Kabuverdianu of Santiago

Introduction

Cape Verdean Creole is a Portuguese-based creole language spoken on the islands of Cape Verde. It is also called Kriolu or Kriol by its native speakers. It is the native creole language of virtually all Cape Verdeans and is used as a second creole language by the Cape Verdean diaspora.

For historical reasons, the Portuguese-based San­tia­go Creole is closely related to the creole va­rie­ties on the archipelago’s other islands on Cape Verdean Creole of Brava, and on Cape Verdean Creole of São Vicente), and also to the Por­tuguese-based creoles of Guinea-Bissau and Casa­man­ce.

The Kabuverdianu Verb

There is no person, number, or gender concord in Santiago Creole verbs. Unless otherwise indicated, un­mar­ked forms of stative and dynamic verbs yield different temporal meanings:

• stative verbs are normally interpreted as present whereas
• dynamic verbs are interpreted as past
• some verbs, like átxa can be either stative or dynamic, and therefore interpreted either as present or past

Santiago Creole has six verbal markers relating to aspect, mood, tense, and voice. Mood and aspect are expressed by pre­verbal particles (in this order), and relative tense and voice are expressed by verbal endings. The three preverbal mar­kers are

• ál (‘desire’),
• sa (‘progressivity’), and
• ta (‘imperfectivity’).

The three verbal endings are -ba (‘anteriority’), -du (‘passivity’), and -da (‘anteriority + passivity’).