Les formes verbales du présent dans le Catéchisme en langue créole, précédé d’un essai de grammaire… de l’abbé Goux (1842)

This contribution analyses the grammatization of Creole languages in the 19th century, as a dimension of the co-lingualism between French and Creole, and the linguistic dynamics of the Creole languages at that date.According to the description of Abbé Goux, the preverbal marker ka would mark the present in Martinican Creole (except for four stative verbs, which occur in the bare form). However, in the Catechism, the verbal scheme Ø + V which bears “present” value extends well beyond the four statives indicated by Goux in his Grammar. The Catechism also highlights the possibility of a double construction, Ø + V and ka + V for marking the present tense of certain verbs, depending on the context. The distribution of the competing forms Ø + V and ka + V to express the values of the present may be explained: i) by the grammaticalization of ka, originally a durative aspectual marker, as a temporal marker, even though not completely achieved at that stage, ii) by the fact that the generic and usual present are still expressed by Ø + V towards the middle of the 19th century and iii) by the particularities of the “Church Creole”, used in the Catechism.