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Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages: Online-First Articles

Adjective phrase fronting in the Malacca Creole Portuguese noun phrase

A vestige of South Asian substrate?

| University of Saint Joseph

This paper is concerned with the grammar and origins of a focusing rule in Malacca Creole Portuguese, (MCP) whereby an adjectival phrase (AdjP) may be extracted from the right branch of a noun phrase and fronted to a position prior to the determiner. It begins by describing the characteristics of AdjP-fronting in MCP, according to determiner type, syntactic role of the fronted adjective, syntactic role of the determiner phrase, and the structural complexity of the AdjP. Subsequently, it considers the presence of AdjP-fronting in 19th and 20th century data of the Creole Portuguese of Tugu/Batavia, Mangalore, Cannanore, Cochin and Sri Lanka. Building on these comparisons, it then addresses the potential influences of Dravidian (Malayalam, Tamil) and Indo-Aryan (Bangla) substrates, and Dutch and English adstrates. The paper concludes that AdjP-fronting in MCP may be added to the list of typological features that demonstrate the connection between the southern Indo-Portuguese creoles and the Malayo-Portuguese creoles.

Keywords: adjective fronting, degree fronting, Malacca Creole Portuguese, Papiá Kristang, Asian Creole Portuguese, typology
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Background: Asian Creole Portuguese
    • 2.1The setting for development of MCP
    • 2.2Methodology and data
  • 3.Adjective fronting in Malacca Creole Portuguese
  • 4.AdjP-fronting in other Asian Creole Portuguese languages?
  • 5.The role of substrates and adstrates
    • 5.1The Dutch and English adstrates
    • 5.2Synthesis
  • 6.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 16 October 2023
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/jpcl.00123.ala
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