Grammatical Relations in a Radical Creole: Verb Complementation in Saramaccan
Francis Byrne, Derek Bickerton
With English and Portuguese as parent languages; the significant lexical retention of African languages; and the relative isolation of its speakers, Saramaccan has always stood out among Creole languages. Yet despite its obvious interest Saramaccan received little in the way of scholarly study. This groundbraking monograph dispels the mystery surrounding Saramaccan and provides strong evidence for a new approach to Creole origins. The study is carried out within the government-binding framework. The author shows how Saramaccan comes close to demonstrating what constitues the irreducible minimum of building blocks with which a language can be constructed, and the types of structure which must develop under such conditions. In this work Frank Byrne combines the outcome of patient and persevering fieldwork with a firm grasp of current theoretical issues and provides us with the insights into the nature of universal grammar of which a Creole like Saramaccan is potentially capable.
年:
1987
出版社:
John Benjamins Publishing Company
语言:
english
页:
307
ISBN 10:
0915027968
ISBN 13:
9780915027965
系列:
Creole Language Library
文件:
PDF, 22.74 MB
IPFS:
,
english, 1987