DEFINING THE TARGET LANGUAGE IN LANGUAGE GENESIS 71

interethnic communication rather than an imperfectly learned Spanish
or expanded Portuguese pidgin. Surely, these systems were used as
lexical fountains, but it's doubtful that they ever served as a TL in the
formation of Palenquero. Furthermore, the TL in language genesis
should be conceived of as community generated, rather than a pre-
existing, abstract language that only exists outside of the community
of speakers. Thus, how we define speech community becomes rather
important (or rather, how the speech community defines itself; i.e.
ethnic identity, class, etc.). The little we know about the social history
of PSB, reveals a situation of language creation rather than imperfect
learning of some pre-existing TL. Was there a choice in the matter? In
other words, did the Palenqueros opt to learn Spanish over Kikongo?
Did the Palenqueros strive to acquire fluency in Spanish? Quite clearly,
the answer to these question is 'No.' If Spanish was not the TL of the
PSB population, they surely cannot be said to have failed to acquire it.
These cimarrones came from a variety of ethnolinguistic backgrounds
(although predominately Bantu) who lived and worked together.
Palenquero is not relexified or imperfectly learned Spanish or
Portuguese. The Palenqueros successfully created a language, a
medium for interethnic communication (MFIC) with the resources
available to them.