Volume 34, Issue 2

This paper gives an overview of post-verbal negative marking in Bantu languages. It shows that, although Bantu studies tend to concentrate on negation marked on the verb itself, post-verbal negative markers are well represented within the Bantu domain and high concentrations can be found in zones B, C, H and L. It is argued that locative pronouns, possessive pronouns and negative (answer) particles are recurrent sources of negative markers in Bantu languages. It is claimed that they take part in what is generally known as a Jespersen cycle: they initially reinforce the original negator and eventually become obligatory for the expression of negation resulting in a double negative construction. It will be shown that in Bantu languages a new Jespersen cycle can set in before the original negator has been lost, yielding triple negative constructions, which are much more rarely attested world-wide.

Pichi is an Afro-Caribbean English Lexifier Creole (AEC) spoken by some 150,000 people on the island of Bioko, Equatorial Guinea. Pichi is an offshoot of Krio (Sierra Leone) and shares many characteristics with its West African sister languages. However, insulation from English and Krio, extensive contact and hybridization with Spanish, language shift involving the Bantu language Bubi, as well as koineization through the prolonged coexistence of Pichi with closely-related languages like Nigerian Pidgin and Cameroonian Pidgin have given the language a character distinct from that of the other English Lexifier creoles of the region. The study of Pichi and its comparison with other West African AECs therefore offers fresh insights into the role that language contact has played in the differentiation of the Afro-Caribbean English lexifier Creoles.