Factores lingüísticos y no-lingüísticos en el contacto entre el papiamento y el español en Aruba

Abstract

Although it is not traditionally considered part of the “Spanish-speaking world,” Aruba has a significant population of Spanish-speakers due to both tourism and immigration from Latin America. Recognizing the significant presence of Spanish in Aruba, this investigation will focus on contact between Spanish and Papiamento, an Iberian-lexified Creole language that is both one of the two official languages of the country—the other one is Dutch—and the primary language of the local Aruban population. This dissertation has two main goals: (1) to identify the contact features of Aruban Spanish transferred from Papiamento along with the linguistic and non-linguistic factors (tourism, education) that condition their appearance and, (2) to contextualize Aruban Spanish in the broader Caribbean context issues of identity in Aruba. Several methodological strategies were utilized to carry out this research. Six linguistic features were studied and analyzed in the Spanish spoken by Arubans: two phonological features (/r/ and word-final -/s/) and four morphosyntactic features (the pluralization in the noun phrase and past tense, subjunctive mood and aspect in the verb phrase). Through sociolinguistic-style interviews and additional elicitation tools such as the reading of a short text and a word list, a translation activity, a grammatical judgement test and a sentence completion activity, data from 14 participants were collected, transcribed and analyzed. Although the research uses techniques and strategies employed in variationist sociolinguistics, the research questions that guide this project deviate from the statistical analysis that structure Labovian sociolinguistic research. The frequency-based analysis used in this dissertation determined that the realization of the studied features, except for the past tense, exhibit patterns that diverge from those of other Caribbean Spanish varieties. Social factors such as the frequency of Spanish use, occupation in or outside of tourism, context of language acquisition, level of education and gender presented varying effects in the favoring of Papiamento transfer in the Spanish spoken Aruba. Overall, a reduced frequency of Spanish use, occupations in fields with little to no contact with Spanish-speakers, limited exposure to authentic Spanish during acquisition, an increased exposure to the norms of standard Spanish through education and female gender favored increased realizations of Papiamento transfer in the Spanish of the Aruban participants. This dissertation concludes that linguistic transfer from Papiamento contributes to differentiating Aruban Spanish from other varieties spoken in the Caribbean. In Aruba, Spanish is not an official language, and the country’s social history is distinct from the colonial legacy of other Spanish-speaking Caribbean countries. Thus, Spanish becomes a tool of constructing a divergent identity, unique from that of individuals from other Spanish-speaking Caribbean nations.