The Emergence of an Optative Marker in Jóola Fóoñi (Atlantic)
Type de matériel :
61
This article analyses the evolution of the construction commonly used in Jóola Fóoñi to express the speaker’s wish about a state of affairs beyond the control of the speech act participants. Originally, this construction is a biclausal construction in which the matrix clause is Ɛmɩtεy εkaan ‘Let God make (that)’, but the possibility of repeating Ɛmɩtεy ‘God’ as the subject of the subordinate clause referring to the desired state of affairs shows that it is being reanalysed as a monoclausal construction in which the former matrix clause acts as an optative particle whose internal structure, although still obvious, is not relevant anymore.
Réseaux sociaux