Chota Valley Spanish

By Sandro Sessarego

Chota Valley Spanish is an Afro-Hispanic language of Northern Ecuador spoken by the descendants of the slaves taken to this region to work on Jesuit sugarcane plantations during colonial time. Based on fieldwork research carried out in Choteño communities, the current book provides a linguistic description of this language by exploring several aspects of its lexicon, morphosyntax, phonetics and phonology. This work also assesses the origin of Chota Valley Spanish and draws attention to its implications for the study of Afro-Hispanic contact varieties in the Americas.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Iberoamericana Editorial Vervuert
• Release date: Sep 2, 2014
• ISBN: 9783954871995

Book preview

Sandro Sessarego

Chota Valley Spanish

Lengua y Sociedad en el Mundo Hispánico

Language and Society in the Hispanic World

Consejo editorial / Editorial Board:

Julio Calvo Pérez (Universitat de València)

Anna María Escobar (University of Illinois)

Luis Fernando Lara (El Colegio de México)

Francisco Moreno Fernández (Universidad de Alcalá)

Juan Sánchez Méndez (Université de Neuchâtel)

Armin Schwegler (University of California, Irvine)

José del Valle (The Graduate Center, CUNY)

Klaus Zimmermann (Universität Bremen)

Vol. 33

Sandro Sessarego

Chota Valley Spanish

Iberoamericana - Vervuert - 2013

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Sessarego, Sandro.

Chota Valley Spanish / Sandro Sessarego.

pages cm. -- (Lengua y Sociedad en el mundo Hispanico = Language and Society in the Hispanic World)

Includes bibliographical references.

ISBN 978-1-936353-18-7 -- ISBN 978-8484897576 -- ISBN 978-3-9548731-0-4

1. Spanish language--Dialects--Ecuador--Chota River Valley. 2. Chota River Valley (Ecuador)--Languages. I. Title.

PC4894.C4S47 2013

467’.98661--dc23

2013022677

© Iberoamericana, 2013

Amor de Dios, 1 – E-28014 Madrid

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© Vervuert, 2013

Elisabethenstr. 3-9 – D-60594 Frankfurt am Main

Tel.: [phone]

Fax: [phone]

[e-mail]

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ISBN 978-84-8489-757-6 (Iberoamericana)

ISBN 978-3-95487-310-4 (Vervuert)

ISBN 978-1-936353-18-7 (Iberoamericana Vervuert Publishing Corp.)

Depósito Legal: M-17652-2013

Diseño de la cubierta: Carlos Zamora

Impreso en España

Este libro está impreso integramente en papel ecológico blanqueado sin cloro

TABLE OF CONTENTS

List of figures

List of maps

List of tables

Dedication

Acknowledgments

Chapter 1: Introduction

1.0. General introduction

1.1. Objectives of this study

1.2. Organization of the volume

1.3. Data collection and methodology

Chapter 2: A sociohistorical account of slavery in Ecuador

2.0. Introduction

2.1. Afro-Hispanic contact varieties and the relative scarcity of Spanish creoles

2.2. A sociohistorical sketch of slavery in Ecuador

2.2.1. First phase (1530-1680)

2.2.2. Second phase (1680-1770)

2.2.3. Third phase (1770-1964)

2.3. Chota Valley

2.3.1. The indigenous phase (until 1610)

2.3.2. The transition phase (1610-1680)

2.3.3. The Jesuit phase (1680-1767)

2.4. Conclusions

Chapter 3: Phonetics and phonology

3.0. Introduction

3.1. Phonetic account of Ecuadorian Spanish

3.2. Phonetic account of Chota Valley Spanish

3.3. Conclusions

Chapter 4: Morphosyntax

4.0. Introduction

4.1. Noun Phrase

4.2. Verb Phrase

4.3. Prepositional Phrase

4.4. Phrase-level constructions

4.5. Conclusions

Chapter 5: Lexicon

5.0. Introduction

5.1. Lexical items

5.2. Conclusions

Chapter 6: The status of Chota Valley Spanish

6.0. Introduction

6.1. On Monogenesis

6.2. On De Instauranda Aethiopum Salute

6.3. Schwegler’s (1999) hypothesis: CVS as a decreolized Afro-Portuguese creole

6.4. McWhorter’s (2000) hypothesis: CVS as a missing Spanish creole

6.5. A few sociohistorical remarks

6.6. The linguistic nature of present-day CVS

6.7. A closer look at the ‘monogenetic’ features

6.8. Early Afro-Hispanic linguistic insights from De Instauranda

6.9. Conclusions

Bibliography

Appendix: Pictures of Chota Valley

LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 3.1. Spectrogram of de ants ‘of before’

Figure 3.2. Spectrogram of ayere ‘yesterday’

Figure 3.3. Spectrogram of todu ‘all’

Figure 3.4. Spectrogram of lo[z] amigo ‘the friends’

Figure 3.5. Spectrogram of Iba[ř]a ‘Ibarra’

Figure 3.6. Spectrogram of los pa[tʃ]ón ‘the owners’

Figure 3.7. Spectrogram of [ž]egue ‘to come’

Figure 3.8. Multiple early-aligned peaks and minimal downstep across non-exclamatory non-focused declaratives

LIST OF MAPS

Map 2.1. Slave trade routes to Ecuador

Map 6.1. The Afro-Hispanic linguistic areas reported by Schwegler (1999)

Map 6.2. Main African departing ports as indicated by Sandoval in De Instauranda

LIST OF TABLES

Table 2.1. Percentage of slaves sold in Popayán with respect to Cartagena’s sales

Table 2.2. Slaves sold in Popayán 1690-1789 (% according to their age).

Table 2.3. Kingdom of Quito’s population in 1781

Table 2.4. Kingdom of Quito’s population in 1784

Table 2.5. Ecuador’s black population evolution from 1784 to 1957

Table 2.6. Jesuit land acquisitions 1615-1645

Table 2.7. Jesuit land acquisitions 1688-1728

Table 2.8. Number of slaves in the Jesuit haciendas by 1767 (from Coronel Feijóo 1991:88)

Table 2.9. Number of slaves in the Jesuit haciendas by 1767 (from Bouisson 1997:47)

Table 2.10. Number of slaves in the Jesuit haciendas by 1767 (from Peñaherrera de Costales and Costales Samaniego 1959:222)

Table 2.11. Demographic figures for the Corregimiento de Ibarra around 1784

Table 2.12. Demographic figures for the Corregimiento de Otavalo around 1784

Table 2.13. Enslaved population in the Jesuit haciendas (1782-1783)

Table 2.14. Enslaved families with two or more children in the Jesuit haciendas (1782-1783)

Table 3.1. /s/ realizations in Ecuadorian dialects

Table 3.2. Word-final realizations of /n/ in Ecuadorian dialects

Table 6.1. Granda’s (1988) monogenetic features

LIST OF PICTURES

Picture 1: Juana Chalá and her nieces

Picture 2: Billboard commemorating Afro-Choteños’ resistance

Picture 3: A group of friends from Concepción

Pictures 4-6: Don Cristóbal showing local youngsters how to make a bomba drum

Picture 7: Don Cristóbal playing the bomba drum

Picture 8: Teenagers practicing the bomba dance

Pictures 9-12: Traditional dances

Pictures 13-16: Traditional tresses

DEDICATION

This poem and the present book are dedicated to Amanda, Marino, Gianna, Simona, Marina, Adolfo, Emy, Mario, Lina† and to all Afro-Choteños.

Concepción, levanta tu cabeza,

clava el arado en tu piedra con vigor,

abre tu pecho y lanza tu promesa

de ser un nuevo edén del Ecuador.

by

Abrón Chalá

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This work would not have been possible without the support of several people. I owe my gratitude to all of them. My deepest gratitude goes to Fabio Lazzaro, Mikela Lazzaro, Olga Palacios, Paola Palacios and Anahí Landazuri, who hosted me in Chota Valley and helped me carry out fieldwork during winter 2011. I am also extremely grateful to Geovanny Cañar and his family (César, Ana, Suzy, Annabelle and Noelle Matilde), Andrés, Pilar, Alejandra, María Elisa, Viviana and Sandro (mi tocayo) for their help and assistance during my Ecuadoran trip.

I would also like to thank Armin Schwegler, John Lipski, Donald Winford, John Singler, Jeff Siegel, Johannes Kabatek and John McWhorter for their feedback on several ideas that came to form this book. In particular, I am grateful to Armin, who took the time to review all of the manuscript and provided me with constructive feedback. Several other academics that provided me with great support during the writing of this work are Javier Gutiérrez-Rexach, Terrell Morgan, Rafael Orozco, Gaëlle Ulvoas, Manuel Díaz-Campos, Manuel Delicado-Cantero, Melvin González-Rivera, Morena Lanieri, Guido Borghi and Claudio Ferrari, who have always been there for me in a variety of circumstances.

Very special thanks go to the linguistic team of the Spanish and Portuguese Department of the University of Wisconsin – Madison for their spirit of solidarity and camaraderie: Fernando Tejedo, Grant Armstrong, Rajiv Rao, Diana Franzen and Cathy Stafford. This work also has benefited from our students’ feedback and from the input they gave me during our Linguistic Circles.

I am thankful to Maurizio Bagnoli, Alessio Bianchi, Ermanno Timossi and their families (Angela, Francesca, Matteo, Antonella, Sandrino, Mariangela and Valentina), Bill Cudlipp, Grace Bloodgood, Lucy Ghastin, Tammi Simpson, Sean Goodroad, Kate Fanis, Sarli Mercado, Juan Egea, Ksenija Bilbija, Loredana Comparone, Aaron Tate, Alicia Cerezo, Víctor Goldgel, Marcelo Pellegrini, David Hildner, Pablo Ancos, Daniele Forlino, Aria Cabot, Gaetano Fossi, Cralo and Paola Forte, Sergio and Carlo Paolessi, Magda Davoli, Giovanni Cristina, Lorenzo Sangiacomo, Chiara Risso, Daniela Nebbione, Paolo Moras, Cristian Emilio, Arturo Busca, Massimiliano Parisi, Simone Lolli, Ilaria Tassi, Marco Petrini, Roberto Berritta, Eugenio Daviso, Nicola Di Fiore, Massimiliano Gambardella, Marta Tallone, Gianluca Garrone and Luca Sessarego, for the time spent together in Madison, Chicago, Rome and Genoa and for showing interest in my research.

Also, I would like to thank the University of Wisconsin, the Latin American, Caribbean and Iberian Studies Program, the A.W. Mellon Foundation, the Center for the Humanities and the Spanish and Portuguese Department for their financial support, which made this publication possible. Finally, I wish to thank Klaus Vervuert, Rebecca Aschenberg, an anonymous reviewer and the publishing team of Iberoamericana/Vervuert for their professionalism and help with the publication of this study. Last but not least, I am grateful to all Afro-Choteños, who warmly welcomed me into their communities. Thank you!

Chapter 1:

INTRODUCTION

1.0. General introduction

Until recently, Afro-Hispanic contact varieties received only marginal attention by most dialectologists, philologists and general linguists with an interest in Hispanic studies. Over the last few decades, the research focused on these languages has grown substantially, to the point that in any subfield of linguistics one can find active scholars willing to explore the grammatical aspects of these language varieties.

From a strictly linguistic point of view, what is fascinating about these languages is their richness in constructions that would be considered ungrammatical in standard Spanish. Nevertheless, such structures form the core grammar of these less prestigious, but equally efficient linguistic systems. A comparative analysis of certain grammatical phenomena in these contact varieties may be used as a powerful testing ground for formal hypotheses, which usually have been built on standardized language data (Kayne 1996; Sessarego 2012a). From a historical perspective, the grammar of these languages can provide valuable insights about the conditions characterizing the African Diaspora to the New World, since the morphological reductions and the second language acquisition traces found in these varieties may provide clues about the sociodemographic scenario characterizing the plantation settings.

This book will consider the linguistic and sociocultural aspects of one of these Afro-Hispanic varieties: Chota Valley Spanish (CVS). CVS is spoken in Chota Valley, located on the borderline of the Carchi and Imbabura Provinces, Ecuador. This dialect is spoken by approximately 12,000 people (INEC 2001), the descendants of the slaves taken to this region to work the Jesuit sugarcane plantations during colonial times.

1.1. Objectives of this study

This work has two main goals. The first objective is to provide a linguistic description of CVS. For this reason, this study will explore several aspects of the grammar of this language by paying close attention to its morphosyntactic patterns, its phonetics and phonology and its lexicon. The second goal is to assess the origin of CVS and its implications for Afro-Hispanic creole studies. In particular, I will test whether the sociohistorical and linguistic conditions for a creole language to emerge were in place in Chota Valley (cf. Schwegler 1999:240; McWhorter 2000:10-11) or if a different scenario was characterizing the region.

1.2. Organization of the volume

Chapter 1 offers a general overview of the goals of this work. It introduces the present study’s objectives, as well as the methodology employed to collect and analyze the data. Chapter 2 is an analysis of the sociohistorical conditions under which Afro-Hispanic contact varieties developed in Latin America; it includes the main debates and argumentations concerning the relatively reduced number of Spanish creoles. In this context, it situates Chota-Valley Spanish in space and time by focusing on the sociohistorical scenario which characterized the evolution of this Afro-Hispanic contact variety. Chapter 3 discusses the phonetics and phonology of CVS by highlighting the features which differentiate this variety from the surrounding Ecuadorian Spanish dialects. Chapter 4 focuses on the morphosyntactic features of CVS. Chapter 5 is a description of the lexicon of CVS; in particular, it focuses on some lexical items identified by the informants as