[2] It is mostly French-lexified except for flora and fauna terms, with a complex mix of substratum languages—most notably the Arawakan Karipúna language.

[3] Alleyne and Ferreira explain that "today, the Karipúna people are a highly mixed group, comprising not only descendants of Amerindians, but also of Africans, Asians and Europeans, and mixtures thereof.

Members of the Arawakan, Tupían, and Cariban linguistic trunks were in contact with European explorers since the 16th century, and around 1830 to the 1840s, due to the Cabanagem, a revolt by a group of indigenous people from the Pará region moved to what is now Amapá and which was claimed by French Guiana.

[2][5] Moving between French Guiana and Brazil in hotly contested territory from the Ounary to the Oyapock rivers, and finally towards the Curipi, where the Karipúna now live, these groups were joined by "members of the Palikúr and Galibí tribes, as well as Guianan Creoles, Arabs, Chinese, Europeans, and Brazilians" and eventually settled in the Uaçá area.

"[4] Furthermore in 1854, due to a gold rush in Approuague, many "coolies, Blacks, Chinese, Martinicans and French adventurers" moved to the Oyapock and Uaçá rivers, where the Karipúna inhabited, further contributing to the broad ethnic mix.

[2] Ladhams explains the adoption of a French creole by the group as a result of the broad ethnic backgrounds of the Karipúna.

Later in 1927, an inspection commission commanded by the Ministry of War began to patrol the Oiapoque and report on the groups living there.

[3] The Ministry of War intended to "incorporate the Indians into society," and from 1934–37, and then from 1945 onwards, non-indigenous teachers were recruited by the government to teach in Karipúna villages.

This education "played a fundamental role in formulating the contemporary identity of these groups, in the propagation of the use of Portuguese and in the configuration of the villages.

"[5] It was also during this period that the "Kheuól-to-Portuguese bilingual education programme was instituted, largely through the efforts of CIMI (the Catholic mission) and with the approval of FUNAI, and later MEC."

Since this period, there has been a stated focus on promoting the maintenance of KFC as a second language and defending Amerindian rights while also providing a "bridge to the outside world," to a varying degree of success, often criticized, both by members of the community and linguistic anthropologists such as Jo-Anne Ferreira.

Members of the latter groups are often bilingual in Amapá French Creole, though only the Karipúna and Galibi-Marwono speak AFC natively.

Ethnologue considers Karipúna French Creole to be "threatened," with a rating of 6b on the Graded Intergenerational Disruption Scale (GIDS).

As noted above, Ladham interprets the language as a tool which the ethnically fragmented early Karipúna communities employed to meet an "immediate need for a medium for inter-ethnic communication.

[8] Lastly and unsurprisingly Corne mentions that "Portuguese has contributed basic vocabulary" of KFC for both lexical and functional categories of words.

The description is in-depth, categorical, and provides examples for various basic and complex sentence structures and clause types, along with justification of the classifications made.

Ferreira states that "the Catholic mission, CIMI, has been largely responsible for promoting a three-year Kheuól education primary school programme."

According to Anonby some of the Karipúna French Creole texts have been published and they are "mainly Biblical stories and folk tales," along with language "primers, such as those edited and organized by Fransisca Picanco Montejo (1985).

[13] Ladhams is a well-cited and succinct socio-historical investigation of the Karipúna community's origins, which is generally accepted by anyone writing about KFC ethnography afterwards.

li3SG.SUBJflɛʃ-earrow-VERBli flɛʃ-e3SG.SUBJ arrow-VERB"He/she shoots an arrow"Pronouns in KFC form a two-number and three-case system, which is undergoing a regularizing change by analogy.

[10] The KFC lexicon on the whole is greatly derived from French[4] and has undergone a process more morphological agglutination and "article reduction."

Ladhams suggests that the Karipúna community is historically composed of "French Guinean Blacks, Chinese, Arabs, and Europeans," although the extent of non-European influence, outside of flora and fauna words, appears to be minimal.

"Karipúna French Creole both in historical sound shifts and in present variation has agglutinative morphophonemic changes.

[4] The morphological reduction of the French article from these words does not have a consistent result on the syntactic category, despite all being non-proper nouns.

Tobler demonstrates how a pseudo-passive can be formed by coercing the verb into a verbal adjective, turning a monotransitive sentence into an intransitive one.

Karipúna French Creole does have a causative construction, using the auxiliary verb "make" (/fɛ/), which appears to be a widely productive, valency-increasing form.

"It is apparent that there is a valency increase with the introduction of the "make" auxiliary, given that the tense marker "te" is no longer present in the /mo lẽj sɛk/ verbal compliment(s).

While KFC can, and often does, use a null tense marker to indicate present completeness for "experience and state" verbs, like /sɛk/, the gloss Tobler provides gives no evidence of a present-complete meaning.

Tobler's gloss suggests that the null past complete tense marker that "event and process" verbs take applies to "make," rather than "chop" in the causative construction, and therefore does not represent mere CP-embedding.

The "generalization" conditional construction applies to general rules and principles about the world, using the null tense marker in the conditional phrase and the present progressive /ka/ in the result phrase, as such: siifu2SGøPAST.INCOMPLkupecutvitmãquicklykaPRES.PROGfãdebreaksi u ø kupe vitmã ka fãdeif 2SG PAST.INCOMPL cut quickly PRES.PROG break"If you cut it quickly it will break.