Gram - SEAS

8. 2 Basic characteristics a/ pidgins and creoles 217
c. Mi bai buk.
'I bought a book (or books).' (Even the speaker does not know/remember
specifically which book[s)) (Guyanese Creole; Bickerton 1977: 58)
(ii) Tense-modality-aspect (TMA) systems: periphrastic expressions are widely
found. Bickerton (especially 1984) argues that they are typically sequences of the
following type: ± anterior 2 tense, ± irrealis modality and ± non-punctual aspect
markers, in that order, e.g.: Guyanese Creole bin [+anterior] - go [+irrealis] -
stei [+non-punctual] V 'would have been V-ing.' Examples from two creoles,
Saramaccan (Surinam) and Fa d' Ambu (Equatorial Guinea), both with Portuguese
lexifiers, and cited in (4a) and (4b) respectively:
(4) a. Mi bu-o-ta-njan df fisi.
I ANTERIOR-iRREALIS-NONPUNCTUAL-eat the fish
'I would have been eating the fish.'
b. Ineni bi ske xa tabaya.
They ANTERIOR IRREALIS NONPUNCTUAL work
'They would have been working.' (Thomason 2001: 174)
While such examples can be multiplied, the view that this tense-aspect-mood
sequence is typical of or unique to creoles has, however, been shown to be greatly
oversimplified. Furthermore the terminology is somewhat idiosyncratic, and is
itself alleged to have contributed to arguments that creoles are very different in
kind from non-creole languages. Plag (1994) and Winford (2000), among many
others, argue that TMA systems in creoles can only be fu lly understood if they
are analyzed in terms of universal cross-linguistic categories such as have been
identified by Dahl (1985) and Bybee, Perkins, and Pagliuca (1994), and in terms
of their discourse functions in narrative and other discourse genres, rather than in
terms of the features ± anterior, ± irrealis, ± non-punctual.
(iii) A distinction is made between realized (-irrealis) complementation as in
(Sa) and unrealized (+irrealis) complementation as in (5b):
(5) a. II desid al met posohladah
She decided at put fish-in-it
'she decided go put fish in-it' [inference: she did what she
decided to do]
b. Li ti pe ale aswar pu al bril lakaz sa
he TNS M go one-evening pu at burn house that
garsoh-Ia me lorsime ban dayin fin atke Ii.
Boy-the but on path PL witch COMPL attack him
'He would have gone that evening to burn the boy's house, but on the way he
was attacked by witches.'
(Mauritian Creole; Bickerton 1981: 60-1, citing Baker 1972)