Íslenskt mál og almenn málfræði - 01.01.2008, Blaðsíða 141

139
The BÚNA-construction in Pidgin Icelandic
Anna Giacalone-Ramat, Onofrio Carruba and Giuliano Bemini (eds.): Papers
from the 7th International Conference on Historical Linguistics, pp. 349-354.
John Benjamins, Amsterdam.
Muysken, Pieter. 2001. The Origin of Creole Languages: The Perspective of Second
Language Leaming. Norval Smith and Tonjes Veenstra (eds.): Creolization and
Contact, pp. 157-174. John Benjamins, Amsterdam.
Muhlhausler, Peter. 1986. Pidgin and Creole Linguistics. Basil Blackwell, Oxford.
Schwegler, Armin. 1990. Analyticity and Syntheticity: a Diachronic Perspective with
Special Reference to Romance Languages. De Gruyter, Berlin.
Steever, Sanford. 1993. Analysis to Synthesis: The Development of Complex Verb
Morphology in the Dravidian Languages. Oxford University Press, Oxford.
SUMMARY
The BÚNA-constmction in Pidgin Icelandic
Keywords: language contact, pre-pidgin, Icelandic, verbal system, perfect
This paper analyzes a core characteristic of the Pidgin Icelandic (PI) verbal system,
'•e-> the so-called BÚNA-constmction. It begins with some general information on PI,
hs classification on the pidgin continuum cline, and the reasons why this kind of
'tnmigrant Icelandic should be regarded as a pre-pidgin or partially stabilized pidgin.
The second part of the article describes the Standard Icelandic (SI) source of the
BÚNA-constmction, i.e., the so-called B-perfect (vera búinn að + inf., literally be
finished to”). Then the author analyzes morphological and semantic characteristics of
'he BÚNA-constmction in PI. The comparison between the BÚNA-constmction and
hs source in SI leads to the conclusion that the B-perfect has undergone profound
Phonetic and morphological simplifications during the pidginization process. The
Sequence vera búinn að has been reduced to a mono-morphemic bi-syllabic preverbal
búna. Consequently, the auxiliary verb vera ‘be’ has been lost and together with it the
'Hflectional markers that it contains in SI, as well as all types of agreement of the
^úói/i-part of the constmction. Furthermore, the phonetic and morphological reduc-
fions have led to some semantic and functional changes. While the SI B-perfect func-
tions mainly as a resultative and universal perfect, the BÚNA-constmction can also
exPress an existential perfect meaning. Additionally, it may be used both as the pre-
Sent and past perfect and display a simple past tense meaning, and in this last func-
fi°n it corresponds to the SI preterite.
The paper is based on observations and interviews performed by the author while
^e Was teaching Icelandic to immigrants in Reykjavík in 2006. As this is a theoreti-
Cal hnguistic paper and not a sociolinguistic study, all statistical information as well
as 'nformation about the speakers (age, sex, education, etc.) is omitted.