ABSTRACT
Although many factors subsequently shaped the regional and social variants of Caribbean Spanish, including relative isolation, shifting trade routes, and changing demographics of arriving colonists, contact with other languages was arguably the most important single factor responsible for the contemporary intrazone diversity of Caribbean Spanish. This chapter provides an overview of both documented and extrapolated language contact environments past and present that have contributed to the Caribbean Spanish dialect cluster. The indigenous population in the Spanish colonies of the Caribbean was once considerable, but European diseases, massacres, and unsuccessful attempts to press Native Americans into slavery quickly reduced these groups to the point of disappearing, especially on the island territories. African-born second language speakers of Spanish, often referred to derogatorily as bozales 'untamed,' spoke a variety of partial approximations to canonical Spanish, depending upon individual levels of proficiency. In Colombia, the creole language Palenquero has a strong Kikongo component, although rarely presenting double negation.
