langi titi kɛnapu wa sɛtɛ kɛkɛ dalki titi kɛnapu ka
langi
long
titi
time
kɛnɛ-apu
person-pl
wa
pst
sɛtɛ
stay
kɛkɛ
like
dalki
now
titi
time
kɛnɛ-apu
person-pl
ka
neg
People of long ago didn't live like people of nowadays.
Comment:
Generic use of nouns does not preclude plural marking. This is in sharp contrast with Bickerton (1981: 22–24), where generic nouns are predicted to be bare nouns. That Berbice Dutch fails to conform to that prediction is perhaps due to the fact that the plural marker is a suffix, not a free form or enclitic, as is the case in Hawai'i Creole. Of relevance also is the argument of Stewart (2007) that the enclitic plural marker of Jamaican Creole is in fact an inclusiveness marker, not a plural marker. It is possible that that analysis can be extended to other creoles which use enclitic plural markers homophonous with a 3PL pronoun. Although derived from a pronominal form of plural human reference in the substrate, the Berbice Dutch plural marker is a suffix which has not retained the pronominal characteristics of its etymon, and is not restricted to human reference.