The completive

[Mesulam Aisoli]

"bin" past continuous perfect tense, em i "bin" kam pinis na i go bek long
haus. from english "been". Some coastal villages use it a lot in question
form, eg: em i "bin" we? or ol i "bin" we or ol i kam we? (similarly).

> ----------
> From: 	BURTON John[SMTP:john.burton at tsra.gov.au]
> Sent: 	Friday, 1 February 2002 10:47am
> To: 	Multiple recipients of list
> Subject: 	RE: The completive
> 
> 
> > "Bin" (meaning "past perfect indicative") occurs in the first edition 
> > of Murphy's Pidgin English book in 1945 (p. 27), so the "eminent 
> > source" is clearly not correct.
> 
> Sure. I was referring to the discussion in Rick Goulden's 'The Melanesian
> content in Tok Pisin' 1990. Pac. Ling. Ser B: 104 where he begins "In both
> Tok Pisin and Bislama there is evidence of a weakly established past tense
> marker 'bin'."
> 
> I will come back with a longer discussion at another time, but the eminent
> sources (two of them actually) were none other than Tryon and Dutton, both
> of whom went for radio station announcer explanations. Because this sounds
> implausible, I didn't want to colour anyone's immediate reaction by
> mentioning Dutton and Tryon straightaway.
> 
> John Burton
>