Gram - SEAS

216 8 Situations 0/ extreme language contact
(2) Sens-pas-king i bin gow, i mas-rut fo rowt, waka
Sense-pass-king PM PAST go, PM makes-foot for road, walks
trong fo hil, sowtey i rish fo king i tong.
vigorously up-and-down hills, so-that PM reaches at king his palace
King i tok sey, yu don korn. Meyk yu klin rna het.
king PM talk say, you COMPL come. make you clean my head.
Biabia i don plenti tumos fo rna het. Sens-pas-king
hair PM COMPL grow too-much for my head. Sense-pass-king
i bin don gri sey, i go bap king i het.
he PAST COMPL agree say/COMP, PM go barber king his head
'Wiser-than-king began his journey. Up and down hill he went, and so finally
he arrived at the king's palace. The king said, "You have come. Shave my head
(because) my hair has grown too long." Wiser-than-king agreed to cut the
king's hair.' (Traugott 1976: 71, based on Schneider 1966: 177)
Note in particular the serial-verb constructions tok sey and gri sey which are the
kinds of construction we noted in Section 1 .3.2 in connection with the development
in Ewe of the complementizer be. There are no clear instances of embedding, but
there is some hypotaxis, as exemplified by the purpose clause introduced by sowtey
'so that,' and the indirect, third-person quotation dOli gri say, i go bap king i het
'agreed that he would cut the king's hair' (as opposed to 'agreed "I will cut your
hair" '). And, as would be expected from an oral narrative, there is parataxis, as in
king i tok sey, yu dOli kom 'the king said: "You have come" '). The West African
construction may have been translated literally (i.e., "calqued") from Akan selsi
'that complementizer, quotative say'; or possibly it is a direct borrowing of Akan
se. Another notable feature is the periphrastic possessive, as in king i tOllg, which
uses the PDE order ofthe inflectional possessive (king 's town), not the periphrastic
(town o/ king). The predicate-marker construction with i will be discussed further
in Section 8.3.2 below.
8.2.2 Some characteristics of creoles
By contrast with limited pidgins, creoles are typically more complex,
especially syntactically. However, they may be relatively similar to extended
pidgins like West African Pidgin English. Among often-cited characteristics of
creoles are:
(i) Articles: a distinction is made between definite referential (3a), indefi­
nite referential (3b), and indefinite non-referential (3c) (for the differences, see
Section 6.4. 1):
(3) a. Mi bai di buk.
'I bought the book (that you already know about).'
b. Mi bai wan buk.
'I bought a (particular) book.'