[Grammaires Créoles] Patricia Cabredo Hofherr (UMR 7023)

retour Séminaire Grammaires Créoles

Patricia Cabredo Hofherr (UMR 7023)
Complex constructions with GIVE in Haitian and Martiniké

This talk presents work in progress on complex constructions with BA(Y) in Haitian and BA ‘give’ in Martiniké that originate as serial verb constructions.

Serial verb constructions have been central to the study of Creole languages (Sebba 1987, Veenstra & Muysken 2017, Maurer et al 2013). As secondary verbs in a serial construction are characterized negatively by a lack of verbal properties (no negation, no TAM marking) it is often not clear whether elements that historically were verbal have been reanalysed as prepositions (see Lord 1993 for grammaticalization of serial verbs).

I present the types of evidence that have been adduced to argue for a reanalysis of serial verbs as prepositions in the literature on Creole languages and how the criteria apply to Haitian and Martiniké (Jean-Louis 2019).

Jean-Louis, Loic. 2019. Les constructions ditransitives de transfert en créole martiniquais. MA dissertation, U. Paris 8. Lord, Carol. 1993. Historical change in serial verb constructions. Amsterdam: Benjamins. Maurer and the APiCS Consortium. 2013. 'Give' serial verb constructions In: Michaelis, Susanne Maria & Maurer, Philippe & Haspelmath, Martin & Huber, Magnus (eds.) The Atlas of Pidgin and Creole Language Structures.  Oxford: Oxford University Press. Sebba, Mark. 1987. The Syntax of Serial Verbs An Investigation Into Serialisation in Sranan and Other Languages. Amsterdam: Benjamins. Veenstra, Tonjes & Muysken, Pieter 2017. Serial Verb Constructions. In The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Syntax, 2nd Edition (eds M. Everaert and H.C. Riemsdijk). https://doi.org/10.1002/9781118358733.wbsyncom075