Beyond Creole: Reflexive Constructions in Cape Verdean Portuguese

doi:10.1017/9781009221900.015

15 - Beyond Creole: Reflexive Constructions in Cape Verdean Portuguese

from Part III - The Development of Syntax

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 19 February 2025

Nélia Alexandre and

Dominika Swolkien

Edited by

Dany Adone and

Astrid Gabel

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Dany Adone: Affiliation:
Universität zu Köln
Astrid Gabel: Affiliation:
Universität zu Köln

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Summary

Alexandre and Swokien’s chapter takes a look at reflexive constructions in the emergent variety of Cape Verdean Portuguese (CVP). They argue that the close contact between Cape Verdean Creole (CV) and CVP has some impact on the reflexive patterns available, but also that Cape Verdean speakers reconfigure the features of the reflexive construction of their native language (CV) into CVP. These observations are supported by two experiments – a sentence repetition task and a cloze test. Results show that there is significant variation in using reflexive constructions in CVP, indicating grammatical unsteadiness, but se ‘SELF’ omission is the preferred strategy.

Keywords

Reflexives pseudo-reflexives reciprocals Cape Verdean Portuguese Cape Verdean Creole

Type: Chapter
Information: The Evolution, Acquisition and Development of Syntax
Insights from Creole Languages and Beyond
, pp. 278 - 298

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009221900.015 [Opens in a new window]

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Print publication year: 2025

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