Cover not available
Article published In:
Approaches to Variation in Creole Studies
Edited by Isabelle Léglise, Bettina Migge and Nicolas Quint
[Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages 36:1] 2021
► pp. 77–108

Synchronic variation in Sri Lanka Portuguese personal pronouns

| Universidade de Lisboa , Portugal
| Universidade de Lisboa , Portugal

This paper presents and discusses the instances of synchronic variation attested in the personal pronoun paradigm of modern Sri Lanka Portuguese, an endangered Portuguese-based creole spoken by relatively small communities scattered across Eastern and Northern Sri Lanka. Although Sri Lanka Portuguese has a long history of documentation dating from, at least, the beginning of the 19th century, only a few studies have explicitly reported cases of synchronic variation. This study aims, therefore, to fill that gap, by contributing to the description and explanation of patterns of variation relating to the personal pronoun paradigm as encountered in documentary data collected between 2015 and 2020, over several field trips to the districts of Ampara, Batticaloa, Jaffna, and Trincomalee. The nature of the variation observed in the data ranges from phonetic alternations to strategies of paradigm regularization and stylistic shrinkage, often revealing the effects of diachronic processes of variant competition and substitution. Combining the observed patterns of variation with surveyed linguistic trends of language shift, we propose that obsolescence may be responsible for some of the variability encountered in modern SLP personal pronouns, especially that associated with certain socially- or geographically-defined subsets of the speech community (viz. the younger generations and the speakers from Jaffna) characterized by advanced language loss.

Keywords: Sri Lanka Portuguese, personal pronouns, variation, endangered languages, language obsolescence
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Background
    • 2.1Personal pronouns, diachrony and language contact
    • 2.2Early accounts of SLP personal pronouns
    • 2.3Data and methodology
  • 3.Modern SLP personal pronouns
  • 4.Variation
    • 4.1Variable forms
    • 4.2Monomorphemic vs. bimorphemic forms
    • 4.3Honorificity
  • 5.Discussion
  • 6.Concluding remarks
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • Abbreviations
  • References
Published online: 25 March 2021
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/jpcl.00070.car
References
Aikhenvald, Alexandra Y.
2020 Language contact and endangered languages. In Anthony Grant (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Language Contact, 241–260. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Anon
1826 O Livro de oraçaõ commum e administraçaõ de os sacramentos, e outros ritos e ceremonias de a Igreja, conforme de o uso de a Igreja de Inglaterra: Juntamente com o Psalterio, ou Psalmo de David. London: G. Ellerton & J. Henderson.Google Scholar
1851 O evangelho conforme de Santo Mattheos. Traduzido ne Indo-Portugueza. London: R. Clay.Google Scholar
1863 O livro de oraçaõs usado ne greyas de Wesleyanos ne Ilha de Ceylon. Colombo: Officio Wesleyano.Google Scholar
Bakker, Peter
2006 The Sri Lanka Sprachbund: The newcomers Portuguese and Malay. In Yaron Matras, April McMahon & Nigel Vincent (eds.), Linguistic Areas: Convergence in Historical and Typological Perspective, 135–159. New York: Palgrave. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Benveniste, Emile
1971 Problems in general linguistics. Coral Gables, FL: University of Miami Press.Google Scholar
Berrenger
1811 A grammatical arrangement on the method of learning the corrupted Portuguese as spoken in India. Colombo: Frans de Bruin.Google Scholar
Bhat, D. N. S.
2004 Pronouns. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Callaway, John
1818 A vocabulary; with useful phrases, and familiar dialogues; in the English, Portuguese, and Cingalese Languages. Colombo: Wesleyan Mission Press.Google Scholar
1820 A vocabulary, in the Ceylon Portuguese, and English languages, with a series of familiar phrases. Colombo: Wesleyan Mission Press.Google Scholar
1823 A Ceylon-Portuguese and English Dictionary. Colombo: Wesleyan Mission Press.Google Scholar
Campbell, Lyle & Martha C. Muntzel
1989 The structural consequence of language death. In Nancy Dorian (ed.), Investigating Obsolescence: Studies in Language Contraction and Death, 181–196. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cardoso, Hugo C.
2007 Linguistic traces of colonial structure. In Eric Anchimbe (ed.), Linguistic identity in postcolonial multilingual spaces, 164–181. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.Google Scholar
2014 Factoring sociolinguistic variation into the history of Indo-Portuguese. Revista de Crioulos de Base Lexical Portuguesa e Espanhola 51. 87–114.Google Scholar
2017 Documentation of Sri Lanka Portuguese. London: SOAS, Endangered Languages Archive. [URL] (26 July 2019.)
Cardoso, Hugo C., Mahesh Radhakrishnan, Patrícia Costa & Rui Pereira
2019 Documenting modern Sri Lanka Portuguese In Pinharanda-Nunes, Mário & Hugo Cardoso (eds.), Documentation and Maintenance of Contact Languages from South Asia to East Asia (Language Documentation & Conservation Special Publication nr. 19), 1–33. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press.Google Scholar
Cardoso, Hugo C., Tjerk Hagemeijer & Nélia Alexandre
2015 Crioulos de base lexical portuguesa. In Maria Iliescu & Eugeen Roegiest (eds.), Manuel des Anthologies, Corpus et Textes Romans, 670–692. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Chandralal, Dileep
2010 Sinhala (London Oriental and African Language Library 15). Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Clements, J. Clancy
1990 Deletion as an indicator of SVO → SOV shift. Language Variation and Change 21. 103–133. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Dalgado, Sebastião Rodolfo
1900 Dialecto Indo-Português de Ceylão. Lisbon: Imprensa Nacional.Google Scholar
Fox, William Buckley
1819 A Dictionary in the Ceylon-Portuguese, Singhalese, and English Languages. Colombo: Wesleyan Mission Press.Google Scholar
Helmbrecht, Johannes
2003 Politeness Distinctions in Second Person Pronouns. In Friedrich Lenz (ed.), Deictic Conceptualization of Space, Time and Person, 185–202. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Ishiyama, Osamu
2019 Diachrony of Personal Pronouns in Japanese. A functional and cross-linguistic perspective (Current Issues in Linguistic Theory 344). Amsterdam/ Philadelphia: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Lyons, John
1977 Semantics, vol. 21. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Mansfield, John & James Stanford
2017 Documenting sociolinguistic variation in lesser-studied indigenous communities: Challenges and practical solutions. In Kristine A. Hildebrandt, Carmen Jany & Wilson Silva (eds.), Documenting Variation in Endangered Languages (Language Documentation & Conservation Special Publication 13), 116–136. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press.Google Scholar
Meyerhoff, Miriam
2017 Writing a linguistic symphony: Analyzing variation while doing documentation. Canadian Journal of Linguistics/Revue Canadienne de Linguistique 62(4). 525–549. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
McGilvray, Dennis
1982 Dutch Burghers and Portuguese mechanics: Eurasian ethnicity in Sri Lanka. Comparative Studies in Society and History 24(2). 235–263. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Nagy, Naomi
2009 The challenges of less commonly studied languages: Writing a sociogrammar of Faetar. In James Stanford & Dennis Preston (eds.), Variation in Indigenous Minority Languages, 397–417. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2017 Documenting variation in (endangered) heritage languages: How and why? In Kristine A. Hildebrandt, Carmen Jany & Wilson Silva (eds.), Documenting Variation in Endangered Languages (Language Documentation & Conservation Special Publication 13), 33–64. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press.Google Scholar
Newstead, Robert
1827 Um curto catichismo da Biblia, disposado em quarento divisaõs, todas as repostas per as perguntas sendo ne as palavras de a Santas Escrituras. Transl. of W. F. Lloyd. London: J.S. Hughes.Google Scholar
1852 O Novo Testamento de Nossa Senhor e Salvador Jesus Christo. Transl. of W. F. Lloyd. Colombo: Wesleyan Mission.Google Scholar
1871 Cantigas per adoraçaõ publico, em lingua portugueza de Ceylon. Colombo: Wesleyan Mission.Google Scholar
Nordhoff, Sebastian
2013 The current state of Sri Lanka Portuguese. Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages 28(2). 425–434. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Palosaari, Naomi & Lyle Campbell
2011 Structural aspects of language endangerment. In Peter Austin & Julia Sallabank (eds.), The Cambridge Handbook of Endangered Languages, 100–119. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Pereira, Rui
2019 Sri Lanka Portuguese: A sociolinguistic perspective. Paper presented at the 19th Annual Conference of the Association of Portuguese and Spanish-lexified Creoles & Summer Conference of the Society of Pidgin and Creole Linguistics. Faculdade de Letras da Universidade de Lisboa, June 17th.
Sasse, Hans-Jürgen
2001 Typological changes in language obsolescence. In Martin Haspelmath, Ekkehard König, Wulf Oesterreicher & Wolfgang Raible (eds.), Language Typology and Language Universals; An International Handbook, vol. 21, 1668–1677. Berlin/New York: Walter de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Sippola, Eeva
2018 Collecting and analysing creole data. In Wendy Ayres-Bennett & Janice Carruthers (eds.), Manual of Romance Sociolinguistics, 91–113. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Siewierska, Anna
2004 Person. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2013 Gender Distinctions in Independent Personal Pronouns. In Matthew Dryer & Martin Haspelmath (eds.), The World Atlas of Language Structures Online. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.Google Scholar
Schiffman, Harold F.
1999 A Reference Grammar of Spoken Tamil. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Smith, Ian
(coll.) 1973 Indo-Portuguese (Sri Lanka) (IRS01). PARADISEC. [URL] (27 July 2019.)
1977 Sri Lanka Creole Portuguese phonology. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University PhD dissertation.
1979a Convergence in South Asia: a creole example. Lingua 481- 193–222. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
1979b Substrata vs. universals in the formation of Sri Lanka Portuguese. Papers in Pidgin and Creole Linguistics 21. 183–200.Google Scholar
1984 The development of morphosyntax in Sri Lanka Portuguese. In Mark Sebba & Loreto Todd (eds.), York papers in Linguistics. York: University of York.Google Scholar
2013 Sri Lanka Portuguese. In Susanne M. Michaelis, Philippe Maurer, Martin Haspelmath & Magnus Huber (eds.) The Survey of Pidgin and Creole Languages, Vol. II (Portuguese-based, Spanish-based, and French-based Languages), 111–121. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
2016 The earliest grammars of Sri Lanka Portuguese. Papia 26(2). 237–281.Google Scholar
Tadmor, Uri
2009 Loanwords in the world’s languages: Findings and results. In Martin Haspelmath & Uri Tadmor (eds.), Loanwords in the World’s Languages: A Comparative Handbook, 55–75. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Tomás, Maria Isabel
1992 Os Crioulos Portugueses do Oriente; Uma Bibliografia. Macau: Instituto Cultural de Macau.Google Scholar