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The present paper argues that West African Portuguese-related Creoles (WAPCs) developed from a Basic Variety (BV) of Portuguese that arose in the second half of the 15th century among the numerous African slaves who were then present in Portugal. This BV, variously called Lingua de Preto (LdP) 'Black Language; falar Guiné 'Guinea speech', etc., is known to us through its representation in Portuguese literature, especially in 16th century theatre, but also in popular writings until the very end of the 18th century. In the first part of the study (sections 1-4), we substantiate our claim that such literary representations are indeed reliable renditions of the linguistic medium African slaves in Portugal actually used in their interactions with the white population and among themselves. We propose a historical scenario to account for the 'return' of LdP to Africa, i.e. Senegambia, where it soon became the lingua franca of trade between Portuguese expatriates and the local populations. From this lingua franca, creoles subsequently arose. In the second part (sections 5-11), we propose an extensive outline of LdP grammar such as we are able to retrieve from the corpus. Comparisons with present-day WAPCs are attempted. We conclude (sections 12-13) that the availability of such historical testi- monies indeed gives us the exceptional opportunity of gaining some first-hand knowledge of the transitional medium that necessarily separates a lexifier language from 'its' creole(s). The fact that this transitional medium, we think, looks much more like a BV than a destructured jargon lends support to the assumption that untutored L2 acquisition by adults played a crucial role in creole formation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The monogenetic theory of the origin of European-based pidgins and Creoles rests upon a thesis which carries the chain of development back to Sabir, the Lingua Franca of the Mediterranean, in the Middle Ages and later. The most important link was Pidgin Portuguese, whose speakers were the most important in the early slave trade and in general European maritime expansion. Italian -- especially Genoese -- merchants and seamen, the earliest users of Sabir, were in especially close contact with Portuguese merchants and sailors throughout the fifteenth century. The multilingual situation and the compact socio-economic unit constituted by whites on the Atlantic coast of Africa in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries provide an explanation of the transmission. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]