Contents iiiACKNOWLEDGEMENTS vINTRODUCTION vii 0.1 Previous work on Kristang viii 0.2 The data ix 0.3 Organisation of the grammar x 0.4 Symbols and abbreviations xiCHAPTER 1: SOCIOLINGUISTIC BACKGROUND 1 1.1 Malacca and its ethnolinguistic diversity 1 1.2 The origins of the Kristang speech community 3 1.3 Use and disuse of Kristang 12 1.4 The current linguistic situation 13CHAPTER 2: PHONOLOGY OUTLINE 19 2.1 Consonants 20 2.2 Vowels 23 2.3 Unstressed vowels in word final position 29 2.4 Diphthongs and vowel sequences 30 2.5 Phonotactics - the syllable 33 2.6 Stress 37 2.7 Orthography 42CHAPTER 3: PARTS OF SPEECH 46 3.1 Articles 46 3.2 Quantifiers 47 3.3 Cardinal numerals 48 3.4 Nouns 49 3.5 Pronouns 52 3.6 Adjectives 57 3.7 Verbs 59 3.8 Modals 63 3.9 Relators 64 3.10 Particles 65 3.11 Interjections 68 3.12 Adverbs 68CHAPTER 4: THE NOUN PHRASE 84 4.1 Constituents of the NP 84 4.2 Co-ordination 114CHAPTER 5: THE AUXILIARY COMPLEX 118 5.1 The auxiliary complex 118 5.2 'Adverbial' features of TMA particles 136 5.3 The NEG constituent 137 5.4 The modal category 142CHAPTER 6: CORE AND PERIPHERAL ARGUMENTS 149 6.1 Grammatical relations defined for Kristang 149 6.2 Object marking 150 6.3 Other NP types 160 6.4 Elision of NPs 166 6.5 The origin of Kristang ku as a multifunctional relator 167CHAPTER 7: THE CLAUSE 171 7.1 The verbal clause 171 7.2 The non-verbal clause 182 7.3 Imperative clause 185 7.4 The interrogative clause 186 7.5 Information formatting devices 191CHAPTER 8: INTERCLAUSAL AND INTERPREDICATE RELATIONS 199 8.1 Structures involving more than one clause 199 8.2 Existential sentences 206 8.3 Cleft sentences 210 8.4 Verb serialisation 211CONCLUSION 218BIBLIOGRAPHY 226

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