The Source of Sango's 'BE'

Samarin, William J.

doi:10.1075/jpcl.1.2.03sam

Article published In: Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages
Vol. 1:2 (1986) ► pp.205–223

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The Source of Sango's 'BE'

William J. Samarin | University of Toronto

Published online: 1 January 1986

https://doi.org/10.1075/jpcl.1.2.03sam

The verb 'be' in Pidgin Sango is an innovation, for vernacular Sango has no copula. The development in Sango had important grammatical consequences. It is argued, with data both from Ngbandi and Kituba, that the most likely source of this verb is some form of Kikongo, which went through the process of pidginization in the nineteenth century.

Cited by (4)

Cited by four other publications

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Samarin, W.J.

2006. Sango. In Encyclopedia of Language & Linguistics, ► pp. 742 ff.

Elders, Stefan

2004. Les manières d’ “être” et les mots pour le dire dans les langues d’Afrique Centrale (LINCOM Studies in African Linguistics, 31). Lingua 114:11 ► pp. 1429 ff.

Backus, Ad, Alfred Bammesberger, Theodore S. Beardsley, John D. Bengtson, Lyle Campbell, Anthony P. Grant, Anthony P. Grant, Shin Ja J. Hwang, Masataka Ishikawa, Alan S. Kaye, Alan S. Kaye, Eugenio R. Luján, Victor H. Mair, Bert Peeters, Edgar C. Polomé, Sergei V. Rjabchikov, R. William J. Samarin, Paul Sidwell, Edward J. Vajda, Edward J. Vajda, Diane Beelen Woody & Xinzhang Yang

1999. Reviews. <i>WORD</i> 50:3 ► pp. 387 ff.

Samarin, William J.

1988. Creating Language and Community in Pidginization. Canadian Journal of Linguistics/Revue canadienne de linguistique 33:2 ► pp. 155 ff.

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