12 55 Years of Arab Studies in Romania - Secţia de Arabă

(6) bēbi ana Ø māma bēt (Bizri 2010: 134)
baby 1SG mother house
„[As for] my son, he is at my mother‟s‟
According to Bizri (2010: 128), “Pidgin Madam expresses possession […]
by means of a construction which consists in saying “at me X exists””. Actually,
the preposition „at‟ does not occur 3 :
(7) ana bēbi fi (Bizri 2010: 128)
1SG child FI
„I have a child.‟
Finally, Bizri (2010: 124) writes that fi is “an indicator of state, it has the
meaning of “to be in the situation of somebody who…”. The data, however,
suggest that fi functions rather like a verbal predicate marker:
(8) a. ana maþi ārip sogel (Bizri 2010: 124)
1SG NEG-FI know work
„I didn‟t know how to work.‟
b. ana þi rūhi ubai 4 (Bizri 2010: 125)
1SG FI go Dubai
„Am mers în Dubai.‟
c. Karuna (10 years)
ana ma þi dogre nēmit (Bizri 2010: 185)
1SG NEG FI immediately sleep
„I immediately go to bed‟
d. Gunawathie (Saudi Arabia, then Lebanon)
þi gūm, þi salli (Bizri 2010: 197)
FI get up FI pray
„I would get up [and] pray‟
As can be seen, fi is compatible with various classes of verbs, and permits a range
of temporal and aspectual interpretations.
To conclude, fi functions as a predicative, existential and locative copula.
The predicative and locative uses of fi are subject to considerable variation. Fi is
also used to express predicative possession (the have-construction pattern) 5 . The
use of fi as a verbal predicate marker in Pidgin Madam is restricted to two
3
As mentioned by Bizri (2010: 130), “Pidgin Madam is […] characterized by the absence of the
morphemes marking […] the locative”.
4
Where stands for a voiced retroflex stop.
5
See the classification of possessive constructions in Heine (1997a and 1997b).
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