The progressive in the spoken Papiamentu of Aruba

This paper investigates the use of the progressive morpheme, -ndo, in spoken Aruban Papiamentu using variationist methods. The morpheme is used with durative verbs to mark progressive or repeated action. Achievement verbs with -ndo indicate repeated action. -ndo use is associated with social prestige, and is used more frequently by each successive generation. These results complement those of Sanchez (2002), which traced the real time development of -ndo in its gerundive and progressive uses in texts, and attributed the rise of the progressive function to contact with English. Here we see that Papiamentu -ndo behaves more like English -ing than Spanish -ndo, and that speakers who learned Papiamentu before it came in contact with English do not use this form.