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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
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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

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