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Instrumental Take-Serial Constructions in Haitian and in Fon

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 June 2016

Claire Lefebvre
Claire Lefebvre*
Affiliation:
Université du Québec à Montréal
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Extract

Since the paper by Jansen et al (1978), it is a well-known fact that serializing languages divide into two major groups: those which have Take-serial constructions and those which don’t. Haitian creole has Take-serial constructions, as exemplified in (l):

  1. (1) Jan pran kabrit ale nan mache

  2. John take goat go in market

  3. ‘John brought the goat in the market.’

Among the languages which have Take-serial constructions, languages further divide into two groups: those which have instrumental Take constructions and those which do not. An example of an instrumental Take-serial construction is provided in (2). In these constructions, the subject of the second verb is interpreted as the instrument of the complex predicate formed by the series of verbs.

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Linguistics/Revue canadienne de linguistique , Volume 34 , Issue 3 , September 1989 , pp. 319 - 337
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Linguistic Association 1989

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