Grammaticalization in Seychelles Creole

Seychelles Creole (SC) is one of the few creoles with a grammaticalized reciprocity marker. The grammaticalized use of kanmarad (< Fr. camarade 'comrade, companion') is mentioned in the grammars of SC (Bollée 1977; Corne 1977; Choppy 2009) but its evolution and distribution in modern SC...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autor: Kriegel, Sibylle
Tipo de recurso: artículo
Fecha de publicación:2021
País:España
Institución:Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona
Repositorio:Dipòsit Digital de Documents de la UAB
Idioma:inglés
OAI Identifier:oai:ddd.uab.cat:252000
Acceso en línea:https://ddd.uab.cat/record/252000
https://dx.doi.org/urn:doi:10.5565/rev/isogloss.149
Access Level:acceso abierto
Palabra clave:Accelerated functionalization
Distinction during Codification Hypothesis
Extra-Transparency Hypothesis
Grammaticalization
Mauritian creole
Reciprocity
Seychelles creole
Descripción
Sumario:Seychelles Creole (SC) is one of the few creoles with a grammaticalized reciprocity marker. The grammaticalized use of kanmarad (< Fr. camarade 'comrade, companion') is mentioned in the grammars of SC (Bollée 1977; Corne 1977; Choppy 2009) but its evolution and distribution in modern SC have never been analyzed. This contribution first presents present-day data from spoken and written corpora of SC and compares them to data published in the Atlas of Pidgin and Creole Language Structures, APiCS (Michaelis & al. 2013). Appealing to several grammaticalization mechanisms discussed in the literature, it then traces back the grammaticalization process of kanmarad, a process that is not very advanced in the closely related Mauritian Creole (MC). In accordance with Michaelis & Haspelmath (2020), the evolution of kanmarad in SC can be considered to be an instance of accelerated functionalization which the authors consider to be typical of creole languages. Ultimately, the study's findings are discussed in light of two complementary hypotheses that try to explain the acceleration of functionalization: the Extra-Transparency Hypothesis (Haspelmath & Michaelis 2017) and the Distinction during Codification Hypothesis which I suggest for SC. Both are considered to be possible factors favoring an ordinary language-internal grammaticalization process.