Encoding path in Mauritian Creole and Bhojpuri - Laboratoire de ...

Sibylle Kriegel, Ralph Ludwig & Fabiola HenriEncoding path in Mauritian Creole and Bhojpuri (40) (…) soley va vine noar, la line na pa vasoleil become black moon donne so clarté, é zétoal va tombé dipi dan lé ciel (…)give clarté and star fall heaven‘Soon after the trouble of those days, the sun will grow dark, the moon will nolonger shine, the stars will fall from heaven…’ (Matthew 24, 29, translation byAnderson 1885)(41) Avla ki lherla mem, voal dan le tampl ti décir an dé,voilà moment veil temple tear twodipi laho ziska anba, (…) top bottom‘Then the curtain hanging in the temple was torn in two from top to bottom…’(Matthew 27, 51, translation by Anderson 1885)(42) Mais so cloisons laçambe là napas dibois napas plances: dipis enbut partition room wood planks haut, dipis en bas toute loison nèque éne grand grand laglace même. top bottom all partition just big big mirror même‘But the partition in his/her room is not made of wood or boards: from top tobottom the partition is a big, big mirror.’ (Baissac 1880: 56)The contribution of French and Bhojpuri toMauritian Creole Path expressionsFrench influenceFrench draws upon two main prepositional formulas to express Path or directionality(point of departure and point of arrival): de … à and depuis … jusqu’à. Thedepuis … jusqu’à construction marks duration, extent and continuity in a local,temporal or more abstract sense. It should, however, be stressed that the temporaluses of depuis are much more frequent in contemporary French. It was found thatin the oral corpus CORPAIX, only 5 out of 234 occurrences of depuis are used ina local sense (Berthille Pallaud, personal communication). However, from a diachronicperspective, the primary use is the local one (see Haspelmath 1997: 139).Thus, French, as the lexifier language during creolization and as a currentadstrate, explains: depi, even though depi seems unmarked whencompared to French depi-ziska (semantic contiguity in general) depi for the partitive and possessive (French as an adstrate)The influence of French, however, does not explain:depi as an ablative marker in Mauritian Creole; French alsoacted as a lexifier language for other creoles in which, however, this markerdid not undergo extension of meaning and where serial constructions are usedmore predominantly (cf. the example of Guadeloupean Creole)depi-ziska to depi-depidepi dan depi in the Indo-Mauritianvariety of Creole (cf. §4.2)Bhojpuri influence The hypothesis – marking at the lectal levelWe propose that Bhojpuri played a critical role in the generalization of depi as anablative and sometimes allative marker. Proof of the plausibility of this hypothesismay first be sought in lectal usages of depi:i. Depi used as an ablative marker, side by side with the zero marker (cf. example18: Mo papa sort depi Sesel vs. Mo papa sort Ø Sesel) is a peculiarity of theIndo-Mauritian variety of the Creole.ii. As we briefly mentioned in §3.4, the tendency to replace ziska ‘until’ by depi ischaracteristic of the Indo-Mauritian variety of Creole, many of whose speakersare also Bhojpuri speakers (see examples (28–b) and (32)).We will revisit this hypothesis of lectal marking in §4.2.3 after examining datawhich would explain the transmission of structural features from Bhojpuri to Creole. The particle se in Bhojpuri: contact with CreoleIn Mauritian Bhojpuri, the postposition se (see examples (2) and (3)) is used as anablative marker; it is the range of functions and the frequency of use of this postpositionwhich were the determining factors for the generalization of depi in Creole.The postposition se is a feature of Indian Bhojpuri and also appears in otherBhojpuri varieties, for example South African Bhojpuri. 27 We will confine ourexamples to cases where depi is used as an ablative marker. For Indian Bhojpuri se, Mesthrie (1991: 262) shows a range of functions which cover a relativelylarge semantic domain. However, illustrations are lacking: “The main postpositions are: (…)(b) se – covering the roles “source”, “comitative”, “instrument” and “force” (to be designated “”).”2nd proofs