The Grammaticalization of the Proximative in Tok Pisin

Bibliographic Data

ID2885241
AuthorsSuzanne Romaine (0000-0002-0746-9704, corresponding author)
Year1999
Volume75
Issue2
Pages322
Publication date1999-06-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueLanguage (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0097-8507 • E-ISSN: 1535-0665
PublisherJSTOR (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.2307/417263
OpenAlexW2033172189
LanguageEN
Citations received18
References cited10

This article discusses the grammaticalization of Tok Pisin laik 'want/like/desire' (from English like) and klostu 'near' (from English close to) as markers of what Heine (1994b) has called the proximative with the meaning 'almost', 'nearly', 'be about to', etc. I will show that although klostu was more generally a feature of Pacific Pidgin English and began to grammaticalize in the mid-nineteenth century, it is now in competition with laik, which is a development specific to twentieth-century Tok Pisin, a pidgin/creole language spoken in Papua New Guinea. The fact that Tok Pisin has two constructions, of different origin and time depth, expressing the proximative yields valuable data contributing to a typology of a much neglected grammatical notion and sheds some light on the grammaticalization paths along which proximatives develop

Grammaticalization · Linguistics · History · Language, Discourse, Communication Strategies · Linguistic Variation and Morphology · Mathematics · Multilingual Education and Policy · Philosophy

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