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system 8 . The only preposition is la. It occurs e.g. in structures with an indirect
object and in those expressing location, direction and possession, as shown below:
(27) a. Gib sigara la ani.
bring cigarette PREP 1SG
‗Give me a cigarette.‘
b. Ani slip la karavan.
1SG sleep PREP caravan
‗I sleep in a caravan.‘
c. Inte rua la sonda?
2SG go PREP rig
‗Are you going to the rig?‘
d. La ani maku fulus.
PREP 1SG not be money
‗I don‘t have any money.‘
Strikingly similar situations are mentioned in the literature. Russenorsk,
for instance, has the ―all-purpose‖ preposition po, which occurs in structures
expressing e.g. location, direction or possession (Broch and Jahr 1981 and 1996):
(28) a. Principal po lan.
‗The captain is ashore.‘
b. Moja po vater kastom.
‗I‘ll throw you in the water.‘
c. klokka po ju
‗your watch‘
This survey of the lexical categories attested in Romanin Pidgin Arabic
would not be complete without a discussion of categorial multifunctionality 9 . This
is a direct consequence of the small size of the vocabulary, on the one hand, and
of the total lack of inflections, on the other hand. Thus, many words can be
assigned to more than one category and can be analyzed as lexically
underspecified 10 :
(29) a. halas ‗ready‘ and ‗to finish‘
b. šogol ‗work‘ and ‗to work‘
8
See the discussion of such systems in Mühlhäusler (1997).
9
See Voorhoeve (1981) and Mühlhäusler (1997) for a theoretical discussion.
10
In the sense of Silverstein (1972a and 1972b).
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