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Article published In: Language Ecology
Vol. 1:2 (2017) ► pp.158–184

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On Sinitic influence on Macanese

Focus on indirect causation

 | University of Milano-Bicocca
Published online: 12 January 2018
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/le.1.2.03arc
Abstract
Macanese, the near-extinct Portuguese creole of Macao, is an understudied contact language with strong Malayo-Portuguese features. It is also characterised by Sinitic influence, which however has sometimes been downplayed in the literature (see Ansaldo, Umberto and Stephen Matthews. 2004. The origins of Macanese reduplication. In Geneviève Escure and Armin Schwegler, eds. Creoles, Contact and Language Change. Linguistic and Social Implications. Amsterdam/ Philadelphia: John Benjamins. 1–20. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar). In this paper, I argue that a distinctive element of Macanese vis-à-vis other Asian Portuguese Creoles is the stronger role of Sinitic in its “typological matrix” (Ansaldo, Umberto. 2004. The evolution of Singapore English: Finding the matrix. In Lisa Lim, ed. Singapore English: A Grammatical Description. Amsterdam/ Philadelphia: John Benjamins. 127–149. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar, . 2009. Contact Languages: Ecology and Evolution in Asia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar). Sinitic influence on Macanese has already been invoked to account e.g. for reduplication (Ansaldo, Umberto and Stephen Matthews. 2004. The origins of Macanese reduplication. In Geneviève Escure and Armin Schwegler, eds. Creoles, Contact and Language Change. Linguistic and Social Implications. Amsterdam/ Philadelphia: John Benjamins. 1–20. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar); however, little research on multi-verb constructions has been conducted so far. The main object of my study comprise constructions expressing indirect causation, and I focus on the chomá [call]-NP-VP pattern. I argue that, whereas in other Asian Portuguese Creoles the syntax of indirect causatives appears to be modelled mainly on Malay or on Indian substrate languages, for Macanese the model is clearly Sinitic.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.A short history of Macanese and of its ecology
  • 3.Multi-verb constructions and the chomá-NP-VP pattern
  • 4.Language contact, grammaticalisation and the typological matrix of Macanese
  • 5.Summary and conclusions
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • Primary sources
  • References
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