Sãotomense

Introduction

Forro Creole is a Portuguese creole language spoken in São Tomé and Príncipe. It is also called by its native speakers as sãotomense creole or santomense creole.

The Sãotomense Verb

Mood, tense, and aspect in Santome are expressed by means of preverbal elements, which occur in this order and can be combined. The core of the system consists of the following items: ka is typically used for habitual or future reference; sa ka ~ ska is a progressive marker; tava ~ taa expresses past; ká is a high-tone-bearing mood marker.

In addition to these markers, the absence of marking yields perfective readings with dynamic verbs and present readings with statives. Syntactically stative verbs are those verbs that receive a zero marker for simple present and a past marker tava for simple past. This small group of verbs includes: mêsê ‘to want, to love’, sêbê ‘to know’, tê ‘to have’, kônsê ‘to know’, fata ‘to lack’, sen ‘to exist’, tê ‘to have’, sa ‘to be’. There is also a small group of verbs that are stative according to lexical aspect but whose syntactic behaviour is similar to dynamic verbs. This group includes: kunda ‘to think’, ngosta ~ gosta ‘to like’, gôgô ‘to enjoy, to love, to like’, kontle ‘to hate’. These verbs take ka for present reference. Note further that some verbs of both stative classes may occur with the progressive marker ska, for instance fata and mêsê.

Verblist

• bobô