Language Contact in Colombia: A Pilot Study of Criollo Sanandresano

Abstract

The present linguistic situation of Colombia counts with more than 68 indigenous languages from different languages families. These indigenous languages are mostly spoken in bordering regions of the country, as well as in settlements located in diverse ecological regions. One of these indigenous languages is the Criollo Sanandresano (SAC) spoken in the islands of San Andrés, Providencia and Santa Catalina, located on the north-west Atlantic coast of Colombia, with the status of official language since 1991 (Article 10, Constitution of Colombia). Criollo Sanandresano, the vehicular language here in informal conversations, is an English-based creole that developed in the seventeenth century and emerged after a process of language contact with English (superstrate), West African languages (from the Atlantic slave trade) and Spanish (substrate languages). Following Thomason (2001: 63), we assume that in situations of language contact all language levels can be affected and "anything" can be adopted from the languages in contact. Our aim in this paper is to describe the current situation of Criollo Sanandresano and to analyze it from a linguistic point of view, in order to see whether the acknowledged view that creoles have a simpler grammar (e.g. lack of inflectional morphological markers, development of analytical particles, etc.) and more internal variability than older, more established languages holds (McWhorter 2005, Thomason 2001). This analysis will be based on a selection of texts available at the Instituto Caro y Cuervo and it will pay special attention to a selection of morphosyntactic variables in the light of contact linguistics and creolization processes.