17h00
visioconférence
Ulrike Albers (U. de la Réunion) & Laura Tramutoli (U. Bologna)
Agglutination, nominal classification and referentiality in three creole languages
ENGL : Agglutination, nominal classification and referentiality in three creole languages
Weak-nominal expressions have been shown to be largely item-specific, i.e. lexically determined by the noun itself (Aguilar-Guevara, Le Bruyn & Zwarts 2014). On the other hand, it has been proposed (Acquaviva 2016:2) that "not only number and countability, but also gender and the kind- or object-level reading are best seen as emergent characterizations that arise from the DP as a whole".
In some creole languages, prefixed nouns, which have undergone a process of agglutination with an article (French de l’eau > Réyoné: dolo; French les yeux > Mauritian lizie; French du riz > Guadeloupean diri) refer to special sorts of things such as liquids; collectives and aggregates; times; places or people with a particular social function/”institutions”; body parts, qualities, events and state of affairs and facts, and unique referents. They also behave differently from other nouns, as we show. We propose that they constitute particular noun classes that essentially denote mass and/or abstract concepts, likely to be used in weakly referential contexts. We compare the article-agglutination in different creole languages and show how the lexical semantics of these nouns interplay with weak referentiality of various kinds and morphosyntactic configurations.
FR: Agglutination, classification nominale et référentialité dans trois langues créoles
[Il est argumenté que dans plusieurs langues créoles, les noms qui ont subi un processus d’agglutination (français de l’eau > seychellois dilo) constituent des classes nominales dénotant des concepts particuliers, notamment des massifs et des concepts abstraits, et sont lexicalement prédestinés à figurer dans des SN à référentialité faible (au sens de Aguilar-Guevara, Le Bruyn & Zwarts 2014). Nous proposons une étude comparative des créoles mauricien, réunionnais, et guadeloupéen.]
