--Beatrice Owusua Nyampong 13:55, 18 February 2014 (UTC)
Agreement
In Krio, there is referential agreement in PERSON. This is seen in the example below.
Example:
I si anoda dog we fiba am, ehn i bak ohl bon na im moht.
“He sees another dog which resembles him and he too held a bone in his mouth.”
In this example, the third person pronoun 'I' (he) refers to the dog mentioned earlier in the text. The third person object pronoun 'am' (him) refers back to 'I' (he) which refers to the dog. Again in the second clause, the third person possessive pronoun 'i' (his) refers to the pronoun 'i' (he) which refers to the other dog. - both the subject pronoun and the possessive pronoun have the same form.
There is, however, agreement in NUMBER.
Den i go tek di oda bon ehn ron wit di tu bon dem.
“Then he will take the other bone and run with the two bones.”
In the above example, the plural marker 'dehm' agrees with the numeral 'tu' (two). However, 'dehm' can occur without the numeral as in English:
the two bones
di tu bon dehm
the bones
di bon dehm
Here are some more examples to help establish this fact:
1,Bring da/de kop na ya.
SG SG
Bring that/the cup here.
2,Bring den/de kop dehm na ya.
PL PL
Bring those/the cups here.
3,Bring den kop na ya.
PL
Bring those cups here.
4,*Bring da kop dehm na ya.
SG PL
*Bring that cups here.
In the examples above, there is a concordance between the demonstratives and the plural marker 'dehm'. In 1. the singular demonstratives 'da/de' agree with the singular noun 'kop'. In 2. the plural marker agrees with the plural demonstratives 'den/de', eventhough as in 3. the latter can occur on its own and still make the noun plural (however, 'de' on its own is perceived as singular rather than plural). But in 4. the utterance is ungrammatical since there is no agreement between 'dehm' and the singular demontrative 'da'.
Clause Linkage
There are various forms of complex clauses and some of these forms are visible in Krio. Below is a case of parataxis; where complete clauses are linked by coordinating conjunctions, with no form of embedding or subordination.
Example:
I si anoda dog we fiba am, ehn i bak ohl bon na im moht.
“He sees another dog which resembles him and he too held a bone in his mouth.”
This sentence consists of two clauses:
1. I si anoda dog we fiba am.
2. I bak ohl bon na im moht.
These clauses are explicitly linked by the coordinating conjunction 'ehn' (and). Syntactically, both clauses are independent and there is no form of embedding or subordination to prove otherwise. The first clause has a subject 'i' and an object 'am' and both refer back to the same subject 'dog'. The second clause also has a subject 'i' and an object possessive pronoun 'im', both of which also refer to the 'other dog'. Therefore, these clauses can only be coordinated to form a complex clause.
The next example expresses hypotaxis; where a clause is subordinate to the other.
Di hangri beleh dog mek op im maind se i wan da oda bon.
“The greedy dog decided that he wanted that other bone.”
Again there are two clauses in this example;
1. Di hangri beleh dog mek op im maind.
2. I wan da oda bon.
The first clause is incomplete because it has an intransitive verb 'mek op im maind'-(decided) which demands two arguments; what did he decide to do? To answer this question, the second clause is introduced by the complementizer 'se'-(that) since what he wanted to do was to have the other bone. Thus the second clause makes known the intended purpose of the first clause. Both clauses are therefore, linked by the COMP. The second clause is however a complete clause which can occur on its own and thus independent. This makes it clear that the first clause is subordinate and thus, embedded in the second clause because the second argument it demands is in the second clause.
Serial Verb Construction (SVC) in Krio
The examples discussed here evidently express serial verb constructions in Krio where two or three consecutive verbs have the same subject. The verbs may either occur one after the other or after some other lexical words; but they still share a common subject. This linguistic phenomenon is very conspicuous in the language, therefore, Krio can be said to be a serializing language.
I bigin ala ehn trai fɔ pul di tin we de insai im moht, nain i swala am.
“He began to shout and tried to remove what was in his mouth then he swallowed it.”
In her article Prepositions in Krio, van de Vate (2006), states that directional verbs like 'kam'-come and 'go'-go occur with motion verbs like 'waka'-walk and 'ron'-run, and prepositional phrases to form locative path expressions, and the position verbs like 'heng'-hang, 'sidon'-sit, 'tinap'-stand or the locative copula 'de'-to be and prepositional phrases are found in locative place expressions. It is also clear in her paper that directional verbs generally occur in V2 position in SVC after the motion verbs in order to express direction(see eg. below), and this V2 position is evident in most serializing languages.
However, in my examples, position verbs can also occur with directional verbs as in eg. 1-3 'go' occurs with 'heng', and 'tinap', 'kam' occurs with 'sidon' and i believe these SVC forms can also form locative place expressions when they occur with prepositional phrases. The directional verbs also occur before the position verbs, ie, they occur in V1 position and not the famous V2 position. Also, in eg. 1, there is a third verb whose action is also performed by the subject.
I dɔn go heng pan di windoh kohtin fɔ kech di flai.
“He has gone to hang on the window curtain to catch the fly.”
Di flai dɔn kam sidon pan di chia we Simon dɔn slip insai.
“The fly has come to sit on the chair in which Simon is asleep.”
Di flai go tinap pan wan kop we di pus dɔn nak ehn di kop dɔn fohdon.
“The fly stood on a cup which the cat has hit and the cup has fallen down. ”