Sixteenth-century evidence regarding the origins of the Capeverdean verbal marker -ba

This article explores the possbility that some inflectional morphemes in modern creoles are not the result of recent decreolization but have existed in some restructured varieties of Portuguese used by Africans since the 16th century. It compares the anterior suffix -ba found on Sotovento Capeverdean verbs such as kantaba ‘cantava’ ‘was singing´ (cf. P cantava) with the corresponding Guinea-Bissau anterior marker ba, which is a free morpheme, a fact that led to speculation that both have a dual origin in Portuguese -va and a postverbal serial verb (ka)ba influenced by the substrate. However, what appears to be a past or anterior inflection -ba occurs in a passage in the Portuguese of Africans in a play witten in 1524: the copula sa takes the suffix -ba and is translated as ‘era’ [‘was’]. The implications of the existence of this early occurrence of saba are then considered, along with the etymology of the copula sa or sã in archaic Portuguese and modern African and Asian varieties of creole Portuguese.