Debates and Reviews 169 Journal of Language Contact – VARIA 3 (2010) www. jlc-journal.org Nicolas Quint. L’Élément Africain dans la Langue Capverdienne // Africanismos na Língua Caboverdiana, 2008, 133 pages. Paris : L’Harmattan. Nélia Alexandre (Centro de Linguística da Universidade de Lisboa) 1. Structural overview Nicolas Quint’s book, L’Élément Africain dans la Langue Capeverdienne // Africanismos na Língua Caboverdiana, explores the presence of (West-)African elements in the Cape Verdean Creole (Santiago variety—henceforth, CVC). The main goal of this book is to examine the relevance of the African stratum of CVC, deciding which African-based Capeverdean words and/or structures determine, in particular, the origins of this Creole language and of the Afro-European Creoles, in general. In the literature on CVC, two main varieties of the language are typically considered: (i) the Sotavento variety, spoken in the leeward islands of Brava, Maio, Fogo and Santiago, represented by the island of Santiago; and the Barlavento variety, spoken in the windward islands of Boavista, Sal, Santo Antão, São Nicolau and São Vicente, identified with the island of São Vicente (cf. Veiga 2000; Baptista 2002). Quint’s option for the Santiago variety is based on three (strong) reasons. First, Santiago variety is the one the author assumes to know better; second, the island of Santiago is taken to be the cradle of CVC and is the variety that is more basilectal (i.e. more africanized); third, the demographic figures show that Santiago is the most populated island, given that over 50% of the population of the country lives there. The book begins with a long and inspired preface from Manuel Veiga (former Minister of Culture, linguist and native speaker of the Santiago variety), who acknowledges Quint’s contribution for the research on CVC, enhancing the African nature of the language, and, according to Veiga, deviating from the scholars that claim that the ‘European influence’ on the Lexicon and the main components of the grammar of Creoles is very relevant. Veiga’s desire to show the African influence on CVC leads him to add to Quint’s arguments one of his own, suggesting that the monophthongization that CVC exhibits is a process of innovation probably due to African influence (e.g., Portuguese baixo > CVC baxu ‘low’; caixa > kaxa ‘box’; peito > petu ‘chest’; deitar > deta ‘lay’; beijo > beju ‘kiss’; feijão > fixon ‘beans’; Europa > orópa ‘Europe’; noite > noti ‘night’; doido > dodu ‘crazy’; louco > loku ‘insane’; poupar > popa ‘save’; coice > koxi ‘kick’; from table in pages 10-11). Note, however, that the very same diphthongs in bold in the words given as examples are monophthongs in some varieties of contemporary Portuguese. Quint’s book is organized in three main parts: Chapter 1 presents some historical facts about the origin of the black slaves that were taken to Cape Verde during the Portuguese settlement in the 15 th century, stressing on the fact that in the second half of the 16 th century there were thirteen thousand individuals living in Santiago island, 87% of which were black slaves (probably brought from a limited area in the West Africa coast, namely, between the peninsula of Dakar, in Senegal, and Freetown, in Sierra Leone). Assuming the hypothesis that the archipelago was inhabited when found, the African features of the contemporary Capeverdean culture (and language) must have their roots on other continental African cultures/languages. Chapter 1 also looks to methodological issues related to the African languages that the black slaves spoke and to the collection of African etyma. Particularly, Quint remarks that one of the methodological problems for the research on the African elements in CVC is the diversity of African languages that might have been at the origin of this Creole. Those languages belong to two linguistic branches of the Niger-Congo family: the Atlantic branch (especially languages such as Downloaded from Brill.com06/12/2020 01:46:56AM via free access