[Grammaires créoles] Ulrike Albers (U. La Réunion)

Ulrike Albers (U. La Réunion)

Réyoné and French plural markers in corpus data

This talk will focus on plural marking in different types of Reunion Creole (Réyoné) corpus data, which differ in the absence/presence and frequency of two types of plural marking. On the one hand, we find the French plural, restricted in our corpus data to determiners les and des which also encode (in)definiteness. On the other, there is the Réyoné plural, which is expressed by a prenominal clitic bann.

1. Mi       té         suiv     les        kour     lékol    in-pé.
   1sg      pst       follow  ind.pl  course  school  a-little
   ‘I attended school classes a little.’
2. Dann    mézon  navé                 des       trucs    à          faire.
   in         house   have.pst          def.pl thing    to         do
   ‘In the house, there were things to do.’
3. Navé                bann     bonbon            pwason.
   have.pst          pl        biscuit              fish
   ‘There were bonbon pwason (biscuits of fish-form).’

In this talk, I will examine the frequency and the contexts of use of these markers. Furthermore, I will illustrate and compare some of their distributional and interpretive patterns.