Diachronica 26:3 (2009), 319–379. doi 10.1075/dia.26.3.02jac issn 0176–225 / e-issn 1569–971 © John Benjamins Publishing Company he Upper Guinea origins of Papiamentu Linguistic and historical evidence* Bart Jacobs Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München his paper deals with the linguistic and historical relationships between Papia- mentu and Upper Guinea Creole as spoken on the Santiago island of Cape Verde and in Guinea-Bissau and Casamance. In the linguistic section, the hypothesis that Papiamentu is a relexiied ofshoot of an early Upper Guinea Creole variety is lent support by focusing on the structural correspondences of the function words in ive grammatical categories (pronouns, question words, prepositions, conjunctions and reciprocity and relexivity). In addition, salient data from several early (18th and 19th century) Papiamentu texts is presented. he histori- cal section provides a framework that accounts for the linguistic transfer from Upper Guinea to Curaçao in the second half of the 17th century. Keywords: Papiamentu, Upper Guinea Creole, relexiication, function words, 17th century slave trade, irst Dutch West India Company, Gorée, Sephardim 1. Introduction his paper is concerned with the Afro-Portuguese origins of Papiamentu (PA). To clarify these origins I will focus on both the linguistic and historical relationships between PA and the Upper Guinea branch of Portuguese-based Creole (UGC) as spoken on the Santiago island of Cape Verde (SCV), and in Guinea-Bissau and * I owe a large debt of gratitude to Lucille Berry-Haseth, Ulrich Detges, Anthony Grant, Toby Green, Tjerk Hagemeijer, Rigmar Haynes, John Holm, Richard Hooi, Silvio Jonis, Sidney Jou- bert, Ellen-Petra Kester, Wim Klooster, Mirto Laclé, Annette Mantlik, John McWhorter, Mikael Parkvall, Matthias Perl, Sebastian Postlep, Josep Quer, Nicolas Quint, Joseph Salmons, Armin Schwegler, Ronnie Severing, Bastiaan van der Velden, Florimon van Putte, Igma van Putte-De Windt and the anonymous Diachronica reviewers for valuable comments, suggestions and other help. Translations of quotes are my own.