The three Portuguese-based creoles spoken in Sao Tome and Principe (Gulf of Guinea, West Africa), Lungwa Folo (Saotomense, ST), Lunga Ngol=E1 (Angolar, AN) and Lungwa Ie (Principense), share in their pronominal system a feature whose rarity among creoles went almost unnoticed. I refer to "a" described alternatively as an indefinite pronoun in Gunther (1973) and Maurer (1995), and an unmarked pronoun in Ivens Ferraz (1979) (cf. 1). It also functions as the second person singular polite pronoun, in addition to having semantically reflexive-like and passive-like characteristics (cf. 2).
(1) ST: A mule fika ua klas=F5 ku zibo d'e
someone die leave a trousers and jacket for him
'Someone died, leaving him a suit.'
(Ivens Ferraz 1979:66)
(2) AN: A ka be 'ne Diziboa
one TMA go 3p Lisbon
'They were leaving to Lisbon.'
(Maurer 1995:61)
This paper will investigate the many functions of "a" in the Portuguese creoles, with special emphasis on its discourse properties. For this purpose, and unlike previous sketches of "a", here creoles narratives from Sao Tome (stories and conversations) are analyzed in order to demonstrate more fully its multifaceted status as it relates to the following topics:
(i) the class of referents (NPs, pronouns), (generic) that brings about the realization of "a";
(ii) the anaphoric pattern of "a" vis-a-vis the third person plural ane which usually refers to non-generic and identifiable referents= as illustrated in (3) below:
(3) AN: tata , mama, ane na pe no xikola wa
father mother 3p NEG put 1p school NEG
'Father and mother didn't send us to school.' (fieldwork data)
(iii) the syntactic properties of "a", restricted to being a sentential= subject, vis-a-vis the more roles the third person plural ane plays (subject and object);
(iv) the source of "a" which seems to indicate an African substrate, possibly of Kwa origin, instead of Portuguese origin, the latter having contributed considerably to the creole lexicon and grammar.
Bibliography
Gunther, Wilfried. 1973. Das portugiesische Kreolisch der Ilha do Principe. Marburg: Marburger Studien zur Afrika- und Asienkunde.
Ivens Ferraz, Luiz. 1979. The creole of Sao Tome. Johannesburg: Witwatersrand University Press.
Maurer, Philippe. 1995. L'angolar: Un cr=E9ole afro-portugais parl=E9 Sao= Tome. Hamburg: Helmut Buske Verlag.