CHAPTER 9 Afro-Bolivian Spanish: the survival of a true creole

This study analyzes data on a unique Afro-Hispanic dialect, spoken in remote areas of Bolivia by descendents of Africans who arrived in the 16th century. Afro-Bolivian speech, now confined to the oldest members of a few isolated communities, has preserved configurations that demonstrate the feasibility of early creolization of Spanish in independent locations. The present investigation concentrates on the Afro-Bolivian VP and DP: quasi-invariant verbs; incipient particle-based verbal system; null definite articles; lack of gender concord; stripped and invariant plurals. There exists a series of unidirectional implicational relationships that span the range from the basilect to the acrolect, and which provide a template for gradual decreolization based on relative markedness and ease of language processing. 1