Embedding Papiamentu in the mixed language debate

This paper takes as a point of departure the hypothesis that Papiamentu descends from Upper Guinea Portuguese Creole (a term covering the sister varieties of the Cape Verde Islands and Guinea-Bissau and Casamance), speakers of which arrived on Curaçao in the second half of the 17th century, subsequently shifted their basic content vocabulary towards Spanish, but maintained the original morphosyntax. This scenario raises the question of whether, in addition to being a creole, Papiamentu can be analyzed as a so-called mixed (or intertwined) language. The present paper positively answers this question by drawing parallels between (the emergence of) Papiamentu and recognized mixed languages.