Doctoral Dissertation Research: Patterns of variable grammatical marking in Palenquero creole

克里奥尔语研究提出了关于克里奥尔语的结构和起源的相互矛盾的假设——基于两种或两种以上先前语言的语言——最突出的是与殖民地语言的接触、基板影响和普遍的语言过程。以西班牙语为基础的克里奥尔语是哥伦比亚圣巴西利奥德帕伦克的非裔西班牙裔社区所说的。该项目考察了Palenquero不同的形式，以测试关于它们的功能和起源的假设。在名词短语领域，研究的重点是指示冠词“e”，这是与西班牙语接触的结果，是基孔戈语的反射，或者是语言内部指示冠词语法化的产物。同时，在言语范畴领域，本研究探讨了时态方面表达是否作为语法标记及其可能的来源。由于克里奥尔语的形式可能与那些假定的供体语言有表面上的相似性，在关于它们的功能和起源的假设之间进行裁决需要比较它们的分布模式。将采用变分比较法。这些数据将是在对50名帕伦克语使用者的社会语言学访谈中收集的自然语言，并将被记录和转录。将为每个功能域提取1,500个令牌，为操作假设的因素编码，并提交给多变量分析。根据语法化理论的预测，本文将对西班牙语和Kikongo语中变体形式的限制与明显相似形式的限制进行比较。在社区层面，这项研究将提供语言描述，可用于为当地学校编写教材。此外，该项目的创新之处在于培训社区成员修改抄本，这为社区成员参与其语言的科学研究提供了机会。更广泛地说，本研究有助于记录被社会污名化的非裔西班牙语变体，并证明其在语言变异结构中的系统性。

Creole studies have advanced competing hypotheses about the structure and origins of creoles--languages based on two or more prior languages--most prominently contact with a colonial language, substrate influence, and universal linguistic processes. The Spanish-based creole Palenquero is spoken in the Afro-Hispanic community of San Basilio de Palenque, Colombia. This project examines variably occurring forms in Palenquero in order to test hypotheses about their functions and provenance. In the domain of the noun phrase, the focus of study is the demonstrative-article 'e' as the result of contact with Spanish, a reflex from the substrate Kikongo, or the product of language-internal demonstrative-to-article grammaticalization. In parallel, in the domain of verbal categories, this research investigates whether tense-aspect expressions function as grammatical markers and their possible sources. Since creole forms may share surface similarity to those of presumed donor languages, adjudicating between hypotheses about their functions and origins requires comparison of their distribution patterns. The Variationist Comparative Method will be employed. The data will be naturalistic speech gathered in sociolinguistic interviews with 50 Palenquero speakers, which will be recorded and transcribed. 1,500 tokens for each functional domain will be extracted, coded for factors operationalizing hypotheses, and submitted to multivariate analysis. The constraints on variant forms will be compared with constraints on apparently similar forms in Spanish and Kikongo and in light of predictions from grammaticalization theory.At the level of the community, this study will offer linguistic descriptions which can serve in the development of educational materials for the local schools. Moreover, innovative in this project is the training of community members to revise transcriptions, which provides an opportunity for involving community members in the scientific study of their language. More generally, this study contributes to the documentation of Afro-Hispanic language varieties, which have been socially stigmatized, and to demonstrating their systematicity in the structure of linguistic variation.