The Grammaticalization of the Proximative in Tok Pisin  

Oleh:

Romaine, Suzanne

Jenis: Article from Journal - ilmiah internasional
Dalam koleksi: Language (ada di JSTOR) vol. 75 no. 2 (1999), page 322-346.
Fulltext: Vol. 75, No. 2, pp. 322-346.pdf (600.09KB)

Isi artikel

This article discusses the grammaticalization of Tok Pisin laik 'want/like/desire' (from English like) and klostu 'near' (from English close to) as markers of what Heine (1994b) has called the PROXIMATIVE with the meaning 'almost', 'nearly', 'be about to', etc. I will show that although klostu was more generally a feature of Pacific Pidgin English and began to grammaticalize in the mid-nineteenth century, it is now in competition with laik, which is a development specific to twentieth-century Tok Pisin, a pidgin/creole language spoken in Papua New Guinea. The fact that Tok Pisin has two constructions, of different origin and time depth, expressing the proximative yields valuable data contributing to a typology of a much neglected grammatical notion and sheds some light on the grammaticalization paths along which proximatives develop.*

Opini Anda

Klik untuk menuliskan opini Anda tentang koleksi ini!

Kembali