ECAS 2013

Especially since the independence of the former Portuguese colonies in Africa, there has been a growing body of descriptive and theoretical linguistic studies on the (emerging) African varieties of Portuguese (AVP), Portuguese-related creoles (Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, S. Tomé and Príncipe) and Bantu languages (Angola, Mozambique), often in a perspective of language contact. In particular, creole and Bantu languages, which are generally at the low end of the diglossia, are often held responsible for the patterns of language change and variation found in Portuguese. This, however, is only part of the story. It will be shown that, contrary to some beliefs, the AVP more often follow the standard than not and that some non-standard properties in these varieties are also found in the European and Brazilian varieties. Moreover, since the spectrum of variation in AVP is much wider due to its combined L1 and L2 status, sociolinguistic variables, such as level of education, are considered crucial to the outcomes. Despite some claims that AVP are pidgnizing or creolizing, it should instead be concluded that Portuguese enjoys good health, which is corroborated by the steadily growing number of L1 and L2 speakers. The non-official languages, on the other hand, may undergo a process of attrition and are, in some cases, at the brink of extinction. Therefore, we belief, the definition of languages should take this changing reality into account and more measures should be adopted to correct the existing imbalance.

In Mozambique, we have witnessed important changes in the language situation over the last 30 years, which challenge some generalizations and predictions previously made by linguists. These changes concern socio-economic and socio-cultural levels, as well as the linguistic competence in local African languages and Portuguese.

After a period where local languages were marginalized, more positive attitudes are currently arising and expanding. This upgrading and legitimization of local languages can be observed in different domains: in education and cultural practices as well as in the labour market.

Despite this progress, competence in Portuguese is still an essential condition for social and economic upward mobility. As a consequence of the privileged status of Portuguese, Bantu languages are not transmitted to the next generation and/or the competence in these languages show evidence of language attrition. Therefore, although these languages are currently the mother tongues of more than 85% of the population, this percentage does not correspond to a homogeneous speech community.

The fact that the number of native speakers of Portuguese has increased from 1.2% (1980) to 10.7% (2007) also represents a new challenge for linguists, who must now study the competence in Portuguese of a new generation, whose parents are typically L2 speakers of this language.

In this paper, after reviewing studies on the language situation in Mozambique, I present arguments and statistical data on the issues addressed above.

In EP there is diversity of expression of the Indirect Object / dative (IO) constructions. The preposition a is able to express not only the IO but also the DO and it may appear in clitic accusative doubling (Gonçalves 2002). In EP there is also a homophone full preposition a, an oblique case assigner to locative nouns, which is used with motion verbs. The preposition a is then a case maker and an ambiguous/defective preposition (Gonçalves 2004). In MP the main feature of this variety is the use of the Double Object Construction, which Gonçalves explains as the reflex of the incorporation of a null preposition in the verb, which gives rise to a double objective case assignment. For Gonçalves (2002: 336) "(...) the input triggers the possibility of preposition incorporation by the verbs, where P is invisible because it is incorporated (...)". Although this explanation is in the right direction for MP, it does not explain either the fact that in Creoles, in particular the CVC, the DOC is also present or the direction that AP is taking. In AP it is common the preposition em introducing the IO, the same preposition that introduces the complement of motion verbs. In Medieval Portuguese a already expressed both locative goal and beneficiary en, em meant a locative or goal /direction and para / pera goal (Mattos e Silva 1989). The ambiguity of a in Portuguese is then one of the reasons for the changes that are occurring in non-European varieties and also in Portuguese based creoles.

Over recent decades, numerous studies have shown there is a steady national variety of Portuguese in Mozambique (MP) which increasingly acts as the de facto spoken standard in the country. This reality is unmatched at the language planning and linguistic policy realms, though, where European Portuguese retains its status as the educational, political and social media variety of preference.

Several factors contribute to this: the inertia of the sociolinguistic perceptions of varieties' asymmetrical prestige by political actors, the lack of endogenous publishing and linguistic normalization resources, and an ever-lasting debate over the legitimacy of assuming Portuguese as an endogenous language of Mozambique, even if today it is most widely spoken throughout the country. One of the first barrier for such policy changes to take place, though, lies in the non-existence of a writing tradition, leading to a perceived lack of legitimacy of the variety's numerous lexical borrowings from the Bantu languages with which PM is in contact.

This presentation will contextualize and describe ongoing efforts towards the creation of linguistic normalization resources for MP, focusing on the current discussion over the definition of spelling rules for lexical borrowings resulting from language contact with other Mozambican languages. It will discuss whether and how such words should be adapted to Portuguese spelling and the perceived result of such a policy in the multilingual and contact-ridden linguistic landscape of Mozambique. Different perspectives (Bantu language speakers, linguists and society at large) will be weighed, assessing the technical normalization issues resulting from the choices taking place.

Understanding that speech and gesture are underlined by the same process, this paper aims at describing linguistic elements and correlated pointing gestures in the Portuguese spoken by a tonga in STP. Pointing gestures have been explored in various gesture typologies. Although pointing at some element in the interactional context may seem a simple and even universal act, recent studies of culturally specific forms of pointing, interactional practices, cognitive processes, forms of pointing in gestual languages and in the semiotic and pragmatic processes reveal a high degree of complexity.

In order to give account to some of these aspects, multimodal deixis in a case study of European Portuguese has been explored (Galhano-Rodrigues, no prelo). In the present paper linguistic deictic elements and the correlated pointing gestures will be described according to the deictic elements used and to gesture configuration. The formal aspects which may reveal cultural differences regarding conceptualizations of various domains, such as time, space and interpersonal relations will be pointed out.

Galhano-Rodrigues, I. (no prelo) "Vou buscar ali, ali acima!" a multimodalidade da deixis na interacção face a face". In: Linguística: Revista de Estudos Linguísticos da Universidade do Porto, vol.7, 2012.

Santomean Portuguese (STP) is the dominant L1 in São Tomé and Príncipe, as a result of L2 varieties in contact with L1 varieties of Creole and Bantu languages, with a major role for Santome, the dominant local Portuguese-related Creole.

Previous studies have shown that STP exhibits significant variation in many domains. This talk focuses on object clitics, using data from a spoken corpus of STP (240.000 words). It will be shown that STP exhibits forms that are homophonous with nominative (ele/ela; eles/elas) and dative (lhe/lhes) pronouns in accusative contexts (cf. (1-2)), together with a tendency toward the loss of third person accusative pronouns (o/a, os/as). This pattern has also been observed in Brazilian and Mozambican Portuguese. STP further exhibits the pronoun 'se' instead of direct and indirect object clitics (cf. (3-4)). This property hasn't been described for any of the African varieties of Portuguese.

We will further discuss the role of sociolinguistic variables with respect to the variation described above.

(1)Se você não atacar ela, ela não ataca você.

'If you don't attack her, she won't attack you'.

(2)Eu auxiliei-lhe a recolher elementos para tal [investigação].

'I helped him to gather elements for that [research].

(3)Levou-os para uma zona, atacou-lhe e matou-se. Matou o indivíduo.

'He took them to a place, attacked him and killed him. He killed the guy'.

(4)Em casa chamavam-se Maria.

'At home they called her Maria'.

Antônio da Costa Peixoto's "Obra nova da língua geral de Mina" (1741) documents the presence of Ewe-Fon in 18th century Brazil. It lists 899 lexical items and expressions and their equivalents in Portuguese.

Re-edited in 1944 in Lisbon through the Agência Geral das Colônias, further research on the subject include comments by Lopes (1945), Rodrigues (2003) and more recently, by Yeda Pessoa de Castro (2002), as well as research by Margarida Petter (ongoing).

Rodrigues (2003) started to annotate "as formas correspondentens aos itens lexicais da "Obra Nova" registradas no grande dicionário de Westermann" in 1957 (Rodrigues 2003: 93), and returned to annotating corresponding Fon words in the 1980ies with the help of a native speaker from Benin, Lucien Akabassi. We recently started working on a new digitalized version of Peixoto's glossary, including multi-lingual equivalents from both European languages (to make the document more easily accessible to a non-lusophone public) and from Ewe (Togo varieties), a task possible thanks to the native speaker competence of D. Samla.

In our paper, we will analyze some semantic aspects such as new word formations and metaphorical expressions.

We think that Peixoto is an extremely valuable resource for both creolistics, research on African substrate influence in Brazilian Portuguese and diachronic studies on Ewe-Fon.