, using Papiamentu or Palenquero as comparative markers where
necessary. Finally, in Section 4, I
will make a decision regarding the status of Isleño based on the results of its
evaluation against the criteria and other Spanish-based creoles.
0.2. Documentation
The main body of data for the Isleño
community comes from two major works: a
University of New Mexico doctoral dissertation (MacCurdy, 1950), a travelogue
of Louisiana (Fortier, 1894), and several articles in Hispanic dialectology
(Lipski, 1985; 1986b, c; 1987).
In addition, I personally recorded Isleño speech in 1986 and 1987. Between 1950 and 1984, however, a paucity of
published data hampers the reconstruction of the modern-day sociolinguistic
history of Isleño.
1. Sociolinguistic Background
1.1. Ancestry
1.1.1. Pre-Conquest
The earliest inhabitants of the
seven Canary Islands were probably "...short-statured brunets of
Mediterranean race origin, with some Negroid admixture," from the Wady Draa region of south
Morocco (Hooton 1925: 299; Dixon,
1923). A subsequent invasion of
"brunet whites with some Mongoloid features" (Hooton 1925: 299) from
eastern Tunisia and another of tall, blond, Alpine-Mongoloid warriors from the
Atlas region of Morocco and Algeria overran the larger islands, probably
starting with those nearest the coast of Africa. The culture resulting from the fusion of these peoples is called Guanche: "correctly only the ancient people of Tenerife but now often
used for all pre-conquest islanders" (Mercer 1980: 65). Berbers seem to have been casual visitors to
the islands nearest the African coast;
according to Abercromby (1917), toponyms and lexical items relating to
food and utensils show Berber ancestry (gánigo
'earthenware pot' <— Tamoseg gennek
'bucket'; gofio 'toasted grain meal' <— gofîto or afîta 'a kind
of broth made from barley').
1.1.2 Iberian
The Spanish conquistadores of the
early sixteenth century received tracts of land from the Spanish monarchs in
reward for their service; in turn, they
granted land in the Canary Islands to Portuguese and Italian colonizers for a
share of the profits. Because the need
for slave labor was acute, slaving expeditions brough Negros from Senegal and
Guinea (Mercer 1980: 234). Emigrations
from North Africa and the Iberian Peninsula added Moors, moriscos, and Negros
to the island colonies. When Alonso
Fernández de Lugo realized the islands' first sugar-producing plantation,
Portuguese and Italian technicians, artisans, and merchants all settled in the
Canary Islands to engage in trade.
When Charles III received the
Territory of Louisiana from Louis XV of France in 1762, Spanish immigration to
the colony was sluggish at first. The French government had granted large
concessions of land along the Mississippi River and
eastern bayous to French nobility and wealthy families (with names like
Beauregard, Phillipon, Delaronde, and De Marigny), who organized large-scale
plantations. Under the administration
of Governor Bernardo de Gálvez, however, an accelerated period of colonization
(1764-1803) increased the number of small landowners and peasant
proprietors. A great majority settled
along the smaller waterways south of New Orleans, along Bayou Teche, Bayou
Lafourche, and Bayou Manchac. In 1778,
about 1500 recruits and their families from the Canary Islands settled in
Louisiana, mostly along Bayou Terre au Boeuf in St. Bernard Parish under the
command of Bernard de Marigny de Mandeville (Gayarré 1903: 115-6). These early Spanish settlers called
themselves isleños,
"islanders" because of their origin;
and they established the towns of Delacroix, Reggio, Yscloskey, and
Shell Beach.
The census of 1788 showed more than 600 people living in St. Bernard
Parish at that time (Fortier 1914: 407).
Recent documents from the archives in Seville indicate that
the Spanish settlers were sort of
secret agents, a loyal population to counteract British ambitions for the lower
Mississippi and the fear of French aristocratic resistance inspired by Governor
Alexander O'Reilly's rebellion. (Segura
1986: 46).
Although the Isleños show Canary
Island ancestry, information concerning exactly which islands the settlers came
from has not been made available.
However, the reasons for emigrating are more clear. As the Spanish conquerors of Andalusía
claimed more land for themselves and granted tracts to the Portuguese and
Italian colonists, the native population had little hope of increasing their
allotment of soil or bettering their lives.
Says Fernández-Armesto (1982: 46), "It was probably the
attractiveness of the New World that drew prospective settlers away from the
Canaries...". The incentive of
owning land in the colony of Louisiana promised greater wealth for the Canary
Island poor than they would ever attain at home. Mercer (1980: 173) concurs, stating, "The land of the
Canaries has continued to this day in the hands of powerful families descended
from or purchasers from the leading conquistadores and the early immigrant nobility."
1.1.3. Western Hemisphere
Emigrants from Spain and the Canary
Islands stopped in Havana, where the captaincy-general of the colonies was
located, to leave off their sick and take on more passengers bound for
Louisiana (Gayarré 1903: 60). Havana
became an Hispanic interchange port in the Caribbean, much like Barbados for
the English. Of even greater
significance is the fact that by 1794, a number of Spanish sugar planters from
Santo Domingo emigrated to St. Bernard Parish and employed at least some of the
Isleños to work on their plantations.
Contact between the colonists of the Hispanic Americas is revealed in
the similarity in the phonologies and shared vocabulary items of the Isleños
and their Dominican neighbors.
Another considerable influence in
the Isleño colony was the arrival of the Acadian refugees. By 1785, the Acadian settlers numbered 765
in St. Bernard Parish alone, taking up residence along the same bayous and
towns where the Isleños had settled.
Furthermore, French-speaking priests from New Orleans welcomed their own
native speakers with religious services and education in French.
To this day, French and Spanish surnames populate the parish side by
side.
The Spanish government intended the
Isleño settlement to be agricultural, furnishing the immigrants with four
years' worth of supplies and farming implements (Workers of the Writers'
Program of the Work Projects Administration 1941: 499). The inhabitants continued to farm until the
first half of the nineteenth century, when fishing and trapping became more
profitable. "Truck farming"
was especially important, because it was the only time the Isleños went
"outside" to New Orleans to sell their crops. The rest of the Isleño pursuits were
isolating in nature, given that the community was not so distant from a
metropolitan area as it was difficult to reach by road travel alone.
In 1838, a newspaper account of the
marketing excursions of the Isleños (Prichard 1941: 45) mentions that
Spanish-speaking blacks also numbered among the Isleño population. MacCurdy (1950) speculates that these were
former slaves who had been brought from Santo Domingo with the sugar planters
and who quickly became emancipated once in Louisiana. This speculation is supported by Mintz (1971: 480), who proposes
that
Generally speaking, the
Hispano-Caribbean colonies were never dominated demographically by inhabitants
of African origin; moreover, in those
colonies movement from the social category of 'slaves' to that of 'free-men'
was almost always relatively rapid and relatively continuous.
Today, a small number of blacks
still live on the northern end of Bayou Terre au Boeuf in the town of Verette,
but none speaks Isleño or any dialect of Spanish, and in fact no one can
remember the last black person who ever did.
The number of Isleño speakers declined
in the early 1900's due to the fact that the Spanish (and Cajun French as well)
was prohibited in the public schools (Kammer 1941: 64). Says elder Frank "Niko" Melerine,
"When we were going to school, they wouldn't let us speak Spanish. They whipped and punished us." Alfredo J. Perez agrees, "When we were
kids, we were disallowed to speak Spanish.
They (teachers) would whip the living hell out of us." (Segura
1986: 48). As a result, the illiteracy
rate of the parish in 1930 was 12.9 percent (MacCurdy 1950: 24), and few
Isleños were literate in Spanish.
However, the oral tradition of the Isleño dialect remains, due to the
fact that the primary occupations of trapping and fishing "keep them
largely removed for long periods of time from English-speaking people"
(MacCurdy 1950: 24). Farming had
declined in popularity as the more lucrative seafood and fur industry and oil
and gas refineries were established.
1.2. Culture
Today, the marshland is receding on
account of the construction of the levees preventing silt from raising the
surrounding land. Since "the levee
system has cut off (St. Bernard Parish) from any alluvial deposits"
(Kammer 1941: 22), the available farmland is rapidly shrinking as the Gulf
waters move inland. Says Irvan Perez,
"Lo más importante en la vida de los
isleños es su bote." ('The
most important thing in the life of the Isleños is their boat.') The majority of the Isleños in the 1980's
work in the fishing industry: trawling
from shrimp, oysters, and crab constitutes the bulk of their business. No speaker is monolingual in Isleño and few
speakers under age 30 are fluent in the Isleño dialect. "Pretty soon, our generation, we're
going to be gone," laments Antonio "Chi Chi" Lopez, "and
that's going to be it. It's going to
disappear." (Segura 1986:
48). The future of the Isleño dialect
is not hopeless, however. The
recently-opened Isleño Museum in Jean Lafitte National Historical Park, and the
Spanish Cultural Heritage Society are two indications that the modern-day
Isleños are working to preserve their ancestral folkways and speech.
1.3. Social Criteria for Creole Formation
The sociocultural matrix in which
the Isleños live has been favorable for the development of a Spanish-based
creole: a small Hispanic colony of
seventeenth-century Spanish speakers separated first from its metropolitan
language and later interacting with their French-speaking Acadian neighbors and
outside American English media. The
Isleños themselves call their speech español
criollo 'Creole Spanish' to which
they claim no relationship with any Central or South American dialect of
Spanish. Their speech resembles the
phonology of Caribbean Spanish dialects, especially the dialect spoken in the
Dominican Republic.
However, since phonology is the least reliable proof of creolization
(Bickerton and Escalante 1970: 256), other criteria will also be examined.
Mintz (1971) lists seven conditions
which foster the generation of a creole.
He states,
In my view, Caribbean
creole languages were produced under particular historical circumstances,
including: (1) the repeopling of empty
lands; (2) by more than two different
groups; (3) one of which was smaller
and socially dominant; (4) the other of
which was larger, socially subordinate, and included native speakers of two or
more languages; (5) under conditions in
which the dominant group initiates the speaking of a pidgin that becomes common
to both groups—that is, conditions under which the dominant group, at least is
bilingual, and the subordinate group multilingual; and, (6) there is no established linguistic continuum including
both the pidgin and the native language of the dominant group; and, (7) the
subordinate group cannot maintain its original languages, either because the
number of speakers of any one of its languages are insufficient, or because
social conditions militate against such perpetuation, or for both reasons.
Let us consider the historical
circumstances surrounding the foundation of the Isleño community in Louisiana,
using Mintz's conditions as guidelines.
(1) The Isleños migrated to
Louisiana to fill the colony with Spanish-speaking settlers. While the land was not "empty" it
was certainly underpopulated. The
Canary Island colonists were used to reinforce Spanish rule over the previous
French and British colonists. (2) The Isleños are composed of descendants from
the Canary Islands, with a later addition of sugar planters from the Dominican
Republic and Spanish sailors who jumped ship in New Orleans. Southern Louisiana certainly qualifies as a
land peopled by more that two groups:
Acadian French, British, and Isleño communities were established in the
marshlands.
(3) and (4) However, neither the
Isleños nor the Acadians were socially dominant or multilingual. Especially in the twentieth century, the
Isleño community is both small and largely socially uninvolved with the larger
"outside" American population in Louisiana. (5) Even if the Isleños
are technically socially subordinate to the mainstream U.S. population (a claim
which they would vigorously deny), the dominant American group never became
bilingual, although the Isleño speech does incorporate vocabulary from other
linguistic groups. Furthermore, the
Isleño community cannot be considered either large or multilingual. (6)
Since the Isleños have separated themselves ethnically (if not
geographically) from the majority of Americans in Louisiana, no linguistic
continuum exists between the Isleño speech and American English. (7)
The Isleños are attempting to preserve their original language even
though social conditions "dissolve the underpinnings of
their way of life," (Segura 1986: 48) and the number of native speakers is
also becoming insufficient for survival.
As we can see, the Isleño history
posseses only about half of the circumstances necessary to precipitate the
formation of a creole. An important
factor may be that while the Isleños were composed of at least three different
groups—Canary Island recruits, Dominican sugar planters and their black slaves,
and later Spanish sailors—they rapidly cohered into a single ethnic identity
against the U.S. majority. Instead of
developing a creole for communication, the immigrants to the group adopted the
Isleño dialect as part of their in-group membership.
The reasons why no clearly-defined
Hispanic creole arose in Louisiana (or in the entire Hispanic Caribbean) have
only tentative explanations. Mintz (1971: 489) believes that "cultural
homogenization" was the primary cause:
any subordinate group (for example, African slaves) rapidly intermingled
with Hispanic settlers to become cultural equals. Heath (1972:22) states that Castilianization was as immediate as
colonization due to the belief of the times that "language is the perfect
instrument of empire" (Hanke 1959: 8).
Any superiority of one group was thus lost in this language leveling
process. Hence, no pidgin (and
consequently no creole) was necessary for long-term communication, and the
local dialect of Spanish came to prevail.
Another important factor was the considerable length of Spanish rule in
the Caribbean: nearly a century of
unchallenged control (Mintz 1971: 492).
While the Spanish governed Lousiana for only 39 years (1764-1803), the
Isleños remained relatively untouched by U.S. social forces until the beginning
of the twentieth century (Smith and Hitt 1952: 41).
1.4. Correlates to
Other Hispanic Creoles
Comparing the Isleño social matrix
with that of Papiamentu in Curaçao and Palenquero of Colombia reveals the lack
of sociocultural indications which would foster the development of a
creole. When the Dutch seized the
islands off the northern coast of Venezuela, they turned Curaçao into an entrepôt for other slaving communities
in the Dutch system. A small
superordinate group of Dutch administrators and Portuguese Sephardic Jews used
Papiamentu in order to communicate with the enormous number of incoming African
slaves and also to converse with each other because they spoke mutually
unintelligible languages. Unlike
Isleño, Papiamentu was used to interact between the two socially stratified
groups. The tiny, yet socially dominant
set of speakers became at least bilingual, and today Papiamentu speakers come
from 61 nationalities. The Isleño
speech never spread beyond the St. Bernard minority and today is used as a
marker for their particular ethnic identity.
In Colombia, Palenquero developed as
a creole when fugitive African slaves from all parts of the Hispanic colony in
Colombia established a fortress in the jungle.
This maroon community became a stronghold for other African escapees,
and a language developed for teaching the children of the various factions,
although the phoneme inventory resembles Colombian Spanish (Bickerton and
Escalante 1970: 255). The telling
factor here is the ethnic diversity in the backgrounds of the former
slaves: while some may have learned
Spanish, within their own community a larger method of communication was
required. This is in direct contrast to
the Isleño situation: although isolated
like the Palenqueros, the Isleños were all basically Spanish-speaking people
(albeit from different dialect areas), and Spanish was common to all.
It seems, then, that Isleño does not
have the crucial socio-historical prerequisites for formulating a creole: one small, socially level group with
essentially the same ethnic identity and no interaction with a superstrate
group.
2. Linguistic Criteria
2.1. Defining a Creole
Judging a language by social and
historical forces alone does not render an accurate representation of a creole,
however. Creoles may develop as a
result of a particular set of circumstances;
however, these circumstances may
not signal the development of a creole in other geographical areas. That is, the development of a creole is only
a probability, given a set of favorable sociohistorical circumstances (Rickford
1977: 192). Therefore, using syntactic
and morphological criteria on synchronic data is useful in deciding the status
of a special speech pattern.
The term "creole" here
will be defined as a language developed from a pidgin into a "full-fledged
complete language" (Meijer and Muysken 1977: 30)—one with an expanded and
complex lexicon, syntax, phonology, and morphology—because the interacting
social groups in this contact situation had no other communication system in
common. The native use by children born
into the contact situation is also considered a part of the definition of
"creole" (Todd, 1984; Holm,
1988). In this paper, I will use the
term "creoloid" to describe the data so as not to pre-judge the
structures as part of a creole language.
I don not wish to imply that Isleño borrowed these features from a
creole or developed these structures as part of the evolution into a creole,
nor even that all creole languages have these features. Therefore, I will use the term
"creoloid" ("like a creole") to avoid these
connotations.
Let us examine the word
"creole" as used by Isleños today to describe themselves. "Creole" in this context most
likely refers to a variety of Spanish which did not come from the Iberian
Peninsula but rather developed in the Americas (or came from the Canary
Islands). In this case
"creole" means "home grown", as in creole tomatoes or a
Creole person. Wilson (1941) states,
"The word does not connote a person with Negro blood, as has been
misrepresented by persons throughout the United States. When we speak of a Creole we refer to a
person of French and Spanish descent..."
Therefore, español criollo is
not a definition of the Isleño speech but a statement of its location and heritage. Secondly, Isleño has been called "the
Spanish of Cervantes" (Segura 1986: 46) to emphasize its antiquity and
relative uninvolvedness with Latin American (especially Mexican) Spanish. However, "the language of
Cervantes," which did come from the Iberian Peninsula, seems to be a
popular idiom used to describe the beauty and literary value of Spanish as a
whole (Entwistle 1936: 256).
2.2. Theoretical Criteria
Hall (1966) lists six morphological
and syntactic criteria which determine whether a language can be considered a
pidgin. Briefly, these are: (1) lack of copula in equational
sentences; (2) serialization of nouns
or verbs; (3) lack of articles; (4) generalized third person pronoun used as
a direct object; (5) few or no
inflectional suffixes, and; (6) a small
inventory of prepositions. These
criteria also form the basis for Taylor's (1971) criteria for creoles, although
Lawton (1971: 193) cautions, "In general, there is no hard evidence to
support the thesis that creolized languages emerged from pidgins...".
Taylor (1971: 294) outlines twelve
"lexical affinities" which many creoles feature in their
grammar. Rather than using the
"affinities" as a measurement for what constitutes a creole, Taylor
shows the featural similarities between members of a set of creoles based on a
European language. These twelve points
are:
(1) the third person
plural pronoun serves as the nominal pluralizer.
(2) a combination of
the markers of past and future expresses the conditional tense.
(3) the word
"give" also functions as the date preposition "to" or
"for".
(4) phrasal
"which thing/person/time/place?" are employed to express
"what?", "who?", "when?", "where?".
(5a) a prepositional
phrase is employed to express the possessive absolute ("mine",
"ours", "the man's").
(5b) a nominal phrase
is employed in the same manner.
(6) the demonstrative
pronoun is postposed to its referent ("house this").
(7) the definite
article is postposed to its referent.
(8) the pronominal
determinant is postposed to his referent ("house my").
(9)
"(my)body" serves to express "(my)self".
(10a) the
iterative/habitual function is merged with the completive.
(10b) the
iterative/habitual function is merged with the progressive.
(10c) the
iterative/habitual function is merged with the future.
(11) na is employed as a general
locative: "at, by, from, in, on,
to".
(12) ma is employed as disjunctive
"but".
In addition, Hancock (1986) proposes
several other features common to many creole languages: morphological innovations and semantic extensions
in the lexicon; particles and free
morphemes showing tense/aspect and other inflections; negation with a simple preverbal particle; collapse of aspects; restructuring of the verbal paradigm; leveling of irregular verb forms, and; serialization of verbs with no interceding
prepositions or particles.
All of these points together create
a framework of the salient features for most creoles, with which we may compare
Isleño speech. However, the
"critical mass" of concurrent features has never been
established; that is, how many features
a language must exhibit before it is called a creole has not been
calculated. If a language has 50
percent of the features outlined, for example, is that amount enough to make it
a creole? Taken in this light, a simple
ticking off of criteria may not suffice, and I will reserve judgment until both
the linguistic and the historical evidence can be considered together.
3. Linguistic Features of Isleño
3.1. Phonology
The phonology of the Isleños can be
linked diachronically to the Spanish dialects of Santo Domingo and the Canary
Islands, and ultimately to Andalusia in Spain.
For example, the aspiration of syllable-final /s/—[ehpañól] español
'Spanish', and [lohihléñoh] los isleños 'the islanders'—is a salient characteristic of Caribbean Spanish
(Guitart 1983: 155) and can also be found in Andalusian Spanish (Lope Blanch
1968: 123). The assimilation of /r/ to
the [l] of the following enclitic pronoun—[matállo] matarlo 'to kill him/it', [yeválla] llevarla 'to carry her/it'—is a telling feature of certain Dominican
dialects which can be traced to Andalusian Spanish, although this phonological
process is not as widespread in Isleño speech.
Isleño phonology has other phonetic variations which link it to Puerto
Rican Spanish, a proposed Caribbean creole (Lawton 1971: 193), as well as to
other Caribbean dialects:
syllable-final /r/ becoming [h], as in
[pwéhta] puerta 'door', or deletion
of /r/ in infinitives to let the pitch accent signal its function, as in [dormí]
dormir 'to sleep' and [morí] morir
'to die'; intervocalic and
word-final /d/ deletion, as in [enka∂enáo] encadenado 'padlocked' and [uhté] usted
'you'.
Several interesting phonetic details
of Isleño speech can be compared to Palenquero. Firstly, initial /b v/ are realized as [g] in certain words, such
as [gwéno] bueno 'good'. Secondly, intervocalic /d/ is deleted, as
in [too] todo 'all'.
Thirdly, word-final infinitival /r/ is deleted, in words like [kusiná]
cocinar 'to cook'.
The fact that Palenquero shares important dialect features with
Caribbean Spanish varieties as well as Isleño leads Bickerton and Escalante
(1970: 262) to suggest that these are descendant of a Spanish-based proto-creole
spoken in the Caribbean in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
The phonetic features of Isleño show
their ancestry to Caribbean Spanish and in Andalusian speech. Lapesa (1964) states,
There can no longer be
any doubt as to the Andalusian origin of some of the most peculiar features of
American pronunication: seseo, which is the most general
one; very probably yeísmo; certainly, even
though not found throughout American, the confusion of final r and l; the aspiration of final s...It goes without
saying that American Spanish is not only a variety of Andalusian. Whatever is Andaluz or from southern Spain
is only one of the elements which entered into its make up...
While Isleño phonology may not be as
complex as that of Puerto Rican Spanish, it shares enought dialect variation to
be considered with the other Hispanic Caribbean creoles, even if not defined as
such.
3.2. The Lexicon
3.2.1. Innovations
Morphological innovation is one
important aspect of a creole. The
Isleños, when faced with an unknown object to be labeled, prefer to borrow its
name from the Louisiana French of their Acadian neighbors rather than invent a
word of their own. Most of the
Hispanicized French words are nouns, "the great majority (of which) are
terms for flora and fauna, especially birds and fish" (MacCurdy 1950:
56). For example,
zenzen <—
La.Fr. zenzen 'baldpate duck'
patasá <—
La.Fr. patassa 'sunfish, perch'
chaque <—
La.Fr. choc 'blackbird'
dogrí <—
La.Fr. deau gris 'canvasback duck'
congó <—
La.Fr. congo 'water moccasin'
Borrowings are rendered into the
Isleño dialect using the closest approximates of Spanish phonology and
spelling. Isleño has no morphological
innovations in the true sense of the definition, but instead uses compound words
made up from Spanish, French, and English morphemes. Some examples are in Table 1.
Isleño does make use of calques,
however. Says Hancock (1986),
"Application of a metropolitan word to its closest cognate in creole is
common in all settlement-type situations." The calques in Isleño are derived not only from Spanish, but also
from French, Portuguese, English, and Louisiana French (as noted above). Some examples of semantic extension are in
Table 2.
Only a few words could be traced to
the indigenous cultures of the Caribbean.
See Table 3.
3.2.2 Etymology
In an Isleño dictionary of 693
words, 67 percent were derived from Spanish;
20 percent from French (12 percent from standard French and 8 percent
from Louisiana French); 4 percent from
Portuguese; 3 percent from
English; 1 percent total from Carib,
Taino, Nahuatl, Quechua, and Tupí; and
4 percent of unknown origin (Figure 1).
The Isleño lexicon shows a small mix
of other languages' influences besides Spanish, which is not precisely
congruent to the usual status of creoles.
Hancock (1986) remarks, "For almost any creole (with a few
exceptions), the immediate source of the vocabulary is one language." Nearly
a third of the Isleño dictionary contains words from sources outside Spanish.
The majority of the Spanish
vocabulary, and most of the Portuguese, can be traced to the Canary Island
dialect of Spanish. Regionalisms and
archaisms also point to Santo Domingo as a place of origin. For example, see Table 4.
The fact that all the Portuguese
terms are no longer in current use is not surprising if we consider that most
came into the Isleño dialect through the Canary Islands in the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries (Millares, 1924).
Although we may assume that Andalusia can be credited for supplying some
vocabulary items to Isleño (since it also supplies some dialect features), most
of the vocabulary terms can be traced back only as far as the Canary
Islands. MacCurdy (1950) states that
the archaisms from Santo Domingo do not show any particular relationship to
Andalusia; and Henríquez Ureña (1940)
adds that true regionalisms are not used in any of the Antilles dialects of
Spanish. Nevertheless, the connection
of the Isleño dialect with the Canary Islands is clear.
3.3. Morphology
The verbal system of Isleño has not
been well documented, due to the difficulty of eliciting some of the more
complex verb forms. The verbal paradigm
and pronominal system most closely resemble standard Spanish and have few of
the idiosyncracies which Papiamentu and Palenquero show. Isleño uses standard Spanish suffixes to
indicate person, number, tense, and aspect on verbs and nominals, and has a full range of interrogative
pronouns and locational prepositions.
No restructuring or other collapse of the verbal paradigm has been
discovered in Isleño.
The only creole feature which Isleño
contains is a modest leveling of irregular verb forms. The stem-changing O>UE verbs of standard
Spanish (poder >
puedo 'I am able'; volar >
vuelo 'I fly') have become completely regular in
the paradigm: yo volo 'I fly'; yo
podo 'I am able'. Several verbs have evened out into
regularity in the preterit tense as well, for example, andar 'to
go': yo andé 'I went'. However, no other major verbal changes have
been noted.
3.4. Syntax
Serialization is a common creole
feature which is not found in Isleño.
Whereas Palenquero may juxtapose verbs without intervening particles (miní kombeksá 'come talk'), Isleño requires an intervening preposition: comienza
a dale 'start to give it'. Possessive noun phrases in Palenquero are
usually paratactic as well (kakara gwebo 'eggshell'); but Isleño requires an intervening preposition: nudo
de guía 'bowline knot'. Thus, serialization does not occur in any
form in Isleño.
With regard to the "lexical
affinities" of Taylor (1971), neither a prepositional phrase nor a noun
phrase serving as the possessive absolute has been attested in Isleño. (Both Palenquero (di mi 'mine') and
Papiamentu (ri mi 'mine') exhibit this feature, however.) Isleño does not postpose the demonstrative
article to the noun phrase, as Papiamentu does (e kas aki 'this house'),
nor does it postpose the definite article or possessive pronoun.
A tally of the creoloid features
which Isleño contains shows that it fares poorly beside Papiamentu and
Palenquero. Only morphological
extensions and innovations and verbal paradigm leveling can be considered to be
linguistic creoloid features.
4. Conclusion
4.1. Sociolinguistic Evidence
From this investigation, it seems
that Isleño does not share many of the features commonly associated with
creoles. Although the historical
circumstances have been conducive to the development of a creole in
southeastern Louisiana, a few important factors are missing. Firstly, the Isleño community is not highly
stratified with a small, superior group governing a larger laborer group. Instead, all Isleños leveled into a relative
equality upon reaching Louisiana and upon establishing their agricultural
communities. This "cultural
homogenization" permitted rapid assimilation into the group, with no
intermediate pidgin being necessary.
Thus, any African slaves promoted to freemen who might have spoken a
creole or pidgin quickly adapted to Spanish as the in-group tool of
communication. Evidence for this idea
comes from the fact that in 1838, newspaper accounts reported that the blacks
of the Isleño group spoke Spanish. The
end result is that even though sociolinguistic parallels exist between the
Isleño dialect and other Hispanic creoles, important divergences make it
different.
4.2. Linguistic Evidence
The phonology of the Isleños is the
most unusual and unique feature of the dialect, closely resembling the dialect
of the Canary Islands and of Santo Domingo and sharing some interesting
features with Puerto Rican Spanish. The
aspiration of syllable-final /s/ and final pitch accent on infinitives are
properties which mark the Isleño speech as a definite link to Caribbean
Spanish.
While morphological innovations are
rare, regionalism and archaisms as well as semantic extensions connect the
Isleños to their linguistic counterparts in the Dominican Republic and
especially to the Canary Islands off the coast of West Africa. An inventory of the vocabulary of the
Isleños shows that two-thirds is Spanish-based, the rest being made up of
French, Portuguese, English and Amerindian stock. There is no evidence of restructuring or collapse of aspects in
the verbal paradigm of Isleño, and consequently no discernible tense/aspect
particles or free morphemes. Although
irregular verb forms have leveled out into regularity, the verbal system is
still the most convincing argument for Isleño being a dialect variation of
Spanish. Both the syntax and the
morphology closely resemble standard Spanish, with only a few modifications in
structure.
Based on the amount of evidence so
far, creoloid structures in Isleño are rare, although the sociolinguistic and
cultural environment were favorable for such developments. The difficulty in reconciling the unusual aspects
of the Isleño dialect may not be in the singularity of the dialect but in the
widespread variance of Spanish. Says
Entwistle (1936: 231),
There have been forces
in operation, and there still are, which tend to make Spanish no longer one
speech but a family of languages in America, similar to the Romance
family: isolation, illiteracy, novel
surroundings, the presence of other languages...
All of these forces interact to make
the Isleño dialect an original addition to the Spanish "family of
languages."
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