Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-dh8gc Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-09T20:50:04.587Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The grammaticalization of tense and aspect in Tok Pisin and Sranan

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 November 2008

Gillian Sankoff
Gillian Sankoff
Affiliation:
University of Pennsylvania
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

According to Bickerton's “bioprogram,” creole grammars from the outset contain privative oppositions in the verbal system, where zeroes can be unambiguously interpreted as contrasting with verbs bearing the marked feature. A quantitative analysis of tense and aspect in narrative texts in Tok Pisin and Sranan indicates that this is not the case in either language. Zeroes freely occur with all tense categories. Verbs occurring with no tense markers are thus not “marked with zero,” but constitute the historical residue of an earlier stage of the languages in which tense marking of the superstrate languages had not been transmitted and the Creole markers had not yet evolved.

Type
Research Article
Information
Language Variation and Change , Volume 2 , Issue 3 , October 1990 , pp. 295 - 312
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1990

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Arends, Jacques. (1989). Ph.D. dissertation, University of Amsterdam.Google Scholar
Bickerton, Derek. (1974). Creolization, linguistic universals, natural semantax, and the brain. Working Papers in Linguistics (University of Hawaii) 6(3):124–141.Google Scholar
Bickerton, Derek. (1975). Dynamics of a creole system. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Bickerton, Derek. (1979). The status of bin in the Atlantic creoles. In Hancock, I. (ed)., Readings in creole studies. Ghent: Story-Scientia. 309–314.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bickerton, Derek. (1981). Roots of language. Ann Arbor: Karoma.Google Scholar
Bickerton, Derek. (1984). The language bioprogram hypothesis. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 7:173–221.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bybee, Joan. (1985). Morphology. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Givón, Talmy. (1984). The pragmatics of referentiality. In Schiffrin, D. (ed.), Meaning, form, and use in context: Linguistic applications (Georgetown University Roundtable 1984). Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press. 120–138.Google Scholar
Heine, Berndt & Reh, Mechthild. (1984). Grammaticalization and reanalysis in African languages. Hamburg: Helmut Buske Verlag.Google Scholar
Herskovits, Melville J. & Herskovits, Frances S. (1936). Suriname folk-lore. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Labov, William. (1972). The transformation of experience in narrative syntax. In Language in the inner city. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. 354–396.Google Scholar
Labov, William. (1984). The interpretation of zeroes. In Dressler, Wolfgang U. et al. (eds.). Phonologia 1984. Proceedings of the Fifth International Phonology Meeting, Eisenstadt. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 135–156.Google Scholar
Labov, William & Waletzky, Joshua. (1967). Narrative analysis. In Helm, June (ed.), Essays on the verbal and visual arts: Proceedings of the 1966 Annual Spring Meeting of the American Ethnological Society. Seattle: University of Washington Press. 12–44.Google Scholar
Muysken, Pieter. (1981). Creole tense/mood/aspect systems: The unmarked case? In Muysken, P. (ed.), Generative studies on Creole languages. Dordrecht: Foris. 181–199.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Myhill, John, (in press). Tense, aspect, and modality marking in Creole languages. In Huebner, T. & Ferguson, C. (eds.), Cross currents in second language acquisition and linguistic theory. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Rickford, John. (1987a). Dimensions of a creole continuum: History, texts, and linguistic analysis of Guyanese Creole. Stanford: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Rickford, John. (1987b). Past marking in the Guyanese mesolect: A close look at Bonnette. In Denning, K. et al. (eds.), Variation in Language: NWAV-XV at Stanford. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Linguistics Department. 379–394.Google Scholar
Sankoff, Gillian. (1984). Substrate and universals in the Tok Pisin verb phrase. In Schiffrin, D. (ed.), Meaning, form, and use in context: Linguistic applications (Georgetown University Roundtable 1984). Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press. 104–119.Google Scholar
Sankoff, Gillian. (1991). Using the future to explain the past. In Byrne, F. & Huebner, T. (eds.), Development and structure of Creole languages: Essays in honor of Derek Bickerton. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins. 61–74.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sankoff, Gillian & Labov, William. (1985). Variation theory. Paper presented at NWAV XIV,Georgetown University,Washington, DC.Google Scholar
Sankoff, Gillian & Mazzie, Claudia. (1991). Determining noun phrases in Tok Pisin. Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages 5.Google Scholar
Seuren, Pieter. (1981). Tense and aspect in Sranan. Linguistics 19:1043–1076.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Seuren, Pieter. (1983). The auxiliary system in Sranan. In Heny, F. & Richards, B. (eds.), Linguistic categories: Auxiliaries and related puzzles. Vol. 2. Reidel.Google Scholar
Taylor, D. (1956). Language contacts in the West Indies. Word 12:399–414.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Taylor, D. (1960). Language shift or changing relationship? International Journal of Applied Linguistics 26:144–161.Google Scholar
Thompson, R. W. (1961). A note on some possible affinities between the Creole dialects of the Old World and those of the New. In Lepage, R. B. (ed.), Proceedings of the Conference on Creole Language Studies. London: Macmillan. 107–113.Google Scholar
Voorhoeve, Jan. (1957). The verbal system of Sranan. Lingua 6:374–396.CrossRefGoogle Scholar