Tense and aspect in Sranan

Sranan is the main Creole language of Surinam (formerly Dutch Guyana).Its tense and aspect system is, though similar to, not identical with that of Guyanese or Jamaican.In this paper, a detailed attempt is made not only at describing the facts of the language, but also at giving rules that generate the correct forms with the correct meaning.The rule system is basically transformational, though the important rules are morphophonemic.The system takes as underlying forms so-called 'shallow structures', which are semantically transparent in the sense that they reflect in a regular way a particular semantic analysis of tense and aspect.As regards tense, the 'double tense' analysis is applied, by which every verb form is preceded by two tenses, a deictic first tense (present or past), and an existentially quantifying second tense.This latter tense quantifies over either moments or durations of time.We thus get structures reading, e.g.'At that past time there was a duration d such that ''John sleep" is true at d'.The aspectual difference between durative and momentary is accounted for by the difference in quantification: when the second tense quantifies over durations, the main verb becomes durative; when it quantifies over moments, the verb becomes momentary, i.e. non-durative.It then appears that a surprisingly simple rule system yields the correct forms from the postulated underlying forms.Apart from a treatment of tense and aspect, a description is also given of the CoWiplexities of the copula verb (BE) in Sranan.Although, strictly speaking, this is a separate topic from tense and aspect, the copula verb is intricately interwoven with the phenomena of tense and aspect, and its treatmeni completes the picture.In the description, account is taken of two varieties of the language, System A which is the representative variety, and System B, which is spoken mainly by adolescent males in the capital.It results that only minute changes in the rub system are needed to account for the different sociolects.Within