The Chabacano Linguistic Communication: The Chabacano Language

Abstraction

The intent of this paper is to determine how new information takes nucleus statement places in the succeeding clauses and how these participants are tracked throughout the discourse. This survey will demo that in Chabacano-Caviteno, ( a ) lexicalisation is the most outstanding mention tracking device employed to track a given information, ( B ) pronominalization is used to disambiguate the referents in cases where there are more than one participant, and ( degree Celsius ) zero anaphora is utilized for state of affairss where there are no viing information to be tracked. I will besides reason that Chabacano-Caviteno indicates an ergative discourse form while bearing an accusatory form in its grammatical dealingss.

Introduction

Background

The Chabacano linguistic communication, technically known to other linguists as Philippine Creole Spanish ( Lipski 2003 ) , while earning growing on its figure of talkers in southern Philippines, unfortunately loses influence in Cavite City. Although there have been attempts from the talkers themselves to resuscitate the usage of this linguistic communication, it is hoped that this research will somehow contribute to the encouragement of the talkers to go on utilizing it, and of other research workers in analysing this linguistic communication.

Mention trailing is one of the most critical maps of linguistic communication, and languages exhibit astonishing characteristics in using this map ( Foley and Van Valin 1984 ) . The end of this survey is to clarify how Chabacano speakers track a specific participant in a discourse. By finding how a linguistic communication path mentions, a system of its discourse construction may be observed. In Du Bois ( 1987 ) , the ergative form of the grammatical dealingss in the Mayan linguistic communications was paralled with its discourse form which besides exhibits an ergative form. In Chabacano, nevertheless, grammatical dealingss are in the nominative-accusative form, so it is a considerable undertaking to find if its discourse form would besides exhibit an accusatory form or non.

This paper is subdivided into six parts. Section I comprises this debut, Section II gives the old plants on Chabacano linguistic communications in general, and the Chabacano-Caviteno in peculiar, Section III probes the nominative-accusative form of grammatical dealingss in Chabacano ; subdivision IV trades with the mention tracking devices of Chabacano ; subdivision V gives grounds to the ergativity of its discourse form, and the last subdivision, Section VI, shall reason this survey.

Methodology

The informations used in this survey are ( a ) five retellings of the Pear movie ( Chafe 1983 ) , and ( B ) two personal narratives ( See Appendix ) . In acquiring the pear narrative informations, sources were shown the movie and so asked to narrate what they have seen and these were audio-recorded. The recorded narrative was so replayed with every modulation units, and the storytellers themselves translated every word in their narrative into Tagalog, of which the research worker transcribed into a written text. The two personal narratives are besides transcribed in the same mode as mentioned above ; the informations were gathered on several trips to Cavite City.

Scope and Delimitations

It is non the purpose of the research worker to show a complete analysis of the discourse construction of CAV but merely to supply an explication of one facet of the linguistic communication. Even in this facet, which is, mention trailing and discourse form, many characteristics of the linguistic communication may hold been overlooked that would hold yielded different consequences. True, this may be due to the little measure of analyzed texts.

This survey is largely an application of the researches done by Du Bois ( 1987 ) and Nagaya ( 2006 ) . Analysis of the discourse form is limited to basic clause buildings and its relationships to each other because it contains the cardinal characteristics of a linguistic communication ‘s discourse construction. In 4.2 nevertheless, where I will speculate beyond basic clause buildings, we will see that basic clauses are of course grouped together to organize a individual coherent strings of actions or province that for the intents of this survey I will merely label as “discourse event.”

CAV has no standard writing system used by everyone. Some people prefer to spell in the Spanish manner, while others spell following the Tagalog spelling system. For illustration, the word glossed as D: D ( Demonstrative Distal ) is spelled as either “aquel” or “akel” depending on one ‘s penchant. In this paper, the Tagalog manner of spelling is by and large employed, but there are some words that are still spelled in the Spanish mode.

Footings and Abbreviations

CAV—Chabacano-Caviteno linguistic communication

basic construction—refers to a clause where there is merely one predicate, and can either be transitive or intransitive, and where there is/are nucleus statement ( s ) either morphologically realized or non.

morphologically realized arguments—arguments in a given building that are lexically present ; as contrasted to zero-arguments or lexically non present statements

Mention tracking device—the manner with which information are tracked after the first reference through the discourse

P— ( predicate ) normally a verb occupies this place but in many cases this may besides be occupied by predicate noun phrases such as NPs or adjectives.

S—the merely statement of an intransitive building. This is the beginning the action and the most affected entity.

A—the beginning of the action in a transitive building.

O—the most affected entity in a transitive building.

Obl— ( oblique ) any component that is non S, A, nor O. This is normally the scene or clip of the action or event.

NOM—nominative instance

ACC—accusative instance

ERG—ergative instance

ABS—absolutive instance

POSS—possessive

LK—linker

NEG—negator

EXIST—existential morpheme

PAST—past tense

PRE—present tense

FUT—future tense.

PL—pluralizer

EncPA—enclitic atom

1sg—first individual remarkable

3sg—third individual remarkable

1pl—first individual plural

3pl—third individual plural

det—determiner

Previous Studies in Chabacano

The followers are few of the surveies done on Chabacano linguistic communication. These selected surveies show what have been written about the comparative and incompatible characteristics of Chabacano and Philippine linguistic communications ( peculiarly Tagalog ) , which will supply a horizon of the issue of finding whether Chabacano is more Filipino or more Spanish.

Batausa ( 1969 ) studied the anadiplosis forms of Chabacano and Tagalog. The consequences are that:

• full anadiplosis of the root is present in both linguistic communications;
• some reduplicated words are minimum free signifiers in both linguistic communications ;
• the reduplicated words can happen in all places: initial, median, concluding ;
• both full and partial anadiplosis occurs in Tagalog ;
• merely full anadiplosis occurs in Chabacano.

Frake ( 1971 ) stated that Chabacano of Zamboanga ( and the Chabacano in general ) is non a Philippine-type linguistic communication with adoptions from Spanish, nor can it be considered a assortment of Spanish with voluminous lexical influences from Philippine linguistic communications. Rather, he claimed that Chabacano is a different linguistic communication by itself. Four old ages subsequently, in 1975 Quilis described that it ‘s a sort of Spanish with borrowed lexical points from Tagalog and Cebuano.

In a paper presented at the 9th Philippine Linguistics Congress, Arwin Vibar and Toribio Navarro, Jr. ( 2006 ) expressed that Chabacano ( Ternateno ) is  non an polysynthetic linguistic communication and does non have inflexions or affixations in its verbal component that may show focal point and facet. The usage of ‘el ‘ and ‘kel ‘ as markers for verbal complements ( e.g. , histrion and end ) may be analyzed to match to the Tagalog equivalent ; A good figure of the common vocabularies of Ternateno and Tagalog were derived from Spanish, including some of the atoms ( such as, parity, di, kung, etc. ) , and some morphemes that have become homophones as they were adapted into Ternateno.

To the ergativity of Philippine linguistic communications, CAV poses a challenge, being a Creole whose grammatical construction is of Philippine type and whose vocabulary is chiefly that of Spanish. Nolasco ( 2005 ) summed up his reply to this challenge with the followers,

“Chabacano inherited its accusatory phenotype from its Iberian male parent and its matter-of-fact and semantic genotype from its Philippine female parent linguistic communication ( s ) .”

That is, Chabacano is a merger of two typologically different linguistic communications, with grammatical characteristics that of Spanish and matter-of-fact features akin to that of Philippine-type linguistic communications, such as Tagalog. This survey will show these matter-of-fact characteristics that makes-up CAV.

Structure of the Basic Clause Construction

Before I proceed with the analysis of CAV ‘s discourse construction, it is necessary to qualify the basic construction of its morphosyntax. As mentioned above, one of the grounds why CAV has been chosen for this peculiar survey is its being a merger between a nominative-accusative linguistic communication and an ergative-absolutive linguistic communication, Spanish and Tagalog severally. This subdivision will supply the footing of the a priori premise used in this survey, that is, CAV ‘s morphosyntax exhibits a nominative-accusative form. This is really of import in foregrounding the significance of its discourse form.

In his doctorial thesis, Nolasco ( 2003 ) has shown the ergativity forms of Philippine linguistic communications. He besides suggested a grammatical and semantic analysis through transitivity and presented his revised transitivity parametric quantities for Philippine linguistic communications. This was followed by another paper where he explicated the S, A, and the O in Philippine languages—its core argumentative belongingss and its semantic engagement in a given building ( Nolasco 2006 ) . This paper probes how these nucleus statements that is besides the discourse participants are tracked by middlemans in a discourse.

In his analysis, Nolasco ( 2005 ) presented two groundss of taging S and A in the same mode and a distinguishable marker of O, therefore it can be concluded that CAV is so an accusatory linguistic communication. The marker for nominative instance is o ( nothing ) and con for its accusatory instance. The illustrations below show its basic building:

• Ya come { o } el gato con EL piscao. PAST eat NOM det cat ACC det fish ‘The cat ate the fish. ‘
• Ya come { o } el gato enantes. PAST eat NOM det cat a.while.ago ‘The cat ate a piece ago. ‘

Note that EL is used for nouns regardless of its grammatical relation, and is referred to as “det” in this paper. While  shows a transitive building where the A, gato ‘cat ‘ is marked by o , and the O, piscao ‘fish ‘ is marked by con,  provides the intransitive opposite number where S is besides marked by o . The 2nd marker for its accusatory form is in its word order, where A follows the predicate in a basic transitive building and the O ever follows the A. This marker system is utilised particularly in buildings where one or two of the nucleus statements are pronominals. Example shows this word-order taging where the A is a 3rd individual pronoun and the O is non marked by con. In this transitive building akel is a pronominal referred to in this paper as “Demonstrative Distal” ( glossed as D: D ) and maps as clincher like el.The illustration below is from Personal Stories F.

The oblique is ever at sentence concluding place, while the predicate is ever at sentence-initial place. See illustration above where the enantes ‘a while ago ‘ occurs after S and where the sentence-initial place of the predicate Ya come ‘ate ‘ is demonstrated.

Below is a sum-up of the word order of CAV using the impressions given above:

• ( a ) P + S + ( Obl ) for intransitive, and
• ( B ) P + A + O + ( Obl ) for transitive buildings.

and these word orders are followed purely except for pragmatically marked buildings.

Reference Tracking in Chabacano-Caviteno

As the old subdivision probed CAV ‘s basic clause building, i.e. instance markers, word order, etc. , this subdivision will delve into its discourse construction by analyzing how CAV “reference-track” participants in a discourse. The mention tracking system of CAV would represent the model of its basic discourse form, and would give grounds for or against CAV ‘s discourse ergativity.

In a given discourse, it is astonishing how the middlemans track the participants from one clause to the undermentioned clauses. These participants frequently occupy the nucleus statement places. These nucleus statements or participants are normally introduced as new information in its first reference as full NP and are normally encoded in the oblique instance. After this technique of presenting the new information, it becomes available for both the middlemans and will be treated as given information, ready to be referred to in the succeeding clauses. These mentions are called anaphora. In his definition of anaphora, Cormish ( 1999 ) stated the followers:

…an anaphor points to an component of the discourse context—though non needfully to a characteristic of a co-text as is frequently believed—in order to enable the middlemans to place the referent intended. Anaphoric mention presupposes that the addressee ‘s attending is already focused on the intended referent, or at least that the latter is in some manner associated with the current focal point of attending, and that its being can easy be inferred: therefore, the happening of an anaphorically used indexical constitutes an instructions on the talker ‘s portion to keep the high degree of focal point already accorded by the talker and addressee to a given discourse entity.

The trailing of the nucleus statements, so, is through the appropriate usage of anaphora by the talker, and a right apprehension of these by the listener. Nagaya ( 2006 ) demonstrated the two devices of mention tracking employed in Tagalog ; one is thru pronominalization and the other is thru nothing anaphora. He qualified these farther by stating that, “a topical referent tends to be encoded by a pronoun, but an accessible yet non-topical 1 is likely to be referred to by zero anaphora.”

Anaphoras are needfully given information. Reference tracking agencies tracking anaphora along the lines of discourse that points to the information that has needfully been introduced as new information foremost. CAV has two techniques in encoding new information. The first is by the usage of experiential morphemes. i.e. tiene as shown in ( I ) , where the S of that intransitive clause is the new information, the 2nd is thru the usage of indefinitizers such as un ‘a ‘ or numbers like una ‘one ‘ or tres ‘three ‘ as shown in ( two ) .

The Chabacano-Caviteno Corpus

The narrations were subdivided into its basic Intonation Units ( IU ) . Every IU is encoded in a individual line based on Tanangkingsing ‘s ( 2006 ) definition of IU,

…a prosodic unit in natural discourse consisting of a address section that falls into a individual coherent modulation contour…The Intonation Unit reflects language-in-use through which a more realistic history of the grammatical units in a spoken linguistic communication can be provided.

The survey opted to use these natural dividers of buildings. We can detect in about all cases, merely one predicate composed an IU with up to two statements and optional obliques. This implies that the basic clause building postulated above is of course produced in this linguistic communication.

Pronominalization as a Reference Tracking Device

Let us now examine how the mentions that are normally introduced foremost as a new information are tracked along the discourse. The followers is an extract from the first Pear Story history. It is the first portion of the narrative where the old adult male harvests the pears and placed them into baskets ( note that the talker here recognized the fruit non as pears but as bayabas or Psidium littorale ) .

This subdivision of the narrative where a series of related actions has been undertaken by one participant, before another different action takes topographic point, is called “discourse event” in this paper. Discourse events are paradigmatic to IUs in that while IUs refer to a twine of words spoken in a individual modulation contour of which a predicate ambits the immediate components, discourse events are a twine of IUs of which a scene, deduced from the series of related actions irrespective of the figure of participants, scopes every individual component, i.e. , predicates, statements, obliques, etc.

In the above discourse event, the new information that we will track is VIEHO ‘old adult male. ‘ We could easy detect that an NP is used to present this information for the first clip. In clauses ( 2 ) to ( 7 ) 3rd individual pronoun ele is used to mention to VIEHO, except in ( 5 ) where a zero anaphoric A is used to mention to VIEHO. It will look here that what has been found out in Tagalog by Nagaya ( 2006 ) sing the usage of pronominalization as a device for mention trailing is besides true here. In his analysis, one new information encoded in the first reference as an NP can be readily referred to by pronouns or nothings in the succeeding caluses. He argued that

…once a participant is introduced into the discourse as a lexical noun phrase, it is in bend referred to by a non-lexical signifier in the undermentioned clauses for the interest of talkers ‘ economic system. Namely a participant recoverable from contexts tends to be pronominalized or zero-realized. ( 2006:6 )

The zero-realization device for anaphoras will be dealt in the following subdivision. Meanwhile, allow us go on tracking in this narrative and continue to the following discourse event where newer information is introduced. Follow closely the technique of the talker in mentioning to two given informations ( the information in the first discourse event and the new information in the signifier of a participant in this subdivision ) .

The inquiry now is when and how is pronominalization utilized once more as a tool in mention trailing? We have already demonstrated that pronominalization fails to be applied in a discourse event where more than one participant is involved in the scene as in illustration ( A-2 ) and ( B-1 ) above. This discourse event will be refered to in this paper as the “overlapping discourse event” or merely the “overlap, ” for it overlaps the discourse event preceeding it with the discourse event following it. While the convergence puts into background the old discourse event together with its participant, it later puts into foreground the following discourse event where merely the newest information is left for mention trailing. This is what happened in ( 12 ) as the beginning of the 3rd discourse event. Notice that the convergence ( B-2 ) successfully diminished or ended the first discouse event ( B-1 ) and triggered the new information who is entirely the participant in the following discourse event ( B-3 ) .

Example ( A-3 ) below is the continuance of ( A-2 ) shown above. It functions as the convergence of ( A-1 ) and ( A-3 ) , as ( A-2 ) contains more than one participant in the scene and neither of them is refered to by a pronoun. In ( A-3 ) nevertheless, the new information that is refered to by pronouns is the information foremost introduced in ( A-2 ) peculiarly in ( 8 ) UN MUCHACHO ‘a male child ‘ . But since ( A-2 ) is an convergence, that newer information can non compensate off referred to by a pronoun, and non until after ( 12 ) signaled the coming of the new discourse event did the talker used the pronoun ele to mention to the male child. So in ( A-3 ) , that participant can so be tracked by the pronominal and nothings.

Zero Anaphora as a Reference Tracking Device

If we would look at Table 1 once more, we can see how statistically non-significant the difference between the lexical anaphoras and the nothing anaphoras. What is important in the statistical sense is the difference between zero S ‘s and zero A ‘s, which is about 100 % more than that of S. Much important still is the low registry of zero O ‘s. This means that more than half of the transitive clauses have a nothing A. What does it connote?

First, we could claim that Du Bois ‘s “Given A Constraint” ( 1987 ) besides applies in this linguistic communication. New informations are normally encoded in S, O, or OBL places, but seldom in A place. If we will look at ( A-1 ) and ( B-1 ) above, we will detect that both of the new informations are encoded in S. This is likely due to the fact that new information at first reference can non yet execute an action to something else other than itself, or can non execute an action at all. A is the beginning of the action in a transitive building where it operates the predicate on O, thereby doing it ineligible to go a new information. Therefore, A ‘s as stipulated by the restraint above, merely carries given information.

This means that a nothing O is avoided in CAV because in an intransitive building, if an oblique is non present, any case of new information will fall into the O place and will non fall on A because of the “Given A Constraint.”

Why so are S and A allowed to be zeroed? In mention trailing in this linguistic communication, the information flows on the statements which are the beginnings of action, in S or in A. If such is instance, it is merely but practical to zero that statement when there is no rival for mention trailing. In a discourse event where there is merely one participant, any beginning of the action in the succeeding clauses will be treated as that of the individual participant ‘s.

In this portion of the narrative, after presenting the participant in ( A-2 ) , there is no other participant left to vie with the UN MUCHACHO for mention trailing. This means that there is no strong demand to track UN MUCHACHO with morphologically realized statements because that information is so given that any action will be attributed to it. This is besides the instance in ( B-3 ) illustrated above. Since in this linguistic communication bulk of the discourse events are those which has merely one participant involved in the scene, it will non be a surprised to happen the prominence of nothing anaphoras, more peculiarly A ‘s and S ‘s, because there is non a strong factor to recognize them morphologically, particularly the A, because when something is acted upon, i.e, an O, we can be precise to track that the provoker A refers to the merely merely new information in that discourse event.

 Lexicalization as a Reference Tracking Device

Finally, we come to the last and the most normally used device in mention trailing in CAV. Looking at Table 1 once more will demo us that lexicalized NPs are the most prevailing statement encoding. It comprises the 51.5 % of the entire figure of statements. Why so, we might inquire, does CAV preferred to use lexical NP ‘s over pronouns? Contrary to what Nagaya ( 2006 ) found in Tagalog where pronominalization is the outstanding device in reference-tracking. One of the most likely replies to this inquiry may be due to the fact that in CAV the stock list of personal pronominals is non every bit rich as that of Tagalog or other Filipino linguistic communications. Ele for case, is used irrespective of its grammatical relation in the clause. This means that in a discourse event where two participants should both be tracked, CAV merely has this pronoun, if they use this to mention to both referents, it will go really equivocal for both the middlemans. So to counterbalance this personal pronominal scarceness, CAV utilizes lexicalisation as the most outstanding device for mention trailing in this linguistic communication as it will disambiguate the mentions more expeditiously.

The Challenge of Discourse to Syntax

Section III dealt basically with sentence structure. It was shown at that place that CAV ‘s basic clause building, i.e. its instance markers and word order, is clearly an grounds of its being a nominative-accusative linguistic communication. The old subdivision explicated the mention tracking systems in CAV. These mention trailing devices are diametrically different to Tagalog ‘s as shown by Nagaya ( 2006 ) . This subdivision will demo how this grammatical form is “challenged” by the discourse form as it exhibits an ergative-absolutive theoretical account.

In this survey, the reference-tracking devices and the discourse flow form of CAV will be analyzed based on the principal that was gathered in Cavite City. These are five retellings of the short movie Pear Story and two personal narratives. Here are the statistics of the happening of the core-arguments in the said principal:

Table 1: Entire figure of the happenings of the nucleus statements

In the given tabular array above, we can clearly see the prominence of S which composed 55 % of the entire figure of statements, which is more than half of the combined A and O. Because of the prominence of intransitive buildings, we may presume that talkers prefer to utilize buildings with merely one lexically manifested statement. See the building below:

[ E-12 ] …ya dale { A } tig-u-uno prutas con tres muchachos ( O ) .

PST give O one.each fruit ABS three male childs

‘ { He } gave one fruit each to the three male childs. ‘

It can be observed here that merely “con tres muchachos” is lexically present, and the A is a nothing.

This premise will be farther supported when we look at the transitive buildings, that is, a building where we would of course anticipate at least two statements to be present. The above tabular array besides shows the entire figure of transitive buildings amounting to 51 ( there are two transitive buildings in the database where there are two O ‘s ) . Out of the 51 transitive buildings, merely 16 buildings have a morphologically present A and O, while 35 samples have merely one morphologically realized statement. If we will number all the buildings with merely one morphological statement, that is, uniting the intrasitive and the one-argument transitive buildings, we will come up with 162 or 70 % of the entire figure of buildings which amounted to 231. Based on these statistical facts, we can speculate in this occasion that in CAV, talkers tend to avoid more than one statement per clause.

Du Bois ( 1987 ) calls this the “One Lexical Argument Constraint.” This restraint harmonizing to him is non a grammatical or semantic regulation because it does non keep the talkers to utilize more than one statement per clause. He farther stipulated,

This inclination exists in discourse, viewed as the sum of cases of linguistic communication usage. [ It is ] merely a statement of an ascertained form, it remains to be seen whether it reflects straight a restraint on address production, or is instead a effect of something else.

Traveling back to the statistical tabular array given earlier, one can besides detect the little registry lexical A in the information. Out of 51 transitive clauses, there are merely 8 cases of a lexical Angstrom, as against the lexical registries of O which amounts to 39. This implies that talkers besides tend to avoid utilizing lexical A, while there is non constraint as to the lexical S or O. Based on this facts, we can use Du Bois ‘ “Non-Lexical A Constraint” of which he meant a inclination in discourse to restrict the measure of lexical statements in a clause to a lower limit of one ; and that this individual statement is non distributed indiscriminately across the grammatically random places, but consistently disfavours certain functions.

These two restraints can be summed up to find what he called the PAS ( Preferred Argument Structure ) of the linguistic communication. He deifned this as the ( maximum ) surface syntactic constellation of statements which is statistically preferred in clause items in discourse….PAS dividers the statements along the same lines as the grammatical resistance of ergative vs. accusatory. From the position of the discourse distribution of grammatical types, S and O therefore constitute a category which is set off as distinct from A.

CAV implements these restraints of ergativity in discourse flow, thereby building its PAS in the ergative theoretical account. What is truly important so, is that its PAS suggests an ergative-absolutive form, thereby giving a stance against the nominative-accusative form of its grammatical dealingss. CAV ‘s accusatory grammatical dealingss as demonstrated here is diametrically opposed to its ergative discourse form.

Conclusion

There is still a batch to be improved in the analyses given here, and one could state that the consequences of this survey may merely be true to the information gathered, and may non stand given a much larger and more diverse discourses in CAV. There are besides some factors that might hold affected the gathered informations, like what Du Bois ( 1987 ) refered to as the “unverbalized information that the talker and listener portion as inexplicit cognition of the world.” One illustration is the usage of the demonstrative distal akel that 1 might anticipate to be used for a given informations and non to present a new one as in illustration below:

[ A-1 ] Ya subi AKEL vieho ( S ) na ponu

PAST akyat D: D matanda sa puno

‘That old adult male went up the tree ‘

This may be due to the fact that the storyteller of this narrative was cognizant that the research worker has seen the film and has prior cognition about it. As quoted above, Cormish ( 1999 ) recognized this as an anaphora outside the text. Other informations garnering techniques in future surveies should be employed to cut down this inclination.

However, in this survey, we have found out that in CAV a topical referent tracked will be encoded by a lexical component in discourse events where there is another participant, while a zero anaphora and/or pronominalization is employed in discourse events where there is merely one participant, to be tracked. We have besides argued that CAV indicates an ergative form in discourse based on its PAS where the S and the O exhibit similarity in footings of lexicalisation while the A differs as it is preferred to be zeroed. To the inquiry of whether CAV is of Philippine type or non, we can state this linguistic communication has Spanish as its interface, Philippine linguistic communication ( s ) as its motherboard, but has developed its ain processor.