Grounding via tense-aspect in Tobagonian Creole: discourse strategies across a creole continuum

This paper explicates the opposition between phi and -ed as tense-aspect ma rkers of foregrounding and backgrounding respectively in Tobagonian Creole in the transition space between the mesolectal and acrolectal varieties in that system, where -ed replaces basilectal bin and mesolectal did as a remo te-past marker, Most consistency of explication can be achieved for these m arkers via their we as discourse strategies, since phi has been variously a ssociated with perfectivity, pastness, resultativity, and recency, while bi n, the basilectal analogue of -ed, has been contextually analyzed as encomp assing the meanings past before past, simple past, and remote or non-releva nt past. The foregrounding-backgrounding opposition is defined and illustra ted in its consistency, through the exponents phi, bin/did, and -ed in a se ries of illustrations of oral and written narratives. In the narratives neg otiated in the transition area, that is, that area closest to the Standard, there is some loss of the opposition. There, -ed takes up generalized past meaning for students at an interlingual stage of development in the assume d acquisition of Standard English.