L'aspect dans les créoles afro-caribéens

Abstract

The family of Afro-Caribbean Creoles with an English lexicon, here referred to as the AECs (e.g. Jamaican, Sranan, Nigerian Pidgin), share a common ancestry, lexicon and grammar. However, there appear to be differences in the way linguists have analysed grammatical aspect (e.g. imperfective vs. perfective) and lexical aspect (e.g. dynamic vs. stative verbs) in these languages. This has led to a bewildering variety of approaches, definitions and analyses. The lack of comprehensive grammatical descriptions and field research data on individual Afro-Caribbean Creoles has aggravated terminological and analytical idiosyncracies and inconsistencies. In my presentation, I will present some of the perspectives that linguists have taken on lexical and grammatical aspect in these languages. By drawing on my field data on Pichi (the English-lexicon Creole of Bioko island, Equatorial Guinea) I will present a unified analysis of aspect which places the notions and terminology of this functional area within the broader typological and areal perspective of West Africa. I conclude that there is no need to maintain an idiosyncratic terminology for the description of lexical and grammatical aspect in the AECs.