Example 5-94

lang taim gat am dangkii kyaat, nou yu gat am mootoo kyaar
lang
long
taim
time
gat
have
am
PATIENT
dangkii
donkey
kyaat,
cart
nou
now
yu
you
gat
have
am
PATIENT
mootoo
motor
kyaar
car
Long ago you had a donkey cart and now you have a motor car.
Comment:
Regular Creolese does not have patient marking of NPs. However, Archaic Creolese spoken by people of South Asian origin does show the marker -am being used as a transitive verb marker. There is no context that we can find with the data available that would allow us to distinguish between -am as a transitive verb marker, which is the way it has been described in Devonish (1978) and Rickford (1987), from a patient marker. For purposes of APICS, we have, therefore, listed it as a patient marker.
Type:
naturalistic spoken
Source:
Dolphin 1996: 66