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Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages: Online-First Articles

Evidence from bare verbs for the future versus non-future split in Creoles

ORCID logo | Université de Picardie Jules Verne, France
Vincentian Creole makes a future/non-future temporal distinction on the basis of the categorisation proposed in several studies, according to which languages combining present and future make a past/non-past distinction and those using the same form for past and present make a future/non-future tense opposition. In Vincentian Creole examples of absolute tense, underspecified (or unmarked) predicates do not generally obtain a future interpretation: only readings in the past tense (for dynamic predicates) or the present (for non-dynamic predicates) are available. Thus, predicates in the future tense are unambiguous regardless of the lexical aspect of these predicates, unlike the context of past and present tense interpretations which I explored in my previous column. Evidence from other English-related creoles supports this claim.
Keywords: Vincentian Creole, future tense, go , underspecification, dynamic, stative, bare verbs, english-related creoles
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Categorisation of languages based on their tense systems
  • 3.Looking back at the english future
  • 4.The future / non-future split in vincentian Creole
  • 5.Extending the future versus non-future split to English-related creoles
  • 6.Concluding remarks
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • Author queries
  • References
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