Cohesión textual y relación genética: el caso del papiamento

Abstract

Textual cohesion, a reflection of the coherence of the text, is its morphosyntactic union, which can be used in comparative studies to emphasize the similarities and the differences between different languages and, consequently, its genetic relation. The comparison of the mechanisms of cohesion between a Papiamento text and its Spanish version reveals the clear genetic relation between the Papiamento and Spanish. Therefore, Papiamento can be considered to be a Neo-Hispanic (Neo-Ibero-Romance) linguistic modality with respect to the most stable and less permeable compartments of language, i.e. morphology and syntax. This way the theory of Afro-Portuguese Proto-Creole and of its relexificationtreorganization by other European languages is invalidated. The proposed methodology applied to representative samples, can be used to determine any genetic relation between the languages, the degree of its kinship, and to elaborate a new possible genetic classification of them.