On French Influence in the Development of Creole Reflexive Patterns

On reflexive forms in creoles

“…As we saw in 4.2, PN-reflexives start out with physical nouns meaning 'body' or 'head'; it therefore comes as no surprise that PNreflexives tend to be associated most strongly with physical events. Thus, in Mauritian CF and Papiamentu CS, the PN-reflexive is likely to involve physical action verbs (Corne, 1988b(Corne, , 1989Muysken and Smith, 1994: 49). 31 But even when fully grammaticalized, that is, when having attained stage N-III, PN-reflexives are likely to retain salient properties of their earlier uses.…”

“…This is what Carden and Stewart (1988: 9-11;1989) refer to as the ''[1,2 uR; 3 -R]'' reflexive. While in non-creoles it is not hard to find examples of B-reflexives (e.g.…”

“…36 For a step in the right direction see Plag (forthcoming). 37 Perhaps the most dramatic case concerns the history of Mauritian CF, for which see Carden andStewart (1988, 1989) and Corne (1988bCorne ( , 1989, and Carden (1993). Table 10 suggests that there is one creole that is unusual in a way: This is Negerhollands CD, which had a third person reflexive marker sie in the 18th and 19th centuries.…”