Copula Deletion in Spanish Foreigner Talk: Using Questionnaires as a Research Tool

Questionnaires were used to discover how twenty-eight students from Peru, Colombia, and Guatemala use the Spanish copulas ser and estar in foreigner talk. Ser usually was deleted but not estar when used as a locative or when discussing health. A multiple choice situational questionnaire was found to reflect actual use more accurately than one where respondents write what they think they would say. The pattern of deletion suggests that creolists should look at the role of "canned topics" in the development of the bipartite and tripartite copulas found in Pacific and Afro-Caribbean English Pidgins and Creoles.