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Article published In:
Diachronica
Vol. 34:2 (2017) ► pp.219–252

Chocó Spanish double negation and the genesis of the Afro-Hispanic dialects of the Americas

| University of Texas at Austin | Freiburg Institute for Advanced Studies

Chocó Spanish is an Afro-Hispanic dialect spoken in the Pacific lowlands of Colombia. This variety is characterized by the presence of double-negative constructions (neg2) (i.e., yo no como no “I do not eat”), which have repeatedly been classified in the literature as the contemporary traces of a previous Afro-Portuguese creole stage for this vernacular. The present paper provides linguistic and sociohistorical evidence offering an alternative explanation. In particular, neg2 is analyzed as an archaic morphosyntactic trait which already existed in 15th–19th century Spanish and which has been preserved in Chocó Spanish and other conservative Afro-Hispanic vernaculars of Latin America.

Keywords: Chocó Spanish, double negation, Jespersen Cycle, creole genesis
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Literature review on Afro-Hispanic neg2 constructions
    • 2.1The (de)creolization perspective
    • 2.2The non-creole perspective
  • 3.An alternative explanation for Chocó Spanish neg2
  • 4.A sociohistorical sketch of Chocó
  • 5.Discussion and conclusion
  • Notes
  • Abbreviations
  • References
Published online: 20 July 2017
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/dia.34.2.03ses
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