The expression of possibility in the Chabacano creoles and their adstrates

This study investigates how possibility is expressed in Zamboanga and Cavite Chabacano and two of their respective adstrates, Hiligaynon and Tagalog. Following Winford’s (2000, 2018) call for creolists to use standard typological frameworks to describe creole modality, this study presents questionnaire data elicited for each language and classifies the modals according to categories proposed by van der Auwera & Plungian (1998), Palmer (2001), and Matthewson et al. (2005). The data demonstrate that all four languages have the same typological profile, with mixed Philippine and Spanish elements. Pwede ‘can’ (< Sp. puede) expresses deontic, dynamic, and epistemic possibility, as in Spanish, and in the creoles, it also marks nonvolitional circumstances, parallel to Philippine ma(ka)-. Epistemic possibility is marked primarily by adverbs in each language, however, with siguro ‘possibly/probably’ (< Sp. seguro ‘sure’) flexibly able to mark necessity. The data support recent proposals (Fernández 2006, 2012a;Sippola & Lesho 2020) that the Chabacano varieties are highly similar not because they descended from a single ancestor but because their adstrates are so closely related. In fact, the adstrate modal systems are nearly identical.