The past imperfect in Palenquero

In Palenquero, an Afro-Iberian creole spoken in Colombia, the -ba marker appears in a wider range of environments than other TMA markers, which are commonly pre-verbal. While most creole scholars have assumed that -ba is a past anterior, I argue that this marker is in fact a past imperfect. The crucial cases for demonstrating this involve examples in which -ba occurs with non-stative verbs. The significance of this finding counters the alleged general uniformity of the prototypical creole TMA system which does not include past imperfect marking.