Olga Solovova

(University of Coimbra)

Many theories about creole languages have focused on their tense-mood-aspect (TMA) markers; Bickerton (1981) concluded that creoles should have three markers to indicate tense, mood and aspect, and that these should occur preverbally in that order. However, neither Cape Verdean Creole (CVC) nor Guiné-Bissau Creole (GBC) comply with Bickerton's theory, consistently placing their anterior markers after the verb. Moreover, apart from the many similarities in the grammars of the two creoles, the TMA system of GBC diverges from that of CVC in its "tripartition of two Imperfectives opposed to specificity" (Kihm 1994:93). This distinction seems to be a GBC innovation which involved the creation of a new marker na, whose origin has not been established. Previous studies have been restricted to comparative descriptions (rather than a contrastive analysis) of the creoles' grammatical systems (Baptista et al. 2002) and lexicons (Rougé 1999).

The present study examines the origins and semantics of the innovative GBC progressive marker. As the substrate languages of CVC and GBC are "nearly identical" (Peck1988:78), the cause of the difference in their progressive markers appears to lie in their differing sociolinguistic histories. In regard to the formation of the creoles' grammatical systems, such factors as the degree of access of the speakers of substrate languages to the superstrate language play a crucial role. Comparing these factors allows us to classify CVC and GBC as a plantation and fort creole respectively. The hypothesis that fort creoles reflect a greater amount of substrate influence in their grammatical systems is strongly supported by the lexical evidence (Rougé1999) and appears to account for the differences in the CVC and GBC TMA systems. Thus, Morais Barbosa points to a "clear parallel between the verbal systems of GB...and the verbal aspects of the Negro-African languages"(1975:147). This conclusion is shared by Peck (1988) who states that interpreting the tense of GBC verbs into European languages depends solely on the context, like interpreting the tense of verbs in many African languages.

This study underlines the importance of aspectual rather than temporal distinctions in the GBC verbal system, suggesting that future comparative studies of other fort creoles may help to establish that they are more likely than plantation creoles to reflect certain kinds of substrate influence.

Keywords: Creole of Guiné-Bissau; Creole of Cape-Verde; TMA markers; fort creole; plantation creole. .