Abstracts Language, Literature, and Linguistic

Estudo de marcas de modalidade no Guineense

by Lucas Gonçalves Inlaté

Abstract: This study describes and analyses, from a syntactic and semantic point of view, the occurrence of the modality marking process in Guinean: a Portuguese lexical base language, which resulted from contact between distinctly intelligible languages, spoken in Guinea-Bissau and by its community in the diaspora. Modality is related to the way speakers of a given natural language express possible and/or necessary states of affairs, that is, how they, in their languages, give advice, orders or permissions to carry out events (Kratzer 1991). In this study, we investigated the use of the auxiliary verbs pudi (can), dibidi ( must) and ten ku (have to) as indicators of epistemic and deontic modality in Guinean, as well as their behavior in relation to tense and aspect categories. The choice for this theme is justified by the fact that there are few studies on tense, mode-modality and aspect (TMA) categories in Creole languages (cf. Winford, 2018) and, above all, because there are no publications on modality marking in Guinean. In carrying out this study, three different methodologies were tested, namely: (i) questionnaire for elicitation of epistemic and deontic modals, based on the Modal Questionnaire for Cross-Linguistic Use (VANDER KLOK 2014); (ii) storyboarding techniques, inspired by the stories developed by the TFS Working Group (2011); and (iii) oral narratives, based on what is proposed in Agostinho and Rech (2023). The results obtained from the application of these methodologies show that Guinean speakers use the modal auxiliaries pudi, dibidi and ten ku in epistemic and deontic contexts. The modal pudi figures in contexts of epistemic modality (of possibility) and deontic (of permission). The auxiliary dibidi also occurs in contexts of epistemic modality (of possibility) and deontic (of obligation). Finally, our data indicate that the modal auxiliary ten ku occurs both in epistemic and deontic contexts, with a modal force of necessity. Regarding the occurrence of particles together with modal auxiliaries, we verified that bin occurs with epistemic and deontic modals with future temporal orientation, indicating that bin is a future marker. We also verified that a deontic modal item, with past temporal perspective and future temporal orientation, appears with the particle ba, indicator of past tense and imperfective aspect. Epistemic and deontic modals with present temporal perspective and orientation do not occur with TMA particles, indicating that the unmarked modal form is also associated with the present tense, in addition to appearing in deontic contexts with past temporal perspective and perfective aspect. In these cases, the context becomes determinant for the time-aspectual specification.