Tempus och aspekt i pidginisering : En studie av sju pidginspråk och deras källspråk

Sammanfattning: It has been proposed that pidgin languages are similar in their marking of tense and aspect. This study wishes to answer three questions: 1) are there similarities in the marking of tense and aspect in pidgins, 2) are there similarities between the source languages and the pidgins they result in, and 3) does the development of tense aspect marking in pidgins follow the general patterns of grammaticalisation observed in other languages. Two quite different approaches are used to analyse the languages. Firstly the concept of grams is used, that is, a representation of a grammatical category in a specific language, e.g. the perfect in Swedish. Secondly the theory of prominence is used, i.e. that a particular language tends to grammaticalise one of the categories tense or aspect (or mood) rather than the other. The study looks at a sample of seven pidgin languages from around the world and compares them with regards to their marking of tense and aspect. Furthermore the tense-aspect systems of the source languages (lexifiers and substrates) of these pidgins are studied. Regarding the first question, the most obvious similarity is the fact that there is very little grammaticalised marking of tense and aspect at all. A pattern can also be discerned were a pidgin uses either a marker for perfective aspect or for past tense and that future/present markers are grammaticalised at a later stage. As for the similarities between the source languages and the pidgins, the pidginisation process has yielded languages with less grammaticalised forms than the source languages. All gram types found in the pidgins can also be found in their lexifiers. The patterns of grammaticalisation of tense and aspect markers follow universal patterns that have been described in typological studies. The semantic change of inherited or borrowed markers follow general patterns as do the innovations in the pidgin itself.