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Highlights
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- Develops genealogical blend: the potential clash of typological features.
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- Tests structural dependencies between features of a particular language cluster.
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- West African pattern with stative verbal predicates prevalent in Surinam Creoles.
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- Adjectival pattern is much more present in Virgin Island Creole Dutch.
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- Support for correlation between Aspect prominence and verbal property items.
Abstract
This
paper explores digitally archived data from three genres of 18th and
20th century texts in two Caribbean Creole language clusters: the
Suriname Creoles and Virgin Island Dutch Creole. They will be approached
from the perspective of variation and change within varieties that were
originally genealogical blends: languages that are made up of
typological properties from different lineages from different parts of
the world, Europe and West-Africa. We will focus on the expression of
property concepts in relation to aspect marking, as this feature
contrasts typologically for the relevant areas, and argue that
genealogical blends are a useful notion to handle the variation found in
the Creole language data. Comparing two language clusters in diachronic
perspective yields stronger support for our central claim that the
typological dependency between verbal property concepts and
aspect-orientation is a robust one.
Abbreviations
- COMP, complementizer;
- COP, copula;
- DEF, definite;
- DET, determiner;
- EXIS, existential;
- FOC, focalizer;
- FUT, future;
- IPFV, imperfective;
- IRR, irrealis;
- LOC, locative;
- N, noun;
- Neg, negation;
- PASS, passive;
- PI, property item;
- PL, plural;
- POSS, possessive;
- PP, past participle;
- PR, present;
- PRF, perfective;
- PST, past;
- REDUP, reduplication;
- REL, relative;
- SG, singular
Keywords
- Typology;
- Creole;
- Surinam;
- St. Thomas;
- Aspect;
- Property concept
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