The Indo-Portuguese Creole of Diu: ‘participant', ‘alien' or ‘observer' of the Indian linguistic area?

1. The Indo-Portuguese Creole of Diu: ‘participant', ‘alien' or ‘observer' of the Indian linguistic area? SCONLI, February 19th, 2009 Hugo C. Cardoso Univ. of Amsterdam

2. Indo-Portuguese? • The product(s) of contact between Indian civilization(s) and Portuguese culture. • Contact between Portugal and India (+ Sri Lanka, + Bangladesh) from 1498 onwards. • Coastal contact, wide geographic distribution. • Multifaceted: Indo-Portuguese

3. Indo-Portuguese? • The product(s) of contact between Indian civilization(s) and Portuguese culture. • Contact between Portugal and India (+ Sri Lanka, + Bangladesh) from 1498 onwards. • Coastal contact, wide geographic distribution. • Multifaceted: Architecture Indo-Portuguese Art Language People Cuisine etc. etc. History

4. Indo-Portuguese creoles • A number of Portuguese-based creole languages spoken in the South Asia region. • Portuguese colonisation in India from ± 1500 until 1961 (Goa, Daman and Diu). • Several varieties, geographically discrete, reflecting different patterns of linguistic contact (different local adstrate). • Most varieties extinct:

5. Indo-Portuguese: some recorded varieties

6. Indo-Portuguese: nowadays

7. IP at present • Daman (U.T.): ± 4000 speakers, incl. children; • Korlai (MH): ± 760 speakers, entirely Christian village; • Diu (U.T.): ± 170 speakers, incl. children; • Cannanore/Kannur (KL): 6 elderly speakers; • Cochin/Kochi (KL): 1 elderly speaker; • Dadra and Nagar-Haveli (U.T.): ? (awaiting prospection); • Sri Lanka: ? (last available data from 1980s).

8. Formation of IP creoles • Chronology: early in the colonisation period (i.e.16th century) - records of mixed Indian and European offspring as early as 1516. • Linguistic contact involving: a) South Asian languages – Gujarati, Marathi, Malayalam, Tamil, Sinhala, Bengali, etc. b) Portuguese (Pidgin?)‏ • 16th- through 19th-century documents refer to role of Portuguese for communication in Asia; common epithet “corrupt/broken Portuguese” (coll. Lopes 1936).

9. Diu Indo-Portuguese

10. Diu • Island territory off the coast of Gujarat –Saurashtra region. • Centrally administered as a Union Territory along with Daman, Dadra and Nagar-Haveli (geographically discrete). • Present-day population: ± 40,000. • Population break-up: Hindus (± 37,000, ± 93%), Muslims (± 3,400, ± 6%), Christians (± 250, ± 0.6%), Jains (minority).

11. Map of Diu

12. Diu Indo-Portuguese • Contact with (Kathiawadi) Gujarati. • (Colonial presence in Diu: 1535 - 1961)‏ • Spoken by members of the Hindu, Muslim and Christian communities. • Native speakers: estimate 170, all Christian. • In younger generation, knowledge restricted to the Christian community. • Co-exists in Diu with standard Portuguese (main lexifier), contact with Daman IP.

13. Questions and method • To what extent does the Indo-Portuguese creole of Diu (DIP) align with its neighbouring language(s) in typological terms, and how much of it was brought about by convergence with Gujarati? • How does this relate to the proposed Indian linguistic area (ILA)? • Step 1: literature review for collation of features recognised as pertaining to the ILA. • Step 2: ascertaining the presence, absence and/or contingent effects of these features in DIP.

14. Selected ILA features

15. DIP alignment

16. DIP alignment

17. Stress Stress is non-contrastive and perceptually weak in various Indian languages (leading to disagreement about its conceptual relevance). In DIP, stress falls consistently on the last syllable – it is therefore not lexically determined and not contrastive. [In etymological terms, the DIP stressed syllable normally corresponds to the stressed syllable in Portuguese, and any subsequent syllable did not survive: ex. PT alPARca > DIP alPAK; PT MÚsica > DIP MUZ]

18. Word order 1 Like Portuguese, the basic word order in DIP simple declaratives is SVO, and in ditransitive constructions the IO occurs after the DO: • yo tə kuziŋa aroz ku pex. 1s IPFV.NPST cook-INF rice and fish 'I'm cooking fish and rice.' • ns de-w diŋer pə igrej. 1P give-PST money DAT church 'We gave money to the church.'

19. Word order 2 There is however a high degree of flexibility when it comes to the placement of constituents in actual speech, like in most members of the ILA: • tud yo sab faz-e. all 1s know.NPST make-INF 'I can do everything.'

20. Word order 3 A preverbal focus position (reminiscent of e.g. Gujarati) is operative and often results in atypical word order: • də nĩge yo nə tə fik-a med. of nobody 1s NEG IPFV.NPST become-INF fear 'I am not scared of anyone.'

21. Word order 4 The SVO tendency and preverbal focus are contradictory if O is focussed, and in certain cases combine leading to predicate doubling: • ãt kastl -r prizãw -r nə? before fort COP-PST prison COP-PST REQ 'Earlier the fort was a prison, nə?'

22. Word order 5 Departures from the prototypical word order often respond to constituent ellipsis, which is as unconstrained in DIP as it is in most members of the ILA: • kume nã te nə? pb mem nə? food NEG have.NPST REQ poor EMPH REQ '[I] have no food, nə? [I am] very poor, nə?'

23. Word order 6 DIP (and Portuguese) use prepositions where most ILA members use postpositions: • DIP: ku kuyr; nə bastãt paiz • PT: com colher; em vários países with spoon in various country(ies) • GJ: camci-thi; juda juda des-o-mã colher-INS diferente diferente país-PL-LOC The exception is the optional postposition of part of a complex adposition such as jũt də '(together) with' (e.g. jũt də Leslie >də Lesliejũt > Lesliejũt)‏

24. Word order 7 Concerning the order of possessor and possessee, DIP is quite strict in that pronominal possessors precede the head noun and lexical possessors follow; there is however a budding tendency to also place lexical possessors in prenominal position: • də tt kaz jə bẽze-w? of T. house already bless-PST 'Has [he] already blessed Tt's house?'

25. Standard of comparison In Portuguese, comparative constructions follow the structure: Comparee-V-(Mod)Parameter-COMP-Standard. In various Indian languages, the standard of comparison is case-marked with an oblique case. In Gujarati, for instance, the structure of the comparative is either: Comparee-AblStandard-Parameter-V or AblStandard-Comparee-Parameter-V.

26. Standard of comparison In DIP, the structure of the comparative is: Comparee-V-(Mod)Parameter-COMP-AblStandard. • galiŋ may barat ki də karner. chicken COP.NPST more cheap COMP ABL mutton 'Chicken is cheaper than mutton.' DIP therefore combines a Portuguese-type structure with the ILA feature of oblique marking on the standard of comparison.

27. Dative subjects Used in DIP when the subject is non agentive: experiencer, subjects of sensory verbs or with no control over the action are Dative-marked: • a mĩ tə sĩt-i fri. DAT 1s.OBL IPFV.NPST feel-INF cold 'I feel cold.' • pə l təme aprende-w purtəgez ku ns. DAT 3sf also learn-PST portuguese with 1p 'She also learnt Portuguese from us.'

28. Participant, alien, observer?

29. Participant, alien, observer? • The question of the participation of DIP in the ILA is a non-question, in the sense that the established members of the ILA are not required to fulfill all the most salient typological requirements. • The comparative study highlighted the typological duality of DIP as well as its flux (tending towards convergence with Gujarati). • On a sociopolitical level, realising commonalities of DIP and the ILA may be relevant to legitimise it as a language of India.

30. Thanks.