Abstract
This study investigates the expression of perfect meanings in thirty English-lexifier pidgins and creoles or related varieties, such as African American Vernacular English or Singlish. The data were elicited with the help of sixteen sentences and a short text from Dahl's (1985:198-206) typological tense-aspect questionnaire. The perfective, as the perfect's 'anti-prototype' (Dahl 2014: 273), is also considered. The possession of a grammaticalized perfect category is particularly frequent in West Africa, where it is likely to constitute a case of substrate influence;moreover, the gram is considerably less frequent in English-lexifier pidgins and creoles than in non-creole languages, which may be related to recent grammaticalization processes.
Item Type: | Journal article |
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Faculties: | Languages and Literatures > Department 3 |
Subjects: | 400 Language > 400 Language |
ISSN: | 0920-9034 |
Language: | English |
Item ID: | 82105 |
Date Deposited: | 15. Dec 2021, 15:00 |
Last Modified: | 15. Dec 2021, 15:00 |