Variable plural marking in Palenquero Creole

IF 1.4 2区文学 0 LANGUAGE & LINGUISTICS

Language Variation and Change Pub Date : 2020-10-01 DOI:10.1017/S0954394520000204

Estilita María Cassiani Obeso, Hiram L. Smith

引用次数: 2

Abstract

Abstract One of the most salient putative African features of Palenquero, an Afro-Hispanic creole spoken in northern Colombia, is the prenominal plural marker ma. However, plural number is not categorically marked with ma, which alternates with bare forms in plural contexts and also occurs in singular contexts. In a principled sample of noun phrases (n = 1,186) from the spontaneous speech of twenty-seven Palenquero-Spanish bilinguals, the rate of ma (versus zero) is 51% in plural and 13% in singular contexts. Singular ma is favored with subjects and specific objects, consistent with an association with definiteness. In plural contexts, where it is robust, selection of ma is favored with specific and generic referents in subject role. This conditioning indicates that plural marking is favored for discourse referential nouns, in accordance with the cross-linguistic generalization that morphological marking tends to appear on instances that approach the prototypical function of a category (Hopper & Thompson, 1984).

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帕伦克罗克里奥尔语中可变复数标记

帕伦克罗语是一种生活在哥伦比亚北部的非裔西班牙裔克里奥尔语，其最显著的非洲特征之一是名前复数标记ma。然而，复数并不被明确地标记为ma, ma在复数上下文中与裸形式交替出现，在单数上下文中也会出现。在27名帕伦克语-西班牙双语者自发演讲的名词短语原则样本(n = 1186)中，ma(相对于零)在复数语境中占51%，在单数语境中占13%。单数名词常用来表示主语和特定的宾语，与确定性相一致。在复数语境中，它是稳健的，在主语角色中，特定的和一般的指称物更有利于ma的选择。这种条件作用表明，话语指称名词更倾向于使用复数标记，这与跨语言的概括一致，即形态标记倾向于出现在接近范畴原型功能的实例上(Hopper & Thompson, 1984)。

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来源期刊

Language Variation and Change Multiple-

CiteScore

2.60

自引率

0.00%

发文量

期刊介绍： Language Variation and Change is the only journal dedicated exclusively to the study of linguistic variation and the capacity to deal with systematic and inherent variation in synchronic and diachronic linguistics. Sociolinguistics involves analysing the interaction of language, culture and society; the more specific study of variation is concerned with the impact of this interaction on the structures and processes of traditional linguistics. Language Variation and Change concentrates on the details of linguistic structure in actual speech production and processing (or writing), including contemporary or historical sources.